Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

Post To VOX Using Your Nokia Hand-held

Jan 08, 2007 No Comments »

First of all, apologies for not posting yesterday…first my one-and-a-half-year-old daughter caught a severe cold that kept all of us awake the previous night, and then I developed a terrible migraine in the evening. Since I don’t find the “auto-posters” available on the Internet, I could post something on my own. But anyway…

Recently I had written about a service that lets you post to your blog using your mobile. Now Six Apart’s Vox is collaborating with Nokia to enable blogging through handhelds. This link says:

The two companies will make it easy for people to upload video and photos, and update their blogs directly from their Nokia Nseries devices to the Vox blogging service.

I think it can work for those who post photographs and not long texts. For instance I can’t imagine myself posting using my cell phone, at least not yet. My phone doesn’t even connect to the Internet yet. It’s “Bluetooth” and all but I have never configured it to surf the web.

Technorati Tags: vox, nokia, handheld, blogging

WordPress Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability in templates.php

Jan 04, 2007 No Comments »

If you are using WordPress to run your blog you need to update your templates.php file that resides in your /your_blog_path/wp-admin folder. The cross site scripting vulnerability in this file allows a remote user to inject malicious code into your files and even steal sensitive information from your server. I just read this vulnerability is also used to launch phishing attacks.

A Blog Herald post talks about the scripting vulnerability in WordPress templates.php file and how to eliminate it:

• On line 72 of your existing templates.php there is a line that looks like update_recently_edited($file); — comment out this line.
• A patch has been declared at http://trac.wordpress.org/changeset/4665 – download the patched templates.php from there and overwrite the existing file with this file and upload this file to your server in the wp-admin folder.

TechLive has some geeky detail on this.

Technorati Tags: templates.php patch, wordpress patch, wordpress vulnerability, phishing attack

WordPress Plugin to Prevent Duplicate Content Penalty by WordPress SEO

Dec 17, 2006 No Comments »

Google penalizes you for creating duplicate content, and when you publish a blog there are lots of ways you generate duplicate content. You content appears on the main page, then it appears on individual blog posts, then it appears on category pages, archives pages and even on your RSS feeds. To prevent Google from indexing your duplicate content and consequent penalize your blog, WordPress SEO just posted a WordPress Plugin To Prevent Duplicate Content Penalty. Just like any other plugin, you upload it in your /wp-content/plugins folder and then activate it. There’s also a robot.txt file you’ll have to upload on to your root folder (where you are hosting your blog).

Technorati Tags: wordpress plugin, avoid duplicate content

Flock - A New Browser

Dec 13, 2006 No Comments »

I’m trying to post this using a new browser I just found, called Flock. I downloaded it because I read in a review that it has an inbuilt blog posting plugin. Well, FireFox too has the Performancing plugin so I just downloaded and installed Flock for the heck of it and to try its blog editor. It’s no where near Windows Live Writer that I’m currently using (to edit posts, not to post them as it too lacks some features). Some of its features are not even working. For instance, I don’t know if it is just my computer or there is some problem, the button that should insert a hyperlink is deactivated, so I’m having to resort to source editing. OK, wait, the button activates when you select some pre-written text with your cursor. Now how would I know? In every blog editor when you click a similar link or button pops a window up and you can enter the link and the anchor text. No, I wouldn’t use it as my blog editor. Even the text I’m typing here is not clear.

The browser on the other hand seems lighter then FireFox and I think I’m going to give it a try for a few days.

Technorati Tags: flock, browser, new browser

Snap Preview for Your Blog or Website

Dec 10, 2006 No Comments »

Today I found a nice tool that you can use on your blog to display the preview of the website the outbound link is linking to. It’s called Snap Preview Anywhere^TM. It’s like, when you hover your cursor over a link, a fancy window pops up that displays the image of the website you’ll be taken to once you click the link. I don’t think it matters how the destination link appears in the preview if you want to click the link and access the destination-page content, but it’s a useful tool to give your visitors a preview of the URL. It’s very easy to install too. I did it just now.

There is also a WordPress plugin for this but getting the plugin and installing it doesn’t mean you don’t have to register with Snap. You need to register to get your unique key that you’ll have to use with the plugin. I didn’t use the plugin — I straightaway copy-pasted the tiny JavaScript into my header.php (a standard part of WordPress). You can also read a detailed review of Snap Preview at Techcrunch.

Technorati Tags: snap preview