Three weeks ago, Twitter began to buzz about a change in TwitPic’s terms of service.  The change appeared to give TwitPic the right to sell posted photos to third parties without the approval of and without sharing the revenue with the person who posted the photo.  Needless to say, people didn’t like this and began moving to YFrog and other image hosting sites.  TwitPic attempted to explain the TOS change but this didn’t satisfy everyone.

I have to admit, I was one of those people who weren’t quite reassured.  I switched over to YFrog.  However, then I began to think.  YFrog said they would never do what TwitPic did, but how could I be sure.  Perhaps a year from now we’ll all be talking about some big scandal about new YFrog TOS changes.  Or maybe YFrog will go belly up.  What would happen to my photos then?

In addition, I began to think about traffic.  When B was at Disney Social Media Moms, she saw Chris Brogan speak.  She relayed some of what he said to me including that you should treat your blog like your home base and Twitter, Facebook, etc like outposts.  Perhaps it was time to move my “photos shared from my cell phone” operation back into my home base.  After all, wouldn’t it be ideal to drive traffic back to TechyDad.com rather than SomeRandomPhotoSharingService.com?

I already had a pretty decent idea of how it would work.  I would create a super-secret e-mail address used only for posting photos.  A script on TechyDad.com would check this inbox for photos I sent and would make them into blog posts, uploading the photos and any additional text I provided.  Finally, an auto-tweet script would alert my Twitter followers of my uploaded image the same way that TwitPic or YFrog would.

While I’d have loved to have written the script myself, I decided to see if anyone had done a WordPress plugin.  Sure enough, I found Postie right away.  I figured others might want to do something similar with their blogs, so I’ll detail my basic steps below.   (NOTE: WordPress has a “Post By E-mail” feature, but you’ll see soon enough why I didn’t use this.) 

Step 1: Be Using Self-Hosted WordPress and install the Postie Plugin

None of this will work if you’re using Blogger or are hosted on WordPress.com.  There might be some solution for you, but I’m not sure what that would be.  Sorry.  If you do have a self-hosted WordPress blog, add the Postie plugin from the Admin control panel.

Step 2: Create a Post From Cell Phone E-mail address

You don’t want to set Postie to use your publicly available e-mail address.  There are protections against just anyone posting to your blog (more on these later), but do you really want to chance it?  So have your web host set up (or set up via their control panel) some kind of super secret e-mail address.  Something like thisisonlyusedby5551212topostpics@mysite.com.  Add that e-mail address to your cell phone’s contacts under a name like “Post Photo.”

Step 3: Configure Postie

In your sidebar, under Settings, click on Postie.  You’ll get a list of options to set up.  First of all, you’ll need to tell Postie just how to get to the e-mail inbox.  So give Postie the mail server, userid and password information.

Next, under User, you want to make sure that you’re the only one who can post.  This is where WordPress’s basic Post-By-Email function fails.  If a spammer were to guess the e-mail address, you might find your blog relaying a Nigerian prince’s pleas for help.  Make sure “Allow Anyone To Post Via Email” is set to No and set up the authorized addresses to be the e-mail address of your phone.  If you’re not sure about this, you could always send a TXT and Picture message to your normal e-mail address and see what e-mail addresses they come from.  (TXT and picture messages often display as two different e-mail addresses.)

Under Message, select the category that the messages should take.  I created a new one called Mobile Photos.  Text/picture messages received as e-mails can often contain signatures added by the providers.  (For example, “This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!”)  Obviously, we don’t want that posting, so go under Advanced options and any signature as a new signature pattern.  You don’t need the whole thing, just enough to for Postie to recognize it and not confuse it with your own text.  (e.g. Don’t add in “This message” lest it cut you off when your post should say “This message comes overlooking a beautiful landscape.”)

You can customize the template under Image and fiddle with the other settings if you wish, but the basic functionality is there now.  Now, you should be able to take a photo, send it to your blog and have it posted.  The only thing you’re missing is tweeting it.

For this, I turned to the Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress.  Sadly, this plugin required a prefix for tweets.  Something along the lines of “New Blog Post”.  Of course, I didn’t want my Mobile Photo posts to be called “New Blog Posts”, so I went into the code.  It turned out to be a simple fix to make it stop using prefixes.  (I actually set it so that a prefix of a blank space would result in no prefix used at all since the application errors if no prefix is used.)  Since I don’t want to assume that everyone out there is comfortable coding, I’d simply recommend finding a prefix you can live with or using another plugin such as Tweet This.

Once this is set up, you’ll be able to completely replace the functionality of those Twitter photo sharing services.  Your photos will remain under your control, you’ll drive more traffic to your site and you won’t need to worry about some random terms of service changes (at least not with this).

If given the opportunity*, would you set something like this up for your blog?  Do you see an upside to TwitPic/YFrog type services that my Post-To-My-Blog solution doesn’t have?

* If you have a self-hosted WordPress blog, but aren’t techy enough to set this up,  I do freelance work on the side and might be able to help you out.  Send me an e-mail via the Contact Me form above.

Don’t forget to enter my Dinosaur Train giveaway.  You could win Dino Poop and Hatchers.

This is what I’m grilling right now. Corn on the cob & salami. Soon to be added: Zucchini, hot dogs & pineapple.

I’ve done it!  I hit 185.  And passed it.  Of course, I still have one more week in the challenge so I’m not going to call it quits just yet.  I’ll keep track of my points and weight for another week to keep at or under my goal.

A drawing JSL did of Mickey Mouse. He added a tail & “legs.”

If this works, I’ll have posted a photo to my blog using my phone.

A couple of days ago, I posted about my Grill Fail.  Well, yesterday we tried again.  This time I had some new tools and was all set.  I put the coals in and lit them.  For awhile, things weren’t looking so hot.  Literally.  The coals seemed to refuse to stay lit.

Just as we were deciding to give up, I gave it one more try and success!

Before long, we had hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner.  We only had hot dog buns, so we split the burgers in half and put them on the hot dog rolls.

NHL, B and I each ate two hot dogs and one hamburger.  JSL ate one… hot dog bun.  (He’s extremely picky and barely tasted the hot dogs or burgers.)

With this initial success under my belt, I want to do two things.  First of all, I want to buy a chimney starter.  This should make starting the coals a lot easier.  Secondly, I want to try some other things on the grill.  Turkey burgers and chicken breasts are a sure thing.

Another possibility is salami.  My father used to slice salami, grill it and then serve it atop rye bread.  Delicious!

My Aloha Friday question for today is: Do you have/use a grill?  What do you grill on it? 

Don’t forget to enter my Dinosaur Train giveaway.  You could win Dino Poop and Hatchers.

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the McLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #89

Over at ManOfTheHouse.com, they’re running an interesting elimination bracket.  Giants are facing off against each other to see who is the best of their group.  No, I’m not talking about sports teams going head to head.  I’m talking about such giants as Keaton, Seaver, Winslow, Micelli, Huxtable, and Foreman.  Yes, they have pit 32 TV dads in head to head competition.

You can head on over to the “World’s Greatest TV Dad” contest and vote for your favorite in each of the two dad matchups.  Each week, one dad will triumph over the other and half of the competitors will be eliminated.  The remaining dads will face each other again and again until only one is left.

Already some dads have been eliminated, including one of my favorites.  Before this contest, if you asked me who was the best TV dad to use as a role model, I’d have said Cliff Huxtable.  It’s clear that Cliff, for all the goofy things he says and sarcasm he tosses out about his ever-growing household, loves his kids.  He works hard to provide the best for them and wants to see them be the best they can possibly be.

However, for all of Cliff’s benefits, there’s another TV dad that I might hold in higher esteem.  This dad was very ahead of the curve when it comes to dad trends.  Of course, I’m talking of Tony Micelli from “Who’s The Boss.”  Tony was a single dad of modest means.  He took a job as a live-in housekeeper to give his daughter a better environment to grow and learn.  His job entailed cooking and cleaning; jobs that were not widely considered “things dads do” in the early 80’s.

To me, Micelli’s dedication to provide the best possible life for his daughter, coupled with his bending of cultural and gender stereotypes makes him a great TV dad role model in my book.

Disclaimer: I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Dad Central Consulting on behalf of P&G and received promotional items to thank me for taking the time to participate.

Last year, I won a Weber Grill and grilling utensil set during a Twitter party.  The grill arrived and I hastily assembled it.  If by “hastily” you mean “let it sit in the box in our living room for a month and only put it together and took it out because B was going to kill me.”  With the grill all set up, I proceeded to not use it.  For one reason or another, I just didn’t get to use it during the rest of the summer or fall.  Winter came and away the grill went.

With spring here, I decided that we should grill.  I remembered that the instructions had said to heat the grill for one hour prior to first use.  Unfortunately, this meant that I couldn’t use the grill during the week.  (Waiting an hour and *then* cooking time seemed excessive.)  Weekends were perfect, but it seemed like every day brought rain.  No way was I going to be standing over the grill with an umbrella!

Finally, this past Sunday, we had nice weather.  B went to the store to get some hot dogs and hamburgers.  When she got back, I went out, put some charcoal in the grill and tried to light it.  Sadly, the wind quickly put out any flame I lit.  Undaunted, I recalled a trick about using newspaper.  So I got a single sheet of newspaper, arranged it among the charcoal and lit the paper.

Sure enough, I got a nice, big flame.  I also got pieces of paper shooting off.  Too late, I noticed some vines (waiting to be bagged) that had potential for catching on fire.  The hose was close, but not on.  Fail #1.  Luckily, nothing caught on fire, but lesson learned.  Next time, I’ll turn the hose on before I light the grill to cut down on any fire extinguishing delay.

The next fail came soon after.  I had the grill all ready now and going nicely.  I began to picture the hamburgers and hot dogs on there cooking away with me flipping them using… uh oh.  Where were my utensils.  During the winter, we put the utensils away.  For the life of us, though, we couldn’t remember where.  Taking turns (as we weren’t comfortable leaving the grill unattended), we looked and looked to no avail.  The utensils *are* in our house.  Somewhere.  But “somewhere” doesn’t help me flip burgers.  Fail #2.

It was too late to go out and buy new utensils, so I let the grill burn for the hour, snuffed the flames and put the grill away (after it cooled down).  The next day, I looked into some new utensils.  On the way home, I bought a new spatula, tongs, and grill brush from Lowe’s.  Tomorrow’s weather is looking good so here’s hoping that My First Grilling Take Two is more successful than Take One was.

Don’t forget to enter my Dinosaur Train giveaway.  You could win Dino Poop and Hatchers.

My boys love the Dinosaur Train television show on PBS by The Jim Henson Company.  They also love playing with toys.  So when I was given the opportunity to review three Dinosaur Train toys from Uncle Milton’s Toys, I was excited.  When I saw that the toys had educational value, I jumped at the opportunity.

Dinosaur Poop

Let’s be honest.  Tell any kid that you’re going to let them play with poop at the table, and they’ll look at you funny.  But once you take out this product, they’ll be crying for you to open that package quicker.

Of course, the contents are not really poop, but a brown dough-like substance.  They come inside of a storage container to keep the “poop” fresh between uses and some pieces of the dinosaur’s most recent meal.

In the case of a carnivore, these pieces are 2 fish skeletons.  In the case of a herbivore, 2 plants.  An omnivore has one fish and one plant.  The pieces can be put together like a puzzle for even more fun.

Once all the pieces have been found, you can flatten the poop and press the fish skeleton or plant into it to form a fossil impression.

You can also get more creative and form poop sculptures.

Of course, this toy can also lead to interesting statements from parents such as “Who wants to play with poop?” or “Keep that poop on the table and not on the floor!”

Hatchers

How would your child like to grow his or her own dinosaur?  Hatchers lets your child do just this.  Each package contains an egg.

Drop the egg into a glass of water and out hatches a dinosaur.

Ok, not immediately.  This is the tough part.  The hatching takes about two days.  So children get to learn a lesson in patience.

Dino Track Discovery Pack

My boys love games.  So it was only natural that they loved playing with the Dino Tracks.  Each package comes with three trails.  Each card contains a dinosaur footprint on one side and some dinosaur facts on the other.  There are also two “egg” cards with suggested games such as follow the trail or try to jump the space of one dinosaur stride.  (As you can see, one T-Rex step is just a little bit shorter than JSL on top of NHL.)

Giveaway

Thanks to Uncle Milton Toys, one lucky winner will receive a Dinosaur Train prize pack which includes two packages of Dinosaur Poop and two Dinosaur Train Hatchers. To enter, simply leave a comment below answering this question: What is your favorite dinosaur?

You can also earn bonus entries by doing any (or all) of the following items. Just be sure to leave a separate comment for each item that you complete.  (Don’t just leave one comment listing everything you did.)

• Follow @TechyDad on Twitter. (1 bonus entry)
• Tweet about the giveaway on Twitter. Be sure to include @TechyDad and a link to this post in the Tweet. (1 bonus entry per day) For example: Play with poop and hatch some dinos with @TechyDad’s Dinosaur Train #Giveaway http://bit.ly/jB2JcX
• Subscribe to my RSS feed or let me know if you already are. (1 bonus entry)
• Leave a comment on any of my non-giveaway posts from April/May/June. Leave a comment here letting me know which post you commented on. (1 bonus entry per comment, maximum 3 entries)
• Enter any of my open giveaway posts (excluding this one, of course).  Leave a comment here letting me know which giveaway you entered. (1 bonus entry)
• Write a post on your blog linking to this giveaway. Leave 3 comments about this to get credit for all of your extra entries. (3 bonus entries)

To enter, please follow the rules above within the comment section. Contest starts today, May 24th and ends at Noon EST on June 7th, 2011. You do not have to be a blogger to enter, but must leave a valid e-mail address for me to contact you for mailing address once the giveaway is over. I will select the winner using random.org and contact you via e-mail. You will have 48 hours to claim the prize. If there is no response, another winner will be selected. Open to U.S. residents only.

Disclaimer: The products were provided for this review by Uncle Milton.  The opinions expressed above are my own.