Internet Typewriter: Distraction-Free WriteRoom Effect Goes Online

WriteRoom, as you probably know, is a popular writing software that provides a full screen writing environment so you can write or blog without any visual distractions. All you see on the computer screen is plain green text (that you have typed) on black background, there are no icons, tool bars or menu bars to distract your attention.

Related: Turn Microsoft Word into WriteRoom

Inspired by WriteRoom, John Watson has created an online version of WriteRoom that works solely inside the web browser - cross platform and requires no downloads or installation. Just write.

Press the F11 key to enter the full screen mode and start typing. Internet Typewriter will auto-save your work every few minutes. The font settings, colors and line-heights can be customized from the Preferences.

There's a neat option to publish the text to your blog without leaving the Writer interface. Or you can save that as a text file to your hard drive.

writer.bighugelabs.com [Internet Typewriter] Thanks Chris O'Brien

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LiveSearch from Yahoo! Better Than Google Suggest for SEO

AllTheWeb LiveSearch is a smart search service from Yahoo! that saves you a few clicks and shows relevant search results while you are still typing the query. There's no need to press the "Enter" key for executing the search query.

For every keyword that you type in the search box, LiveSearch will show (in real-time) related queries and spelling suggestions which may be very useful information from the SEO perspective.

For instance, type "iphone" and you'll immediately know that people on the web are searching for iPhone prices, reviews, accessories, launch date, unlocking iPhone, troubleshooting iPhone problems and places/stores where they buy the iPhone - this is so useful information especially when you have a blog website that covers all things about the iPhone.

While Google Suggest can also show similar information, there are two advantages with Livesearch. First, LiveSearch displays search results without you having to leave the current view so the suggestions are not lost even while you navigate the search results.

The second advantage is that while Google Suggest will only show alternative spellings that begin with the letters you already typed, LiveSearch suggestions may also include queries where the word you just typed could be anywhere. For our iPhone example, LiveSearch suggested phrases like "apple iphone" and "buy iphone" whereas all the phrases recommended by Google Suggest began with the word iPhone.

AllTheWeb LiveSearch | Google Suggest [Thank Nirav Bhaskar]

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Screen Sharing with File Transfer: New CrossLoop Raises the Bar!

Crossloop, an extremely simple yet powerful software for sharing desktop screens, just got better. [If you ever wanted to fix mom's computer over the internet, all you need is CrossLoop.]

The new release of CrossLoop 1.10 has added a file / folder transfer feature allowing participants to transfer multiple files (and folders) of any size across computers via the CrossLoop interface.

[Say some issue on mom's computer is related to corrupt or missing .dll files, just transfer them through CrossLoop - no need to wait for email attachments or third-party sites like YouSendit.]

If the connection breaks during the file transfer, CrossLoop will remember files that have already been transferred and skip them when the connection is re-established.

 The new CrossLoop has a view mode that will disallow the participant computer from gaining control over the keyboard / mouse of the host computer. Alternatively, the host can swap roles and become the attendee himself in one click.

CrossLoop is only available for Windows. Though the new  Crossloop release will work with the previous version, both parties need the latest version 1.10 is in order to use the above features.

If you are interesting in CrossLoop 1.1, please leave a comment in this thread.

CrossLoop.com | Official Blog [thanks Mrinal]

Related Screen Sharing Apps: Yuuguu, MarraTech, Microsoft SharedView

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PageViews are History, Engagement Level is the New Mantra for Ranking Websites

Nielsen/NetRatings has decided to drop page views as a measure of site traffic and site popularity - they will now report the average time spent by a visitor and average number of sessions per visitor for each site.

Currently page views, a figure that reflects the number of Web pages a visitor pulls from a site, are an important metrics for attracting advertisers to a websites.

Nielsen will still provide page view figures but won't formally rank them.

This maybe bad news for Google Search as their main task is to "send visitors away" but should further boost the rankings of YouTube and other video websites. According to AP:

Yahoo has more than twice the time spent as Fox, but has less than a 10 percent edge in page views. That is because MySpace requires users to pull up a new page anytime they make a change or view a new profile, while Yahoo increasingly uses Ajax to continually pull new data, even if a user stays on the same page all day.

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Game On! TechCrunch Ex-Editor Launches BlogNation to Rival TechCrunch International ?

Sam Sethi, who departed ways with Michael Arrington following the Loic Le Meur (Le Web 3) controversy, has launched a new blog called BlogNation that will cover Web 2.0 technology startups from across the globe particularly Asia and Europe.

Understandably, BlogNation will not cover any startups based in Silicon Valley but they do have an army of technology bloggers to cover the start-up scene in most other non-US regions including China, Japan, Australia and Brazil. [content will be in English]

The TechCrunch UK site has been lying defunct ever since the departure of Sam though Mike did promise a June 1 relaunch which never happened. Ironic but maybe TC UK is headed to the deadpool and Sam has big plans to fill that void - he also has VC's to back the venture.

In related reading, Michael Parsons at Times Online has a good analysis of challenges faced by bloggers when they try to expand from being a one-man army to a media empire managing several writers bloggers.

Blogging is a performance art, like juggling. Some people can do it very well, but have you ever tried to manage a troop of jugglers? If the bloggers Arrington attracts are as good as him, they can quite easily set up on their own and tell him to go swivel. If they're not as good, we'll just keep reading Arrington.

And when Arrington is in meetings to discuss the page layouts for additional blogs and settling the awkward personality conflict between two people in his team, he won't be writing great stuff or networking with people to inform that writing.

This is probably applicable to all bloggers including Arrington, Om Malik, Pete Cashmore, Richard MacManus, Rafat Ali and now Sam Sethi who are expanding their blogging empires by adding more heads.

Related:  Former TechCrunch Writer Natali Del Conte

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African Elephants Spotted on Google Earth

This group of ten African elephants was spotted on Google Earth. In another satellite shot of Australia's Bondi Beach, they say the Google Earth pictures are so clear that you can almost read the designer labels on the bikinis.

PCWorld has slide show highlighting some of the strangest sights found using Google Earth including crop circles and a 1.8-square-mile scale model of a disputed region on the border of China and India.

Related: Apple iPod Mine in Australia

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Save Any Blogger Blog as a PDF Document In One Click

There are several advantages of saving a blog website as a PDF file - you can read the blog posts offline, text search in PDF is very fast when compared with web search and above all, PDF will act as backup copy of your Blogger blog posts preserving even the blog images.

Related: Blogger Backup Software

To publish any blogspot blog into a PDF document (for free), we'll use a service called Blog2Print which is actually meant for converting blogger blogs into printed books - type the blog address, select all blog posts or the dates of the entries that you would like to include in the book, and choose whether the posts should appear in reverse-chronological or chronological order.

Though Blog2Print is a paid service, it generates a PDF preview copy of the selected blog entries that opens up inside the web browser - you just have to save this PDF file from the browser's cache to your hard drive.  

Internally, the Blog2Print services using the Blogger Data API requesting blog posts created or updated in a given date range. Blogger feeds are generally public so querying them does not require authentication.

www.blog2print.com [Blog printing for Blogger Platform]

Related: Print Blog as PDF with HP Printing Widget

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