The Functional Wallpaper

Over the years I have changed my computer wallpaper many times. In the beginning it was only the default Windows image. Then I started using pictures of things I wanted to achieve. Then I developed the anti-procrastination wallpaper….

Some time last year, however, I started noticing that my desktop was getting cluttered with too many files and folders, and it was becoming hard to find what I needed fast. That is why I decided to create what I call the functional wallpaper. Here is a picture:

The idea is not mine. I believe I had seen something like this either on the web or on some friend’s computer long time ago. You basically create a background image with sections, and then you organize the icons and files inside these sections. For instance, I have one section for general stuff, one for my backups, one for programming stuff, and one for each of my main websites.

It is working like a charm, so it will probably be a while before I decide to change it. If you are having a hard time finding stuff on your desktop too, give it a shot.

Best Firefox Add-ons: FastestFox

It’s Monday, so time to review another useful Firefox add-on. Today I’ll talk about FastestFox, which intends to make surfing the web with Firefox faster and more efficient.

A come across this extension a while ago when I was using my brother’s computer. I browsed down to the bottom of a Google search results page, and Firefox automatically loaded the second page of results below it (i.e., without the need to click onto a second page). I found the trick really neat, and then I discovered it was FastestFox doing it (not to be confused with FasterFox, an add-on used tweak network and rendering setting in Firefox).

There are other useful features too, including:

• The ability to add related search results from other search engines inside Google.
• The ability to see definitions of specific words and terms just by highlighting them (you can either use a pop-up or open the respective Wikipedia page)
• Improved searches through the URL bar (now you can see results in real time, ala Google Instant).
• An efficient bookmark interface called qLauncher which allows you to quickly open your favorite sites.

Best Firefox Add-ons: Firebug

If you do any kind of web design and development, or are planning to get started, then you must install this add-on. It’s called Firebug, and it adds a wide range of functionalities to Firefox.

Here is a list of things you’ll be able to do with the extension:

• Monitor and analyze network performance, to understand what elements might be slowing your website down.
• Inspect the HTML code by viewing the source of any page in real time, filtering specific elements and editing them if necessary.
• Inspect and edit CSS and Javascript as well.
• Test your pages to see if they contain errors, and debug them with the help of Firebug.
• Use the Firebug rulers and and boxes to analyze and optimize the layout on your pages.

It’s worth a look, so check it out.

Best Firefox Add-ons: Screengrab

If you are tired of using the old Print Screen command to capture screenshots you should check this extension out. Called Screengrab, it allows you to take screenshots with much more flexibility.

First of all you’ll be able to take a screenshot of the entire page you are visiting. That is, the screenshot will contain even the parts that were below the fold.

Second, you can also manually choose a section for the screenshot, which is useful if you just want a small picture of the website to use in a blog post, for instance.

Finally, you can choose if you want to save the screenshots to the clipboard or as a file.

Recommended for any blogger and webmaster.

Best Firefox Add-ons: Autofill Forms

Leaving comments on other blogs is a pretty efficient way to promote your own blog, especially in its early days. The problem is the time you need to waste filling the comment form with your name, email address and website URL every single time….

Is there a work around? Yes, and it`s called Autofill Forms. This Firefox add-on is easy to configure, and after that it will automatically fill the forms for you. In fact in can do a lot more than auto-filling blog comments. Here are some other features:

• Different profiles with different auto-fill rules.
• Assign different profiles to different websites.
• Customize the auto-filling rules with JavaScript.
• Works with input fields, textareas, selections, and checkboxes.
• You can bind the auto-fill to keyboard shortcuts.

Check it out.

Best Firefox Add-ons: Google Assistant

Despite Google having improved its search technology a lot over the past few years, sometimes you`ll still get non relevant results in the first page, right?

If you search for dolphins, for example, half of the results will probably be about the Miami Dolphis, a football team, while the other half will be about real dolphins, the animal. How do you solve this problem?

There is a Firefox add-on that might help, called Google Assistant. It basically waits for you to click on one of the results, and after that it will re-rank the whole thing trying to bring results that are relevant to what you are looking for. It will search up to the 100th page looking for these.

I am still testing this add-on, but so far it looks interesting. It also works with Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Best Firefox Add-ons: BugMeNot

Ever tried to read an article on some newspaper, only to get bugged to register a user account in order to do that? We all have been there, and it’s quite annoying.

To solve this problem a service called BugMeNot.com was created. You just need to specify the website you are trying to access, and the site will give you a list of member created users/passwords you can use. Examples of supported sites are:

• New York Times
• Washington Post
• MegaUpload
• YouTube
• IMDB

And the cool thing is that you can install the BugMeNot Firefox add-on, too, which will make the process even faster. Once the add-on is installed you’ll just need to right click on the user/password field and it will fill it out for you automatically.

4 Excel Formulas Every Blogger Should Know

As a blogger, whether you plan to make a living from advertising or are into affiliate marketing, or even if you are selling (or plan to sell) your own info-products, Excel can be a tremendously useful tool. So, if you are serious about treating your blog as a business, then learning how to use Excel is a smart move.

However, a large percentage of the hundreds of bloggers I’ve worked with at my consulting firm were frustrated with Excel to the point that they were ready to ‘tear their hair out’.

That’s why today, I am going to teach you how to overcome the 4 hurdles that baffle most Excel users. These techniques will allow you to get a lot more value from your Excel workbooks and avoid the Excel-blues.

1. Using the Fill handle

Every day I get the same question: “How do I subtract one column from another” or “How do I multiply two columns”

Well, this is most easily done by creating a simple formula that operates on two cells and then applying this formula to an entire column by using the “Fill handle”, as shown in this 50 second video:

The “fill handle” is amazingly useful tool and can save you a lot of time when entering formulas. What might you use this for? I have used it for taking affiliate commissions from information product sales to find the profit, calculating effective conversion rates, working out my CPM … there are thousands of uses of this neat little trick for bloggers that will save you time. Try it and see!

2. Absolute and Relative Cell References

In the previous video, you saw how to use the fill handle to copy a formula for an entire column. When you use the Fill handle, Excel changes the formula for each row so that it references the correct cells.

This is extremely useful, but in some cases, you want to use the fill handle (or copy the formula) and have some of the cell references change and other references to remain constant. As you can see in the following video, this is extremely easy, you just add a ‘$’ sign before the column and the row:

How might you use this? Well if you are a freelance blogger you might have your hourly or per-post rate in a cell and use this rate for quotes or invoices. You want to use that figure in all your calculations. Same if you sell advertising, you would base your quote off of a price-list where the prices are constant.

3. Linking Data from Other Sheets/Files

Many people struggle with linking data between sheets, but in the following 60 seconds video, you’ll see how easy it is:

Using this technique you could take your price list or rate-card from the previous example and make it far more powerful by having one sheet contain your prices and the other sheet be your quote or invoice!

4. The Formula Evaluation tool

Most formulas, especially complex ones, won’t work right off the bat. You need to know how to easily trace which part of your formula isn’t working and fix it.

There’s a little-known tool that allows you to see how Excel evaluates your formula and pinpoint exactly where a problem stems from.

It’s called the “Evaluate Formula” tool. And it is hidden in the “formula auditing” section on formulas ribbon. In the following video, you can see how to use the “Evaluate formula” tool to find out why your formula isn’t working:

You can use the “Evaluate Formula” tool to:

1. Find why a formula returns an error
2. Discover why your formula does not return the value you expected it to return
3. As a learning tool while you get up to speed with developing complex formulas

I use the “Evaluate Formula” tool on a daily basis to debug formulas and I find it invaluable.

Over to the readers

Do you use other Excel techniques/tools on a regular basis in your blogging business? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Best Firefox Add-ons: LastPass Password Manager

If you are a web geek you certainly have dozens of passwords from different services and websites. Gmail, WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, cPanel, GoDaddy, you name it.

On top of that you also need to make sure that each password is unique, and preferably long and complex, else they would become a security risk.

How do you manage all that without going crazy? With a password manager, obviously. Password managers are programs that will store your passwords securely (i.e., with encryption), and you just need to remember the master password.

There are many desktop based managers, but there is also a Firefox add-on called LastPass that gets the job done.

The advantage of using the extension is that you might sync it with different computers, and that you’ll be able to auto-fill login forms, logging into your favorite websites with single click. It works on any operating system where you can install Firefox.

Best Firefox Add-ons: PrintPDF

Sooner or later we all need to save web pages locally. Maybe it’s a page with a tutorial for something you’ll need to do in the future, maybe it’s the sales page that you think has great copywriting and are not sure for how long it will stay online.

Regardless of the reason, saving the page as an HTML file is not an effective solution. That is because you’ll need to save both page and the respective files (which usually go in a separate folder), and because when trying to open it again it might be displayed incorrectly on your browser.

A better solution is to use a Firefox extension called PrintPDF. Once installed you’ll be able to save web pages directly into your computer as a PDF file.

It works both on Windows and Linux, and the only missing functionality right now is that links will not be present in the PDF. I believe the developer will be adding this feature soon though.

Finally, yes I know Mac users can do this by default, so no need to brag about it!