AdesBlog.com

Let’s say you want to have your own website. You tell freelance webdesigner to design a nice looking website, and you give him some websites as references.

Usually you would just pass him the URLs and tell him that you like this part of this particular website and that part of another website etc.

Better way is with Flowgram

So how Flowgram.com can improve this process? With flowgram you can add live pages to your presentation, make comments on the surface of those live websites, add photos, add powerpoints and even add RSS feeds. Once you are done with your presentation, you can just send him a link that looks something like this http://beta.flowgram.com/p/f4xhdtkgp7usnv

You can also use it to bookmark sites, like what I did on the above link. I have put together a list of wordpress related websites.

Flowgram is in Beta

Flowgram is still in beta, so you need to apply to get an invitation. I do have 10 invitations though, I can give them to the first 10 commenters for this post. I had subscribed a while ago, but it too many usability issues to mention it on the blog. Now it looks quite stable.

URL: beta.flowgram.com

Browsershots is a free online tool that makes screenshots of your blog/site in different browsers. It’s a great tool to check if your blog shows up correctly on different browsers. It’s a bless for web designers who otherwise have to pay for paid services to check their designs on different browsers.

It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server where you can view them.

It tests on three different Operating Systems (linux, windows and mac os) and on different browsers on these three os’s.

You can also choose preferences on screenshot size, color depth, javascript, java and flash (for the last three you can enable them or disable them or leave it as it is). check it out browsershots.org

Download FastStone v5.3 (freeware) here

Very popular freeware tool FastStone Capture is now a shareware, when it was still freeware I had blogged about it here recommending you to download. FastStone Capture is my favorite when it comes to capturing screen, cropping captured images, writing on them..etc. I use it extensively for this blog.

I have heard that it became paid before, but I thought people were referring to the commercial license. Previously it was free for personal use, but not for commercial use. Companies supposed to get a license for using FastStone Capture.

But let’s face it, when the program is available for free download, which company is going to pay for a freeware? Answer: Ethical one. Correct! But these days it’s difficult to find those ethical companies. So the solution for the developer was obviously to charge them all: $19.95 for lifetime license. Still not bad offer, considering you get a lifetime license, that is a free update for all future versions.

I was using version 5.3 and wanted to update it to 5.5 since it had better features. However after installing I got a trial pop-up window; try for 30 days or enter code. So I uninstalled and reverted back to my 5.3 version. Luckily I had the old installer.

Sites like OldVersion.com, OldApps.com and Old-Versions.net keep the old versions of the popular softwares. Unfortunately none of them had the later versions of FastStone Capture. Only OldApps had versions from 3.1 - 3.9. That’s too bad.

Lucky you, I had made further research on Google and found that you can download the latest free version 5.3 at this site. I strongly suggest you to get it.

What to learn from this

• If you are a developer, don’t make a software that is free for one party and paid for another. If you want to charge them, give them more features, better support..etc give them something more.
• If you have developed a freeware software, keep it free always. Don’t disappoint or worse misuse the public, making your software paid when it becomes popular.
• If you will develop a software in the future, remember that donationware didn’t work for FastStone Capture. If you want to make money on freeware, maybe you should think again. On the other hand, if you want to just benefit public with your freeware, go ahead and do it!
• And lastly, when you read AdesBlog suggest you something, just go and get it ;) Otherwise they turn into sharewares.

I hope this post has benefited you, and I hope you will make your own lessons from this case.

Important Link: Download version 5.3 (freeware) here | another source

This heatmap to the left was generated from 2,228 visits and 1,263 clicks from my site at adesdesign.net. I have used CrazyEgg’s free service.

With the free plan you can track up to 5,000 visitors and have 4 different URLs or sessions. The basic plan costs you $9/month, you can track 10,000 visitors and have 10 different URLs or sessions. If you have only one site, free plan should be enough to get the idea about your visitors and where they are clicking on your site.

Heatmaps are a great way to visualize the clicks, you can track them on your own by other scripts or counters but you won’t get this kind of information. With heatmaps you know exactly (you can see it) which part of your website is working and which ones are not. In my case here, I was glad to know that my promotional banner is working great.

Making Money

Once you get your heatmap, you can see where the users are clicking the most. And this information is vital for publishers who are serving ads from GoogleAdsense, because you want to place your publisher ads near to this (hot) region. This region gets the most attention, therefore placing your ads near to it will get better visibility for them, and hopefully that will generate into more clicks. (Please make sure that you do not violate the Google program policy when placing your ads, otherwise that check might stop coming).

crazyegg.com

Snap Preview Anywhere enables a user to get a glimpse (to see the screenshot) of the sites on your page. When you point your mouse on the link it will popup a window that shows the screenshot of that particular site. It’s a free tool so if you want to put it on your site, get it here.

WebSnapr is a tool to display screenshot of any url, similar to the script that I have discussed here.

Using WebSnapr from your html is easy just use the following code and replace the [url] and [size].

http://images.websnapr.com/?url=[url]&size=[size]

Here are the possible screenshot sizes, you will need replace [size] with either T, S, M or L.
* T = 92×70 (example)
* S = 202×152 (example)
* M = 400×300 (example)
* L = 640×480 (example)

www.websnapr.com