1015 Free Tools and Services for Bloggers

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loggers do not just write articles! They have to do a lot of things to manage and promote their blogs. These activities range from commenting to finding useful design and software tools. Often such tools are life savers, allowing more time for the business of writing and keeping readers happy. But at the same time, finding perfect tool for a task is difficult and time consuming. So, we searched internet for best free blogging tools and services for bloggers and summed them up in this post.
toolbox
Advertising:

1. Blog Banner Clicks: Blog Banner Clicks lets you place your 125×125 banner on their homepage for free. Banners are ranked according to number of clicks. More clicks you get, more exposure you get.
2. EntreCard: Entrecard is a blogging network where you can buy and sell ad space for credits. Perfect for newbie bloggers as you can advertise without spending a penny.
3. AdGridWork: AdGridWork is a free targeted network for websites and blogs. You have to place your ad on your blog and after that, your ads will be served. They offer a lot of statistics for ad tracking.
4. Chitika AdPro: AdPro is a free offering from Chitika. They let you sell space on your blog directly without any fees and set up advertiser accounts so that advertisers get all info they need about ad performance. And you get 100% revenue after all this!

Comments:

1. DISQUS Comment System: Replaces your platform’s default commenting system. A must have for blogger users where even embedded form has popups (for captcha and user/url options).
2. Intense Debate Comment System: Another good comment system with a cool “Reply via Email” option. Only thing I found annoying is the need to confirm for comment subscription via email! Further Reading: How to Install Intense Debate on Blogger.

Contacts:

1. Formsmarts: A free form maker. You can use pop-up link options for platforms that do not let you embed JavaScript.
2. Kontactr: A basic contact form available for embedding or as popup.
3. HideText: Lets you create image from text. Ideal to hide your email contact address from spam bots.
4. E-Mail Scrambler: Lets you scramble e-mail address (if you still want to embed it) in a format not recognizable by bots. You have to paste some code in the theme’s head section for it to work properly.

Content:
contentImage Credit: ABContentOnline.com

1. Zemanta: Zemanta is a content suggestion tool that searches for related content (articles and pictures) around the web and also suggests tags and links. Zemanta has been one of our favorite plugins here on Blogging With Success. Recently, Zemanta announced support for Opera, Safari and Chrome. With this, major browsers are covered and it can be considered a complete solution for bloggers.
2. Copygator: Search web for duplicate copies of your content. Also gives a subscription option so that you can stay updated via email about scrapping.
3. OpenOffice.org: It is a free open source alternative to Microsoft Office. Do not worry, it works with Office files. OpenOffice.org Write, the word processor lets you export files and PDF and retains links. Useful for creating e-books with links. Note: This is not an online tool.
4. Ping-O-matic: Automatically pings(notifies) online services about your blog updates.
5. Pingoat: Another automatic pinging service.
6. LinkWithin: A related posts widget/plugin for Blogger, WordPress and other platforms. No signup, no ads. Just place code and related posts from archives will be shown under posts.
7. BlogThis!: Add to Firefox browser, a toolbar to access to Blogger’s ‘blogthis’ feature where you can make a blog post without visiting blogger.com. Use this interface from a page or article you want to ‘blog about’ — it seeds the draft post with highlighted text, the website url and any other text you want to key in, on the spot. Works with Firefox and Internet Explorer.
8. StumbleUpon: Browser toolbar lets you discover web sites based on your interests and refer them to your SU friends.

Design:

1. BrowserShots: BrowserShots is a free website that lets you get screenshot of any website. More than 70 browsers are available and you can request any number of shots for free.
2. FireShot: A Firefox or IE extension that lets you create customized screenshots of your web pages. There are tools that let you edit the snapshot and add text annotations. This software is good for web developers, and for communicating unique graphics to your blog readers. Captured & edited images can be downloaded as png, jpg, gif or bmp formats or uploaded to a free public screenshot host.
3. MoFuse: Mofuse lets you create a mobile friendly version of your website for free. You can customize colors, logo and even put ads on it without paying a penny.
4. DaButtonFactroy: Lets you create buttons for your blog. You can customize almost everything from background shadow to text and colors etc. Here’s a demo button:
button
5. Favicon.cc: Lets you create a free favicon. You can even add animation.Here’s a tiny animation by Mr I (as he admits, not a big artist, so no wonders here.)

favicon
6. WordPress Theme Generator: Lets you make your own two/three column WordPress theme for free. Colors, header image and width of sidebars can be changed.
7. PsycHo Free Template Generator: Generates Blogger template. You can customize number of columns, color scheme etc. Note: This tool is being redesigned and new version will be online soon.
8. I Like Your Colors: Like colors on webpage and want to know HTML codes for them? This tool extracts all the colors from a given page and shows the corresponding hexadecimal values.
9. ColorZilla: This is a Firefox addon that uses an eye dropper icon as a color-picker. Get color codes for anything on any webpage. Also use there different color palettes and select or compose the right color you want from a slide rule for hues and saturation. You can also zoom any online page! Useful for those tiny font messages you might get, which someone forwarded from a mobile device.
10. Firebug: Yet another Firefox addon with a wealth of development tools that let you edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript on any web page.
11. CSS Portal : An excellent guide on using Cascade Styling Sheet elements to format text inline, overriding your template defaults.
12. Easy Calculations: Use this to convert colors form RGB to hex and vice-versa.
13. WebDeveloper: A menu and a toolbar extension for Firefox with various web developer tools that allow you to analyze all the different parts of a web page, including the CSS per element and outline objects. You can edit CSS on the screen and save the code to later update the template.
14. Degraeve.com: This software generates a palette of colors that match and complement any image your provide. You can match theme colors to a key component in your header for example.

imagepalette
Feeds:

1. Google Reader: Online feed reader to read feeds from favorite blogs.
2. Feed Compare: Lets you compare feed numbers with competition. Both new and old Feedburner are supported. Note: You have to give full feed address for new feedburner. e.g. http://feedproxy.google.com/feed-name
3. Feedkiller: Merge multiple feeds and read all your favorite blogs in one universal feed.
4. FeedIcon20: Lets you generate custom feed icons for your blog/website. Here is an example:
RSS feed
about Feed
5. ZapTXT: Sends you a notice via RSS, E-Mails or SMS when your favorite website is updated.
6. Page2RSS: Lets you create RSS feeds for websites that do not publish feeds. You can then subscribe to created feed and stay updated.

For Hosted Blogs:

1. Down Or Not?: Lets you check if a website is down or not.
2. DingIt’sUp: Notifies you via SMS, E-Mail or Twitter if your blog/website goes down.
3. Sitonomy: Ever wanted to find which tools are used by big guys to power their blogs? This website lets you check the technologies that they use. For example, you can find that ProBlogger uses Google Ad Manager and six statistics counters!
4. ServerCheck: Checks if a server is down, the IP of a domain and number of websites hosted on server(useful when deciding host).

HTML:
html_logo
Image Credit: Simplistichost.com

1. Meta Tags Generator: Generates meta tags for your blog which you can paste into your blog’s head section for better SEO.
2. IdTabs: Lets you add tabbed widgets to your blog. Note: You need jQuery before adding it.
3. Drop Down Menu Generator: Lets you create a drop down selection box for your site. Copy the code to your blog and you are done.
4. SikBox: Lets you make a live search box for your site. It is extremely lightweight. Just test the sample menu on their homepage by entering your blog address. However, this tool does not work for hosted blogs ( I tried Blogspot but it did not work, however m.bloggingwithsuccess.net worked out fine.)
5. Headline Animator: Displays animated recent post titles. No additional service, just go to FeedBurner–>Publicize–>Headline Animator.
6. Tabelizer: Converts data from Excel cells to HTML tables. Useful if you don’t know how to create tables.
7. WidgetBox: World’s largest source for widgets for blogs and websites. Widgets are available in every category from music to technology. You can even create tabbed widgets with your feeds (from RSS, Twitter etc.)
Lot of Widgets can slow down your Blog
8. Plus2net.com : An alternative to the converter tool above. Also has other CSS and color conversion tools on the sidebar.

Images:
PhotosImage Credit: Masters.com

1. WetFloor Maker: Lets you create a wet floor effect for images.
2. Imgur: Simple and fast image hosting. no need to register, just upload and get the hotlink for image.
3. MakeAGif: Lets you create animations from given images.
4. Free Banner Maker: Lets you make a banner by just dragging and dropping. you can choose or upload background and customize fonts. Lot of unique fonts available.
5. Logo Maker: Generates text and logos with cool effects.
6. Web 2.0 Stylr: Generates logo/banner with wet floor effects.
7. Flickr: Find the right image to accent your post content. Tools allow you to hot-link to the image in different sizes.
8. Photobucket: Online sharing for your photos and videos.
9. DailyWebshots: – similar to Flickr, upload your own photos, or link to others that fit your blog content.
10. Web Shots Pro: Easy software for creating thumbnails of your home page. Free account has limits on how often you can get an updated thumbnail. The software generates 4 image sizes which you can download: 100 x 75, 267 x 200, 400 x 300 and 640 x 480.
11. Shrink The Web: Similar to Shrink the web, creates thumbnails of web pages. Also expect a large queue of requests on both sites. Running them side by side, Shrink the web finished well ahead of the other one. It returned images in six sizes like 75 x 56 and 200 x 150px, making it more versatile.
12. Simplythebest : Contains free fonts for downloading. Use them to create custom logos and stylized font graphics for your blog.
13. DreamsTime: Contains access to low priced images as well as ‘royalty-free stock photography. Must register for free items; has quality images.
14. Public domain photos: Over 5,000 photos at this site are public domain, which you can use for any purpose, including commercial web sites.
15. FreeFoto: This site has a huge collection of free photos. All require attrition type linkbacks. The image can be hotlinked instead of downloading.You select from four different image sizes.
16. Acobox: Another website for free pictures. You do not need to copy or resize photos, just paste the code in post. Also available as WordPress Plugin.

Monetization:

1. Google Ad Manager: Google Ad Manager is a hosted solution for ad management. You can sell you ad space easily with it and also place other HTML ads. We are using it to manage our ads.
2. OpenX: OpenX is an open source ad management platform that is available as hosted or downloadable solution. Recommended for beginners.
3. Web Valuer: Tells you value of your website in dollars.
4. How Much is My Blog Worth?: Tells you value of blog based on Technorati Authority. You can also copy the given code for a little show off!
5. Dollar$hower ProdFinder: Lets you find a good ad network for monetizing your blog.
6. PayPal: Online transaction service. You can use it to accept payments from advertisers, donations and payments from ad networks. Creating an account is free. Only fees involved are during transactions(usually 2.5 to 3.5 % of transaction)

Offline Blog Editors:

1. Windows Live Writer: Windows live writer is a free offline blog editor from Microsoft. It supports most of the popular blogging platforms.
2. BlogDesk: BlogDesk is also a good feature rich offline editor. However, it does not support Blogspot.
3. ScribeFire: Available as an extension of Firefox, it is a good multi platform editor.
4. ByteScout Post2Blog: Another good editor which can automatically embed your pictures and other multimedia files. However, it can not add tags for Blogspot platform.

SEO:

1. Website Grader: Provides a score for things like website traffic, SEO, popularity, etc., giving some basic advice on improving your blog from a marketing perspective.
2. Review my Web: A report that compares you to competitors in your niche.
3. SEOmoz.org: A suite of tools such as rank and link checkers, and crawl test which reports how accessible your site is to search engines, highlighting potential issues.
4. Fast SERP: Lets you check your rank on major search engines for any keyword.
5. Google Preview: Firefox addon for more information in your search results – inserts preview images (thumbnails) and popularity ranks of sites listed.

Stats:

StatsImage Credit: Bounce.cc

1. 99 Counters: Create customized counters for your blog to show off number of visitors.
2. Google Analytics: The best free analytics suite available online. Tracks lot of data ranging from unique visits to number of clicks.
3. Statcounter: Another free real time analytics suite.
4. Sitemeter: Real time website tracking and counter service.
5. PageRank Alert: Set up e-mail alerts for Page rank updates for any page.
6. Dataopedia: Lets you check almost all statistics (except Page Rank) of any website.
7. Compete: Compares websites based on reach and daily traffic in USA.
8. Alexa: Alexa ranks websites based on their traffic. You can use it to compare your blog with competition based on worldwide or country specific traffic.
9. Site-Perf: Best Site Loading time analysis tool available. You can choose any of the three servers for a world-wide estimate. They even let you adjust number of connections, connection speed and browser!
10. PollDaddy: Lets you create good looking polls and keeps archive of results. You can embed poll as javascript or flash into posts. If you have self hosted wordpress blog, the plugin lets you create polls from there for free.
11. Chart Tools: Lets you create flexible and good looking charts online and share them.
12. Page Rank Widget for Opera: Simple widget that lets you check Page Rank of any page.
13. Alexa Info Widget for Opera: Displays Alexa info for any domain.
14. Linkscape: Analyzes backlinks to URL from over 36 billion URLs.
15. PostRank: A free RSS analyzing service that lets you rank posts from any blog. Also offers a Popular Posts widget. Diggs, Comments, Twets and more than 10 other matrices are used to determine the rank.
16. SearchStatus: A Firefox extension to display Google PageRank, Alexa rank, and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank, backward/related links, Alexa info and more in your browser.
17. FoxClocks: Keep an eye on the time around the world along with your local time using small clocks in your status bar. Useful for international teams (we are a good example).
18. TimeTracker: Keep track of how much you browse with TimeTracker.
19. QuarkBase: Analyzes full information about a website from platform, framework to host and various ranks.
20. Link Diagnosis: Analyzes complete information about links to a website.

And finally, our 101.5th Tool:

The Lazy Blogger’s Post Generator: We do not have much to say about it, so we are leaving you with this sample that we generated with it:

“Oh My Gosh! I just woke up to the fact I have not updated this since petrol was cheaper than a bottle of Grange!… You would not believe that I’d been abducted by aliens. Unbelievable.

I am caught inside with an awfully big adventure, personal projects, just generally being a nuisance to the bodyguards of the blogger I am stalking, my day goes from 8am to whenever. I am beyond drunk most of the time. but who cares.

I totally promise I will write something that makes sense soon. Honestly! I mean it!”

These are 101(.5) free tools and services we found for bloggers. Do you have anything to add? Which one is your favorite? Do tell us through comments.

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Insert Ads Inside Blogger Posts[Only On Post Pages]

Ad placement is the most important thing which you should always keep in mind while Blogging. The better the ad placement, the better the click through rates. But Unlike Wordpress, Google Blogger doesn't have plugins which can make your tasks easier. So, you have to insert the codes into HTML yourself. Here is a screenshot of ads inside a blogger post. Note that it will not appear in the summary of the post on the main page.

Ads Inside Blogger Posts

 Here is a step by step instructions on How To Add Ads Inside Blogger Posts:

• First Create an Ad(AdSense or whatever service you are using) of size that fits your need. I recommend you to create a 300 X 250 -OR- 336 X 280 ad. Now, parse it so that it can be used inside Blogger Template. To parse your ad code, click here and then copy your ad code to the box and then click on 'Convert Ad Code' button. Then copy the parsed code to a safe place.
• Now Login To your Blogger Account, then go to Design>Edit HTML and then, using search function of your browser(Ctrl+F),
• Search for <data:post.body>.
• Now, paste one of the code above the code which you just found.

To Show Ads Aligned To Left, then ad this code:

<div style='float:left; margin-right:5px;'>YOUR ADSENSE CODE</div>

To Show Ads Aligned To Right, then add this code:

<div style='float:right; margin-left:5px;'>YOUR ADSENSE CODE</div>

Now, Copy Your Parsed Ad Code and replace 'YOUR ADSENSE CODE' with it.
Next, Save your Template by clicking on the 'Save' Button and check whether your ads are appearing or not.
Any Problem? Please drop your comment(s) and I'll help.

 

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How to Stop or Unsubscribe from Feedburner Email Updates

Few time I receive emails from my blog readers asking me to unsubscribe them from email updates. I try at my best to reply to each email I receive, but time does not permit to reply to  each and every email and hence this post. Here I will be telling you the most simple way to stop Feedburner email updates yourself, neither you need to reply to the email saying “stop” nor you need to request the blog owner to unsubscribe your email address manually.

Before I proceed, I must tell you that these email updates reach your inbox once a day (for each website) and the number of update emails might increase if you have subscribed to many websites. These emails carry the daily updates of a website to help you to have a quick eye on the entire day’s activity in a single email.

But what if you don’t need the Feedburner email updates anymore? Checkout the procedures to cancel Feeburner email subscription.

Stop / Unsubscribe from Feedburner Email Updates

1. Open the update email sent to you by Feedburner



2. Scroll to the bottom of the email and click on the “Unsubscribe now” link



3. It will take you to the confirmation page, click on “Yes, unsubscribe me now” button



4. A confirmation message will appear saying that you have successfully unsubscribed from the feedburner email subscription



5. You are done.

Feedburner delivers a limited number of articles in each email and if the number of posts published in a blog are higher than it’s limit, it adds a note to the bottom of the email as “Message clipped… View Entire Message” like below screenshot.

If this is the case, click on the “View Entire Message” link and follow from the Step no – 2.

In this way you can also stop or cancel any other website’s subscription emails and unsubscribe from any future updates.

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Learn How To Hack - Best Hacking eBook

Every single day there is some new news about how some popular website, government or public figure got hacked. Have you ever wondered how these “hackers” do this? I did, that’s why I got The Hacker’s Underground Handbook.

I wasn’t sure if it was for me since I know nothing about hacking or computer security, and was surprised when I saw how easy it was to follow along with the real-world examples and understand the material. I now know how hackers think and many of the techniques they use to take over websites like mine and yours… except I now know how to protect myself.

Learn How to Hack Linux, Windows, Websites, Passwords, Networks etc.

Some of the topic that were discussed in The Hacker’s Underground Handbook. were:

1. programming
2. linux
3. password hacking
4. network hacking
5. wireless hacking
6. windows hacking
7. malware
8. web hacking

After Reading “Learn How to Hack – The Hacker’s Underground Handbook” :

• You will learn all the hackers underground tricks and learn to apply them in real world situations.
• You will be put into a hackers mindset and learn to think like one.
• By Learning how a hacker thinks and acts, you will be able to protect yourself from future hack attacks.
• You will aquire knowledge nonexistant to 99.9% of the people in the world!
• This Underground handbook may get you interested in pursuing a career as an Ethical Hacker.

I totally recommend The Hacker’s Underground Handbook. to anyone that’s interested in whats going on in these hacker’s minds and how they go about taking over all these big websites.

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5 Awesome Websites You Should Visit Daily to Learn Valuable Topics

How many times do you find yourself at the computer doing absolutely nothing ? Here are some useful resources, websites you should visit daily for learning new stuff and feeding you brain with positive, useful information.

Utilize 10 Minutes Daily to Learn Useful Stuff, Gather Knowledge Online

1. Qwiki – Futuristic Talking Encyclopaedia, Search Engine

Qwiki (Link) is an online search tool, information aggregator application which let you audio-visually learn about all sorts of topics. Type in a query and as if by magic, in seconds Qwiki prepares a multimedia presentation with voice, video, data charts and photos. And if you’re inspired, you can always choose to see the day selection.

Here is a quick example of how Qwiki works… (I searched for my city Kolkata)

 

Why I think Qwiki so unique is, apart from it being like a futuristic, rich experience with a voice narrating onscreen knowledge, text about the topic to you. In fact hence its a perfect wiki tool for your mobile device, tablet pc etc. With graphs, maps, visual clips and speech this is surely now one my daily sites. If you are knowledge hungry you’ll find Qwiki your favourite companion. Plus it can be a great learning tool for kids.

2. The Wikipedia : A Powerhouse of Textual Knowledge and Information

Who doesn’t know about Wikipedia ? It is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopaedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 18 million articles (over 3.5 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site.

 

Wikipedia currently supports content in 260 different languages and there are over 75,000 authors on Wikipedia, responsible for constantly maintaining and adding to the site’s database.

The pages of Wikipedia are under constant supervision by over 1,500 administrators. The problem with this is that when a person edits a page’s content with new information that has yet to be released to the public, said information is removed.

 

For example, when searching for an “Episode Guide” for your favourite television show, you’ll often find 10 to 20 future episodes and their descriptions; however, the administrators will remove all of the future episodes except for the one that airs the following week.

Most of the articles on Wikipedia can be edited by users that haven’t even registered an account on the site.

3. Improve Your English with BBC

There are countless number of free online resources that offer english courses. Among them, the BBC Learning English has a huge amount of online learning material as well as a wide selection of games, quizzes, crosswords and other interesting flash games that will help you take advantage of your free time to give a boost to your English and keep up with the news alongside. 

4. Inspiring Speeches at TED

Everyone likes to know what’s coming in the future. And if you’re tired of unrealistic stuff shown in TV, then switch to the awesome TED videos. TED is a non-profit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.

TEDTalks (Link) shares the best ideas from the TED Conference with the world, for free: trusted voices and convention-breaking mavericks, icons and geniuses, all giving the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.

Some of my best talks from TED are:

• Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of Sixth Sense
• Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools Kill Creativity
• Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do, and how we can do it better

5. Khan Academy: Free World Class Education Online

Khan Academy (Link) is a not-for-profit educational organization created by Salman Khan. With the stated mission of "providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere", the website supplies a free online collection of over 2,200+ micro lectures via video tutorials stored on their youtube channel (link), teaching mathematics, history, finance, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and economics.

Students can make use of their extensive video library, practice exercises, and assessments from any computer with access to the web.

 

All of the site’s resources are available to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy’s materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.

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Create an online survey for free

Online survey plays a very important role in improving a website or blog. Survey gives you a clear picture of what your visitors look for and how you can make that happen. Most of the website is not using a survey.  With Survey Monkey you can create free online survey, the only drawback  free users are not allowed to export the survey. Except export tool, survey monkey is a great source for creating free online survey and you can also link the survey to your blog or website. It offers user friendly interface and pretty simple. Follow the instruction to create online

Step 1

Visit surveymonkey website and register as free user. Create a survey is pretty simple. Enter a survey name to start creating survey

Step 2

Enter the questions, you need to display on your survey. 

Step 3

Once you are done with editing survey, click collect response and get the link code.

You are done. Now get more visitors by adding online survey to your website.

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Facebook Hack: Hide your online status from certain people

Facebook recently gone for a revamp to make user experience much better than earlier. When it comes to chat, Facebook still lacks many features which is common on other chat applications. Many of us would have felt why Facebook chat lacks features like invisible mode, block list to block certain users. So hence I came out with this hack to hide your online status from certain users.

It annoys when you get anonymous chat request when your status is online, many of us would go offline to simply avoid this issue. But now no worries, here is a hack which let you know how to block certain people from viewing your online status.

 Once you create a new list “BlockList“, click on edit in BlockList and select profiles of the users you need to block. If those users are appeared online just drag their name to the new list “BlockList“. After finishing this step, all you need to do is move your mouse over the green dot and click on “Go Offline“.

Now you had blocked your online status for certain people. Happy Facebooking.

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ReBuzzThis An Alternative to Buzrr For Google Buzz Counter

Everyone is taking about Google Buzz these days, but I don’t know exactly whether its really created a Buzz. But it seems people started focusing on creating application for buzzing products. Following this foot steps is ReBuzzThis a portal, which talks about Google Buzz’s hot happenings as like Tweetmeme for Twitter.

ReBuzzThis wants to encourage blogs and website to integrate Google Buzz as their sharing tool. So for bloggers, tools like this will really help to share their conversation and ReBuzzThis has also introduced Buzz counter button for different blogging platform and websites, which they believe would bring more traffic and make them stand out in Buzzing community. Well, we wish best of luck for their service.

To know how to add Google Buzz for your Blogger / Blogspot blogs, check our previous post. We had also included some compact Buzz buttons to give a twitter counter feel for Buzz.

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Social hub: How to integrate Facebook and Twitter in Gmail

Few days back Google released their new service called Buzz, which is really getting good response from users and stormed the Internet community with cool features. Buzz comes with Gmail integration, which makes Gmail users to access buzz without opening a separate window. So here I am going to teach, how to integrate Facebook and Twitter in Gmail.

Integrate Facebook in Gmail

Adding Facebook gadget is pretty simple, as like the way you add other services gadget to gmail. There are many Facebook gadgets out in the wild, but I felt Facebook gadget by iBruno is good to go. So all you need is copy and paste the the below URL in Gmails gadgets setting. Enter the URL “http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/104971404861070329537/facebook.xml”

 
Integrate Twitter in Gmail

Twitter integration is exactly similar to what we learned how to add Facebook gadget. Follow the same step and enter this URL instead of the Facebook gadget URL.

“https://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml”

If you need further detailed integration of Twitter gadget in Gmail, check out my previous post on Twitter gadget integration in Gmail.

So ultimately it looks clear that Gmail looks to be the social hub, by making integration pretty simple with their website and trying to provide the flexibility to user. Overall Gmail has become social command center.

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How to: Hide or Turn off Google Buzz from your Gmail

Everyone quite these days discussing about Google Buzz and its features, but there are few not satisfied with Buzz. Since it is a product from Google, they had integrated Buzz with Gmail. So If you are an Gmail user, who don’t like to see Buzz in Gmail, then this trick is for you. Here I am using filters to avoid listing Buzz in Gmail, may be some of us aware of this service in Gmail.

1. Hit on Create a filter and enter label:buzz in the Has the words text box. Then click Next Step button

2. Now tick the checkbox – Skip the Inbox and hit on Create filter button.

Now your Gmail is Buzz free. If you want to search for Buzz notifications use label:buzz. Actually there is another way of turning off the function. All you need to do is just hit on Turn off Buzz. Voila, turn on Buzz, by just hitting on the link once again.

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Creative Advertisements Of The Decade

Creating an advertisements involves lots of effort, especially to make it creative it requires even more. Advertisements are believed to be grabbing people’s attention to the product. This idea remained constant more than a decade, which led to the creation of fabulous and mind blowing advertisements. Every year advertisement industry has seen enormous growth, this proves the successful journey. So lets have a look at creative advertisements of the decade.

Google Street View

 

Firefox – Always use protection

The power of Viagra

Mini

Nike – Just do it

Samsonite

Bernmobil – Airport bus

Durex

Canon

Pedigree

Pocket pries

Jobsintown.de

Monster.com

Against child abuse

Moserbaer

Windex

Match.com

Powerbar

 

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Blogger's Next Generation User Interface Design

A lot of things is happening with Google at SXSW and Google has demoed a sneak peek of upcoming Bloggers’ user interface. They call it next-generation user interface and we too think the same. According the official blog post at Google blog, they are yet to demonstrate many new features this year. OK, so lets have a look at it in detail.

Check out the Video walk-through of Blogger’s new user interface design

Post Editor

Frankly I am not a lover of blogger’s post editor and thats until I say this newly designed post editor which is really awesome.

Dashboard

I am speechless at Blogger’s new dashboard which uses the Webkit to give a polished look to deliver the latest in web technology. Everything at one place from Stats, Earnings, Comments and a lot more. The design reminds me of WordPress dashboard sidebar design, however Blogger’s new dashboard is much polished that WordPress.

Content Discovery

The content discovery feature lets you uncover interesting and related content based on the topics of the blog you’re currently reading

After look at these feature, I am damn excited to see it live on our Blogger account. What about you?

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10 Best Free Online SEO Tools By Google

If SEO professionals around the world are scrambling to appear at the top of Google to search for particular words, then there’s nothing like using the tools that Google itself provides.

Online SEO Tools Provided Free by Google

1. Google Webmaster Tools: It is essential to know the condition of our websites in Google. Here we can see errors Google found, as well as tips to improve the website.
2. Google Analytics: The main tool to control access statistics. With your data we can make decisions about what is the best strategy for publishing content.
3. Google Website Optimizer: You can try different versions of your site that will be randomly displayed to visitors, allowing to obtain sufficient data for us to make decisions about design changes.
4. Google Zeitgeist: To view the most wanted in a given year. It helps to know the trends before starting a new project.
5. Google Trends: Allows you know how much or little that is sought a sentence or word in Google, allowing to compare curves between them. There are only the most popular.
6. Google Insights for Search: Allows you wanted to see what is a phrase or word, regardless of popularity.
7. Google Traffic Estimator: Made for Adwords, allows us to draw conclusions about the views that a particular word generates.
8. Google Keyword Tool: Also made for Adwords, we can help you choose the best words in our texts to attract more visitors.
9. Google Search Tool Based Keyword: Another option that allows us to find keywords on specific websites.
10. Google Ad Planner: For statistical profile of visitors to any website.

Before trying with so many options, remember rule number one: write good quality content, original and useful. The rest comes with time.

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100 Awesome Google Search Tools, Services to Find Any Information

In today’s schools, most research is completed online, and Google is a great resource for combing the web. But at the same time, it’s not always easy to find exactly what you want, given that there are usually millions of results — with varying degrees of accuracy.

 

 

These tricks can help you find the best results, while saving time and making your life easier.

100 Very Useful Google Search Tools

General Google Search Tools

These simple tricks will help you get what you want, faster.

• Find similar items: Search for "better than" and "reminds me of" with your keyword to find similar items.
• Track packages: Type in a tracking number, and you’ll get delivery information.
• Find expert information: Search in Google Knol to find expert writings on a topic.
• Search by voice: On your iPhone or Android device, you can search Google using just your voice.
• Set up alerts: If you have ongoing research in certain subjects, set up alerts so that you’ll be notified of new content.
• Check the Wonder Wheel: See related search terms on the Wonder Wheel.
• Add your profile: Put your name and image on Google with this trick.
• See downed websites: Google saves snapshots of pages that you can access, just using cache:website.com.
• Get behind pay walls: Use this hack to get into the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and more.
• Learn keyboard shortcuts: Find and pick search results without your mouse.
• Do multiple searches at once: Use this site for the power of 4 Googles at once.
• Easy spellcheck: Type a word into Google, and see if it suggests a different spelling.
• Use shortcuts for previews: Use your keyboard for Google visual previews.
• Gather citation information: Use info: to get information about a website.
• Search inside websites on Chrome: Use Google Chrome to search within websites from your address bar.
• Find trivia answers: Want to know the Star Wars release date? Just Google it, and you’ll get a short answer with sources.
• See a site in images: Plug site:examplewebsite.com in to Google Image Search to see the images on a website.

Reference Tools

These tricks make it easy to use Google as a reference tool.

• Get definitions: Find definitions for words, abbreviations, and more using define:.
• Get a timeline: With view:timeline, plus a keyword, you can get a timeline for the topic.
• Find numbers: Add phone to your search, and Google will look for anything that looks like a phone number.
• Do fact searches: Population, location, motto, and more are all available as Google fact searches.
• Glossary: With a word, plus ~glossary, you can find glossaries, lists, and dictionary entries for the word.
• Conversion: Google’s search makes it easy to convert any unit of measurement.
• Enter calculations into Google: You can use Google’s built in calculator to find the solution to calculations.
• Phonebook: Search for people, businesses, and more with Google.
• Track stocks: Keep track of stocks, and see charts and statistics by entering a ticker or stocks: company name.
• Use a variety of languages: Google Desktop Search is available in a variety of different languages.
• Translate with images: Query a foreign language word in Google’s image search to find out what that word means.
• Look up public data: Searches like "population texas" will return fact results.
• Identify things with Google Image Search: If you have no idea what a jicama is, just plug the word into Google’s Image Search, and you’ll see it before your very eyes.

Search Tools for Travel & Geography

Whether you’re hitting the road, skies, or the movies around the block, these Google tricks can help you out.

• Look up sunrise and sunset: Type in sunrise and a city to find the sunrise or sunset in a location.
• Check local time: To find out the time in any given city, just type "what time is it" + the city name.
• Check local weather: You can find out the temperature and forecast for a city just by using Google.
• Look up area codes: Enter an area code into Google to find out where it is and see a map of the area.
• Flight status: Just enter your airline and flight number into Google to find out the status.
• Follow sports: Use the names of two playing nations or teams in order to find out scores.
• Find movies: Type in movie: movie name city, state or zip to find local listings.

Shopping Services in Google Search

Get the best deals on books and more using these Google tricks.

• Find toll free numbers: Get toll free numbers by Googling "name" customer support, or "name" 800 OR 877 OR 888 OR 866.
• Search inside a store: Use the store: operator to limit product search results.
• Compare prices: Enter a product near a certain location, and you’ll see prices by location.
• Get local business coupons: Check out Google Local for printable coupons.
• "product name" sucks: Search out bad reviews by adding sucks to your search terms.
• Search all of Craigslist: Find items in any city with this custom engine.

Get Better Results in Google Search

Sick of finding millions of results that have little to do with what you actually need? Use these tricks.

• Use "or": Look up multiple keywords at once by making use of the "or" operator.
• Keep spam out of blog results: Follow these steps to get the best blog results in your search.
• Find faces: Use the code &imgtype=face to limit your image search results to faces.
• Do comparisons: Search for "better than" for comparisons.
• Find easy to read sites: Google Accessible Search helps you find pages that don’t use a lot of style and images.
• Use as many keywords as you need: When it comes to keywords, the more, the better.
• Wildcard: Use * to leave blanks in a phrase, such as [Senator X voted * on * bill].
• Get related search terms: Put a ~ in your search term for related items.
• Find linked pages: Look for pages that link to the one you’re on, and you can find extended information and commentary.
• Do a proximity search: Use the AROUND operator to find pages that have words or phrases near each other.
• Use quotes: By putting quotes around a phrase, you’ll find that exact phrase, rather than the words separately or together.
• Find only sites with images: Use Google’s search tools to select only websites that offer an image of what you’re looking for.
• Exclude terms: With the -keyword operator, you can keep out what you’re not interested in.
• Find document types: With the filetype operator, you can find certain file types.
• Find linked content: Search allinanchor: and you’ll find only content that has been linked by websites.
• Get rid of duplicate search results: Use "-site:website.com" to keep results from specific websites out of your results.
• Limit searches to a certain site: Using site:, you can look on only a particular site.
• Search numerical ranges: With the .. operator, you can find results between different numbers or dates.

Fine Tuning Google Search

Use these search tricks to get your results down to the very best.

• Search by reading levels: Limit results to advanced reading levels for your next research project.
• Limit time: Categorize your search based on time for the best results.
• Check out Show Options: Use Show Options to refine your search.
• Display a number of different country results: This trick will keep specific country searches from showing up.
• Turn off Google Suggest: Stop auto-completion of popular queries by turning off Google Suggest.
• Zero in on Wikipedia: Add the word info or information to your query, and you’ll get a Wikipedia link at the top of your results.
• Get books electronically: Search for "title of book" filetype:pdf to find electronic books.
• Find educational results: Get results only from .edu by using site:.edu.
• Search in a URL: Type inurl:term to find results with your term in the URL.
• Search Google without Google: Take away results from Google sites like Blogger by using this search engine.
• Custom Search Engine: Select your language, sites, and more in your own custom Google.
• Keep out synonyms: To make sure Google doesn’t provide results for synonyms, put + before words.

Media Tools in Online Search

Scour Google for videos, books, and more using these tricks.

• Find only playable videos: Limit your search to playable videos by using playable:true.
• Browse open webcams: Check in on webcams around the world with this trick.
• Search inside books: You can use Google to go inside books.
• Find ebooks: Search for books using this trick.
• Search by style: Find photos, clip art, line drawings, and more.
• Find quality free stuff: Use Google in conjunction with social media sites to find stock images, templates, and more.
• Find full size images: Look for full size images with this trick.
• Search song lyrics: Use this trick to find the lyrics to songs.
• Find music and books: Using a specific search operator recipe, you can find music and other files on Apache directory listings.
• Search video dialogue: Google Video allows you to search for text within a TV show’s dialogue.
• Find sized images: Search Google for specific image sizes, like icons or wallpapers.
• Filter by color: You can filter your image search based on color and more.

Google Scholar

These tricks make it easy to search Google Scholar like a pro.

• Follow library links: Check next to results to find out if it’s available at your school library.
• Search court opinions: Search by state, federal, and more.
• Always search through a school proxy: Using your school’s proxy will ensure that you find library research databases, full text, and more.
• Use "cited by": Be sure to check cited works, and you’ll cut down on your research time.
• Bibliography manager: Add citations automatically to a number of different publications with the Bibliography Manager.
• Find paper topics: Brainstorm research paper topics on Google Scholar.
• Search by author: Increase your results by using the author’s initials or last name.
• Search journals: Find articles in a particular publication using advanced search.
• Locate citations: Find citations that work for your research, then find the full document at your library.
• Limit results by date: Pay attention to when the articles were written.

Security, Privacy & Legal Information Services at Google

These tricks keep your privacy safe and more.

• Find reusable content: Search for Creative Commons content with advanced search.
• Remove your web history: Go into Google itself to remove your search history.
• Check your security with Google: With Google, you can do a security assessment of your own webpage.
• Delete history everywhere: Delete all of the searches you’ve ever made.
• Use Google as a proxy: If your school blocks certain sites, just look for it on Google and view it through a cache.

Hope you like them…

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