November 17, 2010

Big American Apparel Deal from Groupon

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The deal is $25 for $50 worth of clothing and accessories from American Apparel. The fine print is that this is limited to 1 per person, and that it is not valid on multi-packs, California Select Vintage, Multibrand products or shoes. It is for online redemption only on the U.S. site.

That’s what you call a great deal. You can also just click the banner. It should update to the latest and greatest Groupon Deals!

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Karina from DWTS on The Situation

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"He hasn't hit on me! And I'm taking it as an insult," Karina joked with Access Hollywood Live's Kit Hoover on Thursday. "Like, what am I? A grenade?" This quote is too funny! See more DWTS Updates (0)

September 22, 2010

Culinary 101 – Cooking with Godfrey

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UPDATE: They’re adding a 30 day free trial offer for their Culinary 101. Check out the content he’s created for free. That’s a good deal.

This summer I took on a little side project to help a guy who was really passionate about doing an online cooking show which he’s calling Grubbin with Godfrey. My role was to just help code and make the website functional. A graphic designer made it look pretty and I left all the video and promotion of the website to someone else.

All in all, I think Grubbin with Godfrey is turning into a great website. Plus, I’m sure his videos will continue to improve more and more over time as he gets more comfortable in front of the camera and learns the art of cooking while talking. However, the quality of the videos he’s produced is really great. Some of the best I’ve seen on YouTube.

Here’s a short video he did to promote the cooking show that’s pretty funny:

The other cool part about the cooking show is that Grubbin with Godfrey has a section of the site called Culinary 101. This is a set of premium videos that go into depth on cooking dishes. Tracy really wants people to cook along with him.

If you like cooking, take a look and let me know what you think of the site.

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September 21, 2010

Direct Publishing from Social Spark

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This is a crazy and interesting idea. I’m not sure how it all works yet, but I’m interested to find out. I’d heard about it when it first came on board and heard many bloggers who laughed at the idea of letting someone else kind of take over your blog and publish what they want. Of course, these same bloggers are the ones that would love to have someone do a guest post on their blog any time.

Sure, I get that you aren’t sure what’s going to be posted. However, I find the idea intriguing. So, I’ve turned it on for Smuggle Me and we’ll see how it does. Maybe nothing will come of it, but I figured it would be fun to try.

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August 19, 2010

Shutting Down Smuggle Me…Mostly

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I must admit that it’s kind of sad to think that I’ll be basically shutting down this blog. Smuggle Me (this blog) was the first blog I ever created. It’s the start of what has become my blogging empire (a small empire, but an empire just the same). Who would have thought that me just playing around with WordPress one day would later become my full time job and me traveling to present at WordCamp Utah and Las Vegas.

Yes, my first post was June 2, 2005. Although, the post I remember most was when I posted that I beat my sister in Solitaire Showdown. Good times and great memories of the start. It’s hard to believe that it’s been 5 years already.

Don’t think I won’t be blogging anymore. I just won’t be blogging on Smuggle Me anymore. Instead, you can see my work blog at CrashUtah. That’s my new and relatively professional blog that I’ll be writing. Plus, you can follow all of my other blogs which are listed here.

I’ll still be posting here on occasion. This is basically my test blog where I test new plugins and updates. So, I’ll continue doing that. Otherwise, Smuggle Me will go pretty quiet. It’s been a great ride!

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May 29, 2010

Amazing Video About Motivation

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I’m really glad I just spent 10:48 of my life watching this video. The style of the video is great, and the content really amazing for anyone that’s a manager at a company or an entrepreneur like myself. Very cool. I’m sure you’ll all enjoy this RSA Animate about what motivates us:

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May 26, 2010

BuddyPress Group Photo Gallery Plugin Thoughts

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I really need to have a great BuddyPress photo gallery (and it would be nice if it did video also) for a project I’m working on. Unfortunately, there just aren’t many options out there for BuddyPress Photo and or video galleries on BuddyPress.

The 2 top ones that are out there now are the following:
BuddyPress Album+ – Free and Open Source
BP-Gallery – Paid Plugin

Here’s the challenge. I really need the BuddyPress Group Galleries or the plugin won’t work for me. The paid plugin has group galleries and the Open Source one doesn’t. However, the open source one has it on it’s future release list and suggested 3 weeks for the group galleries to happen. I have to make a good choice, because photo galleries are not the type of plugins you want to have to change later.

Don’t get me wrong either. The $30 for the paid plugin is not a big deal at all. It’s a drop in the bucket really. However, what bothers me is that the plugin is not open source. This matters, because then the plugin is only dependent on one person for development. This includes new features, bug fixes, security issues, etc.

I hate the idea that I’m building my website on the back of a plugin that’s so dependent on one developer. Plus, I also don’t like having to pay $30 to see if the plugin is what I really want. I want to try out the plugin and make sure it’s a good fit before I cough up the money.

Long term I think that the open source BuddyPress Album+ has more potential. I also love that it’s a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) project. However, I’m a little nervous waiting the 3 weeks to see if they built the features that I really need (ie. Group Galleries). Plus, timelines often slip when we’re talking about open source development. So, I won’t be surprised if the group galleries take longer than the suggested 3 weeks.

Oh the choices we have to make. Taking what’s here and available now or betting on the better long term choice which isn’t quite ready right now.

P.S. If anyone has an implementation of BP-Gallery I can try, I’d love to have a chance to try out the features.

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May 12, 2010

BuddyPress Disable Email Activation – My First BuddyPress Plugin

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As those of you who follow my Twitter account probably know, I’ve been diving head first into the BuddyPress development side of things as I build my Sports Fundraising website. So far I’ve made some amazing progress and I’m quite happy with my choice of BuddyPress as a platform for this project. I guess we’ll see how it goes once I launch the site in July.

In my process, I’ve created a number of BuddyPress plugins, but mostly just for internal use. I hadn’t written any for the public yet. So, today I decided to take some code written originally by Andy (founder of BuddyPress) and add in one piece that he was missing and make a plugin (he told someone to).

So, here’s the first release of the plugin: BuddyPress Disable Email Activation (download here). I’ve tested it and it seems to work, but I welcome any feedback.

Unfortunately, it only disables the email activation for a standard WordPress install (with BuddyPress of course). I’m still working on getting the WordPress MU email activation to be disabled too. I’ve got most of it disabled, but can’t get the email to stop sending (see more details of this problem here). If I figure that out, then I’ll likely incorporate it into this plugin as well.

Until then, enjoy my first BuddyPress plugin. Now I’m going to figure out how to post it to the WordPress plugin repository.

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March 16, 2010

My Love of Pizza

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This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Tony’s Pizza. All opinions are 100% mine.

Everyone that knows me knows that I eat a lot of pizza. It’s my favorite thing to eat in the world I think. Well, there might be a few desserts that come close, but as far as a meal I eat pizza far too often. People at my work make fun of me for only eating pizza. What can I say? I will often be found going to a buffet and then just eating the pizza. To me a buffet is often just all I can eat pizza.

With this background, you can imagine how excited I was to get some Tony’s Pizza coupons for free pizza in the mail. My wife called me when the free coupons arrived and I told her to go to the store and get it, because I needed me some Tony’s Pizza tonight. Since I’m an expert on pizza, I’ve always found Tony’s to be the best value. It’s a much better quality pizza than say a Totino’s pizza, but isn’t overpriced like a Red Barron pizza.

The pizza was delicious as usual. The only problem was that my kids decided to eat the Tony’s Pizza too and so I didn’t get enough of it. Dang kids never eat dinner and they chomped down this pizza.

I must admit that it’s always nice to have a frozen pizza that I can just throw in the oven and eat. I say this because my wife recently ordered some Dominos Pizza. They told her it would be 30 minutes, but then it showed up 30 minutes late. Do you know how annoying that is? I can barely wait the 15 minutes for the frozen pizza to cook. Imagine waiting a good 30 minutes extra for pizza when you’re hungry.

Of course, Dominoes heard that we were mad that it was late and so they sent us something in the mail saying sorry and offering us some coupons. This would have been really cool. Too bad the coupons were of no value since they were the same discounts we can get by just calling and ordering. Seriously??? So, to make up for their crappy delivery service they’re going to try and sell us more of their product?

Needless to say, I don’t have to worry about that with frozen pizza. Looks like more Tony’s Pizza for me and less Dominos.

Visit my sponsor: Free Samples

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