Added-

1. Enable/Disable WP Likes on specific categories. (check settings page).
2. Support for %NUM+1%, %NUM-2% etc in state texts.
3. Shortcode for displaying top(monthly, weekly) posts on a page.
   • Create a new page. Add shortcode in page content.

   • [wp_likes]

     shows top 5 all time  liked posts.

   • [wp_likes show="weekly"]

   • [wp_likes show="monthly" count="10"]

4. Change in behavior- like link always shows now, added- “Be the first to like” text.
5. Tested to work on latest wordpress 3.3.

I am also rewriting the plugin from scratch to support a variety of requested features, but that would take some time. (I have a day job now!.)

Let me know if it breaks anything, been a really long I updated this and not keeping with wordpress scene.

After a year, I am willing to work on this again. Keep the feedback coming.

The top requested features, my priority are -

• Customizable display of `like` stats (monthly,weekly,daily).
• Display stats on separate page.
• Put CSS, javascript in separate file
• Remove jQuery dependency and re-write JS using closures.
• Resolve conflicts with other plugins, and so no more ‘I click it, nothing happens!’ errors.

Missed out anything ? please drop a line..

First, I would be moving my blog to linux host (probably EC2) and upgrading it to WordPress 3.0, with a new theme. Don’t get scared if things look a little different here in few days!

Hoping people get me now better

Whats the solution to this ??

Facebook’s all about a profile wall and a newsfeed. whatever you post gets added to your wall. Your newsfeed gets populated with posts from various friend walls. Thats it!

For instance – whenever a friend tags you in a photo in there album, it creates a post on your wall. The newsfeeds of your friends pick that entry from your wall and soon everyone in your list could see that photo.

What facebook privacy controls offer now is – add attributes to a wall post entry to hide it or show it to certain people. It doesn’t stop  friends from making erroneous posts on your wall unless you block them all over from posting, which is something you never would do to him/her.

So here’s the idea– why not provide a user with a set of walls instead of single wall for all ? A user sets default walls for different people, he gives different views of himself to them.

Now suppose, I set default walls for my college friends, my work people, my family members. Whenever my college friend tags me in a photo, that goes to wall designated for him, and it appears only in newsfeeds of  my college friends, no one else. I have sandboxed friends this way! I, no more depend on people in friend list for taking care of my privacy.

Facebook already has networks for this, but these networks are very wide, they contain girls, boys, people whom I may not have acquaintances with. Hence they don’t work.

Idea is still developing, will post more as it refines…

Now you go to twitter. Some more cool content for you. Also you notice some posts from services like youtube, flickr, blog feeds duplicated(from facebook) in your feed. Uninteresting.. isn’t it?

So now comes the new thing- Google Buzz. You have already checked facebook, twitter for your daily social dose. But as its inside gmail, you ought to click it.  All that you see is– same repeated content which you have seen earlier. Nothing new.. and on top of that google buzz marks the items people comment as unread, making you check it again and again even when there’s nothing really new. Even the gtalk status updates which you see right away clearly in gmail are starting to appearing in buzz. #fail

Hope you get this redundant data problem..

When I first heard of google buzz and connected sites I was very excited. I thought it would aggregate ALL content posted by my twitter and facebook friends, apply its superb relevancy algorithms and show it inside gmail.  The google guys are clever, they will surely figure it out some day..

I am left with the Android which is making a fuss almost every day. I did try the android in its very early days of T-Mobile G1 then tried the G2 (HTC hero) but none of them proved to be compelling and the absence of multi-touch from majority of applications made me stick to iPhone. So which iPhone I am talking about? The very very very old 4GB iPhone. It still rocks my world with its simplicity and powerful basic functionality as in the iPod, the phone app and the safari browser.

Now android caught my attention again with 2 recent major developments-

• The Google maps app now has a turn by turn navigator !! something which only $50+ apps like tomtom used to have.
• The Nexus One getting multitouch in browser,maps and other apps. (more on this)

Hence I got a T-Mobile G2 back today as the Nexus One is out of my reach. Popped in my Docomo simcard and was really taken away by the amazing HTC sense UI. The first thing I do in phones is to check if I am running the latest software or not. Boom! this phone is still on 1.5 or the cupcake! I remember seeing the 2.x firmware mentioned in most of the good posts and announcements about android. I wanted to try out the other features like the facebook integration, gmail and the android marketplace.. BUT all that would go with new firmware install. My impatience was growing to install the latest firmware on my phone.

So here starts my hunt for the latest firmware for HTC hero with multitouch apps and new google maps. Initially  I go with the stable shipped  ROMs and later use them to benchmark against the custom roms. I came across the words “OTA” wherever I read about new android updates. I dug my phone for the ‘check for updates’  button, but couldn’t find any. I thought if I give this clever device a internet connection, it would automatically check for updates and prompt me to download. My belkin router malfunctioned and i had  given it for service, so I created a AD-HOC wireless network to take android to internet. But wait the adhoc wireless network just doesnot show up in android !! And I thought the blackberry and the PSP were the only devices to ignore adhoc networks Some googling led me to an article which claims to get it working, but right now I am more keen in the ROM update, Google might have fixed it in 2.x?

The HTC websites has some kinda rom update, but it asks for the serial no. etc just to download the ROM. I am not doing that. Lets search for a decent rom which is tweaked to the least..

Now I come across – Rooting the HTC Hero, installing custom recovery …  this page cleared a lot many things for me and pointed  in right direction. After reading reading and reconfirming from 2-3 sites I choose the following path for new ROM.

Stock (1.5 or HTC 1.7 software version) ->Custom Recovery Image -> HTC 2.73(rooted) -> Latest radio as here

I expected I would end up with hacked/rooted 2.0 android with latest radio.. BUT damm the phone (even though its snappier than before) is still on 1.5!!

I went to the ultimate destination for cooked roms I remembered from winmo days- the xda-developers.com They seem to have everything! even android 2.1!  Without much reading I downloaded one ROM. While it was downloading, I started to read about these android 2.1 roms. I figured out that most weren’t stable enough like the 1.5 stock, the UI looked horrible on many(I downloaded one with sense UI), camera was not able to deliver full 5mps and mms wasn’t working yet. Inspite of these I just wanted to try this 2.1 and went on to install it. My phone would take any ROM now as it had a custom recovery patch. The phone booted.. I could spot the new loading animation. After 5 mins of use, HTC Sense felt like a  non-sense! apps were crashing before I could actually explore every menu item in them. Google Goggles wasn’t there. The new google maps app, couldn’t determine my location but was able to route and offered me to try the new beta navigation feature (woot!). I couldn’t find any satellites as I was indoors. The multitouch gestures were there in browser but not swift like the iPhone’s.

Tomorrow I will take this new google maps for a ride in my locality. After that will go back to the rooted latest HTC ROM with android 1.5 and explore other features.

On other side, I have also put the  android source code for download, why not make the OS say Hello Aakash when it boots

One more thing, if you are on Windows 7, download the android drivers from softpedia. You need them to run the ADB and hence to install patched recovery image. I have read that all these changes, hacks are reversible, to go back to factory state all you need to do is– run the RUU from HTC on PC.

I will enlist a few-

1. Renders in one line and more refined customization. No more ‘you and’ being appended everytime. Differentiates between people and a person.
2. Translating or reusing the plugin never been so easy.
   
3. Compatible with popular WP Super Cache plugin. Automatically updates the cache for the post which is liked. Inform WP likes that WP Super Cache is enabled from the settings page and it will take care of rest.

I am testing the plugin right now, so far it has no problems  with WP 2.9.1. You too can try out the plugin from- http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wp-likes.3.0.zip . I will mark this as a stable release after a day or two of testing and consequently your wordpress will ask for plugin upgrade.

[Update]: Release time!! This is working like a breeze. If you want further tighter integration(like in WordPress MU) or even more customization, I am offering support at a very nominal fee. Send a mail to me[at]aakash[d0t]me if you need help. Next version will have improved sidebar widget and people tracking of some form.

[Update2]: This does restore the new default CSS. You might want to backup the old css for reference. And there are some alternate like button images in plugin images folder, you might want to try them out!

As always press like if you like it. Keep the bug reports and feedback coming.

TwitVerbs- http://twitverbs.appspot.com/

It gets the verbs from your tweets and lets you know when you have been doing what! Like when you have been going out somewhere,, drinking, smoking, cooking or playing something. You will be amazed by the results. trust me. eg–

What @biz has been doing

This app is the result of my latest crave on python and the google app engine Do post feedback, if you forgot the url, here it is again- http://twitverbs.appspot.com/

So with 2.0 I tried to fulfill most of your wishes. Here are the highlights of this release-

• Finally an admin panel to tweak common settings like- whether to display on front page / posts on pages.
• It shows the stats of your most liked posts on your admin dashboard.
• You can even show the most liked posts on your blog using the sidebar widget.
• CSS editing is now under settings and translating/reusing the plugin is now even more easy as the text’s for like/unlike can be easily edited.
• A UI uplift.. hope you like it.

Next major revision will be able to track the person you liked the post as your post commenter, blog user or guest.. still digging into this and wondering how to consume gravatar here.

WP Likes 2.0-  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-likes/

Currently it allows visitors dropping by your blog to ‘like’ your posts if they find it interesting. Of  course only once, they can unlike it if the did so by mistake or just to play around with this awesome feature.

Now the big question- Can I track who liked my post?

Well yes.. if the user is a registered member of your site 0_O  // work being done on this folks, any ideas? chip in..

You can download the 1.0 beta bits of the WP likes plugin from here.

Upload the extracted zip folder to your wp-content/plugin directory of your blog. It will automatically appear in the plugin section of your Admin Panel, simply activate it from there.

In the next coming days I will work on packaging it even better and get it to the wordpress directory.

[UPDATE 1 ] The plugin is available directly from wordpress directory- http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-likes/ jQuery is now fetched in its best form(minified,GZIPed, ~20kb) at lightening speed from Google servers. The jQuery dependency will fade away in future releases.

[UPDATE 2] The version 1.1 is released with a lot of critical fixes, please give it a shot again if it was failing previously.

[UPDATE 3] Just commited the 2.0 version to the svn repo. Brings you a lot of customization, dashboard stats widget and sidebar. Will make a new post soon about it, till then take it for ride and keep the feedback coming!

WP likes 2.0 features and highlights.

So LIKE this?? then jump on the link below.