Archive for February, 2007

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Firefox Photo up-loader

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 A new extension available for the Firefox browser is Fotofox, a photo up-loader from Mozilla Corporation:
Easily select, tag, title and upload pictures from your computer to an online photo service. Works with Flickr, Tabblo, 23hq, Smugmug, Marela, and Kodak EasyShare Gallery.
There are similar applications already available but I think I will try this one out over the next week or so. Do you have a personal favourite photuploaderer?

Frustration!

Monday, February 12th, 2007 I have my new computer nearly all set up the way I like it, installation of all my favourite programmes is just about complete, but one thing that seems to not be working is the creation of a back up disc. There is almost always no installation disc provided these days with new computers, but usually there is a disc provided in case of crashes that involve re-installation. Not in this case. What there is is a programme that runs every time I restart my computer and reminds me that I need to create one of my own. Then it asks you to run the programme and get it done. Great! Except every time I get as far as burning it to a DVD it rejects all my discs as being full, which is not the case. They ones I am using are blank and just fresh out of their wrappers. Anyone know of a good work-around? :-( *Update: the programme let me write to CD, so I ended up using 3 of them instead*

“Powered By”- a WordPress directory

Sunday, February 11th, 2007 Over the last week I have seen the "Powered By" directory site mentioned in several blogs but it wasn't until tonight that I finally had a chance to check it over for myself. This site is set up expressly to be used by WordPress bloggers. Going by the footer the site is run by Vasmi Gangavalli, but it looks like this person has a massive job on at the moment as each site that is submitted is manually checked. There is an option to set up a reciprocal link (which is now set up on my sidebar just above my logo) which means you should get quicker authentication. Submission was pretty easy, though the page went a bit kapplooey (possibly not a real word) when I hit the "Continue" button. That was probably due to an error by me on the captcha. It definitely worked on my second try as I got my confirmation e-mail through straight away. Though this is a free service you can pay for some extra exposure, a featured link will cost you $19.95/year but the cost goes up to $29.95/year at the beginning of May. The benefits are:
  • Your link will stay on top of the category that you submit and so attracting more visitors.
  • Featured links are also displayed site wide at the right hand side in random.
  • Featured Blogs have the advantage of Express Approval.
Though this is not something I would be that interested in it may well come in useful for some of those out there starting to try and monetize their sites. Are there any other directories out there that you have used?

Is this thing on?

Saturday, February 10th, 2007 I am trying out "Performancing" today, another on-line blogging tool to try out! I seem to be having a few teething problems, probably all down to me and my usual inability to read instructions properly. It's almost an aversion! Anyways, this is mostly just by way of a test post to see if I have got the settings right. Let's hope the image posts too! (Apparently not! I had to edit the post on site to get the image in, but I will try again tomorrow)

A Shiny New Computer

Friday, February 9th, 2007 With the arrival of Windows Vista on the scene it seemed like a good time to me to try and get myself a shiny new computer. Not a Vista one though. As always with the advent of an updated product, the old system that up until the day before was considered to be state of the art is now considered to be just so much junk, so now XP computers are being sold off at some huge discounts. I managed to pick mine up for £160, so I now have 80 gigs of space with a Pentium Processor running at 2.93GHz, a gig of RAM and a much better graphics card. Let's hope I don't break this one!

Google mail for all!

Thursday, February 8th, 2007 It looks like Google have opened up their e-mail service to everyone, according to C-net. Until now it has been by invite only. The service is still in Beta but if you haven't had a chance to give it a try yet, go get yourself a new addy! Thanks to 901am (again!) for the info. Google mail (or G-mail as it is called in many areas) is a very good service that I thoroughly recommend. As you would expect from Google the search function works excellently, your e-mails can be saved in to labels and if you choose to reply to any messages they are then automatically saved in to "conversations" which I find to be a very useful function. With 2814 mb of space you can accept and store some pretty big attachments if you need to, and not have to worry about your inbox filling up too quickly and bouncing that important e-mail. One of the best things in g-mail is their spam filtering, it seems able to catch everything that it should and nothing that it shouldn't. Another benefit is that you gain access to Google Talk as an instant messenger which also allows you to use voice if you have access to a mike and the ability to send files if you need to. Which e-mail service do you prefer to use?

LastFM just got even better!

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 Do you use lastFM? I am not much of a fan of the social networking sites like Livejournal and MySpace (though I have accounts, of course ;-) ), but lastFM is one that I really do enjoy. At least it seems to serve some purpose. But now it's got even better! According to Reuters:
LONDON (Reuters) - Warner Music Group has signed a deal to allow its entire catalogue to be played over the fast-growing social networking music service Last.fm, the innovative site that links music fans to new and old hits. Thanks to 901am for the heads-up
And even more good music could be heading our way as apparently lastFM are also in talks with the other three major labels. Though this is excellent news for us users I hope it doesn't lead to the other smaller independent labels it has deals with being overwhelmed. Are you a lastFM user? Or do you prefer one of the other music sites such as Pandora?

Online “Writer”

Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 Today I am trying out "Writer", which I discovered via lifehacker. It is a Darkroom style on-line word processor that is minimal but gets the job done and allows you to post directly to your blog where it is saved as a draft (at least that's what it does in self hosted WordPress), so go give it a go! Head over to: http://writer.bighugelabs.com/ No registration necessary, but if you want to be able to access your saved docs from any computer rather than just the one you created them on you will have to sign up. It's also a good idea to protect them this way in case you delete your cookie at some point. You can change the font colour from the default Green to Amber, White or shades of Grey, or you can even enter the text colour code of your own preference. The auto-save feature works pretty well too, and there is a word count tool, but there is no spell checker so make sure you spell check when editing your draft before posting. Do you use Darkroom or any similar distraction free application to help get your work done?

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