257 birthday wishes on Facebook.

11 from family members, 9 from people I have never interacted with on or offline other than to “friend” them, 112 from people i have never physically met, 9 from people I have dated(ish), 26 I have known for at least 30 years, 9 I have kown for at least 40 years, 4 I have known for 51 years.

7 I have worked with recently, 19 past customers, 4 people from my childhood neighborhood and 5 currently serving in state government positions including the Lt Governor of Georgia, Casey Cagle.

Did I get even one paper card? Well, actually I did but none of them came snail mail. It’s a new world. I never (probably never) would have received that many birthday greetings without Facebook and years of actually building engagements – not just hoarding followers.

By the way, I don’t think getting 257 birthday wishes on Facebook makes me anything better than anyone else. It does make me blessed, added to my happiness and caused me to reflect on some great memories with some really awesome people.

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Adobe Acrobat 9.3.3 installation – 240 megabytes

Foxit PDF reader installation – 10 megabytes

Space saved – 230 megabytes

Of course you ask, “why worry about 230 megabytes with today’s terrabyte hard drives?” Have you noticed the system resources the Adobe brand reader consumes at idle? Of course there are functions the Foxit reader doesn’t handle but quite honestly when all you want to do is read the free eBook on optimizing your notepad PC who cares?

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Recently I informed a Facebook friend I had deleted his comment. It wasn’t “that bad” but it just needed to be done for my personal reason. In an email to him I told him I deleted it and explained why and he was okay with the deletion. On the other hand had I simply deleted his comment without notifying him that could have been a different story.

Let’s examine when it it okay or even a good practice to delete Facebook comments and whether or not you should inform and explain to the commenter. Keep in mind these are my opinions and not scientific results:

1. Spam – always okay to delete and never requires an explanation.
2. Off topic – okay to delete and may require an explanation depending on your relationship.
3. Off color – always okay to delete and does not necessarily require an explanation.
4. Personal attack – I would say to leave these. If someone disagrees with me or criticizes me I leave it. My friends usually come to my defense and if they do not then perhaps I should ask some rather pointed questions.
5. Political – I do reserve the right to delete wall posts about opposing views but comments I leave.
6. Religion – see politics.
7. Attacks on other friends –  I lean towards deleting these. I recently had two connections who did not know each other and one attacked the previous. I left the comment but defended the first person. It turned into a banter match and several other friends became involved.
8. Profanity – totally your call.
9. Nudity – depends on what it looks like. Just kidding. I delete, you can do whatever you wish.
10. Coarse humor (innuendo etc.) – I stick with the “if it isn’t for everyone’s ears including my 15 year old daughter or 13 year old great-nephew it’s coming off”.

Your comments are welcome and invited. What would you delete from your Facebook wall?

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1. I am rarely as brilliant on the course as I am in my mind. On the course and off there is nothing like a close friend telling you how badly you suck then helping you improve.

2. Tee shots are like business connections – some fly straight and long. Others make you trek through mud and briars and some get so lost you elect to replace them because they weren’t worth the continued trouble trying to find them. The ones to avoid are the ones you can see but take you out of bounds.

3. Playing in bad weather requires dedication and love for the game. Playing in driving rain storms with gail force winds are the times when you own the course – there is little competition in adverse conditions.

4. Playing with a good natured group and scoring badly beats playing with grinches and scoring well.

5. Nothing beats using the combined talents of 4 mediocre players in a best ball match. Pick team members you like and who have talent for the game and there is no stopping you.

Instead of  GOLF think BUSINESS. You’ll get it – hang in there!

When I was much younger there was a dance called “the bump”. Did I mention that was when I was much younger? Today a new bump craze may be on its way and you may be able to profit from it if your development ideas are the right stuff.

Bump Technologies has introduces a new app for iPhone and Android which, by their own description, “is a quick and easy way to connect two phones by simply bumping them together. Exchange your phone number, photos, or compare friends with just a bump.”

On the Bump blog over at Posterous they give a wish list of sorts for developers to get them thinking in the direction of creating apps using the Bump API. http://blog.bu.mp/requests-for-apps

What could you do with a bump app?

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Trying to install that cool new plugin or theme you just discovered? Using the WordPress web based admin panel to do it? Getting really miffed, enough to Google the problem and find this article, and about to throw your computer through the window?

Stop.

Try this before you start digging around in your .htaccess file. Look in your uploads folder for the year folder and then the month folder and look in there for any .zip files that may be upgrades and not files you want to have available later. Unless you specifically placed .zip files in your uploads they are probably from upgrades that either did not properly install previously or the one you are currently trying to install. The WP dashboard upgrade function “should” automatically delete the .zip (compressed) files for upgrades as soon as the upgrade is installed. Read the rest of this entry »

Just in case you have not heard this is going to be an awesome event. It’s in Atlanta, Georgia at a very accessible Georgia Tech Research Center at 250 14th Street. The 2 day event promises to deliver in depth, nearly one-to-one exposure to businesses who want to or already understand the necessity and power of WordPress as a CMS and blogging platform.

The Business of WordPress Conference will be held at the Georgia Tech Research Institute’s Conference Center on 14th Street in Midtown Atlanta. Designed as a high-tech event space, the GTRI Conference Center is home to more than 300 events each year; over 10,000 square feet of event space and copious free parking in the attached parking deck – it is the ideal place for this Conference.

Follow this link for full details. Contact me for discounted admission – there are only 10 discounted admission tickets available to you through me at this time so act quickly.

I have friends who howl in laughter when they hear someone referred to as a social media guru, expert, leader, or what may you. One friend, and they may well be reading this, gets a look of disgust and the conversation almost immediately ends when “social media guru” comes up.

Today it dawned on me the phrase doesn’t seem to be as prolific as it was some months ago. Especially in the real estate industry, or so it seems, hungry real estate agents latched on to the idea quickly and many who had at least 50 followers on Twitter and 40 friends on Facebook were soon found teaching social media to unsuspecting agents all across the nation.

This short lookup for the terms “social media” followed by “guru”, “expert”, “planner” and others was interesting. See if you are surprised by the results. These are Twitter users who use those phrases in their Twitter profiles:

social media guru 330
social media expert 470
social media trainer 69
social media consultant 726
social media advisor 29
social media planner 27
social media strategist 705
social media marketer 342

Geek euphoria includes never being disengaged. Clear’s 4G nationwide account, which switches to 3G in areas outside the 4G network, promises a big piece of that. Honestly I have been wanting Clear since a sales rep first popped into my office several months ago but just now found a way to get it included in my corporate budget. Bingo – I’m now wired … er, wirelessed.

My supervisor ordered two 4G dongles and accounts on Monday and they arrived today. Since she is in Valdosta, about 160 miles away, I got to play with mine first. Nanny boo boo. Of course my idea is to make it prove itself and quickly. I’m headed on a 4 hours driving trip on Thursday afternoon, actually I’ll be the passenger, and plan on giving it a try several times on the trip. From right here in my office in Atlanta, however, it is fairly impressive. Read the rest of this entry »

Several years ago I hired a bright young lady freshly graduated from webmaster school. It was obvious she was a little intimidated by the scope of some of the jobs we had especially when I told her I coded in pico or emacs. I calmed her a bit by telling her she could also use notepad. Since then many things, make that everything has, have changed. Today I want to introduce you to three Chrome extensions you’ll probably find handy.

Color picker EyeDropper

Remember the days of doing a screen shot, pasting that into Paint Shop Pro and using the eye dropper to select the color? Gone are those days if you use Chrome. The EyeDropper plugin works great. Simply install it, go to the page you are working on, activate the extension, find the color you want and click. Seriously – it’s that difficult.

See the screen capture to the right for an image of the pop-up. Read the rest of this entry »