How to Insert StumbleUpon into your Blogger Footer

If someone stumbles your blog it can bring a lot of traffic to your site so it is a good idea to make it easier for visitors to your site to stumble it.

But have you ever tried to add a StumbleUpon button to your blogger template only to find that the instructions are impossible to follow, you cannot work out where to put the code or your icon sits higher than your text? I have played around with the code provided by StumbleUpon and got it sitting how and where I want it, see here, and have now created this simple tutorial so you can too.

Log in to Blogger

Click on 'Layout'

Click on 'edit HTML'

Click on 'download full template' and save a backup of your blog to your hard-drive in case anything goes wrong

Check the 'expand widget templates box' (you are still in 'Layout', 'edit HTML')

Click anywhere in the actual code then press 'ctrl' and 'f' at the same time (which will bring up the find box)

Enter post-footer-line-1; into the find box and click next to find the line of code that should either be identical with or look a lot like:
<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-1'>

Make some space under this line by clicking at the end of it and hitting 'enter' a few times then past the following code into your template:

<span style='float: left; background: url(http://cdn.stumble-upon.com/images/16x16_su_round.gif) left no-repeat; padding-left: 20px;'><a expr:href='&quot;http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=&quot;+ data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title' target='_blank'>Stumble it! </a></span><br/>

Save your template. Easy peasy. You can change the background url to any button you want to use.

Previewing Word files

There's always something you can learn! Here's a tip I have just discovered that allows you to see what's inside a Word document without actually opening it. Use the Open command in Word (File menu/Open or Ctrl-O). In the dialogue box that pops up, single click on a document title, and then from the Views menu, top right, choose Preview. The content is displayed in a new pane on the RH side of the dialogue box.

If you want to preview files created by other programs, Vista lets you adda preview pane to its Explorer. XP users will need a special utility such as Universal Viewer. This lets you peek inside a variety of common file types (graphics, PDF, HTML, and many more) just by right-clicking and choosing the Universal Viewer command. Install the plugin for Microsoft Office (a separate free download), and you can view Word and Excel files as well. Navigation buttons make it easy to skim through all files in a folder.

Upgrading to Etch-a-Sketch

Somedays computers just seem too hard. For those of you who are finding your PC too much trouble, try this solution: Upgrade to an Etch-A-Sketch. There are many sound reasons for this:

1. No OS (operating system) problems.
2. No technical glitches keeping work from being done.
3. No more wasted time reading and writing emails.

Frequently Asked Questions for Etch-A-Sketch Technical Support
Q. My Etch-A-Sketch has all of these funny little lines all over the screen.
A. Pick it up and shake it.
Q. How do I turn my Etch-A-Sketch off?
A. Pick it up and shake it.
Q. What's the shortcut for Undo?
A. Pick it up and shake it
Q. How do I create a New Document window?
A. Pick it up and shake it.
Q. How do I set the background and foreground to the same color?
A. Pick it up and shake it.
Q. What is the proper procedure for rebooting my Etch-A-Sketch?
A. Pick it up and shake it.
Q. How do I delete a document on my Etch-A-Sketch?
A. Pick it up and shake it.
Q. How do I save my Etch-A-Sketch document?
A. Don't shake it.

Heal your own computer

The Press computer correspondent Dave Thompson writes that there are many things you can do to heal your computer before you go speed dialling for a repairman. "You are capable of resolving many of the minor issues that crop in everyday use," he says. This is a great article that the non-technical can generally follow. There's only one instruction that might baffle the uninitiated: he suggests using MSCONFIG, but doesn't tell you how to access it. Go to the Start menu, choose "Run" and then type MSCONFIG into the dialogue box and you're away. Oh, and how do you check whether your hard drive is full? Double-click the "My Computer" icon on your desktop, and that will bring up a window listing the various drives on your machine, their size, and how much is used.

Have a Picnik with your pics

It must be photography week! While we're on the topic of photos, I have just discovered the photo editing website, Picnik. At this site, you can upload photos and give them the sort of treatment you would otherwise have to use a program like Photoshop Elements to achieve. You can do just about all the basics there, from colour correction to fancy effects, and it is very fast. The main omission from the arsenal of tools that I use a great deal is layers and masking, but for home use this is a great service - and it's free.

More clever uses for a camera

Here's a follow-up to last week's post about clever uses for a digital camera. Among more suggestions from PC World readers were photographing pre-existing damage to rental cars, photographing public maps in foreign cities, making a record of your luggage on flights, keeping a record of your passport, and recording stages of work when dismantling things for repair, so no pieces get left out when you try to put it back together (I really like that one).

Emailing photographs

One of the benefits of digital photography is being able to instantly email pics to family and friends. But you will quickly clog up their inbox if you send the file just as you download it from your camera. Fortunately, there are several easy ways to solve this, by reducing the size of the photo.
Using Irfanview, you can open the pic, then go to Image/Resize-Resample. In the dialogue box, halfway down you will find the option, "Set new size as percentage of the original". Half is probably acceptable, and when you save the pic, give it a new name to indicate it is a smaller version of the original. Incidentally, when you save a jpeg image, you can specify the amount of compression. It is a trade-off - the higher the compression the smaller the file size, but the lower the quality of the saved image.
There is also a useful tool buried in the Windows XP and Vista systems.
Select a photo by right-clicking on it, and from the pop-up menu choose "Send to, Mail Recipient." (In Vista you can also click the email icon on the toolbar.) A dialog box will ask if you want to make the pictures smaller before you send them. If you choose to do so, Windows will create smaller versions of the photos and send them to your default email program. Also, notice the "Show more options" link at the RH foot of the box, which allows you to choose the emailed size of the pic.
Windows shrinks the photos by reducing their resolution. The resulting image will look fine onscreen, but won't print very well. When you send photos this way, it might pay to mention this in the body of my message, and offer to send the full-size version of any photo the recipient wants to print.