This is what my desktop looks like today, if you like what you see, keep reading!

Here is how you can do it too:

• First and foremost you need to get a program called WindowsBlinds, a free trial may be downloaded here.
• Once you’ve got that downloaded and installed, you can go here to download a theme that you like.
  • Some of the themes come in different forms, but usually they are already in the .wba (windowsblinds format) or zipped. If they are zipped then unzipping them with winRAR should do the trick. If you have WindowsBlinds open and running in the background, it usually recognizes when you download new themes.
• If you want to make your desktop resemble mine even closer (Mac style) then you need another little program called ObjectDock, which may be downloaded here.
• ObjectDock comes with a few themes, but if those do not suite your needs then more themes may be downloaded here.
  • ObjectDock has some neat options that you can tweak, such as appearance, positioning, and effects.
• To get rid of your potentially unattractive desktop items, you can simply right click anywhere on your desktop, then highlight “Arrange Icons By” and then click “Show Desktop Icons”.

• If you noticed, my cursor is different from the usual Windows XP one, and that is thanks to yet another little program called CursorXP which may be obtained here.

You can be as creative as you wish!

My desktop is only an example, and there are many more programs than the three that I use.

www.wincustomize.com provides you with more than twenty five other programs (as well as hundreds of themes for those programs) that can enhance your computing experience. How much you wish to customize is up to you.

My experience with these three programs has been strictly with Windows XP, though they are available for Windows Vista as well.

The only free trial that runs out is the WindowsBlinds one. ObjectDock and CursorXP are free. I am not in any way promoting the sale of this program, but merely sharing how I made my computing experience much more pleasant.

del.icio.us solves these problems and offers much more. To take full advantage of it, you need to use it frequently, and to do this you need to make it convenient for yourself. The best way to do this is to use Firefox and install the del.icio.us Firefox plugin. This really is a must. It install two buttons in your toolbar allowing you to easily save pages whenever you see something you like. The other button allows your to find your bookmarks easily. If you want to read more about how del.icio.us works, read here or here.

That’s it to get going. Now on to WHY you should do this, beyond the basic reasons mentioned above.

1. Use a toread tag. Ever find articles you don’t have time to read? I do nearly every day. Some days though I do have time and desire to read many of the backlogged articles I didn’t have time to read. Sometimes I print them out and put them into a three ring binder with page protectors so I can read them on the subway, plane, train, or just waiting around. Tagging articles with a tag (toread) for this is great so you can easily grab those articles whenever you want. No more sending emails to yourself with links or bookmarking your articles at work, only to not be able to find them again on your home computer. Check out which pages people are using it to save.

2. Use todo, tovisit, totry, toeat tags. These tags are the same premise as the ‘toread’ tag. That makes this method a little redundant, but it offers another level of productivity and organization for sites and articles you find. You can of course use many other verbs in tags you want to save for future reference.

3. Follow the crowd. If you looking for a cool site to find gifts, what do you do? Most people don’t have a good answer for this, and will just try to search terms they think might bring up good sites. One might try gifts, best gift sites, or great gifts, which all yield terrible, boring, corporate results. There ARE great alternatives to these lousy results by using methods other than search engines. Namely social bookmarking. Since we’re talking about del.icio.us, and it’s a great solution, take a look at these results compared to Google’s. There is no comparison. The top three sites I get using del.icio.us are a gift guide by Lifehacker, Tastebook’s site, and Uncommongoods; all of which are great sites and fit what I want very well. They also are sensitive to time and recent finds. Google gives me gifts.com, findgift.com, and Amazon’s gift section. Not totally off, but essentially boring results.

This works for nearly any word, but since del.icio.us runs on tags it works particularly well when you are using one word as a query. It gives you the sites people are saving, which by default generally means they like the site and want to go back. Additionally, as I briefly mentioned above, the results are weighted on time as well as number of saves. Try comparing the results between del.icio.us and your favorite search engine using terms like: recipes, zen, lifehacks, productivity, opensource, space, or any other one of your favorite topics.

4. Follow A Leader. What if the crowd doesn’t seem to know a lot about what you are seeking, or you don’t like the results from the crowd or a search engine? OR what if you want to find sites only people you deem experts think are quality? You can do this in del.icio.us by looking at the saved pages of one particular user. All you need to do is add the username to the domain name like this http://del.icio.us/iem2509 (iem2509 is my username). Boom! You now can follow what other people are saving. Now you just need to find someone who reads the same type of content you do, and finds articles you like. This task isn’t as bad as it seems…

A. Find an article you like on del.icio.us that you feel fits into one of the topics you like to read about

B. Click on the link that tells you how many people saved that page. eg. saved by 1335 other people This will show you the people that saved it, tags they used, notes they use for it, and the first person to post it.

C. Now look through the users and see if they have a pattern of finding and saving sites or articles you like

Find a few good people and now you now a great source of page, articles, and sites. I like to follow the SEO guru and author of SEO Book, Aaron Wall ( http://del.icio.us/seobook ).

5. Share Your Favorites. Do you find yourself sending email to a bunch of people with just a link in the body? Worse yet, do you want to share what you read or saw but don’t feel like opening up your email client and sending to everyone you want? There’s a better solution. You guessed it, using del.icio.us. Once you befriend other users in del.icio.us you can tag pages not only with regular tags, but also with your friends usernames in the format “for:iem2509″ (the Firefox plugin does this for you and the recommended tags for that matter). Now you can easily send and receive your friends favorite sites without having to send emails, instant messages, or telephone calls. One drawback here is that you need to get your friends to use del.icio.us first.

6. Track Your Competition. Have your own website or have competitors with sites? Every time you come across a competitor of yours, save their site under “competitor” or “competition”. You now are a building list of your competitors you can check once in a while. Better yet, find their del.icio.us username and see what they’re saving!

7. Look for clients. First save all of your clients under “clients” and make sure to make it a private bookmark of yours. Same thing goes here as the competitors, if you can find their usernames, see what they read, and ADVERTISE THERE!

Feel free to comment with your favorite del.icio.us tips. I hope you learned something from and enjoyed this post.

Please subscribe to my blog for more great posts and save this post in del.icio.us!

Mobility, functionality, free, efficiency, and a ridiculous amount of disk space are all covered with Google’s Gmail. Is there any argument? It’s by far the best free (or paid) email client I’ve used, and probably will be for a while.

HOWEVER, there are a few major drawbacks…

• Can you get the address you want? Many names and words are already taken.
• Do you want to advertise Google’s services every time you send an email, or your own business?
• I know, very unlikely, but what if Google doing something to Gmail?

Security Tip: Gmail defaults to a non-secure login, but also provides a secure login. To access it, is type https://gmail.google.com instead of your standard way of getting there.

• With Gmail everyone who sees your address will know not only your username, but also know they can try guessing your password at Gmail login page.
• What if someone else comes along with a better solution than Gmail? Do you really want to be starting up a new email and forwarding over all of your old mail?

There are solutions to these problems. With the help of Gmail itself, the solution is easy! Gmail let’s you use their interface to handle a mail account from your own domain name. In other words, you can use the interface Gmail uses, and have the same user experience, but instead of being forced to have a gmail.com email address, you can use any email address you own (that allows you to connect through a POP or IMAP connection.)

Pros

• Choose your own email address (you must buy and use a domain name that’s available)
• Own your email address by owning your domain name. You have total control over your new address
• All the advantages of Gmail
• Addresses all of the concerns mentioned in the beginning of this post

Cons

• You must take the time you find a good domain name and use the setup process described below
• It’s not free. BUT all you have to do is pay for a domain name (<$10 per year) and have the email hosted somewhere. 1and1.com has a decent email hosting plan for $0.99 per month.

After going through the setup process below, you will be able to use your own email address, online from anywhere in the world, with all the features of Gmail with ownership, and the ability to move or change your email client if and when you want, all transparent to your email recipients.

Setting Your Domain Up With Gmail

1. In your Settings, go to the Accounts tab…

2. Click on the “Add another email account” link, and a popup window will appear.

3. Type in the email address you want to add and proceed to the next window.

4. Fill out this box with information about your mail server settings. These are the same as if you were setting up Outlook or any other standard POP mail client. I like to check the label incoming messages. This lets Gmail flag all of your messages coming in under this account name so they are easy to see, file, and find.

Efficiency Tip: Learn the Gmail keyboard shortcuts. The keyboard is much faster than a mouse.

Gmail will sent a confirmation email to the email address you use, and that’s it. Now, when you login to your Gmail account, you can use your regular gmail.com address and the email you added.