Thursday, October 9, 2008

Barack Obama's $3 Million 'Overhead Projector' Actually Pretty Cool [Gadget Politics]

Barack Obama's $3 Million 'Overhead Projector' Actually Pretty Cool [Gadget Politics]
During the last Presidential debate, John McCain delivered this line about his opponent with withering contempt: [Obama] voted for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark projects,...

TCP Connections

A Widget to monitor TCP connections, used in Internet communications. The Widget can speak connection changes and culmulative values are available in a tooltip. Double-clicking produces a detailed netstat report of connections. Appearance and function are configurable. Performance optimized with COM/WMI (Windows). read more

FeedBurner feed count drop

You may have noticed on Saturday (3rd November) that you FeedBurner feed counter was reporting a much lower level of subscribers to your blog. Here at Newsniche the counter dropped by nearly a hundred subscribers.

FeedBurner blame Google for the glitch as the Google feedfetcher bot had gone out on Friday night and was up late Saturday. This was probably due to drinking too much GoogleJuice the night before, those bots can't hold their drink. As a result none of the Google Reader subscribers were reported in the stats for Saturday.

Google Feedfetcher drops ball

At the time like me you may have worried even panicked when you saw a massive drop in subscriber numbers. If you have more than one blog then you would have figured out the drop was across the board and due to some glitch.

These sorts of glitches although usually temporary can cause a webmaster a lot of unnecessary stress. These things happen, my advice is don't hit the panic button, do a little investigating then report it if needed. More often than not these things are temporary. I have learned by experience if you do too much tinkering thinking it's something you have done you end up making things worse. All you need to do now is explain to your advertisers why your stats dropped.

This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.

read more

Football widgets are in season!

Football widgets are in season!
With football season fast approaching, now is the best time to put the spotlight on our Sports Scoreboard widget and the NFL Gametrax widget. These two widgets are quite possibly the best sports focused widgets ever built. At least that's what our moms say ;-)

The Gametrax widget pulls in all the currently playing games for the NFL and displays them complete with play by play action and game leaders! (can you say fantasy?)

That's a live Gametrax widget to the left, clicking on the "game" tab will show you the play by play action if there is a game currently being played.

Our Scoreboard widget pulls in a complete list of all games playing complete with live scores for the NFL (excluding preseason), MLB, NBA, NHL, College Football and College Basketball leagues.

The great thing about the Scoreboard widget is that it can be dynamically sized. It will drop down as small as 160 pixels wide so that it will fit on most blog sidebars. If you have a sports blog, this is really the best way to share scores with your readers.

The scoreboard widget set to 160 pixels wide for blog sidebar placement. You can also set the default league shown to be MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA, CBK or CFB
Each league in the scoreboard gets yesterday's, tomorrow's and today's games in a tabbed format and you can set the initial display of the widget to default to any of those tabs for any league when the widget first loads.

In the yesterday tab, the final game scores along with a win/loss indicator on each team shows you quickly who was on top. Tomorrow's tab shows the game time and teams playing so that you can better plan which sports bar to visit to watch the most games at once, and the today tab shows off live in game scores on all games in the list complete with some in game leader information.

Now for the really cool info... For those of you who have our desktop application installed, the scoreboard widget really begins to shine after you download it.

Flip to the preference panel in the desktop sports Scoreboard widget and enable "docking" and you'll be able to drag the widget to the sidebar for all day sports tracking ability even when your work apps are open.

Take a few minutes and play with the widgets and feel free to use them for your desktop, blog or social network profile. If you think our moms are right and these are the best sports widgets that have ever been built, let us know.

If you are interested in more sports related widgets, search the gallery for sports. So far we have 109 sports related widgets that have been created ranging everywhere from Ask Men's Health and Sports News to the Worland Middle School Sports Schedule.

-Don

click the thumbnail to see what the Scoreboard looks like when docked on your desktop.

Cartoons 1.0

Enjoy permanently refreshed cartoons and illustrations of world’s largest user-generated cartoon platform toonpool.com.
About Cartoons
Do you like cartoons, humorous drawings and caricatures? Then download this gadget and get permanently refreshed cartoons and illustrations of world’s largest user-generated cartoon platform toonpool.com. Watch the latest, top rated or random cartoons in a slideshow or view your favorite artist. You can display them as tiny thumbs or in full size. Every cartoon is providing a link to the respective page on toonpool.com.
read more

Twitter Tweets

Twitter Tweets
21:14 Blogging & WordPress Twitter Tweets: 21:21 Blogging & WordPress Twitter Twee.. tinyurl.com/4dabdm # Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter Posted in Blogging Tips      

  • 21:14 Blogging & WordPress Twitter Tweets:
    21:21 Blogging & WordPress Twitter Twee.. tinyurl.com/4dabdm #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Posted in Blogging Tips������

Spiderman gets on the Express train.


Sony Pictures decided to put out an express widget for the upcoming Spiderman 3 movie.

Being a long time comic book collector, I can completely understand the excitement surrounding this film and am looking forward to seeing this one on the big screen at the local Imax probably more than any of you are.

While you are waiting through the last few days prior to the release, be sure to grab this widget and follow the news leading up to the opening weekend.

Remember, "With great power comes great responsibility!"

Of course, this Spiderman widget is so cool, I had to mash one up myself! as did EJRavin, another of our ExpressWidgets users. Good job EJ! read more

New Features - More Customization of the Button

Well, it’s 2008. Hope you all got a chance to try the new features we added last month to your analytics interface. We already received some great feedback. We’ve been busy preparing to move to our new platform. This new platform will enable AddThis to scale more easily and provide additional powerful capabilities to the service. [...]

Well, it’s 2008. Hope you all got a chance to try the new features we added last month to your analytics interface. We already received some great feedback.

We’ve been busy preparing to move to our new platform. This new platform will enable AddThis to scale more easily and provide additional powerful capabilities to the service. We have now reached the milestone of 100 Million buttons served per day, so it was time to move again. The move will happen next week, the transition will be completely transparent.

We have also been busy coding new features for the button (widget). Many of you have asked us for more ways to customize the button, as well as for an email function. We listened…so here are the latest enhancements. Thank for your continuous feedback!

DVD allofmp3 Sting download Bob Sinclar allofmp3 get best 50 cents download fine Santana free best Radio Show buy great Eminem buy popular Toxicity free great Tao Meditation download Spice Girls great get popular Rascal Flatts download ltimate Santana allofmp3 get allofmp3 Santana get great Radio Show download best Luca Ricci DVD nice ltimate Santana DVD popular Radio Show download great Sting DVD great Eminem get good Luca Ricci download best George Strait download great Rihanna cheap allofmp3 Sting DVD popular Bob Sinclar download best Tao Meditation get best George Strait DVD nice Bob Sinclar cheap best Eminem CD best 50 cents cheap fine Rascal Flatts download nice George Strait cheap best Radio Show DVD allofmp3 ltimate Santana cheap nice Sting get popular Bob Sinclar download 50 cents nice cheap fine ltimate Santana buy best Santana free good Garth Brooks DVD fine Radio Show download best Eminem free fine Rascal Flatts DVD allofmp3 Eminem cheap best Madonna download great Sorry DVD allofmp3 50 cents buy popular String Quartet download Toxicity fine download String Quartet fine CD allofmp3 50 cents get best Santana get nice Garth Brooks free fine George Strait get nice Eminem CD nice Radio Show free fine Radio Show download fine Bob Sinclar cheap great String Quartet get fine Radio Show download allofmp3 Tao Meditation CD nice Sorry

Button customization - You now have full control over the customization of the the button image, text, and style. We essentially moved the button image and link outside of the javascript, so you can now change the image, text, or style of the button as much as you want, and very easily.

Service options customization - You can now customize the list of service options that appear in the dropdown (e.g. Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, etc). You can even remove the “More” choice completely, if you only want to provide access to the most popular services.

Dropdown positioning - We also added the ability to re-position the dropdown vertically or horizontally, if needed.

Email a Friend - We have added a new service option: Email. So when selecting your options for the dropdown, you can now include the keyword ‘email’. When the user clicks on ‘Email’, the dropdown will transform itself into a tiny form to send an email notification to a friend.


>> Here is the documentation for the new features <<

Happy Customizing!

read more

3 things you really want to know about RSS

3 things you really want to know about RSS

I have been doing some digging into the statistics for Newsniche to try and discover what you are really interested in when it comes to RSS. So I have come up with the imaginatively titled 3 things you really want to know about RSS. So here are the most wanted to know things about RSS in reverse order.

RSS publishing tools

The third most popular topic is on RSS publishing tools. Rather than an article this is a section of the site dedicated to letting you know how you can publish RSS on your site. Being able to publish RSS on your site means that you have a constant stream of updating content for your readers.

Which is the best RSS feed reader

The second most popular item on the site is an article on Which is the best RSS feed reader. You certainly want to know which is the best way to read your feeds. This is not surprising as RSS is all about being able to have information from your favourite sites available to you without having to visit every you like frequently. Why not subscribe to their feed and have the content come to you.

Using Javascript to display RSS

I guess deep down everyone wants to display RSS using Javascript as the number one most read article is Using Javascript to display RSS. This is an article I wrote ages ago showing you how you could easily place content from an RSS feed on your site using a snippet of Javascript. That is so 2006.

This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.


Asus Planning to Release Touchscreen Eee PC Within Six Months [Eeeeeeeeee!!!!!]

Asus Planning to Release Touchscreen Eee PC Within Six Months [Eeeeeeeeee!!!!!]
Asustek executive Samson Hu has confirmed his company's plans to release a touchscreen Eee PC variant for sale by Q1 of 2009. It's not known whether the devices will look like the touch panel Eee...

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Add an Integrated GPS Receiver to Hackable Dell Mini 9 [DIY]

Modders prodding around inside the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 have discovered that there is a lot of potential to add new functionality thanks to some areas with empty space. That having been said,... read more

aTunes 1.10.0

A fully-featured audio player and manager, with ripping and encoding tools included. A fully-featured audio player and manager, with ripping and encoding tools included. (read more) read more

Yahoo! Fantasy Standings

---Supports the following--- Sports: Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey Types: Rotisserie, Head-to-Head, Salary Cap, Pick'Em League Access: Public, Private ---Other Info--- -Salary Cap and Pick'Em for football only -Pick'Em ids have 2 types, individual and league --Id Formats Individual: league_id/team_number (ex: 67374/2) you can find the information in the url. League: league_id (dont't need slash) read more

No Smoking 2.0

Provides some motivation to help you stop smoking.
About No Smoking
This is a very simple widget that gives you a count of the number of days that it’s been since you’ve stopped smoking. You enter the date that you last had a cigarette and it displays the number of days that have passed since then on top of a No Smoking sign.

Optionally you can now enter how much you typically spend per day and it will display how much money you have saved as well.
read more

New Features - More Customization of the Button

New Features - More Customization of the Button
Well, it’s 2008. Hope you all got a chance to try the new features we added last month to your analytics interface. We already received some great feedback. We’ve been busy preparing to move to our new platform. This new platform will enable AddThis to scale more easily and provide additional powerful capabilities to the service. [...]

Well, it’s 2008. Hope you all got a chance to try the new features we added last month to your analytics interface. We already received some great feedback.

We’ve been busy preparing to move to our new platform. This new platform will enable AddThis to scale more easily and provide additional powerful capabilities to the service. We have now reached the milestone of 100 Million buttons served per day, so it was time to move again. The move will happen next week, the transition will be completely transparent.

We have also been busy coding new features for the button (widget). Many of you have asked us for more ways to customize the button, as well as for an email function. We listened…so here are the latest enhancements. Thank for your continuous feedback!

DVD allofmp3 Sting download Bob Sinclar allofmp3 get best 50 cents download fine Santana free best Radio Show buy great Eminem buy popular Toxicity free great Tao Meditation download Spice Girls great get popular Rascal Flatts download ltimate Santana allofmp3 get allofmp3 Santana get great Radio Show download best Luca Ricci DVD nice ltimate Santana DVD popular Radio Show download great Sting DVD great Eminem get good Luca Ricci download best George Strait download great Rihanna cheap allofmp3 Sting DVD popular Bob Sinclar download best Tao Meditation get best George Strait DVD nice Bob Sinclar cheap best Eminem CD best 50 cents cheap fine Rascal Flatts download nice George Strait cheap best Radio Show DVD allofmp3 ltimate Santana cheap nice Sting get popular Bob Sinclar download 50 cents nice cheap fine ltimate Santana buy best Santana free good Garth Brooks DVD fine Radio Show download best Eminem free fine Rascal Flatts DVD allofmp3 Eminem cheap best Madonna download great Sorry DVD allofmp3 50 cents buy popular String Quartet download Toxicity fine download String Quartet fine CD allofmp3 50 cents get best Santana get nice Garth Brooks free fine George Strait get nice Eminem CD nice Radio Show free fine Radio Show download fine Bob Sinclar cheap great String Quartet get fine Radio Show download allofmp3 Tao Meditation CD nice Sorry

Button customization - You now have full control over the customization of the the button image, text, and style. We essentially moved the button image and link outside of the javascript, so you can now change the image, text, or style of the button as much as you want, and very easily.

Service options customization - You can now customize the list of service options that appear in the dropdown (e.g. Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, etc). You can even remove the “More” choice completely, if you only want to provide access to the most popular services.

Dropdown positioning - We also added the ability to re-position the dropdown vertically or horizontally, if needed.

Email a Friend - We have added a new service option: Email. So when selecting your options for the dropdown, you can now include the keyword ‘email’. When the user clicks on ‘Email’, the dropdown will transform itself into a tiny form to send an email notification to a friend.


>> Here is the documentation for the new features <<

Happy Customizing!


Convenient Download Bundle

For many installing Perl modules is difficult within their environment, and for those people we provide a simple and easy to install bundle of all the necessary perl modules for Plugin Manager. Instructions Download the bundle. Navigate to the MT_HOME/extlib... read more

Facebook Climbing to 3rd Spot

Facebook Climbing to 3rd Spot
The October data are in! Facebook is continuing its amazing climb, taking the 3rd spot away from Del.icio.us. Favorites are back, stealing the first position from Google Bookmarks. Again, Favorites here means “browser bookmarking”, for any browser. On the Feed Reader front things are much more quiet. There was almost no changes between September [...]

The October data are in!

Facebook is continuing its amazing climb, taking the 3rd spot away from Del.icio.us. Favorites are back, stealing the first position from Google Bookmarks. Again, Favorites here means “browser bookmarking”, for any browser. On the Feed Reader front things are much more quiet. There was almost no changes between September and October.

Top Bookmarking/Sharing - October 2007

Top Feed Readers - October 2007


VI Cheat Sheet Widget 1.0

VI Cheat Sheet Widget 1.0
Main commands for the VI Editor.
About VI Cheat Sheet Widget
Main commands for the VI Editor as a quick reference.

We've Got Widgets!

We've Got Widgets!
As anyone following the site can see, we've put a few new widgets in the gallery since last week.

We've added widgets from the NBC Show Heroes, Harper Collins Booksellers, American Idol, Rotten Tomatoes, Ask Men, Fox Sports, Career One, 20th Century Fox, FX, Speed Channel, News.com.au, and about a couple hundred of your own customized ExpressWidgets!

Heroes

How cool is it that SpringWidgets is driving the viral widget on the official Heroes MySpace page! I don't know if you are a fan, but here at SpringWidgets, we are all fans of Heroes and this is one of the only shows that we refuse to miss!

Look through our gallery and you might also discover a Heroes feed in an ExpressWidget or two!

Harper Collins
Take a look at the upcoming books section of Harper Collins Booksellers. Every upcoming book they offer will sport a widget that you can take with you to count down to the release of your favorite upcoming book.

ExpressWidgets in the house!
Even though it's only been a week since we had our soft launch of the ExpressWidgets beta, we're being bombarded with new widgets. My guess is that even with the tens of thousands of SpringWidgets RSS Readers that were created before we introduced the new process, we'll see this gallery grow rapidly.

For those of you who were brave enough to jump on board right away and found a thing or two that you would like changed about the express widgets process, we've been listening! We've upgraded the profiles so that they now show the widgets that you have "expressed" and we've also built in an "edit" and a "delete" feature for your widget in case you have a change of heart after you've published.

Simply log in using the button on the upper right of this page to view and edit the widgets that you have in our system - you can change the default size, header image, gallery tile and color of the widget using your edit page.

American Idol chose to have our technology drive a few bobbling heads made especially for their contestants. Now you too can put a Sanjaya Bobbler on your blog. Check out their site for more information

If you have a few minutes, take a stroll through our gallery and take a look at the variety of creative and colorful solutions that have been added. Chances are that you'll find quite a few that you can add to your page or blog.

This has been a busy couple of weeks here, and we have pushed out quite a few new widgets and features. We're hard at work on some other stuff too that quite honestly blows the doors off any other widget platform out there, bar none. But more on that later . . .

MSI Wind Gets 9-Cell Battery, Unofficially [Mini-notebooks]

If you're willing to buy from a third party vendor, the MSI Wind now has an impressive 7800mAh, 9-cell battery available for preorder. Priced at $180, it's not an inexpensive upgrade and it weighs a... read more

Thursday, October 2, 2008

MyProxy 9.0

MyProxy 9.0
Ad-Filter, Pop-Up Killer, HTTP/HTTPS/SMTP/POP3-Proxy, Port Mapper, i-Dialer Ad-Filter, Pop-Up Killer, HTTP/HTTPS/SMTP/POP3-Proxy, Port Mapper, i-Dialer (read more)

Apple Patent Adds QuickLook Capabilities to Mouse Pointer? [Patents]

QuickLook for instant-previewing files with the spacebar is my favorite feature of OS X 10.5 hands down. Encouraging news, then, is this Apple patent dug up by Apple Insider which could add QuickLook... read more

Free Teen Bible Browser 2.7

Free Teen Bible Browser 2.7
This software was created to help you get closer to religion and to get easy access to the Bible text. This software was created to help you get closer to religion and to get easy access to the Bible text. (read more)

The Simpsons Quote Box 4.0

Displays famous quotes form “The Simpsons” T.V. show and movie. Randomly selects a quote from a database of almost 2000 quotes then displays it when Dashboard is shown.
About The Simpsons Quote Box
Displays famous quotes form “The Simpsons” T.V. show and movie.

Randomly selects a quote from a database of almost 2000 quotes then displays it when Dashboard is shown.

Features:
- The most Simpsons quotes of any Dashboard widget, almost 2000 quotes.
- Allows the currently displayed quote to be copied to the clipboard.
- Quotes from all the major characters of the show.
- Quotes from Seasons 1-19.
- Quotes from “The Simpsons Movie.”
- Quotes from “The Simpsons Game.”
- Customizable face colors. Light Blue, Orange, Pink, and Yellow.
- Checks for updates automatically.
read more

Install Photo Gallery

Install Photo Gallery
There are two options when installing Photo Gallery: Download and install the Photo Gallery archive manually Install via the Plugin Manager plugin for Movable Type...

How to display your RSS subscriber count

How to display your RSS subscriber count

You've all seen the little FeedBurner subscriber counters on sites that display a site or more often a blogs number of RSS subscribers. Whilst this is a nice widget to display on your site there isn't much in the way of customizing to display something different.

Plaint text subscriber count

There is a way to display the number of readers you have for your feed by using FeedBurners API. This means you can display your subscriber count within some text, for example as part of a blog post. You could also have a separate message somewhere on you site saying X number of readers subscribe to this site.

You can use the PHP code below. You need to have PHP5 otherwise the SimpleXMLElement command will not work.

//get cool feedburner count
$whaturl="http://api.feedburner.com/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=YourFeedburnerFeedLinkHere";

//Initialize the Curl session
$ch = curl_init();

//Set curl to return the data instead of printing it to the browser.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
//Set the URL
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $whaturl);
//Execute the fetch
$data = curl_exec($ch);
//Close the connection
curl_close($ch);

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($data);
$fb = $xml->feed->entry['circulation'];

//end get cool feedburner count
?>

The next line of PHP needs to be located where you want the subscriber count number to appear. This code needs to occur after the code above for it to work.

I borrowed this code from Mark over at 45n5 so thanks Mark.

This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.


Ab Solo Combines Sit-Ups and Basketball to Trick You into Exercising [Exercise]

Ab Solo Combines Sit-Ups and Basketball to Trick You into Exercising [Exercise]
I've always wished I could work out at a Chuck E Cheese's, but there has never been an exercise machine that combined the drudgery of sit-ups with the fun of arcade basketball. Until now! Guitar solo...

DropMover

DropMover
The DropMover Widget displays a keypad, which can be used to move or copy files and folders to specified folders, or to open applications, data files and web pages. Each key of the keypad can have a destination folder, application file, data file or url associated with it. Files or folders dropped onto the key are moved or copied to the destination folder or passed to the associated application. DropMover has seven keypad layouts of increasing complexity. Each has its own settings which are preserved when the Widget is closed and restarted. PLEASE NOTE: The default action of the Widget has changed. It now moves files and folders by default. To copy files and folders, hold down the alt-key (on Macintosh) or control-key (on Windows) while dragging and dropping files and folders onto a key. The Widget moves files and folders by copying them to their new location, then deleting the originals. Please use the Confirm Action feature where loss of files would be important.

SpringWidgets loves iGoogle

SpringWidgets loves iGoogle
There is a lot of press today on Google Homepages... oops... I mean "iGoogle"

Since we at SpringWidgets are really big fans of Google and everything they do. I thought this would be a great time to officially say how much we love the iGoogle page by letting everyone know that we have recently added in support for automatic posting of all SpringWidgets into your personalized iGoogle page!

Just choose the widget you are interested in, configure it however you like it to look and function and then select the Google icon in the share it box.

The whole process takes only a few seconds and is one of the easiest ways to put one of our widgets on a page that we have available. Way to go Google!

With all the recent focus on widgets, it's not surprising that everyone is building a widget destination of some sort. We at SpringWidgets will continue to build support for each new destination as APIs become available and look forward to helping enable 2007 truly being the year of the widget.

Here is my iGoogle page. Complete with today's MLB games and a countdown to the next episode of NBC's Heroes!

SpringWidgets Blog is Here!!!!!

SpringWidgets Blog is Here!!!!!
We're using the tools available to speed up our communication process. We'll be using this as our What's Up?, New and Cool, Future "stuff" blog so you don't have to crawl through the Forums if you don't want to (of course, feel free, if you like . . . either's cool).

The "wizards" (as I like to call them), aka our development team will add info here as well . . . so keep checking back.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Pandora and Other Webcasters Saved By Act of Congress [Web Radio]

Pandora and Other Webcasters Saved By Act of Congress [Web Radio]
Today the otherwise preoccupied Senate quickly passed the Webcaster Settlement Act many of you petitioned for, granting Pandora and other net radio services the right to negotiate royalties with the...

RSS advertising with Bidvertiser

RSS advertising with Bidvertiser

There are already several options for RSS advertising but Bidvertiser has decided to enter the market and offer publishers the opportunity to sell advertising in their RSS feeds. Of course this also means advertisers will also be able to buy ads in RSS feeds.

Advertising with RSS

With the much larger subscriber numbers for RSS feeds it has become more viable for advertising to appear within an RSS feed. An ad in an RSS feed means that the ad will only appear in the feed rather than on the site.

As RSS subscribers tend to be more interested in the content the ads could be more effective if targeted correctly. Bidvertisers feed advertising program is in public beta and offers RSS advertising and allows RSS publishers to sell RSS ads. It will be interesting to see how it progresses compared the Feedvertiser program.

This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.


NJStar Chinese Pen 2.23 Build 8308

NJStar Chinese Pen 2.23 Build 8308
An application that allows you to input Chinese by writing it. An application that allows you to input Chinese by writing it. (read more)

"Plugin Manager Enabled" Badges

"Plugin Manager Enabled" Badges
Are you a Movable Type plugin developer? Have you built in support for Plugin Manager yet? If so, consider adding one of the following badges to your plugin's web page to signify the your plugin is "Plugin Manager Enabled." This...

Build A Snowman 2.0

Build A Snowman 2.0
Build and customize a snowman.
About Build A Snowman
With 38 different items to mix and match with, you can build a snowman as unique as you! Snow is not needed! Just a little time and imagination. The widget can be easily placed anywhere on you dashboard to give it some wintry decor, even in the middle of the summer. Intelligence not required! The back customization board is easy to understand and you can build a snowman in seconds!

London Underground Tube Status

Provides real time information about the London Tube Lines. There are two views for this Widget: 1) The detailed view shows the status of all the London Underground Lines. 2) The compact view only shows the Underground Lines that are having problems. You can get detailed information about each of the tube lines (including station closures and details about the report problems) through tool tips (by giving the Widget focus and moving your mouse over the individual tube lines). The Widget also contains a complete map of the tube system and four convenient links to the TFL Journey Planner tool for common trips. read more

Admit It, The Stormtrooper Hoodie is a Little Tempting [Fashion]

Admit It, The Stormtrooper Hoodie is a Little Tempting [Fashion]
By Mark Ecko, this Stormtrooper hoodie will ensure that, at a moment's notice, you will be ready for an impromptu Star Wars convention or back alley role-playing fest. It may sound like overkill, but...

PixViewer 1.2.0

PixViewer 1.2.0
A quick and easy way to browse your image files! A quick and easy way to browse your image files! (read more)

EA Waiting to Release Android Games Until It Can Charge for Them [Android]

While Namco jumped headfirst into the Android Market by giving away Pac-Man, EA Games is going to sit out for the time being, at least until there's a billing system in place for apps in the Android... read more

Install Photo Gallery

Install Photo Gallery
There are two options when installing Photo Gallery: Download and install the Photo Gallery archive manually Install via the Plugin Manager plugin for Movable Type...

Monday, September 29, 2008

How to Remove WordPress.com Ads From Your WordPress.com Blog

How to Remove WordPress.com Ads From Your WordPress.com Blog
Matt Mullenweg has just announced that you can go “ad-free” on your WordPress.com blog. While you may have never noticed, those who are not logged into WordPress.com will see ads on blogs across the WordPress.com network. two years ago, WordPress.com started experimenting with Google ads to help support the cost of the experimental and state-of-the-art multiple [...]

WordPress.com NewsMatt Mullenweg has just announced that you can go “ad-free” on your WordPress.com blog.

While you may have never noticed, those who are not logged into WordPress.com will see ads on blogs across the WordPress.com network. two years ago, WordPress.com started experimenting with Google ads to help support the cost of the experimental and state-of-the-art multiple user free blog service. The intent was not to cover your blogs with ads, like many free blogging services do, but to show an occasional ad discretely within your WordPress Theme.

Since few complained or noticed, the experiment continued, helping to keep WordPress.com free and add a lot of free features that might have been paid upgrades.

These ads were so rare, I never saw them. So I forgot about them. I’ve written a lot about the WordPress.com Terms of Service policy that prohibits adding ads to your WordPress.com blogs, so I was dismayed a few months ago when I got a few emails accusing me of special favors from WordPress.com because I had ads on my blog. They were seeing the WordPress.com experimental ads. Unfortunately, one of the ads was - shall we say - inappropriate, a problem many have with Google’s ad program.

Still, this bothered me. I talked to the WordPress team about this and they agreed that users should have the right to determine whether or not to have WordPress.com ads on their blogs. As Matt explains:

At the same time it’s easy to imagine blogs that would never want ads on them: businesses, startups, non-profits, political activist sites, the list goes on. Google Adsense analyzes the content to show contextually relevant ads, but that might mean a link to a competitor. Because of this we’ve introduced a premium option that gives you control: the No-ads upgrade.

They’ve been working on this new feature for a while, trying to come up with a secure and affordable way for users to continue to support WordPress.com by permitting ads on their blogs, while allowing those with sensitive or special interests to not host ads. They’ve finally done it, and I applaud their foresight and integrity.

Removing Ads from Your WordPress.com Blog

Before you start jumping to remove ads from your WordPress.com blog, remember that those ads, most of which you will rarely ever see, help bring in income to keep WordPress.com going. If they don’t bother you or your readers, leave them alone. Why not?

You are using one of the most powerful, state-of-the-art blogging platforms, a service that will survive the Digg-effect and high traffic surges without charging you; a service that keeps bringing you options and features without charge; a service that gives you a platform upon which to express yourself proudly - and is incredibly SEO friendly. Why not help them continue to keep this service free for everyone?

If you do feel a compelling need to remove ads from your WordPress.com blog, go to Upgrades.

WordPress.com Upgrades Panel

Scroll down to No-ads and select the option.

Select no-ads to turn off ads on your WordPress.com blog

The cost to remove ads from your WordPress.com blog is 30 credits annually (USD $30 if you haven’t earned any credits) which comes to eight cents a day.

Whether you keep or remove ads from your WordPress.com blog, why not take a little time to give back to WordPress.com and other WordPress.com users by browsing the WordPress blog network and get to know your fellow WordPress.com members. You can use the Random Post feature in the gray dashboard bar at the top of your WordPress.com blog when you are logged in, or visit the WordPress.com Blogs of the Day which lists the most popular blogs by language, or the WordPress.com Tags list.

If you are familiar with how WordPress.com works, then why not help out in the WordPress.com forums and get to know the volunteers and staff there as well as your other fellow WordPress.com members. It’s a simple way to say thank you for this powerful free blog service.

I Want to Put Ads on My WordPress.com Blog

A lot of WordPress.com bloggers want to put ads on their blogs to make money for themselves. While some free blog hosts permit that, don’t forget that WordPress.com is also a testing site for many of the latest features of WordPress development.

While the world has to wait for the release of WordPress 2.7, WordPress.com users are already using the new sticky post feature and will soon be playing with other new features as part of the new WordPress Administration interface redesign, a continuation of user interface improvements from the previous version of WordPress - long before anyone else.

This means that WordPress.com has to stay clean of code that will screw up not just one blog but all the blogs on the WordPress.com network powered by WordPressMU. While most ad code is harmless, opening up WordPress.com to Javascript and other code languages opens the door up to malicious code, too. It’s a security risk WordPress.com isn’t willing to take, and I support that policy.

If you want to monetize your blog, get the free version of WordPress and pay for cheap hosting. Some hosts are offering web hosting for under USD $10 a month. With the full version of WordPress, you can not only add ads, but customize the whole look, add all kinds of cool WordPress Plugins, and really tweak your whole site to maximize its revenue potential.

WordPress.com has always been about blogging, about freedom of expression and creativity. It’s not about the code. It’s about the words. WordPress.com is working overtime to make sure we have a place to share our words with others around the world - no holds barred.



Site Search Tags: wordpress news, wordpressdotcom, wordpress.com, wordpresscom, ads, ads on blogs, blog ads, advertising, blog advertising, monetization, advertising on WordPress.com, WordPress.com ads, make money, make money with blogging

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

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Sony's BDP-S350 Blu-ray Player Officially $300 and BD-Live Capable [Blu-Ray]

Sony's BDP-S350 Blu-ray Player Officially $300 and BD-Live Capable [Blu-Ray]
Not only did Sony's mainstream BDP-S350 Blu-ray player finally get its firmware update to be fully compatible with the net-interactive BD-Live (BD 2.0) content already hitting stores, but it also got...

John Chow vs Shoemoney RSS competition

RSS is now one of the most valuable metrics on the net. Increasing your RSS subscriber count is a measurable way to show the popularity of your site. As RSS is an opt in way for readers to view your site contents, they can easily stop being a subscriber at any time.

It shows how far RSS has come when John Chow and Shoemoney start a competition to see who can get the most new subscribers in a month. Notice how it wasn't a competition to get the most traffic or the most subscribers to an email list but who can get the most RSS subscribers.

Why RSS subscribers

John and Shoe are both canny marketers and know the value of RSS. RSS is a transparent metric that shows a loyal readership. If a site starts to slide in it's content then readers will no longer subscribe. They would rather gain an RSS subscriber than an extra visitor.

Whilst the challenge is a bit of fun there is also a serious reason John and Shoe have gotten together to run this little competition. At the end of the competition they will both have a larger loyal subscriber base. This competition has gained them a large number of new subscribers which generally means more revenue for them.

This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.

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See You in Las Vegas at Blog World Expo

I’m going to be joining everyone in the blogosphere at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas this weekend, September 20-21, 2008. Not going to be there? You are missing out on what could be a record breaking event. I will be there with Woopra, Layered Tech, and WordPress. I’ve peeked at the Conference Schedule and there [...]

I’m going to be joining everyone in the blogosphere at Blog World Expo in Las Vegas this weekend, September 20-21, 2008. Not going to be there? You are missing out on what could be a record breaking event.

I will be there with Woopra, Layered Tech, and WordPress.

I’ve peeked at the Conference Schedule and there is so much going on, I don’t even know where to begin.

In addition to the Blog World Expo Exhibitors in the Exhibition Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center, the incredible collection of speakers and workshops, and the crème de la crème of the blogosphers attending, there are also events within the main event, including:

These specialty meetings and workshops cover niche areas and specific issues that confront bloggers within those specific areas. So much of it crosses borders, though, I’m having a tough time deciding which to attend.

I do know where I will be Sunday, September 21, from 3:00PM - 4:00PM. I will be on a panel with my buddies, John Pozadzides and Liz Strauss, covering The Stats of High Performance Content and Marketing.

I will also be occasionally found in the Exhibition Hall in booth 220 with Layered Tech, Woopra, and WordPress. If you want to talk about servers, web hosting, and the grid, I’ll let you talk to the other guys there, but if you want to talk WordPress or Woopra, I’m ready!

I hope to see you there!

NEXT: Next weekend, September 27, 2008, is WordCamp Portland, Oregon - September 27, 2008, where I will also be making noise. The event is sold out and there is a waiting list. It’s going to be great!

Other upcoming events where I will be speaking and attending include:



Site Search Tags: lorelle, lorelle speaks, converences, events, woopra, blog world expo, wordcamp portland, blogworldexpo, blogworldexpo2008, wordcampportlland, hawaii, blog events, blog conferences, blog news, conference news

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Copyright Lorelle VanFossen, the author of Blogging Tips, What Bloggers Won't Tell You About Blogging.

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How to display your RSS subscriber count

How to display your RSS subscriber count

You've all seen the little FeedBurner subscriber counters on sites that display a site or more often a blogs number of RSS subscribers. Whilst this is a nice widget to display on your site there isn't much in the way of customizing to display something different.

Plaint text subscriber count

There is a way to display the number of readers you have for your feed by using FeedBurners API. This means you can display your subscriber count within some text, for example as part of a blog post. You could also have a separate message somewhere on you site saying X number of readers subscribe to this site.

You can use the PHP code below. You need to have PHP5 otherwise the SimpleXMLElement command will not work.

//get cool feedburner count
$whaturl="http://api.feedburner.com/awareness/1.0/GetFeedData?uri=YourFeedburnerFeedLinkHere";

//Initialize the Curl session
$ch = curl_init();

//Set curl to return the data instead of printing it to the browser.
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
//Set the URL
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $whaturl);
//Execute the fetch
$data = curl_exec($ch);
//Close the connection
curl_close($ch);

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($data);
$fb = $xml->feed->entry['circulation'];

//end get cool feedburner count
?>

The next line of PHP needs to be located where you want the subscriber count number to appear. This code needs to occur after the code above for it to work.

I borrowed this code from Mark over at 45n5 so thanks Mark.

This post is from the Newsniche website and should not be reproduced elsewhere. Why not subscribe to the RSS feed and get this information delivered straight to your News reader.