Franciov Weblog

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Popularity: 71% [?]

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TinyURL is a URL redirection service, just one of hundreds of this kind of service. It allows to create a tiny URL that will not break in email postings and never expires. I found myself surprised when I looked at the advertisement shown in the image on the left. How can Google AdWords allow redirecting URLs? I would like to know where I would go by clicking on advertisements.

Google AdWords Affiliate Policy

We allow affiliates to use AdWords advertising. Please note that we’ll only display one ad for affiliates and parent companies sharing the same Display URL per search query. We also monitor and don’t allow the following:

• Redirect URLs: Ads that contain Display URLs that automatically redirect to the parent company.
• Bridge Pages: Ads for webpages that act as an intermediary, whose sole purpose is to link or redirect traffic to the parent company.
• Framing: Ads for webpages that replicate the look and feel of a parent site.

Popularity: 42% [?]

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Snap Preview Anywhere is a tool that enables anyone visiting your site to get a glimpse of what other sites you’re linking to, without having to leave your site. If you are a reader of mine you should already know it because I use it in this blog.

I have just received an email from Snap Preview Anywhere Customer Service.

«Dear Website Owner,

About two months ago, we launched Snap Preview Anywhere because a number of websites had asked if they could use our website previews on their sites.

Little did we know that it would explode.

In just 8 weeks, over 30,000 sites worldwide have already invited us to be part of their sites. We’ve generated over 70,000,000 previews. And we’ve helped millions of your users get more from your site.

Now, thanks to your acceptance of Snap Preview Anywhere, WordPress, the company that powers so much of the blogosphere, has agreed to put us on 600,000 blogs! Read all about it.

Thank you–this would not have happened without you!»

Well, it seems that things are going well. Snap Preview Anywhere is currently used by many thousand of blogs including TechCrunch and Franciov Weblog ( ), and it’s integrated in blogger platforms like Wordpress.com and Typepad.

«New ways to customize Snap Preview Anywhere.

Because so many people have asked about it, we’re now offering a number of end-user customization options directly from the Snap Preview Anywhere bubble, including:

* The ability for end-users to opt-out

* Changing the delay in how quickly the bubble appears

Plus, we fixed several bugs!

[…]

Warmest Regards,

Team Snap»

These are great new features, but I would like also the chance to set up the domain names for which I don’t want to show the preview. Previews are currently disabled for internal links and the only way to disable them for other links is to do that for every links, by adding the class “snap_nopreview” manually.

However I have just found out a useful plugin for wordpress to add Snap Preview Anywhere to your blog and customize it without laying a hand on code.

If you look for comments on SPA, you will find quite different opinions. Indeed Laurelle on Wordpress wrote a post in which she asked to Worpress.com to «please stop using Snap Preview». She considers these Snap Previews «a blight on the web. If you are using them, you are introducing a non-accessibility feature to your site that slows your site down and increases the bandwidth on the web as well as on your site. You are actually hindering your users.»

What do you think about Snap Preview Anywhere? I’d love to know your opinions too!

Popularity: 58% [?]

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Do you know Flickr? Yes, ok. Now imagine Flickr without the photos… Don’t call me crazy, you have just discovered Wordie.

“Wordie lets you make lists of words — practical lists, words you love, words you hate, whatever. You can add citations and comments, see who else has listed the same words, and talk about language.”

Natali Del Conte on Techcrunch deals with Wordie as something that “is more about fun than anything else”. Maybe (for sure) she’s right but I think Wordie could also be useful ’cause you have at your disposal lots of words and links to definitions. Wordie could become a gateway which people go across looking for word meanings. It could also be a way for users to keep track of words they like and want to remember.

Popularity: 25% [?]

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I used iWeb 1.0 to create my photogallery, but by using iWeb you can create an entire website in very few steps and you don’t need to know a lick of HTML! If compared to FrontPage or Dreamweaver, iWeb is from another world. Unfortunately iWeb 1.0 was designed for the .Mac world: to publish (and especially to update) a website to another web host could be hard-working. Fortunately there’s a great free tool called Easy iWeb Publisher that allows Mac users without .mac subscriptions to upload sites created with iWeb to any web host by just dragging and dropping.

I actually think that the future is the opportunity (for beginners) to create websites on the Internet. Web 2.0 allows this. Take a look at Google Page Creator, Sitekreator and Synthasite, for example.

And above all I have to point out Weebly.
(TechCrunch post about it)

Weebly is the easiest way to create a great looking website and share it with the world for free. From personal to professional sites, Weebly will enable you to spend your time on the most valuable part of your site, its content.

I think I’ll try Weebly very soon

Popularity: 61% [?]