With each new authorized changed, SnatchCode creates a new snapshot of your website. Depending on which plan you choose this will be done on a daily or hourly basis. You’ll be able to download these snapshots if needed, in order to restore your website to a previous version. For all unauthorized changes, you’ll be notified immediately via email.

SnatchCode also uses a 256-bit encryption for all communications and “all data processing is performed on servers isolated from direct access to the Internet”. With each new scan, SnatchCode is said to get smarter and better at protecting your website.

Getting Started

First you’ll need to register with an email address, password, name and phone number. Your email address will also be your username.

Adding a Website

Next you’ll be able to add your website. As long as you have FTP access, your website platform is supported; so yes, it will also work with self-hosted blogs.

You’ll need to enter your username, password, hostname (ftp.yoursite.com or IP address), and port (usually 21 for FTP). Since this is sensitive data that you’re entering, the page where you enter this information is encrypted for your security.

Backing Up Your Website

Once your website has been added, all you have to do is click on the “Backup Now” button and you’re all done. SnatchCode will begin with the monitoring and automatic backups. Backups typically take around 48-72 hours, but this also depends on the size your website; larger websites could take days to complete. You’ll be notified via email when the backup is done and/or if any issues are found.

Backing Up Your MySQL Database

SnatchCode also has a database backup feature, which is currently in beta.

It works the same way as backing up your website except you need to enter your MYSQL username, password, database URL or IP, and database/schema name.

Other Features

If you ever wish to undo changes to your website, you’ll first need to upgrade to a Plus, Pro, or Enterprise account. The option will then be enabled on your dashboard. This is a nice feature because if you happen to change something on your website and totally mess it up, you can simply go back to a previous version before you made that change.

As mentioned above, you can also download your backups to your computer for further safe keeping.

Pricing

• Free: Comes with a storage limit of 250MB for 1 site; backup is done automatically on a daily basis.
• Plus: Comes with a 750MB storage limit for an unlimited number of sites; backup is done automatically on an hourly basis.
• Pro: Comes with 30GB of storage for an unlimited number of sites; backup is done automatically on an hourly basis.
• Enterprise: Comes with an unlimited amount of storage for an unlimited number of sites; backup is done automatically on an hourly basis.

Benefits

If you’re a WordPress user, using a backup plugin doesn’t always make sense. There are some plugins that will save your backups to Dropbox or another secure server, but most will only backup to your own server. So if your server happens to crash, you’re still in trouble because your backup was on that same server and it will be lost as well.

With SnatchCode, your backup is saved on their server so there’s no worries about losing your backups.

Will you use SnatchCode?

All you need to do is sign up for the service being offered by Wazala. This is a full-featured e-commerce solution that provides your own storefront, complete with an easy to use interface and plenty of robust options, all without ever touching a single line of code. It also comes with some nice extras that set it apart from other seemingly similar e-commerce solutions.

Turn Any Site into an E-Commerce Store

It used to be that having a proper shopping cart on your online store was a complex and confusing process. That’s not the case anymore. In fact, you can be fully operational in under fifteen minutes using Wazala.

The great thing is that Wazala is mostly platform agnostic. If you already have a company website set up to run on WordPress, Wazala can work with that. If you have it coded with another CMS, that works too. This is because one of the features of Wazala is that it doesn’t load as a separate page.

Instead, the e-commerce store appears as a lightbox element above the dimmed site content. In this way, customers aren’t leaving your site and going to a third-party shopping cart. You can have Wazala run on your own domain, keeping that pure branding intact. Alternatively, you can also have your store page at yourname.wazala.com.

A Full Catalog of Digital and Physical Products

What do you want to sell online? Maybe you have a local brick-and-mortar store for handicrafts, but you want to expand your business onto the web? Perhaps you sell digital products like e-books and mini-games. Wazala has been designed to work with both physical and digital products.

Shown above is the demo site version of the Wazala engine at work. You can also see other samples to get a better sense of what is possible. In the case of digital products, Wazala will handle the digital product delivery for you, including the ability for you to limit the number of times a customer can re-download the content as well as the when the download expires.

Naturally, shippable products will need to be fulfilled by you, but it’s good to know that Wazala has been setup with this capability too.

The Customer Experience

Because of its platform-agnostic position, the Wazala online shopping cart solution can work on any number of platforms, including Blogger, Tumblr, Posterous, SquareSpace, Google Sites, and TypePad, as well as Facebook by way of a Facebook app.

In every instance, the experience is largely the same. As mentioned earlier, a lightbox appears with the e-store itself. Whatever you want to sell online, you have the ability to categorize your product list, display product thumbnails, and offer full descriptions. You’ll also notice the social media integration for sharing the links, plus the usual “add to cart” and “checkout” buttons that you find with all e-stores.

There is also a mobile version called Wazala Touch, ensuring that your customers can still shop for (and buy) your products from the comfort of their mobile devices. The experience is meant to be “app-like” with touch gestures and automatic browser detection.

How Much Does It Cost?

The small plan ($9.95/month or $99.50/year) allows for up to 25 products, but it does not handle digital downloads. Step up to the medium plan ($19.95/month or $199.50/year) to get up to 100 products, digital download support, and music sales with previews. The large plan ($29.95/month or $299.50/year) tops the list at 250 products, adding customized store labels, custom emails, Google Analytics, and goal tracking support.

All three available plans for Wazala include a 15-day free trial, giving you the opportunity to use the Wazala solution with no obligation to continue your subscription.

You may already have a tool or app that you’re using for weather, but does it also alert you of natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, etc? If not then you may want to take a look at one of these 6 tools that are great for tracking all of the above.

Accuweather for Google Chrome

This is a simple extension for Chrome that shows you a 15-day weather forecast, which includes: hurricane weather, world weather, and local weather forecasts.

AniWeather for Firefox

AniWeather is a Firefox addon that animates the 5-day weather forecast right within your browser. Weather conditions are updated in real-time and you can also check out more in-depth reports along with weather alerts, with a single click. There are also iOS apps for the iPhone and iPad.

Hurricane Software

Whether you have Windows OS, Android, Windows Phone 7, an iPhone or iPad, this tool has you covered when it comes to tracking hurricanes. This is especially useful right now since so many people in the U.S. are being affected by Hurricane IRENE.

You will get the latest NHC real time data from our internet servers including real-time Satellite, Current position, Latest Real Track, Official NHC Prediction Path, Tropical Weather Outlook, Tropical Weather Discussion, Strike Probabilities, Public Advisories and Forecasts directly to Tracking The Eye to be viewed on a colorful map and saved to your computer. You can even setup alerts to your cell phone and email so when a new storm becomes active you will be the first to know.

1-Click Weather for Safari

1-Click Weather for Safari adds a button to your browser that, when clicked, takes you to a page where you can view the current temperature and weather conditions for your area.

Swackett

Swackett is a “different kind of weather app.” It lets you know whether you need to wear a sweater, jacket, or coat when going outside. It’s the graphics and colorful UI that make it so fun and unique. While it was originally just a Mac app, there is also now a Web app available (which also looks great on the iPad). You can also view weather watches, warnings, and animated maps.

Stormpulse

Stormpulse is an advanced tool that tracks hurricanes and other severe weather conditions with detailed maps. Unfortunately, all of the advanced features are only available with a paid subscription. With the subscription you also get access to the iPad app.

If you’re looking for a free alternative, you may prefer MyHurricane, which is specifically for hurricanes and offers alerts, a widget, and a web app (which is also optimized for mobile browsers). It’s an “advanced, full-screen hurricane tracking software platform built on open web standards such as HTML5 and CSS 3.”

You may also want to check out:

• 5 Useful Earthquake Related iPhone Apps
• Natural disaster? There’s an app for that
• Android Apps for News and Weather
• 4 Web Services to Keep Track of Earthquakes and Storms Around Us

Online gambling is a positively booming business, but can you really own your own branded Internet casino? With a service like GamblingBuilder.com, you can… and it’s a lot easier (and cheaper) than you think it might be.

How Does Gambling Builder Work?

Most people assume that you have to buy expensive software and then hire a coder to customize the site for you if you want to have an online casino. That is not true at all. Gambling Builder takes care of all the grunt work for you.

You don’t need to buy a hosting plan. You don’t need to install any scripts. You don’t need to debug any code. That’s all done for you. Better still, the end product is at your own custom domain name too; you don’t get an “affiliate link” or a subdomain off of Gambling Builder. It really is your own Internet casino.

The crazy thing is that the price is just $10 a year. The basic plan itself is free; the $10 simply covers the domain registration. Surely, you can turn ten bucks of profit over the course of a year, right?

How Much Money Can I Make?

Under the basic plan, you receive an online casino under your own management and under your own domain name. Then, a full 40% of the profits generated by that Internet casino are forwarded your way as income. It’s as simple as that. How much money you make really depends on how profitable your casino is. That’s why it’s important that you work hard to refer new players to your site and get them to put their money where their mouth is.

The money is processed through several popular online payment systems, including LibertyReserve, PerfectMoney, and WebMoney. I don’t see any mention of PayPal, but this could be for any number of different reasons.

What Will My Casino Look Like?

To give you an idea of what you can expect, they’ve set up a sample page with links to six example casinos. Here’s one of them.

Remember that the $10 membership that you pay each year includes all the software and coding that you’ll need to get your online casino up and running. The designs themselves aren’t terribly advanced, but the backend structure is actually quite complex and very robust. It’ll handle all new player signups, manage the payments, and run the games in a web browser. No downloads needed.

What Games Can They Play?

All the games powered by Gambling Builder, as mentioned, are web-based. This is a great feature for all your potential players, because many don’t want to bother installing software on their own computers.

The interface is reasonably simple, but it has everything that you need for your players to get in the game. After signing up for an account with your casino, they can then choose to play for fun or to play for money. This applies to all the games that are available in the casino, which range from baccarat and blackjack to roulette and video poker. There are several versions of slot machines too.

An Internet Business in a Box

Yes, you can go out there and spend tons of money to set up your own custom online casino. That can be very expensive to do. With Gambling Builder, the process is much easier; basically everything is done for you on the coding, payment management, and design side. Your task is simply to drive the traffic. After that, it’s pretty much on auto-pilot until you’re ready to cash out.

That’s why you might be interested in Backlink Profit Monster, a software package that aims to “grab all the high PR backlinks you can handle on auto-pilot.” Let’s have a look at what this program is all about, how it works, and how you can get a copy to use for your business.

Get to the Top of Google Search Results

Search engine optimization can be a very tricky business, but at the heart of it, getting high quality backlinks directed back to your website are really what are going to drive you to the top of Google. Backlink Profit Monster helps you achieve that goal.

This “unique SEO program” is designed to “instantly boost your search engine rankings and increase your profits.” The idea here is to get as many of those high PR backlinks as you can, but without having to go about doing it in a manual fashion. You also don’t have to invest in paid links or other strategies that might elicit some Google backlash.

Checking Out the Competition

The first step is seeing what your competition is doing. After installing the software on your computer — there is only a Windows version at this point, so you’ll need Parallels or something similar if you want to use Backlink Profit Monster on a Mac — you can get started by checking out the competition.

And so, you enter your target keyword or keyword phrase into this SEO tool. It then see what websites are currently ranking at the top for that term. The next phase is that it analyzes all the inbound backlinks that these websites are receiving. This is critical, because you can effectively emulate what they already have, since what they have has proven to be successful.

From there, you can filter for only the dofollow links, since nofollow links don’t really help, and you can also filter for links only from blogs. By taking these two critical steps, you now know what blogs offer dofollow links and what blogs offer sizable “link juice” in your niche or industry. The software will also let you know about PageRank and other useful metrics.

Unleashing the Autopilot Monster

And this is where you can start to utilize this backlink-generating monster. You can watch the video on the main page of Backlink Profit Monster for an example of how this works, but the idea is that you can enter your target URL, your target keyword, your email address (or any email, for that matter), and some sample comments.

The system will then visit the blogs discovered in the earlier steps and start posting the comments you pre-write. The autopilot portion is really for automatic comment posting. Some people may argue against such a bot-based approach, but there’s a reason why people do it: it can be quite effective. Having it done automatically, including support for Disqus and Facebook Connect adds to this proposition.

How Much Does It Cost?

The regular price for Backlink Profit Monster is $247. However, they currently have a special where you can buy Backlink Profit Monster for $97.

This is for a lifetime license, meaning it is a one-time payment and there are no additional monthly fees or hidden costs. If you’re not satisfied with how the program works, there is also a 60-day money back guarantee in place.

Save IE6 gives some great reasons why Internet Explorer 6 should be saved such as more screen space due to no tab option and no support for silly PNG transparency!

What surprised me was a little was that Microsoft have themselves thrown their weight behind a campaign to stop people using IE 6 with their website IE6 Countdown. The site explains why users should stop using IE6 (and why they should upgrade to IE9!). Interestingly, it shows a detailed world map of where IE6 is being used.

Scandinavia is leading the way with less than 1% of internet users in Norway and Finland using IE 6. English speaking countries such as the USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Australian and New Zealand are a bit behind with between 3 and 3.5% of users using IE6 as their browser. Asia, where piracy remains a major problem for Microsoft, has the highest percentage of IE6 users in the world with a whopping 34.5% of Chinas internet users using the browser. I must admit I was surprised at the high percentage of users using IE6 in leading technology producing countries such as Japan (10.3%) and South Korea (24.8%).

Should bloggers be concerned?

I’m sure the majority of Blogging Tips readers use a modern browser such as IE9, Firefox, Opera, Safari or Chrome; however Microsofts official countdown page highlights that there are millions of internet users using this outdated browser. This can be a major problem for blog owners. IE6 was notorious for causing designers a lot of headaches as they had to add apply lots of additional tweaks and add ons to make sure designs worked on the browser, and even then things never looked right. Due to this, the vast majority of designers don’t even design with IE6 in mind, which is understandable considering the browser is over 10 years old.

The problem is, millions of people are still using IE6, which means that a percentage of your readers are not viewing your blog in the way you intended. There are of course things you can do to stop this being a problem. For example, WordPress users can install a plugin such as IE6 No More or IE6 Upgrade Option which encourages users to update their browser.

Obviously, we don’t have to guess how many of our readers use IE6; that’s what traffic stats are for. For example, Google Analytics states that only 7.86% of WP Mods visitors use Internet Explorer and of that 7.86%, only 2.16% use IE6 i.e. only .17% of my readers. Clearly, it isn’t a major problem for my WordPress blog however you would expect readers of this type of blog to be using modern browsers. Those of you with blogs which focus on less technology/internet based should have a much higher percentage of IE6 users reading your blog.

I’d love to see what percentage of IE 6 users other blogs get. Please post the percentage of IE 6 users your stats program gives for your blog and the topic the blog focuses on. It will be interesting to see the difference in genres.

Thanks for reading

Kevin

So, what can you do? If you want to target an international audience, you want to see what they’re seeing and one way to do this is to install the GeoSurf Toolbar in your web browser. It puts the world at your fingertips.

Getting a Global Perspective

So, what is GeoSurf? In a nutshell, it’s a toolbar that you can install in either Firefox or Internet Explorer that allows you to access any site on the Internet as if you were viewing it from another location altogether.

This can prove to be incredibly useful for a number of different purposes. Let’s say that you are geotargeting a few select countries as part of an ad campaign and your current home location isn’t one of those countries. By using GeoSurf, you can visit the sites serving your campaign to ensure that it is display correctly.

You can also check up on things like whether your ads are leading to the correct landing pages. It doesn’t make sense for an English ad to send a user to a Japanese landing page or vice versa, right? GeoSurf has a premium proxy network with servers in 70 locations around the globe.

Setup and Usage

The installation and setup process is quite simple. You download the toolbar file, run the setup process, and it’ll automatically dock itself in Firefox or Internet Explorer. From there, you click on the “login” button at the top right, enter your credentials, and away you go.

Want to check more than one country at a time? You can do that too. Click on the “Geoview” button in the toolbar and you can view any website from up to eight geo-locations simultaneously. That’s very powerful for checking landing pages, for instance, without having to hop between the individual countries.

It should be noted that using GeoSurf in Internet Explorer will affect any concurrent browsers running on your computer. When I had it running in IE, my Chrome window would keep asking for my GeoSurf credentials. In this way, it is best to only run the single browser when using GeoSurf.

How Much Does It Cost?

There are four pricing plans available with GeoSurf.

The cheapest is the Group plan at $29 per month. This provides for access to only one of the proxy servers, however, and only allows for up to 100MB of monthly bandwidth. From there, you can step up to the $59/month Pro plan, the $89/month Plus+ plan, or the unlimited plan. It really depends on the specific needs of your company which plan you should select.

The good news is, regardless of your choice, you get a five day free trial to take the GeoSurf toolbar out for a test drive. Go ahead and travel the world, so to speak, without ever leaving your desk.

I eventually dropped my credit card processing account since the volume of generated income via credit card payments was not worth my while and told my existing clients (that don’t use direct deposit) to pay me via PayPal (which still takes a small percentage) or via the dreaded check (which delays payment and is not guaranteed to clear the bank).

I was excited to learn about Square Up from my friend who is starting up a motorcycle shop and will need to periodically accept credit cards.  He told me about the free app he found on his iPod touch to accept credit cards with no hidden fees and no commitments, so I then download to my Droid. The App is also available for iPhone and iPad, as well as all Android systems.

My friend received a free card reader that plugs right into his iPod touch within a couple of days of requesting it to swipe credit and debit cards. I requested mine today and can’t wait to swipe my first card!

The fees for using Square Up are the lowest I’ve seen anywhere else – a simple 2.75% off all swiped transactions.  Or you can manually enter the credit card numbers for 3.5% + 15¢ per transaction, which is still inexpensive compared to other payment solutions (ahem ProPay).

Anyone else use Square Up?

But while everyone has a favorite browser that fits their tastes and needs, I’m of the view that, as someone who works online and makes their living on the Internet, I have to be something of a browser nomad, constantly switching from browser to browser as they improve, upgrade and change.

Simply put, if you are sticking solely to one browser, you’re not getting the full picture of the Web and that includes your site. Sometimes you need a new perspective on things and one of the easiest ways to do that is change the tools with which you look the online world.

Reason 1: Browsers Affect Site Design and Use

If you don’t think Web browsers affect the way we use the Web, stop for a moment and ponder how different the Web was before tabbed browsing was common. Previously, most people surfed the Web one stream at a time, flowing from site to site without interruption and never coming back. Now, sites stay open in tabs for long periods of time, as people come back to them over time.

Tabs, bookmarks, favicons, toolbars, etc. are all examples of browser features that have drastically impacted how we surf the Web. An example today is expandable textboxes, available in Chrome and Firefox, but not in Opera, making it crucial, if somewhat difficult, to have comment and contact boxes large enough to be used in all browsers,

If you use just one browser, you’re only seeing one implementation and that might color the way you build your sites, even if you don’t realize it.

Reason 2: Seeing Your Site in Multiple Browsers

Though you can use a program like Browsershots to see how your site looks in multiple browsers, there really is no substitute for downloading other browsers and giving it a try. Using other browsers regularly lets you see how your site and others perform across the spectrum and find ways to tweak and improve your site you might not have seen otherwise.

In short, you might miss something important if you don’t experiment with other browsers from time to time.

Reason 3: Stay on Top of New Trends

Browsers copy from one another heavily and advancements in one routinely make it into another. For example, the “tabs on top” approach popularized by Google Chrome is now being used in the latest releases of Internet Explorer and Firefox (albeit with some variation).

If you use different browsers you can watch and understand these innovations and not be caught off guard by them and how they might affect different surfing habits.

Reason 4: Know What You Love, Know What You Hate

Different browsers have different strengths and weaknesses. By using different ones you get a better feel for what you love and hate in a browser.

If you use just one browser, you might know that you like it, but you might not know exactly why. Experimenting helps you articulate that and that, in turn, is a skill that’s useful when building sites or anything else online. However, it’s a skill you only get with experience and you can’t get that doing the same thing over and over again.

Reason 5: Learn all of the Tools

Sure, you might get your browser of choice when you’re at your computer and using your browser, but what happens if you have to use someone else’s in an emergency? If you’re not at least somewhat familiar with their browser and their setup, it can be a culture shock and can set you back when trying to get started.

Being at least somewhat familiar with every browser possible can be a lifesaver in an emergency. Though they are all similar, the differences is more than enough to trip anyone up in a tight situation.

Reason 6: Variety

Though it might seem a petty reason to switch browsers, but variety makes things exciting and that increases passion. Passion, in turn, makes for better blogging.

If trying a new browser makes you even just a little bit more excited about getting online, do it. You’ll likely find, despite the learning curve, you’re working harder as you’re enjoying the newness of the browser.

I know, personally, my most productive days are the ones where I make a switch and I suspect many others are the same way.

Take the Challenge

With all of this in mind, here is my challenge to you. If you’ve been using the same browser for a long time without exploring other options, take a day this week and dedicate it to using a new browser for the whole day. It’s important to spend the whole day with the new browser, even if it can be difficult to tough it out sometimes, but you need the extra time to really get a feeling for the browser and what you like/dislike about it.

If you take this challenge once every two weeks or so, you’ll be able to try all of the major browsers in a few months. This can greatly broaden your horizons and help you get a more complete view of the Web, essentially seeing your site (as well as the whole Web) through other’s eyes.

Bottom Line

When people ask me what browser I’m using, I usually have to answer “Today?”

I change browsers seemingly constantly and sometimes even compare them side by side over the course of the same day.

I can’t say for certain that this made me a better blogger, but it definitely has changed the way I use the Web and has made me more comfortable no matter where I might need to work. Also, I spotted errors on my sites that went unreported by visitors and gleaned several pieces of information that helped me optimize my sites for all browsers.

Whether it is to keep a fresh perspective or to just stay in tune with what’s going on online, trying new browsers and avoiding browser lockdown will change your outlook on the Web, at least in some small way.

I am an online student at Full Sail University and our email system does not allow POP or IMAP access. So, that means that I cannot access my school email from any other client, just Full Sail’s website. It also means that I have no way of receiving alerts or notifications for new messages in my inbox. A few days last week I was expecting some important emails and I really needed an easier way of knowing when a new message had arrived (rather than having to check my inbox every 10-15 minutes). It wasn’t until this whole issue evolved that I remembered coming across Snippage last year.

What Is It?

Snippage is an Adobe AIR application that lets you “make desktop widgets out of any site.” In other words, it’s a browser that lets you snip a piece of a website and refresh it every so often as if receiving automatic updates.

How Does It Work?

You must first navigate to the website you want to snip (within the Snippage browser). You can then move around and resize the snip box so that it only contains the section of the website that you want to monitor. Click on the “scissors” icon and Snippage with cut down the site to the size of your snip box.

Options

Once you have your “widget” you can now customize it (there are only 2 options located in the top right corner of the snip).

Links: You can choose to open links in a new window or new snip. Click on the circle (pictured to the right) once or twice depending on your preference.

Refresh Time: You can choose to have your snip automatically refresh every 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours or never. Click on the refresh symbol (pictured to the right) until you get the option you want.

The Issue

I use Snippage on both my PC and Mac and have only really had one issue (which I was able to fix on my PC, but not Mac). It’s not a huge issue, but still an issue. The problem is that the snip/widget will not stay on top of all other windows.

I’ve found that “Always on Top” for Windows works great for keeping my snip on top of all the other windows I may have open. For my Mac I’ve tried using Afloat, but it just doesn’t seem to work with Snippage. Maybe there is another windows management app for Mac that will, but I haven’t tried any others yet.

Besides that small issue, as you can see problem solved with having to check my Full Sail email about 50 times a day. I can simply take a quick look at my snip to see if any new messages have arrived in my inbox. Snippage may not be much (it’s actually still in early development), but it does help to boost my productivity and helps to keep me sane! What more can you ask for?

What Is KnowEm?

“KnowEm allows you to check for the use of your brand, product, personal name or username instantly on over 470 popular and emerging social media websites. Grab your name and secure your brand before someone else does.”

How Does It Work?

With a few quick steps, you can have KnowEm searching for your specified username across the Web. You then have the option to create an account on the sites where your username is not secured on. If that’s too time consuming for you, for a hefty fee you can have KnowEm do all of the work for you.

Getting Started

Enter the username that you want to search for, right at the top of the homepage. Then click on the “Check It” button.

At first, KnowEm will search through the most popular social networks only. If you want to check more, then you’ll have to click on the “Check More Social Sietes (400+)” link at the bottom of your results.

KnowEm will also show you the most common available domain names for your username. Again, you can check more domains by clicking on the “Check More Domains (40+)” link.

Searching All Sites

You obviously want to check more than just the most popular sites and click on the “Check More” link. KnowEm then takes you to a page where the sites are broken up into categories and you then must check each section individually.

The categories are: blogging, bookmarking, business, community, design, entertainment, health, information, microblogging, music, news, photo, tech, travel and video.

Click on the “Check This Category” button and give it a minute or two. Sites where your username is registered will be grayed out, while open sites will have a clickable “Available” link next to them. Clicking on the “Available” link will take you to that site’s registration page in a new tab.

Take The Easy Way Out

If you don’t have the time or really just don’t want to sit there, check each site and then register on all of them, you don’t have to. Personally I think you should just choose the categories most important to your niche and makes sure you at least have those areas covered, but you can also pay KnowEm to do the job.

They offer 4 different subscription plans ranging from $99 to $599. The $99 Individual Plan will start the initiation process for 150 sites. This means that they do not setup actual profiles for you (you have to get the $249, $349 or $599 plan for that). What they do is complete the initial registration process (usually where you enter your desired username, password and email) and that’s it. From there you have to confirm your registration via email and then fill out all of the profiles yourself.

That’s quite a price to pay for something you can definitely do yourself, yet that may be the only option for people who just don’t have the time. Whichever you decide, it is important to at least check and see where your brand is established and expand your coverage as much as you can. Try doing just one category at a time and you’ll see that it’s really not much work at all!

Get started at KnowEm now.

“The Sucuri Web Integrity Monitor detects unauthorized changes to your websites, DNS, Whois and SSL Certificates.” By entering your URL into their security scanner, you can receive a free limited scan.

If you’d like more in-depth details though, you’ll need to sign up for an account. Their accounts range from $9.99/month to $74.99/month ($89.99/year to $789.99/year). Also, if you just have website that is already infected and needs to be cleaned ASAP, you can have your site cleaned for $69.99. Recovering a hacked blog can be very frustrating and involve a lot of trial and error; so $9.99 is really a small price to pay to insure your sanity the next time something like that happens!

The free, limited scan will let you know your site’s status and whether it is blacklisted or not. There is also a pretty detailed Technical Report that follows.

The Technical Report has three different tabs: Web Site details, Blacklisting status, Malware information. The Web Site details tab then has four different sections: Web server details, List of links found, List of JavaScripts included, List of iframes included. So, just from simple little scan, you can really find out some pertinent details about your site.

The blacklisting status shows whether or not your domain is considered clean by Google Safe Browsing and by Norton Safe Web. You can click on a “reference” link to be directed to the actual (Google and Norton) sites for more details. I imagine if something was not right here, they would let you know. Sometimes it may take days or weeks before you even realize that something is wrong with your blog, so it’s a good idea to scan often just to make sure everything is ok.

With an account, you can also receive Sucuri alerts via email and Twitter. If you’d like to learn more about how Sucuri protects your site, be sure to check out the tour.

The idea behind Content Professor is that you can save a lot of time, get some unique articles, and post them up on your site for better results. Perhaps the best part of the whole exchange is that Content Professor is free.

What is Content Professor?

I realize that I am probably going to come off sounding a little biased, since I make my living as a freelance writer, but I also recognize the value of services like those offered by Content Professor.

In a nutshell, Content Professor is comprised of two key elements. First, it is an article spinner. If you’ve been following the Internet marketing industry, then you may have noticed an increase in interest in these kinds of tools. An article spinner allows you to take an existing article and “spin” it into several more on the same topic. This way, you are afforded what may appear as “unique” content to Google, Bing, and the like.

Second, Content Professor is also a PLR search engine. As a directory of PLR (private label rights) articles, Content Professor grants you access to a huge library of free articles that you can post on your site(s) with no fear of copyright infringement. Putting these two elements together, you can conceivably produce thousands of articles with no actual writing on your part.

Spinning for Uniqueness

First, let’s take a quick look at the article spinner.

Those familiar with other article spinners will be familiar with the general interface. You can define a series of alternative terms that are randomly chosen within the { and } brackets, separated by the | pipe. You can “spin” single words, phrases, or entire sentences. This makes the actual meaning of the article fundamentally the same, but you can produce articles that appear unique.

This obviously isn’t the same as hiring a writer to produce unique articles for you, but it can be a lot faster and a lot more efficient. To further aid in your spinning endeavors, Content Professor has a tool on the right side of the screen that will search for synonyms and highlight them in the article for you. Clicking on the underlined terms, you can then select which alternative terms you’d like to “spin” into the article.

When you are ready to go, you can click on the “Generate spun articles” button on the right, generating the number of spun articles that you define in the same space. This becomes a downloadable archive and the articles are provided in raw text format.

Accessing the PLR Search Engine

Complementing the article spinner is the PLR search engine. Here, you can find a series of articles that are free for you to download, spin, and publish as you see fit.

At the time this review was written, Content Professor’s PLR database contained over 13,000 articles of varying length. Most were in the 400 to 1000-word range and in English. Subjects included everything from professional speaking to CD duplication, signs of a cheating spouse to tai chi concepts. This database is completely searchable, so you can look for your target keywords.

The other handy feature is that you can click on the “Load Article” button under the Actions column and this will automatically populate the article spinner with the content of the corresponding article. You don’t need to copy and paste it manually into the utility.

How Much Does It Cost?

Content Professor comes in two editions. There is a free version that grants you access to all the core functionality of the article spinner and PLR directory. There is also the paid version that offers more advanced features and functions; it costs $9.95 per month or $97.00 for a year.

Visit Content Professor and see the full program for yourself.

Unless you’re able to build your site management software, code your theme from scratch and create all of the tools you use, you’re standing on the shoulders of those who lent their expertise to total strangers, often without renumeration, to make your site possible.

So as the U.S. sits down for Thanksgiving and gives thanks for the various blessings in its life, I’d like to give thanks to six tools and services that, without them, I probably wouldn’t have a blog or much of a presence on the Web at all.

They are in no particular order, but all are tools that I’ve grown to love, enjoy and depend upon over the years. Many, I have to wonder how I ever got along without.

1. WordPress

As far as content management systems go, WordPress may not be the most robust or the most flexible, but it is easy to use, runs well on smaller hosting accounts and, most importantly, is free to use.

For the vast majority of bloggers WordPress more than fits their needs and does so without a lot of hassle. Though WordPress has been expanding its feature set, including the merging WordPress and WordPress MU to enable multiple blog installations, it met pretty much all of my needs when I first started with it in 2005 and never really gave me a reason to look for an alternative.

Though Drupal and Joomla are both fine CMSes, WordPress has fit my needs and, judging from the fact it is the most popular blogging platform, it seems many others out there agree.

2. Disqus

If WordPress does have a weakness for me it has been its commenting system. Though improvements such as replies have been added to the system and plugins can greatly extend the system, the WordPress commenting system just seemed to leave a lot to be desired.

Disqus provides a simple, drop-in commenting system that automatically synchronizes with your database to ensure that you never lose a single comment posted to your site.

Not only does Disqus add a great deal of features to your sites comments, including connectivity with various social networking sites, it also connects your site and commenters with the other sites that use the service and it just flat out looks professional.

Though I’ve also used and enjoyed Intense Debate, another Automattic product, Disqus just worked better for me and is pretty much where I have settled down.

3. After the Deadline

However, another area where the Automattic product has won out is After the Deadline, the free grammar and spell-checking tool that can help save you from “your own mistakes” and other errors you make “like the plague”.

Once you configure AtD, it will scan your posts before you publish them alerting you to potential areas for improvement or correction. The process is extremely quick and, though the feedback isn’t always perfect, it can be very useful for improving your writing and making it more readable.

Best of all, After the Deadline is completely free to use. Though competitors such as Grammarly offer more features, including plagiarism checking, AtD is perfectly adequate for most users and, considering how easy and free it is, there isn’t much reason to avoid giving it a try.

4. Zite

Over the years, I must have tried a dozen services and tools for combatting information overload. Every day I am bombarded with dozens, if not hundreds, of links and trying to find out what I need to read and what I can skip is a nearly impossible task.

Zite, for me at least, has found the magic formula. Though it may not be able to tell me every story that might be of interest to me, it certainly finds and highlights the things I HAVE to know about.

My Zite page has, quite literally, become the first thing I read most mornings and the first place I turn when gathering stories for the “3 Count” column on Plagiarism Today. If something reaches number one on my Zite page, I probably need to read it.

I’m not as sure if it will work as well for others, but for me, it has been a tremendous sanity saver.

5. Remember the Milk

When I first sat down to use Remember the Milk, I didn’t get the service. My workload at that time was light and it seemed an ever-present todo list was more annoying than helpful.

However, as my workload began to grow and I found myself torn between my client work, my blogging and my personal life, I realized that things were falling through the cracks.

Suddenly, having an easy-to-use and easy-to-organize todo list became not just an asset, but a necessity. Best of all, with free integration into Gmail, it exists where I am naturally and fits in well with what I’m already doing.

I may not always have time to do everything I need, but at least I won’t be forgetting important tasks.

6. The “Hidden” Players

On nearly every Web server, there is quite literally a dozen applications and tools that, while important to make your site work, go virtually unnoticed, even by those who are using them.

For example, I use Apache, MySQL, PHP and CentOS Linux, all of which are freely-available tools largely built by volunteer contributors. Even if one could write their own CMS, they probably couldn’t write their own database server or operating system without serious help.

These are tools that most bloggers never think twice about and many don’t even know are there, but they are critical to everything we do as, without them, there would be no website at all.

Bottom Line

While it’s true that many, if not most, of these tools are run by businesses who are seeking a profit from their creations, they also chose business models that make their tools and services available to me and you at no cost.

So, for their willingness to let me and others use their products at no expense, I say thank you. I wish all of these companies the best of luck and continued success and I hope that they are able to continue providing an important service that enables people like you and me the chance to run a blog without having to open our wallets.

In the end, it is true that some of the best things in life are free. These six products are excellent examples of that.

Even if you’re quite proficient and fluent in English, you’re bound to have a typo every so often. There has to be a quick and easy way to check your spelling without having to install any software on your computer. And there is: it’s called Respelt and the kicker is that it is 100% free to use.

What Is Respelt?

Some web browsers have built-in spell checkers. WordPress has a built-in word count section for every blog post you compose. Even so, you want to have an easy-to-use tool to quickly spell check your website’s content.

Respelt is 100% web-based, so there is nothing to download and no software to install. Just like web-based email and Twitter clients, you can log into your Respelt online spell check account from anywhere you have Internet access.

If you only need the basic functionality of Respelt, you don’t even need to sign up for an account with the site. An account (which is free) gives you some advanced features and I’ll describe some of these in just a moment.

Spell Check Any URL

While Respelt certainly has a section where you can copy-and-paste your text to check for errors, it also comes with two additional areas for even more spell-checking utility.

Just underneath the main text box on the main page, you’ll find an area where you can insert the URL to any webpage. As an example, I put in the URL to my blog. It doesn’t render the webpage perfectly, of course, but it does capture all the content (including images).

In this case, the tool did not find any spelling mistakes on the front page of Beyond the Rhetoric. You can see the “no spelling errors” indication toward the top-right portion of the screen.

Checking RSS Feeds for Spelling Mistakes

What if you want to check more than a single page? You can do that too.

Underneath the URL field is the RSS field. Plug in the URL to any RSS feed and Respelt will make its way through that feed in search of spelling mistakes.

For this example, I entered the RSS feed to Dot Com Pho. As you can see, it picked up “pho” and “ep” as errors in its spell check results page. There are links to each individual page/post, so you can use those for quick correction purposes.

As mentioned, you don’t need an account to use these basic functions on Respelt. If you do sign up for a free account, however, you can use the utility to monitor your website and RSS feeds, delivering e-mail messages to you daily with all the spelling errors contained on your site.

This is great for owners of multi-author sites like Blogging Tips, so they don’t have to actively monitor every post to catch the mistakes; Respelt does it for them and then the webmaster can go and make the appropriate change.

Spelling Still Matters

Some people on the Internet will tell you that little typos don’t matter. In some contexts, that may be true, but you also have to realize that systematic spelling and grammar mistakes on your site really take away from your professionalism and credibility.

Considering that Respelt is a 100% free spell check, you really have nothing to lose by giving them a shot. Moving forward, I anticipate some monetization strategies to come into play with Respelt, like premium accounts and on-site advertising. Until then, it’s free to use and ad-free to boot.