Check your Hotmail Email in Microsoft Office Outlook

While Hotmail doesn't offer POP3 access, Microsoft has released a free utility called Microsoft Office Outlook Connector that allows you download email from your Hotmail account to Outlook or Outlook Express.

With Outlook Connector, you can not only send or receive email - you get all the goodies of Outlook including the Junk Mail filter and powerful Rules Wizard of Outlook to help you auto-sort the incoming email.

To configure your Outlook with Windows Live Hotmail, just download the 3 MB Outlook Connector, type in your Hotmail username+password and you're done.

The best part is that if you have multiple accounts, you can manage them from one central location - your Outlook. Supports both Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007.

Get Outlook Connector here. [outlookconnector.exe] Requires Windows Validation check.

Google Bans a PR 7 Website for Selling Paid Text Link Ads

Robin Good writes the popular MasterNewMedia blog that enjoys a Google Page Rank of 7 and is also a premium Adsense Publisher. Like most other websites on the planet, this place is monetized by Google Adsense, text links  and other direct advertising.

Early this week, Robin realized that his site has been pushed out of Google without warning and all the organic search traffic originating from Google suddenly vanished.

This could be the worst nightmare for any online publisher since Google has, without doubts, the maximum reach. In Robin's case, Google was responsible for 80% of his site traffic which is now gone.

Initially, he thought the corrupt sitemap file for responsible for Google kicking the site out of the top results but soon realized the culprit was something else - paid links. [Read Matt Cutts warning on paid links here and here.]

Robin has submitted a re-inclusion requested with Google. He makes over $3k per month from Text Link Ads alone but has decided to remove them from his site because it's an overall loss in the long term.

"I do not suggest you take off text links or stop considering them because they pose a risk of Google penalizing your site. I suggest this because if it doesn't start from me the being honest and transparent with the system I use to survive this independent publishing game is not going to last very long."

How to View Adobe PDF Files on your iPod

Grove writes - "Is it possible to read PDF files with my iPod?"

If you have iPod Touch, you can use iBooks to read PDF files but if you have an older-generation device, you  can also read PDF documents in your iPod but only the text, not the embedded images.

Here's the three step process to turn your iPod into a basic PDF viewer:

1. Open the PDF document in Adobe Reader and save that as a text file. Alternatively, you use GMail or Zamzar to extract the text out of the PDF.
2. Next upload the text file to ipod-notes, give it a name and download the split version as a Zip. [can also be used for saving HTML web pages to your iPod like articles from Wikipedia]
3. Plugin your iPod and Enable Disk Use in iTunes. Now open Windows Explorer and double click the Notes folder in iPod device. Just extract the zip file here that we created in Step 2.

To read the PDF on your iPod screen, scroll to Extras -> Notes. All notes are automatically connected with each other just like hyperlinks in websites.

Send Really Big Files From Your Desktop with Sendago

 

Sendago is an impressive desktop+web software for sharing files on your hard drive that are otherwise too large for sending as email attachments. It's not an online file storage service but a good alternate to email attachments.

You can either use Sendago as a standalone app for emailing large documents or it can be easily integrated with Outlook just like the YouSendIt plugin - emails are sent via Outlook but the files are uploaded to Sendago servers.

There are a couple of reason why you may enjoy Sendago - First, it allows you 10 GB of online storage for free so you can share files of virtually unlimited size.

Second, Sendago's desktop uploader cum file manager keeps of track of all files that you have sent via Sendago - so if you are sending the same file again to a different set of people, Sendago won't reupload, it would just use the existing file.

You can see thumbnails of pictures making it easy for you to make selections. Sendago even tracks the number of times a file has been downloaded by the recipients. All this information is shown in the desktop software itself without you having to open their website.

The recipient can download the shared files from the web browser without installing any software. One issue - the file download links auto-expire after a week for free accounts.

Related: Send Large Email Attachments and Big Files

FeedBurner RSS Numbers Gone Down? Blame it on Desktop Readers

This blog has approximately 13,000 RSS subscribers according to FeedBurner but that subscriber count figure fluctuates anywhere between 12,300 and 13,000 (it's always more on weekdays).

Wondering the reason behind this 'massive' variation? Well, the answer is that numbers will go down when less number of people are checking your feeds in their desktop RSS readers (like FeedDemon, Outlook 2007, RSS Bandit, etc).

Rick Klau of FeedBurner resolved this mystery on Darren's blog. Excerpt:

In the case of stand-alone feed readers, that user has an application running on their computer which fetches the feed [from FeedBurner servers] repeatedly throughout the day...

The fluctuations are almost always due to people using stand-alone computers who don’t turn their computer on, or don’t load their feed reader on a given day. If their feed reader doesn’t ask for the feed that day, we don’t see them, and consequently don’t include them as a subscriber.

While FeedDemon or NetNewswire are also desktop based RSS readers, their subscription numbers are reported by NGO and hence don't influence the day-to-day fluctuation in Feedburner numbers. See Rick's comment below.

Change The Text of FeedBurner RSS Graphics

Which Search Engine Visitors Are Clicking Your Adsense Ads

It's a well known fact that search engine visitors, not your regular readers, are more interested in Adsense ads and other advertising because they've have to your looking for information and are probably in a mood to buy something.

Related: Track Adsense Clicks with Google Analytics

Now the next query, visitors from which search engine are most interested in advertising displayed on your website? In other words, which search engine is sending traffic that converts best for you.

Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo! (he uses Adsense, not YPN) tracks the referring search engines as separate Adsense channels. He posted a snapshot of his Adsense report suggesting that visitors from Comcast, Ask.com and AOL are converting best for him in term of CTR and eCPM (i.e., Adsense Revenue)

Bloglines visitors registered almost negligible conversion and that's obvious for the reason stated above - regulars are more interested in content, not in advertising. Therefore, it makes sense to hide advertising from new articles that are generally read by return visitors, not search engine traffic.

Where to Upload PowerPoint Presentations On the Web

Comparing The Tools for Getting your PowerPoint Presentation Online 

Zoho Show, SlideShare, Scribd, SlideAware and Splashcast are some of the most popular hosting services for uploading PowerPoint files on the web for others to watch the slideshows online or for you to embed the presentations inside web pages.

Though we compared SlideShare and Zoho Show in the past, it's probably time to revisit the topic with the entry of some very good PowerPoint players like the one from SplashCast and Scribd.


Scribd [review] - This may surprise some but Scribd is an excellent place for uploading PowerPoint files. The big advantage of using Scribd is that visitors can search inside the content of your PPT files right inside the viewer. Another feature unique to Scribd is Zoom which is not available in any of the other PowerPoint players. And you can select the slide number that should load at the beginning.

SplashCast (inactive) - This "one size fits all" web player allows you to embed PowerPoint presentations, Word documents, MP3 songs, videos and photographs right inside one player. And you know what - SplashCast gives a skinless PPT player - the navigation bar is visible only when the visitors wants to see else it remains neatly hidden. The transition effects between slides are again very impressive.

SlideShare [review] - The most popular PowerPoint hosting service is also the most convenient one. Upload, grab the Flash embed code and paste. Slideshare create a text transcript of your PowerPoint presentations making it easier for search engines to discover your content. Presenters can learn which websites are embedding their PPT presentations which is such a useful feature. The SlideShare player looks good but you cannot resize it and there's no autoplay option. Supports multiple uploads in one go.

Zoho Show [review] - Zoho is the only service to provide an IFRAME based embed code though the player is done in Adobe Flash like other services. With Zoho Show, viewers can jump to any slide by selecting the slide name from the drop-down in the player bar. They can also select the slide transition duration and run the slideshow. Zoho Show lets you edit your existing presentations before sharing them.


SlideAware [review] - Unlike other PowerPoint hosting services, SlideAware is mostly paid but they do have a free plan which should work for lot of presenters. The PowerPoint player of SlideAware can be resized and you can decide what buttons to display on the player skin. SlideAware provides excellent viewership stats per PPT slide - you'll know who viewed your Presentation, when they viewed it and how long they spent on each slide.


Recommendations:If you a have a long text-based PPT, use Scribd since visitors can quickly search for text phrases.If you want to edit the PPT online before sharing, Zoho Show is the way to go.
If you want to integrate the PowerPoint presentation with pictures from Flickr, videos from YouTube and even MP3, SplashCast is the perfect service for you. Very clean interface.
If you want a quick and easy way for sharing (multiple) PPTs, go with Slideshare. Your presentation will gain maximum visibility here.

Related: Upload PowerPoint to Flickr or Picasa Albums