Blogger in Draft: Use Your Own Photo for Your Blog’s Background

I've always believed that the Blogger blogs are highly underestimated and underappreciated. I believe that Google's Blogspot blogging platform will evolve to become the very best or tie with Posterous.

The best way to blog is the use Posterous to publish posts to Blogger along with Social Media channels. In my opinion, simplicity is best and content is king.  And Blogspot and Posterous provide the medium to focus on writing and expressing yourself.

Now you can use your own beautiful photo as your blog’s background image!

Read more via bloggerindraft.blogspot.com:

Go to Design | Template Designer | Background, click on Background Image, and you’ll notice a new “Upload image” option, which will allow you to select and upload your image.

For images that fill the entire background, we recommend using a resolution of 1800 pixels wide and 1600 pixels high, and file size less than 200KB to minimize the loading time of your blog pages. We support JPEG, GIF, and PNG format images.

After uploading a photo, you will see additional options that are not available for the built-in images: Alignment, Repeat, and Scroll options.

• Alignment: You can adjust horizontal (left, center, right) and vertical (top and bottom) alignment of your background image.
• Repeat (Tile): If you have a small image, you can have it repeat horizontally and/or vertically to fill the page. Otherwise, we recommend that you choose a page background color that blends in with your background image.
• Scroll: By default, your image stays in place while readers scroll the page contents. By selecting the “Scroll with page” option, both the background image and page contents scroll together. We recommend that you use an image that blends into your background color or set your image to tile vertically if you choose this option.

This feature is available on Blogger in Draft right now, so please go ahead and check it out! As always, thanks for using Blogger in Draft. We will welcome your comments, and if you have any questions, please send them our way through the Blogger Help forum.
via bloggerindraft.blogspot.com 

This will give us the ability to truly customize our blogs and bumps up the Blogger platform in a HUGE way! All you have to do now is upload your photo for the background and match it up with the template that compliments it the most.

Two Sure-Fire Ways to Increase Traffic To Your Blog

via socialtriggers.com

As a quick summary, in this video, you’ll learn my two sure-fire ways to more web traffic. You’ll also hear specific examples of how you can implement them on your website today.

For more specifics, here’s a list of what I talk about in this video:

• How to Convert “Random Visitors” into “Regular Visitors “

• How to Chase Hot News and Get Traffic

• The “Celebrity Bait” Traffic Strategy

• The “One Page One Goal” Method to Optimizing Your Website

There’s a few more things, but you’ll have to watch to find out. It won’t take but a few minutes!

Posted via email from The Prolific Blogger

Why Blogging Is Like Being a Duck

 

 

I was told a few years ago at a leadership conference that leaders should be like ducks.  Serene and calm on the surface, but underneath paddling like mad to keep things moving.  The same can be said about blogging and participating in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (31DBBB) Challenge.

I’ve been keeping up with the daily challenges over the past few days, but as they’ve been about behind the scene work it’s been hard to articulate into a blog post. It’s all been valuable work that’s helping me to understand this medium that I like to play in and how to get more out of it for myself and those that would share in what I put out there into the interverse¹.

While I’m not able to share some of the work I’ve been doing behind the scenes I can share with you another task from the Problogger playbook.  I thought it might also be good for those of you thinking about purchasing and completing 31DBBB to see the kind of things that you’ll be doing, and how much fun, information and direction you can get from participating.

It’s the 7 Link Challenge.  The idea is to post links that relate to seven blogging topics.  Topics that highlight your own blog and highlight those that you read and aspire to be like.  Without further ado here’s my response to the 7 Link Challenge:

Your first post:

My first post was definitely not a Pulitzer Prize winning entry.  In fact it was fairly bland in the scheme of things. Not so much a cannon fire of an announcement, more a spitball against a blackboard.  However it served it’s purpose; it got me started!

A post you enjoyed writing the most:

It’s hard to go back through the archives and search for posts because I tend to feel like they all happened yesterday.  The posts that I usually enjoy writing the most are my review posts.  I have an opinion and I love to give it.  One of my favourite review posts has to be the one I wrote for Star Trek.  I left the cinema and headed straight home and it just flowed.  Even now reading back over it I’m really happy with the end result.

A post which had a great discussion:

A month ago Australia got it’s first ever female Prime Minister and I wrote a post about it. While the post received a handful of comments I had a really great time talking to friends, family and tweeters about the event which in turned help inspire me to write the post.  I also found people that read the post off twitter commented back to me through twitter about the post and we were able to talk about it.  I really got a buzz out of that interaction.

A post on someone else’s blog that you wish you’d written:

Damn, talk about a hard question.  I’m torn between being purely egotistical and going for a post that went viral and shot someone to blogging fame.  Or maybe a post that tugs at the heart strings and makes you see the good in humanity.  Even going with a post that makes you laugh.  I guess for me I haven’t ever looked at someone else’s posts and wished I had written them.  I think for me it boils down to the fact that we’re all individuals and we’ve all got amazing things to share.  It’s about getting out there and interacting with the internet and finding those pieces of amazing.

Your most helpful post:

From a purely, how to perspective, it would have to be the only how to I’ve done.  How to make a heat bag.   Although I’d like to think that my Friday Fancies help people come up with gift ideas if they need them.  My Blog Love and Music Monday posts should point people in the direction of new and interesting blogs to check out as well as some interesting play lists.

A post with a title that you are proud of:

This going to sound naff, but I’m quite fond of the title for this post.  I’m starting to think more about my blog and it’s content and that’s all because of this Challenge.  I’m really enjoying the challenge and it’s given me a real push when it comes to getting the blog in shape and getting out and about in Blogland.  I didn’t realize just how much I needed that.

A post that you wish more people had read:

Gosh… can I say all of them.  *laugh*  Difficult question.  I’ve even been through some of the archives looking for something and I can’t really find anything that jumps out and says “People need to know this!”.  I guess there’s posts that I’m proud of the way they reflect who I am and therefore I think if people want to get to know me a bit better then these posts should be read more… two that I can think of are Self Portrait and Cupcake of Doom.

That was a lot harder and took a lot longer than I thought it would.  Damn that Problogger for his insight and thought provoking questions!

¹ I just made that word up, it’s a cross between internet and universe and I’m totally going to play that in my next game of scrabble.

via gnomeangel.com

 

Posted via email from The Prolific Blogger

Want to see who has viewed your Facebook profile? BEWARE!

Are we too curious? No doubt we can put ourselves in danger when we are overly curious and open the door to these type of online scams.  One thing that tips me off is having to do too many activities/surveys to get whatever you originally wanted to get online. It's a huge red flag.

Read more on Graham Cluley's blog via sophos.com:

I'm increasingly being asked by folks on Facebook if it's possible to tell who has been viewing their Facebook profile. A number have been attracted to webpages and Facebook applications that claim to be able to give you a secret insight into who is spying on your profile.

Well, if you're one of those people who are curious about who might be watching you online, take care.

Right now we're seeing a significant number of Facebook users posting messages such as:

OMG OMG OMG... I can't believe this actually works! Now you really can see who views your profile!!! WOAH

and

See who views your Facebook profile in real-time!!!

However, like the "Justin Bieber cell phone number" scam and the "This mother went to jail for taking this pic of her son!" scam, the links pointed to in your friends' status updates are not to be trusted.

If you make the mistake of clicking on the link to one of these pages offering to tell you who is viewing your Facebook profile, you will find that the people behind the "services" want you to do a few things first.

For instance, they'll ask you to "Like" their pages (which means you are spreading the link to friends in your social network), and they will ask you to advertise their site by posting an "OMG" message (with a link) to at least five different places on Facebook.

After all that hard work you would hope that they would give you access to the powerful Profile Spy app wouldn't you? But I'm afraid your luck is out.

They'll next ask you to hand over your personal information by taking numerous surveys - before ultimately trying to trick you into handing over your cellphone number which they'll sign up to an expensive premium rate service.

Remember, this scam doesn't work as the result of clickjacking, or a vulnerability on Facebook. The scammers are achieving their ends because of human gullibility - pure and simple. If people considered what they were doing and thought twice about the possible consequences then we would see nothing like as many of these attacks occurring, and our news feeds on Facebook would see less spam.

Do your bit for the public good and share this page on Facebook to warn your online friends about scams like this.

Interestingly, the pages that this particular scam points you to aren't on Facebook, but still display a fake Facebook header at the top. You will notice if you visit them that although the top menu options are there, they cannot be clicked on - which clearly makes the pages look even more suspect.

Ultimately you have to have your wits about you to avoid scams like this. If you or your friends keep falling for these sort of confidence tricks, or want to learn more about security threats, don't forget you can join the Sophos page on Facebook.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 23rd, 2010 at 10:43 pm and is filed under Scam, Spam, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. --> Posted on July 23rd, 2010 by Graham Cluley, Sophos

via sophos.com

Posted via email from The Prolific Blogger

50 Fabulous Twitter Backgrounds

Now that everybody and their cat is on Twitter, it is time to stand out in the crowd. Make a statement not only with your tweets but also with a background that says who you are.
It is a proven fact that people with profile pics and custom backgrounds tend to attract more followers when compared to the rest. So to spice up your Twitter profile, we have come up with a list of 50 splendid Twitter backgrounds. Check them out after the jump.

Finally - Rich text signatures in Gmail

The next time you log in and visit the Settings page, you'll see a rich text editor in the signature section. Here, you can customize your signature by adding pretty formatting, links, and images — or decide to leave things nice and simple.

Gmail also now supports a unique signature for each email address associated with your account. So, if you send mail using a custom "From:" address, you can use a different signature for that address. From the Settings page, you can edit the signature for each account by changing the email address that appears in the dropdown menu.

via gmailblog.blogspot.com

Posted via email from The Prolific Blogger

How to retweet with the original "RT" in Hootsuite

The default setting for retweeting in HootSuite is the new same retweet style from Twitter.  You can't add your own comments to the Twitter retweet.

If you want to use the original "RT" in HootSuite, here's how to change the preferences:

After logging into HootSuite and arriving at your dashboard, click on the owl on the far left side.

Click on Settings and uncheck the box that says Use Twitter Web retweets.

After changing the preferences, check your settings by retweeting something in your twitter stream from within HootSuite.  You should now see the RT in front of the tweet and the message will stay until you hit send.

You'll see your retweet with the RT on your Twitter page.

Also, check out this video tutorial:

 

Posted via email from The Prolific Blogger