Couple Cool Tools for Bloggers

I am going to take a little diversion from Poker to point out some of the really cool services available for bloggers to liven up their site. I know many of my readers are other bloggers, so check out some of these tools to help spice it up.

Snapshot

This site is extremely cool and every blogger should make use of it. See those cool little boxes that come up when you arrow over a hyperlink on my site -- those are from Snapshot. It is incredibly simple to use. Go to the link above and type in your websites name and answer 3 questions about customizing for your site, then the site will generate one line of code to place in you blog. They will tell you where to put it -- insert it and your site is ready to go with Snap boxes associated with each hyperlink on your site. It make surfing so much more fulfilling for your readers because they can quickly see a glimpse of the page without actually clicking through.

WidgetBox

Another very cool site for bloggers, it allows users to insert Widgets onto their site. Even if you have not heard the term widget before, you have probably used them or seen them on another site. Widgets are small little applications that you can imbed on your site (usually in the sidebar). There are widgets that allow you to show a photo gallery , provide a favorites list, display stock quotes, add little games to your site, etc.

On my site, I have a couple of widget games added for users to play when they are bored. These can increase your stickiness and add depth to your site.