Useful Tuesday : Pagealizer
Looking for a new web site tool? Try out Pagealizer for a fresh look into what your site visitors are interested in when they go to your website.
“Pagealizer helps increase page conversion by showing relevant usage data and suggesting page design and content optimizations. We show in great detail how long people stay on a page, bounce rate, how far they scrolled down, and where they clicked. Our patent pending algorithm then analyses page performance so we can suggest what should be done to improve user interaction in your site. Even an experienced site owner would be surprised from the insights gotten from our website analysis. If you are interested in landing page design optimization - Pagealizer is for you.”
Useful Tuesday : Online Photo Editing
Online photo editing is just the way to go these days, as many applications find themselves a home on the web and off of your hard drive. This blog post has some interesting examples of what online tools can do! The photo above is one of their examples.
Useful Tuesday : Flash Photo Gallery
There are many Flash photo galleries to pick from but hopefully this one is new to you! It does show a tiny site logo in the corner but many free galleries do to help out the developer.
Useful Tuesday : PHP Widget
”PHP Function Reference (PHPfr) is a Mac OS X Dashboard widget that provides fast lookup of information about the PHP web programming language.”
Useful Tuesday : Toodledo
”Toodledo can be easily integrated with many Calendar applications, including Google Calendar and Apple’s iCal. You can also integrate Toodledo into your Google start page with our Google Gadget, or integrate Toodledo into the Firefox browser with the Firefox Extension. Toodledo can also integrate with your email inbox. You can easily send yourself a copy of any folder, and you can even receive daily reminders of important tasks that you should work on. You can also add a task to the website by sending an email to Toodledo.
Using Twitter.com you can interact with your to-do list via your Instant Messaging client or cellphone. Developers will be happy to know that Toodledo has a fully featured API, so you can write your own software to interact with your tasks in ways that we have not imagined.
If you want to use the same login and password across many different websites, you can use OpenID. Toodledo fully supports OpenID. “
Wow! Get to Toodling!
Useful Tuesday : iPhone Copy and Paste
First Look - MagicPad from Apple iPhone Apps on Vimeo.
The iPhone has always been missing copy and paste, so this is a great find.
Useful Tuesday : Send Me RSS!
In an effort to continue making the use of RSS easier and easier, today we bring you SendMeRSS.com. It’s a simple email notification site to get RSS updates. Just another way to use RSS in a smart way. Hope you enjoy!
Useful Tuesday : iTunes Alerts
“Every week Apple offers a special 99¢ movie rental on iTunes. 99Rental.com keeps track of the $0.99 iTunes Movie of Week for you. You can check the site or be notified automatically through RSS, Email, Twitter, or Dashboard Widget”
Useful Tuesday : RSS Snacks
Are you new to using RSS feeds? If you want to ease into the transition, Snackr may be the answer for you. It scrolls summaries of feeds across your screen and provides eye candy at the same time.
You do not even have to leave your screen to read one of the articles. They pop up into a small window and just as easily disappear so that you can get back to what you were doing.
Snackr is a very polished and useful tool!
Useful Tuesday : CodeFetch
”Codefetch‘s mission is to connect programmers and authors so that programmers get the information they need, and the work of authors is supported and encouraged. Today, Codefetch sells books, but watch for change-- we envision an infrastructure where authors can get their content out more quickly and with less environmental impact than selling books printed on paper.”
This is self-explanatory: tasty code.
Useful Tuesday: Firebug!
A great plus for having Mozilla FireFox as your preferred internet browser is their extensive collection of plugins. With them being created and developed everyday, its an almost “what do you have to lose” situation! One of my favorite and I feel very useful plugins for FF would be Firebug.
With Firebug you are able to edit HTML and CSS. See where a certain tag or style is located and also see where mistakes you have made within coding are also located! A great tool for anyone creating a website who always needs that “second look”. Be sure to download it today!
Useful Tuesday : RSS Feeds Anytime with Ponyfish
What happens when you want updates from a website that doesn’t have an RSS feed? If there is a certain site you go to and you’d like to know when the page is updated, Ponyfish can help. Here is how I’ve used it.
I like Digg but I never really log in, who has time to log into so many websites everyday? Not me, not you! But I do visit some sections of Digg regularly to browse the top stories. So as an example I went to PonyFish and plugged in http://digg.com/security and went through the next steps until the feed was created. Now maybe there is a feature in my Digg account that can send these notifcations, but I want to do this my way.
If you’ll remember back to our last Useful Tuesday, I introduced IMFeeds.com. So I sent the feed to the RSS bot.
Next Tuesday I’ll be discussing RSS again and will let you know how the Ponyfish service is working. It almost seems too good to be true! Visit Ponyfish to see all of the sites that other users are creating RSS feeds for; it’s amazing which popular sites do not have RSS yet on their homepages!
Useful Tuesday : RSS Feeds to IM
Useful Tuesday is all about finding something to make your online life easier! Today we’re thinking about the many ways to receive updated RSS feeds. Many of us use instant messaging programs and have them connected all of the time. So it would likely be a good idea to send RSS feeds there, but how? The answer is IMFeeds.com! Signing up and using this free service could not be easier.
First just add their robot to your buddy list. We named him Easy Feedy.
Next you’ll go through the sign up process and Easy Feedy, or er, the robot will send you a message while you go about your usual routine. (Like organizing your Kermit the Frog photo collection.)
Now that you’re acquainted, you can send a message to the robot to add a feed, or use the website to add a feed. In this example I grabbed the feed for the Surpass Hosting Forums Announcements section.
The robot or the website will confirm the addition and then, for us, it took about 15 minutes for the update to come in. How convenient to receive an IM for a website update!
Getting Greener
From jjjohn on Flickr.
Earth Day has been celebrated since 1970 but the ideals it trumpets are now more heard than ever. We’re becoming aware of just how much waste we are blindly capable of on a daily basis. Empty bottles, an expired box of cereal and an empty bag of chips get tossed into the trash can - not a recycling bin. All of the lights are on in the house but no one’s home. One person drives a guzzling SUV, all to themselves, every day of the week. When do we step back and realize that we are doing things that are unnecessary and harmful to everyone else? And it’s not just us that we’re harming, but future generations plus the environment itself. I just wanted to talk about a few things here in honor of the day and hopefully we can make some changes in our lives.
- No one can deny that drinking water is really good for you. Instead of buying bottle after bottle (even if you do use recycling bins) get one that you can easily wash and refill. From a New York Times article, “It takes 1.5 million barrels [of oil] a year just to make the plastic water bottles Americans use, according to the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, plus countless barrels to transport it from as far as Fiji and refrigerate it.” Sigg makes really nice water bottles that have an added bonus of showing your personality as well. Plus they’re not just for water. If you want an even more interesting bottle, Platypus definitely has that covered.
- Think about the different foods that you eat each week. It’s probably a better idea to buy only organic foods which come from farms that have the environment and the humane treatment of animals in mind. Some would say that the prices of organic food are keeping them back but the margin between organic and non-organic is getting closer and closer, which is very good news. “The world organic market has been growing by 20% a year since the early 1990s, with future growth estimates ranging from 10-50% annually depending on the country,” from Wikipedia.
- Packaging and storage should also be concerns when buying food. It could be cheaper to buy some of your food (like cereals) in bulk and place them in storage containers. If your town has any type of farmer’s or open-air market it would be a wonderful idea to do a lot of shopping there which also helps your local community.
- Transportation is a definite concern in the big picture of going green. The fact is, a lot of us are a little lazy sometimes, myself included! It can seem daunting to jump on a bike when a car is more convenient. If you are able to frequent certain areas using a bike, or even walking, you’re not only helping reduce waste, labor costs, and more - you’re also helping yourself which is extremely important. Getting off your rump just makes you feel better, too.
- Think of all of the electricity you could save if you started watching television and movies and playing games only on your computer. Just sell the TV (which is probably turned on most of the time) and all other electronics/entertainment you have. The Internet is where it’s at, you know? This tip shouldn’t take any further convincing. 
Privacy Solutions : Offline Disguises
Privacy on the Internet is a huge concern and there are so many traps! We’re looking out for your best interest so this is what our post is about today. For those of you who use Facebook, you may have experienced a few situations when you were tagged in friends’ photos but were not thrilled about how you looked (or what you were doing). MySpace recently added the “tag” feature also so now we all really have to be on our best behavior, now don’t we? We found something that can help you out during your next outing or party.
Black Bars Glasses!
To-Do Lists and Online Organization
At Surpass Hosting we like to make everything fast and simple. That’s just how getting things done with your website should be so your focus is on content and the big picture. In an effort to reach the ocean of easiness, we’re focusing on organization. That “spring cleaning” bug is still in the air for us! Organizing the rest of your tasks can help your online activities, so let’s get started with a few tips.
(Before the big fish comes.)
There are websites out there that can really help you to remember things that you need to do. They also can keep track of thoughts that magically pop into your mind throughout the day (and just as easily pop out to be forgotten). You may already jot ideas down on paper, in a text file or even real paper, but sometimes it seems that you may not catch everything. I think the answer is to stick to one method and make it a routine. Here are a few ways to prioritize - hopefully one of them works just right for you.
Phone reminders with Jott.com: If you aren’t into typing and would rather talk instead, Jott may be for you. Just call the toll-free phone number and enter your PIN code. Record your thoughts and they’ll be emailed to you in text and in voice for review later. There’s also other options like email or text message reminders. Since Jott is currently in beta, it is free during this time. So you can try it out to see if you get hooked!
Email reminders with IWantSandy.com: Have you ever dreamed of having your own personal assistant? Sandy is standing by. She has her own language to keep up with times, dates and more in order to send you email reminders or text messages just when you need them. When you sign up for Sandy, you receive her special email address to send your notes to. Then she really dives in and handles all of the rest! And did I mention how very polite she is? (You can even send messages to Sandy through Jott and also Twitter.)
To-do list program, Tudumo: I’ll tell you up front that this handy program is not free, but you can try it for 60 days to see if it’s your style. It’s a very compact program to keep track of just about anything you want. It really has a simple look and feel and I think if you are used to writing down things on paper, this could be a very easy transition because it does not give you an overwhelming feeling of buttons and menus. Tudomo explains that best! If you get attached to this snappy-as-snappers list maker, it’s only $29.95 USD after the trial is over.
More quick mentionables:
Ta-da List: Make lists for yourself or share lists with others. It also is iPhone compatible.
Remember the Milk: Another iPhone compatible, Twitter friendly, Gmail and Google Calendar crunchable lister.
Ah, I ran out of fish jokes.
The Fastest Way to Video Editing
Your digital camera may look a bit like mine: beat up and scratched from bouncing around in your bag. Or perhaps it’s impeccably shiny because you actually have a camera case. Either way, those “inside parts” still function quite well. So well in fact, you’ve decided that being a filmmaker is your new calling. So now here you are with a plump video collection on your memory card. If you have a Canon your videos are likely in .avi (Microsoft) format and if you have a Kodak you’ve probably got .mov (Apple) files. Different camera manufacturers choose either of these formats most often, though I am not sure of their personal reasons. But no matter the file formats your camera creates, you can work with them easily and it’s no sweat.
After transferring the video files to your computer, what’s next? Here you are with a folder full of random clips and not sure where to begin. I had previous experience with Adobe Premiere so I downloaded the trial of Adobe Premiere Pro CS3. It really looked exactly the same.
By selecting “File > Import” you can repeatedly import several video files to work with. Then you can movie them around (get it?) where you like, delete certain parts (razoring) and easily add special transitions between clips. It’s also very easy to add text titles to distinguish changes of scene. However, my problem with Premiere Pro comes at the end of the process when you are ready to export the finished file. It’s not easy or intuitive. I had a 17-minute video which took 2 hours to render into a new .avi file. And still, after all of that time, the file was over 1 GB in size - hardly web friendly. I tried lowering the quality many times and changing different settings. It just wasn’t making much sense but I figured I would have to download different “codecs” for compression. But this brings the question: why aren’t the “good ones” already included to make this all easier? I decided to try saving my video as .mov instead of .avi. Maybe this would provide an easier way and better compression. Or maybe not. Open output… what? Well we can possibly blame Windows Vista for this.
This is when I went directly to the source. For $29.99 (as compared to hundreds of dollars for Adobe products) you can purchase a QuickTime Pro license which adds editing features to your existing install of QuickTime Player. I grabbed the huge 1 GB completed movie and imported it into QuickTime, re-exported it as a .mov and the file was a healthy but much smaller 132 MB. This was more like it. There’s also so many other options when exporting your movie with QuickTime which I’ll get into in later. So start practicing until next time!
CAPTCHA vs. Questions
Flashback to December of 2006: the Surpass forums started getting a lot of fake registrations from spam bots. They’d target one or two forums and post a few messages upon sign up. Needless to say, this was getting annoying. Nothing is worse than clicking New Posts and seeing a lot of garbage.
There are a few ways to stop the automated spam. You can have admins manually approve registrations around the clock, but that’s working harder and not smarter. Our solution came to fruition in this thread. We have a vBulletin plug-in called NoSpam! - an alternative to CAPTCHA which was found in the vBulletin.org forums. It allows you to add a simple question to the sign-up form, in the place of (or in addition to) the CAPTCHA image. Our secret question asks “What city is Surpass located in?” and the user has to type in Orlando. May will mark our sixth spam free month. This plug-in has worked 100%. I still see those slimy bots hitting the boards they used to have their way with and getting an error on the sign up page. Too bad they can’t get in. So far it seems that NoSpam! is the only permanent and no-fail method available. Not to mention easy.
Ok, it’s easy for us, but mildly inconvenient for new users. Even so we are still getting a regular rate of sign ups per day. Would it be better for our new users not to answer this question? Sure it would. The less questions during a sign up, the better. When I see that the bots haven’t been around for a few months I will remove the question, but so far they seem to be hard coded for life.
After seeing the great success of this plug in, it makes me wonder why any site uses CAPTCHA still. Obviously it was not a “firewall” for the bots we’re dealing with. It seems many sites have been using the “question” method for quite some time now. Another example of the method is called QAACK (Questions and Answers Answerable with Common Knowledge) described here; this was posted a month before the NoSpam! vB plug-in was made.
Site Stats: Turn Up the Heat
When our site was redesigned we wanted the new look to inherit two traits from the Surpass Philosophy: simplicity and straightforwardness. We like to get in and out of a site fast and know exactly what’s being offered and how it can be of help to us. Now that our new site has been up for some time now, we needed a little insight on what we can’t see. We have tracked with Mint since March 2006 and have a big brick (our affectionate name for the huge Mint database) of visitor information, but something was missing. We needed a bigger and better analysis of visitor trends.
Enter CrazyEgg. They offer a monthly service that allows you to see exactly where site visitors are clicking. The results are visual, even beautifully visual when you take a look at their heat map. A heat map you say?
It can cost a pretty penny to track a lot of clicks, but you may get all of the insight you need from one month. All heat map services offer free trials and added services. We’ve included some links below if you decide to seek the heat.
Links:
CrazyEgg.com - Free Starter Plan
ClickDensity.com - Free Starter Plan, seems to have more goodies than CrazyEgg
LabsMedia.com/ClickHeat - Open Source, but not as fancy looking as CrazyEgg and ClickDensity
So what have we found so far? Shared hosting is our most popular service by far, even in our forum Shared Discussion is the hot spot. We now have a plan of action to spice up our reseller hosting and other lines. We also noticed that our site map is tumbleweed territory. We’ve removed the site map link to make room for the blog link. Site maps aren’t what they used to be!
Stay toasty!
W3C valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Document validates as CSS3.
© Copyright 2002-2008 Surpass Hosting, LLC. All rights reserved.
