Web & PC stuff – Page 5

Social media tracking tools

19th February 2011 Marketing, Social Media, Web & PC stuff Marketing, marketing tools, pr tools, Social Media, social media tools, web advice by Matt

It’s often useful to find out what’s being said about particular topics or news stories – and fortunately, there are a range of tools to help take some of the grunt work out of this labour intensive task. So, rather than having to visit each individual site, forum or blog that might contain information that you want to read, use some of these tools instead.

I’ve put together a selection of some of the tools I’ve come across and used previously, as well as a quick summary of some alternative options – including some paid-for applications. If you have others that aren’t mentioned here, please leave a comment and share your experiences. Thanks!

Use temporary email addresses to beat spam

12th February 2011 General, Web & PC stuff advice, email, privacy, tools, web by Matt

Temporary email addresses are free services available online that allow you to set up and use a temporary email address. They’re all pretty easy to use, but one of the ones I’ve used and would recommend is 10 Minute Mail (link here: http://10minutemail.com).

Why use a temporary email address? – Well, for one thing, it can be really handy when signing up to some web sites or forums that insist on you registering before accessing all the content, or submitting any of your own questions. It’s also great at avoiding spam – because if your temporary email address has expired, there’s nowhere for the email to go!

Signing up with 10 minute mail gives you a temporary email address for 10 minutes (you can keep extending the 10 minute window though, but only so long as you are on the site). The interesting part of this disposable email service though, is that it allows you to receive, read and respond to any emails received whilst your address is currently live. This means you can sign up to web services or forums, for example, and click on the confirmation email request as and when it comes through.

It’s definitely going to be added to my favourites, and will certainly be a tool I’ll use again.

Use Windows Task Scheduler to send news to Kindle with Calibre

16th January 2011 Gadgets, Kindle, Web & PC stuff advice, calibre, Kindle by Matt

Following on from my earlier post about “Automated free news for Kindle using Calibre” (link HERE), nickredding over at Mobileread.com suggested a much simpler approach. Rather than using a separate wake up timer application to wake my PC up, ready to run Calibre – I should use the one built into Windows.

Windows Task Scheduler allows you to schedule your PC to wake up and run a specific application at a specific time.

Calibre will have to be set up the same, in terms of scheduling the download of news from specific sites at specific times, so as to coincide with the task scheduler, but it just means you don’t have to download the separate wake timer.

Kindle and wordpress

15th January 2011 Gadgets, General, Kindle, Web & PC stuff, Wordpress Kindle, wordpress by Matt

The more I play around with the Kindle the more uses I’m finding it for it. Already there’s a plugin that can be used with WordPress to benefit Kindle owners/users. It’s called Kindle This (more info below HERE). And if you’re wanting to publish your blog to Kindle – then you can do so now – and it’s actually surprisingly easy, taking around 10 minutes to do; info on this, including step by step instructions is included below HERE.

Kindle ebook news server using Calibre

14th January 2011 Gadgets, Hosting, Kindle, Web & PC stuff advice, calibre, Hosting, Kindle, server by Matt

I’ve been reading around the topic and I’m still struggling to understand just how to install Calibre on my web server. I want to be able to run Calibre 24/7 on my server so that I can serve up news according to my pre-determined schedule, as opposed to using the process described in my other post: Automated free news for Kindle using Calibre.

However, I have come across three resources that I think might help.

Automated free news for Kindle using Calibre

8th January 2011 Gadgets, General, Kindle, Shopping, Web & PC stuff Amazon Kindle, automate, calibre, ebook, free news by Matt

The Amazon Kindle is a fantastic piece of kit, with lots of great features and an immense and growing library of available resources. Check out my other post HERE to read more about the Kindle and find links to some great resources.

However, one of the things that I’m not overwhelmed with is the selection and quality of news sources that are available for subscription through Amazon. Not only are they quite pricey which, for a digitally delivered item, seems to be exploiting the new device and the growing market of people with ebook readers. But there is a solution, if you want to take a little time and effort to set it up properly. That solution is CALIBRE – download available HERE.

I’ve read around various sources and have outlined a relatively simple process for setting up Calibre to automatically fetch and send news to your Kindle. (If you’ve not got a Kindle yet, you can click HERE to buy yours now)

GD Star Rating records IP addresses

4th January 2011 Wordpress by Matt

The rating plugin that I’ve used on my site is provided by GD Star Rating (link HERE). It’s a powerful, free plugin for wordpress that “allows you to set up an advanced rating and review system for post and comments in your blog using single, multi and thumbs ratings.” More information is available on the wordpress.org web site HERE.

A summary of features is detailed below – but one of the really useful and perhaps underplayed features that is included within the rating system is the ability to record IP addresses of the visitors that vote on the various posts. A quick lookup using http://whois.domaintools.com revealed some interesting facts for me, when I was looking at the latest batch of votes… all of which occurred within minutes of each other today, and all originating from my ex-employer’s IP address! Surely people have better things to do than visit my personal web site and try to rank down my own posts?! But apparently not…

Closing Google Accounts

22nd December 2010 Web & PC stuff google by Matt

It’s really quite simple to close Google Accounts – but they don’t make it abundantly clear how to do so.

Google offers many services and products, mostly free of charge, to web surfers all around the world via Internet. The most popular and most famous is definitely Gmail. Other services include Alerts, Blogger, Calendar, Docs, Groups, YouTube, Web History, iGoogle, Checkout, Analytics, AdSense and AdWords.

If you no longer want to use any or all of the Google services, you can delete and remove and delete any number of Google services from your Google Account. Or if you wish, user can delete and close Google Account completely, together with all services and information that associated with the Google Account.

Free anti virus and firewall software

18th December 2010 Web & PC stuff anti-spyware, antivirus, free, PC by Matt

There are lots of different packages available that offer anti virus and/or firewall protection, often with many other products and protection elements bundled in as well… but sorting out which is any good and which can be relied upon is important for all computer users.

The is my list of free ant virus and firewall software. It’s not an exhaustive list – and I’m open to receive recommendations or suggestions for additions… but it’s a useful list of free resources.

How to build WP Pagenavi into your WordPress theme

25th November 2010 Wordpress wordpress by Matt

It’s surprisingly easy actually… you just need to make sure you edit the theme in all the right places.

I used this resource here to guide me on how to best to achieve this: http://themeshaper.com/how-to-build-wp-pagenavi-into-your-wordpress-theme/

Code example after the link…