Entries from April 2008 ↓

So you can roll your tongue… but can you do a wave, a clover, what about a happy face?! This has got to be seen to be believed…

Popularity: 7%

WPDesigner.com is a site that I’ve visited a few times before to check out the free wordpress themes on offer - most notable is the jello mello theme that I’ve used for the maltese dogs site. I was really surprised to find out today that the owner has sold it on sitepont… and not only sold it, but for a final price of $66,000!

Statistics wise, the site itself was doing ’okay’…

• URL: http://www.wpdesigner.com/
• Page views/month: 896,000
• Monthly Revenue: 890
• Google Pagerank: 7
• Uniques/Month: 70,000

but I’m struggling to find a justification for the price tag of $66,000 - that’s more than 6 times a multiple of its yearly earnings! I can only assume that Mr Pawel Ciszewski is one cash up dude with a heck of a lot of take over and valuation experience.

The risks here for Pawel are enormous. He needs to replace the original blog owner - both his work AND his quirky personality. With a mug shot like this… it’s going to be tough.

With absolutely no theme development experience, Pawel intends to outsource everything whilst just sitting in the background and plugging in the doe. The first release of the monthly club theme is going have to be huge in order for him not to lose the existing club members who are already cynical of his money, money, money outlook.

Popularity: 7%

WP Premium is a theme released by wpRemix. I’ve seen it used in a few blogs I’ve visited, including itResource who was good enough to give me a free web hosting account (I have ample space on my current server but I’ve been experiencing some downtime due to dns server changes at my current host (Servers Australia) recently so I’ve realised the benefits of spreading my sites around!). So I’ve downloaded it and tried it out at sliick.com, which is now hosted with itResource.

What I like

1. It’s nicely layout out.
2. The dynamic tabbed sidebar for the search, archives, and categories is a great way of conserving space without sacrificing usability.

What I don’t like:

1. the tags widget is not well supported on the sidebar (it looks like crap)
2. I had to uncomment the_tags() line in the single.php to show my tags. Why not put it in by default?
3. the links on the black theme that I’m using are black which means it looks just like the rest of the text! I had to alter the stylesheet to make them blue.

The Conclusion? Whilst the dynamic tabbing is great, I’m sure it’s been ripped off a few other themes like the revolution or wp-magazine theme. The cons I’ve listed are such simple, careless design mistakes that really drag down the theme designer. It’s definitely not polished enougth to be deserving of the name WP ‘Premium’.

Del.icio.us : wordpress themes

Popularity: 6%

I’ve just discovered desktop blog publishing clients. They use the xml-rpc protocol which comes with wordpress - where have I been hiding?!

Remote blog publishing would really be awesome because most of the clients come with multiple blog account support so I’ll be able to post to all my blogs from one place and not have to individual log into each one them. How neat!

From this list of xml-rpc clients on the official wordpress site, I followed through to all their websites, tried a few and have selected my preferred choice.

• BlogDesk - free, multiple blog profiles
• BlogJet - visited the site, there’s a free version and theirs a paid version for 29.95 euros. Doesn’t say what’s missing from the free version so I couldn’t be bothered downloading it.
• Blog Writer - now released as Zoundry Raven
• Deepest Sender - not interested in firefox extensions
• Ecto - The main product is only for mac. There is also a beta windows version. I thought it was free but it’s not. Move on.
• Elicit - website down. too bad
• Flock - it’s actually a browser.
• jBlogEditor - open source but no longer actively supported.
• LIPIDr - website has missing links on the screenshots. No support forum, no active blog, I pass thank you.
• Post2Blog - Apparently the pro version was a paid product and the express version was the freeware. For some reason ByteScout has decided to make the pro version free. Hmm.. a free pro version! Good enough for me to try then. The download link was actually hard to find so here it is from download.com. This is feature rich. Has every feature I’ve tested from the others so far with the added extra of auto uploading images to imageshack so that i don’t have to use my own server space! sweet!
• Qumana - has a Q Ads feature that you need to sign up to. I don’t know.. just don’t get a good feel on this site.
• ScribeFire - another mozilla plugin. pass
• Semagic - it’s a livejournal client but it’s listed on the wordpress client page so it must be compatible. Also It’s open source so that’s a plus - I’ll be able to hack whatever is missing! I downloaded it, installed it, and couldn’t work out how to connect to my wordpress blog. Bummer.
• Zoundry Raven - looked great but the auto inserting of amazon links bugs me - (Yes, I know you can turn it off, but…) Also, the text editor had problems with making numbered lists, there was no resizing option for uploading to imageshack, and when I installed this as a portable version on my usb stick, symantec reported a W32 silly virus! - the virus could be a coincidence but I’m not game enough to try the install again just to confirm it.
• w.bloggger - nothing amazing. no imageshack option and damn it no uninstall shortcut!
• WB Editor - gotta pay mate.
• Windows Live Writer - Official M$ product. Looks feature rich. They’re trying to copy the google model by providing free products to win us over! I like it. It has plugin support so you can develop a plugin for it. Existing plugins include a digg this button, screen capture, picasa gallery link, and more..
• WriteToMyBlog - web based. ie. i’m not interested.

So my pick of the bunch?

1. Post2Blog. Because of the imageshack feature

2. BlogDesk. Because it is very simple and intuitive to use. Has just the basic features (multiple blog profiles, saves your posts to your harddrive, spell checker, etc.,) and is what I used to blog this post.

3. Windows Live Writer. Because of the plugin feature.

Popularity: 5%

The Australian share market has either passed its bottom or is very close to coming out of it. Bank shares have taken an absolute beating in the last couple of months and I’m of the view that they are severely undervalued.

The Bank that I’ve put my money on is the National Australia Bank.

They’ve recently changed their image (and their logo) to move away from being a business bank to something more personal and friendly for the average consumer. They’ve also introduced the ‘every atm is a nab atm’ campaign which I think is an absolute winner and will definitely pull in more market share - I know that if I was to choose a new bank to join, I’d choose the nab just because of that. I remember when atm’s and internet banking were free because it helped the banks reduce their teller numbers. It really irks me that banks have since charged $$$ to cover the ‘costs of maintaining the systems’ - What about the savings in staff numbers?!!!

Whilst you should never buy shares just for the benefits, owning more than 500 nab shares does come with some nice perks:

• no monthly account service fee on NAB classic Banking
• no transaction sfees for NAB internet and phone banking, NAB ATMs, NAB branch and cheque transactions, EFTPOS or NAB Visa Debit within Australia
• bonus 0.25%pa interest on investments in a standard NAB Term Deposit
• Annual card fee waived o selected credit cards (includes standard, velocity, gold, and amex cards)
• no application fees on NAB FlexiPlus Mortgage and NAB Tailored Home Loans
• 5% reduction on MLC Personal Protection Portfolio premium rates for new applications

Nope, I’m not an acreditted financial advisor so insert the standard disclaimer here about seeking your own professional financial advise before actioning on any of my recommendations :)

Popularity: 6%

She’s a 27 year old super model from Queensland. He’s a 63 year old Texan billionaire geek who founded Netscape. She says she loves him cos he’s funny and smart…

“To me, it was different to hang out with someone with something to say that was so interesting and important and who was truly, incredibly intelligent.

“He’s handsome and has so much charisma - and he’s so funny.”

Sounds like another case of the ANS (Anna Nicole Smith) syndrome?

Jim has reached the epitome of geek desire… but I think we’ll have to put Kristy down next to Anna and the two Kate’s as the world’s best gold diggers

Popularity: 6%

This is another one of those crazy stunts where if you’re the first to do it, you’re going to generate a lot of buzz around the world.

The guys name is Ian Usher and he plans to ’sell his life’ on eBay. Now, when I first read this on the newspaper reports, I though he was just looking for someone to share his life with, since he just recently divorced with his wife of 5 years (reading in between the lines, I gather he caught his wife cheating on him.. poor bugger). If you read his site, alife4sale.com, he is actually selling everything so that he can use the money for a bit a whole lot of globetrotting.

Up for auction is

• his house
• his car
• his Kawasaki
• his bycycle
• his jet ski
• his electronics (including home entertainment system, laptop, digital camera, etc, everything!)
• his job (well a two week trial stint with his employer anyway)

On face value, it’s stupid. The best way to get most value out of your auction is to split it into multiple auctions so that people can bid on just the things they like. By bundling everything together with his house, he has shut away thousands of potential bidders who may be able to afford his camera but not his $420,000 house! As stories of the internet age go though, traditional thinking is there to be tested. Since publicising this auction, he has appeared on TV shows in the US, Japan, Britain, and a host of radio shows aswell.

He’s probably made enough money from those appearances already but for the trained money makers eye, there’s more. If you poke around his website, he’s got amazon and adsense ads, and judging from the footer link - a deal with his hosting company. According to Alexa, the site has already spiked up to the top 100,000 most visited sites and backlinkwatch shows that it has more than 1000 link backs already. Turns out that this will prove to be a smart finance move for Ian.

Regardless of his money making motives, and the fact that he’s already made a killing, I’ll be keeping a close watch and come 24th June, I’ll definitely add his ebay auction to my watch list.

Update: Just read his post on his adsense earnings. How abysmal. I think he needs some serious help on monetising that amount of traffic from yours truly.

Popularity: 5%

Last month whilst setting up my wordpress mu domain parking system, I came across Andy Peatling’s post about how he pulled together a bunch of plugins and hacked away at wordpress mu until he came up with a working social network that he used for his college girl site chickspeak.

It’s pretty neat reading about other hackers exploits and seeing the fruition of their works. ChickSpeak looks awesome - the design really fits in with it’s girls diary marketing. The plugins that Andy wrote for this included photos, private messaging, extended profiles, polls, and user credentials. He also integrated bbpress as the forum for members to hang out.

Since ChickSpeak’s launch, Andy has extended this to create BuddyPress which is intended to be a full scale wordpress mu social network platform for public release that we can all use (ie. it’s not just hardcoded for chickspeak). BuddyPress was quickly snapped up by the Automattic Wordpress gang (especially since they’ve just raised millions in VC funding!) and Andy has joined the Automattic permy staff team.

Today, the official BuddyPress.org website is finally live. The code source is still very much in it’s infancy and it’s no where near usable but it’s feature list look very promising…

• Extended Profiles: The extended profile component allows site admins to create specific profile fields for their members to fill in. They can create as few or as many profile fields as they like, be as specific or vague as they want. Profile fields can then be grouped…
• Personal Blog: This is everything WordPress has to offer for publishing a blog. The only difference is that all administration tabs will be moved underneath a “Blog” tab…
• Private Messaging: BuddyPress private messaging works like internal site email. Members can message people on their friends list as well as forward and reply to received messages…
• Friends: Members of a BuddyPress social network can be connected together by one member adding another as a “friend” and then the other member accepting the friend request…
• Groups: Groups in BuddyPress are a gathering of members, blog posts, photos and any other user generated content…
• The Wire: This is a place where friends can come along and post to a members profile. This would be a short message and could include a picture and some basic HTML. The TinyMCE editor will be used to allow for basic formatting…
• Status Updates: Status updates in BuddyPress will appear on a member’s profile page. A member can update their status as frequently as they want to. All status updates are logged in a member’s activity log…
• Albums: Members of a BuddyPress installation will be able to create their own photo albums. These albums can be shared with friends and groups. Each member is given a certain amount of space, which can be set by the site administrator…
• …

so basically, this will be the open source version of myspace.. but much much better, cleaner, faster, friendlier! I’m a big fan of this and will definitely be watching this space. I’ve always thought that if you can somehow combine the blog, the forum, and the social networking, you could create a really addictive service. MySpace was v1.0 and BuddyPress is definitely shouting v2.0. Let’s hope it can live up to the hype cos I’ve got the perfect domain name to maximise on this platform - muhahaha :P

Extra info: You can keep up with Andy in his data stream page: Andy in Life

Popularity: 14%

I was just reading up about Twhirl which is a desktop app for Twitter and noticed that it was based off Adobe AIR. I’ve never heard of the Adobe AIR platform before but it looks awesome. Looks like a super quick way of building nice looking desktop apps. Definitely worth investigating when I have time…

Credit: Twhirl

Popularity: 5%

If you have a MFA (made-for-adsense) site, then this tip is going to be pivotal in increasing your CTR. We all know that you need to blend your ads into the site so that they look like normal informational links rather than ads. You can’t change the ad font type and size (it’s against google’s TOS) but you can alter your own site’s font to exactly match that of the ad! This is probably the most underused tatic out there.

To find out the stylesheet details for the adsense blocks, just right click on an empty area and view source. (Do it on someone else’s ad to avoid accidentally clicking your own ad!)

Here’s the stylesheet used for the popular 300×250 text box:

a:link,a:visited,a:hover,a:active{color:#e1771e;cursor:pointer;}
body,table,div,ul,li{font-size:10px;margin:0px;padding:0px}
body{background-color:transparent;font-family:arial,sans-serif;height:100%}
#aus{height:250px;width:300px}
#ads{left:0px;position:absolute;top:0px;width:300px}
#ads ul{list-style:none;}
#ads ul li{clear:both;float:left;height:58px;overflow:hidden;width:300px}
.ad{margin:0px 2px}

.adt{font-size:11px;font-weight:bold;line-height:14px;}
.adb{color:#ffffcc;display:block;font-size:11px;line-height:14px;}
.adu{color:#b3b3b3;font-size:10px;line-height:12px;overflow:hidden;white-space:nowrap}

.adus{cursor:pointer;}.adc{width:100%;height:58px;table-layout:fixed;overflow:hidden}
#abgi{left:220px;position:absolute;top:233px}
#aubg{background-color:#333333;border:0px solid #333333;height:250px;width:300px}

The two important classes are the adt (ad title) and the adb (ad body). As you can see the

• font-family is arial,sans-serif
• font-size is 11px
• line-height is 14px

Unfortunately, the style sheet changes depending on the number of ads in the box. I just try to accomodate the most common one which is four ads and a font size of 11px.

Popularity: 6%