Today, 40Tech is pleased to present a guest post by Neil Jones.
My Father has a saying; if you’re paid by the hour, take your time. Sadly I’m not paid by the hour and I can’t afford to take my time. I guess I’m like most folks and every minute is precious – especially if you are in a job like mine where you are only paid on results, so the more you can get done in a day the better your wage will look at the end of the week. Automation and generally trying to increase your productivity throughout your working day is something that none of us can now overlook, and if any part of your job involves using the web, then, for a start, Firefox is a must .
Make no mistake Firefox will help you get more done, save time and generally help to remove or at least automate any mundane repetitive jobs you have to do. It can’t do it on its own though, it needs the help of these plugins:
Imacros: If you only ever add one plugin to Firefox then add this one, it can fill forms, auto-click buttons and do pretty much whatever else you need it to. I can’t stress enough how good this plugin is, but to help I’ll give you an example. The first thing that most people who own a website do when they sit down to start work is check their analytics for the previous day, I know it’s a little anal but I counted the amount of clicks and the time it takes, and you are talking between 4 and 5 clicks and 30 seconds to get to where you want to go. Imacros can do this for you while you go make a coffee. This is only one example of how this plugin helps and I know 30 seconds doesn’t sound like much, but they all add up!
Autocopy: As the name suggests this little plugin will automatically copy any highlighted text on a web page, with no longer a need for CTRL+C one hand is now freed to drink more coffee!
URL Fixer: If you’re a typo demon, this plugin will help you whenever you misspell a TLD ( Top Level Domain) like when you type .cm instead of .com. Maybe not a huge time saver but it definitely helps and saves on the number of clicks.
Adblockers: Though there are countless available they all do pretty much do the same thing, they prevent any flash banners or ads from being displayed, this saves on load time and it also removes any distractions from the page. GreaseMonkey in particular has some of the best adblockers.
For the addictive websites that you find you spend too much time on (mine is PassiveAggressiveNotes.com just can’t get enough) there are plugins that will either block the site completely during certain times (LeechBlock) or if you just want a friendly reminder of the amount of time you have spent on a certain site then use Procrastato. It can be scary to realize how much time can be wasted just on one site alone.
Following on from the idea of the addictive websites there are a couple of plugins that allow you to save a page so you can read when you have more time, the best is probably Read It Later. Essentially, it works in the same way as the bookmarking services but it’s quicker and stores the addresses locally.
Finally, Morning Coffee keeps track of the most visited sites on your browser, giving you quick and easy access to your most popular pages.
If you are looking for your working day to be revolutionized, where you will find yourself with all your work done and an hour to spare every evening, then maybe you are reading the wrong post (start looking for a Virtual Assistant…) but if you want things to work a little smoother, a little smarter, and a little faster, then any of these plugins are a pretty good place to start.
What are some of your favourite time saving plugins for your browser?
Is Google A Monopoly?
Today, 40Tech is pleased to present a guest post by Kosmo from The Soap Boxers.
It has been 14 short years since Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google. Since then, the company’s market value has skyrocketed to more than $150 billion and the company’s name has become a household word.
Photo by HarshLight
Like many successful companies, Google has decided to diversify rather than putting all of its eggs into the search engine basket. I personally use Google for:
That’s a half dozen tools that I use fairly frequently, and I’m not even a real “power user” – there are people who depend on Google products much more heavily. With Google having its hand in nearly every pie these days, have they grown into a monopoly that needs to be regulated or broken up?
They Could Put Me Out Of Business!
A friend of mine runs a successful blog and is concerned about the amount of power that Google has in the search engine space. A considerable amount of his traffic (and revenue) comes as a result of Google (as is the case for a great many bloggers). Changes in Google’s algorithms could result in his traffic being cut dramatically – costing him a considerable amount of advertising revenue.
While I can certainly empathize with my friend – since I also get a considerable chunk of traffic from Google – I happen to think that he (and others) are looking at this a bit backward. Who are the customers of Google’s search engine – the people searching, or the website owners? I see Google as the Lonely Planet guide to the internet – a travel guide to stops along the information superhighway. To take the analogy further, let’s say you own a restaurant that a popular travel guide reviews as a top choice for travelers. Suddenly, you’re booked solid and perhaps even think of opening a second location. Then, the next year, the travel guide doesn’t mention your restaurant at all – and traffic declines sharply. Can you be very upset at the publishers of the guide? Of course not – their job is to make the readers happy. Any benefit to you is incidental. It’s the same thing for Google – it’s nice if they drive traffic your way, but they don’t owe you anything.
Too Hard To Switch?
Is it too hard to switch from Google products, since they have their hand in everything? Earlier in this article, I mentioned that I use six Google products on a regular basis. How hard would it be for me to switch?
Search engine – If I wanted to switch to a different search engine, it’s pretty easy – just plug the URL of the search engine into my browser.
Email – I use Google’s mail servers for my own domain. Since these aren’t @Gmail.com addresses, I could switch by making a few changes to settings on my domain registrar’s site. I’ve done this before, and I can assure you that it’s not a very big deal. For Gmail addresses, this is more difficult, but that has always been the problem with email addresses – unless you own the domain, they generally aren’t portable. There are so many different providers of email service that it seems a bit silly to suggest that Google has undue influence in this market.
Advertising provider – I use Google’s Adsense program for the ads on my site. Google does have some competitors in this space, and I have experimented with a couple of them, and have always come back to Adsense (some of the competitors show ads that aren’t very relevant). I have a WordPress plug-in (WhoSeesAds from Ozh) insert the ad code on the fly. It would be child’s play to replace this code with something from Chitika or a different competitor.
Website Analytics – Google Analytics is one of three products that I use for analytics, and not the one that I rely on most heavily. I think it would be fair to say that I have already switched to WordPress Stats for most of my analytics.
RSS Reader – I really don’t need a lot of bells and whistles, so I don’t have much of a reason to switch to a different RSS reader. However, it seems that there is a standard called OPML that allows you to export information about your subscriptions and then import this information into a new reader.
Webmaster tools – Switching to a different provider would generally mean adding a small bit of code to my site.
In addition to being a user of these six Google products, I am also a former user of Blogger. I made the switch to WordPress back in April of 2009, at the urging of a friend who declared WordPress to be superior. I was able to easily import all of my old articles from Blogger to WordPress in a matter of minutes.
Unreasonable Barriers To Entry?
One characteristic of a monopoly is that their actions cause unreasonable barriers to entry into the market. Certainly, companies wishing to compete against Google have an uphill battle. However, it’s important to note the different between a high barrier to entry and an unreasonable one. There are many industries in which new companies face difficult barriers to entry. If I wanted to start a car company, it would be extremely expensive and quite difficult to succeed – but I can’t honestly say that Ford, Toyota, Honda, Mercedes Benz, or Porsche have a monopoly.
I even question exactly how high the barriers are. Bill Gates famously said that a kid in a garage could put him out of business. This could happen to any number of Google’s businesses as well. If someone is able to find a way to charge advertisers less than Adsense does while paying web site owners more, that would be a sustainable advantage that could be used to drive Adsense out of business. It is unlikely that any one company could completely put Google out of business, but that’s the whole point of diversification – and not the mark of a monopoly.