The only thing I love more than Google Chrome itself are the Extensions!

First, let me explain why I love Chrome. It is MUCH faster than any other browser I’ve tried. It takes high-speed Internet to a whole new level! Plus, it doesn’t take up half of your screen like other browsers. The minimalist design is something I totally dig.

Recently I discovered the Linky extension.

This extension is something that you add onto your browser and will allow you to highlight a list of links and open them all at once. It is amazing to use for blog hops and entering giveaways! You highlight your list, click the linky icon and voila, all sites open in tabs across your browser! This saves me a ton of time from going back and forth and once I am completed with my tasks on one site, I simply close the tab. Oh, did I mention it is Free? Bonus!

Extensions can really help an avid blog hopper like me save time and become much more efficient.

Do you have extensions you love and use daily? Let me know! I may want to try them out for myself.

Notice anything different around here?

You might not notice it right away, but it is lurking down toward the bottom of this post, and it is the new way to share your content across the web. According to the cool kids anyway.

It looks like this.

Pretty snazzy, right?

You might think so once you learn what it can do for you.

We May Have Something In Common

When you +1 a blog post, or other content across the web, you can see what you have in common with your friends. For instance, my friend Julie always passes along amazing articles to me. Now, I can just go stalk her +1 profile and see what she is liking across the web! This saves her some time in sending it to me and allows me to filter what I want to see.

SEO Benefits

When we read a great article, the first thing we do is share it with others that we think might enjoy it. This social sharing also helps the post to become more visible in the search engines. You will start to notice the +1 button popping up everywhere. It is already on Google’s search results if you are logged in with your gmail account.

Note – The +1 button interacts with your Google Profile. If you have an @gmail.com email address you should have the profiles set up with no problem. However, if you are using gmail to run your custom domain email, you will not have access to profiles and not be able to participate quite yet, but they assure us that it is coming. So, until then, I simply participate with one of my gmail accounts! Because I seem to always want to participate in the new stuff!

Why?

Because, because, because, because, becaaaaause…. because of the wonderful things it does. Users across the web have started to become more accustomed to “liking” content. I joked with some friends on twitter a while back that I wished Twitter had a like button because that is exactly how I would respond to certain tweets. In fact, I use the like button to not only tell a friend that I have liked something, I also use it to tell them I have done something. This includes, voting for them in a contest, sending them the goods they have requested in FarmVille or simply expressing that I agree with their post and have done the same thing. The +1 button is Google’s way of allowing users to like and share content through their platform easily.

If you would like to add +1 to your website, please visit the Google +1 Website to get the code. Installation will be different based upon what platform you are using to blog and also what theme you are using.

What do you think? Will you be adding it to your blog soon?

Are you familiar with blogs that encourage you to “grab their button” and place it on your blog? This is often used in blog hops, link parties, or for advertising purposes during a giveaway for additional promotion. This tutorial will show you how you can create html button code for your blog.

Grab My Button Code Generator

As always, I searched for an easy way to do this for my own button, and stumbled upon the Grab My Button Code Generator. This process is so easy, that I wanted to share it with you!

Step 1:  Create an image that you would like to use as a button. Most buttons are made as a square and are 125 x 125 pixels. I used Adobe Photoshop to create my button, however free softwares, such as Gimp or Picasa, also work great for this task. When you save your button, make sure to use your “save for web” option to compress the image down to the smallest size so that it will load faster when viewed over the Internet. This is important to do on blogs and when sharing images because all of our readers don’t have the same speed of Internet connection and we don’t want people to leave the blog because they have to sit and wait for images to load.

Here is a picture of my button and the finished product:

 

<div align=”center”><a href=”http://www.midwesternmoms.com” title=”Midwestern Moms” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://midwesternmoms.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/newmwm.jpg” alt=”Midwestern Moms” style=”border:none;” /></a></div>

Step 2:  Upload the image to your blog’s media library. After you are complete with uploading your image, you will be given the image URL. This is where the image is stored on your site. You will want to copy this URL by using “Control C” on your keyboard or your copy/paste functionality from your mouse. I use WordPress, so this is an example of what I see after I upload my image to my media library.

Step 3:  Visit the Grab My Button Code Generator link. Here you will input all of your information. For “Container Type” I chose “Text Area” and I left the default colors. I also always choose to open links in a new window from my blog. This is simply a personal preference. When you click the “preview” button you will see your code has been generated. Choose “Get Code” to then display the code to copy and paste over onto your site.

Step 4:  If you wish to add the button and code to your sidebar, add a new “text” widget. You will then paste the html that you just generated from the website into the widget and save.

If you notice in my code, I have updated the original height and width to be 125px. This is so that it will fit in nicely on my sidebar. You are welcome to adjust the code as you like so that it fits where you want it to in your site.

Did you find this tutorial helpful? Be sure to let me know if there are any blog tips and tricks out there that you would be interested in seeing a tutorial for, please contact me and let me know.

As I unwind for the evening, part of my ritual is to grab my iPhone and check out the latest Facebook posts or Twitter updates from my friends and fellow bloggers. Of course, this includes clicking on any links that I wish to read more about. Often times I then sit… and wait… until the blog finally loads all the way into my iPhone browser. As you can imagine, since most blogs I read include advertising and image heavy posts, this takes quite a while.

Why not speed it up?

Offer a mobile version of your site.

For all of those that think this is a labor intensive process, or that it takes technical knowledge, you are absolutely wrong.

This took a whopping 30 seconds.

Now users that visit Midwestern Moms will be able to scan the post title and read a quick, clean version of the post. It might not be “pretty” but it is functional and it serves the purpose for what mobile users are looking for – a quick way to read just the post that they clicked on.

If you use WordPress, like I do, here is how you make your website mobile compatible.

1. Access the Plugins section in the WordPress navigation
2. Search for  the “WPtouch”  plugin, or if you are looking for a version with more features you can pay for “WPtouch Pro“
3. Install and activate the Plugin
4. Customize your settings if you wish
5. Test it out!

It is a very quick, simple, process to give your readers another option to read your content.

Do you run Blogger and still want to create a mobile version of your site? I’ve done some research and found a widget called “Blogger Touch” that will make your Blogger Blog mobile ready.

I wasn’t offered anything to write this post. I simply found this service and as a resource to my fellow bloggers wanted to share it with you!

Did you install it? If so, please comment and let me know what you think!