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50 Free Apps We're Most Thankful For [Downloads]

2010-11-25T15:00:00Z

As we prepare to give thanks for our delicious Thanksgiving meals (and impending food comas), let's not forget to pay tribute to the wonderful developers who bring us our favorite free apps.

Earlier this week we asked you to share the free apps you're most thankful for, and you came through with thousands of votes for apps covering the desktop, mobile phone, and devices in between. With a little spreadsheet magic and a few choices of our own, we bring you the top 50 free apps we're all most thankful for. Whether you're celebrating the holiday or not, it's a great list of free software that ought to make for some gluttonous downloading. The popular apps are some of the more obvious, however, so be sure to look further down the list for new free software you may not yet know about. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

The 50 Free Apps We're Most Thankful For

And that's the list! Items on this year's list garnered a minimum of ten votes (with a few exceptions), with popular apps pulling in far more. Dropbox took the lead with 137 votes, followed by VLC and 109, and Firefox 97. Happy downloading, and happy Thanksgiving!

Gambling Addiction Enabler: UFC 116 Edition

2010-06-30T19:33:49Z

Well, we've got a big UFC event coming up this weekend, which means you should all head over to fightpicker.cagepotato.com (or apps.facebook.com/fightpicker) and make your predictions for UFC 116: Lesnar vs. Carwin. Congrats to FightPicker Grandmaster Aaron Rampey for becoming the first player to crack the 10,000 chip mark. Well done, buddy. That's gonna look awesome on your CV.

Of course, if you had some balls you'd bet actual money on the fights, and not silly-ass "PotatoChips." As usual, we'd like to help you win some cash for Saturday's event — or at the very least not take heavy losses. Betting lines are below, courtesy of BestFightOdds.com; if you don't know what this stuff means, read this first.

MAIN CARD
Brock Lesnar (-130) vs. Shane Carwin (+140)
Yoshihiro Akiyama (-200) vs. Chris Leben (+185)
Chris Lytle (-195) vs. Matt Brown (+160)
Krzysztof Soszynski (-218) vs. Stephan Bonnar (+195)
George Sotiropoulos (-195) vs. Kurt Pellegrino (+160)

SPIKE TV PRELIMS
Brendan Schaub (-295) vs. Chris Tuchscherer (+264)
Ricardo Romero (-145) vs. Seth Petruzelli (+120)

PRELIMINARY CARD
Goran Reljic (-155) vs. Kendall Grove (+145)
Gerald Harris (-245) vs. Dave Branch (+200)
Daniel Roberts (-170) vs. Forrest Petz (+145)
Karlos Vemola (-160) vs. Jon Madsen (+150)

Read on to get that paper...

Repurpose an Old Router as a Network Switch [Repurposing]

2010-06-23T18:30:00Z

We've covered how to repurpose your old router as a range-boosting repeater or a wireless bridge, but if you just need a few extra wired ports for devices your current router can't accommodate, consider repurposing your old router as a network switch.

Photo by DeclanTM.

By simply running an Ethernet cable between your old router to your current one (run a wire from one of the available LAN ports on your active router to ~~the WAN-in~~ LAN ports on the old router), you can repurpose it as a network hub/switch. Home improvement blog Unpluggd notes that you'll want to disable DHCP on the router you want to use as a switch, which you can normally do from your router's admin page.

It's important to note that you'll need to make sure the two routers are not using the same IP address before connecting the devices. If you're having trouble with the routers after disabling the DHCP, assigning the new hub a non-conflicting, static IP address will help.

Got any network-savvy tips for the rest of us? Share them in the comments below.

3 Great Uses For Old Routers [Unpluggd]

Significantly Speed Up Your WordPress Blog in 9 Easy Steps

2010-06-21T19:15:53Z

Your blog’s loading speed affects more than just user experience but is now a factor used by google to determine an overall ranking for your site. The reasoning is clear according to google and other search engines’ goals, which is to provide the most relevant search results from sites that offer the best user experience. Site speed is definitely something we cannot not ignore and should take advantage of every opportunity to improve.

Here are 9 effective techniques and tips that can be easily implemented to make your blog lightning fast.

1. Disable Unused Plugins

This is one of the easiest things we can do to reduce load times. I know many of us get carried away trying out the thousands of cool plugins available but we need to bear in mind the fact that they use system resources. Assess whether you need the plugins that you have installed and determine if they necessarily serve a useful purpose. Also, deactivated plugins that are not deleted can possibly create loopholes and back doors that hackers can exploit so delete them and maintain security for your blog.

2. Install A Caching Plugin

I recommend using the caching plugin W3 Total Cache which can greatly reduce the load time for your blog’s pages and ease the work on your hosting server. W3 Total Cache has the highest level of compatibility I’ve seen so far, especially with Content Delivery Networks.

3. Choose The Right Web Host

Personally, I’ve had my share of headaches when it comes to bad web hosts. There are tons of web hosting companies out there claiming to be the best but don’t seem to make the cut. Regardless of how optimized and efficient your blog may be, hosting your site on slow servers can drastically reduce your blog’s speed and up-time.

4. Use Less External Scripts

A tracking system such as Google Analytics is extremely useful for tracking a blog’s traffic and visitor demographics. However, having too many scripts installed from different providers can significantly increase and stall the loading of your blog because they are being called from an external source. If the server where the script is being called from is slow or down, this will affect your site’s performance. Other examples of external scripts include, code from video hosting sites, tracking badges and advertisements from external ad networks.

5. Check For Hacks & Other Exploits

Malicious code can seriously cripple your site’s performance and if you suddenly see an increase in your site’s loading times, its worth it to check for possible malicious injections. Plugins such as WP Anti Virus can scan your files for existing exploits. Read WordPress Security – A Comprehensive Guide to significantly improve your blog’s security.

6. Optimize Your MySQL Database

Optimizing your blog’s MySQL database can greatly reduce the load on your hosting server and improve load times, especially if you have a huge long-standing blog. The WP DB Manager plugin can easily optimize your database in a single click and even allows you to schedule optimization tasks.

7. Reduce The Number Of Images

Although images can assist with the overall appeal of our blogs, they need to be used in moderation. Less is best. Remove unnecessary badges and pictures that provide no useful purpose for neither you or your visitors. Minimal blog templates and designs usually perform best since they use less fancy images and javascript in the code.

8. Use A Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A CDN is a network of expertly optimized servers around the world containing copies of your site’s data placed at various locations in the network to maximize bandwidth thus reducing your site’s load time. This works really well if you have visitors from all across the world as the servers closest to them will be used to deliver content quickly. A CDN provider such as MaxCDN can provide great performance without putting a strain on your pocket.

9. Avoid Flash Content

Flash takes a lot of time to load and can significantly increase load times. Flash should not make up the main design elements of your site.

Conclusion

There’s nothing better than a blog with great content and zero load times. Use the simple techniques above to improve the experience for your blog’s visitors while achieving maximum authority in google.

Do you know of any unique tips and tricks for increasing speed that are not mentioned here? Please share them with us in the comments, we would love to hear from you.

First Drive: 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo LP 570-4 Superleggera stupefies our senses

2010-06-17T16:55:00Z

Filed under: Coupe, Performance, Lamborghini, First Drive, Racing

2010 Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera - Click above for high-res image gallery

The explosive burble from the V10's exhaust coming off the back straight seems powerful enough to vaporize insects in mid-air. The Howitzer-like concussions shock through the firewall and slam into our spines an instant before the combustive dissonance has time to reverberate off the outside wall and into our eardrums. The menacing acoustics force the other cars on the circuit to back off, while trackside spectators crane their necks to look up and cheer as the Lamborghini rockets by.

We're at California Speedway attending the "The Ultimate Lamborghini Experience." This annual event allows owners to play with their exotics in a controlled environment free of driving citations and other pesky... um, slow cars. Since we don't own an Italian exotic, we have to thank Lamborghini of Beverly Hills for graciously bringing along the automaker's latest and greatest. In this case, it's the Gallardo LP 570-4 Superleggera.

Gallery: First Drive: 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4 Superleggera

Continue reading First Drive: 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo LP 570-4 Superleggera stupefies our senses

First Drive: 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo LP 570-4 Superleggera stupefies our senses originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HOW TO: Build A Twitter Strategy for Your Business

2010-06-17T16:34:46Z

Megan Berry is Marketing Manager for Klout, the standard for online influence. She also blogs at The Huffington Post and Brazen Careerist. You can follow her on Twitter at @meganberry.

You know your business can’t just wing it on Twitter, you need a strategy. But how do you get there? A lot of social media advice revolves around confusing, high-concept buzzwords: There are only so many times you can be told to “listen” and “engage.” Concrete advice can be hard to come by, and while this guide won’t tell you what you need to tweet, it will provide you with the real questions you need to ask in order to craft a Twitter strategy for your business.

1. Choose Your Audience

Who do you want to reach on Twitter? Be specific and limit your scope to the demographic you really need; trying to reach everyone isn’t a great strategy. If you’re a B2B company, for example, you’ll probably want to reach other businesses and the people that represent them.

Here is a quick example: Look up at least 10 of your customers on Twitter (a quick name search on Google can turned up their Twitter profiles). Once you’ve found some, look at who they’re following and who they talk to. These people could also become part of your audience. Look at how they describe themselves and what terms they talk about. Use those keywords and terms to find like-minded people.

The goal here is not to find everyone you’d like to interact with (that would probably be next to impossible), but to find people who might fit into your audience. Try to pay attention to who has influence in your audience. For example: who are people talking to, about or retweeting? Who do they seem to ask for advice? Once you have a decent group, move on to step two.

2. Understand How They Speak

It might sound like I’m giving you clichéd advice to “listen,” but clichés exist for a reason. You need to understand how your audience talks, what they like, and what they share. Below are some solid steps to get you started.

Look up what people are saying about your company. Are they saying good things or bad things? Are they asking for advice about what product or company to choose? Are they giving feedback about their experiences after the fact?
Do the same for your competitors. Note if your competitors are jumping in or influencing any of these conversations.
Notice the way your audience talks. Are they generally formal or informal? This will be very different depending on the companies you are tracking and the people you attract. It’s always good to match the tone of your audience.
Look at what your audience shares and retweets. What kinds of links and articles do they like? What kinds of terms and ideas get them excited or annoyed?
Note any hashtags or other ways your audience connects. Look up those hashtags to see if they have any real traction (if they’re all spam or if people are really using them to connect).

3. How Much is a Twitter Lead Worth?

This is a bit more theoretical but it’s an important step that many companies forget. The reason you’re involved with Twitter isn’t just to say you’re there, it’s because you’re looking for a good return on investment. So what is it that you’re after? It might be as concrete as sign-ups and sales or as ephemeral as buzz and brand awareness.

Depending on your goal, try to figure out how much each person is “worth.” This almost certainly won’t be an exact number, but you should get a general idea. For example, if you’re doing B2B sales and a sale is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, you’re going to have a very different strategy than a company with millions of users that makes its money from advertising.

4. Set A Goal and Track It

Setting a goal is just the start of your strategy, you also need to track it with metrics. Choosing metrics does not just mean tracking your follower count because the count isn’t always a totally accurate measure of how many people are paying attention to your account.

There are obviously different approaches depending on the size of your fan base. If you have a large audience, you might not be able to put a lot of time into each lead. Your overall goal will likely be about brand awareness and creating buzz for your company. You should consider metrics that capture overall influence such as retweets, blog posts and clicks.

If you have a targeted audience, each lead probably carries more value. You overall goal will likely be to generate new leads. You should consider metrics like sales, email sign-ups, @messages, direct messages and clicks.

5. Define Your Approach

The language you use to tweet and what you choose to share should be targeted towards your audience. This means you should be thoughtful and accurate, not false and calculating. For example, if you’re trying to reach knitting mothers, you’re going to using a very different style of language than if you’re trying to reach hip hop aficionados. Below are a few main questions to consider:

How formal or informal do you want to be?
Should you include buzzwords or hashtags?
How much effort should you put into reaching out to specific followers or finding new ones?
What kind of links and content should you share?
Can you do any special offers or campaigns on your account?
What’s the style of your company? You have know your company’s message and define its personality. Your followers will appreciate the authenticity.

Any Twitter strategy is a perpetual work in progress. Just deciding that you need a strategy is an important first step that will have you thinking about what and why you tweet. The key is to keep experimenting: Twitter is ever-changing and to succeed on it you need to be flexible, but you also need to know where you’re headed.

For more business coverage, follow Mashable Business on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

More business resources from Mashable:

- 6 Ways to Recruit Talent for Startups
- 6 Tips for Effective Recruiting on Social Media Sites
- 10 Essential Tips for Building Your Small Biz Team
- How Venture Capitalists are Using Social Media for Real Results
- 5 Surprising Social Media Business Success Stories

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, DNY59

Reviews: Facebook, Google, Twitter, iStockphoto

Tags: business, Google, small business, twitter

Top 10 Beautiful Minimalist Icon Sets

2010-06-17T17:20:17Z

This series is supported by Ben & Jerry’s Joe, Ben & Jerry’s new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. Learn more about it here.

Icons are an effective aid in helping users quickly find and gather information. They not only communicate information but help break it up and add visual interest to grab the users’ attention.

With thousands of icons available, with endless gradients, colors and reflections, it can be overwhelming as to what will best suit your minimalist design. There are alternatives to all those over-glossed icons, should you require a more simple, elegant design style.

Here are ten noteworthy icon sets which match the minimalist design ethos.

1. Iconic

Iconic is a beautiful set consisting of 120 icons in raster and vector formats. The icon set packages are in both PNG, SVG, and SWC image formats with Omnigraffle stencil formats also included. The raster-format icons come in 8×8, 12×12, 16×16, 24×24 and 32×32 pixels; however, if you require a different size you can create your own with the original SVG icons. Iconic also comes in 14 separate colors to meet most designers requirements.

The beauty of Iconic is it’s flexibility, with each icon rendering from eight to 800 pixels, while maintaining a high legibility. Many of the icons in the set come in at least two variations to further increase flexibility. The strict adherence to a grid system also helps keep the look of the set consistent. While the icons are minimal in style they are highly stylized yet subtle enough to be easily incorporated into most design projects. The icons were originally designed for a WordPress theme, and it is within a blog format where they would perhaps be showcased best.

2. Mono Icons

Available as a free download, this pack consists of 108 icons in a 32×32 pixel PNG format. While the icons are gray you can easily customize the color in Photoshop, by using layer styles and applying Color Overlay. In Fireworks, simply apply Filters → Adjust Color → Color Fill and choose your color.

The icons are simple, bold and extremely well designed and would fit well within most applications, perhaps best though within either a software application UI or blog format. The ease with which they can be customized and colorized make them an attractive option for your next project.

3. Pictoico

With over 100 fully scalable icons, available free for download, Pictoico is an attractive package which bundles both vector and SVG formats. It is the start of a visual initiative to create over 1,000 symbols which will be released to the public over the course of 2010. Pictoico aims to create a contemporary, simple icon which can be used in a variety of ways.

The icons could be incorporated into your online, print, mobile and software applications. The author even suggests utilizing them for signs in the real world around your street, campus, resort or even city.

4. Gentleface Toolbar Icons

Available free or with a Royalty Free license, the entire set totals 244 original icons (including eight cursors) optimized for 16×16 pixel size and available in 16×16, 32×32 and 48×48 pixel sizes. The set includes vector icons in EPS and flash SWF formats, which allow complete control to resize without loss of fidelity, color, and effects.

The icons include pagination arrows, ratings and voting controls, social interaction symbols, file system icons and text editor actions. These icons are extremely versatile and would be ideally suited to wireframes and software mock-up creation; however, they would also work well within software applications, toolbars, and even within iPhone and iPod apps.

5. PICOL

PICOL stands for PIctorial Communication Language and is a project to find a standard and reduced sign system for electronic communication. PICOL currently offer 3 sets of icons each totaling 517 beautifully designed icons. 16×16 and 32×32 pixel formats are available along with a SVG vector package, all free to download.

The icons offer a unique take on many of the standard symbols, such as application, firewall, internet, cut, copy and paste. Each icon has been designed to be simple, yet effective in conveying the message.

The PICOL icons were heavily featured in the History of the Internet video (by the same designer), which has amassed over two million views and explains the Internet in a fun and incredibly simplistic and elegant way using the icons.

6. Brightmix

Featuring 104 wonderfully elegant icons within one EPS vector format, Brightmix offers a flexibile package which can be resized, edited and colorized simply and efficiently to suit most projects.

The icons were originally designed for the relaunch of a newspaper site, and as the authors created and added to the set and utilized them for other projects, they later decided to release them as a free download. Of particular interest is the WTFPL license under which they are released!

The icons are an update to a previous version and include a wider range of icons, which would be useful for various mediums, such as presentations, iPhone applications, wireframes and software applications.

7. Token

A beautiful, minimal set of icons which is available as a free download or with a commercial license ($50), Token includes 128 unique icon designs, available as an ICO bundling of 16×16, 32×32 and 256×256 pixels icons, or as a PNG at 128×128 pixels. Each icon has both dark and light variants, and comes along with a PSD which includes the layer styles for each resolution.

Token was created as a sequel to the designer’s earlier icon set, Mnml, and has been regularly updated and expanded. You can now download the additional Token File Type set which includes 32 icons, has a dark and light variant, and is saved as a windows ICO that displays crisply at most resolutions.

8. BackToPixel

Designed in a retro pixel style, BackToPixel is available as a free download of 75 icons in 9×9, 18×18 and 28×28 size pixels, in both PNG and GIF formats. The package also includes the icons in over 10 separate colors.

This unique set also includes three button styles which are optimized for lighter backgrounds. The icons could be utilized especially well within a blog design (perhaps an 80s, old-school or retro styled blog) and equally well within both presentations and website design.

9. Eclipse2

Available as a free download, the package includes 116 system and 165 application dock icons in 16×16, 32×32, 48×48 and 128×128 pixel sizes in PNG format.

Whilst originally created as a replacement for system and applications icons, the simplicity and clarity of each icon means they would fit perfectly within presentations, as well as web and software applications.

You can also extend the set by downloading the supplementary pack for additional system and application icons (e.g. Acrobat Reader & Microsoft Office) and the complementary Syzygy icon pack which builds upon Eclipse2.

10. Helveticons

No minimalist icon showcase would be complete without including the beautiful Helveticons – a selection of vector icons, glyphs and symbols based on the Helvetica Bold typeface.

The purchasing options range from the basic set ($279) to the complete set of 477 icons with extras ($439), which includes a very helpful PSD file to inspire you on how to make the best use of the icons, with examples ranging from basic web buttons to strong logotypes. The set includes seven file formats of which six are scalable vectors as well as the GS format for Omnigraffle icons and CHS for Photoshop shapes.

The icons are stunning in their clarity and overall design and would be perfect for almost any medium, including; wire-framing, presentations, web applications, buttons and promotional material.

What other minimal styled icon sets have you discovered? Be sure to share your picks in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Spod

For more dev and design coverage, follow Mashable Dev & Design on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

Series supported by Ben & Jerry’s Joe

This series is supported by Ben & Jerry’s Joe, Ben & Jerry’s new line-up of Fair Trade and frozen iced coffee drinks. Learn more about it here.

Reviews: Facebook, Internet, OmniGraffle, Twitter, WordPress, iStockphoto

Tags: BacktoPixel, Brightmix, Eclipse2, Gentleface Toolbar Icons, Helveticons, iconic, icons, List, Lists, minimalist, minimalist icon sets, MonoIcons, PICOL, Pictoico, Token, web design

StopTech builds trackday BMW M3, takes pretty pictures

2010-06-16T23:58:00Z

Filed under: Aftermarket, Coupe, Performance, Europe, BMW

StopTech BMW M3 - Click above for high-res image gallery

The boys and girls at StopTech have taken the knife to the new BMW M3 - cutting unsprung weight and upping the horsepower to improve on the car's strong points. The company started by ditching the stock brake system and replacing it with - you guessed it - StopTech components. Up front, the car now wears forged aluminum six-piston calipers that clamp down on two-piece 15-inch rotors, while the rear has been treated to four-piston pieces that squeeze 14-inch discs. The company claims that the new hardware saves a total of 17.6 pounds of unsprung mass spread between the four corners.

The stock wheels were also sacrificed in favor of new rollers from APP. Even at 19 inches, they manage to be 3.3 pounds lighter per wheel than what came from the factory. StopTech then turned to Collaction AG Widnau to give the car's horsepower a mild bump. Final figures now sit at 450 horsepower and 325 pound-feet of torque, though neither company is saying exactly what went into making that happen. We're guessing a slight ECU reflash was part of the recipe.

The whole kit and caboodle was then wrapped in a special silver vinyl by CFC - a company that specializes in unique vehicle wraps. Tasty.

Gallery: StopTech BMW M3

[Source: StopTech]

StopTech builds trackday BMW M3, takes pretty pictures originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 16 Jun 2010 18:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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5 Ways to Build a Loyal Audience on YouTube

2010-06-15T19:42:06Z

Vanessa Pappas is Vice President of Audience & Strategic Partnerships at Next New Networks, where she oversees key partner relationships, builds out audience growth strategies and advises programming of the networks which include Indy Mogul, Hungry Nation, and Barely Digital.

Online video has moved from the niche to the mainstream and become a part of our regular media consumption. After five years, YouTube hit the milestone of serving one billion video views per day in October 2009, and just seven months later crossed the threshold of two billion view day in May.

With online video viewing rivaling some of the biggest television ratings, how can you stand out in this sea of content on the world’s largest video platform? Whether you’re a Fortune 500 company, a media outlet, a small business, or an individual, the questions are the same: How do viewers find your videos online, and what keeps them coming back for more?

Here are five guidelines to improve your video discovery rate and create a loyal audience on YouTube.

1. Create Meaningful Content

Online viewers are fickle — they are always one click away from skipping over to the next thing. So while content is king, the key to having your video discovered is to create the kind of content that will add value to your defined community.

Ask yourself key questions: Why would people want to watch your video? What relevance does it have to your target audience? Whatever creative format you chose to take, whether it be a vlog, how-tos, interviews, topical viral concepts, news-focused, or a scripted web series, you need to give people a reason to watch and share your videos.

One brand that has done a great job of this is The Home Depot. The company’s videos are not just repurposed commercials. Instead, they offer DIY expertise and insight on products and projects around the home. By creating engaging content that is valuable to the specific DIY community, Home Depot is able stay on brand and increase their chance of satisfied viewers seeing and sharing their content.

2. Package and Brand Consistently

More than ever, the challenge everyone faces in building audiences online is getting viewers to come back after they’ve watched that initial video. A viral hit is a short-term success, but how do people know to come back? Did you give them a reason to?

To this end, branding and packaging is crucial. Your brand will serve as a navigation marker in a sea of online content. Having a strong point of view within your content helps define your brand and position yourself as an expert and leader in your field — it’s a voice that they will know to trust and return to for specific content.

Machinima, one of the leading channels for video game content on YouTube, has been the most consistent in this, and no doubt their branding and packaging has lead them to garner over one million subscribers.

The packaging of your video refers to the branding expressed around your content. Here you can include graphic intros or end cards that reinforce the brand so that viewers don’t have to guess what they are watching. It also establishes how people can find more of your content by giving them a name to search for. Additional branding and packaging within your video can include displaying your URL or YouTube channel name as well as using consistent channel and episode description and title conventions that reinforce your brand. These are all proven practices that can help viewers find their way back to your channel in the future.

3. Utilize the Platform — This Is Not TV

YouTube is many things to many people, but above all it is a social medium. It’s where conversations happen, content is shared, and people engage in a very personal and direct way. By looking at some of the most successful YouTube channels, you’ll quickly learn that being authentic in your videos is rewarded while brand marketing that is disingenuous or without value gets few results. Big companies like Zappos and Southwest Airlines understand this, and are excelling via engagement.

To get the most visibility from YouTube, use all the tools at hand. People are not just watching content; they are “Liking” it, commenting on it, and sharing it through e-mail, Twitter and Facebook. By encouraging such activity through either specific calls to action within your videos or using advanced features like YouTube Annotations, you increase the chances of your videos being shared and discovered by a wider audience.

Another main YouTube tool is the subscription feature. By asking your viewers to subscribe, you can convert many of them into repeat viewers and guaranteed audiences for future videos. Above all, by directly engaging with your viewers — through comments, responses, and replies to messages — you can effectively convert fans into a mobilized marketing team. Reward them by letting their voice be heard and including them in your content, and in turn you will find they will advocate on your behalf. To that end, no marketing dollar spent can match the value of personal endorsements and word of mouth from your biggest fans. At our company, we’ve seen the “pass-along” value and engagement metrics drive upwards of 40% of our traffic on top videos.

4. Optimize Your Video for Search

Today it’s all about SEO. In online video, the same rules that apply to making your blog or website discoverable apply to how people will find your videos. YouTube is the second largest search platform after Google, so when people visit YouTube they often search for something specific. Optimize your content by creating smart titles and descriptions and by tagging with relevant keywords. These steps will help viewers find your content in searches.

A word of caution: Avoid spam-like tagging. This means you must avoid tagging everything under the sun or the latest pop culture icon or trend if that tag is not relevant to your content. Such practices will only create distrust among your viewers and keep them away for good. Remember, online video has a “long tail,” so your videos will continue to surface over time. Investing time in good metadata and paying attention to your archive will serve you well in the long run.

5. Partner with the Experts

We talk a lot about creating good content, but that’s no easy task. A lot goes into creating compelling and genuine videos that people want to watch. On top of that, building an audience takes time, and that’s a challenge for businesses that may not have skills in that area.

This is when you should look to the experts. There are many successful YouTube channels that you could partner with that have already built large audiences. A quick browse on YouTube’s “Most Viewed” channels reveals dozens of creators that are amassing millions of views per month with quality, original programming. Find a channel where the content is consistent, the community is engaged, and the subject matter (and therefore, audience) has relevance to your brand. These independent media studios and creators have dedicated untold hours to fostering a community that is loyal. Use this as an opportunity to work with those established leaders and tap into that audience to give your brand visibility.

A couple of successful recent campaigns include GE’s partnership with Howcast where they recruited key YouTube personalities such as iJustine, Smosh, Alphacat, and Rhett & Link to take a physical challenge and make original videos about getting healthy. So far, these videos combined have been viewed more than 9.5 million times, rated more than 250,000 times, and attracted more than 110,000 comments.

Through such partnerships, brands can have instant access to a loyal following, and as long as they respect the guidelines above and trust the expertise of those who manage their own audiences, the results will provide great exposure to a targeted community.

Conclusion

The above strategies are some of the key ways to develop and build audiences online and specifically on YouTube, but they’re by no means the panacea. Given the relative newness of online video, the mechanics are continually shifting. That said, these guidelines have proven successful for many who sought to reach beyond the hype of creating ‘viral’ videos to move toward building a consistent and genuine community around their brands or businesses.

For more web video coverage, follow Mashable Web Video on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

More YouTube resources from Mashable:

- 4 Tips for Producing Quality Web Videos
- HOW TO: Make a Great How-To Video
- 10 Killer Tips for Creating a Branded YouTube Channel
- Top 10 YouTube Tips for Small Businesses
- HOW TO: Boost Your SEO with a YouTube Channel

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Leontura

Reviews: Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, iStockphoto

Tags: audience, branding, List, Lists, MARKETING, SEO, social media, video, web video, youtube

DIY Moleskine Case Protects and Camouflages Your iPad [DIY Creations]

2010-06-17T14:00:00Z

If you don't add the Apple sticker, a DIY, Moleskine-style iPad case offers quite a few advantages over Apple's own model. It feels better in the hand, has a customizable backing, and, best of all, doesn't advertise your $500, easily-lifted device.

Commenter theDevilsDue pointed us at this how-to at the Modern Day Pirates site, wherein the author details everything that's great about the DODOcase iPad cover—except the long wait on shipping, and the $49.95 price. Inspired by the look, feel, and protection of an elastic-banded Moleskine notebook, he rounded up supplies and used a class in bookbinding to create a smart Moleskine knock-off case. Here's his supply list, the majority of it bought at Hollanders:

1 sheet of liner paper – $3.50
1 sheet of Imitation Leather Black Morocco (brown also available) - $6.75
1 sheet Davey Binder's Board .098 – $3.75
PVA Glue - Thin 4 ounces – $3.25
Black elastic ribbon – AC Moore – $1.50

Total = $18.75

It's the kind of inspired hack that caused Moleskine to finally make its own Kindle cover. We'd guess that the iPad's glass screen prevents the melding of a notebook with this case, but, as Brandon points out, a separate Moleskine now looks nice and orderly next to your iPad.

How to Make a Moleskine iPad Case [The Modern Day Pirates via #tips]

Turn Your Old Router into a Range-Boosting Wi-Fi Repeater [Router]

2010-06-15T16:00:00Z

If you're upgrading to a faster, stronger wireless router, don't chuck your older Wi-Fi box. With the magic of DD-WRT, you can turn your older wireless router into a range-expanding Wi-Fi repeater to cover everywhere you need a connection.

The advent of wireless home networks grew slowly in the past decade, but reached the point at which nearly every home with a high-speed connection had a wireless router that shared Wi-Fi connections throughout the home. Now Wireless N has become the standard at electronics retailers, promising faster connectivity with your wireless devices, faster transfer and streaming speeds between devices, and better connectivity. So what's to be done with your home's first wireless router?

Our suggestion is to install the open-source DD-WRT firmware on your router and turn it into a repeater for your main router, expanding your Wi-Fi signal to reach every nook and cranny of your house, and even into your backyard or garage, if needed. You'll be able to use the same password and security scheme, you won't need anything except a power outlet for the repeater when you're done, and most of your devices will automatically switch between the two signals when needed.

We've previously run down how to install DD-WRT on a Linksys router to give it many, many more features, including the repeater function we'll cover here. If you've already installed DD-WRT, then, skip to the section on repeater configuration. One notable difference in this guide, too, is that I'm installing a custom build of DD-WRT, the "micro" flavor, on a Linksys WRT54G ver. 6, or "version 6." Adam wrote his original guide in 2006, with a fully-DD-WRT-compatible Linksys WRT54GL router, and at that point, those who picked up a blue Linksys box without knowing about open-source firmware were pretty much stuck. Now there's a huge array of supported devices, and even my sadly restricted Linksys can run a Micro build, and Micro now includes a repeater function.

Update: A Note on Speed

Some intrepid bandwidth watchers, Will Smith among them, have pointed out that their own experiments with repeating signals has left them with slower connections. To be honest, I was using the repeater mostly for Google Reader in bed, and browsing and web working from outside the house, so I hadn't seen a noticeable drop in speed. A few tests at SpeedTest.net tell the tale. Pictured at left here is the result from my main router, a Buffalo model with Wireless N (detailed here), connecting from my upstairs office to the downstairs living room, then Buffalo, NY to Toronto, ON.

This result is through the modified Linksys WRT54G ver. 6 router about 10 feet away, connected as a repeater to the Buffalo router downstairs, and then tested again through Toronto. There is, as you can see, a download speed difference, and if I'd been using my Wireless N modem, it might be even more severe. So take a repeater for what it is—a slight trade-off in speed for a greater reach, with your mileage varying based on your hardware and connection. You might also note, though, that using SpeedTest's Android app, I actually received better download speeds from my office through the repeater than through the main router—for a smaller antenna, perhaps, connectivity can sometimes win over latency concerns.

What You'll Need

• Compatible router: Grab that old-but-still-works router and flip it over. Get the model number off the label, and write down the MAC address, while you're at it—the locations for both, on a standard Linksys "blue box," are pictured above. Type the first few characters of your model number into DD-WRT's router database, and look for your model to pop up. If you get any kind of green "Yes" listed with your model, you're in the clear—even the most pared-down DD-WRT build, micro, supports the repeater function.

• Firmware files for your router: In that same router database, click on the line that relates to your router model, then grab all the files listed there. You may not end up using all of them, but once you've taken your router offline, even if it's not your main router, you'll want to have all your files available offline.

• Print-out of your instructions: There's a good chance, if you've got a fairly popular router, that you'll have access to specific router model instructions on the DD-WRT wiki. You'll usually see a link on the same page as your firmware files; if not, go ahead and search the wiki. If you don't have a printer, or hate wasting paper, use a print-to-PDF tool like doPDF or the Nitro PDF Reader for Windows, or the built-in PDF functions in Mac or Linux. The reason, again, is that you want to be prepared in case you lose internet connectivity on one or more routers during the flash process.

• Ethernet cable & computer with Ethernet port: Enough cable to comfortably reach from your computer to the router you're working on, and a computer without any networking problems that you know of.

• A pen and paper: The paper for notes, and the pen for both writing and pressing and holding down the reset button on your router.

• At least an hour's time, and patience: Instructions for most routers are laid out in step-by-step detail, with very specific instructions. Even so, you do not want to rush things, or load the wrong file at the wrong time. Doing so opens the potential for a "bricked" router, one that doesn't work and can't be accessed or set back to its default, factory-fresh state. That's not going to happen to the patient, cautious firmware flasher, though.

Get Started

As stated above, different routers will take different paths to installing DD-WRT. There are some common procedures, and a general path, to getting it installed, though, so you can read along as I follow the DD-WRT Wiki's instructions for a WRT54G version 6 installation.

• Do a hard (30/30/30) reset on your router: A "hard" reset, or a "30/30/30," means locating the reset notch on the back of your router, then inserting a pen and holding it there for a total of 90 seconds—30 seconds at first with the power on, then yank the power cord and wait another 30, then plug the power cord back in and wait 30 seconds, all while still holding the pen. It seems a bit excessive, but trust me—I've had friends with electronic engineering skills explain just how finicky, and sometimes random, physical memory chips like those in routers can be at holding their settings or otherwise not completely blanking out.

• Set a static IP address on your computer: Most DD-WRT guides want you to set your computer's IP address, the one it draws from your router, to 192.168.1.7, and set a subnet mask to 255.255.255.0. How do you do this in your computer, without the router being accessible?

Head to Windows' Network and Sharing Center, usually by right-clicking on your network connection icon in the system tray, or heading there through the Control Panel. In the left-hand panel, click "Change adapter settings," then right-click on your "Local Area Connection" offering and select Properties. Under the Network tab, select the "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)" and hit the Properties button. Now in the General tab, change the first radio switch button to "Use the following IP address:", then enter 192.168.1.7 in the IP Address field, and 255.255.255.0 should fill itself in under "Subnet mask." Make sure you've got the IP entered correctly—Windows can skip the "7" part if there's only a single digit in the third section—and hit OK when you're done.

Firmware Installation

Now we're gonna get serious. Connect the Ethernet cable between your computer and the router—be sure to insert the cable into one of the numbered ports, not the port labeled "Internet" that's slightly distanced from the others. Turn off any wireless connection to your main router, unplug any broadband cellular modems, and so forth.

In the case of my WRT54G ver. 6, I had to create a customized flashing image for my router, with a designated MAC address written in. The MAC address is a supposedly unique identifier given to all computer hardware that can access the internet, one that allows networks to allow and block hardware based on this address. Your internet provider and the the cable modem they provided also tracks the MAC address of your router, and can deny service if a different router than the one the modem is used to servicing suddenly appears. So I followed the instructions for downloading GV5Flash.zip, unpacking its contents, then running the vximgtoolgui application and filling in the MAC address I wrote down from underneath my router, and pointing the app at a place to drop the resulting .bin file.

Now you're going to pull off one of those "hard," or 30/30/30 power cycles—hold down reset for 30 seconds plugged in, 30 unplugged, then 30 seconds again plugged in. When you're done, wait a few seconds, open your browser (making sure your computer's still connected by cable), point it to http://192.168.1.1, and you should get a prompt for a username and password. The default for my router in this mode is "root/admin"—yours can likely be found at RouterPasswords.com, or in your own DD-WRT instructions. After entering that combo, you should see the default router screen. A Linksys default usually looks like this:

In most cases, you're next going to head to the Administration section (circled in the pic), then click the Firmware Upgrade sub-section. It's usually a simple affair: a Browse button to find the file you want to upload, and an OK/Apply button to set it in motion. From here on out, unless you have my same exact router, you'll possibly have a different set of one or two files to upload, in a very particular order—follow your own DD-WRT customized instructions. In general, though, you'll be doing a procedure along these lines:

Uploading a "prep" file that gets your router ready for a new firmware.
Waiting a solid five minutes—no cheating.
"Power cycle" the router (a simple unplug, 30-second wait, then re-plug).
Re-connect to 192.168.1.1, see the "Management Mode" window, then upload your (possibly customized) specific DD-WRT image and hit Apply.
After seeing this nice little "Upgrade Success" message, wait another full, honest five minutes.
Open a TFTP program, usually provided among your DD-WRT files, and point it at 192.168.1.1 (your router). Select your specific DD-WRT firmware (a micro build, in my case), then set the retries to 99—But! Before hitting "Upgrade," power cycle your router, wait a few seconds after re-powering, then go for it. When your TFTP app has a green light and success message, wait another full five minutes, then come on back.
Undo the static IP setup you put in place on your computer from the Network and Sharing settings. Unplug and re-plug your cable, then open a browser. If you can connect to 192.168.1.1 on your computer browser and see a setup page for DD-WRT, do a (final) 30/30/30 "hard" reset on your router, then check that you still see the DD-WRT setup. If so, you're all set up!

Setting Up the Repeater

Now that you've got your oldie-but-goodie router set up with DD-WRT, you can set it up to pick up the signal from your primary router and re-broadcast it within its own radius. Here's how to do that.

With your computer still hooked up to the now-secondary router, head into the DD-WRT setup screen. It will ask you to set a better password and username at first, so go ahead and do that—you'll probably want to set up the same admin/password as your primary router to avoid confusion. Once you're in, your setup screen will look something like this, as my Micro setup on my Linksys appears:

First up, click on the Wireless tab, then choose Basic Settings. Switch "Wireless Mode" to "Repeater," and the "Wireless Network Name" to the same as the main router you're going to be re-broadcasting. Don't worry about the bridged/unbridged radio buttons—they'll set themselves later. Hit the "Save" button at the very bottom, but do not hit "Apply Settings" just yet.

In the "Virtual Interfaces" section, below that main "Wireless Physical Interfaces" section you just modified, hit the "Add" button, then enter a new name for your repeater—don't use the same as your router, or else suffer the wrath of confused devices. Adding "Repeater" or "2" to the end of your main router's name is pretty sensible in most cases. If you prefer an access point that doesn't broadcast its name, save that for switching off later—while we're testing our repeater, we'll be using basic settings to make sure the connection goes through. Hit the "Save" button at the bottom again.

With the main Wireless tab still selected, head to the "Wireless Security" sub-tab to the right. You'll see two interfaces again—a "Physical Interface" and a "Virtual Interface." In the "Physical Interface" section at the top, fill in the same exact security settings as your primary router—the security mode, the algorithm (TKIP or AES, generally), and the password any device would use to connect. You might need to jump back into your primary router settings to confirm these—that's fine, but do so from another device. Under the "Virtual Interface" section, set up the same exact security settings as your primary router, again. Hit the "Save" key at very bottom again and, again, avoid "Apply Settings" for the moment.

Jump over to the Setup tab at the very top, then scroll down to the Network Setup section under Basic Setup. The main thing to do here is slightly alter the "Local IP Address" from what your primary router is. If you connect to your main router at 192.168.1.1, for example, set this repeater router to something like 192.168.2.1, or another number that you can remember in the second-to-last position. Hit (you guessed it!) Save.

Finally, head to the Security tab up top, and in the Firewall section, disable the "SPI Firewall," and un-check everything under the "Block WAN Requests," except "Filter Multicast." Hit "Save" at the bottom one last time. Finally, head over to Administration, double-check that you've got your administrator password written down or remembered, and hit "Apply Settings" at the very bottom. Your router will reset itself now, so give it time to do so.

Unplug your computer's Ethernet cable, turn on a wireless device, and see if you can find your new repeater bridge. Connect to it, use the same password you'd use for the main router, and you should have success. If not, run through the steps and double-check your settings. DD-WRT's wiki page for WLAN Repeaters has a good deal of troubleshooting advice, so check there too.

You've now got a second Wi-Fi station in your house that picks up signal from the main router and offers it out to devices that are farther out. It's likely not as fast a connection between devices—it's wireless G, in most cases, as opposed to N. Then again, at this point, there are very, very few services or streaming applications that make full use of Wireless N's crazy bandwidth potential, so your Hulu streaming, web browsing, and other usual internet life will likely be unaffected.

In my own case, my wife and I don't have to use modern-day divining tricks in our very non-linear Victorian home to keep a spotty Wi-Fi signal to an iPod touch or Android phone, and a side patio has just become a preferred secondary home office for the summer. As a bonus, my closest neighbors now know that I'm a serious, serious nerd when they fire up their laptops. Here's hoping you find similarly fun and free uses for a Wi-Fi repeater.

How is your repeater working out for you? Do you have any suggestions on making the repeater more convenient, or another guide for DD-WRT, Tomato, or another firmware? We'd love to hear your comments, questions, and tips in the comments!

Drift Innovation helmet cam shoots 1080p, sports a rotating lens and built-in LCD

2010-06-10T17:04:00Z

Drift Innovation's HD170 is far from the "world's first" HD helmet cam -- heck, it's not even the first that does 1080p -- but we'll admit it's an attractive proposition on paper thanks to a tiny 1.5-inch color LCD and built-in speaker. While those let you verify your death-defying stunts were captured appropriately, an adjustable lens promises more freedom in the way you attach it, too, and at $329, the rest of the specs (30fps, H.264 compression, 5 megapixel stills, 1110 mAh battery, up to 32GB SDHC card) are more or less competitive with the other elephants in the room. Though we certainly can't recommend it without getting some hands-on time first, Drift's got some video samples after the break if you'd like to see how well the POV cam handles the open road and some skydiving Gs.

Continue reading Drift Innovation helmet cam shoots 1080p, sports a rotating lens and built-in LCD

Drift Innovation helmet cam shoots 1080p, sports a rotating lens and built-in LCD originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Top 10 Ways to Tweak Your WordPress Theme

2010-06-10T15:12:51Z

Brian Casel is a web designer and owner of ThemeJam WordPress Themes and CasJam Media. You can follow Brian on his blog at briancasel.com or on Twitter @CasJam.

WordPress is the fastest growing CMS platforms in today’s web design industry (yes, it’s a true CMS). Much of the action in the WordPress community is largely driven by the market for WordPress themes.

The vast selection of free and commercial themes is what makes WordPress so attractive. But the theme is often only a starting point for further customizations. Web developers and DIY website owners like to start with a great theme and tweak it to perfectly suit their (or their client’s) needs.

Many themes, particularly commercial themes, come packaged with a robust theme options page, which lets you to configure many aspects of it. You should check out those available options before diving into the code. That said, all themes are different, and sometimes you need to get your hands dirty to fully customize it.

Below are some of the most common things website owners like to tweak, and of course, how to tweak them! This article is based on the assumption that you have at least a light background in website design, code editing, and a familiarity with WordPress.

One general tip before we get into specifics: It’s often a good idea to make your modifications by creating or editing a “Child Theme,” rather than editing the “Parent Theme” itself. The benefit here is that if and when the theme author releases updates to the core functionality, you can easily update your theme without losing your modifications. Check out the WordPress.org Codex to learn more about Child themes.

1. Edit Your Theme’s CSS

If you’re looking to tweak colors, fonts, layout, backgrounds, spacing, and other visual elements, your best bet is to start by editing the CSS. Most of the time, your theme’s CSS styles will be located in the file style.css. This file is always present in a theme, as this is what defines the theme in the WordPress admin. But sometimes there are additional stylesheets, which may be located in a sub-folder.

The best way to track down a particular style and location within the theme files is to employ a browser web development tool, such as FireBug. It’s a FireFox extension, which allows you to inspect and tweak CSS styles on the fly, and quickly locate the stylesheet and line number you need to edit. If you don’t already use FireBug, it’s time to start.

2. Display Post Excerpts or Full Content

Sometimes, by default, your theme displays the full content of your blog posts on your home page. Let’s say you would rather display only a short excerpt from the post as a little “teaser” to click through to the full article. Or perhaps it’s the other way around — the theme shows excerpts, but you’d rather display full blog posts. Here are the two tags you need to swap:

This tag displays your full post content:

<?php the_content(); ?>

More info on this tag.

This tag displays your post excerpt (in the Edit Post screen, it’s the text box just below your main body box):

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

If no excerpt is set, it will automatically display the first few sentences of your blog post. More info on this tag.

3. Create a Custom Page Template

Sometimes you have one page that requires a unique layout — something different from the others. You’d like some flexibility in the HTML markup, but don’t want to affect all the pages on your site. WordPress makes it really easy to create unique templates and assign them to specific pages. Here’s how:

1. Duplicate your theme’s page.php file. This is the file WordPress uses to display your generic pages.
2. Re-name it anything you want. In this example, let’s call it pricing.php (we will be creating a unique “Pricing” page).
3. At the very top of the page, add this to the code:
<?php
/*
Template Name: Pricing
*/
?>
4. Modify the markup and CSS for this page template however you want.
5. Create your “Pricing” page. Using the “Template” drop-down, select “Pricing.”
6. Save your page. It now displays using the markup you created in your unique template.

4. Crafting The Loop: Excluding/Including a Category

Let’s say you’d like to display posts from all categories with the exception of one. This is a common request for a variety of reasons. One example would be if you have a featured posts slider at the top of your home page, showing posts categorized as “Featured.” You’d like to display the rest of your posts below the slider, but avoid displaying the same post twice on one page. Here’s how you do it:

Add this code before your loop:

<?php query_posts(‘cat=-8′); ?>

This will exclude all posts which have the category ID 8. Change this number to whichever category ID you’d like to exclude.

Perhaps you’d like to do the opposite: Display posts only from one category. Simple! Remove the ” – ” before your category ID, like so:

<?php query_posts(‘cat=8′); ?>

More info on The Loop and Query Posts.

5. Crafting Your Page Navigation the Easy Way

Many themes display all of your pages across the top of your site, perhaps with drop-down menus for hierarchical navigation. But let’s say you’d like to exclude a page from your main navigation. Sometimes you have pages on your site that don’t need to be right out in front, like a “Privacy Policy” page for instance.

Here’s an easy way to exclude a page from your navigation. Find this code, which displays your list of pages:

<?php wp_list_pages(); ?>

Change it to this:

<?php wp_list_pages(‘exclude=5′); ?>

You’re telling WordPress to list all of your pages except for the page with ID 5. Change this number to whichever Page ID you’d like to exclude.

More info: WP List Pages

6. Enabling Menu Management in WordPress 3.0

Let’s say you’d like to have complete control over your site navigation including setting your own order, including/excluding pages, categories, and external links. WordPress 3.0 provides an awesome new feature called “Menus,” which gives you this flexibility. However, you can’t use this feature unless your theme supports it.

Here’s how to change a traditional page navigation (using wp_list_pages(); above) to the new admin-controlled menu.

NOTE: You must be running WordPress 3.0+.

First, you must enable this feature by adding the following code to your theme’s functions.php file:

<?php add_theme_support(‘nav-menus’); ?>

Then, add your menu to your theme, likely somewhere in your header.php file:

<?php wp_nav_menu(); ?>

Of course, you will need to create your custom menu by going to Appearance > Menus.

More info: WP Nav Menu

7. Create a Simple Conditional Statement

Sometimes, you’d like to display or modify a piece of content depending on which page is currently being viewed. For example, when viewing your “Pricing” page, you’d like to display a message in your sidebar reading “Pricing Plans For Any Budget,” but on all other pages, you’d like this message to read “Quality Products, Reliable Service!”

Here’s how to set this up using a simple conditional statement:

<?php if ( is_page(‘Pricing’)) { ?>

<p>Pricing Plans For Any Budget!</p>

<?php } else { ?>

<p>Quality Products, Reliable Service!</p>

<?php } ?>

More info: Conditional Tags

8. Add Post Thumbnails

WordPress 2.9 introduced a handy feature called Post Thumbnails. As the name implies, it allows you to set a thumbnail image for a post, without the need for custom fields or embedding within the post content.

NOTE: In WordPress 3.0, this feature has been renamed to “Featured Image,” but the functionality hasn’t changed.

Post thumbnails are useful for adding a colorful dynamic to your post listings, or if you’re using WordPress posts as your portfolio. There are many other ways thumbnails might come into play. Here is how to enable and insert post thumbnails in your theme:

Like menus, Post Thumbnails need to be enabled in your theme. Add this code to your theme’s functions.php file:

<?php add_theme_support( ‘post-thumbnails’ ); ?>

Then, insert your post thumbnail image within your loop, using the following tag:

<?php the_post_thumbnail(); ?>

You may want to tweak the layout using some CSS. You can also add various thumbnail sizes, and cropping options. Check out this detailed tutorial about the Post Thumbnails feature for more information.

9. Add Something (Anything) to the End of Every Blog Post

Sometimes, you’d like to add a bit of content to the end of every blog post — something constant, like a promotional message about your services, a link to subscribe to your newsletter, an advertisement, etc.

The file you want to edit is your theme’s single.php. This is the template that displays your single articles. Open that file and find a good spot to add your additional message. A good spot is usually after your article, but before the comments, like so:

<?php the_content(); ?>

Your additional message here…

<?php comments_template(); ?>

Your theme may have additional formatting tags and whatnot, but this should point you in the right direction.

10. Add Google Analytics Tracking Code

Everyone wants to know how many visitors come to their site. Google Analytics is the most popular tool for tracking your traffic. Setting up Google Analytics is very easy. Once your free account is created, Google provides you with a chunk of code, which you need to embed on your site at the bottom of every page.

You want to add that tracking code to your footer.php file. Paste your Google Analytics tracking code just above the </body> tag. It is now included on all pages of your site.

For more technology coverage, follow Mashable Tech on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

More WordPress resources from Mashable:

- WordPress 3.0: The 5 Most Important New Features
- HOW TO: Add Facebook “Like” Buttons to Your WordPress Blog
- HOW TO: Secure Your WordPress Blog
- 7 Superb Social Plugins for WordPress
- 14 Fantastic Free WordPress Themes

Reviews: Facebook, Firefox, Google, Google Analytics, Twitter, WordPress

Tags: blog, BLOGS, CSS, design, development, html, List, Lists, trending, web design, Web Development, Wordpress, Wordpress Tips

How to Keep Track of Your Cellphone Data Usage [Mobile]

2010-06-09T00:00:00Z

Just as many smartphones added tethering support and enough great features that we wanted to use the hell out of our data plans, many carriers are moving to metered plans. Here's how to monitor your usage and avoid overage fees.

Photo by paul_irish.

In recent weeks, cell carriers have changed their data plans, opened up to tethering, and made cellular data subscribers worry about how much data they really use. With this guide, you'll hopefully find a tool for monitoring your data use more accurately, and more frequently than when the shocking bill arrives. We'll look at tools that work for straight-up cellular users, tethering road warriors, USB broadband stick addicts, and anyone who's a little of each. Great tools with alert capabilities exist as mobile apps, desktop applications, and, as a last resort, on your cellular carrier's web site.

Why should you care about your cellphone data usage if you never had a problem before? For a few good reasons. More carriers are offering tethering options with their data plans, and an Android upgrade rolling out includes tethering and mobile hotspot powers by default, but no carrier is waiving over-limit fees or eliminating stern warnings for heavy usage, even if you pay extra. Even if you don't tether, the release of cool streaming apps like Netflix for iPhone mean that those just using their phones alone should be aware of how much they're passing back and forth to cellular towers each month.

The Current State of Tethering

Tethering is simply a means of connecting your smartphone to your computer—generally a laptop and usually through a USB cable—so that you can use the mobile data connection you pay for on the bigger screen. Very few phones and carriers have officially supported the practice in the U.S., although that hasn't stopped those in need of internet everywhere from figuring out solutions, whether cracking older iPhone operating systems or tricky/paid Android work-arounds, along with other solutions, like PDANet's full line of tether software.

Recently, though, AT&T has made tethering an official data plan add-on. Pay $20 extra per month, connect your iPhone as you would for syncing, and you're good to go—except that you're now on a 200 MB or 2 GB per month plan, one that definitely needs occasional monitoring.

On the Android side, Sprint is charging $30 per month for (supposedly unlimited) tethering access through its new HTC EVO 4G, while T-Mobile has quietly allowed Nexus One models to upgrade to Android 2.2 "Froyo", with both tethering and Wi-Fi hotspot creation options, though the carrier institutes a "soft" 5 GB restriction/reminder on its "unlimited" data plans. On Verizon, the Droid Incredible also has a hardly spoken-of tethering feature, while other Android phones on the big red network can use less-official tethering tools.

Whether or not your carrier offers "unlimited" data, you'll likely be warned, or possibly even charged, if you start heavily using your cellular data connection as a net connection for your computer. So here's how to watch your data—on your phone, on your laptop, and, as a last resort, through your carrier's (universally cruddy) web-based account management tool.

Android Phones

3G Watchdog: It's the easiest to use and most versatile data monitoring tool I've found for Android phones.

Install the app (through the barcode link at its Cyrket page or searching "3g watchdog" in the Market), launch it, then give it your daily, weekly, or monthly data limit in its settings, and set the date when your last billing cycle turned over. Choose the threshold you want to see alerts for, and when you want to see the monitor's color-coded icon in your phone's notification bar. If you're serious about not breaking past your data limit, install APNDroid as well, and have 3G Watchdog actually turn off your data just before you go over. There's also a home screen widget, in both small and large sizes, you can add and monitor for a more passive watch on how much cellular data you're using.

NetCounter: Far more simple than 3G Watchdog, NetCounter has you set intervals it should be watching—today, this week/month, or a period starting right whenever you create a new interval—and does so in the background, pinging you when your cellular data usage approaches. It automatically launches on phone restarts, and can write out its usage data to your SD card, if you want to extract and take a deeper look.

iPhones

AT&T offers its own myWireless iPhone App that provides a good glance at how much of your plan's data you've used for that billing cycle. Fire it up, hit the Data tab up top, and you'll see your usage set against your plan total. Simple, no?

If you're not on AT&T, a few readers and Twitter users recommend Consume, which supports both international and unlocked carriers like T-Mobile, Orange, Rogers, and others.

On Your Computer

There are many, many bandwidth monitoring tools available for all three major computer platforms—as you can imagine, the folks who really know how bandwidth works tend to be the types who can code up their own monitors. We'll offer up just a few suggestions for those looking for just a workable, handy solution.

Windows: I've found BitMeter 2, an older version of which we'd previously covered, as a really handy kind of stopwatch for bandwidth monitoring. Don't let it start up every time you start your computer, but start it up when you're plugging in your tether tool.

You can keep a tiny, transparent data widget floating around your desktop, and set it so it doesn't interfere with anything you can click on your desktop. The app itself can notify you when you hit certain limits on particular network ports, including the USB tether you're using, and can track and graph usage over certain periods.

Of course, if you'd like a more stylish, whole-picture look at your bandwidth usage, the Rainmeter desktop monitor is the way to go. You can devote whatever space you'd like to specific bandwidth readings and counters. A variant and customization tool, the Enigman Desktop, is a nicely pre-packaged Rainmeter system that makes customizing your desktop very easy, bandwidth monitors included.

Mac: Your best bet is the free SurplusMeter.

It's perfect for setting up certain bandwidth limits in particular time frames. Set it to monitor the connection your computer connects to your phone through, and you won't have to mess with it again. It'll just ping you when you're getting close to your limit. You can manually tweak the amounts, see your usage over time on a graph, and otherwise control how much data you pass through the air into your MacBook.

Linux: Many, many options abound for Linux users. I mean, just look at a sampling of picks. But for a (relatively) simple-to-set-up monitor, try vnStat, which quietly monitors a specific network interface and charts its use.

Linux Magazine has a good installation, setup, and usage guide for vnStat.

Check Your Usage Through Your Carrier

If you're not using your tethered device at the moment, you can usually see how you're doing for your month's usage through your carrier's web site, or through a free text message or phone call. The operative word there is can—it probably won't be convenient, or detailed, but at least it's from the horse's mouth.

Verizon: For a free check from your phone, dial #DATA (#3282) and hit Send. You'll get back a (free) text with your total data usage for the current billing cycle. To check online, log into myaccount.verizonwireless.com, then head to the my data usage section.

Sprint: Log into My Sprint, head to the "My Account" section, then look to see if your smartphone is listed. It may not be, and you'll have to enter your phone's serial number in manually (as Jason found out, to his great battery-popping annoyance). Once it's there, look for a link under your device reading "Show all usage," then scroll down and click on "Data/Others" under the "Detailed Usage" section.

You can also dial *4 on your phone, hit 4 again to hear the extended menu, and you should then have the option to get all your usage read to you. Near the end, you'll hear your data usage read to you, albeit in slightly awkward form (to quote Jason, "You have used—twenty one thousand, four hundred and ninety-two kilobytes of data ...").

AT&T: As The Mac Observer explains, you log in at AT&T Wireless, head to Bill & Payments, click the "Create a Billing Report" link under Billing Reports, and choose Data Usage Trend. You'll then be able to see your data usage over select time periods. You can also dial *DATA# and hit Send on your phone, and you'll get a text back with your usage.

T-Mobile: T-Mobile doesn't make any to-the-moment data use tools readily available for its customers, as far as one editor's searches reach, anyways. That's likely because they offer a "fair use" unlimited data plan, wherein there's no firm cap, but you might get a warning if your data exceeds what customers have estimated as a 5 GB/month soft cap.

You can still check to see what you've used in previous months by logging into My T-Mobile, then clicking on "Bill Summary" or another billing area, and checking out the "Data" tab on any bill view.

We know some of you have been doing the mobile data thing since the days of Palm Treos and beyond, so we'd love to hear what tools you've used to monitor your usage, and prevent gotcha-style fees, in the comments.

Report: GM prices 2011 Chevrolet Corvette range

2010-06-08T18:32:00Z

Filed under: Convertible, Coupe, Performance, Chevrolet, GM

2011 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Carbon - Click above for high-res image gallery

The C6 Chevrolet Corvette has been around since the 2005 model year, but General Motors has made a point to keep its everyman sports coupe fresh with regular updates. For 2011, the big change is an upgraded Z06, with new Z07 and Carbon Fiber packages. One thing that isn't budging much for 2011 is price, as most versions of the Bowtie sports car have reportedly gone up in price but $20 compared to the 2010 model year.

The base Vette starts out at a reasonable $48,950, and if you lose the fixed roof, the price jumps to $53,600. Move up to the Grand Sport and you'll be staring at a $54,790 Monroney, while the GS ragtop is exactly $5,000 more than the base convertible. Move out of the GS and into the Z06 and the price rockets to $74,305. The Carbon Fiber package is $3,995 stand-alone package, while the Z06 Ultimate Performance Package (A.K.A. the Z07 package) is a healthy $9,495. The Corvette Blogger says the limited Carbon edition Z06 should come in at around $95,000.

The ZR1 gets by far the largest price increase of the bunch, as the starting price jumps $2,920 to $109,820. That's a $6,320 price bump from the 2009 model. Add the ZR1 premium equipment group and you're looking at $119,820, which is still a pretty handsome deal for the performance it offers. Head over to Corvette Blogger for more Vette pricing info. There are 19 different package options, 38 stand-alone options and nine tire choices.

Gallery: 2011 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 Carbon

[Source: Corvette Blogger]

Report: GM prices 2011 Chevrolet Corvette range originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LumoPro LP160: Quad Sync v.2.0

2010-06-01T17:00:00Z

Moishe Appelbaum and the folks at MPEX were never ones to leave well enough alone. Building on the sold-out LP120, the original quad-sync flash, LumoPro today announced the arrival of the more powerful LumoPro LP160 -- a second version borne of user feedback from the original model.

It's a lotta flash, for notta lotta cash. Details after the jump.
__________

This is the reason those LumoPro LP120's have been out of stock the last couple of months. They were not re-upped in anticipation of the impending arrival of the LP160.

I am told that for those of you who had previously unfilled LP120 orders (for instance, in Strobist kits) they are simply gonna swap you out for the LP160. You're welcome, internet.

The feature set is improved all around (except they kept it to quad-sync, cause quintuple-sync woulda been crazy...)

Specs

• Power level: Equal to a Nikon SB-900 or Canon 580 EX II

• Four-second recycle time w/NiMH batts

• Metal, screw-lock hot shoe (sync #1)

• Rotating head turns 180 degrees to the right, 150 degrees to the left for 330-degree coverage. (So you can aim the flash head and the slave in any two directions.)

• Built-in slave (sync #2, and extremely sensitive)

• Built-in PC jack (sync #3, until the industry finally comes to its senses)

• Built-in 1/8" sync jack (sync #4, giving you access to cheap sync cords)

* Motorized Zoom Head goes from 24mm to 105mm

• 7 f/stop range: 1/1 - 1/64th power in 1-stop increments

• 2-year warranty.

The LP160 ($159.99) ships with the following accessories: Slip-on ultra-wide diffusor, 1/8 to PC pigtail sync cord (for remotes) and a cold-shoe stand. Note, the stand does not have a 1/4 x 20 socket embedded.

Additionally, it has a "digital" slave that somehow ignores preflashes. I have never used one of those, and do not usually have to deal with preflashes. But for those of you interested, have at it.

As for road testing, I got to play with a beta unit for a while a ways back. My results confirmed the power levels, and the flash was very color- and level-consistent from pop to pop.

Essentially, it has everything an manual off-camera flasher could want, without a lot of TTL doodads to drive up the price.

I am excited about this not just because it is great value for dollar in an off-camera speedlight, but also because the improvements came largely as a result of user feedback on the already user-inspired LP120.
__________

:: LumoPro LP160 Product Page ::

New: Strobist Index

Best Personal Web Host: DreamHost [Hive Five Followup]

2010-05-25T21:30:00Z

Last week we asked you to share your favorite personal web host, then we rounded up the five most popular nominations for you to vote on. Now we're back with the results and a discount code for DreamHost!

Consider it an abnormal state of affairs in Hive Five world, but in last week's Hive Five the category of "Other" didn't just score highly—it took the majority vote with 30%. What does "Other" mean? You'll have to read the comments on the Hive Five Call for Contenders and Hive Five to see what your fellow readers had in mind. (More than anything it's probably a testament to the number of services available for the job.)

Following close behind Other was DreamHost with 26% of the vote, BlueHost with 12%, 1&1 with 12%, HostGator with 10%, and NearlyFreeSpeech with 10%. Check out the results in bar graph form below (click for a closer view):

Update: DreamHost contacted us and gave us a fantastic discount code for Lifehacker readers. If you sign up for 2 years of service and use the code 222 while checking out it will give you 70% off and bring the per-month cost down to $2.69. That's a great deal!

Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Shoot us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line.

Top 10 Privacy Tweaks You Should Know About [Lifehacker Top 10]

2010-05-22T16:00:00Z

With all the talk lately about Facebook's flawed privacy systems, it's a good time to consider what you're making available elsewhere on the web and on your system. These 10 settings tweaks and setups make your web life a little less public.

Photo by Jorge Franganillo.

Note: The most basic means of boosting your privacy in any computer system is encrypting your data, but that's more of a system setup than a slight change to your usual setup. Still, it's worth looking into if you've got files for your eyes only.

10. Run a Background Check on Yourself to Know What's Out There

It takes only a few seconds to know what Google knows about you, but there are many, many other avenues into your past and present on the web. Want to know more about what a potential employer can know? Consumer action blog Consumerist has a nicely comprehensive list of background check tools to try out. You shouldn't try and run them all, but at least get a feel for what can be known about you with just a few clicks. Photo by omk_489. (Original post)

9. Skip Incognito/Private Browsing and Really Leave No Trace

Private browsing modes might prevent your coworkers or roommates from seeing where you wander on the web, but you still leave plenty of traces for someone who knows where to look. Take the How-To Geek's advice and really browse without leaving a trace. Wipe away Flash cookies, clean out DNS caches, and automate your system so every boot-up is a fresh start.

8. Pick Better Security Questions

Some security questions and password recovery schemes offered by webapps are so bad, anyone with your casual acquaintance and a small amount of Google savvy could poke into your email whenever they felt like it. To get around weak security questions, use blogger danah boyd's security question algorithm. Instead of straight-up providing your mother's maiden name, use a scheme, such as "[Snarky Bad Attitude Phrase] + [Core Noun Phrase] + [Unique Word]," so that your answer becomes "StupidQuestion MiddleName Booyah," substituting "MiddleName" for the actual answer. If you're lucky enough to be able to choose your own security questions, Lifehacker reader James has written about the best kinds of questions at his blog. (Original posts: memorable answers, good questions).

7. Set Up BitTorrent for Private Downloading

BitTorrent is a public commons of file sharing, and that means that all kinds of folks interested in, say, what your home IP address is, and what you're downloading, can dig into it. With both a proxy and settings in your favorite torrent app, you can protect your privacy when downloading. Nothing's foolproof, but a few checkboxes and a different downloading path can do a lot to give you great peace of mind.

6. Know Your Google Settings

If you're anything like us, or most of our readers, you've got a lot of your life floating around in Google's cloud-based apps. It pays, then, to know how to set what Google shares publicly about you, how much of your search history is being saved, and how to back up your data so you've always got your own copy. These are among the 10 Google settings you should know about that center on privacy and data retention, though it's always a good idea to know the parameters of the spaces you share your data in.

5. Know How to Travel Without Being Spied On

Just because some countries have widespread net access doesn't mean it's an open and private web. It's often meant to deter dissidents in strong-handed regimes, but why take the chance of letting your web data fall into the wrong hands? One Lifehacker reader, wishing to remain anonymous and in a non-specific region, crafted a survival guide for traveling where privacy isn't respected. Using secure Gmail, carrying two cloned USB sticks, relying on KeePass and TrueCrypt for passwords and encryption, and knowing how to send data over the web without having it looked at are all good skills to have, both for traveling and in general. Image a composite of photos by hemmob and nolifebeforecofee

4. Know Where You Stand With Facebook at a Glance

Facebook has promised "simplistic" privacy settings coming soon, but in the meantime, knowing exactly what you've offered to share or keep private is far from transparent. One very crafty hacker at ReclaimPrivacy has put together a settings-scanning bookmarklet that shows what you're sharing beyond your social circle, and offers links and automatic fixes for those settings. Another coder, Ka-Ping Yee, offers a site that shows what the public web can see on Facebook, some of which you can then remove. They're both excellent eye-openers, both for your own account and for friends who refuse to consider what's being shown out there. (Original posts: ReclaimPrivacy bookmarklet, Facebook public).

3. Run Your Browser Through a Proxy

It's not something you'll want to do all the time, but once in a while, you might want to hide your online tracks. To do so, you can use the go-to web randomization tool, TOR, which has tools available for nearly every OS and browser. For a DIY solution that can work from any browser, we've detailed installing the free PHProxy tool on your home computer or hosted web space to get around restrictions and slightly disguise your tracks. You could also run a proxy through Google's App Engine, and go the full-tilt geek route of encrypting your browsing with an SSH SOCKS proxy. Any way you choose, it's a smart skill to have handy for dodgy connections and restrictive networks.

2. Better Protect Your Mint.com or Other Financial Accounts

The thing that makes Mint.com such a convenient one-stop shop for financial data and budgeting also makes it a gold mine for anyone looking to learn more about you, or know which accounts they could try to jump into. Security professional Jason Owens provides some smart tips on better protecting your Mint.com account that can apply to any site where you manage your financials. Key among them—don't use your regular email address. Set up a new email address you don't tell anyone about as your login/password verification address. You can forward its mail to your main email, sure, but if someone compromises your email, don't make it too too easy for them to get a hold on your finances.

1. Stay Available on Facebook Without Really Being In It

You might have considered quitting Facebook, but stopped short because it's how a few far-flung friends and relatives stay in touch, or a place those without your email address can ping you. We can understand, and, luckily, have a halfway solution to recommend. Quit Facebook without really quitting, as Whitson did. Create a new account, linked to a different email, and set it up so that your old friends are still there, but Facebook, even at its most Draconian, can't really reveal all that much about you, and your friends can't really overshare without your permission.

What steps have you taken recently to bolster your own web or desktop privacy? What would you like to fix, but need some pointers on doing so? Let's hash it all out in the comments.

GM prepping for 50th anniversary of Corvette at LeMans with one-off Z06

2010-05-21T00:00:00Z

Filed under: Motorsports, Coupe, Performance, Chevrolet, Racing

Corvette celebrates 50 years at Le Mans - Click above for high-res image gallery

At next month's 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Chevrolet Corvette will celebrate its gold anniversary, having run the French race for the first time fifty years ago.

The first party to mark the milestone will be this weekend at the will be marked by having the current Corvette racing team joined by 'Vettes and 'Vette drivers from the last fifty years at the six-hour ALMS race at Laguna Seca Raceway. Follow the jump for the full release on Corvette's activities for this weekend, and have a look at a dressed up one-off Z06 built to commemorate the pedigree.

Gallery: The Corvette celebrates 50 years at Le Mans

[Source: Chevrolet]

Continue reading GM prepping for 50th anniversary of Corvette at LeMans with one-off Z06

GM prepping for 50th anniversary of Corvette at LeMans with one-off Z06 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 20 May 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RouterPassView Recovers Lost Router Passwords [Downloads]

2010-05-20T21:00:00Z

Windows only: RouterPassView is a freeware application that taps into a router's configuration file, allowing you to recover important data like router login information, wireless network keys, and more in the event any of that important information goes missing.

Once you load the configuration file into the program, it displays your (supported) router's passwords, wireless keys, and login information. It can also decrypt ISP usernames and passwords. It could be really handy if, say, you're troubleshooting a less tech-savvy friend's router or if you happened to lose that information yourself.

RouterPassView supports a limited number of models, so you'll need to check the web site to see if your router will work with the program. It includes some popular router brands like Linksys, D-Link, and NETGEAR. Support for additional routers is planned for the future. RouterPassView is a free download for Windows only.

RouterPassView [NirSoft via Ghacks]

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Significantly Speed Up Your WordPress Blog in 9 Easy Steps

1. Disable Unused Plugins

2. Install A Caching Plugin

3. Choose The Right Web Host

4. Use Less External Scripts

5. Check For Hacks & Other Exploits

6. Optimize Your MySQL Database

7. Reduce The Number Of Images

8. Use A Content Delivery Network (CDN)

9. Avoid Flash Content

Conclusion

First Drive: 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo LP 570-4 Superleggera stupefies our senses

HOW TO: Build A Twitter Strategy for Your Business

1. Choose Your Audience

2. Understand How They Speak

3. How Much is a Twitter Lead Worth?

4. Set A Goal and Track It

5. Define Your Approach

For more business coverage, follow Mashable Business on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

More business resources from Mashable:

Top 10 Beautiful Minimalist Icon Sets

1. Iconic

2. Mono Icons

3. Pictoico

4. Gentleface Toolbar Icons

5. PICOL

6. Brightmix

7. Token

8. BackToPixel

9. Eclipse2

10. Helveticons

For more dev and design coverage, follow Mashable Dev & Design on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

StopTech builds trackday BMW M3, takes pretty pictures

5 Ways to Build a Loyal Audience on YouTube

1. Create Meaningful Content

2. Package and Brand Consistently

3. Utilize the Platform — This Is Not TV

4. Optimize Your Video for Search

5. Partner with the Experts

Conclusion

For more web video coverage, follow Mashable Web Video on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

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DIY Moleskine Case Protects and Camouflages Your iPad [DIY Creations]

Turn Your Old Router into a Range-Boosting Wi-Fi Repeater [Router]

Update: A Note on Speed

What You'll Need

Get Started

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Drift Innovation helmet cam shoots 1080p, sports a rotating lens and built-in LCD

Top 10 Ways to Tweak Your WordPress Theme

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2. Display Post Excerpts or Full Content

3. Create a Custom Page Template

4. Crafting The Loop: Excluding/Including a Category

5. Crafting Your Page Navigation the Easy Way

6. Enabling Menu Management in WordPress 3.0

7. Create a Simple Conditional Statement

8. Add Post Thumbnails

9. Add Something (Anything) to the End of Every Blog Post

10. Add Google Analytics Tracking Code

For more technology coverage, follow Mashable Tech on Twitter or become a fan on Facebook

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How to Keep Track of Your Cellphone Data Usage [Mobile]

The Current State of Tethering

Android Phones

iPhones

On Your Computer

Check Your Usage Through Your Carrier

Report: GM prices 2011 Chevrolet Corvette range

LumoPro LP160: Quad Sync v.2.0

Best Personal Web Host: DreamHost [Hive Five Followup]

Top 10 Privacy Tweaks You Should Know About [Lifehacker Top 10]

10. Run a Background Check on Yourself to Know What's Out There