Some of you may be familiar with the WordPress plugins that display the country, browser, or other related information for each person who leaves a comment on your blog. This helps to foster the growth of an international community, showing new and current readers that they are joined by people all around the world. What if you want more specific information than learning that such-and-such a reader is from the United States?

The GeoSmart WordPress plugin is just the ticket. Acting as an IP geolocation tool for WordPress, GeoSmart determines not only the country where the person leaving the comment is from, but also the exact city where the person is posting the comment. This is based on the IP address provided, so it may or may not be 100% accurate depending on a number of factors, but it should work the vast majority of the time.

By using this plugin, you can learn very quickly whether the majority of the commentators on your site are from the East Coast, the West Coast, or some international destination around the globe. The plugin also has the ability to generate a map showing the global location distribution of the comment authors for each post on your blog. This works in tandem with a Google Maps API key and is displayed as a sidebar widget.

For more information and to download the free plugin, check out the original page at SamuelFolkes.com.

Attention bloggers if you have manually installed WordPress then you should upgrade to 2.8.5. This upgrade has a lot of security fixes. Full details on what has been updated are here.

For those who installed WordPress with Fantastico, Netenberg usually has the upgrade released a week or two later. We do post Fantastico updates on the blog so keep an eye open for that.

Please also note we will post when it is time for Managed Blog hosting customers to upgrade in this blog.

When customers sign up for an email newsletter from a retail store or some other company, they are sacrificing a little bit of privacy. After all, they are willingly giving their email address to a commercial entity and they don’t have the fullest of assurances that this email address will not be sold or shared with third-parties. In this way, it is important that should you choose to offer an email newsletter as part of your marketing plan, you should provide a suitable incentive for potential subscribers.

Whether it be a newsletter associated with a professional blog or an email mailing list for a local electronics store, this newsletter should come with a reason why the person would want to subscribe to it. One strategy that some companies take is to provide an initial bonus offer or extra right away. If you sign up for a certain newsletter, you may be provided with a special one-time coupon code for 20% off a purchase of some kind. For some people, that’s enough to sign up.

The problem with the one-time bonus is that the subscriber may choose to unsubscribe immediately after receiving the bonus. For this reason, it is much more valuable to offer some kind of ongoing incentive, either in place of or in addition to the one-time bonus. A great example of this is the email mailing list maintained by Boston Pizza, a popular restaurant chain in Canada and the United States.

The sole reason why I chose to sign up for its email mailing list is to get a free gourmet pasta on my birthday. Each year, they send me a new email and I get a free dinner. Because this is an ongoing promotion that gives me a free meal every year, I choose to stay subscribed to the list. If they only offered one free pasta at the time of signup, I probably would have unsubscribed shortly thereafter.

Give your subscribers a reason to stay around. This can be newsletter-specific coupon codes, promotions, or other valuable inclusions.

We’ve gone digital with so many aspects in our lives. We’ve got digital cameras to take pictures, digital signals for our televisions, and digital clocks to tell the time. It’s about time that our semi-scientific endeavors enter the world of 0s and 1s too. That’s where you might consider the digital microscope from ThinkGeek.

The 1.3 Megapixel Digital Microscope does exactly what you think it does. It works just like a regular microscope, except the imaging aspect is basically a USB-powered digital webcam instead of using conventional optics. You can use this USB microscope to capture high resolution images from up-close items.

Yes, it is only capable of producing a mere 1.3 megapixels, but this digital microscope can be used to produce good quality videos as well. The specimens can be things collected around the yard, around the office, or anywhere in between. You can zoom in on a variety of different objects in a way that you simply would not be able to see with a regular digital camera. It’s plug-and-play and you can magnify as much as 200x. Time-lapse movies are also a possibility.

Find the USB digital microscope for $349.99 on ThinkGeek. No one said that satisfying your curiosity came cheap.

We’ve managed to survive another work week, so that means that we can now take a little bit of time to navigate our way through the blogosphere. We’ve gathered together an eclectic collection of blog posts for your reading pleasure, grabbing a little something for everyone.

Deb Ng recognizes that people want to see transparency when they deal with different businesses or when they interact with other people online, but we also have to wonder how transparent is too transparent. Are you sharing too much personal and professional information with others? Not enough?

Dough Roller is a blog that appeals to people at all financial levels, but very few of us ever get to experience the riches enjoyed by professional athletes. That’s why it boggles the mind to consider why many NFL players fumble when it comes to personal finance. When you’re making millions every year, how can you possibly find yourself in unrecoverable debt and excess?

Tina Merritt reminds us that technology can provide some fantastic tools for all kinds of business. Tina says that one of the essential tools for real estate investors is the pocket camcorder. Whether you go with a Flip Mino, a Creative Vado, or any number of other options, having the pocket camcorder can capture the property in ways that your mental photos simply cannot.

Damien Riley likes a good bloodbath as much as the next guy, but sometimes too much is just too much. We used to only have Interview with the Vampire, but now Damien is annoyed to death by vampire shows. From movies like Twilight and Blade to TV shows like True Blood and Vampire Diaries, it’s become far too overwhelming.

James Chartrand offers an interesting approach to being a more effective writer. You can improve your grammar or ask your colleagues for creative criticism, but James suggests that you try cross-dressing to be a better blogger. Take on the perspective of the opposite sex and see how your writing may change with this newfound outlook on life and how the world works.

Every industry has its own set of buzz words and these change with the times. As consumer trends and preferences shift one way or another, most of the companies in the niche will adjust their marketing message accordingly. However, at what point would you say that a company is overusing buzz words? At what point would the implementation of buzz words do more harm than they do good?

A quick walk down the juice or health food aisle at the supermarket will reveal many products that seem to push the limits on buzz words. There’s one juice that is fortified with this vitamin and another granola bar that is enriched with that mineral. You’ll hear about yogurt products that is fat-free and another item that is enhanced with some probiotics. Are these products any better than the ones on the store shelf that don’t proclaim being fortified, enriched, or enhanced in some way?

Yes, it is important to consider buzz words and important key selling terms when it comes to designing your marketing strategies and branding techniques, but you also have to be careful not to overuse these tactics. When every item on the shelf is touting the exact same advantages, they start to lose any meaning whatsoever. Try your best to differentiate your brand from the competition, but in a good way.

So what if your product has been enhanced with this or fortified with that when the competition is selling something nearly identical? Buzz words have their role, but they should not become the focus.