Now, of course there are tons of photos on flickr. But, thanks to something called a Creative Commons license, many are available for you (or anyone) to use in your blog posts for the low, low price of simple attribution of the original author. The easiest way to find these photos is to run an advanced search limited to only CC-licensed content. Here is the advanced search page and here is a quick link to an example search for sunsets.

The section you are looking for on the advanced search page is at the bottom. I typically search for images licensed for commercial usage. You may not consider your blog “commercial,” but I like to err on the side of caution. You can spend a lot of time searching for images, but when you find one you like, click on it to bring up the detail page.

Down on the right side of the page, you’ll find a section titled “License.” The link below this section will take you to a page describing how you are allowed to use the photo. This page is important and clearly outlines what your responsibilities are if you want to use the photo. Typically, the requirement is attribution and can be accomplished by an explicit reference to the photographer on your blog post or a direct link to the photographer’s page on flickr.

The easiest way to use a flickr photo in your blog is to use the embed code provided by flickr on the photo page. Clicking on the “Share This” button will give you several options for using the photo. The “Grab the HTML/BB Code” option will give you a code snippet you can copy and paste directly into your blog post (in HTML view). This method will automatically link the image to the photographer’s photo page and count as attribution.

Doug Karr just blogged about a great, simple WordPress plug-in that will maintain redirects to all your old permalinks after you make the change. Dealing with all those newly broken links is what stopped him (and me) from making the change. Honestly, I hadn’t put much thought into the permalink structure on this blog, but it’s such a simple and fast change, everybody should do it!

Check out Doug’s easy to follow post on Optimizing WordPress Permalinks and understand the three main reasons you should make this change today.

…If you’re a Twitter user, it’s a great way to get more followers and support your favorite Twitter apps. If you’re a Twitter app developer, it’s a simple way to start monetizing your application.

The basic idea is that Twitter users can gain exposure and followers by paying to have their Twitter details show up on various Twitter app websites. The idea is simple, cheap, and will not turn you into a Twitter superstar overnight. However, it’s a great way to help support 3rd party Twitter apps and gain some followers in the process.

As Twitter spam is on the rise, many are quick to denounce anything that even looks like spam on Twitter (and usually with good reason). This kind of Twitter ad network is a great alternative to spamming people directly on Twitter. Advertising yourself here still gets your name in front of a highly targeted audience (Twitter users) without cluttering up people’s tweet streams.

In a way, FeaturedUsers.com helps keep spam out of your twitter stream. And that should make any tweep happy.

Check ‘em out over at FeaturedUsers.com.

This is a question most bloggers wonder–especially when they are first getting started. While there are plenty of ideas on exactly how often you should blog, we wanted to know how often you actually are blogging.

As we close in on 100 bloggers having completed the 2008 Indiana Blogger Census, I thought it would be a good time to share a little bit of the data we’re collecting. As you can see from the pie chart, Hoosier bloggers are blogging much more than I had anticipated.

Read the rest of this story over at the Blog Indiana 2008 Conference blog.

Sell photos on photrade | By HamWithCam

Ever since I discovered Photrade.com through their sponsorship of Blog Indiana, I’ve been admiring the service and slowly starting to use it. My main interest in the service is the ability for bloggers to find great photography and easily place it on their blog or website. Many bloggers just grab images from Google Image Search or where ever they can find them without consideration for the legal implications of using photos without permission. With Photrade, the permission is built-in.

On the other side, photographers (professional and amateur) can profit off not only your free usage of their photos, but the integrated marketplace allowing their photos to be licensed/sold at prices they can control. All photos can be watermarked with a custom mark that helps protect everyone’s photos. If someone wants to purchase the right to use your photo without the watermark, Photrade facilitates that purchase in an automated way.

I believe this new service, which is just now in beta, has huge potential. Below, I humbly submit some feedback from what I’ve experienced so far.

• I love the ability to search for blog post images and easily post into my blog. I would love stronger integration the way flickr lets you make blog posts about a photo directly to your self-hosted blog.
• Please, please, please release an API. I think a killer application for Photrade would be a WordPress plugin that would let me browse Photrade’s database of photos straight from my “Create New Post” screen. Then, just a button click drops the photo into my blog post.
• It would be great if the framing and links that accompany an embedded Photrade photo could be customized. I’d just like to see the style, spacing, and fonts be a little better styled (or give me control).
• The uploader works pretty well and it is fairly fast (as they claim). However, it would be great if they could add some kind of counter letting me know how many photos I’ve uploaded and if any had any errors. Also, once the uploads are done, there is nothing prompting me as to what to do next.
• A more detailed, expanded view of all my photo view activity and their earnings.
• And last but not least… I can’t wait until the Flickr integration is complete! That is what is really keeping me from using Photrade to full potential. I have a pro account at Flickr and use it for ALL my photos. Being able to import photos directly from Flickr would make Photrade my 2nd favorite photo app (maybe my first, depending on the size of my next royalty check!)

Of course, the site is still beta, and is still amazing. I highly suggest you check it out: Photrade.com

For some reason, I tend to be fascinated with other people’s business cards. I love seeing how creative people can be in such a small amount of space with such a specific purpose. I never seem to be happy enough with the business cards I design for myself and am considering a redo sometime soon. I thought I’d share one of the websites I came across that gives some amazing examples of simple, stunning, and memorable business card designs that should give anyone a creative kick in the pants.

36 Cool Business Cards You Should’ve Seen

4INFO is a text messaging information service that lets you request and subscribe to a wide range of information from various publishers via your cell phone. I’ve signed up as a publisher and have reserved the keyword: TSCAN.

Here’s how it works:

Send an SMS/text message to 44636 in this format: TSCAN <keyword>

For example, if I sent a text message to 44636 with the message:

TSCAN obama

I would get back a short menu of the most recent “tweets” with the name “obama” in them. I could then reply to that message with the corresponding menu number to see the entire “tweet.” Seem confusing? Give it a try! It really works.

I have no idea if this is useful to anyone, but just thought it was a fun way to learn about 4INFO’s publisher services.

It likely won’t show up on anyone’s top 10 list of killer features for ANY browser. However, I’m finding the simple and useful way that Safari handles feeds to be very satisfying. I’m talking about how your browser displays an RSS or ATOM feed when you load it directly in your browser (as opposed to a seperate feed reader). An example of how this can save you time is by visiting the Smaller Indiana homepage. If you wanted to get a quick overview of the most recent activity on the site without spending a lot of time clicking around, just click the blue RSS button on the far-right side of the browser’s URL box. This will give you a dropdown list of all available feeds to view. If you click on “Forum – Smaller Indiana” you’ll see a nicely formated view of recent forum posts with some very nice filtering features.

As you can see in the above animated graphic, you’ll see a cleanly formated listing of recent posts. You’ll also get a very handy set of tools on the right to search and filter the feed dynamically. One of my favorite tools is the ability to reduce the amount of information displayed in the feed. For example, sliding the “Article Length” slider over to the left (as the animation demonstrates) will give you an email inbox-like view of the forum posts. This is an excellent and fast way to see what’s new on any website.

While feed readers are very effective at allowing you to subscribe and consume many different websites. This integrated feed display in Safari allows you to quickly and easily cut right to the latest content on any website or blog at supports feeds. Both Internet Explorer and FireFox also provide default views of feeds. However, neither are as robust as Safari (oddly, IE comes closest).

Today I discovered Todoist and I think I’ve found my last to do list app. The basic version (which covers most all you’d need) is free, with some extra features thrown in for a small fee. Things I love about Todoist:

• Nested groups and to do lists
• Tons of keyboard shortcuts to make list entry and management easy
• Built-in calendar system with intelligent date entry (I can type “every Saturday” and it knows what I mean)
• Full export of all your lists via XML
• iGoogle widget is awesome if you use iGoogle as your start page
• Easily customizable views

If I use this service enough over the next month, I might just spring the few extra bucks to get more features such as email reminders. Check it out at todoist.com.