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Showing posts with label Things. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Things. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Things You Should Do After Installing WordPress

After you have installed WordPress, you may tweak a few settings to further optimize the performance and security of your WordPress website. Here’s a complete guide to optimizing your WordPress installation.

It takes two easy steps to install WordPress but you may tweaking some of the default settings to further optimize the performance and also improve the security of your WordPress website.

Wordpress Optimization Guide

These suggestions are only applicable to self-hosted WordPress.org sites and not blogs that are hosted on WordPress.com. Also, I assume that you are running WordPress on Apache. Let’s get started:

The default installation of WordPress will store all your images, documents and other uploads inside the wp-content/uploads folder.

It is always a good idea to store your images outside the WordPress folder, preferably on a sub-domain. This offers a few advantages. Your image URLs will be relatively shorter, your daily WordPress backups will be more manageable and, most important, serving images from a different domain will allow parallel downloads and thus improve the page loading time (see Yahoo Performance Rules).

WordPress 3.5 (or later) does not offer an option to change the default media upload folder but there’s a plugin to bring those settings back. Also deselect the option – “Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders.”

If you look at the HTML source code of your WordPress site, you will find a couple of meta tags that aren’t really required. For instance, the version of WordPress software running on your server can be easily retrieved by looking at your source header.

This information is like a good hint to WordPress hackers who are looking to target blogs that are using the older and less secure versions of WordPress software. To completely remove the version number and other non-essential meta-data from your WordPress header, add this snippet to your functions.php file found in the WordPress themes folder.

remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wp_generator' ) ; remove_action( 'wp_head', 'wlwmanifest_link' ) ; remove_action( 'wp_head', 'rsd_link' ) ;

The WLW-Manifest function (line #2) is used by Windows Live Writer to download the styles / themes used in your WordPress blog. Windows Live Writer users who do not use the live preview feature may turn off this function.

Since you would not like anyone to browse your WordPress files and folders using the explorer view in web browsers, add the following line to your .htaccess file that exists in your WordPress installation directory.

Options All -Indexes

Also make sure that there’s a blank index.php in the wp-content/themes and wp-content/plugins folder of your WordPress directory.

The comment box is WordPress is a mini HTML editor and commenters can use standing HTML tags like , , , to format their comments. They can even add hyperlinks in their comment. If you would like to disallow HTML in WordPress comments, add this snippet to your functions.php file.

add_filter( 'pre_comment_content', 'wp_specialchars' );

WordPress includes a helpful document revisions feature to help you track changes and you can also revert to any previous version of your blog posts. Post revisions do however increase the size of WordPress wp_posts table as each revision means an additional row.

To disable post revisions in WordPress, open the wp-config.php file in your WordPress directory and add the following line:

define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', false);

Alternatively, if you would like to retain the Post Revisions functionality, you may just limit the number of posts revisions that WordPress stores in the MySQL database. Add this line to the wp-config file.

define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', 3);

Reference: Editing wp-config.php (WordPress Codex)

When you are editing a blog post inside the WordPress editor, it will auto-save your drafts as-you-type and this will help in recovering your work in case the browser crashes. The drafts are saved every minute but you can change the default duration to say 120 seconds (or 2 minutes) by adding a line to your wp-config.php file.

define( 'AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 120 );

Your WordPress syndicates multiple RSS Feeds – the blog feed, article feeds, comments feed, category feeds, archive feeds, etc. – and these are auto-discoverable as they are included in the HTML header of your blog pages using the meta tag.

If you just want to publicize your main feeds, add these line to your functions.php file:

remove_action( 'wp_head', 'feed_links', 2 ); remove_action( 'wp_head', 'feed_links_extra', 3 );

In the previous step, we simply removed the RSS feeds from printing inside the header but the RSS feeds still exists. If you would like to have one RSS feed served through FeedBurner and disable all the other feeds, add this to your .htaccess file. Do remember to replace the feed URL with your own.

RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.*(FeedBurner|FeedValidator) [NC] RewriteRule ^feed/?.*$ http://feeds.labnol.org/labnol [L,NC,R=301]When you type a non-existent username or an incorrect password while logging into WordPress, it will provide a very detailed error message telling you exactly whether your username is wrong or the password doesn’t match. That’s bad.

Add this to your functions.php file to hide all the login-related warnings from displaying on the screen.

function no_errors_please(){ return 'GET OFF MY LAWN !! RIGHT NOW !!';}add_filter( 'login_errors', 'no_errors_please' );

This is highly recommended. If someone gets hold of your WordPress credentials, they will still need your mobile phone to get into your WordPress dashboard.

Unlike Dropbox or Google, 2-step authentication isn’t part of WordPress yet but you can always use plugins. Authy is popular for enabling 2-factor authentication though I prefer Authenticator since it can be used with the official Google Authenticator app.

Do not use the default Permalink structure of WordPress since it is bad for SEO.

Go to Options -> Permalinks inside your WordPress dashboard and change your WordPress Permalink structure. The recommended structure, from the SEO and performance perspective, is:

/%post_id%/%postname%

Your WordPress theme may not even include references to the favicon (favicon.ico) or the Apple touch icons but web browsers and feed readers may still request them from your server. It’s always better to serve a file than returning a 404.

Put a 16×16 favicon.ico and a 144×144 apple-touch.png file in the home directory of your blog. Then add this line to your .htaccess to redirect all apple touch icon requests to that particular file.

RedirectMatch 301 /apple-touch-icon(.*)?.png http://example.com/apple-touch.png

You want Google and other search engines to crawl and index your blog pages but not the various PHP scripts that have been used by WordPress or the various plugins and themes.

Open the robots.txt file in your WordPress home directory and add these lines to block the bots from indexing the backend stuff of WordPress.

User-agent: *Disallow: /wp-admin/Disallow: /wp-includes/Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/Disallow: /wp-content/themes/Disallow: /feed/Disallow: */feed/

If your WordPress username is “admin,” create a new user and grant them administrator privileges. Now logout out of WordPress, log in as the new user and change the privilege of the user “admin” from Administrator to Subscriber.

You may even consider deleting the user “admin” and transfer any existing posts /pages to the new user. This is important for security reasons because we don’t people to guess the username that has administrator privileges to our WordPress installation.

XML Sitemaps will help search engines better crawl your site but you don’t want to search engines to actually show your sitemap in search results pages.

Add the following line to your .htaccess to prevent indexing of XML sitemaps.

Header set X-Robots-Tag "noindex"

Make sure your site search is powered by Google Custom Search and do not use the built-in search feature of WordPress.

WordPress search returns less relevant results and the other advantage is that it will reduce strain on your WordPress server /database since the search queries will be handled through Google.

Alternatively, if you plan to continue with WordPress built-in search, use the Nice Search plugin. It creates better permalinks for your WordPress search pages (/search/tutorials vs /?s=tutorials).

You can easily add another layer of security to your WordPress installation by password protecting the wp-admin directory. You’ll thus have to remember two sets of credentials for logging into WordPress – your WordPress password and the password that is protecting the wp-admin directory.

404 errors are a missed opportunity. You can use events in Google Analytics to log your 404 errors including details about the referring site that is pointing to that 404 page of your site.

Add this block inside your Google Analytics tracking code after the _gaq.push function.

_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', '404', document.location.pathname + document.location.search, document.referrer, 0, true]);The unused plugins and themes won’t affect the performance of your WordPress website but the aim should be to have as little executable code as possible on our server. Thus deactivate and delete the stuff that you no longer need.

WordPress has a strange habit of guessing URLs and it does make mistakes in most cases. Let me explain. If a user request labnol.org/hello URL but if that page doesn’t exist, WordPress may redirect that user to labnol.org/hello-world just because the URLs have some common words.

If you would like WordPress to stop guessing URLs and instead issue a 404 Not Found error for missing pages, put this snippet in the functions.php file:

add_filter('redirect_canonical', 'stop_guessing');function stop_guessing($url) { if (is_404()) { return false; } return $url;}

The static files hosted on your WordPress website – like images, CSS, JavaScript, .txt, etc. – won’t change often and thus you may set Expire Headers against them so that the files get cached on the user’s browser. Thus, on subsequent visits, your site will load relatively faster as the JS and CSS files would be used from the local cache.

Refer to the .htaccess file of the HTML5 boilerplate template for details on setting up expiry headers. If you are using a caching plugin like W3 Total Cache, the cache control is managed by the plugin itself.

ExpiresActive OnExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 30 days"ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 30 days"ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 30 days"ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 week"ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 1 week"

I have discussed WordPress security in detail earlier. The gist is that you should add secret keys to your wp_config.php file, install a file monitoring plugin and also Limit Login to prevent brute force attacks.

When you are logged into your WordPress dashboard as an admin, you can easily edit any of the PHP files associated with your WordPress plugins and themes. If you would like to remove the file editing functionality (one missing semicolon can take down your WordPress site), add this line to your wp-config.php file:

define( 'DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT', true );

If the web address of your WordPress site is abc.com, people can still reach your site if they add a few query parameters to the URL. For instance, abc.com/?utm=ga or abc.com/?ref=feedly are, technically speaking, completely different URLs but will work just fine.

This is bad because it dilutes your link equity (SEO) and, in an ideal situation, you would like all URLs to point to the canonical version. Add this little snippet to your .htaccess file and it will strip the unnecessary query parameters from all incoming requests.

RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !="" RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^p=.* RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} !^s=.* RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/wp-admin.* RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /$1? [R=301,L]

Want more? Here’s a comprehensive list of WordPress plugins that I use and recommend. It would also help if you can master these essential Linux commands to better manage your WordPress installation from the shell.


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Sunday, October 20, 2013

10 Things Men Hate About Women

Here is our list of 10 annoying female habits. Feel free to add to the list!

1. Empty Fuel Tank: This is one thing that most women specialize in. No matter how many times you tell her to keep an eye on the fuel tank meter while driving, she will find it impossible to locate it leaving the fuel tank empty for you to drive the next day.

2. Saying ‘I’m fine’ when they are not: So she stood in front of the television while the football match was on, you got annoyed and now all sorts of issues have been bought up. Then she says it – that passive-aggressive statement that marks the start of the dreaded silent treatment: “I’m fine”. Ladies, if you’re unhappy just outline the problem and then we can sort it out and carry on as normal.

3. Constantly asking what you are thinking: They take your silence and the faraway look in your eye to assume you are in the midst of some romantic revelry when in fact, your mind has wandered to that difficult level on Halo 2. This means you have to think of something suitably appropriate before it becomes obvious you were committing the cardinal sin of not thinking about her. Asking what we’re thinking is basically a nice way of saying ‘you aren’t allowed to have private thoughts, unless they’re about me’.

4. Winning arguments by crying: A woman cries whenever she knows she can’t win. This kind of emotional blackmail drives men go crazy! It’s fine for women to cry if they are genuinely hurt, but using crying as a manipulative tool is damaging to any relationship.

5. Trying to change us: Women have a tendency to take up charity projects and forcibly attempt to change the behavior of their men. They try their best to make him a better man by pushing him into doing something he doesn’t like or doesn’t want to do. They fail to understand that for two people to be in a relationship it is not necessary for them to be alike. Unlike men, they fail to understand the cliché “Opposites attract”.

6. Sex is key: This is one thing women use as a weapon in their romantic relationships. Men express their love through physical intimacy. A problem faced by almost all men is that whenever there is a discord, women withhold sex which makes the men feel unwanted.

7. Annoying pet names: ‘Jiggily poo, sweety pie, sweet cheeks, babu’. These pet names may not be appreciated as you think especially when you call him with these pet names in public.

8. Talking during a film: Instead of watching the movie quietly and understanding the plot, they will ask a million questions. “Do you think he is going to get eaten?” she will ask. “Do you think it will be alright in the end?”; “Oh God! Something horrible is going to happen now. What will they do now?” The only suitable answer for all these annoying questions is that you are not psychic and if she watches the movie quietly she will get all the answers to her questions.

9. The Cleanliness Talk: "A place for everything and everything in its place," she says. Well, that's a nice idea, but who has the time? It's far more fun to throw our clothes here and there as if a bomb went off in the closet.


10. Does my behind look too fat in these red shoes?: She will hover over something for eternity: This dress or that? Red shoes or blue? Men don’t have the patience to wait until she matches every piece of that outfit and just when it seems to be coming together they change their mind and start all over again.

LOL there are many others as well :p tons you can say . :D

Source


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Thursday, October 3, 2013

NFL Draft 2013: Geno Smith, Roger Goodell, Suits, And Mr. Irrelevant Among Things To Watch

Nfl Draft A detail of the video board and stage during the 2012 NFL Draft at Radio City Music Hall on April 26, 2012 in New York City.

NEW YORK -- Since 1936, the NFL has picked the best of college football to join the pro league. From the very first pick – Jay Berwanger, who also was the first bust, never playing a down in the NFL – to last year's No. 1, Andrew Luck, the draft has always offered plenty of intrigue for teams and fans.

Here are 10 things to watch for during the three-day NFL draft beginning Thursday night:

Get Alerts

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Saturday, September 7, 2013

5 Things You Can Do To Double Your Blog Traffic in 2013

There are a good number of blogging tips blogs online today, but only a handful of them get noticed or generate a significant amount of blog traffic and readership. Not every blog goes on to become another “Basic Blog Tips” or “ProBlogger”.

Double Your Traffic in 2013Even though many bloggers find they can earn a fair amount of money, for most of us we can’t make as much as the big A-list bloggers. Moreover to create a big authority blog, you need to do a lot of hard work. When I say a lot of work, I mean writing quality content, driving a great deal of blog traffic, building high quality links and making connections with other bloggers in your niche.

The most important task among these – is generating and endless stream of quality, targeted traffic to your blog.

In this post I am going to share 5 simple strategies that you can use to double your blog traffic in 2013.

As most of you already know about the newest Google+ feature – Communities. By posting informative articles to the communities, you can double your website traffic.

If you really want to get a lot of brand and traffic exposure, you need to post your content inside the appropriate Google+ Community. And don’t just share links from your own site, but also comment on and share other people’s content.

By engaging in the right Google+ community, you would be able to make the connections with other members and thus get traffic to your blog.

Here is a screenshot of my stats from Google Analytics. You can see that I got a nice spike in my blog traffic rankings when I finally started using the Google communities+.

google+ blog traffic increase Screenshot of traffic spike from Google+

Head over to Google+ and enter your keywords in the search box, then refine your search by clicking “Communities”. Check out a few of the top results until you find the ones that are active and engaging. I think it’s worth a try.

Link outreach is hard, you send 100+ emails and end up getting just a few links.

No not always the case, last month I sent an email to 10 blogging friends who are well-known in my niche for sharing successful blogging tips, and almost everyone replied. I even ended up getting two guest posts – SEO for WordPress – What Every Blogger Should Know and 5 Powerful WordPress Plugins to Help Prevent Content Theft from Matthew Barby and Adam Connell, respectively.

Few things to consider:

Write more long form content. You need to have quality content (at least 800+ words) before you even do link outreach.Engage with those on social media sites. Before sending an email pitch, you should connect with those people before hand.

Ever since I started focusing on writing quality content, my traffic has been doubled. Though, those types of blog posts take a lot of time but the benefits are endless. Over time I have learned that this is one of the best tips for good blogging.

Be it a guest post or content on your site, focus on Quality. In the past few years, the search algorithm has been improved a lot. Now, if a competitor has tens of thousands of links and you merely have a few hundred, you can still outrank them if your quality is better. When your content is valuable, you begin to earn the trust of your readers and the search engines. The readers will come back for more and the search engines will continue to send you more blog traffic.

If your site growth is organic and has original content, than it’s just a matter of time before you start getting 1000+ visitors every day.

Wouldn’t you love if you get 100+ retweets as soon as you hit the publish button? Yes, there’s a site that lets you get more retweets simply by joining or forming a tribe in your niche.

This is one of those sites which you could use to increase the social signals & get more traffic.

These days, search engines are using social signals to measure the site quality & authority. By joining sites like Triberr, you could easily boost your rankings.

If you’re already using Triberr, than you should definitely try out Viral Content Buzz & JustRetweet.

By social blogging sites, I mean the niche bookmarking sites. This is the easiest way to increase your blog traffic. It takes few minutes everyday, all you have to do is submit your content and engage with the community.

This is where you need to have a presence -

Inbound: The most engaging community for Inbound MarketersBlokube: Established and invite only community for bloggers and internet marketersBlogEngage: The most active community!

BONUS VIDEO: Discover how to create blog traffic and get a handy checklist in the video The Blog Promotion Manifesto

Know of any more social bookmarking or community site which I didn’t included? Please let us know in the comments below.

These sites can bring very targeted & quality traffic to your blog. If you have a great post shared and it makes it to a home page, you will have your blog flooded with traffic.

Tagged as: Blog promotion, blog traffic, blogging tips


View the original article here

Monday, June 24, 2013

Three Things To Watch In Nashville

Over the weekend, news reports from Nashville indicate a deal between the Nashville Symphony Orchestra (NSO) and Bank of America (BoA) may be announced as early as today. Multiple sources claim long time NSO supporter Martha Ingram maybe the new variable in the equation, nonetheless, here are three things crucial to the NSO’s potential success you need to keep an eye on.

ADAPTISTRATION-GUY-126Making the decision to address financial problems by focusing on settling bank debt before engaging in labor negotiations is a bold strategic move that distinguishes the NSO from peers such as Atlanta, Detroit, Indianapolis, Minnesota, Philadelphia, and St. Paul.

The latter groups all made national headlines by engaging in public and bitter disputes with musician employees over instituting severe austerity measures. One key theme among many of those employers was the need to achieve a sharply concessionary agreement as a prerequisite for settling outstanding debt.

The result for most of these orchestras was a prolonged work stoppage, degraded artistic accomplishment, and embittered work environments. The NSO board is bucking national trends by playing a firm public hand with banks rather than using that debt as negotiation leverage.

On 6/20/2013 the NSO and its musicians issued press statements indicating both sides have agreed to a media blackout while negotiations are under way. This is likely the best decision as it allows both sides to engage in bargaining without undue influence from outside sources.

At the same time, this negotiation is just as crucial to the organization’s immediate future as settling the bank debt. If either employer or employees lose sight of using the negotiations to develop a unified institutional vision and instead engage in traditional brinkmanship, any bank deal could be for naught.

If the NSO managed to accomplish #1 and #2 then the final step is making everything work; meaning, the administration will have more pressure than ever to reach earned revenue and attendance goals, the board will need to step up accomplishments in contributed revenue, and artistic employees will need to amplify commitment and effectiveness.

The NSO will need to bring all of these efforts together using fewer resources while simultaneously remaining relevant to their community all without sacrificing hard fought artistic gains since the Schermerhorn Symphony Center opened. Unsurprisingly, it won’t be an easy path, but it is far from impossible for any institution unified behind a vision with shared risk and mutual goals.

The NSO is in a very unique position right now in that they could emerge from these trials as a representative example that poisoned labor relations and artistic decline hidden behind press statements that project faux accomplishments aren’t the predetermined outcomes of financial distress.

Ultimately, the NSO board and musicians will need to be particularly mindful to keep antagonistic, fringe elements from becoming the dominant voices in the upcoming discussions. Tact, transparency, and yes, even mutual deference are necessary qualities in order to emerge as the field’s leading example for how to manage great recession era challenges without simultaneously hobbling the institution.

For more on my views on the NSO situation as related to the issues above, check out an article by John Pitcher in the 6/20/2013 of the Nashville Scene, this article by Jamie McGee in the 6/10/13 edition of the Nashville Business Journal, and this article by Travis Loller in the 3/29/2013 Associated Press."I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house. I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why. In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu. For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, and love a good coffee drink.

View the original article here

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Galaxy S4 Features: All The New Things That Samsung's Latest Smartphone Can Do

Galaxy S4 Features The Galaxy S4 (left) has picked up some new tricks that the Galaxy S3 (right) just can't do. Here's all (or most!) of them. (HuffPost/Jason Gilbert)

Samsung's Galaxy S4 boasts a bigger screen, better camera and faster processor than its predecessor Galaxy S phones; it also ships with a whole bunch of new features, too many to list in our primary wrap-up about the S4 launch (with photos here), which happened Thursday evening in New York. Here is your unabridged and alphabetized version of every new feature -- or, at least, the really important ones -- you'll get with Samsung's latest volley in the smartphone wars:

Air Gestures: Refers to hand movements made above the phone's display, without coming into contact with the display, that controls the phone. Common gestures include waving your hand over the display to skip a track or waving left and right to switch between open web pages in the browser. These gestures only work with specific Samsung apps.

Air View: Like the stylus on the Galaxy Note 2, you can hover over the display with your finger to view information about certain pieces of content. For example, hovering your finger over an email shows you a longer preview without opening the message; hovering your finger over a date on the calendar shows you a quick view of what to expect on that day.

Drama Shot: Camera feature that shoots 12 photos at once and shows you a time-lapse of all the action in those photos combined into one picture.

Dual Camera: Activates both the rear camera and the front camera, so that the photographer can superimpose himself or herself into the subject of the photo. Samsung gave as an example someone watching football superimposing himself or herself into the game.

Dual Video Call: While video-chatting with someone, you can show them both your face and the view from your rear camera while you chat.

Group Play: Allows multiple Galaxy S4 owners in close proximity to join a private network in which they can, among other things, play a game.

S Health: New app that acts as a fitness tracker and food diary. The Galaxy S4 has a built-in pedometer to count your steps, and you can take photos of your meals each day to keep count of your calories and eating habits. Samsung will also sell a fitness bracelet, a digital scale and fitness belt to measure blood pressure, pulse, glucose levels and weight for those interested.

S Translator: An app in which you can input any of 10 languages and receive a translation, either spoken or in text. Also works to translate text on your email, text messages and a few other Samsung apps.

S Voice Drive: New hands-free function for drivers that allows the driver to operate the phone with his or her voice.

Samsung Adapt Display: The Galaxy S4 "learns" what you are viewing and adjusts the display's brightness accordingly. If the phone senses you are reading an article, for example, it will illuminate from a more muted brightness.

Samsung Adapt Sound: Similar to Adapt Display, your audio can adapt to the content you're listening to (video, music, etc.) and optimize itself to that content.

Samsung Optical Reader: Camera feature that can snap a photo of a business card and import that information into a new contact in your phonebook. Was not working as of demo time, but Samsung reps assured me it would be fixed by the time it shipped to consumers.

Samsung Smart Pause: When watching a video, the front camera can sense when your eyes move away from the screen and pause the video automatically if you aren't looking.

Samsung Smart Scroll: When you are reading an email or article on the web, you can scroll up and down by tilting the device up and down rather than swiping with your finger.

Samsung WatchON: A built-in IR sensor lets you control your television set with your smartphone. Comes with a standard remote and a program guide depending on your cable provider. Can also control certain cable boxes and DVD players.

Share Music: When linked with Group Play, multiple Galaxy S4s can work as surround sound speakers, all playing the same song at once.

Sound & Shot: Allows you to record up to nine seconds of audio at the time of taking each photo.

Story Album: Templates that allow you to create a digital photo journal or scrapbook from a certain event. You can also then order and print out that story album for a fee.

*

Phew! So, what do you think? Do any of these jump out at you, or are all of these destined to be unused features for Galaxy S4 owners? Fight it out in the comments below. (And, in case you were wondering: A Samsung spokeswoman told me that some of these features *might* be made available to older Galaxy S phones but declined to name which features, or when).


View the original article here

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Krystian Zimerman Will Have Bigger Things To Worry About

Last week’s post about the uproar surrounding pianist Krystian Zimerman’s decision to cut a recital short because he spotted a patron allegedly recording the performance with a Smartphone generated some terrific feedback from readers. In particular, readers focused on issues surrounding copyright infringement and patron interaction.

First up, was a comment from reader Rochelle Skolnick who observed that the coverage surrounding the topic was missing copyright related points.

I admit that I have not followed the coverage of this issue very closely but what strikes me about the coverage I have seen is that it does not seem to acknowledge that copyright laws play a central role. We have gotten used to the idea that illegal downloads of music and film from file-sharing sites are just that–illegal. But it is also true that anyone who records a performance without the permission of the performer is simply stealing intellectual property. Such a recording also implicates the rights of the entity (usually composer or publisher) that holds copyright in the music that is being performed. While they may only be complying with artist contracts requiring them to do so (although I suspect their conduct may also have something to do with complying with the terms of the blanket licenses they purchase from ASCAP, BMI and/or SESAC), those venues that strictly enforce bans on recording by patrons are also discouraging the violation of copyright laws within their precincts.

Next was a comment from reader Terence Hines who asserted patrons using Smartphones for any reason during a concert were distracting to other patrons.

This isn’t just a question of respect for the law, the artist, and the venue. What about audience members who just want to sit there and listen to the music without being distracted by some bozo with a smartphone? This ain’t a nightclub, folks. Turn off your frigging phone.

Both comments bring up valid points but they also confine the parameters of the discussion to predominant technology. But what happens when Google Glass (and what will almost certainly be a flood of copy-cat products) hits the market in force?

GGsIf you aren’t already familiar with Google Glass, it is basically a wearable computer with a head mounted display. It currently functions very much like a smartphone in that it can record photos, video, and sound that can be synced with a user’s cloud based account but it is worn like a pair of eyeglasses and can be controlled via a variety of verbal and tactile interfaces.

It is all but certain that live streaming of an event from something like a Google Glass device is going to be commonplace by the end of the decade.

Sure, they look kind of dorky right now, even when integrated into the cast of MadMen, but it won’t take long for the design to evolve and for those of us who wear prescription eyeglasses already, they will likely be embedded into those existing designs where you probably won’t even be able to notice who is and isn’t wearing an internet ready pair of glasses capable of recording media.

Consequently, issues of disturbing fellow patrons are all but eliminated and when it comes to copyrights and intellectual property…well…it certainly doesn’t make the issue less complicated.

Then again, perhaps Krystian Zimerman wouldn’t have even noticed the girl who was allegedly using her smartphone during his recital and would have made it all the way through in blissful ignorance. Then again, maybe not.

Postscript: if you think that folks aren’t already hashing out issues of copyright and intellectual property vis-a-vis Google Glass, think again.

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house. I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why. In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu. For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, and love a good coffee drink.

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Saturday, May 25, 2013

3 Things that all Affiliate Marketers Need to Survive Online

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Tuesday, March 12, 2013

10 Things Your Office Doesn't Want You To Know

How many ways are desk chairs and co-workers bad for your health?

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Friday, January 18, 2013

How To Overshare: 7 Things We Forget We Do Daily On Social Media

Let's own up to it: Social media is an addictive part of our everyday lives. In fact, habits like flipping through Facebook or Instagram have become almost second nature -- 40 percent of Americans even admit to checking their smartphones while on the toilet. The problem with living simultaneously in both the digital world and reality? Sometimes we end up sharing way more than we realize.

Automatic sharing features on some social networking sites (ahem, Facebook) let you publicize your activities without having to hit a "share" button. It can be pretty convenient, until the day comes when you forget you've elected to use these particular features.

We've gathered together a list of pointers in the slideshow below, highlighting the information you may inadvertently give away on the Internet every day. Whether it's unknowingly tagging yourself in specific locations, or embarrassingly stalking your crush on LinkedIn.

Have you ever accidentally shared information on the web? Sound off in the comments section below, or Tweet us @HuffPostTech. Then, read more about the 9 ways you can get kicked off Facebook, or flip through 15 annoying tweets we never want to see again.

Without further ado, here are the 7 things we forget we're doing online each day:

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FourSquare was designed to show the world your location -- but sometimes photo-sharing app Instagram inadvertently gives us away. In fact, we're so accustomed to snapping "artsy" pics of puppies and salads that it's possible we're unintentionally sharing our whereabouts, particularly if the photos aren't categorized as "private." So if you call out of work sick, make sure you don't accidentally post a picture of yourself relaxing at the local beach. Or, to minimize unwanted attention, go to your Instagram "Options" page and select the "Photos Are Private" button.

For many years, we were able to read Facebook messages at our leisure -- and then promptly ignore them. Now, after a Facebook update this summer, users can see when someone has read a chat or message they've sent. So if you want to avoid the awkward realization you've ignored someone, type a message back, don't open the message to begin with, or use this Chat Undected extension to regain your excuse for not responding.

OkCupid and LinkedIn are used for notably different purposes, but these social networking sites share a (potentially embarrassing) feature. Both platforms show who has viewed your profile and when you're checking out someone else's, making "cyber stalking" a not-so-anonymous act. In order to privately dig into another person's information, both websites offer memberships, which will cost you a few extra bucks a month. But then, of course, you'll be able to check out as many profiles as you want, without ever being detected. Creepy? No, we find it more... practical.

Everyday we might read a few news articles online, "Like" a slew of photos on Instagram or listen to a couple tunes via Spotify. All of the above activities now have "frictionless Facebook apps," or apps that automatically post activities to your Facebook profile without the use of a manual "share" button. Every app has different preferences, so be sure to read the details of what you're allowing Facebook to publish. We know for a fact that nothing is worse than accidentally publishing a video titled "ToPLeSs CHiCkS" to your profile, or telling the world that you read a heinously embarrassing "news" article about some celeb's sideboob.

Sometimes we want people to know our location. But have you ever forgotten to turn off Twitter's geo-tweeting feature, which specifies your exact location, only to find you've been leaving a digital footprint for all the world to see? Be weary of oversharing information. Twitter is an open website, so anyone can Google your name to find your Twitter handle. If you want to limit who can see your profile, go to Twitter's "Settings" page and check the "Protect my Tweets" box, or turn the location feature off (seen in the image to the left).

Occasionally, companies will offer customers rewards for "Liking" their brand on Facebook. You might be a sucker for incentives, but don't forget -- once you "Like" an organization's Page, you'll receive corporate updates that have the potential to litter your News Feed. So "Like" accordingly!

When was the last time you checked you're "Other" Messages on Facebook? This hidden folder displayed in the top left corner of the Messages screen holds posts from people you're not connected with on Facebook. But who remember to look there? Not us... The same rings true for Direct Messages on Twitter, or InMail on LinkedIn. While these modes of communication can be awesome resources... sometimes we forget they exist.

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