From the category archives:
Apps
After a lovely but somewhat short Holiday break in Virginia, USA. I’m back in front of the machine again. I was hoping to write a couple of posts on the plane to keep things updated, but after unpacking my laptop when the no seatbelt sign finally illuminated, I decided against it – But hey let’s move on.
If you’re like me and find yourself easily distracted while writing, I’d like to share with you a neat lightweight text editor that I discovered yesterday. Even though I now exclusively blog using Windows Live Writer, Q10 is an entirely different beast which serves a completely different purpose altogether. (1)
Q10’s primary goal is to totally immerse and focus your attention on text. Upon launching the program your screen will turn entirely black. No Windows task bar, no desktop, no nothing – just you and your text. It’s a different experience but I’ve found writing this way has boosted my productivity somewhat.
The program is shortcut driven, so if you’re not comfortable with using shortcuts on a regular you may struggle. But in all honestly, it’s not at all complicated and you’ll be up and running in no time at all.
Although the program has no toolbars, there is a small but non intrusive statistics bar at the bottom of the screen. Which gives you information on word count, pages and the number of characters in your document. It also comes with a handy spellchecker which other similar programs such as Darkroom do not provide. (2)
Q10 is available to download free of charge. (3)
After heading over to Windows Live, (1) I decided to download and test-drive Windows Live Writer. (2) After using Scribefire for awhile I decided I required something with a little more punch. (3)
First initial thoughts where very pleasing, the interface is very easy to navigate and the GUI is everything you’d come to expect from Microsoft. So if you’re familiar with Microsoft Word you’ll feel right at home.
Adding images into your posts couldn’t be easier, in fact the minute I saw how easy it was I was instantly hooked.
Simply browse to the image from your hard drive and insert it into your post. From there you’ll be able to tag it change the dimensions and add various built-in affects such as custom borders, emboss and all that jazz.
The image will be uploaded into your media library (Wordpress), and linked to and tagged accordingly. Live Writer can also be expanded by downloading free extensions from the Windows Live Gallery. (4)
There are various plug-ins available to download, most notably for Flickr and YouTube – so for example, say you inserted a video into your post, when it comes time to publishing Live Writer will upload the video to YouTube or Soapbox and link to it automatically – cool.
Live Writer is compatible with Wordpress, Blogger, Live Journal, TypePad and many more, give it a try – and let me know your thoughts.
Sharing your content by making it easier for your visitors to bookmark and distribute your content with like minded people around the web. Is a great way to increase rankings, generate buzz! and promote your website or blog.
If you are using a blogging platform like Wordpress, there are a bunch of plug-ins you can download and activate free of charge. Once installed you’ll see neat little share-it buttons like the ones you see below this post.
Popular Share Software
The most popular share-it software has to be ShareThis and AddThis. Both are available for Wordpress as plug-ins or the less than manageable copy and paste variants. But which software do you choose? And which services do you want your content shared on?
If tracking how many visitors shared your content is important to you, then I recommend you try either of the above. As both ShareThis and AddThis offer free analytics as part of their service. If analytics are not that important to you then I recommend Sociable.
Be Sociable
The reason I preferred Sociable over the other two was simple. Sociable is non-intrusive, customizable and available as a standard Wordpress plug-in. I wanted to keep the design at J.T clean and I dislike Ajaxy buttons that expand and take over precious real estate.
aideRSS Rocks my Socks
Secondly I use a great RSS analytics package called aideRSS. If you’re not using aideRSS then I highly recommend you give it a try. Basically aideRSS tracks the popularity of your RSS feed by using what they call PostRank™.
PostRank™ ranks each article on relevance and reaction and you can judge which posts or content you deliver to your visitors where the most popular or relevant across the web.
Using aideRSS you can also view who digg’d, twitter’d, and bookmarked your content. Hopefully they’ll add other social services in the future but for now those options are available to you.
Which Services to Choose
This is a tricky one and there really isn’t any right or wrong. The choice is after all up you, I touched upon the importance of not overwhelming your visitors with too many options here. But if you’re really stuck I found a great article that discusses the most popular ShareThis data.
Using that research I whittled down my services to 11 choices. Strangely enough they don’t provide a MySpace button yet, but I found a temporary remedy here. Also including Twitter and Pownce was a no brainer for me, but you might decide otherwise.
Ultimately the choice is yours but I hope this information was somewhat useful in your quest to share your content like a pro.
Image Credit: creativecommonersAdjix the new URL shortening service with a twist. Enables users to monetize any outbound link they create using the service. With Adjix you can earn up to $0.10 cents per unique link view, and $0.20 for each unique click-through.
How it Works
Simple really, when an ad supported Adjix link is clicked, the user is redirected to the original web page with an ad displayed at the top. A slight concern is that the page is actually displayed within a frame, which may cause problems further down the line.
Analytics
The real benefit of using Adjix to shorten your URLs is the analytics. Although quite simple, when using the service, you will be able to track who and how many users are actually clicking on your external links.
Ad-Free Version
Adjix announced an ad-free version today for people who want to track the usage of their external links without ads. The ad-free version uses standard URL redirection as you would expect from TinyURL.