Tuesday, February 9, 2010

More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it.

WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on hundreds of thousands of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.

The GPL from the Free Software Foundation is the license that the WordPress software is under.

Websites need images. For pop, color, interest, and direction. Images enhance your website and also if you set them up correctly , they are tools for SEO, (Search Engine Optimization).

I update these sources as needed and add new ones all the time.
Some of these may take you to istock or a paid image source. Many of them are only one to five dollars.

Use Creative Commons-Licensed Images

When googling for an image, add “Creative Commons” to the search.

Use images that have a Creative Commons (CC) license. However, be aware that a CC license is just that: a license. You need to read its terms and conditions and see what it allows or not.? Not all CC licenses allow the same uses. A CC license may allow use as-is, in a remix, or as part of a new work. In some cases a CC license requires attribution of the copyright owner.

Free Quality Image Galleries-by Arun Basil Lal

Google Image Search: Google has done a good job in organizing the images on the web. Google image search is awesome place to find images, but there is no guarantee on its quality or copyright, so it’s last on my list. Make sure that you visit the landing page and confirm that the image is free to use before you add it on yours.

Don’t forget to save the images that you find while casual browsing for later use. I have a vast collection of images offline which I have collected over time. Make one yourself.

Always read the terms and conditions before you use images. Some images are free to use, but not free to edit, some need attribution, play it safe. 

Another excellent article from Arun Basil Lal.

How to deal Content Copiers who copy from your Blog

It even allows users to search for celebrities – and see what Microsoft thinks their real ages are.
It is fun to use, but the ages vary wildly.

People uploaded photos taken of them on the same day and got a huge variance in the age it said they were.
The developers said,  ‘We wanted to create an experience that was intelligent and fun could capture the attention of people globally, so we looked at the APIs available in the Azure Machine Learning Gallery,’. The system works by analyzing 27 points on the face. Called face landmarks, they are a series of specifically detailed points on a face; typically points of face components like the pupils, canthus or nose.

‘These attributes are predicted by using statistical algorithms and may not always be 100% precise.  Still it is quite fun to try out. Hint on the photos, if you are using ones from your digital camera and have not re-sized them, they will not work. They have to be smaller than a straight digital file you may of downloaded.
Most people have no idea how huge those digital files really are.

Here is a group photo of some of us from the San Francisco Writer’s Conference volunteer meeting this year.

For some reason it missed one of us, and as for the rest, well let’s just say I think it is not exactly the most accurate tool yet!
Visit here and try it out. “How old do I look.net”

Another time wasting activity, halting your progress online with your real work. 

Update: The Daily Mail tried it out on a bunch of staff and wrote about it here.

My own kids left FB years ago. On their own. They felt like the fights, the gossip and the drama was not worth it. All three of them say they are quite happy to not be on Facebook. Most of their friends are not on anymore either. The young people who still use it, tell me it for family and to keep in touch with their grandparents and family. How they use it has changed dramatically. The young people I am speaking with are college age and high school.
Most of them use Instagram and snapchat to communicate now.
Facebook paid one billion dollars for Instagram in 2012, so they  found a way to get  back and keep those kids who have migrated to Instagram.

Do you ever wonder what life is like without Facebook?
In response to Facebook’s controversial mood experiment involving some 700,000 unwitting users, we present you 99 Days of Freedom; an online study on how life without Facebook impacts user happiness. Joining is very simple: follow our three step instruction to join the experiment for as long as you like. We can’t wait to hear how you spend your time off.
Visit the website here.

Reaction to Facebook’s controversial mood manipulation study dominated headlines for a week. Lawmakers called for an investigation. Governments did, too. Consumer groups filed complaints. And of course, users threatened to leave.

The “99 Days of Freedom” initiative was dreamed up by employees at Just B.V., a creative agency in the Netherlands. It started as an office joke.

“Like a lot of Facebook users, many of us were bothered by reports of secret mood experiments,” Just’s art director, Merijn Straathof, said in a press release. “As we discussed it internally, we noted an interesting tendency: To a person, everyone had at least a ‘complicated’ relationship with Facebook. Whether it was being tagged in unflattering photos, getting into arguments with other users or simply regretting time lost through excessive use, there was a surprising degree of negative sentiment. Then someone joked, ‘I guess that the real question is, ‘How do you feel when you don’t use Facebook?’ There was group laughter, followed by, ‘Wait a second. That’s a really good question!”

Just chose 99 days because it thought users would lose interest if the campaign ran longer and it would be hard to measure emotional change if it was shorter. Straathof stressed the goal isn’t to protest Facebook or undermine its business. “Facebook is an incredible platform, we’re all fiercely loyal users and we believe that there’s a lot to love about the service,” he said.

As of early Friday morning, more than 6,000 people had signed up for the campaign, which was announced on Wednesday. That’s barely a drop in Facebook’s billion-user bucket.

Even if the campaign called for leaving Facebook altogether, would it work? Cornell University conducted a survey which it published in 2013 showing a quarter of Facebook users take breaks from the site by deactivating their account, and one in 10 completely quit. The survey was based on responses from 410 people – not exactly representative of Facebook’s much larger user base.

However there were some interesting results. The researchers found that Facebook users who deactivate their account are more likely to know someone else who has also deactivated – perhaps a sign that if enough people get mad at Facebook, a mass exodus could occur.

But mass exodus would mean overcoming the network effect. That would be tough. People might be mad at Facebook, but it’s still the site people use to catch up with friends and family. You can’t just leave it for another site because your friends aren’t on another site – they’re on Facebook. Even if you quit Facebook, you might be using another network it owns like Instagram or What’s App.

But plenty of alternative social networks are out there – some popping up just in time to capitalize on anti-Facebook rage. Sobrr is one such Facebook alternative. In a way, it’s the anti-Facebook. Instead of tracking everything you do, the site erases everything every 24 hours.

Erasing everything is a promise we’ve heard before. Remember Snapchat’s supposed commitment to privacy? Users were told photos and videos sent through the app would disappear within ten seconds, but it turned out they were being saved without users’ knowledge.

 Original story credit: Washington Post, link here.

If you feel like maybe it is time to leave Facebook for good here are some directions on how to do that.
How to leave facebook.

Facebook has conducted a secret massive psychology experiment on its users to find out how they respond to positive and negative messages – without telling participants.

The article above is from the Telegraph, UK and it is quite detailed. If you would like to read it, it has what is known as a “paywall” in front of it. The work around for that is open your browser in privacy mode or with Chrome, it is called incognito, so that is a good tip for you today. How to read protected articles online.

I officially  officially declare that all search engine submission services are now scams. If you receive an email from anyone claiming to offer search engine submission services or a similar submission service–it is spam and also a scam.

Here is a photo of the volunteers for that year! 2005.
The only two from this photo who are still volunteering, are Kate Farrell, and myself. I am sure we are missing a few people in this photo. We have 75 volunteers, so it is a big crew. As the Volunteer Director, I must say our volunteers do an amazing job.
We could not put on this wonderful event without all of their help.
Kate is the current President of the Women’s National Book Association, SF Chapter, and I am the former President. The SFWC is how I discovered the WNBA-SF Chapter, which is an organization I love dearly. You can visit our table at the conference to learn more.

I look forward to this event every year. It feel like a class reunion. If you have never been to the conference, you are missing a great event.
If you cannot make it for the entire conference, we now offer classes that are open to anyone to sign up for on Thursday and Monday. Click here to view the schedule.

I will be teaching “WordPress for Newbies” on Monday. Enrollment is limited so sign up now.

WORDPRESS BOOT CAMP FOR NON-TECHIES      –  Fee: $99

I love Masterchef Australia, and then I started watching Masterchef UK season 9, and I just finished it last night. It was quite enjoyable.  The cooking was amazing. One of the contestants you could not help but like and root for is a talented young lady named Natalie Coleman. She is a lovely person, humble, hard working, sweet and close to her family. She feeds her Grandpa and Uncle, to help look after them and because she loves them. She tries out her recipes on her Grandpa. He must love that.  She is a creative and talented cook. She seemed to have things so well thought out. I thought it must be her career in finance, she was so orderly and always made sense with her food. I wanted her to win. Also I love it when the girls win!

So she won and I was excited for her and I looked her up online, and she is doing many things now like cooking shows and creating a cookbook with the other two finalists from her season. I found her twitter account and I congratulated her. Drop in the big bucket of the twitter ocean, right? She favorited my tweet and said, “Techno lovin’ foody! MasterChef Winner 2013  http://t.co/QXPxQrUDmg” Natalie Coleman @NatalieColeman1

I thought that was so cool. I just watched her win last night, ( she actually won last Dec, and had to keep it quiet until May of this year.)  and then I can just connect with her that easily? That kind of stuff is what makes social media fun, right?

Another fun thing I use the internet for all the time is finding songs I hear on programs with a piece of music I like.
In the Masterchef  UK penultimate season 9 episode they had this beautiful piano piece near the end that I had to find. It just gripped me.
Those of you who know me, know I am a search engine ninja. I can find just about any information you could ask for online. People, places, things and all things helpful…
One of the keys to finding obscure information online is to google it in many different ways. You can just drop in related words, or a question, or a sentence, or even if you only have one line of lyrics, it is amazing how fast you can find a song or piece of music with limited information.
In this case I asked the question, “what was the piano piece at the end of Masterchef UK episode 22”? It took me about 30 minutes to finally find a facebook group where one member posted the name of the piece and where the music could be found. Score! I love it when that happens.
I went straight to Amazon and bought it for 99 cents. How great is that? Talk about instant gratification, (delayed by the search, but all the sweeter for the hunt.)
 I do not personally use any of those song recognition apps like Shazam or Soundhound and there are more, but thank goodness other people do, because those apps seem to find quite a bit of music and then the users will post it. I sincerely thank all the people who leave the rest of us breadcrumbs online to find things. I try to pay that forward on websites when I know the answers.

Good karma right? Take a listen to the piece of music I found. It is called “Snow Falls” by Adam Burns.

Snow Falls

So my question of the day is, do you use twitter and how do you use it? Really use it. Because most people I meet and know, sign up try it out for awhile and then stop using it. I have my websites set up to auto post to twitter, facebook and linkedin when I publish a new post. I use a free program called twitterfeed. It is very simple to use, and you only need to spend about 30 minutes one time setting it up and then you never go back there again. This works for me, since I get stressed out trying to track everyone and things on the social media scene. I get a big case of the “overwhelms”.  Do you get that too when you work online?

There is so much to do online already. I have my work which is all web based and then to spend time tweeting and promoting myself is like the last block of a Jenga game that will topple me.  Do you have a fun story or cool connection you made because of twitter?

Leave your story in the comment section. Feel free to leave a link to your website or social media ID. It is fun to hear those stories and it takes some of the drudgery out of working online 24/7.
We all need to remember, life is short and we have to some fun in what we are trying to do, just like all those Masterchef contestants who inspire me to try new things and have fun in the kitchen. Seeing them reaching for their dreams, helps remind me to reach for mine too.