BatchGeo is different from simple map creating. With BatchGeo you can create Google Maps having multiple locations.

You can

• Make an interactive map
• Create a mobile optimized store locator map
• Embed a map on your blog or web site
• Built in geocoding, no need for latitude and longitude coordinates

All you need to do is to create a data of locations in Excel with following columns

Address    Name    Phone    Group    URL    Email

Here is a video explaining it copmpletely

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video tells you about more things you can do with this free online resource.

Here is link to BatchGeo

Batch Geo

News USA

NewsUSA is a different kind of site. It offers you more than 15000 articles which are not copyrighted. That means you can use them  any way you want on your website and other content places.

I have have browsed few of the articles and the quality appears good.

Copy the content, add your unique style to it and your article is ready.

Faster loading time directly translates into better user experience and is  considered a better element for search engine ranking. But how do you gauge, measure, and compare the loading time.

Which Loads Faster is such a tool.

Actually it compares between two websites and tells which is faster. But apart from making comparison it also tells you the exact time that each website took to load.

Check it out here.

For those who do not know, Google also has an ebookstore.

Yes! I understand your feelings. Google is permeating every possible sphere on the internet.

At Google ebokstore, Google has partenered with publishers and authors to make ebooks available for purchase.

The ebooks include new releases and bestsellers too.

Google eBooks are stored in the cloud, so for reading purpose, there is no file to download and you can read ebooks directly within the browser or application in your PC, laptop or tablet.

For download, the ebooks are available in ePub and PDF file formats.

At this moment, the latest arrivals does not display nay ebook. Free classics shelf has few books to display.

You can browse through ebookstore here

In spite of how we feel about taxes, taxes are bitter pill that every business has to face. Most of us do accept the reality of taxes and learn to live with them.

But it is important to understand how taxes affect the business.

Scott Shane has written a nice article about how taxes affect business. Its a good reading. Go ahead.

Next time you have a file which is compressed in the format you do not have a decompresser for, do not panic. I stumbled across Wobzip which would extract Files from RAR, ZIP, 7z and other Compressed archives online.

The built-in decompressor of Windows Explorer cannot handle other popular zip formats like 7z, RAR, Z or TAR.

At home page of Wobzip, you asked to either browse and upload the file that you wish to decompress or point the URL to the file. The file should be less than 100Mb in size.

Wobzip uses 7zip utility to perform the decompression.

Following decompression it scans the extracted files and offers them to you in form of list which you can download individually or together.

Best thing is – It is free.

One of the most likable things about internet is that if you search, you would find a free service that can pose as good alternative to the stuff you need to buy. Here are few free tools which would enhance your web designing skills

OSWD – Open source web design contains some excellent  open source templates.

WordPress Templates – Here’s tons of free templates that can be used with WordPress, or “regular” sites with a little modification.

Layouts 4 Free – This websitehas a number of good web page templates for free download.

Open ClipArt Library – This contains collections of submitted clip arts. All the submissions are in the public domain.

Cool Styles – This page has lots of code to produce really cool effects and styles using CSS.

Color Pix – This  is a downloadable program will tell you the hex codes of color on your screen.

CSS School – Everything you need to know about CSS.

Color Picker – My favorite online “color picker”.

Hex Mixer -Quickly choose and specify web-safe colors with Hex Mixer.

I Like Your Colors – It will visit the site you like and give you the colors used on that site.

Crazy Dad Color Picker – An online application that lets you choose a color and then it visits Flickr.com and finds public domain photos that match the color you selected. This is a great tool for locating images to compliment the design of your website.

NVU

An easy to use WYSIWYG WEB PAGE editor and a very good alternative to FrontPage and Dreamweaver. I have used this before WordPress days and it has surely improved with time.

Gimp – It is simply called free photoshop.

VCW VicMan’s Photo Editor - This comes with a wide range of essential features for both novice users and professional designers. You can refine your digital photos and draw artwork naturally.

Your site is down and you are restless. You check your internet connection, you check your browser setting and you check everything else but everything is just fine.

Why your site is down?

Then it comes into your mind.

May be the site is down. It is not showing not only on my computer but every other computer on the planet.

But how to check?

I came across a very nice resource that lets you check this with just a click.

Down For For Everyone Or Just Me

Try it.

It is really amazing.

Have you ever thought of expanding your readership by offering your blog in more than one language. English is no doubt lingua franca but there are people who do not know English but could be interested in what you write.

Yes! The world is a tiny village now thanks to internet. We are just a click away from anybody, anywhere.

With WordPress, the task of translation becomes easy with use of plugins. There are many WordPress plugins that will help you get your message across.

When it comes to language,  the plugins fall in two categories

• Translation Plugins – These plugins provide instant translations of your post content into other languages.
• Multilingual Blogging Plugins  – These plugins allow bloggers to blog in more than one language.

If you want to blog in multiple language, multilingual blogging plugin is right choice for you. However if you write in just one language [which is the case most of the times], your need is translation -plugins.
Translation WordPress Plugins

These plugins help you to cross the language barrier and get your message across the continents. WordPress Plugins that translate your WordPress blog from one language to another help cross the language barrier that often divides us.

Global Translator WordPress Plugin

This plugin is from Nothing2Hide and is one of the most popular translation WordPress Plugins.On activation it allows you to  put a small table of international flags in the sidebar or wherever you might desire.  If you scroll below  on this page, you would see it at the bottom of the sidebar.

When someone clicks the flag of interest whole of your blog including title would be translated to that langage.

Global Translator automatically translates your blog in the following 48 different languages: Italian, Korean, Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese, English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, Greek, Dutch, Bulgarian, Czech, Croatian, Danish, Finnish, Hindi, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Norwegian, Catalan, Filipino, Hebrew, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese,Albanian,Estonian,Galician,Maltese,Thai,Turkish,Hungarian.

The number of available translations will depend on your blog language and the translation engine you will chose to use.

You can control the placement of the flags within your WordPress Theme.
Google AJAX Translation

The Google AJAX Translation WordPress plugin provides a quick, simple, and light way to add translation to your blog.  A “Translate” button can be added to the bottom or top of posts, pages, and/or comments. When the button is clicked a popup window opens showing a list of available languages.

You can choose which of the 52 languages to display in the Administration Panel. The list of languages can be shown as text (in the native language of each language), as flag icons, or as both.

The plugin detects the browser’s preferred language and shows the “Translate” button in that language if available. That language is listed first in the popup. The tooltip for each language is also translated into the browser’s preferred language.

These two plugis are best translation plugins that I have come across. Interestingly Globall translator also has a paid version which is available with Nothing 2 Hide membership.

Are you aware of any other tool. Please do share.

I always get amazed by the information storehouses on the internet for free. While looking for book and publishing resources I came across many good sites worth sharing. Here is list of 32 websites that allow you to access for ebooks or books without any cost.

• Flaxx –IT and computer books
• Baen Library – Free books on science fiction and fantasy
• LibraryThing – A place for social networking and free books
• Online Books Page – Searches the books that are freely readable over the Internet
• Memoware – Free ebooks for PDA
• DocStoc – Online document sharing
• Gutenberg Project Top 100 – Oldest producer of free ebooks on the Internet
• ManyBooks – The best books, free of cost
• BookCrossing – A book sharing network with adventure
• Podiobooks – Free serialized audio books, delivered on your schedule.
• Book Rags – Browse eBooks
• Technical Books Online – Old tech books digitized
• ebookSearchr – Google powered ebook search engine
• Internet Archive – Includes a vast text library
• Book Yards – Books, videos, education materials – A huge collection
• Library Elf – Personal email library reminder service
• Scribd – Open library to publish and discover documents online
• Word Public Library – 400,000 PDF ebooks for download
• Free Tech Books – free online computer science, engineering and programming books, textbooks and lecture notes
• Well Told Tales – Publish your short stories, films and audio tales
• Wowio – Public domain, free legitimate copyrighted materials & comic books
• CHMPDF – A collection of general interest and technical ebooks
• Realtime Publishers –Free IT eBooks by experts
• TitleTrader – Free service that allows users to exchange books , music (CDs), and movies (DVDs and VHS) with other community members from anywhere around the world.
• SwapSimple – Swap your books
• PaperbackSwap – Swap books
• PinkMonkey – Study Guides,Booknotes, Online Chapter Summary Notes and Analysis
• BookMooch – Exchange  used books
• Free Computer Books – Free ebooks on computers
• Librivox – Free audio works and podcasts of public domain books
• WIkibooks – Free textbooks
• DailyLit – Receive small parts of books via email