The Helpful Web

After I switched to dark mode on almost every app and gadget I never went back. My devices last longer on battery and my eyes get less sore. It just took a few days to get used to. Started with dark mode in Windows settings, which makes apps borders and menus darker. In Windows 11 it can be found under Settings - Personalization - Colors A dark mode button on websites is becoming more common and I use it whenever I see it. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and many other apps have dark mode in the settings.  I installed an extension for Chrome that can 'Dark Mode' websites that don't have the button. It works well on most sites by changing the CSS background to black and text to white, either on-demand or automatically with a click.

Instead of installing apps and extensions just use bookmarklets. How to install: Make a folder called Share on the bookmarks bar, and drag/drop these bookmarklets into it (one by one): Pin It Tweet it to Facebook WordPress This Reddit Share on Tumblr Add to Listly Share on Mix Flip it Pocket Rebelmouse Or just drag them to your bookmarks bar or any folder you wish. Now you can easily share to your favorite social network with just two clicks.

Maintaining an e-mail list or newsletter is an important tool for marketing, and staying in touch with your customers or fanbase. There are many ways you can offer email subscription button on your website, using custom input forms, or one of the services listed below. Feedburner This useful Google tool can be used to create a simple email subscription box. You can also set up automatic email feeds from your rss or website. Or download your email list as a text file to send newsletters manually, or from another service. MailChimp

Some more tips for Google Chrome. Using bookmarklets to share a page to social media (pinterest,twitter,etc.) saves you the pain of having to install an app. "How to use bookmarklets" Bookmarking things in a "read later" folder: When I'm on a Website I'd like to Read Later I Bookmark it into a folder  Easy in Chrome  – Two ways to Fave a Page: Click the Star in the Address Bar — Select a folder. Or just drag the Secure Site Icon straight to your Desktop, into a Folder, or to your Bookmarks Bar — it makes a shortcut to the page you are reading. https secure site icon The only problem is my Read Later folder was filling up faster than I could possibly read (even with a speed-reader).

MISTAKE #1. NOT MY MISTAKE Although we have had a lot of guest writers over the years, I'm the only main writer, editor, and designer, with limited time for the tech related issues of the blog. The blog has sort of bounced back from being stolen and spammed, and someone copied all of our articles. I also did not have time to keep up with Panda SEO updates and the other stuff to keep the blog up to date in search engines. MISTAKE #2. NETWORKING IN THE WRONG NICHE Read more:  Tube Blogger - Learn to blog from tubeblogger's mistakes

Creating a buzz for your brand can be difficult without spending any money. A few days ago I wrote about Branding Yourself and how important it is to own your brand name across social networks. Today we will talk about how to find and cover the most engaging topics. Become an expert in your niche. Keep up with the topics in your category. Connect yourself with Klout to measure your influence. Add the topics in your niche to your profile and Klout gives you the latest insights and stories in your topic. Share some of the news daily (better yet write your own article, video, or headlines about it). Subscribe to some leaders in your topics, or a mailing list such as SmartBrief to get stories early and see what others are writing about. Another good tip I got a long time ago (though I often forget to follow it) is to focus on one social network at a time. With a service such as Hootsuite you can easily posts a message to several networks at once, but there is a limit to how m...

Some tips for building a photography portfolio. Did you know you can make money off your pictures? I recommend using Flickr where you can easily change the settings and tags on multiple pictures and albums at once. Summary: Creating an Album on Flickr with your Stock Photography (Images people can use for free). Another album for your professional photos. Using descriptive tags and captions to help people find your images and albums. Understanding Creative Commons

Own your Brand Name on Social Networks. Sites such as Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and perhaps YouTube can be important for your brand. This is perhaps more important than having a custom web address, because these social networks are free, and last forever (or as long as the company lasts). As long as you own your brand name on social media then even if your web address expires and someone else buys it, you still control your brand on all networks, and you might keep most of your followers.

One of my favorite websites is Lifehacker, learn something new every day. Favorite book "A Short History of Nearly Everything" Favorite YouTube Channels for learning new things: SciShow, Numberphile, VSauce Read Jeevan Jacob John 's answer to What are the best YouTube channels for learning, growth and development? on Quora

Turn any YouTube video into a GIF by just adding 'gif' to the URL

Steganography is the ancient practice of stashing secret text, images, or messages inside a different text, image, or message. It dates back to as early as the fifth century BC, when Spartan King Demaratus removed the wax from a writing tablet and wrote a message hidden on the wood underneath  warning of an imminent invasion by Xerxes . Users need only type the text they want others to see in one field and the hidden message in a separate field. The service, created by New Zealand-based developer Matthew Holloway, then spits out a tweetable message that fuses the two together in a way that's not noticeable to the human eye. Read the article at 'Artstechnica '

Productivity Tools Online - but for offline too! View more lists from Nicko Gibson Some useful tools and extensions for productivity. Vote and add your favorites.

Here are some tips for where to post your picture, article, etc. for most views and options Image provided by Kudo Studios Some alternatives etc.: Remember to pin a picture after posting it (on Pinterest ). It gives a backlink to the original post. Some people like to use Tumblr as a blogging platform, as an alternative to wordpress, also Blogger.com (by Google). Both have more options than Wordpress when you use the free version. Wordpress is king when you put some money in it - better templates, etc. You can use Google+ or Facebook for your picture portfolio if you already have many followers. Flickr has been the best place place to host your professional photos for a while, but Google+ (with their picasaweb) is growing as well. The benefit of using Flickr is mainly the licencing options. You can decide whether you want people to be able to use your image by giving you credit (link back). This helps grow your portfolio visibility. A lot of people search flickr for image...

Bookmarks Bar below the address bar - With a folder Bookmarklets are useful links that work as alternatives to extensions. They use much less memory than extensions and often offer the same functionality. Just like you can drag any link on the web onto your bookmark bar you can drag a bookmarklet there. First enable the bookmark bar. In chrome Click the settings dropdown , Bookmarks, Show Bookmarks bar.  Most social sharing sites have bookmarklets available. For example the Twitter bookmarklet allows you to share the current page you're on to Twitter, saving you a few steps. Below I've collected some bookmarklets from favorite sites. You can drag these onto your bookmarks bar. Tip: Create a folder on your bookmarks bar called "share" Open the bookmark manager, it's right below the "show bookmarks" bar. Right click the Bookmarks bar folder and select new folder. Name it "share". This will now be a folder on your bookmarks bar. Yo...

Social Networks (Photo credit: Nickogibson ) The most often shared blogging advice is: use social media to drive traffic. Social websites are one of the most powerful ways to bring the first visitors to your blog, and if you know what you’re doing, to create the core of your own community that will help you further promote your blog. Using social media isn’t a bad advice, not at all, and here is the crash course that should help you find your way in it all. Don’t be scared Everyone’s been there, even the big guys that you’re admiring today. You have a good reason why you’ve started the blog, so you do have something to say. The marketing part is on you, and it’s important that you believe in yourself. You have to start once – you just have to, there’s no way around it. Sign up for an account if you don’t have one, and just observe what others do for a while, if that will make you feel more comfortable, and read about how to use social media until you believe that you can do it ...

We are featuring regular freebies and resources for our audience. This week we have found a beautifully sleek set of icons for your shopping website. The Icon pack is actually 16 designs with versions designed in PNG formate ready for light or dark background websites. Each icon comes in 512 pixels square to allow for accurate scaling to whatever size you want, most common sizes are favicon size at 16 pixels or 32 pixels, and those sizes do not scale with the detail to allow for header images. That's a problem you won't have with these icons as they'll scale to a size you can even use on your facebook buttons or facebook selling page! Please do submit your comment or request below if you have suggestions for other useful packs you'd like to see on this site. These icons are completely free! All that is required is the relevant author link attribute to comply with the license, provided below on each page the icons are used on. InMotion Web Hosting Have provided...

Can’t Embed YouTube Videos Anymore? : "The 'embed' link in youtube is gone. Where the heck is it? It's still there of course."

Little Things That Ruin Your Website : " Pictures that aren't the right size can be pretty annoying sometimes. =D It takes a long time to build a great website and get it optimized so that lots of people can see it. You need design skills, strong content that people actually want to see, then you need to create a plan and execute it by working your network. All these things take time and energy, sometimes a lot of them. But it’s really easy to undo all that hard work with just one or two little things that will completely ruin your site – whether it’s from an SEO or a usability standpoint. Really, if you have a site with great rankings, but is terrible to use, you’re not going to accomplish your goal anyway (make money, raise awareness, etc.). Here’s just a short list of some things that can really do you in: 1. Music or Videos Playing Automatically: When you are watching TV or listening to the radio, you expect commercials, theme music, or other forms of audio and ...

Increase Sales Using A Smartphone-Enabled Website : " “This is the time for us; now is the time for us to get behind this… We understand that the new rule is “Mobile First.” – Eric Schmidt, Google CEO “One-third of all Google searches via the mobile web pertain to some aspect of the searcher’s local environment.” – Diana Pouliot, Director of Google Mobile Advertising By 2013, Google expects that 50% of all internet traffic will be from mobile devices. The smartphone industry is growing faster than any segment of technology in history. It is mandatory to have a smartphone-enabled website in order to have mobile searchers find you. A lot of effort and funding is going towards “find a business near me” technology. If you owned a restaurant, wouldn’t you want to reach the Blackberry user that performed a search on their phone to “find restaurants near me?” Would it not benefit you to reach those with GPS that use Google maps? Practically every business and service can increase revenue...

You might have the same problem I had, and the fix is pretty easy. This seems to be a problem if you're using the new Adsense interface in beta. Try Google Chrome if you don't already have it. This problem seems to be with both Firefox 4 and Google chrome. On the Firefox page a lot of people have reported this "blank page" problem recently Turn off your Adblock Plus for that site, or any similar ad blocker program you have running. I had this problem today when I tried to go to the link https://www.google.com/adsense/v3/app#home It simply showed a blank page. Being kinda lazy and tired I couldn't figure out what was wrong right away so I googled the thing to see if anyone else had the same problem. And I noticed a lot of people did. I also remembered that Google updated their Adsense a few days back, and the new beta interface is having problems, so I figured turning the Adblock Plus off would help, and it did! Another option is to go to this address ins...