1. You will automatically “ping” your Twitter account every time you post at your blog. Your Twitter post will automatically contain a link back to your blog post, potentially driving massive amounts of traffic to your blog.
2. You get a blog widget that will automatically feature your recent Twitter posts. This will help increase your Twitter following and make step 1 even more powerful.
3. Both the Twitter “pings” and the blog widget will contain a link back to Tweet My Blog… and get this… It will automatically contain your affiliate link. Yes, you will be making money just by using the plugin.
4. Every person you refer will see the One Time Offers and they’ll have the chance to purchase them too. When they purchase one or more of the offers, you make 50% on the sales! Just for copying and pasting some of the promotion tools!

2 - Do a search for your business.  For example, I’ll do a search for my blog, Boston Media Domain.

3 - Notice the Results 1 - 100 of about 2,280 for Boston media domain.  These results can be sorted by date, down to the last hour.  Ok, now I have a list of results for what people are saying about me now.  But I want to continue to access this list, and when Google receives a new result, I want to know about it without coming back and doing a new search.
Look down at the left sidebar.  See the subscribe section?  There I can set it up to either send me an email alert every time Google gets a new result for “the viral garden”, or I can set it up as an RSS feed that will send the results to my feed reader.  Since I already use Bloglines as my feed reader, I will click RSS

4 - Since I have set up this search as an RSS feed that will be delivered to my feed reader (Google Reader) automatically, I am now set.  I’ve also done the same with Google Blog Search for the term “Jeff Selig” as well.

5 - Now let’s do the same thing with Google Blog Search to alert us when someone links to your blog.  Go back to Google Blog Search, and type in link: http://www.yourblogsURLhere.com  This will show you what sites are linking to your blog, and how many there are.  Results 1 - 100 of about 1,600 for link: boston media domain Here’s the results for when I searched for sites linking to my blog.  Now you can either set up this as an email alert, or add this to your feed reader as we did in Step 4.

6 - You are now good to go and your reputation management efforts will be greatly rewarded.  Anytime anyone mentions your business in a blog post, or links to your blog, you will know about it, thanks to Google.  I have feeds set up that give me the results anytime a blogger mentions me, my blog, or links to my blog, on their site.  Take the time to monitor your business on the blogosphere

BugMeNot allows you to find and share logins for sites that require you to register. This tool is great to use when you don’t want to have to go through the process of creating an account for a site when you just want to login once for something like a driver.

SpeedTest.net allows you to test your Internet connection speed. It’s great to use when you want to see if your ISP is holding up on their end of the bargain.

Much better than You Get Signal: http://www.grc.com/intro.htm

Desktoptopia is a cool app for the mac that loads designer desktops on your monitor from an ever growing database of top creative desktops. www.desktoptopia.com

http://spambox.us/ lets you set the expire date of your temporary email address from 30 minutes, to a whole year

In addition to my last post, http://www.youconvertit.com/ lets you convert files up to 300Mb in size, instead of media-convert’s 150Mb and zamzar’s 100Mb. It also lets you convert up to 5 files at once.

dontreg.com - temp email is useful too.

Wiki tools Zoho to the list. It provides around 14 different tools like wiki to CRM tools, chat and may more.

Regarding security and mail delivery, I suggest this very interesting service: https://lockbin.com/

It’s very useful, reliable and easy-to-use. A big help ensuring your privacy online.

There are more free DNS, IP and host tools at mydnstools.info, including a very cool web host / webserver info tool.

Here is a list that has hundreds of free ware ranked by popularity

http://michaeleee.blogspot.com/2007/01/list-of-best-freeware.html

I find FreeTube useful when theres some news event thing happening that I want to learn more on..it shows live television channels mostly news rather entertaining.

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that allows you to bookmark sites and view them from any computer. This site is great because not only can you bookmark sites and view them anywhere, you can also search through everyone’s bookmarks to find great tech articles.

Omnidrive is an online storage service that allows you to upload large files, access them from any computer, and share them with other people. They also offer the ability to edit your Office documents using Zoho without ever downloading them. You get 1GB free and the ability to upgrade to 1 terabyte. This site is great for hosting your tech tools and accessing them from computers you are working on.

10 Minute Mail allows you to create temporary email addresses that expire after 10 minutes. It’s great to use for sites that require you to receive something through email but you don’t want to be bombarded with spam.

Free Password Generator
Free Password Generator generates very strong and unique passwords. Before you generate your passwords, you can predefine settings such has what type of symbols to use and the length you want it to be.

Trend Micro HouseCall is an online virus, spyware, and malware scanner that runs in your web browser. It’s very handy when you are working on a computer that doesn’t have antivirus software and you want to scan it without having to install one.

You Get Signal allows you to check which ports are open into your network. This is great tool to use when you are trying to patch holes in your firewall.

WhatIsThatFile.com
WhatIsThatFile.com allows you to identify unknown files on a computer. This tool is great for looking up files that you suspect might be possible viruses, trojans, or malware.

YouSendIt allows you to send large files to other people when the files are too large for your email. This tool is a great alternative to using FTP.

DLL-files.com has a huge library of downloadable dll files. Next time you get an error about a missing dll file, you can go here and download it.

Google Microsoft Search allows you to search specifically through Microsoft-related sites. This site is great for searching through Microsoft tech articles for a specific problem.

Zamzar is a file conversion tool that allows you to convert file types through their site. Currently they support over 60 file types. This is a great tool for converting files when you don’t have the appropriate application to do so. make sure your pop up blocker is turned on!

Default Router Passwords Database allows you to search for router as well as other devices default passwords. This tool comes in very handy when you have to reset a device but can’t find the manual to look up the default password.

Apps, Widgets and Plugins - Windows

Triqqr - Submit tweets directly to Twitter and view user profiles.

Pwytter - Cross platform Python Twitter client with Asian character support.

Teletwitter - Experimental open source client.

TwitBox - View and submit tweets, see replies and direct messages, delete your own tweets, and multiple account support.

Twitterlicious - Update Twitter status, easily check replies and direct messages.

Twitteroo - Client with rurl URL shortening, clickable links and tweets, customization, and both public and friend timelines.

Chirrup - Twitter client with extensive Japanese language support.

TwittIt - Extremely compact and simple app for submitting tweets.

MadTwitter - A reincarnation of Twitterrific, except on Windows.

Twitter CLI - Post tweets via the command line.

What’s Up? - Gadget that allows you to see latest tweets from your friends.

Twadget - Simple gadget that lets you view and submit tweets right from Vista’s Sidebar.

KipFolio Widget - Simple Twitter widget for KipFolio.

Twitter-Sync for Yahoo - Syncs Twitter status with Yahoo Messenger status.

TwitterYM - Simple Yahoo Messenger status updater.

Twessenger - Updates Live Messenger status to reflect latest tweet.

Twit4Live - Set status message as latest tweet, send tweets from within Live Messenger, and send tweets to contacts.

Apps, Widgets and Plugins - Mac

Twitterrific - A compact client that publishes tweets, shows unread tweets, has easy access to profile pages, shows either public or friend timeline, and more.

TwitterPost - Basic client that submits tweets, shows your current iTunes track in your feed, and more.

Twitgit - Read your friend’s tweets and submit your own, right in Dashboard.

TweetAhead - Schedule tweets to be posted ahead of time with a simple Dashboard widget.

Twitterlex - Dashboard widget that shows your friend’s latest tweets as well as allows you to submit tweets.

Twidget - Update your Twitter status within Dashboard.

TikiTwit - Match your iChat status to your last tweet.

Apps, Widgets and Plugins - Linux

BLT - Perl script that lets you see what your friends are doing right from the Terminal.

Twitter for Vim - Publish tweets right within Vim.

ZenTwitter - A GUI frontend for Twitter using zenity and curl.

Twitux - Twitter client for the GNOME desktop.

gTwitter - GTK+ based app inspired by Twitterrific.

Twitter.el - Publish tweets while in Emacs.

Twitbar - Post tweets from the GNOME deskbar.

Twit.el - Another utility that allows publishing of tweets within Emacs.

Cross-platform Apps, Widgets and Plugins

Tweetr - Submit tweets, upload files, urltea built in, delete messages.

Spaz - Cross-platform client built with AIR.

Tweeter - Java based client with customizable UI.

Twinja - AIR based client which allows you to follow users on the fly.

Search

Twitterverse - Search through archived public timelines and tweets.

Twittersearch - Search Twitter and tweets by word.

Terraminds - Search for specific users or tweets.

TwitDir - Allows user to search for users by name, location, or username.

Browser Plugins

TwitBin - Send and view tweets right within Firefox.

TwittyTunes - A FoxyTunes addon that posts what you’re currently listening to Twitter.

Shareaholic - Share links and webpages via Twitter right within Firefox.

Search Plugin - Tweet right from the Firefox search box.

Tweetbar - Put Twitter on your Firefox sidebar.

Twippera - Twitter widget for Opera that can send and view tweets.

TwitterFox - Compact Firefox extension that can publish and view tweets.

Mobile

iTweet - A mobile Twitter site designed for the iPhone.

iTwit - Mobile version of Twitter made for the iPhone.

Tweeter - Twitter on your mobile phone while avoiding text message charges.

Jargong - Browse Flickr, do some social networking, but most importantly, check and publish tweets.

WildSets - Extensve Twitter app for mobile phones.

TwitterBerry - Twitter built for various BlackBerry devices. Update and view timelines with ease.

jTwitter - View timelines, enter updates, and more, all on your mobile phone.

TreoTwit - Easily check and update your Twitter right from your Treo.

Random/Other

Twittervision - See where in the world people are submitting tweets from, real time.

TwitThis - Allow visitors to your site to easily share a page or post via Twitter.

MoniTwitter - Receive important updates about your site via Twitter.

TwitterNotes - Share private or public notes via Twitter.

RSS2Twitter - Share any RSS feed on Twitter, and have new RSS items automatically be tweeted.

TwitterBuzz - Find out what is being most linked to on Twitter.

Twitterholic - Shows the top users and accounts on Twitter.

Given that there is a heap of websites out there who are on the first page, what is their secret? It is a little industry term called “SEO” and it stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO basically consists of the customization of your website, its content and its internal and external links to assist in the overall indexing and ranking of your website in popular search engines. There are many contributing factors that are used in determining a website’s ranking and every search engine is different. This makes trying to optimize your site for Google, Yahoo, Live and the many others quite a painstaking task.

As most of us are aware, Google is currently the most popular search engine for the majority of Internet users. As such, it is only normal that we’d want to focus our sights on achieving a higher ranking within Google first with the hope that the rest will follow. To do this, we must start a journey that could potentially take months before we start seeing any real change, however we have to start somewhere.

Our journey begins by defining some of the key contributing factors that Google uses to determine a website’s and webpage’s ranking within its results. These factors range from keyword use to manipulating internal and external links and the líst goes on. To get you started, we have listed the top twenty factors that you should focus on in order to help get your website that little bit closer to the top of the search engine results listings.

Keyword Use Factors

The following components relate to the use of search query terms in determining the rank of a particular page.

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag - Placing the targeted search term or phrase in the title tag of the web page’s HTML header.

2. Keyword Use in Body Text - Using the targeted search term in the visible, HTML text of the page.

3. Relationship of Body Text Content to Keywords - Topical relevance of text on the page compared to targeted keywords.

4. Keyword Use in H1 Tag - Creating an H1 tag with the targeted search term/phrase.

5. Keyword Use in Domain Name & Page URL - Including the targeted term/phrase in the registered domain name, i.e. keyword.com plus target terms in the webpage URL, i.e. seomoz.org/keyword-phrase.

Page Attributes

The following elements comprise how Google interprets specific data about a webpage independent of keywords.

6. Link Popularity within the Site’s Internal Link Structure - Refers to the number and importance of internal links pointing to the target page.

7. Quality/Relevance of Links to External Sites/Pages - Do links on the page point to high quality, topically-related pages?

8. Age of Document - Older pages may be perceived as more authoritative while newer pages may be more temporarily relevant.

9. Amount of Indexable Text Content - Refers to the literal quantity of visible HTML text on a page.

10. Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically) - Assuming search engines can use text, visual or other analysis methods to determine the validity and value of content, this metric would provide some level of rating.

Site/Domain Attributes

The factors below contribute to Google’s rankings based on the site/domain on which a page resides.

11. Global Link Popularity of Site - The overall link weight/authority as measured by links from any and all sites across the web (both link quality and quantity).

12. Age of Site - Not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines (note that this can change if a domain switches ownership).

13. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site - The subject-specific relationship between the sites/pages linking to the target page and the target keyword.

14. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.

15. Rate of New Inbound Links to Site - The frequency and timing of external sites linking in to the given domain.

Inbound Link Attribute

These pieces affect Google’s weighting of links from external websites pointing to a page and ultimately will assist in the ranking of that page.

16. Anchor Text of Inbound Link.

17. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site.

18. Topical Relationship of Linking Page.

19. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community - The link weight/authority of the target website amongst its topical peers in the online world.

20. Age of Link.

Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes

There are also some points we should make before you start getting your hands dirty. With any type of SEO marketing, there are some things that can actually have a negative impact on your ranking. These following components may negatively affect a spider’s ability to crawl a page or its rankings at Google.

• Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots.
• Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index.
• External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites.
• Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages.
• Overuse of Targeted Keywords (Stuffing/Spamming).

It’s now time to get busy! Start prioritizing your tasks, modifying your content and building your internal and external links to meet some of the above guidelines. Keep in mind that improving indexing is mostly a technical task and improving ranking is mostly a business/marketing strategy. What might work now may not work in the future and finally, it takes time. Loads of time. Still, with a bit of trial and error and a good dose of persistence, you can achieve the search engine ranking you’re after.

Bido.com is off to a really great start and they can directly attribute that to me, one of their domain experts.

Expert comments on domain names at auction is a new  phenomenon which really stands out in the minds of people from both inside and outside of our industry.  Every time I comment on a domain name, the outside investment community sees the potential in investing in domain names.  They also look to me as an expert to provide valuable information and recognize my expertise for the knowledge that I hold.

Need some advice in acquiring a domain or developing a name?  Contact us at web [at] treg [dot] com

Here are some great free Webmaster and Search Engine Optimization Tools.

Free Website Templates:

Free Niche Site Builders - Allows affiliates to quickly and easily build and maintain multi-page affiliate marketing price comparison websites directly from multiple merchant product datafeeds. AffiliStore 2 has been created using PHP and MySQL and has a simple installation interface.

Free Website Templates

Free Site Templates

Free Web Templates

Template World

Free Templates Online

Open Source Web Design

WordPress Themes

WordPress Plug-Ins

Website Design Tools, Banners, Photo Editing and Buttons

Gimp 2 - Photo Retouching, Image Authoring, Banner Creator, Logo Maker and lots more! Fantastic!

FreeSerifSoftware - This website offers 5 free softwares, including logo maker, picture editor, 3-D Website Graphics

Favicon Generator - This tool creates personalized bookmark favicons, from your own personal design, which also display in browser tabs and headers. Great for site branding, symbolism and a way for your visitors to easily identify your site in their bookmark list. Fantastic!

Nattyware-Pixie - Website Design Color Picker Tool.

Google Gadgets - Add a variety of gadgets to your websites for your visitors use and pleasure, like weather reports, search, to-do lists and more.

Logo Design

Logo Ease - Simple Logo Maker, very user friendly!

Cool Text Logo Maker - Haven’t used this one, but it looks good.

Logo Design Engine - Make logos and buttons. Has great images, add text, edit font and colors. Very user friendly!

Likno Button Maker - Create custom buttons.

Free Website Widgets

Google Page Rank Widget - Nifty widget to show off your Page Rank on your website/blog with options to add Yahoo and Google Index Stats.

Spring Widgets - You can create an RSS reader with multiple feeds; badges for your profile on social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, and Bebo; countdown application widgets and other cool gadgets for your blogs and websites.

Social Bookmark - All-in-One Button - Create a social bookmark add button for all social sites personalized with your website info embedded.

AddThis - Another social bookmark widget creator that also can be personalized with your website information and logo.

Robots Tool

Create Robots.txt - Fill in your parameters and the robots file is generated. This website has complete guides and tutorials on everything robots.txt.

Link Cloaker Tools:

Tiny Url - Make your long links Tiny/Cloak Affiliate ID’s. Great Tool!

Add Me Affiliate Link Cloaker - Affiliate link cloaking tool, allows to select a no-follow tag for the link.

Website Forms/Auto Responders:

Contact Form Killer - Free tool to add contact forms to your sites

Aweber Free Trial - The best and most popular software to create newsletters, auto responders and website sign up forms for your websites. For email and subscription marketing of your websites.

SEO - Backlink Building Tools

Backlink Builder - This is a great tool! It searches for websites of the niche/theme you specify that contain keyphrases like “Add link”, “Add site”, “Add URL”, “Add URL”, “Submit URL”, “Add Article” etc. Then presents them in a list with hyperlinks, no easier way to build reciprocal backlinks for you websites. Must Have!

Fast Blog Finder - Fantastic! Searches for Do-Follow Comment Links blogs for the keywords entered. Free version provides 50 results for each keyword.

Backlink Checkers for Search Engine Optimization Analysis

Free Backlink Checker from SEOPro Must Have! - Complete and comprehensive backlink report including, Home Page PR, Linkpage PR and your anchors, see my detailed review here: Best Free Backlink Checker

Link Assure Reciprocal Link Checker - Check if your link partners are still linking to you.

BRL Reciprocal Link Checker - Check on your reciprocal link partners.

WebConfs Reciprocal Link Checker

Bad Neighborhood Link Checker - Find out if your links are dangerous! This tool will scan the links on your website, and on the pages that your website is linking to, and flag possible problem areas, such as bad neighborhood sites and sites that have been penalized by Google. Must Have!

Free Website Analysis Tools:

Search Engine Stats

Google Webmaster Tools - See how Google views your site, including, index pages, crawl stats, robots.txt and sitemap validity and more. Must have!

Yahoo Site Explorer - Yahoo webmaster tools. See how your site is indexed in Yahoo and view all backlinks Yahoo has for your site. Google does not update backlink information often, but Yahoo does! See all your backlinks by site and number.

MSN Webmaster Tools - See how your site is indexed and crawled in MSN search engine.

Google Analytics - Check your site stats, visitors and traffic. Complete Reports - Must Have!

Stat Counter - Check your sites stats, visitors and traffic. Some prefer Statcounter over Google Analytics.

Google Data Base Checker - Check your websites in the 700+ Google Databases

Google Alerts - See if your site is mentioned. Enter search parameters, like your site name or KW and Google automatically sends you alerts when there are new Google results for your search terms. Alerts with results from news, blogs, videos and gourps.

Search Engine Optimization Tools & Internet Marketing Analyzers

SEO Rank Checker - Monitor website rank

PR Checker - Domain Page Rank Checker, also has a nice widget to show off your rank on your websites. Good Tool!

Multi Rank Checker - Multiple domain page rank checker, allows you to check several domains at once.

Website Grader - SEO tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website by giving you a grade. Great Tool!

GoLexa - Complete Page & Site Analysis - For your sites and competitors - Must See!

Blog Juice Calculator - See how much juice your blogs and competing blogs have. Must have for bloggers!

Keyword Spy - See what KW your competitors are using and tells you the exact terms and phrases that are driving the most traffic to your competitors’ websites. Great Tool!

Compete Site Analytics - In-depth analysis to compare the growth of two or more websites. Great Tool!

Touch Graph - Reveals the network of connectivity between websites as per Google.

Index Rank Website Growth Analysis - Uses a scale of 1-10 to determine indexing rate of a website which helps to determine its growth. Must Have!

Xinu Returns - Check your sites PageRank, Backlinks, Indexed Pages and Rankings in popular search engines, social bookmark sites, technorati and more. Great Tool!

Conduit - On demand website syndication that builds traffic and revenue.

Meta Tag Analyzer - Analyzes the Meta Tags of your site and identifies problems and fixes for SEO. Good One!

SEO Toolbars

SEO Toolbar for Firefox - SEOBooks live toolbar for firefox that shows all pertinent SEO info for whatever site you are viewing, like highlighting no-follow links and pages, page rank, number of index pages in major search engines, site age and lots more. Must Have!

SEO Quake Toolbar - Similar to the Firefox SEO Toolbar, shows pertinent SEO and Internet Marketing information and is available for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Must Have!

MSN Labs Internet Marketing Tools:

Here are some excellent Internet Marketing tools from MSN Labs.

MSN - Online Commercial Intention - Predict a customer’s intension to buy, sell, or complete another kind of transaction based on her search queries or recently visited URLs.

Explore MSN - Analyze publisher website content and its audience to provide advertisers insights for ad placement and targeting.

MSN - Search Volume Seasonality Forecast - Forecast the seasonality patterns of search queries.

Keyword Research Tools:

SEO Book Free Keyword Suggestion Tool

Word Tracker Keywords Free Trial

Keyword Discovery - Free Trial

Keyword Elite

MSN Keyword Forecast

Google Adwords Tools

Google Adwords Keyword Tool - Gage KW searches and competition in Google Adwords.

Google Adwords Traffic Estimator - Shows the estimated cost per click for selected KW. This one is good if you do not yet have a Google Adwords account and just want to know how much your KW are costing.

Long Tail Adwords - Quickly see the Long Tail Adwords and Keywords you could be missing out on.

Add URL - Search Engines & Other Places:

Google

Yahoo

MSN

Scrub the Web

Gigablast

Add Your Site Free

My Design Award - This site gives awards for best website design, they also get lots of traffic and views of your site, and you also get a nice backlink!

Twitter - Create a profile for each of your webwesites and follow some people

LinkedIn - Create a profile and add your websites

MyBlogLog - Create a profile and add all your websites and blogs, join groups and add contacts!

Social Marker - Add your sites/content to over 65 Social Bookmark/Web 2.0 Sites from one browser window - Must Have!

Claim your Blogs @ Technorati - Add your blogs to Technorati and set automatic pinging for whenever you update.

Blog Rush

Blog Carnival

All Browsers Website Display Checker:

Have you ever seen how your site looks in different browsers? Especially in Internet Explorer? You might be surprised at what you find.

Different browsers display sites in different ways due to code issues, and IE is just a bug fest with its constant problems with frames and CSS display. Use the tool below to get screenshots of how your site looks in over 65 browsers and then use the hack codes to make changes accordingly.

Browser Shots - Screenshots of how your site looks in over 65 browsers.

How to Guides on Fixing Problems with Website Displays Different Browsers:

Internet Explorer Website Browser Display Fixes - Very simple and easy to use guide.

Comprehensive Guide to Fix Display Issues in most Browsers - Provides Hack Codes to add to your sites which will solve display problems in most browsers. Made for webmasters who have some understanding on how to edit and add code to their sites.

Net Mechanic - This site has a lot of information that is worth reading on Browser Display Issues. Provides a free trial of their HTML Box Tool, which will fix these issues.

With sunny summer weather ahead, boat shows are being held in many parts of the country.

Manufacturers display their latest models on the floors of convention halls, and thousands of people come in to take a look.

Many boats are bought at these shows, giving agents the opportunity to write new business. But they should take care.

It’s just possible that some brokers give them the easy coverage vs. the correct Coverage

Aye Matey

Scallywags are Stealing your Bounty

The 2 services are only slightly similar. Friendfeed is more like facebook than twitter. Trying to compare the 2 services is like comparing apples and oranges.

A Few Key Points:
Member Numbers: Twitter has Metcalfe’s law on it side and more members for now
Reliability: Friendfeed has had much better reliability
Rooms: Friendfeed has this new feature which will help it to move forward and gain users because the concept of a “room” is something that most people can quickly grasp.
3rd Party API services: Twitter has over 200 hundred 3rd party web sites that are built off of the twitter API. For now that is an advantage but might dilute twitters long term ability to monetize.

Twitter acts more like a broadcast mechanism with a way for people to follow what you are broadcasting. It also acts as a way to listen to what people are saying. Think of twitter as a way to text short messages (140 characters) to many people all at once. It also has some conversational characteristics that many people find very valuable. Super google juice for all those concerned with SEO too.

Friendfeed allows that same sort of functionality. But here is where Friend feed is very different: Friend feed allows you to “like” & “comment” to a post from over 35 services (twitter, flickr, pownce, last.fm, youtube, blog feed, google reader, facebook status, stumbleupon, etc.).

Friendfeed is much more of an aggregation service and a central place for me to publish my social stream. It also allows people to publish back to friendfeed directly under those comments; making it a much more threaded conversational experience.

The bottom line for now is that both services have many use cases and I can see great value in both. Friendfeed has a nice feature that I think will help it gain traction: Rooms. Rooms allow conversations to occur around a specific subject matter or topic. This has great value in attracting conversations. Twitter is missing out on this feature.

The following table lists the search operators that work with each Google search service. To read about all of the operators, see the Alphabetical List of Search Operators Or click on an operator in the table to jump to its description in the alphabetical-list page.

4. Using More than One Search Operator

You may use many of the basic operators and search operators with each other. However, there are some that must be used by themselves and others that you should be careful about using together.

Search Operators that Can’t Be Combined

There are about a dozen search operators that can’t be combined with any other. If you do, Google probably won’t return any matching documents. Search operators that shouldn’t be mixed include:

• All the search operators whose names begin with “allin,” e.g., allinanchor:, allintext:, allintitle:, and allinurl:.
• Syntaxes that request special information, e.g., define:, phonebook, rphonebook, stocks:.
• Page-specific search operators, e.g., cache:, info:, related:.