Tools For Websites/Blogs

My Playlist

2008-09-19T10:37:00.000-07:00

If you are looking for some live online music the all your search will end at MyPlayList. This website gives you a wide variety on Western Music of all genre.
Here is an example of my playlist containing some of my favorite songs, so enjoy folks:

And if you are looking for some Bollywood music then I stumbled upon a website which gives a good collection on that.The website name is Phulki.com.It also gives a collection of Tamil music. So go and try Phulki.com today.

Twitterfeed Your Blogs

2007-07-20T05:31:00.000-07:00

Twitterfeed takes almost any blog RSS and feed it into a Twitter account.This is cool application which is nowhere related to Twitter as a company and it enables you see new items when you're on Twitter or using any of the Twitter applications.

Twitterfeed can make (almost) any blog into a Twitterbot.My suggestion is to create a Twitterfeed from an existing blog though it allows you create a new feed.If you do not have a Twitter account then create a Twitter account and you will also need an OpenID account to log in toTwitterfeed. OpenID is a quite a different site authentication system. If you don't have an OpenID, just go to MyOpenID and sign up for an account.

So logoin to create a newTwitterfeed using OpenID,tell it your blog's RSS address (rss.xml) and how often you want it to check for new items (once an hour is reasonable), and then wait for Twitterfeed to start scanning.So once you are done with it you have a blog update available to all your Twitter friends.

A new cool way of getting more traffic through Twitter to your blogs.Isn't this a good tool to use, share your thoughts, folks!!

RSS Integrator:Profilactic

2007-07-19T05:03:00.001-07:00

Profilactic is a personal feed aggregator and very suitable for the bloggers who write on different topics and need to come with one widget having all their posts to be read from one location.One has to tell it where one posts online, and it pulls all the feeds together.You can invite friends and can point them to this "mashup" page.another facility that this site provides is to add widgets provided to one's webpages or blogs.

There are other websites like YourMinis and Widgetbox provide a facility to create widgets from RSS feeds of your blog or website but does not give an RSS integration facility.Profilactic is much easier to set up, though.Another good feature is that it can read from websites like Jaiku,Digg,Del.icio.us,Twitter, Pownce,Flickr, and several more and all you have to do is put in your public usernames for the accounts you have.

As this site is in its early stages so I think it will enhance its services for posting to several social websites and blog websites from one central location.I am still in look out for such a website.It just provides only reading facilities and that too from a limited number of websites.Facebook is not supported as yet or may be in time to come that will also be done.

A nice way to get more and consolidated exposure of one's posts.Here I have also shown what I have made through integration of two separate RSS feeds of mine,one on Advanced Technologies and the other on Interview Questions on Java and Java EE:

Rediff:Another Organization To Be Acquired

2007-07-16T01:56:00.001-07:00

India-based Rediff, a widely-used consumer Internet portal is most likely to be taken over by Google or Yahoo.The recent launch from Rediff of a website for consumers to submit user-generated content such as audio, images and videos for free, has helped Rediff's NASDAQ stock to move upwards in the past week when it moved from $17.94 per share to $25.41 per share. Its trading volume has also increased to a reported valuation of $1 billion. Other companies like AOL and Microsoft may also be in foray of acquisition.

Yahoo's business is very much in line with what Rediff currently offers and if acquisition happens then it gives a clear edge to Yahoo than others for penetrating a large piece of Indian online consumers market.Google is aggressively trying to diversify its line of businesses by strategic takeovers of the companies and Rediff interests them from that point of view.

Rediff, from all options,is in a good position to get the best possible deal.It will be interesting to see in times to come who will get Rediff in one's kitty.

SlideFlickr:Make Slides Out Of Flickr Photos

2007-07-15T01:26:00.001-07:00

Recently I stumbled upon SlideFlickr which is in Beta version and it is a new flickr tool helps in making slides out of your Flickr photos. SlideFlickr will help you create and embed Flickr slide shows in less than 10 seconds."

So, I embedded a flickr set I created on my Switzerland trip photos in last December,you may check this slide here.There are set of advanced features like changing width,height,text,background,speed,logo and url.The most striking I found was adding background music.I also added one to my slides.You have choice of putting this music off.I think one can add one´s voice over as an MP3,though I did not try it on my own.

An overall cool tool.

Online Video Hosting Consolidated

2007-07-11T07:16:00.000-07:00

Recently came across HeySpread which lets users upload a single video to multiple video-hosting providers. It is a cakewalk to do so,just pick the video you want to upload from your hard drive, and HeySpread will pull up a listing of various video hosts. You provide log-in information for each of them, and the file will automatically get sent out to each, assuming you've not messed up with your credentials.

The video hosting websites it works with are :

-YouTube
-MySpace
-Google Videos
-Yahoo Videos
-Dailymotion
-Blip.tv
-Photobucket
-Metacafe
-Bolt
-Putfile.

In fact this service is helpful in saving lots of upload time, in case if you have very slow internet connection, on multiple video hosting websites simultaneously.

Moreover you can add title,description,tags and categories associated with your videos.It definitely makes availability of your videos to a larger audience in much faster and efficient way.

Free Online Sharing Of Presentations/Video Conferencing

2007-07-09T04:22:00.001-07:00

There are several website which provide facility to collaborate powerpoint presentations online.

WebEx - Cisco owned on demand web meeting tool is very simple to use.

Slidelive is a browser-based free WebEx competitor in beta. Presentations can be easily uploaded and conference calls scheduled to review them.

Zoho Show
helps in creating and sharing presentaions.One can publish uploaded presentations inside their websites and blogs.

Zentation it is where one can combine presentations with Videos.

TeamSlide is a personal web application to actively present PowerPoint®-type slides to one or more viewers over the web.

Scribd is a YouTube like website where one can upload presentations and share it with world.

DimDim (open source)

1VideoConference is an Open Source web conferencing facility which allows its Web, Audio/ Video phone, Skype, MSN and Yahoo users to instantly participate in live web conferences without the need for lengthy downloads or complicated installations. It is now known as VMukti.At any time, one can simply drop a small piece of code onto their websites and INSTANTLY create their very own online video conference room.

FeedBurner Goes Free With Its Paid Services

2007-07-04T05:18:00.000-07:00

Google accquired FeedBurner this year in May and now they have made their two premimum services free.A very much welcomed news by publishers community.

Stats PRO and MyBrand services are free to use.

FeedBurner Stats PRO, a service that provides detailed statistics including subscriber numbers, item clickthrough tracking, podcast downloads and aggregate item uses amongst other features, becomes free.

FeedBurner MyBrand, a service that allows users to control the URL of feeds is now free as well; a move that will be strongly welcomed.It was an issue with most of the publishers that they have to loose the ownership to their RSS feeds.This will boost FeedBurner's popularity and more and more people may join in.

Though both FeedBurner PRO and MyBrand are now free, FeedBurner users are required to upgrade themselves for these new services within the FeedBurner control panel.

Communicate with CircleUp

2007-06-27T07:20:00.001-07:00

You have a website and you keep in touch with your audience through regular newsletters on their emails.Now a big question is how do you get a feedback from your audience on a particular topic,product or service in an efficient manner.You can create a list of all registrants to your website to communicate but getting response from them on your email will be a real tedious task to manage.Recently I stumbled upon this website called CircleUp which takes all your woes away in a real cool fashion.The respondents need not register,simply answer the query posed my you and you get a response in single,consolidated and summarized fashion.

You can create group of your contacts, which you can import from your existing address book from GMail,Yahoo,Hotmail,Outlook and more. CircleUp gives an easy way to ask questions of any community you belong to and get back a single organized result to use and share instead of a hassles of emails and instant messages.

Moreover you get a cool widget from them which you can integrate in your website.It enables your visitors and members to use CircleUp right from your site or blog,adding a great value for your visitors and increase site traffic and loyalty.

Excelling In Google Analytics

2007-06-27T01:28:00.000-07:00

Google Analytics not only allows you to know about your visitors in details but also helps you achieve your goals from your website by analysis various reports.Not so long ago,Google Analytics was given a new touch and new way of presenting reports(Release2.0).

Google Analytics gives you insight on:

- Knowing your audience and helping you in enhancing their experience
- Increasing your ROI on Website
- Increasing conversions
- Tracking performance of your marketing campaign like AdWords campaigns, email campaigns, or any other advertising program
- Google Analytics has been fully integrated with AdWords so AdWords users will keep themselves abreast with latest developments with their ad campaign

Recenlty found an excellent video from Beth's blog which tells you how effective one can reap the benefits of Google Analytics. Watch and learn...

Wigets From Grazr

2007-06-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

Another cool widget generation from Grazr which is a free publishing tool for feeds. It lets you quickly and easily display RSS, RDF, Atom, and OPML files on any Web page so they can be viewed by any visitor to the site.

Grazr is written in Javascript, so no software download or installation is necessary for someone to view it in a browser. As long as Javascript is enabled, it can be used in any modern Web browser.This Javascript feature limits to show this widget in a Blogger post.

I have created a Widget for one of my blogs, the result of the same can be seen by clicking the widget shown below:

Enjoy feed grazing with Grazr...and share this with world!!!

Cool Widgets

2007-06-20T07:08:00.000-07:00

Recently I have found out few websites which provide you widgets to be incorporated into your website or blog.These widgets make your blogd/website equipped with new features and attract cross website/blog promotion.The features like showing photos as slides,world time,weather info,pregnancy counter,news ticker,showing your recent post list,games like Tetris,Sudoku,Jokes and many more are most sought after amongst publisher community.
The interesting part to this story is that there are some online widget publishing websites where you can use several widgets to publicize your products/services/information.These widgets created by you can be used by anyone,so you create and share it with world.Isn't that interesting and good for your blog/website promotion.It is easy and fun making one.
These widgets providing websites provide you a flexibility of automatically adding these widgets to Blogger, MySpace,WordPress, FaceBook, Netvibes, Google IG, PageFlakes or other accounts.
Some of my favorite widget providing website are:

Opera Widgets
Yahoo Widget Gallery
Widgetbox
YourMinis RSS Widget

YourMinis helps you create Flash based widgets to spice-up your website and takes RSS feed for doing that.

I have posted one of many widgets I have created,here below.And this one is for this blog as an example to demonstrate how well they can assist you to build a wide exposure to your website/blog,as others, if found your Widget useful, would embed in their website/blog.Moreover I see already, this widget being subscribed by few of netizens...:-)

I created a widget on YourMinis for my 'Interview Questions on Java and Java EE' blog and this is how it looks:

I have already posted it on few of my Social networking websites to get more traffic to my blog.

Create Banners/Logos For Your Website/Blogs

2007-06-12T04:35:00.001-07:00

Creating Banners and Logos for one's website or blog helps to great extent for self promotion.There are lot of online resources that will help you out in creating them.The following points should be kept in mind while creating them:

-Your headers, banners, logos and buttons should look the same on every page to maintain the consistency through out.
-Animated or Adobe Flash banners are very catchy but usually Google neglects them while indexing, though there are mixed opinions on them.
- Submit your banners to free banner posting websites to promote your brand.
- While posting your blogs to various blog promotion websites and directories they ask for your banner URL in prescribed width and height dimensions.Create banners as per details asked and then upload them on a web-directory(Google pages or Tripod).Get the URL for the banner and post it while promoting your website.
-On-line sites you can use to create free headers, banners, buttons and logos are listed below:

3D Text Maker
Animated-Banner Creation.
Acme Label.
Banner Creator.
Banner Generator .
Button Maker
Cool Text(My Favorite)
Cool Buttons.
Free Web buttons and menus
GIFWorks
iqAuto 3D text generator
Logo Generator
Logo Maker
Media Builder
MyImager

-Submit your created banners here.

Why Firefox And Not IE

2007-06-04T02:37:00.000-07:00

Why people are fedup of IE and looking for alternative web browsers? Ask IE users about their pains. And the best alternative is FIREFOX. The ten reasons why you must have Firefox :

Tabbed browsing: It makes surfing easy and faster.You can open as many site as you would like in adajacent tabs which are easier to manage than opening too many windows for doing continuous,smooth and hassel-free surfing.
Popup blocking: Firefox blocks all those annoying popups which keep bothering you so much.You get a beeper/icon in the status bar showing all popups blcoked.So Firefox makes your surfing convenient and peaceful.
Downlaod Management:A built in Download Manager helps in managing all downloads in an efficient manner.You have complete control over all finished or unfinished downloads.
Opesnsource: Firefox is an opensource and free.It has world beating support for W3C standards like CSS, DOM, etc. Where browsers like Opera or IE may fail on a dynamic page, Firefox usually succeeds.
Better Bookmarks and History:Firefox makes it easier to organize your Bookmark collection with its handy Bookmarks manager (Bookmarks, Manage Bookmarks... menu item). Create folders to group similar items, and add annotations to remind yourself of why you bookmarked a particular item later,sorting are few of featurs. Both Bookmarks and History are available as convenient Side Bar panels for quick access. Simply hit Ctrl+B for Bookmarks, and Ctrl+H for History. Links open with a click.
Accessible, Intelligent, Responsive : The set of shortcuts make accesibility to various features of Firefox faster.Ctrl+T opens new tab, Ctrl+K opens Google bar, Ctrl+L puts focus on location bar and Ctrl+S saves the currently open web page.
It remembers what you've filled in web forms, to make searching for things again, or filling out things like your name and address a simple process. Firefox also features a handy Password Manager that automatically fills out user-name/password fields on sites that require you to log in.
Firefox feels more responsive, pages appear on screen sooner, and there are fewer annoying lock ups. The effect is a browser that feels faster.
Customizable and Extendable: With Firefox, one can make customizable toolbars and developers can extend Firefox's UI by using XML,JavaScript, CSS etc.
Find Stuff Easier: In Firefox just say Ctrl+K which opens Google bar and searching is made easier than before.
Simplified Privacy / Annoyance Eliminator: One can easily delete the stuff one has punched in various forms and sites, temporary files,downloaded stuff and cookies.If you're using a public or shared computer, you can also instantly clear all stored information with a single click.
KISS (Keep It Simple and Straight-Forward): Firefox is a browser that works in the simplest and most straight-forward way out of the box. Defaults have been carefully chosen so you don't need to spend time setting up the browser. Menus and dialog boxes are kept clean and free of options that only a marginal number of people use. More Space for Pages.A great deal of importance on space for web pages in Firefox has been kept. That's why our browser has more space devoted to web pages than Internet Explorer, Opera, or Mozilla. Firefox offers 2% more space to web pages than Mozilla, 4% more than Internet Explorer, and a whopping 10% more than Opera.

Add your readers/friends with their snaps on geographical map

2007-04-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

A very useful tool to know the geographical locations of all your friends,readers to your blogs or websites from Frappr Map. You can plot your location, add a photo, post a shoutout to everyone else on the map, or edit your map profile on Frappr.com.

You too can join my personal Frappr Map and map-socialize.

Add ClusterMap To Your Blogs And Webpages

2007-04-12T09:08:00.001-07:00

Get ClusterMap to display a world map on your blog or website, giving details of geographical location of all visitors to your pages.

- Visit ClusterMap website.(http://clustrmaps.com/admin)
- Register with your website URL and password sent by ClusterMap which you can change later.
- Get HTML code and paste inside your webpages/blogs.
- You can change the frequency of refresh of this service daily/weekly/monthly/never.
- It also provides Archiving facility as well as daily/weekly/monthly/yearly.

Some Important Tools

2007-04-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

When you are through with basic layout and putting information on your pages/blogs , you would like to add some cool tools.These tools not only make your blogs/websites interactive with your readers but also gives significant information like who are visiting your blogs,which geography they belong to,what do they think about contents you are publishing and their important feedbacks will help you improve your site contents and sometimes may give you more ideas.

Here is a list of cool tools that you would like to add on your site:

Counter Stats
Guestbook
Tell A Friend
Mailing List
Message Forum

Get a Google Horizontal or Vertical Personalized Video Bar

2007-04-04T04:50:00.000-07:00

Upload your videos on Google Video.Ensure that you give all of them unique names so that could easily be listed when searched on Google video on the basis of your unique keyword.
Go on AJAX Search API Link for AJAX Video BarIt gives you two formats : Horizontal and Vertical.
Make a smart search on all your uploaded videos on Google Video and get the code and paste it into a relevant webpage of yours.

I have listed here one of my videos uploaded in Horizontal Video format, being searched on keyword 'Zeil,Frankfurt'.

<br /><br /> <script type="text/javascript"><br /><br /> window._uds_vbw_donotrepair = true;<br /><br /> </script><br /><br /> <script src="http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/videobar/gsvideobar.js?mode=new" type="text/javascript"></script><br /><br /> <style type="text/css"><br /><br /> @import url("http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/videobar/gsvideobar.css");<br /><br /> </style><br /><br /><br /><br /> <style type="text/css"><br /><br /> #videoBar-player .playerInnerBox_gsvb .player_gsvb {<br /><br /> width : 320px;<br /><br /> height : 260px;<br /><br /> }<br /><br /> </style><br /><br /> <script type="text/javascript"><br /><br /> function LoadVideoBar() {<br /><br /><br /><br /> var videoBar;<br /><br /> var options = {<br /><br /> largeResultSet : !true,<br /><br /> horizontal : true,<br /><br /> autoExecuteList : {<br /><br /> cycleTime : GSvideoBar.CYCLE_TIME_MEDIUM,<br /><br /> cycleMode : GSvideoBar.CYCLE_MODE_RANDOM,<br /><br /> executeList : ["zeil frankfurt"]<br /><br /> }<br /><br /> }<br /><br /><br /><br /> videoBar = new GSvideoBar(document.getElementById("videoBar-bar"),<br /><br /> document.getElementById("videoBar-player"),<br /><br /> options);<br /><br /> }<br /><br /> // arrange for this function to be called during body.onload<br /><br /> // event processing<br /><br /> GSearch.setOnLoadCallback(LoadVideoBar);<br /><br /> </script><br /><br /><br /><br />

Embed Google Reader

2007-04-04T04:08:00.000-07:00

If you already do not know about Google Reader,please read.
Register your self on Google Reader.
Add subscriptions for which links you would like to read.
Share Items
There is link in right section of webpage saying 'Put a clip on your site or blog', once you will click this item,you will get the code to be inregrated in your blog or webpage.Here is sample of item which I have in my Google reader and could be incorpaorated anywhere in a webpage:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/reader/ui/publisher.js"></script><br /><br /><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.google.com/reader/public/javascript/user/06411556745368620180/state/com.google/broadcast?n=5&callback=GRC_p(%7Bc%3A'green'%2Ct%3A'Dharmendra%20shared%20items'%2Cs%3A'false'%7D)%3Bnew%20GRC"></script>

Adding a Google Map to your site

2007-04-04T03:59:00.000-07:00

Create a Google page as you please.Write "MyGoogleMap" somewhere in the page and save,publish it.

View this page Live.Do right click and copy and paste the code to a new text editor page.

Get your personal Google maps API-key. At Google Code.

Go to word editing tool and search for . Paste the following code JUST IN FRONT (no spaces,...) of the head-tag:
<br /> <script src="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2&key=" type="text/javascript"></script><br /><br />

Next, locate the words "MyGoogleMap" which you typed in in the beginning. Remove it and paste the following code in its place:
<br /> <div id="map" style="width: 400px; height: 300px"></div><br /><br /> <script type="text/javascript" defer="defer"><br /><br /> //<![CDATA[ var map = new GMap(document.getElementById("map")); map.addControl(new GSmallMapControl()); map.setCenter(new GLatLng(50.1579, 8.6899), 13); //]]><br /><br /> </script><br /><br /> </div><br /><br />

If you want to show a specific location on map, you will need latitude and longitude data for your location. You can find these here or by using Google Earth. The first number is your latitude (E) , the second your longitude (N), the third number is the zoom.

Add Clock To Your Site

2007-04-04T03:58:00.000-07:00

You can put both analog and digital clocks on your website, if you like.
Here are few links which may solve your purpose:

http://24timezones.com/online_clock.php

www.timeanddate.com/clocks/free.html

http://www.clocklink.com/

A slideshow from Flickr

2007-04-04T03:50:00.000-07:00

Register yourself on Flickr.If you have Yahoo id then registering on Flckr is simple process otherwise you have to register yourself afresh.

Upload your photos and make a slideshow with desired layout.

Copy and paste the following code in HTML editor:

<br /> <style type="text/css"></style><br /><br /><div style="text-align:center"><div style="background:#000;width:550px"><br /><br /><b class="dtop"><b class="d1"></b><b class="d2"></b><b class="d3"></b><b class="d4"></b></b><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><a style="font-size:10px;text-decoration:none;color:#555" href="http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com/2005/09/flash-slideshow.html">Flash Slideshow</a><br /><br /><b class="dbottom"><b class="d4"></b><b class="d3"></b><b class="d2"></b><b class="d1"></b></b><br /><br /></div></div><br /><br /><br /><br />
Replace the XXXXXXXXXX@NXX by your Yahoo ID.Flickr provides you copy paste code with all these details which one can analyze easily and even ypu face any problem then write to me. Your User ID is always a part of the URL.
If you want more than one slideshow, you'll have to split up your pictures in Sets in Flickr. Now you have add a little part of code (Set ID) to the code above:
Example
When the URL of a set is like this: http://www.flickr.com/slideShow/index.gne?nsid=7189987@N05&set_id=72157594571259813
Then the Set ID is 72157594571259813

How to create password protected area?

2007-04-04T03:45:00.000-07:00

The safest and easiest way to make some area of your website password protected is given on this Link.

There are other crude scripting ways to do that but they are not secure.

Playing Videos in you site

2007-04-04T03:44:00.000-07:00

Upload your video files on Google Video.
Go and View your video from your account on Google Video.
On Google Video on the right side of the site you will see a button/link with text 'Email-Blog-Post to MySpace', when you click it you see a link 'Embed HTML'.
'Embed HTML' link will give you an HTML script which you can place in your website where you want to display Video in your web-pages.

Playing background music on your webpages

2007-04-04T03:41:00.000-07:00

Upload your background music files(MIDI,MP3 etc.) on Google Pages.

Add following script in "body" tag :

<br /><br /><br /><br /><noembed><br /><br /><bgsound src="yourbgmusicfile.mp3" loop="infinite"><br /><br /></noembed>

Save and publish your page.You have to put this code on all pages where you want to have background music.

Playing Music Live From Your Website/Blogs

2007-04-04T03:09:00.000-07:00

Upload your music files on Google Pages.Only MP3 files are supported by script posted here.

Add following script in "body" tag :

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://del.icio.us/js/playtagger"></script>

If it still does not work,go on my site in 'Music' section, right click and view code and see the location of the script.