LinkChecker | Find broken links with this firefox extension

Broken links or missing links are not liked by the Search Engines and the websites having missing links are severly penalized by the Search Engines. So, it is very important that the webmasters constantly search their websites and webpages for the missing links. If your w

ebsite is smaller,

then this task can be easily accomplished by LinkChecker, which is firefox addon, and will ensure you to quickly find the broken or dead links on a webpage.

The link status on the webpage is expressed in different colors as shown below.

red - broken links
yellow - forwarded, forbidden links
green - good links
gray - skipped links*

Kevin A. Freitas, the creator of this popular firefox extension has also created a test page here for you to see its usability.

Nice useful web tool for SEO and web development.

www. dontclick.it | Makes your mouse redundant

I have just come across a very novel website based on an idea, which has the potential of completely changing the way we use the Internet.

Welcome to www.dontclick.it. It is a website, just like any other website with lots of pages and navigation links, but with a totally different approach. You are not required to click anywhere. That's the way the name of this website has been devised.

Go, check it out. It is really a nice experience.

How to rename multiple files in windows

Recently I had to upload about 100 photos of my daughter's birthday from my digital camera to the PC. These digital cameras generally give these uploaded pictures an unrecognizable name like DCMZ123 and so on. I wanted to change these to Birthday (1), Birthday (2) and so on.

It semes like it had to be done manually one by one.

But when I searched for an easy method, I came to know this.

Just select all the files at one one go, who are to be renamed, right click and selecet rename. In the dialog box, enter birthday and lo...you are through. All the files are renamed exactly as you have desired.

It is lot more convenient.

Webtools is now PR 4

Today I am a happy lot.

After a wait of six months, Google has finally given this blog a PR rating of 4.

I have expected to get at least 2 or 3, but I must say, I myself was not expecting PR4.

But it is here, and I am happy.

FireFTP | Firefox add-on for FTP

File Transfer Protocol, FTP, is the protocol through which a client and a server communicate for the transfer of a file. But the term is loosely used for the software programs which use FTP to transfer the files.

One of the the most popular FTP program today is FileZilla. However it is standalone program, and you have to run it separately. If you wish to have an FTP functionality right within your firefox browser window, than FireFTP is for you. It is firefox add-on and very light weight, just like any other firefox extension, and performs the task quite efficiently, just like your favorite FTP program.

Verify email address

If some unknown person gives you his / her email address and you want to verify whether it is genuine or not before actually sending an email, then what can you do.

One method is to send an actual email to him and wait for the response. If it gets bounced then it is fake, otherwise genuine.

But that is not a fool-proof method.

Better is that you head for this cool webtool to verify the email address here.

Caution: But I will not advice you to use this service, because the credentials of the company are not yet verified, and there may be chances that they are collecting the email addresses and may spam them in some way or the other at a later date.

Save office files as pdf documents

PDF has been a very popular method of distribution of documents so as not to allow the recipient from editing and changing the document. There are many stand alone programs available, which can covert an office document into a pdf document.

Earlier, there used to be a built in feature in MS Office 2007, which allowed users to save the document in pdf format. But due to dispute with Adobe, the creator of the pdf concept, Microsoft had removed that feature from Office suite.

But now, Microsoft has again started to bundle the same feature in the form of a add-on utility, which you can download from the Office 2007 download center, but you have to have a genuine copy of Office because the download checks it before any installation.

Secured email messaging through Lockbin

Many email services today use SSL, the secured Service language to protect the privacy of your messages. But your emails are still not safe. There are lots of freely available programs on the Internet, which can sniff your message easily, specially at the Hi Fi spots.

Lockbin, is a special and free online web tool, which encrypts your message with a code words supplied by you and sends an email to the recipient along with a link to retrieve the message. However, the recipient can read the message only if he enters the code word, with which you had encrypted the message. Now it is upto you how you send the code word to the recipient, it can be through IN, chat, email or phone.

Simple service, but still useful.

11 great Firefox add-on free games to waste (use) your time

Firefox today is the first choice of the informed web surfers. Firefox is fastly racing ahead IE in the browser race. It is true that with the introduction of IE 7 and Safari, its pace has slowed down, but it is still the popular browser of people who use Internet more than average persons.

One of the reason of its popularity is its open source nature. That is, add-on applications developed by third party can easily be integrated with it to customize it as per your needs and requirements. This blog has previous written posts on various firefox add-ons like ScreenGrab, Hyperwords, Sparky, SiteAdvisor and many others.

Here we are going to let you know about 11great firefox add-on games, which you can play within your browser. No need to download heavy flash files, no need to spend big bucks purchasing them and absolutely no risks of adware, spyware and other sorts of malicious scripts generally associated with various games.

But let it be clear, that these are not very hi profile games. These are simple, light weight desktop games, but surely have the potential to keep you involved for hours.

So here goes the list. It is in no definite order.

Xoom: A simple racing game, which offers two tracks - beginner and advanced. The controls aren’t very much like steering.

Clines: A clone of the colored lines game you’ve seen here and there. The goal is draw a line of five balls of the same color, which then disappear and give you points.

Mozteroids: Nice graphics. It is like a modern version of the old “Asteroids” game. You drive a spaceship, which can spin, thrust, stop, and shoot. The target is to blow up the approaching asteroids before they collide with you.

Cards: A collection of card games like Solitaire. It also includes games like Aces Up, Double Klondike, Double Solitaire, and many more. This is a very complete solitaire implementation, with your choice of about 29 different solitaire card games. Also has a full feature set; undo, hints, scoring, automatic “smart” card moving, and more

Froggr: It will bring memories of the classic arcade game, Frogger. But here, the movements are a bit smoother and game is slightly more challenging.

Mines - Another classic game - Minesweeper - in your browser window.

Pag-Man: Remember the famous addiction of nineties. This new avatar comes with a two-player mode also.
PingPong - For those people who find playing Pong against other people too difficult, you can just play against the computer.

PONG! Multiplayer: Play a game of the classic game Pong while chatting with people online.

Snake - A clone of the popular game Snake and Worm.

Xultris - Bringing the love of the colored block game Tetris to your browser.

5 great Gmail web tools for doing things other than email

Gmail is a wonderful email service. The secure and robust email service from Google is probably using one of the most powerful spam blocking techniques and the ever increasing storage capacity, which is more than 2.6 GB at present, and still counting, gives you something more than you can wish for.

But there are lots of other application, which can over ride on Gmail and give you a unique experience.

One such application, which allows you to use the spare storage capacity of your Gmail account virtually as your hard disk, was mentioned elsewhere on this blog.

Here are some other applications, which you can use with Gmail.

Gmail Music: Allows you to store MP3 files in your Gmail account and play them on any computer using a web-based GUI. This application has been developed by SourceForge.net project.

GTDInBox: This is a firefox browser add-on, which allows you to be more organized. It incorporates a Getting Things Done tool with Gmail. It was once ranked #12 in the 'Top 50 Firefox Extensions' article in .NET Magazine. Gmail Todo is yet another tool from the stable of SourceForge.net project, which also allows you to do the same thing.

Gspace: Just like GmailDrive, this tool also lets you turn your Gmail account in to a virtual web drive that you can upload files to and store them. It is a firefox add-on makes your Gmail account look like a FTP host.

gTalk Sidebar: This great firefox add-on Google Talk into the Firefox sidebar for easy chatting on the same browser window you are browsing. This tool can also be used to send off mails quickly.

These are great web tools. Try them, they are free.

GmailDrive | A useful web tool for using Gmail as your hard disk

Most of us use Gmail, the robust, secure mail service from the big 'G' Google.. which gives us more than 2.5 GM worth of space. But most of this space is remain unutilized as emails generally consume very little space unless heavy files are attached to them.

Have you ever thought of utilizing this space for some productive use.

Gmail Drive, is a useful web tool, which allows you to use this space virtually as if it was available on your hard disk. You can save files, add folders, rename files, search files and delete them through Windows Explorer just like any other file on your computer. And the best part is that, these files are available to you from any other computer, which is connected to the Internet.

GMail Drive actually creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account.It actually creates a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder.

Caution: But GMail Drive is still an experimental tool and is developed by third party.

Take notes online with TwitterNotes

Remember the old school days...when we used to remember the things by taking notes. Wasn't that the best way to do / remember things.

The same flexibility is now available with TwitterNotes. With TwitterNotes, you can twit your note, tag it and it will get added to your note list, that all while your are online. The web tool is closely linked to Twitter but they only scan your timeline for notes and copy them into TwitterNote service. There will not be any change to the messages in your Twitter account.

To create a note using Twitter, you just have to write a message and prefix it with a plus sign, like this: + I will write today a post about web tools on taking notes.. And the note will be saved into your account.If you want, you can also tag your notes as per your convenience for better organization.

I like it, a nice web tool.

Learn foreign language online with Mango

Learning a foreign language is often a tedious and time consuming job and generally requires special tutors.

But Mango is a new online web tool, which makes learning foreign languages a whole lot easier. It is currently in Beta and is FEE at present. Signup process is easy, no email required, no passwords.

The unique plus point of Mango is that it uses both audio and visual technique for learning. You go through different slides; the quality of learning material and quality of audio is great, there’s a lot of the materials, and it’s free!

Why don't get it NOW.

Fluther | Yet another place to find answers to any questions

After the success of Yahoo Answers, there are now many sites on the web, which provide answers to your questions. After the launch of websites like Microsoft's QnA and Ask Metafilter, now you can find your answers at Fluther.

The exact meaning of the word Fluther is a group of jellyfish. Fluther community of users, who ask questions and other answer that. It tracks your activities and let you monitor questions you've asked or answered in real time. They also promise to send your questions to so-called experts, who are considered experts because they have successfully answered questions on related topics in the past.

The Big 'G' Google is also present in this market, but on a more serious note. Google Answers, relies on paid experts to generate answers, and therefore, it costs you to get your answers through them..

Fluther is hand-tailored for you. The more you participate, the more Fluther gets personalized for you. Fluther also a large tag cloud, which displays the topics of questions asked in a easily comprehendible tag cloud format.

Fluther has installed a ranking system also, where you get points for good and bad answers. People rate you based upon the quality of your activity on Fluther. And based upon your ratings, you are given access to advanced features.

In all such website, one thing I really wish. If these services could start a feature, where the person can also be able to discuss the answer in real time, it will be really interesting.

You can find many other services also on this question / answer these. With the presence of Wondir, Oyugi and Yedda, this space seems to be getting over-crowded.

del.icio.us tags: fluther, answers, questions, google answers, QnA, Wondir, Yedda, Oyugi, yahoo answers, ask metafilter

A complete guide to what is social bookmarking (Part II)

In the first post of this series, we had detailed about the concept of what is social bookmarking and mentioned the advantages and disadvantages of using them as search engines. No we present here a list of some of the popular bookmarking sites. This list is in no particular order and contains some lesser known sites as well.

AllMyFavorites: Here you can create your own page, store bookmarks, share them with your friends and family and access them from anywhere.

Backflip: Gives list of most popular links on the homepage, Easily customizable to give webpages of your interest easily.

BibSonomy: Provides a tag cloud, suggests related tags. Detects duplicate content before submission. Easy navigation , clean site.

BlinkPro.com - for advanced users / researchers, a subscription-based service, and therefore doesn't bombard you with advertising or annoying email marketing

Bluedot.us: Uses tabs for organizing your page, you can import contacts from mail services like GMail and Yahoo.

Connectbeam.com Uses the concept of social bookmarking to enhance the productivity of a corporate entity.

Connotea.org - Allows you to export your library of resources into other programs (like EndNote) or subscribe to an RSS feed of your own or another user's library.

Diigo.com Very convenient to use, just select the portion of the webpage, write on it like you would a piece of paper, share and share it.

Ma.gnolia.com - Contains a discussion facility, where you can share and discuss bookmarks in groups.

Netvouz.com - Facility of password protection, Hotpicks for your most used bookmarks, import/export capabilities, RSS feeds, clean user interface, no advertising. Also available in Swedish!

SocialBookmarking.org - Separate tag clouds for the user and global, blog, avatars etc.

StumbleUpon.com helps you discover great websites. With a single click you can find and share interesting sites recommended by friends and like-mindedpeople. You can feel like channel surfing.

Yahoo! My Web A huge platform, duplication detection system

These social bookmarking sites allow you to add clippings also.

BlinkList.com - allows you to rapidly bookmark, label and comment on any web page. You can even send your saved pages to your blog for wider sharing.

Clipmarks.com - Single up-to-date bookmark set, Complete Privacy, Coolest Management Tools

del.icio.us - One of the biggest social bookmarking platform.

Furl.net - Suggests you the best pages which may interest you. You can save the archives also and can export your bookmarked page as a ZIP file.

RawSugar.com - member-designated tags to refine your search, It can cluster your tags for you based on recommendations by other users.

Simpy.com - It can even detect the links that have changed, distributes your bookmarks via your blog’s RSS.

Spurl.net - You can check out their hot lists, recommends you the suggested links.

Digg.com - The mother of all social bookmarking sites. Most popular. Has the rating system in the form of number of times a link has been dug.

Netscape.com - Now known as Propeller. Earlier was considered a better browser than Internet Explorer, but now is a news aggregator.

Newsvine.com - Allows you to write articles on news events, save links vote, comment and chat on article pages.

Reddit.com - A neat voting system to move your story up or down.

Shoutwire.com Instead of digging a story, here you shout it.

Technorati- the recognized authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs.We help people search for, surface, and organize bloggers and their daily posts

Thoof.com A unique feature is that others can improve your story by editing it or fixing the URL.

Besides these, there are many others, not so popular but good websites.

• A1-Webmarks
• Aboogy
• BandBuzzer
• BlogMarks
• BlogMemes
• Blog-buzz
• Blue Smiley Organizer
• BmAccess
• Bookmark Base
• Bookmark Buddy
• Bookmark Commando
• Bookmark Magic
• Bookmark Tracker
• BookmarkSync
• Bookmarx
• Bookmax.net
• BuddyMarks
• Chipmark
• CiteULike
• ClickMarks
• Clipmarks
• CommonTimes
• Complore
• Connectedy
• de.lirio.us
• Dohat.com
• EasyBM
• Excites
• Favmark
• Favoor.com
• Feedmelinks
• Finety
• Frassle
• Freelink.org
• GetBoo
• Givealink
• GlobusPort
• Google Bookmarks
• GUIcookies
• Hotlist Anywhere
• HumDigg
• HydraLinks
• Hyperlinkomatic
• IC Soft, Inc.
• iFaves
• IKeepBookmarks itList
• Jots
• Kaboodle
• KMFavorites
• Lilisto
• Link2Mark
• Links2Go
• Linkroll LiveFavorites
• Linktopia
• Lounge
• MarkaBoo
• MemFrag
• MindDeposit
• Mister-Wong
• Mobleo
• MURL
• My Bookmark Manager
• MyBookmarks
• myFavorites Anywhere
• myHq
• MyLinkVault
• MyWebDesktop
• Nextaris
• Newo17
• Online Bookmark Manager
• openBM
• PeerMark
• Philippine Country Bookmarks
• Pluck Web Edition (PWE)
• Powermarks
• Save Your Links
• Scuttle
• Searchles
• SearchFox
• Shadows
• Shoppersbase.com
• SiteBar
• SiteJot
• Smarking
• SportsLister.com
• Start Aid
• SV Bookmark
• Sync2It
• SyncOne
• unalog
• URLBlaze
• 2URLex
• Web Feeds
• WhatLink.com
• Whitelinks
• Wink
• WireFan
• Wists
• World Wide Wisdom
• wURLdBook
• Xilinus
• yourMarks
• Zoogim.com Online Bookmarks
• Zurpy

A complete guide to what is social bookmarking (Part I)

The concept of Social bookmarking is probably the fastest growing idea in today's cyber world. social Bookmarking allows Internet users to store, organize, share and search for the webpages of their choice. Users save links of pages they want to remember, at a convenient location. No need to remember them or clutter your browser's window.

These bookmarks may be private or public, which can also be seen by others. The users can browse through them chronologically, by category or tags, via a search engine, or even randomly. The biggest reason for the popularity of these bookmarking sites is that they are now being used to drive traffic towards your own site or blogs.

Social Bookarking as search tools

At the time of bookmarking, you can tag the web pages with appropriate words, which can later be searched by you as well as other. Today's Social Bookarking has started replacing the traditional methods of searching through search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Advantages

This system is human based, as against the automated systems of search engines. So, the system is more perfect.

They virtually provide a rating system to the web pages. Bette pages are bookmarked by more people. So, larger no. of bookmarks usually can be associated with better content.

Drawbacks

However, this system doesn't have standard set of tags. Also there are spelling mistakes while tagging, no discrimination when words mean more than one thing.

Furthermore, thismethod is susceptible to corruption and collusion. A webpage of a popular blog, with just about average quality of content, is likely to be bookmarked by more people than a page, with excellent content, but hosted on a not so popular website. Spammers also use lots of tags to bookmark their pages, just to gain more visibility.

With this background, we will present here a list of some of social bookmarking site in the coming two post of this series.