Read it later - Read It Later allows you to save pages of interest to read later. It eliminates cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest. This one is among my favorites because it’s going to help me clean up my bookmarks and get them more organized. Download

Stumble Upon Toolbar – Channel-surf the Internet with the StumbleUpon Toolbar. StumbleUpon discover websites based on your interests, learns what you like, and brings you more. Bloggers can also use it for promoting their blog or their favorite reads. Download

Delicious Bookmarks - Delicious Bookmarks is the official Firefox add-on for Delicious, the world’s leading social bookmarking service. It integrates your bookmarks and tags with Firefox and keeps them easily and conveniently accessible. Download

Shareaholic – Social networking and link sharing addicts will love this! Shareaholic allows you to quickly share, bookmark, and email web pages across many web 2.0 social networking and bookmarking sites such as Digg, Delicios, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Mixx and many others without cluttering up your browser with multiple toolbars and buttons. I love tidy! Download

Reminder Fox – The more I learn or aspire to learn, the more cluttered my ind gets the the more forgetful I become. ReminderFox displays and manages lists of date-based reminders and To-Do’s. It makes sure you remember all of your important dates via easy-to-use lists, alerts, and alarm notifications. Very useful for bloggers and freelancers alike as it’ll enable you to set deadlines and reminders for writing posts, paying your bills, important events etc. Download

Search Status – SearchStatus displays the Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, and Compete Ranking anywhere in your browser. It also enables you to quickly analyze keyword density, highlight no-follow links on the page, and more. Very useful for all the bloggers and SEO pros out there. Download

Fire FTP – FireFTP is a free, secure, FTP client for Mozilla Firefox. FireFTP provides easy access to FTP servers. Along with transferring your files quickly and efficiently, FireFTP also includes more advanced features such as directory comparison, syncing directories while navigating, SFTP, SSL encryption, search/filtering, integrity checks, remote editing, drag & drop, file hashing, and much more… Download

Fireshot – FireShot allows you to take screenshots of web pages. Unlike other Firefox plugins, this one provides a set of editing tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text and graphical annotations. FireShot lets you capture the entire web page or only the visible part of the web page. This plugin is very useful for bloggers who don’t have a premium screenshot taking utility and editor like SnagIt.  Download

CoComment – CoComment allows you to keep track of your comments across any blog or collection of blogs. Very helpful if you subscribe to a lot of comment feeds or if you comment a lot – it might even be the inspiration you’ve been looking for if you wish to become more interactive around your niche blogging community. Download – Friend me on CoComment

PS: You’ll first have to register at CoComment before you can use this plugin.

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My Comment Commitment: If you leave an approved comment on any of my posts, I will visit your blog and “share it” in some way whether on StumbleUpon, Twitter or Facebook depending on if I can find a nice fit.

Originally posted 2009-12-14 17:17:30.

While I may be a seasoned blogger, I believe it’s important to take time, revisit programs and tools you use to become familiar with the changes they’ve made since you began using them.

Feedburner is just such a tool.

I’ve always known that it’s a must have tool – but I’d no idea there were so many valuable changes since I began 5 years ago. Sure, I’d dip into my account once in a while to see how many readers I had, but never to dig deep and pick apart all the latest offerings. Wow – was I amazed.

I spend a couple of days adding a better RSS feed to all my blogs via Feedburner. Wow, do I love what they offer! Feedburner can’t help you get set up, but what they can do is – once you are set up, they provide the easiest tools to Optimize, Publicize, Monetize, Analyze and Troubleshootize your blog.

What’s more, Feedburner offers an awesome and entertaining blog that makes even the newest beginner feel comfortable moving forward with their tools.

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My Comment Commitment: If you leave an approved comment on any of my posts, I will visit your blog and “share it” in some way whether on StumbleUpon, Twitter or Facebook depending on if I can find a nice fit.

Originally posted 2009-12-13 15:32:17.

There are so many free blogging tools on the market, but loading up your blog with all of the free accessories you can find isn’t necessarily a good idea. While it may be tempting to add a visitor counter, a flashy background, an exciting new font, and a cluster of quirky animated gifs to your blog, this kind of plan can easily backfire. The key to getting the most from free blog tools is being selective.

It is a great idea to learn about all of the kinds of free blogging tools that are available so that you can make an informed decision about what to add to your blog, but try to remember that just because you can have something doesn’t mean that you need it.

Practice restraint and only choose the options that you think will really be useful. If you can find out how many visitors are reading your blog by checking your traffic statistics, a visitor counter is likely to add unnecessary clutter to your page. If your blog is text-based, a flashy background can be more of a distraction than an benefit. Be realistic about assessing what kinds of blog accessories will help you realize your vision and improve your site. Remember that even a blog tool that doesn’t cost you any cash may not be an asset in the long run.

And if that’s not enough to detour your temptation – keep in mind that not all your readers are going to be on high speed and if your site takes to long to load, they’ll find their information and entertainment elsewhere.

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My Comment Commitment: If you leave an approved comment on any of my posts, I will visit your blog and “share it” in some way whether on StumbleUpon, Twitter or Facebook depending on if I can find a nice fit.

Originally posted 2009-11-02 15:49:59.