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Collect data on your website with Google Forms
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Looking to create a form for your website or to collect data from someone remotely? Google has added a new feature to their Google Docs that allows you to create forms and automatically insert data into a Google Spreadsheet. Your users will not even need a Google account to submit info, the form you create is one that anyone can access just like any web form. Just start with a spreadsheet and create your fields, then click the share button. Select the third option called “to fill out a form NEW” and follow the on screen prompts. Google forms give you plenty of options for creating your form such as text, paragraph text, multiple choice, check boxes, and lists. The great part is all your data ends up in a nice Google spreadsheet that you can easily export into any popular file formats such as Excel or a comma delimited field.
Add a LinkedIn signature to your Gmail
So you can finally add a HTML signature to your web Gmail account. The “Gmail HTML Signatures” greasemonkey script allows you to automatically insert an HTML signature into your Gmail messages based on the email address that you are sending it from. While adding HTML signatures is cool all by itself, it also means that you can now add LinkedIn signatures to your outgoing email. Just go to your linkedIn Signatures section and copy and paste your html code. Then go back to your Gmail and click “Edit Signature” and paste.
Captcha that Google
Google may soon be able to read text on the images and videos on your website. They patented an application which has the capability of doing that. This could turn out great for the search engine giant (in terms of new ways to index pages). But one thing scares me. If there is such a program, then what happens when it gets into the hands of evil? What do I mean by evil, you ask? I mean spam bots of course. If a program is so advanced that it could read text off of ordinary images, then that means it could certain tackle any captcha. I know there are already some programs which can do this, but those can only decipher very simple captchas like the ones phpbb 2 used (I am not sure if phpbb 3 uses the same ones). On the other hand these bots can read text off of any old image, so captchas are certainly not a problem. That’s scary! But on the bright side, this will lead to development of new security features and maybe that means we won’t have to type in those stupid little letters and get tricked by them ever again!
Protect your Adsense account from Invalid clicks
Reading the DigitalPoint forums you get a sense that Google’s Adsense is banning everyone and anyone for invalid clicks and while that may be an exageration just the fear of getting banned by Adsense is enough to cause shivers down the spine of well monetized sites. If your site is click bombed or you suffer from a click happy reader or a associate editor who turns out to be scammy you could loose your Adsense account and all the money you earned, but all is not lost.
There is quite a few tools for blocking a tracking click bombers. The first one I recommend is Clickaider.com, this gives you the reporting you need for people who try to get you banned by click bombing you. In fact instead of banning you, Google bans them. Giving Google Clickaider tracking is essential in them tracking down the click bomber, typically resulting in them loosing their own Adsense account. Its free and its easy to sign up with ClickAider and as a added bonus you get great tracking that can help you better monetize your Adsense ads, just add a few lines of code under the body tag and away you go. If for some reason you get click bombed by invalid clicks be sure to quickly email Google using this form to let them know, be sure to forward as much info from your Clickaider account as you can.
But wouldn’t be nice if you weren’t clickbombed in the first place? Thats where code such as this by Jim Westergren comes into handy. This code will limit multiple clicks by IP and shut down your click bomber before he gets a chance. The problem is that this can shut down legitimate clicks. Do you have code that you use to protect your Google Adsense account, feel free to share!
LocateTV, its like Google Search for TV
OK lets say someone turns you on to a new TV show and you get home and you want to watch this show. Do you flip through pages of your TV guide? Do you Google the name and hope for useful information? How about typing the name into locateTV? LocateWho you say? Search for just about anything in their Web 2.0 like interface, for instance search for Kevin Bacon and chances are you will see a bevy of shows that will show up (Kevin is very busy). OK, Kevin Bacon is in everything you say how fair is that? What about Kevin Smith, well he’s on at 10:30PM. Try searching for your fave band, yep they are on at midnight. Maybe you are in the mood for a good drama, there it is Sex in the City “Drama Queens” at 12:30. You name it search for it. Except for ALF, don’t search for him, you won’t find him. ALF is apparently in the syndicated alien relocation program and apparently cannot be found at this time. LocateTV is like Google Search for TV which makes you wonder why Google isn’t in this business. It seems like Google could out search TVGuide, AOLTVguide, or even LocateTV. Maybe someday but until then we have LocateTV.
Gmail gets Colored Labels
Google’s Gmail has added colored labels for users of Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2, much like the colored labels in Google Calendar. So pointing out the obvious this is a long overdue feature and it is strange that it is missing in Safari and Opera. The good thing about this new label coloring scheme is there is nothing to do but choose your color, so colorize your labels today! This new feature helps you better organize your email via labels much like label colors used to associate importance in Mac OS 9.
