Often times when I am working with a client there is a file we need to share that is just too large for email. I used to have an FTP file storage site that I used for this purpose until I found these nice large file sharing websites. This has been especially useful when editing Power Point presentations which have sound such as a client would use for an eCourse or Webinar. Also, sharing MP3 files is really hard when you are working on someones podcast for them.

Here are the sites. There is a certain amount of storage space you can use for free, and you can upgrade to a paid account if you really lilke it and you want to be able to transfer larger files.

http://www.mailbigfile.com/

http://www.dropboks.com/

Happy Web Developing!

Ever been in just straight HTML and needed to build a nice looking calendar? How many rows and columns would you need in your table? Should you nest information in another table? Can you even come close to uniformity much less a nice looking design? Or did you just resort to using Power Point or Word and saving as a .jpg? 

I found a great site where you can build nice calendars and transfer them to your site very easily!

Here you go: http://www.calendarhub.com/

Happy Web Developing!

If you’ve never poked around Google for fun you really should!

Ok let’s start with the Web Developer Tools.

These can be found by going to the Google search page, and clicking more and going into the Google Labs area.

Here are my three favorite areas to look at. Google Trends gives you a good idea of the most popular web sites and what the more popular web sites are going to be by giving you info on the most popular searches search engine-wide. Google Suggest can be used as a light key word research tool, it gives you helpful suggestions for key words to search under as you type your own search in the search bar. Google Page Creator can be used as an HTML editor, and prepares your pages for the Google search engine because that is what is actually creating the pages!

-Google Trends
-Google Suggest
-Page Creator

Here’s another fun Google thing; It actually shows you the “web” of the World Wide Web. You can use it for fun, and it also serves as a great tool to see linking on a site you are working on.

http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html

Here’s a great place to get your gMap:  http://www.yourgmap.com/

AND finally the FUN:

Did you know that if you text 466453 (Google) from your phone and in the body of the text message put in a query for any number of things you will get a text message back with the answer?

It’s true! Just a few of the things you can get an answer for: Weather, Glossary, Sports, Maps and the list goes on! Check it out, I love this feature and most people I encounter have never heard of it!

If you don’t have a fast way to create web forms using an HTML editor or a site builder here is a place where you can easily create forms and cut and paste the HTML/Script into your site.

Good knowledge of HTML and Java Scripts and how to integrate with your database is necessary, but it is very fast if you know these things!

Here’s the site:  http://www.webformfactory.com/

Happy Web Developing!

Being web site developers we all have issues regarding different browsers and the way they can force things to show up not quite the way you imagined or planned. The top two browsers that most people know about are Internet Explorer and Fire Fox. There are however several others that you want to make sure your site shows up well on. And if you ever work for someone developing a site that originates in another country you will need to check the browsers most commonly used there.

So, what’s a web designer to do? Download all the necessary browsers and check the site in all of them upon publishing and tweak and tweak and tweak until you get some reasonable results? Nope! Now there is a great tool you can use to take a snap shot of your site/page in many different browsers at once and look at them at a glance without having the hassle of doing this yourself!

http://browsershots.org/ is the site which does it. Simply go to the site and click, you have a snap shot of your site in many different browsers so you can tweak right away and get your site looking in top shape in more markets faster! Your international clients will LOVE that you can do this!

Happy web developing!