AfterTheDotNet

Make others more aware of your social networks using Wisestamp

Wisestamp is a Firefox extension that allows you to add personalized email signatures on any of the webmail services. You can add multiple signatures and can also include your social networks.

The features of the service are

• Personally designed signatures.
• Easy setup and configuration interface.
• Use multiple email signatures (Business and Personal)
• Signature Rich Text editor (WYSIWYG Editor-choose color and font) and allows preview. It also supports special characters.
• Add your logo or image to your signature.
• Automatically insert your signature to your webmail services like Gmail, Google App’s, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, AOL and more…
• Easily Include all your IM (Instant messaging) ID’s + icons.
• Easily link to all of your social services-links & Profiles + icons
• Manually add your signature at mouse cursor location.

Advantages

• Popularize your social profiles.
• Drive traffic to your social networks.
• Improve networking.
• Makes otherwise dull signatures something interesting.

Disadvantages

• Works in only Firefox as it is only a Firefox extension
• Some people are of the opinion that signatures are not that important.

Conclusion

I would recommend everyone who is into social networking sites to try it for sure. It will increase traffic to your social networks for sure. If Wsestamp does not work for you then disable it.

Tags: email, free, html, signature

Snail mail with a twist - Letterfu

In this day and age there is very little incentive to write snail mail. The main reasons why snail mail has taken a back seat are

• it is cumbersome,
• your handwriting is not good and
• it takes time to deliver

But the advantages of writing snail mail are there as well

• it is more thoughtful as people take time out to write snail mails,
• it has a personal touch to it
• and the feel good factor for the writer and the recipient.

Letterfu is a service that gives you reasons to write a snail mail as it makes snail mail fun and is also fun. Letterfu provides you templates for your snail mail, which you can print out, that are the mail templates and the envelope templates rolled in one. Some of the features are

Read more about Letterfu……

Tags: letter, mail, snail, writing

Laptops are mostly lost at airports!

According to a report in July 2008 the most likely place where people loose a laptop in US is the airport. A study done by Dell which covered of 106 major U.S. airports and 800 business travelers

• about 12,000 laptops are lost in airports each week.
• 70% never recover their laptops.
• And the most astonishing aspect of the report – nearly 50% travelers who lost their laptops claimed that their laptops have customer data or confidential business information!
• Few companies report laptops theft as they are embarrassed to report these thefts.
• 600,000 laptops are lost each year at US airports
• The laptops are usually lost during security checks or in the departure lounge.
• The LA airport reported maximum losses – 1,200 per week!
• While 1% of those surveyed admitted losing a laptop whereas 84% of those surveyed said that they knew someone who had lost a laptop at the airport.
• Only 65% business travelers admitted taking steps to protect the data on their laptop.
• Only 20% of business travelers encrypt their hard disks.

A PDF version of the report can be downloaded here.

Going by the report it seems that customers information with companies is at risk and it is quite likely that it would be leaked. The silver lining is that cases of actual data theft reported are far less than actually possible.

Tags: data, laptops, stolen, theft

Usable social recommendation engine - Goodrec

Goodrec allows you to easily find and remember recommendations for restaurants, books, movies, shopping stores and more using a mobile or the Internet. The recommendations are brief, to-the-point from friends and trusted sources.

Some of the features of Goodrec are

• To-the-point recommendations
• From people you know and trust
• Easy to make, find and remember. Fast and informed decision making using the ‘Thumbs Up’/ ‘Thumbs down’ recommendations.
• Quickly add quick tips and photos to recommendations.
• For restaurants, nightlife, books, movies and more
• Available online and on your mobile device

Continue reading about Goodrec

Tags: engine, networking, recommendation, social

Firefox update – Get more out of browsing from Firefox

Firefox had a released version 3 recently. If you have been using Firefox 3 recently your browser would have updated automatically to version 3.02 because as the updates are turned on automatically. To know the version of Firefox go to the Firefox window and then hit Help in the menu button and then about. A pop up would inform you about the version of Firefox you are using.

After the update I happened to check the update page of Firefox and was surprised that I was not aware of the features that had been updated or added and infarct some of the features were those that I had wished for.

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Tags: features, firefox, update

Do not throw away old stuff – trade it online with commuto

Commuto, a Canada based start up, allows its member to smart swap things they have for free. It provides a unique secure and safe way to to exchange stuff  or barter online with other members locally. It is aimed at college or university students though anyone can join. The way it works is

• create an account
• create communities and list what things you have to share
• when you see an item on the website which you would like click on the “I want this” link next to it.
• Based on what you want to share or what you want the system at Commuto will notify you when someone is looking something you have to share or someone has a “I want this” item.

Read about how to use commuto and about the online trading industry

Tags: barter, community, online, trading

Track micro blogging with budurl

In this era of micro blogging and with limited message space URL shortening services are in demand. Twitter uses tinyurl.com service.

Tiny URL does provide you statistics for the shortened URL’s you create but they are very basic. I would like to see more details of the shortened URL’s so that I know more about how the information I shared with others is being used. This is weere the service budurl helps.

read about the features and advantages of budurl

Tags: blogging, micro, redirection, shortening, url

State of the blogosphere 2008

Technorati has released “State of the Blogosphere 2008 report” which gives details of the status of blogging around the world. A survey was conducted by Technorati which also included questions about personal lives of selected bloggers. Technorati has released the first report of a total of five reports. The reports are

read the highlights of the blogosphere report

Tags: blog, bloggers, blogging, blogosphere, industry, profile