Archive for June, 2005
June 30, 2005 at 11:01 am · Filed under Resources, Misc
One of the blogs that I regularly read is WebKEW (Web Knowledge Equals Wealth). Marshall Brain (cool last name!) outlines the steps required to make a successful website, be it a blog, ecommerce, content or services oriented website. Well, I've been trying to follow his advice and most of it seems like common sense, but with any sound common sense type advice, it's only useful if you actually believe it and follow it.
I chose to concentrate on a specific number of topics on my blog, mainly IT and Web Technology related ones. I may sprinkle in a few unrelated or funny posts here and there, but GetIntoThis is mainly a techy blog (for now.) Also as a personal experiment, I decided to add a few Google ads, just to see how they would perform on a blog that gets about 10,000-12,000 unique visitors a month. I put in the ads a few weeks ago and so far I've made almost $3.00! No, not 30 or 300, but "3". I never intended to make money from this blog anyway, but its just interesting to see how it performs.
I started this blog in April and so far here's a hint of how it's been doing:
Not bad for a small website I put together in one day using some great existing tools. The hardest part of it all is providing good and relevant content. And that is made a bit easier by reading other related blogs. So, go ahead and start your own blog and if it relates to the content on my site, then we can exchange links 
June 29, 2005 at 11:58 pm · Filed under Resources
Looks like Google finally decided to release a legit API for their map service. A lot of sites have been hacking the current Google Maps to make some creative web applications and services, but now with an actual API, it should make it easier for anyone to put together their own Google Map powered site. Thanks Google!
Google Maps API
Google Maps Chicago Transit Authority
ChicagoCrime.org
GoogleSightSeeing
June 29, 2005 at 12:07 am · Filed under Misc
Hey boys and girls ... it's been a crazy and hectic few weeks for me, hence the lack of updates to the blog. I quit my job, found a new one (in reverse order) and have been diligently searching for an apartment.
Well, it's finally all coming together. I will be starting my new job in New York City (woohoo!) on July 5th. I have found an apartment in Brooklyn (2 stops away on the L train from Manhattan and 20-25 min to my new job.) that I am very pleased with. Why Brooklyn and not in the City? Well, mainly because it was half the price for twice the space and only about a 5 minute difference on the subway. You do the math, but I personally think its worth it.
Anyway, I'm pretty excited about the move and the new job. I will try to get back to blogging very soon, but the next few weeks may be a bit hectic as well. I got a wedding and bachelor party to attend. Then I have to move in and buy new stuff for the apartment. One of those purchases might just happen to be a new Apple... we'll see. Meanwhile, I recommend checking out some of the cool blogs on my blogroll (links on the right). You should find something of interest there.
Time for me to go to sleep... good night.
June 25, 2005 at 12:30 am · Filed under Misc
Since my blog has been getting a little more popular and actually showing up on search engines, I've been getting a bit of comment spam. Fortunately, WordPress has pretty good spam protection, so it intercepts most of them.
Ironically, I keep getting spammed from the same IP address, over and over again. I wish WP had a way to ban an IP address. This particular spammer isn't too bright either, since all his spam contains the words poker and/or casino. I mean, seriously, if you're gonna spam me with poker and casino related junk, at least be a little creative and use another word. I find it amusing that most of the comments praise me and my blog and then the sender's name is "best online casinos". I guess I'm just lucky and I'm being attacked by one dumb spammer.
This is his IP address, just in case you guys wanna do bad things to him: 65.75.166.110
June 20, 2005 at 9:59 pm · Filed under Resources
I found this link on the Del.icio.us popular pages. It is a comprehensive list of Power Tools, Development Tools and Websites. Scott Hanselman requests that people link to his site rather than recreate the list on their own sites, so I will do just that.
Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List
The list is really long and has some very amazing tools and resources on it that I didn't know about. I haven't gone through the entire list yet, but so far here are some really cool ones that I've downloaded, tested and already fallen in love with:
- TaskSwitchXP Pro - a much better alternative to window's ALT+TAB window switcher. This is not as slow as the PowerToys one either. It's actually pretty quick.
- TopDesk - If you've seen the Expose feature on the new Mac OS X, you'll love this little utility. Works just like the Expose, but its for windows. Nice.
- Highlight 2.2 - This utility will conver just about any source code into HTML, XHTML, RTF, TeX, LaTeX, XSL-FO and XML format. Simply amazing.
- FUNDUC Search & Replace - If you like GREP, you'll love this thing.
- Whiteboard Photo Image Capture - You gotta see this one to appreciate it. It transforms images taken of a Whiteboard into a clean and clear image with full color. Really cool. Check out the examples.
- BootDisk.com - If you're the computer geek in the family and everyone comes to you to fix their computer, then you NEED to have these bookdisks handy at all times.
Ok, that's enough for now. Go check out the original list to see the rest of the links.
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