Since purchasing my new Motorola Droid X, I’ve spent time and energy adjusting to the differences between Android and iPhone.  While I do still miss some of the iPhone features and ease of use, there are many features and applications with Android that make this operating system interesting and innovative.

One of these features is Google Voice Action which uses voice recognition technology as an alternative to typing.  By combining this feature with the Wordpress application for Android, I’m able to type this entire blog post by simply speaking into my phone.

Surprisingly, the voice recognition software is extremely accurate as long as I enunciate well.  In order to write this article, I am simply speaking one sentence at a time and waiting about one second for Android 2.2 to convert it into text.

This is a pretty nice option if I want to make a quick blog update while I’m traveling or away from a computer.  Obviously it wouldn’t be a great solution if I had a lot of content to my post.

Google Voice Action actually does much more than just convert voice to text.  It is very intuitive and can be used for web searches, phone commands, directions, listening to music and more.  The video below is worth checking out because it gives several examples of just how powerful their technology has become.

It remains to be seen how often I’ll actually use this for blogging, but I love the concept.  Is this something you would find useful for your own blog.  If so, let me know about it in the comments section.

NOTE:  Although it is possible to add images and video to your article through the Wordpress for Android application, I actually added them after uploading the article to the server.  However, all of the text has been completed through voice only.

BackTweets and BackType Connect can help

Have you ever used Twitter search to determine what others are saying about your blog?  If so, there’s a very good chance you aren’t seeing everything being discussed.  It’s easy to find tweets that specifically mention the name of your blog, your ursername or retweets of your own posts, but Twitter search fails to find links to your site when a URL shortener is used.

Fortunately, the folks from BackType recognized this problem and launched the free service BackTweets in 2009.  BackTweets works by cataloging the redirected URLs on tweets using a URL shortener like bit.ly, ow.ly or tinyurl.com.  Therefore, they can determine the destination of each link and present that data when you search for a specific website URL.

BackTweets Screenshot

When you visit the BackTweets site, the process is simple.  Just enter any website URL and click the search button.  BackTweets immediately scours the “Twittersphere” and finds any tweets linking to the URL in question.  You will likely be surprised how many tweets you’ve never seen linking back to your site.  Furthermore, there is no need to keep revisiting the site because they offer email alerts and RSS feeds on your search term.

Although BackTweets is a very useful took, what if you want to expand your search to other social media networks?  For that, the folks at BackType have a service named BackType Connect.  This service searches a wide variety of social media sites (not just Twitter) to find all of the conversations surrounding a specific post or article.

BackType Connect Screenshot

To use BackType Connect, just enter the URL of a particular article.  For example, Mashable’s recent article on the new Google app store http://mashable.com/2010/02/01/google-apps-store/ generated nearly 1000 results when I tested it this morning.  In addition to displaying the result from an article search, BackType Connect also gives you the option to search individual topics such as “groundhog” or “super bowl”.  The results displayed in this scenario include social conversations from all sorts locations on the web.

There is currently no option for email or RSS alerts with BackType Connect which means you will need to revisit the site in order to obtain updated search results.  However, the use of both free tools can help you discover posts you didn’t know existed and establish new social connections.

How a long weekend led to a whole new AP

When I started AlertPresence the primary goals were simple.  First, focus on the content.  Second, don’t get caught up in the design elements.  With that in mind, I launched the site using the Thesis theme for Wordpress due to it’s simplicity and SEO benefits.  Since I’m definitely not a designer, Thesis would enable me to easily redesign the site AFTER I generated a decent amount of content.

When I stumbled across a theme for Thesis late Friday afternoon, there was no immediate plan to redesign the site.  Nevertheless, one thing led to another and I found myself knee deep in site changes.  The following information is a recap of how I redesigned the site in a weekend and also managed to squeeze in the time to submit an iPhone application for approval.  To top it all off, I spent less than $100.

This is how the site looked 3 days ago

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Steps Taken

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iPhone application created by Appmakr.com

1. Purchased and installed the Blogussion theme for Thesis ($44.95 on sale).
2. Updated my web server to Thesis 1.6 (latest version)
3. Spent considerable time tinkering with the different color and layout options available with the Blogussion theme
4. Created a logo with Paint.net which is a free but very powerful image editing tool
5. Downloaded and used the Page Peel social media icons featured at SmashingMagazine.com
6. Tweaked the “archives” page with the code from Mattflies.com
7. Changed some simple settings in Thesis so that only one article is featured on the homepage
8. Added post images to each of my existing articles so Thesis can display thumbnails next to each of the teasers
9. Used the code from this article to create an appealing footer for each post (Note: I had to fix some of the code.)
10. Added the option in my Feedburner account to subscribe to the AP RSS feed via email
11. Created and submitted an AP iPhone application using Appmakr ($49.95 after discount code)
12. Organized the category methodology and updated past articles to reflect any changes

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Wordpress Plugins Installed

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1. Used similar posts, popular posts and recent posts from Rob Marsh in order to link back to past articles
2. Added Smart 404 in order to display alternative articles in the event of a 404 error
3. Set up Socialable to appear at the bottom of each article to encourage sharing through various media
4. Decided on Twidger for now as the Twitter feed app on my sidebar (see screenshot)
5. Added Javascript to footer in order to improve page load times
6. Chose Contact Form 7 to manage the contact page

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Unfinished Business

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1. Fix a problem with IE 8 (go figure) that doesn’t properly display banners in the header
2. Find a script for more attractive blockquotes
3. Work on improving the comments section
4. Add an avatar
5. Add navigation buttons to the header
6. Improve the look of the contact form
7. Add a random QR-Code rotator on the sidebar
8. Reduce the size of the header

While the new design is still a work-in-process, I believe it’s a nice improvement from the original.  I’m pretty impressed with how easily the Blogussion theme integrated with both Wordpress and Thesis.  Unfortunately this process required me to postpone the publishing of  some overdue articles so it’s time to get back to where I started – focusing on the content.

It took a vacation to get started…

The blog has officially launched so I thought it would be appropriate to have a short video introduction.  Thanks for visiting AlertPresence.com.

Hello From Kauai from Brett Pollard on Vimeo.