BobBuskirk.com

A Great Blogging Laptop

Bob Buskirk — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:30:46 +0000

One thing that is so great about blogging is that you can do it from pretty much anywhere as long as you have an internet connection. Wordpress makes things even easier, and the Wordpress App for the iPhone means you don’t even need a computer to publish blog posts on your website. Although something like that app is not really that realistic for someone who wants to add images and other media in their posts. A blogging laptop does not need to be that powerful, just needs to have a capability to do some word processing and be able to surf the web and possibly resize images. The most important thing is that you want it to be portable.

I recently had the chance to check out the Lenovo Ideapad S10 10.2-inch laptop. You can check out the full review over at ThinkComputers. It is a perfect little laptop for blogging. First let’s talk about the size, it is only 9.8″ x 7.2″ x 1.2″ and only weighs 2.64lbs. This means you can easily carry it around with you it and it could fit in a backpack or medium to large size purse without a problem. During my testing I took the S10 everywhere I went and it was not like carrying a regular laptop around at all.

So it’s small, but what about performance? The S10 has a 1.6Ghz N270 Intel Atom processor and has 1GB of memory. So of course you will be able to do word processing and web surfing but also you will be able to use programs like Paint.net to resize and edit images. Also unlike most small laptops like this the S10 has a regular hard drive not an SSD. This means you actually have a lot of space, not 4-8GB that you get with an SSD, the S10 has a 120GB hard drive. Lenovo tries really hard to give you as much screen size as possible with a 1024 x 600 resolution LCD.

The thing that really sets the S10 apart from other small laptops that are around the same price is the ExpressCard slot. Having an ExpressCard slot gives you a lot of expansion options. One of the most important things would be an EVDO card so you can have internet anywhere. My Sprint EVDO card is an ExpressCard and its awesome that I can use it with the S10. If you want more information on the S10 check out my review over at ThinkComputers.

Giving Away 3 Thermaltake Cases!

Bob Buskirk — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:42:57 +0000

ThinkComputers has teamed with Thermaltake to bring you a great Holiday Giveaway! It is that time of the year, snow is on the ground and Christmas is right around the corner. We have decided to give the ThinkComputers readers a surprise. Thermaltake will be providing 3 different cases for us to give away. First is the Speedo ($199.99), then the V9 Gaming Case ($139.99) and finally the Armor+ MX ($139.99). There are quite a few ways to enter this contest…

Forums: Reply to this post and have a minimum of 35 posts - 1 entry

ThinkComputers Blog: Be one of the top 5 commentators on the ThinkComputers blog - 2 entries (1 for November, 1 for December)

Newsletter: Subscribe to the ThinkComputers E-mail Newsletter - 1 entry

So there are quite a few ways you can qualify, you can get up to 4 entries total. The contest will run from today, November 12th to December 25th. Winners must be located in the US and Canada to receive prizes. Head on over to ThinkComputers to check out the contest!

Tell-a-Friend Wordpress Plugin

Bob Buskirk — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:20:41 +0000

I have seen quite a few people using this plugin on their blog so I decided to check it out for myself. If you notice at the bottom of every post is a little Tell a Friend button. If you hover over it, it will bring up a box where users can tell a friend about that post via IM, E-Mail, or a Social network. What’s great about this plugin is that it allows users to do this without leaving your site to do it.

Tell a Friend was launched by Social Twist and is free to download and install. Now you don’t need to sign up to Social Twist to download the widget but if you do signup to Social Twist you are able to customize the widget and have access to usage statistics. I went ahead and signed up for an account. Once you download the plugin, just upload it to your wordpress plugins folder and active it and you a good to go. It can’t get much easier than that. The plugin can also be used on other platforms like TypePad, Blogger and Textpattern. It will be interesting to see if anyone uses the widget on the page, check it out for yourself.

Here is a video that shows how Tell a Friend can be useful to the visitors to your site.

Pumped For Gears of War 2

Bob Buskirk — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 22:16:42 +0000

It’s not often I play a lot of games, mostly because I’m busy working hard on my sites. And the free time I have I usually just like to relax, we all know that some games can take up a lot of time (World of Warcraft etc.) so I normally don’t really get into games that much anymore. If I do feel like playing a game it will load up hockey or Counter-Strike: Source (Gungame Deathmatch is awesome). That pretty much feeds my need for gaming. I do own an Xbox 360, but like I said I don’t have that many games for it, the last game I bought was NHL 09.

One of my favorite games for my 360 is Gears of War. When it first came out the graphics and gameplay were amazing, it was one of the most anticipated games for the 360. I’m sure a lot of your remember the Mad World trailer that was played on TV for a straight month before the game came out. Watching that trailer really got you excited for the game. Well just like the original Gears of War there is another trailer just like that for Gears of War 2.

These trailers are great, they really portray Gears of War as not just a game, but a great story, and playing through the original Gears of War felt like I was living the story. Not many games can do that, and not many games look amazing like Gears of War. Gears of War 2 not only has new weapons, but new game modes and much more!

The Gears of War figurehead is Cliff Bleszinski who is the design director for game development at Epic Games. I’ve been playing his games for the longest time, even since Unreal Tournament, which was one of my favorite games of all time and I still own all Unreal games all the way up to Unreal Tournament 3. I know a game is going to be good if Cliff is involved.

So I’m all set for tonight, I have my Gears of War 2 LE preorder all paid off, have a 6 pack of Vault, and 3 frozen pizzas! I will be waiting in line to get it at midnight! If you follow me on twitter I will be posting photos from the GameStop at my mall. If you are getting the game add me to your friends on Xbox Live, my gamertag is Enigma5.

Checking Out Woopra

Bob Buskirk — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 00:40:46 +0000

I received an e-mail a while ago asking me if I wanted to check out the Woopra beta. Having no clue what Woopra was I went on their website and discovered that it was web analytics software. Like most people I run Google Analytics on my sites for analytics and for the most part it provides me with the information I need. Learning that Woopra was actually desktop software I decided to try it out. I always like being able to check out new things, especially when they are still in beta.

Just like any analytics system you need to sign up. After you are all signed up you can add your websites. For most of you it will take some time for Woopra to approve your website. Once your website is approved you can get started. First you need to install the Woopra code on your website, if you are using Wordpress they have a plugin to easily insert the code and add the analytics to your Wordpress dashboard. After you have the code installed on your site you can download the Woopra program, they not only support Windows, but OSX and Linux too.

Once you have Woopra installed on your computer you can login from the main screen. The Woopra program is java based, which gives it a cool look and makes it easy to use. Once you are logged in Woopra will connect to your sites tracking stats. They will show up as tabs on the top of the program window. Once you enter the dashboard screen there is a ton of things to look at…

I really cannot go over everything in the Woopra program, because this post would be extremely long, but I will go over a few things. The main dashboard of Woopra has 6 main sections, the top graph, daily / hourly traffic overview, content, referrers, searches, and visitor map. Also along the bottom is a ticker of relevant information.

One of the coolest things about Woopra is being able to see live visitors on your site. If you click on the live icon on the side you will be brought to the live visitors page. Here you can see all of the live visitors on your site, not only that there is a map showing you where the visitors are located. There is even more information to get about the live visitors, their IP address, country, city, language, browser, platform, screen resolution, and what page they are currently viewing.

The search and analytics buttons will give you even more information about what is going on with your site. After thinking I would not be impressed with Woopra I’m actually blown away! It has to be one of the coolest analytics packages I have seen. What makes it so great is that it is in real time! Check it out for yourself and see if you can get into the beta!

Get Out and Vote Today!

Bob Buskirk — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:30:54 +0000

Well today is the big day, the day you can go out and make a difference and vote! Honestly I hate politics, mainly because a lot of it is BS and it causes things like this to happen, which makes me wonder what is wrong with some people in this country. But as you are reading this I’m probably out voting, not because I feel obligated to, but because I want my voice to be heard. Whatever reason you have for wanting to vote make it count and go out to the polls today.

If you remember my Seriously Don’t Vote post from last month it included a video from Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way, which was very entertaining. Well they have done a follow-up (make sure you watch the first video if you have not seen it), so if you are not sure whether or not to vote check out this video…

October Thoughts

Bob Buskirk — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:14:35 +0000

Well I decided to start this type of post back up. I was doing it for a few months back in 2007, but then stopped. I think reflecting on the previous month is a great way to come up with new posts for your blog and looking at what people are actually reading can help you find new topics to write about. Well it’s already November and last month was not a good month a blogging for me, I only wrote 8 posts which is the lowest post count since December 2007! I really hope that his month I can get a lot more blogging done. My favorite post from October was the 3 Reason’s Your Website Isn’t Making Money post.

Popular Posts
Well what was everyone else reading in October? Here are the top 5 posts from that got the most traffic in October.

Keeping Track of Money and Payments

Are You Working Hard?

Check out HoopStick!

Seriously Don’t Vote

3 Reason’s Your Website Isn’t Making Money

It was good to see the one of my posts from 2007 is still getting a lot of traffic!

Traffic Sources
Where is all that traffic coming from? Here our my top traffic sources for October.

Notice that Facebook and Justin.tv are listed in the top 5 traffic sources, social networking can bring you traffic!

Stats Tracker

RSS Readers:

Twitter Followers:

Facebook Friends:

Moving on to November
I really hope to post more than 8 posts in November, this will be #1 so I’m pretty sure I can make get 7 more posts done atleast. This time of the year is crazy for me because of ThinkComputers and that I just started ThinkPenguins, but I don’t want to stop blogging so expect more posts!

My First Game of the Season

Bob Buskirk — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:18:03 +0000

As most of you know I’m a huge hockey fan! Hockey is my favorite sport and I usually make it out to 4 or 5 penguins games a year. Usually I don’t go till later in the year but my friend Brian was nice enough to invite me to the game against the Flyers, of course I took him up on the offer. The Penguins have really gained a lot of popularity this year since they made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals last season. So the Penguins and Trib total media started the Faceoff Festival outside Mellon Arena for the first 4 home games. The festival included a video board to watch the game if you didn’t have tickets, food vendors, and special booths. Good to see stuff like this go on in Pittsburgh.

The tickets Brian got for the game were actually gold circle tickets. Gold circle tickets are special seats in every section. They include a TV for watching replays and a place to put food or drinks down. They even include a phone so you can order food so you don’t have to leave your seat. Definielty some good seats, but I would never pay for them…haha.

The Flyers are probably the Penguins biggest rivals and it was great to go to a game against them. I was at the last game we played against them where we defeated them to go to the Stanley Cup Finals. The rivalry is definietly still alive as there was a fight in the first period.

So something interesting happented in between the first and 2nd period. I sat back down in my seat and it just broke. The penguins do have the oldest building in the NHL and that is proof of it. We let the usher know that our seat broke and they were able to move us into Igloo East 3 rows behind the Flyers bench. This was the closest I’ve ever been, definitely cool but I wouldn’t want to watch a game from that close because you have to stand up to see plays in each end. It was cool being that close to the players though.

The game ended up going into overtime and the Pens won! You can check out my full recap of the game at ThinkPenguins.com.

Are You Working Hard?

Bob Buskirk — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:34:14 +0000

I made a post a while ago talking about how summer is over. That means that most people are going back to school or work. For me that means it’s time to dig in and work even harder. During the summer there is less internet traffic and it’s nice so you want to go out. In the fall / winter you see an increase in internet traffic and since its cold and cloudy most of the time it’s not like you want to go outside all the time. I have been working really hard on many things, here is what I’ve been up to.

ThinkComputers
As I mentioned earlier I have been really pumping out content on ThinkComputers. We did 20 straight days of content last month and we are averaging around 5 reviews a week if not more. This is a hard thing to accomplish but I have a very good system in place to get things done. Also we have a steady flow of products coming in and my staff is really kicking ass!

There are some new features on ThinkComputers too. I have revamped the articles page. Now the articles are separated into categories instead of a long page of all the articles on the site. This way they are easy to find and navigate and it gives more exposure to older articles.

ThinkComputers also has an official staff blog now! It will give ThinkComputers users a behind the scenes look at what we have going on. It will be updated once a week or so, nothing major but something to keep people coming back to ThinkComputers.

I will also be adding more features to site in the coming weeks too!

ThinkPenguins
I launched a new website, ThinkPenguins. Since launching it has been great so far. I have met many people who write about the Pens and it is great to write about something other than technology and the internet. I love hockey so writing posts is easy. I’m averaging a post a day!

I hope to get a good following going in the Pittsburgh area, we will see how it goes!

The Blog
I haven’t done much with the blog since the new layout was launched, but I have a long list of things I want to implement. Hopefully you will be able to see them in the coming weeks. If you have any suggestions for the blog please let me know and they will go on the list!

I hope everyone is working hard during this busy internet season, make that money so you can take it easy during the summer months!

ThinkPenguins Launched!

Bob Buskirk — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:18:37 +0000

As I said in an earlier post I wanted to start a Penguins blog. I love hockey and I’ve been watching the Penguins play for as long as I can remember. So over the past weekend I got to work on it since the season has started. I stuck with the “Think” theme that I have with many of my other sites, so ThinkPenguins was born. Luckily I was able to find a good Wordpress theme that matched the colors of the Penguins well. I really did not have to do much to the layout except change the logo. Please let me know what you think of the site.

The site is going to cover all pens news and I will be doing game recaps for every game. Also if there is any interesting NHL news I will be posting it also. I created a twitter account, so make sure you follow!

Since this is a brand new blog I did a fresh install of Wordpress. Here are some of the plugins that I’m using: Akismet, All in One SEO pack, Contact form 7, Feedburner FeedSmith, and Similar Posts. I think for any blog you should have these plugins installed.

This is my first sports blog so we will see how it goes, wish me luck!