Make a 3D Valentine’s Card

Posted on February 14, 2008
Filed Under DIY | 2 Comments

Wikihow.com has a great tutorial on how to make your own pop up valentine’s day card. All you need is two pieces of paper (card stock - heavy weight paper works best), scissors and a printer to print the template out on. The step by step instructions are very simple and easy to follow with great pictures. I suggest you try adding colored papers (construciton paper would work well) and decorating the final product. Please leave a comment if you have a DIY Valentine’s present that you want to show off.

You can read the full instructions at:
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Pop-up-Valentine’s-Day-Card

What is Open ID?

Posted on February 5, 2008
Filed Under Information, Internet, Technology | 2 Comments

Open ID is an attempt to keep you from having to have a different user name and password for every website you go to. Imagine if your one profile, user name and password for your blogger blog worked when you left comments on your friends wordpress blog.

From OpenID.net Open ID is:

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

Also from the website, who would use open ID:

For businesses, this means a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing new web traffic. OpenID lowers user frustration by letting users have control of their login.

For geeks, OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity. OpenID takes advantage of already existing internet technology (URI, HTTP, SSL, Diffie-Hellman) and realizes that people are already creating identities for themselves whether it be at their blog, photostream, profile page, etc. With OpenID you can easily transform one of these existing URIs into an account which can be used at sites which support OpenID logins.

And because Open ID isn’t owned by one company you don’t have to worry about it going under over night or that a large corporation will change the terms of service in a negative way.

This week I plan on looking at Open ID for blogger and adding Open ID to Wordpress.org blogs.

To find out more information go to:
http://openid.net/

How to Backup your Wordpress Blog

Posted on January 31, 2008
Filed Under DIY, Internet, Software | Leave a Comment

There are a couple of ways to back up your wordpress blog. If you are hosting your own wordpress blog (sometimes referred to wordpress.org and not wordpress.com) you can backup your database your webhosts admin controls. You can also backup your blog by exporting your posts and comments. This is what I am going to show you how to do today - it only takes 5 easy steps.

Step One: Log into Wordpress: This should take you to your wordpress dashboard.

Step Two: Click on the Manage tab: From the dashboard select the manage tab.

Step Three: Click on the Export Tab: from the mange screen select the export tab.

Step Four: Select Authors and Click Download Export File: If your blog only has one author or if you want to back up all the authors select all and click download export file.

Step Five: Save File to Disk: Since this is an .xml file you want to tell your browser to save the file to your hard drive as opposed to opening it in the browser.

I was using firefox, however if you are using internet explorer the process should be similar. However, please - please - please consider using firefox, it will make the world a better place.

How to Back up Your Blogger Blog

Posted on January 29, 2008
Filed Under DIY, Internet, Software | 2 Comments

I know of at least two ways that you can back up your blogger blog. The first one is to open up a free backup blog on wordpress.com and then import your blogger blog. However it is the other method that I want to look at today.

The nice guys over at codeplex.com have made a free blogger blog backup software. Their newest update (January 26, 2008) solves some bugs and plays much better with the new blogger. So if you are a windows user head over to codeplex.com and download Blogger Backup (Windows Only). It is a small download - the zip file clocks in at less than a megabyte.

Blogger Backup can backup your blog and your comments. It can restore deleted posts also. On top of that it does will do incremental backups - that means it only has to backup your changes and thus will run much faster on large blogs than if it backed up the whole blog every time.

You can find more information at the following websites:
http://www.blogger.com/home
http://www.codeplex.com/bloggerbackup/Release/
ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=6978

How to add hyperlinks to email and blog comments

Posted on January 28, 2008
Filed Under Internet | 2 Comments

I am sorry for not posting any nerdjack tips last Thursday or Friday. Work has picked up a lot and time I would normally use for posting is no longer available. Today I am going to be talking about something that I know some people have had questions about and it really is very simple. How to add a link in your email or on a blog comment.

Email is pretty easy to add a link to. Most internet email providers offer plain text email and most email providers and most email software will turn a url in a plain text email into a link for you (mail providers such as Google’s gmail and Apple’s Mail - two of my favorites). So if you wanted to send one of your friends to this blog you would just copy the url from the address bar (http://www.nerdjack.com) or just type in the address, the http is not usually needed (www.nerdjack.com). With very long web addresses this doesn’t always work. Some mail programs will break the address in two so it will fit to the screen. When this happens the link doesn’t always work. I might in the future write an article on how to use a service like tinyurl.com to turn a long web address into a short one.

Some email gives you the option of sending your email in html form instead of plain text. If that is the case or you wish to post links into web log comments then you need a little html. The html is based around tags that tell the program how to format the information for a web page or an html email. There are two types of tags, the first are self contained tags that give the program instructions to add something to a webpage. The second type of tag, the one we will be using for adding link, has two parts. There is the open tag that tells the program where to begin adding the formating and the end tag that tells it where to stop the formating.

The open tag for a web link looks like this:

<a href=”www.webaddresshere.com”>.

This tag is telling the browser a several things. First these symbols < and > tell the browser that this is a formating tag and not text to display on the webpage. The a in <a href=… tells the program that this is an anchor tag. The href tells the program that it is an anchor tag that is going to be pointing at a webpage. In between the quotation marks is the address of the webpage that you wish your link to point to. The next part of the link will follow the tag listed above and this is the text that you wish your hyperlink to display. So if you wanted to leave a link to this blog it might look like this:

<a href=”www.nerdjack.com”>You need to read this blog</a>.

That code will display a link that looks like this: You need to read this blog. The last tag above </a> tells it to stop the link. The slash says stop and the “a” tells the program what it is stopping.

So to add a link to a blog comment or a webpage copy this code