I just wanted to take a minute to wish you all a happy and safe 4th of July. I know Independence Day (the holiday, not the movie) is not till tomorrow – but how can you not start the celebration today with a little Hulk Hogan, apple pie, and “Real American” music?
Looking for a way to get an entire social web site profile of your domain name via one simple online tool? Buildstats is another domain information tool that does just that. All you do is insert your domain name, and then you will be taken to a page with tons of information about that previously entered domain name.
Some of the details you get per domain include:
Here is the example search I came up with for mitchelaneous.com:
It is a simple web site, that does it’s job well. Check out Buildstats.com to lookup information on your own domain name of choice.
Actually inspired by one of my nephews, who really wants to learn how to make his own video games, I started searching the Web to see if I could find some easy to use web sites that would allow anybody to create their own game. I found more than a few, however these are the three best ones thus far.
This web site is pretty complicated when it comes to the number of things going on, on the screen – however it does have a lot of tools to use to create your own games (or play the games others have created). You can either start from scratch or go with one of the templates they provide, such as action game, golf game, ninja game, jumping game and more.
With Sploder, you are given the option of creating either a platformer game or a shooter game. Also giving you the options of sharing your creation, I liked Sploder because it was a little more on the simple side. So, if you want to show this off to a kid – it might be a lot easier for them to wrap their minds around.
Mockingbird is the last pick on my list. They too give you a lot to work with, but instead of simply building one kind of game – they offer several kits (or the ability to build your own kit) with programmable sounds, actions and more. If you wanted to get somebody into the mindset of programming a game – this would be the one I would have them play with. Why? Well, with having to set, for example, a bomb to be able to jump and assign the farting noise when he does so – gives a much better cause and effect result I think anybody from any age group could understand.
Although none of these games will have you programming your own games, each site delivers a unique way of getting a younger child, nephew, or sibling interested in the idea of game development.
Where Google used to be alone in giving you tools to see how they are indexing your web site, each of the three big search engines now have their own set of webmaster tools.
The newest kid on the block, Bing gives you access to keyword research tools, a robot.txt validator, and a HTTP verifier tool right out of the box. Once you get your site listed, you get details like your domain score, feedback on any crawl issues Bing might have had on your site, your top five pages and a lot more. I have to say, Microsoft really impressed me with their tool set.
Poor Yahoo!, does have a site explorer, and it does pay to sign up and list your web sites on it – just to confirm that Yahoo! is watching you. The problem is that they don’t offer much when it comes to tools you can really get much use out of. Also, why do they think I want a badge to show everybody how many people are linking to a page?
Google’s webmaster tools selection is still top dog as far as features and ease of use. They give you a wide selection of diagnostics tools, your top search queries, keywords, subscriber stats, and more. You can also add a new tab to iGoogle to get instant access to all the tools they provide right on your start page.
Which webmaster tools set does the best job? I think Google still wins hands down, however Bing’s selection of tools for webmasters is rather impressive. I am afraid though, that puts our friends at Yahoo! in third place. With that said though, I suggest you sign up for all three so that you can keep tabs on how well your site is being indexed in each.
For those of you who might not have noticed, one of my other projects – WebHostingShow.com got a little ‘bit of a face lift yesterday, mainly as far as the logo goes. This did give me an excuse to spruce up a few other features that are well worth checking out too.
How do you like that new logo, by the way? It was designed my my good friend and graphic design specialist, Sean Barton. I’m personally pretty proud of it – as it is pretty much the logo I always wanted for the show, but never had the time or the skill to put together. Want to learn more about the web hosting industry? The web hosting show is both a podcast and web site dedicated to helping anybody from novices to experts learn more about how to make the web hosting world work for them. If you haven’t before – be sure to bookmark WebHostingShow.com, subscribe to the e-mail updates, and add the RSS feed to your favorite news reader.
I have a great love for useless web sites, and this one might rank up there as one of the most fun useless ones out there, (sorry InstantRimshot.com). KissTunes.com lets you become a grand piano, acoustic guitar or electric piano player right from the comfort of your own keyboard.
The interface here is pretty simple. You can use your keyboard or the mouse to click the buttons, and play that specific note. You also can record your little ditty once your done, play it back, save it or load another. Who wouldn’t want to play and record tunes online using your computer’s keyboard?
Although it is a little slow right now (probably going to be getting really popular soon) be sure to keep KissTunes.com handy next time you feel like composing your next keyboard tune of your own.
Free image web hosts are a dime a dozen, and with that said here is another time for your piggy bank of free web hosting options. ImgLot delivers free image hosting with the idea of simplicity in mind. Trying it out, I uploaded a test image here.
Site features include:
The only thing that the web site’s creator is asking in return, is that you tell others about the ImgLot hosting service. After you upload your image, you are given the option of a direct link, a page, forum code for linking and HTML code too. You can also share your image on a number of different social news and networking sites.
Give them a shot at ImgLot.com and follow them on Twitter (@ImgLot) for more news and updates.
My Zen Stone Plus MP3 player died on me a couple of weeks ago (wouldn’t hold a charge anymore) so I had to go search for a new one. Most people go to Apple when they want an MP3 player – however I stayed on a different route and picked up the horribly named Coby MP305-4G MP3 Player.
Now why not go towards a more expensive product like the iPod line of players? Well, I need something that is cheap enough that I don’t feel bad dropping it in my pocket, and letting it get beat up a little ‘bit while I do work outside. I’m afraid if I got something like an iPod Touch I would be cradling the thing like a new born baby, which for my needs, it just does not fit.
Back to the Coby MP305-4G, it is not a bad little player in it’s own right. Some of the features include:
It runs off a single triple A battery, which is a test really to see if I like that more, or the rechargeable battery I had with the Zen Stone Plus. Couldn’t tell you the battery life yet – cause it has yet to run out. Overall, if your looking for a cheap MP3 player you can slap some stuff onto and get back to work – I would highly recommend the Coby MP305-4G. If your looking for something that has tons of bells and whistles, you might want to look elsewhere.
I have spent some time on finding the right icon and picture for me to use across all the social networks that I am apart of. Some people might thing it is silly to spend any time on this, however I think it is important to use a graphic that people can easily associate with you.
For example, look at Chris Pirillo and his icon. If you are a follower of him and what he does, you know when you see this icon:
That he is associated with it. No matter if you follow him on his web site, his Twitter page, his Facebook page, you know to associate that with him. Others have done this too. BlueFur.com, a Canadian based web host uses their blue monster as their Twitter icon too.
Here are a few more tips about the process that you might find useful:
With that said, here is what I have currently decided to go with…
I had to update my look, since I cut my hair off – plus I threw my own favicons from my various site in for good measure.
So as you can see – you might want to give a little more thought when it comes to picking the right picture you want to use across all the web pages you wish to frequent, especially if you want to build a brand around your name or business.
Have multiple RSS feed sources that you would like to merge into one? There are a number of different services that can get this done for you, however FeedStitch is a new one that has caught my eye recently.
What is new here? Well they cover the basics, for sure. With HTML, RSS, and JSON they make it easy to republish the data however you want. To get started, all you have to do is select your feed type, and click “Add Feed”. You can also store your feeds in manually created groups too. The feed types they support right now are:
To use the service, all you need to do is login with a pre-existing Google, Facebook, or some other open identification service, and get to adding your feeds. It is really easy to use, and might be my new favorite service for merging multiple feeds into one. You can try it out for yourself at FeedStitch.com.
