Cranial Soup

Web Link Captor: A great new research tool and time saver

2011-12-11T13:30:00.001-05:00

Web Link Captor will be a real time saver for any blogger or curator of information that has a large list they need to link to other sites.

It was inspired by my father's Desert Island Jazz Collection...about 700 tracks of what my dad feels is the all-time best of the best that jazz has to offer. Many people have asked him to publish this list on his blog, but the amount of work involved to look up every album and link it to Amazon, with an affiliate ID, is just too much work for him to consider doing.

With Web Link Captor, a task like this will be much faster and easier, with automatic formatting of the output in HTML, bbCode, or Wikipedia markdown, depending on where you want to paste the results.

But it doesn't just link to Amazon. It can link to Wikipedia and a host of other sites. You have full control over everything and can fine tune it to be exactly what you want.

Watch the video and see it in action:

So, if you have any enormous lists of value that you have hesitated publishing on the web because of the amount of work it would take to manually link each item somewhere that would enhance the list and make it much more interesting and useful, give Web Link Captor a shot.

It won't be officially released until January 1, 2012, but you can request an early fully functional beta version on the forum.

Web Link Captor was created by Jesse Reichler (aka mouser) for DonationCoder.com's New Apps for the New Year (NANY 2012) software celebration. Every year the community at DonationCoder holds an event where developers pledge to release a new freeware/donationware application by Jan 1. Most applications are pre-released to give the community time to test and offer feedback, and give the developers a chance to fix bugs, add requested features, and apply some final polishing before the official event date.

Whether you are a developer or just love software, you can be a part of this great community, too. And if you spot a DonationCoder application that you really like, we encourage you to support its development in any way that you can, through donations, testing, feedback, spreading the word, etc.

A full year’s worth of blog post ideas

2010-12-24T13:27:00.001-05:00

I got this brilliant idea from Chris Whitely a few years ago. You can literally buy 365 fantastic niche-specific blog post ideas, in a single pack. All you have to do is tear off the top page and write about whatever it says, each & every day. Don’t copy them word for word, just use them as your springboard to get you started.

And if you know a blogger that is struggling with ideas for what to write about, it would make the perfect holiday gift. Just be sure to point out that it’s a blog-post-idea-a-day pack, because it might not be that obvious to them to use it for that purpose.

To make it easier for you, I dug up these from amazon.com. If you have a blog related to any of these topics or want to start one, these will be perfect for you.

Yes, they are affiliate links and Amazon will throw me a few cents if you buy through my links, but it won't cost you any more than if you had just gone to the site and found the calendars on your own. And if none of these calendars interest you or you don't like the prices, you are free to look elsewhere.

How can you rank well on search engines, without fussing with SEO?

2010-07-02T16:07:00.002-04:00

If you want to rank well on search engines without fussing with SEO, then pretend it's 1995 and there are no search engines that will list you, because you can't afford the high fees for inclusion.

Now, how are you going to, in an ethical way, make people want to visit your site, stay awhile and explore, come back often, and share what they find with others?

Your site should work well and not be broken.

Make sure all links to pages on and off your site actually lead to where you want them to.
Make sure you don't have broken images.
Make sure the content loads correctly in all the major browsers.
Make sure your pages adhere to W3C standards and they validate.

Your site should be designed for people.

Make sure your template is pleasing to the eye and not painful to look at.
Make sure it has good navigation and is easy to discover and find the content your site has to offer. Good use of sidebar links to important stuff. Links to similar content pages on your site.
Make everything within 2-3 clicks of the main page.
Break up huge amounts of text with related images to help the eyes stay focused where they should be,
Your site should load fast. Use real thumbnails for your images and not just merely resizing with HTML.
Don't overwhelm people with ads.
Remove spam promptly.

Your site should invite people back.

Give your visitors multiple ways to be notified and access new content (RSS feeds, email subscription, follow on Twitter, a Facebook fan page.) Make sure new content reaches them wherever it's convenient to them.

Your site should encourage sharing.

Make sure you don't use frames. Every page should have its own unique URL that shows in the address bar.
Use Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Google Reader/Buzz buttons.

Your content should be unique and of high quality.

Don't copy other people's stuff, write your own.
Check your spelling and grammar.
Put thought into what you write.
If you post YouTube videos, add some unique commentary that doesn't exist anywhere else on the web.
For every sentence you quote from another source, write 3-5 of your own. So if you quote 3 sentences, you will have to write 9-15 to balance it. Don't quote in every article. Don't quote any more than what is necessary, less is much better than more.
If you are supplying information, make sure it is complete, accurate, and up to date.
Write about stuff people will care about enough to want read it. Don't write about what you had for lunch unless your a restaurant critic.
If your site is a blog, link out in every article to quality related content. Linking out to pages on other good blogs has the bonus in that it may earn you a trackback link on that page, or at the very least attract the eyes of the author of that blog who will stop by and check out who is linking to him.

Interact with your visitors and make them feel important.

Allow commenting and respond to comments as soon as humanly possible.
Give your visitors a means of contacting you privately, either by supplying an email address or a contact form.

Spread the word.

Become a highly respected member of a large community with similar content.. Put your link in your profile and signature. If people respect you, they will click the links.
Reach out to blogs by reading and participating in discussions. Never leave a "nice post" comment. Put some thought & work into your responses. You want to catch the attention of other readers and the bloggers themselves, and make them ask "Wow! Who is this guy?" so they will click your name and visit the site it links to. Always make your comments increase the value of that bloggers page.
Participate on social media sites and interact with people in a positive way. Get conversations going. Again, you want to make people ask "Who is that guy?" which will lead to them checking out who you are (your profile) and where you came from (your site).
Find an ad network that gives away free advertising. (I happen to really like Project Wonderful, personally)

If you do all of the above, quality inbound links will happen on their own and between the fact that others think high enough about you and your site to write about it and link to it, combined with having a great site, structurally, that makes it easy for spiders to find your content, you will get the ranking in the search engines that you deserve.

Above all, be patient, work hard, and don't engage in any "evil tricks". Good ranking does not happen overnight.

The easy and fun way to market your message to millions of people

2009-04-27T00:36:00.006-04:00

Too many so-called “experts” are saying that if you have some message that you want to tell the world, that you need to have tons of followers on Twitter. They write blog posts and tutorials explaining how to do it, and sell tools and services to help you rapidly get as many followers as you can.

But they are wrong...dead wrong. You don't need any followers on twitter, none at all. You don't even need a twitter account.

You can reach more people in more places, including Twitter and Facebook, by just getting the right people on Friendfeed to follow you.

But who are the right people?

Anyone with a large following on both Friendfeed and Twitter that is highly active and will be likely to respond to your messages, blog posts, and whatever other content you post by clicking that "like" link, who also has his Friendfeed account set up to post his activities, including "likes" to his Facebook and Twitter accounts. And if your content gets reshared or retweeted, the potential reach can be explosive!

And it takes only a handful of power users to potentially spread your message to millions.

But the really tricky part is getting them to follow you and clicking that golden "like" link, which you can only do if what you post is of good quality and relevant to their interests, and you are actively social, commenting and clicking that "like" link on theirs and other people's content.

This isn't something you can fake your way through. You are either the real deal or it just will not work. Luckily you will have a blast and make a ton of new friends while you are doing it, because Friendfeed is a whole lot of fun and loaded with tons of great discussions around great content.

Social media "experts", internet marketers, get rich quick on the internet scammers, and spammers need not bother even trying. This kind of powerful marketing was not made for you.

7 Reasons Not to Direct Link to a Developer's Download Files

2009-03-16T23:10:00.001-04:00

As a developer, I can't help but be more than a little bit bothered by the fact that some bloggers chose to direct link to application download files (.zip, .exe, etc) in some of the articles they write, rather than the page on the developer's site, in which the download links can be found.

If this is how you do things when you write articles & reviews, then I'd like to inform you that this isn't a very nice thing to do, for the following reasons:

You are depriving the developers of the full credit they deserve for the work they have done. If the application is worth writing about, it's also worth giving the developer full proper credit.
Some freeware authors have Paypal donate buttons on their sites, and your readers will never see them, therefore never click them. This deprives some developers of their only income and maybe their only incentive to keep making freeware/donationware.
Some freeware authors have advertising on their sites, and additional page impressions or clicks generated from the traffic you send them means an income for them, and your direct linking to the files prevents that from happening. This is how some software can remain free, rather than the author resorting to making it payware (or even worse, adware). If you would like things to stay free and clean, you have to do your part to help the developers keep it that way.
A blog linking to a page on a small developer's site can mean a big boost in Page Rank, making their software easier to find through search engines. This helps the people searching for the perfect tool to do the job they need, as well as the software developer that created it.
You are depriving and cheating your readers of the chance to browse around the developer's site, and perhaps the opportunity to discover more useful software they might be interested in. And in the case of the applications that come from sites like donationcoder.com, you are preventing them from discovering a wonderful software enthusiasts community that they really would enjoy, and can even request custom made freeware, made to their specifications.
In some cases, you may also be making it more difficult for your readers to find the info necessary to submit bug reports and get support, not to mention application updates and upgrades.
You may also be depriving your readers of important information related to installing or using the application, that they may need to know.

So, could you please be a really nice person to us poor freeware/donationware developers, and your readers, and fix your links to point to the pages and not the file downloads? And in the future, always link to the pages, instead.

Your readers and the software developers would really appreciate this.

Thank You.

When Grandma died, she took her Christmas cookies with her

2008-08-23T09:33:00.004-04:00

After reading a post on WassupBlog, it got me thinking again about this issue, and I feel that you should take a moment to think about it, too. You have a will and life insurance to take care of the big details, but are you overlooking another big one that needs taking care of and preparing for?

In just about every family I know, there has occurred a similar situation, where a loved one has died and all of the recipes that person was responsible for, that became an integral part of that family's culture and traditions, were lost forever.

When a death occurs in a family, it is hard enough to deal with the loss of that person without adding the loss of family culture and tradition on top of it.

Sure Christmas will never be the same without Grandma, but now you don't even have her cookies to help keep her memory alive and feel like at least that part of her is still here.

I would like all moms, grandmas, and anyone else that has ever cooked any food for their family, from holiday dinners to Friday night pizza, to take a moment to think about what would happen to your recipes if anything ever happened to you. If you are a newly wed, and don't really have many yet, think about what could happen in the future when you have plenty.

Are all of your recipes written down and all in one place? Does your family know where to find them? What would happen if your house burned down, taking your paper copies of your recipes with it? Do you have any of Grandma's recipes that need to be protected so they can be handed down to future generations?

Consider publishing all your recipes to a blog, maybe including photos of the prepared items, or even better, photos of your family members enjoying them. Make sure every member of your family has the URL bookmarked.

You might want to create this recipe blog on a free service like Blogger, so there will be less risk of them being lost by being deleted by a hosting company, just in case something happens to you and the hosting bill doesn't get paid.

The bonus you will get for doing this, besides peace of mind, is that while you are still alive, all your recipes will be in one place, easy to share with family and friends, protected in case a fire or flood destroys your home, and you will be introducing others to creations that could possibly become part of their own family culture and traditions.

But more importantly, should anything happen to you, your family will still have that part of you kept alive. And it will be a big comfort to them to still be able to have that. It will be like you coming back every once in awhile to give them a big hug when they really need it most. All of the good memories that go along with the foods will be well preserved in their hearts & minds, when the taste is still on their tongues.

Bloggers With Comment Forms That Suck a Chunk of Your Life Into a Black Hole

2008-07-15T01:57:00.006-04:00

Listen up, John Chow, Jack Humphrey, Matthew Henrickson, Andy Beard, and the rest of you lazy and/or inept bloggers out there:

I am tired of wasting my time on broken comment forms, screwball captchas, lazy moderation, and bad site design.

Too many times in the past 2 weeks, I have tried to make comments on blogs that ended up sucked into cyberspace and never making it to its destination, which is the post in which I was commenting on.

On three blogs, after taking the time to formulate an informative, relevant, quality comment (one of them was at least an hour of work), it was just sucked away after clicking the submit button, with no indication that it made it to where it was supposed to go, or it being held for moderation, or anything else. Will I ever grace those blogs with another comment again? No!

On another blog, after almost the same amount of work and hitting the submit button, I was informed that commenting on that post was closed. Why was there a comment form then? And why was there no visible indication that commenting was closed that I could see, before I wasted my time putting together a comment? Will I ever grace that blog with another comment? No!

On another blog, after I took the time to make a comment thanking the blogger for his post and tell him how useful it was to me and why, and how I was going to send him some traffic because it was that damn good, his captcha informs me that I must have flunked math in school because 4+3 does not equal 7. Don't insult me like that. I try to compliment you and thank you, and this is the thanks I get? A screwball captcha that calls me an idiot? Will I ever comment on your blog again? No!

On another two blogs, my comment was being held for moderation. Now I can understand the need to do that in order to keep spammers at bay, but don't you think you should check your queue to see if any comments were made, at least once a week, if not more often? Maybe even check it when you are making a new post, at least. Will I be commenting on those blogs again? No!

I am tired of wasting chunks of my life trying to comment unsucessfully on your blogs.

So to all you bloggers out there, please check to make sure your comment forms and captchas work, when commenting is closed that it is visibly closed to your visitors before they waste their time (remove the form if possible), if comments are being held for moderation that commentors are told this, and process your comment moderation queues on a regular basis!

And if you have no clue what you are doing or how to fix things, ask someone to help you!

U Comment = I Comment - Exchange Your 2 Cents Here

2008-07-07T23:55:00.013-04:00

UPDATE 03-11-2009: I am no longer exchanging comments with everyone that posts one on my blog.

I have tried this and it has failed, mainly because of people taking advantage of my good nature by

leaving comments linking back to splogs and pure crap
leaving half a dozen dumb comments and expecting just as many good ones in return
placing rules upon my return comments with rediculous minimum length requirements
the plethora of just plain stupid comments left just to boost their own page rank and get both a nofollow link and a comment back from me

I don't have the time to play games any more. While I will still return comments with good blogs on occasion, and I still will post about great sites I find this way, please don't depend on it.

There are a number of people that read my blog and will contact me in private or elsewhere to share their thoughts, rather than leaving comments here.

They raise interesting points and we get into great discussions.

This is why I have very few comments on my blog and so many long IRC & private message chatlogs, instead.

Then there are others that read and wander off...with me never knowing what their thoughts are, never knowing who they are, where they came from, or if they have a blog of their own.

So, inspired by an article on John Chow's blog discussing evil ways to get more comments, and since I don't feel like talking to myself or being "evil", I have decided that anyone that comments on one of my posts (not this one) will receive a comment from me, somewhere on their blog. (not so evil)

The quality will be reciprocated. Leave a great comment and I'll leave a great one too. Leave a crappy "interesting post" comment and you will get a crappy comment from me, that you probably won't want showing on your blog.

I love free stuff. And I love giving away free stuff. And what is the one thing that I have in abundance that is free? My words. I always have a thought to share, and I share them freely when and where I can.

As any blogger that has had the honor of having me comment on their blog knows, I leave great comments that add value to a page. Sometimes I put more work into my comments than I do on my own blog posts.

I also write about and link to sites that I like, and leaving a comment on my blog is a great way to introduce your site to me and possibly end up with an honest, enthusiastic review on my blog, if I like it. But please don't spam, make the comment relevant to the post or you could find it deleted and yourself disqualified.

So, if you want one of my comments, leave one for me on a post other than this one.

Oh, and if you want to display my graphic on your blog and link to this post (or your own message) and do the same kind of comment exchanging, I won't mind. And if you make a better graphic than mine, let me know...I might want to use yours instead.

My experiences with Project Wonderful

2008-02-26T01:41:00.004-05:00

I can't remember which blog I was on, but they had ads from Project Wonderful.

I have been looking for other ways to make money on my blogs and websites besides Adsense. I decided to give it a try.

It has been 16 days since I signed up and I figured I would let everyone know about my experiences with it so far, and some other thoughts I have had about the whole program.

Since one of my sites is an educational site that is accessed by a number of schools, I have to be careful about other sites I link to and what kinds of ads appear on it. Project Wonderful allows me to check each site and decide if I want to approve or reject it. I like this. I won't have to worry as much about who or what is advertising on my site. I can go see myself before the ad ever appears.

So how much money have I made? A big $0.44. That isn't very much for 16 days.

There is something that I have been thinking about though...

Are people clicking the ads that are appearing on my sites? No, not really, but I am clicking them all to check them before approving them. So I am being paid a tiny amount to look at other people's sites. And I look at their site even if they aren't the winning bid. Just the act of bidding, win or lose, will bring in some extra traffic.

Since I am checking all ads before they appear on my site, I have discovered quite a few really nice blogs and a lot of web comic sites, which I have sent the links to my daughter. She is nuts about web comics and is always looking for new ones she can get into, so it seemed like the logical thing to do.

Would I pay for placing an ad to one of my sites with Project Wonderful? Probably not, since the traffic it would generate would most likely be miniscule and not really boosting the traffic enough to make more off the ads that are already on my sites.

But you are allowed to bid and decide how much you are willing to pay per day for placement. And believe this is where the beauty of placing ads with them is. I think if you were to bid on every site where the ads are going for $0, you could do quite well generating some traffic without any cost involved. And at the very least, if you bid on a site that is run by someone that checks all ads, like I do, if you have a decent site you may win traffic from the 'secret traffic source' of Project Wonderful...the webmasters themselves.

If they like your site, it's all worth the no-cost effort. Advertising on a blogger's site and the webmaster liking your site, could turn into even better advertising if they like your site enough to tell their readers about it and give you a nice honest review and send their readers to you. At the very least, even if they don't write about it and you never get a click on your ad, you will have them as a fan, so you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Would I write about some of the sites that have bid on my ad box? Certainly, if the site excites me enough, and some have.

A few are about to get a bit more advertising than they had anticipated when they placed their bid. Rather than a day or so in a box on my ebook site, they are going to have a permanent spot here in this post.

Here is what I have discovered in the last 16 days that I found quite appealing:

Living on Adsense - A blog by a beginning blogger meant for beginning bloggers, sharing the knowledge he acquires with others, as he learns it, in a style that isn't boring or dry. This isn't the 'How to Get Rich Step-by-Step, Now Buy My Book' that you will find in other blogs of the sort. This guy is for real, and struggling with it, like the rest of us.

If you want to read about real experiences with trying to make money from blogging, this is a good one to read. If you are a little ahead in this game, a bit farther than this guy, maybe you would like to share some info with him and help him out. He wants to make a living from blogging and isn't doing too well at the moment. I think he could use a little advice and encouragement from his fellow "I am still broke & blogging" peers.

High T3ch - How do I describe this one? All I can say is that it is quite visually appealing and interesting. Lots of stuff from the world of science & technology, presented in a way that will appeal to the common person. Don't be afraid or think you aren't smart enough to understand. Dive in and learn a little something new.

impNERD - Nice blog if you are a blogger. Lots of stuff about social bookmarking, blogging, SEO, Wordpress, writing articles, marketing your blog, etc. Hopefully, Chris (from at Living on Adsense) is reading this and checking this one out. ;-)

Calamities of Nature - This is a rather well drawn and appealing web comic. One of the few that I have come across in the last 16 days that I would actually read. It's quite professional. And it seems the artist is starting to get some good exposure. Consider this little blurb of mine, approval, and a bit more publicity to help him out. He deserves it.

Technically Easy - An interesting blog that presents technical stuff in an easy to understand manner that even non-geeks can understand. He also does free website reviews, so if you want him to take a look at your site and write about it, ask him. He's an honest guy that will tell you and the world, the truth...the good, the bad, and the ugly. He scores +100 bonus internet points from me. I like a person with integrity.

So even though I have only made a measly $0.44, I think it was still worth it just to find some cool new sites. Once I have hit the minimum amount needed to place a bid, I'll be making some $0 bids and see if it has the same effect on other publishers as it has had on me.

Online Privacy Policy Generator

2007-10-11T13:41:00.002-04:00

Constructing a privacy policy for your website can be a complicated task, but it doesn't have to be any more.

With this generator it is as easy as checking off some boxes and filling in some blanks.

They give you the choice between generating an HTML page which you can just save, or emailing you an HTML or plain text copy.

http://www.the-dma.org/privacy/creating.shtml