Getting PDFs on your blog (for free).

Some sites, like Scribd.com, used to let you upload PDFs and share them for free. Uploads are still free, but my subscribers report that Scribd wants them to join and pay before allowing a download.

I was forced to come up with a new solution. Fortunately, one is available.

Upload the PDF to Google Drive and share from there.

Contrary to the article below, I was unable to embed my PDF, but I was able get a link and also to "share" it on Facebook. The link on Facebook did show the document, so it seems like an embed there at least.

UPDATE: I was able to get the embed code. It works great.

1. After clicking on the PDF while in Google drive
2. Look in the upper right hand corner of the frame. There is a little box icon with an arrow coming out of it. Click on that.
3. When it pops out into a new tab or window, click the button in the middle top of the window, that is the vertical dots. In that menu, select "Embed Item".

Here is how another article says an embed is supposed to work:

How to Display a PDF on Blogger

Advanced "Liking"

Do you manage a business or community Facebook page?

There is a way to "Like" another page from that page. After that happens, it is possible to "Share" posts back to the page that you manage.

I found a video that taught me how to do it. I summed it up here and have included the video below.

First, how to "Like" another page:

1. Go to the page you manage.
2. Go to "See Pages Feed." It is in the left sidebar, along with how many likes, number reached, etc.
3. Open "Page Feed"
4. At the top center of the page, you will see a green box that says "Like other pages."
5. Click on that and begin entering the name of the page you want, or key words to the type of page you want and then make your selection.
6.  Now you have liked that page. When you visit the page, you can comment or share as the page you manage. Just be sure to look in the lower right hand corner of the post and see that you are doing so under the name of your managed page and not under you own Facebook profile.

Social Media Graphic Sizes Cheat Sheet

The handy page has a TON of different measurements for the best fit for graphics and where ever you could imagine to post them.

2016 Social Media Image Dimensions [Cheat Sheet]

Creating and editing email signnatures in Yahoo mail

A bit tricky, but I succeeded in editing my email footer or signature in Yahoo mail.

Here is how:

1. Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner of the Yahoo page.
2. Select "Settings" from the drop down menu.
3. In the left hand column, select "Writing email."
4. At the very bottom of the page, where it says "Note," click on the link to "Accounts"
5. Scroll down to "Signature" and use the box to create and edit the signature. Make sure to check the box "Append a signature ..." so it will appear at the end of every email from now on.

There are other links in other places to "Accounts," but this is the only one that led me to the signature creation and editing area.

Mailing lables

I had a hard time getting mailing labels printed. I finally found an easy way to do it.

1. Create a mailing list on "Google sheets"
2. Use "Launch the App" button on the lower left corner of the Avery Labels page below.
3. Point it to the spreadsheet you want, select the labels and print.

Avery Labels for Google Docs | Avery

Eliminate white background from text in Blogger

Sometimes I copy and paste an article into blogger, it looks great before it's posted, but appears with strips of white behind the text when the article is posted. This may be avoided by pasting the copied text into "Notes" on a Windows PC and then recopying it. But, "Notes" will strip out pictures and links as well, which is a real pain. So here is another solution that may work out better: using a not so obvious "unformat" option in Blogger.

Embedly: How to embed media that has no embed code

Today I wanted to embed a news article into I blog that I manage. But the site had no embed code generator. I came across "Embedly" and was able to create an embed code that worked fine. Here is an example: Mini Meditations The process is simple. Simply paste the URL of the desired site into the embed code generator and BAM! you have the code you need to embed the article into your blog post.

There are a few caveats: The article does not appear full length but has a "read more" feature. When your readers click on the embedded article, they will be transported out of your website to the site hosting the original article. They will also be exposed to any advertising that may be surrounding that article. And those ads change, by the way. Your readers may be offended by ads that you never even saw, because they were not on the site when you first shared the article. Not everyone understands how the internet works and they may hold you accountable for what happens on a site run by somebody else.

Because of these two factors (readers being taken away from your site and potentially being blamed for something that is not under your control), simply cutting and pasting the text of articles may be a better option. But for the times when you do need a utility to generate embed code for your blog, Embedly will the job and do it well.