Google offers a free, embeddable widget for web site owners that can help fight back against link typos, permalink problems, and other issues that send visitors to non-existent pages. The customisable JavaScript widget suggests the URLs on your site closest to the link visitors come in on, and offer a search box pre-loaded with search terms relevant to the bad link. Anyone who’s run a site for a long while knows that page URLs are a hard thing to keep linked and standing properly, and this widget is a nice step to preventing aggravation on both sides of the site. The widget requires signing up for a free Google Webmaster account and heading to the Tools menu, then the “Enhance 404 pages” link.
Custom 404 pages [Google via Google Blogoscoped]The Wise Bread blog has a few tips for anyone who’s received such a nice thought from far-away relatives or friends who aren’t quite hip to their tastes. If Craigslist, eBay, and same-store returns can’t achieve equilibrium, you can turn it around, but not without taking a few precautions against getting caught. For example: Don’t wait too long to regift. … The older the brand new item becomes, the more obvious it becomes that this is a regift. If you can no longer find the product in the stores, if the packaging has been updated or if the company that made it went out of business ages ago, you’re stuck with that item. By all means try to sell it or give it to charity, but as a regift it stinks of “here’s an old thing I found in my basement, but hey, it’s never been used!”
For more regifting tips, and a few laughs about regifting horror stories, check out Regiftable.com. Photo by tornatore. Regifting: a simple how-to guide [Wise Bread]
Windows/Mac/Linux: Free ebook converter GutenMark takes plain ebooks from the Project Gutenberg site and converts them into chapter-separated HTML files, italicizes words in foreign languages, removes all-caps instances, and much, much more. One of the main uses of GutenMark is to make ebooks much easier to read on mobile screens, removing hard line breaks and other annoyances that come with some straight-up Gutenberg text downloads. As its own home page describes it, GutenMark is a “prettifier” for Gutenberg texts, and a pretty good one, at that. GutenMark is a free download for WIndows, Linux, and (with more complications) Mac OS X. GutenMark
Web site Quarkbase offers an organised and detailed overview of any web site, complete with summary, popularity, ownership, traffic information, and even recent blog posts and tweets about the site. In a nutshell, it’s sort of like Whois.net on steroids. Quarkbase’s accuracy and wealth of information varies based on the popularity of a site, but if you want to know more about a web site, it’s a great place to start your search.
QuarkbaseWeb-based service 8tracks remixes 30-minute MP3 playlists for personal listening or sharing with friends. 8Tracks offers all of the basic functionality of previously covered Muxtape, with the additional ability to add artwork and information about the mix itself. Users can browse others’ mixes, comment, and view mixes sorted by popularity and freshness. Here is a sample mix I enjoyed listening to while reviewing the site:
Cats love cardboard boxes, but they don’t look nice strewn around the house—so the Evil Mad Scientists DIY site details how to assemble a hilarious cardboard box “chaise lounge” for your favourite kitty. All it takes is a few boxes and some cutting and folding, and they offer a PDF pattern download to get it just right. Once your feline’s chaise is done, she’ll love having a cardboard box to lounge in and you’ll have a conversation-starter in your liviing room. Cardboard Cat Chaise [Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories]
Get a load of this week’s most-trafficked posts: How to switch off Google Suggest “Google’s addition of Suggest auto-complete suggestions to its main search box isn’t going to be universally popular. If you don’t want suggestions for what you’re looking for, relief is at hand.” Primus offers shaping for mobile broadband “One of the big disincentives to signing up to mobile broadband services — especially as your main means of Internet access — is the excess data charges you face when you go over the limit.” The Best Free Apps for Your Windows Mobile Device“Despite the flurry of attention surrounding the iPhone and other new mobile phone platforms, Windows Mobile still has a widespread distribution and capacity for customization.” Soup Up Your Homebrew-Hacked Wii“You’ve hacked your Wii to run homebrew apps and play back DVDs without any difficult hardware hacking and now you want to dive into more of your homebrew options.” Top 10 Calendar Tricks“Software and webapps rock at being calendars: You can update them from any computer or your phone, they don’t have to triple-check when Columbus Day is, and they never get coffee stains on them.” Five Best Password Managers“You’ve got enough to keep track of in your day-to-day life without filling your head with the countless logins and passwords you’ve racked up over the years, and the Post-It note on your monitor just isn’t an option.”
All platforms with Adobe AIR: Free desktop application GMDesk provides quick access to Google services in a standalone window separate from your browser. GMDesk separates Gmail, Google Reader, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Maps from the rest of your web browsing, and provides keyboard shortcuts to switch between them (Ctrl+ or Cmd+1 through 6). You can’t install browser add-ons like Better Gmail or Better GReader in GMDesk, and currently it displays too-small text in Gmail (though the developer is working on a fix for that). Ultimately GMDesk doesn’t offer many features that make it worth using (or much better than apps like Prism or Fluid), but it raises the question: If Google released native desktop apps like Picasa for Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and Google Docs, would you use them? Until they do (which may be never), GMDesk is a free download and requires Adobe AIR to run.
GMDesk [via CyberNet]Nintendo doesn’t exactly advertise it, but the remotes for the Wii gaming console—including the balance board that comes with Wii Fit—have Bluetooth capabilities. That means you can connect your Wii peripherals to your computer to operate the media centre hooked up to your TV, play emulated games with a Nunchuk, Classic Controller, or even a Balance Board, and pretty much have them do anything you can do with a keyboard. Let’s walk through linking up your Wii peripherals and putting them in control of your Mac, PC, or Linux box.
Web Worker Daily highlights some sound tactics for the spare-time or full-time freelancer trying to get their paychecks to arrive in orderly fashion. The advice runs the gamut from common-sense-but-sound (get a signed contract) to a few ideas that may spark an idea. Such as this idea: Find a way to make early payments beneficial to the client. One of the things we’ve decided to implement is to give a client a 5% discount if they pay the invoice within 24 hours from the time it was sent. Another alternative you might want to try is giving a discount or promo coupon for the client’s next order.
