This Week in Web Apps

This Week in Web Apps: "

This week has been pretty busy for both bigger and smaller companies in the online universe. Google trying the hardest among the lot, working towards making internet a better place as always (all the while collecting & mining data). Bit.ly pulled one more rabbit out of their hat, Mozilla showcased its financial might and Meebo jumped on the check-in bandwagon.

At the end of a week, a few times per month, we’ll bring you some of the best web app news and updates. App developers, this is a great time to familiarize yourselves with our contact form to submit your news or tips.

Read on after the break for some of this weeks best web app news and updates.

20 Things I Learned

20 Things I Learned

This month marks the twentieth anniversary of Tim Berners-Lee publishing a proposal about the World Wide Web. Imagine where things stand today! Pretty amazing isn’t it! Still a lot of us have a bunch of question as to how browsers and the web actually work? What is HTML5—or HTML for that matter? What do terms like “cookies” or “cloud computing” even mean? More practically, how can we keep ourselves safe from security threats like viruses when we’re online?

Google has collaborated with Christoph Niemann and have produced a fantastic web app that educates newbies on all things internet.

Bit.ly Bundles

Bit.ly Bundles

For a company that focuses on making URLs short, Bit.ly always has bigger goals. If they did not get a kudos for running a pseudo domain name registry, they deserve it alteast now with their recent announcement. Now you can bundle up all your tiny URL links into one tiny little URL. Every link you add to a bundle will include a rich media preview, a bit.ly click count, and can be customized with a title and description. Try it out !

Google Product Search

Google Product Search

The holidays are coming and so is the gifting season! Every year retailers start the holiday shopping season earlier and earlier and it’s a real mess when trying to find the best bargain out there. To help all the shopaholics, Google has just revamped its Product Search feature. They’ve partnered with 70 large retailers and now if you’re looking online to find that new gadget you’ve been wanting, you can click on the “nearby stores” link to see where it’s in stock nearby.

Also, when you search for a category of products, the new popular products feature helps you get started by showing you the products from the same category that other people are viewing online. As long as they don’t show the name and addresses of people along with results, I am happy!

Meebo Check Ins

Meebo Check Ins

These days, everybody wants to be in the check-in game. Poor Foursquare! Now Meebo has gone one step further and allows you to check into the websites you visit. Find a good story? Link to the page. Add a comment. Click Check in.

When you check in to a site, it is added to your Meebo Profile – that’s right: Meebo users can now have their own profile pages that highlight their favorite sites. Link your Facebook or Twitter accounts to keep your friends up to date on your Meebo activity.

Scribd Stats

Scribd Stats

Scribd is the YouTube for documents. Being an awesome web app is never enough for them and they constantly keep improving their product. Their latest new feature allows you to pull comprehensive statistics on your documents shared in Scribd ala. Google Analytics.

From your “My Stats” page you have access to the dashboard of information, including which of your docs people are reading and sharing most, how people are finding them, which docs they’re spending the most time on and much more.

The State of Mozilla

State of Mozilla

Being an ardent fan of Firefox, I’ve been super pissed at them for pushing back Firefox 4 into 2011. Even though Google Chrome is eating into Mozilla’s market-share, things are going very well for them on the financial front, which is evident from the State of Mozilla report. For 2009, Mozilla reported revenues of $104 million, up 34% from 2008. That’s a really cool number considering the fact that all their products are free. They do this once they’ve filed their audited financial statements for the previous year, so these numbers are for 2009. Go Mozilla!

Share Your Thoughts!

What news from the app universe grabbed your attention in the past few days? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments section. Thanks!

"

The 30 Startups People Care About The Most

The 30 Startups People Care About The Most: "

Yesterday I wrote about a service called StartupFollower, which allows users to sign up for email notifications when TechCrunch writes about their favorite startups.  Today, after receiving 738 signups and 3138 total company follows post launch, founder Tim Suzman sent us the StartupFollower follow distribution list. While informal, the list gives a rough idea of which companies our readers want to receive news about, based on subscriptions.

Prior to StartupFollower, we knew that 23% of you wanted to read more news about companies, but we had no concrete idea which ones. Now we know that Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Quora, Google, Groupon, Apple, RockMelt, Zynga and TechCrunch are on your top ten list, or at least they were yesterday.

And, allowing for a disproportionate following of startups that were recently on TC (eh hem Rockmelt) the list jives pretty well with the amount we cover rockstars like Facebook and Twitter, for example.

Likewise, we and other tech publications often get dinged in the comments for covering biggies like Apple too much, but how could we ignore the fact that Microsoft is below Box.net in the amount of people who want to subscribe to MSFT related news?

Other notable bottom feeders? IBM, Craigslist and Diaspora. But hey at least they made the list, which is now up to 1387 unique companies followed. Feel free to include any others you think should be on here in the comments.

Note: Because technically the definition of a startup is “a fledgling enterprise,” it’s pretty debatable which companies on this list are still in the startup stage. Even we’re not that sure, behemoth Facebook won last year’s Crunchie for “Best Overall Startup,” no joke.

Says creator Suzman on StartupFollower’s loose categorization, “I figured the most common use case would be to follow startups, but obviously people want to be able to follow Google too.”

You can check out the full list here.

CrunchBase Information

StartupFollower

Information provided by CrunchBase

"

7 Blog Platforms for 3 Methods of Blogging

7 Blog Platforms for 3 Methods of Blogging: "

The last time I compared blog platforms on Practical Ecommerce was in 2005. In 'Blog Platforms: Choose One that Fits Your Need,' I reviewed four of the most used at that time: Blogger, TypePad, MovableType, and WordPress. While those are still popular, others have since appeared.

Over the years blogging itself has matured to a point where it is no longer adequate simply to do a side-by-side comparison. Instead, blogging can be broken into three tiers, which I refer to as 'long form,' 'lifestreaming' and 'micro-blogging.' In this article I will attempt to explain the difference between the tiers and compare popular platforms in each.

Long-Form Blogging

In his post 'Blogging is Dead' on Copyblogger, Brian Clark refers to the term 'val...

"

20 Words from Around the World With No Single-word English Equivalent

20 Words from Around the World With No Single-word English Equivalent: "

Photo: laogooli

Here are a few examples of instances where other languages have found the right word and English simply falls speechless.

1. Toska

Russian – Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

2. Mamihlapinatapei

Yagan (indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego) – “the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start” (Altalang.com)

3. Jayus

Indonesian – “A joke so poorly told and so unfunny that one cannot help but laugh” (Altalang.com)

Photo: craigallyn

4. Iktsuarpok

Inuit – “To go outside to check if anyone is coming.” (Altalang.com)

5. Litost

Czech – Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, remarked that “As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.” The closest definition is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.

6. Kyoikumama

Japanese – “A mother who relentlessly pushes her children toward academic achievement” (Altalang.com)

7. Tartle

Scottish – The act of hestitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name. (Altalang.com)

8. Ilunga

Tshiluba (Southwest Congo) – A word famous for its untranslatability, most professional translators pinpoint it as the stature of a person “who is ready to forgive and forget any first abuse, tolerate it the second time, but never forgive nor tolerate on the third offense.” (Altalang.com)

9. Prozvonit

Czech – This word means to call a mobile phone and let it ring once so that the other person will call back, saving the first caller money. In Spanish, the phrase for this is “Dar un toque,” or, “To give a touch.” (Altalang.com)

10. Cafuné

Brazilian Portuguese – “The act of tenderly running one’s fingers through someone’s hair.” (Altalang.com)

Go to the next page for 10 more awesomely untranslatable words.

Comments"

A Free Office Suite That's Especially Designed For Kids

A Free Office Suite That's Especially Designed For Kids: "OOo4kids is, as the name implies, a version of Open Office (or OpenOffice.org, hence the 3 O's) that's specially designed for use by 7 to 12 year olds. The menus are trimmed down to the bare minimum, to keep things easy. The word processor, for example, allows only a choice of font, size, color, and bold/italic/underline. The other options are still there, and can be enabled if required, although the facility to do so is password-protected so it's up to you whether or not to tell the child about it.



OOo4kids is a great idea, especially if it encourages kids to use computers for something other than playing games or social networking. The program is free, quick and easy to learn, and gives them a real feeling of doing grown-up things with their computer.





http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/office-suite-thats-especially-designed-kids.htm

"

8 Instant & Free Website Ranking Analyzers

8 Instant & Free Website Ranking Analyzers: "

The success of a website is the result of various factors including the content, its frequency, functionality, design, social activity, marketing and more.

Once the website is at a certain level, the chicken-egg loop starts: popularity brings better search engine rankings, recognition in social networks and they end up in bringing more readers making the website more popular.

Although the priority should be focusing on the factors mentioned above, monitoring rankings regularly helps better understanding "how (and how fast) your content spreads" and "if search engines/social networks react enough to your efforts" to find out any possible issues.

Here are 8 free website ranking analyzers that display data from Alexa, Compete, Pagerank, and social networks like Delicious, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc.

WooRank

WooRank is a full-featured website analyzer that not only diggs the rankings of Alexa, Delicious, backlinks, etc. but also checks other stuff like W3C validity, existance of sitemap + robots.txt file and more.

QuarkBase

The service shows traffic data, similar sites, social comments, social popularity and much more about websites.

It also categorizes website by type and lists fastest growing ones.

popuri.us

popuri.us checks the popularity of a site from multiple sources including Google PageRank, Alexa, Technorati and social bookmarking services.

There is also a free-to-use widget to be inserted on any website to show the popularity publicly.

miniStatus

This is a very functional service that returns detailed results from search engines, social bookmarking websites and other stuff like whois info or W3C validation.

miniStatus also has a Firefox addon for quicker usage.

ClearWebStats

The service displays details on the pagerank, indexed pages from multiple search engines, Alexa ranking and an analysis of the domain.

Also, it calculates a value for the website -which you wished was true.. : ) -.

Xinu Returns

Xinu Returns displays so many details about a web page including the pagerank, backlinks, social success, W3C validation and more.

It also shows "how many times a HTML tag is used" as well.

CubeStat

CubeStat is another service that focuses on valuing websites.

While doing that, it shows the pagerank, backlinks, indexed pages, domain age, Dmoz listing exists or not and more.

Rankbuzz

This analyzer displays values from Alexa, Compete, Technorati, Google pagerank and also shows the success in social websites like Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and more.

Special Downloads:

Ajaxed Add-To-Basket Scenarios With jQuery And PHP

Free Admin Template For Web Applications

jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop

ScheduledTweets

Advertisements:

Professional XHTML Admin Template ($15 Discount With The Code: WRD.)

Psd to Xhtml

SSLmatic – Cheap SSL Certificates (from $19.99/year)

Tags: Alexa, Compete, Pagerank

Related posts

• Free Web Stats With SEO Features: GoingUp!


• Pagerank Checkers And SEO Tools

"

Seven Great Site Development Apps

Seven Great Site Development Apps: "

These are some of the apps that can make a Website efficient:

AccuTagger:

It is developed to help you manage <META> tags. It can also generate Description, Keywords and <META> tags based on your requirements. Free trial is available on its Web site.

Major features:

• Automated site analysis


• Integrated spell checking


• Automated report generation


• Automated <META> tag generation

FastStats:

It gathers information from the Web server log files, including daily traffic, traffic sources and common keywords used by visitors in search engines. Data can be shown in graphic or table formats. FastStats is also useful to track down dead links and to monitor server performance.  FastStats is free for 30-day trial period.

Major features:

• Elaborate reports to help Webmasters in analyzing the cost efficiency of their online advertising


• A graphical hyperlink tree to show how visitors navigate the Web site


• Site stickiness reports

MozillaTracker:

A log analyzer for collecting site statistics, for example operating system and browser your visitors are using. Reports can be presented as HTML or text and printable. This app is free to use.

Major features:

• Report on visitor application(s) or operating system


• Sort data by the number of hits or alphabetically.


• Filter visitor report

NetTracker:

It is a log analysis app that gives you with an opportunity to track traffic data on more than one site.  It includes complete reporting as well as an opportunity to generate ad hoc and custom reports. It is also possible to track the effectiveness of banner advertisements, traffic sources, and find most popular pages on your site. The software is free to try.

Major features:

• Custom reporting with filter options


• Trend reporting on site traffic


• The ability to check data collected from server logs

PowerMapper:

It provides webmasters with a quick interactive sitemap, which in turn offer simple site visualization and navigation. PowerMapper crawls your site and generates a site map containing thumbnails of each page; site map can be in GIF or HTML format. It also detects broken HTML tags and verifies links.

Major features:

• Site map generation


• Visual representation of site structure


• Site map printing


• Invalid HTML and broken links inspection

Search Engine Commando:

It is useful for measuring the effectiveness of online promotion.  The app can submit your newly created pages to major search engines and generate ranking reports. It is a trialware.

Major features:

• Supports popular search engines


• Works with many URLs and Web pages


• Generates automated scheduling


• Provides reports showing how well a Web page ranks against competitors

TopDog Pro:

It queries the major search engines for your URL and primary keywords, showing your and competitors’ positions. The app eliminates the chore of checking each search engine, typing in a keyword, and evaluating the results. TopDog creates reports on your Web site position and prompts you to changes in rank.  It is a trialware.

Major features:

• Customizable reporting


• Determine site ranking for a specified keyword


• Built-in scheduling


• Support for unlimited sites

"