What software do I use?

I get asked what software I use since I do web development work and have several hobbyist websites on the side that *make me money.

At one point in my career, my domain count was well above 500+ but now I’m dwindling it down to 10% and only holding onto 40-50 which I can realistically work on.

I currently run a MacBook Pro with a Virtual Machine of Windows 7.

My machine has 8GB RAM due to the fact that VMWare is such a memory hog.

LIST OF SOFTWARE

mRemote – to get into my remote machines
Windows Live Writer for my blogging tool
Google Chrome
Opera
Safari
Tree Size Professional 5
Easy Lead Finder
Local Keyword Generator
Market Samurai
Team Viewer 6
Seesmic Desktop
Tweetdeck
Update Patrol
7-Zip
Azure
CCleaner
ESET
Dropbox
Evernote
Filezilla
Google Adwords
HeidiSQL
Lastpass
Mioplanet
Microsoft Expression
Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
Netbeans 7
Notepad++
Quicken 2010
Redgate
Sizer
SpeedPPC
SqlYog
Sysense
SoapUI
Apigee
Adobe Dreamweaver
Scrapebox
Axure Pro
iTunes

Testing a new Website Site Monitoring Tool called Montastic

I had the unfortunate situation of waking up this morning and finding out that my FlavortownUSA website had been down for 15 hours. I had signed up for Pingdom to send me an email when this happens so I was very frustrated to not receive one. I am using their free account so when I found that out, it was all my fault for not reading and upgrading.

When I was logged into Pingdom it wasn’t very easy on the eyes, was difficult to determine what I got exactly for my free account and what I didn’t. I did determine that my account was up in terms of receiving email about my site being down so I decided to find another service. One that was simple, easy and fast so I could get it going quickly.

I found Montastic during one of my searches and so far it’s been a joy and here’s why:

1. Extremely fast to get setup
2. Easy on the eyes to understand what it does and what I’m getting
3. Showed me that the free package checks my site every 30 minutes
4. If i wanted to upgrade, the dropdown showed me that a 5 minute check would need to be upgraded
5. Not a lot of fluff, no fancy designs to get in the way of what I want
6. Just the facts look and feel, gives me what I want in a straight forward manner

I’m so far quite pleased but it’s only been a short time using it so I will let you know and keep you in the loop about how I proceed with this tool.

Outsource your projects

I was at MinneBar this weekend and was in a session where the speaker was talking about how he built a website while on the bus and in his off hours. It was good insight about what it takes to succeed but then towards the end of the session it was pretty eye opening to hear the questions from the crowd. It seemed that this type of work was foreign to them, how’d you find the time? How’d you find the helpers?

I wanted to share my thoughts and let you know that I’m currently outsourcing as much as possible using tools like oDesk.com and scriptLance.com. There are many other sites out there to outsource work to like guru.com, elance.com, rentacoder.com, freelancer.com etc. but the ones I like best are oDesk.com and scriptlance.com.

SCRIPTLANCE.COM

What I like about scriptlance.com is that I’ve only had 1 bad experience and I’ve been using the site for over 3 years. It’s a simple enough interface and could be slicker but it really is a nuts and bolts type of site. The key in working with sites like these are that you get to be extremely clear about what you need and if you’re not your project will get compromised.

Here’s an example, one project I was working on asked the programmer to research 50 items for me. He came back with 100 items and wanted to get paid double the money or asked for a bonus. It was a frustrating spot to be in but at scriptlance.com you put the money into an escrow account and you agree on a price before the project begins so I told this person that I was sorry but I will only pay for what we agreed upon.

ODESK.COM

All these sites are pretty much the same and oDesk.com is not that much different but this site does have one cool feature and that’s the availability to see what your programmer is working on because it takes a picture of them working every few minutes. Very cool to make sure that you’re getting what you paid for.

What people will do for $5 dollars?

I found a fun site to get stuff done cheap and with lots of humor, the site is called “Fiverr” and people will do pretty much anything they can do for $5.

I used the site to get a logo made for me and was fairly happy with my logo. The guy was doing it for $5 so there were no tweaking going on and I couldn’t complain too much.

The payment was easy too, upload the amount you think you’re going to spend and hit them up via PayPal.

I wouldn’t get too serious about this site as it seems more for fun like these posts below:

• I will jog a mile today and have my wife thank you
• I will die my hair purple
• I will let my buddy slap me with a fish for one minute and send you the video

Someone is stealing your real name

You probably don’t know this but there are 340+ Social Media type Networks out there and you probably only know of two (twitter & facebook).

If you’re ahead of the game you got onto twitter & facebook and got your nickname or something funny but did you bother to check your real name?

What if there’s another person out there who has the same name as you? or your same last name? What if that person turned out to be an axe murderer? became someone famous? or what if they were a U.S. Army reservist who was convicted of prisoner abuse in connection with the 2003–2004 Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal?

My last name is “Graner” and my Uncle’s name is “Charles Graner” but that’s not him in the link above. I haven’t had too many questions about my last name but my Uncle has, how embarrassing for him to always have that lingering over him.

Now imagine if this guy got your twitter or facebook name and started to run a muck on your good name? UGH!

You probably think that this won’t happen to you and you’d be right, it is far-fetched but it does happen and you should get out in front of it if you can.

I’m currently looking at KnowEm.Com and Claim.IO, they both seem very slick as I can check my names on all their social networks and they will (for a fee) sign my name up for all of them.

I haven’t chosen yet so if you have one of these services let me know what you think ?

Google Chrome and WordPress are like oil and water right now

As much as I love Google Chrome, it’s not cutting it when writing posts in WordPress. What I notice happens to me is that it will spin when I click on “Save Draft” or “Preview”.

It’s not all the time but the pattern is that I’ll do a couple of previews and then nothing. It just stops doing a preview, clicking on the “Preview” button over and over and nothing happens.

The only way to get preview working again is to click on the “HTML” tab, highlight all the copy, then click on the “Visual” tab and then click on “Preview” again and it works for a while longer until I have to do it again.

The other thing that killed me was that on one of my “Preview” clicks, it started that dreadful spinning again next to the “Publish” button and sure enough, the darn post was published. UGH!

I get it, this is beta software right now, Google Chrome is a brand new baby and it’s bound to have some bugs so take my advice and keep using Firefox or as much as I hate to say it … IE

Backup your files, pictures, videos and for the love of god your wordpress blog

Backup your wordpress blog with this tool from Austin Matzko!

You’re feeling pretty confident about your web host and your website, it hasn’t had any issues in quite some time so I don’t need to back up right now.

Bad move Joe or Jane!

Backup right this second if you haven’t done it this month because that “too confident” feeling you’re having right now means that something bad is about to happen to your beloved family photos or your blog.

I am speaking from experience when I say that it can cost somewhere around $1253.87 to get your data back from OnTrack and you will feel extremely sick writing out that check.

You know those checks that you write out because of your own stupidity? Those checks hurt the worst because it could’ve been prevented and that’s what makes you shake your head so much.

Backing up everything you have is the key to success not only at work and personally but with your wife. I told my story to a co-worker and then he shocked me with his story!

He said that he lost six years worth of photos of their kids and even OnTrack couldn’t get them off. It still cost him money to find out if they could be recovered and when you write out that “not small” check only to find out that you’re going to get back nothing in return, that also sucks.

SOOOOOOOO

Where are your files right now?

Where are your pictures?

Where are your videos?

If they are on anything that could crash or break down and you only have one copy of, you should be very worried and afraid. For WordPress blogs, backup using the plug-in above. For files, my recommendation is to backup all of your sensitive data with DropBox.

having trouble with forgotten passwords?

Roboform Password Management

After talking with a few of my friends recently, the topic of how I handle my passwords has come up and I thought it would be a good post to write about.

I have almost 1000 sites that I have login & passwords for and I use roboform to keep track of all of them. I’ve been using this tool for several years and highly recommend it.

Here’s a couple of highlights:

RoboForm was named PC Magazine Editor’s Choice, and CNET Download.com’s Software of the Year. RoboForm allows you to:

• Manage your passwords and Log In automatically.
• Fill long registration and checkout forms with one click.
• Encrypt your passwords to achieve complete security.
• Generate random passwords to maximize password strength.
• Back up and Synchronize Passwords between computers.
• Fight Phishing and Defeat Keyloggers.

Twitterfeed.com automatically feeds your wordpress blog posts to twitter and facebook

http://twitterfeed.com

I just started using this service a few days ago and am pretty happy with it so far.

Do you hate to post to your wordpress blog and then write up something for Twitter linking to the blog and then going onto facebook to again post something that feed back to what you just wrote on your blog? Then you’ll love TwitterFeed because you set it and forget it as it feeds your blog out to both services for you.

There are several options to choose from so currently I have it checking my blog every couple hours and I ask it to track the links for me on the dashboard. Very useful tool so far but I don’t see much in the way of other services but I’m sure they’ll com.

I’m a big fan of anything that helps automate my message so this service is currently in my bag of tricks.

Twitter for the don’t get its of the world, it’s explained here in plain english

I still remember the day I watched this video and it made me laugh because I couldn’t believe it took over two minutes to explain the how but for the naysayers out there it had to be done, wow. It’s kinda like explaining how a spoon works.

Funny thing though, today I was talking with a fellow co-worker who is extremely technical and savvy about the internet or so I thought but they poo-pooed twitter and talked about it like it was a fad … kinda like the telephone was (doh).

Anyways, I hope this helps all yous out there who still don’t get it … enjoy the video!

A quick and plain English intro the micro-blogging service Twitter.

Follow us: twitter.com This video comes in an unbranded “presentation quality” version that can be licensed for use in the workplace. commoncraft.com