Have you ever spent a lot of time searching around the Internet to find the perfect social media button that can be added to your site? Well stop searching and head over to MySocialButtons. MySocialButtons does what it says on the can and offers free social networking icons and buttons to download. Buttons include TTwitter, Reddit, Digg, Facebook, Stumbleupon and come in various different colours, styles and sizes.
WooThemes has just released a new Free theme called Irresistible. It is a visually-rich personal blog, with a little bit of a multimedia focus. Incorporating some nifty video-options and widgets, Irresistible should meet all of your personal blogging needs. Just add your content to the mix.
WooThemes has launched today a new free WordPress Theme. Irresistible is a personal blog theme with a great unique design, available in 9 different color styles. Download and demo it here.
Comfy news theme is a free news / magazine style theme for WordPress. It looks really clean, stunning and professional. Comfy comes with many features, some of them are basic magazine features such as dropdown navigation, feedburner subscription, advertisement spots, featured entries, ajax tabs, widget-ready, gravatars built-in, and more.
106 Beautiful rounded icons in a iPhone style.
Download from Deviantart.
Over at Tutorial9 and Smashing Mag they have just released a new icon pack for everyone. This Free Icon Pack is for use in your personal and commercial projects, and can be used without attribution. It may not be redistributed.
Nurture is a Social Bookmark Icon Pack. The set includes 10 icons featuring the logos of popular social bookmarking sites. Nurture includes 512×512, 256×256, 128×128, and 64×64 icons in .png format.
Download Here for Free.
Freemium Theme is a free premium theme for wordpress, it was designed by Paul Kadysz and developed by Dariusz Siedlecki and made free by freebiesdock.com.
You can see the demo here.
Some of the features of freemium theme are:
Download: freebiesdock.com/freemium-wordpress-theme/
There are so many publishers out there that are just learning what Wordpress is and how they can actually make money from blogging. The easiest advertising network to join is Adsense from Google. Adsense provides users the ability to earn money every time one of their readers clicks on an ad. Recently I was looking through free Wordpress themes in search of the most basic template I could find which have adsense blocks as standard and in which optimise those positions to bring in the most revenues for the blogger. After all my searching I thought I might even compile a list of ten themes that I think everyone should use when they are first starting to blog on Wordpress.
1. ProSense | Download Prosense | ProSense Gray | ProSense Blue
2. AdSense Theme | Download
3. Problogger Clean | Download
4. SEO Blix with AdSense | Download
5. Ads Minded | Download
6. Connections with Adsense | Download
8. Adsense Ready | Download
9. Boqpod Adsense | Download
10. Tigopedia 1.0 | Download
WordPress.tv is your visual resource for all things WordPress. To make it easy for you to find up-to-date, WordPress-themed video content within a couple of clicks. Without having to wade through spammy promotional videos, out-of-date content, and missing chunks of presentations. WordPress.tv is there waiting for you, you can learn anything related to WordPress by watching the videos there.
Additional to basic Wordpress tutorials they have a section specifically for WordCamp videos in which is Wordpress related sessions in which professions talk about Wordpress and how to use it affectively and efficiently.
I have also noticed today that Techcrunch has changed their theme again. It hasn’t really been too long since they last changed their theme, probably about a quarter off the top of my head. Last time the Techcrunch theme was changed they seems to have nothing in their sidebar except advertising (i know Crenk also has a little bit of advertising), however that being said this new theme really addresses the key issues of the older theme.
The site itself is a lot more compact in the header and key change is that the 728×90 advertisement is no longer above the site, but fitting in with the header itself. The key green is not really as predominant, but it makes it easy to distinguish between Techcrunch and the other network sites. In the old theme they just had excepts on the home page, but now they have an additional three slots in which they can feature certain articles. Navigation has really improved within this new theme and now it is a lot easier to find new content. As well as feature articles in the header on the home page they have also added eleven featured articles in the sidebar sitewide. If I didnt have an RSS reader or use it everyday, with the previous theme it would have been impossible to keep up with the new content, however with this new theme it provides me with a better idea on what is happening in the tech space.
This new theme is far from perfect but it is a huge improvement from all the previous themes they had on the site. I would really still like to see a lot more integration between the Techcrunch home page and the other network sites, but im sure that will come within the year.
Zemanta has long been a favorite addition to my blogging processes. This interesting little addition to the browser builds in the ability include photos, links, and tags for all of your media inserts. By installing Zemanta, I have reduced the time it takes to track down information to include, and by setting up some personal settings I’m sure to find what I need when I need it.
The New
Zemanta has always offered what it thinks you will need in terms of photos and links, but today Zemanta is launching their public API which will now allow users to build a “user suggestion engine.”
Funding for the company has come from Union Square Ventures, Eden Ventures and The Accelerator Group, along with its win at the fist SeedCamp, this announcement has come out of LeWeb in Paris, France. This announcement is sure to increase not only the number of users, but also the dependency that online writers will have on this dynamic tool.
The Future
Zemanta has now opened itself to a huge reception in the world of online content creators. By opening their API, they can approach content creators to leverage their unorganized with the system, and the users are able to access the content for various needs.
In an article by TechCrunch, they state that “usage of the API is free for up to 10.000 API calls per month, and for a subscription fee above that.” So not only has Zemanta found a way to integrate user input, but they also find a way to monetize their efforts for content creators to get organized.
Zemanta has a bright future ahead of it. I have just recently connected with one of the Founders for Zemanta on Twitter @andraz. He’s easily approachable and seems to be keen on connecting with users around the world.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_b.png?x-id=ecf75557-7023-4291-ad5f-ccd974cf469f)
During these turbulent times there has been a lot of change across the economic landscape. Companies from big to small, brick and mortar to online sites have all experienced the crunch. Many are comparing these times to the dotcom bust years ago, if history is cyclical this was a short rotation.
Recently BlogRush has decided to close it’s “doors” and fade away. In an announcement by John Reese, BlogRush was suffering from lack of clicks, and users who no longer wanted to be advertised to. While that may come as a no brainer to the typical user, BlogRush prided itself on being unobtrusive and focusing on the needs and wants of the users.
Was this truly what BlogRush stood for? The site definitely had its fair share of critics. For example, Seopedia sticks out in my mind after they were so amazingly rejected by the site. You can read their entire ordeal here. Basically it appear that BlogRush depended on random people to be the judges of whether a site fit the criteria or not. The advertisement that was sent out by owner John Reese seems to focus less on quality judges, and more on mass quantity.
Mashable has a more scathing post from late 2007 where they say BlogRush was a throwback to the Web 1.0 era. They explain the process of earning credits by using their widget on your site, and sharing traffic with other sites increasing exposure and ranking within the network. He compares the concept to that of a pyramid scheme.
Despite the critics, John Reese stands by his product and claims that he is a risk taker. He admits that as an entrepreneur he has had some ideas succeed and some fail, but his success stems from not being afraid to try. He goes on to say that BlogRush was offered a “small fortune” but that he reluctantly turned it down to keep the purity of the idea. Not sure if I necessarily agree with the decision, but regardless, the site is down for the count.
It’s advised that users remove the BlogRush widgets from their pages because they are no inactive. So while click rates dropped, and BlogRush has come to an end, John Reese promises that he will continue to strive with new online ideas, and look to continue his innovative streak.
You can read the entire letter to users here.
