Here is something my 10-year-old showed me that I used at work today. Since I do not do this often, it's mostly a note to self (in case I forget). If you need to play with a web page layout in a browser (I, for example, needed to add some new lines to a few messages on the page to see what makes them easier to read). It is very simple (the instructions assume you are using Google Chrome, but I suspect you can do the same in other browsers).
Right click anywehere on the web page and select the Inspect option from the context menu.
In the Developer Tools' window, switch to the Console tab.
At the prompt, type in document.body.contentEditable=true and press Enter.
Make your changes on the page (you can cadd, change and delete text, and do other things).
When done with your changes, at the prompt, type in document.body.contentEditable=false and press Enter
Summary: Pros and cons of using Weebly and Yola free web site builders.
If you need a simple web site, a wide range of providers can offer you a capability to build and host your site for free, assuming that you can live within their limitations. The most common limitation is banner advertisements which will be sprinkled across your web pages. Banner ads may not be a problem for some, but they often make you site look amateurish. If you want a more professionally looking site with no banner ads, your free web hosting options are limited to:
I have checked these sites and used two of them to establish web presence for some friends (small businesses owners). Here is a brief summary of my experience (note: I describe the features of free hosting; all companies provide premium -- paid -- hosting with fewer limitations).
Wix looks slicker than the other two, but it produces web pages that use Adobe Flash technology instead of more common (and expected) HTML. Now that Google can index Flash-based pages this may not be a big deal, but being mostly an HTML type of developer, I can't bring myself to embrace Flash as a web page medium. Call me old-fashioned or biased, but I think that for simple web pages, HTML is more appropriate than Flash.
Yola (formerly, Synthasite) and Weebly are very similar. They give you a web site builder to create web pages based on available templates (some templates are free, some are not). You pick a template (you can change the template at any time), then you add elements (such as two-column layout, heading, text, picture, hyperlink) to the page layout via available widgets. Widgets allow you to customize the page elements, but customization options are often limiting. If you need to add an element that does not have a corresponding widget (such as a table), you can use an HTML widget that lets you enter any HTML code snippet.
Once your web site is ready, you publish it to a subdomain under yolasite.com or weebly.com (e.g. mycompany.yolasite.com or mycompany.weebly.com), or you can use a custom domain (e.g. mycompany.com), which you can purchase directly from Yola or Weebly (for a slightly higher fee), or from any domain registrar, such as GoDaddy.
Yola and Weebly add their company logos to page footers, but the logos are rather unobtrusive.
Here is a list of problems I encountered when I worked with Yola and Weebly:
Yola: Web site builder requires Firefox (it did not work for me in Chrome). (This seems to have been fixed.)
Yola: CSS customization is tricky (there is no easy way to define common styles, such as fonts, etc).
Weebly: Cannot paste formatted text (say you paste text copied from a web page); it messes up formatting and does not let you correct it (the only way is to delete the element and recreate it).
Weebly: Customization of a window title is somewhat limited (you cannot define an arbitrary title for a page title).
Weebly: Cannot reference already uploaded images (e.g. you can upload an image and reference it on one page, but how do you reference it on another page?).
Weebly: Some features of the resulting site work only in Internet Explorer (e.g. ALT properties of IMG elements only work in IE).
Weebly: There is no option to preview changes before publish the site.
Weebly: Customer support is sporadic at best (I got a response to one out of four questions I submitted).
Both: Cannot specify title (tooltip) for hyperlinks (looks bad for image URLs).
The best things about Yola are vibrant user community and customer support. I raised several issues with Yola's customer support and got prompt responses from Yola's representatives. All my issues were resolved. I can say that Yola's customer support rivals (well, it's actually better than) customer support of most big names in software industry. I also found good recommendations at Yola's user forum.
The major limitation of both sites is their page templates. Although, they offer dozens of free templates, most of them look like they were designed in mid-90's for a high school project. I found one relatively decent template at Weebly (which I used for one site), but I had even less luck with Yola (I ended up building one site at Yola, but it's not something I would be proud to show).
If you need a simple and unassuming web site, give Weebly or Yola a try. They could be so much better, but even with current limitations, you can use either service to build online presence for a small business, create a personal or family site, and other simple applications.
If you can recommend another alternative (based on personal experience), please leave a comment (just make sure that this alternative does not use banner ads and supports other features offered by Yola and Weebly: custom domains, templates, site builder, custom CSS, HTML editing).
UPDATE (Dec 25, 2010): I recently published another site on Weebly, and while working on it, I appreciated the feature that let me easily find and incorporate free stock photos into the pages. Being able to select a different photo in the page header for each page was especially handy.
Summary: How to manage documents, photos, music, passwords, e-mails, contacts, personal information, and other files and data.
Can you relate to the following scenarios?
Scenario #1: You bought a new computer and now you need to migrate your bookmarks, e-mail messages, music, and other important files from your old PC to the new system.
Scenario #2: You are using several computer (like work PC and home PC) and would like to keep some files in sync between them.
Scenario #4: You backed up your photos to CDs, but you have so many of then that you cannot find your favorite photo of your cat.
Scenario #5: You're losing track of your Internet passwords, usernames, etc.
I can go on, but the point I'm trying to make is: managing personal information (files and data) on multiple computers and avoiding data loss from a hardware crash is not trivial. In this article, I'll explain how (with minimum effort) you can keep your data safe, up-to-date, and accessible. My recommendations are intended for PC users, but some of them can be applicable to Mac and Linux fans, too.
Before I get to the recommendations, let me emphasize the following: your personal computer -- whether it's running Windows, Mac OS, or Linux -- is not reliable: its hard drive can fail, the operating system can get corrupted (e.g. via a virus), it can get stolen. To avoid data loss with the loss of your computer (or its parts), you must keep copies of your data somewhere else.
A traditional approach is to back up files to an external drive. Although, it's a praiseworthy strategy, it has several limitations. First, it requires additional hardware. Second, it does not address the issue of accessibility (not a big deal, if you have only one computer, but can be a problem if you want to keep some data in sync between several machines). Third, have you actually tried to recover data from your backup? If you haven't, you may be up to an unpleasant surprise. Finally, most people don't perform regular backups because they consider them a hassle.
Whether you regularly back up your hard drive(s) or not, consider an alternative (or complementing) approach: keep important data online using what techies call cloud computing. Here is how you can use cloud computing services from reputable providers and software to keep your data safe, manageable, and accessible.
Internet bookmarks/favorites
First a suggestion: do not add every interesting page you find on the Internet to your browser's bookmarks/favorites; only bookmark the sites which you visit regularly (daily, weekly); for everything else use a social bookmarking service such as Delicious (or any of the alternatives). If you're not familiar with social bookmarking, watch this short (3:25 min) video:
For regular bookmarks/favorites, use the Xmarks browser add-on(s), which will keep your bookmarks (and optionally passwords and cookies) in sync between different machines and browsers.
E-mail/calendar/contacts
For e-mail needs, I have two words: use Gmail. Why? First, Gmail is the only service that lets you forward your e-mail to any other address for free. You can forward your messages to your work e-mail, your ISP's account, or anywhere else. This way, you will not lose any messages if you switch jobs or ISPs. Second, Gmail's generous storage capacity (currently, over 7 GB) lets you archive important messages without the risk of running out of space. Third, if you do not like the web-based interface, you can use Gmail with most mail clients (also see these), such as Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, and Mozilla Thunderbird.
Tip: If you are using a desktop e-mail client and keep the incoming e-mail in local/personal folders (.PST files in Outlook), you need to back these up.
Google offers tools to automatically sync your Google calendar with Microsoft Outlook and mobile devices (BlackBerry, iPhone), but to sync Google contacts (with Outlook), either transfer them manually or get a commercial tool, such as kiGoo (Google released the Contacts Data API about a year ago, but I still cannot find a good and free contact syncing tool).
Passwords
For storing passwords (and other sensitive information, such as user IDs, bank accounts, etc), I can recommend any one of these two options. Option 1: Use the free web-based password manager LastPass (other alternatives include Clipperz and Passpack, but LastPass seems to be the most capable). LastPass can protect your browser passwords better than the browser. It can also auto-populate login forms. When using LastPass along with Foxmarks, you may need to disable the Foxmarks' password synchronization feature. Option 2: Use the free KeePass application and synchronize the KeePass' data file across multiple computers with the help of DropBox or Sincplicity mentioned below.
Photos
You can use online photo storage to back up your photos and to share them with friends and family. Many sites, including MySpace and Facebook support photo sharing, but most of them are too restrictive: they resize photos, limit the number of photos you can upload, and so on. Among the sites I tried, Flickr (now owned by Yahoo!) seems to be the most feature rich: it supports multiple sizes of photos (including original size), photo downloads, slide shows, videos, and more. A free Flickr account imposes a few limitations, but it's still better than most alternatives. After trying a Pro account, I decided to keep it for $24.95/year ($2/month is not that much for unlimited photo uploads and storage). Google's own Picasa Web Albums is another online photo storage alternative similar to Flickr (as Flickr, it also offers a free as well as a fee-based plan).
Music
Most sites that let you upload and listen to music, such as Deezer and Imeem, do not allow downloading MP3 files (including the ones you uploaded). There are two exceptions: mp3Tunes and tunesBag (currently in beta). Mp3Tunes gives you 2 GB of online storage for music and video files; tunesBag offers at least 5 GB. I have been using tunesBag for a few months and so far I have few reasons to complain: it lets me back up my music and listen to it from anywhere. I was a bit disappointed with the mp3Tunes' and tunesBag's upload tools intended to automatically keep the local and online audio libraries in sync: neither of them worked for me (well, they worked, but both had bugs that made them useless). Nevertheless, these two sites are worth considering if you are looking for an online storage option for your music files that also allow playback and other listening and sharing features.
UPDATE: I take back my comment about tunesBag's uploader. It works fine, BUT it does not sync files automatically; you need to run the tool manually to upload the files.
UPDATE: For storing and playing music online, you can try Amazon Cloud Dive (5 GB free; allows you to store any files including audio; you can listen to your music from any web-connected computer with Amazon Cloud Player; works with portable devices) or Google Music (20,000 songs max; can listen online or portable devices). Also see other options (and more).
Software keys
Use Keyfiler to store your software license and registration info (serial keys, activation keys, etc).
Documents
For Microsoft Office users, Office Live Workspace allows storing and sharing documents (Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, etc) online. If you do not use Microsoft Office, you can try switching completely to a web-based office suite, such as Google Docs, Zoho, or ThinkFree. If you prefer a free desktop alternative to Microsoft Office, such as SoftMaker Office or OpenOffice.org, you can back up your documents and synchronize them across multiple computers with the help of file synchronization and backup tools.
Sync tools
File synchronization tools allow you to duplicate files across multiple computers. Manual file synchronization tools, such as Microsoft SyncToy that must be launched by the user, are okay for occasional use, but they are not well suited for continuous synchronization. Out of automatic file synchronization services I tried, I liked DropBox and Syncplicity most. Both services offer 2 GB of free online storage and they just work: they work on my home laptop as well as my work PC, they work over firewalls and corporate proxy servers, they work on Windows and Mac OS. The only limitations I can think of include relatively high memory footprint (the running process takes about 50 MB of RAM for DropBox and 70 MB for Symplicity). Also DropBox can synchronize only one root folder (which can contain multiple subfolders), while Syncplicity can synchronizes Desktop, Documents, Favorites, Music, and Pictures. I highly recommend DropBox and Symplicity to anyone who wants to synchronize files across multiple machines. There are other file synchronization services, such as Microsoft Live Mesh (currently in beta), Windows Live FolderShare (currently transforming into Windows Live Sync), but I did not have much luck with these (for one, Mesh and Live Sync do not seem to work across corporate firewalls (also here), and I could not use FolderShare, because our corporate proxy server settings block access to the site); however, they work for some some users, so depending on your settings, they may work for you. [Update: See list of cloud hosting services at Cloud Drive Price Comparison: Amazon, Apple, Google, Box, Dropbox, Skydrive and SugarSync or Compare SkyDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox.]
Backup tools
You can (and should) use scheduled backup to save important files online with the help of such services as:
Online storage
Finally, for occasions when you just want to save a files or two online once in a while, you can use the following online file storage services:
Initially, it may take you a bit of effort to follow these recommendations, but once you adopt them, you will make your digital life easier and data safer.
Summary: A few recommendations that can help you get the best out of a new PC.
You just brought home a new laptop (or desktop) and feel an urge to run your favorite programs or download stuff from the Internet. Before you put your hands on the keyboard, take a few minutes to learn how to configure your system for better performance, prepare it for a disaster, and avoid common problems. Here are some recommendations which can help you get the best out of your new PC.
Before connecting to the Internet, do the following:
Complete Windows installation.
When you first turn the computer on, it will prompt you to complete the Windows setup process, during which you will create a Windows login account, select the region, time zone, language, and define other configuration settings. When creating the login account, keep the blank password for now (the following steps will require you to reboot the system and log on to Windows several times, which will be easier to do with a blank password); you will define the password later. Do not activate Windows, yet, or register the computer (since you are not connected to the Internet, the activation/registration attempts will fail). Follow the setup wizard until you log on to Windows. [Note: You may have heard or read recommendations to replace Vista/Windows 7 with XP. Unless your PC has less than 1.5 GB of RAM, which, for some reason, you cannot upgrade (you can easily upgrade RAM to 2 GB for about $20-$30), downgrading the operating system to XP makes little, if any, sense. Most people who make these recommendations, either do not have much experience with Vista/Windows 7, or base their recommendations on earlier problems, such as software and driver incompatibilities, and many of these reported issues have been resolved. See The Mojave Experiment for some insight on this topic.]
Create the repair disks.
If your computer came without the operating system and/or repair (restoration) disks (which is most likely), you must create them yourself. Without the repair disks you will not be able to restore the system if your hard drive fails (hard drives are notoriously prone to failures). You may want to rebuild the system for other reasons, e.g. if your kids install a virus which you cannot remove, or the system becomes slow and nothing else you do improves its performance. Check your computer manual or the quick start guide for instructions on creating the repair disks (normally, there is a program that lets you create the disks). Keep the repair disks in a safe place.
Enable Windows firewall. Windows Firewall blocks unwanted access to your computer. It is not the best firewall, but it's good enough, so unless you are using something else, make sure that Windows Firewall is turned on.
At this point, you are ready to connect your computer to the Internet. If you use a wireless router, configure the wireless settings to let your PC connect to the wireless network (make sure that your wireless network is secure); otherwise, connect the network cable to the network port on your PC. After connecting your computer to the Internet, perform these tasks:
Get Windows updates.
Although your PC is new, it's probably missing the latest Windows Updates and therefore more susceptible to virus infections and other exploits. Before you start browsing the Internet, install the latest Windows updates.
Uninstall crapware.
New computers, especially the cheaper ones, come filled with crapware that a typical user does not need. These include trial versions of software that you will not purchase, toolbars that you will not use, applications that have better free alternatives, and programs that slow down your system (see the list of common crapware). The free PC Decrapifier tool can help you remove most crapware from your PC.
Install anti-virus software.
Most new PCs come with a preinstalled anti-virus application (normally, Norton or McAfee). Keep in mind that, unless you purchase a license, these trial versions will stop working after 1-3 months. If you do not intend to purchase a license for the pre-installed anti-virus, uninstall it and get a free alternative, such as Avast Home Edition, AVG Free Edition, or Avira AntiVir Personal Edition. I'm not sure about AVG and AntiVir, but I have been using Avast on my home PCs for a few years and have no complaints (if you use Avast, make sure that you register it with a valid registration code, which you should get via e-mail; otherwise, it'll stop working after one month). UPDATE: For a free anti-virus software, I now wholeheartedly recommend Microsoft Security Essentials (read why).
Change your Windows login password.
If your Windows login password is blank, change it to a strong password (use Password checker to test password strength). If you leave your login account with a blank password and someone steals your computer (or gets access to it), s/he may be able to read your sensitive documents, access your online bank accounts, steal your secrets, and do other damage. If your computer supports hard drive passwords, it may be a good idea to set up one, too (hard drive password can be defined via the BIOS settings).
Install your favorite programs.
Reboot your system and install your favorite programs. Keep in mind that some older programs fail to install on Windows Vista/Windows 7. You may be able to find a workaround, get/buy a newer version of the program, or switch to an alternative. For example, if you have trouble installing Microsoft Office 2003 on Vista/Windows 7, try these workarounds (see post by Dominic), but if it does not help, check free alternatives, such as Open Office (another option is to get Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 for around $100). You may be surprised how many excellent programs are available for free (see my free software recommendations).
Register your computer.
There is no rush to do this, but when you get a chance, register your computer with the manufacturer, so you can get support. You should be able to register the system directly on the manufacturer's web site, or using a built-in registration program (if it is installed by the manufacturer). If you haven't done so, registered your other hardware devices: printer, router, etc.
Activate Windows.
Follow the Windows activation procedure (Windows activation must be completed within 30 days after installation).
Once you get your new PC running, perform the following steps every few months or so:
Check Windows updates.
Make sure your system is patched with the latest Windows updates.
Check anti-virus software updates.
Keep an eye on your anti-virus software to make sure that updates the virus database.
Remove unnecessary programs from the startup list.
Check if the Windows startup program list contains any applications that don't need to start up automatically, and if so, block them (do you really need Skype to run all the time?). Some programs allow you to remove themselves from the startup sequence; for others, use the System Configuration utility.
Defragment the hard drive
A fragmented hard drive can significantly slow down your system. Use the built-in Windows Defragmenter (if your disk is badly defragmented, you may need to run Windows Defragmenter a couple of times) or a better alternative, such as Smart Defrag, UlimateDefrag, Defraggler, Ultra Defragmenter, or some other defragmenting tool to defragment the disk. Before defragmenting the drive, it is a good idea to delete unnecessary files using Disk Cleanup.
Install the latest firmware updates.
If your PC runs smoothly, you do not need to worry about this, but if it crashes or causes problems, which cannot be solved by regular software updates, check if updates to the system BIOS and drivers (video/audio/network/wireless/etc) are available from the PC manufacturer. You can get updates directly from the manufacturer's web site, or via a built-in program (if your computer comes with one).
Finally, a couple of tips, which can extend the life of your PC (these mostly apply to laptops):
Use laptop cooler.
Overheating (which is more common in laptops that one may wish) can cause anything from performance degradation to hardware failure (motherboards are especially prone to failures caused by overheating). To prevent your laptop from overheating, invest $10-$20 in a notebook cooler.
Do not carry a running notebook.
If you carry a running laptop from one place to another, you are increasing the chances of the hard drive failure. Unless you wish to spend $100 or so on a new hard drive, before moving the notebook, switch it to a sleep mode (it takes just a couple of seconds to turn the system to and from the sleep mode).
Okay, don't go, yet: here is one more piece of advice. While you're enjoying your new PC, keep in mind that sooner or later, you may need to replace it with something else. To make your next PC replacement easier, address the data migration strategy now (by data migration I mean the process of moving your data -- such as documents, photos, music files, Internet bookmarks, e-mail messages, and so on -- from one system to another). A common recommendation is to perform frequent backups using an external hard drive or an online backup service such as Mozy. In addition to backups, you can use other strategies. One option is to keep your important files online. For example, you can store your photos at photo sharing sites, such as Flickr and Picasa. Your office documents can go to Microsoft Office Live Workspace or one of the file hosting services, such as Adrive, SkyDrive, or Box.net (file hosting sites can be used for storing not only office documents, but other files, too). You may also consider moving from the desktop-based office suite, such as Microsoft Office or Open Office, to a web-based office suite, such as Zoho, Google Docs, or ThinkFree. There are many file synchronization services that can make your files available for easy migration, such as Dropbox, Microsoft's Live Mesh and FolderShare, Syncplicity, or SugarSync. You can use one of these file synchronization programs to back up (or synchronize between multiple computers) your Internet Explorer favorites. Firefox users can greatly benefit from the Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer. Or you can use a social bookmarking service, such as Delicious (or one of these), which has certain advantages over traditional bookmarks. For e-mail, I always recommend GMail because it is free, offers lots of space, can be used with most e-mail client programs (such as Microsoft Outlook), and it is the only service which allows you to redirect your e-mail to any other e-mail account for free (Hotmail only supports redirection to Microsoft-hosted e-mail services, while Yahoo!'s e-mail forwarding feature is not free). I haven't figured out where to keep my music (MP3) files, yet; most services, such as Imeem and Deezer, allow you to upload and listen audio files, but I cannot find an option to download my own files from these services (if you have any recommendations, please leave a comment).
Summary: A few advanced techniques for building Yahoo! Pipes.
In the previous post, I explained how to use Yahoo! Pipes for monitoring hot deals. In this post, I'll cover several techniques which can help you get the best out of your pipes.
Before I get to the the good parts, let me share a couple of problems, which I discovered. Understanding these issues can help you avoid some frustration.
Problem #1: Changes appear not to be saved. If you create a new pipe (or make changes to the existing pipe), save the pipe, and then try to run it (or open it for edit), you may get an error saying that the pipe was deleted. If you re-open the My Pipes page, the new pipes may be missing, and if you open a modified pipe in the editor, you may not see the changes you just made. Don't panic, yet: your new pipes (or modifications) are there. Just refresh the page until the error message goes away (you will need to refresh the page a few times). I'm not sure what causes the problem, but to me it looks like there is a synchronization issue on the Yahoo! side (maybe your changes are saved in one database, but when you switch a page, you hit a different server to which your changes have not been replicated). After a couple of hours the problem will go away and you will not see the errors. I reported this problem to Yahoo! (and others did too), so hopefully, it will be fixed (no word on this, yet).
Problem #2: RSS reader is slow to report new posts. I do not know if it affects all RSS readers, but I saw this problem on Bloglines, as well as Google Reader: matching posts returned by your pipes may appear in the RSS reader several hours after they have been posted in the original feed. This is not a big deal for regular posts (like your favorite blog subscriptions), but if you want to be notified about a product returned by your pipe faster, you may want to use the pipes' built-in notification mechanisms instead of relying on the RSS reader.
Update: A few weeks ago, Bloglines stopped retrieving RSS posts from almost all of my Yahoo! Pipes. Due to multiple issues with Bloglines (also reported by others), I no longer recommend using it (I switched to Google Reader).
And now, the good stuff.
Hint #1: Reuse your pipes. Say, you want to build several pipes with something in common. Instead of duplicating the common functionality in every pipe, you can build a special pipe containing the shared logic, and then pick this pipe as any other module from the module library (you will find your pipe under the My pipes heading in the library panel of the editor). For example, I created the following pipe defining the input sources and transformation rules for all of my shopping-related pipes:
My other pipes use this pipe as input, and apply additional filters to specify pipe-specific conditions. Now, if I find a better way to define input sources and transformation rules, I just need to change one pipe and all pipes that use it will pick up the modifications automatically.
Hint #2: Use regular expressions for more precise matches. Say, you are shopping for a ring, so you define a filter with the following rule:
item.titlecontainsring
What you may not realize is that this pipe will return posts with titles containing the following words: spring, boring, ringtones, and so on. To make sure that your filter finds exact matches of the whole word ring, instead of the Contains condition, use Matches regex.
Tips:
For non-programmers: Regex stands for regular expression, which is a sophisticated mechanism for finding (and replacing) more complex matches. For programmers: In case you wonder, Yahoo! Pipes use the Perl-like regular expression syntax with certain caveats. For example, to look for case-insensitive matches, you need to prefix the search string with (?i) (I thought it would be /text/i). For all: Here are some great resources for learning, building, and testing regular expressions:
To search for the exact word match, you need to use the following pattern:
(?i)\Wtext\W
As you may have noticed the \W tokens surrounding the search string specify the word boundaries, while (?i) indicates case-insensitive search. Here is an example of the search filter one may use for baby-related products (notice that it uses another pipe as input):
Once you get a grip on regular expressions (if you are so inclined), you will be able to build more efficient filters, but in the meantime, the information I provided should get you one step past the novice. If you stumble upon a problem you cannot solve, check the Message Boards for Pipes (this is where I found how to implement case-insensitive search).
Summary: How technology can help frugal shoppers find good bargains.
Today's bargain hunters have many tools at their disposal:
Comparison shopping sites, such as PriceGrabber, NexTag, PriceSpider, and other, allow you to check prices on the specified products available from various retailers.
Stores specializing in daily deals, including Woot.com, Woot's sibling Sellout, and shops like 1 Sale A Day, Stootsi, Yugster, and other (also here), provide deep discounts on a single product every day.
Communities of frugal shoppers, such as forums at SlickDeals.net, FatWallet, and other, post the information and feedback on the latest hot deals.
Unfortunately, these services are not very helpful when you're (a) looking for the best bargain (or, at least, a good one) on a particular product and (b) not in a rush to buy.
Ideally, the above-mentioned scenario should be addressed by a service, which would let you enter the product (either the exact model, such as Garmin Nuvi 360, or a range of products meeting certain criteria, such as GPS device), and notify you when this product becomes available at the price you set (or at a significant discount). Alas, this service does not exist, so while waiting for geeks and venture capitalists to get their act together [and if someone is interested, please give me a call], let me explain how to achieve similar results with the help of already available tools.
When hunting for bargains on a particular product or type of product (laptop, printer cartridge, HDTV, diapers, baby products, or whatever), the following services will let you save time, effort, and money (if you're not familiar with these, don't worry: I'll explain what they do and how to use them shortly):
RSS reader
RSS feed from you favorite deals alert aggregator and/or discount shopping site
Yahoo! Pipes
Before I show how to put these services together, let me briefly explain what each of them does (if you already know this, skip the next two sections).
RSS feeds allow you to easily access frequently changing contents of the web sites, such as blogs, forums, news, and, in our case, shopping-specific posts. [In addition to RSS, you may also encounter subscriptions to Atom feeds. Atom is a subscription format similar to RSS, so I use the term RSS to refer to both.] RSS feeds are available via subscription links most often marked with the RSS icon, such as this one: . To get a better understanding of RSS, watch this short (less than 4 min) video:
As the video explains, to access the contents of a web site via an RSS feed, you should use an RSS reader (or RSS aggregator). BloglinesGoogle ReaderFeedly is my favorite web-based RSS reader, but you may prefer a desktop-based FeedDemon (for a very brief overview of Google Reader, watch this one-minute video [UPDATE: Google Reader is dead, but the idea can be applied to any RSS reader]):
Now, that you know how to read RSS feeds in the RSS reader of your choice (I assume that by this point you've picked one), you can subscribe to RSS feeds from your favorite shopping sites (see links above), but don't do this, yet (or you will risk spending most of your day catching up with the subscription posts). To save time and effort, you should filter posts returned from these feeds by the type of product you're interested in, and this is where Yahoo! Pipes comes in.
Yahoo! Pipes is a free service, which lets you combine and apply filters to one or more RSS feeds. The resulting feed will return only posts matching your criteria. Once you define a pipe, you can receive notifications of the new posts via an RSS reader, e-mail, or phone. To understand the basics of Yahoo! Pipes, see this four-minute Yahoo! video:
So how do you use Yahoo! Pipes to search for bargains? You have a couple of options: you can use a pipe built by someone else, or you can build your own.
Option 1. Use someone else's pipe.
While writing this post, I discovered that other people already built shopping-oriented pipes. For example, Shiva Hothu made two pipes to search for hot deals. Both pipes let you specify up to three search filters, and each filter accepts one or more words. The pipe will scan the most popular hot deals sites looking for the posts matching your criteria (it will look for the exact match of all text entries defined in each filter). There is one difference between these pipes: the first pipe will scan the complete posts' descriptions, while the second pipe will only look at the posts' titles. You can access these pipes here:
When you open the pipe's page, enter the search filters, and run the pipe. For example, if you are shopping for a 46-inch LCD HDTV, you can define the following search criteria:
Filter 1:46 Filter 2:LCD Filter 3:HDTV
After running the pipe, you will see the list of matching hot deals. At this point, you can do various things with the customized pipe. You can generate a widget (Yahoo! calls it badge) for the pipe results to be displayed in your web site or blog. You can retrieve the URL of the RSS feed of the pipe and subscribe to this RSS feed via one of the supported RSS readers (use the More Options menu). Or you can set up an e-mail or phone-based notification, so that you will be informed immediately once the pipe detects new posts matching you criteria (via the Results by Email or Phone menu).
A limitation of the existing pipe approach is that it does not allow you to define the more precise search criteria. Say, you're only interested in TVs supporting the 1080p display resolution, and you don't care about the ViewSonic models (Note: I'm using ViewSonic here only as an example; ViewSonic TVs are actually pretty decent). Since you cannot add the fourth search filter (1080p) and an exclude criterion (ViewSonic) to these pipes, you can consider building your own as described in option 2.
Option 2. Build your own pipe.
When building a new pipe, you can clone and modify an existing one, such as one of the pipes mentioned in option 1, or create one from scratch.
To build a pipe from another pipe's clone, use the Clone menu option to make your own copy of the original pipe, and then make your modifications. Before doing this, check the source of the original pipe to see if you can figure out how to change it. To view the pipe's source, use the View Source menu option (Note: Do not confuse the pipe's View Source menu with the web browser's View Source menu).
I can't show you how to create a complex pipe, like one of the pipes built by Shiva Hothu, from scratch, but this is how you can build a simple pipe to search for hot deals on 46-inch LCDHDTVs with the 1080p display resolution, which excludes ViewSonic models (again, no offense to ViewSonic; this is just an example):
Create a pipe.
Sign in to the Yahoo! Pipes web site using your Yahoo! user ID and password (if you do not have Yahoo! credentials, you will need to register; registration is free). After signing in, click the Create a pipe link.
Add RSS feed(s) to the pipe.
In the pipe editor, expand the Sources group (in the left pane) and drag the Fetch Feed module to the editor window. In the URL field of the Fetch Field module, enter the URL of the RSS feed of your favorite hot deals site. In this example, I will use FreshBargains' feed (http://rss.freshbargains.net/rss.xml) because it already aggregates feeds from multiple hot deals sites. [If you think that FreshBargains feed fetches too many results, many of which are not really hot deals, you can use a more restrictive alternative. For example, you can use SlickDeal's feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/SlickdealsnetForums-9) or something else.] To add more feeds, click the plus sign on the right side of the URL label and fill enter the URLs off additional feeds.
Add inclusive filters.
Expand the Operators group (in the left pane) and drag the Filter module to the editor window. Click on the dot at the bottom of the Fetch Feed module (Fetch Feed output) and drag the edge of the appearing line to the dot at the top of the Filter module (Filter input) to connect them. In the Filter module, make sure that the top-most text reads: Permit items that match all of the following. Click the plus signs next to the Rules label repeatedly to create four rows of rules. Make the first two columns of all four rules read: item.titlecontains. [This pipe will only search for matches in titles; to search complete posts, instead of item.title, select item.description.] Enter the following values in the third column of the four rules: 46, LCD, HDTV, and 1080p (order is not important).
Tip:
To see the output of each module, use the Debugger tab at the bottom of the screen. The Debugger tab displays the output of the currently selected module, so you can immediately see the effects of your filter settings. You can also use the Debugger tab to vie the elements of the feed (you need to click the arrow next to each feed entry to view its contents).
Add exclusive filter.
Add one more Filter module (as you did in previous step), and connect the output of the previous Filter module to the input of the new Filter module. In the new Filter module, make sure that the top-most text reads: Block items that match any of the following. Make the rule read: item.titlecontainsViewSonic.
Complete the pipe.
Finally, connect the output of the last Filter module to the Pipe Output module (this module was auto-generated when you added the first module to the pipe), so your pipe will look like this: Click the Save button. When saving the pipe, give it a meaningful name, such as Yahoo! Pipe (46", LCD, HDTV, 1080p, no-ViewSonic). You can also define other properties, such as description and tags, but these are only necessary if you want to publish your pipe in the Yahoo! directory to make it visible to general public.
Use the pipe.
When your pipe is ready, run it and use the Use this Pipe menu options to retrieve the URL of its RSS feed, subscribe to it in your favorite RSS reader, or register for the e-mail or phone notifications when the pipe detects new posts.
For other examples of using Yahoo! Pipes, see the following articles (although these are not related to shopping, they can give you a better understanding of Yahoo! Pipes):
Once you get a grip on the basics, you can build more complicated and useful pipes, but in the meantime, even the most simple pipes should be able to help you find the best deals, and save time and money.
Summary: Presentation with links and references, which can help you find, use, and produce blogs and podcasts.
I recently gave a presentation at work which my teammates seemed to like. The presentation discusses blogging and podcasting and addresses such questions as:
Why would you want to read blogs and listen to podcasts?
Where can you find interesting blogs and podcasts?
How do you start a blog?
How dow you produce a podcast?
Where do you store the podcast files?
How do you stream audio and video podcasts?
And many more.
Coincidentally, at about the same time, a couple of (non-technical) friends asked me about the very same topics, so I thought I would make this presentation available online to help both technical and non-technical -- okay, make it semi-technical -- people, who are just starting on the path to blogging and podcasting.
Here is the inline version of the presentation (the best part of the presentation is links to resources and articles, so don't miss them):
By the way, I was not sure which presentation sharing/hosting service to use, so I started investigating by reading two excellent reviews at Digital Inspiration:
First, I tried the services not mentioned in the reviews: ThinkFree's Online Office and Microsoft's Office Live Workspace. I did not like either of them. ThinkFree removed all hyperlinks from the presentation and did not offer any way to put them back, while Office Live's sharing screen looked rather ugly (dunno, maybe I did not use it correctly). Anyway, I tried Scribd recommended by Digital Inspiration, and I really liked it. I suspect that there may be better options (such as SlideShare), but Scribd fulfilled my immediate needs; I may try other services in future, though.
UPDATE #1: Apparently, Scribd turned off hyperlinking capability from the online presentations, which is a shame. I'm now back to square one: looking for a better online presentation hosting service.
UPDATE #2: I just found out that Docstoc offers pretty much the same features as Scribd, but it also supports embedded hyperlinks. Kudos to Docstoc. I updated the embedded presentation (and reference to it) to point to the Docstoc version.
Both VodPod and WorldTV let you collect videos from various video hosting sites and share your video collections with the world or a selected group of people (you, your friends, family) at your own custom URLs, such as these:
After playing with WorldTV and VodPod for a few weeks, I would like to mention a few things I liked and did not like about both and each service.
I like WorldTV's name: it is simple, understandable, and easy to remember. VodPod's name is unfortunate. I suspect that the pod part of the name is somehow related to podcast, but what in the world is vod? [UPDATE: Vod stands for video on demand.] I also like the term channel (like TV channel) used by WorldTV to describe a video collection. VodPod calls video collections pods, again one more confusing term.
VodPod and WorldTV use different naming schemes for video collections: VodPod puts your collection name in front of the address (as a subdomain), WorldTV keeps it at the end (as a virtual directory). VodPod's scheme is more appealing to me, but you can decide for yourself, which one is easier to remember: AlekTV.vodpod.com or worldtv.com/AlekTV.
WorldTV uses a very simple interface for its channels, but at reduced size, the screen elements tend to stack over each other and the aspect ratio seems distorted.
WorldTV's Welcome (home) page has a few design flaws as well. For example, the main navigation buttons (Go and View) of the Welcome page are not visible on my 14" laptop screen, even in the maximized browser. [The buttons are placed lower than the browser's bottom margin, but because the page does not show a vertical scroller, there is no way to get to them (in IE, the scroller bar lacks the scroller button, while in Firefox, even the scroller bar does not appear).] Also, it's impossible to know without rolling the mouse all over which elements of the Welcome page (and some other pages) contain hyperlinks.
For some reason, WorldTV's channels offer no way to see the list of videos in a collection; you only see a currently played video. Neither can you select a video without manually skipping the videos before it. So, to watch the last video from a 100-video WorldTV collection, you will need to click the Skip button 99 times. VodPod's interface, although cluttered, shows the list of video snapshots, using which you can browse videos and easily select the one you want to see.
Unlike WorldTV, VodPod cannot show videos in the full screen mode, but given the generally low quality of Internet videos, most of them will not look good maximized. Still, when more sites start supporting higher quality videos, this WorldTV's feature will become more useful. [Note to the WorldTV developers: when already in the Full Screen mode, the option to switch back should say something other than "full screen"; maybe "original screen", or "restore screen".]
WorldTV takes an unorthodox approach to authentication/authorization. Unlike most sites (including VodPod), which allow you to sign in with a user ID and password, WorldTV requires you to enter a pas... sorry, a "secret word" (that's the term WorldTV uses) for your channel (URL). To clarify: you do not have a user ID. This means that if you want to create multiple channels (say, you want to keep your collections of music videos and funny clips separate), you need to define a password for each one of them (password is only needed for administration, not for viewing).
Maintaining multiple collections in VodPod is easy because they all are associated with a single user account. Each collection will a have a different URL (Web address). You can use any name for the name of your collection in the URL as long as it is not already in use. For example, my (test) pods can be found at:
At VodPod, once I sign in (with my user ID and password) at the home page, I can see and work with any one of my channels. At WorldTV, I sign in at... Hmmm... Where do I sign in?!! There is no sign-in link visible anywhere on the WorldTV's home page. It took me a trip to the FAQ page to figure out that to sign in (so that I can make changes), I need to enter the URL of the admin (editor) page of my channel, which, by default, is defined as the "editor" subfolder under your channel, such as:
http://worldtv.com/YourTV/editor
You can change the name of the of your admin page, but if you forget it, you may never find it.
WorldTV should work fine for a small video collection, but once the number of clips starts to grow, it will be harder to manage, because there is no way to categorize or filter videos. VodPod makes this job easier by letting you define tags and categories for videos. I haven't yet figured out how to use tags, but categories allow you (as a channe..., sorry, a pod editor) and your pod viewers to view only category-specific videos (a video can belong to multiple categories). For example, if you define two categories "Humor" and "Music" and associate them with your videos (some may belong to Music, some to Humor, and some to both), you will be able to view clips belonging to each category. Unfortunately, there is no way to select videos from multiple categories, such as "Music" and "Humor" (say, I want to watch "White & Nerdy").
VodPod lets you add comments to your videos. Comments can be handy if you want to explain why you liked a particular video, add trivia facts, links to relevant sites, and so on. WorldTV does not support comments.
For integration with Web sites (blogs), VodPod allows you to create widgets for your pods. When building a widget, you can specify its layout, title, category, and other options.
As I found out, not all widgets are created equal. For example, when I select a single-frame (so-called "button") layout (when only one video is displayed), the widget does not recognize the specified category; it will show all videos defined in the pod (see the VodPod widget in the right side bar of this blog). WorldTV does not offer widgets, although you can plug your channel into your Web site via an IFrame.
VodPod offers a whole range of social features, like ability to leave comments, follow other people's pods, ratings, RSS subscriptions; I don't care about the social aspect, but there are several non-social features, which I wish were improved. For example, it would be nice to be able to filter videos by (spoken) language. For example, if a collection includes Russian and English videos, non-bilingual viewers may want to watch only clips in the language they understand. There should also be a language-neutral option for videos, which are not language-specific.
A silly problem: inexplicably, VodPod chops the photo in my profile. I tried to add different photos (various sizes and aspect ratios), but they always get chopped (almost by half) at the bottom. And once you add a photo to profile, there is no way to remove it (unless you replace it with another one).
Another idiosyncrasy involves the video approval process. After I added one video from a non-standard site, it turned into a zombie: although it appeared in my pod, it did not play, making the pod look broken. The status of the video stated that it was approved but not encoded (in another place, the status indicated pending approval). The video was pending for a few days with no progress, so I eventually removed it. I'm not sure what went wrong here, but at the least, pending non-playable videos should not be visible to viewers.
Here is one of the most irritating problems (to me): I cannot find a way to show videos in a custom order, instead of the chronological order. I can re-order videos, and play them using default categories (random, most viewed, top ranked, and others), but there seems to be no way to play them in the same order they appear in the pod. Also, there should be an easier way to share videos between pods. For example, if a manage several pods, I should be able to publish a video from one pod to another (with the same comments, tags, and categories) via a simple mouse click.
I sent feedback to both WorldTV and VodPod, but did not get any response from either of them, so it should be safe to assume that you ain't get much support either.
[UPDATE: After publishing this article, I got feedback from both WorldTV and VodPod. VodPod people were especially responsive and fixed a few problems mentioned in the post. If you are interested in additional information, see comments.]
Summary: Learn how you can keep your bookmarks and favorites synchronized between multiple browsers and computers.
UPDATE: Recently del.icio.us changed the name (and URL) to Delicious.
If you don't know how to keep your Internet bookmarks (or favorites) synchronized across Web browsers and computers, stop whatever you are doing and check out del.icio.us (pronounced delicious, as in delicious dinner). Don't mind a weird name (and even more weird spelling), del.icio.us (recently acquired by Yahoo!) is a very capable service, which can end your browser synchronization hassles. Although other services offer the same (or similar) functionality, I like del.icio.us because it meets all of my bookmark synchronization needs.
I use two Web browsers -- Firefox and Internet Explorer (IE) -- on several computers, at work and at home. Firefox is my primary browser, IE is secondary. [I use IE because some sites -- in particular, certain enterprise applications I use at work -- only work in full-blown IE, even the IETab extension does not help.] My computers run Vista and XP. I have unrestricted access to the Internet from home, but corporate firewall rules do not allow connection to some social networking sites at work and when using VPN.
Based on these assumptions, I expect a bookmark synchronization service to do the following:
Support IE and Firefox I don't care about Opera and other browsers at this point.
Support multiple computers It must synchronize bookmarks on at least three computers.
Work on Vista and XP Because I use different operating systems, it cannot be Vista- or XP-specific solution.
Respect corporate firewall policies Although these policies can change, the bookmark synchronizer must at least work within the most common limitations.
No additional hardware Having to carry software or data files on a USB drive is too much hassle.
No manual operations There should be no need to start bookmark synchronization jobs. All work must be done transparently to the user.
No new browser toolbars Please, no more browser toolbars. I would not mind having to install a browser extension, but its functionality should not be dependent on a whole new toolbar. Context menus, additional menu options, new buttons added to existing toolbars, and an optional toolbar providing enhanced functionality, are fine, though.
Web-based access to favorites Bookmarks must be accessible from any computer without dependency on special software (extensions/add-ons). This feature would allow accessing bookmarks on someone else's computer, e.g. in a public library.
No need for a personal server Some bookmark synchronizers require a personal FTP server; not everybody has one.
Must be free I do not mind commercial software, but free is better.
Before trying del.icio.us, I tested a number of free browser synchronization services, such as BookKit and Zinkmo. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I could not make them work. [It has been a while, though, so they may have improved since then.] My other idea was to use the PlainOldFavorites extension in Firefox and keep IE favorites in sync between computers with the help of FolderShare, but because the corporate firewall blocks access to FolderShare and I did not find a comparable provider, I had to abandon this approach, too.
Del.isio.us is free, but to use it you must first register to create an account, which will hold your personal preferences and favorites. After registering, open Firefox and install the del.icio.us Bookmarks add-on. If you use IE, open it and install the del.icio.us Buttons extension.
Both extensions add two buttons to the browsers' toolbars: Search (the one that looks like a four-square chess pattern) and Bookmark (or tag).
The Search button gives you access to your saved bookmarks. It functions differently in Firefox and IE. In Firefox, the Search button opens bookmarks in a sidebar. In IE, it opens bookmarks in the current window (tab), which is not the best approach, but since I do not use IE often, I can live with it. The Bookmark button, allows you to bookmark a current page. When you click this button, del.icio.us opens the Add Bookmark dialog box, where you can override the bookmark name, enter notes, and assign tags. In some cases, del.icio.us will suggest tags for you, but you can always add your own (more on tags later).
In addition to the Search and Bookmark buttons, the Firefox extension also installs a new toolbar and a new main menu item. I don't see the value of the toolbar, so I always hide it in the browser (by unchecking the View-Toolbars-del.icio.us Toolbar menu option). The menu contains shortcuts to common operations, such as Add Bookmarks, Your Bookmarks, Manage Favorite Tags, How Do I Use This, and others. In IE, you can only access these features on the Web from your del.icio.us account page.
Before switching to del.icio.us, I was a bit cautious about deviating from a traditional hierarchical structure of Firefox bookmarks and IE favorites, but once I started using tags, I loved them. Tags make it easier to classify, manage, and find bookmarks. For example, say I want to add the Microsoft [Designs the] iPod [Package] link to my bookmarks [if you haven't seen this video, it's quite funny]. If I were to use traditional bookmarks, under which folder should I save it? Should it go under Video? Microsoft? Humor? Something else? And will I remember the folder under which I save the bookmark? Del.icio.us' tag-based approach solves these problems. You just define Video, Microsoft, Humor, or whatever seems appropriate, as the bookmark tags, and you can can navigate to the bookmark by drilling down the tag tree starting from any one of them. For example, you can go Video-Humor-Microsoft, or Video-Microsoft-Humor, or Humor-Microsoft-Video, and so on.
Del.icio.us makes it easy to add, rename, delete, and assign tags. Once you make the change, it will be immediaely reflected in the bookmark navigation tree. In addition to tag-based navigation, you can search for specific words in the bookmark names, check the most recently added bookmarks, and use other search and browsing techniques.
When you bookmark a page, by default, del.icio.us shares your bookmark with the community; use the do not share check box to keep the bookmark to yourself.
Del.icio.us allows you to import Firefox bookmarks and IE favorites, although I did not try this option. You can also export bookmarks from del.icio.us, in case you decide to use a different service.
I haven't looked closer at other bookmarking service, but most of them should be comparable, and maybe even better, than del.icio.us (they sure have better names), but if you haven't picked one, yet, try del.icio.us and you will never want to go back to your old bookmarks... or favorites.
P.S. If your primary browser is Firefox, in addition to del.icio.us, I also recommend installing the Google Browser Sync extension. It can help you sync the toolbar buttons, persistent cookies, history, and other settings between different computers. Thanks to Amith for the recommendation.
. To get a better understanding of RSS, watch this short (less than 4 min) 
