In essence, it connects blog readers with blog writers. Readers suggest topics they’re interested in, and then writers decide if they want to address it or not. It’s actually designed with employee blogging in mind (IBM has a huge intranet), but there’s no reason such a system couldn’t be applied to the Wordpress or Blogger dashboards.

Initial results at IBM were positive: in a study of 1,000 users that tried out Blog Muse (someone coined a more catchy name for the system), blog posts “got twice as many comments and got more views as well, and they got 3 times as many stars (or likes).” Posts weren’t any more frequent though; they were simply more engaging.

The in-depth analysis at GigaOm doesn’t hint at IBM using Blog Muse outside its intranet, but with the research paper now out in the open, I would expect to soon see a similar system appear for Wordpress or Blogger.

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We’re going to be covering some of these 1,000 in the coming days here at Download Squad, however we’d be remiss to not mention the 1,000th app which (quite by chance) happens to be from our comrades at Engadget.

The Engadget app – which complements the iPhone and iPod touch application covered by our friends at TUAW a few days ago – provides you with news from Engadget, Engadget Mobile and Engadget HD along with comments for each story. There’s also the option to share stories via Facebook, Email and Twitter.

You can grab the (free) Engadget application directly to your phone here, or browse for it in the App Catalog.

I never thought I’d be the type to report website subdomain rumors (what next, trawling trademark repositories?) but this is one of those things that’s more a matter of when rather than if. There are already iPhone and BlackBerry apps so it’s only natural that Android would be next. Whether it will support video blogging like the BlackBerry app or if it’ll be akin to a crippled geriatric like the iPhone’s remains to be seen.

The Blog Herald (I meant ’some nerd’ in a nice way, incidentally) goes on to mention that the app will probably coincide with the Nexus One’s release, rumored to be released on January 5th.

If that’s the case, you can expect a Download Squad review of the app in just a couple of days!

Today sees the launch of the Ask feature to all Tumblr users — if you’re one of them, the feature can be enabled along with blog submissions in the Messages area of the Dashboard.

It’s not that I don’t understand what Intel is trying to do with AppUp – their angle is pretty clear. There’s plenty of potential profit if Intel negotiates distribution deals with OEMs and can get AppUp preinstalled on millions of netbooks.

But what’s the big selling point for the consumer?

There are, after all, loads of great sites you can already visit to download freeware and shareware: Filehippo, FreewareFiles, Download.Com, Softpedia, and many others. Unlike plain old download sites, however, AppUp requires you to submit payment information – even if you’re only interested in downloading free apps.

Ultimately, it’s about brand recognition and convenience. The average Joe doesn’t know much about finding safe, useful software online and AppUp will be right there – waiting patiently on netbooks for a user to pull out his or her credit card to pay for a program “tailor-made” for Atom-powered systems.

People have always been willing to pay for trust and convenience, and AppUp is built on that premise. It could well turn into as big a cash cow as the preinstalled McAfee and Norton software users think they need to lock in to for eternity.

When it comes to externally hosted utilities like this, I rate them in two basic ways: functionality, and reliability. In this case, there’s not a clear winner, since Twitterfeed beats Feedburner hands-down when it comes to functionality, but the opposite is true when it comes to reliability.

Twitterfeed offers more control over how it updates your Twitter account, and gives you the added benefit of also being able to update Facebook at the same time. Feedburner only updates Twitter, and offers fewer configuration settings.

Personally, I’ve settled on Twitterfeed for now because it solves two problems for me with its ability to update Facebook, but it has already had an outage at a very inconvenient time (the launch of a new blog), so for me it’s on notice; any further outages and I’m switching to Feedburner.

If you’re interested, Feedburner’s Twitter update function is hidden away in the Publicize tab, down under the Socialize link on the left menu.

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If, like many bloggers, you fall somewhere between on this issue, you might need to be more granular, and disclose payment on a case-by-case basis. Of course, you can always do this in the text of what you write, but if you want something standard you can just link to, have a look at what CMP.ly is offering.

CMP.ly offers a set of 5 standard disclosures using very short URLs that you can link to, as well as a sixth custom disclosure that you can modify to meet a specific scenario if you create an account. The URLs are short enough that they can be used anywhere that you write online, to make sure you’re really covering your, well, all your bases.

The super-simply blog platform Posterous has just released a new feature on its post.ly domain, which was previously used only as a URL shortener. For those that are not familiar, Posterous is a blogging platform that makes posting dead simple. You just send an email to post@posterous.com, and if you don’t already have a blog there one is created for you. Subsequent emails are treated as new posts.

As much as the email-based ease of use is great, Posterous’ real claim to fame is how seamlessly the service handles media. Attach photos or video, and they are automatically embedded into the resulting post. Include the URL to an online video, and the video is embedded. Posterous can also cross post to various platforms. So if you attach a photo to your post, it can be embedded into the post, but also automatically uploaded to your Flickr account. And of course, it includes Twitter integration, so new posts are tweeted on your account.

All along Posterous has been looking at post creation as something you do from your email client, but today’s post.ly release tackles it from the other side. Post.ly is an online Twitter updater that allows you to attach files and even add more text beyond the 140 characters that Twitter supports. All of this is then compiled into a tidy Posterous blog post, and a post.ly URL is appended to your tweet.

If you already have a Posterous account, you’re all set; just navigate to post.ly and start updating. IF you don’t have a Posterous account yet, you basically just do the same thing. You’ll have to authorize post.ly to update your Twitter account using OAuth, but after that creating a tweet through post.ly will automatically create a Posterous blog for you.

[via TechCrunch]

As it happens, you’ve always been able to do that. Here’s how!

The easiest method is to check out our Feeds Page. You’ll find direct links to dozens of specific RSS feeds for the categories we use. Whether you’re an Open Source supporter, keen to stay on top of web browser news, or just looking for Time Wasters to kill your productivity there are loads of dedicated feeds listed.


You can also subscribe to a specific author. Underneath the title of any post you’ll see his or her name — and just to the right of that you’ll see (RSS feed). Like Jay’s posts? Just grab his RSS link from any post he’s penned!

Here’s another handy tip…

We’ve started using tags more heavily than categories (for various reasons). For an even more personalized experience you can subscribe to a specific tag! To add a tag feed, use the following format:

http://www.downloadsquad.com/tag/yourtaghere/rss.xml

Tags are listed at the end of every post. We try to be straightforward with them – Google, Chrome, Firefox, Windows, Facebook. You’ll notice some Categories and Tags clash — if anything, we’ll be dropping categories in favor of tags, but we’ll let you know of any changes if and when they happen.

There you have it! Feel free to custom tailor your Download Squad RSS experience any way you choose, and thanks again for reading!

The super-simple blogging platform Posterous has released a theme directory, offering up eight new themes in addition to the five default themes offered right from within Posterous’s management interface. To download the new themes you must be a member of posterous.us, a forum dedicated to helping users make the most of their Posterous blog.

Once you create your posterous.us account, you can download the theme, which amounts to simply a text file containing the code for a CSS stylesheet. Copy the text and paste it into the management interface for your Posterous blog in the Theme > Advanced section, apply the change, and you’re all set.

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