Blogging

When I did this last year it was fairly well received. So here I am, a year later, doing it again. As usual I’ll share pretty much every statistic about this site (except specific financial details), and more importantly, everything I’ve learned (the highlights anyway) in the last year. [click to continue...]

WordPress for the iPhone and/or iPod Touch is now available from the App Store. Keep reading for a brief overview with plenty of screenshots.

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This brief will take you through the steps required to install WordPress - and all of its dependencies (Apache, PHP and MySQL) - in Windows Vista, using the fantastic open source software BitNami WordPress Stack. [click to continue...]

Hi all - this is a first for Simple Help, today marks the first time I’ve had a guest blogger contribute to the site - I’d like you all to meet Rebecca, aka Miss604. Rebecca is one of, if not the most, prominent Vancouver bloggers. Miss604.com covers everything from Vancouver tech happenings (she’s a live-blogging specialist) to sports, music and local events. If you’re a local you already know about her site, if you’re not, check it out to get a great feel for our city.

How to create a screencast using OS X

Resources: Snapz Pro X, Snapz Pro X tutorials

Using the absolutely fantastic WordPress plugin WPtouch, your site will not only look great for visitors using an iPhone or iPod Touch, but it will be significantly easier to navigate. Keep reading for a review and screenshots. [click to continue...]

If you noticed a change in your Alexa rank today, here’s why. Simple Help went from 77k (+/-) to 49.5k. If you have a site and pay attention to your Alexa rank, did your rankings change?

Contest details - to enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post. Here’s what your comment must include in order to be eligible to win:

1. A tutorial suggestion - is there a PC/software topic/problem that you struggled to figure out? Or wished you had a detailed tutorial to help you learn? Suggest it to me (and ideally check to make sure it’s something I haven’t already written). Linux, Windows, OS X - just something computer/software related (in keeping with the theme of the site…)
2. Which of the two prizes you want to receive - the first prize is $25.00 cash. I’ll send it to you via PayPal or as an Amazon Gift Certificate or even a personal cheque if that’s what it takes. The second prize is a $25.00 donation to one of the following non-profit organizations:
   1. Vancouver Rape Relief and Womans Shelter
   2. Electronic Frontier Foundation
   3. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
   4. Children’s Network International

   I will of course make the donation in your name and/or send the confirmation email to you.

3. Please use a valid email address in the E-mail field of the comment form below. If I can’t email you, I can’t tell you you won. Note: I hope it goes without saying, I would never, ever do anything w/ your email address other than send you a note telling you you’ve won the contest. I don’t collect them, sell them etc

That’s it. Oh - and yes - you can enter twice, once for each prize. Just leave one comment saying “I’d like to enter the first contest, and here’s my suggestion for a tutorial…” and then another comment saying “I’d like to enter the second contest, and here’s my suggestion for a tutorial…”. If you enter twice, you have to suggest two different tutorials.

The contest will run from now until midnight on Friday, Nov 16th, 2007. At that point I’ll get my room-mates to pick numbers to select the winners at random. Saturday morning I’ll notify the contest winners and post the details re: the winners here on Simple Help.

Here’s an example of a valid entry:

Hi - I’d like to enter the cash prize contest, and my suggestion for a tutorial is “How to join two divx files together into one”. Thanks!

and/or

Hi - I’d like to enter the donation prize contest, the non-profit I would like to have $25.00 donated to in my name is XXXXXX, and my idea for a tutorial is “How to copy a DVD in OS X”. Thanks!

Good luck!

Jamie of Blog2Life has finished the Simple Help redesign (99%). Based on reader feedback a few things have been changed already, and there are one or two more to go. But I couldn’t be more happy with the results, and couldn’t recommend Jamie enough as a designer/developer.

The entire redesign process was accomplished using the online tools Zoho Notebook, GTalk and email. Jamie put up with my constant requests for changes, nitpicking and borderline unreasonable requests, all the while never complaining. More importantly, he also introduced me to a number of tools and concepts that had never occurred to be before.

With all of that said, and now that he has some time on his hands, Jamie is looking to redesign another site - for free. Contact him and include the site you’d like him to redesign and develop. Be sure to include as much detail as you can (does your site run WordPress, Blogger, or on a custom platform) and he’ll get back to the selected site owner.

I’ve been waiting for them to roll out the “version 2″ features. Well, they finally have - so now I can drop the service. Here’s why - [click to continue...]

Using DeliCount, a free program created by the How-To Geek, you can find out how many times your site - and all of the pages on it, has been bookmarked on the popular social bookmarking service del.icio.us. [click to continue...]

In no particular order, here are my favorite posts from Blog Action Day 2007.

With all the recent talk over buying and selling of text link ads causing a negative effect on your Google PageRank, I’ve decided to disable the text-link-ads.com WordPress Plugin (ie. stop selling text-link-ads). That’s about $100/mo that I’m kissing goodbye just to avoid the possibility that Google might punish me. Here’s why - [click to continue...]

Why MWSnap doesn’t show up on every “top Windows freeware” list, I’ll never know. Version 3 has been around since 2002 (!?). Admittedly, it hasn’t been updated since 2002 either - it still works perfectly well in XP (I haven’t tested it in Vista yet). With the resulting screenshots you have a choice between BMP, JPG, TIFF, PNG and GIF formats, with selected color depth and quality settings - among dozens of other features. This “part tutorial, part overview” will get you started using MWSnap in no time. [click to continue...]

I have to admit, I almost want this one (BlogRush) to work. It’s like the little train that could. It came out of nowhere, had huge publicity immediately, and then huge problems, immediately. Today it rolled out the promised “Flavors” feature. So now I have a slightly more appealing widget.

The BlogRush CEO sent out another long-winded email today (I’m talking 50+ paragraphs) that I’ll summarize for you here:

-”we won’t rest” until it’s working great, acknowledgment of problems
-huge list of excuses for problems
-reassurances that BlogRush isn’t some passing “fad”
-huge rant full of threats to current “cheaters”
-we’re moving to a manual, human reviewed process for allowing sites into out network, and we’re going to review everyone who has signed up already
- SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL LOW-TRAFFIC MEMBERS: In the near future we’ll be giving our low-traffic members (those that need more traffic the most) the BULK of our bonus credit allocations. You’ll get a ton more bonus credits than high-traffic members because you really need it. It’s only FAIR!
-Flavors and “Filters” are now live. Filters allow you to stop certain posts from appearing in the BlogRush widget (ie. content you don’t want displayed via BlogRush).

Update: (later in the day) If you really, really want, you can read the entire thing here. And, since I wrote this post, the “Dashboard” section of BlogRush (the part that displays your ‘credits’ etc) hasn’t been functional.

Also, in the last 3 days, my BlogRush referrals has doubled to 30. But the average time spent on the site is pretty low.

Source: widget.blogrush.com
Visits: 30
Avg. Pages/Visit: 1.30
Avg. Time on Site: 00:00:21

Site Avg. Pages/Visit: 1.67
Site Avg. Time on Site: 00:01:28