studiowhiz ramblings

We’re a cynical bunch aren’t we. If TV & Movies desensitize us to violence then the internet desensitizes us to charity & needs.

I’ve had a couple of things happening recently that have highlighted the issues faced when wanting to or needing too raise funds online and just how hard it is becoming to raise awareness and funds.

Lets take the case of my very good friend over at webhelp …
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve mentioned before that when you want to run a blog & bring in great levels of traffic you have to devote a lot of time to sculpting the content of your blog/website.

One of my issues is that I’m not a professional writer, I make no claims to being a good writer - however without content, without writing you have nothing to bring in more visitors. Read the rest of this entry »

Wow, no wonder I’m having a little trouble growing traffic. Oh well there is only one way to go from here - that is UP.
So if you have a blog, a site, anything - why not point a link at www.studiowhiz.com and help me get back into Google. Yes I have requested a resubmit… so we’ll see how that goes.

In the meantime you can help, please point to this site - pick any of our great articles.

I used to develop full time, that is designing, programming and full development of websites. Of course that was a number of years ago, and my job now, while requiring a growing understanding of the internet, doesn’t see me coding or developing.

I’m starting to set up a small website in the evenings, just a small site I hope people will enjoy. It should be the sort of site I can set up and only touch once in a while. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just spent about 4 hours looking around Google trying to find some solutions that I need. I only have a few requirements:

• must be free (open source)
• must be php & mysql
• must be (x)HTML & CSS compliant
• must integrate with PayPal
• must have Credit Card integration (c2o etc)
• manage memberships (free & paid - 1 off fee, paypal)

As a bonus I’d love one solution that can do all of that and can manage online tests - nothing over the top just a few multi-choice questions in each test. Would like to track users answers, not so worried about them being able to see their history. This however is proving hard to find.

Got any thoughts? Why not post some links in the comments & I’ll check them out.

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

If you hadn’t heard Apple are running their MacWorld conference at the moment. This is the ‘holy of holy’ events for any true Mac aficionado. At these events Steve Jobs has a keynote speech in which he reveals the direction for Apple in the coming year - oh and he throws out any new hardware.

Well I have to say all in all I’m rather disappointed. I mean he announced 4 new things today and none of them have the usual ‘wow’ factor I’ve come to expect from Apple. Read the rest of this entry »

I enjoy using WordPress, after all it is pretty much the leading blogging software. It’s been through a number of iterations and has become a pretty solid hunk of code.

However I have to say, WordPress upgrading sucks. I’ve just completed an upgrade here and seriously, all that downloading, unzipping, making sure I backup my files and then uploading the new ones. Bah humbug. Why can’t WordPress have an auto-upgrade feature?

How hard is it to have the system know what files have changed, and simply update those directly? Sure allow the admin of the site to verify file updates (in-case they have hacked the odd file).

Maybe I should just switch to a hosted version of WordPress ey?

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