studiowhiz ramblings

how to make an icon, how to draw a car, how to create a flash website? These are all questions sitting in my traffic logs. Obviously Google thinks studiowhiz.com is a site that can help - and in the past that would have been true, back when Studiowhiz was well known in the Flash Community. I even wrote the book Build your first website with Flash MX a few years back.

Now however Studiowhiz is my personal blog - still why can’t it provide a resource for these things? So this post will answer these 3 questions:

• How to make an icon
• How to draw a car
• How to create a flash website

Read the rest of this entry »

Vandelay Design have a great post today showcasing 25 beautiful website designs.

I enjoy Vandelay’s blog as they have some great tips and tricks for WordPress and general website design. Today’s post is a great one for stirring up the inspiration.

» 25 Beautiful, Minimalistic Website Designs - Part 2 on Vandelay Design

It’s become a very easy process these days to start a blog. There are a number of services that can give you a free blog within minutes - however these are not always the best solutions.

Now that you have completed the planning of your blog you will have a firm understanding of what you are trying to achieve. For now we are going to assume your primary purpose is to share some understanding you have without having to shell out a fortune.

I am a fan of wordpress, a fantastic free application that powers some of the bigger blogs on the net today. They have both a download version and a hosted solution - we talked about this in the planning of your blog. For the sake of this article we’ll assume the use of a hosted solution. Read the rest of this entry »

You walk into a meeting with your web designer (marketing/advertising agency) and ask them to help you drive traffic to your site. They reply “There is no such thing as a free lunch traffic”

I’m here to tell you there is such a thing as free traffic and here are 5 easy steps you can follow to drive traffic to your site. Read the rest of this entry »

Well it finally happened. Dwindling traffic finally took it’s toll - that and I blew away all my old posts. I found an email in my inbox from TextLinkAds wondering why their system couldn’t find the posts on my site.

After tyring to explain that I was rebuilding the site, intending to grow traffic again (which is starting to happen) they kick studiowhiz.com out of their inventory. I was asked to resubmit - which I did & no longer meet their criteria. Sad really considering I’ve been with TextLinkAds (and still have other sites with them) for many years.

Oh well, for now Studiowhiz will run without advertising & I will resume funding the site from my back pocket.

My mate over at webhelp.co.nz has an interesting post about his favourite Google Search, a nice little trick that allows you to quickly and easily find mp3, mp4, pdf, avi, mpeg, audio, music, videos, movies and much more.

I thought I’d extend this a little by adding some new functionality to his search & introducing Firefox bookmarks as a quick and easy way to do your search.
Read the rest of this entry »

I am currently looking for solutions to managing my personal finances. I’m currently going through a number of services. Sadly many online services only support US based banks - useless for someone in NZ. www.xero.co.nz is a New Zealand service they say is suitable for personal finances. They are wrong it’s a small business service, and it’s jolly expensive - heck even Quicken Online is only $3 a month.

It got me thinking though. Many banks now offer (and have for many years) online access to your accounts - however these are simply online versions of off-line realm. I don’t think I’ve really seen any serious innovation in the area of bank websites. (A side note, I’m pretty much blind to any online bank service outside NZ).

Why can’t I tag transactions? Why can’t I categorise my finances directly on my bank site? I want to set up tags for, coffee, computers, household, grocery, garden, vehicles etc etc. This way I could quickly get a glimpse of what I’m spending and where I’m spending it.

Come to think of it, with the amount of transactions banks do they should know what sort of things are purchased at what locations. Surely it isn’t too hard for them to suggest tags/categories for your transactions?

For now, it’s back to using Cha-Ching on the local computer

Update: Jan 25 2008: Well folks it’s all over, MacHeist is done and $488 003 was raised. However true to form the MacHeist guys thought that wasn’t the best number, so they’ve added $21 997 to the amount to bring the final total to $500 000 raised for charity.

UPDATED: more apps are now available. Purchase now using this link & help raise even more money for charity

Every year a bunch of guys get together to raise some funds for charity. They call themselves “MacHeist” and with the offer they have for us this year - well we might as well be robbing them blind.

MacHeist is fast becoming a regular event. Each time a bunch of Apple software companies are asked to provide software at massively reduced cost. This year there are 10 fantastic apps on offer for the low price of $49.00 - over $340 down to $49.

I have been looking for a personal finance app and was about to spend $39 for one I found, then I found MacHeist which happens to have Cha-Ching as part of the package. That and 25% of the $49 goes into the charity fund, and I walk away with a sweet bundle.

There are 3 apps (Snapz, CSSEdit & Pixelmator) still waiting to be unlocked. To unlock these MacHeist needs to hit certain targets. They need to sell 5000 bundles to unlock CSSEdit. Lets help them get there ey!

To find out about any of the apps, head over to MacHeist now.

» Get MacHeist now

Tags: mac, apps, ultimate OS X apps, apple, charity, raise, money

Lets get right to it, you are thinking of creating a blog. Why?

Ah, that stopped you didn’t it. You’ve read the first post “Building wealth with your blog” and like the the thought of bringing in some extra money from your blog. This post looks at what it takes to plan your blog, before you even get started writing. Hopefully by the end of this post you will have some answers that help you establish the purpose of your blog.

Here are the questions we’ll look at:

• Topics
  • What are you going to talk about?
  • Who are you going to talk too?
  • How often are you going to say it?
• Goals
  • What do you want from this blog?
  • What are your targets for this blog?
• Marketing
  • How are you going to promote your blog?
• Investment
  • What do you need to purchase for your blog?
  • Will you pay to promote your blog?
  • Do you have the time to write regularly?

Ultimately, you need to be able to answer “What is the purpose of this blog?” (or Why are you writing?).

Read the rest of this entry »

This is part 2 in my series explaining the jargon of the web. If you missed part 1, POP, SMTP & IMAP, you might want to read it first.

So now we are going to look at some jargon around these www things we use to visit websites & send email. For example, you typed (or clicked a link) www.studiowhiz.com into your address bar of your browser. Your browser bought you here. You just used a domain (web address) to get to this site.

So lets start with domains. A domain is a unique name that helps direct traffic around the internet, from computer to computer. Why do we need domains? Well computers identify each other with a series of numbers. Your computer knows itself at 127.0.0.1, one of Googles many computers is 72.14.207.104. These numbers are known as IP (internet protocol) numbers. It’s hard to remember these IP numbers, however words are easier to remember. So domains use words to point to these computers, making it easier for us to remember.

Domains are made up of a number of parts. Lets break a couple down. www.studiowhiz.com & www.nzherald.co.nz

TLD (top level domain) is the right most part, and is the first bit read by the browser. In the examples above this is the .com and .co.nz parts. This tells the browser where to look and what for.

Domain name is the next bit, and is the bit you can make up. In the example above this is the studiowhiz and nzherald parts.

Subdomain is the last bit, and generally is www, however can be anything. You are in control of these and they are free.

When you type www.nzherald.co.nz into the browser, your computer says “go to New Zealand (.nz), find all the companies (.co), then find nzherald” this will give your computer the IP number for the computer that has the NZ Herald website.

You have to purchase your domain name (name.tld - eg: studiowhiz.com) and you purchase them from a registrar. There are many, however for .com, .net or .org domains check www.godaddy.com these guys are widely respect as ‘the’ company to purchase your domain from. For regional domains eg .co.nz or .com.au you will probably have to purchase through a local registrar. Just do a Google search for your local registrar eg: Australian Domain registrar.

The last part to this domain puzzle is DNS (doman name server). This is a special computer that connects domains to IP numbers. When you type www.studiowhiz.com into your browser, your computer must talk to a domain name server to find the IP number. When you purchase your domain, chances are your registrar will have their own domain name servers that you can use. By default their domain name servers will point your domain to their own computers.

Your domain works for your website (eg: www.mysite.com) your email (me@mysite.com) and many other protocols used on the web. One of the great things about domains & DNS is that you can use one domain name, to point to different computers.

In my 5 reasons to use Google Apps post I talked about how I use Google for my email (me@studiowhiz.com) and I use MediaTemple for my website (www.studiowhiz.com), well I do that by setting the 2 parts of the domain to point to different IP numbers.

Summary:

• Domains are used so we don’t have to remember IP numbers
• Domains have 3 parts
  • top level domain (eg: co.nz & .com)
  • domain name (eg: studiowhiz)
  • subdomain (eg: www)
• Domains can point to different service providers (eg: Google for email, MediaTemple for web hosting)
• DNS (domain name servers) link domain names with the IP number of the server