Sketchcast A Cool New Blogging Tool
Introducing Sketch Cast. SketchCast.com allows you to whiteboard your ideas and share them via the web. Think the UPS whiteboard commercials with the ability to post in your blog for the rest of the world to see. Traffic is Gold uses a lot of screen casting using Camtasia, so naturally SketchCast.com caught my attention.
If I can find a good use for sketch cast out side of my regular usage of Camtasia, you may see it on this site. The technology looks cool, so check it our when you have sometime to brainstorm on the white board.
Check out their tutorial/intro video:
UPDATE
I had to take the video down as it was casuing my site to not load. You can see the video on their site.
Technorati Tags: whiteboard, UPS whiteboard, blog, Traffic is Gold, Camtasia, SketchCast.com
Wordpress 2.3 Is Now Available
We have seen in our Wordpress dashboard the coming of 2.3. Today we welcome Dexter or 2.3. Get the latest version here. I guess the biggest news of this release is tagging, tag clouds and better URL handling. The SEO crowds are cheering!! Check out the release notes for full updated items.
While I am glad to have an update, which means more features and more security. It also means I have to update about 15 blogs… It’s going to be a long night.
Technorati Tags: Wordpress dashboard, Dexter, tagging, tag clouds, URL handling
Blog Rush Exploits
In the Blog Rush Dash board there is a message about low CTR due to gaming of the system by some users, “Click- through rates are very low right now due to problems with some users cheating the system.”
There are several sites giving out information on how to exploit the BlogRush software.
I hope John’s team can address and resolve these issues very soon, or it will really compromise the effectiveness of the tool. So far John as been up front with his communication about some of the issues BR has faced since it’s launch.
Excluding Pages In The Wordpress Sidebar
I created a Youtube video to show how you can exclude a page from showing up in the Wordpress sidebar of your blog. I did a quick search on Google for a plug-in but was not able to find anything. If anyone knows of a plug-in please post on the blog.
Find:
The first thing you will need to do is edit the sidebar.php file. Do a search for the following function: wp_list_pages.
Edit:
Next you will need to find the post ID for the page you want to exclude. Once you know this you will add this “&exclude=5” to your wp_list_pages function.
Example: <?php wp_list_pages(’sort_column=menu_order&title_li&exclude=5′); ?>
Upload:
Once you have modified and saved your file then upload to your server and the page will be updated.
Done
Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) PostsTechnorati Tags: Youtube, Wordpress, Google, plug-in, wp_list_pages
Try Mango.com Not Working
Last Friday I read about a new language site called trymango.com. I have a life goal to be fluent in Spanish (scroll to the bottom of the page), so I immediately registered for this online language learning site. To my surprise the application did not work in FireFox. So next, I tried IE and the application loaded partially… Check out the screen capture.
After hours of trying, I can not get this site to work. It just sits on loading for hours. This leads me to the point of this post, if your site is not ready for primetime keep it locked down. This site is not even ready to be called beta. We are not talking about a ton of priority one bugs; the site does not work at all.
Releasing a site in this state is a quick way to blow through potential customers and risk your company’s reputation.
It is in Beta so I guess I really can’t complain. Right? Wrong. I see many companies releasing buggy software and applications and slapping the word beta on them so they can tell their users “but it’s beta, we are still working out the bugs…”
Traffic is only one side of the equation. I hope TryMango.com can work through their issues, because it seems like a great idea and I really want to get on with my Spanish lessons.
Technorati Tags: FireFox, IE, beta, TryMango.com, Spanish lessons
I am passionate about SEO | Social Media | Blogging | Wordpress. Living a good life in Los Angeles with my wife and daughter. I am an internet Marketing consultant who can be hired on an hourly basis. 
