January 2008 All

Today's show will be a bit late
2 comments      Added on January 30, 2008 by Kris
Sorry guys, we were going to record this morning but something came up with Betsy's sister and she needed to help out.

She should be back shortly and we'll get on it!


  

Tags
  Croncast  Kris Smith  Betsy Smith  




Hammer Drill Kit 0824-24 Milwaukee 18V 1/2Cordless NEW
Current bid: $238.99 on eBay

NEW 49-24-0165 Milwaukee 18 v Volt 18v Flashlight
Current bid: $36.99 on eBay

Strat-O-Matic 1999 Milwaukee Brewers 35 cards MINT
Current bid: $6.00 on eBay

NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK MILWAUKEE 10/22/08 FLOOR SEATS
Current bid: $140.00 on eBay

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Mother-in-law on Linux? Yep.
9 comments      Added on January 29, 2008 by Kris


Am I crazy? Nope. It's show time for Linux.

Some of the the Linux flavors have matured enough to be great solutions for keeping family members safe from viruses and giving them the tools, graphically, that they need. So much so that Dell is now offering computers with it as an alternative to Windows.

However, it's not just family members that benefit, it saves the "son-in-law tech support company" a ton of time and headaches.

And now there is a great tool available called Automatix that is a great asset for installing new apps quickly. Sure, I am comfortable with command line work but if there is a gui available that can make installing software simpler than finding a package, decompressing, cd to directory and then running . . . well, I am all for it.

You can see from the photo above that I chose Xubuntu for the install, a smaller footprint of Ubuntu. It's designed to run on low RAM machines.

It's perfect for a mother-in-law prone to installing software from every popup ad that she encounters. Which is the reason that her Toshiba laptop has a desktop that looks like this:



So far so good.
  

Tags
  Ubuntu  Xubuntu  Toshiba  Dell laptop  Linux  


 

Make the Flickr PHP API not so ugly and easier to use
2 comments      Added on January 29, 2008 by Kris
For months I have been bypassing the Flickr API and using RSS 2.0 feeds instead. The reason? They come with all the photo stream data that you need in a nice little package. Things like title, description, tags, date taken, date uploaded, image dimensions, etc.

What is missing from the RSS feed the ability to load comments with a photo and choose how many items are returned in the feed. The API, however, will let you load hundreds of images and load comments for each photo.

There is a catch though. The API is broken up into about a 75 different calls. Not one single call to the server can match the data that is returned in the RSS feed. To get the same data I need to make approximately 8 different calls to Flickr. Not good.

What use is the API?

It gives me the ability to create a historical back up of my photos in their most basic form with urls, date, descriptions (with html stripped) and tags. It also gives someone building an application a rich data source to do some of the things that Flickr isn't already doing - the purpose of an API.

After working with it for a few hours I became frustrated. PHP is my poison of choice and the PHP examples that Flickr uses all return serialized data. Which is great and easy to work with if you already know what the XML namespaces are but without them it is hard to access the data. And in some cases impossible without printing out the serialized array and looking at it because the returned serialized array's keys don't match the XML namespaces. Not to mention children are buried in deeper arrays that aren't as easy to access as say $title = $item->photo['title'].

Here's how I cleaned up the mess. If you are PHP guru then I am sure you could get this down to one script.

An 'include' script, sort of. View this script by URL on your server to see all name spaces:

1) Create a new PHP file declaring xml as file type - header("Content-Type: text/xml")
2) Use the url that Flickr supplies to return content in REST format
3) Comment out the line for serialization
4) Use PHP's file_get_contents() function
5) echo the returned XML



A loader script:

1) Create a loader script
2) Call the include script - $resp = simplexml_load_file("YOUR INCLUDE SCRIPT URL");
3) Get the data out by name space, the same ones that Flickr documents



To view the name spaces that you will want to access simply open up the include script by url in your browser.

For now I will stick with the RSS 2.0 feeds for blog submissions but once I have some free time I will be using the API code above to create a cached archive for my own safe keeping.
  

Tags
  photo frame  digital  Flickr API  PHP  simple  simplexml_load_file  




1.5" LCD DIGITAL KEYCHAIN PHOTO FRAME 107 PICTURE ALBUM
Current bid: $12.79 on eBay

1.5" LCD DIGITAL KEYCHAIN PHOTO FRAME 107 PICTURE ALBUM
Current bid: $12.75 on eBay

1.5" LCD DIGITAL KEYCHAIN PHOTO FRAME 107 PICTURE ALBUM
Current bid: $12.75 on eBay

1.5" LCD DIGITAL KEYCHAIN PHOTO FRAME 107 PICTURE ALBUM
Current bid: $12.75 on eBay

See all 6,525 photo frame items on eBay.  


 

Season 19 Ep 10: Rough Stop, Danger Here, Mongoose Chow
2 comments      Added on January 28, 2008 by Kris
Croncast 2008-01-28 align= Croncast - 2008-01-28.mp3
Show: #456
Length: 25:57
Size: 17.9mb
Format: mp3

Show us some love and leave us a review at iTunes



The Resale Queen Podcast is now here!
Every Saturday by 9 a.m. CST

Really short show notes today

Old school send email intro piece
You can stare to long at a boa constrictor
Feeding mongoose baby ducks
Yes, we shouldn't have entered the bathroom
A huge chunk of snow hit him on the head
Maggie stopped her fall with her face
No I didn't say take her to the emergency room
Yes you did, like 10 times
You'll do anything for a trip to the emergency room
You grew up in there


View Kris's resume or download it



View Kris Smith's profile on LinkedIn

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Tags
  mongoose  Lincoln Park Zoo  baby chicks  caution tape  hep c  


 

maybe recession is looming - via twitter
0 comments      Added on January 28, 2008 by Kris
but the purchases this month made from our ebay affiliate links say something different.



  

Tags
  ebay affiliate  recession  


 

Gross.
4 comments      Added on January 27, 2008 by Kris

Gross.

This mess, or call it a sign not to use this restroom, was waiting for us when we entered. Being me and having a child who's 'got to go' required entry and usage of the facilities.

Fastest I have ever used a restroom, ever. Ddn't let Elliot touch a thing or wash his hands. It seemed right given the state of affairs.

Keeping Purell in Betsy's purse was never a better idea.


  

Tags
  restroom  given  state  seemed  hands  


 

On my dome
1 comments      Added on January 27, 2008 by Kris

On my dome

Elliot got cracked on his head by falling snow and ice from a pavillion that he was walking under.

More embarrassed than any other emotion he laughed it off. If only we could have predicted Maggie's face plant a bit later from this falling snow omen ;-).


  

Tags
  falling  snow  maggie  predicted  laughed  


 

Apple Affiliate Program, Giving It Another Shot
0 comments      Added on January 27, 2008 by Kris
I have no clue why I am giving the Apple Affiliate Program another shot. When you look at the numbers you will think I am crazy for trying again. I just can't get passed the fact that they sell a ton of iPods, MacBooks and now the MacBook Air and that we could possibly make a couple bucks from it.

Last year we were paid $0.00 by Apple after running a pretty aggressive campaign on Croncast and Resale Queen and in our RSS feeds. There is no way that in hades that not one single individual didn't buy the item they clicked on from the online Apple store in the 3 month span we ran the ads. It is illogical to look at the numbers (first table) and think that not one items was purchased from the online store within the cookie expiration period.

Advertiser

Commissions

S_Amount

Items

Sales

Leads

Clicks

Imps

CTR

eBay

$ XX

$ XX

47

598

84

351,500

59,514

590.61

Apple Store US & Apple Store Canada

$ 0.00

$ 0.00

0

0

0

218

31,192

0.69



Here's where we are in the last 4 days since I started running a couple ads in Betsy's Resale Queen feeds: blog posts and her podcast feed. The ads are for iLife '08 and the new MacBook Air. They are placed after the post item content and before the post tags.

Advertiser

Commissions

S_Amount

Items

Sales

Leads

Clicks

Imps

CTR

eBay

$ XX

$ XX

3

105

6

26,354

4,949

532.51

Apple Store US & Apple Store Canada

$ 0.00

$ 0.00

0

0

0

57

82

69.51

The clicks and impressions both are higher than I would have expected but maybe I did better targeting of the audience this time around. I doubt it. I think I was dead on during October, November and December to run iPod ads for shuffle, nano and video iPods.

I did contact the Apple Affiliate program through CJ during the second month to ask what the issue might be and never received a response.

For some reason I feel a need to go through with this again and hope that we can get our payout on a purchase from a lead that we created. I'll let you know how this goes.

Anyone else have experience with the Apple Affiliate Program?
  

Tags
  MacBook Air  iLife 08  Apple Affiliate Program  Commission Junction  eBay affiliate  


 

Twitter background guidelines
11 comments      Added on January 27, 2008 by Kris
Ever wanted to make an interesting Twitter background? Here's how I did it.

Side note: This post comes to you straight from an email reply to fellow long-time podcaster Michael Geoghegan in regards to my Twitter background.

Also of note, this layout works best on higher res monitor settings. I imagine that most active Twitter users that are going to be viewing the site as opposed to sms or mobile versions are on high res settings. That said, let's roll.

Creating your background
-----------------------------

File Dimensions: 2048 px by 1707 px (no clue why i used these dimensions but I am sure I knew what I was doing at the time)
Branding Dimensions: 80 px by 587 px
Coordinates: X=20, Y=14
Horizontal position: 20 px from the left (give yourself some padding)
Vertical position: 14 px from the top (will line up your graphic with the top of the twitter logo. our eyes like symmetry) File size and type according to Twitter: "Images must be smaller than 800k. GIF, JPG, PNG."

Aesthetics
------------

Color palette: Pick colors that match that with default Twitter stylesheet colors. If they contrast too much follow the Change Background directions above and change the colors for Text, Name, Link, Sidebar fill and Sidebar border as needed.
Recommendation: Choose colors that work with the default and save yourself the headache of matching the CSS to your image. Follow Twitter's lead.

Uploading your background
------------------------------

Change Default Background: Login and click 'Settings' >> click 'Design' >> Select 'Use my custom style below' radio button >> Upload your image

It took me quite a bit of time to get a background image that I was happy with. There was a lot of editing and uploading again, and again until I got it right. I would suspect if you're like me your experience will be much the same. So have patience when getting it just right. And remember that you are working within someone else's website and can't control all the features.

Here's my background at work - http://twitter.com/croncast. And here's a link to the background all by itself if you want to use it as a guide.
  

Tags
  template  size  twitter background  Michael Geoghegan  twitter  


 

super bowl tickets big bucks - via twitter
2 comments      Added on January 26, 2008 by Kris
i haven't watched sports in a long time. then i see some super bowl tix over $30k. huh?!?



  

Tags
  super bowl tickets  scalper  ticket prices  


 
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