Now to find a Twitter app? It looks pretty good in Safari on iPad..

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Arrived today by UPS courier.  Just opened the box (with a nice “out
of box experience”), although not much inside the box, apart from IT.

Then synched with iTunes (and needed to download the latest 100Mb version).

The iPad is shockingly lovely to handle and use, even after all the
worldwide hype.

This quick picture with it sitting on top of my Toshiba laptop PC,
does not do justice..

Yum yum. Think I will like this expensive purchase.

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Posted via email from kevinbrown’s posterous

Beautiful Summer’s evening here, so I popped down the road to the National
Trust’s Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, to take some photos.

Just after 6pm, there was virtually no one else about (usually it is
very busy). I got some delightful pics.  Here is just one..

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So I thought I should take a look and install the latest WordPress 3.0 Release Candidate (RC1) as a demo site.

To install WordPress, I almost always use the automatic Fantastico service included with my hosting. It makes the process very quick.

But as 3.0 is available only as a Release Candidate at present, I had to do a manual install.. (and it took me a little while to remember what to do!)

My first impressions of 3.0 are very good. I’ve not really got into it yet, but it seems to have some useful customization facilities built-in

And I really like the new default theme (and note that the old default Kubrick-based and Classic themes, are no longer distributed in the package).

The new “Twenty Ten” default theme includes a horizontal page menu, which I always prefer because it helps visitors find your Wordpress pages, plus a modern, clean, white appearance (although I see it does have the facility in the admin area, to easily use an alternative background image, if you want).

I think many people will really appreciate the built-in customization facilities, such as easy header and background image customization, that you can do without having to touch any css stylesheet code. This may mean that many people will be happy to stick with the default theme, avoiding the effort of searching for another theme having a more individual appearance.

I look forward to testing WP 3.0 properly and giving it some serious exercise!

UPDATE: Here is the official WordPress video tour of brand new Version 3.0 (released yesterday)

Without widgets in the footer, you know the problem … You read a good post, get to the bottom of the page, then wonder where to go next.

BUT, if the page footer contains widgets, chances are you will immediately see other post titles or enticing comments, which help you to find other posts you may enjoy.

So having realized this from my own blog reading behavior, I thought I really should put widgets in my own footer, here at KevinSBrown.com

I’ve just done it and you can see the new widgets in the footer here (if you page down). I have added three side by side widget areas to the footer.

So having worked it out, I think I should share my “easy how-to guide” to widgetizing your WordPress footer.

Here goes…

STEP 1: Tell WordPress you want to use three more widget positions, and they should be called “footer 1″, “footer 2″ and “footer 3″)

Use the theme editor for your current theme, to add an extra line of code to the functions.php file (it’s the 3rd line below, beginning register_sidebars(3,array…

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
    register_sidebar();
    register_sidebars(3, array('name'=>'Footer %d'));

STEP 2: Add the extra widget positions to your theme’s footer

Again using the theme editor, add this to your footer.php file…

<div id="footerwidgets">  
  <div id="footer-left">               
    <ul>      
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') 
   || !dynamic_sidebar('footer 1') ) : ?> <li>                                                                                     
      <?php endif; ?>                
    </ul>    
  </div>   
  <div id="footer-middle">               
    <ul>        
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') 
   || !dynamic_sidebar('footer 2') ) : ?> <li>                                                                                   
      <?php endif; ?>                
    </ul>    
  </div>    
  <div id="footer-right">               
    <ul>       
<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') 
   || !dynamic_sidebar('footer 3') ) : ?> <li>                                                                                  
      <?php endif; ?>                
    </ul>    
  </div>
</div> 
<br /> <br clear="all">

STEP 3: Style the new footer divs, by adding div styles to your style.css file
(note: you will probably need to adjust the width parameters and other style elements, to suit your particular theme)

/* Footer Widgets */
#footerwidgets {
	display: block;
}
#footer-left {
	width: 210px;
	float: left;
	margin: 15px 10px 10px 30px;
	padding: 10px;
	background-color: #f3f3e7;
}
#footer-middle {
	width: 210px;
	float: left;
	margin: 15px 10px 10px 15px;
	padding: 10px;
	background-color: #f3f3e7;
}
#footer-right {
	width: 210px;
	float: left;
	margin: 15px 10px 10px 15px;
	padding: 10px;
	background-color: #f3f3e7;
}

I hope that helps. You will need to adjust to your particular theme and requirements, but that is exactly what I have just done here and you can see the result.

So it will come as no surprise, I write an astronomy blog… Using the internet delight WordPress (of course).

I do use basic SEO strategies, but mainly, I just try to produce good content which visitors will enjoy and find useful.

Today, the traffic to the blog (well, one single post in particular) has gone THROUGH THE ROOF. Like nothing I have seen before.

It’s been helped GREATLY by a logo change on the Google homepage today, but you will see from the image below, visitor numbers have been very good all week. So, I must be doing something right?

Niche Blog Traffic Spike

Is this a “High Traffic WordPress Blog”? lol

I hesitate to mention the site url, because it doesn’t need the publicity at the moment! But the linked event will be over soon (for another year) so I will.. It’s IYA2009.com

Big thanks to Goscomb Hosting, who have worked with me over the past 24 hours to keep the site available for most visitors (it had to be turned-off at one point and comments are still unfortunately disabled).

So what was the single biggest change, that kept the blog going through this traffic onslaught?

It was installation of the magic wp super cache plugin.

This plugin enabled more than 180,000 extra visitors, to view the blog! Thanks Donncha.

It was a great day, as evidenced by the written feedback and video testimonials from the people there on the day.

I was really scared beforehand, so I have made this short video to try to explain how I managed this fear…

I hope this story motivates YOU to push far outside your personal comfort zone, like I did with this workshop event.

Kevin Riley

It’s been an exciting couple of weeks…

When I found out my internet business mentor Kevin Riley is coming to England from Japan in July, on vacation, I had to ask… would he speak at an event and share his business-building experience?

When he said Yes, I knew I just had to organize a suitable London event.  So that’s what I have been doing.

To complement Kevin’s product creation skills, I now have another business hero of mine on board – the rapidly successful Lee McIntyre from the UK.  

Lee has shown he’s very good at using his list building techniques,  outsourcing and clever business automation, to grow his fledgling online business into a very substantial enterprise, in just the last two years.

Lee McIntyre

So organizing the event is now going full-steam ahead.

I have secured a central London hotel for Sunday July 26th 2009 (to fit with Kevin’s vacation schedule) and you can now reserve a place on the priority list..

http://yesinternetbusiness.com/londonworkshop/

I can’t yet confirm the “earlybird” ticket price, because I’m still pinning-down the costs of running the event (my intention is just to make it breakeven, so I will keep the cost as low as possible).

I’m sure it’s going to be an excellent learning workshop, offering unusual face-to-face access to these successful business owners – plus of course, the chance to get to know them personally and network with everyone at the event.

I strongly recommend you get yourself on the earlybird list and take advantage of the ticket offer, when it’s out.

UPDATE: Ticket price confirmed. Not much over the price of a London Lunch.. But with so much more lasting value.

http://yesinternetbusiness.com/londonworkshop/

I hope to meet you on July 26th.

PS. BONUS

Get your Earlybird ticket and you’ll get immediate access to a cool audio bonus..

It’s an iPod Touch, so it’s one of the wi-fi internet enabled ones. I do realize I’m somewhat late to the party!

However, what’s more important is it led directly to me creating a product.

The product is a book called “Blogcasting Blueprint” and it’s now selling at a low price as a Launch Offer. It’s about linking a WordPress blog to the iTunes Store and creating podcasts to reach a wider audience.

Here’s the process I followed. Hopefully it will give some insight, into how the iPod purchase led to product creation…

I started to use iTunes (obviously) and was astonished by the loveliness of the whole set-up.

My Channel at the iTunes Store

But what really caught my eye, were the “privateer” Podcast channels, there in the full iTunes Store.

Small information publishers like me (and probably you, too). I thought, how can I do that? These guys have their publishing in front of goodness knows how many millions of people, who search at the iTunes Store for interesting stuff to enjoy.

Well, being me, I started to investigate and I discovered that I (and you) can get our own channel at the Store, with a bit of organization.

Plus, joy of joy, my WordPress blog already had suitable content (my posts) AND it could handle the technicalities of RSS feeds etc, automatically.

All rather interesting!

So I tried it out.. And it works. I got my own podcast channel at the Store and now, publish my blog content to this much wider audience.

So then, I started thinking… How could I help other blog publishers, do the same thing?

Well, of course, I had to write a report all about it. It shows how to do it step-by-step, short-circuiting all the research I had to do.

As I mentioned, the report at a Launch Offer price is currently available.

So if you’re at all interested, I’ve worked hard to make this report clear and useful, showing how to setup your blog with the wonderful (free) plugin I use. And then podcast, to your own channel at the iTunes Store.