I was asked recently by a good friend of mine what the difference was between having your own web desktop and using Google’s web based productivity tools. It’s actually a good question. But there are 3 specific reasons why I am enjoying using the open source eyeOS and hosting my own web desktop, as opposed to using a 3rd party service like Google.
1. The data is mine – sometimes I work on confidential business documents, and the last thing I want is for those documents to be hosted by a 3rd party. Even if that 3rd party is Google as much as I trust them. With my own web desktop, hosted on my own server that I pay for, I know that my information is kept completely private.
2. Everything in one browser tab – one of my biggest pet peeves about Google’s web apps, is that they all involve [...]

I wrote a while back about eyeOS, the open source web desktop and the benefits for web workers in a post titled 8 Ways EyeOS Can Help You in Business. In case you are still in the dark as to what eyeOS is refer to that page. In this post I am going to show you step-by-step how to get eyeOS installed, in this case on a Dreamhost server. It’s fairly easy.
1. Download the eyeOS application from eyeos.org

2. Unzip and upload the contents to your server
3. Now in your browser, go to the /installer/index.php file to access the Installation Wizard

4. Be sure to setup your root password to something you will both remember and will be difficult for someone to hack into.
5. That’s it! You should now have eyeOS working perfectly on your Dreamhost server. You are presented with a login screen. Remember that the main username is ‘root’ and [...]

My biggest weakness in writing copy online is my grammar. Any of you who read my blog can vouch for this. It’s something i’m constantly working on to get better at. But this plugin for WordPress called ‘After the Deadline’ is helping me also. After the Deadline is a plugin that was purchased by the Automatic team (founders of WordPress) and is part of every WordPress.com hosted blog. I recently downloaded the plugin and installed it this blog here and it is working wonders for me!
Here are a couple screenshots I took yesterday while writing my last blog post. You can see the various grammar and spelling errors that After the Deadline picked up while I was writing. Notice the underlined items.

When you right-click on the underlined text you get a drop down with options, just like when you are spell checking in a word processor.

After The Deadline has been [...]

A critical element in the development of any online project is planning. And more specifically in the development of software a term is used called “Prototyping”. The act of sketching or laying out a rough draft of an application before it is actually completed. Over the years the best applications I have seen on the web are those that were planned well in advance…

The great bloggers have the ability to direct you to their best written stuff, no matter what blog post you happen to be reading at the time. This is one of the big keys to their success. You want to be able to inform your new readers of the great content you wrote 6 months ago, or even 3 months ago. There are some handy plugins that can help you with this. Here are 13 that will help your readers find your best content.

Creating more conversations through blog posts is the holy grail of blogging. Bloggers are constantly trying to find more ways to get their readers to interact with them. And while much of this depends on the quality of your writing, there are some technical things that you can do with Wordpress to help you along the way. Here are 13 plugins for Wordpress to help you get more comments.