Category: 5 Points

  • Useful Twitter Bots

    The most useful Twitter utility bots that work within the Twitter ecosystem.


    Set reminders with @RemindMe_OfThis

    An open-source Twitter bot that lets you easily set reminders for public tweets. Mention @RemindMe_OfThis in the reply of any tweet and specify the time in natural English when you would like to reminded of that tweet.

    You could say things like in 2 days or in 12 hours or next week or even in 5 years. Check out the source on Github.

    Save Twitter Threads with @ThreadReaderApp

    The gurus on Twitter have figured out that threads are the best way to extend the reach of their tweets and @ThreadReaderApp makes is really easy for you read and save these threads.

    To get started, reply to any tweet of a thread and mention @threadreaderapp with the “unroll” keyword. and they create a single page with all the tweets arranged in chronologicusefual order. Blog posts anyone?

    Also see: Search Twitter Like a Pro

    Capture Screenshots with @pikaso_me

    Reply to a tweet with the word “screenshot this” and mention @pikaso_me in the reply. You’ll receive a reply tweet with a screenshot image of the original tweet.

    The twitter bot capture images in tweets but you can also use Screenshot Guru for that.

    Download Videos with @DownloaderBot

    You can easily download any video or GIF image from tweets with the help of this Twitter bot.

    Mention @DownloaderBot in a reply to any tweet that contains either a video or a gif image, and you will receive a reply with the direct link to download the media.

    Twitter, like YouTube, may have a love-hate relationship with bots that allow downloading videos off their platform so it is always a good idea to bookmarks some alternatives. There’s @GetVideoBot, @SendVidBot and @Get_This_V.

  • Tools To Know Everything About a Website

    How do I contact the owner of a website? Where is a particular website hosted? What other websites are hosted on that same server? Is the site using WordPress or Gatsby? Which ad networks are they using to monetize a site? Is my site accessible from China?

    Here are some of the most useful online tools that will help you know every single detail of any website.

    Also see: The Essentials Tools for Programmers

    • just-ping.com — Use Just Ping to determine if a particular website is accessible from other countries. Just Ping has monitoring servers across the world including Turkey, Egypt, and China so if the ping results say 100% Packet Loss, most likely the site is inaccessible from that region.
    • who.is — If you like to know the contact address, email and phone number of the website owner, this free whois lookup service will help. This is a universal lookup service meaning it can simultaneously query the whois database of all popular domain registrars.
    • whoishostingthis.com — Enter the URL of any website and this online service will show you the name of the company where that website is hosted. This may come handy if you need the contact information of the web hosting provider for writing a DMCA Notice or if you are looking to switch web hosts.
    • chillingeffects.org — When there’s a copyright-related complaint against a website, a copy of that letter is archived in the Chilling Effects database. Anyone can query this public database to know about all the copyright infringement complaints against a particular website.
    • myip.ms — MyIP.ms offers a comprehensive report of any website or I.P. Address. You get to know about the hosting provider, the physical location of a website, the IP Address change history of a website and the DNS information. Netcraft also offers similar reports.
    • reversewhois.com — The reverse whois lookup will help you determine other websites of someone. You can search the whois database by the email address or name of the domain registrant.
    • builtwith.com — Use BuiltWith to know the technology stack of any website. It helps you figure out the mail service provider of a domain, the advertising partners, the tracking widgets that are installed on a website and whether the site is using any CDN like Amazon S3 or Google Cloud. See example.
    • ssllabs.com – The certificate diagnostics tool will verify your site’s SSL certificate and ensure that it is correctly installed, trusted and does not show errors to any of your site visitors.
    • semrush.com — If you wish to analyze your competitor’s website, this is the tool to go with. SEM Rush will help you figure what organic keywords are people using to find a website, what is the site’s traffic and which are the competing websites.
    • dnsmap.io — When you buy a new domain or switch from one host to another, the DNS records for the domain changes and it may take a while to propagate these changes worldwide. The tool checks the DNS records from various geographic locations and it can check your domain’s A, CNAME, TXT and MX records. whatsmydns.net is also a good alternative.
    • toolbox.googleapps.com — If email messages, including those sent via Mail Merge, from your domain are not reaching the recipient’s mailbox, use this Google tool to confirm that DMARC, DKIM and SPF records are properly configured for your domain.
    • browserstack.com – Check your website’s responsive design on multiple desktops, tables, iOS and Android phones running different versions of operating systems.
    • screenshot.guru – If a website is inaccessible, use Screenshot Guru, hosted on the Google Cloud, to confirm if the website is down or not.
    • thinkwithgoogle.com – A mobile speed tool developed by Google that will help you determine how fast your websites will load on mobile phones on 3G and 4G network. You can also compare your mobile speed score with other websites.
    • testmysite.io – A simple site testing tool from Netlify that will measure and rank your site’s loading time from different regions around the world.
    • developers.google.com — Find the Page Speed score of any website on both desktop and mobile devices. The higher this number, the better. The Google tool also offers suggestions on how the score can be improved.
    • httparchive.org — The HTTP Archive is a repository of all performance-related metrics for a website. It keeps a record of the size of pages, their average load time and the number of failed requests (missing resources) over time.
    • Website Monitor – Use this open-source Google Sheets based website monitoring tool to get alerts when your domain goes down or is inaccessible.
    • Flush DNS – Use this tool to flush the Google DNS cache for a domain. If you changed the DNS servers for your domain, by changing registrars or DNS hosting in the last few days, flush your main domain name first before you flush any subdomains. OpenDNS also has a web tool for refreshing the DNS cache.
    • DomainTools – The tool monitors one or more web domains and sends email alerts when the domain is expiring, the domain gets renewed, the nameservers change or when the registrant information is updated for the domain.

  • Discover Top Websites for Free High-Resolution Photos

    Good, high-quality images add visual interest to your website. Another reason why photos have become so important is because web pages that include good photos get better engagement when shared on social sites like Twitter and Facebook.

      Download High Quality Images for Free

      The web offers billions of photos that are just a Google search away. The images that are in public domain, or licensed under the Creative Commons license, can be used without any copyright issues.

      The only problem is that Google may not always surface the best content that is free. Their algorithms, at least for image search, prefer pages from premium stock photography websites and the free listings thus lose out. If Google isn’t helping in your quest for images, here are some of the best websites where you may find high-quality photos for free.

      1. unsplash.com (Unsplash) – This is my favorite website for downloading high-resolution photographs. Subscribe to the email newsletter and you’ll get 10 photos in your inbox every 10 days. All images are under the CC0 license meaning they are in public domain and you are free to use them in any way you like.

      2. google.com (LIFE) – The Google images website hosts millions of historical photographs from the LIFE library. You can add source:life to any query in Google image search to find these images and they are free for personal, non-commercial use.

      3. flickr.com (The British Library) – The national library of the UK has uploaded over a million vintage photographs and scanned images to Flickr that are now in pubic domain and they encourage re-use.

      4. picjubmo.com (Picjumbo) – Here you’ll find exceptionally high-quality photos for your personal and commercial use. The pictures have been shot by the site owner himself and all he requests for in return is proper attribution.

      5. pixabay.com (Pixabay) – All the images on Pixabay are available under the CC0 license and thus can be used anywhere. Like Flickr, there’s an option to browse photographs by camera model as well.

      6. publicdomainarchive.com (Public Domain Archive) – This is an impressive online repository of public domain images that are neatly organized in categories. It contains only high quality photos though the collection is limited at this time.

      7. commons.wikimedia.org (Wikimedia Commons) – The site hosts 21+ million images under some kind of free license or in the public domain. The images are arranged in categories or you can find images through search keywords.

      8. superfamous.com (Super Famous) – Another great resource for finding high-res images for your websites and other design projects. The images are licensed under Creative Commons and require attribution.

      9. nos.twnsnd.co (New Old Stock) – Here you will find a curated collection of vintage photographs from public archives that are free of any copyright restrictions. If you are trying to create a twitter feed like @HistoricalPics, this might be a good source for images.

      10. freeimages.com (Stock Exchange) – This is one of the biggest repositories of free images and graphics that you can use for almost any purpose. You do however need to sign-in to download the images. The site, previously hosted on the schx.hu domain, is now part of Getty Images.

      11. raumrot.com (Raumrot) – The site features beautiful, hi-res 300DPI stock photographs available for both personal and commercial use. The pictures are sorted by subject and available under Creative Commons.

      Related: Protect your photos from Casual Copying

      12. gettyimages.com (Getty Images) – If you are looking for professional images for your website but without the expensive license fee, Getty has something in store for you. You can embed pictures from Getty Images for free on your website though in future, the embeds may carry ads.

      13. pdpics.com (Public Domain Photos) – The website contains thousands of royalty free images that can be used in both personal and commercial projects but with attribution. Unlike other sites that merely curate content, the images found here have been clicked by their in-house photographers.

      14. imcreator.com (IM Free) – A curated collection of outstanding high-quality photos on all subjects that are also free for commercial use. The images have mostly been sourced from Flickr and require attribution.

      15. photopin.com (Photo Pin) – Flickr is among the biggest repository of photographs on the web and Photo Pin helps you easily find photos on Flickr that are available under the Creative Commons license. You get the embed code as well so you don’t have to host the images on your own server.

      16. kaboompics.com (Kaboom Pics) – Karolina Grabowska, a web designer from Poland, has uploaded 550+ high-resolution photos (240-300dpi ) that you can use for all kind of projects included commercial ones. The photos are arranged in categories and tags or you can use the search box to quickly find images on various subjects.

      17. morguefile.com (Morgue File) – The site hosts 300,000+ free images and you are free to use them in both personal and commercial projects even without attribution. The image gallery has a built-in cropping tool and you can even hotlink the images from your website.

      18. magdeleine.co (Magdeleine) – Hand-picked and free stock photos that you can search by subject, mood or even the dominant color. Some of the images are copyright free and you can do whatever you like with those photos.

      Tip: How to avoid common photos

      You may have found a great photo that is perfect for your project but there’s a probability that several other websites are using the same image. It will therefore help if you do a reverse image search using Google Images to estimate the relative popularity of that image on the Internet.

      Also see: Sell your Instagram & Facebook Photos