When my wife, daughter and I moved to our new home in Manchester, MO we were excited to know that recycling is a big part of the community. Within the first six months we were given a very large bin with wheels to place all our unsorted recyclables in. So through-out part of 2008 and all of 2009, before placing an item in the trash we conditioned ourselves to first think if it could be recycled. It even turned into a game. If we didn’t know, we’d bet on whether it would make it into the recycle bin or not.

In 2010, we’re going to take living greener to the next level. Here is a short list of our strategy for living greener in 2010:

1. Start a small garden, just tomatoes and green beans for now.
2. Pay more bills online.
3. Start a compost pile.
4. Plan meals for each day of the week and only grocery shop for those items.
5. Go to the grocery store once a week.
6. Install recycling receptacle in home office.
7. Install compact florescent light-bulbs.
8. Turn off and unplug electronics that aren’t being used.

The following is based on actual events. The profiles have been blacked out to maintain the focus of the message. Kids, DON’T steal tweets and pose as the original tweeter.

Whether it’s what you are doing or what someone else is doing, at its core Twitter is all about sharing between people. The more valuable the information you share the more valuable your tweets become to potential followers. The better your info, the more of an authority you become on the topic of your Tweets. So let’s review:

Sharing Valuable Information = Topic Authority

This connection between valuable information and authority is magnified through re-tweets (RT). That is, if a follower finds great value in your original tweet, they will in turn re-tweet the original tweet expanding your reach to potential new followers. At this point, giving credit to the original tweeter is good form. Without proper credit given, the original tweeter is essentially disconnected from the tweet and the true sharing opportunity is lost. Let’s review the proper way to give credit.

1. If the tweet was already posted:
   
2. If the tweet has not been posted and the user has a profile:
   
3. If the tweet has not been posted and there is no user profile: In this case it’s safe to say that since there is no profile to give credit to, it is not necessary to provide an association between the shared content and the person responsible for creating it. This is a rare situation and could prove as an opportunity to introduce the person to Twitter.

Bad Twitter-er

Posing as the original publisher, though helpful to your authoritativeness, is not only selfish it’s downright stealing. To put it straight, no one likes a content thief. To better understand how not to be a self promoting tweet stealing poser, let’s review a bad tweet.

The bottom line is…

• Give credit!!!
• Find out if the person’s content you are about to share has a Twitter profile so credit can be given.
• Don’t add a self promotional link pointing to your own content after sharing some one else’s content. It devalues your message and clouds your intentions.

Have you ever wanted to countdown to a milestone post? Here is the code needed to display a countdown to, say your 1000^th post.

<?php
$post_count = wp_count_posts();
$published_posts = $post_count->publish;
$countdown = 1000-$published_posts;
echo $countdown;
?>

Update: Now You Can Use This Handy Plugin

Download Plugin: WordPress Post Countdown Plugin

Plugin Features

• Use a title or don’t use a title, it’s there if you want it.
• Add some text before and after the countdown number
• Countdown to what ever post milestone you want

Plugin Installation

Simply unzip the file and use your favorite FTP client to upload post-countdown.php into the wp-content/plugins/ directory. Proceed to your widget management dashboard and configure accordingly.

More detailed wp_count_posts(); tag information.

See more funny videos and Sports Videos at Today’s Big Thing.

1. My Family (Wife, Daughter, Mom, Dad, Sisters, Brother, Grandparents, In-Laws, all of them…)
2. Did I mention my Wife?
3. Did I mention my Daughter?
4. My Faith
5. Our House
6. My Job
7. Beer, both kinds free and cold. What? We all know there’s only two kinds of beer.
8. My iPhone, yeah it’s in the top ten.
9. Filet Béarnaise at Sidney Street
10. Football, both American and European
11. The Interwebs
12. Christmas
13. Beaches. Not the movie!
14. Media Temple
15. Wordpress
16. CSS Tricks
17. Nettuts
18. jQuery
19. Digsby
20. My Domain
21. Last.fm

Which is why I’ve devoted 2009 to increasing posts and improving quality of content. With that said, the plan is to build a separate blog that will house all of my search marketing, social media, web development and other business type posts while keeping this blog personal. I’ll be unveiling the new blog January 2009. Stay Tuned…

Available November 2008!

Features Include:

• New Admin UI – Primary menu ajaxified, so no more click/reload to manage and click/reload to post.
• Plugin Upload Integration – Load and activate through admin, no more download then ftp then activate.
• Customizable Views – Drag and drop elements in post and page views. Exclude elements that you don’t use.
• Quick and Bulk Edit – Mass edit features for managing post.
• Replying to Comments – Reply to comments within the admin panel. Oh yeah, they’re threaded!

Here is a full list of panels with times and locations.

1. Login to Network Solutions

   

   Once logged in, click Domains then Manage Domain Names

   
   

2. Edit Domain Details

   

   Under Domain Details for your domain, near the right side, click “Turn Off or Request Authorization Code

   
   

3. Edit Domain Protect

   

   Check BOTH “Leave Domain Protect off” and “Request Authorization Code”, then SAVE near the bottom right corner.

   
   

4. Authorization Code Emailed

   

   Network Solutions will email the authorization code to the email address of the primary account holder.

   
   

5. Login to MyDomain.com

   

   Create a MyDomain.com account if you haven’t already and login. Then click “Transfer Your Domains To Us” near the bottom of the home tab.

   
   

6. Check Transfer Ability

   

   Type the domain name in the text box and click “Check”. This checks to make sure the domain is not protected and is eligible for transfer.

   
   

7. Domain Transfer

   

   If the domain is eligible for transfer you can add it to your cart and proceed to chekout. The transfer is typically not immediate, so check your MyDomain account for status. DNS info should remain in tact, but again its a good idea to check back.

   
   

As a comparison, a 5 year renewal through Network Solutions is $99.95. Through MyDomain, a 5 year renewal is $43.79.

Update:
Here is the code to embed the video. I’ve changed all the long urls to tinyurls, not to hide the source but to make the code much smaller. Enjoy!

One specific discussion over dinner one night really stuck with me. A couple social media critics positioned themselves at my table for no other reason than to engage in a debate regarding the value of social media in the overall picture of internet marketing. Their main point of debate was that marketers have no place in social media and that social advertising is inherently biased. I whole heartedly agree that social advertising is biased, but I disagree that marketers should avoid the space. My primary concern with their argument was that advertising is a matter perspective. This is extremely true in the realm of social media. Take for example the signs on the highway for food and gas. Travelers typically ignore them as advertising until they need food or gas. Then the signs transform into a welcomed visual pointing people in the direction of what they seek most at that time. Social media, in my opinion, is like the highway sign analogy on crack. It’s a space for sharing, identifying with a brand identity and networking with like minded individuals.

If your message needs further explanation, try re-constructing it before publishing. Or add a link to further details.

This lesson is not limited to twitter, just channels for content distribution that limit characters or message size.

The study is segmented by Waves in which each segment signifies a number of survey submissions within a single month a year. Wave 1 included 15 countries, 7,500 users and was completed in September 2005. Wave 2 included 21 countries, 10,000 users and was completed in June 2007. Wave 3 included 29 countries, 17,000 users and was completed in March 2008. Though in my opinion the sample sizes seem small the validity of the data appears legit.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Methodology
• What is Social Media?
• Global Snapshot
• Blogging
• Social Networking
• Sharing Content
• Consuming Content
• Final Word

View it in full screen, some of the text is hard to see otherwise.

| View

1. Text friends notifying them of Madeline’s arrival.
2. Call family notifying them of Madeline’s arrival.
3. Email friends and family pictures of Maddie.
4. Sooth a fussy Maddie with Bob Marley and DMB.
5. Show off pictures of Maddie.
6. Monitor feeding times
7. Check the weather to see if it’s ok to take Maddie for a walk.
8. Get directions to the pediatrician.
9. Call my new daughter.

Here is the script I used for the typing effect.

If you want a custom 404 error page on your Wordpress blog, simply edit the 404.php page in your theme.

Typically found here:

wp-content/themes/(your active theme)/404.php

Here are some funny 404 pages that inspired me:

• 404 Error Pages: Reloaded – Smashing Magazine
• 17 brilliant 404 pages and why they are cool – Royal Pingdom

Update: (8-13-2009) Due to the recent redesign, the custom 404 page is no longer as cool. I’ll work on another concept soon.

I took a screenshots throughout the process with the idea of collaborating them into a slideshow. The slide show starts with my old theme and moves through the process as I took the default theme and re-designed it.

Here is a list of the resources I used for developing the new theme.

• Dreamweaver CS3
• Photoshop CS3
• Colorschemer
• I used this little tutorial for creating multiple widget sidebars

BERLIN (Reuters) – German unions on Thursday called for a consumer boycott of Nokia products to protest against the cellphone maker’s plans to close a German plant.

“Whoever buys a cellphone today should think about the choice they are making and what catastrophic consequences the company’s actions in Bochum will have for thousands of workers,” Muscheid, who heads the DGB in the southwest state of Rhineland-Palatinate, said.

German Unions Boycott = Drop in Cellphone Sales
Drop in Cellphone Sales = Definitely Closing the Plant
Definitely Closing the Plant = German Unions Boycott

Hmmm….

Dear pleasantcreature@gmail.com,
Your personalized Cease and Desist letter is on its way.

More to follow…or should I say less?

Have you ever met someone that used foul language so much that it essentially loses its meaning? The same effect appears to be happening across social sites. Certain users are Digging, Stumbling, and Twittering everything under the sun, and quite frankly it’s getting obnoxious. And it all appears to be for nothing more than increasing the popularity of a user account. What really bothers me about this is that it dilutes the content.

A friend of mine, Andrew Nagy said it best, “Social media is only beneficial the way any kind of social interaction is…moderation. if you’re at a party and one guy keeps walking up to every person and asking questions and being overly friendly, that guy usually gets beat up, or at least gets beer poured on him. So the moral of the story is, when you’re interacting with social media, don’t be ‘that guy’”.

So in the style of Mr. Tony Sinclair, “What’s true for shrimp cocktail is also true for social media…always in moderation.”

Votrs.com Links:

• Votrs.com
• About Votrs.com
• Social Media Scanner

Embed

Christmas is awesome. First of all, you get to spend time with the people you love. Secondly, you can get drunk and no one can say anything. Third, you give presents. What’s better than giving presents? Or fourth, getting presents. So four things, not bad for one day. It’s really the greatest day of all time.

– Michael Scott, Regional Manager, Dunder Mifflin Paper Company, Inc.

Happy Holidays!

If you haven’t had a chance to check out SEOLogs.com, please take a moment to do so. Badi really puts some great posts together. If you feel so inclined, why not join his community and help him win the ProBlogger Contest?

Asterpix enables users to easily create hypervideos and share them through websites, blogs and email. Analogous to hypertext, hypervideo provides an interactive experience by allowing viewers to select objects of interest to get more information or navigate the video.

Here is an example of how it works.

During my lunch break, I went to my jeweler to pick up the ring. The entire purchasing experience was flawless. Greg at Novak Jewelers was attentive, creative, and helpful. He designed and created the ring that I knew Jen would love. Being the social media addict that I am, I decided to review Novak Jewelers on the review site, Yelp. While writing the review, my colleague Reem Abeidoh asked me what I was sharing on Yelp. After informing her about my intentions, she simply asked, “Are you crazy?”

For those who are wondering why Reem questioned my sanity, the answer is pretty simple. The Yelp review I was in the process of authoring would have appeared on my Facebook page. Guess who my friend is on Facebook? Jen…

So, would you use this unique search platform?