Daily Tech Bits

Docs To HTML

Converting Word to HTML code that works is always a pain. If you don’t, you’re stuck with messy characters and invalid code. Not only does it look bad, but it also irritates readers. There are a number of tools you can use to avoid this problem and many of these are highlighted in the Wired wiki guide to converting Word docs to web pages. It covers three free tools, two downloadable tools and tells you how to prepare your Word doc for conversion. It’s a no frills guide which will help you achieve clean HTML even if you compose in Word.

Weeding Out The Scrapers

If you’ve had your own blog for a while, then you’ve probably come across the scrapers. These are the people who steal your content (in whole or in part) without even the courtesy of acknowledging the source.  They put your content on their blogs so they can make money with Adsense or their advertising of choice. Meanwhile, there’s not much you can do about it. Or is there?

Actually, there is, and this rant from my friend Jen on the Domestik Goddess blog tells you how. If this seems a strange place to find this info, rest assured that Jen harbors a not so secret geek inside her and knows what she’s talking about. Here’s how she sees the situation, using the analogy of an artist going into a gallery:

One day, you waltz yourself into a brand-new gallery with a brand-new original collage under your arm, full of optimism, chin held high. You’re sure that today’s the day you’ll break through into the big-time art world… but shock! The gallery walls are already covered, top to bottom, with perfect copies of your original work!

Needless to say, you don’t have to take this lying down.  Jen shows you how to fight back in Pond Scum Scrapers: No More Ms Nice Blogger.

Evernote Free Registration

Here’s a boon if you like to save things online but have access online. Evernote is giving away free accounts to mark the one million note anniversary. But you’ve got to hurry. The offer is only open till 6pm Pacific time. After that it’s back to signing up and waiting to get an invitation.  I signed up and got mine within seconds. Look out for a review in the next few weeks.

Someone To Watch Your Words

You may not mind much on your own blog, but what if you are doing a guest post for a blog that will get lots of attention? You want to make sure that your blog post looks its best, and is not only chock full of stellar content, but completely error-free.  Now there’s a way.

Lindsay Stordahl is editor in chief of Quick Post Edit, a service that offers a 24 hour turnaround on proofreading and editing your posts. Grammar, sentence structure and punctuation are all fixed by the team of editors. This service happens online. You upload your file and get your corrected blog post back within a day.

Of course, this service isn’t free, but paying $2 for this service probably won’t break the bank. That’s the rate for checking a 500 word post, with slight increases for longer posts. If you have a rush job, then you can pay a bit extra to go to the head of the queue. It’s probably better than ending up with egg on your face. (Tipioff from Entrecard.)

Online Text Cleaner

Don’t you just hate it when you write an HTML document in Word, have to upload it and the code is all messed up? MS Word puts all those strange characters which make your web page look like some imp has been through it with a paintbrush.  Yes, we all know that there are better ways to write code than to use Word, but if that’s the only tool you have, what you need is a way to clean it up fast.

One of my Twitter friends (rjleaman) alerted me to the Textism Word Cleaner. It’s a simple online tool that strips ‘Microsoft’s proprietary tags and other superfluous noise from Word-generated HTML documents, leaving all the basic goodness intact.’

Just upload your document and you get it back, leaner and cleaner, within seconds. It’s free for small documents 20kb or under, but if you want to process larger documents you will need a subscription - only 20 euros for a year. This is a great tool for someone who works online or is on the move.