It didn’t quite work. TweaK returns two links. The good news is I think I can fix it by making a wrapper API that will only return the first link. A search indicates that someone already did it, but I can’t find the source code for the script, and I want to be able to release the code into the public domain, which means I’ll be doing it myself. Looks like it won’t be too hard, but until it’s done, if you see a pair of my links on Twitter or StatusNet and you want to click it, just click the first one that looks like bcd34.tk. The second one that looks like tk./bcd34 doesn’t seem to work.
In other news, since before the upgrade of StatusNet, my blog posts haven’t been reaching Identi.ca. I hope they get that fixed soon. I can’t seem to figure out where the problem is though, so I plan to eventually migrate this blog to Wordpress, of course hosted at HostingPad, so that I can just install plugins rather than dealing with all kinds of third parties to share my posts across my social networks.
Update
The TweaK API has been replaced by Freenom's Random Domains API, allowing for 5 times the domains, and therefore 5 times the available short links. Links to tweak.tk are broken, preserved for archival purposes only.
All my websites have been down since early yesterday afternoon. Ironically, I have just been thinking over the last couple of days how cool it would be to take my blog to the next level, (open source), and host it in the same place where my other sites are currently hosted. Down time is unavoidable, I guess, but 20 hours? This really hurts!
Doing a little experimentation with WordPress. Logged into the admin section for the first time. OMG! This thing actually says "Howdy, kyle" LOL.
I’m experimenting with adding a share button to my posts, which should make it easier to share them on your favorite social network. I’m currently trying the share button from Add to Any, which allows both sharing and bookmarking on many networks from a single button. Other than the fact that my post title only shows up correctly if you click the button from the post’s page, it seems to work quite well.
A tip for screen reader users
I noticed that nothing seems to happen if you press enter on the link that says “Share it.” The solution to this problem has so far only been tested with Orca and Firefox 4.x, but you should be able to press enter on the link, press control-home to get to the top of the page, and then press enter again. From there you will be able to tab to the link for the network you want and press enter to go to its share page. The text box will already be filled in with the link, and usually the title of the post. If you click a share button on the front page, however, you will probably want to replace the blog title with the title of the post or whatever text you like. Let me know in the comments if this works on other screen readers/browsers or if you find another solution that works better for you. If not, I’ll look for another share button that will work better in more situations. I feel that a share button of some kind is a good thing, but I don’t want to sacrifice the accessibility of my blog to have one.
Update
I found a faster solution for navigating the pop-up menu for Add to Any. I have changed my screen reader tips to reflect the new key sequence. I also looked at Add This, which is supposed to be the world’s most popular share button, but I couldn’t properly make it work using a screen reader, so it looks as though Add to Any is indeed the best choice.
I replaced my link to a page containing Feedburner's email subscription form with the direct link. It doesn’t conform to my theme, but since the form opened Feedburner's window to present the captcha verification, I thought it would be better to have the email address textbox in the same place. It just looks a bit cleaner and allows for one less click and page load during the subscription process.