Translate your content, comments and anything else…
I figured I would give Google’s new AJAX Language API a try today and I will say I’m pretty happy with the results. It was really easy to setup and so far the results have been pretty good. For a while now I’ve been thinking of adding other languages to my sites and this will create the transition much easier. Basically it works like this.
You include a little JavaScript snippet on your page. You then setup a simple JavaScript function on your page to translate the text you want. Google offers a whole bunch of languages…here’s the list off their site with the promise it will grow.
- Arabic to English
- Chinese to English
- Chinese (Simplified to Traditional)
- Chinese (Traditional to Simplified)
- Dutch to English
- English to Arabic
- English to Chinese (Simplified)
- English to Chinese (Traditional)
- English to Dutch
- English to French
- English to German
- English to Greek
- English to Italian
- English to Japanese
- English to Korean
- English to Portuguese
- English to Russian
- English to Spanish
- French to English
- French to German
- German to English
- German to French
- Greek to English
- Italian to English
- Japanese to English
- Korean to English
- Portuguese to English
- Russian to English
- Spanish to English
Within about 20 minutes I had a fully working demo up and it’s only the start, I’m sure with some more time and creativity I can find a lot of good uses for this cool API. For those of you interested swing on over their site and read up about it or check out my demo page.
Look at the comments, I’ve added a few languages you can translate to.
http://www.inspirationfolder.com/site/10/5thcolumn.co.uk.html
InspirationFolder.com - New project 98.2% complete.
I’ve been busy over the past week or two trying to finish up a project that’s been sitting for a while. I think it’s about time to set it free so I figured I can post it up here now. If you’re a designer I think you will get much enjoyment from this site. Comments, suggestions, ideas are welcome and don’t forget to tell your friends!! ;-)
For you blog owners; If you like the site a blog write-up would be greatly appreciated.
http://www.inspirationfolder.com
Should you have a toll-free number?
It used to be you only ever saw toll free(800 numbers) for large companies and usually they were only for sales calls. Not too long ago it was pretty expensive to have a toll free number because not only did you have to pay for the number itself but the per-minute charges were much more than than normal phone charges. This kept small businesses away from having toll free numbers but with the explosion of the Internet and technology in general owning a toll free number is much more reasonable now. Even though the price is much more reasonable now does having a toll free number help your business, does it make you look more appealing to customers?
In my opinion, it depends on what kind of business you’re running. If you’re a small time freelancer whose business comes off the Internet then a toll free number probably wont help you out much. However, if you’re a sales guy and travel all over the world to sell products or yourself than a toll free number might help you increase sales. Toll free numbers allow your customers to contact you for free if you’re located out of their local calling area but this brings up an interesting point, do people still have local calling areas? Some five years ago long distance was still popular but with the mass market of mobile phones and voice of IP(Internet) calling the idea of local calling areas has begun to shrink. I can say with certainty that over the past three or so years I have not even thought about if a call was long distance. If I’m using my mobile phone I have nation wide coverage and if I’m at home my phone has free long distance to anywhere in the US. I think this is becoming the norm so when people see an 800 number does it capture their attention like it used to, do they immediately think of a free call like they used to?
I own one toll free number for one of my businesses and it’s an off line business(selling local product). We chose to go this route because we think that our customer base still sees toll free numbers as an important part of a business and even though they might not need it we feel it gives this particular business an edge over the competition. This is also something to think about when deciding if a toll free number is for you, will your customers notice and will it matter to them? If your competition is using local numbers and your ad has a toll free number are your potential customers more likely to call you?
Overall this is a question you have to ask yourself and the answer will depend on many factors. If you’re thinking of getting a toll free number do some research and see if it fits your goals. You can obtain a toll free number for under $5/month so it’s cheap enough to experiment with, give it a try for six months and see if it helps your business. If it does, great keep the number, if not cancel it and you’re out $30.
Have you had a toll free number? Did it help your business, did you notice any changes in sales? Do you have any advice for others? Post your comments below.
Never fill out a profile page again using OpenID!
I’ve read about OpenID many of times over the last year or so and all though it seems like a great idea I didn’t feel it had the backing on large companies to really gain steam and become a standard. Last month the OpenID idea caught my attention again when I read an article on how Yahoo has begun to use OpenID and they are now incorporating it into their site. Since then it seems a bunch of other big name Internet companies(Google, Microsoft,IBM) are jumping on board and if it continues to grow this could be on the best things to hit the Internet since the 90’s bubble burst.
The idea behind OpenID is you can login to any site that supports it by using your personal OpenID URL instead of having to sign up, fill out forms, and login using a unique username/password for each site. Basically you will only have to fill out one profile page with your personal information(all though you can have others) and you only have to remember one username and password to access tons of sites(with more added daily).
OpenID can be confusing at first but once you’ve tried it and understand how it works you will be amazed at how simple it is. Here is a little example of how easy it is to use.
For this example I’m going to use the site http://www.wishlistr.com. This site was easy to setup and it looks nice, some of the other sites I’ve been to that support OpenID where broken or hard to navigate; wishlistr is a good starting point for people new to OpenID.
First things first, you need to get an OpenID URL. Some of you will already have one and you don’t even know it…if you use AOL, LiveJournal, SmugMug and dozens of other site you already have an OpenID account. If you don’t currently have one or you don’t want to use the one you have you can use one of the free providers out there and create a new one. It doesn’t matter since one of the great things about OpenID is you can change it anytime. For example, I signed up for www.myopenid.com because I liked their site and what they offer. My OpenID with them is http://ryan.r.detzel.myopenid.com/.
Now that you have your OpenID you can use this when you’re ready to login to any site that supports OpenID. Using wishlistr for our example you can head over to their site and click on the Login link. On most login pages OpenID is not the first option, often you will have to look around for a link to login with an OpenID…on the wishlistr page it’s right under the Sign In button. Click the OpenID login link and you’re brought to another page where you enter your OpenID url, this is the URL your OpenID provider gave you when you signed up(Mine being http://ryan.r.detzel.myopenid.com). Enter your URL and you’re redirected to your providers page to confirm you identity. You enter your username and password and then give the site(wishlistr in this case) permission to access your information and confirm your identity. You’re then redirected back to the original site and you’re all set! No signup forms, no new usernames and passwords…no hassle.
All though this process was rather easy the OpenID standard is still rather new so it’s not implemented all that well on most sites. I would say out of the ten sites I signed up for only two I would consider easy and the others were kind of a pain. I do suggest you give it a try especially if a site you frequently visit offers it because I have a feeling as more and more companies jump aboard you will start to see the OpenID login box at more and more of your favorite sites.
Free sofware…without stealing.
I was in the process of writing up a post on the great world of free and open source software when I woke up this morning to read a great post over at Nick Cernis’ blog Put Things Off. He hit the nail on the head so instead of re-writing what he puts so nicley I will just direct you to the great post. Enjoy.
http://putthingsoff.com/index.php/the-creative-sweet/
Entrecard.com Review - 10 day update
Ten days ago I wrote a review on entrecard.com and how I didn’t think the site was really worth it and in my tens days of using it my thoughts haven’t changed. As I mentioned earlier I didn’t think the way it was implemented would work and my assumptions have just grown in to facts the more i use the site. All of the traffic I’m getting from the site is garbage traffic, the visitors come, click the ‘drop card’ link and leave. This is useless and does nothing but inflate my stats with meaningless traffic. My goal was to get enough points to put my ad on a well known site for a day and see what kind of traffic I could pull in. Well, my ad ran the other day and it brought me in…wait for it, 54 new visitors! Now, the site I put the ad on pulls in some decent traffic(nearly 10,000 uniques a day) but they did put the entrecard box below the fold and kind off by itself which could be one of the reasons for the low return. Who can blame them though, the ad doesn’t really fit with it’s odd measurements and they are not actually get paid real money so there is not real incentive to put it somewhere meaningful on their site. So, it took me over a week to get enough points to put an ad up and it gave me pretty much nothing in return…see where I’m going with this?
Since entrecard is filled with spam and money making sites that’s where your ad will probably end up so if you run of these sites entrecard might be great for you. The ads I displayed on my site for my ten day trial were the best of the offers I got and those were not that great anyways. I’m not seeing the real benefit of entrecard and I’m sure it is destined to fail just like all the other traffic swapping sites that popped up in the nineties tech boom. I’m curious to hear how it’s working for others so post up some comments on what kind of traffic you’re receiving and if you’ve found the site useful or not.
Blog Basics - Chapter 4: Give birth to your blog; your first post.
Wow, we’ve come a long way in only a short time. We’ve decided we want to start a blog, we decided what software we want to use to create our blog and we’ve decided where we want to host our blog. Once that was all setup we continued by customizing our blog so that it looks and works the way we want it to. That was the hard part; now the fun and more useful part will begin, adding content to your blog.
Chapter 4, Section 1: Pages and Posts, Posts and Pages.
Depending on what blogging software you’re using there may be a difference between the content you choose to post on your blog. Some software packages only offer a way to “post” while some offer more choices such as individual pages. Posts are like an entry into your virtual journal, when you post items they are added onto your blog in the order they were published. Posts often contain the author who posted it, the date and time the post was published and sometimes categories or tags to go along with the post. Most posts offer a way for visitors to leave a comment or a ping back (more about these later) and usually they have their own page yet they all come together in an archive and on the homepage. A page on the other hand is just a static webpage on your blog. It contains no author, date/time or category. Pages are aimed at creating permanent non chronological content such as an about page, a contact page or in the case of this series a collection of related articles. I use pages for indexes; for example I have a page for reviews so I can take my posts that contain reviews and put them someplace where people can easily find them without having to dig through all of my posts. I also usually create a contact and about page to give visitors a quick and easy way to see what this site is about and to give them a way to contact me if they should want to send me money or something. If your software offers both posts and pages I suggest you use a combination of both, otherwise use whatever is available.
Chapter 4, Section 2: Your Introductory Post
Before you dive in and start writing your first post I offer this bit of advice. Get used to your software first. Don’t jump right in and start posting, play around with the software and get used to everything first, that way you’re aware of the capabilities of the software and how everything works together. Create a test post, try out different formats, add a comment or two to see how it looks and try different methods of creating pages. You can always delete a post or page and it’s much easier to experiment now before your blog is well known. Once you’ve discovered all the quirks in the software then you’re ready to create your first official post.
What to write about, this is often the biggest question that pops in to one’s head when they’re ready to start posting. You’ve come all this way, you’ve gone through tons of work to get your blog up and running, you’ve picked a topic and now….you’re stuck. An intro post is often the best first post because it breaks you from the first post jitters and it gives your readers an understanding of what this blog will be about, if anyone even reads it. :-) Unless you’re starting another blog and expect your existing visitors to come to your new blog it will often take time for people to find and start reading your blog. Since this is the case it’s often true that you will (and should) have much more content than you do now so your beloved intro post will most likely be archived by then. When ever I visit blogs I always search out the first post, it’s pretty interesting to see what people have decided to put as their very first entry into their new blog.
Motismo Review - Time Tracking Software
I stumbled upon Motismo when I noticed their ad on another blog and since I’m still looking for a time tracking program I figured I would give it a try to see how well it works. At first glance it looks 
promising with it’s clean look but it has a pretty basic website, and by basic I mean basic. The Motismo website consists of three primary pages, a homepage, a plan select page and a sign up page, that’s it. There is not much in the way of informational pages which was kind of a disappointment because it pretty much forces you to sign up to see what features it contains. I guess it’s a bonus for them but it might turn some people off. Motismo offers three plans, a basic(free), a standard($6.00) and a premium($12) and as far as I can tell the only difference is in the number of projects, clients, and users you can have much like many other time tracking programs.
The interface itself is pretty nice; it’s very clean and the colors work well together. The Dashboard looks very similar to other time tracking programs, it has a begin new task and recent project history along with a little hint section in the right sidebar. Once you have clients and projects setup in the system you can start a new task right from the dashboard. Once you start a new task it appears in your Currently working on section on the dashboard but there is no way to interact with the task other than clicking on the complete button. Tasks are treated different in Motismo than in other time tracking applications; you basically create a task which starts it and then when you’re done you finish it. You can’t pause a task which is odd; I can’t remember the last time I completed a task in one sitting but that just might be my style. Once you’ve completed a task you can go in and edit it and something I found odd is you can change the time manually after you’ve completed it yet you can’t start it back up. I found this cumbersome and not very practical.
The comments section is nice, you can enter a new comment for each task but again I think 
this would be more useful if you could start and stop the tasks. I would use this feature to leave myself notes so when I have to stop a task to do something else I know where to pick the task back up…but since you can’t start a task back up I’m not sure what I would use this for. I would rather see these comments moved to the project page where I think it would prove more useful.
The projects and clients sections are pretty basic but they really don’t need to be complicated so I like this. Navigation is pretty easy with the clear visible tabs and for the time I’ve spent on the site it was pretty quick.
I want to jump back to the timing process for a minute because it’s not like any other program I’ve used. In the other time tracking programs I’ve reviewed there was always some type of stop watch feature that you either downloaded or used on the web to keep track of time; Motismo does not have this. When you start a task it starts in the background and it just runs until you stop it. Because of this there is no visual way to see how much time you’ve spent on a task unless you want to do some math and subtract the current time from the time you started it. The total time for the task does appear once you’ve closed a task though. The fact that you don’t have a widget or something showing you you’re currently tracking a task I found it rather easy to forget you have the task running which will can only cause problems later.
Overall Motismo is a pretty decent time tracking application. It’s very clean, it’s quick and it does what it should. I’m not too fond of the way the time tracking actually works which will probably stop me from using this time tracking application but I can see how some people would actually like this method. Because it’s different I encourage everyone to give it a try. I would also suggest they add something in so you can continue a task where you left off, all though not a deal breaker it’s hard to get used to it when all the other applications out there offer this.
Blog Basics - Chapter 3: Making your blog YOUR blog, presentation and customization.
So, you know what you’re going to write your blog on, you know what software you’re going to use and you know where you’re going to host it; the next step is setting it up so it’s your blog.
Chapter 3, Section 1 – Presentation, a.k.a Themes.
Every software package is different so I will try to speak as general as possible so most people can relate, but for the purpose of this article and all remaining ones I will be dealing with the Wordpress software. All blogging applications offer you a way to customize the look and feel of your blog; some only allow very simple changes such as colors and font styles while others offer very advanced features that allow you change the complete look and feel of your blog. In Wordpress for example you can change the complete layout, these are called themes. The Wordpress community is pretty large and there are thousands of free themes available to download off the Internet, so it’s more than likely there is one out there that looks good to you. If you’re using something other than Wordpress you will want to check over their site to see what they offer but most blog programs are moving to full theme customization because it allows complete design control over the blog.
If your blog software only allows you to change simple things like colors and fonts it’s pretty easy to setup the look of your blog. Simply go into the section of the blog that allows you to change these options and start experimenting until you find a look that fits your style. For those users that are using a more advanced blogging application they’ve done a pretty good job at making it as easy as possible to setup the design. In Wordpress you simply download a new theme and put it in your wp-content/themes directory; the theme will then be available for you to select in the Presentation section. Most other applications are very similar to this but you’ll want to check with the documentation for the particular software you’re using to make sure. Search online for free themes for you application and try a bunch out until you find the one that fits your blog the best.
There are people on the net that provide a service designing premium themes. These themes you usually have to pay for and they usually are of a better quality than the free one, thus the name premium. If you’re looking for a clean and professional look than using one of these premium themes might be the best bet, but remember that even though you’re paying does not mean it’s unique. For a truly unique theme you will have to pay more, often much more. Theme designers are popping up everywhere now which is good for us since it drives the prices down. If you’re looking for a unique design for your blog and are willing to pay for it search around and contact some designers to get a price quote for your design. Most designers work with multiple blogging applications and some work with just one so you will want to make sure they will be able to create the design so it fits with your software you’ve chosen.
Chapter 3, Section 2 – Extending you blog with plugins.
Now that your blog is looking great it’s time to take a look at what else you can do with it. The basic features of a blog, posting and editing content for example are already built in so you don’t have to worry about this. However, most blogging applications also offer some type of addon or plug-in feature that allows you to add extra features to customize your blog even more. Wordpress has a complete section built just around plugins and there are literally thousands of plugins you can use with your blog. Most of the applications I listed in Chapter 1 have something similar so once you’re blog is up and running you may want to check these out. Here are some of the plugins I use on this blog:
- Wp-cache – Caches your webpages for faster download times.
- cforms II – Allows an easy way to put forms(like my contact form) on your blog.
- Akismet – A spam detecting a blockin plugin, a must for any blog.
- All In One SEO Pack – A plugin that makes my posts and pages more search engine friendly.
- FeedBurner Feedsmith – A plugin that publishes my feed on the Feedburner site.
- Google Sitemaps – This generates a sitemap for search engines.
- Slimbox – The cool ajax image plugin that shows images in a popup box. You can see this plugin in action by clicking on an image.
These are just some of the popular plugins I use, there are dozens of others. Some plugins add functionality to the administration section; some add functionality to your pages to give your readers a better experience and some are internal plugins that make the blog run more efficiently. I suggest you find which plugins your software accepts and start experimenting to see which ones you like and which ones will work best with your blog.
WordPress 2.5 Admin Preview/Review
After reading that WordPress was going to skip an official release of 2.4 and go straight for the 2.5 release in March I figured I would have a look at how it’s coming along. I was looking forward to a new update for my blogs because there are a few things I wanted fixed so not only did I want to see if these bugs were fixed in an upcoming release but I wanted to see if this new admin interface they’re talking about is indeed better than the current one.
I installed the latest build and took it for a spin, here are some screenshots with my thoughts.
- Login Page. Look is a little different, functionality is the same.
- WordPress Dashboard: They’ve changed the dashboard around a little. It’s cleaner and it seems they’ve removed a lot of the random stuff on the dashboard which is nice, I thought it was just cluttered anyways. The Right Now box seems to replace the Activity section but it’s more prominent on the screen which is nice. It appears the Incoming Links plugin might now be built in as well. The other information is pretty much the same, I do like the New Post and New Page buttons right on the dashboard, this makes sense to me because these are probably the most performed actions.
- The write page is where I see changes, and not really for the better in my opinion. It seems they’ve removed everything from the sidebar except the Publish Status box. This publish box moves with the page so you can always see it on the screen which is cool but I don’t think it’s very useful, I would rather have the sidebar. There is a new editor which is nice and I really like the full-screen mode which fills the screen so you’re free to type your post without scrolling. The windows have a new fold up feature also. Well, they have a new look anyways.
- I took this shot so you can see how the Publish Status moves down the screen and so you can see where all the admin plugins go. The plugin you see at the bottom I created to show this list and it worked great when it was at the top of the page next to the actual post. Now that there is no sidebar and everything seems to stack on the left side it’s useless. Any admin plugin that used to be on the sidebar will now fall under everything else on the left…kind of stinks.
- This shot was taken just to show some more of the design elements, most of the features in here and in the other sections not shown are the same.
Other then the new layout and the pretty new colors there is not that much of an improvement. I’m sure there have been a lot of changes in the actual system but I’m not too impressed with the new admin interface. I’m still hoping that in the next two months they will make some serious progress but…I’m not getting my hopes up too much.
