.::REALITYRECALL::.

Regina city council is being asked to give its seal of approval to what could soon be Saskatchewan’s tallest building.

More than 70 per cent of bottled water samples from Canada contain bacterial rates that exceed recommended limits in the U.S., suggests a study presented at the general meeting of the American Society of Microbiology.

The federal government is re-introducing legislation to stop unwanted spam on computers and cell phones and guard against identity theft.

Want to quickly give your blog a fresh coat of paint and make it stand out from the pack?  Here’s how you can customize your WordPress blog and make it uniquely yours.

WordPress offers many features that help you make your blog the best it can be.  Although it doesn’t offer as many customization features as full WordPress running on your own server, it still makes it easy to make your free blog as professional or cute as you like.  Here we’ll look at how you can customize features in your blog and build an audience.

Personalize Your Blog

WordPress make it easy to personalize your blog.  Most of the personalization options are available under the Appearance menu on the left.  Here we’ll look at how you can use most of these.

Add New Theme

WordPress is popular for the wide range of themes available for it.  While you cannot upload your own theme to your blog, you can choose from over 90 free themes currently available with more added all the time.  To change your theme, select the Themes page under Appearance.

The Themes page will show random themes, but you can choose to view them in alphabetical order, by popularity, or how recently they were added.  Or, you can search for a theme by name or features.

One neat way to find a theme that suites your needs is the Feature Filter.  Click the link on the right of the search button, and then select the options you want to make sure your theme has.  Click Apply Filters and WordPress will streamline your choices to themes that contain these features.

Once you find a theme you like, click Preview under its name to see how your blog will look.

This will open a popup that shows your blog with the new theme.  Click the Activate link in the top right corner of the popup if you want to keep this theme; otherwise, click the x in the top left corner to close the preview and continue your search for one you want.

 

Edit Current Theme

Many of the themes on WordPress have customization options so you can make your blog stand out from others using the same theme.  The default theme Twenty Ten lets you customize both the header and background image, and many themes have similar options.

To choose a new header image, select the Header page under Appearance.  Select one of the pre-installed images and click Save Changes, or upload your own image.

If you upload an image larger than the size for the header, WordPress will let you crop it directly in the web interface.  Click Crop Header when you’ve selected the portion you want for the header of your blog.

You can also customize your blog’s background from the Background page under Appearance.  You can upload an image for the background, or can enter a hex value of a color for a solid background.  If you’d rather visually choose a color, click Select a Color to open a color wheel that makes it easy to choose a nice color.  Click Save Changes when you’re done.

Note: that all themes may not contain these customization options, but many are flexible.  You cannot edit the actual CSS of your theme on free WordPress blogs, but you you can purchase the Custom CSS Upgrade for $14.97/year to add this ability.

Add Widgets With Extra Content

Widgets are small addons for your blog, similar to Desktop Gadgets in Windows 7 or Dashboard widgets in Mac OS X.  You can add widgets to your blog to show recent Tweets, favorite Flickr pictures, popular articles, and more.  To add widgets to your blog, open the Widgets page under Appearance.

You’ll see a variety of widgets available in the main white box.  Select one you want to add, and drag it to the widget area of your choice.  Different themes may offer different areas to place Widgets, such as the sidebar or footer.

Most of the widgets offer configuration options.  Click the down arrow beside its name to edit it.  Set them up as you wish, and click Save on the bottom of the widget.

Now we’ve got some nice dynamic content on our blog that’s automatically updated from the net.

Choose Blog Extras

By default, WordPress shows previews of websites when visitors hover over links on your blog, uses a special mobile theme when people visit from a mobile device, and shows related links to other blogs on the WordPress network at the end of your posts.  If you don’t like these features, you can disable them on the Extras page under Appearance.

Build Your Audience

Now that your blog is looking nice, we can make sure others will discover it.  WordPress makes it easy for you to make your site discoverable on search engines or social network, and even gives you the option to keep your site private if you’d prefer. 

Open the Privacy page under Tools to change your site’s visibility.  By default, it will be indexed by search engines and be viewable to everyone.  You can also choose to leave your blog public but block search engines, or you can make it fully private.

If you choose to make your blog private, you can enter up to 35 usernames of people you want to be able to see it.  Each private visitor must have a WordPress.com account so they can login.  If you need more than 35 private members, you can upgrade to allow unlimited private members for $29.97/year.

Then, if you do want your site visible from search engines, one of the best ways to make sure your content is discovered by search engines is to register with their webmaster tools.  Once registered, you need to add your key to your site so the search engine will find and index it. 

On the bottom of the Tools page, WordPress lets you enter your key from Google, Bing, and Yahoo! to make sure your site is discovered.  If you haven’t signed up with these tools yet, you can signup via the links on this page as well.

Post Blog Updates to Social Networks

Many people discover the sites they visit from friends and others via social networks.  WordPress makes it easy to automatically share links to your content on popular social networks.  To activate this feature, open the My Blogs page under Dashboard.

Now, select the services you want to activate under the Publicize section.  This will automatically update Yahoo!, Twitter, and/or Facebook every time you publish a new post.

You’ll have to authorize your connection with the social network.  With Twitter and Yahoo!, you can authorize them with only two clicks, but integrating with Facebook will take several steps.

 

If you’d rather share links yourself on social networks, you can get shortened URLs to your posts.  When you write a new post or edit an existing one, click the Get Shortlink button located underneath the post’s title.

This will give you a small URL, usually 20 characters or less, that you can use to post on social networks such as Twitter.

 

This should help build your traffic, and if you want to see how many people are checking out your site, check out the stats on your Dashboard.  This shows a graph of how many people are visiting, and popular posts.  Click View All if you’d like more detailed stats including search engine terms that lead people to your blog.

Conclusion

Whether you’re looking to make a private blog for your group or publish a blog that’s read by millions around the world, WordPress is a great way to do it for free.  And with all of the personalization options, you can make your it memorable and exciting for your visitors.

If you don’t have a blog, you can always signup for a free one from WordPress.com.  Also make sure to check out our article on how to Start Your Own Blog with WordPress.

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What looked like numerous photographs and videos of a ship entering the cosmos was actually put together by not a team, but one person.

North Korea says it will sever all ties and communication with Seoul as retaliation for what it calls a “smear campaign” over the sinking of a South Korean warship.

NASA has declared the Phoenix lander officially dead after failed attempts to regain contact.

Oh, surface-conduction electron-emitter display (SED). We still remember the halcyon days of 2005 when we first laid eyes upon your black as a CRT / thin as a plasma or LCD self, and equally recognize the pain of each false start and delay that followed, each leading up to today’s announcement by Canon that it is abandoning SED HDTVs entirely. It had held out hope as late as last spring that the technology could have a future in professional displays, but Japan’s The Nikkei reports it simply couldn’t bring down costs enough. There’s still the possibility for a future in “image diagnostic equipment” but all those prototypes will never see the light of mass production. Check after the break for some of the highlights along the way, or just to imagine what might have been if not for lawsuits and technical issues.

Continue reading SED’s dead, baby: Canon abandons development of new HDTVs, we take a look back

SED’s dead, baby: Canon abandons development of new HDTVs, we take a look back originally appeared on Engadget HD on Tue, 25 May 2010 03:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Reuters  |  Nikkei (registration required)  | Email this | Comments

Farewell 24: Highs And Lows Of Days Gone By A television resource updated many times a day with the latest in TV news, gossip, and reviews. All with attempted humor.

Canada and the United States offer their full support to South Korea as the country’s president cuts trade to North Korea in retaliation for a torpedo attack that killed 46 sailors.

The Norway spiral comes to mind when TheWeatherSpace.com received photographs and even an amazing video of the event. An object swooped down from the sky and then returned in a brilliant display on Friday night across the Western Canada areas

Windows only: Media Center Studio allows you to create your own custom themes for Windows Media Center, allowing you to create a cooler, more customized WMC look more akin to what you’d expect from popular media center, XBMC. More »

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

Six months ago we began offering a free 4GB SDHC Eye-Fi card (a $95 value) to anyone who bought 200 GB of Google paid storage for $50, which is shared between Picasa Web Albums, Gmail, and Google Docs. An Eye-Fi card lets you wirelessly upload photos and videos from your camera directly to Picasa Web Albums, or straight to your computer – no cables needed.

As with all special offers, this too must come to an end: this Thursday, May 27th, is the last day to take advantage of this deal. Head to picasa.google.com/eyefi.html to check out all the details and get one for yourself.

Without question, one of the most anticipated games of this fall is Halo: Reach. Bungie’s final entry in the sci-fi shooter series has been in beta for a while now, and it’s been the largest beta in Bungie’s history.

Over 2.7 million people logged into the beta, a far greater number than the Halo 3 beta, which garnered 800,000 users. Those millions racked up more than 16 million hours and more than 1.1 billion virtual kills in the beta, which lasted 18 days.

Now that the beta has ended, everyone’s waiting to get their Halo fix again. It looks like you’ll have to wait until September 14, 2010. That’s the day Reach will be released worldwide (except in Japan, where it will land on the 15th).

Until then, you can regale your buddies with tales of that wicked awesome headshot you got that time, right?

You can find more info, including Bungie’s weekly updates, over at their Halo: Reach site.

[Via Associated Press]

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