I reported a while back that Zoho’s Office plugin had suddenly stopped working for me in Excel and become uninstallable - an issue some other users had, too. Good news: Zoho is working on a new plugin. They offered me a chance to beta-test a version which would uninstall the old version and install a [...]

I reported a while back that Zoho’s Office plugin had suddenly stopped working for me in Excel and become uninstallable - an issue some other users had, too. Good news: Zoho is working on a new plugin. They offered me a chance to beta-test a version which would uninstall the old version and install a new working version. I tested it and it worked like a charm.

Look for an updated plugin in the next few days.

This is a paid review.
A couple of years ago, when I launched a new site the first thing I’d do was submit it to every directory I could find that didn’t charge for submissions and didn’t require a reciprocal link.
That method doesn’t work anymore. There are too many directories. Too many of them get devalued [...]

This is a paid review.

A couple of years ago, when I launched a new site the first thing I’d do was submit it to every directory I could find that didn’t charge for submissions and didn’t require a reciprocal link.

That method doesn’t work anymore. There are too many directories. Too many of them get devalued for including questionable sites or for slapping so many AdSense banners on their pages that Google decides they’re “made for AdSense”. And then people find out how much work is involved in maintaining a directory and dump them.

For a while now, I’ve only been submitting to paid directories I believe can give me a quality link in. Alive Directory, for example, has no ads on their pages. All money is made through paid submissions and Featured Link upgrade options. Their domain has been around since 2005, according to their WhoIs. They’re human-edited and the links are SEO friendly, which is important. They currently have over 18,000 backlinks listed in Google, which is much, much better than most directories: they promote themselves with backlinks included on free templates they design for Wordpress and other CMS - if they’re bothering to work on their own backlinks, then you know that linkage is being passed onto you.

The cheapest option is one year with a reciprocal link at $34.95. To determine if it’s worth it for your site, navigate to the page where you would submit your site and check its pagerank. I’m not a fan of buying pagerank but as the final metric in the equation it can help you determine whether a site’s worth buying links from.

If you’ve ever thought about self-publishing a book, DVD, music, etc., Lulu might be what you need.
Lulu is an online print-on-demand service that allows you to upload your book or creative work, and have individual copies printed on demand. You can order one copy or five, or use Lulu to promote & sell your book [...]

If you’ve ever thought about self-publishing a book, DVD, music, etc., Lulu might be what you need.

Lulu is an online print-on-demand service that allows you to upload your book or creative work, and have individual copies printed on demand. You can order one copy or five, or use Lulu to promote & sell your book online.

Via Lynn Terry

It looks to me to be quite similar to the Cafepress concept. You do most of the work - the creative parts - then outsource the tedious bits, like the actual printing.

Harvard has started something that reminds me of Squidoo, but it seems to be geared more toward academic topics. You can get yourself a “playlist” (like Squidoo’s lenses) and add articles to it from various sites. Possibly some of your sites. Those links will have an .edu in them.

Harvard has started something that reminds me of Squidoo, but it seems to be geared more toward academic topics. You can get yourself a “playlist” (like Squidoo’s lenses) and add articles to it from various sites. Possibly some of your sites. Those links will have an .edu in them.

I know YouTube videos are the new blog post, but am I the only one getting sick of having to watch a video when I just want to read a couple of paragraphs about a topic? I don’t want to see the tutorial video; I want to read instructions. I don’t want to listen to [...]

I know YouTube videos are the new blog post, but am I the only one getting sick of having to watch a video when I just want to read a couple of paragraphs about a topic? I don’t want to see the tutorial video; I want to read instructions. I don’t want to listen to you tell your idea in into your webcam with diagrams on a whiteboard; I want to read an article about it.

You know why? Because I can skim written text. I can’t skim a video. It’s like punishing me by making me sit there for it. Plus, I can’t crank up the sound on a video just anywhere like I can with text.

Surely a lot of our visitors must feel this way, too.

SearchEngineLand covers a way to keep your Feedburner feeds using your domain name, for essentially $1 per feed per month. That’s an interesting alternative if you like pushing your feeds through FeedBurner - it’s always advantageous to have everything showing as your domain.
Personally, I’ve decided to disable my FeedBurner Replacement plugin for WordPress. After running [...]

SearchEngineLand covers a way to keep your Feedburner feeds using your domain name, for essentially $1 per feed per month. That’s an interesting alternative if you like pushing your feeds through FeedBurner - it’s always advantageous to have everything showing as your domain.

Personally, I’ve decided to disable my FeedBurner Replacement plugin for WordPress. After running it for a couple of weeks, I have a good idea how many subscribers I have and where they’re coming from. In a few months I may run it again and see where I’m at then.But I like to keep things simple, so I’m just going to stop using them for now.