Goodbye 2007 - Hello 2008

by Mike Bryan
~ January 2008 No.215 ~

Another year has come and gone as we continue to add, modify and improve the features you use at Medicinal Food News. Although 2007 was a busy year for our editor¹, we managed to bring our total published articles to 214. Our log files shows the number of visitors this year mimics last year as seen by the the number of distincted hosts serverd (dhs). We are averaging about 25,000 dhs per month. Considering the dramatic increase in personal blogs², I think we are doing OK

With the proliferation of mobile phones, handheld gaming system and game consoles able to access the web, I setup a mobile website for the small screen systems. mfn.ca³ is our mobile site.

The site has limited graphics and styling components to allow fast access. Access keys are heavily used to improve navigation and allow the user to get the information they want quickly. Only a limited number of articles are posted at this time and the menu was changed to support the mobile web. For those who do not have a web phone access, you can click the adjacent picture to use a web emulator to access the site.

This year, over 300 posting for inthenews were summitted to del.icio.us⁵. The website del.icio.us (pronounced as "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in late 2003, and was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In the past two years we have bookmarked almost daily one link to a popular press article on health. We now have over 700 bookmarks.

Similiar to del.icio.us, Ma.gnolia⁶ is where we bookmark our articles. Originally, I was intending to use this site for bookmarking Journal articles but a new site has emerged specifically for bookmarking Journals which I am presently using.

Connetea⁷ is where we are bookmarking our scientific references. This free service was created in December 2004 by Nature Publishing Group. It recognises a number of scientific websites and will automatically collect metadata for the article or page being bookmarked, including author and publication names.

Odeo⁸ is where we have posted podcasts of recent articles. Being an announcer does not seem to be one of my callings as it has taken more time to do than actually posting an article on the web. So, I have experimented with using an artifical voice reader from Bluegrind⁹. For people with heavy accents, this approach to podcasting might be their best route. It works for me.

To help improve our exposer to the web communittee, I have submitted articles links to digg. This popular bookmaking service allows users to rate an article by voting for it. The service allows you to display the number of votes you received on your webpage. This feature is still under consideration and has not been implemented.

Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. Even though we don’t have a blog, people do write about our website. Their posting are available on technorati reactions¹⁰.

As with 2007, we will continue to update and improve Medicinal Food News thoughouth this new year.

Other articles on year in review §

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DISCLAIMER

To the best of our knowledge, the information contained in Medicinal Food News is true and factual. No changes to your diet should be made without first consulting a dietician or family physician.