Don't Back Down

Back in January (the 18th, I think, in case Amnesia comes calling), I ordered up a Leatherman Skeletool CX from Amazon. The price at the time was $79.85, with free shipping. I was happy, though for perhaps the first time in the history of times I've ordered from Amazon, I was going to have to wait for a while, since they were low on stock. I figured it would be worth the wait for this sweet little tool.

As it turned out, the wait would be a long one. On February 5th, I tweeted about how the product was delayed, while the price had gone up (the page at Amazon now shows another company not Amazon, as the primary supplier - though Amazon still offers it at $79.85, with free shipping, on the alternative link). On February 8th, I tweeted that now it was shipping earlier than expected, but it was still to arrive by March 18th. Guess what. Still not here.

Read "Amazon Really Blows it with the Leatherman Skeletool CX" »

As I'm recording information for taxes this year, I realize that once again, I've managed to forget to update the account information at PayPal, and the 1099 form has my personal Social Security Number on it, rather than the company's Employer ID Number, which means that I personally will be paying taxes on any interst in the account, rather than the company. To make matters worse, the company taxes are already filed, which means that they have accounted for interest income, so it's like a double whammy. About the only good news is that it's not a huge amount. But still.

I figure I need to take care of the problem. The only issue is that there is no easy way to do it. The interface at PayPal, while not difficult, doesn't seem to have a way to figure out how to change this information. In fact, there's no obvious place to change your Social Security Number/Employer ID Number anywhere that I can find. I do manage to find a couple of places where you can contact them directly - both a local area code and an 800 number - so I try both. No such luck. After spending at least half an hour on the phone with various reps, being transferred more than once and being disconnected twice, I was still stuck with the same problem: My 1099 for next year was going to have my personal information on it, not the company's.

Read "Change Your Social Security Number at PayPal" »

The fourth annual Don't Back Down Tournament Pick'em has arrived. You can make your picks now. Thanks again to Yahoo! Sports for providing the brackets, which make it awfully easy for me to keep track of things.

This year, the contest is even better, because you can win $5 million for a perfect bracket (not from me, unfortunately), so get those brackets filled out to see if you can win the big prize. There are a few more readers around than last year, so hopefully we'll have a few more competitors - but no matter how many people are in the contest, I'm sure that it will be a good time for all! In order to sign up, you'll need a Yahoo! ID, along with the group ID (69931) and the group password (which, as usual, is dbd). So visit the Tournament Pick'em page and sign up!

I just received an email telling me that I only had a limited amount of time to accept (or decline) a potential review for a site called Web Hosting Bluebook. This is interesting for two reasons - one, because I don't remember being asked to review the site and two, because it's actually the first time I've been asked to review a site. In the interest of disclosure, this is a paid review, but I will give you the full details on what I find out. Ready? Here goes.

Web Hosting Bluebook bills itself as the #1 Web Hosting Source (their claim) - which is interesting, because it makes it sound like they actually provide web hosting (something I don't think they do). The site has a clean look to it, and I suspect they would be better off telling you that they are the #1 Web Hosting Research Guide or something along those lines. Whatever the claim, I think you'd be hard-pressed to put either to a test and have it proven with hard facts, so it's probably better to look at the site to see what you do get.

Read "Web Hosting Bluebook" »

With version 3.31 of Movable Type, the product began shipping with feeds.app lite, which allowed some simple abilities for republishing the content of other feeds on your site, through the use of Movable Type template tags. This plugin was a great step forward, and expanded on earlier plugins that did similar things, but in fact, it is the less-capable sibling of the (much) more powerful feeds.app from Appnel Solutions.

The primary difference between the two is that feeds.app lite allows you to pull some basic information out of the feed, while feeds.app allows you to get anything at all - it's much, much more powerful (and it also has a price tag associated). Unfortunately, feeds.app, while insanely powerful, also has caused some signficant hair-pulling to get things working from time to time. It's a shame, because it's a good plugin. Some of the problem is a conflict between the default feeds.app lite plugin and the full-featured feeds.app plugin. Some is that there are a lot of requirements (that ship with the plugin), and it appears that many systems just don't support everything that you need to get it working. Because of that, I have recently been looking for an easier solution, and I think I've found one in Feed Digest.

Read "Using Feed Digest to Republish Feed Content on Your Site" »

Now that I've mentioned what would make TypePad really rock because those features are things that I run into every day, and also came up with a few features that would make TypePad just a bit better with some features that I run into, but perhaps not quite as often, you might be thinking that I don't like TypePad.

That's actually not the case. In fact, the more I work with it, the more I like it. Sure, you can't do PHP on TypePad, and using PHP makes managing sites easier. But you can use SSI, which is awfully close. In fact, since you use the blog name in SSI calls, all you have to do is substitute one blog's name for another in the SSI and you suddenly have a module that you can easily include on multiple blogs. This isn't quite the same as having a module that you can include from multiple places, because you can't actually parse the content for template tags, but it's close. It isn't Movable Type, but there's a lot to like in there.

Read "TypePad Does Have Some Great Features" »

Perhaps this is in reverse order, since I first mentioned what would make TypePad really rock, but hey - those are the things that I run into every time I use TypePad, so they were foremost on my mind. This next batch of items are things that are high on my list, because I get them a lot, but I don't necessarily see them every time I log in. They are just little nitpicky items that I'd like to see go away.

In all honesty, it would probably be better to address these first, because like most things, it's the little things that will get you. In life, you can often deal with the largest of problems, yet you're only too happy to let the small stuff build up and build up until you just can't take it any more. This list is all about the small stuff. The items that you only see from time to time, but that - if fixed - would make using the service just that much better.

Read "Now, What TypePad Could Use to Make it Better" »

Much of today, twitterfeed has been down. Which is okay - it just means that my blog posts don't get into my Twitter stream (just one of the reasons I don't like depending on third-party services). Last week, John Chow announced that he had set another new record, with more than $30,000 in income. Unforunately, if you haven't read the report, you may not be able to do so, because his site has been responding horribly of late (at least for me). I don't know what's happening for John - if it's a problem with his server, his software, or if he's just bogged down because of the latest numbers.

Frankly I don't care that much because I keep up with his blog through Google Reader, so I don't often have cause to visit. I only happened to notice that things were slow when I went to look something up, and realized that it had happened last week when I did it as well, so it seems to be an ongoing issue. Or it could be related to my own ongoing issues (but I don't really seem to have much of a problem with other sites). Whatever the case, it underscores the importance of keeping your site running.

Read "The Importance of Uptime and Availability" »

I've mentioned before (more than once, in fact) that I don't much care for social networking. This could be for two reasons. Either I just don't get it - a distinct possibility - or because I'm just not very social - also quite possible (in fact, quite possibly even more likely). For one reason or another, I haven't really managed to get into Twitter, though I've tried a few times. I want to like the service, but I just couldn't get into it. I finally figured out that the problem wasn't so much that I didn't like it, the problem was in how I was using it.

The other day as I was chatting with a friend (not on Twitter), I mentioned my confusion, and he pointed me to a series on the use of Twitter from Jennifer Laycock of Search Engine Guide. At this point, I should mention that Search Engine Guide, and by extension Jennifer, are customers of mine in my Movable Type Consulting business. But that doesn't mean she doesn't know what she's talking about. In any case, she has so far put together three parts in her series (one, two, three). It's worth reading, but ultimately all it did was get me moving in the right direction. I had to find a good client to really get attached.

Read "A Good Twitter Client Makes All the Difference" »

There's a school of thought that says you should Fake It Until You Make It - that even if you aren't successful, that you should pretend that you are successful, because it will make people believe that you are, and that will in turn, lead to success. But just how long do you go on pretending to be a success? As long as it takes, of course. That's the standard answer. How long do real successes go on pretending? The simple answer is that they go on as long as they can keep you believing.

For a quick study, let's take a look at the man everyone loves to hate, John Chow. He took his personal blog from a couple hundred dollars per month in September of 2006, writing relatively decent content, to over $25,000 in December of 2007. All the while, he says that his traffic hasn't really increased (it has certainly increased from that point, but when he does share traffic figures, it shows that it hasn't changed much in recent months), but his monetization strategies have. Perhaps most importantly, it makes you wonder - has he made it, or does he fake it?

Read "How Long Should You Fake It?" »

One way to keep visitors involved in what's happening with goings-on at your site is by involving them in what's happening, and one of the more interesting developments in this area is by providing them with the ability to rate your content. Until now, one of the more common ways of doing so for Movable Type was with the Ajax Rating plugin.

Mark Carey has done a great job of putting the plugin together, don't get me wrong. But installing the plugin and getting it to work right can sometimes be a bit more than most folks want to take on. The advantage is that you get complete control over what's happening. Sometimes, however, you just need a quick-and-dirty rating solution, and that's where Outbrain comes in.

Read "Easily Add Ratings to Your Site With Outbrain" »

One of the complaints about pair Networks is that their back-end interface is a little different than a lot of hosts, and I'll have to capitulate on this point. It's not your standard cPanel host - not even a branded one.

Instead, pair has developed their own interface, dubbed the Account Control Center, where you log in to do all the necessary tasks related to your account - setting up email accounts (including related tasks), managing databases, files, billing tasks, just about anything you could want. The only difference is that it's not what you're likely to see on any of dozens of other hosts. The one thing that they didn't typically offer that most hosts did was an easy way to administer your databases. Until now.

Read "Pair Networks Adds Shared phpMyAdmin Install" »