Blind Ape Seo

The neat XRAY bookmarklet lets you view the CSS properties, HTML hierarchy and much more of any HTML element just by clicking on it.

Unbelievable, but this makes the new iPhone even more attractive.

No, the old simian does not have one (yet).

Jason Bartholme put together quite a nice list of Firefox Plugins.

Enjoy.

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The Elements of User Experience

This book alone will guide you through conception, code requirements, project management and design of a flagship site.
If you are going to build any site filled with information, this book is for you.
The title is a bit misleading, as this book is not really about User Experience or Usability. Rather it will show you how to write and use a solid concept for your website, beginning with fundamental goals and strategies, leading through content up to design.
Each of the five levels discussed in the book works together with all the other levels to make a great site.

Learning PHP and MySQL
Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Database-Driven Web Sites

Essential. This book will teach you anything you need to know about PHP and mySQl to start database driven sites.

Pocket references
The O’reilly pocket references are the books a programmer needs to have in arm’s reach.
These three should satisfy your information cravings while pumping out new websites.
PHP Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition - Coding dynamic websites? Get this to keep you company.
MySQL Pocket Reference - As you will use MySQL a lot, this becomes indispensable.
JavaScript Pocket Reference (2nd Edition) - With AJAX, javascript becomes important again.

Head First
The books of the “head first” series make programming easy to grasp. Here are two for your web development needs (although all the others are good, too!)

Head First HTML / CSS

Head First Ajax

The Pragmatic Programmer

Regardless of if you are a fledgling programmer or a seasoned developer, this is the book for you.
I was amazed at how much value I got out of this thin tome. It is full with good, down to earth advice and techniques for anyone involved in programming.

The 4 Hour Work Week

Again, the title might be misleading. I see the value in this book more in the general idea. Also, the concept of split testing and many lifestyle questions that self-employed webmasters encounter are answered here.

Getting Things Done

If you pick up only one book in this list, this should be it. David Allen presents a rounded and well-working system for personal productivity geared towards modern day “knowledge workers”.
The GTD system really shines for people who have a myriad of small things to do in dozens of projects.
As a web developer, you know this means you.

Wow… available for all major programs out there, this should make creating wireframes for your new website a breeze.

Get the Y! Stencil Packs here.

A neat checklist for building new web pages .

Good coverage of everything From business plan to line height.

Image credit: Ultimateslug

This paper describes in minute detail how to crack a captcha.

Interesting, to say the least. Grab the pdf, enjoy your reading.

Wordpress Themes to definitely check if you are in the Adsense market.

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Image credit: Dunechaser

One of the tasks you face as an affiliate marketer is getting plenty of good links to your site. A task that can be hard, expensive, or both.
Also a task that has been attacked at various angles, giving rise to link building services, link exchanges and more..
Here is where Lord’s newest invention, the oh-so-cleverly named “Link Building Tool” comes in.
Without further ado, let’s jump straight into the review.

What is it?
The “Link Building Tool” is a small desktop application that will help you in the task of finding good sites to get links from.
The actual task of entering the information into those sites is still left up to you, but the tool will help you in building those lists and ranking the sites for quality and accesibility.

How does it work?
When opening the link building tool, you are prompted to give it a search query, the number of pages it should crawl and which search engines (MSN and/or Google) it should get the results from.
In the first step, the link building tool goes and grabs the search results, displaying the URLs in the list window.
You can now proceed to give it more search terms to grow the list, or let it analyze those links via the “Rank new URLs” button.
Once you press that button, each URL gets a ranking value between 0 and 10.
This value is a mix of the search engine ranking and the ease with which you can insert a link there.
You can sort by ranking with a click of the mouse and off you go, inserting your link.
For this task, you can open either one selected website or 5 at a time.
Once you open a website, it is marked with a 0-done and will disappear from the top ranks.

My experiences so far
This tool makes it far easier to find good websites to get links from. Once you get sites ranked 5 or above in the tool, it is usually just a matter of seconds to enter your link in some comment form.
However, the tool can’t work miracles. When you move in competetive environments, you have to look around. My best strategy for this case is to hit the long tail keywords.
The save / load options make it easy to get back to previous lists and continue working.
The ranking is a godsend, as is the “open pages in browser” feature.
I already got more than a few nice links from sites I found with this tool, so I am more than happy.
The price of 67 US dollars is not really a steal, but more than justified by the ease of getting good links.

Summary
Head on over and get your copy.