To be honest, there’s a real workaround out there that you can install with the Greasemonkey Firefox extension, but this is a quick trick if you are on the go, or don’t have the time to deal with the install just yet. I found this down and dirty method when I wanted to reply to a client’s email with some links to show them some examples of social networking in action.

Step 1: In your Webmail account, go to your Settings folder and select Compose. Then,create your webmail signature with interactive links in the compose window and save the changes.
My Doteasy webmail Settings>Compose window
Tip: Make those links as user-friendly as possible. Luckily my Doteasy webmail GUI lets me include tooltips in a link. That way people will have some idea of what they are going to see when they click the link.
Step 2: Go to your webmail mailbox and send a message to your Gmail account with that new signature.
Step 3: Go to your Gmail account and open up the message you just sent and give it a test drive.
Step 4: Now you can keep that message handy and copy and paste your signature from there when you want to include it in a Gmail message. When you want to include that signature, simply view that message with your signature, highlight the signature and then copy and paste it into the new message.
Please Note: This only works if you launch Gmail in its own window. (top left corner of inbox window;”Launch Full Gmail”)
Easy!
Signature from webmail email copied and pasted into new Gmail message.

 

So you want to include a link in your WordPress or Blogger site, but the usual link color won’t do? There’s an easy way to color your links with inline styling! Since this takes advantage of the cascade function in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), it’s a great way to add extra spice to a link you want your readers to really notice.

Continue reading »

 

One thing I’ve noticed about a lot of free stuff on the web is that the administrators like to just throw you in there with a shrug as if to say: “Go figure it out for yourself, it’s free isn’t it?”. I respect that. It takes tons of BS&T to start any sort of web service and since every tweener on the block seems to be trying to do it, I have that much more respect for services that actually succeed. So, as I’ve been adding friends, checking out walls and sending messages back and forth, some things are making me wonder. What is a “poke” and why would I want to use it? What’s the deal with “Boxes“?

Originally I wanted to do a Glossary, but A: That takes a lot of time, time I could spending on Facebook! B: It’s a fairly fastmoving service, so I’d run the risk of dating myself (and I don’t mean in a fun way) and C: Why tread where others have obviously tread before?

So…here are some links to fairly good guides to Facebook. Enjoy, and let me know if you’ve found some good guides you’d like to share!

CNET: Newbie’s Guide to Facebook

Techsoup’s Beginner’s Guide (with bonus screenshots!)

AllFacebook’s Guide to Page Tabs: Find out what Boxes and Notes are all about

Web Worker Daily’s 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally: Good no-fluff, no hype tips for using Facebook to its fullest.

And, for fun, check out Sugarrae’s Unofficial Guide

 

We’re all familiar with the SEO mantra “ranking is determined in part by the number of pages that link back to your site.” While that is a big slice of the magic pie of good search results rankings, it is a concept that leaves many people wondering how all those wonderful links are created. Plenty of companies are poised to pounce on your money with their promise of acquiring links by the bushel for you, but do you really need to spend any money at all? Continue reading »

 


Whether you’ve been to a business meeting or dinner with your teenaged niece, chances are high that you’ve heard at least 200 references to social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn. And, if you’re like me, after hearing those names about 199 times you started to get curious about what those sites are about. For a while I used the excuse that I was too busy actually working to spend time tracking tweets and updating my online “mood” of the moment. Continue reading »

 

My latest project has been one of those things where you say “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can do that.” only to end up thrashing around on Google and in various forums, trying every keyword combination possible to make WordPress do something that you thought would be fairly simple. Continue reading »

May 232008
 

So I had an interesting synchronization happen last month. I met with a parenting group in Salem about possibly helping them put together a new web site and the site’s administrator asked me if I thought WordPress MU would be a good solution for handling the group discussion feature. I had to ask him to explain what it was, and it sounded interesting, but kind of overkill for something that could probably be handled by comment moderation in WordPress.

But the idea of using multiple blogs on one site was interesting and I thought it might work for another client who wanted to build a web site around the idea of one umbrella corporation and three companies under that corporation. Continue reading »

 

The Stockexpert site is one of that rarest of breeds, a free photo website that is actually free! Well, some of their best photos are only available via their credit system, but it is clearly explained and they tell you right on the 1st pop-up window how much each photo is at each resolution. Having spent the good part of a rainy Saturday afternoon slogging through about 6 stock photo websites, this site was tops for selection, pricing (majority of pay-for-use images $1) and ease of use.

 

Since I’m currently working on 3 different sites that require working with Google’s map feature, I’ve had a chance to find a few quirks in their map interface. Continue reading »

 

It seems like it should be easy enough. Your client wants to put a few ads for local businesses into the sidebar of their site. So you upload an image for the ad into your “images” folder, open up your “sidebar.php” file, find out where you want the ad to show up, write some html and Voila! Hey, wait a minute, there’s no image, just the “alt” tag showing through. What up?
Continue reading »