We’re honored to have space shuttle Endeavour making it’s final stay here in Los Angeles. Here at our west coast office situated overlooking the airport, it’s just a walk to see the shuttle situated at one of it’s stops on it’s 12 mile trip to the LA museum. Our building is situated fairly close to the shuttle’s route, which means the commute into our office, as experienced by a number of us here, was spotty with road closure preparations. A small price to pay to feel the awesome presence in person – and “awesome” is a much overused word, but the only one that really suits seeing the shuttle up close.
To recap with the whole journey, the shuttle carrier aircraft took off just over two weeks ago on September 17th, piggy-backing Endeavour on it’s last flight across the United States. Since 1981, space shuttles have been landing at Edwards Air Force Base and have been transported across America to their takeoff site at Kennedy Space Center. Very few people have had the privilege to come close to a shuttle, nor has there been any effort to make an extra show of low flying pass-overs. The focus is merely to get the job done.
Endeavour’s final journey however, was a real mission to say goodbye. It was to spend two days traveling across America with low-flying tours at below 1500ft from the space coast, New Orleans, a stop-over in Houston, and then Edward’s Air Force Base before coming to Los Angeles and beginning two weeks of detaching from the aircraft carrier and processing.
The project is huge, but only to match the majesty of this feat of combined human efforts in engineering. If you follow the hashtag #SpotTheShuttle on Twitter and on Google Plus, you’ll see the incredible montage of people’s snapshots documenting Endeavour’s journey. Endeavour will be assembled in an upright launch position and rebuilt with her rocket boosters in position as testament to her memory.
The past weekend drew a crowd of those eager to learn about WordPress to Loyola Marymount University where WordCamp LA curated speakers for all levels of Blogging Enthusiasts. On the closing day of the weekend we were proud to open up our Los Angeles office for developers to relax, network and enjoy lunch on us!
Registration at WordCamp LA
Team InMotion Hosting at WordCamp LA
Packed Seminars at Loyola Marymount University on WordPress
Don't ask me to fix your computer
InMotion Hosting goodies
WordPress Developer Day Kicks off at the office
Showing off gadget paper for synching dev notes to screen
Organizers of WordCamp LA with more goodies
Are we working?
It was a great opportunity for us to chill out with our fellow WordPress fanatics, and also find new ways of working together. There were a cozy few who made it to Developer Day hosted at our Los Angeles office, and not only observe what it was like working here, but also to forge some amazing relationships with the @InMotionHosting team.
Jason, our Affiliate Manager, was available to speak to those about monetizing their blogs, as well as myself who is looking forward to introducing our panel of expert guests to do a live broadcast here on #IMHhangouts.
Click this Image to Circle us and join our hangout! Wednesdays 2pm-3pm PST Western Time.
Our weekly webmasters live Q+A is a broadcast via Google Hangouts supported with a live twitter chat stream #IMHhangout.
With the talk of the release of the new iPhone 5, we decided to make our topic ‘Do Mobile Devices Really Increase Productivity’. We hope that our audience of web pros, gadget geeks and those that postulate working on the run will share with us their experience working while away.
Questions to follow a round of introductions:
What mobile devices do you own? #iPhone #iPad #netbook
What form of work do you do? #Webmasters, #Designers #Sysadmin
Do you use your device for work or personal organization?
Lets see which apps you use for each group: #personal #office
How many hours daily do you spend on your mobile device? #texting #sharing
Who or what is really doing the driving?
I threw this sophomoric question in for debate!
So! Whether you’re a traditionalist who prefers doing things in person or keeping work to a focused time-frame rather than jumping to every alert that comes in, here’s an opportunity to find out if those that are really ‘connected online’ fare any better at productivity.
The event will go live both on Twitter using the #IMHhangout Hashtag and on Google. So you can lurk without jumping into the hangout if you’re too shy. We do want you to showcase your tech savvy reviews of mobile gadgets, to help the rest of us decide what we really want. Please interact using tweetchat.com here, and we’ll keep an eye on the live twitter stream to mention your name, and find out what products you root for.
Type ‘InMotion Hosting‘ into google plus search to find our brand profile page. On your mobile device you have to do this through ‘people‘ [not circles] profile search to view our page profile.
Do a hard refresh [hold down shift + refresh] near broadcast time to make sure our google plus page refreshes and shows you the invitation to ‘join hangout‘
We received a comment on one of our hangouts that one viewer couldn’t jump in. So I decided to test it out and sure enough Google hangouts do work through iPhones and mobile devices. Unfortunately we cannot explain why some of you get messages like this:
“This hangout is not currently supported on this device” – So we are aware difficulties like this do happen, as this is what I saw on my iPhone. I’m looking forward to suggestions from other mobile people on how they overcome this. In the mean time the only suggestion I have is to leave the G+ app, and restart it if you see this message come up. Even so, please don’t let this hold you back! We value your input through the TweetChat hashtag, make sure you tag your conversation with #IMHhangout so that everyone in the community can see your voice!
Keep an eye on this blog page as details get added to see who’s joining in! We are looking forward to giving you all a spot here in the live broadcast – so make sure you jump in
@InMotionHosting #IMHhangout will be hosted by @JulianaPayson.
Our team to welcome you and help you in the live chat are:
@AnieA203 – Our in-house Graphic Designer, will be scanning our Tweetchat
@IMH_Affiliate – Our Affiliate Manager, will be keeping a deft eye on G+ and hopefully making sure you can jump in.
@Maria_InMotion – Our SEO and Partner Specialist will be watching out for people on Facebook to make sure you get a mention.
Here’s this week’s Hashtracking report which shows that we had over 127,000 impressions on this hangout! Thanks this week to @Brianna5mith who was our top contributor on Twitter from the Business Branding world.
Click this Image to Circle us and join our hangout! Wednesdays 2pm-3pm PST Western Time.
Our weekly webmasters live Q+A is a broadcast via Google Hangouts supported with a live twitter chat stream #IMHhangout.
This weeks coming topic is ‘Working from the Office vs the Telecommuter’ which is aimed at getting web pros and freelancers together to share their experience on finding the perfect workspace for your digital day.
Questions to follow a round of introductions:
Have you ever worked from home?
What form of work do you do? #Webmasters, #Designers #Sysadmin
What type of office do you think supports your type of work?
Have you ever made use of CoWorking locations?
Pros and Cons of Telecommute?
Pros and Cons of Freelancing?
This hangout is not just for those starting from scratch, but also those who are willing to share their great experience to others that might be looking for some webmaster help, or even webpro employment opportunities! Simply Hover over the event at the bottom of this post and add it to your calendar.
The event will go live both on Twitter using the #IMHhangout Hashtag and on Google. So you can lurk without jumping into the hangout if you’re too shy. Bear in mind this is an opportunity to showcase your knowledge and availability for hire. We’ll push on with the show and you can still interact using tweetchat.com here. We keep an eye on the live twitter stream to highlight your say, as well as review every person’s input after the video broadcast.
Don’t forget to hard refresh our Google Plus Page to make sure you see or simply listen in on the hangout! Near the 2pm EST spot, you will have to re-open the page to check if the broadcast is live once everyone is onboard. Keep an eye on this blog page as details get added to see who’s joining in! As a special treat this week we are having our HR team join us so we’ll have some useful insight to present on who they look for!
@InMotionHosting #IMHhangout will be hosted by @JulianaPayson.
Our team to welcome you and help you in the live chat are:
@AnieA203 – our in-house Graphic Designer,
@IMH_Affiliate – our Affiliate Manager
Here’s a sneak peak at the Hastracking report which shows that we had over 95,000 impressions on our first hangout! Check out our previous Hangout on Blogging Here.
Click this Image to Circle us and join our hangout! Wednesdays 2pm-3pm PST Western Time.
September sees the launch of our weekly webmasters live Q+A broadcast via Google Hangouts supported by the twitter chat stream #IMHhangout.
This weeks coming topic is ‘How to Build Your Blog’ which is aimed at getting webmasters together to share advice, tips and opinions on how to launch and develop an audience for your blog.
Launch Questions:
Which Blogging Platform do you use and why?
See WordPress.com WordPress.org Drupal.com Joomla.com for installable CMS Platforms
Which Industry are you blogging within?
We have several people from the Technology Vertical, but also creatives blogging from their passion like Filmmaking. Be sure to make note of seasonal trends and weekly differences for your Industry, including down to the popular traffic hours.
Any special tools you can’t live without for your blog?
Jason recommends ‘Ninja Affiliate’ as a WordPress Plugin for affiliates. Here is a link to Special Themes and plugins for different industries.
Favorite resource sites for themes, and design?
Take a look at Anie’s suggestions here. Jason suggested RocketTheme.com and TemplateMonster.com
Did you auto-install your blog, or set it up from scratch?
I’ve used Auto-Installers Fantastico and Softaculous. If you have to do a manual install or migration then please check out our support center.
How long before you saw good traffic to your blog?
My experience has been 6 months, please tell me your story in the comments!
This hangout is not just for those starting from scratch, but also those who are willing to share their great experience to others that might be looking for some webmaster help.
Simply Hover over the event at the bottom of this post and add it to your calendar.
The event will go live both on Twitter using the #IMHhangout Hashtag and on Google. So you can listen in, join in on twitter even without jumping into the hangout if you’re too shy. We’ll push on ahead and you can interact with the show using either tweetchat.com here, we’ll be watching and sharing your voice to the rest of the audience so make sure you introduce yourselves.
Don’t forget to refresh our Google Plus Page to make sure you see or simply listen in on the hangout! Keep an eye on this blog page as details get added to see who’s joining in!
@InMotionHosting #IMHhangout will be hosted by @JulianaPayson.
Our team to welcome you and help you in the live chat are:
@AnieA203 – our in-house Graphic Designer,
@IMH_Affiliate – our Affiliate Manager
Here’s a sneak peak at the Hastracking report which shows that we had over 95,000 impressions on our first hangout!
If you’re joining the current political debate, whether it’s on Sodahead or discussing Aaron Sorkin’s ‘The Newsroom’ make sure you stamp your presence with one of these nifty badges! Your voice adds weight to shared opinion, and helps towards an educated decision. We’ve developed these icons for you to use free of charge – whether you host a blog, website or debate of your own. All we require is that attribution is given back to www.InMotionHosting.com
Have you ever been given the job of building a beautiful website, to find the important choices and design specifications for the eCommerce section omitted from your style sheet? Well, to save you the hassle of resorting to last minute searches, we’ve decided to compile niche icon packs to help you in those last minute website refinements.
Shopping Cart Icons
Our opening selection is the eCommerce icon pack. They are simple, sleek and scalable to maintain design consistency throughout your hosted website. We’ve gone to some effort to include dark and light themes to blend with any colored theme you have already built.
Feel free to give us any feedback on this article about other designs you’d like to see us produce. We’ll be doing a regular round-up of common resources for our audience in this blog, and we look forward to reviewing any of your suggestions. Simply place a comment in the reply section below and we’ll guarantee to take a look.
We have provided the use of this eCommerce icon pack under The Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0). This means it’s free to download and use, as long as attribution is given to InMotion Web Hosting www.inmotionhosting.com.
After intense searching and testing, I have found one mobile app that reigns above all others to compare with Snagit‘s unbeatable screenshot educational sharing tool. The winning contender is… PicSay! For those of you who like to engage co-workers and audiences with the wonderful tools offered by Snagit, I knew I had a hard task on my hands to find anything remotely comparable.
For those of you who are wondering why I’m raving Snagit here is a montage of just a few of the cool tools I love in this browser application:
As yet, Techsmith have not yet released a mobile app version of their Screengrabbing tool Snagit. So in the mean time, I was forced on the hunt to find the best available solution. And for anyone that’s vaguely involved in writing and explaining technical content, especially whilst on-the-go, I’m sure you’ll agree there’s a gap in the market for this software.
A search for picture editing and screen capture brings up hundreds of apps for your iOS or Android Mobile device, but they are all geared towards picture effects not ‘in-picture’ frame and layering effects.
With a little work around you can compile just the technical explain it material you need from a screen capture on your mobile device using PicSay:
It can layer objects, but unfortunately not additional segments of screenshots which I would say is the major portion missing from this app that would otherwise make this a near perfect competitor to Snagit.
There are all the usual tools such as rotate, cursor effects, re-framing or canvas resizing. I Particularly love the export feature which is more versatile than Snagit; being able to share to virtually any other app loaded on your mobile device is pretty ingenious!
Overall if you’re looking for a technical explain-it bit of sharing software for screen capture and graphics from your mobile device, then until Snagit comes up with a version, PicSay is the closest app I’ve found.
I need to have connection at my fingertips to check in at ease on several of my websites. In fact this has only become a feasible option very recently, and made especially accessible with WordPress Blogging Platform. For my mobile tools, I use a mobile tablet browser, a wifi hotspot, and an iPhone. Each of my browser devices has various apps installed to connect to the websites, including my favorite of course, ‘WordPress’.
You can find and install the free WordPress by Automattic App in both the iTunes App Store, and Google Play. Once installed I keep it handy in the immediate wallpaper on both of my devices.
Before you can configure the app, you have to enable remote blogging from your WordPress installation:
Go to Settings >> Followed by ‘Writing’ and scroll down to check the ‘Enable XML-RPC’
Now your mobile devices should be able to connect to the administration of your WordPress, and you’re ready for configuring your mobile client for posting directly to your blog! The difference between using WordPress Client App for remote publishing, is that you avoid the extra steps of logging in via your browser WP-admin page. The App retains an API permission with your administrative back-end, so getting on with productivity is simply faster and skips a lot of navigational clicks down into the system. I have advised many clients to get onto this system, and since they rarely access full administrative interface, I tend to feel a lot more secure that they are not interfering or tweaking with the actual PHP code and site structure.
The WordPress App is very simple to set up:
I select the ‘self-hosted’ for my client’s blogs, it’s pretty useful even for those managing multiple sites.
Now that your WordPress app is configured for each of your blogs, I tend to use the tablet for note-taking and constructing articles on the go, and the smaller screened device for keeping up-to-date with incoming comments:
The downside to having this level of connectivity is that you do have to be fairly organized with your time management, your productivity can increase, but not if your addiction to checking in on your hosted blogs takes over your focus for your own relaxation time!
Have you wondered how there are a few who respond to blog posts with such preparedness their photo appears everywhere? Do they really spend more time than you to upload their profile pictures on every site they comment on? Chances are no, if you go to Gravatar.com you can do a one time upload, and everytime you comment on someone’s site your image will show rather than that empty silhouette. It also helps make sure your comment doesn’t go unnoticed, webmasters frequently have to deal with a tonne of spam comments and sifting though comments to authorize legitimate ‘real’ profiles.
If you’re stuck for a suitable photo for your blog commenting addiction, head over to some of these fun suggestions to create your own avatar:
Personal favorite, lots of customizations, from freckles, make-up to scars and accesories.
2./ Clay Yourself
Ever wanted to see yourself as a clay model or maquette? Not only can you customize your clay-self, but you can set the stage, script it, and see an animatic of yourself. Screen capture the complete version to create your avatar.
3./ Digibody’s Caricature Maker
This avatar creator makes you a simple pencil drawing illustration of yourself.
This one is a bit memory hungry on the browser and I had difficulty just getting my Java to work. But if you have the patience to wait for your bandwidth consumption with all the adverts on their website the Animated Gif is a cute effect!
Plenty of customizations available.
