So I think I’m going to give it a whirl. Not as a full-time thing, but as a way to pull myself out of my shell a bit, and maybe earn some more readers.

Before we went away this summer, Chris and I bought a handy little Kodak video camera. It has some bells and whistles (high def) but nothing fancy. Between that, the webcam on my laptop and my iPhone, I’m pretty much set to record anywhere and any time.

Now I just need some topics and a bit more nerve, and I’ll be all set.

The event had about 40 people in attendance I think, and they ranged from youngish (20s) up to pretty mature (grey hair, no guessing on their ages) and ran the gamut of experience from “I want to get a blog” to folks who have been making a living with WordPress for a long time.

I met some great people and added most of them to Twitter. It was funny to see several people taking notes on paper amid a sea of laptops. Our host/facilitator/organizer was Gary, who has organized all 3 of the WordCamps so far. Gary did a great job, even coming up with a decent presentation on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on the morning of WordCamp because one of the presenters had a family emergency.

I took nearly 7 pages of notes in OpenOffice (no paper for me) that I need to review. 4 of the presentations really taught me something.

1. John Bollwitt‘s talk on how he implemented WordPress as an intranet solution for 4 local radio stations. John detailed how developing Floyd (their name for the intranet) really improved communication, community and documentation for the entire staff of 150+ people. Even the GM now has a personal, weekly blog he posts to. It became a way to share events and photos, as well as corporate documentation. He posted his presentation here: http://sixty4media.com/2010/11/20/using-wordpress-for-an-intranet/
2. Danny Bradbury‘s talk on how to come up with ideas for blogging. It’s challenging, but as a professional journalist he needs to stay on top of current topics, track stories and sources and be ready with ideas. He presented a number of great sites he uses for research and tracking. His presentation is online here: http://prezi.com/evjtna9a9x6l/finding-your-bloggy-muse/
3. Lynne Robson gave a great presentation on Child Themes for WordPress. Child themes were something I’d heard about, but never understood before. Now having seen Lynne’s presentation, I get why they’re so powerful. Short version – you can override styles and add functionality that aren’t in the parent theme. AND, if the parent theme is written properly, your functions can replace theirs, so you can improve on them. The upshot? If the owner updates the parent theme, you can safely upgrade without losing ANY of your customizations. Unless they change a style name.
4. Leah Coss’s whirlwind and problem plagued session about Vlogging (video blogging) was amazing. The technical problems prevented us from seeing her PowerPoint, but she didn’t need it. At least for me, her points were clear and well made without the visuals. She did show us some good and bad examples on YouTube though. Yikes. I may yet start posting videos here.

Not to short change the other presenters, but these 4 really taught me something new. Tris Hussey, Kulpreet Singh and Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega all gave great talks, and inspired me in other ways, but I didn’t learn as much “new” information from them. Kulpreet’s talk has me wanting to look at eCommerce again. Something I both appreciate and hate him for doing. LOL.

Overall, it was a great day, full of interesting topics and interesting people. If you went, be sure to say hi. If you didn’t but are interested, be sure to check out other WordCamps, possibly in a city near you. I hope next year I don’t miss WordCamp Vancouver again.

So in v1.2, I added the ability to undo the most recent set of scheduled posts. If any of those posts were already published, the plugin doesn’t reset their status. It was simple. I’d started out making harder than it needed to be, but after ignoring it for a week, I found the solution.

In v1.3, I added 2 new features to Drafts Scheduler, both suggested by users who sent feedback.

1. Check for the existence of drafts before showing the options.
2. Schedule an exact number of posts per day in “Surprise Me” mode.

I also moved the menu option from the TOOLS area up into the POSTS area where it makes more sense.

Anyway, I hope these features work for everyone and I look forward to more feedback.

First, we went WiFi with our laptops, netbooks, phones, WDTV Live and Wii . I think the toaster is connected too.

Then we decided that wasn’t good enough. Transferring a movie from our computer to the drive attached to the WDTV Live was taking too long, so we needed (yep) to update to 802.11 N because it’s faster. And that was cool. Except we found out that Chris’s Netbook isn’t compatible so he’s still on the slow connection.

For some reason, the D-Link router we were using kept dropping out. I constantly updated the firmware etc and made sure our computers were up to date as well, but nothing worked. Nearly every day we had to reboot the router in order to get online again. I think the longest we went was about 3 days.

Finally we decided to upgrade and see what happens. So, I did a bunch of research and found that the NetGear WNDR 3700 was getting good reviews and great performance. It also uses 2 different frequencies, including the 5GHz range. Apparently the 2.4GHz range is getting crowded with other devices like wireless phones etc. So 5GHz means less interference.

Once again, it turns out that Chris’s netbook isn’t 5GHz compatible. But my laptop is.

Regardless, once we upgraded, all of our problems seem to have stopped. We’ve been on this new setup for 2 weeks and it’s been flawless. My speed is AMAZING and consistent. Yay! We may have finally rectified the problem. As an added bonus, the router features RapidShare meaning that we can plug a hard drive into it and have instant access to shared files throughout the house. Neat.

Anyway, I’m doing fine, but Chris loves him some portable media and has recently discovered iMovie on his phone and basically ran out of space on day 1. We’ve been trying to find a solution (downsizing his active collection for example) but they didn’t work out well. So, last weekend we went looking for a solution at Future Shop, intending to buy an iPod Nano. Probably a shiny green one that he could use just for music, leaving his phone for anything else he wants (tv, movies, books, photos).

Instead, we found the Archos 43 Vision Personal Media Player (PMP).

It sounded promising. It played a bunch of different media files, hooked up to the TV with an HDMI cable (high quality) , started with 8GB of internal memory and had an expansion port for up to 32GB more. Awesome.

The screen was great on the Archos 43 Vision and the video playback was great. But.

• We couldn’t play media from the exansion cards.
• The “calibration mode” in the settings would get stuck and have you repeating it over and over and over.
• The touchscreen is resistive touch, meaning you “push” a little bit like a button. On this device you had to tap 2+ times to get anything happening.
• Even after calibration, the menu size was so small that I couldn’t accurately press the right choice anyway.
• It wouldn’t play some of our personal video files, including any created on our iPhones.
• It had size restrictions and format restrictions on the video that didn’t match many other things.
• Chris disliked the feel of the back of the device.
• For a small device, it’s pretty heavy. This is a good and bad. Heavy = bad, but heavy = metal = sturdy.
• It also said bad things about my mom one time.

So, we played with it for a day or so. The real killer was the absolutely horrible touch screen interface. I guess we’re spoiled by iPhone/iPod devices, but you shouldn’t have to tap the screen 3 or 4 times to start a video playing, no matter what.

On the plus side, this nifty little device is only $99 – an amazing price, but if it doesn’t work properly or as expected, then it’s not a value at any price.

Today, we returned the device (we had a busy week). We looked at some other devices but in the end, Chris got himself a shiny green 8GB iPod Nano. He is very very happy and it sync’d perfectly to his iTunes when we got home, and he had it up and running within about 15 minutes – with all his music on it.

Do you ever have moments where you’ve been working on a project/item/report/blog post for a while and you find yourself staring at the computer screen but nothing is happening?

Happens to me a lot. Just staring at a problem and not making any headway.

The experts tell you to think about something else, turn your attention away and distract yourself. Go for a walk, grab a glass of water etc. But if you’re like me, you find yourself inexplicably drawn right back in having made no progress, 30 seconds later.

So what I sometimes do is reboot my computer. Save your work first.

It’s a great way to force yourself away from the problem for 2 or 3 minutes (or more in some cases) and you can’t just jump back into it.

Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but it does force that tiny break which is good for you.

I’ll be right back in about 5 minutes…

It wasn’t the best weekend, mostly because Chris was super sick all weekend. It didn’t entirely stop us but slowed us down. It’s now Monday and he’s not 100% better, but improving. Poor guy.

I spent the majority of the weekend working on my WordPress plugin. Standout Comments runs the comment system on this blog and many of my other personal blogs. My partners in this, Alex Shalman and local marketer John Chow hope to launch this to the public on March 25.

I’ve been struggling with Tweetbacks, a system for tracking tweets about your blog across the Twittersphere. I think I finally nailed it 100% this weekend, but it cost me about 8 hours of tracking, testing and coding to get it. The main problem was that it sent thousands of requests and Twitter would rate-limit me. When Twitter rate-limits you, they send back an error that says “Enhance your chill.” Cute, but not helpful.

We had to cancel some plans with friends and the weather wasn’t great for getting out or having the windows open too much either, it seemed like I was opening and closing windows every 5 minutes, or turning the heat on or off too.

Combine that with “Spring Forward” and the new early morning darkness and it was a little confusing. Oh well, now it’s Monday. Which can only mean one thing…

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The original article is on IndiaTimes here.

Mistry demonstrates some amazing technology including projector and camera systems that the user can wear transforming any flat surface into a computer system. He started by pulling apart 2 ball-based mice and transforming their physical rollers with some string and springs into a gesture based input device. You know those wearable gloves that let people manipulate 3D objects on a computer? Yeah, that – from spare parts!

If Mistry can bring this kind of tech to live, then we’re going to be living in some amazing times. What’s cool is that Mistry and his team have actually developed this tech. It’s not just theory, but actually working! He even plays PONG! on the floor of a subway. He’s promised to release the open source code to all of his development, which means just about anyone could pick it up, build on it and start releasing consumer products for a fraction of the cost.

Thanks to Susan and Pardeep for sharing this with me.

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For the non-techies out there, this website or blog runs on the WordPress platform. WordPress is a tool that makes blogging easier by simplifying a lot of the “tech” bits.

That said, I like my “tech” bits, so I dig a little deeper.

I run several (over 10) WordPress blogs, and even started looking at WordPress MU to build communities.

I also started developing plugins, or add-ons, to give it even more functionality. My first attempt was a good idea, poorly implemented, that I haven’t been back to revisit.

Recently, I’ve been working with a commercial or premium plugin with my friend Alex called Standout Comments and it’s nearly ready. We’ve designed it to be an all-in-one comment plugin with lots of great features for your average site owner, but also for Internet Marketers who want “everything”. It’s not perfect, but it’s “good enough” for a beta release.

Alex has lined up Vancouver blogger and big-man-on-campus, John Chow to help us (awesome) and given a couple of people a private beta copy. I’ve installed it on all of my main blogs (including this one) but am looking for more testers.

You can test Standout Comments in one of 2 ways.

1. Leave comments here and/or tweet about posts using the Tweetback URL provided – this is the function I’ve tested least. Tweetbacks should be tracked and show up in comments automatically.
2. Request a beta copy by leaving a comment below. I’ll take a look at your site and make a decision. Ideally you get a bunch of visitors and comments daily to put the plugin through it’s paces.

Beta testers will get free access to the software when it’s launched.