Archive for July, 2007

Firefox extension that improves security AND saves time

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 Secure Login is a Firefox extension that makes signing into password protected web spaces more secure. That, I don’t really care about, although I probably should. What I love about the plugin, though, is it actually speeds up the login process. Just clicking the little key icon it sticks in your toolbar causes the login blanks to fill in and be submitted instantly. If you have multiple logins at one site, ... READ MORE

WinTabber – you wouln’t expect it to be cool, but…

Monday, July 30th, 2007 Basically, WinTabber just takes the tabs from your taskbar (for all your open apps) and puts them at the top of the screen, inside a browser-like shell. What’s the big deal? If you like to use Alt-Tab to switch between applications, you know that it likes to annoy you by sticking up 6 identical Word icons to represent the 6 Word docs you have open – not too helpful. WinTabber lets ... READ MORE

Alexa is crap, but now Firefox people can game it, too

Friday, July 27th, 2007 Alexa has finally released that Firefox toolbar they’ve been promising for ages. Alexa’s rankings bear only the occasional coincidental resemblance to reality when it comes to comparing site traffic. For a while, most of my sites were going up, up, up in Alexa as their traffic grew or stayed on plateaus. For the past few months they’ve just plummeted, despite traffic growing. By installing the toolbar, I can help to boost ... READ MORE

Bookmark post

Thursday, July 26th, 2007 Call it speedlinking if you want – I call it a “bookmark” post because I regularly use my own site to find links to stuff I’ve come across that I checked out and loved or want to check out sometime. Here’s a batch for you: Crop pictures online, quick and easy See what’s showing in the top fold of your site in various browsers The Authority Bloggers Forum- great place to get suggestions, ... READ MORE

Free PDF merging solutions – Windows and Mac

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 LifeHacker managed to dig up both Windows and Mac free utilities that let you merge PDF documents, re-order pages and edit them with watermarks and stuff like that. If you ever thought of writing an ebook, these are potentially very helpful programs. The ability to create PDFs in the first place is part of the Mac operating system. For Windows, you need CutePDF, and then any program with a print option ... READ MORE

Limiting time spent on tasks

Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 LifeHacker had an article about a guy who realized he was spending inordinate time replying to emails that really didn’t require encyclopedic responses. To get this bad habit under control, he limited himself to five sentences per email reply, and set up a link in his signature to explain the change to anyone who found it disconcerting. What if we did that with other stuff, too? What if I limited how long ... READ MORE

Do we need a forum for money bloggers?

Monday, July 23rd, 2007 I read the comments on a post where ProBlogger asked folks what they could do to improve the site for readers, hoping to get ideas for improving my own sites. To my surprise, one suggestion came up over and over: A forum. People want a forum. I’m just curious to know if anyone else wants this, as opposed to just commenting on blogs. Do forums really encourage better discussion? Or networking relationships ... READ MORE

Go niche… or don’t.

Monday, July 23rd, 2007 Is tackling a niche always the best answer in starting a site or online brand? Of course not. Nothing’s ever that simple. So don’t take so much time searching for a perfect niche that you never get started. There’s always time later to niche down as you find a subset of information or products that your visitors seem to want. Think of offline businesses. You can start out like Amazon, just ... READ MORE

GTD: Hard copy!

Friday, July 20th, 2007 In the past, I’ve written about my methods of online organization, which I prefer because I use more than one computer during a typical day and having it all online makes it so easy to keep up, especially given the option of doing some of the work offline and uploading the results. But if you prefer having pieces of paper, folders and calendars you can touch for your GTD, Neat Living ... READ MORE

Cut down Firefox and Thunderbird memory loss (Windows Only)

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007 This is a great hack that helps Windows users reclaim some of the memory Firefox likes to eat. Once you follow the steps outlined in the post, you can test it by doing the following: Close down your browser. Hit CTRL-ALT-DEL, and select your Task Manager from that window Click the “Processes” tab Start Firefox. An entry will show up for it under the Processes tabs. Note how much memory it’s using. Minimize Firefox (this is ... READ MORE

Don't miss an article!

 Subscribe in a reader or get every article delivered by email