Techtrends

Favicons are the little icons that show next to bookmarks and in the address bar of most browsers which provides an identity to a site. Favicons are 16 pixels square ico files. Here is a simple, online favicon maker where you can draw an icon or upload an image to make a favicon. This favicon maker supports alpha transparency.
If you prefer only text / letter instead of image you can prefer Antifavicon to generate favicon. You only required selecting color of text and background and just typing text for your favicon.
. Read full story .

Dixero is a free, web based application that allows you to listen to your favorite RSS feed online, on your computer as a podcast. It converts RSS feed in to audio content with different voices.It saves your time in accessing the RSS contents at the time to read your favorite feeds and also, we can take over the audio at any audio player. The service is in beta stage, required invitation to access.(source)
. Read full story .

Free blogging services (like Blogger.com, for example) generate a high traffic for websites which increases its popularity. If you want to have your own blogging service for your site , LifeType application allows you to manage multiple blogs and users through a single control panel corresponding to a unique MySQL database. It is an open-source blogging platform with support for multiple blogs and users in a single installation. Writing articles is comfortable with the included state of the art WYSIWYG editor. Adding pictures and sound files (for Podcasting) is just a matter of browse and click.
The Dashboard provides you with all the information you need every time you log in. Recent articles, comments and trackback as well as brief statistics get you updated about your blog immediately.
LifeType requires at least PHP 4.3.0 and MySQL 3.23 to run and it has been built on and for Linux and Unix servers, but it will run on the Windows platform without any problem (both under Apache and Microsoft Internet Information Services)(source)

For features click here.
Platform: Windows / Mac OS / Linux / BSD / Solaris
License: GPL / Download / Developer page

. Read full story .

Disqus is an enhanced, free comment system for blogger that allows the user to track comments and replies, and categorize them. Leaving a comment can be as involving as writing a blog post.Every time a user posts a comment, a new thread is started in his own forum, and replies posted in that thread are linked to the original. Every commenter has a profile that is used on all blogs enabled with Disqus. More details....Disqus has full integrated support for WordPress, MovableType, Tumblr, Blogger, and TypePad. If you do not use any of these, Disqus also provides a general code snippet for any website. While Disqus was designed with blogs in mind, any newspaper, website, or web application would also likely work. [source]
. Read full story .

Zoundry Raven is a WYSIWYG desktop blog editor that makes posting to your blogs easier and faster. This free application supports multiple blog platforms like Blogger, Wordpress, Movable Type & TypePad, and Windows Live Spaces. It is as easy to use as a word processor, plus tools to add links, tags, photos, music and video files, and more.Following are some of the features of this application:
1. Tabbed WYSIWYG writing and XHTML source editing. Drag and drop images, video, and text from the Web. Unicode (UTF-8) support. Preview posts in your blog's template.
2. Spell checking in different languages, search functions and replacement
3. Ability to configure multiple accounts Connection blogs and publishing multiple simultaneously. It also supports the publication in draft mode and publication delayed.
4. Built-in indexer allows you to see posts by blogs, links, tags, and images. View tag cloud and browse to posts containing specific tags. View posts independently of where they were published.
5. Ability to define multiple repositories of files to upload images, documents, etc.. This not only includes FTP connections, but services like Picasa Image Shack, etc..(source)
License: Free / File size:9.9Mb / DOWNLOAD
. Read full story .

PicApp is an online service that provide quality images for free use to bloggers and other online publications without having to think about copyright or legal issues. You can simply enter search terms and obtain the desired images to be published, choose the image size you want, and grab the code for publish.
The best thing about this service is that we can use desired image for publish without the fear of copyright or legal issues. However PicApps includes some advertisement over the image and also some sponsored links.[source]
. Read full story .

FlowPlayer is a powerful and flexible video player (open source) that allows you to insert various media formats like FLV, SWF, MP3, MP4, H.264 video, JPG and PNG on your web site, without the need to resort to external sites such as Youtube.FlowPlayer possesses extraordinary features, ranging from the adaptation of skin color or, to adapt the best possible player to your Web tones, as well as options that can be found in traditional services, such as the option to share your video via email , Embed (allowing users to insert your video on their websites).
More features:

• Protection against direct links: You can protect your videos and images against a direct link.
• Support for advertising: The playlists allows insert advertising in the stream of videos. Besides video controls can be deactivated when the sale advertising, and of course advertising linked to the advertiser.
• Support for full screen mode.
• And much, much more….[source]

>>Download
. Read full story .

In blogspot there is no facility to back up or download all your post and comments left by readers as in Wordpress blog. However there are some third party utilities to helps you, among them Blogger backup is the most suitable for this purpose. This utility saves all your Blogger posts to the hard disk and can easily restore them in case you accidentally delete your blog or some of the posts.
After installation, just login with your Blogger account and select your blog to save locally. You can either save all your posts in to a single file or let the software create new file per blog entry. It can also backup reader comments.
If you want to restore any of your post from the hard disk that are deleted from your blog, just hit the ‘Restore Posts’ button, select the post and they will be back online.
The application follows the incremental backup style, that is, if you run the Blogger backup again after a week, it restores the posts that published in that period, not the entire posts. [Source] Download Blogger Backup
. Read full story .

There are many reasons for increasing the page load time of a blogger or a web site. For example flash content or too many images takes longer time to load a page in a browser. Another very important reason is messy CSS file of your blog or site. That is more lines of code in your template takes longer time to load in a browser.[CSS code determines your blog’s entire style which lies in between <b:skin> and </b:skin> in the case of blogger.]
What is a messy CSS file? CSS file with multiple spaces, space around character like :{}:, multiple empty lines, space between selectors, unnecessary semi colons, etc causes an increase in your blog’s page loading time.
So it is the time to optimize your template. Just copy and paste your CSS file at CSS Drive. last year I published an article about it, now it comes with some bugs fixed. This online tool compresses your CSS file in to a smaller unit.
In the case of Blogger copy and paste the whole code that lies in between <b:skin> and </b:skin>.Remember to back up your template before doing this. Just choose a normal method (or liter or super compact) to compress the CSS file. Thanks to David
. Read full story .

Header of a website or blog catches visitors’ attention firstly. Therefore, a suitable header graphic have greater importance.Smashing Magazine presented a set of beautiful header graphics which is the results of the contest - 45 beautiful blog header designs you can use for free. There are 45 banners from 38 designers that can be used without any restrictions, including their source files (Photoshop (. Psd), Illustrator (. Ai)) and has a size 850 x 200 Pixel
Related story - Free webpage header graphics
. Read full story .

Blog ping is a new ping service that allows us to send pings to major directories like Technorati, Webblogs, Newsgator, etc whenever you update your blog. It includes up to 26 directories and you just enter the site name, URL, select the directories want to send, and press the 'Send Pings!' that’s all!The advantage of such services is that, it has the ability to cover a multitude of search engines at once and knowing that some of these directories, in turn, contain many others.[Source]
. Read full story .

Here is a simple guide for evaluating the quality of content on a web or blog. Today internet has become a rich environment of web pages, blogs, wikis, social networking sites, free research services, media types and more. It can be a challenge to figure out which content to trust. This guide will help you to identify the type of site you are visiting and to evaluate its content.For example, to evaluate the content of a blog, the author has point out the following -

• Most blog postings focus on a discussion of issues rather than day to day personal or recreational activities.
• Blog postings are signed by an identifiable author.
• The author has expertise on the topic of the blog.
• Comments on blog postings emphasize substantive discussion of the issues.
• Blog postings are cited on other blogs. A blog search engine such as Technorati can help to determine this, and general search engines are also useful.
• Links to the blog or its individual postings are saved on social bookmarking sites such as Del.icio.us./li>
• New blog postings appear fairly regularly – though archived blogs can contain useful material.

Read full story here. You can also download it as pdf file.
. Read full story .

It is always good to have back up of your blog posts as a precaution, but normally free blog services like blogspot have no straight method to back up a post. Wordpress paid service lets you do it from the control panel.BlogBackupr is an online application that just needs your blog URL to create a full backing of posts using RSS feeds. It does not require registration but if your e-mail address so that you have access to a panel where you can see your tickets, download backs in three formats (xml, txt and html), and even restore your blog if you have any problems.
The service works with any blog that have an RSS feed. If your blog engine is Wordpress its back up all includes full posts, comments and categories. It is a great tool for a blog that do not provide a backup / restore system themselves.
>>BlogBackupr
[source]
. Read full story .

Most of the Wordpress blogs and some of the Blogspot blogs are using the related article/post widget on their blog and are very useful for a reader to find similar articles. Here is a special related post widget for your blog – Arkayne, which automatically links your pages to similar content around the web. All you have to do is simply install a widget (JavaScript code) on your blog and Arkayne will do the rest. No need of RSS feed URL or account setup to use Arkayne. Details here.The Arkayne widget can be easily customized to match your site. You can configure the widget like the number of links displayed on your blog or the minimum relevancy required, etc. Currently this widget is available for Blogspot and Wordpress users and the set up is also quite easy.
[source]
. Read full story .

Google has released a new widget -Chatback Badge that allows your blog/site visitors to chat with you, whenever you're signed in to Google Talk. All you need to copy and paste a piece of small code in to your blog or site.

With this chatback badge anyone can chat with you even if they haven't signed up for Google Talk or a Google Account. The badge will display your online status (whether you're available to chat or not) and, optionally, your status message. You can also change the title of your badge, and control whether you want to show or not your online status.
To create a Chatback badge, you need to be a Google Talk user and will need to be online and available (with a green ball next to your name) in Google Talk to enable people to chat with you.
[source-blogoscoped]
. Read full story .

Genuine Site Rank is a tool to analyze a web site’s or blog’s relative significance and value. Site Rank gathers and analyzes data on a site’s popularity, inbound links and many other attributes. In the end you will get a general value of a site in percentages. The higher the percentage, the higher should be the significance of the site analyzed.Just enter your sites/ blog URL,Genuine Site Rank provide information like basic info like page title, Meta tag, key word and thumbnail preview image of you site, Position in Google search results, Google page rank and Alexa rank, position in social book marking site like delicious, Digg, Domain Age, Domain Maturity and finally your rank in percentage and your sites value in dollar.
License: Free
Link to Genuine site Rank
. Read full story .

Ratingburner is ranking tool for blogger. Here you can see a blog’s total number of RSS readers, its page rank, monthly subscription changes and last post, etc. You can also submit your site for analysis. Just enter feed url of your site and get the rating.

. Read full story .

FCC Ribbon Manager is a plug-in for Wordpress blog that lets you add a side ribbon on your blog without touching the template file or the CSS (Badge usually shown on upper corner of the right hand side of a blog)

The usage of this plug-in is very easy. Just download the plug-in, decompress it and upload it on the mask of plug-ins. Once there you activate from the panel of administration, proceed to set it up. Specify the URL of the image that you want to use as a badge, its dimensions, and where you want to link an alternative title. Finally choose the location of the sticker and ready.
[source]

. Read full story .

Spottt is free link exchange service from Adbrite. Anyone with a web or blog can trade links with other like minded sites or blog.

It’s very simple, just sign up with Spottt; you will get a small piece of code, which you will then put on your site, that’s all. Other Spottt member’s ads will make appearance on your site and yours will be on their site.

[source- hongkiat]

. Read full story .

The Cheats’ Guide to Blogger Template Design is a free e-Book which helps you create a new look for your blogger blog. This e-Book will offer you many options and examples to customize your existing Blogger template quickly and easily.

Divided in to 5 chapters, this e-Book will help you understand the basic techniques of blogger template design, from configuring background images to creating a custom header, using clickable buttons and much more!

Each chapter in this e-book covers different aspects of Blogger template. Following are some of the features of this e-Book.

• New examples of template customizations
• An entire chapter about customizing stretch (fluid) templates
• How to use buttons, banners and images
• Many useful resources for template customization
• An optional download folder containing all of the templates and images used in the e-Book

>>Download the e-Book
>>Related posts:A handy reference guide to Wordpress

. Read full story .