Crenk » tools

Top Sites for Free eBooks

Steven Finch — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:21:06 +0000

eBooks are becoming more and more popular these days and Crenk just wanted to let you know the best places on the web to find eBooks.

eBook Search Engines

www.pdfgeni.com
www.pdf-search-engine.com
www.data-sheet.net

Scribd.com

Scribd is basically the YouTube of documents. They have a great library of free ebooks to choose from.

Free Ebooks For Your iPod, PDA, Smartphone, Blackberry etc.

www.gutenberg.org
www.manybooks.net
www.feedbooks.com
www.booksinmyphone.com

Free Tech eBooks

www.freecomputerbooks.com
www.freetechbooks.com

Website Grader: Free SEO Tips

Steven Finch — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:36:59 +0000

Want to know how to get your Website high up in natural search results, but don’t want to pay a search engine optimization (SEO) firm just to find out what you are doing wrong? Now you can get a free, automated evaluation of your site on Website Grader. Just type in your Website address, and it will spit out a report detailing what you can do to boost your site’s SEO juice. It even gives you a grade.

Crenk scored a 97.6 out of 100. With over 2,130 pages indexed by Google and over 15,500 inbound links Crenk seems to be doing quite well compared to our competitors.

Website Grader is operated by HubSpot, a search engine and Web-marketing optimization company hoping to get leads from the site. If you use it, don’t be surprised if you get contacted by one of its sales reps trying to upsell you to one of its paid services. Hey, you didn’t really think it was free, did you?

20 Twitter Applications Everyone Should Be Using

Steven Finch — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:47:46 +0000

Twitter is growing all over the world and thousands of people are joining on a daily basis. I thought we would put together a quick list of our top 20 Twitter applications.

Twitter Toolbar – Downloading this free toolbar gives you instant access to Twitter. You can use the toolbar to access online Twitter tools, check your Twitter stats, post your updates and more. Versions are available for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Twitoria – This simple application lets you quickly find out which of your followers has not been actively tweeting. Easily sort through your network of followers and purge the inactive users.

Monitter – Get a live streaming view at what Twitter users in your location are saying about you or your small business. Simply insert keywords you would like to search for and the surrounding area you would liked monitored.

Bubble Tweet – This unique application lets you post a short video message that pops up on your Twitter profile in a bubble shaped player. You can personally introduce yourself and/or your business to anyone who visits your profile.

Twitter Gallery – A collection of free backround themes for your Twitter account. You can use the one click installation or manually install them yourself. Lots of nice designs and colors to choose from.

Tweepler – Simplify the way you manage your Twitter followers. Tweepler enables you to easily sort through new followers and accept them or ignore them on one simple screen. They have made accepting followers easier by giving the Tweepler user the followers stats and last 3 tweets in one screen view. This will save you time by eliminating the need to visit each individual follower’s profiles.

Twit This – Allow visitors to your blog or website to easily post Twitter messages about you or your business. Post the TwitThis button to your website or blog pages with the instructions and coding provided on their site.

StockTwits – Follow and join into conversations with traders and investors. An active community of investors are sharing their views on current market conditions and recent news happenings. You can quickly see what others are saying about investments in your portfolio.

HelloTxt – Update your status to several social networking sites in one simple step. You can choose from over 35 social sites to post to including Twitter.

TwitterFox – This Firefox extension is one of my personal favorites. You can post Twitter updates without visiting the Twitter site each time. A small icon is added to the bottom of your Firefox status bar. The icon opens to reveal your friend’s most current updates. You can add your updates from that dialog box, even for multiple Twitter accounts.

Future Tweets – Do you have something to promote on Twitter tomorrow but are afraid of forgetting to do it? With FutureTweets, you can schedule your tweet ahead of time for a specific date and time. Even schedule reoccuring tweets to post daily, monthly, even yearly.

TwitPic – Share your favorite pictures on Twitter. This would be a good way to introduce your new product to your network of followers.

twtQpon – Create exclusive coupons for your business services or products and share them with your Twitter followers.

Tweetburner – This site is designed to help you track your tweets. With Tweetburner you can shorten URLs and track the clicks your tweets accumulate.

Tweetbeep – Just like Google Alerts, Tweetbeep tracks Twitter conversations that mention you, your business or your products and services. Alerts are sent to you via email.

Twitter Counter – Proudly display the number of Twitter followers on your business blog or website. Add the badge to your site and invite customers to follow you on Twitter.

Group Tweet – This app enables all employees within your company to post updates which can be privately viewed only by your group of approved members.

Twitter Safe – This free service protects your years of hard work building your community of followers. This one click backup will restore your network of followers in the event that your list is compromised.

Twitxr – Post product pictures and updates from your mobile phone directly to Twitter.

Track This – This app enables tracking of any UPS, USPS, FedEx or DHL shipment. Updates are sent to your Twitter account direct messages whenever your package changes location.

MySocialButtons: Find Social Networking Buttons and Icons for Your Blog or Site

Steven Finch — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:00:55 +0000

Have you ever spent a lot of time searching around the Internet to find the perfect social media button that can be added to your site? Well stop searching and head over to MySocialButtons. MySocialButtons does what it says on the can and offers free social networking icons and buttons to download. Buttons include TTwitter, Reddit, Digg, Facebook, Stumbleupon and come in various different colours, styles and sizes.

MakeMoneyOnline.com: Money Making Tips Sites Thats Actually Worth Reading

Steven Finch — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 09:56:55 +0000

I came across a very interesting site the other day. I know its not really a startup so I shouldn’t be reviewing it, but I thought it was worth a mention anyways. The site is MakeStableMoney and it talks about how the average person can make money from home. I realise there are so many poor sites out there that seem to talk about this same issue, but for some reason I think this site actually has some quality.

Previously the site has talked about way to make money through sponsorships, best 3 google adwords books to read, 17 secrets on how to sell ebooks and more. This site can really help people make money online and I think it is a good investment of your time to check it out.

Produle: Create Flash Based Applications Online for Free

Steven Finch — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:57:13 +0000

Produle is a software as a service (hosted) solution which allows users to create flash based applications online and then distribute them. Produle has some great features and benefits including no installation, automatic updates, global availability, cross-platform (works under PC, Mac and Linux). Moreover users can design and publish flash apps with no time consuming compilation or uploading, it’s just instant.

Produle can be used for a wide range of projects including widgets, banners, promos, animations, product guides, data apps, presentations, user interfaces for web services and any other possible interactive web content. Since the applications will have no persistent produle branding, they can be fully customized to suit your needs.

Produle is a great tool for new flash developers because of it easy of use. However, options don’t seem to be as interactive as other widget tools in the market at the moment such as Sprout Builder.

Top 5 Multi-Search Tools for Find The Best Torrents

Steven Finch — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:00:12 +0000

Previously here on Crenk we have talked about the top torrent trackers on the web and this time I want to outline the top 5 multi-search torrent tools.

NowTorrents. Searches up to twelve sites at once. I like the file type tabs and health indicator, and they offer a Firefox and IE compatible search plugin.

uSniff. I wrote about uSniff before, and I use it quite often. I don’t really search a lot of different sites, usually just Pirate Bay and IsoHunt, and they’re both supported (along with six others). The interface is clean and responds quickly – the search box throws some people off, though. I don’t understand why, it’s giant, orange, and says “search” on it. They also have a search plugin for IE and Firefox.

ScrapeTorrent. Offers a nice preference page and searches nine sites at once. Piratebay, IsoHunt, Mininova, and Demonoid are included, and they’re my go-to sites anyways. I approve!

Speckly. I hate the way it displays results: gobs and gobs of text, Google style, and all on one page. There aren’t any sorting options, though you can at least view by file type.

Torrentz. Technically it searches multiple sites, but you’ll get a general results page first. Clicking one of the results will take you to a listing of all the individual torrents. I find it an annoying process, and don’t use Torrentz as a result.

Lovely Charts: Best Web Based Tool For Flowcharts and Wireframes

Steven Finch — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 09:03:05 +0000

Lovely Charts is a slick new web-based tool for creating flowcharts and wireframes. Features you’d expect from a similar desktop app come standard: copy-paste, undo up to 20 steps, and pan/zoom all work the way you’re used to. Objects snap into place, and the basic drawing tools are all there. The only drawback? You can only save one chart at a time until you upgrade to the pro version. Depending on your needs, though, the 18 euro for 6 months might be worth it to you.

The advantages of having a web-based wireframe app are obvious if you’re a designer who works from home and an office. You can access your stuff from anywhere, and let collaborators work on it if need be. Lovely Charts also comes pre-stocked with some network diagram symbols and wireframe templates that could save you a lot of time. You might want to wait to buy until they implement a few more export formats. JPG and PNG are currently supported, with more on the way.

Stimator: Real Website Valuation Estimator

Steven Finch — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:32:34 +0000

Stimator is a real-time website value estimator that aims to deliver the most accurate economical value that a website could worth by collecting important data from different sources as well as market places.

There are six major factors involved in the calculation:

Top Level Domain – Stimator take in account the strength of a TLD.
Financial - It uses Yahoo Finance to get all data needed to perform the variations of the financial market.
Real Sells – The service was built to delivery real results (at least the most possible ones). The math used to determinate a website value was study using real website sells such as: Sedo, Sitepoint Marketplace etc.
Web Factors – Stimator collects information from the website itself and from several major sources during the calculation stages before presenting the final estimated result.
Estimation - The calculations are made to give what is called the “economic value”.
Observations - The main mission is to avaliate domains and sub-domains. After each calculation, Stimator presents a report with the main relevant factors that it can extract from the examination. This factors will give the users an idea of how the site is performing.

Using Stimator Crenk is worth $17,351 which is kind of a realistic valuation. Anyone interested in offering me that much for the site?

AIMcrm: Sales Leads Management At Its Best

Steven Finch — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:08:56 +0000

AIMcrm is an on-demand web-based software application to manage the handling of sales leads (essentially lead management). There is also the ability to sell leads (lead aggregation business). AIMcrm provides a highly customisable interface and is one of the most promising sales management software tools on the market today. Other key features within AIMcrm include campaign management , sales force automation, sales team management and CRM reselling.

I know AIMcrm is probably not as good as SalesForce or SugarCRM, but their allround software and interface can really aim to compete with the big boys in years to come. Im not too sure however if they should have gone with a paid model or actually provided the software free as does SugarCRM and ZohoCRM. This way they could just add an advertising script into the software in which could bring them a lot more revenues than just a subscription. Additionally, they might need to do a bit of work on their website and make it a lot more professional and a little less 90’s.

Apart from all that make sure you check out AIMcrm because they do currently provide a great piece of crm software. It might be free but then again it is a lot more affordable than SalesForce.

Crenk Interviews… Zentact

matt — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:00:13 +0000

Following our recent review of Zentact, we spoke to the team behind the service. Read on for insights from Jared Brandt, John Sampson and Eric Marcoullier about their previous work with MyBlogLog, a hint of what’s to come with new service Gnip, and what makes them and their fab social networking tool tick.

What is the Zentact philosophy?
(Jared) We are creating a product that integrates into already existing work flows, helping our users build better relationships. We do this without any BS. (Eric would say the our product will make the baby jesus cry…)

Sharing information with your contacts is something that Mr. Marcoullier seems to be a fan of! What makes Zentact different to other content sharing websites?

(Jared) Social networks are a lot of work for traditionally very little payoff. CRM tools are worse.

(Eric) Zentact aims to flip that on its ear and provide loads of tangible results for little ongoing effort.

(Jared) Typical content sharing websites and apps have focused on the user always remembering whom to share with. We are trying, in effect, to whisper in the user’s ear and suggest whom they can share this with in a meaningful way – we make sure you share what matters. We will be adding more social aspects in the near future as well.

How has the web 2.0 landscape changed since the coneption and subsequent selling of MyBlogLog to now and the work you’re doing with Zentact?

(John) MyBlogLog allowed users to create profiles that traveled with them where they surfed, adding value to both the mybloglog member and website owner. More Web 2.0 apps today are leveraging this concept, be it scripts, widgets, and even in browsers. The value that is created by individual apps and even apps created mashing APIs together is significant.

Some commentators have said that they’d like Facebook integration, in particular to help when tagging – is this something you and the team are looking into?

(Jared) We will be integrating in with Facebook to help with both tagging, tracking last connection and posting to the wall.

Will you be looking to include integration with other social networking services – if so what is the liklihood of this happening before Zentact comes out of Beta?

(Jared) We are in a private beta now and working on launching our public beta. We will likely integrate with other social networking services and other communication platforms before leaving beta. We are also listening to our users – feedback will help lead the way.

What is really exciting you on the web (Zentact aside)?
(Jared) Gnip
(John) Apple app store

I would argue that 2008 has been the year of Twitter and that it will become more mainstream in 2009 – what do you think will be the big social media development in the next 12 months?

(Jared) We think that there will be a big movement towards information – instead of just data. More products will become contextual.

What has been the main challenge for Zentact since you founded the company?

(Jared) Our number one challenge has been to prioritize features since, as a team, we have many features we want to do quickly.

And what has been the achievement that has made you most happy?

(Jared) We have gotten feedback from users ranging for “wow” to “Zentact helped me close a deal”. This feedback is what makes us tick!

What are the next key milestones you’ll be looking to meet?

( Jared) Public beta and our IE version.

What can we expect from Zentact in 2009?

(Jared) A killer product that will seamlessly improve your life.

To try Zentact for yourself, we have a few private invites to test the private beta, which you lucky boys and girls can get here.

Twingly: The Blog Search Engine That Is Actually Moving In The Right Direction

matt — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:20:40 +0000

When you have an urge (we all get it), or a task that requires you to go sifting through blogs, what is the first place that comes to mind? Technorati of course. It is an established player in a fairly open market which has seen their superiority fairly untroubled. Until now?

Enter, stage left, Twingly.com, a Swedish blog search engine founded by Martin Källström.

According to Twingly.com’s ‘about‘ section, the philosophy behind their search system is to produce “a blog search engine featuring a spam-free, faceted, social search for the global blogosphere”. Nice, but aren’t Technorati and URLFan doing the same thing? Twingly uses relationships, ie how well linked each blog and article is, to work out how relevant to your search they are. Key to the service is a blog’s ‘approval’. If a blog is not approved by the Twingly team (meet them here), it could potentially be spam. If you are the owner of a blog that comes up as not being approved, you can of course resolve that little issue by sending the Twingly team a swift e-mail.

You can express your opinion on the blogs Twingly finds via a fluorescent green ‘links/likes’ tab. This shows you how many people are linking to the page and it allows you, once you’ve signed up to the service, to vote on if the post is relevant or useful – it’s the equivalent of Technorati Favourites.

Where it gets really interesting though is the blog profile page. With some nifty “research”, we can compare Crenk’s ranking on Twingly, Technorati and URLFan.

Crenk is ranked 3/10 (10 being the highest) with 43 blogs registering as being linked to various articles on Twingly. Technorati claims 80 and URLFan says 45, with 199 other mentions. These are vastly differing numbers, and you have to wonder if Technorati is brilliantly accurate or if it’s not omitting that nasty spam.

Some other nice touches from Twingly include the ability to search within a certain timeframe, as mentioned you can search by one of the 12 supported languages, and you can also look for blogs that have been officially approved, thus weeding out any other possible spam.

Twingly have also released their top 100 blogs by ranking, and if you are proud of where your blog sits in their 1-10 scale, you can of course throw on that all important badge to show it off. One rather large omission however, is the Huffington Post.

With this in mind it is safe to say that Twingly isn’t the most accurate blog search engine, yet. However, the layout is simple and practical, and although the ‘likes/links’ updating isn’t instantaneous (it took about ten minutes to register), the future looks very bright for the Twingly team who are currently overseeing about 25 million searches per month.

Twingly has the potential to be a very good blog search engine. It looks good, is quick when pulling together results and the blog profiles, in relation to each other, are very useful; it even has some pleasant widgets to pop alongside your page ranking.

They are very much into their feedback in Sweden, and you can vote for your most wanted features at the Twingly Tech Plan page.

Try Twingly.com out for yourself and let us know what you think.

AppShopper: The Best iPhone and iPod Touch Applications Directory in Town

Steven Finch — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 13:22:25 +0000

Apple iTunes has always been so popular and with the launch of the iPhone iTunes has gone to the next level. Every single day Apple sells millions of dollars in the iTunes store just for iPhone applications. With so many applications being launched everyday how do you keep up? Additionally, I have always wondering how much money these applications are making developers and which applications are actually popular.

Today I stumbled across a great new site called AppShopper. AppShopper is a huge directory of all iPhone and iPod Touch applications and allows users to search through apps, find out how much they cost, and find out which applications are actually selling.

Additionally on the AppShopper blog they have great insights into applications within the app store and also all kinda of application related news there is. So if you are looking to easily find applications within the App Store, dont head over to iTunes itself, head to AppShopper.

Yahoo Site Explorer Gets a Makeover

Steven Finch — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 03:00:06 +0000

It has been reported that Yahoo has been playing around with the look and feel of their Site Explorer. Most of the time Yahoo Site Explorer is only used by webmasters because it shows backlinks to any URL and also shows them in authority order (unlike google).

Today, we launched a new look and feel for Site Explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/new) that provides a more dynamic interface to accommodate future feature roll-outs. The new interface also includes a new Site Summary page to provide statistics for authenticated sites. On top of this, we’re also increasing the number of rules for Dynamic URL Rewriting that you can enter from 3 to 10.

I really wish Yahoo Site Explorer had a lot more features, kinda similar to Google Webmaster Tools. However, any really new and exciting features still havent arrived on Site Explorer. Do you have any suggestions on what they might want to add?

50 Online Applications and Sites That Everyone Should Test Out!

Steven Finch — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:26:31 +0000

Chris Brogan has put together a great list of the top 50 online applications and sites to consider. The list is very indepth and there are really some great tools that everyone should try out.

50 Online Applications and Sites to Consider

Blogging

Blogger – free blogging and hosting.
Movable Type – paid software, needs host.
TypePad – paid blogging and hosting.
WordPress.com – free blogging and hosting.
WordPress.org – free blog software, needs host.
Tumblr – free blogging and hosting.

Microblogging
BrightKite – microblogging, mobile, location.
FriendFeed – microblogging/ aggregator.
Identi.ca – open source microblogging.
Jaiku – microblogging, mobile too.
Posterous – microblogging, and/or sends to other sites.
Pownce – microblogging and file sharing.
Plurk – microblogging and threaded conversations.
Seesmic – video microblogging.
Twitter – microblogging and mobile.
Utterz – microblogging, mobile, video.

Social Bookmarking
Delicious – bookmarking.
Ma.gnolia – enhanced bookmarking.
Sphinn – bookmarking/voting.
StumbleUpon – bookmarking and browsing.

Social News Sites
Digg – social news.
Mixx – social news.
Reddit – social news.

Social Networks
Facebook – general networking.
Flickr – photo and video sharing.
Last.fm – music sharing.
LibraryThing – book lovers.
LinkedIn – professional social networking.
MySpace – general networking.
Ning – white label social network.
Pandora – music sharing.
Yelp – rating restaurants and businesses.

Miscellaneous and Useful
Twitter Search (formerly Summize) – search for what matters to YOU.
Picnik – free online photo editing. Good for avatar pic touchups.
Evernote – online and desktop note syncing/storage.
Upcoming.org – event sharing site (great for finding cool conferences).
Netvibes – web start page (has Ginger social features now, too).
Twingly – blog search.
Compete – web ranking analysis.
AideRSS – rates your blog posts.
Skitch – screen capture tool (mac).

Video Platforms
Blip.tv – video hosting, sharing.
Google Video – video hosting, sharing.
Viddler – video hosting, sharing.
Vimeo – video hosting, sharing.
YouTube – video hosting, sharing.
Mogulus – live video platform.
uStream.tv – live video platform.
BlogTV – live video platform.
ooVoo – live video chat.

10 Tools For You Too Become The Worlds Best Twitter User

Steven Finch — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:56:40 +0000

I came across a great article from Dumblittleman which talked about the best 10 tools to use which will make anyone a expert Twitter user.

1. Desktop apps
The best way to update twitter is through the various desktop apps like Twhirl or AlertThingy for Windows and Twitterific for Mac. They have a nice interface and let you interact with other twitter users easily. However they might fail to update when they cross the limit or twitter has technical problems and you would then need to revert back to the web interface.2. Twitrefresh
One of the main reasons twitter users prefer desktop apps and not it’s web interface is because they have to manually refresh it to check the tweets. Twitrefresh provides a solution to that and refreshes the twitter page after every 1 minute. Those who love twitter’s web interface will find this tool very useful.

3. Firefox extensions
If you are one of those who don’t like to leave their browser when they are online, then there are some cool firefox extensions like Twitterfox and Twitbin which work like the desktop apps helping you to update and use twitter from right inside the browser.

4. TwitterSnooze
If you are getting a blast of tweets from a particular follower then you may want to snooze him/her using TwitterSnooze. For example if you’ve got a follower who uses Twittytunes to update his twitter status then you could get frequent automated tweets from that person when he is listening to songs. If that gets irritating you can use this tool to snooze tweets from that person.

5. Twitterfeed
Twitterfeed is a must use app if you’re a blogger and use twitter. It retrieves the RSS feed of the blog and updates the twitter status when you publish a new post on the blog. This could be an additional source of traffic for your blog.

6. Summize
Summize is the best way to search twitter real time for any information. It also has very good advanced search features which let you retrieve results quickly and easily. Here is an article which delves further into some nice tools to search twitter in real time. Note: This tool worked so well, Twitter just bought it.

7. Twitterfone
Twitterfone is a nifty tool which let’s you post messages to your twitter account using your voice. It translates your voice into text and posts them. You can use it when you don’t feel like using your cellphone’s keypad to tweet.

8. Twittercal
Twittercal, as it says, connects your Twitter account to your Google Calendar account and let’s you easily add events from twitter.

9. Quotably
Quotably let’s you view the twitter conversations as a discussion thread and also allows you to reply to them and participate in the discussion. This can be very useful if you are looking to follow a particular discussion.

10. Timer

Last but not the least, Timer does a very simple but extremely useful thing. It uses twitter to remind you about a task at the time specified so that you don’t forget to accomplish it.

Powerset Launches a Wikipedia Search Tool

Steven Finch — Mon, 12 May 2008 13:19:48 +0000

Powerset launches their service with a Wikipedia Search tool. For a long time now Powerset has been ridiculously over hyped and has produced nothing, until now. As I mentioned the search engine is based around Wikipedia at present, but im sure will be moving into other sites in the near future. Powerset allows users to search via topic, phrase or question and it uses its own algorithm to work through key words and find the best matches. Powerset is first applying its natural language processing to search, aiming to improve the way we find information by unlocking the meaning encoded in ordinary human language.

For the last 6 months or more the word around the valley seems to be Semantic. Im simply just sick of hearing about semantic search and how it is going to change the search industry. It seems to be time now for some actual results, so can Powerset provide this?

Powerset Demo Video from officialpowerset on Vimeo.

Have a look at who else has been talking about Powerset:

Rev2, Lifehacker, Marketing Pilgrim, VentureBeat, Webware, Inquisitr and Techcrunch.