How to Add Some Cool Web Tools to Your Blog or Site

Ever wanted to add a Page Rank checker or domain search to your blog, so your readers can use them? Now you can.

Today I stumbled onto a website called iWebTool. They have a large amount of simple web tools that you can use there on the site, or you can put the tools directly on your own blog or site.


They offer search engine ranking tools, HTML tools, domain tools and a bunch of Misc. tools.

If your looking for a great way to add some "pop" to your site or blog. Check iWebTool out!

Why You should Use More Than One Statistic Tools for Your Site

I use Google Analytics, MyBlogLog and SiteMeter. Sound crazy? Here's why you should to.

Today I was looking over and email report from Sitemeter. When I noticed that on the 26 of this month 80+ unique visitors had come to my site. I hadn't seen this on Google Analytics, so feeling a little puzzled I decided to look into it here's what I discovered:

I had submitted one of my posts to StumbleUpon, that's where the traffic came from, but I got different reports on all three statistical tools.

From Google Analytics I saw this:


It didn't even show StumbleUpon as a refferer.

From MyBlogLog I got this:


And From SiteMeter I got this:


Why did this happen?
Most SU users have Javascript blocked. Google Analytics uses javascript, but I pretty sure MyBlogLog and SiteMeter use it to. Do you guys know why? Let me know!

Anyway this just goes to show that it's not good to rely on just one site statistic tools. I'm not saying you need to use three, but it doesn't hurt.

StumbleUpon 101

StumbleUpon is a great social bookmarking tool, but are you using it as best you can? Here are some posts on other blogs that give tips and tricks on using SU.

Why StumbleUpon Sends More Traffic Than Digg - A great post on why SU drive so much traffic. - Problogger.net

How to Draw StumbleUpon Users Into Your Blog - Another Problogger post on SU.

Using StumbleUpon To Connect With People In Your Niche - A good post about connecting with like-minded people on SU. - Caroline Middlebrook

Building Your Blog With StumbleUpon - Another post on Problogger.net, but this one isn't by Darren, instead it's by Skellie @ skelliewag.org

Here are some more posts:
StumbleUpon Traffic Tip#1 - The Super Stumble

Easily Increase Site Traffic Using StumbleUpon.com

My take on StumbleUpon as a social bookmarking and research tool

Stumble Upon: A Cool Ethical Approach

Get Visitors to StumbleUpon Your Website

There are a lot of other great posts out there about SU, just run a Google Blog search for StumbleUpon and see!

Why not StumbleUpon this post, or check out my SU profile!

Google Page Rank

There's been a lot going on lately with the whole page rank thing. I made this animation to show you guys:

Keep your Social Bookmarking Easy

Do you have a StumbleUpon account, a Digg account, del.icio.us, Reddit etc.? If you use more than one of those, admit it, it can be hard to keep organized.

and There is a way that you can do two or more social bookmarking sites easily. I currently do SUDigg and del.icio.us. How do I stay sane?

With the AddThis browser button. To be honest with you, this isn't a web tool, but it's still cool.

All you have to do is setup and account, then install the browser plugin (IE and FF) or the bookmarklet.

Then on any page you want to bookmark, you simple hit the button and it takes you to a page with a list of social bookmarking sites. Just Click the one you want to bookmark it on.

This is really nice because you won't have a million toolbars piling up in you browser.

Enjoy! -Thomas

Google Trends for Bloggers

Google Trends may seem like a simple useless tool, but I think it's a great tool for bloggers.

Google Trends is a tool that lets you see what the top searches are. You can also put in any search terms any it shows you the popularity of that search as far back as 2004.

Those aren't the real gems of Google Trends though. The real cool part is that you can compare two or more search terms by separating them with commas.

For example I put in iPod, iPhone and here's what I got:
iPod iPhone

As you can see iPod has gotten a lot more searches that iPhone.

So how does this help bloggers? Well I tell you. Say you are writing a blog post about this cool iPod mod you found, but you weren't sure if you should title the post "Cool iPod Mod" or "Cool iPod Hack"

Just jump into Trends and put them both in. You would find that the keywords "iPod Hack" gets a lot more searches than "iPod Mod".

Enjoy!
-Thomas Flight

Need to create a Contact From or two? Wufoo!

Wufoo is a great tool that allows you to build any kind of contact form you want! A free account will get you three forms with pretty good customization. The interface is clean and fast. Overall a great tool.

Here's a example:

Powered by Wufoo

Survey Monkey: Make your own Survey in Minutes!

I kept hearing about a great tool called Survey Monkey, so I decided to check it out.

I found a free, easy to use, web tool that allows you to make a survey in very little time. You can have rating boxes, text boxes, drop-down menus and more. Want to make a long survey? Survey Monkey allows you to easily divide you survey into pages. You can also (slightly) customize the look.

Why not take my survey to help me make The Web Tools Blog better! Click here to take the survey.

The Web Tools Blog FAQ

This is a list of Frequently Asked Questions. So you can get an idea of what I'm trying to do on and with this blog.

Q. What is this blog about?
A. This blog is about web tools. It's here to help you find web tools, and show you how to better use them. I will have reviews on different web tools, tips and tricks and maybe so hacks.

Q. What is a "web tool"?
A. You may know them better as wed-based apps or web services. Pretty much a web tool is a tool that's on the Internet. In other words you don't have to download or install it.

A web tool can be any thing from Digg to Wordpress to Bloglines to Google.

Q. When do you post?
A. I post on every week day. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Q. Can I copy you posts?
A. No you can't copy entire posts without permission. You can copy small portions ( a paragraph or to), but please give credit to me. My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Q. Can I use your blog's theme?
A. No. Although if you contact me we may be able to work something out.

Q. Can you link to my blog?
A. If you would like to trade links, let me know. I might be interested.

Q. What is Geek-More.com?
Geek-More is a website/Blog network that I'm currently developing. For more info please contact me.

If this hasn't answered you questions, please contact me, or comment below.

10 Reasons I use Gmail and Love it!

Here are the ten biggest reasons Gmail is great.

1. It's free! free is good. Sometimes free stuff tends to stink, but this is not the case with Gmail.

2. Lot's of space! 2GB and counting is no small potato's. Especially when you compare that to the measly 10MB that some paid services give.

3. Awesome search capabilities. This is great for finding that one message your really need.

4. Built in chatting features. You can chat with anyone else of has Gmail. Cool!

5. Great filter features, lets you organize messages nicely.

6. It automatically organizes your messages by conversations.

7. No ads in messages! There are some in the sidebar, but messages are ad free.

8. POP accounts. Don't like the web interface? Just setup a POP account and use Gmail in your favorite email program.

9. Fast and easy user interface (I hate slow and clunky).

10. Spam filter, I haven't got a spam yet. :)

I'd love to hear why you love Gmail in the comment section.

Del.icio.us Inside Out, Part 3

OK this post is going to wrap up my del.icio.us series. Today I'm going to talk about the del.icio.us user interface (UI). It is a little tricky to get the hang of so hope this post is of some help to you.

Now first of when you come to the del.icio.us home page, you see a couple of things.

• Hotlist
• Tags To watch
• Navigation
  

The hotlist is really just that, it's a list of the popular bookmarks right now. This list changes from day to day even hour to hour.

The tags to watch area is just a place with popular tags.

Finally the navigation along the top:

your bookmarks | your network | subscriptions | Links for you | post

These will take you to various area of your del.icio.us account.

One last thing I would like to mention. For some reason a lot of great feature where stuck in the "settings" area of the navigation. The features that are "hidden" here include; network badges, daily blog posts, tag lists, link list, Facebook integration and more!

I'd love to hear all your tips on how you use del.icio.us in the comment section!

More Web 2.0 Tools -Linked In Wednesday

Yazzie just posted a great list of links to web 2.0 tools. This is should be helpful for any webmaster or blogger.

This list is huge! The list contains tools for Images/graphics, CSS, Forms, fun and humor, RSS, site maps, meta tags, passwords, flash, favicons and a lot more!

Another Post to look at would be this one, a post much like the one above. Only It has screenshots of the tools.

P.S. I'm very busy right now, but I'll get back on the del.icio.us series soon! Thanks!

Del.icio.us Inside Out, Part 2

Now if you would like to start using del.icio.us you will need an account. It's just three easy steps, and it doesn't take much time.

If you are using FireFox you can install the del.icio.us buttons. I would recommend doing this. There are also options if you are using Internet Explorer, Safari or Opera.
And your done! Tomorrow I'll do a post on how to use and move around in and with del.icio.us.

Del.icio.us Inside Out, part 1

This is the first part of my series on del.icio.us.

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking network. Here is a quick list of what you can do with it:

1. Bookmark blogs/websites etc.
2. Bookmark stuff for other del.icio.us users.
3. See what others are bookmarking.
4. Keep private bookmarks that only you can see.
5. Delete, bundle and rename tags.
6. Subscribe to tags to see what others are bookmarking.
7. Network with other del.icio.us users.
8. Make a blogroll of you bookmarks. (My post on how to do this)
   
9. make tag lists/clouds for your blog or website.
10. Put a Creative Commons licence on your bookmarks.
11. Facebook integration.
12. Import/upload bookmarks
    

del.icio.us relies heavily on "tags" so you should know what a "tag" is. On the del.icio.us homepage it says:

A tag is simply a word you use to describe a bookmark. Unlike folders, you make up tags when you need them and you can use as many as you like. The result is a better way to organize your bookmarks and a great way to discover interesting things on the Web.

Inline comments on Blogger

For those of you who use Blogger I'm sure you have wanted in-line comments. Maybe you envy those nice Wordpress in-line comments. Here's the answer to your problem.

Amanda on Blogger Buster (my review post) is the one who discovered this great hack. You can read about it and how to use it here.

I was able to set it up with ease, and it's not to hard to customize if you know HTML.

Heard of any other great hacks? let me know!

-Thomas Flight

A Fun way to Catch Reader's Attention, Comics!

OK, so maybe that looks a little dumb, but did it get your attention?

You can easily make you own strip at StripGenerator.com.

If you're trying to get attention, try to make a strip that's relevant to your post topic.

Or you could slip in your blog's URL, pop it on your mySpace or something and have a free advertisement comic.

Don't over do it thought, you'll suffocate your readers.

Make Your Site or Profile look Web 2.0

Here are some great tools for generating Web 2.0 graphics. These can really spruce up a blog or website.

I found these tools on two posts I read Free Web 2.0 design tools for your blog and More than 100 Web 2.0 Online Generators. I chose my favorite out of the lists of tools in these posts. Here they are:

Stripegenerator.com
This is a really great tool. You can make stripes to fit just about any need. This tool will save you a lot of time in Photoshop. Very customizable.

Tabs Generator
This is Stripe Generator's cousin. It's also very customizable and easy to use. I you need some tabs, this is the place to go!

Logo Maker
This one is great for making reflection logos. You can also add a few symbols such as "beta" to your logo.

My Cool Button Maker
This one is nice of you want to make a round button. Only so customizable.

Quick Escape
This is a great tool! It's not web 2.0 really, but It rocks! Just add your raw HTML code, and it generates code that the browser can't read. In other words the browser doesn't read the code, so you can see the actual HTML in your browser.


Some more tools:
Roundedcornr
Easily make round corners.

Web 2.0 Badges
Make some neat round badges.

Stripedesigner.com
Another stripe designer.

OK This is the last post in the series Maximize your Web life, 21 days of tips You can click the link to see a list of all posts in the series.

Want to know more about web tools and how you can use them to maximize your web life, you can subscribe to the RSS feed or by email.

Here's a Quick Time Saver, Form Auto Fill

Form auto fill is a tool that's built into some browsers and is in some browser toolbars. All you have to do is fill in common info about you (email address, name, etc.). Then when you come to a web form you hit a button and auto fill fills everything in for you!

Here how you can get it: Safari has it built right into the browser. To get auto fill for FireFox or Internet Explorer I would recommend Google's toolbar (my review). This has auto fill built into the toolbar.

Maximize your Web life, 21 days of tips

Power Blogrolling with del.icio.us

In today's tip you will learn how to make a very efficiently blog roll using del.icio.us.

1. The first thing you are going to need is a del.icio.us account. You can sign up for one here.

2. Once your signed up and ready to go you might want to download the buttons for FireFox or IE, or you can the use bookmarklet buttons.

3. Now go to your account page on del.icio.us and click "settings" then click on "link rolls" below the "Blogging" heading.

4.Customize the settings. You can change the look a little, but the coolest thing is the box where you can filter the bookmarks that appear in your blog roll by tag. So you can have for example a tag called "blogroll" so that when you asign a bookmark to that tag it appears in your blog roll.

5. Add the code to your blog, and your done!

Now whenever you bookmark something with del.icio.us it will appear in your blog roll.

No more manually adding links to your blog roll!

Maximize your Web life, 21 days of tips

Using Squidoo, part 3

(If you haven't you might want to read parts one and two of the series) Now that you have your lens built you can start moving and customizing different modules.

I'm not going to how to customize each module, but I will list a few of the the modules there are and what they do. To edit any module in your lens, click edit while in the workshop. You definitely should experiment with different modules, see what works best for you!

Introduction module

The intro module give you a place to type an intro to your lens. This is the first thing people see on your lens. You can also add a picture.

Here are some modules that let you show your favorite name-brand products on your lens (money makers). There are more than this this is just to give you an idea of what's there.

ArtByUs Artist module

Barbecues.com

Beauty.com

Better home and Gardens store

eBay

Buy.com

Boaters World

Callway Golf and pre-own outlet

Camera World

Candle Bay

Cell phone shop

Amazon

Cafepress

The best thing to do is to go into the money makers tab (in the add module page) and click th category that suits you. There is a ton of them!

Here are some other module that stood out to me

Amazon Plexo

The same as the normal Amazon module only people can vote on which products they like best.

Gestbook

This lets people leave "comments" on you lens. There are some setting you can change to your liking.

Text/ Write module
Let you add text to your lens. Use this as much as you can , because while the other modules are great. You can forget to a the "meat" a good amount of text is the first step to making a awesome lens.

Link List
Pretty self explanatory

RSS module
Do you have a blog? Put your blog's feed URL in here to show the most recent headlines, or any blog for that matter
Google Blog search
This is a neat one. The latest on anything in the blogosphere

Plexo modules are like normal module except people can vote the items up and down, or even add there own. (you can choose how much people can do)

Alright that's a rap for the Squidoo mini series. I'd love to hear your Squidoo tips in the comments on this post. Have Fun!

Maximize your Web life, 21 days of tips

Using Squidoo, Part 2

If you don't know what Squidoo is read part one of the Squidoo series.

Today I'll walk you though the process of setting up a Lens. This is very easy but I'll give you some tips on the way.


1. First you are asked what you lens is about. Now note, this is not your lens' title. This is the main keyword for you lens. So choose carefully.

If you want to make a lens about iPod Nano 3rd generation. Put in "3rd Generation iPod nanos" not "ipod nanos". What you put here helps search engines pick-up your lens.


2. In step 2 you are asked what you want to do with your lens:

I want to get the word out about "_______" (easiest option)

I'm gonna sell "_______" stuff and earn $, for me or for charity (money maker!)

I want to make a list of my favorite things about "_____" (most popular)

I just want to do my own thing

You can just choose accordingly. Note: This doesn't change how your lens will look or what you can do with it, it just helps Squidoo give you initial modules.

3. In step three you pick your lens' title, URL, category and rating.

When you pick your title, remember to use keywords for search engines. Again something like "How to groom and feed small dogs" is better than "About dogs". So stick some keywords in the title, but not to many! Or you'll look like spam.

The same goes for you URL keep it as short as possible but still get some keywords in!

Category and rating a pretty self explanatory.

4. In step four you need to pick 4 more keywords for your lens. Choose wisely! Then you need to fill in the anti-spam code.

You have your lens!

Tommorow I'll post part 3 of the "Using Squidoo" series. I'll talk about customizing different modules and Building the "meat" of your lens.

Maximize your Web life, 21 days of tips

Contests at Problogger.net

There are some great contests going on over a Problogger.net (most of them you don't need to be a blogger to enter). You might want to check them out here.

I've already won something!

-Thomas Flight

Using Squidoo, Part 1

Squidoo is a great tool that I started using just recently. It can be great for bloggers or just some one who wants to make a mini web page.

What is Squidoo?

Squidoo is a free tool that allows you to easily make a one page website (or as they call it, a "lens"). It's a very simple process and is a lot of fun.

The FAQ at Squidoo says:

What a lens is:

A lens is one person's view on a topic that matters to her. It's an easy-to-build, single web page that can point to blogs, favorite links, RSS feeds, Flickr photos, Google maps, your eBay auctions, CafePress designs, Amazon books or music, and oh so much more. That way, when someone is looking for recommended information, fast, your lens gets him started and sends him off in the right direction. Hooray for you!

Build one lens, build a hundred. It's fast, fun, and free. (And you could earn a royalty from each one--for you or for charity). What are you waiting for!

And why you should have one:

Great question! Here are just a few reasons to get you creative muses flowing:

• Share the knowledge: When you know a lot about something, it feels good to share. Help other people discover what you found out the hard way.

• Increase your profile: A popular lens gives credibility to the Lensmaster. A popular lens reinforces your role as an "everyday expert." And a popular lens makes you the go-to authority for those looking for help.

• Increase your traffic: Your lens points (if you want it to) to your blog and to your website. Lenses have huge credibility with search engines, so your lens can help your other sites rise to the top of Google searches.

• Earn a royalty for you, your organization, or your favorite charity. Think of the royalty as a bonus--and don't quit your dayjob yet! A single lens might not earn a lot, but if you imagine hundreds of lenses working to your favor, or fundraising for a charity, it can really start to add up.

Hooked? Here's how you can make your own lens!

Making your own Lens

After you pick a topic go to Squidoo.com and click the "Build your own" box. Go through the six steps (title, cash or charity, keywords etc.), and you have your lens!


Tomorrow I'll walk you step by-step through the process and give you some tips on how to make your Lens even better!

Here's a link to the lens I made about me.

Maximize your Web life, 21 days of tips

How to follow one train of thought on the web

Have you ever been looking for something on the Internet, and were distracted by a link or search result. Clicked that, and never found what you where first looking for.

Here's something you can do to keep on train of thought (And still check out all those neat things you see on the way).

Say I'm looking for info on "laptops", and I find a link to stuff about "building a better blog". I want to see the "building a better blog info", but that's not the info I'm looking for. Here's what you do:

Open the link in a new window/tab or bookmark it in your the specially made bookmarks folder called "things of interest" (or whatever you want). Then view it or open it after you found the info you are looking for. This way you skip that "I have a million topics being thrown at me at once!" feeling.

Maximize your Web life, 21 days of tips

Other ways to find stuff on the web

When I say "other" I mean "other than search". Search is great! I use Google every day, but it can get boring.

Social Bookmarking is probably the biggest and most up-and-coming way of finding content on the web. Here are a few Social Bookmarking sites you might want to look at.

Social Bookmarking Networks

These are a great way to find stuff. Usually some one bookmarks stuff and then people vote it up or down. You can often find some great content at these sites. Here are a few:

StumbleUpon- This is a great bookmarking site that puts more emphasis on the "Social" part of Social Bookmarking. Also the front page is a little more random than some other Social Bookmarking sites.

Digg- I don't know to much about Digg. I haven't used it myself. But from what I here it's worth checking out.

Del.icio.us- This is more of a "bookmarking" site than a Social Bookmarking site. But they do offer some great tools.

Technorati- This site has a number of tools for bloggers, as well as a bunch of way to find content on the web.

Note: This is all from the readers point of view. Actually signing up and using the bookmarking features is another post.

Maximize your Web life, 21 days of tips