I’ve read so many articles that tell writers how to title their articles, that I can no longer bear it. I’ll tell you why: once not so long ago, I was in a magazine store, browsing for something to read and I looked along the row of magazines, women’s, computing, general stuff, etc.. and while the entire range of magazines was quite compelling, really it was.

I’ll include some shots of magazines to show what I mean. Need I go on? The titles are hugely homogenous: take a look at the images to see what I mean. Each has a number somewhere on the front page – 10m 16, … how many others can you see?; each tells you to do something – how many instructions or commands can you see?; or to be afraid of something else – how many fear words can you see?; keep looking as you will see many other similarities of titles, regardless of genre of the magazine.

With the online article sites, the homogeneity of titles is even worse. It is hard to stand out in a sea of titles beginning: 7 ways to…; 10 ideas how to…; 6 reasons not to…; etc..

The homogeneity of their titles and their articles struck me: all the articles are promising me this, telling me that, outlining x reasons for/against the next… and it struck me: modern magazine articles and their titles suck. The drive to create compelling content so that more magazines are sold has created a kind of rigorous title writing mentality that says: if the title has no “Reader Benefit”, then it is a bad title.

What can the ‘nervous’ blogger do? Well, for one, make sure your titles are compelling, avoid numerating the points, unless it is ABSOLUTELY necessary. Try descriptive titles, too; think about the titles that you HATE – analyze what’s wrong with them. How do you decide what to call your posts? Do you have any titling system? Share your thoughts.

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(by the way, did you spot the mis-leading title?)

Keeping your data safe and secure is an ongoing challenge as the amount of data grows ever larger. Compression Tools made it easier early on to manage the amount of data by reducing the required amount of space for data. But the so-called ‘zipped’ files weren’t particularly secure, esp. if you had to email them across the internet.

Enter PKWare’s new ZIP software from www.securezip.com which offers a secure alternative to previous versions of its original and useful pkzip programs. In fact, they are offering a free license to users on a short term basis. “Free” as in you have to register your name and email address to get the file, but downloading is easy and it is NOT trialware. It’s a full license.

They claim “SecureZIP – The next generation of ZIP”, and after a few days, I will be giving it a full review to answer that claim! Its convenenience and security rest on its integration with mail platforms, especially Outlook, but I found on my system that it worked well with Thunderbird. Its security features consist of up to 256 Bit AES encryption as well as the ability to add passwords or X.509 Certificates. Now that’s secure. This tool should really help the blogger! And the price is right!

Thunderbird 2 is now available for release. If you have used TB1.5, it’s time to try out version 2.

I’m downloading it right now. Will report back.

In the meantime, here’s what it says on the download site!

Keep Your Vital Information Organized

Thunderbird 2 features many new enhancements to help you better manage your unruly inbox, and stay informed. Thunderbird 2 scales to the most sophisticated organizational needs while making it easy to find what you need.

Advanced Folder Views Thunderbird 2 offers a variety of ways for you to organize and display your folders, whether by favorites, recently viewed or folders containing unread messages. As always, you can also set up RSS and newsgroup folders to stay on top of news and your interests. Thunderbird 2 also allows you to maximize your message view pane by opting for a folder drop down menu instead of the traditional sidebar.
Message Tagging Thunderbird 2 allows you to “tag” messages with descriptors such as “To Do” or “Done” or even create your own tags that are specific to your needs. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email.
Message History Navigation Thunderbird 2 offers message history navigation that allows you to click “forward” and “back” much like in your Web browser. You can now quickly toggle between messages and folder views.
Improved Search Thunderbird 2 features a find as you type pane that speeds up searches within displayed messages. Thunderbird also offers quick search, which starts showing search results as soon as you start typing in search terms.
Saved Searches Do you find yourself searching for the same subject or message content over and over? Thunderbird 2 saves you time by allowing you to store this search as a folder. Rerunning the search is just a matter of clicking on the saved search folder in the folder pane.
Stay Informed Thunderbird 2 has been updated to provide more informative and relevant message alerts containing sender, subject and message text for newly arrived messages. Folders provide a pop up summarizing new messages in that folder.
Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services Thunderbird 2 makes it even easier to integrate and use various Web mail accounts from one inbox. Gmail and .Mac users can access their accounts in Thunderbird by simply providing their user names and passwords.