Shopping for a Blogging, Traveling Laptop

My laptop has reached the four year birthday and I’m ready for a new one. Every computer and laptop I’ve owned I’ve pushed beyond it’s capabilities from day one. I will never forget the first computer my husband and I bought “together”. Within three days, I’d filled the 2 gig hard drive, the largest one […]

Future Laptops Faster and Less Battery Drain – But Cooler?

The New York Times reports that Intel chips will run faster and use less power, and be even smaller. The microprocessor chips, which Intel plans to begin making in the second half of this year, are designed for computers but they could also have applications in consumer devices. Their combination of processing power and energy […]

Blog Exercises: Backups and Alternatives

I didn’t expect to return home after a meeting this morning to find I have no telephone or Internet access on this bright sunshine, calm weather May day. I’ve got classes to prep for, sites to review for students and clients, article deadlines, these blog exercises to publish and keep to my year long commitment, […]

Blog Exercises: How Much Does Your Blog Cost?

How much does your blog cost? It should be a simple question. Do you have an answer? The costs associated with a blog are the costs associated with any website. There is the cost of the domain name, if you choose to have a custom name. In general, it is about USD $15 a year, […]

Firefox 15 Out and Dazzles

Firefox 15 is out. According to InformationWeek, the latest version of the Firefox web browser is better than ever. Here is a summary of the new features: Behind-the-Scenes Updates: No longer will you have to fuss over upgrades. It will happen in the background and “seamlessly implement the changes when the browser is next launched.” […]

WordPress Codex Night Success and PDX Saturday Codex Party

Last night’s PDX WordPress Meetup Group: WordPress Codex Night was a resounding success. In just under two hours, 130 changes were made to the WordPress Codex, the online manual for WordPress Users. On the informal WordPress Documentation Team Task List, 49 “things to do” were added which will become deleted files and pages, redirects, new […]

Defying Brute Force Attacks on WordPress Logins

Sucuri, the web security specialists, published “Brute force attacks against WordPress sites,” an in depth look at not just the importance of a strong password but the brute force nature and anatomy of login and registration access attacks. There is a technique known as brute-force attack. Like the name implies, access is gained to your […]

Security and Protection: Understand the Social in a Crime Network and How to Protect Yourself

While the following is a bit off-topic, my head is spinning with all the layers and networks I’ve uncovered within this recent experience. A friend of mine called this a combination assembly line meets Wikipedia of crime social networks. It begins with my car being broken into and my purse stolen a few months ago, […]

Blog Struggles: SOBCon, Idea Whelmed, and Tell It To the Telephone Pole

A few people were concerned when I started my first Blog Struggles Diary recommending that I not blog every day thus changing the whole tone of my site. This confused me as I thought this was what my site was about. I had to take some time to think about that…then life and work interfered, […]

WordPress.com Maintenance Downtime on Sunday, February 15, 2009

WordPress.com warns that the free blog hosting service will be down for maintenance starting Sunday, February 15, 2009, at 20:00 GMT (noon PST, 3PM EST) for maintenance and upgrade improvements. This should only be a few seconds to a couple minutes. This does not impact full version and self-hosted versions of WordPress. The maintenance probably […]

WordPress News: Lots of WordPress Releases, Love Blogging and WordPress Contest, Scott Wallick, Akismet News, Permalinks, and More

This week’s Blog Herald WordPress News is WordPress News: Release Week News, WordPress 2.7.1, BuddyPress, WordPress MU, and More Releases, and I’ve covered a lot of WordPress news you can use: It’s Release Week. WordPress 2.7.1 Beta 1 released for testing. WordPressMU updated. BuddyPress Beta 2 released. WP Scanner beta released. WordPress.com releases January stats. […]

The Art of the Fan-Based Blog: Continuing to Fight the Good Fight

By DB Ferguson of the No Fact Zone Now, if you’ve been following my series on The Art of the Fan-Based Blog, you’ve got a blog, you’ve got readers, you’ve got content. Have I forgotten anything? Oh, yeah. Burnout and how to keep fighting the good fight for your celebrity, readers, and fellow fans. Here […]

Oh, The Weather Outside is Frightful and the Snow is So Delightful

Part of the magic of blogging is the ability to reach out across the distance and touch a heart. That’s also part of the magic of the Internet in general. It allows us to connect with strangers across the planet and find like-minds. The first year WordPress.com featured the snow fall effect, WordPress founder, Matt […]

Blog Struggles: Trackbacks Count

At a blog conference recently, I overheard the following exchange over a laptop as part of a blog review exercise: “For your blog to be successful, you need more comments on your blog posts.” “I have plenty of comments on my blog. See, this one has 14 comments.” “That post has only one comment. The […]

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 […]