The beauty of this is that it allows you to use StumbleUpon on computers where you wouldn’t be able to add a toolbar, ie. work, school, or other public computers. Plus, he included my favorite part of Strangej and Thlayli’s StumbleUpon Add-on Toolbar, the rating selection option. If you’re like me, and usually keep your settings on SU set to G, being able to switch easily to R to visit someone else’s page is a great addition. If you do normally keep your ratings set to G, I would recommend adding both G and R to your bookmarks if you use this. That way you can force a change back to G without resetting anything or restarting your browser.

There are some other great options in the Add-on Toolbar if you don’t mind adding another toolbar to Firefox. It includes the ability to go to a random archive page, back up your SU blog, Advanced photoblog, and a box to type in the name of a SU user and go to their blog.

Technorati Tags: beginner, Toolbar, Toolbarless, StumbleUpon, SU,

When I started using SU, one of my first impressions was “Oh neat! It’s an online bookmarking site, like del.icio.us, but I can add information about the things I really like.” So my blog started out as an eclectic mixture of things that caught my interest, and well, it’s continued the same way pretty much, ever since. If I’m researching a subject, I share it.

The nice thing about stumbling is that you can thumb up any pages you like. You can even add tags to any page, without having to post the page to your blog. Which leaves your blog free to post anything you want! So, if you don’t want an eclectic blog, then make it be about something. On StumbleUpon, there are photoblogs, poetry blogs, technology blogs, silly blogs, eclectic blogs, blogs about blogging, and anything else you can think of!

Here are some examples for your perusal:

I’ve mentioned Pseudonym before on here. He started on SU a month before I did, and we soon discovered that we shared a mutual love of learning and exploring how things work.

His About Me section includes: Forever curious and likes good explanations. A lifelong learner. Constantly seeking answers to life’s many mysteries and happy to share all knowledge thus gleaned.

Part photographer, part poet, and always interesting, I always know I’ll learn something new and intriguing whenever I visit his pages.

A recent post: From the page: “Enough is enough

From its older use as an expression of content or satisfaction (cf. enough is as good as a feast), this is now frequently used as a reprimand, warning someone off from persisting in an inappropriate or excessive course of action.”

Miz Diamondz is a true Southern Belle! She loves sweet tea (my favorite drink) and jewelry, and on my birthday she sent me a card playing House at Pooh Corner, one of my favorite songs that I’d forgotten about. How could we not end up friends!

Her About me section includes: “Yesterday is history..Tomorrow is a mystery..Today is a gift..That’s why it’s called “The Present” ENTP – “Explorer/Inventor”. Enthusiastic interest in everything and always sensitive to possibilities. Non-conformist and innovative.

Her blog is a great combination of Southerness and Satire…to quote from her page, “Every Southern lady “worth her salt” has a string of pearls…a lotta class…and a lil sass.”

A recent post: ~(I’m So Much Cooler)”ONLINE” lyrics~

I work down at the Pizza Pit
And I drive an old Hyundai
I still live with my mom and dad
I’m 5 foot 3 and overweight
I’m a sci-fi fanatic
A mild asthmatic
And I’ve never been to second base
But there’s whole ‘nother me
That you need to see
Go checkout MySpace

‘Cause online I’m out in Hollywood
I’m 6 foot 5 and I look damn good
I drive a Maserati
I’m a black-belt in karate
And I love a good glass of wine
It turns girls on that I’m mysterious
I tell them I don’t want nothing serious
‘Cause even on a slow day
I could have a three way
Chat with two women at one time
I’m so much cooler online
So much cooler online

Wow, I just realized this could take forever, there are so many great Stumblers out there! So I think what I might do is try to introduce you to a couple new ones every week or so. I’ll try to find a good variety, and if there are stumblers you think others should definitely not miss, leave a comment and tell me what you like about them.

I have an apology to make. I’ve been giving you hints and tips for using StumbleUpon and never thought that maybe you don’t have StumbleUpon installed yet. So, first things first, run, don’t walk, to StumbleUpon, sign up, and download the toolbar. (Think I could throw more cliches into that sentence without it sounding ridiculous?)

Okay, so you’ve signed up at SU, you’ve got the toolbar installed, you’ve added a picture of yourself (or anything that’s different than the ipody looking temp avatars SU gives), you’ve even read (or watched) my instructions on how to set up your toolbar, and now you’re wondering what to do next.

Well, the first thing I’d recommend doing is to give yourself a thumb up. I’m serious! You like yourself, right? You like your Stumble page, and want others to visit? Then apply that thumb button to your SU page! You can even write a comment if you’d like, it’s really not a bad idea, thanking others for visiting your site and leaving a comment. Your review of your own site will always appear at the top of your review page, so that anyone who looks will see it.

The next thing I’d recommend doing is to make a couple posts. Find a picture or a website you like and share it. (Here’s how to add a picture to your page.) When you start getting visitors, you want something interesting on your blog so that they’ll stop for a bit. Hopefully they will give you a thumb up also, which will start bringing even more people to visit.

After you have a few items on your page, I suggest visiting other stumblers some. You can do this several ways. You can see which stumblers are online now, you can use your toolbar and set it to show you other stumblers, then click on the stumble button, or if you already know a stumbler, you can visit their page and click on their friends list. I love doing the last one, visiting friends of friends of friends…it’s like watching the 6° theory in action.

Oh, and while you’re visiting, don’t forget to pop over to my page and say “Hi.” I try to return visits, but don’t always get to everyone before the list changes (you’re shown your 10 most recent visitors), so if I don’t stop by after your visit, please forgive me, and feel free to come by whenever.

Technorati Tags: StumbleUpon. Stumbling, Stumble, SU, Stumble upon, Beginner, Getting started, Toolbar,

If I could tell them one thing to help encourage people to stumble them, it would be to put a small or medium sized brand at the top of their page and allow people to photoblog it.

These companies have it right:

Think about it…for a small amount of extra bandwidth, their brand is getting shared all across the internet. Don’t you think that’s worth it?
Technorati Tags: StumbleUpon, SU, Revenue blogging, Business, Photoblog

First, you need a picture. When I first started using SU I couldn’t figure out how everyone was posting pictures. After a little research, I finally figured it out, but for several weeks, my SU blog was pictureless.

The easiest way to post a picture is to right click on the picture you want to post and select Stumbleupon PhotoBlog It!

Occasionally though, photoblogging doesn’t work very well. Usually it’s because the picture is too long, too wide, or too large. The maximum size of a picture you can photoblog is width=715, height=715, and the file size can’t be more than 250 KB (kilobytes).

So…what do you do if you want to post a picture that’s bigger? First, although it’s possible to do it, I wouldn’t suggest posting a picture much wider than 715 pixels. Depending on the size of someone’s screen, you may make them have to scroll to the sides. For some pictures, this makes it hard to get the full impact. The same goes for pictures that are too long. My laptop screen is wide and short. Perfect for viewing movies, but a picture that’s too long often loses impact because I’m only seeing parts of it at a time. That doesn’t mean you can’t post larger pictures, but it’s something to keep in mind when you’re deciding whether to shrink your picture or not.

Regardless of whether you decide to shrink a large picture or keep it the same size, you still need to know how to post it.

SU uses the following code in order to post a picture:

<a href="http://teeg.stumbleupon.com/"><img border=0 width=184 height=185 src="http://www.stumbleupon.com/mainpics/353460.jpg"></a>

Here is a breakdown of what the code means:

First, the brackets: <>. You may have noticed that whenever you put something in brackets, it won’t show up on your page. Brackets are a way of telling a computer to watch out for code. Anything inside of the brackets makes the computer think you’ve written a note for it to read. Anything outside of brackets is for everyone else to see. So, when we want the computer to do something in HTML (the computer language we use in SU) we have to include it in brackets.

Now, the first set of brackets has the following information inside it:
<a href="http://teeg.stumbleupon.com/">

<a href> is simply a way of telling the computer to go to a certain place. It creates a link to where you want the computer to go. In this case, the link would send you to my SU page.

Now that you know what this part does, you can edit it if you want to. For example, if I wanted people to go somewhere else when they clicked on my picture, I’d use a different address instead of http://teeg.stumbleupon.com.

A friend of mine edits his a href section so that when you click on the picture, it opens a new page. He does this by changing this section to read:
<a href="teeg.stumbleupon.com/" target="blank">

<Target="blank"> tells your computer to open a new page or a new tab.

Finally, if you don’t want your picture to link to anything, you can just leave this section out. Your picture will still show on your page, but clicking on it won’t take you anywhere.

Okay, next section:

<img border=0 width=184 height=185 src="http://www.stumbleupon.com/mainpics/353460.jpg">

If a href tells your computer where to go, img tells your computer about the image. All of the information inside of the a href brackets is going to be telling your computer where to go and how to get there. All of the information inside the img brackets is going to tell your computer about the image you’re wanting to show.

border=0 allows you to set the size of the border around your picture. For example, if you wanted a nice big border, you might want to change the 0 to 50. If you want a small one, you might set it to 10. If you don’t want a border, just leave it at 0 which is the default setting.

We discussed the width and height earlier. If you are wanting to post a picture that is too big, it is possible to resize the picture. First, right click on the picture you are wanting to resize and select properties. This should open a pop-up window. I’ll try to post a picture of one later, for now, you’re wanting the following information…location, width, and height. Location is the web address where the picture is located. My Pooh picture is located at http://www.stumbleupon.com/mainpics/353460.jpg. As I said before, pictures larger than 715 pixels in width or height may cause problems for some people trying to view them. If you want to make a big picture the right size to fit the screen, divide 715 by whichever measurement is biggest…and then multiply the result by the smaller number. Don’t worry, I’ll show you what I mean.

Let’s say for example that my picture’s properties look like:

width=850
height=800

Okay, I don’t want either the width or the height to be larger than 715, so first I figure which number is bigger.

Since the width is bigger, I already know what size the width will be. In my picture code, I will be changing width to equal 715. Now, since I want my picture to have the same dimensions, I need to figure out what the height should be. So, I open my calculator and put in 715 (the new width) and divide it by 850 (the old width size). I take the answer that I get from that (.8411….) and mulitply it by 800 (the old height) to get the new height size. It’s okay to round this answer, so I end up with 672.94 for my new height.

Now I insert my two new numbers into the code for my picture:
<img border=0 width=715 height=672.94 src="http://www.stumbleupon.com/mainpics/353460.jpg">
Then change your image location if you need to.

The same formula works if the height is larger. Always remember to start dividing with 715, or whatever size you are wanting to make your picture.

Finally, what if you want to change how your image is placed? Most likely you already know the <center> tag, but what if you’re wanting your image to be on the left or right side and to allow text to be placed beside it? Adding align="left" will put the picture on the left and the text on the right. align="right will put your picture on the right and the text on the left. Here’s how it should look:
<img border=0 width=715 height=672.94 src="http://www.stumbleupon.com/mainpics/353460.jpg" align="left">.

Finally, all that’s left of your code is to tell your computer that it can stop reading now. We used <a href...> at the beginning, which told the computer to go to the link whenever someone clicked on the picture. Now we need to tell the computer that only the picture is the link, and not the rest of your post. To do that, we simply tell the computer to stop using <a> by typeing a / in front of a. So we end our code with </a>.

So that’s it. Now you know what all that code means that you use when you’re wanting to add a picture to SU.