Wordle

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends

Kontrastwerks.com

Lately I've been busy helping others setup websites. Just resently a local photographer approached me wanting to create an online presence. Working under the business name kontrastwerks, Dennis Reifsnider has been creating his high contrast black and white photographs for many years and has established quite a following in southeastern North Carolina. Checkout these examples of his work:

This shot of the Bodie Island Lighthouse (above) is one of my favorites. Below is a photograph of the dunes near my home after the tidal surge of a hurricane.




Ok, if you're still with me at this point, you have to be wondering what this, if anything has to do with blogging. Well, in the course of creating a website for Dennis, he expressed a desire to create and sell motivational posters that incorporate his photographs. To fulfill his wishes I enlisted the services of a print on demand company, and this is where you as bloggers come in.

POD's such as CafePress not only print posters, but all types of merchandise and apparel that you can sell or purchase online, which is a great way to promote your blog. For example, Duane at thejournalofaprizefighter.com was nice enough to send me a coffee mug with his blog's logo after I helped him with a little coding. I to have created items such as bumper stickers to spread the word about my websites, and I know many bloggers who sport t-shirts with there blog's header on them. So, check out CafePress, it's free to set up a basic store and be sure to check out more of Dennis's photos and posters at his CafePress shop.

Using Google Maps in your Posts

Google maps is a great resource, I use it to locate any unfamiliar place that I might be headed to, but did you know you can embed it into your Blogger posts. The map below is not just an image but a full functioning Google map that allows you the to zoom in and out or slide any any direction. Give it a try! Your map can be of any location you wish. For example, say you are blogging about a resent camping trip. You could show a map of the campground and surrounding area.

View Larger Map


It's easy to do. For starters, go to http://maps.google.com/ and type the general location you want a map of into the search box. In the case above I used Washington, D.C. You can then narrow your location by adding an address to your search or zoom in to a location. Once you have the final location showing on your map, click the "Link To This Page" text link at the top right of the map. A pop-up window will appear that gives you two options.

One: Paste link in email or IM
or:
Two: Paste HTML to embed in website

Copy the code in the box below the second option and paste this code into your Blogger post. Your done, it's that easy.