Archive: May 2008
It's estimated that about 4000 children are born with Down Syndrome in the U.S. each year. Down Syndrome is a condition defined by the presence of an extra chromosome. It can cause a number of physical and intellectual developmental problems. Hearing and visions deficits and heart and lung problems are common among people with Down Syndrome. One of their biggest problems, though, can be a lack of acceptance. They may need an extra measure of sensitivity and a few special accommodations, but people with Down Syndrome can and do function well in school and in society at large.
Postie Val has a young son with Down Syndrome. She's on a mission to increase awareness and encourage people to learn more about Down Syndrome and other specials needs. Y'all know Val, don't you? If you're a regular visitor to the Izea Message Boards you've met her. She's all over the place, helping newbies, sharing her vast wisdom and skewering us with her sharp wit. She has a stable of diverse blogs where she shares her passions, including cooking and computers. Her greatest passion, though is advocating for people with special needs. Check out the Life, People & News category on her main blog. You'll find out about corporations that are dedicated to providing employment for people with disabilities, about products and services that accommodate special needs and about some outstanding people who prove that determination and enthusiasm can take some folks well beyond stereotypical expectations.
We've all come to recognize the monetary value of our blogs. Val could increase her income by dedicating more space to sponsored posting and advertising. She's chosen instead to invest a substantial amount of time and blog real estate in an ongoing project to educate us about people with special needs. It's a feature I've come to look forward to and that I hope you'll check out.
Each of us has the ability to make the world a better place. We've been blessed with personal resources that equip us for the task: our time, money, intellect and physical abilities. We can make a difference when we make the choice to put them to work in ways that benefit others. Many posties have made that choice and are a great asset to our community. Have you caught a postie doing good? Drop me a line so I can help spread the word!
Another PostieCard to add to our soon-to-be "PostieCard" Wall. We've still yet to figure out exactly how to display them so if you have any ideas, send them our way. (Right now we're thinking of a giant map.) Soon we'll have cards from all over the US...and then some!
Here's a PostieCard from the beautiful state of Pennsylvania, courtesy of Postie Jenn:
Jenn's blog url is Jenn.nu if you'd like to pay her a visit. You can also get to her site by clicking on either of the photos above. By the way, thanks, Jenn!
If you're keeping track, we've also received cards from the following states:
- Alabama
- Iowa
- Las Vegas
- Minnesota
- Tennessee
And a few from our International friends:
- British Columbia
- Isle of Man
- Nova Scotia
If you'd like to send us a postcard from your city, state, province, or country, feel free! You can address it to:
ATTN: PostieCards
150 North Orange Avenue, Suite 412
Orlando, FL 32801
P.S. Anyone know off the top of their head what pious means?
Posties worth their salt should be pretty familiar with the value of keywords in their posts. Using appropriate keywords can help improve your ranking in searches and allow people to find your posts easier. I wonder, however, are you tagging your images on photo hosting sites with the best keywords? Let us take Flickr for instance. On Flickr you have an opportunity to drive additional traffic to your blog by doing a few things.
- 1. Give your photo a good title.
- 2. Write a description of the photo and add a link to the blog post where the image appears.
- 3. Add as many descriptive keywords to your image as possible. (Make sure they are relevant to the actual photo)
- 4. Make sure you tag your images with your blog URL as well.
- 5. Search out groups on Flickr that you can join. Join them and add your photos, this gets your images in front of a larger audience.
- 6. Geotag your images. You never know when someone is looking for photos from a specific location on earth.
- Just because I mention Flickr in this post doesn't mean that it is the only option. In fact, the more places you add your photos and links the more likely they will get noticed and help you drive traffic to your blog.
By tagging your images there are some indirect ways that you could be noticed as well. I received my weekly Photojojo newsletter today and there was an article about Tag Galaxy. This fun little site lets you view images from Flickr that are tagged with particular keywords. What makes Tag Galaxy fun is that you can type in a keyword like 'Dog' and you will be presented with this image.
You can click on any of the planets to zoom in and get spinning 3D sphere of images. I used the keyword 'IZEA' to get this sphere.
Then I clicked on the middle photo of JustJulie and Ted.
If I click the image a second time I can go directly to the Flickr Page for Julie's photo. Once there. I can see what she has written about the image and if there was a link in the description I would probably go on to visit her blog. So you can see why it is important to tag your images with keywords as well as write descriptions and make sure you link to your blog. Just one more way to drive a little traffic to your blog.
Drew writes four blogs, is an avid kayaker and a Transformers fan, he also does a mean cake plow. He recently completed taking 1140+ consecutive photos in 1140+ days. You can visit him at The BenSpark, The Wired Kayaker, Read To Me, Dad, Google is not God.
My mother died of breast cancer twenty years ago and one of my aunts lost the same battle a few years later. Three other women in my family survived breast cancer. The numbers put me in a high-risk category, but the fact is that if you have breasts, you can get breast cancer (yes, men get it, too.) Diagnosis and treatment have come a long way in the years since Mom died, but we still don't have a cure. The numbers tell the story. From the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer website:
Approximately 178,480 women and 2,030 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year
40,460 women and 450 men in the U.S. will die from the disease annually.
There are over 2 million breast cancer survivors in the U.S. who have been treated for breast cancer
Every 3 minutes, there is a new diagnosis of invasive breast cancer
There are more than 250,000 women under the age of 40 in the U.S. living with breast cancer, and over 11,000 will be diagnosed this year
One of the treatments my mother received was experimental. That was her contribution to the body of knowledge about this devastating disease. Many of us will never be called on to give in that way, but all of us can support breast cancer research and treatment with our time, our labor and our money. We can start by supporting three posties who are walking for a cure.
Colleen hopes to raise $1800 in pledges and contributions when she walks with the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in New York City on October 4th and 5th this year. She's already raised over $400 and is soliciting contributions today in front of a grocery store near her home.
Deb was a contributor to Colleen's walk last year. They've teamed up this year and will be taking their walk together in October. Deb also hopes to raise at least $1800 when she walks for a cure. She had a garage sale last weekend and had raised over $300 for far.
Laurie will be walking in the 2008 Dallas Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk. She and her partner have been selling candy and holding other fundraising events. They've already raised $2905 towards their goal of $6000. Laurie will also be participating in the North Texas Race for a Cure, a 5K walk/run in June. She needs to raise at least $125 for that event, apart form the money raised for the 3-Day.
If every postie who is reading this gives their earnings from a single sponsored post we can put these gals over the top. They're doing the hard part. All we have to do is click a link. I've made a small contribution to each and challenge each of you to do the same right now while it's on your mind. Do it for everyone with breasts!
Have you caught a postie doing good? Are you participating in a service project or fundraiser that could benefit from the support of the Izea community? Send me a link and I'll share the word!
I travel for work and I have a laptop that I take with me on the road. That laptop has many software programs that I am pretty dependent on to help with my blogging, namely PhotoShop Elements 6.0. On Monday I had to turn my laptop in to our help desk to have it fixed. I was given a loaner PC for the week. The good news was that the loaner worked like a charm, no problems whatsoever and it was pretty fast. The bad news was that it had none of my programs for photo editing. This was not a good thing for a guy who takes a photo every day and posts it to his blog.
Sure I could have taken each photo this week with my camera phone and I have used that in a pinch. I had a real camera with me and I still wanted to get some editing done. Lucky for me I won a contest that one of our Posties, Alli, had on her blog. I won a year long subscription to Picnik. Picnik is a great site that allows you to do photo editing through a web browser. No need for software at all. It makes me realize more and more the resources that are available to bloggers and web users that you can find if you just look. You don't have to be out in the cold if you have no software or you are missing your own computer.
Drew writes four blogs, is an avid kayaker and a Transformers fan, he also does a mean cake plow. He recently completed taking 1140 consecutive photos in 1140 days. You can visit him at The BenSpark, The Wired Kayaker, Read To Me, Dad, Google is not God.
I have the dubious distinction of belonging to a somewhat exclusive club that most would prefer not to join. It doesn't have a secret handshake or burdensome bylaws to which I must adhere. Members don't hold annual conventions in exotic places where we gather to discuss our common experiences. There is, however, an initiation ritual that we all had to endure. To join the Comeback Club you have to die, then return to tell about it. My initiation came in 1994 when I kicked off following a surgical procedure. It was an enlightening experience, though not in the ways you may have heard described on daytime television. I didn't have a great compulsion to go into the light. I didn't even see the light. Dearly departed loved ones didn't appear to ease my journey and show me the way. I missed all of the fun and drama of the whole thing. When I awoke from a coma two weeks later I was told that I had died and been revived, but I have no memory of the event itself. I still claim it as an enlightening experience, though, because it's given me, to date, fourteen more years to grow older and wiser. Not a shabby gift, I assure you. That being the case, I feel that it's appropriate - nay, that it's compulsory! - to justify my use of the gift of time that I've been given.
Much of that time has been spent online. I no longer need to justify the hours spent blogging and networking and promoting my brand. Friends and family have finally come to accept that these are legitimate pursuits that contribute to my income. It's the "fooling around" time that they question. They don't understand why I spend so much time playing games. They consider some of my game playing to be "legitimate" use of my time because my game reviews draw a lot of traffic to skeet's stuff. I'm a beta tester for a game developer - no one thinks I commit too much time to that. When game time consumes large chunks of each day, though, they tell me I should turn off the computer and go out and live. They just don't understand that I'm learning how to live a better and wiser life as I'm popping bubbles and flipping virtual burgers. I'm honing my life-skills so that I may better use the time I've been given. I offer you a few examples of the profound insight I've gained:
If you stick to the shortest distance between two points, you might get there faster while missing the joy of the journey. Try the winding road sometimes. Don't be afraid to step off of the path to gather flowers and friendships and interesting souvenirs. Most of the good stuff isn't on the main drag anyway. Wander around. Make lots of connections!
If you want something badly enough, you'll find it eventually. If it's not obvious at first, keep looking. It might be right before your eyes, awaiting only a change of focus to bring it into view. Perseverance pays off.
The stuff around the edges is just that - stuff. If we blast our way through it and get to the heart of the matter, we'll be victorious!
Power is not necessarily an indicator of intelligence or moral superiority. It's okay to question authority
I have more pearls of wisdom I've garnered from playing games, but now it's your turn. You learned how to handle money by playing Monopoly. World dominion became clear once you mastered Risk. What have you learned lately? What zen-like enlightenment have you gained through games?If you can't think of anything right off the bat, go play! If someone says you're wasting time fooling around online, tell them I made you do it. Tell them you're helping skeet research life!
In order from top to bottom, the games are:
As I was dropping my EC this morning on the SocialCardsters Blogroll I came across one of my favorite Bloggers, Chica and her blog Photo-Projectz. Chica has run into a snag that I bet a number of bloggers have at one time or another. She signed up for a photo hosting account on Flickr and then uploaded a 201 photos which put her over the 200 photo limit. Great! Now What?
Well, like Chica, you have a few options.
Option 1 - Just keep uploading, I mean, who is gonna look at those older photos anyway. (Not Recommended)
Option 2 - You can buy a pro account for yourself at $24.95 for one year or $47.99 for 2 years.
Option 3 - Explore the world beyond Flickr...
If you are on a budget and paying for photo hosting is not part of that budget then you might want to try one of these alternatives.
Buzznet - I've been uploading images to Buzznet since 2003. At one point I got a pro account there and was able to make as many different galleries and folders as I wanted. I still upload my Photo-A-Day to this site because the Photo-A-Day Widget that I created is based on the RSS feed from a gallery on Buzznet. I don't think you have to pay for a pro account anymore and so you can upload a ton there.
Pros - Uploading images is free, you can upload an original full sized image and choose from a bunch of sizes for your blog. You can also easily post to 20 different blog related sites including blogger and myspace. The site is also social so you can give other images 'Buzz' (Mark them as favorites), you can comment on images, add friends, make galleries private and password protected too. I don't think there is a size limitation but there is a monthly upload limit which is 300 images.
Cons - It seems a bit spammy. I've gotten over 400 friend requests from people who are not photographers, who have not photos on buzznet and I think the age range is something like 14-22, so I am an old dog on that network. I upload my one image a day and go.
A Closer Look - You can set specific privacy for your account and if I tighten it up it should cut down on the spammyness, But I am still too unhip for participating in that community.
Zooomr - Zooomr is as close to Flickr as you are gonna get. It looks pretty similar but the major difference is that you have unlimited uploading capabilities. So you will not run out of space, ever.
Pros - Unlimited Uploads, easy geotagging, labeling and you can put a url of a Zooomr image into Pownce and have it show up automatically. You can upload whatever size you would like and Zooomr will make sizes for your blog. You can also generate smartsets of not only your images but other images as well. The site is mainly for serious photographers who want to learn from each other. That is the impressions I get from the place. But that certainly doesn't mean that if you are not hardcore into photography that you can't have an account. Heck you might get some great comments from those hardcore photogs as well.
Cons - No 'one click' posting to your blog. Not many features beyond the unlimited uploads. Yet
Photobucket - I just signed up for this one for this post so I am not as familiar with it. This is a photo hosting site powered by Google, there are a few of them out there, Picasa is another. Once you upload there are a bunch of places where you can automatically post the image. You can sign up for a free account and then you can decide to go pro at $25.00 a year.
Pros - Free up to 1GB of space. Multiple ways to share the image.
Cons - I found the interface clunky. I also just started playing with it today.
As you can see the quality of the image is the same across each hosting site. It doesn't really matter where the image is located. What you have to decide is what features are you looking for in a photo hosting site. There are many other options to chose from when deciding where to host your images. My advice would be to scout them first, sign up for each one and try them out. Upload a few images, see how each interface is, look at the features. What is most important for you when choosing a hosting site for your images? Do you want to interact with other photographers/bloggers. is the hosting site a weigh station for your images before you post them to your blog? Do you post images to multiple blogs? Go through the questions and then decide which one of these options is the best for you. If there are other photo hosting sites that you are interested in please leave comments on this post.
Drew writes four blogs, is an avid kayaker and a Transformers fan, he also does a mean cake plow. He recently completed taking 1000 consecutive photos in 1000 days. You can visit him at The BenSpark, The Wired Kayaker, Read To Me, Dad, Google is not God.
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If you've spent any time on IZEAFest.com then you know it's going to be a blogging event like noneother. I mean, have you seen the folks who have already signed-up to speak?
Maybe you've been considering registering for IZEAFest but have been holding back for some reason. Well, here's something that should be that extra push to go ahead and book: we've extended the "Early Bird" special to the first 100 people who register. That's a $15 savings per person! And just think, if you purchase two tickets you'll be saving $30. Three tickets...$45. You get the picture. Not a bad deal, eh?
We're close to halfway to 100 and the offer is only valid until May 14th, so you have to act fast! After you register don't forget to pick-up your "attendee badge and post it on your site, so to let other bloggers know you're making an appearance at IZEAFest. Hey...if you happen to see this badge posted on a blogger's site--or even a speaker's site--drop 'em a note and tell them you're looking forward to seeing them in Orlando.
Have questions? Feel free to drop us an e-mail at IZEAFest[at]izea[dot]com, or check-out the IZEAFest forum on the IZEA Message Boards.
Technorati Tags: Advertisers, blog conference, IZEAFest, Orlando, Posties
This weekend I spent on my own as my wife and baby girl went up to Vermont for a Girls Weekend. I spent the whole time doing all the guy things that I've wanted to do on a free weekend like watch movies, eat food bad for me but oh so tasty and play video games to all hours. I'm married with a kid now and so weekends are full of family things these days. I wouldn't trade that for the world because, in addition to loving my wife and child dearly, if I was still young and single I'd probably not survive these weekends when I overdo things.
Some of you might already know that I went and saw Iron Man because I mistakenly sent a post through Utterz to all of my blog connections, including this one. I had forgotten that I set up a connection to the Postie blog through Utterz for a previous Guest Post. So there was an accidental review of Iron Man that got automatically posted here. Thanks to the anonymous "postie power" for the heads up, I fixed my Utterz account so that won't happen again.
I attended two community events during the weekend that inadvertently helped me get out and work on becoming a better blogger and photographer. I followed my own advice from another guest post and took it offline. On Saturday I got out there and met people. I gave many people, that I met, my blogger business card. If you don't have your own blogger business card by now there really is no excuse. There are many avenues for you to obtain cards, even free ones. There are even some opps every so often for free business cards. I suggest you order some for your blog and keep them on hand when you go out.
The first community event that I went to was called Strut Your Mutt. It was a fund raising event for the local animal shelter. I brought my camera and a stack of blog business cards with me to hand out as I took photos of the different pets. I noticed something, it is much easier to ask someone if you can photograph their dog than it is to ask for a photo of the person themselves. However, I would ask if I could take a photo of a person's dog and then say, "Would you like to be in the photo with your dog?" This would open a nice dialog with the owner of the pet. After I took the photo I handed them my card and told them that the images would be available on my Flickr account and they could download them for free.
Just by going out and talking to people and giving them my card I was able to make some great connections in the local community. From that one event I may get a couple of photography gigs. I also got an inspiration about something I could do to help our local animal shelter. I met a beautiful dog named General at the event and I really want to help the shelter get him placed in a new home.
General needs a home.
I had given the shelter my card and they contacted me to tell me that they liked my photos. I pitched my idea of photographing one of the animals each week as a Weekly Adoption Spotlight post on my blog. While we can't adopt all those animals ourselves maybe I can point someone to the shelter to adopt them. I think in the back of my mind I had been a bit inspired by Skeet's most recent Guest post about Posties Doing Good.
The other part of my handing out cards to people in the local area was to try and expand my reader base. Right now my readers are primarily other bloggers, online photographers and my family. I've been writing sponsored posts for a while now about people and places far from me. I think I could use that knowledge and my blog to connect with people in my own back yard as well. To do so I need to get out there and spend some time in the community.
The second event was a fundraiser for our local YMCA. It was called the Wing Off and it was all about which local restaurant had the best Buffalo Wings. I went from station to station photographing each team and their wings. I gave them my business cards and talked to each person for a little while. From this I might get some additional readers and photo gigs. I also got an idea for a series of posts where I go to each restaurant to rate the wings in the local area.
My Favorite Wings, hot spicy and delicious.
Between these two events I got inspiration for future posts, possible visitors, great photos and tons of tasty, tasty buffalo wings. More and more when I take the virtual blinders off and step outside both my home and my comfort zone I find inspiration that I can use to become a better blogger.
Drew writes four blogs, is an avid kayaker and a Transformers fan, he also does a mean cake plow. He recently completed taking 1000 consecutive photos in 1000 days. You can visit him at The BenSpark, The Wired Kayaker, Read To Me, Dad, Google is not God.
Hello everyone. How y'alls been? Even though it's been a while since my last post, I'd like to dive right in with a little discussion of web hosts. In the three years I've been running OhGizmo.com, I've gone through a motley crew of hosts that offered everything and the kitchen sink. After a long search, I finally found a home for the site.
In this post, I want to share my personal experiences. And to make it interesting for everyone, it would be cool if you could leave comments with your own.
Dreamhost.com
Ok, so this is technically not my first host. But the first real one was so small, it's barely worth mentioning. Dreamhost, however, is HUGE. And the thing they don't tell you is what kind of a dream they're talking about. Yeah, that's right, they should rename themselves Nightmarehost.com. Support was slow, the site was sluggish and the ability to have tons of bandwidth was moot since you'd drive all your potential readers away from having such a slow site.
Of course, early on, I didn't know any better, so I thought this was normal. The price was right, and I stayed there for way too long. It wasn't until they got serious downtime, for weeks on end, that I decided to look for a new home.
Bluehost.com
This was a definite step up. To this day, I can't remember a faster server. Things were lightning quick, and I thought I'd found a permanent home. The price was right. Things were fine and dandy until the first day I got a story featured on Digg while on this new host.
No one had told me about CPU cycle quotas! So even though I could have tons of traffic, and the site loaded fast and everything... if too many people were reading the site at once, it would get disabled for five minutes. After five minutes, it would come back on, only to get disabled within seconds because the load was still too high.
This wasn't working. I needed something that scaled.
MediaTemple
They promised something they called The Grid. An array of servers who could distribute the load during traffic spikes, so that nothing would come crashing.
Things crashed anyway. Not only did they crash on the base plan, they crashed on the more expensive VPS. See... and this boggled me... the VPS actually was not on The Grid. Meaning it didn't scale. But no one told me that. I had to find out by being ridiculed on Digg with endless Database Connection Errors... Shameful.
Plus, service was slow and painful.
So I moved to my last home, the one I'm at now.
Mosso.com
Mosso is definitely more expensive than anyone above. It's $100 a month. But for that price, you worry about nothing. I've never encountered such service. They have an 800 number... Guess what happens when you call it? A human answers! Whatever the issue, no matter what time of day or night, someone can help you.
What's more, they've built their offering on Rackspace infrastructure. If you don't know what that means, just take my word for it: it's great and reliable!
Just last week, we got featured in a bunch of places. Ended a 24 hour period with about 110,000 pageviews, a single day record for OhGizmo. And we were down for exactly: 0 seconds.
So that's it for my tales. It would be great if you could share your own experiences in the comments.
