Using Twitter for Business

We all know that success of any business is in its people. The wider network of contacts business has, the more people will know about it and the greater chances some of them will use  services business offer. With raise of networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. more companies are trying to workout if these sites are suitable for use in the business marketing, increasing level of support, and getting better connections with their customers. In this post I am listing some popular sources from Internet about using Twitter social networking site for business.

Internet Sites about Using Twitter for Business

Twitter 101 for Business — A Special Guide - This is a very interesting site providing a lot of useful information like guides, best practices, case studies and handful references to many other resources like books, tips and tricks, and links to other related sites

Using Twitter for Business – a free e-book from Duct Tape Marketing

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business – This is an excellent post listing the steps to get started in ides about what to tweet and how to survive in the information overload.

4 Ways Companies Use Twitter for Business – another post with business ideas for Twitter

How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business – one more if not enough

Twitter Tools and Applications

10 valuable Twitter utilities for business users

Twitter Fan Wiki / Apps – a very long list of Twitter applications for any platform

How To Backup Your Twitter Archive

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Free Mozilla Add-ons

Below is a list of Mozilla add-ons I use.

Add-ons for better work with Google SERVICES

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Better Gmail 2 - Enhances the new Gmail interface with Greasemonkey user scripts. Only compatible with the NEW Gmail interface.

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Better GReader - Enhances Google Reader with Greasemonkey user scripts.

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Better GCal - Enhances Google Calendar with Greasemonkey user scripts.

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Better YouTube - A compilation of some of the best Greasemonkey user scripts for YouTube in one interface

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Google Toolbar for Firefox - Take the power of Google with you anywhere on the Web

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GMarks - helps you sync & manage your bookmarks with Google Bookmarks.

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Google Shortcuts - Display all of your Google Services as buttons just next to your address bar or anywhere you like it.

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Google Gears - is an open source project that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser.

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Designer and Web Developer Tools

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ScribeFire Blog Editor - is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.

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Dummy Lipsum - Generate "Lorem Ipsum" dummy text.

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Web Developer - adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.

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Firebug - the most popular and powerful web development tool.

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FFClickOnce - Allows Firefox to run a .NET ClickOnce application.

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Misc Tools

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Forecastfox Enhanced - Enhanced version of the popular Forecastfox extension (forecastfox.mozdev.org) by Jon Stritar and Richard Klien.

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Friendbar - The Twitter and Facebook Toolbar.

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Power Twitter – makes Twitter Better.

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eBayBuddy Australia - is a small eBay extension for quick navigation of eBay.com.au The Australian eBay, and other related tools through the right-click context menu or a single toolbar button you can add from the customize menu. It includes lots of advanced search features, category browsing, discussion boards, a full site map of eBay, PayPal, comparison price shopping and more.

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Firefox Companion for eBay - Be a better bidder! You’re always securely signed in so you can check out your progress whenever you like. Customise your alerts so you stay on top of your bids. Be told when an auction style format listing you’re bidding on is about to end.

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TOOLS for better browsing

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GUI:Config - makes it easier to change preferences that can only be found in the “about:config”.

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Configuration Mania - More Advanced (hidden) configures.

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DownThemAll! - The first and only download manager/accelerator built inside Firefox!

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IE Tab Plus - An enhanced version of IE Tab which supports Adblock Plus in IE, and can sync cookies between IE and Firefox.

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WOT - Warns users about risky websites that try to scam visitors, deliver malware, or send spam.

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Fox Splitter - splits the content area of the browser window as you like.

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ErrorZilla - Implements a useful error page when a website cannot be reached. Will add Try Again, Google Cache, Coralize, Wayback, Ping, Trace, and Whois buttons, along with the Firefox logo to the error page when a website isn't found or a web server is down.

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Resurrect Pages - Searches through five big page cache/mirrors and shows lost pages.

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Google chrome extensions manager - will allow you to use Google chrome extensions inside Firefox.

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Ctrl-Tab - Ctrl+Tab navigation and "All Tabs" panel.

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Greasemonkey Add-on and Scripts

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Greasemonkey Add-on - Allows you to customize the way a webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript. Hundreds of scripts, for a wide variety of popular sites, are already available at http://userscripts.org.

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Mozilla Themes

Below are the Mozilla Themes I am using.

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Noia 2.0 (eXtreme) - This is a fully skinned version. This theme is based on the Noia 2.0 icon set by Carlitus( http://carlitus.deviantart.com/ ).

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References and Tips

These are links to useful Mozilla Internet resources.

• Ultimate GMail Collection: over 80 Tools and Tips from MakeUseOf.com
• How to eliminate speling mistakes in Firefox text boxes - Download Squad
• Make Your Own Printer-Friendly Pages in Firefox - MakeUseOf.com
• Power User's Guide to Firefox 3 - lifehacker.com
• Mozilla Firefox About:config
• Firefox Tweak Guide
• Keeping Safe on the Web 8 Firefox Add-ons - MakeUseOf.com
• Firefox 3 Memory Usage
• Mozilla Problematic Extensions
• Tips to Reduce Mozilla Firefox Memory Usage
• Another 16 Firefox Add-ons For Web Designers

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Free Multimedia Applications

This is a list of the Multimedia Applications that help us to play, create, edit video, DVD, images, music and other file formats.

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XP Codec pack - is one of the most completed codec packs for XP which helps you to play all major audio and video formats.

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Windows 7 and Vista Codec Package - is one of the most completed codec packs for Vista which helps you to play all major audio and video formats.

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DVD Shrink - is a freeware tool for fitting a DVD-Video disc on a single DVD-R.

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Paint.Net - is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows.

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GimPhoto - GIMP modification together with GimPad a free Photoshop alternative.

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IcoFx - is an award winning freeware icon editor.

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Bug Shooting - is a free screenshot utility that was developed for software testers who use bug tracking systems including FogBugz, Gemini, Ontime and BugTracker.NET.

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MPlayer for Windows - The award-winning Open Source media player available for Windows now!

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PNGOUT - is a freeware command line optimizer for PNG images written by Ken Silverman.

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Creative Docs .Net - is a vector-based graphic design tool with support for rich text, ideal to quickly write short documents, manuals, posters, illustrations, schemas, plans, flow charts, and much more.

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VirtualDub - is a video capture/processing utility. An easy way to join AVI files into one.

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Google SketchUp - You can use Google SketchUp to create, modify and share 3D models.

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Picasa – Organise, Edit, Create and Share Photos.

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Free Multimedia Converters

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FormatFactory - is a multifunctional media converter.

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Free Multimedia Internet Services

• TextAnim - Generate an animated text picture (gif) with texture in 10 seconds.
• SplushUp - is a powerful editing tool and photo manager.
• iConvert - Convert ico, icns, and png icons online for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

References

• Top Free Media Converters for Windows | MakeUseOf.com
• An Introduction To Codecs, Converters and Rippers | MakeUseOf.com
• How To Repair Broken AVI Files That Won’t Play | MakeUseOf.com
• Say Goodbye to Adobe Creative Suite | MakeUseOf.com

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Joomla! Installing XAMPP on Vista

Currently I am working on installing Joomla! content management system and as a first step it requires to install XAMPP package. After some time of tweaking I finally managed to install and run XAMPP package on Vista. XAMPP installation completed fine and basic configuration steps made no problems. All services except Apache started.

 

Turned out that service was unable to start, because Apache process had no access to “C:\Program Files\xampp” directory. I decided to give SYSTEM account access to it and run Apache, MySql and FileZilla as windows services. To give access to SYSTEM account open properties of the directory and Security Tab.

Check that it has full access rights assigned. If not, use Edit button to assign access rights.

After trying to start Apache service again it still was failing to start. Apache log in C:\Program Files\xampp\apache\logs\error.log showed the following error.

“(OS 10013)An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions.  : make_sock: could not bind to address [::]:80”

This error happens when some process already uses port 80. My solution was to change “C:\Program Files\xampp\apache\conf\httpd.conf” file and set port to something else like 8080 or any other number. Edit lines “Listen 80” and “ServerName localhost:80” to be  “Listen 8080” and “ServerName localhost:8080”. Start Apache service. Success!

The next step will be to install Joomla! I will publish another post if there will be problems that required solution during install.

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How to get Virtually unlimited online backup storage with Live Mesh

As you may already know Live Mesh Online Storage currently offers 5GB of online storage. This amount of data is enough if you are backing up documents as DOCs or plain text files, but if you want to store music, photos, large multimedia files, storing them into one account will quickly add-up to the limit. To expand this 5GB limitation we will use an excellent sharing functionality of Live Mesh.

Lets looks at the example. We want to setup backup for our Photos, Music, Documents. We will need to create a separate live or hotmail accounts for each of them, say my_photos@live.com, my_music@live.com, and my_docs@live.com. All these accounts will need to link with main account say my_mesh@hotmail.com.

 

After creating my_docs account login into www.livemesh.com using it and connect to Live Desktop.

Double click on ‘Create new folder’ Icon and enter ‘Documents’ in the name field.

Once folder is created double click it to open it and click Members and then Invite to enter address of your main account.

 

After clicking OK Email will be sent to my_mesh@hotmail.com account which will have a link to accept an invitation. After that ‘Documents’ folder will be linked to your main mesh account and will be visible in the list of folders.

These steps need to be repeated for photos and music and add virtually unlimited number of folders.

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