Posts Tagged ‘software’

The computer hard drive storage capacity setup on my pc 3 years ago seemed like a forever solution until just recently. Imagine the shock of seeing a computer alert warning that open capacity on the 250Gb hard drive storage was dangerously low at 4%.

Rather than buy a new pc my solution was the WDBAAF0010HBK-NESN 1Tb External Hard Drive from Western Digital. The photo here shows the new My Book Essential 1Tb hard drive on my desk next to the pc tower. You can buy alternate capacity of 500Gb or 2Tb, also.

Once installed, mouse over the WD icon in the taskbar and it indicates storage used as a percentage plus a temperature indicator with “ok”.

The photo shown has the box (left) and actual external drive (right). My Book is an appropriate name. At approximately 7″ tall with air vents on 3 sides the add-on is shaped like a small thick book.

The backup system chosen 3 years ago was a Western Digital 250Gb external hard drive at $150 plus separate backup software for $100 for $250 total. The new WDBAAF0010HBK-NESN 1Tb external hard drive has 4x the storage for $99 (July 2010), plus includes excellent backup software that installs automatically. Thus total cost for bigger and better was cut more than half.

In 2007 I never imagined filling up a 250Gb hard drive. By the time I need a 2Tb drive I’ll be overdue for a new pc. The plug and play setup and installation of the WDBAAF0010HBK-NESN 1Tb was surprisingly fast and simple.

I was mildly disappointed that the software does not mirror my folder structure but splits storage into folders by file type: system, pictures, other, music, movies, mail, and documents. I archive and sometimes delete by entire project folder not by individual files, so I went to the WD forum for archive advice.

One solution from the WD community forum is keep two copies of the file you would delete or archive with one as the “original” and one on the “backup” drive so you have them stored in different locations. I’ve decided to store 50Gb of the original files on the retired WD 250Gb drive. There are already backups on the new external drive, so now I can safely remove them from my computer to free up storage space.

Overall I’m pleased with the great value and ease of use of the WDBAAF0010HBK-NESN. In particular I was very impressed with the software, the speed of the initial backup, and the automated real time backup function. The automation instead of manual backups means my 2007 post Surviving the Inevitable Hard Drive Crash warning about regular backups is now even easier with an external hard drive upgrade.

Having purchased SubmitEaze directory submission software several years ago for seo or search engine optimization reasons, recent updates and enhanced functions make this a good time for another look at SubmitEaze. Part of website optimization strategy for search engine optimization involves backlinks which are links to your website from other sites. These are like votes when found by Google, so by acquiring more votes your site is more likely to increase its rank.

Two methods of acquiring those backlinks are “Website Directories” and “Article Directories” featured in my series of do-it-yourself seo reports released in 2007. Follow that link to download your free copies of the PDF reports (no email or registration required).

In a hurry to learn how? Visit their site to watch the SubmitEaze demo videos.

In summary, you acquire backlinks by getting listed on other websites. The Website Directory lists businesses by category with links to those sites, and the Article Directory sites accept advice articles for syndication that includes links in the resource (About the Author) box. Get listed, or write helpful articles about your business niche and submit to 100′s of directories.

Prior to SubmitEaze, the submission process was VERY time consuming. Each site you visit meant doing copy and paste of content over and over, so submitting to 100 sites could take 2-3 days. SubmitEaze is a very fast and semi-automated software program with a system to submit your site or articles to directories in minutes, not days.

First released for web directories only, SubmitEaze now handles article submissions, too. My advice is to review the SubmitEaze software and watch their demo videos before you buy. I started out doing manual submission of my website, and then bought other software before discovering SubmitEaze and making it my standard.

The developers of DupeFree Pro software for checking duplicate content and testing article keyword density, just to name two great features, are asking existing users to reply to an online survey of possible new features. If YOU have taken my advice for downloading their free program and receive their survey request email, please take the time to comply. Here are some of the comments I included in my submission.

For me DupeFree Pro is used mostly for keyword density and article word count. It might be nice to have the option to set a target density for a keyword, ie 4 percent, then test and if the density is low, have a value displayed in DupeFree Pro for the number of times to add that word to achieve my target percentage.

That’s easy to achieve by trial and error yet with a number it would be easy to copy/paste that key word X number of times in appropriate places within the article while maintaining human readability. Otherwise, with trial/error and copy/paste I compromise the target and stop while thinking “good enough”.

In addition, I made the following comments

You have a great product which I am happy to promote and suggest people use. Many have. A 50 page PDF tutorial I wrote on custom cms web design and do-it-yourself seo makes reference to free resources for research and testing of website content.

The free ebook has been downloaded 1000′s of times, and includes DupeFree Pro as recommended for testing keyword density. The 4 percent target keyword density mentioned earlier in the survey is what I suggest within the 1.5-6.5 percent in your documentation. It has worked very well for me.

My core business is custom cms web design. I truly believe holding my position on Google page one at #1 and #2 for custom cms web design for the last 2 years is due in part to your fine software. Thanks!

Finally for my readers, given the opportunity please take the DupeFree Pro survey to help them in deciding on future developments and enhancements of their software.

An email received today was from a customer who watched one of my graphics tutorial videos recently where I use Xara Xtreme, and then asked for a comparison of Xara Xtreme and Photoshop for creating website graphics. Here’s my reply.

I chose Xara based on price and functions after downloading trial copies of each. Both are vector graphics software. Photoshop is the “standard” for high end professional design, yet for what I do designing web graphics and artwork for print, the cost and functions of Xara were more than sufficient and made it a clear choice.

It’s easy to understand why the advanced print artwork capabilities of Photoshop are needed for full time graphic design. Based on need, Photoshop had more than I needed or would ever use, while Xara was sufficient without more technical functions or a steeper learning curve.

View examples of my artwork for a feel for what can be done in Xara. 9 out of 10 logo designs on my site including these 50 custom business cards and another 50 card designs were drawn freehand in Xara to ensure crisp clean lines in the final artwork.

The video flash animation in the intro and outro of new videos done for my puppy’s Life with Corky website used Xara. Here’s an example 23 second puppy video on YouTube to demo flash creation and export. Special effects for the moving text and puppies popping up was created with Xara.

If you’ve only seen the first photo edit tutorial, an improved video of photo masking techniques shows more detail of how to use Xara for photo edits including cropping backgrounds, so that may be of interest, too.

I’ve been using Xara Xtreme for more than 5 years with professional results online and in print. Photoshop is excellent, yet more than I need for web and print graphics.

This review of the Google Chrome browser BETA features the latest Google venture from this dominant internet giant. The intitial release is for Windows users only and runs on Vista and XP SP2, so Mac and Linux web surfers must wait for future development.

Visit the Google Chrome browser download page to download your copy, or follow their links to learn more including a series of video presentations by Google staffers. Here is a screenshot of a sample startup window showing recent history thumbnails as displayed in the Google Chrome browser.

As a web developer working full time in custom web design, my interest is more about performance than aesthetics. The Google browser development strategy was start from scratch to create a browser with forward looking concepts rather than build on architecture that evolved over 12 years from text only pages through a series of more complex stages. Thinking outside the box meant considering current leading edge advanced web design multimedia features and aps, and then projecting future needs to include now in the Google Chrome browser software in preparation as the internet becomes more sophisticated.

Unique features include a dual purpose address bar that acts as a search bar, also. As you type a url or search phrase a dropdown list of prompts appear. View a screenshot of Google Chrome browser history here. View the first graphic in this post and the multiple thumbnails display recent history of websites visited. Selecting “Show all history” brings up a list of history in text, and I really liked the layout and level of detail which helped recall more about those websites from recent visits.

The Google Chrome BETA version browser is open source, and they welcome comments and feedback from users and programmers. This attitude is a welcome change from the pretense and arrogance of at least one browser software provider criticized for broken promises.

The Google Chrome browser is excellent, yet as expected there are likely minor defects in this preliminary BETA release. Trust Google to consider your input and then stand back and watch them conquer another internet niche with leading edge technology that responds to what users really want.

In testing some of my more advanced custom web designs a minor problem was encountered from as page featuring a wide screen flash video (6.5mb file size).

Attempting to follow the link resulted in a delay and then the following popup window with a statement that the page was unresponsive and then options to either “Kill pages” or “Wait”. Kill? There must be some dark humor on staff at Google because that option had me wondering if I should risk destroying a web page that I designed.

I tried the “Wait” option first, and that didn’t work and I somehow ended up back on the home page. Deciding to risk killing pages (why plural when I was accessing just one page?) the result was the following new window that filled the entire screen with a dark background with the message “Something went wrong while displaying this webpage. To continue, press Reload or go to another page”.

The page began loading on the second try, yet the audio track with music and narration began while the video screencast was stuck on the first slide, and it took 15-20 seconds for the audio to synchronize with the video. Once the entire video played through and was stored in cache, the third attempt worked perfectly. To my delight, and despite the ominous “kill pages” option, the page survived and was online the last time I checked. Phew!

Returning to the page of vacation rental tutorials I decided to try right clicking a different video tutorial and then selected “Open link in new tab” and the Google Chrome browser functioned flawlessly. Return visits to test those links a day later allowed left clicking with instant display of each video tutorial.

Note: After clearing cache and returning to the tutorial video listings page to try to duplicate the “unresponsive kill pages” and “something went wrong” error messages, navigation and performance of each video tutorial worked flawlessly with either left click or right click on the hyperlink.

All other video and audio tested from other custom web sites loaded and played without problems, so the anomaly may have been from external factors outside the Google Chrome browser BETA.

Pro (very positive):

• Rendering excellent with clear text and graphics
• Standards compliance met as tested in complex web designs
• Speed of accessing and displaying simple content exceptional
• Usability with basic essentials without being overly complicated
• History shown as thumbnails with superior text history listing
• Browser status bar at the bottom invisible until needed
• DOM inspector access built-in for web developer code and css

Con (very minor):

• Flash video (6.5mb) locked up on standards compliant page
• The “kill pages” popup and “went wrong” screen result on compliant page
• Favorites history drop down uniquely placed on right of screen

Overall Opinion: The Google Chrome browser BETA is excellent and provides a peek at the future of internet browsing. The initial release deserves high marks for quality, compliance, and usability, and I strongly urge users and web developers to download a copy and actively provide feedback to the Google team.

With the demise of support for the Netscape browser, Google Chrome joins Firefox, IE, Opera and Safari as the new top 5 list of browsers for web designers to utilize for testing cross browser compatibility.

Finally, check out the single sheet icon in the upper right that displays “Control the current page” on hover, and then left click to select from the drop down menu and follow “New incognito window” for further evidence the programmers at Google have a sense of humor. Google Chrome BETA can be practical and fun.

Today’s podcast episode of the Small Business Website Mailbag was released earlier and included a free download pdf tutorial for adding a do-it-yourself desktop blog pinging service. The motivation for the podcast episode entitled DIY Desktop Blog and Ping is recent trends with online pinging services, and the need for an alternative method of announcing new blog posts.

In addition, the audio program explains the basics of using blog and ping to easily contact blog tracking services of new blog posts. You may view the DIY Blog and Ping PDF Tutorial online here, or right click to save your copy now. You may want to listen to the podcast episode, and then read along with the tutorial as I follow the step by step process of downloading free software, custom program the software to load your blog info, program a list of ping services, and finally set up an instant one click ping service on your desktop.

Quite often professional voice talent creating video or audio production use a teleprompter. For small business website multimedia production, there’s a low cost alternative to expensive dedicated teleprompter solutions when adding video or audio to your web design or podcast.

After considerable research of teleprompter software reviews, the Prompt! software from DataWay Multimedia Canada, Inc for $44 USD is my recommended choice. A free lite version may be downloaded, also. Here’s the list of features from their website, MovieClip.biz:

• Text can be imported and exported
• Simple text editing is available
• Native files can be saved
• User customizable controls
• Macintosh or Windows playback
• Control over font size
• Mirrors text display on screen
• Mouse or keyboard control
• Lite version available
• Multiple resolutions
• Works with most remotes (not included)
• Cheap!

Prompt! version7.0 is a standalone application that allows keeping multiple windows open during recording. My advice is preparing your audio script in NotePad and then load it into Prompt! with copy and paste. The scrolling text may be adjusted by size, color and background, and scroll speed. The Lite version is limited to 2500 characters, so you may want to do a test drive with Lite before making a purchase.

Using a teleprompter for short clips or full presentations allows readers to focus on content to eliminate gasps, oohs, or aahs during recording. Speaking extemporaneously is very difficult for most small business owners, and a prepared message is more likely to enhance the multimedia production. Reading from an audio script will be faster and more professional when adding audio or video to your website, blog, or podcast. Download Prompt! here.

Small business website designs that depend on uploading photographs for online stores or sites like real estate will be more effective with photograph optimization. Too often site owners upload original digital photos taken at high resolution, and then the load time is intolerable for visitors on dialup because of the file size. They won’t stick around waiting for pix to load.

Fact: More than 50% of USA internet users are on dialup. This number dwindles as high speed options become more affordable. Why disappoint half your visitors with slow loading photographs and increase the chance of losing a potential sale?

For this tutorial you may want to read the IrfanView photo edit freeware review previously posted on this blog. The owner of the recently launched e-commerce website for Mainstream Memorabilia downloaded IrfanView and learned this lesson in about 15 minutes total, and was very pleased with the ease of use. The online store is easier to manage, and IrfanView will be used on the Mainstream Memorabilia advice blog, also.

You should consider downloading the free software for this photograph optimization tutorial from IrfanView if you don’t already own it.

Once installed, go to any large photo in My Documents and right click on the file name and select “Open with…” and then select “IrfanView” from the menu list. Here’s a sample photo and screenshot of the open window.

In the main window menu (see top arrow) select “Image” and then “Resize/Resample” or use the shortcut keys by holding the CTRL button and pressing the letter R. The next window as shown below summarizes the file information, shows the current photo width in pixels, and the resolution in dots per inch, or dpi. Enter the desired width to match what you want on your site, and then select “OK”.

When you select “File” and then “Save as” a new window appears as shown below. The sliding bar controls the quality of the final photo, and may be adjusted from lowest to best with 100 being the highest quality. Experiment with the bar in this last step until you have the smallest file size which still displays well on your screen and use that on your website.

To summarize, the steps are as easy as 1-2-3 within IrfanView. Select image-resize/resample, enter the width before doing save-as jpg, and then experiment with the slide bar until the file size is reasonable. Anything less than 50Kb file size will display well on your small business website, so taking your 1 meg photos and reducing them may keep visitors on your site longer and help make more sales.

My recent report for do-it-yourself small business website promotion introduced SubmitEaze for submitting your website to web directories. The strategy of listing your site in public directories that sort websites by category is one way to gain backlinks to your website.

Each link TO your site is like a vote when found by search engines, so small business website owners are encouraged to take 30 minutes a week to submit to 5 sites. For more natural linking over an extended period of time, pick one day a week to submit to 5 sites, and continue the weekly project for 6 months instead of spending 2-3 days of intensive submissions.

The free seo report Web Directory Top Resources listed my top 150 sites, and some may be outdated. The SubmitEaze software is preprogrammed with current sites and their future updates are free for life. This has been a great time saver because of the auto fill feature. As of August 2007 it is available in your choice of Pro License for $64.95 or Standard License at $39.95. View SubmitEaze features or download a trial copy here.

Here is the list of features and benefits displayed on the opening window of SubmitEaze version 4.0.

• Find directories that link to your website using Directory Detective.
• Full control over the auto-fill feature, so you can add your own fields.
• Sort directories on Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Rank, or number of Incoming Backlinks to the directory.
• Setup rotating link title text and description text for each project.
• Full range of directories: Free, Reciprocal Link Required, and Payment Required.
• Project Briefcase so you can import / export projects between different computers.
• Full web browser navigation to display the current URL, move backwards, forwards, stop and refresh.

Pros: Ease of use, updated free for life, great time saver, excellent help files with video tutorials
Cons: A few outdated sites because directories changed from free to free with reciprocal link

This is software that I have purchased and use, and I recommend SubmitEaze for small business owners.

Take a moment to learn why I recommend Article Post Robot for submitting original articles to article directories. It’s no secret that backlinks from other sites to your website are like votes when found by search engines, and writing articles for syndication is an easy way to create these votes.

The next free pdf report in my series of search engine optimization techniques covers this subject with My Article Writing Top Resources. Planned for release in July 2007 this report includes my Top 50 Article Directory list which was already published on my blog last month.

Article Post Robot will be featured in the new report, and after using this software for 2 months, I highly recommend this program to streamline submitting your articles for syndication. At the time this was written in 2007 they have over 450 sites preloaded in their software.

Select this graphic image to visit their sales page.

The problem with most programs used for automatically submitting articles is the potential for rejection due to being placed in the wrong category by the script running the program. Article Post Robot allows you to select up to 5 categories to help offset this approval issue. It’s not perfect, but close to it by comparison to other programs evaluated.

Note: Some article sites require prior registration and activation from a link in a confirming email to be registered as an author. Others require that you create a pen name on their website after registration. You may visit each site from within the list of over 450 article sites displayed in Article Post Robot with one click on each site name. The registration process takes time, but do that first, and expect to spend 1-2 days just setting up user names with passwords for the sites you select.

The option in Article Post Robot to manually submit articles is the ideal solution for me. Before buying this software the process of submitting new articles to over 50 websites was tedious. You visit each site, enter your username and password and then enter the submit articles area. Next, and with your article content open in NotePad, you copy and paste your article title, return to your file, copy and paste the intro, and continue back and forth for the article body, resource box, and key words. Argh! After an hour your wrist is ready to fall off and you’re cross eyed from bouncing back and forth between screens.

With Article Post Robot you complete these same steps, except you copy and paste just once because you enter these same blocks of text into fields within the program! Automatic mode will visit each directory site and post your article in an appropriate category based on what you input earlier. The software posts and submits, and then automatically goes to the next until it’s done. From experience the category selection is less than perfect, at least for my niche.

In manual mode you input your article details just once into the program to begin, and then it logs on each article directory, selects the category, inputs your article details in each appropriate box for title, intro, body, resource box, and key words, and then pauses for you to manually select the “submit” button. I prefer manual submission because I can verify fields are properly completed, and then change the category if I feel another is more suitable before I hit “submit”. In automatic mode you click start and walk away.

Note: The layout and requirements to submit may vary by article directory, and some have additional manual only fields to enter, or correct. You can only see these if you use manual mode. Almost all articles are reviewed before approval by a human editor. Manual mode may result in more article editor approvals.

In manual mode you pause at each, so you must monitor progress, yet the autofill feature means you no longer have to copy and paste 5-6 blocks of text individually on each site. This time saving function allows you to post to more sites in a much shorter period of time with very few clicks for each. You can do in 30 seconds what used to take 3-5 minutes, so the process of submitting is much easier on you, and especially your wrist.

Important Note: In either mode you may notice an error or page not found if the target directory is temporarily offline. There may be a significant pause as if the software locked up. It probably didn’t. Wait several minutes if necessary because as I found out it is still working and will advance to the next site.

Article Post Robot was less than $130 at the time this review was written. I feel that the cost savings in time from submitting just 2 articles more than offset the price in time savings and convenience. The documentation is written in less than perfect English grammar which is easily dismissed because the basics are there and sufficient to effectively use the software to your advantage.

Pros: Reliable, fast, cost effective, great time saver, value for money
Cons: Category selection for some niches and documentation less than ideal

Overall I highly recommend this software. You may purchase Article Post Robot here.