Thing 26. Join the 23 Things On a Stick Ning

I've been putting off writing about the Ning, mostly because I don't really see it as being that great. I mean, if all the information about 23 Things came off of that page, maybe it would be a place that I would visit often. As it stands, there just isn't anything there unique or useful or entertaining enough for me to want or need to visit it that often, if at all. I joined in the second round and I commented and I read some stuff, but this is just another thing for me to have to check and keep track of, and that takes away from my productivity.
With that said, I guess I could see making one for some sort of community page or something. It's the sort of thing that isn't really useful until it is, I guess. Profound, huh? I do notice that with the advent of More Things that there is more activity on the Ning, making it more interesting, so maybe I'll continue following it through the entirety of More Things and comment on it at the end.

Thing 25: Bloggers Toolkit

Oh geez. I spent what seemed like ten hours looking at widgets, trying them out, making them work, and making them fit my page. I spent WAY too much time looking at things that were broken, useless, or ridiculous. I ended up adding a favicon, a search bar, a subscription feed, a widget that turns my posts into a podcast, and a widget that pops-up mini-screens over the links on my page.

I ended up rejecting many widgets mostly because they came with advertising attached. I guess that's the downside of free widgets; I despise ads because they make the page so cluttered. In fact, I'm not sure how long I'll keep Odiogo, the podcast widget, and Snap Shots, the pop-up box widget, because both of them add a visual element to the page that I don't like. The podcasts themselves are hilarious, though. They're all wooden and mis-pronounced in a charming, robot kind of way.

The really great widgets were the ones that could be added with one click. My favicon was a little more complicated and even now seems to only work intermittently. Also, during the customization part I had no idea what to put in for number of pixels that I wanted the widget sized at. Mostly, I'm pleased with what I found, and I'm still thinking that Lil Wayne widget would have looked SO good...