If you have a blog or a website, I am sure you love checking different stats from time to time. I have to confess that I have caught myself obsessing over some of these numbers in the 9-10 months of blogging. I have used Xinu, Website Grader, Bad Neighborhood & BuiltWith to get a quick summary of various stats about ShanKri-la or any other blog/site I am curious about.

DnScoop offers us various stats about your site and has been put together by Badi Jones. Here are a few things you can get from DnScoop:

• Age of a domain - older domains tend to rank better. Although I started blogging in March’07, I registered my domain 1 year, 3 months & 10 days back.
• Google PageRank - Shows your PR & verifies if it’s valid.
• Inbound Links - Shows the number of inbound links. Did you know ShanKri-la has 20,000+ inbound links. I know that’s freaking awesome.
• Alexa Rank - in addition to showing your Alexa rank, it also shows which breakdown your blog belongs to
• IP neighbors - If you use share hosting, it shows which others sites share your IP address. You can see if your IP is shared by a bunch of porn/splog sites which could be a negative thing. Mine shows that I share my IP with 330 other sites! Wow.
• Link Value Report - Based on the above stats, they give you the value of a link in your blog if you monetize it with Text Link Ads. ShanKri-la’s estimate: $19/month for a link.
  That is very tempting but is it worth the Google PageRank slap. I think I might wait a little bit more before I venture into this. If you are interested in advertising in ShanKri-la, I have some changes coming up in the New Year to facilitate just that.
• Site Value Report - Again based on the above estimates, you could find out what is your site’s perceived worth. They estimate ShanKri-la’s to be $11,639! I have no intention of selling ShanKri-la, just for the record.
  If you are really proud of your blog, they provide a snippet of code to display your blog’s worth in your sidebar.

As you can see there are many ways to quickly get a feel for your blog stats. Obsessing over these numbers isn’t the best thing about blogging but it doesn’t hurt either to do it at some level as these can serve to improve your blog in many ways.

But, content and your readers have to come first. That is the sure way to success and the rest is just to help your blog get better and stay healthy.

Merry Christmas to all my readers celebrating tomorrow!

[via Blog About Your Blog] 

Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!

I was just going through my Google Reader starred items and found these gems that I wanted to share with you. Enjoy!

• Caution: Online MD5 Cracker Tool - Ryan of CybetNet News
  MD5 is a popular encoding used widely for encrypting passwords. It is scary to find out that these MD5 encryptions could be hacked. Find out how safe your passwords are.
• Flickr upload tool turns 3.0, goes open-source - Stephen at Webware
  Flickr upload tool is a favorite of many Flickr users and it has gone open source with version 3.0. At the same time, Flickr Pro users can now see statistics about who views their pictures. If you get DSL through Yahoo/AT&T, you’ll get it for free too.
• The ‘TakeTV’ Video Player - RT at UnTwisted Vortex
  RT tells you about this tiny USB drive looking TV player. Read on if you’d like TV on the go.
• Easiest way to type accents - Martin at gHacks
  If you type a lot of accent characters in your writing, you have to check out this free utility which would make your life much easier.
• Top 10 New and Improved Apps of 2007 - Gina at Lifehacker
  I love this list of top 10 apps of 2007 which lists a lot of my favorite apps. I am not a Mac user so my number would be something else. Oops did I spoil your surprise?
• PuTTY Tray - Can PuTTY Get Any Snazzier? - My post at Techie Buzz
  If you are a Linux user or even if you just use PuTTY to connect to web host, check this neat improvemnt to PuTTY.

Hope you liked these links and I’ll see you tomorrow!

Are you in our TopSpots? See our sidebar for more details!

Google Docs & Spreadsheets have started to make me think different about I use and organize documents. I keep track of some of my spreadsheets online at Google Docs just because I can access it from anywhere with a browser and update it.

I still missed at times when I found it easier to work from my desktop with OpenOffice that using Google Docs web application.

DocSyncer (beta) is here to take care of that missing piece for me and you if you have ever felt that way. DocSyncer works by automatically finding and syncing your documents to Google Docs and your DocSyncer account.

Quick Facts about DocSyncer

• DocSyncer monitors changes to documents and sync the updated files as well
• Install DocSyncer in as many computers as you want and have them synced at Google Docs
• Log in to DocSyncer from any computer to continue your work you left at half way in another computer.
• You can see all previous versions of a document as well
• Uses 128-bit SSL & AES encryption while syncing your docs for security
• With Google Docs Mobile Edition, you can even get to your documents in your computer from your cell phone.
• Launch Google Docs from your computer just like you open them in Microsoft Office
• You can open files in your My Account tab in your browser locally in your computer
• Custom folders work a little bit where you can turn off which folders inside Desktop or My Documents you don’t want to sync.
• You can also change your Google Docs account from inside DocSyncer.

Should I Use It

It sure looks like a promising way to streamline my personal document management. One thing that I don’t like right now is that if I update a document, it uploads it to Google Docs as a new document. But, they say a fix is coming soon to make it a version of an existing document. And I think it is a very important one at that before people start using it widely.

I am also looking forward to the promised features like the ability to email documents from anywhere to your DocSyncer account and have it in your desktop when you come home. Plus, the only folders they sync right now is My Documents and the Desktop folder and more control is in the offing.

Private Beta

I had signed up for a private beta and at first look the service looks very promising. Although, I am going tohold my horses until the service matures with the upcoming features before using it mainstream. You can sign up to get notifed of the launch or even an invite to the private beta.

I have been meaning to test drive a service such as FolderShare for a while and I will post about my experience with it compared to this and their differences in a future post.

Until then, I would like to hear from you what you think about this service and if you think it is something that you would like to use.

Are you tired of your old Windows Explorer’s plain looks and lack of killer features that could make you more productive? You’d probably like this if you are like me and keep going back to Windows Explorer out of habit even if you have a Windows Explorer alternative installed.

There are several other free alternatives to using Windows Explorer that offer superior functionality. But, this guide is for anyone interested in tricking out Windows Explorer itself to their likes.

Windows Explorer Tabs (XP & Vista)

If you are a Firefox user, you have probably learnt to love the convenience, power and productivity (often times) brought to you by tabs. How would you like it if you could surf through your computer’s folders and files with tabs in Windows Explorer?

QTTabBar is a small freeware that lets you do just that. Windows XP & Vista users can use this program. Windows XP users need the .NET framework 2.0 installed for this to work though.

Some quick facts:

• Favorites
• Tooltip previews

Windows Explorer Folder Size (XP)

When your computer is running out of space, you would start by finding out which folder is taking up the most space. Usually, you’d do it by taking a wild guess and check the folder ‘Properties’ to find out the size of a folder and start cleaning up from there.

With this free utility Folder Size, you will be able to see the size of every folder right in your Windows Explorer just like you see the sizes of files.

Change Windows Explorer Default Location (XP)

Have you ever been annoyed by the fact that Windows Explorer opens ‘My Documents’ folder every time you open it? How would you like to change the default location to be anything you want?

Brown Baron of Brown Thoughts has an excellent write-up showing you how you can easily change this in your computer with screenshots.

If you are a power user, all you have to do is to go to Windows Explorer’s Properties and change the Target field to the following, if you’d like to default to C:\music folder.

c:\windows\explorer.exe /n,/e,c:\music

Trim your Windows Explorer Context Menu (XP)


Most software you install on your Windows desktop add some form of context menu entry to your Windows Explorer making the content menu too long to be useful. Now, you can trim the fluff with a free software called MMM. You could optionally hide menu items or move rarely used items to a submenu.

Vista Explorer Breadcrumbs for XP (XP)

Vista has a nice feature in Explorer in offering breadcrumbs navigation in the location bar. Breadcrumbs is a way of showing links back to the homepage along with the links clicked to get to where you are.

With the free QT Address Bar utility, you can have this same functionality in Windows XP without upgrading to Windows Vista. You do need the .Net framework installed.

Add Favorite Folders to Title bar (XP)
With FileBox Extender, you can add favorite folders to your Windows Explorer window. Better yet, these shortcuts are accessible via keyboard shortcuts so you can jump to your favorite folders without touching the mouse.

FileBox Extender adds to 2 buttons to the title bar for accessing recent and favorite folders. It is a freeware utility.

I would love to hear what you think about these enhancements for Windows Explorer.

[via Brown Thoughts, gHacks, HowToGeek ]

Montastic is a very cool website monitoring service. It is free to register and use. If you have a blog or website and you want to get notified anytime it goes down, keep reading.

Quick facts about Montastic

• Free to register and use
• Register as many as 100 sites to monitor
• Get an email when your site goes down
• Get an email when it comes back up
• You can get status updates via RSS or a Yahoo Widget
• Montastic checks from 2 different locations
• Get a cool logo to display that you use Montastic if you want to spread the love for this awesome site!

What are you waiting for? Just sign up and register your blog or website.

If you don’t have a blog/website, how about finding out when your favorite website goes down? Maybe your bank’s website or your not so friendly colleague’s website so you can poke fun at him/her at the worst moment?

PassPack has become indispensable for me to keep track of usernames & passwords for various services I use. I did an extensive review about this awesome service that goes beyond just managing usernames & passwords earlier.

Here are some keyboard shortcuts that makes using PassPack such a breeze.

• Press 1 & click the star on the top right corner to activate 1-click login.
• Press r & click on a tag to replace or rename a tag account-wide.
• Press e & click on a tag column to edit. Don’t have to open entries to edit tags. Auto complete works too.
• Press d & click on an entry. No warning or confirmation dialog. Be warned.
• Open an entry. Press h & click on scrambled password field to look at password history.

Passpack is one of the few services that have a blog that is not just for announcements but actually filled with tips & tricks and instructions. Plus, Tara Kelly & Franscesco are always there to answer your questions or take feature requests.

Did I say this is all for free?

Have you collected a lot of RSS feeds over time that you neatly categorized in folders? If you are like me, you hardly have time to visit some of these folders because to actually go through them all, you are going to need a few hours a day. And who are we kidding?

RSS is the best thing since sliced bread to me and many of you who follow our feed. But, it offers little flexibility in choosing what you want to read in a particular feed. Often you end up receiving any updates made in a blog/site and then manually discarding (marking Read) that item in your feed reader. Some blogs offer your category feeds, so you can choose the category you’d like to follow. But, often times it is not that clear cut.

For instance, what if you don’t want to receive any post of mine that talks about ‘Remember the Milk’ or if you wanted to only receive posts that are about ‘Firefox’? How would you like to fine tune a feed to match your interests and filter out other stuff that are probably interesting to others reaching your feed reader?

With FeedRinse, you can do just that. And more.. Let’s take a look at it’s features and I’ll show you how it can help you overcome your RSS Overload.

FeedRinse Quick Facts

• Add individual feeds or import an OPML file (most feed readers have an export option)
• You can get a rinsed individual feed or create a Channel RSS with multiple feeds in it. (limit of 5 channels)
  
• You can choose to allow or block a post in a feed by specifying one or more filters. Use a filter like iPhone to block any posts about iPhone or a filter like Facebook in a channel to get all the news about Facebook or even a combination of multiple keywords.
• You can set filters for individual feeds or set filters for Channels (group of feeds)
• Feed filtering includes keyword filtering, author filtering, isolating filter by title or body & profanity filtering.
• Filtering supports Regular Expressions for power users.
• You can easily add a page you are browsing to FeedRinse with a bookmarklet.
• Once, you have rinsed your feeds, you can get RSS feed url for individual feeds or Channels. You could also opt to export all your rinsed feeds as an OPML file that is readable by most Feed Readers.
• It’s FREE to sign-up & use.

I have previously discussed, as a blogger how you can use Google Alerts to stay on top of your niche. FeedRinse can help you in a similar manner where you can create customized channel feeds.

Here are a few ways you can use FeedRinse:

• You can also use author filtering to follow a single author in a multi-author blog.
• If you are following feeds from Craigslist/Slickdeals.net but you are looking for just one particular item, use FeedRinse to get just that item.
  
• If you are following a job feed and you want to filter the feed to your interest, you could do that.
• Follow a personal finance feed to follow just posts about Mutual Funds or create your own custom Finance channel.
• Follow just chicken recipes in a Culinary blog
• Follow windows recovery tools from a site like Softpedia

As you can see, the way you can use FeedRinse is limited only by your
imagination. Sure, you might miss out on a few interesting posts when
you are filtering but isn’t it much better than just letting it
accumulate and marking them all as read in frustration?

I have heard of FeedRinse before but haven’t had the need to try it so far. I set out to do something about my Google Reader feeds. I simply wasn’t able to read all my feeds everyday.

I had subscribed to a lot of feeds and some of the feeds were getting updated with tons of posts. For instance Mashable has anywhere between 30-50 posts a day and it was increasingly getting hard to read all the posts. I could have deleted their feed but some of their posts were of great interest to me. That’s where FeedRinse helped me out.

After setting this up this week, today was the first time I was able to actually really read and mark my feeds as ‘Read’. It did take me a week to achieve this and I will be fine tuning this by adding and deleting feeds to FeedRinse as I go.

This is my workflow to rinse my feeds

• Move a potential feed with clutter to FeedRinse to the proper channel
• Either choose to allow certain posts or block certain posts
• Come back and add more filters or remove filters until I get it just right

So, give your feed reader a fall cleaning and read your feeds with your own spam filter for the feeds. Are you ready to overcome your RSS Fed overload?

Geeks are Sexy $1300 Contest

Geeks are Sexy s having an awesome contest where they are giving away prizes worth $1300 celebrating their 2 year anniversary. And this is my entry for this contest and there is only a few more days left until the contest ends. So, write your how to article to enter the ccntest!