Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

I have seen this plugin at work on many blogs, and it is indeed awesome! I am going to be uploading it and using it myself, soon. It’s the AWSOM plugin. It creates a drop down menu of all your archives, by title. I have seen others using it and I love it! I am an archive browser (and even a sometimes medical id bracelet reader, lol), so I appreciate how user-friendly it is.

The AWSOM Archive (formerly called AWSOM Drop Down Archive) is a Wordpress plugin that allows you to place any type of Posts archive you want anywhere in your site.

It works with all versions of Wordpress.

In a recent post of mine, a visitor asked where she could get photos for her blog. The Internet is a freedom-loving place, so there are scads of photos everywhere, but if you are like me, I prefer the copyright-free photos, or photos with permissions. You don’t want to steal other people’s photos (and don’t download MP3 files for your MP3 players unless you have permission, too).

Here’s a terrific plugin for photos– it’s the Photo Dropper plugin (Wordpress only). You can use this plugin to search the Flickr photo database for copyright-free photos. The plugin automatically displays a link from where the photo is taken, so that the author of the photo gets credit. Read all about the Photo Dropper plugin here. I’ve tried it on one of my other blogs, and it works well.

Need a user guide or manual? I don’t know what it is about me, but I am ALWAYS losing those durn things! Thank God for the Internet. Here’s a website where you can find a huge variety of user manuals: SafeManuals.com. Remember, it’s a “free” site, so ALWAYS use caution when downloading files and be sure to scan them with your anti-virus first. I haven’t had any problems, but it pays to be careful about everything these days.

I’m very impressed! After hearing about Hulu for several weeks, I decided to give it a try. It/s a website that offers free streaming television programs. It actually worked! I have “medium speed” broadband, and the show worked pretty well. i didn’t browse around a great deal, bui their selection looks quite large.

The shows are free; however you watch a brief advertisement in the beginning, and there is a small banner ad in the Hulu browser. Every once in a while, a corporate logo (I saw the McDonald’s Dollar Menu ad) pops up in the eight-hand side of the screen. The ads are not obtrusive and are easily ignored.

I was extremely impressed because they have a good collection of PBS and NOVA documentaries (I am not a TV show watcher, but I love documentaries). Even when I enlarged the video player to full screen, the video ran smoothly and the picture was still relatively clear. (It’s not like YouTube, where the picture is blocky and cube-looking when you go full screen). Hulu is an excellent tool for home educators. I give it my thumbs up.

I’m still looking for the perfect Instant Messaging program. We use MSN here at home amongst our computers, mostly because I have bee dissatisfied with the free LAN network chats. I am not saying that I like MSN more, but at least it works! I have tried them all– Yahoo, BORG, Tonic, ICQ, AIM, etc.

I’ve tried Trillian and liked it, but it was still too big for me. I JUST want to IM, you know? I don’t want whiteboards, videos, games, music, videos, file sharing, winks, backgrounds, handwriting, diet pill reviews!, etc. Sheesh! I JUST want the IM. It is SO difficult to find! But Trillian is a great “all-purpose” IM if you have a lot of contacts who use all sorts of IMs. Read more about Trillian here.

There’s also Miranda IM. I’ve heard about it; I think I even tried it years ago. I uninstalled it because I was looking for a LAN chat program, and not a third-party IM. But I may try Miranda again. It looks so simple and clean. Read more about Miranda here.

If you have found a great all-purpose, no-bells-and-whistles IM, please let me know!

Heads up, I found another website offering free music. It’s Musopen.com. I like it. I wish they had more of a selection. The music is public domain, so it’s free to download, and free to listen. I love the music player interface– it does not open up a new media player. I can’t tell you how much I hate using Windows Media Player! Grr! This is just a little button you push and the music begins! I like it. The music is all classical, and they have a large selection of composers, but i think they need to widen their selection of pieces. Maybe they will.

The kids and I listen to classical music as we work on school lessons, so it’s great to have variety (and it’s free!).

I’ve found another great coupon site for your Frugal Hacks out there! It’s called Coupon Money– click here for online coupons. I love the assortment. There are even coupons for Amazon, PetSmart, Overstock, and Staples. Check it out. Remember what Mrs. Mecomber always says: never shop online without checking for online coupons first! Why pay more when all you need is a coupon or promo code to save?

I’ve pulled away from Blogger for the most part (at least for the blogs I monetize), but I do still have a few blogs with them, and I do still pay attention to what they are doing. The latest feature just released is the ability to pre-schedule posts. Wordpress has had this feature for a long time, and I’m glad to see Blogger take it on. It’s a wonderful feature, and I use it a lot with Wordpress. This is from their news release post:

Scheduled post publishing, which we talked about testing on Blogger in draft last month, is now live for everyone. If you set a post’s date into the future, Blogger will wait to publish until that time comes.

Have you ever wanted to announce something on a certain date but knew you wouldn’t be at a computer to make a post? Or you wanted to keep posting regularly but knew you’d be on vacation for a few weeks? Scheduled post publishing is here to help you out.

There are a few extra steps to take for “bumping” posts, but anything is an improvement here.

I kind of lost repect for Blogger after hearing that Google was arbitrarily deleting or suspending accounts they didn’t feel were “worthy.” Sure, some sites were probably spam– I’ve come across a lot of them– but not all of them were! If you had a harmless blog about the wonders of wood shutters and dared to monetize your blog without Google’s AdSense, you risked deletion. With a week after I heard about Google’s actions, I hopped on over to Bluehost web hosting and Wordpress. The transfer from Blogger to Wordpress was agonizing, but the risk of losing a year’s worth of posts just because I monetize my blogs was too great.

Anyway, Blogger is introducing new features every few months, it seems. They are doing a good job of keeping up with the big dogs. And Blogger is a terrific place for a beginner blogger. Plus, it’s still FREE!

If you are as old as I am, you remember that old television commercial for Eggo waffles, where the kids scream at each other “Leggo my Eggo!” Eggo waffles were pretty good. I might even have screamed that at my brothers to get one.

Anyway… I’m quite off the topic, lol. There’s a new cute computer game for Lego lovers (I have two sons who have spent a small fortune on Legos). C|Net does a good review and has a download link. It sounds like a very cute game, and I’m sure my sons will love it. They are quite the Lego fans– they are members of the online Lego Club, too! So now, instead of buying tons of Legos, we can buy a ton of ram to run the new games!

I have been hearing of this new email broadcast program developed by IZEA, and am given the opportunity to review it. It’s called Zookoda, and it is nifty online software that allows you to send your latest blog posts via email to subscribers. Use of Zookoda is free, so that a big plus. I decided to check it out, since I am seeing growing interest in my home improvement and travel blogs.

You need to register to use Zookoda. It’s like anything else, you need your name, your email, etc. Very quick and easy to sign up. After the verification email, I logged in to see a slew of possibilities before me.

The thing I wanted to do right away was tinker with an actual email and get a feel for how good it will look. Creating an email was extremely easy. I entered the name of the email title (I just called it “New York Renovator”) and put in my RSS feed. Zookoda took my Feedburner RSS url just fine. Everything was so easy!

Next, I took a look at the templates for email format. These were a little sparse, but they still were very nice. There were four pages of Blogger-type templates. This is wonderful if you use one of these for your Blogger blog! Your email will match your blog template. However, I don’t use Blogger templates, but I did think this template was stylish.

I tried out the Zookoda template, and liked it best of all.

If you are comfortable tinkering with html, Zookoda allows you to tweak the template. Or you can even use your own custom template. I liked the flexibility of this. You can also use some of their basic images, too. I don’t like “plain jane” type templates, so these little customizations won me over.

Next was customizing content. I could pick and choose what blog posts I wanted to send. This customization is extremely helpful if you want to send only your best posts or if you want to send an anthology. Zookoda also gives you the option to send emails on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. This is terrific!

Finally, Zookoda offers a way to manage everything. You can create mailing lists, manage the lists, view real-time click, unsubscribe, and other activities, and you can even email blog content in text format for your mobile readers. All this is pretty amazing for a price tag of FREE.

IZEA is a blossoming mover-and-shaker in the blogosphere. Zookoda, combined with their RealRank system, SocialSpark, and Blogger’s Choice Awards, is showing the real prowess of this company as they continue to churn out innovation after innovation. I predict they will soon be the next blogger powerhouse of the Internet.

So if you’ve got readers, check out Zookoda. If you want readers, you’ll definitely want Zookoda- this will draw them like flies to honeycomb. Zookoda is clean, classy, and simply a breeze to use and manage.

I discovered another free program for kids. It’s a paint program called Tux Paint. It’s adorable. My 11-year old is probably too old for it now; I’d say kids ages 3 to 8 would really like it. It’s bright and it’s got big buttons. Very easy to use. And, it’s free! It’s a great way to introduce the world of graphic design to the little tot. It’s really an adorable little program. But don’t blame me of your little ones suddenly all want their own laptop computers!

I’m a BIG fan of the Firefox browser. It’s been having a few problems lately (usually happens after an update) and I think that my plugins may be going screwy on me. For some reason, Firefox won’t connect to the Internet when I use wireless. It’s driving me crazy! So I’ve been tinkering with the plugins. I hadn’t looked at their bank of plugins for a long time, and was surprised to see their “new look.” I was also surprised to be hundreds upon hundreds of plugins for everything to launching radio players to tips for acne treatment! Sheesh! It’s a bit much.

I did find a golden egg in the nest, though. I love this addon! It’s called Fancy Numbered Tabs and it simply does what it says– it gives your tabs little numbers so you can keep track of them. I always have a lot of tabs open and sometimes I get confused. It’s a nice addon.

We all can use some new fonts to spruce up our documents and templates, right? I do a lot of graphic design and template tinkering, so I have quite a collection of fonts. I have never paid one cent for a font collection. And you don’t need to, either. Here’s a little list of the best free fonts I have found.

Simply the Best Free Fonts
Search Free Fonts.com
1001 Free Fonts

Most fonts sites have the same fonts over and over again, I’ve found. Those three have the best collection, IMHO, and the easiest searching and downloading capabilities. There are lots of “small time” font makers out there who have created some nice specialty fonts. a Yahoo search will pull them up.

Be careful what you download, however. Browse wisely. I use McAfee’s Site Advisor, Netcraft, and update my anti-virus software before I go searching for fonts. Sometimes creeps will include malware or trojans under the guise of “free” fonts. So stick with the well-known font sites. Also, Kim Komando’s message boards are filled with advice on finding font sites. The boards are searchable.

I found a wonderful website (via Entrecards, again!) that is a great resource for finding free software programs. It’s called Softfreebie. I really like it. It has a growing list of excellent software found for free on the Internet. It’s a good one to keep an eye on for future resources. It’s got everything, looks like, from games, database tools, firewalls, educational tools, backup tools, proxy tools, Adobe programs! I didn’t see anything about online term life insurance quotes, but hey, who knows, maybe that’s next, lol! They’ve got everything else! The categories are varied and numerous, and I really like the style. I haven’t tried out the search feature, yet.

Keep an eye on this one of you are looking for freeware on the Internet. I know I will, because i always am.

Once again, via Entrecard surfing (if you haven’t checked out Entrecards, you really should!), I discovered another very helpful blog for computer users. This one is called WatchTheTutor.com. It covers the most basic of applications, like how to StumbleUpon a website and how to start a Gmail account, and dabbles in the more complicated stuff like converting a DVD to mp4 to an iPhone and creating an ISO image from a directory. It’s a very new blog, so we will see how it develops.

If you haven’t tried Entrecards, I recommend you take a look at it. It’s a free, fun way to increase traffic to your blog or website. You essentially join the community, make a little business card for your blog, and “drop” it on other blogs. Other bloggers come by your blog to “drop” their cards. You can advertise your blog on other’s blogs, too, giving you “free” advertising. I put “free” in quotes because it doesn’t cost money, but it does cost “credits.” You get these credits by dropping your card. The entire system is designed to get you to visit other blogs while they visit yours. Some blogs are outstanding, and I never would have discovered them any other way. I love “shopping” for other blogs as I drop my card and look for blogs to advertise with. It’s almost as much fun as shopping at directbuy!