In real life, my friends would describe me as an early adopter – I was the first of us to start using a Blackberry, the first with an iPod and I’m the one they all turn to for “techie” advice. But in the internet marketing world, it’s dawning on me that I’m pretty conservative, and that there is an awful lot of technology and software out there I haven’t even heard of, let alone adopted.
I have been a convert to IE7 for some time, and was delighted with tabbed browsing, when I came across an advert for Google Chrome. In the spirit of my new role as an internet entrepreneur I hit the download button and I have been using Chrome for a week.
And I love it! These are the key reasons:
• One box for search, or for entering URL’s. This is so easy – to find a taxi service in London, for example, I just type those words into the one box and the browser does the rest for me. This is a huge timesaver – before I had to go to favorites, click Google, then type the words – do this 100 times a day (and I do) and the saving is staggering.
• When you open a new tab, the sites you use the most are shown as thumbnails - just click the thumb to go to the site – brilliant!
• Tab drag and drop – you can drag a tab out of the main window and create a new one, or drag separate tabs into your main window, making managing your screen so much easier.
• When IE7 crashed (and it did too often) I lost all my tabs – with Chrome each tab is separately loaded, which means if one crashes, the others stay up.
• Incognito Mode – Not something I’d ever use of course, but if you should want to visit sites that a partner or child in the home wouldn’t approve of, Chrome has an incognito mode, which means those visits are not recorded in the browsing history.
Apart from all of the above, the other key factor I love is the speed – everything seems to load much faster than in IE7.
I’m sure there are drawbacks, but I haven’t found them yet – please let me know if you have found any via the comments.
If you want to download Chrome, you can do so free at the Google Chrome Download Page
blog
Choosing a Content Management System for Your Blog
You can read about step one which was all about choosing a domain name and host for your blog here: http://www.mikeslife.org/content/choosing-host-and-domain-name-your-blog
Having decided on Servage as my host, the next step was to decide on a CMS, or content management system. A CMS is a piece of software which manages the content of your site, without you having to code every single entry in HTML.
I researhed quite hard and discovered that the best two systems for blogs were Wordpress and Drupal.
Wordpress has the advantage that it is specifically for blogs, whereas Drupal is a more general product and can be used in several applications. Both are open source and free to download, which is wonderful! In fact, both come preinstalled with Servage and can be uploaded to your new site with one click! Although you can install either in your server via www.drupal.com or www.wordpress.com
Day Eight - Learning American English
I drove to the office this morning hoping for a quiet day and to get some time to prepare for Christmas, but my plans were thwarted when I had a call from a customer with a problem. It took the best part of the day to solve their situation, and because of the nature of it we didn’t earn anything, but it felt good to be doing something constructive and they were very happy in the end.
Something I’ve learned over the years is that even when you have a customer service problem, or have let someone down, by actually handling it well, you can bring their satisfaction level up higher than it would have been in the first place – bizarre, but true!
The net result is that I didn’t get any Christmas stuff done, so I will have to do it on Christmas Eve. I always did that anyway as a youngster, so it will be like old times.
Adding Blog Features - Digg, Addthis and Related Content
If you’re reading these posts in order, you should know by now what modules are and how to upload them to Drupal. If you’re using Wordpress, or another CMS, hopefully you have found another site to help you out.
I added a few more features to the site which are worth mentioning:
Digg it Button
Setting Goals and Objectives for your Blog
I call it setting objectives, my American friends will call it setting goals – to me goals are to do with football, or should I say soccer?
Firstly, let me apologize to readers who follow this blog chronologically – this post should have been the first! Although,……does anybody read a blog chronologically?
I digress. Before you buy your domain name, before you think about which CMS to use, before you do anything, please, please, please, set some objectives and write them down! Now I know you’re going to ignore that advice, because you’re an action person, and you want to be doing things and your head is full of great ideas. So at the very least, stop where you are right now, and if you don’t have written objectives, do them, now.
Comment
The moment Chrome went out, I immediately got fascinated of its features. Its design and speed is surely much better than that of FF's. Sadly, it lacks plug-ins that Firefox has. Anyways, I'm using Opera now. Personally, I think it is similar to Chrome but better.
Thanks for the tip Karl -
Thanks for the tip Karl - I'll look into Opera as a new early adopter! Good luck with your new blog and well done for hitting PR1 already!
Mike
I have tried almost all
I have tried almost all browsers that Windows can run. I ended up sticking to Firefox. Chrome is my second choice though, but it's lacking on some useful features that Firefox has. The only feature of Chrome that is not present in Firefox is the most visited sites in thumbnails size. IE sucks in all aspects, all versions!... can't avoid it though.
BTW, your blog is interesting. I just bookmarked it.
Thanks Frenchy for the
Thanks Frenchy for the comments. I'd be interested in knowing the features you use regularly on Firefox, as I haven't tried it myself. Thanks for the kind words about the site, I'm on my way over now to look at yours!
Mike
When it comes to design of
When it comes to design of interface Firefox cannot compete even with that of IE's new versions, but the good thing is, Firefox themes or skins can be changed to your liking. The primary feature of Firefoz that Chrome doesn't have are the plug-ins in which some of them are useful for us bloggers and internet marketers.
Thanks for your visit to my blog.