I just installed the WordPress android application, it looks like it has all the needed features for quick blogging. I am going to test it in the next couple of days and review it here.
Category: Blogging
I just installed a new theme for the blog. I am going to personalize it this week end. Hopefully I am going to restart posting more frequently.
Since I finished my university studies (But still doing my Masters) and started a new job I am finding a lot of stuff to write about so I hope you’ll enjoy my up-coming post.
A friend of mine recently started a blog about softwares. The blog is always updated with new and useful softwares organized into different categories. Every post contains a small description of the software in question and a download link. All the softwares are legal and the site doesn’t offer any pirated content.
In addition to the softwares you can also find pluggins to various programs (Firefox…) and some useful tips and tricks. Check out the site here and don’t hesitate to contact them if you have any software related question. I am sure they can help!
I receive a lot of spam daily on my blogs and most of it gets filtered by the Akismet anti spam plugin so I usually check the filter once per week to see if any clean comment was marked as spam. Two Weeks ago a comment caught my attention, the website of the writer of this comment was Lebanese so I first thought it was a wrong catch and wanted to un-spam it, but before I did so, I noticed many more similar comments also caught in the filter so I realized the comment was really a Lebanese spam message!
Since that date the Lebanese Blog Spam has been increasing, most of it gets caught by the filter but a few manage to get through it so I manually mark them as spam while moderating .
Here are some screenshots of the spam messages, the first 3 were caught in Exoleb‘s spam filter the other two made it to moderation (Haifa’s one in Exoleb, Fairuz’s one here).
In Lebanon a lot of people are connected to the internet via a semi-legal cable provider since the services provided by the Ministry of Telecommunication are very slow or very limited in bandwidth.
The cable provider are subscribed to worldwide providers mainly from Russia and Turkey so because of this a lot of time websites identify you as being Russian or Turkish and show up in the language of that country. Google does that the first time you connect to it but pressing “View Google in English” under the search button fixes the problem and remembers your choice, ImperiaOnline a multi player game I’ve been playing lately also opens in Russian every time I visit the site but unfortunately doesn’t want to remember that I press the little British flag every time I enter it. Another website that also thinks I am Russian is Blogger, it does that every time I access a blogger’s profile but doesn’t offer me any way to switch back to English so today I had the idea to go to blogger main page to see if I can select me preferred language on it.
When I accessed the page I was surprised to find out that it was in English! I tried refreshing a profile I was checking but it still showed up in Russian so I clicked on the Language selection Drop Box on the top of the main page and chose “English UK”, I refreshed the profile again and this time it showed up in English!
Last week I found out about WidgetBucks from a post by fusion and decided to start testing it yesterday in Exoleb.com.
WidgetBucks shows visitors to your site a list of products with ratings and a link to buy it from the website with the cheapest price, the ad sizes are similar to the ones offered by adsense so I replaced two of my adsense ads with WidgetBucks ones to test them for a week and see how they perform.
If you are interested by WidgetBucks you can sign up here and you’ll get a 25$ Sign up bonus.
1 Click WordPress Upgrade
I found this WordPress plugin and thought it might interest Bloggers using WordPress. The plugin allows you to upgrade WordPress to the new version in just one click, I haven’t tried it yet but probably will soon since the WordPress V 2.3 was just released.
The BBC has a nice article with a list of Iraqi Bloggers, reading the blogs on that list is really interesting, bloggers talk about how they are living in Iraq and you understand the problems they are facing a lot better.
In the list there is a blog for a guy called Nabil, he is an Iraqi who now moved to Jordan. Before moving the street he was living in was invaded by Al Qaeda!! Reading his description of life in Iraq makes you wonder how some people are still living there! In one of his posts he talks about a “funny” story that happened to him, he almost got hit by a bullet while he was playing his guitar, the “funny” thing is that the bullet entered his room the second he said: “Now I’ve been happy lately,”!! (he was recording himself so you can actually here it happen!!)
I hope Iraqis get to live in peace soon, a couple of outsiders are fighting a war in Iraq and they are the victims of it!
Yesterday I checked my blog in Internet Explorer and discovered that the sidebar isn’t loading correctly, I checked in Opera, same error.
I made a huge mistake when I started the blog, I only tried it in Firefox so when I saw the error I thought the theme is to blame so I started looking for a new one, this morning I installed a new theme but the same error occurred in IE and Opera, I noticed that the two browsers stopped loading the page at the Acer post, so I checked the post code and discovered that it’s full of unnecessary crap from Gmail! I corrected the code and now the site opens in every browser.
Every year bloggers from around the world will tackle one important issue on the same day, this year on October 15th blogs from around the world will write about environment, and the ways we can preserve it, I am going to participate in the initiative and you can to, just register and promote the day on your blog to get more people to participate.