Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Options for linking Picasa into your Blog

There are various places on your blog where you can put items from Picasa - and different options from Picasa too (individual pictures, albums, slideshows). This article describes them, and links to articles with specific instructions about each combination.

Where to put Picasa items on your blog:

Previously, I looked at how Picasa manages pictures, and the advantages and disadvantages of using each type of Picasa item in your blog.

In short, you can choose where to put Picasa pictures, album links or slideshows in your Blog.

Options include:

inside an individual post,
as a gadget in your sidebar
as a gadget in some other part of the blog that is set up to take gadgets (eg the header or footer)

The advantanges and disadvantages of each position are just the same as they are for other types of item (widget, diagram, map, graph, spreadsheet, etc) that you might put on your blog, ie they're not specific to Picasa items, and they vary a lot depending on your blog's design and niche. So I'm not going in to them here..

How to put Picasa items into your Blogger blog:

(may of the principles here will work with Picasa and other types of blogging software - eg Wordpress, Typepad, etc - but these articles are targetted to Blogger)

	Inside a Blog Post	In a Gadget
As an individual picture	Putting a Picture into a page on Blogger	Inserting a Picture as a Gadget.
As an Album link	Linking to a Picasa album in a Blogger post	Linking to a Picasa album in your sidebar (or other gadget)
As a Slideshow	Putting a Slideshow (from a Picasa album) into a Blogger post	Putting a Slideshow (from a Picasa album) into your sidebar

Picasa & Blogger - series overview

Blogger-Hints-and-Tips has a series of posts about integrating Blogger and Picasa. This is the "home page" for the series, and has links to all the articles.

Articles in the series include:

What is Picasa - a very basic introduction

How Picasa Manages Pictures: Understanding Picasa, Picasa-web-albums and Blogger (under development)

Advantages and disadvantages of using each type of Picasa item

Options for putting things from Picasa into Blogger (with links to detailed how-to instructions for inserting pictures, albums and slidehows into Blogger posts and gadgets)

Finding a picture's URL in a Picasa-web-album

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Audi A3 Sport

O modelo mais compacto da marca alemã ganha mais uma versão no mercado brasileiro, apenas com carroceria de três portas, e preço de 110 mil reais, já disponível na rede de concessionárias.

Como era de se esperar, o comportamento esportivo é garantido pelo motor 2.0 TFSI, com injeção direta de gasolina, e que produz 200 cv e 28,5 kgfm de torque. Isso lhe garante aceleração de 0 a 100 km/h em 6,8 segundos e velocidade máxima de 238 km/h, segundo dados da marca. Sua transmissão é a automática sequencial S-Tronic, com seis marchas e dupla embreagem.

Generoso, seu pacote de equipamentos contempla ar-condicionado digital bi-zona, volante em couro com borboletas para troca de marcha, quatro airbags, sistema de som multimídia e piloto automático. A segurança é garantida pelos freios com ABS, EBD e ESP.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Stopping some pages appearing on the home page

This article is about how to make sure that a given post never appears on your blog's so-called "home page".

Blogger and Home-pages

As explained previously, Blogger's usual approach is to show new visitors to your blog your most recent post - since hopefully they are return visitors coming back to check what you've written recently.

However there may be some things that you don't want to appear first when users go to your blog.

For example, contact details or lists of committee members, which users normally reach by clicking on a menu or link.

Option 1: pre-date the post

To ensure that a page is not what a reader sees when they arrive at your blog's home page, you just need to: make sure that its Post-date (which can be set in the Post Editor) isn't in the top N dates used in your blog, where N = the number of posts per page that you have selected. This is set:

in the Blog Posts area which is under Design / Page Elements. Or
under Settings > Formatting > Show at Most

By default, in most templates, it is set to 7. In many of my blogs, I've set in to 1, so there is only one post on each page. And even if Blogger chooses to show less posts than you have selected per page, this approach will still work.

Give a far-in-the-past date to pages that you never want to appear first. But don't make it so far in the past that they will seem like nonsense if Google ever converts historic posts. A date like 2-3 years ago might be a good compromise.

However if you follow this approach, then it would be a good to not display the post-date on ANY of your posts. If you do display it, and it's out-of-date, the reader will think

"gosh, those contacts haven't been updated since <>, they can't be right".

So you need to turn it off (also on Blog Posts), and if date is relevant, put it in the text of your posts.

Option 2: Use a Page instead of a Post

Blogger's so-called "static" pages are a far simpler was to meat this goal. Simply put the material that you do not ever want onto one of your regular Pages", an d"home page", and guaranteed not to show up on your home page or in your RSS feed.

This option was not available when this post was originally launched, but it has a lot to recommend it.

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Chevrolet Agile Sport

Em seu ano de estrÃ©ia no Melhor Compra, o Agile faturou a categ

Enquanto não se desdobra em variantes como sedã ou picape, o Agile tenta agradar aos mais diversos clientes através dos dois novos pacotes de acessórios, Sunny e Sport, instalados na rede de concessionárias. Possível de ser aplicado em qualquer versão do compacto por R$ 5346, o kit Sport dá um ar mais agressivo ao modelo, incorporando rodas de liga leve de 16 polegadas, faróis com máscara negra, spoilers dianteiro e traseiro e saias laterais.

De resto, o modelo mantém as mesmas características do Agile comum, com o mesmo espírito de VW Fox e Renault Sandero de oferecer detalhes de classes superiores, como o excelente espaço interno e o ótimo porta-malas de 327 litros, mas mantendo as raízes típicas de popular, como algumas falhas de projeto inconcebíveis em um carro deste porte. O compacto também manteve a opção única de motor, o 1.4 Econo.Flex de 97/102 cv (gasolina/álcool). Felizmente a tabela de preços também se manteve inalterada, começando em R$ 37.708 para o LT, e R$ 39.601 para o topo-de-linha LTZ.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Adding a footer section to a Blogger template

This article is about how to add a a footer section to your blog. It was written in late 2009, before Designer Templates were available. Today, the best approach is to use a Designer template. However this article has been updated for people who are still using Layout templates.

Footer sections and Blogger templates

Blogger's Designer Templates (ref Template types in Blogger) all let you configure the footer section - you can have a one, two or three column footer, and this together with choosing where to add gadgets gives a lot of flexibility about how the footer looks.

But if you are using an older Layout template that doesn't ave a footer and you want to add one, you can either:

Change templates (but this means that any customisations you've made, eg adding Analytics code) will be lost, OR
Add a footer section to your existing template, by customising the code - provided you are willing to accept the disadvantages of editing your template.

Ading a footer section to a Layout template

Edit your template

Pre-Sept-11: Design > Edit HTML
Post-Sept-11: Template > Edit HTML > Proceed

Download a full copy of your existing template (in case things go wrong), and put it somewhere safe

Find the part where the code says:

]]></b:skin>
</head>

Add the following code immediately before this. (This adds a style for youre new footer to use)

#footer {
border-top:1px dotted #999999;
clear:both;
margin:0 auto;
}

Find the part where the code says:

<div class='clear'> </div>

Add this code immediately after that point (this is setting up the footer section in your new template)

<div id='footer-wrapper'>
<b:section class='footer' id='footer' maxwidgets='10' showaddelement='yes'>
</b:section></div>

A similar technique works for adding multiple Footers, if your template already has one - you just have to make sure that the section gets a separate ID (eg id='footer2' in the part in bold-italics).

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Ford Focus 1.6 16v

Ainda que seja um excelente produto, com desenho atraente, alto nível de sofisticação e soluções técnicas modernas, o novo Focus ainda não deslanchou nas vendas, não importa com que carroceria.

Mas a principal responsável por este insucesso é a ausência de motores flexíveis nas opções do modelo, defeito este que passa a ser história com a chegada da opção do 1.6 16v Sigma, sucessor dos RoCam no mundo todo, e que também supre a necessidade de uma versão de entrada, ideal para combater rivais como VW Golf, Fiat Stilo Attractive ou Chevrolet Astra, mais baratos, mas ainda muito bem-equipados.

Moderno, seu motor de alumínio produz 109/116 cv (gasolina/álcool) e apresenta baixo peso, que ajudado por ótimas relações de marcha consegue extrair desempenho satisfatório, considerando o elevado peso do modelo, e ainda com impressionantes suavidade e silêncio. Segundo a fábrica, ele vai de 0 a 100 em 12,5 segundos e atinge 189 km/h de máxima, quando usando o combustível vegetal.

O Focus 1.6 recebeu uma agressiva estratégia de vendas por parte da Ford, recebendo airbag duplo, ar-condicionado, computador de bordo, direção hidráulica, sistema de som com MP3 rodas de liga leve de 16 polegadas de série desde a versão básica GL, que parte de R$ 49.900. Já a GLX começa em R$ 51.400, e adiciona vidros elétricos traseiros e com sistema um-toque para todos, além de detalhes externos na cor do veículo, entre outros. Os únicos opcionais são freios com ABS, EBD, CBC e disco nas rodas traseiras.