Latest Entry
Apr 12, 2009 Marketing
In my day job I work for an online home furnishings retailer OrientalFurniture.com. We are in the process of upgrading our ecommerce platform and redesigning the site to provide new functionality and an updated look and feel.
We are currently rebranding and carrying out our new marketing efforts and one key aspect is our new Interior Design blog. This new blog will focus on Asian Style with categories for Buying Guides, Style Tips and Cultural Spotlights.
This blog will be a lot different to manage than my personal blogs as it will be the blogging persona of our company. Also it is a blog in a traditional industry. Hopefully the niche interior design angle will let it standout and allow us to create unique content.
Stay tuned 
Recent Entries
Mar 22, 2009 Tech
I am blogging this from my newly downloaded Wordpress app for the iPhone. The HTML markup has to be done manually but it is a great little app.
I will get the most use out of it from the comment management functionality. I suppose it will also be good for drafting new posts and then finalizing them from my laptop.
Mar 10, 2009 twitter
I ran into more issues getting this to work properly so I switched to another TweetBack plugin. I like the TweetSuite implementation better so I will try to get it working on another one of my blogs (this one perhaps!). Thanks for reading!
I was having a lot of trouble getting TweetSuite to work properly on the Tweet Vegas website. After some tweaking and researching I finally got it to work. Here is a list of issues/pointers to keep in mind while integrating it.
- “Tweet This” button will only appear on posts published after the plugin was installed. There is a table called WP_ShortURLS which is populated with the different iterations of the short urls for the post (bit.ly, tinyurl, etc). The records are inserted upon the publishing of the post. Therefore previous posts will not be available in this table. You can unpublish then republish your post to see it work.
- You need to set the permissions on the TweetSuite plugin folder to 777 or else the dynamic “Tweet This” image cannot be created.
- I had an issue where the “Tweet This” image wouldn’t show up when there were zero tweetbacks. I added this line to rt-gif.php
if($count<1) { $count="0"; }
I added it directly after line 4. Your results may vary, this was an issue I came across. There is likely a more elegant solution, but it worked for me!
- If you do not set your twitter handle in the TweetSuite settings, but leave the default “admin” then your tweetback will default to appending “from @admin” at the end. You can see this in action here: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=from+%40admin
Hopefully this will come in handy as you install TweetSuite.
Feb 19, 2009 twitter
You may have seen Twitter contests where to enter you need to “Click Here to Retweet” a certain message. Here is how it is done!
You can add a custom message to the Twitter URL as a link like so:
http://twitter.com/home?status=Custom%20Message%20Here
When you click it, you will be brought to your Twitter home page (if you are logged on already) and the status box will now say “Custom Message Here”. Obviously you can put in whatever text you wish to be displayed.
What do you do if you want to put spaces, hashtags, slashes and other special characters in your message? You can use an URL Encoder like this to do the work for you.
When you encode the URL, be sure to append it to http://twitter.com/home?status=
Share the love, Tweet this article!!
If you would like to follow me on twitter click here.
Dec 12, 2008 Misc
I just made a donation to the Fisher House to support the great work they are doing. The Fisher House provides a home away from home for the families of America’s soldiers who often have to travel long distances to receive specialized medical care.
This is a great cause and your help is needed this holiday season to make sure the families of our wounded soldiers can be close to a loved one at these most stressful times.
Thank you, and Happy Holidays!
Dec 11, 2008 Misc
To be considered in my top X “All Time” movies it has to pass one test. Will I stop what I am doing and watch it, whenever it is on, no matter what I am doing? With that as the criteria, here are my top 5 movies of all time:
- Shawshank Redemption
- Tombstone
- Cincinnati Kid
- Old School
- Armageddon (don’t laugh! I think it kicks ass).
I’d like to see what my other friends choose as their top movies, so consider yourself tagged:
- Pokerplasm
- Grundy
- Rock_The_Ice
Oct 30, 2008 Poker
Complete Poker Rules has teamed up with Poker Plasm to host the Twitter Poker Tour (TPT). It’s an online home game open to all players. The events are held each Thursday PM.
Since there are players with accounts on specific sites, we have created two circuits:
We hope that you can join us for the fun! You can follow the conversation over at twitter by searching the hashtag #tpt. And feel free to join in by tagging your own tweets: #tpt.
For more information and event schedule see TPT Stars and TPT Tilt or visit the Twitter Poker Tour homepage.
Oct 27, 2008 Tech
If you are not using Google Webmaster Tools then stop reading now, sign up and come back, we’ll wait. OK now, say we are analyzing the Diagnostics > Web Crawl section in Google Webmaster Tools and notice that there are some Not Found errors. One way to fix these errors is to redirect them in .htaccess using a 301 Redirect.
Here is a handy spreadsheet (301-generator.xls) that I use to create my redirects using the data I download from Webmaster Tools. If you don’t like opening spreadsheets from an unknown blogger, then scroll down to the bottom of this post for the formula!
How to use it
- Download the Not Found errors by clicking Download this table in Webmaster Tools
- Copy the non-domain part of the bad URL in first column (URL) of the spreadsheet downloaded from Google Webmaster Tools. Paste it into the next open field in column A on the 301-Generator spreadsheet. The non-domain part is everything after the http://www.yourdomain.com part of the URL field.
- Paste or Type in the new destination (in FQDN or Fully Qualified Domain Name format) into column B on the same row as the bad URL in step 2 above.
- The 301 redirect syntax will populate column C in the same row. You can paste that into your .htaccess file.
- All requests for the bad URL will now be redirected to the new destination.
Important
- Always make a backup of your .htaccess file before making modifications.
- Always test the results of your changes, you may inadvertently redirect traffic from your homepage or otherwise make your site inaccessible.
- If you are using Wordpress you should use the Redirection plugin instead of .htaccess
Excel Formula
If you just want the formula, and not the spreadsheet, read on:
- In column A1 type Bad URL
- In column B1 type NEW URL
- In column C1 type 301 Syntax for htaccess
- In column C2 enter the formula
- =”redirect 301 ” & A2 & ” ” & B2
- Copy that formula to all cells in column C as needed.
Oct 21, 2008 Tech
I used to have a chronically messy desktop. Fed up with all the clutter I asked myself what the point of the Desktop was. For me it was to hold files and application shortcuts. Well, if I can’t keep it clean, can’t I just hide it and have it still serve it’s purpose?
What I did was (I’m running Windows XP):
- Right clicked the desktop
- Clicked Arrange Icons
- Deselected Show Desktop Items.
Voila! Clean desktop. But have I lost any functionality?
Access to Desktop Files?
I put a shortcut to the Desktop folder in my quick launch bar so I can click it to see my desktop as a folder. So I still have direct access to desktop files.
Access to Desktop Application Icons
I installed Launchy to quick launch any apps so I don’t miss having desktop app icons. I hit ALT-Space and start typing the app I want.
Hope this helps keep your desktop clean!
Oct 3, 2008 Tech
Well, at least they make *my* life better, and hopefully those of my readers! I use a lot of Wordpress plug ins for SEO, Event Management, Web Analytics, Communications, etc so I wanted to just list them out for all to see.
Here are all the plug ins in use over at Complete Poker Rules:
- AdSense Manager
- For managing Adsense Ads throughout the site
- Akismet
- Nearly eliminates the spam comments I receive. Some false positives but that may just be the nature of running a Poker Blog.
- Amazon Reloaded for Wordpress
- Allows you to search Amazon from the post edit screen and insert the product image or text link complete with Amazon Associate ID.
- cforms
- Contact forms with an excellent admin interface and highly flexible styling.
- FeedBurner FeedSmith
- Used in conjunction with FeedBurner to manage your RSS subscriptions.
- Google XML Sitemaps
- Creates and keeps up to date you sitemap.xml file for assisting search engines with the structure and pages of your site.
- Headspace2
- Make your Wordpress site SEO friendly with this very powerful tool.
- Highlight Author Comments
- Call attention to the comments that you leave as admin so they stick out from the rest.
- More Link Modifier
- Changes the behavior of the ‘More’ link in Wordpress posts. You can customize the copy that is displayed as well as disabling the “Jump To” behavior of the More anchor link when clicked.
- Redirection
- Manage the redirection of deleted posts, etc without needing to edit your .htaccess file. Also great for 301 redirecting domain.com to www.domain.com or vice-versa.
- Robots Meta
- Manage the index nature of your site. Some SEO expert say that duplicating content within your own site dilutes the link juice you would otherwise get from a single instance of a post. Also good for noindexing your Wordpress Login page among others.
- RSS Footer
- Append a footer to the end of each post in your RSS feed. This is especially key if you have sites that scrape your content, it will include a link back to your site and you can at least benefit from the juice!
- Search Excerpt
- Enhance the on site search experience for your readers with keyword highlighting and relevancy sorting.
- Sociable
- Allow your readers to share your content on social networks.
- Theme Tester
- Allows you to test out a new theme without disrupting service to your visitors.
- Ultimate Google Analytics
- Plugin to allow you to include your Google Analytics tracking code on all your pages. Also allows you to set which user level should the tracking code be displayed for. For instance, you can disable to tracking code for admin users to avoid inflating your tracking numbers.
- Wordpress Database Backup
- Schedule the backup of your Wordpress database tables to file or email.
- Wordpress Related Posts
- Include links to related posts based on tagging. great for deep linking content.
- WP-Polls
- Include a poll in your post. Highly customizable: user contributed answers, multiple selection answers, etc.
- WP-PostRatings
- Adds a ratings system to each post.
- WP-Table
- Insert a table in your posts or pages for a better handle on structuring your content without CSS.
- WPListcal
- Create events and display them in any post, page or template. Flexible scheduling system to show x days out, only current and future events, etc.
