Software by tag 'feed'

QuarkBase – Find everything about a website

Posted by Lim on Sep 8th, 08 | Filed under Blogging, Internet, Tips, Web 2.0 | 2 Comments

QuarkBase is a powerful tool, which can “dig” everything about a website. For example, you can get the WHOIS information, traffic ranking, social popularity, total feed readers, and also the blogging platform (if the website that you traing to check is a blog).

To get information about a website, simply provide the domain name and press the “Search” button. I try to search for “techsnack.net” and below is the screenshot of the summary of my blog:

At the rught hand site, it will show you the domain owner, summary of the website, alexa ranking, and also the blogging platform that you are using.

There are also some tabs at the top of the page, which will bring you more details of the website information. For example, the Intro tab will show you the introduction of your blog, your blog description, about and contact page.

The Popular tab will show the social popularity while the Traffic tab will show the details of alexa ranking. The Technical tab shows you the framwork and programming language that had been used to create your website. You may also get hosting information through this tab.

QuarkBase

Embed others’ feed to your blog easily with Feed Source

Posted by Lim on Jul 8th, 08 | Filed under Blogging, Cool Stuff, Internet, Web 2.0 | 3 Comments

If you have more that one website, wondering how to put each other feeds on them? Feed Source is a service which easily integrate others’ feed on your blog.

There are a lot of methods to put other feeds to your website. For example, you can use Google’s API to do so. But, most of the methods require some basic PHP/Javascript coding, which is not suitable for non-programmers.

But, non-programmers can use Feed Source, which is a free service to integrate feeds on your blog.

Simply provide your feed URL and then customize the color and text. Press the Update Example button to view the example output. After you done, copy the code and then paste it to your blog.

Feed Source

3 Services which deliver RSS to your mailbox

Posted by Lim on Jun 28th, 08 | Filed under Blogging, Cool Stuff, Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments

There are a lot of websites which contains handy tools for users to manage RSS subscribtion. Today i would like to introduce some web services which will deliver RSS straight to your mailbox.

I had cover a lot of RSS articles before, which mainly focus on how to filter RSS or create feed for websites which don’t provide RSS service. Although FeedBurner let users to subscribe through email, but there are some alternatives beside FeedBurner.

Send Me RSS

Sendmerss.com is a service which help users organize and send their favorite contents straight to the mailbox. To subscribe through email, simply provide the RSS URL and your email address. They even provide a widget for bloggers to embedded into their blogs. The widget’s design is very attractive, and it just needs a single step to subscribe through the widget.

RSS FWD

To subscribe through RSS FWD, simply provide the RSS URL and choose your delivery preferences. After that, you can preview the looks of the RSS mail before you confirm to subscribe.

RSS2Email

RSS2Email is a Russian service, and i can’t read the words. But, it is very simple to subscribe through RSS2Email. Simple provide the RSS URL at the first textbox and your email at the second textbox and hit the button.

Send Me RSS | RSS FWD | RSS2Email

FilterMyRSS – Create filter for any RSS feeds before subscribe them

Posted by Lim on Jun 8th, 08 | Filed under Internet, Tips, Web 2.0 | 2 Comments

FilterMyRSS is a web2.0 service which can filter any RSS feeds with keywords. You will get a new URL to the new feed created.

Sometimes, we subscribe to a blog, but we only interest in certain types of articles. For example, maybe you just interested in the “internet” topic. Unfortunately, most of the blog systems don’t provide such feature for users to filter the feed before subscribe.

Luckily, FilterMyRSS solve this problem. simply provide the feed URL, provide them your keywords and you will get a new feed URL.

The screenshot above showed that i filtered my own feed with keyword “internet”. The new feed URL is shown above the textbox. Just use the new URL when you subscribe to the feed.

FilterMyRSS

Page2RSS – Create feed for any website

Posted by Lim on May 23rd, 08 | Filed under Blogging, Cool Stuff, Internet, Web 2.0 | 1 Comment

Page2RSS is a cool service which can let us to create RSS feed for any website, which do not publish feeds. It will automatically monitor and check any websites for upgrades and deliver them to your RSS aggregator.

I had cover a Firefox extension that can monitor any websites upgrade, and will inform you to read the new content. Now, Page2RSS is a more powerful service which can create feeds for websites that do not publish feeds.

Just type-in the URL that you interest and hit “to RSS”, Page2RSS will then convert the content of that URL to RSS feed and you can subscribe it useing any RSS reader. There are some similar services such as dapper, and Ponyfish, but Page2RSS is the most simplest service among them.

You can click on the www.google.com link to see the Google feed created by Page2RSS. Page2RSS provide a javascript bookmarklet button for users to easily convert any web content into feed.

Note: Not all page can be converted into RSS feed. You can use the bookmarklet button to quickly know whether the page can be converted to RSS feed or not.

Page2RSS

ReadBag – Save and read your stories later

Posted by Lim on May 22nd, 08 | Filed under Cool Stuff, Firefox, Internet, Web 2.0 | No Comments

ReadBag is a useful service which similar with Firefox’s Read It later plugin. You can save any stories and read them when you are free.

ReadBag runs on the new Google apps engine, so you just need an Google account in order to use this service. It provides user a javascript bookmarklet button so that users can add new stories quickly and easily.

To save a story, simply provide the title and URL. You can turn on the “auto archive” function, so that all stories read will automatic go to the archive folder.

There are some other features such as mobile access and API. Furthermore, Firefox users can direct posting or access ReadBag through extension, while Google Reader’s users can add stories in ReadBag by using greasemonkey script.

Another similar service is Instapaper, which is much straight forward than ReadBag. If you need extra features, i would recommend ReadBag, else go for Instapaper.

ReadBag

ReadAir – Google Reader at your desktop

Posted by Lim on May 14th, 08 | Filed under Application, Cool Stuff, Internet, Web 2.0 | 3 Comments

ReadAir is a desktop application which let Google Reader users read their feed on desktop. It is built with Adobe AIR, which means it is compatible with Windows, Linux, or Mac machine.

Google Reader is one of the best feed reader, but one thing is that you can’t bring it to your desktop. Thanks to the ReadAir team, they had successfully bring Google Reader to the desktop.

These are the features of ReadAir:

  • Mac themed scrollbars and form elements
  • Full synchronization with Google Reader Account
  • Add/Remove/Manage tags
  • Subscribe/Unsubscribe from feeds
  • Search your feeds
  • User preferences
  • Resizable viewing pane
  • Auto software update
  • Auto login

Currently, ReadAir has Mac interface, but they will implement Windows XP/Vista themes in the future release.

Note: You need to install Adobe AIR before use this application.

download ReadAir

Source: Life Rocks 2.0

Grab free RSS icon set from Smashing Magazine!

Posted by Lim on Apr 7th, 08 | Filed under Blogging, Design, Downloads | 9 Comments

Dirceu Veiga had released a free RSS icon set which contains 8 icons in different format for Smashing Magazine readers.

These icons are free to use for both private and commercial use and are available is various resolutions: 16×16px, 24×24px, 32×32px, 48×48px, 128×128px, 256×256px and 512×512px.

You can download the icon set in different format: PNG, Windows icons, and Mac icons.

So, which RSS icon you prefer? I prefer the first one, which is a man reading the newspaper. Hurry up, change your RSS icon to attract people to subscribe your RSS feed!

Source: Smashing Magazine

download from MediaFire

Free open source digg-clone download

Posted by Lim on Apr 2nd, 08 | Filed under Blogging, Cool Stuff, Internet, Web 2.0 | 10 Comments

I am sure almost all internet users know what is Digg. There are a lot of open source digg-clone application for download. I would like to share some of the example of such applications.

  1. Blinkk – Blinkk is an application which combine digg, del.icio.us, and forum into a platform. View screenshot here.
  2. Vote up/down Package for Drupal – A plugin for Drupal CMS which can create a voting system which similar with digg.
  3. PHPDug – An open source digg-clone which support templates and has a very clean interface. It has several extra features such as automatically add stories from RSS feeds and multilingual support. View demo here.
  4. Vote It Up for Wordpress – It is a Wordpress plugin to create the voting system. It support the latest Wordpress 2.5.
  5. Upwarded – Simple digg-clone application. But unfortunately i can’t found much information about it.
  6. Last but not least, Pligg – The most powerful digg-clone application which support templates and plugins. There are a lot of Pligg users, so i believe you can easily get support by the community.

I personally like Pligg and PHPDug over the others as i felt both of them has better interface, which you can modify through the template.

Pingie – Get RSS delivered as SMS to your phone

Posted by Lim on Jan 16th, 08 | Filed under Blogging, Tech News | 1 Comment

Pingie is a service which is kind of RSS to SMS notification utility. It will send an SMS to you whenever a new post appear in your “watch” feed.

Google Reader, Feedreader, RSS Reader, and Newsgator are examples of great Reader, but if you want the RSS content deliver to your mobile, you need Pingie.

Pingie

Pingie is an absolutely free service. You provide your email, phone number, and RSS Feed URL to them, and they will notify you whenever the RSS Feed get updated. You can follow certain category’s or certain author’s update by provide the correct Feed URL.

For example, if you want to follow my Tech News, you can enter http://www.techsnack.net/category/tech-news/rss.

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