Recently I switched to Google Chrome as my default browser, I’ve found it to be lighter weight and faster than the other main stream browsers (FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari) found on Windows Operated PC’s. So far it’s been a really good move, except…

Apparently there isn’t a built-in function to check page rank in Google Chrome yet. This is a big problem as I constantly use Google’s PR to evaluate the performance of websites in Google’s search results. If a site has a good or even decent PR you can assume that Google is viewing it with some credibility, while a site with no PR has some serious issues.

While Searching for an answer, I discovered the following solution from techie-buzz.com

“With the recent PageRank update many webmasters and publishers may be eager to check their latest PageRank scores, but if you are using Google Chrome there is no toolbar available yet to view the PageRank.

If you do not want to switch between multiple browsers just to check page ranks, here is a handy bookmarklet you can use to check PageRank in Google Chrome.

Just drag and drop the Google PageRank bookmarklet to your favorites bar and click on it whenever you want to check the PageRank of any given page.

This tool is a part of techie-buzz.com’s collection of the extensive useful tools and utilities we are launching for users. Do try it out and give your feedback to us.

Here’s how it works:

1. In Google Chrome, Single left click and hold down
2. Drag to the bookmark bar in Google chrome (if done correctly, cursor will turn into a circle with a line through it)
3. Release left mouse button (shortcut will be created)
4. Click on bookmark to see page rank of the website in your current Google Chrome Tab. A pop-up will launch with your page rank information in it.

Now that Yahoo has decided to discontinue support for the Overture keyword suggestion tool, we need an alternatives and here they are!

• Google Adwords Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Digital Point Keyword Suggestions
• Self SEO Keyword Popularity Tool

Free web site speed test to improve website performance

• Web Page Analyzer – 0.963

Weblogs.com, a VeriSign service, is a ping server that automatically notifies subscribers when new content is posted to a website or blog. Weblogs.com is the original ping service and receives millions of pings every day from blogs that configure their publishing software to notify Weblogs.com the moment content is published.

• VeriSign Weblogs Ping Notification Service

Evaluate the density of the keywords on your web pages.

• Keyword Density Calculator

When used properly, trackbacks and pingbacks are an excellent way to build links and traffic to your blog, as well as building relationships with other bloggers.

• WordPress Trackback Tutorial

The Sitemap Protocol allows you to inform search engines about URLs on your websites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap that uses the Sitemap Protocol is an XML file that lists URLs for a site. The protocol was written to be highly scalable so it can accommodate sites of any size. It also enables webmasters to include additional information about each URL (when it was last updated; how often it changes; how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

* Google Sitemap

This article will show you how to stream MP3 or WMA music or audio on a web page using Windows Media Player object and embed controls (for cross-browser compatability). This will allow large sound files to be streamed as they are played, and will work perfectly in all major browsers (eg: MSIE, Netscape/Mozilla, and Opera browsers).

• How to stream music or audio from your website

The HTML required to embed a movie or animation into a web page can be complex. With the Embedded Media HTML Generator developed by CIT staff, you won’t need to remember the complex HTML code required to embed media in your Web pages. All you need to do is select your media type, fill out a simple form, click submit, and copy and paste the generated HTML into your Web page.

• Embeded Media HTML Generator

If you don”t want MSN to display a picture of your site in the search listings use one of the following options.

Place in your robots text file:

• User-agent: searchpreview
  Disallow:

Place between your head tags:

• <meta name=”robots” content=”noimageindex,nomediaindex”/>

Webmaster resources for Google Stats, sitemap and more

• Google Webmaster Tools

SENDA legislation states that all educational websites must be accessible to all e.g. websites must be readable by the web page ‘readers’ used by visually impaired users. This page provides tips on complying with SENDA.

• Validation Tips for SENDA

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

• Lorem Ipsum

Color Selector is an application for selecting, mixing and previewing colors, intended primarily for Web developers as it deals directly in HTML hexadecimal colours. It features several colour selection and display modes, can copy and paste HTML colours, and supports drag and drop.

Colours can be selected via RGB and HSV sliders, entered as an HTML hex code, or chosen from a colour palette or a bank of favourite colour slots. Pairs of colours can be blended together to obtain an in-between colour, for if you want to adjust one colour to be more like another. Text preview is also available, to determine how text of a particular font and size will look in a particular colour, over a chosen background colour.

All the program’s settings (with the exception of the live color copy state) are saved when the program exits, and restored again when next loaded.

Click Here to learn more

ColorZilla
Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies. With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. DOM spying features allow getting various information about DOM elements quickly and easily. And there’s more

Color Cop
Color Cop v5.3 is a multi-purpose color picker for web designers and programmers. It features an eyedropper, magnifyer with 1 to 16x zoom, 3 by 3 and 5 by 5 average sampling, snap to websafe, auto copy to clipboard, color history, and a 42 color complementary color palette. It can output color codes in the following hex formats: HTML, Delphi, Powerbuilder, Visual Basic, and Visual C++. Windows95/98/NT/2000/Me/XP.

Click Here to learn more about Color Cop

ColorPic
Ever tried using a color picker on a high resolution monitor? It’s impossible. That’s why this color picker has a magnifier attached. Grab palettes of up to 16 colors at once and use four advanced color mixers to select a spectrum of possibilities.

Click Here for more info and to download

RedHat Color Picker
Like the color scheme of another website? this handy tool will tell you what they are using. Click Here to try it out!

To learn even more about using color on the web, Check Out Color Mixers.

You can create a Google Sitemap in four easy steps

1. Enter your full website URL and some optional parameters.
2. Press ‘Start’ button and wait until the site is completely crawled (the progress will be indicated)
3. Download the sitemap file using this link and put it into the “public_html/” folder of your site.
4. Go to your Google Webmaster account and add your sitemap URL.

Click Here to get started