http://blog.surpasshosting.com en kf@dimenoc.com Copyright 2008 2008-04-22T23:40:01-05:00 http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/getting_greener/ http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/getting_greener/#When:23:40:01Z From jjjohn on Flickr. Earth Day has been celebrated since 1970 but the ideals it trumpets are now more heard than ever. We’re becoming aware of just how much waste we are blindly capable of on a daily basis. Empty bottles, an expired box of cereal and an empty bag of chips get tossed into the trash can - not a recycling bin. All of the lights are on in the house but no one’s home. One person drives a guzzling SUV, all to themselves, every day of the week. When do we step back and realize that we are doing things that are unnecessary and harmful to everyone else? And it’s not just us that we’re harming, but future generations plus the environment itself. I just wanted to talk about a few things here in honor of the day and hopefully we can make some changes in our lives. - No one can deny that drinking water is really good for you. Instead of buying bottle after bottle (even if you do use recycling bins) get one that you can easily wash and refill. From a New York Times article, “It takes 1.5 million barrels [of oil] a year just to make the plastic water bottles Americans use, according to the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, plus countless barrels to transport it from as far as Fiji and refrigerate it.” Sigg makes really nice water bottles that have an added bonus of showing your personality as well. Plus they’re not just for water. If you want an even more interesting bottle, Platypus definitely has that covered. - Think about the different foods that you eat each week. It’s probably a better idea to buy only organic foods which come from farms that have the environment and the humane treatment of animals in mind. Some would say that the prices of organic food are keeping them back but the margin between organic and non-organic is getting closer and closer, which is very good news. “The world organic market has been growing by 20% a year since the early 1990s, with future growth estimates ranging from 10-50% annually depending on the country,” from Wikipedia. - Packaging and storage should also be concerns when buying food. It could be cheaper to buy some of your food (like cereals) in bulk and place them in storage containers. If your town has any type of farmer’s or open-air market it would be a wonderful idea to do a lot of shopping there which also helps your local community. - Transportation is a definite concern in the big picture of going green. The fact is, a lot of us are a little lazy sometimes, myself included! It can seem daunting to jump on a bike when a car is more convenient. If you are able to frequent certain areas using a bike, or even walking, you’re not only helping reduce waste, labor costs, and more - you’re also helping yourself which is extremely important. Getting off your rump just makes you feel better, too. - Think of all of the electricity you could save if you started watching television and movies and playing games only on your computer. Just sell the TV (which is probably turned on most of the time) and all other electronics/entertainment you have. The Internet is where it’s at, you know? This tip shouldn’t take any further convincing. 2008-04-22T23:40:01-05:00 http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/privacy_solutions_offline_disguises/ http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/privacy_solutions_offline_disguises/#When:20:16:00Z Privacy on the Internet is a huge concern and there are so many traps! We’re looking out for your best interest so this is what our post is about today. For those of you who use Facebook, you may have experienced a few situations when you were tagged in friends’ photos but were not thrilled about how you looked (or what you were doing). MySpace recently added the “tag” feature also so now we all really have to be on our best behavior, now don’t we? We found something that can help you out during your next outing or party. Black Bars Glasses! 2008-04-09T20:16:00-05:00 http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/10_wordpress_themes_you_never_heard_of/ http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/10_wordpress_themes_you_never_heard_of/#When:19:21:00Z If you’re already a WordPress user, you probably know how hard it is to find good themes. Maybe you’ve even created themes of your own. Either way, throughout this process it’s easy to get lost in a jungle of either wacky looking themes or good themes that are just overused. We’ve searched the Internet over to show you the 10 following themes that you may have never heard of! Let us know in the comments if you liked this post so we can find more. We’ll probably keep looking anyway though. 1 - Gangway by Perfomancing.com | Download This 3-column theme can fit ads and other plugins easily. The text is easy to read and the navigation is not hard to follow. Its focus is really on content and this is good for sites with multiple authors. 2 - Minibits by CreativeBits | Download With its creatively placed publish date and comments boxes, Minibits has a fresh and unique look.  The colors are pleasing and remind us of Flickr. 3 - Pecton by Livetr.org | Download Pecton is a very nice theme with a grayscale feel that you may just want to keep. It would be good for a technology site or even a news blog. 4 - Purple by ThemeLab.com | Download This theme has a fresh and clean look with good spacing that is easy on the eyes. Because of that reason we think this theme is good for a product reviews site or any site where you really want to make sure your visitors read everything. 5 - Fauna by NoScope.com | Download Fauna has a fun look and includes both a light and dark theme. Be sure to read the Fauna page for more information. 6 - Particles by Devlounge.net | Download For those of you write more than most, Particles has a unique layout that summarizes many posts on the main page. Photo Themes Want to show off your photos the easy way? Use WordPress of course. These are two of the best photo blog themes which are highly customizable. 7 - Photo Blog by BlogOhBlog.com | Download This theme is very simple and the colors can be changed easily. 8 - Grain by Mac.defx.de | Download Needs this plugin to work This photo blog theme has a very elegant look and by using plugins you can show all of the photo information. Alternatives Need something completely different before you go crazy? Try these. 9- Canvas by FreshPursuits.com | Installation instructions are here. If you want to try something very different and more personalized, try Canvas which lets you build your theme yourself. It’s one of the most impressive packages out there to customize your theme. 10 - Starkers by ElliotJayStocks.com | Download Speaking of canvases, if you want to go all out, I’ve saved this next theme for last. Elliot Jay Stocks created a naked theme called Starkers. Naked as in he removed all unnecessary elements and anything non-semantic. He calls it a true clean slate to create your own proper theme. Read about it here. We’ll discuss more about creating your own themes in our next WordPress post. Perhaps we’ll have “WordPress Wednesday” or something like that. Thoughts? Note: If you have made any of themes here and would rather link the downloads to your own site, just let us know. One big problem as posts age is that linked files are suddenly not found so we’re trying to avoid that, while also saving your bandwidth. 2008-04-07T19:21:00-05:00 http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/to_do_lists_and_online_organization/ http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/to_do_lists_and_online_organization/#When:17:43:00Z At Surpass Hosting we like to make everything fast and simple. That’s just how getting things done with your website should be so your focus is on content and the big picture. In an effort to reach the ocean of easiness, we’re focusing on organization. That “spring cleaning” bug is still in the air for us! Organizing the rest of your tasks can help your online activities, so let’s get started with a few tips. (Before the big fish comes.) There are websites out there that can really help you to remember things that you need to do. They also can keep track of thoughts that magically pop into your mind throughout the day (and just as easily pop out to be forgotten). You may already jot ideas down on paper, in a text file or even real paper, but sometimes it seems that you may not catch everything. I think the answer is to stick to one method and make it a routine. Here are a few ways to prioritize - hopefully one of them works just right for you. Phone reminders with Jott.com: If you aren’t into typing and would rather talk instead, Jott may be for you. Just call the toll-free phone number and enter your PIN code. Record your thoughts and they’ll be emailed to you in text and in voice for review later. There’s also other options like email or text message reminders. Since Jott is currently in beta, it is free during this time. So you can try it out to see if you get hooked! Email reminders with IWantSandy.com: Have you ever dreamed of having your own personal assistant? Sandy is standing by. She has her own language to keep up with times, dates and more in order to send you email reminders or text messages just when you need them. When you sign up for Sandy, you receive her special email address to send your notes to. Then she really dives in and handles all of the rest! And did I mention how very polite she is? (You can even send messages to Sandy through Jott and also Twitter.) To-do list program, Tudumo: I’ll tell you up front that this handy program is not free, but you can try it for 60 days to see if it’s your style. It’s a very compact program to keep track of just about anything you want. It really has a simple look and feel and I think if you are used to writing down things on paper, this could be a very easy transition because it does not give you an overwhelming feeling of buttons and menus. Tudomo explains that best! If you get attached to this snappy-as-snappers list maker, it’s only $29.95 USD after the trial is over. More quick mentionables: Ta-da List: Make lists for yourself or share lists with others. It also is iPhone compatible. Remember the Milk: Another iPhone compatible, Twitter friendly, Gmail and Google Calendar crunchable lister. Ah, I ran out of fish jokes. 2008-04-04T17:43:00-05:00 http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/the_easiest_way_to_resize_images/ http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/the_easiest_way_to_resize_images/#When:03:29:00Z Squash was created by Seb Ruiz, a traveler and photographer. Just like Seb, many of us take photos in large resolutions so that we can later print our favorites. But if you want to upload them to the web for regular viewing, you need them to be much smaller. If you’re not using a service like Flickr to share your photos, which automatically does resizing, Squash can save you time instantly! Just click “Add Images” and dump an entire folder of your photos into Squash. Then with a click of the “Resize Images” button, all of your photos are resized into a specified folder. I don’t think there is anything easier or faster than this - but if you’ve got something better, let us know! Squash is currently available for Ubuntu and Windows only. 2008-04-04T03:29:00-05:00 http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/usb_flash_drive_security_differently/ http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/usb_flash_drive_security_differently/#When:01:53:01Z Some techy art for you today. From Dialog5. 2008-04-02T01:53:01-05:00 http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/the_fastest_way_to_video_editing/ http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/the_fastest_way_to_video_editing/#When:22:28:01Z Your digital camera may look a bit like mine: beat up and scratched from bouncing around in your bag. Or perhaps it’s impeccably shiny because you actually have a camera case. Either way, those “inside parts” still function quite well. So well in fact, you’ve decided that being a filmmaker is your new calling. So now here you are with a plump video collection on your memory card. If you have a Canon your videos are likely in .avi (Microsoft) format and if you have a Kodak you’ve probably got .mov (Apple) files. Different camera manufacturers choose either of these formats most often, though I am not sure of their personal reasons. But no matter the file formats your camera creates, you can work with them easily and it’s no sweat. After transferring the video files to your computer, what’s next? Here you are with a folder full of random clips and not sure where to begin. I had previous experience with Adobe Premiere so I downloaded the trial of Adobe Premiere Pro CS3. It really looked exactly the same. By selecting “File > Import” you can repeatedly import several video files to work with. Then you can movie them around (get it?) where you like, delete certain parts (razoring) and easily add special transitions between clips. It’s also very easy to add text titles to distinguish changes of scene. However, my problem with Premiere Pro comes at the end of the process when you are ready to export the finished file. It’s not easy or intuitive. I had a 17-minute video which took 2 hours to render into a new .avi file. And still, after all of that time, the file was over 1 GB in size - hardly web friendly.  I tried lowering the quality many times and changing different settings. It just wasn’t making much sense but I figured I would have to download different “codecs” for compression. But this brings the question: why aren’t the “good ones” already included to make this all easier? I decided to try saving my video as .mov instead of .avi. Maybe this would provide an easier way and better compression. Or maybe not. Open output… what? Well we can possibly blame Windows Vista for this. This is when I went directly to the source. For $29.99 (as compared to hundreds of dollars for Adobe products) you can purchase a QuickTime Pro license which adds editing features to your existing install of QuickTime Player. I grabbed the huge 1 GB completed movie and imported it into QuickTime, re-exported it as a .mov and the file was a healthy but much smaller 132 MB. This was more like it. There’s also so many other options when exporting your movie with QuickTime which I’ll get into in later. So start practicing until next time!  2008-03-31T22:28:01-05:00 http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/the_messy_desk_transformation/ http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/the_messy_desk_transformation/#When:10:39:00Z Since today is Leap Day, we knew we had to do something fun. It would be easy for all of us to have a “Messy Desk Contest” but the winner here will show us the best transformation. Just take a before picture of your messy desk and the area your computer is in. Then after it’s all cleaned up, post the before and after photos here. (Must be a registered user/logged in.) The most amazing transformation will win a dedicated server for one year (from April 1, 2008 until April 1, 2009). We apologize that everyone with clean desks are not allowed to participate! You can prepare for and post your entry of this defining moment from today until March 19th. Public voting here in Surmunity will take place on or before March 31st. Brooms and flashlights ready? Go! P.S. If you happen to be in the middle of purchasing a server during our current sale, you can hold off and participate in this contest if you think you can win! Or if you already have a server, and happen to win this contest, you’ll win ANOTHER server free for one year! But please remember, any bandwidth overages unfortunately will not be free. Only current Surpass customers allowed to participate. 2008-02-29T10:39:00-05:00 http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/surpass_forum_awards_2007/ http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/surpass_forum_awards_2007/#When:07:31:00Z 2008-01-25T07:31:00-05:00 http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/ffffound/ http://blog.surpasshosting.com/site/ffffound/#When:02:54:00Z Do you ever find yourself in Google images searching for random photos? I’ll admit I do it every few minutes. Ok maybe not that often, but it’s something that happens all of the time. If I want to find an image fast, it’s off to Google Images I go. Then there’s all of the other random images you come across on other web travels.  Say you want to keep track of images for later, what to do? You need image bookmarking. And better yet, how about an image bookmarking community? A really great one is FFFFOUND! FFFFOUND! is a web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user’s tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience! What will you found? 2008-01-22T02:54:00-05:00