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Pay Per Play - No Clicks Needed to Monetize ALL Your Traffic!

December 16, 2007 | Author: Rob | Filed under: Money Matters

Pay Per Play is a new audio advertising program. It’s quite rare that I get excited about new programs. Typically I won’t touch a pre-launch but what I’m about to introduce to you has gotten me quite excited.

Let me introduce to you a new form of advertising on your website that involves no impressions and no clicks to earn revenue. I’m talking about a system that allows you to cash in on 100% of your website visitors similar to the way television companies make their money. If you don’t feel like doing much reading and just want to watch the video explanation click here.

Big-time advertisers are starting to realize that at any given time there are more or close to the number of people logged on to the Internet than there are television. They also know that the Internet and its usage is exploding in terms of growth.

An average Super Bowl commercial can cost a few million dollars for 30 seconds with no guarantee in sales… The reason people do this is because they can reach 100 million people at once! With the use of the Internet they can reach even more.

Basically this is how the program works: you join free and enter a simple code on your website that when a browser visits it plays a quick professional five second audio promotional advertisement. The software crawls your website to determine your niche and it serves a relevant advertisement. This is the way advertising should be! You did your part and made your visitors aware of the advertisement; and you’ll be paid accordingly. This is the same way advertisements on television work; no more need to worry about clicks etc… On the website you can listen to several sample audio clips from reputable companies such as Harley Davidson, Burger King, Taco Bell etc… Basically the same types of companies you’d hear about on television. I highly recommend you watch the video explanations on this page.

As I mentioned earlier I think this is going to be a big success and I’m glad someone made me aware of it when they did. It’s in pre-launch now but also has an interesting referral program so it pays to spread the word.

In summary you will earn:

• 25% of what the advertiser spends on PPP ads you serve on your own website(s).

• 5% of what the advertiser spends on PPP ads played on the website(s) of those you refer.

• 5% of what the advertiser spends on PPP ads played on the website(s) that your direct referrals bring on board.

That means in total the company is giving away 35% of the revenue to publishers and keeping 65% to themselves. This is a sustainable model and many that promise ridiculously high commission seem to cease operating due to insufficient funds for operating costs. (Cough Agloco) It also provides you the publisher with an interesting opportunity to make additional money on this program via networking marketing. I look at it similar to an affiliate program with residual earnings. Sounds like a winner to me. Seems to be getting a lot of attention as you can see on it’s alexa ranking; take a look at the graph!

I think it was only a matter of time until something like this made its way onto the internet. Will it sink or will it sail? No clue as it’s still in pre-launch until bidding for terms opens February 1st 2008. The creator has a few other successes under his belt, a great reputation and understanding of the internet. Since it’s a Pre-Launch I wouldn’t go overboard but I would consider signing up and doing what I’ve done which is write a blog post and let a few people know then wait and see what happens in February. Never want to push something too hard until you know it produces results. Either way this seems like an exciting concept to me so I thought I’d let you know about it first as it makes its way through the internet.

If you’ve read this far take the time to read the promotional page for Pay Per Play. This could be the opportunity you’ve been waiting for whether you are a publisher or an affiliate marketer or as in my case; both! Now is the time to do a little bit of work that could pay of large if this program is all that it promises to be. If not nothing lost and back to the drawing board!

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Freelancer + Promotion = Money

If your a freelancer, where have you looked to find work? Do you have a blog? Blogs are one great way to promote the service you offer. But an even better way is registering at the various career sites. These are the places that people look at while looking to hire someone for a project. There is really no reason NOT to add your profile to as many as you can. Like the old saying goes, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

I have a portfolio at all of the sites listed below, in several sections. I listed myself in web design, writing, and basic SEO. What are your ’specialties’? Can you write articles? That is a big one. Whatever your field, register your resume at the sites below, and you will have that many more chance to get a job. Some even let you browse projects and bid on them.

I am going to sort the list by free and those that are not free. (While free is a great option, and do all of them, don’t over look the paid memberships, those sometimes have great results.

Free to list Sites:

• Yahoo Job Board
• HotResumes.com
• Job.com
• Beyond.com

Paid

• Great deal- I have gotten quite a bit of work from this on. Just $2.95 to sign up @ GoFrelance
• ResumeZapper.Com - They distribute your resume to up to 10,000 recruiters!
• Email My Resume sends your resume to prospective buyers.
  

I you need help putting together a professional resume, check out e-resume,they have alot of samples and how-to’s as well as a service to make one for you.

The Three Biggest Internet Marketing Time Wasters

The Three Biggest Internet Marketing Time Wasters

Buliding a great website / blog / brand takes time and hard work. Unfortunately, many aspiring web entrepreneurs put too much emphasis on these three time-wasting activities:

Changing the layout, colors and general appearance of their site

Designing our website is one of the first steps in our long journey to build a small business brand. Just when we thought we had everything figured out, the little artist in our head keeps second-guessing everything we just did and we start changing colors, moving the position or our logo, changing the font, messing with our navigation options, etc. This is a mistake for two reasons:

1. Your site will never be perfect. However, if you followed a few basic web design guidelines at the beginning, chances are your site is already good enough and ready to be enhanced with useful, valuable content.
2. Once you build a strong readership base, constantly changing the appearance of your site will negatively affect your brand. Customers like consistency and familiarity. If as a result of your constant changes customers can’t find what they want or don’t recognize your site you’ll end up losing brand equity.

The best strategy is to make very subtle changes to your site once a year or so. In other words, make your web design changes few and far between and keep your branding consistent.

Believing that Search Engine Optimization is the be-all and end-all of your marketing

Preparing and optimizing our site for the search engines is just one of the many tactics at our disposal to promote and build our brand online. Putting all our eggs in the SEO basket is risky, since search engines keep changing their ranking formulas on a regular basis, and what works today may not work tomorrow.

If we find ourselves spending too much time fiddling with page titles, changing the wording in our headlines or worrying about our keyword density, it is time to stop and ask ourselves if that time wouldn’t be better utilized creating useful content and building a loyal customer / reader base.

If you are just starting out, you may want to check the SEO advice coming straight from the horse’s mouth and read the design and content guidelines of the offered by the the main search engines. You can then read some online tutorials and a few good ebooks on the subject.

I would suggest, however, that you focus on the basics and don’t get tied up by the extremely technical stuff. As with any other topic, the law of diminishing returns applies here, and you don’t want to spend more time chasing Google’s tail than building and improving your site.

Obsessing with Adsense ads and revenue

Unless you run a purely informational site, Google Adsense shouldn’t be a significant part of your business model. If you sell something and are trying to build your brand online, Adsense ads will be a distraction from your core offering, where you can make more money than the few cents per click you would be getting by plastering Adsense code all over your site.

Additionaly, Adsense ads are detrimental to the user experience (especially if placed in the prime areas of the page) and make your site less likely to be linked by others. In the crucial early stages, plastering your site with ads is branding suicide. Your main focus should be in building a loyal following of people who visit your site regularly, subscribe to your feeds and link to you.

Even for more established sites, or sites that are purely informational in nature, some experts suggest to wait until a site can draw around 1,000 visitors per day before placing ads.

In summary, build value first, tell people about it, and tell them to tell their friends. Everything else will fall into place at the right time.

Secrets Of Stumbleupon - Making And Keeping Friends

Add me to your del.icio.us network Recent Visitors You! Join My Community View Reader Community Join this Community (provided by MyBlogLog) Secrets Of Stumbleupon - Making And Keeping Friends" target="_blank" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;" face="arial,sans-serif" color="#000000" href="http://www.moxie-drive.com/">Moxie-Drive Home Page Submit Your Articles To Moxie Drive Expressions Turnkey Business Blog Home Page Click here to email me Exchange Links The official NowSourcing blog © Copyright: Moxie-Drive.com Powered by:

"> You can make friends in Stumbleupon, or any social media site for that matter, two ways. You can ask someone to be your friend or your friends can come to you. It is important that you have good content, presented in the first post to this series Secrets To Stumbleupon - Fresh Content. The kind of people who you want to ask are going to check out at least the first page of your Stumbleupon Blog. Make sure that you like it. It is your interpretation of what you really like. If you are seeking other people interested in Social Media, post articles that are mostly about Social Media and not Baseball or some other unrelated niche. You should certainly have checked the green button indicating that you like "Social Media, as well so when you press the Stumble! button you are presented with Social Media sites by Stumbleupon. This is how you build your Stumbleupon "personality". If you think that you have found a fellow stumbler that is interested in the same topics that you review, along with your own material of course, then use the contact link on their Stumbleupon page and ask them to be your friend. I did this with about 100 Stumblers at first. I then reviews their posts and voted on them as well as showed up on their Stumbleupon page frequently. They noticed I was hanging around and some of them finally reciprocated by making me their friend. After awhile, you will notice other Stumblers coming and hanging around your Stumbleupon page. People are curious about other people. They are showing your pages so why not reciprocate friendship and make it official? Press your new friends picture at the bottom of your friends page and then press the "Add As Friend" button in the top right hand corner of your new friends Stumbleupon page. Keep in mind that Stumbleupon only allows 200 friends. Check your friends Stumbleupon page by clicking on their picture under the friends tab occasionally to make sure they are active. If they have not been active for over a month or so, they are not pursuing the main purpose of Stumbleupon, which is many things including friendship, traffic, or maybe just a place to spend your time. When you reach the 200 limit, consider "de-friending" Stumblers who are not presenting material on their Stumbleupon Blog that is in the various topics (keywords) of your Stumbleupon blog. No hard feelings in doing this, some of your friend and you are just not interested in the same things, time to move on. You will find that you will draw solid, related subscribers with good quality content. They will want in your door also and are most likely to stick around and help you meet your goals in Stumbleupon. The main key to making friends in Stumbleupon is a very simple concept. When anyone reviews your material (distinguished from a vote) or adds you as a friend as mentioned either way in this article, say "thank you". A thank you in Stumbleupon acts just like it does in real life. Eventually you will get a very tight knit group of Stumbleupon friends all Stumbling on basically the same topic who are willing to take you to the next level of Stumbling, becoming a Stumbleupon Power User, which is going to be the topic of my next post, The Secrets Of Stumbleupon - Becoming A Stumbleupon Power User. Read the first three in the series by clicking on: 1. Secrets To Stumbleupon - Introduction. 2. Secrets To Stumbleupon - Fresh Content. 3. Secrets Of Stumbleupon - Tagging Your Posts For A BIG Traffic Boost internet internet+tools stumbleupon social+networking social+bookmarking,

Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2007

Top 10 Most Popular Torrent Sites of 2007
Written by Ernesto on December 29, 2007

2007 is almost over so it’s time to make a list of the Top 10 “public” BitTorrent sites getting the most traffic this year. Mininova is out in the lead followed by IsoHunt and The Pirate Bay. TorrentSpy, the most popular BitTorrent site last year, has dropped down to 6th place.

The list is based on Alexa’s traffic rank, and this data was backed up by reports from quantified sites on quantcast and traffic reports from some of the site admins.

Here is the list, as of December 29, public BitTorrent sites only.
1. Mininova

Without a doubt the most visited BitTorrent site. In November, Mininova reached a milestone by entering the list of the 50 most visited websites on the Internet.

Alexa rank: 46
2. IsoHunt

IsoHunt continued to grow this year. In September they were forced to close their trackers to US traffic because of the issues they have with the MPAA, but this had no effect on the visitor count.

Alexa rank: 143
3. The Pirate Bay

The Pirate Bay has been in the news quite a bit this year and remains not only the most used BitTorrent tracker, but also one of the most visited BitTorrent sites. At the moment they are fighting with IsoHunt for the second place in this list.

Alexa rank: 147
4. Torrentz

Torrentz is the only “torrent site” in the top 10 that doesn’t host .torrent files. Several improvements and new features have been introduced over the past year such as a comment system, private bookmarks and a cleaner layout.

Alexa rank: 160
5. BTjunkie

BTjunkie was one of the fastest risers last year and continued to grow throughout 2007. Last month they were, like many others, forced to leave their ISP (LeaseWeb), but the transition to a new host went smoothly and didn’t result in any downtime.

Alexa rank: 445
6. TorrentSpy

TorrentSpy was the most popular BitTorrent site of 2006, but dropped to sixth place due to legal issues with the MPAA. To ensure the privacy of their users, TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US, causing their traffic to plunge.

Alexa rank: 461
7. TorrentPortal

Not much news about TorrentPortal this year, but that probably is a good thing. Like most other sites they have grown quite a bit in 2007.

Alexa rank: 481
8. GamesTorrents

It’s quite a surprise to see GamesTorrents in the list of 10 most popular BitTorrent sites of 2007. This Spanish BitTorrent site had a huge dip in traffic earlier this year but managed to secure 8th place.

Alexa rank: 583
9. TorrentReactor

TorrentReactor.net has been around for quite a while, four years to be exact, and is still growing.

Alexa rank: 604
10. BTmon

BTmon was one of the newcomers in 2006, and it is the youngest BitTorrent site in the top 10 this year.

Alexa rank: 673
Honorable Mention: Demonoid

For being one of the most visited BitTorrent sites until they pulled the plug in November.
Top 5 Newcomers
1. SumoTorrent

SumoTorrent launched this April and quickly became one of the more popular BitTorrent sites.

Alexa rank: 1021
2. SeedPeer

SeedPeer launched in September and is formerly known as Meganova.

Alexa rank: 2924
3. Zoozle

A BitTorrent meta-search engine, launched in January.

Alexa rank: 2987
4. Extratorrent

Launched a year ago, it got a serious traffic boost earlier this year.

Alexa rank: 5304
5. BitTorrent.am

BitTorrent.am is also indexed by Torrentz.com, and was launched early 2007.

6 E-mail accounts worth having, and why.

6 E-mail accounts worth having, and why.
December 5th, 2006

email.jpg

I’m not going to start off like everyone else, saying that we live a time when anybody needs an e-mail address, because technology is advanced, blah, blah, blah… If you’re reading this, you surely have an e-mail address and you know what it’s all about, so I’m not going to explain the principles of electronic communication.

Lately, I’ve seen an explosion of websites that offer e-mail services, just to get some extra visitors, or some recognition, but I myself don’t even bother checking them out, because I think they’re all the same.

If you’re the type of person that likes innovative and diverse things, you might want to read what follows. Each person should have, in my opinion, at least one of the following six e-mail accounts:

Yahoo! Mail

Why?
Because it’s one of the most widely spread e-mail providers out there, and its services are always expanding. Cool interface (which the Yahoo! Mail Beta has made cooler), more than enough space (1.0 GB will suffice, if you only deposit e-mails), lots and lots of other things you can do with your Yahoo! Account.

GMail

Why?
Simple. Because Yahoo! and GMail are the largest rivals out there, and they will always compete for your appreciation, by giving you newer, cooler things. As opposed to Yahoo’s mail system, GMail has the advantage of controlling several e-mail addresses from the same account, a larger storage space (almost 3.0GB; if that doesn’t satisfy you, what will?), and a better interface. The one slight disadvantage is that you can’t register your account directly from the website, you have to be invited by a friend. But don’t worry, there’s bound to be somebody willing to help (if not, ask me and I’ll invite you).


The world’s longest Alphabetical Email Address

Why?
Because it’s funny as hell. Even as they advertise it: everybody will think your e-mail account is bogus; email software cannot be configured; web forms are unable to read your email address; people have a hard time even typing your address. Let’s be honest, it’s not meant to be effective, it’s meant to be funny. And it is. What’s the address, you ask? Let me take a deep breath. Here it goes: http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz abcdefghijk.com/ . Woah.

10 Minute Mail

Why?
Because it’s simple and very very useful! Did you ever find yourself wanting to register an account somewhere, and that somewhere asked for your e-mail address to confirm something? You know you’re gonna get spammed by doing it, but you don’t have any choice - you need that account now; maybe in ten minutes you won’t, but you will now. That’s where the 10 minute mail comes in handy. Go there, register an account (a random one will be provided), the confirmation will come, and you won’t have any problem registering your account. After that - the e-mail is just deleted, no questions asked. If you still need some time, it can be extended by another 10 minutes, and another 10 minutes, and another 10 minutes, for as long as you need.

Goowy

Why?
Because it’s the nicest I’ve seen in a long time. In fact, it’s not only an e-mail service. It’s your own personal online desktop, filled with games, IM, Email, contacts, File Storage, even mini widgets. I’m not going to say any more, hoping that you become curious and check it out yourself. Trust me - it’s worth it!

FreeGabMail

Why?
Because you can easily send videos and audio recordings to all your friends, without having to register an account. Simple design, simple idea. Etherfast presented it more detailed here.

Well, that’s that. Which one of the above did you like? Which account do you already own? I must confess that I’ve got accounts on all of the above, and all impressed me in some way.

100 great free and open source tools and applications for web developers

100 great free and open source tools and applications for web developers 18Oct07

Over the last few months I have been madly documenting all the free and open source tools and applications I have used or come across during my working day. So below you can find 100 of the best tools and applications I have found.

Please not I will have missed some things of the list but feel free to post any tools or applications you like and I’ll try and add them.

Enjoy!
Code Editors
1. Aptana

The Aptana IDE is a free, open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript-focused development environment for building Ajax applications. It features code assist on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS languages, FTP/SFTP support and a JavaScript debugger to troubleshoot your code.
More about Aptana
2. Eclipse

Eclipse is an open-source software framework written primarily in Java. In its default form it is a Java IDE, consisting of the Java Development Tools (JDT) and compiler (ECJ). Users can extend its capabilities by installing plug-ins written for the Eclipse software framework, such as development toolkits for other programming languages, and can write and contribute their own plug-in modules. Language packs are available for over a dozen languages. (Source Wikipedia)

More about Eclipse
3. jEdit

jEdit is a mature programmer’s text editor with hundreds (counting the time developing plugins) of person-years of development behind it. Being a Java based solution it runs across multiple operating systems including; Mac OS X, OS/2, Unix, VMS and Windows.

More about jEdit
4. NVU

A Web Authoring System for Linux desktop users as well as Microsoft Windows and Macintosh users to rival programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Nvu (which stands for "new view") makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML.

More about NVU
5. Quanta Plus

Quanta Plus is a highly stable and feature rich web development environment. The vision with Quanta has always been to start with the best architectural foundations, design for efficient and natural use and enable maximal user extensibility.

More about Quanta Plus
6. Amaya

Amaya is a Web editor to create and update documents directly on the Web. Browsing features are seamlessly integrated with the editing and remote access features in a uniform environment. This follows the original vision of the Web as a space for collaboration and not just a one-way publishing medium. Amaya started as an HTML + CSS style sheets editor. Since that time it was extended to support XML and an increasing number of XML applications such as the XHTML family, MathML, and SVG. It allows all those vocabularies to be edited simultaneously in compound documents.

More about Amaya
Modelling Tools
7. Dia

Dia is inspired by the commercial Windows program ‘Visio’, though more geared towards informal diagrams for casual use. It can be used to draw many different kinds of diagrams. It currently has special objects to help draw entity relationship diagrams, UML diagrams, flowcharts, network diagrams, and many other diagrams. It is also possible to add support for new shapes by writing simple XML files, using a subset of SVG to draw the shape.

More about Dia
8. ArgoUML

ArgoUML is the leading open source UML modeling tool and includes support for all standard UML 1.4 diagrams. It runs on any Java platform and is available in ten languages.

More about ArgoUML
9. StarUML

StarUML is an open source project to develop fast, flexible, extensible, feature rich, and freely-available UML/MDA platform running on Win32 platform. The goal of the StarUML project is to build a software modeling tool and also platform that is a compelling replacement of commercial UML tools such as Rational Rose.

More about StarUML
10. MagicDraw

MagicDraw is a visual UML modeling and CASE tool with teamwork support. Designed for Business Analysts, Software Analysts, Programmers, QA Engineers, and Documentation Writers, this dynamic and versatile development tool facilitates analysis and design of Object Oriented (OO) systems and databases. It provides the industry’s best code engineering mechanism (with full round-trip support for J2EE, C#, C++, CORBA IDL programming languages, .NET, XML Schema, WSDL), as well as database schema modeling, DDL generation and reverse engineering facilities.

More about MagicDraw
11. OpenOffice Draw

DRAW - from a quick sketch to a complex plan, DRAW gives you the tools to communicate with graphics and diagrams.

More About OpenOffice Draw
12. Kivio

Kivio is an easy to use diagramming and flowcharting application with tight integration to the other KOffice applications. It enables you to create network diagrams, organisation charts, flowcharts and more.

More about Kivio
File Transfer Clients
13. FileZilla

FileZilla is a free FTP client and a server solution. FileZilla is open source software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

More about Filezilla
14. WinSCP

WinSCP is an open source SFTP client and FTP client for Windows. Its main function is the secure file transfer between a local and a remote computer. Beyond this, WinSCP offers basic file manager functionality. It uses Secure Shell (SSH) and supports, in addition to Secure FTP, also legacy SCP protocol.

More about WinSCP
15. CyberDuck

Cyberduck is an open source FTP and SFTP (SSH Secure File Transfer) browser licenced under the GPL with an easy to use interface, integration with external editors and support for many Mac OS X system technologies such as Spotlight, Bonjour, the Keychain and AppleScript.

More about CyberDuck
16. FireFTP

FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

More about FireFTP
Code Documentors
17. JSDoc

JSDoc is a tool that parses inline documentation in JavaScript source files, and produces an documentation of the JavaScript code. This is typically in the form of HTML, but XML and XMI (UML) export are also supported. JSDoc is based on the (very successful) javadoc tool that was created for the same purpose for the Java programming language.

More About JSDoc
18. Javadoc

Javadoc is a tool for generating API documentation in HTML format from doc comments in source code. It can be downloaded only as part of the Java 2 SDK.

More about Javadoc
19. PHPDoc

PHPDoc is an adoption of Javadoc to the PHP world. PHPDoc is written in PHP. It offers you a way to generate an API documentation of objectoriented and procedural code with certain markup in your source. PHPDoc is an Open Source Project and gets distributed under the PHP Licence. That means you can use it in commercials projects.

More about PHPDoc
20. phpDocumentor

phpDocumentor, sometimes referred to as phpdoc or phpdocu, is the current standard auto-documentation tool for the php language. Similar to Javadoc, and written in php, phpDocumentor can be used from the command line or a web interface to create professional documentation from php source code. phpDocumentor has support for linking between documentation, incorporating user level documents like tutorials and creation of highlighted source code with cross referencing to php general documentation. A complete list of features is available.

More about phpDocumentor
Bowser Plugins
21. ColorZilla

Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.

More about ColorZilla
22. LiveHTTPHeaders

LiveHTTPHeaders displays http headers in real time (while pages are being downloaded from the Internet) letting you edit request headers and replay a URL.

More about LiveHTTPHeaders
23. DebugBar

The DebugBar V4.1.1 is an Internet Explorer plug-in that brings you new powerful features such as a DOM Inspector, HTTP Inspector, JavaScript Inspector, JavaScript Console and HTML Validator.

More about DebugBar
24. Firebug

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

More about Firebug
25. Firebug Lite

Well this one isn’t a browser plugin as such, however I think it goes nicely under Firebug.

Firebug Lite is a JavaScript file you can insert into your pages to simulate the Firebug console in browsers that are not named "Firefox".

More about Firebug Lite
26. FireBug Lite ++ (IE7Pro)

An amelioration of the FireBug Lite Script used as userscript for observing from all web sites. F12 to open the console
FireBug Lite ++ can :
- Observe errors
- Evaluate expression (console)
- Browse JavaScript Object (not in FireBug lite, added by this script !)

More about FireBug Lite ++ (IE7Pro)
27. Internet Explorer Toolbar

The Microsoft Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar provides a variety of tools for quickly creating, understanding, and troubleshooting Web pages. This version is a preview release and behavior may change in the final release.

More about Internet Explorer Toolbar
28. Firefox web developer toolbar

The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. It is designed for Firefox, Flock, Mozilla and Seamonkey, and will run on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

More about Firefox we developer toolbar
29. IE7Pro

IE7Pro is a must have add-on for Internet Explorer, which includes a lot of features and tweaks to make your IE friendlier, more useful, secure and customizable. IE7Pro includes Tabbed Browsing Management, Spell Check, Inline Search, Super Drag Drop, Crash Recovery, Proxy Switcher, Mouse Gesture, Tab History Browser, Web Accelerator, User Agent Switcher, Webpage Capturer, AD Blocker, Flash Block, Greasemonkey like User Scripts platform, User Plug-ins and many more power packed features. You can customize not just Internet Explorer, but even your favorite website according to your need and taste using IE7Pro.

More about IE7Pro
30. Opera Web Developer Toolbar & Menu

The web developer toolbar is a menu and toolbar setup for Opera which brings together functions related to web development, validation services and links to standards and other documentation. It integrates parts of Toby’s W3-dev Menu, MooseCSS’s menu, and countless BookMarklets taken from various places (Jesse, Aleto, SlayerOffice, Tarquin and others).

More about Opera Web Developer Toolbar & Menu
31. Pearl Cresent

Pearl Crescent Page Saver is an extension for Mozilla Firefox that lets you capture images of web pages. These images can be saved in PNG or JPEG format. Using Page Saver, you can capture an entire page or just the visible portion. Options let you control whether images are captured at full size (which is the default) or scaled down to a smaller size.

More about Perl Cresent
32. Feng GUI FireFox Add-On extension

A plugin allowing you to easily find out how people View your website or image and which areas are getting most of the attention.
The ViewFinder Heatmap service, is an artificial intelligence service which simulates human visual attention and creates an attention heatmap.
More about Feng GUI FireFox Add-On extension
33. Lorem Ipsum Content Generator 0.4

The Lorem Ipsum Content Generator creates placeholder content using latin pasages. This allows you to see what a page is going to look like with content before the copy is actually available.

More about Lorem Ipsum Content Generator 0.4
34. FlashBlock

Flashblock is an extension for the Mozilla, Firefox, and Netscape browsers that takes a pessimistic approach to dealing with Macromedia Flash content on a webpage and blocks ALL Flash content from loading. It then leaves placeholders on the webpage that allow you to click to download and then view the Flash content.

More about FlashBlock
Unit Testing
35. PHPUnit

I understand this is a framework, however, I think it’s a good tool to use in PHP development.
To make code testing viable, good tool support is needed. This is where PHPUnit comes into play. It is a member of the xUnit family of testing frameworks and provides both a framework that makes the writing of tests easy as well as the functionality to easily run the tests and analyse their results.

More about PHPUnit
36. JUnit

JUnit is a simple framework to write repeatable tests. It is an instance of the xUnit architecture for unit testing frameworks.

More about JUnit
37. JsUnit

JsUnit is a Unit Testing framework for client-side (in-browser) JavaScript. It is essentially a port of JUnit to JavaScript. Also included is a platform for automating the execution of tests on multiple browsers and mutiple machines running different OSs.
More about JsUnit here
38. NUnit

NUnit is a unit-testing framework for all .Net languages. Initially ported from JUnit, the current production release, version 2.4, is the fifth major release of this xUnit based unit testing tool for Microsoft .NET. It is written entirely in C# and has been completely redesigned to take advantage of many .NET language features, for example custom attributes and other reflection related capabilities. NUnit brings xUnit to all .NET languages.

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Load/Stress Testing
39. OpenSTA

OpenSTA is a distributed software testing architecture designed around CORBA, it was originally developed to be commercial software by CYRANO. The current toolset has the capability of performing scripted HTTP and HTTPS heavy load tests with performance measurements from Win32 platforms.

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40. curl-loader

A powerful C-written HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS load generator, performance and stress testing tool. It uses real HTTP and TLS/SSL stacks, generating thousands of users each with own IP-address. Emphases is given to user authentication, login and statistics.

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Usability/Accessibility and General Testing
41. Xenu

Xenu’s Link Sleuth (TM) checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on "normal" links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets. It displays a continously updated list of URLs which you can sort by different criteria. A report can be produced at any time.

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42. Vischeck

Vischeck is a way of showing you what things look like to someone who is color blind. You can try Vischeck online- either run Vischeck on your own image files or run Vischeck on a web page. You can also download programs to let you run it on your own computer.

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43. browsershots.org

Browsershots.org is a free open-source online service providing screenshots of your web site in a multitude of different browsers. It is not as advanced as BrowserCam but a fantastic tool none the less.

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44. BrowsrCamp

If you need to test your websites on MacOSX browsers then this service is the perfect place for you. BrowsrCamp offers two services: a Safari screenshots generator (free) and a testing system based on VNC (paid).

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45. Feng GUI

Find out how people View your website or image and which areas are getting most of the attention.
The ViewFinder Heatmap service, is an artificial intelligence service which simulates human visual attention and creates an attention heatmap.

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46. Watchfire WebXACT

WebXACT is a free online service that lets you test single pages of web content for quality, accessibility, and privacy issues. It is very similar to Bobby and usefull to anyone wishing to check the accessibilty level of their templates/site.

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47. DBMonster

DBMonster is a tool which generates random test data and puts it into SQL database. It helps to test how an application can deal with large database.

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Regular Expressions
48. Expresso 2.1

Expresso is useful tool for learning how to use regular expressions and for developing and debugging regular expressions prior to incorporating them into your code. It provides a very cut down version of RegexBuddy but most importantly it is simple to use and free.

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49. Regex Coach

The Regex Coach is a graphical application for Windows which can be used to experiment with (Perl-compatible) regular expressions interactively.

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Image Editing
50. GIMP

The GNU Image Manipulation Program is a Photoshop replacement that doesn’t have "quite" as much functionality but it’s excellent for free. It comes installed by default on many Linux distros and is also available in Windows. Worth a look.

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51. Inkscape

Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

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52. Paint.net

A really good, lightweight alternative to Photoshop. It offers layers, unlimited undo, special effects and a wide variety of useful tools. The download is around 2mb too so absolutely worth a look – I use this when Photoshop is playing up.

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53. XnView

XnView is software to view and convert graphic files, apparently really simple to use and supports more than 400 graphics formats.

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54. ImageMagick

A lesser known application but it offers the ability to "create, edit, and compose bitmap images. It can read, convert and write images in a variety of formats (about 100)". Use it to "translate, flip, mirror, rotate, scale, shear and transform images, adjust image colors, apply various special effects, or draw text, lines, polygons, ellipses and B?zier curves."

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55. Blender

A 3D Studio Max alternative, very comprehensive and full-featured.

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56. Pencil

Pencil is an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X and Windows. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source.

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57. Artweaver

Artweaver is a simple Freeware program for creative painting, i.e. Artweaver offers you all artistic effects which you need for your work. You can create sketches from photos and experiment with a wide range of brushes. The brush simulation is thereby so realistic as possible.

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Colour Matching and Sampling
58. ColorJack

ColorJack is an amazing online application providing users with the ability to match colours that work well together. Perfect for those developers who struggle to get a good colour scheme together.

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59. Kuler

Kuler is a very nice application allowing you match colours that will “work well” together. Also allows you to see other people colour pallets. A good starting place and very cool.

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60. Color Cop

A very handy tool for capturing colours anywhere on your screen. Color Cop makes it quick and easy in those situations where you need to know what colour is being used.

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Database Design
61. DBDesigner 4

DBDesigner 4 is a visual database design system that integrates database design, modeling, creation and maintenance into a single, seamless environment.

It combines professional features and a clear and simple user interface to offer the most efficient way to handle your databases.

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62. Clay

Clay is a database design tool that runs as a plug-in in the Eclipse development environment. Clay has an intuitive user interface for graphically designing database models. Clay can also create a database model by reverse engineering an existing database. Furthermore, Clay generates the SQL (DDL) code appropriate for your database.

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Source Control
63. Subversion

The goal of the Subversion project is to build a version control system that is a compelling replacement for CVS in the open source community. The software is released under an Apache/BSD-style open source license.

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64. CVS

CVS is a version control system, an important component of Source Configuration Management (SCM). Using it, you can record the history of sources files, and documents. It fills a similar role to the free software RCS, PRCS, and Aegis packages.

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65. CVSNT

The CVSNT Versioning System implements a version control system: it keeps track of all changes in a set of files, typically the implementation of a software project, and allows several (potentially geographically separated) developers to collaborate. It is compatible with and originally based on Concurrent Versions System (CVS), which has become popular in the open-source world and is released under the GNU General Public License. (Source Wikipedia)

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66. RapidSVN

RapidSVN is a cross-platform GUI front-end for the Subversion revision system written in C++ using the wxWidgets framework. This project also includes a Subversion client C++ API.

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67. TortoiseSVN

A Subversion client, implemented as a windows shell extension. TortoiseSVN is a really easy to use Revision control / version control / source control software for Windows.

Since it’s not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like. TortoiseSVN is free to use. You don’t need to get a loan or pay a full years salary to use it.

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68. TortoiseCVS

TortoiseCVS lets you work with files under CVS version control directly from Windows Explorer. It’s freely available under the GPL.
With TortoiseCVS you can directly check out modules, update, commit and see differences by right clicking on files and folders within Explorer. You can see the state of a file with overlays on top of the normal icons within Explorer. It even works from within the file open dialog.

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69. SmartCVS

SmartCVS is an innovative multi-platform CVS client. It has powerful features, like built-in File Compare/Merge, Transaction display or List Repository Files, and still is easy and intuitive to use. SmartCVS focuses on your day-to-day tasks and usability and is not limited to the available CVS command set.

SmartCVS is available in two versions, a free Foundation version and the powerful Professional version.

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70. Subclipse

Subclipse is an Eclipse Team Provider plug-in providing support for Subversion within the Eclipse IDE. The software is released under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0 open source license.

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71. JCVS

JCVS is a CVS client package written entirely in Java. JCVS provides a complete CVS client/server protocol package that allows any Java program to implement the complete suite of CVS operations. JCVS also provides a Swing based client that provides a commercial quality GUI client for CVS. Finally, jCVS provides a Servlet that allows any Servlet enabled web server to present any CVS repository on the internet for browsing and download.

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72. WinCVS

WinCvs is a CVS client that runs on the Microsoft Windows platform. CVS, Concurrent Versions System, is a centralized Revision Control System (RCS). SourceForge.net provides CVS service to all hosted projects. In order to access our CVS service, you will need to install a CVS client. CVS allows developers to keep a historical record of changes made to their source code tree, and to allow multiple developers to work on a single set of files at the same time without accidentally overwriting changes made by other developers.

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HTTP Debugging
73. Fiddler

Fiddler is a HTTP Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP Traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler includes a powerful event-based scripting subsystem, and can be extended using any .NET language.

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74. Fiddler 2

Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet. Fiddler allows you to inspect all HTTP(S) traffic, set breakpoints, and "fiddle" with incoming or outgoing data. Fiddler includes a powerful event-based scripting subsystem, and can be extended using any .NET language.

Fiddler is freeware and can debug traffic from virtually any application, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and thousands more.

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Servers
75. Apache

The Apache HTTP Server is an open-source HTTP server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows NT. It provides a secure, efficient and extensible server that offers HTTP services in sync with the current HTTP standards.

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76. Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat is the servlet container that is used in the official Reference Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies. The Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages specifications are developed by Sun under the Java Community Process.

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77. XAMPP

XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use - just download, extract and start.

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Databases
78. MySQL

MySQL is the world’s most popular open source database software, with over 100 million copies of its software downloaded or distributed throughout its history. With superior speed, reliability, and ease of use, MySQL has become the preferred choice of corporate IT Managers because it eliminates the major problems associated with downtime, maintenance, administration and support.

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79. PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL, the highly scalable, SQL compliant, open source object-relational database management system, is now undergoing beta testing of the next version of our software: PostgreSQL 8.3.

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80. Apache Derby

Apache Derby is an open source relational database implemented entirely in Java and available under the Apache License, Version 2.0. Some key advantages include:

• Derby has a small footprint — about 2 megabytes for the base engine and embedded JDBC driver.
• Derby is based on the Java, JDBC, and SQL standards.
• Derby provides an embedded JDBC driver that lets you embed Derby in any Java-based solution.
• Derby also supports the more familiar client/server mode with the Derby Network Client JDBC driver and Derby Network Server.
• Derby is easy to install, deploy, and use.

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Database Administration
81. pgAdmin

pgAdmin III is the most popular and feature rich Open Source administration and development platform for PostgreSQL, the most advanced Open Source database in the world. The application may be used on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSUSE, Solaris, Mac OSX and Windows platforms to manage PostgreSQL 7.3 and above running on any platform, as well as commercial versions of PostgreSQL such as EnterpriseDB and Mammoth PostgreSQL.

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82. MySQL GUI Tools Bundle for 5.0

MySQL GUI Tools Bundle for 5.0 is available under the MySQL AB "dual licensing" model. Under this model, users may choose to use MySQL products under the free software/opensource GNU General Public License (commonly known as the "GPL") or under a commercial license.

This is the MySQL GUI Tools Bundle for 5.0. It includes the following products.

• MySQL Administrator 1.2 Generally Available (GA)
• MySQL Query Browser 1.2 Generally Available (GA)
• MySQL Migration Toolkit 1.1 Generally Available (GA)

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83. phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields.

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Site Statistics
84. AWStats

AWStats is a free powerful and featureful tool that generates advanced web, streaming, ftp or mail server statistics, graphically. This log analyzer works as a CGI or from command line and shows you all possible information your log contains, in few graphical web pages. It uses a partial information file to be able to process large log files, often and quickly. It can analyze log files from all major server tools like Apache log files (NCSA combined/XLF/ELF log format or common/CLF log format), WebStar, IIS (W3C log format) and a lot of other web, proxy, wap, streaming servers, mail servers and some ftp servers.

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85. phpMyVisits

phpMyVisites is a free and powerful open source (GNU/GPL) software for websites statistics and audience measurements.

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86. Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. Its main highlight is that a webmaster can optimize his/her AdWords advertisement and marketing campaigns through the use of GA’s analysis of where the visitors came from, how long they stayed on the website and their geographical position. (Source Wikipedia)

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Other
87. Beautify PHP

This program tries to reformat and beautify PHP source code files automatically. It is a pretty printer for your php source code. The program is Open Source and distributed under the terms of GNU GPL. It is written in PHP and has a web frontend.

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88. PuTTY

PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham.

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89. WinMerge

WinMerge is an Open Source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. It is highly useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions.

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90. DBG

DBG is a full-featured php debugger. It works on a production and/or development WEB server and allows you debug your scripts locally or remotely, from an IDE or console.

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91. PHP Accelerator

The ionCube PHP Accelerator is an easily installed PHP Zend engine extension that provides a PHP cache, and is capable of delivering a substantial acceleration of PHP scripts without requiring any script changes, loss of dynamic content, or other application compromises.

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92. ajaxload.info

Ajax Load is an online application providing the ability to easily create and download “ajax loading“ images for your website or application. Very Web 2.0 ;-)

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93. Stripemania

Ever wanted to create a cool background for your site? Well this site allows you to easily generate your perfect background to use as you wish.

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94. FavIcon Generator

Does exactly what is says on the tin. You upload your desired image and the generator does the rest.

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95. YAML Builder

Ever wanted a tool that could build a base HTML Template quickly by allowing you to define the basic layout? Well this is that tool and it works really well too. Definitely worth a look.

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96. CSS Rounded Box Generator

A simple tool allowing you to quickly and easily generate rounded corners for your website.

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97. CSS Optimiser

Online CSS Optimizer/Optimiser is a web tool for reducing the file size of cascading style sheets. In order to save more space optimized files would be messy even so you may output it as a file. Non-valid or hacked (for certain browsers) CSS files may result in error.

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98. CSS Validator

Validates your CSS stylesheets against W3C standards.

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99. Acrobot

To cut to the chase Acrobot is a tool that takes supplied content and adds in relevant abbreviation or acronym tags.

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100. Markup Validation Service

This validator checks the markup validity of Web documents in HTML, XHTML, SMIL, MathML, etc. If you wish to validate specific content such as RSS/Atom feeds or CSS stylesheets or to find broken links, there are other validators and tools available.

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10 Absolute "Nos!" for Freelancers

10 Absolute "Nos!" for Freelancers
Filed in Freelance Lessons by Samuel

When I first started freelancing as a college student, I was eager to do any website and would say "Yes" to anything, regardless of my skill set or the time involved. It was just nice to know that someone needed me for a skilled task. Unfortunately, I quickly found myself working all the time, eating Ramen noodles, and not getting anywhere in terms of paying off my wonderful college debt. To make things worse, these people were also giving my contact info out to other such people (you know, the lady who has been thinking about selling dog sweaters online and has a $100 budget for an e-commerce site, 1000 brochures, and a guaranteed #1 Google search result for the words "dog", "sweater", and "love").

Anyways, now four years later, my world (AND financial success) now requires ample use of the answer "No." And here are ten questions I nearly always answer "No" to:

1) Can you show me a mock-up to help us choose a designer/developer? No.
I fell for this once when I was young and naive. I made no money and wasted lots of time. Don't do unpaid work for the chance to be paid -- this wouldn't fly in any other industry, so why web design? The best case scenario (though rare) is that you get a job with a client who knows that you'll work for free when necessary. The worst case scenario is that they don't pay you, and still use your stuff, knowing you don't have the legal resources to do anything about it. Most likely though, you’ll just waste time.

2) Can you give us a discount rate? No.
There are A LOT of companies out there that do not see web design as a service worth more than $20 an hour. These should never be your clients. In my early post-college years, I used to value "getting the job" so highly, I would take on an inordinate amount of work for the pay. Let me tell you that it's not worth it. Ever. Remember, you may be doing this company a favor, but on the flip side, you're hurting your own future, and your family's. Nowadays, I give my hourly rate immediately, and it weeds out many potential clients. It's simple math really -- if doubling your rate loses half your client work, then you're still making as much in half the time. If you do excellent work, get paid for it – there will always be comparable "firms" charging double what you are.

3) Will you register and host my site? No.
Sure it seems like a good idea -- free recurring revenue right? Well, maybe... if you can first get them to pay, and then if you can justify making $10 a month for the endless phone support you'll have to give at all hours of the night. You see, once the client thinks that you are responsible for their email and website functionality, you WILL get called all the time when their email shows the slightest wavering or their website 404s for any reason on their home computer. Believe it or not, I've even known someone who had a client call about his cell phone functionality just because my friend hosted his site. Don't do it...it's not worth it. Give them a registrar and hosting company and let them sign up themselves.

4) Can you copy this site? No.
Now you may think that I answer "No" strictly from a moral standpoint, and although that is true, there are other equally important reasons. First, if they're copying a site, they have shady ethics themselves and the chances of you getting paid on time and in the full amount are unlikely. Second, doing this type of work reduces you to a monkey, and although some of your work may be like this to pay the bills, why purposely pursue it? Third, if it's a true copy, the only benefit you may receive is payment - you really won't get to use it for a portfolio or example work, and furthermore, this type of client is one you do not want work from in the future.

5) Can I pay for my e-commerce site from my website sales? No.
I hate to be the pessimist, but when I am asked this, I want to tell them that they most likely won't make any money so they might as well ask me to do it for free. Yes, I know there are exceptions, so sometimes I will ask them about their business, marketing, and revenue plans, which 99% of them don't have. They just thought that selling t-shirts would be a novel idea for the internet. I usually go into a spiel about having to support me and my family, and I can't do it with speculative work -- I then recommend Yahoo! Shopping or CafePress, and 9 times out of 10, they never get their site up anyways.

6) I have a great idea. Do you want to...? No.
Not much different from #5, but could be a much larger time waster if you buy in. Again, not trying to be a jerk, but if the person adds little to the potential business outside of speaking an idea, then any work you proceed to do is mere charity (which may be okay with you). But to be honest, I'd rather be charitable with my family and friends and make them partners for free versus partnering with a stranger. Trust me, if someone really has a great idea, he will make you partners AND pay you as well.

7) Do you have an IM account? No.
I might give it out if it's to a person I can trust during an intensive project, but as a general policy, I tell clients that it's my general policy not to. The reason here is obvious -- you have a life and other clients beyond them. Many clients see you as an on-call employee, and this is bad. This is why you quit your day job...

8) Can I just pay the whole amount when it's done? No.
I require 50% up front (unless it's a huge job -- then maybe 33%). I need that assurance that they have "bought in" on this project, and that I can plan on the income, pay bills, and eat. People who want to pay at the end are much more likely to back out after you've done tons of work.

9) Is there any way you could get this done tonight or this weekend? No.
Once they know that you helped them out one time, they will expect it in the future. Now you might choose to get extra done at night (I do all the time), but don't start making promises about getting things done at night or on the weekends/vacation. I know a lot of freelancers that charge night/weekend hours as well, so that might be a possible route to take. Because the reason you freelance is for the freedom, right? Right?

10) Can I be sure you won't use this work in anything else? No.
This is a very sensitive subject because most clients misunderstand it (intellectual property is a tricky subject anyways). In my Terms and Conditions that I require all new clients to sign, I make sure they know that (1) their code has utilized code from other projects which I haven't charged them for, and (2) I will probably use code from their project on other projects, and (3) they own the code and implementation of the project (finished website), but not the actual code pieces (login system, image uploader, etc.). I pride myself in productivity and speed, and I need to use other code all the time to accomplish this. Not to mention that I sell stock Flash which I may need old code to help build. They're not paying you to create code that they in turn will sell, so make sure they know that it's the implementation and not the coding that's theirs.