Though I’ve previously covered How to install WordPress in Windows Vista, that method used a BitNami stack, which comes with a few drawbacks. The method outlined in this tutorial will leave you with a perfect WordPress installation on your PC – which is great to use as a development and testing environment.

1. Before you install WordPress, make sure you have WAMP (Windows, Apache, MySQL & PHP) installed. Fortunately we have a tutorial that walks you through each step of installing and configuring WAMP. Once you’ve got that done, continue with step #2.
2. Click the WAMP icon in your System Tray and select www directory.



3. Explorer will open the folder C:\wamp\www\. This is where your HTML, PHP and other site files reside. You’ll notice an index.php file. This a WAMP file (the one that provides shortcuts to phpMyAdmin etc). You don’t want to delete it, but you also probably don’t want to leave it titled index.php.



4. Rename it to something else (for example, wamp.php).



5. Now download WordPress, and extract it into the C:\wamp\www\ folder



6. When you extract WordPress, it will create a folder called wordpress. If you’re using WAMP specifically for WordPress development, and you don’t want to have your blog show up at the address http://localhost/wamp (and would rather it display at http://localhost) – select all the files in the wordpress folder, cut and paste them into the C:\wamp\www\ folder.


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7. Now load the WAMP config screen in your browser by entering the address http://localhost/wamp.php – assuming you renamed the WAMP config file to wamp.php (in step #4).



8. In the Tools section, select phpmyadmin.



9. Log in to phpMyAdmin.



10. To create a new database for WordPress, select the Databases link.



11. In the Create new database section, enter wordpress as the database name (or something similarly descriptive) and click Create.



12. Make sure you get a confirmation that the database was successfully created.



13. Now enter http://localhost/ into your browser. You’ll be greeted with the WordPress “getting started” screen. Click the Create a Configuration File button.


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14. Review the info, and then click the Let’s Go! button.


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15. In the Database Name field, enter wordpress (or whatever database name you specified back in step #11). Enter root as the User Name (unless you’ve created another MySQL user) and your MySQL password in the Password field. Your Database Host should be set to localhost and the Table Prefix should remain wp_ (but can be changed if you wish). When you’re done, click Submit.


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16. Now click Run the install.


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17. A few seconds later you’ll be presented with the Information needed screen. Give your blog a title, and enter your email address in the provided fields. If you’re using this WordPress installation as a development site, uncheck the Allow my blog to appear in search engines like Google and Technorati. Click Install WordPress.


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18. Make note of your username (admin) and assigned password, then click the Log In button.


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19. Enter your Username and Password in the appropriate fields, and once again click Log In.


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20. That’s it! You can start writing posts, uploading/creating themes etc.


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How to remove the DiggBar from sites visited via digg

When I did this last year it was fairly well received. So here I am, a year later, doing it again. As usual I’ll share pretty much every statistic about this site (except specific financial details), and more importantly, everything I’ve learned (the highlights anyway) in the last year.

I’m going w/ the same format again, for the same reason (I’m lazy). Speaking of lazy, I’ve had this post in my drafts waiting to be finished since the beginning of August – the actual 2 year mark.

1. What I’ve done
1. Stats
2. What I’ve learned
1. SEO
2. Find a Mentor
3. Your Niche is Different
4. Advertising
5. Write more content, then some more, and then some more

What I’ve done

Stats
Here’s an overview of the statistics for Simple Help from the last year. Even after 2 years, I can’t go a day without checking Google Analytics.

1. Visits and Pageviews – 08/01/07 – 07/31/08

As the graph below illustrates, there was a significant drop in the middle of Dec. 07. I was quite sick, and the site went down for 2.5 days. Such is life.

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By Month

All in all I’m pleased with the growth compared to the first year (1,104,495 visits, 1,756,518 page views). One of the things I wanted to increase this year was the number of page views per visit, which I did – slightly. Last year it was 1.59 page views per visit, this year it grew to 1.72. I attribute this to 2 complete site re-designs and the use of the Related Posts plugin (and the Related Posts for your Feeds plugin).

2. Traffic sources – 08/01/07 – 07/31/08

Similar to last year, search remains my #1 source of traffic. By far.


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One rather significant change is that during Simple Helps first year, it was on the front page of Digg.com 16 times. In the second year – not once. This I attribute to two things – 1) I stopped “writing for digg” and 2) it’s a lot harder to get on the front page now. One of my silly goals in my first year was to get on the digg.com front page twice in one day. The second time I accomplished that goal, my previous hosting provider told me in no uncertain terms that Simple Help had to move. It was at that point I went from shared hosting to a dedicated server.

Last year, digg was my #2 source of traffic, this year, it’s #8. Which is kind of interesting in and of itself – a lot of people will claim that digg has no long-tail. Not entirely true.


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You’ll also note that images.google.com is my 6th highest source of traffic. If that’s not a glaring hint as to why you should use the alt and title tags, I’m not sure what is.

3. Traffic sources – 08/01/07 – 07/31/08

Once again, Google reigns supreme.


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4. Top Content – 08/01/07 – 07/31/08

My 5 most popular posts in the last year were:

1. How to convert .flac files to .mp3 using Windows
2. 10 Alternatives to iTunes for Managing your iPod
3. How to use your PC and Webcam as a motion-detecting and recording security camera
4. 15 Windows Explorer alternatives compared and reviewed
5. How to completely wipe all the data from your hard drive

Only one of those posts (How to completely wipe all of the data from your hard drive) did I actually write in the last year. The other four are from the first year. Also noteworthy is that my most popular post, accounts for almost 10% of my traffic. That’s one post out of six hundred.


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What I’ve Learned

SEO
If I had to guess, I’d say there are a billion sites on SEO (search engine optimization). There should be a new rule – if your site doesn’t get a couple of hundred thousand visits via search engines, per month, you can’t start or run an SEO site. My suggestion? Review some of the tips on one established SEO site (say Matt Cutts or the seomoz blog), implement those tips, and then stop. The time that some bloggers spend reviewing SEO “tips and tricks” never ceases to amaze me. Use that time to write an article instead. No matter how “SEO friendly” your site is, if you don’t have content, no one’s going to come. Besides, most SEO sites just take content they found on another SEO site, re-word it (the ones that aren’t totally lazy) and publish it. Do you really need to read the same 10 tips 50 times?

Find a Mentor
Without question, my absolute #1 suggestion is to find someone already established in your niche, and befriend them. I cannot possible emphasize this enough. The How-To Geek writes PC tutorials, just like I do (though he has a more heavy emphasis on Vista), and has shared countless tips with me. Without question, Simple Help would not be nearly as popular as it is today without him. The hard part is, of course, finding someone that’s willing to share information with you. I’ve been unbelievably fortunate.

Your Niche is Different
Similar to the SEO rant (above), do not waste your time reading “pro blogging” web sites. Here’s why – they generally offer suggestions that may not even apply to you. A blog that focuses on collecting coins has a completely different audience than a blog that focuses on photography. The differences can be in gender, age group, geographic location – the list is endless. What applies to one site does not necessarily apply to another. Again, find someone successful in your specific niche, and find out what has worked for them and what hasn’t. You’ll find that information way more valuable than what you would on a “pro blogging” web site.

RSS subscribers don’t matter

This one might be a tiny bit controversial. For my site – a computer tutorial blog – RSS subscribers don’t matter, at all. Remember – your niche is different. Everywhere you go you’ll read about how to increase your RSS subscriber count. Take a step back and ask yourself – “for my site, does the number of RSS subscribers matter?” Here’s an example. Darren Rowse, of ProBlogger.net, has 47,189 RSS subscribers (as I write this, Aug. 23rd, 2008). I have 3,227. He has 14 times (plus) more RSS subscribers than I do. However, in the last 30 days, problogger.net has had 767,118 page views (according to SiteMeter. Over the same period of time, Simple Help has had 796,178 page views. Slightly more page views, 14x fewer RSS subscribers. So before you spend too much time trying to increase your RSS readership, ask yourself, does it really matter for my blog?

Social networks are a waste of time

What the heck, another controversial one. I publish my posts via Twitter, I have a MyBlogLog page, FaceBook page (two actually), FriendFeed account, Last.FM… you name it, I have a page or account on that service. Not a single one of them drives any significant traffic to my site. StumbleUpon is an exception, and I’m not sure if it even counts as a social network. But again – consider your sites topic. If you write about FaceBook apps, you may get a tonne of traffic by creating a FaceBook group.

Advertising
Here’s my experience with advertising. When your site becomes popular, advertisers find you. They’ll even bid against each other. Until then, stick with AdSense, Kontera, Tribal Fusion – whatever.

Write more content, then some more, then some more
Just write more. Not everything will be popular, in fact most of it probably won’t. But the more content you have, the more it’ll show up in Google, and the more visitors you’ll get. Also, if you write something that you think is absolutely terrific, and the visitors don’t immediately flood your site – don’t stress. I’ve had things that I wrote months and months ago all of the sudden become hugely popular on StumbleUpon, or show up on a very popular blog – driving that traffic you hoped for.

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WordPress for the iPhone and/or iPod Touch is now available from the App Store. Keep reading for a brief overview with plenty of screenshots.

1. Download WordPress for the iPhone / iPod Touch the same as you would any other application in the App Store (yes it’s free). Sync your iPhone/iPod Touch and it’ll appear on your springboard.


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2. Tap Set up your blog to get started.


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3. Enter the relevant info in the appropriate fields.


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4. Now select your blog.


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5. A list of your recently published posts (and scheduled posts) will be listed.


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6. Tap the “write new post” button in the bottom right corner to create a new post for your blog. Start entering info. Tap the Categories and you’ll be presented with a list of all the categories you’ve previously created.


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7. When you create the actual post, the screen changes to give you more room to work with. Tap the Save button in the upper-right corner to save your post.


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8. By default, your post will be saved as a Local Draft – which means it’s on your iPhone/iPod Touch – not on your blogs server – yet.


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9. Tap the Status: field and you can publish, save as a draft (on the server) etc.


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10. Tap the Preview button from the bottom list, and you’ll get a preview of your post (the yellow fields are AdSense ad locations).


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11. Tap the Photos button from the bottom list and you can add a photo to your post. Tap Take Photo with Camera if you have an iPhone and want to add a ‘live’ photo, or Add Photo from Library to add a picture from your iPhone/iPod Touch photos.


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12. I added a photo from my library…


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13. but when I tried to save it, I got an error (I don’t use the wp-content/uploads/ folder, and it has specific permissions set).


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14. All in all it’s a very neat app that will come in handy for creating quick posts. I don’t think I’d want to try and write a particularly long post using it mind you.

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This brief will take you through the steps required to install WordPress – and all of its dependencies (Apache, PHP and MySQL) – in Windows Vista, using the fantastic open source software BitNami WordPress Stack.

A bit of background: BitNami Stacks are completely self-contained, and therefore do not interfere with any software already installed on your system. For example, you can upgrade your system’s MySQL or Apache without fear of breaking your BitNami WordPress Stack. If you have Apache already installed, the version that installs with BitNami won’t interfere with it.

Though this tutorial covers installing WordPress in Vista, BitNami WordPress Stacks are also available for Linux, Mac x86, Mac PPC, Solaris x86 and Solaris SPARC.

1. To get started, head over to the BitNami WordPress Stack page and download the “Full Stack” for Windows (about 39.1MB for WordPress 2.6). Run the installation file once the download has completed.

   Click Next to begin.


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2. Decide if you want to include PhpMyAdmin as a part of your installation (why not) and leave it checked if you do. Click Next to continue.


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3. To change the default installation location, click the folder button and navigate to the folder you want to install the BitNami WordPress Stack in. The default is fine. Again, click Next to continue.


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4. Enter the user name and password you want to use for WordPress. This user name will be the default administrative user – so opting for something like admin isn’t a bad idea. Then enter your real name and email address in their respective spaces. Yet again, click Next.


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5. Give your blog a name. Since I’ll be using mine as a development environment for Simple Help, I gave it the creative name of “Simple Help Dev Blog”. Your Hostname will be filled in for you. You’ll likely want to leave this alone. You guessed it – click Next.


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6. One last time – I promise – click Next.


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7. Now sit back and watch as the BitNami WordPress Stack installs itself. It can take a few minutes, depending on the speed of your computer etc. You might want to grab a cup of coffee, but don’t go too far.


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8. If you have Vista’s Firewall enabled, you’ll be prompted to Keep Blocking or Unblock mysqld. Click Unblock. If you have another Firewall installed, make sure to unblock mysqld.


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9. And a minute or two later, you’ll be prompted with the same message, but this time for Apache. Again, click Unblock. And the same holds true if you’re using another Firewall – make sure Apache is unblocked/allowed.


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10. Towards the end of the installation, it may appear as though BitNami has “stalled”. It hasn’t, just give it another minute or two….


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11. and it will finish. Leave Launch BitNami WordPress Stack checked, and click Finish.


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12. Your default browser will launch and open and load the BitNami Welcome screen. Click the Access BitNami WordPress Stack link.


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13. Your brand new WordPress blog will appear! Use the Login link in the bottom of the right-column to sign in to WordPress (or just add wp-admin/ to the end of the URL in the address bar).


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14. Sign in with the user name and password you created way back in step #4



15. After signing in, you’ll be at the WordPress Dashboard. From here you can write a new page, post, etc.


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16. Below you’ll find a screenshot of the first post in my new blog.


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17. If you opted to install PhpMyAdmin as a part of the BitNami WordPress Stack, you can access it by loading the page http://127.0.0.1/phpmyadmin. The default user name is administrator and the password is the same one you set for WordPress (in step #4). If you’re using your newly installed WordPress as a development environment, you can use PhpMyAdmin to import your existing WordPress database. If you’d rather use MySQL directly, the administrative login is root and the password is the same as your WordPress pass. The non-root account used to access the database is named bitnami, and its password is bitnami as well.


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18. Happy WordPress’ing!

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Hi all – this is a first for Simple Help, today marks the first time I’ve had a guest blogger contribute to the site – I’d like you all to meet Rebecca, aka Miss604. Rebecca is one of, if not the most, prominent Vancouver bloggers. Miss604.com covers everything from Vancouver tech happenings (she’s a live-blogging specialist) to sports, music and local events. If you’re a local you already know about her site, if you’re not, check it out to get a great feel for our city.

How to create a screencast using OS X

Resources: Snapz Pro X, Snapz Pro X tutorials

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Using the absolutely fantastic WordPress plugin WPtouch, your site will not only look great for visitors using an iPhone or iPod Touch, but it will be significantly easier to navigate. Keep reading for a review and screenshots.

The installation is very straight forward – it’s the same steps that most WordPress plugins require. Once installed, navigate to your Options -> WPtouch (for WP 2.3 or earlier) or Settings -> WPtouch (for WP 2.5 or higher). From here you can customize a number of aspects of WPtouch.

There are a quite a few Page Icons that are displayed next to the pages you specify. You can also create your own icons by adding 60×60 px .jpg or .png files in the icon-pool folder.

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The Logo, Page and Icons section is where you specify which logo you want to represent each of your WordPress Pages.

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The Companion Support section reveals information about supported plugins, unsupported plugins, and explains how you can further customize your site to work with WPtouch.

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Make sure to review the Template Switch Code and WP-Cache Compatibility sections of the WPtouch page for additional details on setting up the plugin.

Once everything is set up, here’s how your site (depending on your configuration settings) will look on an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Home Page		Menu drop-down
Individual Post		Expanded Post
Search with WPtouch		Search Results
Bookmark Options

Horizontal View

Footer

ps. thanks Miss604 for the heads-up

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If you noticed a change in your Alexa rank today, here’s why. Simple Help went from 77k (+/-) to 49.5k. If you have a site and pay attention to your Alexa rank, did your rankings change?

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Contest details – to enter, all you have to do is leave a comment on this post. Here’s what your comment must include in order to be eligible to win:

1. A tutorial suggestion – is there a PC/software topic/problem that you struggled to figure out? Or wished you had a detailed tutorial to help you learn? Suggest it to me (and ideally check to make sure it’s something I haven’t already written). Linux, Windows, OS X – just something computer/software related (in keeping with the theme of the site…)
2. Which of the two prizes you want to receive – the first prize is $25.00 cash. I’ll send it to you via PayPal or as an Amazon Gift Certificate or even a personal cheque if that’s what it takes. The second prize is a $25.00 donation to one of the following non-profit organizations:
   1. Vancouver Rape Relief and Womans Shelter
   2. Electronic Frontier Foundation
   3. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence
   4. Children’s Network International

   I will of course make the donation in your name and/or send the confirmation email to you.

3. Please use a valid email address in the E-mail field of the comment form below. If I can’t email you, I can’t tell you you won. Note: I hope it goes without saying, I would never, ever do anything w/ your email address other than send you a note telling you you’ve won the contest. I don’t collect them, sell them etc

That’s it. Oh – and yes – you can enter twice, once for each prize. Just leave one comment saying “I’d like to enter the first contest, and here’s my suggestion for a tutorial…” and then another comment saying “I’d like to enter the second contest, and here’s my suggestion for a tutorial…”. If you enter twice, you have to suggest two different tutorials.

The contest will run from now until midnight on Friday, Nov 16th, 2007. At that point I’ll get my room-mates to pick numbers to select the winners at random. Saturday morning I’ll notify the contest winners and post the details re: the winners here on Simple Help.

Here’s an example of a valid entry:

Hi – I’d like to enter the cash prize contest, and my suggestion for a tutorial is “How to join two divx files together into one”. Thanks!

and/or

Hi – I’d like to enter the donation prize contest, the non-profit I would like to have $25.00 donated to in my name is XXXXXX, and my idea for a tutorial is “How to copy a DVD in OS X”. Thanks!

Good luck!

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Jamie of Blog2Life has finished the Simple Help redesign (99%). Based on reader feedback a few things have been changed already, and there are one or two more to go. But I couldn’t be more happy with the results, and couldn’t recommend Jamie enough as a designer/developer.

The entire redesign process was accomplished using the online tools Zoho Notebook, GTalk and email. Jamie put up with my constant requests for changes, nitpicking and borderline unreasonable requests, all the while never complaining. More importantly, he also introduced me to a number of tools and concepts that had never occurred to be before.

With all of that said, and now that he has some time on his hands, Jamie is looking to redesign another site – for free. Contact him and include the site you’d like him to redesign and develop. Be sure to include as much detail as you can (does your site run WordPress, Blogger, or on a custom platform) and he’ll get back to the selected site owner.

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I’ve been waiting for them to roll out the “version 2″ features. Well, they finally have – so now I can drop the service. Here’s why –

The Stats

From Sept. 16 to date (Oct 31st), the BlogRush widget has sent 156 people to Simplehelp. Those 156 people averaged 1.41 page views per visit (during the same time the site average was 2.00 page views per visit) and spent an average of 47 seconds on the site (vs. the site average of 1 min 52 seconds).

All of that info becomes more significant when I reveal the next set of numbers. I’ve “earned” 585,833 credits – 560,456 by displaying the widget on Simplehelp (my traffic) 25,377 by referrals (my network – which consists of 9 members who signed up via my referral link).

All of that amounts to this – a click-through rate of 0.026%. My “very best” (most successful) BlogRush post was viewed 32 times – after being displayed 82,424 times. And according to BlogRush – that click-through rate is “hot” (see screenshot below). You have GOT to be kidding me.

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So I bid you a not entirely fond farewell BlogRush, your widget will grace my site no longer. Good luck in the future.

ps. I hope the folks @ BlogRush have learned, at the very least – don’t roll out something until it’s ready. I understand you weren’t expecting it to be so popular so fast, but that’s only valid for so long. Promising updates within a certain time frame and repeatedly not delivering does not make for good customer service.

related note: during the time I’ve been using BlogRush, the following sites have sent more traffic than BlogRush – images.google.co.uk, mail.google.com (from my email signature?), images.google.ca and even images.google.com.mx. And that’s not including the ‘real’ traffic referrals like lifehacker, howtogeek, ubuntuforums.org, webupon.com etc.

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Using DeliCount, a free program created by the How-To Geek, you can find out how many times your site – and all of the pages on it, has been bookmarked on the popular social bookmarking service del.icio.us.

1. To get started, download DeliCount. It requires that the .NET 2.0 Framework be installed, which you can find here.


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2. Enter your sitemap address in the space provided, and click Go.


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3. Sit back and watch as DeliCount uses your sitemap to count the total number of times your sites contents have been bookmarked on del.icio.us. Note: this can take a while depending on how many pages your site has. I tried to determine the number of times the contents of Read/WriteWeb had been bookmarked and after 8 hours (and 65k+ bookmarks) del.icio.us decided I had been polling just a little too much, and temporarily banned my IP. It’s also worth noting that if you do get banned, it won’t be for more than a few hours.


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4. As of 10/18/07, Simplehelp has been bookmarked 8131 times – how many times has your site been bookmarked? Feel free to leave a comment below.

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In no particular order, here are my favorite posts from Blog Action Day 2007.

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With all the recent talk over buying and selling of text link ads causing a negative effect on your Google PageRank, I’ve decided to disable the text-link-ads.com WordPress Plugin (ie. stop selling text-link-ads). That’s about $100/mo that I’m kissing goodbye just to avoid the possibility that Google might punish me. Here’s why –

They send me more traffic than anyone else. I can’t say I’m entirely happy about the situation, but there isn’t much I can do about it. One thing I can do, is email the folks @ text-link-ads.com and ask if they’d consider adding the rel=”nofollow” tag to each ad they sell. Here’s what I sent -

Hi TLA folks -

With all of the recent talk of Google punishing Text Link Ad buyers
and sellers, are you considering adding the rel=”nofollow” tag to the
link code? I ask because I’m afraid I’m going to have to stop
participating in the TLA program if there’s a chance that it will hurt
my Google rankings/indexing, as Google is by far my #1 source of
traffic. I’d *like* to keep TLA running on my site, as I have 7/8
spots filled and I’m quite happy w/ the service – but again – I can’t
risk a Google punishment for the income that TLA provides. Your
response would be very much appreciated!

Thanks!

Ross

That went to sales@, Patrick Gavin (the TLA President), and whomever receives the mail generated by the “contact us” form on the TLA home page. So far, I’ve yet to hear anything back. I’m not surprised, they’re (TLA) probably holding frantic meetings trying to figure out what to do – since this latest not-exactly-official-news has probably seen a lot of folks like myself dropping their service.

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Why MWSnap doesn’t show up on every “top Windows freeware” list, I’ll never know. Version 3 has been around since 2002 (!?). Admittedly, it hasn’t been updated since 2002 either – it still works perfectly well in XP (I haven’t tested it in Vista yet). With the resulting screenshots you have a choice between BMP, JPG, TIFF, PNG and GIF formats, with selected color depth and quality settings – among dozens of other features. This “part tutorial, part overview” will get you started using MWSnap in no time.

1. When you start MWSnap for the first time, you’ll be prompted to specify which language you want to use. Make your selection and then click Ok.


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2. The main MWSnap window will appear. Hover your mouse over the items in the Toolbar to become familiar with some of the options and settings. For the sake of this tutorial I’ll show you how to take a screenshot of a “window” – which can be any open program or item that takes up space on your screen (the Task Bar, System Tray etc). Select Window/menu as the Snap type, and then click Snap window/menu.


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3. Move your cursor over all of the open ‘windows’ on your screen. Notice that when you pick a certain program or item, it will be highlighted in red. The highlighted section indicates what you’ll be taking a screenshot of, if you click your left mouse button. Once you’ve found something you want to take a screenshot of – click your left mouse button.



4. The screenshot you just took will appear in MWSpan’s “preview” window. From here you can save the file, add a frame to it, add a cursor to somewhere on the screen, flip/rotate etc.


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5. From the MWSnap menu, select Tools and then Hotkeys. Here you can customize exactly how you want your screenshot (MWSnap) hotkeys to be. Once you learn them, you’ll have MWSnap minimized to the System Tray and taking screenshots will become second nature to you.


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6. Select Edit and then Add cursor. Note the whole slew of cursors you can add to your screenshots. All you have to do is select one, and then click inside the ‘preview’ window where you want the cursor to appear.


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7. To check out some of the MWSnap settings, select Tools and then Settings. The General tab allows you to set things like autostarting with Windows, display settings for the MWSnap icon in your system tray, and various warnings.


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8. Select the Auto-saving tab. Here you can specific what format you want the screenshot to be automatically saved as (hint: change from the default of bmp), the default auto-save folder (hint: change from your C:\Program Files\MWSnap to something more easily accessible).

   You can also change the default file name for each auto-saved screenshot, add numeric suffix’s (so that each file has a unique name) etc.


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9. Select the Fixed sizes tab. This is a new one to me, I’ve never had a need to create a series of screenshots based on a fixed size, but I can think of a few pretty good uses already. Anyway – here you can customize or create new “fixed size” regions to use in MWSnap.


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10. Play around with it a bit to discover even more features and settings. Goodbye Snagit.

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Related Articles at Simple Help:

How to take screenshots with drop-shadows in OS X
How to take Screenshots with the Nokia N95
How to change the default screenshot save location in OS X
A look at the Instantbird Beta
How to change the default screenshot format (jpg) in OS X

I have to admit, I almost want this one (BlogRush) to work. It’s like the little train that could. It came out of nowhere, had huge publicity immediately, and then huge problems, immediately. Today it rolled out the promised “Flavors” feature. So now I have a slightly more appealing widget.

The BlogRush CEO sent out another long-winded email today (I’m talking 50+ paragraphs) that I’ll summarize for you here:

-”we won’t rest” until it’s working great, acknowledgment of problems
-huge list of excuses for problems
-reassurances that BlogRush isn’t some passing “fad”
-huge rant full of threats to current “cheaters”
-we’re moving to a manual, human reviewed process for allowing sites into out network, and we’re going to review everyone who has signed up already
- SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL LOW-TRAFFIC MEMBERS: In the near future we’ll be giving our low-traffic members (those that need more traffic the most) the BULK of our bonus credit allocations. You’ll get a ton more bonus credits than high-traffic members because you really need it. It’s only FAIR!
-Flavors and “Filters” are now live. Filters allow you to stop certain posts from appearing in the BlogRush widget (ie. content you don’t want displayed via BlogRush).

Update: (later in the day) If you really, really want, you can read the entire thing here. And, since I wrote this post, the “Dashboard” section of BlogRush (the part that displays your ‘credits’ etc) hasn’t been functional.

Also, in the last 3 days, my BlogRush referrals has doubled to 30. But the average time spent on the site is pretty low.

Source: widget.blogrush.com
Visits: 30
Avg. Pages/Visit: 1.30
Avg. Time on Site: 00:00:21

Site Avg. Pages/Visit: 1.67
Site Avg. Time on Site: 00:01:28

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Related Articles at Simple Help:

BlogRush – First Week Summary
Goodbye BlogRush
BlogRush – An Experiment | Update 1