Have just noticed today that LibDemBlogs has made it to a Google Page Ranking of 6.
So now we have managed to join other LibDems including:
Jonathan Calder, Lynne Featherstone, Nick Barlow, Peter Black, Richard Allan and Will Howells

Forgot to post this on Thursday, but I believe that on Wednesday we saw the largest number of posts on LibDemBlogs since it started. Some 73 posts were made and almost half were about the US Midterms. Unfortunately I’ve not got a proper record of posts per day so without going back through the last two years, I’ll rely on someone else to prove me wrong.

Whilst surfing about on the net I came across this on the BBC website “Google offers personal searches“. Now Google had told me in the monthly newsletter about Co-op and as I’ve signed up to almost everything Google have to offer I though I would give this a try.
What I’ve been able to do is put all the URLs of the blogs which appear on LibDemBlogs into a Co-op, which then lets me and you search this subset of Google search results. I have previously built my own search engine using the Google Search API, but this only allowed me to search the contents of one site. So for now anyway I’ve changed the search box on LibDemBlogs to use the Co-op version instead.

Now I noticed quite a few people (well maybe just Will and Rob) reading LibDem Blogs via their mobile. Using Opera Mini they were able to shrink the whole site so that it fitted on their small screens.
However I was using a script that I wrote some years ago. This script only loaded the posts and ignored everything else. After speaking to Will in the bar I decided to revamp the script and publicise it. So the new url is www.libdemblogs.co.uk/mobile/. It’s been tested on Opera Mobile 9 on my P990i and the built in browser on Heather’s K800i. I’ve also added some customisation using cookies, so it’s possible to show the posts from the last x hours or even the most recent y posts. You can even choose to show the MyBlogLog Stats, the full list of contributors and the news feeds which appear on the side bar.
Please give it a go, and if you have any feedback please let me know which mobile phone you used, if it was the built in browser or Opera Mini and what network you are on.

My webhosts Dataflame have been playing with their servers, which has been causing me some troubles. The first problem affected all of my .htaccess files which in turn crashed my blog and LibDemBlogs. After getting them to fix that, I then noticed a collection of scripts were broken, CNPS and my sidebar script all stopped working, so then I got that fixed. Then tonight everything disappeared. I sent off an email, but didn’t get any reply, then I realised email to was down, so I tried live chat instead. Someone called Jamie went off and soon everything was back up again. However if you find something faulty on any of my sites please let me know as I’ll need to get those fixed too.

Now I’m not sure if it’s the computers here at work, but the current crop of Google Ads on LibDemBlogs seem to be drug related, including this classic block of ads:

Blogger and BlogSpot are being rubbish. I’m finding that requests aren’t being returned for a large number of users (which changes everytime) XML files. For the time being all Blogspot hosted blogs have been disabled from the site. Hopefully they’ll fix their end soon and we’ll get you all back on.
19:00 update I’ve changed the cache period from 25 minutes to 2 hours, so new posts may take time to appear. However this does seem to allow BlogSpot blogs to appear.

I’ve just spotted a Google Ad on LibDemBlogs advertising jobs for MI5.

It’s only for admin staff, but I’m sure that the job could lead to other more exciting roles.

In Lincoln we (currently) elect in thirds. Being the newest councilor for Park Ward I have noticed a problem. Of all the casework that has dropped through the door or been left on the phone, all of it has been for my attention. Nobody ever asks for Cllr Quinton, yet she is the one who knows which department or officer needs to be spoken to.
The only good thing is that I’ve now got a casework helper…
…Heather.