Along with the new iPod lineup, Apple also introduced Ping, a new social music discovery tool built into iTunes 10 at the Fall Music Event, held last Tuesday. iTunes 10 users can log into Ping and follow their favorite artists and friends and discover what music they’re talking about. It sounds like Apple’s goal is to get you to post your thoughts about an artists particular album, live concerts and just discuss their music genre in general. In addition to Ping, iTunes 10 looks a lot different than the previous versions. The layout looks fresher and it sorts music in a different manner, geared more towards artists rather than particular songs.

More @ iTunes.

Over the past couple years Facebook has really taken off to become the online resource for keeping up with your friends. It’s not just for college students anymore. My mom, sister, borther-in law, girlfriend and just about everyone I know is on it whether I want to be friends with them or not. Just like in real life there are friends that are annoying and do annoying things.

• Don’t become a fan of stupid things like Waving at security cameras or Stopping the microwave before it hits 0:00 to avoid hearing the “BEEP”s. (Yes those are really Facebook fan pages and I know people who are fans of.)
• Stop sending me group invites. I don’t want to join your group a protesting a Wal-Mart being built in Shaboygen, Wisconsin. We live in a capitalist society and you need to get over it.
• Don’t have 20 siblings listed in your profile. If you really have that many siblings then your mom is a prostitute and you shouldn’t admit it to your friends even though they probably already know.
• Don’t post status updates every 10 minutes telling your friends what you’re doing. I know it just snowed two feet and we’re all stuck inside for a week straight but we don’t need the constant updates on how bored you are.
• Countdowns are so ridiculously dumb. Why would someone need to tell everyone who follows them a daily countdown leading up to an event that obviously only they care about. If it’s such a big, cool event then I want to see other people excited and counting down to it. Sometimes they start it at day 20 too.
• If you post updates that are TMI, you’re history. Just because I met you that one time at a party and will probably never meet you again doesn’t mean I want to know about your rash or gyno appointment.
• If you play Farmville, Cafe World or the Mafia game and post game updates then I’m not your friend anymore. I know there’s a way to turn off specific status updates but I don’t care, deleted.
• Don’t post duplicate pictures. If you do then you don’t deserve to be my friend.
• Stop adding people you met online as your friends. As much as you want it to be, it’s not a popularity contest and you don’t really know 1,043 people as your Facebook profile suggests. If you do then you don’t have a real life and I don’t want to be your friend anyway.
• Wow you made a baby. Good for you. Stop begging for attention by posting 43 pictures of him with a puppy.
• Facebook, stop completely redesigning your site. A tweak here or there is fine but it’s annoying to get to relearn where everything is when you update the look every six months.
• And last but not least: DON’T ever, ever, ever,Poke me. Poke me, you’re gone. Not only will I remove you from my friends list, I will also block you so there’s no chance I will ever communicate with you over Facebook again.

More random stuff I hate:

• Stop IMing me in Facebook chat if I enable it for 10 seconds.
• Stop posting weird obscure updates that no one understands.
• I don’t want to have a Facebook pillow fight.
• I don’t know any of my friend recommendations.
• Stop getting in verbal fights with random people over random comments.

When tracking your statistics on your blog, there are many options. If you have a self hosted Wordpress site, there are built in widgets that you can download and install. Your hosting company may also provide free statistics to you already. But I usually like to use statistic sites where you can sign up, copy code and paste into your sidebar.

I’ve been using Extreme Tracking for a while now. They make you put a button on your site that links to your public statistics but the statistics are very easy to read and user friendly. I actually just discovered a new tracker provided by W3Counter. The thing that makes W3Counter different is the deep amount of statistics provided. The deep web 2.0 friendly stats make it easy to monitor who is coming to your site and how they’re getting there.

Another cool feature of W3Counter statistics is the Google Maps view you get of your visitors. You can zoom in and out, slick on the markers and view the IP address of that visitor, how they got to your site and the time and date of the visit. The above screenshot is just of the past 24 hours but It’s going to be fun to watch the visitors multiply on the map and see where they are located.

Welcome, Blogger

With blogging getting bigger and bigger over the past few years, people may want to know what the best blogging publisher is. It is now easier than ever for potential bloggers to sit down on the computer, go to a blogging site like Blogger, fill out a few forms, pick a template, and start blogging in minutes. Blogging is a great and exciting way to express your feelings to a world of potential listeners and WordPress is the best way to do that.

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

There are two ways to use WordPress. The first is free but limiting. Check out WordPress.com and sign up for a blog, You can choose from over 60 themes but won’t be able to do much customization unless you buy upgrades and you will be stuck with a domain like mysite.wordpress.com. The second way is to go through a hosting company (I recommend ehostpros) with auto install. This will typically cost around $5-$10/month but will get you tons more options which can be viewed at WordPress.org.

What are all these options?

Well when you use WordPress through your own hosting site, you get access to all WordPress has to offer. Because WordPress is open source, developers and designers make plug-ins and themes and you have access to the PHP and CSS code so you can customize every pixel of your blog. Now obviously you will need to know how to code in order to be able to edit it but the friendly people over at the WordPress.org forums should be able to help you with questions you may have.

When I built the blog you’re currently viewing, I started with a theme I downloaded here. From there I  customized the graphics and images. When it was looking the way i wanted it to visually, I started to focus more on some of the add-ons and plug-ins. I updated the site with features such as post views, a better photo gallery and search engine friendly blog posts.

So what makes WordPress so Good then?

WordPress has been leading the charge as the leading Blogging Publisher for five years now. The admin section of WordPess is fluid and easy to use. For every feature that WordPress doesn’t offer, there are usually five plug-ins that do what you’re looking for. Some fully functional websites are completely done in WordPress and while that limits what you can do, it does make a decent content manager. New versions of WordPress come out every couple weeks which upgrade features and fix bugs and security flaws. I’d check out Movable Type before settling on WordPress but I currently recommend WordPress as the best blogging publisher available.

I’m relatively new to blogging but that doesn’t mean I can’t get decent hits on my blog. Recently I posted a story on Sim City coming out for the iPhone. In Photoshop I mocked up a simple and clever photo of what Sim City could look like on the iPhone along with some text. The post took me about 10 minutes to make in total.

The good people at 9to5mac.com liked the picture and featured it on their website while linking back to mine. My daily hits shot up from around 35 views/day to 250 views/day. Sure it only lasted 3 days and they’re back to normal again but for those three days I drew a lot of traffic into my site, viewers who could potentially click ads or subscribe to my RSS feed. I learned that creating witty images are easy ways to draw in hits to your blog.