Entries Tagged 'Net News' ↓
September 1st, 2010 — Net News
In my neck of the woods, a new school year is starting and parents are collectively rejoicing as kids head back for another year of learning. The timing seems right for a blogging back to school post!
With that in mind, following is a refresher on the fundamentals for successful blogging:
1. Publish useful content.
This fundamental rule of successful blogging applies not only to the content in your blog posts but also to the content in your blog comments and across the social web. Make sure it’s useful or no one will read it, share it or talk about it.
2. Avoid things that make you look like a spammer.
Go light on the links, disclose paid posts and ads, and don’t crowd people’s in boxes. In other words, be honest and play nice.
3. Give credit where credit is due.
Cite your sources. If you quote content from another website or blog, link back to that site or blog as the original source. If you use an image with a creative commons license that requires attribution, make sure you link back to the owner of that image.
4. Follow the laws.
Claiming ignorance won’t get you off the hook if you’re caught breaking the law. Make sure you don’t plagiarize, and only use images, audio and video that have the proper copyrights and usage permissions attached to them that allow you to legally do so. If you publish paid posts or reviews on your blog, make sure you follow the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 16 Title 255.
5. Remember your words live online for a long time.
Don’t publish content on your blog or elsewhere online that you might regret later. What you publish today can be found in Google searches for many, many years. Even your Twitter updates are archived by the Library of Congress!
Remember those rules you learned in grade school about being nice to others, being respectful, listening, taking turns, and so on? They apply to us as adults, and even to bloggers and online publishers, just as much now as they did when we were children. Follow those golden rules you learned in kindergarten, and you should be just fine.
Are you still following the blogging basics or is it time to go back to school?
August 31st, 2010 — Net News
This is a guest post by Kim De, a freelance writer and author of Zen Kitchen, a blog focused on recipes and food issues.
Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For animals to remain strong and healthy under adverse situations. For humans to maintain their well-being. For agriculture to satisfy human needs for generations.
It is a word that has been batted around for awhile and has been prevalent in the media recently as farmers who are using sustainable practices are finally getting the spotlight.
But what if we were to stretch the definition to encompass other areas of our lives? Sustainable relationships. Sustainable employment. Sustainable blogging.
Lets see how easy it is to adopt the techniques used by farmers to bloggers.
Sustainable farmers raise food in a way that is healthy for the consumer and animal.
• They employ practices that will attract like-minded customers.
• They take care not to harm the environment to keep the land usable for years
• They show respect toward their workers, animals and land.
• They keep their land rich and viable which assures that crops and livestock will thrive for years to come.
But how does this relate to blogging?
• Don’t you want to attract new consumers (readers) and keep them coming back for more?
• Don’t you want an environment (blog) rich with ideas and conversation? Evergreen topics that are viable for years to come?
• Don’t you want to show respect for your land (blog and readers)
• Don’t you want to write articles (crops) that will enrich the land (blog)?
Well maybe the analogy is a bit much, but you get the idea.
So the question now is, “How can I use these ideas to create a blog that will be productive for years to come?”
1. Have one or two focus topics and stick with them. This will help you develop a base of interested readers.
2. Know from the start if this is for fun, or for revenue
3. Networking, network, network.
• Participate in other blogs
• Have a Facebook page and post regularly
• “Tweet” your topics
• Make RSS feed available
4. Encourage commenting, then reply to all comments. This shows an enthusiasm for not only your topic, but for your readers.
5. Post regularly. Keep a list of ideas as they pop into your head so you will never run out.
Remember that “sustainable agriculture” is more a philosophy than a strict set of rules, and the same applies for blogging. Find what works for you and stick with it.
And most of all, have fun!
This is a guest post by Kim De, a freelance writer and author of Zen Kitchen, a blog focused on recipes and food issues.
August 28th, 2010 — Net News
Google today announced the acquisition of social-graph and news content startup Angstro.
According to ReadWriteWeb, the Angstro website describes themselves as:
“Inspired by the angstrom unit of measure (0.1 nanometre) named after Swedish physicist Anders Jonas Angstrom, Angstro represents the ability to hone in on highly focused, relevant news across professional networks. Where search engines such as Google and other news aggregator services have immense infrastructures that return a huge array of random results, Angstro analyses a wide breadth of information from multiple data sources to deliver very few, yet very intelligent results.”
With the acquisition The L.A. Times is also reporting that company co-founder Rohit Khare has been hired to help mold the companies newly forming social network. Khare is a respected Internet researcher and will help Google form the look and feel of the new network.
The acquisition and hiring of Khare was confirmed by Google employee Joseph Smarr when he tweeted:
“Thrilled to welcome @rohitkhare to Google to help us work on building a better social web!”
The move is an important consideration for Google as rumors are circulating that Facebook may soon release their own ad network to compete with Google Adsense. Currently several ex-Google executives are running the advertising division at Facebook.
How Khare will affect the GoogleMe project base is yet to be determined, however one thing is for certain, with his know how it will be a huge step forward for Google and their efforts to compete with Facebook in the social networking field.
August 26th, 2010 — Net News
There are countless of posts that highlight great WordPress plug-ins and after sometime you keep coming across the same ones over and over again. The fact is that no matter how good or great these plug-ins are sometimes they are just overkill for your needs. Once a plug-in is popular developers will mostly keep expanding its features to satisfy all its users.
For a change I decided to look around what other plug-ins there are out there that are almost never mentioned and I came across more then two that I will be using on my own WordPress install. Especially wp Time Machine and Simple SEO are plug-ins I can’t believe I didn’t know about.
Check out these 10 plug-ins for different purposes.
Organize the order of your posts using a handy AJAX drag and drop admin interface. Handy if you use WordPress more like a CMS then for content publishing only.
Your own URL shorten-er with your domain address. Easily hide affiliate links and keep track of amounts of clicks, where users click from and other details. There is also a pro version.
Create a back-up of your WordPress:
- Your data (from your WordPress MySQL database)
- Your files (and Uploads) — everything in wp-content
- Your .htaccess file
- Instructions for a smooth recovery
- A shell script that can help automate recovery — though this is still a “work in progress”
and store them on your DropBox account, Amazon AWS S3 or on another server using FTP. You need to have PHP5 to use Amazon and DropBox. A cheaper alternative then VaultPress if you can’t afford the latter.
An admin interface to create and manage your shortcodes.
Transfer your plug-ins and SEO data from theme to theme and plug-in to plug-in.
Supported Themes
- Builder
- Frugal
- Genesis
- Headway
- Hybrid
- Thesis
- WooFramework
Supported Plug-ins
- All in One SEO
- Headspace2
- Platinum SEO
Display your past MailChimp newsletters on your site using a shortcode.
A simple plug-in to add Facebook like button, fully customizable. It’s a modified version of Like plug-in by Bottomless.
Custom location breadcrumbs.
Verify your website with Google, Bing and Yahoo! without going through the hassle of FTP and file editing. Just fill out your verification code and the plug-in will generate the correct meta tags.
Add a custom page and menu title to your pages for usability or SEO purposes. This plug-in is perfect if you don’t need the whole SEO she bang or use WordPress as CMS for a low key website.
August 20th, 2010 — Net News
This week on Friday Focus: designs that feature artistic renderings of skyscrapers and other features of a long landscape. See how they’re incorporated below.
Designs of the Week
Great grungy attitude all over, even the shiny buttons have a bit of smudge on them. Nice little detail: I like how the carousel’s right arrow changes into a square block to indicate there are no images left to view.
Love the easy feel from the pastels, gradients, rounded corners, and happy illustrations. The “add your company building” feature is also a great concept for the purpose of this website.
Bold and high contrast. Even the borders and background patterns are rugged and chunky.
The animated stack of books is really clever, and clicking loads a page where the books is opened.
Love the non-rectangular frame for the carousel—I’m seeing more of these lately. Body text is a little to small though.
The open, airy header area looks great. This is also a rare gem of a liquid layout.
Interesting fisheye (a.k.a. OS X dock) hover effect on the navigation, though I can see not-so-seamless texture tiling!
I like how all the clickables are so big yet still look minimal and refined. It’s all in the type and colors, right?
Great treatment on the contact form and the image frames. Textures all over!
I seem to have a lot of grungy designs this week, and I’m not complaining! Love the way the sections are divided, with blocky headers and thick borders of stars.
Spacing needs a little work in the featured images area, but the header navigation animations are adorable. This site is so warm and friendly.
Good idea to use the neightborhood skyline as a divider for the different sections in this one-page site. Although I think the black background is a big disconnect from the light blue one at the top.
Not a fan of the lens flare, and the featured image could have been a slideshow/carousel instead.
Lovely animations, and I like the way the skyline is in a corner instead occupying the whole width of the screen.
I wish the quirkiness of the header illustration and logo carried over to the rest of the design.
Beautiful, beautiful illustrations of the Moscow skyline. The scrollbar navigation for the image works well too. I wish they were a little more interactive though, with tooltips or links. And hooray for another liquid layout.
The header canopy is a nifty touch to the header design. Love the mix of patterns too.
Social Media Weekly
Design – Perception and the design of forms – Part 4: Figure/ground
“In this article we are going to explain the principle of figure/ground, which is surprisingly central to how forms work. More often than not this principle is—unintentionally—applied well. But we’ll also show you a few examples of when it isn’t.”
Programming – Semantics and sensibility
“For a while now, sensible naming conventions and semantics have been confused.”
Mobile – HOW TO: Make Your Mobile Websites Act More Like Native Apps
“Fortunately, a number of different frameworks are making it easier and easier for developers to create mobile web applications that look and feel more like native apps. Here are six examples.”
August 16th, 2010 — Net News
If you want to grow your blog’s audience and you use WordPress.org as your blogging application, then you need to try the five WordPress plugins listed below. They’re easy to use, free, and can have a significant impact on the number of visitors to your blog.
The more great content people are exposed to on your blog, the higher the chances are that they’ll find something they like causing them to return to your blog again, share your content with their own online connections, and ultimately, drive additional traffic to your blog. YAARP is a great plugin for automatically including a list of related posts at the end of each of your blog posts. The Link Within widget is another alternative.
The Retweet button is a must-have for all bloggers who want to increase traffic by making it easy for readers to share your blog posts with their own followers on Twitter. You can add the Retweet button to your blog as a widget or as a WordPress plugin. The TwitThis plugin offers similar functionality.
There are a number of WordPress plugins that make it easy for people to share links to your blog posts through their social web profiles like Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and more. Share This is a popular choice. Others include Sociable and Add to Any.
You can use the All-in-One SEO Pack plugin to give your blog posts an SEO boost and drive more traffic from keyword searches on popular search engines like Google.
When you allow people to subscribe to the comments published on a blog post, they receive an email when new comments are added. This drives them back to your blog again to keep up with the conversation and continue participating. The Subscribe to Comments plugin makes it easy for WordPress.org users to allow readers to stay involved in ongoing conversations on their blogs.
What are your favorite WordPress plugins for boosting traffic to your blog? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!
Image: stock.xchng
August 5th, 2010 — Net News
There has been a debate waging some time already about the use of Flash or HTML5 Canvas, which became pretty intense when it became obvious that Apple would not support Flash on its mobile devices. With big websites slowly implementing canvas, the constant updates from browsers(dear IE excluded) and the gaining popularity of HTML5 the debate is still ongoing.
The use of canvas still needs to take off, right now it is still in a ‘trial’ stage due to browsers limitation and lack of wide resource of code and tutorials. Canvas is in its childhood but growing up fast.
If you like animation, games and a good coding challenge check out these canvas demos and experiments to get some inspiration and learn how to code your own.
A highly addicting game now in your browser without Flash. In my case there was no loading time or lag whatsoever. I had to make myself stop playing to keep working on this list.
If you are interested in science, medication and molecules this is one cool canvas animation. The work that must have gone into this, not only the coding but the actual data.
Remembers me of the matrix, the colors and flow.
Try viewing it with your browser on full screen mode.
Right click changes the blob and colors, a nice experiment.
According to the maker this one started as a tracking experiment, this gives you an idea of what all is possible.
The title says it all. A full screen version with auto play would be wonderful.
This one totally reminded me of when Winamp was popular, I loved the visualizations that came with it.
The most simple and inventive yet, bounce the ball in between browser windows.
Reacts on mouse gestures and keyboard input.
These examples can be very intimidating but they show the full potential of canvas. Four your own website or web app canvas can be useful for a progress indication, a content loading spinner, etc. Like I said before the resources(books, code, tutorials) are still slim but growing fast.
July 27th, 2010 — Net News
Twitter today announced a new featured called “Tweet Media” which allows users to choose whether or not they want their photos and videos tho show up in the stream, a move that makes it seem likely Twitter will soon embed videos and photos into a users Twitter Stream.
Tweet Media, which earlier today was accessible to some users under their account settings menu asked if they would like to share photos and videos with everyone. Here’s the setting verbiage:
“By default, you’ll only see images and videos shared by people you’re following, and reveal those by people you’re not. Check this box to see media from everyone on Twitter.”
Unfortunately Tweet Media was later removed from all accounts, although it never appeared to be a working release to begin with.
Twitter released the following statement about the program:
“We’re constantly exploring features and settings. What you saw was a small test of a potential consumption setting for inline media. We show inline media on our own iPhone and Android apps.”
Here’s a screenshot of the Tweet Media message witnessed earlier today:
What do you think, is embeddable media going to change the way you use Twitter? Let us know your thoughts about this hopefully soon to be released option.
July 23rd, 2010 — Net News
We are looking for a writer who can make total of two posts per day (20 days a month) about luxury real estate, cars, boats, clothes and other high-end luxury products and properties.
The posts can be between 150 to 300 words each and must include one photo.
This is a long term blogger work so please be dedicated to commit to at least for a year.
The pay is fixed @ $250 per month. Payment via paypal at month end.
Apply Now
Please email us at nethead@yahoo.com and let us know why you would be an ideal match to post on blavish.
July 13th, 2010 — Net News
TweetDeck is a popular desktop application that makes for an enjoyable experience when sending and receiving Tweets, among other Twitter options, now the company behind the program has announced that their app has been downloaded over 15 million times.
The desktop apps astronomical rise is all the more impressive when you realize that their download rate is five times higher than their closest competitors.
Throw in 2.5 million iPhone app downloads which generate four million tweets and status updates a day and it’s easy to see who the king of third party Twitter apps really is.
TweetDeck Founder Ian Dodsworth also announced the companies specific focus on the “multi-stream” and “real-time ecosystem” fronts. Basically we can expect TweetDeck to serve more users interests when it comes to the social web as a whole.