Archive | October, 2008

24 Personalized Start Pages

Oct/20 in Online Apps

Since this is a Monday, figured it might be best to start your week off with the best ways to start of your day – a good start page in your browser.  As familiar as your morning cup of coffee – which of these is your favorite?

  • PopURLs – Uniquely different than the rest, but still have a lot of information to share.
  • My Live – The standard lots of boxes, fill me up type of start page.
  • Protopage – One of the better of the customizable start pages, tons of options and tools.
  • Pageflakes – Another top choice of mine.  Really like the look and feel of Pageflakes.
  • Netvibes – Best of the lesser known selections.  Latest update was kinda disappointing however.
  • Suprglu – Brings your favorite social tools together to create a better start page.
  • 24eyes – At least they didn’t call it 99 bottles of beer on the wall?
  • iGoogle – Google’s recently updated way to start your day.  Quickly becoming a fan favorite.
  • favoor – Notes, news links and more on this lesser known start page.
  • StartAid -StartAid is perfect for saving all your bookmarks online.
  • eskobo – Funny enough, has nothing to do with Eskimos.  Who knew?
  • smplr – One text box to rule them all!  It doesn’t get any more simplier. (or is that smplr?)
  • feedly – Start page + Firefox = Starting Goodness?
  • Widexplorer – Because nobody wanted to use the narrow explorer.
  • Gizi – A clone of the more traditional tons of boxes start page.
  • LinkedFeed – The more you use it, the better it serves you!
  • Fav 2.0 – A thumbnail gallery of your favorite web sites.
  • Widgetop – A fun and colorful desktop-like start page. 
  • BBC Beta – Even the BBC is letting you customize their front page.
  • Webwag – Looks like Netvibes’ ugly and less talented step sister.
  • My AOL – Get your day going with a fresh cup of AOL!
  • Sputtr – At least it wasn’t called stu.. stu… studder.
  • Symbaloo – Wins my most unique award.  Tons of squares to fill in with your favorites.
  • My Yahoo! – Get your news, weather, RSS feeds and more all with a Yahoo!-like twist.

Is it time to change the start page you have been using?  There are many of them out there to choose from.  Secret is, is to find the one that provides the most stuff you need in the best presentation possible.

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Free Custom Desktop Icons from Mitch!

Oct/18 in Personal

custom-icon-category

I have done a number of custom icons in the past few weeks and months, so I figured – why not dump them all into a category so you can pick them up one by one?  Hence, the reason for the brand new (and reeking of awesomeness) custom icon category:

http://www.mitchelaneous.com/category/desktop/free-icons/

Browse through all the past icons, and if you have any requests – be sure to let me know!  More will be coming soon too, so look forward to seeing some updates there.

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My Birthday Present for You… Freaks!

Oct/17 in Hot Web Topics, Personal

Since today is my birthday, I had to find something extra special to get for all of you.  Yes, I know birthdays usually work the other way around – but hey, I am a giving kind of guy. So what better to hand you than another public domain favorite movie of mine, Freaks.

It is a horror movie about sideshow performers.  Instead of using makeup and actors though, the films director (and producer) Tod Browning hired actual carnival performers.  That, in its own right, makes it even stranger.  The film was also banned in the United Kingdom for thirty years.

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Yahoo! Web Analytics?

Oct/16 in Web Development Tutorials

Looks like Yahoo is following Google into the web analytics game.  If you visit http://web.analytics.yahoo.com/ you will see that IndexTools is now well, Yahoo! Web Analytics. What was Index Tools?  I don’t know either.

yahoo-analytics2

They are promising a powerful and flexible web site stats package.  Not much is known yet due to the only thing we have to go by is the web site.  I am excited to see that they are promising to get detailed reporting within minutes after and action occurs on your web site.  With other similar tools, you usually have to wait till the next day to get the best results.  Other features include:yahoo-analytics

  • Dashboards
  • Custom Reports
  • Advanced Campaign Management
  • Real-Time Segmentation
  • Scenario Analysis… and more!

So when can you sign up for this new tool?  Yahoo! Web Analytics will be made available to a wide range of Yahoo!’s customers, partners, developers and advertisers in stages throughout the rest of 2008 and into 2009.

Maybe my glass is half full, but I am excited about giving this a shot.

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Watch Night of the Living Dead for Free!

Oct/14 in Hot Web Topics

What says October more than one of the greatest zombie movies of all time.  I don’t care who you are or what you do – there is no zombie movie better than the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead.  The other day I just happened to cross the full movie up on Google Video (probably due to the copyright on it running out many years ago).

What is your favorite scary movie?  Night of the Living Dead would be in the top ten, no wait – top five for me.  How about you?

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For the Love of Great Wallpaper

Oct/13 in Desktop

I love great wallpaper as much as the next guy.  Want proof?  Here is every single wallpaper suggestion I have ever made to all of you.

Have a wallpaper you love or a resource to share?

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Send Windows Live Writer to the System Tray

Oct/10 in Desktop, Web Development Tutorials

System Tray Access to Windows Live Writer Want to keep Windows Live Writer in the system tray toolbar? 

Searching around for various plugins and scripts to add onto the already pretty great Windows Live Writer I stumbled upon a tiny program that will let you do that.  Windows Live Writer System Tray is a small application that lives in your system tray giving you quick access to these Windows Live Writer features:

  • Start a New Post
  • Open an Existing Post
  • Show Options
  • Exit

This is the system icon that will be placed in your system tray when the app is started.  You can grab the free download on the Windows Live Writer System Tray web site.  If you enjoy Windows Live Writer as much as I do, I know you’ll appreciate being able to keep it handy in the system tray at all times.

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Site Usage in Google Analytics

Oct/09 in Web Development Tutorials

ga-site-usage

I have been using Google Analytics since its debut, and love it as a stats tool.  I probably use it more than I have any tools built into a hosting account.  Some people might be overwhelmed by some of the terms though, so to break it down I thought I would take a look at the first thing you see, the Site Usage section.

ga Visits – In Google Analytics, visits are the number of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site.

ga Pageviews – With Pageviews, these are defined as a view of a page (inside of your web site) that is being tracked.

ga Pages/Visits – This number is an average of how many pages your average viewer are checking out inside of your site at a single time.

ga Bounce Rate – Once of the more confusing stats, it is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page.  The lower the number, the better you are doing.

ga Avg. Time on Site – Ok, maybe this one doesn’t need to be explained. It is the average time a visitor spends on your web site in a single session.  The longer, the better (in most cases).

ga % New Visits – This is a comparison of new visitors with old visitors.  It is always good to bring new people into the fold, but you also want to make sure you give people something to come back for.

Now, at least, you have a better idea of what those numbers mean to your web site you are tracking.  Need help getting Google Analytics setup for your site?  WebHostingShow.com has a great guide on how to get started.

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Project Management with Scrumy

Oct/08 in Online Apps

Image1 Scrumy is a simple project management solution based on Scrum.  Now I could do my best to explain Scrum, but would probably mess it up – so that is why this well placed link to Wikipedia is here so that you can figure that one out on your own.

With Scrumy, all you do is point your browser towards scrumy.com/ and then after the / type in any name you want.  For each job you might need to get done, add a new story.  Then you can add the tasks for that job under the “To Do” list.  In addition to the “To Do” list you also have sections for work in progress, that are verified, and that are done.  As the work progresses, you can drag and drop to do list items to other boxes.  The process is simple, yet very effective for organizing your team’s ideas and tracking the progress.

The service is totally free, but if you want a few more features – I suggest you shell out for Scrumy Pro.  With Scrumy Pro, you can password protect your project. You get the Dashboard to help you manage multiple sprints. You get Burndown Charts to help you schedule. You can rename your project at any time. Your project will never be deleted for inactivity. Ever.

If you need help organizing your next big project, give Scrumy a shot.

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Mitchelaneous Goes Black and White

Oct/07 in Web Development Tutorials

The latest site of mine to get a re-design, is Mitchelaneous.com.  The basics are the same, but I really wanted a black layout.  I had never had one before – and well, hey it is mine, so I can do what I want. (hehe) Coming next month will be my four year anniversary of starting it up too.

new-mitchelaneous

Hope you enjoy, and if you just subscribe to the RSS feed – that works too.  For those of you who go out of your way to both visit the site and subscribe to the RSS feed – you my friend, are awesome. Give me your feedback on the theme and any general thoughts you might have about the content here.  What do you like, what do you hate, what do you want to see more of?  Let me make you happy.

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