Trying four new web services
I’m currently trying four new web services and I’m pretty impressed with all of them.
Kwout is responsible for the images you see in this post and some of my other recent articles.
With Kwout you can quote part of a web page as an image with an image map. You need to add a bookmarklet to your browser or use the Firefox addon.
I’ve got the Firefox extension and find it the easiest way to add small extracts from web sites to my blog. It’s much faster than making a screenshot, which requires editing and uploading. Kwout even hosts the images.
The Lijit search tool you can see in the top of the sidebar on the right-hand side. 
From the screed: “Using the power of people, their content, and their connections, Lijit enhances the way your readers search for and discover information on the internet. You serve as a filter for all of the results your readers could possibly receive, ensuring they only receive the most relevant results from the source they trust…YOU.”
I find it useful because it searches my site and others that I nominate. It also gives me stats on what people are searching for. You can see a summary here.
BlogUpp Link Exchange I have mentioned previously. I find it strangely addictive to see screenshots of other people’s web sites on mine, complete with a teaser from their RSS feed.
I’m clicking on them quite a lot, but so far it’s only brought three visitors to my site.
I really like the concept, but it will need to drive some traffic here to justify taking up a fair lump of space in the sidebar. I’ll give it a few more days to make a decision.
I’m also trying Zenbe webmail. Zenbe is “designed to be the world’s best email experience”.
“Zenbe lets you use all of your email accounts in one place. Use Zenbe to make your Gmail, AOL, or Yahoo Mail Plus, almost any email address better. You can easily read and organize all your email in one place, accessible from any computer on the internet.” There are no ads.
At the moment I’m forwarding my gmail there to test the service, in addition to using my unique Zenbe address for some messages.
Unfortunately it can’t receive my Google Apps email at this stage.
It’s an invitation beta test at the moment and I’m happy to keep trying it. Zenbe is the best new webmail service I’ve seen for a long time.
Whether it can shift me from Gmail remains to be seen.
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Tags: email, internet, Technology
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Consider the back end of Widgets in your decision.
P.U.B. [Publishers Union of Bloggers] has pending inquires to Widget Providers concerning how they generate their income; what percentage of this income goes to the Blog Publisher making the critical decision to allow a Widget on their site for their readers. In addition we are requesting transparency on the critical issue of how the private statistics from Publishers Blogs are collected and used by Widgets, hopefully with the Publisher’s permission!
Something we neglected, but have been advised of, is the impact on Blog load performance from a Widget, and are adding this component in our investigation. Let us know if you have any experience with this.
P.U.B. expects to heard back from Lijit on the financial and private statistics issues from P.U.B’s inquiry we sent to Lijit in mid April 2008. When we do we will let great Blog Publishers like you know their deal.
Will publish these results to keep the community of Blog Publishers informed on this critical component of Widgets on our Blogs.
Barney Moran
Founder, P.U.B.
Thanks Barney, I’ll be interested in the response you get. I’m wary of javascript, widgets and plugins; they can slow down the page load.
I haven’t noticed any problems so far, but if anyone on dial-up, for example, is having trouble please let me know.
Michael, create a page where you will add your widget code. Create a php page and reference to that page with an IFRAME,
Now include the php page in your sidebar.php
Now if the Widgets are loading slow it will not affect the loading of your front page, because the IFRAME will load as an independent document.
You may have a problem with DOM type of JS because you need to allocate the desired are in the IFRAME width and height.
Good tip Igor, thanks.