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	<title>Blog by Jon Bishop &#187; How To</title>
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		<title>Does Your Business Need A Website?</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2010/02/does-your-business-need-a-website/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2010/02/does-your-business-need-a-website/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:42:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CMS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hosting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[website]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=1802</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
A couple years ago I would have said it depends. Now it is a necessity.
It doesn&#8217;t matter how big your business is or how much money you bring in. If you exist, I want proof of it on Google. I can bring up a business listing and even get reviews within minutes right from my cell [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a class="post_image_link" href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2010/02/does-your-business-need-a-website/" title="Permanent link to Does Your Business Need A Website?"><img class="post_image aligncenter frame" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/needsite.jpg" width="470" height="168" alt="Does your business need a website?" /></a>
</p><p>A couple years ago I would have said it depends. Now it is a necessity.</p>
<p>It doesn&#8217;t matter how big your business is or how much money you bring in. If you exist, I want proof of it on <a id="aptureLink_i8jx0Abz14" href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a>. I can bring up a business listing and even get reviews within minutes right from my cell phone anytime, anywhere.</p>
<p>We live in an on demand world where everything is a click, flick or a button press away.</p>
<h3>But I Can&#8217;t Afford a Thousand Dollar Website!</h3>
<p>Well me neither.<span id="more-1802"></span></p>
<p>Luckily I make them for a living. For those not as fortunate feel free to <a href="http://www.jonbishop.com/about/what-i-do/">learn more</a> about how I can get you up and running with a customizable website for very short cash. The truth of the matter is, you really don&#8217;t need a thousand dollar website. There are tons of free content management systems and thousands of open source plugins on top of that creating endless possibilities for a completely unique, dynamic, out of the box website for your business. It&#8217;s not always about the glitz and the glam but about easily providing the information your audience needs.</p>
<h3>Your Online Identity Freebies</h3>
<p>User moderated reviews and online discussions have become the corner stone of a business&#8217;s online identity. These sites dominate the search engines and our mobile phones when searching for information about businesses and therefor should not be overlooked. You should check these sites to see if your business is already listed and add/modify as needed.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.yelp.com/business">Yelp</a></li>
<li><a href="http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=143059">Google Maps</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.zoominfo.com/Search/AddNewCompany.aspx">ZoomInfo</a></li>
</ul>
<p>These sites require more attention on your part if you decide to participate. They take time to develop interested audiences but can be well worth it in the long run.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://business.twitter.com/twitter101">Twitter</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/business">LinkedIn</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Don&#8217;t Be A Sucker</h3>
<p>That basically just means don&#8217;t spend thousands of dollars on a crazy flashy website for your corner store boutique. Web developers are a dime a dozen &#8211; you can find them at your local college campus, all over <a id="aptureLink_vYS9xWYhe5" href="http://twitter.com/">Twitter</a> and dominating <a id="aptureLink_T78XH0YKP8" href="http://www.craigslist.org/">craigslist</a>. Be careful any way you go about it though. If you think you are getting ripped off, you probably are. Get a couple quotes for the same project and <a href="http://css-tricks.com/web-nerd-terminology-explained/">learn the lingo</a>. Don&#8217;t go overboard with Internet marketing techniques like <a id="aptureLink_rlrSO2Uqku" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social%20media%20marketing">social media marketing</a> and <a id="aptureLink_bDDCmNuApJ" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search%20engine%20optimization">SEO</a>. Get yourself a functional up to date website that provides your audience with what they want.</p>
<p>- Photo by <a title="Link to Curious Expeditions' photostream" rel="dc:creator cc:attributionURL" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiousexpeditions/">Curious Expeditions</a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.jonbishop.com/2010/02/does-your-business-need-a-website/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Creating A Video Section On Your WordPress Blog</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/10/creating-a-video-section-on-your-wordpress-blog/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/10/creating-a-video-section-on-your-wordpress-blog/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:40:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blogging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tutorial]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wordpress]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[WordPress Hack]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=1490</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
Awhile back I decided to start posting videos on my blog. Once I had a few videos up I began to rethink my approach. Ultimately I wanted to prevent videos from showing up where normal posts are displayed and instead display my most recent video in the sidebar.
To do this, I would need to:

Suppress all video posts [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a class="post_image_link" href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/10/creating-a-video-section-on-your-wordpress-blog/" title="Permanent link to Creating A Video Section On Your WordPress Blog"><img class="post_image aligncenter frame" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/video_embed_wordpress.jpg" width="470" height="150" alt="Adding Video To Your Sidebar" /></a>
</p><p>Awhile back I decided to start posting videos on my blog. Once I had a few videos up I began to rethink my approach. Ultimately I wanted to prevent videos from showing up where normal posts are displayed and instead display my most recent video in the sidebar.</p>
<p>To do this, I would need to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Suppress all video posts from being displayed with other posts</li>
<li>Create an archive of all video posts</li>
<li>Resize and place my most recent video in the sidebar</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>The first step</strong> was pretty easy. I just created a new category called &#8220;Video Post&#8221; and assigned it to all of my video posts. This would become a fairly intuitive list of videos people could access at their will.<span id="more-1490"></span></p>
<p><strong>Next</strong> I wanted to remove all video posts from being displayed among other posts on the home page. However, I still wanted my videos to be displayed in RSS feeds as well as archives and search pages. To do this, I just modified the default WordPress query used to pull the most recent posts by placing the following code before &#8220;The Loop&#8221;.</p>
<div class="geshi no php">
<div class="head">//Hide a category from the home page</div>
<ol>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1"><span class="kw3">global</span> <span class="re1">$wp_query</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">query_posts<span class="br0">&#40;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp;<span class="kw3">array_merge</span><span class="br0">&#40;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; <span class="kw3">array</span><span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="st0">&#39;cat&#39;</span> <span class="sy0">=&gt;</span> <span class="nu0">-66</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="sy0">,</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; <span class="re1">$wp_query</span><span class="sy0">-&gt;</span><span class="me1">query</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp;<span class="br0">&#41;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1"><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p><strong>Be sure to change</strong> &#8216;-66&#8242; to the id of whatever category you are trying to hide. <a href="http://wordpress.org/support/topic/226313">How do I find the category IDs?</a></p>
<p>Also, if you are not sure where the WordPress Loop begins, it is usually located inside of index.php in your theme folder and starts with:</p>
<div class="geshi no php">
<div class="head">//Beginning of the WordPress Loop located in index.php of theme</div>
<ol>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1"><span class="kw1">if</span> <span class="br0">&#40;</span> have_posts<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span> <span class="br0">&#41;</span> <span class="sy0">:</span> <span class="kw1">while</span> <span class="br0">&#40;</span> have_posts<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span> <span class="br0">&#41;</span> <span class="sy0">:</span> the_post<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p><strong>The last step</strong> is to display my most recent video in the sidebar. To do this I decided my best course of action was to save the embed code of my videos into a custom field as well as within the content of the post. This would allow me to easily pull the embed code and I would still be able to add text along with my video within the content.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-1502 aligncenter" title="Create custom field for embed code" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/video_embed.jpg" alt="Create custom field for embed code" width="470" height="100" /></p>
<p>In the example below I used the custom field &#8216;embed&#8217; in my posts. Just paste this code in your sidebar where you would like your video to be displayed.</p>
<div class="geshi no php">
<div class="head">//Display resized most recent video along with link to previous video</div>
<ol>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1"><span class="kw2">&lt;?PHP</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1"><span class="re1">$firstPost</span> <span class="sy0">=</span> <span class="kw2">true</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">query_posts<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="st0">&#39;cat=66&amp;showposts=2&#39;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1"><span class="kw1">while</span> <span class="br0">&#40;</span>have_posts<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span> <span class="sy0">:</span> the_post<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp;<span class="kw1">if</span><span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="re1">$firstPost</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="br0">&#123;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; <span class="re1">$firstPost</span> <span class="sy0">=</span> <span class="kw2">false</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; <span class="re1">$key</span> <span class="sy0">=</span> <span class="st0">&#39;embed&#39;</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; <span class="re1">$width</span> <span class="sy0">=</span> <span class="st0">&#39;200&#39;</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; <span class="re1">$height</span> <span class="sy0">=</span> <span class="st0">&#39;190&#39;</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; <span class="kw3">global</span> <span class="re1">$post</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; <span class="re1">$custom_field</span> <span class="sy0">=</span> get_post_meta<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="re1">$post</span><span class="sy0">-&gt;</span><span class="me1">ID</span><span class="sy0">,</span> <span class="re1">$key</span><span class="sy0">,</span> <span class="kw2">true</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; <span class="kw1">if</span> <span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="re1">$custom_field</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span> <span class="br0">&#123;</span> </div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="co1">// Set values</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="re1">$width</span> <span class="sy0">=</span> <span class="st0">&#39;width=&quot;&#39;</span><span class="sy0">.</span><span class="re1">$width</span><span class="sy0">.</span><span class="st0">&#39;&quot;&#39;</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="re1">$height</span> <span class="sy0">=</span> <span class="st0">&#39;height=&quot;&#39;</span><span class="sy0">.</span><span class="re1">$height</span><span class="sy0">.</span><span class="st0">&#39;&quot;&#39;</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="re1">$custom_field</span> <span class="sy0">=</span> <span class="kw3">preg_replace</span><span class="br0">&#40;</span> <span class="st0">&#39;/width=&quot;[^&quot;]+&quot;/&#39;</span> <span class="sy0">,</span> <span class="re1">$width</span> <span class="sy0">,</span> <span class="re1">$custom_field</span> <span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="re1">$custom_field</span> <span class="sy0">=</span> <span class="kw3">preg_replace</span><span class="br0">&#40;</span> <span class="st0">&#39;/height=&quot;[^&quot;]+&quot;/&#39;</span> <span class="sy0">,</span> <span class="re1">$height</span> <span class="sy0">,</span> <span class="re1">$custom_field</span> <span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="sy0">;</span> </div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="kw3">echo</span> <span class="st0">&#39;&lt;li class=&quot;widget widget_recent_videos&quot; id=&quot;recent-videos&quot;&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Videos&lt;/h3&gt;&#39;</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="kw2">?&gt;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="sy0">&lt;</span>ul<span class="sy0">&gt;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="sy0">&lt;</span>li style<span class="sy0">=</span><span class="st0">&quot;text-align:center;&quot;</span><span class="sy0">&gt;&lt;</span>strong<span class="sy0">&gt;&lt;</span>a href<span class="sy0">=</span><span class="st0">&quot;&lt;?=get_permalink(); ?&gt;&quot;</span><span class="sy0">&gt;&lt;</span>?<span class="sy0">=</span>get_the_title<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="re1">$post</span><span class="sy0">-&gt;</span><span class="me1">ID</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="sy0">;</span> ?<span class="sy0">&gt;&lt;/</span>a<span class="sy0">&gt;&lt;/</span>strong<span class="sy0">&gt;&lt;/</span>li<span class="sy0">&gt;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; &nbsp;<span class="kw2">&lt;?</span><span class="sy0">=</span><span class="re1">$custom_field</span><span class="sy0">;</span> <span class="kw2">?&gt;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp;<span class="kw2">&lt;?php</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp; <span class="br0">&#125;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp;<span class="br0">&#125;</span> <span class="kw1">else</span> <span class="br0">&#123;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp;<span class="kw2">?&gt;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp;<span class="sy0">&lt;</span>ul<span class="sy0">&gt;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp;<span class="sy0">&lt;</span>li<span class="sy0">&gt;</span>Next Video<span class="sy0">:</span> <span class="sy0">&lt;</span>a href<span class="sy0">=</span><span class="st0">&quot;&lt;?=get_permalink(); ?&gt;&quot;</span><span class="sy0">&gt;&lt;</span>?<span class="sy0">=</span>get_the_title<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="re1">$post</span><span class="sy0">-&gt;</span><span class="me1">ID</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="sy0">;</span> ?<span class="sy0">&gt;&lt;/</span>a<span class="sy0">&gt;&lt;/</span>li<span class="sy0">&gt;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp;<span class="sy0">&lt;/</span>ul<span class="sy0">&gt;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp;<span class="sy0">&lt;/</span>li<span class="sy0">&gt;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp;<span class="kw2">&lt;?php</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&nbsp;<span class="br0">&#125;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1"><span class="kw1">endwhile</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1"><span class="kw2">?&gt;</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p>You will notice I also included a link to my last video however you can remove this or replace it with a link to your video archive. This code should work with most video embed codes. Be sure to change the width and height so everything fits nicely into your sidebar.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s it. Now all you need to do when adding a new video post is:</p>
<ol>
<li>Assign the post to your video category</li>
<li>Paste your embed code into the content and your &#8216;embed&#8217; custom field</li>
<li>And Publish Your Post!</li>
</ol>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/10/creating-a-video-section-on-your-wordpress-blog/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>How To Speed Up Your WordPress Blog</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/08/how-to-speed-up-your-wordpress-blog/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/08/how-to-speed-up-your-wordpress-blog/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 07 Aug 2009 14:00:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blogging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Plugins]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wordpress]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=1068</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
A WordPress blog is an easy way to establish a dynamic online presence however it&#8217;s also very easy to get trigger happy with plugins and themes that ultimately slow down your websites loading time. Here&#8217;s a quick little checklist to help improve your blogs performance.

1) Test your blogs speed first and get it primed
Use tools [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a class="post_image_link" href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/08/how-to-speed-up-your-wordpress-blog/" title="Permanent link to How To Speed Up Your WordPress Blog"><img class="post_image aligncenter frame" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/speed.jpg" width="470" height="150" alt="Speed Up Your WordPress Blog" /></a>
</p><p>A WordPress blog is an easy way to establish a dynamic online presence however it&#8217;s also very easy to get trigger happy with plugins and themes that ultimately slow down your websites loading time. Here&#8217;s a quick little checklist to help improve your blogs performance.<br />
<span id="more-1068"></span></p>
<h3>1) Test your blogs speed first and get it primed</h3>
<p>Use tools like <a href="http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test">iWebTool&#8217;s Speed Test</a> and <a href="http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/">Pingdom&#8217;s Full Page test</a> to visually see your blogs weaknesses and identify any key areas to focus on.</p>
<p>You should also be sure that your HTML adheres to W3C guidelines by <a href="http://validator.w3.org/">validating your website</a> and fixing any problems.</p>
<h3>2) Make sure you have reliable hosting</h3>
<p>Choose a reliable host that has the most recent versions of PHP and MYsql installed as well as enough space/bandwidth to handle large loads. WordPress has it&#8217;s own list of <a href="http://wordpress.org/hosting/">recommended hosts</a>.</p>
<p>Here are a few others worth checking out:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.hostgator.com/">HostGator</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.fatcow.com/">Fat Cow</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.godaddy.com/">GoDaddy</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.lunarpages.com/basic-hosting/">Lunar Pages</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.hostmonster.com/">Host Monster</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>3) Handle your images properly</h3>
<p>Images can put a huge strain on your server&#8217;s load time if not managed properly. Your images don&#8217;t need to be any higher than 72 DPI and should be resized before being inserted into your post. Resizing images with HTML can distort the image and increase it&#8217;s loading time.</p>
<p>It also might be a good idea to disable hotlinking so no one outside of your website is using up your resources. All you have to do is navigate to your .htaccess file and insert the following code. (Note:  If you are unfamiliar with how htaccess works, you may want to skip this step or contact a web developer for help)</p>
<div class="geshi no html">
<ol>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">RewriteEngine on
</div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
</div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?example\.com/.*$ [NC]
</div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|png|ico)$ &#8211; [F,L]</div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p>It also wouldn&#8217;t hurt to <a href="http://zenpax.com/">cache your commenter&#8217;s gravatar images</a> if you are currently displaying them on your site.</p>
<h3>4) Easy with the javscript calls</h3>
<p>Calls to 3rd party javascripts seem to be the main culprit in slowing down WordPress blogs. Between all the analytics packages available and social media enhancements you can make, their are tons of ways to slow down your blog. It really comes down to just choosing wisely. Do you really need that nifty little MyBlogLog widget? Is Google friend connect that important to your blogs strategy?</p>
<p>Two easy ways to cut down on the amount of time is takes to load whatever scripts you deem are necessary is to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Move javascript to an external file so browsers can cache the scripts.</li>
<li>Move any remaining scripts to your WordPress&#8217;s footer.php</li>
</ul>
<h3>5) Don&#8217;t load too many videos at once</h3>
<p>Too many flash videos on one page is a sure way to use up all of someones memory trying to load your page. I worked around this problem by assigning all video posts to the same category and not displaying any posts from that category on the home page. I just placed the following code above my &#8220;WordPress loop&#8221;:</p>
<div class="geshi no php">
<ol>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">query_posts<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="st0">&#39;cat=-3&#39;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="sy0">;</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p>Another easy fix would be to use the &lt;!&#8211;more&#8211;&gt; tag above your code that embeds the video in your post. This would only prevent the video itself from displaying on your home page.</p>
<h3>6) Control your plugins</h3>
<p>Only make calls to plugins when you need them by only calling them on the pages they will be used on.</p>
<div class="geshi no php">
<ol>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1"><span class="kw1">if</span> <span class="br0">&#40;</span>is_page<span class="br0">&#40;</span><span class="st0">&#39;archives&#39;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span><span class="br0">&#41;</span> <span class="br0">&#123;</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1"><span class="co1">// function code here</span></div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1"><span class="br0">&#125;</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p>This code only displays &#8220;function code here&#8221; when you are viewing the &#8220;archives&#8221; page. A full list of all the conditional tags can be found <a href="http://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags">here</a>.</p>
<p>Also be careful <a href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/03/woah-i-cant-read-your-wordpress-blog/">not to install too many plugins</a> in general and disable and remove any plugins that are not being used.</p>
<h3>7) Cache Your Pages</h3>
<p>The <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-super-cache/">WP Super Cache plugin</a> is probably the easiest way to seemingly increase your blogs loading time. It saves a copy of your website to a file on your server so WordPress only need to call that file rather than all the SQL and PHP it normally has to run. It comes in very useful when you have traffic spikes from certain social media sites.</p>
<h3>8) Reduce SQL queries and PHP calls</h3>
<p>Yoast has a <a href="http://yoast.com/speed-up-wordpress/">great post</a> that can help significantly reduce the number of calls your blog makes to your database. It also wouldn&#8217;t hurt to clean up your database either manually or with a plugin like <a href="http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-dbmanager">WP DB Manager</a>.</p>
<p>Another thing you can do that might speed up your database is to <a href="http://lesterchan.net/wordpress/2008/07/17/how-to-turn-off-post-revision-in-wordpress-26/">disable post revisions</a>.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p><strong>I hope someone finds this useful. Are there anymore tips you would recommend for speeding up a WordPress blog&#8217;s loading time?</strong></p>
<p>- Photo by <a rel="dc:creator cc:attributionURL" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevindean/"><strong>kevindean</strong></a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
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		<title>Using Custom Social Bookmark Icons With AddThis Analytics</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/05/using-custom-social-bookmark-icons-with-addthis-analytics/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/05/using-custom-social-bookmark-icons-with-addthis-analytics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2009 10:00:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[AddThis]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Customization]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Javascript]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Bookmarking]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=506</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
(Note: This code is meant to be put in your Wordpress Template. However, it should be easy to modify it for other uses.)
Awhile back, I tweeted about how I wasn&#8217;t a huge fan of the AddThis button and I felt the need for more actionable social sharing buttons. That led to a few conversations with [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a class="post_image_link" href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/05/using-custom-social-bookmark-icons-with-addthis-analytics/" title="Permanent link to Using Custom Social Bookmark Icons With AddThis Analytics"><img class="post_image alignleft" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/addthis.gif" width="243" height="70" alt="AddThis" /></a>
</p><p>(<em><strong>Note</strong>: This code is meant to be put in your Wordpress Template. However, it should be easy to modify it for other uses.</em>)</p>
<p>Awhile back, I tweeted about how I wasn&#8217;t a huge fan of the <a href="http://addthis.com/web-button-select">AddThis button</a> and I felt the need for <a href="http://www.magicomm.biz/blog/are-you-optimizing-your-blog">more actionable social sharing buttons</a>. That led to a few conversations with an AddThis representative about how I could still use their JavaScript to help <a href="http://www.addthis.com/help/getting-started/analytics">track my custom buttons usage</a>.</p>
<p>So now, with this code, you can use any <a href="http://speckyboy.com/2009/01/26/30-amazingly-creative-social-bookmarks-icon-sets/">custom social bookmarklet</a> you like, and still track the button usage.</p>
<p>So first and foremost you will need an <a href="http://addthis.com/register">AddThis account</a>.</p>
<p>Then you need to add the AddThis javascript to your HTML. I like to put it in the footer so all of my content can load first.</p>
<div class="geshi no html">
<ol>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot; src=&quot;http://s7.addthis.com/js/200/addthis_widget.js&quot;&gt;&lt;/script&gt;</div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p>Next, you will need to add the following javascript, substituting the &#8220;YOUR-ACCOUNT-ID&#8221; with your AddThis username. I usually put this right above the first link that will be using the AddThis code.</p>
<div class="geshi no html">
<ol>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt;
</div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">addthis_title = &#39;&lt;?=get_the_title($id); ?&gt;&#39;;
</div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">addthis_url = &#39;&lt;?=get_permalink(); ?&gt;&#39;;
</div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">addthis_id = &#39;YOUR-ACCOUNT-ID&#39;;
</div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">addthis_clickout= true;
</div>
</li>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&lt;/script&gt;</div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p>Finally you will need to add the &#8216;onclick&#8217; javascript to the anchor tag like I do in the example below. The key here is to put the name of the service you wish the button to link to where I have inserted &#8217;stumbleupon&#8217; below. A full list of services can be found on the <a href="http://www.addthis.com/help/customize/services">AddThis custom services page</a>.</p>
<div class="geshi no html">
<ol>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&lt;a onclick=&quot;return addthis_invoke(&#39;stumbleupon&#39;, addthis_url, addthis_title, addthis_id);&quot; href=&quot;http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=&lt;?=get_permalink(); ?&gt;%26title%3D&lt;?=get_the_title($id); ?&gt;&quot;&gt;&lt;img border=0 src=&quot;http://cdn.stumble-upon.com/images/160&#215;30_su_blue.gif&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;</div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p>So that is how I am able to track my sharing button usage on my site through AddThis without using the AddThis button.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Who Are You Following on Twitter?</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/03/who-are-you-following-on-twitter/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/03/who-are-you-following-on-twitter/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:05:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Follow]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Organization]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=364</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
I talked a little about my Twitter following strategy back in a previous post but I wanted to expand a bit.
First you should know I am a very active follower. I take recommendations very seriously as well as any incoming replies.
Then there is my &#8217;social media&#8217; inbox. I&#8217;ve basically just set my GMail to move [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a class="post_image_link" href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/03/who-are-you-following-on-twitter/" title="Permanent link to Who Are You Following on Twitter?"><img class="post_image aligncenter" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/twitter-follow.jpg" width="420" height="124" alt="Who I Follow On Twitter" /></a>
</p><p>I talked a little about my Twitter following strategy back in a <a href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/03/my-twitter-is-run-by-robots/">previous post</a> but I wanted to expand a bit.</p>
<p>First you should know I am a very active follower. I take recommendations very seriously as well as any incoming replies.</p>
<p>Then there is my &#8217;social media&#8217; inbox. I&#8217;ve basically just set my GMail to move all Twitter follow requests to a separate folder for easy sorting and general management. Then I begin the daunting task of opening each new followers Twitter page to scrutinize their stream.</p>
<p>One time I went a week without checking my &#8217;social media&#8217; box and then spent the next 2 hours checking 350 Twitter profiles. It&#8217;s not so bad once you get in the groove. I try to keep each profile view down to a couple seconds looking for a couple key points:</p>
<p><strong>The user&#8217;s bio/website/profile pic</strong></p>
<p>I like to know I am following a real person and this could be the first giveaway. I also personally stay away from people pushing MLMs, porn and press release feeds.</p>
<p><strong>The user&#8217;s conversation quotient</strong></p>
<p>Your conversation quotient is simply the ratio of total tweets to total replies. The average is said to be around 25% so that&#8217;s more or less my bearing for success. The higher your conversation quotient, the more likely I am going to follow you back.</p>
<p>You can learn more about the conversation quotient as well as view in depth statistics at <a href="http://twitter-friends.com/faq.php">twitter-friends.com</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Any signs of robots</strong></p>
<p>I don&#8217;t get along with robots for some reason so I just avoid them. This includes <a href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/03/my-twitter-is-run-by-robots/">follow schemes and auto replies</a>.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s about it. It all boils down to following real people talking to other real people. It&#8217;s becoming easier and easier to see through the bullshit, so don&#8217;t kid yourself.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>My TweetGrid</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/03/my-tweetgrid/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/03/my-tweetgrid/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:30:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Internet Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TweetChat]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TweetGrid]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter Tools]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[TwitterLocal]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=346</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I love talking to people about the tools they are using to efficiently track conversations in social media. Everybody has there own methods they&#8217;ve developed over time and their own goals they wish to achieve.
Most of my Tweeting revolves around TweetGrid and Twhirl. TweetGrid always seems to catch my new replies a split second before [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p><a href="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/mytweetgrid1.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-406" title="My TweetGrid" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/mytweetgrid1.jpg" alt="My TweetGrid" width="220" height="142" /></a>I love talking to people about the tools they are using to efficiently track conversations in social media. Everybody has there own methods they&#8217;ve developed over time and their own goals they wish to achieve.</p>
<p>Most of my Tweeting revolves around <a href="http://tweetgrid.com">TweetGrid</a> and <a href="http://www.twhirl.org/">Twhirl</a>. TweetGrid always seems to catch my new replies a split second before Twhirl will so I keep TweetGrid running in the background at all times.</p>
<p>There are a couple very cool features built into TweetGrid that allow me to track local, relevant and high profile conversations.</p>
<p><strong>First there&#8217;s the local search</strong>. I&#8217;ve been using this feature via <a href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/02/getting-local-with-twitter/">Twitter&#8217;s advanced search tips</a> before it was <a href="http://tweetgrid.com/news?r=an">officially revamped and released</a> in TweetGrid. It&#8217;s a fun way to keep up with the local scene as well as find some local tweeps. </p>
<p><strong>Next we have Groups.</strong> Keeping up with 2000+ followers can become quite a hassle. To be sure I don&#8217;t miss anything too important, I&#8217;ve put together a list of friends and tweeps I&#8217;ve conversed with in the past that provide value. The list changes on a weekly basis and is usually dominated by the same people (as you can see in the attached photo). But it keeps me in the loop.</p>
<p><strong>I also track terms associated with me and my blog</strong>. I recently released <a href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/03/introducing-commentwitter/">my first wordpress plugin</a> and like to keep track of it&#8217;s mentions in Twitter. It&#8217;s also a great way for me to keep tabs on any problems people might be having with my plugin.</p>
<p><strong>I usually leave a spot for my interests.</strong> This grid does not have it, but I usually have a spot for tracking bands I like, games I play and anything else I&#8217;m interested in.</p>
<p><strong>And last but not least I can keep track of my friends timeline and DMs</strong> thanks to some recent TweetGrid updates.</p>
<p>The one thing I cannot stress enough is the speed at which TweetGrid produces results. I&#8217;ve yet to use it as a replacement to <a href="http://tweetchat.com/">tweetchat</a> for <a href="http://journchat.info/">jourchat</a> and other hashtag related discussions but I could easily see it being a suitable substitution.</p>
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		<item>
		<title>Twitter Metrics</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/03/twitter-metrics/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/03/twitter-metrics/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 09 Mar 2009 22:45:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Video Post]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Analytics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Metrics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter Metrics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[twitter-friends]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=419</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="437" height="370" id="viddler_bc22876a"><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.viddler.com/player/bc22876a/" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed src="http://www.viddler.com/player/bc22876a/" width="437" height="370" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" name="viddler_bc22876a" wmode="transparent"></embed></object></p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Rules of the Retweet</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/02/rules-of-the-retweet/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/02/rules-of-the-retweet/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 18 Feb 2009 23:57:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ReTweet]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Viral]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=314</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
The ReTweet plays a pivotal role in the viral capabilities of Twitter. I&#8217;m not going to get into all the viral sciences of Twitter because Dan Zarrella is already doing that. Instead I want to discuss some basic simple rules that can encourage the ReTweeting of your Tweets.
1) Keep It Short
I usually keep it less [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a class="post_image_link" href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/02/rules-of-the-retweet/" title="Permanent link to Rules of the Retweet"><img class="post_image aligncenter" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/retweet.jpg" width="420" height="177" alt="Rules of Retweeting" /></a>
</p><p>The ReTweet plays a pivotal role in the viral capabilities of Twitter. I&#8217;m not going to get into all the <a href="http://mashable.com/2009/02/17/twitter-retweets/">viral sciences of Twitter</a> because <a href="http://danzarrella.com/">Dan Zarrella</a> is already doing that. Instead I want to discuss some basic simple rules that can encourage the ReTweeting of your Tweets.</p>
<p><strong>1) Keep It Short</strong></p>
<p>I usually keep it less than 120 characters to be sure there is enough room for people to add RT @username before my Tweet. When people have to trim your Tweet down to ReTweet it properly you run the risk of them not following through.</p>
<p><strong>2) Make Sure Your Link Works</strong></p>
<p>You would be surprised how many people post bad links without even knowing it. Some reasons this could happen are:</p>
<ul>
<li>You posted the wrong URL</li>
<li>You posted an incomplete URL</li>
<li>You added an extra character to your URL (<span style="text-decoration: underline;">example.com/abcd</span> and <span style="text-decoration: underline;">example.com/abcd?</span> are two different links)</li>
<li>The URL shortening service you are using is down (I&#8217;ve been having problems with <a href="http://tweetburner.com/">Twurl</a>)</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>3) Don&#8217;t ReTweet Too Often</strong></p>
<p>There are bots made for this. Your main goal on Twitter should be to provide valuable content and form relationships with like minded Tweeps. How am I supposed to get to know you if all you do is ReTweet other people.</p>
<p><strong>4) Learn What Works</strong></p>
<p>Check out what is trending on sites like <a href="http://www.retweetist.com/">Retweetist</a> to learn what is working for other people. This is a great way to learn how to structure your Titles as well as what other people are finding interesting. You should also review some of Dan Zarrella&#8217;s research about &#8220;<a href="http://danzarrella.com/the-20-words-and-phrases-that-will-get-you-the-most-retweets.html">The 20 Words and Phrases That Will Get You the Most ReTweets</a>&#8220;.</p>
<p><strong>5) Become A Trusted Source</strong></p>
<p>Remember to share other people&#8217;s work as well as your own. If you are successfully forming relationships on Twitter then there will be a group of people willing to share your Tweet.</p>
<p>You&#8217;ll notice that most of my tips revolve around convenience and honesty, because that is what social media is about. ReTweets are a great way to get your good name out there and develop a solid loyal following. Just take an extra two seconds next time to make sure your Tweet is fully ReTweetable.</p>
<p><strong>Side Note</strong>: I&#8217;m still torn on whether or not it is okay to ask for a ReTweet. It seems as if Twitter is torn as well (<a href="http://twtpoll.com/r/durw1m">Twitter Poll via ProBlogger</a>).</p>
<p>- Photo <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/149294353/">by swanksalot</a></p>
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		<item>
		<title>How To Stop Receiving Auto DMs</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/02/how-to-stop-receiving-auto-dms/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/02/how-to-stop-receiving-auto-dms/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 11 Feb 2009 20:35:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Auto DM]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opt Out]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Spam]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=300</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Third party services that sent out automatic direct messages to new followers were all the rage a few months back. Even still it&#8217;s a popular solution for the &#8220;lazy twitterer&#8221; hoping to snag some extra traffic for their company&#8217;s blog or website.
There are two main websites responsible for the auto DM epidemic, SocialToo and TweetLater. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>Third party services that sent out automatic direct messages to new followers were all the rage a few months back. Even still it&#8217;s a popular solution for the &#8220;lazy twitterer&#8221; hoping to snag some extra traffic for their company&#8217;s blog or website.</p>
<p>There are two main websites responsible for the auto DM epidemic, <a href="http://socialtoo.com">SocialToo</a> and <a href="http://www.tweetlater.com/">TweetLater</a>. Both are great sites that have just been abused by their users.</p>
<p>Thankfully, both sites recognize the auto DM problem and have provided ways to opt out from receiving further communications via automated direct messages from their sites.</p>
<p>To put a complete stop from receiving these messages you should opt out from both sites.</p>
<h3>Opting Out From SocialToo</h3>
<p>SocialToo is currently the harder of the two to opt out from.</p>
<ol>
<li>You will need to go to <a href="http://www.socialtoo.com">socialtoo.com</a> and create an account.</li>
<li>Log In and click on &#8220;Change your Twitter and Facebook Preferences&#8221;</li>
<li>Navigate toward the bottom of the page and check next to &#8220;Turn off automatic Direct Messages from other SocialToo.com users?&#8221;</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-302 aligncenter" title="Turn Off Auto DM in Social Too" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/autdmst1.jpg" alt="Turn Off Auto DM in Social Too" width="420" height="93" /></p>
<p>You should be all set. Now on to TweetLater.</p>
<h3>Opting Out From TweetLater</h3>
<ol>
<li>Log in to Twitter.</li>
<li>Follow @<a href="http://www.twitter.com/OptMeOut">OptMeOut</a>.  (@OptMeOut will follow you back shortly)</li>
<li>Once you receive an email stating you&#8217;ve been followed back, send a DM to @OptMeOut. (You can write whatever you want in the DM, it does not matter.)</li>
</ol>
<p style="text-align: center; "><img class="size-full wp-image-303 aligncenter" title="Opt Out from Auto DM from Tweet Later" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/autdmtl.jpg" alt="Opt Out from Auto DM from Tweet Later" width="288" height="83" /></p>
<p>That is all. You will receive a confirmation DM from @OptMeOut at which point you can unfollow them or just be on your way. The best part is that you do not need a TweetLater account to opt out.</p>
<h3>* Update (8/3/2009) *</h3>
<p>Here are a couple new services you can opt out from.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://playspymaster.com/optout">SpyMaster</a></li>
<li><a href="http://fun140.com/ask_opt_out">Fun 140</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.twables.com/opt">Twables</a></li>
</ul>
<p><span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Waiting on </span><a href="http://twitter.com/lolplaying"><span style="text-decoration: line-through;">@lolplaying</span></a><span style="text-decoration: line-through;"> to add a way to opt out from receiving auto-dms from their games.</span> (see update below)</p>
<p>I can&#8217;t find who made <a href="http://www.playmobsterworld.com">Mobster World</a> so I can&#8217;t ask them how to opt out.</p>
<p>Please let me know of any other services that send auto-dms on Twitter that also provide a way to opt out so I can add it to the list.</p>
<h3>* Update (9/8/2009) *</h3>
<p>Still no response from <a href="http://twitter.com/lolplaying">@lolplaying</a> however they have provided an opt out for <a href="http://lolquiz.com/optout">lolquiz.com</a></p>
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		<title>Getting Local With Twitter</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/02/getting-local-with-twitter/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/02/getting-local-with-twitter/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:56:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[GeoCode]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yahoo Pipes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=252</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I used to be a big fan of TwitterLocal until the landing page started displaying this message:
Since Twitter cut off their Jabber feed from TwitterLocal, we had to rely purely on the XML API, which meant that only about 20% of Tweets from the public timeline got into TwitterLocal.
Which in turn forced them to shut [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>I used to be a big fan of TwitterLocal until the landing page started displaying this message:</p>
<blockquote><p><em>Since Twitter cut off their Jabber feed from TwitterLocal, we had to rely purely on the XML API, which meant that only about 20% of Tweets from the public timeline got into TwitterLocal.</em></p></blockquote>
<p>Which in turn forced them to shut down the web service and create a desktop app.</p>
<p>I personally have enough applications running on my desktop and preferred to keep my conversations organized in my browser. So it&#8217;s a good thing Twitter has it&#8217;s own TwitterLocal type service built into it that is actually very easy to use. It&#8217;s called geocode and can be used right inside Twitter Search.</p>
<p>The geocode docu reads as follows:</p>
<blockquote><p><strong>geocode</strong>: returns tweets by users located within a given radius of the given latitude/longitude, where the user&#8217;s location is taken from their Twitter profile. The parameter value is specified by &#8220;latitide,longitude,radius&#8221;, where radius units must be specified as either &#8220;mi&#8221; (miles) or &#8220;km&#8221; (kilometers). </p></blockquote>
<p>Well this is all fine and dandy if you know the latitude and longitude of your location off the top of your head. To make my life easier (and hopefully now yours), I created a Yahoo Pipe that creates a geocode for you as well as links you to a page that can display the results.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=8vA1gjvl3RGqWknCBB50VA"><img class="size-full wp-image-253 aligncenter" title="geocode" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/geocode.jpg" alt="geocode" width="420" height="177" /></a></p>
<p>You can click the link that was generated to view your local results instantly or you can copy your geocode into your favorite Twitter Search engine. Geocode can be used in most Twitter Search engines like <a href="http://www.twitexplorer.com/">Tweet Explorer</a>, <a href="http://tweetgrid.com/">TweetGrid</a> and plain old <a href="http://search.twitter.com/">Twitter Search</a>.</p>
<p>I personally use geocode in one of my grid blocks in TweetGrid so I am always up to date on local happenings.</p>
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		<title>Why Your Social Media Strategy Isn&#8217;t Working</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/02/why-your-social-media-strategy-isnt-working/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/02/why-your-social-media-strategy-isnt-working/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:16:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blogging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Internet Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Facebook]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[LinkedIn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ning]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=236</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[
Wondering why you&#8217;re not seeing any results from your marketing efforts in social media? Probably because you are doing it wrong. Here are a few things you can try doing differently.
Twitter
I feel like Twitter is the easiest one to do right and somehow so many people do it wrong.
First you have your spray and prayers. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a class="post_image_link" href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/02/why-your-social-media-strategy-isnt-working/" title="Permanent link to Why Your Social Media Strategy Isn&#8217;t Working"><img class="post_image aligncenter" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/social-media-not-working.jpg" width="450" height="162" alt="Social Media Strategy Not Working" /></a>
</p><p>Wondering why you&#8217;re not seeing any results from your marketing efforts in social media? Probably because you are doing it wrong. Here are a few things you can try doing differently.</p>
<h3>Twitter</h3>
<p>I feel like <a href="http://www.twitter.com">Twitter</a> is the easiest one to do right and somehow so many people do it wrong.</p>
<p>First you have your spray and prayers. They follow everyone on TwitterPacks and post one link in their feed that sends them to their website. If very little untargetted traffic is your thing then by all means go for it. You won&#8217;t last very long as Twitter is slowly getting better at filtering out the trash in its intertubes.</p>
<p>So the easiest way to use Twitter for business is to develop a following through honest communication.</p>
<p>Wondering why no one&#8217;s following you back?</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2008/10/starting-a-twitter-account-from-scratch/">You&#8217;re following too many people</a></li>
<li>You never filled out your profile</li>
<li>You never post anything</li>
<li>You only post things from your blog</li>
<li>You&#8217;re too hot to be real (or too ugly to be followed)</li>
<li>You sound like a robot</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Key to Success:</strong> <a href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/02/three-ways-to-become-a-well-rounded-twitterer/">Reach out to others</a></p>
<p>I find that those that become resources in their communities often thrive at building trust as well as followers.</p>
<h3>Facebook and LinkedIn</h3>
<p><a href="http://www.facebook.com">Facebook</a> and <a href="http://www.linkedin.com">LinkedIn</a> are great places to network by using their groups and micro communities to find like minded individuals. However, people often overlook the potential in niche community sites outside of the main stream social media. These smaller communities are filled with people that might actually like your service and even welcome it.</p>
<p>Another reason why your marketing efforts won&#8217;t work on Facebook is simply because they are not welcome. Facebook is a platform to connect with friends, not your brand. If you once again focus your efforts on becoming a resource rather than just throwing yourself out there, you may see better results.</p>
<p><strong>Key to Success:</strong> Be yourself</p>
<p>Like I said, &#8220;Facebook is a platform to connect with friends, not your brand&#8221;. Use these tools to network the same way you would at a party or any other networking event.</p>
<h3>Blog</h3>
<p>Blogging can be the foundation of your companies online reputation or it can get overlooked completely. There&#8217;s no shortcut to developing quality content  for your posts. Blog about things you actually know about.</p>
<p>Wondering why no one is subscribing to your feed?</p>
<ul>
<li>Your posts are too long</li>
<li>Your topics don&#8217;t provide value</li>
<li>Your layout compromises your post</li>
<li>Your title isn&#8217;t appealing</li>
<li>No one knows your blog exists</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Key to Success:</strong> Focus on writing unique content for a specific audience. Also be sure to seek out your target audience and connect with them honestly and openly.</p>
<p><strong>Wrap Up</strong></p>
<p>There are a lot of specifics you can get into when identifying your target audience online and how you can best reach them. I look at all of my social media conversations and try to be as completely transparent as possible. I also try to maintain a healthy mix of personal and business interactions as I do in life. Remember that social media is just a tool that helps extend our real life beyond it physical limits and it should be treated as such.</p>
<p>So what do you think? What else might be holding back someone&#8217;s social media efforts from seeing any results?</p>
<p>- Photo by <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/coxy/3076703161/">coxy</a></p>
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		<title>How To Change Your Twitter Name Without Losing Followers</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/01/how-to-change-your-twitter-name/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2009/01/how-to-change-your-twitter-name/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:01:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Change name]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=209</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I joined Twitter in October of 07 not really knowing what it had in store for me. Well one thing led to another and as I reached my 1000 follower milestone I began to regret my original naming decision. Then I received a tweet from Ari Herzog concerning my Twitter name and that was it, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>I joined Twitter in October of 07 not really knowing what it had in store for me. Well one thing led to another and as I reached my 1000 follower milestone I began to regret my original naming decision. Then I received <a href="http://twitter.com/ariherzog/status/1119352980">a tweet from Ari Herzog concerning my Twitter name</a> and that was it, I had to change.</p>
<p><strong>Here is how I changed my Twitter name without losing any followers.</strong></p>
<p><strong>First</strong>,  make the name change. You can change your Twitter name at any time on the &#8217;settings&#8217; page at <a href="http://www.Twitter.com">Twitter.com</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Second</strong>, create a new account with your old Twitter name. You don&#8217;t have to do much with this account. Maybe add a URL to your new twitter account and post a single tweet notifying people that your name has changed.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.twitter.com/JonDBishop"><img class="size-full wp-image-211 aligncenter" title="Tweet about new account name" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/moving.jpg" alt="Tweet about new account name" width="425" height="129" /></a></p>
<p>You won&#8217;t lose any of your followers and they&#8217;ll all see the name change as their Twitter clients refresh.</p>
<p><strong>Notes</strong></p>
<p>I seem to have missed a few @replys right after the switch. Most Twitter apps won&#8217;t update your existing tweets with your new name until they are restarted. As a result you are at risk of getting some @replys sent to your old account. This could also happen with people you talk to regularly. Be sure to continue to monitor your old account so you can catch missed replies and update your follower of the name change.</p>
<p>I also made it a point to run across all of the social networks that list my Twitter handle and update them. This included sites like MyBlogLog, FriendFeed assorted ning sites, etc. It may be awhile before my new Twitter account shows up on Google for Jon Bishop.</p>
<p><em>Don&#8217;t forget to update your Twitter link on your blog if you have one.</em></p>
<p>My <a href="http://twitter.grader.com/">TwitterGrade</a> went down .9 points &#8230; oh well. I also had duplicate listings for awhile but this was solved by retrieving an updated grade for the old account. Other Twitter stats sites are showing decreased numbers but I&#8217;m sure this will even out over time.</p>
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		<title>Variable Video</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2008/07/variable-video/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2008/07/variable-video/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:01:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Flash]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Internet Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Variable Video]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Personalized Video]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.jonbishop.com/?p=53</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve talked about variable video and personalized video a little in the past. Now let&#8217;s look at some more examples and break down some of their components.
Here are some examples:

Inspiring Escapes
Dexter
Haunted house
Walts wisdom
Carmen has a crush on you
News3Online
Disney World &#8211; New
I Love You &#8211; New

There are 4 main effects that can be achieved in a [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>I&#8217;ve talked about variable video and personalized video a little in the past. Now let&#8217;s look at some more examples and break down some of their components.</p>
<p>Here are some examples:<a href="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/proof.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-52" style="float: right;" title="Variable video proof of concept" src="http://www.jonbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/proof.jpg" alt="Variable video proof of concept" width="190" height="195" /></a></p>
<ul>
<li><a title="Variable Video Test Site" href="http://variablevideo.magicomm.biz">Inspiring Escapes</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.sliceoflifetv.com/index.php?id=088c0dfa" target="_blank">Dexter</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.yourmessagegoeshere.com/haunted/message/index.asp?f=Jon&amp;l=Bishop&amp;m=JonBishop%2Ecom+is+freakishly+awesome%2E">Haunted house</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.waltswisdom.com/blog/2008/030372pz3w">Walts wisdom</a></li>
<li><span style="text-decoration: line-through;">Carmen has a crush on you</span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.news3online.com/index.php?code=3RrH214ml23UyC816ga1">News3Online</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.jonbishop.com/2008/12/disney-jumps-on-the-variable-video-bandwagon/">Disney World</a> &#8211; New</li>
<li><a href="http://www.pvideo.com.hk/lover/view_en.php?code=3f50609b570428aef479d5e391fc27a0">I Love You</a> &#8211; New</li>
</ul>
<p>There are 4 main effects that can be achieved in a variable video:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Variable text</strong> <strong> &#8211; </strong>example: holding up a card with the persons name</li>
<li><strong>Variable image</strong> &#8211; example: holding up a picture of the person</li>
<li><strong>Variable audio &#8211; </strong>example: saying the persons name with actors face covered</li>
<li><strong>Variable video scenes</strong><strong> &#8211; </strong>example: saying the persons name without actors face covered</li>
</ul>
<p>If you wanted to create a variable video campaign, there are multiple ways to go about it. All of the above effects can be recreated using Adobe Flash. If you only plan on doing variable text and/or imaging in the video you may not need 3rd party software. If you do wish to integrate your variable video campaign with other software, XMPie recently announced video integration capabilities with their system.</p>
<p>Another important aspect of variable video is the story. To properly recreate any of the videos shown in this post you would need actors, sets, equipment, scripts, etc. But, one great thing about variable video is it&#8217;s surprise factor. You could get away with crappy quality video as long as the personalization tied in seamlessly.</p>
<p>The most important part of any variable video campaign is it&#8217;s final conversion screen. This is where you encourage personalizing the video for someone else. Someone the user believes will find the video entertaining. People love seeing their name in lights and now everyone can be part of the internet video phenomenon.</p>
<p>Contact <a href="http://www.magicomm.biz/contact.phtml">Magicomm</a> to learn more about variable video.</p>
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		<title>Twitter 101</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2008/04/twitter-101/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2008/04/twitter-101/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:26:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter 101]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter Guide]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jon.bishport.com/?p=25</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Everything you need to know about Twitter in as short of a post as possible.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send &#8220;updates&#8221; (or &#8220;tweets&#8221;; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (e.g. on a cell phone), instant messaging, or [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>Everything you need to know about Twitter in as short of a post as possible.</p>
<p class="style4"><strong>What is Twitter?</strong></p>
<p>Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send &#8220;updates&#8221; (or &#8220;tweets&#8221;; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (e.g. on a cell phone), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. &#8211; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter" target="_blank">From Wikipedia<br />
</a></p>
<p>Commoncraft also has a pretty good explanation of <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o">what twitter is</a> on youtube.</p>
<p>Here are some <a href="http://twitterhandbook.com/blog/twinterviews-post-your-reply-here-as-a-commnet/">Twinterviews</a> about what people love about twitter.</p>
<p class="style4"><strong>Who do I follow?</strong></p>
<p>First thing you can do is invite all of your friends through Twitters Find &amp; Follow page. Once that is done you can move on to websites like <a href="http://whoshouldifollow.com/" target="_blank">Who Should I Follow</a>, <a href="http://twittersearch.com/search/" target="_blank">Twittersearch</a> and <a href="http://www.crazybob.org/twubble/">Twubble</a>. (<a href="http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps#SearchEngines" target="_blank">More Twitter Search Engines</a>)</p>
<p>There are also lists you can scan through at <a href="http://twitterpacks.pbwiki.com/" target="_blank">TwitterPack</a> and <a href="http://www.twitterholic.com/">Twitterholic</a> as well as some <a title="Permanent Link: 200+ Internet Marketing Gurus on Twitter" href="http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/01/internet-marketing-experts-twitter.html" target="_blank">Internet Marketing Gurus on Twitter</a>.</p>
<p>It is probably a good idea to view a users Twitter page before you follow them to be sure they aren&#8217;t spam.</p>
<p class="style4"><strong>How do i update?</strong></p>
<p>There are A LOT of ways to update your twitter status. The most obvious (and sometimes most reliable) is the Twitter site itself.</p>
<p>There is also an array of third-party apps to help feed your twitter hunger:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.naan.net/trac/wiki/TwitterFox" target="_blank">TwitterFox</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.twhirl.org/" target="_blank">Twhirl</a></li>
<li><a href="http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific" target="_blank">Twitterrific</a></li>
<li><a href="http://getsnitter.com/">Snitter</a></li>
<li><a href="http://engel.uk.to/twitkit/">Twitkit</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Or you can automate the process with <a href="http://twitterfeed.com/" target="_blank">TwitterFeed.</a></p>
<p class="style4"><strong>Where else can i put my twitter feed?</strong></p>
<p>You can view your feed in any feed aggregator (Google Reader, FriendFeed, Outlook, etc). Your feed can be accessed at</p>
<ul>
<li>http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/<em>username</em>.rss &#8211; Your Feed</li>
<li>http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/<em>username</em>.rss &#8211; Your Friends Feed</li>
</ul>
<p>as well as by clicking the RSS button at the bottom of your Twitter page.</p>
<p>Another popular thing to do is add your Twitter feed to facebook. <a href="http://apps.facebook.com/apps/application.php?api_key=7cc3dc042ec019b913300d1e7559aad9">Twitter has its own Facebok App</a> or you can just <a href="http://apps.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=6009973148&amp;b=&amp;ref=pd" target="_blank">sync your facebook satus with Twitter</a>. I personally chose to use <a href="http://apps.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2795223269&amp;b=&amp;ref=pd">FriendFeed</a> because it was the least intrusive.</p>
<p class="style4"><strong>What are some cool apps I can use?</strong></p>
<p>Check out the <a href="http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Apps#WebApps">Twitter Fan Wiki Apps Page</a>.</p>
<p>I hope someone found this informative. Please feel free to follow me: <a href="http://twitter.com/spazcer">@spazcer</a></p>
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		<title>Interactive Video How-To and Examples</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2008/04/interactive-video-how-to-and-examples/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2008/04/interactive-video-how-to-and-examples/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:08:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Flash]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Internet Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Variable Video]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PURL]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jon.bishport.com/?p=24</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I talked awhile back about personalized video and how it could be (is) the next big marketing medium.  The benefits of personalized video are obvious, you&#8217;ll get better quality personal information and it is very viral.
The key here is personalization and interactivity. The internet took a turn a few years back with the rise [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>I talked awhile back about <a href="http://blog.bishport.com/2008/03/personalized-langing-pages-20.html">personalized video</a> and how it could be (is) the next big marketing medium.  The benefits of personalized video are obvious, you&#8217;ll get <span style="font-weight: bold;">better quality personal information and it is very viral</span>.
<p>The key here is personalization and interactivity. The internet took a turn a few years back with the rise of <a href="http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/28/morgan-stanleys-march-internet-trends-report-social/">social and interactive networks</a>. From that point on, the user was given control, and thats the way it going to be from now on. I showed in my previous post how successful personalized video is and now, I want to show you how easy it is to pull off.</p>
<p>Here are two videos i made when first experimenting with how flash could be used to manipulate video:</p>
<p><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,19,0" title="game" height="240" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://bishport.com/cv/player1.swf"><param name="quality" value="high"><embed src="http://bishport.com/cv/player1.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="240" width="320"></embed></object></p>
<p><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,19,0" title="game" height="240" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://bishport.com/cv/player2.swf"><param name="quality" value="high"><embed src="http://bishport.com/cv/player2.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" height="240" width="320"></embed></object></p>
<p>

<p>The best part is that <span style="font-weight: bold;">i made each of those videos in under 15 minutes.</span></p>
<p>All you need to do it upload your video in flash:</p>
<p>1) File -> Import -> Import Video</p>
<p><a href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_3yPANXuQTYk/SBcy9_7MSAI/AAAAAAAAAb0/T8ybzITjxXU/s1600-h/vidhow1.gif"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_3yPANXuQTYk/SBcy9_7MSAI/AAAAAAAAAb0/T8ybzITjxXU/s400/vidhow1.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194676735908268034" border="0" /></a></p>
<p>(Note: I had to rerecord my video as a wmv because i could not get avi to work properly)</p>
<p>2) Then choose:</p>
<p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp2.blogger.com/_3yPANXuQTYk/SBczif7MSBI/AAAAAAAAAb8/DbIIXDkF01Q/s1600-h/vidhow2.gif"><img style="cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_3yPANXuQTYk/SBczif7MSBI/AAAAAAAAAb8/DbIIXDkF01Q/s400/vidhow2.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5194677362973493266" border="0" /></a></p>
<p>&#8220;Embed video in SWF and play in timeline&#8221; is what allows you to manipulate movieclips on top of your video. Now what you could do with this is map certain items to sync with the video and possibly even change those items at run time. You could insert personalized images, text, etc.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Anatomy of a Blog &#8211; Scripting for Social Media</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2008/03/anatomy-of-blog-scripting-for-social/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2008/03/anatomy-of-blog-scripting-for-social/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:32:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blogging]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Development]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jon.bishport.com/?p=19</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s a small back story to this entry. Ive been working with an open source content management system for my company Magicomm and it eventually came time when we decided we were going to start our own blog. My goal was to use the preexisting framework of the CMS to smoothly integrate the blogging software [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>There&#8217;s a small back story to this entry. Ive been working with an open source content management system for my company <a href="http://www.magicomm.biz/">Magicomm</a> and it eventually came time when we decided we were going to start our own blog. My goal was to use the preexisting framework of the CMS to smoothly integrate the blogging software into the back end of the system. It turns out this was the easy part&#8230;.</p>
<p>So now the goal of this entry. When it came time to output the data into your common blog format I found that their were some small things that <span style="font-weight: bold;">helped my blog get indexed</span> by popular blog directories as well as other assorted social media aggregations.</p>
<p>So ultimately I&#8217;m assuming you understand the general format and <a href="http://www.magicomm.biz/blog/blogging_for_business">benefits of a blog</a>. You&#8217;ve got your <span style="font-weight: bold;">title</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">author</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">timestamp</span>, and a <span style="font-weight: bold;">post </span>of some sort. Other optional features include <span style="font-weight: bold;">keywords</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">permalinks</span>, <span style="font-weight: bold;">comments</span>, and an <span style="font-weight: bold;">RSS </span>feed.<br />
Now I want to go into a little more detail about the code side of this and show you where some simple HTML syntax separates the blog from the..um&#8230; not-blog.</p>
<p><strong>Rel-tag</strong></p>
<p>First I&#8217;ll talk a little about my favorite blogging feature, the &#8216;<strong>rel-tag</strong>&#8216;. Rel-tag is basically a keyword that physically sits on your screen as apposed to META keywords which hide in your page&#8217;s header. Now when you&#8217;re displaying &#8216;rel-tag&#8217; that relate to a specific post you use the relationship attribute of the anchor tag to define the hypertext as a &#8216;tag&#8217;.</p>
<div class="geshi no html">
<ol>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&lt;a href=&#39;http://www.magicomm.biz/tags/great+blog&#39; rel=&#39;tag&#39;&gt;great blog&lt;/a&gt;</div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p>As you can see it it pretty simple to establish a tag. Basically <strong>rel-tag is a</strong> <a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-tag">MicroFormat</a> and what you are doing is declaring that this link is an author-designated keyword for this post. Also note that in the URL of the link I&#8217;ve separated the two words with a + sign instead of a space (You could also use %20). You want to try and be sure that your tags relate and are appropriate for your post. Alot of social media aggregators use this information along with specific information in your RSS feed to categorize your post and you can often see your tags displayed on sites such as <a href="http://technorati.com/">technorati.com</a> and <a href="http://mybloglog.com/">mybloglog.com</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Permalinks</strong></p>
<p>The second thing I would like to talk about are <strong>permalinks</strong> which are also often called bookmarks. Permalinks are basically links back to a specific entry that will never change. This makes them ideal for bookmarking which is why it comes as no surprise that the following helps you establish a permalink/bookmark.</p>
<div class="geshi no html">
<ol>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&lt;a href=&#39;http://www.magicomm.biz/blog/cross_media_is_now_our_life&#39; rel=&#39;bookmark&#39;&gt;Cross Media is now our life!&lt;/a&gt;</div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p>As you can see we once again use the relationship tag to define the Permalink. This is not always necessary however Ive found that certain social media sites use the bookmark relationship to determine if this link is a permalink or not.</p>
<p><strong>RSS </strong></p>
<p>Now last but not least there is the <strong>RSS feed</strong>. I could go on forever about the different formats and <a href="http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html">everything you can stuff into a solid feed</a>, but i wont. The only thing i want to mention here is how to <strong>make your feed available</strong> to social media sites (seems to be the theme here). Basically what you do is use a combination of <em>rel=&#8221;alternate&#8221;</em> and <em>type=&#8221;application/rss+xml&#8221;</em> to define a META link to an RSS file.</p>
<div class="geshi no html">
<ol>
<li class="li1">
<div class="de1">&lt;link rel=&quot;alternate&quot; type=&quot;application/rss+xml&quot; title=&quot;MagiBlog &#8211; RSS&quot; href=&quot;http://feeds.feedburner.com/Magiblog&quot; /&gt;</div>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p>Thats pretty much it. I hope that between the 3 things I&#8217;ve showed you and some of the resources ive presented you should have a social media friendly blog thats ready for the masses.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Favicon</title>
		<link>http://www.jonbishop.com/2007/11/favicon/</link>
		<comments>http://www.jonbishop.com/2007/11/favicon/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Nov 2007 19:11:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Jon Bishop</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[How To]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Favicon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[icon]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://jon.bishport.com/?p=8</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[So i wanted to add the little icon next to my URL in the address bar so i went on a hunt for the easiest solution (kinda counter-productive as i could have just downloaded a program however I so love to find new SAAS apps online). So i finally ran across this site. This was [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p></p><p>So i wanted to add the little icon next to my URL in the address bar so i went on a hunt for the easiest solution (kinda counter-productive as i could have just downloaded a program however I so love to find new SAAS apps online). So i finally ran across <a href="http://www.degraeve.com/favicon/">this site</a>. This was pretty much exactly what i was looking for and it was very easy to use. I went on and created 7 icons:</p>
<p><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129808184138266690" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp2.blogger.com/_3yPANXuQTYk/RzC9XVVz-EI/AAAAAAAAAYY/_5BwP7q7ydY/s320/iconsampls.GIF" border="0" alt="" /></p>
<p>I ended up using the first one i made for my site, but they still all look kinda cool.</p>
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	</channel>
</rss>
