For the past few weeks, I’ve been using a nifty little Firefox add-on called Drag & DropZones. It’s purpose is to save you clicks by making available to you many of the things you find in your context menu or the menu bar itself.

Do you find yourself searching for that “Open link in new tab” in your context menu? I use that all the time, but instead of hunting for it, all I do now is click on the link and drag it over the super-imposed box that I’ve designated as “open link in new tab”. Dragging anything on the page that you’re on engages the add-on, so it’s always right there when you need it.

The screenshot may be a little hard to read, but basically what you’re seeing is several light blue tiles each designated as a specific zone. Each zone represents something you want it to represent: the aforementioned link, search Google or any search engine, and just about any other link accessible in your menus.

All you Firefox users, install it now and be more productive.

I just found out about this slick service called LaterLoop. It’s a free and handy way to save things you find online and return to for later reading. I love the way it integrates with Firefox and I think you will, too.

It’s a Firefox plugin that provides you with a way to easily mark something as an item of interest that it will save to your LaterLoop account. There are just two simple things you need to remember.

Save your stuff
When you want to save something, you can click on the icon provided in bottom-right corner of your Firefox browser. But there’s an even better way to do that by way of a keyboard shortcut. Find something you like? Just press CTRL+Spacebar and you’re done! If you have more than one tab open and you press CTRL+Spacebar+Spacebar, the information is saved AND the tab closes by itself.

View your stuff
When you’re ready to read the stuff you saved, you just right-click on that icon in the bottom-right and select “Your LaterLoop” and you’re swiftly taken to your list of saved links (click here for a sample). While there, you can mark things with stars to indicate that you want to do something with that bit of information later. You can even use this on your iPhone and other smartphones.

I posted a while back about another Firefox add-on called ReadIt Later. I haven’t been too pleased with it lately. Either it’s faulty, or perhaps the data it has saved for me has become corrupt because I have maybe a dozen or so saved articles, but it doesn’t allow me to go through them. I’m giving LaterLoop a try for now.

There are a gazillion text editors available, which is amazing when you think about it. How much can you improve on a tool designed to enter text? Well, evidently a lot because I’ve seen one end of the spectrum that has the bare bones essentials and then the other end offering you all sorts of scratch-n-sniff options.

I’ve found some nice choices for you to consider that I’d like to share with you, which are all FREE!

Writer: A simple name with a simple interface. Pictured above, you can see that it’s distraction-free enabling you to just focus on your words. One of the things I look for in a text editor is word count and this one has it — and I don’t have to select the text first! I also like the choices of colors to make it easy on the eye. The toolbar lights up when you roll over it with your mouse, but then fades after a few seconds.

You can also save your files online (create a free account), send the files in a number of ways (even to your WordPress blog), download it or convert it to a PDF. This is one of my favorites.

Q10: This one is a software download and loads very fast. Plus it maximizes on your screen by default — another distraction-free interface. Once I discovered that F1 gives you a list of the shortcuts Q10 offers, that really opened the door for me to know how to tweak it. For example, you change change color combinations, search and replace, go through a list of recent files, spellcheck, and you can even toggle the tiny toolbar on and off if it’s just too much for you. Other features are included as well. So go check it out!

DarkCopy: a very slimmed down version of the previous two choices is DarkCopy. It, too, offers an easy-on-the-eye interface which is green text on black background. No other choices for colors though. No other bells and whistles, so if you’re in a hurry to find only a text editor, this is one to keep in mind. You can download your file and choose to do a full-screen.

Notepad++: this one here is my old standby. Actually, I do use it quite often; it depends on my mood. By far, this one has a plethora of options, including recording macros and all types of plugins. It’s great for coding. Among the basics are line numbers, word wrap at a width you determine, hiding lines, moving chunks of text by a simple keyboard command, and so much more.

I’m in the car right now writing this to you or to be more accurate I’m having a service called Jott type it for me. It’s actually dictating what I’m saying right now on my cell phone. And after I’m done what it does is it sends that information transcribed all ready to me along with a voice message that I can get to my email. So all I’ve done is copy and paste this information into my WordPress post to show you what the whole thing looks like and to see how easy it is to use.

Okay, I’m home now and continuing with my writing using WordPress.

Jott is a free online service designed to help you communicate with others easily. Not only can it dictate your words, but it can also send that information to people you want, plus it will send you reminders for tasks.

What’s more, the email that it sends, not only contains the message as text, but it also attaches the voice recording. All you have to do is call up the toll-free number and you’re greeted with a normal sounding voice (as a opposed to a robot), and it asks you to whom you’d like to Jott. If you’ve entered someone as your contacts in your account already, just say their name and it will confirm your request and allow you to begin recording.

When I found out about Jott, I could see the potential at making things a little easier for people on-the-go or who just have a lot of information to deal with. It’s pretty handy, actually. With the exception of two words in the quote above, it came straight from Jott’s transcription of my voice. The changes I made were really my own fault and probably had to do with the way I stopped in the middle of a sentence. But who cares — just think of when you have the need to write something down, but don’t have something to write it on. Just call up Jott and you can send it to yourself or someone of your choosing.

Go on, give it a try!

Maybe you’ve heard of Micro Niche Finder before, but decided to wait to get it or didn’t understand how it could help you make money online. Hopefully, after you read this, you’ll decide now is the time to buy because the price is about to go up! Not only that, but it could help you make up for the cost of the software when you unleash what it can do for you.

Micro Niche Finder (MNF) is a software application you install on your computer to perform keyword searches. The results of this type of search can tell you how often a keyword or keyphrase was searched on, how much “noise” there is for that keyword or phrase, and the strength of it. It tells you other things, but I’m only going to focus on these three for now.

First, the search count (see figure above; click to enlarge) is the most obvious, telling you how many times your term has been searched on in the past 30 days. I know, there are plenty of other tools that tell you that same thing, but read on.

Next is the column called “Broad Match Count“. This is the “noise” I was telling you about earlier. A good number is around the one million mark, give or take. When you start getting into the two million range or 700,000 range, then MNF is telling you that either there’s too much noise (high numbers) or the signal is too weak (low numbers). Just know that the higher or lower you go, the less value your term has. And third is the column to the far right, which is Strength of Count or “SOC“.

All three numbers combine to tell you if that term is worth shooting for. And when I say “shooting for”, I mean it’s telling you the likelihood of your blog being called up in the Google search results provided you use the term wisely in your post.

Let’s say your seach term is “paint”, just like in the figure above. When you search for a term, the only numbers you get first are the broad match counts. Remember, those are the noise numbers — the less noise, the better chance you have at being heard.

I sorted on that column, then I checked the boxes next to the three terms you see highlighted. I chose these to demonstrate the broad match count. Checking the boxes allows me to do a search count on all three in bulk instead of doing them one at a time. (Be careful though, if you do too many too often, then you could get your IP temporarily banned by Google — but only temporarily. Besides, Micro Niche Finder will remind you before you go too far.)

So the numbers get better as we move down the list, making “paint library” the most attractive of the three (the numbers get better further down the list, but I’m just going to focus on this one for now). This means that that term was searched on 1,050 times in the past 30 days, and with a broad match count of just over one million, not too bad. And better still is the SOC, which is six. That green ball next to the six is telling you that this one’s a go.

Let’s think about this.

With the term being searched on 1,050 times in 30 days, this tells you that you’re looking at potentially 1,050 visitors to your blog or site in a month who just might click on your ads or subscribe to your RSS feed. Using this example, you’re looking at about 35 visitors a day in one month (possibly new visitors at that). Are you beginning to see the power behind this now?

Now, if I were to click on the 1,050 for the term “paint library”, I’ll see this:

I can see exactly the number of combinations used for the terms “paint” and “library”. This is useful to me because I can get a feel for other terms that might interest me or be better than the ones I started out with. Naturally, the higher the number next to the terms, the better. In this example, 780 is still a little low for me, but if I wanted to and if the numbers were higher — like in the thousands range — I could start the process over again on one of these terms.

There’s even more you can do with Micro Niche Finder. Watch what happens when I click on the actual term “paint library”:

I’m shown a pop-up with other powerful features. For example, I can do numerous types of Google searches. I can do a marketplace search on the term, which means I can see if there are any products I can sell based on that term. This makes sense because if people are searching on “paint library” they’re more inclined to buy products that have to do with that topic.

But out of all these features, my absolute favorite is the DomainTools Lookup. So, right from Micro Niche Finder I can initiate a domain name search on the search term I entered and see if it’s already taken or perhaps for sale.

I could go on, but now I want to tell you how you can save $30 if you buy Micro Niche Finder right now.

James Jones, the maker of this software, is currently selling this powerful tool for $67. In just a few weeks he’s going to raise the price to $97. But since James is a cool guy, he’s going to allow you to buy the $67 version now and you can upgrade for FREE!

If you want to tap into untapped niche markets, you need an edge to be competitive. Micro Niche Finder can be your edge. Click here now to access free videos demonstrating more about how MNF works. Then make your purchase.

Okay, maybe not eat, actually, but you’ll have plenty to choose from to store on your USB drive for sure.

If you’re an on-the-go person and looking for portable apps, then Lupo PenSuite is where you need to be. Broken down into categories, you’ll find browsers, email clients, video and audio players, MP3 tools, CD rippers and burners, image viewer and capturers (is that a word even?), and so much more.

[tags]portable apps,usb,applications[/tags]

With Beta Marker you can discover new software while keeping track of the software that you like. You’ll never miss out on the latest release again!

It’s sort of like BlogCatalog in a way. You create your profile and mark software that you like (like joining communities). Find someone there that shares the same interest in software as you? Then add them as a friend to your profile. Each of you can also monitor the other’s activity to see if any great finds have been made.

Majority rules on Beta Marker, so by voting on software packages, you can support your faves or know by the votes of others if what you’re about to use isn’t worth looking into because it has a low score. You can even share your views on something and read reviews from other members.

Maybe you have created something that you’d like to release in beta. Well, you can upload it and have others starting using it.

[tags]software,community,beta marker[/tags]

I found something in a newsletter that I read regularly that I just had to share. It’s about Microsoft’s Photosynth, which is based on Seadragon technology. Fancy words, but once you see the video you’ll understand the meaning behind them.

Basically, what this new technology will do is make all images on the Web — your’s, mine, everyone’s — connected to make a meaningful collection of data. So what hyperlinks have done for pages, so, too, will do for images.

For example, it can take photos of an object from several vantage points, taken by different people, and put them together to make one cohesive and three-dimensional and/or panoramic view; the more data, the better.

This video demonstrates lightning-fast mobility across numerous thumbnails of images, allowing you to zoom in at incredible levels. What appears to be a pixel can in actuality be a finely typed document. This is pretty cool!

[tags]microsoft photosynth,seadragon,technology,photos,images,community[/tags]

We surf the Web, we install software, we remove software…lots of things go on that can clutter up our hard drives. CCleaner can help remove all that while giving you back precious hard disk space.

This is a free utility for Windows users that’s meant to optimize your computer’s performance. It does this by removing the unused files that accumulate. It’s also a privacy tool of sorts because it can erase your online activities. But even if you wouldn’t use it for privacy purposes, it’s still a good idea to clean your cache, history, and cookies to ensure you have a clean start every once in a while.

It’s surprisingly fast, too. Just tell it what to scan for, and it will give you an estimate on the amount of space you’ll save. The times I’ve used it, I usually save somewhere around 100 MB of space at least.

Types of files it removes can be associated with Internet Explorer or Firefox, Windows recycle bin and temp files, stuff left behind by third-party applications. It also has a registry cleaner.

I’ve used it for a while now and have been very pleased with it.

[tags]ccleaner,computers,technology,software[/tags]

Portable Bookmarks is a portable bookmark manager enabling you to, well, take your bookmarks with you anywhere. The most obvious choice would be a USB drive, but if you’re the stationary type, it will work just fine on your PC. And while you could even take it with you on a CD, I’m not sure why you’d want to.

The software has a small footprint so you can easily install it on any removable device. I can see this being a benefit to business travelers, but even more so for IT personnel. At my office, our IT guys login from a DOS prompt or external drive on the network to access the files they need. It would be so much easier for them if they just kept their links stored on a thumb drive. And if they did it using Portable Bookmarks — even better.

When compared to online bookmark managers, the difference is quite apparent. Don’t get me wrong, I love using online services such as Diigo, but what Portable Bookmarks offers you is something different: security, synchronization, duplication removal, and, of course, portability.

One thing that I found interesting is that instead of integrating with a browser, it instead displays itself as a “drop target” — an icon — that hovers in any location you choose to drop it on your computer screen. With the ability to adjust its transparency, it can remain there unobstrusively, too.

Clicking the drop target is how you access your bookmarks and perform functions such as searching for a link in your collection, or adding a link, even activating the application interface itself. Searching is fast, too. It showed me a match even before I finished typing!

Despite what web browser your computer is set to use by default, you can configure your collection of links to open in a browser of your choice. On my computer I have Firefox and Internet Explorer, so I’m not sure if they were the options because that’s all I had available to me or if that’s all Portable Bookmarks was setup to be used with.

Want more features? How about: password protection, adding descriptions and keywords, hotkey activation, organize multiple collections of links, and importing/exporting your links to/from a browser.

They offer a free trial for downloading, which can only accept up to 100 links. The full version, which costs $24.95, does not have that limitation.

[tags]reviews,product,usb drive,bookmarks,technology[/tags]