Easily accept credit card donations with WP-Stripe

Noel Tock, who’s at WP On Tour with me, just released a brand new WordPress plugin that lets you accept Stripe payments. Stripe is a new, highly developer-friendly payment solution. They have low rates for processing and a great API. Right now, you can only use Stripe to accept payments if you’re in the US, but if you are, you can accept money from all over the world.
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WP On Tour – Greetings from Sitges

This week, some of the brightest minds in WordPress – and me – are co-working in Sitges, Spain. As I wrote before, I’m part of the first WP On Tour, organized by Karim Osman of Automattic. We’re in a very nice villa and, compared to back home, the weather is excellent here. But more importantly, it’s really nice to be surrounded by fellow WordPress users and devs for a change.

We’ve set up a Flickr group, but at this time there’s very little in there. On Twitter, we’re using the #wpontour hashtag.

Roy | January 17, 2012 | English,WordPress | Comments (0)
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Raspberry Pi, a $25 computer for (future) geeks

Most of the current generation of computer nerds started out writing small programs in languages like BASIC. If you’re in your 30′s, chances are you started out on a Commodore C64, or one of its competitors, and fiddled around with writing small programs. Since then, computing has changed dramatically. Knowing your way around Microsoft Word makes you a “whiz kid” nowadays, and knowing how to install Windows can get you a job.
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Auto-starting Transmission in recent Ubuntu versions

In my opinion, one of the coolest things about Ubuntu is that it comes with a Bittorrent client pre-installed. Transmission is an excellent torrent downloader. I use it all the time on my media server PC, both using the GUI (on my TV) and the web interface. I’ve even set it up so it watches my dropbox folder for new torrent files, so all I have to do to start downloading is power up the computer.

However, in order to make that work, Transmission needs to start automatically with Ubuntu. This used to be really straight-forward in older Ubuntu versions. You could simply add the terminal command “transmission” to the startup programs and that was it. Since “Meerkat” (or perhaps the version before that), this does not work any more.
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Roy | November 15, 2011 | English,Software | Comments (1)

Gravity Defying Smartphone Holder actually uses gravity

Last week, I came across the video below, and it made me wonder how this smartphone holder worked. The stop-motion animation shows both metal and plastic objects clinging to the holder’s surface, so magnetism was out. I tweeted about it, Ideasbynet offered to send me a sample. It arrived today, and I think I have it figured out now.


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Roy | October 21, 2011 | English,Gadgets,ideas | Comments (4)
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Wordfeud cheat battle: Scrabulizer vs. Wordfeud Helper plugin beta (UPDATE)

Last week saw the kick-off of the first completely unofficial Dutch Wordfeud tournament. I’m competing, and so far, things are going great. I have no illusions about making it to the next round though. Even though I’m winning most of the round one games, my scores are mediocre at best, and the accumulated total scores decide which sixteen players will compete in round two. But there’s a catch…


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Roy | October 3, 2011 | English,Internet,Software | Comments (8)
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Samsung’s Galaxy Tab Book Cover Case first impressions

When I got my Galaxy Tab tablet, I thought I would mostly be using it at home. As it turns out, it’s also an ideal device to take with you. I’ve spent hours playing Wordfeud on long distance train rides, and well… everywhere else too. Like any tablet, the Samsung is basically a large piece of glass with some electronics glued to the back. Without a good cover, chances are you’ll eventually scratch the screen, and a drop from even one meter could be fatal.

But one of the downsides of not going with the absolute market leader, the iPad, is that there isn’t an abundance of protective cases available. My friends over at Mobilefun offer quite a few Galaxy Tab 10.1 accessories, including Samsung’s own Book Cover Case. They were nice enough to send me one of those to take a look at, and I’m happy to report that it’s pretty nice.
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Roy | September 29, 2011 | English,Gadgets | Comments (6)
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My personal top 10 Android tablet apps

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my first experiences with the Galaxy Tab 10.1. I noted that while its hardware is excellent, there’s a distinct shortage of tablet apps for Android. Most apps will work just fine, but they’ll make poor use of a tablet’s screen real estate.

But things are definitely improving. New apps are coming out daily. I’ve tried quite a few of them, and I thought I’d do a quick rundown of the apps I’m actually using on a daily basis.
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Contest: Win a 200GB Binverse account! (UPDATE)

Now that I have a speedy internet connection at home, I’ve been looking for ways to properly use all that speed. Previously, I’d been using Bittorrent to download movies Linux distributions, but brute-force as that protocol is, it never really maxed out my 120 mbps line. So I moved to Usenet instead. I’ve been trying out premium Usenet provider Binverse, and the results are very promising. They contacted me about possibly doing a giveaway, so I thought I’d offer you a chance at winning a free account.
More Contest: Win a 200GB Binverse account! (UPDATE)

Dear Asus, are you flipping mad?

For as long as I’ve been using PCs, I’ve loved Asus products. My very first motherboard was the now-famousAsus P55T2P4, I’ve got two Eee-PCs, and my laptop is also from the mythical flying horse brand. But recently, I’ve come across an issue with said laptop that’s making me question Asus’s sanity. Turns out that the webcam in my UL30A is mounted upside down.
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Roy | August 18, 2011 | English,Gadgets | Comments (6)
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