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bbPress 1.0 Released

faryl — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:44:18 +0000

bbPress is forum software created by Automatic, the same folks who brought us WordPress. Until recently, it’s development had been relatively slow.

Seems like things are starting to move forward, based on an announcement made in the bbPress.org forum today:

Hi everyone, bbPress 1.0 is moving beyond Alpha stage and skipping Beta to go straight into a series of Release Candidates towards a final 1.0 release. The first RC is now available for download.

We’ve made this decision to push towards 1.0 final as the scope of what was going to be included in 1.0 has been whittled back and we have had some serious real world trials through TalkPress.

I’ve been playing with bbPress for the still-in-progress URLuscious.com, so plan to try out the new upgrade in the next few days and will keep you posted when I have a live version available for folks to check out.

For more on bbPress, visit the site at bbPress.org. Justin Tadlock has also recently posted the first in his series of bbPress-related tutorials on his site.

Technically Challenged People Deserve Blogs Too

faryl — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 03:27:57 +0000

I’m excited to announce my latest endeavor: URLuscious!
URLuscious is part of my master plan to demystify all things techie-geeky; helping non-techie folks incorporate the web and its social goodness into their lives.

The mission statement:

Make it easy for anyone to quickly and easily have a website or blog that looks great and is easy to maintain – regardless of your creativity, technical knowledge or experience.*

*translation: Websites so easy, even your mother can do it!

Blog-in-a-box
URLuscious’s flagship product is Blog-in-a-box, a service that includes installation, configuration, hosting and user training for a WordPress blog.

Having a blog has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I’ve talked to so many people who would like to have a blog or website of their own, but don’t have the time or technical comfort level to get one started. Others want the benefits of a self-hosted WordPress blog, but feel locked into their current system or don’t know how to make the switch.

My goal is to remove these intimidating and/or frustrating barriers so that anyone can have the rewarding experience I’ve enjoyed.

Sneak Peak and Gift Certificates

The site’s not quite ready (right now “alpha-ish” might be a better description!) – its launch will be in early April. I’m still cleaning up some broken links and adding functionality.

In the meantime, I’m offering a $25 Gift Certificate to the site in exchange for your feedback. If you’re interested, please take a moment fill out this survey after visiting the site.

I’ll be posting news about the launch and offering special “Fearless Blogger discounts” here. You can also follow @URLuscious on Twitter or enter your email below to join the mailing list:

Of course, your feedback is also welcome in the comments!

(URLuscious is powered by Apple and WordPress, and energized by equal parts Justin Timberlake, Conan O’Brien, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.)

Eat me! Personalized Fruit Roll-Ups

faryl — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 07:34:28 +0000

For those who have found fruit roll-ups to be sadly lacking in personalization options, it’s your lucky day!

At long last, General Mills has introduced My Fruit Roll-Ups, fruit roll-ups with a design of your choice printed on them.

Myfruitrollups.com‘s Design Center lets you design your own fruit-flavored snacks, offering a selection of “canvases” to add images and your message to. You can choose from a gallery of images or upload your own.

At $29.99 for a carton of 30 rolls, they’re a perhaps a bit extravagant to be used as your “every day” roll-ups, but the price is not too exorbitant to find some fun uses for the treats:

birthday or holiday gifts for kids
party favors
engagement or save-the-date announcements
valentine treat for your sweetie*
promotional giveaways for conferences
congratulations message for a client or colleagues

* Caution: Guys, as a general rule of thumb fruit roll-ups are not an acceptable replacement for jewelry.

I would say the possibilities are endless – except the ordering process does include a Design Approval Process, noting

To keep things family-friendly, designs will go through an approval process. Please review your designs for questionable images and messages. Remove anything inappropriate before you submit your order.

What do you guy think? Are these something you’d consider buying?

WordPress users: Bookmark this site

faryl — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 08:24:04 +0000

This post at speckboy.com crossed my radar today. It was too good to keep to myself and didn’t want to wait until I have time to put together my own WordPress resource list together to share it, so it gets its own blog post:

63 Essential WordPress Hacks, Tutorials, Help Files and Cheats

thanks to @mayhemstudios & @minervity for posting the link

Why You Should Wish Tamar a Happy Birthday

faryl — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:31:34 +0000

Happy Birthday, Tamar!

To celebrate her birthday, Tamar Weinberg has gathered the mother of all lists of internet marketing posts for 2008. It’s a list you don’t want to miss – it’s one you’ll want to bookmark and save with your very most special and favorite-est bookmarks. Click over to that list immediately and see for yourself.

Be sure to wish Tamar a happy birthday while you’re there!

Tamar Weinberg is a social media enthusiast with a passion for all things tech and productivity. She provides consulting in internet marketing and blogs for numerous online publications, most notably Real Simple Magazine, Lateral Action, Search Engine Roundtable, and Mashable. She is also a former Lifehacker contributor.
From Tamar's About Page

Two reasons I’m a fan of “The Hunt for the Coolest Twitter Background”

faryl — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:47:53 +0000

Alister Cameron is currently running a contest called The Hunt for the Coolest Twitter Background. As soon as I read about it, I was immediately a fan of the idea. I asked Alister (via Twitter) what inspired him to run the contest and his response was:

I was inspired by the desire to acknowledge people who’ve found ways to make their Twitter page background/colour look great. Also that, to my knowledge, no one has paid attention to twitter page design, period. And I wanted to! Finally… more on this later, I am using my competition to prove a point about strategic use of twitter.

Back to why I am such a fan of the contest . . .

First, as someone who likes to obsess on customization, I’m all for recognizing folks who have put effort into designing unique – er cool – Twitter backgrounds (so far @problogger and@rozsavage seem to be in the lead). There are a couple of sites that offer resources and suggestions for customizing your Twitter background, but it’s not an area that’s received a relatively large amount of attention. Granted Twitter doesn’t allow as much customization as MySpace or even Facebook, but that’s part of what makes this contest so very – um – cool.

someone

The second reason may not be directly connected with the contest’s intent, but something I believe could be a meaningful by-product. Let me explain . . .

After the first day, there were only about 100 nominees. Given that Alister has close to 1,500 followers and the viral nature of the Twitterverse, I thought this number was surprising low.

On second thought, I realized most people on Twitter are either using a third party Twitter application to read and respond to tweets or don’t really stray from their own “home” page in Twitter during their daily Twitter activity.

In other words, many folks don’t see anything beyond a person’s avatar and tweet content - they may be interacting with others on Twitter without ever visiting that person’s profile page (something I am guilty of as well).

After reading Amber Naslund’s “Thanks For Following, Now Click On My Junk“, I disabled my auto-reply and I made it my mission to get to know every new follower I’d gained. It took all night, but by the end of it I felt instead of my “followers” being just a number, I knew who the people behind them were. I made some connections I’d go so far as to describe as meaningful.

I love that Alister has given us a reason to look beyond the avatars. This contest is the perfect excuse to pay a visit to some of your followers’ profiles.

Your mission, should you choose to accept: Visit at least one follower’s profile page a day. Read their “about”, click on their outbound link. See if you can get a sense of the person behind the tweets.

In other words, the second reason I’m a fan of this contest is that it’s an opportunity for each of us to make a connection.

Will you?

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picture credits: Wordle licensed as

Explaining Twitter

faryl — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:41:53 +0000

Something I enjoy about the holidays is the cross-generational conversations family gatherings provide.

One cousin just learned to drive, a nephew is learning to walk, an aunt just started a new job . . . and Grandpa sits back smiling, observing, absorbing, basking in the glow of bringing family together.

photo credit: Bryan Ledgard

It occurred to me that Twitter is a bit like that family gathering; and we’re all a bit like Grandpa.

We tune in and tune out: overhearing snippets of conversations between other people in the room; (hopefully) catching any words directed specifically at us and forming responses appropriate to the person posing the question. Sometimes people talk about us like we aren’t there; other times as if we just wouldn’t understand. The art of selective listening is relied up; equally is the ability to absorb the chatter as a whole.

My grandfather always was interested in what his grandkids were up to – the newest fads, latest trends.

I wonder how I would describe Twitter to him?

When describing a new service or tool, it’s important to make it relevant to the person you are explaining it to.

Ideally, what are ways they might use it themselves? How might it compliment or replace something they already use? The key to an effective explanation is making it something your audience can relate to.

How would you explain Twitter to your grandparents?

Your parents?

How might the way you describe Twitter to you mom be different than the explanation you’d give your dad?

Do you have a story about introducing someone new to Twitter? How did you do it?

Please share your stories in the comments below . . .

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photo credits: “Happy Christmas, war is over” by Bryan Ledgard | licensed under

New Chris Brogan Rockstar Badges

faryl — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:48:00 +0000

A while back I had made some badges for Chris Brogan’s Rockstar program.

Since Chris just launched his site’s redesign today, I made these new badges for those rockstars who’d like to continue to match his color scheme!

For those not familiar with Chris’s blog, it’s an excellent resource for insights and advice on blogging and social media.

In particular, if you’ve been wondering about that whole “twitter thing” – click here, sign up (or sign in) and follow Chris. You’ll learn quickly!

(copy & paste the code below to display the badge on your site)

Ode to my Couch – Designing with Intent

faryl — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 11:03:43 +0000

Write something about design.

Design. It’s a pretty big topic.

To try to focus myself on a more specific aspect of the topic, I looked up the definition of “design”.

Here is part of what I found:

noun
-a plan or drawing produced to show the look and function or workings of a building, garment, orother object before it is built or made
- purpose, planning, or intention that exists or is thought to exist behind an action, fact, or material object
verb
- decide upon the look and functioning of (a building, garment, or other object), typically by making a detailed drawing of it
- do or plan (something) with a specific purpose or intention in mind

What strikes me most about the definition is how closely integrated the concept of design seems to be with the concepts of intent, planning and purpose.

Some women who know a little something about design

Which makes me a bit uncomfortable.

It makes me uncomfortable not because I take issue with the definition itself, but because I’ve never been very good at combining those three elements together; certainly not if any sort of creative aspect is involved.

And I don’t really care for things I’m not good at. Yes, I’m a bit small that way. I’m working on it.

So, my initial reaction is that this type of design would stifle the creativity process. It feels dry. Bland.

Controlled and controlling.

In contrast, this definition is more appealing to me:

noun
-an arrangement of lines or shapes created to form a pattern or decoration

Nothing about planning. Nothing about intent. No purpose.

Here, design can be random and arbitrary. Here design can be accidental. An unforeseen outcome of happenstance.

It doesn’t rule out procrastination. There’s room for inspiration.

This makes me comfortable. This I can be good at. To me, this is what creativity is.

But then I think back the first part of the definition. And what the world would be like without that design.

A world with no design.

Now, I don’t mean this in a “design is everywhere”; “design touches everything” vein. Mind you, that was one direction I considered going with this. (Because it is. And it does.)

What I mean is, what happens when we take away the planning and intention element of design?

So I sit here on my couch and ponder (yes, ponder), could we take away that element of design?

My couch is pretty cool. It moves. It’s “L-shaped” and, at the push of a button, one part reclines to an almost horizontal position. I like that.

But what’s really cool about it is the way in which it was designed so that it can do this, while still being able to be placed with it’s back against the wall.

See, I have a feeling this is a result of that first definition. Someone likely gave a lot of thought into engineering a piece of furniture that looks spiffy, is comfortable, and is functionally able to fully recline without having to be placed six or more inches from a wall.

Image via Wikipedia

The design of iPods, iPhones and everything Apple, too, are a result of the first definition. And those are neither dry nor bland (at least not to me).

As I sit here trying leave you with some semblance of a conclusion, my eyes wander towards my blog.

My blog.

It’s actually filled with purpose, planning and intention.

You know, I think I’m growing more comfortable with that part of the definition.

What does design mean to you?

Can good design focus on function, at the expense of form?

Conversely, can good design eschew function, with emphasis strictly on form?

Do we need both parts of the definition to achieve truly great design?

This week’s spotlight was on Jacob Cass and the Design Group Writing Project For Charity project at Just Creative Design. One way to participate is to write something about design. (The other is to donate to the Blog Action Day Poverty Fund.)

Fun with Scanners (free graphics!) (second try)

faryl — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:15:45 +0000

this is a repost, since the first attempt seemed to have some sort of formatting quirk

I’ve been playing with my scanner to create some backgrounds, textures, and other graphics. Here are (reduced size) samples of some of the files I’ve created. (Yes, I actually scanned a tortilla!)

If you would like to download any of these, you can find them here.

I’ll be posting more over the next couple of days. I’ve also uploaded higher resolution versions of these, plus a few other graphics, for Fearless Blogger subscribers.

Subscribe to The Fearless Blogger by Email and you’ll receive the link with your confirmation. (If you’ve already subscribed, check the bottom of the feed’s daily update for the link/password.)

The Fearless Blogger » create

bbPress 1.0 Released

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