Zahid Lilani – Technology and Social Media for Business

WordPress.com to Self Hosted WordPress Blog in 5 Easy Steps

Posted on 14. Sep, 2009 by Zahid Lilani. View Comments

Few days ago I helped Shari transfer her WordPress.com blog to a self hosted WordPress blog. This task might sound daunting but its really not and Shari is my witness. What is the difference? To avoid confusion I would like to mention here that there are two types of WordPress blogs, one is when you go to WordPress.com and sign up to get a blog address something like yourblog.wordpress.com and self hosted is when you go to WordPress.org, download the software and upload it on to your own server.

Main Difference
Wordpress.com is hosted blog service. You do not have to download software, pay for hosting or manage a web server.

WordPress.org is a website where you download the WordPress Blogging Software. You need a domain and a web server to make it functional.

There are number of other blogs that have talked about Advantages and Disadvantages of both the platforms and I am not going to talk about it again*

I will tell you step by step how to convert your WordPress.com blog into self hosted WordPress blog:

Step 1 – Go to your wordpress.com blog’s admin panel.

Step 2 – On the left sidebar, look for Tools and under Tools you will find Export. Click on it!

Step 3 – Download the export file and save it on to your computer.

Step 4 – Go to your new blog’s admin panel, look for Tools in the sidebar and this time click Import.

Step 5 – Look for wordpress at the bottom, browse for the file you just downloaded from your old blog and import.

Step 6 – You are done !

Let me point out one more thing, it’s better to leave the images on your old blog because it might give you an error if you try to import everything. Don’t worry, images on your new blog will still work.

* 15 Benefits and Limitations of WordPress.com Blogs, Blogger.com, WordPress.com or WordPress.org – Which One Should I Choose?,

Is Twitter Really Following the Money?

Posted on 11. Sep, 2009 by Zahid Lilani. View Comments

Social media powerhouse, Twitter, an immensely popular microblogging website has decided that it’s about time they make money. It has been widely criticized throughout its recent growth for not monetizing even though it has 44.5 million monthly visitors.

Yesterday, September 10, there was a change in Twitter’s Terms and following was added:

“services may include advertisements, which may be targeted to the content or information on the services, queries made through the services, or other information….. In consideration for Twitter granting you access to and use of the services, you agree that Twitter and its third-party providers and partners may place such advertising on the services.”

This change in Terms is a sigh of relief for Twitter investors but for most Twitter addicts like myself, I still have doubts whether showing advertisements on Twitter pages is a viable option. Most people use TweetDeck (dekstop) and HootSuite (web) to access their Twitter accounts because of added functionality and ease of use. I personally go to Twitter only to see who is following me and if I would be interested in following that person.

The way I see it, the only viable option for Twitter is to charge the most popular users. Let’s take a look how this can work out.

Twitter user A signs up. Twitter user A is very interesting and within few months has few hundred followers. As soon as Twitter user A tweets, there is a buzz, there are clicks to to the links posted etc. Seems to me like Twitter user A is benefiting and likes the response.

How about charging this Twitter user with a monthly fee? Keep it low, have a threshold and provide better tools to monitor and analyze Twitter traffic and anyone will pay a small fee. Oprah will gladly pay monthly subscription of $9.99 or even $19.99 for her 2 Million plus followers. As a matter of fact, Oprah should pay that amount of money every month just to have a verified account.

There are number of very influential people on Twitter who are only famous today because of Twitter, Oprah is not in that bunch. They would gladly pay a small amount of money to keep up with the increase in their popularity and to gain access to special Twitter features, wouldn’t they?

iPhone OS 3.1 Software Update Released

Posted on 10. Sep, 2009 by Zahid Lilani. View Comments

Along with iTunes 9.0, Apple came out with iPhone OS 3.1 software update. Below are the new features:

• Genius recommendations for Applications
• iTunes 9 support
– Genius Mixes
– Organize your apps directly in iTunes
– Improved syncing options for music, movies, TV shows, podcasts and photos
– iTunes U content organization
• Redeem iTunes Gift cards, codes and certificates in the App Store
• Display available iTunes account credits in the App Store and iTunes Store
• Browse and download ringtones wirelessly from the iTunes Store
• Save video from Mail and MMS into Camera Roll
• Option to “Save as new clip” when trimming a video on iPhone 3GS
• Better iPhone 3G Wi-Fi performance when Bluetooth is turned on
• Remotely lock iPhone with a passcode via MobileMe
• Use Voice Control on iPhone 3GS with Bluetooth headsets
• Paste phone numbers into the Keypad
• Option to use Home button to turn on Accessibility features on iPhone 3GS
• Warn when visiting fraudulent websites in Safari (anti-phishing)
• Improved Exchange calendar syncing and invitation handling
• Fixes issue that caused some app icons to display incorrectly

OS 3.1 update is available for the following iPhones:
• iPhone
• iPhone 3G
• iPhone 3GS

For feature descriptions and complete instructions, see the user guide for your iPhone.

This update is very unnecessary and doesn’t do much. Of course I upgraded, how would I talk about it otherwise but now I think if I didn’t blog, would I upgrade?

iPhone Users Are Just More Connected

Posted on 09. Sep, 2009 by Zahid Lilani. View Comments

I was just reading this blog post on Mashable titled “iPhone Users Are Data Whores” by Christina Warren and thought that I would reflect, after all I am an iPhone user who prefers the word connected over whore.

According to the Times, not only do iPhone customers use the web and stream video, music, and download applications more than the average smartphone users, they also use more than ten times the network capacity.

Yes, I am paying $30 for unlimited data plan, give me one good reason why I should use an iPhone as a regular phone when it has all the functionality of a laptop plus it allows me to make phone calls. I personally don’t use Youtube on iPhone because it is lame but yes I am always checking Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, and Latest News. In other words, I am more connected than most other smart phone users.

According to Apple Insider:

78 percent of iPhone users reported they access the Internet at least weekly on their phone, while only 38 percent of the rest of the smartphone market were on the mobile Web that often.

iPhone has a better browser, better email and excellent applications that make it far more technologically advanced then most smartphones. At the end of the blog post, Christina asks “Does the quality of AT&T’s network deter you from buying or considering renewing your existing contract”?

Answer: NO

Google Needs Better Damage Control

Posted on 09. Sep, 2009 by Zahid Lilani. View Comments

Gmail was inaccessible to 36 million users Tuesday afternoon which made it the number one trending topic on Twitter and caused an out roar by many on other social networks. Mashable even decided to post “5 Things to Do While Gmail is Down.” What if Gmail disappeared tomorrow? Will there be frenzy?

After the recovery, Google’s blog said

“We’ve fixed the issue, and Gmail should be back up and running as usual. We’re still investigating the root cause of this outage, and we’ll share more information soon.”

That’s it? No reason? This outage affected a lot more people than Gmail team is willing to accept. Saying that we don’t know what happened means tomorrow Gmail can be completely down for hours or days and Google won’t have a clue for most part.

I personally think it is very irresponsible on Google’s part to not address the concerns of people who use Gmail. If this had happen back before Twitter and Facebook, people would just assume something is wrong with their Internet connection or PC and call technical support. Google could have downplayed the mess as a minor hiccup but in 2009, that’s impossible to do.

Did I mention Gmail and other services associated with Google were down back in May 2009?