Is Your Washing Clean?

A young couple moves into a new neighbourhood. The next morning, while they are eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbour hang the wash outside. "That laundry is not very clean," she said, "She doesn't know how to wash correctly. Perhaps she needs better laundry soap."

Her husband looked on, but remained silent. Every time her neighbour would hang her wash to dry, the young woman would make the same comments.

About a month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband, "Look! She has learned how to wash correctly. I wonder who taught her this."

The husband replied, "I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows!"

The moral of the story. What we see when watching others, depends on the purity of the window through which we look. Before we give any criticism, it might be a good idea to check our state of mind and ask ourselves if we are ready to see the good rather than  to be looking for something in the person we are about to judge.

( Source unknown )

Sorry!

It has been a while since the last post, but I will be back shortly.

Firefox 3.5 released!

Version 3.5 of the Firefox web browser was released today and is available from the Firefox website.

The new version is the fastest Firefox ever. A redesigned page rendering and layout engine means Web pages loads faster. Firefox 3.5 also includes the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, which gives the browser dramatically better performance. With a new memory management function in place, Firefox 3.5 keeps memory usage under control and also uses less of your computer’s memory while it’s running.

What are you waiting for, go and download it now!

Want to Become a Gmail Ninja?

Now you can! Gmail asked a lot of Googlers for their tips and tricks on Gmail, and they combined the best of these into a guide at Gmail: Tips, entitled "Become a Gmail Ninja." The tips are categorized into ninja belts ( “White belt,” “Green belt,” “Black belt,” and “Gmail master,” ) based on how much mail you get each day.



Gmail has also made a PDF version of the list for you to print out

Don’t do #FollowFriday!

When I started using Twitter one of the first uses of hashtags that I saw was #followfriday. What a wonderful idea! It was started by @micah and it is so easy: every Friday you use #followfriday to suggest people to follow.  Simple, easy, and fun. An excellent idea!

But why do I say don’t do #followfriday?  I started doing #followfriday  and send out my first #followfriday tweets just like some of the examples I saw:

After doing a few #followfriday’s I realized that it is not really working. You write a tweet with the #followfriday hashtag and add people you think should be followed and you feel good because you did #followfriday and even better when you receive a recommendation.

But take a good look at the tweet. Why would you follow any of the people mentioned?  Because I said so? Or because you like their usernames? And if you receive a lot of tweets like that, who do you follow? A tweet like that does not give you any reason to follow the people recommended.

I agree with @jason_pollock recent Twitter Tip:

Here is a person with more than 52000 followers and he suggest that you add value to your #followfriday tweets. How do you add value to your #followfriday tweets? Look at this tweet by @axito11

and this tweet by @HilzFuld 

Both are excellent examples of value added #followfriday tweets. They tell you a bit more about the person and give you a reason to follow them. It is a much better way to do #followfriday than just giving a bunch of usernames.

Speaking of @SmartZombie. He is always creative with his #followfriday tweets and it is very entertaining:

If you see a tweet like that don’t you want to know why does he say that about them? If you want to see more you can have a look at Smart Zombie's Greatest Twitter Follow Friday Shoutouts

@SharonHayes started doing #followfriday in a completely different way. She writes a post on her blog with her #followfriday recommendations and tweet about it. She is doing it this way  because “I think that a simple 140 character recommendation isn't enough. Like many others that use Twitter, I believe in quality over quantity” If you see one of her #followfriday posts you will understand what she means by quality!

She also tweeted this tip recently:

Twitter made a change in how replies are handled. If you start with @username only that person, their followers and other people mentioned in the tweet will see the recommendation. You can read more at Sharon’s Twitter Tips.

It is easy to do #followfriday like my first example and it takes a little bit more time and effort to do it like the other examples, but I think most people would appreciate your recommendation more if you put that little bit extra effort in.

So please do #followfriday, just add some value to your recommendations. People that don’t follow you might just start doing it because of that little bit extra that you did.

If you want to, you are also welcome to follow me.

PS. The people mentioned above is also good for #followanytime

7 Free Offline Blog Editors

When I first started blogging I wrote my post in the online editor, and then I started using OpenOffice to write posts. The problem with OpenOffice was when I wanted to publish the post I had to copy and paste the post into the online editor and finish it there.  After writing one of my longer posts ( Three would-be hijackers killed! ) I started looking for a better program to use.  I found a few offline blog editors. Listed below are seven free blog editors.

1. Windows Live Writer 2009 

Windows Live Writer is a free offline blogging program made by Microsoft. You can create a blog on Windows Live, Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, SharePoint, Community Server, and many more. You can setup a few different blogs and then select the one you want to use.

Writer also makes it easy to add Hyperlinks, pictures, photo albums, tables, and tags. Writer can also help you to publish videos to Soapbox on MSN Video, or to YouTube, and embed them in your blog. And just like photos, it’s easy to align, resize, and caption your videos.

You have all the standard editing function as well as a spellchecker. If you are ready to publish your post just click on the ‘Publish’ button or else save a local draft. Another nice tool is word count that show the amount of words and characters used in the post.

 

2. Qumana

Qumana is an easy-to-use desktop blog editor, enabling you to write, edit and post to one or more blogs. Supported blog platforms include Blogger, Drupal, LiveJournal, MovableType, Windows Live, Wordpress, and others. You can save your blog posts to your hard drive and upload whenever you like. Qumana features include easy text formatting and image insertion, simple Technorati tagging, and advertising insertion with Q Ads.

 

3. Zoundry Raven

Zoundry Raven  is a open source blog editor that you can use to post to Blogger, Movable Type, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, WordPress, and more. It's as easy to use and include simple tools to add links, tags, photos, music and video files, and more. You can also install Raven as a Portable Application on your flash/thumb drive and take your blogging on the road.

 

4. Blogdesk

BlogDesk makes it easy to write, speeds up lavish processes and assists the author with smart features. BlogDesk is optimized for the blog systems WordPress, MovableType, Drupal, Serendipity and ExpressionEngine.

Features includes integrated spell checker with dictionaries for 14 languages and features like Notebook, Frequently-Used-Phrases and the Technorati-Tags-Generator relieve you from time wasting and recurring tasks. You can publish to multiple weblogs on different servers with one click.

 

5. w.bloggar

From the FAQ: “The w.bloggar is an application that acts as an interface between the user and one or more blog(s); in other words, it is a Post and Template editor, with several features and resources that the browser based blog editors do not offer.”

Can be used with Blogger, Drupal, MoveableType, WordPress, LiveJournal and others. You can import text files, add links and images, format text font and alignment, use spell checking and post preview. Use multiple accounts and post to many blogs. 

 

6. Thingamablog

Thingamablog is a cross-platform, standalone blogging application that requires Java 1.4 or higher to run. Thingamablog ships with an English dictionary and it uses OpenOffice spell checker dictionaries so you can download a dictionary for whichever language you need.

Thingamablog allows you to set up a blog in minutes via an intuitive wizard, maintain multiple blogs and effortlessly manage thousands of entries. 

 

7. ScribeFire

ScribeFire is a borderline case. It is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with the Mozilla Firefox Browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, upload images, and post to multiple blogs. To post to your blog, simply type some text in the main editor panel of ScribeFire, give it a title and click the Publish button.

ScribeFire allow you to categorize and tag your blog posts, upload images, set the timestamp of your posts, save works-in-progress as notes, post an entry as a draft, share your posts on social websites, and upload files via FTP.

ScribeFire supports WordPress, LiveJournal, Windows Live Spaces, MySpace, Movable Type, Drupal, Blogger and any blogging software or blogging platform that implements the MetaWeblog API.

 

Do you know of any other blog editors I should add here? Please let me know.

Windows 7 will be in stores beginning ….

Microsoft’s OEM Division Corporate Vice President Steve Guggenheimer revealed during a keynote address at Computex 2009 in Taipei that Windows 7 will be in stores beginning 22 October 2009.

Microsoft will also start a Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program soon. The program enables participating retailers and OEMs to offer a special deal to upgrade to Windows 7 for customers purchasing a qualifying Windows Vista-based PC. The actual start date for the program will be announced when it is ready for consumers.

I am still using Windows XP on my main pc and is busy testing and playing around with Windows 7 Release Candidate on the old, and smaller, pc. So far I think  Windows 7 much better than Vista.

BTW if you want to use Windows 7 download it directly from Microsoft. Apparently there are some virus/trojan infected versions available on other sites.