PC Power User - Skypre Credit 100 $ of value for 10 $

I used Skype today, and didn't want to miss the chance to mention you how good I think it is. And I am not referring to Skype to Skype calls. Why I love Skype? Skype allows me to speak with people outside of Serbia at really low price. It offers gigantic opportunity to anyone starting a business online. If you are offering online service, you can set up low cost customer support with number directly in USA for humorous 10 bucks. This alone leaves me speechless. It's insane opportunity, but beside that, Skype offers a lot more and helps me conduct my online business even better.

Do you remember my story about ePass, when it was closed down? After that I switched to Payoneer, as preferred source of income. It took Payoneer entire month to ship me credit card. It would take them even longer if I didn't have Skype, because there was a problem that needed phone contact to sort it out. It's just one of many opportunities Skype offers you... 

How I use Skype? When someone mentions Skype, they initially think of head set and/or microphone and headphones and sitting in front of computer. I use it as a phone, and let's keep it that way. Skypeophonie rules! A couple of months ago I used it on N95 Nokia, now I am using it on my Samsung Galaxy S. I know there  are many other phones that have Skype support. I know multiple occasions when I used Skype instead of calling my friends from coffee shop, just because they offered free Wi-Fi...

Contacting Customer support via Skype is saving you money. I was contacting multiple customer supports, like Blizzard and Payoneer, and sometimes quees can take for half an hour and longer. If you are calling from abroad that's quite a lot of money.

Disadvantages of Skype: There are stuff that I don't like about Skype. First of all, you can't use it properly as messaging platform, Skype doesn't allow integration into another chat protocols. Nimbuzz could integrate it for a while, until they banned them also. I use different platforms when I am accessing my instant messaging platforms, like Digsby and Skype doesn't allow that. It's huge minus for me, because it's not open, as web should be, so it's never going to be my primary account for messaging.

Watch out, maybe you're reading too much

Internet is addictive source of information which streams you in many different ways which can distract you from your original goal. One of top things when doing successful business online is keeping commitment to yourself and to your readers. I am one of those people who read way too much, instead of writing my own content.

Tweeting and Facebook are very useful, but only when used properly. Being exposed to constant stream of information is dangerous for your writing flow, which is most productive of all of your time spent in front of computer.

Watching YouTube clips, answering Facebook comments and status updates is killing your productivity and hurting your potential. In order to grow up as a blogger, you need to threat your blogging like a business. It's something that helps me grow. Blogging is not something that I do, it's about something you are becoming gradually over time. I am into blogging for more than 4 years, but starting up blog from scratch can be like climbing up Mount Everest...

Since I am mentioning mountains I am going snowboard down the avalanche of information using my Google Reader and deliver relevant content in Social Media for my readers. It's going to contain top articles I've read that week, along with my comments and my point of view. Opt In list is essential for all bloggers, so I won't be an exception.

Producing content for my readers, that's my top priority. What's yours?

PC Power User - Surf the web like a pro

First of all, I recommend Chrome as your browser. If you haven't downloaded it yet, you should do it here. Lots of awesome features and plugins that are arising daily. In this article I will cover bookmarks, extensions and tips for Chrome.

Bookmarks

Amount of time saved by using bookmarks is tremendous, it may be small chunks of time, but investment in familiarizing yourself with your bookmarks and way of sorting them out is pretty important tool for anyone who is spending a lot of time in front of computer. For Chrome there is one awesome tip. When you are bookmarking, delete the description of your bookmark and you will only save favicon of website. For websites that you visit often, but not on daily basis, use Folders. I am using folders to organize my Google Docs. Hence my browser is becoming more and more like my operating system.

Extensions

There is a huge list of extensions that I am using. When I sit down on some foreign computer I find myself amazed how people could function without all the plugins and addons that I use on day to day basis. What I find amazing about Chrome is that it helps me out with my extensions. Unlike Mozilla, I have this neat feature, where I can sync my bookmarks, but if you scratch under the surface, you will find out, that not only bookmarks can be synced, but also your theme, your extensions, apps, auto fill... And couple of other stuff that I've forgot to mention. So you're away from your devices and need to sit and work on device that isn't customized to your needs, you simply sync everything and you can feel like on your own computer. This tool is lifesaver, keep your working environment in the cloud... 

There are some changes in the newer version of Chrome, you will need to access sync from the options.

Here is the list of extensions that I find important.

 

10. Chromed Bird - If you are Twitter user, you will find this extension extremely useful! Chromed Bird is a Twitter extension that allows you to follow your timelines and interact with your Twitter account, and it does a great job at it!

09. Google Tasks - A simple Google Task extension for Chrome. If you are using Google Tasks (you can access it from your gMail) you will find this extension great. I keep note of things that I need to do, and if I remember something I can add it directly from browser. Keep in mind that all my to do lists are kept on my android device main screen. It's neat and always reminds you to keep the right track on what you need to do. Here are some tips from LifeHacker on android tasks sync.

08. Insta Paper - You are surfing the web to find something and you stumble upon this great article that's not really related to the topic that you're looking for. You would love to read it, but you need to look for other things? With Insta Paper website and Insta Fetch, you can save those articles for later and read them offline on your phone while waiting in the line of the bank, or while you are waiting for a bus, or whenever you have free time to read stuff that you saved. I prefer Insta Paper to Evernote, because of some cool features InstaFetch has. If I find article really useful for later reference for the article I am developing I will send it to Evernote's notebook related to that particular website. Also one of great features of Insta Paper is that you can send articles you find interesting directly to Google Reader. If I find desktop standalone application I will update this article. But for now, this is one of the extensios I highly recommend. You can also optimize it  to close the page, when it's done memorizing it on InstaPaper.

07. Send Using Gmail - If you are like me, than your gMail, is most probably your default mailing client. When you click on email link, it will automatically open compose new message in gmail.

06. Swap My Cookies - You are using multiple email adresses? Or have couple of Twitter accounts? You can check them all by using Swap My Cookies extension. You simply click the cookie set that you want opened and it switches you right to it. That way you can check multiple emails. There are many other uses of this spectacular addon, which you can figure out for yourself.

05. Clip To Evernote - Same as Insta Paper, just different platform. I use it for article research.

04. Share-a-holic - This add on you've gotta see for yourself. Let's you customize it in the way you are using the web. You can share on Facebook, Twitter, via gmail and many other things... Saves time and makes your browsing experience more social...

03. RSS Subscription - I am avid user of gReader, and this extension lets me subscribe to a blog that I want to follow in 1 simple click.

02. PDF Viewer - Automatically previews pdfs, powerpoint presentations, and other documents in Google Docs Viewer. Adds cool feature to download the file into your Google Docs.

01. X Marks - If you use multiple browsers and computers like I do, Xmarks is insane tool! Lets you sync your passwords as well as your browsing history, all of that across multiple browser platforms. You also have backups of everything on your Xmarks account. All of these features put it on the very top of extension for Chrome and for other browsers as well.

Tips for Chrome

I will keep tips short and useful, just meat. 

First of all, learn to pin tabs. Pinning tabs saves space and whenever you close Chrome, pinned tabs will be saved, for the next time you open it.

Use Auto Fill (you can find it in settings). If you are completing a lot of forms on the web you can use this neat feature.

DO NOT SAVE YOUR PASSWORDS - This is one of the weakest features in Chrome. Whoever comes by and sits by your computer can gain your passwords in three simple clicks. There is no master password like Mozilla have it, and seems like Google won't implement this feature anytime soon, even though users are complaining on this major security flaw.

Hope you enjoyed this article, if you found it useful share it with your friends on Facebook and Twitter or simply email it to someone who might make use of it.

PC Power User - Fight the clutter and procrastination

To be honest with you, I was procrastinating about this article. Until I've actually sat down and decided to write it. I had an issue with writing about procrastination when I am the one who's also procrastinating. But than I figured, everyone's doing it and I've actually decided to combat it. Therefore I decided to combine clutter and procrastination, because of their direct link. In order to combat these 2 stubborn diseases, there are certain steps that you need to take.

My lite routine consists of next of couple of steps:

Planning -> Writing it down -> Removing the clutter -> Taking action -> Reaching the goal

When it comes down to planning this is pretty much hit and miss, especially if you are beginner in time management. There is a lot of data, that you will need to figure out about yourself and preferably write them down. I am avid hater of pattern behavior, but there are certain events that are happening to you on daily basis. Use the reminders for those and mark those blocks of busy time. Good example of that are working hours. Mark the begging of those times and use a reminder. I have really flexible view on the time and need constant reminder on time and things that have to be done, therefore I found one really powerful tool to help me with all the things that I plan on doing that day. That tool is Google Calendar and it power drains from the opportunity to sync your plans onto your mobile phone and use it as a reminder afterwards, by using your alarm, that will keep reminding you.

There are a couple of reminders that you can use. When you click on "create event", afterwards you should jump on to "modify the event" in order to set the reminders. There are two types of reminders: emails and pop-up. I usually set 2 reminders for activities that are longer in my time line. One of them is email, which I set out to notify me 24 hours prior to the event and another one that is pop-up, which notifies me 1 hour prior to the event (or depending on how much time it requires me to reach the destination if it requires my physical presence.) This can give you a clear idea on what is scheduled ahead. Also there is a third type of reminder, which gives me a brief summary of what's planned for next day. That one pops up on my mobile an hour or two before I go to sleep, forcing me to think, how my next day will look like.

One of most important things around Google Calendar planning is it's flexibility. If you don't feel like doing something, cancel it, and remember to cancel it in appropriate time. When you plan, you want to decrease your stress levels. Decreased stress levels lead to higher productivity. So now that I covered the basics of planning (which I will cover in more details in next blog posts) I want to get back on removing the clutter. 

Removing the clutter is something that we need to do on day to day basis. It consists of throwing or disposing the stuff that we don't use, removing bad subscriptions from your Google reader, removing people that you don't care about in your Facebook/Twitter newsfeed/timeline. De-clutter your life on daily basis, by removing all those informations that are unnecessary and distracting. No I am not advocating removal of fun things in your life, but there is time for you, when you are going to watch funny YouTube clips and read non related stuff for leisure. And you plan that time, as your leisure time! We are being way more productive when we are focused on task at hand, even our leisure is generating more pleasure when we focus only on that segment of our work day. 

Loads of us are mix and matchers, because we are going to Facebook a bit during our work flow, and than we're going check out that awesome YouTube clip, which we could watch later... Or skip it altogether? And when distractions kick in, we will spend whole day, thinking that we were working and draining mental energy that is in working mind set and pour it into distractions. Leaving us unsatisfied, not properly entertained and worse of all, leaving us without our tasks complete.

Make a habit of having leisure time separated from your work flow. This way you can work less and achieve more. Now that we removed all the clutter in form of distractions, it's way easier to combat procrastination. There is our phone reminding us, that our leisure time is scheduled after we complete goals that we've sett for the day... Careful planing leaves you easy battle against procrastination, and getting you in the mood to take action. When you are consistently taking action, you will reach your goals way sooner, beating the deadlines and overall you will get things done and have more free time.

If you liked this article, please share it.

PC Power User - Storing your ideas

If you are someone that is into internet marketing or any other form of web publishing, than you are definitively into writing and creating quality content. In order to achieve this, we are always hungry for high quality ideas and information on which we are going to write and talk about. If you don't write them down, you will eventually forget them and never put your energy into something that could be valuable to do. In this article I will cover how I am getting ideas for articles, how I store them and how I organize them. Be mindful of your ideas, they are something that is floating around, but if we don't take action in writing them down, we will loose them. Many ideas, can merge with other ideas of ours and make new and better ideas when combined together, make sure to keep them at your disposal, than time is on your side.

So how do you get ideas for articles? I spend a lot of time on the internet searching for high quality information and while I learn new things I get ideas. But lately instead of surfing the web aimlessly I decided to focus my efforts by organizing what I am reading. By keeping your reading content organized, you stay focused on your task and subject. Best tool for staying focused on subject is Google Reader. What I love about it, is flexibility it offers. It lets you organize your RSS feeds, into one streaming platform, something similar to your Facebook newsfeed. I have a couple of important tips, when gReading:

1. If you press 2 on your keyboard, you will switch to headlines only view. I love this view, because I can immediately decide weather I want to read an article or not.

2. When you find article that you would like to read, don't stop to read it, open it in new window, and save it for later, this way, you will keep your mind focused on figuring out what articles you want to read for that day. You can only read as much as your time allows you to. You want to make sure that you are reading what's most important to you and not the first thing that poped up on your Google reader. I like to open around 10 new tabs for 10 articles I read, no matter how big my list is. This makes my brain selective and shuts down information that aren't that important.

3. USE FOLDERS - Google Reader lets you organize your RSS feeds by folders. This is by far most useful tool at your disposal and if you use it properly, you will get to use it to it's fullest 

4. Share useful articles with your friends - if you found something that interests your friend, don't be shy and send it to his email, they will be grateful for your share.

5. If you are using Google Chrome, there is this wonderful extension that lets you automatically subscribe to some new and interesting thread, it's called RSS Subscription Extension.

If you want more tips and tricks on using Google Reader I highly recommend this article: Quick Tips for Google Reader Power Users

I will keep brief on getting the ideas, 2 more things that inspire me is using Twitter and Facebook lists in order to organize information streams. Getting to many different informations on different topics gets me into ADD (attention deficit disorder). So I like to keep my information streams, tidy and organized. This also helps me organize the way I start conversations on topics that I am covering. My greatest tip for these kind of lists is HIDE from Newsfeed and unfollow. Simple as it is. I don't like getting spam, so removing the things you don't care about is keeping your information clear and organized. You don't want clutter in your social media profile. I like getting high quality information that I can contemplate on and reuse after, also I like good humor, so if someone is constantly providing content that I don't care about, I just skip it. Unfollow and hide from news is your friend. Don't worry if you offend someone, it's you and your time, and take pride in how you use it.

Now we got to the most important part of this article: Storing the ideas. Before I get to some fancy widgets and gadgets I want to emphasize the importance of Pen and NoteBook. These 2 alone boost your creativity by quadriziollion %. Scribe, take notes, write aimlessly, having a notebook in front of yourself is simply put: GREAT. It's personalized and it's your own way of taking notes. I am usually mind mapping my notes or take lists. Concept of mind mapping is extremely important for me, and there is no software that can exchange the natural flow of my mind as pen and paper can. Not having a pen and paper in front of yourself is like shooting your idea storing process in the foot. Plus you have everything in physical form. If you don't know how to mind map, here are quick 10 mind mapping tips, to get you started.

All of those notes need a home and that home should be Evernote! This cross platform application is so cool, that we could write a book about it. Use it on your smartphone, desktop or as web app. Whenever you get an idea, STORE IT! Open up a new note, write it down, assign it to notebook and add tag to it. There is Evernote Chrome Extension as well. Now instead of talking what there is at your disposal, I will explain how I use Evernote. Whenever I see something interesting I take a snapshot of it, with my cellphone. It's image recognition system tags all the letters on the picture, so all the notes I took using my Pen and Notebook, become seaerchable by Evernote engine (and since I am using Chrome Extension, whenever I search Google, I search my notes as well). I use it to take screen shots of visit cards, maintenance bills and any other important information that I want to remember, for later reuse, where ever I am. Evernote stays synced with my smartphone. So whatever I am doing, I can use it to write/snapshot/audio record stuff that I want to remember.

Use of notebooks in Evernote is what keeps your ideas clear and well organized. I am running multiple websites and there is no way I can track ideas for all of those if I don't use notebooks. I keep one notebook per website and one notebook for my most notable activities during my day. I've got notebooks for bills, random ideas, dairy... Possibilities are endless... I will keep you covered with ideas how to use Evernote in future articles.

Also one of the services that I like to use as a back up is: Insta Paper. This website allows you to save articles for later read, there is even option inside of Google reader settings, that allows you to send articles directly to Insta Paper, via "send to" button. Pretty part of this extension that there is Android application that lets you read articles offline on your smart phone, it's called Insta Fetch.

Here I covered the basics of storing your ideas. If you found this article useful please share it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and / or email. Stay tuned for more articles in the series of: "How to become PC power user".

How to become "PC Power User" series

I am constantly on my PC and always on the look out to save tiny fractions of time. Being and staying productive on the web is one of my main motos. If you want to achieve more in less time and stay more organized you should follow these tips. Essentially you will figure out what ideas to have and how to implement them in order to become power user.

In this series I will cover:

Android Phones

Google Chrome Extensions

Mozilla Fire Fox Extensions

Windows applications

and Pen and Paper

I will start with some essential tips, that aren't PC related and which are focused on productivity alone. Having pen and paper always by your side is essential. Storing your ideas became important to me, since I started with internet marketing. In the process you will have many ideas, but if you don't store them, they will fade away and go to oblivion. All of those ideas require certain action in order to succeed. 

How to combat procrastination? Biggest problem of working from home is that you can get lazy and skip doing the stuff that are really important. Not that many times, I've lost track of my activity and wasted timeless hours on reading unimportant RSS feeds on Google Reader, instead of doing what's really important. Writing down what's important and needs to be taken care of is, yea you guessed it: ESSENTIAL. You should get into habit of writing down things that need to be taken care of. Even if you don't eventually do them, you wrote them down and made bigger significance and bigger attachment to your goal.

Main thing about getting your online business on track is dedicated commitment to do what's important and avoid procrastination. Procrastination is our biggest enemy, draining our time and making us spend more time in front of computer than we really should. So in order to avoid procrastination, you need to remove all the clutter. So how do we actually do it? Removing the clutter ain't an easy task I tell you. 

I know a lot of people who have cluttered desktop, cluttered working table. Your workspace should be minimalistic with smallest amount of objects. Ideal working environment should have monitor, keyboard, mouse and of course pen and paper :) Everything beside those things on the desk is distraction!

So after reading this article I want you to remember three things:

1. Store your ideas

2. Combat your procrastination

3. Remove all of the clutter

Stay tuned for Power User series articles. If you have any ideas, suggestions, please share them with us in the comments.

Moja mala beleska misli...

Vodim ozbiljne blogove na engleskom, promovisem ih, i svi imaju mogucnost to da citaju... Ovde cu da vodim casual svoju beleznicu misli i zapazanja...

Bez uredjivanja i slika, samo tekst i samo sirovo i razumljivo samo meni... Kao neki dnevnik...