It’s hard to keep track of all the social networking accounts you have and even harder to update all of them. Thankfully, there are several tools which help make this easier for us. In this post, we have compiled a list of web-based tools which automatically post blog updates on your social networking sites via the RSS feed.

Dlvr.it: This is a tool that publishes blogs via RSS feed to all your social channels. Dlvr.it also includes a dashboard which tracks how many people clicked the links it published as well as other statistics. Some of the social media sites it posts to include Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Tumblr, MySpace & many more.

HootSuite: Among the many other uses of Hootsuite, you can manage your RSS feed posts to your social networking sites. You can also pause the updates and resume as you wish. You can see this feature in action on their YouTube channel.

TwitterFeed: TwitterFeed only publishes to Twitter and Facebook, but it has a great dashboard to keep track of clicks and blog posts.

RSS2Twitter: Rss2Twitter lets you setup multiple Twitter accounts for blog updates. It also allows filter options and does not ask for your Twitter password. This tool is currently in beta mode.

Note: If you are using Google Feedburner for  your RSS feed, there is a automation tool built-in.

While you’re setting up your blog feeds with these tools, don’t forget to subscribe to the Freesoucing.org RSS Feed!

Can your shared hosting account accommodate 5 million page views per month? If I told you that the average shared hosting account could easily accommodate that many page views you might laugh at me and accuse me of being naive. But the fact is that 5,000,000 page views would amount to just under two page views per second. That’s tiny for modern servers.

Don’t forget about concurrency

So why does shared hosting so often fail? It has to do with the other part of the hosting equation: concurrency. If you’ve never heard of concurrency, the simple way to understand it is in relation to the number of people who want to view a page at the exact same moment.

When concurrency is high (many people access the same resource at the same moment), then you can run into trouble. In fact, the same server that could deliver 5,000,000 page views per month might crash if only 500 people ask for a page at the same exact moment.

The way to achieve high concurrency is to have many servers and distribute the work among them. To extend the example above, imagine that each of your servers can serve 16 pages per second. If you want to accommodate the burst of 500 people all at once, you will need 500/16 = 31.25 servers. That many servers can cost a fortune.

5 minutes of fame

One drawback to acquiring 31 servers is that you don’t always need to accommodate spikes in traffic. In fact, most of the time your site is likely to have a normal flow of visitors and a single server could probably handle it. For all but a small fraction of time those servers are sitting around with nothing to do.

As it turns out, those short moments in time when you do have a spike (your 5 minutes of fame) are often the most critical for your business. They’re the times when you need your site to be the most responsive.

Wouldn’t it be great then if you could share those servers with others to reduce costs? That’s exactly what Google has done with Google App Engine. This service from Google allows you to share their ultra scalable infrastructure to accommodate big spikes in traffic.

The free quotas can accommodate roughly 5 million page views per month for a “reasonably efficient application”. It’s also much different than traditional shared hosting in that as resource needs increase, so does the pool of available machines, and so the responsiveness of your application stays constant.

Zero up front cost (possibly no cost)

There is zero up front cost to develop and deploy applications on app engine. They have a quota system that resets every month. If you don’t use up the quota then you never pay anything. If you go over the quota, then you’re charged for what you use (which might be pennies per day).

Strictly speaking nothing worthwhile comes with no cost. You need to put in the time to develop it and then to promote it. In order to help you visualize some of the details, I created a basic App Engine app and a short video to accompany this article. See the app at Freesourcing Directory. Here’s the video:

Limitations

There are some limitations to the infrastructure. The last time I checked, they supported only their proprietary database (datastore) and didn’t have support for traditional RDBMs. This didn’t turn out to bother me too much since their ORM (object relational mapping) solution was adequate and kept my code clean. It’s also likely to scale well within their environment.

They also don’t support PHP, which is a popular web scripting language. They do support Python and Java. I know that will turn off some folks that really like PHP, but as a developer that has used all three technologies, I can say that for large scale applications, PHP usually isn’t the right choice. Both Python and Java provide more structure and maturity for large scale applications.

The lack of PHP support means that some mainstream applications, like WordPress, won’t run in this environment natively. Google App Engine isn’t a viable replacement for traditional hosting.

Good fit

App Engine could be an excellent way to host a custom application or a special add-on feature for your existing website (like a social comment tool). SaaS (Software as a Service) applications would also be a good target. There are development platforms, like Django, that can make the development process go very smooth.

Since it’s free, there’s virtually no barrier to getting started. They have a download that provides you with a complete development environment and easy deployment tools. I was able to build and deploy my first app in about 30 minutes.

This article was contributed by Daniel Watrous. He writes about Internet technologies and how to leverage them in direct response sales on his blog at http://www.danielwatrous.com/

Online surveys are easy-to-use tools to gather feedback and when implemented properly, allow you to collect actionable data quickly and inexpensively in order to make informed decisions. Upfront planning will help lead you to higher response rates and higher quality data, ensuring a more meaningful, relevant, and successful survey experience.

To help you plan more efficiently and reap the benefits that timely, relevant information can provide, SurveyGizmo has put together 10 common survey pitfalls to avoid.

1. Not defining your survey’s objective

Why are you conducting a survey? Before you write your questions you need to clearly define what it is that you want to learn and then you can evaluate each question you pose against that objective. If the question doesn’t serve your main objective, get rid of it.

2. Making your survey too long

Short surveys that focus on a single objective generally have higher response rates and lower abandonment rates among survey takers. Research has shown that surveys should take 5 minutes or less to complete. Although 6 – 10 minutes is acceptable, longer than 11 minutes will likely result in significant abandonment rates. On average, respondents can complete 5 closed-ended questions per minute and 2 short open-ended questions per minute.

3. Asking too many open-ended questions.

If you want specific information, ask specific questions. Studies have shown that open-ended questions are more likely to produce vague, brief responses or even no response at all. Open-ended questions are best used as a follow-up to a specific question (whether it is multiple choice, rating scale, yes/no….) to collect additional feedback.

4. Changing rating scale

If you are using rating scales be sure to keep the scale consistent throughout the survey. Use the same number of points on all your scales and make sure the meanings of the numbers stay consistent throughout the survey.

5. Including poorly written or structured questions.

Review your questions to make sure you are being concise, clear, and brief. Make sure you are not using double negatives, acronyms, or obscure technical/industry jargon. The more clearly your questions are written, the more quickly and clearly your participants will respond. Look for questions with worded with bias towards giving you a certain answer. If you’re doing a satisfaction based surveys learning where you can improve ultimately helps you more than just get high scores. Also be on the look out for questions where more than one answer can apply or where the user may have opinion. You can often fix the former problem by qualifying with a “choose the answer that best applies” and help out a user who can’t answer a required question with a “not applicable” choice.

6. Question randomness

Make sure your survey questions are asked in a logical order so that each question and topic flows into the next. Unless you are using demographic data to screen out survey participants it is usually best to collect demographics and any sensitive questions at the end after you’ve hopefully built some trust.

7. Forgetting to pre-test your survey

Be sure that you pre-test your survey with colleagues, associates, friends, and even a few members of you target audience to find any unexpected obstacles. Testing your survey is a quick and easy step to make sure it is functioning properly and typo-free and that the questions are clearly written. Remember to pre-test your survey invitations too.

8. Failing to think about who your audience is

Sometimes your audience is obvious, for instance if you are doing an employee satisfaction survey, but if your trying to understand your company position in the market place or gather market research for a new venture you may need a combination of current customers and non-customer panelists that fit a certain profile. You might consider surveying lost leads or past customers for some needs. Go back to the survey objective and consider which audience can best give you the answers you seek.

9. Not sending reminders

After the first 2-3 days response rates typically drop off so you should consider sending a survey reminder email. While not appropriate for all surveys, sending out reminders to those who haven’t already responded can often provide a significant increase in response rates. When sending reminders, be sure you remove those who have already responded from your reminder list (SurveyGizmo does this automatically) and limit yourself to no more than two reminder emails, changing the time of day and the day of the week that you send out the survey reminders.

10. Failing to respect and understand your audience

It is important to respect your audience’s time by asking for it. Don’t just create a survey and send out an email blast with a default request. Make a brief case for your survey. Who should participate? Why would they be interested? What will you do with the data? Will you share the results or offer an incentive?

Remember, just because online surveys are automated it doesn’t make it any less personal and you are asking for information from busy people. Also, consider offering a survey incentive as a thank-you. And don’t forget to thank people with a follow-up email after the survey (you can do this in SurveyGizmo email invitations) which is also a great time to share any preliminary insights if you’re doing so.

If you’re in the market for some new and free anti-virus protection, we’re happy to introduce you to AVG’s Free anti-virus protection. This software is download.com’s most popular download by a landslide. The freesource is listed in our directory, but this review is priceless. CNET did a fantastic job on this review – it’s thorough, engaging, and just very well done. Enjoy!

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Twitter Lists have to be the hottest addition to twitter yet. This entry is part shout out, and part informational. The shout out goes to Liz Pullen, a sociologist/ethnographer, who recently guest starred on Mashable covering Twitter Lists. Her entry titled “Twitter Lists: Frequently Asked Questions and Strategies” is simply brilliant. Liz not only calls out questions about Twitter Lists that you didn’t even know you had yet, but then addresses the questions with detailed strategies on how to approach & execute on the answers.

We’ve taken Liz’s advice on at least one question “Okay, I’ve spent a lot of time creating what I think is THE ultimate list! How can I show it off?” The strategy: Submit it to list directories like Listorious and suggest a follow on #followfriday. We’ve submitted the Freesource Twitter List and already had one of our Freesources pick up on the list and follow along.

The informational portion is this…Twitter Lists are largely an organization feature – but they are also a very strategic one. The use cases, and uses, for Twitter lists are undoubtedly a huge value-add for Twitter and the end user. The strategy for using this enhancement is not going to be the same for everyone and will evolve in time (probably even in the coming weeks). For me, Twitter lists have created a HUGE convenience – now I can keep track of all our Freesources with ease!

If you’re interested in hearing more from Liz Pullen, she can be followed on Twitter @nwjerseyliz and on her blog Spiral Srcatch.

Thanks for reading, and happy listing!