So I made a custom size del.icio.us Widgetbox widget for my Ning profiles, but Widgetbox won’t put it in their gallery because the links don’t open in a new window. I added the code they provide to make it do this but it appears not to work. I think because the links are being created by the del.icio.us javascript rather than already being in the widget. Does anyone know how to fix this? The other del.icio.us tagroll widget must have managed it because it’s in the Widgetbox gallery, but you can’t resize that one on Ning. Here’s my code:

<script>
	var i;
	var aTags = document.getElementsByTagName(“a”);
	for (i=0; i < aTags.length; i++) {
		aTags[i].setAttribute(“target”, “_new”);
	}

	var areaTags = document.getElementsByTagName(“area”);
	for (i=0; i < areaTags.length; i++) {
		areaTags[i].setAttribute(“target”, “_new”);
	}
</script>
<div style="padding:7px;font-family:Arial;
width:${config.width}px;">
  <script type="text/javascript"
src="http://del.icio.us/feeds/js/tags/${config.username}
?count=${config.number};
size=${config.minimum}-${config.maximum};
color=${config.little-colour}-${config.big-colour};
title=${config.title};name">
</script>
  </div>

_____________________________EDIT___________________________

Solution! OK so I wrote to Widgetbox support eventually and they’ve helped loads.  They’ve now added a ‘code snippet’ inserter into the widget code editor which adds the correct code for making links open in a new window.  Apparently the problem was with copy-pasting the code into my widget made the quotes into speech marks  rather than those code type straight quotes.  So now that’s fixed.  BUT sometime in the last week the actual widget itself has broken on Ning.  The widget is fine on Widgetbox, but even the ‘add to Ning’ option has disappeared.  I can’t find an ‘add to Ning’ option on any of the other widgets either so I wonder if Ning has changed something and become incompatible?  Anyway, I’ve asked Widgetbox about this again so bear with me and I’ll let you know what they say…

So I’m a member of a few Ning sites and I really like it.  In trying to edit my profile, I have managed to import my regular blog here into the standard Ning RSS widget.  But you only get one Ning RSS widget.  So for a work-related Ning community like ELESIG, I wanted to show my work blog too.  You get a Ning Text Box widget on your Ning profile which supports embedded widgets from external sites, so I’ve used yourminis RSS widget to import my SPLASH project blog.  yourminis widgets are nice because you can template them really easily to match their destination or leave them in a minimal format.  The only difficult thing here was to get the size right on the yourminis site because you can’t resize them once you’ve embedded them on the destination page.  The next thing I wanted to do was to put a tag cloud of my del.icio.us links on my Ning page.  The standard del.icio.us provided javascript code is stripped from the Ning Text Box widget so that didn’t work.  I couldn’t find a yourminis del.icio.us widget but I found a Widgetbox one.  Again this provides javascript code which is stripped by Ning, but Widgetbox does give you an opensocial URL which should allow you to embed a Widgetbox widget in a Ning site.  But I don’t get what I’m supposed to do with this URL.  Widgetbox says ‘Click the “Copy” button and then paste the url on Ning to add the app”.  OK but where on Ning do I paste it?  I tried the Ning Text Box widget but this just writes the URL out unformatted.  Hmm.  Anybody know how to put a tag cloud of del.icio.us links onto a Ning profile?  Or what I’m supposed to do with the Widgetbox URL for Ning?

Tags: ning, opensocial, widgets, widgetbox, javascript, embed, elesig, rss, yourminis

This is annoying. I’m trying to sort out some of my Google groups, which are all registered to my Yahoo email address. But I also have a Gmail account which I want to combine with my Yahoo Google account. Google will let me add alternative email addresses to my Yahoo Google account, but it won’t let me add my Gmail account. It tells me here that I have to delete my existing yahoo related Google account, then open up my Gmail related Google account, then associate my yahoo address to that. But all my groups and history are connected to my Yahoo Google account! I don’t want to have to re-join all of them again.

Tags: yahoo, google, gmail, Google groups

Plaxo just put me off by forcing me to choose my gender:

The only options were male or female. C’mon Plaxo, get with the program! This is the modern day and you should know better than to only give us these limiting binary options with which to define ourselves (and must you force us to define ourselves in those terms at all?). What about everyone between or outside these options?

When you’re building a social networking site you should have advisors on identity politics, since you are getting your users to create identities on your site.

An example of gender being handled in a lighthearted and positive way is Pownce.

Tags: plaxo, gender, social networking, queer, feminism