Since some of my blogging and emailing and such comes from my phone, it’s only fair that I share with you my fav Android apps that keep me in the loop and connected with everyone and everything:

DailyBooth: the DailyBooth app allows me to upload a new or existing photo to my DailyBooth account

WordPress: WordPress has its very own Android app, so updating my blog and moderating comments is a browser-less breeze.

Mileage: the Milage app allows me to keep track of how much money I spend on fuel, and when, and the average MPG that I get with each fill-up, as well as the average of all of the fil-ups. You can track multiple vehicles, which is quite nice. I have been using this particular app since January 2009, so over the past year and a half my husband and I have been able to see – and cry at – just how much fuel we’ve purchased and how far it has taken us.

Facebook: the Facebook app does, as one might guess, what the mobile Facebook page does, except that it’s geared towards Android phones, and provides condensed, easy-to-access options and info

MySpace: ditto what the Facebook app does, only it’s for MySpace

Twidroid: a great Twitter app (note: newer versions of Android contain their Twitter app called Peep).

AnyPost: easily send updates (with or without photos – your choice) to Ping.fm, which in turn shares it with any connected social networks

Foursquare: a fun app that allows me to easily send updates and check-ins to my Foursquare account

WeReward: IZEA’s WeReward app is now available for Android, which means I can earn points (that can accumulate to be enough for me to cash-out for $10 via PayPal) for checking in at certain places and doing certain things. ?

Thursday 13: Thirteen must-have WordPress plugins

1. @Reply – allows you to do Twitter-style replies to people who leave comments on your entries
2. Akismet – awesome spam protection
3. BM-TrackPing – separates pings and trackbacks from regular comments (very useful when organizing giveaways and selecting winners!)
4. CommentLuv – share the commenting love!
5. Comment Timeout – automatically close comments after X amount of weeks/months. This is especially great if you have a giveaway for baby shower games, and don’t want people entering after the contest has ended.
6. CR Post to Ping.fm – send notifications of new blog entries to Ping.fm
7. Custom Smilies – should be self-explanatory
8. Flickr Manager – makes adding Flickr photos to blog entries a no-brainer
9. Math Comment Spam Protection – more spam prevention
10. Search and Replace – run “find X and replace it with Z” queries from the admin panel
11. Spam Karma 2 – awesome spam prevention
12. TTFTitles – use fonts to generate custom title images
13. WP-PageNavi – add numbered pages navigation to your posts

A few months ago IZEA launched WeReward, a mobile phone application that allows users to “check in” to report where they’re at and what they’re up to, in exchange for points. Special tasks (such as taking a picture of yourself at a Panera Bread or in a grocery store with a particular product) can also be completed for points. So many points equals $10 cash-outs, which can be received via PayPal.

When I first heard about WeReward, I thought it was really neat, but didn’t join, since at that point the app was only available for the iPhone. But as of today it’s available for Android! Whoo! So guess who just signed up? I’m sitting in a Panera Bread right now, and as soon as I leave I’m going to take a picture of the entrance and submit it as a task, for which I’ll earn 5 points. Whee.

I thought it would be interesting to share my blogging history. Feel free to share yours, either in the comments or on your own blog (a link back here to help me spread this cute-though-not-original meme type post would be appreciated!)

1998: my mom purchased a Gateway computer (for $2000, no less) and dial-up internet service. Within a matter of days of being online I discovered Bolt.com, and started logging journal posts there.

1999: I started participating on the boards (the Sex & Love boards namely) on Kiwibox, and then started posting journal entries there.

1999/2000: I set up my own sites/manual journals on Geocities.

2001: After using Envy.nu and Virtue.nu for a little while, I got hosted at orange-jello.com (I don’t remember what my subdomain was).

2001: I registered my very first domain name, orgasmic-bitch.org (since I was just sixteen at the time, my mom was a little irritated about the choice of name…), and began blogging with Greymatter.

2002: I registered kiss-my-kitty.com, and continued with Greymatter, though I eventually switched over to b2.

2005: Several domain names later (seriously, I hopped around with so many. A few I remember: voluptuous-girl.org, mwahness.net, kittylicious.com, sassylicious.com, lusciousness.org), I started using kitty.nu fulltime and switched to WordPress.

2006: I registered xoxo.nu.

2007: I registered and made the permanent switch to jenn.nu. I also set up several blogs, including this one and In My Bag, which is a product review blog (I review everything from fitness equipment to what I had for breakfast to what shampoo I just bought).

Today I manage multiple blogs, but jenn.nu remains my one true personal blog.

A lot of bloggers use social networks as a way to keep in touch with family and friends. Additionally, these and other bloggers use social networks to promote new blog posts. I’m one of those bloggers, and if you’re reading this, perhaps you are too. You can manually update your social network status to reflect a new blog entry, or you can use plugins that update just a particular social network. Or, you can get yourself a copy of the fabulous CR Post to Ping.fm and allow it — and Ping.fm — to update all of your connected social networks for you.

CR Post to Ping.fm sends a new blog entry notification (the exact notification is 100% customizable) to Ping.fm, who in turn distributes it to any social networks you have connected to your Ping.fm account. The plugin allows you to specify the categories in which new posts will trigger notifications. You can choose all, or specify the categories you want to include notifications for, or categories that you would like to exclude notifications for. This is handy if you participate in paid blogging, don’t want to start a war as a result of an opinionated post on the electronic cigarette, or simply don’t want to update your social networks every single time you hit the Publish button.

CR Post to Ping.fm is incredibly easy to install, and simply requires you to input your Ping.fm application key in order to get started.

I currently have a T-Mobile myTouch 3G. It’s my second Android-powered phone (my first was the lovely but bulky T-Mobile G1). And now there’s the T-Mobile myTouch 3G Slide. Oh yes. It has a slide-out keyboard, just like the G1. That’s the one thing about my G1 that I SERIOUSLY miss. For the record, I only “upgraded” to a myTouch because my G1′s call button broke (so I couldn’t answer incoming calls), and T-Mobile’s stupid promos made it over $100 cheaper for me to get the myTouch instead of another G1. Even online coupons couldn’t bring down the price of the G1, so I gave up a keyboard in exchange for saving a few bucks (well, more than a few…).

QWERTY keyboard, how I miss thee. Don’t get me wrong, the touch screen on the myTouch is quite intuitive and responsive, and Swype makes everything so much easier, but there’s nothing like a physical keyboard!

I joke about having carpal tunnel syndrome, but I’m 99 certain that I’m at the very least developing it. How can someone work with computers 8-12 hours per day, every day, year round, for years on end, and eventually not develop it? Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if our generation (20-somethings) manages to set some kind of world record as far as documented cases of carpal tunnel syndrome. Between the typing/texting/touching we do with computers, phones, MP3 players, and other devices, we’re constantly abusing and overworking our poor wrists!
Speaking of which, my mom has/had it, and she had both of her wrists operated on for it back in 2004 and 2005. I took her to both surgeries and stayed with her for a few days afterward each time. She said the recovery wasn’t too bad, though she was definitely sore and tender for a few weeks. But hey, seeing as how I’ve been through childbirth, a c-section, and gastric bypass surgery, I can’t imagine not being able to handle some minor cuts to my wrist and hand!

Tonight I spent quite a bit of time upgrading WordPress and an assortment of plugins on about 45 WordPress-powered blogs. Yes, that is a lot of blogs. The subjects on the blogs vary from office furniture supplies to wedding favors to online shopping to baby shower invitations to cooking to general topics. There’s definitely a lot going on with these blogs. The upgrading isn’t too bad, though at the same time it’s a royal pain. It’s a lot of clicking and navigating, really, but it can be both tedious and tiresome! I swear I’m getting a case of carpal tunnel right about now. My right wrist is not too happy with me.

I wish there was some type of WP feature (or a plugin, haha) that would enable plugins to upgrade themselves. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?

By default WordPress allows you to display an extremely customizable list of blogroll links in your blog’s sidebar. But what if you want to display links on a separate page? Manually coding in links is redundant and inefficient, but WordPress disables PHP coding on posts and pages. Fortunately, there are two workarounds:

First, there’s a plugin called WP Render Blogroll Links which will quickly and easily allow you to make a customizable links on a page or post (yes, post) of your choice.

Or, you can do things the hard-coded route and create a page and an accompanying template file to display your links with. For this method, you’ll need to create a new document and title it links.php. Here’s how mine is set up (note: you can copy and modify index.php or even page.php to get a “base” for your links page):

‹?php
/*
Template Name: Links
Author: Jenn
Author Email: x@jenn.nu
Author URL: http://www.jenn.nu
*/
?›

‹?php get_header(); ?›

‹h2›‹?php the_title(); ?›‹/h2›‹br /›
‹p›
‹strong›Links‹/strong›‹br /›
‹?php wp_list_bookmarks(‘title_li=&categorize=0&category=0&before=&after=‹br /›&show_images=0&between= of &show_description=0&orderby=name’); ?›
‹/p›

‹?php get_footer(); ?›

The important part is Template Name: Links. This makes your new template file easily recognizable and listed within the Admin Dashboard.

Save the file as links.php, then upload to your current theme’s folder.

Now, login to your dashboard, create a new page, title it “Links”, and select the links.php template file you just made as the template for the page.

Congrats — your links page should work like a charm!

P.S. Check out the wp_list_bookmarks page on the WordPress Codex to determine what parameters to use to display links as you see fit.

I came across the coolest WordPress plugin today: Render Blogroll Links. It allows you to create a post or page of bookmarks from your WordPress blogroll in one easy step. Typically creating a page for blogroll links entails creating a template page that has the necessary PHP functions on it, then creating a page and pointing it to that links.php template. Not difficult, but definitely time consuming. If you have multiple blogs to set up with pages for blogroll links, or you don’t want to be hassled with managing more template files, then this plugin is for you!

How does it work? Simply install, and plop on whatever page you’d like to display blogroll links are. Check out the included documentation (also listed on the Render Blogroll Links page made in your admin dashboard upon plugin activation) for how to tweak what types of links are displayed and how they’re displayed. One great tweak is the ability to include or exclude specific categories. This means having the capability of displaying all of your links, or maybe keeping links like baby shower favors and baby shower themes separate.