Learn for free – Podcasts from the best

I have been slowly building up a collection of must listen too podcasts – podcasts for helping you learn. I was hoping to (and may still do one day) write a post here with the ultimate list of learning podcasts. I mean why pay a fortune for an education when you can get much of the information FREE online via podcasts?

Well I don’t need to any more as this morning I found OEdb (online education database) have published a fantastic list of 100 podcasts, from some of the best colleges in the world.

Learn from Stanford, MIT, Berkeley and more. These podcasts are well worth your time. From Quantum Mechanics to Human Nutrition, Business Skills to Search Engine Technology (this is a great podcast for all SEO people).

» Check out the OEdb list of 100 great podcasts by clicking here.

Rusty coding

I used to develop full time, that is designing, programming and full development of websites. Of course that was a number of years ago, and my job now, while requiring a growing understanding of the internet, doesn’t see me coding or developing.

I’m starting to set up a small website in the evenings, just a small site I hope people will enjoy. It should be the sort of site I can set up and only touch once in a while. [...]

Ultimate PHP software

I’ve just spent about 4 hours looking around Google trying to find some solutions that I need. I only have a few requirements:

• must be free (open source)
• must be php & mysql
• must be (x)HTML & CSS compliant
• must integrate with PayPal
• must have Credit Card integration (c2o etc)
• manage memberships (free & paid – 1 off fee, paypal)

As a bonus I’d love one solution that can do all of that and can manage online tests – nothing over the top just a few multi-choice questions in each test. Would like to track users answers, not so worried about them being able to see their history. This however is proving hard to find.

Got any thoughts? Why not post some links in the comments & I’ll check them out.

Track outbound links with WordPress & Google Analytics

I’ve just set up a new plugin for tracking my outbound links with analytics.

To help me test it, why not visit www.webhelp.co.nz and find out “Does Google love you?“.

Thanks everyone

WordPress sucks – but I still love it

Don’t get me wrong, I love WordPress, the guys over at Automatic are great. But seriously WordPress sucks, like really really sucks.

I’ve posted before about why wordpress needs an auto-update feature, which btw would be easy to do. I’m now moaning because Wordpress is really really crap at knowing things. See for a while now my blog has been telling me that my Wordpress version is out of date, and my plugins are out of date. [...]

The day I said “I do”

It’s wasn’t today, it was tomorrow, 8 years ago. We stood in a fancy church in front of a fellow in white robes. She was beautiful, I was in Adidas tramping boots. It was a life time ago, it was yesterday. It’s been a happy time, it’s been a hard time, we’ve laughed, we’ve cried. We’ve welcomed a little one to join us.  8 years, it’s not that long but still it’s a day to remember, a day to pray for many many more years to come.

The day I said “I Do”.

Apple Movie Trailers down?

I love apple.com/trailers, I could spend hours on this site checking out new movies coming up etc etc.

In fact today at work I stole 10 mins to check out the trailer for KungFu Panda. I get home tonight and want to show the trailer to my wife. Well, the page is no more. It’s gone & instead I’m faced with Apple’s 404 page, including a link to the defunct movie trailers.

I need your help: [...]

Traffic & Success

Isn’t it funny the things we think are going to go great, don’t always. The things we throw together with little forethought often pan out better than we expect.

Case in point, “Stop writing and increase your traffic“, a post I threw together in minutes while waiting for a mate to pick me up for a Dad’s night out. I really wasn’t thinking “This’ll be a great post” it was more, “Gosh I better put something on Studiowhiz” [...]

Stop writing and increase site traffic

I thought I would try something. I’ve written quite a bit (well okay a little bit) on the site and was busy trying to promote a new post from the site each day.

So I stopped, for a few days and guess what. My site traffic went up and looks to be stabilizing around the 200 people a day mark. Not too bad given I only started blogging here again in December. Still I’m not back yet – the site doesn’t have a PR status yet (I’ll need your help for that – so why not link to Studiowhiz and help?). We used to have a PR 7 from Google, but that’s another post coming this week.

Now I’m not advocating that if you stop posting on your site your traffic will go up, however I do wonder if taking a few days off to let Google & others catch up, can be a good thing for your site.

It’s all in the title

I’m about to break one of my rules with this post but here goes.

Once you have planned your blog, and started your blog you need to really think about the things you are going to write. Actually you’ve probably already done that so lets look at something you are probably overlooking.

It’s all good and well to have great posts, but what is going to draw people in? The title. [...]

how to …

how to make an icon, how to draw a car, how to create a flash website? These are all questions sitting in my traffic logs. Obviously Google thinks studiowhiz.com is a site that can help – and in the past that would have been true, back when Studiowhiz was well known in the Flash Community. I even wrote the book Build your first website with Flash MX a few years back.

Now however Studiowhiz is my personal blog – still why can’t it provide a resource for these things? So this post will answer these 3 questions:

• How to make an icon
• How to draw a car
• How to create a flash website

[...]

Beautiful CSS Websites

Vandelay Design have a great post today showcasing 25 beautiful website designs.

I enjoy Vandelay’s blog as they have some great tips and tricks for WordPress and general website design. Today’s post is a great one for stirring up the inspiration.

» 25 Beautiful, Minimalistic Website Designs – Part 2 on Vandelay Design

Apple MacBook Air – bah whatever

If you hadn’t heard Apple are running their MacWorld conference at the moment. This is the ‘holy of holy’ events for any true Mac aficionado. At these events Steve Jobs has a keynote speech in which he reveals the direction for Apple in the coming year – oh and he throws out any new hardware.

Well I have to say all in all I’m rather disappointed. I mean he announced 4 new things today and none of them have the usual ‘wow’ factor I’ve come to expect from Apple. [...]

Starting your blog

It’s become a very easy process these days to start a blog. There are a number of services that can give you a free blog within minutes – however these are not always the best solutions.

Now that you have completed the planning of your blog you will have a firm understanding of what you are trying to achieve. For now we are going to assume your primary purpose is to share some understanding you have without having to shell out a fortune.

I am a fan of wordpress, a fantastic free application that powers some of the bigger blogs on the net today. They have both a download version and a hosted solution – we talked about this in the planning of your blog. For the sake of this article we’ll assume the use of a hosted solution. [...]

Free traffic: What your web designer didn’t tell you!

You walk into a meeting with your web designer (marketing/advertising agency) and ask them to help you drive traffic to your site. They reply “There is no such thing as a free lunch traffic”

I’m here to tell you there is such a thing as free traffic and here are 5 easy steps you can follow to drive traffic to your site. [...]