Wow, really!?  Not only did Mozilla have an anniversary, but they’ve gone mobile as well.

Firefox Facebook fans can get a free Firefox Mobile Kit to celebrate the Firefox 4 beta for Android and Maemo release.

Send in a postcard to the Firefox offices for a chance at a limited edition mobile T-Shirt.

There’s more info on their Facebook page under the Fox Cards tab at facebook.com/Firefox

So how do I track all the numerous incumbents, nominees and pundits?

Let me list the ways…

The CNN Election Center covers all the basics…the House…the Senate… Republicans VS. Democrats…the GOP…who’s on what Committee? Who’s running for Governor in what District and which State? Why are midterm elections so important? Check in at cnn.com/ELECTION/2010

CNN also has a new Election Center app for Android, Blackberry and iPhone; get it at cnn.com/mobile/electioncenter

The New York Times appears to have the best overall coverage of all the races in the Senate and House, along with opinions, polls, caucus iinformation and blogs at nytimes.com/pages/politics

The Associated Press has a site dedicated to election coverage at ap.org/elections2010
AP covers national, state, district and some regional and local races, including primaries, runoffs, general and Nov. 2 special elections. It also provides national trend reports on changes in congressional and legislative composition by party.

Reuters has the latest political headlines, along with analysis and opinion, news and video at
reuters.com/news/politics

The Washington Post has major coverage on their site at washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/sectionfronts/politics

This site’s name says it all…election projections, and also has popular polls and other political resources at electionprojection.com

Vote and voice your choice today! There’s several good online resources to help you find your polling place to cast your ballot.

Rock the Vote rockthevote.com also has a site dedicated to each state and it’s elections at electionland.com

USA.gov has information on voting and voter registration, along with info on absentee ballots, election assistance, how to register to vote by mail, state election offices, state voter laws, voting assistance, a guide for uniformed and overseas citizens, and voting rights and discrimination at usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/Voting

I would be bigger and very popular with the ladies, multi-lingual, plus getting some great discounts on every drug known to mankind. I would have a brand new kitchen, along with new hip replacements, a new iPhone4, cheap lasik surgery, a fistful of brand new credit cards with no limits, unlimited dating, free online TV, and a new security system.

My life would forever be enhanced by easy payday loans, brand name pharmaceuticals at ridiculously low prices, discount brand name software from Microsoft and Adobe, a new iPad for $20, free online movies, successful online dating, rapid weight loss, and a new work-at-home job that pays $5000 a week for only 20 hours of work.

It’s really amazing the kind of crap that fills our spam folders these days. Also amazing is the amount of spam that rapidly accumulates and chokes our Inboxes and Spam filters.

Just think…if you actually believed in any of these scams, OR if they were actually true, what a world this would be.

Don’t believe it for a moment!

So it seems like a good time to review Facebook Profile settings, just to make sure your Account, Privacy and Applications are set up the way you want.

Click here for explanations of Facebook’s Privacy Controls.

The Facebook Blog is another good source of information about controlling what you share, and other general info on this social media giant. This blog post talks about the launch of Facebook’s new Privacy Page.

Also the official Facebook Page is posting videos in their “Learn More” series about privacy settings.

I used to be afraid to tackle the confusing array of upgrade configuration options, but now all of my WordPress 2.9 installations offer an upgrade link at the top of the admin panel.   I’m done with only a couple of clicks!

The Admin Panel doesn’t look much different in WordPress 3.0, which won’t confuse current users with a totally new interface.

The most convenient and time-saving feature about WordPress3.0 is Bulk Updates, so you can upgrade 15 plugins at once with a single click

The new default theme is Twenty Ten, which includes a cool new menu system.  Of course, the Theme you’re currently using has to support these new features to be usable.  But it’s great not having to spend an hour upgrading to a new version of my favorite CMS.

It’s recommended to back up your files first before an upgrade; Click open Tools menu, click Export.  The resulting XML file contains all your posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, and tags.  It can be imported back into your blog in case of a disaster.

Source: WordPress Blog

There’s more great info on WordPress3.0 at planet.wordpress.org

The free version is pretty basic and your video creation is limited to one minute, but it does have some cool features, like professionally designed themes and transitions, plus a sharing feature to export your video to YouTube or Facebook. You do have to allow permission for the application to connect, just like Facebook does for sharing. That calls for a certain amount of trust, doesn’t it?

Plus you’ve got to have Google Apps installed on your server, which is not an average daily user thing. But it’s a huge deal for small business, and a great group collaboration tool, if you can afford it.

The Stupeflix Studio App allows you to mix and mash up photos and videos, add text to any image or video, add in a soundtrack anywhere in the timeline, create discrete groups to separate videos and images, and manipulate special effects in each group.

There’s five different slide transitions, or what Stupeflix calls a “group effect,” applying that effect to anything inside that particular group. Auto is set by default, which cycles through all five transitions.

There’s no way to tweak audio levels in the basic free version, and video editing is limited to the time you allow for each element inside a group. Video runtime starts at zero, there’s no way to edit different segments of a video, start at 0 and set the time per element, just like a slide show.

Unlike YouTube who’s announced their online video editor, where you can trim the beginning and/or ending of your videos. Plus YouTube gives you the ability to add soundtracks from their 10K file AudioSwap library, and you don’t have to fret about file formats. Plus they say it’s one click publishing now without the upload.

Nice!

Fade to black…

Sometimes you want to search within a specific website…so you would enter your search words (space) site name, for example, if you’re looking for news about social media in the New York Times, you would enter: social media site: nytimes.com

You can also specify a whole class of sites, like if you’re just looking for Texas state government pages, for example: Texas site:.gov

To find an exact phrase, enclose your words inside “double quotes” although Google’s default behavior is to consider all the words in a search. The double quotes will make your search very specific, instead of generic.

If you want to specifically allow either one of several words, you can use the OR operator (note that you have to type ‘OR’ in ALL CAPS;) for example: Dallas Cowboys 2010 OR 2009 would produce team results for either one of those years.

Google also publishes good search tips in their blog, along with company news and events.

@cybercoder on Twitter said: By far the easiest way to make a PDF file has got to be using Google Docs, just work it up, and download it.

It’s just that easy…you can create a PDF from a text file or a spreadsheet. With a text document open in Google Docs, go to the…
File Menu…
Download As…
PDF

Thanks @cybercoder for the great time-saving tip. I remember jumping through hoops years ago in an office environment trying to create a PDF document for a co-worker. We’ve made light-years of progress since then.

If you haven’t tried Google Docs yet, it’s a great easy way to save and share your documents online.

With this experimental program, the National Weather Service will be searching for Tweets that contain information about severe weather events like flooding, wind damage, hail, a tornado or funnel clouds, freezing rain, snowfall and dense fog.

The National Weather Service is taking advantage of the geotagging capability of Twitter, allowing the NWS to correlate each Tweet to its location when it was sent. They’re hoping this will help enhance and increase timely and accurate online weather reporting and communication between the public and their local weather forecast offices.

The NWS is asking Twitters to enable geotagging on their Twitter and 3rd party applications. Since geotagging is still controversial and not everyone is using it, the NWS is offering suggestions for users to Tweet either way.

With Geotagging on, submit your Tweet like this: #wxreport your significant weather report

Without Geotagging, submit your Tweet report in this format: #wxreport WW your location WW your significant weather report.

Some examples of weather report tweets without geotagging:
Ex. 1: #wxreport WW 1289 W Oakridge Circle, St Louis, MO WW 6.0″ new snow as of 1 pm
Ex. 2: #wxreport WW 44.115, -88.595 WW Hail 3/4 inch in diameter at 4:25 pm

• Here’s some examples, starting with the most accurate:
• Using a latitude and longitude, like this: WW 44.231, -88.485 WW
• An address: WW 2485 S Point Rd, Green Bay, WI 54313 WW
• A street intersection: WW intersection of Holly St and N 4th St, Perry, OK WW
• A city name: WW Ft Lauderdale, FL WW
• A zip code is the least accurate: WW 53221 WW

Your location can be just about anything, but the more specific the better.

Read more about this new program at weather.gov/stormreports

The NWS is working with the following sites to monitor #wxreport Tweets:
Wx411
Twitter search
nearbytweets.com
geochirp.com
Twitterfall

Google says the whole point of this experiment is to make searching fun. That’s cool, but why can’t do I the same things I’m seeing done in the demos?

However, it’s pretty boring to watch someone else’s search. Unless it’s Jeff Beck, who put together his own Google Search Story promoting his new album.

Back to the drawing board…First, I had problems getting Search Stories to use Google Maps, it tells me it only uses KML or KMZ files from Google Earth. Strike one. OK, then Google Earth wouldn’t connect to the Earth Server. Back to maps. Loaded in my directions, switched to Street View, then I couldn’t save the file to Search Stories. Strike two.

I tried to spice it up with video by going to YouTube. It looked pretty sweet in Google’s demos, but again, Search Stories wouldn’t pick up the data from YouTube. In fact, there’s more than more example loaded on Google Search Stories home page that appears to have way more editing options that I find available. Strike three.

But I’m a die hard geek, so I’m trying it again. This time I actually planned a story, but Google only gives you six search lines to use, even though there’s seven search fields. The last one doesn’t have an active tab to select your search method, using Search the Web, Images, Maps, News, Blogs, Products or Books.

Idea! I’ll use a recent blog post as my storyline about Fiesta in San Antonio. That should be a good search criteria for images, and make a good movie. Right? Here we go…

After trying to upload to YouTube twice, I gave up (again.)
UH OH!! I’m using Firefox, better go back to Google Chrome. Maybe it’s browser problems.

See what I mean? I just can’t resist playing with this new toy! So I’m back in Chrome after closing Firefox, and starting over from scratch. Google didn’t even save my Description and Video Options, like the video Genre and Title. This time I’m saving everything in TextPad. (Don’t use Windows Notepad for text editing anymore; it drops in unknown lines you can’t see, and you’ll have problems later. Especially with code!)

Built my searches line by line, assigned the background music, do a quick demo, enter the Title, Description and Genre. Wait for the build…please wait…p-l-e-a-s-e w-a-i-t. OK done.

Uh Oh! Upon review, the first map comes up in New York! But I entered “Battle of Flowers Parade in San Antonio” into Maps, just to be precise. So what am I doing in New York? Oh wait, that’s just the default map location in their demo. Next slide please….there’s San Antonio!

More images, good. Uh Oh! Back in New York again?!? They have Fiesta in Manhattan too?!? Whoa, back in good ol’ San Antone on the next slide. Good thing I’m not in Google Earth, the whiplash from that trip would snap my neck like a pretzel.

OK, enter the Title, Genre and Description. Time to upload to YouTube and cross my fingers…

ERROR! Google tells me…”We were not able to submit your search story. Please try again later.”

What!?! That’s three times it’s failed and I rebuilt my search, and even switched browsers and made sure I was logged into my Google Accounts plus YouTube! Ah well, it’s just a new search toy anyway. They don’t say it’s a Beta…

OK, after going around the block a couple of times, I see some things I’m doing are wrong.

I was using URL’s copied straight from the browser’s address bar. Sometimes they work, if they’re under 50 characters. If longer than that, gotta use bit.ly to shorten them, but no guarantee Search Stories will pick up the information and use it.

Just use plain and simple search words, just like you do in a regular Google search. (or Yahoo, Bing, etc.) The URL’s don’t always work.

Also, make sure you’re logged into your Google Account or Gmail and of course, YouTube so the search service can find and authenticate you. Login or lose your work.

Maybe I’ll try again later. View my first Google Search Story.

Now what the..? I switch over to my YouTube account, and there are all THREE of the video searches in My Videos! Google Search Stories gave me the same error 3 times and fooled me into thinking my videos were lost. Haha, the joke’s on me, I guess.

In reviewing them I see the 2nd one really is messed up, it lost an entire Search line. Can’t afford that, there’s only 6. Yes, there’s another mistake on the other one. Scratch 2, I got one good video left.

Well, whaddya know? I’m finished with 2 Google Search Stories! Now what do I do with ‘em? Hmm, seems this would apply in the classroom, or used as a presentation tool. I sometimes wonder if Google ever asks “Why?” before they build something like this? Nah, build it and they will come. And Search.

Search Stories doesn’t always work like Google’s demos on their home page.
Where’s the cool video you can pull in from YouTube? I wasn’t able to click a link in a search result like the dude did on a YouTube page. Google’s Search Stories are just screen shots, as far as I can tell.

Where’s the awesome Map features with Street View that you can zoom in on and travel cross-country in two seconds? Did I miss something here?? Please tell me if you know, or leave a comment with your experience with Search Stories. That’s why I’m blogging this. Login, Live and Learn.

Thanks for reading, and Good Luck with Google Search Stories!