All posts in Online Tools

Change Detection in Websites

by Ades on August 21, 2009 in Online Tools with 23 Comments

ChangeDetection is a great tool that I have been using lately. As the name suggests it’s a free service for website (or page) change monitoring, whenever the change occurs it will notify you via email.

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You can specify the type of changes in the preferences; whether it’s a sizable change or when the text is removed from the page or when the page is updated with new content etc.

When it’s useful? It’s useful for keeping track of newly launched sites, for example when the site is up but you see a sign saying “we are in private beta now, come back later” etc. type of websites. Or websites that do not have RSS or other types of communication tools that can notify you of the new updates. Or just to keep track of your own websites… for example when it gets defaced :) sure it will notify you when your site is hacked and the content is changed. But let’s hope that you won’t receive such a notification, ever.

Website: http://www.changedetection.com

SitePal’s Talking Widget

by Ades on August 13, 2009 in Advice to Businesses, Online Tools with 17 Comments

SitePal, a website that offers animated speaking avatars has came up with a new free widget now. The talking character widget can be integrated into your blog or used as a messaging tool to send voice mails to your friends.

See the demo below… now you can have your own welcoming Obama for your blog :) I like the way he follows your mouse cursor.

Share button at the bottom gives you many options to share your newly created widget with your friends. Options include Email, direct URL, Facebook, iGoogle etc.

Some Suggestions

I think the idea of providing free talking characters i.e widget is great. Whether people will use it or not on their blog that is a different thing. However, I think incorporating the following suggestions into their next versions will increase the chance of people using the widget on their blog.

  1. Provide different sizes
    Especially compact widgets… web space is a scarce thing, more so on popular blogs and websites. If possible bloggers would rather monetize the space as much as possible than putting a widget that covers the half of the sidebar. Therefore providing smaller widgets will increase the chance of adoption by popular blogs. Continue reading →

Free Online Store Service

by Ades on August 7, 2009 in Online Tools with 9 Comments

bigcommerce.jpgIf you want to sell online but do not want to install oscommerce or similar ecommerce scripts yourself, here is a great service that provides everything you need for your ecommerce needs. Free option allows you to sell 20 products, which is quite good actually for a starter. If you are successful and want to add more products you can upgrade your account to paid plans, $24.95/month option allows you to add 100 products.

It’s compatible with most of the payment processing gateways like paypal, google checkout, amazonpayments etc. It’s also compatible with major shipping services like FedEx, UPS, RoyalMail etc.

I think they are onto something…

Website: http://www.mybigcommerce.com

NetworkSolutions

On another note, NetworkSolutions had a total brand and website revamp recently. Now they are offering similar ecommerce service called CommerceSpace. Unfortunately it’s not free and the cheapest plan starts from $26.95/month.

For Digital Product Sellers

If you are selling ebooks, wordpress themes or softwares etc. One of the best and preferred solutions on the net is e-Junkie. Their winning feature is the affiliate program management feature where you can offer certain percentage of the sales to your affiliates (i.e to the person who sold the product). So if you want others to sell your digital products and you don’t want to install your own affiliate management system then try ejunkie. Their cheapes plan is $5/month for 10 products.

Website: http://www.e-junkie.com

GCube: Free Online Leave Application System

by Ades on May 8, 2009 in Online Tools with 30 Comments

gcube.pngGCube is a newly developed free online leave application and management system for SMEs. If the company that you work for is still using paper and making you run here and there to get your leave approved, then ask your boss to check this application out. It’s free, so has nothing to lose!

It’s locally developed web application by Malaysian startup called Green Cube Solutions Sdn Bhd. I had the privilege to work with the CEO of this startup Ganee Baharudin back in 2004 at one of the local IT companies.

Currently the system has two fully completed modules running, more modules are expected to be added in the future. If you use the sytem, do let them know about your experience and where you would like to see improvements. I am sure they would appreciate that.

Website: http://www.gcube.com.my

All your twitter followers on one page

by Ades on April 16, 2009 in Online Tools, Social Networking with 19 Comments

twitter_collage.pngWant to make a collage of all your twitter followers? Use this tool to create one, you just need to enter your twitter username only.

It creates a code that you can enter in your blog.

Tynt.com – see what texts and images are being copied from your blog

by Ades on April 5, 2009 in Online Tools, Trackers with 21 Comments

Following two screenshots are self-explanatory for what Tynt does:

tynt1.png

tynt2.png

Other than that, Tynt will also show which texts or images are being copied from your posts in the blog. All these will be reported in detail when you login to your account at Tynt.

I have already installed it to my blog, so beware if you want to cut and paste ;) Unfortunately it doesn’t show who (i.e which IP or URL) copies, rather it only shows which texts are being copied.

Nevertheless it’s a great service, because by seeing which posts are being copied the most, you can know what type of posts people like the most. Once you know that, you can increase the effectiveness of your posts by blogging in particular style or format.

Website: http://tynt.com/

(via http://23rdworld.com)

How to get your questions answered from big companies

by Ades on March 11, 2009 in Business, Online Tools with 13 Comments

getsatisfaction.pngGetSatisfaction like FixYa is a place for you to get answers to your questions. But in GetSatisfaction your questions will be answered by the company representatives themselves and not by the crowd.

Moreover, in GS you can do more than just posting a question, you can actually submit ideas, suggestions, report an issue, give them praise etc. It seems many big companies are already on board with at least a dozen employees on support.

getsatisfaction2.png

It’s a great way to get answers to your questions. Because usually these big elephants won’t get back to you if you use their contact form on their websites ;) – your emails just get dumped in their database. But here it’s in the open and transparent, so they most probably will answer your questions.

You can also get a feedback widget for your blog from GetSatisfaction like the one I am using from uservoice.

Website: http://www.getsatisfaction.com

Twibs – Twitter Business Directory

by Ades on March 6, 2009 in Online Tools, Social Networking with 9 Comments

twibs.pngWant to find if your favorite “brand” (company) is on twitter? Go to twibs.com – it’s a directory of businesses who are on twitter. So far over 5000 businesses have joined twitter.

Note: follow me on twitter http://twitter.com/ades

BackupUrl.com – capture a snapshot of any website

by Ades on February 27, 2009 in Online Tools with 21 Comments

BackupUrl.com is a website that allows you to capture a snapshot of any website (URL) and store it for you to access anytime in the future.

What is it useful for? I guess you could use it store different versions of your website, or you can also use it to prove stuff, for example; if someone denies that your banner was never removed from their website but you found it to be otherwise on certain days, you could capture it and show him that your banner was in fact missing from the page(s) etc.

Since it’s a third party application there is no way someone could alter the results, thus making it a reliable source of evidence.

backupurl.png

Website: backupurl.com

Online Tool: Free Docx to PDF Converter

by Ades on February 16, 2009 in Online Tools with 13 Comments

There are many “free” online conversion tools on the net, but they make your life difficult. While they are free, most of them will force you to wait before you get your converted file. And that spoils the whole “free concept” thing.

But this open source tool JODConverter seems great. No BS, no nonsense – just upload and get your file converted.

jod_converter.png

Available conversions include Microsoft Office to OpenDocument (ODF), Microsoft Office to PDF, and OpenDocument (ODF) to PDF. A more detailed list:

  • DOC to PDF, DOC to ODT, DOC to RTF
  • DOCX to PDF, DOCX to ODT, DOCX to DOC, DOCX to RTF
  • XLS to PDF, XLS to ODS, XLS to CSV
  • XLSX to PDF, XLSX to ODS, XLSX to CSV
  • PPT to PDF, PPT to ODP, PPT to SWF
  • PPTX to PDF, PPTX to ODP, PPTX to SWF
  • ODT to PDF, ODT to DOC, ODT to RTF
  • ODS to PDF, ODS to XLS, ODS to CSV
  • ODP to PDF, ODP to PPT, ODP to SWF

Website: http://www.artofsolving.com/online-document-converter

WebLoadTester.com – Web Stress Testing

by Ades on February 6, 2009 in Links, Online Tools with 8 Comments

webloadtester.pngLaunching a new project that will be the next facebook or twitter? Then make sure you stress-test your website and servers. The following I received from mon.itor.us in my email, I thought the offer was pretty good.

WebLoadTester allows instantly check your website load handling capabilities. You can enter many URLs, number of nodes, duration and number of simultaneous users to generate web stress test. There is a special promotional price $1.98 per each order regardless of number of URLs, nodes and clients. The offer is valid till 2/15/09.

Website: http://www.webloadtester.com

FeedBlitz.com – better RSS via Email service

by Ades on January 15, 2009 in Online Tools, xml with 6 Comments

I had been subscribed to many blogs through “RSS via Email” feature (that is usually offered by FeedBurner). However, I found myself unsubscribing from these blogs after few weeks. Besides the content (blog posts), one of the other reason for unsubscription was getting too many daily digests from many blogs. And it’s worse when the content of the digest is not so interesting.

FeedBlitz.com has few advantages that solves the above mentioned issues. First, it offers a combined daily digest emails of all your subscriptions. This decreases the amount of emails you get from various blogs, instead you get “all in one” one email per day.

feedblitz_digest.png

Secondly, unless the blog content is really deteriorated, you will less likely to unsubscribe from your favorite blogs just because of few bad posts. Because in the same digest, you will have plenty of other blog posts to read from different blogs. I guess this makes you more forgiving…

Some Disadvantages

FeedBlitz is not without its disadvantages. One of the main disadvantages of the site are;

  • It offers too many things – i think their tagline explains it well: “Way More than Email Marketing…” Offering multiple services is generally an advantage, but in this case it’s a clear disadvantage for FeedBlitz. Because it confuses the user – you don’t know what the site is all about.
  • Usability problem:
    • Interface design could be improved, maybe simplified a little bit. (This could solve above mentioned problem and turn the disadvantages into advantage.) Perhaps “Enterprise” and “Advertising” services could be separated from the main site to keep the website focused.
    • The process flow (navigation) could be improved greatly. It’s really difficult to navigate and figure out how to do particular action. (You will know what I am talking about when you start to use it.)

feedblitz_dashboard.png

Out of all the services they offer, I just use the RSS via Email service and that’s what I need at the moment.

Website: http://www.feedblitz.com

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