Introducing a Service That Allows Non IPhone Users to Comment onInstagram Photos

I discovered a service recently that will be of interest to those on instagram and those who aren't. Instagram is one of the hottest social communities out there at the moment but only iPhone users can use it - until now! Webstagram aims to allow non iphone owners to comment on users photos. You can't upload photos yourself yet but you can comment via facebook comment system on the photos of your friends. This isn't the only reason it is a great service though. For instagram users who are bloggers it is a great way to connect with your readers even more as no matter what phone they use they can comment on your photos. You'll have noticed that I have added an instagram link to my sidebar. this links to the web version so now you'll be able to comment on mine but unfortunately you won't be able to follow me per se. BUT you can sign up to the RSS feed on there to be notified when I post photos. It is a great little service.

In other instagram news - you may remember that I blogged about a website called snapwidget that allows you to add your recent photos to your sidebar. well I've discovered another similar service called badgeplz. This service gives you more options for customising the look of your widget and that is why I am using it instead of snap widget. It also shows stats like number of followers and number of photos. As time goes on I fully expect that more services for instagram will be introduced as the service goes from strength to strength.

Webstagram can be found here.

Badge Plz can be found here.

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Apple Releases OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview with Over 100 New Features

 

Apple today released a developer preview of OS X Mountain Lion, the ninth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system, which brings popular apps and features from iPad to the Mac and accelerates the pace of OS X innovation. Mountain Lion introduces Messages, Notes, Reminders and Game Center to the Mac, as well as Notification Center, Share Sheets, Twitter integration and AirPlay Mirroring. Mountain Lion is the first OS X release built with iCloud in mind for easy setup and integration with apps. The developer preview of Mountain Lion also introduces Gatekeeper, a revolutionary security feature that helps keep you safe from malicious software by giving you complete control over what apps are installed on your Mac. The preview release of Mountain Lion is available to Mac Developer Program members starting today. Mac users will be able to upgrade to Mountain Lion from the Mac App Store in late summer 2012.

“The Mac is on a roll, growing faster than the PC for 23 straight quarters, and with Mountain Lion things get even better,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “The developer preview of Mountain Lion comes just seven months after the incredibly successful release of Lion and sets a rapid pace of development for the world’s most advanced personal computer operating system.”

The developer preview of Mountain Lion features the all new Messages app which replaces iChat and allows you to send unlimited messages, high-quality photos and videos directly from your Mac to another Mac or iOS device. Messages will continue to support AIM, Jabber, Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk. Starting today Lion users can download a beta of Messages from www.apple.com, and the final version will be available with Mountain Lion. Reminders and Notes help you create and track your to-dos across all your devices. Game Center lets you personalise your Mac gaming experience, find new games and challenge friends to play live multiplayer games, whether they’re on a Mac, iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

Mountain Lion presents notifications in an elegant new way, and Notification Center provides easy access to alerts from Mail, Calendar, Messages, Reminders, system updates and third party apps. System-wide Share Sheets make it easy to share links, photos and videos directly from Apple and third party apps. Twitter is integrated throughout Mountain Lion so you can sign on once and tweet directly from Safari, Quick Look, Photo Booth, Preview and third party apps. Mountain Lion also introduces AirPlay Mirroring, an easy way to wirelessly send a secure 720p video stream of what's on your Mac to an HDTV using Apple TV.

More than 100 million users have iCloud accounts, and Mountain Lion makes it easier than ever to set up iCloud and access documents across your devices. Mountain Lion uses your Apple ID to automatically set up Contacts, Mail, Calendar, Messages, FaceTime and Find My Mac. The new iCloud Documents pushes any changes to all your devices so documents are always up to date, and a new API helps developers make document-based apps work with iCloud.

Gatekeeper is a revolutionary new security feature that gives you control over which apps can be downloaded and installed on your Mac. You can choose to install apps from any source, just as you do on a Mac today, or you can use the safer default setting to install apps from the Mac App Store, along with apps from developers that have a unique Developer ID from Apple. For maximum security, you can set Gatekeeper to only allow apps from the Mac App Store to be downloaded and installed.

Mountain Lion also has features specifically designed to support Chinese users, including significant enhancements to the Chinese input method and the option to select Baidu search in Safari. Mountain Lion makes it easy to set up Contacts, Mail and Calendar with top email service providers QQ, 126 and 163. Chinese users can also upload video via Share Sheets directly to leading video websites Youku and Tudou, and system-wide support for Sina weibo makes microblogging easy.

Hundreds of new APIs give developers access to new core technologies and enhanced features within OS X. The Game Kit APIs tap into the same services as Game Center on iOS, making it possible to create multiplayer games that work across Mac, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. A new graphics infrastructure underpins OpenGL and OpenCL and implements GLKit, first introduced in iOS 5, to make it easier to create OpenGL apps. Using Core Animation in Cocoa apps is easier than ever, and new video APIs deliver modern 64-bit replacements for low-level QuickTime APIs. Enhanced Multi-Touch APIs give developers double-tap zoom support and access to the system-wide lookup gesture. Kernel ASLR improves security through enhanced mitigation against buffer overflow attacks.

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Sneak Peek at Adobe Photoshop CS6

Photoshop CS6 is coming. Adobe recently launched a video showing some of the features coming up in the update to their popular Photoshop software package. The biggest change is their new feature aware tool that will allow users to quickly and easily move portions of a photo around. The video below shows this new feature in action and is sure to be a big hit with users as the same process would take ages in past versions of Photoshop.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrlsnQ32YhY]We have no release date for the new version as of yet but I'll be sure to keep you updated when more details emerge.

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Auto Updates for Internet Explorer

Finally the news that web designers have been waiting for - Microsoft recently announced that it will start auto updating Internet Explorer. Chrome and Firefox have been auto updating its browser but IE was lagging behind its rivals in this respect. IE's old browsers are a real headache for designers as catering to old versions of IE means adding extra code to website stylesheets. Thus far auto update has only been rolled out in Australia & Brazil but more countries will be added in the near future. Microsoft aim to have all users running the latest version of IE as soon as possible. The web is safer when latest versions are used as security flaws are often dealt with in later versions. This move by Microsoft will allow people like me to use the latest coding techniques like HTML5 in our designs and will cut down the traffic coming from browsers like IE9. It isn't all good news though as Microsoft's latest version IE9 isn't compatible with Windows XP so those users will be limited to using IE8. But it is a good move forward for the software giant and I certainly look forward to being able to design in HTML5 as the markup is less messy and more advanced.

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My Favorite Wordpress Plugins

 

The beauty of Wordpress is the ability to use plugins to improve the functionality of your site. Of course the same tasks can be completed with advanced coding but plugins save a hell of a lot of time. I don't use tonnes of plugins on this blog but I do use a few. So today I'm going to share with you my favorite Wordpress plugins. So let's get started.

 

Socialize

 

Socialize is a lovely little plugin that allows you to add a call to action box at the bottom (or top) of your posts. It not only allows you to add a message for your readers but it also lets you add share buttons for a wide range of social networks.

Twitter Mentions as Comments

This plugin does exactly what it says on the tin - it looks for tweets mentioning your posts and then adds them as comments. A brilliant plugin for those of you who get a lot of tweets in relation to your posts.

Facebook Tab Manager

 



 

A plugin that allows you to create a landing page for your Facebook fan page directly from your Wordpress dashboard. Super simple to use and it will really make your Facebook page stand out. Brilliant idea and one I've used since the formation of this blog.

 

Fontific

 

Fontific provides a really easy way to add custom fonts to your site. You just choose your font, size and colour and then specify the css selector to tell the plugin which text to apply the font to. With this handy little plugin you have no need to fiddle with your theme's stylesheet.

 

Pinterest Plugin

 



 

This plugin adds the pin it button to the top or bottom of posts to allow readers to easily share your posts via pinterest. Pinterest is rapidly growing so it is key to give people a way of pinning items to it.

 

Akismet

 

This plugin is the big daddy in spam detection. I've used this for over a year and I've found it to detect 99.9% of all spam. It can detect spam trackbacks as well as comments.

 

Plugins make life so much easier and those are my favorite ones. Have you got a favorite that isn't mentioned here? Add it to the comments section!

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Nokia Lumia 800 - Review

 

Say hello to the first handset to be released in a collaboration between Nokia and Microsoft - the Nokia Lumia 800. We first heard about this collaboration back in February and it really doesn't disappoint. So let us take a closer look at the newest Windows phone on the block

The Nokia Lumia is a stylish and sleek smartphone with a user interface that is easy to use and attractive and performs along the lines of Windows 8. It utilises ClearBack display whose super bright display makes it perfect for people on the move. This handset is perfect for keeping in touch with friends and family, listening to music, watching movies and surfing the web.

It is also a smartphone made for social media addicts.It comes pre-loaded with Twitter, Facebook and Linked In and you can pin contacts to the start screen to save time and enable ease of use. Perfect for conversing with your closest friends.

GPS is available out of the box as well as Nokia Maps so it is made for the male who'll never ask for directions. At least now he doesn't need to. Internet Explorer 9 ensures surfing the net is a breeze. You'll also have access to XBox Live, Nokia Mix and Mix Radio. So videos, games and music are easy to access.

It also has an extensive app library. It isn't quite as extensive as the Android App Library but they're getting there. This phone is also perfect for the businessperson on the go as it comes with Microsoft Office.

So what are the specs for this little beauty:

• 
  

  Seamless design

  
  Curved 3.7" AMOLED ClearBlack glass touchscreen display seamlessly integrated into a smooth one-piece body


• 
  

  People Hub

  
  Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, Chat, SMS


• 
  

  Internet

  
  Bing, Internet Explorer 9, HTML5, Wi-Fi


• 
  

  Camera

  
  8 MP Auto Focus with Carl Zeiss Optics, 2x LED Flash and HD Video

 

Overall

The Nokia and Windows collaboration have managed to produce an extremely beautiful and good quality handset. The WP UI experience is fully integrated with your apps. The camera produces great quality sharp photos and is very user friendly even allowing you to snap pics while the phone is locked. The video produces high quality HD video footage. This phone does pretty much everything you'd expect from a smartphone and more and it isn't overly expensive either. It isn't the lightest handset out there but its smooth curves make it a joy to hold. I think Nokia & Microsoft can be very proud of their first offering and if your after a smartphone that allows you to easily surf the net, take & store photos, play games, listen to music, watch videos & work on the go then this phone will be perfect for you.

 

 

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Create a Google+ Fan Page

Individual Google+ pages have been around for a while now but brand pages are a recent development. Creating a fan page is super easy and operates in much the same way as a Facebook fan page. So now I'm going to show you how to create one.

First of all navigate to https://plus.google.com/pages/create

You'll be faced with this page.



Select product or brand and fill in the details then press create.

Next you'll be taken to the screen below. Fill in a little information about your page and add a profile photo. Click continue.

 



Then press finish.



Fill in more details about your site on the about tab on your new profile page.

It really is worth your while having a Google+ as recent changes mean pages are searchable. So Google+ really can be a good source of traffic.

Now you'll want to let your readers know about your page by adding a badge to your site.

Go to https://developers.google.com/+/plugins/badge/config

Fill in your google+ page ID



You'll find your Google+ ID in the address bar of your page like below:



 

Adding the ID will generate a piece of code like this:

<!-- Place this tag in the <head> of your document -->
<link href="https://plus.google.com/115639686051747826824" rel="publisher" /><script type="text/javascript">
(function()
{var po = document.createElement("script");
po.type = "text/javascript"; po.async = true;po.src = "https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js";
var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s);
})();</script>

<!-- Place this tag where you want the badge to render -->
<g:plus href="https://plus.google.com/115639686051747826824" size="badge"></g:plus>

You'll need to add the first paragraph of code to the HTML page of your site (Dashboard>Template>Edit HTML>Proceed. Add the code just before the </head> tag.

Now add the second paragraph of code into a html widget if your on Blogger or in a text widget if you use wordpress.

That is all there is to it you have now created a Google+ page for your blog.

 

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Publish Your Blog on Kindle in 5 Easy Steps

 

I recently added my blog to the amazon kindle network to allow my readers to view my blog on their kindle if they so wish. So i thought I'd do a little guide to what’s involved here.

Kindle Publishing for Blogs allows you to sign up and submit your blog feed. Amazon then converts this feed into a kindle-readable layout.

The main benefits to the blogger is a little added revenue and the fact that more readers will become aware of your blog as you can enter keywords which amazon users can search on. Kindle subscribers pay a small fee to gain access to your blogs which is usually $1.99 per month, the negative is that this fee is fixed (I wish it was free). Amazon takes 70% of this fee and the blogger retains 30%.

It’s free to join just visit the Kindle Publishing for Blogs page and create an account. So what’s stopping you?

Once you’ve created an account follow the following steps :

 



Click on ‘Your Blogs’ – its along the top of the page on the right hand side.



Then click on ‘Add Blog’ that's the one with the green cross next to it.



This is the screen that will be displayed next. Fill in the url of your blogs feed in the top field. Then click validate feed and a green tick will show underneath to show that your feed has been added successfully. Then fill in the other fields – blog title, tagline, blog description, your name, add a screenshot of your blog and one of your blog header, add keywords that kindle users can utilise to search for your blog. Press save and then click publish at the bottom.



To complete the process fill in your contact details and choose whether to add an account or be paid by cheque. FYI. only US users can be paid electronically all international users must be paid by cheque.

Then click publish and that’s it. It’ll take about 48 hours to be activated but it really is that simple!

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Can You Trust the Accuracy of Google Analytics?

 

There's been a lot of talk around the blogosphere recently about the accuracy of Google Analytics. I'm personally not a fan and I use my server stats as ultimately it is a lot more accurate.

There's no question that GA is one of the world's most widely used statistics services. It is free, easy to install and fairly simple to use but it would be a mistake to assume it is perfectly accurate. Most bloggers that I know of use GA as do a lot of businesses and online magazines. It offers a wealth of information on your visitors from traffic sources to unique visitor counts.

The main problem with GA is that it uses javascript to track visitors. Now most internet users use javascript but it is estimated that 10% of users have JS deactivated. So on a site with 50,000 visitors a month it equals a discrepancy of around 5000.

The tracking of unique visitors is also inaccurate as some users may visit from several different devices. They could view your site on their laptop at home, or their iPhone or even a work computer. So the unique visitors statistic may be higher than the actual amount of unique visitors. This discrepancy could be large or small depending on the amount of visitors who use multiple devices.

Like Alexa, Google Analytics uses sampling and while this method is widely used and mostly accurate it can produce discrepancies.

My personal experience is that Google Analytics regularly under reports my stats. For example one month my server stats showed I received 50000 pageviews on my fashion blog but GA showed stats of 9000 pageviews for the same month and that's a drop of more than 80%. Speaking with other bloggers I've realised that a massive drop is fairly common.

So in answer to the question posed in my post title I'd say NO! Google Analytics is about as far from accurate as you can get.

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How to Use Firebug to Design Your Blog

If you want to improve your design but not sure of the html and don't wanna mess with your code while trying things out the Firebug is for you. Firebug is a browser extension that is totally free and available for Chrome or Firefox users.

Firebug shows you all the CSS that makes up your design. But the best thing is that you can then edit the CSS and instantly see the result without having to delve into the coding of your theme. If you like the result you can then copy the code and paste it into the add css box in the Blogger Template Designer.

For example let's say you wanted to change the colour of your post titles. All you'd do is inspect the element using Firebug and change the colour code then copy the code and paste it in.

I've constructed a little video to show you Firebug in action so that you can see what I mean.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWhbGLmMI-M] 

It's the first You Tube video I've ever done so apologies if it isn't of the highest quality!

If you have any further questions just drop me a comment!

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The Best IPhone Apps for Bloggers

With the expansion of the mobile web the quality & quantity of apps available on both Blackberry's and IPhones is ever expanding. I've covered the best BB apps for bloggers in an earlier post but now I'd like to introduce you to the best apps out there for IPhone users. It`s a great selection of apps and I hope you'll find them useful. (Just click on the app image to go directly to the download site).

Wordpress

More and more bloggers are using the Wordpress blogging platforms. This app allows you to approve/deny comments, write posts and reply to comments. A must have for all WP bloggers.


 

Analytics App

This lovely little app let's you access your google analytics stats on the go. Very useful indeed.

 

What the Font

This app allows you to identify any font just by taking a photo on your IPhone. I'm seriously tempted to get an IPhone purely for this reason.



 

iBlogger

Blog on the go with iBlogger. Covers pretty much all the major blogging platforms including Blogger and Typepad.

 

Photoshop Express

A nifty little app for editing photos on your iPhone. Unlike Photoshop itself this app is totally free.

 



 

Instagram

This app needs no introduction. The legendary iPhone app allows you to change the appearance of photos with the use of filters. Wordpress even has a plugin for showing the photos in your sidebar.

 



 

iBloglovin

A great app for keeping updated on your favorite blogs while out and about. Boring train journeys be gone!

 



So there you have it! That is my selection of must have iPhone apps.

If there's one missing that you think should be included, add it in the comment section.

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Free Photo Editing Software Programs

I am a huge fan of Photoshop CS5 but it is rather expensive as it costs around £300. Luckily for those of you whose finances don't stretch that far there are a whole host of free photo editing software programs out there on the World Wide Web. Today I'm going to introduce you to two programs that are totally free but also easy to use and give great results.

First up is Artweaver Free. Artweaver is a free program which should appeal to beginners and advanced users alike. It has an appearance that is very similar to Photoshop and it also has a lot of the same features including layers, brushes and filters. You can even save your steps and play them back a la Photoshop actions. This program also supports Photoshop PSD files and has the ability files may be edited by more than one person via its group editing function.

Artweaver is available online on the Artweaver website. The only negative is that it is only available for Windows users.

Next up is ArcSoft's photo retouching program Perfect 365. This program is basically airbrushing for portrait photos. You can choose from 21 different looks for your portrait and I've included some screen shots below so you can get an idea of the results. This program is totally free and is available for Windows, Mac and even IPhone.

Perfect 365 is available for download on the ArcSoft website.

I hope you'll find this information helpful and I'd love to know what you thought of them in the comments section.

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