=) Bnpositive's Blog http://www.bnpositive.com/blog Various thoughts, observations and comments on life and social media Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:59:34 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8 en hourly 1 Help My Friend Blog Behind the Scenes for NBC http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/06/09/help-my-friend-blog-behind-the-scenes-for-nbc/ http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/06/09/help-my-friend-blog-behind-the-scenes-for-nbc/#comments Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:59:34 +0000 bnpositive http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/06/09/help-my-friend-blog-behind-the-scenes-for-nbc/ im-a-blogger

One of the great people I’ve met in my involvement in social media and blogging over the years is Lynn DeVries. She and I co-blogged together for b5media at the CSI:Fanatic blog awhile back. She’s a blogging machine! She still writes on the following sites and if you’re interested in these shows, you should start reading her blogs now:

She’s in a contest to try and get to blog behind the scenes for NBC’s new reality TV show "I’m A Celebrity, Get Me out of Here!".

Lynn has made it to the final round of the contest and just needs everyone to send an email to the email address they’ve setup for her voteLynn@imabloggergetmeoutofhere.com saying you’re voting for her. You can just click on the email link. If you’ve got multiple email addresses, send a vote from each one.

Thanks so much. Now, the next time I apply for Survivor and they let people vote contestants in hopefully paybacks will be in order.

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]]> http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/06/09/help-my-friend-blog-behind-the-scenes-for-nbc/feed/ 1 A Boy Heartbroken – Bob Sanders Turns Back on Fans http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/06/06/a-boy-heartbroken-bob-sanders-turns-back-on-fans/ http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/06/06/a-boy-heartbroken-bob-sanders-turns-back-on-fans/#comments Sun, 07 Jun 2009 03:46:00 +0000 bnpositive http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/06/06/a-boy-heartbroken-bob-sanders-turns-back-on-fans/ DSC05907

This weekend I took my son to the Hometown Celebrity Softball Challenge here in Indianapolis. I wrote about the event here and who attended, but wanted to share a bit of a personal story about our experience with the event.

My son was so excited about seeing all the players from the Colts that were there. His favorite players are Bob Sanders and Anthony Gonzalez. I should clarify that he absolutely LOVES the Colts and football period, so he was excited about everyone. Anthony Gonzalez wasn’t in attendance, so he really wanted to get Bob Sander’s autograph. Bob wasn’t interested in interacting with any of the "common" fans in the stands though. Dwight Freeney and Melvin Bullitt walked right up to the fans and signed autographs as much as they could between innings, along with a few other celebrities in attendance.

I realize that Bob Sanders and some other Colts players are like rock stars in Indianapolis. I realize that they probably get mobbed just about anywhere they go and I’m sure it gets annoying. If they’re out by themselves trying to have a "normal" life, then I think fans should be respectful and try and leave them alone as much as possible.

However, when you’re participating at an event like this that’s specifically for fans and to raise money for a charity, I believe "celebrities" should consider this part of their job and responsibility. It’s part of what comes with being famous. Am I way off base here? I’m sure I don’t completely understand what it means to have to deal with this type of fame, but I can tell you I sure hope I’d keep that in mind if I were famous.

Now my son isn’t very interested in Bob Sanders. He’s very let down with his experience this weekend. He told me wants me to sell his jersey on eBay.com for him. I’m trying to encourage him to be patient and maybe we’ll have another chance to meet him and get his autograph. We’ll see how it goes.

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]]> http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/06/06/a-boy-heartbroken-bob-sanders-turns-back-on-fans/feed/ 0 Missing: Bnpositive’s Blog Posts http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/06/06/missing-bnpositives-blog-posts/ http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/06/06/missing-bnpositives-blog-posts/#comments Sat, 06 Jun 2009 21:46:00 +0000 bnpositive http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/06/06/missing-bnpositives-blog-posts/ missing-bnpositive-milk-carton In case you haven’t noticed there been a few posts gone missing from my blog. I had an error with a previous WordPress installation that I never seemed to have noticed before. When I did a roll-back of the install I lost some posts that had previously been published with seemingly no problem.

I’ve got a back-up of everything, but just need to work through restoring just the posts that are missing.

Really annoying with everything else going on and the stuff that needs to get done. I don’t need more maintenance issues popping up on my personal blog! It’s already been forsaken enough.

Please be patient with me as I get this worked out, and stay tuned!

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]]> http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/06/06/missing-bnpositives-blog-posts/feed/ 0 Social Media Is NOT The Answer http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/05/21/social-media-is-not-the-answer/ http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/05/21/social-media-is-not-the-answer/#comments Fri, 22 May 2009 03:20:55 +0000 bnpositive http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/05/21/social-media-is-not-the-answer/ social-media-icons

There’s been a thread of thought bouncing back and forth in my head lately. It stems from some conversations with a few different people as well as hearing the response from other individuals as they speak of and refer to a variety of social media platforms.

Many of my friends are aware that I’m active on Facebook, flickr, blogging, StumbleUpon, twitter, BrightKite, YouTube, Vimeo and a variety of other social sites. Many of those same friends don’t "get" some of them, while others they can see the value.

Most of the time people don’t get twitter. They think it’s only about updating everyone on the fact you’re waking up, eating a meal or going back to bed. If you’ve been using twitter for very long, you probably know it’s useful for so much more than that. I’ve already written about how it’s been useful for me (although I can’t seem to find the link to that post now).

Here’s the deal though, if you’re the type of person that’s not really interested in having a conversation with someone offline (aka the "real" world), then communicating with people via social media isn’t going to make much sense to you either. Even if you understand the potential, if it’s not your personality, I doubt you’re going to be active. For that reason alone, Social Media will NOT be the answer you’re probably looking for in business or even your own personal endeavors.

Don’t waste your time and ours by setting up accounts that will grow dusty with unuse and being ignored.

Similarly anyone can setup a blog, but not everyone will have the discipline to be a writer and keep that blog updated. It’s really no fault of your own, you’re just not interested in writing and you’re not interested in your voice being heard. I believe you can show someone how to write and what to write, but you can’t make them a writer.

You may enjoy these posts as well.

]]> http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/05/21/social-media-is-not-the-answer/feed/ 2 Jason and the Bienstock http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/05/07/jason-and-the-bienstock/ http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/05/07/jason-and-the-bienstock/#comments Fri, 08 May 2009 03:55:35 +0000 bnpositive http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/05/07/jason-and-the-bienstock/ A couple of weeks ago now I had the opportunity to help someone in a situation that they felt was there may have been no real solution for in the end. They had exhausted their options and had followed the path to a solution that was the one just about everyone would have taken. They did everything they could to resolve the issue, and weren’t getting anywhere.

A friend of mine, Howard Bienstock, had his twitter account hijacked by spammers and they were using it and taking advantage of his significant list of followers. As of right now, Howard has just over 24,000 twitter followers and they were all getting useless, false and annoying twitter updates from this spammer. They had already setup a new twitter account thinking they would never regain control over their original.

Howard founded OneDegreeConnected.com and is an ultimate business networking machine! Howard’s goose laying the golden eggs is his network and the integrity of his name and that same network. These spammers were getting ready to roast that bird and serve it with SPAM for dinner.

What did I really do to help Howard in this situation?

I don’t have any real special powers. I’m not some amazing security analyst who knows how to work around security problems. I don’t know how to hack into someone’s twitter account and gain back control of everything. So what did I really do?

I took the time to be as helpful as I could and tried to capitalize on my own network to see if I could get anywhere.

I knew the key was to try and get in touch with someone that worked at twitter directly. The problem was that all the standard operating procedures for resolving an issue like this with twitter results in automated steps being performed via email. The spammers had hijacked the account and changed the email address associated with the account. Any validation efforts were going to the spammers for approval, which they would ignore or immediately reject.

I sent out a few tweets of my own to see if anyone in my network might know someone. A couple of people responded. One I expected and one I didn’t. In the end, it was the connection from the person I didn’t expect that go the solution worked out. It worked out quickly at that, within about 5 hours from start to finish from my time getting involved and trying to help.

What did I really do? What did it take to fix the situation?

All I had to do was show an interest in the problem and make the initial contact and ask how I could help. Sometimes being helpful just means just being willing to do what you can and get out of the way. You don’t have to be an expert in something and you don’t have to claim any special amount of "magic" or mystery in getting the problem fixed.

Note: Don’t use a simple password to setup an account thinking you’ll change it later. Use strong passwords. Oh, and don’t write them on Post-It notes and stick them on your monitor.

You may enjoy these posts as well.

]]> http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/05/07/jason-and-the-bienstock/feed/ 0 How To Set Redirects on GoDaddy Hosting http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/04/23/how-to-set-redirects-on-godaddy-hosting/ http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/04/23/how-to-set-redirects-on-godaddy-hosting/#comments Fri, 24 Apr 2009 03:12:43 +0000 bnpositive http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/04/23/how-to-set-redirects-on-godaddy-hosting/ First let me say "Welcome Back!". Not to you, to me! It’s been forever since I posted something here, been busy at EveryJoe.com so hopefully you’re catching some of the stuff I’m writing over there.

I spent some time this evening trying to work out how to set some auto-redirects for URL’s for a client. To practice I decided to setup some links for my domain that automatically redirect to other profiles for me on some social networks.

For example, if you now go to http://bnpositive.com/facebook you’ll be redirected to my long Facebook URL at http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=502473549. I also setup the same thing for http://bnpositive.com/twitter which redirects to my twitter page.

This won’t be what we’re doing for a client, but it was a good practice and test. Also, if I change all of the links I use to direct people to my various online presences, I should be able to start tracking how much traffic my website is generating to these other networks for my exposure.

The problem today though was that the process for setting up these redirects. I know how to setup redirects in the header of various web pages in both HTML and .aspx pages. The problem with that solution is that I’d have to setup an actual page for each URL I wanted to use and then manage those pages independently. There’s a better way!

One way would be to modify the .htaccess file to setup your own internal redirects. I didn’t have access to this (I thought I did) with GoDaddy.com. The good news is that GoDaddy.com provides a Site Redirect tool to accomplish this task. The bad news is that it wasn’t too obvious and user-friendly for the end-user in my opinion.

Keep reading for screen shots and details of how I accomplished my goal with GoDaddy.com

I won’t go into the details of how to get to the Site Redirect tool on GoDaddy.com, so let’s jump straight to the information you’ll need once you get into the wizard itself.

godaddy-redirect-step-1

First you complete the information for where you’re wanting to redirect from on your site as shown above:

  1. Type in your domain name. This is important. No "http://", no slashes, etc.
  2. Next put in the path, which is the portion of the domain you’re redirecting from. Notice again, no slashes, etc.
  3. Specify whether or not you want both http://www.yourdomain.com and http://yourdomain.com to be redirected identically.

Click "Next".

godaddy-redirect-step-2

On the next screen (shown above):

  1. Specify whether the domain prefix you’re redirecting to is an "http://" or an "https:" (secure) website.
  2. Specify the root domain of where you want to redirect to. Notice this is just the root and NOT including the previously specified "http:"
  3. Now specify the path you’re using after the root domain. Notice again, no leading slash.

Click "Next"

godaddy-redirect-step-3

The last step is pretty straight forward:

  1. Specify whether this redirect is a temporary or permanent redirect. In this case the URL doesn’t actually exist and never will, so I’ve chosen permanent.
  2. I’ll be honest that I don’t clearly understand the differences in the next three items, but I just specified "No Redirect" and moved on.

Click "OK" and you’re done. Kind of…

The only problem now is that for some reason the paths we specified earlier are getting changed by something GoDaddy.com is doing. My redirects will work once or twice, but then seem to break later. I go into my settings and check stuff and there’s been more information and paths added to what I put in earlier.

When I fix one the other one breaks, when I fix the other, the original one breaks. Can’t get both of them to work at the same time.

I can’t figure out why this is happening or what I can do to stop it. Maybe someone from GoDaddy.com will read this and look into it.

Now my next task is to figure out the accurate process to move a paid for email address on GoDaddy.com to one of the free ones I get with hosting with them. This seems to be another not-so-user-friendly process even with guidance from the support desk.

Maybe I’m just a complete moron. Sure hope not though, it can’t be this hard can it?

You may enjoy these posts as well.

]]> http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/04/23/how-to-set-redirects-on-godaddy-hosting/feed/ 4 I’m Just Another EveryJoe.com Kind of Guy http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/25/im-just-another-everyjoecom-kind-of-guy/ http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/25/im-just-another-everyjoecom-kind-of-guy/#comments Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:30:00 +0000 bnpositive http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/25/im-just-another-everyjoecom-kind-of-guy/ Logo-EveryJoe If you follow me on twitter, you may have remembered me tweeting about an interesting email I received a couple weeks back.

The email was about some changes taking place at b5media that directly impacted me and the writing I was doing on Microsoft Weblog and Uncover the Internet.

They had made the decision to terminate a number of their blogs and to aggregate the content and various writers into their new tech/sports/men’s interest portal at EveryJoe.com.

Due to the changes in market conditions and advertisers, b5media has been launching a variety of portals to make deeper, more content rich sites as opposed to their original model of numerous niche blogs on a variety of topics.

b5media is still sticking with the variety of topics, but keeping them in portals based on general ideas of interest and topic. For instance, EveryJoe.com has categories or topics like:

Baseball, Basketball, Cars, Computers, Electronics, Fitness, Football, Gaming, Golf, MMA-UFC, Movies, Music, Racing, Spirits, Sports Rumors, Television, Tennis, Weight Lifting.

Some of the higher traffic blogs under the original blog structure have been maintained as "Featured Blogs" in the new portal. Proudly my Uncover the Internet site was one of those blogs kept in this method.

So, if you’ve enjoyed my writing on my other blogs for b5media, stop on over at EveryJoe.com and catch me there along with some other great writers and topics.

Oh, and if you’re interested in some of the other b5media portals, check us out at:

Splendicity for beauty and style

Splendicity is the third portal in a series designed for easy access to the specific themes that may capture a reader’s interest, as well as discovering unique content in other splendid topic areas. Splendicity covers everything from luxury fashion to bargain choices and cosmetics reviews to celebrity style. With Splendicity, visitors can enjoy all the latest and greatest information and advice about beauty, fashion and accessories.

Bizzia for business

Following the successful launch of b5media’s first portal, Starked.com, Bizzia covers themes such as finance, leadership, e-commerce, small business, sales and marketing. Bringing together the latest news coverage on breaking topics and popular business discussions, Bizzia makes it easy to access the specific themes a reader is interested in, as well as discover unique business perspectives around other topics.

Starked for entertainment

Starked covers themes such as celebrity gossip, TV show topics, music tips and movie reviews and is the first of b5media’s blog portals to go live. Bringing together the latest news coverage on breaking topics and popular entertainment discussions, Starked makes it easy to access the specific themes a reader is interested in, as well as discover unique featured entertainment stories.

Of course you can also continue to stay in touch with what I’m doing and where I’m writing by keeping an eye on my sidebar over there on the right. I bring in links for all my posts on my most popular blogs right there. I’m looking forward to seeing you visit and reading your comments on what I’m writing in the future.

You may enjoy these posts as well.

]]> http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/25/im-just-another-everyjoecom-kind-of-guy/feed/ 1 b5media CEO in Nivea for Men body wash Commercial http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/23/b5media-ceo-in-nivea-for-men-body-wash-commercial/ http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/23/b5media-ceo-in-nivea-for-men-body-wash-commercial/#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:04:46 +0000 bnpositive http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/23/b5media-ceo-in-nivea-for-men-body-wash-commercial/

I could probably get fired from my job with b5media for this, but everytime I see this commercial I think of my boss and CEO of b5media, Jeremy Wright. It’s the guy in front of the Honda CRX. He appears at :11 into the video.

Anyone else that knows Jeremy Wright see the resemblance?

You may enjoy these posts as well.

]]> http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/23/b5media-ceo-in-nivea-for-men-body-wash-commercial/feed/ 5 Another One Bites the Dust: Bye-Bye Citibank http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/19/another-one-bites-the-dust-bye-bye-citibank/ http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/19/another-one-bites-the-dust-bye-bye-citibank/#comments Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:47:05 +0000 bnpositive http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/19/another-one-bites-the-dust-bye-bye-citibank/ citibank-zero-balance

I’ve been working for the last few years to be a little more serious about getting out of debt. The key to our efforts has been to just spend less wherever possible and to try and increase income with odd jobs and project as much as possible.

Today, I’ve knocked out another credit card in our list and am down to just one more loan. With the amount now going to the last one, the debt snowball is now pretty big and rolling with some momentum. We will be completely out of credit card debt a little later this year.

Time for celebration, without spending any money of course. We’ve still got plenty of other items, particularly some large medical bills that are crushing us, but having these stupid pieces of plastic out of the way and out of our lives is a great thing.

You may enjoy these posts as well.

]]> http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/19/another-one-bites-the-dust-bye-bye-citibank/feed/ 3 Dual or Triple Monitor Laptop http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/07/dual-or-triple-monitor-laptop/ http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/07/dual-or-triple-monitor-laptop/#comments Sun, 08 Mar 2009 02:58:19 +0000 bnpositive http://www.bnpositive.com/blog/2009/03/07/dual-or-triple-monitor-laptop/ Thinkpad-dual-screen A friend recently sent me a link about a story of someone finally developing laptop that has multiple screens. The Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds provides the 2nd screen that slides out from the cover and primary screen of the laptop. The primary screen is a 17", the secondary is a 10.6".

The author of the article, Michael J. Miller said he was impressed with the laptop but wasn’t sure if he was the type of person that would need a laptop with two screens. He stated that he would understand why people that used CAD programs, engineering employees and development teams could use them. I can tell you though, I am so addicted to working with two monitors now that I carry around a 2nd 17" LCD display with me to work onsite with clients.

It’s for that reason that my boss and I have come up with the idea to have a laptop with at least two screens. Our opinion though is that the additional screens should be the same size.

tri-screen-Toshiba

Our version of the multiple monitor laptop is shown above. We feel that with the technology available it should be possible for these two additional monitors to fold flat onto the main monitor when it’s put away and then unfold as needed. Just take a look at the Macbook Air to see how thin the monitor panel itself can be.

Macbook-Air

There’s an obvious need and a demand for net books and ultra-light and small laptops. I believe there’s also a market for a serious, multi-monitor laptop for developers that also travel from client-to-client or conference-to-conference.

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