Jul
30
Here are two sites you might like to try:
Test Your Web Design in Different Browsers
The first site I found is called Browsershots. This is a really great site for Web Designers that are curious about how their site looks on different operating systems with different browsers. You can see your design in 24 different browsers for Linux, 26 browsers for Windows, and 7 browser for Mac.
How it works is you submit your site to Browsershots, then Browsershots directs a set of hub computers to view your page. These different hub computers take screenshots of your page on their browser and then sends them back to Browsershots for you to view them. The site is open source and free for anybody to use. Plus it’s kind of fun to see what your site looks like in Firefox 1.0. 
If you’re curious, go to browsershots.org to try it out.
Web Indexing - Free Web Submission
This next site makes it really easy to submit your site to 140 different search engines on the web. I haven’t heard of most of the search engines, but they do have all the big ones like Google, Msn, and Yahoo. The guidelines and suggestions on the page have 2 recommendations.
- Make sure your site is online and is not “under construction”
- Use a alternate e-mail address as some sites may spam you ( also to note some sites require email confirmation, although most don’t from my experience).
I used my Hotmail address to submit stateofaffairs.info seeing how its my most spamed address anyways. In reality though I only noticed a couple new spam messages from using this service, so there is not much to worry about. Check out index.sinard.net for more info.
Thanks for reading.
Technorati Tags: web submission, indexing, web design, test sites, linux, windows, mac, browsershots, web index, screenshots, browsers, firefox, msie, free web submission, free
Jul
26
A couple ways to alleviate the world’s problems in consumption
Filed Under Politics | Leave a Comment
In economic organization of society, we have the forces of supply and demand, as well as distribution (but that’s kind of a different story). So in the cycle of production and consumption, we also have consequences, such as pollution, exploitation, and the threat to our ecosystem. The price we pay for the item only reflects how much it cost to produce, scarcity, as well as how much people are willing to pay for a product. However, between laissez-faire economics and corporate commodities, it never works to reflect the environmental, social, or health costs. As consumers, we are only conscious of the price tag next to quality, and as we are beginning to become aware of things like global warming, the poverty, and pesticides, we wonder what our government is going to do about it or what we can do about it (without lowering our standard of living or killing our debit accounts). Most people I know are waiting for something to happen from the top of the enlightenment period, but why not start right here in our day-to-day lives?
Baby steps - Here are some things I have listed to share an idea about everyday consumers changing the world. Through demand we have the ability to encourage the production of one good over another. Choices - they are a reflection of how we live and what we find value in… I’m not going to get into reusing bags and bottles, donate to charity and cause, or taking public transit.. i have a feeling most of us are already aware and are doing what we can.
“Recycle” Shopping
When I picture a department store, I see racks of mass produced clothes manufactured in a factory from a third world country. Rather than perpetuating the waste and the exploitation of children in sweatshops, why not shop used clothing? Used clothing are generally in good to new condition, and one may find some unique articles, as well as a good price. While you’re at it, you can also sell some of your old clothes towards your new closet.
Used books are available online, and a great place I would recommend is Amazon.com. Many individuals and “companies” post their used books online and you can purchase directly from them. Generally after the shipping costs, the used books are far cheaper than buying brand new. This is a good idea especially for college students who have expensive textbooks to buy - it is far cheaper to buy used online than used at a bookstore! Usually takes about 2 weeks to arrive, so time may be a factor for some.
Google books also has a bunch of free books to download online. There are also many other websites that offer this if you go out and look. Why cut down more trees for the printing press? Why throw away your old books? There are also many used book stores around that you can sell your old books to. They usually don’t offer a good price, but if you can’t wait to get rid of them, it is a good option. They also serve as drop off locations for donations.
Organic Small Farm Produce
Did you know that land is far more productive in small-scale farming? With small scale farming, more food is yielded per acre, there is less homogenizing of germ seed, the ability to plant at different levels of soil (this practice is good for preserving the topsoil). In large scale farming, plants are grown under the philosophy of predictability, so therefore farmers want to grow a certain amount to be harvested in one day (whereas in small scale, it is harvested all season long). Therefore, it encourages homogeneity in what to produce, as well as in the germ seed.
There are some seed companies who are based off of this idea. For example, Monsanto has been genetically modifying seeds (or GMO’s) to create a predictable yield. In traditional farming practices, seeds are gathered from the old crop and replanted every year. With the newer Monsanto seeds, they cannot reproduce and so they die off every year. New seeds have to be rebought every year, and what’s more is that these seeds are patented by these companies, so there is vulnerability in that a corporation who can control a food supply.
Also, environmental stability relies on diversity. Because life feeds on life, diversity provides the balance and the support to all living species. If there was only 2 species, such as rice and man, it can mean disastrous results if the one crop should fail. Mass farming and its homogenizing quality only expands territory as population increases, so it is inherent that mass farming is unproductive and destructive in the long run.
So there is the gist of it - the reason why i think going to your local farmer’s market actually makes a difference. Through conscientious shopping we can enact the change that we want to see. Do some research, ask a few questions, talk to other people, find out the story of the products you buy. Sometimes we make mistakes, the news on TV is not always right, and sometimes we see that a system is not working the way it could or should be. I hope to see and hear other ideas out there, as well as other alternatives. When I do, I shall update this post.
Technorati Tags: farmers, market, consumption, decreased, manufacturing, clothes, amazon, gmo’s, organic, google, supply, demand
Jul
24
Top 20 Best Wordpress Plug-ins
Filed Under Blogging | 9 Comments
I know there are lots of articles already out on the web in relation to this exact topic. The problem I found is not that these other articles didn’t do a good job of describing some great Wordpress plug-ins, it’s the fact that none of the them had half of the plug-ins I use.
These plug-ins are what I use on my site and are what I find useful for my blog, this does not mean that they are what everybody needs, but for a beginner I think they will help out a lot in customizing a blog. Feel free to leave a comment on what plug-ins you use and what you like at the bottom of this post!
Wordpress Database Back-up
This one can be a lifesaver. It can do a automatic or manual back up of your Wordpress database just in case your database becomes corrupted or is lost all together.
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the Wordpress installation to the latest one provided by Wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the Wordpress upgrade instructions. I didn’t use this the last time I upgraded and I regretted it. If you ever plan on upgrading this is the way to go.
Google XML Sitemaps
This plug-in generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your Wordpress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. There are a lot of other great features of this plug-in I recommend you check out as well.
Samsarin PHP Widget
There are many versions like this plug-in but I found this one to be the easiest to use. It allows you to place a text widget in one of your sidebars which can read and execute PHP. The normal text widget only allows text and html.
All in One SEO Pack
This plug-in makes it quite easy to optimize you site for search engines. Add tags, header and description with ease.
Akismet
Akismet is a great plug-in for blocking comment and trackback spam. If your site starts to get a lot of visits you’ll definitely want to get this one.
Simple Archive Generator
Simple archives makes a really great index or archive page for your site. You can view my index page here http://stateofaffairs.info/index
Grunion Contact Form
This plug-in Adds a contact form to any post or page by inserting
[contact-form]
in the post. All emails will be sent to the post’s author. Your email address is never shown, and the sender never learns it (unless you reply to the email). I tried Cforms but found it to be buggy and overly complex for just a simple contact form.
Related post
This plug-in will output a series of “related” entries on the bottom of your post based on keyword matching. I personnel don’t use this plug-in but I may implement it in the future.
Ad Wrap
This plug-in will mark the key parts of a blog post so that context based ad services can identify the post content and comments for the best ad matching (thus avoiding the static content that is irrelevant for context ad matching).Supported by:
1. Google Adsense
2. Amazon.com Context Links
3. Kontera ContextLink
4. MediaText
Add to Any: Share/Save/Bookmark Button
Helps readers share, save, and bookmark your posts and pages using any service, such as Delicious, Digg, Facebook, MySpace, and all the rest. Works great at the end of all of your post.
iflickr
iFlickr is a Wordpress plug-in that allows you to easily find free creative commons images on flickr and insert them into your blog post while automatically putting the attribution link underneath.
Subscribe To Comments
This plug-in places a check box at the bottom of your post allowing commentators to subscribe to your comments so they will receive a email when someone else comments. It’s a great way to entice visitors to come back to your blog so they can participate in the discussions.
Register Plus
Ditch the default registration page on Wordpress. This plug-in allows you to enhance your registration page. Add a custom logo, password field, invitation codes, disclaimer, captcha validation, email validation, user moderation, profile fields and more.
FeedBurner FeedSmith
This plug-in detects all ways to access your original Wordpress feeds and redirects them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber.
SEO Friendly Images
Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well.
SimpleTags
SimpleTags will allow you to easily generate Technorati tags at the bottom of your blog entries. All you have to do is insert code as such [tags]Word Press, Technorati, SimpleTags[/tags]. You can also do individual words with the [tag] [/tag] syntax.
SEO Slugs
The SEO Slugs Wordpress plug-in removes common words like ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’ from post slugs to improve search engine optimization. It turns “/what-you-can-do-immediately-for-higher-rankings” into “/immediately-higher-rankings”. Great for anybody looking to improve their SEO.
Kimili Flash Embed
Kimili Flash Embed is a Wordpress plug-in that allows you to easily place a flash movie onto your site. Once installed the syntax is really easy to adjust. The syntax is [kml_flashembed movie="filename.swf" height="250" width="400" /].
Audio player
Once installed, this plug-in allows you to insert mp3 audio files into your posts and pages. Use the following syntax:
[audio:name_of_mp3_file.mp3]
This code will insert a flash player and will load the file named name_of_mp3_file.mp3 located in your audio files folder.
Thanks for reading!
Technorati Tags: wordpress, plug-in, blogging, top list, best list, blogosphere, useful, top 20, blog, database, back-up, steps, installation, seo, search engine, tags, flash, audio, ads, contact form, php, xml sitemap, feedburner
Jul
21
Download: Single Track Flash Mp3 Player
Filed Under Music | Leave a Comment
A while back I made a small flash animation for my band site to showcase a single off of my album. In reality the flash animation was actually a single track audio player. I spent a while trying to just download one from other sites but I couldn’t find one anywhere. So to save you some trouble you can download mine here for free. I am not a flash pro, but I did manage to program all the buttons and animations to my liking. Here is a example of the player.
- There are only two things you need to do to customize the player
- Add your music track to the “Music” layer in Adobe Flash.
- Adjust the other layers frame counts to match the length of your audio file.
That’s all there is too it! Text would be a easy add to the player as well, but isn’t completely necessary. You can download my original flash file here.
Single Track Flash Mp3 Player - File size: 5.7mb
*Note the file size of you final .swf file will be only slightly larger then your audio file. The .Fla file is larger because it isn’t encoded like .flv and .swf files.
Enjoy!
Technorati Tags: mp3, flash animation, mp3 player, download, free, music
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