By the way, recently Youtube changed their "Watch Later" playlist and removed the "removed watched" button. I was pretty irritated with that change because it is such a critical function for the whole thing. BUT... I am happy to announce that they brought it back. There's a removed watched button back on the Watch later Youtube playlist! Yeay! -- Okay back to our normal programming.

I thought I'd share with you some of the tips and tricks I use to help me keep my digital life somewhat in order. Each year I do quite a bit of this cleaning up and I try to keep it up during the year, but you know what Sweet Brown says.

Email Cleanup

First, email. I use Thunderbird to backup my email and as a side effect I get the benefit of sorting email quickly by date, or sender or even subject line. All I have to do is click on one of the columns and the email instantly sorts that way.

The benefit of this arrangement I've just described is that I can sort my email by sender and scroll down just looking for "big senders," these are easy to spot. You can't quite do that using the web interface of Gmail (or any other web client).

Some of these bulk messages are social media alerts, or software updates and newsletters. So as I scan down the list I'll notice sometimes more than a screen's worth of email messages so then I click on the first email, then scroll down to find the last one on the list.

Once I find the last email on the list I press the SHIFT key and then click on that last message and this combination selects all the messages in that block. Then I just press DELETE and the messages will get deleted. Even though I am doing this on Thunderbird, the changes get synchronized up to Gmail automatically.

You could also do this on the web based version of your Gmail, but you'll need to do searches instead of just scrolling through. Some people might actually like that approach better, but I'm not going to cover that today.

After a quick pass looking for big senders, I then sort the email by subject line. This gives me a view that helps me find alert notifications, newsletters and other repetitive emails that get sent out daily or multiple-times per day. Facebook email notifications for example, or Twitter alerts, Google Alerts and other similar ones.

Some of my big senders were: Google Alerts, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Empire Avenue, Youtube, Zendesk, Instagram, Hubspot and a few others. They'll probably different for you.

As I scroll down the list sorted by subject, it is pretty easy to spot the bulk of the emails that I'm looking for and I can then delete them just like the ones before when I sorted by sender.

Then I just do another quick scroll up and down looking for any other big blocks of patterns. I'm looking for blocks of 100 or more emails at a time so I'm looking for senders, or subjects or anything that stands out and even maybe a few of these searches:

• "mentioned you on Twitter"
• "is now following you on Twitter!"

Once you do a major round of cleanup you'll see why I like using Thunderbird for this. Outlook would work as well, or any other visual email client like these two I've just mentioned. All you have to do is make sure the bulk of your email is downloaded locally to your computer using IMAP. If you don't use IMAP then the changes won't be saved on the cloud (generally).

After all that I've mentioned above, I take a look at the drafts folder and delete as many as possible. Really, if it's not something you started in the past 2 days and needs to go out today or tomorrow, it shouldn't be in there. I'm guilty of keeping over a hundred drafts in there. I usually get rid of them indiscriminately.

If I feel a draft is worth saving then I copy and save it into an Evernote for more incubation. Clearly the draft wasn't ready to be an email to anybody if I didn't send it  yet. So back to the drawing board for a few messages, but for the rest of the drafts emails. Just delete them.

At last I move down through the folder or tag list whatever you want to call them, and some of them get emptied completely but the folder remains. Some of the folders get deleted themselves along with the contents.

This is the last round of cleanup I do through my inbox and I do this all throught Thunderbird. Why? Because Thunderbird helps me sort emails quickly, lets me do background searches and I can look at all my accounts in one location without having to login to one, then log out. Login to the next, then logout. This way I can do it all at once!

In this case I was able to delete about 15,000 emails or more which gave me about 1GB of space back in my main Gmail account!  So that works for me!

Notes Evernote

You know how I told you before Evernote is my second brain? It's like my extended memory. But it also needs some TLC from time to time. This one is a little bit simpler than email I think.

I do a couple of things for Evernote:

• I search for "Untitled note" - This will usually bring up a bunch of blank notes that had potential but just weren't meant to be. Nuke em!
• Switch to all notes view and sort by date. Go to the oldest and scroll up for a bit. This does two things, highlights any notes that may just need to be deleted and reminds you of possibly forgotten projects.
• Check folders from automation system and other apps. For example, I use Skitch a lot, skitch creates its own notebook so I go in there and clean that up. Do the same for any apps you use in conjunction with Evernote, like IFTTT, or Docusign, Zapier or even other Evernote apps.

A quick note in practicality. Evernote, like Gmail encourages you to save everything and just file stuff away without deleting stuff. For the most part that has worked out for Gmail quite well, and it works okay with Evernote but I still think it's good to do some housekeeping once in a while. Sometimes I just want to get rid of things, so this is how I do it on Evernote.

I think that's good for now, I will show you a little bit about files and a few other places where cleanup is needed on a regular basis, and at least for spring cleaning. It's funny how fast you can write 1,000 words about something you like. So if you liked this, let me know in the comments!

The post Digital Spring Cleaning appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

And As the days go by and time passes, your daily blogging drops to once a week, then once a month and next thing you know the last time you blogged was almost a year ago. Yikes! that's happened to many of us but it doesn't have to be that way. In a future blogpost, I'll tell you how to manage your time so you can blog consistently. I will show you what has worked for me and what hasn't. But this post is about the other side of blogging woes. Ideas on what to write about.

If I were a blogging snob, I'd probably ask you: Why'd you start a blog and then don't have anything to say? I thought you had a lot to say! But I'm not a blog snob, and in fact I want to help you get your blog up and running. But having been a blogger for almost a decade now, I know how it feels to be stuck. Many people will give you very practical advice, like write down a list of stuff, or set a schedule, or make it a habit, yadda yadda yadda, but many time that advice isn't what you need. Writer's block is based on the fear that what you will write won't be any good. First, don't worry about that. Write from your heart and use at least basic spelling and grammar rules and your writing will get better each time. But if you don't write... it will never improve. -- With that said, don't force it. Sometimes you just aren't meant to write at that particular time --  So here are some unusual tips to help you get through those dry spells.

Read lots of stuff. All the time, everywhere.

Read. You know that the best writers are readers first right? Maybe you didn't know but in order to be good at something, you have to practice the end result. So if you want to be good at writing, you must read other people's writings. This will help you hone in your style and language. It will show you how it's supposed to look and sound. In addition to finding your voice through the reading of other people, you'll also be inspired to write. It's one of those things where it builds upon itself.

If you read something good, you want to then go and write something good. Don't limit yourself, read anything and everything you can get your hands on. Magazines, classic books, new books, fiction, non-fiction, even brochures have sparked ideas on how to craft a title or develop my story. Most important of all, read other blogs. Remember? No man is an island! Reading will hone your writing skills, don't take it from me. Take it from one of the master writers of our time if you must...

Break the monotony and habits.

Do something completely different today. We often get into the monotony of our habits and it's very easy to fall into the comfort of them without realizing that this could be killing your creativity. Take a different road home, eat a new food, call an old friend. Skip your usual coffee shop and try the new one a couple blocks away. Make your lunch instead of eating out, or eat out if you always make your food. I know it doesn't sound like blogging advice, but I can't tell you how many times I've been inspired to write something because I did something different that day that sparked a new idea. To add to the previous tip, read something completely new or out of the norm for you.

Give your opinion or expert advice.

Respond to a question. You'll hear at least a dozen questions today. You'll hear it on the radio, on TV, at work, at the market. You may read them on a magazine. You can even click over to Quora and see what people are asking about. Digest those questions and answer them, on your blog. As a bonus to getting more readers to your blog, when you answer a question on your blog, try to let the source of the question know that you answered their question on your blog.

Encourage the various aspects of creativity.

Develop other creative outlets. Writing is one of many ways of expressing your thoughts, emotions, and outlook. Try going outside and taking some photographs, even with your phone. Or pull out a piece of paper and pen or pencil and doodle for a little while. If you're into art and actually can do some cool paintings or sketches like my buddy Sam Carter, then take a break from your blog for a day and work on that. Breaking the stress of writing by doing another creative activity will sort of refuel your writing juices, or you may just get inspired by something completely new.

After you've done some or all of the above, get to writing. If you're still stuck, try a few of these:

Brainstorm.

Take a piece of paper, or your notebook or your journal and just write down ideas for new posts. Look for topics within your previous writings, current events happening, or important dates coming up. Holidays and historic days are great ways to re-ignite your blogging because when you write about something that is known or expected, writing tends to flow more easily. Keep a running notebook for ideas when you have a brainstorming session. I use evernote, getpocket, and a couple other tools to remind me of ideas I've thought about and other inspiration I've found during brainstorming sessions.

Revive and old topic.

Browse through your old blogposts and see if there is one that could use an updated version or some expansion. If you don't have a lot of blogposts or you are just starting out, find some of your favorite blogposts by other people and use them as your topic. Write your own perspective on the topic. Respond, agree, or add more information to what they've said. I'm currently doing a mix of all this on Notagrouch and on Oscarstech.

If you're just not inspired to write, even though you have ideas, maybe begin a writing plan or editorial calendar. Actually, that is what I'm doing now, and it leads me to my next and final tip.

Set a writing plan in motion.

Create an editorial calendar and stick to it. An editorial calendar is a fancy way of saying to plan out the next few weeks, or months of writing. You can use Google Calendar, or any other calendar application you're comfortable with. You could even use excel. Write down the date of when you want to publish your next blogpost, write down the title for the blogpost and next to it or in the description (if using a calendar app) write down 3 to 5 key points or ideas you want to touch on when you write your blogpost. You could also use something like Evernote so you always have your ideas on the go and can update them, change them, or heck! even write a blogpost while you're waiting in line or dozing off in that boring accounting meeting. A WordPress Blog comes in really handy for this too. You can create these ideas as posts in advance and save them as drafts, then come back to develop them on your own schedule.

Practice time management.

Another way to help you with writer's block is to manage your time wisely. A blogpost should not take you more than 20 - 45 minutes to write and about 10 - 20 minutes to polish it up. Not counting research and resource gathering, the actual writing part should be fairly quick. I often know that I'm not ready to write a particular post if I've been stuck on the first paragraph or two for more than 30 minutes. That means that I still need to let it stew in my head some more, or I need to read more about the topic or find more resources to help me support or deny my viewpoints. I will elaborate more on this soon when I tell you how I actually write a blogpost from start to finish.

If these ideas aren't helping you, tell me, what is keeping you from writing? How can I help you blog better and more consistently?

The post Writer’s Block be Gone! 8 Unusual Tips for bloggers appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Use cases:
* Scan QR code and send info to your Chrome browser.
* As you are reading an article, you walk into your office and want to finish it on your desktop.

Ideally, you could choose different "profiles" or users to send it to, but directly to the browser. So if you need to send a website to someone, you could just send it directly to their Chrome browsing session.

Wouldn't that be cool and useful?

I guess a rudimentary way of doing this right now is with a web service, like readitlater or evernote or something like that. The only problem with that is the couple of additional steps of sending it to the service. Then typing in some description for it, and then retrieving the website when you get to the desktop.

Another way would be to have your browsers synchronized and save the article to a temporary bookmarks folder.

I guess I'll have to try this and see how it works.

The post Missing Mobile Android Apps appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The purpose of Tarpipe is similar to Yahoo Pipes. It takes a source of data and posts it to a location. The sources available right now are of two types, email or a REST API. If you don't know what a REST API is, don't worry its not very important yet. But it means that it could read information from other websites. The destinations in the other hand are greater in numbers and some of them include WordPress, Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, Evernote and many others.

Essentially, Tarpipe allows you to send an email to a special email address, and this action of sending an email can trigger a whole process which ends up posting the body of your email to your Blog, and then announce it on Twitter while saving it to Delicious at the same time... for example. Anyway, check out the video and let me know if you have any questions. I also have a second video ready which improves on this one and should be made available later on this weekend.

The follow up video is now published, you can watch it here.

The post Tarpipe, Learning by Example appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Speed is important when surfing the internet; studies show that people sometimes judge a website within three seconds of visiting and the timer starts running the moment they click on your page. However, speed isn't nearly everything that is hyped out to be. I believe Chrome will be a well rounded browser in the next few months and I have a feeling that it will be the dominant browser in the coming years. But it is not quite there yet.

Before we continue, What is your primary Browser? (select from the choices below).
[poll id="16"]

The main issue I found with Chrome is the lack of extensions, and within those extensions that do exist there is an overwhelming sense of disappointment with the limited functionality they give you.

If it isn't usable, then I don't care if its lightning fast. It is irrelevant if I can't do what I want to do on it.

Firefox has grown to be my favorite browser, for its speed, reliability and extendability. Speed of course isn't Firefox's forte, but if you strip it out of extensions then it can run with the big boys just as well. So it comes down to reliability and extendability. Reliability can easily be compromised by a bad plugin or extension; Chrome limits the way extensions access its resources to make itself more reliable and stable. I understand that Chrome has taken a secure approach to its development and this may be why extensions aren't able to do everything that they can do in Firefox.

No matter how you paint it, if I can't do something I need to do in the browser then it isn't usable, even if you make it go faster than Mach4. Lets go with extensions for now. In Chrome some extensions are missing altogether, a few exist with limited capabilites and there's a few that are just okay. Lets look at a few examples:

All in One Gestures. I use gestures to navigate around web. Its much faster than using the back or forward and reload buttons. I don't use gestures as much as I wish, but I use them enough to make me feel that without this, Chrome can't be my main browser. Gestures date back to early 2000.
Cooliris. Absolutely the best way to look at pictures for pleasure, especially if you have a nice monitor. This is great for Flickr, Facebook, and tons of other sites. Does not work on Chrome + Mac.
Colorzilla. Tells you the color code of anything on a website; very useful for web development.
MeasureIt. Measures anything on a website to give you its dimensions in pixels; very useful for web development.
Firebug. There's the developer kit for Chrome and maybe I have to get used to it a a little more, but it seems lacking when you compare it to Firebug.
Delicious. Incomplete, I can only save a bookmark, or go to my delicious inbox or my delicious bookmarks. I can't receive notifications from my network, or search for bookmarks on a sidebar without having to load the delicious website. Ugh.
Evernote Web Clipper. This is the extension for the awesome Evernote application. It hardly has any integration on Chrome making it almost unusable; taking a note on Chrome is weak compared to doing it in Firefox.
ScribeFire. A blogging client that kicks ass, nothing comparable for Chrome. Edit: There's an alpha version of this for Chrome now. ScribeFire beta for Chrome.
StumbeUpon. This is a big one for me, I'm the biggest SU fan I know and I use it daily. The extension for Chrome that currently exists is a lame. I don't mean it in a pop-culture kind of way, I really mean it is lame. It can't do anything that the proper extension can do. No searching, no browsing through stumblers, no stumblethru, etc. Sad indeed.
1Password. 1Password support in Chrome is there but its very basic and it doesn't even begin to compare to the integration available in Firefox, or even Safari. This isn't a huge problem for me anymore since I switched to Lastpass, but it is still a problem for thousands of users.

You also don't have extensions like WebDeveloper that allow you to quickly turn on or off certain options about a website, or resize the viewport to help you debug a webdesign.

As you can see, there's a lot of extensions and functionality that doesn't work in Chrome. Some of the extensions aren't being developed at all, some have a beta version but its limited. Some offer just basic bookmarklet type of functionality and frankly that just doesn't cut it. The list of extensions above are only a few from my personal list, I'm sure there are others users out there that feel the same way about their own list of must-have-extensions. We need to see more support for social networks and full integration between the addons and the services they interact with, e.g. Delicious, StumbleUpon.

If it was all about speed, I would have made Opera my main browser years ago, as it has been running circles around Safari, IE and Firefox for at least a few years. Google should have learned a lesson from Opera; Speed doesn't cut it, you need extensions and functionality.

Is this Google's fault? or the Developers of extensions? I think its mostly Google's fault for restricting how the browser is written against as far as extensions go. Will it get better? I certainly hope so and believe it will. The developers will find workarounds and hopefully bring us the same functionality to Chrome as they've done for Firefox. I can't wait to make Chrome my main browser, but its not there yet.

An interesting angle to look at is this: as more people migrate to Chrome I wonder if the developers of popular extensions for Firefox will also migrate to Chrome and eventually abandon Firefox's development. It seems that developing extensions for Chrome requires an entirely different approach than when developing for Firefox. Many of the extensions are put out by a team of one, so I doubt they'll have the resources to maintain yet another browser. I wonder if we'll see a departure from the free extensions we've grown accustomed to and see an exchange of money to get extensions developed.

The post Chrome is fast, but speed isn’t everything. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.