Well, Problogger Darren Rowse and New Media Man Chris Garrett wrote a book called Problogger - Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. You can download a preview of the book at the previous link.
So here’s my review of the preview. 
Here’s a cool tool to help you find what’s on your hard drive and where all its space is going to. It’s called JDiskReport. JDiskReport is a file management tool for your hard drive(s). Because it runs on Java, you can use it on most platforms - Windows, Linux, Mac, etc.
Have you heard of Ubuntu? Pronounced oo-BOON-too. It’s an operating system. What is an operating system? An operating system is what controls your computer and its many functions. It is part of the interface between you and your computer. A popular operating system that is equivalent to Ubuntu (as far as functionality) is Windows XP or Windows Vista.
So what is Ubuntu?
Brian Clark of the wildly popular Copyblogger blog is offering his Teaching Sells course for 7 days for only $1. DEADLINE - Noon Eastern on Thursday, April 17, 2008.
Twitter is making big waves these days and has been throughout 2007. If you haven’t heard of Twitter, it’s kind of like Instant Messaging but different and better.
In their own words:
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless!
And I’ll just add - THE WHOLE FREAKIN’ GLOBAL COMMUNITY!!
You have 140 characters to answer the question, “What are you doing?”
So what’s the point?
In my article How To Automatically Shut Down Your Windows XP Computer I showed how to set it up so you can use the ShutDown.exe command to schedule and automatically shut your Windows XP computer off. In this article I’ll show you how to do the same thing in Windows Vista.
Wordpress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.
For those who are still looking forward to upgrading to WordPress 2.5 I like to share my experience upgrading from WordPress 2.3.3 to 2.5 on two blogs.
I decided to download and install the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin. Pretty easy to do and outlines for you how the upgrade process will work, along with a one click upgrade. I decided I didn’t like the one click solution and was pretty skeptical of using it. So I used the step by step option. Plus, I just like to know what the heck’s going on at each step of the upgrade.
If you look at the upgrade the steps are:
1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
Since I did this upgrade one step at a time after running the backup task, I downloaded the zip file containing the backup. When I opened the zip file using 7-Zip, the following folders with their files were:
I ran that in the root folder of where my blog is installed on my hosting account. That worked fine.
However, when I ran it on a subfolder where I have one subdomain I ended up with an empty zip file with no title. Maybe that was just my experience with a subdomain but I fired up FileZilla and backed up the following folders to my hard drive:
With that out of the way and feeling comfortable I moved on to step two by clicking on the link provided by the WordPress Automatic Upgrade which was…
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
Again, this is part of my nightly routine by using the WordPress Database Backup plugin. I wasn’t too worried about this since I know it works and I’ve actually used it to restore. Which by the way wasn’t too bad but will require someone technical to do if you’re not too technically inclined.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
Clicking on step three worked perfectly. Like it says, it was downloaded and unzipped.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
Clicking on the next step puts your blog in maintenance mode where a user who would see a short message on a blank web page that your site is having maintenance performed on it at the moment.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
De-activating the plugins worked just fine as well. However, before I took this step I took a screenshot of all my plugins to make sure I did not miss a plugin at the end.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
This step worked just fine. Nothing too complicated just click on the upgrade link and away you go.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
Since the WordPress Automatic Upgrade runs in WordPress as a plugin this step keeps you in the old version while opening up a window to the new WordPress 2.5 version. After you’re done with this step you go back to the old window and finish up by doing…
8. Re-activates the plugins.
For some reason this didn’t work for me. None of my plugins were reactivated with both blogs. There is a final link for clean up and you’re done. Each step runs pretty quick so you’re literally done withing 5-10 miinutes. However, since I took the time to check each step it probably took 15-20 minutes.
I closed out the old WordPress and started working in the new WordPress 2.5. First thing I did was look at each plugin and activate the ones I knew I still needed and wanted. I left some of them de-activated because I wanted to do some further investigation on whether I still needed that particular plugin.
The plugin screen is nice because it lists each plugin along with a link to a newer version of the plugin if it exists. You can either investigate that link or there is a link that automatically upgrades your plugin. Very nice. I chose the automatic upgrade on all the plugins that needed upgrading. Everyone worked well except for one right now - Top Commentators plugin. There is a bit more work with that one.
So all in all the upgrade was a pretty darn good experience for me.
I have a couple domains that I haven’t setup before so I’m debating setting up a 2.3 WordPress and running through the upgrade process and recording it so I can provide a video on it. We’ll see.
This is my first post using WordPress 2.5. Most everything is working. I don’t have a bunch of plugins for this blog and you can view them on my resources page. The Top Commentators plugin isn’t showing up so I’ll have to investigate that a bit more.
More to come on WordPress 2.5
This post is a quick post about making money with a blog. I have not spent a bunch of time trying to make money on this blog and the blog I made money on was my Smart Saving Investing blog. Specifically the article called Zen To Done - The Ultimate Simple Productivity System from a November 26, 2007.
Although I haven’t updated that blog in over a month and some of the updates have been sparce, it goes to show you that it’s possible to make money with a blog even when you don’t update it. Not a whole lot of money in this case, but some.
Now, the pay out for the ebook is 50%. So, the ebook costs $9.50 and I was paid $4.75. Not a lot, but pretty cool to be paid for anything online instead of me paying for something. So if you haven’t been paid for anything that is advertised on your blog, there is hope.
Now, I will say, buying the product and writing a blog post about it probably helps. Providing a bit of commentary on parts of the ebook helps as well. With a big image that is clickable and takes you directly to the shopping cart so you can check out quickly.
Here’s the post from that blog. The concepts and principles that Leo talks about are sound and are timeless.
Leo Babauta of the wildly popular Zen Habits blog has released an 83-page e-book called Zen To Done for $9.50.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
1 Why ZTD?
2 Overview - What is it?
3 Minimal ZTD - the simpler alternative
4 Forming the 10 Habits
5 Habit 1: Collect
6 Habit 2: Process
7 Habit 3: Plan
8 Habit 4: Do
9 Habit 5: Simple, trusted system
10 Habit 6: Organize
11 Habit 7: Review
12 Habit 8: Simplify
13 Habit 9: Routine
14 Habit 10: Find Your Passion
15 A Day with Zen To Done
16 ZTD FAQ
17 Resources
If you’re a fan of GTD - Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
Leo teaches you his ZTD or Zen To Done by combining and simplifying some of Allen’s and Covey’s productivity concepts. Narrrowing your focus on what you need to get done by way of MITs or Most Important Tasks.
Habit 10: Find Your Passion is one of the best sections of this e-book because it helps guide you through that over-arching question everyone needs to answer or update in their lives - What Are You Passionate About?
Leo guides you a long a path of questions that put you in the right mindset to help you determine what it is you’re passionate about.
I highly recommend this e-book as you can’t beat the price. If you’re feeling overwhelmed with all the stuff in your life and need a way to get organized Zen To Done will help you.
