Cool Websites Everyone Should Bookmark
Often I find websites that offer interesting, innovative,
or just plain cool stuff that doesn't quite rate a stand-
alone article, but several of them together will get you
jumping all over your computer to check them out.
** Copyright Thieves Beware **
A free service at www.copyscape.com allows you to see if
anyone out on the Web has copied the text from your website
and to what degree.
Just enter the url of your webpage, article, or blog post,
hit the submit button and the site will show you if another
website contains substantially the same text as your page.
If you get a hit, then click the links provided to go to
the sites that may have copied you and see highlighted text
that matches your site.
The free service on the home page only displays 10 results,
and if you want to see more, you can pay $10-20 a month and
the service will monitor your web pages and let you know of
everyone who copies them.
A positive use for this tool I thought of for anyone who
operates an online business: put in your competitors' url
where they display the ads, articles, and other tools they
give their affiliates, and see who links to them.
They may have active affiliates posting their content (with
permission of course) and you may find some great potential
partners to help you promote your business.
Another way you can watch for this type of activity is by
signing up for alerts at Google.
Go to http://www.google.com/alerts/ and enter in your name,
product title, article title, or some specific keyword
combination that would tip you off that someone had taken
your stuff (or was posting your competitors' material).
You can then receive an update with links any time Google
finds a new reference to your keyword phrase.
** Surf While You Sleep **
One of the disadvantages of surfing the web, especially
with a 56K modem, involves the fact that your browser
doesn't allow you to easily and selectively download
content from the World Wide Web.
For anyone who ever experiences this frustration, here
comes GetBot to the rescue!
Available at www.getbot.com, this handy little program
allows you to surf individual sites, view all the page
titles, see all the website links, both internal and
external, and decide which pictures and pages you want
before downloading.
Should you desire to download an entire site, you can set
the program to run before going to bed. When you wake up
the next morning all the information will already reside on
your computer, making for a fast and pleasant perusal of
all the material.
Getbot comes as shareware with limited functionality, which
means you can try the program for free, but if you decide
to keep it, or want all the features, then you must pay $19.
On the bad side, it's a memory hog, so be prepared for a
restart or two when using it. GetBot is a decent starter program... but if you want real power for downloading websites to view offline, check out www.httrack.com I've found it to be MUCH more versatile... and, it's 100% no cost :-)
** Keyword Specific News **
Log on to http://News.Google.com and you can find just
about any breaking news story on virtually any topic.
Though the front page is segmented into main categories
like Science, World News, Technology, and more, Google News
also allows you to search over 4,500 different news sources
for stories containing your keywords.
For example, a search for "Iraqi Elections" returned over
10,000 stories, many of them less than 5 or 6 hours old
when I did the search.
Google News also allows you to sign up for "News Alerts"
via email where the service will email you a link every
time a new story with your search criteria appears in their
database.
If you need keyword-specific information and articles to
post in your blog... this makes an excellent way to get
material sent to you the minute the news breaks.
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About the Author
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the
co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how
to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted
visitors to your website or affiliate links...