Market Samurai Review 

What does this tool do: Keeps you from wasting time by entering a too-competitive market.

Cost: It doesn’t matter what it is this week. Buy it.

Who Needs It:  E-commerce Marketers

Info Page:  http://www.noblesamurai.com/

Comments:  

You hit on the right page. This is probably the most valuable tool I own for choosing a competitive E-market. It will tell you the key phrases or key words that are highly searched plus show you those terms that have low competition. Then it will show you a graphic display of Google competitors to let you know if you should attack your area of interest. Such a time saver, lack of this software is what kept me away from the E-commerce market for years. I was not interested in doing the tedious analysis required of weighing good markets. I have never not listed a price before, with good reason. What ever it is, pay it and shut up. 14 day trial for free. 

Woopra Review 

What does this tool do: Collects and feeds you analytical information about your site visitors.  

Cost: Free in Beta

Who Needs It: If you have your own blog, these details are required reading.

Info Page: http://www.woopra.com/ 

Comments:

A beautiful interface and easy navigation are only two of the lesser benefits of Woopra. This analytical gem-collector will also present you with demographic facts and information in real time. Meaning, you can watch as people arrive and move around on your blog. You can even intercept them to chat directly.  The activity can be fascinating as visitors move from page to page. After auditioning Woopra for the last six weeks, it seems that the demographic data is on par with Google Analytics, but the display and real-time layout is much more attractive and interesting. HT to Len Charnoff of Digital College.

Unmask Parasites Review 

What does this tool do:  Searches out malicious code in your blog’s HTML.

Cost: Free

Who Needs It:  Would you prefer not to know you have Ebola? Don’t touch my doorknob.

Info Page:  http://www.unmaskparasites.com/

Comments:  

Never underestimate the ability of a scumbag to undermine your blogging efforts. And never believe that because you can view your site perfectly well, there is not malicious code embedded somewhere among the branches of your site. You should sign up for Google Webmaster Tools (see next WebZoom posting), and you should use this tool to alert you before Google erases your precious site from its memory.

HideText Review 

What does this tool do: Converts text to an image.

Cost: Free

Who Needs It: Do you hate spammers who crawl through your site and lift your email addresses?  

Info Page:  http://www.hidetext.net/

Comments:  

Email addresses in particular are tasty morsels for spammers who crawl weblogs in search of opportunities. That’s why you often see people spell out their email addresses like:

 “person at gmail.com”

This format will fool most spam bots. But HideText is another alternative. Enter your email or other text at the HideText site and an image will be auto-generated that you can drag and drop into your blog text. Viola:

Images are not indexed by crawlers and so you can thus avoid the spam bot plight.

You might also want to post text that you do not want “read” by search engines, or re-post text that appears simultaneously on other pages. To avoid duplicate content issues with Google, you can use HideText to make an image of the text and then post it without concern.  

ExactFactor Review 

What does this tool do:  Identifies your site’s ranking on the pages of major search engines, based on your keyword focus.

Cost: Free in beta

Who Needs It: Wanna know how you rank, Buddy? 

Info Page:   http://www.exactfactor.com/

Comments:  

A simple interface allows you to quickly find how your efforts to rank your site in the major search engines are working out.  Enter your primary keywords and find your page ranking in seconds.  Want to compare yourself to competitors and watch your progress as you try to overtake them? This is the place. Sign up to receive weekly reports that include advanced analysis factors.

TweetDeck Review 

What does this tool do: Manages Twitter communications much better than Twitter. 

Cost: Free in Beta

Who Needs It:  Looking for friends, contacts or new business opportunities through Twittering?  TweetDeck will save you time.

Info Page:  http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/

Comments:

A more sophisticated program than SPY, TweetDeck manages Twitter messages efficiently.  You will want to open an account at Twitter and become familiar with it first.  (See our previous post on Twitter, then review the SPY post to see how you can use TwitterDeck for business.)

TweetDeck allows you to search out multiple key words and phrases for possible response. And it prompts you whenever an update finds something of interest. 

After registering at Twitter, you can put it aside and do all your communicating through this compact and elegant interface.    

UpdateStar Review 

What does this tool do: Takes an inventory of all your software, then notes which applications have updated versions and gives you a link to retrieve the update. Very nice. 

Cost: Free

Who Needs It: Got a computer?

Info Page:   http://www.updatestar.com/en/features/

Comments:  Ever forget to follow-up on a valuable application only to find out that the software manufacturer released 5 free upgrades since you first bought it?  Grrr. UpdateStar will do the checking for you, present you with a complete list of your installed software (freeware, shareware, demos, commercial software), identify the current and latest software versions, and then give you a link where you can download the latest upgrade.

pic2ColorReview 

What does this tool do:  Allows you to create color schemes based on photographs, other web sites, or random schemes.

Cost: Free

Who Needs It: Website/Weblog designers.

Info Page:   http://www.pic2color.com/

Comments: 

Our last post featured a site that will identify colors and Hex codes of color schemes on existing web sites. This new tool will also do that, plus give you a color scheme readout of images from your own picture file.  The ability to grab color codes greatly speeds up the task of designing photo layouts or choosing primary colors for your site. It’s always helpful to have multiple tools for these tasks and this is a good one.  

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.

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.