Although WordPress 2.7 was released some time ago, a lot of people are just now getting around to upgrading their blogs with the latest version of the popular platform.  Now that people are doing this, I am started to get asked questions about why things don’t work or look the same.  One that has come up multiple times recently has to do with links in the comment section fo a post.  After a 2.7 upgrade, many users are noticing that when a person leaves a comment, their URL link in that persons name goes to their URL but with the addition of some garbled mess that looks like “%20%20do-not-follow”, landing you on a “401 page not found” link.  The solution to fix this is pretty simple.

Every person that asked me about this, upon further investigation, was using the Google Analyticator plugin, which tracks site traffic with Google Analytics.  Older version of the plugin didn’t work so well with 2.7, but fortunately there is an update.  If you are experiencing this problem, go to the Google Analyticator page, download the newest version of the plugin (2.3 as of this writing) and upload it to your wp-content/plugins directory.  Problem solved!

I just installed a WordPress plugin that I’m pretty excited about, TweetSuite.  Dan Zarrella announced its release this morning, and I quickly installed it.  If you are a WordPress blogger and use Twitter, I think this is a mandatory install for you because it does several important things.

• A “Tweet This” button is placed at the beginning of your post, much like the “Digg This” buttons that are so popular
• A list of Tweetbacks (mentions and links on Twitter) at the bottom of the post, which act like track backs from other blogs
• Inclusion of several optional widgets, like “Recently Tweeted” and “My Favorited Tweets”
• Option to send notification to Twitter with the publishing of a new post
• Completely self-sufficient code.  It doesn’t pass thru the author’s server or use Javascripts, so it should be pretty stable

This is one of the more exciting plugins that I’ve seen developed in a long time, and it integrated seamlessly with my WP 2.7 install.  Go download it for yourself and give it a try!  I would love to hear what you think about it.

The ability for all of my readers to see my posts in the method of their choosing is very important to me.  Although the majority of my traffic comes from desktop and laptop computers, I’m starting to see an increase in visits from mobile browsers.  I’ve tried different plug-ins from time to time that are supposed to redirect to a mobile friendly page, but for the most part they have been too watered down.  With 3G and other high speed networks, I’m not sure that text-only is the way to go. I think I’ve found a service that finally balances mobile speed with aesthetics.  Enter Mippin.

Based in The UK, Mippin does an amazing job of transforming my site from bells and whistles to mobile friendly.  From my POV, the ease with which this is done makes it a bit of a no-brainer.  They will grab my feed and transform it for free into a fully functional web site that is mobile browser friendly.  If you want to see what this site looks like, browse on your mobile phone or look at this page in your browser.

If you run your site on WordPress, they have sweetened the deal even further.  They have created a WordPress Plugin that you upload to your wp-content/plugins folder, activate and that’s it.  I have tested this on a few different phones and it redirects without problems.  Of course the question that you have to ask yourself is, do you want to redirect?  The plugin actually steers your audience to the Mippin site, away from yours.  Personally I’m okay with this, but I know some people that are not.  It’s a personal choice.

If you run a blog, you need to try this out, it’s fabulous.  For more info check out their blog, or follow them on Twitter.

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Sorry, I couldn’t help the “talking” pun in the title.  Forgive me.  But it is quite appropriate for this announcement.

I’ve been a fan of Spinvox since I signed up in January 2007.  Since that point I have consistently said, blogged or texted that it is *the best* business tool that I have in my cache.  I still stand by that, having my voicemails turned into text and then emailed and SMSd to me is hands down the most productive thing I have. Don’t take my word for it, Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki are both fans as well!

Now Spinvox and the one-stop-status-update service Ping.fm have announced a partnership that rocks.  You can sign up for an account here, and then get to updating.  Here is how it work: you call the phone number assigned to you after your initial sign up, speak your update then hang up.  Through the magic of the internets, all of the social networks that you have assigned to ping.fm will be updated (Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, LiveJournal, Jaiku, etc).  That’s it.  One phone call, everything is up to speed.

I’ve done this a few times, and it works great.  I would like to get the link to the original voice message off of my status updates though, it would save some space.  We’ll see.

Did I mention that you don’t even need a SpinVox account to do this?  It’s true.  Just sign up for the service via Ping.fm and you are set.  Of course, being the thinking person I know you are,you should also sign up for SpinVox because it truly will make your life a lot easier.

Go give this a try, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

In just an hour or so I’m going to hope in my batmobile and head north to the land of geeks.  That’s right, I’m going to San Francisco.

I’m going to be attending The Start Conference tomorrow, and I’m pretty excited to be a part of it. The conference is billed this way:Quit your day job.

"Start is a one-day conference in San Francisco designed for smart, talented Web people to take hold of their ideas, follow their dreams, and start their own companies."

I’m not going there to learn how to start my own company (I’ve already done that a couple of times, the school of hard knocks has been good and bad to me), but I’m going there to hear and learn from some pretty savvy folks so I can help build other people’s companies and projects into things of spectacular success!  The conference speakers include people from Flickr, Twitter, Wordpress, 43 Folders, TypePad and other amazing companies.  It almost sounds like too much info for one day…but I’ll do my best to take it all in.

A couple of notes about my travels over the next week.  First, I am not taking a laptop.  I plan on doing all communications, including blogging, from my iPhone.  Yes, I’m throwing the gauntlet down.  We’ll see if I love this thing after a week, or if I want to stab myself in the eye with a shrimp fork.  Second, and somewhat related to the first, this will be my first all-Moleskine conference.  I’m looking forward to putting pen to paper again, it’s been a while.  Third, I will be Tweeting with the hashtag #start08 unless the conference folks declare an "official" hashtag, which would be cool.  Sidenote: if you are putting together a conference or large get together of some type this year, you should declare and official hashtag so the tweeps can embrace it and have some uniformity.  You’re welcome for the idea.

That’s all folks…see you in San Francisco!  Oh, if you are going to be there, DM me on Twitter, username is @mattsingley

I have a new vlog up on the front page of MattSingley.com , go check it out.  You can leave comments here, because the vlog section of my website seems to have blown up a bit.  It’s probably the iPhone’s fault.

UPDATE: I have restored the video section, head over to the vlog to check things out.  I added some functionality also.  Per a few requests I have created embed code at the bottom of each post so you can put the videos up on your site or blog if you wish.