Website Heatmaps, an often heard but not-that-often used web tool to analyze your website or blog. Heatmap is a simple concept to analyze the most click-able segments of a web page, with a purpose of optimizing it for better revenue generation. Most of the webmasters, specially those handling small and medium size websites and blogs, know its importance, yet often overlook it, just because of unavailability of an affordable and reliable heatmap builder for their websites. This post is an attempt to let its readers benefit from this concept and introduce some cool free website heatmap generator services.

But first things first…

What is a website heatmap

Heatmap is a term, which has been borrowed by the Internet community from Molecular Biology, where it represent the level of expression of many genes across a number of comparable samples (e.g. cells in different states, samples from different patients) as they are obtained from DNA micro-arrays. [Source: Wiki]

However in reference to websites, a website heatmap is a schematic representation of a web page through multi-colored areas, which show where people look the most on a web page. For an publisher or advertiser it tells you the place your ads are likely to be most effective.

Importance of a website heatmap

Ever webmaster thinks that he has created a perfect design. But it is often just a perception. The perfection of a web page design can only be judged by a web tool, which is able to gather information about what the readers of a web page are actually seeing, and more importantly clicking. Since the purpose of every web page is to give maximum exposure to its content, it becomes highly important to place your content in such a location, which generates maximum impact.

This aspects becomes highly critical in case of websites or blogs, whose purpose if revenue generation through clicks. The web master will like to know, which are the hot spots on their web page and where people click most.

How to build a website heatmap

There are many heatmap building services available. But most of them are paid services, and if they offer you free service, it is limited to only few features. Two of the most popular heatmap generator applications are FuseStats and CrazyEgg but they charge for their service handsomely. Although they also offer free services, with limited features / traffic, but these limits are so stringent that websites within that limit rarely bother about heatmaps.

The free heatmap generators

However, I have come across at least two services, which are free and give satisfactory results for medium sized websites.

First one is ClickHeat, which is an open source program. You just have to upload their code to your site and follow the simple instructions on screen to install.

A basic common feature with all the three heatmap building services mentioned till now, is that they capture the actual clicks in real time. You have to set up the installation, and wait patiently for the clicks to happens. Each click sends the data to the server, and after a definite period / or visitor counts, the report is generated for you to analyze. Obviously this method to build website heatmap is more accurate, but time consuming.

Yet another method is based on some pre-defined algorithms, which simulate the human behavior. A popular and free heatmap generator service based upon this concept is Feng Gui. This service employs the neuroscience concept of “saliency” and claims to “simulate human visual attention and create an attention heatmap”. If you read their blog and their website, it seems their is a high degree of confidence in their algorithm as far as the accuracy is concerned. However, it would have been nice, if they had given some actual data on how close their simulated results are with the actual heat maps. This would have surely increased the confidence level of the users.

How to use Feng-Gui

Use of this service is extremely simple. Just go to their website and enter your URL address. Your website heatmap is generated within 30 seconds. See the heatmap of my blog Web Tools and Tips. Sometimes, the service is not able to load your webpage, in that case your can take a snap shot / screen capture of it and upload it as an image so as to quickly generate the heatmap.

Firefox Addon for Heatmap

And now comes the simplest of them all.

Feng-Gui also provides you a firefox addon, just for building a heat map of any web page. This is real cool. That’s why I love Firefox. You can install the firefox addon for heatmap here.

After reading this long post, if you still want to have more information, then DazzlinDonna has written a decent analysis of 5 Heatmap Site Analytics Solutions, which you may like to check out.

In the previous post, we had written about a quick tip to hide your files and folders from your colleagues and other users of your computer. The basic premise of that tip was to create an invisible folder in your PC, which will be like any other folder, but there will be no name and no icon will be seen. So if somebody else explores the directory, that folder will not be seen and hence your files and folders within that invisible folder will remain protected.

However that method is not a foolproof method, and in case your colleagues also are reading my blog then they will also be knowing this tip and thus can access your folder easily.

A better approach will be to encrypt your sensitive files, with the help of some encryption web tool. There are plenty of them available. We would like to introduce you to four of the free file encryption utilities, which can easily encrypt your files with the click of a mouse.

FileVault: It is primarily meant for a Macintosh computer. It can be found in the Mac OS X v10.3 (”Panther”) operating system and later. It works by encrypting your home directory using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm with a key, which is derived from the user’s login password. The best part is that the recipient doesn’t need any software to open these files, just a password, and therefore, this utility is useful if you want to send it to somebody over the Internet, who is not having this tool in his PC.

TrueCrypt: TrueCrypt is a free open source on-the-fly encryption (OTFE) program for Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista and Linux. It creates a “file-hosted container” which consists of an encrypted volume with its own file system, contained within a regular file, which can then be mounted as if it were a real disk. TrueCrypt also supports device-hosted volumes, which can be created on either an individual partition or an entire disk.

AxCrypt: AxCrypt is a free, open source file encryption application for Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2K/XP integrated into Windows Explorer. Its current cryptographic primitives are AES-128 and SHA-1.

Kruptos: Use Kruptos to encrypt files on your PC or a portable storage device. With this tool, you can also create files that self-decrypt. It uses 128 bit blowfish encryption to encrypt your files or folders which then can only be accessed with the correct password, so that only you can have access to them. You can even select to disguise the newly encrypted files name for further privacy.

I am a fan of free software Google Pack. Google Pack includes several independent softare like Google Desktop, Gtalk, Google Earth, Picasa, Google Screensavers as well other free ware software’s like PDF reader, anti-spyware etc. An interesting feature of Google Pack is its ability to automatically look for the updates and update itself. If you have not yet download Google Pack, just click the link in my side bar.

As a competition to it, Microsoft also has its own version with the name Windows Live Pack, which brings Windows Live services to your desktop. There are various services like Family Safety suite, web photo gallery, online storage service, Windows Live Writer blogging tool, and some more included in it. You can choose which services to get. The new ‘Mail’ program, which is also part of Windows Live pack, lets you connect to Hotmail and other email accounts.

I will here make a specific mention of Windows Live Writer, which is one of the most useful program, I have come across for writing my blog posts in an offline environment. There are also several useful plugins available for Live writer, which enhance your blogging experience.

Overall, a nice competition for Google Pack, but still, Google pack is a winner for me, specially with its unbeatable application like Google Earth.

Independent Thoughts:
The best web hosting service is the one that takes out time to review the particulars of the site. This is done in order to figure out if cheap web hosting would be enough for the site, or is the web design too complicated for it. Once done with deciding webhosting domain, one can proceed with other important matters like features suiting wireless internet service. Considering all of this is a part of search engine optimization and domain name registration.

Microsoft Power Toys is a set of tiny all-purpose applications, which are there for enhancing user experience with Windows. Ideally, they should ha ve been part of the OS itself, but for some reasons best known to Microsoft, they have not been part of Windows, but you can download them and use them for free.

Currently, the package counts 15 different programs as mentioned below. Some of them are really useful. But they are only for WIndows XP and do not work with Windows Vista.

Color Control Panel Applet: This web tool helps you to easily manage Windows color settings in one place. Ideal solutionn for those worrying about the changes in colors from screen to print.

SyncToy: It helps you copy, move, and synchronize different directories and files from different sources like digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops.

RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer: Organize and work on your digital RAW image files.

ClearType Tuner: It lets you read text on your screen.

HTML Slide Show Wizard: It helps you create a slide show of your digital pictures, which can easily be uploaded on a web site.

Open Command Window Here: A quick way to open the command window from the contextual menu.

Alt-Tab Replacement: You will also be able to see a preview of the page, which you will switch next.

Tweak UI: It gives you an instant access to system settings which remain unexposed by default, like including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.

Other power toys include web tools like Power Calculator, Image Resizer, CD Slide Show Generator, Virtual Desktop Manager, Taskbar Magnifier, Webcam Timershot.

Overall, a nice collection of free web tools and utilities.
Independent Thoughts:
Mostly webhosting net is a rather compliant host. It offers useful software tips as an incentive too. The free web design templates are taken for granted. The uses of such cheap web hosting is that more capital can be invested in internet marketing. Particularly, certain fields like ecommerce hosting require more online backup.

Microsoft Office is the king of the Office Applications. There are no second thoughts about that.

But that doesn’t mean that they are the best on all parameters. They are the king because they were the first and therefore were able to quickly grab the market.

Today there are many free alternatives to the Microsoft Office suite, which are free also. Microsoft Office may be offering some really advanced features, which may not be utilized my most of the common users, but if you consider price also as a factor, then these free web tools will rank much higher than Microsoft Office. They offer almost all the features, which a common user may ever require. Some of them are mentioned below.

Online Office Applications

• Google Docs
• Zoho
• Thinkfree

Downloadable Office Applications

• StarOffice
• IBM Lotus Symphony
• OpenOffice

You can find a review of them at Makeuseof.com.

However, general users are always concerned about the compatibility issue; whether the documents created on the office suites will seemlessly be able to work with other popular office suite packs. This is the question asked by many and this is the prime reason why these excellent office suite applications have not been so popular.But, if such a suite is offered by Microsoft itself, then all such concerns should come to a halt. And lo… Microsoft is going to present the Windows Live (Office Suite), just for meeting that requirement. The service is yet to go public and you can register yourself now to get informed, when it is launched

If your online life is divided at different locations; like office and home, you may be wanting to synchronize different files and folders, which are located at your office computer, your home PC, your laptop and your USB drives.

There are many options. Simple copy and paste. But that is too crude.

A few freeware like Allway Sync etc. They are nice but, somehow, I am always skeptical of using third party software.

Now Microsoft has released latest version of SyncToy 2.0 beta for letting you synchronize your files. It is free and comes from a trustworthy source like Microsoft. And so, I like it. With this, you can easily copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers so as to achieve perfect synchronization.
Independent Thoughts:
Getting domain registration is the first step of site hosting. A cheap web hosting service may be employed, in order to save more for wireless internet providers. But this fact should not effect the affiliate marketing. Installing internet phone services depends upon the host too and software tools are also available to check the affiliate.

Foxit Reader is a free light weight application for handling PDF documents. It is small in size, only 2.1 Mb and a rich feature set. The best part is that it is amazingly fast to load. Foxit Reader supports all Windows platforms like 98/Me/2000/XP/2003/Vista.

Now no more waiting periods to open pdf files through Adobe Acrobat reader, which was a pain when opening in Firefox Browsers. Its breezing fast speed will surely amuse you.

Another useful feature of Foxit is that it allows you to make annotations. i.e. now you can write notes or comments or highlight text on a PDF document very easily. It is further claimed that it is spyware free, while some other freely available pdf readers often connect to Internet to share your important data.

There are several new features in its latest version Foxit Reader 2.2 like interactive form filler, multi-language UI support, on-demand download of add-on, self upgrade, Javascript support, improved printing speed, streamlined UI and much more., which you can check out on its download page.