Los Angeles Fires Raging Uncontrollably

LA Fires Caught on CameraThe fires in LA are seriously out of control. If you have any doubt, here is a very impressive time-lapse video that Brandon Riza shot, with his Canon 5D Mark II I might add.

First of all, the fires are very scary, and I feel bad for the folks in California right now. I hope none of you guys are being affected, but I’m sure a few of you are, so my heart goes out to you. Secondly, it goes to prove how little control we have over our environment. After thousands of years, and with all the technology we possess, mankind still lacks the ability to put out a forest fire.

Sad.
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How to Invite ALL Facebook Friends to a Group, Event or Page

I set up a couple of groups on Facebook – our Wealth Nation group (PLEASE JOIN!) and the Stop the Farmville Madness!!! group – and wanted to invite all my friends, but it would have taken an eternity because for some strange reason Facebook doesn’t allow you to “select all” friends when sending an invite. I mean, they’ll let you do it… but only if you click one at a time! Uugh.

Well anyway I went on a little search and found that you could cheat the Facebook system by inserting a little javascript to make it happen! Here is how to do it:


  1. Go to your Facebook Event, Facebook Group or Facebook page and click “Invite People”.
  2. Once the page has loaded you should see all of your friends, but they are not selected.
  3. At this point, copy and paste the javascript code below into your Web browser’s address bar, then hit “Enter”.
  4. If all goes well, it selects all of your friends!
  5. IMPORTANT: NOW YOU MUST WAIT!!! If you have a lot of Facebook friends, you have to leave that window open for a long time so it sends all of the invitations! I have about 1,400 and it took like 15-20 minutes to send all of the invitations. The Invite window will close when its done. So exercise patience!!!!!!!!!!

javascript:elms=document.getElementById('friends').getElementsByTagName('li');for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === 'object'){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}

If that first method doesn’t work for you give this a try:

Right click the “friend box” and open it in a new tab:
Then paste this ==> javascript: fs.select_all()


Finally, there is now a GreaseMonkey script for Firefox to Invite All Facebook Friends if you want to try that as well..

Oh, and by the way, if you found this helpful please tweet it or share it on Facebook to help others find it too. The more people who share it, the more people it helps! It takes some time for all of the Facebook invites to be sent. They go into a queue. So if you saw them all get selected, just be patient. The messages WILL get delivered over the next 24 hours or so.


UPDATE

If none of that is working for you, Michael Quale developed a little Chrome plugin which I personally tested and it did the trick. You can get it on the Chrome browser store here. And here is a little video of it working.

Again, that one is only for Chrome users, but I highly recommend that everyone use Chrome anyway…

NEW Wealth Nation: Spotlight on Success | Scott Jordan, ScotteVest

ScotteVestFor those of you who weren’t aware, I am co-hosting a podcast with my friends Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell called Wealth Nation in which we tackle a wide variety of topics ranging from personal finance to business issues. We’ve started a new segment on the show which we’ll be putting out once or twice a month called “Spotlight on Success”.

Each Spotlight on Success show will feature a different successful entrepreneur, businessperson or professional, and we’ll learn all about how they came to stand out, what challenges they faced, and what they would do different if they could do it all over again. If you’ve got any suggestions for people you’d like to see us interview please let us know. But in the meantime please enjoy meeting Scott Jordan, CEO of ScotteVest…

(Just click the play button below to listen)

Listen to

The podcast is also available for subscription in iTunes (please rate the show if you get a chance), and you can find it on WealthNation.FM as well.

Pretty Link Pro Will Change the World (Wide Web)!

Pretty-Link-ProI’m pretty sure this is the first time that I’ve ever come out and advocated any sort of add-on, theme or plugin for WordPress that actually costs money. But get ready folks because here comes a game changer!

I heard about a WordPress plugin called Pretty Link Pro from Mitch over at Planet5D (the awesome Canon 5D camera site) and was intrigued enough to check it out. The plugin promised to do a few things that I could hardly believe:

  • Create YOUR OWN Short Links from Long URLs
  • Measure the effectiveness of Pay-Per-Click campaigns
  • Track social media campaigns

After reading through the user manual, and also seeing that Blair Williams (the plugin author) offered a 30 day money back guarantee, I decided I had absolutely nothing to lose and paid for the plugin on the spot. I’ve just spent the last 12 hours installing, tweaking, testing and using the plugin and I am absolutely in love. I 100% recommend that every WordPress user get this plugin now! And I’ll tell you why…
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WordCamp Dallas 2009: Dave Curlee – How To Add Video To Your WordPress Site

Dave CurleeOh good lord. You guys are in for a treat that I will never live down. You get to see me in my full on Pimp outfit from the brief appearance at WordCamp Dallas 2009. I can’t believe that Dave left that in the video. Oh, who am I kidding. I can believe he left it in there! Anyway, here is Dave Curlee lecturing on How To Add Video To Your WordPress Site.

Of course, all of these WordCamp videos were produced and edited by Dave Curlee. So, when it comes to this video he had to give the lecture, oversee himself being filmed, and edit and post it. Whew! That’s a lot of work!
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More OMB Changes

Folks, a few more changes for the old blog here today:

  • Removed the MyBlogLog widget. Sorry, but I got sick of it slowing down the page loading time. Plus I just don’t use it any more, so it was time to go.
  • Added new Facebook integration! Now you can log into OMB with your Facebook account! How cool is that? You can also have your comments appear on your Facebook wall and stuff like that.
  • Removed the “Top Commenter” widget. Sorry for those of you who really liked that feature, but it was attracting so many spammers that I just didn’t want to deal with it any more.

Oh, I also added a Facebook Group for OMB, so please join it if you haven’t yet. It’s going to be a good place for us to all chat about stuff without having to do it in the comments here on the blog.

He’s One Bad Mutha… Shut Yo Mouth! What? I’m Talkin Bout Shaft!

ShaftThis is the intro to the original 1971 version of the movie Shaft. I needed to post this because I’m always quoting the famous line from the song, “He’s One Bad Mutha… Shut yo Mouth! What? I’m Talkin’ bout Shaft!” but a bunch of people have no idea what I’m talkin bout Willis!

So here you go. I’m talking bout Shaft! You’ll here the line at the 3:48 mark in this video.
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How Disabled People Use the Internet – Refreshable Braille, Screen Readers and Wheelchairs

Web AccessibilityThank to Glenda Watson Hyatt (@GlendaWH on Twitter) for sharing a fascinating article by Roger Hudson called Refreshable Braille.

This article has a great deal of significance to me because I’ve been preaching Web Accessibility since the inception of the Internet, having even served on the W3C’s original Web Accessibility Initiative, and having built HTMLHelp.com around educating people about standards compliant Web development.

Heck, I even built the theme for OneMansBlog.com from scratch to try and insure accessibility among other things… But can you believe that in the last decade, I’ve never actually seen real users navigating the Web like this? Wow. It is refreshing to see that people can do it after fighting so hard for so long to build accessible standards.

I believe every person should watch these videos, whether you are a designer or not, to understand the challenges that some visitors face when they come to your Web site. So please take 5 minutes out of your day and give this article a little attention. Thanks!
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I’m Lecturing Friday 8/28/2009: The Social Web Made Simple

John-P-AvatarFolks, this Friday August 28th from 8:30-11:30, along with Mitch Savage from Nomee, I’ll be speaking for the Frisco Chamber of Commerce members about “improving customer connections to benefit the bottom line”. I hope you will all come out and join us! And by all, I mean only a few of you because seating is limited and you definitely won’t all fit. :-) In fact, the event is almost full, so if you would like to come please hurry up and register!

This is a three hour session in which we will cover the business benefits of the social web and show you step-by-step how to get started. By the end of this easy to understand workshop you’ll be ready to put the social web to work for your business. So, bring yourself, and bring your boss if you have been looking for the opportunity to convince them that you should be doing something with social media. This is one of the few times this year that I’ll be taking time out to do this sort of thing…

The cost to attend is $25 for Frisco Chamber members or $30 for non-members. You can register online and here is a PDF version of the flyer for the event.
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