iZachy » Tools

Cheat with CSS

Ken Cheung — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 07:01:57 +0000

Check out the CSS Cheat Sheet over on Leslie Franke's blog. What's so great about it? It prints out on one sheet of paper and as the words "Cheat Sheet" imply, the page contains CSS hints and syntax. I'm not a CSS expert and I don't mess around with CSS enough to have the syntax, property, and values memorized. I usually have to hunt around the web to find what I'm looking for. With the cheat sheet, I have the CSS information tacked on my wall. No more searching. OK, that's probably an over-statement, but you know what I'm saying.

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Free Web Tools

Ken Cheung — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 18:35:15 +0000

Wow, check out SEOmoz's list of stats tools. There are several gems in there. Can you say, "link bait." There are also some interesting links in the comments area too. Check it out and bookmark the list because you won't have time to go through all the links in one sitting.

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Feedvertising vs phpAdsNew Ad Server

Ken Cheung — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 21:47:52 +0000

TLA rolled out their new Feedvertising service today. Feedvertising enables publishers to run text link ads in their RSS feed. Feedvertising can display ads from TLA, publishers' in-house ads, or affiliate links. They even have a WordPress 2.0 plugin to make setup relatively easy. An extra bonus is that TLA can even sell RSS text link ads for you. Which is great because Google RSS ads are still in beta (the last I heard) and Yahoo RSS ads don't seem to work with WordPress/FeedBurner-powered sites.

Read Feedvertising vs phpAdsNew Ad Server (389 words)

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phAdsNew Ad Server Review

Ken Cheung — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 17:42:40 +0000

Yesterday, I installed phpAdsNew, which is an open-source ad server. The ad server is free and is easy to install. OK, it was easy to install for me because my web hosting provider uses Fantastico, which makes installation of various programs easy. Installation is as simple as clicking on a link.

The ads on the right and the ads in the left column are served by phpAdsNew. The server randomly displays ads from Google and Yahoo in the left column and Amazon ads to the right of the content. Like Adsense and YPN, all you have to do is copy and paste a few lines of code. However, if all you want to do is rotate Google and Yahoo ads, then phpAdsNew is over-kill. You can get by with a simple Javascript/php script or a simple ad rotator plugin. However, phpAdsNew does more than just rotate ads, it's a full blown ad server with a bunch of bells and whistles. With phpAdsNew, you have the option of serving ads that you sell yourself.

Read phAdsNew Ad Server Review (493 words)

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Keyword Difficulty Tool

Ken Cheung — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 22:13:33 +0000

As mentioned in my Page Strength post, SEOmoz has a Keyword Difficulty tool. The tool is used to analyze the competitive landscape of a particular search term or phrase, this tool issues a percentage score and provides a detailed analysis of the top ranking sites at Google and Yahoo.

There's a couple of manual steps involved and you have to register to use the free tool. You also need a Google API key (free) to use the tool. The tool takes a while to run so you are better off just having the results emailed to you. Other than the long wait, I like the tool and found it useful.

The Keyword Difficulty tool gives you a ranking for how competitive your keyword is, the factors involved, and the top ten results on Google and Yahoo. Then the tool gives you data on the sites that ranked in the top ten for your keyword in Google and Yahoo (ie – links to the site, Alexa ranking, mentions in Google news, pagerank, etc).

I have two suggestions for improving the tool. First, it would be nice to be able to click on a link to see where competitors are linked from. Second, it would also be useful to have your own site listed so you can compare the results of your competitors with your own site.

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What is Your Page Strength?

Ken Cheung — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 21:24:53 +0000

Check out the Page Strength tool over on SEOmoz. The tool is designed to satisfy the curiosity of webmasters, surfers and web marketing professionals seeking a better metric to quickly assess a site/page's relative importance and visibility. In other words, something other than Google's PageRank. This tool was created by Matt Inman and Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz, a Seattle based search engine optimization company.

Read What is Your Page Strength? (456 words)

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Are Your Subscribers Getting Your Newsletters?

Ken Cheung — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 01:45:26 +0000

I've been gathering delivery data on the four email broadcasting services I reviewed previously (FeedBurner, Zookoda, Squeet, and FeedBlitz). In my first test, I setup Zookoda and FeedBurner with my EDA Geek test mailing list (about 30 posts a week). I setup Squeet with EDA Blog, which has about five posts a week. Lastly, I setup FeedBlitz with this site, iZachy (about five posts a week during the test period). If I had to do it again, I would have set up all the services with the same site, but I setup the newsletter via FeedBurner. With the FeedBurner interface, you have to disable FeedBlitz and Squeet if you want to use the FeedBurner email service. In hindsight, I should have setup the newsletter directly from the FeedBlitz and Squeet sites.

Read Are Your Subscribers Getting Your Newsletters? (1,414 words)

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Squeet Email Review

Ken Cheung — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 07:05:36 +0000

This is my fourth in a series of reviews on email broadcasting service. This will be last email review for a while. Today's focus is Squeet. Like the other three services reviewed so far, Squeet is a free web-hosted service. The main difference is that Squeet gives most of the control to subscribers instead of to publishers. Subscribers can set the delivery frequency, delivery time, and delivery day.

Read Squeet Email Review (938 words)

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FeedBlitz Email Review

Ken Cheung — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 07:07:48 +0000

Today I am reviewing FeedBlitz. This is my third in a series of reviews on email broadcasting services. FeedBlitz is yet another free web-hosted email broadcasting service. It offers more features than FeedBurner, but fewer features than Zookoda (unless you want to upgrade and part with some money). Of the three services I tested so far, FeedBlitz appears to be the most reliable (more about this in this post).

Read FeedBlitz Email Review (993 words)

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FeedBurner Email Review

Ken Cheung — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 21:48:06 +0000

This is a second in a series of reviews on email broadcasting services. Today I am reviewing FeedBurner Email. Like Zookoda, FeedBurner is a free, web-hosted solution. In my test drive, I found FeedBurner was easy to setup. This was because the only option you can change is the from address for the newsletters. After that, all you have to do is copy and paste the subscription form code to your site.

Read FeedBurner Email Review (450 words)

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Zookoda Email Review

Ken Cheung — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 06:21:57 +0000

Zookoda, which I discovered on ProBlogger, is a free web-hosted email broadcasting service. The service allows you to send posts from RSS feeds to subscribers. Zookoda is packed with features and it's hard to believe it's free. Other services I tested charged a million dollars for all the features found in Zookoda. However, I did encounter a few problems with it.

Read Zookoda Email Review (1,342 words)

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Text Link Ads Link Value Calculator

Ken Cheung — Tue, 23 May 2006 05:25:01 +0000

I saw a post about the Text Link Ads Link Value Calculator over on Darren's ProBlogger site. Apparently the calculator is an estimate of market prices for text links (they have a disclaimer for their tool: "does not always reflect the prices of Text Link Ads inventory").

Read Text Link Ads Link Value Calculator (243 words)

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Google Ranking Program

Ken Cheung — Sat, 13 May 2006 03:42:29 +0000

I've finally had time to signup for a Google API key so I could try this nifty Google ranking program. A long time ago, I use to use Web Position to find my ranking for various keywords, but I stopped using it for fear of being punished by Google. Now I can legally use a page ranking tool for free. Give it a try. Its a big time saver. You can signup for a free Google API key here.

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Looking for E-Newsletter Solution

Ken Cheung — Fri, 05 May 2006 17:50:43 +0000

I've been looking for an email solution to power my newsletters. I noticed in my tests that some of the emails do not arrived. I've been evaluating FeedBurner, FeedBlitz, Squeet, and Zookoda. I've just started collecting the data and will share them with you soon.

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