I’ve already mentioned that I had the opportunity to be a speaker at the Blog Indiana 2010 Social Media 101 sessions. Myself along with Chris Theisen of Hare Chevy, Erik Deckers of Pro Blog Service and Patric Welch of Noobie all spoke on different topics to serve as introductions for people that were just getting started in social media.
- Keynote “Intro to Social Media” by Erik Deckers
- Breakout “Getting Started with Facebook” by Patric Welch
- Breakout “Twitter Tips & Tricks for Beginners” by Chris Theisen
I presented a breakout session titled “The Blogger’s Toolbox” which covered a list of the various applications that I’ve picked up over the years of my blogging experience. These were tools that have allowed me to write on a number of blogs consecutively, while maintaining a full-time job and being a husband and father of two great kids.
I divided the tools up into the different categories below:
The Fodder of Blog Ideas
Sometimes the challenge is just coming up with a new idea to write about for your blog topic.
- Digg – mainly used to see what’s being discussed and is popular, although this site is losing popularity overall with other options that provide similar resource.
- Google News Alerts – regardless of your blog topic, put in some keywords in Google Alerts and receive updates in your RSS reader or in your email inbox.
- Twitter Search – Twitter continues to be a wealth of a resource for blog ideas. You can either respond to what others are saying online or just get inspired about your own new post idea.
- Blog RSS – that’s right, we’re still reading blogs. Sometimes a great post can be an extension of a comment you left on someone else’s original post, or your own spin to a post or topic shared online. I personally use Bloglines as my RSS reader, but Google Reader is also an obvious option.
Continue reading ‘Blog Indiana 2010 Presentation: The Blogger’s Toolbox’
As a follow-up to my previous post, Elephant Like Memory of Windows 7 Start Menu, about trying to get my computer to forget everything that was pinned to my Start Menu and let me start over; I’ve got an update. I was just messing around with my Start Menu again and accidentally opened the location of where all the shortcuts were stored for the Start Menu.
The shortcut are located in this directory path:
C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\StartMenu
I’m not sure why I couldn’t find that before but I was able to find it this time and deleted all the shortcuts. In addition, I wanted to try and follow-up with some of the other websites I’d found earlier when troubleshooting my problem. I couldn’t find the exact ones I’d used previously, but these two websites provided the similar information I’d read earlier when trying to troubleshoot the issue.
Hopefully this information will help someone else out in the future. Don’t let this little issue sour your opinion of Windows 7. There is a fix and the rest of my experience has been pretty much outstanding.
I’m absolutely loving my experience since installing Windows 7 Ultimate on the new laptop I just migrated over to from my 4-yr old laptop. I really should work on a series of posts that talk about my favorite features, but first I really want to figure out the answer to one little snag I’ve run into.
As you can see from the Snagit of my current Start Menu in Windows 7 Ultimate, I have a little issue with what appears to be multiple copies of the same shortcut in my list.
Somehow during the transition and migration of all of my files into my new system, Windows 7 Ultimate has remembered a previous setting of my Start Menu and WILL NOT forget it no matter how hard I try and what steps I take to try and refresh/remove the items.
I’ve edited the Windows 7 Ultimate registry multiple times using the regedit functions that store these values and nothing seems to work. My Start Menu can be completely empty, but as soon as I right-click on a shortcut and select “Pin to Start Menu” the shortcut name gets populated and written with the numeric identifier for there being multiple shortcuts to the same program that already exist.
If anyone can provide me some instructions that will completely wipe this memory and listing clean so that I can start again, that would be wonderful.
Until then, I’ll try and figure out another way to make this wonderful new elephant forget something and start fresh.
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