Archive for January, 2008
· January 31, 2008 at 7:03 am · Hot Web Topics, Online Tools, Popular Posts
Tags: addons, google calendar, Greasemonkey, guide, help, tips, tricks
Ever since I did the Google Reader guide people have been asking me to do another post like that about some other service. I do use Google Calendar a lot as well so here are a few Google Calendar tips and tricks that you might actually get some use out of.
Greasemonkey Scripts for Google Calendar
· January 30, 2008 at 6:07 am · Free Hosting
Tags: filebig, files, free, hosting, share, web
Sounding like the mumblings of a caveman, FileBig.com is on the scene and will allow you to upload up to 50MB per file to share with your friends, forum buddies and file sharing amigos. Here are a handful of the perks.
- Fast, Easy and Free!
- Easily share files too big to email.
- 50MB file size, bigger than others.
- Unlimited storage and downloads.
The promise a free file hosting experiance that can not be beat. You can use the web site interface to upload all types of files (as long as by all you mean .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, .TIFF, .BMP). It will allow you to easily share files on MySpace, Facebook, eBay, and more.
· January 29, 2008 at 6:31 am · Hot Web Topics, Resources
Tags: blogs, favorites, feeds, list, sites, suggested
This is my last list of suggestions of web sites you should be subscribed to.
The list is now complete, well - at least for the current date and time. I am always subscribing to new content so I am sure more suggestions for web sites you should check out are coming in the near future.
The Wrong Advices - Lots of tech news, blogging and WordPress stuff to be had here. Great alternative view and look at a lot of this stuff if your tired of the same old crap from your A list collection of bloggers.
Worthy Example Link? Blogging is harder than you think
thepinkc - Ellie’s work here is totally fabulous, and I would have to say she might be one of the best under appreciated feeds in my entire list of web sites I subscribe to. Lots of tech, advice and optimization stuff here to enjoy.
Worthy Example Link? Get organized with Tidy Start Menu
Unclutterer - Who likes to be cluttered? I know I don’t. I take great pride in my organizational skill but it would be nowhere without sites like Unclutterer which are as inspiring as you can get to get out there and clean the garage, closet or maybe even just your desk.
Worth Example Link? Unclutter Your Online Passwords
Weblog Tools Collection - Once I started becoming such a big fan of WordPress this is one site I had to start coming back to again and again because they had more blogging goodies than most. From themes to plugins and even advice tons of fun to be had.
Worthy Example Link? Other Side Of Permalinks
Thanks goes out to these 4 excellent top of the line web sites and everybody else I have suggested out there since last month. Without you these lists would have been a lot of empty links.
Checkout the Entire Feed Suggestion Series!
· January 28, 2008 at 5:00 am · Interviews
Tags: clickfire, emory rowland, hosting, internet, interview, webmasters
Emory Rowland of Clickfire.com is one of the legitimate good guys out there in the web development and hosting world today. He has also been around as long if not longer than some of the other big names in our business.
How did you get your start on the Web?
Emory: My path into the web began in the mid 1990’s. I was a fairly uninspired surfer and email user until I discovered online multiplayer gaming. Meeting others and competing with them in a virtual world fascinated me. I spent a lot of time gaming back then when I should have been reserving domains like games.com. Looking back, I guess you could say that playing multiplayer games was my first online social networking experience. But, instead of the polite introductions we have with today’s social networking sites, you broke the ice by joining a game and chasing people around, taunting and blowing each other up.
Soon, I started building my own user maps. The next thing I knew I was learning to create graphics, then my first Web site which was a Duke Nukem fan site that had an address of something like someurl.com/~emory/dukenukem/, then writing PC game reviews for Gamezilla and UGO and just generally enjoying the whole Internet experience.
Who is the bigger star, Emory or Clickfire?
Emory: The best way to answer that question is by comparing the number of people who stop by my place to visit (friends, magazine salesmen, mailmen, etc) with the number of people who stop by Clickfire to visit. Emory might get one visitor per month. Clickfire gets many thousands. Clickfire can serve a lot more people than Emory ever could. It really makes you think about the leveraging power of the Internet. I could be standing on the street outside my home with a sign that said “Free 100 dollar bills” and I’d never get as many visitors, solve as many problems or meet as many cool people as Clickfire allows. Creating and maintaining my own Web site has has been one of the most enriching of life experiences.
Across Clickfire.com you cover lots of different web developer topics and discussions. What is your favorite area of the massive tent of web development and why?
Emory: I am still having a great time playing around with RSS/XML. Every major social site these days has a feed for the mashing. WordPress has individual category, post and comments feeds. I like to pull pieces of them from my own site and present them on a static page. Then, there is the mobile side, which I haven’t even begun to experiment with yet.
I would say you’re one of the longest running webmaster resources, with your roots going all the way back to 1997. What has made you want to stay in the game so long?
Emory: I enjoy it. Why I enjoy it is something I’ve thought about a great deal. I like having my own “place” online where I can do creative stuff like writing reviews and building free tools. Visitors read the reviews and use the tools and comment; that makes me like doing it more. I can earn revenue by adding affiliate marketing into the mix. So I enjoy it even more. I can increase that revenue with SEO. Now my career is in search marketing and I’m having fun and getting in even deeper. So, I meet even more interesting people like yourself who inspire me to be creative–the cycle starts again.
Are you afraid your going to wake up one day and have the sudden urge to quit and sell shoes at the mall?
Emory: I have no talent outside the Web, so I am sure that will never happen. Besides I can’t sell. I’d probably offer the customer an objective review of the shoes and then give him a pair for free. If I had to make money the brick and mortar way, I’d be broke. Being a webmaster is too much fun.
As far as web hosting goes, which two web hosts out there impress you the most and why?
Emory: You saved the toughest question for last 
. It seems that all the big shared hosts are offering more bandwidth than you can shake a pipe at. As I’m sure you are well aware, webmastering can be a lonely job and often keeps you up late into the night. If your site goes down at 3:00 AM, you can’t scream. Opening a support ticket online doesn’t seem to satisfy the human need to know that someone is listening and just might care. It’s probably no coincidence that the only two web hosts that have ever won 5 out of 5 Clickfire stars both have 24 hour phone support lines, BlueHost and HostGator. I will say that Lunarpages was the highest rated host we reviewed last year and I really like LP’s pro customer attitude. I am also hosting some sites on HostDime, which I like so far. And HostICan seems intriguing, which we are reviewing now. I think that’s more than two so I’ll stop and bid farewell before I get carried away.
Thanks, Mitch, for giving me the opportunity to share with your readers. And thanks for the free therapy because I have learned some new things about myself now. Keep up the great work with the Web Hosting Show and Mitchelaneous.
· January 27, 2008 at 8:41 am · Popular Posts, Web Hosting
Tags: ajax, dns, domains, lookup, network, Resources, whois
Here are some of the best networking tools on the Web these days:
- Network-Tools.com - Ugly interface but a little something for every network tool loving freak.
- Pingdom Tools - The best looking set of network tools, ping, traceroute and page loading tools included.
- DNS Goodies - Lots of goodies here to love from whois, ip check, ping and more.
- Traceroute.org - Need to do a traceroute from more than one location? The interface is horrible but the info is handy.
- DNS Stuff - Another list of your generic domain name tools. Also has a paid service for more perks and choices.
- My Nameserver - Tons of DNS related lookup tools here. Also good to look up abuse, domain name worth and more.
Read the rest of this entry »
· January 25, 2008 at 6:32 am · Software Help
Tags: doc, docx, files, formats, microsoft, Software Help, tools
I ran into a problem yesterday, because I got a .docx file e-mailed to me and I could not open it. Why? Well from what I could tell this seems to be one of Microsoft’s wacky file formats that you can only open using their products. Since I use OpenOffice.org as my word processor, spreadsheet, and more of choice I needed to find a quick fix.
That is when I stumbled upon this neat tool provided by Microsoft. Get read for this name… the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats.
(Try to say that ten times fast!)
I downloaded and installed it, now I can right-click the oddball files, pick “Open With…” and choose this new download. When you do it pops up with a box asking you what you would like to convert it to. With my .docx file I just turned it into a regular .doc file and I was done.
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