Once Picasa has scanned your drive and found all your pictures, you’ll be treated to a beautiful, easy-to-use interface that lets you easily scroll through your photos in many ways: thumbnails, full-screen galleries, and even in a cool ‘timeline’ layout. You can enhance and correct images, too – there’s even a great ‘I’m feeling lucky’ option that auto-corrects the image. I had pretty good luck with it, but it won’t work on every on (much like the ‘auto levels’ feature in Photoshop if you’re familiar).

Then there are all the great things you can do with your images – email, print, buy prints, add to your blog and more. They’re all just at the click of a button on the lower right of the screen. You can even create a photo collage the print or use as wallpaper on your computer. There’s a simple grid or a layered picture look, much like the google screensaver.

Check it out if you’re looking for a way to organize all those great digital photos of yours – it sure beats sorting old shoeboxes full of prints!

I got lucky and found what I think to be is the ISP offering the greatest services and control I’ve ever seen…Their implementation is actually far superior to anything I imagined would be out there. Also, their support has been extremely friendly and fast! Once I dialed in the number and hit 3 for tech support, I’ve gotten someone on the 2nd or 3rd ring so far…and the longest it took for a change to be implemented was like 3 hours.

ANHosting is their name and making website hosting is their game (and boy am I lame).

They have an EXTENSIVE list of software that you can literally install by clicking a couple of buttons: want to have a blog, a forum / discussion board, a content management system, ecommerce package, guestbook, mailing lists, polls, project management tools, photo galleries, wikis, ad server, auctions, webcalendars, and much more? Then, just click away…you generally have at least 4 options for each those things listed. Your software requires a database connection? No problem, the install scripts set the software up for you: it will automatically create a mysql database for you, install the software where you specify, and set up the admin passwords for you. SO EASY!!!! I literally installed my ad server and blog software in 20 seconds a piece.

The have this cool “cPanel” app that allows you to do just about everything you want: configure mail (web or pop3) accounts and passwords, add extra domain names, set up FTP accounts, password protect directories, configure sub domains and MySQL databases (so you can access them from home like I do), set cron jobs, mime types, look at stats, Deny by IP, etc…you don’t really need to use tech support to control your web site (which is very foreign concept to me). However, if you don’t live and breath Internet technology, then tech support could walk you through anything you needed to do as they are up 24×7. I made a couple of calls all bleary eyed at 2am and they totally helped me out.

The level of control, the easy to use admin interfaces, the fact that they give you SSH access as root (for your chained directory), the number of software packages that auto install, and the support system all makes me give ANHosting 5 aardvarks (the highest aardvark rating I can legally make). I was honestly surprised how fast and easy it was…especially when I had as much control as I did or when I was counting on ANHosting to make some change. Because of this Carlin and I were able to turn this site out in just a few days (but worked our asses off doing so).

They give you all that with 3.5 GBs of space, 750,000 MB of transfers, unlimited email accounts (with Spam Assassin) and sub domains, 10 domain names, have PHP, Perl, MySQL, CGI scripts available to do all sorts of form processing, Python, shopping carts, backups, etc…all for the princely sum of $6.95 a month…and the first month is free with no set up. I saw all that and thought it was too good to be true…god, I sound like an infomercial…anyway, they rule! Check them out…you really don’t have anything to lose (no setup fee…first month free).

OK…once you get them set up: log into the CPANEL, go to the Fantastico link at the bottom, click that, select WordPress from the list on the right, and follow the installation steps…I think there are two and the only thing to decide is if you want your blog at the root of your website or in a subdirectory…If it is at the root, it means it is the first thing folks will see when they go to your domain. It’s what we did for this site and you don’t have to type anything if you want that.

Once you have got your WordPress blog set up and running (SUPER SIMPLE, btw), you can go to Google and open an adsense account. Google will give you javascript that you can then embed in your theme (using WP theme editor) to place your ads where you want on the page. The Adsense code is pretty cool as it looks at your content and then puts context sensitive ads on your pages…for example, if I was writing about boats, you’d see google ads about boats…Now that I’ve said boats…are there ads for boats. Damn, I should have said diamond rings…HEY LOOK DIAMOND RING ADS…Who can tell I am writing this late at night? Raise your arm! Oh, crap I just got a deodarant ad to show up…DONE!

Google pays your x amount for each ad clicked…where x amount is pretty small. I’m pretty sure you won’t get rich off them but if you do, will you let me know what you did? I promise not to tell!

If you want to embed your ads in the middle of your content, then you should probably get the Adsense-Deluxe plugin that makes it possible to do so:
http://www.acmetech.com/blog/adsense-deluxe/

If you want to get even more advanced, you can sign up for an affiliate program, log in to their site, choose your ads, and the schedule them into your site. If you want to go that route, use the phpAdsNew piece of software available at ANHosting. It is listed under the Fantastico link again. It is an easy thing to install but get everything configured and running right will take a few hours probably…it did for us at least. But once you have it set up, you can control how often ads are being served out (using either simple or very complex rules), see which ads are getting clicked, which ads are top performers, etc…it is very cool piece of free software. Big thanks to my buddy, Jeremy Fisher, for turning me onto it…saved me a ton of time (I was going to write my own ad randomizer cuz I am a geek and it wouldn’t have done 1/20th of what phpAdsNew does.

Best of luck to you, entrepreneurial blogger!

You get back from vacation, sunburned and tired, you finally muster up the energy to transfer your images from your digital camera, and then create a slideshow for the family with them.  You think you are done?  No way, you’ve got back those babies up or they could be wiped out any day.

By not taking steps to back up your memories (data), you are asking for major heart ache down the road.

Here are some high level strategies for making sure your data is safe:

Keep all your data in one place: either really store everything in “My Documents” or create a directory called c:\data and then create sub dirs in there like c:\data\pictures, c:\data\videos, c:\data\music, c:\data\documents, etc.  Having your data in one place makes it a million times easier to back up.

If you don’t have an external hard drive, stop reading at this point and go get one!!!  How terrible would you feel losing the only images from your wedding, that video you worked on for countless hours, or all your finicial data?  I recommend external hard drives because you can set up programs to automatically back up your data for you…it’s what I do most of the time because I am lazy and know I won’t remember to do it consistently.  They can run anywhere from $60 to $400. 

Sporadically check to make sure your backups are actually backing up ALL of your data PROPERLY.  What’s the point of backups if they don’t backup the right data or last worked 8 months ago?

Occasionaly, burn DVDs or CDs of your data.  External hard drives have the same life expectancy as normal hard drives and it is unlikely that you would lose both your computer’s hard drive and external hard drive at the same time but electrical storms or burgalurs would prove me wrong.  DVDs / CDs have a life expectancy of 2 to 3 times that of hard drives.

Keep a copy of your data offsite.  No matter how diligent you are in your backups, fires and thieves won’t respect it so you need to make sure your data is somewhere really, really safe.  Personally, I have collections of data on my computer that represent multiple years of work.  I’d rather lick a razor blade (as my baby brother once did) than try to recreate that work so rather than lick the razor I keep DVDs and another external hard drive (that I update monthly) at work.

I know I’m paranoid when it comes to backups but it would really devestate me to lose everything I’ve worked so hard on so I opt for a little bit of prevention and never have to worry about it.  Two women in my wife’s PEPs group had their hard drives die within two weeks of each other…One had to send her drive out to a data recovery service (more expensive than an external hard drive)…the other lost all her data since the beginning of time.  Yuck!

Blogging is a fun and easy way to keep folks up to date on what is going on with you or your family. I’ve maintained a personal family website since 1997 with photogalleries so that my mom (who lives an ocean away) and other friends and family can see what projects we’ve tackled, what crazy new hairstyle I’m sporting, whether I have a black eye or not, and basically keep them involved in our lives.

The only thing about maintinging a website is that it has required a fair amount of time and my wife (designer) and I (web programmer), who have about 19 years professional experience combined, and have spent even more time to create tools and templates to make our site even easier to publish. The normal (I’m definitely not normal) person would not want to take the time to do this and now you don’t need to.

[CUE TRUMPETS]

Blogging software, specifically WordPress, makes turning out a family (substitute your topic of interest here) website the easist thing in the world. WordPress comes with an admin interface that just blows me away a seasoned web veteran like myself (for those of guessing at home, the seasoning is a garlic rub and war I fought in was the Duke Nukem wars of 1993 – 1997…we lost some good men).

You can download free custom templates for your blog to make it look however you want…When you put the template in the right spot, it automatically comes up in a “Theme chooser”, you click the theme you want and the look of your blog has changed. That simple. For the more web geeky folks out there, you can edit the design to your heart’s content, and WP even has an interface for you to edit the raw PHP/CSS/HTML that is super easy to use.

With WordPress, you can choose how folks interact with your blog: you can allow anyone to post or comment without approval, send them to through the built in registration, allow you to change folks status and roles, etc…it is incredibly easy and cool. You and your users can be informed when folks respond to a post or you can can choose not to…there are too many options here to list.

When writing entries, users don’t need to know HTML to format their content with spacing, bolding, adding links, or images (uploaded images have thumbnails automatically created for them and are autolinked to the full size image). But if you want to tweak the HTML yourself to add divs or styles, you can do that too.

Another thing that makes WordPress so cool is that if the default install is lacking some functionality, it is a simple matter of going to google and typing “wordpress plugins xxxx” where xxxx is the the functionality you are looking for. You put the plugin in the proper directory, go to the Plugins tab in the admin, activate your plugin and boom, your new functionality is in place. People have written thousands of plugins (for free) to make WP even more powerful.

• Useful plugins
• Search for all plugins

Quick example, by default, WP doesn’t allow you to order your categories (it just sorts them alphabetically). I did a quick search, came up with “Category Order“, put the plugin in the right dir, activated it, and I immiediately had a new tab in WP that allowed me to order my categories so “Enjoy”,”Share”, etc…were at the top.

I guess what makes WordPress so cool (and in my opinion better than other blogging sofware) is that it allows the web novice to turn out a professional looking website with almost no web experience and with an intuitive / easy to use interface. But it ALSO allows the webgeeks to go in and totally customize the look, feel, and functionality of the site if they want…and do it in an easy and totally logical way. My wife and I have both been super impressed and said numerous times while setting up our site “WordPress rules”. Carlin even wants to redo our personal site using WordPress now.

At this point, I feel like I need to state that I get absolutely no money for endorsing WordPress…this post reads like an advertisment but it’s only because the sofware seriously rules. If you want to use something else like Blogger, blogspot, TypePad, go for it! I just think WordPress rules!

That last cool thing about WordPress: it’s free and they even will host your site for you. The one thing that sucks and is the reason our site in not on the offical WordPress site is that they don’t allow advertising…so if you want to run ads and try to make some money off your blog as well, they check out my “Blogging for donuts or dollars” post.

• WordPress
• Getting started with WordPress