Customized news is nothing new.  In fact the process of creating a customized news portal using NetVibes or Google is very straight forward.  But Congoo is taking a different approach by adding a social networking layer above the news.

Anyone can create their own news portal which takes content from over 25,000 free sources and 300 premium sources.  Instead of adding an RSS feed, or keyword to gather news, you can select a fairly specific topic area (or focus) and then drill it down with keywords.

The “social networking” aspect of the site features the ability to comment on any news article on your portal and to “favorite” other news portals or “circles”

As an example, I created a news circle at www.congoo.com/tap 

Writing articles and submitting them to article directories for reprint is an excellent way to increase traffic to your web site. Because the article directories require those that reprint your article(s) to also include your byline and a hyperlink back to your web site, you get direct traffic from readers who want to find out more information about you and/or your web site.

In addition, since each reprinted article contains a link back to your site, you also increase the number of inbound links to your web site and this in turn increases your search engine rankings and overall traffic over time. This is why many Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts consider article writing and distribution one of the best available SEO methods.

There are currently hundreds of article directories where you can submit your article(s) for reprint. Submitting to each one manually is an overwhelming task. Instead, Bryxen Software has developed a computer application called “ArticleSubmitter” to help automate the process. The free version of the software allows you to submit your article(s) to a variety of article directories and it also keeps track of your submissions, account information (logins, notes, etc) and more.

I currently use the software myself, and it has saved me a lot of time compared to the manual submissions I did before. I would highly recommend the program to anyone who is interested in increasing their web site traffic and search engine rankings trough article writing.

Im not sure if submitting a blog to a directory will increase your traffic dramatically but I do know that when I am looking for a new and interesting blog to read, I take a look through a few of them. Here are some of the most popular and interesting blog directories.

Blog Show Off - A dynamic directory that keeps on changing
BlogTopSites - A nice looking directory that will rank blogs on the number of visitors.
BlogHub - Im not a fan of this one, however im told it is quite popular
BritBlog - A directory just for British Blogs.
FindingBlog - Pretty much the standard directory
BlogCatalog - Ranked as the number site in Google for the term “blog directories”
Blogdup - Blogs are arranged by the country of origin.
KingOfTheBlogs - Another “Top Sites” directory
BlogFlux - A nicely designed and popular directory
Blogarama - Another standard directory
Blogwise - Blogs are arranged by country and keyword
Technorati - The most popular and largest directory of blogs!
Bla.st - Several categories, including one for blogs.

If you know of any other directories then let me know and I will add them to the list

Digitalpoint provides webmasters with several useful tools including many search engine related applications. One of the more useful tools is their Keyword Suggestion Tool.

Enter a keyword or keyphrases, and The Keyword Suggestion Tool will provide you information about how often those keyword or keyphrases are searched for daily in major search engines. The results are pulled from both Wordtracker and Overture.

In addition, the tool also provides alternate, related keywords to those you entered and provides their search frequency as well. The tool is an excellent resource for optimizing your web pages with the best keywords related to your site’s content.

I’ve been using Del.icio.us for bookmarking for a long time now, but I have always wanted a more visual approach to organizing and browsing bookmarked links.

Deskload seems to have filled this void by creating an online bookmarking app that resembles the desktop. Its very simple, and thats what I like. To add a bookmark, just select a title, URL and icon and it will be added to your online bookmarking desktop. So essentially you are organizing bookmarks in the same way you would desktop icons.

Its great to see some innovation in the bookmarking arena as it was starting to look a bit stale.

I recently begun using StatCounter to view web traffic statistics on about a half dozen web sites I maintain. The free version of the application provides enough of a log size limit to provide me with some quick and detailed information on my most recent site visitors. I particularly like how well the program tracks search engine referrals and visitor paths through each web site.

I mainly use StatCounter to get quick updates on my sites when I do not have the time to log into each web site’s control panel individually. To use StatCounter you just need to add a small piece of code to each page you want to track and you can track several sites with just a single free account.

Microsoft announced today that it has made an offer to buy Yahoo for nearly $45 billion dollars. The move would allow Microsoft and Yahoo to join forces to compete against Google in the Web search market.

Currently, Google controls about 80 percent of the worldwide Web search market while Yahoo is second with about 16 percent and Microsoft third with 4 percent.

If the buy out is successful it would be interesting to see how this affects Google’s current market dominance and if either Microsoft and/or Yahoo will drastically change their search algorithms in any way which could result in changes in search engine optimization techniques used by webmasters.

Uniblue Software is a leading provider of performance and security software solutions including Registry Booster, SpeedUpMyPC and SpyEraser. At their web site, you can get free computer scans to check for stability, performance and security issues.

1. Stability Scan – Provides a complete diagnosis and deep scan of your computer registry for errors and conflicts.

2. Performance Scan - Provides a complete diagnosis and deep scan of your current computer performance status and provides suggested optimizations.

3. Security Scan - Performs a complete diagnosis of your system and identify spyware, malware and other harmful files.

AddThis.com offer a variety of tools that helps users bookmark your web site or blog as well as subscribe to any feeds you may have. The service is free and involves just placing a couple lines of code on any page you want the AddThis button to appear. In addition, the service tracks all pages bookmarked and the social bookmarking services used which can be viewed from the online user interface. An example button is shown below:

With PhotoPost software, webmasters can now allow their web site users to upload photos and videos to online galleries. The PhotoPost software is written in PHP and is currently installed by over 7,000 web sites. PhotoPost includes extensive login and style integrations with vBulletin as well as login integrations with phpBB 2.0, UBB Threads v5 or v6, DCForums, InvisionBoard, and other popular forums. A live demo of the software and example web sites with galleries are provided.