Hi There,

You have reached this page as you need some guidance on using the new Silicon Kid website. Well, you have come to the right place. However, before we get started, if you have come looking for how to ask The Silicon Kid a question, you will want the information on this page instead: www.siliconkid.com.au/contact .

Alright, so assuming you want to know more about how to use the Silicon Kid website let’s start at the beginning…

Front Page

The front page of the website is my blog. A blog is short for Web log, and according to Wikipedia a blog is a website:

usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.

This pretty much sums up what I do on the front page, whereby I post both written and graphical items of interest. Additionally, when I post past editions of The Silicon Kid column these will also appear on the front page. As such, the front page essentially shows all of the most recent additions (posts) to www.SiliconKid.com.au .

You have also probably noticed that there are several different types of posts which appear on the front page. These are generally denoted by the posts being placed into particular categories (the category name is displayed underneath the title of each post) and also by an icon next to each item. Here I will explain each type of post:

Blog Entry

This is a standard blog entry. Normally involves some kind of commentary on a particular topic, or a journal of recent travels (when I am on the road). I normally post these Blog entries from a computer by logging into my website online.

Twitter Update

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a microblogging service. It is much like a blog post, but is limited to 150 characters. This is designed for short and sharp updates, rather than lengthy blog-style posts. These short updates are called “Tweets”. I have setup this website to pull all my Tweets from Twitter onto the website. You can also “follow” me on Twitter by visiting my Twitter page (www.twitter.com/siliconkid). Most Twitter updates are posted from the Twitterific Pro application on my iPhone. I normally use Twitter for short updates which on the move.

Flickr Updates

Photos and video also occasionally appear on the blog. These are posted from my Flickr account, which is my online central repository for all the photos I take and wish to share online. There is no icon next to these posts (so ignore the icon on the left-hand side of this message!) as it didn’t fit very well. However, these Flickr posts are characterised by the text posted from Flickr underneath the photos. I only post a small number of all my photos across to the blog. You can view all my photos at my Flickr page (www.flickr.com/siliconkid). Flickr photos are a mix of photos taken on my iPhone (uploaded via 3G) and photos from my digital camera which I manually upload to Flickr.

Tip of the Week

This icon denotes that the post is a Tip of the Week. I included this icon to make the Tips more easily identifable amongst the other Question & Answer content.

Question & Answer

This denotes that the post is a standard Silicon Kid question and answer.

Widgets

On the right-hand side of the front page, and various other pages, you will see widgets. These provide the concise display of particular content.

Subscribe

Don’t want to check the website every day but still want to keep up-to-date with the content? Enter your email address here and you will be sent a daily email digest which contains all updates to the website from the past day.

Donate

Donations? Yes! This website is provided as a free resource to the community. However, when you consider the hosting fees together with other costs (including time) it ends up costing several hundred dollars to operate this site. Me (The Silicon Kid) funds this at the moment, but always appreciates assistance!

In the current harsh economic times if you could spare a few dollars towards this website it would be greatly appreciated! There are four buttons in the widget, allowing you to contribute either $5, $10, $15, or $? (an amount of your choosing). All payments are processed securely through PayPal.

What do you get for your donation? Well…nothing except a warm fuzzy feeling inside that you have contributed to the operation of this website.

Flickr Photo Blog

This widget displays six of the most recent photos from my Flickr account. The widget refreshes with new photos every hour. If you would like to see my entire Flickr photo collection click the link underneath the widget. Alternatively, visit www.flickr.com/siliconkid.

What I’m Doing…

This displays my current status from Twitter. Each of these entries also posts as an entry within the blog itself, but this widget provides an overview of my most recent activity.

Archives by Month

This displays posts sorted by year and month. Useful if you are looking for a post from a particular time period.

Menu System

While the top menu bars may be self-explanatory to some, it may initially look a bit confusing. The top main menu bar contains the primary pages on the website. These are static pages - i.e. pages which do not change. The sub-menu (underneath the main menu) contains links to the categories on the website. This will display posts from within the categories. For example, if you click the Twitter menu link it will only display posts which have been put into the Twitter category. Likewise, if you click the Silicon Kid > Windows XP link this will only display posts categorised in the SK archive under Windows XP.

Search System

We are very fortunate to have Funnelback Search operating on the website. This enterprise-level search engine makes it much easier to find content relevant to your needs. Searching is easy - just enter the terms/words you would like to find in the search box and press Enter or click the button to get searching!

RSS Feeds

In addition to the email subscription service the website also has pure RSS feeds to which you can subscribe. The main RSS feed (which contains updates from across the entire website) can be accessed by clicking the RSS icon at the bottom of every page. If you are using an RSS-aware web browser (such as Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, Safari, or Opera, to name a few) you can also click the relevant button within your web browser to subscribe to the feed.

At this point you may be wondering what on earth is an RSS feed and RSS reader? Have a read of the following article on Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.com/wiki/RSS_feed.

Any other questions, queries, or theories?

If you have any other questions which you would like answered here please let us know at .