Hawaii Web Consulting

• Currently Browsing: UStream’s Live Campaign of Obama #
• Augmented Reality: Wired’s story Make Books ‘Pop’ With New Augmented Reality Tech and a company doing it t-immersion.com — very cool “immersion” of ads with reality #
• Currently Browsing: Rackspace’s PCI Compliance Webcast. If you aren’t familiar with PCI and you do online sales, should will:
  

  “The Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard details security requirements for members, merchants and service providers that store, process or transmit cardholder data”

  Source: PCI Compliance Guide #

• Currently Browsing: http://www.codeweavers.com/ free Mac/Linux software TODAY for MS apps #
• Today’s Zen Calendar koan: “Where was the sound of Tommy Ramone hitting the rim shot on Teenage Lobotomy before you heard it?” #

• Podcamphawaii - Colin Devroe with Vidder - Using Video For Community now #
• podcamphawaii - lots of live blogging and video streaming going on now #
• think my server is down now - not responding #
• Pch08: Kristie Wells with Social Media Club now #
• pch08: Rob Farrow with J&J - “equity marketing not hard ROI” for videos on YouTube #

Podcamp Registration

Today was the opening day for the two-day Podcamp Hawaii.   It was a lot of great information, great variety of sessions, and plenty of wonderful people.   Here’s just a few of my notes from the day:

Opening blessings by Haunani and ‘Illima Kauka.  Followed by two lovely hula songs, danced by Kanoe Miller, and performed by The Casey Olson Trio.

Podcamp Blessing

Chris Heuer (www.chrisheuer.com) - Social media principles: tip — Be human, be personal.  Check out:  Filtrbox.com

Rob Farrow - Managing Online Identity: tip — chi.mp

Kristie Wells -Building Your Community: tip — socialmediaclub.org

Podcamp swag

Rob Halper - Johnson and Johnson health channel on YouTube: “equity marketing, not a hard ROI”

Dave Erdman - Podcasting Hawaii to Japan: tip — use lots of different media (YouTube, Podcasts, and “theme” web sites) to help Search Engine ranking

Overall, very interesting! I can’t make tomorrow’s session, even though there are some really good ones, including: Matt Mullenweg and Neil Abercrombie.  Try to make it if you can: PodcampHawaii.

• in Wordpress with Lorelle VanFossen today #
• “Stop Link Dumping” #
• Woot-off! I was in a class all day… did I miss anything amazing?! #
• HMAUS.com is having problems again. Apparently a server issue that’s going to be looked at… #

I’m testing one of the new Targus Bluetooth Laser Mouse for Mac.   They’ve designed a whole series of accessories for Mac users, all are streamlined, using the same design styling.

My previous mouse was the Kensington Slimblade Presenter Mouse.   It’s a small, compact bluetooth mouse that looks good and works fine.   However, it seems to eat through batteries like there’s no tomorrow.  

The Targus mouse feels more like a bar of soap in your hand — longer and taller than the Kensington.   Getting it paired up with my Macbook Pro was effortless.  However, the disc that came with it — to make use of the extra two side buttons — was unreadable.   I had to use a Windows machine to grab the .dmg installation file.

Extra options

After installation into the System Preferences, you have to reboot.  Then you can set those buttons to a variety of options; the default being forward and back in Safari, but you could set up AppleScripts to be triggered, or launch a specific application.

One of the biggest pluses for me was the “quick scroll” that is available in the four-way “touch scroll” button.  It makes scrolling through long web pages a breeze!    That “touch scroll” works well if you can get over the fact it’s more like a touch-pad than the standard scroll wheel on most mice.

Overall this seems like a good mouse for someone wanting to make use of bluetooth on their Mac, while getting extra functionality from the additional buttons and touch scroll.   And, it has something the Kensington needed, an OFF switch!

Update 10/25/08: The scrolling on this mouse is sometimes a bit too much; it scrolls too fast, too far at times.   Perhaps there’s a setting or button to help this.   Also, the mouse is very particular as to WHERE you click on it.   So, for me, when I type, then go to click with the mouse, I don’t always reposition myself in the correct position, ending up with some unexpected results, such as ending up with a right-click when I tried a standard left-click, or a side button when I was just trying to move it.   I’m not sure if it’s a design problem or a (new) user problem yet.

• Currently Browsing: WordPress For Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson (Author), Matt Mullenweg (Foreword). #
• Currently Browsing: Hawaii Geek Week Begins in Honolulu an article about the day’s events by Lorelle VanFossen. #

Today was Web Weavers Workshop with Lorelle VanFossen, part of Hawaii’s Geek Week.   Lorelle had a ton of great tips to go along with the basics of setting up a successful Wordpress blog site.   A large part of the information is in Lorelle’s book, but it was her discussions to student questions that often proved most helpful.  Some sample tips:

• watch using pronouns in blog articles. Readers might be confused on what “it” is, along with the SEO problem related to keywords.
• do “brain dumps” and THEN edit.   Unload your ideas completely and then go back and edit.   And edit, and edit, and edit some more.
• and if you are using more than 400 words from someone else’s web site, be prepared to hear copyright problems.   In other words, keep your quoting of someone else’s material under 200 words or ask that writer for permission to use more.

Being a power-blogger, Lorelle had several shortcuts using Firefox, GreaseMonkey, and Google Reader, she even had tips on a great mouse that will power through web site scrolling.

It was a good class for anyone interested in learning about blogging, from beginners to those already blogging! Check out Lorelle’s web site for lots more information also!

During the opening event of Mactoberfest for Hawaii’s Geek Week, Lorelle VanFossen asked the audience, “How has Wordpress changed your life?”   She showed some great videos of how lives have been changed by using Wordpress as a blogging software application for helping people express their lives.  For me, Wordpress has changed my life in two main ways, though not really because of blogging.

1) As a web developer looking to help clients solve their online needs, I’ve found one of the biggest requests I hear is, “How can I get a great looking website THAT’S EASY TO UPDATE for someone with no HTML skills.”   I’ve tried finding the perfect CMS solution for those kind of requests, but keep coming back to Wordpress.

(more…)

• Governor Lingle’s proclaimed that the 18th through 25th is to be know as Hawaii’s Geek Week! http://ping.fm/ngaKK #