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1. Winter Special - Free Consulting With Each Purchase (One Week Only)!
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Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas! I hope you're enjoying this winter, building snow men or spending a cozy night in front of the fire place (or some crazy last-minute shopping?). As one last special for the year, just until December 29th, you get an entire hour of consulting time with one of our product experts. That's a $50 value, entirely free!
With your free hour, we'll help your project hit the ground running, whether it's integrating Article Manager into your existing site, launching a brand-new real estate site with Realty Manager, or setting up any of our other products.
We can even implement advanced features to enhance and customize your installation. We could configure your Realty Manager site to showcase featured properties or offer both Rental and Sales listings.
With Article Manager, you could have us:
- Set up an RSS feed.
- Display your headlines in other sections of your site.
- Integrate Google AdSense so you can instantly create a revenue generating website.
Like Tim Carter (site owner of AsktheBuilder.com), who's paired Article Manager with Google AdSense to make a very profitable website, with your free hour of Consulting you can have your Article Manager set up with Google AdSense, absolutely free.
Let us know what you need for your next project - how you use your free hour is entirely up to you. :)
To learn more about Priority Consulting, look over the Consulting Page or contact our support team.
Visit our order page to get your free hour of Priority Consulting with every purchase.
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2. Seasons Greetings (One More Time)...
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...and another happy edition of this, the final newsletter of 2005, for all of you jolly, merry subscribers. It's strange how fast it really goes, but I guess that's another year come and gone.
I just finished most of my Christmas shopping, picking up some final gifts for my wife. I'd tell you what I got for her, but she's probably reading this right now. You'll have to wait for Christmas Morning, Dina!
I thought I'd give the men who are reading this a few words of advice when buying gifts for their girlfriends or wives. I've made some pretty ridiculous mistakes in the past, so maybe my limited wisdom in this area can help guide you (like how Yoda guided Luke!). Here's some tips!
1. Never give any kind of household or kitchen appliance (or anything remotely housework related). For instance, a microwave, a toaster, detergent, a vacuum cleaner, or that frying pan I bought 2 years ago when rushing through Walmart three days before Christmas (what the heck was I thinking!?)
2. Never, never, ever buy gifts for yourself and pretend they are for her. "Honey, we'll get a ton of value out of this video game, and it's 2-player, so we can spend some serious time together!" You're not fooling anyone, and you'd better be prepared to run. The $5 box of chocolates you were eyeing in Safeway will go over much better than the "self-gift".
3. And of course, never give any gift that implies that she needs to change or improve (acne cleanser, or a book on losing weight). Not even as a joke. She WILL NOT like this, and won't think it's funny at all (which it isn't!). It may seem obvious, but it happens, and usually leads to a lonely night on the couch with a bag of potato chips for dinner!
4. And finally, pay attention. Like when you're in the mall together a few days before shopping for friends and family, watch closely to see what she's eyeing. That might give you some clues!
And just a reminder, we'll be closed on the following days:
December 24th
December 25th
December 26th
December 31st
January 1st
On those days I plan to be at home, not working, but opening and giving gifts. Well, except for the 31st, where I'm going to celebrate by bringing in the new year.
So until next year, I hope Yule have a Happy Holidays and a very Happy New Year!
Best Wishes,
Luke Holzken
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3. Add Google Analytics To Article Manager
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If you read last month's newsletter or if you were reading tech news elsewhere online, you probably heard all the racket about Google Analytics, Google's new free web stats utility.
You can use Google Analytics to get the lowdown on your site traffic. Learn how visitors interact with your website, how ad campaigns perform (AdWords, banner ads, search keywords), and much more. When you have this information on hand you can focus your marketing resources on campaigns that deliver the best results, and improve your site so it converts more sales.
It's been so popular I wanted to share with Article Manager users some steps on how you can integrate it into your Article Manager installation. It's actually quite simple if you follow the steps outlined in this tutorial.
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4. Web Developer Firefox Extensions
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For many web developers Mozilla Firefox has become the browser of choice. One reason for this is the wide selection of browser extensions that make building a site so much easier.
Extensions are small add-ons that add new functionality to Firefox. Developer extensions can be used for all sorts of things, from resizing your browser, viewing the HTML code generated by JavaScript, or finding the exact color used anywhere on a site.
Below I've listed a few that we find most useful here at interactivetools.com. Some of these I’ve just learned about, while others I’ve been using for a while.
Web Developer Extension
This extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. You can easily outline elements like tables and table cells, resize your browser to standard resolution sizes, validate your CSS or HTML, find those images that don't have an alt attribute, and much more.
As the description reads, it’s an essential extension for any web developer/designer as it provides a raft of incredibly useful features all under one roof. You will wonder how you ever managed without it!
ColorZilla
This is a very handy tool which is useful for anyone involved in web development or graphic design. It features a color picker and an eyedropper feature, allowing you to quickly grab any color from any pixel on a web pate. You can even copy the color to a clipboard in a CSS friendly format. I find this extension very useful!
IE Tab
Tired of having to switch between Firefox and Internet Explorer when testing sites? Now you can easily see how your webpage looks in IE using only your Firefox browser.
View Rendered Source
If you’re coding with JavaScript this powerful tool can help you debug. It allows you to view HTML generated by JavaScript as if it were regular HTML. This is very helpful when you have an HTML error but the markup was generated using JavaScript.
Installing an extension is easy:
- Using Firefox, simply click on the link to download the extension.
- Firefox will automatically launch the installer.
- Click "ok" or "install now".
- Once downloaded, close Firefox and reopen.
If you know of a Firefox extension that you would like to share, please let me know and I’ll see what I can do to feature in it in a future newsletter! :)
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5. Google Talk
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If you work in an office (like me) you're probably familiar with using a chat program for messaging your coworkers. We recently made the switch from ICQ to Google Talk. Now not everyone in the office was on the bandwagon right away. It really took some convincing on my part. It seems like trying out new things scares the socks off some people! :)
Anyhow, after making the switch, we're quite happy with it. ICQ is nice, but with each new version came a ton of new features. Google Talk is very light weight, so it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that ICQ has. The nice thing about that is it loads way faster and uses very little memory.
It's not just a simple chat application: it does come with two powerful features. If you have a gmail account it'll notify you when you've received a new email. You can also use it to voice chat with anyone else (in the world!), all you need is a mic and a speaker. Of course, they'll need Google Talk too. ;)
If you'd like, you can give it a try for yourself. It's absolutely free.
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About the author
The interactivetools.com newsletter is written by Luke Holzken.
About interactivetools.com
interactivetools.com creates world-class web software. Web developers use our software to provide their non-technical
clients with an easy-to-use system for managing their websites. Visit
interactivetools.com or try an
online demo, free! Call us at 1-800-752-0455
if you have any questions not addressed on our site.
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