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Google: Best free web resource ever
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thingofitis said:
on October 31, 2009 03:21 PM ET
Google is one of the greatest free sources on the web. Maybe it deserves a group of it's own and maybe someone will start one. Until then, I figured I'd start it as a topic here. First let me say I love Google. That will more and more obvious as I add things to this topic. LOL. But, to get things rolling, I'll include a few links here. First Google has a brand spanking new music search feature. You can find music you like or discover new music you might like... even if you can't remember the artist, album or title. How cool is that? There's a video demo on how it works included in this post. Just scroll your mouse over the little icon to the video link and it will play right there without bouncing you all over the web. (New feature in my blog ;0): Google music search (brand new) 2 Features in Google Calendar (Sort of new; for keeping up with contacts and your favorite sports teams) If you use Firefox browser (the best browser around; secure and very customizable): 5 Google add-ons for Firefox (if you only try one of these, try Customize Google and you'll love me forever for suggesting it to you. lol) Google labs are experimental features. All Google's features start out here and get tested and played with by the public. This is where Maps and lots of other cool Google stuff got started. And last but not least, a page from Google's corporate site that outlines their design principles (what I think makes them so great). If you've got any Google stories, new search or other features to tell the world about, please share. Sharing is good. |
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Many people have cell phones that ARE NOT web enabled and think they are left out of using Google on their phones. You can do a Google SMS (text messaging) search on your cell phone. Google does not charge you. You just get charged whatever your cell plan charges you for text messaging.
Here's a link that includes a little video demo. Easy peasy:
Well, that's a good question? Can you really make money blogging? Blogging really shouldn't be looked at as a money making endeavor.
Bloggers can opt to have adsense on their blogs. People have a lot of misconception about what that means. Adsense was created by Google. It's a totally new way of marketing whereby advertisers have ads only on pages where there are keywords relevant to what they're selling. As an incentive to site owners and bloggers, if a user clicks an ad on their page and that click results in a sale for the advertiser, the blog/site owner receives a small percentage of that sale... which is usually in cents, not dollars (unless it's a very big sale).
There are ways to make money writing online though and having your own blog with good content can serve as a sort of portfolio as well as gain readers for you if you work at getting readers. Having a web site or a blog is the easy part. Anyone can do that. Getting people to know it's there, takes work.
edited on November 3, 2009 08:10 PM ET
Thank you so much! I can tell you are very experienced in blogging. I have never done it, but, maybe after the Holidays I will look into it. Can you actually make money with a blog? I really know nothing about them, other than looking at them.
Although I on a PC... I'm a total Mac person ;0) Safari is a decent browser. It's fine for most people. If you only need a browser to surf the web and use email is just fine.
Neither Safari or IE are nearly as customizable as FF. Plus FF is open source. The software is not proprietary... Meaning that people all over the world work to improve upon it and it goes through a lot of beta testing from users before a new update is announced.
Apple doesn't compete heavily in the browser area though. Safari is a nice clean browser that's great to include in the install when you get an Apple.
Once you get into blogging, you'll find that writing your posts is probably the easiest thing about it. However, you're going to want to link to other sites or include links to other related posts. That's the pain in the butt part. The 7 FF add-ons for bloggers helps A LOT with this... especially the Apture add-on. Apture will add a lot of sophistacation to any blog and cuts down on having your readers bounced all over the web when they click on links in your posts. Check out the link to that post in my previous reply and you'll see what I mean.
Flock is another great Mozilla browser, based on FF, but made especially for those into sharing and social networking. It has a built-in media bar that you can toggle off/on. Not as many add-ons as FF yet but it's still fairly new by comparison and integrates easily with most every social networking/sharing site.
If you have a web enabled phone, Opera Mini is the best by far. It sizes web pages automatically to fit your phone. So, you don't have to keep reloading the page when you magnify. Opera has a regular browser for computers which has been around awhile. It's a pretty fast browser but still not nearly as customizable as FF.
You are a treasure trove of information! Thanks for all the links!
thanks for the info about the updates. Man oh man, I love the idea of the master password! I am constantly having to look up my user names and passwords - this would save me so much time!!
Maybe a FF topic isn't such a bad idea! Do you know anything about Safari?
Oh, as far as Customize Google... it may be that most complaints might be stemming from people not adjusting their settings. Most FF add-ons have preference settings and they're often overlooked. You can usually adjust these settings by going to the TOOLs menu and click on ADD-ONS.
Like all apps, there are default settings. And sometimes, FF add-ons aren't always compatible with newer vesions of FF... but FF usually lets you know when you update.
Whenever you not really sure what a setting for any software means... it's probably best to leave it at the default setting.
And on the blogging thing, I wish you all the best. Blogging is fun. I love it. Here are a few links that might be of interest to you:
Blogging, adsense, SEO: No secrets, just common sense
Trends in social media (did you know if Facebook were a country it would be the 4th largest?)
7 Free FF add-on tools for bloggers
Free image resources for bloggers(don't want get in trouble for copyright infringement)
