The Tech Guy for Saturday 6 March 2010 – Show 645

Host: Leo Laporte

The newest netbooks, modifying the x-box, cleaning dust from your digital camera, multibooting with Windows 7, and you calls.

For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com.

Bandwidth for the Tech Guy podcast is provided by Cachefly.

Running time: 1:59:46

More Info: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/twit.cachefly.net/ttg0645.mp3

Everyone likes to know statistics about their website.  Here is the way to learn the Google Pagerank and tons of other information, not just about your own site, but any one you choose.

I have purchased and installed a program on my companion website PageRankToday called RankChecker. 

RankChecker is a great program written as a php script and is easily installed on a webserver.  It is hosted on a site called GetRank.org.  You can get to the website by clicking on the picture to the right.  The author has a great demo of the front page as well as the administrative area. 

This script gives a tremendous amount of information about any website you wish to explore.  Straight from the website, here are the tools and information it displays.

TOOLS:

• Domain Age
• Google Pagerank
• Alexa Rank
• Google Backlinks
• Yahoo Backlinks
• Alexa Backlinks
• Altavista Backlinks
• AllTheWeb Backlinks
• DMOZ Directory
• Yahoo Directory
• Google Indexed Pages
• Yahoo Indexed Pages
• Bing Indexed Pages
• ASK Indexed Pages
• Digg Links
• Delicious Links
• Google Bot Last Visit
• Site Value
• Pagerank Button

I am looking forward to having RankChecker as part of my SEO toolkit.  I have made it available on PageRankToday as one of my SEO Tools, but I would encourage you to purchase a copy for yourself if you would like to host it on your site.  The $10 cost is minimal. 

If you aren't really sure, there is a free version that doesn't have all of the features, but would give a good "test drive".  You can access the free version from the GetRank.org main page, or just click -> HERE.

I have only good things to say about this script and its author.  There were a couple of small issues with the script running on my hosting server, but they were quickly fixed.  I would rate the Script and Support outstanding.  

RankChecker is a great way to learn many details about any website, not just your own.

Enjoy!

-Loren

Everyone is interested in growing their blog audience.  Twitter is a great way to get more people to visit your blog. 

When you tweet you can get people interested in your content.  Actually retweeting others tweets is even better.  The person you retweet will generally see that you have an interest in their information, and they will respond in kind.

I am not interested in tricking people to visit my site.  I just want as many people as possible to look at it.  If they like the content, they will be back.

I came across this site called Digerati Marketing a while back and I was intrigued by a post about creating a twitter bot.  This is a well done tutorial that will enable you to automatically post to your twitter account based upon the topics you select.   I would rate the process of making this automated ReTweet Bot a little complex for the novice user, but the tutorial walks you through each step. 

How to Make A Twitter Bot With No Coding

Be sure to check out some of the other posts on this blog.  He doesn't post too often, but when he does, the content is well done.  As the author of the post comments, don't let people try to sell you a bot when you can make your own.  One of the extra benefits is that you will learn how to use Yahoo Pipes.  Pipes is an excellent application that I never knew existed until I dug into this Bot building project.

So go ahead and try it!  Create a twitter bot see how your traffic can grow.  Let me know how it works out for you.  You can visit my Twitter Site to see how it is working out for me.
http://twitter.com/theteachingbox/

-Loren

The Tech Guy for Sunday 21 February 2010 – Show 642

Host: Leo Laporte

The web-cam spying lawsuit, the best video conferencing options, moving music to a new laptop, flash issues, and your calls.

For detailed show notes, visit techguylabs.com.

Bandwidth for the Tech Guy podcast is provided by Cachefly.

Running time: 1:59:30

More Info: http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/twit.cachefly.net/ttg0642.mp3

My Friend Katherine has a great Blog called