I recently scheduled a meeting with someone who sent me to www.tungle.com It was cool. I got to pick what time worked for my schedule, and it then integrated it with my google calendar. Very cool.

I decided to sign up for a free account. Here I can go in and set the times when I’m available for meetings. If I want to schedule a meeting with someone, instead of sending email back and forth saying “that won’t work for me,” they can go to my dedicated page at tungle.com When they choose a time, it automatically reminds them of the meeting, and puts it on my calendar. This calendar then syncs with my google calendar (and other calendar types are available).

Here again, I’m not sure how you turn “Free” into a business plan, but who cares. It works and makes my life easier.

There are all sorts of ways to share your schedule on your websites, facebook, twitter, etc.  There is even an iphone app.

Check it out at www.tungle.com

Here is a video showing it off.

In the past I’ve already spoken about Dimdim.com and Sitepal.com and since those reviews things have drastically changed for the better.

Dimdim.com Adds More Cool Features

Dimdim.com came out with a new version of their system that allows you to hold a webinar for free. If you want to have up to 50 people (you can do up to 20 for free) its only 25 bucks a month (compared to the $60+ I was spending at webex.com ) Here are the cool things I like about dimdim.com

A way to put a widget on the site for people to register for the webinar.You can also collect information about attendants (optional). This was the feature I needed, and I love it.

You can record your webinar and make it available to hear/see afterwards.

They still only allow three people to have microphones, but they do have the ability to use a telephone line as well.

I just know I’m enjoying the savings.

Sitepal Adds the Ability to Turn Yourself into a Cartoon

Sitepal.com recently added a feature where you can upload a picture of yourself, record and upload your voice, and their system turns you into a cartoon that looks real. The feature is called “photo face” and it allows you to upload an image of yourself and then you cut out your face and it will animate it. It’s pretty cool. I would suggest a picture of you where you are staring straight forward for best results. In the picture on the left, I went and traced around my head to make sure only my head was copied into sitepal.

When I played with the preview, I can see where my picture was not the best for this example, but it still worked. When my photo faced version of me would watch the cursor, I looked a little high.

I know what you’re thinking, “Why not just use a video?” Well you can update what you say by phone. You can also have the character as a lead generator where it collects email addresses, and it can also be programmed to answer frequently asked questions (much like those pop out virtual assistants everyone has now that show up when you close the browser). These feature make it a very powerful tool, and shows you are on the edge of technology. If you don’t want to animate yourself, you can also pick from any of there many characters. You can go over and play with the demo at their site. it’s fun.

This is a pretty cool system if you are looking to make a quick presentation using photos. Best of all its free. Here is a sample

What’s new in PhotoSnack 2.0 Beta?

• 1. Subscription NOT needed for premium services
• 2. NO storage limit per user account
• 3. New slideshow templates added
• 4. Slideshows can be downloaded for offline use (formats: .swf, .exe, .app)
• 5. Customizable controls colors
• 6. Improved publishing system
• 7. Unlimited hosting for free slideshows
• 8. Premium services can be purchased now only with SnackTools points

For more information go to http://www.photosnack.com/

Taweet (beta) is a social calendar and event promotion application for Twitter. Taweet adds a whole new dimension to your Twitter experience: the future. The casual format of Taweet allows users to answer one simple question, “What are you doing in the future?” …and search the future to see what others are doing.

After you sign into Taweet for the first time you can then begin to link multiple Twitter accounts together. This will allow you to easily switch between accounts without having to sign in each time.

For more information go to www.taweet.com

This weeks web tools is great if you are looking for some feedback on a project. It’s free, and it seems to have a nice community of marketers, designers and developers who provide feedback on your advertisement, logo, flash presentation, web design. Best part is free.

Each reviewer has a reputation score. You can improve your Reputation Score by posting and reviewing concepts. It sounds liek a great place to learn and improve your deisgns.

Affordable Scheduling Tool

Today I talk about another scheduling tool that I missed in a previous episode. Its Acuity Scheduling and its a great mix of versatility with ease of use. You can easily customize the look of the scheduling interface, have multi schedules, block time, set your business time, make custom forms for each type of event (very cool) and you can accept payments. There is a free version (you can’t customize, or take payments, but it will let you kick the tires), and the professional version is only 10 bucks. You can find it at acuityscheduling.com

PDF TOOL FOR DREAMWEAVER

SiteScribe creates an Adobe PDF document from any site, local or remote right from within Dreamweaver. Convert your current site to PDF format for client approval or comments on a design in progress. Point SiteScribe to your online sites to create a single file portfolio of one or more published websites, easy to distribute in electronic or hard copy format. With SiteScribe, you set the number of screen shots to appear on each PDF page, the order of the pages, page breaks, title page and much more. SiteScribe gives you full security control with password protection and printing or copying options.

Find it at webassit.com

Today I just found about a new site that reminds me alot of paydotcom.com which  reminds me of clickbank.com(I like paydotcom.com better) only this one has no waiting for checks (like clickbank), no waiting to have things listed (like clickbank), and no “per product fees (like paydotcom.com) and its called click2sell.eu

No sign up fees – FREE

Unlimited products

Flat fee per product (earn up to 95% commission)

Built in Affiliate program and market place

I just signed up, so I will be talking more about this in the future.

DOMAIN NAME TOOLS
When it comes to a name you need to take some time to think about it. These tools help show you what names are available. You may find a name that is better than the original one you thought up. I’ve used nameboy.com and I had some friends tell me about domainsbot.com and bustaname.com

Fun Tool For Photos on Social Sites
You can make cool slide shows, or make your photos sparkle and more with this free tool at www.magtoo.com Its fun to play with, and it’s free.

Today we have a few tools for you to play with. You can check out a free version of photoshop at www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html

The next tool I heard about at www.454n5.com it’s called Crawltrack at www.crawltrack.fr which allows you to track search engine spiders and their visits along with other interesting details. It also blocks hackers. Its free.

Scribe Juice creates sales pages, generates power words, helps with the layout, built in analytics, it has research tools and more. It has a ton of stuff built into it, and why spend years becoming an expert when you can use this software. For more information go to scribejuice.com

Pic2coloris an interesting site where you point it at a graphic (locally or on the Internet ) and it will come up with a matching color scheme.

www.designsnack.com is an interesting site to get some constructive criticism on your site.

In the News
Ebay and Half.com affiliate program is leaving commission junction and going in house starting April 1.

In last week’s show we talked about how drop down and fly out menus suck because it takes such a steady hand to get through the navigation. I currently use a program from Xara. It turns out they have software, and a ton of online tools you can use (but no expandable/tree menu software )So I went looking for a menu system that would stay open until I closed it. Some call this tree menus, or expandable menus. Here is what I found.

Emenu Tree
http://www.emenutree.com/
This site and its software look like they were designed in 1991. No thanks.

Tree View
http://www.treeview.net/
$29 and a very nice site with good examples of how it works.

Cool JSTree
http://javascript.cooldev.com/scripts/cooltree/
$49 This looks to be a very flexible and easy to use software. One of the front runners.

Soft Complex Tigra Menu Pro
http://www.softcomplex.com/order.html
$29. This site seemed ok until I went to look at the price. It seemed like they had so many options that I had a hard time finding out how much this software is, and what is a configuration service? Is your software so hard I need this?

CSS Tree Menu
http://www.pluginlab.com/dreamweaver-extensions.asp
This site is great looking, and if you are using Dreamweaver they have a ton of stuff (some of it free). It’s 79 for their product, but I’m seriously considering it.

Tree Menu Magic
http://www.projectseven.com/products/menusystems/tmm/index.htm
$90 This was alot like the previous Dreamweaver plugin site only more expensive.

NEW NETWORKING TOOLS

Entrecard.com is a networking tool where you upload a 125X125 jpg file into the system and you can “Drop” your card on blogs and people. The more people drop cards at your site the more you can earn. You can even sell credits (um, ok I don’t know about that), but it is easy to transfer your credits to another person. It looks interesting. See my entrecard in my sidebar >>>>>

NEW SEARCH ENGINE IN BETA “Search Me”
This new search engine provides results as a graphic. Interesting, and it makes my previous points that the first impression of your site should be a good one. Check out the video at www.searchme.com

Today’s show has three web tools, all free.

Adflint from from Engine Ready is a great little tool that will help you write google ad words without the guesswork.

Fotolia is a Royalty Free Stock Photos site where you can get images as low as a buck.

Fotolia is the first worldwide social marketplace for royalty free stock images, allowing individuals and professionals to legally buy and share stock images and illustrations.

www.stompernet.com/ Has some very interesting videos og “Going Natural” and I found them fascinating on how the eye reads a website. They have free software to emulate this . Very interesting. I haven’t used it yet, but it really has tweaked my curiosity.

New and insights from www.highrankings.com and www.searchengineguide.com

When I went looking for some web tools I didn’t expect to gind such a large amount in one place. You name it they have it at iwebtool.com

Want to know if your website has been banned? Want to know how much to pay for a link? Domain checkers, Reverse IP lookups, Clean up your HTML. The best part is they are all free (in hopes that you buy their SEO Checklist book).  Very interesting site. Worth a bookmark.

I found a widget that is kind of a small stats package in a widget. You can see the number of visits, etc, as well as geography and more. You can get it for your site at http://www.visitwidget.com/

This is “OK,” but I will be taking it off my site shortly.

Our news is how do the search engines use Meta data in terms of your website and how it is described.

You can cut down the phone calls and email from your visitors with a well organized FAQ page. I did some quick searcing and found a couple of scripts. These scripts have the ability to be customized to match your website.

Soft Biz Scripts version was 23 dollars, and the Kbase was 99. I purchased the cheaper one an wish I had purchased the $99 verison (as I think it looks a bot more professional out of the box). We also have some links from folks, and the forums are heating up at www.weeklywebtools.com/forums
Someone will win a copy of Live Help Messenger in the future.

Leave your comments about the show in out FORUMS

Episode #16 Has us looking at Live Help solutions for your website and Time Tracking software for those of us who need to track billable time for clients.

LIVE HELP MESSENGER
It gives you the ability to add Live Help to your website without a monthly fee. I’ve looked around and finally found . Live Help Messenger from Star Develop. Here are some of the things I like about it.

NO MONTHLY FEE
Unlimited operators and departments.
Ability to store frequently asked responses, links, and the ability to “push” a visitor to a page (like a sign up / sales page).
You can easily customize the look and feel of the chat window.
Very easy to install. (Less than 15 minutes from start to finish).
I can see where my visitors are coming from, how long they’ve been on my site.

I liked it so much I asked them to sponsor the show, and they said yes. AND they are offering discounts on the software and will be giving away a copy of Live Help Messenger to someone who contributes to the forums

Standard Time – Billable Tracking Tool
I needed an easy way to track my time that didn’t have me doing a bunch of double entry. I have tried a few, but this is one that does what I want to do. It’s called Standard Time, and its $150 (again no monthly fee). It is flexible in the way I can charge my clients, and I love the fact that I can have an icon in the system tray and when I need to start billing people for my time its a few clicks away.

It also has a desktop and mobile version so I can track meetings, phone calls, etc on my smart phone, and then synchronize with my desktop when I get home. It does have an invoicing feature, and you can track customer payments, but to me its strength is in its time tracking (it does tie in with quickbooks if you are using it).

Leave a comment in our forums

Today I give some insights into Membership sites. I’ve used a few (www.amember.com) and really like a new one some of the features of Easy Member Pro. You have the ability to have a free membership site, and then upsell them later. There is a built in affilaite program (powerful), and a built in WYSIWYG system. This way you don’t have one system to build your site, and one system to protect it – they are all one in the same.  The best part is while many membership software titles are well, membership based…. this system is a one time fee of $137 and it runs on your server.

Be sure to hold on to anyone who cancels their membership. You never know when they may report you to paypal saying you billed them again.

Don’t forget www.throwdaveabone.com your support is deeply appreciated.