They are not necessarily in any particular order.

1. TextPad
2. Firefox with FireBug extension.
3. Chrome Browser
4. Skype
5. Google Talk
6. Google Reader
7. Twitter
8. Facebook
9. WordPress
10. Email (Gmail)

As an extra mention, most of these are used on my desktop and my iPhone. I am still doing 99.9% of my work on an HP Mini 311 Verizon Netbook, which is simply amazing.

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The one thing I can not grasp is why Google is choosing to keep the control so tight. After all these years the one thing you could count on with Google was some options. And we all know, if it can be done, Google can do it.

Suggestions:

• Google Buzz in the inbox. Give us some options. Start with, yes or no, and branch out from there. If yes, let us set the update interval to some extent. Buzz in Gmail is not the issue, just the inbox flow.
• Google Buzz and Google Reader integration. Once again, yes or no would be nice. My Reader was just about perfect for me, now, it is a mess.
• Bump interval. Why not let us set this to a number of comments before a post is bumped? Maybe a combination, either X number of comments, or an elapsed time will bump it.
• Mute fade. I just don’t think the Web 2.0 feature is worth the delay. I know I muted it, just let it go. Of course, an option here would be nice for those who like it.
• Contacts. Wow, what a mess this is. Google Buzz has made trash out of my contacts. I have not investigated this much, but I know I was shocked when I realized Buzz was doing a number on my nice clean list.
• How about a favorites button or some mechanism to flag something for later review? You are the ones who got us used to this in Gmail and Reader!

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According to this error I received, Google Chrome is not a supported browser for Google Gmail?

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If you find yourself answering the same question over and over in Gmail, you can just add a canned response and then set a filter to handle who the response gets delivered to automatically.

This is not the same thing as autoresponders, this is more fine tuned to a specific topic or person and not just an email address. Check out the blog post about it at New in Labs: Canned Responses

One thing I realized quickly, there is no obvious way to add a Canned Response?

You have to do it from a Reply window, once you activate it.

Select an email to reply to and there is a new option link to add a canned response.

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Google only allows subscriptions to a Blog Search, but not a Web Search. A good substitute for this is a Google Alert which will keep you up to date on any topic across Websites, Blogs and News.

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I am not going to do a full review since K did such a great job reviewing it for us. But I will say, so far I am very impressed. I downloaded and installed Digsby and had it up and running in just a few minutes. The biggest feature for me is the ability to see, read and mark my email without loading the Gmail web page, now that is a big time saver.

Make sure to check out K’s full review of Digsby and give Digsby a try!

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I work with a few bloggers very closely, and I see and hear the same thing often. “I can’t keep up”. The interesting part is that this same statement comes from a variety of blogger types.

I work a full time job, 50-55 hours a week, I own at least 60 domain names, and have 10+ blogs and websites that I am working.If you have more than one site, you need to manage your time and resources. Here are a few things I do that help me keep it all rolling.

• Delegate – I have a couple of people writing for me. They get paid from the blogs that they write on.
• Trade – I have traded skills with others. Garry Conn is a good example. He did the header graphic on this site, and I did some PHP programming for him.
• Layout – It starts with my browser, when I start up, I have 9 tabs loaded as my home page. My Yahoo, Google, Gmail, Adsense, Analytics, Google Reader, Pandora, Google Docs and Google Trends. From this point I can see what is going on with my sites, and what is going on with others.
• Glance first – Each time I sit down to work I glance at each tab to get an overview. This means I spend maybe 1 or 2 minutes on a tab. I do not answer emails at this point, or dig through stats. From here I can go back and work on what looked to be the most critical items.
• Scheduled posting – I use WordPress and the scheduling has saved me a lot of time. An added benefit to the scheduling is releasing a post to publish early in the morning so by the time traffic is rolling my posts are already in the Blogsearch and at least the home page has been Indexed.

With this plan of attack I have been able to keep my full time job and get my online income to go from $25 to $2000 a month. And don’t kid yourself, luck plays a part in all of this too. And I have been lucky at times over the last couple years. But if you want to take advantage of luck, you have to be prepared. Are you prepared?

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