Welcome to WebZoom, I’m Alan Bixby. If you happened to attend one of my internet marketing presentations for small-business, you’ll know that this is where you find many of the tips and cool-tools I didn’t have time to reference. See the links in the right sidebar for an archive of recommendations and a subscription link so you can receive continuing updates that identify other valuable tools.
FindSounds Review
What does this tool do: Offers you a quick and comprehensive online source for sound effects without having to purchase a pricey package.
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: Podcasters or sound recordists who need brief, (usually) royalty free music riffs or sound effects for their recordings.
Info Page: http://www.findsounds.com/
Comments:
Well chosen sound effects will add new dimensions to a podcast or video production. So if you need noise, where do you go? Try FindSounds. Here you can search for audio files by description, name, genre, category, copyright, format, sample, rate, key or tempo. Need computer sounds, animal sounds, tinkerbells, whooshes? Go to Find Sounds.
Simple Machines Forum Review
What does this tool do: A Forum invites visitors to contribute information through community feedback, troubleshooting and help topics. Simple Machines Forum provides the tool for this to happen.
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: If your site is growing and you want to further involve your visitors, network around a specialized topic, share knowledge, and invite visitor interaction, then setting up a forum should be on your agenda.
Info Page: http://www.simplemachines.org/
Comments:
A Forum is an effective tool to keep visitors returning to your site for more education and help that focuses on your area of expertise. This sophisticated forum template can add a new interactive dimension to your site. Just remember that forums take considerable time to administer and need a fairly large base of contributors to succeed and endure.
Amberjack Review
What does this tool do: Inserts a pop up window that guides new visitors through your site.
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: Administrators who want to help lead visitors through site functionality and benefits.
Info Page: http://amberjack.org/
Comments:
A useful tool, especially for more complicated sites where visitors can benefit from a simple tour. Pages and explanatory pop-up windows change in unison to step viewers through help screens.
Process Tamer Review
What does this tool do: Runs in the background to keep your computer running fast and efficiently.
Cost: Free with registration and support-request nag
Who Needs It: If you use a lot of programs at one time and find your PC is straining to keep up, this is a nifty tool.
Download Page: http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/proctamer/
Comments:
This tool does exactly what it promises. From the DonationCoder website: Process Tamer is a tiny (140k) and super efficient utility for Microsoft Windows XP/2K/NT that runs in your system tray and constantly monitors the cpu usage of other processes. When it sees a process that is overloading your cpu, it reduces the priority of that process temporarily, until its cpu usage returns to a reasonable level.
Feed Validator Review
What does this tool do: Checks to see that your registered feed is structurally correct and prompts you with recommendations to make it more broadly accessible by other feed readers.
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: Weblog and Website administrators.
Info Page: http://www.feedvalidator.org/
Comments:
Ever wonder why nobody cares about you or your site, or that your site is not appearing in the search engines or that it’s not being picked up by blog news aggregators? Better check to see that you have a valid feed or you could be talking to an audience of one.
Social Scan Review
What does this tool do: Tells you how many people have linked to your website through some of the social networking gateways.
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: If you need to gauge whether anyone cares about your weblog or website efforts, this is one of many ways to determine your popularity.
Info Page: http://www.socialscan.com/
Comments:
Page rank is a factor that determines your location in the search engines. Is your site appearing in the first several pages of Google, or far back in the pack? One way of measuring page rank is through the votes of people who have already visited your site. Have they linked to you through any of the major social networks? If they haven’t, it’s a sign that you are ignoring the potential of these social networking engines to help raise your website profile.
HTML Editor Review
What does this tool do: Lets you test your HTML coding offline before you post.
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: Both experienced and inexperienced bloggers who need to test out their coding scripts before posting online.
Entry Page: http://htmledit.squarefree.com/
Comments:
Even the lowliest of bloggers come in contact with prickly HTML issues. If you are unsure about your coding capabilities, you need a test window to expose your weakness before posting to your site. No signup or registration. Just a free window to use when you need it.
BlogTalkRadio Review
What does this tool do: Create your own live talk show or listen to shows from around the world.
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: Creative, communicative types with a flare for self marketing through a free internet megaphone.
Info Page: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/
Comments:
“Poof poof poof. Testing 1,2,3.” You always thought you should have been in radio, right? Here’s your chance to talk to the world. This is a web based service that allows you to host your own live internet radio show, conduct interviews or take phone calls from listeners. You can also post the code to your site and create podcasts so your site visitors can listen at any time.
Copyscape Review
What does this tool do: Searches the web to find illegally posted copies of your own content.
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: Those who fear their hard work on documents may be plagiarized and posted on other sites without attribution.
Info Page: www.copyscape.com/
Comments:
Ever wonder if your own words or even webpage code may have been lifted from your own site and used verbatim on someone else’s? It happens constantly. Whether copyright infringement or simple ethics violation, this neat tool will find the culprits and tattle on them without guilt. Worth bookmarking.
Filed under All Posts, Worth Bookmarking by Alan Bixby
URL Bunch Review
What does this tool do: Generates a single URL to replace a list of many links.
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: Online researchers.
Info Page: http://www.urlbunch.com/
Comments:
Some tools may be rarely used yet very handy when needed. If you frequently prepare lists of links for research purposes, you’ll find URL Bunch helpful. You can prepare bunches of related links and then store the entire list under a single link. Clicking that link will allow you to view or even load them all simultaneously. Save a single page (on your local computer) that lists your master links, and then you can recall, embed the single links in your documents, or email the links as needed.
Favicon.cc Review
What does this do: Gives you an online tool to create your own dinky little icons that show up in the tabs of their browser when someone visits your site. (See the green “Z” for WebZoom in your browser tab?)
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: Gotta weblog or website?
Info Page: http://www.favicon.cc/
Comments:
This answers the question for many who are new to blogging: “How the devil can I create one of those silly things?”. If you are incompetent when it comes to creating such heady artwork, you can search among thousands of other icons and hijack someone else’s creativity to use on your own site.
Adobe Photoshop Express Review
What does this tool do: Combines downsized versions of Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, then offers free online photo storage, browser edit capabilities and image gallery displays.
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: Those who edit images for their blogs or websites, or those who simply want a more sophisticated image editing tool for family/friend photos without having to purchase the packaged version of Adobe Photoshop Elements.
Info Page: https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html
Comments:
Sign up for free and from any computer you can access your photos and the tools you need to organize, edit and display them. A slick interface, 2.0GB of free online storage, cool gallery display options, editing tools, and Adobe quality standards all add up to a great and useful package.
Tags: adobe photoshop elements, blogs, capabilities, editing tools, family friend, free online photo storage, free online storage, friend photos, gallery displays, image gallery, image storage, images, online image editing, page nbsp, pizzazz, quality standards, slick interface, sophisticated image
Webnode Review
What does this tool do: Builds a functional website in about, oh…60 seconds!
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: Wanna website of your own but find too much dissonance in those four consonants HTML? This is your baby.
Info Page: www.webnode.com
Comments:
Can’t imagine an easier way to put you or your business online. Trade Offs? Sure. Not a lot of flexibility in design or customizable options. Still, this is a no brainer if you have neither cash, talent nor time to build your personal website from the ground up. Choose your options from an extensive checklist (see left sidebar in the basic example-site below). Then add content and edit via the toolbar in your browser. Need a domain name and place to host your page? You’ll find that help here as well.
Tags: baby info, brainer, business online, consonants, customizable options, dissonance, domain name, flexibility, functional website, page nbsp, page www, personal website, trade offs, website framework
Diigo Review
What does this tool do: It is (still) most valuable as a tool to save and organize your bookmarks, so you will never lose or forget a saved-site again. But the latest upgrade adds much greater depth to previous versions.
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: If you have more than 50 bookmarks and have trouble finding them, you’ll find Diigo to be a huge benefit.
Info Page: http://www.diigo.com/
Comments:
To call Diigo just a bookmark organizer is like calling Ella just a singer. But the truth is that your first and most obvious value will come from Diigo’s ability to store and search out your lost bookmarks like no other free program available. You can also highlight and file short sentences within a URL without saving the entire site. Plus you can search text as well as tags and easily forward your best links on to your friends. If you want additional layers of social networking, note taking, and added research ability, this tool satisfies. But you should plan on a gradual ramp up to proficiency. In order to take full advantage of Diigo, it will take some effort to make it sing for you…but in the meantime, it can sure hum.
What does this tool do: Offers a free critical analysis of your website.
Cost: Free
Who Needs It: Got a website or weblog? Want the truth?
Info Page: http://www.websitegrader.com
Comments:
A mix of statistical and subjective feedback, this site offers a reasonable thumbnail appraisal of your on-page structure and off-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO), plus interior page analysis, readability level, page rank, number of Google indexed pages, last crawl date, inbound links, appearance in major search directories and more. This will likely send you back to the drawing board for tweaking your site, but you’ll have a clue about some of the things you’ll need to improve.
Tags: appearance, clue, critical analysis, drawing board, google, inbound links, nbsp, optimization seo, page rank, page search engine, page structure, rank number, search directories, search engine optimization, thumbnail, truth, tweaking
