Here are some of the most useful:

Search a specific website

site:blackdogmedia.co.uk hello

Adding site: followed by a website (without the www. or http://) will give you search results from that particular site.

Using a minus sign to exclude results

-keyword

Using a – (hypen, minus sign, dash) will exclude a particular key word from the google result.

Quote marks to search for an exact phrase

For example, “the quick brown fox”.  This is apparently a handy one for cheating in pub quizzes…someone told me.

Other Tips

There are lots of handy google uses.  For example, google can do maths 5*7/34 (5 x 7 divided by 34).  Or unit conversion, by typing 100 kilograms in pounds you’ll discover the answer is 220.462262.

You can search for specific file types by typing filetype:pdf (returns PDF documents only) or filetype:doc blackdog tab will return word documents with blackdog tab from the Led Zeppelin song (no relation to the name of my company).

Rick

Personally having had a BAD experience once in my life with data loss which resulted in a veeeerrry unhappy wife, I’m now a paranoid uber backer upper (PUBU).  Here’s the solution I came up with, which might be useful for you.  I would thoroughly recommend it!

At home I’ve a QNAP TS-210 NAS.  Which is a hard drive attached to my network. As soon as I turn on any of the laptops at home, they start backing up via time machine. You can also use this box to backup your PC laptop (it supports SMB or AFP).

Why not use time capsule?  I hear a lot of complaints about unreliability so avoided that solution.  Also, the QNAP box came with lots of other stuff, for example I can set it to download movies in my absence and my TV can play movies directly from it (no need for an apple TV).  It also has a built in web server, iTunes media streaming, surveillance system, full RAID (multiple instances of same drive just in case one fails).

So what if the house explodes, burns down, gets washed away by the flood or struck by lightening?  Hopefully this will not happen, but if it does I’ve also got a cloud based backup happening as well.  I went with backblaze, although there are lots of different cloud backups available.  Backblaze costs $5 a month, so it’s not exactly a bank breaker.  It backs up everything except your operating system and applications.

Once all that’s set up, you can simply forget about it (but test it every once in a while).

Download files > Unpack > Upload files to site > site down > site breaks > heart fails > site apology > site restored

Good start to the day!

I had previously hand coded a content management system, but having realised the awesome power of wordpress, decided it needed that treatment. Used a great event manager plugin, really customisable.  Timed myself making the move from the old site, managed to transfer in under 2 hours which is pretty good going.

It will be interesting to see how the statistics are affected by the improved SEO in wordpress.

His list of achievements under apple (and also outside such as NeXt and Pixar) are astonishing.  The inventions created and pioneered under apple have led the PC market by the nose.  Love them or loathe their cocky self assuredness, apple have indeed changed the world as we know it.  From the use of typography and design, to firewire, to the iPod which paved the way for apple to create the iPhone & iPad.  Not to mention the Mac itself, software built around the hardware it runs on – this is one of the mains things that sets apple products apart from their competitors, and the reason that ‘it just works’.

Apple aside, Steve Jobs was an inspiring man and a great example of character.  I love this clip from ’97.  In this video Steve is insulted by a member of the audience, his response was one of grace even though he could probably have biten back.

In the famous Stanford Commencement speech, Steve outlines some of the steps that brought him to this place, including some of the personal aspects of his life such as being told by doctors to ‘get his affairs in order’ after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

“I want to make a ding in the universe”
~Steve Jobs

I would say, and I’m sure most will agree, mission accomplished.

• Disk Space - 3,000 MB
• Monthly Bandwidth - 25 GB
• Secure Email Accounts - unlimited (only by space)
• Mailing Lists - 4
• MySQL Databases - 10
• Parked Domains - 10
• Sub Domains - unlimited
• FTP Accounts - unlimited
• cPanel Control Panel
• Web Hosting Applications
• MailFoundry Protection
• R1Soft CDP Backups

Site: moltenmagazine.com

Molten Magazine are Ireland’s newest Hard Rock and Metal magazine monthly, getting ready to launch their first edition this August. Have to say, I really enjoyed putting this site together as there were a few challenges, being able to update multiple pages, create feature articles and have a featured image slideshow on the front page. WordPress enabled us to create advertising areas controllable by the client, full comment system, contact forms, advertising areas and share daddy goodness.

Rock on \m/

Tools used: HTML5, jQuery slideshow, CSS3 gradients and font-face title fonts. CMS was wordpress.

Making the move from Windows to OSX isn’t as scary as you might think. If you’re like me and you prefer keyboard shortcuts to hunting through menu options, then this list should be helpful.

 (Command key) – On some Apple keyboards, this key also has an Apple logo ()
 (Control key)
 (Option key) – “Alt” may also appear on this key
 (Shift key)
 (Caps Lock) – Toggles Caps Lock on or off
fn (Function key)

Essential General Shortcuts

• Command Q – Quit the current application completely (closes all documents)
• Command W – close the current Window.
• Command H – this will Hide the current application and all open windows
• Command T – open a new Tab on any browser.
• Command Tab – (this is identical to Alt Tab on Windows) press and hold the Command key and press the Tab once. While continuing to hold the CMD key, press the tab key to cycle through open applications.
• Command A – select All text or images, website content etc.
• Command Alt Escape – launches force quit, similar to the task manager in Windows. This allows you to quit a program that has become unresponsive.

Text Editing

These are all similar to windows shortcuts, but use CMD instead of Ctrl.

• Command Z – Undo last move (the opposite of this is Redo which is Shift CMD Z in most applications)
• Command X – Cut selected text
• Command C – Copy selected text
• Command V – Paste text from clipboard

Twitter… maybe you have it? Maybe you’re thinking about it? Perhaps you use it for your business, to connect with friends, to follow celebrities, to show off your crazy skills, or to stalk your ex-lover.  It can be an incredibly useful tool, not just as a networking tool but to promote and communicate nearly anything. Still in their relative infancy, twitter and facebook have become the voice of communities in countries that have collectively removed governments from power, sparked protest and brought truth to the surface where it has been covered up. Twitter may well be the fastest and most accurate source of news on the planet today.

As a newbie, or perhaps even as a user who has been on twitter for a while you may be wondering if you’re getting the best from it. Perhaps you use it for your company, events, services or to promote a product. Maybe you simply use it to connect with your facebook.

If so, read on…

What is a hashtag?

A hash tag is simply any word preceded by the # (hash, number, pound sign, alt 3 on an UK mac).  It’s purpose is so that a specific word of phrase can be indexed by twitter and collectively searched and viewed by everyone else. For example, as I tweet my rage at how rude Simon Cowell was to little Percy on tonights X Factor, I may end my tweet with #xf11 or #xfactor.

Using the hashtag in your Organisation

You may like to choose a hashtag for a specific event, product or service for your company. Just remember that twitter has millions of users, and so you should check your hashtag of choice before you decide broadcast it. After all, you don’t want to discover you’re linked to something completely inappropriate, irrelevant, or a competitors company. Here is a handy tool to check out hashtag stats HERE before making the leap.

Also remember you can’t ever have exclusive rights to a hashtag – this would defeat the purpose.

How not to use the Hashtag

There are no real rules here, although I’ve observed some pointless uses of hash tags, such as a running phrase at the end of a tweet:

#somethinglikethisdoesntmakemuchsense

The likelihood of someone searching for that phrase, or that it would start to trend, are nearly non existent. So there’s not much point in doing it unless you think it’s #absolutelyhilariouslyfunny.

Twitter Updating Facebook

You may want to use your twitter to update your facebook (or vice-versa), but lately I’ve realised this is no longer a good idea. Facebook in their ever changing wisdom have hidden status updates from twitter by default. So if you’re promoting something on both platforms, the way to get the most visibility is to do it the hard way and update both twitter and facebook manually (aw come on, copy and paste, it’s not that hard).

Also remember if you are using twitter to update your facebook status, the hashtag may not make any sense to those friends. It is also of no use to them.

Good uses

A great example I’ve seen is a local trend from people here in N. Ireland in response to recent resurgence of violence. People tagged their frustrations and disgust with #notinmyname. This is where the collective volume of the voice of sensible people in this world is raised.

If one hashtag is not enough to encapsulate your tweet, then work away with as many as you want.  However 1 or 2 key words are probably going to be more effective that twenty.

So in short, here are my top tips:

• When selecting hashtags for your event/company/website etc, choose carefully (check it first here)
• Keep it short and to the point, #disagreeifyouwillIthinkthisisratherpointless
• #dont #overdo #it #on #the #hashtags
• Remember, it may only make sense on twitter
• Facebook hide status tweets by default, so update it directly for maximum exposure