While established photo sharing sites already exist, Yogile is different because it lets multiple people contribute with ease. Once you create an album, you get a customizable URL and e-mail address to share with anyone who wants to add photos, either as e-mail attachments or uploads through the site. There’s no need for these users to register, keeping the process simple and hassle-free.

Take a wedding, for example. Dozens of attendees take their own photos, all from different cameras and angles. While you might try asking everyone for their shots afterward, Yogile offers a smart alternative.

There are many photo sites out there for where you can upload photos and share the URL with your friends and family but Yogile takes this idea a step further and enables anyone to be able to contribute their pictures to a public or private photo album.

It Works!
You can upload pictures in three ways, via the web, via email or via MMS. The last two options are done via a unique email address which uses the name of your photo album URL. When you upload a photo via email the Subject line is the title of your image while I can only guess that any text in the body of your email would be the image description. Submitting an email via MMS also works wonderfully but any text included in the MMS will not get used at the image title nor for an image description but those can be added/edited via the web. You have the option, as the album creator, to receive notifications of new photos added to your albums and the nice part is that the email comes with image previews which is much better than a new image message with a link to your album.

Personalize It!
After I uploaded images via the web, email and MMS I thought back to the example that Yogile spoke about, a wedding, and how this site could be useful.

Imagine being able to give all your wedding guests an email address and URL and all of your photos would be in one location. No need to have photos spread across multiple sharing sites or going around tagging people so that they would know where to see their pics you have access to one central location for all your pics!! There’s only one issue that I could see…the automatic URL when you first register is just some random characters (mine was yt8colz) and putting this string of characters in print would be rather ugly and telling all your guests these characters would result in no one remembering the email/URL. I thought it would be great if you were able to customize the email/URL and when I went to create a private photo album I learned that you could actually name your own photo album! By being able to name your own album you also end up creating a custom submission email and a custom Yogile URL, perfect!

It Could Break!
When I created my account on Yogile it automatically created an album along with an email that I could use to submit photos to, this album was yt8colz with an email address of yt8colz@yogile.com. When I discovered you could create custom album names I went back and edited the first album that was created with a custom name of GabeDiaz. So my public album could now be found at yogile.com/gabediaz and you can email pics to gabediaz@yogile.com but what happens to yogile.com/yt8colz and yt8colz@yogile.com? Well visiting my original URL yogile.com/yt8colz results in a page not found and sending emails to the original email of yt8colz@yogile.com disappeared into the internet without any bounce-back email…not good.

This issue of renaming your albums could cause issues if an excited user creates an account and starts to send out the email address to all of his/her friends for submissions and then later edits the name of the folder. Can a person’s URL be assigned to someone else or can a person switch back? I’m actually a little surprised that Yogile doesn’t forward or associate your old URL with your custom one.

Overall
Yogile is a site that simplifies group photo sharing and although there could be issues, specifically with the name changing of your own albums, the site works like a charm. Yes there are other sites out there which offer group photo sharing; with one that specifically that comes to mind, Posterous, but Yogile allows you to create an email to share with your group to upload to versus having to add others via their email address’. Think back to the wedding example, it’s much easier to give your wedding guests a single email to submit to versus trying to collect everyone’s email address and then adding them to your photo sharing site. Let’s be honest not everyone wants to register to a new service in order to submit pictures, so the email feature from Yogile is great and I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar gets rolled out to your favorite photo sites or if the Yogile team gets acquired and integrated into a larger photo site.

Participate
As you saw above my submission email is
gabediaz@yogile.com and my public album is yogile.com/gabediaz feel free to submit any pictures!

Disclosure
For anyone who comes across this post I just want to let you know that I was made aware of Yogile and it’s service by one of their team members. The above is my honest opinion upon first using the site. Unless otherwise noted by a Disclosure statement all of my other “First Impressions” are based on products that I personally use or come across.

Have something you want me to look at to share with my readers? My contact information is above and to the right, cheers!

In order to deposit a check via the Chase mobile iPhone app is an internet connection and a well lit area, stipulations for depositing via Chase Mobile is that you are only allowed to deposit a maximum of $1000 a day and $3000 a week. The app requires you to choose an account to deposit to, a deposit amount and then to take a picture of your check via the app and once it’s done will display the checks relevant information on your phone. Truthfully it took me 3 times to get this to work as the app wasn’t able to read the check properly.

1st Attempt
My first attempt resulted in the app reading the correct amount to deposit(it verifies the deposit amount) but had issues reading the account number on the check, although it did read the routing number fine. I was asked to type in the routing number in the missing field but I figured I’d try again to see if it was an issue with how I took the photo.

2nd Attempt
My second started out a little differently. The Chase app asks you to take the photo of your check from an overhead position. On my first attempt I did as such but because I was overhead and taking the picture in my office, the lights from the ceiling cast a little bit of a shadow from my head, throw in a slight glare from the fluorescent lights and I now understood why the app couldn’t read all of the information. So for my second shot I moved from underneath the ceiling lights and positioned the phone to an overhead position but made sure to stand aside so that my head didn’t cast any shadow at all. Once the front and back shots were taken the app did it’s magic and tried to read the information on the check. Luckily this time it read the account number and the routing number but it told me it couldn’t verify the deposit amount…the app read the check as having a $0.00 value!! This was not good so I shut down the app and tried again.

3rd Attempt
I knew what I had to do for the 3rd time around. I needed no glare from the lights, no shadow from my head and just to make sure the app read everything correctly I made sure the check was evenly flat, after being in a folded envelope, by doing the drag the check along the corner of your desk trick. I guess there’s a reason they say “third times the charm” because this time the Chase iPhone app worked as expected by verifying and reading the deposit amount, account number and routing number all by the picture taken by my iPhone. Once you have all your information displayed properly on your phone you are able to submit the deposit to your account. You then get taken to a verification screen which acts as your confirmation and since you already in the app you can quickly go to your account and see the status of your deposit.

Total time taken for depositing a check via the app was less than 10 mins although if I hadn’t run into issues would probably have taken 3-5 mins. The total time for the check to clear and get credited to my account was less than 24 hours, not sure if this is the norm but I’m guessing deposit time will vary and it will not be instant availability as it has to be reviewed. After using the Chase Mobile app successfully I can now say that if I ever have a check that falls under the deposit requirements of the app I will definitely think twice about getting into the car and driving to the nearest bank. The hard part for me is over; I deposited a check for $900 via my phone, it was a large amount to use as a test amount and believe me I was scared of something going wrong but in the end it worked out and it saved me around 20 mins by not having to leave the office. So if you’re apprehensive about depositing a check via your phone, don’t be…it actually works.

There are 2 main versions of the Like button

The basic Like button is available via a simple iframe you can drop into your page easily. A fuller-featured Like button is available via the XFBML tag and requires you use the JavaScript SDK. The XFBML version allows users to add a comment to their like as it is posted back to Facebook.

The Facebook Like Button comes with a handy generator with several options for outputting the proper code to add the Like Button to any web page. This is fine and dandy for some sites/pages and only needs a little tweeking to add the button to your WordPress posts.

The Basic WordPress Code
The only thing needed to add the Facebook Like button to your WordPress posts is to include the proper code for your permalinks. Basically you add the WordPress the_permalink() code to the href= to get the following:

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/widgets/like.php?href=<?php the_permalink() ?>"
scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; width:450px; height:80px"></iframe>

The above adds a 450px wide by 80px high box on your site that is ready to display thumbnails of every friend that has also liked the site/page. If you noticed in the Facebook Like Button generator there are several options for turning off thumbnails, changing font and even using a button count counter. You can append any of these settings after the URL in order to change the look of your button.

Editing the Facebook Like Button
Let’s add the following to change the options to the Facebook button, here we are changing to the count view, hiding thumbnails as well as changing the width and height. We will add the following the code above, after the permalink and before closing out the double quotes.

Add this to the above basic code:

%2F&layout=button_count&show-faces=false&width=100&action=like&colorscheme=light

End up with a new style button:

<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/widgets/like.php?href=<?php the_permalink() ?>%2F&amp;layout=button_count&amp;show-faces=false&amp;width=100&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light"
scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; width:100px; height:20px"></iframe>

This is the simple version, for a detailed button that integrates deep with Facebooks new social graph you will need to use the Javascript SDK version of the Like Button.

You can see an example of the iframe Facebook Like button below, if you are signed into Facebook and are reading this feel free to test it out!

There’s no official Share on Buzz button nor do the current buttons share directly on Buzz but the buttons enable you to post an item to your Google Reader, in which you can add it your shared items. Google Buzz has the option to import your shared items from Google Reader so the workflow goes as follows:
Google Reader > Shared Items > Google Buzz
Simple and effective yet alot of the code that I’ve seen around the web forces you to either leave the page you are on or opens the Add to Reader in a new page, this doesn’t have to be the case.

Share on Google Buzz Popup Code

<a href='javascript:var%20b=document.body;var%20GR________bookmarklet_domain=&quot;http://www.google.com&quot;;if(b&amp;&amp;!document.xmlVersion){void(z=document.createElement(&quot;script&quot;));void(z.src=&quot;http://www.google.com/reader/ui/link-bookmarklet.js&quot;);void(b.appendChild(z));}else{}'>
<img src="IMAGE.JPG" border="0" alt="Share on Google Buzz"/></a>

All you need to do is insert the above code in your Single.php file and replace IMAGE.JPG with the Buzz Logo of choice. There’s a nice Buzz logo psd file on DeviantArt by =Zadong and there are also several Buzz Share buttons over at ChethStudios. I decided to go the compact button route and ended up creating my own button which you can save and use if you please.

If you use the code above, the compact button or if you used a different technique to add a Buzz Share button to your site leave a comment and let me know, would love to see how people are implementing a Google Buzz share button. Also, if you are on Google Buzz leave a comment with a link to your profile so others can follow you and if you wish to follow me on Google Buzz just visit my Google Profile.

“Gyrowheel is a revolutionary front wheel for children’s bikes that eliminates the need for training wheels. Powered-on it provides high stability at low speed and makes learning to ride safer, easier, faster and a whole lot more fun!”

I ordered my Gyrowheel as soon as I could and a few days ago I received my fancy new high tech front wheel. I didn’t know what to expect when I opened the brown box but I was definitely excited to finally see it in person. When I opened the box I was not only happy to see such cool product in my hands but the packaging itself was awesome. The site, http://thegyrobike.com, has a streamlined look with just enough colors to express the fun and excitement of this product. The packaging continued this and was boxed with matching colors to the site, of course logo/tagline and the happy face stick figure leaning to the side riding his bike.

I won’t be able to put the wheel on my son’s bike for another week but expect some pics from the installation. Till then here are some of my pics and a little info vid from the Gyrowheel team.

The Problem
The Displaying Author Pic and Bio in Your Wordpress Post the Non-Gravatar Way technique made the author block appear on every single post in your WordPress install, let’s take the idea one step further and enable you to choose which posts to display a author block using the WordPress Custom Fields.

The Solution
We will be making edits to your single.php file, please make a backup of your originally single.php file just in case something goes wrong and you need to revert.

We will be using the author block example from Displaying Author Pic and Bio in Your Wordpress Post the Non-Gravatar Way which is:

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<div class="authbio">
<img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/<?php the_author_firstname(); ?>.jpg" alt="" class="alignleft"/>
<?php the_author_description(); ?>
</div>

We will also be using WordPress Custom Fields to trigger wether or not a WordPress Post will show an author block or not. For this example I added the author bio after the article, right before the share options and comments in single.php

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<?php
   if($authbio = get_post_meta($post->ID, "authbio", "true")) {
?>
<div class="authbio">
<img src="<?php bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/images/<?php the_author_firstname(); ?>.jpg" alt="" class="alignleft"/>
<?php the_author_description(); ?>
</div>   
<?php } else {?>
* 
<?php }?>

What the above means:
WordPress checks for a Custom Field Key called “authbio” to see if there is any value. If there is a value, display the authbio div which includes our author pic and a short bio. If there is no “authbio” Custom Field Key then display *.

Essentially you can write a post, if you wish to display the author box then add the field “authbio” and give it a value of yes if you do not wish to display any author box then don’t add any field to that post.

For example purposes, this post had a custom field of “authbio” with a value of yes, you can see the author bio and pic at the bottom of the post. Please take a look at every other post on this site…you will notice that after every post you will see a * as this is the only post on this site with an author box.

Things to remember:
-If you are going to use this technique in your WordPress site remove the * or else you will have a * after every post with no author pic and bio, just leave it blank.
-You do not need to call your Custom Field Key “authbio” you can label it anything you want, just use the same naming convention in your php in the single.php.
-This posts references Displaying Author Pic and Bio in Your Wordpress Post the Non-Gravatar Way several times, please read it if you have any questions about how to create an author bio and pic box.

Hope this helps, enjoy!

DISCLAIMER: Before making any edits to original files make sure to have backups in case something goes terribly wrong…not that it should but you can never be too safe!

WordPress Category Templates
WordPress Category templates are very easy to use, view the WordPress Codex – Category Templates and you will see that hierarchy for a category templates is:

• 1. category-6.php
• 2. category.php
• 3. archive.php
• 4. index.php

This basically just means that WordPress will first look for a template labeled category-6, if there is none, it will then look for category.php and so forth all the way down to index.php.

To create a custom category template, just copy your category.php and resave it as category+”your category ID number.” If you do not have a category.php, you can copy your archive.php or index.php but just remember that your custom template will look like the template you copied until you make your edits. So if you have a category.php, archive.php and index.php you will want to copy your category.php and work from there.

You can find your category ID number by logging into your WordPress backend…go to your categories section and hover over or copy any category names and you will see your category ID. Upload category-”ID#”.php to your theme directory and the specified category can now be freely styled to look differently than your other categories.

WordPress Page Templates
WordPress Page Templates may be easier than Category Templates. Wordpress looks for templates in the following order:

• 1. The Page’s selected “Page Template”
• 2. page.php
• 3. index.php

Let’s pretend we want to create a specific template for an “About Us” page. Most themes will have a page.php so once again, you can copy your page.php and resave it, let’s call it about.php.

Once resaved, our page template must start with the following 5 lines of code so add the following to the very top:

<?php
/*
Template Name: About
*/
?>

The above sets a name for your page template, so you can enter just about anything in the Template Name: “Your Choice” For the ease of consistency I would label the template name something similar to what I am saving the file, so this about.php will have a Template name of About. Now that you have your Page Template named along with some copied format from your original page.php you can edit this about.php to your hearts desire. Any edits made to about.php will only affect those pages using this template. Upload your new about.php to your theme directory and we are all set.

To use a Custom Page template just create or edit any page. You should see a dropdown box labeled Page Template, if all is in order you should see your template name as an option in the dropdown.

WordPress Post Templates
WordPress Post Templates are great because they allow you to make posts in different categories different from each other.

For example let’s say you had 2 categories named Apples and Oranges. You styled each category differently using Custom Category Templates but also wanted posts that appeared in Oranges to have a different look than posts appearing in Apples.

Custom Category Templates do not pass any styling to the posts within, posts take their styling from either single.php or index.php as per the WordPress Template Hierarchy.

Most themes will have a single.php, so yes once again duplicate your single.php…twice. We only need two Post Templates in this example since we want one Post Template for Oranges and just use our original Post Template for posts appearing in the Category Apples and the rest of our posts in our blog.

Let’s name one of our copies of single.php to singleOriginal.php, this is a direct duplicate of our original file unedited.

For our second copy of single.php that will be used as a Custom Post Template for the posts in Oranges, let’s save this file as singleOranges.php. This file will be the edited single.php that will have whatever custom edits you want for all Posts in the category Oranges. Make your edits to this file and you will also need to retrieve the category ID for the category Oranges, let’s pretend it has an ID of 10.

Recap
Before we move ahead, let’s make sure we have everything in order, we should have 3 files and 1 Category ID number.

The 3 files consist of a singleOrignial.php which is a direct duplicate of our original single.php. We should also have a singleOranges.php which has our edits for our custom look for all posts in the category Oranges(ID #10). And finally we should still have our original single.php unedited in it’s original format.

Now let’s edit single.php since WordPress first goes to single.php for all Post Templates. Edit your single.php with the following:

    <?php
    $post = $wp_query->post;
    if ( in_category('10') ) {include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/singleOranges.php');}
    else {include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/singleOriginal.php');
    }
    ?>

That’s it! Basically the above checks the posts to see if it’s category 10, if so use the template singleOranges.php, else use singleOriginal.php. What if you wanted a Custom Post Template for Oranges, Apples and Grapes but still wanted a single.php for everything else?

    <?php
    $post = $wp_query->post;
    if ( in_category('10') ) {include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/singleOranges.php');}
    elseif ( in_category('11') ) {include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/singleApples.php');}
    elseif ( in_category('12') ) {include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/singleGrapes.php');}
    else {include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/singleOriginal.php');
    }
    ?>

A very easy way to customize posts in any category. Go ahead and get creative with customizing then come back and leave a comment to show it off, would love to see what some people do!

I have close to 50 apps loaded onto my phone, but in reality there are only a handful that I use on a daily basis.

As the App Store is about to hit 1 billion downloads, here are “5 Must Have Free Apps” that I find to be great.

• TwitterFon – Yes Twitter is just about everywhere nowadays. From P. Diddy, to your local News Channel it seems that everyone has a Twitter account. The great thing about TwitterFon is that you have a menu bar on your screen which lets you sort through your Friends, Replies, Messages, Favorites and an option to Search. View profiles, see timelines and be able to retweet makes this my go to Twitter app.
• Google – Even if you don’t have a Google Account to make use of the Gmail, Calendar, Docs etc. features, just installing this app for the the Google Search feature is worth it. If you search using the google search bar using the iPhones built in Safari browser you will see the same results as you would on your computer If you use the Google App search you will get results tailored to your location. Not to mention search by voice is pretty cool.
• Fandango – Need to check what’s playing at your local theatre? Pop in your Zip Code and you are all set. Never tried to buy tickets through it but it is an option if your theatre supports it.
• Free Wi-Fi Locator – Using your current location this little app returns the nearest locations that offer Free Wi-Fi. This is not to be confused with other apps such as WiFinder which just searches for the nearest Wi-Fi locations.
• Pandora – Streaming music to your iPhone based on your choices. Listen to a song or two and Pandora will start to recommend music based on what you just heard. Create specific stations for different genres and enjoy free streamed music.

The above are only a handful of great apps so also check out: Skype, Mint.com, Facebook, AIM, Brightkite, Urbanspoon, Yelp and iTalk, you won’t be disappointed.

Have an app that you love? Please leave a comment and let me know, free or paid I love downloading and testing out new apps!

Those were the words that came out of my mouth this morning when I checked my email on my iPhone. For those registered to Adjix you may have received an email from the company announcing their new advertising format in which Twitter users will be able to embed an ad at the end of their Twitter Tweets in order to monetize off of their number of followers.

Adjix’s current ad program is based on link shrinking and including a text link on the top portion of the site as long as you are logged into your account on Adjix when shortening your link.

What’s actually useful about Adjix is that they offer several features such as the ability to track the number of clicks your unique shortened link receives. Not only are stats recorded for links with ads but there is an option to shrink a link without an ad, and yes you will still be able to track clicks for that URL.

Do people actually use the service for click tracking and not to serve ads?
Yes. More importantly one of the Twitter elite, @guykawasaki uses the Adjix service very frequently(to shrink and record stats) and if you visit his Twitter stream you will see that most, if not all of his links begin with http://adjix.com.

Adjix has a video demo of their new feature as well as details on their blog outlining Advertiser Info, Twitter User Info and how to install their bookmarklet in order to start embedding ads into your Tweets.

Luckily for me the only person I follow that uses Adjix is @guykawasaki, but the thought of monetizing on Tweets to a large list of followers may cause several to sign up and start using Adjix’s new ad embed. If so, we very well may see more Tweets as the mock put out by Adjix.

Creating Your New Database
Just sign into your account and navigate to Web Space & Access and then to MySQL Administration. Click on “New Database” and you will be prompted to name your new database along with the option of choosing between MySQL 4.0 and MySQL 5.0 for your new database. WordPress Requirements state that WordPress need PHP 4.3 or higher to function properly although a few plugins require that you use PHP 5 to function. Choose PHP 5 and your database will begin setup.

Since we created a new database and chose the option of MySQL your database is using PHP 5 right? Unfortunately that’s not the case.

Checking Your PHP Version by Creating a phpinfo.php File
1&1 will have your new database running PHP 4.4.9. Easiest way to check what version of PHP you are running is to create a phpinfo.php file and insert the following.

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Upload this file to your directory and open phpinfo.php in your web browser.

The information at the top of this window will display the version of PHP that you are running.

Forcing 1&1 to Use PHP 5
It only takes 2 lines added to your .htaccess to force 1&1 to use a version of PHP 5. Add the following to the first 2 lines in your .htaccess file.

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

Once you make the edits to your .htaccess upload it to your directory and once again open phpinfo.php in your web browser. You should now be able to see that your database is using PHP 5