Hipmunk totally saved my butt when I had to travel back to back from San Francisco to Park City, Utah to speak Friday and then depart the next day for Los Angeles, CA to speak Saturday!
I met with Florence (@flo_hipmunk) from Hipmunk for coffee to talk about the travel service. At first was a bit unsure about using it because I’ve been using Priceline since 2000 and have been using Yapta for price tracking on flights for the last year so I didn’t see where Hipmunk could fit into my travel planning for the public speaking I do…until last month.
When you travel to multiple cities before returning to your departure city, it’s known as “open jaw”. Searching for flights can seem like a “hit or miss” type thing but there are strategies like flying mid week and buying your tickets between Tuesday and Thursday (when airlines let go of tickets reserved by travel agents over the weekend that were not fully booked) and buying at least 21 days in advance.
For $352 I was able to travel from San Francisco on a Thursday to Park City , UT, speak Friday morning then fly out that afternoon so I could speak in Los Angeles, CA Saturday morning. It was friggin’ awesome to plan out my flight using Hipmunk because I could see all the legs of my flight and choose them by departure time!
This is one of the screenshots I took in early June when I was researching flights. I needed to make sure my departure and arrival times would allow me time to get to the conferences, socialize, network and of course speak!
Check out this fun video Grumo media did explaining Hipmunk:
Many people have experienced the frustration being booted out of their Gmail and Google Apps account after Google’s transition of all Google Apps accounts to proper Google accounts.
You can enable account switching without using multiple browsers by using the following page multiple sign-in settings page:
When multiple sign-in is turned on, you can click the arrow next to your address (at top right) to switch between accounts with these Google products: Gmail, Calendar, Google Voice and Google Reader Read More…
Know those forms that have that annoying box at the bottom with a bunch of scrambled words in it that look like this?
Well that’s a CAPTCHA and it’s an acronym that stands for: Completely Automated Public Turing tests to tell Computers and Humans Apart
Let’s talk about how CAPTCHA’s make websites suck.
I was motivated to write this article after Allison responeded to my Tweet sharing what the acronym stood for:
The goal is to prevent automated systems from submitting data, usually via a form. While it may seem like a good idea to block fake submissions and registrations, it can often leave the end user feeling frustrated.
New feature in Gmail today to copy + paste images and photos right into the body of your email!
In this video, I copy an image from my desktop and paste it into a new email draft. This new feature is available now to all Gmail and Google Apps users. Start using your keyboard shortcuts to copy and paste (or right click) the the image you want to add and paste it into the email. Read More…
Are you using Feedburner to manage your RSS feeds for your blog or website?
Are you also using Clicky real-time web analytics to track visitors?
You can combine the best of both worlds by pulling in your Feedburner info onto Clicky’s dashboard to have an easy, one stop dashboard to view how your site is doing and more importantly…what people are doing on your site!
Have you ever gone into WordPress and changed the URL in the settings area only to find you couldn’t login anymore or load your site? Never fear! Today’s question from @laurenthedark asked this on Twitter so here’s your video Lauren:
Steps
Sign into cPanel
Go to Databases > phpMyAdmin
Choose your database on the left (you can verify which one by looking in your wp-config.php file via ftp)
Go to **_options (the default is wp_options but you may have changed your prefix)
The SiteURL will most likely be the 2nd row and you will click the pencil to the left to edit
Edit the “option_value” box to reflect your correct website address and hit “go”
You will get a green confirmation that it was successful
So Lauren, there you go. Make sure to sign up for my training newsletter to get tips and news on WordPress and business productivity tools.
So how to capture that joy and happiness for a live audience to share?
Planning an Outdoor Streaming Event
Internet Connection. This is huge. The system requirements at Livestream indicate a download speed of 500kbps is needed. In reality, upload speed is more important since you’re pushing content to the web. Use a site like Speedtest.net to figure out your upload and download speeds ahead of time.
Ideally, you want to be using a wired internet connection. It’s as easy as scouting the location beforehand and asking a local business if you can branch off their public internet with an ethernet cable. I just picked up a 50 foot weather resistant Ethernet cable from Deepsurplus.com for $12 bucks and I see a 100 foot cable is about $20. (my roommate actually ordered it).
Sunlight. Glare can be a huge problem here as well as direct sunlight causing damage to your electronics. Be prepared with an umbrella or plant to setup the web cam inside a tent to avoid weather extremes.
Webcam stand or tripod. Whether you are doing a stream with your iPhone via Qik or using your camcorder that is patched through your laptop, you’re going to need a steady setup. Test your tripod or mount before the big day.
Audio windscreen. We humans love to see people smile. We love the sound of laughter. Capture memorable sounds by making sure to soften the effects of wind and background noise with some sort of dampening solution. Try to setup away from the wind, traffic and any sort of busy spots like near an outdoor grill where there may be a lot of noise.
Power. Bring plenty of cords! They make heavy duty power cords that are weather resistant. If you’re having an all day event, you’ll probably arrive early when there is morning dew still on the grass. Be careful about your setup and bring velcro straps, old blankets and masking tape along to secure your cords from the weather and careless feet that could trip and find the owner of said feet injured.
Have someone monitor the stream every hour or so to be sure it’s still running. Based on the streaming service you use, you may need to disable comments for your event as people have been known to “crash” stream channels and leave a bunch of profane things in the chats.
Great question Eddie! Thanks! As always, if you have technology questions you’d like answered, send them over via the contact form on AskAdria.com
Today, I ran across yet another person who still provides their email in the following format as some sort of maladaptive coping mechanism to spam protection:
Whenever possible, I try to educate these folks and help them understand the root problem with spam and how Google addresses it for the millions of email users, businesses and organizations they support.
So if you’ve gone to a conference in the last year you may have had trouble trying to keep track of all the tweets and hashtags on Twitter.
If you’re trying to track mentions of your product on Twitter and have several, it may seem like a waste to keep searching for each one.
Tweetdeck, a very popular Twitter, allows you to create "columns" based on searches. If you make too many, you can be easily overwhelmed by all the info!
What is a conference going, company owning, Twitter loving person to do?
Check out the following tutorial on how to make your Twitter searches easier
I like deals and coupons as much as the next person. People have been burned by forgetting to cancel their 30 day trial of and end up seeing a charge on their card. A few years ago, I began to put cancellation reminders for trials in my Google Calendar.
I’ve used this for Amazon Prime, Audible, cloud apps, credit report monitoring and a variety of other deals on-line and then gracefully step out before I get charged.
Here’s a screenshot of my Google Calendar. I have both email reminders and pop ups enabled so I can keep track of upcoming events. I enter in the url where I signed up or link to the welcome email. This saves me the hassle of trying to dispute the charges later via email or phone. That’s a hassle no one wants to deal with!
ElisaC said on Twitter she didn’t want to upgrade to the new Tweetdeck because of the new RT style that doesn’t allow you to send on Retweets with your comments. Never fear! You can adjust the settings in Tweetdeck. Watch this video to see how.
I finally have had a chance to review Feedly as an alternative RSS to Google Reader. @Corvida of SheGeeks.net told me about this wonderful RSS reader that presents your favorite feeds in a way that looks like a magazine website style layout.
I got a question today from someone on how to change your feed source on Feedburner. She has moved off of Blogger and onto her own WordPress.org install. You want to change the second box that says, “Original feed” to reflect the new location. Read More…
I haven’t needed MMS capabilities until now. MMS allows you to receive rich text messages that can include images or html. Since I’ve jailbroke my iPhone and unlocked it onto the T-mobile network, it’s pretty much seen a life of work centric apps and phone calls…until now!
Want to get a nice looking url at Flickr like http://flickr.com/photo/yourname? This video shows you how: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXbTsf6h1Xs[/youtube]
![Image for Hipmunk Airline Travel Made Easy [VIDEO]](http://cdn.butyoureagirl.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/9-1-2011-6-50-50-PM.png "Visit: Hipmunk Airline Travel Made Easy [VIDEO]")
![Image for How Switch Between Your Personal Gmail and Google Apps In The Same Browser [VIDEO]](http://cdn.butyoureagirl.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/google-multi-account-sign-in-7-13-2011-9-37-45-AM-179x200.png "Visit: How Switch Between Your Personal Gmail and Google Apps In The Same Browser [VIDEO]")
