LwEEs.com

I had a weird glitch on my WordPress install the other day (January 2, 2009), as I was updating a post, my browser stop responding and when I force it to close, when I came back online the post I was working on disappeared. Good thing that I write everything in MS Word (for the spell checker feature) and then post it to the web, I had my copy and I was able to re-post the article immediately. It frustrated me at the time but it also gave me something to do.

I checked my “sql” tables and the post was not duplicated, this means that whatever happened either it dropped my “sql” table for this post or it used the space for the new post since I gave it the same name. I looked around for other issues and notice that my sql database has now 73 tables with lots of entries, I hate when plug-ins that I de-activate don’t take their tables with them.

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Reading an article on CNET about a deal on a Blu-ray player on Sears the author and the end of the post added an update that indicated a better deal on some other website but the deal was, and I quote “today only”. That made me think about when today is, and what will happen down the road when people read the same article.

I started over-analyzing the issue by locating the date, the date on the CNET site is located above the article giving you a clear view of when the article was published. The author’s update was at the bottom of the page, which if you are like me, I only skim over sites looking for what I think is important. I try to think like someone that is no too very tech savvy and the “today only” remark should have been accompanied by the current date of the post in this case.

Personally, I try not to make this mistake when writing articles for my blog, I always keep in mind that while I’m writing about an article today (November 17, 2008) that doesn’t mean that you, the reader, is reading this the day it was published. My website has the date in the header, that is the current date, and then I include (my WordPress theme by default) the date of the article in the article’s footer.

On top of these dates, I make sure that if I need to reference a specific time within the post, I include the date as I expect the reader to understand it. This gives me certain peace of mind, I’m just making sure that my space-and-time talk makes sense to the reader without actually worrying when my readers are actually reading one of my articles.

You can travel around the web and if you do it as often as I do, you start noticing how important dates are. If you are a blogger, how important are dates for you? Would you omit the date in your post for a specific purpose? And if yes, why? The same goes for my readers, how important is the date for your when reading stuff around the web?

Find me on twitter or Facebook, interact with me and tell me what is your opinion about this article. Also, you can write directly to me at lmenendez7@gmail.com, thanks for reading.

I want to apologize to my readership about my lack of blogging lately. Life has again get on my way and I still need a couple of weeks to start all over.

I bought a 3G iPhone, this gives me lots of material to talk about, get ready for that. I’m typing this post on my iPhone using the new Wordpress iPhone app, it works great.

I’m moving this weekend to Atlanta, GA, big deal for me and my family but we are doing OK. Please, stay subscribed as my passion for blogging hasn’t end.

If you need to contact me, email me at luismenendez7@yahoo.com. Or simply leave a comment on this post, good luck, see you later.

I’m worry about the significance behind being a blogger, credibility is something that it’s earned, and some people that call themselves bloggers are damaging our name. Of course, I consider myself a blogger, I’m not saying that I’m any good, but surely, I speak with the truth. I always write about subjects that interest me and I have a wide knowledge about, otherwise I talk about things that interest me while I’m learning about them.

You know where I’m going with all this talking, certain people that blog about things are making a bit of damage on our credibility because they manage to cause an impact with articles that are plain lies. This type of jokes or pranks or whatever you want to call it, are plain silly and as you can tell I’m concerned and upset about it.

At the beginning of January, I had to unsubscribe from a famous news blog because they went to CES and while in use of their press badge decided to play a prank turning TV’s off around the place. I was upset then and I still upset now, the latest one is from a developer, he decided to go out and say he was working with Apple in an iPhone SDK, which ended up being just another lie.

My problem with this is that mainstream media picks up this news rather quickly, then when everything ends up being a joke is the general blogger community the one that looks bad. I know that blog-news sites should be careful with this type of news, and most of the time they are, but it’s their responsibility to report to the public news as they happen. Anyone remember the dude that had surgery on his fingers to reduce the size so he can use his iPhone more comfortably.

As bloggers, we need to be careful with things like this, if we want to be taken seriously, we need to make sure we are serious on what we do. I didn’t mention names because I don’t want to keep giving them free advertising, the link bait is not going to work with me.

No, I’m not closing it, LwEEs.com will be used for business purposes only, I just realized that I can do great things with Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org combined. My idea is to leave my Wordpress.org blog strictly for business purposes while using Wordpress.com for blogging, ranting, and talking pretty much about anything I want.

Why doing this? I think that Wordpress.com is a great source for hosting your blog, it has the necessary tools to do so and while you don’t have complete control of it, it gives you enough to be creative. The other blog that I have using Wordpress.org is more, let say fragile. For example, if I get in trouble and spend some time in jail for various months and don’t pay my hosting dues, my blog will disappear while Wordpress.com can easily be without any updates for awhile.

Without more explanations to do, and if feel you need them let me know, here I go. Hope that you enjoy the content that I will be creating everyday, and if you are in Florida and need some IT or Business related services don’t forget to visit www.lwees.com to see what I do. I’m still working on making that site more business friendly, so don’t yield at me is something is broken. Cheers.

More than often applications track their own updates, this is part of job of a developer when building good and secure applications. If you are unsure, check any of your applications and either in the Help menu on Windows or Application menu or Help menu on a Mac you will find an option line for checking for updates.

The other option is to have an application version tracker on your computer, this little application can help you track the version of your software to keep you up to date and secure. I don’t have much experience on this kind of applications for Windows, but there is a Version Tracker Pro, which is not free ($29.95 USD) and some people seem not to like according to Download.com.

For Macintosh there is the same Version Tracker Pro but it cost $49.95 USD, other options like AppFresh (Free) is another applications that despite a couple minor bugs it works great. I use AppFresh and the couple of issues I have are because of identifying versions that do not exist on some applications, after tracking the behavior I can see that is not really a problem with the software but because we are still transitioning from PPC to Intel.

Let me talk to you about a third method of tracking updates for the applications that you like the most, this is really the tip I want to give you. If there are application that you can’t live without, find out who the developer is and try to subscribe to his/her blog or newsletter. This often lets you know in advance, about when updates will become available, also you will learn about what other applications they are working on to get more great application.

Let me give you an example, the one application that I use the most that is not Apple brand is Firefox, this people have a blog, which you can find at blog.mozilla.com. At their blog you can find updates notifications, beta software notifications, warnings and security issues, and information about other projects they handle other than Firefox.

It is a great idea to subscribe with all the developers that work on your favorite applications, especially if your income depends on that particular application. Give it a try, get all of them and unsubscribe if you think is not worth it, but I guarantee that you will find most of them a useful tool to have around. Tell your friends about this article if you like it, stay subscribed and thanks for reading.

Last week in the news, was a report that Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 for his continued effort on protecting the environment and making other aware of the necessity of protecting the environment. I feel that I don’t do much for the environment as I would like to do, my excuse is my busy schedule. I know is a lame excuse but I haven’t forgotten about the environment at all, at the beginning of this year I found a site with an initiative that I loved.

The site is One Million Bulbs, I immediately subscribed and participated by changing all my house’s light bulbs to energy-efficient fluorescent lights. My effort will help save over 2,000 pounds of CO2 annually and this makes me happy, I know I could be doing more but I don’t have a lot of time to become an activist. Another small effort towards the good of our environment is that I’m participating on my community recycling program, all I have to do is separate plastic from glass, put it in some orange and green recycling containers that are given free to the homeowners and every Wednesday the recycling truck stop by to get my recycling items.

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Have you ever plan to do something that reaches people everywhere in the world, I’ve seen it many times, one example is when people send those emails asking you to forward them to 10 people. If you start counting 10 by 10 and so on, that is a lot of people, other types of examples of reaching to big amounts of people is the Blog Action Day organized by bloggers. During this day bloggers from all around the world are trying to hit a mark by joining bloggers in an effort to see how many of us get together in one same effort.

To reach masses one must have very good dictation, write in very simple terms and make sure that your communication is not limited to one section of the population. By joining forces with other people you can also make the biggest of any campaign, mediums like written press, TV, and radio are also the best of them all to advertise to many people at once. I personally think that many of us can have a better opportunity of making a good impression by if you make the joint effort using social media outlets, for bloggers social media and social networking play a very important role in our life.

No matter what you do or what your plan is the best thing you could do is to consult an expert, many experts in advertising are also bloggers, many even have a podcast that can drive you to take better decisions when advertising or looking for advertising outlets. I really hope that blog action day is a success, many have joined already. The last count was of over 14,000 bloggers, and I know that many will join today and make this the best joint effort example we’ve ever seen.

Lorelle is a respectable blogger-ette that I’ve followed for some time now, I love her passion for blogging because more than often I learn something new from her. She just posted an article challenging blogger to share their favorite one tip that was very useful back when you started blogging, since I’m up for the challenge, here is my tip hopefully you’ll like it.

I remember that back when I started blogging I use to feel lost at times, with nothing on my mind to blog about. I had my passion defined but my skills to start an article were bad, I feel that I have improved a lot and its all thanks to sites like lorelle.wordpress.com and problogger.com. There are other sites that bring so much knowledge to me, but these two are the best. That’s exactly my tip, find people that inspire you, that when you read what they have to say it empowers you and make you feel confident about what you are doing.

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I started writing this post sometime ago and left it unfinished for a while, and then this week I was listening to another of my favorite podcasters, Mitch Joel at www.twistimage.com/blog he mentioned this very same thing and that got me into finishing the blog post. Does it happen to you that you are reading an article from another blogger and suddenly you have the urge to reply by leaving your comment, you start writing and notice that your reply comment is not enough to drive the message you have, your idea, your opinion. I felt like that a couple times this week, and to be honest I feel like that almost every week.

Is it plagiarism to expand on someone’s post on your blog? I don’t think so, if you are honest about the source of your material, if you tell your audience what drove you to write the article and explain that is in response to something you found over the web, is definitely no plagiarism. I think is even healthier to write larger responses on your own blog than to leave a large comment someone’s blog about your opinion. If you were a blogger, would you agree with this practice? Would you rather like the whole comment wrote on your post?
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