Phil Bradley's weblog

spellr.us | Automated Website Spell Checking

spellr.us is a website tool that automatically spell checks websites and provides a monitoring service that regularly checks your website for spelling mistakes. It's in closed beta at the moment, but you can request an account and they come through fairly quickly. I played with it a little and it's very fast. It pulls up errors which it lists by error, rather than by page initially, and offers to show you your pages with all the errors on them. The language dictionary is US, but you can add to 'My Words' which is logical. Wasn't too sure about some of the terms they picked up - they didn't like weblog, blog, internet (lower case I think), webpages, podcasts, favourites (UK spelling), spyware and a few other technical terms.

I was impressed with the speed and ease of use. The display of results was fine, but I'd have liked some more native understanding of internet related terms. Would I pay for it? (They're looking at pricing models at the moment) No, not a chance.

Ajax Whois 2.0 - fast domain name search and whois

Ajax Whois 2.0 - fast domain name search and whois. This is very helpful if you're exploring domains. It allows you to see if a domain name is available, and if it isn't, you can get information on who it belongs to. It also links into a site called Statsaholic which looks a little like Alexa in that it does a people count of monthly unique visitors, and terms that draw people to a specific site.

Sky One - how bad is the website?

Just how bad IS the Sky One website? It doesn't work properly with Firefox, it keeps crashing, spews out error messages like a kid on Easter Sunday who has eaten too much chocolate, doesn't load properly in the first place, appears to be consistently overloaded and is, not to put too fine a point on it, pants.

Statsaholic: Website Statistics and Website Traffic Graphs

Statsaholic: Website Statistics and Website Traffic Graphs. Statsaholic (formerly Alexaholic) blends Alexa website traffic graphs with a lightweight ajax-enhanced interface to satisfy hard-core traffic chart junkies – aka Statsaholics.

LabPixies - Coolest Gadgets On The Web

LabPixies - Coolest Gadgets On The Web. Add a bunch of funky widgets to your pages.

Topicalizer - The tool for topic extraction, text analysis and abstract generation

Topicalizer - The tool for topic extraction, text analysis and abstract generation. Pop in a URL and it'll come back telling you lots of funky stuff about the page you've given it. Frequency of keywords, readability and so on. Useful for SEO/SEM.

Leafletter

Leafletter is a web based application which enables users to create miniature web sites ("Leaflets") and embed them into social networks, blogs, and other web sites with ease.

A Leaflet is a miniature Flash® based web site that can be displayed anywhere HTML is welcome. For instance, a Leaflet could be distributed to the About Me section of a MySpace Profile, the body of a Blog Entry, and in the Portfolio section of a photographer's Personal Website, all simultaneously.

At least, that's what the email that I got said. I watched the demo, and it looks good. I tried it out, and started by adding a Flickr image, but the whole thing hung up on me. This could simply have been a bit of a glitch. If anyone tries it, and it works for them, please leave a comment!

Registering Domain names

I've been informed of 123 Domain Names which is a resource that can be used to register domain names. It's very straightforward to use - just type in what you want to register and see what it comes up with. The most impressive thing however is the sheer number of alternative options you're given. All of the obvious choices, such as .com, .co.uk, but also ones such as .plc.uk, European domains such as .gr, .no, .pl and some international options.

If you're looking to register a domain, then this is a good resource to take a look at. Thanks Adrian!

'Most websites' failing disabled

'Most websites' failing disabled according to a report from a company called Nomensa as reported by the BBC via the link. 97% of the 100 websites tested in 5 different countries failed testing. The Prime Minister's site was one of the 3 to achieve minimum standards. The key shortfalls are:

• 98% did not follow industry web standards for programming code
• 97% did not allow people to resize pages
• 93% failed to provide adequate text descriptions for graphics
• 89% offered poor page navigation
• 87% used pop-ups, causing problems for those using screen magnification
• 78% used colours with poor contrast, making it difficult for those with colour blindness
• 73% used JavaScript for important functionality.

It's an interesting news story and worth reading.

PCNames Domain Search

Link: PCNames Domain Search. Absolutely top resource to check to see if domain names are available. It doesn't include .uk or .eu, which would make it really useful, but it has the key top level domains. I've raved about it in a lot of detail in the SearchEngineWatch blog.