Google Tips Here's a link to a nice listing of tips for using Google. (Via David Pogue).  ¶ 12:43 a.m. 0 comments

  Firefox Is Slow Firefox is my default browser. I can hardly use Internet Explorer at all anymore. But Firefox is getting slow. I don't know if it's because I have 20 extensions installed. Or that I typically have 6 or 7 tabs open at a time. Or what. But it's getting really slow.  ¶ 11:56 p.m. 0 comments

  Quality of Life From a post on BusinessWeek Online about getting rich slow:

'Americans should use their incomes to buy "inconspicuous goods -- such as freedom from a long commute or a stressful job."'

If the bigger house isn't going to make you happier or improve your quality of life, what will? Is there an obvious part of your everyday life that you can change or eliminate to improve your quality of life?  ¶ 11:46 p.m. 0 comments

  Learn a New Skill From Harry Newton's web page:

"Learn a new skill every six months. (Samples: negotiation; computers, investing, Excel.)"

Great idea! I try to learn new things all the time, but I ought to broaden the scope of it. Make it "official". And try to learn some things outside of tech.  ¶ 4:35 p.m. 0 comments

  Selling Online Very interesting story, with a lot of detail, over at The Wall Street Journal Online. It's all about how Ebay's dominant position in online selling may be eroding, and how Yahoo and Amazon are trying to woo sellers.

Here's an a quote that got my attention:

"EBay shoppers are "looking for unreasonable bargains," Mr. Hawksley says.

Mr. Hawksley says he made more profit in four months on Amazon than in four years on eBay. Merchants and analysts, such as ComScore Networks Inc., say prices are higher on Amazon because it attracts wealthier shoppers."

And this:

"Mr. Hawksley found he could sell DVDs of TV shows such as "Dragnet" or "Adam 12" for $35 on Amazon, where he can set his own price, compared with eBay, where he found consumers unwilling to pay more than $10."

In theory, you could buy on Ebay to sell on Amazon.  ¶ 6:04 p.m. 0 comments

  Dive Into Greasemonkey Note to self: Look at this site!  ¶ 10:40 p.m. 0 comments

  Firefox Downloads Window Needs Work The Firefox downloads window is not useful. It tells me what files I have downloaded, which is fine, and it gives me two options: Open and Remove, for each download.

Open does just what it says; it opens the file that I downloaded. Personally, I think this is dangerous. I download a lot of software. There's no way I'm going to launch software that I just downloaded (which Open does) without first running a virus check on it. So, to do that, I have to open Windows Explorer and navigate to my download folder and find the file, then, I can run the virus check and if everything is ok, I can launch the software.

Why should I have to go through all that? Why doesn't the Downloads window have an option to open the containing folder? Firefox knows where it put the file, just let me get to it easily. This is one area where Internet Explorer really got it right.

The second option in the Downloads window, Remove, isn't very useful either. It removes the filename listing of the download from the Downloads window -- it doesn't do anything to the actual file on your hard disk. It's ok that it does that, I just think it's misleading. I would expect it to delete the file from the disk.  ¶ 2:27 p.m. 0 comments

  Sage Templates I wonder if there are any templates available for the Firefox Sage RSS Reader? One of the options in Sage renders the news feeds in the browser's contents area. The default display is acceptable, but nothing special.

If there's nothing readily available, it would be a good excuse to practice your CSS skills. Create a few templates and have some fun with it. If they are any good, you could post them.  ¶ 4:46 p.m. 1 comments

  How to get out of a rut

From Jugglezine:

What does it take to escape a rut? A combination of self-awareness, strategic planning, and perseverance. "There's an old coaching mantra that says, 'Nothing changes until something changes,'" Cohen says. "Talking about change isn't enough, and thinking differently isn't enough, either."

It's soooo easy to talk about change. But the article is right: nothing changes until something changes. It sounds so easy, yet it can be so difficult.  ¶ 5:22 p.m. 0 comments

  Mimic Alertness to Enhance Productivity I read an interesting post on Open Loops about how to mimic the sympathetic nervous system.

"When the sympathetic is active, it dilates the pupils, increases the blood sugar, increases the heart rate, and increases the respiration. In short, it triggers the “fight or flight” response, enabling us to take action."

By doing things that cause those reactions, you can make yourself more alert and ready for action. When you're feeling sluggish, you can try "sitting up straight, standing, moving quickly, deeper breathing", to make yourself ready to work better.

This is interesting. I've come across the basic premise here in a few places lately. It seems that the body uses a two-way mechanism. When you're happy, you smile. But it seems to work the other way too. If you feel down and you make yourself smile, you'll feel happy. Malcolm Gladwell mentions this effect in his book: Blink.

And this is a basic idea in all kinds of self-development books.  ¶ 2:38 p.m. 1 comments

  Protect Your Magnetic Strip I use my debit card to pay for just about everything. After awhile the magnetic strip becomes difficult for the machine to read and the cashier has to swipe it over and over again. Or he has to resort to some trickery to get it to work (all cashiers have their own tricks).

But there is a trick you can use yourself. When the card is new, put a piece of Scotch Tape over the magnetic strip. This will prevent it from getting damaged but won't affect the working of the card.

From Tricks of the Trade, via Lifehacker.  ¶ 12:54 p.m. 0 comments

  Flash Ads Are Annoying It's very distracting when I'm trying to read something and there's all that flickering going on beside what I'm reading. I look at those ads because I can't not look. But I always come away with a negative impression of the advertiser or product.

Because those advertisements are so annoying, I try to get rid them. I use two Firefox extensions (just to make sure) called Flashblock and Adblock. The result is that I don't see those ads at all.

I think that advertisers are making a big mistake by making their ads so intrusive. If they had used a still image, I would have left it alone. Or at the very least, if they had given me the option to turn off the animation, I may have left it alone. But I had no choice, I had to remove their ad completely.

This is unfortunate because I think the advertising model is a good one for the web. I certainly would not want to pay a subscription fee for every site I visit, so I'm all for a site earning some money so that they can continue doing what they do. And who knows, I might have even clicked on an ad myself at some point, if they were still there.  ¶ 2:12 p.m. 0 comments

  Screencast repository : Lifehacker Some cool links to screencasts and how to make them. I've seen a couple of Jon Udell's screencasts, and they are definitely a helpful way to learn.
Screencast repository : Lifehacker  ¶ 12:06 p.m. 0 comments

  Steve Jobs gives commencement address at Stanford "Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories."  ¶ 11:59 a.m. 0 comments

  Beyond Blogging Lots of interesting links about blogging at Blogger Help : Beyond Blogging. Take a look when you have more time.  ¶ 10:30 a.m. 0 comments

  Firefox Popup Blocker The Firefox popup blocker is a very nice feature. It sits quietly in the background and it does a good job. But there is one annoyance I have with it. Sometimes I actually want to look at a popup, sometimes popups really are legitimate, and sometimes I'm just curious about it and would like to see it - just this one time.

I don't want to allow all popups for the site, all the time. I just want to see this one popup, this one time. There should be an option for this on the popup blocker message that displays at the top of the page whenever Firefox has blocked a popup on that page.  ¶ 9:55 a.m. 0 comments

  Blogging to Myself Whenever I come across something interesting on the web, I try to capture it and remember it. The obvious way to remember a site is to bookmark it. But bookmarks get out of hand easily and you can't annotate them. So I've taken to sending links, copying bits of text and jotting down thoughts in an email to a Gmail account where I can label them and easily search them whenever I need to. This idea comes from "How to use Gmail as your second brain".

Then I realized that what I was doing was blogging to myself. So, I thought, what the hell, why not blog for real. Send it out into the world and see what happens. It might be fun.

Herewith, my blog.  ¶ 10:51 p.m. 0 comments