MakeUseOf.com: “Cool Websites and Tools [April 9th]” plus 10 more |  |
- Cool Websites and Tools [April 9th]
- The 5 Best Questions From You [MakeUseOf Answers]
- The 10 Top Free Apps For The iPad [Mac]
- Manage Your Blogs & Social Media Accounts with Postling
- 2 New Reasons Google Chrome May Pull Ahead Of Mozilla Firefox
- Social Network Face Off – Is Facebook Safer Than MySpace?
- 7 Quick Tools To You Solve Crossword Puzzles Online
- Top Deals of the Day [April 9th]
- How To Keep Track Of Speed & Location With Android
- The 2 Firefox Addons to Help You With SEO Keyword Research
- Daniusoft Video File Converter – Convert & Crop Videos Easily
| Cool Websites and Tools [April 9th] Posted: 09 Apr 2010 08:31 PM PDT
These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed. We NEED Your Comments! Please do share your thoughts in article comments! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The 5 Best Questions From You [MakeUseOf Answers] Posted: 09 Apr 2010 07:31 PM PDT
These are some of the most interesting questions that received the most comprehensive answers. We’re planning to reward the top contributors to MakeUseOf Answers. Hence, if you feel you can give great answers, go ahead and share them for a chance to become a winner!
There are many more interesting questions to be discovered! Check out our Latest Questions and Most Popular Questions. If you’re keen on helping someone, browse our Unanswered Questions page. For regular updates, you can subscribe to the Answers RSS Feed. Do you need help with a tech issue? Please ask us at MakeUseOf Answers. No strings attached! It’s free and you don’t have to sign up. Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 15,000 fans already!
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| The 10 Top Free Apps For The iPad [Mac] Posted: 09 Apr 2010 06:31 PM PDT
I'm also sure you have heard that you can download the iPhone and iPod touch apps you already own to your iPad tablet. But my humble recommendation is not to add all them of them to your iPad, only the free iPad apps that you really need to use.
Okay, so now let's move on to some optimized free apps for the iPad that look really great. EvernoteMUO has several articles on the free notebook application, Evernote. Not only can you get a free Evernote account, but the iPad app is also free. It take full advantage of the iPad screen real estate in which all your notebooks are displayed in icon form. When you click on a notebook, you get a really nice icon view of your individual notes and documents in the selected notebook, with selected content displayed underneath. I could write an entire article about this app, but suffice to say, the design is just great.
Apple's iBookIf you're looking forward to reading e-books on the iPad, you will want to download of course Apple's iBooks application. I haven't had a chance to read an entire book using the application, but based on reading a few pages from a sample book I downloaded from the iBooks store, the experience is pretty much like reading on the Kindle for the iPhone, but with a larger screen. Apple has thrown some impressive eye-candy into its e-reader that resembles reading a paper book. Personally, I'm glad I put off buying the Kindle and waiting instead for the iPad. If you're a dedicated Kindle customer, the Kindle for the iPad is equal to the iBook, for highlighting and bookmarking text and pages, though the iBook has search capabilities absent in the Kindle iPad app.
FwixFwix is a news reader that downloads top news stories about your local area. Stories are taken from various sources, and its elegant, clean interface scanning headlines very easy. And unlike newspapers, there are no ads on the front "table of contents" page. When you click to read the full version of a story, you do get ads on the source pages.
NPRThe NPR app is another free app I've written about for MUO. It's a great news app that is even better on the iPad. It has small ads at the bottom of the screen, but they don’t distract from the clean design of the interface. You get top NPR news stories in both written and radio format. You can also create a playlist of stories that you want to save or read later.
Furthermore, you can listen to local NPR stations and save them as your favorites. The app will locate the nearest stations for you, or search by zip code. Fluent News ReaderOkay, one more news app. This one downloads top news stories based on categories and topics you want it to search for. The sources include Wall Street Journal, Fox News, CNN, Time, USA Today, and others. You can also save stories for later reading.
Dragon DictationYou will definitely want to download Dragon's Dictation app to your iPad. It does the same thing as the iPhone version, but in the larger iPad version, you can save dictated notes as you do with Apple's free notebook. The only drawback is that you can't see text as you dictate, so it takes a little getting used to.
TwitterificI'm simply loving Twitterific for the iPad, even with its unobtrusive ads. The developers also take full advantage of the iPad's screen real estate. In horizontal view, you get every feature of the app available to you in on a single screen. In vertical view, you simply click on your account name and a menu bar pops out to access Twitter features. The entire design deserves an Emmy.
TweetDeckIf you're a Twitter power user, you'll want to add TweetDeck for the iPad. Its interface works much better on the larger screen, and you also can sync searches between other devices you have TweetDeck installed on.
NetflixIf you have a Netflix account, you can now watch streaming selected movies and TV shows on your iPad with this free app. It's part of your Netflix unlimited membership, and is not available for the iPhone.
ABC PlayerI'm not much of a television watcher, but the ABC network app looks to be a great way to watch streaming ABC shows. This app is not made for the iPhone, but with the much higher screen resolution of the iPad, the shows look great.
Well, that's my top ten selections of free apps, selected in the first 48 hours of the iPad's release. I know there will be many other free apps that MUO readers could recommend, so please do so in the comments section. Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Manage Your Blogs & Social Media Accounts with Postling Posted: 09 Apr 2010 04:31 PM PDT
Postling is a social media management tool that allows multiple people to manage multiple brands and social media accounts in one place. It is meant to allow you to seamlessly manage your brands through blogging, Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks. In this article, I am going to go over some of the key features and benefits of Postling.
Organize and Manage Your Social Media AccountsPostling allows you to get organized and be completely transparent with your social media campaigns. By aggregating all of your social media accounts into one place, you can limit confusion as well as the hassle of logging in or out of different accounts and having to remember tons of passwords.
Imagine being able to manage your blog, Twitter account, Facebook Fan Page, Flickr, and Tumblr accounts all in one place. Postling allows you to group accounts into distinct brand profiles. Share Access With Your TeamWhether you have a marketing team or multiple clients you can share access on Postling and collaborate with them. You can control what accounts they see, the brands they can manage, and whether or not they can share their access with others.
Everyone who has shared access enabled will be able to see all the content published on those accounts, which is meant to ensure accountability and transparency. Publishing On Your AccountPublishing to your social media accounts is pretty simple with Postling. Its Wordpress-like interface allows you to type up a blog post and select which networks you would like it to post to.
In only a few minutes, you can publish your blog post, update your Facebook page and Twitter with a link to the post, and upload any pictures in the post to Flickr. How long does that normally take you? You can also schedule posts and status updates to be published later on. Engaging Your ReadersAnother prominent feature within Postling is comment aggregation. Whenever someone leaves a comment for you, whether it's on your blog, Facebook page, Twitter, or Tumblr, it is displayed on your Postling dashboard.
From the dashboard, you can easily reply to the comment and the reply will be published right to the network you received the comment from. Tracking the Conversation
You can track what people are saying about your brand from Postling's tracking tab. Track what they're saying on Twitter, Facebook, Yelp and CitySearch. It seems to be a pretty new feature, as they are currently taking suggestions for additional services that people would like to see supported. ConclusionAll-in-one social media aggregators can be great assets to your brand management efforts. Being able to access and post to multiple accounts in one place makes it easier on you and saves you time, which can be huge in the long run. It also enables you to utilize certain social networks that you wouldn't normally spend much time on to engage your audience. What programs and applications are you using to manage your brand? Do you like Postling? Leave your thoughts, ideas, and comments below! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2 New Reasons Google Chrome May Pull Ahead Of Mozilla Firefox Posted: 09 Apr 2010 02:31 PM PDT
You see, since Chrome came out, it still had miles to go to split me away from Firefox. Sure it had its perks such as the different way it handled memory, its minimalistic feel, its simple way of handling downloads, etc. If I think hard enough I’m sure I could think of more.
Recently Chrome threw a few balls into the internet browser court that may end up being a game changer. There are two areas that Chrome has drastically improved over Firefox that cannot be ignored. Two activities, that have always annoyed me about Firefox, are now being done better by Chrome. They are themes and extensions. Let’s take a look at a Google Chrome vs. Firefox comparison. You be the judge. Which browser does it better in these two areas? Google Chrome Is Classy In The Way It Handles Themes
If you have ever installed a theme for Firefox, you probably noticed that Firefox asked you to restart the browser for the changes to take effect. This was the case until they came out with Personas (it’s easy to create your own). Now Personas were not fully-fledged themes but only skins for the browser. In other words, themes could modify shapes and designs of things like buttons, whereas Personas only change a few colors and background graphics. Personally, I’m happy with that. I like the buttons where they are. Getting back to the point, Personas do not require a browser restart, which is what I love about them. Chrome now does themes too. They have it set up so that a restart is not required. Like I said, I love that. Who wants to stop what they are doing and wait for the browser, with all the sites you’re working on, to reboot? I know I don’t. All things being fair, what Google calls a theme is basically the same as Firefox’s Personas, being they are only a few color and graphical changes. They’re basically skins. If you are happy with the simplicity of Personas, as I am, then you’ll probably like Chrome’s themes. Let’s see how simple it is to install a theme in Google Chrome:
Very cool and very classy. Lately I’ve been digging the simple design of the Puk-Puk theme. How about you? Google Chrome Handles Extensions Like A Million Bucks
Listen up, Firefox, because Chrome has a way of handling extensions that you can really learn some tips from. Firefox, just like the themes, makes you reboot the whole browser to activate an extension. Boo! Chrome comes to the rescue only requiring a few clicks. The process is simple:
See how easy it is? In my opinion Firefox must do something similar to get a hand in the extension handling fight. The point of this article is not to tell you that you ought to switch from one browser to another, nor is it to tell you one is better than the other. The point is to show you that the war is far from over. Sometimes it seems that as soon as we set one browser aside because it doesn’t do this or that, that browser comes out with some kind of improvement changing the dynamics of everything. Now it’s time for your opinions. Do you like how Google Chrome is currently handling themes and extensions? At this point in the war, which browser is doing better in the fight? Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Social Network Face Off – Is Facebook Safer Than MySpace? Posted: 09 Apr 2010 12:31 PM PDT
Is Facebook safer than MySpace? While lots of folks have opinions one way or another, this article is intended to give you all the resources necessary to make a decision for yourself.
A Note About MethodsResearching an article like this can be daunting if you are a fan of either Facebook or MySpace. Rest assured, faithful fans, I have accounts in both programs and generally like them both for different reasons. Thus, I have no agenda to “push” one or the other upon you.
In doing research for this article, to determine whether Facebook is safer than MySpace, I needed to figure out what “safe” means to the average user. Parents and teenagers have very different ideas about what is and is not “safe” on the internet. Parents, for example, do not want to see “potty mouth” talk online, but teenagers don’t exactly see foul language as a safety threat. So, we know for certain that there is a keen difference between “inappropriate” behavior, “risky” behaviour and outright “dangerous” behavior. This article will focus on the latter two, but I promise to come back soon to talk about the naughties and niceties of online behavior. Risky behavior is anything that has the potential to put a person at harm. For example, listing your employer’s address isn’t exactly dangerous, but if someone wants to stalk you, they now have some information about where you go every day. Risky behavior applies to adults AND teenagers, since adults often post too much personal information about themselves.
Dangerous behavior is worse; it is material that is ASKING for trouble. For example, posting something like, “For a good time, call me! My cell is…” is asking for peeps of all walks to ring you up. Again, this kind of openess doesn’t just stem from our teens; many adults post “invitational” messages, too. What Does “Safety” Mean?The difference in perceived and actual safety will truly rest on the settings and tools available within each program to protect privacy. In order to measure the two programs, we will rely on the sensible advice provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. While their information is geared toward protecting children, we can safely accept that their guidance also applies to adults. They have an excellent booklet that you can download and distribute to your teens or your coworkers.
The Pew Internet and American Life Project released an excellent study in 2009 on Teens and Social Media. You can download the whole study or read it online. According to their study, “55% of online teens ages 12-17 have created a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace; 47% of online teens have uploaded photos where others can see them, though many restrict access to the photos in some way; and 14% of online teens have posted videos online.” Clearly, we need to address safety and online behavior with our teens.
Interestingly, a lot of the data out there about safety issues between MySpace and Facebook is fairly old. Most of it stems from 2007 when it seems that there was a lot of press coverage given to MySpace’s removal of 90,000 sex offenders from its roles; pundits assumed that these people shifted over to Facebook, but it appears that both Facebook and MySpace do all they can to identify and remove sex offenders. Another comparison by the LovetoKnow blog in 2008 makes a really good point; safety depends on what you expect safety to mean.
Because there was little quality information available, and most blogs and articles seemed to have an agenda to push one program over another, I decided to focus on the safety policies and procedures of each one and provide you with a comparison. It will be up to you to decide which is most safe for your needs and expectations. MySpaceThe MySpace Privacy Statement indicates that it does not gather personal information “knowingly” from people under the age of 13. They will, however, gather information about you if you register for a service, try to win a prize, or take a survey.
MySpace does not limit you from listing information about you in your profile, and takes no legal responsibility for information you provide there. According to MySpace, “the Profile Information in a Member's profile is provided at his or her sole discretion.” Members can change their personal information at any time if they are concerned. You can set your stuff to private fairly easily, but you should remember that evil-sick people can and will do the same. Interestingly, MySpace offers a specific statement about members located in the European Union. The “Member is responsible for ensuring that such information conforms to all local data protection laws. MySpace is not responsible under the EU local data protection laws for Member-posted information.”
MySpace admits to using “cookies,” but takes no ownership for cookies designed and placed by third-party companies. While you can choose to block cookies, you might lose access to games and features that you use most often. MySpace is very clear that it has the right to disclose your personal information without giving you a choice if there is a legal reason to so. While the statement is pretty lega-leese, it basically states that if the police come a-knockin’, they will provide all of your data without asking or telling you. This is great if you are a parent and suspect someone is posing as a teenager but is really some sick dude. It can be alarming if you are a teenager thinking you are being funny by posting degrading and slanderous comments about your teachers. MySpace offers tips to its users and devotes a lot of time, space, and money to the issue of safety. MySpace Safety Tips is the overall topic, and Safety Setting tips from MySpace is more specific. Specific Tips for parents can be found in the section called Tips for Parents. The recent article about a convicted Facebook killer raises a lot of questions about the safety of Facebook. But, again, the same thing could have easily happened in MySpace or AIM. Since Facebook seems to have more current users, it isn’t surprising that sick people are drawn to it to find prey. The demographics and user statistics are interesting to read, as well.
The Facebook Privacy Policy is similar to MySpace in content, but is a little easier to read and has direct links for reporting offenses. They, too, accept no responsibility for what the user posts to, or omits from, their profile. They highlight four principles of their policy on the main page that all basically boil down to one key concept: the USER is responsible for checking his or her privacy settings and the USER must make changes to default settings as appropriate. Facebook does not take responsibility for information provided by the User. Like MySpace, Facebook does not collect information about children under the age of 13. Their statement is a little more explicit than MySpace in stating “If you are under age 13, please do not attempt to register for Facebook or provide any personal information about yourself to us. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under age 13, we will delete that information as quickly as possible. If you believe that we might have any information from a child under age 13, please contact us through this help page.”
There are some nice community resources about being safe in social spaces, and this video on Facebook safety is worth reviewing with your children: The rules governing Facebook and MySpace are nearly identical on every account. Advertising policies and Cookie placement, for example, is strikingly similar. Facebook, like MySpace, will, in a split-second, give your account up, including your IP address, if a person is in danger or the law is being broken. Both companies will pass along all of your information if they are sold and bought by a new company, and your rights will apply under the policies listed when you most recently agreed to the terms of service. Be the JUDGE!Who can decide whether Facebook is safer than MySpace or the other way around? The documentation is fairly equal, and so my professional opinion is that they are both equally safe and equally dangerous. A hammer, likewise, is both a great tool and a weapon; it simply depends how it is being used. In reviewing the documentation, I think MySpace does a better job helping parents and teenagers think about safety, but I think Facebook’s rules and regulations are more clearly written. In the end, though, both programs say the exact same thing. The user is responsible for what he or she posts, so take precautions and measures that fit your needs and expectations concerning safety. Image Credit: DCFS, mediaite, DailyMail Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 7 Quick Tools To You Solve Crossword Puzzles Online Posted: 09 Apr 2010 11:31 AM PDT
Here's some help to solve crossword puzzles online. I know solving crossword puzzles with the help of the web is pretty close to cheating. The Guardian even has its crossword answer button labeled as cheat. But heck, it's the only recourse when you are stuck at the intersection of five down and three across. When all is said and done, a completed puzzle is better than an incomplete one.
Most apps that solve crossword puzzles online rely on dictionaries and word lists to construct the clues from a few hinted alphabets. Not very remarkable, but even this simple technology can help save a few hairs when you get bamboozled by a crossword clue. Here are seven websites that can help you fill out the little white squares and cross out the across and downs. One Across
Most word solving applications study word patterns and provide answers. One Across says it 'analyzes the clue as well'. You can enter a crossword clue and/or the length of the answer or an answer pattern made up of a few letters with a question mark as the wildcard. One Across also lists several ways to refine your answer search. Read it in their Hints for better searching. AllWords
With the crossword solver at AllWords.com, you have to know at least a few letters of the word. The word also has to be 3 to 20 letters long. Enter the few letters you know, more the better and AllWords.com's word solver will spout out a list of words for you to choose from. You can also check the meaning to be doubly sure. This tool can also be used for playing other word based games like Scrabble. CrossTips
CrossTips has a fast and simple interface. Enter the word length, fill in the known letters, and you get a word list as solutions. CrossTips comes in four languages – Swedish, American English, British English, and French. Read a bit more about it here. Crossword Clue Solver
If you need a comprehensive online crossword tool, then Crossword Clue Solver is the site for the job. It has a wordlist based approach to start with where you specify the length of the clue and any known letters. For phrases and multiple length word strings, you can try out the three steps in the Crossword Solution Wizard. If all that fails, you can take the befuddling clue to the Crossword Help Forum that seems to have pretty healthy Q&A sessions going on. Ultralingua Word Hunt
Ultralingua is an online dictionary and grammar app. It also has a Word Hunt tool which you can use to find the word that's on the tip of your tongue. Wild cards and advanced search options are applicable. AskOxford
If you have trusted the Oxford Dictionary with your words, then this site of theirs could be handy while solving crosswords. AskOxford.com has an Anagram solver and a Crossword solver. With the former, you just have to type in the word and the possible combinations as whole words get listed on the right. The crossword solver works on the same known letters and wildcards combinations as the sites mentioned before. The field can handle words with a string length of 30 words. The online dictionary uses the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary for its word lists. Dictionary.com
This is one tool where you enter a clue phrase and get the word or synonym you are searching for. You can use wild cards too, but that's what most of the other sites as shown above commonly do too. Dictionary.com's crossword can act more like a reverse lookup tool. The Confidence (relevancy) percentage against each answer helps to narrow down on the solution. A serious cruciverbalist (that's the 14 letter word for the guy who creates or solves crosswords) might scoff at these seven web tools. But for the guy who is lost between his across and downs, it's a chance to complete the grid. Are you a crossword buff? Would you rather get thwarted by a clue than take the help of a crossword solver? Image Credit: bradlauster Got Questions? Ask Them Now FREE on MakeUseOf Answers! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top Deals of the Day [April 9th] Posted: 09 Apr 2010 11:00 AM PDT
Today, home entertainment systems, refurbished iPhones, iPods and Macs, cheap external storage, laptops and Dell coupons.
Laptops
Netbooks
Desktops
Home Entertainment
Mobile Phones
MP3 Players
Accessories
All deals are accurate at the time of writing. Image credit: Modified from Svengraph’s icon set We NEED Your Comments! Please do share your thoughts in article comments! Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Keep Track Of Speed & Location With Android Posted: 09 Apr 2010 10:31 AM PDT
For practicing sports, this can prove quite difficult. Have you ever tried mounting a dynamo to a pair of skis? Take it from me; it does not work. The next step takes us to radar and outdoors GPS technology. And either of those will cost you an arm and a leg. But there’s another alternative. If you’ve got an Android phone with GPS, there are a ton of free applications that’ll let you get the location of your Android and exactly how fast you were going. Best of all? Using a GPS doesn’t cost a dime, so you can use it to suck your battery dry anywhere in the world!
GPSTracker Lite
GPSTracker keeps track of pretty much everything a GPS can supply. This includes speed, altitude and location. You can view the recordings as raw numerical data, graphs, or as a Google Maps overlay. After launching the application, you can create a new GPS log by specifying the filename, description, and even the kind of sport or transport you’ll be using. While tracking, you can add a checkpoint with a flick of the thumb. These will start a new travel chapter, and show on the various graphs and the map overlay. Accessing GPS Tracking DataAs previously said, there are a number of ways to visualize the tracking data on your Android. A rather extensive overview can be reached via the State button. This will show you most data that’s instantly available, including the exact GPS coordinates, altitude, speed, GPS accuracy, traveled distance and – with a turn-by-turn GPS – orientation. Of course, when exported, you’ve got a lot more data at your fingertips, with near to a thousand of these GPS points saved every hour. Said GPS logs can be easily exported from the main screen.
A little more accessible are the speed and altitude graphs, very similar in implementation. Here you can view the approximated speed on a time axis, including minimum, maximum and average. The checkpoints are viewable on the graph as yellow dots, and you can add more of them on the spot.
Have you ever used GPS applications on your mobile phone? Let us know in the comments section below! Hey Facebookers, make sure to check out MakeUseOf fan page on Facebook. Over 15,000 fans already!
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| The 2 Firefox Addons to Help You With SEO Keyword Research Posted: 09 Apr 2010 09:31 AM PDT
The first involves proactively researching visitor behavior, or incoming traffic, at the site that you’re trying to promote to the top of the search engines. The second involves an innovative approach to researching your competition in order to understand the market that you’re in, and adapt your techniques to gain a competitive advantage.
Enhanced Google AnalyticsThe Enhanced Google Analytics addon is a tool provided by Juice Analytics. It was originally a Greasemonkey script, but is now repacked and offered as a quick and easy Firefox addon. The addon only focuses on two areas of your Google Analytics data – Referring Sites and Keyword Reports. However, if you know even a rudimentary bit about search engine optimization and identify high value opportunities, then you’ll know that these are two of the hottest areas to focus on. All you have to do is install the addon and you’ve transformed Google Analytics. The next time you visit Google Analytics, just go into the Referring Sites section. From the dashboard, click on Traffic Sources and then Referring Sites.
This screen will appear as it normally does, except for one tiny little detail at the top of the screen. You’ll notice a blue button that reads, “Who sent me unusual traffic?” When you click this button, you’ll see the magic.
The secret is that the plugin extracted your referring site data and conducted additional analysis for you – and extracting the important changes in your normal trends. The thing about referring sites is that you most likely have the same high-volume referring sites every week, and it’s not always easy to spot or identify when there’s a sudden blip on the radar.
Enhanced Google Analytics identifies decreasing and increasing changes that are significant enough (over 50% change) to demand your attention. As you can see here, over the last three days my site lost a bit of Google traffic (I haven’t posted in some time), but I recently received a lot more traffic from Google Image visitors from the U.S., the U.K. and Denmark.
This section will also show you where your brand new visitors are coming from (if new sources pop up on the radar).
Again, here you can see the international Google traffic, but one funny fact this plugin revealed to me is that I recently received a bit of new traffic from visitors using a particular proxy service. This isn’t much of a surprise, of course, as the site deals with conspiracy theories, and as such, visitors tend to be of the paranoid variety.
Under the same “Traffic Sources” section of Google Analytics, click on “Keywords” to get some insight into some of the significant changes in your keyword traffic. The focus here is change. You may receive high volume for a number of keywords, but this data tells you when there’s a dramatic change from your normal levels, providing you with some time to react accordingly and post new content that these visitors are looking for. In the example above, a lot of people have recently become interested in an individual I wrote about who claims to be associated with a U.S. intelligence agency – it appears this information is attracting more visitors, so the smart thing would be to react quickly and provide more related content. Downward trends may identify keywords that other websites started covering after you – so as the keyword becomes more competitive, you might slip in the listings – this would identify an opportunity to be proactive and improve your optimization for that keyword so that you’re more competitive again. Using The Keyword Spy Plugin To Study The CompetitionAs I mentioned in the introduction, Keyword Spy is a paid SEO tool, however they now offer a free plugin that lets you conduct SEO keyword competition research from right inside your browser and in parallel with your Google searches. Once you install the plugin, you’ll immediately notice the data and search box in the lower status bar.
As you visit your competitor websites, you get instant feedback of the Google Page Rank and the Alexa Rank of those sites. Even better, when you conduct a search in Google, the plugin appends as much information as it can about each site including ranking, the age of the domain, how many and types of links at the site and lots of other data. A little flag icon will appear next to the title to let you know where the domain originated (if available). The following search is for “cool websites.”
If you click on any of the top links, like Organic Keywords, PPC Keywords, Competitors or Domain Overview - you’ll get whisked away to the Keyword Spy website where you can review the intricate details of that data. For any analyst doing SEO keyword research, this sort of competitor data is invaluable, and to get it for free and on-the-fly within a Google search is just awesome.
Also, in the PPC ads off to the right, you’ll see small “View Keywords” buttons appear under the listed sites. This will also take you to the Keyword Spy website where you can review the top keywords for that site, providing you with some insight into how the site listed in the ad for that search term. Studying the competition is an important part of any SEO analyst’s job – there’s simply no better way to understand the market or the niche where you’re competing than understanding the techniques and behaviors of those who are at the top. By understanding the leaders and then emulating what they do (except hopefully, even better) then you’ll be able to bypass your competition. Do you conduct competition SEO keyword research for yourself or for clients? Do you have your own free tools that you find useful? Share your insight in the comments section below. Do you like MakeUseOf articles! Please do share our articles with others! It’s really important to us. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Daniusoft Video File Converter – Convert & Crop Videos Easily Posted: 09 Apr 2010 08:31 AM PDT
It is super simple to use and also has a built in video editor. Using the editor you can crop your videos to display only what you want or choose specific clips of time from within the video. This is a very nifty free application. It will allow you to convert files for your iPod, iPhone, Windows Mobile Phone and many others.
First, you have to download the free version of Daniusoft Video Converter. After downloading the 9MB file you will have to install it. After installing, this is what the home screen of the application looks like:
What we will need to do to get the ball rolling is click on add video. You can see the red arrows pointing to it in the screenshot below:
Choose a video file to convert and click open. This will load the video into memory for you to crop and convert. You will be able to play the video using the built in media player on the right hand side. This is a good test before starting the conversion to make sure the application recognizes your media file.
In the bottom left hand corner where it says profile, there is a drop down menu. You can click on that drop down menu to select the profile you want to use. This is a fancy way of saying "what do you want to convert your video file to?" I used the default AVI profile as that is my format of choice. It plays on all my devices including my DVD player off a USB drive.
After choosing your file format you can choose where your output file should be written to. If you have added multiple videos to your console you can also check the checkbox that says: "Merge into one file". This will add the files together in the order they are displayed. This is very handy for creating a compilation of multiple video files easily.
Now that we have all of your settings down pat we can edit our video. The edit feature in the free version really only allows for minor adjustments. But you can use it to crop your video down to a smaller size or shorten its length. These are very nice and easy to use features. You start by checking the checkbox next to the video you want to edit. If you only have one video you do not need to do this step. Then we will be clicking on the Edit button at the top of your interface for cropping or the edit button next to it to clip the video. You can see those buttons below:
You can type into the boxes that say cropped area size the size you want your output file to have. This will draw a box that size inside your original preview. By default it is set to the original size of your video as you can see below:
By changing it, only a portion of your video will be seen. Move it to the section you want to see. Your changes are immediately reflected in the output preview.
Click OK at the bottom of your screen and we are ready to do our conversion! Just click the big blue start button and the application will do all the hard work for you. And in a little while (depending on your video’s size) you will have your output file in the folder you selected before. Do you have a favorite free video converter? We would love to hear about it in the comments. Follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too. Includes cool extras. Similar MakeUseOf Articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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