The cartoon blog of Andertoons cartoonist Mark Anderson. He discusses his cartoons, cartooning, comics and, oddly enough, LEGO.
OK, sorry for not posting yesterday. My land line, and hence my DSL, went down in a big way.
So for the immediate future, I’m running the Andertoons empire from from the local Caribou Coffee. (There’s mocha everywhere!) I’ll get some more blogs up soon.
If I owe you an email, I’ll get back to you ASAP.
If I owe you five bucks…
OOPS! There goes my connection again!
Technorati Tags: andertoons
One of the most popular feature at everyone’s favorite cartoon site, is the blog-sidebar-ready free daily cartoon.
On the last site, you’d enter what subject you wanted the HTML code for, wait for the email to direct you to the correct code, go to that page, get the code and then, presumably, you’d head to your site to install it.
That’s a lot of back and forth. It worked, and a lot of people used it, but I really wanted to streamline the process. Hence, the new free cartoons page:
OK, first big change, instead of a bunch of text and graphics explaining how it works, I just added the thing to my own site so you can wee it work live. (Why didn’t I think of this like 2 years ago?!)
The other major change is that the code now appears ready to cut and paste into your own HTML immediately after choosing a topic:
We even added a Select All button for the CTRL-A challenged.
The Typepad Widget stuff is here too, and makes a cartoon on your Typepad blog just two clicks away. (I’m hoping to add WordPress availability later this year.)
A minor addition is some FAQ/Help stuff about the free cartoon thingy right on the page.
Anyway, all of this should make it even easier to add some Andertoons to your blog or site.
Technorati Tags: andertoons, cartooning, cartoonists, cartoons, websites
Ran across ChaCha again over at TechCrunch, and finally gave it a try. Here’s a transcript of my human guided search:
Status: Connecting …
Status: Looking for a guide …
Ring: …
Status: Connected to guide: joshua(79876)
joshua(79876): Welcome to ChaCha!
You: Hey there
You: I need some good business cartoons
joshua(79876): Welcome to ChaCha! Please wait a moment while I search for your results.
You: k
joshua(79876): Please be more specific as to what you’re looking for on this topic.
You: I just need some funny business cartoons for a presentation
You: Where could I purchase some?
joshua(79876): does it matter of what business the cartoons are about
You: Nope
You: Generic business
You: Sales and stuff
Then results started appearing in the right column:
I waited until four results showed up. to continue:
You: Cool, that Andertoons looks good
You: Thanks!
joshua(79876): no probuno momento por favor
joshua(79876): lno problem
joshua(79876): anything else i can help with today
You: Nope
joshua(79876): k have a nice day and thanks for choosing chacha
joshua(79876): Please RATE ME. Thanks for using ChaCha.
Status: Session ended.
I rated the guide as “GREAT” even though the results I got were under the heading “Health > Conditions and Diseases”
ChaCha is interesting, but dreadfully slow in a “I’ll just Google that real quick” world.
Anyway, kinda weird, but nice being #1.
Technorati Tags: andertoons, cartooning, cartoonists, cartoons, websites
Another brand new feature is Andertoons keeping track of cartoon views.
Every time you click on a cartoon’s thumbnail and the big cartoon page comes up, that counts as viewing that cartoon. (Also, whenever you navigate to the home page, it counts that as a view for the daily cartoon.)
Each cartoon now lists the number of times it’s been viewed by visitors, and, again, the most viewed cartoons are displayed on the home page, and by topic on each of the main topic pages.
I dunno how useful this is in the end, but it’s kinda fun to see what everyone is looking at!
Anyway, enjoy!
Technorati Tags: andertoons, cartooning, cartoonists, cartoons, websites
We have a lot of brand new features at the new Andertoons, but the one I think is the most fun so far is our new ratings system
Again, I was thinking a lot about Web 2.0 and allowing visitors to interact a bit more, and, to be honest, ratings seemed long overdue.
It’s pretty simple – click on the arrows and give a cartoon a rating from 1 star (mostly reserved for terrible puns and cartoons that don’t make sense) to 5 stars (take THAT New Yorker!).
The stars are then averaged over the number of times the cartoon had been rated and that rating is displayed.
The really fun part is the highest rated cartoons are then displayed on the home page, on by topic on each main topic page (business cartoons, for example).
Here’s the thing though – cartoons rated 5 stars having been voted on only once will rise to the top. I’m no math whiz, so anyone got am idea to get around this? Maybe only show cartoons as “popular” is voted on more than once?
Anyway, it’s a minor point, and the ratings are already proving incredibly popular. And I’m really enjoying seeing people enjoy the cartoons!
So click away, and have fun rating! I promise I won’t get my feelings hurt. 🙂
Technorati Tags: andertoons, cartooning, cartoonists, cartoons, websites