Easy online image cropping application at Quick Thumbnail

I recently expanded the functionality of Quick Thumbnail to include a Quick Image Cropping tool. This tool lets you crop an image by uploading a file or by entering a URL to the image file. Once uploaded, Quick Cropping allows you to select the cropped area and each time you press the Crop button a new output is generated. No need to reload the image, simply adjust the selection area and press crop again.

Active Cropping Window:

Cropped Results:

Link:
http://quickthumbnail.com/crop/

Quickthumbnail adds Watermark feature

You can now add watermarks to any image while your resizing it at Quick Thumbnail. The text is rendered as part of the image. Like everything else I develop for free this was done to play around with a code technique, in this case rendering text onto an image.

For now I only give basic control over the text: The phrase, color (either light or dark) and a choice of three sizes.

Comments?

Link:
http://www.quickthumbnail.com/

Convert files with Cometdocs

Cometdocs currently offers over 50 online conversions. We handle many different types of file conversions. Check our list at the end of this FAQ to get the full details of each conversion type we offer.

Really should check this site out and bookmark it. It converts more files than I have ever found on another site. Basically it does what many sites do but in a single website.

Link:
http://www.cometdocs.com/

What is Wolfram?

Wolfram Alpha is backed by Stephen Wolfram, the noted scientist and author behind the Mathematica computational software and the book, A New Kind Of Science. The service bills itself as a “computational knowledge engine,” which is a mouthful. I’d call it a “fact search engine” or perhaps an “answer search engine,” a term that’s been used in the past for services designed to provide you with direct answers, rather than point you at pages that in turn may hold those answers.

Do a search on Wolfram Alpha, and if it has matching data, it presents a ton of information on a single page, from figures to charts. For example, a search for “newport beach” not only shows the current temperature and forecast but also provides easy access to historical temperatures, which also get charted:

Will this be revolutionary? Is this just hype that will go nowhere? We'll see. Hopefully Wolfram will send me an invite so I can check it out

Read more and chek out some screenshots:
http://searchengineland.com/...

Wolfram:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Yahoo! Closing GeoCities Web Hosting

Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) is quietly closing down the long-standing free web hosting service GeoCities (geocities.yahoo.com), according to a report that appeared today on TechCrunch.

A notice appearing on the GeoCities homepage says accounts are no longer available, adding, “after careful consideration, we have decided to close GeoCities later this year,” and promising to share more details later this summer.

Link:
http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/...

Oldest domains around

The oldest three:

• symbolics.com (registered 03/15/85)
• bbn.com (registered 04/24/85)
• think.com (registered 05/24/85)

See all 100 here:
http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/...

What’s a Hulu? The Origins of 8 High-Tech Names

You know the names, but do you know where those names came from? Here are the stories behind the naming of TiVo, BlackBerry and more – including what they were almost called.

Link:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/23170

Find people by searching the deep-web

Pipl's query-engine helps you find deep web pages that cannot be found on regular search engines.

Not too bad. Did a few searches and the results were fairly broad and it returned alot of accurate information. The results were better than what you can get from Google - at least in the same time frame.

Link:

Facebook Reaches 150 Million Users Worldwide

Wow. Since they just reached the 140 Million mark back on Dec 18th (or around) means that Facebook is growing at 500,000 new users per day. I am amazed at that rate of growth.

Some fascinating stats:

• 500,000 new users per day
• 13 Million users update their profiles once a day
• 700 Million photos uploaded per month
• 52,000 application using the Facebook platform
• 2.6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day (worldwide)
  

Want more stats? Then check out the Facebook Demographic Statistics where you can generate your own growth chart.

Read more about their growth:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_growth_explodes.php

Thousands of recipes from cookbooks at CookStr

Cookstr.com is a new cooking site dedicated to providing our users with great recipes from the best chefs and cookbook authors. It’s still early days for us, and we’re adding more chefs and authors – and more recipes – all the time. We’ll also be adding new features over the next few months. But in the meantime we’re excited to share with you thousands of recipes from cookbooks you know and love, and help you discover wonderful new books and cooks.

The interface for each recipe is extremely clean and well laid out. Also the search can be refined by things like: One Pot, Kid Friendly or Five Ingredients or Less. Very nice...

Link:
http://cookstr.com

Spell using Flickr images

Spell with Flickr lets you enter a word a a series of images are returned that is the word spelled out with Flickr images. The interface is ok. Don't really like the black background and it would be nice to have a single image of the word. What I do like is you can click each letter of the resulting image and have it call up a different image for that letter.

Fun to play with for a little.

Link:
http://metaatem.net/words/

7 ways to track your web traffic for free

Awstats
Awstats is a log file analyzer type of web statitics reporting tool. This means the data displayed will be the most accurate and complete than some of the other methods listed. Awstats can provide all the expected information (page views, visitors, hits) plus it can give you bandwidth used, and filesizes of downloads.


CrazyEgg
One of the first to offer Heat Maps which shows where your user are clicking on your website. This alone makes Crazy Egg worth checking out.


FuseStats
Another website offering Heat Maps, which is a color overlay so you can see where your users click, on top of the standard web stat information. They offer a free account, which is why I added it to the list, which can be used for very low traffic websites.


Google Analytics
This, in my opinion, is the gold standard for client side web tracking (not a server log analyzer). Google Analytics provides some of the most powerful tool for tracking your visitors, analyzing your websites traffic flow, checking on goals for your visitors and general overall information provided. Plus they are constantly pushing out new features and I'm sure real-time tracking isn't far behind.


HiStats
Another great option which provides a very user friendly interface (and quite appealing) and provides a hit counter which can be added to your website so your visitors can see how many visits you get. Oh, did I mention they provide real time tracking? Very nice option.


StatCounter
A very popular web stats choice where a small piece of code is embedded in your web pages that handles all the tracking for your visitors. Not as reliable as Awstats but easy to setup, not tied to a server (so you maintain your history) and you can access your stats at anytime from any computer.


The Hit Counter
Looking for a simple, simple to install (2 steps) hit counter for your website? Then The Hit Counter what you need. They have made the creation of a custom hit counter as simple as it can be.

Check if your username is available

UserNameCheck.com allows you to easily check if your desired username is available on many of the popular social websites.

After testing some of the sites aren't reporting back properly and say a name is available when its not. Try it for yourself and see what results you get. It did tell me my username was available on a site that it was recently not and I was able to grab it.

Link:
http://www.usernamecheck.com/

Turn your handwriting into a font

YourFonts.com is a FREE online font generation service that allows you to create your own fonts within a couple of minutes.

Professional designed wizard interface walks your through the entire process. At the end you will have a font of your handwriting. Give it a try and post a comment on your results.

Link:
http://www.yourfonts.com/

Send a Free Fax with FaxZero

FaxZero lets you send a fax to any fax machine in the United States (including Puerto Rico) or Canada for free. You don't need a fax machine yourself, but you do need a valid e-mail address. The service is supported by advertising on the web site and on the cover pages of the free faxes you send.

For those times when you need to send a quick fax and don't mind an ad being sent on the fax you are sending.

Link:
http://faxzero.com

Busuu - A new way to learn a language

A new concept of language learning by offering you the following advantages:

• Learn from your fellow students: Learn directly from native speakers of the busuu.com community and forget about the horrible grammar sessions you had in school
• Learn what you really want: Be completely flexible in the content you want to learn, from preparing for a job interview to a discotheque pick-up line we can meet all your language needs
• Learn for free: During our beta phase, busuu.com can be used completely for free! Once we launch our next version, you will have the possibility to pay a small amount per month in order to become a premium member and get access to additional learning tools and premium content. But even as a basis-member, you will always enjoy loads of learning content completely for free!

Link:
http://www.busuu.com

6 Online Photo Storage websites besides Flickr

ImageShack
ImageShack is an intuitive and easy-to-use free media hosting service. It can be used to upload images, flash files, and movies, and share them with friends using any imaginable means.



PhotoBucket
Photobucket is a media-sharing and hosting site that also allows users to upload video clips, edit them using Adobe Remix, and create profiles and portfolios to share.



Picassa Web Albums
Show your photos at their best. View full-screen slideshows, see your pictures arranged on a global map, enjoy video playback, and more.



ShutterFly
Helping you enhance, organize and store your digital photography allows us to provide the highest quality products for you, our customer.



WebShots
Webshots is one of the largest photo- and video-sharing sites.



Zooomr
Everyone can sign-up and share unlimited photos with their family, friends and the entire world as well.

CurdBee, weird name but a useful website

CurdBee is a safe and secure web-based billing application from Vesess. Use it to send clients invoices and then collect payments via PayPal or Google Checkout, billing them easily in the currency you choose. It’s so simple, you won’t believe it till you see it.

Link:
http://curdbee.com/

Find out if someone is stealing your images

TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology. Given an image to search for, TinEye tells you where and how that image appears all over the web—even if it has been modified.

This is a very cool, specialized search engine that can really help find out if someone is stealing your images. Its kinda of like copyscape but for images. TinEye is what I used to find out that a blogger had stolen one of my blog posts and had hot-linked the images from my server.

Check it out, it's worth the time...

Link:
http://ideeinc.com/products/tineye/

Firefox plugin (this is what I run):
http://tineye.com/plugin

Check if an email will likely be considered spam

Submit your planned newsletter/ad/etc. (via SpamCheck Form or via e-mail). In seconds, we'll return a Spam Score and recommendations on how to reduce the likelihood of your e-mail being filtered.

Whether is accurate or not at least its something. Wish I could find an open source PHP solution so I can play around with the algorithms a bit. Anyway, use it if you like and let me know if it worked for you or not.

Link:
http://spamcheck.sitesell.com/

Free websites and hosting without ads or banners

The Quick & Easy Website Builder that Requires NO Technical Skills.

• 100% FREE - No Hidden Fees
• No Ads, No Banners - It's Your Website!
• Customize Your Website Template - Make Your Site Unique
• Free Subdomain or Free Hosting for Your Custom Domain
  
• No Download - It Works In Your Browser

Link:
http://www.synthasite.com/

Online Geneology Family Tree Maker (free)

Geni is a private place for your family to build your family tree, preserve your history and share your lives.

Link:
http://www.geni.com/

Get your .Me domain starting tomorrow

Tomorrow, July 17, GoDaddy.com is offering .ME domain names for Open Registration. This gives anyone who wants to get their presence online an opportunity for a valuable piece of Internet real estate. As with any Open Registration period, plenty of premier domain names are available to be registered.

Will you get YourName.me?

Link:
https://www.godaddy.com/...

Get a free estimate on your car repairs at RepairPal

RepairPal gives you independent and unbiased repair estimates, user ratings and reviews, plus advice you can't get anywhere else.

Link:
http://repairpal.com/

CitySense tells you where the people are

Like a Doppler weather map with red blotches tracking the paths of major storms, a new tracking software service co-developed by Columbia University computer science professor Tony Jebara instantly shows people where the hottest clubs or hangouts are, in real time.

Link:
http://www.physorg.com/news133192373.html

Form W4 Assistant

Link:
http://paycheckcity.com/W4/...

New report identifies dangerous Web domains

McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to are ".hk" (Hong Kong), ".cn" (China) and ".info" (information).

Of all ".hk" sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of ".cn" sites and 11.7 percent of ".info" sites that way.

Link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080604/...

Windows Live SkyDrive

Password-protected online file storage. Always available where you need it.

Offers:

• 5 GB of free online storage, available from any computer with Internet access.
• Create personal, shared, and public folders -- you decide who has access to each folder.

Personal

• Use personal folders to back up important files that are only for you.
• Get to your files from any computer with Internet access by signing in with your Windows Live ID.

Shared

• Shared folders make it easy to collaborate with coworkers or classmates.
• You decide how much control each person has over each shared folder. Some can just read what's there: others can add and delete files.
• Everyone who is sharing uses their own Windows Live ID.

Public

• With public folders, anyone on the Internet can view your files, but they can't change them.
• Want to show your public files to others? Just send them a link! Each folder and file has its own web address.

Link:
http://skydrive.live.com/welcomemoreinfo.aspx

Test websites in IE6, IE7 and IE8 with IETester

IETester is a free WebBrowser that allows you to have the rendering and javascript engines of IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.

Link:
http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/...

Rentomatic

What it does:

• Gain control and visibility of your properties anytime, anywhere. Advertise, manage finances, real-time data tools, and more.


• Connect with your tenants: communicate, track maintenance, and receive payments – we invoice for you.


• Automate rents: the only service to process both checks and online payments. We take care of billing, collection, deposit, and accounting updates.

Link:
http://www.rentomatic.com/

Web 2.0 Awards

After scouring the web for Web 2.0 sites both new and old, we developed a "short list" of over three-hundred sites in forty-one categories. From there, we had some of the web's best bloggers, entrepreneurs and business people vote on winners, narrowing the field to 174 place-getters and Honorable Mentions.

Link:
http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0

Online conversion tools for Adobe PDF documents

This conversion service will convert to text Adobe PDF files that are in English and most West European languages.

If it comes from Adobe it will probably do the best job since its their format.

Link:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/...

Create Your Own Social Network with Ning

Ning is the only online service where you can create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds.

Link:
http://www.ning.com/

Photoshop Express (Online version of Photoshop) in Beta

This is the main interface of the online version of Adobe Photoshop called Photoshop Express. Once you have uploaded an image, through the My Gallery manager, you can access and modify your images. What Adobe has done is make this as dead simple as possible. Nothing too complex, but still pretty powerful.


The menu of options seems limiting at first but when you get into modifying your image you will see it covers pretty much everything need to do (at least for the person using an online version of Photoshop). What they have done that is very cool is when you apply or use one of the menu items it becomes checked and that option is applied. You can simply uncheck the item to see your original image.

Everything is done through an AJAX, interactive, interface which means things are done without having to refresh or reload pages.

I changed the color of the corvette in the image with two clicks: select Pop Color from the menu and then select one of the preset choices.



Did I mention all menu items, when selected, give you 6 or 7 choices to try so you don't have to worry about figuring out what the settings should be.

Link:
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopexpress/...

Free online virus scanner with Virustotal

Virustotal is a service that analyzes suspicious files and facilitates the quick detection of viruses, worms, trojans, and all kinds of malware detected by antivirus engines.

Link:
http://www.virustotal.com/

(found through DonationCoder.com)

Car company family tree

Link:
http://jalopnik.com/...

One site, all jobs searched

Indeed is a search engine for jobs - with a radically different approach to job search. In one simple search, Indeed gives job seekers free access to millions of employment opportunities from thousands of websites. Indeed.com includes all the job listings from major job boards, newspapers, associations and company career pages - and we continue to add new sites every day.

Link:
http://www.indeed.com

Doh

Homer, as a real person. Scary...

Link:
http://bp2.blogger.com/...

Self Publishing with LuLu

Just upload your manuscript, photos or digital files, use our formatting tools to get everything set up just the way you want, from size to binding to cover art, and... well, that's it. You're the proud parent of a brand new digital creation, ready to publish and cherish. The publishing process couldn't be easier.

Link:
http://www.lulu.com

Cartoon yourself with Funky Ways

Cartoonizer is where the user re-creates images/videos by turning into digital paintings, cartoons and comics in just a few seconds without downloading any tool.

Link:
http://www.befunky.com/

Exploit-Me lets you test the security of your website

Unsure if your website is as secure as it should be? Then check out the Exploit-Me suite to test the two most common, and well known, forms of attack; Cross Site Scripting (XSS) and SQL Injection.

XSS

XSS-Me is the Exploit-Me tool used to test for reflected Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities.

SQL Injection

SQL Inject-Me is the Exploit-Me tool used to test for SQL Injection vulnerabilities.

Link:
http://www.securitycompass.com/exploitme.shtml

How They Hack Your Website: Overview of Common Techniques

When you consider that you can go to Google right now and enter a search string which will return you thousands of usernames and passwords to websites, you realize that this dark science is really no mystery at all. You’ll react similarly when you see just how simple a concept SQL Injection is, and how it can be automated with simple tools. Read on, to learn the basics of how sites and web content management systems are most often hacked, and what you can do to reduce the risk of it happening to you.

Methods Discussed:

• SQL Injection
• Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
• Authorization Bypass
• Google Hacking
• Password Cracking

Link:
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/...

Amazing Photosynth Demo built on Seadragon

3 places to get answers

Askville

Yahoo! Answers

Live QnA

Free newsletter manager for your website

phplist is an open-source newsletter manager. phplist is free to download, install and use, and is easy to integrate with any website.

Link:
http://www.phplist.com/

Webmaster tools from search engines gives valuable information

If you've never signed up for the various webmaster accounts at the major search engines (Google, Live Search, Yahoo!) then you're missing out on a lot of very valuable information on your website. These are great tools to help increase your position within the various search engines.

Where to find:

• Google Webmaster - Help you with your crawling and indexing questions, introduce you to offerings that can enhance and increase traffic to your site, and connect you with your visitors.
• Yahoo! Site Explorer - Allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. View the most popular pages from any site, dive into a comprehensive site map, and find pages that link to that site or any page
• Live Search Webmaster - Use the Webmaster Tools to troubleshoot the crawling and indexing of your website, submit sitemaps and view

Convert a document to PDF through email

Koolwire makes it very easy to convert documents to PDF by following these basic steps:

• 1. Create an email and attach your document to convert
• 2. Send the email to pdf@koolwire.com
• 3. Wait for the return email with a PDF attachment

In my test I sent a Word document containing a high-res image and some text. Within 2min I received an email back with the PDF attached (named the same as the Word doc). Quality was great.

Link:
http://www.koolwire.com/Default.aspx

Who's hosting a domain

Who Is Hosting This is a tool that enables you to find out who is hosting any web site. Simply type in any domain name, and you'll get a link to the company that's hosting this particular domain.

Its a little fun and a whole lot of geeky. I actually quite like tools like this since it gives me, at times, valuable information in a simple and easy to use interface.

Page Headers is very similar to the tool above. It gives the header information from any domain. This can be used to see what type a server a domain is hosted on (why I created it).

Link:
http://www.whoishostingthis.com

Get help coming up with a domain name

• Domain Twister - Find different domain combinations with this tool.
• DomainsBot - Provides domain suggestion to GoDaddy, Tucows and BulkRegister. Thanks to their semantic search engine you can find hundreds of meaning related suggestions for available, expiring, expired and on auction domains. Try their LiveBot to customize your semantic search.
• EyeOnDomain - Combines domains from user keywords and checks them for availability.
• 123Finder.com - Finds domain names by generating keywords and making up name variations.
• Pdom.com - Searches for personal names to register as domains.
• VeriSign Domain Name Suggestion Service
• Domain Name Suggestion - Domain Name Suggestion tool to help you find domain names that are available.
• Keyword-Rich Domain Suggestion Tool - This tools will suggest keyword rich domain names.

If you find something you like make sure you go over to GoDaddy to pick up the domain. I really don't trust small time registrars.

How fast does your website load for your visitors?

The Full Page Test loads a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). It mimics the way a page is loaded in a web browser.

The load time of all objects is shown visually with time bars.

You can view the list of objects either in load order or as a hierarchy. The hierarchy view allows you to see which objects are linked to in for example a CSS file.

Every test also shows general statistics about the loaded page such as the total number of objects, total load time, and size including all objects.

Link:
http://tools.pingdom.com/

The Ultimate Student Resource List

It’s back to school time, yet again. In the spirit of the season, I decided to gather together the best tools, websites, and advice I know of to help make you a more effective and relaxed student this semester. Since I know you’re broke, it’s all free!

Link:
http://.../the-ultimate-student-resource-list.html

PDFHammer online PDF editor

PDF Hammer is a website that allows you to edit your PDF files online for free. You don't need to install any additional software, you can edit PDF documents right now inside your browser. Once you start, you will be able to upload one or more PDF files into your project, arrange the pages in any order you wish, and delete any pages you don't want.

For example, you can create a PDF document that has the cover page of one PDF file, followed by all of the pages of another PDF file, and finally followed by the back-cover page of the first file.

Link:
http://pdfhammer.com/

Is the new Google Analytics code buggy?

Not sure if you heard that Google has released a new code to insert in your website so you can benefit from the new metrics Google has stated that Analyitics will provide. Well, it would seem that some users, myself included, have experienced major issues with the new code.

For me it started when the code causes a major glitch if you run it on an ASP page running through IIS (page will crash). Ok, this was pretty easy to fix but the next issue was not possible. The new code would not register any stats. That means for the 4 days I had the new code installed I registered 0 for everything. I fixed that problem by going back to the old code.

So be warned as the new code may not be ready for primetime yet.

See other discussing problems:
http://groups.google.com/group/analytics-help-troubleshoot/topics

TripTouch: providing live city guides

TripTouch is a website for independent travelers who want the best from their trip. Everything at TripTouch is centered around your location and your personalized travel tastes. We'll bring you information, services and a lively community - all in one easy to use site. TripTouch is still in beta stage - so please be patient with us if you see any glitches... we're working hard to make it the best travel site for your trip

What I like:

• The design and interface is clean, friendly and well organized. (nice icons)
• The type or grouping of information seems logical to what I would want if I was traveling.
• Strong foundation for what could be a great travel website
• The information contained within the Travel Information group. Just wish it was extracted onto the main page so I didn't have to click to see it.
  

What can be done better:

• Some information should be much lower on the page. Like the currency converter. This is something that I really wouldn't want so high. IMO the highest things should be where to stay, what to do, and where to eat. Those are the three primary questions that most travelers to a new city ask.
• Information seems incorrect. When I view my city I see local news that is no where near me, events that are not representative to whats going on, and no listing of restaurant.

What I wish it could do:

• Create a voting system where users who visit an area can vote on things like restaurants so a person visiting for the first time knows whats good. This is what I find lacking online right now. I really want to be able to easily find the cool places to see and the great places to eat when I visit a new city. Creating a Digg like interface could allow these places to bubble up to the top and show on a users main travel page.
• Ability to customize the layout of the main page (like iGoogle).
  

Good start and looking forward to the next big release.

Link:
http://www.triptouch.com

Does your browser pass the ACID2 test?

The ACID2 test is a test page to help browser developers test their browser to web standards.

My Quick Test:

• Firefox 2 - fails
• IE6 - fails bigtime
• Opera 9 - passes
• Safari (win) - passes

Link:
http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/

Safari 3.0.4 for Windows released

Apple released a pretty big update to the Safari 3 Beta browser for Windows this morning. One of the most notable additions is the spelling and grammar checking, which can be done inline if you so desire.

Link:
http://.../safari-304-for-windows-spelling-and-grammar-check/

Download Safari:
http://www.apple.com/safari/

Schmap provides dynamic travel guides

Exploring a Schmap Guide is a uniquely interactive experience: maps and guide content are dynamically integrated, allowing intuitive, real-time access to reviews and photo slideshows for places of interest.

Link:
http://www.schmap.com/

Unclutterer

Unclutterer is the blog about getting and staying organized. A place for everything, and everything in its place is our gospel.

One thing I hate is things that are out of place or not in some kind of an order. Bring some order and organization to your spaces.

Link:
http://unclutterer.com/

What Software Powers Nine of the Largest Sites?

Have you ever wondered what software powers sites like YouTube, Flickr, and MySpace? Wonder no more because Pingdom has the scoop! The results are located in the table above, and as you can see Linux, Apache, and MySQL are among the most popular tools. In the end this is how the stats play out:

Link:
http://.../what-software-powers-nine-of-the-largest-sites/

Flickr offers tools for uploading images

If you don't like working through a web interface for handling your Flickr account then you can use the standalone applications they offer for uploading and working with images in your Flickr account. Easy to install and even easier to work with makes this an option for the most novice users.

Also, Flickr has a pretty cool WinXP Explorer plugin that lets you 'Send To Flickr' right from within Windows Explorer. Can't get much easier than that. (look at the bottom of the tools page for the download and how to install here)

Flickr Uploader:
http://www.flickr.com/tools/

Add a survey or poll to your website

Poll:
Easy-Poll.com let you quickly and easily add a poll to your website. They store the results and you manage the poll through your account with them. Although you lose some control over the poll having all information passed to them, this is a drop-dead easy solution for the non-developers out there.
http://www.easy-poll.com

Survey:
LimeSurvey is probably the best open-source, PHP, survey script I have found. Its highly customizable and can handle most kinds of surveys you want to put up with ease. The down side, and there is always a down side, the admin area is kinda confusing and non-intuitive to use. Once you get past the admin area you will probably find that LimeSurvey works great. (oh and they have a very nicely designed website)
http://www.limesurvey.org/

List of more surveys:
http://.../Onlinesurveys/software.htm#freesoftware

Online website creator with Jimdo

Create your own beautiful website. It's really easy to create your own JimdoFree-Page: just sign-up, follow the link to your own Page, integrate pictures, videos and texts in seconds, change the design with a click, add as many pages as you want...and show your swifty JimdoFree-Page to your friends.

These are good for what they are for and that's simple website for you personal use. I would not recommend using a service like this for your business website but for a personal website or a website for a small organization it might work very well.

Link:
http://jimdo.com

PayPal Fee Calculator

So simple, so useful, why didn't someone come up with this sooner. PayPal Fee Calculator will let you quickly determine what PayPal's cut will be on a transaction. The nice thing is they offer a way to say I want to receive this much, so how much do I have to request to get the amount I want and still cover PayPal's fees.

Link:
http://www.ppcalc.com/

Stop catalog junk mail with Catalog Choice

Catalog Choice is a free service that lets you decline paper catalogs you no longer wish to receive.

Link:
http://catalogchoice.org/

Online floorplan design application

Floorplanner is the easiest, quickest, and best looking way to create and share interactive floorplans. Using point-and-click, drag-and-drop tools, you can make your floor plan in minutes, and rearrange it as often as you want. Then you can save, send, and print your designs to share them, or place them on your own website.

Interesting. Not only can you create a floorplan but you can add and rearrange furniture. What a cool way to plan a room.

Link:
http://www.floorplanner.com/

(as found on DonationCoder)

Enter a URL to see what time it takes to download

HTML Page Breakdown will evaluate the speed at which a webpage will load in a browser. You will see the total time and the breakdown of where the slow points are.

Link:
http://tools.itscales.com/cgi-bin/pma-dl

Process Scanner

Now you can harness the power of the industry's leading and most definitive process listing with just one single click! Process Library now lets you search for and identify all the processes that should - or should not - be running on your computer. What's more it's fast, comprehensive and FREE to all PC users.

On occasion I would look through the running processes on my system to see what was going on. Every time I found something in question I would hit Process Library to get the details. Well, Process Library has made it very easy to find out details on all processes in one swoop with their Process Scanner software. This makes it easy to clear running processes that can slow a system down.

Link:
http://www.processlibrary.com/processscan/

You Convert It

YouconvertIt.com, the world's first and most complete conversion website allowing internet users to convert audio video images and documents into an array of formats.

YouconvertIt.com’s service is free, instant, and does not require any tedious download and software installations.

Link:
http://www.youconvertit.com

What is your domain worth?

After reading up on how to value a domain, then check out the online domain appraiser from LeapFish. This online domain appraiser is totally garbage as it just doesn't produce a value that is even close to being correct - its says Google is worth $130 (I'll take two, thank you).

A slightly better one is over at dnScoop.com. This one provides a breakdown of what it found out about your domain, which is actually pretty useful. It still under values the domain but at least the result has some meaningful information besides the value..

So, read this:
http://.../what-is-my-domain-name-worth/

And check out this:
http://www.dnscoop.com/

How many pages

A quick search for page file types in Google yielded these results:

• HTML: 3,810,000,000
• ASP: 860,000,000
• ASPX: 475,000,000
• PHP: 1,100,000,000
• PDF: 230,000,000
• CFM: 399,000,000

HTML is first followed by PHP.

In case you wondered about the advanced searches on Google.

HowTo: Run a website or blog on a USB flash drive

Of all the good things we can do with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) flash drive, I think running a website is one of them. This is a perfect solution for web designers who need to cart along a whole bunch of designs to show potential clients.

Link:
http://.../running-a-website-or-blog-on-a-usb-flash-drive/

Excel 2007 Web Data Add-In

The Excel 2007 Web Data Add-In makes it easy to use a Web page as a data source in Excel. The add-in plugs into Excel 2007 seamlessly, its entry point located on the Data Tab under the From Web option. The system extracts data by learning from a user’s selection of data they wish to capture into Excel. The more selections, the more the system is trained. An example scenario: You wish to import and track data from MSN's weather page. Visit the site using the tool, enter Data Capture mode, and select a row or two of data from the table. Then click Select Similar, and the system will find similar data based on your previous selections. You then can click Import and leverage Excel's rich data-editing capabilities, including the Refresh command, which will revisit the Web page and extract potentially new, updated data.

Link:
http://research.microsoft.com/research/downloads...

Two services to locate someone

Intelius People Search: People Search Includes: Current phone number, address history, age, birthdates, household members and more...

ZabaSearch: Free People Search and Public Information Search Engine

FreeThesaurus.net

FreeThesaurus.net is a new online thesaurus service offered by DonationCoder.com. We expect it to deliver fast, fine, free thesaurus search results to English language lovers around the globe in their continuous quest for the right words.

If you're like me and seemed to get stuck using the same word over and over then FreeThesaurus.net is for you. Not only are there over 30K entries with over 2M synonyms but the interface and usage is very clean and well designed.

Link:
http://freethesaurus.net/

Where the Web 2.0 stars were born

Every year thousands visit the garages where Hewlett-Packard and Apple were hatched. But the hottest tech companies out there weren't all started in a car lot.

Link:
http://money.cnn.com/.../gallery.web2_0_stars

TouchGraph Google Browser

The TouchGraph Google Browser reveals the network of connectivity between websites, as reported by Google's database of related sites.

Link:
http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

PHP Link Directory

phpLD is now the most widely used directory script on the internet. Our customers have tested the script on over 25,000 websites, and we have been able to produce a script that works in nearly all PHP hosting environments.

Link:
http://www.phplinkdirectory.com/

Eleven steps to buying a domain name that doesn't suck

Eleven steps to buying a domain name that doesn't suck: "Whether you're a multinational Internet retailer or a lone human just entering the Web world, there are many things to consider when purchasing a new domain name, not the least of which are core SEO (search engine optimization) parameters. Following is a list of considerations I'd supply to either entity mentioned above or anyone in between. Some may seem ridiculously obvious, but a friendly reminder won't hurt."

Link:
http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9759544-7.html?part=rss

Xinu shows how well your website is performing

Xinu lets you quickly check your PageRank, backlinks and much more. This is a great way to see how your website is performing in the web world. Be aware that some information may not be 100% accurate so use this as more of a guide.

Link:
http://www.xinureturns.com/

Need a quick and easy file manager for PHP?

Then check out File Thingie (great name).

File Thingie is a small web-based file manager written in PHP. It is intended for those who need to give others access to a part of their server's file system when FTP is not practical. Through File Thingie you and your users get access to the most common functions

Link:
http://www.solitude.dk/filethingie/

Scrollovers

Scrollovers are a way to quickly and easily add flair to your web pages, giving your users an experience they weren't expecting.

Integration of Scrollovers into your web site couldn't be easier, even if you’ve already built the site that you want to include Scrollovers on. In just minutes you will be able to have them appearing on your own pages.

Link:
http://www.scrollovers.com/

Options to hide your email address from spam bots

Wired magazine has a small article on how to protect your email address from spam bots when publishing on your website.

Link:
http://...page_name=hide_your_e_mail_address_from_spam_bots

How To: Bulletproof Server Backups with Amazon S3

We all know that it is important to keep recent backups of anything you value at all, so why not automate the process? Until I started tinkering with S3, my server backup process involved manually downloading and compressing the contents of my server and storing the compressed file on my hard drive. That usually took longer than I’d like so I wouldn’t do it terribly often. The main benefit of backing up with S3 is that you take advantage to your server’s high-speed connection and bypass the need to download files over your connection, as well as safely store files somewhere other than your own server.

Link:
http://.../how-to-bulletproof-server-backups-with-amazon-s3/

Top 12 SEO tips for 2007

Some good, some OK but the entire article is worth reading for someone who has never thought about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) before. You can also read my blog post on what I know about SEO - been meaning to come out with a v2.0 of this post as I have learned so much more since that post first appeared.

If you could do one thing now its #3 in the SEO Tips article.

Article:
http://.../top-12-seo-tips-for-2007.htm

ajaxWindows

Why do I keep posting about Virtual Operating Systems? Please prove me wrong on several points: 1) They are not OS's and 2) They are not useful in their current state of development (or even future development).

Link:
http://ajaxwindows.com/apps/windows/content/index.html

The Open Source Web Design Toolbox: 100 Tools, Resources, and Template Sources

In fact, the open source model, which began with programmers, has been so successful that it is currently being applied in government, media, education and private business. But despite these new applications, the unique combination of the open source model with the universalism of web design remains one of the ideal applications of open source. This pervasiveness of the open source spirit in web design now means that you can use open source software to design both graphics and your CSS and HTML, and you can also use the dozens of reliable open source code resources or thousands of templates to base your own designs on. In this article we highlight 100 open source web design tools, resources, and templates.

Link:
http://...100-tools-resources-and-template-sources/

Stripe Generator

Another web2.0 graphic, thingy creator. Kinda like the web2.0 logo creator.

Is it useful? Not really. Is it fun to play with? Not at all.

Link:
http://www.stripegenerator.com/

URL Shrtn lets you create a TinyUrl site

URL Shrtn is a free URL shortening and forwarding service - this script allows you to run your own site similar to tinyurl.com and other URL shortening services.

Not sure you will be able to compete with a site the magnitude of TinyUrl but who knows if you have an idea missing from TinyUrl.

Link:
{removed}

UPDATED: Seems like URL Shrtn is no longer available.

AutoPOST automatic form submission

AutoPOST is a Web site/utility that can automatically submit a form, complete with data. Your form submission is packaged into one extended URL, which you can use anywhere you'd use a normal URL-- a bookmark, a link, a non-form-supporting browser. Whenever you access the URL, the form is automatically submitted. AutoPOST supports both GET and POST form submissions (POST submissions are routed through a special AutoPOST script when called, transparent to the user).

Link:
http://www.io.com/~jsm/autopost/

See how a website looks in other browsers

Use one of the websites below to see how a website will render in other browsers. Critical step in designing a website is to ensure that designs renders the same in the major browsers: IE6, IE7, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

IE NetRenderer:
http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/index.php

Browser Cam:
http://www.browsercam.com/

BrowsrCamp:
http://www.browsrcamp.com/

iCapture:
http://www.danvine.com/icapture/

ieCapture:
http://www.danvine.com/iecapture/

92,815,583 domains currently in use

See what domains are doing through the Total Domains Trends Worldwide statistics. Pretty amazing the amount of domains that are gained and lossed in a given week.

Just shows how difficult a good domain name is to get by how many are gained each week. One of the factors in choosing the company name of Veign was that I was able to get Veign.com. This is a trend that will continue until something better than the internet comes our way (not in my life time).

Link:
http://www.webhosting.info/domains/global_stats/total_domains/

Website page layout templates using CSS

Some great examples of page layouts using CSS as the primary layout method;

CSS Layouts:
http://layouts.ironmyers.com/

Layout Galore:
http://blog.html.it/layoutgala/

Even more layouts:
http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/boxes.html

If you need a custom designed website then check out my website design services.

What is that file extension?

You can look up the information about desired file extension and its file associations using File-extensions.org website. Simply use the search box in the top-left corner of each page tosearch for a specific file extension. You may also view an alphabetical list of extensions using the starting letters above, or browse by file type using the links on submenu at the left side of the page.

Link:
http://www.file-extensions.org/

Web App Autopsy

Web App Autopsy: "In this feature, we’d like to help you minimize those mistakes by dissecting 4 very different web application companies that are at varying stages of their life cycle. In addition to age and size, these companies vary in their business models, programming languages and views on approaching the web as a platform. Specifically, we’ll be sharing code line counts, business processes, conversion rates, support requests revenues per customer. It’s good stuff and we’re hoping it’ll help you identify some trends that’ll make your predictions a bit more accurate."

Link:
http://particletree.com/features/web-app-autopsy/

50+ Ways to Track Website Traffic

From analyzing your RSS feed to counting page views to visual representations of where your visitors are clicking, there is no shortage of companies looking to help you better understand your web site’s traffic. In our latest “toolbox” installment, we analyze (pun intended) the wide variety of applications and tools available for keeping tabs on how your sites, feeds, blogs, emails, or even your intranet is performing.

Link:
http://mashable.com/2007/06/25/analytics-toolbox/

Is your Web site 'usable'?

You try one company's Web site. It's plain, but it lists pricing information, the models it services, and its contact information. Then you try another company's site. It makes you sit through a three-minute Flash presentation before letting you explore the site. (There's a "skip this intro" button at the top right, but the button is camouflaged.) And, instead of getting pricing information, you have to fill out a form and wait for a salesperson to call.

With probably millions of websites competing for the same thing your website has to be as easy as possible on the user. Make it confusing, too difficult or too many clicks to get around and your users will move on.

Link:
http://.../online_marketing/is_your_web_site_usable.mspx

HorseURLs just released - Another website by Veign.

Latest and greatest in my suite of Horse websites. This site is very similiar to PopURLs, in fact thats where the idea came from, in the sense it pulls all the news sources together in one location.

Has become one of the largest collections of the best articles on anything and everything horse. This site is a must bookmark for anyone interested in horses.


A great, ever changing, collection of horse pictures from around the world.


A community for horse people to hang out and get involved in discussions. This is a very friendly forum with some of the best or the best getting involved.


That's it and all the above sites have been designed and developed by me.

Safari releases yet another release for Windows

Safari browser for Windows keeps releasing new versions to try and correct the issues. Its now up to its third release on Windows and supposily this one is faster and more stable. Not a good intro onto the Windows OS. I'll stick with Firefox.

Link:
http://www.apple.com/safari/download/

A new uncenersored image hosting service from Pirate Bay

bayimg.com is a place where you can host all your images. We do not censor them. We believe in freedom of speech, it's of utter importance to us.

You can upload about 140 different formats. There's even support for .RAR and .ZIP-archives! If you upload an archive with multiple images, you'll also get an album-address for all the pictures inside of it. Tags are separated by spaces, removal code is a password to let you remove images you upload.

Seems they are also working on a Video hosting service, like YouTube, but since its in a closed beta really can't get any other information on it. Try it if you want but this one isn't for me.

My Image:
http://bayimg.com/eaPOkaAap

Link:
http://www.bayimg.com/

How to clean the HTML code from Word

I released another tool that can be used to throw together quick web pages and page elements called Easy HTML Editor. This is a really cool tool for making quick page elements and has a feature that I use and that's the ability to clean the code from MS Word (instructions provided on the page).

Feel free to play around with it and make suggestions for improvements.

Link:
http://www.veign.com/tools/easy-html-editor/

A big thanx to FCKEditor for all their hard work on this amazing component.