Share Almost Any Blog Post in Google Reader

Share Almost Any Blog Post in Google Reader:

Google Reader's sharing feature is very cool, but it's limited to your subscriptions. If you find an interesting post and you want to share it with your friends without subscribing to the feed, Google Reader is not very helpful. On a closer look, you'll notice that Google Reader lets you preview any feed without subscribing to it if you go to this page:

http://www.google.com/reader/view/feed/FEED_URL

But it's not that easy to find the feed and build that URL every time you want to share a post. And even if you do that, you'll still have to find the post.

So I created a bookmarklet that automates the process: it finds the feed and creates a different URL that tells Google Reader to search for the page's title in that feed. Hopefully, the first result is the page you want to share.

Here's how to add the bookmarklet to your browser (because of a Google Reader bug, this doesn't work in Opera and Safari):

1. Make sure the link toolbar is visible in your browser. You can enable it if you go to the View menu in your browser,

click on Toolbars and check:

* Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox

* Links in Internet Explorer

2. Don't click on the link below!

For Firefox, right-click on the link, select "Bookmark this Link" and choose "Bookmarks Toolbar" from the dropdown. For Internet Explorer, right-click on the link, select "Add to Favorites", ignore the security warning and choose "Links" from the list of folders.

Note that you'll be able to share pages only from sites that have feeds and only if you go to the blog post, not to the blog's homepage. If the post is very recent, it's likely that Google Reader didn't index it yet. If the page's title is not identical to the post's title, select the title before clicking on the bookmarklet.

Credits: the bookmarklet contains code from Google Reader's subscription bookmarklet; based on a idea by Louis Gray.

Google Docs in Firefox Sidebar

Google Docs in Firefox Sidebar:

Google Docs Bar is a Firefox extension that shows the list of documents from Google Docs in the sidebar. The extension has many features from Google's file explorer: you can search for a file, restrict the list to documents, spreadsheets or presentations and view a certain folder (the subfolders aren't yet supported).

A great feature that makes this extension more valuable is uploading files using drag and drop. Drag one or more files from Windows Explorer to the sidebar and they'll be uploaded in the background.

For those who are worried about security, the extension sends your credentials directly to Google and stores them in Firefox's password manager. After installing the extension, you can make the sidebar visible by going to View > Sidebar > Google Docs Bar. The sidebar will always show the list of documents and it's useful if you frequently use Google Docs.

Google Shows More Results in the Local OneBox

Google Shows More Results in the Local OneBox:

When you search for something like [italian restaurant ny], the local search results are more useful than the web results, so Google displays a OneBox that includes these results at the top of the page or in other position. Google has recently increased the number of results displayed in the local OneBox from 3 to 10.

Last year, in January, the OneBox was enriched with a static map, information about reviews, directions. To make room for 10 results instead of 3, Google removed the addresses, the links to directions and the ratings.

It's very interesting to see that the other general search engines (Yahoo, Live Search, Ask.com) link to pages from their local search engines, while Google links to the homepage of each business. Another difference is that Google's box has a variable position, depending on the relevance to user's query.

Search Engine Land asked Google why it decided to increase the number of results. The reason is that "many people didn't realize there was additional local content available beyond the three listings, despite the more results... prompt. Accordingly, Google said that with the 10 links it is hoping to signal people that there is much more local content a click away. The ranking of those ten results is based on a range of factors, including the query, proximity, availability of ratings/reviews and their quality and several other variables."

Completely Uninstalling Windows Applications

Completely Uninstalling Windows Applications:

When you uninstall a Windows application, the uninstaller doesn't remove all the files and registry entries created by the application. Sometimes the developers were too lazy or they thought those files might be needed if you reinstall the application. The end result is that your computer loads slower because your registry contains more entries and the hard drive stores unnecessary files.

Revo Uninstaller is a software that lets you completely uninstall programs and it's easier to use than the built-in "Add or remove programs". You can search for a program or locate it in a more intuitive way: enter in the Hunter Mode, open the program you want to uninstall and drag the target to your program's window.

After finding the program, Revo Uninstaller analyzes the program's data, launches the uninstaller and shows you a list of leftovers (files, folders, registry entries related to the application). The application does a pretty good job at identifying them, but you should still check the results before selecting everything. "Even if you have a broken installation, Revo Uninstaller scans for an application's data on your hard disk drives and in the Windows registry and shows all found files, folders and registry items so you can delete them."

Revo Uninstaller also includes a junk files cleaner and a way to remove the history from browsers, Microsoft Office and some Windows application, but CCleaner is a better application for this.

Invite Collaborators to Multiple Documents

Invite Collaborators to Multiple Documents:

If you have a lot of documents in Google Docs and you need to collaborate with the same people on all of them, it's pretty tedious to open each document, go to the Share tab, enter the email addresses and choose the right settings. Now you don't have to do this anymore, because there's a new button in the file manager that lets you invite people to collaborate on more than a single document: it's called "Share".

It would be nice to automatically add a certain group of people as collaborators for all the documents from a folder, but that's not currently possible.

Google Reader Shows the Published Date

Google Reader Shows the Published Date:

Besides a new favicon and a confirmation dialog displayed when you mark all the posts as read, Google Reader now shows the published date of a post in a tooltip. Next to the snippet, Google Reader displays the date when the post was indexed by Google, not the date when it was published. Sometimes the difference between these two dates can be a single minute, but it could also be much bigger.

Google Reader also added some new keyboard shortcuts: a to add subscriptions, g+d to open the feed directory, e to email the current item. You can see the list of keyboard shortcuts by typing ? in Google Reader.

Save Google Presentations as PDF

Save Google Presentations as PDF:

Google Presently, the poorest member of the Google Docs family, added some new features and they're almost as exciting as the previous update. Now you can finally save your presentation in a decent format: PDF and this is especially useful if you want to print the presentation. To select the number of slides displayed on a page before exporting the presentation, choose the printing option.

Presently also redesigned the rich text editor's toolbar and added a small number of shapes you can insert into your slides: block arrows, circles, bubbles.

While Presently's biggest problem is the poor performance, there are many basic features that are missing: export to PPT, slide master, tables etc.

Mobile YouTube Application

Mobile YouTube Application:

YouTube updated its mobile site available at m.youtube.com to include all the videos from the desktop version and to provide access to your account, the option to rate videos and post meaningful comments. To use the mobile interface, you need a phone that is able to stream 3GP files over RTSP.

But there's a better way to play YouTube videos from your mobile phone: a Java midlet currently available for some phones from Sony Ericsson (K800, W880) and Nokia (S60 3rd Edition phones: N73, N95, E65, 6110, 6120). The JAR file for Nokia phones can be found here, in case you want to test it on unsupported phones. YouTube's mobile application also lets you upload videos from your phone. To install it, just go to m.youtube.com/app on your phone and follow the steps described in YouTube's help center.

"You may be wondering, Is YouTube for Mobile the same as what's available on the Helio Ocean or Apple iPhone? In a nutshell, yes -- YouTube for Mobile is all about bringing video to mobile phones. We believe in providing the best user experience possible for all users, which in some cases means different YouTube solutions for different phones," explains the YouTube blog.

Google Docs Uploader

Google Docs Uploader:

Google released a basic application for Windows that lets you upload files to Google Docs by using drag and drop. The application is more like a sample for Google Docs API, but it's pretty useful if you want to upload a lot of documents. There's also an option to add "Send to Google Docs" to the contextual menu so you can upload files directly from Windows Explorer.

The application can be downloaded from this URL and requires .NET Framework 2.0.

Another way to upload more files at once is to send them to the email address displayed on this page, but this only works with documents and presentations and there are some restrictions regarding the size of the uploaded files: for example, you can send by email only presentations smaller than 500 KB. Google Toolbar for Firefox also has a feature that lets you open files in Google Docs.

Block your friends scrapbook - ORKUT

Block your friends scrapbook - ORKUT:


It will be really scary when you will find out that you are not able to reply to your friends scrap from your own scrapbook. Yes this hack can be used to block anybody's scrapbook. The best part is that after the scrapbook is blocked nobody can scrap him.

Really cool!

Copy this and paste in your friends scrapbook.


that man will enter his scrapbook he will be at the login position .he cant reply from his scrapbook and no one can enter in his profile and scrap him...

Solution : (To Unblock it)

To avoid being logged off again when you see the scrap, you can block flash in your browser.

For Firefox download the following plugin :https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433

In opera, you can disable the flash plugin.Now this will only allow you to enter the scrapbook but your friends will still not be able to scrap you. So for that you need to delete the scrap.

Another Method:

First open your scrapbook.

Now Open your Orkut Homepage in a new window( Don't close the scrapbook ).

You will find the login page.Now enter your detail and login to Orkut.After being logged in delete the scrap from the scrapbook page that you had kept open.Enjoy!!!

Make about:blank Your Homepage

Make about:blank Your Homepage:

Many sites try to convince you to set them as your homepage: for example, every time you visit google.com using Internet Explorer, the site prompts you to make Google your homepage (Firefox's default homepage is already a skinned google.com).

Other sites are created just to become your homepage: from classic portals like Yahoo.com to personalized homepages like My Yahoo, iGoogle or Netvibes. But none of the sites is better than about:blank.

According to Wikipedia, "about: is an internal URI scheme (also known as a URL scheme or, erroneously, protocol) in various web browsers to display certain built-in functions and Easter eggs. It is not an officially registered scheme, and has no standard syntax." One of the most common addresses is about:blank, whose only purpose is to display a blank HTML document. It's supported by most browsers and it has a lot of advantages:

* your browser loads much faster

* it works even if you don't have an Internet connection

* it's not distracting so you can continue your work

* you are free to decide where to go, without letting others decide for you

* if you open a new window, some browsers (for example, Internet Explorer) load the homepage

* it's the most minimalist homepage in the world

Fortunately, most browsers have an option to set the blank page as a homepage, but you can always type about:blank to replace the default homepage. And next time when you install a toolbar or any other popular software, keep an eye on settings like "Make Yahoo.com your homepage". By default, most software from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft has the mission to change your homepage and the default search provider.

Dividing Lines in Google's Navigation Menu

Dividing Lines in Google's Navigation Menu:

To separate the search and the non-search properties, Google added two dividing lines in the More menu. Another change is that the services are no longer sorted alphabetically, but probably by usage. The order for non-search services is: YouTube, Google Calendar, Picasa Web, Google Docs and Google Reader, while in the search area: Google Video, Google Groups, Book Search, Google Scholar, Google Finance, Blog Search.

It's still difficult to understand why Google doesn't let you customize the navigation bar, the same way you can customize it in the new iPhone interface. This will probably encourage more people to use the menu and to go to their favorite services more often.

Popular Shared Items in Google Reader

Popular Shared Items in Google Reader:

The idea of aggregating the posts shared by Google Reader users to create a memetracker somewhere between TechMeme and Digg is not new. Mario Romero created a Facebook app called Feedheads that shows the most popular items shared by your friends, your groups and by all those who use the application.

ReadBurner doesn't focus on aggregating shared items from your friends and it's not restricted to Facebook: the application gets data from any shared items page. "In order to filter out the best stuff ReadBurner counts whenever an item is shared by multiple persons. Since Google Reader users can generally be described as very tech-aware, I think that over time lots of good stuff can come out of ReadBurner," explains the author of this project, Alexander Marktl. For now, most of the popular items are related to technology and a post can get at the top of the list if 20-30 people share it.

Louis Gray, who found this site in the referrer logs, thinks "there is a market for people looking for most popular shared items, and finding new people sharing what they read on Google Reader." It's not clear why Google Reader doesn't experiment with this idea, at least by de-duplicating the reading list and showing only once the posts shared by more people.

Making Google Reader More Like Gmail

Making Google Reader More Like Gmail:

Google Reader could add a lot of features from Gmail that would improve the way it organizes information.

A filtering mechanism would allow you to automatically star, share, email, label or mark as read the posts that match a certain pattern. For example, you could receive an email for each post that contains GDrive in the title or automatically label as Apple all the posts that contain one of the keywords: iPod, iPhone, Mac, iMac, iTunes, Steve Jobs etc.

Conversations are a great way to group related messages and could also be used to cluster posts based on their topic and the backlinks. You'd see the chronology of the articles and read all the posts about a certain subject successively.

Colored labels should make it easier to identify related conversations, especially if you read them in a combined view.

To reply to a post, select a fragment and send it to Google Notebook, Blogger or another blogging platform. To forward a post, send it as an email, an instant message in Gmail Chat.

Create an inbox-like view that doesn't include all the incoming posts: only those that weren't automatically classified and archived using filters.

Mute annoying conversations: a post gets a lot of replies, but you don't think it's interesting. A special option would automatically archive all the future posts from that thread.

If you don't like the web interface, an API should allow those who develop desktop feed readers to implement synchronization with Google Reader.

Editors for Creating iGoogle Themes

Editors for Creating iGoogle Themes:

igThemer is a simple way to create iGoogle themes. This week, Google released an API for creating themes, but if you don't want to read the documentation and create the theme files, igThemer lets you select the colors and the necessary images, while previewing the theme on the same page.

igThemer doesn't let you create themes with multiple scenes, but it hosts your theme so you can share it with your friends or submit it to iGoogle's directory. Regardless of the way you create a theme, an easy way to preview it is to use this URL:

http://www.google.com/ig?skin=SKIN_URL(replace SKIN_URL with the location of your theme's XML file)

An even cooler solution lets you edit the theme directly in iGoogle and see the changes in real-time. Just go to iGoogle, copy the code below and paste it in the address bar (you could also bookmark the script):

javascript:var s=document.createElement('script');s.id="igteid"; s.type="text/javascript";s.src= "http://igoogle-theme-editor.googlecode.com/svn/" +"trunk/iGoogleThemeEditor/dist/ige.js?lang=en&" +new Date().getTime(); document.body.appendChild(s);void(0);

{ The first screenshot is based on the photo Colourful life, licensed as Creative Commons by BlueSunFlower. }

Associate Email Addresses with a Google Account

Associate Email Addresses with a Google Account:

Alternate email addresses are useful if you forget the password of your Google Account and now you can add more than one. In your account, click on Edit next to "Personal information" and associate additional email addresses with your Google Account. Note that you can't add email addresses already associated with another Google Account or Gmail addresses.

After you associate an email address with your account, Google sends a confirmation message to authenticate that the address is actually yours. An added benefit is that your other email addresses are connected to your account and Google can use this information: for example, Google Calendar shows you the invitations sent to any of the associated email addresses. You can also log in by using any of the additional email addresses.

AOL Tests Jabber Gateway

AOL Tests Jabber Gateway:

Florian Jensen blogged about an AOL test server that lets you connect to AIM and ICQ accounts using XMPP, an open protocol also used by Google Talk. This tutorial shows how to connect using a client that supports XMPP, but you shouldn't expect too much from an experimental project.

Edwin Aoki from AOL confirmed the news: "We've been working really hard over the past few years in making all of our services more open and standards based, working with the SIP as well as the Jabber/XMPP communities. Our XMPP gateway at xmpp.oscar.aol.com, which we've been working on for a while now, is just one approach we're tinkering with. (...) This particular server at xmpp.oscar.aol.com is a test server, so I wouldn't count on it being reliable or even continuously available until we put some more work into it to bring it up to our standards. In the meantime, keep your eyes open for more announcements from us soon."

Justin Uberti, a former AOL employee who now works for Google, is hopeful about the future. "Right now you can only connect to the AIM/ICQ network using this gateway, there is no XMPP Federation. This means that you cannot talk to users on any other IM network at this time, including Google Talk. Hopefully AOL will add support for XMPP Federation in the near future."

For now, Gmail lets you chat with your contacts from AIM or ICQ, but you still need accounts on those networks.

Blogger Becomes an OpenID Provider

Blogger Becomes an OpenID Provider:

After allowing you to authenticate your comments using an OpenID, Blogger is now an OpenID provider. To use any of your blogs as an OpenID identity, you need to check "Enable OpenID for blogs" in your Blogger profile (the feature is still experimental, so it's not added in the public release yet) and save the settings.

Blogger inserts this line in the head section of your template

so now you can use any of your blogs as an OpenID. Some simple things you can do with your OpenID are to claim your blog at Technorati (you still need a Technorati account), sign in using your OpenID at Plaxo, Zoomr or post comments in a LiveJournal blog, like Brad Fitzpatrick's blog. A small inconvenience is that Blogger uses the subdomain of your blog instead of your name.

Yesterday, Yahoo announced it will support OpenID 2.0 (Blogger is a provider for OpenID 1.1), so the future is bright for this authentication system.

Yahoo Will Add Support for OpenID

Yahoo Will Add Support for OpenID:

In one of the greatest moves since the Zimbra acquisition, Yahoo announced today that it will provide support for OpenID 2.0 at the end of this month. "Yahoo! (...) announced its support for the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework for all 248 million active registered Yahoo! users worldwide. OpenID, an open framework based on proven Internet technologies, enables users to consolidate their Internet identity, eliminating the need to create separate IDs and logins at all of the various websites, blogs, and profile pages they may visit in the course of their online session.

In addition to the many leading Yahoo! services users already enjoy, anyone with a Yahoo! ID will be able to use the same ID for easy access to any sites that support OpenID 2.0. Yahoo!'s initial OpenID service, which will be available in public beta on January 30, enables a seamless and transparent web experience by allowing users to use their custom OpenID identifier on me.yahoo.com or to simply type in www.yahoo.com or www.flickr.com on any site that supports OpenID 2.0."

From January 30, any Yahoo ID will also become an OpenID that could be used to authenticate on any site that accepts OpenIDs (for example, to post comments on Blogger). Even if many important companies backed this authentication system, very few started to support it and this reduced its usefulness. Yahoo mentions that it will triple the number of OpenIDs to 368 million, although I don't think there's a way to calculate the total number of OpenIDs.

Hopefully this is just a start and many other companies, including Google, will become OpenID providers and will accept OpenIDs.

iGoogle Theme Directory:

iGoogle will soon let you create your own theme and upload it to a directory. The documentation for building themes is very detailed and you can already select some themes created by famous designers: Troy Lee's Supermoto Mayhem, Yves Behar's Earth-light, John Maeda's Simplicity is Complex, Mark Frauenfelder's Adventure in Lollipopland and a new theme created by Google: Countryside.

"The Themes API lets you create custom designs for iGoogle. Themes are visual designs that personalize iGoogle pages for millions of users. Themes are not just static designs--they can change throughout the day to reveal a visual storyline, message, or anything else."

Google Code Blog encourages everyone to personalize iGoogle. "Creating your own theme isn't rocket science. If you can create a webpage, then you can create a theme. There are only three steps involved: designing images for the header and footer, entering metadata and color information in an XML file, and submitting the theme."

Update:

More themes (not yet included in the directory): Projected Box (3-D rendering of colorful projected boxes), Books, The Sims 2, Spore, Eat Every Sandwich, Harvest Party, Chris Anderson's The Long Tail.

Google to Launch Picasa for Mac

Google to Launch Picasa for Mac:

TechCrunch found from a Google employee that we should expect to see a version of Picasa for Mac later this year. "I asked if Picasa for Mac was coming, and as luck would have it I managed to pick the Google employee with the least amount of media training and immediately put her on the spot. Her response: Picasa for Mac is under-development and will be launched later this year."

For now, Picasa only works in Windows and Linux, using WINE. There's also a Mac uploader for Picasa Web Albums that lets you upload photos from iPhoto.

Google is increasingly concerned with supporting other operating systems than Windows: a single Google software works only in Windows - Google Talk, even though there's a limited web version.

Switch Between Your Gmail Accounts

Switch Between Your Gmail Accounts:

A useful feature of Gmail Manager, a great Firefox extension that notifies you when you receive new Gmail messages, is that you can easily log in to a different Gmail account without entering the username and password: after adding your Gmail accounts and Google Apps accounts, select the account by right-clicking on the Gmail Manager icon in the status bar and then click on the icon.

Another way to easily switch between your Gmail accounts is the Google Account Multi-Login Greasemonkey script, but it stores the passwords in a non-secure way.

Hopefully, Google will add a feature that lets you link a main Google account with your other accounts and log in once to access all your Google accounts, like you can do in Windows Live Hotmail:

If you want to minimize the number of times you access your secondary Gmail accounts, forward all the messages to your main account and enable it to send messages using custom From: addresses.

Google Prepares for a Better Mobile Web

Google Prepares for a Better Mobile Web:

One reason why Google and other companies develop interfaces optimized for iPhone is that people actually use Apple's phone to browse the web. New York Times (free login) reports that "on Christmas, traffic to Google from iPhones surged, surpassing incoming traffic from any other type of mobile device (...). A few days later, iPhone traffic to Google fell below that of devices powered by the Nokia-backed Symbian operating system but remained higher than traffic from any other type of cellphone."

Google has another reason for providing special interfaces for iPhone: they'll work on Android phones too, since Android's default browser uses the same rendering engine as Apple's Safari, namely WebKit.

Today, in the first day of MacWorld, Google will announce an update for its unified mobile interface, codenamed Grand Prix. Among the new features, the navigation bar will be customizable, Gmail will automatically show new messages without having to refresh the page, the compose page will include contacts, while Google Calendar will add a month-at-a-glance view. The updated iGoogle will probably be integrated in the interface.

"Google, which developed the first version of Grand Prix in six weeks, is introducing a new version on Monday, just six weeks after the first one. That is a speed of development not previously possible on mobile phones," said Vic Gundotra, vice-president at Google.

Vic Gundotra expects that "consumers are going to demand Internet browsers [as good as Apple's]" and the mobile web experience will improve.

Update:

From a Google announcement (my emphasis): "These new features provide iPhone users with a desktop-like Google web application experience in terms of ease-of-use, speed, and feature richness but optimized for the iPhone. This experience is made possible by the iPhone's general usability and the capabilities of its web browser, combined with Google's innovative mobile web applications. We plan to expand this experience to international versions of the iPhone and to other platforms that offer similar usability and browser capabilities. One of our goals is to support platforms that are fulfilling the promise of the mobile web - like the iPhone - and to ultimately deliver unique and compelling mobile experiences that improve people's daily lives."

Update 2:

Google Mobile Blog has some screenshots of the updated interface.

Search, No Longer the Main Feature of Google Desktop

Search, No Longer the Main Feature of Google Desktop:

If you install the latest version of Google Desktop for Windows, you'll notice a new dialog that presents a list of features and lets you select the ones you want. Google Desktop enables by default the sidebar with gadgets, but the search feature is limited to filenames. To actually search the full content of your files, you need to enable the "enhanced search".

This is a strange choice, considering that Google Desktop was built for this "enhanced search", which is now disabled by default. Here's the description of the application when Google launched it, in October 2004:

"Google Inc. today announced a beta desktop search application that enables users to search their email, files, web history, and chats. Called Google Desktop Search, this new application makes it possible for users to find information on their computers as fast and easily as they can search the web with Google."

The desktop search application added gadgets in the subsequent versions and was renamed to Google Desktop. "Google Desktop is a new, easier way to get information – even without searching. You can think of it as a personal web assistant that learns about your habits and interests to identify and present web pages, news stories, and photos that it thinks you will be interested in," explained Marissa Mayer the shift.

Maybe performance was the main cause for disabling search, or maybe users didn't think it was very useful. You can still enable the search feature both when you install the application and in the settings, but not everyone will discover it. I recommended Google's software to someone who needed a tool for searching his documents and I was surprised to hear that the software didn't work as advertised: obviously, Google Desktop didn't index any file.

iGoogle for iPhone

iGoogle for iPhone:

Google created a version of iGoogle optimized for iPhone, that displays all the gadgets and feeds from tab in a single column. To switch to another tab, choose a name from the drop-down displayed at the bottom of the page.

The iPhone interface has a public URL: http://google.com/ig/i, but iPhone users will be automatically redirected to this URL.

The standard mobile version of iGoogle available at http://google.com/m is much more limited: it only displays feeds and a very small number of gadgets, you need to manually add items to your page and you can't change the number of items displayed from a feed. Another limitation is that it only works in the US.

{ via Blogoscoped Forum. The image doesn't show a real iPhone. }

Make a chat with Charcoal Black Skype Mouse Voip Phone

Make a chat with Charcoal Black Skype Mouse Voip Phone:

This is an attracting gadget which has Charcoal black color works with standard 800dpi mouse and it also has high quality of VOIP phone with sliding cover and it also has skype which allows the calling another computer or another phone. The same device with silver color was attracting and so as this black one.

• Compatible with multiple VOIP platforms

• Independent sound chip to handle soft phone VOIP voice quality

• Built in Mic

• Large 1.5W Speaker for high quality sound. Small 20mW Speaker for privacy
• Sliding Cover

• Hands free Function

• Plays music from your computer on the speaker

• LCD displays contact details, time, and other information from the chat program

• Auto Detection or Manual Switch between Mouse and Phone

Both the Black skype and silver skype is pretty same only the color is differed but the black is stylish and it attracts more users.

Diamond coated USB too Costly

Diamond coated USB too Costly:

Diamond is the costliest thing in the world and the diamond encrypted USB seems as costlier as Diamond. This is the USB flash drive offered by miiSTOR and dubbed ICE this is one of the glittering USB drive which made of Hallmarked platinum and it is set with 456 white diamonds.

This USB is beautifully made and this one is crafted in such a impressive one. If you want to buy diamond it is costlier, these USB is costlier and it price is only $22,110.

Trends in Google Checkout

Trends in Google Checkout:

Google is all about numbers, metrics and stats, so it's natural to see features that explore trends in user's activities. There's a product for search trends, one for music trends and now a product that shows trends in Google Checkout. "

Google Checkout Trends aggregates the sales data of Google Checkout merchants and charts it in a matter of seconds," explains the product's blog. As usually, Google doesn't show actual numbers, just the revenue evolution over time. The charts are borrowed from Google Finance, so they'll look familiar.

Import Your Hotmail Messages into Gmail

Import Your Hotmail Messages into Gmail:

I finally found an use for Microsoft's Windows Live Mail, a mail client that replaces Outlook Express as the light version of Outlook. Windows Live Mail has a unique characteristic: it's free and it allows you to access Hotmail accounts. Microsoft also provides a plug-in for Outlook with an exuberant description:"

With Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, you can use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail or Microsoft Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages and contacts for free!"

Microsoft probably thinks it makes you a favor by providing ways to access your mail from a desktop client, so it uses a proprietary mechanism that can only be interpreted by Microsoft's software.

But I digress: Windows Live Mail is a good way to migrate the messages from your old Hotmail accounts to Gmail.

1. Enable IMAP for Gmail.

2. Download Windows Live Mail. Microsoft no longer links to the standalone version of the product and it forces you to install a package, but you can choose the software you want to install.

3. Add the Hotmail accounts from Windows Live Mail's interface.

4. Add your Gmail account and make sure you manually configure the IMAP settings.

5. To prevent some new Gmail labels from being created, right-click on your Gmail account from Windows Live Mail's sidebar, select Properties, go to the IMAP tab and uncheck "Store special folders on IMAP server".

6. Then go to the inbox of each Hotmail account, select all the messages (Ctrl+A), right-click, choose "Move to folder..." (or "Copy to folder..." if you want to keep them in Hotmail) and select the Inbox of your Gmail account (or create a new folder). You should repeat this for each folder created in Hotmail.

If you don't expect to receive other message in your Hotmail accounts, uninstall Windows Live Mail. Otherwise, check your Hotmail accounts from time to time and manually move the messages to Gmail. Microsoft doesn't allow you to create rules for IMAP and HTTP mail accounts, so you can't forward new messages to Gmail. If you try to use the forwarding option from Hotmail, you'll notice that Microsoft still tries to keep your mail hostage.

Social Yahoo Mail: from Contacts to Connections

Social Yahoo Mail: from Contacts to Connections:

Yahoo's CEO, Jerry Yang, made an announcement at CES about a new version of Yahoo Mail that will be more social and will integrate third-party apps."

Jerry walked through a vision demo showcasing the possibilities of a more open Yahoo!, in this case focused on one of our key starting points, Yahoo! Mail. He showed how a smarter inbox could prioritize the most relevant connections in his life, both from Yahoo! and multiple social networks, and make all of his communications (email, IM, SMS, voice, status text, photos, etc.) simpler to manage. He then walked through how Yahoo! as an open platform—using Yahoo! Mail, Flickr, Yahoo! Local and Maps, and third party applications like Evite and eBay—could let you tap into the collective tastes, interests, and knowledge of the people you know and of the rest of the world. His example was trying to corral a bunch of very different friends, family, and execs for an awesome dinner. He was able to discover and explore what millions of people find interesting in Las Vegas (via Flickr and our TagMaps prototype) and what his dinner guests might enjoy as well."

It's interesting that the prototype allowed you to create "connections" by adding people from your inbox, your Yahoo Messenger list, but also from social networks like LinkedIn. So Yahoo tries to make the inbox more powerful by unifying all your connections and merging all their details in a single place. Based on information extracted from all these contexts, Yahoo Mail shows a list of the most important updates from your connections.

The third-party apps become tools that help you find information related to conversations and have access to your connections. The maps application can find a restaurant based on the preferences of those you want to invite for dinner.

Yahoo Mail moves from being a mail application to a social application that integrates mail in a broader context. Yahoo intends to connect you more with your contacts and to transform them into connections, links in a social graph.

RescueTime, Attention Monitoring Tool

RescueTime, Attention Monitoring Tool:

What would you get by combining Google Web History with Google Analytics? An application that shows where do you spend most of your time on the web using beautiful charts.

RescueTime takes this idea, but also tracks the usage of desktop applications. "RescueTime is a web-based time management and analytics tool for information workers who want to be more productive. [It] doesn't record what apps or sites you have open, but rather what app or site you are paying attention to!"

RescueTime installs a desktop client (available for Windows and Mac) that monitors the web sites you visit and the software you use. The data is sent to a web application that processes it and displays statistics. For now, you can only see the domains, subdomains and apps sorted by the time spent and details for each item, but it would be interesting to see information about navigation paths and individual web pages.

If you don't like the application or you're concerned about your privacy, RescueTime lets you delete your data. It also makes it clear in the FAQ that the application only monitors "the names of the apps and sites you use and the times that you use them."

Use Google Web History Without Installing Google Toolbar

Use Google Web History Without Installing Google Toolbar:

If you want to use Google Web History and save your browser's history on Google's servers, you generally need to go to this page and select "Enable Web History and install the toolbar". This procedure installs Google Toolbar, a plug-in available only for Internet Explorer and Firefox, and enables the PageRank feature, which displays the ranking of any site you visit while sending the URL to Google in the process.

If you use another browser or if you don't like Google Toolbar, there's an alternative way to send all the web pages you visit to Google: a script that asks Google for the PageRank of any web pages you load in your browser. To install the script you need:

* Greasemonkey, an extension for Firefox. Make sure to restart the browser before trying to add the script.

* Trixie, one of the best Greasemonkey-like plug-ins for Internet Explorer

* SIMBL and GreaseKit for Safari

* no additional software for Opera, but you need to enable the feature from Opera's interface

* Konqueror Userscript for Konqueror

The script is taken from this site, that also adapted it from other scripts. I mirrored the script to an easily-accessible location.

Once you've added the script, you only need to enable Google Web History: go to this page and select "Enable Web History and install the toolbar", but cancel the downloading process (you don't need the toolbar).

This feature only works when you're logged in to your Google Account. To disable it, remove the script from Greasemonkey or from another plug-in you've installed.

Blacklisted from Google Notebook

Blacklisted from Google Notebook:

Many web applications have limitations that are not disclosed to users. If you happen to use an application too frequently or upload too much data, your access will be disabled. In most cases, you'll see a message that informs you about the penalty, but Google Notebook chose a different strategy: showing a 404 error message.

"Back on December 20, I wrote about my frustration with Google Notebook, which I use every day as a way to archive much of what I read online (...). For some off reason, it seemed like Google Notebook was down, and yet I could find no other description of the issue online, which made me think I must be mad," writes Ran Barton.

He received a message from Google that explained the problem. "Your account was accidentally blacklisted by a blacklisting heuristic that looked at total size of notebook information. We've revised the heuristic, so you shouldn't be accidentally blacklisted again in the future."

Google Reveals New MapReduce Stats

Google Reveals New MapReduce Stats:

An updated version of Google's paper about MapReduce (available at ACM and mirrored here) provides new information about Google's scale. MapReduce is a software framework used by Google to "support parallel computations over large (...) data sets on unreliable clusters of computers". Google uses it for indexing the web and computing PageRank, for processing geographic information in Google Maps, clustering news articles, machine translation, Google Trends etc.

The input data for some of the MapReduce jobs run in September 2007 was 403,152 TB (terabytes), the average number of machines allocated for a MapReduce job was 394, while the average completion time was 6 minutes and a half. The paper mentions that Google's indexing system processes more than 20 TB of raw data. Since 2003, when MapReduce was built, the indexing system progressed from 8 MapReduce operations to a much bigger number today.

Niall Kennedy calculates that the average MapReduce job runs across a $1 million hardware infrastructure, assuming that Google still uses the same cluster configurations from 2004: two 2 GHz Intel Xeon processors with Hyper-Threading enabled, 4 GB of memory, two 160 GB IDE hard drives and a gigabit Ethernet link.

Greg Linden notices that Google's infrastructure is an important competitive advantage. "Anyone at Google can process terabytes of data. And they can get their results back in about 10 minutes, so they can iterate on it and try something else if they didn't get what they wanted the first time."
Aug. '04 Mar. '06 Sep. '07
Number of jobs (1000s) 29 171 2,217
Avg. completion time (secs) 634 874 395
Machine years used 217 2,002 11,081
map input data (TB) 3,288 52,254 403,152
map output data (TB) 758 6,743 34,774
reduce output data (TB) 193 2,970 14,018
Avg. machines per job 157 268 394

Unique implementations
map 395 1958 4083
reduce 269 1208 2418

{ The screenshot illustrates a Google rack from 2007. I don't remember the exact source of the image, but it's likely to be a presentation. }

Obligatory Quotes

Obligatory Quotes:

From New Yorker's "The Search Party":

"I worry about complexity. I admire Steve Jobs. He has been able to keep his products simple." (Sergey Brin)

"Microsoft is a bit of an unusual company. It doesn't seem to like any of us being successful in the technology space." (Sergey Brin)

"How many people do you think had embarrassing information about them disclosed yesterday because of some cookie? Zero. It never happens. Yet I'm sure thousands of people had their mail stolen yesterday, or identity theft." (Sergey Brin)

"There are almost three billion mobile phones worldwide, and Schmidt expects a billion more in the next four years. If the phones use Google software to sell advertising, Schmidt thinks that over time it is 'mathematically possible for Google to become a one-hundred-billion-dollar corporation.' Two vital markets are television, which is 'easily attainable,' and mobile phones, which are 'more personable' and more 'targetable' than most advertising. To achieve this goal, Google would need to claim ten per cent of all global advertising, which now amounts to just under a trillion dollars."

"What sets Google apart, Schmidt told me in another conversation, is that although people like him always assumed that 'Google would be an important company, the founders always assumed that Google would be a defining company.' He remembers a day in 2002 when he walked into Page's office and Page started to show off a book scanner he had built. 'What are you going to do with that, Larry?' Schmidt recalls asking. 'We're going to scan all the books in the world,' Page replied. Eventually, Google began to do just that."

Headers and Footers in Google Docs

Headers and Footers in Google Docs:

The latest version of Google Docs lets you add headers and footers in your documents. Just go to the Insert tab and click on the appropriate link. Google Docs still doesn't provide support for pagination, so you can't add any information about the number of pages in your header or footer. In fact, there doesn't seem to be a way to enter dynamic content.

In November last year, Zoho Writer added a special view for pagination and more advanced headers & footers. While the page view is still read-only, Zoho gives some idea of your document's layout. In Google Docs, the only way to see an estimation for the number of pages is to select File / Word count.

If you try to print a Google Document, you'll have another surprise: Google will export your document to PDF without mentioning that or adding a link to a PDF reader. In the print settings you finally have the option to add page numbers, but make sure there's no conflict with your document's header or footer.

An Unfulfilled Wishlist

An Unfulfilled Wishlist:

In December 2006, I posted a list of the Google features I wanted to see in 2007 and you added 273 comments with even better ideas. Very few of your wishes were fulfilled in 2007:

* Using your own domain at Blogger.
* Ability to search feeds in Google Reader.
* An orkut redesign! Who came up with that hideous colour scheme and those pathetic-looking buttons? And the silly bevel effect added to all photos looks ridiculous!
* IMAP in Gmail* A presentation app for Google Docs
*Google Talk on your Google Personalized Homepage
* More and better "mobile" versions of Google services
* How about the ability to open (in Docs & Spreadsheets) a Doc or Spreadsheet that is sent to you as an attachment to your Gmail account?
* GPS support in Google Maps for mobile phones
* Google Desktop for Mac and Linux
* I want Google to make their own Wikipedia.

The most frequently requested features and services were:

* GDrive (Google online storage)
* synchronization with mobile devices and Outlook for Google Calendar, Gmail Contacts
*task management (To-Do lists)
* Google Operating System (Linux-based)
* project management tools
* a lot of updates for Google Talk (Mac/Linux versions, groups, phone calls)
* Google web hosting

GDrive continues to be in the works, but it should be launched this year, according to a WSJ article. Google Calendar should add a task management feature, while the synchronization with mobile devices is currently limited to Blackberries. Google Talk will either completely move online or surprise us with some major new features; Google Operating System, project management and web hosting don't seem to be in Google's plans. The conclusion is that Google still has a lot of things to add from the wishlist for 2007.

A Search Engine from Every Collection of Links

A Search Engine from Every Collection of Links:

So you've found a great web page that lists a lot of interesting links about a certain topic and now you're ready to explore them, but you don't have enough time to read everything. A good option would be to create a custom search engine, but it's too time-consuming. A faster way is to create a custom search engine on-the-fly from all the links included in the page you've found. That means you'll have a search engine restricted to all the domains, subdomains and web pages linked from your page.

For example, del.icio.us search results pages are a good place to obtain a list of authoritative sites on a topic like AJAX. Once you have the del.icio.us URL, paste it at Google's on-the-fly search engine factory and enter your query.

Other good starting points could be: Wikipedia articles, other wikis, directories, scholar papers, pages with many references etc. Maybe Google should create a separate search engine for pages that have a lot of external links related to a topic (like these pages).

Multi-Touch Interface for Google Earth

Multi-Touch Interface for Google Earth:

Google Summer of Code Blog mentions about an application created by Pawel Solyga "that allows you to control Google Earth using two finger gestures on [a] multi-touch table". I couldn't find too many details about TouchEarth, but it's an interesting application of the mostly-unknown Google Earth COM API.

I remember that one of the demos of Android (03:54), Google's mobile platform launched in November last year, showed a touch interface for a spinning globe.

YouTube Feeds

YouTube Feeds:

YouTube has never offered too many feeds and they were usually difficult to find. The new YouTube API changed that, but the feeds are still inaccessible from the interface. This why I decided to compile a list of the most useful YouTube feeds you may want to add in your favorite feed reader:

1. Search feedshttp://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?orderby=updated&vq=mapreduce(replace mapreduce with your query)

2. Search in a categoryhttp://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/-/Film/?vq=michel%20gondry&orderby=updated(Film is the category, while michel gondry is the query - you need to replace the space with %20. Other categories: Music, Comedy, News, Sports, Autos, Howto.)

3. The latest videos from a channelhttp://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/radiohead/uploads?orderby=updated(replace radiohead with your channel)

...or only the videos that match your keywords:http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/radiohead/uploads?orderby=updated&vq=jigsaw

4. Feeds for favorite videoshttp://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/lonelygirl15/favorites?orderby=updated(replace lonelygirl15's favorite videos)

5. Your subscriptionsThis is not a feed that comes directly from YouTube, it's a Yahoo Pipe.http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?YouTubeUsername=lonelygirl15&_id=28303b479f11e24199be4cafced31ad9&_render=rss&itemLimit=20(concatenate the two lines and replace lonelygirl15 with your username)

6. Playlistshttp://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/playlists/50653251EDB4E764(the code in italic can be obtained from the playlists's URL (e.g.: Eric Speaks)

Embed PowerPoint Presentations Using Google Docs

Embed PowerPoint Presentations Using Google Docs:

When you publish a presentation at Google Docs, there's a new option that lets you add the slideshow to your site. Google calls this "the mini presentation module", but it's more like a YouTube player that happens to display a presentation. Unlike YouTube, the embedded presentation doesn't use Flash and there's no auto-play, so you need to manually advance to the next slide.

Since Google's presentation app uses a lot of memory, doesn't have an export option and it's impossible to use if you want to create a decent presentation, the new viewer is a good option if you want to add an existing presentation to your site. You only need to upload it to Google Docs, publish it and then copy the code.

Other sites that offer presentation viewers are: Scribd (which accepts many other file types and has a multi-file uploader), Slideshare (that doesn't require login and has a file size limit of 30 MB). Surprisingly enough, none of these two sites offer auto-play and, even if it has the most advanced viewer, Scribd requires to scroll down to see the next slides. Here's the same presentation above at Scribd and at Slideshare.

{ Presentation by Brent Callinicos, Vice President and Treasurer at Google. News found by Google Blogoscoped }

Google Docs Adds Subfolders

Google Docs Adds Subfolders:

Even if the interface doesn't completely reflect this change, you can now create subfolders to organize your files in Google Docs. To do that, go to one of the existing folders, click on New and select Folder from the drop-down. Alternatively, you can use the contextual menu.

Google choose an interesting way to visualize the hierarchy: folders can be expanded inline by clicking on the small arrow placed in front of their names. The left sidebar doesn't show any subfolder, but this is probably a flaw that will be fixed soon.

The folders from Google Docs continue to also act as labels, even if it's more difficult to treat them this way and the language used in the UI doesn't help too much. To add a file to a new folder you need to click on "Move to", select the folder and then click on "Add to folder".

More Xooglers

More Xooglers:

"After a life-changing four and a half years of working with the most talented group of people I have ever met, I've decided to take the plunge and do it all over again, working for a very small start-up. Today is my last day at the Big G," explains Kevin Fox, who designed the user interface for Gmail, Google Calendar and redesigned Google Reader. "Google is the first place I've ever worked where I feel that I'm part of the company as opposed to working for the company."

In December, Nathan Stoll left Google, after working as a product manager for Google News. "Google has been like a family, one of the most significant shaping influences in my life. (...) I'm grateful for the fortuitous opportunities I was gifted with during the past five years, the phenomenal people I've had a chance to work with, and the knowledge and experience I have gained that I'll carry through my career and life. (...) I've been comforted by the realization that Google benefits by my departure to tackle new endeavors. Great companies like Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Company, Procter & Gamble, and GE all consistently turn out leaders in their fields; their employee departures complement the mother ship by spreading the culture and working ethos. Google has many more fine minds joining than it has leaving, and is training them to be technology-focused leaders with a passion for building great consumer focused services."

It's interesting to see more and more people leaving Google to build a start-up, to join Facebook or to other interesting things. The same Google that was named last year "the best place to work for" by the Fortune Magazine. Maybe Google has been a great school for many of them and they want to start anew, to prove they can still achieve great things in other contexts, without the pressure and the unfair advantage of working for Google.

The Rise and Rise of YouTube

The Rise and Rise of YouTube:

This is the first YouTube video, uploaded on April 23rd, 2005. In the video you can see Jawed Karim, co-founder of YouTube.


One year and a half later, on Oct 21st 2006, Jawed Karim gave a talk at the University of Illinois. YouTube already had 30 million visitors per month and served more than 100 million videos daily. 12 days before this talk, YouTube had been acquired by Google for $1.65 billion.


Jawed Karim sayd that YouTube is a natural extension of other social sites like LiveJournal, Friendster, HotOrNot, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Flickr and its success was possible because it was launched at the right time, when people started to have broadband and digital cameras. YouTube attracted a loyal audience that spent 30 minutes a day watching videos and then spreading their popularity.