Why I Gave Up on the Droid Eris

August 31, 2010 By 1 Comment

I have been eyeing the Android market for a while now.  As a loyal Verizon guy (sorry, way too many bad experiences with AT&T) I couldn’t make the switch to iPhone so had to just patiently wait.  In the waiting I started to get excited about Android.  Open-source, cheaper units to buy, integrated with Google where my entire virtual life lives all made it a very appealing option.

I broke down and turned in the Blackberry Curve for an Eris.  I was up for a renewal so my $40 investment felt pretty good, though I hate long-term contracts, but that’s for another post. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: , , , ,

Desktop Sharing Using join.me – a Review

August 29, 2010 By 1 Comment

I recently found the need to share my desktop with a few people and wanted a better option to LiveMeeting, GoToMeeting and Yugma.  I could review those as well, but will stick to one that I found recently that is still in beta but was a great alternative.

After stumbling upon join.me (created by LogMeIn) I was immediately impressed with how SIMPLE it was!  Download this packet and presto!  It assigns you a number that you can email or share and people can just go to that URL and they are on.  For those joining the presentation it’s such a clean experience as there’s absolutely nothing to install. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Online Tools, Reviews, Software/Apps, Solutions

Stats and Perspective on the Future of Social Media

August 10, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Small Business, Social Media, Video

Blogging: Professional vs. Personal Posts

August 7, 2010 By 1 Comment

I recently went through and consolidated 2 different blogs I was unsuccessfully trying to run at the same time into 1 brand new one. On one the hand it was hard to watch all the previous work go away, but on the other it was bliss.

The conflict that I wrestled with (which prompted the creation of 2+ blogs in the first place) was whether I have a ‘personal’ blog as well as a ‘professional’?  How much do I want to divulge about myself to people I might end up working with?

My opinion is I want people to get the whole picture of me should they choose to follow me in my blog obscurity.  Of course I don’t want to jeopardize my family or privacy or whatever, but if that’s the case I shouldn’t be blogging or be online for that matter! I want this platform to educate, inform, give a sneak peek into my mind, and so I feel that sharing whatever is on my mind is relevant to my overall ‘brand’. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With:

Essential Plugins for WordPress

August 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

I recently re-launched by blog and was able to mess around with a few new plugins that I’ve found really helpful.  Here’s a list of a few:

  • For commenting, I highly recommend Disqus.  Plugin integration was very simple and there are some great options to manage from right within the options settings.
  • Clean-Contact is a great contact us form that’s simple to use and set up.
  • To help blog posts extend to the social world:
    • Auto Tweet allows your posts to auto-tweet when posted online. UPDATE: Actually prefer Tweetly Updater as I’m a bit.ly guy.
    • Can’t decide which network to allow?  Use them all with ShareThis!  I particularly liked the various options in terms of the tool set that you can use.
    • You can insert a TweetMeme button right at the top of your post so that option is front and center.
  • I also am using Google Analytics to track my site traffic and Google Webmaster Tools (with the help of Google XML Sitemaps plugin) so that I can make sure my site is working as best as possible.

Hope that helps!

Filed Under: CMS, Website Tagged With: ,

Raising Kids to Be Entrepreneurs – Cameron Herold

August 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

My dad sent me this video recently with the note of “Check out this video. Reminds me of you.”  In watching it I had a few thoughts, but I’ll save that for after YOU’VE watched it so click the read more to see my thoughts:

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Video

WordPress for Blackberry

August 5, 2010 By 1 Comment

I have been wrestling to try and figure out how to get the email-to-post to work on this WordPress installation. This is something fairly straight forward, and yet came to realize that because I am using Google Apps for my email, so far no good. There are a ton of posts ‘out there’ as to something that changed in December not allowing this to happen any longer.

Plan B to the rescue. The issue was that I wanted to be able to post from my phone so I just downloaded the Worpress app for blackberry. The only thing I had to do was enable the XML-RPC option under Settings – Writing on my WordPress install.

Not a ton of bells and whistles but if you’re looking for a nice alternative to posting by email, give the WordPress app a try. This is my first post with it so I might have more thoughts in the comments section…

Are you using it? Anyone using the WordPress app for Android or iPhone who want to chime in?

Filed Under: Reviews, Software/Apps Tagged With: ,