A few months ago, I was persuaded to host my blog on its own domain. Dreamhost is popular blog host and was recommended to me by a few people. I signed up, got the domain, and installed WordPress . I was up and running in less than a half an hour. Quite impressive. Once the blog was installed, I wanted to customize the look and add some plugins. I had to open up the pages and insert the code into the templates. This was my first exposure to PHP, and I was a little taken back.

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International social bookmarking sites can be a great source of traffic. There are bloggers all over the world who link to content. If a post or article does marginally well in the major English social bookmarking sites, try posting it to a popular site in another language. The challenge may be translating your post on the social site into their language. It helps to know a native speaker.

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Are you tired of sifting through a box or bin of Lego Mindstorms pieces while building a new creation? Need something to get your robot running quicker? A simple parts organizer can speed up your development time as well as save your sanity.

The Lego Mindstorms NXT set (8527) contains 578 pieces all in various sizes. Fortunately, they can all neatly fit into a common hardware parts organizer. Recently, I visited the local Home Depot and came across the Stanley ten compartment organizer. The organizer was roughly $15. It is made from a thick, rugged plastic with ten removable bins. I was able to neatly organize the all Lego pieces into each bin and they are arranged as follows:

1. Brick and sensors

2. Curved beams

3. Straight beams

4. Miscellaneous parts

5. Connectors

6. Angled connectors

7. Axles

8. Gears

9. Wheels

10. Wires

When you take a robot apart, simply place the pieces back into the proper bins.

Are you a junkie for the latest facts and figures on your web sites? I’m on a downward spiral of addiction the more I get into managing my own sites. Whenever I turn on my computer, I need to check my sites and see how they are doing. It sets the my mood for the rest of the day, as well as a plan of action, if needed.

My first stop is Google Analytics. All my sites are tracked there. I know it’s not the best application for analytical statistics, but you can’t beat the price for the amount of features. One gripe with GA is that they are so slow in updating their stat information. My sites are usually 4 hours behind, at least. If there is a way to default to the current day when selecting a site profile, please let me know. It would be a nice convenience. I am constantly checking the referring sources. Marketing Optimization > Visitor Segment Performance > Referring Source, if you are following along. Usually, if I see a new referrer, I’ll visit the site to see where I’m linked. StumbleUpon always beats out Google in volume for all my sites.

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Many people including Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz.org have raved about the volume of traffic they recieve from StumbleUpon.com. On many cases, the number of StumbleUpon referrals out number those of the major search engines.

This blog is no exception. Since transferring a small handful of blog posts to this domain less than two weeks ago, 50% of my traffic has come from StumbleUpon and less than 2% from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask combined. I have received a bunch of clicks from a mention on reddit.com that recieved “arrow up’s.”

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On Thursday, February 8, 2007, mozilla.org released the alpha version of Firefox 3. The next generation of the powerful browser is built on the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine. Gran Paradiso, the project’s code name, improves on existing features as well as introduces a few new ones.

Firefox 3 is leaving behind older operating systems such as Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME. Mac users will need OS X 10.3.9 or better.

Aside from not supporting legacy operating systems, Firefox 3 introduces several new features, which include the following:

• The core layout code for calculating widths, floats, positioning elements has been rewritten.
• Code handling of dynamic pages has been changed extensively.
• First from Mozilla to be totally Acid2 compliant.
• Support for the Web Apps 1.0 API for changing stylesheets.
• XML is rendered as it downloads not when it completes
• Improved Mac widget support
• Improvements to the Cairo graphics layer.

I installed the Mac version and quickly discovered that none of my existing addons/extensions was compatible. Seeing that the version was just released, this was expected. Over time, developers will catch up. In addition, the rendering of the preferences had a bad flicker when I tabbed to the next item. It is the alpha version so bugs are expected. The graphics rendered fine when I visited the Flash-heavy Eye4U site.

Firefox 3 alpha 2 can be downloaded here.

Did you know that if you have a [tag]Google[/tag] account, you might be getting served personalized search results? Search Engine Round Table posted today with a comparison of the different results you recieve if you are logged in versus logged out of your Google account. The results are displayed side-by-side and are sorted differently.

I would prefer to get the same results as they come from Google without an influence based on what I have search previously. If my niche is payday loans, and I check the SERPs daily, I’d prefer to see the natural sorting to see what everyone else sees.

Granted, most people logged into their Google accounts don’t know they are receiving altered results. Most would probably prefer to get results more targeted to their search history. As a search marketer, I want to see the results my potential visitors do.

Fortunately, you can turn this feature off. Once you are logged into you Google account, click Search History, then click Pause. I turned off this feature immediately.

My wife and I just got back from OB’s office and learned that we are going to have another boy! This was the first ultrasound were you could tell the gender. The tech asked us if we wanted to know if it was a boy or a girl and we said we’ll be able to tell anyway. Sure enough, there was a stem on the apple. We’ll try for a girl next time. Until then, we have to get ready for the new boy.

Two days ago, I decided to get rid of my ColdFusion based blog, and create one and WordPress. I wanted the domain dedicated solely to my blog instead of a bolt-on to larger domain. The ColdFusion hosting was going to be more than I wanted to pay, so I decided to host it with DreamHost.

First of all, installation could not have been any easier. I simply chose One-Click Installs from the DreamHost control panel, chose WordPress, named a new database, and clicked “Install it for me now”. That was it. The message told me the application would be available in ten minutes and it took about three.

Then, I browsed URL, I was given a password and I was able to log in. The layout of the backend is clean, uncluttered and highly organized. I clicked on Manage > Import, chose RSS and was able to import my posts from my old blog. That impressed me as much as the easy install.

With my posts pulled in, I was ready to alter the theme. WordPress includes a bunch of well-designed themes already installed with the blog. A blogger can can the themes as quick as a double-click. These are found under the Presentation tab.

I wanted to add some bells and whistles, so I checked out the Plugins tab. First to be added was Aksimet. It checks your comments with the Aksimet services to see if it is spam or not. The other included plugins did not seem beneficial. The WordPress plugin directory is a gateway to loads and loads of plugins for every aspect of tracking, presentation, monetization and anything else you can think of. I highly recommend David Ogletree’s Plugin list. Lots of good stuff there.

Well, in two days I:

• • created a blog
• • imported all my previous posts
• • changed the look and feel
• • added some nifty features

This is only scratching the surface of the power and flexibility of this application. I can’t wait to learn more.