3 Blog Idea Generators

photo © 2007 Jared Tarbell | more info (via: Wylio)

Need an idea for your next blog post? Here are a few sites to help with that.

1) Big Huge Thesaurus: Blog Post Ideas

A plain interface, and a simple solution. Shows a list of ideas, and then you can just click the "Get Some More" link to show another list of ideas.

2) Generator Land: Blog Post Idea Generator

Bracketed by advertising, shows ideas one at a time. Click "Create" to generate the first idea, and keep clicking to generate more.

3) 101 Great Posting Ideas That Will Make Your Blog Sizzle

Not an automatic generator, but a list of generic suggestions that can help you pick a direction and generate blog ideas from the ultimate blog idea generator... your brain.

See What People Are Saying - A Better Way to Use Google Alerts

photo © 2009 Thomas Carter | more info (via: Wylio)
You may already know that Google Alerts will notify you when content appears on the web containing search terms you've specified. It's a great way to keep tabs on what others are saying about you, your site, or your business online.

What you may not realize is the trick to getting the most useful alerts is to have a grasp of the simple, powerful, and often unused Google search operators.

For example:

• Quotes around a "search phrase" will require all the terms in the phrase.
• The site:example.com will return results only from the example.com site
• Using * as a wildcard, can be especially useful in quoted phrases like "Google is * "

You can combine operators... So, for instance you could add these terms to a Google Alert:

"Google is * " site:techcrunch.com

If you did, you'd be notified when someone writes  "Google is great", "Google is releasing", "Google is horrible" and all other possible "Google is" phrases on TechCrunch.

The Google Alerts page has a "preview" link, so experiment with different operators, searches, and alert options, until you get the results you're looking for. Then click the "create alert" button and you turn your selected options into an alert that will notify you either by email or by feed.

There are many search operators to play with, take a look at Google Search Basics and Advanced Operators and choose the ones that meet your needs.

In case you're wondering, you can get Google alerts without having a Google account, but having an account lets you easily change your alerts and gives you the option of receiving them as a feed instead of an email.

A New Perspective of Being Wrong (and a Kathryn Schulz TED talk)

In the blogosphere, it can pay off to show how wrong someone else is. You can get your traffic to spike if you destroy illogical statements of others. If you nit pick someone else's metaphor to death, and seem a little more right you "win." Exactly what do you win? A sense of superiority? Readers who enjoy reading about how wrong people are?

Being right has become the metric to measure ourselves and others with. The thinking (subconscious or not) goes like this:

• The more we are right, the better we are.
• The more we are wrong the worse we are.
• And as Kathryn Schulz notes: When someone else is wrong we tend to believe it is because they are ignorant, stupid or the embodiment of an evil conspiracy

But guess what? We might be wrong about that.

This phenomenon of wrongaphobia is just as true for everyday life as it is for online comments and blog articles. However, I would argue that it isn't hardwired into us. This fear of being wrong and the loathing of those who are is something that we've picked up somewhere along the way.

It must have been after our repeated walking failures as toddlers were the mechanism by which we learned to walk. It must have been after our experimental babbling of wrong words was the framework on which we built language.

In the TED Talk below, Kathryn Schulz communicates a powerful new perspective of being wrong. Enjoy!

Amazon's Android Virtual Machine

photo © 2010 Gerwin Sturm | more info (via: Wylio)
Engadget recently published an article about Amazon's Android virtual machine which allows users to try out apps before buying them. As noted, this isn't simply a flash based mock-up that works "kinda" like an android device. It's a fully functional virtual machine.

Why this is cool:
Normally, you'd need a virtual machine installed on your local computer and/or the Android SDK installed to get this level of accurate interaction. Instead of requiring you to install something, Amazon is sending the input from your clicks to a virtual machine running on their infrastructure and then streaming audio and video from that VM back through your browser.

The downside:
Keyboard input isn't currently accepted. So...

1. Apps that require a keyboard to really test drive them sufficiently aren't very testable.
2. Even though you can exit the app you're test driving and open the web browser, you can't use it to check what your blog looks like on an android device (yet?).

Want to try it? Visit this link to test drive the IMDB Android App and click the big green "Test Drive Now" button.

NOTE: The Amazon Test Drive service is currently only available to U.S. customers.

Free Month of Wylio Premium

photo © 2010 Ken Hawkins | more info (via: Wylio)

We've temporarily increased the free trial period of Wylio Premium from a week to a month. We think you'll like the extra features so much that you'll stick around after your trial is over. Especially since $2.99 per month doesn't exactly break the bank.

Why You Can't Get "A Copyright"

photo © 2008 Mike Seyfang | more info (via: Wylio)

One pervasive misconception about copyright law here in the U.S. is that "a copyright" is something you need to "get." In actuality, copyright law protects your work as soon as it is created (in the case of writers, that means as soon as you write it down). Yep, it could even be an inspired piece of prose written on the back of your latest utility bill's empty envelope and still be "copyrighted."

To clarify, when a work is "copyrighted" a good way to understand that is:

Your work is protected under the existing copyright law.

Where the misconception that "You need to get a copyright" probably comes in is from the registering of a copyrighted work.

Wait... Why would you want to register your work if your it is already protected?

Registering your copyrighted work gives the added security of having an impartial third party (the U.S. government) in possession a document stating that you were indeed the creator of the work in question. That way if there is any doubt, you have a tangible record to backup your case, dated and signed.

So, now that you're armed with this little piece of info... you finally have a fool proof way to get out of playing Pictionary. Simply tell your friends all your works are protected under current U.S. copyright law and you require a royalty payment for their public display.

Wait... no don't do that... keep your friends instead.

NOTE: I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. I know a bit about copyright because I've had a few years of experience in various forms of media and have read the U.S. copyright law for myself as well as interpretations and articles related to it.

Visualizing Online Publishing - Infographic

If you've ever been curious about how some of the newer online publishing brands like Engadget, Mashable, TechCrunch, and TechMeme stack up against the more traditional publishing brands' online presence such as The Washington Post, The New York Times and BBC (and if you accept Alexa, Twitter, and Facebook as good indicators) this post is for you. While you've probably heard about all brands mentioned, it's hard to really get a feel for how the audience sizes of each compare without having a quality visual aid. Infographic to the rescue!


Online Publishing by Infographiclabs

Shutterstock Royalty Free Stock Image Results Coming Soon

We're working with Shutterstock to bring you royalty free stock image results along with the typical free Creative Commons pictures you're used to seeing on Wylio. For most day-to-day blogging activities, free pictures with Creative Commons licensing work great. But there may be times that more traditional (a.k.a. purchased) stock pictures are better suited to your needs.

For example if you:

1. Don't want to display image credits along with the image your using
2. Need images of models to include in the promotion of your product or service

In general, Creative Commons licensed photos aren't well suited for those situations.

Model releases and using the likeness of a person is a separate issue from copyright and isn't dealt with in the Creative Commons licensing. For projects that require talent releases or other things not offered by CC licensing, it's important to have a trusted source for stock images. No matter what image source you decide to use, you'll always want to familiarize yourself with the actual licenses that govern the images they provides (for example, here's Shutterstock's licensing terms).

There are good reasons to use either free Creative Commons images, or non-free stock images. And your final decisions about what types of pictures to use will change depending on your project, budget, and required outcome.

NOTE: Wylio is a Shutterstock affiliate. This means we get paid of you use any of our links to Shutterstock and then purchase pictures from them.

Wylio Featured on Pro-Blogger

photo © 1987 Florida Memory | more info (via: Wylio)

We were recently featured on the popular blogging site ProBlogger. You can find Wylio at number 8 of the 15 resources listed.

A few other interesting sites listed include: 

• Timely (twitter scheduling) 
• Stella (site performance test)
• Color Scheme Designer (as it sounds)

New Flickr Results Sorting Options for Premium Accounts

photo © 2009 Creativity103 | more info (via: Wylio)

We've recently added sorting options for the Flickr results. If you visit your Wylio dashboard, you will now see the "Flickr Results Sort By" and "Flickr Results Sort Direction" on the "Default Actions" settings slate. These options are available to Wylio Premium users. It's important to note that if "Relevance" is selected as the sort option, "Sort Direction" will have no effect.