Hey Everyone,

Here’s what I found to be interesting in the world of WordPress this week:

Planet WordPress Canada
To showcase Canada’s variety of knowledgeable and enthusiastic WordPress bloggers and developers, Peter Keung has launched Planet WordPress Canada, which is an aggregation of posts from various blogs (this one included) on the topic of WP and all things related.

Draft Posts Widget
How cool is this? Website developers and bloggers are always looking for ways to keep their audiences anticipating for more. With the Draft Posts Widget, you can do just that. It will show a list of your draft posts so that people can see what’s coming up on your blog and they can anticipate your upcoming writings. I really like this idea and will start using it on a few sites I own.

WordPress Security Issues
According to TechCrunch, WordPress has a tonne of vulnerabilities and has been the object of attack by numerous hackers, especially in the last few weeks. Some people have responded in the comments that the current (2.5+) version is not affected, but still something to be checked out for those rocking the old versions.

BuddyPress Theme Previews
BuddyPress is the upcoming social network platform based on WordPress Mu. Developer Andy Peatling has provided a preview of how it will look on his website. I’m really excited about this product because it will integrate WordPress blogs, BuddyPress discussion forum, and social networking.

WordPress Essential Training
For those of you who are new to WordPress and would like to start a blog on WordPress.com, you can take advantage of new WordPress.com blog tutorials on Lynda.com. There are a few preview tutorials, but in order to view the whole collection you have to be a member.

ComicPress - WordPress theme for Artists, Cartoonists, etc.
A great new theme has been released by Tyler Martin called Comic Press, which, combined with the ComicPress Manager plugin, allows you to maintain a WordPress blog that exclusively showcases your comics, artwork, or any other type of images. It is a very nice tool for people who want to have a blog along with a daily illustration or comic.

God FTW!
Apparently, God (the Christian version at least) has a blog, and S/he’s using WordPress.

That’s all for now - have a great weekend :D

-k.s.

Hey Everyone,

So after the success of WordCamp Vancouver hosted at the Network Hub in Downtown Vancouver by Tazzu Networking Forums, somebody somewhere was thinking, “if Vancouver can pull this off, why not Langley?” Well if you missed out last time, or want to learn and network with fellow WordPress bloggers and developers, join us on July 16th for WordCamp Fraser Valley, hosted by BlueFur Web Hosting at the Cascades Casino in Langley. Like WordCamp Vancouver, this is a mini-version of WordCamps held in other major cities (spanning over a day or two), but it still promises to be a fun evening of learning and inspiration.

Here’s the shortlist of cool presenters: Dr. Raul Pacheco, Rebecca Bollwitt, John Chow, and Yours Truly. At WordPress Vancouver I presented on how to use WordPress as a CMS and create catalogues and mashups with the help of custom fields, and the feedback from the audience was great. However, I do think it was a little advanced for some of the blogging audience and so I’ve got a simpler (but still technical) presentation planned for WP Fraser Valley. I’ll be posting more details about my presentations in the coming weeks but in the meanwhile, click here to register for the event!-

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UPDATE

WordPress Fraser Valley was a success! You can read all about it at these links:

http://www.miss604.com/2008/07/wordcamp … eblog.html
http://www.johnchow.com/wordcamp-fraser-valley/
http://hummingbird604.com/2008/07/17/wo … aftermath/
http://www.thomasso.com/?p=738
http://sixty4media.com/2008/07/16/hangi … er-valley/
http://purpledragonfly.playaparadise.co … word-camp/
http://www.savings-naturally.com/wordpress/?p=168

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Photo: 4EverYoung

I don’t do this in my  life in terms of personal relationships or professional responsibilities, but when it comes to personal leisure and personal development (improvement / restoration / sustenance), I have a habit of committing to things and then having a change of heart. I think a lot of people in North America generally have this problem, due to a variety of reasons.

We don’t recognize that our body is the temple of the soul. As a result we neglect our body and our issues of physical / biological health  while being more concerned about the relational and sensational aspect of our life (psychology, emotions, politics, satisfying immediate physical needs). Furthermore, in our increasingly impulse-driven society, we are actually devolving as a society such that the entire North American culture is becoming less likely to commit to anything that doesn’t deliver fast results with minimum effort.

However, there’s a disconnect. Sometimes in the attempt to save investment of time, money or effort, we end up losing out in the end. A few examples of common “loss from the start” commitments for North Americans are diets, gym memberships, exercise equipment, doctor’s appointments, physical exams and check-ups (especially applicable to men). These are things that the average North American invests in financially or with an initial verbal commitment, but fails to maintain or integrate into one’s life. As a result, while the initial verbal commitment freed us from the guilt of not having done anything, the fact that we don’t actually do anything to follow up (long-term commitment) puts us back where we started, if not a few steps even further back.

So where’s this all coming from? Well today for the first time in at least 3 years, I went to the gym. My cousin, who’s a few years younger than me, persuaded me to join him and get a gym membership in order to get back into shape and maintain good health. The Watermania gym membership at Riverport in Richmond also offers free access to the swimming and sauna facilities, so that was an added perk. The annual membership costs $400. I had to think about it a few times because it’s easy enough to give that peice of plastic with your name on it and not thinking about your $400 investment until there’s only a short time left in your membership and you have to “make it worthwhile.” And I would know. Earlier this year, I registered at Fitness World (more expensive, no pool or sauna) for a five-month pass. How many times did I go to the gym in the five months? Not a single time. Zero. I can make excuses such as we were moving, and I was setting up my business, but the reality is that I made an impulse purchase at the time, and was not actually motivated enough to attend the gym until now.

It’s true, perhaps I would not have been motivated to sign up at Watermania now if I had not lost out on my previous membership, but the lesson I’ve learned is that you should think things through before you make a purchase, just as we think things through before making a life-altering commitment. I also learned, more importantly, that when you make a commitment of anything relating to your health, wellbeing, etc., you should try to get a partner, spouse, friend, sibling, or any loved one who can keep tabs on you and encourage you to stay on track. Having another person to push you through something that is good for you is extremely helpful and can sometimes make the difference between “just in time” or “too little, too late” in terms of preventing diseases, health problems, or wasting your $250 Fitness World membership.

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Image Source: Rick, Eschipul

Hey Everyone,

Here’s what stood out to me in the news about Facebook this week:

Facebook as a Corporate HR or CRM
Imagine instead of your company discouraging the use of Facebook, actually implementing it as a system within the corporate network for the purposes of Human Resources Management or Customer Relationship Management. Well such solutions may be on the way as the brainstorming sessions at Facebook are starting to include ideas about rebranding FB as an enterprise software application or something of the sort.

Facebook as a Social Network Platform
Recently, Facebook started to make certain parts of its platform open source, allowing for individuals to use the infrastructure of Facebook for their custom setup. As a result people could connect to Facebook and develop their own niche social networks without having to recreate the whole system. If you think something like this is new, think again. Ning has been around for a while providing exactly this solution, but with the powerful Facebook engine behind it, the Facebook social network platform might provide competitive challenges to Ning.

Rate Ads on Facebook
Recently Facebook has opened up its advertisements to public opinion. You can thumb up or down an ad based on its quality and provide further feedback on the advertisement. By learning about users preferences, it is hoped that ads can be targeted more appropriately and result in higher conversions.

stay in high spirits,

-k.s.

Image Source: Javier Aroche

Okay, as I posted earlier this week, my mind has been completely off from blogging or thinking about technology topics in general. However this week I’ve had the great opportunity to work with a group called Youth Ending Poverty, and help them launch their website. Hopefully I’ll be working with them more actively in the future.

The exercise of working with them gave me insight into how technical expertise can actually help with humanitarian and goodwill projects. You can use almost any type of technical expertise to somehow assist a non-profit organization in optimizing a certain part of their organization, whether it be the financial / bookkeeping aspect, the donation/donor management aspect, or just getting their organization known by helping them with a website or some type of media.

So for the next week to ten days, I’m on the hunt for two things:
1) Individuals that are using technology, specifically their expertise related to the internet, to help good causes around the world

Before I outline the second thing let me explain. It’s been a month since Cyclone Nargis in Burma and stupid news agencies across the board are still more concerned with trivial issues than large-scale humanitarian crises. Therefore it’s been a little difficult to seperate the regurgitation of old hearsay from the current reality. I really want to make a commitment of my time, part-time but for a long-term, to helping people in impoverished communities in Burma, Ethiopia, Somalia and farmers in Punjab, but I don’t know which organizations are doing work out there in a more efficient and reliable manner. So I need to find…

2) Organizations to which I can contribute money and time, which are highly efficient (good result of their work but not too much administrative cost), and are helping directly to alleviate the problems of impoverished communities around the world.

If you can help me with my hunt, please e-mail me at info [at] kulpreetsingh [dot] com, or leave a comment below. Thanks!

stay in high spirits,

-k.s.

Hey Everyone,

So just over a year ago, I purchased a new Dell Inspiron 9400 from the Dell.ca website. For the first eight to ten months, the battery would last at least 1.5 if not two hours without a recharge. Recently, however, whenever I’d pull out the power cord, the battery would give strange numbers about how much power is remaining. It would say something like “28 minutes…” and just a few minutes later it would say “8 minutes.”

So I decided to call up Dell technical support and was introduced to a catch in their sale of notebooks. The 3 year warranty with CompleteCare that I have apparently does not extend to the battery. I was not made aware of this at the time of purchase, and the friendly voice on the phone now told me that usually the battery is only covered for the first year. So I thought, “well that’s alright - I am within the first year right?” Sadly I was informed that I was just a few weeks past the first year mark and therefore the battery was no longer covered.

Then, the friendly voice on the phone said, “But what I can do for you, sir, is connect you to our [forget the name] department and they can quote you on the price of a new battery.” The tone with which he gave me this sales pitch, as if he was doing me a huge favour by connecting me to a sales person to purchase a new battery because this battery had barely lasted a year, was priceless.

In any case this post is just a heads up to all those who own or are planning to purchase a Dell notebook. Check your battery regularly and if it has issues, get them fixed within the first year. :)

stay in high spirits,

-k.s.

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Photo Source: Kansir