Posted on : 31-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Delusions
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Its slowly sneaking up on me. That most hated of days. No, Valentines day has long come and gone, I’m talking about April 15th. Tax Day. The day that Uncle Sam comes and pillages the rest of my networth for what he didn’t get through out the year. Despite having the best intentions, I never manage to get my taxes done early. Maybe its because I don’t want to (as they are no fun at all to do) or maybe its because I’m afraid of the price tag that Uncle Sam is going to tack on in addition to what I have already dished out. Whatever it is, I’m always finishing my taxes the week or so before they’re due (which I know is nothing compared to those who rush to the Post Office at 11:45pm on April 15th).
Maybe its just me, but the money I send to the Government every payperiod could be better spent on refinishing my wood flooring or paying off the car or the credit cards (yes, Dave Ramsey, I still have credit card debt, though I aspire to be abnormal like you). Maybe its because I find numbers boring and would rather spend the time playing with my kids or maybe its because I would rather watch paint dry and grass (the lawn, not weed) grow then sit down and cry over how much the government thinks I made as opposed to how much I really made (have you ever compared the two numbers??)
Thats why, once again, I want to bring your attention to the FAIRTAX. Lets do away with the income tax (which doesn’t fairly tax anyone except those living on government handouts) and lets institute the FairTax. Add a national sales tax to items we buy daily (like clothes, toothpaste, yatchs, cars, bikes, weed, etc.). That way, everyone (you, me, the drug dealer down the street who doesn’t pay income taxes) ends up paying the taxes. Hell, the illegal immigrants alone could help cut the deficit in half just through their purchasing (most of which is done with cash they earned through cash transactions for labor and wasn’t taxed in the first place!).
The fairtax works on so many levels its absurd at this point and the only way its going to come about is if we the people finally stand up and demand some change. Visit FAIRTAX.org for more information and learn how you can demand that your money is your money.
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Posted on : 28-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Delusions
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If you’re a neanderthal like me, you might have missed Earth Hour tonight. At 8:30pm local time, people all across the world were either sitting in the dark in the belief that Global Warming is actually something real or (like me) going about their business, blissfully ignorant of the damage they were (and most likely are) doing to the environment. While I think that the idea that we should all do our part to take care of the earth is a good thing and I really do, I think the Global Warming alarmists and extreme environmentalists are on the wrong tack.
In stead of asking people to turn off their lights for one hour (during which they could have actually been doing something productive) why not ask people to give up their fine Sferra linens for ones produced from all organic materials or how about pushing the carpool or teleworking movement even further. Heck, instead of turning off the lights for an hour (the effects of which are dreadfully minimal) why not try recycling, reducing or reusing? The three R’s that everyone should be doing anyways (Right Jack Johnson?)
The fact that so many people have bought in to Global Warming is what should be alarming. Yes, we, as humans have an impact on the Earth and its atmosphere. However, the Earth goes through periods of warming and cooling and scientific data currently shows that we are in a cooling period. Maybe we should have left the lights on instead?
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Posted on : 27-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Delusions
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Sometimes when it rains, it really, really pours. I don’t know if its the weather, the fact that we have a third bundle of joy due in a little under 7 weeks or just stress with the current situation of, um, everything, but it seems that this past week was just a rather long, tiring week. Don’t get me wrong things started out ok. I was able to get everyone working on the new email system ok. The two new copiers are in and working properly and the house is still somewhat clean, but that’s about where the fun ends.
As far as work goes, I hope this is the worst week for a while. It started ok, and it seems to be ending on a rainy note, its what happened in between that’s the kicker. I attempted to upgrade three laptops with some more computer memory. The plan was to take them to 2gb of memory. I had my CDW rep (who is usually on the ball) come up with the memory (I told him the make and models of the laptops) and he got the ram ordered. Well, so far, one of the laptops can’t use the ram, one could only go up to 1gb and the third I haven’t had a chance to get my hands on yet to see.
On top of that, the day the copiers were delivered, I was also trying to get the last sales rep moved over to the new email provider, our new director of finance was having issues with the corporate accounting software he needs to report to Sweeden and another of our servers came down with the Windows XP Antivirus Virus (I know, its absurd right?). So we’re still working on cleaning that mess up as well.
One thing has gone right though this week, the new email provider is rather good and *EVERYONE* is happier with email now.
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Posted on : 26-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Twitter
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It seems like everyother post I’ve done lately is about twitter. Well, thats because the world is atwitter with twitter. New stations (CNN, FOX, Local News), televisions shows (ET) and others are bringing up twitter or commenting about their twitter posts. I’ve been on twitter more and more lately (SocialScope is one of my most used apps on the Blackberry) and I find its fun to read what others are doing daily. Most recently, I posted about WeFollow.com. Well, this post is a suggestion of 10 People that I’m currently following that you should follow as well. So here goes:
- Zappos CEO Tony If you haven’t ordered from Zappos (and why haven’t you?) you haven’t experienced the MOST AWESOME ONLINE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE EVER. From the service, to the items, Zappos is awesome and Zappos CEO Tony updates twitter regularly. One of my favorite twits of his was when he asked for ideas about helping the economy recover prior to a meeting at the Whitehouse. How cool?
- WilliamShatner Yes. The Denny Crane is on twitter. He mostly pimps his web show, but he also tweets with regularity. Plus, its Denny Crane.
- MattCutts is the head of the webspam team at google. For some really good insight and a little heads up on whats going on at the big G, Matt is a good person to follow.
- NewtGingrich One time Speaker of the House, Gingrich is a noted author, history teacher and conservative voice in today’s political landscape. He’s currently helping to push the FairTax and several other programs which would help the country get back to more conservative roots.
- PFTompkins Paul F. Tompkins is a comedian. At least, he claims to be one. He host’s the “Best Week Ever” Friday nights on VH1 and most of his tweets are between him and @hodgman but they’re still very entertaining.
- Mashable Anyone who has ever visited the Mashable site knows how valuable the information there can be. Well, now you can get it via twitter. Never miss a Mashable post again. EVER.
- RainnWilson Yes, Dwight is on Twitter. Perhaps one of the funniest people on Twitter (even more than Chris Walken) Rainn’s humor is out there.
- Politifact is the TruthMeter site setup by the St. pete Times and it does a pretty good job of checking political fact from fiction and (in rare form these days) is pretty unbiased.
- Wil Wheaton Whether or not you liked him on StarTrek TNG, or in Stand By Me, his tweets are pretty entertaining. Plus, he’s written a number of blog posts and books and has some pretty cool things to say. You also get instant geek points for being a follower (double on days he mentions D&D)
- Guy Kawasaki Founder of AllTop among other tech things, he’s on top of the news and always posts some pretty interesting reads. One of the first “famous” people I began following on Twitter, I’ve read plenty of new stories recommended by Guy.
So those are 10 twits I recommend, You can of course Follow Me for a look at my mundane life. If you have anyone on twitter you’d recommend, let me know, I’m always looking for more people to follow.
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Posted on : 25-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Amie Street
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Holy Crap, its time for another Amie Street Music Wednesday. Sorry for falling asleep at the wheel.
I discovered this week’s artist through an email Amie Street was kind enough to send me. Samantha Shelton’s laid back vibe is one I like listening too. Reminds me of some of older classics that I like. Blue Girl has a kind of loungy sound to it that makes it a fun listen and one that demonstrates Shelton’s vocal range pretty well. Give it a listen and let me know what you think of it.
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Posted on : 20-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Delusions
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Between Tweepular (can’t talk about it yet), TweetDeck and SocialScope I’ve been spending a lot of time playing with twitter. One of the cool facets of the MicroBlogging is that normal people (like Gruntled) can catch glimpses into the psyche of celebrities like Ryan Seacrest. One of the downsides is that people think it also makes a good way to inform the world of their penchant for sparkly engagement rings.
Luckily, there is now a way to find people to follow in the categories you want (for instance I’d like to follow people who post about Blackberries, Linux, or the Fairtax, but not American Idol or Biggest Looser). Wefollow.com makes that painless. Simply tweet to wefollow with the hash’s you like and viola, you’re added to the list. Its pretty cool. For example a tweet of “@wefollow #cookies #pot #crack” would add you to the list of people who like cookies, pot and crack. Anyone looking for people to follow who like pot would then go to the pot category on wefollow.com and have their pick of twitterabusers to follow. Its a cool idea.
Here are a couple of Celebrities gleaned from the wefollow site:
- Kevin Pollak – His turn in “The Whole NIne Yards” was hilarious. “The Whole Ten Yards” not so much.
- Kevin Smith – Yes, of Clerks, Mallrats and Dogma.
- SnoopDogg – I didn’t even know he knew how to twitter, but I bet he’s also listed under #pot
- ColdPlay – The band. Not something Canucks do in the winter
- Trent Reznor – Yes. That Trent Reznor
There are plenty more on there too. Take a gander and tell me who you find worth following.
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Posted on : 18-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Amie Street
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In college a good deal of my time was spent writing term papers and essays at 4am on the day they were do. I was hyped up on Mt. Dew and CRANKING the Rusted Root as loud as it could go. This was when they had a very upbeat bohemian vibe to their music. Looking back, its amazing I passed the history classes I did with the grades I did. Its also a good thing that my roommates spent most nights out partying or in Athens with his girlfriend (thanks Toff).
Rusted Root is back with a hot album on Amie Street and the feeling is a little more low key then it was back then, but the music is just as good. Take for instance, this track called Give Grace.
Starts out with a sweet riff on the guitar and then is joined by the rest of the band. The melody and words are nice and simple. “Whatever it is you want, I don’t care about that”. Its a good song about taking chances and being willing to fall (at least thats what I gleaned from the lyrics). I highly recommend this song (indeed the whole album rocks!).
Welcome back Rusted Root. Its been too long.
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Posted on : 12-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Delusions
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II actually. I was out browsing the intarweb this morning as I happen to do cause I’m good like that, and I came across a Post @ Cromely’s World (which is a good source of world view from Seattle) on an online flash game I never heard of before: Pandemic II. I had played Desktop Tower Defense before, but this posed a new challenge. According to the site: “Customize your disease and wipe out the population!”
Thats pretty much all there is to the game but its a fun, unnerving challenge. They have a tutorial in the game itself, but I just jumped right in first thing this morning. It isn’t like getting a life insurance quote, there’s little to know other then where the reset button is right? But once I started playing, I was on a quest to wipe out the world with my imaginary virus named Emma (after my youngest).
It takes a little figuring out what to go after first. Do I work on the transmission routes, or its resistance to heat, cold, water or drugs, or do I make it evolve in to something that will blind you and cause you to hemorrhage? It really is a strategy game. The game itself is different every time I play it (no matter how I play it) and it offers three version, Virus, Bacteria and Parasite. Parasite being by far the hardest one to play. I will admit, there is a little bit of glee deep inside whenever I see that a country has been declared dead…
If you’re looking for a good waste of time, seriously check out Pandemic II and let me know what you think.
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Posted on : 11-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Amie Street
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If you were a purveyor of this site previously (early last year?) you would have noticed my weekly postings on wednesday’s for Amie Street Music Wednesdays. Well, they made some changes to the player at Amie Street, so the old plugin wasn’t working and I wasn’t able to post. Until now.
The Code has been updated and is now easier to add the player to your site.
In honor of that, here’s Skeleton Boy from Friendly Fires. Have a listen and enjoy.
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Posted on : 10-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Delusions
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Somehow I missed it. 26 (27) posts ago I hit the 1,000 post mark on this blog. That’s quite a lot. If you look back at some of them, its pretty hard to see why I’m even bothering. Actually, if you look back at most of them, its pretty hard. Anyways here are a couple of posts that helped me earn my membership card in the 1k club.
- Starting Over – I moved hosts and with the move, I decided to start the blog fresh. This was the first post, from 1/31/2007.
- My e62 – Long before I rocked the Blackberry, I had a nokia e62. I hacked that sucker up too. It survived a trip on a barge and a summer doing fireworks. Good phone. 2/2/2007.
- White Chicks and Gang Signs – I came across this video and I absolutely loved it. Enough to blog about it. Watching it today, its easy to see why it warranted a post. 3/9/2007
- When Tech Support Isn’t – This post relates the story of how the support for the webhost wasn’t able to get the server running correctly, but I was. Really good story of how AWESOME I am.
- 4th of July To Forget – The tale of a 3 hour cruise. Well, it was a little longer than that, but here’s what my Fireworks crew went through one 4th of July. 7/10/2007
Ok, thats 5, I’ll post five more next week.
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Posted on : 09-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Delusions
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We’ve got three dogs. Two of them have been with Amy and I for almost 10 years now. Lucy was our first, she’s a bitchy little beagle with a crooked tail who (despite what Amy thinks) is a daddy’s girl, then we got Linus (pictured with Grace) a couple of months later. If you haven’t picked up the Peanuts Reference of Lucy and Linus, I’m not going to explain it. We got Lumiere (I was out voted, I wanted to call him sparky) a Sheltie, two years ago. Everyone in the family has their favorite (except amy, who despite being the one who wanted each of them to begin with, would be fine with out any of them). Last night and this morning it was plain to see just how attached Grace was to Linus.
Linus is a wanderer. If he escapes from the house or fenced back yard, its not uncommon for him to go missing for two or three hours. So, when he escaped yesterday when one of the little people let him out of the house, we weren’t too worried. We’d go to church and he’d be sitting on the front porch when we got home. Or so we thought.
We got home from church and dinner around 8:00pm. No sign of the prodigal dog. No worries, I’d go food shopping and he’d be home when we got back because he wouldn’t want to miss dinner. Right? Wrong. Still no linus at 9:30. So, after bathing the girls, I went out at about 10pm and drove some of the local roads and surrounding neighborhoods. No sign of the dog.
We finally called it a night around midnight and I left the light on for him. I was up a couple of times in the middle of the night and went down to check the front stoop. Still no dog. No dog when I left for work this morning either, but no signs of a squashed beagle on the road, so there was still hope. Amy searched the neighborhood on her way to work and saw the same nothingness I had earlier.
About 11:30a Amy messaged me. She had gotten a call from our vet, and Linus was at the Local Petsmart. A family had found him last night about half a mile from our house and taken him in for the night. Apparently, they loved on him something fierce. In the morning they took him to the petsmart and called several of the local vets. One just happened to be ours. Shilo Vet has exactly ONE beagle in their system named Linus. They called Amy to see if we had misplaced a dog and we had.
So I got to go pick the prodigal dog up from the vet at petsmart and we’ve now made it a hard and fast rule that Little People are not allowed to open gates or doors with out permission.
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Posted on : 09-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Delusions
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If you’ve been living under a rock lately (the past month) you might have missed the fact that The Pirate Bay has been on trial in Sweden for Copy Right infringement. The Pirate Bay trial brings up some interesting questions, but perhaps the one thats most important to my is whether or not a Bittorrent Tracker should be responsible for the content that is being tracked.
For instance, I run Linuxtracker.org one of the largest Linux Torrent Trackers on line. We do not host any distributions. We do not provide the actual iso’s or zip files for download from our server, we merely host the torrent files that allow people to connect to one another for sharing and downloading the files. Another interesting thing is that Recording Industry Associations across europe are beginning to pressure ISP (Internet Service Providers) in to blocking the Bittorrent protocol and other file sharing protocols on their networks.
This could be a bad thing for Linuxtracker and other Legitimate torrent sites like the The Norwegian State TV which is launching their own tracker to serve up their shows (which is a really cool move). I haven’t run across anyone completely blocking the torrent protocol yet, but if I do, I’ll be sure to post it.
I’m curious though, how many people are grabbing their shows/music/movies/apps via torrent as opposed to watching them in Hulu, the channel’s site or buying them outright? I tend to grab shows, but I’ve stopped downloading movies, I have little time to watch DVD’s, let alone movies I have to wait to download and as most of the work on my computer is done on a work laptop, I tend to buy my software as well…. what about you?
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Posted on : 05-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Delusions
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I’ve talked about making money on this blog before (don’t believe me, look at some of the related posts). It seems that one of the best ways is still paid posting, though I’m doing relatively little of that these days (I haven’t logged in to SocialSpark or PayPerPost in months). I am working though, on increasing my CTR (Click Thru Rates) for the advertiser networks I run ads for. One of the coolest networks around at the moment is PepperjamNetwork
.
I’ve been running ads for PepperJam for a while (busted T’s and US Cav seem to be some of the best offers around!) and I’ve been pretty happy with the success. The affiliate center is really nice and stylish and one of the best I’ve come across (easier to navigate then CJ’s) and the advertisers they have kick ass (Jelly Belly, TotalGym, WB Shop and more). My network manager Tim is a good guy and has answered my questions fairly quickly in an industry where it seems often times emails get pushed away.
Another cool feature of the PepperJam Network is the ability to create custom shops with items from many of the PJ Network advertisers. It really is a cool setup. The only issue I currently have with the program is that there is not a way to export the ads. Its a minor issue, but one I can live with.
If you want to know more about PepperjamNetwork feel free to ask me or follow PJamNetwork or KingPepper (who is the ceo or something I believe). If you’re looking to make money thru ads on your blog or site, you can’t go wrong with PepperJam!
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Posted on : 04-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Delusions
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A couple of weeks ago Amy was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes so we’ve been making some changes in our diets. I switched our E Mealz plan to the Points System which helps a little bit (cheaper then a diet pill that works) , but the problem isn’t her blood sugar after dinner (or lunch which I have little control over) but her counts when she wakes up in the morning.
Apparently, little can be done about this outside of exercise and careful snacking before bed time. My problem is what constitutes a good snack?
Her favorites, popcorn, ice cream, chocolate, fruits, chips and salsa and other things like that aren’t always the best thing for a diabetic to be gnoshing on, but how do you control the snacks and what snacks are good? I’ve found a couple of sites with guides for snacking diabetics, but they’re things like 6 (six) vanilla wafers, 15 teddy grams and 6 grapes. Who wants to snack on 6 grapes before bed?
There has to be a good resource for diabetic snacks. What snacks do you have before bed?
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Posted on : 03-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : Delusions
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I don’t know if you heard or not, but over the weekend, the Metro Atlanta area was treated to its first (only) big snow of the year. Yep, we had about 1/2 an inch in Kennesaw while other parts (athens) saw around 9 inches. Its odd, but it always seems to happen in march (in 93, we had a blizzard come through the state which dumped feet of snow on the ground). This year, it was just enough to make a couple of nice SnowMen in the yard. Its mostly gone now (temps have been back up in the 40’s) but there’s still some icy remnants in shady areas and behind the house where the sun doesn’t get to.
It may not be a big deal to people who live in places like Colorado or Maine, but the inch of snow here was like a native New Yorker scoring New York Yankees tickets when the Red Sox are in town. Almost Unheard of.
I bring up the snow because it serves as a good reminder. Children and adults alike were gathered around the TV or Radio Sunday night and early Monday morning, praying for those magic words to scroll across the screen telling them it was ok to go back to sleep. I know because I was one of them. I wouldn’t have minded taking the day off to stay home with the Family because the roads were icy or the was still snow everywhere. Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be as the warmer, dryer air moved in and started melting the snow family we had so carefully crafted the day before.
Its nice though, having a reason to be a kid again isn’t it? And if you have any doubts, you should have seen the facebook statuses and twitter tweets on Sunday (and even some on Monday) as a multitude of people went frolicking in the snow.
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Posted on : 03-03-2009 | By : mcangeli | In : wp plugins
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I was reading around the web today looking for ways to make the blog better and I stumbled on a post over at sitepoint about 10 must have Wordpress Plugins. Surprisingly, I’m already running most of the ones listed, but I thought it was time for me to make another list of my favorite plugins and the reasons I like them. So here goes:
- Comment Timeout 2.0.1 – One of the worst things on a blog is comment spam (you know those “I read your post and it is good” comments that get left by ‘Super Duper Webhosting Wow’). Akismet helps keep down a good bit of that, but the comment timeout plugin gets the rest by doing something Wordpress *should* do automatically. After a set time period (one month, one week, days) the comments close. It gets extended a bit every time someone comments in order to keep the discussion alive. It works rather well and has reduced my time editing spam to almost nil.
- CommentLuv – One of the best ways to help out people who leave comments on your site. It crawls their site and if possible, grabs the latest post (though newer versions of the plugin also have the ability to allow the person to choose one of the last five posts) and links back to it. Giving both you and the poster some deep link luv. Its developed in to a kind of movement and has its own site and program to go along with it. If you want to see it in action, leave a comment here…
- Google Site Maps – The big G loves to crawl your site. Providing them with a map makes it easier, and the google site maps plugin makes it mindless. Add the plugin, set the parameters and its done. No more worries and you have a good site map for the robots to find.
- LinkCurl – LinkCurl takes the tags (or categories) you add to your post and grabs a handful related links and appends them to your post. It takes a little longer to post the post due to it crawling the web, but it helps add links to your site (and the little boost from return traffic is swell). I’ve edited the code a bit to make it work a little better. If you’d like my copy, let me know and I’ll send it to you (or post it here).
- Quoter – Allows commenters to quote other comments. That way, if there’s something Gruntled said that you don’t like you can make sure to comment on his comment. Comment.
- Related Posts – If your readers liked the post they read, maybe they’d like this other one? This plugin recommends other posts for your readers to read. After all, its all about getting them to stay on your site right?
- Subscribe to Comments – Does what it says it does. It allows your readers to subscribe to the comments when they comment. Automatically emailing them if anyone else comments, that way they can follow the discussion.
- Top Friends – Top Friends allows you to list your friends in a block on the side and post a link to their most recent post. This is cool as it gives some updating love to your friends or blogs you like. Also shows the frequency of their updates.
- Wordpress Mobile – In this day and age, there is no reason not to have a mobile enabled site. I pull my site up on my Blackberry all the time (as though someone else is going to update it) and I hate it when other sites aren’t enabled for mobile devices. You’d think that in the age of the iPhone and the Blackberry that everyone would be. Well, now with Wordpress Mobile, its as easy as activate. Check it out, you’ll be glad you did. If you use it, let me know, I’d love to see your site on my phone!
- All in One SEO Pack – This provides Out-of-the-box SEO for your Wordpress blog. You can control the keywords, description and more from the simple to use admin interface with this plugin. Now you have NO REASON not to be SEO approved!
All of these plugins are in use here on the site and they are in no way all that I have. If you have a favorite plugin, let me know what it is, I’d love to check it out. Also, most of these can be installed directly via the plugin manager in WP these days…
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