Disqus - Friends of dslacker

Re: Trying New Commenting System

leolaporte — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:44:11 -0000

This is the first Disqus comment... What do you think?

Re: Trying New Commenting System

leolaporte — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 21:57:27 -0000

Second!

Re: Trying New Commenting System

leolaporte — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:06:21 -0000

This is one of them - threaded discussions WITHIN the comments.

You can also have an avatar (if you sign up at http://www.disqus.com). There's better control for admins, as well. And a bunch of other features I'm just learning (like a karma system it looks like).

I'm just testing it out though. I'm primarily interested for the Tech Guy site.

Re: Trying New Commenting System

leolaporte — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:09:50 -0000

It does disable the video commenting - that's a minus, although not a lot of people use that.

It looks like they are planning to have a way to import old comments into Disqus. Not planning on using that at the moment.

Re: Trying New Commenting System

leolaporte — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:11:12 -0000

It's REALLY easy - it's just a plugin. I didn't do much of anything at all.

I do wish they'd add Textile or Markdown to comments, though, so I wouldn't have to emphasize words with caps!

Re: Trying New Commenting System

leolaporte — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:02:36 -0000

It doesn't use Aksimet - but there seems to be some spam filtering. I'll let you know when we get some spam. It seems to be baffling the spambots right now.

Re: Trying New Commenting System

leolaporte — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:03:34 -0000

I bet we could talk Disqus into supporting video comments (maybe even a partnership with Viddler).

Re: Trying New Commenting System

leolaporte — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:04:31 -0000

This is an example of comments one might want to downgrade. Use the arrows to the left of the avatar. A comment scoring below -4 points becomes invisible.

Re: Trying New Commenting System

leolaporte — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:25:25 -0000

I've changed it to go from oldest to newest by default - but you're right, it's a setting users can control individually.

Re: Trying New Commenting System

leolaporte — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:44:30 -0000

Hi, Daniel.

There's a lot to like about Disqus - we'll definitely use it on the new Tech Guy site. We were looking for a better way to include commenting with threading and karma on that site. It's going to be running on Wordpress, too.

And I'll upgrade to the latest version right now. Thanks!!

Re: Trying New Commenting System

leolaporte — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:37:06 -0000

Sounds good and reliable to me! ;-)

Seriously, I can't think of why that would happen. It's probably not Zone Alarm but the fact that the CSS is not loading fully (there should be a white box between the text and the background picture - it's in the CSS definition). Can't think of what would cause that though. Press refresh whilst holding the shift key to force a reload and see what happens.

Re: TWiT Live Update

leolaporte — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:48:59 -0000

Right you are, Mick. 2-7p Eastern.

I thank you so much for your donations. I don't know if people really understand that it's the listener donations that pretty much pay for TWiT. The advertising money is divvyed up to the show hosts (including me) but the donations pay for all the day to day expenses including capital costs.

I've been saving up donations for six months to pay for the studio equipment. Without that money we'd still be upstairs doing the audio podcasts only. Thank you!!

Re: TWiT Live Update

leolaporte — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:50:12 -0000

Oops. I fixed that typo. Thanks!

Re: TWiT Live Update

leolaporte — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:50:59 -0000

It probably won't be as organized as that, but that's exactly the kind of Call for Help material I hope to inject, along with interviews, and other fun stuff.

Re: TWiT Live Update

leolaporte — Wed, 14 May 2008 23:53:35 -0000

Seesmic video reply from Disqus.

Re: TWiT Live Update

leolaporte — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:01:04 -0000

You don't have to register to comment.

But... If you're not a registered Disqus user your comment will have to be approved by me before it shows up, that's all. It's to prevent spam.

Unfortunately if we didn't have anti-spam meaures we'd have more spam comments than regular comments. I've blocked over 80,000 spam comments since I moved the blog to Wordpress less than a year ago!

Registering with Disqus is cool because you get an avatar, comment threading (notice that this is a reply to a comment and not just stuck at the end of the comments) and many other blogs are using it now. People can subscribe to your comments cross blog so it's a way to create a web presence by commenting alone. Disqus also adds karma (that's what that double-ended arrow is next to the poster's avatar) so people can vote comments up or down (kind of like Digg). I think it's a really great commenting system. I was nervous about letting comments live outside my blog, but I think the idea of commenting communities that are bigger than an individual blog is very powerful.

Re: TWiT Live Update

leolaporte — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:10:15 -0000

Thanks, Daniel! Now that I have something worth visiting I hope you'll come up and be on TWiT Live some time. You can demo Qik if you want.

Re: TWiT Live Update

leolaporte — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:11:46 -0000

YOU should come visit ME! And bring Cathy!

Re: TWiT Live Update

leolaporte — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:12:26 -0000

I am employee #1! It's going to be nice to get a paycheck from TWiT after all these years no matter how meager.

Re: TWiT Live Update

leolaporte — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:15:34 -0000

I estimate I've spend around $30,000 on setting up the studio. Lights were $10,000, Tricaster was $10,000. I already owned the cameras, but they'd be another $10K. We bought furniture, rugs, curtains. You could definitely do it cheaper, most spend much more for a live TV studio.

I'll let you know when I get the workers' comp bill, but I think my monthly employee costs will be around $12,000 including SSI, SUI, and all those other acronyms. In other words I'm just like every other small business trying to make ends meet!

Our revenue comes from two places. Donations help cover the monthly costs (not entirely any more but they help), but advertising makes up the rest. We're getting good ad rates on the audio podcasts and we're close to sold out there, so that's good. TWiT Live audiences are so small right now they don't offer us much financially, but I think it will drive new listeners to the podcasts and I hope in a year or so that enough people will watch live that we'll make some money on the live stuff. And, as I mentioned in the blog post, we will offer the best from TWiT Live as a download, so that may make us some money.

Re: TWiT Live Update

leolaporte — Sun, 18 May 2008 12:06:55 -0000

I totally believe in appropriate compensation for employees (and TWiT contributors). They get paid before I do.

I pay for the ISDN, T1, and Cable Modem. DSL is provided by a radio sponsor, DSL Extreme. Bandwidth for the TWiT audio shows is donated by AOL and Cachefly. Bandwidth for the streaming video is donated by Stickam. If I had to pay for bandwidth, there would be no TWiT. It would be over $30,000 per month.

Re: Leo’s Twitter Updates for 2008-05-17

leolaporte — Mon, 19 May 2008 00:01:19 -0000

It's Remember the Milk: http://rmilk.com - an excellent to-do site with reminders. Thanks for listening!

Re: UGM 2008

leolaporte — Mon, 19 May 2008 09:58:01 -0000

I can only say that it was at the end of the week, I was tired, and I was a little too focused on the TWiT Twitter derby. In the cool light of day it's apparent that it's totally irrelevant. No matter what I do Kevin's going to win in the long run!

Also, I don't really see why Twitter should be the beneficiary of all this. Making people join Twitter to win UGM makes no sense at all! I'll figure out a better way that's more equitable.

As for International viewers, I have no idea what the legality of all this is. If it's possible to give it away internationally without getting put out of business I'll do it!

Re: UGM 2008

leolaporte — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:22:06 -0000

I really like that idea, but it limits it to folks who have a blog. Hmmm.

Re: UGM 2008

leolaporte — Mon, 19 May 2008 10:22:44 -0000

I give up. Even if I won the Derby Kevin would ultimately win the race. The TWiT Army is mighty, but it's no match for the Digg Nation!