Blogging

Playing With the WordPress iPhone 1.2 App

Posted on March 18, 2009

WordPress has released their 1.2 version of their iPhone app. Noteable items that this update includes are:

- Landscape Mode
- New/editing pages
- Comment moderation
- Image resizing
- Password protect posts

I am using it to do this post and it seems to be working pretty well.

Good job WordPress iPhone App Dev team!

Now I just need to get used to tying in Landscape mode with my thumbs.

- Post from my iPhone, please excuse any typos :-) .

Blogging From Windows 7 in Parallels on the Mac

Posted on January 30, 2009

Windows-7-in-Parallels This morning I was doing a fresh install of Windows XP in Parallels on my new MacBook and decided to go ahead and try to install Windows 7 on my iMac at the same time. At the time of writing this I have finished the install of Windows 7 but am still doing all of the updates on XP to get it running. Windows 7 installed incredibly fast in Parallels 4.0 and the installation of Parallel tools went without a hitch.

I have not had too much of a chance to play with Windows 7 yet, but from what I have seen so far it blows the doors off Windows Vista and XP.

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2009 State of the Small Time Blogger Address

Posted on January 5, 2009

Well 2009 is upon us and everyone is doing their 2008 roll ups and 2009 predictions. I thought I would chime in with what I saw in 2008 and what I am expecting in 2009 and beyond. The idano Blog Network consists of around 15 blogs that spans various topics and subjects so I have a pretty good window into the overall state of the blogosphere for the small time blogger.

The first thing that I noticed through the holiday season was that sales were really down. I made about 33% of what I did last year in Amazon sales and Adsense compared to 2007. Here are a couple of contributing factors for this decline:

  1. The economy and the fact that people were just not spending as much. The items that I was selling were kind of pricey for Christmas presents and I think people went for more practical and safe presents.
  2. Stores were overstocked for the holiday season. In 2007 the items that I was selling were sold out in brick and mortar stores so that pushed people online. This year there was plenty of stock through the entire season.
  3. The market was saturated. Last year there were 2 major products in the market I was selling to. This year there were at least 10 from the main manufacture that I sold for. Also, everyone and their brother was selling the same thing, you could get them anywhere and everywhere now.

Going into 2009 I have already seen a pretty big drop in advertising revenue from December. I am trying to be realistic in the fact that this is probably going to be dropping more as the year goes on. I don’t expect it to go away completely but I am already adjusting my budgeting to not count on this money anymore. Read the rest of this entry »

The Evernote as a Blogging Tool Post Got Twittered

Posted on October 16, 2008

evernote It seems that my post about using Evernote as a tool for blogging has caused a little stir in the Evernote community. Yesterday I started getting emails from folks saying that using Everynote on the spot to take notes for blog posts later was a cool idea. They also mentioned that my comments section was broken which I finally fixed. Anyway, traffic is way up today for idano and the majority of traffic is coming from this Twitter –

#EvernoteTip – Blogging – Capture your ideas and inspirations into Evernote as they occur, then blog when you want: http://twurl.nl/no4a2c

 

Evernote also mentioned my post in their Evernote update email that went out last night:

Cool ways to use Evernote – Evernote for BMX riders: http://evernote.com/about/redirect/2c3mep – Evernote for knitting: http://evernote.com/about/redirect/qfjr4a – Evernote for recipes: http://evernote.com/about/redirect/d48da2 - Evernote for blogging: http://evernote.com/about/redirect/no4a2c

I am really happy to see a company like Evernote keeping there fingers on the pulse about what people are saying in regard to their products.

New Blogging Tool – Evernote on My iPhone

Posted on October 14, 2008

image I have discovered a new tool that I hope will help me to start blogging more – Evernote on my iPhone. This application is not directly related to blogging but it is a note taking program that fits in my pocket so it is with me all the time. Evernote has the ability to take text, photo, and voice notes and is a free application on the iPhone.

The issue that I have had for a while now with blogging is that I do not have as much spare time as I used to blog. When I do have some time I sit in front of my computer and thing – Um, what am I going to blog about? After a while I end up only getting a post or two out or at worst  none at all.

With Evernote anytime I feel inspired I can pull my iPhone out of my pocket, record a quick voice note. let it sync, wirelessly with Evernote’s servers and then I am done. Once my voice note is uploaded to Evernote’s servers it then gets downloaded to my computer when I open the Windows or Mac application on any one of my computers.

The night that I put  2 and 2 together and figured this out I sat down and recorded 6 blog posts in under 1/2 hour. In fact this post is one of the posts that I recorded that night. The only way that it could be any easier would be if Evernote could transcribe my voice note for me then I would not even need to type the whole thing (wishful thinking, I know).

I am really hoping that this new discovery will help in me blogging more frequently.

WordPress iPhone App Version 1.1 Released – I Can’t Wait Until 1.2

Posted on August 4, 2008

WordPress has just released the 1.1 version of their iPhone Blogging application. This was mostly a bug and stability fix so their are no noticable feature updates or changes. They did reference the coming 1.2 version and provided a link to it from their announcement iphone.wordpress.net.

The 1.2 version virtually looks like my Don’t Like and Wish List combined together. It is supposed to include the ability to add links to posts, better image insertion, and password protection. This app already has gotten me blogging more but the addition of these items would make my life much easier.

Thanks WordPress team for awesome blogging software and an awesome software app!

WordPress iPhone Blogging App – 5 Posts and a Day Later

Posted on July 24, 2008

I know it gas only been a day (or so) since the WordPress iPhone blogging app has come out but I have already used it to do at least 5 posts on various blogs. As I speculated it is allowing me to blog more which I really have been struggling to do. The fact that I can blog from anywhere has caused me to try to utilize my down time more and I am actually trying to think of things to blog about now. Also, I do not feel restricted by the tiny keyboard and have actually typed some rather long posts (quite longer then long emails that I have done in the past).

With that there have been somethings that have surfaced on my like/dislike/wish lists in regards to the app. I will start with the likes first.
Read the rest of this entry »

Finally! A Better Looking Theme Here at idano.net

Posted on July 22, 2008

I had really trashed the other theme that was here previously but know we have something that is a little better looking.

This is the WP Premium theme from by WP Remix.

I have made a couple of modifications to it to fir this site but the underlying theme is still intact. I will probably look to change the color from red to blue down the road but the red color scheme is much better then what was here before.

Anyway, I have gone through it and everything seems to work correctly. If you find anything that doesn’t please drop me a line.

WordPress Releases Blogging Client for the iPhone

Posted on July 22, 2008

Hot off the press – WordPress has released their blogging client for the iPhone. In fact I am typing this post on my iPhone right now.

I have been waiting for this since the iPhone 2.0 firmware release when Typepad released their blogging client. I downloaded it but never used it since I don’t have a Typad blog.

So far this seems to be working great. The add photo section works cool although it adds the photo to the bottom of the post. Preview is awesome since you get to see you post formated in your blogs theme.

I think with this app I am going to be blogging a whole lot more :-) .

P.S. I originally uploaded images from my iPhone to this post but it was not working. That was an issue with this blog not the app. Also, I have noticed with this post that this template is not very WordPress Gallery friendly – I realize that – i am looking for a new theme as we speak as I cannot stand this one anyway.

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