Adding Your Favorite Links to Your Windows Explorer Menu
I am sure someone else has figured this out long ago and its probably common knowledge among geeks, but I am happy to report that I finally figured out how to customize Windows Explorer with your favorite shortcuts (in Windows Vista or 7).
While I was tooling around the directory structure, trying to figure out where I had last saved some graphics that are still hidden away from my view. I stopped in my user’s folder that is often refused to as “Libraries” and I noticed that there was a “Favorites” folder and a “Links” folder. I thought, why would there be two? I knew the “Favorites” folder is where my internet shortcuts are saved, but why was there a “Links” folder, which is exactly what I would’ve called it in the first place. So on a hunch, I placed a couple extra shortcuts in the “Links” folder I had just discovered and walla, they showed-up in Windows Explorer (the file explorer, not internet explorer).
I’m so proud of myself. 
It really helps out, having all your most often traveled destinations in there ready-to-click and send you exactly where you want to go, under the “Favorite Links” column.
So now anyone can add their favorite directory destinations in the “Links” folder (found within the “Users” folder bearing your user log-in name on the computer) as shortcuts, and then your shortcuts will appear in the “Favorite Links” column of Explorer anytime you open the “Computer”, “Documents” or any other directory.
Cool.
Customize your FireFox browser experience with a Persona!
These days we all like to customize our stuff so that it reflects our own personality. New industries have sprung out of the desire for custom vinyl car, phone and laptop wraps. And of course we can do the same thing with our FireFox browser now, using Personas, which act like little FireFox browser themes.
We all have to think about how we want to promote our businesses online. SEO doesn’t work unless there is some sort of promotion program in place. The more creative ideas always seem to win out over just submitting your website to the directories.
People who make good videos tend to get lots of viewers. I keep wanting to make my own tutorials but the screen recording and presentation software has always been out of my budget (let me know if you have something free/share-ware that works).
But I finally decided to take a look at how I can get my work out there. Because I have so many domains, I have been making lots of logos for my minisites & blogs. But I have always been trying to find a way to share my graphic design skills.
I had been so busy that I hadn’t noticed it. But every time FireFox updated to a new version it was always inviting me to try out the new personas. To tell you the truth, I don’t like a lot going on in my browser. I don’t want it to clash with other websites or be too busy. I’ve even stopped using the Google Toolbar because it refused to share the same line with any other toolbar and pushed the content down and closed my visible window on the cyberworld.
But as a graphic designer my curiosity has finally gotten the better of me and I was quite amazed what I found there. Many were just plain awesome because they invoke loyalty to a brand such as the Vikings, the Twins or the Yankees… I even have a couple Superman themes for FireFox, now.
But later I made a few of my own. The first few have finally been approved at:
http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/gallery/Designer/SymbioticDesign
Some of these are actually quite busy for a texture pattern, but I’m learning and they still seem to work well for some people with less going on than I have. Some could actually be modified further if someone wanted to. And I usually added credit for my business or a website in somewhere (usually on the bottom footer image) with a blatant plug for my website.
I’m still experimenting with stuff and a whole bunch of others are pending, but it’s just a good idea I thought I might share. It might go somewhere, it might not, but the idea of having a technically sophisticated user (I think most FireFox users are well up on things) that might see my creativity and check out my websites (I am promoting quite a few of them in different patterns), sounded like a good idea and a real win-win if my graphic eye is attracting them to my services.
Thought you might like the idea.
I know there are some “Personas” that I made that maybe I shouldn’t have uploaded, but everyone likes something different and as indicated, I have just started toying around with this. I think I have a few better ones that I expect to be approved soon and I am even going to be tapping other parts of my hard drive (some of my folders seem to be growing spiderwebs but have images I know would work well).
Here are some examples of FireFox Personas that I thought worked well:
Brushed Recessed Metal
Brushed Recessed Metal Persona by Symbiotic Design (Preview Image)
Space Craft Panels Persona
Space Craft Panels Persona by Symbiotic Design (Preview Image)
Knurled Persona
Knurled FireFox Persona by Symbiotic Design (Previe Image)
Alien Ribs
Alien Ribs Persona by Symbiotic Design (Preview Image)
Blue Angels 1 through 6
Blue Angels 1 through 6 Persona by Symbiotic Design (Preview Image)
Wavy Grill
Wavy Grill Persona by Symbiotic Design
It’s easy enough to use another designer’s Persona or with very little work you can make your own. Although it is free, it helps get the word out about your sites and stuff, if you decide to try to make your own to promote yourself or your business.
I’m sure there are other such avenues, if you do something similar, post it here (or in a new thread).
As another designer pointed out, we do have to be careful about what images we use. I made all my designs, or used photography that I had taken. Be sure that you have the rights to use anything that you might come up with in your own Personas. If it’s Copyright at all, make sure it’s your Copyright!
Adventures in Computing
I’m trying to upgrade a website logo to the new version (it is incorporated into the layout).
As I’m getting ready to upgrade the logo, I had to get the old Photoshop master image files off my old desktop. Since I started having video card issues with this old PC, I hadn’t used it in a while. Of course, Norton AntiVirus 360 is now expired and Windows wants to update. All I want is a few image files.
For some reason the laptop (which I am using now due to the video card woes) and the old desktop won’t network together as they used to (the very last time I used the PC). Oh no!… The normal broadband connection won’t work. So, I grab the USB wireless modem from the laptop and use it on the desktop.
While I am downloading a free antivirus solution from Avast, Windows is updating. I install Avast Free and sometime after, things start misbehaving. If I click on the start button, my mouse will only show the menu if I hold the left mouse button down. I am anxious to reboot once Windows is updated and Avast is installed. Then, I notice that not one of the browsers work (Not IE, FF, Safari, or O). I’m a bit worried.
I managed to copy the files to a 4GB flash jump drive, but the laptop can’t see the files. Huh? Yeah, it’s like looking at a whole different drive, with different files and directories!
Upon rebooting the old desktop machine, I am presented with the video card issue at login. Lovely. Will I make it in to copy those files? The keyboard won’t work. Oh, wrong one. I make it in and it was like the malicious hacker security fix that Windows downloaded worked because all systems are fine again. Except Norton seems to have trashed my networking setup and I still can’t connect via wired broadband. Avast doesn’t see the PPOE connection with my modem, so I can’t register, but the start menu works and I can actually use all my browsers. I copy a mess of files over to a new 8GB flash jump drive in case this is the last time I can access this old workhorse of a system.
But as I am doing this file copying, I am switching between the HDMI connections of the laptop and desktop on my monitor (actually, it’s a TV). I notice that my favorite wireless mouse is opening files on one computer as I am using it on another computer. That is strange, since the wireless receiver that the Microsoft mouse and keyboard use is plugged into the laptop. But, the mouse is actually functioning on the desktop, too! And there is no wireless receiver on the desktop. The mouse must be burrowing a hole through the old network connection between the two computers, that has since somehow disappeared? So now I have to be careful what I am doing on one computer, because the same mouse actions are being repeated on the other computer.
I put this mouse aside after starting a system scan using Avast on the desktop. I grab another smaller notebook wireless Microsoft mouse that I use when I am on the road. It works when I plug it into the laptop and doesn’t seem to control the desktop mouse. Whew!
I insert the 8GB flash jump drive and Windows wants to scan it, says there may be a problem with it. Did I take it out too soon and corrupt the file structure? The scan takes forever, but the drive is OK and I can finally see and copy over those image files. Heck, I put that directory in 2 places on my laptop’s hard drive, just in case.
Get this, my work night has just started! I wonder what will happen next. I bet Avast needs to be updated before it can really find anything, but doesn’t see my PPOE modem based internet connection. And I still have to straighten out the networking issue. But once it is done with this scan, I’ll just power the PC down. I have to get that logo updated tonight, afterall!
Internet Explorer Support Now Costs Double
Can you believe this:? Microsoft Internet Explorer refuses to run on my XP desktop or XP notebook machines, or even my Vista based laptop! I can’t get IE running on anything, not even on my son’s XP desktop.
Thanks so much for nothing, MS!
It isn’t that I want to use it, it’s just that I need to support the IE browser for my web design clients. And yet it won’t even run on my Windows based machines. I am so tired of supporting IE. They fail to develop the browser at all so that it will keep up with ancient web standards such as CS3, XHTML and XML and don’t even plan on supporting HTML5. Ideally, the browser is considered crappy.
Why the hell should I support this peice of junk browser? Oh yeah, my client’s clients/customers. Well, I am now doubling my rates to support anything other than the last version of Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. Why? because IE is so poorly undeveloped that it should not even be considered a true modern browser.
So from this moment on, if you want support for IE7, you will have to pay double for it. Because IE really *is* that crappy and really is much of a pain in the butt. Everyone else supports the current and emerging web standards, just not IE.
Do You Need Like-Minded People to Follow on Twitter?
Are you looking for some like minded people to follow on Twitter? If so, you may have been following people that your friends have been following, trusting their judgment. But this has not worked out well for me. Often it works very well, but there are the few trouble makers with a crappy mouth that I do not like my son to see. Since TweetDeck is updating at regular intervals automatically, this is a big problem.
But recently Twitter has introduced “lists”. Lists allow you to categorize other twitterers (or “tweople”) into lists. In my case, I have categorized a whole mess of people into quite a few lists. This should allow some of you who are designers to follow other designers, and etc.
A list of my current lists, with links to them, follows:
Hopefully that’s a good place to start, anyway. I actually spent quite a bit of time building those lists. I hope you can enjoy a few of them.
These lists are meant to allow others an easy means to follow other like-minded professionals, but you don’t have to actually follow each member, individually. From what I understand, Twitter allows you to follow each individual list, making it much easier to add everyone listed there.
However, remember that you don’t have to follow anyone in order to put them in your own list, either. That is, I started a list of designers and added all the known/recognized graphic and web designers to it. But I didn’t actually follow the guys who’s Twitter posts (“tweets”) weren’t in English. I still want them in my list in case I need someone who speaks Polish better than I (or some other language), so that I have easy access to them should I need to contract a freelancer on a project.
I do suggest that you follow like-minded people, though. For instance, if you don’t know anything about domain names, and don’t especially want to, don’t go through the list of Domainers. You’ll only get a bunch of info you don’t really want to know, such as domain name news, domain names offered for sale, or maybe something like how to use Google AdSense to monetize your website. Professional websites don’t show Google AdWords advertisements, after all.
Happy Tweeting!
Getting Started on Twitter Info & Tips
I’m sure that you have heard all the buzz on social networking, social media and/or social marketing. Rest assured that it is a big deal. This is not all hype. Social media allows us immediate interaction online, which makes it much more immediately effective and impactful because things do change over time.
For those of you that keep hearing how Twitter is losing visitor traffic to the website and therefore it isn’t important, don’t listen to the naysayers. That is a bunk statistic because what powers all those Tweets are third party applications and texting from smartphones or PDA devices. Only recently has Twitter updated the user home page with web 2.0 scripting which allows them to update the user with new Tweet alerts, so no one was really accessing Twitter webpages too much in the first place. Most people are using it from desktop applications on their PC, notebook or netbook, on their smart phone or PDA, and they are using it from all over as they live their day, not just from home.
I can even attest that I have increased sales through Twitter by trying to be helpful, a good resource, and plugging my websites a bit without being spammy. If you need help with it, just tweet me as @Domainating, or through one of my branded domain names for sale posting account brand names of either @DomainNameGamer or @PremiumBrand. I am also online there with other accounts, but you might think I am spamming the group if I listed them all (and some of you probably think I am already being too spammy, but I am also trying to elaborate on my point that if you have multiple brands to protect, you should do so).
When “tweeting” on Twitter, remember that you are limited to 140 characters. All the people (tweople) who follow you will be able to see your tweets (your posts). It is much like social blogging in 140 character increments. Anyone searching for posts that use certain keywords can actually see your posts as well. And you can use this to your advantage by searching for customers looking for recommendations, as well.
Some Simple Tweeting Tips:
Your tweets (posts) can also be seen by even more people when they are retweeted.
As an example, let’s say I saw this tweet from JoeTrippi:
JoeTrippi Google to improve upon HTTP protocol? Tests show it could speed up page loads by more than 50% http://bit.ly/u6mt9
So maybe I think the Web Design and Development group (WDaDg) members and followers should know this, so I “retweet it” by copying Joe Trippi’s whole post.
Then I start the next post I make with “RT @” – RT means ReTweet, and the @ (at-sign) in front of a username functions as a mention so that they get credit and anyone seeing the retweet can check them out by clicking on the username (and possibly add them as a resource to follow). so now it looks like this:
RT @JoeTrippi Google to improve upon HTTP protocol? Tests show it could speed up page loads by more than 50% http://bit.ly/u6mt9
…now, everyone following me will see that, as well. So if you have something significant or valuable to say and do it consistently, you might be followed as a good resource by those who are searching related keywords in posts to follow.
When you mention other tweople’s usernames using the @ mark, they will see it in a special mentions area. However, others may not see it if it is the @ sign is the first character of the post. If you want others to see something, you just have to make sure that another character (other than a space) precedes the @. Lots of tweople use a simple dot so that a reply to someone by mentioning them in the post where they want others to see might look like:
.@Domainating Thanks for the tip.
If you don’t use the dot or other character to precede the @, others still may be able to see it, so not using the dot or other preceding character does NOT make it a private message. For instance, it still can be seen in your quick quip next to your picture on any of your follower’s (people following you) following page (the list of people they are following, which is accessible from their profile page) as the last post you made when listed there (there are usually multiple pages, you would only be listed on one of them).
If you want to send a message directly to another person (tweep) privately that only they will see, you can send them a Direct message by using a “D”:
D Domainating, you are ugly and your mom wears army boots!
…only I would see that post (or anyone looking over my shoulder when I was accessing it).
The catch is that you can only D (Direct message) your friends. That means that in order to D the username you want to, you have to be following him/her/it AND they have to be following you (which is considered a mutual friendship). Perhaps this is why they made @ kind of private if there are no characters in front of it and the username in a message?
The “#” (aka the number sign, the American pound sign of weight, or at Twitter it is most often called the hash tag) mark helps categorize posts and trends that people can access as a keyword or category, so that people can browse tagged messages according to subject. So I might post…
ICANN accredidation means nothing because all registrars have to follow ICANN rules, and ICANN does not police registrars. #domain #domains
So now this post has been categorized using the hashmark so that other people looking for posts using the domains and domain keywords can easily find them. They also speak to the trends of subjects in the social network.
Note that you will find tweople looking for recommendations on a web designer, a CMS, a domain registrar, a smartphone, a wireless service, an antiviri & security suite software package, and more, and Twitter can put you immediately in touch with these people. Now THAT’s real time (social) marketing.
Twitter can be quite useful. And you will find that as you establish relationships and have engaging conversations, you will reap the most benefits.
Twitter Tools and Utilities:
There are also several directories that specialize in listing tweople. The most popular is wefollow and by listing yourself there you can gain a following of others interested in the same subjects.
Klout (http://) is a Twitter analysation tool that you may be interested in.
TweetStats n. an app to graph your Twitter stats (or anyone else’s, incase you want to check them out before you follow them if you are worried). The graphs are nice, but I like to see the most used words and hash tags.
As noted above, I use a Twitter client (third party software) to monitor my Tweets. My favorite is an Adobe Air application, @TweetDeck:
TweetDeck “TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more. TweetDeck shows you everything you want to see at once, so you can stay organised and up to date.” …from the homepage itself.
…hope that helps you get started (if you aren’t already)!
Thanks for reading!
Widget Droid
I registered the domain name WidgetDroid.com yesterday. I think that Android 2 is a big hit and it just needs some decent devices to take advantage of it. Verizon has already announced that they will be releasing the Droid to the public on Friday, which appears to be a very highly capable smart phone/device.
I didn’t register WidgetAndroid.com for 2 reasons: widgetandroid.com looks more like Widget And Roid than Widget Android, and because Google has declared the Android name as a Trademark and seem to want to protect that name.
But I want to get an Android powered smart phone someday, when I can afford it, and I think this domain will be a good one for recommending and selling widget downloads for the Android operated devices that will be coming out, now.
Wish me luck!
-Doug
Windows Laptop(s) & Windows Notebook(s) Info Sites Online
I have just setup a few domains that I think should do pretty well…
Windows Laptop TM logo
I liked how the letters flowed together (once I worked at it a while).
WindowsLaptops.com logo
This one above was based on the colors of the WordPress design theme/template.
WindowsNotebook.com logo
I like how the checkmark reflects the angles of the W and the dot of the i turned out to be the icing on the cake that completed the illusion. In this case I am actually experimenting with keeping the text as large as possible and incorporating the checkmark to appease the web media image optimization cops.
Windows Notebooks logo
It probably doesn’t seem like I spent a lot of time on the logos for the plural versions of these domains. But I was specifically matching them up to the colors of the WordPress design theme/template that I want to use for those two, so I didn’t want them to not look alike and if you visit the articles blog/site, I think you’ll agree that they match-up pretty well there.
I also wanted the plural versions to seem more like a conglomerate or at least a partnership between the two sites.
I did want the singular (non-plural) version domain name logos to offer their own unique identity, as they offer great value in a premium domain name.
I plan to get these posted online elsewhere, in my profile (Doug-Peters.com), and featured at Premium Brand Name, but I have a birthday party to go to for my 70 year-old uncle Gordon (great guy, by the way). So I am just throwing out these images and thoughts as quick as I can so that all this will get posted somewhere.
I really like these sites and there are already some great reviews and tips and tricks posted. I will be obviously be posting more articles, as well. I will definitely be looking to post some laptop/notebook mods and hacks on the plural version domains. The singular version names will probably be a bit more conventional.
I added about 3 pages to the WD&D group at Google Groups. One was a resource links page. I’m thinking that when I get it further along, I might just post it here.
Anyways, I have been extremely busy trying to clean-up my portfolio, working on my resume and doing just about everything I can think of in order to get my next web designer, online marketer, SEO, ad writer, copy writer, graphic designer, brand expert, illustrator and/or webmaster position. Let me know if you have anything for me. This looking for a job is worse than a full time job.
I am getting tired of it. I am ready to move to either coast, Chicago, or anything. But if I don’t get something soon I may wind-up as an auto salesman. Which wouldn’t be bad, but I wouldn’t be as creatively challenged. Which is simply when I am the most excited and happiest.
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