A Single Desktop Upload Tool for YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and more

Do you have an account on Flickr, Google Picasa Albums, YouTube, Facebook or Box.net ? If yes, get this free Universal Uploader without a second thought - you'll love it.

Fire Universal Uploader is a Firefox extension that lets you upload and also download videos, pictures, documents and other files to the above websites from a common interface.

Getting started is simple - click the dropbox icon in the Firefox status bar, select one of service where you wish to upload the file(s) and then drag-n-drop the pictures or videos - you content will be online almost the next minute.

The Universal Uploader is like a two-way FTP client for YouTube, Flickr and other sites - you can browse stuff that's already available in your account or upload new media file. The upcoming version could have support for Google Video, Photobucket and more.

To download the file uploader, visit addons.mozilla.org or fireuploader.com. In case of Flickr and Picasaweb, you'll have to authorize the service before uploading pictures the first time.

For some reason, the official Flickr batch uploader software never worked on my Windows machine and this Firefox uploader is like a god-send - more usable than the web based file uploaders. Related: Use Email to Upload Videos on YouTube

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Pick your Favorite Media Player Software for Playing Audio and Video

Here are some of most popular media player software along with a quick description of their features. They help you play audio/video files, organize your digital media collection, rip or burn CDs, play videos in full screen and much much more.

Which one of these media player is your favorite ? Please tell us through this quick 10 second poll. (If your personal favorite is missing in this list, do mention the name in the "Others" category).

Windows Media Player - This popular digital media player from Microsoft can play most common audio-video formats, audio CDs and DVDs. WMP can be also used for copy tracks from music CDs to your computer or for burning new CDs with your music files. Excellent support for organizing music through tags and ratings.

Media Player Classic - It's like the light-weight edition of the official Windows Media Player from Microsoft. Once you install the k-lite codecs separately, the Media Player Classic can play most video formats including Quicktime and Real Media. Everything is great about this software except the interface which is so 90s.

VideoLan VLC Media Player - It can play almost every audio and video file format (including Flash Video), records streaming videos and music, rip DVDs and can also capture screenshots from DVD movies. Available for all platforms.

WinAmp Media Player - The most popular MP3 player that can also play video files in Full screen mode.  Winamp also supports streaming media content and ripping of Audio CDs. This media player probably has the largest number of skins, visualizations and plug-ins than any other media player.

iTunes + Quicktime - If you have an iPod, you probably need this media player from Apple. Good interface, excellent support for podcast feeds but this Apple jukebox has a slightly large memory footprint. Best features include Smart playlists, seamless integration with iPod (and now iPhone) plus it can backup your entire digital media collection into DVD disks.

Miro (formerly, Democracy Player) - Like iTunes, you can use Miro to subscribe and download Audio or Video podcasts.  Miro supports full-screen mode, can play virtually all video formats, supports file downloads via BitTorrent and best of all, it search and save videos from most video sharing sites and watch them for new videos.

JetAudio 7 - Can play most audio and video formats, convert among audio file formats, cross-fading for a smooth transition between two songs and CD burning support.

GOM Media Player - GOM Player supports file formats such as AVI, DAT, MPEG, DivX, XviD, WMV, ASF and even FLV video. GOM Player is capable of playing incomplete or damaged AVI files by skipping the damaged frames. It can also play locked or partially downloaded files.  Can also take screen captures of the current video frame.

Real Player 11 - The new version can rip video clips from YouTube and other video sharing sites and downloads them offline in the background. A lot of streaming audio content on sites like BBC is still available in Real format so you probably need the Real Player on your system.

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iPhone Books, Training DVDs and Accessories on Amazon Store

Just hours before the iPhone launch, dozens of iPhone books, training DVDs and accessories like LCD screen protector, iPhone car chargers, iPhone Leather pouch, etc have gone for sale at the Amazon Online store.

David Pogue's missing iPhone manual is very likely to rule the market.

iPhone: The Missing Manual - Written by New York Times columnist David Pogue, this book teaches you how to extend iPhone's usefulness by exploiting its links to the Web as well as its connection to Macs or PCs; how to save money using Internet-based messages instead of phone calls; and how to fill the iPhone with TV shows and DVDs for free.

iPhone For Dummies - Written by USA Today Personal Technology Columnist Edward C. Baig, this book illustrates how to make and receive phone calls, play podcasts, music, videos, and photo slideshows, browse the Internet, send and receive e-mails and instant messages, take and organize photos, sync with your desktop and troubleshoot common iPhone problems .

iPhone Guide - Full coverage of the latest product rolled out from Apple HQ, from powering up the first time to sending pictures as email attachments and hooking up to hi-fis. Making calls, Listening to music, Email, Web browsing, Camera & pictures, Video & TV, Syncing and updates and iPhone extras - if you are thinking of buying an iPhone, this is the book for you.  

iPhone Training DVD - Not much details mention about the iPhone DVD except that it's authored by Dan Ablan,  founder of 3D Garage.com. If you're serious about learning and understanding your new iPhone, there's no where else to look than 3D | Garage video training.

More iPhone Accessories.

Indian Mobile dealers promise Unlocked iPhone.

iPhone Coming to India | iPhone vs N95, Blackberry, Treo

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Upload PDF Documents to Scribd with a Simple Right Click

Scribd, as most of us know is a hugely popular service for uploading and sharing Microsoft Office documents or PDF ebook online. Scribd can also convert documents to Flash files which can then be embedded in web pages.

The other good point about Scribd is that you don't require an account in order to upload or convert documents into other formats like PDF, Flash Paper or MP3.

To upload documents to Scribd, you can either use their browser based uploader tool but what about documents that are already on the web ? Would you save them to your hard drive for uploading to Scribd ?

One of the option is to use the Slurping feature where you append the URL of your web document to the following URL and it gets copied on Scribed automatically.

http://www.scribd.com/slurp?url=[DOCUMENT_URL]

If that sounds confusing, get this new Firefox extension called Scribd Slurper - say you come a PDF document in Google search that you want to save on scribd - just right click that search result and select "Slurp to Scribd" in the contextual menu. Give a title, some tags and you're done.

Even if you don't use Scribd for sharing or storing documents, this is useful when the Google cache cannot render the PDF document properly - view the file inside Scribd - it will be much convenient than downloading the file locally and viewing it Adobe Reader or Foxit.

Bonus Tip: Use filetype:pdf with your Google search queries to limit the search to Adobe PDF documents.

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Bypass Censorship, Unblock All Restricted Websites With Opera Simulator

Internet filters are active everywhere - Flickr is banned in Iran & UAE, BBC & Wikipedia are blocked in China, Blogspot blogs are banned in Pakistan, YouTube & Photobucket are prohibited for US army overseas while social sites like Bebo, MySpace or Facebook may be banned in your office. 

Some companies even block access to mail websites like Yahoo or GMail under the pretext of security.

Click To Play

In the past, we have discussed atleast a dozen methods to help you access blocked websites that are banned in your office, school or by the government of your country. Here's a new method for unblocking websites - you'll probably enjoy it more than the previous hacks because it takes the geekiness out of the whole process and make it extremely easy to access blocked URLs.

Opera provides a free online tool called Opera Mini Simulator that emulates the Opera mobile phone browser on your desktop computer. The tool is done in java and is quite popular among web designers for testing website layouts on mobile phone devices without actually using a mobile phone.

As you probably guessed it by now, this Opera Browser Simulator can also be used for accessing web pages that may be blocked on your computer. Since the requests are made via the Opera.com website, they would easily bypass the local filtering.

To open any site in Opera, just append that site address to the following URL and start browsing.

http://www.operamini.com/demo/?url=[URL] - example

The Opera Simulator can even be used for secure sites that require cookies - for instance, you can check your Hotmail emails via Opera. Though you are restricted to the tiny 200x200 screen of Opera simulator, it's still a very handy tool. [Opera link from Rupesh]

Opera recently launched version 4 of the Mini simulator that offers a better browsing experience than the previous version. You can access v4.0 of Mini simulator here. The above video demo was created in this version.

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Google Suggests Absence When You're Looking for Adsense

See what happens when you make a search for "adsense" on MIT website. Surprising because the MIT search engine is internally powered by Google web search.

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Creative Photo Effects, Text Captions for your Pictures

Graphita Live Studio is a fun way of decorating your digital photographs with Photoshop style brushes, speech bubbles, post-it notes, Devil horns, sparkling tooth and much much more.

Upload your picture to the web-based Graphita studio editor and drag-drop the doodles from the object palette over the photograph. Every object can be rotated or resized to fit the size of your picture.

[Press the Shift key while resizing objects to maintain the aspect ratio]

Pretty neat application to make your boring pictures look interesting and even funny. 

www.graphita.com [via David Shantz]

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Want to buy Unlocked iPhones ? Indian Dealers Promise to Unlock iPhone for ~$25

If you are among the millions of souls who live outside the US but crazy after the new touch screen Apple iPhone, here's something interesting - you could get an unlocked iPhone in the grey market of India and other Asian countries very very soon that will work with your existing GSM SIM card.

iPhone is a quad-band GSM mobile phone so it will working internationally in countries outside the US though you'll have to ask AT&T to turn on international roaming on the iPhone and that the places you’re going offer GSM coverage.

Officially, the iPhone won't be in India until 2008 but you could get the unlocked version from the grey markets of Palika Bazar or Sarojini Nagar in New Delhi for around Rs 30,000 (~$650).

Or you could purchase an iPhone from Apple store, get it unlocked in India and pop in your GSM SIM card. The grey market dealers told BS that they can unlock the iPhone cellphone for ~$25 so that it can be used on any GSM carrier network.

It's a surprise that Indian phone dealer are so confident of breaking the iPhone though they have never touched the device and only seen it in pictures.

Though the iPhone has a slot for the SIM Card, you need to activate the iPhone via iTunes so even if phone dealers manage to unlock the iPhone, it could possibly be used only for voice, video or music - the other "cool" features may not work on carriers that are unsupported by Apple.

Update: The iPhone website has more details on the unlock question:

Can I “unlock” iPhone and use it with another wireless carrier? - AT&T is the exclusive wireless carrier for iPhone in the United States. If you currently use another wireless carrier, you can choose to transfer your number when you activate your AT&T account.

Can I use the SIM card from my current mobile phone? - You should use the SIM card that came preinstalled in the iPhone.

Reuters has reported that Vodafone (and possibly Deutsche Telekom) are in talks with Apple to launch iPhone in Europe. Though France Telecom's Orange had also been in the running to bring the iPhone to Europe, but that Apple had a preference for Vodafone.

Another site called PureMobile, which is a CNet retailer, has claimed to offer iPhone units in US or Canada that will work with Cingular, T-Mobile and other GSM Carriers. Let's see who gets to break the iPhone first - wait until Saturday.

Related: Apple May Came to India via Reliance Retail

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MIT TechTV - YouTube Like Portal for Science and Tech Videos

MIT School of Engineering have launched a video sharing website called "MIT Tech TV" for showcasing lecture recordings, student presentations and other video content particularly about science, engineering and technology.

While the MIT TechTV videos can be viewed by anyone on the web, only members with an @mit.edu email address - students, faculty, MIT staff or even the alumni - can upload videos on the MIT TechTV portal.

MIT TechTV website, which looks the same as Blip.TV with a new skin, has no connection with the TechTV channel (now G4TV).

This is MIT's second attempt to share knowledge with the outside world. Earlier, MIT had launched the very popular MIT OpenCourseware project to make the course materials used in the teaching of virtually all of MIT's courses available on the Web, free of charge.

techtv.mit.edu/  [MIT Tech TV] ocw.mit.edu [OpenCourseware]

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Maybe It's OK to Remove the Blogger NavBar - Unwritten Policy

If you have ever been to a blogspot blog, you would have definitely noticed the 40-pixels wide Navbar that appears by default at the top of every Blogger-powered blog.

This navbar is like Google's own version of StumbleUpon where visitors can search existing blog or discover new Blogger blogs just by clicking the NextBlog link. And if you are logged-in to your Google account, the navbar turns into a personal dashboard toolbar similar to what you have seen on Wordpress.com blogs.

Though Google provides no "disable button", tons of blogspot users have hidden the navbar on their blog through simple CSS tricks which available for both new Blogger and classic Blogger templates.

The next important question is whether you are violating any Google policies or Blogger's Terms of Service by removing the navbar ?

The Blogger's TOS page makes no reference to navbar while Google representatives in the Blogger support group (nickname: Blogger Employee) have always ignored discussion threads seeking an official stand on hiding navbar. 

There's some hope now. Google recently organized a road show in select Indian cities to promote their Blogger platform. Ankit attended the event and requested clarity on the navbar policy from the Googlers present at the roadshow. They immediately called up their team based in Google's Bangalore office and confirmed to Ankit that it's legal to hide the navbar.

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How to Use Google Analytics ? What Reports are Most Important ?

You will get answers to all these and more in Beth Kanter's excellent video tutorial on web analytics software with main focus on Google Analytics.

Other than learning about Analytics, this video gives you an idea about the usefulness of screencasts if they are properly scripted and produced right.

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Adsense Ads with Round Corners For People Who Love Borders

Google today introduced new Adsense ad formats that have rounded corners - the ads are available in two option - slightly rounded and very rounded (the former has a slighly lower corner radius that the latter).

If you are displaying Adsense Ads with background color same as the border color (which is recommended for high CTR), this new format would be of little interest as the ads will essentially look the same.

In terms of Adsense implement,  the following variable will be added to your ad script depending on the version you select:

google_ui_features = "rc:6"; [slightly rounded]

google_ui_features = "rc:10"; [very rounded]

google_ui_features = "rc:0"; [default, square corners]

Probably the rc: numbers indicates the pixel radius.

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Comparing the Relative Popularity of Technorati Top 100 Blogs

These blog popularity graphs are based on number of incoming links and number of members who have made them as favorites respectively.

Notice the steep climb from position ten and above in both the figures where the slots are occupied by the who's who of blogging community.

And it's almost flat from position 50 onwards implying how tough it is for blogs in that region to maintain their current position in the popularity charts.

Pete Johnson, Chief Architect of HP.com, draws an interesting comparison between these blog popularity charts and the Long Tail curve of Chris Anderson - "there's plenty of ad revenue for the right suitors in that flat tail". True.

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Convert Images, Documents to Adobe PDF via EMail Attachments

KoolWire is a new and wonderful email based file conversion service to help you convert your Microsoft Word (.doc), Powerpoint (.ppt), Excel Spreadsheets (.xls) or even pictures into Adobe PDF documents. 

Just compose a new email message, attach document(s) that have to be converted into PDF and send the email to pdf@koolwire.com. The PDF file(s) should arrive in your inbox the next moment.

The big advantage is that Koolwire PDF converter requires no software installation and, unlike Google Docs or PDFOnline, you don't have to upload documents to any webserver in order to print them as PDF - just send them across as email attachments. PDF creation couldn't be simpler.

Best of all, you can attach multiple documents / images to the same email message and Koolwire will batch convert them into PDF. Don't think any free PDF writer software offers such a convenient option to create multiple PDFs in one go.

koolwire.com/ | Developer Blog | PDF Presentation

Limitations - No support for Office 2007 format documents, cannot convert password-protected documents to PDF. [H/T Ram]

Reverse: PDF to Text via email,  Convert PDF to HTML

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Windows Live Writer with WordPress - Problems and Solutions

These are some of the most common problems faced by WordPress bloggers when they're using Windows Live Writer for uploading images, publishing new blog posts, posting drafts online or simply editing the existing blog posts.

Problem with Template Detection: Windows Live Writer cannot detect and download the latest theme of your blog for Live Web Preview.

Solution: Make sure the following snippets exists in your blog header (between the <head> tag)

<link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml"
   title="RSD" href="http://www.myblog.com/xmlrpc.php?rsd" />

Problem with Speed: Does it take too long for you to start Windows Live Writer or it hangs for no reason ?

Solution: Windows Live Writer checks for software updates in the background and this may slow down the software or make it consume lot of your CPU power. The solution is to type services.msc in your Run box, select the "Windows Live Setup Service" and press the "Stop" button. It won't do any harm if you disable the Windows Live Setup Service forever.

The Secret Tricks of Windows Live Writer 

Problem with Publishing: When you publish a new post on WordPress, you get an error message saying - Invalid Server Response - The response to the metaWeblog.newPost method received from the weblog server was invalid: Invalid response document returned from XmlRpc server."

Solution: This is relatively a new problem which I noticed only after upgrading to Wordpress 2.2.1. In most cases, this error is misleading because your blog post has already been published online (goto WordPress Dashboard -> Manage Posts).

However, as the response is invalid, WLW would not know that the post has been processed successfully so it would save it the Drafts list instead of "Recently Posted" items list.

Problem Adding a New Blog: When you try to add a new blog to WLW, the software throws an error - "Windows Live Writer was not able to automatically detect your blog: Invalid Server Response - The response to the blogger.getUsersBlogs method received from the weblog server was invalid: Invalid response document returned from XmlRpc server"

Solution: Add the following lines of code to your .htaccess file contained in WordPress installation folder where the xmlrpc.php file also resides. Thanks Alpesh.

<Files xmlrpc.php>
SecFilterInheritance Off
</Files>

Problem with Image Upload: You get an error message saying "The following images cannot be published because the weblog does not support image publishing" - Window Live Writer would then suggest you to configure your FTP server for uploading images.

Solution: This generally happens when you include big images (file size) in your web posts. To resolve this error, either reduce the size of pictures (resize, use jpg instead of png) or configure WLW to publish images via FTP or upload images manually using the Web based Wordpress editor and then include the hyperlinks in WLW posts. 

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Protect Digital Camera from Water and Dust

Build a waterproof and dust resistant case for your Digital Camera - picture says it all.

To protect your digital camera from water, humidity and dust - add a roll of cardboard around the lens, then slide the camera body inside a condom (non-lubricated), also slip a packet of silica-gel to absorb moisture and tie the knot.

Best of all, you can still shoot pictures or video while it's inside the pouch though the quality may not be perfect. Underwater photography anyone ? More details at Instructables.

A similar method can be used to protect mobile phones while you're inside the swimming pool.

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Microsoft Smiles as FM and ValleyWag Argue Over People Ready Ads

Nick Denton recently accused Fred Wilson, Om Malik, Mike Arrington, Richard MacManus and several other top tech bloggers of accepting money from Microsoft for endorsing their "People Ready" campaign.

Though Om has withdrawn the Microsoft ad from his blog fearing that it compromises his editorial integrity, it's virtually impossible to digest that he or any of the other blogging elites would ever do this.

Can you buy a quote from Fred Wilson for few thousand dollars ? Never. Fred earlier called Nick a genius for turning Valleywag into a successful business. Wonder how he reacts to this episode. [Fred still loves Nick and Valleywag]

Neil Chase, VP at Federated Media Publishing, has posted a detailed response saying that bloggers were not paid for this:

In the case of this Microsoft campaign, the marketers asked if our writers would join a discussion around their "people ready" theme. Microsoft is an advertiser on our authors' sites, but it's paying them only based on the number of ad impressions delivered. There was no payment for joining the conversation and they were not required to do it.

They're not writing about this on their blogs, and of course several of them have been known to be pretty hard on Microsoft at times as reporters. They're talking about the topic, and readers joined that conversation.

The clear winner here is Microsoft since this controversy will do nothing but draw more eyeballs to their People ready campaign. And Microsoft gets all this traffic without spending a penny as FM has taken down the ads across all their properties.

Related: Microsoft Ferrari Bloggers

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FaceBook for Adults and Senior Citizens

If the current Web 2.0 generation continues to use Facebook for the next 40 years, here's how a Facebook profile page might look like. Brilliant. Thanks Scoble.

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Which Adsense Format & Color Scheme Will Convert Best for You ?

Should I use the 300x250 Adsense Rectangle or the much wider 336x280 for maximizing clicks? What do I select - 4 or 5 ads per adlink unit ? Will text only ads perform better than text+image ads ? Should I hide the colored border ?

These are some very common questions among web publishers especially those who have just gained admission to the University of Adsense. While the answer is to keep on experimenting, most Adsense experts employ a simple technique called "AB Split Testing" to optimize their Adsense ads.

The basic idea is to display different Adsense formats at the same location simultaneously but randomly. [This is done using the random() function in Javascript that generates a number between 0 and 1 with equal probability]

Here's a sample scenario to help you determine what format works best for your site - 300x250 or 338x280 ?

Step 1: Create two custom Adsense channels - name them as 300x250 and 336x280.

Step 2: Generate the Adsense Javascript code for each of these Adsense formats. Everything will be common in two code snippets except the value of following variables: google_ad_channel, google_ad_width, google_ad_height and google_ad_format.

Step 3: This is an important step, you will merge the two Adsense snippets in such a fashion that each makes an appearance on your web pages nearly 50% of the time. Here's a sample code:

<script type="text/javascript">
 var google_ads = Math.random();
    if (google_ads < .5){
      google_ad_channel = "300x250Channel";google_ad_width = 300;
      google_ad_height = 250;google_ad_format = "300x250_as";
    } else {
      google_ad_channel = "336x280Channel";google_ad_width = 336;
      google_ad_height = 280;google_ad_format = "336x280_as";
    }
      google_ad_client = "pub-xxx";google_ad_type = "text_image";
      google_color_border = "FFFFFF";google_color_bg = "FFFFFF";
      google_color_link = "0000FF";google_color_text = "000000";
      google_color_url = "0000FF"; 
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" 
      src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

Monitor the performance (CTR, eCPM) of the two Adsense channels for a week or two to know which of the two Ad formats are converting better. [Switch to Advanced reports, select the two Adsense for Content channels and group by both date and channel]

In the next iteration, you may try the same trick with two different color schemes but keeping the Ad format same - just create separate Adsense channels for each color scheme.

If you are displaying Adsense ads on the homepage of blogs or other places where content changes very frequently, it's a good idea to test between Text and Text+Image ads.

The contextual ads may not be very relevant on blog homepage or archives because of the dynamic content and therefore CPM based Image ads may bring in more revenue.

More on A/B Adsense Split testing at Adsense Blog and Adsense Help.

Related Reading: Google Adsense Tips and Tricks

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How Do Popular Websites Look on Mobile Phone Screens

Vodafone UK has created a good interactive demo to help you understand how some of the most popular websites on the internet look like on your cell phones.

The Vodafone commercial uses a Nokia N95 to simulate MySpace, YouTube, BBC, Google Maps, Amazon, Yahoo, Hotmail and eBay - you just have to move the mouse over various locations of the street and watch the website pages change on the N95 screen. 

Mobile Internet Demo 

Good for folks who haven't switched to an internet enabled mobile phone yet - the Vodafone websites also says that Nokia N95, E65, N76 and Nokia 6300 are best mobile phones for Internet though the complete list also mentions Blackberry and Sony phone.

Surprisingly, the Vodafone demo makes no mention of blogs, personalized homepages or newsreaders but do check this "Backseat blogging" billboard spotted by Steve Clayton.

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Software Serial Numbers and CD Keys on Google

Software License details of Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, Microsoft Office, Windows XP and tons of other software can easily be located on Google by running this simple query:

"Belarc Advisor Current Profile" "Software Licenses"  "Software Name"   key:

These are actually real software inventory reports generated by Belarc Advisor, a popular tool often used to backup software licenses.

The only problem is that innocent users have placed these HTML reports in public directories of their web servers, the search engine spiders index them and in-turn expose the secret software keys to the whole world.

Though most new Adobe and Microsoft software will require additional web or phone activation, that is not mandatory if the Belarc reports have Volume License keys. Scary.

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Incremental Backup for Blogger Blog Posts and Comments

Abhishek is looking for methods to help him download his entire blog archive offline.

The good old option is to use website ripping software like wget or HTTrack to create a mirror copy of any blog with images on your hard disk.

If that sounds too geeky, here's an excellent alternative - Greg Duncan has created a free blogger backup software that's extremely easy-to-use and gives lot of control over the backup process. [enlarge the screenshot]

With Blogger Backup, you can backup your blog posts into a single file or one blog post per file or multiple posts per file. The future versions may even save your blog posts into PDF files that you can distribute as eBooks.

Blogger backup can download everything or you can do incremental backups meaning backup just the new posts since your last backup or download blog posts posted between any two given dates. 

Best of all, Blogger Backup can also extract and save your Blog readers comments offline. No image support yet but you can always use Picasa web albums to download your Blogger photos.

codeplex.com/bloggerbackup | Greg Duncan [Uses the GData and Blogger Data API]

Related: Backup Your Software License Keys, Backup Blogger Posts on Wordpress

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Incoming Links on YouTube Expose Hundreds of FTP Passwords

As these screenshots show, some incoming links on YouTube videos are found to contain username/passwords of FTP servers that could allow anyone to login into these servers. 

If Google doesn't fix this immediately, it could possibly become a big security issue for FTP sites whose credentials are now available in Google cache.

Earlier these YouTube links had revealed clicks on Adsense Gadgets ads. The latest issue was discovered by Rohan Pinto of konkan.tv/.

To ensure that your FTP servers are not in the YouTube database, run the following query:

site:youtube.com "clicks from ftp" your_server_name

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Write a Text Blog with Pen, Paper and a Digital Camera

Dislike typing on the computer keyboard or the tiny cell phone ? You can still write a beautiful text blog - just get a piece of paper and a pen or pencil to jot down your blog posts.

These are called handwritten blogs - the paper note with your text is scanned using a digital camera or a scanner and posted on the web as a regular photograph.  Even PostSecret is an handwritten blog.

There an entire Flickr group devoted to the community of handwritten bloggers. It would help if you have a good handwriting style but sorry, no Google Juice for you as search engine bots can't read your handwritten blog posts. Very creative.

More examples at flickr.com/handwrittenblogs/ and mivox.com/.

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Desktop Tower Defense 1.5 Leaves the Building

Techmeme will probably remain silent today as bloggers have just found a new reason to stay away from blogs - the addictive and much awaited new version of Desktop Tower Defense Flash game has finally rolled out

Go waste your time play the game at handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/

 

For those new to the DTD game, here's how Rafe at CNet describes it:

Our desk is under attack by invaders coming from both land and air. Your only solution? Defend it at all costs, using tiny turrets. Fight off waves and waves of attackers that get more challenging with each onslaught. Use your victory winnings to fortify and buy more defensive units. Losing this battle means losing your humanity.

No wonder, DTD won the top honors at Webware. And you can't download Desktop Tower Defense offline - the Flash swf file requires an active net connection.

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Run Windows Vista, Office 2007 Together Without Installation

Too lazy to install the new Office 2007 or Windows Vista on your machine ? Worried that the new software might break existing stuff on your computer or may not work at all ? Here's something for you - Windows Vista cum Office 2007 inside Windows XP.

Microsoft today released a free combo VHD edition of Windows Vista and Office 2007 Professional which includes Publisher, Excel, Outlook, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, and Word.

You can download this all-in-one package from Microsoft Download Center and run it on your Windows XP computer without making any modifications by using the free Microsoft Virtual PC software.

Start the Virtual PC software and just open the Windows Vista cum Office 2007 image - the software will run independent of your existing XP SP2 setup and will not alter or install anything on the computer.

Excited ? There's a small catch - though the Office 2007 / Vista image file is free, it is a bit bulky (~2 GB to be exact) and requires addition 10 GB of free hard drive space for running smoothly inside the Virtual PC software.

If you think your Broadband connection can take the load, get the Office 2007 cum Vista installer from microsoft.com/downloads/ (file available in VHD image format).

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Build Interactive Photo and Video Presentations with Vuvox

Vuvox creates extremely impressive Flash presentations from your videos, photos, music like you've never seen before.

To create your own Vuvox presentation, simply collect the media files into Vuvox from your hard drive or pull them direct from the web (Flickr, YouTube, PhotoBucket, etc), choose one of the 3D styles and publish.

The final presentation will look stunning though it took only couple of minutes if not seconds to create it from scratch.

In one of the styles, your pictures and videos appear on the branches and leaves of a tree and they grow as you add more media. Another style reminds me of the Microsoft Coffee computer table - you move, resize and rotate pictures on the computer screen with your mouse instead of your fingers.

Each presentation can be viewed directly on the Vuvox website or you can embed them in web pages. If you have to showcase you portfolio to clients, look no further than Vuvox. Presentation does matter.

www.vuvox.com/ | Sample |  DEMO Launch

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Picture of Google Phone from LG - Coming this Month

Unlike the previous image, this is no Photoshop version of Google Phone - it's real picture released by LG. The Google phone will be released around the iPhone launch but in Europe, not North America.

Dubbed LG-KU580, this CDMA phone provides one click access to GMail, Google Maps (the LG official says Google Earth?) and Google Web search. The design looks similar to LG "chocolate phone."

This will be released in Europe this week with a price tag of somewhere between $300 and $400. Also included is a a 2-megapixel camera, an MP3 player and Bluetooth.

Google's applications have been embedded into cell phones before but this is the first time its big three features - search, e-mail and mapping - have all been incorporated into one.

Full story at Korea Times [via, via]

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Picasa Templates for Beautiful Web Photo Albums, Slideshows

Google Picasa is more than just a simple photo editing and management software. You can create wall posters, screen savers, photo collages or even movies of your digital pictures with Picasa.

There's another very impressive feature - it can convert your picture collection into professional looking web photo albums that you can either publish on websites, email them to friends as Zips or just save locally - No CSS, HTML or JavaScript knowledge required.

Watch this YouTube video showing how an HTML photo gallery created inside Picasa looks like - took less than a minute to create the entire photo album.

To create a Photo album in Picasa, select the photos and put them in the Picasa tray by clicking the Hold button. Next goto Album - Export as HTML page. Select the picture size, web album template and click export. That's it.

While Picasa comes with an impressive array of templates, you can download additional templates from paulvanroekel.nl The above picture gallery was created using the awesome LightBox Picasa template available here.

These templates are available as zip files - extract the content to the directory \Program Files\Picasa 2\web\templates\ in separate folders.

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Put Your Social Bookmarking Icons in a CSS Dropdown Menu

AddThis [review] now offers a beautiful alternative to social bookmarking icons or those 16x16 pixel images that clutter the footer of almost every blog post on the web.

With AddThis, you can easily put links to all popular social bookmarking websites in a two-column drop down that appears only when someone hovers the mouse over the Bookmark button - the icons and links stay hidden or invisible otherwise.

If a visitor cannot find his/her favorite social bookmarking site in the AddThis menu, they can click the "More.." link access all other other social bookmarking services. Very cool!

Just add the following code to your blog template.

<!-- AddThis Bookmark Button BEGIN -->
<script type="text/javascript">
  addthis_url    = location.href;  
  addthis_title  = document.title; 
</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/addthis_widget.php?v=12" ></script>
<!-- AddThis Bookmark Button END --> 

Though you can grab the AddThis button for your blog without registration, I seriously recommend getting a free account as you get access to invaluable stats.

Time to keep your blog layout free of social bookmarking clutter. AddThis also has a plugin for WP users.

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Add a "Save as PDF" Button to your Websites and Blog Pages

Want site visitors to print or download your blog posts as PDF documents ?

PDF Online, the free PDF conversion service that helps you create PDF files of your Microsoft Office documents, has released a new online tool for converting HTML web pages to PDFs.

Here's how the new service works - bloggers add a small Javascript snippet in the blog templates, visitors can click the "Save Page as PDF" button and the current web page will be rendered as a PDF document.

Though the "SavePagesAsPDF" service is in closed beta, you can still give it a try as show below:

<script type="text/javascript">
function savePageAsPDF() {
   var pURL = "http://savepageaspdf.pdfonline.com/pdfonline/pdfonline.asp?cURL=" + escape(document.location.href);
  window.open(pURL, "PDFOnline", "scrollbars=yes, resizable=yes,width=640, height=480,menubar,toolbar,location");
</script>
<a href="javascript:savePageAsPDF()">Save Page As PDF</a>

Real Example - Print Google.com as PDF

When the SavePageAsPDF service goes live officially, you will be able to track all the PDF conversion activities on your website helping you visualize the most popular content  on your blog.

More on the service at pdfonline.com/ and pdfonline.blogspot.com/.

This will be in direct competition with HP Print Widget that also allow printing blog posts and RSS feeds as PDF documents.

Related: CSS for Printer Friendly Web Pages

Update: You can directly embed the URLs in your blog posts without using any javascript. Use the following values for cURL instead of encodeURIComponent(document.location.href)

Classic Blogger - <$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>
Blogger XML Template - data:post.url
WordPress - <?php the_permalink();?>

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Cross Promote Your RSS Feed with Blog Widgets

Widgets (aka Gadgets) are now found everywhere on the web - people use them for cross promoting their blogs, running picture slide-shows in the sidebar, sharing favorite music or video clips, displaying Amazon Shopping wish-list and more.

Two of my favorite blog widget providers are YourMinis and Widgetbox - both offer detailed stats and an option to embed widgets in your Blogger, MySpace, FaceBook, Netvibes, Google IG, PageFlakes or other accounts automatically.

Let's look at them more closely:

WidgetBox Blidget - Type in your blog address and you instantly get a blog widget in wide or long skyscraper formats. They have some extremely nice color gradients, the font styles are very appealing and you can display just the article headline or even full posts inside the widget.

There's neither an option to resize the widget nor can you configure the colors according to your site design.

YourMinis RSS Widget - If you think normal is boring, you'll love YourMinis. They give you a Flash based design environment to help you create a widget from any RSS feed.

The YourMinis widgets are resizable (drag the corner handles) and you get to select font families, font sizes and background color schemes for your widget.

Visitors can read the first few lines of your blog post by hovering the mouse over the title itself - there's an optional inline browser to help visitors read full posts without leaving the webpage that they are currently viewing.

While both services offer the option to publish your widget to any blogging platform or social media website, YouMinis widgets can run in the Vista sidebar like other native Vista gadgets.

Alternatively, you can place the web widgets on you desktop if you have Adobe Apollo runtime installed - create once, publish anywhere. Watch both YourMinis blog widget and WidgetBox Blidget live in action at myspace.com/labnol

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Adsense Publishers Report Massive Dip in Earnings and CTR

Google's decision to shut down Made-for-Adsense websites and Adsense Arbitragers could be affecting the earnings of regular Adsense publishers.

Several members of Adsense forums at WebMasterWorld and DigitalPoint have reported significant drop in CPM and CTR values in the current month (June 2007).

Here are some Adsense CPM / CTR figures reported by members in the discussions:

1. Page views with Adsense: unchanged, EPC: down 25%, CTR: down 15%, Revenue: significantly down.

2. EPC down about 20% from last month.

3. I've gone into a freefall today. Epc down by 80% across a variety of sites and topics.

4. I'm beginning to think there has been a new flawed algorithm added with good intentions, but bad results, that is doing this and is causing a lot of advertisers earnings to fall.

5. Clicks, traffic remains the same. but the revenues are going down about %50-60

6. June - Down 50%

7. CTR is down 40%. Net result is less money.

8. At the moment we are looking at our stats, shaking our heads and asking 'what have we done to deserve this?'

9. I'm having a 40% reduction in eCPM

10. We are now down over 60% from ANY month last year, so tomorrow it will be adios to G.

11. My traffic and CPC are basically the same, yet Adsense earnings are still down by about 45%

12. The clicks that used to be over 2.00 dropped to 0.03. So strange and frustrating.

13. Same amount of clicks but I've got from about $5.00 a day to about $0.50

Full discussion threads available at Adsense Nosedive and Adsense Freefall.

Smart pricing could be one of the reasons behind this free-fall but it could also be attributed to some algorithm changes at Adsense. Or does it have anything to do with eBay suspending their Adsense campaigns ? [Picture: wiseacre]

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Preview the New CNN.com Website That Includes Widescreen Video

Starting next month, CNN.com website will sport a refreshing new design.

The new site will offer wider (575x325) video clips and they'll will be fetching related blog posts for every article using Sphere blog search engine. [expect some traffic if you cite a CNN story]

If you would like to preview the new US edition of CNN.com, visit beta.cnn.com. The international edition of CNN.com will however be unveiled only on July 1st.

Like all other video sharing websites, CNN too has moved from Windows Media to Flash Video - so you'll no longer require the Windows Media codec to watch CNN videos inside your web browser.

CNN has also added Live news video feeds and the entire archive of news videos on CNN.com will now be available to all for free.

Since the CNN news videos are now streamed from pdl.stream.aol.com/cnn/ as FLV files, it will be much simpler to save CNN videos locally.

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Blogging Slogans and Badges for Blog Addicts

  

More blogging taglines for T-Shirts on PrintPerfection and CafePress.

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When Web Celebrities Quit Current Jobs To Join A Startup

If you are a startup company planning to hire some web celebrity (like a high-profile blogger), make sure your web servers are capable of handling the web traffic - it could be equivalent to getting Digged, Slashdotted, GigaOmed, Scobleized and TechCrunched simultaneously.

The following Alexa graph depicts the traffic at Podtech.net (maroon) and Zillow.com (blue) - look at the spike in traffic when Scoble resigned from Microsoft to join the podcasting startup.

In case of Zillow, traffic peaked when Vanessa quit Google to join Zillow.

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Know What Your Favorite Blogs Have Written About a Web Page

Long ago, Google released the Web Comments extension that shows which blog posts are linking to a web page that we are currently reading in Firefox - an extremely neat idea but not always helpful because it shows only the latest posts linking to the current web page - there's no option to sort results by blog authority or to filter spam blogs.

Imagine if you were able to instruct Blogger Web Comments to show commentary only from certain blogs / bloggers that you trust - that's where BlogRovR comes into the picture. You can think of BlogRovR as a far more useful and customizable version of Google Web Comments - both are Firefox add-ons and help you track incoming links but the former gives more flexibility and spam-free results guaranteed.

When you install BlogRovR, it is pre-configured with a bundle of most popular blog feeds (like GigaOm, Mashable, TechCrunch, Scobleizer, etc) - you may edit this list and include your personal favorite blogs individually or just import your entire reading list into BlogRovR through the OPML route.

Now when you visit some web page, BlogRovR will show you (in an unobtrusive auto-slide box) summaries from your favorite bloggers that are linking to the current web page and what tags they have used.

Another excellent feature - you can even read the full blog posts of your favorite blogger in-place without visiting his / her blog site - BlogRovR will show the blog post as a Sticky note over the current page itself.

The BlogRovR extension is so good that Mozilla guys have made it an officially recommended Firefox extension. Give it a try, you'll love it more than Blogger Web Comments.

BlogRovR.com | Developer Blog | Mozilla Add-ons

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Capture a Web Page Screenshot in Safari 3 Quickly

Do you know that Apple Safari browser has an in-built screen capture feature - it's not for taking snapshots of wide or long scrolling web pages but a perfect tool for grabbing the visible portions of the web page as an image (very similar to Print Screen key with auto-save).

Apple never told you about their secret screen capture tool because they use it for getting bug reports from Safari Users.

Goto Help, Report Bugs to Apple and select "Send screen shot of current web page" - As you press submit, the screenshot will be automatically saved in the temp folder of your computer (like C:\temp) as a BMP image file (Safxxx.bmp)

You can even manually type the URL of the website that you want to save as an image.

Important: If you are worried about privacy, don't use this feature since the data is also sent to Apple. [May help when you are in a cyber cafe where the computer has no application other than the web browser]

More Web Page Screen capture tools for Firefox and Internet Explorer.

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iPhone vs Nokia N95, BlackBerry Curve, Treo, Samsung BlackJack

Just ten days ahead of the much-hyped iPhone launch, Apple has released a smartphone matrix comparing the physical dimensions, talk time and battery life of some of the most popular smartphones that are available in the market today.

As per the matrix, Apple iPhone is the thinnest smartphone (half the thickness of N95 or Treo 750) with the largest screensize and Wi-Fi capabilities. [pdf]

While there's no option to swap the drained battery of an iPhone with a full recharged one, the promised eight hours of talktime and 250 hours of standby time should bring enough cheers to those who are planning to queue up outside the Apple stores at 0600 hours June 29, 2007.

In related news, a new report has suggest that 19 million Americans have strong interest in buying the iPhone, 67% of who are subscribers on other carrier networks.

Update: Nokia N95 is a Wi-Fi enabled phone and Apple has now updated the phone comparison chart.

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Those Who Search for GOOG Are Filthy Rich, Seeking Luxury Homes

Try googling "GOOG" (the stock ticker symbol of Google) and you are likely to see the following ads:

Filthy rich? We'll help - Throw away your newfound cash at Woot. You're welcome.

LuxurySiliconValley.com - $3 Million+ homes and condos for sale in the Silicon Valley

Surprisingly, Google currently has no ads for people googling for BRK.B (Berkshire Hathaway Inc.) - this stock trades at 7x the stock price of Google

For MSFT (Microsoft) and YHOO (Yahoo) - the ads are related to jobs in both cases:

Write beautiful code? - www.ooyala.com/careers [Thanks Rakesh]

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Single Sign-On for YouTube and Google Account

Good news YouTube fans - you have one less username / password combination to remember since you can now move your YouTube data to Google account.

And if you have never signed-up for YouTube before, you can now create a new YouTube account with your existing Google Account. [you'll still need to supply an additional YouTube username though which is kind of strange]

Everything remains the same except that a new YouTube icon will show up in your Google Account Services page.

What's a Google Account - if you are on GMail, Google Groups, Adsense, iGoogle, Google checkout, etc - that's your Google Account - it may not necessarily be a @gmail.com address.

Sign Up for YouTube with Your Google Account

If you would like to unlink your YouTube and Google Account association, goto youtube.com/my_account_unlink - If you unlink your accounts, you will no longer be able to login to YouTube with your Google account. Your YouTube account will stay the same otherwise, and you can still login with your YouTube username and password. [Thanks Pramod]

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Cheerleader Girls Wearing T-Shirts with your Message

Click To Play

[this post contains a video which may not be visible in your newsreader]

Philips created this Cheerleading Girls Generator for the FIFA World cup 2006 - just type in some text message and click "Cheer Up". Time waster but fun.

Links: Cheer Up Generator | Sample Video

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