Spy Review

What does this tool do: This deceptively simple robot will find and deliver potential customers who have problems that you can solve.

Cost: Free

Who Needs It: Hate cold calls?

Info Page: http://spy.appspot.com/

Comments:

SPY will monitor social media conversations and deliver those short comments to your screen every few seconds. But SPY will also filter the comments and update them for you, without your having to refresh your screen… as in Twitter.

I first found this site to be an astonishingly helpful tool for monitoring eye witness accounts of the Mumbai terror attacks. As witnesses posted to Twitter and other social networking sites, SPY would aggregate comments around a single topic (#mumbai) and forward them on to me every seven seconds.

The immediacy of these posts is the key to your use of SPY as a business tool. In the SPY search window simply type an issue that your product/service/concern addresses. Then return to your work and wait for queries to appear. Whenever anyone posts something that you might have a solution for, respond (from the SPY site) by clicking through to their link. As with all Twitter-like communication, stay away from overt promotion. But helpful, value oriented references are always welcomed.

You’ll want to register for a Twitter account if you have not already.

TweetDeck, a similar but more sophisticated program, will be reviewed in a followup post.

MeasureIt Review 

What does this tool do:  One click tool for pixel height/width measuring of blog dimiensions.  

Cost: Free

Who Needs It: Do you need to size elements for your sidebars or main content area?  

Info Page:   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/539

Comments:  

A nifty Firefox add-on so you can build a blog to precise measurements, or insert photos at the correct dimensions. This is the kind of tool that you may not have known you needed.  Very handy when you do.  

IE Tab Review 

What does this tool do:  A Firefox Add-on, this one click tool switches your browser display from Firefox to Internet Explorer, without having to open the IE Browser.

Cost: Free

Who Needs It: If you are building your own blog, this is an absolute necessity.

Info Page:  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1419

Comments: 

So, you’ve finished building your blog and it looks great in the Firefox Browser. Do you know if it looks OK to people who view your site in Internet Explorer?  Hmm. Never thought of that. Well, you better.  Use this nifty one-click icon to check. More about validating other browsers in future installments.  

SEO for Firefox: Review 

What does this tool do:  Helps you research other blogs.. and design for the success of your own. (Check our next post for reference to a video tutorial.)

Cost: Free

Who Needs It: Blog builders and administrators.

Info Page:   http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html

Comments: 

This valuable tool works through the Firefox browser to bring research data about any site to your desktop. Want to know how your competition is faring? Use this to find who owns a site, how many people subscribe, whether it’s listed in DMOZ, how many pages are cached in Google, its Google and Alexa Page Rank, how many incoming links from other sites, how old it is, and on and on.  This is useful information for understanding and measuring the success of your competitors…before you go online.  It’s also a handy record of your own site’s success or failings. Also see SEO Tools.  

Foxmarks Review 

What does this tool do: Auto-synchronizes all your bookmarks on all your computers, while you sleep. Magic.  

Cost: Free

Who Needs It: Efficient bloggers who own or use several different computers.

Info Page:   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/search?q=Foxmarks&cat=all

Comments: 

One of the Firefox browser’s most valuable add-ons (or plugins, or extensions), this is an incredible time saver for those who use multiple computers.  Whether you are at your bedside laptop, home or office desktop, you can easily clone a URL to all your computers, then later access that same bookmark and all your other duplicate bookmarks from any of your other computers. After a simple Foxmarks setup, you’ll discover an identical bookmark structure on each of your computers. Using Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer in tandem with Diigo will also ensure that a disk failure will never threaten your valuable link collection. Foxmarks is a truly valuable tool. 

LinkChecker Review 

What does this tool do: Simple Firefox browser extension to verify the validity of links on your site. 

Cost: Free

Who Needs It: Bloggers

Info Page:   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/532

Comments: 

A no brainer addon if using the Firefox browser…recommended. This simple extension will verify which links in any of your posts are actually invalid due to URL spelling errors, syntax or outdated status. An important consideration for any conscientious blogger.