Guidelines For PR Professionals Who Pitch Bloggers

PR professionals often approach bloggers, with decent readership, to talk about the products and services of their clients.

Though most bloggers would love to read PR-pitches about products that are closely related to their niche, irrelevant pitching is always ignored and sometimes met with great frustration.

To save from this frustration, Ogilvy PR team (in consultation with external bloggers) have drafted a "Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics" document that outlines certain essential guidelines for public relations professionals who pitch bloggers. Some excerpts:

1. Before we email you, we will check out your blog’s About, Contact and Advertising page in an effort to see if you have blatantly said you would not like to be contacted by PR/Marketing companies. If so, we’ll leave you alone.

2. If you are initially interested in the campaign, but don’t respond to one of our emails, we will follow up with you no more than once. If you don’t respond to us at all, we’ll leave you alone.

3. We won’t pretend to have read your blog if we haven’t, and we’ll make a best effort to spend time reading the blogs we plan on contacting.

4. If we ask you to review a product and, therefore, provide you with the product to enable you to “experience” it, we will ask that you be transparent and reveal that you have been given the product temporarily, or permanently.

5. If we reach out to you with news about a product, campaign or issue, we will not provide monetary compensation, because we believe it is unethical to “buy” favorable reviews and not want to appear as if we are.

You can get the full version of Blogger Outreach code of ethics document from Ogilvy's blog. It's a must-read for all PR companies and marketing professionals who want to maintain a good relationship with bloggers.

Adobe Office Gets A Word Processor, Outlook the Next Target ?

Adobe officially entered the web-office space by acquiring Buzzword, a word processor that works inside the web browser (like Google Docs or Zoho Writer). Other than creating documents from scratch, Buzzword can also import your existing Microsoft Word .doc files.

Buzzword is done in Adobe Flex, the same technology that powers Picnik, the popular online image editor.

 

Now that Adobe has a word processor, what could be next logical addition to their productivity suite?

Adobe Ventures recently made an investment in Scrybe, an online organizer that's a perfect blend of Microsoft Outlook and Google Notebook. Scrybe (video demo below) allows you to store notes and web clipping, manage TODO lists, calendars and more inside the web browser.

And like Buzzword, Scrybe looks beautiful, intuitive and extremely impressive. Do not be very surprised if Scrybe becomes the next member of Adobe Office Suite. The icing is that Scrybe already works both in online and offline mode.

Move Draft Posts Written in Windows Live Writer Across Computers

Here's are simple tips for bloggers who work on multiple computers and use Windows Live Writer to compose and publish blog posts.

Problem: If you write a blog post in WLW on computer A and save it as a local draft, how to you access that unpublished post from another computer ?

Solution: You have two options here - the first is to use "Post Draft In Weblog" (available under "Save Draft") - WLW will put the post online though in Draft, i.e. it won't be available to your blog readers.

The approach is recommended if you just have a handful of drafts written in Windows Live Writer.

But if you tons of unpublished posts or if you are planning to move to a new PC altogether and transfer all the drafts from this computer to the new one, an easy option is "My Documents".

Windows Live Writer creates a "My Weblog Posts" folder under "My Documents" which has two sub-folders - Drafts containing all the unpublished posts while Recent Posts has all the posts you have ever published through Windows Live Writer.

You can also clear the Recent Posts folder to reclaim hard drive space.

Just a word of caution, these .wpost files are binary and you read or edit them only with Windows Live Writer.

Additional Windows Live Writer reading:

Windows Live Writer Tips & Tricks
Windows Live Writer Guide for Power Bloggers 
Useful Windows Live Writer Plugins

A Standalone FLV Player For Watching Flash Videos on the Desktop

If you download streaming video content from the web (like YouTube videos, CNN news clips, etc), chances are that you have piled up tons of Flash Video (flv) files on your desktop.

Unfortunately, these FLV files cannot play directly inside the web browser or the standalone Flash Player and you need to download an additional software like RIVA in order to watch the FLV videos.

But the future of these third-party FLV players may be in trouble as Adobe has just introduced an all-new Adobe Media Player that can play FLV videos - you can drag and drop the FLV video file over the Adobe Media Player and the video will be begin to play instantly. The videos can also be viewed in Full Screen Mode.

Get Adobe Media Player installer here. Release Notes in PDF are available here.

Everything else you wanted to know about Adobe Media Player {FAQ}

The FLV files are associated with Adobe Media Player so you can even double-click the FLV file on your hard-drive to play it in Adobe Media Player.

This is a pre-release version and does not support H.264 encoded videos. Only Flash video encoded in Flash 8 [On2 VP6] and Sorenson Spark and H.263 can currently be played in Adobe Media Player.

Getting Things Done Wallpapers for Desktop and Mobile Phones

Love GTD? Make that your desktop or mobile phone background so you always remember the core principles of GTD.

Stefanos Karagos has created some beautiful wallpapers for fans of David Allen's Getting Things Done workflow. They are available for the desktop or the iphone here.

  

Some more motivational desktop backgrounds by Stefanos are available here.

The wallpapers are done in MindManager, Photoshop and PowerPoint. If you have a copy of MindManager, you can download the mindmap version here.

Related: Download Windows Vista Wallpapers

For Start-Ups Who Want Some Positive Review on TechCrunch

It's a fact that a review on TechCrunch can really make or break Web 2.0 startups.

To win a positive (or even neutral) review on TechCrunch, you just don't need to build a solid product, you should also pray to God that TechCrunch editor Mike Arrington is in some good mood while he's blogging about you.

Here's what Mike told PC Magazine recently - "sometimes I wake up and I'm in a pissed off mood and I trash a company. You're never going to do that when you have an editorial process. And while maybe that's unfair to the company, it adds a little bit of color and flavor to what we do, which I think engages the readers so far. "

TechCrunch is no doubt an influential online publication but it's still very much a personal blog.

PC Magazine [via apscout] Picture Credit: Chesh

Firefox Running Slow? Make It Fast Again Without Re-Installation

Firefox is your favorite browser but, over time, it keeps getting slower and slower. Not only can it get slow, Firefox may sometimes hangs for no reason, consumes a large amount of memory and CPU usage can climb to 90% or more when you have multiple tabs open in the browser.

You have uninstalled most of the extensions and toolbars, deleted all the cookies and internet temporary files, cleared up the file download queue and disabled the background check for software updates - but none of this has helped you speed-up Firefox.

This is a common problem especially if you have been running the Firefox program on your computer for some time - I don't know why Firefox slows down but here's a small trick to rejuvenate the aged copy of Firefox without doing a fresh install.

1. Start Firefox and export your bookmarks as a file on your hard-drive (we'll need them later).
2. Type firefox.exe -P in the Run box of Windows.
3. Click the Create Profile button without making any modifications to your existing profile (which is normally called "default")

Now when you Start Firefox in the new profile, you are very likely to be impressed with the speed. You can import the bookmarks that you saved in Step 1. If you have made any changes to the Firefox Dictionary, copy the persdict.dat word list file from the old profile folder to the new one.

Yes, there won't be any old Firefox add-ons in the new profile but the browser will be extremely quick and won't hog the CPU - just the way you want Firefox to run on your computer.

And if you ever need to revert to the old profile, just type Firefox -P again and click the old profile. Nothing is lost.

Add Picture Frames to Your Digital Photos Online

flauntR is a new web based image editor - extremely fast and works in the browser. It's layout looks no different from any desktop based software.

While the basic image editing features in FlauntR are no different from other online image editing tools, what impressed the most are the variety of photo frames, textures and light effects that you can apply to digital images in a click.

These small but very creative effects suddenly make your boring photos look very interesting.

Update: Flauntr is no longer available but you can use Photoshop Express.

Tumblr Bookmarklet for WordPress Blogs; Post Stuff Quickly

Tumblr is probably the easiest and fastest way to publish blog posts online - select anything on the current web page (be it text, video or pictures) and they will be on your Tumblelog almost instantly via the Tumblr Instant Post Bookmarklet.

Unfortunately, that quick posting bookmarklet can only be used for publishing on Tumblr.com - there's no way to integrate Tumblr with your existing WordPress or Blogger Blog.

However, here's some good news for WordPress bloggers - there's a new Tumblr inspired bookmarklet for WordPress that allows you to quickly post photos, videos and blocks of text from web pages to your WordPress blog just like Tumblr. See Screenshot:

You install the Tumblr Quick Post plugin like any other WordPress plugin and it will provide you a bookmarklet that you can add to the browser toolbar.

When you click the Quickpost bookmarklet from any web site, a new window will pop up. The URL of the page you're on, linked with the title of the page, will automatically be transferred to the editor in that window. You can do almost everything you do with the default editor of WordPress and create a new post for your blog.

The only issue is that if you tumblelog a photo on the web, this Quick Post plugin will hotlink to that image - that's different behavior from Tumblr where a copy of the image is uploaded to your Tumblr account.

QuickPost | Developer Home

Google Warez Search Engine

It takes lot of effort for websites to rank high in Google web search results - you require lot of incoming links, unique content, good reputation and sometimes a decent PageRank as well.

However, warez sites (that illegally distribute pirated software) seem to have discovered a way to trick Google.

Do a search for "adobe cs3 master collection" on Google.com and you'll be so much surprised to know that five out the top ten results on the first page are linking to underground sites. (enlarge the screenshot)

Other than Amazon and CNET, none of the reputable websites that review Adobe software in detail (like PC World, PC Magazine, Photoshop User or Adobe Labs) have managed to score a place on the first page of Google courtesy these warez websites.

And Adobe Creative Suite 3 is probably one of the best selling software - you can easily guess that by looking at the density of Adsense Ads on the search page.

Google may not be the next Baidu but they quickly need to get rid of this spam which is dangerous both for the general visitors and the software companies.

Related: Downloads Adobe CS3 Wallpapers

Record Skype Calls and SkypeCasts with Skype Recorder

Skype Recorder is a simple tool for recording podcast interviews, skypecasts and voice calls made through Skype as MP3 or Windows Media audio files.

Skype Recorder will start the recording by itself as soon as you start talking on Skype. Once the conversation is over, Skype Recorder will encode the audio recording to your preferred audio format.

It has an in-built audio player, so you can replay your Skype recording immediately and decide whether you want to keep it or just delete it.

Skype Recorder is Windows only and costs ~$14 but you can have it for free in the next 24 hours via GiveAway website here.

Our favorite pick is still Pamela Skype Recorder though the free version will let you record Skype and SkypeOut phone calls upto 15 minutes.

Record Skype Calls - This has more details options for recording skype audio and video conversations.

Add A Picture To Your LinkedIn Profile; Help People Recognize You

Your work colleagues, old classmates and friends will now have no problems finding you on LinkedIn even if there exist a dozen profiles with the same name as yours.

Starting tomorrow, LinkedIn members will be able to upload a photograph to their profiles. You can control if the photos become visible in your public profile page or just your approved connections can see the picture. Thanks Adam.

Click here to connect with me on LinkedIn.

Fix for Excel 2007 Calculation Error

If you are an Excel 2007 user, try this:

Type =77.1*850 in any cell and press Enter. Excel 2007 would return a value of 100,000 instead of 65,535.
Any combination of numbers that should calculate to 65535 will show 100000 in Excel 2007.

Excel Team says the issue is actually not in the calculation itself (the result of the calculation stored in Excel’s memory is correct), but only in the result that is shown in the sheet. 

Said another way, =850*77.1 will display an incorrect value, but if you then multiply the result by 2, you will get the correct answer (i.e. if A1 contains “=850*77.1”, and A2 contains “=A1*2”, A2 will return the correct answer of 131,070).

I am not sure if that's correct because when I type =B1+1 in the cell C1, I get 100001 and not 65536 as per the official explanation.

Anyway, David Gainer confirmed that this bug was introduced in the Excel 2007 version and a fix for the calculation issue would be available on Microsoft Download Center very soon. It's already under testing.

Fix Blogger Sitemap XML Warnings Inside Google Webmaster

Though you can easily redirect Blogger Feeds to FeedBurner now, this has a side effect - you will see some warnings when you submit the Sitemaps file (xxx.blogspot.com/atom.xml) to Google Webmaster Tools. (see screenshot)

The following Sitemap warning messages are shown in the Google WebMaster Tools control when using Blogger feeds with FeedBurner:

Line: 2 Invalid XML: too many tags - Too many tags describing this tag.
Line: 2 Incorrect namespace - Your Sitemap or Sitemap index file doesn't properly declare the namespace.

It's like a catch 22 situation - you submit the blogger generated atom.xml file to Google Sitemaps but it's redirected to the FeedBurner feed and that causes invalid XML errors.

Fortunately there's a simple fix - just delete the existing sitemap and submit a new web sitemap that has the following URL:

http://xxx.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false [replace xxx with your blog name]

The secret redirect parameter in blogger feeds will offer you the best of both worlds. You XML Feeds will still be redirected to FeedBurner but for Google Sitemaps, the redirection won't happen at all.

Here's the webmaster console with the new sitemap URL - no warnings anymore though the feed format has changed from RSS to ATOM (that should not bother you).

You can find solutions to most of your FeedBurner problems in our FeedBurner FAQ Guide.

[Fix] Microsoft Office Contacting Server For Information

When you try to copy paste some text from a web page to a Word 2007 document, the application freezes for few seconds and the message in status bar says "Contacting the server for Information. Press ESC to cancel."

This annoying behavior, also present in Outlook 2007 and other Office programs, mostly occurs when the clipboard has HTML formatted content (like when you copy content from a website to the clipboard).

Would anyone know how to get rid of this permanent? Which server is Office 2007 trying to connect when you working in a local environment outside any network.

One of the possible solutions is to do a "Paste Special" (click the down pointing arrow near the Paste Icon) and select "Unformatted Text" instead of the default "HTML format". Or you could have the Scrubber running in the tray that auto converts clipboard text in plain format.

Favorite Microsoft Office Command - Format Painter

Closed An IE Browser Tab By Mistake? Get It Back Easily

If you accidentally close a tab in Firefox, you can easily retrieve it by pressing Ctrl+Shift+T.

If you do the same mistake in Opera, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Z will help you reopen the most recently closed tab. Or click the Trash icon near the toolbar to see a list of closed tabs arranged in reverse chronological order.

Coming to Internet Explorer, there's no inbuilt feature to restore closed tabs but there's a free add-in called IE7 Open Last Closed Tab that makes your IE 7 behave just like Firefox or Opera.

You can click Alt+X in IE and it will open up the most recently closed tab - the add-in is worth installing because you never know when you may need it. Available at Download.com

Related: Recover Websites if IE Hangs | Add IE 7 Quick Tabs in Firefox

A Convenient Case For All Your Memory Cards

If you carry multiple Flash memory cards of different formats, the Elecom card reader is a perfect thing for you.

Elecom MR-C12 series has numerous slots for housing a variety of Flash memory cards that may be from your mobile phone, PDA, digital camera or other devices.

As in the figure, the card reader attaches to the computer via USB port so you don't have to worry about slipping the SD Card in the Compact Flash slot or vice versa.

More details on Elecom website. It's currently available only in Japan but others can grab the Kingston MobileLite which is similar though not so sleek as the Elecom thing. Thanks GBM.

Winners of Screencasting Software Give Away!

Thank you everyone who participated in the software giveaway! - We received 112 responses and deciding the winners was no easy job.

Here’s the list of five winners in no particular order - each of them gets a full licensed version of ALLCapture 2.0 screencasting software from Balesio.

Congratulations and do stay tuned for more such events in the future.

Announcing Winners of Screencasting Software Give Away!

Automatically Download Satellite Images from Google Maps

Google Maps Image Downloader is a Windows-only tool that lets you auto download satellite images from Google Maps between two locations anywhere in the world.

To use Google Maps Image Downloader, you will first need to specify the latitude and longitude of the two locations on the Google Map, then specify the zoom level and click download.

The software also comes with an image stitching tool that will create a large panorama or a wallpaper by stitching these individual tile images of Google Maps.

See how to find the latitude and longitude of any location on Google Map.

The free version of Google Images Downloader is limited to a maximum zoom level of 13 so you'll probably miss the high resolution satellite imagery of Google Maps.

Invest $25 bucks only if you're sure that Google Maps Image Downloader isn't violating any of Google Maps policies especially the one that says - "you may not use Google Maps in a manner which gives you or any other person access to mass downloads or bulk feeds of numerical latitude and longitude coordinates."

Update: The creator has removed the tool.

Embed Flickr Photostreams in Web Pages as a Flash Slideshow

Want to display Flicks photos in web pages as a Flash slideshow? Look no further than PictoBrowser.

Here's a sample Flickr Photo slideshow generated just using PictoBrowser - all the pictures are displayed as thumbnail images in the lower navigation bar, you can also read the descriptions of individual images by hovering the mouse over the thumbnail.

To get started, you type your (or someone else's) Flickr user name and then select the tags or photo sets that you would like to embed in web pages. The default dimensions of the Flash slideshow is 500x580 but you are free to customize that as in the case above.

It's so good and impressive that Yahoo! should consider making PictoBrowser a native feature of Flickr. For geeks, there's another method for creating Flickr Slideshows.

Related: Flickr Photo URLs Demystified