The Best iPhone Applications (Fast Company Magazine)

Eighteen programs that add skyrockets to your "genius phone."  We had just turned off the video cameras after my interview with Mike Cannon-Brookes, CEO of the enterprise-wiki company Atlassian, when Mike pulled out his iPhone. He couldn't wait to start showing me all of the apps he had loaded, screens full of them, which he easily flicked through with his finger. read more ...

Bring out the bloggers (The Star)

StarMetro takes a look into the wide, wonderful world of blogging with a new columBy travel blogger Nicole Tan. This week, she shares her personal experiences and provides some tips on how to start your own blog.

Live updates: Orioles-Red Sox (Baltimore Sun)

Roch Kubatko blogs from Camden Yards Scoreboard: Red Sox 5, Orioles 2

How to Make a Wordpress Static Site

It is really easy to create static Wordpress sites.

Find a nice template you like. There are many sites with free Wordpress templates. Go to Google and do a search on ” Free Wordpress Templates” or “Free Wordpress Themes”.

If you don′t need things in the sidebar like calenders or archives etc, a simple solution is to go to design>widgets and by adding widgets you can make the sidebar look exactly as you like. This way you don′t have to touch any code.

Add the all in one seo plugin
Add the privacy policy plugin. Optional, but I always have a privacy policy on my sites.
Add a sitemap plugin if you want. Good for Search Engines
Add a Google Sitemap.

If you want Adsense or affilaite banners add the ads manager plugin or any of the other wordpress plugins available. I use ads manager. It also can be used to easily add other types of banners to a page and control it by the Admin panel. With ad smanager you also need:
exec php plugin. Might need this if you are going to hard code includes into the template. I use it to add banners to the sidebar via widgets and the text widget. If you don′t know what this means then forget it.

Find the plugins at Wordpress.org or do a Google search for each of the above plugins. If I am looking for some type of plugin I usually do a Google search by “keyword” and then “wordpress plugin.”

Activate plugins in your wp admin panel. They are located in the plugins link to the right if you are using Wordpress 2.5. Read the instructions that are on the individual author plugin sites as to how to use them.

Create a page. Label it whatever you like. Scroll down the page writing panel to all in one seo area and add keywords and description to your page.

Scroll down some more to comments and pings and turn off Allow Comments so you won′t see a user comment box. If you want also un-check Allow Pings. It is up to you. I un-check both.

All the way on the bottom of the page you will see Page order. If you want to have a certain order to your pages in your category menu then name the page you want on top of the menu 1 then the next page you create 2 etc. You can later change the order of your pages by using this feature. This is good so that maybe a sales page will be on top.

I also use the subcategories Parent – child a lot. An example. I will make a page say articles and then add different article pages as a subcategory to articles. For me everything is then neat and orderly. But this technique is up to you.

In the Wordpress admin panel go to settings>reading. On top you will see reading settings. Then “front page displays”. In the front page displays check the radio button “A static page (select below)” and then from the front page drop down menu click the page you want to use for your front page. That page I usually title Welcome or I will add a keyword rich title. if you don′t want any title leave blank.

Now you have the start of a static website with Wordpress. Use pages instead of posts, add keywords and descriptions via all in one seo and your site is static. Control the sidebar with widgets.

You can add to it but this will give you a basic static website.

Do not choose templates that make use of the wordpress tagging feature. Some of these templates are called newspaper themes. They are a little harder to do and take a little more to understand.

Probably you can find someone who has time on their hands to do it for you. I have a problem with doing the word for someone mainly because no one ever did it for me. I learned myself. I just did the research and mainly used Google to find anything I needed. And the advantage was that I learned very fast.

If you don′t do it yourself you are at the mercy of other people. If you do it yourself and, this is really easy once you get the hang of it, you can keep your site updated and fresh very fast.

This Chinese proverb is very powerful and I think about it every day:

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Blog star ends up in self-made black hole (The New Zealand Herald)

Emily Gould lay panting for breath on a bathroom floor in the throes of a panic attack. It was as if she could hear millions of voices, but they were not inside her head. Instead, her defences were overwhelmed by a frenzy of blogging, narcissism and sniping from the worldwide web.

Blog star ends up in self-made black hole (The New Zealand Herald)

Emily Gould lay panting for breath on a bathroom floor in the throes of a panic attack. It was as if she could hear millions of voices, but they were not inside her head. Instead, her defences were overwhelmed by a frenzy of blogging, narcissism and sniping from the worldwide web.

Carnival Senior Cruise Director’s Blog Reaches New Audiences on Corporate Web Site (PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance)

Although the popular blog of Carnival Cruise Lines' Senior Cruise Director John Heald has been featured on the Web site of parent company Carnival Corporation & plc since last August, in the past few months he has broadened the scope of his postings to showcase other Carnival-affiliated brands.

Gloucestershire opens food blog (KableNET)

The blog , which uses Wordpress's hosted service, aims to become a forum for local people to discuss food issues, and will cover areas such as healthy eating, food labelling, allergies and local produce.

AREA PLAYERS SPEAK OUT – ON BRITNEY (Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal)

Throughout the school year, the Daily Journal honored area athletes in its Players of the Week feature. Each athlete was asked a handful of questions about things they liked and disliked.

AREA PLAYERS SPEAK OUT – ON BRITNEY (Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal)

Throughout the school year, the Daily Journal honored area athletes in its Players of the Week feature. Each athlete was asked a handful of questions about things they liked and disliked.