Tag: Online Tools

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Reviews

Keep track of webpage changes which does not have RSS

Some pages on the internet are made by people who do not really want to engage with other proactively. As a blogger you cannot image someone writing a blog or creating a website without any RSS feeds. Most websites which are popular absolutely support RSS feeds but sometimes some websites which I might feel important and want to follow changes to do not have RSS feeds. 🙁

This is where I liked Change Detection a website to keep updated about changes.

Features of Change Detection

  • Just enter the name of the website which you want to monitor changes to and also enter the email address to which the alert is sent.
  • Practical use can be to actually monitor a change of policy in a company or stay updated if a software you are using has newer version. 😉
  • It can also double up as Google alert but I have not tested it much. Still feel Google alerts works great.

Previously I had written about how to use Google Reader to create rss feeds of any page which can also be used to monitor a website and changes it has. Change Detection is better in the sense I do not need to your Google Reader! 😀

Do you monitor any website without RSS? Do let me know your views through your comments.

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News

YouTube increases video limit upto 15 minutes

YouTube yesterday announced that the default time limit for users uploading videos has gone up from 10 minutes to 15 minutes. If you were wondering why most videos were 10 minutes or less on YouTube was because they did not allow making a video longer than 10 minutes.

What will it do?

If you are using YouTube for looking up tutorials like I do, it can get a little annoying to see part 1 and part 2 for longer tutorials. Having the limit go upto 15 minutes it makes it easier for publishers to have a single video show a lot more.

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How is YouTube celebrating it?

  • YouTube is starting something called 15 minutes of fame. You can create a 15 minute video of your life or about you and upload it on YouTube. You have to tag the video “yt15minutes”.
  • Once tagged some of these select videos will be features on YouTube’s homepage in a future spotlight. Basically this is a great way to become famous with a 15 minutes I guess. 😉

YouTube is always upto something fun. Be it allowing us to create 3D formats of our videos to playing snake game while a video loads. It is never short of constantly doing something cool and interesting.

Do you think 15 minute videos on YouTube will help you as viewer? Or do you think 10 minutes was more than enough? Do let me know through your comments.

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Reviews

Twilk – Put your Twitter followers on your Twitter background

Reward your followers by putting them on your Twitter background. Twilk makes this super easy and even sorts them based on how much you mention them in your Twitter feed.

Twilk takes your Twitter followers’ profile photos and puts them on your Twitter background.

Twilk Features

Twilk is really easy to use. You sign in with Twitter info and it does all the work for you, plus you can edit where you want your friends to be. Great idea!!

  • Choose between people you follow and/or your followers
  • The more you interact with someone, the more prominently they are positioned
  • Other options: 2 columns only, black and white

Although Twilk is primarily a free service, they also offer a paid subscription that will automatically update your background daily.

  • Upload your own custom logo for the upper left of your background.
  • Exclude certain avatars from appearing on your background.
  • Choose which people get put on the left side of your background and much more. 🙂

If you liked reading this post you might also enjoy reading 3 great online tools to clean up Twitter.

Do you think showing your followers display pictures as your Twitter background would be useful to create an impression? Do drop in your comments with your views.

Link: Twilk

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Reviews

Easy way to create word cloud in seconds from website

An image of a word cloud can be quite eye catching and very useful to quickly say a lot about something within seconds. For instance a word cloud of Devils’ Workshop can show all the relevant and important words associated with the blog and give you a pretty good idea about what we are all about. 🙂

Wordle.net is a great website which creates a word cloud on any website URL or even a a list of words you enter manually. Below is a screen shot of one such word cloud.

Features of Wordle.net

  • Wordle works on Java and creates a ‘word cloud’ of which you can take a screenshot and share it.
  • You can choose three options on the content part which are a group of words, words from a webpage and also another cool feature which creates a word cloud of tags you have as on a del.icio.us account.
  • There are a range of options to edit the word cloud. You can choose to have all the words displayed vertically or horizontally. Or also choose a mix of them. You can customize the colors and also delete unwanted common words in English. 🙂

This seems to be quite useful for someone looking to create a presentation. Give Wordle a try and do let me know your views through your comments.

Link: Wordle

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Reviews

Create 3 color gradient in CSS with online tool

If you are starting off learning CSS, online tools to create CSS code are quite useful. Recently I wrote about creating CSS borders without coding knowledge which was useful for the amateur. I found another nice tool to create 3 color gradients in CSS with an online website.

3 Color Gradient Generator with CSS 3

  • The 3 boxes at top allowed me to select the three colors of which I wanted the gradient effect. Once selected click on “Generate Gradient“.
  • The results are in three parts. We get the visual representation of the 3 color gradient with like Top to bottom, Left to right and Radial. It also has the code which can be used by copy-pasting it. 😉

  • The only drawback the website mentions is that the gradients are at equal distance with Firefox 3.6, Chrome and Safari browsers. It might need manual adjustments with other browsers.

I like the 3 color Gradient Generator tool as it does make the repetitive work a little easy to carry out instead of working on it over and over. If you liked this tool you might want to check on how to go about speeding up your CSS coding with CSS generator which is another cool tool.

Do you like online tools which generate CSS? Do let me know through your comment if you know of better alternatives or other such tools.

http://freehtml5templates.com/gradientgenerator/gradient-generator.php

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Tips

Does Your Blog Appears Correctly In Every Browser?

There are some browsers which do not display your blog or site properly. Sometimes the font is wrong and we have other problems as HTML 5 is being used more often.

You realistically cannot install every browser and check your blog on it. So I am going to tell you a website where you will be able to see a screen-shot of your blog on different browsers and even their older versions. It doesn’t even require any sign-up or registration.

You just have to submit your blog and wait for a few minutes depending on how many browsers you have selected for testing.

Images from Makeuseof.com

  • This online tool is called  Browser shots and it practically is a one stop testing site for all browsers. 🙂
  • When I submitted devilsworkshop.rsites.dev6.rt.gw in it, I saw that most of the browsers were showing it perfectly. 🙂
  • When I submitted my blog, some browsers were not showing it perfectly.
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It has more than 60 browsers listed and we can see full screen preview of every browser we selected. This is ideal if you want to get a quick overview of the number of browsers which can view your website correctly. You might need to redesign some parts in case you find a particular browser which is popular and showing your website incorrectly.

What are your thoughts on this online tool? Which browser do you use? Do lets us know through your comments.

Link: Browser shots

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Reviews

Check two files with text for differences within seconds with diffChecker

If you are a professional web designer most times you will have tools or features in the software you use to write code to help check where code is different from another. But sometimes amateurs and also writers need to see the differences between two bits of text to quickly see where something was missed.

diffChecker is one such web service where I could upload two different text files and get any differences between the text of those files.

About diffChecker

  • diffChecker is very easy to use and the best feature of it is a novice can also use it immediately. Also there is no need to sign up or register with the website to use this feature. 🙂
  • I sometimes write a post and then improve on it. To learn what mistakes I make at the beginning I tried to use this tool by comparing how much I had to improve upon.
  • This tool is ideal to check a backup file of a HTML code and compare it with another file you have been working on to see where exactly you might have deviated or changed course.

If you liked using this tool you might want to check on a web site which helps checking if you are using certain words repetitively.

Do try out diffChecker and let me know if you know of any other similar tools by dropping in your comments.

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Reviews

Create A Free Logo Using LogoSnap

If you are starting your own blog and don’t have budget for designing a new logo then you should check out LogoSnap, a free service to create interactive logo in few minutes. Just visit the site and make a logo in 4 easy steps.

First you have to choose your profession. It will give you an attractive icons set.

select logo logosnap

You can select among large amount of symbols given. You can sort symbols according to various categories given on the left.

select symbol

Now the step 3 is to customize your logo. Select the font and colors. There are fonts suggested by the tool itself. You can always select other fonts to design it. You can flip, rotate, zoom and scale the logo to check it in various aspects.

devilsworkshop

After you satisfied with it, move on to step 4 and register with the service. After registration, you can download logos in JPGM PNG and EPS formats. Your logo will be saved in your account and you can browse it anytime.

This site is free to use and its interface is dead simple. This site also offer paid service to create a custom logo. So if you don’t have contact with designers then you can move to this site for the custom logo design.

You might like to also read up on guess the correct logo game for brand geeks.

Check out LogoSnap to create free logo easily.

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Reviews

Find the value of your Facebook page

As a blogger I feel Facebook pages are very important as it allows a blog to share links to its blogs and it is helpful to people who are basically using Facebook more than anything else.

So what is the value of your Facebook page? The answer is a little difficult to explain. Mainly every fan of your Facebook Page is a money maker. For a blog it might translate to consistent visits and hence adding up on adsense revenues. 😉

It shows the the value of Fbknol’s Facebook page is about $2640 and that is if we calculate each fan worth $5.00. Ofcourse for a blog its difficult to earn $5 through every fan so we can actually increase of decrease the number. This will increase with lets say a Facebook page of a company offering paid services on the internet.

Try out Evaluator Virtue for looking up the value of your Facebook Page and get pointers on how to improve its end value.

Do you have a Facebook Page and do you think it is crucial for your business? Do let us know through your comments.

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Reviews

AudioExpert: Edit And Convert Sound Files Online

Audioexpert is a multifunctional online tool that can be used for editing sounds. Apart from editing sounds you can convert the sound from one file format to other.

To get started with the service, you need to sign up with the service. Before editing the sound file, you need to upload it to the server of the service. It supports up to 100 MB files. After conversion, you’ll get the download link to download the converted file.

audio-experts

You can cut or crop audio files of various file formats. Also you can merge different files into one file. It convert files from one file format to another. It supports different file formats (WAV, MP3, OGG, M4A, AAC, FLAC, AU, AMR, WMA, MKA).

audiomasters

Features

  • Easily converts and edit document online.
  • Change the file format, bit rate, frequency of the file easily.
  • Supports batch conversion.
  • Upload files up to 100 MB in size.
  • Sign up is required.
  • Free to use.
  • Merge multiple files into single track.
  • Record audio and save it directly to WAV, MP3, WMA, OGG or other available file formats.

Check out AudioExpert to quickly edit and convert sound files online.