Continuing with the site site updates, after migrating to a new and improved web server, I’m bringing you an updated version of the Site Popularity Google Gadget I posted about 18 months ago. This new version uses cURL instead of less reliable methods to access and capture the main search engines output, thereby providing a faster and more accurate result.

Add this Google Gadget to your iGoogle Page or your Google Desktop, enter an URL and within seconds, get your site’s Google PageRank and Alexa Ranking, and the number of backlinks to your site, as reported by Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and AllTheWeb.

It’s been quite a while since the last free tool from MT-Soft, so I thought it would be nice to give it whirl. This time, I have created a Google Gadget that allows you to add round corners to images, with selectable background colors and optional image resizing capabilities.

The Gadget is rather simple, with a color picker to select the background color to use for the corners, a slider bar control to select the corner size and 2 boxes for entering the final image size. You can also choose which corners should be drawn.

To get your round-corner images, you simply select an image (up to 800×600 pixels), choose which corners you want on the image, pick corner size and color and you’re on your way! Enjoy the tool and leave your comments.

Thanks to some advice from a friend at PHP Classes, I’ve updated my free MySQL Backup and Restore class: IAM_Backup, originally published in IAM Backup – A Free Database Backup PHP Class. Basically, this class allows you to perform a full-DB backup from PHP and then Restore it either on the same server or another. It’s pretty simple to use and it’s easy to integrate with your PHP programs.

This class is featured on PHPClasses.org and Freshmeat

This class is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), so feel free to use it, modify it as you want, although a little credit is always welcome. Get the full IAM Backup Source Code and Documentation here

If you want to start a new web forum, maybe as a subdomain on your website, but you don’t have much experience on how to create and manage it, you might want to turn to free forum hosting service, since you’ll get the space, code and all tools you need to create and manage your own web forum. All this, for free, in few minutes with almost no technical skills .

One of such sites is Free-Forum.com, a fast, security and reliable free forum hosting service that offers options not found anywhere else, such as unlimited access for unlimited number of messages and users.

They provide upt o1GB space for hosting our files, photos, music, etc. Don’t speak English? Not a problem, Their forums support 30+ different languages. Themes are not an issue either, as you get more than 40 themes to pick from. Other cool forum enhancements such as chat boxes and portal tools are also free to use. With all this, you have few excuses left not to create a forum for yourself or your company.

If you think that this space is not sufficient for you in future and want more space than you can contact them by visiting their main site also. If you have forum but you want to change the host than also you can contact them may be they can offer you best deal .

One of the best features a website can provide its visitors and customers is a live chat or instant messaging service. The first generation of this online chat software was developed before the big World Wide Web explosion. Over the years, this services have evolved into much better tools, which can be easily integrated into a website infrastructure. Also, these services have sprouted into much more user-friendly chat software sprouts, which also come packed with many exciting features.

There are lots of benefits in integrating a chat software in your website. Many customers are very familiarized with chat and IM software, so they will be very comfortable when using a chat session to contact a customer representative who can, on the other hand support multiple users at the same time.

We all suffered the pain of calling a customer services representative, where you have to wait for 30 minutes or more before you can talk to them, only to be redirected to another call queue just because you dialled the wrong extension. Enabling chat support in your site, your clients have much better response time, because they’re instant messaging to a service representative with virtually zero delay.

Free chat software packages often have limited features when compared to commercial chat software, although there are some exceptions. Even among commercial chat packages, there some that distinguish themselves from the rest, thanks to their reliability and feature set. One of these packages is is Uzoom.

Uzoom has lots of features which other chat software companies do not offer. When it comes to consistent, effectiveness and cost efficient Uzoom has it. Uzoom provides you with quality tool for greater customer service to your clients.

They even have a comparison chart where you can compare some features and benefits you will get from Uzoom. Not satisfied yet? Uzoom offers a 30 day trial for there products, just provide your email and click the “Free Trial Sign Up” and begin enjoying the benefits of professional chat support software.