Today in this blog post, I will introduce a tool that will help you to create extension for your blog, which in turn will help your content to be easily discovered. Extension Factory is a tool that helps you to easily create extension of your blog, or rather any blog you want – all you need to do is enter the required blog URL.

It is easy to create an extension of your blog. Go to Extension Factory page. Enter the URL of the blog and click “Create your Extension”. Then, you get a code, copy and add it in your website. Or, if you want to test the extension first, you can also do it by click on “Test Extension” button. If you are a wordpress user, then there is a plugin that does the same job. You might have noticed that on my blog.

The tool basically takes the RSS feed URL of a blog and creates an extension using that feed. The tool supports Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE. It creates a simple dialog box interface containing feeds of your blog posts. Whenever a new post is updated on your blog, the extension shows a notification (See picture below).

The extension has an option to bookmark posts too. Also, if a blog has more than one feed, you can select only the feeds you want, from the “Options” tab.

If you want anymore information about this tool, visit their FAQ here.

Don’t you think getting feeds of your favorite blog right on your browser would be great? So, IMHO this a simple yet good tool. What do you think about this tool? Would you use it for your blog? Or how would you use it? Drop in your comments below.

However, if you look back a few years, then you would see a thick division between the online computing and the local computing. But, with the popularity of social networking sites increasing everyday and also the Cloud Computing technology evolving day by day, the line that divided the online computing world from the local computing world is diminishing very quickly.

But, that doesn’t mean that we would stop using our local storage. We still use our local storage as backup always. So, if you are a person, who stores a lot of data online on different social networks and other file sharing sites, then Social Folders is an excellent tool to use.

Be Social. Stay Local – is the aim/motto of the creator of Social Folders. This tool acts like a bridge between the Online world and the local world of computing that I talked above.

If you upload your photos to Facebook, or videos to Youtube or your documents to Google Docs very frequently, then this tool is a boon for you. Even after uploading your files online, you still keep them offline, i.e. on your local computer. So, why not do both the things at the same time? Social Folder lets you do exactly that!

In simple words, this tool lets you upload files to different sites from windows explorer. This tool is currently in private beta. So, you need to ask for an invite by giving you email id on their website. I got an invite in a very short time. So, I think even you will get one, if you are early enough to grab it. After you have got the invitation, you will be directed to a page where it asks you to download Social Folders setup file on your desktop. Download it. A 5MB file.

Now, install the Social Folders on your desktop through the setup. That’s it. The installation process is done. Now, you will be directed to your account online. Here, you need to add different websites that you want to sync locally. Click on “Connect to new Website” and select a website. It currently supports most of the major websites like Flickr, Google Docs, Instagram, Photobucket, Picasa and Youtube.

Connect to the websites and now you can start uploading or downloading files.

You can download files from your account onto the desktop (in a folder called Social Folders, automatically created) from your online account. Also, uploading files is a piece of cake! Just paste the files into the Social Folders folder and refresh. It will automatically upload it to your account online. Simple, isn’t it?

And also, by the way, just out of curiosity, I tried to upload some unsupported files into Facebook, and refreshed. It didn’t get uploaded. Nice.

Also, if you edit a file and refresh, it will upload the edited file again.

You can also transfer files across different sites, by just copying and pasting the files into the respective folders. For example, if you want to upload the images, from Picasa to Facebook then just copy and paste those photos from Picasa folder into the Facebook folder.

Maybe, I have left out some of the features, but you will know about it as you use it. Alright, concluding this with my opinion, I would say this tool will go a long way. I have liked every feature and also the idea behind this tool and the whole concept Be Social. Stay Local – is awesome. Hats off to the creator!

101 Free Tech Books is a website which, as the name itself suggests gives away free books related to computer and technology every month. It’s a 100% free giveaway as they take care of even the shipping charges. So, you just should have enough luck to win a free tech book, and you will get a book, for free effortlessly. You can increase the odds of you, winning this book by referring the site to your friends through different media (like I am doing right now). Please check out other details about this site here.

Don’t forget to share this with your friends! Go to 101 Free Tech Books

Where’s George? – Track USD Bills

So, coming back to the point, “how does Where’s George? track your money?” is the question. If you already clicked the above link and glanced through the website, you might have got an idea of how it works.

The core idea is simple. You enter the zip code of your state and the serial number of the note/bill you have. This is registered in their database. When someone else registers the note/bill with same serial number, then a “hit” has happened. The user who registers enters a some information regarding where he got and the status of the bill (whether new, old or wrinkled etc.) and the place is tracked through the Zip code. Thus, you can keep track of the bills you registered.

Bills of all denominations like 2, 5, 10, 50 and 100 USD can be tracked using this service. The website is pretty active and gets real time hits every second or two. You would have a fun time tracking your bills. You need to register with this website before you start registering the bills.  Go ahead and try this service, if you are a US resident! You can also check out this Wikipedia article on Where’s George? for more information.

Track Gandhi – Track Indian Currency Notes

This is completely similar to the Where’s George? concept. You need to enter the location and the serial number of the note you have. Then, wait for the hit. Compared to the Where’s George?, the Indian version is pretty lame and not so active. The hits, according to the map is mostly near Karnataka (3056) and other South Indian areas (I wonder how?!). The next popular place where hits have been registered is near the Indian capital New Delhi (1974).

Come on, lets make the Indian version popular too. Go ahead and register. Share it with your friends too.

In such cases, there are many tools that can help you to shrink all your URLs into a single, shortened URL, neat and tidy to share. In this post, I am going to list out a few tools that can help you to combine multiple URLs to a single URL.

Link Bunch

A small text box and fewer ads is what that defines LinkBunch. It has a very simple interface. You just need to put all the URLs you want in the box provided and click on the “Bunch” button. It will generate a new URL which leads to the page containing all the URLs you had entered into the text box. Here is an example: http://linkbun.ch/unum . If you feel this URL is longer, you can further shorten it by other shortening services.

Krunchd

Unlike the tool I mentioned above, this tool is a little more advanced. This tool helps you to see the actual pages of the URLs that you had “krunchd” in its own page. With easily navigable “left-right” buttons you can navigate through different URLs. It asks you for your email id, but it is not mandatory. You may skip that step. Check this out!

1Link.in

It has similar features as the above tools but one unique feature in this tool is the password protection to your links. You can set your own password to the URLs. This helps you to share confidential links online with your friend alone.

ShareTabs

ShareTabs is a tool similar to the LinkBunch. This tool copies all the URLs you wants into a page and generates a new short URL. This new short URL redirects you to a page where the links you have given are arranged in “tiles”. Example: http://sharetabs.com/gdv

MultiURL

Apart from the features similar to the above tools, this tool gives us an option to name each link. Also, this tool helps you to name the whole group of links and also set a password for that group. You can track the number of clicks on your URL too.

Readability is a tool that helps you to read any webpage clutter free. Whenever you want to read a webpage without any distraction, you just need to click on this bookmark and Voila! all clutter is cleared! You will be presented with pure content without any ads. Check the below two images to see how it works!

Tip: 5 Tools That Help You To Tweet From Gtalk

Now, who would want to read that with Clinton and Bush?

Now, just click on the bookmarked button. Wow! Clutter-free! You have to click that “refresh” button (See below image) to get it back to normal mode again.

Bye Bush, Clinton: Ah! I can read that post easily and quickly now!

Add Readability bookmark to your browser and enjoy clutter free reading! (To add a bookmark to your browser, drag and drop the link to your browser bookmarks bar.)

Apture is an addon that helps you to reduce the bounce rate of your blog. This addon helps you to insert multimedia to your blog posts and in turn makes your readers dig deeper through your articles. Apture is compatible for almost all common blogging platforms such as Blogger, WordPress, Typepad etc.

Links you usually offer directs the readers to a new page and hence many readers are hesitant to click on those links. Apture is different here. If you link to a Wikipedia article using Apture, it’s pretty easy for readers to reach it. When the pointer hovers on the link, a pop-up appears enabling users to read the article there itself.

I am using this addon right now and this is how it will show up when you hover the mouse here. With this addon, you can also link to your previous related articles as I have done in the link above.

Apture helps you to find reference articles, when you are writing articles that need information right from your editor. It uses Wikipedia and other trusted sources. The sites that you can access through Apture are Flickr, Wikipedia, Google Books, Yahoo! Youtube and many more.

It also helps you to add relevant images or videos to the links. Overall, the link you provide through Apture will be a compact encyclopedia for the readers. It also helps you to embed the document itself into your blog post and hence making it more convenient for the readers. This is how an embedded link looks.

You can also check out how Apture would work on your blog or website here.

Don’t you think this addon is amazing? Share your thoughts about this addon through comments! If you liked this post, then don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed for more such amazing articles.

SEO I Did To This Post:

SEO Title: Blogger/Wordpress Addon For Reducing Bounce Rate Of Blogs

There are certain important things to note here. I have used “Blogger/Wordpress addon”. This adds more keyword relevancy to the title. The googler is pretty much likely to search for any of the two keywords, “WordPress” or Blogger”. Another important thing to note here is, I have used “Blogger” first and then “WordPress”, this is because there is less competition for the keyword “Blogger” than “WordPress”. The more nearer the keyword will be from the starting of the title the more better it is.

SEO Excerpt: A perfect addon for reducing bounce rate of wordpress or blogger blogs.Add links from various sources and make visitors to dig through your site content for a long time.

Nothing much to explain here. Usual things. Write keyword-oriented excerpts in order to rank higher.

SEO Tags:reduce bounce rate of blogger blogs, reduce bounce rate of wordpress blogs, bounce rate reduction, addon for reducing bounce rate.

All possible search terms that a googler could search for.

To enable, this feature in MS Word, you need to first setup your account in the MS Word. The following tutorial could help you doing so.

1. Click on the Office button on the top left corner of MS word. Go to “Publish” option and select “Blog”.
2. In the new window open, create new blog account. This image tutorial will guide you through the installation.

   

3. While setting up the account, click on “Picture Options”. Select my own server and enter the URL of where you upload the pictures. For example, http://www.techmonk.com/wp-admin/uploads.php. If you are using FTP server, then give the corresponding URL. In the “Source URL” enter your blog URL.
4. If you are setting up an Blogger account then you can simply select the blog provider option or set up any other server online like Flickr or Photobucket wherein you can upload your pictures.

Note: If you are using WordPress.org (Self-hosted) then you need to enable XML – RPC. (Remote Publishing Client). To do so, go to “Settings- Writing”. Check the Enable Remote Publishing option.

Advantages Of Blogging From MS Word

There are many advantages when you are blogging from MS Word.

1. It has more formatting options. So you can choose among variety of fonts.
2. You feel at home when you use MS Word.
3. You can use font sizes with greater flexibility.
4. You can insert chart, clip-art, wrod art and so on.

Disadvantages Of Blogging From MS Word

1. You cannot SEO your articles like in WordPress or in WLW.
2. You cannot create tags and categories for Blogger account. However, if you are using wordpress you can create categories.

SEO I Did To This Article:

This is a new practice that I am adopting in my blogging. This section of the blog will contain all the SEO I make to a article as it would be helpful to my readers. I discuss the importance of the SEO below every post from now on as much as I know. Suggestions about SEO and the article are welcome by means of comments or mails. Will continue it depending on how people react to this.

Post Title: How To Post Articles To Your Blog Using Microsoft Word.

Here the post title is same as the one I have entered into the Platinum SEO pack. This is because people search like “How to post articles from MS Word” and as Google gives more importance to the title I have entered the same.

More about Platinum SEO pack. (A must have wordpress SEo plug-in.)

Post Excerpt: Here is a simple tutorial that helps you to blog from MS Word. If you are searching for an alternative for WLW, then you can use Microsoft Word as your blog writer.

This the post excerpt that the search engines see. If you look at the post excerpt on my blog homepage, it is different. The important point in this post excerpt is the keywords. “Blog from MS Word”, “Alternative for WLW”, “Microsoft as your Blog Writer”. People are likely to search these keywords. and if they do so, this would help me to rank high in the search position.

Also note that the excerpt just contains 165 characters. Most search engines just take 160 characters of the excerpt. So being brief in your explanations with keywords will help you to rank higher.

Note: Google gives second position to the Excerpts after Post Titles.

Keywords: blog from MS word, blog from Microsoft Word, alternative for WLW, alternative for Windows Live Writer

These tell search engine to invoke our links when a query like the above ones are entered. People are likely to search using the following keywords.

Image Optimization: I am still a novice in image optimization and still learning it. Any suggestions on optimizing images are welcome.

An important note: Here, we are in no way fooling the Search Engines as many might think. This is just making our post much related to the search queries.

Without Google, as we all know web will be half dead. Google has been constantly improving. It started off its project in a garage and now it is conquering the whole web and more practically the whole world. Google has been the most popular search engine ever internet has seen and I think it will remain always.

Here are some Google Logo creators to have fun with, creating your names in Google Font:

Goglogo.com

Goglogo is a site where you can create your own logos in Google font. You can also create your own search page and search through it. It’s a fun tool that would help you pass your time by creating Google Logos for different names.

Googlogostyle.com

This is another website where you can create Google logos by typing in the text you want. It also provides you the logo code, which you can paste it on your webpage or on any social media sites.

GoogleFont.com

With Google Font you can download the Google Logos that you have created on to your desktop. A nice fun to do your own logos.

Now, this is a good eye-catcher if you are a twitter addict. Power Twitter is a firefox addon that helps you to enhance the quality of you twittering life. This is a simple addon for FF users which puts in some great features on your twitter dashboard. Below are some of the great features that you find in this addon.

1. Retweeting automatically: Retweeting (RT) is a very good custom on Twitter religion. RT helps you to build a relationship between you and your followers. The first superb feature of this addon is the retweeting. (Did you say what’s special in that, see the pic below). You need not write the whole tweet again. Just click on the “RT” button and update.
2. Tweet Images Directly From The Dashboard: Twitter is associated with many other sites like Twitpic, Yfrog, Tweetphoto, TwitGoo and so on for image tweeting. Power Twitter enables you to upload images to twitter right from you Twitter dashboard. You can have a look at the pic of how to do it.
3. Shorten Links From Dashboard: With Power Twitter you also have the option to shorten your link manually. You can do this directly from you Twitter dashboard.
   
4. Answer Daily Questions: You can answer the #dailyquestion on Twitter from your dashboard.
5. Beware While Clicking Those Links!!: It also gives you the full link separately ( if any present in the tweet). This prevents you to click on the malicious link.

Power Twitter is thus a must-use addon if you use twitter a lot. Go ahead and experience the wonderful twitter addon and don’t forget to leave comments about your experience. Happy Tweeting!! Please do subscribe to my blog if you liked the post.