Blogging can be a challenge for most of us – whether it is because life gets in the way of our blogging time, or it is a challenge to find great ideas. We’ve rounded up the top 10 essential blogging tools by reading dozens of blogs and keeping an eye on trends.
This list is by no means exhaustive, so if you have suggestions, let us know in the comments!
The Top 10 Essential Blogging Tools
I read quite a few articles over the weekend about top Firefox extensions, and while several of them mentioned using add-ons like Speed Dial and Morning Coffee to set up your home pages in Firefox, I dug deep in the Geek Girl’s archives and found a way to do this manually, without adding any additional add-ons to my Firefox installation!
First, go to the menu bar and click on Tools, and then Options. Then, click on the Main tab.
Screenshot of the Home Page Options
One of my favorite jobs was working in tech support for a large international company. Not only did I learn a lot about to troubleshoot OS and software issues, but I also got hipped to Firefox! When I first got introduced to Firefox, it was version 1.0 and it was November, 2004! Now, 4 years later, I’m using version 3.0.3 and loving every moment of it!
If you are serious about web surfing, you will quickly find that many websites render (load) faster in Firefox, it is easily customizable through the options available out of the box, but you can choose from hundreds of add-ons (extensions) to add additional functionality!
I’m an associate for Amazon.com – I try to refer people to purchase Amazon products and services. I have found them very useful, so I want to “spread the love” to everyone else.
After Amazon updated their Associates code, I was unable to use the getASIN bookmarklet. I searched high and low for a solution, and finally found a bookmarklet that works from Justin Blanton with the new Amazon Associates website.
Amazon Associates Bookmarklet v1.1
To use this bookmarklet, follow these steps:
- Drag the above link to your browser’s toolbar.
About time! Firefox 3 officially supports built-in Gmail as your default email client support!
I showed you a hack back in July that would force Gmail to be your default email client.
However, for those who aren’t as comfortable with coding, try these quick steps to set your Gmail account as your default email client:
You do not have to restart your browser.
Cloud computing is the wave of the future, according to many tech experts. So I decided to try the free online operating system (OS), icloud beta, which runs directly in your web browser (IE 6 or 7, Windows only), to see what all the hype is about.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I logged onto icloud, which is built upon XML and Ajax. Each program runs smoothly and built-in features with this beta release are enough to keep you coming back to icloud for your computing needs.
Here’s a video demo of the program at work:
So, I click on this orange button and I can get your latest posts. But what is RSS?
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. A RSS feed document can contain a summary or the full content of that site. It allows you to know the latest of all the sites you regularly visit saving you the trouble and time of visiting each individual site everyday to get the latest content. Almost all blogs, news sites and other sites that have regularly updated content provide RSS content.
View this three and a half minute video about RSS from CommonCraft:
Have you ever bookmarked something in your browser only not being able to find it later using the search term but you know it’s there? Then you’re like me.
I don’t have a quick fix, but I have a way you can productively spend an hour or two, which will gain you more time in the future.
Organize your bookmarks! Of course the smart way to do this would be to organize them as you bookmark them, but I use shortcuts for bookmarking and that’s too much of a hassle 
.
Firefox 3 has been on the tongues and fingertips of people around the globe since it was released. All of the new features have been met with delight, and techies everywhere have been finding tweaks to make Firefox run faster or suit their needs.
The Firefox Bookmarks Library features built-in tagging support and easy drag-and-drop labeling.
