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Many of our members have asked for recommended plugins to add slide shows of multiple photos / images to their blogs.

I’ve tried most of the plugins at some time and have found most to need either a lot of care, a lot of technical knowledge or a lot of patience. In most cases all three!

Recently I decided to do some more research and came up with a solution that I think is fantastic. No only do you not need a plugin, you can expect more traffic and the results are just superb. You end up with your Flickr photos showing up on a really cool 3D Photo Wall provided free by Cooliris

Watch this video to see exactly what I mean.

You’ll need to sign up for Flickr and use Cooliris (if you haven’t downloaded the Cooliris plugin for Firefox yet you are really missing out)

I’d love to see what you’ve done with this so leave me a message on the Contact page.

It can be a nightmare – login names and passwords are required for virtually every site you visit!

blogging beginners obviously have their WordPress blog admin logins and passwords plus the admin area at blogging beginners as an absolute minimum. But what about all those social sites, like Digg, Stumble Upon not to mention Squidoo and Blip and countless others.

Do you use the same logins and passwords? Is that really a sensible thing to do?

And if you use different details each time how do you remember them? Do you write them down? Do you have a spreadsheet?

Or do you do what I do?

Without doubt 2 of the most useful tools I use are Roboform on my PC and 1Password on my Mac.

These programs securely store the login user name and password for each site and automatically populate the boxes each time I visit.

I was prompted to write this when somebody told me today they couldn’t remember a login password nor could they find where it was recorded.

Both of the programs I use have a free option – but this restricts the number of sites that can be recorded. I bought both – Roboform I’ve been using for years and has hunders of passwords stored. I’d be totally lost without it. Oh, yes, you can get a memory stick version (Pass2Go) that you can take with you and plug in to any computer and access your sites.

Now that is really cool. I wouldn’t want to write a list on a piece of paper and run the risk of losing it. The memory stick can of course be password protected so nobody could access your sites if you lost it.

If you struggle with passwords this could be the answer to your prayers!

One of the members at blogging beginners – Mark from Insomnia Cures – introduced me to TweetSuite a few days ago.

I’ve checked so many Twitter related plugins and tools lately I thought this might be just “another” idea.

But, in fact I was pleasantly surprised. I can see some real value in this one.

There is a Wordpress plugin – that always gets me onside!

Once uploaded and activated you can position the Tweet icon to the left or right of every post you make. Automatically the plugin adds a footnote to every post you make suggesting “be the first to Tweet this post”.

As soon as a visitor Tweets the post – either the icon at the top or link at the bottom of the post, their Twitter icon shows up below the post – try it – click the link at the foot of this post and see what happens. There – you now have a link to your Twitter account.

And now my reservations.

The plugin installs a number of widgets which you can add to your sidebar(s) to show your latest Tweets, Most Tweeted, Favourite Tweets etc. The widgets don’t work too well with the Mandigo theme. Each Tweet that shows up manages to attract the bullet point icon (in my case the blue arrow) and looks really bad. I haven’t looked into why this is yet – I probably won’t in fact because I already use Tweet My Blog which provides much the same information.

I’m happy to have my hat put on straight if I’m missing a point here – so do let me know if you know different.

I think it’s a great plugin though even if you don’t use the widgets (simpl;y don’t add them to your sidebar). You can download it at TweetSuite.

Here’s a screen shot of the backlink to my Twitter link I got in seconds. – I captured that screenshot with Jing by the way – remenber I told you about that a few days ago.

Imagine if all sites were using TweetSuite – how long would it take to create a massive following?

A few Apple Mac users have encountered some difficulties in watching my Fast Start Online Business Video-e-Book. This is because the default Mac pdf reader does not (currently) support embedded video.

To get round this you need to install Adobe Reader 9.0 and then open the video e-book using that program. The first time you open Reader 9.0 you’ll be asked if you want to use it for all pdfs in the future – obviously your choice. Iif you are happy with what you use now answer just NO.

You should now see all of the controls for the video as you mouse over the image of the video.

I created a very short video (I used Jing – the program I mentioned a few days ago)  showing the steps that you can watch here.

Quick Reader 9.0 Download Demonstration

This is so cool! Create Video for your site for free. No need to buy expensive programs. No need to learn processing, uploading – all those things that make video a pain.

Just capture the screen while talking and click a button.

I created this a few minutes ago:

Introducing Jing

I had a problem with Camtasia which I use to create videos and the support guy sent me a link to a file showing me how to resolve the problem.

He created the video he gave me the link to using Jing.

As you know by now, I am compelled to look at these things to see if they are any use to our members and the answer is a resounding yes!

You can use it to create videos or simple “still” shots of anything on your computer. If you want to add augio like I did all you need extra is a microphone or headset.

Take a look – it’s simple to download and install. Easy to use and upload and you can be adding video to your blogs in 10 minutes from now.

Highly recommended.