Draw Graffiti on the Facebook Wall of your Friends

Mark, Ted and Tim Suzman, the trio famous for creating a book exchange website for college campuses that's now used by millions of students, have launched another interesting application for Facebook called Graffiti.

Graffiti, as the name suggests, will let your friends draw freehand on your Facebook wall. If you want to paint graffiti on the wall of your Facebook friends, they'll have to add the Graffiti application to their Facebook profile.

Graffiti has a Flash based drawing canvas where people can scribble using paint brushes of various widths and colors. The drawing is rendered as an image and added to the Facebook wall. Neat.

Graffiti Wall on Facebook - Add to your Facebook profile.

Related: Draw Graffiti on Street Walls with Spray Paint and Brushes

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Print Blog Posts, Web pages as PDF Files with HP Printing Widget

HP today introduced a blog-printing "widget" that adds a "Print Posts" button to your blog pages.

When visitors click this print button, they get an option to pick and choose the blog posts they want to print, and skip those they don't. Only the text and images are included, everything else including advertising, header graphics, sidebars, etc are stripped off.

The blog posts are then saved as a PDF files in A4 or Letter format on the reader's hard-drive. For sites that do not offer RSS feeds, HP will offer a separate Print widget next month (based on Tabblo) that will allow site owners to add print functionality into their existing websites.

The HP Print Widget is currently being tested on popular blogs like Dooce, TechCrunch, BoingBoing and may become widely available sometime next month. [Until then, you can consider making your website printer friendly with simple CSS]

Here's how the Print dialog look like with HP Smart Web Printing - you can tick the arrows next to blogs posts that you would like to save as PDF.

Overall, a very elegant print solution that will also help save trees since your reader are saved from printing non-essential webpage elements.. Expect to see the HP print widget on majority of blogs in the coming weeks. [Thanks Nathan]

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Most Useful Windows Live Writer Plugins

Wish to enhance your blogging experience with Windows Live Writer ? Here are some very useful plug-ins that will supercharge your copy of Windows Live Writer.

Blog This - This is like the Tumble bookmarklet for quick blogging - select some text on a web page in IE or Firefox and click the Blog This button - it will launch a new blog post prepopulated with the title, text snippet and URL of the current webpage. [example]

Insert Video - Use this to quickly embed video clips from YouTube, Google Video or Myspace Videos into your blog posts. Just type the URL of the video and the plugin will generate the code for you.

Flickr4Writer - If you are a Flickr member, this plugin will help you browse your Flickr photos and insert them into your blog posts.

Social Bookmarks - Add social bookmarking icons (like digg, del.icio.us, furl, yahoo!) in your blog posts that will allow readers to save or share your articles on these social sites.

Screen Captures - This is like an offline version of Picnik Screen Capture. Specify a webpage URL and this plugin will insert a screenshot of that page in your blog post that you can later resize or apply image effects.

Syntax Highlighter - Recommended for geeks and developers who frequently share code on their blogs. This plugin will highlight the code syntax and language specific keywords in various colors.

WebSnapr - Allows you to insert thumbnail images of web pages in your blog posts similar to ones that you see on Alexa or Snap.com

Insert Code - It formats a snippet of text in a number of programming languages such as C#, HTML or JavaScript. Makes the source code more readable.

For additional Windows Live Writer plugins, please visit the Live Gallery and the excellent WLWPlugins.com. Want to write your own Windows Writer Plugin ? Try this useful guide by Keyyan Nayyeri (uses C#).

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Blog This! New Windows Live Writer is Here

Microsoft today released a new version of Windows Live Writer 1.0 (beta 2). This WYSIWYG blog editing software is a vast improvement over the previous version and a must-have upgrade.

There's an inline spell checker (so readers will complain less about spelling errors), support for HTML tables and a reminder option that will make sure you don't post stuff without adding appropriate titles and categories / tags. (related: email attachments)

Blogger users will love the support for labels. Wordpress fans can now compose static pages or add new categories right inside WLW without logging into Wordpress Dashboard.

Like Microsoft Word or Excel, you have a new "Paste Special" function that lets you copy-paste stuff into WLW with or without formatting.

Your old plugins will still work in the new release of Windows Live Writer. The Temporary Post issue now occurs only if you enable Web Preview for your blog posts.

Writer synchronizes drafts on your blog with changes you make when you're offline, so you don't have to worry about reconciling different versions.

There's another useful change - Windows Live Writer now allows you to upload images without applying borders or drop shadows, something which was not possible with the previous version.

The new Vista style look-n-feel of the WLW interface is also very refreshing.

Unfortunately, Blogger users will still have to depend up Picasa or Blogger Web Editor for uploading pictures since the Blogger Picture API is not yet integrated with Windows Live Writer. Expect that to change in the coming release.

Download WL_Writer.exe [5.4 MB]

Thank you Charles Teague, Joe Cheng and everyone else at the Windows Live Writer team. You guys rock, seriously.

Related: Windows Live Writer Tricks, SEO Techniques with WLW

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YouTube enters the Living Room - Move May Backfire for Apple

Apple wants you to watch live internet videos from Youtube on your large television screens through Apple TV. They will soon provide a free software update to make your Apple TV compatible with YouTube.

Users can browse video categories, search and play any video from YouTube.com while relaxing on the living room sofa.  YouTube members can also log-in to their YouTube accounts on Apple TV to view and save their favorite videos.

Are you excited with the idea of Apple offering internet video outside the computer ?

Apple TV requires high-definition widescreen TV while most YouTube videos have a 320x240 pixel resolution. Will you enjoy watching pixelated video content and listening to sub-standard audio on you expensive television set ?

Second, YouTube invites users to upload "user generated" content but like any other video sharing website, a large portion of videos popular on YouTube are copyrighted content that have been ripped from movie DVDs or recorded from TV shows.

Now Apple sells music, TV shows and movies through their iTunes store but if the same content is available to users for free via YouTube-AppleTV, some customers may reduce spending on the iTunes store.

And it will not be long before someone discovers a hack to save music and videos directly from Youtube onto the large 160 GB hard drive of Apple TV.

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Why Use a Mobile Proxy on the Desktop Web Browser (Hint: Speed)

Services like Phonifer, Google Mobile and Mowser help you browse web content (meant for the desktops) on the small screens of a mobile phone or a PDA device.

They optimize the webpages for mobile phones by stripping them of all unnecessary HTML tags, embeds and formatting styles.

The next question - do you need to know about these services if you access the web only from a desktop computer ? Well, the answer is yes and here are some reasons:

For users on a slow internet connection (like a dial-up)

Phonifier and Mowser will help improve your internet browsing experience since they load webpages with just the text and images (optional). Other elements like Flash animations, CSS, Java applets, Javascripts are removed automatically..

Dial-up users will probably feel more productive when they browse the web via these services as the page loads will happen much faster.

While Google Mobile and Mowser will divide a webpage over several pages, Phonify will present everything on one page so it's more suitable for browsing on desktop computers.

How Search Engines see my site ?

Though Google Cache is a good tool to understand how web crawlers look at your site, Phonifier is another great option since it generates a very clean view of your webpage as it appears to the search engine bots. [Thanks John]

Create a Mobile version of your Blog

Don't have the time to create a mobile friendly version of your website. No problem - ask the mobile phone and PDA users to browse your site via Phonify or Mowser.

They'll love the experience. See real examples on Mowser, Google Mobile and Phonifer.com. You can toggle the display of images in Mowser and Phonify.

As a proxy to open restricted websites

You may access blocked websites in your school or work by using Google Mobile or any of the other two services as a proxy.

Since the browser request is sent via Google.com, the internet filters will normally not block the page.

www.google.com/gwt/n?u=URL_HERE

For example, to access the Myspace profile of Madonna, type the following address in your web browser and the page is very likely to open on your school computer without problems:

www.google.com/gwt/n?u=myspace.com/madonna

More: PHONifier is an open source project that anyone can download free of charge. You could install the PHONifier script on your server to have it automatically update your webpages when a mobile device tries to access them.

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Choosing the right Web Stats and Traffic Analysis Program for your Websites

This is a good time for site owners and bloggers as they do not have to invest in expensive web analytics software for tracking and analyzing visitors to their websites.

We now have tons of interesting options like Statcounter, Sitemeter, Google Analytics, FeedBurner or even MyBlogLog that will help you understand how visitors are discovering your site and how they are using it.

Abundance of choices can be overwhelming for must users so we'll help you compare and pick the best site statistics package for your website.

SiteMeter and Statcounter - This is the most popular breed of web analytics software on the internet that you will find included in the maximum number of websites today. Both the services are similar in nature and very reliable.

They will help you track where the users are coming from, what keywords they have used in the search engines, how long they stayed on your site, physical location on the Google Map, what browser they're are using, etc.

I somehow prefer StatCounter over Sitemeter since Statcounter allows you to track the activity of last 500 visitors while Sitemeter limits that to 100 visitors. Second, Sitemeter is always visible on the webpage while Statcounter offers an option to hide the tracking icon from web pages.

103 Bees - Like MyBlogLog, this tool also has a very specific purpose - it will analyze the traffic that is reaching you from search engines like Google or Yahoo - you will know the search phrases / keywords that internet users are typing in the search boxes before reaching your website. [a dream come true from SEOs]

While such data is available through all other web stats software, 103 Bees is fast, uncluttered and less complicated for an average user. One simple report will help you analyze and build upon your organic search traffic.

MyBlogLog - MyBlogLog is famous for tracking outgoing traffic in near real time - it will show hyperlinks that your visitors are clicking to leave the website. A neat way to learn about stuff that's currently hot and popular on your website.

You can also use MyBlogLog to track Adsense clicks - it won't tell you the specific Google Ad that the visitor clicked to exit the site but you'll know what Ad formats are receiving the maximum clicks on your website.

The basic free version of MyBlogLog should be good enough for most users. [Track MySpace Profile Visitors]

Google Analytics (formerly Urchin) - This Google goodie is absolutely free, generates beautiful charts and also offers several unique features.

With Google Analytics, you can invite users to view your site statistics in read-only mode, track file downloads from your website, have daily reports sent to your email address in PDF or Excel formats, track external links that visitors are clicking to exit the website and more.

Google Analytics is clearly the most comprehensive visitor tracking software recommend for all sites since it even preserves historical analytics data which is quite essential for measuring the performance and improving the website rankings.

Awstats - This is not exactly a web analytics program but a log analyzer that extracts data from raw server logs and converts them into more meaningful reports that are pretty easy to understand.

Awstats is not for users of Blogger, Geocities, Wordpress.com or Googlepages since these free services do provide access to visitor logs. Instead, the program is for people who are self hosting their websites and have control over logfiles.

While Awstats will not provide real-time traffic data for your site, it saves you from embedding that Javascript snippet in your webpages which sometimes increase the webpage loading time. And it can help you track non-HTML content like favicons, images, etc that are consuming your site bandwidth.

FeedBurner - This wonderful RSS company which will soon become a part of Google, does provide a free a blog statistics tool that is integrated with your FeedBurner account.

While you get the standard details from FeedBurner site statistics, the advantage here is that one service is keeping track of your blog audience as well as RSS subscribers. That makes life a bit simpler.

Concluding Thoughts

If you have relatively low traffic and want real time stats - go with Statcounter. It also provides an HTML version of tracking code for tracking sites that do not permit Javascript (like Flickr, MySpace, etc)

If you have a large site with fairly high traffic, get Google Analytics. There's a small learning curve involved but you'll absolutely love this software once you master it.

Finally, if you have hosted the site yourself (say on DreamHost or Media Temple), install Awstats package and setup a cron job that runs at midnight daily. You will be amazed to see the detailed visitor reports that popup on your screen every morning.

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Upload Files on Wikifortio - Rapidshare Style File Hosting Service

Wikifortio is a free file uploading service like Rapidshare or YouSendit that alllows users to upload and share files upto 100 MB in size.

Wikifortio has one advantage over Rapidshare - there's no waiting time and the site is free of any popup or under advertising.


The file begins to download almost immediately when the recipient clicks the download link. The site is now used for hosting and distributing software from GiveawayOfTheDay.com.

WikiFortio.com - Store your big files on-line.

There's however a downside - uploaded files are automatically deleted from Wikifortio servers after five days. And the website makes no mention about the developers and their business model.

If that worries you, read about Files Upload service that's a Rapidshare like service with FTP support and also resumes broken downloads. Next in the list is Divshare.

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iPod Recycle Bin at Microsoft - Get a Zune, Dump the iPod

Rex Sorgatz of MSNBC recently spotted an iPod Amnesty bin outside a Microsoft office that houses the Zune team.

You do see some old iPod models lying inside the box but could be just another "interesting" joke.


Microsoft is close to selling over a million Zune digital music players while Apple iPods have already crossed the 100 million mark in April this year. Obviously, Zune has failed to make any significant dent into the iPod marketshare and this Google Trends graph narrates a similar tale.


Related: Apple Mocks Windows Vista Campaign

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Do Presentations, Training Sessions Without a Projector

Don't have the resources to buy (or hire) an expensive LCD or DLP video projector for the conference hall or your classroom ?

No problem, you can deliver impressive PowerPoint Presentations to an audience even when a digital projector is not available.

This is possible through a desktop sharing cum presentation tool called "Tiffany Screens" available for Windows, Mac and even Linux.


Assuming that everyone sitting in your workshop or seminar carries a laptop, Tiffany Screens software auto-detects all the computers in the room (connected through Wi-Fi or ethernet cables) and will broadcast the presentation content from the presenter's computer to the the laptop of the participants.

You hit the play button on your screen and the participants press the Watch button. That's it.

Like other desktop sharing software, Tiffany Screens allows users to request the mouse pointer during the presentation and participants can also share their screen content with each other. [Tiffany must be installed on all computers]

The drawback - Tiffany requires a commercial license if you have more than three participants in the meeting. Second, it reduces that eye-to-eye interaction between the presenter and the audience since everyone is glued to their notebooks screens.

Otherwise, a great solution for meeting that have a limited budget (like the BarCamps).

TiffanyScreens.com | Download Tiffany Screens UG

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Technorati Favorites Tweaked to Discourage Link Swapping

Big brother Technorati has finally stepped in to prevent spammers from increasing their Technorati Favorites Rank by artificial methods - i.e. people who participate in schemes like "I favorite your blog, you favorite mine."

The Technorati Favorites feature is very much in place and fans/readers can still add your blog to their Technorati favorites.

However, with the latest changes, Technorati won't tell you anything about the people who have favorited your blog on Technorati.

They are also hiding the Favorites count from your Blog profile page that suggested how many Technorati members called your blog as their favorite. You have to be in the Technorati Top 100 Most favorited blogs list to know that number.


The only way to check if someone has added you on Technorati is to visit the member's Technocriat profile page and scroll through his/her list of favorite blogs.

This was long needed though it's sad that now you won't have a clue about your fans who read you through Technorati.

Related: Technorati Charts and Blog Finder

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Remove the QuickTime Icon from System Tray Forever

Apple Quicktime player, that comes as a bonus with your iTunes, has one very annoying feature - it installs (without confirmation) another program called QuickTime Task (qttask.exe) to your system tray that will auto-run the next time you boot your computer.

QuickTime Task is no spyware or malware from Apple but it really serves no useful purpose except occupying some of your precious screen estate and slowing down the Windows start-up and the shutdown process (even if by a few milliseconds)

The annoyance doesn't end here. Though you can disable QuickTime from installing that icon in the system through the Preferences dialog, there have been instances when QuickTime ignored the local user setting.

Here's a simple trick to disable QuickTime Task from your system permanently.

Start the Windows Task Manager, select the process that says qttask.exe and hit delete. This should kill the process.

Next, open the Registry editor and remove the following entry from
HLM\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

QuickTime Task - "C:\Program Files\QuickTime\qttask.exe" -atboottime

Next, open the QuickTime installation folder inside Windows Explorer (C:\Program Files\QuickTime\), select the qttask.exe file and hit F2. Type qttask.exe.old and hit enter. Better still, just hit the delete key.

From the help: The qttask.exe process provides a system tray icon that you can use for quick access to the QuickTime application and additional settings.

If you use the system tray icon to launch QuickTime you should leave this process running, otherwise you can terminate it to free up system resources and/or space on your start bar.

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Microsoft Shuts Down Netscan (Usenet groups Analytics Tool)

Back in 2004, Microsoft unveiled the NetScan tool that scans the postings made on various Usenet newsgroups on the Internet.

The purpose of the tool was to help users find newsgroups relevant to their interest, learn about authors who post frequently, track the threads / topics that are hot and popular on the Internet, etc.

Microsoft Netscan system has been scanning and collection activity of all newsgroups since 1999 but unfortunately, things are about to change.



Microsoft will no longer update the Netscan databases starting next month (June 2007) though the old data is likely to remain available on the website.

Probably the declining popularity of Usenet newsgroups in the recent years (and the rise of Google Groups) forced Microsoft to take this decision.

Google Groups hosts a web-based archive of Usenet posts dating back to May 1981 that it acquired from Dejanews. Some historical threads like Linus Torvalds' sharing details of his Linux project can also be read on Google Groups.

Microsoft NetScan | Google Groups Timeline

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Screen Capture a Long and Scrolling Web page Online

Picnik.com, one of the favorite Flash-based tool for editing images online just keeps getting better and more useful.

They have a excellent add-on for Firefox 2.0+ that will help you grab a screenshot of any webpage with a simple right click and it will automatically export the image to Picnik image editor for further editing (like resizing, including borders, overlay text, rounded corners, etc)

For instance, this page from Steve Rubel was enhanced using the Vignette / Matte effect and it's trasformed from a boring screenshot into something that immediately invites attention.


You can screen capture either the visible portion of the webpage or the entire webpage even if extends several folds. Very handy for saving snapshots of webpages (like an ebay paypment receipt) or for creating thumbnail images of your websites for MyBlogLog, Facebook or other services.

Picnik Firefox Add-on | Picnik.com

The Picnik Screen capture extension is Firefox only but here are some screen-capture options for IE. And some more Firefox extensions for taking screen capture of websites and HTML web pages.

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Protect Your EMail Address from Spam with CAPTCHAs

reCAPTCHA MailHide is a very innovative online tool that helps your protect your email address from spam through the use of CAPTCHAs.

This free service from Carnegie Mellon University requires others to answer a two word puzzle before revealing your email address to them. There's also an audio option for visually impaired users.


Other than protecting your email from spam bots, you will do a great service to the community by using the reCAPTCHA service.

When someone solves the distorted text image to access your email address, he is helping digitize text from old printed books that was not deciphered correctly by the OCR software and required human intervention.

reCAPTCHA.net | Mail Hide | Wordpress Plugin

OCR doesn't always work on text that is older, faded or distorted and the only option is to manually type them into a computer. reCAPTCHA is sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher.

Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words.

If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.

CAPTCHAs as Advertisements | Google Voice CAPTCHA

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20% Free Time - The Biggest Threat to Google ?

The bright Googlers get 20 percent time in which they're free to pursue projects of their choice. Some immensely popular projects from the Googleplex like Orkut, Google News, Google Suggest and even AdSense were conceptualized and developed by Google engineers during their "20% Time".

But according to Robert Cringely (remember Nerd TV), this 20% time is a terribly fatally flawed strategy and will ultimately kill the company.


Bob's arguement is that thousand of ideas are brewing in the minds of intelligent Googlers, some of them are stunning but the management may not turn all of them into live projects.

And these Google Geeks who are feeling bitter because their ideas were turned down may be cooking with up with peers:

By design each worker is no more than 100 feet from a bathroom or food and drink. This creates an environment where people tend not to go home, which Microsoft discovered and leveraged decades ago.

But nobody works every minute they are AT work, which means the Google Geeks are constantly talking with each other, team building, bonding, and goofing off.

And for 20 percent of that goofing-off time I'll guarantee you that many of these people are discussing their pet projects, which have been REJECTED by the company.

The Final Days of Google

While Robert has given an interesting perspective, the problem he mentions is almost universal to every big organization - some disgruntled employees will leave when their ideas go unrecognized but a whole bunch of smarter people are waiting outside the Googleplex gates to fill the vacant seats.

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Track Your Favorite Topics and Blogs with Particls Desktop Alerts - It's Good

Particls is a new desktop alert software to help you keep track of news, blogs and other RSS feeds right from the comfort of your desktop - Particls does it in style.

Getting started is simple - just specific a list of keywords or topics that you would like to track and you are ready to go. If you want more control, there's an option to specify stop-words that will block items containing specific words.


Like the new email notification box in Google Talk or Microsoft Outlook, Particls will show an unobtrusive system-tray alert in the right corner of the desktop when there's a news item or blog post related to your favorite subjects.

The alert window fades away after few seconds. The unique feature here is that Particls will also display blog images in the alerts, not just the text excerpts. The alert window is automatically resized depending on the dimensions of the image.

You can drag alerts on to your desktop and they stay there like post-it notes. The are known as Pebbles in Particls jargon.


Particls will try to learn from your reading habits - if you like a particular news item, you can instruct Particls to show more news from that source or even vice versa.

Particls Desktop Alerts are also available in the form of a scrolling news ticker that can be docked anywhere on the desktop screen. Hover the mouse over any news item in the ticker, the ticker stops scrolling and you can read more details or save that to your desktop as a sticky note.

And you can have both the ticker and system alerts running at the same time. They suggest that general information might be displayed on a news ticker while important or urgent stuff might appear on a popup alert.

Overall, the software is impressive and not very heavy on system resources. If you like to stay ahead of the curve, Particls software is a good tool for your desktop.

It may not be a replacement for your RSS reader but Particls can certainly help you reduce some of your email overload especially those "as-it-happens" news alerts from Google that pop-up in your inbox every now and then.

Particls opens for public on Monday but if are willing to try it now, leave a comment and I'll pass on the download details. Windows only but a Mac version is coming.

Particls.com | Screencast Demo of Particls | Thanks M

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Adsense Video Ads Now on Leaderboard and Skyscrapers

There's some good news for Adsense publishers who are using the 728x60 Leaderboard or the 120x600 / 160x600 Skyscaper ad formats in their websites.

Adwords advertisers can now target even your websites for click-to-play video ads - they were earlier limited to sites using square and rectangle ad formats.


To enable video ads in your site, you must accept images ads (it should say text_image in your Adsense code)

Will this mean more income for you ? Sandra Tsui says that if a click-to-play video ad appears in one of your ad units, this means that it has won the auction against other ads and will generate the maximum earnings for you.

To check if an advertiser has targeted your webpage for a Video ad, use the Google Adsense Sandbox. More details here.

Google Video Ads - Sample ads in all available sizes.

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Download Videos from CNN IBN or CNBC TV18

Parveen Sibal from Canada is looking for a method to download CNN IBN news videos to his hard drive just like he can save from YouTube and Google Video.

News videos from CNN IBN or CNBC TV18 (Moneycontrol) are served as streaming Flash Video FLV but the actual URL of the video is hidden inside some complex javascript. No problems, we can still download and save CNN or CNBC videos using the following steps:

1. Get URL Snooper from DonationCoder.com - it's a tiny utility that reveals the hidden locations of music and video files as they stream from the web onto your computer.


2. Start URL Snooper and type video.tv18online.com in the Keyword Filter text box. Now click the Sniff Network button. [Not for NDTV 24x7 Videos]

3. Open the CNN IBN or Moneycontrol.com video webpage that you wish to download locally. As soon as the video starts to play in your browser, the URL Snooper will show a URL that resembles the following pattern:

video.tv18online.com.edgesuite.net/cnnibn/flvstore/ [for CNN IBN]

video.tv18online.com/cnbctv18/ [for CNBC Stock News]

Right click, copy the FLV video URL to the clipboard and download it inside Flashget or any other internet download manager.

You can play the FLV file using the free FLV player. [Related: Embed FLV Videos in Web pages]

This post is relevant for the CNN IBN site at ibnlive.com or CNBC TV18 site at Moneycontrol.com. For downloading videos from international news websites like CNN Pipeline, ABC News, CBS News, AP, TMZ and Reuters, use AOL videos website instead.

Disclaimer: Please check the Terms of Service before downloading videos from websites. Some sites may not permit users to download content on their computers.

Download BBC Radio, Convert RM to MP3, Save Music from Web Radio as MP3

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Sorry Mr John Edwards, You are Sending Spam

Just got an email invitation from Mary Jo Codey for a fundraiser campaign which will be attended by Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of 2008 Presidential candidate John Edwards. Read invitation in PDF.

I have neither visited the "John Edwards for President" website before nor registered with them for event updates so such email messages asking for contributions to the Edwards' campaign can be classified as spam.

Not a good idea especially when it comes from the marketing team of a wannabe US President.

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Create Web 2.0 Buttons Online Without Photoshop

   
My Cool Button is an excellent online tool for creating Web 2.0 style aqua buttons with rounded corners and color gradients. It generates the final image in PNG format.

This button generator is so simple and intuitive that even a three year old can produce professional looking Web 2.0 buttons in seconds. Do add it to your Web 2.0 designer toolchest.

Related: Web 2.0 Logo Tutorials | Online Logo Generator

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Turn Pictures into Interactive Puzzles and Flash Games

Pictogame is an online tool that will make you a Flash game designer with no effort - it converts yous favorite digital photographs into some nice Flash games that you can embed in your blog or share with friends over email.

Creating a game is easy - upload an image, zoom it (optional) and select the puzzle type from the various options.

That's it. You can also resize the Flash game to fit that in your site layout.

Here's a sample puzzle that requires you to arrange the pieces in the right order. Solve it as fast as you can and notice the time in the right corner.

Since the game is based in Flash, you can use it on any site including MySpace, Friendster and Blogger. Time to entertain everyone.

Create PictoGame | Bruno Carsenti

Related: Create a Dotted Puzzle from an Image [Birthday Party Ideas]

[The beautiful ladies in the Flash puzzle are the better halves of my college friends shot while they were on a vacation in Las Vegas]

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Help Google Improve Adsense, Get an Apple iPod in Return

Google is inviting Adsense publishers to participate in a "Adsense Satisfaction survey" and offering them a chance to win an 80 GB video iPod in return. Four Adsense users per billing country will be randomly selected on 15 June 2007.

Other than the attractive prize, this Adsense Satisfaction survey offers an insight into the upcoming features and the future direction of Adsense program.

Google is trying to find what percentage of your online advertising revenue is coming from Adsense, what other ad networds are you a part of and what kind of page-views does your site receive every month.

Here are a couple of questions from the Adense survey that are particularly interesting:

How interested would you be in the following capabilities if they were offered within Google AdSense?

Managing other publishers' AdSense accounts for them
Paying for phone support
Selecting the types of advertisers that appear on your site
Applying AdSense earnings towards AdWords marketing
Specifying your own ad formats and sizes
Gathering information about your visitors
Selecting ad categories to appear on your site

Site targeting is a feature that enables AdWords advertisers to list specific sites on which they would like to advertise. Which (if any) of the following new features would most increase your satisfaction with site targeting? Being able to:

Give advertisers more information about your site
Allow advertisers to see how their ads perform specifically on your site
Choose which advertisers can appear on your site
Offer your website inventory at a more granular level than domain
Set a minimum CPM for ads on your site

Of your ONLINE ADVERTISING revenue, what percentage comes from each of the following sources? Your answers should sum to 100%.
% from AdSense
% from Other contextual/text ads
% from Banners/Pop-ups/rich media
% from Site sponsorships
% from Referral/affiliate programmes
% from Other (please specify)

The email came from the Global Customer Insights Team at the Google Ireland office. If may be reaching your inbox shortly. [Photo: Shimon]

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Autorun Presentations or Software Programs from USB Drive

Anil Narwani from Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts wants to distribute some marketing brochures (read PowerPoint Presentations or HTML web pages) to clients on USB Flash drives.

He is looking for a simple method to make the document autorun (or auto-open in associated software programs) as soon as the client inserts your removable drive into the USB port of his / her computer.

Windows XP does have an Autoplay feature (through AUTORUN.INF) but that is limited to CDs and DVD disks. As discussed earlier, you cannot launch applications or presentations from pen drives since they fall in the "removable media device" category.

There's however a workaround - you can distribute your brochures in USB drives manufactured by a Japanese company called UDRW.

These special USB Flash drives emulate the CD - they trick the computer into recognizing them as standard CD-ROM disks and hence the autorun function gets enabled - you can configure these drives to launch any document or file upon insertion and run by itself.

Though the USB drives will work in Mac OS but not the Autorun feature. The price is not mentioned on the corporate site but it won't be inexpensive for sure.

Just a word of caution - some people may have disabled the Autoplay feature of Windows using the TweakUI utility from Microsoft or through the gpedit.msc policy editor that ships with XP Pro. In both these cases, the above trick may not work.

Related: USB Ports Disabled ? Enable it with Regedit

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Useful Technorati Tools That Are Missing in the New Design

Lot of things have changed at Technorati. From a simple blog search engine indexing 71 million blogs, Dave and his team have transformed Technorati into a multimedia search engine for pictures, videos, music, blog posts and current events.

The Technorati redesign is nice and refreshing but you may be missing the old features like Technorati Charts and the Blog Finder which was a directory of blogs arranged in various categories.

Well, there's little reason to get disappointed as these features very much exist inside Technorati though they are not easy to use as before.

Access the Technorati Charts as before

Technorati Charts are one of the most useful features of Technorati. They show (in near real-time) the popularity of some topic or URL in the blogosphere.

For instance, this chart on Feedburner shows blog posts / citations for the last 30 days - notice the peak yesterday due to the acquisition rumor.



Technorati Charts are unfortunately broken in the new version but you can create them manually with a bit of URL hacking.

technorati.com/chartimg/keyword?days=30&height=200&width=400

Replace the "keyword" with a search term like "Yahoo" (for finding blog posts containing Yahoo!) or yahoo.com (for citations or blog posts that linked to the Yahoo! website)

Other parameters like Days, height and width can also be modified for custom Technorati Charts.

Technorati Blog Directory (aka Blog Finder)

http://technorati.com/blogs/[topic]

Type technorati.com/blogs/Yahoo in the browser to find blogs about Yahoo! or technorati.com/blogs/blogger to see top blogs in the blogger category.

You can find blogs on particular topics using the standard Technorati search but that doesn't offer an option to sort results by freshness, authority or relevance.

Bonus Tip:Update Your Website Thumbnail Image on Technorati

Is Technorati displaying an old thumbnail of your blog ? Blame it on Alexa since Technorati uses the site thumbnail from Alexa instead of capturing them on their own.

Therefore, to update the site snapshot in Technorati, visit this site thumbnail updater on Alexa.com - type your website URL and Alexa will update the thumnail image of your site in next 48 hours. It will update automatically on Technorati.

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Apple Mac Mini like Desktop Computer from Dell

Dell has unveiled a budget desktop computer that looks very sleek and is available for purchase without a monitor.

The design of this low-cost Dell EC280 resembles the Mac Mini or a set-top box while the technical specs are ideal for basic computer tasks like web surfing, email, sharing pictures, etc.


Prices starts at around $350 so if you have an spare monitor lying unused at home, this Intel based Windows XP machine could be a good option for you. Unfortunately, this is currently available only for the Chinese market.

While the design of EC280 is small and cute, this is not the cheapest option from Dell even when they are targeting the emerging markets.

For instance, the Dell Dimension C521 comes preloaded with Windows Vista Home, bigger hard drive, a faster processor and other accessories for roughly the same price and is available worldwide.

Dell EC280 Product Page | Press Release | Thanks Rob Beschizza

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Google, Please leave BlogAds, Adify and TribalFusion Alone

What is your first reaction when you learn about Google acquiring some company ? If it's an advertising network like DoubleClick or more recent, Feedburner, I get worried.

It is fairly easy to guess that, going forward, Google will bring all these advertising programs under the common umbrella of Adsense / Adwords. With Feedburner on their side, Google may soon expand their Adsense for RSS Feeds program.


With every Google acquisition, the choice of blog advertising networks for bloggers reduces by one. And if Google maintains their current acquisition spree, we may see a situation where we have no choices and all the eggs will lay in one basket (called Google).

And that's something which make me slightly uncomfortable.

While Adsense is a successful program, you still need to diversify the revenue streams - depending only on one player sounds bit of a risk even when that player is Google.

What advertising choices would be left for small website publishers, other than Adsense, if Google expresses interest in other popular blog advertising networks like Adify, BlogAds or Tribalfusion ?

Feedburner Advertising Network was a good source of revenue but that option will soon disappear as it merges with Adsense.

Related: Paid Blogging and Google

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Windows XP SP3 in the Works - Microsoft Confirms

Putting all rumors to rest, Microsoft today confirmed that Windows XP Service Pack 3 is very much under development and will be available later this year.


The Windows Service Packs roadmap still says that XP SP3 is planned for release in 2008 but a new press release from Microsoft announcing a deal with Juniper Networks ends all speculation related to the release of XP SP3. It says:

Microsoft is announcing that Windows Vista supports this protocol today and Windows Server 2008 and Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) will support it as well later this year.

Customers running Windows Vista or Windows XP SP3 will be able to easily realize the benefits of a Juniper UAC deployment without requiring the need to deploy additional client software.

I think XP SP3 will primarily be a bug-fix release integrating all the patches and hotfixes released by Microsoft since XP SP2.

Don't expect a new version of Windows Media Player or Photostory or Windows Movie maker inside XP SP3 as Microsoft have shifted focus on Vista but still, XP SP3 should ease the life of sysadmins in organizations that are still on Windows XP.

Related: Autopatcher XP, Slipstream Windows XP SP2, Windows XP SP3 Unattended



Update: The information about the XP SP3 release date mentioned in the press release is inaccurate. This was conveyed to Mary at ZDNet by a Micrsoft representative:

"I just received additional information from the product manager responsible for SP3... Please do reference this link for current timing and disregard the release from InterOp, which is inaccurate."

Microsoft has atleast confirmed that they have a product manager for developing XP Service Pack 3. That should keep the hopes alive for XP users.

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Send Large Attachments in Microsoft Outlook via YouSendit Plugin, Track File Delivery

You probably know that YouSendit, like Rapidshare or Megaupload, allows you to transfer large file attachments via email indirectly - upload the file to YouSendIt.com and email the link provided by YouSendIt to your friend.

Files as large as 100 MB can be shared over YouSendit for free and upto 2 GB if you are a paying customer.

YouSendIt now offers a better option for Microsoft Outlook uses - they have released a free Outlook add-on that will help you email large files from Outlook directly via YouSendit.

As you attach a file with your Microsoft Outlook email message, Outlook will automatically send that file using the YouSendIt service. The YouSendIt icon in the system try will indicate the current upload status of the file.

One big advantage here is that YouSendIt tracks file delivery and the sender will now know exactly when files have been received at the client side.

In addition to Outlook, Yousendit has similar plugins for Corel Draw X3, Adobe Photoshop and Apple Aperture.

YouSendIt Plug-ins and Applications

Related hack: Know when your email gets read

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Technorati Blog Search Engine Moves to search.technorati.com

The gist is that Technorati is not a blog search engine anymore.

Technorati website sports a new refreshing look today. There's a new a scrolling ticker at the top that displays the current hot tags and search on Technorati.


Other than the new design (which reminds me of the Indian Flag), Technorati has repositioned themselves as a media search engine that helps you search through pictures, videos and music in addition to blog posts.

If you are looking to search for only blog posts on technorati, bookmark their new site at s.technorati.com. Dave has more details on the changes at Technorati.com

They have added a Widget Library which is actually a directory of all browser plugins / bookmarklets and widgets related to Technorati. The layout looks much cleaner and not confusing as before.


Going forward, it may not be fair to compare Google Blog Search with Technorati. Blog search is now just a subset of what Technorati has to offer.

Related: India Blogs Search Engine

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Adobe Visual Communicator 3 - Download up on Adobe Labs

Adobe Visual Communicator 3 is a video presentation software for creating video podcasts, training videos or even corporate presentations.

The software is not a video editor like Adobe Premiere but can help you create professional looking video presentations in minutes that look like television quality broadcasts (provided you have a decent webcam or camcorder and sufficient lights).

Place the supplied green screen behind you (it supports chroma keying), look at the teleprompter and start narrating. Adobe Visual Communicator can output video as Flash video (FLV), Windows Media, or Real player format.


But there is some good and bad news. The good news is that Adobe has posted the next interation of Visual Communicator 2.5 on Adobe Labs that anyone can download for free.

And the bad news is that this Visual Communicator 3 installer runs over 2 GB so most users cannot try it even if the software is free during the beta period.

Adobe Visual Communicator 3 will be shipping in the summer of 2007. Till then, you can download on Adobe Labs for free provided you are on good internet connection.

More details on Adobe Labs and Adobe.com

Wish Adobe had stripped the VC3 installer of all extra music clips, images and video to reduce the file size so that more prospective video podcasters would have explored the software.

Related: Video Blogging with Cockpit, Video Podcasting Software for PC or Mac

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Share Pictures, Documents, Music on the Web Without Uploading Them Anywhere

You use Flickr for uploading photographs, Scribd for sharing Office documents, YouTube for video files and Rapidshare or Divshare for uploading Music MP3s and other file formats including .zip and .exe.

Now that's not a bad approach but care to try something very different that would save you from the hassle of uploading stuff on the web ?

Enter Purplenova, a 3MB software that turns your computer into a virtual website.


Every file or folder that you share from your computer gets a public URL. Your friends can simply type that URL in their web browser and access the file no matter how large the size is - it will be streamed directly from your computer to his/her machine.

Purplenova is like turning your computer into a web server (with an internet address) sans any complex setup. Just run the utility, choose the local files or folders that you like to share over the web and Purplenove will give you a URL for each of them that you can paste in your email or blog.

There are some interesting application of Purplenova - you can access files located on your home computer from office or vice versa. You can also listen to streaming music on another computer from your Windows Media player.

They are integrated with Google Analytics to provides you with stats about file usage. Think of Purplenova as extremely simple web hosting from your desktop with absolutely no limits on storage space or bandwidth constraints.

PurpleNova.com | Download Purplenove 3.0 | FAQ

Unlike screen sharing software like Yuuguu or SharedView, Purplenova does not give other remote access to your computer, it delivers files only through the web browser.

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Create Web Forms Online; Embed Them in Your Blog

FormLogix is an online HTML forms designer that will help you create web forms fast and easy inside a WYSIWYG environment.

Whether you want to build email contact forms, feedback forms, or online surveys - you will find FormLogix useful. It will also host the HTML forms for you.

FormLogix has an intuitive design interface where you simply drag-n-drop the form elements (like textbox, radio buttons, etc) on the canvas without having to write any HTML - the forms still look stylish and beautiful.


They have a neat template gallery with forms for people who are too lazy to design a form from scratch. Once your form is ready for use, you can embed it inside your blog or website using simple Javascript code or as an IFRAME.

Every element / attribute of the form is customizable including fonts, background colors, borders, form dimensions (height / width), etc. Hence they integrate well in your existing website.

When a site visitor populates the form with data and clicks the Submit button, you get the contents in an email the format of which is quite similar to new comment notifications in Wordpress. A copy of your form submission is also stored online.

FormLogix will also provide a webpage for your HTML form that you can link in your email signatures or share in message boards - the chances of receiving email spam are thus reduced since you no longer have to share your actual email address on the list but other members can still get in touch with.

FormLogix.com | Form Templates | Contact Us Form [sample]

Related: Generate a Contact Us Form With Your Email Address

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Larry Page, Marissa Mayer and the Google Book Scanner

Google Book Search, which allows you to search text from around a million books that have been scanned by Google, has an interesting history.

Though Google Book Search made a public debut in 2004 as Google Print, the seeds of this book scanning project were sown in 2002 inside Larry's office when he and Marissa scanned the first paper book manually using a digital camera.

Larry took pictures of the book pages with his camera while Marissa flipped the individual pages after every shot. The Google duo could scan all the 300 pages of that book into PDF format in full 40 minutes.

They used a metronome, a practice tool for musicians, to maintain a steady duration between two consecutive shots.

This interesting story, mentioned in the Google Book Search history page, was also by Marissa during her keynote address at the Acrobat PDF conference.

Well, that was just the prototype. Today, Google is scanning more than 3,000 books per day according to NYT.

Related: Turn a Camera into a Book Scanner

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CBS Video Clips on Joost and AOL, WallStrip goes to CBS

Wallstrip creator Howard Lindzon has finally broken his silence on the CBS rumor.

Howard just announced that Wallstrip, the daily video podcast on stocks with a tinge of humor, has been acquired by CBS for an undisclosed amount.


[Lindsay Campbell in the Wallstrip Studio (Manhattan), Credit: NYT]

Liz Gannes adds that host Lindsay Campell and producers Adam Elend / Jeff Marks will become full-time employees of CBS, and Lindzon will play a consulting role. Congrats Fred and Feld.

So there is scope for monetization of video podcasts provided the content is produced in a professional manner and the delivery schedules are maintained.

CBS already has some good experience with video podcasts - the CBS Evening News video podcast with Katie Couric is syndicated daily.

Related: RocketBoom with Lindsay Campbell on WallStrip

Reuters says that CBS plans to syndicate most of their video content on the web.

AOL and Joost will soon carry the video content of CBS while CBS is also working with sites such as Facebook and Last.fm Ltd. to allow users to post its video clips to their profiles.

Rocketbook guru Andrew Baron is naturally excited especially with that unconfirmed $5 million price tag. He says - "This evaluation is great news for Rocketbooom and others in our field... it looks like Rocketboom spends just a fraction of what Wallstrip spends.

Lindsay visits the CBS heardquarters but the security guards won't let her in. Watch the video recording on Youtube.


Staci Kramer adds that Howard Lindzon becomes an "active consultant" while writers/producers Adam Elend and Jeff Marks will executive produce original video content for the division (CBS-Wallstrip) and Lindsay Campbell continues as the program's host.

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Make Money by Using Blogger - $100 per hour

Here's an opportunity to make some decent money from blogs - you do not have write a blog on Blogger, just test the new upcoming features of Blogger and provide your feed to Google.

Google is willing you to pay upto $100 per hour for this job. You can work from anywhere in the world, but need to have a computer and a good internet connection.

A Google researcher will call you while you sit at your computer, and ask you to try out a Google product or prototype via your internet connection, and give feedback on it.

Google routinely invites people to test Google Software (on paid basis) and they have conducted Blogger Usability Study earlier but that was confined to residents of New York City and San Francisco Bay Area.

Sign-Up for Blogger Study

Related Jobs: Work from Home for Google [Adwords Quality Rater]

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Google Adsense Sandbox - Online Adsense Preview Tool

Adsense Sandbox 1.0 - We have just launched a new online tool for Adsense publishers that shows the latest ads available in Google inventory for particular keyword(s) or webpage URLs.

Unlike the official Google Adsense Preview tool which is only available as an IE add-on, the Adsense Sandbox works across all browsers and supports all Google ad formats including Adlinks and Rich Media Google Ads (Images, Video or Flash).

The tool can also help you determine what kind of Google Ads are being served on your web pages for visitors who are coming from other countries like China, Brazil or Japan.

Since the Adsense Sandbox tool uses random Adsense Publisher IDs, advertisers are not charged by Google for ad impressions or ad-clicks generated though this tool.

You can watch this short Screencast Video on YouTube.com for a quick tour of Adsense Sandbox. Give it a try.

Adsense Sandbox 1.0

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Want More Friends on Facebook ? Add Contacts from Outlook, GMail, Yahoo, etc

Are you on Facebook ? Don't be too surprised if you are getting tons of new friendship requests in your email inbox daily from other members of Facebook.com.

Like Tagged and other social networks, Facebook too has added a "mass invite" feature allowing members to import and invite all email addresses from their Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, Gmail or MSN address book in one click.


This feature may have existed in Facebook for some time but now they are promoting it very prominently on the homepage so Facebook members are more likely to explore it.

Maybe the sole motive here is to increase the Facebook subscriber count but such features are often misused. If are finding it tough to handle the email invitation load from Facebook members, your best bet is to disable email notifications that reach you when someone adds you as a friend on Facebook.

Of course your queue with pending friendship requests will still grow on the Facebook website.

Mass Invite Your Friends | My Facebook Profile

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Convert HTML Web pages to JPG Images or PDF Documents

Total HTML Converter can convert HTML webpages into virtually every file format including JPG pictures, Word Documents, Adobe PDFs or even Excel Spreadsheets.

You can also use this tool to extract plain text from HTML web pages. The utility supports batch conversion allowing your to transform any number of HTML files into other formats at the click of a button. Geeks would love the command line support.


Total HTML Converter supports different charsets and encoding tables and can fit HTML Width to the chosen PDF-Page-Size.

Total HTML converter costs around ~$40 but you can have this useful HTML conversion tool for free providing you start your downloading engines within the next 24 hours.

Download Total HTML Converter at Give Away of the Day for free. No watermarks.

Related: Convert PDF, Office Documents to HTML, Screen Capture Webpages in Firefox

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