BarCamp Conway is awesome so far! I will turn this into a full fledged post after the event. I just wanted everyone to know that it’s a great event – very good turnout, great presentation topics, and Krispy Kreames to boot. In the Account Management presentation by @zackhill right now. @steventrotter is taking a lot of notes, I plan to link to his posts as well.
Stay tuned!
Argh. I have been wrestling with the commenting system DISQUS this week. After updating to the newest version of the disqus plugin I stopped receiving comments through my disqus system. It took me a few days to realize this. Disqus support seemed to be quick to respond for a day or so, but I haven’t heard anything on a solution in a few days, though I check in daily via my support email and twitter. So, I’ve disabled the plugin for the time being.
I decided to try out Intense Debate, which is actually made by the people that make WordPress. Great! So I logged in with my wordpress account, which it practically forces one to do. Then I tried to add my blog. Denied! I had tried to us Intense Debate before, got frustrated with a feature that wasn’t working, and deleted my blog from my account there. Well, apparently I deleted it, but the system didn’t “forget” it and it was still marked as registered.
No problem, I’ll just e-mail support….the link has to be on the support page…no…contact us…no…humm – none of the support links provided anyway to contact them. I searched them up on twitter @intensedebate, but they had not tweeted in about a week. I sent a tweet asking what to do for support and got no response, I tweeted again the next day – no response.
Yesterday I sulked back to my plugins page, reactivated askimet, and through much email searching, found my key to activate it once again. I’m now back to regular ol’ WP comments.
Music is an escape, and these songs are all about the the very thing many people want to escape from the most – their job. There are many songs on this topic, but I’ve only chosen my favorites. Whether you hate your job or love your job, you’ve undoubtedly had some experience that’s made you able to relate to these songs. I can’t help but crank them up every time I hear them, and they always put me in a good mood!
9 to 5 – Dolly Parton
The theme song to a movie about thinking you’ve accidentally killed your boss with rat poison, I think that says a lot more than the song. Also, I’m pretty sure this is the only song to use a typewriter as a musical instrument. My one gripe…apparently you got to work an hour less in the early 80s.
Bad Days – The Flaming Lips
You hate your boss at your job, but in your dreams you can blow his head off. I guess the “in your dreams” part works as a disclaimer. I remember the first time I heard this song, it was in Batman Forever and I instantly loved it. I was in middle school and had never even held a job.
Huey Lewis and the News – Workin’ for a Livin’
Leave it to Huey Lewis to make you feel happy listening to a song about working for crappy pay. Another infectious product of the 80s, excuse me while I go dig up a copy of Sports and watch Back to the Future.
Draggin’ the Line – Tommy James (cover in video by R.E.M.)
This brings back memories of the movie Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, which featured a montage set to a terrible early 90s version of the song. Have you ever felt like huggin’ a tree when you get near it?
Takin’ Care of Business – Bachman Turner Overdrive
If you ever get annoyed look at me I’m self-employed, I love to work at nothing all day. A rather misleading “Damn the Man” song – seeing as when you’re self-employed you have to do everything. Work Out.
Do you have a favorite job hating anthem? Let me (and everyone else) know by leaving it in the comments!
Do you have some original music you want to sell on iTunes (or amazon MP3, Rhapsody, Napster, etc) ? Do you have friends that have asked you (because, you know, you must be the authority on such things since you have a blog AND an iPhone) how to get their music on iTunes for their fans to buy? Have you ever just wondered how to sell songs on iTunes?
I recently placed a few songs for sale on iTunes for a client, and the process was much different than what I imagined. I would like to share the process so it’s not as shrouded in mystery, it’s really not too complicated once you know a few details. People can be rocking out to your music through an iTunes download in about two days, and you can be seeing money in about 45 days.
Unfortunately, you can’t just log in to your iTunes account and start selling music – you have to go through a distributor. Most large record labels are distributors, but if you have no label you will want to find a distributor to use. A distributor is the middle man between you and iTunes/other online stores where you want to sell your music. You’ll want to pick a good one, one that doesn’t take a percentage of your sales, provides a UPC code (a barcode, like you would see on a CD case), lets you keep all of the rights to your music, and doesn’t charge exorbitant fees.
I used the most popular and recommended distributor, TuneCore.com. TuneCore doesn’t take any money from your sales, provides a UPC code, doesn’t take any of your rights and offers reasonable pricing. At the time of this posting, distribution for a single starts at $9.99 for distributing to one vendor, and distribution for an album starts at $47.99 for one vendor. (prices are set to go up to $12.99 and $59.99, respectively on August 27th, 2010). The renewal of distribution for an album annually drops to $19.98 after the initial year.
This post will focus on using TuneCore since it is the most widely used online distributor.
TuneCore.com
Head over to TuneCore.com and create an account. The process is pretty simple, and there is even a tutorial video on the process. The interface has changed a little since the videos have been made, but you’ll get the idea. Now you can start adding your song and artist information into TuneCore, you will also need your cover art and optional liner notes. The cover art needs to be 1600 x 1600 pixels at 300 dpi to look it’s best. You can also choose which stores you would like to sell you songs. I only chose iTunes US, but you can sell on as many as you like for a small fee per store.
After you have all of this info in, it’s time to rip your songs and make sure they meet these specs:
Again, there is a tutorial for the process on this here. You can easily use iTunes or Windows Media Player to accomplish this. After you have the songs in the correct format, you can upload them to TuneCore, this may take a while depending on your Internet connection.
Now you will complete the final step, which means you need to pay TuneCore to distribute your music to the store(s) of your choosing. For example, I paid $29.97 to have three singles distributed to iTunes US. You can pay by credit/debit card or PayPal. After you pay TuneCore, your songs will be delivered to the store in around 30 minutes (though times can vary) after that, it’s up to the store to get your songs on the “shelf”. iTunes currently averages about 48 hours to get a song live on the iTunes store, various stores take different times. You will be able to tell your song is “live” by looking at your song listings on your discography.
Stores send out your payments and sales results in one of two ways:
iTunes uses the 45 days after the end of each month model. There is no way of knowing how many songs you have sold or how much money you have made until iTunes returns the payment and sales results. You can’t check your stats every day. When you do get a payment placed in your TuneCore account, you can leave it in your account to build, or you can transfer the money elsewhere via PayPal or by having TuneCore mail you a paper check. The fee for the paper check is $2.25 and it’s deducted from the amount withdrawn. A check cannot be mailed unless you have $100 or more in your TuneCore account. The fee to transfer to PayPal is free.
iTunes US gives you 70 cents per song. They get to decide the selling price of your music, but the standard price is usually 99 cents. For a complete list of a majority of questions answered, check out this FAQ.
You may only want to try this process out with one song and see how it goes, but there is a penalty for removing a song before it’s been “live” for six months. Also, auto renew is checked by default, so be sure it is unchecked when you are adding your payment info if you don’t want to be automatically billed annually for distribution of your materials.
Happy selling!
In the words of Christopher Walken, wowee wowee wow wow wow. My site is finally back from the great hacked beyond after about a week. While restoring the site wasn’t a difficult task – it was a pain in the tookus.
My sites were effected by an attack targeting WordPress sites hosted on Rackspace and MediaTemple servers. The main symptom of the attack was an in-browser warning that the site “contains links to sites known to host malware” when attempting access the domain. Here is a brief description of the attack on sucuri.net.
The attack inserted a link to sites supporting malware in every .html .php and .js file within WordPress, which in turn prompted the browser warnings. Since it effected so many files – I backed up my posts and uploads, and nuked my database and WordPress files. I created a new database and did a fresh install of WordPress and replaced the uploads, and I was still having the same issue. After clubbing a baby seal, I then went through every published post searching for the injected code. I only found one instance and after deletion I had no problems. I then repeated this process (sans baby seal clubbing) on a few other sites and everything was back to normal. (btw, I also noted all of my plugins and themes, and downloaded them from there original source before reinstalling them)
I was actually surprised with how easy it was to get all of my posts, pages and images back on a clean install.
Nothing too terrible happened as a result of my site(s) being hacked. Several people mentioned their browsers warning them upon trying to view my site, but I was unable to find the time to fix my sites for several days. In that time, I did happen to be a guest on The Cotton Club podcast, and my domain name was dropped while it was still hacked. I am sure the millions of podcast listeners were annoyed when attempting to view my site. My apologies!
As you may be able to tell, I still have some widgeting and other things to attend to, but my site will be back to running at it’s usual 83% in no time.
Were your WordPress sites attacked as well?
Man, I have really been slacking on scanning the Interwebz and hitting the theater this summer, because the first time I saw the trailer for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World was today. This movie looks hilarious.
7 evil exes? Yes, 7 evil exes. The movie is based on the Scott Pilgrim series of graphic novels by Canadian Bryan Lee O’Malley (is that just how they spell Bryan in Canada? Is anyone that reads this old enough to get that joke? It’s straight from the heart…)
The movie opens on August 13th.
Otterbox Defender for iPhone 3Gs
If you own a phone, especially an iPhone, and have ever entertained the thought of getting a case for it, you’ve probably heard of the Otterbox Defender. Here are my thoughts on the case after using it for about a day. As I mentioned in a previous post, I ordered the Otterbox Defender cases for my iPhone 3Gs and Black Bear’s Blackberry Storm.
I think the iPhone case is slightly better made than the BB Storm case, the Storm case’s plastic front screen cover isn’t attached to the bezel on the sides, to allow a little slack for the buttons that are under the screen cover. I am pretty sure that it will allow dirt to creep under the plastic. The iPhone case screen cover is fully attached since the button is not under the plastic screen cover. The iPhone case’s outer rubber cover also attaches more smoothly to the hard inner case.
Overall I am happy with my iPhone case, it was easy to install (there is even a video on the Otterbox site) and the screen sensitivity was not decreased much (and I even have a protective film cover on the iPhone glass). It is a little hard to hit the keys on the edges of the keyboard because of the bezel around the recessed plastic screen cover.
The one thing really didn’t like was the “oil slick” and air bubbles that appeared between the iphone screen and the plastic screen cover. I quickly googled the problem and found a video by Otterbox on how to remedy it with baby powder. Here are the solutions for the problem as stated on otterbox.com:
- One solution that has been tested by our Engineering team is to apply a very light dusting of baby powder to the inside of the built-in screen protector. View this video for easy to follow instructions on this solution.
- A second solution, which is easier but requires an additional purchase, is to get an anti-glare screen protector and apply it to your phone. Make sure the screen protector you purchase is anti-glare and has a matte-finish.
I used the first option, and as you can see in the video, you barely use any baby powder. It took me a few tries to get the right amount. Here are my tips:
This should cover the inside in a fine dusting that you can’t see, if you can see any spots, wipe the inside of the case off and start again. When you think you have it right, insert the phone into the front part of the case and press on the back to simulate the pressure of the back of the case and test out your screen, you shouldn’t see any powder, and you shouldn’t get any air bubbles. My case has a very very faint oil spill look when the light hits it a certain way when the screen is black, but it’s not noticeable in any other conditions. I was happy with the result, as I was tired of the repeating the powder process. I am sure you can get it perfect if you wish. Good Luck!
Earlier this week I ordered two 23″ Acer monitors from walmart.com to replace the 19″ Dell LCD monitor that came with my computer in 2006 and the mis-matched off brand monitor that I sometimes used as a secondary monitor. I ordered the Acer H233H. Here are a few features of the monitor as listed in the item description on walmart.com:
The Acer 23″ full HD widescreen LCD Display (H233H) is made to amplify high-def multimedia enjoyment. The panoramic, 23″ full HD LCD has a 16:9 aspect ratio and 1920 x 1080 resolution, making it perfect for advanced 1080p full HD gaming and multimedia applications. Using a very high contrast ratio of 40000:1, it delivers the best picture quality for a superior viewing experience. Advanced digital HDMI connectivity delivers exceptional high-def viewing and gives the highest-quality video and audio. A DVI input maximizes the connection quality between LCD monitors and other digital sources, including PC graphics cards. High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) support ensures enjoyment of full-quality DRM-protected entertainment.
Acer H233H
I received my monitors yesterday afternoon and had them unboxed and set up yesterday evening. The monitors were very nicely packaged with easy to carry handles built in. Included in the box were an instruction booklet, a CD with quick start guide, etc. a speaker cable (it has built in speakers), power cable, HDMI cable, DVI cable, VGA cable, monitor base, and monitor. As you can see in the photo, the monitor bezel and base are a glossy black, the base is actually metallic black. Unpacking and sitting the monitor on the base were very easy. I hooked the first monitor up through DVI in my aftermarket video card (NVIDIA 7300 LE) , and it said “no signal”. I then decided to glance at the instructions – I missed a very important note. I was supposed to turn the computer off, then hook up the monitor, then turn the monitor on, then the PC. After I used this method it worked the first try.
I then hooked the second monitor into the second input in my video card, which was a VGA input. The monitor started working on start up of my PC, I then noticed that my highest resolution was 1660×1050, and that the monitor was stretching it to fill the screen. I went to the NVIDIA site and downloaded the most current driver for my video card, installed it, and rebooted. After reboot 1920×1080 was available was my as my highest resolution, and I was a happy camper.
Now that I’ve used the monitors for a few hours here are some of the pros and cons I’ve noticed:
All in all I am pretty happy with the monitors, they were on sale for $190 with free shipping and I had been in need of new monitors for a while, but didn’t want to unload a lot of money. These fit the bill very well. If you are interested in these monitors, I recommend reading their review on cnet.com and also making sure that your video card can handle the native resolution of the monitors.
What kind of monitors do you have? If you have any questions about the Acer H233H, feel free to ask in the comments.
LCD Cleaning Wipes
I picked up these LCD wipes hanging next to the LCD TVs at the local Wal-Mart for $1.98. Being a little leery of using them on my TV without knowing what they would do, I tested them out first. I used a wipe on my LCD computer monitor, and while it removed most of the stray spots and smudges with little effort, it left behind a lot of streaks.
The streaks aren’t noticeable when the monitor is illuminated, but in it’s off state the streaking doesn’t look too great. I also tried them out on an LCD laptop screen, and the streaking was even worse. The wipes did work fine on the keyboard and outside surfaces of the laptop (it was a hard plastic).
I read up online about LCD screen cleaning and apparently it’s pretty common for wipes to leave streaks no matter the price and the way to go is special LCD cleaning spray for no streaking. I have also heard that if you take a polishing cloth (for glasses/sunglasses) and wipe the moisture off from the wipes it will not leave streaks. I haven’t been brave enough to try this on the TV yet.
How do you clean your LCD TV screen?
Otterbox Defender for Blackberry Storm 9530
Black Bear is now on his third (yes, third) Blackberry Storm in less than a year, so I ordered him an Otterbox Defender case for it tonight. They are supposed to be pretty awesome cases. I went ahead and ordered one for my iPhone 3Gs as well, but I’m hoping I don’t think the screen is too unresponsive with the full plastic screen protector that is built into the case.
I have been pretty satisfied with the Otterbox Impact case that I got after sinking my first iPhone 3Gs in an eternal spring, aka toilet. The Impact case has enough grip on the outside so that it will stay in a back pocket. I am pretty sure the Otterbox Defender won’t fit in any of my pockets, but it should be safe being tossed in my purse.
I ordered both cases off of amazon.com and got pretty good discounts. Both phone cases retail for $49.95 - the Blackberry case was $32.88 and the iPhone case was $27.99. Both should be arriving this week, so I should have a review up soon.
Do you have an Otterbox case? Let me know what you think of it in the comments.
