Friday, May 18, 2007

Browser Bookmarks (or Favorites) As Popular As del.icio.us

11:29 AM  the technology of information  No comments

A lot of users still use the traditional favorites system of web browsers to bookmark websites that they find interesting.

AddThis, a free service that allows visitors to bookmark webpages on social websites, today released an interesting report that showcases the current trends in social bookmarking.


While Google Boorkmarks, del.icio.us, Yahoo! MyWeb are the most popular places for saving bookmarks, local bookmarking is at an impressive third-place and nearly as popular as the del.icio.us system.

If you provide users with an easy option, they are more likely to put your content in their local bookmarks folder.

Here are detailed instructions on adding the "Bookmark the website" or "Bookmark the web page" link to your blog on Wordpress, Blogger or MovableType. The code should work on IE, Firefox and Opera.

AddThis Report [Thanks Darren]
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Dell Tablet PC Screenshots, Coming Later this Year

11:15 AM  the technology of information  No comments

Dell Tablet PC
Dell Senior Vice President Jeff Clarke has just confirmed that Dell Tablet PC is coming later this year.

The Latitude Tablet PC from Dell is designed for the education sector, health care and corporate. It's a convertible notebook, lightweight and runs on Windows Vista.

While Jeff did not reveal the configuration or other features of Dell Tablet PC, the unit looks impressive in the video.

Related: HP Pavilion tx1000 Tablet PC

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Uploading Photographs, Screenshots or Illustrations ? Flickr Wants To Know

10:52 AM  the technology of information  No comments

Flickr Picture URLsFlickr is asking users to specify the kind of content that they are uploading to Flickr servers.

When you upload a new image to Flickr, you need to specify whether it's an art-work, photograph taken from a camera or a computer screenshot.

Flickr is also asking users to assign movie-style ratings to their photographs at the time of upload. The picture ratings can be Safe (G), Moderate (PG, PG-13) or Restricted (NC-17) - (though Flickr won't allow Porn pictures, nude images are permitted and hence the Restricted rating)

Flickr Screenshot
It is important that you set the content type else your pictures may not turn in the Flickr search engine or users may not be able to view them without logging into Flickr.

If doing this for each picture sounds too much effort, Flickr has a simple page where you can set the general preferences for your pictures. Later, when you upload a picture of different type, just specify that at the time of uploading.

Tip: If you have reached flickr while looking for screenshots, goto the advanced search page, deselect photos and select "screenshot" in the search option. That should give pretty relevant results.

Flickr URLs - Dissecting the web address of Flickr Pictures

Related: Shoot and Upload Screenshots to Flickr
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Microsoft Spends $6 Billion, Anyone Interested in the News ?

5:58 AM  the technology of information  No comments

Microsoft has acquired an online advertising firm called aQuantive for about $6 billion. That's about 4x the Google-Youtube deal and 2x the Google-DoubleClick deal.

With this acquisition, Microsoft plans to create an online advertising platform for it's own properties like MSN, Windows Live, Xbox Live, and Office Live, as well as for third party publishers..

The very surprising part is that this story is not on Techmeme yet. This latest screen capture of Techmeme homepage shows that iPhone rumor is still the top story in the blogosphere.

Either the news about Microsoft acquiring aQuantive hasn't spread yet or announcements from Redmond don't excite people (read bloggers) enough.

Microsoft on Techmeme
Techmeme sported a very different look when Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 Billion.
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Google Gadgets on Web Pages Without Google Branding - Quite Possible

4:56 AM  the technology of information  No comments

Google Gadgets, which were previously available only for iGoogle and Google Desktop, can now be embedded inside any blog or web page using a line of HTML/Javascript code.

Select any Google Gadget from the official Google list and click the "Add to your webpage" button. You can also modify the width, height, frame border colors and other properties of the Google widget so that it blends perfectly in you web pages.

Here's a screen capture of the popular Calendar / Clock Google gadget placed on a webpage.

Google Gadgets Screenshot
Every Google Gadget has a title, an "Add to Google" rectangular button and a tag line that says "Gadgets Powered by Google"

In order to display a Google Gadget on your webpage without these extra Google related links / images, here are the steps involved:

1. Replace the <script> tag in the Google Gadget code with <iframe>

Before:
<script src="http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?..
...url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/datetime..
..%23999999&output=js></script>

After:
<iframe src="http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?..
...url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/datetime..
..%23999999&output=js></iframe>

2. Replace the parameter output=js in Gadget HTML code with output=html

3. Delete the "w" and "h" parameter from the HTML code and add the following attributes to the iFrame URL:

height = "300" width = "250" frameborder = "0" scrolling = "no"

[The height and width values may be different in your case]

The final Google Gadget code that doesn't display the Google Logo or any other hyperlinks to Google Gadgets directory will look something like this:

<iframe src="http://gmodules.com/ig/ifr?..
...url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/datetime..
..%23999999&output=js height="300" width="250"..
..frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Important: Modify the Google Gadgets code at your own risk as it might go against Google guidelines that say:
You agree not to modify or remove the "Gadgets powered by Google" text and link or the "+Google" button or other promotional text or images provided by Google with the gadget code.

You understand and agree that Google retains the option to replace the "+Google" button with content, including advertising or promotional content, that occupies the same space and position on your page when you display the gadget.
Related: Google Gadgets with Adsense Ads
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Poll for Bloggers: Where Do You Compose Blog Posts ?

2:45 AM  the technology of information  No comments

There are a zillion ways to compose and edit blog posts. Some people write a blog post offline inside Notepad and then use the online editors of Wordpress or Blogger to publish their posts.

Some use blog editing software like Blogjet, w.bloggar or Windows Live Writer to compose and publish blog posts from their desktop. Other bloggers just email the post to a specific address and it's automatically published online.

What is your favorite method for writing a blog post ? Please take this online poll (multiple choice)


[If you are reading this article inside a news reader, request you to visit the home page to answer this poll. Thanks]
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Move Your Blogs from Blogger to WordPress The Easy Way

12:08 AM  the technology of information  No comments

If you have been planning to migrate your blog from Blogger to Wordpress but found the whole process of importing blogger posts with comments into Wordpress too technical and complicated, here's a very good news for you.

You can now move all blogs posts and comments from your Blogger account into your WordPress blog with the click of a button - it's so simple that even mom can do it as long as her blog is hosted on the new Blogger platform.

Move from Blogger to Wordpress
Wordpress.com and self-hosted Worpress 2.2 installations ship default with a free Blogger Importer plugin that can be accessed from your Wordpress dashboard (Manage -> Import -> Blogger)

All you have to do is authorize Wordpress to use your Google account and Wordpress will display a list of blogs associated with Blogger account. Select the blog that you like to import in blogger and click import. Voila!

All your posts, comments, categories (Blogger labels) and users will be visible in Wordpress in few minutes depending on the size of your Blogger Blog.

Even if you have no plans to switch from Blogger to Wordpress, this is still an excellent option to create a backup of all the posts and comments from the Blogger blog.

For Geeks: This Wordpress-Blogger Importer will not change anything in your Blogger hosted blog - neither the timestamp formats nor the blogger templates. It simple uses the Google Blogger API to fetch the blogger posts into Wordpress.

The Blogger Importer script will however not import the Blogger images to your Wordpress installation. And there's no way to specify filters on your Blogger posts - everything will be imported in one go.
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