We are impressed with the popularity iChecklist has had in only two weeks since launch. We want to thank all the users who are sending in their gratitude and kind comments about this application. We also want to give out a special thanks to all the people sending in ideas and bug reports to improve the quality of this product. All in all we are looking forward for the future of xVolve and all its upcoming products we will be delivering to the business and productivity mobile world.

Stay tuned for more updates! Try iChecklist for FREE! http://ichecklist.xvolve.com

xVolve is currently in the works of making a huge amount of changes to the application to save iPhone users a lot of time. Stay tuned for beta updates at http://www.apple.com/webapps/productivity/ichecklist.html

I found a nice little article on iChecklist at iphoneworld.ca
A lot of us probably encountered the type of situation when upon arriving at the store we realized we don’t have the shopping list… Of course we all had it on the kitchen table, and were about to take it, but… Then it’s either the painful “Honey, I forgot the shopping list… again” phone call, or an even more painful drive alone home because of course you can’t remember even 50% of what you wanted to buy.To avoid such unpleasant situations one might want to consider using iChecklist for iPhone — it’s a web application by InterVolt Development that allows you to create customized shopping lists, optimized for iPhone’s screen and EDGE connection.

To access iChecklist for iPhone point your browser over to ichecklist.xvolve.com.

http://www.xvolve.com coming soon!

Step 1.

Goto “Customize Permalink Structure” under the Options tab in your Wordpress Admin.

Step 2. 

Select the “Custom Structure” bullet. Now this is where things get tricky. How you want the URL structure to be laid out is up to you. If you would like your URLs to display like ours, you would use the following structure:

 /%category%/%postname%/You can find a complete list of customization options available at Wordpress.org - Using PermalinksAfter you have selected what URL structure best fits your WordPress Blog, proceed to click “Update Permalink Structure”. In most cases, this should lead to the page refreshing; with WordPress letting you know that it worked.

 Step 3.

After you have updated the permalinks on your blog, you should make sure that everything is right. You can do so by clicking “View Site”

  to get to the main page of your blog. Once the page has loaded, click one of the blog titles and check to see if the URLs have structured the way you wanted them to.

If they haven’

 t, the most likely scenario is that the permissions were set too strict for the htaccess file when you updated your blog.  Troubleshooting PermalinksStep 1.

Using an FTP program of your choice, connect to the server where your blog is currently being hosted. After you have connected, then proceed to locate the .htaccess file on your server. Right click this file, then select “properties”

 (or ctrl + o for CHMOD options on popular ftp clients like FlashFXP).  We are trying to make this file writeable. Change the permissions from 644 to 666, then press OK.  (Keep the ftp program open)  Step 2.

Now go back to your WP-Admin panel, and proceed to options > Permalinks. Copy and paste the URL structure that you have selected into the custom structure textbox. Once you have done that, please continue to click on “Update Permalink Structure”

Step 3.Now you can verify to make sure everything is in place, by going back to your site and clicking on a blog post. Once you have confirmed that the link structure is work, go back to your FTP program and change the permissions back from 666 to 664. Click on OK, and you’re finished!

What  is “Link Baiting”?

            Link baiting is simply getting the viewers to place your link on other websites. This type of marketing would be considered “viral”, as the users would be spreading your link out all over to their friends.  There are several types of “hooks” used when link baiting. I have provided all hooks below, with a detailed description of each hook.

Types of Link Bait Hooks:

 News hook: If you can disprove an article, or be the first to find a news article relative to your niche, then that would be considered a “News Hook” type of link bait

Attack Hook(use at own risk!): The Attack Hook is used when attacking another blogger/story/product in your specific niche. This method is not recommended unless you can really justify with what you’re attacking.(Don’t go overboard!) If done right, you can gain instant credibility and reputation within your niche. But be careful, you don’t want to brew up angry bloggers that link back to negative posts! 

Resource Hook: The Resource Hook is a resource that users within your niche deem useful. Maybe it’s a tool you created, or a list that you gathered of useful information. If users find it helpfup, they will link back to it. Have to give, to receive!

Contrary Hook: Expose an article or disagree strongly with what another blog author has written. If you can disprove a major story in your niche, that could win you some extra coverage.  Be controversial!

Humor Hook: Can you come up with something funny relative to your niche? Maybe a video or a picture you found off of google, anything that you might think people would find funny enough to link back to.

Link baiting is most successful on social networking sites, blogs, forums, places where users are having discussions / debates relative to your niche. You should now be able to link bait on successfully. If you are new kid on the block, using the attack hook or contrary hook, might not be the best way to gain a reputation. Do your homework, and be creative, if you want attention you have to earn it!   

However the main focus for this week has been on our smaller web application titled iCheckout. iCheckout allows iPhone shoppers to create a simple shopping list and view the contents directly when they are shopping. We still have much to do for the development of iCheckout:

• Research all the type of popular groceries shoppers buy weekly.
• Complete the Shopping Cart display interface
• Create the Wish-list environment
• And mostly programming development and beta testing.

Estimate time for completion: January 30th.

You can view more about these iPhone web applications or pre-order iSinch at http://shop.intervolt.net

Calling all Web Developers!
We invite web developers willing to lend a hand with future iPhone web projects, that we currently have on the upcoming projects ledge. We really want to make these applications available to all iPhone users as soon as possible (hopefully sometime in early or mid 2008). If your interested drop me an email at jeff at intervolt dot net OR erkan at intervolt dot net. We will be happy to assist you and give you the low down of all the projects we have planned out.

iPhone Web Application Development Newb Tips
You can view a lot of videos and read on iPhone design and content development here http://developer.apple.com/iphone/devcenter
They tell you EVERYTHING about developing in the iPhone environment and is a perfect starting point for getting involved in iPhone application development. In detail they discuss how to plan your application, navigation guidelines, dimensions & sizing, do’s and dont’s and so much useful information. Anyway, when designing an iPhone web application I think the best way is to menu-ize everything for easy navigation. We all know the iPhone uses multi-touch technology and its better to have a big fat link then itty bitty one that no one can touch. Also, a must is having Safari installed; the iPhone uses Safari as a web browser so it is extremely important to build your web site around it. Here is a good starting point when creating your iPhone menus:

Creating a simple iPhone compatible web menu
1. First create a nice little transparent arrow around 8×13 pixels or you can download one in the menu pack at http://developer.apple.com/iphone/devcenter
2. Create an index.php in your root directory.
3. Create a directory called css
4. Within the css directory, create a stylesheet file and label it style.css
5. Open up style.css and add the following:

.navrow ul {
padding: 0;
margin-top:0;
margin-right:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
font-size:18px;
font-family: Helvetica;
font-weight:none;
color:white;
}
.navrow li {
list-style-type: none;
border-bottom-width:1px;
border-bottom-style:solid;
border-bottom-color:#6F7D94;
padding-top:10px;
padding-right:10px;
padding-bottom:14px;
padding-left:10px;
}
.navrow a {
display: block;
padding-top: 8px;
padding-right: 8px;
padding-bottom: 12px;
padding-left: 8px;
margin-top: -8px;
margin-right: -8px;
margin-bottom: -12px;
margin-left: -8px;
text-decoration: none;
color:white;
}
.showArrow  {
margin-right:10px;
margin-top:7px;
padding-right:16px;
background-image: url( /* IMAGE OF YOUR ARROW HERE */ );
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: right;
}
.secondary {
font-weight:normal;
float:right;
margin-right:10px;
}
.secondaryWArrow {
display:block;
font-weight:normal;
float:right;
font-size:11px;
color: #FFFFFF;
}
.secondaryWLink {
font-weight:normal;
float:right;
margin-right:10px;
font-size:11px;
color: #FFFFFF;
}

6. Change /* IMAGE OF YOUR ARROW HERE */ to your arrow filename.
7. Open index.php and add the following line to the <head> tag:

<link href=”css/style.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” />

8. Finally, add the menu code to the <body> tag:

<div class=”navrow”>
<ul>
<li><a href=”http://www.intervolt.net”>InterVolt Development<span class=”showArrow secondaryWArrow”>&nbsp;</span></a></li>
<li><a href=”http://iphone.intervolt.net”>iPhone Web Development<span class=”showArrow secondaryWArrow”>&nbsp;</span></a></li>
<li><a href=”http://blog.intervolt.net/”>InterVolt Blog<span class=”showArrow secondaryWArrow”>&nbsp;</span></a></li>
</ul>
</div>

9. That’s it! Preview and change all the necessary colors and text to fit your application needs. Happy iDesigning…

After reading a lot of blogs on web development, making quick cash, traffic increase, and iPhone web development we decided to continue the trend. The InterVolt Development team will be adding daily input on project progression, upcoming projects, web development skills, iPhone applications, SEO, and a lot of rad stuff. So stay tuned!