Technology and Money

A Day in the Life of a Part-Time Blogger Who Has a Full-Time Job

This is how David Armano describes a typical day of his ‘blogging + work + family’ life.

Am sure lot of people can connect with this diagram especially those who actively blog and also have a full-time job somewhere.

 

Related: Life of a Professional Blogger (video)

A Day in the Life of a Part-Time Blogger Who Has a Full-Time Job - Digital Inspiration

Importing Email Addresses from Google Apps into LinkedIn

Q: While you can directly add email addresses from Gmail, Yahoo or Windows Live Hotmail accounts into LinkedIn using the import contact feature, what are the options for people who using another webmail program like Gmail for Google Apps?

A: The answer is fairly simple. If your email is hosted on a web domain that’s not directly supported by LinkedIn (like @microsoft.com or @googlemail.com), you can still easily import email contacts into LinkedIn using the CSV option.

Just export all entries of your address book into the Outlook CSV format and upload the file here. Then select the contacts you wish to invite on LinkedIn and done.

Related: Compare Gmail with Google Apps Premier

PS: If your email address is Rediff, Indiatimes or Gmx, select the "other" option on the webmail import page and select the appropriate domain from the drop down – no need for you to do the import-export exercise.

Importing Email Addresses from Google Apps into LinkedIn - Digital Inspiration

Monitor your Internet Speed and Bandwidth Usage in Real-Time with BitMeter

You got a broadband connection at home with a data transfer limit and the ISP charges extra money for every byte of data that you download / upload beyond the limit specified in the monthly plan.

If you can connect with the above situation, what you definitely need is BitMeter for keeping a track of your internet bandwidth usage.

In fact, Bitmeter is more than just a bandwidth usage meter. You can create custom desktop alerts (see screenshot) to know when your internet connection goes offline or if the net speed drops beyond a certain level.

Screenshot A: The ISP Restrictions screen allows you to configure BitMeter with details of your ISPs monthly usage allowance, so that it can warn you as you approach your limit.

Screenshot B: Alerts can be created to notify you when you have transferred a specified amount of data (a Volume Alert), or when your speed goes above or below a specified value (a Speed Alert).

There are other free apps for tracking bandwidth as well some of them have now been abandoned by their respective developers. I have been using BitMeter for about a week now (thanks CNET) and find it very useful especially for tracking the current ISP speed.

Related trick: Find about websites that your computer is trying to connect.

Monitor your Internet Speed and Bandwidth Usage in Real-Time with BitMeter - Digital Inspiration

Schmap.me: Create a Web Page with your Contact Information

Schmap is like your virtual business card – key in your contact address, website URL, phone number, email or any other details that you want to reveal in public and it creates a personal web page for you with all this information.

You can ever grab a personal URL for your contact page and it looks the same on desktop browsers as well as mobile phones.

Your virtual business card with Google Map looks the same everywhere on web & mobile phones

Schmap uses Google Maps to display the location. If privacy is a concern, just enter your city or country in the address field or you may even leave any of the fields blank.

To get your contact page, visit schmap.me. Here are some dummy cards I created to test the service – they look pretty good even on the mobile phone.

The service doesn’t require any registration but if you need a provision to edit your contact details later, they provide a secret URL for that as well.

You may also want to read this review of Schmap Local that lets you interact with contact addresses and phone numbers available on web pages.

Schmap.me: Create a Web Page with your Contact Information - Digital Inspiration

Did Google Toolbar Break your Firefox Address Bar Search?

When you type something in the Firefox address bar, it automatically performs a Google search if the phrase you typed doesn’t match a web domain. The situation is slightly different with OpenDNS but can be reverted with a simple hack.

Now, for some unknown reason, the default search function of the Firefox address bar broke after installing the Google Toolbar (version 5.0).

The searches from Firefox address bar were getting redirected to some server at linkhelp.clients.google.com and then to opendns.com.

Not sure whey Google changed the defaults but here’s a a simple fix for the above problem:

1. Type about:config and click ‘I Promise’.

2. Type keyword.URL in the Filter field and change the values as shown below:

• Before: about:neterror?e=query&u=
• After: http://www.google.com/search?q=

Did Google Toolbar Break your Firefox Address Bar Search? - Digital Inspiration

Make a Site Map of your Website with WriteMaps

WriteMaps is a web based tool that you helps you quickly draw a conceptual diagram of your website.

You may also use the tool to plan the layout of an upcoming site or for generating the sitemap of an existing website as in this example.

The tool has a very intuitive interface and the favorite feature is that you can share sitemaps online (each sitemap gets a unique URL) or you edit them with co-workers.

Now unlike your WordPress plugins that create sitemaps exclusively for search engines, the sitemap written inside Writemap is fit both for human and search engine consumption.

The downside is that this tool may not be fit for large websites as you have to create pages (nodes) manually.

Related: Fix XML Sitemap Issues in Blogger

Make a Site Map of your Website with WriteMaps - Digital Inspiration