Using the Apple iPad onscreen keyboard

April 3, 2010 By 2 Comments

How fast are you able to type using the Apple iPad onscreen keyboard? It’s a non-standard QWERTY keyboard, so until have the positions of characters like (, <, ?, etc. then it’ll take a bit of practice.

In the meantime, Loren decided to try his hand at a blog post and at the exact same time Layne was broadcasting doing the same thing. Here is the video I took of Loren typing his entry.

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Special Saturday delivery

April 3, 2010 By Leave a Comment

We’d be glad to share photos, videos, and other things as we set up the Apple iPad.

The iPad uses a PC to sync with iTunes application, which is required on setup. We have video inprocess of attaching the iPad to a Toshiba Portege M700 Tablet PC for synchronization, playing with WritePad, Autodesk, SketchPad Pro, Netflix, iBook, and more.

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Fifteen Years and Counting

March 24, 2010 By 5 Comments

Lora's small dog named AJ

Five years ago Problogger’s Darren Rowse summarized how to write a blog post in a short list:

Here are ten tips that help me with my blog writing.

  1. Make your opinion known
  2. Link like crazy
  3. Write less
  4. 250 Words is enough
  5. Make Headlines snappy
  6. Write with passion
  7. Include Bullet point lists
  8. Edit your post
  9. Make your posts easy to scan
  10. Be consistent with your style
  11. Litter the post with keywords

Lora doesn’t use this list. She has her own writing style. Now that she has WordPress available, will her style of writing change? Probably not.

Just in case she chooses to expand on her thoughts, I’ve installed the following 27 plugins as a default installation. Not all of these are active yet. They will be activated once the site goes from beta to live.

  1. Advertising Manager
    • Control and arrange your Advertising and Referral blocks on your WordPress blog. With Widget and inline post support, integration with all major ad networks.
    • Version 3.4.17 | By Scott Switzer, Martin Fitzpatrick
  2. Better Excerpt
    • Gives you full control over the WordPress excerpt: change the length, the ellipsis [...] and surrounding markup; can automatically add a link to the full post. Has admin page; no code/theme editing required.
    • Version 0.2.1 | By Sue Bailey
  3. BM Custom Login
    • Display custom images on the wordpress login screen. Useful for branding.
    • Version 1.4 | By Ben Gillbanks
  4. Custom Post Templates
    • Provides a drop-down to select different templates for posts from the post edit screen. The templates are defined similarly to page templates, and will replace single.php for the specified post.
    • Version 1.1 | By Simon Wheatley
  5. Follow Me
    • The Follow Me plugin is designed to allow users the ability to add links to their social media profiles in their blog. To get started activate and visit the Settings Page.
    • Version 2.0 | By Brian Chappell @ Ignite Social Media
  6. Google XML Sitemaps
    • This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com to better index your blog.
    • Version 3.2.2 | By Arne Brachhold
  7. Insights
    • Insights allows you to quickly search and insert information (links, images, videos, maps, news..) into your blog posts.
    • Version 1.0.2 | By Vladimir Prelovac
  8. No Self Pings
    • Keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site.
    • Version 0.2 | By Michael D. Adams
  9. Posts of Current Category
    • Lists (Show/Display title) Posts of Current Category and Order Posts by author,content,date,ID, .. etc Sort ASC/DESC. Go to Appearance>Widgets and Drag “Posts of Current Category” widget to your Sidebar.
    • Version 0.2 | By Anup Raj
  10. PuSHPress
    • PubSubHubbub plugin for WordPress that includes the hub
    • Version 0.1.6 | By Joseph Scott
  11. Scribe
    • Quickly and easily check your content against SEO best practices utilizing the Scribe Content Optimizer. You will need a Scribe API Key in order to use the application. If you do not have an API Key, go to http://scribeseo.com. Requires one of the following installed and activated – Thesis, Hybrid, Headway, Genesis, FV All In One SEOor All In One SEO Pack.
    • Version 1.0.11 | By Scribe
  12. SexyBookmarks
    • SexyBookmarks adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts. See configuration panel for more settings.
    • Version 2.6.1.3 | By Josh Jones, Jamie Carter, Gautum Gupta, Norman Yung
  13. Simple:Press Forum
    • Fully featured but simple page-based forum
    • Version 4.2.1 | By Andy Staines & Steve Klasen
  14. Simple Login Widget
    • Just a simplified login widget, with only the register and the login/logout functions
    • Version 1.1 | By Edem
  15. Sliding Panel
    • Creates a jQuery-based, fully-widgetized sliding panel.
    • Version 0.1 | By Justin Tadlock
  16. Smooth Slider
    • Smooth Slider adds a smooth content and image slideshow with customizable background and slide intervals to any location of your blog
    • Version 2.2 | By Tejaswini Deshpande, Sanjeev Mishra
  17. SyntaxHighlighter Plus
    • An advanced upload-and-activate WordPress implementation of Alex Gorbatchev’s SyntaxHighlighter JavaScript code highlighting package. See WordPress.com’s “How do I post source code?” for details. Click here for options.
    • Version 1.0b2 | By Fred Wu
  18. Thesis OpenHook
    • This plugin allows you to insert arbitrary content into the many hooks that the Thesis Theme Framework provides. Never again edit a file! Based on K2 Hook Up and GPLed.
    • Version 2.2.5 | By Rick Beckman
  19. TweetMeme Retweet Button
    • Adds a button which easily lets you retweet your blog posts.
    • Version 1.8.2 | By TweetMeme
  20. Widget Logic
    • Control widgets with WP’s conditional tags is_home etc
    • Version 0.47 | By Alan Trewartha
  21. WordPress Database Backup
    • On-demand backup of your WordPress database. Navigate to Tools ? Backup to get started.
    • Version 2.2.2 | By Austin Matzko
  22. WP-Optimize
    • This plugin helps you to keep your database clean by removing post revisions and spams in a blaze. allows you to rename your admin name also. Additionally it allows you to run optimize command on your wordpress core tables (use with caution).
    • Version 0.8.0 | By Ruhani Rabin
  23. WP-PageNavi
    • Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog.
    • Version 2.61 | By Lester ‘GaMerZ’ Chan
  24. WP Policies
    • Creates preset policy pages on your blog. Configure Options Here.
    • Version 1.0 | By Offline Marketing Tools
  25. WP Super Cache
    • Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.
    • Version 0.9.9 | By Donncha O Caoimh
  26. WPtouch iPhone Theme
    • A plugin which formats your site with a mobile theme for the Apple iPhone / iPod touch, Google Android, Palm Pre and other touch-based smartphones.
    • Version 1.9.9.8 | By Dale Mugford & Duane Storey (BraveNewCode)
  27. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
    • Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.
    • Version 3.1.6 | By mitcho (Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine)

If you want to install these onto your WordPress installation, go to Plugins –> Add New –> Place the name of the plugin into the search.

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