Blog Challenge: Describe Your Software – Then and Now

Last week’s blog challenge was Describe Your Computer Setup – Then and Now. This week, I am challenging you to blog about your blog software, then and now. I’ve used just about all types of computer technology, from the early days of data storage on gigantic floppy disks to magnetic cards to “640K is enough […]

Blog Challenge: Describe Your Computer Setup – Then and Now

This week’s blog challenge is to blog about your computer setup as it was “then” in the early days of your computer life, and how it is now, in your modern technology life. What computer tools are you dependent upon for your blog that surround you on your desk? Do you podcast? What do you […]

Blogging on the Edge: Blogging NOT From My Computer

Recently, some trauma in the drama in my life had me staying with family for a few days, separated from my best friend: my laptop. They had two computers connected with DSL to the net, and I had time to get some work done while waiting for the dust to settle, so I figured this […]

Google Releases Tesseract OCR Open Source Software

SearchEngineWatch announces “Google Opens Tesseract OCR Software”, which is exciting news for those of us who scan or want to covert a lot of documents to text: The Google Code Blog announced that Google has “re-released” the Tesseract OCR software to the open source community. OCR, optical character recognition, is the technology for converting text […]

One Year Anniversary Review: Internet, Web, and Computer Tips and Tricks

WordPress, WordPress.com, and blogging aren’t the only subjects I’ve covered over the past year. Yet, the other topics were all related. Under the category of Web Wise, I included information and resources to help your blogging, but more specifically, with information you should know about being online, browsers, and computers in general. I’ve written a […]

Firefox 2.0 Alpha Coming to a Computer Near You Soon

The news is out. According to PC Pro, Firefox 2.0 Alpha is due next month. The move from version 1.5 to 2.0 for WordPress was not as big a jump as most consumers thought it would be, even though some of the improvements were tremendous, they were underneath the hood more than on the surface. […]

Family Holiday Time – Would You Fix My Computer?

It never fails to happen. I show up to any family event, holidays or not, and I’m asked to take a look at the computer. A recent trip to Seattle resulted in just that kind of request from my mother. She is famous for being a clean freak, panicking at the thought of not enough […]

Fast Computer Crash Recovery with WordPress

As if we haven’t had enough trouble running from all the hurricanes smashing into the US Gulf Coast where we are temporarily living, I’ve been battling a summer of computer crashes. In one month, I had five computer crashes between two computers. My laptop finally returned from the manufacturer, delayed by Hurricane Katrina. They put […]

Blame WordPress For the World’s Problems

Let’s call this person “wise” using air quotes to give you a description of where they come from in life. This “wise” person confronted to me at a public event to announce that WordPress was evil and must be destroyed. “After all,” he informed me soundly. “While WordPress says it supports freedom of speech, it […]

Blog Exercises: Taking Inventory on What Keeps You Blogging

The recent major desktop computer crash has left me reeling. I thought I had all my data backed up. For the most part, I did. What I didn’t have backed up was my programs. Getting back up to speed fast, I’ve had to prioritize the programs I had download and install. Yes, download. Who gets […]

Blog Resources for English Language and Blog Writing

I blog in English and it behooves me to get it write – okay, at least once in a while. The challenges I face as a writer are not just generating ideas but finding the write way to convey those ideas. I frequently need to check the spelling or definition of words I come up […]

Vulnerability in phpMyAdmin Requires Immediate Patch

A critical CSRF Vulnerability in phpMyAdmin Database administration tool has been found and a patch is available for all computers and servers running the MySQL database. Does this include you? If you are using WordPress, yes it does. Contact your web host to ensure phpMyAdmin is updated immediately. If you are self-hosted and manage your […]

Blogging Tools: DownThemAll Browser Add-on

DownThemAll! Firefox Extension is another tool for your blogging toolbox. As a reminder, most power bloggers use Firefox or Chrome web browsers. Not just because they are “better” in the terms of meeting web standards, but also because of their powerful extendable features. Browser extensions, add-ons, or plugins allow you to extend the features and […]

Blogging Tools: Jing Screen Capture and Video

One of my favorite blogging tools – okay, tool I use for teaching, writing, and research – is Jing by Techsmith. It’s a must-have tool for bloggers and blogging. Jing is free. It allows capturing still images (screenshots), basic video, and animation, and allows you to share them on the web or save them to […]

WordPress School: HTML and CSS References and Resources

In “9 Truths That Computer Programmers Know That Most People Don’t” by Macleod Sawyer, he quotes Ben Cherry and adds the following after: “Under the hood, most critical software you use every day (like Mac OS X, or Facebook) contains a terrifying number of hacks and shortcuts that happen to barely fit together into a […]