Photo Credit: practicalowl

I discovered a cool free tool at the recent RSA conference, called Paros, a man-in-the-middle (MITM) proxy. While my fist impression was that Paros is no more than a hacking tool, upon further investigation I discovered it can be really useful to developers and testers.

If you don’t know what a man in the middle attack is, it is an Internet attack, where the person doing the attacking intercepts, and attempts to read or alter information moving between two computers.

As a dev tool, Paros is useful because:

• You can easily monitor the traffic between the browser and the site you are developing.
• You can trap the requests, and if you made an error you can change it, so you can test that whether the remainder of the application works correctly. This saves you having to immediately change the application to correct the erroneous request.
• It raises the visibility of the information being exchanged. If there is any user related information, other than the initial login information, get rid of it quick, as this will allow hackers to easily request other user’s information.

Fore warned is fore armed.

One thing I don’t like is that when you download Paros, they hide the download link in the top right hand corner of the download page, and present sponsor solicitations, which on a quick glance, you think they are required for downloading. They are not, so skip them.

I have since discovered Fiddler, which I had yet to try. This is a free tool, supposedly from Microsoft, so if you prefer a non-Java based application, as Paros is, give this a try.

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If you want to know what people are saying about you on the Web, consider using these free online tools.

Blogdigger allows you to search, as well as subscribe to RSS feeds, on specific keywords

Boardtracker will track threads in forums and sends alerts on specific keywords

Google Alerts will send you e-mails on the keywords you select

Ice Rocket helps you find mentions of you on the Web that Google misses

Linqia lets you search thousands of online communities via keyword

Serph shows you what is being said about you across social media sites – in real time

Summize searches Twitter for specific keywords in real time

Technorati lets you search on keywords, or subscribe to specific tags via RSS

Twing lets you search for forums by posts, threads and topics

If I’ve missed any you think are great, please let me know.

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I often get questions about creating, maintaining, and optimizing an online presence from small businesses and non profits; how to get into search engine results, how to redesign an old site, what tools are available that are useful, inexpensive or free.

If you know of any tool or resource I have not listed, that is particularly good for small businesses, please take a moment and leave it in the comments below.

Before you Launch your Small Business Website

Before you Launch that Local Small Business Website

Read Rae’s tips on what you need to think about before you launch your small business website - particularly good if you have yet to begin your online presence.

Your Domain Name

If you want to create a professional and credible site, one that enhances your product, service, or business, it is imperative you choose your domain name with care. Problogger Darren Rowse explains how the right domain name can make or break your business.

10 Tools for Researching Domain Names

Not only is it important to find the right name, it’s imperative to make sure that the name you decide on doesn’t have any bad history associated with it. Steven explains it best and offers 10 tools for you to use in your research.

Blog Dammit!

Duct Tape Marketing author, John Jantsch, provides number five in a five part series, Blog Dammit! and explains why you must start and grow a blog in 2008 if you haven’t already.

WordPress: Not Just for Bloggers Anymore

Did you know that WordPress lets you build an entire website; one that is optimized for search, easy to setup and maintain, and requires very little technical nouse? If you don’t, read this article by Barry Ochsner

Creating and Maintaining an Audience

How to Get Repeat Visitors for Your Website

There are two types of visitors to a site: new visitors and repeat visitors. In this article, Maki provides insight into how to create an online place that people will want to return to.

Give Your Readers Room to Participate in Your Blog

If you are having a hard time getting visitors to leave comments, read this article by Problogger Darren Rowse that explains how you can gently encourage and engage your readers, and build a reputable online presence.

10 Free Ways to Get Blog Exposure, New Readers and Success

There is much you can do if you want to spend money on getting exposure on the Web, but what can you do to increase exposure without having to pay one cent?

Analyzing Your Site

Analytics On The Cheap: Six Free Stats Packages for the Startup or Small Business Owner

If you’re not analyzing your website, you should be. Tamar Weinberg describes six free statistics packages and explains how they can help your business.

Competitor Analysis to Build Traffic and Links

Having an analytics package isn’t enough. You need to understand how they work so you can perform competitor analysis and use the results effectively to grow your own site.

Website Grader

Website Grader measures your site’s marketing effectiveness. It gives you a score that incorporates information from Alexa, PageRank, Technorati, Del.icio.us, and offers information about the health of your site (how many links in, from where, etc). Good for an overview, but will never replace a professional SEO audit. Read Michael Gray’s post Why Website Grader is a Bad Idea for more information.

Check your Google PageRank

Type in your URL and your Google PageRank will be displayed.

Google Webmaster Tools

See how Google crawls your site and any problems it’s having; you can also see how your site is performing here.

DNScoop

DNScoop attempts to estimate the value of an established website or a domain name, by using factors such as; links, popularity, age, pagerank and traffic of the domain.

Business Blogging

Business Blogging 101

Darren Rowse gets you thinking about how businesses should use blogs, and gives you the basics in plain English if you want to start blogging.

Choosing a blog platform

There are many blogging platforms around, some requiring technical know how, others not. Read this post if you are not sure which platform suits your needs best.

WordPress.com

For an easy to use, non-techie approach to blogging, WordPress will give you more than other platforms. Ad-Free, customizable, and optimized for search, Google loves WordPress, so will you. If you are tech inclined, you can run WordPress software (free) on your own site. See also, WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org for more information about the differences.

How to install WordPress software

Ten video tutorials from Stefan Mischook on how to install and configure WordPress if you want to give it a go yourself.

Ninja Blog Setup

If you decide to go with WordPress software and host it yourself, but don’t want the headache of setting it up yourself, these guys will set up a blog for you, for free. They make their money by providing hosting partners.

Small Business Blogging: What to Blog About

If you’re not quite sure what to write about, read this post by Dan Bricklin that offers practical advice for small businesses.

Legal Guide for Bloggers

The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers a basic guide to laws surrounding bloggers.

De Clutter your Blog

If your blog looks cluttered but you aren’t sure which components you should remove, read this. This is particularly interesting for those who cannot work out the ‘musts’ in a sidebar.

10 WordPress Plugins that Encourage Visitors to Return

If you want your blog to be user friendly, there is no nicer way than to offer visitors options that are useful and helpful.

10 Things CEOs should know about Web Design

Anita Campbell points out what works and what to steer clear of when it comes to Web design.

Design decisions that annoy readers

Things to think about and not do when designing your site.

9 Ways to Gauge Your Visitors’ Experience

Vandelay Design helps you understand the opinion of your visitors, and explains why you need to take the time.

Signs it’s Time to Redesign your Website

Erin Ferree points out seven ‘tells’ that will let you know it’s time to redesign.

Does your Web Site Suck?

Two checklists from Vincent Flanders, author of Web Sites that Suck to help you determine whether you need to overhaul your site. Fill them in, learn from them, and then use this page to help you fix things.

How to Redesign a Website

You’ve made the decision to overhaul your site, now what? From .net magazine, the things you might want to consider.

How to evolve your irrelevant corporate website

Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research explains why your website may be irrelevant, and gives tips on how to rebuild to stay relevant.

Best Premium WordPress Themes For a Non-Blog Look

If you don’t like the blog look, but want the advantages that a blog brings, take a look at Donna’s post.

Cream of the Crop: Six Cutting-Edge, Minimalist WordPress Themes

According to Skellie, these six themes are at the forefront of modern, minimalist, typographically interesting WordPress theme design. She also tells you how to tweak them for maximum impact.

Content for Your Small Business Website

The Seven Deadly Sins of Website Copy

Michel Fortin shows how simple copy changes to your site can transform an average site to a great site.

The Power of the “About Us” page

Do you have an “About” page? Was it just thrown together, or did you spend time putting it together for maximum impact? Bryan Eisenberg gives expamles of the most common mistakes.

Building More Effective “Contact Us” Pages

When putting together a site, not many people think about their contact information. It’s time you did and Bryan Eisenberg shows you how.

Forms that Work: From the book Web Design for ROI (Sample chapter PDF)

If you have forms on your site, read this and make sure you don’t annoy your visitors by making your forms too tricky

Page Not Found: Error 404

What makes up a good error page? Have you even thought about it? If you haven’t, it’s time you did. WebMama shows you what to think about.

The “Coming Soon” page

While not everyone agrees you should have a coming soon page, if you decide you need one, take a look at this first.

A Complete Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images for Free

Skellie shows you how to make your site more interesting by incorporating great imagery. It doesn’t need to cost much; oftentimes it will cost you nothing more than time.

Search Engine Optimization for Small Business

SEO Jargon Buster

A complete glossary of essential SEO jargon for beginners.

13 Ways to promote your local business for free

Small businesses take note. Michael Gray gives you quick and easy tips to get noticed in search results, that can bring more traffic to your site.

10 Tips to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

Mike Busson explains that search engine optimization is not rocket science; you just need to be aware of the basics.

7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 Hours

There are ways to speed up getting noticed by the search engines; you just need to know what they are. Michael Jensen explains.

7 Simple Ways to use Universal Search to Appear on Top of Google

Tad Chef walks you through the various components that make up Universal Search and how to use them to increase your chances of being included in Google’s search results.

What is the First SEO Question? What is the Second SEO Question?

The first two questions you should ask yourself before you embark on an SEO program, and a third on the way from WebMama.

Introduction to Keyword Sniping

How to choose keywords, and how to use keywords; one of the most important articles you can read from Courtney Tuttle.

All about Permalinks

Mark Blair explains permalinks, and why it is important to get them right if you want search engines to like your site.

All about Title Tags

Title tags make up the text that appears in the top left hand corner of your browser when you visit a Web site. Did you know that you can choose to put your own words there? Jill Whalen offers the ultimate in title tag explanations.

All About Description Tags

Rand Fishkin shows you how to make the most of your meta description tags. If you don’t know what they are, you will by the time you read this.

Optimize Video for Search Engines

Video is getting bigger on the Web every day. If you decide to use video, Jody Nimetz gives you tips to optimize them for search engines.

Optimize your Website for Google Image search

Maki explains how to optimize your images, make your site more visually attractive, and attract search engine traffic at the same time. If you’re not doing anything but uploading pictures, it’s time to understand how it all works.

Linking Strategy for Small Business

The Ultimate guide to building the perfect link

The biggest problems small businesses face is getting links to their site. Matt McGee walks you through types of links, how to approach them and what not to do.

102 Ways to get backlinks

Written in the order they need to be done, Courtney Tuttle walks you through how to get links to your site the right way.

Link to Yourself Using Anchor Text

Anchor text is extremely important if you want search engines to notice you under specific key words, Darren explains why and how to do it.

20 Ways to Get Legit Links Without Getting Penalized by Google

If you don’t want to annoy Google, but want people linking to your site, try Tad’s recommendations – they work.

Link Buying Guide: Directories, Ads and Reviews

If you want to buy links, buy links that don’t jeopardize your online presence. Loren Baker lists his favorites.

PR and Marketing

Blogging’s a Low-Cost, High Return Marketing Tool

From the New York Times, a recent (Dec 07) article explains how, for some small businesses, blogging is the way to go if they want a great tool to raise the company profile and build their brand.

Ways to Market your Business Online

You can’t expect to compete as a small business today without choosing from a growing arsenal of online marketing tools. Here are four ways to get your business noticed on the Internet from CNN Money.

I am Clueless About Your Product: Sell it to Me Correctly

Tamar Weinberg points out the importance of using everyday words on your site if you have a product to sell. Use the KISS method, easy but often forgotten.

The Etiquette of E-mail

Good business means communication, and although e-mail is used a lot, it’s not always used correctly. Gina Trapini shows you how to do e-mail right.

Features Vs. Benefits: The Showdown

Do you know the difference between the features and the benefits of your product or service? If you don’t, you should. It makes marketing your small business oh so much easier. Naomi explains.

Lowdown on press release optimization

Lee Odden shows you how to write a great press release, and offers a list of wire services you can use to distribute them.

How to Advertise your Website or Business: 8 Paid Advertising Models

Advertising is one of the fastest and easiest ways to bring traffic to your site—if you do it right. Read this if you want to understand the various types of advertising, and how to work out the best places to advertise.

How to Get News Coverage

A beginner’s guide to getting media coverage, particularly useful for those with small budgets.

Reputation Management and PR for Small Business

Online Reputation Management for Beginners

Andy Beal walks you through the importance of online reputation management. Did you know there’s a good chance that your name, your company, or your brand is out there somewhere on the Web, quite possibly put there by someone you may not know?

Search Engine Reputation Management Techniques

If you’ve ever come across your name (or your company name) on the Internet, in an unflattering light, try these techniques and turn the bad press around.

Want Your Business to be Featured on CNN? Send an I-Report

Share your tips in with CNN and you could be featured on television. Just fill in the form and you’re set.

Social Media for Small Business

Ten Reasons to Use Social Media

Tad explains the importance of using social media; why and how it can benefit your online business.

Strategies for Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

Charlene Li, senior analyst at Forrester talks about what business objectives and results can be achieved with Web 2.0 technologies and how social technologies will transform your business in the future. Audio and Video available (approx 1 hour) at PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre).

The Importance of Social Media Marketing

Maki explains how social media marketing is a low cost way of promoting your site that will get you links, attention and lots of traffic.

Online Networking and the Professions That Use It

If you haven’t been networking online, it’s time you start. Muhammad Saleem points out networks for the medical profession, musicians, educators, photographers, and business folk.

What is StumbleUpon?

Garrett Camp, Founder of StumbleUpon talks about what StumbleUpon is, how it works, why it works, and what they have learned over the years. A presentation for PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre) Audio and Video available (approx 1 hour).

What is Facebook?

According to Sugarrae, this is the updated, unofficial and smartass guide to using Facebook. If you’ve always wanted to know more, here’s your chance to find out what it’s all about in a fun way.

Facebook Ads and Will They Work For You?

Facebook advertising isn’t for everyone, but advertising on Facebook may work for you. This article explains how.

Ways to use Twitter

17 ways you can use Twitter: A guide for beginners, Marketers, and Business Owners from Maki

The Big Juicy Twitter Guide

A seven part series on what Twitter is about from Caroline Middlebrook

Effective Marketing on LinkedIn

If you’re using Linkedin and are not quite sure why, Helen shows you how to effectively market yourself with this business networking tool.

Useful Tools for Small Businesses on the Web

Blidget

Create a blidget; a widget that sits on your website and pulls in the latest entries from your blog. Customizable and free

Browsershots

Browsershots lets you test how your site looks in different browsers; Firefox, Opera, IE, Safari, running on different operating systems; Linux, Windows, Mac.

Colour Lovers

If you are planning changes to your Web site, Colour Lovers helps you work out what color schemes work well together. It also gives you RGB and Hex reference numbers if you want to pass them on to your site developer.

Contribute

If you are paying a programmer for each tiny change to your website, it can get expensive, and quickly. Contribute allows you to easily update pages on your site using your browser; no technical knowledge required and can save you tons of money in programmer fees. From Adobe - $169 with free trial period available.

Decluttered

How to declutter your desk. Not so much a tool, but a how to on making your desk neater; always good for business – and cheap and easy to do.

Deyey

Design your business cards online for free; then save them on your own PC and print them up. A nice alternative to better design without the cost.

Favicon Generator

A favicon (favorite icon) is an icon that is displayed in the browser address bar before the site’s URL. If you don’t have one, but want one, upload an image and the favicon generator will create a favicon for you to use.

Fax Zero

If you’re in the US or Canada and don’t have a fax machine, go to this site, upload your document and send your fax for free.

Feedburner

Feedburner is a free media distribution service for blogs and RSS feeds. This means you can automate the process of sending your news to your audience via e-mail or RSS. It also allows you to track who is reading your content.

GIMP

Gimp is a free powerful, full-featured photo editing program, comparable to Photoshop. Available for Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Google Alerts

If you want to know what is being said about you or your company online, Google Alerts offers you an easy way to keep track. Type in the words you want monitored (your name, your business name, your competitor etc.) and let Google e-mail you each time that word appears in search results.

Goog 411

Instead of calling 411 for information call 1800 Goog 411 ( 1 800 4664 411) and get a street address or phone number for free.

Icon Buffet

You need an icon, but where to get it? Become a member and get free icons sent to you, or buy your own packs here. The philosophy is quite neat. They give away free icons every month, but not everyone gets the same ones. The idea is to swap them (sorta like swap cards) and use what you like.

Icon Factory

The Icon Factory offers great looking icons you can use for your site as long as it is not for commercial use (then you have to buy them). But, for non profits, this just might be the way to go.

International Time

Does your business deal with customers internationally? Make it easy for them to contact you by adding a link to local time on your contact page–customizable.

Jott

Jott is a free service that converts your voice into text and sends it to you via e-mail or text message; great if you need to record something but don’t have a pen handy. (US only.)

Media Convert

You upload one file format, and Media Convert will convert it to another file format. Works with most formats of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, video and audio.

Montastic

Montastic monitor your website and send you an e-mail if it goes down. This free service can check your site every ten minutes, and saves you the trouble of visiting your site as often.

Open Source Web Design

Over 2000 free designs for you to choose from for your Web site.

PC Decrapifier

Have you ever bought a PC only to find it filled with pre installed junk you don’t need? The PC Decrapifier gets rid of all that stuff. Free for personal use

Resizer

A free image resizing site. Upload your pictures and edit them online.

SEO Tools and Lessons

9 SEO tools you shouldn’t be without from Aaron Wall (with free lessons).

Stock Xpert

Stockxpert is a royalty free stock photography community. With over 100,000 images, search by keyword for the image you need. Costs per image range from $1 - 3.

The elements of typographic style applied to the Web

For the tech inclined.

Typeflash

If you’ve ever been stumped for inspiration when it comes to typography for your site give typeflash a go.

Widgetbox

A useful assortment (over 30,000) widgets that you can add to your site – all free

How To and What is?

Understand Search Engines and Subject Directories

UC Berkeley offers lessons on how to search, including explanations on the differences between search engines, subject directories, and the invisible Web.

What is RSS?

RSS and all its bits explained by Darren Rowse.

The best 10 RSS readers for Windows, Mac and Linux

There are many free RSS readers out there, Tad shows you the best.

Understanding Domain Names

What is a domain name and how does the domain system work? A non technical explanation from Internic.

How to Podcast

A free step by step guide for anyone wanting to create a podcast

How to Design Web 2.0 Style

A tutorial that covers various common graphical elements of Web 2.0, with explanations of how, when, and where to use them best.

HTML for Beginners

In English; also has intermediate and advanced HTML.

CSS for Beginners

In English, with intermediate and advanced CSS guides.

Photoshop Tutorials

Easily understandable and doable, if you’ve ever wanted to give it a go, try visiting this site first.

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In this always on, 24/7 world, anyone working on the Web knows that time is an extremely elusive element – it seems our brains go at a hundred miles an hour.  Boy I wish there was another one of me…

In an attempt to make my life easier, I keep - no further than a click away - resources on the Web that make my life easier.  Here are 10 of my favorite sites – bookmark them:

The Way Back Machine

Although I don’t use this daily, it is one of my most useful tools.  Let’s say you visit a site, come across something useful, bookmark it and forget about it.  Three months later, you’re researching for a post, and you remember that useful comment on somewhereoutthere.com?   You go back, and alas, it is gone.  Error 404: I hate that.  Well, this is where the Way Back Machine comes in beautifully to save the day.  Just go to the site, type in the URL and bang!  It offers up, by date, a list of archived dates for that site.  Click on the month you were there and voila – instant access.  There are in excess of 85 billion Web pages archived since 1996 for your viewing pleasure.

Browsershots

Browsershots lets you test how your site looks in different browsers; Firefox, Opera, IE, Safari, running on different operating systems; Linux, Windows, Mac.  Just visit the site, type in the URL of the site you want tested, and your request will be placed in a queue.  Processing time is dependent on the number of requests at the time, but I’ve never had to wait more than an hour.

Media Convert

You upload a file and Media Convert will convert it to another file format.  Works with most formats of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, video and audio.  It’s fantastic for inserting a PDF into your Web page by converting it to an SWF Flash file, or converting WMV into MOV. Hundreds of formats are supported.  Media Convert also lists mobile phones and the type of formats each supports for easy reference.

I Love Jack Daniels – Cheat Sheets

Dave Child provides the best in cheat sheets, particularly useful for developers, but more and more becoming important for bloggers.  His cheat sheets include quick references for: RGB HEX Color Chart, PHP, CSS, MySQL, mod_rewrite,  JavaScript, HTML, HTML Character codes, ASP/VBScript, and more.

Google Advanced Operator Cheat Sheet

The Google Guide is an online interactive tutorial and reference for experienced users, novices, and everyone in between. Visit the site and learn if you need to, but at a minimum, keep the Google advanced operator cheat sheet close to hand.

Rex Swain’s HTTP Viewer

Rex Swain wrote his HTTP Viewer to see exactly what an HTTP request returns to a browser; it lets you see your site as search engines do. 

To use this free tool, type in your URL and voila!

Web site Grader

Website Grader measures your site’s marketing effectiveness.  It gives you a score that incorporates information from Alexa, PageRank, Technorati, Del.icio.us, and offers information about the health of your site (how many links in, from where, etc).  It will generate a report and offer basic advice on how you can improve your site from a marketing POV.

Colour Lovers

This is one of the greatest sites to get color inspiration for your site.  With thousands of color palettes to choose from, it is useful when you need the hex or RGB codes for specific and unusual colors.

Automated Gif Generator

Easily create a loading or waiting animated click by selecting the indicator you want from a choice of 40 (ish), selecting a background and foreground color, and pressing “Generate.”  Free, easy, very Web 2.0.

Validator and Link Checker at  W3C

The W3C mainly produces specifications, but also provides some useful tools for folks of the Web.  All are easy to use, usually all you do is type in a URL and you will be given a list of issues with your site; then it’s up to you to fix them. 

HTML Validator

CSS Validator

RSS/Atom Feeds Validator

Link Checker (helps you find broken links)

Plus: One cool tip!

World Time Server

Fellow Aussie, Darren Rowse has a simple, yet really useful link on his contact page that takes you to the World Time Server, so you can tell what time it is in Melbourne before you ring him.  If you want to have conversations with people from around the world, consider setting up a link to your location on your contact page.  It’s just a nice thing to do.

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There is an ongoing argument about whether SEO is dead or not. Some even talk about SEO 2.0.

I don’t really care; I just want the Web to be easier to navigate and safer to use, and for this to happen we need to pay attention to Web standards.

If you’re a blogger, does the product you use measure up?

Mine does. Not only does it measure up, but Google likes it too.

Coincidence or not?

So what’s in search results for blogging software at Google?

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Cedrick Collomb has a handy utility called Unlocker which will tell you which processes are preventing you from deleting a file or folder.

If a delete fails, you get the generic access denied error message from Windows; however, if you have Unlocker installed, then it will popup and display the processes which have a lock on the file or folder.

For example, attempting to delete C:\Windows\System32\user32.dll (yes this would be a dumb thing to do) will display the following list of processes (which will be almost everything running on Windows):

Unlocker allows you to force the file to be unlocked, or even kill the processes; however, I prefer to find out which processes are preventing the deletion and closing them myself.

One common issue, is that you have an editor active, but no files currently being edited, and you can’t delete the folder which contained files you just recently edited.  The editor’s current directory is the one you want to delete, so Unlocker will show the editor process in its list.  So you know to exit the editor so you can delete the folder.  An alternative is to open a file from a different folder within the editor, so the current directory changes to something other than the folder you want to delete (or ones of its children).

You can run Unlocker on a file before you attempt to delete it.

It would be nice to have a Close button within Unlocker, which would politely ask the application to close, much the same way you would select Close from the system menu when you right click on the system tray’s entry for the application.

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Lid pointed me to an article by Mark Pilgrim, the author of GreaseMonkey Hacks for Firefox, about forcing Firefox to use https, so that you know that your email is secure from any person of ill intent who wants to read your email by monitoring the data being exchange between your machine and Google.

It got me thinking that although this is technically pretty cool in that you can load scripts which can redirect http://mail.google.com to https://mail.google.com automatically, this does raise the possibility of another script being loaded, unbeknowist to you, which changes say https://www.wellsfargo.com to say https://www.weiisforgo.com (they look more similar within the address field of both IE and Firefox with 2 pixels of black being the difference between ‘l’ and ‘i’) and then getting your login details.

Now Google allows you to access your mail via https, but you need to initiate this by going to https://mail.google.com instead of http://mail.google.com, so if you bookmark the https version, they you are good to go in either Firefox or IE.

It would be nice if Google allowed you to force access via https as one of the gmail account preferences, so if you mistakenly access your mail via http it will warn you.

I didn’t try Yahoo, but Microsoft don’t allow https access to hotmail, or at least provide the hassle free option that Google does, maybe if you throw $’s Microsoft’s way.

Note to Google, why can’t http://www.google.com/mail/help/images/mvideo_thumb.jpg be accessed via https so that IE does not complain about secure and non-secure items being on the same page when you logout (yes you can set “Display mixed content” to prevent this).  Logging in does the same, but I can’t quite figure out the item being referenced via http.  If only Google didn’t obfuscate their pages, then we could easily look, um steal [ happy 25th smiley].

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WinDirStat: Windows Directory Statistics is a Windows utility which allows you to view disk space usage, broken down by:

• Folder/Directory - percentage of parent folder allows you to identify the folders taking up the most space.
• File type summary - useful for seeing how much space your pictures take up
• Individual files

The graphical view, called TreeMap, allows you to easily identify the largest files.

After installing and letting it analyze my disk, I was able to instantly free up 2.0 GB which was used by archives of old database backups I had forgotton about.

WinDirStat took 12 minutes and 39 seconds to analyze my disk which contains 36, 406 folders and 460,374 files totalling 54.5 GB.

And the best bit it is open source (hosted on SourceForge.net) and free.

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Among the many sessions at the recent Searchnomics conference, Barbara Coll,  WebMama CEO, along with Reid Spice of iCrossing discussed tools for search engine marketing. 

Whereas Reid spoke about the advantages of using automated systems, specifically iCrossing’s proprietary system, Coll spoke about the importance of “hand managing” PPC (pay per click) campaigns, and offered a list of tools for SEM.

WebMama’s Tools for Search Engine Marketing presentation is now available on video.

In particular, Coll recommended:

www.marketleap.com to see what is being indexed

www.se-spider.com to see the links to your site

www.rexswain.com to see your site as search engines do

Note: One of my freelance gigs is for WebMama, however, this post is of my own choosing as I honestly believe the tools Barb offered are an invaluable resource for all SEM’s.

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Marissa Mayer, Vice President, Search Products and User Experience at Google, was keynote speaker at the recent Searchnomics 2007 conference in Santa Clara. 

She walked us through recent developments at Google, and pointed to what she considers the cooler stuff Google is working on - or - the future of search; specifically automated translation and voice recognition.  All things that open up the power of the Web to more users are cool to Google.

Here are my favorites: 

Google “Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR)

CLIR is a new Google product that will translate search queries from one language to another, run a search using the second language, then spit out the results in the original language.

The example Mayer gives is searching for “Restaurants in New York” in Arabic.  As it turns out, there is no information on the Web about restaurants in New York written in the Arabic language - lots in English though…

And this is where Google’s CLIR comes in. 

CLIR translates the query into English, searches the index and finds the most relevant pages, then offers results in Arabic and English, side by side. 

Voila! Information that was once inaccessible to certain people suddenly becomes much more accessible.

Read the “ Search without boundaries” post on the official Google blog. (May 23, 2007)

  

Google Book Search

Photo credit to Jeremiah Owyang, Jeremiah on Flickr

Working with 16 major libraries and publishers, Google is still determined to bring all books online and make them searchable.  A recent addition to Google Books is metadata (information about information).

Although this doesn’t mean you will be able to read every book online (think copyright), what it does mean, is you will be able to search for a book, then, using Goog’s other services, find a copy based on location (be it from a bookshop or library). 

Google have also added an “About this Book” section, meaning you can look at reviews, references from Web pages, and references from other books. 

Another cool feature is you can look up places mentioned in this book, with pop outs available pointing to the page where the location was mentioned. 

Official Google Blog entry “ Books Mapped” (January 25, 2007)

1-800-GOOG – 411

(Also known as Google Voice Local Search)

411 (in case you are not familiar with the US way of things), is a call to the operator of your telco service – the place to get information.

When you ring 1-800-GOOG-411, Google takes your voice and converts it to text, does a search, and spits back results via SMS.  It even offers to connect you free of charge (you only pay your provider costs).

However, the stuff happening in the background is way cooler.  By assembling an array of voices, that lead to better voice detects than are currently available, Google is laying the foundation for its voice recognition software to be used across a range of Google product, for instance, using it over video to pull out transcripts. Of course, the more people that use the service, the better Goog will understand the sound discrepencies.

This service is still in beta, and is only available in English, in the United States

If you want to learn more, check out the GOOG411 discussion group

  

Google Video

At the moment, when you search for video on the Web, you are presented with a thumbnail image of the video that is related to your search.  Soon, and Mayer expects this is likely in the next year or two, you should be able to do a video search and get not only a thumbnail, but also a transcript. 

In addition to voice search, Googlers are working on visual search, which will allow the searcher to look at a filmstrip (various images from the video - see pic above), that will hopefully allow the user to see at a glance whether the video is what they are searching for, although Mayer expects this will happen after voice.

More about changes in Google Video at Google Blogoscoped

Universal Search

Video, books, images, and news are now included in Google’s search results.  It’s called Universal Search and debuted a couple of months ago.  See Danny Sullivan’s  Google 2.0 article at Search Engine Land for more detailed information.

According to Mayer, the idea is to present to users an almost encyclopedic experience. 

Right now, only certain Google services are used, but Mayer expects more of their data, such as blogs, to appear soon.

  

Google Maps

 

Photo credit to Jeremiah Owyang, Jeremiah on Flickr 

You can now use Google Maps to look at traffic results in real time.  Mayer shows us that heading down a certain highway at the end of Searchnomics is a mistake – huge delays. 

She also talks about the Street View, explaining how useful it is for those people heading to a new restaurant/bar/café, giving the example of the Olympic Club in San Francisco.  Instead of driving around in the rain, she checks street view and knows exactly what she needs to look for when she gets there.

Google Grant Ventures

Photo credit to Jeremiah Owyang, Jeremiah on Flickr

Today Mayer announced Google Gadget Ventures  which provides two types of funding:

The first tier grants are for $5,000 to people who have built gadgets that Google would like to see developed further.  You need to have 250,000 page views per week to be eligible to apply.

The second tier is a seed investment of $100,000 to developers who would like to build a business around Google gadgets.  You need to have been granted tier one to be eligible for tier two.

For more information, check out Google Gadget Ventures FAQ’s and if you’re interested in building your own, check out the ‘how to’ page, at  Goog Gadgets API Developer Guide

Mayer explained that Google Gadgets allows lay people to create their own product, and gives the example of young Caleb Eggensperger, a google gadeget maker who has 6.5 million page views per week…I guess this means he is definitely eligible to apply for tier one grants.

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