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Sometimes you come across a file you want to download but all you’ve got is your smartphone. Perhaps it’s a standard file, perhaps it’s a torrent. Whatever the case may be, it’s relatively simple to get your smartphone to tell your home computer to get started on that download from afar. Here’s how.

Remotely Download Web-Hosted Files

If you want to download a file to your computer that’s hosted somewhere on the web, this is the method you want to use. All you need is an account with Dropbox (our favorite file-syncing tool) and a web browser on your smartphone. To download that file to your home computer from the comfort of your phone, just follow these steps (or watch the video to the left):

1. Grab the URL of the file you want to download on your smartphone.
2. Open any web browser on your smartphone and head over to urldroplet.com.
3. Enter the URL in URL Droplet’s only text field and click the "Log In" button.
4. Log into your Dropbox account and grant access to URL Droplet.
5. When you’re back on the main URL Droplet page, scroll down to the bottom of the screen and see if the file is listed as queued. If not, just add it again via URL Droplet’s only text field and click the "Save" button.
6. It’ll take a few minutes for the file to show up in your Dropbox, but when it does it’ll be in the root folder and you can use it when you get back to any computer that’s syncing your Dropbox folder.

Pretty easy! If you want to see a walkthrough, watch the video above.

Alternatively, if you want to do this with a native iPhone app, download Drop It ($1). For another option, your could set If This Then That to add, for example, emailed file URLs to your Dropbox (learn how to use it with our guide).

Remotely Download Torrents

There are a few ways to remotely download torrents, and we have a bunch of guides to help you do it. If you want to stick with the same basic method outlined above, you cansend .torrent files remotely to your Dropbox folder. For a little more control, though, you might prefer just using uTorrent’s mobile interface to remotely schedule torrents instead:

1. Grab a copy of uTorrent (if you don’t have one already).
2. Open up uTorrent and edit its Preferences/Settings.
3. Go to the "Remote" tab and check the box next to "Enable uTorrent Remote".
4. Enter a unique computer name and a password. If your computer name is accepted and isn’t in use by anyone else, you’ll be asked to answer a new security question. Fill in your answer and press okay.
5. Go to remote.utorrent.com in your smartphone’s web browser and log in with your computer’s name and password.
6. Press the + button to add a new torrent via URL.

That’s all there is to it! For a more detailed walkthrough, see our recent guide to monitoring your BitTorrent downloads from any computer or mobile device.

Remotely Download Files from Usenet

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Using your smartphone to tell your home computer to remotely download files from Usenet is really easy to do. You just need the right app, SABnzbd+ running on that home computer, and the port SABnzbd+ runs on (8080 by default) forwarded to that computer via your router’s admin software. Then you can use the relevant app for your smartphone to remotely schedule downloads. That’s the process in a nutshell. Here’s the step by step:

1. Presumably you’ve already got a Usenet account and set up SABnzbd+, but if not you need to do that.
2. Forward port 8080 (or whatever port you’re using) to the IP address of the computer running SABnzbd+. If you don’t know how to do this, read our port forwarding guide.
3. Now you need an app for your smartphone. If you’re using an iPhone, download myNZB($3). For Android, download, NZBAir ($5), sabdroidplus (Free), NZBDroid (Free, $1), orone of the many other options.
4. Once you’ve downloaded your NZB-adding app of choice, go into SABnzbd+ on your computer, grab your API key. You can find it by choosing Config -> General, then scrolling down the page to find the "API Key", and copy it. You can either do this directly on your phone or do it on your computer and send the API key to your phone via email (or whatever method you prefer).
5. Go into the settings on the app you chose and enter your SABnzbd+ credentials. This will generally include your username, password, and API key. On the iPhone, you’ll find this in the myNZB settings in the Settings app—not in the myNZB app. On Android, the location will vary a little because we’re not talking about a multiple apps, but you’ll find the settings you’re looking for by pressing the menu button on your device.

Now you’re all set up! You can now use your SAB-compatible app to search for and schedule Usenet downloads with ease.

Anyone who doesn’t have dropbox yet please get a free account…. click here to sign up and get 2.25gb account http://db.tt/LzItW0uL

Google plus allows to invite friends from Yahoo and Hotmail account’s contact list and you use this feature to invite all of your Facebook friends at your Google plus  profile. Here is the quick guide lines to invite Facebook friends via your Yahoo or Hotmail account.

1. Sign in to your Yahoo or Hotmail account. If you do not have one, sign up for it. Here I am using the Hotmail account to show the workarounds step by step. The similar procedure is applicable also for the Yahoo account.

2. In your Hotmail account’s home page, you can find an option to connect services like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn etc.

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3. Click on the Facebook icon and connect it with your Hotmail account. You are required to grant the access permission for your Facebook profile.

4. Once connected, go back to your Google plus profile and click on Circles.

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5. Here, you will find three sections – People in your circle, People who’ve added you, Find and Invite.

6. Click on Find and Invite link.

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7. You can find now the option of inviting people through your Yahoo and Hotmail accounts. Click anyone to connect. I’ve used my Hotmail account.

8. Once the account is connected with Google plus, it will fetch all the contacts from that account and show you the entire contact list.

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.:: Update ::.

=========

After the successful launch of Google plus, the internet users are too much eager to know about Google plus. According to some sources, folks are enjoying Google plus and they are thinking this social network from Google as replacement of Facebook. After giving it a try, I realized that things are too much organized in Google plus than the Facebook. The best thing about Google plus is that it is clutter free.

Those who have already gotten the invitation and are able to use Google plus, the first thing they want to do is inviting some of their friends from different networks like Facebook, LinkedIn etc. Though Google plus automatically imports the contact from the corresponding Google account, it does not allow you to import contacts from Facebook or LinkedIn accounts but it allows importing contacts from Yahoo and Hotmail account. Again both Hotmail and Yahoo allows you to import contacts from your Facebook account. This impressed me to use my Hotmail account to invite Facebook friends in Google plus. I wrote above tutorial on how to invite Facebook friends in Google plus where I used my Hotmail account to import the Facebook contacts.

But after reading the feedback from some readers, I came to know that the importing contacts from Facebook in Hotmail is not working. While I re-checked it, found that some thing is wrong with Hotmail-Facebook pairing. But the Yahoo is still working fine and you give you Yahoo account a try to import contacts from Facebook account. Here is the total workarounds onhow to invite all Facebook friends in Google Plus using Yahoo account.

1. Sign-in to your Yahoo account and scroll down the mouse wheel to reach at the end of the landing page.

(2-1)

2. Click on Address Book link under the Yahoo!Services. This will take you into theContacts tab.

3. Click on the Tools button and select Import from the drop-down menu.

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4. Now the options from where you can import contacts in Yahoo appear. Click Facebook icon.

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5. If you are already logged into your Facebook profile in the same browser, it will automatically start to import the contacts from your Facebook account after providing the necessary permission of accessing data from Facebook, otherwise you will have to sign into your Facebook account with correct login credentials.

(2-4)

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6. Once it successfully imports all the contacts from Facebook into your Yahoo account, go back to Google plus profile and click the Circle icon then Find and Invite link.

7. You can see, there is an option to invite people using Yahoo contacts and what you have to do is clicking on that link.

(2-6)

8. It will ask for the permission of accessing data from your Yahoo account. Simply, grant the permission.

(2-7)

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Once connected, it will import all the contacts from your Yahoo account and you are free to invite those people in Google plus by dragging them into your desired circle.

http://Plus.Google.com/

There are tons of SEO tools out there.  SEO Tools can be incredibly helpful, however, tools are generally only as good as the person using them. We’d love to know what tools you use and why, so please let us know in the comments after the post

I am not "house" handy by any means, I can barely hang a picture frame straight. So if you gave me the best construction tools in the world I’d still make extra holes and screw something up.

Even if I managed to get the picture hung correctly, it certainly would not look professional.

You can buy as many guides, tools, and accessories as you like but in the end it is your skill that determines the success or failure o

SEO Tool Fatigue

SEO tool fatigue is a real issue for some folks. Some people spend a good chunk of their productivity on testing or trying out new tools, or even using so many tools that their implementation and interpretation of data suffers a great deal. One tool says this, another says that, and yet another says 1 or the other or both or neither .

The first thing to realize is that most of the data from tools (excluding analytics and such) are basically estimates of estimated data, or are directly from Google’s various estimation-type tools (Keyword Tool, Trends, Insights, and so on), or driven off what the tool builder thinks are important or reliable metrics to build your research off of (there tends to be some swings and misses with that type of approach).

You are not going to fail miserably if you decide not to do days and days and days of keyword research with multiple tools and then spending more days comparing different datasets. Research is important, but there is a limit.

Picking a Core Set of Tools

From a cost and time standpoint I’ve found it really helpful to pick a core set of tools and stick with them rather than bouncing around to get an extra feature or two.

It’s good to peek around from time to time but using mostly similar tools can lead to a "needle in the haystack" approach; where you spend most of your time digging a time-suck hole rather than building websites and adjusting strategies based on analytics and/or AdWords data.

Again, research is important but there is a sweet spot and it’s a good idea to get some kind of system down so you can focus on doing "enough" research without doing harm to the time it takes you to get sites up and running.

Evaluating Tools

I’m going to highlight some of the tools I’ve used below, most of which are considered to be market leaders. I’ll point out why I use certain tools, why I don’t use others (yet) and I encourage anyone who’s dealing with tool overload to do the same for the tools you use.

The areas I’ll be focusing on are:

• Keyword Research
• On Page Criteria
• Rank Checkers
• Competitive Link Research Tools
• Link Monitoring

Keyword Research

There are many keyword research tools that pull data from the sources listed below (like our free keyword research tool, which pulls from Wordtracker).

• Google AdWords Keyword Tool
• Google Trends
• Google Insights
• Microsoft Ad Intelligence
• Wordtracker’s Keyword Research Tool
• SeoBook Keyword Research Tool
• Wordstream

These tools use their own databases (although in Wordtracker you can ping Google’s tool as well).

I use all the Google tools as well as Ad Intelligence and Wordtracker as well as the SeoBook Keyword Tool. Sometimes I use Wordtracker just via our keyword research tool and sometimes I use Wordtracker’s web interface (I like being able to store stuff in there).

Our keyword tool also links in to most of the sources listed above. A big reason why I like our keyword research tool is that it’s super easy to hit the major data points I want to hit on a particular keyword from one location.

Ad Intelligence is solid as (Microsoft claims) they incorporate actual search data into their results, rather than estimating like Google does.

I should also note that I mainly use Trends and Insights for comparing similar keywords and looking at locality (in addition to the history of keywords). Sometimes you run across really similar keywords (car, auto) and it can help to know which one is most relevant to your campaign.

On-Page Optimization

For the on page stuff I’m mainly concerned with large scale, high level overviews.

I use our toolbar for specific on-page stuff but when I’m looking to diagnose internal linking problems (not maximizing internal link flow, broken links, http status codes, and so on) or issues with title tags and meta descriptions either missing, being too short, or too long, or duplication then I use a couple different tools.

• Screaming Frog (Mac/Win)
• Xenu (Win)
• Integrity (Mac)
• Website Auditor (Mac/Win)

Since I’m on a Mac and I don’t care to run Windows for anything other than testing, I use the three listed which work on Mac (though I don’t use them in every situation).

I use Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider pretty frequently as well as Peacock’s Integrity. Integrity is a broken link checker while SEO Spider incorporates other SEO related features (title tags, H1/H2′s, anchor text, and a ton of other important elements).

WebSite Auditor offers most, if not all, of what SEO Spider does but also incorporates white-label reporting, Google Page Rank, Yahoo! & Google Link popularity, cache dates, and so on.

For some of those features in Website Auditor you might want to either outsource the Captcha inputting or use their Anti-Captcha service so you don’t have to sit there for hours entering in captcha’s.

In my regular workflow, SEO Spider and Integrity get used a lot and Website Auditor comes in to play for some of those other metrics and for white label reporting.

Rank Checking

Here’s a crowded space! So I think the right choice here really depends on your needs. Are you a solo SEO who runs multiple sites, or maybe you run your own sites and client sites, or maybe you are a client-only shop.

Here are some of the main players in this space:

• Advanced Web Ranking
• Link Assistant’s Rank Tracker
• Raven’s SERP Tracker
• SeoBook Rank Checker
• SeoMoz Rank Tracker & Web App
• Authority Labs

Even if you have reporting needs, you can still do a lot for free with our free rank checking tool(scheduled reports, stored reports, multiple search engines, and so on) and Excel or another spreadsheet program like OpenOffice.Org or Google Docs. Some good tips on creating ranking charts with Excel can be found here.

There are a couple differences with the software players, Advanced Web Ranking and Link Assistant’s Rank Tracker (both have multiple levels so it’s wise to check the features of both to see if you need the higher end version or if the lower priced versions will work for you). Some of the key differences are:

• Rank Tracker integrates with Google Analytics
• Advanced Web Ranking has a variety of ways to track local rankings, including maps and a local preview engine
• Advanced Web Ranking has more, easier to customize reporting options
• I find that the interface with Rank Tracker is much easier to work with
• If all you are looking for is rank checking, then Link Assistant is a bit cheaper overall (comparing enterprise versions of both). While noting, AWR has more local options at their higher price point. You can see AWR’s pricing here and Link Assistant’s here. Note, it’s worthwhile to check out maintenance pricing as well (Link Assistant and AWR)
• AWR let’s you assign a proxy per project, which can be really helpful if you have clients all over the map.
• AWR automatically pulls in the top ten sites for a keyword, and their last position compared to current, and let’s you add that site to your tracking (at any point) with all the historical data saved and updated within your account.

One tip with software tools is to run them on a different machine, perhaps even behind an IP off of a private VPN service like WiTopia, and think about utilizing multiple proxies from a service like Trusted Proxies and/or using an anti-captcha service with Link Assistant’s tools.

The idea is to not get your IP banned and to let you continue to work as normal on your main machine while another machine is handling the automated queries. If you don’t want to fuss with that, you might want to try a cloud app.

The Cloud and Scalability

The 3 main services, that I’ve used anyway, come from Raven, SeoMoz, and Authority Labs. Authority Labs now powers Raven’s SERP tracker too. My biggest concern with cloud-based rank checkers is that the keyword volume can be (understandably) limited. Now, Authority Labs has unlimited checking at 450/month but the other two have limits.

Let’s just look at the highest plans for a second, Moz allows 30 campaigns and a total of 3,500 keywords. Raven’s highest plan allows for unlimited domains and 2,500 keywords total (and 200 competitors).

If scalability is a concern for you then you might be better off with software solutions. Once you start running multiple sites or are responsible for reporting on multiple sites (and you are working the long tail and your analytics) then you can see how restrictive this could become.

Of course, comparing just the rank checking options of a tool set like Raven and Moz (which both have other useful tools, Raven more so for full on campaign management) doesn’t do the pricing justice. So what you could do is still use the many other tools available from each company and use a software solution once your rank checking scales beyond what they offer.

Both Moz and Raven integrate with Google Analytics, and Raven’s campaign integration with GA is quite nice too (beyond just rankings).

Link Research

Free tools like Yahoo!’s Site Explorer, search query tools like Solo SEO’s link search tool and Blekko’s link data are nice but at some point in your SEO career you’ll might have to get on board with a more advanced link research tool or tools to get the data you need to compete in competitive SERPS.

A good chunk of software-based solutions pull link data from search engines but if you want a more, way more, comprehensive view of a competing site’s link profile (and link history) you do have a few options.

• Majestic SEO
• Open Site Explorer
• Advanced Link Manager

Majestic was originally known for having a much deeper database, with the caveat that they keep a lot of decayed links, and their UI wasn’t overly impressive. Well, as noted in a recent blog post (which includes 20% off coupons) on Majestic’s new tools, most of that isn’t the case anymore. Though, I still feel Open Site Explorer has a better and smoother UI.

Advanced Link Manager’s strength lies in their ongoing link management and reporting but they also have some decent link research tools built in and they can connect to SeoMoz’s API to gather link data, so that kind of sets them apart from those other software-based solutions.

Again, Moz offers other tools as well so it’s hard to really compare price points. What I like about OSE is that you can get a really solid, quick overview of the anchor text profile of a competing site. Also, you get unlimited look ups and up to 10k links per query on their pro plan (in addition to other Moz tools). You can get a 30 day free trial of all the Moz tools as of this writing.

Majestic’s New Tools

Majestic, now with their new site explorer and fresh index, rival OSE’s UI and freshness a bit but there still are limits on usage. You can check out Majestic’s pricing here and don’t forget about the 20% off coupon mentioned here.

Typically I like to use both Majestic and OSE. I like the new tools Majestic has come out with and their historical data is solid. OSE, for me, is great for getting some of a site’s top metrics quickly (anchor text, top pages, etc).

If I had to pick one, I’d go with Majestic mostly because Moz gives a decent amount of data away for free (being a registered user) and because Majestic has really good historical + deeper data.

Link Management

Building links, especially if you have a team, can be a cumbersome process unless you have collaborative tools to work with. Even if you operate mostly on your own, you might want to track links you’ve earned or built directly.

Every once and awhile i like to download a report from Majestic SEO and add any links that are not yet in my tracking program into the program. Some people like to just track paid or exchanged links and let the natural ones sort of come and go naturally.

There are a couple of tools out there that I’ve used, and one I haven’t but I’ve heard good things about it from reputable sources so I’ll include it here.

• Raven’s Link Manager
• Buzzstream
• Advanced Link Manager

Raven’s Link Manager is probably their flagship tool. It has received really high praise from experienced SEO’s and is easy to use. You can easily add links, assign them to employees, and let Raven worry about the automatic checking and reporting in case something changes with a link.

Advanced Link Manager has many features built in but you can use it just for tracking links you want to track by uploading the links into the program. It’s software based and you can set it to run whenever you’d like, automatically.

I personally haven’t used Buzzstream, but reputable people have told me it is a solid program, and they have a free 14 day trial here. It’s a dedicated link building and management tool (and also has a PR and social media tool) so chances are if you are looking for a specific tool to fill that need, this one might be worth a shot.

If you don’t have a ton of links to manage or a team to manage, you might be just fine with an Excel spreadsheet or a Google Doc. To me, it’s just one more thing to think about and Raven and Buzzstream have low priced plans if you don’t need enterprise-level storage.

Cameraphones have come a long way in the past few years, but they don't always take point-and-shoot quality pictures on the first try. Here's how to squeeze the best quality photos out of your smartphone's camera.

Photo by Eskimo Pic.

They say the best camera is the one you have with you, but that doesn't mean it'll always give you the best-looking pictures. If you have a great shot in sight, but don't have the time to grab your DSLR or point-and-shoot, you'll have to make do with your phone's camera. Depending on your cameraphone and the lighting conditions, the results are often dull, ugly photos that are barely worth looking at later on. You can do better, though; you can take most cameraphone shots from forgetful to interesting with just a few tweaks.

All phones and cameras are different, so your mileage may vary with any given tip. While most cameraphones suffer from similar weaknesses (most notably the inability to take good pictures in low light), each has its own idiosyncrasies as well. The iPhone, for example, usually takes photos with pretty good color, while the Droid often produces colors that are less than stellar. That said, most of these tips can apply to your phone and favorite camera app pretty easily.

All photos below were taken with a Motorola Droid. Click on any of them to get a closer look.

Don't Forget Basic Photography Rules
 

After doing lots of research and asking around, some of the best tips I got were the most obvious (yet rarely heeded) rules of photography. When you use your phone's camera, make sure you aren't forgetting about the basics. We've mentioned a few of these before, but it's always good to go through them again before you dig into the more minute settings.

Use Your Light

It's important with all cameras to make sure your subject is facing the light source and you're not, but it's even more important with cameraphones (Unless, of course, you want to take a silhouette—like all rules, this can be bent). As I mentioned above, your phone's biggest weakness is its inability to take good pictures in low light, which means you generally will want to get as much light as you possibly can on your subject. This may require a bit more thought and a bit more moving around than it might with a point-and-shoot camera, but you'll thank yourself in the end.

Clean Your Lens

It may seem silly, but give your lens a wipe down before you start snapping photos with your phone. While most people are pretty good about keeping their grubby fingers away from camera lenses, it's not as easily done with cameraphones. If you have a dirty lens, none of the other tips in this article will make your photo look less like crap, so keep it in mind.

Avoid Digital Zoom

You've probably heard this one a million times, but we can't overstate how useless this feature usually is. If you need to get closer to a subject, you're much better off stepping closer to them. If you can't, you can always crop the picture later on, which is all digital zoom really does—you can always crop down, but you can't crop up.

Pay Attention to Your Flash

Sure, LED flashes have been hyped on recent smartphone cameras, but they're not always all they're cracked up to be. If you don't have enough light to work with, they can at least ensure that you get a picture, but a lot of phones tend to use it more often than necessary, and that white LED light can be really harsh. You may find, even in some lower light situations, that turning off the flash will give you a better result, so snap one with and one without if you're ever in doubt. You can always tweak them further in post-processing (which we'll talk about in a moment), so you have nothing to lose by giving yourself options.

If you find that you still need the flash, you can also soften it by placing a thin white sticker over it, like a small piece of tissue or white label. You'll still have some light from the flash, but the sticker will take away a bit of the harshness that tends to make people look ghostly.

Tweak Your Camera App's Settings

Depending on your particular phone and the camera app that comes with it, you may have a few settings you can adjust before taking a picture. In almost every case, though, you can do better by grabbing a more advanced camera app, like CameraZOOM FX for Android or Camera+ for the iPhone. There are a ton out there, so shop around, but those are the two that I've used in the past.

Check Your Resolution

Most camera apps have a setting that allows you to take pictures at differing resolutions. Low resolutions are nice if you're just sending a quick photo via MMS, and they'll save to your phone faster, but if you're taking a photo you want to keep around, you're better off taking it at a higher resolution. It's a simple and obvious tweak, but something you definitely want to check before you start snapping—there's nothing worse than taking a bunch of really cool pictures, only to find out once you put them on your PC that they're just 640×480. (Also worth noting, some phones will resize images when you email them—make sure you send them at full resolution when quality matters.)

Turn On the Stable Shot Setting

Phones are difficult to keep stable while you're getting your shutterbug on, and sometimes it's hard to detect the blur of a shaky photo on a small screen. While you can always rest your elbows on something solid and breathe like a sniper, enabling a stable shot setting in your camera app will help a great deal. This setting will use your phone's accelerometer to measure how much you're shaking the camera, and won't snap the picture until your hand has been steady for a certain amount of time (usually about one or two seconds). Some apps may even let you set the sensitivity of the stable shot, so your phone will wait until you're barely moving to take the photo.

White Balance

Usually, cameraphones are pretty good at detecting the white balance, but when you get into low light they can have trouble. The first thing you can do is give the camera a second to adjust itself—if you just open up the camera app and snap away, you might get a remarkably orange picture. Give it about 5 seconds to adjust itself, and you may get a better-looking shot. You also might try pointing your phone at a different light source, which will adjust your phone to a different balance, then popping back.

However, if you've given your phone a minute to acclimate and the picture still looks off, try adjusting the white balance yourself. You can usually set it to one of a few different light settings, like "daylight", "fluorescent", or "cloudy". You may find that choosing one manually gives you a better result than the auto setting does.

Exposure

As the biggest problem with cameraphones is their inability to make up for low light, the exposure is one of the best settings to play with in dimmer situations. Setting the exposure higher lets more light into the lens, which means kicking it up a notch will likely get you a brighter, more vibrant photo. I've found that exposure tweaks often produce the biggest immediate improvement in my phone's photos.

Salvage Bad Photos with More Extreme Edits

While you're better off tweaking some settings before you take the photo, you can always make a picture look better by editing it a tad after you've downloaded the pictures to your computer. Here are a few simple edits that you can make on your PC to cover up some of your phone's shortcomings. You don't need to be a Photoshop expert to pull these off—in fact, you can make these tweaks in pretty much any photo editor around, whether it's Photoshop, the GIMP, Paint.net, or iPhoto. You can also make these edits in many camera apps if you need to do it on-the-go, but it's always easier to edit a photo when you see it full size than on a dinky phone screen.

Tweak the Color Levels

While some cameras (like the iPhone) have pretty good color, others (like the Droid—which is also, incidentally, my phone) really don't. If adjusting the white balance and flash still don't get you the best results, tweaking the color levels in the photo can definitely make a difference. We've talked about how to get the best colors from your photos before, and it's a good skill to have—but even if you're not an expert photo editor, you can make a few small tweaks that make a world of difference.

Throw your picture into your favorite photo editor and find the color settings. For example, in GIMP, head to Tools > Color Tools > Levels. In iPhoto, you can just hit the Edit button at the bottom of the window and then hit Adjust to bring up the color level HUD. Without going too crazy, you can raise the red level a little bit to give skin tones a more natural look. Similarly, you can fix any exposure or contrast issues you still have in the photo—again, a little experimentation will help you find the right tweaks for a given photo.

Go Black & White

If minor color edits aren't helping at all, you can always go full black and white or sepia. This will get rid of any major color issues your picture has, and can salvage a dull picture. Sure, you still may not have color, but you can make the lack of color look more intentional and less like you're just using a bad camera.

Note that while you can take black and white pictures in a lot of camera apps, think hard before doing so. You can always make a color picture black and white, but you can't make a black and white picture color again. Of course, you can always shoot two pictures and save yourself the trouble later on.

Embrace Your Camera's Mediocrity

In the end, you may still be unhappy with some of your cameraphone's photos. After all, while all these tweaks can take your photos from crappy to passable, most phones just can't measure up to a point-and-shoot. However, that doesn't mean you're left without options. A lot of people enjoy using camera apps (like Hipstamatic or previously mentioned Instagram on the iPhone, and FxCamera on Android) that emulate old, cheap, cameras with digital effects.

Surprisingly, it adds a whole new dimension to your photos—so even if you can't get them to look like they came from a $100 Canon, you can give them a lot of style by making them look like they came from a classic LOMO or Polaroid instead. It's a strange trend, but you can't argue with the results—some of the photos produced by these apps are remarkably beautiful (in cases where their cameraphone counterparts would certainly be boring and ugly). If you're not convinced, check out some of the photos in the Hipstamatic Flickr group, and you may find yourself singing a different tune.

Of course, you don't need to be taking super artsy shots to make use of this—if, say, your cat happens to do something humorous and you don't have time to grab your real camera, these types of effects can simply make the photo look a little nicer and less like they were taken with your mediocre smartphone camera.

We've mentioned a few good apps in this post, but both the iPhone and Android have tons of great options available. The above are merely the ones that I've personally used, but be sure to check out our favorite photography apps for iPhone and Android to see a few more.

It’s been a little more than a year since theYahoo/Bing merger was announced, and a couple months ago, Yahoo began testing Bing search results. A lot of talk has been made about how this will influence organic search, but what about paid search? This deal could be an instant boom for those doing PPC. Following are 7 possible advantages:

1. Market Share Gets Instant Boost

Yahoo and Bing reach more than 154 million searchers. This equates to a volume of 4.4 billion monthly searches and a 28.6% search share in the U.S.

The expanded market place will improve scale of reach. Previously, volume was an issue with both Yahoo and Bing. With their combined forces it does add a certain appeal since the opportunity for volume is greatly improved.

2. Harmony Between Yahoo/Bing

Rather than competing with each other, they will now join forces. Together they can both take aim at their more handsome brother, Google. This unified focus should help move the meter on increased market share.

3. One Login

I think we are all looking forward to having all data in one login. Managing both Yahoo & Bing via one platform should boost efficiency and performance. This will cut down on the time it takes to toggle between both engines. It should allow for more opportunity for data analysis and optimization improvements.

4. Innovation

Now that the minds from Yahoo and Microsoft have been brought together, we expect new cutting edge ideas and strategies. (At least, I hope this is the case) Personally, I’m hoping this merger succeeds. At the moment, Google is still the 700 lb gorilla. We all know that.

This will always be the case until Yahoo and Bing give people a reason to choose them over Google. I highly doubt Google executives are losing any sleep over this merger. But if this merger does accomplish what is hoped for it will at least force Google to step it up even more. This will be good for all of us.

5. Simplified Reporting

I will admit that I actually liked the Yahoo reporting. The good news is, Bing still provides adequate reporting necessary for effective optimizations. While the Bing reporting interface is much different compared to Yahoo, I have found the reporting in Bing to be just as effective. All it really takes is to get into the reporting center and get your hands dirty.

6. Standard and Advanced Match Dies

I was never crazy about Yahoo matching. We always had a fun time explaining just how Standard and Advanced matching truly works to clients. It almost felt like a gray area. Fortunately, Bing already uses Broad, Phrase, and Exact match. I certainly prefer these match types. They open the door for additional keyword iterations and traffic opportunities. These match types also help filter out unwanted clicks and can improve account efficiency.

7. Microsoft AdCenter Desktop Tool

In case you haven’t heard of this, its Microsoft’s version of the AdWords Editor. This tool actually works quite well. I have been using this tool for about three months. It has saved our PPC team a large amount of hours. It’s a good thing Microsoft got this tool working prior to the launch. Yahoo has a desk top tool. I used this one for a short time and always had trouble with it. I’m sure the focus was shifted to the Microsoft tool. Fortunately it appears to have paid off.

When you love Dropbox like we do, you start syncing more and more stuff. The more stuff you sync, the harder it is to organize. Here's a simple way to sort quickly and stay organized across multiple computers, Windows, Mac, or Linux.

We're going to deal with two things here: organization and synchronization. Organization is the big part, since that relies mostly on you (whereas synchronization relies almost entirely on Dropbox). We'll tackle organization first, then take a look at some of the issues you may encounter when syncing almost everything you do on your computer. While I came up with these organizational ideas using Dropbox, many could apply universally to any modern file system. Some will require Dropbox, but you can still use most of these organizational ideas without it.

The Structure

The lovely icons used above that everyone is curious about belong to the Flurry family, created by thethe Iconfactory. Dropbox starts you off with a bunch of folders, and rather than change a bunch of things we're going to keep organized by building on that. Before we dive in, let's take a look at the folders you'll want to have in your Dropbox. Once you have those, we'll discuss how to use them.

• The Dump
• The Landfill
• Projects
• Documents
• Your Flex Folder
• Applications
• Movies
• Music
• Photos
• Shared Folders

Alright, let's get started!

Ed. note: If, after consideration, Adam's folder structure doesn't feel right to you, you may also want to consider Gina's My Documents organization structure.

The Dump and the Landfill

We are not perfect. Like many diets, organizational systems expect us to simple curb our flaws for the sake of bettering ourselves. You've got a limited supply of willpower, so how you organize should recognize that. The Dump is all about having a place for your imperfections. You need to have a work folder where you can just save things arbitrarily. Starting on the first day of your week, everything you're creating gets saved to The Dump. It doesn't matter what kind of file it is or what kind of project it's for—if it belongs to the current work week, it belongs in The Dump. If you take lots of screenshots, change the location of those screenshots to The Dump (here's how to do it with OS X's default screengrab). Whatever you create and whatever assets you use to create it, make sure this is where they go first.

When you reach the end of your work week, it's time to organize. You should only need to set aside about 15-20 minutes to go through The Dump and decide what to do with everything. This week I ended up with 145 items and was able to sort them in about ten minutes, so don't worry about how long that list of files get. If you start by listing everything in The Dump by file type you can start cutting the fat more easily.

First go through and find things you've saved to The Dump that you no longer need and delete them. Next, select the files you're not quite ready to throw away and put them in the folder called The Landfill. The Landfill exists so you don't have to spend time deliberating over whether or not you need to keep certain files, and if you do, where to put them. Once a month you'll need to spend some time cleaning out The Landfill, but a month away from most of your "maybe" files will give you better perspective on whether or not you need to file them or throw them away. Most of the files in The Dump will either end up deleted or buried in The Landfill at the end of the work week. Once you've gotten through those, you'll find you have a handful of other files that should only take you a few minutes to sort. Sort those and The Dump is ready to go for next week.

These two folders—The Dump and The Landfill—will be the most important part of how you keep things organized in your Dropbox because they allow you to be a little lazy, but it's important to not just let everything flow or you'll become overwhelmed as it gets later in the work week. When you're working on something new, even if you think it might only require a file or two, make a new folder inside of The Dump to contain it. Do not make efforts to spend time organizing the dump, but definitely take a second to keep similar files together so you can move through The Dump quickly while you're working.

Projects and Documents

Projects and Documents are where you'll end up keeping most of your work. Projects should be made up of active projects you're working on. You can just keep individual project folders inside (e.g., New Rock Ballad, Essay About Strawberries, Johnson Wedding Photos for Album, etc.) or create a sub-structure of project types if you do a lot of different things (e.g. Audio Projects, Video Projects, Photo Projects). The important thing is that this folder only contains files for long-term projects you are actively working on (as in things outside of the scope of the current work week, as those files are relegated to The Dump). I find it helps to keep my to-do list in here as well. I use an awesome Mac application calledTaskPaper and save my project to-do list in the root of the Projects folder. You can use whatever you want for your to-dos, but if you need to save a physical file somewhere the Projects folder is a great place to put it.

Where Projects is youractive work folder, Documents is yourdormant work folder. Consider Documents useful for two things: static documents you may want to reference or use more than once (like stock photos, forms, etc.) and finished projects you want to archive from your Projects folder. Organize Documents however you like, but don't put anything in it that you're going to change. While the Projects andDocuments labels work well for me, you'd have a good point if you argued they're not intuitive. The labels Active and Archive might work a little better for some, but choose what's right for you. As with everything described here, this is an organizational idea, not a paradigm. There really are no paradigms—only systems that work for you and systems that don't.

Your Flex Folder

Being that there is no such thing as an organizational paradigm, no system broad system like this can account for your specific needs unless it provides that kind of flexibility. This is where your Flex Folder comes in. Chances are you have something in your life that just needs to exist outside of the big buckets that make up most of your Dropbox. For me, it's a folder called Writing. I love to write, and so it doesn't stop with Lifehacker posts. I write short stories, screenplays, ideas, or really anything I'm in the mood to write. This adds up quickly and I've found it helps to have it all in one place, separate from all the other stuff that I'm doing. As a result, my flex folder is a dedicated Writing folder.

The reason this is necessary is because my Flex Folder is sort of a combination between active projects and archived documents. Everything I save into my Writing folder could end up staying there untouched indefinitely or could be very active. The problem is, I don't know which category each piece of writing will fall under. As a result, having a Flex Folder for writing lets me organize these documents with that extra flexibility. If you do any kind of work that doesn't allow you to apply the active/archive structure, a Flex Folder is often the answer.

Applications

Because we're syncing all of these folders between multiple computers, it's easy to end up with a machine that requires a certain Application that isn't installed. While it's not that hard to download what you need online, it's annoying to have to stop your work to search for the application you need, wait for it to download, and then getting back to work. If you're focused and in the zone, you want to minimize these problems as much as possible. Keeping installers for commonly used applications (or even portable applications that you're running directly from your Dropbox folder) in a synchronized folder will help you do that. While you're not going to keep big installers in here (like Photoshop, for example), it's a great place for smaller installers for those applications and utilities you can't live without. As an added bonus, if you ever need to share an app with a friend you can do that directly from your Dropbox.

Movies, Music, and Photos

If you're using a free Dropbox account and surviving by referrals, chances are you're not going to have enough space to sync your rich media. If you're paying for an account of 50GB or more, however, Dropbox can do a great job of handling your media. (Dropbox offers a 50GB plan for $100/year and a 100GB plan for $200/year.)

Movies and photos are both pretty simple, since they can be organized in similar ways. About a year ago I got fed up with iPhoto and decided to try something else. That something else was an organized folder structure for my photos, forgoing any actual application to help me out. Dropbox made for a perfect partner because it provided an automatic backup of all my images. I have an enormous photo collection, but organizing it wasn't all that hard because you really just have to look your Photos folder the same way you'd look at managing your photos in a photo management application: organized by albums. The problem is that a directory isn't ordered any way you want it, but rather based on certain criteria. Generally you're going to organize your files in alphabetical order. To ensure similar albums stayed together, you can just add a tag to the front of the folder name. For events, I added a date stamp (e.g., 2008-09-21). For portraits of people, I added the tag PEOPLE. Folders containing wallpaper were prepended with WALLPAPER. The idea is pretty basic but it helps keep everything sorted nicely. This same method works well for movie clips, too.

Music gets a little tougher because many of us use iTunes, or something like it, to work with our music. The problem with syncing iTunes with Dropbox is not so much keeping files in sync but keeping your iTunes Library file in sync. If you have iTunes open on more than one machine at a time, you'll run into problems. While there are other ways to go about it, one of the easiest solutions is to also use iTunes syncing software like MediaRover that will handle the synchronization of your iTunes Library file so Dropbox doesn't get confused. Alternatively you can just be diligent and make sure you always close iTunes when you're finished so it never ends up being a problem, but this is requires a lot of you and can be a dangerous road to follow. Unless your music player doesn't use a database file or you just don't use one at all, syncing your music with Dropbox might be a little more work than you're willing to do. This is one task you might want to set aside until a simple option comes along.

Shared Folders

Dropbox's shared folders feature is really great—especially if you need an alternative to the now defunction Drop.io—but as soon as you start sharing a bunch of folders with people it can get tough to manage. The solution is very simple: put all of your shared folders in one place. This may seem a little obvious, but it's something you want to get in the habit of doing before they start piling up. It's great to be able to easily share files with coworkers, friends, and family, but when they clutter up your Dropbox or get lost in your organizational structure they end up being more trouble than benefit. Get on top of he problem with a single location for shared folders and you won't have the problem at all.

Customize and Be Flexible

I deal with more files (and different types of files) than the average person, and this is a system that's worked really well for me. It's about as ideal and perfect as I could possibly ask for and it makes my life easier every day. That said, you're not me. You do different things, have different talents and flaws, and could be a very different person. If you want to implement this system, the first thing you should do is assess any doubts you might have. Chances are most of these ideas can help you stay organized and productive across your multiple computers, but only if you put a lot of yourself into the way you implement them. This setup may not work for you exactly as is, but try it out in a way that suits your needs best.

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