1stwebdesigner

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20 Must Have Android Apps for Developers and Designers

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 02:00 PM PDT

Android is an operating system for mobile devices and uses modified version of Linux Kernel. The mobile operating system was developed by Android Inc, the firm was purchased by Google later on. The main competition of Android is Apple iPhone.  iPhone became very much successful in short period of time because of its handy and useful applications but android owners don’t need to worry because now  the applications for android are in very large number and have almost same features of the applications of iPhone. But we don’t want to start arguing which one is better. Both have their own pros and cons, it depends on your taste and choice which 1 is better. Well our today’s focus is best Android applications for web developers and graphic designers. In this article we cover 20 best applications which can make life of developers and graphic designers easy.

1. Magic Color Picker

The Magic Color Picker make you able to browse different colors through color-wheel. This application provides you the value of colors in different formats like RGB, HSV, YUV, HSL and hexadecimal. This also provide different choices for the display of web palette, you can use palette or sliders, choice is yours! This application is FREE!

2. AndFTP


AndFTP is a JAVA application which enable you to access your web servers via your mobile. It supports FTP, SFTP and FTPS. Using AndFTP you can upload and download files with resume capability, rename, delete, create files and folders. It has very easy to navigate interface and, yeah, it is FREE

3. Camera Illusion


Camera Illusion is a camera application that enables you to take and preview pictures with filters, effects and masks in real-time. Version 1.5.1 also have debug mode. It is free , pretty basic but  full of fun.

4. Iromihon Color Palette


Iromihon Color Palette is a very basic application to adjust and see colors. It has RGB, HSB and HSL models. It also work as color light or flash light in full screen mode, This application provide the ability to add “User Color Names” which make handy quick references while working with specific palettes.

5. CSS Cheat Sheet

CSS Cheat Sheet is a quick course refresher of CSS properties and values for every CSS developers. By using this application you can revise or learn many aspects of CSS language. It costs 0.99$ but worth paying.

6. Flickr uploader pro


Every graphic designer has a deep relation with flick so i have selected this application. Flickr Uploader Pro backup you pictures to your flickr account automatically. It runs in background but it can back up files only when WIFI is available. It costs $1.99.

7. Flubble

Flubble is a ActionScript 3 (AS3) stub creator. It allows you to create shell classes or outlines to work in your flash of flex applications. The interface is as simple as possible. You can save and load a class or you can email it as an ActionScript file or in an XML format. This application is FREE.

8. Freelancer Ex12131


If you are working as a freelancer and feeling lazy, then this application can help you. Freelancer Ex12131 is a free handy tool to generate excuses which forces your client or boss to back off. It includes 200 funny excuses which you can use to have 1 more free day. Specially designed for lazy freelancers.

9. Google Analytics for Android


Every web developer and blogger know the importance to Google Analytics. By using Google Analytics for Android you can keep an eye on you summary statistics while you are not home or office. This application is secure, fast ,light weight and supports Date range comparison, Graphs and charts for each report, Custom date ranges, Favorites, Geo-location reports, Regex-enabled searches. It is not free you can buy it by visiting Android Marketplace from your mobile phone!

10. HTML Cheat Sheet

Even web developers need a quick refresher in HTML details from time to time. Easy to use interface makes it simple to quickly find what you need. Includes examples and quick reference for Tags, Attributes, Events, Colors, Symbols, ASCII, Encoding, Languages, Statuses, and more. This application also works offline! It costs $0.99

11. Merchant for Android

If you are working online then you have to rely on unverified and slow sources of payment. But using Merchant for Android application you can get instant credit card authorization without credit card terminal or cash register. You can enter customer card information and get immediate authorization and credit card information is not stored on the device you are using.

12. Photo Workshop


Photo Workshop is a very easy-to-use and powerful photo editing application for Android which offers many features of photo manipulation like Crop, Rotate, Drawing Pad, Stamp, Text Overlay, Effects, Frames, Edges, Re-size and Tuning. It costs 2.99$ and supports 320×480 devices.

13. Photobucket Mobile


Every graphic designer and web developer needs access to his photobucket account so here is an application by using which you can take photobucket everywhere with you on your mobile device. You can download, capture and upload photos. Browse and search in different categories, manage your photobucket albums and copy image URL links to post on web. This application is free for use.

14. Photoshop for android


Everybody is familiar with the PHOTOSHOP and its feature. It is ultimate photo editing software. Now it is in your reach when you are out of your home or office, away from your computer, by using Photoshop for android application. You can crop, rotate, color-correct, and many more basic features for photo editing. You can upload and share your photos using your free photoshop.com account.

15. PRO Zoom Camera 5X


PRO Zoom Camera 5X replaces the default camera with 5X ZOOM, 8 filters and sharing. This has editing functions such as draw, paint, brightness, contrast. It also contains 18 fonts, 18 photo effects and 53 clip-arts! This application is worth $2.99 .

16. View Web Source


Very simple application to view page source of any website. You will also be able to select text, search for text as well as copy and paste the HTML. You can use the share feature from the menu and select View Web Source. This application is FREE.

17. WordPress


Nowadays most of the blogs uses WordPress. So this application is designed to facilitate the bloggers who want to remain update with their website. By using this application you can write new posts, edit content, and manage comments with built-in notifications. This application is open source and free.

18. Bloo – Facebook


Facebook is very important for every web-site owner, every website has its own fan page or group which is to be updated regularly. Using Bloo you can use facebook from your mobile devices easily.

19. Twitter for Android


After twitter’s release, it is being used like hell for marketing purpose. Every website can keep their readers updated via twitter. So looking at the importance we are featuring Twitter for Android. You can use it freely and it has all functions because it is official release of twitter.Apart from this application you can visit http://mobile.twitter.com/ on your phone to use Twitter.

20. YapYap! for Twitter


Yap Yap is another android application of twitter and it is FREE for use.

In the end I would like to hear your response about the application we featured here. Tell us about these application after using or if you are already using then tell us which one is better. If you have better replacement for these application for android then do mention in comments!

How To Make The Right Keyword Analysis For Your Website

Posted: 16 Jun 2010 03:00 AM PDT

Everyone looking to build a website might have heard about SEO- the mysterious Search Engine Optimization. This is a never-ending process that consists of multiple steps and there are always enhancements that can be done to improve website visibility in the search engines.

If you have ever heard about the SEO you might have also heard that one of the basics of successful SEO is the Keyword analysis and that’s exactly what I’m going to speak about today.

Let’s start from the very beginning. The keywords are the words that web surfers use in the search engines to look for the product/service/information needed. This is the “WordPress beginners guide” that you type when you’re looking for the info how and where to start with WordPress and “website design studio” when you’re looking for a company to create a website for you.

1. Define the keywords that people use to find your business.

This step is most important and probably the easiest one and you can complete it in 3 simple steps without any additional software or paid programs offered on the market.

  • 1. Ask your friends and relatives what words and phrases they associate with your business and put them on list.
  • 2. Go to Google and type the keywords and key phrases into the browser and Google will also show you the related searches performed by other people.To make things even easier, you can switch from the Standard view to Related searches view. Just type your keyword to the Google search bar and on the left of the search results page click on the panel “Show search tools” and scroll to the bottom until you see it, and here’s how it looks.

  • 3. Use Google Wonder Wheel- that’s an adorable tool that I love so much. The wonder Wheel is another variation of the Related searches but in a more convenient way and is located right below Related searches view in the left panel. The wonder wheel shows you all related searches and their popularity. You can also click on the related search circle and go even deeper into the search keywords. Put as many related keywords on the list as you can but make sure they are really related to your business, service or product.

2. Find out how many people are actually using the keywords you have selected.

The cool tool you can use here is Google Keywords Suggestion tool. It’s a part of Google Adwords (and is used to find nice keywords for your google ands) but you can use it separately to identify the popularity of the chosen keywords and key phrases. Take a minute to register with Google Adwords and you are ready to use the tool.

Type in your key phrase and Google Keywords Tool will show you the list of related searches (compare it with your list and see if you’re missing something) and the number of Monthly searches for according keyword.

At this stage you can make an excel table with your keywords in the first column and the number of monthly searches in the second one. Now sort your keywords putting the most popular ones on top and less popular ones closer to the bottom.

Delete the keywords that have less that 1000 searches a month except if you offer something really unique and that’s the top number of search engines visitors looking for it.

3. Define your competition and make sure the keywords you have chosen are relevant.

Make yourself a cup off coffee or tee as we’re starting on a pretty boring thing. Now that you have all the possible keywords in your list, we have to find out their relevance and competition.

Let me explain you what I mean for the term “relevance”. Let’s say you produce a software allowing photographers to create cool photography websites easily. One of the great keywords that you might think of is a “photo website” however it is not. If you go to Google and type “photo website” into the search field you will see that the search returned you a list of websites offering stock photography and thus this is not the keyword you should base your website optimization strategy on.

Now back to the competition. This is not really the number of companies offering the same services that you do but rather the number of indexed pages in Google containing your keyword and which you actually have to beat. So type your keyword into the Google search bar, make sure it’s relevant and put the number of indexed pages for the according keyword into your table next to the number of monthly searches.

4. Finding the best keywords

By now you should have a list from about 50 keywords and keywords phrases in the descending order with the appropriate number of monthly searches and competition. If you have a website with the number of pages over 20 you can use all of them, but it you have a simple 5-10 pages website you’ll have to choose the best of the keywords.

The keyword “bestestness” is defined by the ration between relevance, popularity and competition. The keyword which is most close to your business, has the largest number of searches and the smallest competition is the best.

There are lots of coefficients offered by different experts, but if you are not making the keywords analysis every other day you are most likely to forget how to calculate it. So, to keep things simple, you can divide the number of monthly searches to the number of pages indexed for this keyword and multiply by 1000 for example. You’ll get figures like 0,1-0,3, less than 0,1 and much less than 0,01. Small figures mean that there is either a small number of searches for the given keywords of the competition is really high.

You can exclude these keywords, however do check each one individually. If you have the best product in some area, you can easily overcome all the competition and show up in the search engine results for the given keyword.

At the end and having made the ratio analysis you should have around 10 very cool keywords, 10 just cool keywords and around 5-10 nice keywords that also might be useful.

5. Breaking keywords into pages.

Now we’re going to the most complex point. You can’t use all your keywords on just one page. Every page has to be optimized for no more than 2-3 keywords/keyword phrases and of course, they should be 100% relevant to the content of the page.

Choose the best 3 keywords for the home page and spread the rest on the other pages. Now add a few nice keywords for every page. Choose one or two keywords that you can use throughout the pages in the text organically.

Put it all in a spreadsheet. Now you have the list of keywords to use on every page of your website to ensure best visibility for the given keywords in the search engine results. Sorry for the blurred screen but I have to keep my own keyword research results private.

The next step is actually creating the keyword optimized content for the website pages. This is the separate science and I’m going to speak about it in my next post. Stay tuned, make the keywords analysis and check back with us soon!

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