JC - Technology and Stuff

In the last article I wrote about the approach to getting 16,000 Twitter followers. In this article I’m going to cover some of the more detailed approaches and ‘how to do it’.

Step 5: Twitter maintenance - as I mentioned last time, every day you need to perform Twitter maintenance. So what exactly is Twitter maintenance? Well, simply put it’s unfollowing all the people who haven’t followed you back and following all the people who followed you who you weren’t already following (within limits - see below). Then having done that, it’s adding some more follows. And on it goes. What’s the easiest way to do this? I’ve tried two different methods and they both have their advantages and disadvantages.

Method 1: The first method is the ‘go through your emails’ approach. Hopefully you have turned on email notification for when you get new followers. If you haven’t, go ahead and do this now (it’s under Settings and Notices). Then set up some kind of filter in your email that sends all email from Twitter to a specific folder. This will make it easier for you to process all the emails you’re going to get every day (and it will be a lot!). Every few hours you need to go to your email and open each one and look at its content. The email will be one of two kinds. If it is like below then you are already following the person and there is nothing you need to do to follow them back. If the number of followers they have is less than about 7,000 just delete the email and move on. If the new follow has more than 7,000 follows themselves then keep the email for later processing (discussed later).

If the email you have is similar to the one below then someone has elected to follow you who you are not currently following (see the extra text at the bottom of the email?). If this is the case then click on their Twitter name and you will be taken to their profile page. From here you can click on ‘follow’ and follow them back.

But what about spam people that follow you or people who you followed but shouldn’t have done? Well this is where the information provided in the email is most useful. It contains the number of followers they have and also how many tweets they’ve sent out. Generally speaking if they have sent out less than about 5 tweets they are probably a spammer. Also if they are following 1,000 people and only have 20 follows, look closely at the profile. Most other people are probably genuine. If you get a ‘follow email’ from someone you have followed and they are a spammer or someone you shouldn’t have followed, just click on their Twitter link and ‘unfollow’ them. Simple.

Ok, so what about the emails left in your inbox that had 7,000 or more followers? Well these can become your new ‘seed list’ (But don’t process these until after you’ve unfollowed orphan follows - see below). Click on their profile, click on ‘followers’ and start following some of this user’s followers. The chances are that if they already have 7,000 users then a lot of their followers will also follow you. The guidelines I generally use is if the user has between 7,000 and 10,000 follows then I follow up to 2 pages worth of followers, and if they have more than 10,000 then I follow 3 pages worth. Why? Well I want to try and follow users who are more probably online. The ones at the top of the list are the recent follows. Users with more followers generally grow faster than users with less followers and so there’s more chance that users with more than 10,000 followers have more recently online follows than those with less. You’ll have to find out a method that works for you. Anyway, when you’re done making some new follows, delete the email and move to the next. In this way you should be able to build up a stock of people to follow every day. If that doesn’t give you enough at first (or you need to supplement) then you can simply right click on a user on your feed, open a new browser tab for that user and use the above guideline to follow from your existing stock. If I use this method I discount any user that has less than 1,000 followers and then if they have between 1,000 and 7,000 followers I just follow their first page (20 users). You get the idea.

Method 2: the second method is to not use notification emails from Twitter at all but instead regularly go to your Twitter profile page and click on ‘followers’. There you can see who you are following back.

Simply click on those people who you wish to follow back. Although this may seem like a simpler method than number 1 (it certainly takes less time), it’s not as discerning and as thorough. When you use this method you cannot see how many followers the user has or how many tweets they have sent, you just have to use your own judgment or right click on the user to open up a window to look more closely at them. Also it doesn’t give you any idea of the users who have more than 7,000 followers so you’ll have to use a different method to decide who to follow.

Ok, so you’ve maintained your followers, how about those that you previously decided to follow (from yesterday)? As I mentioned in part one of this article, you’re going to be following 800-1,000 people a day and only 30%-40% are going to be following you back. You need to purge the others. There is no simple way to do this (yes there are programs that claim to do it automatically, but believe me you need to do it manually or else you’ll be unfollowing some people you want to follow even though they don’t follow you back - i.e. some celebrities). You just have to bite the bullet and once a day go to your profile, click on ‘following’ and skip ahead to page 40 or so (or wherever your follows started that you haven’t cleaned up yet). You can tell easily enough, it’ll be the last page where everyone isn’t following you!

Then page by page, going backwards, unfollow (remove) all those people who aren’t following you (they won’t have a ‘Direct Message’ option). This is very boring and can take up to 20-30 minutes. But when you’re done with both steps above (follows and followers), you’re cleaned up ready for the next day’s work.

Don’t add any new follows (the people with 7,000 followers or more) until you’ve done this maintenance!

Ok, enough for today. Part three of the post will cover your brand, earning money, Direct Messagesand linking Twitter to Facebook or your blog.

Enjoy your tweeting!

People join Twitter for a variety of different reasons and this article is not meant to judge anyone in their use of it. No doubt the way I use Twitter goes against many of the twitterverse but I, like everyone else out there, is free to ‘try their own thing’. Isn’t this what social networking services are all about?

Anyway, let’s get down to business…

Why I wanted to get 16,000 followers - I was a happy Twitter user in the ‘old days’ (at about the turn of the year!) and like many many people out there just had a few friends. But sometimes Twitter gets addictive and after a few months of using the service I wondered what it would be like to chat to a few more people on a regular basis. So I followed a few more people and happily continued using Twitter with about 100 people on my list. It was shortly after this that I started to get Direct Messages (DMs) and tweets from people promising me 16,000 followers in only 90 days if I clicked the attached link. I clicked a few of the links and they were all advertising ‘spam’ and pretty soon I started to get a little annoyed with it all. I actually came close to giving up on Twitter at that point. Well, a few other things happened in my life at about that time too, and so I had a little more opportunity to grow my Social Network on other services like Facebook. I wondered to myself whether it was also worth growing my Twitter network too. What the heck? If other people can grow 16,000 followers, why shouldn’t I be able to? And I was determined to grow my followers without resorting to any artificial methods (no steroids for me!). I was going to do it the hard way. Blood, sweat and tears. All in all it has taken me about 2.5 months to get my 16,000. I could have been more aggressive and done it quicker, but I would have lost the richness of the experience and the twitterverse along the way. So, this is the @jcx27 method of getting 16,000 Twitter followers.

Step 1: Building your brand - First things first. If you really want to build followers (and keep them) you have to work out just what your message is going to be. Furthermore, you have to stick to that message. Change it, or go off topic too often and your followers will leave. After all, there’s plenty of interesting people out there as well as you! My strong recommendation is that BEFORE you start building a follower base you start tweeting and discover where your niche is. Write at least 200-300 tweets before you start actively pursuing new followers. Failure to find your brand and style will lead to failure later!

Step 2: Growing your user base - the first 2,000 - Ok, so you’ve written your 250 tweets, you’ve got maybe 50 followers already and you’re ready to hit the big time! Twitter has some rules about how quickly you can build new followers, especially in the early days (and Twitter defines the early days as following up to 2,000 people). You can, if you are crazy enough, follow 1,000 people on each of the first couple of days and then come to a screaming halt on day three when Twitter tells you it won’t allow you to follow anyone else until the number of people following you has caught up. Hmm. Not the best plan of attack! No, take it slowly; follow two to three hundred people every day. Watch who follows you back, perform maintenance (covered in part two of the post) , tweet some more and start to get in the Twitter groove. Remember this isn’t a race, it’s a way to build a solid social network. Eventually you will reach your 2,000 Twitter follow limit and hopefully the number of people you have following you at that time will be close behind. If it’s not, perform some more maintenance and repeat. After a couple of weeks (possibly) you will have your 2,000 followers! Then it’s time for the next phase.

Step 3: The middle years 2,000 - 10,000 - there are thousands and thousands of Twitterers out there that have between 2,000 and 10,000 followers. You need to know this up front going into this phase of your growth. Competition is tough. Unfollows are common. Some days can be depressing! Your target is to grow your followers by somewhere between 250 and 400 a day. Sounds easy? Try again! Getting 250 to 400 followers every day AND KEEPING THEM is hard work. It means you’re going to have to follow somewhere between 800 and a 1,000 people every day in the hope that 30% to 40% of them follow you back. This is where previous efforts spent on brand definition come into play. If you have been tweeting regularly every day and you have 50 or so close twitter followers that interact with you regularly then you stand more chance of success during this phase of growth. Remember, just because you have 2,000 followers (or even 7,000 followers) doesn’t mean people are just going to seek you out and follow you automatically. And there are still Twitter limits to watch out for too. If who you are following gets more than about 10% ahead of your followers count then Twitter will stop you adding more until they even up a little. Also if you try to follow too many people in one day (probably due to the previous) then Twitter will also stop you following for a time. You will find you need to be on Twitter for a lot of the day and slowly add people for this phase to be most effective. And that’s a lot more hard work! Still, eventually you will reach your goal of 10,000 followers and you will be ready to move on to running a mature Twitter account.

Step 4: Maturity and nurturing your followers - When you finally reach 10,000 followers you are overcome with emotion! There’s something about hitting that magic number. I mean, how many other people out there have 10,000 followers you ask yourself? (Quite a lot actually. Probably about 20,000 or so!). Still, you consider yourself one of the elite now. You tweet regularly, you reply to lots of people, you try to remember to retweet other’s good posts and you generally feel on top of your game. But, and here’s the kicker, you’ve still got another 6,000 followers to go. And it’s getting a bit old this routine, isn’t it? It’s a lot of work. Every day you have to add followers, remove people who don’t follow you back ,send out a fistful of tweets, interact with friends, and stay on brand topic. It’s getting a bit like a job! Well, guess what? It IS a job. Welcome to social networking my friend! The funny thing is remember at the beginning when I spoke about those DMs that promised 16,000 followers in 90 days? All those people will never ever get 16,000 followers (and if you look at most of them they actually have less than 1,000 followers). The reason is quite simple. They don’t want the hard work of interacting with their followers. They don’t actually want a social network. They want the easy life. If you have now reached 10,000 followers you know this is not an easy life! Anyway, back to the plot. Once you’re through the 10,000 mark you can be a little more aggressive, if you want, about follow numbers every day. You should also start noticing a bigger number of people that start following you too without you instigating the follow. Numbers talk! You still need to do your maintenance and you still need to keep tweeting though. The other thing that’s easy to forget is that as you are growing followers, a lot of the newbies don’t know much about you. Sure, your first 2,000 loyal followers know all about you. But the last 2,000? They’re probably just those who started following you in the past week! They know nothing about you. You need to spend time introducing yourself to them, letting them know what you do, how you do it. This is how you nurture your followers. Your core followers will forgive you and your new followers will be grateful. Remember, it’s a tough world out there and you don’t want to start losing follows at this stage of the game! Ok, fast forward. Somewhere between 60 and 90 days after you started, if you have followed all the advice, you finally reach your 16,000 followers. HOORAY!!! Life stops? No, life goes on. What’s next? 20,000? 30,000? Only you know the answer to that. For me, I’m undecided. When I first decided to get to my 16,000 it was a challenge. Now it’s a way of life. I love my little twitterverse. I love their conversation and observations. It’s become a two-way relationship.

In part two of this post I will discuss the topics of maintaining, adding and purging followers; What, how and when to post; earning money on Twitter; Direct Messages; Linking Twitter to Facebook and blogs; and a few other hints and tips.

Until then, keep tweeting…

A couple of months ago I started to notice that my Twitter inbox was getting full with DMs (direct messages) from people promising me “16,000 followers in only 90 days”. It actually got to me after a while and made me a little annoyed. Especially as most of these people only had a hundred or so followers at the time.

So after a couple of weeks of living with this I decided I’d run my own “Twitter Experiment” and see if I could get my own 16,000 followers without spamming, resorting to traffic sites, paying anybody, or anything else ‘dubious’. I wanted to build my own 16,000 followers using legitimate means.

At the time I had about 200 followers and now, nearly two months later, I have amassed over 12,000 and only need another 4,000 to reach my goal. Along the way, I have found my Twitter niche and made some wonderful friends. It’s difficult to keep up with everyone, but I always make sure I answer all that send me a personal DM or a @reply.

Anyway, I just wanted to write this brief post to let you all know what I’ve been doing recently. My intention is that in about 2 weeks time, when I expect to hit the 16,000, I will write a long detailed post about ‘how I did it’. Hopefully it will be of interest and help anyone who wants to legitimately create a large Twitter following.

If you’re one of my follows, thank you. If you’re not, please follow me at: @jcx27

Later…

There are an amazing number of different websites that can enhance your daily Twitter experience. In this blog post I am going to mention a number of them so that you can decide if any will be useful to you. In the end it’s your choice, your Twitter experience and the way we each use Twitter is a little different from everyone else. Still, here goes:

1/ TwitterCounter - Want to know how many new follows you are averaging each day? Want to see the trends of how you’ve picked up new follows? Then TwitterCounter gives you this and several other things besides. I’ve been using TwitterCounter since February and although I wasn’t really using Twitter that much at the time, as I’ve started to expand my Twitterverse, TwitterCounter has really helped me stay on track and let me see just how my progress has been.

2/ TweetValue - Want to know how much your Twitter Id is worth? Well TweetValue will give you a number. Of course, it’s only some kind of made up number, but it’s a number nonetheless and you can watch that number grow in value as you spend more time gathering follows and posting new tweets. I have slowly built by value up from $150 or so to $3500. Of course, it’s still a long way from the top of the TweetValue league table!

3/ TweetGrid - Are you looking for real-time results on certain topics? Want to watch some trending topics on Twitter? If so, then TweetGrid is the product for you. At TweetGrid you can choose how you want your screen laid out - in a 1×1, 1×2, 2×1, 2×2, etc. grid and in each section of the grid you can track a different topic. You can even tweet direct from TweetGrid if you want. Overall it’s a great little tool to use on certain occasions and highly recommended.

4/ TweetLater - There comes a time when you know you’re going to be out for a while but you still want to send out some tweets to the twitterverse. This is where TweetLater comes in use. This website allows you to set up an account and create delayed tweets among other things. Just this morning I used it to schedule about 6 tweets that went out in the background while I got on with other tasks. Of course the product does a lot more than this. It can send out recurring tweets, store draft tweets, and there’s even a paid professional version available that gives you even greater control. So, another product I really like.

5/ Twitoaster - Want to know how interactive you are in the Twitter world? Just how many people do you engage in on a daily basis? Well, Twitoaster will give you these answers and rank you along with the rest of the Twitter world too.

6/ Tweetdeck - I’ve written about Tweetdeck before (here and here), but basically if you’re looking for a Twitter client that is better than twitter.com (and let’s face it, anything is!), then Tweetdeck is the product for you. It really let’s you take control of your twitter follows and sort them into groups and allows to engage with them in a number of different ways. Simply put, if you don’t have it already - get it!

7/ RevTwt - Lastly, just in case you would like to earn a few dollars from Twitter, there is a way you can advertise. I say ‘a few dollars’ because you’re not going to get rich on this, but it is a genuine site and it does pay genuine money! Just make sure you follow their Terms of Service and all will be OK. RevTwt accepts advertisement from sponsors and you post up to four advertisements per day to your Twitter account. When you do so, you earn ‘click’ money. If you have a larger number of follows you can also post advertisements that pay a fixed fee, but you can generally only post one of these kind of advertisements once a day. Like I say, you’re not going to get rich, but it will pay your hosting fees and maybe get you a beer or two!

So, there you have it. A few tools to help you do a little more with Twitter. Did I forget anything else that you use? If so, drop me a comment and I will investigate that as well.

Have fun Tweeps!

Well, it’s been 5 weeks now since I was downsized from T-Mobile and I no longer get in my car at 7:00am in the morning for my drive to the corporate office. A lot of things have changed. As I was sitting at my desk in my home office this morning I was thinking that maybe it would be a good exercise to write a little about it and all those subtle little lifestyle changes that take place.

First things first, I am fortunate not to be in the same position as some American families who are currently struggling on a day to day basis just to get by on the basics. For that I am thankful. Indeed, I hope not to ever have to face that position. Even so, being ‘unemployed from the corporate world’ does make you think a little more about decisions made on a daily basis. I guess it’s a sort of inbuilt survival mode. I hope this article helps you focus a little on how to survive a corporate downsizing and get back on the track to success.

The most important thing to get past is denial. This is crucial for your long term survival. Thinking “it’ll be alright tomorrow” is not going to get you through. Spending more on your credit cards to compensate for the sad feeling inside is also not going to get you through. You need to admit that your income has taken a sudden decline and that you will have to change your perspective on living and spending for possibly quite some time to come.

Okay, so you’ve got past that. What next? First off you need to make a list of all your monthly and ad hoc expenditures. Be exact and don’t miss anything out. Then add on 10% or so for all the things you also spend money on that you’ve forgotten about or don’t capture. Now write down all the sources of income you have (i.e. Unemployment Insurance) and also write down what you have in savings. Then comes the scary part. How long do you realistically think you’ll be out of work? 6 months? A year? In this economy it may actually be somewhere between those two numbers, or more. So, divide your savings between that number to give you a monthly spend and add to it your new income. Now compare that to your list of outgoings. Swallow. Then swallow again.

Obviously when you are unemployed some things have to change. Some of the little luxuries need to be struck from the spend list and then it’s time to do some serious pruning. The idea here is to make your available money last as long as is feasibly possible. Don’t be overly optimistic about getting another job. Try and be realistic. We are in a tough economy. So, you make alterations to your spend list and shave off a few dollars here and there, but somehow it still doesn’t seem to match what you have available to spend. That’s because you’re still not being as cutthroat as you need to be. Now is the time to move into money conservation mode. Minimum payments, minimum expenditures, maximum efficiency. You’re going to have to examine every aspect of your monthly budget line by line and make adjustments.

When you’re done with all this you know better just how long you can manage for before it gets to the nearly poverty stage. The aim is that you never have to get to this stage. But what do you do next?

When you knew you were being laid off you probably made a list of a million things that you could do with your time. You probably also made a list of all the jobs you meant to get around to. Well, guess what, it doesn’t quite work out like that! Along with unemployment comes personality and attitude changes. Subtle, but changes nonetheless. You have been so conditioned to doing your job every day that for some unknown reason you can’t seem to get into a new routine. Instead you squander time, wander around aimless, look at job boards, chat to a few friends, and generally watch days pass by.

In the same way as you made a list of your monthly expenses you’re going to have to make a list of your new routine. Otherwise you will never get things done. Make time every day for looking at and applying for jobs. Make time every day to get certain tasks done. Try and fill your normal work hours with things that are scheduled. Only use your normal non-work time to do the social things. Changing your routine is hard but it’s this one thing that will ultimately determine your success. Being unemployed makes it very easy to put something off until tomorrow. Don’t be tempted by that thought. You should be trying to get back to work and filling your time with useful and necessary things to do.

Stuck for ideas? Volunteer for something. Embark on a large project that needs planning and organizing. Give back to your community. Cook, redecorate, organize the apartment or house, do the garden. There are lots of potential things you can do. The important thing is to fill your working hours with useful and beneficial things. Don’t cut yourself off from the world and spend your days watching TV, reading or playing World of Warcraft!

As time ticks by you will gradually settle into your new routine and it is this routine that will ultimately determine your success. If your routine is laziness and apathy, be prepared to spend a long time unemployed. If your routine is non-stop morning til night, then you’ll be re-employed a lot quicker. The reason is fairly obvious. Staying busy focuses your mind, keeps you networking, keeps you pushing for something and lowers the odds on you finding a new job substantially.

So, there we have it. Just a few thoughts. You’ve been downsized; not shot at or physically injured. Get over it! You are ultimately in control of your future success and happiness. Sure, it may take some time. I didn’t say it wouldn’t. But it’s times like this in our lives that define who we are and who we want to be.

Back in late October of last year I wrote about two websites (A & B) that tried to help you out when you were looking for a place to meet halfway between your address and someone else’s. The two products were Meetways and MeetInBetweenUs. At the time of my last blog posting, both sites failed to find a suitable meeting place for me. I thought it was time to revisit the sites and see if there had been any improvements.

Firstly I have to say that I live on the ‘Eastside’ of Seattle, in Redmond, WA. Seattle is a city that is surrounded by water and lakes and if you live on the Eastside like I do then to get to the ‘westside’ you usually have to cross a bridge, or make a long detour around a lake. That’s why I decided it would be an interesting test of these two websites. I mean any piece of software can work out a halfway point if there’s no water in between; but if there is? What then? Last time, both pieces of software decided the halfway point between the two addresses I used was actually in the middle of Lake Washington. Not such a good place to meet. Consequently, the coffee shops it suggested were definitely not easily accessible to one of the two addresses.

So, it’s now May 1st, a full 5 months since my last review. What has changed? I’ll start with two screenshots of the suggested answers provided by both websites.

As you can see, there is a clear winner! One of the sites has clearly updated its logic and the other - hasn’t. So, which is which? Well, the first graphic is from Meetways, and I can therefore wholeheartedly endorse the efforts they’ve gone to to improve their software. Now lakes are no longer a concern! As for MeetInBetweenUs, still some work to do I’m afraid people!

Furthermore, Meetways also gives directions for all results from both addresses and links to reviews of the establishments. They’ve taken a great idea and turned it into a simple, easy to use, well thought out and time-saving product.

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Postscript: On a sadder note, I received a couple of comments to my original blog post from someone claiming to work for Meetways. The comments are shown below:

If you work for Meetways and you are reading this blog post and the above individual really does work for Meetways then you might like to have a word with him about his great marketing technique and representation of your company. If he does not work for you, then I apologize. Enjoy the weekend…

I haven’t really posted an article about the camera on the G1 phone and demonstrated its quality. Well yesterday I had the opportunity to go visit the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival (near Mt. Vernon, in Washington state) and the only camera I took was my phone! It’s only two mega-pixels and it has no flash and no zoom so I was a little concerned that maybe my pictures would be disappointing. However, I am pleased to say that it performed very well and I am posting the results here to demonstrate.

The first nine pictures are reduced from their original 2048 x 1536 size to 600 x 415, but the last picture is a 600 x 400 crop from the penultimate picture so that you can see the full-size quality. I think overall you’ll agree, the G1 phone takes a pretty good picture. So, there you go, don’t be cautious about substituting your phone on occasions when you don’t want to carry the extra bulk and you’re going to be outdoors.

Enjoy!

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So there we have the offical T-Mobile sales figures for the G1 phone - over 1 million of the lovely beasties sold.

Me? I’m still loving my early version Android phone. I wouldn’t be without it. Here’s to the next million of the things and some links to other G1 posts I’ve written:

T-Mobile G1 - First Impressions

T-Mobile - Second Impressions

My Favorite T-Mobile G1 Applications

My Favorite T-Mobile G1 Applications (Update)

T-Mobile G1 - Hints & Tips

T-Mobile G1 Update

More G1 Applications - Microsoft Exchange Sync

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T-Mobile G1 Phone (Black) - At Amazon.com

Today is St. George’s Day and the odds of you knowing that are next to none! Everyone has heard of St. Patrick’s day, even Cinco de Mayo, but alas very few people know of St. George’s Day. The English have done a good job over the years of infiltrating many countries across the globe, but they never really took St. George with them. Most of the time it seemed to be in the name of Christianity or trade, never in the name of St. George. And what was St. George famous for? Yep, slaying a dragon.

Actually many countries have St. George’s Day on their calendar and do mark it in some way or another, including Germany, India and Palestine. But for England it’s also their National Day - their day of pride. That is the theory anyway. So I had a look at the British papers today and what did I see? Basically nothing. The Daily Telegraph, The BBC and The Daily Mirror all had no mention of St. George’s Day. Only The Guardian seemed to have an article, and even that talked about Bradford being the most English of cities, sporting Fish and Chip shops, cricket clubs and Morris dancing. All in all, disappointing.

I think it’s a sign of the times of how some countries are starting to lose their identities. Whenever I return to England I am always surprised at how much it has changed since my last visit. Surveillance cameras are everywhere, public places are festooned with video recording equipment. No place in rural England is safe from the ever-watching traffic camera. Cars dawdle on roads that were not built for the current load, gardens shrink as new homes are built on existing plots. Even that ever sacrosanct place, the English Pub, is disappearing. St. George, ‘who is he anyway?’ is probably the response you’ll get in many of the now completely pan-European High Streets of major cities.

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy lamb of god
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear: o clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariots of fire!
I will not cease from metal fight;
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

These were the words we sung at school, the words to a hymn entitled ‘Jerusalem’ that was supposed to signify the beauty, history and pride of England. St. George’s Day fitted in to this England, my England.

Tonight I am proud to be going to our local pub - The 3 Lions Pub - in Redmond, WA, USA where we will be celebrating St. George’s day. There will be a good group of ex-pats there, eating good English fare, drinking good English beer and reminiscing no doubt about our beloved country.

I look forward every year to St. George’s Day and I am proud to be English. Life has brought me to another country to live, but that doesn’t take away my heritage. So, this is a call to all you with some English blood in you:

Celebrate St. George’s Day with pride today…

With the advent of lots of wide-screen monitors, vertical real estate is now at a premium. This is especially true in your Internet browser. Well, yesterday I discovered a Firefox add-on that I am just simply loving. The name of that add-on? Tree Style Tab. It’s a fairly innocuous sounding add-on name, but it does just what it says. It replaces the tab bar along the top of your browser with one that runs down the side. I mean, now that I use a wide-screen monitor I can afford to give up a little of my horizontal real estate after all. And when I have umpteen tabs open (as I quite often do), I can actually see and read which one is which. Amazing! What’s more, if I open up another tab as a result of a link in a tab already open, it indents the tab so I can easily see it. That’s where the ‘tree’ part of the name comes from.

Use of it takes a little getting used to, so please stick with it. What I mean by that is that to close a tab, you automatically go to your tab bar - which isn’t there anymore! You have to re-train yourself to go to the sidebar and delete it from there instead.

You can have the sidebar condensed down to just ‘favicons’ if you want to, and then you’re hardly using any real estate at all. Pretty good! So now I’m not worried about having 15 tabs open at the same time - I can actually see what they are named and ones that were ’spawned’ from others are grouped logically too.

Lastly there is also a complete ‘options’ tab set available so that you can configure it just the way you want it, although I have to say, the default settings work just fine for me.

So, if you have a wide-screen monitor and don’t mind giving up a little bit of horizontal real estate, give Tree Style Tabs a try.