ProBlogger’s Guide to your First Week of Blogging

If you’re starting a blog, you might as well do it right and learn from the master: Darren Rowse aka Problogger. He has just released a brand new ebook that will guide you through all the important decisions that you have to make. From selecting the topic of your blog to figuring out exactly what to write and how to promote it.

I’ve been reading Darren’s blogs for years and I have learned so much from him over that time, but I can say without a doubt in my mind that what you will learn by reading this book will save you the years that it has taken me to pick up on his tricks and secrets. If you don’t feel the same way, no worries, Darren offers a money back guarantee on all of his ebooks…

The book is on sale for only $9.99 USD for a limited time. This is 50% off the regular price, so don’t wait! If you buy before May 17th you’ll also go into a draw to win a prize worth over $850!

Reactions from the mainstream media went from surprise, to shock, to outrage when Amazon recently opened up the Kindle for shipping to a large list of countries, that did not include Canada. The Kindle is a “Wireless Reading Device” (commonly known as an eBook reader) that includes free global wireless coverage and doesn’t require a computer to access new content from the Kindle Store.

I personally don’t really understand what the hype is about this class of device. I much prefer reading my books in paper form, or to have all the other features of a mini computer that are built into my iPod Touch. But there are many people out there who rave about these things, and they love the convenience of having nearly instant access to hundreds of thousands of books, newspapers, magazines, and blogs on a device with a screen that “Reads like real paper without glare, even in bright sunlight”. I’d love to give one a try, if only to see what the hype is all about.

For any of my fellow Canadians that have been waiting to get their hands on one, your time is now. For only $259 US you can order one now and have it with plenty of time to spare before Christmas!

The Kindle Store: More Than 360,000 Books
At Amazon, we’ve always been obsessed with having every book ever printed, and we know that even the best book reader is useless without the books you want to read. We are fortunate that we have tens of millions of book customers at Amazon, and as a result, we know the books customers want to read and we prioritize getting those titles. Today, the Kindle Store has more than 360,000 books available, including 101 of 112 New York Times® Best Sellers, plus top newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Our vision for Kindle is to have every book ever printed, in any language, all available in under 60 seconds.

I wanted to change my default Post Category in WordPress from “Uncategorized” (which is how WordPress comes “out of the box”) to something that I’m much more likely to write about.  I mean seriously, how often am I going to write about topics with no category??  So I went to the “Posts” menu, chose “Categories”, and spent several minutes trying to figure out how to:

1. change the default Post Category, and
2. delete “Uncategorized” from my list of possible post categories

But I couldn’t do it.  You can delete categories, but not the default category.  And there is no way in the “Categories” panel to reassign the default.  After a quick Google search I found a blog post that helped me figure out how to do it:

This is definitely an oddity…  Instead of going to the “Categories” panel, you have to go to the “Writing” panel inside the “Settings” menu.  From there you can set both the default Post Category and the default Link Category (“Blogroll” is the out of the box default for Links, and I always change that to “Links”, which I find much more intuitve). 

I also found that I could change the size of the post box from the meagre 10 lines that I had been fighting with to 20 lines.  This simple change makes it much easier to see what I’m writing about (I knew this one was there, but hadn’t gotten around to changing it yet).