Designer Sait Alanyali surely loves his Mac Mini, and with rumors abounding of a new Mac Mini with no real results to show, Sait decided to take things into his own hands by coming up with a personal concept should there be a revised Mac Mini. His main beef with the current machine would be the location of the I/O ports, hence the whole point of this V-shaped design that keeps cables at bay while bringing all the relevant ports within reach. In addition, the form factor will also improve cooling since air is able to move freely through the heatsink. Other dreamboat features include an HDMI port with hot-swappable hard drives. What else would you like to see Sait add?

Permalink: Mac Mini Concept from Ubergizmo (US, FR) | Good deals | Hot: Storm Review

(Via Ubergizmo.)

Apple releases a list of the most popular free and paid iPhone and iPod touch apps in the iTunes Store with Pandora, Shazam, and Remote leading the charge in the free section. Compare to our list of what’s good (and free!) in the iTunes App Store which we posted shortly after the App Store opened its doors. [via]

(Via Lifehacker.)

With some of my family overseas, Skype and iChat have become important tools for voice communication, second only to the cell phone and face to face protocol. It occurred to me that outside of telemarketers and the very occasional late-night pizza dial, the land line has become a relatively unused service. Unused, yet a consistent and not insubstantial monthly bill.

With thoughts of finally ditching the land line, but still a bit resistant to going completely phoneless in the home (what about when my cell battery dies?), I came across an article in Linux Journal by Andrew Sheppard, author of Skype Hacks, that shows you how to reconfigure your home telephone system to be completely routed through a server running Skype and Linux.

My solution was to build a Skype server that provides 24/7 phone service with the minimum of hassle and fuss. By dumping your regular phone company and taking back control of your home phone wiring using a Skype server, you will have not only a phone system with nearly the same capabilities as before–indeed, in some ways better–you will also save a bundle of money! In my case, I save a little less than $700 US each year (this year, next year, and the year after that, and so on), or about 82% off of my old phone bill.

Using a Skype server plugged in to the existing copper phone wiring of your home means that you can lift a receiver anywhere in your home, at any time, and get a regular dial tone. Incoming calls either from Skype users or regular phones ring all handsets throughout your home. Basically, you can make Skype behave like a regular phone line, but at a tiny fraction of the cost.

There are some big benefits to switching to a Skype server. It’s likely a lot cheaper and if you’re a regular Skype user, you can now use the service with any handset in the house instead of sitting at your computer.

There are also some downsides. The phone system still remains one of the most reliable services. It’s more likely that I’ll lose electricity than I won’t have a dial tone, which may be of some concern for fire and bugler alarm systems. You also wouldn’t have 911 service in this scenario, but if you have a cell phone anyway, this may be a moot point.

Build a Skype Server for Your Home Phone System
Andrew Sheppard’s Skype Hacks - Tips & Tools for Cheap, Fun, Innovative Phone Service

(Via MAKE Magazine.)

1. Use Wordpress. No other platform is as flexible with all the plug-ins, in my opinion.
2. Post often. I usually default to one post per day, when I’m asked. I try to do at least one per day on this blog, except for weekends.
3. Use catchy blog post titles. Put yourself in the shoes of a person who is casually surfing the Internet, seeing your post along with hundreds of others. Will your blog headline stand out? Copyblogger is an awesome source for information on writing.
4. Ask open ended questions. One of the best ways to invite commentary on your posts is to ask for it. Ask your readers questions and tell them to answer in the form of a comment.
5. Comment on other blogs – often. I actually maintain a separate folder in Google Reader for relevant blogs I want to follow more closely than others. And, on those blogs, I comment regularly whenever I have something to say.
6. Use Twitter. You’ve GOT to be out there, being social. Friendfeed, too.
7. Use Twitterfeed to pipe your latest posts into Twitter. But, don’t ONLY use Twitterfeed. You’ve got to be a real person on Twitter, first and foremost. Twitter should not replace RSS.
8. Make your RSS feed obvious, above the fold, and preferably use the orange RSS icon.
9. Provide an RSS-to-Email option so people can subscribe to your latest posts without being forced to use an RSS reader. Many people still don’t use RSS. Feedburner provides a free RSS-to-Email service.
10. Use images in your posts. Images communicate on aesthetic wavelengths words cannot.
11. Use header tags to separate sections in your blog posts, where applicable. H1, H2, and H3 tags. And use good search engine keywords wherever possible in those headers.
12. Structure your blog posts for easy scanning. Use header tags, lists, etc. Avoid long sentences and long paragraphs.
13. Avoid Myspace-style blog designs. What I mean by this is super BUSY designs with too much on screen, animated graphics, etc. These things make your blog truly suck and makes your content too hard to pay attention to.
14. If possible, use a custom Wordpress theme. It is getting to the point where people can recognize cookie-cutter themes. It is OK to use one, but at least modify it so that you have a unique header design.
15. Start your blog’s mailing list as early as possible. The sooner you start, the longer you have to grow your list and, trust me, that list can be used to make money later. Jeremy Shoemoney made this mistake. John Reese used to hound him about building a list. When he finally got around to it, he realized how important it was.
16. Research and choose your mailing list option correctly the first time. I recommend Aweber. What you choose is up to you, however moving a mailing list later can be a huge pain. I know from experience.
17. When choosing a topic to focus your blog on, two things should be considered: (1) Your interest in the topic, (2) How MARKETABLE your topic is.
18. Learn to SELL. The way to a full-time income by blogging is to learn how to MARKET and sell things using your blog. Yaro Starak does a good job of selling via his blog, for example.
19. Don’t discount Facebook. It is a powerful networking tool and you should take the time to build your network, just as you might on Twitter.
20. Create a Facebook page. On Facebook, create a page for your blog or yourself and invite your readers and Facebook friends to become fans. This page can be your blog’s outpost on Facebook. Be sure to import your blog posts as notes.
21. Don’t Be a Me-Too Blogger. You don’t want to become a copy-cat news blog, where you type news-style posts about what is happening in a saturated market. In technology, this is common. Offer something unique that cannot be found everywhere else in your market.
22. Learn to think about your blog as a business. The blog is a promotional and delivery mechanism to your ultimate product or service.
23. When writing your About Page, pay attention to what you write. Don’t just rattle off some dumb, cookie cutter facts. Your About Page should tell a story of who you are and why your blog is worth reading.
24. Do lots of videos. Use TubeMogul to publish them in as many places as you can. And make sure your blog URL is not only in the video, but in the text description that accompanies the video.
25. When making videos, be REAL and be personable. Your videos are an important component to your blog’s brand. Don’t waste the opportunity.
26. Link to other, related blog posts regularly in your own posts. Not only your OWN posts, but the posts of others.
27. Remember, blogging is a SOCIAL business. Be accessible to your readers and proactively get out there and talk with other people in your niche.
28. If you can afford it, travel to blogging conferences. Not only can you learn a lot, but socializing with successful people often breeds so much motivation and success in yourself that is simply beyond words.
29. Write an e-book, create some videos – whatever – but the idea is to create something which is of value to your readers on your subject, and have it available to SELL to them on your blog.
30. Get involved as an affiliate and start linking to products relevant to your posts using your affiliate links. You are providing relevant links to your readers (valuable) while potentially making some money.
31. Don’t Post Low Feedburner Counts. Do not show your RSS subscriber count unless you have a high enough number (at least a few hundred). A low number acts as social proof that your blog has no readers, and that’s not good.
32. Install Popularity Contest or some similar plug-in which ranks your posts based on popularity. Whether you display this information in public on your blog or not, knowing which of your posts are most popular tells you that that particular subject material works and you should probably do more of it.
33. Put relevant keywords into your blog’s title. Use All-In-One SEO to have more control over the titles across your blog.
34. Use a Photo Gallery. People dig photos, so a photo gallery can be a great component to your blog. If you use Flickr, check out the Flickr Photo Album plug-in for Wordpress.
35. Create an RSS widget for your blog on WidgetBox and make it available for your readers to embed on their own blogs if they so choose.
36. Spend some time creating some killer posts for your blog, the link to them somewhere so that new arrivals can quickly see your best work. It is your best stuff which is going to sell them into becoming a subscriber.
37. Make Sharing Easy. Put options on your blog for your readers to share your posts across social media. ShareThis is a great option for this.
38. Share and share alike. If you submit your own posts to sites like Digg or StumbleUpon, be sure to also submit other posts. I might even recommend a 10 to 1 ratio of other people’s posts to your own posts. You do not want to develop a reputation on these sites as somebody who only submits their own content.
39. When you write a post for your blog, aim to be helpful. You want your visitors to come away with a solution to the problem they arrived with. Chris Brogan does so well because his posts are truly helpful.
40. Read other blogs often. When starving for ideas to write about, go to your RSS reader and read related blogs. Often, your own post can be a response to a post on another blog. In fact, this is usually a good idea.
41. Train your readers to do what you want, if needed. If you’re in a market where the people will not know how to use social media, RSS and some of these other things that help promote your blog, TRAIN THEM. Write posts or do videos which show your visitors how to Digg a post, use StumbleUpon, how to use RSS, etc. Perhaps you can educate them and they’ll become part of your promotion army for your own blog.
42. When starting a blog, decide on it’s mission. Your posts should, for the most part, center around a specific theme if you want your blog to really take off. If you run a personal diary kind of blog, where you write about anything that comes to mind, your blog traffic will always be limited because your blog will never attract any particular segment of people. Stay on topic. If you have no specific topic, that’s fine, but realize your blog is going to be more a hobby than a business at that point.
43. Don’t overload your blog with javascript widgets. These things slow down the load speed of your site. In fact, just recently I had to get rid of the MyBlogLog widget on this blog because it was having some effects on page loading time.
44. Use Analytics. I personally use Google Analytics as well as the Wordpress.com Stats plug-in on this blog.
45. Use Windows Live Writer. It is the best blogging client program out there. Even though it is a Microsoft product and a Windows-only product, it is also better than any Mac blogging client I have tried. And it’s free.
46. Be yourself. I believe it is a good thing to show personality on your blog. Don’t be a fake. People can see right through it. Chris Pirillo draws people to his blog and Ustream feed almost solely on personality alone.
47. Don’t write like you’re writing for Britannica. You want your spelling and grammar to be correct, but be colloquial. Talk to people like you would normally talk to people, not as if you’re writing a PH.D. dissertation.
48. Link To Your Social Profiles On Your Blog. Link your various social media profiles right on your blog so that your readers can connect with you outside the confines of your blog.
49. Go where your readers are. Every market is different. When I blog about blogging, I know most of my readers are pretty adept online and probably hang out in the social media space frequently. If your readers are young, they might be on Myspace. If they’re Linux nerds, they may be in the Ubuntu forums. Regardless, you need to maintain a consistent presence in the spaces your readers congregate. Be an authority and be helpful, and traffic will be drawn over to your blog.
50. Equal time reading and writing. You should probably spend just as much time reading and learning as you do writing for your blog. This is how you expand your knowledge, become a better blogger, and get new ideas for your own site. Blogging isn’t all about you. Remember that.

(Via David Risley.)

While this is a cool feature for readers, it could be a very valuable tool for the visually impaired. These tools also provide benefits to readers with learning disabilities like Dyslexia.

As a demonstration of how easy it is to setup this text-to-speech technology, we’ve actually gone ahead and helped Rachel from Why Not Rachel setup Odiogo for her blog. Why Rachel? Well, she’s legally blind and truly needed something like this so she and many of her subscribers could experience her posts in an audible manner. This means less strain and fatigue for the eyes and more accessibility as the posts can now be heard from mobile devices.

Easy 10-Step Setup Guide for Text-to-Speech Conversion

1. Join Odiogo.

2. Download the player button plugin that you will need depending on the blogging platform that you’re using. Odiogo will work with several popular blogging platforms such as: WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, BlogEngine.NET and Terapad. Note: In this example, we will use a WordPress blog.

3. Upload the directory odiogo_listen_button to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory via FTP.

4. Login to your WordPress admin account.

5. Click menu Plugins and Activate the Odiogo Listen Button plugin.

6. Click menu Setting > Odiogo Listen Button.

7. Enter your Odiogo Feed ID and click Save. (You’ll receive this feed ID in email after joining)

8. Click menu Presentation > Widgets (or Sidebar Widgets depending on your WP version).

9. Drag and drop Odiogo Subscribe Button from Available Widgets to Sidebar.

10. Click Save Changes.

Within minutes, your blog posts can be heard online and on iTunes or mobile devices such as iPods and iPhones. Here’s a post from WhyNotRachel with the Odiogo Listen button clearly visible within each and every post just under the post title.

The other important thing to point out is the Odiogo subscription button which appears on the home page in the location that you place the widget. In this sample, it’s located above the Twitter Badge.

Clicking the Odiogo button will take you to the newly created Odiogo feed page for the blog. The impressive thing is that there are several different types of feeds, such as HTML, xHTML (for mobile devices) and XML/RSS feed.

As you will notice, there’s a plethora of ways for subscribers to listen to your blog now. They can select to subscribe to your new podcast from iTunes and play it on their mobile device of choice or they can subscribe with Juice. They can also elect to use their web readers such as Google Reader, Newsgator, etc. There are also options to share the feed with friends on social networks.

Also worth noting is that all of the posts can be played with the ‘Stream All Articles’ link or played individually with the player located next to each post title. Every blog post can be downloaded individually as an mp3 file.

Other Text-to-Speech Tools

iSpeech - Another text-to-speech conversion service similar to Odiogo but not quite as feature-rich. For example, you can embed a widget to play back the entire blog or convert chunks of text but there isn’t a way to embed a player in each blog post for easy playback. However, they do offer a choice of male or female voice, which is lacking from Odiogo at this time.

Jott - Can convert blog feeds to audio and let you listen to them on your cell phone, which in essense becomes an audio Google Reader of sorts.

AT&T Labs - Provides a free TTS service that converts whatever you type to speech and lets you download it as a wav file as well.

NextUp - Offers a line of commercial products such as TextAloud, NewsAloud, and StocksAloud that can convert text to audio.

GhostReader - Does text to speech for the Mac platform.

FlameReader - Reads text or even letters as you type, which is good for those with learning disabilities.

Expressivo - Offers a commercial product as well as a free online version that lets you convert text to speech in different voices as well as share them on a blog, email or IM.

Conclusion

Providing greater accessibility to your content makes a great deal of sense for several reasons. It not only gives your readers more ways to experience your blog, but it also allows many others to enjoy your work that otherwise couldn’t do so. Text-to-speech technology continues to improve with time, so look for this feature to spread across the blogosphere, slowly but surely as people realize that the web isn’t just for viewing but for hearing too.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, bunhill

(Via Mashable!.)

We knew this day would eventually come, but somehow we’re still misting up a little — Linux has been ported to the iPhone and iPod touch. Dev Team member planetbeing is the mastermind in charge of bringing everyone’s favorite open-source OS to Apple’s handhelds, and while it’s a little rough around the edges (read: no touchscreen drivers, sound, or WiFi / cell radio support), it’s definitely the first step on the road to hacking nirvana. The team is hard at work, and it even sounds like they’re thinking about porting Android in the near future (!), so hit the read link to try it out and lend a hand if you can — or just head on past the break for a quick vid of the port in all its text-scrolling glory.

[Via iphone-dev.org]

Continue reading Linux hits the iPhone!

Some Facebook users are complaining that they are being banned from Facebook Chat for sending too many messages, when in fact they’ve sent few or no actual messages. The bug appears to be affecting Internet Explorer users.

Dozens of other problems are being reported with chat as well, but this particular issue seems sort of ridiculous. Only your Facebook friends are on your chat list, so even the fact that the error exists is odd. Is there really such a thing as sending too many messages to friends?

Update: Facebook has responded with the following: ‘Some Facebook users received a message in error that Chat was disabled for them due to a bug in the system. A team of engineers worked to resolve the situation and Facebook Chat should be restored for anyone affected. We appreciate the reports from our users that help us make improvements to the product and apologize for any temporary inconvenience.’

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

(Via TechCrunch.)

While Twitter might be the ‘it’ startup of 2008, it somewhat famously has zero revenue. Meanwhile, although Facebook has become the most trafficked social network, its biggest competitor, MySpace, does a far better job of monetizing its users as it evolves into an online media company. What can Facebook do to counter? Instead of buying the hottest startup on the planet, take a look at acquiring companies with real business models that are in need of what Facebook has – hundreds of millions of users. Here are a few ideas that come to mind:

SmugMug

We know that Facebook isn’t just the world’s biggest social network, it’s also its biggest photo sharing site. SmugMug offers a gorgeous interface for organizing photos, but more importantly, offers serious monetization by letting users buy prints, postcards, merchandise, and more. MySpace recently introduced its own options for photo printing, through a partnership with HP.

Imeem (or iLike)

Increasingly, Facebook’s lack of a music service is becoming one of its most glaring omissions. Recently, rumors surfaced that the company was looking to forge a partnership or outright purchase one of the online music companies. iLike already owns the most popular music application on Facebook, while Imeem offers a more popular destination site and widget network. The business model here is obvious: digital downloads, concert tickets, merchandise, and ringtones. Their big competitor: MySpace Music.

Jaxtr

This startup provides web-based VoIP services, allowing users to create widgets that can be embedded on blogs, websites, and social networking profiles. While all seemed to be rosy as the company passed 10 million users and introduced premium services to make money, Jaxtr recently laid off staff and saw its CEO resign.

What’s the play for Facebook? Like other web-based VoIP services, while member-to-member calling is free, calling out to landlines or cell phones costs money. Since Facebook would be spending $0 on user acquisition (typically a huge cost for VoIP services), that revenue drops right to the bottom line.

An Ad Network

For a while, speculation had it that Facebook would launch its own behavioral ad network, where users’ profile data would be leveraged to serve ads on participating publishers’ sites. Ultimately, we wound up with Beacon, which just freaked people out and ruined a few people’s Christmas. Nonetheless, this remains a huge opportunity for Facebook, and with an unsustainable number of ad networks out there as we head into an economic slowdown, Facebook could pick up a big network (in terms of reach and impressions) on the cheap, and then insert its own behavioral technology behind the scenes.

Digg

Acquiring Digg would be a bit out of leftfield and probably very unlikely; whereas the other names on this list are services that would integrate within Facebook, Digg is its own massive destination site. However, the two companies are already working together to bring Facebook Connect to Digg. News is the cornerstone of any media operation, and Digg, with Facebook Connect, would simply fit the bill without being a boring also-ran in the world of news aggregators.

Plus, with Google no longer interested, Yahoo building its own social news site (Buzz), and the big media companies all being squeezed by the current economy, there aren’t that many companies that would offer a competing bid. On the other hand, Facebook could potentially build their own Digg competitor, based on an aggregate view of user’s posted items.

Will Any of These Deals Actually Happen?

The Pros: all of the businesses above offer Facebook logical ways to make money. The Cons: None of the above are nearly as sexy as Twitter, and they all come with baggage.

Nonetheless, even if Facebook isn’t worth the $15 billion valuation they used to try and persuade Twitter to do a deal, they are in a far better position than most as the economy slows down. Lots of startups with good ideas and good business models simply won’t be able to gain users fast enough to survive. Facebook can scoop up these types of companies on the cheap, get them integrated, and emerge from the current economic downturn as an online media company with diverse revenue streams. On the other hand, the alternative - not doing any deals - isn’t a bad idea either.

(Via Mashable!.)

You know what they say - necessity is the mother of all invention, and Eric Skiff decided to use some of his spare time to carve out this laptop stand from cardboard. This green piece of low-tech computer peripheral ought to provide not only relief to your body while working, but your pocket as well. This DIY stand consists of a trio of cardboard pieces that have been cut to specifications, so head on here to download the pattern files before you begin. A good way to introduce art & craft to the little ones in these days of electronic distractions.

(Via Ubergizmo.)

(Via Lifehacker.)