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By Editor, February 27, 2010 8:48 pm

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POWER OF THE INTERNET:

Google demonstrated its caring side and rushed to assist in today’s devastation caused by the one-two blows of, first earthquake, then tsunami in the South American country of Chile. Launching the site “Google Person Finder: Chile,” http://chilepersonfinder.appspot.com/ relatives and others concerned are able to either look for someone or offer information about the missing. The site is available in both English and Spanish.

click to enlarge

Early photographs are nothing short of images of disaster to Chile. The powerful 8.8 earthquake, numerous aftershocks, and ensuing tsunami, certainly a day of horror. Hardly known at this time is the extent of the overalll damage, injury and loss of life. Our thoughts and prayers are out to all.

[View with PicLens]

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By Editor, February 16, 2010 1:15 pm

TIME for MARDI GRAS!

Mardi Gras is French for “Fat Tuesday,” which is the last day to do things like load up on artery clogging rich fatty foods, and learn how to insert PDF documents into your WordPress pages or posts. Yup.

In true New Orleans tradition, the Big Easy way to do this, is as follows:

• Using an FTP client, upload your PDF to the root directory of your site. (Whilst there, why not create a sub-directory/category, such as “documents.” Having a place to “park” this and your future documents will help when feeling “memory challenged.”)
• Login to your WordPress Admin. and pick or create a page or post where you want your PDF to appear.
• On the Toolbar, click the little green button that looks like a “film strip.” That’s the “Insert/Edit Embedded Media” button.

(click all pictures here to enlarge)

• A new dialog box like the one below will appear, and from the drop down menu, select the option for “Shockwave.”

• Type or paste the link to the PDF on your server in the URL box.
• Decide dimensions, in pixels, the size you wish to display in the post or page.
• Hit the “Insert” button as seen above, and voila, you’re done! Scroll bars, view features – all included, just like my example below:

Being Fat Tuesday and all, here’s a copy of  the Creole Dictionary. Enjoy!

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By Editor, February 16, 2010 12:47 am

Thanks to Alison Barrett, aka; Aliso the Geek, for coming up with the idea of her “Color Boxes” plugin seen here with a self-portrait of…moi. Every now and then, an “enhancer” to the uppermost part of your post might be just the thing to get your point across, and Color Boxes does just that – simply.

COLOR BOXES:

After installation, Color Boxes will appear in the custom edit area of your administration page, where all that is needed for use, is your text and/or html as above, and perhaps a code tweak or two for larger fonts, bold, italic, or even a bulleted list.

For even more customization, you can change the appearance of the colored boxes on your posts and pages by applying rules in your own stylesheet for several classes. just overwrite the default styles, adding any kind of containing element to make your rules more specific.

Pretty cool idea from a geek (what she said), I think!

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By Editor, February 15, 2010 1:41 pm

MP3 PLAYER/DOWNLOADS

Brenton Wood

Wood had a hit with “The Oogum Boogum Song” in the spring of 1967. It reached number 19 on the Billboard R&B chart

The Oogum Boogum Song

Clarence Carter

Clarence returned in the late Eighties with the album Dr. CC, which spawned the bawdy, comedic single “Strokin’”, which has evolved into a favorite at clubs and weddings.

Strokin’

Edwin Starr

“Twenty-Five Miles” (w/Three Amigos), a popular dance hit from 2001 making it to #30 in the UK.

Twenty-five Miles

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By Editor, January 27, 2010 3:07 pm

My "Dream Captcha"

NO COMMENT…

Think about this for a minute. If you allow site visitors to leave comments to your posts, they are adding content to your site.

Getting feedback in the form of comments is often the sole benefit of your literary effort, and hey, it’s nice to see that somebody actually reads your stuff. But, you really need to pay attention to what is showing up in your comments.

You might not know this, but you as a the site owner, may be unwittingly hosting content (via comments) that violates a search engine’s quality guidelines (Google), which can harm your site’s standing in search results. Yikes! All that hard work down the dispose-all, thanks to some cretan in Lower Spamistan!

Take a look at some of your spam comments, and you’ll get an idea of what I mean. The worst offenders contain links to nefarious ads, sites or clandestine malware which, when discovered by Google, Bing or Yah0o, will cause your site to pick up a new, free “landing” page greeting your visitors with something a bit unsettling like: “REPORTED ATTACK SITE – WARNING.” Ouch!

If this is happening to you, remember, it’s your site, and you are responsible for everything there – abuse notwithstanding.

What can you do? Well, short of disabling comments altogether, make sure you are using Akismet, the free spam blocker from WordPress. Amazingly, some 83% of all site comments are disingenuous spam (bummer), and Akismet will catch and prevent most of it from ever  hitting your pages.

To level the playing field even more, consider using another freebie; reCaptcha, now owned by Google. Annoying to some (a bit like life), Captcha’s are those puzzle things, one must “solve,” proving same is human and capable of (hopefully) responsible behavior. And, because you asked, “CAPTCHA” is the acronym for: “Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart.”

I realize nobody enjoys being subjected to a “test” simply to leave a comment, but it’s not arrogant to include this site safeguard. Rather, to your credit, and everyone’s benefit, Captcha’s play a big part in stopping the bad guys. Besides, and ponder along – if this wasn’t important, Google likely wouldn’t have bought the company.