The Apple iPad will start shipping on April 3 and with it, a new media form.

John Makinson, CEO of Penguin Books, demonstrated the electronic books on Tuesday and I’m sure jaws dropped. The touch-based navigation and interactive elements make this a new breed of electronic book.

Related Buzzwords:
* Gamechanger
* Transmedia

Related Posts:
* First Look: How Penguin Will Reinvent Books With iPad (PaidContent.com)
* Apple iPad Coming to U.S. on April 3 (Mashable.com)
* Wired Magazing Goes Tablet
* Apple iPad Challenge. Are You Up To It?

Google Analytics allows you to collect and see statistics over your blog site traffic. You can see the number of visitors, referral sources, and the keywords that are driving people to your site.

I’m going to show you how to set up Google Analytics on a WordPress site. This video only applies to WordPress.org blogs, not to WordPress.com sites. Click here if you are a WordPress.com user. Otherwise, enjoy the video:

WordPress.com
Because WordPress.com does not support JavaScript, you cannot load Google Analytics. As of now, there is no way around this. If you have a WordPress.com blog and want to capture some statistics then you can use GetClicky. This site allows you to get some site stats but nowhere near the kind of information you can get from Google Analytics.

The other way to get site statistics is to use the built-in stats viewer in WordPress.com’s Dashboard. Here are a couple of views:

The Dashboard view:

Part of the “More Details” WordPress.com view:

So there you have it, installing Google Analytics on a WordPress.org and tips for checking stats on WordPress.com.

Do you have any questions? Leave a comment and don’t forget to squeeze the tube below and subscribe to my YouTube Channel (cinemaluna).

[This is a follow-up post to "Foursquare Stalkers Go IRL."]

I usually don’t post my Foursquare location until after I leave. At dinner we decided to dine-in instead of takeout but by then the post was out and also over to Twitter.

As we waited for my salmon on brown rice plate, the cashier spoke my name into the microphone.

I never thought not to pick up the phone. Foursquare was fresh on my mind since I had recently written a blog post on PleaseRobMe.com, the stalker-enabler site.

As I went to the phone I figured someone was playing a prank and I would see this through. I didn’t recognize the voice on the phone that immediately started calling me “the biggest [insert homophobic language]“. There was nothing funny about that and the voice was even, as if he had done the same thing a dozen times earlier that night. I could tell from the stupid questions he was asking that he was trying to offend me, but still keep me on the line. I figured he was getting his jollies by recording the conversation so I hung up.

That evening I tried to figure out who it was and started closing up accounts and blocking people. My list grew longer and longer as I became more paranoid. Was it the PleaseRobMe guys, pissed because I linked to their Whois information on my blog post, exposing their address? Was it the Mayor of the place I visited, warning me off of his territory? I didn’t know.

The next morning I started some serious searching on Google and Twitter. Eventually I searched for “called me Foursquare” and found someone else who had the same thing happen to him. I kept digging and a reply to his tweet led to this PhoneLosers.com post. The site users had been stalking several people using Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook and posting about their exploits.

After looking through their site, I didn’t find my name on it so I couldn’t positively tell if they were the ones calling, but I was 99% sure. It was the same thing they did to the other guy. I figured the caller didn’t get enough satisfaction from my hanging up so he never posted to the site and went on to harass someone else.

Energy is very important to me. I’m very careful about the kind of energy I let into my life. After doing more research on the PhoneLosers site members, I saw some seriously creepy stuff so I left it and didn’t tweet about it or post about it for several days. It wasn’t until I told some people about it at a tweetup that I decided to review the site again.

They were now stalking dozens of people.

I felt bad that I hadn’t exposed the site earlier but I can’t do anything about the past. There is only the now and I’m acting now by working to close their juvenile operation.

I love our online community. I love playing in it and oversharing. And won’t let some loser site piss in my paddling pool without making waves of my own.

Related Posts
* Foursquare Stalkers Go IRL
* New Site Aims To Scare Foursquare Users – PleaseRobMe.com
* Are We All Asking to Be Robbed? (Mashable)

I posted this review of Steve Garfield’s book, “Get Seen: Online Video Secrets To Building your Business” to Amazon.com. In the spirit of my 2010 mantra “Own your own stuff”, I’m re-publishing my review here.

The Amazon.com Review

Get Seen is a MUST for anyone looking at doing online video. I’ve been following Steve Garfield’s work for almost two years now and couldn’t wait to pick up a copy of Get Seen and pour through it. This book doesn’t just talk about how important video will be, it shows you step-by-step how to use the tools. You learn practical tips, expert analysis on the best ways to use cameras, Web sites, and social media tools.

I highly recommend Get Seen and you owe it to yourself to also follow up and follow Steve’s blog, Twitter account, and other digital trails.

———-
Shameless Affiliate Link

Twitter has been giving my @jesseluna account the cold shoulder, not displaying tweets from others for over 8 hours. It’s 9:09AM Pacific Time and the last tweet update was at 35 minutes after midnight.

Apparently I’m not the only as The Next Web reports that many accounts have been affected. TheTwitter blog has not posted any information on this freeze out yet.

I can see Replies and tweets that use hashtags that I follow but that’s it. The Next Web also points out that you can see updated tweets using the Twitter Lists feature.

Hopefully Twitter can patch things up soon. Until this gets resolved, I’ll focus on conversing (not just reading posts or retweeting) then probably head over to Facebook to see what’s going on in the world.

Did your account freeze up? Did you jump to another social networking site? If so, which one?

Will these self-identified stalkers ruin your cyber community? Or will we ban these bullies from our playground?

A site called PhoneLosers.com has been stalking dozens of people using Foursquare, Twitter search, and Facebook. Supposedly, their main goal is to prank people and get them to post about them or the event.

This is part of the PhoneLosers.com forum post by someone named RBCP (appears to also be @rbcp on Twitter), urging people to stalk Foursquare users:

Make a new thread in this board for each person you stalk. If that gets out of hand, we’ll figure out a different way to organize it. It would be cool to include a phone call with your stalking, but I guess a transcript would work too. Most Twitterers are such attention whores that they’ll post about being stalked too. Or they might Facebook it, so check their Facebooks too and post their reactions in the thread you create. – RBCP

The name on the Whois listing for PhoneLosers.com lists a “Brad Carter” as the domain registrant.

There’s also a @PhoneLosers Twitter account and it shamelessly tweeted out:

Stalking people on FourSquare is fun! Come and listen to the sound clips at http://www.phonelosers.com/index.php?board=61.0 – @phonelosers

I have emailed Foursquare, GoDaddy (the domain host), and Twitter so they are aware of the situation and can take action.

One of the best ways to tell your blog visitors about your Facebook presence is by using a Facebook Fan Badge. This allows users to click a button and join your Fan page and to click through to your Facebook account.

Quick note, are you looking for information on the Facebook Fan Widget? If so, click here.

To add the Facebook Fan Badge Widget:

1. Go to the Facebook Fan Badge Widget page. You will need to be logged into Facebook to access this page.

2. The “Select a Page” drop down box will show all of the fan pages you have joined. By default, the Fan Badge Preview section on the right will show the first fan page in your fan page list. Select your fan page and the Fan Badge Preview will update.

3. When you select your fan page, the “Copy the code below and paste it on your website” textbox will update with the correct code. Copy the code. Pro-tip: I like to keep a text file open (like Notepad) so I can paste in and label code. I do this in case I totally forget what I just copied and end up copying something else into my clipboard. It saves time and my sanity. ;)

4. Log into your blog, and add a text widget to your blog, paste in the code, and save your changes. This part of the process will be different depending on your blogging system.

For WordPress.com and WordPress.org (custom install) users
1. Log into WordPress.com
2. From your blog’s dashboard, go to the Appearance> Widgets page
3. Assuming you have at least one sidebar, click + drag a Text widget to your sidebar
4. Set a title. I used “Join My Facebook Fan Page” as the title
5. Paste in the code that we copied from the Facebook Fan Badge page. If it is no longer in your clipboard, you can copy it from your temporary text file mentioned in the Pro-tip above.
6. Save then Close and you’re set.

This is a screenshot of adding the badge to WordPress.com (click to enlarge):

Adding the widget to WordPress.com and WordPress installs is fairly easy but to add them to Tumblr and Posterous take more work and you have to muck around in the HTML. I’ll show you exactly how to do that.

For Tumblr users:
1. Log into your Tumblr account
2. Click on the Customize link button (upper right part of the page with the wrench icon)
3. Click on the “Theme” tab at the top of the page. We’re assuming you have Advanced HTML turned ON for your theme.
4. Navigate to the part of the theme where you want the badge to show up. I put mine right below a FormSpring widget which shows up under the Archive/RSS segment.
5. Click on the Update Preview button to see your changes.
6. After adding the exact code the box was slightly our of whack so you may have to tweak the colors a bit. Once you’ve done that, click on the Save & Close button and you’re set.

This is where I added in the Facebook code (click to enlarge):

For Posterous users (requires Advance Theme view to be turned on):
1. Log into your Posterous account
2. Go to the Settings page by mousing over the upper right section of he page and clicking on “Settings” button
3. Click on the big “Theme and Customize My Site” button
4. Click on the Advanced tab in the upper left hand side of the page
5. Once again, you’ll need to have Custom Theming turned on to proceed. If you do, you’ll see HTML template code in the top window. Expand the window by clicking on the “Expand” link
6. Navigate to where you would like to add your badgeand paste it in. I added my badge right below the “Subscribe via RSS” link

This is what the RSS link template code look like. Paste your badge code right after this section (it ended up being 90% down towards the end of the template page on my theme). Click to enlarge:

So we just learned how to add a Facebook Fan Badge to your blog site. If you desprately need help with doing this with one of the other blogging platforms, leave a comment below and I’ll update this blog post with those instructions. M’Kay?

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Whoa there big feller, how to I display the fan pictures and my Facebook feed like on some other sites?

Facebook has several types of goodies for sites and one of them is a Facebook Fan Widget (not the same thing as the badge). The Fan Widget uses JavaScript code so some blogging systems do not allow them. WordPress.org blogs do allow them since they are installed on one’s own server but WordPress.com does not allow them because of the JavaScript.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDG) were decided upon by 191 countries in 2000. With only 5 years to go, 8 top filmmakers got together to mobilize others into action. They created 8 short videos which were compiled into the feature film “8.” Each of the short stories focuses on one of the MDGs which are:

1) Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger
2) Achieving universal primary education
3) Promoting gender equality
4) Reducing child mortality
5) Improving maternal health
6) Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7) Ensuring environmental sustainability
8) Creating global partnerships for development

I spent a week at the United Nations in 2002 so I have a very personal connection to this mission and hope to become more involved.

You can find out more about the project by visiting NoTimeLeft.org and by viewing the videos on YouTube.

I was particularly taken with the way the global partnership and develpment video was created. The story was directed by Wim Wenders and is below.

One of my themes for 2010 is Own Your Content. In that light, I’m sharing the Amazon.com review I did of Aaron Brazell’s WordPress Bible.

Here is the text of my Amazon review for the WordPress Bible:

I’ve been developing Web sites for over 12 years and jumped into WordPress design about two years ago.

This book will help me super charge my development. Having come from a .Net developing background, I’ve only been tweaking PHP code and using software to create 80% of my new theme code. This book will give me the tools to further explore the code and learn how to do things from scratch.

In addition, the WordPress Bible provides great sets of “cheat sheets” to help figure out some of the complexities of theme layouts, the dreaded loop, and other structures.

I’ve also been Alpha testing the WordPress 3.0 code and the contents of the book are still highly relevant. In fact, I’ve never used the WordPress MU functionality but will take the tips and information in this book to help direct me on the 3.0 multi-site setup which is still being developed.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in taking their blogs to the next level and for WordPress designers and developers. I can’t wait to use the book to get under the hood of my next project and super charge that sucker.

* Direct link to my Amazon Review Feel free to “Like” it or leave a comment there.
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As you decide where to spend your hard-earned money, I recommend the WordPress Bible for WordPress developers and theme designers. WordPress beginners (non-developers) might have trouble understanding it so you should browse through the book before buying it.

I would have liked to have seen more information on adding video to blogs since I’m a lifestreamer and do a lot of video. But photo bloggers will be happy since the book does have a special section for them.

I tweeted a link to this image on Posterous when I went to purchase the WordPress Bible. Despite Chuck Norris’s will, I only purchased the WP Bible. :)

Shameless Affiliate link so you can buy a copy or three:

(Note/reminder: The Chuck Norris book is not included, although it really wants to be)