Check Out My Mobile Blog

To help me blog a little more, I'm trying Tumbler out again. The tool is easy to use and lets me do many cool things, like tie directly into FaceBook. It's easy to get to, just go to: blog.kellysworld.net. Tracy and I are off to Boston, so this tool should allow me to better share my experiences while in Boston and Maine. Tracy is graduating this Saturday, if I have a good enough signal on my phone I may try and use UStream so that those not attending can actually watch some of the ceremony.

Until then - Happy Trails! We get up at 3:00 and our plane leaves at 7:00 am. Going to be a long day tomorrow.

Photos - Update to Site

I'm working on "upgrading" how I handle photos on the site. Taking a bit of a queue from how I decided to handle video, I'm going to use Flickr. While YouTube is pretty much the king of video on the net right now, Flickr has been the king of photos since it's creation several years ago. While it's feature set hasn't changed a great deal, it's still the big boy on the street and does what I want it to do. I've had a Flickr account for ages but stop using it when Apple upgraded to MobileMe. While I like how they handle photos, one glaring omission is the inability to embed photos in other places; like my website. Flickr does allow me to do this, and while Flickr has other limitations, it's still pretty slick.

If you look under the Galleries menu you will now see one that says Flickr. From there you can either click and go to my primary Flickr page or you can go down through the menus to categories.

Be advised that I haven't uploaded too many photos in the past year to Flickr so I have some uploading to do to get the site more current.

I did upload some old family photos this weekend, so there is some fresh content available. You can also see how I can embed a slideshow into the website. Like I said, slick.

I will probably also keep some photos on FaceBook. Many of the people I know use FaceBook and I have to admit, it's pretty handy. Especially if you have a modern smart phone.

Several New Videos

I've added several videos to my "NEW" YouTube channel. Below are links to each. You can also go to the new page on KellysWorld called KWTV. That page is dedicated to just showing the latest videos. It's very easy to use and it totally embedded into the site. There is also a link back to my YouTube channel on the player. If you use YouTube a lot you can subscribe to my channel and follow my videos that way. I expect there will be more video than in the past; assuming I can find the time to do quick edits and upload them.

• Carlos Year One
• Christmas 2008
• Kristie On Helium
• Night out With Kristie

Bit.ly Shortening Test

This is simply a test to see if the Bit.ly shortening service works with the plugin for #TwitterTools on #WordPress. I guess I could have waited for a real post to give this a try, but why not just do a test and get it over with.

Announcing KellysWorld Relaunch

Letter sent to family and friends announcing the relaunch of KellysWorld. Use commenting to tell me what you think. Letter:

Most of you should know about my website KellysWorld.net. I've had it since October 2002 and started blogging in early 2003.

Recently I switched to a new publishing platform and relaunched the site 2 weeks ago. It's not perfect and it isn't going to win WebSite of the year but it's a decent offering.

The content remains the same but some design and publishing changes give me more control and from just about anywhere in the world.

I've tied my site in with Twitter, micro blogging site, and added some features that weren't available to me before. For example the site can now be translated into any of four langueges instantly. Not terribly useful but one of them is Korean and I have a few Korean friends that check in on ms occassionally.

I'm also looking at the Ability for others to post stories, photos and other items. I have a few options in that area and we shall see.

One really cool benefit of the change is that posts back to day one (2003) are now available for view. It's strange reading stuff I wrote 5 years ago, much of it spure of the moment.

There is a commenting system, but you do have to register to use it. Eventually I may increase security it depends on how much web spam I get. Right now it's wide open.

Photos currently link to my MobileMe photo site and Tracy's. Still thinking about that one. Lots of options.

Site isn't done yet, but i thought I would let you all know of the relaunch. I'm also looking for suggestions.

Just go to www.kellysworld.net.

See you there! Tell me what you think.

Kelly

KellysWorld - Translated

Okay, this is really cool. At least I think so. A new feature of KellysWorld is the ability to translate it into one of a long list of languages. That's right, for those living in say Korea who's English might not be 100% they can read KellysWorld in their native tongue. The power of computers and the web, truly amazing. How do you translate the site? All you do is click on the language of the site and rather quickly a new version of the site pops up properly formatted in the language of choice. For now I've selected Korean, German, French and Spanish; but there is a really long list of choices, but 4 seemed enough for now.

Even if you don't need to read KellysWorld in one of 4 other languages feel free to click on the button and see what happens. I was amazed at how very well it worked, and I'm hard to amaze when it comes to technology.

Decisions, Decisions

As you should already be aware KellysWorld.net has been under major revisions for the past two weeks. Now that I have moved to using WordPress as my site creation tool and I have decided on the basic functionality it falls on me to find that theme or look I want for my site. The current one, as of today, is at this point my favorite. I've tried a few others, but they haven't stuck. Below are images of some of the options, including the current one. Each look requires a little changing of where information is placed so they don't have the same layout; but all carry the same content. Take a look, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts. One thing I did decide on was going with only 5 posts per page instead of 10. I'm not sure readers like to scroll on forever. I could be wrong. Sample Site Images:

[gallery]

New Features for KW 4.0

I've added some new features to KellysWorld 4.0; along with settling on a new theme for the time being. The changes I believe both put the fun in "functionality." The first new feature is the Video of the Week. The first video is a commercial you just have to see to believe, babys getting their groove on while roller skatting. It's creepy, but fun. Another new feature is a social bookmarking one that you will find at the bottom of ever post, including this one. I've included some of my favorites. Basically, it allows you to take a post and repost it through your favorite social site like FaceBook or Twitter. I've includd e-mail as well. Want to subscribe to my blog feed, that's the individual posts; all you have to do is enter your e-mail address into the box on the right under my welcome message. The feed is provided by FeedBurner, now powered by Google!

Another feature is a direct view into my Twitter feed. Twitter, if you don't know, is a social micro-blogging website. Posts have to be less than 140 characters. It started off as a tool used by only the geekiest of folks (like myself) and is now used by the President of the United States (also a geek), celebrities and even one of our local weather guys. Some days I "twitter" a lot other days none at all. Individual posts are called "tweets."

One of my favorite features is my mobile access. If you use an iPhone, Blackberry or any other web enabled mobile phone then accessing my site is easy and automatic. The iPhone version is really stellar. To see the standard mobile version, scroll down to the bottom of the page and chose "Mobile Version." Don't worry, you can convert back. For the iPhone version, well, you will need to get your hands on an iPhone, iPod Touch or even an Android mobile phone. Them the breaks!

Finally you will find what's called a Tag Cloud at the bottom of the page. Most posts on this site and most others use categories and tags to help categorize their hundred or even thousands of posts. By clicking on any category or tag, you are automatically taken to a page with posts that only match that category or tag. I had this on KellysWorld 3.0, but the tags didn't all make the transition. I'm not done re-tagging, but I've done over 50% of the posts so far.

Enjoy the new features and please, feel free to leave me comments. You will have to register with the site to leave comments (that too is a new feature) but it's easy to register.