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Small Potato Keeps His Word

Tung Do otherwise known as Small Potato has kept his word regarding what used to be his theme club. He stated that if the new owner didn’t do anything with the site that he would refund those who purchased theme club memberships. Michael Castilla over at WPCandy is reporting today that he has received his $5.00 membership refund through Paypal already. He also mentions word that someone continued to pay the $400.00 webhosting fee for the WPDesigner.com website. How weird is that considering the site has been stale ever since it received new ownership.

I think what Small Potato has done proves that he is someone that is a trustworthy and honorable person. Good on him for keeping his word.

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First Interview At BloggerTalks

I published my first interview today over at BloggerTalks.com and the lucky recipient of my interview questions was Christina Warren. As you read the interview, take note how she became involved in the blogging scene. I find it particularly interesting that she received a position at USA Today based on her comments alone. I wonder if it is still possible in this day in age to get a writing position based on your comments.

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Taking Over For BloggerTalks

BloggerTalks logo

Thord Hedengren who did a wonderful job with BloggerTalks.com, a blog exclusively focusing on interviews with other bloggers has moved on to greener pastures. Guess who has taken his place? Me.

Each week will feature a new interview. These interviews will mostly be text based but don’t be surprised to see an audio interview mixed in as well. This is a cool position for me because I enjoy interviewing people as I treat interviews as one on one opportunities to learn. I’m a curious guy who always has a series of questions to ask and although mainstream media loves to ask softball type questions, I’ll ask any question I see fit.

So far, I am making an average of $1,200 – $1,400 per month of blogging income. This is almost as much as I made working full time at the grocery store with the exception that the grocery store provided medical benefits. Something bloggers don’t tend to get unless you work for a major blogging network or corporation.

Starting November 1st, I’ll be working weekends only at the grocery store and will be using the time during the week to pump out content on the sites I write for and try to make even more money in this game known as blogging.

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NOAA Implements Google Maps To Forecast Pages

I’m a weather junkie, no doubt about it. However, I was surprised to see that NOAA has implemented Google Maps into their point forecast pages. Typically, the map would display a plain image with county lines and various cities. Clicking on the exact location of where you live for your specific forecast was a trivial process of trial and error. Now however, users can zoom into the map, pan the map around, see a highlighted section of the map which describes the forecast area, and download the data in a KML file.

New Google Point Forecast

The Weather Channel website has had an implementation of Google Maps along with radar data for quite some time but I always find the page to load slowly, especially during an animated radar sequence. Although NOAA has not gone that far with regards to local radar images, the new iteration of selecting point forecasts in relation to where you live is a vast improvement.

Here is what the old point forecast used to look like and still does for those sites who have yet to be upgraded.

Old forecast Point Graphics

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Twitter Looking To Hire Spam Engineer

The other day, I noticed Ev Williams who is the co-founder of Twitter, send out a Tweet mentioning that the company was looking to hire a spam engineer. Imagine how much it would suck if the job title was rearranged to engineer spam. Of course, there are already plenty of people/bots that have fulfilled that role. At any rate, I hope the position is filled quickly so I can stop receiving followers such as this one.

Twitter Spam Lady

Despite the half way decent looking avatar, this lady has earned a spot on the blocked list.

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Woopra To Close Beta Registrations

A post published by John P. over on the Woopra blog is stating that Woopra will be shutting down beta registrations once they reach 50,000 monitored websites. As of October 8th, Woopra was monitoring 45,000 websites. Once registration is closed, there is a possibility that the media will blow in response but John gives a series of explanations as to the reasoning behind the move.

  • A 50,000 site “beta” is certainly a big enough sample to work through bugs and take suggestions.
  • We have a number of projects underway that we need to turn our attentions to temporarily and this will allow us to focus on core improvements as opposed to continual expansion.
  • We continue to hear from the community that you’d like more personalized attention, and pausing the site additions will ensure against further dilution of our current limited resources.

Once the Woopra team gets their ducks in a row, they will replace their site approval system with a personal invitation system in which current Woopra users will be able to send invitations to friends and family. Woopra was unofficially announced back at WordCamp Dallas about six months ago and since then, the sky has been the limit for the amount of success and growth that Woopra has experienced. Keep it up John!

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You Know Your Economy Is Screwed When

You run out of digits to display the countries national debt level. According to an article written by the BBC, the national debt counter located in Times Square has run out of spaces to display the national debt level. The sign will be replaced by a lengthier one by next year and will be able to showcase a quadrillion dollars worth of debt. I am really looking forward to that!

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Twitter Finds OJ Simpson Guilty

Geeze. As I am sitting here reading some blogs, I noticed the CNN breaking news Twitter account post a message about O.J. Simpson being found guilty. Two minutes later, Twitter blows up.

If it weren’t for Twitter, I would have no idea what is going on in the world.

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Time Keeps On Ticking Ticking Ticking…

I hope I don’t get sued by The Steve Miller band for using that lyric for my post title. Anywho, it’s been awhile since I’ve published anything here at my home away from home and with good reasons. Of course, you have the obligatory statement about how there has not been much time for me to publish anything and in this instance, that is true. I’ve been really busy between getting WordPress Weekly back on track, maintaining Perfcast,  contributing on a daily basis to Performancing.com and then there is that crappy night job I have which always seems to ruin everything. In a nutshell, that explains why there hasn’t been a post published on this blog in awhile.

Back when I redesigned this site, I did so because I wanted to dive into experimenting with monetization techniques while also narrowing the site down to just a few categories. I’m still not interested in monetization right now so that idea has been tossed aside. As for slimming down the blog, I have to admit that I feel stupid by transferring all of my personal posts away from this site onto its own domain with its own blog. I thought I was doing a good thing by doing this but now, all I have accomplished is providing yet another site for me to update. I should of just kept everything under one roof and told people that if they don’t want to read my personal mumbo jumbo, to just subscribe to the categories they were interested in as I see each category being its own blog. I’m not sure yet if I will re-import my personal musings back into this site so the verdict is still out as to what I am going to do.

Asides from all of that, I am inching closer to finally being able to cut myself down from 32 hours a week at the grocery store to perhaps weekends only. There are some changes afoot over at Performancing. There are also some other opportunities opening up within the SplashPress network which may help me accomplish my year end goal of only working at the store on the weekends while blogging full time. With all of this going on, I am throwing away most of my living space and will be purchasing some equipment to transform it into an office. I’ve seen some nice looking furniture at Officemax which would look even better in my room. I feel I’ll be much more productive with an office environment compared with what I have now which is more of a mashup of a work space.

The leaves are starting to change color here in northern Ohio while Fall is definitely in the air. I have yet to have my annual fall picnic with my girlfriend but that should be coming within the next week or so as the leaves reach their peak color. Soon enough, it will be Winter time. The time of the year where there is not much to do besides blog. How are the leaves in your neck of the woods? Looking forward to Winter?

Before I let you go, I have decided to bring WordPress Weekly back online. Starting this Friday at 8P.M. EST, I’ll be broadcasting live with my Canadian co-host all things WordPress. The anticipation has been building and I am looking forward to interacting with members of the WordPress community yet again.

Last but not least, I have removed the URL field from the comments here on this blog. This means I have also disabled the CommentLuv plugin. This is only an experiment for the month of October as I want to see for myself what happens to not only the volume of spam, but which types of spam I receive. To read more into why I am performing this experiment, read this post on Performancing.com.

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Join Me On Perfcast

Those of you who remember me from hosting and producing the WordPress Weekly podcast will know that I spoke of a new project in which I would be producing another podcast that dealt with everything blogging. That podcast is called Perfcast. This show covers some of the blogging news which happened within the past week, contains a blogging job of the week, initiates a blogging challenge of the week and most of all, is interactive allowing listeners and bloggers alike to chime in with their thoughts and opinions.

The show is hosted by Jeff Chandler (That’s me) and co-hosted by David Peralty of Xfep.com. The show airs live on Talkshoe every Thursday evening at 7 P.M. EST. Please read this post (How To Participate In Perfcast Live) on Performancing.com to find out how to participate live during the show.

By the way, we already have an episode produced. You can check out the show notes here or listen to the show via the embeddable Talkshoe player. Hoping you’ll stop by this Thursday for Episode 2 where David and I will be discussing WordPress 2.7, Blogging Through A disaster and a service called BackType.

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