Though Plurk Notifier provides a little icon on the toolbar, which makes it easier to hide from the boss, Plurkmate can give you more! it’s written by lis186 (plurk) released at Google Chrome Hackathon 2009.

With Plurkmate, you can check how many plurks waiting to read, plurk, and perfectly interpret “working your fingers to the bone.”

5 steps to install:

Step1: go to Plurkmate and click “install”

Step2: “install” it, of course.

Step3: notification will pop-out at the top right corner

Step4: go to “Extension” and find plurkmate options

Step5: click the icon to plurk or read plurks

Wei Guang-Wen the husband, 3 years elder than A-Tong, was a secretary of Wu Nai-Ren, the past chairman of Taiwan Stock Exchange but he is just a normal white-collar worker right now. What puts these two people together is Internet indeed, but not a dating website. It’s a micro-blog service (http://www.plurk.com), which is very popular recently. They picked up each other for leaving messages. Wei Guang-Wen keeps saying that he was appealed to A-Tong by her words before by her photos. A-Tong makes fun of him and says, “If the girl in the photo looks like Cai-Tao (a male funmaker in Taiwan), will you say so?”

These two persons talked on the phone and the Internet day and night for one month. On August 30^th, Wei Guang-Wen plucks up his courage to tell A-Tong his feeling: “Keeping it going on, I’ll fall in love with you.” A-Tong asked him to send a photo first, but all she can see is a terrible photo. All the romance was gone. That hurt Wei Guang-Wen a lot for he used to get girls’ hearts easily before. Afterward, he begged her to meet once at least.

On September 4^th, they met each other face-to-face for the very first time. Wei Guang-Wen, who has seen lots of girls, was as nervous as a big boy who falls in love for the first time. At dinner, he kneeled down to propose, but she took it as a joke; next day, the second date, he proposed again and A-Tong still didn’t take it seriously. “Do you want to ‘check the stuff’ first, and then decide to go out with me or not?” he says unexpectedly. So, everything meant to happen happened.

One deep night, Wei Guang-Wen brought her to the balcony of his company, where has a great view of Ba-De road. Bathed in this gorgeous nightscape, as she studied in Waseda University before, “it’s so beautiful like the scenes of Japanese drama.” escaped A-Tong’s lips. At this moment, Wei Guang-Wen kneeled down the third time and he succeeded.

A-Tong told him that there were two days to get married, “on your birthday or my birthday.” Therefore, They got married on October 12^th, A-Tong’s birthday. The ceremony only took 15 minutes. This decision was made in haste so they didn’t have time to find a new house. At the end, this lovely couple went back to their old houses separately.

They planned to give a banquet right on the 1^st anniversary next year. “Banqueting friends after holding the marriage for one year shows that it’s not blackmail but a serious marriage indeed. How thoughtful we are!”

Translated from: 網路美女作家阿潼 見他一天就嫁了

People want to go to that party should finish a questionnaire (here) and Valen will pick up 30 persons by herself. The list of selected audience was released on June 12:

01      werboy
02      zu_hi4
03      azier
04      tommyrace
05      fatzzz
06      niceguyhill
07      milk1007
08      bennoda
09      LEGOLAU
10      phoenixsol
11      dancingwing
12      whoooaaammmiii
13      simplejay
14      jingjong404
15      repeat
16      angelahung
17      Loman
18      euzfwod
19      BakaBear
20      u8104131
21      supercandy
22      sesses
23      PEH301
24      waterworld
25      barneybook
26      sablezero
27      5min
28      cageling
29      wisely
30      amigo0305

Detail Information of Private Pre-listening Party:
Date: June 14 (Sunday)
Start Time: 17:00 (Doors open and seating begins at 16:45)
Location: People will get informed by e-mail.

Moreover, PlurkLife will live broadcast it on plurk. (Here)

Designer: Sorry
Install Now: Excel

Designer: Sorry
Install Now: PuTTy



Designer: nori942
Install Now: PhotoShop (basic)



Designer: nori942
Install Now: PhotoShop (advanced)



Designer: kthsieh
Install Now: Outlook



Designer: lomotw
Install Now: Flash



Designer: JerreyRule(?)
Install Now: Bugzilla



Designer: Askeing
Install Now: NetBeans



Designer: Milkitty
Install Now: AutoCad



Designer: lingchen
Install Now: Visio



Designer: lingchen
Install Now: Word



Designer: ???
Install Now: Illustrator CS2



Thank these designers again!

This kind of plurks is meaningless to some other plurkers. So…while some are plurking step-on-it plurks, some are plurking “here they are again.” However, the “don’t try to step on the line” plurks are kind of stepping on the line as well…….(LOL)

Anyway, here is a pic of taiwanese plurkers trying to step right on the line:

Wonder if plurkers from other countries also love doing this?

Bookmarklet: 抓Plurk (drag the left link to the bookmark toolbar.)

Step 1

Set up the bookmarklet and open the plurk page you want to get the css code from, like: http://www.plurk.com/briian. Click “抓Plurk” and you can get the whole CSS code of that plurk page.

Step 2

Select and copy the code.

Step 3

Open your plurk page, go to “edit”→” Customize profile”, paste the copied code here and click the “save and update.” Done!

Before talking about those events, there are many different topics on plurk each day. How do we choose what’s to be top 10 or not? Couple of principles are as follows:

◎ be significant and representative
◎ benefit Taiwanese plurkers
◎ increase Taiwanese users
◎ be positive, of course

Now, we will show you the top 10 events in chronological order. You may also check how many of them you have heard.

Event 1: First Plurker In Taiwan

Time: 2008/05/08

Who to be the first one seems not so important to many plurkers. We’re asking this question just out of curiosity. According to the information provided this February by wiselysong, an unofficial analyst, the first Taiwanese plurker sorted by UID is Tino.

If fact, Tino signed up for Plurk away back on May 8 and has been plurking from then on. Tino knew Plurk mainly from domestic/foreign technology websites. Based on the Internet services Tino uses, he should be a heavy Internet user. At the party, Tino suggested two things about Plurk, but I didn’t catch them…it’s OK. It’s more important that Alvin got them.

Event 2: Plurk Collaborative Translation Project

Time: Mid-June, 2008

Plurk only had English version at the very first beginning but Chinese(zh_CN) version showed up soon after. Seeing this, Sorry translated the  Chinese(zh_Hant) version spontaneously and the translation was authorized by Plurk team. Sorry himself shared this story on his blog (here). Afterward many translators volunteered to join the project, including weedyc. Thanks to those people’s voiceless contribution, Taiwan plurkers can have today’s user-friendly interface, which even makes many plurkers think of Plurk as a company from Taiwan. These Volunteers deserve all the credit.

Sorry was a little bit late on that day for going back to hometown for a Chinese festival. Before I say anything about it, it occurred to me that  he is also the first plurker who designs office disguise layouts (here). For his doing these two things of great contribution, we happily accepted his being late, overtime speech, and giving little commercials.

Event 3: The Origin Of Pu-Lang

Time: 2008/06/04

When I interviewed Alvin for the first time, I asked him why plurk is called Pu-Lang in Chinese. He said he had no idea, either. It turns out Pu-Lang is not an official translation but a conventional calling within several primary users. I try to trace back the first plurk talking about it, and one plurk from dogg comes up. Like the Chinese interface, Plurk didn’t have its Chinese name at first. Later, everyone calls it Pu-Lang after dogg. Personally, I think it’s very beautiful and correspondent to its nature. [Note: “Lang” means waves in Chinese. Hence, many terms come out from it, like He-Dao (a streamway), Chong-Lang (surfing) and Shang-An (being offline)] Yet we didn’t have time to invite dogg to the scene. What a pity! (all my fault!) Can’t imagine what if plurk was named as Suei-Zuei (banging on)!

Event 4: The Story Of Infinite Karma

Time: 2008/10/12 22:47

Early plurkers should have known this story. Mr.6 also wrote the whole thing in the end of last year (here). The story is that at the time given above a plurker named Harley_Quinn had her last plurk, which said she was the happiest woman in the world because her boyfriend proposed to her. Unfortunately, right in the next morning, she and her boyfriend had a car accident and passed away. That the happiest and saddest things happened in one day makes people sigh and feel helpless.

For this reason, Harley’s friends wrote to Plurk team and hoped they can freeze her karma. Some people say that Amir was in a really bad mood hearing it and Alvin shed a drop of tear (I doubt it). Knowing the story, Plurk decided to make Harley’s Karma infinite to stay with friends forever. To be honest, when writing the words above, I still feel weepy. If this sad story showed us something positive, that would be “to love on time”! I mean it. Whether you plurk or not, please don’t spare your concern to family, friends and lover.

Event 5: The Story Of A-Tong And Her Husband

Time: 2008/10/15

A piece of news was kept being replurked all day long: “A beautiful Internet writer says yes to a man she only met for one time.” (here) The two people referred in this headline are A-Tong (atom1012) and her husband (mrmota). It’s so romantic and legendary that it’ll probably still be a talking material after a hundred years (well, if plurk is still there). Rumor has that the location of blowing it out is a legend as well because the reporter knew this information in KTV. Anyway, it increased network flow rapidly in a few days and, of course, shocked A-team. When team members traced back to the source, they found out who to be responsible for it. Moreover, due to Alvin as the only one person who knows Chinese, the whole story was translated to other members word for word by Alvin. (No idea what Alvin translated.)

So far, their relationship still stays steady (supposedly). Their love quarrels are on plurk every once in a while. At the same time, A-Tong makes good use of plurk power by asking her husband to clean dishes. This romance strengthens single plurkers’ faith to find their soul mates on plurk someday. “Never say never.” Never…(if plurk is still alive then.)

Event 6: Karma Turning Into Money

Time: 2009/02/09

It should be the first commercial activity for plurkers only, which is planned by GozCafe. The value of Karma can be regarded as real money and you can use it to pay the bill. The really cute boss, Cutie (fungshung), showed up at the party and shared the reason why he held this activity. After “Karma turning into money”, GozCafe continued to design several activities. The latest one in late July is called “Rob GozCafe.” Plurkers can drink or eat for free on the chosen day. (OS: It would be better to offer take-out service…)

By telling this story, I want to urge the brands seeking publicity on plurk to give your imagination a little play and come up with some fun and plurker-only activities. Don’t treat plurk as a platform to send out eDMs. Do it better, OK?

Event 7: Alvin Coming To Taiwan

Time: 2009/02/09

On this day, Alvin Woon (alvin), a co-founder of plurk, backpacked his stuff, arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport after a long flight and began his trip in Taiwan all by himself. On the one hand, the chief of plurk wanted him to come here to figure out why Taiwanese love plurk so much. On the other hand, Alvin had an interview in Taiwan. It turned out that the fixed interview was never finished but many unexpected ones popped out. My first time to meet Alvin himself was in one of those interviews. What happens afterward? Alvin keeps playing around in Taiwan, being interviewed and his trip lasts until now.

Life is wonderful. After Alvin came to Taiwan, Plurk, members of which are a long distance away, changed a lot. During this trip, PlurkLife took Alvin to Taichung, Kaohsiung, and threw one and the only one party worldwide in Taipei. Taiwan isn’t big and Plurk just takes a little place in the world. It’s a wonder that destiny brings us together.

Event 8: First Media To Broadcast Plurk

Time: 2009/03

Actually, before PC Home, Engadget and Liberty Times had already given a report of Plurk in February. However, taking a view of the date of interviews, tenz should be the first interviewer to meet Alvin. PC Home (03 2009) published a special issue to introduce Plurk with 16 pages. All of these should be credited to workers from publishing business. They all are big fans of Plurk. It’s surely a great chance to talk face to face with a founder of a worldwide network service.

Tenz himself is an early user so he can really feel the power of Plurk. Therefore, he designed the special issue in March and interviewed 4 plurkers. With PC Home’s target readers to be normal people instead of network service users, its report triggers the next event…

Event 9: 2 Scores Of Karma To All

Time: 2009/03/12

If you didn’t experience this event, the time of your playing Plurk is less than 3 months for sure. How hard to make Karma go up? The answer is inside everyone’s heart. How come Karma increase 2 points on that day? (related plurk) It was because Plurk was t-o-t-a-l-l-y dead. Everybody knows Plurk’s shutdown is as normal as us drinking and eating. Yet Plurk had been messed up since March 10 and it had driven everyone crazy. Coincidentally, Alvin went to Taichung and Kaohsiung to meet plurkers this time around. All of sudden, Alvin became a living target of all plurkers. Complaining emails bombarded Plurk members’ inboxes. To lull everyone’s anger, Plurk gave 2 Karma to all.

It’s a rumor that after this horrible incident Plurk spent a lot to purchase new machines and also realized Karma means a lot to plurkers. From then on, they found it a perfect way to deal with customer complaints. (LOL) It’s a fat chance for a new network service that shutdowns may happen many times. Hence, each low-Karma plurker is expecting the next huge shutdown……

Event 10: Plurk For Care About Friends

Time: 2009/04/01

This activity is initiated by Citytalk. The rule is that each plurker sends a plurk in the very early morning of April 1^st. Its title is set as “Plurk is for care about friends” and its purpose is to remind plurkers of concerning friends from the bottom of hearts. At the birthday party, Brian (asdic), one of the initiators, shared his thoughts about this activity which has more than 1000 plurkers in response. To me, basically I couldn’t reply to all plurks but I would give my best concern while seeing someone celebrating his/her birthday, in a bad mood, ending a relationship or being sick. Likewise, I myself also receive much concern from plurkers in return. This, I think, is the charm of Plurk. Without the warmth of human beings, it’s no use to provide more and better programming. You can check out more details on Citytalk’s blog.

What I stated above are the top 10 events revealed at the Plurk birthday party. Hope more and more touching stories will show up on Plurk next year!

This is the English version of Plurk 之非官方新手入門手冊.

06/07 Update: Plurk stand-alone app……..【Part 9】

◎ My plurk ID: weedyc. Click here, sign up and you’ll automatically become my plurk bud. (LOL)

You might not feel used to Plurk at the beginning for its horizontal layout. However, once you get over it, Plurk could be your msn/blog/newspaper/twitter/forum/Yahoo Answers…quite handy.

As a result, I decided to write an introductory manual. If you are new to plurk, this is definitely what you need. (Of course, this manual will be updated if there is any new feature releases.)

———————————————————————-

Part 1: Basic Plurk Codes

Bold: **plurk**
Italics: *plurk*
Underline: __plurk__
Text link: link (text) (Notice: there should be a blank after the link)
Link to a user : @plurk (Notice: no blank after @)

———————————————————————-

Part 2: Karma

You log in, plurk, therefore you get karma. So…
as long as you continue to plurk, you get more karma…(God bless you. LOL)

Rules about karma:
1. Plurk Karma is updated every 4 hours: 00:00、04:00、08:00、12:00、16:00、20:00.
2. Karma increases very fast during the initial period but slow down over time.
3. over 30 plurks a day/too many friendship rejections/Inactivity for a long period would decrease your karma.
4. Over 10, you can change the title of your personal page. Over 40, you can change your nickname.
5. You can get exclusive emoticons when karma is over 25 and 50.
6. The highest karma is 100. (The A-team considers to freeze karma as it reaches 100 but this idea isn’t put into practice.)

Otherwise, want to know how much karma you get/lose everyday?
Add karma_trends as friend and
copy http://plurk.ryanlim.com/graph.php?nick_name[]=weedyc,
change the red ID into yours. Done!

Going on a longer vacation
or don’t have time to Plurk?
Check out Karma freeze!
Click “My Account” and you will see Karma vacation mode (freeze karma).
Turn it on and you are free from karma.

———————————————————————-

Part 3: Plug-ins of Emoticons

Though the original plurk emoticons are really cute, they still cannot be compared with those designed by ourselves. Many famous Taiwanese bloggers/comic drawers create los of cute emoticons, like: Wan-wan, Onion head …and Tuzki, created by Wang Momo from Beijing. Want to use these on plurk? Sure…Only if you are using Firefox or Opera.
(My suggestion: plurk with Firefox. It loads faster in FF than IE.)

Firefox:
Install GreaseMonkey first and then Plurk Smile (version 3.3.2)

Opera:
First, Download Plurk Smile.
Go to Tool → Preference →Advanced → Content →
JavaScript options → User JavaScript files→…

———————————————————————-

Part 4: CSS Themes

Feel bored with few color choices for plurk personal page?
Don’t worry. Plurk lets people customize CSS style.
Here quickly introduce some themes:
(one-click install. You can easily revert back to your old design if not loving it.)

Cartoons:
Hello Kitty, four-leaved clover, Winnie the Pooh 1, Winnie the Pooh 2,
blue sky, Powerpuff Girls, Super Mario Bros, Totoro…

Camouflage:
Excel, PuTTy, PhotoShop (basic), PhotoShop (advanced),
Outlook, Flash, Bugzilla, NetBeans…

You may have heard a lot of sites
that have numerous gorgeous CSS themes.
The following are some:

Plurk Themes
PlurkTemplates
Plurk Theme Sate Bab
The Plurk Themes Pool
Plurk K! | Kustomized CSS Theme
Plurk Customized Theme Emporium
Plurk Layouts, Plurk Themes, Plurk Designs

———————————————————————-

Part 5: CSS Customization

Dislike those themes designed by others?
You can edit CSS on blog and, of course, plurk as well.
The main CSS codes are:

body, html: Whole background
#top_bar .content a: Links in left side of top bar (my profile…)
#top_login a: Links in right side of top bar (Find/invite friends…)
#timeline_holder: Date line
.plurk_cnt: All plurks
#updater: Updates or new responses
#plurk-dashboard
#more_options: Private plurks, languages & options
#dash-profile
#dash-stats
#dash-friends
#dash-fans

More details: Styling Plurk

———————————————————————-

Part 6: Basic Add-ons for Blog, HTML Editing

A big part of plurkers are also bloggers.
You too?
Then you may want to add plurk to the sidebar of your blog.
Is that possible? Definitely.

Click “edit” (beside “My Profile”) → widget,
find Blog/Website (HTML), copy the codes, and paste them to the sidebar.

Of course you can customize the widget.

For people using WordPress, you have your own add-ons!

Get Your Plurk：
1. WordPress users only.
2. Show date & time for each plurk or not.
3. Widget support.
4. Customize CSS file.

The two ways above are to display your own plurks,
which means that you take plurk as a tool to document all your thoughts.
Adding plurk to the sidebar of your blog is for your readers to know you more.

Here is one possible situation on plurk:
You throw a question that stirs up a brisk discussion
and you want to transform the plurk into an article on blog.
How? Use Plurk2 (Plurk Plug).

There is a “plurk page” at the bottom right corner of each plurk.
It looks like: http://www.plurk.com/p/i4ufv.
copy the plurk URL, go to Plurk2 and get JavaScript code.
Paste the code while you post an article.
I’ve tested it. Pretty cool, huh?
Many styles are available,
including Hana Style, ph2 style, Plurk Blue style…etc.
Here is a post from the original programmer:
Plurk.tw, to plurk on blog or plurk to blog?

A plurker asks if someone sets his timeline viewable for friends only,
will his plurks be viewable after Plurk2 JavaScript encoding?
After my testing, the answer is NO.
you cannot make it a normal post with Plurk2.
The content would be a bunch of unreadable characters.
How about private plurks of open timeline? Still no.

Are you a WordPress user? If so, congratulations!
You can use Wordplurk to share your articles by directly plurking it out.

Wordplurk Install:
1. Download the WordPlurk zip file.
2. Unzip and upload the file and folders to your WordPress plugins folder.
3. Activate the plugin in your Admin section.
4. Set your username and password in your Admin section.
5. Next time you post to your blog it will update to Plurk automatically for you.

If you take each plurk page as an article,
you may want to track someone’s plurks by subscribing to RSS feeds.
It’s very easy: add “.xml” after his plurk url.
Again, take my plurk as an example:
http://www.plurk.com/weedyc.xml is my plurk rss feed.

More details:
“Get Your Plurk” Plugin for WordPress
WordPlurk a WordPress plugin for Plurk

———————————————————————-

Part 7: Plurk to other websites

If you have a blog (MySpace, Blogger…),
use micro-blog (twitter, plurk…),
instant messaging (AOL, MSN…),
or social bookmarks (Digg, del.icio.us…),
you probably think:
“Can something send each of your plurks to all of your social networks?”
If fact, Plurk itself could help you to update status
on facebook, twitter, Friendster, Multiply.
Otherwise, you can also plurk through MSN or a mobile phone.
Simply click “My Account” and follow the instructions.

Want more options?
There are always multi-platform updaters/services to choose!

HelloTxt:
1. Read and reply messages from other networks.
2. Support mobile, sms, email updates

Ping.fm:
1. Support over 40 social networking sites
2. Unable to read and reply messages from other networks.

Mechanical Plurk:
1. Only for twitter to plurk (in other words: easier and simpler)
2. Use @id to reply on twitter, it’ll reply to the user on plurk automatically. (if he uses MP as well)

———————————————————————-

Part 8: Thumbnails, Shortened Text or Url

Basically, links of photos or videos (ex: youtube…)
would be showed by thumbnails automatically after posting on plurk.
You click them and they’ll pop out plurk windows.

What if you don’t have space to upload photos?
What if the words you want to say are over 140
and you don’t want to separate them into several plurks?
You can use Twitdom or ppt.cc (a Taiwanese website).

March 12, Plurk released a new feature “Plurk Paste“,
which allows not only over 140 words input and code,
including c, c++, java, JS, HTML, MySQL, XML…etc.
but also setting the message to private.

———————————————————————-

Part 9: Other Plug-ins and Info.

Wow, finally it is part 9…the previous 8 parts are basic
and “the more former, the more common.”

Besides A-team, there are many hidden great programmers on plurk.
As a consequence, They create many plug-ins by their own….

◎ GreaseMonkey plug-ins for Firefox

Plurk Rich Edit:
Being Lazy to memorize basic plurk codes?
Plurk Rich Edit, like the toolbar of WORD,
lets you to make words bold, Italics, underline or links by one click.

Plurk Calendar:
Thank rein a lot for his writing this save-my-fingers-from-endless-scrolling program!!!

Plurk Time Jumper:
This Script fixed from YungSang’s “Plurk Time Machine”.
Add a SelectDate button to input date.

Plurk Productivity:
It locks your timeline temporarily and you can set the time limit as you want.
After locking it up, the efficiency…will be raised theoretically.

Plurker 2_blank:
If you like to click the right button to open a plurker’s page in a new window, you have to try this!

◎ General Plug-ins and Sites

Poll/Survey Generator:
Enter Poll Question and 3 options. Done!
Run your own polls at once!

PushLURK:
Reading something you want to share? Push PushLURK to share it on plurk easily.

Plurk Head View Tool:
Enter your Plurk ID.
You’ll not only see all used ID photos but be able to select one friend to see his/hers.

Plurk stand-alone app for Mac:
Use plurk as an software.

Finally, I want to share an info: Plurk Collaborative Translation Project
“The goal is to have a full translated user interface
for every language our users speak.” Quoted from PCTP.
I am a Chinese (traditional) translator from Taiwan in this project.
Anyone is highly welcome to join us!

The English version is a little bit shroter then Chinese one
because part of the content is for Chinese readers only.
If you want to know the full content,
the only way is to learn Chinese. (LOL)

Last sunday (May 31st) I celebrated Plurk 1st birthday with around 300 Taiwanese plurkers. Words cannot describe what an amazing event it was and one that I will always remember for many years to come. I’ve been in Taiwan for about 4 months now and every little things about this place is heart warming to say the least. Hereby I wish to extend my gratitude to the organizer (plurker.tw.com) of this birthday event, all the sponsors and last but definitely not least, all the plurkers who were there.

Looking back, this past 1 year has been a momentous and joyful ride. As our previous blog post stated, Plurk has ALWAYS been about fun from day one. We also want to let you know how much fun we are having building this little beast and watching it grows up.  Happy birthday.

(Original Post)