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Katie Freiling featured WordPress blog

The featured WordPress blog this week is the personal, coaching and marketing site of Katie Freiling, a social media, blogging, and personal development coach in the online home business industry. This one takes the headline position because of its balance between the personal blog style, and the content and panache of a marketing guru. It uses the Fresh News theme by WooThemes from WooThemes

The site is a must see for anybody who is considering setting up a blog for marketing purposes, including nonprofit organizations, associations or coalitions, or even just to promote a worthy cause. It contains tips on Video marketing, getting top rankings in search engines, list building and numerous desirable achievements. The included YouTube videos are textbook examples of the way to build your brand online, in small chunks.

Among her plugins, Katie is using the WP-FacebookConnect, WP-Polls and the ubiquitous Contact Form 7. WP-FacebookConnect adds Facebook functionality to WordPress using the Facebook Connect APIs. It provides single sign-on, avatars, and News Feed publication of comments. WP-Polls adds an AJAX based poll system to your WordPress blog so that you can easily include a poll into a page or post.

You can find the plugins to add to your own WordPress site by following the links below:

Click here to visit Katie Freiling’s blog

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Changing Pages To Posts

Sometimes in the life of a WordPress Blog there comes a moment when you realize that a static page you created (say for an upcoming event or campaign) has time expired, but still contains useful information. You might like your users to find the detail, in a search, but you do not want it clogging up your page structure, so it is time to make it a historic post. What you really need is an easy way to change a Page into a Post!

You can create a new post, copy all the detail into it from your old page, and then delete the page, setting the Publish date to the original date. However, the easy way to change a WordPress Page into a Post is to use a widget!

Changing Pages To Posts
The widget we are currently using is called Post Type Switcher, by John James Jacoby. After installing this plugin and activating it, you will see a new option under Publish when editing a page or a post, Post Type. Clicking on the Edit link next to it will allow you to select Posts, Pages, or if you have any custom types defined Custom. Click OK, and the Page entry you are editing will turn into a Post. Simple!

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Featured WordPress blog is Twingly

The featured WordPress blog this week is Twingly Blog, and more specificly a post by Martin Weiger called Europe’s 50 most popular startups according to the blogosphere.. Using data from their Twingly Blog Search they rank blogs in the global blogosphere from May 1 to July 31. This gives you a useful list of web and tech startups to check out for inspiration.

The blog has posts going back to September 2006, and provides lots of interesting comment and links to resources. It also contains the observation that A blog is a timeline; The fact that every blog is an ordered record of thoughts and opinions makes the aggregated data of many blogs very valuable.

This is a useful tip to remember when you are structuring your own WordPress posts, as you should consider that you are also writing for history, as well as promoting your latest product or venting your spleen. Surf back through the Twingly timeline and see how the writing style has progressed, and the rated Social Media sites and tools have emerged. Consider the way your own posts might be viewed in three months, or after a year, or in five year’s time.

The Twingly Blog uses the Neutra Theme, by Artmov which is a simple and elegant free theme. The site is hosted at WordPress.com.

Resources to check out:

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Town uses Google Earth to find Swimming Pools

The Town of Riverhead, Long Island, New York, has earn itself a place in the history of technology by employing the services of Google Earth to find swimming pools which did not have a permit. Chief Building Inspector Leroy Barnes Jr. declared that 250 permit-free pools had been identified thanks to Google’s technology. According to Chris Matyszczyk, The town has reportedly earned $75,000 through this activity.

I wonder if Google will be contacting the Chief Building Inspector to ascertain the amount of compensation to be paid for breach of the Google Earth End User License Agreement, which I note reads as follows:

1. USE OF SOFTWARE The Software is made available to you for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use the Software or the geographical information made available for display using the Software, or any prints or screen outputs generated with the Software in any commercial or business environment or for any commercial or business purposes for yourself or any third parties.

Riverhead’s no doubt honorable intention would be to stick within the letter of the law, so may I suggest that they donate the additional revenue to charity, as being income that they would not otherwise have been able to legally obtain. Remember, you can’t even use free Google Earth at work for personal reasons.

Then there is just the matter of the unpaid fees to Google…

To read the original article by Chris Matyszczyk, click here to see his posting on Technically Incorrect.

For more on the use of Google Earth, see the WordPress blog post by James Fee on Geospatial Technology, Web Mapping and Spatial Services website

Search Google Google Earth to find Swimming Pools