All posts in Blogging

Blogger in prison being released, yay Dante!

by Chris M on January 15, 2012 in Blogging, Internet, World News with No comments

I blogged about a guy who was caught with drugs being imprisoned for over 600 days at the beginning of last year. I knew the guy through Reddit and because I am close to those who built the website for him so he could carry on blogging from prison whilst he served his sentence.

I’ve read every single post he’s written whilst he’s been locked up and it’s been like web reality TV to an extent, but obviously far more serious and quite sad to be honest. I’ve found myself sitting at the computer wondering how difficult it would be and as silly as it might sound, I feel that I’m a more honest man thanks to Dante’s eye opening posts.

I’ve got some good news though (I say good because I’ve known him and I never felt he deserved what he got), check this out:

In less than a week, I’ll walk out the door of Sheridan Federal Prison and begin serving the tail end of my time at a halfway house in Los Angeles, California.

My grasp of the English language is not adequate enough to properly describe the range of emotion that comes with the thought of me finally finishing the last leg of this journey I’m on. But it’s like I’ve been lost at sea, and finally see a hairline of land creeping over the horizon.

I’m almost home.

That’s right! He’s being released from prison!

See you on the other side, Dante.

Attention Bloggers: PAIA by 31st December 2011

by Chris M on December 20, 2011 in Blogging, Business with 7 Comments

Before I write this post I’d like to state that I’m not a lawyer nor an accountant, so what I write below is based on my research and my opinion thereof.

The Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) states that anyone who trades in any way needs to register for PAIA. People who do not register by the 31st of December 2011 could be fined up to R15,000 and face prison time of 2 years.

If you have a blog and you accept payment for advertising, you are going to need to register – you will need to complete your PAIA forms and link to them from the bottom of your website.

I was sent the following form from Shelf Company Warehouse – click here – which I had to complete and they submitted it for me. At this point I’m not sure if anyone can do this or if it’s only for clients of the Shelf Company Warehouse, but worst case scenario, you could still use the template to complete your PAIA and submit it yourself.

If you do some research, you’ll see that this isn’t a joke and that everyone should be making a big move to getting registered – I don’t want to see a case where a local blogger is made an example of!

I’ll be adding my PAIA docs to iMod shortly :)

Top 10 posts on iMod during 2011

by Chris M on December 9, 2011 in Blogging with 2 Comments

I saw Rafiq do a post on his top 10 posts of 2011 and decided to do one of my own, so here are the top ten most popular posts on iMod, based on read count, for the year of 2011:

  1. MXit on your Computer – MXit continues to be one of those keywords that gets thousands and thousands of searches.
  2. New Facebook Profile Page Preview – Hah, caught this one early, pwned the SERPs and chomped the traffic.
  3. South Africa iPhone 4 Pricelist – Ah yes, the long awaited for arrival of what turns out to be the best mobile device ever!
  4. South African Uncapped ADSL Options – Remember when all the ISPs went crazy and announced mad specials? I do!
  5. Locnville – Sun in my Pocket -  Legendary song by some locals.
  6. Awesome iPad Accessory – The iProp – Another fantastic gadget that caught people’s attention and went viral.
  7. No Tangle Interlocked Headphones – Just brilliant, and hugely popular.
  8. New Star Sign – Ophuchicus – Remember this?
  9. What does Waka Waka Mean – World Cup of course!
  10. Work from Home Nonsense – A tough year for all of us, prices are up, pressure at work is higher than ever, so many people looking for ways to earn money at home. This blog post has received several hundred comments this year.

Interestingly, each of these posts has received over 20,000 unique visits!

Inspired by eFrog Themes, Google and Nando’s

by Chris M on October 30, 2011 in Blogging, My Life with No comments

We all know that Google changes its logo on special occasions and eFrog Themes does the same, but only when Nando’s took over my logo for the day the other day for Nando’s Tangy Tomato (launch of their new flavour) did I think that perhaps I would try to do the same.

So, in light of it being halloween tomorrow I decided to change my logo to suite the occasion. I’m not much of a designer, so it doesn’t look amazing, but it’s for fun! eFrog Themes have already updated theirs, take a look here.

Here’s the one that Nando’s did for me if you missed it:

Pretty cool hey?

Anyway, just sharing that with you, and hopefully I’ll do it for my logo from now on :)

Create an iPhone app for your blog? [plugin]

by Chris M on October 20, 2011 in Blogging, Mobile with No comments

A good 6 months ago I spoke to a friend about building a plugin for WordPress that would convert your blog into an iPhone application; the premise was simple and the task wasn’t all that complicated, the problem was free time and unfortunately the idea never got legs.

Wiziapp is a new WordPress plugin that does exactly this, you download the plugin, create your app and publish to the app store, as simple as that.

The plugin isn’t free though, a personal account will set you back $19.90 per month and the enterprise plugin will set you back $49.90 per month, so you really need to know that people will download and use your app or it’s not really worth it.

You can download the plugin here: http://www.wiziapp.com/download

Introducing WordPress 3.3 and its 3 new features

by Chris M on October 11, 2011 in Blogging with 2 Comments

That’s right folks, WordPress announced today that they’ve moved past version 3.2 and have made a copy of 3.3 Beta 1 available to people who want to download, test and report bugs. The aim of the game is to release 3.3 by the end of November.

So obviously you’re wondering what’s new and so forth, so let me mention a couple things for you to ponder about if you’re not keen on downloading and giving it a go.

The admin bar that floats at the top has been improved, there’s a new media uploader and fly out admin menu’s are now available.

I downloaded and installed copy, here’s a screenshot I took of the three features:

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Nice additions!

You can download a copy directly by clicking here.

Introducing Google Analytics Premium

by Chris M on September 29, 2011 in Blogging, Equipment, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization with 2 Comments

Google Analytics, for those who don’t know, is a free service provided by Google that allows website owners to view all sorts of information about the people who arrive at their website. From simple things such as what country the visitors come from to advanced formula’s for calculating social media traffic and conversions.

Today, Google has announced that they’ve launched a Google AdWords Premium account, which gives advanced users even more tools, support and access to more data (if that’s even possible!).

The main additions are:

1. Extra processing power
2. Advanced analysis
3. Service and Support
4. Gaurentees

The bad news is that the Premium accounts are only available to those in the United States, Canada and the UK, so us South Africans are going to have to wait a while still.

Here’s a video to bring you up to speed:

Google rolls out new version of Blogger

by Chris M on September 29, 2011 in Blogging with No comments

Google recently launched an enhanced version of Blogger, it’s completely rebuilt, has streamlined authoring and the editing experience is far greater. The next phase has commenced and Google is introducing seven new ways to display your blog.

Introducing Dynamic Views. AJAX, HTML5, CSS3, the latest technologies, combined, to bring your readers a unique viewing experience, which will encourage them to spend more time on your website.

Take a watch:

We’re not just talking about a template here, we’re talking about infinite scrolling (no pagination), images that load as you browse, integrated search, sorting by date, label and author, lightbox-style posts, keyboard shortcuts and a bunch of other awesome new features.

Blogger’s needed an update for a long time and it’s finally happening. To read more about the different views, click here.

Featured in Fair Lady Online

by Chris M on September 18, 2011 in Blogging, Publicity with No comments

I was thrilled to see that I was featured in the Fair Lady Online article called, “Deal with trolls”. As someone who’s blogged for longer than I can remember, I’ve run into so many situations when it comes to dealing with people who leave comments with a negative taste.

The article’s well written and takes the opinions of several bloggers, who have all earned their place in the blog sphere:

Emily Pettit-Coetzee – http://www.iheartyouroutfit.com/
Kate Chauncey – http://pessimiss.wordpress.com/
Emma-Jane Harbour – http://www.emmajanenation.com/
Dax Villanueva – http://www.relax-with-dax.co.za/
Diana Moss – http://www.missmoss.co.za/

The articles goes on to discuss how bloggers should deal with comment trolls (“those delightful, anonymous ‘voices’ that litter the online space with opinions) under the opinion of the 6 featured bloggers. The insight is really great and all bloggers should have a read of the article as there’s plenty to be learnt on a topic, which I feel is very important.

Let’s open this up, how would you deal with a comment troll?

Native iPhone app for your blog

by Chris M on September 5, 2011 in Blogging, Mobile, Wordpress Themes with No comments

A new service has launched called Wiziapp, which effectively allows you to turn your blog into a native iPhone application that can be searched for, found and downloaded through the App store, worldwide.

The service operates as a WordPress plugin, which requires an install, the setup of some simple config bits and pieces and that’s it.

The core features:

  1. Just ‘plugin’ and play
  2. Native user experience
  3. Available on the App Store
  4. Stats and Data

The plugin isn’t free, but it’s relatively inexpensive, here’s a breakdown:

  • Personal Blog – $19.90 monthly ($199 setup)
  • Pro Blogger – $29.90 monthly ($299 setup)
  • Enterprise – $49.90 monthly ($499 setup)

The main differences between the pages are basically how many push notifications each package provides. Another important thing is that Pro Bloggers and Enterprises are given the ability to monetize their applications.

So what this means is that you can take a blog, where you publish information and seamlessly turn it into a native iPhone application and experience the potential of a massive market.

The question is, should we be jumping at a native iPhone application or should we be using services which do the same for Android devices, which are becoming more popular than iOS ones.

What do you think?

View the service here: http://wiziapp.com/

Page 1 of 1612345...10...Last »