Find the other Websites of a Person?

Learn how you can find the other websites (or domain names) that are owned by some person using online lookup tools

Say you are on a website example.com and would like to know which other web domains are owned by the same person who owns that example.com website. Is it possible?

Yes there are some easy workarounds (and tools) that can help you find domains owned by an individual or a company though you may not be successful on every hunt. Let’s give it a try!

Step 1: Reverse Whois Lookups with Google

When you register a web domain, your name, contact address, phone number and other details are stored with the domain in a public registry database that anyone can access online using a Whois Lookup tool.

Go to whois.sc and enter the domain name that you are trying to research. This will provide you contact details of the domain registrant and you can then use this data to perform a reverse whois lookup on Google to find other domains of that person.

"PHONE_NUMBER" site:whois.domaintools.com

"STREET_ADDRESS" site:whois.domaintools.com

Replace Phone Number or Street Address in the above search queries with the actual data from the whois database. You may also perform reverse Whois Lookups by name but that may return too many results – phone numbers and postal addresses are more likely to be unique.

Step 2: Perform Reverse IP Lookups

Some domain owners may have opted for “private” registration (Google Apps does this for free) and in that case, their contact details won’t be available in the public whois database.

The next option you should try is a Reverse IP lookup. These tools determine the IP address of the server that is hosting a website – example.com in our example – and will then provide you are list of other websites that are hosted on that same server. The logic is that if a person has multiple websites, he could be using the same web server to host them.

You can use Bing to perform a Reverse IP check for any domain or an even easier tool is spyonweb.com – just put the site’s domain and it will show other websites hosted on that server. If you get hundreds of domains in the search results, it possibly means that the person is using a shared host and thus he may not be the owner of all these domains.

Step 3: Reverse Google AdSense Lookups

If a web domain is using Google AdSense ads, you can use Blekko search to find all the other sites on the web that use the same AdSense ID.

View the HTML page source of any website and look for the AdSense string which has a pattern like ca-pub-1234. The numeric part (1234) is the AdSense ID which you can put into Blekko in the following format:

/adsense=1234

Some of the returned sites could belong to scrapers but you should be able to unearth some legitimate sites as well, if they are also using AdSense – see sample.

Step 4. Reverse Google Analytics Lookups

Google AdSense is only popular among content publishers but almost every website is using Google Analytics for traffic statistics. And there are online tools available that can quickly find all websites that are are connected to the same Google Analytics account.

Go to ewhois.com and type the domain name that are you are researching. Next choose the Reverse Google Analytics ID Lookup tab and it should bring a list of all web domains (see screenshot) that are connected to the same Google Analytics ID.

This is the most effective option of them all though it would only work for live websites that use Analytics while standard Whois lookups can even find web domains that have only been registered but are not live yet.

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Same mouse for my all computers

Learn how you can easily share the same set of your keyboard and mouse with two or more computers without requiring any extra hardware.

My current work setup is something like this – I have two desktop computers, each running Windows, and they are both connected over LAN. Each of these machines have separate monitors but they share the same wireless keyboard and mouse – thus the desk looks less cluttered and I can quickly switch between the two computers.

This can be done is multiple ways.

There’s a simple hardware device called the KVM switch that is helpful when your computers aren’t connected over a network. With a KVM Switch, you can easily manage multiple computers (CPUs) with just one monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

The idea is a simple. The switch has USB ports where you may attach the shared keyboard and mouse. Then connect the switch and your computers using the included cables and you are good to go. Most switches have a button to help you flip between computers.

KVM switches even make it possible for you share the same set of microphones and speakers with multiple computers. And it doesn’t matter whether your computers are running Windows, Mac or a mix of both.

Software Alternatives to KVM Switches

If you are not too keen on a hardware based solution and if your systems are connected with each other over LAN, all you need is copy of Input Director, a Windows-only utility that’s easy to configure and is absolutely free for personal use.

As a first step, you need to install the Input Director software on all your machines. The computer that is physically connected to the keyboard and mouse becomes the “Master” machine while other systems will be known as “Slave” machines. Here’s a detailed guide to help you through with the installation.

The good thing about using a software based solution is that you can seamlessly switchbetween computers without having to press any buttons as in the case of KVM switches.

There are however a few points you need to remember:

1. Never shut down the Master machines without turning off the Slave machine first because then you would lose access to the keyboard and the mouse as well.

2. Don’t disable networking in Windows while the keyboard /mouse is active on the Slave side else you’ll have to restart the Master to regain control over the mouse and keyboard.

3. There may be instances when your Master machine won’t be able to recognize the Slave(s). In that case, simple right-click the Input Director icon in the system tray and choose “Rescan Slave Systems.”

4. Unlike a VNC software, you can’t drag and drop windows from one computer to another. However, Input Director supports clipboard sharing so you can copy-paste URLs and other text across computers.

Also see: Connect Laptop to your TV

[*] Input Director is for Windows only but if you are work with both Mac and Windows, or if you intend to use the program in a commercial environment, check out Synergy.

[**] If you only want to share a monitor between two computers, you don’t even need a KVM switch. Just connect one computer to the monitor using a VGA cable and the other monitor using the DVI or HDMI cable. You can then switch between computer using a button on the monitor itself.

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Puzzles for Treasure

Crossword puzzles are fun to solve and can also be used as an educational tool. Learn how to create your own crossword puzzles

A lot of us are crossword enthusiasts – a fact easily demonstrated by the inclusion of these puzzles in almost every newspaper across the globe. Crossword puzzles are fun to solve and can also be used as an educational tool to great benefit. Being a niche field, there aren’t too many crossword puzzle generators out there that are both competent as well as affordable.

The easiest tool for creating crosswords from a given set of words is EclipseCrossword. You specify the words and their corresponding clues, choose a grid size for your crossword puzzle and your crossword is ready. If you aren’t happy with the generated layout, you can always shuffle until you find the right combination.

You can now print the crossword grid on paper, publish it inside a web page as an interactive puzzle (see example) or export in popular formats like Word or WMF (image). You may also save your puzzle in Across Lite format which is compatible with most other crossword software. See a detailed review of Eclipse Crossword to learn more.

Then there’s Puzzle Maker from Discovery that lets you quickly create crossword puzzles right inside your browser. Enter the words with clues, specify the number of squares for the puzzle and hit the Create button. This will generate a PNG image of the crossword – pretty quick but you’ve little control over the layout of the puzzle grid.

Another online alternative that is quite popular among amateur crossword compilers is available at dowedo.net. Here, in addition to freeform style, you can you create crossword puzzles that follow the British (higher percentage of black squares) or the American (more white squares) style. Once you have created a crossword, wait for it to get approved and it will then become available on the public web for anyone to solve it online.

Crosswords Compilers for Professionals

Professional crossword setters, like those who work for newspapers, often rely on commercial tools like Crossword Compiler and Crosswordman to prepare crosswords. Follow this detailed guide to know which of these tools would be most appropriate for your work. There’s also a DIY option in case you would like to create a crossword grid manually.

Embed Crosswords in Web Pages

The Eclipse Crossword tool discussed above can output your crossword puzzle in standard HTML format that you can then easily embed inside any web page using the IFRAME tag.

There’s another option as well called Across Lite – available for both Mac and Windows. You need to write the crossword in a standard format (see example), save this file to Across format (puz) with the help of Across Lite and then publish it here. You’ll get an interactive version of the crossword puzzle that you can easily embed in any web page with the help of JavaScript.

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Block Adult Sites from Kids

If your tech-savvy kids are spending a fair amount of their computer time surfing the Internet, there’s a chance that they may sometimes accidentally stumble upon adult sites that you would definitely not like them to see.

Keep your Kids from Seeing Adult Content on the Web

It is nearly impossible for any parent to manually monitor their child’s entire computer session and what you therefore need is a solution that works in the background even while you aren’t around to watch over them.

There are couple of options. For instance, YouTube has a safety mode to block videos that aren’t appropriate for children. Then you have OpenDNS that you can configure with your router or computer to block an entire category of websites that contain violent or adult content.

There are some site blocking programs (NetNanny for example) that monitor your kid’s activity on the computer and will automatically restrict them from visiting sites that aren’t meant for them. Then you have the slightly-geeky 127.0.0.1 trick to that helps you block any of the known websites on your computer.

A More Straightforward Solution to Block Sites

If you are looking for a more simple solution to keep all adult sites off your computers, switch to FamilyShield as described in the following video:

FamilyShield is part of the previously described OpenDNS service but the advantage here is that you don’t have to do any tweaking to block adult content – just change your DNS server entries (these are different from the original OpenDNS values) and the web filters are immediately activated.

If you chose to setup FamilyShield on your router, sites that contain adult content will automatically get blocked on all your computers, gaming consoles and even mobile phones that are part of your home network. It even blocks proxy sites that are commonly used bypass the web filters.

It can’t get easier than this and there’s no software to install though your kids are likely to encounter ads when a site they’re trying to visit gets blocked – that’s the business model of OpenDNS.

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Free Conference Calls

Have your conference calls arranged for free with SabseBolo, a free audio conferencing service in India. Ideal for small businesses, team meetings, trainings or for family chats.

The next venture of Hotmail co-founder Sabeer Bhatia is SabeseBolo – an Audio Conferencing service that lets you make conference calls through regular landline or mobile phones within India.

The service is completely free and all you need is an email address to get a unique conference number and pin. All the participants will then dial that number to set up a conference call.

You can have at most 10 people per teleconference session. There’s probably no direct way to record conference calls though you can refer to previous hacks.

Sounds simple and there’re no fees for using the conference service but the meeting participants may have to pay national calling charges (if some of them are outside Mumbai) because they are not dialing a toll-free number.

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Internet calls free

Make Phone Calls over the Internet (VoIP) and Lower your Phone Bills

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Want to make cheap (and even free) international or long-distance phones calls. This guide reviews the best VoIP services that let you make phone calls over the internet thus lowering your phone numbers

There was a time when long-distance and international phone calls were a luxury but, thanks to VoIP or Internet based telephone services, this is no longer the case.

You can now call your friends and family members anywhere in the world at extremely low rates (sometimes even free) and some of these VoIP services don’t even require you to have an Internet connection at home.

VoIP Services for Making Phone Calls

Most people have heard of Skype, and it still is one of the best VoIP services around, but there are quite a few other good options as well that let you make phone calls over the Internet using your regular landline, mobile phone or your computer.

There are three kinds of Voice over IP (VoIP) solutions that let you enjoy crystal-clear* phone calls at a fraction of the price that your phone company charges:

1. Hardware based – You get a dedicated hardware router that sits between your Internet modem and your corded /cordless phone so you can make and receive phone calls just like before. The only difference is that calls are now routed through the Internet and not your phone company so you usually end up saving money.

2. Software based – You install a VoIP software on your computer or your web-enabled mobile phone and make phone calls via the Internet connection bypassing your phone company. It doesn’t matter if you mobile phone is connected to the Internet over Wi-Fi, GPRS, EDGE, 3G or WiMAX.

3. Web based – Web based VoIP services neither require any hardware nor software. You open the VoIP service provider’s site, type the phone numbers and you’re instantly connected. Some services also offer special hotlines (or direct access numbers) that let you make Internet phone calls using your traditional phone even if you don’t have an internet connection.

Let’s look at popular VoIP services that fall in each of these categories:

1. Dedicated VoIP Hardware

This is usually the best option for people who want to make regular phone calls over the internet but while they are relaxing on the couch and not having to sit in front of the computer screen.

To use dedicated hardware-based VoIP solutions, you need a router, sign up for the appropriate service (listed below), and connect the box to your internet and the standard telephone. Here are some of the best hardware based VoIP products that also provide you a traditional phone number so you can both place and receive calls through VoIP. And none except magicJack would require a computer.

VoIP Service:	Costs Involved and Features:	Pros and Cons:
Vonage – Vonage makes your VoIP experience very similar to a traditional telephone service. Simply plug the Vonage box into your internet connection, then connect your regular phone to the Vonage box and start making calls.	The hardware costs $79.99 and you pay $24.99/month for unlimited calling to US and 60 other countries. Vonage is available in the U.S., U.K. and Canada but you can ship the device to your family members in other countries (like India) and they’ll be able to call you at local rates.	Pros: Worldwide calling, flat rate, simple setup, works like a traditional phone service. You can carry the device while travelling and save on calling cards /hotel bills.Cons: Monthly service cost is high, long contract.
Ooma – You simply plug the Internet line into your Ooma device and then connect any corded / cordless phone into Ooma. That’s it – you can make unlimited phone calls inside the US for free.	The hardware costs $249.99. There are no monthly charges except $12/year for taxes and other fees. A $9.99/month premier plan is available that adds number porting, an additional line, and advance telephone services.	Pros: Unlimited free calls to any phone number in the US, low rates for dialing international numbers, no long-term commitment.Cons: Entry-cost is a bit high.
Skype Phones – Skype is best known for offering voice and video calls through the computer, but they also provide hardware to help you make calls over the internet without a computer. This gives you the convenience of a traditional phone with the value of Skype calls.	Standalone Skype phones start at $79.99 though you can go for USB phones that cost a little less but require a computer. With a Skype phone, you can make phone calls to all other Skype users for free or refer to this price chart for calling international numbers.	Pros: Powered by one of the most popular internet telephone services and no long-term commitment. Skype is available worldwide. Cons: The unlimited calling plans aren’t available in all countries.
magicJack – A cross between a software and a hardware offering, magicJack is a small USB device that connects to a Mac or PC. You then connect a traditional phone to the magicJack device and make free phone calls to any number in the US.	It costs $39.95 for the first year (device cost + yearly charges) and then all you pay is $19.95 per year. Calls from your magicJack from any country to the U.S. and Canada are free while calls to international phone numbers are charged based on their rate table.	Pros: Cheap hardware and low-yearly fees. Cons: Requires a computer.
PhoneGnome – It’s a simple box that you plug-in between your Internet modem and the landline phone and start talking. PhoneGnome is the oldest player in this segment.	The hardware costs $99.99 and there are no monthly bills. For $5/month, you can pick any 10 phone numbers in US, Canada and other countries and you’ll be able to make unlimited calls to those numbers for free.	Pros: With PhoneGnome, you can also make calls to GoogleTalk, Windows Live, and Yahoo Messenger using your regular phone. They also ship to international locations. Cons: Requires invitation.

2. VoIP Software for Desktop and Mobile Phones

Your first introduction to internet based telephone services was probably through services like Skype that allowed you to make voice and video calls through your computer. In order to make VoIP phone calls through your computer, all you need is a headset cum microphone and one of the following programs.

Service:	Price:
Skype – Available on Windows, Mac, Linux, Windows Mobile and iPhone. Nokia, Sony and Samsung users can use Skype Lite for making calls from their mobile phones.	Free calls to another Skype user,rates per minute to any number worldwide start at $0.02/minute.Unlimited minutes to any one country cost $5.95/month, while unlimited minutes to over 40 countries worldwide cost $12.95/month.You may buy a personal phone number of any country for $60/year and your friends /family members in that country can call you from their regular phones by paying only local call rates.
Windows Live Call – RequiresWindows Live Messengerwhich is available only on Windows.	Free calls to any Windows Live Messenger user, rates per minute to any number worldwide start at $0.015/minute. You can also send text messages to mobile phones for free but a limitation with Windows Live Call is that it is only available in select countries.
Yahoo! Voice – RequiresYahoo! Messengerwhich is available for Mac and Windows.	Free calls to any Yahoo! messenger user, rates per minute to any number worldwide start at $0.01/minute. For $2.49/month, you can get a dedicated phone number (of US, UK or France) for your computer so that friends can call you directly from their landline or mobile phones. All calls to 800 numbers are free with Yahoo! Voice.
wengoPhone– Available on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Windows Mobile, or via a Firefox extension.	Free calls to wengoPhone users, rates per minute start at 0.006€/minute (wengoPhone is a European-orientated service).
pfingo – Available for Windows PC, Nokia, Sony and Motorola mobile phones.	Free calls to other pfingo users, rates per minute to any phone number worldwide start at $0.04/minute. You can get aninternational phone number for Singapore, Australia, US, UK or China and your contacts in these countries can call you at their local rates.
Vopium – Available for all popular mobile phones including BlackBerry, HTC (Android), iPhone, etc.	With Vopium installed, you can use your mobile phone call to anywhere in the world with rates starting at7¢/minute. If you are in a Wi-Fi zone, you don’t even have to pay the local charges to your phone company but a downside is that Vopium is not available in all countries.
Truphone – Another popular mobile VoIP application that is available for Nokia, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry phones.	You can call other Truphone anywhere in the world from your mobile phone for free while international calls to other landline and mobile numbers start at5¢/minute.

3. Make VoIP Calls with (or without) Internet

Yes, you can make cheap international phone calls over VoIP without even having an internet connection as long as you a landline or mobile phone.

There are VoIP services that offer a local phone number which you can call using your normal phone, then dial the number of the person you wish to call, and your call will be routed over the internet by the VoIP service. Then there are services that let you enter your phone number and the number you are calling on a website; your phone will ring, and when you answer it, it will automatically dial the number you wish to call.

Service Name and Features	Costs involved
Jaxtr – Jaxtr offers local numbers for most countries – simply call that number and then input your friend’s number. Jaxtr will send an SMS message to your friend containing a local number. She can call that number and you’ll be connected. If you are located in a country with non-local Jaxtr numbers or if you want to skip that call-back option, you can make direct phone calls using the web dialer at jaxtr.com – enter your number and the number you wish to call, and the phones will simultaneously ring.	You can make unlimited free calls to landlines and mobile phones in countrieswhere Jaxtr has a direct access number and when the other person is willing to call-back on the number that he receives by text. For direct dialing, the rates start at13¢/minute.
Jajah – Like Jaxtr, Jajah also providesdirect access numbers for many countries around the world. You call a local number from your phone followed by the number of your friend (it could be long-distance or an international call) and Jajah will connect the two parties. It will also assign a unique number for your friend so you call him or her directly without having to dial that local access number. Alternatively, you can type your own phone number and that of your friend on the jajah site and you’ll be connected. You may use this desktop browser or any internet enabled mobile phone to call friends via Jajah.	All calls between Jajah users are free while calls to any number worldwide start at around 5¢ per minute. If the friend you are trying to reach is on Twitter, you can use the @call service of Jajah to make a free phone call and talkupto 2 minutes without revealing your personal phone number.
Rebtel – You get a local phone number that will connect you directly with your friends and family abroad.It works like this. You type in your friend’s international number and Rebtel will provide you with a unique local number corresponding to that international number. You can then use your regular landline or mobile phone to call your friend’s international number through a simple local call. With Rebtel, you can call anywhere in the world but the person initiating the call (i.e., you) should be located in a country that is supported by Rebtel.	In case you calling the other person directly using the local number provided by Rebtel, the rates start at$0.01/minute. However, there’s a way by which you can make free international phone calls with Rebtel. Once your friend is assigned a unique local number, give him call on that number. When he picks up, ask him to hang up and call you back on the number displayed on his phone while you wait on the line. You’ll be instantly connected and will only have to pay local charges for an international phone call.

[*] VoIP calls are generally cheaper than regular phone calls but make sure you have a decent broadband connection for better voice quality. Also, they are no replacements for your traditional phone as none of them offers access to emergency services like 911 in US.

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Save Web Pages and Blogs for Offline Reading

Lean how to store web pages and blogs for offline viewing. Now you can easily catch up with all your favorite websites whether you are inside a taxi or a public park where there’s no Internet.

Consider the following two situations where a local offline copy of websites may come handy:

Situation A: You are travelling in a taxi or an airplane where you have access to a reading device (like a laptop computer or your mobile phone) but no Internet connection. 

Situation B: You have just checked into a modern hotel where there is WiFi (or an Ethernet port) available in your room but the problem is access cost – it’s way too expensive as the hotel charges you per minute.

In the first case, you may want to download a copy of all material that you want to read before embarking on the journey while in the latter case, the aim should be to download web pages and blogs as quickly as possible to save on Wifi access costs.

Store Web Pages for Offline Viewing

If you have Google Desktop running in the background, you already have a local copy of all web pages that you have recently opened / read in any browser on your computer. You can click "Browse Timeline" inside Google Desktop and your web history will be listed in reverse chronological order – the most recently visited websites will be listed at the top.

The problem with web history in Google Desktop is that it can get cluttered too easily and finding relevant pages from the history may require some effort.  In that case you may install Scrapbook for Firefox and only save relevant web pages that you intend to read in an offline environment.

Scrabbook, like Google Notebook, is primarily for organizing web research but it’s an excellent offline browser as well. You can specify the depth level and all target links from the current web page (up to that level) will be saved offline automatically. For instance, you want to read all stories on the CNN and BBC website offline. Capture the home page with Scrapbook and set the depth as 1 – it will then save full text of all the front page stories as well.

Scrapbook can export all the web captures as an HTML web page so you can easily read the saved content on a mobile phone or your PDA. Another popular tool for downloading web pages in Firefox is DownloadThemAll.

The limitation with either of the above tools is that they work only in Firefox and also require some manual work. What if you want to read all front stories from all major news websites while offline? All news sites provide RSS feeds but they aren’t full text so you have no option but to scrap content from the main website in order to read it offline.

HTTrack is a free website copying software where you can create download jobs and execute them whenever you go online. For example you can create a single download job for all news websites (like BBC, NYT, etc.), set the depth limit as 1 and get an offline version all the front news stories in one go. You can also save this job and re-execute it anytime later either manually or set it up as a scheduled task.

Another good alternative to HTTrack is wget available for Mac, Windows and Linux. You don’t have to spend time learning the complicated command line switches of wget as there are nice GUI apps available both for Mac (CocoaWget) and Windows (WinWget).

Download Blogs for Offline Reading

Blogs, or websites that offers RSS feeds, are much easy to handle and save because we know exactly what stuff has changed since we last visited that site.

There are two categories of blog readers – (a) Addicts or people who are subscribed to several hundred feeds and want to read them all while offline and (b) Casual Readers or people who follow only a dozen or so feeds.

Casual readers can simply add their favorites feeds to Tabbloid and download them all as a PDF newsletter.

For people who fall in the category of addicts, the solution that will work best is a dedicated offline reader that can pre-fetch all the new articles and here are some good choices:

My first recommendation has always been FeedDemon – it’s fast, rich in features and the upcoming v2.8 is even better since it lets you export unread items as an HTML web page that can be read on any device.

If you are subscribed to feeds in Google Reader, you can either try RSS Bandit or  Scoop – these are desktop based readers that work in offline mode and can synchronize with your Google Reader subscriptions. If you are on Bloglines, a similar solution for you exists in the form of GreatNews – a desktop RSS reader that is also portable. Google Gears is another solution for Google Reader users but it has limitations.

The advantage with either of the above solutions is that they all support synchronization – so if you mark an item as read in an offline environment, the change will get propagated when you go online next so there’s no double work.

Saving Blogs & Web Pages for Mobile Phones

If you plan to save web pages for offline viewing on a mobile device (with a small screen), I would recommend Web2Book – it not only downloads multiple web pages and blogs in one go but also converts them into formats like HTML or PDF that are supported on almost every mobile device.

Web pages saved with Web2Book can be easily read on ebook devices like the Microsoft Reader or the new Sony Reader. Another option for mobile devices is Plucker – it’s an offline browser available both for Windows Mobile and Palm based PDAs.

If you are an iPod owner (the old models, not the latest iPod touch), you can even turn your MP3 player into a notes reader and read web pages as plain text.

Drawloop, an online service that I mentioned in the previous Adobe PDF guide,  too can join multiple web pages and save them in a single PDF file like in this example where you have the home pages of three news websites saved in a single file.

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Website Monitoring Services

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Website Monitoring Services continuously monitor your websites for downtime and send email alerts as soon as your web server goes down or becomes slow and inaccessible

I recently did a small experiment to evaluate the reliability and response time of various website monitoring services available on the Internet.

In case you are new, these services continuously monitor your website(s) for downtime and send email alerts as soon as your web server goes down or becomes slow and inaccessible. You get another alert when the site is up again.

For this test, I configured my site with Uptime Party, Pingdom, Watch Mouse, Site Uptimeand Zoho’s Site 24×7. They are all commercial site monitoring services but also offer a trial version which is good for around 30 days.

Now as you would know, the site went down last week for a couple of hours due to some issues with the file server of the web hosting company but this was a good opportunity to test how quick and reliable these site monitoring services are.

Here’s a snapshot of email alerts that came from all the above services along with the exact time when these alerts were received.

As you may have noticed, Pingdom was able catch the downtime within seconds while Watch Mouse and Site Uptime were late by 5-10 minutes. Uptime party sent a notification almost 30 minutes after the site went down.

When the site was up and running again, Pingdom and WatchMouse were the first one to send an uptime email alert while the rest two were late by 10-15 minutes.

The problem resurfaced yesterday night when the site went down and here’s a snapshot of email alerts from the second instance. Pingdom response time impressed again.

I was not too sure why there were no email alerts from Site24x7 and it later turned out that site monitoring was disabled in the control panel. Have no clue why that happened so can’t really comment on Zoho’s service.

Finally, here’s a quick chart comparing the price of various website monitoring services for bloggers and small web publishers.

Site Monitoring Services	Free Service	Monitoring Interval	Number of Allowed Sites	Cost per month
Uptime Party	Yes	30 minutes	1	$0
Site Uptime Free	Yes	30 minutes	1	$0
Site Uptime Premium	No	5 minutes	3	$5
Pingdom	No / 30 Day Trial	1 minute	5	$10
Watch Mouse Free	Yes	60 minutes	1	$0
Watch Mouse Premium	No / 30 Day Trial	5 minutes	1	$36
Site 24×7 Free	Yes	60 minutes	2	$0
Site 24×7 Premium	No / 15 Day Trial	5-30 minutes	Unlimited	$1-4 per URL

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Essential Tools for Presenters

Conferences have come a long way in the last few years. As a presenter or as an organizer, here are some useful tools and tips to help you get the most out of your sessions

Conferences have come a long way in the last few years. People just don’t attend a presentation, take down notes, ask a few questions and leave but they expect something more. As a conference presenter, here’re some useful tools (and tips) that may help you get the most out of your session.

Once the details of your session has been finalized, set up a Google Moderator page  to get an idea of what people expect to gain from your presentation. They may also send you questions in advance through the Moderator’s page and, because time for Q&A  is often limited in conferences, you may address the most popular questions just after you are done with the presentation.

It will help if you can create a public Facebook event for your session. You’ll not only know who is keen to attend your session but as people RSVP the event, their action will help spread word about your event in their respective Facebook circles. You may also set up a separate Twitter list with handles of all people who are possible attendees as you can then easily keep track of all the chatter related to the event.

If you are speaking at a big conference, the organizers may have already set up live streaming for your session but if that’s not the case, go live yourself with the help of services like UStream or LiveStream. You may either use the web cam attached to your laptop to live-stream the conference or use one of their mobile apps to broadcast your session directly from the phone. If one of the attendees is kind enough to live-blog your session, you may suggest him to use Cover It Live or even Google Docs.

Here’s one time-saving tip from Seth Godin that you should try in your next presentation. Prepare a slideshow with photos of people who you would like to acknowledge (or thank) and run this slideshow in a loop ten minutes before your actual presentation while everyone is still busy finding their seats. This way, you get to thank people but without boring anyone.

If you would like to make your presentation more interactive, you can consider adding live polls to your slides. There are online services like Polls Everywhere where audience can respond by sending text messages and you can then show the poll results inside the PowerPoint slide itself in near real-time. Alternatively, you may also conduct quick polls using Google Docs – Google offers a mobile-friendly site for polls and thus, people can participate from their mobile browser itself.

Some people in the audience would be live-tweeting your presentation and if you would like to show those tweets on the big screen, you have two options. You may either get one of these PPT templates that use Adobe Flash to fetch tweets into your slides or the other alternative is Live Web – this is a free add-in that lets you embed any webpage into PowerPoint. You can embed backchannel Twitter chatter (say, search results for a hashtag), Google Moderator pages, and more.

The last slide of your presentation will mostly have your contact information – if you can put all this inside a QR Code, the audience can easily save your information to their mobile phones without having to type anything. If possible, make good use of Speaker Notes, invisible to the audience, to deliver a flawless presentation on the lines of Steve Jobs.

When you are done with the presentation, you can use a service like Speaker Rate to get instant feedback from the audience on your session. If people have been using a consistent hashtag to live-tweet your session, you can use Hashalbum and The Archivist to save all the pictures and tweets from your session in one place. You may also use Lanyrd or any of the other content curation tools to collect all the buzz – videos, presentations, links, etc. – around your session.

Some people will obviously want to have a copy of your presentation after the session. There are services like SlideShare, Issuu, Scribd and Docs.com where you can upload the deck though I would recommend that you convert the slides to PDF before putting them online to prevent modification.

SlideShare attracts the maximum eyeballs, Docs.com is very tightly integrated with Facebook, Issuu offers the best presentation player but one big advantage with Scribd is the “send to mobile” option – users can directly send your slides from Scribd to their mobile phone, Kindle, iPad, Nook or any other device for offline viewing.

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Free-up Disk Space

If your Windows computer is running low on disk space, here’re few things that you should do to instantly recover a few gigabytes of free space.

The cost of digital storage is going down and most newer computers ship with 500 GB to 1 TB of hard disks that are big enough to store all your files. However, if you are using Windows on an old computer with limited disk space, here is a list of things you should do to instantly recover some free space.

1. The Obvious Methods to Free Disk Space

a. Use CCleaner to quickly clear your Windows recycle bin, temporary Internet files, log files, memory dumps and other stubborn files that don’t show up in Windows Explorer. CClean also provides an option to clean your unused Windows Registry keys and your browser cookies but that won’t save any disk space.

b. Use Revo Uninstaller (the free version) to remove software programs, game demos and other stuff that you no longer use. Revo has a useful “hunter mode” to help you uninstall programs that are not listed in the “Add/Remove Programs” section of the Control Panel.

c. Use either WinDirStat or Space Sniffer to locate files that are taking the maximum amount of space on your hard disk and either erase the unnecessary ones or move them to another partition. You may also use Windows Desktop Search to easily find the largest files on your system from Windows Explorer.

d. Use Duplicate Cleaner to find duplicate files on your hard disk. These may include videos, documents, MP3s, zip archives, images and all other types of files. Duplicate Cleaner compares the MD5 hash of files – not just the file names or their byte size – and is thus pretty accurate at identifying duplicates. Another good alternative for removing duplicates is Duplicate File Finder – this is more suitable for novice users.

e. Check your downloads folder and get rid of all the program installers, driver packages, ISO files, IPSW files, virtual machines, and other bulky files that you may have downloaded from the Internet.

f. If you enjoy watching video podcasts, it may be a good idea to delete old episodes from the disk. iTunes, Zune and most other podcasting software offer easy options to automatically delete podcast episodes that either too old or have been watched.

g. iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users should consider deleting device backups from the computer to reclaim space. Open iTunes –> Preferences –> Devices and delete all backups of your iOS devices but for the most recent one.

h. If you have been an Outlook user all your life and only recently migrated to Gmail, you can backup Outlook’s bulky PST files to Gmail and then move them to another drive for safekeeping. All your old emails can be easily access from Gmail itself.

2. The Not-So-Obvious Ways to Recover Free Space

a. Get Rid of the Shadow Copies

When you install new software program, update device drivers or apply patches and hot-fixes on your computer, Windows will automatically store a snapshot of your system before making the changes. This helps because if something stops working after the installation, you can easily restore your system to the last working state.

Other than system files, Windows also stores backup copies of data files (like documents, pictures, etc.) on your computer which may come really handy if you accidentally modify or delete the original files. Technically, these are known as shadow copies and the feature is available in all editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7.

If you have been using your computer for some time, the disk space consumed by these restore points and shadow copies may easily run in gigabytes. You can either remove all the restore points from your system or, if you would like to play extra safe, you can keep the new restore points and just get rid of the old ones.

Click the Windows Start button and type cmd in the search box (not the Run dialog). Now press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to open the command prompt with Administrator privileges. Click Yes if you are shown the User Access Control Window.

Now type the following command to remove only the old shadow copies:

c:\>vssadmin delete shadows /for=c: /oldest

Or, if your system is working normally, use this command to remove all the shadow copies.

c:\>vssadmin delete shadows /for=c: /all

Command Line is quicker but if you prefer the visual option, launch Disk Cleanup from the Start Menu and choose Clean up System Files. Switch to the “More Options” tab and choose “Clean up” under System Restore and Shadow Copies to delete all but the most recent restore point on the hard disk.

b. Make the Service Pack Permanent

When you installed Service Pack 1 (SP1) on a Windows 7 machine, it saves the installer packages in c:\WINDOWS\WinSxS folder. These would be required in case you want to uninstall SP1 later but if that is unlikely to happen, you can remove the SP1 backup files and reclaim some lost space.

Launch Disk Cleanup, choose Clean up System Files, select “Service Pack Backup Files” and delete. Alternatively, you may run the following command as an admin:

c:\>dism /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded

You may have to reboot the machine after the dism command. If you are on Windows Vista, you may also use the Vista Cleaner utility to clean the Service Pack installer files.

c. Reserve Less Space for Restore Points

Windows will continue to save new restore points until all the disk space reserved for saving restore points is filled up. That means if you have less reserved space, the old ones will get deleted more quickly to make room for new restore points.

Go to Windows Start –> Run and type sysdm.cpl to open the System Properties dialog. Click the “System Protection” tab, choose your current drive (C:) and click Configure. Set the Max Usage anywhere between 3% and 5% of the total disk size. Apply the changes.

Now that you have recovered some important space, go back to the “System Protection” tab and click Create to to capture of snapshot of your system in its current working state – just to be on the safe side of things.

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