You might be seeing a new author around my network of sites … “HART KAHUNA” .. that’s me!

Well, actually, that isn’t me – it’s an automated service providing my blog with fresh content .. for Free!

Bloggers – Get FREE Content For Your Blogs

I’m trying Syndicate Kahuna on a few blogs – in particular, blogs that have been dormant or to prevent a blog from being dormant. For instance, on the “And You Will” blog I have a little store included and drip feeding product selections (books) into the blog automatically. Currently, there is no full time writer on this blog anymore, and I wanted some fresh content to mix in with the store content. This is a great alternative for me than (1) hiring another full-time writer or (2) writing fresh content every day myself.

How Does It Work?

There is no cost to the blogger using the service and content. I have included an affiliate link with the banner et al because authors have to PAY to submit content to Syndicate Kahuna and if you are an author and go through my link, I might earn a little commission. This is a quality HUMAN edited service that make sure that that quality of the content coming in, is also going out to quality sites (like mine! :D). This assures the author that their links included in the articles do generate GOOD backlinks for them. Reading the site’s Terms of Service, I’m unsure whether or not I am technically allowed to modify the content – I PRESUME THAT I AM ABLE TO – as long as the links are left in tact. This way, like PLR articles, if I had the time, I could change the title of the article and reword it in a way and manner suitable to my liking and tone of voice. However, I’m quite lazy and if I did that – I would have a stack full of Draft posts needing to be edited.

The identical articles may be found in other sites, but they will limit the number of blogs they will redistribute content. But, it’s not like the free ezine article sites that distribute everywhere and have those resource box endings that stuff keywords and adds an extra 200 words to your post! For my “And You Will” blog, with the automated drip feeds and now the automated syndicate kahuna articles .. I will still occasionally go into the blog and provide additional and original content myself just to mix it up a little more for the google bots!

How To Use Syndicate Kahuna

Inside the website there is a list of “Sites Needed” ..

If you are a writer, you can see that there is a need for articles to be distributed to people wanting content on women’s world, fun stuff, other, writing and speaking, etc etc. There may be opportunities for you to write articles and submit and get many backlinks to your site if you are an authority on these topics!

For bloggers like me, I would look at the bottom of the list and see that there are many articles available per site like mine, under technology and gadgets, food and drink, and insurance topics. This will give me an opportunity to find selected topical articles that may be suitable for my blog because you can specify specific keywords that articles must have before any are selected for you. I thought I would do a mini-tutorial here, how I would go about selecting content for a brand new site in my network.

Tutorial: Case Study How To Syndicate Content With Syndicate Kahuna

For my “TEST” .. I thought I would try this on The Beef Jerky Shop @ HART Market because it is the first store in alphabetical order that is food related (ratio of 18.3 articles available per blog).

* Step One: Create an author with “Author Permissions” on the blog in question. You probably do not want to use a password you generally use for this . You also have to go into your “Settings” and then “Writing” and enable/tick the box for “Enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols”.

* Step Two: Log into Syndicate Kahuna and go to: “My Sites”, then click the “Welcome” link. There is a link below their step 6, just after the “if you don’t want to mess with uploading the script” part. Set up the details of your site, URL and author username and password that you just created.

* Step Three: Select the category that you want the article to be selected (it looks like the above image) .. For this case, I have ticked the box “Food and Drink” but, I can select up to 10 categories .. so I have decided to ALSO tick the boxes “Fun Stuff” and “Health and Fitness”. Click ‘next’ button.

* Step Four: Assign categories – this is already tied in directly with your blog, and you should see all of your categories. In this case, I created a new category called “Beef Jerky Notes” although, on my “And You Will” blog I integrated this into the various existing categories that I have over there.

* Step Five: Add Keywords and keyword phrases – As you can see, I don’t want any old food and drink article thrown on my site .. just related to the store topic – which is Beef Jerky.

* Step Six: Select Your Post Settings – I already have 2 posts a day on this and each blog that I have, so I will select only 1 post per day maximum, and “Publish” it immediately. The alternative post status was to save “Pending Review” if I wanted to review it more closely. What I have decided to do is publish immediately, and if the content is not what I want – redo the keyword section or, add keywords to exclude etc.

* Step Seven: Add Site > you’re done!

Feel free to follow my progress with articles in the “Beef Jerky Notes” category to see how this shapes up over the next little while.

Thanks!
HART

I Should Be Sending Out Newsletters

I’ve been blogging since Mid-May 2005 and although I do offer the option to subscribe to our RSS Feed via email (via Feedburner) – not many people have been subscribing. I mean, I have just about 1,000 subscribers on the 40-50 blogs of the HART-Empire Network .. (and to you subscribers who have signed up .. THANK-YOU!) .. but I feel I should have a LOT more subscribers by this time in 2009.

But, why would you sign up for my newsletter? I’m not sending out newsletters. Actually, on half my blogs I don’t think I am even sending out daily recaps of my RSS Feed. But, to be honest .. even if everything was working correctly and I was on the ball .. I just don’t have any clue how to send out newsletters with Feedburner!

This isn’t one of those “Uh-Huh” moments .. as I’ve known about this problem of mine for years. I just wasn’t sure how to fix this or what I should be doing. I’ve received many recommendations by my online friends and forum buddies but there was one article that really got me convinced: Chris Garrett did a post Why I Switched to Aweber for my Blog E-Mail Subscribers back in April 2008.

The Aweber Option

About a year and 2 months ago (July 2008) I signed up with Aweber .,.. paid $193.80 in advance for a full year .. and never really did much with this. I mean, it wasn’t a total waste, as I do have a subscription option in my sidebar of PetLvr.com/blog/ but certainly not effective. I haven’t promoted it at all – and, what’s worse – I didn’t take the time of day how to use the information that I was collecting.

At the end of July 2009 when renewal came up – I figured I had two options:
(1) Quit or
(2) Try again

Well, I blame myself for not spending the time to learn Aweber and utilize it – not the fault of the service – so I renewed it for another year and decided to try it once again. You can sign up to Aweber on a monthly basis ($19/month) but this is a long-term venture, if I can get this to work for me, and I opted for the annual renewal price one again $16/month).

Now It’s Time To Get In Your Face!

I’m not really a fan of popups, or popunders, or terrible messages preventing you from leaving site .. but I’ve been eyeing the popup on Cindy King – Cross Cultural Marketer and International Sales Strategist. Cindy uses Robert Plank’s Action Popup which is a paid plugin for both wordpress and non-wordpress sites. At this time, I have tried it on my wpMU environment (HARTmarket.com) and it doesn’t work. But this is a great plugin and works on every other site.

What I like about this plugin is that you can set the background to different colors, adjust the popup size, time, height, width and also decide when to have the popup arrive in your blog. Another important consideration for me was, that there is no hidden “X” button. If you click anywhere anyplace the popup goes away.

Purpose of ME Collecting Emails

1) I want a permanent solution. Currently, with the Feedburner email option .. I have various sites that do not use Feedburner, and that excludes me from allowing my readers to view the RSS via Email. Also, if I ever get big and wanted to change Feedburner, I would have to ask everybody to OPT IN once again to any new system. I may as well start from scratch – well, practically – and do this right once and for all.

2) I really do want to get to know my readers and let my readers know me. I wish to periodically give free stuff away to my readers and/or recommend non-free stuff that I might make a small commission or referral free. I want to do secret polls and pass along secret sites that everybody else is not able to access. And most of all, I would like to find out better the needs of my readers and what they are looking for that will help me better serve them.

3) Viewing my site, via email. Although I hope you sign up to my RSS feeds, I personally think that most people would prefer to receive email updates with the option to eventually read an RSS feed. Generally, once a feed runs through the Feed Reader, and you view an article, it will eventually fall off the table. With Gmail, it’s easier to search your Gmail account for research on blog topics – if you are subscribing to many newsletters – because you have already weeded out the garbage from the general search engines.

4) Heck! I want to sign up to my own newsletters to find out what I’m doing in my network 🙂 Currently, besides myself, I have other writers publishing everyday, and automated content drip feeding in the stores and although I should be reading 30-50 sites a day .. it’s time consuming. I prefer myself to read the recap of posts once a day – believe it or not! Once you start checking your email (or RSS Feed Reader or Twitter) it is quite easy to get lost in the forest and forget to walk out and do other stuff.

So? When Do I start!

I will be doing this for every site I have, and eventually this one too! I want to push .. and ASK MY READERS if they want to subscribe to my newsletter. I think this will be good for me, to know who is really interested in my sites and see the people subscribing .. instead of gawking over random analytic and other statistic data.

Check out my Santa’s Gift Secrets Blog to see this script in action!

And If You Don’t Want To Subscribe To My Newsletters?

Well .. you don’t have to! I hope that you do not STOP coming to my sites, just because of this popup. I can assure you that if you sign up to my newsletter, there won’t be any future popops! 😀

But seriously folks (bahroompah!) I will be setting the plugin to eventually stop after “X” visits, so if you haven’t signed up by a certain amount of visits, it won’t bother you anymore. Also, I’m on a HART-Timeline .. meaning that this won’t be an instantly Snap=My=Fingers and this is set up on all my sites … and why not?

I just decided this course of action this afternoon!

Grrrr.

These blogs of mine were affected by the recent wordpress worm that has been spreading across the internet ..

BattlingForHealth.com
AndYouWill.com
CatLvr.com
FishLvr.com
BirdLvr.com
PapillonLvr.com
HorseLvr.com
and this one – HART-Empire.com

What Happened?

Everybody is linking here on twitter and around the web .. so I will do that too ..

Please Read: Lorelle on WordPress – Old WordPress Versions Under Attack (Sep 4/2009)

Basically, all the permalinks from the above blogs had this attached to it:

/[old-permalink-post-title]/%&(%7B$%7Beval(base64_decode($_SERVER%5BHTTP_REFERER%5D))%7D%7D|.+)&%/

How widespread has it been? Even Scobleizer was hit!

WordPress offers some advice – but it doesn’t really offer a solution (that I can find).

HOW TO FIX YOUR BLOG IF YOU ARE AFFECTED

The best fix that I found was on Andy Sowards blog –
UPDATED! Breaking: WordPress MySQL injection – how to fix latest attack %&({${eval(base64_decode($_SERVER[HTTP_REFERER]))}}|.+)&%/

Let Me Recap: It’s not that hard to do.

1) Fix your Permalinks (settings/permalinks/update)
> You can do this in your blog .. just remove the custom permalink modification by this worm

2) Check and Remove (if exists) any new Administrators – could be hidden.
> You can do this from your blog, or see via phpMyAdmin in your cPanel

Do Yourself A Favor

If you haven’t been hit with this wordpress worm, upgrade to the latest wordpress version 2.8.4.

If you have been hit with this wordpress worm, upgrade to the latest wordpress version 2.8.4.

There is always good reason to keep upgrading to the latest version, and it’s all security and peace of mind. WordPress makes it so easy to upgrade now – all you have to do is push a button – so, there should be no reason why you wouldn’t want to have the latest version around.

This is a TRUE Story. After reading and following the timeline of HART and the INTERNET, you can only come to ONE CONCLUSION! This is HART’s official entry in BlogCatalog’s Give Away contest to Blog World and New Media Expo 2009 .. and HART needs to win .. HART *must* win! 😀

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

15,000,000,000 BC

– The “Big Bang” Theory
– The universe was created so HART could fulfill his destiny

3000 BC to 2500 BC

– Construction of the Egyptian pyramids at Gizeh

2500 BC

– Stonehenge was built

BIRTH OF THE INTERNET

January 1995

– Discovers something called “The Internet”

March 1995

– signs up with Compuserve

July 1995

– realized what a douche Compuserve was and obtains own host provider and 56k dial-up service

August 24, 1995

– win95 was released to the world and becomes HART’s preferred operating software

September 1995

– HART creates his award winning “HART’s Homepage”

November 30, 1996

– HART travels around the world from Winnipeg, Manitoba to London UK to meet internet friends for fun and gathering

December 3, 1996

– HART visits Stonehenge, after being mugged on a train on his first night in London UK, and miraculously finds his passport and belongings returned in another city 100 miles away with a letter from the mugger that said: “I like Canadians .. you guys are smart not to carry your money with your passport. Here is yours back. Cheers.”

March 8, 1997

– While watching A&E or the TLC channel history of the construction of the Egyptian pyramids at Gizeh, a woman named Yvonne decides to initiate a chat with HART on PowWow

August 31, 2002

– HARTandYvonne.com was created to memoralize HART and YVONNE’s medieval wedding on this date

FORMATION OF THE HART-EMPIRE NETWORK

May 31, 2005

– HART’s first blog, PetLvr.blogspot.com/ was created

July 14, 2005

– HART moves everything from Blogger to his own servers and to become PetLvr.com/blog/ and begins creating multiple blogs and websites and starts to build and ’empire’ online

August 10, 2005

– HART creates a profile and joins Blog Catalog directory

October 16, 2005

– HART creates the HART-Empire Network and officially embarks on to build up his blogging empire
– Coincidentally, the birth of the HART-Empire Network and subsequent anniversaries fall directly in the middle of the famed BlogWorld New Media Expo conference, of which had solicited the HART-Empire Network to join and participate in an exhibit since 2006 and subsequent years

July 2006

– During rapid expansion of the HART-Empire Network, HART experiences growing pains and while a mega account containing 5 major blogs starts becoming a burden, HART moves all the expansion blogs to new hosting service plans.

November 10, 2006

– Joins MyBlogLog and discovers that a social community will be the future of forums and other catalog and directories, and creates a popular presence and standing in the community

Sometime in January 2007

– BlogCatalog is purchased from those bloggy guys and is under new ownership. In addition to a directory, there seems to be growing activity in a forum type of website

May 13, 2007

– HART gives up all social communities online and decides to concentrate on the blogging

May 13, 2007 at 11:59am

– Antony Berkman from BlogCatalog personally requests to HART …
” Don’t leave blogcatalog. We love a community made of characters. Check out the new discussions…. you’d be a welcome addition blogcatalog.com/discuss “
– (and HART never left!)

July 2007

– Receiving growing pains again, HART Consolidates all host providers into one single dedicated Server, at substantially higher fixed costs, however the upgrade solved a lot of downtime problems due to excess CPU Resources bringing the server down (not traffic levels).

August 30, 2007

– the HART-Empire Network impresses thegoodknife

September 27, 2007

– HART and the PetLvr Blog unites with bloggers around the world blogging against animal abuse and receives one of five honorable mentions of all the bloggers around the world contributing to this worthy cause by Copywrite, Ink

March 24, 2008

– TonyB commented on BlogCatalog that the HART-Empire Network was on the verge of going big, and enquired if I was going to SOBcon08

August 31, 2008

– HART receives an extended 3-month upgrade to his existing membership here at BlogCatalog for his excellent suggestion and valuable input to the betterment of the community

September 3, 2008

– TonyB is desperate for HART to find a way to make it to BlogWorld Expo Sep20-21/08, although timing just was not right – again in 2008, as it was in 2007

October 16, 2008

– HART and the PetLvr Blog participates in the first annual Pet ‘Net Adoption Event

January 4, 2009

– After registering record gross revenues for the calendar year ended December 31, 2008 .. HART still reflects whether or not it cost him NOT to go to any SOBcon events, BlogWorldExpo events, or any other blogging events during the year and reflects on the results over the next few months.

March 1, 2009

– The HART-Empire Network consolidates 16 health blogs into one mega BattlingForHealth.com blog

April 1, 2009

– The HART-Empire Network consolidates 12 do-it-yourself improvement blogs into one mega AndYouWill.com blog

August 6, 2009

– While away on summer vacation, during a typical Manitoba summer day (NSFW), and assessing the HART-Empire Network and its finances, HART recognizes that although traffic levels were maintained over the past 7 months in 2009, revenues have declined by approximately 30% since the consolidation of the 28 blogs into 2 mega blogs.

August 19, 2009

– BlogCatalog announces that they are Giving Away Full Access Pass to BlogWorld 2009 which includes a free 3-day, full access pass (valued at $1,195) for this year’s event being held October 15-17, 2009 in Las Vegas, NV… PLUS 1 million ad impressions for your blog on BlogCatalog!

August 30, 2009

– HART (aka PetLvr on BlogCatalog) decides to enter BlogCatalog’s contest entry with this post as his official entry.

CLAIRVOYANT PREDICTIONS

Friday September 19, 2009

– Blogcatalog announces that HART (aka PetLvr on BlogCatalog) wins the grand prize of a 3-day full access pass for BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2009, and a dinner in Las Vegas with the BlogCatalog team!
– HART scrambles around trying to raise money to pay for travel and hotel expenses to be able to learn and meet many smart bloggers and new media personnel that will be in attendance.

October 15-17, 2009 in Las Vegas

– HART has the time of his life in Las Vegas and … (oops, can’t say … what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas)
– October 17, 2009 – HART remembers to call his folks to wish them a Happy Anniversary

October 19, 2009

– HART starts first thing Monday morning with STAGE TWO of the life and times of the HART-Empire Network

January 3, 2011

– HART reports the largest and most success year ever! for the HART-Empire Network, with one of the largest list of online and offline friends one can have!

December 21, 2012

– Who would have thought … but, in the Bizzaro World, the forecast based primarily on what is claimed to be the end-date of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, which is presented as lasting 5,125 years and as terminating on December 21 or 23, 2012, along with interpretations of assorted legends, scriptures, numerological constructions and prophecies .. actually happened! Bizzaro World is destroyed by a meteor.
– Hello.

December 22, 2012

– On our planet Earth, everything is alright and everybody prepares to have a safe and happy Holiday season!
– Goodbye.

This is HART’s official entry in BlogCatalog’s Give Away contest to Blog World and New Media Expo 2009.

In the event that HART is awarded this prize, and unable to finance this venture (travel and hotel etc), HART will give away any free prize at the earliest convenience to a lucky and regular reader of the HART-Empire Network.

We were out for a walk and was thinking that if I were the neighbor across the street, I’d be constantly looking out my front window during thunderstorms with lightning!

I dunno *shrug* just wanted to say that.

These are my favorite “sweet-HARTs” that have been stumbled by me during the two weeks, since my last “Tuesday sweet-HART” post on July 14th. Last week I ran into some food poisoning, and with me also trying to finish up some offline work so I can take a vacation next week .. last week’s post never happened.

I stumble, reddit, digg, mixx, propel, Tipd, bizSugar, delicious, and probably at least a good half dozen other social media bookmarking and voting sites and you can see all of my stumbles at petlvr.stumbleupon.com. But, for every 10-20 good posts that I come across, there is usually one GREAT POST that just makes you go “Wow” .. or “LOL” .. that you just have to smile! These are what I call my “sweet-HART” picks!

You might want to get a fresh cup of coffee .. or your favorite glass of wine .. or light some nice scented candles .. etc .. and Enjoy!!

This week’s sweet-HARTs

* Anthony McCune, The Lives and Times… – The Rooftop Concert
* Belly Fat Loser – How to Get Rid of Cankles
* Blogging Health Careers – 50 Excellent Blogs to Learn About the Upcoming Healthcare Crisis
* Bust Clutter! – How reducing clutter decreases your debt
* Chef Tom Cooks! – 5 Free Cookbooks For Twitter Users
* Holy Taco – PSA’s From The Future
* Freelance Folder – Ten Tips To Stay Motivated — Even When You Really Don’t Feel Like Working
* Karaoke Lounge – Favorite Karaoke Moments in Film and Television
* Pot Politics – US Health care debate please weigh in thanks
* Small Biz Bee – Seven Habits of Highly Effective Twitter Users
* Starcasm – Tim Burton Alice In Wonderland Trailer 2010 Photos Gallery Part 2
* Store Crowd – Top 25 Gadgets for Men in 2009
* TechJaws – Eat Blueberries to Improve Sexual Performance
* The Income Team Blog – Favorite Quotes
* The New York Times – Apollo 11 – Mission To The Moon
* The SciTech Journal – After 40 years of first Moon landing: Was it real?
* Vladimir Prelovac – Incredible Wave Pictures (ps like the favicon too :D)
* Wild Apricot’s non-profit technology blog – What Have You Done for Me Lately? – Keeping Score in Social Media
* Winning The Web – 7 Red Flags that Reveal to Google You’re an SEO Criminal – Avoid These!

Other Folks’ Weekly Roundups! (2 weeks)

* Anthony McCune, The Lives and Times… – McCunications Weekend Mashup 19
* Anthony McCune, The Lives and Times… – McCunications Weekend Mashup 26
* Battling For Health – What’s the latest in health care, July 27
* Kikolani – Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Slap Chop Remix
* Kikolani – Fetching Friday – Resources Mashup, Follow Friday, & Back to School Backpack Safety
* TechJaws – Feeding Frenzy – Sharks with a Big Byte
* TechJaws – Feeding Frenzy – Walter Cronkite, Apollo 11, Entrecard Sold

* Your Site Here (if you have a weekly roundup post of good reads that is .. let me know!)

Around The HART-Empire Network

* And You Will – When You Disagree With Your Teen
* Battling For Health – Diet and cancer risk: vegetarians are the winners
* DogLvr – What’s the Best Way to Train Pit Bulls?
* PetLvr – Keeping Pets’ Paws Healthy

If you like any of these posts .. please support the blogger .. participating and commenting on their blogs .. subscribe to their RSS feeds … follow them on twitter .. share the love .. etc etc.

If you have a weekly roundup of posts and would like to be permanently included in this list – let me know in the comment section! Thanks // HART

Every year I spend between $150-$200 CDN on a new office chair for my home office. Being self-employed and working out of my house, an accountant and income tax preparer, a blogger and just a general person who loves to be on the internet for 12-16 hours per day .. I go through a lot of chairs. Some years, I’m buying a new chair every 8 months and other years it’s one chair every 18 months. Time sure flies though, because everytime I need a new chair I can remember rushing out to my local Staples or Office Depot and search for a cheap replacement chair.

Last year, I thought I found a good chair … at Office Depot. It was a little more than $200 CDN ($229.99 I believe) and was the first chair I ever bought that actually had an “ergonomic rating“. It was rated for a maximum of between 3-5 hours a day. When I purchased this chair, I told the salesmen that this was the most stupid rating system that I’ve ever hear of, having office chairs not being able to at least average a regular 8hr business day sitting on the damn chair – not to mention me, who is on the chair for about 12 hours a day or longer! The salesman (who earned his commission that day) assured me that the chair does last a good working day .. and that it’s just common sense guidelines that this new “ergonomic rating” system is really meant that you shouldn’t be sitting in front of your computer for more than 3-5 hours anyway – and should go for a walk, stretch your legs, keep your eyeballs away from the computer screen, etc etc etc

Anyway, This is what happened AFTER 9 Months

On June 5th, the above happened to my office chair. I was just sitting on the chair, and was swivelling left to grab some report out of my printer and *SNAP!* the back just broke in half, like corkboard. The chair wasn’t that bad actually, although the padding was a bit squished from sitting down all the time – but, I couldn’t work without a back.

I tried to fix that chair!

I needed a chair! So, I tried to fix it. I found some 2×4 pieces in my basement and wedged it in along the front of the back mechanism of the chair back, and tied it together with some electrical wire that I also had lying around! That wire started to hurt my back sitting against it, so I found a few old belts and a small pillow and this chair basically was ‘almost’ good as new!

In Search Of A New Office Chair

It was my birthday July 11th and my wife wanted to buy me a new office chair as a present. When she asked me where I wanted to go to buy a new office chair, I thought about this very hard. I thought I could “double up” on her present, and instead of buying some cheap office chair from a cheap office store chain like Staples or Office Depot .. I thought I would look around and find something that would last a lot longer than 8 months or a year! This is what we found.

Believe it or not – we bought a USED office chair, from a hi-end furniture company. These office chairs just came off lease (2 year lease that is) and was still in great condition! Hard to believe! Brand new, these chairs were priced to sell for about $1,600 CDN RETAIL. Because they were used, the were discounted to about $800.00 range (50%). Well, that was more than just a double up on the birthday present and was more like 4x’s what we were initially planning to spend. We asked whether there was something that they can do, and he did say he could lower the price a little, and had to run a few figures. We weren’t dealing with a salesman, by the way .. we were dealing with the owner of the company! My wife’s place of work, as it turned out … is a big customer of this company, and altogether, all things considered … I could have the chair for $600 CDN!

So ..we bought it! Meet HART’s New Office Chair

Not bad for a 2 year old used chair, eh? And, it’s been a week IN USE that I have been testing this chair, and I can tell you 100% that I will never buy a cheap office chair from cheap factory outlets again! It pays to upgrade and I really think that this chair will last a while for me!

Characteristics Of A Good Office Chair

#1. Good Materials

Sitting on this chair is an absolute delight. I’m a big guy, and the fabric of the chair material is durable and permeable that is supposed to dissipate moisture and heat. This is very important for my office, because I’m on the second floor of our Condo and there is a heating issue. In the summer it is quite hot and in the winter it is quite cold and I have to have a heater in my office to keep it warm enough to type. The seat is wide enough so I’m not cramped in the chair and there is about a good “fistful” of space between the front of the chair and my inner knees. Apparently, this is a good thing to keep circulation for those working sitting down in a chair all day. Also, this is a chair with some feathers or spongy styrofoam inside. There is an extra durable MEMORY FITTING harder styrofoam in the cushion that not only supports my weight sitting down all day (and the back too) but when I get off of the chair the seat cushion resorts back to normal position! How cool is that?! Also, there is the standard ‘Seat Pan Tilt” control for this chair. Part of the whole “ergonomics” thingie is to help get the right posture while sitting while you work and help to alleviate
pressure on the back of the thighs. If you ever pulled your hamstring muscles while sitting down working – this is probably why.

#2. Good Armrests

You need armrests when working on the computer. Because my office is an “L” shaped office, I have to be careful on the left side. Almost every chair that I have .. the left armrest always gets broken or sliced up as I rotate a lot to the left, where my Laser printer is located. I’m always swiveling and it has to be able to be a little lower on that side. The armrests on this new chair is very sturdy and well built too. It’s not cheap rubber that, if too hot in my office, my elbows will stick to it. You can move the armrest inwards and outwards for greater comfort seating and you can raise and lower the armrest to place it at the right height you need. For this chair, there’s actually a button/knob that you turn to raise and lower. Most other chairs have a button that you just push in and slide up or down. I think this is a good thing, because it’s more sturdy and doesn’t wobble. My last chair I thought the arms would have fallen off before the back would have broken.

#3. Good Backrest Adjustment

I’m quite happy with the backrest adjustment on my “new” chair. A good chair will have backrest adjustments to help make it easier for you when you sit in a chair for long periods of time. This chair’s backrest can adjust both up and down and tilt forward and backwards. I’m 6’1″ and a big guy, and I need good lumbar support while I sit. I can sit in this chair and lean back, and if the backrest is in the lowest position, I can actually find the right position and slide up a notch at a time to get the right position while I am sitting! At the top of this setting, I would have to release a button on the backrest to revert. There is a lever under the seat for the tilt position, which is supposed to help with the lower back support. My chair has three levers under the chair in total. One to raise the height of the chair, one for the tilting of the backrest and another for the seat tilt. All of this sort of sounds silly talking about it, but in my old chair I would always have to get up and do stretches that .. well, you push your shoulders out and stretch your back (what’s that called?) Since I got this new chair last week .. my back never needs to get a stretching while I work. I think that’s good!

#4. A Really Comfortable Back

This chair has the best back that I have ever had – just look at the shape! My entire office is used while I work, and I often swivel left to get something out of my laser printer, or around to get a glass of water, or swivel right to my fax/inkjet/scanner printer or to my phone, and so on and so on. You don’t really think you notice it with the larger chairs, but the act of spinning around on a chair and reaching for something behind you – with a chair that’s not so thick around the shoulder blades – is very noticeable to me now! Imagine spreading your arms out to your sides, then backwards. It is a lot easier to move your arms back as your shoulders and shoulder blades move with them as well. I have the chair’s skinniest part to fall in between my shoulder blades and have been quite mobile reaching all around my office while remaining sitting at my office chair!

#5. Stability

Unfortunately .. my chair FAILS in this part. I’ve never really noticed this before . but my previous office chair had 5 legs, and this new office chair only has 4 legs. When I was researching for new office chairs, I read somewhere that a good office chair should have 5 pronged base for support. You should also have soft casters for hard surface and hard casters for soft surfaces. Currently, this chair has the softer casters. My chair is sitting on a plastic sheet on top of carpet – so, the surface is also soft. At the moment, this week, it’s not an issue because where my old chair used to have 5 legs .. there are dents in the plastic floor cover! I’m sure over time, the 4 legs will create it’s own indentation in the plastic. I’ve also noted that with the 4 prong legs, if I turn suddenly to the right, it comes a little unstable. I have to watch this to be sure that I don’t tip over and give extra weight to one side of the chair.

All In All ..

Well .. 4 out of 5 ain’t that bad and I’m still sure that this chair will last me a few years at least. I’ve hope you enjoyed my adventure in RECORDING of my chair purchase here in this blog .. as it is a major part of my blogging process each day (being comfortable as I write). Also, I want to see how long it will last me and give me something to search for in the upcoming years, when I need a new chair!

How’s Your Office Chair? How many Hours Do You Sit At Your Computer? How Much Did You Pay For Your Last Office Chair?

Feel free to let us know in the comments!

This is your chance to go to Mars!

Drop by Nasa and fill in your name and location and your name will be included with others on a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover heading to Mars in 2011! You can get a certificate (like above) that you can print and cover with saran wrap and put it on your office wall or something 🙂

Found: via Amy Byrd at Blogcatalog

I’ve decided to add TweetMeme’s “Retweet Button” to all my sites. I am a fan of twitter, and although I have added the Wp-To-Twitter wordpress plugin which, included with other social media buttons appears at the bottom of each of my posts, I think this is complimentary. I remember looking at this plugin early on, and didn’t want anything to do with it because I never saw the RT’s .. it was all going to @tweetmeme, but they changed that. Also, I was receiving a conflicting cron error message with my other twitter plugins (tweet this and wp-to-twitter) so I assumed having more than one twitter plugin will always conflict. This one doesn’t conflict!

The tweetmeme button shows the number of retweets of the post, so I can see how many people LUV the post 😀 .. plus I have configured it to mention @PetLvr (me!) so I know our posts have been retweeted. It’s easy to install – just like all wordpress plugins .. go into your dashboard, click Plugins, then click Add New .. and search for “Tweetmeme” .. and install, then activate. Simple 😀

A few things of note ..

1)

When I activated the plugin for the first time, the plugin appeared next to every post on the front page. Personally, I think that is overkill, because I am using the “Evermore” plugin to show only a few paragraphs of each post with the [more] link, and the button seemed to overwhelm the front page!

So – this is what I did. I’ve edited the single.php page (or appropriate file where the single post is being displayed) and placed the following code .. just before the content is displayed:


< ?php if (function_exists('tweetmeme')) echo tweetmeme(); ?>
< ?php the_content(); ?>


In the Tweetmeme settings, I ticked “Manual” instead of automatically placing the icon at the top or bottom of the post because I manually added the code to the template. I also added the RT @PetLvr so I receive notice everytime someone retweets one of our posts!

2)

Usually, when people RT one of my posts .. I tend to include that person in my #followfriday posts on twitter! 😀 and, naturally we will become bestest of best friends!

Welcome to this week’s feature here at the HART-Empire.com blog!

While most of you may or may not already know .. on Friday July 10, 2009 my SU account was under review. On Monday July 13, 2009 it was reinstated. All the details may be searched in BlogCatalog under my username over there if you are curious, but I feel that is all I have to say about that. Of course, I would like to add that I am now caught up with all the great stumbles in my SU toolbar now .. and with my normal random stumbling .. I think you are in a treat this week with some real “sweet-HARTs”!!

These are my favorite “sweet-HARTs” that have been stumbled by me during the past week, ended Monday. I hope you feel compelled to go visit these great bloggers and see why I liked their post! Enjoy!

A Few Great Stumbles This Past Week!

* Atomic Age Cinema – The Conversation (1974) – 12 parts
* Chris Cree TV – What is Social Media?
* Danny Brown – Seesmic Web Ups Ante for Twitter Management Tools
* Karaoke Lounge – Be the Music: Creating songs without musical instruments
* Kikolani – Benefits of Blogging – Developing SEO & Internet Marketing Skills
* Netalot – Reasons For Using Internet Explorer
* Once A Fortnight – Starvation and Trade – poor bed fellows
* Pot Politics – Link Building
* Techjaws – Free SEO Analysis Tool
* TreeHugger – In Defense of the Cow: How Eating Meat Could Help Slow Climate Change
* Wikipedia! – List of Most Common Misconceptions!
* Wimp – Most Talented People On Earth!

A Few More Weekly Roundups!

* Kikolani – Fetching Friday – Resources, Follow Friday & New Moon Parody
* TechJaws – Feeding Frenzy Saturday – Sharks in the Bay
* Von Pip Musical Express – Music News Week Ending 10/07/2009

* Your Site Here (if you have a weekly roundup post of good reads that is .. let me know!)

Around The HART-Empire Network

* And You Will – Staying Safe At The Beach
* Battling For Health – Another first: cardiac stem cells to treat heart attack
* PetLvr – Why Obedience Training is Important

If you like any of these posts .. please support the blogger .. participating and commenting on their blogs .. subscribe to their RSS feeds … follow them on twitter .. etc etc.

If you have a weekly roundup of posts and would like to be permanently included in this list – let me know in the comment section! Thanks // HART