7 Obnoxious Things People Believe About Photographers

Dale Hogan    Cool Links     Business, Photography

A friend sent me this link to a post over on www.lightstalking.com. I have to admit that I’ve run into all of these types of people. It got me thinking about how to best communicate to people that think this way and how to position my business / services to avoid running into these attitudes.  Perhaps it’ll inspire you too.

WordPress Tip: Is My Blog Working?

DavidM    Cool Links, WordPress Tips     development, online, tool, WordPress

Excellent online tool for checking if your WordPress blog is working properly.

http://ismyblogworking.com/

It reports on the status of:
Your web server
Your RSS feed
Your robots.txt file
Your blog is indexed by Google
Your blog is indexed by Bing
Your blog application support for gzip compression.
WP Super Cache
Your blog hosting

Along with a collection of technical details.

iOS 4.2 Update

Dale Hogan    Cool Links     Apple, iOS, iOS 4.2, iPad, iphone, iPod Touch, Media

This week Apple released an update to their iDevice Operating System, iOS 4.2.  iPad owners have been waiting a long time for this update which finally gives them folders, multitasking and some other features iPhone and iPod Touch users have had since the summer.  So go fire up iTunes, plug in your iDevice, select it from the “DEVICES” list and hit the “Check for Update” button.

My favourite new feature so far is the ability to stream media content from my iPhone (or iDevice) to my AppleTV and Airport Express.  Sweetness!

WordPress and iFrames, Problem Solved

DavidM    Cool Links     edit, embed, iframe, iframes, plugin, problem, strip, visual, WordPress

I love simple solutions to annoying problems.

Problem:
Wordpress visual editor strips out iFrame embed coding when an editor saves or edits in Visual mode. Google calendar is one thing that can be added to a page using iFrame.

Solution:
Use the plugin TGN Embed Everything
Not only does it solve this problem it makes it easy to embed lots of different things into WordPress…like an inline PDF viewer, YouTube videos, TIFF files…and more. Just a little reformatting of the iFrame embed codes provided by the source (Google Calendar, YouTube, etc) and you’re back in business.

Google Wave…Dead

DavidM    Cool Links    

ReadWriteWeb sums up the attempted rise and now fall of Google Wave. Although I tried it and was initially quite interested in where it could go, I never really got into using it. I guess that was the case with many people. It’s sad to see it go but with all the other tools out there I won’t really miss it.

My Blog in 3 Posts

DavidM    Cool Links    

A quick challenge for all you active bloggers out there.

Provide the following 3 links to your blog and comment on why.

1. A post you enjoyed writing the most.
2. A post which got the most attention.
3. A post that you wish more people had read.

Too Good to be True…

DavidM    Cool Links    

…then it likely is. If you ever received emails promising riches and freebies you’ve likely thought “this is a hoax”. Most often you’d be right except there’s always one that makes you wonder. Well for years Snopes.com has been debunking email and internet hoaxes and scams. Next time you receive a once in a lifetime offer from a friend who is forwarding the message to you because they heard it was on Good Morning America or CNN, take a moment and check it out at Snopes.

Announcing SlideShowPro Mobile

Dale Hogan    Cool Links     Apple, browser, Browsing, CSS3, HTML 5, Internet, iPad, iphone, iPod Touch, Moblie, Slide Show Pro, Slideshows, Technology, web

For all of you out there that have either a photo slideshows or video on your websites this is great news!  Many of you may even already use SlideShowPro; if not check it out.  By the end of month SlideShowPro will be rolling out a Beta program that will have all the slide shows showing up on Apple devices such as the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.  With mobile browsing on such a rapid rise, this is good news.  Check out the announcement from the folks at SlideShowPro.

WordPress 3.0 Multi-Site (Multiple Blogs on One Install)

DavidM    Cool Links    

Quick instructions to enable the powerful, new multi-site option in WordPress 3.0

To enable this feature, simply open your wp-config.php file located in your WordPress root folder (of course, you should make a backup copy first). Then add the following line anywhere in the file:

define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);

You should now be able to access the network settings page from Tools » Network

You will need to deactivate all plugins before the network can be configured.

More detailed information is available on WordPress.org

Note: If you are considering this for centralizing development sites (several client sites under one WP install) you should think about how this will impact your ability to migrate individual blogs to new installs or domains.

Visible Tweets

DavidM    Cool Links    

Looking for a cool way to display filtered Tweets at a public event…check out Visible Tweets

You just enter what you are wanting to show — goatminds in my example link — and it creates a cool animation. Move your mouse to the top of the screen and the interface drop down lets you select the filter and set animation style.