I’ve created a Wordpress plugin called Subscribe Sidebar!

If your familiar with my blog, you’ve seen my Subscribe sidebar before. Now it’s available as a plugin for Wordpress. I got sick of copying/pasting the HTML from theme to theme and after Todd Chochrane requested the same links for the RawVoice Blogs I decided it was time to put it in an easy to install and configure plugin.

The plugin may be added to the sidebar by either utilizing the dynamic widgets sidebar feature or adding a few lines of code to your theme’s sidebar template. Configurable options include links for RSS 2.0, Atom, Podpress podcast Feed, add to Google Reader/Homepage, add to My Yahoo, add to iTunes, add to Zune and follow on Twitter. I constantly get a steady stream of people asking for my twitter name, so now it’s under my subscribe links in my blog, I can now refer folks to my blog.

So, what do you think of the plugin, is it useful for your blog and/or podcast?

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Anyone in the Central Ohio area who is a blogger, podcaster or social networking enthusiast/expert should be aware that there is a potential meetup group organizing called the Columbus Social Media Cafe. Yesterday was the 4th SMC meetup and I gathered that they are just now working on defining what the goals are of the group and plan on forming a mission statement. You can read more about the last meetup at Elephants on Bicycles and This Woman’s Work blogs.

When I arrived, I found myself briefly explaining what PodCamp and PodCamp Ohio is. I was not prepared to make any sort of presentation at the meetup but I did my best. This was a learning experience for myself, as I found myself speaking to a crowd of bloggers who are aware that podcasting should be included in their space but don’t exactly have a grasp on what exactly podcasting is. I also mentioned briefly some of the viral networking techniques that PodCamp Ohio is using in order to market the event to bloggers, podcasters and social networking enthusiasts.

I learned a lot from the meetup. What I found the most interesting was what they are envisioning; a social networking web site that pulls in feeds of blogs and podcasts and provides social networking features such as tags and comments. The group would be the perfect customer for the RawVoice Generator, which does pretty much what they want. One of the organizers mentioned someone who is in the process of developing such a tool that the group could use, so I didn’t quite feel comfortable mentioning that my company already has such a product on the market for more than 2 years now. The process they are undertaking made me feel vindicated that the past 3 years of my life that I’ve spent developing such tools is of real importance, not just globally but also for the local community. There is real potential for blogging and podcasting to connect with its local communities, and I for sure want to be involved in helping that happen here in Central Ohio.

I hope they can create a brand/logo soon and put in place a scheduled meeting time using not just meeting spaces in the public but also utilizing those social media tools that are so important such as TalkShoe/BlogTalkRadio for on-line recorded phone meetings and Google Group public mailing lists. At the moment the only way anyone can participate is by attending the public meetings, which may limit the audience size of participants. The more opportunity to let someone be herd, the more opportunities that will be used by those with the means. I’m pretty confident they will pick up on these other tools soon.

I am a little concerned that some of the founders organizing the Columbus SMC group found PodCamp Ohio somewhat threatening. I hope they did not get that impression cause it is definitely not something meant to compete with other groups with similar goals. PodCamp is a social event with the primary goal to bring bloggers and podcasters together to share knowledge and network with each other. I hope the Columbus SMC organizers don’t feel threatened by the event, that’s certainly not the events goal and I am confident that’s not what Chris Brogan or Christopher Penn intended when they created PodCamp.

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Last summer, I purchased a new computer, right away I had to swap the new keyboard that came with it (HP Pavilion) with my previous worn down IBM keyboard. Well in October, the keyboard wasn’t working so well so I hunted through the house till I found a keyboard I could live with. Oddly, it’s a HP corporate keyboard from about 10 years ago. It works ok, I am typing on it as we speak, but a couple keys aren’t as reliable as they should be. So last week I went to Microcenter and purchased a $30 Microsoft Keyboard. It was the cheapest keyboard that had a normal keyboard layout with the 2 key wide backspace key. It also had the normal 6 keys between the mail keys and the numeric pad. Many keyboards are starting to re-engineer the 6 keys (insert, home, page up, delete, end and page down) in non standard ways. If you’re a programmer like me, that completely sucks. Some of the keyboards have a 2 key sized delete key and have removed the insert button completely. I don’t know what keyboard designers are thinking lately!

I used to always buy IBM brand keyboards but since they left the desktop/laptop computer market, they no longer sell keyboards. Oh how does that suck! In my opinion, IBM made the best keyboards.

So I’ve been trying out a Microsoft keyboard out for about 5 days and quickly came to hate it. I finally disconnected it and plan on returning it. It did have softer key action, which was keeping my wrists from getting tired. Now I am using this old HP keyboard, my wrists feel like someone stuffed rocks in them.

So the last keyboard I used that I really liked was the Dell Multimedia Keyboard pictured. This and its non multimedia variant were pretty well designed keyboards, the keys were where they should be and the space in front of the keyboard allowed you to add your own wrist pad.

There’s a few other little things about this keyboard I like. First, the mute button is on the right hand side. The Microsoft keyboard had the mute button on the left, which doesn’t help me at all. The volume control is an actual dial on the Dell, which doesn’t matter for me because I usually use the windows controls for that anyway. It makes a nice holder for my wedding ring when I feel the need to take the ring off while working.

So today, I ordered a new Dell USB Multimedia Keyboard. With shipping it was about $33.

What kind of keyboard are you using? Are you as picky as me as far as key placement?

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Well, I’ve finally found others who are finding the same problem. I will be surfing the net, open a page and bam! Firefox crashes. More recently the computer was running slow when Firefox crashed and I swear I saw a pop up from quicktime asking me if I’d like to update. Since then, I’ve used a computer without iTunes and QuickTime with Firefox and have had no problems.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=4630001

I want my iTunes. So to avoid this crashing in the future, I’ve taken the necessary steps below.

1. Click Start >Â Programs > QuickTime > QuickTimePlayer
2. Click Edit ? Preferences > Player Preferences
3. Click the Update tab and remove the check next to “Check for updates automatically”
4. Click the File Types tab and unselect everything except “QuickTime Movie Format” Uncheck the option at the bottom titled “Notify me if other applications modify these associations”.
5. Pray that QuickTime doesn’t crash your Firefox again.

Hopefully this is helpful to others.

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It’s been a while since I blogged anything. I’ve been very busy. Here is my update of what is going on in my life.

RawVoice
Been very busy working on a number of projects as usual. We are about to launch a new web site on Monday, January 14, 2008. If things go well, we’ll be launching some new service each Monday for the rest of the month. We’ll see if I can keep up.
http://www.rawvoice.com/

Spaceblue
I reprovisioned the server the day after Christmas, I am happy to report that I finally have everything on-line and running strong. I quickly got the crucial items on-line. I mainly had to get web stats and a few other little things setup after the new year. Setting up the new server took much longer that I anticipated since I switched from using Apache to Lighty web servers. It is paying off though, the server is handling the same amount of traffic without using all of the system resources.
http://www.spaceblue.com

PodCamp Ohio
I’ve been leading up the charge to organize PodCamp Ohio. Over the past month, we’ve secured a venue location and launched the web site. I am pretty happy with the core podcasters participating, they are really on the ball and have no problem taking charge of items they are good at. PodCamp Ohio will be on Saturday, June 28, 2008 from 9am to 5pm at the ITT Technical Institute in Hilliard (just west of Columbus), Ohio. More details are available on the web site.
http://www.podcampohio.com/

Association for Downloadable Media
Last fall I was elected Chair of the Measurement Committee of the Association for Downloadable Media. The entire process is exciting. I purchased a copy of Roberts Rules and have been slowly coordinating all of the members of the committee. After 12 people joined the committee, I was looking for the board members to set a limit to the size of the committee so it would not become too large to manage. The consensus of the board is to allow as many ADM members to join the committees as possible. I understand the motives, as the podcasting community is oriented in a way that encourages participation, it just makes managing the committee that much harder. I am up for the challenge and started devising ideas how to manage the situation. My position as Chair of the Measurement Committee could not be more perfect for the Association since I have both a technical background with Internet Engineering and vast experience with measuring podcast downloads.
http://www.downloadablemedia.org/

The House
Dad was in town two weeks ago when I was about to fix a shower leak. The work started with Dad reminding me to buy the tool recommended to remove the faucet cartridge in the documentation I printed out. A couple of minutes later, I broke the cartridge trying to remove it with pliers. Lesson learned, still listen to your parents! At this point I think Dad was convinced we would have to call a plumber, but my plan was to buy the removal tool and a screw tap. My plan worked luckily, with the help with an extra long screw replaced in the recommended tool. The rest of the process of installing the new cartridge went smoothly. I am happy to report the shower no longer leaks! If any family or friends need to fix a Moen shower/bath leak, let me know cause I have the recommended tool to remove the cartridge. Definitely don’t try to remove it with pliers!

San Giorgio Pasta Choo Choo Wheels
I told Heather a long time ago about Choo Choo Wheels Pasta and she looked at me rather strange. Two weeks ago I came across a package of San Giorgio brand Choo Choo Wheels and snagged a box. Sam Giorgio is my preferred pasta brand. The back of the box has a recipe for spaghetti meat sauce, so I thought I’d give it a try. I don’t have all of the details here, but the main ingredient are 2 large cans of whole pealed tomatoes, 2 small cans of tomato paste, 2 teaspoons of sugar, 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese, graded and 1 pound of ground beef or sausage. I used a 1 pound roll of Bob Evans Italian Sausage. Cook the sausage, then mix everything except the Parmesan, bring to a boil then cook on a medium/low heat for 30+ minutes. When you are ready to serve, add the Parmesan, which will thicken the sauce. I like thick sauce, so stumbling upon this tip has revolutionized my spaghetti sauce making abilities!

Anyway, the sauce on the back of the Choo Choo Wheels box was awesome and so far is the closest thing I’ve been able to get to taste like real home made spaghetti sauce the way Grandma would make. She would cook the sauce for hours and have 3 different types of meats in the sauce. It is the standard which I use to judge all other sauces. Funny how that works.

What’s Next
I’m going to restart my Compiled Weekly podcast. The recent work I’ve been doing moving blogs around for RawVoice and reconfiguring the Spaceblue server with Lighty has given me a lot of content ideas for the show. I got a lot of knowledge to share about Lighty and tips with server management. I got just about everything automated so I don’t have to manage anything now.

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I just recently purchased a new computer. It’s very powerful. It has a 320GB hard drive, Intel core 2 Duo 4400 running at 2Ghz and 2GB of memory. There is one problem though, Windows Explorer in Vista. I can’t explain how unstable Windows Explorer is in Vista. The operating system itself does not crash, but Windows Explorer crashes randomly. Whether it be Explorer itself or anytime an application uses the file open/save dialog, I have to cross my fingers that the application doesn’t crash. Vista removed some navigation features for going down and up a folder, and in its place are folder names that are separated with drop downs. in addition, the files are automatically sorted in the current view. The end result is a dynamically changing view of your files. It seems like a great idea, but it has some major stability issues. All I want to do is safe, open and copy files, I don’t need a complex unstable system to do this. Microsoft really went too far with Windows Explorer. They should have been spending this time making other tools that would be much more useful.

If you have the ability to buy a new computer with Windows XP, do it without hesitation. I have not come across a functionliaty in Windows Vista that would make it necessary for anyone to upgrade.

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Over the past couple of months I’ve been working on a podcast statistics system for the RawVoice communities Blubrry.com, PodcasterNews.com and TechPodcasts.com. The system can also be completely re-branded for companies who want to use the media download statistics for their podcasts.

Podcast Statistics are a very important part of the Podcasting business. The download numbers are very important, not only as a way for the producer to gain insight of their audience size, but they are also used as a means of making money. Most podcast advertising today is based on allotments of 1,000 downloads, referred to as CPM. If someone offers you $5 CPM and you have 10,000 downloads of your podcasts, you would make $50. The CPM in this example is just that, an example. Actual CPM rates range based on the popularity of your show, the content it targets and the demographics the advertisement targets.

We were fortunate to work with download statistics for a very popular podcast, one of the top 10 on iTunes. This podcast alone has an audience size of roughly 1/2 million. Having this data, I was able to truly test and optimize the database and programming logic in order to quickly create the reports. The first version of the system took 15 minutes to update. The updates now take between 60 to 90 seconds and include the totals for country demographics, software clients and operating system platforms.

If you want to see what I have been working on over the past couple months, check out the Blubrry Podcast Statistics page. Link: http://www.blubrry.com/podcast_statistics/Â If you are a podcaster, you may also want to check out the tutorial video Todd made, it has detailed instructions how to setup your podcast to use the Blubrry Statistics system.

I am pretty excited by the outcome of the RawVoice Statistics system. I have many people to thank, especially my wife for her help and support.

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I’ve been wanting a plugin for Wordpress for a while now that would list other related posts to visitors. The best way to draw someone to read a previous article is to remind them of your previous posts in new posts. This extra step is a real hassle and frankly when someone is reading your blog simply from the feed it becomes more of a hassle than anything.

So tonight I searched and tried out a few similar posts plug-ins for Word press and finally came across this one (http://rmarsh.com/plugins/similar-posts/). This particular plugin gives weights to the post titles and uses the first 20 words in order to determine like characteristics. I just used the defaults for my blog and it works great. I am sure if I increase the number of words it scans in the posts to 50 it would be more accurate, but it’s working well out of hte box and I dig it. Now, I wonder what other posts it will recommend for this one?Â

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I’m done, I finished wiring the house 2 nights ago and it feels great. Actually I am not finished, I still have 4 more open ports in the patch panel and the whole first floor. :-p

Here’s a picture of my patch panel:

A picture of my desk somewhat clean. This is a rare sighting!

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I’ve been slowly wiring the house with Ethernet Cat5e and Coax RG-6 cabling. The evening of the 4th I finally ran cabling up to the attic and dropped the wires into the bedrooms. All the rooms now have coax cable ports. I’ve punched down 4 Ethernet in two of the important bedrooms. Sometime this weekend I’ll finish the other 2 bedrooms.

I think putting 2 ports in each room was a smart thing to do. I color coded them so each room has both a blue and a green port. If we ever decide to get a home ‘lan’ phone, we now have the option of putting Ethernet phones in every bedroom.

I had to pull one of the cables off the patch panel. I still don’t know what the standard practice is for re-using a port in a patch panel that was previously used. I assume I can re-use the port but I haven’t found a blog post or web site to say either way. If anyone knows one way or the other, please leave a comment.

I didn’t wire everything on my own, as you can see Ty helped out!

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