We had a good turnout today for our weekly BNI meeting at the Domain in north Austin. As can be seen by the accompanying photo, lunch is part of our routine.
After our officers got through reporting on business matters, we moved around the room for our one-minute presentations. A one-minute presentation is each member’s opportunity to give a quick synopsis of part of his or her business. When my turn came, I talked about Twitter as part of what I call a web presence, specifically how to compress a web link to conserve Tweet space.

My intention is present a different topic each week. After all, who wants to hear me say the say thing at the same time 52 times a year? My hope is to make my one minute presentations educational and interesting. I would encourage my fellow group members to do the same.

This was followed by John Oberg presenting the ten-minute presentation, a more in depth presentation presented by a member who has the right amount of longevity in the group as well as proper education, the Member Success Program (MSP).  John, a former president of the group, is a very inspirational speaker who specializes in “Raising Expectations, Elevating Performance” at http://www.ms-tx.com. But it looks to be an invitation-only site. Also shown in the picture is Luis Delgado, The Critical Update, Juan Mondragon, Liquid Capital Assets, Steve Benet, Sente Mortgage, Rodney Schwalbach, ESG Realty Advisors  and Ryan Connor’s head, State Farm Agency.


We are looking for a new member in the each of the following professions: lawyers (all types), photographer, residential landscaper, plumber, cleaning company, hairstylist, electrician, and painter. You also may have a skill not listed here. If you are interested in membership, contract me: Lindsey Allen at 512-921-2618, or lindsey@exploringnewmedia.com

Exploring new media is exploring what’s new to me. Well, for the past couple of months I’ve been getting oriented with Business Network International (BNI), a business networking organization with a chapter here in Austin called Business Builders Network. So far, networking has been working for me. I have been able to secure business from referrals in that organization that have more than paid for my enrollment fees.

So it was that I found myself at our weekly meeting place on April 18th to participate in our standard rituals of presenting individual 1-minute spiels about our business, listening to a 10 minute presentation by one of our members, giving and receiving referrals, and sharing individual conversations with other members.

The meeting was presided over by Jan Mahaffey of It’s Faux Real Interiors. Others in this photo include Heather Walvoord, Acadia HR, Tommy Gonzalez, Regions Bank, and barely seen, Shane Lake of Lake Financial Strategies.

This week, our presenter was T J Bass, President of Handyman Matters. Incidentally, T J received several testimonials from group members for services rendered. He presented an informative talk, the highlight for me being how to saw a bathtub, add a bathtub door, and create an implement which can be used either as a walk-in shower, or as a bathtub.


We are looking for a new member in the each of the following professions: lawyers (all types), photographer, residential landscaper, plumber, cleaning company, hairstylist, electrician, and painter. You also may have a skill not listed here. If you are interested in membership, contract me: Lindsey Allen at 512-921-2618, or lindsey@exploringnewmedia.com

Prior to the beginning of my weekly BNI network meeting last week, a fellow BNI member, Juan Mondragon expressed an interest in QR codes.  Like many of you, I have seen them in many places but had never used my smartphone to scan one and see what happened.

Well, that has changed and am I impressed! Thanks for your question, Juan.

As is common for me, when I need some info I usually go first to my good friend, Jeff Bernier, the CC Wizard. He gave me a good basic explanation of QR Codes and showed me how to generate them by pointing me to GoQR.me. (This is not the only site that shows how to create a QR code. Just google for QR code and take your pick.)

To continue, I discovered how to create QR codes that will generate text, connect to your default web browser, call a phone number, send a text message via SMS, and generate a vCard.

I created a code shown by qrcodeURL.png at 90px by 90 px. It scanned nicely and opened this website. I orginally tried a 60px by 60px code but it was hard to consistently scan.

But when I scanned in a text QR code shown by qrcodeTEXT.png, the scanner couldn’t seem to capture it at 6opx by 60px unless I increased its screen display size. So, I decided to create a new code measuring 120px by 120px. This scans nicely and when scanned, the text shows up in my default text editor.

The next QR code, qrcodePHONE.png, was for the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas. Beware if you follow through with this example, you may end up making a long distance call to Austin. An interesting thing happened when I created the telephone code. I was able to create an entry in my Macintosh Address book. Notice that it is sized as 90px by 90px also. Not sure why the code for text couldn’t easily be scanned. That’s a cause for a “hmmmm..”.

I decided not to create an SMS or vCard because to do so would reveal my personal contact information to the world and I don’t need any more phone calls or text messages at odd hours.

This is not the end of the QR Code story. It is just the tip of the iceberg. These codes can be used for many purposes.  Look at this WikiPedia article to get your creative juices running.

What do you think about QR codes? Do you use them in your everday life? Do you use them on your business card/stationery? Do you use them in marketing campaigns? Tell me.

You can write the best blog possible and still get very little attention.  One way to gain attention is to write the blog then send an email to your list telling them that you just wrote the blog. Bad!! Or you could install an RSS Feed by going to http://feedburner.google.com.

As I mentioned in my blog about RSS Feeds, you will have to have a Google account in order to set up the RSS feed with Feedburner. Not a big restriction and you get so much benefit from Google.

1. Go to the text box labeled “Burn a feed right this instant.” and follow the directions. Click the Next button.
2. On the next page, Identify Feed Source, select the radio button for RSS Feed and click the Next button.
3. On the next page, Welcome!, type in a word or phrase identifying the Feed then click the Next button.
4. On the next page, Congrats!, click the Next button.
5. On the next page, Get More Gusto, choose the options you wish, then click Next button.
6. On the Next page, click on the Publicize tab, choose Chicklet Chooser, and select a radio button for a new standard feed icon. I chose the smaller version of the icon with the orange background. Scroll down the page to the area labeled “Copy the HTML”, copy the code, go to your WordPress dashboard, choose Appearance, then Widgets. Choose Text from the Available Widgets selections, move the text box into an area beneath Sidebar 1, give it a title, and paste the RSS code into the large area, and hit the Save button.

Voila, you are now ready to provide RSS feeds to your readership.

Caveat Blogger!   The example above is just one set of instructions that you can perform to set up an RSS Feed. Note that I have an RSS Subscription link on my personal blog that was created as explained above while the subscription link on this page is a bit differrent. Feel adventurous and find another way. Comment about it here. Please.  It’s lonely out here when no one speaks to me.

Ever wonder who visits your website? And when? And from where? Windows/Linux/Macintosh users? Browsers used?

It’s easy to find out. The only slightly restrictive requirement is that you have or get a gmail account. Since Google provides so many nice features, it’s not really that restrictive. Think of the Google account as your club house key with you being a member of this exclusive club whose only requirement is that you use their key to gain access. And just in case you are not using it, gmail is a very nice email package that is web accessible thus available on any of your devices anywhere you have Internet access and a browser connection.

Install and Use Google Analytics

Log into http://www.google.com with your google account info. Add a website profile – which really means that you need to enter the URL of the site you want to track. I’m doing it for this site, exploringnewmedia.com

Google then comes back with some Javascript code that I install in the footer.php file of my currently chosen theme. Why place it in the footer.php file?  Because in WordPress, the footer information is placed on every post and page so it’s always there. When someone visits any post or page, Google takes note and enters it into a database.

Don’t expect any meaningful information for a few days because it will take a bit of time before you begin to get visits. After that, log in to your account on google.com/analytics and choose View Report for your URL to get some (and more) of the information alluded to in the first paragraph above.

If you try this and can’t get it right, please ask me and I’ll walk you through the process.  Leave a comment or contact lindsey@exploringnewmedia.com

I created my personal website using WordPress. I am styling it using the Genesis Framework, which is really a super, but complex application for creating and modifying your theme, or the overall look and functionality of the website.

As it came from Studiopress, it was pretty bland – black text on a white background, and no bells and whistles.  I intend to gradually change its looks and discuss what I did.

Today, I’ve decided that I want to make the background black. Perhaps, someday I’ll put a graphic behind the content but for today, I’m just going to change the colors of the background.

NOTE: Today’s changes will all be done in the style.css file located in the public_html/personal/wp-content/themes/child folder of my newmediauses.com account. This will be done using a Macintosh FTP program called Transmit to access my website and a Macintosh text editor called TextMate to effect the required changes.

The framework (of Genesis Frameworks) looks like this. This diagram is the visual markup guide.  By studying it and applying Genesis functions to it, you can build some pretty awesome themes (I’m told).  I’m still struggling to do so.

So, to change the background (or body) to black, I opened the style.css file and searched for body and found it down at like 154, defined as:

body {
background-color: #fff;
}

I changed the background color from white (#fff) to black (#000) and ended up with a pretty stark sight. I had expected that the content of the website would reside on a white background with a black body background. Well, it can but not just from that one change.

Note that in the visual markup guide, there is an overall container named #wrap and it contains 5 other subcontainers named #header, #nav, #subnav, #inner, and #footer, respectively. And each of them contain other definitions but we will not be bothered by them in this post.

I will create a white background-color the colors for 2 of the remaining containers. They currently inherit the background color of the body. CSS stuff, you know. (I’m going to leave the #nav and #footer ids alone.)

Added background-color: #fff;  to the #header id at the inserted line 172. and for #inner at inserted line 604

As I made these changes, the background showed through between the #nav and #inner ids.  This is because of the margin definitions of these two ids. So, I changed     margin: 20px auto 0; in the #inner id  (line 605) to    margin: 0 auto;

and
changed      margin: 0 auto 10px; in the #nav id  (line 396) to     margin: 0 auto 10px;

But you fix one thing and another thing pops up – like whack-a-mole.  When the body and all the ids had a white background, it was not so obvious that the text butted right up to the left of its container. So, what do we do?

For the time being, I will just add   padding: 0 0 0 20px; to each of these containers: #inner, #nav and also for #title-area.

No, I haven’t been asleep for 20 years. Just been meandering through life. Sip a little from this glass. Eat a little from that plate. Check out this video. Read that book. Study this discipline. Bog down in that concept.

But I’m coming back.  New client. New requirements. New advice from my talented friends. They say Genesis is the WordPress framework to consume. Get up close and personal with. Know it like the back of my hand. Treat it like an expensive tool. Learn it. Use it. Devour it. Regurgitate it.

Well, perhaps I’ve waxed too poetic here. After all, I have been involved in a Creative Writing Course for the past several weeks. Words just seem to flow whenever I describe anything.

Down to the facts. I bought the Genesis Pro Plan, which gives me a group of really nice themes. My client likes one of the child themes.  I have created a developmental site that is mostly for my education. I installed the Genesis Framework and the child theme at that site. I began reading.  Lot of time on Designs by Nick the Geek, Studio Press Genesis Tutorials,  and Bill Erickson‘s sites. Glassy eyes. Obviously, I will need to reread and perhaps rereread this information.

One thing I learned yesterday from Nick.  Hooks are just directions about where to place code.  Wow! An eyeopener.  Truly. No sarcasm here.

So far today, I have earned How to Set the Header to Display Text or Logo Image

Coming Events: Perhaps you’ve noticed, as of Oct 13, 2011, this site’s theme is Thesis.  I expect that it will change to one of the Genesis child themes in the near future.

Call to action.  Does this post interest you in any way? Give me a comment. Want to hear more about my adventures in Genesis land? Give me a comment. Want to buy me lunch? Call me on my iPhone. Quickly. Today.

I started an online class in Creative Writing today with the Gotham Writers Workshop. I’ve been writing since the first grade. That was in 1947. Although I think I’m a fair writer, I’d like to do better.
This will be the second time I’ve concentrated on writing as an end result. My anticipation is great.

Starting to prepare for my Rise Austin 2011 presentation at 4PM on the 8th of March 2011.  I will be discussing and demonstrating the hardware, software, and procedures to creating a video cast/podcast for placement on your web site and at YouTube.

That was the title of our January Meetup and was presented by Chad Peevy of Peevy Media. Ten guests participated in Chad’s presentation and informal discussion regarding aspects of social networking.
Thanks to Chad for his informative and entertaining presentation. And thanks to Jan Triplett of the Business Success Center for her hospitality.