Why Blog?
Posted on | June 7, 2010 | View Comments
synergy-blog has just passed it’s one year anniversary, which prompted this post. Why Blog? It’s a question that I hear from clients and people I do business with frequently. It’s always a discussion on the table during a website pitch or sales meeting. My answer is usually “it depends”. That’s not a half assed answer by any means- it’s true.
A blog is the new media. A PR firm may be expensive to hire on a long term basis, and the time spent trying to get big media outlets to cover you may be very costly. Getting word out on your blog is a cheap way to begin to get the word out. Obviously the exposure is not even close to the same as what a media outlet can provide, but it’s a start. By blogging your ideas and becoming a thought leader, you can gain a following that can be far more valuable than what other traditional PR and advertising routes can provide. When the time comes, you can start to push your products and services to a prospect base that you already have a foot in the door with.
Being a thought leader comes with some baggage. Some people may not like what you say. Good. Usually if you are in position where people are starting to listen to you, chances are there is a group of people that think your crazy and bash you. Take that criticism with pride, and build on it. Their negative exposure to your thoughts may even fuel more people to come see what your all about. That’s the goal, isn’t it?
It works. Blogging has opened up so many doors both personally and professionally for me, and that is where the satisfaction comes from. That’s why I blog.
Parse RSS feeds and display on your website using PHP
Posted on | May 22, 2010 | View Comments
I recently needed to display an rss feed on a website. PHP is my weapon of choice, and was pleasantly surprised when I found RSS PHP. I was up and running with a CMS interface to change the feed location, and the option limit the number of items to display. The function is very simple to use and will return the results in an array.The newest version brags about being able to parse any XML document, which can also come in very handy. I’ll be using this for another upcoming project and will report the findings.
One thing that bothers me is that page load time can be slowed down because it’s relying on the speed of the feed. It would be handy to develop a script that can parse the feeds and store them in a database for faster display. Otherwise keeping a small limit on the number of items to display will help keep page load times quick.
CKEditor and CKFinder – great way to screw up a good thing..
Posted on | May 7, 2010 | View Comments
Anyone who does web development for a CMS will tell you how nice FCKEditor is to work with. Not only is it nice to work with, but it’s an open source project with a huge community following. While support is optional, there is plenty of it you can find free online. The other nice feature of FCK is the integrated file manager to allow for uploads right from link or image creation. Making it very easy for people to upload PDF’s and link them right in their updates.
Then in early 2010 the new kid on the block rolled out. CKEditor. Tons of visual and functional improvements, but one big downfall. No integrated file manger. That to me really is a deal breaker, and luckily you can still download the latest version of FCKEditor with the filemanager from their website. They did create CKFinder which is a much more robust (and admittedly impressive file manager) but it’s plastered with DEMO all over it when you use it unregistered.
I understand that they want to make some money from such a wonderful project, but I think there were better and more tasteful ways to do this, than to surprise the users after upgrading to CKFinder to find no decent file manager integration. There are some reported hacks and workarounds to make it work, check them out below.
Open File Manager
Integrating FCK File Manager with CKEditor
Beware Twitter Spam
Posted on | April 22, 2010 | View Comments
Like most, I generally make it a point to keep an eye on my spam folder for things that may have slipped in. I don’t usually see much that surprises me in there, but I did see a fairly crafty and legit looking message that was actually spam. The message stated that it was from Twitter and that I had 3 unread messages. The style of the email was perfect and with some of recent changes and announcements involving Twitter, this almost got me. It was clear when looking at the real path of the link but I’m sure this is working very well across the web. Beware and share this with your friends.
Click to see full size
iPhone 3G Won’t Power On
Posted on | April 9, 2010 | View Comments
This afternoon I had a user who’s iPhone was fully charged (which we found out after we had gotten it to turn on) but would not power up. Screen was black and nothing could be done. Found a simple fix that worked.
1. Toggle the mute switch on the iPhone 4 or 5 times finally leaving the mute off.
2. Hold the power and home button down at the same time for 10 seconds or so.
Sure enough the device powered up and had a full charge. Oddly enough I remember similar issues with the earlier iPods where a similar combination of keys reset the device.
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