The new and improved ScribeFire
I love Firefox.
I have plenty of other browsers installed, some are good, some less so… but I’ve never found anything to coax me away from Firefox.
Believe or not though, this post isn’t about why I love firefox, but rather it’s addon capabilities.
There are a lot of smart folks who have produced a lot of smart addons that make my day to day life easier and more productive. (I’m sure most of those smart folks don’t read this blog, but if you do, THANK YOU!)
Specifically, the reason for my little ode to Firefox came about because I just installed the new version of ScribeFire.
I used to use ScribeFire back when it was called Performance or Performancing and for one reason or another stopped (I honestly can’t remember why). But I came across news on the newest release today and reinstalled it… and what a treat!
ScribeFire is a Firefox addon that provides you with full posting capabilities from any webpage.
Once you’ve set it up to talk with your blog (took about 15 seconds) you can create posts/notes/drafts/pages from anywhere! No more copy and pasting from one tab or window to another!
And the ScribeFire WYSIWYG is significantly better than any built in blog editor I’ve used before.
Other features from ScribeFire:
…categorize and tag your blog posts, upload images, set the timestamp of your posts, save works-in-progress as notes, post an entry as a draft, share your posts on social websites, and upload files via FTP.
You can also open multiple posts in ScribeFire at the same time, copy text from a website and preserve the sites formatting, copy text as a quote with attribution, supports common keyboard shortcuts, call up old posts in the ScribeFire interface, flip between code and design views, pull in images or video from flickr or youtube instantly and even promote your post via several social bookmarking sites right from the interface.
I love the fact that ScribeFire is tabbed and isn’t locked to the page you are on, so you can do some research, opening each source in a different tab, and then open ScribeFire and flip back and forth between all your sources, pulling what you need without interrupting your blogging interface!
A couple of funny things I did notice already (hey, nothing’s perfect right!?)…
- Some tags, like heading tags, are absent from the interface and you will need to code them directly (not a huge deal).
- If you accidentally use the wrong formatting somewhere, clicking the same button doesn’t UNDO it, you have to flip over to code view and delete the associated tags
All said this is a great addition to Firefox for any blogger and I heartily recommend giving it a try (I’ve only been using for 1/2 an hour and look what I have to say!)
This is the best lifehack/workhack tool I’ve tried out in a long time!
On another note…
I read an interesting article on China today that claimed two intriguing things (neither of which I’ve spent the time to try and validate… but they sound good!):
1. If the entire population of China were to walk past you in single file, the line would never end (due to the rate of reproduction).
2. There are more English speaking people in China than in all of North America.
Firefox is the #1 Browser
I was just glancing through some of the analytics for this domain (MichaelValiant.com) and noticed that Firefox has taken over as the number one browser being used by visitors.
And firefox didn’t just slide ahead, it blew by IE usage!
So either Firefox is taking a huge market share nowadays (and I love the new betas of 3 (other than the fact that my plugins don’t work)! So keep it up FF!) or I am attracting more and more of the geeky side of the interwebs. 
Either way, Firefox rocks this blog!
Comic Interlude
I’ve never seen this comic before, but it’s definitely getting added to my del.icio.us account!
I suppose you could call this stopping-the-conversation-dead conversation building!
What can you really get for a dollar?
Apparently you can gain access to the video recordings and take-aways of Matt Bacak’s previously (very) expensive seminars.
I think I’ll pay my buck just to see what he has to offer, although there is very little any of the Internet Marketing ‘gurus’ have to say that suprises me anymore.
That being said, I met Matt last fall down in Georgia and have to say he was refreshingly down to earth and I enjoyed hearing about his process at the time. That and the fact that all monies are apparently being forwarded on to Habitat for Humanity are good enough reasons for me to part with my dollar.
I am curious though what Matt’s affiliates are gaining from this. I’ve received email from a number of different marketers regarding the event, and some of them are offering various perks for using their link. Not a new tactic of course, I suppose it just proves that the list rules!
Anyway, I’ll offer some kind of review once I’ve had a look through, so stay tuned, or go pick it up yourself here.
The Dao of Twitter
I almost titled this post: “How I hate Mondays” but Twitter came to my rescue and what started as an idle search actually ended up making me feel a little better about the beginning of the week!
This all started off with a headache on a Monday morning… here’s a personal confession for you: I hate Mondays. Not JUST because it’s Monday or because I don’t like my job or most of the typically cited reasons… actually, my hatred also extends to the first day back to work after more than 2 days off; there are a few reasons I hate Mondays, but lets just leave it at the fact that I love spending time with my family so hate to see the end of the weekend
So here we are on another Monday and I thought I’d try and make myself feel a little better by checking out the TwitterSphere to see if there was anyone else down on the Mondays. And I have to say, I was surprised to discover how much hate there actually was floating around so early in the week… Here is a small selection of the Monday hate notes that jumped out at me (Names withheld to protect the innocent haters):
I hate Mondays.
Ugh I really hate Mondays,
I think I hate Classmates.com
I hate her “food” and I use the term loosely
I hate money
I hate getting my oil changed
RAWRRR I HATE SCHOOL
I HATE the internet
I HATE sport
I hate most musicals. TALK OR SING. I hate sing-talk
I hate all things Adobe
I hate insurance companies
I hate stupid people
Did I mention I hate this airport? No? Well, I hate this airport
I hate job hunting
Switzerland… Crap. I hate going there…
argh! i hate flickr
I hate it when you open a foiltop yogurt and it spatters you
I hate buses
Now, I’m a big believer in Karma and Vipaka, what goes around comes around, do unto others… etc, etc, etc. Whatever your nationality, the colour of your skin or your religious beliefs, it’s been my experience that you’ve likely heard some variation of this…
Basically, <sidetrack warning> we humans generally know that it’s a pretty good idea to conduct ourselves in a moral and positive manner. (unfortunately for too many people, daily life gets in the way and we tend to react instead of acting)</sidetrack>
Where I’m (eventually) going is that reading this list of Monday morning hatred actually made me feel more down than when I started (although there were some, like “I hate sweating”, that DID make me laugh), and I figured that the Universal Karma of Twitter couldn’t let this list go unanswered; Twitter, by the very laws of the universe, must balance itself out in someway…
so I did another search and found that I was right, the Twitterverse has balanced itself out:
| The ‘I Hates’ | The ‘I Loves’ |
| Switzerland… Crap. I hate going there… | I Love NYC. or (runner up: ‘Dear Canada: I love you and your wonderfulness’) |
| RAWRRR I HATE SCHOOL. | I love this school thing. |
| I hate all things Adobe. | I love InDesign |
| I hate it when you open a foiltop yogurt and it spatters you. | <who can refute that!?> |
| I hate her “food” and I use the term loosely | I love linguine al pesto and pasta fagioli. |
| Did I mention I hate this airport? No? Well, I hate this airport. | I love flying Jet Blue |
| I hate getting my oil changed. | I love it that the place I get my oil change is next door to the bakery. Bear claws for bfast! |
| argh! i hate flickr. | I love the pics you used in your latest post! |
| I HATE the internet. | God I love the Internet. |
| I HATE sports. | I love Kickball… |
| I hate most musicals. TALK OR SING. I hate sing-talk. | I love My Fair Lady! |
| I hate money. | I love money |
| I hate job hunting | I love job postings that are unintentionally accurate: |
| I hate insurance companies | |
| I think I hate Classmates.com | i love woot. |
| i hate stupid people | I love when people are hella stupid. (I know… doesn’t exactly refute the hate… but funny) |
| I hate buses, | I love the transit. thats how I plan my bus rides. |
| I hate Mondays. | <wait for it> |
| Ugh I really hate Mondays, | I love Mondays… Fresh start. Fresh Perspective. |
This made me feel much better… The Dao of Twitter has taken care of itself this Monday morning. And I hope there is a small lesson in this for everyone… Always look on the bright side of life (I can’t even TYPE that without hearing the Monty Python song!)
I also want to say thanks to jacoutofthebox for the ‘I love Mondays’ quote. Fresh start, Fresh Perspective. I like it and will be making an attempt to start loving Mondays a little more.
Do you have a good reason to love/hate mondays too?
