When the latest issues with EntreCard developed, I started looking at ways to more completely replicate the EntreCard experience. Sites like Adgitize and CMF Ads provided a good way to advertise and be an advertiser, and BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog provided nice lists of recent readers. Yet none of this effectively replicated the ‘Inbox’ on EntreCard.

When a person drops a card on EntreCard, the blog owner sees the card, and can return the visit, feeling fairly confident that the visitor is still using EntreCard. The functionality to easily return a visit for BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog is there, but not as easy as with EntreCard.

It was with this in mind that I wrote the Enhanced BlogCatalog Surfer. Initially, I wrote it as a test script on one of my internal Linux boxes. When it started working a little more nicely, I added it as a post on my blog.

The page takes two optional parameters, userid and count. So, if you want to see the ten most recent visitors of kml, you would go to http://www.orient-lodge.com/node/3774?userid=kml&count=10. It defaults to my five most recent visitors.

However, having a quick and easy link to people that have visited me via BlogCatalog was not enough. What I really want to do is visit those sites that have Adgitize or CMF Ads. So, I added a little lookup. If it is a page that I’ve visited before, I add a note to a file that I keep about the blog, and whether they have EntreCard, Adgitize, CMF Ads, BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog and in some cases other widgets on their site.

So when I ran this as I wrote this post, the only site showing up that I had details on was Cornyman. He has EntreCard, CMF, Adgitize and BlogCatalog on his site, and so I know that visiting him will provide me with good opportunities to surf ads from other sites and that it will leave my smiling little face up in his BlogCatalog widget.

It is worth noting that not everyone using BlogCatalog has a BlogCatalog widget on their screen, so if you are looking to show up in a recent readers list, just because they are on BlogCatalog doesn’t mean your visit will be obvious to anyone, unless they have the widget.

So, this is the first pass of my Enhanced BlogCatalog Surfer. I use it now as part of my efforts to find interesting blogs to read for the day, along with checking my EntreCard inbox and surfing various ads.

I’ve currently entered 90 sites into my list of recognized BlogCatalog users, and I’m slowly adding to that list. Over time, I expect it to change. Ideally, down the road, I would love to have a program that looks at all the various blogging and social networks and lets me know which most influential blogs according to my personal ranking have been updated most recently. Eventually I’ll get there.

Any geeks that are out there that want to get a copy of my code, as it is, are welcome to it, just let me know. It is still pretty messy code as it continues to evolve. Everyone else, feel free to use my surfer. Let me know what recommendations you have.