Simple Informations

Palette Grabber is a simple plug in for Firefox made by Konstantine Prevas. It will get the colors used on a web page at the click of the mouse. You can save the color palette in the following formats -

You can use palette grabber to get the colors used in the template of any web site you like.

Google Sites” is now available for free public registration and use. With Google sites you can start a personal or group managed web site.

You can upload content and manage all your files from one location. You can also decide who all could see your site and files uploaded. You don’t need to know HTML or other coding to build your own site. So if you were looking for one good reason to start a web site why wait, start it right now.

I have made a test page on Google Sites. Check it out and post your comments there.

Themes -

Although the sign up process is simple the default themes available really sucks. You can edit theme, images used in template, colors and fonts from Appearance in site administration. Even the repeat options are provided for background images. Also you may change the home page to whichever you like as far as it is on the site itself.

Attach files -

Google sites has the ability to attach files to specific pages. So if you attach a file abc.def to a page you will get the file link as under this page.

Page history -

the author of the page is provided with the ability to view or revert a page to an earlier version.

For this a detailed history is provided including Author, time of edit, time after edit etc. Also you may subscribe to page changes.

File editing -

Editing the file has been made too simple so to say. Even if you know nothing about web page coding you will be able to create really good looking and attractive pages. The ability to insert Google docs, Google calender, Youtube and Google videos are major plus points. You can also insert Picassa sideshow directly to a page.

Automatic site map generation (not for search engines) -

A site map is generated automatically as you add more and more pages. The site map is not the one used by search engine bots. It is intended to make human navigation easier. You can add Google Analytics with the click of a button.

Search -

Web site search is built in. The search results page is rather neat and functional with the sidebar shown and results easily navigable.

Bottlenecks -

You cant use <embed>, <script>, <iframe> or <style> tags even while editing HTML code of the site as they are considered to be unsafe tags. So if you need to add a video you are forced to upload it to Youtube first. Pretty thoughtful from Google.

Over all Google sites is a great combination of functionality and ease of access for those who don’t want to get deep into the troubles of managing a site. You are provided with almost all the tools for basic site management. As always  uploading of an exe file is prevented, but after ZIPPING it can be uploaded. And at 100Mb although the storage space isn’t so much to boast about you will be satisfied for sure.

Last week I posted about ZAMZAR the Free online file converter. ZAMZAR had a better paid version too. If ZamZar was amazing here is another free online file conversion, video downloading and file sending tool which can be called the big daddy of it all.

YouConvertIt allows you to do everything ZAMAR did plus a lot more. If you thought ZAMZAR supported many file types then checkout this new site. It supports an unimaginable number of file types and all this for free.

Just checkout the comments section in the poat on ZAMZAR and you will know how I was introduced to Youconvertit.

You convert it allows you to convert and download videos from online file sharing sites in many formats, even in  audio formats. Also the online conversion utility supports much more file types than ZAMZAR. Another added feature is the ability to attach and sens files to any email address. So if you email service provided puts a limit on attachment size go to Youconvertit, upload the file and enter the destination email address. You can also add your emil and a message along with the file. Youconvertit has got an online units conversion facility too.

With the neat interface and functionality Youconvertit can be called as the BigDaddy of all online file convertors. The onlu problem I have faced with this site is that the interface does not work correctly in Opera. In firefox and IE the aite works just fine.

ZAMZAR is an online service which allows you to convert between many different file and media types. All this can be done for free when many softwares that lets you convert only between limited filetypes will blow a hole in your pocket. You can upload the file type to the ZAMZAR servers select the filetype to which you need to convert and provide your e-mail address. The link to th converted file will be sent to your mail.

ZAMZAR has got diffrent payed plans also which will let you store your files online and allows for larger files to be converted. Currently there is a limit of 100Mb on individual file size for the FREE plan. The only negetive about this is that the price tag is pretty heavy. If you have plenty of files to convert then it may be economical, but who on earth would spend a $47 to convert files for just one month.

ZAMZAR is now in its BETA stage and the developers doesen’t promise that the service will still be free when they are out of the Beta stage. But still it is one service that is payed and I would still recmmend to others.

You can convert between different file types of music, video, office docs, compressed archives and images. The following is a list of file types supported

Images :

bmp, gif, ico, jpg, pcx, png, tga, tiff, wbmp, wmf

Documents :

csv, doc, docx, html, odp, ods, odt, pcx, pdf, ppt, pptx, ps, pub, rtf, txt, wpd, wps, xls, xlsx, xml

Music :

aac, ac3, flac, m4a, mmf, mp3, ogg, ra, ram, wav, wma

Video :

3gp, 3g2, avi, flv, gvi, iphone, ipod, m4v, mov, mp4, mpg, ogg, rm, rmvb, vob, wmv

Compressed :

7z, tar.bz2, cab, lzh, rar, tar, tar.gz, yz1, zip

You can convert between any of these formats from the online menu. Another advantage is that you can add a file that is already online to be converted. That is you may provide the URL of the file and get it converted. As of now I am satisfied with the quality of the output file they are provideing.

Just remember that you have got no control over the conversions done by ZAMZAR be it file size or the quality.

Some times we may need to know more about the site we are visiting, including its IP address, domain name provider, administrator etc. Or we may need to know if the site’s server is up by using a ping command. All these and more can be done by using DomainTools by Name Intelligence. It provides almost every service related to a domain name.
Here is what Name Intelligence says about Domain Tools :

Name Intelligence is best known for its feature rich website DomainTools.com. The mission is to gather and enable as much information as possible about every domain. Domains records exist in the deep web and are not as search able as the very web pages they host. Name Intelligence will enable search on whois records and expose multiple views of how the domains are structured. Our custom thumbnail system and intelligence fetching will draw in data from all sources that have complementary data to our records.DomainTools is ranked by several third parties such as Alexa to be the number one whois website in the world based on visitors. If a domainer is researching domains then DomainTools is the place to be.

You can lookup the sites IP, check performances of various hosts, view important information about servers and various domains, view history of domain name, do a reverse IP look up etc. They have got an XML API so that you can use their service right for your office or web purpose. Visit Domain tools to have a look at what all they are providing

Most of us browse through numerous web pages and save them if we find them interesting. When I am downloading the entire site I will use Winhttrack a very useful web archiving utility. But the problem with html pages is that the have an associated folder, even the mht files are not much of use also if you need to read the page later as an e-book. So what if we could save the web page as pdf

Thats exactly what PDFOnline offers. It has a plethora of options to choose from. they provide online conversion of doc, jpg, htm and many more files to pdf. But you need to signup inorder to put there convert to pdf widget on your blog, which enables a visitor to save your page as pdf to their system. Users are able to convert pages to pdf just by clicking a button as the one shown here.

If you need the page exactly as you saw it on the net than you may try saving the file in Microsoft Web Archive format.

**Tips :Although this is nice and convenient I am sad to say that the formatting is pretty much ugly. What you’ll get is almost a screen shot and then also some image including backgrounds are missing. So for now save the page as .mht **