I found this site via Development Gateway. It compares economies and offers rankings to quantify how easy it is to set up or shut down a business:
Doing Business in Malawi
Category: General
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Exploring economies
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Adding the SEO Title Tag plugin
Here are my short notes on new WordPress plugins I’m trying out at Chiperoni.ch:
SEO Title Tag
I read about this in a WordCamp 2007 report last weekend. The corresponding plugin web page is here.
If you’re using K2, open
header.phpand replace everything within thetitletag with this:
< ?php if (function_exists('seo_title_tag')) { seo_title_tag(); } else { wp_title(''); ?> < ?php if ( !(is_404()) && (is_single()) or (is_page()) or (is_archive()) ) { ?> at < ?php } ?> < ?php bloginfo('name'); } ?>
e voilà :
Bad behavior
According to the website:
Bad Behavior complements other link spam solutions by acting as a gatekeeper, preventing spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place. This keeps your site’s load down, makes your site logs cleaner, and can help prevent denial of service conditions caused by spammers.
And yes, my logs are cleaner. Less spam is slipping thru into the comment moderation queue.
Stats plugin
I’ve been using Counterize II for a couple of months and can recommend it.
If you’re in a hosted setup like WordPress.com, you could use a service like Sitemeter, Statcounter, or Google Analytics.
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MacBook salad
I’ve decided to move to Mac… and I’ve been asking other Mac users for tips regarding software. And the list is long.
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Authentic content
I’ve been reading thru various WordCamp 2007 posts. And I’ve found quite a number of useful tips. This evening I quickly skipped thru Lorelle’s slides:
with lots of very useful advice how to build content.
Just a couple of thoughts to carry on the conversation:
I agree that you should spend extra time to write better posts. But don’t be shy to hit the Publish button at an early stage either. Participate.
Experiment, learn, and evolve.
It’s kind of an ongoing process.
I tend to post a high percentage of very short blog entries: tumblr-like. Just an introductory text and a link. Or a block-quote. Or a photo. Or a video. Fragments of captured attention. Yet I’ve found that in time seemingly stranded-looking posts fall into place in a larger context. Cos I can embed them in a larger text.
I think the main point is to be authentic. But don’t publish every single personal detail.
If you are blogging for yourself, it’s perfectly acceptable to go ahead and write the 1 860 001st entry on how to install WordPress, especially if it helps to learn. You won’t get any traffic. But if you’re a little bit like me, writing about a topic will help to understand and reflect. And you’ve got notes and links you can refer to later. BTW, other how-tos on other issues will get you lots of hits.
That said I’ve got a couple of trivial CSS and JavaScript and WordPress posts lined up…. 😉
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Who participates?
Stumbled across this Businessweek chart on what people are doing online:
via Lift Lab.
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Malawi GNU/Linux T-Shirt
cool:
Anthu Ozindikira amagwirisa ntchito GNU/Linux Software -
Twittering Retro Style
I’d just like to check in and report that the Neighborhood Information System (NIS) is working great here…
This morning I had a small note pegged to my bike’s brake wires, asking me if my neighbor could borrow my 2nd bicycle for a visiting family member. No need for Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook et al….
Total electricity consumption: 0 kW
Internet connection cost: 0 CHF
Depreciation of computer equipment: 0 CHF😉
Have a good weekend!
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double t
Is it benefitted or benefited?
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Laptop choices…
Just 4 months after the motherboard was replaced in my workplace laptop: end of life. I couldn’t start up my laptop yesterday morning. The 3 year service guarantee has expired. Which means I get to order a new one.
The choices:
It’s Dell or MacBookPro with Parallels. -
The way I see PR – or parts of it
A regular Chiperoni reader asked about my opinion on Scoble’s recent post on PR and developers.
Not an easy question to answer. I’ve been following a pragmatic way. And I’m in a smallish company where I need to generate interest rather than block off journalist queries. A very different situation.
I would tend to agree more with Guy Kawasaki’s DIY list of PR tips. I’ve had good experiences with being authentic and sticking to the truth. There’s so much marketing glib out there. In my experience, journalists prefer talking to somebody that knows the product 😉 but can explain the big picture. Some PR folks want to control the message yet know too little about the product.
But Kawasaki also says you should try to find an interesting story. Just presenting the tech. specifications or technology highlights isn’t really going to thrill anybody. And that’s a pitfall some developers may fall into. And many small IT companies want to appear serious and established. Whereas looking dynamic and fast-moving would scare the established competitors more.
As the comments show being secretive isn’t going to work the same way for all companies. And IMHO, Scoble profits more from developer or entrepreneur interviews than polished PR interviews.
In our fast-moving world, bad or inaccurate press stories may also generate good attention. Cos some people will look closer to form their own opinion.
This sums up my current strategy.
With the usual disclaimer: off the top of my head and unreflected….
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Windmill builder
Lunch over IP on young Malawi windmill inventor:
See also Soyapi’s blog, another Malawian TED attendee.
(update)
And William’s own blog at: http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/ -
nchenga’s Web 2.0 roundup: Links and comments
How many online services did you sign up for, use once or twice, and then never return again?
In my case, that would be lots of ’em. Some of them are really popular services like Digg or Mister Wong, where I just haven’t found a personal use case, or I’ve got a substitute or workaround. While some of them have disappeared, like leze.de or gada.be.
Here’s an idea for a blog post which I’ll update as I go along and find more unused websites in the backwaters of my Internet history.
Sites I tried, but which I don’t use anymore:
- Digg
- Mister Wong (I keep forgetting the url and typing mrwong.de)
- MyBlogLog (I wanted to un-subscribe, but I didn’t see the corresponding info, and now I’m too lazy and too busy. I don’t like the automatic delurking. Sometimes I want to lurk around for a while to get an opinion on the site…).
- Stumbleupon (I tried this once or twice, got really frustrated by the navigation and the tool bar, and couldn’t find a way to un-subscribe and leave).
- Web.de (changed the policy for their free email service to make it unusable, a clear goodbye from my side.)
- Blog-city.com (the hosted blog service I first tried out when I started blogging in 2003, at the time it had long and frustrating upgrade cycles, the reason that I moved to my own installation of WordPress)
- Blogger (I read some Blogger sites… but I hate it if I need to sign in into Blogger to leave a comment, I’ve got about 2 Blogger logins floating around and I just find it cumbersome).
- Bloglines
Sites or services that I visit regularly:
- Flickr
- del.icio.us
- Gmail, Gtalk…
- Wikipedia
- Technorati and blogsearch.google.com (mainly due to lack of alternatives, I think there’s lots of room for improvement in both)
- Slug.ch and blogug.ch (for the Swiss perspective)
- Youtube, Revver
- Skype (I recently signed up for SkypeOut and used it to call Malawi, very good sound quality, comparable or lower pricing compared to telecom carriers)
On the content side of things, I read:
- Scoble
- Dooce (you’ve got to have at least one mummy blogger in your Webtwodotoh portfolio)
- Metablog.ch (although recently this blog has slowed down a bit… I guess, Matthias has a lot of other duties)
- Climb to the Stars
- Gapingvoid (all time favorite)
- Google News, and I’ve set up Google Alerts for a couple of keywords.
- WordPress and WordPress.com (WordPress goodness hosted for you)
- Lorelle on WordPress
My favorite RSS feed by far:
- Dilbert
New explorations:
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Book: Hiking tours to Swiss buildings
currently reading:
Architektur erwandern -
Interesting TED video
on investment as the means to help Africa:
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Malawi cycle challenge accident
Here’s a blog entry on an accident that occurred in a Malawi biking event for charity.
Stories on Malawi: Sarah injured in Malawi cycle challenge
Source
Get well soon, Sarah.
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Meltingerberg
went on a short hike yesterday, sort of following this route to Meltingerberg and Erschwil.
“sort of” cos missing a turn-off somewhere, meant walking back for about 20 mins. Reached the bus stop safely and in time.
