Posted new Portfolio page at http://simpler.me/category/portfolio/

Simpler.me recently created an informational site about the 2009 Swine Flu (H1N1) outbreak. It aggregates RSS feeds from a variety of official and press sources, as well as displaying an outbreak map of the latest cases. Tools used:

• Wordpress
• HTML / CSS
• Wordpress theme design
• Feedlist Wordpress plugin

[www.2009swineflu.info]

It is possible to consolidate all of your incoming mail into one Gmail inbox, if you want to. Gmail has two crucial features – the ability to send mail as a different account, and the ability to download mail using POP3 from other accounts.

1 – Sign into your Gmail account

2 – Go to Settings –> Accounts –> “Get mail from other accounts”

3 – Click to “Add a mail account”, and input the POP3 settings from your old email account (varies by provider). Then choose how to import it. I highly recommend you not delete the mail from the old account’s inbox, and also apply a label to all mail from the old account.

4 – Gmail will then download all of the old account’s mail, this may take awhile depending on how much mail there is. After the mail is downloaded, it will all be marked as “unread” – since POP3 does not “see” read status like the superior IMAP protocol does. You’ll have to sort through it (using that label you should have applied in step #3) to mark the messages read.

Now, to set up emailing from the old account, if you wish to do so. If you are completely switching to Gmail and don’t want to reply to messages using the old account, you are already done!

5 – Go to Settings –> Accounts –> “Send mail as”

6 – Click to “Add another email address”, and fill out the form. Gmail will send an email to the account, to confirm you own it. If you set up POP3 downloads to Gmail in steps 1-4, it should show up in your Gmail inbox.

7 – When you get the email, click the confirmation link, and you now should be able to send mail using the other account from your Gmail account.

I personally am only partially using these features so far – what I am using them for is to consolidate account types. For example, all my personal email will go to one account, business related to another, and shopping/junk mail to a third. I may eventually consolidate into one master account, but only when the “Multiple Inboxes” Gmail Labs feature plays nicely with the Remember the Milk Firefox plugin.

Hope this tip has helped you organize your email inboxes!

Here are the basics to login and content creation in Wordpress, current as of version 2.7.1:

In your web browser, visit http://www.[your sitename here]/wp-admin (for example: http://www.mysite.com/wp-admin )

You should see a screen like this:

Type your username and password, then click the Log In button.

Now you will be at the Wordpress Dashboard. Here, you can see some of your site statistics and recent information at a glance. For editing and adding information, look at the sidebar, as shown here:

In the sidebar, everything is divided into three main sections: the Dashboard (top, dashboard only), the content creation section (middle, contains Posts, Media, Links, Pages and Comments) and the administration section (bottom, contains Appearance, Plugins, Users, Tools and Settings). For adding and editing content, you will only be using the middle content creation section.

For today, we will mainly be dealing with the Posts and the Pages headers. Each header can be expanded into individual pages. For example, under the Posts header, there are Edit, Add New, Tags and Comments pages. Under the Pages header, there are Edit and Add New pages.

You should use Pages and Posts for different activities. Pages are for more permanent content, such as your site About page, Contact page and Home page (if you have one). Posts are for more often updated content, such as news items or freqently updated information.

To add a new Post, go to the Add New page under the Posts header. To add a new Page, go to the Add New page under the Pages header. Both will take you to a content editor you can use to publish to your site. You will enter the Page or Post title at the top and the content in the main center text box. Choose whether to allow comments and trackbacks (links from other blogs or websites) near the bottom of the page under the “Discussion” header, then add a Category (if this is a Post, Pages do not have categories) on the right. When you are finished, click the Publish button on the upper right.

To edit an existing Post or Page, visit the Edit page under the Posts or Pages header. You will see a list of your current Posts or Pages. Click on a Post or Page to bring you to the content editor, just as if you were adding a new Post or Page, except now you are editing an existing one. Make any edits you need, then click the “Update Post” (or Update Page) button on the upper right, in the same spot the Publish button would be when adding new content.

To add a picture, click the first icon just to the right of “Upload/Insert” below the title box in the content editor – see the photo to the right:

There are other buttons for adding other content, but we will cover only Photos for today. Once you clicked the Photo button, a box will come up prompting you to upload the photo. Once the photo is uploaded, you can choose the title, caption (optional), link (optional), justification, and size. When all of those are set, click “Insert into Post” (or Page). Once it is on your page, you can click and hold to drag and reposition it as neccessary.

Just signed up for the http://simpler.me twitter account – visit us at http://twitter.com/simplerme

Hi! Welcome to simpler.me. This site is dedicated to helping you make the most out of the internet, new media, and technology in general. Please visit the what we do page for more information on hiring simpler.me, or the articles page for helpful technology strategies.

Villa Sabana is a beautiful vacation destination in Bali and it deserved an equally beautiful website. Tools used:

• HTML / CSS
• Adobe Photoshop CS3
• Adobe Illustrator CS3

[www.villasabana.com]