AdesBlog.com

FeedBlitz.com - better RSS via Email service

Posted in » Online Tools, xml - by Ades

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.

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.)

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: www.feedblitz.com

RSSfwd - tool when blog doesn’t offer RSS via Email

Posted in » Online Tools, xml - by Ades

7 Comments 

What do you do when your favorite blog doesn’t offer RSS via Email? And you want to receive daily digests in your email? The answer is “nothing” until RSSfwd came about.

RSSfwd allows any site/blog that has RSS to be emailed to your email as individual emails (as the posts are posted) or as a daily digest that is send to your email as specified by you (eg: every morning, afternoon, evening..etc)

While I don’t normally subscribe to RSS via email , I think there are some people who prefer to get posts via Email. So, I thought some of you guys might find this tool useful. rssfwd.com

Adobe XML News Aggregator - your free blog promotion tool

Posted in » Adobe, SEO & Promotion, xml - by Ades

2 Comments 

If you have a blog that is related to Adobe products such as Photoshop or Flash then you have got yourself a free blog promotion tool! Submit your blog to Adobe XML News Aggregator (formerly known as the Macromedia XML News Aggregator) and start receiving free traffic. If your blog is related to Technology you may still submit it.

You may get over a hundred clicks for your every post. Below is a screenshot of my blog’s stats, as you can see some posts got over a 100 clicks.

weblogs.macromedia.com/mxna/

XML-Sitemaps.com - Free Online Google Sitemap Creator

Posted in » Google, Online Tools, xml - by Ades

7 Comments 

XML-Sitemaps.com - offers Free Google Sitemap generating service with unlimited number of URLs per sitemap. When your sitemap is ready you can download it in .xml, xml.gz, .ror, .html and .txt file formats. What a wonderful tool compared to Google’s official sitemap generator script.

Here is what you have to do if you want to use Google’s script to generate a sitemap:

1. Download the Sitemap Generator program files. Extract the files to a local directory.
2. Create a configuration file for your site using the provided example_config.xml file as a template. Modify this file as needed for your site and save it.
3. Upload the necessary files to your web server.
4. Run sitemap_gen.py.
5. Add the generated Sitemap to your Google Sitemaps account.
6. Set up a recurring script. (optional)

No wonder adoption of Google Sitemaps are very slow, because it is too hassle to get your sitemap created in the first place. Google should develop online tool Read more »