One month ago I wrote an open letter to Google/Feedburner suggesting that it might be time to add some more features to Feedburner - particularly the ability to customize subject lines of those subscribing to a feed via RSS. It seems that they’ve been hard at work on that very feature. Today I logged into my Feedburner account and noticed this in the ‘Email Branding’ area. Yep - it’s the feature we’ve been waiting for! All you need to do now is add the tag ${latestItemTitle} into the subject line and it looks like you’re set to have new subject lines on…
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ProBlogger Blog Tips
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Feedburner Add Customizable Subject Lines to Email Subscriptions
2 Jul 2009 | 7:38 am -
Win an Omni Bean Bag Worth $149 in the Next 48 Hours at @ProBloggerDeals
1 Jul 2009 | 11:50 amToday’s ProBlogger Deal is simply - follow @ProBloggerDeals on Twitter and you’ll automatically go into the running to win the ultimate blogger’s chair - the Omni Bean Bag Chair from SumoLounge. You’ve got 48 hours to enter! Valued at $149 USD the Omni Bean Bag Chair comes in a range of 10 great colors, measures 4.5’ X 5.5, is made from rip-proof and easy to clean nylon and is filled with high quality beads which will stay fluffy for ages! Can’t you just picture yourself lazing around with your laptop on your knee in this baby? To win the Omni chair - simply… -
8 First Step SEO Tips for Bloggers
1 Jul 2009 | 7:13 am“What are the first steps to optimizing my blog for searches?” - question submitted by @monedays using the #pbquestions hashtag on Twitter. Much has been written on the topic of search engine optimization for bloggers - but let me give you a few basic first steps: 1. Content is King The quality of the posts you write is the single most important factor when it comes to Search Optimization on a Blog. I suspect others will argue differently but as I look at my own blogs success in the search engines I’d say that this has been the number one factor. Quality content that helps… -
Should I Quit Blogging?
30 Jun 2009 | 7:30 amImage by -nathan “Should I quit my blog and start Lifestreaming, Videocasting, Social Messaging/Networking etc?” There’s been another round of ‘blogging is dead’ posts doing the rounds of late and as a result I’ve had a number of emails hitting my inbox over the last week from bloggers asking if they should stop blogging. Here’s some of the advice I’ve been sharing: Blogging is not dead - it’s evolving. You should be evolving too (read Blogs are Out of Beta, But Bloggers Should always be in Beta) Keep being useful, keep solving problems… -
How to Manage a School/Blog Balance
29 Jun 2009 | 2:55 pmThis post was written by Aditya Mahesh, founder of AMBeat.com, a complete resource for entrepreneurs complete with advice articles, start-up profiles, interviews, news analysis, and more. Common wisdom suggests that academics are always chief in importance. Students, at least those here in the United States, are told time and time again that extra-curricular activities, whether it is a sports team or clubs, always come after academics. Student entrepreneurs and bloggers have a tendency not to follow this rule of thought. Throughout my high school and college experiences, I have always been…
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ShoeMoney
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Switching To the iPhone – 2 Weeks Later
2 Jul 2009 | 3:54 amLast Friday, after years of frustration with Sprint, and seeing the busted Palm Pre in action, I decided to give the iPhone a try. I had many concerns about switching… mostly because of AT&T network but I had some other valid concerns as well. To refer to my phone as a phone is kind of silly. I actually talk on the device probably less then 5% of the time. I rarely take phone calls and even more rarely make them. I use a service called phonetag to transcribe all voice mails to email and send them to me which I then reply in email. With my Sprint phones over the years I have used my… -
How To Avoid Obvious Failure As An Affiliate
1 Jul 2009 | 3:36 amThis is a guest post by Dennis Yu, CEO of BlitzLocal.com, a software company that does local lead gen for professional firms and retail outlets. Look at the top affiliates– the ones who are actually making money versus the pretenders . What’s the difference between them? You’ll notice that they all work ultra hard, are ultra networked, and are ultra knowledgeable. The catch-22 is that if you’re a one man show, how can you possibly put in enough time to work, meet people, and learn at the same time? Let’s look at how people fail at this: Ultra networkers: You know… -
What I Dont Understand About Twitter Followers
30 Jun 2009 | 4:30 amHere is the thing I don’t get about twitter. People follow people they are interested in and want to know what they are doing (unless I am missing something). What I don’t get is why people follow me, but then bitch about what I say… repeatedly…. and often times will say “Who gives a shit” in response to my tweets. Well I guess you do jackass or you would not follow me. Here is a good example… Last Friday I went with my wife and daughter (it was my daughters birthday) and she REALLY wanted me to get my toenails painted. So I put up a twitpic of it:… -
Winning The Web Announces ‘Winners Circle’
29 Jun 2009 | 8:00 amGyutae Park of Winning the Web has just launched a new Internet marketing training program today called Winners Circle. And at first glance, I think it is pretty awesome. Winners Circle is a members-only site with exclusive Internet marketing case studies, interviews, and community. Currently, there is one case study up and a new one is released each week. There are also a few interviews with top Internet marketers (released bi-weekly), a special bonus report called “4 Steps to Finding the Perfect Niche for Your Online Business”, and a forum which gives you direct access… -
Feedburner Drops Aweber From RSS Counts?? Or Not??
29 Jun 2009 | 3:34 amMid last week a lot of blog owners saw their RSS subscribers count drastically decrease. I had seen this before but it never lasted more then a day (that i saw). I was surprised to see the issue still going on several days later as it started to pop up on forums, blogs, and on some Google Groups that Feedburner was no longer showing your Aweber Blog Broadcast Subscribers. I talked to a friend who works at Feedburner and he said he was not sure the exact reason they stopped showing but that Feedburner in general was cleaning up questionable services that might not be reporting properly. I…
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Copyblogger
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How to Write an Ebook that Sells in 2009
2 Jul 2009 | 8:35 amYou’ll see one theme come up again and again on Copyblogger. If you want to create real revenue with your blog, you need to have something worthwhile to sell. Most sites are disappointed by the nickels and dimes that come in from advertising. If your site gets massive amounts of traffic, it can work, but if not, you’ll want to find a much more profitable source of revenue. But most of us find that it’s not all that easy to translate high-quality content from your blog into a high-quality product for sale. Four or five years ago, you could have slammed together an ebook over the weekend… -
Old-School Marketing No Longer Working? Blame Canada
1 Jul 2009 | 6:45 amCanadians are a funny lot. They use strange words and spell with a U. They kiss cod. They enjoy being frozen solid nearly 8 months a year, and they call their money Loonies and Toonies. Don’t get me wrong; they’re nice people just the same. They’re nature lovers and humanitarians and they like things simple and friendly. And contrary to popular belief, they’re actually pretty smart. But there’s just one problem. Your marketing strategies? You notice how they’ve been changing? That the old-school methods aren’t working anymore . . . at all? Well, I’ve figured out whose fault it… -
The Courage to be Wrong
30 Jun 2009 | 8:28 amI used to think being “right” was a big deal. I had to say the right thing, dress the right way, know the right people, read the right books, live in the right neighborhood, go to the right school. It wasn’t because I wanted to, exactly, but because I thought it was a prerequisite for success. If you want other people to respect you, then you have to look and sound a certain way, right? Makes sense, if conformity is all you’ve ever been taught. What no one tells you is the cost. Yes, conformity gains you a certain type of approval from others, but it comes at the cost… -
The Future of Copyblogger
29 Jun 2009 | 10:59 amWhat a wild three-and-a-half years, huh? Copyblogger started out as a way for me to demonstrate what I knew and could do in order to collaborate on new media projects with others. Now it’s the hub of a business enterprise that supports three families, two single guys, one single mom, and a host of domesticated animals. And we’re just getting started. Of course, that means having a clear picture of where we want to go is pretty essential. Guidance from the Wise Bald One I’m not going to pretend that Seth Godin and I are best buddies who hang out on weekends and major holidays. But if… -
Blogging is Dead (Again)
26 Jun 2009 | 10:56 amWelp, it’s time once again to log out of WordPress and turn out the lights. Once again, blogging is dead. Seems at least once a year, a flurry of discussion erupts around the imminent demise of blogging. And then the rest of us shrug our shoulders, grab some coffee, and get back to creating content that further solidifies our web presence. Don’t get me wrong… as always, change is definitely happening. But it doesn’t mean blogging is dead this time around anymore than it has every other time this discussion pops up. Reports of Blogging’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated Like the…
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John Chow
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You Have Less Than 24 Hours To Become a Blogger
2 Jul 2009 | 5:00 pmThe Become a Blogger Premium program will be closing its door in less than 24 hours. The door closes at midnight EST, July 3rd. This is your last chance to sign up and take advantage of my free $500 review offer. Become a Blogger Premium is a world renowned course taught about Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick that shows you, step-by-step, with instructional videos, how to become a successful money making blogger. More than 1,000 people have already gone through the course, and now is your chance to join the new intake of members so that you too can set up your very own successful blog. Get A… -
HasOffers – New Features Launched
2 Jul 2009 | 8:48 amEver since my review of HasOffers back on June 14, Adapp Solutions has been steadily making improvements to the white label affiliate service. There are so many upgrades that it warrants a new post just to talk about them. For those who don’t know, HasOffer allows you to create you own affiliate network. Over 1,000 people have used it to set up their own affiliate networks. Big names like Shoemoney are using it to power his affiliate marketing systems. And best of all, it’s FREE! The new features unveiled today include: New look and feel for the stat reports. Much more user… -
The Value of Checklists in Increasing Productivity
1 Jul 2009 | 6:08 pmOne of my main obstacles when it comes to work is staying focused. There a million sources of potential distraction, especially for bloggers and web entrepreneurs who spend a good deal of their time in font of the computer and on the Internet. There are thousands of interesting pages to visit, videos to see, content to read, etc. Yet, I have found that a good way to overcome these distractions and stay focused is through making a simple checklist of everything that needs to get done in a given day. I have tried dozens of different approaches from downloading software which tracks how much… -
My Name Is John And I Am Canadian
1 Jul 2009 | 9:51 amNormally, I don’t remember most holidays because everyday is a holiday when you’re living the Dot Com Lifestyle. However, Canada Day is an exception. For one thing, the date is easy to remember – July 1 and it’s three days ahead of the U.S. Independence Day celebration. Like Independence Day, Canada Day is a celebration of our nation and what makes us great. I received my Canadian citizenship when I was 12 years old and I’m proud to say I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. Happy Canada Day everyone. My name is John and I am Canadian! Find out what… -
Ask Yaro And Gideon For Help With Your Blog
30 Jun 2009 | 7:48 pmYaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick of Become a Blogger are running live free public teleconference this Thursday and they will be answering any questions you have about blogging and making money from blogging. This is a one time thing as their coaching calls are normally only for paying members. The capacity of the conference line is 150 people only so make sure you are there early if you want to listen in or ask a question. I may show up myself to give my two bits. If you’d like to speak to us, or just eaves-drop as other people ask questions and you want to experience what it is like to get…
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Blog Directory, Blogs on Blogged
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Web retailers, states tussle over tax rules
Physorg In a big break for online shoppers, Web retailers generally don't have to charge sales taxes in states where they lack a store or some other physical presence. -
Manny Ramirez to Stir Up Stagnant Los Angeles Dodgers Offense
Bleacher Report It’s official: Manny Ramirez has returned to the Los Angeles Dodgers active roster. Shortly after beating the Colorado Rockies 1-0 on Wednesday afternoon, the Dodgers placed Ramirez back on the 25-man roster. They sent... -
Neil Patrick Harris wait-for-it Emmy Host?
Seriously OMG Hot off of his amazing job as host of the Tonys, the extremely talented Neil Patrick Harris is in serious talks with CBS and the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences to do the same thing at the Emmys on September 20th acc... -
Debbie Rowe Wants Custody of Michael Jackson’s Children
The PopCrunch Show Debbie Rowe will fight for custody of her two children with Michael Jackson, according to KNBC Los Angeles reporter Chuck Henry, who spoke to the pop star’s former wife in a “long” interview on Thursday morning. Rowe confirmed that she plans to pursue custody of Prince Michael I, 12, and Paris Jackson, 11. Rowe said the reason she planned to step forward now is because the pop star didn’t “keep his end of the bargain,” referring to the singer dying... -
Washington Post reportedly selling health care lobbyists and CEOs access to its journalists, Obama officials.
Think Progress The Politico reports that the Washington Post, for a price of $25,000 to $250,000, is “offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, non-confrontational access to ‘those powerful few’ — Obama administration officia...
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Blog Design, Optimization & Usability - TopRank Marketing
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Search Better From Your Blog’s Search Box.
29 Jun 2009 | 10:49 amIt seems that that there could be a lot more done with WordPress’ internal search. More results, better options, filters, or something to make the user experience better. So I started looking for options. One option I found was Lijit. Lijit offers the ability to allow your users to search your blog, bookmarks, photos, videos, social networks such as Twitter, and other sites from one search box on your site. It seemed like what I was looking for, so I installed it. The downside to Lijit is that it can give other sites more visibility via advertising or the web searches tab. And taking… -
3 Alternative Ways To Post To WordPress
24 Jun 2009 | 10:25 amDid you know that you can post to a WordPress blog in a number of different ways? Here are 3 alternatives to create content in WordPress other than logging into the blog admin using the built in editor. Post via Email Built into WordPress is the ability for the software to check an email account and post each message it finds to a blog. This serves as a quick and easy way to send an email message and publish new content. To set this feature up, the fist thing you’ll need is a custom, secret, email account. Since WordPress posts everything that goes to this account, it can’t be one… -
Why Blogs Preform Better in Search
10 Jun 2009 | 7:32 amThere are a lot of people that will tell you that you need a blog because it’ll perform better in search engines and gain more traffic. This is not completely false, but it’s not exactly true either. Blogs tend to perform better because of the abundance of content. Blogs empower users to create content in a way that is easy and fun. By doing so, users are creating content on a daily, or weekly, basis. More content means more traffic and links. This is more for search engines to index, more for users to link to, and more to share with their friends and co-workers. More visitors can… -
Subscribe To Comments Revisited
27 May 2009 | 7:24 amA while back we covered a plug-in called Subscribe To Comments. It’s a great way to ensure that when visitors comment on your blog posts, they receive follow-up comments and stay a part of the conversation. After using Subscribe To Comments for over a year, there was one major issue, fake email addresses. Whether they are from people who didn’t want to leave their real email address, or from spammers, the number of bounce backs can become overwhelming. The good news is there are developers out there that have taken the Subscribe To Comments plug-in to the next level. They… -
How Companies Can Control Their Blog Content & Comments
14 May 2009 | 1:50 pmWhen thinking about a blog, one big thing that a lot of companies are concerned with is control. They are worried about what may get posted on their blog, and are concerned with people saying negative things about them in their comments. Companies get scared that it’s going to be mass chaos. The good news is content can be easily controlled by properly setting up user rolls and comment moderation. When a WordPress blog is stet up properly, some users can be free to create content, but not able to push it live. Other users can be given the power to publish, but only after they…
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NoBloggerLeftBehind.com
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Twitter Soup for the Soul
2 Jul 2009 | 11:00 amTwitter Soup for the Soul View more documents from Frances Flynn thorsen. (Frances Flynn Thorsen is hosting the Route 66 Real Estate Social Media Retreat in Williams, AZ, later this month. She is also launching the Social Media Skills Builder.) -
Social Media Business Planning
2 Jul 2009 | 9:26 amReal estate agents can build a social media presence with a business plan that blocks an hour a day for consumer connection and engagement. Here's an easy plan to follow after you set up a profile page at Facebook and Trulia. Real Estate Social Media Business Planning and Time Blocking View more documents from Frances Flynn thorsen. Here is my Trulia page: http://www.trulia.com/profile/foreclosure/ My Facebook profile: http://www.facebook.com/Frances.Flynn.Thorsen My Facebook Fan Pages: http://www.facebook.com/Socialebb http://www.facebook.com/HUDHomesForSale… -
Real Estate Social Media FSBO and EXPIRED Training
2 Jun 2009 | 11:22 amLeverage new social media tools to capture saleable listings and build relationships with new age consumers! Learn about dollar-productive ways to use social media in your real estate practice from one of the nation's leading journalists and social media mavens, Frances Flynn Thorsen. "What you hear, you forget; what you see, you remember; what you do, you understand." - T. Harv Eker, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. Capture the FSBO and EXPIRED market with new social media tools in a first-time ever online listing extravaganza! Real Estate Social Media Summer Blowout! SOCIAL MEDIA SKILL… -
Create Your Own Public Service Announcement - Help Homeowners at Risk of Foreclosure KEEP Their Homes
31 May 2009 | 10:07 amAre you using your blog as means to reach homeowners at risk of foreclosure? Here is a step-by-step plan to create a Public Service Announcement (PSA) to reach your market and help those homeowners: Get a list of non-profit agencies who can help. The key word here is nonprofit. Nonprofit government agencies and private agencies have trained, HUD-certified counselors who can help homeowners facing foreclosure. Example: Arizona has a very active Foreclosure Coalition with members who support distressed homeowners. Don't Borrow Trouble is a Web site and group founded by Freddie Mac to support… -
Real Estate Social Media Classes in Tucson
31 May 2009 | 8:23 amThere is still room in two classes tomorrow: Real Estate Social Media Mastery 101: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Trulia (9 am - 12 noon) There are THREE social media sites most important in a Real Estate Social Media Business Plan. We will spend time learning how to leverage these sites and establish a social media cornerstone as part of a carefully designed strategy for social media success. 1. Trulia Learn 5 Tips for Social Media Success on the fast growing real estate web site … learn the secrets of designing a powerful profile page, create a free blog, and learn the best ways to engage buyers…
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Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog
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Blogging Tidbits Round-Up
30 Jun 2009 | 10:58 amA little bit of blogging this and that today to catch you up on some things I've been up to and that may boost your business and blogging efforts... 1. Have you joined The Blog Squad's fan club on Facebook? The new direct URL is http://facebook.com/BlogSquad. FYI if you have a fan page on Facebook, be sure to get a "vanity" URL for it ASAP before someone else grabs your ideal URL. I am now offering exclusive Blog Squad Fan Page deals on the last day of the month. If you want VIP notification of savings on Blog Squad products and services, make sure you join the fan page by clicking on the… -
Blogger Jeff Hopeck Interviewed by Denise Wakeman - video
20 Jun 2009 | 7:21 amGotta love the Internet, blogging, social media and my dentist, Dr. Ramsey Amin. Today I met a fellow blogger at a micro tweet up - just the two of us at a popular cafe near my home office. Jeff Hopeck is the brother-in-law of my dentist who connected us through blogging and twitter. The last couple of times I got my teeth cleaned and checked, Dr. Amin was telling me how his brother-in-law blogged and that I should look him up. Can't remember the sequence of events, but through blogging and twitter we chit-chatted a bit. This week Jeff is in town from Atlanta so we met up for a coffee. We… -
Michael Stelzner Interviews Denise Wakeman
16 Jun 2009 | 8:32 amLast week I had the pleasure of visiting my colleague and King of White Papers, Michael Stelzner. I was in the San Diego area meeting with colleagues and attended a tweet-up with a 100 twitter friends. On my way back to L.A. I stopped in Poway to have a chat with Michael. Michael is the brilliant mastermind and organizer of the Social Media Success Summit with which I've been associated, promoting and presenting at for the past four weeks. Wednesday is the final day of the amazing online event (you can still register and get access to all the video presentations, audio, transcripts, bonuses… -
How to Reach 97 Million Americans - Lou Bortone's Video Tip
14 Jun 2009 | 7:34 amLou Bortone the Online Video Guy is my guest "author" today. I guess author takes on whole new meaning with video. I asked Lou to share a video tip with my readers and in the video he talks about why you should be using video in your marketing mix. I think you can see I'm pushing the use of video on your blog. Not for every post, but to mix it up once in a while. Give your audience a more intimate glimpse at who you are and the chance to connect with you even more deeply. Don't be intimidated by Lou Bortone's videos. He's been doing this a long time. If you've seen any of my videos, you know… -
Use Video on Your Blog to Entertain Your Audience
12 Jun 2009 | 6:53 amNot a day goes by that I don't read something in an ezine or on twitter or Facebook touting the power of video to connect, engage and convert your readers. And it's true. Video is a much more intimate way to connect since the viewer can see your body language, your facial expressions and hear your tonality. In this 2 minute video clip, which is part of a 5-part 50 minute video program about blogging (free!) I talk about the power of using video on your blog (it's a video clip from a presentation I did a few months ago). And video is not difficult to shoot, produce and distribute. The tools…
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Chris Garrett on New Media
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Creative Penn Blog Critique
30 Jun 2009 | 9:08 amJoanna Penn describes The Creative Penn as a site … aimed at people who are interested in writing, self-publishing/print-on-demand and internet marketing for their books (in print/ebook or audio format). That is a great niche, there are thousands of people struggling to get their book written, published and sold. I know the pull of books very well myself. Joanna has self-published her print book using print on demand, and also e-books, along with marketing via clickbank, so she has practical hands on knowledge of what she writes about. She also has created an online course called… -
Summer Traffic Blog Project
26 Jun 2009 | 8:01 amEvery year I get questions from people asking how they can fight the “summer slump” where traffic droops over the summer months. Also, who does not want more traffic any time of year, right? So this year I came up with a plan. Starting 1st July until the end of Summer, I will be posting tips, tutorials and exercises over at the Authority Blogger Forum. For your part I will want you to share your traffic generation questions, experiences, results and thoughts so we can all make the techniques and tactics even better. Here is the best bit for you. Anyone who participates will get… -
Everyday Guide Blog Critique
22 Jun 2009 | 7:02 amEveryday Guide First Impressions Wow these blog critiques have been popular lately - I hope you are getting as much out of them as I have fun writing them This critique is for Althaf Ahmed who runs a site called Everyday Guide which he described in his email to me as “an online repository of mini guides”. He also has the .net version of the domain which is due to be merged with the dotcom. What are these “mini guides” you might ask? Good question, I am glad you raised it. Here are some examples: How to start a home business What is a blog How to start an internet… -
Spiritual River Blog Critique
17 Jun 2009 | 8:52 amSpiritual River Patrick Meninga, aka skinnyninja to forum members, won this blog critique in the Blogger of the Month competition. If you would like to win a blog critique or Authority Blogger membership there is still time to win the June prize, you just need to participate in the forum by being friendly, asking excellent questions that spark discussion, or answering questions well. The blog is called Spiritual River and is about addiction, or rather I guess is more about sobriety by being more spiritual. By using the Thesis Theme, many of the techy things you need to do are handled already,… -
Join Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett on a Live Call
2 Jun 2009 | 5:45 amHow would you like to ask Darren Rowse of Problogger fame a question? Next Tuesday Darren is joining me on the telephone where I will be asking him YOUR biggest questions about blogging, traffic, subscribers and how he makes so much money - and you can join us online. Windows users will be able to listen live from your computer speakers, no phone necessary. Due to scheduling issues and time zones the call will be at 11am UK time, which while fine for the rest of the world is early for our USA friends, but even if you can not make the call live, if you sign up below you will be able to still…
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Blog World Expo
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The Speakers Lineup Taking Shape For 2009: A Quick Update
All this week I have been working with the staff here to get the lineup of speakers put together for the event and we are just now after pouring through the many submissions and proposals sending out the emails of those that have been accepted as part of our curriculum ... -
Why it Pays for Brands to Monitor the Social Networks
Last week I publicly wondered whether or not brands should monitor the social networks, this week I was able to prove my point. I'm not smug about it though, just happy there are folks who get it. A few days ago I tried to upgrade my cable service and was displeased ... -
David Lee at Wetoku Interviews Me
Yesterday BlogWorld Exhibitor and Wetoku VP of sales David Lee asked me a few questions using their new video service. It was pretty lag free and despite both of us having lousy web cams the quality looks pretty good to me. That is except for both of us having a ... -
CEO’s Are Actually “Social Media Slackers?”
Looks like the biggest big-wigs of the biggest companies in the world might just have some explaining to do. The world is shifting every day to a much more "socially networked" world, and everyone from your grandparents to your grandchildren are jumping on board and taking part. That is, everyone ... -
Can’t Make it to BlogWorld? 5 Ways You Can Still Be There in Spirit
The BlogWorld and New Media Expo is a wonderful celebration of networking and learning, a place where bloggers can talk about their favorite topic and know others will get it. Not all who are feeling the love can attend conferences, however. For many the airfare, lodgings fees, entry and other ...
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Daily Blog Tips
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Now You Can Use Dynamic Subject Lines for Your Feedburner Emails
2 Jul 2009 | 10:28 amThis was probably the most requested feature in the history of Feedburner. Until yesterday, if people subscribed to your blog via the Feedburner email service, all the subject lines of your emails would be static, containing either the name of your blog or some other text that you would specify. This is obviously annoying because subscribers can’t know what the email is about before they open it. On Daily Writing Tips we have close to 10,000 email subscribers, and at least once a week one of them would email us asking how come the subject lines only contained the name of the… -
Free Report with 500 Internet Marketing Strategies
2 Jul 2009 | 9:48 amMy friend Gyutae Park emailed me to let me know that he just released an ebook titled The Winning Way. The ebook is free, and you will just need to subscribe to his email newsletter to be able to download it. It has 118 pages and it covers 500 different Internet marketing strategies and tips. Those are obviously short tips, but there are many interesting ideas among them, ranging from ecommerce to blogging and linkbuilding. In fact here is what Gyutae wrote on the ebook page: I’m so confident that this resource will help you as an Internet marketer that I’ll make you a deal. Download the… -
Improve Your Search Rankings with Internal SEO
30 Jun 2009 | 8:00 pmThis is a guest post by Derek Clark. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here. Earlier this year I wrote a post about the stimulus package that passed Congress in February. I titled the post Government Stimulus Package because I thought the only thing it was stimulating was government. I got lucky with this, because apparently a lot of people searched for the phrase “government stimulus package” to learn about what was in it. The post did ok on Digg and Reddit, nothing spectacular but it brought in some traffic. It may have gotten a few other links, but not a… -
Poll: Do You Auto-Follow Everyone Back on Twitter?
30 Jun 2009 | 10:03 amWhen it comes to auto-following people on Twitter (either manually or with third party applications), there are basically two camps: those who claim it is a bad idea, and those who claim it is a good idea. People who say auto-following Twitter users back is a bad idea use the following arguments: When you auto-follow everyone back, in a matter of weeks you will be following thousands of people, and it is impossible to keep track of what they will tweet. If you auto-follow you will end up following spammers, scammers and bot accounts that are automated, with no real humans behind them Even if… -
BecomeABlogger.com Is Open Again (5 Days Only)
29 Jun 2009 | 7:04 amThis Monday Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick are re-opening their BecomeABlogger.com course. If you don’t have a blog yet, or if you are just getting started with the whole blogging thing, this is probably the best course online for you. Why? Because it covers the A to Z of blogging, and all the lessons are video tutorials, so you can actually watch Yaro talking and showing things on his desktop. Here are the 8 modules of the course (each of which comes with several videos inside): Get Your Blog Up And Running Fast And Free How To Optimize Your Blog For Maximum Search Engine Performance…
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Online Marketing Blog
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7 Ways To Develop A Unique Brand For Your Blog
29 Jun 2009 | 8:00 amWith the blogosphere churning out nearly 1 million posts every 24 hours, an unstoppable river of content flows over the web daily. It’s daunting, especially if you’re new to online publishing. The good news is it’s still very possible to succeed, even if you’re just starting out today. Developing affinity with a group of readers who will actually take the time to link, comment and share your material requires a commitment of both resources and creativity - this is common knowledge. But all other things being equal, you can and should give yourself an extra advantage… -
Intersection of Search and Social Media
26 Jun 2009 | 3:10 pmEarlier this week I gave a presentation on the intersection of SEO, online PR and social media to a great mix of people (mostly agencies) at a SEMPO Arizona event. The SEO/PR/Social topic is an interesting mix due to the convergence that’s been happening over the past 2-3 years and of course, because it’s the essence of what we’ve been doing at TopRank. Forward thinking companies are investing in social media for a variety of reasons, including gaining a competitive advantage through building relationships, creating content and capturing mindshare. I think it’s safe… -
How Direct is Social Media Marketing?
23 Jun 2009 | 7:00 amI had nice back and forth with Brian Clark of copyblogger on Twitter last week about direct marketing and social media. Ultimately it was more an issue of perspective and semantics but there were some great points about the intersection of direct marketing on the social web. I’ve been an advocate for several years as have others in the social media consulting space, that the social web is not a place for direct marketing. In the past I’ve even posted a fairly good comparison of the difference between direct marketing and social media marketing. Brian’s position via our… -
Influencing The Social Web: Agility Is A Factor
22 Jun 2009 | 6:28 amHow agile is your marketing? Do you have layer upon layer of approval processes, committees, lawyers, and executives who need to sign off on every piece of external communication before it goes out? If yes, your business is structured for a pre-Internet world, and unfortunately this means you will always be at a disadvantage compared to agile competitors designed to take advantage of a connected society. An inescapable truth isthe web rewards companies (and people) that are nimble. People interact deepest with thoughts and ideas that have character and personality. And if there is one… -
Strategic Link Building for SEO
18 Jun 2009 | 10:14 amNot many in the Search Engine Optimization game would argue that link building isn’t tactical. The problem is, approaching link building as an end goal and tactically, is very much like a hamster running in it’s cage. That’s what many mechanical SEO consultants do: Chase links one by one or get creative with link bait to attract an influx of links from blogs that write about the kinds of things other blogs do for link bait. I should know, in the past 12 years of providing SEO services, there have been many opportunities to do just that. It’s not scalable, not…
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The Friday Traffic Report
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Webside Chat with Randy Gage
30 Jun 2009 | 11:14 pmRandy Gage is a world class speaker, author, consultant, and prosperity guru. In this Webside Chat, learn how such a successful guy (who has admittedly few technical web skills) can become massively successful with blogging and social marketing. How Randy does Twitter alone is worth the time to check this one out. He’s doing Twitter right. Real right! Check out Randy Gage’s blog and grab some killer free stuff just for stopping by. He’s one to follow! (And if you have $60,000.00 or more burning in your pocket, you can hire Randy to speak to your group.) Post from: Blog… -
Webside Chat with Perry Marshall
30 Jun 2009 | 2:11 pmPerry Marshall is the original Adwords how-to-get-traffic guy. His training on pay per click traffic is the most popular and recognizeable on the web today. On this webside chat, learn how Perry actually uses Adwords to run traffic to his blog landing pages and how he views the role of social media and blogging in online marketing today. Perry’s free Google Adwords course is on his blog. I highly recommend you check out his stuff! Post from: Blog Marketing Webside Chat with Perry Marshall -
Webside Chat with Anik Singal
29 Jun 2009 | 7:15 pmAnik Singal has exploded on the scene in the last year to become one of the most respected and well-known internet marketers today. Learn how he sold over 6000 $77 products in a recent launch, how to be a bigger, better affiliate marketer, and much more on this Webside Chat. Catch up with Anik at Lurn.com and grab a lot of great free training on everything from affiliate marketing to pay per click and beyond. Post from: Blog Marketing Webside Chat with Anik Singal -
This is how my wife explains why women talk so much…
27 Jun 2009 | 3:21 pmIt begins at birth, apparently… Post from: Blog Marketing This is how my wife explains why women talk so much… -
Local Blogging Boom Meets Local Advertisers On The Ground
26 Jun 2009 | 10:17 pmThere’s a major growth industry on the web. And it’s got nothing to do with Google, Facebook, a new social media platform, or Twitter. (Seems like that’s all that’s ever talked about anymore, as if nothing else happens on the web outside the usual suspects.) It’s a boom in an “old fashioned” industry. Despite great demand for it, surprisingly little has been done to connect local people with their local communities. Yes, there are Yellowpages online. And local news and radio stations have websites. There are sporadic community sites set up for areas…
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Winning the Web
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Winners Circle is Now Live! Sign Up Now for Exclusive Internet Marketing Case Studies
30 Jun 2009 | 11:26 amThe wait is over – Winners Circle is now live! In case you didn’t know, Winners Circle is a new kind of Internet marketing training program & community that uses case studies, interviews, and examples to show you how to create winning businesses in various niches. This is a project that I’ve been working on for the past 6 months, and I believe 100% that it offers tremendous value to online entrepreneurs and marketers of all levels. Why? Studying case studies and examples is the best way to learn what works and what doesn’t and this is what sets Winners Circle apart… -
RevResponse Review – A Year of Growth and Improvements
26 Jun 2009 | 12:24 pmLast year, I reviewed RevResponse, an ad network that enables website owners to generate revenue by providing their visitors with free business resources like trade magazine subscriptions, white papers, books, and software trials. What makes RevResponse different from most other ad networks is that it’s not based on a CPC model (like Google Adsense) nor is it based on affiliate commissions since the offerings are free. Essentially how it works is publishers place text links, widgets, and banners on their site to promote the free RevResponse business offers from relevant categories. Whenever… -
Winners Circle is Launching on Monday, June 29th – Internet Marketing Case Studies
25 Jun 2009 | 10:58 pmYou may have noticed that posts here on Winning the Web have been pretty light the past couple of weeks. But don’t worry, I am not neglecting you guys – promise. In fact, I’ve been incredibly busy working on a few new projects… 1. A friend and I bought a site in the personal finance niche. It has pretty good cash flow already so we’re hoping to build it up into a leading resource in the industry. It’s my first hand at a 5-figure site purchase so it’s very exciting stuff. I’ll provide more details on that experience in a future post. 2. I’m… -
Offer Vault Review – Compare Top-Paying Affiliate Marketing Offers
19 Jun 2009 | 8:32 amThere are a ton of affiliate networks out there offering different benefits and payouts. In fact, I review a lot of them here on Winning the Web – most recently the up and coming Tatto Media. But with so many networks and offers available, how do you effectively keep track of them all? Isn’t it better to just stick with one? No, not really. Ideally, you want to try out different networks so that you can maximize payouts and get a better sense of what works for your campaigns. The best way to accomplish this is to use a free tool like Offer Vault to compare thousands of offers and… -
Blog Themes Club – Win a Free 1 Month Membership for Premium Themes
15 Jun 2009 | 3:59 pmI don’t know about you, but I’m a huge fan of Wordpress (version 2.8 just came out, by the way) – a blogging content management system that’s extremely simple and flexible, yet very powerful. In fact, I use it here on Winning the Web and on most of my other content sites. One of the biggest benefits of Wordpress is that it offers a theme system that allows you to change the look and and feel of your site with a single click. How awesome is that? This feature has created a huge aftermarket of countless Wordpress blog themes. There’s something out there for…
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The Edublogger
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Here’s My Top Five Mistakes Made By New Bloggers — What Are Yours?
27 Jun 2009 | 4:26 amEver felt like you wished some one had told you about what mistakes NOT to make when blogging before you MADE the mistake? Well I know I have so here are my five top mistakes made by new bloggers: #1 Copying and pasting text written in Word into blog post When you copy and paste text from MS Word, emails, other word processor applications, websites etc into blog posts it transfers extra code which you normally won’t see unless you click on the HTML tab. Trouble is you mightn’t be seeing this code but your blog might. This extra code cause problems including changing font size… -
Is a picture always worth a thousand words?
18 Jun 2009 | 1:49 amWhat’s wrong with this picture? Spotted it yet? Yes, I know we’ve had similar conversations but some conversations NEED to be continuing for new educators starting their online journey. What are your thoughts on: Student photos and how much information is appropriate to use with photos? What else do educators need to consider when starting to blog with their students? If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider Subscribing For Free! Authored by Sue Waters. Hosted by Edublogs. -
The Edublogger’s USA Adventure… to NECC and Beyond!
15 Jun 2009 | 4:17 amFor those that aren’t aware I’m off on an USA adventure for 3 weeks, from June 21 to July 13, to attend NECC 2009 and network with people. What these means is: I would love to catch up with anyone attending NECC that wants to chat or ask questions You’ll find me at NECC unplugged Send me a tweet using twitter @suewaters Leave a comment on this post to coordinate a time Probably less posts on this blog during July Less access to provide support in Edublogs Forum Grateful for any help answering posts in Edublogs Forum (willing to reward your efforts with a free 12 month… -
Using Scribe Posts on Class Blogs
12 Jun 2009 | 5:11 amCommon question asked is “It’s easy to understand how English or social studies teachers use blogs with students. But how would you use blogs for maths, science, art ….?” Finding Blogging Ideas Checking the class blog list, categorized by year and subject area, is a good starting point. These two posts also help: Check Out These Cool Ideas From Class blogs! Looking for Ideas? Here’s some creative ways teachers are using Class Blogs! But it’s also good to check out teachers with years of experience using blogs with students. Take for example how Darren… -
Want to blog from your iPhone or iPod Touch? Here’s How!
8 Jun 2009 | 6:44 amLooking for a blogging app for your iPod touch and iphone? Maybe not yet, but we’ve had quite a few people asking what to use. Sorry but WordPress for iPhone app doesn’t currently support Edublogs blogs but there are other blogging apps available. Thankfully Mr B. from Teach Me Tekkie blog saved research time by telling me how he has been using BlogPress to post from his iPhone. All you need to do is: Install BlogPress from your App Store of your iPod touch or iphone Launch BlogPress and add your blog details NOTE: Edublogs users need to select WordPress as your blog Service…
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Dummies' Guide to Blogger
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How to remove Header borders
28 Jun 2009 | 4:28 amA blogger request help for removing the Header border (she called it title). This is easily done. First, sign into your Blogger account (Dashboard). Then click on the LAYOUT tab followed by EDIT HTML to get to the template editor. Look for this in the template:#header-wrapper { width:100%; margin:0 auto 10px; border:1px solid $bordercolor; }#header-inner { background-position: center; -
Google account deleted, cannot access blog - What to do
18 Jun 2009 | 7:06 amA Blogger account is associated with a Google Account. Never delete your Google Account. If you delete your Google Account, your blogs will become inaccessible to you. If you have accidentally deleted your Google Account, go to Google Account Help and fill in the form as soon as possible. Then pray.Acknowledgement: Thanks to Mishka for pointing this out. -
Fixed width template horizontal scroll bar
8 May 2009 | 4:05 amA blogger told me that some of his readers complained of seeing a horizontal scroll bar (at the bottom of the screen) while he himself found no issue. I am guessing that he must be using a fixed width template optimized for screen resolutions greater than those of his readers while he himself is using the wider screen so see no horizontal scroll bar. These are the standard screen resolutions - -
Blogger for Dummies is not my main blog. Blogger Tips and Tricks is
17 Apr 2009 | 6:53 amI see that there are 35 followers of this blog on Blogger. If you happened to be a follower, perhaps you might be interested to know that while this is my first Blogger related blog, this is not my main Blogger related blog and is not updated often. The main Blogger related blog is Blogger Tips and Tricks of which the URL is http://www.bloggertipsandtricks.com/. The reason this is not my main -
Why can't I find my blog in search engines?
12 Feb 2009 | 4:53 amThat is a frequent question from new bloggers. New bloggers who just started are understandably impatient to find their blogs in search engines. However, search engines take time to index new blogs. The first thing bloggers should do is to check if their blogs had been indexed. This is simply done by typingsite:URL of bloginto the search box and search. For example, to check if this blog is
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WordFrame Blog
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Government 2.0: Policy & Practice
20 Jun 2009 | 8:43 pmI’m off to the national capital, Canberra, tonight for the all day event at Parliament House, Government 2.0: Policy and Practice. As indicated in a previous post, I’m speaking on the subject: Why parliamentarians and public sector managers need to participate in social media. The sub-head is: briefings and slide shows won’t cut it. I plan to live blog the event with the help of Coveritlive and am embedding the code for that here. I’ll switch i... -
Speaking at Government 2.0: Policy and Practice
16 Jun 2009 | 1:08 amGot the word this morning that I’m scheduled to speak at the Government 2.0: Policy and Practice event next Monday in Australia’s national capital, Canberra. The fact that the event is being held within Parliament House makes me feel doubly appreciative. This is the event I posted about a couple of weeks ago as Open Government Camp and Social Media. Because I’d thought of the event till now as something of an upscale barcamp, I think I’d been ... -
Daily Blog Cruise Choice Posts
11 Jun 2009 | 11:37 pmPitch Engine Social Media Release Works for Small Business TooSocial media release provider Pitch Engine offers small businesses a very economical way to get their messages out(tags: PitchEnginesocialmediasocial+media+releasesmallbusinessbrandsprPR20)Link to original post... -
Business Blogging Has Bright Future: Survey
10 Jun 2009 | 7:29 pmAccording to a new survey on business applications of social media, blogging is not old news, but actually looks set for a bright future. Although it suits some commentators to proclaim the demise of blogging, Josh Gordon in his report The Coming Change in Social Media Business Applications, says that blogging is shaping up, along with LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, as an increasingly relevant social media tool, indeed perhaps the most relevan... -
Daily Blog Cruise Choice Posts
9 Jun 2009 | 11:22 pmChinese filtering move demonstrates futility of Australian censorship proposal… if China can’t get ISP level filtering to work, why does the Australian Government believe that it’s different?(tags: ChinaAustralianet+filternet+censorship)PitchEngine Announces BOGO PromotionFor the budget-conscious business (are there any others right now?) a great offer from social media release Pitch Engine - 2 customized newsroom premium acco.....
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Quick Online Tips
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Buy Twitter Followers: 100,000 for $3479
2 Jul 2009 | 12:27 pmWhat is the secret to increase Twitter followers? You can easily buy Twitter followers for a few dollars. As huge twitter follower counts represent prestige, some of them might actually be bought. uSocial twitter follower service lets you actually buy Twitter followers. I checked their prices and a starting package will get you 1000 twitter followers for $87 to a new or existing account in 7 days. You can buy 10,000 twitter followers for $372.75 in 45 days. So you want more…. How about 100,000 Twitter followers – that is sure to make you famous on Twitter. You can spend $3,479… -
How to Create Cool Usernames
2 Jul 2009 | 7:08 amGuest post by Srikanth Username has many important qualities, it instantly represents you. If you join a social networking site, then you need to have a cool username to gain focus and visibility. Username should be creative, unique and should be able to represent you in all means. Consider Twitter for instance, people look at your username before looking at your profile, so it should also attract users to your profile to become popular on social networking sites. For email you have to choose a simple and short username such that people can remember it easily. Think creative when you are… -
Top Brands Introduce Extra Large Ads
1 Jul 2009 | 11:23 amWhat are extra large ads for you – 768×90px or 160×600px banners? Well XXL extra large size advertisements went live on top websites like CNN, New York Times as consumers continue searching for content between the ads. I spotted this huge Mercedes ad on New York Times Online Publishers Association announced that several popular members, whose sites reach 68% of the total U.S. Internet audience, have begun offering the three new larger new ad units, namely The Fixed Panel: 336 wide x 700 tall, remains constant as the user scrolls to the top and bottom of the page The XXL Box:… -
5 Best Sites to Get Answers to Your Questions
1 Jul 2009 | 9:50 amGuest post by Dee Barizo The Internet is a rich resource of information on all things imaginable. But while you can just key in a query on the Google search box, you are not sure you would get the right information. This is especially true if you are looking for answers to specific questions. And because of search engine optimization, you’re not sure if the site at the top of the result page is there because it’s genuinely helpful, or if it’s simply there because it’s the best-optimized webpage. Here are five resources that you can use to get answers to questions. 1. Mahalo Answers… -
12 Easy Ways to Extend Mobile Phone Battery Life
30 Jun 2009 | 12:09 pmGuest post by Srikanth How to increase your mobile phone battery life? Most of the modern mobile phones come with good batteries, which last for years if used according to the manufacturer instructions. Nowadays most of the mobile phones can support various applications and programs that are useful to us. However, we must note that these applications are energy hungry and use up the battery power faster, adding to this, most of the people ignore to turn off some of the functions in the mobile phone that use power. Usually modern lithium-ion battery can power your phone for days in standby…
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Alister Cameron // Blogologist
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Why Alex King’s Carrington WP theme is great.
8 Jun 2009 | 6:32 amI was stunned today to discover that a lot of people just don’t “get” the Carrington theme by Alex King and the team at Crowd Favorite. To me it’s a no-brainer why it’s so damn good, and why I’m basing a part of the functionality of my upcoming Vanilla theme on it. So being a faster talker than a typer, I shot a fast and crappy video explaining my passion. Comments welcome below or here. Click here to view the embedded video. -
Democratizing the Twitter “suggested users” list. Vote now!
30 Mar 2009 | 6:17 pmSeen this before? It’s the suggested users list that Twitter installed a few weeks back. A brand new Twitter users sees it at the conclusion of their signup process. @biz explained a few days ago how they go about selecting people for the list, and it’s still a whole lot less than clear and transparent: We’ve explained that the Suggested Users list is a bit like your local book store’s staff picks but there’s a little more to it than that. Our Chief Scientist developed a program that scans active Twitter accounts for a bunch of key ingredients such as how much of… -
Twitter: get as many followers as you can, as fast as you can!
18 Mar 2009 | 6:06 amToday Twitter is all abuzz about Tweepme.com. There are a lot of people signing up for the service and they’re each sending out an automated tweet announcing the fact. And there are a lot of fellow Twitter users up in arms about the “wrongness” of the Tweepme.com service. I am very please the Tweepme.com service has come along, because — aside from anything it may or may not achieve for those who have signed up in the hope of gaining lots of followers for no effort — it has caused the Twitter community to throw around (again) the question of what Twitter is… -
The future of WordPress themes (2009)
2 Mar 2009 | 6:15 amThanks to another invitation from Ian Stewart to take part in his annual blog post looking at the future of WordPress theming. I’m getting more direct and to-the-point as I get older and grumpier… hope you enjoy it! -
Words as weapons: when a commenter upstages a journalist!
9 Feb 2009 | 4:45 pmI love this “age of social media”. We’re seeing the “populace” given voice in ways that have never existed before. Here’s an example from today… In a Guardian article just published, entitled “The ‘continent of smoke’ is still burning“, writer (and Guardian Weekly editor) Natalie Bennett chooses very insensitive timing to discuss Australian urban planning, population, climate and such favourite lefty topics. She doesn’t seem bothered that the search for Victorian bushfire fatalities is not yet concluded, and the large…
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Write to Done
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Campfire Writing: Why Stories are the Writer’s Elemental Tool
1 Jul 2009 | 5:44 amA guest post by David Masters “I don’t think you can write - at least not well - if you don’t love stories.” ~ Nora Roberts “To hell with facts! We need stories!” ~ Ken Kesey An Ancient Greek Parable on How to Captivate Your Audience Demades, the Ancient Greek orator, is about to address an assembly in Athens on a matter of vital importance. Though widely recognised as one of the greatest speakers of his time, he can’t get his audience to listen. They’re joking and laughing among themselves, ignoring Demades as he stands alone on the podium,… -
First Draft Secrets: Five Simple Steps
23 Jun 2009 | 2:10 amA guest post by Marla Beck If you’re anything like me, sometimes writing a first draft can be a huge struggle. On some level we may be busy “just writing,” but on another level, we’re often working hard to ignore, silence or simply drown out our mind’s chatter. No wonder we sometimes resist writing and finishing our first drafts! It’s not always easy to split our attention between writing and “mind-management.” To write a useful, “flavorful” first draft, it helps to have a helpful mindset and a few tools to help us focus. Mind… -
How to Stop Digital Fiddling and Start Writing
17 Jun 2009 | 2:59 amBy Mary Jaksch Are you prone to digital fiddling? I am. In fact, I’ve increased my skills of digital fiddling so much that I hardly notice that I’m putting off writing. What is digital fiddling? Reading emails How often do you check emails? When I’m stuck in procrastination, I happily check my emails every twenty minutes or so. After all, there could be an email that’s really important. I usually manage to find a few that I absolutely have to reply to at once. (After all, anything is better than having to tackle writing the piece I’m trying to avoid). Checking stats Once I’ve… -
A Forgotten Key to Blogging Success
5 Jun 2009 | 4:10 amBy Glen Allsopp I am under no illusions regarding my writing ability; I’m aware that I still have a long way to go in terms of honing my skills in this area. And, despite the fact that I took my English A-Levels one year early, writing is something that definitely doesn’t come naturally for me. Yet, while I’m aware of my flaws (which are slowly decreasing) it has never put me off attempting to be a writer and wanting to motivate, inspire and awaken people with my words. I have managed to build quite a decent following on my site, but I recently decided I wanted to take… -
The Cycle of Creativity and How to Ride It
2 Jun 2009 | 7:37 pmBy Mary Jaksch It sounded an excellent plan, no doubt, and very neatly and simply arranged. The only difficulty was, she had not the smallest idea how to set about it.~ Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland Who is in charge of your creativity? Are you? Or is your inspiration like a wellspring that flows one moment and stops the next – without you being able to control it? The good news is that we can learn to be consistently creative. The trick is… Yes, there is a trick. But before I say more about the cycle of creativity and how to ride it, let me tell you what prompted this post. I’ve…
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AdvertiseSpace - blog advertising...
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Twitter Secretly updates the Rules of the game
25 Jun 2009 | 1:48 pmTwitter appears to have secretly edited their policies without any public announcements, and it appears that they change the terms frequently to suit new needs. That is a the problem with a totally free service, they can boot whoever they like for whatever reason, whenever. Some of the notable updates: Accounts that are inactive for more than 6 months may be removed without further notice If there is a clear intent to mislead people into believing this account is affiliated with the company/business in question, the account will be permanently suspended. News feed accounts… -
A single affiliate just earned over $1 million from GetResponse.
16 Jun 2009 | 9:06 amGetResponse just announced that ONE of their affiliates has just made $1 million in our affiliate commissions! Yes, you read it correctly. One person. So I’m wondering how much they have paid in overall commissions if just one person made a million? They claim to have over 100,000 affiliates promoting their stuff, go I’m guessing they are making mad cash. The best part of this affiliate program is the monthly recurring fees. Unlike most one time commissions, with these guys you keep getting paid each month. Sign up and get your piece of the pie! GetResponse. -
Yaro of Blog Mastermind Launches his own Membership Site.
28 Apr 2009 | 12:50 pmThe Internet guru and make money online expert behind Blog Mastermind is at it again, this time with a membership site training course. With the runaway success of Brian Clark’s own Teaching Sells, Yaro himself is replicating the same program. I did sign up for the Teaching Sells course myself when it re-launched back in Feb. The course were solidly written true to Brain’s copy writing expertise and very motivating to do your own training course. I’m not sure if Yaro himself took Brian’s course and was inspired or he just saw the success and decided to… -
Just Launched my new Blog!! - ProTwit.com
6 Apr 2009 | 9:37 amSo since I’m officially addicted to twitter and I love finding new ways to make money online, I thought I’d combine the 2 and explore something that is sure to be a hot button and a sensitive subject for a lot of twitter users… “How to make money on Twitter” Check out my new blog now! http://www.Protwit.com Follow Protwit on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/protwit ShareThis -
Google Buys Twitter for $635 Million!!!
1 Apr 2009 | 6:31 amGoogle To Acquire Twitter for $635 million in Stock Combination Will Create New Micro-blogging opportunities for Users Everywhere MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 1st*, 2009 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has agreed to acquire Twitter, the consumer media company for people to share original 140 character micro experience, for $635 million in a stock-for-tweet transaction. Following the acquisition, Twitter will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate, albeit, board line neurotic community. The acquisition combines one of the largest and…
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Steven-Sanders dot com
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Win A Free Ticket To IzeaFest 09 At Blogher
29 Jun 2009 | 1:41 pmYes, I’m going to Blogher 2009 in Chicago. Why? Because I can, because as an Izea Insider, my cost is covered, because my wife wants to go and I am very supportive of her blogging, because women have a very powerful voice in blogging, because only 10% of those attending Blogher are going to be guys, and because I have something special to give away to a very special Blogher attendee! Free Ticket To Izea Fest Early last month, I started a giveaway for 2 IzeaFest tickets, holding onto a third and hoping I could come up with some creative way of giving it away. And I’ve finally… -
Gadget of the Week - Lenovo A600 (The Sexy PC)
27 Jun 2009 | 8:28 amUntil now it’s taken a special (OK, weird) kind of guy to see sexiness in the profile of a Windows PC. But even the most manicured Mac fanboy would have to admit that Lenovo’s ultrathin IdeaCentre A600 desktop is the sexiest PC ever. The sleek all-in-one unit’s 21.5-inch HD screen and hidden speakers and sub make it perfect for doing double duty as a bedroom TV. It even has a sweet remote control/air mouse and wireless keyboard. A Core 2 Duo processor, optional ATI Radeon graphics card, and up to 4 GB of DDR3 memory provide enough muscle to play intensive games like Crysis… -
Free Tickets To IzeaFest 2009 - The Winners
26 Jun 2009 | 10:55 amAt the beginning of last month, I started a giveaway for 2 free tickets to IzeaFest 2009. Due to some things pulling me in a different direction, I was delayed on announcing the winners of the giveaway, but I hold in my hand the two names of the lucky readers that will attend IzeaFest this year in Sea World Orlando! Winner Number 1 The first winner of a Free IzeaFest ticket is Anne-Marie Nichols of www.the-write-spot.com. You can also find her on Twitter under the name amnichols. How convenient. Anne-Marie seems to be doing very well for herself with her many blogs and social media… -
Gearing Up For Conferences - New Business Card
24 Jun 2009 | 6:42 pmIn the spirit of getting ready for Blogher (yes I’m probably the only guy going that doesn’t blog about being a dad), and IzeaFest, I’ve decided to freshen up my look, and get some new business cards designed. And thanks to the marvelous workings of my Twitter friend Jeff Peak (you can follow him here), I have a new design, that truly stands out from most other business cards. I, of course, made a few minor text changes myself. Your Thoughts Of course, I could never settle on the final touches without getting your input. After all, you are the reason I write. So here are… -
Free Passes To Affiliate Summit East
23 Jun 2009 | 12:51 pmIt seems as I finish one giveaway, I’m starting another. You can just call this the place to get free stuff! I have 3 Gold passes to Affiliate Summit East in New York City. These passes normally cost $399, so a free one could be the difference in whether you can go or not. What’s Affiliate Summit East? For those of you who don’t know, here is an exerpt straight from the Affiliate Summit website: “Affiliate Summit East, the premier affiliate marketing conference, is taking place August 9-11, 2009 in New York City. This three day conference includes an exhibit hall…
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Delicious/tag/blogging tips
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Copywriting 101: An Introduction to Copywriting | Copyblogger
2 Jul 2009 | 4:54 pm -
Micro Persuasion: Ten Blogging Hacks
2 Jul 2009 | 4:47 pm -
How to Build a High-Traffic Blog Without Killing Yourself
2 Jul 2009 | 4:42 pmNice insight into how TF writes his blog. (Evernote) > http://www.evernote.com/pub/tomkrieglstein/mynotes#Note/ec8709ee-260b-43be-89de-3d648044d126 -
21 Surefire Tips for a Successful Blog Launch
2 Jul 2009 | 4:39 pm21 very good tips for successful blogging launch -
How to Blog without Killing Yourself | John Chow dot Com
2 Jul 2009 | 4:31 pm
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Performancing
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Making money with Amazon even if you miss the direct sale
30 Jun 2009 | 12:35 amUntil recently, I’d almost given up on being an Amazon affiliate. It wasn’t necessarily hard to get people to click on links but they rarely seemed to buy what I was offering them. However, times have changed. I can’t think of any of my family, friends or acquaintances that isn’t aware of the Amazon brand and hasn’t bought at least one item from them. What I’m discovering more with Amazon is that, while the basic rules of affiliate success remain the same — including traffic, deep-linking, compelling and relevant enticement — Amazon is one of the few… -
Would You Withhold Information If It Meant Saving a Life?
29 Jun 2009 | 7:12 amA lot of bloggers tend to be trigger happy with publishing information. There’s always the desire to be the first to post about breaking news, especially if it’s fresh and yet unpublished by the more mainstream news sources. Bloggers and editors of new media publications take pride in this. But how far will we go with the desire to be first? What if it meant possibly endangering the life of a person–a fellow writer or journalist at that? Back in November of 2008, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist David Rohde was kidnapped in Afghanistan. His employer, the New York Times, has… -
Review: Using the iPhone OS 3.0 for blogging
23 Jun 2009 | 5:15 amA few months ago, just after the upgraded iPhone operating system was announced, I speculated on whether iPhone OS 3.0 would make the iPhone a better blogging platform, basing my article purely on the specifications Apple provided. Now that iPhone 3.0 has arrived, here are my initial thoughts on whether the iPhone is good for performing a variety of common blogging/social media tasks. Blogging A number of applications already exist to integrate with popular blogging platforms such as WordPress and Movable Type, and it’s possible to access most admin panels via the Safari web browser. -
Success in the Business of Blogging is More than Passion
22 Jun 2009 | 12:58 pmOver the last four years, I have watched as many successful bloggers stopped blogging, and new bloggers took their place. Having success in the business of blogging requires more than passion, and I think that is something far too few people make sure to mention. If you want to have a successful business where your primary product is your blog, then you might want to think long and hard before you dive in. Creating a business from blogging is like any other business. You need to think about what you are trying to build, and come up with a plan to get there. Organize Your Thoughts and Ideas If… -
Would You Pay to Read Someone’s Tweets?
18 Jun 2009 | 8:23 amWould you pay to read someone’s tweets? For some time now, enterprising individuals have been trying to find the holy grail of Twitter monetization. Some have been blatantly spamming advertisements through @replies. Some have indirectly monetized their Twitter accounts by using it as a viral marketing tool. Still, others have created Twitter clients that are funded by advertisements. Will you dare to venture into Twitter monetization by limiting your audience to paying subscribers? This is what TwitPub aims to do. It’s supposed to be a marketplace made for Twitter so users can buy…
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It's Not a Lecture
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"I don't want the computer to be part of the performance. It's just a pencil."
30 Jun 2009 | 2:06 pmThe same goes for what I do with my colleagues. One of the reasons I think Zoe Keating is so interesting. -
Beyond Bizlex: Ceasefire Liberia
29 Jun 2009 | 3:52 amI'm back in the office - and it seems quite a lot has happened since I placed the blog on auto-pilot. Hopefully I'll have some time to get to all of it. While I was away my latest column in Business Lexington ran - it's a feature on Ceasefire Liberia, an innovative new project led by a journalist named Ruthie Ackerman and supported by my friends at Global Voices Online.It turns out there's a rather interesting link between Liberia and Kentucky. The Bluegrass Region is actually the birthplace of two Liberian Presidents. I think this is the kind of column my editors had in mind when they… -
This Is A Blog About Issues, After All
26 Jun 2009 | 3:33 amEnjoy your weekend. I'll be back soon. -
More Smart People on Video
25 Jun 2009 | 3:19 am -
Blog vs. Print
24 Jun 2009 | 5:11 amOn Video.
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Blogging Tips
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Feed a Fever, Without Starving Your RSS Reader
2 Jul 2009 | 10:37 amIf you’ve ever come back from a vacation or conference and been reluctant to open up your RSS reader due to the sheer number of unread items that certainly awaited, you are already familiar with “second inbox guilt”. It’s caused by having a second unread count, much like your email inbox, that you have to constantly churn and plow through every day. The cure for this disease, however, may well be a fever. Fever is a different kind of RSS reader, rather than burdening you with unread entries and making you rummage through hundreds or thousands of posts to find what you… -
Faulty Subordination, Rambling Sentences, and Faulty Parallelism
2 Jul 2009 | 8:34 amIf you missed the post on faulty coordination, Sentence Structure and Coordination, be sure to check it out. We discussed that you don’t always need to begin a sentence with the subject, and the problems we can run into with improper coordination. This post is a continuation of that topic covering faulty subordination, rambling sentences and faulty parallelism. There are two types of problems we can encounter when using subordination; we can use the wrong subordinator or we can subordinate the wrong idea. To avoid using the incorrect subordinator, always make sure that the connecting… -
Aviary Screen Capture
2 Jul 2009 | 7:00 amIt’s a pretty common task for a blogger to need a screen capture to get a picture of a Web page or grab a logo of a web site that they are writing about. While Windows, Mac and Linux include some basic tools for screen captures, most bloggers will want a screen capture tool with the ability to capture portions of pages and add text or other annotations to the captured images. What’s amazing is that the improvements in screen capture software are rolling out at an amazing pace. Just earlier this year Jonathan Bailey wrote about Skitch: The Mac Blogger’s Best Screenshot Tool… -
WordPress Adds Commercially Supported GPL Themes
2 Jul 2009 | 5:25 amThere has been a lot of discussions lately about WordPress and it’s GPL policy for themes. Thord Daniel Hedengren posted about the latest twist in the GPL debate today. WordPress have added a Commercially Supported GPL Themes directory to the themes area of WordPress. There is currently 9 theme websites displayed in this commercial area : Pro Theme Design, Jestro, iThemes, Press75, StudioPress, Spectacu.la, Themeshift, ThemeHybrid and WooThemes. Though I have no doubt that this will encourage many more commercial theme sites to adopt the General Public License due to the exposure that… -
Leveraging Your Twitter Account to Achieve Fame and Fortune?
1 Jul 2009 | 9:01 amLeveraging your Twitter stream can be archived in a number of ways, but avoiding the negative connotation of being spammy or being labeled as a gimmick can be the tricky thing. Some tweet for a cause in order to ensure that their online actions aren’t perceived in bad light. The upside? You’re actually tweeting for a good cause. Now isn’t that a win-win? It’s a lesson driven home by Franny Syufy over at About.com. She notes the current Twitter trend that Sockington started, which was little more than a curious return to the cat-blogging phenomenon that Twitter once…
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Bloggers & Blogging Blogs On Blog Catalog
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Google Cash Sniper | Bonus
2 Jul 2009 | 4:27 pmGoogle Cash Sniper Reviewed -
How To Decoupage
2 Jul 2009 | 4:22 pmHow To Decoupage -
Heart Disease Cure!
2 Jul 2009 | 2:51 pmThe Myth Behind Heart Disease! -
Addison's Journal
2 Jul 2009 | 10:16 amHello. I am Addison Post, a sim in The Sims 3 neighborhood. I currently reside at 9 Sun Song Ave., across from the beach, and my lifetime goal is to become a rock star. On my journal, here, is where I write about what is my life events. -
Natural Penis Enhancement Info
1 Jul 2009 | 1:06 pmHow To Get A Bigger Penis
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Blogging Pro
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WordPress Themes ARE GPL…Kinda.
2 Jul 2009 | 3:42 pmAccording to a post on the WordPress Development blog today, there are finally some concrete GPL related answers regarding some fuzziness in the communities (and WordPress’s) understanding of exactly how themes fit into the GPL framework. Long story short, the php (or at least the parts related to hooking into WordPress) of themes ARE required to be GPL compliant. The tricky bit is, the images and css are NOT. Meaning a theme could be partially GPL and still retain copyright of the artwork/design to some degree. Here’s a snippet for you… The PHP elements, taken together, are… -
Review: Winners Circle Membership Site
30 Jun 2009 | 10:32 amStarting a business online may be an exciting idea but are you ready for the challenges ahead? Putting up a website is not the start and end of it because you have to ensure that you sustain your traffic and sales once you begin. Deciding on your own may not be sufficient but with a mentor to guide through every step of the way, you can be sure to build your confidence going forward. The Winners Circle membership site is one training program you can count on. I strongly recommend this especially to start up entrepreneurs. It’s easy to use and requires only a small amount from your pocket… -
WordPress 2.8.1 Beta 2
29 Jun 2009 | 10:30 amBeta 2 is here. Get it while it’s…still not quite out of Beta…or something. From the WordPress.org Dev Blog… Notable fixes in beta 2: * Translation of role names fixed * wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title * Upload error messages are now correctly reported * Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed * Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed * SSH2 filesystem requirements updated * Switched back to curl as the default transport * Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with… -
3 Alternative Ways To Post to WordPress – bloggerdesign.com
26 Jun 2009 | 11:30 amIf you don’t find using the default post editor in WordPress very efficient, or for whatever reason just want to be able to post to your WordPress blog without going to the admin panel, starting a new post, and going through the somewhat lengthy process of getting everything ready to go, then they are quite a few alternative methods to getting something posted. Bloggerdesign.com currently has a great list describing many of them, including a fairly good list of desktop applications or browser addons. Here’s a taste from one of the methods they discuss… Press This is a… -
6 Steps to Get Your Company to Pay You to Blog – ProBlogger.net
25 Jun 2009 | 9:54 amIf you work, either full time or part time, for a company that might benefit from having a someone running a blog for them(and it would be extremely strange if that isn’t the case), you might be able to roll some blogging into your job, or maybe even make blogging for that company your ONLY job if that’s something you’d enjoy. Alexandra Levit has a guest post up on ProBlogger.com about just that called, “6 Steps to Get Your Company to Pay You to Blog“. Here’s a taste… Develop your area of expertise: It’s not realistic – or even a good idea – for…
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Smackdown!
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Dear Google, Both Yahoo and Bing Crushed You Today
12 Jun 2009 | 6:50 amDear Google, I ran a search today. It was a real search. In other words, this search wasn’t something I was researching as a search professional. This wasn’t a search for one of the high keyword value phrases. This was just me … being an ordinary user … wanting to find some information. And what I discovered was that Google failed me, big time, with absolutely nothing in the first ten results that was of any relevance to my query. Now at first, I assumed *I* was the problem. After all, we’ve been conditioned to believe that if you don’t give us the answers… -
Poopfree what? WTF?
5 Jun 2009 | 10:47 amYesterday, I wrote an email which included words like “cluck” and “chicken” in it. I then sent it off to some friends. When I got a reply back, and I opened it up in Gmail, I noticed the ad that Google served based on the content of my email. Here’s a screenshot of it. Really, it rendered me speechless, and well, I just think a picture is worth a thousand words. WTF? A poop-free chicken waterer? What??? Wait, I don’t even want to know. -
Win A Date With Pedobear? WTF??
24 May 2009 | 8:35 pmI was checking out a link a friend of mine Stumbled on tonight, when I see this ad for what looks like a teen dating site. Like most of the adult version dating sites that you see plastered all over the internet these days, the banner ad featured profile pics of the girls you could supposedly wind up hooking up with. The service advertised is not some small time website thrown up by amateurs with a very low budget… it is owned by Hearst Teen Network, the same guys who own Seventeen.com, CosmoGIRL.com, and a bunch of other teen oriented websites. I am not exactly sure who the hell their… -
Is Plagiarism Ok… If It Was An Accident?
15 May 2009 | 1:19 pmLast year I wrote this handy little script named EasyWP. It makes installing Wordpress much easier for those without Fantastico or shell access, and is many times faster than having to upload all of the files individually. It’s very useful, especially if you install Wordpress on a regular basis, or if you need to do a complete Wordpress reinstall for whatever reason. Lots of people use and enjoy the script. Today I receive this email from someone by the name of Joel Drapper: Hey, I’ve got a little problem. The other day, I had this great idea to make a single PHP file that… -
Google Decides To Slow Down Search Results And Cloak Their New Tracking URLS
16 Apr 2009 | 10:09 amToday over at ReadWriteWeb Sarah Perez wrote an article on how Google was gaining ground on their share of the search market. In the article she talked about the latest buzz from Google Analytics blog having to do with changes to the way Google.com handles clicks in their serps, which were a implemented as result of what Google would break in analytics packages by implementing AJAX driven search results. She notes that even though the speed benefit Google gains from going AJAX would be minimal on a per-search basis, when multiplied by the millions of searches performed every day it would…
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Technofriends
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[iPod] Sony NAS-Z200iR Is A Wi-Fi Enabled iPod Docking Station
2 Jul 2009 | 5:48 amSony has announced the latest Sony NAS-Z200iR iPod Docking station which features Wi-fi connectivity, Integrated FM Radio, a CD Player. It also offers DLNA streaming and a remote control with a 3.5 inch screen. The iPod dock is DLNA certified and the best thing about the system is the Wi-Fi compatibility, which allows you to listen to music not only from your iPod but any device capable of streaming it over the Wifi network. You can even listen to the music streamed over the Internet Radio Stations if you choose. Image: Sony’s NAS-Z200iR (Wifi enabled iPod Docking Station) Sony NAS-Z200iR… -
[How-To] Remove IT Policy From Your BlackBerry
2 Jul 2009 | 5:17 amEach BlackBerry smartphone, on activation, is added to a customisable base IT policy to ensure a minimum level of security. From this starting point, administrators can create user groups and easily modify policies to meet the security needs of the organisation. All policy settings are synchronised and assigned to the BlackBerry smartphone over-the-air. As a result, BlackBerry Enterprise Server administrators who need to facilitate large deployments can easily change IT policies on a corporate level without requiring users to cradle their BlackBerry smartphones. With the BlackBerry Enterprise… -
Youtube Increases Upload Size Limit to 2GB
1 Jul 2009 | 11:57 pmYoutube has increased the standard upload size limit on videos from 1GB to 2GB. This move is pretty interesting given the fact that Youtube is pushing the HD quality videos. . The increase means, now you can upload longer videos at a higher resolution as well as large HD files directly from your camera. Youtube blog also shares two interesting HD hacks. * To share a link to the HD version of your video, simply append &hd=1 to the end of the URL. This means the video will start playing in HD as soon as someone follows the link. Cool, huh? * To embed the HD version of a video on a website… -
iPhone App From Alarm.com Lets You Monitor your Home Security through your iPhone or iPod Touch
1 Jul 2009 | 10:46 amIf you ever wanted to monitor and control your home security system in real-time from anywhere,the iPhone App from Alarm.com is the answer to your wish. The application is a freebie for Alarm.com customers. Alarm.com’s systems are designed for homes and businesses and rely on wireless sensors and GSM/GPRS networks. The application also provides various monitoring tools which let you get real-time updates on doors and windows,watch live and recorded video feeds and also allows you to review “event histories”. Features provided by Alarm.com iPhone Application 1.) Send commands… -
[iPhone] TEL3Dialer App Allows You To Make International Calls At Reduced Rates (Offering 1 Hour Free Trial)
1 Jul 2009 | 4:25 amTEL3Mobile is offering its free iPhone App called TEL3Dialer. The iPhone application allows TEL3 users to enjoy calls at a lower call rate and better quality.The app offers the convenience of placing international calls directly from the address book and saving up to 80% on all international calls. In order to get started with the iPhone app, you need to first sign up with the service, download the free TEL3 iPhone application from App Store. Also Read: [Free Phone Calls] Make Free International Phone Calls With Tuitalk EvaPhone: Make free International calls TEL3 is a offering a free trial…
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ConverStations
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Brunch n Brains: On the Road to Innovation
29 Jun 2009 | 8:29 amBrunch n Brains is the new upscale version of our Lunch n Learn series, a chance to snack on some brilliance while grabbing a coffee or croissant. Today, we take a shortcut on the path of innovation (if there is a such a thing...gotta view the show) and ponder these slides of wise all the way through Lunch:-) Lots of Habitudes in this one: Road To Innovation View more presentations from Denise Caron. More Denise Caron: - Denise on Twitter -
Lafflaw Likes Lunches and Learning Lots and Legal
29 Jun 2009 | 4:32 amThe folks at LaffLaw.com (serious!) have sent me a C&D note on the "Lunch n Learn" series (serious?) because they have a client who has that registered.Their client has a "page" called Lunch 'N Learn, and I guess the series we have here promoting others and their brilliance was drinking some of their Google Juice? Never mind that I don't capitalize the "N" or put an apostrophe in the mix; never mind that almost every Chamber of Commerce has some variation of lunches and learning (Did the "EDS" they refer to invest so much postage? And does the real EDS know that LaffLaw refers to… -
Lunch n Learn in the WWW (Wild, Wild, West)
24 Jun 2009 | 10:10 amNice metaphor and story by Brandon Chestnutt in this How to Think Like a Social Media Cowboy presentation. I'm undecided whether slide # 9 or # 13 is my fave: How to Think Like a Social Media CowboyView more OpenOffice presentations from Brandon Chesnutt. More Brandon:- on Twitter- on FriendFeed- IdentityPR -
Off the Grid for a Bit
23 Jun 2009 | 4:18 amWhat a whirlwind week! The Angela Maiers 21 Century workshop yesterday was a great success (though not without hurdles -- but hey, we have Habitudes!) Lots of grappling, lots of learning. I'm excited for those who attended -- and moreso for their students!I'm going to take some time to catch up, reflect, and re-create. Most of the activity around this site will be filled with Lunch n Learn type of stuff, book reviews I need to catch up on, and daily delicious links I find.Thanks so much for your patience and peseverance:-) -
links for 2009-06-18
18 Jun 2009 | 11:01 pmMy Manifesto: Great Customer Experience Is Free « Customer Experience Matters If Classrooms are Conversation Stations (and they are) and our Students are our customers (and they are), then we would do wise to digest Bruce's Manifesto (tags: customer strategy experience usability education) TeachersFirst Resources by Subject & Grade Classroom Resources split into Elem, MS, HS for each subjects - Alpha List spread over 4 pages (tags: education resource LessonPlans maierswiki)
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Court's Internet Marketing School
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Keyword Academy News: A New Brand, a Logo Contest, Affiliate and Job Opportunities
18 Jun 2009 | 12:08 pmCourt and I have spent the last couple of years together building our brand in the world of making money online. We enjoy it, and we’re not going anywhere (at least we hope to hang around if our audience and subscribers will have us for a few more years!). At the same time, we’ve realized that there’s a whole world out there we’ve ignored - the world of the small business owner looking to find new customers and clients through the search engines. So we’ve decided it’s time to establish a new brand that gives us a chance to reach out to that market. -
Make Money Online With HubPages Experiment Complete
16 Jun 2009 | 11:14 amOver the last month or so, I’ve been conducting a make money online experiment to determine if HubPages is a viable tool that can be used to make money. The official start date of the experiment was May 11, 2009. This experiment didn’t come out of nowhere, in fact the main reason that I wanted to do this with HubPages was because I had created a few hubs here and there and they had done surprisingly well for me. I decided that I would create 100 hubs in 30 days and track the results to see how well those hubs could produce. Before I got started the Marketing Manager (Ryan Hupfer)… -
Make Money Online With HubPages Week 4 Update
8 Jun 2009 | 10:22 amDuring week 4 my focus was on giving my hubs links from related hubs. The reasoning behind this should be pretty obvious. First, it helps the people that read the hubs. You want to provide as much relevant information as possible. Second, you’re going to get an SEO benefit from having links from other hubs. It was nice to already have the hubs done (as I said in week 3 of the make money online experiment, they were completed in the first 3 weeks). Week 4 produced great results and the hubs made $164.11, nearly double what they made in week 3: Google Analytics is on crack this morning,… -
Make Money Online With HubPages Week 3 Update
3 Jun 2009 | 2:19 pmWeek 3 of the make money experiment was interesting. The income this week wasn’t as good as it was in week 2. Here’s the income chart from Google Analytics: As you can see, the hubs during week 3 made $88.88, down from $112.56. That brings the total so far to $257.64. We still have another 10 days in the experiment and it will definitely be interesting to see how the hubs do overall. Why The Hubs Produced Less In Week 3 During week 3 I focused a ton on getting all of the hubs up and did very little to them. I didn’t give any of the hubs links from other hubs. Overall that… -
Make Money Online With HubPages Week 2 Update
27 May 2009 | 10:23 amIt’s time for an update on my most recent make money experiment on HubPages. If you missed the first update you can read it here: Make Money With HubPages Update 1. Week 2 went really well. During the seven days of week 2 my hubs produced $112.56: On the worst day of week 2, my hubs made $8.01 and on the best day they made $23.21. The average day of week 2 produced $16.08. Multiply that out over a 30 day period and you’re looking at $482.40. I still expect that number to grow a lot for month 2 - that’s just how it works. With a little more age these hubs will start to do…
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Blogging News Blog
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WordPress Themes ARE GPL…Kinda.
2 Jul 2009 | 3:42 pmAccording to a post on the WordPress Development blog today, there are finally some concrete GPL related answers regarding some fuzziness in the communities (and WordPress’s) understanding of exactly how themes fit into the GPL framework. Long story short, the php (or at minimum the parts related to hooking into WordPress) of themes ARE requiruddy to be GPL compliant. The tricky bit is, the images and css are NOT. Meaning a theme could be partially GPL and still retain copyright of the artwork/design to some degree. Here’s a snippet for you… The PHP elements, taken together,… -
Ryan Block & Peter Rojas Launch Gdgt
1 Jul 2009 | 7:00 pmGdgt is a new user-edited website focused on gadgets founded by Ryan Block and Peter Rojas. The welcome post can be found here. The website includes gadget profiles and spec, gadgets reviews, news, discussion and user profiles. The news links section pulls in snippets from the latest gadget blogs and news sources. Gdgt brought in Veronica Belmont to explain the website. Take a look: (via TechCrunch) Permalink | Recent Headlines | Plurk | Twitter | WWFeeds.com Original post by Bloggers Blog: Blogging the Blogsphere -
TMZ, Mainstream Media Get Traffic Boost From Michael Jackson’s Death
30 Jun 2009 | 10:40 amAOL’s TMZ.com website was the first source to report Michael Jackson’s death so it not a astonishment that HitWise is reporting the site saw record traffic. TMZ leaped into 60th place when ranked by market share of visits on Thursday. As a result, traffic to TMZ reached a 3 year high, with visits increasing 5x in volume from the previous day. The market share of visits increased 18% above the previous high on February 20, 2009, which took place after TMZ published photos of a bruised Rihanna following the assault by Chris Brown. TMZ was 60th among all websites on Thursday when… -
Review: Winners Circle Membership Site
30 Jun 2009 | 10:32 amStarting a business online may be an exciting idea but are you alert for the challenges ahead? Putting up a website is not the start and end of it because you have to ensure that you sustain your traffic and sales once you begin. Deciding on your own may not be sufficient but with a mentor to guide thcoarse every step of the way, you can be sure to build your confidence going forward. The Winners Circle membership site is one training program you can count on. I strongly recommend this especially to start up entrepreneurs. It’s easy to use and requires only a small quantity from your pocket… -
Retweeting Basics From CNN
29 Jun 2009 | 8:00 pmNaamua Delaney talks about the power of retweeting on Twitter with CNN.com writer Elizabeth Landau. Anyone who has used Twitter for a while is familiar with the RT acronym and the power of retweeting. If a story gets enough retweets it has the potential to ricochet acircular Twitter and send lots of traffic the link mentioned in the original tweet. The CNN video has some basic tips for Retweeting: Begin with the letters RT Give credit to the source of the tweet Shorten the URL when linking It’s beautiful basic stuff but Twitter noobs might be confused at the sight of RT when they first…
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Bloggers Blog: Blogging the Blogsphere
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Ryan Block and Peter Rojas Launch Gdgt
1 Jul 2009 | 7:00 pmGdgt is a new user-edited website focused on gadgets founded by Ryan Block and Peter Rojas. The welcome post can be found here. The website includes gadget profiles and spec, gadgets reviews, news, discussion and user profiles. The news links section pulls in snippets from the latest gadget blogs and news sources. Gdgt brought in Veronica Belmont to explain the website. Take a look: (via TechCrunch) Permalink | Recent Headlines | Plurk | Twitter | WWFeeds.com -
TMZ, Mainstream Media Get Traffic Boost From Michael Jackson's Death
30 Jun 2009 | 10:40 amAOL's TMZ.com website was the first source to report Michael Jackson's death so it not a surprise that HitWise is reporting the site saw record traffic. TMZ leaped into 60th place when ranked by market share of visits on Thursday. As a result, traffic to TMZ reached a 3 year high, with visits increasing 5x in volume from the previous day. The market share of visits increased 18% above the previous high on February 20, 2009, which took place after TMZ published photos of a bruised Rihanna following the assault by Chris Brown. TMZ was 60th among all websites on Thursday when ranked by the… -
Retweeting Basics From CNN
29 Jun 2009 | 8:00 pmNaamua Delaney talks about the power of retweeting on Twitter with CNN.com writer Elizabeth Landau. Anyone who has used Twitter for a while is familiar with the RT acronym and the power of retweeting. If a story gets enough retweets it has the potential to ricochet around Twitter and send lots of traffic the link mentioned in the original tweet. The CNN video has some basic tips for Retweeting: Begin with the letters RT Give credit to the source of the tweet Shorten the URL when linking It's pretty basic stuff but Twitter noobs might be confused at the sight of RT when they first see it. -
Twitter Song: Tweet Tweet Twitter
27 Jun 2009 | 12:00 pm"Tweet Tweet Twitter" is a new song from Irish Pop Group Tinselitis who are made up of Sean McCarthy, Deborah Confrey and Jonathan Jacobson. Here's the music video: You can hear more Twitter songs here and here. Posted in Twitter Permalink | Recent Headlines | Plurk | Twitter | WWFeeds.com -
The House That Tweets
25 Jun 2009 | 2:25 pmIBM employee Andy Stanford-Clark has wired his home automation system so that it sends a tweet when windows or open or lights are turned on. The home also sends a tweet when a mouse is caught in a trap. Andy's twittering house can be found here on Twitter. Take a look: Posted in Twitter Permalink | Recent Headlines | Plurk | Twitter | WWFeeds.com
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Movable Type
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Recording Now Available: The Marketing Benefits of Social Media
26 Jun 2009 | 9:55 amThanks to all of you who attended Wednesday's online seminar for marketers, The Marketing Benefits of Social Media. Our chief evangelist Anil Dash was joined by social media pro extraordinnaire Lauren Kozak, who directs social media for one of the most recognized and highly valued brands in the world: Britney Spears. Anil and Lauren discussed why companies should engage in social media, shared best practices they have learned over years of using social media, and illustrated how to successfully implement a social media plan with some excellent case studies of Comcast, Wells Fargo, Britney… -
Successful Social Media: Join Our Online Seminar
15 Jun 2009 | 6:00 amEverybody's talking about Social Media. But who's succeeding at it, and how are they doing it? We've invited an expert, who happens to use Movable Type, to help answer those questions in an online seminar on Wednesday, June 24, at 11 am Pacific/ 2 pm Eastern. Besides managing social media for Britney Spears, a billion-dollar brand, Lauren Kozak has advised businesses on the most effective use of social media for years. Anil Dash, our Chief Evangelist and social media practitioner extraordinaire, will moderate the event. We'll share many case studies as we talk about how you can use social… -
The San Francisco Appeal Starts Up with Movable Type
12 Jun 2009 | 11:38 amEve Batey, formerly with the Gothamist network news site SFist and most recently with the San Francisco Chronicle*, launched new online newspaper The San Francisco Appeal a few months ago. The SF Appeal provides comprehensive coverage of local news and events, which means if you’re wondering about the latest on anything to do with San Francisco, this is the place to go. Eve recently came by to talk with us about working with the Six Apart Services and Media teams to build the site and drive revenue by placing quality ads on it. Eve also shared how Movable Type will help her grow her… -
Movable Type 4.26 is Now Available: An Optional Performance Release
10 Jun 2009 | 4:15 pmWe want to let you all know that Movable Type 4.26 is now available. This is an optional performance release which includes bug fixes and feature improvements.Movable Type 4.26 is recommended for Movable Type Enterprise 4.x customers because it provides dramatically better search performance for large datasets and improves background publishing performance and reliability (i.e. TheSchwartz). You can review the release notes on movabletype.org for full details on all changes. We recommend only updating to 4.26 if the documented changes will directly impact you. Movable Type… -
Social Media Tips from a True Pro
11 May 2009 | 3:00 pmLauren Kozak, Social Media Director for Britney Spears, recently stopped by our offices and shared her views about how corporations can use social media to grow their brands and engage with customers in meaningful ways. We enjoyed her talk so much that we videotaped some of her advice to share with you. Lauren's advice is the real thing - it not only comes from her current experience creating social media success for one of the biggest brands in the world, but also from her pre-Britney Spears work as a social media advisor to corporations when the medium was still in its infancy. We hope you…
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Weblog Tools Collection
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Official WordPress Commercial Theme Directory is live
1 Jul 2009 | 4:03 pmThe Official WordPress Commercial Theme Directory is now open. It is linked off the WordPress Extend and is part of the parent theme directory set of links. It is not as much a directory as it is a listing of sites that offer commercial GPL themes. It lists the philosophies, a few words about the business models and the need for the encouragement, a list of screenshots and links to the various theme sites and then a list of criterion for inclusion into this site. I like the succinct explanation of the purpose and the listing criterion seem simple and straightforward to follow. Send your… -
WordPress Theme Releases for 07/01
1 Jul 2009 | 10:29 amMagloss Magloss is a magazine style WordPress theme packed with fully customized features. This 3 columns WordPress theme has integrated JonDesign’s SmoothGallery 2.0 for the rotating featured content. This theme also comes with an automatic thumbnail cropping feature for your front page posts. Besides the rotating featured content, this theme also enables you to use the category block feature to display recent posts for each category chosen. All these features are controllable inside the admin panel (Magloss Theme Option). Magloss is also comes ready with Twitter, Feedburner,… -
WordPress Plugin Releases for 06/30
30 Jun 2009 | 11:02 amNew Plugins AVH Themed By Browser The AVH Themed By Browser plugin gives you the ability to set a correlation between browser and theme. The theme of your blog can change dynamically based on the browser the visitor is using. Follow My Links Follow My Links is a very simple plugin that prevents WordPress from automaticaly adding a “rel=nofollow” attribute to links in the post authors URL and comments. YOURLS: WordPress to Twitter This plugin is the bridge between YOURLS, Twitter and your blog: when you publish a post or a page, it will use your own YOURLS install, either hosted on… -
WordPress Configuration Tricks
29 Jun 2009 | 4:13 pmWordPress Configuration Tricks : If you have ever installed WordPress and wanted to know what else you could do with your wp-config.php file, this is the blog post to read. As Ozh points out in the comments, a couple of tricks were left out but nothing that could not be remedied with a simple Google search (e.g. WP_HTTP) as long as you know what you are looking for. Tips from that page that got me thinking (things that make you go hmmmmm?) include moving your wp-content directory, increasing your memory limit, changing the autosave interval, turning on debugging and finally the ability to… -
Benchmarking the WordPress Admin Panel
29 Jun 2009 | 9:48 amDev4Press has done some interesting work on benchmarking various aspects of WordPress and then testing out some popular questions on page loads etc. The methodologies are well documented and the benchmarking setup is standardized. They are testing three version of WordPress including 2.6.5, 2.7.1 and 2.8 (I wish they would have waited for 2.8.1 to be released). This first set of tests were performed on the WordPress admin interface and other benchmarks will follow. While the quantities are not as important, I think the trends are interesting. Though not independently confirmed, the growing…
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Wordful
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The Power of Publish
1 Jul 2009 | 8:06 pmAlas. After all this time, you’ve crafted something great. Starting from those ideas in your head, you’ve self-educated, planned, prepared, procrastinated, anticipated, taken notes and finally started writing, rewriting and editing. And now, there you sit, eager and excited, steward of your final product–your content. Will they love it or hate or think it’s just okay? Will they be back for more? Where will your content take you? The answers to these questions will never be known until you click that little button labeled “Publish.” For some, pushing it… -
Coming Soon: Blogging 3.0
26 Jun 2009 | 5:03 pmIt’s time for Wordful to move up the ranks of blogging. Instead of solely focusing on ways to be more expressive, free-thinking and creative with your blog, I’d like to put more energy into how you can build your blog into a viable media publication. This implications of this shift have huge upside potential, as it follows blogging’s natural evolution towards mainstream publishing. A Brief History of Blogging In the beginning, blogs provided soapbox-like platforms for personal expression (Blogging 1.0). Then, a few smart bloggers started posting useful content and hustling… -
The Easy Way to Simplify Blogging
24 Jun 2009 | 6:50 pmFor those of you who think blogging is too much work, you’re almost right. Growing a successful blog requires about 30 different disciplines, all of which can take a good 10,000 hours to master. So where to begin? The most simple trick to blogging efficiency is to prioritize your work. This means you need to identify and concentrate on what matters most with your blog. And for everyone, the answer should always be the same: Your Content Matters Most Ask any top blogger or social media guru what the most important aspect of content marketing is and they’ll unanimously tell you… -
How to Fight Blog Plagiarism Guerrilla Style
16 Jun 2009 | 2:35 pmTwo weeks ago I woke up to a suspicious pingback in my Wordpress dashboard linking to my one-page business plan post. Sure enough, when I checked it out, there was my post–plagiarized word for word on a scraper site. The first reaction of any hard-working blogger being plagiarized is to get angry, which I did. But then what? If you do a Google search on “blogging plagiarism,” you’ll more or less get these recommendations: Contact the plagiarist and ask them to remove your content. Contact their advertisers and file a “duplicate content” complaint. Report… -
Cut “That” Out
12 Jun 2009 | 6:17 pmTry snuffing the word “that” from your writing. Most of the time, you don’t need it. This sentence: She knew that she loved him and he knew that he loved her, too. can be reduced to: She knew she loved him and he knew he loved her, too. This tiny change will tighten your writing and make it sound smoother, too. From Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style,”page 78: The ear, for example, must decide when to omit “that” from a sentence, when to retain it. “She knew she could do it” is preferable to “She knew that she could do…
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WordPress Development Blog
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Themes are GPL, too
1 Jul 2009 | 10:50 pmIf WordPress were a country, our Bill of Rights would be the GPL because it protects our core freedoms. We’ve always done our best to keep WordPress.org clean and only promote things that are completely compatible and legal with WordPress’s license. There have been some questions in the community about whether the GPL applies to themes like we’ve always assumed. To help clarify this point, I reached out to the Software Freedom Law Center, the world’s preeminent experts on the GPL, which spent time with WordPress’s code, community, and provided us with an official… -
WordPress 2.8.1 Beta 2
26 Jun 2009 | 1:06 pm2.8.1 Beta 2 is ready for testing. Download it, check out the changes since beta 1, and review all tickets fixed in 2.8.1. We especially suggest, recommend, and beg that plugin developers test their plugins against beta 2 and let us know of any issues. Notable fixes in beta 2: Translation of role names fixed wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title Upload error messages are now correctly reported Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed SSH2 filesystem requirements updated… -
WordPress 2.8.1 Beta 1
20 Jun 2009 | 5:05 pmWe’ve started work on the first maintenance release to 2.8. 2.8.1 will fix a handful of bugs that turned up in 2.8. Today we’re releasing the first beta of 2.8.1. Download it, and check out the bugs fixed so far. Here are some of the notable issues that are fixed in beta 1. Certain themes were calling get_categories() in such a way that it would fail in 2.8. 2.8.1 works around this so these themes won’t have to change. Dashboard memory usage is reduced. Some people were running out of memory when loading the dashboard, resulting in an incomplete page. The automatic… -
2.8 Release Jazzes Themes and Widgets
10 Jun 2009 | 7:01 pmI’m very excited to announce to everyone that the latest and greatest version of WordPress, version 2.8 “Baker,” is immediately available for download. 2.8 represents a nice fit and finish release for WordPress with improvements to themes, widgets, taxonomies, and overall speed. We also fixed over 790 bugs. This release is named in honor of noted trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker. Here’s a quick video overview of everything in the new release: The first thing you’ll notice is that visually 2.8 feels a lot like 2.7, just with some minor tweaks here and there. -
WordPress 2.8 Release Candidate 1
7 Jun 2009 | 4:29 pmWith Release Candidate 1, we think WordPress 2.8 is ready and complete. Download it, test it, and tell us what you think. If you don’t uncover any bad bugs, 2.8 will be released on Wednesday the 10th. If you’re interested in what has changed since beta 2, consult the changelog.
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Blogger Buster
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Housekeeping - Updates, Issues and Forthcoming Features
2 Jul 2009 | 5:42 amI realize my posts have been rather scarce lately, mostly because I've been so busy with work and other commitments which have left me so little time to write posts for this blog. So let me explain what's happening with Blogger Buster at the moment, along with a few hints about what you can expect in the forthcoming weeks. Problems with my file hostsMany of you have reported problems downloading templates and other files which are hosted on http://bloggerbuster.com. This is because my hosting service has been completely overpowered by the sheer number of requests for files and has been… -
Blogger Read More/Post Summaries - The Best News Yet!
9 Jun 2009 | 11:38 amOne of the functions most voted for in Blogger's recent Product Ideas forum was the ability to summarize blog posts on non-item pages. I've written about a few different approaches to this, but these methods were never so easy to implement. Luckily I came across this tutorial from Quite Random which offers the simplest - and most useful - method of displaying post summaries automatically for our Blogger posts, complete with a thumbnail from images used in our posts. This customization is very easy to implement (there are literally only two steps) with very little editing of the template… -
Display your current location on your blog with Google Latitude
5 May 2009 | 3:31 amIf you use Google Latitude, you can now display your current location on your blog using a Google Public Location Badge. Google Latitude is a feature of Google Maps which, should you choose to enable this, allows selected friends and family members to see your location. You can also give permission for Latitude continuously update your location in the background. The Public Location Badge is a gadget which you can easily add to your Blogger blog to provide readers with your current location. This feature may be especially useful for travel bloggers or personal bloggers who wish to share their… -
Google Blogger for Dummies - Full Review
30 Apr 2009 | 12:43 pmSome time ago, I was able to preview Susan Gunelius' new book, Google Blogger for Dummies, which is now available to buy from your local bookstore. After receiving my own copy, I've spent the past few weeks reading intently in order to provide you all with my full review of this "Dummies" guide. Blogger for Dummies?The "For Dummies" series of reference books published by Wiley are complete guides on a range of subjects which present information in plain English. "Dummies" books are offered as complete guides on the given subject, where the information presented makes the subject easy to… -
Blogger wants to hear from us!
23 Apr 2009 | 2:00 amThe Blogger Team have released Product Ideas for Blogger: a forum based on the Product Ideas platform which enables us to suggest and vote on new Blogger features, gadgets and even Blogs of Note: One of the primary factors that drive innovation and improvements on Blogger is the voice of our users. We always take your feedback to heart, and we use it do help make Blogger the best service it can possibly be. Take a look at this screenshot to get an idea of how this forum works: We can log in to Product Ideas for Blogger using our Google account, then vote on existing suggestions by clicking…
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Robert Cox's blog
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FTC information: Guides on Endorsements and Testimonials
22 Jun 2009 | 12:26 pmThe AP has a story up today which is getting a great deal of attention in the blogosphere today: FTC plans to monitor blogs for claims, payments I was interviewed for the article and quoted here: "It would always be better for bloggers to self-police," said Robert Cox, president of Media Bloggers Association in New Rochelle, N.Y. "We have laws on the books. They apply to everybody, not just people who write blogs." The FTC provided the following information about their proposed guidelines regarding endorsements and testimonials to the Associated Press who, in turn, provided them to me so that… -
Newsvision 2009 at Newseum DC #nvision
30 Mar 2009 | 9:56 amPanel on "News in Transition," talking about trends in Internet journalism. Left to right, Jeff Birnbaum of The Washington Times, me, Kinsey Wilson of NPR and Ju-Don Roberts of washingtonpost.com, Lou Ferrara of the Associated Press/Sports. Event sponsors are Newspaper Guild, Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, Knight Foundation, Online News Organization, Merrill College of Journalism -UMD. Trend among people here--Jeff Birnbaum hired to run washingtonpost.com, John Harris running Politico, Vivisn Schiller running NPR, Kinsie Wilson running NPR.com--all arguably fish out of water… -
People Never "Paid for News"; They "Paid To Be Informed in the Most Efficient Manner"
7 Mar 2009 | 2:05 pmI was reading Maurreen Skowran's article on E-Media Tidbits, NYT Readers Brainstorm Business Models, Paying for Online News, and it got me thinking again about the "death of journalism" issue and, in particular, the strange idea of "paying for news". Maurreen wrote: Two of the Times essays focused on paying for news. The one by Steven Brill (founder of The American Lawyer magazine, Court TV, and Brill's Content) was headlined "Culture of Free" Is Suicide. With newspaper fortunes sliding as they are, the question of whether and how to ask readers to pay for online news has recently gained… -
Floodgates Open in Federal Courts as Twitter Comes to Kansas Trial
7 Mar 2009 | 8:56 amThe Associated Press reports on a Kansas report getting permission to cover a federal criminal trial using Twitter from his cell phone: In a victory for news technology in federal courts, a judge is allowing a reporter to use the microblogging service Twitter to provide constant updates from a racketeering gang trial this week. It's not the first time online streaming has been allowed in courtrooms, but the practice is still rare in the federal system, especially in criminal cases. We first began discussing blogger credentialing for federal trials in 2005. It took two years before we were… -
Words of Wisdom from Seth Godin on Leadership
27 Feb 2009 | 7:17 amCopyblogger has a good interview with Seth Godin who operates out of my old hometown of Irvington, NY. The interview is getting heavily re-tweeted right now. Asked to share some universal principles on leadership from his new book "Tribes", Seth offers these pearls: People want to belong, they want to be missed when they don’t show up. Charisma doesn’t make you a leader, leading gives you charisma. Most of all, people care about themselves. Faith is belief in the future and it is critical. Religion is a set of rules designed to amplify faith at the same time it guarantees the status quo.
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Group Writing Projects
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Favorite Flower Group Writing Project
14 Jun 2009 | 1:00 amTabetha Gedeon’s last group writing project is about your favorite flora. Theme Favorite flowers In Tabetha’s words: “I want you to let me know what type of flower is your favorite and have you post a picture of it on your blog.” Rules Blog a new post about your favorite flower, with a picture of it. Link back to the announcement post. To submit your entry, leave a comment on the announcement post with your post’s title and permalink. Submission Deadline June 27th 2009 --Jacob Share, Professional Blogging Consultant and THE Group Writing Projects Expert Related… -
The Servolution Group Writing Project
10 Jun 2009 | 1:00 amDan of BibleDude has created a group book review project. Theme Dino Rizzo’s Servolution book Rules Contact Dan (Bible Dude) at danbelieves [at] gmail [dot] com to express your interest in the project. If you don’t have a copy of the book, he will send you one. Blog about a chapter of the book in a guest post on BibleDude.net and on your own blog (preferably with a link back to the gwp announcement post). Submission Deadline Dan would like to have the first chapter reviewed for June 20th, 2009 Results June 20-27, 2009 --Jacob Share, Professional Blogging Consultant and THE Group… -
Sailor Light Bulb Joke Group Writing Project
8 Jun 2009 | 7:00 amWant to try your hand at a lightbulb joke? Theme Sailor light bulb jokes In Carol Anne’s words: “create a light bulb joke with the format “How many ____ sailors does it take to change a light bulb? ____, (because) ____.”” Rules Either… Blog your light bulb joke and link back to the announcement post, or… Post it as a comment on the announcement post. Submission Deadline There is no submission deadline, this gwp is open-ended. Results “Periodically” i.e. whenever Carol Anne decides to show them --Jacob Share, Professional Blogging Consultant and THE Group… -
What I Learned From a Mountaintop Experience Group Writing Project
3 Jun 2009 | 6:00 amMiddle Zone Musings’ latest WILF group writing project is about stories that changed you forever. Theme Life-changing experiences In Robert’s words: “Have you ever had what is commonly known as a mountaintop experience? You know what I mean, right? I’m talkin’ about an experience so amazing, so profound - maybe even so life-changing - you’ll never forget it. Well, chances are, you have, and if so, we’d like to hear about it!” The Usual WILF Rules The post has to be new. Link to the announcement post on Middle Zone Musings. Be nice! Warning: to be eligible for the final… -
What Does It Mean To Be A Caribbean-American Group Writing Project
27 May 2009 | 1:00 amAuthor Geoffrey Philp’s first group writing project tries to address the same question as his recent book. Theme What does it mean to be a Caribbean-American? In Geoffrey’s words: “What does it mean to be a Caribbean-American? This is a question that has haunted me ever since I left Jamaica over thirty years ago.” Rules Blog a new post (maximum 1000 words) on the theme One entry per person, from anywhere in the world You must be over 18 to enter The post must contain a link back to the announcement post To submit your entry, leave a comment on the announcement post…
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About.com Web Logs
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NC, RI, HI - No Longer Allowed in Amazon Associates Affiliate Advertising Program
1 Jul 2009 | 2:21 pmIf you're a blogger in North Carolina, Rhode Island, or Hawaii, then you can cross the Amazon Associates affiliate advertising program off of your list of possible ways to earn... -
Review of 'Google Blogger for Dummies'
30 Jun 2009 | 2:09 pmJennifer Kyrnin, the About.com Guide to Web Design, published a review of my book, Google Blogger for Dummies. I'm happy to share that she gave it 5 stars! ... -
51 Blogging Jobs Added to About.com Web Logs Forum
27 Jun 2009 | 11:38 pm51 blogging jobs have been added to the About.com Web Logs forum in the Blogging Jobs folder. Despite the continuing economic troubles around the world, people continue to see... -
Don't Forget Your Manners When You Blog
24 Jun 2009 | 1:15 pmPerez Hilton is a popular celebrity gossip blogger for several reasons -- he speaks his mind, his abrasive commentary can be amusing, and he's entertaining. However, many people, particularly... -
10 Questions about Starting a Business Blog Answered
23 Jun 2009 | 2:45 pmEarlier this week, I received an email from an About.com Web Logs reader with a number of common questions about starting a business blog. I thought her questions were...
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Blog For Profit
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There Are No Rules, But… –– Day 29 of Twitter Tips and Hints
2 Jul 2009 | 6:00 amIt is true and even with all the suggestions you hear on how to use twitter, there are no set in stone rules. What you do need to do however is establish some goals or perhaps what you want to accomplish with twitter. When you first start looking at using twitter as a marketing tool, you need to sit down and take this list of “goals” and see what answers you come up with. There are no rules, but you should set some goals What is it you really want to get out of or accomplish by using twitter? Do you want to use it for networking, marketing and/or business development. Or do you… -
Do Not Auto-Follow New Followers on Twitter –– Day 28 of Twitter Tips and Hints
1 Jul 2009 | 6:52 amI know this is not something most of those who have been on twitter for a while would do. Right? However, I have seen twitter newbies do this and it is really not the way to manage your followers on twitter. There is really no good reason to use the auto-follow feature on twitter or on some of the twitter applications. Especially on your personal or main business account. If you check your new followers at all, you are going to see there is a large number of spammers and crap on twitter. And you don’t want any of that in your main twitter stream. When I get a new follower on twitter, I… -
Twitter for Dummies: Buy the Book –– Day 27 of Twitter Tips and Hints
30 Jun 2009 | 6:00 amI am going to keep this one very short. If you want to get some great information from someone who knows what they are talking about. Go right now to this link and buy Twitter For Dummies. And yes that is my affiliate link to Amazon and I will make a huge profit of something like a dollar if you buy it there. If you don’t want to buy that book, be watching for what I plan to do with this series very soon. You just might be surprised as I plan to do something a very select group of people have been after me to do. Yes, there will be a workbook or ebook of some kind coming soon. Exclusive… -
Saying Blogging is Dead is Such Complete BS
29 Jun 2009 | 1:05 pmI am always lost for a reason some of those who are considered the “big boys” need to make the statement every few months that blogging is dead. Or that they are leaving blogging behind for greener pastures. Quite frankly, I think it is complete bullshit. (Sorry, that was the only word I could come up with that actually captured my true feelings). The latest to join the cry that blogging is dead or they are shutting their blogs down is Steve Rubel. I am not sure why we should care. Rubel makes the statement that he is evolving from blogging to “Lifestreaming.” Again,… -
Using Hashtags with Twitter –– Day 26 of Twitter Tips and Hints
29 Jun 2009 | 8:03 amFor those of you who have been on twitter for a while, you most likely have noticed and know what a hashtag is. For those of you new to twitter, you may be saying, good god not another twitter term I need to know about. Actually, hashtags can be a great tool and serve many useful purposes. Not the least of which is the fact hashtags are wonderful if you are following a particular conversation on twitter. We will discuss more on that later in this post. Hashtags serve a number of functions They get a topic noticed by those on twitter Help get you noticed on twitter too if you are the one who…
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Blogsessive
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Three Formulas for Sparking Conversation
30 Jun 2009 | 7:10 amBlogsessive recommends WP WebHost for quality WordPress blog hosting!A year ago, I wrote about creating reader-engaging posts. In that article, I discussed the benefits of creating posts that got your readers involved. Now I want to point out some techniques and formulas content that will keep your readers talking, on and off your blog. For your content to truly be great, you don’t want people just reading it. You want people discussing it. However, many bloggers struggle to create “conversation-worthy” content. What is the magical formula to sparking discussion? As it turns… -
Double Your Readership with a Fantastic Introduction
29 Jun 2009 | 8:19 amHave you read "How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer" yet?Your introductions are not that great. Sorry to be rude, but you could be getting ten times the readers if you only wrote better opening paragraphs. If you’re wondering how this is possible, consider the opening to this post. How did I grab your attention? Your blog could have the most informative content on the internet with a design that blows others out of the water and still not get a lot of readers. The reason for this is that your introductions just aren’t sucking readers into your content. You need to get them… -
Effective Blog Post Sculpting with HTML Headings
24 Jun 2009 | 6:00 amDo you need quality design resources? Graphic River has them. Tons! And cheap...When it comes to reader engagement, crafting an attention-grabbing headline is not the only thing you should consider. You might even write a great introductory paragraph that will make your readers click the little “read more” link on your blog, but the hard part is drawing their eyes down the page, and keeping them hooked until the final message. Great content is essential, but it only goes so far. What your readers are looking for is a summary of the main points, in an easy-to-find-and-follow… -
RockinSEO.com – A Free Keyword Tracking SEO Tool
23 Jun 2009 | 10:44 amBlogsessive recommends WP WebHost for quality WordPress blog hosting!A while ago I wrote about a cool project that allows users to check how their blogs and websites stack against their competitors, Review My Web. Today, I’d like to present you with another free (and so useful) tool, from the same developer: RockinSEO.com. Free Keyword Tracker Yes, that’s what you get with RockinSEO. You get to track your website’s results in Google, Yahoo and the recently released Bing for up to 20 keywords, for free. More than that, for the same keywords you can compare your results with… -
My Take on the WordPress Themes & the GPL License
22 Jun 2009 | 11:05 amBlogsessive recommends WP WebHost for quality WordPress blog hosting!There’s a huge hype these days around WordPress and the (infamous?) GPL license. Out of the “big guys”, first Brian Gardner of StudioPress (ex-Revolution) decided to distribute his themes as GPL. Later, iThemes followed, and now it’s time for WooThemes to adopt the license. The discussion around this always seems to evolve into “open source” versus “author protection”. As Alex King pointed out in one of his posts, theme authors should be aware of what the GPL license exposes…
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Webmaster-Source
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WordPress WP-Config Tricks
2 Jul 2009 | 4:26 amDigging Into WordPress recently put up an interesting article, WordPress Configuration Tricks, that covers a bunch of useful features hidden in that little-accessed part of WordPress: The wp-config.php file. [What] many users don’t know is that the wp-config.php file may be used to specify a wide variety of configurational settings, enabling you to improve the functionality, performance, and security of your WordPress-powered site. Did you know you can set several configuration options, usually stored in the database, as constants in the wp-config file? It saves a bit of time and processing… -
TweetBoard
1 Jul 2009 | 4:17 amTweetBoard is an interesting new service that sprang up a few days ago. It’s sort of a way of bringing Twitter conversation onto your website. Tweetboard is a fun and engaging micro-forum type application for your website. It pulls your Twitter stream in near real-time (max 1 min delay), reformatting tweets into threaded conversations with unlimited nesting. Conversations that spun off the original conversation are also threaded in-line, giving your site visitors full perspective of what’s being discussed. As people leave their messages on your TweetBoard, they simultaniously add… -
Nielsen Wants Your Passwords to Be Visible to the World
30 Jun 2009 | 4:30 amUsability authority Jakob Nielsen recently published a new article suggesting that developers “abandon legacy design” and stop masking password fields with bullets or asterisks, because of “reduced usability to protect against a non-issue.” Most websites (and many other applications) mask passwords as users type them, and thereby theoretically prevent miscreants from looking over users’ shoulders. Of course, a truly skilled criminal can simply look at the keyboard and note which keys are being pressed. So, password masking doesn’t even protect fully against… -
Blogsessive on WordPress Themes and the GPL
29 Jun 2009 | 4:50 amI recently read an interesting post over at Blogsessive on the big controversy over the GPL and WordPress. It covers the other perspective, that of the smaller theme developers trying to earn a living, from a somewhat neutral standpoint of someone who on one hand likes the GPL, but on the other hand doesn’t want to put stifle the creativity of the authors who can’t necessarily devote time to something that will have little return. The discussion around this always seems to evolve into “open source” versus “author protection”. As Alex King pointed out in one of his posts,… -
What the Twitter API Needs…
28 Jun 2009 | 4:11 amDo you know what the Twitter API is missing? A way to sync the last status you read. I use a Twitter client on my laptop (Tweetie), and I use another (Twitterific) on my iPod Touch. And sometimes I might use either Twitter.com or Twhirl when I’m on another computer. Every time I move between devices, I lose my place in the stream of incoming tweets. Any good Twitter client remembers the last tweet you read. The only problem is that little bit of information (simply the numerical ID of a tweet) is locked down to one device. I propose that Twitter add a new API method that accepts the ID…
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Blogging Without A Blog
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Finding Pleasure In Ordinary Things
30 Jun 2009 | 10:48 pmWhen I landed on this blog a few weeks ago, I assumed it was an older blog as the archives has posts dating back to 2006. But when the author commented the other day and said she was celebrating her third month of blogging. I was confused, so I made time to dig through her archives. It wasn’t until I read the post, Meet My New Baby Bloggling that I understood. You see, she had been writing and posting privately, but hadn’t let the world see her work until the end of March (2009). One of the first things that drew me into this blog was something I found in her header. There is a… -
How To Capitalize On Your Blog Statistics
28 Jun 2009 | 11:28 pmGoogle Analytics vs AwStats vs Webalizer statistics. Many bloggers and/or webmasters may ask, “Why is there a difference between these numbers?” Add Woopra, WordPress Stats, Sitemeter or another statistical program to the mix, and it gets even more confusing. Truth be told, anytime we begin to compare the results from more than one statistical program, there will always be a difference as each program uses different matrix for measuring the results. Although many bloggers measure their success by how many visitors arrive on their site, more important is why, how and what we can do… -
Blog Posting - Rap It Up
25 Jun 2009 | 11:15 pmGood Day Class! What a wonderful surprise I have for you today. Our substitute teacher (guest writer) is none other than the famous singer, song writer, Ms. Jannie Funster. You all know her as the bra flinging blogger from Jannie Funster.com who will write about anything she sees, and maybe even turn it into a song. For her lesson, Jannie provided me with a photo of herself as she studies more about blogging. Isn’t she cute? Please take your seats and have a listen as this won’t be an ordinary lesson. Hello Ms. Funster. Welcome to the Blogging Without A Blog classroom. Hello… -
It Started With A Tweet
23 Jun 2009 | 11:39 pmI never know how or where I’ll find the next blog to showcase on Wednesdays. Sometimes it’s someone who commented here, a link left in the Blog Registry, a recommendation from another blogger, or someone who has been blogging for awhile and I feel they need more recognition. The blog I’m showcasing today started from a tweet - on Twitter. The tweet said, Chk out my new post “My Top Five Favorite Pranks to Play on People I Love.” http://bit.ly/67zj4 Curiousity got the best of me so I clicked on the link. As I read this author’s favorite pranks, I laughed out… -
Do “They” Have The Right To Know
21 Jun 2009 | 11:01 pmIn case you haven’t been following the news, here’s a story that has been raising a lot of controversy. The name of the article is, “Town Requires Job Seekers To Reveal Social Media Passwords”, by Aba Journal. In part, it says the City of Bozeman, Montana is requiring the following information from it’s applicants: “Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.” The…
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HowToMakeMyBlog.com
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Blogging is dead, long live blogging – Free WordPress Ebook
1 Jul 2009 | 4:02 pmBlogging is dead they say. Move to Twitter, move to FriendFeed… Some bloggers are just lazy I think… I say long live blogging! Download the “WordPress Blogging” ebook now for free (or read on). It’s easy to just write 140 character updates all day long. It’s easy to copy / paste a piece of text you have read somewhere and write your two line comment on it. If you’re too lazy or you find it too hard to write consistent blog articles that your targetted audience finds useful, maybe blogging is not for you. But that doesn’t mean that blogging is… -
How to minimize your blog costs to improve your blogging revenue
28 Jun 2009 | 4:02 pmEarning money from your blog is good. But the other thing to be aware of is to try and minimize your costs. I recently made a change which will save me hundreds of dollars in blog hosting fees. Don’t be shortsighted when investing in your blog I recommend that bloggers focus on niche blogs. One topic per blog and one blog at a time. And I was doing this personally as well. HowToMakeMyBlog then Twitter book and so on. As the number of my blog projects started to increase, my need for new domains and hosting accounts increased as well. I just used to buy the cheapest “economy”… -
Google changes PageRank flow: Why you should use an iframe in blog comments
21 Jun 2009 | 4:02 pmI have just integrated Disqus comments service on my blog. Main reason is Google’s PageRank flow NoFollow change that Matt Cutts recently announced: So what happens when you have a page with “ten PageRank points” and ten outgoing links, and five of those links are nofollowed? Originally, the five links without nofollow would have flowed two points of PageRank each (Nofollowed links didn’t count toward the denominator when dividing PageRank by the outdegree of the page). Google has now changed how the PageRank flows so that the five links without nofollow would flow one point of… -
Ebook cover design tutorial – Behind the scenes look at my Twitter book cover
18 Jun 2009 | 4:02 pmI am very impressed by the work of Daniel C. Townson of Afterman Media. He created my blog header image and also the book cover for my Twitter Marketing ebook. I do not know much about design, but many bloggers have asked me about it, so I have Daniel to help explain his thoughts and the process behind the design of a cover for an e-book. Enjoy! Twitter Marketing: Book Cover Design Tutorial By Daniel C. Townson of Afterman Media So, here’s a brief explanation of the concept and process behind the design of the Twitter Marketing: How to go Viral on Twitter eBook cover. It was a pretty quick… -
How to create a sales letter landing page with WordPress Thesis Theme
15 Jun 2009 | 4:02 pmIf you want to sell your own product, you need a sales letter landing page to send potential buyers to either from your own blog, via affiliates or via PPC search engine marketing. Landing page template can help you improve conversions and drive sales. When I released my Twitter marketing e-book last month I created a landing page for affiliates to use. In this article I will explain how I did it. If you follow these steps, the end result will look something like my Twitter marketing page. Strip your Thesis to the bare bones To create this landing page I am using a self-hosted WordPress blog…
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David Risley dot com
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Thoughts on Blogging For A Living [Video]
2 Jul 2009 | 12:55 pmThe other day, I asked whether you would blog for a living if you could. I got some great responses from you guys! In this video, you’ll take a car trip to the post office with me. I’m heading down to check my PO Box to see if I have any checks waiting for me. While I drive, I share some of my thoughts on blogging for a living and why I personally love this line of work… NOTE: If you want to view the video much bigger, just click the full screen button on the player. When I asked you guys about this, I got some great responses… Jimi Jones said: Going full-time with… -
Secret To Maximum Blog Income And Conversion [Tactic Video]
1 Jul 2009 | 11:56 amConfession: Blogs suck at converting visitors into money. Say what?! In this video, I explain what I mean and what you can do to get maximum benefit from the visitors who come to your blog. NOTE: If you want to view the video much bigger, just click the full screen button on the player. This video shares with you the simple concept of click funneling. The idea is simple: Blogs usually contain a lot of “clutter” and potential distraction and attention grabbers. So… You can get and keep a reader’s attention and maximize conversion into a subscriber or a sale by getting… -
If You Could Go Full-Time With Your Blog, Would You?
30 Jun 2009 | 9:50 amI asked this question on Twitter yesterday and here are some of the answers I got… @miklb said: Absolutely, because I dig not wearing long pants and shoes. @CardCycle said: Hi David! Not sure because I just started. What do you enjoy about it? @ShannonAlbert said: Yes. Freedom to live anywhere while doing something creative and helpful to others. @CrystalsQuest said: Absolutely I’d love to make a living with my blog. It’s my passion, and it connects me with great and like thinking people worldwide. So, I extend this question to my blog readers. If you could go full-time with your blog,… -
NEW: Six Figure Blogger Blueprint
29 Jun 2009 | 5:13 amAs we lead up to the launch of Blog Masters Club, I wanted to remind my audience to download and read the Six Figure Blogger Blueprint. This report is my flagship report, as far as I’m concerned. I really poured a lot into it. In it, I talk about things like… …The REAL way to generate six-figure level income from a blog …The 3 vital questions to help you pick a profitable market for your blog …4 tactics for increasing your blogging production even though it seems like you “don’t have time” …The exact layout of your six figure, traffic sucking… -
Are Marketers Ruining Twitter?
26 Jun 2009 | 5:30 amThere has absolutely been a rapid increase in spam on Twitter lately. It was a problem beforehand. But, then some celebrities brought more attention to Twitter and, all of a sudden, the rest of the world is catching onto Twitter. And where the people are, marketers follow. Is it a bad thing? What should be done about it? Good Versus Bad Marketers I know there are going to be people who have a knee-jerk reaction to this question by lumping all marketers together. But, that is a mistake. The smart, savvy marketers realize that Twitter is a SOCIAL site and they use it accordingly. Savvy…
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Twingly Blog
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BBC is the latest addition to cover the real time web with Twingly
30 Jun 2009 | 5:54 amThe British broadcaster BBC is the latest addition of media companies that track real time social media with the help of Twingly. Together with Yahoo and Nielsen, Twingly provides BBC with data for a prototype of their new service, Shownar that launched today at www.shownar.com. By helping more than 100 customers with their relation to social media, Twingly has become one of the greatest players in offering real time information in Europe. This is once again proven through the co-operation with BBC and Shownar. Shownar monitors activity around BBC programmes on the web, and works out which… -
Participants of Reboot11 catching air
28 Jun 2009 | 7:26 amHere is a compilation of jumping people shot at Reboot11 conference June 25-26, 2009. Notice how happy people get just by jumping! And you get happy just by watching people being happy. Share forward with tag #reboot11. Music is “Once You Used To” by Gentle Touch, big thanks to Martin Thörnqvist at Songs I wish I had written for allowing us to use it. Check out http://www.songsiwish.com for lots of cool music and vids! “Whatever you want, just make it happen” was the spirit of Reboot 11 that got me to shoot the video. Go to http://reboot.dk for more info on the… -
Announcement: Twingly to launch Project Shinobi on October 1st, 2009
10 Jun 2009 | 4:00 pmWe are very excited to announce today that on October 1st, 2009 Twingly is going to launch what will become the next great platform for social media. The Realtime Web has claimed the throne as successor of Web 2.0 and the world is blogging and Tweeting and Facebooking to their hearts’ content. Interesting content deserving your attention might be only seconds or minutes old, and yesterday’s news is since long gone. In social media, newly published content travels to you propelled by it’s own interestingness and quality. People around you find different ways to say… -
iMente.com starts using Twingly Data
2 Jun 2009 | 5:38 amOur latest data customer is iMente.com, a Spanish online media monitoring company, that now uses Twingly data to monitoring the blogosphere. As a subscriber of their monitoring tool you can search for keywords or your own brand name in either news, blogs, press releases or so-called official bulletins. A big number of filter possibilities and further functionalities is available. Anyone interested can apply for a 15-day-trial on their website and test it to the heart’s content. A nice new and useful toy not only for analysts, marketeers or PR-bureaus it seems. This is what the result… -
Trade Union Centre joins the Twinglysphere
2 Jun 2009 | 2:15 amWe are happy to welcome The Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees (TCO) as the first trade union centre to apply Twingly in their communication. They will at each article in their newspaper online, TCO-tidningen, link back to bloggers that link to them. They are the second biggest trade union confederation in Sweden with 1.2 million employees in their affiliated trade unions. With Twingly they pioneer as a trade union in becoming transparent in their online communication. Click here to find a sample of how it looks like at TCO-tidningen (under the article).
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Blog Design Studio
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TweetBoard – what’s the point of invites if it doesn’t work
30 Jun 2009 | 11:05 amTwitter has been growing fast and one of the key reasons is the applications that have been build for and around it. Recently, twitter users were seen requesting for an invite from TweetBoard, a new service that enables a small public forum where website visitors can come and have discussions. Interestingly, the service got great initial buzz and it looks to me that it’ll be able to make bloggers or webmasters to install this little wonder on their web pages. The widget sits in sidebar and once you click on the tweet count, a small ajaxy window slides and one can start the conversations… -
Free Blogging Calendar – Use it to get in schedule
29 Jun 2009 | 11:05 amWhile trying to get in a schedule and to ensure that I’ll consistent in my blogging, I went through lots of GTD articles and found this yet another brilliant piece from my blogging guru, Darren Rowse. In this post, Darren has created a hypothetical calendar to help bloggers (like me) to get in schedule. I was pretty impressed with the calendar that I literally copied everything from it and have put it in my Apple iCal and I thought that it’d be a great idea to share it with every one of you! The good thing is that the file is in iCal format thus you can easily import it in Google… -
Learn tips to increase your publishing business from Google!
26 Jun 2009 | 1:18 amGoogle adsense team has started this wonderful five-weeks educational series where they’ll tell the bloggers and webworkers to speed up their business in the time of recession. They’ll tell us that how we can make use of Google tools to increase the revenue. The posts will be updated every thursday, so keep an eye on this page or subscribe to their RSS feed. Download Free Ebook - Tips and Tricks to Make Money Online © mayank for Blog Design Studio, 2009. | Permalink -
Must install Firefox plugin for all bloggers – SEO Blogger!
25 Jun 2009 | 11:37 amWhat’s common between Firefox & WordPress? They both are open-source, they both are best in their respective markets and they both help you make your blog better! WordTracker has recently released a firefox add-on, SEO Blogger that helps you improve the SEO of your blog posts by giving an overview of the keyword research. This tool sits in the sidebar of Firefox and while you are writing content in your blog editor, it will assist you to find the right keywords for that blog post and will also tell you that how many times you have used those keywords in your blog post. This ensure… -
RIP my-hacks.php in WordPress 2.8
25 Jun 2009 | 7:06 amIn the earlier versions of WordPress, the only way to change it’s behavior was to change the core files of WordPress. That was never considered as safe and was never simple for those programers who didn’t have much experience with PHP/MySql. However, with newer versions, WordPress started supporting both plugins & themes and with that the need to play around with the core files diminished. Till version 2.7.x, WordPress allowed the programers to make changes in the core behavior, in indirect way by allowing them to add functions in my-hacks.php file. This way it kept the core…
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Mike's Life - Life Can Get Better!
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How to get your blog readers to subscribe
2 Jul 2009 | 7:30 amIn yesterday’s post Why do I need an email subscription list, we talked about how people’s levels of engagement increases when they subscribe first to your RSS feed, and then to the holy grail, your email subscriber list. Today we’re going to talk about how we encourage people to subscribe to your blog. Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net Content What you actually write on your blog is the single most important thing that results in people subscribing to it. If you can’t write compelling stuff and write it well, you may as well forget it now, or move into a niche where you can. Posting… -
Why do I need an Email Subscription List?
1 Jul 2009 | 7:34 amWe need to consider the levels of engagement of our readers to answer the question. Occasional Readers These are people who stop by from time to time – when they think to do so, or if they see a Tweet about our blogs. They aren’t really engaged and they certainly aren’t part of our community. RSS Readers There is a level of engagement here – they have had to consciously decide to subscribe to our blogs, and they have had to physically press a button to do so! Email Subscribers These people have let us into their inboxes – this is the highest level of engagement we can achieve as… -
Give Away the Secret of Social Media!
26 Jun 2009 | 1:11 pmI need your help, fellow social media enthusiasts! I’ve spent the last few weeks working with some well known companies and pitching them to create and maintain a social media presence on their behalf, using corporate blogs, Twitter and forums. The thing that has amazed me is that the senior management of most companies have not got a clue about how social media can benefit them. These folks are focused on how effective their web 1.0 site is, and really don’t know what social media can do for them. Let me give you an example, a power tool manufacturer. Now this manufacturer has a simply… -
Eight Tips for getting more Comments
25 Jun 2009 | 1:27 amI was reading Chris Hinton’s post on Geek Speak the other day about Feedburner now including Friendfeed followers as subscribers. He asked whether subscribers, visits or page views were the best metric to measure the health of a blog, and he also suggested that one good measure might be comments. That got me thinking, and I’ve put together a short list below of ways to increase the number of comments to each post. Maybe the community of Mike’s Life readers can help to add to this list…..in comments! Ask for them! It may seem obvious, but a direct approach often works well. Ask… -
Road Test - Lexus GS45oh
22 Jun 2009 | 8:59 amThe Lexus GS450h has just re written the rules in the luxury / performance sector. In my four day test of the car, I was staggered by the performance time and time again. The headline figures are a 0-60 MPH time of under six seconds and an (electronically limited) top speed of 155MPH. But what those numbers cannot demonstrate is the wave of torque this car rides and which enables it to accelerate from cruising speed to overtake a line of traffic in the blink of an eye. 50MPH to 100MPH is so effortless, there is a feeling that you are being pulled along by a huge elastic band which…
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Better Blog Tips and the New Media by Blog Bloke
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10 Reasons Why Twitter Is So Popular
2 Jul 2009 | 1:00 amI was pondering today why the social networking site Twitter is so incredibly popular. So I thought I would Google it and read what others are saying about Twitter. Surprisingly I couldn’t find anything out there so I started to write down my own reasons and it wasn’t long before I came up with the following reasons for Twitter’s popularity. Everyone seems to love lists so here are my 10 reasons why I think Twitter is so popular. While you’re reading please remember my tongue-in-cheek sense of humor and don’t take everything I say too literally (*_*). -
Twitter Celebrity Overkill
30 Jun 2009 | 2:32 pmLog in and follow my tweets. Are you following your favorite celebrities on Twitter? Watch this funny video for more Twitter madness, and while you’re at it don’t forget to follow the Bloke Copyright by Blog Bloke - Blog Tips to Help You Be a Better Blogger. All rights reserved. Related Blog Tips @ Blog Bloke: No related posts. -
Should I or Shouldn’t I Turn Blog Comments Off? That is the Question
27 Jun 2009 | 8:59 pmI’ve often said that a blog without comments isn’t really a blog at all. Some of my readers refer to me as their blogging guru, but to me blogging is about the conversation and interacting with my readers - not just a sermon from the mount. Lately I’ve been reconsidering that notion. Comments are down again and frankly I’m tired of beating myself up over it. I’ve been through this cycle before, and whenever there’s a lull like this I find myself feeling despondent and not wanting to blog at all. Of course my blogging has been sporadic this year and I… -
The New Social Depositories - What’s the Big Deal?
26 Jun 2009 | 1:32 am“Ok, so I admit it. I’m stuck in a quandary and please indulge me with your words of wisdom. I’m still trying to figure out what’s all the fascination with Social Networks. Yes it’s true. I really am struggling with this new media thingy and I need your help. I mean REALLY” … I wrote that two years ago and never got any further with it. The funny thing is a lot hasn’t changed and after mulling it over I’ve come to reach an epiphany: First off: Let me be clear and state emphatically that you don’t need to be on all of the Social Networks. I repeat… -
15 Secret Tips for Building A Better Blog
9 Jun 2009 | 12:01 amToday I’m going to give you 15 tips that will show how you can build a better blog than your competition. I will give you the insider’s secrets for growing your blog exponentially and how to become an authority in your blog niche. In no time at all you will be able to boast thousands of newsfeed subscribers and Twitter followers and kick sand in your competitor’s face. Sound too good to be true? Well trust me it’s not, and it’s so easy you will kick yourself for not trying sooner. I have a confession to make. The idea for this post came from my…
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tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog
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Collaborative podcasting
29 Jun 2009 | 11:03 amSeveral years back, I had what seemed to me a good idea for a fun hack: fill my iPod. Here's how it works: you find an MP3 file, you tag it at del.icio.us with the tag "ricksipod". I used the feed from del.icio.us for that tag as the source feed for a new feed in FeedBurner, and applied FeedBurner's "SmartCast" service to turn that feed into a podcast feed (by linking to the mp3 files as enclosures).Since I just bought an iPhone, I'm using iTunes more often now (my iPod sat, unused, in my briefcase for quite some time). Subscribe to the resulting feed in iTunes, and voila! Now any MP3 file… -
My commencement speech
26 Jun 2009 | 10:16 amLast month I was the commencement speaker at the University of Richmond School of Law's commencement ceremony. I graduated in the class of '96, and was honored to be invited back to address this year's graduating class. The transcript of the speech is here, and the video of the speech is now available on YouTube:Thanks again to the graduates for the invitation - it was an honor to share the day with the very accomplished graduating class. -
Social media presentation at SMPS event
18 Jun 2009 | 11:50 amJust finished presenting at the Society for Marketing Professional Services San Francisco event, where I shared the stage with Maura Ginty from Autodesk and Heather Durham of The Durham Group. We were there to talk about social media, and we covered a number of interesting avenues. The audience was marketers for architecture and engineering firms, and was a great opportunity to talk to a group for whom much of social media - blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. - is new territory. These firms - much like the law firms I used to work with when I was at iManage and Interface Software - have to… -
Who and where are you?
2 Jun 2009 | 2:58 pmHere's a cool hack: earlier today I created a two column Google Spreadsheet, and built a form front-end. One column is for location, the other column is the caption for that location. Using the Google Maps gadget for Google Spreadsheets, I was able to create a real-time map of the data in the spreadsheet. The gadget contains a "publish gadget" option, which provides the javascript to display the embedded map. Finally, I grabbed the HTML from the embedded form and added it to an HTML/Javascript gadget on Blogger right below the map itself. The result is a real-time, updated map showing the… -
Blogger templates - favorite sources?
1 Jun 2009 | 4:36 pmA while back on Twitter, I invited @Blogger followers to share their favorite third party template designers, and promised a summary post on Blogger Buzz with pointers for our users. Responses were great - but unfortunately, they're lost (for the time being, at least) while Twitter works on repairing its archival search. So I'm going to try again: and this time, I promise a more timely response. If you have a favorite source of Blogger templates, please share it in the comments. I'll summarize by tomorrow on Blogger Buzz (if I get enough comments), Wednesday at the latest. Looking forward to…
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Newsome.Org
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Evening Reading: 6/13/09
13 Jun 2009 | 8:37 pmiPhonery: There's a lot of buzz surrounding the upcoming release of the iPhone 3G S. It looks like ATT has sold all of its pre-order inventory. A guy at the local Apple store told me today that they have sold a ton of pre-orders, and that next Friday will be a crazy day. Apple has an excellent compilation of "how-tos" for the world's greatest phone. That link is a mandatory bookmark for all iPhone users. Postage is a neat-looking iPhone app that lets you create and email postcards, but then you have to print them to put them on the fridge. Photogene looks… -
Crosby, Stills & Nash 1969 Video Footage
9 Jun 2009 | 6:35 pmI enjoy listening to great musicians talk about their craft. Here's some interesting footage of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Good stuff. -
Is Pandora One the One?
7 Jun 2009 | 6:31 pmI've been a fairly consistent user of Pandora since I first read about it on December 30, 2005 (ain't it great the way your blog becomes your personal archive of thoughts, both good and bad?). I have several Pandora stations, a couple of which are over three years old. In that time, I have finely tuned my likes and dislikes and, generally speaking, the Pandora algorithm knows what I like. And given that my music preferences are broad in some ways and narrow in others, that's no mean feat. The thing that allowed Pandora to map my musical genome is the thing that distinguishes… -
Free Pre: Baby x Baby in the Gillmor Nursery
6 Jun 2009 | 6:32 pmI used to love the Gillmor Gang, but I don't listen to it much anymore, because I have come full circle and once again think that too many of the core participants are intentionally non-inclusive. I'm not talking about on the podcast; I'm talking about on the internet. Too many of those guys treat the social networks as a stage where they can engage in dramatic dialog with one another, while the great audience watches in admiration. And I have said over and over that Mike Arrington needs a lesson in personal brand maintenance. Petulant jerk is not the image I'd go for. And I… -
How TweetDeck Could Take Over the World
6 Jun 2009 | 12:56 pmAnd maybe kill Google, Microsoft and Wolfram Alpha in the process. OK, that was a joke, but since all tech blogs use absurd, over the top headlines in a juvenile effort to attract readers, I thought I'd give it a try. Back to TweetDeck. . . I've dabbled with TweetDeck for some time, using it periodically but always finding my way back to my home-grown Content Master. The Twitter part of Content Master, of course, is the excellent TwitterGadget, which does a lot of really neat things that other Twitter apps have surprisingly not implemented. TweetDeck comes about as close as…
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Disqus
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Featured Friday: Dan of Dan-Patterson.com
26 Jun 2009 | 3:14 pmWhat do you do for a living? I am a content manager and correspondent for ABC News. I cover politics and technology - though I cover much less now that it is a non-campaign year. And, I’m learning a lot from the seasoned journalists that I work with - I’m low on the totem pole here, and covered much more in my previous job. I’m sure this will change come 2012 Presidential cycle. When you were a kid what did you always dream of becoming? I probably didn’t have the insight to really know what I wanted. As an adolescent - like EVERY adolescent - I played in punk bands and… -
Comments Driving Clicks in Search
24 Jun 2009 | 12:53 pmLijit allows you to easily create your own search engine. One that searches your blog, bookmarks, photos, blogroll, comments, and much more. A few months ago we talked about Lijit and their integration of Disqus comments within their search results. Since then, we’ve learned that Lijit search results which include comments alongside the posts are seeing roughly 3-5% greater click-through rates than those without comments. This reaffirms what we’ve been hearing for a while — that comments can serve as an effective means of signaling engagement and quality for a given blog… -
Featured Friday: Eric of Rezzing.com
19 Jun 2009 | 10:33 amEric Rice is a Silicon Valley-based new media producer and writer. What do you do for a living? My time is actually split between business consulting and freelance design. It can run the whole range of disciplines, really. I started in print design about 20 years ago, evolved to multimedia and web. It’s bounced from landscape and interior design to game design, to multimedia and print. How I ended up in such a wide field, I have no idea. Do you love what you do? Totally, and it gives me the ability to do whatever I want to do or need to do. I can travel the world, yet I home school one… -
Subscribe by email? Yes Please!
15 Jun 2009 | 5:34 pmWe’ve updated the email notifications feature on Disqus to be more powerful and reach more of your visitors. Why is this awesome? Previously, only commenters with a Disqus Profile could receive email notifications when new comments were posted in the thread. Now, everyone can receive replies for the entire conversation, even Guest commenters. There’s a couple of ways to subscribe by email. Let’s say someone was reading your post but was not compelled to comment just yet. However, they may still want to keep up with the conversation. They can click “Subscribe by… -
Featured Friday: Annie of banannie.com
12 Jun 2009 | 12:06 pmAnnie is a mom, and a Wordpress theme designer. What do you do for a living? I’m a web developer and WordPress customizer/troubleshooter. What got you into that business? It began as a hobby, something I could do for fun when my kids were little. Friends began to ask me to help them with their sites, and it grew from there. I do it on a part-time basis. It sure beats other part-time jobs out there! How did you find Disqus? I heard about it awhile back, just in the general Twitter chatter. What feature do you use most? I’ve been lax with the blogging thing lately I’m afraid,…
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Ruhani Rabin - Tech, Life and Interestingness
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Elegant Useful and Free PHP Graph/Chart Libraries
2 Jul 2009 | 10:35 amFor various kind of reports/applications graph and charts can play a very important role. Here are some of the free and open source chart libraries that you can use into your own PHP web projects. Use these to enhance the user experience and build a rich client presentation. OpenFlash Chart 2 Home | Download | Demos Charts with PHP and Google Charts API Usage and Download XML/SWF Charts Information | Gallery | Download | Tutorial Max’s Chart CSS and PHP Driven Information | Download pChart PHP Class with Cache Information | Screen shots | Download | Addons |… -
Foller.me know more about your twitter followers
1 Jun 2009 | 9:17 amTwitter is huge and everyday it’s becoming more popular in the crowd. Everyday from a geek to a carpenter uses twitter in many different ways to enhance knowledge, relationship and reaching a mass audience which eventually brings passive business. Today I am introducing another twitter tool called Foller.me.Foller.me is a creative and research initiative by one of my great twitter contact @kovshenin. Today is the live date of this product. So lets take a look at his startup. So basically what does Foller.me do? In simple words it lets you know more detailed useful information about your… -
Best Adobe AIR Twitter Desktop Clients
11 May 2009 | 8:00 amTwitter is become the most popular micro-blogging platform now a days and yes many of us preferred different kind of twitter clients. Some prefers desktop based twitter applications specific to Windows, Linux or MAC and some of us prefers web based twitter applications. Those are mostly platform specific twitter desktop clients, so they depends on target operating systems. Then came Adobe AIR platform, provides a common ground for most popular operating systems to build rich desktop clients, they act similar on multiple operating systems with common interface. Now there are a variety of Adobe… -
How-to Remove Mikeyy Worm from Twitter Profile
13 Apr 2009 | 2:31 amMikeyy is variant of an internet worm spreading through the Twitter stream disguise itself under a short url, which looks legitimate but it’s not. It hijacks the twitter user account who clicked on the disguised link. What it does? It takes over your twitter account and spread messages using your username Changes links and profile information It spreads messages like “Twitter, freaking fix this already. >:[ - Mikeyy" and "This worm is getting out of hand Twitter. - Mikeyy" How to remove it? First of all close down your desktop applications like Twhirl and any other. Turn… -
10 Useful free CSS tools and services
3 Apr 2009 | 11:20 amCSS allows a website owner to build their HTML in a nice, logical order. Mostly when using tables to layout a website, the HTML that powers the website is not laid out in a proper order (also known as the ‘code flow’). Now here are some tools and web services I’ve use in a day to day basis to shorten and speed up the development time that might come handy for you. These tools aid you to write better and tested codes in less time. #1 Sky CSS Tool Sky CSS Tool allows you to create CSS classes almost without using manuscript code but you will need a JavaScript…
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Spot Cool Stuff: Websites
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8 Weird and Wacky Items Sold on Amazon.com
7 Jun 2009 | 12:10 pmAlmost everyone knows Amazon.com for its bargain deals on books and electronics. Amazon is also a good source for discount groceries. We like their DRM-free MP3 store (even more than iTunes). And we love their Amazon Kindle. But Amazon also has a surprisingly large selection items that defy categorization, from the odd to the downright wacky. Here’s our look at some of the weirdest items for sale on Amazon and the solution they provide to some of life’s most common problems: Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank Common life problem: When cruising the Utah salt flats in a convertible you… -
The 3 Best Environmentally Friendly Web Hosts
25 May 2009 | 9:09 pmIt probably isn’t feasible for you to drive an all-electric vehicle, grow your own organic food or power your house entirely off of solar panels. That’s okay. It can make a big difference to the planet when of people take small steps towards reducing their carbon footprint. Like using a more environmentally-friendly website host. Website hosting is a surprisingly electricity-intensive (and thus surprisingly polluting) enterprise. A single website server can produce as much as 12.5 tones of CO2 each year. It is estimated that by 2020 the website hosting companies will be as… -
The Best Online Dating Site For You
12 May 2009 | 3:09 pmIf you are reading this post we presume you are single and contemplating an entry into the world of online dating. Our unbridled advice is: Go for it! Think of it this way: If you were looking for a job you’d conduct your search online. When looking for a gift or for tomorrow’s weather forecast or for a used car you search online. So why not when looking for a boyfriend or girlfriend? So, got for it! And start by choosing the online dating site that will work best for you. The internet hosts dozens of dating sites but only a handful of them are worth joining. Spot Cool Stuff has… -
Cool Websites To Use WHILE Traveling
3 May 2009 | 4:31 pmThere are thousands of websites where you can research trip ideas (Spot Cool Stuff’s own travel blog not least among them) and hundreds of websites where you make your trip reservations—from general booking engines like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz to niche sites like Cruise Direct, Mr & Mrs Smith and HostelBookers, to a site like Tripology that will hook you up with a travel specialist for free. But what after your accommodations are booked, after your travel guidebook is bought, after your general itinerary is set and after you’ve left for your trip? What are some… -
The Convenient Way To Sell Your Old Electronics
1 May 2009 | 7:30 pmIf you are like us you buy a lot of gadgets. Which means that you, like us, have a lot of old gadgets you no longer use filling drawers and cluttering closets. Sure you’ll sell the higher value ones on eBay—or think about selling them on eBay, maybe, possibly, someday—but often it doesn’t seem worth the hassle. And what about that long outdated laptop or camera that won’t even turn on anymore? Throwing out your old electronics isn’t a good option, not for your wallet and not for the planet. (Do you know how long it takes a toxic battery to decompose in a landfill?)…
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TwistedSifter
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Bugatti Veyron Versus McLaren F1 Drag Race [Top Gear]
2 Jul 2009 | 8:27 amIn this corner: The Bugatti Veryron Cost: Approximately $1.4 million USD (300 produced) - Horsepower: 1,001 HP - Top Speed: 407 km/h | 253 mph in approximately 50 seconds - Acceleration: 100 km/h | 62 mph in approximately 2.46 seconds In this corner: The McLaren F1 Cost: Approximately $2-4 million USD (106 produced) - Horsepower: 627 HP - Top Speed: 386.4 [...] -
Hump Day Headlines - July 1, 2009
1 Jul 2009 | 4:11 amEvery Wednesday you will find links and top-line summaries of current events around the globe. Zelaya vows return to Honduras despite arrest threat [Reuters] - Ousted President Manuel Zelaya vowed on Tuesday to return to Honduras flanked by foreign leaders to serve the rest of his term, defying a warning from a hostile interim leadership that he [...] -
The Most One-Dimensional Players In Sports
30 Jun 2009 | 2:55 amJason Kapono rookie cards - The most inaccurate portrayals ever Jason Kapono - Philadelphia 76ers - Shooter Monikers: Kapono Dragon, J-Killa, Al Kapono One of the NBA’s greatest 3 point shooters is not so great at anything else. He can’t play defense, dribbles like a yeti, and passes like a man who can only shoot three’s. Regardless, he’s [...] -
Political Art - Clowns, Demons, and More!
28 Jun 2009 | 10:18 amI just came across Hebiclens/WMxDesign’s Flickr page and it’s pretty entertaining. Every picture in the Flickr album includes links to articles supporting why politician X is a clown, demon, etc. Political agenda aside, the Photoshop skills are above-average and the outcome will put a smile on your face. Why? Because everybody loves a clown… Senator Evan [...] -
The Friday Shirk Report - June 26, 2009 | Volume 11
26 Jun 2009 | 5:08 amWelcome to the Friday Shirk Report where you will find 25 images, 10 articles and 5 videos from the previous week of sifting. Enjoy! 25 IMAGES - The map for planning your next trip - The app for planning your next trip - Stern but fair - Embarrassing? Yes. Still gangster? Yes. - You call that a scar? - John’s got [...]
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The 42nd Estate
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dm Design on Pokin’ Holes Episode 7
26 Jun 2009 | 11:29 amYesterday, the DART Boston group recorded its weekly podcast, Pokin’ Holes, where they have three expert panelists discuss a business and provide that business feedback and tips to improve their strategy. This week, the guest company was dm Design, a web marketing and design firm based out of Plainville, MA. In essence, dm Design is a group of freelancers with skills in web marketing, web design and development, print design, and 3D modeling. The three panelists for episode 7 of Pokin’ Holes were: Paul Northup, [@PaulNorthup] Sandy Kalik, [@skalik] and me [@AdamPieniazek]! -
Friendfeed-Feedburner Integration: Not a Big Deal?
22 Jun 2009 | 8:51 pmThis past Thursday, I logged into my FeedBurner account for a quick subscriber count of our various sites. Usually the counts go up a little, but this morning nearly all our sites went up by about 250 subscribers. It’s great to see such a jump in subscriber count (especially network-wide) but also unusual, especially since there wasn’t any huge traffic jump or buzz to go along with it. Subscriber Increase Investigation My first instinct was that Google fixed something on their end that showed more accurate numbers than before. Not satisfied with going off instinct, I set off to… -
Five Cool New Features in Wordpress 2.8
15 Jun 2009 | 9:20 amA few days ago, the fine Wordpress folks released the latest version of their blogging/content management system, Wordpress 2.8. In addition to bug fixes and speed tweaks, Wordpress 2.8 includes five new helpful features. Password Change Reminder After setting up a new blog, Wordpress will post a message at the top of the admin panel reminding you to change your password from the auto-generated one to something you’ll remember better. It’s not a huge change, but a nice little addition to make the initial installation process just slightly more intuitive. Photo URL in Media Section… -
Networking for a Cause Boston Wrap
12 Jun 2009 | 9:15 amLast night we attended the Networking for a Cause Boston event (OK, I was the only The 42nd Estate member in attendance), which proved to be a big hit. Met a bunch of smart, passionate people. Won a free book! And got connected with a very cool non-profit via our social media consulting giveaway. Then, to top it all off a bunch of the Dart Boston people came by and integrated their post podcast wrap party with our networking event. Check out their show from last night featuring Swagger Paris. Sport in Society As you all know, The 42nd Estate contributed four hours of social media consulting… -
Swagger Paris hits Boston on the Dart
11 Jun 2009 | 1:10 amA few months back we added the Swagger team as one of our hosting clients. Right now the team is composed of Sian-Pierre Regis and Monique Meertens. Their Swagger brand extends to Swagger Paris and Swagger Reloaded, two sites where they promote the latest fashion trends seen on the streets of Paris and New York City. Sian has spent the past several months in Paris, France getting the Swagger Paris brand up and rolling. He’s back in Boston for the week and this past Tuesday we met up to catch up and exchange ideas before rolling out to the TweetNetworking Boston event. Networking works…
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FresheVenture.com
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VIDEO: How To Organize Your Affiliate Links
2 Jul 2009 | 11:02 amIn this video, I show you how to quickly organize your affiliate links with your favorite spread sheet software! If you’re overwhelmed with links, affiliate websites, commission percentages, etc, this is the perfect video for you. Save yourself time and energy by organizing and managing your affiliate links! -
Free Coaching Opportunity from Two of the Biggest Names in Blogging!
1 Jul 2009 | 6:45 pmAsk the Blogging Experts Directly on July 2, 2009 Not sure how to get started blogging? Have a blog, but need help on driving more traffic to it? Here’s your chance to get help from the big dogs! Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick of Become a Blogger are hosting a FREE LIVE CALL tomorrow, July 2, 2009 at 7PM EDT. Live calls are normally only offered to paying students. This is a rare opportunity for you to get free coaching from two of the biggest names in blogging! Only 150 participants can squeeze into the teleconference, so make sure you stick a note on your monitor with [...] -
New OIOpublisher Coupon for July 2009!
1 Jul 2009 | 12:15 pmFor the last two months, OIOpublisher has been kind enough to provide a discount to all of my FresheVenture.com readers. This month, OIOpublisher continues the kindness with a new $8.00 Off Coupon! That means you can grab your own ad server today for only $39! This new coupon expires at the end of July 2009, so be sure to take advantage! Coupon Code: RAINMAN-FEVJULY (Note: FEV = FresheVenture!) Visit OIOpublisher to grab your new Ad Manager! Just in case you aren’t aware of OIOpublisher and why this coupon is SO AWESOME, read my full review here: The Best Ad Manager for Wordpress –… -
The Internet Brings Mom and Dad Back Home
1 Jul 2009 | 10:21 amPlease help me welcome my guest blogger this week, Richard Matthews. Want to be a FresheVenture.com guest blogger? Apply here. Last night, as I laid down to sleep and drifted off to that place between wake-fullness and dreams, I found myself walking down a beach where I felt the cool sand squishing between my unclad toes. The cool night air caressed my face and the sound of the waves gently crashed on the shore as an un-spoken mystery in my ear. A few more steps in the cool sand and a sparkle caught my eye. I looked down and saw that the moon had cast its iridescent glow on a beautiful… -
30% Off Internet Marketing Sweetie Courses!
1 Jul 2009 | 7:24 amI’m really late on posting this, so thank goodness Alice emailed me a reminder today. Alice Seba of Internet Marketing Sweetie is offering each of you a chance to grab one of her self-study or coaching courses for 30% off. The discount expires TODAY! Discount Code: 2ndhalf Visit her Internet Marketing Sweetie blog and click on Self-Study or Coaching in the navigation to browse through her collection of fantastic courses! Once you find a course you like (which won’t be hard), enter your discount code during checkout and the coupon will automatically apply to your order! Alice is one of the…
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Micheal Savoie Welcomes You
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Is Tomorrow Saturday, Daddy?
2 Jul 2009 | 8:10 amOver the past couple of weeks I have been following the story of Sam Crowley, a former executive from a Fortune 100 company whose life changed when… After arriving home from work late one night (again), his 3 year-old daughter asked him: “Daddy, is tomorrow Saturday? https://friday.infusionsoft.com/go/special/signup That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Right then Sam decided to take Massive Action and change his life FOREVER. He went on to quit his job and pursue his passion of helping others live the life of their dreams. He now works for himself, and every day… -
Harris Gives You Reasons NOT To Get ESF?
1 Jul 2009 | 1:02 pmWhat is up with this? Someone is telling you why you should NOT buy Easy Sales Formula? I don’t believe it, but this is an excerpt from an email I received today from Harris Fellman: That’s right, I’m going to tell you why you should *NOT* buy Easy Sales Formula even though 13 people have already ordered through my affiliate link to get my kick-ass bonus. The bottom line is, Easy Sales Formula is actually *not* for everyone. What ESF teaches you is how to easily create a sales video that you place onto a web page INSTEAD of a big long written sales letter. So, if… -
Easy Sales Formula Explodes Into Record Sales!
30 Jun 2009 | 2:52 pmThe man of the hour is Keith Wellman, with a launch that plastered his name into the record books with a launch that had 30,000 people scraping their penny jars and cracking open their piggy banks to find the $1,997 that Keith was telling us his product was going to cost. The launch began in a big way with Keith giving up a lot of free content, including one of his brainstorms of taking a clickbank product, creating a sales video for it and linking directly to the order button to make sales directly from your video! Sheer brilliance. Then he hosted an 8 hour Q & A live streaming broadcast… -
The Insanity Continues…
29 Jun 2009 | 7:37 pmI am looking forward to taking some time off later this summer. I am mentally exhausted, because of some projects I have taken on, and it just seems like whatever direction I am going is adding even more to my plate. I know for sure that I will be taking a break, because I am not going to schedule anymore new projects until each of these has come to a reasonable conclusion. Keith Wellman just announced that he has an announcement scheduled for tomorrow when he sends out the early bird notification about Easy Sales Formula. I have a sneaky suspicion that he is planning on offering a payment… -
Alex Jeffreys VS Keith Wellman
29 Jun 2009 | 4:09 amTomorrow at 12pm EST Keith Wellman will launch the Easy Sales Formula… Over 20,000 people have opted in to get on the VIP list and hundreds of thousands have watched the video’s… http://easysellingsuccess.com/video-skin My Bonus For Easy Sales Formula First I wanted to offer a bonus that would be difficult to get on your own. That is why I am offering Private Label Rights to my Easy Selling Success Video Workshop that reveals all of the portions of a sales letter (or video) in easy to watch videos. This is something that can be placed on DVD and sold as a home study course…
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iWebU
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Web Secret #58: User Name Check
2 Jul 2009 | 5:10 amWhen I present my workshops on social media marketing, I always urge attendees to secure their Twitter username ASAP, even if they are not sure whether they will ultimately tweet. Twitter usernames must be 15 characters or less, and many desirable names are still available. You can sit on your acquired name for 6 months, without posting a single tweet. (After that your unused name gets sucked back into the Twitter username pool and released to the general public after an additional 6 month's time in no man's land.)But what if you are launching a comprehensive social media marketing campaign? -
Web Secret #57: TinyChat
25 Jun 2009 | 6:06 amToday I was stuck for blogging inspiration so I start clicking the Stumble button on my toolbar. Three clicks later, I stumbled upon a not untypical blogpost: 26 New And Awesome Web Apps You Probably Don’t Know About. Usually my response to this type of blogpost is "if I don't know about them, I don't need them."Well there's a first time for everything, and the first app listed was TinyChat - and I fell in love - immediately. TinyChat allows you to create your own chatroom and invite people through one simple link. You can upload documents into your personal chatroom and share them with… -
Web Secret #56: Hushmail
11 Jun 2009 | 5:40 amRecently, DeeAnna Nagel mentioned Hushmail.com during Ethical Implications Online: Working and Socializing in Cyberspace, a free webinar previewing an all day presentation on the same subject, to be held October 20th at the 2009 World EAP Conference.I perked up because DeeAnna is one of the world's experts on issues related to delivering online counseling. Anyway, she was talking about the importance of encrypted e-mail to maintain confidentiality, and until that moment, I thought you only needed encrypted mail if you worked for the CIA, or your name was Obama, or you lived inside "The… -
Web Secret #55: Alltop
4 Jun 2009 | 7:25 amThere are a number of milestones every social media fanatic aspires to: Having a 1,000 followers on Twitter Getting sent free stuff to blog about Making enough money on AdSense to actually get a check Getting paid to present your social media expertiseand...drum roll please... Getting your blog on Alltop® Alltop collects and displays all the top stories on the web, aggregated on subject-category pages, and it’s fast growing into a digital magazine rack that includes all topics. Aggregation without the aggravation, for people who don’t read blogs in an RSS feed reader, but want to browse… -
Web Secret #54: Kableflags
28 May 2009 | 6:42 amI don't know what your desk is like, but mine looks like NASA mission control. I have two cordless phones, a VOIP phone console, a laptop, two USB hubs, a wireless router, a wireless signal booster, a 22 inch LCD screen, a printer, a fax machine, chargers for a broad range of electronic devices - but wait - there's more.I won't bore you further. The point is that identical black power cords and various black wire tentacles spread all over the place. My neat freak spouse is appalled by the mess. I don't care about the mess. What I care about is when something goes wrong with my little high…
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Blog traffic tips - Blogging tips
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Blog traffic from Youtube
18 Jun 2009 | 2:39 amHow to get blog traffic from youtube? Uploading video to youtube is easy but what can we do to generate traffic to our blog from the video?Here are important ideas and steps which helps to bring traffic from youtube video.First I will list three basic steps and then will discuss each step in detail.1) Create your own video2) Register with youtube and Upload your video with correct title.3) Incorporate and mention your blog url at appropriate places on youtube.1) Now we will look at first step as what kind of video can be prepared?You need something related to your blog subject. Website owners… -
Blogging tips for beginners - Part 2
14 Jun 2009 | 7:50 amThese blogging tips are update on my last post on Blogging tips for beginners. These are mainly using some blogger.com features which are actually useful but rarely used by bloggers.Blogging tip #26 - SchedulingPlease write regularly for your post because search engine likes blogs which are updated regularly.Many times due to lack of time or other reason we do not get time to write for the blog so when ever you have some thoughts or ideas to write something straight a way write into new post and do not publish but save as draft. Later on add and edit into it as you get time.Also there is one… -
Blogging tips - 25 tips to build better blog for beginners
28 May 2009 | 7:01 amDuring my surfing of the net and participation in discussions I came across many blogs and bloggers.After looking at their blogs and blogging help they have asked for I decided to write this post about blogging tips so that by using these blogging tips they can do better blogging and make their blog better.You may already have a blog or want to start a new blog so I will list my tips starting from choosing the blog name (domain name)Please read following 25 blogging tips to build better blog .Following are Blogging tips useful before starting a new blog or writing new post.These are important… -
Add adsense ad, link unit or page element below header
21 May 2009 | 2:31 amMany blogs have good blogger template and they want to add the google adsense link unit or google adsense ad below header or title. How to do it?For this purpose either they can change the whole template or do the simple html code editing mentioned here. This widget / trick actually gives additional 'Add gadget' (add page element) option above the header.Go to your Dashboard > layout > edit HTML > then search for<div id='header-wrapper'> <b:section class='header' id='header' maxwidgets='1' showaddelement='no'><b:widget id='Header1' locked='true' title='your blog title (Header)'… -
Show total posts - total comments script widget
17 May 2009 | 8:02 amOn right hand side column of this blog traffic tips blog you can see total number of posts and total number of comments.How to show total number posts and/or total number of comments on your blogger blog ?Here is script to show total number of posts and comments . You have to add this java scriptby going to Dashboard > Layout > Add a gadget > HTML /Java scriptThen copy following java script .Please change blog url from www.blogtraffictips.net to yourname.blogspot.com in the following script.<script…
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DollarShower.com
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Feeder blogs to the rescue…
1 Jul 2009 | 7:12 amBlogging is more about researching and less about writing! I talked about this 80-20 principle in a recent post titled ‘advantages of blogging‘. However, from time to time most bloggers will face the writer’s block or inability to continue writing at the same pace and frequency as they used to do in the past. There are a number of ways to deal with the writer’s block problem and one of them is to follow profound bloggers and their hugely popular blogs in order to draw inspiration to blog about. I would like to call such blogs feeder blogs and let us talk about them in this… -
10 ways to increase your Twitter followers
28 Jun 2009 | 7:31 amIn the past one year or so, Twitter has grown from a mere micro blogging option to a must-have social networking route. It is not just for bloggers, affiliate marketers and online service providers anymore but Twitter forms an extremely handy channel for selling your offline products as well. The success on twitter is directly proportional to the number of quality followers you have. However, quite unlike other subscription mechanisms (such as RSS, aWeber) it is not at all difficult to build a very good follower base on twitter. In this post let me try to talk about a few practical tips to… -
Are you a BlogTrotter?
24 Jun 2009 | 10:37 amThis is a little survey post. I had part of this post in my drafts for quite a while and at the time of saving this draft I even proudly believed that I coined the term ‘blogtrotter‘ - arrived at flipping ‘globetrotter‘ a little - myself. However, a dig on Google today, I got to know the following meanings for the term blogtrotter. 1. A mildly insulting epithet for an Irishman 2. A person that loves cake and is capable of eating it in large quantities 3. A person who lives in or frequents bogs Now what I had in mind originally was the third one of those definitions… -
Bloggers are Selfish people!
20 Jun 2009 | 12:46 amFor the past three-four days I have been stuck at home with flu (Nothing new - it recurs every two or three months) and wasn’t really active on visiting and commenting on other blogs. The impact of this short break from the blogosphere was immediate - there was a huge reduction of traffic and comments on this blog. And I was really thinking whether we bloggers are becoming more and more selfish these days. I think, the selfishness is more in the MMO niche because helping each other is not a popular formula here. After all ‘money’ and ‘selfishness’ complement each other very well. -
Deep Linking - The most important aspect of Link Building & SEO
17 Jun 2009 | 9:14 amKnowingly or unknowingly, bloggers, unlike regular website owners, usually do a lot more link building and SEO activities. Many of them are via commenting on other blogs, link exchanges with friends, creating public profiles/SocNet accounts, being active on forums etc. However, many of us blindly concentrate on the link building activities directed to our home page alone than focusing on deep linking. In this post, I would like to concentrate on the deep linking topic inspired by a bunch of tweet exchanges I had with with Luis of Some Extra Pennies - a regular reader of this blog. What is…
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Technotip.ORG
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Feedburner – Tips to add latest post’s title as Subject of email
2 Jul 2009 | 7:48 amMost awaited feature of feedburner is now live(without any official word!). How it feels to see 10 to 20 emails with the same subject line/title and from the same person? Even if the content of the mail is different we get irritated to open it and read. Many times, when we are busy and want to clean/process the inbox, we just delete such mails. Feedburner used to send a static subject line with all the email updates. But now they have added a feature, using which we can customize the email Subject line and make it more meaningful. Use ${latestItemTitle} to insert your latest post’s… -
Technotip.org included in Alltop®
1 Jul 2009 | 11:12 pmHappy to share a moment of happiness with all the readers, who actually made it happen. With the completion of 1 year, our blog has been included in the Alltop® . Have a look at the end of this page blogging.alltop.com. Its a honor to get included in such reputed sites. We will surly work to provide value to all its users. For those of you who do not know about Alltop, watch below video for clear explanation: Here is a quote from their about me page: The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you. You may wonder… -
How To Show A WordPress Post As Featured Article
30 Jun 2009 | 1:07 pmThis is a guest article by Amit Banerjee Do you want to highlight something on your blog homepage as “Featured Article” ? It may be some of your best content that is popular and you wish to highlight it. In some case you can show your blog contests or Your email Newsletter Service just above your latest articles(above the Fold). A featured Section is basically an area where you want your readers to focus and “Call to Action”. Technotip.org uses a “Featured Article” section on the Homepage that showcases some of the best content published recently. If you… -
Technotip.org completed 1 year – Happy Birth Day “SweetHeart”
18 Jun 2009 | 12:03 amI am excited. We couldn’t recognize how the time passed. A year back, I had started this blog to share whatever I have learnt about internet. Now with this blog and all you readers and commentators, I have learnt a lot. This motivates me to keep blogging, keep sharing. I had the plan of starting a blog, and bought the hosting on June 1st[that's the actual date our blog was live], but on 18th June, it officially got a new, professional design and I took the blog seriously, as a main place for me to stay online. I am busy with my exams now a days, so we will not be having a blast party… -
Interview with Vanae
16 Jun 2009 | 11:54 amToday we have Vanae from Vanae.com on our blog for the interview.. The purpose of Vanae.com is to empower yourself and nurture your soul, in order to succeed in your dating life! A splash of hip. A splash of personalness.Much more.. If you are having problem with your love life, confidence level or any other personal problems or if you want to expand the joy in your life, then Vanae.com is for you. I personally know Vanae from many days. She is a nice person, she gives the feeling of a good, close friend while you are talking to her. And more importantly, she know well about what she talk on…
