Sprayfly

According to Anieto2k, the next version of Wordpress, Wordpress 2.6 will come packaged with Google Gears which will allow Wordpress users to create and edit their Wordpress posts when they are not connected to the internet. Those people who make use of Google Reader or Google Docs, other web applications that make use of Google Gears, will already be familiar with this concept.

Basically, after you update to 2.6, the Wordpress admin panel will notify you that you are able to activate Google Gears. If you choose to activate this feature, Wordpress will then install it and you will be prompted to grant permission to Google Gears to access your Wordpress installation. Google Gears will then automatically start to store necessary Wordpress files and all of your posts on your local computer so that you can work offline.

Thats it, once transfer is complete you can open up your computer anywhere in the world and whether or not you have internet access you will always be able to access and edit your wordpress posts from your web browser.

Screenshots are available on Anieto2k’s post (Spanish)

I recently encountered some difficulties selling items worldwide on eBay. Whilst eBay would let me sell items within the UK, I was not able to offer postage to other countries. When I tried to offer Worldwide postage, I received the following message:

Attention Seller:
In order to maintain a safe trading environment, selling limits are occasionally placed on accounts. Your eBay account has been restricted from listing this item at this time until you have verified through PayPal.

1) To verify your PayPal account, click on your country of eBay registration below to understand how to complete that process.

2) If you already have a verified PayPal account, and are still receiving this message, you need to link it to your eBay account.

For instructions on how to become PayPal Verified or how to link your PayPal account to your eBay account, please click on the site of your eBay registration below:

I proceeded to follow eBay’s instructions and followed the steps on the Paypal website to become a ‘verified’ seller. I then followed the below steps to ‘link’ my paypal account with my eBay account:

1. Sign into My eBay
2. Select the ‘Paypal Account’ link from the left-hand menu
3. Click on ‘Update Profile Summary’
4. Log into Paypal

This should link your account to eBay.

After following the above steps, if you are able to offer worldwide postage, you are indeed lucky. I was not and so next tried the following:

1. Log into Paypal
2. Click on ‘Profile’
3. Under ‘Selling Preferences’ click on ‘Auctions’
4. If your eBay account name isn’t present then add it.

Unfortunately, this still didn’t solve the problem (although it may solve yours). I did some more searching around and found another possible solution:

1. Sign into eBay
2. Go to My eBay
3. On the left hand side, underneath ‘My Account’, select ‘Addresses’
4. Click on ‘View all postal addresses’
5. If your ‘Paypal Address’ is present then make that address your primary address (Hit the ‘Make Primary’ link on the right hand side.
6. If your ‘Paypal Address’ is not present then you will need to scroll down to the ‘Add PayPal Addresses button’ below the list of available addresses and ‘link’ your eBay addresses to your Paypal account.

This last solution did the trick for me and I am now able to offer worldwide postage of my items on any eBay site (US, UK, Ireland etc)

Hopefully this guide will help anybody else out there who has encountered this problem find a quick solution.

I recently installed Twirl, an Adobe Air application that helps to keep you up to date with Twitter on my Windows Vista computer. The application is great, however, there was one thing that annoyed me - whenever I clicked on a link, it would always open in Internext Explorer - even though Mozilla Firefox is my default browser.

After googling around for a while, I managed to find the below solution on twhirl’s blog which seemed to do the trick for me:

Go to Start > Default Programs > Set Program Access and Computer Defaults
Expand Custom, select the radio button next to the application you want to set as the system-wide default browser (there will be a few options - such as IE, Safari, Mozilla) and apply the setting.

Hopefully all your links should now open in Firefox and not in IE.

Today I did a major upgrade on my blogs, not only upgrading all my Wordpress installations to the newly released Wordpress 2.5 but also rolling out a completely new site design.

The Wordpress upgrade went smoother than expected. After backing everything up, I used ‘rsync’ to update all copies of Wordpress on the server and then followed the upgrade instructions for each site one by one. To my surprise, all the plugins worked fine and some even updated themselves automatically. Much smoother than I had expected!

Regarding the new design - I was fed up with the old one which was ugly, cluttered and difficult to navigate. I therefore downloaded a very mimimalistic Wordpress theme called ‘Simpla’ which i then modified to add a few new features (Flickr badge, Search Box, Twitter Feed, Site Links, RSS Feeds) and its all up and running now.

As usual, please let me know if you encounter any bugs. I’d also love to hear anybody’s opinions on the new design.

Thanks