Recently in Tools & Productivity

Yahoo! having a web hosting sale

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If you are looking for an entry level web hosting packing, this is a pretty good price. Save 50% with Yahoo! Web Hosting - Only $4.99/month

Clicktale, In Page Analytics

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Clicktale is an interesting start up that provides insights into your website traffic, using what they call "In-Page Web Analytics". Some of what they claim to provide:

  • Watch Movies of your visitors' browsing sessions to analyze their behavior
  • Scrolling Heatmaps show where visitors look and how far down they scroll
  • Link Analytics shows every interaction, hover, hesitation time, and much more
  • Form Analytics reveals problem fields in online forms that cause visitors to leave
  • Has anyone tried this technology out? Would be interesting to hear from some real users -

    Facebook Connect demo Part 1

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    I recently set up a quick demo of Facebook Connect...Basically it gives you the ability to leverage Facebook data for use on your site.


    Facebook Connect is the next evolution of Facebook Platform - enabling you to integrate the power of Facebook Platform into your own site. Enable your users to...

    Seamlessly "connect" their Facebook account and information with your site
    Connect and find their friends who also use your site
    Share information and actions on your site with their friends on Facebook


    Here is a demo that will log users into Facebook on ibizdaily.com...additionally it lets you invite people in your network to use ibizdaily.

    ibizdaily Facebook Connect demo

    Alexa.com

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    Has re-designed their website.

    FireShot plug for Firefox

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    I just added the FireShot plugin for Firefox. What I needed was a way to quickly make notes on a page and share those with the team... The plugin converts the page into an image and allows you to make notes on the image

    Here is an example:

    fireshot.JPG

    FireShot is a Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages (entirely or just visible part).

    Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers.

    My First Facebook app

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    Intrigued by the idea of developing a Facebook app to generate large amounts of income from the millions of Facebook users hitting my app, I decided to give it a try. It was surprisingly easy to get the basics up and running. The documentation provided by Facebook could use some work, but it is still better than most.

    I started out by building the "Hello World" equivalent of a Facebook application. Basically, it is a page on facebook that shows five facebook friends who are currently logged in to the site. My application is a take on example code given to you by Facebook when you register your application with them.

    You can try it out here

    This is a screenshot:

    facebook.JPG

    Here are a few links that helped me out:

    Facebook Cookbook -These guys have a few very detailed, yet simple examples to follow.

    Nettuts - This guy show the basics of getting your first app up and running.

    Facebook Developers Wiki - Great resource for developing apps and learning the API.

    The next step is to come up with an idea that would have a plausible business impact... for me that is.

    Here is the code.

    Video hosting

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    I just got an email newsletter from Viddler.com and it reminded that I have been wanting to post about sites that host video that you can then use on your website or blog.

    I started using Viddler after I noticed that Wine Library TV was using it. Before that was using Brightcove - but my new favorite in this space is Vimeo.

    Of course the 800 lb. gorilla in web vidoe is YouTube - but I find YouTube both ugly (the interface) and too advertising dominated - and as great as Google is, it is nice to see them have some real competition in some areas. Vimeo especially has a very clean interface and all the controls disappear once the video starts playing (until you mouse over it again) which I like very much.

    So what can you do with pretty much all of the above sites? Basically you upload your videos from your computer (in several formats) and then these sites do their own encoding of that video and host it. People can watch it on the video hosting sites, or you grab some code and embed the video into your own site. It is pretty simple and straightforward, and probably easier than hosting your own video and embedding a flash player or messing with Quicktime, AVI files, etc. You also don't have the bandwith concerns of hosting and streaming large files.

    Additionally, many of these sites feature social tools where other people can rate and share your videos, etc. which gives the added benefit of getting your video more exposure (if that is what you want).

    ScribeFire Blog Editor

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    I just installed ScribeFire, a Firefox add-on (plug in, extension etc.) that enables you to post a quick blog post with the click of a button in Firefox. Basically it's a browser tool that lets you compose and save a blogpost via your blog post system api...

    Easily update your blog through Firefox®

    ScribeFire Blog Editor enables users to easily drag and drop formatted text from the web into their blog(s), post entries, take notes, and optimize their ad inventory directly through the Firefox browser.

    Additionally Blog Editor enables you to:

    * Categorize and tag your blog posts
    * Upload images
    * Set timestamps
    * Save works-in-progress as notes
    * Post an entry as a draft
    * Share your posts on social websites
    * Upload files via FTP

    So your hard drive crashed - now what?

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    This my first post to iBizDaily and it really is not about Internet Business, but the just the other day my main workstation, where it feels like I spend 50% of my life, crashed. When I finally got it to boot again, one of the hard drives was not visible to the operating system.

    The first thing I did was pull the hard drive out of the computer and put in and external enclosure. If you don't have one, you can buy one. After this experience I bought the Thermaltake Blacx because then you don't have to take apart the enclosure when you move the drive around. It also has an eSata interface for much faster data transfer speeds. It also handles notebook hard-drives as well. Perfect. Also with the price of hard drives getting cheaper and cheaper it makes for stellar backup system.

    After connecting the hard drive to the system, Windows could see the drive in the disk management utility, but it said there was no partitions on the drive. Oh swell. But don't panic. What you want to get is a utility called GetDataBack for NTFS. Pay the $79 dollars. There is lifetime update policy. What GetDataBack does is reads the hard drive natively and allows you to copy the files off of it that are recoverable. It is not fool proof, but it amazing. I was able to recover all the files on my hard drive, including 2 months of family photo's that were not backed-up.

    5 Useful Project Management Tools

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    There are a number of project management tools out there today, most are general use and broad in their scope..what I have here are 5 that are useful for internet applications/site development projects.


    Devshop is a hosted project management application specifically designed for planning software projects. Not planning weddings, or building roads - just software

    5 PM Web-based project and task manager for your team. The powerful features are accessed through a smart customizable interface. Everything is within a click or two.

    Taskado keep projects simple as never before - no learning curve required! Get your entire team on board, stay current on progress, and stop worrying about where your emails and documents ended up: use Taskado to communicate efficiently and store all your documents in one place.

    TaskDriver is a unique task assignment based application developed specifically to meet today's tough corporate standards of task assignment and tracking

    Teamwork Project Manager is an easy-to-use online teamwork & project management software application that helps managers, staff and clients work together more productively online.

    Browser Compatibility Testing

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    I came across a couple good sites that help you test your pages in many different browsers. In my case I needed to ensure a page would work in IE6. Here are the two I used for my testing:

    1. NetRenderer - German based site that gives you realtime feedback in IE5.5, IE6, IE7, and IE8. I liked since it gives you results in realtime... I think this is best for small one off types of page testing.

    2. Browsercam - Screen capture and Remote Access service for cross platform compatibility testing and HTML design quality assurance. This is probably the most feature complete service around. It is offering screenshot services with project management and image format options, as well as VNC remote control for numerous operating systems.

    Self publishing a book

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    Interesting article in the NY Times today about the self publishing industry. Even though the web is mentioned as part of this growing industry, I think the article overlooks that the ease of this process made possible by the Internet is probably a significant factor in the growth. This is a part of a larger theme that I have been thinking about for some time - just how to measure the impact that the web is having on all business and personal activities.

    Now, for as little as $3, an author can upload a manuscript or collection of photos to a Web site, and order a printed book within an hour. Many books will appear for sale on Amazon.com or the Web site of Barnes & Noble; others are sold through the self-publishing companies' Web sites. Authors and readers order subsequent copies as needed.

    I mean in the past if it meant actually typing and printing a manuscript, and finding a service like this near you or someone to send it to, etc. - just those steps alone could put people off. Now - if you have the file on your computer - it is nearly done. To me this is yet another industry seeing growth because of the web - not because there are more people than ever who think, gee, I want to publish a book - but simply because they now can much easier than they could have a few years ago.

    Basecamp extras and add-ons

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    We use Basecamp to manage our clients and internal projects - I have mentioned it before here - but what I didn't know until today was that it works with extras and add-ons:

    We all know that Basecamp is an essential tool for managing projects. Did you know that software developers the world over have created over 30 add-ons that make Basecamp an essential tool for running your business?

    These add-ons allow you to do such things as: send invoices to your clients after a project, track bugs and issues for software development, control Basecamp on iGoogle and inside GMail, and much much more.

    This is pretty cool and something I plan to check out soon.

    Creating a favorite icon for your website

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    ibd-icon-100.gifA favorite icon - the tiny image in the address bar of your web browser to the left of your URL - is something that is easy to do and adds some polish and professionalism to your website (and also makes it easier for people to identify your site). With the help of this simple web-based tool you can turn almost any image into a favorite icon.

    Some tips:

    • Simple, bold graphics work best -
    • The image should already be square -
    • Photos can be okay but the image must be identifiable

    Once you generate the icon (the file name is favicon.ico, don't change it!), you download it to your computer and upload it to the root (web) directory of your website (the same place where your index page is located - the icon should be here: http://www.mywebsite.com/favicon.ico). As long as you have FTP access or some other way to upload images to your site (maybe through a browser based form, etc.) you should be able to do this.

    Mantis bug tracking software

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    Mantis is an opensource web-based bugtracking system that I have been using for a couple years now. I have used it with small local project teams and also with large globally distributed development teams. Its written in PHP and works with MySQL, MS SQL, and PostgreSQL databases. Its currently supported on Windows, Linux, Mac OS, OS/2.

    We have it installed on Linux and use MySQL. Its easy to configure on the back end and they provide a web-based admin interface that allows you to control both projects and users. If your looking for a good bug tracking solution check it out

    http://www.mantisbt.org/

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    Basecamp