First it was requiring link backs, then it was ads, then it was hidden ads and there are also reports of adding stuff that ‘call home’ or inject malicious code that harm your visitors or even steal your traffic. A shame.

Problem is, most theme users don’t have the ability or resources at hand to check these themes thoroughly. I recently bumped into this really cool plugin – Theme Authenticity Checker and quickly took it for a quick run.

First impressions – neato! I think this is much needed to help anyone novice or expert take a quick look. The plugin itself is pretty straightforward and looking inside the code, there doesn’t seem to be anything malicious inside this plugin itself – that’s important too!

What you should know: The plugin did warn me of two themes which came packaged with a contact.php Page template. Concerned, I naturally investigated the code. I’ve come to the conclusion that the base64 encoding is not used to call home, it was not used to inject viruses. It was used to encrypt or mask submitted email addresses and subject lines in the form. In short – it was not malicious.

The bottom line for me: The plugin is a great way to quickly scan any theme you use, but if you find something and don’t know what to do about it. Get help from someone who can give you more concrete answers.

No hidden code or crazy linking terms. Download here to by clicking on the screen shot.

One of the most important features I wanted is something that would be able to create tasks by email. When I found Hiveminder, I thought it was the answer but later found out it’s more than what I asked for which makes it so sweet.

You see, not only can Hiveminder create tasks by email, you can also update these tasks by email. Also, the person you are working with does not need to have a Hiveminder account. Confused? Let me explain.

Inside Hiveminder, I can set up a special email that clients can use to email me whenever they have a new task for me. Any email sent to that super secret address will automatically be converted into a task. I can then choose to accept, decline or ignore the task. When I do, a notification email will be kicked back to the client and a code (much like a help desk ticket ID) will be appended to the email. This will be used to track the task. Anytime I add a note, the client will also receive an email and all they need to do is reply. No new software to learn, no login, no downloads and installations. Works for clients, keeps things neat on my end because I can give each task it’s own deadline, add a team to it or even attach other tasks to the main one.

It also works the other way around. If I have something I need to assign to an assistant, I would simply enter the assistant’s email address in the task to assign it to them. They will receive a accept/decline email and can communicate with me through email on their end while I keep things neat in Hiveminder. Of course, she can always choose to sign up a Hiveminder account if she wishes, but it’s not required.

I’ve only used it for one day but can already see it’ll probably be a keeper. I’ve managed to keep my email inbox from cluttering up with too many task type emails that get buried or lost. And, hey, I’ve checked off more tasks today than before and that’s the whole idea. Check them out.  

Technorati Tags: productivity

Then, portable video players were very expensive. Now? Shoot, you can buy a video/mp3 player for under $50. Then, I pondered about the popularity of screen videos to-go since these are such tiny screens, you can hardly see anything. Still do – but you know what?

People are weird – me including. Sometimes it’s not the clarity of video we want but rather the rough gist of it. Have you seen some of the video quality on places like YouTube? You know then it’s not great. This leads me to conclude, sometimes, it’s not the quality of video but what people get out of it.

Well, am one of those people. As a long time subscriber of Reese Report  - I love the content but sitting through the videos is a bit tough for me. I’m antsy and can’t sit to view something longer than 10 minutes. But if I don’t watch the videos, I may miss something important. Besides, who wants to sit on their butts all day when you could watch it while working out?

So, I went and purchased one of those book/laptop trays that you attach to the treadmill. It worked OK for a while but golly is it ever so hard to find a good one that’s made of steel. The one I got is plastic and every time I put my laptop on it, I’d start to worry. I’m even afraid of running on the treadmill… time to think of something else.

I looked at my MP3 player and thought… why can’t I take my video like I take you everywhere my friend?

*Light bulb moment* – Ok, it’s more of a Duh! Moment. See, I bought an Archos portable media player last year so why not stuff John Reese into that and take him with me? Great idea, except for one small problem. Reese Report videos are in flash – like most Internet Marketing material is. The Archos and almost all other players including the iPod, can’t do flash naturally. So I needed to convert it.

You’d think conversion is easy right? But no! I bought a converter that worked for a few flash files then quit, I tested so many, I can hear my computer complain. <<–Major Frustration!

I did find a tool that would do it though and finally get Reese Report to-go! But it is SUCH a pain.

The point of this long story? It’s probably smart for us marketers to start creating videos in alternative format(s) in addition to flash. Especially if we want it to be ‘viral’ and passed on.

They are both low tech products but given the extra zing with the latest technologies. I’m talking about Instant Teleseminar and Send Out Cards. These are by no means ground breaking products, but made much better with today’s technology.

Most of us don’t really see how services like these can work for us. So, I wrote a case study – A Phone Call And A Postcard. How simple tools can help improve your conversion. It’s a quick read, under 5 pages. Click here to download.

There are also details inside the document, how you can witness these two tools in action on May 30th, 2007.

www.teleflip.com . At time of writing, I don’t have any problems getting the message. But if you want something more reliable, you could purchase credits from www.clickatell.com and use a simple script to put the form on your site. This requires a little bit more technical knowledge but is probably more reliable all the way around.

There are many other ways for your team to reach on emergency of course. Most people just prefer a regular phone call. I’ve always encouraged people to use what works best for them despite new technology. SMS is just what I like best.

Technorati Tags: SMS, textmessage

As an advertiser, though I’m not super worried. Yes, it does mean we’ll probably have to jump through more hoops to advertise. Some might even see this as advertising censorship – though that’s a bit drastic from where I stand. All this again boils down to a simple thing John Reese and Alice Seba keep drumming into my thick skull.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Some businesses live (and die) on one or at best, two traffic sources and when there’s trouble, their business goes South. In a traditional brick and mortar business, if you have a store on a busy street and the city decides to divert their traffic through a new highway, most businesses suffer badly. It’s not easy for them to relocate or to find other ways to generate the foot traffic they had before.

Online, you can decide which roads lead to your site because you can build those roads. So why limit yourself?

The theme also has a lot of functions. For example, if you want to change the header image, you can do it directly from WordPress Presentation dashboard. It’s also widget ready. As a widget user, I cannot imagine a releasing a theme that doesn’t do widgets. Below is a screen shot of the theme

Download it from here. Enjoy!

The quick way is to upload the WMV file to your site then use a code like this in your pages (make sure you’re pointing to your video)
Code:

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 <object NAME="Player" WIDTH="320" HEIGHT="240" align="left" hspace="10" type="application/x-oleobject" CLASSID="CLSID:6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6">
<param NAME="URL" VALUE="yourfile.wmv></param><param>
</param><param NAME="AUTOSTART" VALUE="false"></param>
<param name="showControls" value="true"></param>
<embed WIDTH="320" HEIGHT="240" align="left" hspace="10" SRC="yourfile.wmv" TYPE="application/x-oleobject" AUTOSTART="false">
</embed>
</object>

This is by far the quickest, easiest solution. However – I would advise you to use Flash. Any web video is better with flash because of compatibility. WMV is a pain to view on Macs and Linux, MOV is a pain on Windows.

How to you make your video flash? Convert it using a converter like Super. Upload the SWF to your site then use the following code to embed it into your web page (again make sure you edit the code to enter the video’s URL properly)

Code:

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<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000"codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"WIDTH="550" HEIGHT="400" id="myMovieName">
<param NAME=movie VALUE="myFlashMovie.swf">
</param><param NAME=quality VALUE=high></param><param NAME=bgcolor VALUE=#FFFFFF>
<embed src="/support/flash/ts/documents/myFlashMovie.swf" quality=high bgcolor=#FFFFFF WIDTH="550" HEIGHT="400"
NAME="myMovieName" ALIGN="" TYPE="application/x-shockwave-flash"
PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed></param></object>

In both codes, you can edit the movie height and width to suit.

You can of course use [tag]Google Video[/tag] or [tag]YouTube[/tag]. Create an account, and upload it they’ll give you a code to paste onto your website. That’s just as quick an easy as the first option. In my experience that works – but I’ve found sometimes the uploaded video quality turns out really bad even though the original you uploaded is of good quality. So, for my own web sites, I prefer using option number 2 above and use Google Video/Youtube and other videos sites for promotion.

My co-worker and I are going to be co-managing an email account. We’d both receive not only the incoming messages but also all the replies that we send through that account so we can keep up with quotes to clients, clarifications and so forth.

She handles everything until 4pm daily and then I take over from there.

Here’s the problem. When I check the mail, she obviously doesn’t get a copy and when she checks it, I don’t get a copy and neither of us get a copy of the replies without CCing one another to a different address. I set mine to leave the message on the server but will she be able to download them since the server will recognize that is has already been read?

I don’t suppose you have any type of solution that will allow both of us to actually download all the incoming/outgoing mail?

This was my response to her.

You can both use Webmail. That’s perhaps the quickest and easiest way. But if you prefer to use an email reader, instead of POP, use IMAP. You should first check with your web host or ISP if they support this. How to do this is easy. Just setup a new account in your email reader and select IMAP instead of POP. Enter everything as usual. Your co-worker can do the same too.

IMAP checks email just like POP. The only difference is, it doesn’t download your emails to your computer. All emails stay on the web server. So no matter who checks the account and from anywhere, all the emails stay online. It’s kinda like editing web pages live with FrontPage.

There are only two things you must be careful. If you or or your co-worker deletes any email from the account it is gone forever. Also, make sure you make the email account large enough to store emails that you might want to keep.

Here’s a video to show how to check emails using IMAP in Outlook Express or ThunderBird.