scribefire is the best thing since blogging began

I enjoy blogging. I have several blogs and the process of posting to them has been clumsy. Any time I wanted to post I would have to log in, post, tag, and then move on the next one to log in, post, tag, and... You get the idea.

Recently, I had an "ah-ha" moment when I downloaded ScribeFire. I use a number of Firefox add ons, but to come across one that allowed me to manage all of my blogs - including post tags - from one window at the bottom of my browser, well, it was like moving from a bicycle to a moped. I felt liberated.

It means I can spend more time writing and less time posting. Consider this, blogging is a great marketing tool. Using WordPress, Blogger, or a php-based blog of your own design (if you happen to be that talented) is one of the best marketing strategies available to increase your exposure on the internet and attract new customers and clients. More people read blogs than newspapers. Sharing your knowledge and skills on a well constructed blog is invaluable to building credibility and revenues.

ScribeFire can be found at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox along with a number of other handy little tools that make life a lot easier than clunking through Internet Explorer. You may also want to give these Firefox add ons a try:

• Firefox Showcase - displays a window with thumbnails of open browser tabs. This add on makes finding the page I want to read easy and keeps me sane considering I tend to have 2 dozen or more tabs open at a time in 3 or more windows (commonly referred to as browser clutter).
• Session Manager - Often I want to save my surfing results. Whether it's research for a book or a collection of food reviewer websites I can save the session for later use with this add on.
• FireFTP - With the click of a button I have an FTP tab without losing the rest of the work. FireFTP is easy to configure and manages multiple accounts.
  
• IE Tab - I may not like Internet Explorer, but like Windows it's a necessary evil and sometimes websites just don't look right in anything other than IE. This add on switches the tab view from FireFox to IE and back again.
  
• Morning Coffee - This is one of my favorite add ons. This add on lets you group websites you regularly visit by day and opens them simultaneously with a click of the coffee cup. For instance, my Sunday group is a collection of news sites and blogs.
  

If you're not a FireFox user I'd suggest switching. It's easy to download and install. It's fully customizable to your surfing habits. It's even portable on a smart drive.

I began using FireFox in 2003 and haven't opened IE since. The feature that sold me on this free browser is the bookmarks file. It's stored as an HTML file. No more losing favorites during an upgrade.

For more on blogging download this free report from GReat Kreations; Blogging 101

dreamweaver versus nvu... the winner is

For those of you not familiar with it, Nvu (pronounced en view) is an open source web authoring system and it's brought to you by the same folks that developed Firefox and Thunderbird, both of which I have been using for years. Nvu is available for Linux, Windows, and Mac.

I began my html "career" using a simple text editor on an old Mac SE and at some point in the 90s began using programs like Mozilla Composer, FrontPage, CoffeeCup and now I use a pricey version of Dreamweaver for HTML and PHP editing. Well, that was until last week when I decided to give Nvu a chance to prove itself.

Prove itself it did. This compact yet powerful WYSIWYG editor has all the features of the big boys with the flexibility and stability of its Mozilla cousins. Nvu is a multi tabbed work environment allowing you to not only work on multiple pages, but also switch from WYSIWYG editing to working with the HTML source code and even previewing the page as it would be seen in a Firefox or Mozilla browser.

An added feature is the ability to see the HTML code with tags highlighted. At first I was stumped as to how this might be useful then it occurred to me that in Dreamweaver, as in FrontPage, stray tags are often added by the software or are left behind during editing. This is a great way to edit tags to ensure the best presentation of your page in any browser.

Simply put, you don't need expertise in building web pages to create professional, complete, and easy to manage sites with Nvu. If you've been searching for another stable open source application to add to your arsenal download Nvu at http://nvudev.com.

By the way, it's customizable with extensions and themes just like Firefox and Thunderbird. A little personalization goes a long way with this kid.

open source

I'm a big fan of open source software. The idea of collaboration and access appeals to me. It's a building block of the work I do with my clients. It's my "style" so, naturally it's an integral part of the way I want to see the world.

For small businesses and the newbie entrepreneur I often share open source as an alternative to high-priced, proprietary software such as Norton Antivirus, Microsoft Office, and QuickBooks Accounting. While these are good products, they're expensive and likely to suck the user into an annual cycle of buying new versions at increasingly higher costs.

And those costs increase not only in terms of product purchase price, but in system conflicts, system bloat, learning curves due to functionality changes, sometimes even in forcing the user to buy new equipment altogether just to "keep up."

The #1 question I'm asked is, "What else can I do?". Sometimes the answer is easy. For a single user working from home I recommend AVG Free Edition Antivirus instead of Mcafee or Norton. I recommend OpenOffice as a dependable and full-featured alternative to Microsoft Office.

When it comes to accounting software I recommend any business owner speak with their accountant before using any of the applications available. There are a number of things that should be considered as you evaluate various accounting packages.

Some of the considerations are, how big is the business, what type of business is it, are you, but business owner, doing the bookkeeping or is there a bookkeeper, what software does your accountant support (might make your life easier when it comes to taxes or audits). For a complete discussion about this go to GReat Kreations.

Having said all of that, here are three of the best and most popular open source accounting packages available:

OSAS Open Source Accounting Suite - OSAS is award-winning accounting software for Windows, Linux, UNIX and Mac users. OSAS can be used by churches, charities, and small corporations. The main features of this product include separation of duties, General Ledger Accounting, Cost Center Accounting, Budgeting, Donation Accounting and Reporting.

GnuCash Financial Accounting Software - GnuCash is personal and small-business financial-accounting software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports.

Grisbi Personal Accounting - Grisbi is a personal accounting application running under GNU/Linux and Windows, released under the GPL licence. Grisbi can manage multiple accounts, currencies and users. It manages third party, expenditure and receipt categories, as well as budgetary lines, financial years, and other informations that makes it quite adapted for associations (except those that require double entry accounting).

road tech

I'm a big believer in the idea that work is what I do, not where I go (am) and that with the right systems in place I could work anywhere. Recently, the opportunity to test that theory manifested itself. I just returned from spending a significant amount of time "out of town" and that meant away from my office. Some of the tools that helped me stay in touch with clients and the projects I was working on?

Skype - I've been using free Skype for about a year now, but with the Pro package (purchased for my travels) I was able to save tons of money on phone charges and still have clear, regular, reliable telecommunications with clients. My Skype number is now my "office" number.

MyFax - For $10 a month this fax service proved an invaluable addition to my arsenal of admin tools. Anytime a client sent a fax MyFax sent me an email alert. Sending and receiving with this service is easier than making sure my office fax has paper and a good ink cartridge in it.

Zoho - I love zoho projects and am a big fan of zoho meeting. Now I'm a fan of the rest of their web-based apps. Check 'em out. 'Nuff said.

RTM - Remember the Milk is now Twitter compatable and if you use Launchy with cURL you've got an unbeatable way of painlessly managing a task list. You can also use RTM with AIM or have them text you the reminder.

Launchy - Launchy is a free windows utility that can launch your documents, folders, and more without taking your hands off the keyboard. It leaves a small footprint, is intuitive like no other program of its kind (that I've tried), slick-looking, and with a few custom batch files I suspect it can do anything. Check out Life-Hacker for more info about this and other life-saving utilities. BTW cURL is an open source command line tool for transferring data with URL syntax.

Add to all of this my ongoing remote access to files and junk on my server and I really was able to be out of town and stay in touch. If you don't have a file server stuck in the corner of your office, try using an online storage service like Box.net or Omnidrive.