Connect With Other Bloggers, Readers and Advertisers

Blogoria is a great Blogger Search resource to find bloggers, readers and advertisers to connect with. This is a great way to get your blog exposed to more people who might be interested in reading your blog. I’m always trying to find new ways to do this because I need all the help I can get.

It’s very easy to register and find what you’re looking for. There isn’t any clutter causing you to become lost on the site. I am now a new Blogorian for the moment at least.

The site displays the new Blogorians on the front page and below that the newest content is listed. When logged into my account, I can view related bloggers and recent posts from channels that I’m interested in reading feeds from. One I might be interested in would be Technology.

As you can see in the image above, the highlighted one is a post I wrote today and is found under the Technology Channel. This is in the Recent Posts tab and allows me to find other posts that have been written by other members under the channel that I choose.

I’m hoping this might bring more traffic for me than Technorati does. I rarely see someone visit from Technorati, so I hope Blogoria will provide something different. Even if it doesn’t help with traffic, it’s a great way for me to find other blogs that I may be interested in subscribing to or even networking with.

Sponsored by Blogoria

Four Free Useful Tools

MailStore

This first one is probably the most useful of the four. I found out about MailStore over at MakeUseOf. Because of my recent switch to Gmail IMAP, all of my e-mails are stored in one location and I have thousands of e-mails that I view from Thunderbird, but can’t be sure that they are all downloaded in full.

MailStore allows me to backup all of my e-mails and search through them. I can also still use them from where ever I backup from. Taken from the site, it archives mail from:

• Microsoft Outlook
• Microsoft Outlook Express
• Microsoft Exchange Server
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• Mozilla SeaMonkey
• AVM KEN! Server
• IMAP and POP3
• e.g. Google Mail and AOL Mail
• PST, EML and other files

MailStore also provides you with a way to backup to a CD. This is the first thing I am doing after archiving all of my e-mails. Please note, if you have a lot of e-mails, archiving can take a lot of time. You can customize which folders you want archived and if you want MailStore to delete e-mails after archiving.

There have been so many times I’ve lost e-mail due to data corruption or a client not importing correctly and so the e-mail is lost. Once MailStore archives my e-mails, I can read them directly from MailStore.

Windows Live Writer

This one can be useful if you don’t always have access to the Internet. I usually take for granted that I have an Internet connection that is always there and available, except when the power goes out or for maintenance. Lately, I’ve been thinking about this and realized that if I wanted to write a post and had no Internet connection, I’d probably have to use Notepad or Word, which neither of them would be really that great.

I had tried using Windows Live Writer before, but wasn’t able to really get into it because all of my drafts were stored on my blog and Writer doesn’t import them. Since it’s been so long since I’ve gone through those drafts, I will just start fresh with Writer.

I like some of the features it provides for inserting images. Adding borders to images can sometimes make images look nicer; for example, a drop shadow. It also allows me to change the dimensions of the image, instead of opening Photoshop and deciding what the dimensions should be and then having to go back into Photoshop again because it didn’t look right.

Because I have the newest post set to show an image on the home page, I can’t really use Windows Live Writer to publish. I would have to save as a draft on the blog and then go to the blog and publish from there after adding the finishing touches to the post. This is where “Post Draft and Edit Online” comes in under File in the menu. I learned about that through Chris Kasten from Solo Technology.

Check out these tips for image formatting at TechnoSpot. My favorite is the one for centering images. For whatever reason, you can’t center just an image, you need text as well. So, if you center the image with some text, then you can select just the text and align it to the left. It’s one extra step that is time consuming, but it works. Note: When using the “Post Draft and Edit Online” feature, the images are not centered when editing in WordPress.

Prism

I’ve talked about Prism here before and my love for it. I still use it, especially for opening up Gmail. Prism will help keep online apps from becoming just another bookmark in a browser. Because it allows you to create shortcuts and opens a separate instance of Prism for each one, it makes it possible for you to just close it out and come back to it later when you need it. No need to keep online apps stored in tabs.

One feature I’d like to see with Prism is the ability to use an online app’s favicon or allow you to add a custom one. This would help distinguish shortcuts from each other and allow you to find one quickly without having to read the name. Because Prism is missing this feature, every shortcut is saved with a blue globe. So, storing each one in Quick Launch would not be very efficient.

Prism isn’t a complete browser in that some things may not work correctly. I’ve run into videos without sound (they used to work). Using the Rich Editor in Gmail prevents you from tabbing into the message field to type out an e-mail message.

If you are interested in more of what I’ve said about Prism, read my post: 13 Uses for Prism.

eBay Desktop

I don’t use eBay very often unless I’m looking to save money. I try to use eBay as a last resort only because of the risk of not receiving an item that is paid for. Almost had that happen one time.

eBay Desktop looks like a great way to search and bid for items without leaving the desktop. No longer do you need to refresh either. After searching, on the right side of each result is the time remaining in real time. It counts down until it reaches 0 and displays “Ended”.

When you click on the item you want to look at, the results shrinks to the left side of the window and on the right side is where the information is displayed. This includes the price, time remaining, seller, payment information and the description of the item. eBay Desktop gives a much friendlier way for bidding on items. And, because you don’t need to refresh, you can make sure you make your last bid before time runs out.

This is one application that will stay installed until I no longer use eBay. I do think it could look a little better. Some of the text is hard to read because of the font that is used. It’s still beta, so maybe there will be improvements in a future version.

Please leave comment if there is a useful tool you use to get things done.

Posts Around the Web

Today, I thought I would share some posts around the web from feeds that I am subscribed to.

Is Your Desktop Naked?

This one comes from Mitchellaneous and caught my attention, because like Mitch, I also like a clean desktop. The only difference between mine and his though is that I use gadgets from the Vista Sidebar. But, it’s still clean because I don’t have icons cluttering my desktop.

This is useful if you are working on a project for a client, because whatever you decide to save on the desktop is for that project alone. Then as Mitch said, you can move file(s) to another location when you’re done, or delete if you no longer need the file(s). Great tip.

Photoshop Tutorial: Candy in a Plastic Wrapper

This tutorial comes from Larissa Meek showing us what to use the plastic wrap filter for in Photoshop. I haven’t put her tutorial to the test, but it looks easy to follow. I’d be interested to know if anyone’s used the filter for anything else.

5 Packs to Transform Windows to other OS

One thing many people like to do is making Windows look like another operating system. The two most common ones I see are Mac and Vista.  This list comes from MakeUseOf.

• Vista Transformation Pack
• Mac OS Transformation Pack
• FlyakiteOSX
• Fedora Transformation Pack
• Ubuntu Transformation Pack

For screenshots, check out the post.

Google Takes Feeds Out of Search Results

I read this great news over at Jeffro2pt0.  This is very important to me, because I was starting to consider using another search engine because it annoyed me that every search result included a lot of feeds, rather than the actual content. And it takes time to manually find the link to the content.

It’s also important that if you have a blog, that your feeds aren’t showing up in the first results, possibly resulting in less visitors.

The No Fix, No Pay Tech Support

The only tech support I’ve received is through my children’s father. So, if I didn’t know how to fix a problem myself, most of the time he was able to fix whatever the problem was. The best part? It was free no matter if he fixed it or not.

Some people aren’t able to get free tech support and have to pay a lot of money only for the tech support person to say they can’t fix it because <insert reason here>. I don’t think that’s right, charge less when you can’t fix it! This is why I am liking PC Ask Me. I have not tried it out yet, but if I run into a problem someday and have no free tech support, it might be worth remembering.

PC Ask Me offers PC Repairs and can fix problems over the Internet or you don’t pay. I thought of my friend, Shannon, when I saw that they also offer virus and spyware removal. She gets them frequently. They even offer setup and installation of peripheral devices, memory and performance enhancements, and more.

For those of you looking to install Vista but not sure how to upgrade, they offer Vista upgrade install/reinstall.

Even though I personally use System Mechanic for this, they also offer PC diagnostic/tune up. This is great for anyone who doesn’t know what to use or do to keep their computer running smoothly.

Why call PC Ask Me for support:

• They will give you a free estimate.
• They are located in the US, so you are probably likely to talk to someone you can understand in your language.
• If they don’t fix the problem, you don’t pay for it.
• If you talked to a specific person about a problem before, you will talk to the same person again.

The prices for the most part seem reasonable, but maybe a little expensive for a few things. I don’t charge to help anyone with computer problems, so I’m not sure if those prices are cheaper or more expensive than what most tech support would charge.

Watch the video summary of how PC Ask Me works on their front page. It even looks like they are offering a free PC diagnostic for a limited time. Might be a great way to try them out and see if you like them.

Sponsored by PC Ask Me

Create Your Own Wallpaper

I just read about PaperMaker over at Lifehacker. It is really cool, but I think it needs more choices and the ability to import your own backgrounds. I would also like to be able to see and download what others have created. Although, there is a gallery, but only very little are displayed.

PaperMaker lets you choose a background, pictures and accessories to create your own custom wallpaper in the resolution you choose. I’m not sure if this is automatic, but it had the resolution set at 1440×900, which is the resolution I have set. Thumbs up if it does automatically detect resolutions.

The backgrounds PaperMaker has are even great by themselves without any extra pictures and accessories. I chose a blue one that looks like paint was splattered all over and set it as my wallpaper.

Since it doesn’t let you view what others have created and download them, I thought I would share my creations. They aren’t really that good, just saved my tests of PaperMaker. But, if by some chance someone likes them, they are available for you to download at the resolution of 1440×900. Click on the image to preview the full size. Enjoy.