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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