Yovav (Jay) Meydad's Personal Blog

Several readers and friends have asked me for tips and suggestions on how they can improve their blog or how to start  a blog. I thought it would make sense to list what powers this blog.

• Hosting service – I host this domain on BlueHost.com were I get much more that what I used to get from my previous crappy provider. I get more space (disk space, # of domains, email accounts etc), better tools, good CS support and a good price.

• Blogging platform - I use WordPress.org (self hosted). In my opinion this open source blogging platform is the best. It keeps evolving, improving and it provides a large variety of themes and plug-ins which extends ever further the platform’s capabilities. I have tried using other platforms such as Typepad, Vox, Blogger and the hosted WordPress.com and none come close to the capabilities of a self hosted WordPress.org blog.

• WordPress Plug-ins - One of the great things about WordPress is the variety of themes and plug-ins. The control panel inside WordPress makes it very easy to activate/deactivate plug-ins or switch themes. Here are the ones that are currently installed:
  • SnapShots – The product I am very proud to be one of its creators, provides a better user experience and an entirely new source of ad inventory for every web site owners.
  • Akisment – eliminate blog comments spam
  • WordPress Blog stats
  • All In One SEO pack
  • iWPhone – A plug-in that automatically reformats your blog’s content for optimized viewing on Apple’s iPhone.
  • AddThis – social bookmarking & sharing made easy
  • WordPress Database backup
  • Current theme installed is ISM – this might change in the future

• Other Sidebar widgets
  • Lijit – Search tools for a blog
  • MyBlogLog
  • Feedburner for content syndication (don’t forget to offer a “Subscribe By Email” option)
  • Site Analytics done by Google Analytics, SiteMeter with help from Lijit and MyBlogLog (all services show different stats for some reason…)

• Desktop blogging application – Windows Live Writer makes blogging very easy. I wrote in the past a detailed post, followed by another one, about it.

I hope it helps those who are currently blogging or about to start blogging.

Were PDF spammers the source of inspiration to the new advertising format?

I have noticed that one of the most popular sources of traffic to my blog is actually Google Images. Not surprisingly, users all over the world are searching for a David Beckham photo and they end up looking at my attempt to be a paparazzi.

I know it has been written in every basic SEO guide but I will repeat it again for those who might have forgotten. You can always use a "professional SEO software" that will do a lot of the work for you, or you can simply remember to set ALT text and a meaningful file name for images you post. That itself will do a lot.

Today at BlogWorld, I met the product manager and the lead developer for Live Writer. Besides complementing them for creating a great desktop blogging application, I also learned that the official version for the product has just been released – welcome Windows Live Writer 2008.

I wrote in the past about this tool and how great it is. The new release makes things even better. Here are four examples for improved capabilities:

• Embedding images and video became easier and with more capabilities. For example – when pasting an embedded code from any video sharing service while working in the Web Layout mode, Live Writer immediately displays the video player instead of the html code. In the previous version you could only paste code in HTML mode
• The “New page” feature lets you create new pages. The previous version enabled only the creation of new posts
• An “Add category” feature was added (prior to that I had to do it via the WordPress admin console)
• If you add post’s “Keywords”, those would automatically map to WordPress’s tags (a ver 2.3 feature)

Basically, I have less and less need to login to WordPress admin in order to post on a regular basis. The only reason to login is to manage comments or update the site template & plug-ins.

Kudos to the Microsoft Live team for the improvements. I highly recommend installing/upgrading.

• Gmail announced the addition of IMAP support. Finally my inbox can be kept in sync when I read emails using my iPhone. This is how to set it up.
• Meebo, my favorite web based IM service, released a very cool and useful Firefox plug-in. Try it out.

A quick update to those of you who follow my work at Snap. Yesterday we released two significant improvements to our product:

• MapShot – triggered of links to maps.google.com and displays a GoogleMap for a an address, a point of interest of a location specified using lat/long. The Shot also offers a neat way to perform quick local searches. More information can be found on the Snap blog . Here are a few examples:
  • Address (130 W. Union St., Pasadena, CA)
  • Lat/Long
  • Point of Interest: Disneyland

• WikiShot – A wise man once said “a picture is worth a thousand words”. We have improved our Wikipedia crawler to search for images inside articles and display them inside the WikiShot when such are available. Detailed information can be found here. Here are a few examples:
  • Empire State Building
  • Snare Drum
  • Radiohead

Today, over 15,000 bloggers around the web participate in the Blog Action Day, and unite to put a single important issue on everyone?s mind – the environment.

I would like to use this day as an opportunity and remind everyone about CO2 Saver. It is a lightweight application that automatically adjusts computer?s power settings when the computer is idle in order to reduce electricity usage (and bills) and by that decrease CO2 omission.

CO2 Saver was released nearly 6 months ago (on April 25th 2007) and since then helped save over 429,000 lbs of emission which equals to nearly 5000 tree seedlings grown for 10 years. Very impressive!

Those of you who have not installed CO2 Saver on their desktop and/or laptop yet should do it by clicking here.

Technorati Tags: Blog Action Day, CO2 Saver, Eco-friendly, Blogesphere events

An interesting launch strategy – ask users to leave the page open in browser for hours/days in order to create a large pool of initial users with great hunger to try your new service.

As it currently looks, I think we are a day or two away from the launch of the new Hype Machine. Still, this is a great viral marketing tactic.

I am happy to announce that the experience for my readers who use iPhone or iPod Touch to read this blog has been upgraded.

I installed the iWPhone WordPress Plug-in on my blog. This plug-in automatically reformats the blog content for optimized viewing on an iPhone and iPod Touch.

Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: WordPress, iWPhone, iPhone, iPod Touch, Usability, Mobile

I was kind of surprised to see this in the middle of a working day (to be more accurate 6:05PM Pacific).

I am glad I am not a sales guy who needs another sale to reach his Q2 goals…it would be kind of hard to find now the name of a potential client.

Update: It is taking a little longer than expected.

Technorati Tags: LinkedIn