How To Filter & Organize Your Messages With Thunderbird

August 19th, 2009 5 comments »

Going through huge amounts of email everyday can be a monotonous task, especially if one gets lost in the shuffle. If you are constantly dragging your new emails into folders so you can keep things categorized, you really should be automating that. By automating this task, I have saved at least one hour per day, leaving my work days to more important things.

First you are going to need Mozilla Thunderbird, you can perform this same technique with Microsoft’s Outlook, but I will be focusing on Thunderbird. If you don’t have Thunderbird yet, you can go to their website and download it for free (http://www.mozillamessaging.com/thunderbird). If you haven’t used Thunderbird yet, I highly recommend trying it out.

Next, we are going to take a look at your folders, finding a way to automate new emails that are already in those folders, to go in there from now on. Locate the folder your most popular folder that you constantly place emails in, and let’s start there. Open up a text editor and copy and paste all of the email addresses that are in that folder (we’ll come to that later).

Fire up Thunderbird and go to TOOLS and click MESSAGE FILTERS (as seen in the picture below).

Tools --> Message Filters

Tools --> Message Filters

You are now greeted with the Message Filters window, which is displayed below.

Message Filters Content Window

Message Filters Content Window

Now if you have multiple email addresses, you are going to have to change the email at the top of the box, in order to correspond with the email you want the filter added to. Now that you have the email selected, you need to click on the button labeled NEW. You are now greeted with the following window:

New Filter

New Filter

The first field labeled “Filter Name” is going to be your label for your filter, so you can remember it later.

The next field is “For incoming messages that,” we are going to click “Match any of the following” (which should already be highlighted) and move to the next line.

Click on the drop down menu that says “Subject” and choose “From”. This is applying the filter to an email address. Leave the field “contains” alone and open up your text editor and enter in your first email address on the list. Now if would like more than one email to be filtered and stored in the same folder, click the “+” sign and do excactly what you did with the first email. Once you have all of your email addresses entered (remember we’re only working on one folder at a time), now it is time to tell Thunderbird what you want it to do with these future emails that you recieve.

The field that says “Move message to,” you can leave alone. Select the field to the right of “Move Message to” and find the folder that you wish to use for the filter.

Now press Ok.

If you own many email addresses, and emails that you would like filtered go to both of your addresses, you need to perform the steps over again for each account.

Now, for every email that you filtered, it will now automatically be inserted into the folder you assigned.

Congratulations, you have now automated one more task in your life and if you’re like me, you will be saving yourself a considerable amount of time. Doesn’t it feel great to have an empty inbox?

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Do you have any tips, suggestions, or add-ons that you recommend for helping automate email?

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Google Caffeine Search

August 15th, 2009 1 comment »

So Google has allowed anyone to access their newest project, Google Caffeine. If you haven’t heard about Caffeine yet, it’s Google’s project to increase “size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions” of their current search engine, according to Google’s Official Webmaster Central Blog. This is huge for consumers, now being able to get what they want from this search engine giant at even quicker speeds (as if you knew it was slow before).

When searching graticle, I achieved a .19 second decrease in search and 2,300 less search results — hoping none of those were ours ;)

Before Google Caffeine

Before Google Caffeine

After Google Caffeine

After Google Caffeine

You have to give Google credit, I don’t remember complaining about the speed or the accuracy of my searches, yet they still improve. That’s respectful.

Go check out Google Caffeine and give it a test yourself: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

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What do you think about Google’s project? Do you see negative effects coming from this?

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Search Engine Optimization Tips

August 14th, 2009 1 comment »

Search Engine Optimization PhotoHere is a short list of search engine optimization tips, allowing you to further the SEO of your current website. These are to the point, allowing you to get your way into SEO quickly.

1. Meta Tags

Include your keyword or keyword phrase that you are optimizing for in the title of your webpage. This is between the tags “< title >” and “< /title >” (without spaces).

Also include your keyword or keyword phrase in your meta description tag and your meta keywords tag, respectively < meta name=”description” > & < meta name=”keywords” >.

2. H1 & H2 Tags

On every page of your website you need to have at least one < h1 > tag, and one < h2 > tag. The search engines analyze an h1 tag as being the topic of the page, while the h2 the subtopic. Again, include your keyword or category keyword in these header tags.

3. Keyword Density

For the keyword that you are focusing on, on a particular page, you need to make sure the density is somewhere around 10%. For example 10 out of every 100 words is in relation to your keyword or keyword phrase. You can check the keyword density of your website at Ranks.nl.

4. Anchor Text

For links on your webpage (especially internal links), make sure to include your keyword or keyword phrase. (ie. “Our Web Design Services” not “Click here”).

5. Images

For images, don’t forget the alt tag which allows the search engine to know what a picture is. Here is an alt tag example: < img src =”images/graticle.jpg” alt =”Website Design Logo” >. Again, don’t overdue it, only use relevant information — this is also how people with viewing disabilities or otherwise know what your pictures are.

6. New Content

Keep your website updated regularly as you can do this by adding a blog to your website. This not only allows you to have a better ranking, but also connects you with your customer base at the same time.

7. Linking From Other Websites

A great way to earn credibility through a search engine is having a well established website link to yours. This show the search engines that your website is more important than the website that has none.

Remember, this is not a magic bullet, it is a constant effort to increase your rankings in the search engines. So keep updating, editing, and creating fresh content and slowly but surely, your rankings will increase.

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Installing Your Own Wordpress Blog

August 6th, 2009 4 comments »

### This instruction guide assumes you have some prior knowledge to PHP and MySQL and experience with web hosting. If you are a beginner to programming you can learn the languages mentioned at W3school.com while also contacting your hosting provider for more details.

This guide is for those that would like to install their own blog. According to Wordnetweb.com a blog is “a shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies.” The blog software is the system that allows you to post, and read others posts. Anyone can set up a blog for themselves, and hosting it on their own website. I am going to share with you the process of installing a blog, so you can start blogging today.

1. Finding and installing a blog

There are many companies that allow you to use their software to blog. They give you the system, and all that’s left to do is install it and you are ready to start writing. The most popular companies that make blogs are Wordpress, B2Evolution, Text Pattern, and Nucleus. The one that you have most likely heard about is Wordpress, as it is among the most popular. I am going to focus on Wordpress in this article, but feel free to explore the others.

The first step is downloading the necessary files to install Wordpress to your website. You can download the latest version here: www.wordpress.org/latest.zip

Once you finish downloading the latest version you can open this .zip file with your favorite unpacking tool (such as WinRar). The first file that you will notice is the ReadMe.html file (look below) that will give you your next set of instructions, don’t worry we are going to go through this together.

So first things first. You need to drag the folder Wordpress from the .zip file somewhere on your computer. We are going to change a few things before uploading it to your server.

The file that needs to be changed is wp-config-sample.php, which is located in the folder Wordpress that you just placed on your computer. Open this file with a text editor. In windows open Notepad (programs > accessories > notepad) and click file, then open. Find wp-config-sample.php which is, again, in the Wordpress folder. Once you open this file you should be seeing this code:

The first thing you have noticed is that you need a database, user name, etc. This is the point where you call up your hosting provider and find out this information (that’s what they are there for — although they might disagree).

You are going to need to ask these questions:

a. What’s my username to access MySql
b. What’s my password to access MySql
c. How do I create a database –> then get the name of the database you created

Also don’t forget to go to http://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1/, to get your authorization key, secure auth. key, logged in key, and nonce key.

The fields that need to be changed are highlighted in the picture below:

After you have updated this information it’s time to rename wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php.

Now you need to upload the entire Wordpress folder to your server. Before doing so rename your Wordpress folder to “blog”. Log in accordingly and upload the folder to your main directory (generally this is public_html), I recommend using www.YourDomain.com/blog because this is a standard in the industry, a standard worth following.

You have everything uploaded and now it’s time to go to www.YourDomain.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php, to finish the installation of your blog. The instructions are fairly simple and will give you the password that you need to complete the installation as well.

Well now you are ready to start blogging! Of course there is a learning curve involved in installing your own blog, so if you don’t have the time or it’s not your specialty, I recommend getting someone to do this for you.

Let me know if something was left out, as I will surely give you the information necessary to complete the installation.

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Great Tools To Help You Online Or Otherwise

July 30th, 2009 5 comments »

I want to share with you some of my favorite tools that I use on a regular basis. These tools can help the business owner that finds themselves on the computer for a majority of their day, or even the occasional web browser looking to decrease the amount of time taken to accomplish a handful of tasks. Either way, I hope you take sometime to use them, if only once every other day. It’s great learning about programs and what they do to help with you next latest and greatest conversation, but if you use them and benefit from them, you’ll still be able to have that conversation while reaping the benefits.

1. Egg Timer
At times, we all find ourselves becoming distracted from the task at hand and checking the new email, or the new comment on Facebook. This not only creates the problem of accomplishing a task, but also sends your mind in different directions furthering you from this goal. You might look at Egg Timer as just a stop watch that does nothing more than keep time, but it’s more than that. If you use it right, it can help you become more productive. Say for instance, I need to get an hour long task finished sometime today. So comes that time, and I decide to start working on it. Now before I start, I open up Egg Timer in a new tab in the browser and set it for the time needed. By setting this timer you are allowing yourself to know the amount of time taken and also helping you realize you are “on the clock,” so to speak. So check it out, it’s free, and most importantly it will help you become more productive.
2. Jing
If you didn’t know about this already, you can capture a screen shot (or picture) of what you can see on your screen at all times, pressing the print screen button on your keyboard. While this is a great tool, what happens when you need to only take a small photo of something on your screen, and not the entire thing? Jing allows you to highlight a certain portion of your screen and save it as a picture. Rather than opening up your graphics program and editing it to size, it is taken care of instantly.  While very neat in itself, it also allows you to take movies of the activity on your screen that you want to share with someone. So for instance, if you are making tutorial videos on how to use a certain program that you want to share with your colleagues rather than resorting to showing them in person. You can capture the video and then share it with them through YouTube or ScreenCast, among others. Although there are many programs that are similar, and it’s not a new technology by any means, Jing is by far the simplest, easiest screen capturing program I have came across.
3. Fireshot
Ok you might be saying, well I want to take a screen shot of an entire web page — something that extends farther than the viewable area. Fireshot is a Firefox add-on that allows you to do just that. When you are on a website, simply click the Fireshot button on your browser and it will give you a few options including, snap a photo of the viewable area, or the entire web page. It has helped us share various web pages with client’s, sending them a photo of a website, rather than asking them to go there themselves.
4. Bubbl.us
If you haven’t had a chance to Mind Map, there is a free mind mapping service online at Bubble.us. Mind mapping can help you brainstorm and organize your thoughts into a visual format, rather than the typical roman numeral abbreviations. It’s fast, easy, and helps you brainstorm without thinking about formatting your thoughts; press enter for a new category, and tab to create within the same category.
5. K7 (Free Voicemail & Fax)
Although I didn’t understand the potential of getting a voicemail service, it can be very beneficial (plus it doesn’t hurt being a free voicemail service). K7 gives you a free phone number that functions as a voicemail, fax, or one or the other. They also allow you to create your own personal greeting. Having a voicemail can allow you to post your phone number online, without the regret of receiving calls from spammers. Of course you will still receive those calls, but the number they are calling isn’t your cell phone number, and you can choose to call them back or not. And lastly, K7 allows you to check your messages on the phone, or even through email as they send the voicemail in an audio file (which you can opt out if you would like) or fax through an image.

1. Egg Timer

At times, we find ourselves becoming distracted from the task at hand and checking the new email, or the new comment on Facebook. This not only creates the problem of accomplishing a task, but also sends your mind in different directions, furthering you from this goal. You might look at Egg Timer as just a stop watch that does nothing more than keep time, but it’s more than that. If you use it right, it can help you become more productive. Say for instance, I need to get an hour long task finished sometime today. So comes that time, and I decide to start working on it. Now before I start, I open up Egg Timer in a new tab in the browser and set it for the time needed. By setting this timer I am allowing myself to know the amount of time taken and also helping realize I am “on the clock,” so to speak. So check it out, it’s free, and most importantly it will help you become more productive. Oh, and when the time runs out — you’ll know!

2. Jing

If you didn’t know about this already, you can capture a screen shot (or picture) of what you can see on your screen at all times, pressing the print screen button on your keyboard. While this is a great tool, what happens when you only need a portion of the screen shot, and not the entire thing? Jing allows you to highlight this portion of your screen and save it as a picture. Rather than opening up your graphics program and editing it to size, it is taken care of instantly.  While very neat in itself, it also allows you to take movies of the activity on your screen that you want to share with someone. So for instance, if you are making tutorial videos on how to use a certain program that you want to share with your colleagues (rather than resorting to showing them in person), you can capture the video and then share it with them. Although there are many programs that are similar, and it’s not a new technology by any means, Jing is by far the simplest, easiest screen capturing program I have came across.

3. Fireshot

Ok you might be saying, well I want to take a screen shot of an entire web page — something that extends farther than the viewable area. Fireshot is a Firefox add-on that allows you to do just that. When you are on a website, simply click the Fireshot button on your browser and it will give you a few options including, snap a photo of the viewable area, or the entire website. It has helped us share various websites with clients, sending them a photo of a website, rather than asking them to go there themselves.

4. Bubbl.us

If you haven’t had a chance to mind map, there is a free mind mapping ser

vice online at Bubble.us. Mind mapping can help you brainstorm and organize your thoughts into a visual format, rather than the typical roman numeral abbreviations. It’s f

ast, easy, and

helps you brainstorm without thinking about formatting your thoughts; press enter for a new category, and tab to create within the same category.

5. K7

Although I didn’t understand the potential of getting a voicemail service, it can be very beneficial (plus it doesn’t hurt being a free voicemail service). K7 gives you a free phone number that function

s as a voicemail, fax, or one or the other. They also allow you to create your own personal greeting. Having a voicemail can allow you to post your phone

number online, without the regret of receiving calls from spammers. Of course you will still receive those calls, but the number they are calling isn’t your cell phone number, and you can choose to call them back or not. And lastly, K7 allows you to check your messages on the phone, or even through email as they send the voicemail in an audio file (which you can opt out if you would like) or fax through an image. Brilliant.

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