Adding Flickr Photos to Your Website with Author Attribution Tags

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Mark

Building up a beautiful website is always a balance between clever copy writing and using photos and videos to communicate your subject. In a perfect world, you would be able to use all your own content to do everything, but really that is not necessary.

Mornington Peninsula TourismI make a lot of websites for clients and I also build websites for myself on topics usually related to travel. So, getting interesting images is always a challenge. Flickr is an online photo library used by amateur and professional photographers to display their work. Many photographers are happy to share their work, using the nonprofit Creative Commons which has 6 default licenses as an alternative to full copyright. This means that both you and the photographer can benefit – you get to display great images and they get recognition for their work which can lead to greater things as well.

Using Photo Dropper with WordPress

Spending the day at Ashcombe Maze a natural maze made from hedgesIt’s one thing to know it is possible, but another to do it. And, more important to do it easily. With Photo Dropper installed as a plug in for WordPress, you can now quickly search through Flickr for images and then with a couple of clicks insert the photos into your blog posts with full attribution.

Once you’ve installed the Photo Dropper plug in, your page editor has a new button that helps you browse images on Flickr and click to install them into your post.

I’ve used Mornington Peninsula as an example and I’ve inserted 2 images into this post: a photo of the bathing boxes at Portsea and a shot from Ashcombe Maze. Also note at the bottom of the post is an attribute to the photographers. You can chose the size of the image and give it your own title attributes and set the image to right, left or centre.

 

Posted in Misc, Website Design Techniques | Leave a comment

iPad and MAC compatible Property Management Software for Australian Motels and Hotels

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Mark

Many Australian Motels and Hotels are switching to MAC computers and they need Mac compatible property management software to run their accommodation. Many are also finding the convenience of Apple’s iPad and hotel management software a winning combination. Booking Center provides affordable well designed products that are perfect for the Australian business running on Apple Computers.

Booking Centre has been providing truly MAC compatible software for over 15 years. Our MAC software is completely ready to manage Australian accommodation with Aussie date formats, GST, terms, etc. Web Reservation Systems is the local agent for Booking Centre providing Australian business owners with local help that is based on providing 100’s of motels, B&B’s, backpackers and other Australia.

Use an iPad to Manage Hotel Reservations

Hotel Reservations on an iPadFor managers that want to use an iPad to manage hotel reservations, we have a new service called MyPMS which is a cloud based property management software that can be used safely and securely on your iPad either through your wifi network or a high speed mobile 3G network like Telstra NextG. That means you can be mobile while you are also fully connected to your front office software. When you are at the office, you can log in with your desktop computer. In fact, you can have multiple users working at the same time.

The advantage of a cloud-based software system is that your data is always safe from computer crashes and virus and you can access it securely from any location with fast Internet. For a business with multiple offices, or the need to manage bookings while you’re on the road – MyPMS is the perfect product.

Try the MyPMS front office software on your iPad or desktop computer now. With this free trial, you can use the software from any computer – PC or MAC as well as your iPad. You could use MyPMS on an iPhone as well, but you will find the screens are a bit small to comfortably do much.

Online Bookings For Your Accommodation

All Booking Centre products have the ability to manage Online Bookings through many sales channels. You can add booking links on your website that show real time availability. When a guest books, you set your on terms and conditions and take secure advance payments directly from the guest. Online Booking is a great way to increase your occupancy while you save time and give guests a more convenient way to book.

To learn more about how our systems can make it easier for your guests to make bookings and how our Australian business can provide you with great local support and service – please contact Web Reservation Systems at (02) 66848101.

Posted in Misc | Leave a comment

Survey Shows How Gen Y Uses Technology in Daily Life

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Mark

Well, it’s no surprise to hear that Generation Y (13 to 24 year olds) are big users of technology and social media. They use FaceBook, mobile apps for check in, text each other constantly and so forth.

For marketers this is big because survey results show how Gen Y uses FaceBook likes to get special offers, check in apps to see where there friends go and then follow, and how they research and buy new products. If you’re selling to Gen Y and ignoring these trends then you’re probably not selling as much as you could and your customers may find other businesses are more interesting for future sales.

You can read the full article here at NextWeb.com > http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/01/21/number-crunching-the-top-51-stats-for-generation-y-marketers/

 

Posted in Internet Marketing Ideas | Leave a comment

Installing WordPress for a Pre-existing Website and the not being able to Log In

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Mark

I’ve just set up a new hosting account and installed WordPress using Fantastico in CPanel. All that is great, but the website needs to be built first and then when it is ready I’ll re-delegate the domain from the old host to the new host.

That is pretty normal, but when you install WordPress Fantastico likes to input the domain name for the website – not the temporary domain name. So, the first time you try to log in to manage the site through the WordPress dashboard, you get log in errors because it keeps loading the wrong url.

If you’re like me, you are breaking things and then finding solutions to how you fix them all the time. And, if your like me every time you find the solution and fix the problem, 3 months later you break it again for another job and can’t remember how you fixed it before. Is this an early sign of Alzheimers or just standard???

So, here is a pretty good description of how to fix the problem. This one describes how to fix a WordPress Installation through Cpanel using phpMyAdmin. I know I’ve also fixed it by using an FTP program like Filezilla and grabbing a file and editing the details in notepad, but so far this seems to be easier. Not sure who wrote this description, but it is really well done and I found it on the BlueHost user forum. Thanks guys!

And then of course, I’ll probably have to fix it again when I delegate the domain. Perhaps another post?

Posted in Website Design Techniques | Leave a comment

What is Waze and will their Car Navigation systems work in Australia?

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Mark

There are a handful of new Internet businesses that are experiencing exponential growth. They are shaping new ways to use phones and communicate. Car navigation systems for your Smart PhoneI learned about Waze.com today from a presentation on growing businesses. Waze started in Israel and quickly grew to an installed base of over 14 million users. They specialize in Car Navigation systems, but then this is an app for your Smart Phone.

The video below does a good job of explaining the Waze service. It is basically a user knowledge base that is constantly updated from people’s phones. It happens both passively and actively. The methods of update look simple and they take into account requirements to not allow users to do unsafe things while in motion – so they have really simplified commands.

Today, the points of interest are improving the basic maps to include new roads and get the names of roads right, and then provide a dynamic picture of what is happening now with traffic congestion, parking and speed traps and cameras.

Tomorrow… well this kind of user generated network could provide the same kinds of data like Foursquare, Gowalla and other check in apps. I would guess that if the business continues its meteoric rise, it will need to partner or combine with parallel business ideas.

Australia’s phone networks can be woefully slow and painfully expensive. I can see the appeal of using this kind of service where you have unlimited high speed data plans. I wonder if that will be a factor here? There are a lot of new services that will rely upon lots of data and speed – so I guess Australian mobile networks will have to change.

I thought it was interesting that their presentation seems to be focused on the Android user and seemed to leave out iPhone users. More about Waze > http://world.waze.com/

Posted in Misc | Leave a comment