One of the advantages Google Spreadsheets has over a client-side spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel, is access to live data look ups. Using the GoogleLookup function, data lookup for many kinds of standard facts is simple. Standard facts include, for example, population figures for cities and countries, capitals for states and nations, and places of birth for famous people. For exact syntax and more examples see the Google Docs & Spreadsheet Help Center .
If you’ve spent any time wandering around the blogosphere (the world of web logs and social networking) you’ll have come across the term “permalink”, a concatenation of “permanent” and “link.” Because blogs post only the most recent stories on their front pages, the permalink gives you a URL where a story will always be accessible, even after it’s been pushed off the front page by more recent articles.
Google Page Creator is a simple and free way to create and host web pages. It has a WYSIWYG (”what you see is what you get”) interface, and doesn’t require any knowledge of HTML or web hosting. Google Page Creator is still in its early stages of development (it’s a Google Labs project) but is worth a look for anyone wanting a quick and easy way to publish their own website.
It’s easy to add a free, interactive Google Map to your website. First, sign up for a Google Maps API Key . You’ll also find a lot of documentation there about how to use the Google Maps API, but I preferred the short and simple explanation written by Joshua Siler at ExplorationAge.
BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer (P2P) software tool that distributes download bandwidth among those who are downloading. The problem with offering large files from your website is that a surge in traffic can crash your web server. BitTorrent rewards those that share their bandwidth by using cooperative distribution, also known as swarming downloads. With the rise in popularity of podcasting (and huge audio files) torrents are also gaining ground.
Today’s tip is for anyone who owns a domain name. Because of an ICANN (Internet Corporation on Assigned Names and Numbers) policy change implemented late last year, it is possible to lose control of a domain if you fail to respond to an email transfer request. Since email has become bogged down with spam and spam filters, this puts everyone who owns a domain at risk. The solution is to lock your domain name with your domain registrar. This will prevent transfers and ownership changes, until the domain is unlocked. If you do not see a lock option in your domain management interface, ask your registrar to do it for you.
Podcasting is distributing digital audio files for playback at a later time. It is a play on the words “broadcasting” and “iPod,” even though podcasting works on any music player, not just the Apple iPod. For more on podcasting, read Answers.com or download the free iPodder application.
Picasa from Google, is a free Windows download for organizing digital photos. It eliminates the need to manually organize photo files, and replaces it with a powerful thumbnail search system. Picasa also includes editing tools for cropping, rotation and red-eye removal. For sharing photos with friends online, Picassa integrates with Hello.
When writing about your website, should you include the “http://” in your URL? Here’s a rule of thumb. For offline use, such as business cards and envelopes, drop the “http://” prefix. But for anything electronic, such as word processing documents or e-mail messages, always include the “http://” because in many applications it makes your link clickable.
If you have a website and occasionally look at your site traffic logs, you may notice visits from robots with funny names like Slurp, Scooter, or GoogleBot. These automated programs are search engine robots that crawl the Web looking for pages to add to their search data bases. To learn which robots belong to which search engines, read this article from JafSoft.com .
