A recent comment moved me to help out a fellow blogger. He’s a young gun and has a lot to learn but with the right motivation and dedication, who knows, he could really go somewhere.

FailureBlogger, I didn’t see a way to contact you on your blog so if you’re reading this, use the Contact page and get ahold of me. There are two things I would like to offer you.

First off, if you want to develop a successful blog you’ll need to develop your branding. You’ve got a start with “FailureBlogger” but I just don’t think having your blog hosted on blogger.com will make the cut. You need your own domain name! What better domain than www.failureblogger.com

Secondly, if you’re going to have a custom domain for your blog you’ll need to have it hosted somewhere. Luckily I can host it for you!

So here’s the deal. I have registered failureblogger.com and once it is active I will setup an account for you on my server. I will setup WordPress (since that’s really the best way to go) and work with you on getting a good theme up and running.

Ah, ah, ah!! Not so fast Mr. My requirements are as follows. You have to try your darndest! I think you have great potential, but trying to make money from blogging is no easy task. It will take hard work, persistence, dedication and lots of learning.

Thanks for the comment FailureBlogger!

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Alright, this is a heads up that this post is essentially a rant. Not quite but a little bit. A rant (to me at least) is a passionate expression of frustration, anger, etc.

I’m flat out tired and although I’m passionate about hating Friday’s, I’m just too tired to really care. Why do I hate Fridays? Well, it’s kind of a love-hate type thing I suppose. When it’s Friday, it’s almost the weekend but when it’s Friday, it’s generally the most stressful day of work.
Working at a Newspaper can be stressful in general but the last day of the week is just the hardest. Anyway, enough about the terrible day….

I have a couple good posts coming up such as a 10 step website guide, becoming a search guru, the dangers of blogging with a friend or family and a few other guides are in the works (but those are coming after the weekend).

Although I have made a goal to post once per day, this will have to do for today. It’s a weak attempt but hey, good stuff is comin!

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!

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By day I work as a graphic designer. By night I work as a nerd, blogger, web developer and movie enthusiast. Every now and then I’m asked what software people should use to mess around with their photos.

Of course, being a graphic designer, I choose Photoshop. Unfortunately for those people, Photoshop is generally out of their league. They are looking for something that is setup for basic image editing/adjustments.

The next question that follows is, “How do I get it?”. This one always cracks me up because if you don’t even know how to get Photoshop, you’re surely not going to know what to do with it.

ENTER web based image editing! With today’s modern web applications, there are some sweet web apps available online built to do exactly what the majority of these people want. They’re built with all these social networking, blogging, online photo album technologies (which is ever so popular these days) as well as the abilities to make simple photo edits and adjustments.

The most recent addition to this group is Adobe Photoshop Express (beta). It’s available for free, boasts 2 gigabytes of photo storage, easily allows you to share your photos with the world and offers a handful of features for simple/quick image touch-ups. This one has my pick.

Then there’s FotoFlexer. Some say FotoFlexer is the next best thing to Photoshop Express but I personally like Photoshop Express much more. FotoFlexer offers lots of nice filters and tools for your photo touchup needs but doesn’t quite fit the shoes of Photoshop Express.

Then we have Picnik. As with the other two photo editors, this offers a nice variety of tools to make the edits and adjustments you’re looking for (for beginners). It’s free just like the other two but has a Premium option for $24.95 per year.

Just as I’m writing this blog I ran across Flauntr.com which has tons of predefined templates and effects you can apply to your photos. Not quite the Photoshop abilities you might be looking for but certainly something you might enjoy.

All 4 of these web applications have 3 things in common. They’re all free, make photo editing easy for anyone and involve the social networking world to share yourself with all your friends (and even strangers ).

Plus, if you’re a blogger and happen to be away from your regular computer, these web apps could just save your hind end when you need to make some quick edits and don’t have the real Photoshop around.

Overall, I’d have to say nothing online could ever replace my precious Photoshop CS3. This is a big sign that as web applications become more advanced and more capable and it’s very possible desktop applications like Photoshop begin merging and even being overtaken by web applications. It’s just a matter of time. Know of any other cool online photo web applications? Post a comment and share with the rest of us!

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This is great! I found this list on The Java Me Blog and having a techy background I thought it was pretty funny and very true. Even if you don’t work in as IT but you are generally more knowledgeable about technology….this applies to you. I sure know it applies to me.

1. If you ask me technical questions please don’t argue with me because you don’t like my answer. If you think you know more about the topic, why ask? And if I’m arguing with you…it’s because I am positive that I am correct, otherwise I’d just say “I don’t know” or give you some tips on where to look it up, I don’t have the time to just argue for the sake of it.
2. Starting a conversation by insulting yourself (i.e. “I’m such an idiot”) will not make me laugh, or feel sorry for you; all it will do is remind me that yes, you are an idiot and that I am going to hate having to talk to you. Trust me; you don’t want to start a call that way.
3. I am ok with you making mistakes, fixing them is my job. I am not ok with you lying to me about a mistake you made. It makes it much harder to resolve and thus makes my job more difficult. Be honest and we can get the problem resolved and continue on with our business.
4. There is no magic “Fix it” button. Everything takes some amount of work to fix, and not everything is worth fixing or even possible to fix. If I say that you just need to re-do a document that you accidentally deleted 2 months ago, please don’t get mad at me. I’m not ignoring your problem, and it’s not that I don’t like you, I just cant always fix everything.
5. Not everything you ask me to do is “urgent”. In fact, by marking things as “urgent” every time, you almost ensure that I treat none of it as a priority.
6. You are not the only one who needs help, and you usually don’t have the most urgent issue. Give me some time to get to your problem, it will get fixed.
7. Emailing me several times about the same issue in the same day is not only unnecessary, it’s highly annoying. Emails will stay until I delete them, I won’t delete them until I’m done with them. I will typically respond as soon as I have a useful update. If it is an urgent issue, let me know (see number 5).
8. Yes, I prefer email over telephone calls. It has nothing to do with being friendly, it’s about efficiency. It is much faster and easier for me to list out a set of questions that I need you to answer than it is for me to call and ask you them one by one. You can find the answers at your leisure and while I’m waiting I can work on other problems.
9. Yes, I seem blunt and rude. It’s not that I mean to, I just don’t have the time to sugar coat things for you. I assume we are both adults and can handle the reality of a problem. If you did something wrong, I will tell you. I don’t care that it was a mistake, because it really makes no difference to me. Don’t take it personal, I just don’t want it to happen again.
10. And finally, yes, I can read your email, I can see what web pages you look at while you are at work, yes, I can access every file on your work computer, and I can tell if you are chatting with people on an instant messenger or chat room (and can also read what you are typing). But no, I don’t do it. It’s unethical, I’m busy, and in all reality you aren’t all that interesting. So unless I am instructed to specifically monitor or investigate your actions, I don’t. There really are much more interesting things on the internet than you.

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I’m a little brain dead right now so I’m stumbling around the internet and I ran across a list of 11 places to get a cartoon character of yourself.

I happened to find a cool character on stockxpert.com that resembled myself (as seen in the header) but there are lots of different cartoon styles. I’ve had a few people ask where I got the picture (people that know me) but it really was a stroke of luck type thing.

One of the sites on the list was CartoonMe.com which I liked more than the others on the list but it costs a few bucks to have it done….thats because someone is drawing the character from an image of you!

I think thats pretty cool because all those automated web apps that you use to design the cartoon of yourself kinda suck. Well, when you’re looking for a cartoon closer to what you really look like.  :smile:

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If you’re new to WordPress and you’ve just setup a fresh WordPress install, you might be wondering if you should do anything else. The answer is yes. WordPress is an amazing piece of software but without plugins and other changes in settings, it’s not quite all there.

So, first thing’s first. Here are 5 things I would do right after getting WordPress installed.

1. Change the default theme (you can find tons at themes.wordpress.net and how to use/install them here)
2. Change the default permalink structure to something like “Date and name based”
3. Setup WordPress with a statistics tracker like Google Analytics - Use a plugin or install the code yourself by putting the block of code provided by Google Analytics into your footer.php file.
   
4. Make sure you have a good setup for your feeds (I use FeedBurner - Plugin provided below)
5. Make sure your ping settings are setup right (I use PingShot with FeedBurner)

Ok, so you have WordPress installed and the basics configured. You might want to add a few plugins to WordPress for added functionality. Here are the plugins I use and would recommend:

• Akismet Comment Spam Blocker - Pre-installed, just activate. (Some prefer other plugins instead of Akismet but it works for me and newbies)
• Install FeedBurner FeedSmith to redirect/manage all your feeds at FeedBurner
  
• Setup Google XML Sitemaps
• I use the All in One SEO Pack but it’s probably not a really important one if you aren’t concerned about traffic.
• Setup a way for people to share your blog posts with others. I use AddThis.com but will probably be switching to ShareThis.com which includes an option in the button to email as a way of sharing.

These are additional plugins I use but aren’t necessary unless you need them or want them on your blog.

• CformsII - Makes it easy to add a way for people to contact you through your blog.
• Commentluv - I especially like this one because I like it when other people have it on blogs I comment on. It adds a link to the last blog post the commenter had in their comment.
• Subscribe to comments - keeps you informed of comments posted after yours.
  
• WP AJAX Edit Comments - makes it quick and easy to edit comments should that ever be necessary.
• WP Grins - Now this one I love! It adds the little smiley faces to your blog which I think are great.
• WP Super Cache - this one will save you lots of bandwidth and help pages load faster.
• XHTML Video Embed - this makes it easy to embed videos into your blog.

Thats all the plugins i’m using right now but I have a few other in mind that I might be adding soon. If you’re new to WordPress these plugins can really help bring some added functionality to your blog but beware, they can also slow things down a bit if you are using far too many!

It’s a good idea to get all the little bits of your blog setup and configured before you start posting away. It could save you from having to do much more work in the future and you’ll have a better functioning website/blog.

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