Blogging Sueblimely

Collections are a newly introduced Firefox site feature that allow you to save lists of your favorite add-ons (extensions, toolbars, Greasemonkey scripts) to your Firefox profile.

A subscribe option allows you to add the collections of others to your favorites and track when these are updated. These user created collections are ranked by the amount of subscribers they have attracted.

The Firefox Collections page allows you to view lists of Editor’s Picks (so far only Firefox Created Collections), Popular Collections, your own and your favorite Collections. The lists are searchable by most popular all time, most popular this week or month and newest. A keyword search box is also provided.

Social networking aspects are involved here.

• You are able to keep up to date with new extensions added by those whose knowledge you respect. I first heard of collections via the blog post Best Of Breed Firefox Collection For SEO, Bloggers & Internet Marketers, by Andy Beard, whose collection I subscribed to immediately.
• You can subscribe to the collections of current friends and develop more contacts.
• By publicizing and gaining subscribers for your own collections, the higher your own profile will reach in the collection rankings.
• For bloggers this could lead to more visitors and regular readers.

It has taken me a while to get back into the swing of blogging after being away on holiday but life is now back to it’s normal routine. As usual I have tried out the tools I review so here are my own Firefox Collections: These are based on those I use and those I have found useful but have had to delete from my default Firefox profile to keep the number of add-ins down. The more you have the slower the browser.

• Social Networking Firefox extensions and toolbars that help you interact with your social networks and communicate with your contacts. I keep my most used in my default profile but have a social networking profile for times when I wish to do nothing else but catch up with my network contacts.
• Blogging- blog writers, web design and image tools for blogging.
• Sueblimely Using Add-ons- the add-ins I use with my default Firefox profile.

For an explanation of why and how to use different profiles please checkout my post Speed Up Your Firefox Browsing

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Firefox Collections and Social Networking

Work with Wordpress MU (multi user) is the reason from my recent absence from blogging. The East Coast area of a UK charity, the National Coastwatch Institution, needed a rebuild of one its website to go along with an extension of it’s activities.

Although you may not have the same needs as this organization you may consider using Wordpress MU if you want to develop more than one blog.

I had originally created the coastwatch site using the Joomla CMS system but, as the interface was complicated for them, Wordpress was my obvious choice. After working with Wordpress on various sites for a year or so, I know how flexible it can be. I was pleased to see that immediately after the new site was up and running Keef, who will be a co-author, had written a post and just needed me to tell him to hit the media button to add images. So much simpler.

As NCI East Coast now comprises of two coastwatch stations, managed by two separate committes, each needed their own unique identity, I decided on using Wordpress MU to make administration simpler. Both stations now have their own unique pages and blogs on their own virtual subdomains.

The blog and some pages on the main East Coast site are being used as a private member only area for both of the coastwatch volunteer teams. Plugins turn this section into a true community site.

The other East Coast pages are public and contain information common to both stations. By using Wordpress MU, the three blogs and three sets of static pages (NCI Eastcoast, NCI Skegness and NCI Mablethorpe) can all be managed from one admin dashboard.

I am hoping to see lots of posts written on the site to gain it speedy search engine page ranking and to raise awareness, more volunteer watchers and, hopefully more funds, for this worthy charity organization. Their volunteers man the coastwatch stations daily, making sure beach and sea goers are safe.

You may like to go along and leave a comment, joining me in congratulating them on their hard work and efforts in getting their second station up and running.

I will expand upon the advantages of and uses for MU in an upcoming post. For those of you interested in setting up an MU site I will also be talking of how to I set the East Coast site up, the plugins I used and where to find futher information.

I will also be discussing how you can use Wordpress, including an existing installation, or Wordpress MU to create a community site. As with the NCI Eastcoast example, you do not have to run your whole site as a community site – you can just have it as an add-on to a normal WP site.

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Wordpress Multi User

The reports of Sheila’s whereabouts are quite right, she has been visiting me in Melbourne.

Sheila in Melbourne – Source Flickr – poetic licence by Photoshop

She was a little shy at first, tentatively peeping around the front door when she first entered.

Once she found aspects of the house that she could relate to she soon started to feel at home:

More mug shots – Feeling at home among the other cups

Family members were impressed by her warmth and soon got close to her:

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Sheila and the Sisterhood of the Travelling Bra

Do you come across web and blog templates or themes that are ideal layout wise but the colors do not suit you or your site’s purpose. These are relatively easy to change via a templates CSS style sheet but you may need some help choosing the correct color combinations. There are numerous free online tools to help in your decision, so many that it can take time just choosing which tool to choose. Rather than creating a long list of what is available I have chosen a selection of a variety of the more comprehensive but easy to use free tools:

Mimicry is the highest form of flattery

If you are short on ideas, or are just unsure what other colors you can add to those you already like, browsing other websites can be useful but time consuming. Screenalicious, which showcases websites, also displays the color palettes off each featured site, along with the corresponding hexadecimal numbers.

If you have seen a website whose colors you like but are having trouble reproducing them I Like Your Colors will tell you exactly what they are. Simply type in the site URL and you will be given a graphical representation of the colors and their numbers. Here are the results from the Mashable site:

The Firefox Addin Colorzilla not only provides an eye dropper and a color picker tool but allows you to analyze and save a color palette of any webpage.

DOM Color Analysis Results

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

Color Palette Generators

Then there are the many color palette generators. A few stand out from the crowd with regard to features and ease of use:

Adobe Kuler allows you to explore and vote on color schemes created by others as well as create, save and share your own. You can generate a color theme from scratch or use colors from an uploaded image or from Flickr. If you are not feeling creative you can choose from the gallery of user created schemes.Your swatches can be downloaded as Adobe Swatch Exchange (.ase) files for use in Adobe CS (2,3 and 4) programs. Kuler is integrated into CS4. If you do not have these Adobe products an Adobe Air application, Color Browser, allows you to import and save downloaded .ase files to.organize your favorite color palettes locally.

Color Lovers offers simple and more advanced color palette creation tools; although I find the simple tool harder as it offers no suggestions as to color combinations. As with Kuler you can browse and search for user contributed color palettes and use these yourself. Color lovers provides a whole host of other features to help you with your creations. Vote on the user created palettes and patterns and submit your own. View a showcase of websites to keep up with color trends. Connect with others via forums and groups. Follow their colorful blog. Proclaim your love of Color Llovers to the world by purchasing their T shirts.

Aviary Toucan allows you to create a color palette from scratch or choose colors from imported images (from Flickr, Facebook, Picassa, by URL or from your computer). A “color deficiency preview” shows you how a color palette will appear to those with various different kinds of color blindness.

Color Jack has two tools, Color Sphere and Color Studio, providing you with plenty of ideas and suggestions as well as catering for your own creativity. Export your creations to a bookmark, delicious, illustrator, photoshop or to a URL.

Colors On The Web has 3 basic color tools and mixers as well as articles covering color theory, color terms, combining colors and contrast..

Absolute Color Picker is a free downloadable program that lets you select and pick colors using various color models. It also features a color picker, color scheme generator, color history builder, color scheme management system, screen color grabber (eyedropper)

If you just prefer to choose from existing color palettes rather than create your own there are a number of sites, in addition to those mentioned above, that offer listings with search capabilities including:

• ColorCombos – they also have a tool to “grab” colors other websites.
• Colors on the Web.
• Color Schemer Gallery The Color Schemer products are not free but you can use their gallery and forums without buying..
• Color Hunter is different in that its user created palettes come from uploaded images and its tags are based on the type of image as well as colors.

Yet more tools

Your header image needs to be in line with the other colors on your site. You may have an image already chosen and then base your other colors on this. If not, Idea Labs clever MultiColr Search Lab can help you choose images using colors you have already decided on or just give you ideas for an overall color palette This tool searches through 10 million Flickr Creative Commons images based on your choice of up to 10 colors. They also provide other tools which search the Alamy stock photo site.

Google have very recently integrated color search tools into their Image Search. You are able to filter Google images by the predominant color. Click on “All colors” above the search results and you can choose one of the 12 available colors based on your search terms. For example this was a result of a search for beach sunset filtered by the color pink:

To ensure accessibility for those who cannot distinguish colors easily there are tools to check for legibility and contrast on your site. In addition to the Color Deficiency Preview tool in Toucan, ColorSelector is free desktop software from Fujitsu for judging the legibility of background and text colors. The online tool, Color Accessibility Wheel, shows you how a background and a foreground color will look to those with three types of color blindness, based on colors you choose.

You may not be interested in whole palettes of colors but just want to know the details of one particular color you see online. Eyedropper tools are the simplest way to accomplish this.

• Instant Color Picker is free to use on one machine, with nag screens, or to buy. More than a basic color picker, this tool allows you to zoom in on websites, save up to 20 colors and copy color swatches as bitmap and paste it to other applications. You can also test color combinations using various layouts.
• My trusty favorite program MWSnap is a screen capture tool which includes a color grabber and measuring tool.
• If these are more than you need try the more color grab only ColorSelector for PC or Mac from Fujitsu or ColorPic

Finally, for Wordpress users the Theme Tweaker plugin displays the existing colors from your current theme, and gives you a color picker to replace them. You can also change colors in bulk by for example inverting them, converting them to greyscale.. Once you have chosen your colors, you can preview or activate the new theme. You can save your new stylesheet locally and then upload to your blog server to replace your current theme or create a child theme.

There are a whole host of Firefox addins that will help you with your site colors which I will cover in my next post.

You now have the tools at your disposal to choose your site colors but may not have the know how to implement them into your theme. In upcoming posts I will provide you with instructions and details of tutorials and tools you can use to help you with your CSS stylesheet coding.

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Best Color Tools For Your Blog

Is it a matter of survival of the fittest or the survival of those more adaptable to their environment that leads to the success or continuing success of a blog?

Does posting daily or every other day count more than writing less regular more indepth and original content?

I have always used the latter reasoning, not wanting to churn out content that is written about in numerous other blogs. That would be simple to do considering content that I could regurgitate from multitudes of blogs that write about blogging. Would anyone read it? A few loyal readers maybe but, being a lone blogger, I do not have a chance of providing the same amount of content as those with multiple authors. These I consider the fittest blogs. They can even regularly repeat content, albeit it in different words, because of the constant stream of new bloggers that come their way. They also have access to information on what is new because they are told about it. They can break the news to the world; others just repeat it second hand.

Unless you are a personal blogger with a loyal following, less well known bloggers need to be able to adapt to survive and succeed.

This blog is at the need to adapt stage and I am pondering where to go with it. I have been writing infrequently lately and it shows. From a position of 27 in the top 100 Australian bloggers list in November I sank to 36 in January. In the top Australian Women’s list I am now 30 down from a position of 9 last year. When new figures are published I know I will be even lower.

Many bloggers give up in their first year. I have survived longer but motivation has been lacking and topics to write about evading me. As a beginner blogger it took me a while to find my way but he plethora of new social networks and blogging tools provided plenty of material. Now it has become harder and harder for start ups to find something new or different enough to compete successfully with what already exists. Even Twitter the newer shining star has become overrun with applications that support it. Users having been overloaded with new applications and are less keen to try something new if it does not offer them any more than is already available.

What has not changed is my desire to remain in the blogging world; a world much larger and diverse than my particular suburbia and daily routine.

As a refresher and motivator I have enrolled in Darren Rowse’s 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge which has just commenced with Write an Elevator Pitch for Your Blo. It is not too late to join in.

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Evolution Of A Blog

Make sure you check your PC for the Conficker C worm and remove it before April 1st. If your PC is infected by the Conficker C worm, April 1st is thought to be the day it is going to go off and do unknown mischief. What this may be is anyone’s guess but the worm has the capability of running any code on infected computers. Rather than an attempt to bring down the internet, as some are predicting, the most likely explanation seems to be that its purpose is to distribute spam or other malware.

Vista machines and other Windows operating systems that have installed all their updates are thought to be safe from the worm. Not totally convinced of this myself I did a check of my machine using a tool McAfee is providing free of charge – W32/Conficker Stinger v10.0.1.537. Do not despair if your machine proves to be infected as various removal utilities are available, for example BDTools has removal tools for single PC’s and networks.

After looking for information on Conficker and being bogged down with technical detail Colin, of Free PC Security, came to my rescue with easy to understand details and instructions in his post Conficker C – D day is coming. Thanks Colin, I should remember to visit you first when looking for such information.

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Don’t be Confickers Fool on April 1st

Image: by mybloodyself

My previous post on Thunderbird covered methods to organize and keep up with your emails. This post will show you extra techniques to use, to speed up the process further, by using a small selection of Thunderbird addins.

QuickFolders (Folder Tabs) 0.9.9.5

This is a real time saver for storing your emails if you have a lot of Thunderbird folders. Dragging your most used folders to the QuickFolders toolbar creates shortcut tabs to them. When you want to move emails to these folders, instead of having to search among the sidebar folder tree, you now just drag an email to the folder tab you wish to store it in.

Tag Toolbar

This extension displays your tags as tabs on a toolbar. Tag or untag an email quickly by clicking on the relevant tab..You can also filter the tags to be displayed by categorizing tags. For example you could add a ‘work’ category and choose to display only the tags you have categorized as work in the toolbar.

Quick Text

To save time you time if you send out a lot of emails containing the same text, Quicktext allows you to create templates for insertion into your mail. Creating multiple signatures is also possible.

Integrating other Email Accounts

It is not easy to get by without a Gmail account, because of all the Google applications that demand it although having an email address other than that of your IP is wise for anonymity sake.

To save time having to log into Gmail separately and reading two lots of emails it is simple to import Gmail into Thunderbird. You also create a backup of Gmail in the process. You can set up Thunderbird (and Outlook) to receive POP or IMAP email or to just forward all mail received in Gmail. Visit your Gmail Settings/Forwarding and POP/IMAP page to turn on these features and to read instructions for configuring Thunderbird to receive POP or IMAP emails.With POP the emails are downloaded to your compute, whereas with IMAP all mail is kept on the Gmail server which is a slower process.

If you don’t fancy setting things up manually, the Gmail IMAP Account Setup Thunderbird extension or Mozilla Webmail extension can help you. Webmail can also bring your Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, mail.com and Libero accounts into Thunderbird.

Google Contacts synchronizes your Google Contacts with Thunderbird saving you time having to set address cards up manually.

If you know of other Thunderbird addins or methods that save time with your email reading and storing please do let us know.

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Best Thunderbird Addins To Save Time

Downloading videos from YouTube*, Google Videos, Myspace, Facebook and other popular video sites requires the use of downloader programs, browser addons or online video tools. Some downloaded video file formats may not play in your preferred video player.

This article is intended to help you through the maze of optons so that you can easily download videos for personal use. You can then view them later without connecting to the internet.

Video Downloaders

There are many downloaders available in various forms. Some offer more features than just downloading. Here is a selection of the most popular for you to choose from.

Downloaders for YouTube

New YouTube download and purchase features

Recently You Tube started testing a download and purchase feature, which gives video video owners the ability to allow the download of videos straight from YouTube either free or for a small fee. The video watch pages of these participating "partners" link to a download option (below the left-hand corner of the video) More details from the YouTube Blog YouTube Goes Offline

KeepVid

• KeepVid is a browser Toolbar button for downloading YouTube FLV files.

KeepHD

• KeepHD is an online utility that downloads YouTube videos in a choice of formats: FLV,
  3gp Mobile Download,
  MP4 and if available
  HD ( High Definition 720p)
• How to Use: On the KeepHD site enter the URL of the video that you want to grab and hit the "Download Video" button.. No registration or plugins are needed. .

PWN YouTube

• Downloads FLV and mp4 formats There are three ways of downloading via PWN

1. Go to their website and enter the video URL into the " Download a YouTube video from any web page:" URL box – handy if you are not viewing the video on YouTube.
2. Type pwn in front of any YouTube URL.
3. Add the browser bookmarklet from the PWN website and click it when you are viewing
   any Youtube page or public webpage with an embedded YouTube video

Get Tube v.3.0

• Get Tube is a downloadable utility for Mac to download videos from YouTube and to save format mp4 or mp3.

Downloaders for Multiple Video Sites including YouTube

Source: nickwheeleroz’s Flickr

Flash Video Resources Downloader

• This application offers three methods of video download:

1. Enter the URL of video on the Flash Video Resources Downloader Page
2. Install the Flash Video Resources Downloader 1.0.2 Firefox Extension
3. A Greasemonkey script that allows downloads from 3 adult sites that I am not going to mention here.. The Greasemonkey Firefox addon must be already installed.

Flash Video Downloader 1.7

• The sites currently supported by Flash Video Downloader include: YouTube, Google Video, MySpace Video, DailyMotion, Metacafe, Break.com, Blip.tv (blip.tv), Spike (spike.com), MyVideo.de (myvideo.de), YourFileHost and others including adult sites.
• An added feature with this utility is that you can download Flash Games from: gamespot.com, community.games.com, armorgames.com, net-games.biz, gamesvine.com, zoopgames.com and flashgames247.com.

Clone2Go Free Video Converter

• Clone2Go is a free software program for Windows that downloads and converts videos including YouTube and Google Videos FLV files The program includes a feature to split videos into smaller clips.
• You can download major file formats such as WMV, FLV, MPEG-4, MPG, RM, RMVB, AVI, 3GP and convert them to a variety of formats including MP4, AVI, WMV, FLV. It supports conversion to files playable on portable devices such as MP4 player, iPod, iPhone, Sony PSP, Microsoft Zune, Mobile Phone (e.g. Nokia N-Series), Pocket PC and smart phone.

Video Download Helper

• Video Download Helper is a Firefox extension that works with popular video sites such as YouTube, MySpace, Google videos, DailyMotion, Porkolt, iFilm, DreamHost and others.
• When DownloadHelper detects that it can do something for you, an icon at the bottom of your Firefox window becomes animated and a menu allows you to download files by simply clicking an item. When you are on a page containing links to images or movies, you can download some or all of them at once.
• Converting files from your hard disk into a choice of multiple formats (Windows or Linux) is now possible with the installation of a file converter feature which uses the powerful FFMPEG video conversion utility. The feature is available from the extension’s preferences. An experimental Integrated MP3Tunes services allows you to send videos to mobile phones or to your private locker.

Net Video Hunter

• Net Video Hunteris a Firefox addon that allows you to download videos and music from most video-sharing sites – YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Metacafe, Dailymotion, iFilm, Videoegg, Veoh, Blip.tv, etc…
• This extension also supports the download of music if it’s in a player on a website (for example, Myspace Music player). The beauty of this extension is that it captures the video links (if it’s possible), and the video counter of all the videos you have played from a webpage. (e.g. a YouTube Playlist Page) Clicking on the Net Video Hunter icon at the bottom of the Firefox window displays the list of captured media files which you can then Play or Download. Turning off the video smoothing feature plays the video in lower quality which is ideal for slower computers or for preserving download bandwidth.

Flashgot

• One of the problems with trying to download online videos is finding the actual video file source. Flashgot is a Firefox extension that works alongside your preferred download manager (Windows, Linux, Mac) to download all the links, movies and audio clips of a page including links to FLV videos.
• Once downloaded and configured to recognize your download manager, Flashgot can be accessed via the Tools menu or by dragging and dropping a shortcut to your toolbar. The toolbar menu gives you options capturing video selections and creating galleries. You can choose to download all videos that Flashgot finds through its Auto Start feature, although this may create a massive amount of downloads. Download

Vixy Net

• Vixy allows you convert a Flash Video / FLV file (YouTube’s videos,etc) to MPEG4 (AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP) file online.
• When you submit a URL, it will download and convert to the video format, and then you can download the converted file.
• As well as an online converter Vixy now has a beta desktop version for Windows and Mac.

Orbit Downloader

I would have added Orbit to the top of the list had it not been for some of the Orbit forum messages which indicate a few issues with the newest version. I have as yet been unable to get it to work with YouTube through Firefox itself. However, If I use the Grab++ function in the Orbit program Tools Menu it will download YouTube videos that are playing in Firefox.

• Orbit Features:
• A free downloadable program, based on p2p and multi-source downloading technology, which integrates with Firefox, IE,Opera and Maxthon browsers.
• You can download and record streaming media, social music, social video, movie, flash and files from "anywhere" including Pandora, YouTube, Yahoo, Myspace and Rapidshare.
• Supports most of the file-sharing service websitesmegaupload, badongo, sendspace, yourfilehost, uploading, filefront, 4shared, turboupload, depositfiles, filefactory ……
• Supports: HTTP/ HTTPS/ FTP/ RTSP/ MMS
• Includes a pause and resume function which includes interrupted downloads

Facebook Video Downloader

Facebook Video

• Facebook Video allows the download and conversion of Facebook videos in one of two ways:

1. Greasemonkey Script
2. A new Firefox addon that lets you download and convert Facebook videos, and embed videos outside of Facebook.

Playing Downloaded Videos

Source: libraryman Flickr

If you download an .mp4 version of a video file, you can play it in Real Player, QuickTime Player, or iTunes. Most players do not support YouTube FLV files. My choice for a lightweight but fully featured video player is my default video player, VLC Player.

VLC

• VLC is A free video player that supports most file formats with no extra codecs needed, for example, MPEG, AVI, WMV, AV, FLV, MIDI, Flash, Real, MP4, MOV, 3GP, OGG ….For Windows, Linux, Mac OS X 10.5 or later and various other operating systems.

Another highly rated free player, which I have not tried, is:

GOM Media Player

• GOM Media PlayerFeatures: Supports most Codecs, plays incomplete or damaged AVI file by skipping the damaged frames and can play video files that are still in the process of being downloaded.

If you just want a program to play FLV videos there are a number of free programs including the one I used before I realized that VLC could play them.:

FLV Player

• FLV PlayerPlays Flash FLV and H.264 (MPEG-4) videos.
• This program also includes an option to install a free audio recorder browser toolbar, Free Recorder, which allows you to make MP3’s from anything you can hear on your PC, including sound tracks from videos, music, and more. Download current version FLV Player 2.0.25: CNET Download.com

Do you have any preferences for video download or video player applications?

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Downloading Videos and Video Players

I admit that I am powerless over my email, Thunderbird has become unmanageable.

Image: by uzvards

If you can relate to this do not despair but spend some time, to save some time in the long run. Although most of the following applies to my email program of choice, Thunderbird, some can be adapted to other programs. If you use online email applications consider importing and reading them from Thunderbird to take advantage of its more extensive features.

I recently had to take more steps to organize my own emails so as not to miss those that I need to read straight away. It took a little time but has been worthwhile. I am keeping up with and actioning the more important messages, the rest are tucked away for reading if and when I have the time. Here are the steps I took.

1. If your inboxes are full now, click on the top of the "Organize by Subject" or "Organize by Sender" columns and concentrate on senders that send multiple emails. The others can be done bit by bit as they come in. It is not worth spending time searching for or trying to remember them at this stage.
2. Unsubscribe from emails that you do not read and have no need to refer to in the future. Then delete those that already exist.
3. Create a number of Inbox folders for mail you do not need to read or action straight away. A two tier system of of folders works well. One tier is for emails you do need to action, but not immediately, the other for those that can be left until you have some spare time to read them. If you are bringing in mail from more than one email account do not create separate inbox folders for each but in only the one you use more regularly. Some emails could be filtered directly into Local Folders rather than Inbox subfolders, although I recommend you only do this for less important ones, if you think they may get forgotten.
4. Create filters to automatically file relevant incoming mail from all email accounts into the folders you have just created . I filter my gmail accounts and my ISP email into subfolders of my ISP account inbox.

5. Make sure that emails you mark as junk are removed from the inbox – Go to Options/Privacy tick "When I mark messages as junk" and choose to send them to the junk folder or delete them. Make a habit of marking spam as junk rather than just deleting them so that Thunderbird’s spam filter can learn what you consider to be spam.

6. You could also create filters for spam that slips through the net, such as those containing the word Viagra, to send them straight to junk (unless they are emails you have subscribed to of course) .
7. Create folders within your Local Folders for filing away emails you have read but need to keep. Base your folder structure to suit yourself but I advise creating folders just for registrations and subscription confirmation emails, for important emails that you may need to find again quickly and those that have ongoing threads.
8. Use Thunderbird’s default tags and/or create your own to mark inbox emails that you need to do something about in the future. They are much easier to find again.

9. Take advantage of Thunderbird extensions to further automate the process.

Next I will talk about the Thunderbird extensions that are useful for organizing your mail and saving you time.

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Managing Thunderbird Email Overload

Advantages of Using Online Bookmarking

Bookmarking services such as delicious came along very early before the surge of services of the social media revolution. They could now even be considered the start of it, although at the beginning bookmarking was probably considered more of an online service than a sharing activity. The popularity of social bookmarking rating sites such as Digg and Stumbleupon and Reddit left ordinary bookmarking in the shadow.

However interesting, popular and up to date the content on the rating sites may be, they are not as useful for reference or research purposes as the bookmarking sites. I see two three main reasons for this.

Because our digging and stumbling is "social" we add sites that our friends favor or those that we want to get noticed, for ourselves or for others. What reaches the top is often more about how many contacts the originator of the bookmark has rather than the quality of the content. I will digg and stumble all sorts of topics which, although they may interest me, I will never look for again. I regularly refer to my diigo bookmarks.

Secondly, despite the availability of tagging, tags are either not totally relevant to the content, or they are tagged inappropriately, on rating sites. Digg’s range of categories reflect its News and Video purpose but not the broad range of topics it is actually used for. Stumbleupon allows more flexibility, but it is unusual to see full advantage being taken of this, meaning a search for a topic of a given tag brings unsatisfactory results. Lately I have noticed an increase in mis-tagged articles either: through mistake or mischief. I have never done a search on these sites, whereas I regularly do so on diigo and delicious. The social features of the latter also allow me to add contacts who bookmark topics I am interested in and whose tags I can refer to.

Finally, although the delicious type bookmarking sites may not be not used to their best advantage, as far as tag applying is concerned, it is still far easier to find relevant information on a given topic and information does not get so easily lost over time. The rating sites are all about what is new. This is fine if you are looking for breaking news or for such things as the latest happenings in the entertainment industry or the latest scientific findings. They are not the place to go for research on factual and non changing information. On the plain old bookmarking sites people add articles that may be years old but still of value. The best of these are bookmarked the most bringing the most valuable information to the fore.

My personal favorite bookmarking site is diigo because it has more advanced features than others and it also automatically posts all my bookmarks to Delicious which, after using for years, I was loath to let go of completely. Today I discovered an excellent reason for using the diigo/delicious combination for duplication. Ma.gnolia, one of the main bookmarking sites, lost all their bookmarks! Their database is unretrievable.

The tagging, relevance and searchability of the bookmarking sites make them a valuable tool for research and for bloggers they can be a useful resource for your readers too. I add bookmarks to sites I believe you will find of use on diigo and therefore also on delicious.

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Social Bookmarking v Social Bookmarking Rating