Following up from my last post about tasks to complete before and after publishing a blog post, Post Writing a Blog Post Post, as promised I am going to talk about my favorite tools that you can use to automate or speed up this process:

Spelling and Grammar

To automatically check your spelling and grammar “After the Deadline” is available as a stand alone plugin for WordPress or as an add-on to the Tiny MCE plugin, as an add on for Firefox and Chrome and as an OpenOffice.org extension.

Keywords and SEO

A WordPress SEO plugin is a must have to ensure you have the optimal information and keywords to help your post be listed and found. I use either WordPress SEO or All in One SEO.

Layout

I write and preview my posts in Firefox but to make sure that nothing is breaking the layout in the, not yet totally compliant, Internet Explorer I use the View in IE Firefox addin. This adds a “View in IE” item to the right click menu; click on this on any webpage and IE opens with the weppage loaded.

Sharing/Bookmarking a Blog Post

There are many tools available for sharing your post on bookmarking and social networking sites; some are browser toolbar buttons, some full toolbars. Use of a button or toolbar is a matter of personal preference although too many toolbars can slow your browser down and reduce your viewing area although Buttonizer for Firefox hides/displays your toolbars easily. I like the functionality of toolbars but only add a few and use different profiles with different toolbars for different internet uses (personal and business).

Don’t forget to make full use of tags where they are available to further enhance your keyword optimization.

• OnlyWire If you take the time to join up and add the supported bookmark and social networking sites this tool automatically sends your posts to all your services. A great time saver. The disadvantage is that if you are a free member you have to add the OnlyWire share button to the bottom of your posts. but you may have other share buttons that you prefer to use. OnlyWire works with most blog platforms by using a script and there is a plugin that adds it for you in WordPress.
• If you use WordPress and don’t want to use OnlyWire you can add a different share this type button that shows on each of your posts. You can make full use of this yourself and submit your own post. I am trying Tweet, Like, Google +1 and Share as well as OnlyWire on this blog right now. Shareaholic and Add This for Firefox are other tools that allow you to submit your post to a wide range of sites at the click of a button. For links to these and to more resources for Firefox only please visit my Firefox Collection Sueblimely Social Networking Tools. This includes bookmarklets, toolbars and utilities for Stumbleupon, Digg, Facebook, Twitter and more. Please bear in mind that certain sites such as Stumbleupon do not approve of you submitting too much of your own content.
• I use the bit.ly url shortener service and their toolbar bookmarklet to share posts on Facebook and Twitter. Creating a free account allows you to add your FB and Twitter accounts. Clicking on the bookmarklet when on your post page will open bit.ly with your post title and the short link already entered in a box that you can add to or edit.. Click on publish and your message will be published to your choice of the FB and Twitter accounts you have set up.
• Delicious bookmarklets for all browsers and a toolbar. There are also various Firefox add-ins that have functions such as showing your bookmarks in the sidebar.
• Diigo tools – bookmarklets and toolbar available for FF, IE Chrome
• The Rockmelt browser had many social networking tools already built in to it. I use the browser although, because of the inbuilt updates from my friends, it can be a distraction if I am working.

Social Networking

Visit your blogging friends and contacts and leave a comment. This is one of the most pleasant sides of blogging. You get to know other bloggers, read content that interests you and, signing in to comment, automatically adds a backlink to your site. To speed up this process you can add a browser bookmarks folder or RSS reader folder that includes these blogs. Blogs that have a higher ranking are the most useful to comment on (such as this one with a rank of 3 – it was 4 until the latest Google update). I will do this for SEO purposes but most often comment on a blog because of its content and author. I enjoy giving encouragement by commenting on brand new blogs too.

Best Tools and Tips to Speed Up Blogging | Blogging Sueblimely

Make posting to Facebook and Twitter automatic:

Using bit.ly, when I am on a site I want to link to, I just press the bit.ly toolbar button , and then press “share” on the bitly site. The url is automatically shortened and title and text are automatically added, with the option to edit and add tags. My selected Twitter and my personal Facebook pages are automatically posted to without me having to go there.

To post to my Facebook community pages, I use the Facebook add-in Smart Tweet for Pages. Anything I have posted to my chosen Twitter accounts, which I have usually automatically posted to via bit.ly, are then also automatically posted to my chosen Facebook Pages.

Reading Updates

NutshellMail sends me twice daily emails containing all my Facebook and Twitter updates. (I have set up all the individual notification emails that come from FB to automatically go to trash because there are so many of them). This service also supports updates from Linked In, YouTube, MySpace, Yelp, FourSquare and CitySearch.

I have recently discovered that my Windows Live Messenger main screen can include updates from Facebook. What’s more, none of the application requests are included here – only messages from friends. I can post messages to FB from here too. If it were not for using FB apps and joining in group discussions I would not need to go to the Facebook site at all.

Using paper.li I have created two “daily papers” one for Twitter and one for Facebook. These show posts that include my chosen Twitter @tags and Facebook phrases. I use them for keeping up with mentions of #fragilex and “Fragile X” so that I do not have to trawl the increasing number of FB and Twitter pages that talk about Fragile X Syndrome. I can then post any links that turn up here to my own Fragile X page by which I am attempting to centralize all relevant references. This way others do not have to crawl numerous sites themselves. I subscribe by email to these two daily papers, again saving me time. Others can subscribe too.

Although I use the paper.li service for references posted anywhere on FB and Twitter you can use it to create papers that apply to only your own personal or community pages. This is a useful tool for bloggers who want an additional resource, apart from just RSS feeds, to share their posts with their readers.

Tools for posting to Twitter and Facebook | Blogging Sueblimely

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

Firefox Collections and Social Networking | Blogging Sueblimely

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.

Best Color Tools For Your Blog | Blogging Sueblimely

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?

Downloading Videos and Video Players | Blogging Sueblimely

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.

Social Bookmarking v Social Bookmarking Rating | Blogging Sueblimely

With the holiday season upon us and many travelling for holidays or to see family, (longer holidays in the Southern Hemisphere of course), internet access is not always available. I enjoy such a forced break from the net to catch up on some reading, including some of the downloaded ebooks I have not had chance to look at. Here are a few of the more worthwhile free ebooks and reports I have come across relating to blogging.

The Roadmap To Become A Blogger from the team at Become a Blogger – superstar blogger, Yaro Starak, and internationally reknowned author, Gideon Shalwick, was released for download on 1st December.

Yaro Starak’s Blog Profits Blueprint is a 50+ page report particularly useful for beginner to intermediate level bloggers wanting to monetize their blogs

Caroline Middlebrook is offering the 49 lessons of her “The Bloggers Bible” for free by email instalment – if you do not want to wait for the emails you can purchase the book for download. Her How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with WordPress ebook is available for free download as is her Traffic Rush Home Study Course, teaching how to start driving a rush of StumbleUpon traffic to your website.

From Alex Sysoef comes Profitable Blogging For Newbies.

Jake Humphrey’s Authority Black Book 2.0, 2009 version to teach you “Social Marketing Tactics That Generate Traffic Instantly”

Marketing guru Seth Godin has a treasure chest of ebooks on offer, available via his Squidoo ebook page. These include, until Dec 30th, The Bootstrappers Bible.

Mashable comes up trumps once again with the following resources (:including some that I have already mentioned)

• 20 Free Ebooks and Whitepapers for Better Web Design
• Top 10 Free E-books For Bloggers

The March 2008 edition of Bloghology provides some insights into how other bloggers have succeeded, although the site was temporarily down when I visited..

Rapidshare – downloads of all sorts of resources including blogging. Rapidshare itself is not searchable but you can use the RapidShare search engine to find what you want. I will not mention ebooks I found that were on torrent sites. Whatever your views are on downloading TV shows and movies, you will likely agree with me that if a blogger is trying to make a few bucks by writing and selling an ebook then we should buy it and not illegally download it. I am not certain if Rapidshare contains such ebooks but it might.

If you are interested in purchasing books:

• ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett, which is always sold out in bookshops I have visited, but it is available on Amazon UK as a hardcopy (not in stock at Amazon US at present) and, for Aussies, Dymocks online in hardcopy and via download. Review by Freelance Switch. Darren says, in a comment to one of his posts, that the book is now available in some libraries too.
• The newly released The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging Amazon
• Do a search for blogging on Amazon and you will find many more including the Dummies range on Blogging and Wordress.

PS Have you noticed a recent increase of popup forms on blogs offering free resources – ebook downloads, newsletters or I have maybe been visiting sites that I would not normally go to? These are appearing as you first enter the site and require your email address and sometimes to sign up for newsletters or email feeds. I find the popups intrusive although I do not object to having to sign up for a newsletter to download something that is being given away free, this seems a fair deal. You will find a few of these popups on some of the sites referred to above!

Please let me know if you have read other good ebooks on blogging related matters.

If you need a break from blogging totally try the following sources for free fiction or hobby ebooks – Project Gutenberg and Scribd Literature for downloads, the getfreebooks blog for information on where to find books or do a search via the pdf geni search engine.

Happy reading!

10 Top Free eBook Resources for Blogging | Blogging Sueblimely

Graphics and Icons

Smashing Christmas Icon Sets Smashing Magazine always has great resources.

Nicu’s holiday gallery contains these:

There are 16 icon sets to be found at FreshFreeStuff.net including social networking and RSS buttons – Free Christmas Holidays Icon Roundup . This is a selection from the sets available:

Gifts From Designers To You: Best Of 2008 – goodies include icons, fonts, wordpress themes and headers.

50 Most Beautiful Icon Sets Created in 2008 including this Christmas set:

A set of Christmas smilies is offered by Christmas Corner, many of which are animated:

DigiScrapDepot.com has 3516 Christmas Freebies if you want to
decorate the pages of your Christmas photo scrapbook pages.

1stWebdesigner brings us a range of Photoshop brushes- 48 Snow, Ice, Snowflake and Christmas Brushes

Mel’s Photoshop Brushes gives us a set of Christmas Illustrator Brushes

A search for Christmas on Adobe Exchange shows a plethora of Illustrator and Photoshop images, gradients, patterns, shapes, styles and brushes.

Desktop Wallpapers and Screensavers

25 Outstanding Christmas Wallpapers to Decorate your Desktop! from sagacious of Weird Resources

Vlad Studio has a whole range of Christmas Images/Desktop Wallpapers (higher resolution by subscription) and E Cards.

Wallco.net has a huge selection of free Christmas wallpapers in various resolutions – 42 galleries to date. I really went to town with these and created a whole folder of them to use as a My Pictures Slideshow Screensaver.

To create your own Christmas screensaver slideshow (or any other sort) in Windows XP – go to Desktop/Properties/Screensaver and choose “My Pictures Slideshow” in the drop down box. The default folder is My Documents/My Pictures but in settings you can choose any folder of pictures you want.

Not free but a good bargain – Woo Themes have a 4 for 1 special going until 24th December – $70 USD for a single licence and $150 for a developer licence.

Christmas Image Tutorials

Strobist lets us into some secrets of How to Photograph Christmas Lights using even a basic digital camera. I love Christmas lights although the ones I have appreciated the most this year were the new green and red lights in the car park of a newly renovated shopping centre which showed me the way which spots were free.

Smashing Magazine gives us 60 Beautiful Christmas Photoshop Tutorials

PS Lover has a whole range of Photoshop Christmas Image tutorials but turn your speakers down as they advertise those very annoying smilies who keep saying “Hellooo”

What not to do when blogging

Finally but not least, Michaela Lica of eWritings has provided us with some good Christmas blogging reading by publishing her ebook Blogging Tips: How to be Cocky and Vexatious – a collection of blog entries that followed her 10 Ways to Make Your Fellow Bloggers Hate You meme.

Thanks to Design Bliss for putting me on to many of these freebies in their – Over 100 Free Christmas Design Resources – A Design Bliss Mega-List post

I am now off to join the teaming throngs at the shopping centre which is enough to provoke this Christmas emotion in anyone:

100+ Free Christmas Images and Blogging Gifts | Blogging Sueblimely

Its method: prompting us to answer some maths problems at designated times – by default Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as "this is the time that most people are likely to need it",. You can change the timings; which is handy if you are prone to long drunken lunches or are an alcoholic.

If your math skills are lacking you can use your windows calculator, if you can find it in your state. If you are really determined to send the email you can, and live to regret it – unless you forget you have sent it. In this case you may live forever in ignorance or wonder why someone is no longer talking to you, has deleted you from SU/Digg friend, is leaving you nasty blog comments …. or the opposite: arrives at your place with all their worldly possessions, asks when you are going shopping for rings…

If you get the maths questions wrong then a new box appears with new questions with the comments “Water and bed for you. Or try again.” If you are too slow in answering the message is “Oops, looks like your reflexes are a little slow. Try again.” I bet they had some fun trying to think of the messages to use here and some of them would not have been quite so politely phrased.

Can you tell that I find this feature amusing? When I read about it I had to remind myself that it was not April 1st and even then go into Gmail to make sure Mail Goggles really existed.

You can turn on Mail Goggles via the Labs tab in your Gmail Settings and then customize it via the General tab.

If, like me, you receive your Gmail via POP mail and have not visited the Labs Tab (how long has it been there I wonder?) there are a few other interesting and useful features that you can enable for Gmail. For example,

• Email Addict which lets you take a break from email and chat by blocking the screen for fifteen minutes and making you invisible in chat. I wish they could come up with a way of blocking my desk inbox (or the pile of things in front of me that need doing) and let me email and chat for fifteen minutes.
• Old Snakey game – for when you want a break from everything.
• Forgotten Attachment Detector which prevents you from accidentally forgetting intended attachments by prompting you if you mention attaching a file, but have not done so.
• Quick Links which adds a box to the left column that gives you 1-click access to any bookmarkable URL in Gmail. It can be used for saving frequent searches, important individual messages, etc.
• Quite a few other ways to customize and improve your Gmailing experience.

Google Gmail Gets Mail Goggles | Blogging Sueblimely

Features

• Optional addition of some or all of your bookmarking, social networking and photo sites to Lijit will allow search of not only your blog posts but of sites you have bookmarked, your blogroll sites and your social networking contact’s posts and their contacts and bookmarks. Most of the popular sites are included although my favorite bookmarking site, diigo, is as usual not included. There is also a feature to add feeds and site url’s so adding my diigo bookmarks feed solved this problem for me.
  The search result window shows tabs for results from your blog, your network, your content (on any site), and the web. You set your widget’s default search to show one of these tabs as the front page of the results. I have set mine up to show search results from my blog first. I recommend this as you will keep searchers on your own site longer if the search term brings up satisfactory results in your blog (in terms of what the user wishes).

• Choose to have your search results show up only on the Lijit site or in your blog window via a pop up screen.
• Statistics available on your Lijit page will give you information about:
  • the number of times you have been searched,
  • the results that have been clicked,
  • information sources that have provided the most clicked results,
  • blogs that have linked to you,
  • searches that have brought people to your blog .

You can choose to make your statistics publicly viewable.
Widgets can be created to display some recent reader stats on your blog via a list or map:

• An optional “Surprise me!” button produces a list of random content from your blogs and added services – and the results did surprise me as MyBlogLog blogs, that I was not even aware of, showed up there. (MBL automatically adds blogs that you have visited a certain number of times) I may remove MyBlogLog from my options so that results are more relevant to my blog topics.

• A feature named ‘Re-search’ displays extra information for those reaching your blog via a Google search. Here are the results which showed up after I had done a Google Search for “blogging sueblimely images”.For this example, I had to use my blog name in the search terms so that I guaranteed that one of my posts came up in a google search! Options allow you to either display these results below your widget or across the top of your blog.

Below Lijit Wijit

Top Placement – this image was created by a Lijit preview feature

• The widget can be configured to show ‘Popular Searches’ and ‘content’ icons’ I chose not to include these features on mine, being mindful of above the fold sidebar space and page load time, but this is what they would have looked like had I installed them:

• Along with search results comes an option to add a search of the blog you are searching to your browser search engines.
• Lijit uses Google search but also has its own search infrastructure. Om Malik reports that there are plans to add an opt-in ad network to search results and to allow publishers to sell their own keyword inventory in as well as giving them the opportunity to “use Lijit to back-fill the advertising spots”

Advantages of using Lijit Search on your blog:

• Lijit search stats are very useful and are displayed in a simple to understand way.
• The browser search engines feature is useful for yourself to add for a quick search of your own blog as well for others to add to encourage others to revisit your content..
• Searching of your blogroll and social networking contact sites. This could be seen as a resource for your readers as well as a way of recognizing your blogging contacts – another form of link love.
• When results
• Search of your bookmarking sites is another resource for your readers to tap into. I consider my online bookmarking sites a research tool for you, adding links that I think you would find useful relating to topics I cover here, rather than using them for personal purposes. I already display my diigo bookmarks so for me the Lijit search is an extension of this principle. As you will know, if you read this blog often, I tend to ignore SEO recommendations for more incoming links than outgoing as I wish to provide useful information, whether written by myself or others, and to give recognition to the good blog content of my contacts. .
• Keeping the search result window on your blog, rather than purely on the Lijit site, will retain your readers on your site for longer.

Setup was simple and, if you change your preferences, you do not have to alter the widget code as new or changed features are automatically added. The widget itself did not seem to impact my page load time although the search results are a little slow to show up. Disadvantages – yet another widget added to your sidebar and for me another tool to divert me away from my tasks at hand today – my (semi) regular news post and a tutorial on Yahoo Buzz – which now allows anyone to add content a la Digg but with some different and useful features.

Lijit Blog Search Tool – Review and Tutorial | Blogging Sueblimely