Free Real-Time High-TechTracker

Have you ever wondered who visits your site? Sure you’ve got counters and trackers to tell you where they linked to your site, but have you ever wondered stuff like who: who’s your audience? How’d they find your site? What interests them (seriously)? I’ll bet that neither your counter nor tracker gives you detailed activity information about visitors that have recently left your site. Well let me tell you, I’ve got a counter/tracker that will make yours sound like a near-sighted man looking through the wrong end of binoculars. It’s called W3Counter.

W3Counter is your free, hosted website solution for answering the key questions about your website. There's no installation, no configuration, and tracking begins as soon as you copy and paste a code onto your website. You’ll receive a dashboard for each of your websites which will give you an executive overview of the key statistics to watch.

How does W3Counter work? Check this out: It’s a real-time tracker, which means you can actually follow visitors as they browse your website (creepy, huh?). You can even watch arriving visitors appear as new info markers on the map, with a referring source and landing page for each new hit. (You're like a navy seal in the digital brush!)

And here’s a neat perk: with w3counter, you can label your visitors. That way when somebody returns to your site, instead of trying to remember their IP Address, each label will appear in your tracker reports of online and recent visitors. There you can view all the past activity of each member or customer.

Downsides: I signed up just to see w3counter work, and found 2 downsides. One is that the code for the tracker doesn’t work with some Java-based sites, like Xanga for instance. The second problem is that since I can’t use the tracker on my site, I figured I’d cancel my account. Only, I can’t find the link to do so…I’m sure it’s around someplace, but not as easy to find as one may prefer.

On the upside though, it does work for Blogger, and yes, we are tracking you now.

Free Online Picture Hosting

We've all heard that if you upload your pictures to the internet, they're there forever and anybody can get a hold of them. So with that in mind, community sites like facebook, myspace, or your personal blogs are really not the safest places to share your life's experiences. But what if you want to easily and quickly share your pictures via email, chat, social network, or a message board (forum)? Or maybe you'd like to share your pictures only once, and then forget about them, never having to worry about them surfacing in some company's ad? Or maybe you'd just like to have a backup copy of your pictures stored on the internet for safe keeping? What do you do? You could pay an annual or monthly fee to one of those hard drive backup sites, or you could check out a free online picture hosting site, like "fumpr.com".

Formally known as "FixUpMyPic", "Fumpr" is "the world's fastest and easiest (free online) image host". There's no need to register, and yes, it is 100% free!

Once you upload your pictures, you'll be provided with a fast loading image and some easy ways to share them on the internet. JPG, PNG, BMP, and GIF up to 3MB are allowed, though fumpr will eventually allow additional file types and larger sizes in the future.

The ONLY way someone will see your pictures is if you share the link with them. For instance, if you want the pictures for yourself only, just don't share the link. Or if you only want one person to see them, then give them (and only them) the provided link. And everything you post will be safely stored there forever.

In terms of picture content, anything is allowed unless deemed illegal and/or inappropriate by applicable law. On that note though, if someone reports an picture, then without reason to the original uploader, fumpr will permanently remove the picture. This is also good should somebody upload an embarrassing picture of you, say from your younger years, that you don't want anybody else to see. Simply click on the "Contact or Report" link at the bottom, email fumpr the link, and "(they)" will take care of it."

Another reason fumpr.com is the best free online picture host for you and your pictures.

Free Character Names Generator

Have you every wondered where Gene Roddenberry got names like Work, Spock or Klingon? Or how Street Fighter got the names of its characters' awesome moves? Whether you're writing a story, movie script or an assignment for your fiction writing class, SeventhSanctum is here to help writers of all genres conjure up intriguing, fascinating and unique names for their story characters. And, it doesn't end with just giving you free character name generators, SeventhSanctum also helps you come up with plots and ideas to make your writing more interesting.

For example, when I clicked on “Anime/Manga”, it listed off a number of possible generators, such as a “Power Generator”, which generates those crazy, multi-word, occasionally incoherent attacks our beloved anime characters yell out. So I clicked on that and I was given a number of drop-down lists to describe what I was looking for. Let’s see. I wanted “1” name generated, fitted with “Armor Piercing”, “Air”, and “Nuclear/Atomic”, with a size of two to seven words. I clicked "Generate" and read “Tornado Atomic Battler”. Hmmm...not too fancy, so I clicked “Generate” again and got “Nucleo Battler Way Atomic Crashing Beam!” Yeaaaaahhhhh! now that’s more like it!

So you get the idea here? Seventhsanctum is a free character name generator that helps battle the infamous plague known as 'writer's block'. Check out some of their other unique generators, especially ones for creating short stories. And if you still can’t seem to pinpoint the perfect antidote, try clicking on their “Random Generator”.

Seventhsanctum is truly inspiring, fun, and almost guaranteed to get your creative juices flowing!

Free Calorie Counter

Whether you're trying to lose weight or gain it, counting calories is a huge part of your life.

I used to try counting calories, but since most of what I ate didn't come with a nutrition table, I lost both track and interest in that quickly. Then I came across "Calorie Connect". At Calorie Connect, just type the name of the food, and the nutrient table shows up to the right.

Unfortunately though, different brand names do have different calorie counts, and it doesn't account for different brand names. But it does give a basic idea for the food types.

Another nice feature with Calorie Connect is that, being a free online interactive nutrition and wellness service, they also provide an exercise page. This allows you to record your exercise activities and assess your progress towards weekly and monthly goals. Nice! Maybe now I can get those abs I've always wanted.

Owning (or leasing) your car just got easier!

When you’re looking for a car to buy and want to know about its history, you look at Carfax. We used it when searching for our latest car, and it was very helpful.

But what if you own a car and are looking to sell? What’s it worth on the market? Would you get more by trading it in or selling it to a private owner? That’s where DriverSide comes in. Simply enter the car's make, model and year, then click “get started”. Did you know that keeping maintenance records could help you sell your car for more money? Read more car ownership tips or latest car reviews by visiting DriverSide's reviews and advice page.

Now maybe you just got a car and want to know more about it or how to better care for the car you already own or are leasing. By registering with DriverSide, you’ll be alerted when your next service is due, what needs to be done, repair price estimates, car diagnostic tools, service history logs, and digital storage of service records. Or if you have a question, ask advice from their certified mechanics (for free!).

All DriverSide can’t do is give an estimated price for your car’s sentimental value.

Blipfoto: Daily Photo Journal

Blipfoto is an online daily photo journal that lets you publish one image each day, starting on the date you sign up. Most people use this as a challenge to take and publish one picture every day of their lives, while others just add entries when they feel like it, leaving empty days in between. It's the zero-fuss website that lets anyone join in and publish or record your life in pictures, improve your photography skills, or just keep in touch with your family and friends. They just insists that any pictures you upload are taken on the date you're uploading them against. In other words, if you upload a picture and date it 1st January, the picture must have been taken on 1st January.

And now, (Extra! Extra! Read All About It!):

Blipfoto has teamed up with Channel Four Television and the National Theatre of Scotland to bring you “Unstaged”, a global photographic event comprised of three consecutive contests, together which aim to expose the extraordinary aspects of daily life. The contest's first prize wins a new Canon 500D and 500 pounds cash (that’s Eurodollars).

The contest is free to enter, but to take part, you need a free blipfoto.com photo journal, and be thirteen or over.

Your contest entries will consist of five pictures with accompanying text, taken and uploaded to your journal between each contest's published start and end date. At the close of each contest, the Blipfoto community - including participants in the competition - will be given a week to nominate the finalists. The top ten nominations in each category (junior and adult) then go before a judging panel for a final decision. The contest's judging panel will include Joe Tree (Blipfoto), Stuart Cosgrove (Channel 4), Vicky Featherstone (National Theatre of Scotland) and others.

Nominations and final judging will be based on the entrant's collection as a whole; where the underlying concept is as important as the technical execution, where image aesthetics are balanced by narrative text. Unstaged is truly open to all - a winning contest entry is just as likely to come from a camera phone as an expensive digital camera. Join the community now and begin seeing the world in a completely different way!

Free Book Search and Matcher

A neat idea and creation, BookLamp matches you with books according to your style. The example they use is, say you "like Stephen King's "It", but thought it was too long. Booklamp allows you to find books with a similar level of tone, tense, perspective, action, description, and dialog, while at the same time, allowing you to specify details, but only about half the length."

The interface is very smooth, attractive, and intuitive, but at the moment, their database currently only holds science fiction books and fantasy books. They emphasize that while their service isn’t very functional yet, they are working on it.

You do have to register to use BookLamp, but it’s not a lengthy process. By registering, you can compare books, post in the forums, and suggest books to be added. But because of their limited collection, signing up for BookLamp now mostly just shows interest and support for the service.

BookLamp aspires to be a “Pandora for books”. BookLamp is also looking for suggestions for their future direction, so if you explore and have ideas, feel free to suggest some to them.