Daily Archives: December 12, 2007

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Guest Post on Cutcaster Blog

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Yesterday I made a guest post on the CutCaster Blog. CutCaster is a new service that allows creators to sell their digital content like photos and videos. After the holidays I am going to sign up for CutCaster and give it a review. It looks pretty interesting.

Here is an excerpt from that guest post.

Photo-A-Day #889f 09/14/07My name is Drew and I am the author of The BenSpark I was invited to guest post to the Cutcaster blog. My topic is the low cost ways that you can create content to enhance your blog. Personally, I usually skip blog posts that do not include images. They bore me, but if your post also includes an image my eyes are going to be drawn to the image and I may look at your written content as well because of that image.

For almost three years now I have been working on a personal project where I take a Photo-A-Day and post it to my blog. I have used a number of cameras as well as software programs to accomplish this work. I have also used a number of photo hosting platforms to host those photos. And in the end I have also widgetized my daily photo stream so that others can host my content on their blogs. Getting started with photos and video on your blog is very, very simple.

Things you need
* Digital Camera
* Photo Editing Software
* Photo Hosting Platform

An Afternoon at Capron Park ZooDigital Camera – First things first you are going to need a digital camera. Digital cameras have dropped dramatically in price and as each new and improved version comes out the previous versions drop even lower in price. Here’s a secret, unless you are printing images in extremely large formats or going into professional photography you don’t need the latest and greatest gear. You can pick up last year’s model and it will be perfect for digital online content. So if you are shooting just for the web let’s say that $100 would be a good price point. As far as what camera is the best I cannot speak to that. I can tell you about the gear that I have used in the past and what I use currently……

Well, that was a teaser, you car going to have to visit the CutCaster blog for the rest of the story. If you like it drop a comment on the post. Let John from CutCaster know that you want me to do additional guest posts for the CutCaster blog.

Technology

Getting a New Cell Phone…

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With the month of January looming in the horizon I can only think about the end of my Verizon cell phone contract. January 7th is the day when Allison and I can take our mobile cell phones and decide if we want to go with another carrier free of the hassle of having to pay $175.00 to break out of an unfair 2 year contract with our crappy phones. I can finally get rid of my Palm Treo 650 that no longer lets me use the handset to make my calls, but the plantronics bluetooth headset I got works great. I can also get a better camera and video phone so I can post more to Utterz.

In my research for a new cell phone or cell phone provider (we may stay with the “in” network after all) I found a site called Discusswireless.com. The site has a number of forums that are moderated by a knowledgeable staff. I can ask questions about the phones I am looking for as well as plans, contracts and fees. Also you can get a 5% discount on any purchases made at www.puremobile.com.

There are specialized forums for each of the major carriers as well as for certain phones. I will be spending some time on the Verizon Forum to learn more about the phone I really want, the EnV. Yes it is from Verizon. The whole family is on Verizon so it would be stupid for me to leave the network to pay for calls to them when I could get all my calls to family free.