How To Securely Hide Your Private Folders In Windows

A quick and easy way to protect sensitive information on your computer from children, employers, and anyone else who uses your computer, including hackers.

Free Hide Folder will hide your sensitive files so that they cant be seen or accessed. Files stay hidden even if you turn on "View Hidden Files". Even links in your recent documents menu wont be able to find your hidden files!

For extra security, use a password to prevent anyone from accessing your files. You can run this software in stealth mode so that no one knows its there, and hide or show your sensitive files using hotkeys.

There has never been an easier way to keep private files really private.

View docx Files in Firefox Without Office 2007

If you like to open .docx files without Office Word 2007, there’s a new Firefox extension from Microsoft that should help. Available for Windows as well as Linux machines.

Called OpenXML viewer, this plug-in (download link) lets you read docx files inside the Firefox browser just like any other HTML web page while retaining all the text formatting and layout.

There’s a command-line version of OpenXML viewer (download link) available as well for converting docx documents into HTML files that you may then open in any other web browser.

Other alternatives for reading docx files without Microsoft Office 2007 include Internet Explorer, Gmail, Email, Word viewer and the converter for Mac.

How to Hide Your Facebook Online Status

Here’s a simple tip that I just figured out myself the other day: hide your online status on Facebook! Why is this useful? Well now that Facebook has built chat into the online interface (kind of like Google Talk running in Gmail), your friends can start chatting with you at any time once you log into Facebook.

Personally, I never wanted to use Facebook as an instant messaging program, that’s why I have a separate IM program (though I do enjoy using Gmail from inside Facebook)! Thankfully, Facebook has made it very easy to change your online status so that people cannot see you are online.

Of course, if you go offline, no one will be able to see you are online, but you will also not be able to see which of your friends are online. It’s not like the Invisible feature in Yahoo Messenger

Here’s how to quickly go offline and hide your online status:

Step 1: Log into your Facebook account

Step 2: Click on the chat icon at the bottom right of the browser screen. You’ll get a list of some options and you’ll see a link that says Go Offline.

hide online status facebook

That’s it. Now you are offline and you will no longer see the list of online friends. As long as you are offline, you’ll see a red icon next to the chat icon.

Send Pictures From Your Cell-Phone/Mobile to Facebook

Just about everyone has a cell phone with a camera on it these days, which is great for capturing moments instantly, but it’s rare for those photos to ever be seen by anyone else. Getting photos off your cell phone and to an online account like Picasa, Flickr, etc can be a real pain.

Facebook, however, makes it a lot simpler to transfer photos from your cell phone to your Facebook account with their Facebook Mobile service. Basically, how it works is that you email a photo from your cell phone to Facebook and then login into your Facebook account and confirm your cell phone. After that, you can send photos directly to your Facebook account from the phone.

Step 1: First, find the picture you want to upload to Facebook on your cell phone and find the option to send the photo in an email. Or you might first have to choose that you want to send an email and then you can pick a picture.

Step 2: Now send the email to mobile@facebook.com. Make sure the picture is included as an attachment to the email.

Step 3: You can put a title for the photo in the Subject line.

Step 4: Send the email and wait until you receive an email back from Facebook stating that the upload was successful. At the bottom of the email will be a six character code which you will need in the following steps.

Step 5: Now go to Facebook and log into your account. Then go to the URL below

http://www.facebook.com/mobile

and click on the Activate Facebook Mobile button.

Step 6: At the bottom left of the page, you will see the Activate Facebook Mobile heading. Under the Activate button, click on Already have a confirmation code? link.

Step 7: Type in the confirmation number that you had gotten in the text message from Facebook. You will then get a message saying Your mobile phone has been confirmed.

That’s it! You should now be able to send photos from your cell phone to mobile@facebook.com and have them show up in your Facebook profile! Enjoy!

Google Starts Indexing Scanned Documents

Google has begun indexing scanned documents using the Optical Character Recognition technology that helps the company in converting ‘a picture (of a thousand words) into a thousand words’. According to Google, “This is a small but important step forward in our mission of making all the world’s information accessible and useful.”

“In the past, scanned documents were rarely included in search results as we couldn't be sure of their content. We had occasional clues from references to the document-- so you might get a search result with a title but no snippet highlighting your query. Today, that changes. We are now able to perform OCR on any scanned documents that we find stored in Adobe’s PDF format,” Google said .

Auto Login Into Facebook

Make Facebook log you in so you don't have to. Just make sure you have Firefox set to remember your password.

For people who hate logging in always, this is one Facebook script you should install right away. No more will you have to waste logging into Facebook henceforth.

Install This Script

How to Remove Ads From Facebook

Not only does this script remove banner ads from your Facebook site, it also removes that annoying Sponsored section.

Of course, Facebook's not going to like it that you can't see their ads, that's their source of income. But if those ads are really annoying you, here's your chance to get rid of them, at least from your computer.

Install This Script

Before Installing Facebook Scripts

Before adding any of these Facebook scripts to your computer you'll need to first add the Greasemonkey Add On.

• Greasemonkey Add On for Firefox
• Greasemonkey add on for IE

Top 20 Wordpress Plugins for Power Users

Finally something for wordpress folks, an all-time favorite, carefully-selected, top 20 wordpress plugins. Enjoy! Read More

Shrink Outlook PST by Removing Email Attachments

Why do you have so much stuff in your Outlook? Are you just keeping everything there as a backup, maybe it is your central repository? Well, either way it would be wise to at least strip the attachments from your messages saving them elsewhere. This slims down your PST (Personal Folders File) and makes your files readily accessible
Read More

Access Hulu, NBC and ABC Videos Outside the US !

Hulu is one of the most popular video sites nowadays, and hearing from my US friends that they watch all their TV shows online doesn’t help to relieve the pain that it’s a region restricted website. The same is the issue with NBC, ABC and also Internet TV in Windows Media Center. While I may never understand why they have to restrict access to users outside of the US, I have understood a way to access them easily.
Read More

Add Yahoo Messenger to your Website

Yahoo! today introduced Yahoo! Messenger 9 and a new service called Pingbox which is like a live chat box (in the form of a Flash Widget) that you may embed in any website or blog including your MySpace page. Like the Google Talk badge, site visitors can send your private messages via the Pingbox chat box without requiring any IM client.
Read More

How To Free Disk Space On Your Windows Drive

It is generally considered that whatever drive your windows is installed in you should try to keep it as free as possible, that really helps boosting your PC performance, So here are some steps to free up your Windows drive.
Read More

Browse Faster and Anonymously with Toonel

Most of us know how annoying it is when you’re unable to open Facebook, update your antivirus, download any file, or use your IM application behind a corporate or university firewall. Although there are many ways to bypass them, most of them require you to find fast proxy servers or use unsecure tunnel websites
Read More

How To Speed Up Your Torrents Easily

Every torrent client needs to be tweaked so as to increase the download speed. Today we will show you how to increase your torrent’s speed without using any any complex software, you’ll see the difference in downloading speed.
Read More

How To Fix ‘Cannot Delete Folder/File’, ‘Access Is Denied’ or ‘File In Use’ errors in Windows Using Unlocker

If you get an “Access is Denied” error while accessing a folder then it means the administrator has not allowed you permission to access it. If you are not an Administrator then you will probably never be able to fix this error. But if you are an Administrator and receiving this problem then there is a software called Unlocker that is going to come in handy
Read More

How To Download and Watch Dvdrip Movies With Subtitles

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How To Increase Your Laptop’s Battery Life

With the rise in laptop sales it is essential for laptop buyers to make sure they use their laptop batteries to the fullest and also make sure they can achieve the highest performance with the available battery.Here is a list of some essential tips which can almost double your laptop battery life.
Read More

How To Maximize Or Increase The Speed Of Your Wi-Fi Connection

Today, enterprises are deploying wireless LANs for corporate applications and home users that involve e-mail, Web browsing, and access to various server-based databases. The need for higher data rates and techniques to improve performance of wireless LANs is becoming crucial to support these types of applications. To get that extra performance, you may have a lot to consider.
Read More

How To Monitor Or Change The Temperature Of Your Computer

Is your PC getting toasty or is your motherboard melting? Okay, I’m exaggerating, but if your components are reaching a potentially damaging temperature, I recommend that you use SpeedFan. This program monitors and reports the temperatures inside your PC using the built-in sensors on the processor and motherboard.
Read More

13 Amazing Firefox Add-Ons To Make Designers Lives Easier

13 Amazing Firefox Add-Ons To Make Designers Lives Easier.

read more | digg story

8 hacks to make Firefox ridiculously fast

Firefox has been outperforming IE in every department for years, and version 3 is speedier than ever.But tweak the right settings and you could make it faster still, more than doubling your speed in some situations

read more | digg story

Android: Google's Dream, Apple's Nightmare?

On Tuesday, Google will unveil its new iPhone competitor: the HTC Dream smartphone from T-Mobile, which will run the Android operating system. How do the two match up?

read more | digg story

15 Ways to Extend Your Laptop’s Battery Life

Laptops tend to lose their charm quickly when you’re constantly looking for the nearest power outlet to charge up. How do you keep your battery going for as long as possible? Here are 15 easy ways to do so.

read more | digg story

Get Your Website Included in Google News

Here are some basic rules to get listed.

1) Original Content: Simply reproducing news from other websites will not work. You need to have original content on your website.

2) Multiple Authors: Simple blogs with good content will not get included in Google News. This is because Google News wants multiple authors to “qualify” a website as a news source.

3) Organizational Structure: Google News includes articles only from sources that could be considered organizations; generally characterized by multiple writers and editors, the availability of organizational information, and accessible contact information. Hence, reviewing a website should give evidence of an organization.

This may seem like a very difficult task but below are 10 tips that should help you before submitting your site to Google News.

1) Website Template: Your website should look like a news source. Avoid any template that remotely resembles a blog. The design of your home page is important and should clearly mention which industry your website covers.

2) Content Management System: Your website Content Management System (CMS) should be geared to handle news-type content. Your CMS should have a URL rewrite engine so that it generates flat-search engine friendly URLs — those with keywords, rather than something like “yourwebsite.com/article.asp?=123.?456.” This not only will help in crawling, but also in Google News ranking. Avoid a CMS that generates more than two variables in the URLas it can create crawling problems.

3) Article URL: Each article URL should be unique and contain a unique number consisting of at least three digits. The Google News crawler cannot index an article with this URL: http://www.website.com/news01.html. It can, however, crawl an article with this URL: http://www.website.com/news001.html. Google News cannot crawl an article URL with four digits, which resembles a year (http://www.website.com/news2008.html).

4) About Us and Contact Pages: Make these pages prominent on your website and one click away from the home page. A “Contact” page should have your organization’s name and contact information. You should also have a URL that is a directory of contributors and provide names of all your authors and editors, preferably with their email addresses. Try to give more information about your company and what it does in the “About Us” page.

5) Article Format: Each article format should include a title, author name, publication date and time (optional) and a minimum of 250-300 words in the article body.

6) Article Title: Set the title tag on the HTML page to the title of the article. The title should be displayed prominently above the text of the article. Avoid hyperlinks in the title. Title length should be 2-22 words. However, try to avoid very long or very short titles. If you are covering some big publicly-listed companies, include their name in the title. This will help your article appear if anyone is tracking those companies, either in Google News or through their email alert service.

7) Number of Articles: Chances are, a website with 10 total articles applying to be included in Google News will be rejected outright — it doesn’t give the impression of authority or heavy activity. Therefore, I recommend that you have at least 100 articles before you even think of completing the application form.

8) Article Frequency: Try to add at least three new articles every day. The more new articles you add the better, because once an article loses its “News” value, it will stop getting visitors from Google News.

9) Images and Video: As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Having a few images will make your news site stand out. And the same goes with videos. However, articles that are solely images and/or videos will not be included in Google News.

10) Advertising: Avoid too little or over-the-top advertising. Too little means your website does not attract enough visitors, whereas too much advertising might make one question your motive in getting your website listed with Google News.

Once you have covered these 10 points, apply for Google News inclusion. You will be asked to provide your site location information (City, State/Province, Country) and contact information URL and a URL that lists a directory of contributors. You can also select what topic(s) your site covers on this page. The Google News team will then respond to your request, generally within a few days to a week’s time. If your website is rejected, don’t give up. Many times, the Google News team
gives a reason for not including your website. Correct the oversight(s) and reapply.

Once you get an inclusion confirmation you can check which articles were crawled by using this command in Google News — Source: Website name. If your website contains paid content, use the “First click free” concept. Configure your Web servers to not serve the registration page to Google crawlers, identified as “User Agent — Googlebot.” You can configure this in a way so that the first article view by a Google News user doesn’t require a subscription. But all other links on this article page are trapped, which means if the user clicks anywhere else on the page, then they will be prompted to sign up.

After getting listed with Google News, your priorities should be ensuring trouble-free running of your website and adding the latest news to attract traffic. Below are some general tips which should help:

1) Webmaster Tools: Create an account with Google Webmaster Tools for News. It’s very useful in trouble-shooting your news website.

2) Hosting: This will help smooth crawling for the Google News bot. And if your article hits the first few spots in Google News for an important keyword, you will likely see some serious traffic which will need stable hosting. If there are any problems with hosting, you will see indicators in webmaster tools — errors in crawling or other problems.

3) Article Updates: Avoid article updates, because currently Google News crawls each article URL only once. Hence any update to an article after Google News has crawled it will not be reflected on Google News.

4) Google News Sitemap: Creating a Google News Sitemap will not affect your rankings. But having a Sitemap gives you more control by informing Google News which articles specifically to crawl. Sitemaps also allow you specify meta-information about individual articles, such as their publication date or keywords that help determine where your article belongs in Google News.

5) Feeds: Have RSS feeds for your news so that your visitors can subscribe. Use Feedburner to create feeds that are compatible with the most popular feed readers. Have a button on your home page where readers can click to subscribe to your feeds.

6) Content Ideas: Subscribing to press release distribution feeds will help you get the latest information coming out of your industry. You can create a journalist login with PRNewsWire, BusinessWire, MarketWire or PRWeb and set your preferences for receiving press releases. These releases can give you ideas or certain figures to help you create unique news articles. Apart from these, you can also subscribe to RSS feeds from industry websites or set email alerts for some industry keywords on Google News.

Google News is not the only player in the game, but it is the largest and most likely to send you hordes of visitors. Listed below are two other websites where you can submit your news site:

1) Yahoo News: Apply for Yahoo News inclusion at http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/news/forms/submitsource.html.

2) Topix.net: Find relevant news categories at http://www.topix.net/ then click the Feedback button at the bottom of the page. On this page, under “Are we missing a news source?” you will find a link to submit your site.

The aim for your news website should be to publish the latest industry news and articles and garner a loyal readership. If you work diligently, you will start generating thousands unique visitors a day through Google News alone. In turn, this will open up advertising opportunities on your website and help cover some of the initial cost of setting up your site, create resources for improvement and even generate income for your business. And that’s always a worthwhile endeavor.

Facebook's Network Effect

Was it only two and a half years ago that MySpace seemed completely unbeatable? The combination of inexpensive content development and a huge audience seemed like the path to riches, or a least a new content development format. According to the numbers, MySpace is clearly still the dominant player in the space:

Why all the buzz about Facebook then? There is not a single stat in the chart above that would suggest Facebook is a market leader. However, when you look at Facebook’s growth over the past year, there does seem to be solid audience growth:

Now, let’s focus in on the last couple of months. Since April, when Facebook basically opened up the doors to everyone, their traffic has grown from 22 million unique visitors to almost 35 million unique visitors. During this time, MySpace has stayed relatively flat. This is interesting, but not altogether shocking. The growth of audience isn’t what I find interesting, what’s interesting is the Time Per Person:

Facebook is a living demonstration of the Network Effect; as the audience has increased, so has the usage on a per person basis. This is a remarkably difficult thing for a site to do. As most sites pick up more traffic, they sacrifice engagement by watering down their audience with casual visitors.

How strong is the Network Effect? If you start looking at the time per person and audience starting in April, Facebook data correlates at .95 and MySpace correlates at -.39. This means, roughly, that each additional person added to Facebook increases the incremental time spent (read: value) by any individual person. That, my friends, is the Network Effect in action.

The funny thing is, websites don’t normally act this way - communication outlets, such as email, fax machines and telephones do. Here’s where things get interesting, advertising via communication mechanisms doesn’t work all that well. We all hate spam, cold calls and even those little ads you sometimes get with Yahoo! Mail and Gmail. But Facebook needs to make money, right? So, it would appear that they have a problem.

This leads to the $100 million question (literally in this case) - how do you use the Network Effect to your advantage in an advertising model? Facebook has some new ad formats out there that are interesting attempts; I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Google Chrome Attracts 2 Million Visitors

Nielsen Online, a service of the Nielsen Company, today reported that between Sept. 1 and Sept. 7, 2008, more than 1.9 million unique visitors in the U.S., 73 percent of them male, visited the “Thank You” page associated with Google Chrome, Google’s new Web browser.

Nearly 1.4 percent of all U.S. users who went online during the week from home or work visited the page, which typically indicates a download. In addition, consumers immediately – and in great numbers – took to blogosphere to discuss the new offering.

Men dominated traffic to the Chrome “Thank You” page, with males 35-49 accounting for 39 percent of overall traffic. Female visitors were more likely to be in the 18-34 age group.

Top News Sites for May 2008

Brand or Channel	Unique Audience	Time Per Person
All Current Events & Global News	100,417	125:42:00
Yahoo! News	35,846	00:22:12
MSNBC Digital Network	35,184	00:29:00
CNN Digital Network	33,101	00:38:48
AOL News	22,524	00:35:27
NYTimes.com	21,340	00:28:52
Tribune Newspapers	16,238	00:08:59
Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division	14,629	00:19:49
Google News	11,356	00:12:28
ABCNEWS Digital Network	11,124	00:09:34
USATODAY.com	10,785	00:13:00
Fox News Digital Network	10,132	00:43:16
CBS News Digital Network	9,225	00:08:00
washingtonpost.com	9,204	00:16:04
McClatchy Newspaper Network	9,131	00:12:41
Hearst Newspapers Digital	7,955	00:17:45
WorldNow	7,523	00:17:55
MediaNews Group Newspapers	6,965	00:12:13
Slate	6,456	00:07:37
Advance Internet	6,202	00:14:27
IB Websites	5,943	00:13:38
BBC News	5,933	00:09:13
Cox Newspapers	5,826	00:12:58
Belo Television	5,354	00:09:52
Topix	5,133	00:04:40
Boston.com	4,962	00:09:40
Gannett Broadcasting	4,735	00:10:02
TheHuffingtonPost.com	4,715	00:08:50
Associated Press	4,527	00:05:09
Belo Newspapers	4,462	00:09:38
Fox Television Stations	4,386	00:06:22
Daily News Online Edition	4,331	00:06:16
Daily Mail	4,040	00:08:44
New York Post Holdings	3,966	00:08:02
Freedom Interactive Network	3,749	00:05:20
NPR	3,713	00:07:31
Newsmax.com	3,375	00:11:33

Wikipedia U.S. Web Traffic Grows 8,000 Percent in Five Years

Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, today announced that four out
of the five top referring Web sites to Wikipedia, which has grown nearly 8,000
percent over the last five years, are search engines, led by Google. In April,
61 percent of visitors from home and 66 percent of visitors from work to
en.wikipedia.org were referred from Google (see Table 1). Yahoo! Search was
the second most common referring site to English-language Wikipedia, referring
19 percent and 16 percent of visitors from home and work, respectively. Other
searchproviders to make the top five referring destinations for Wikipedia were
MSN/Windows Live Search and AOL Search.


Table 1: Top Referring Sudomains for en.wikipedia.org for April 2008 (U.S.)

Subdomain             Percent of         Subdomain                   Percent of
                    Visitors at Home                                   Visitors at Work
www.google.com                      61   www.google.com                 66
search.yahoo.com                    19   search.yahoo.com                16
www.wikipedia.org                   11   www.wikipedia.org                9
search.msn.com                       5   search.msn.com                     6
aolsearch.aol.com                    3   search.live.com                      4

Source: Nielsen Online
Note: Referral traffic is not unduplicated. Visitors can be referred from
more than one Web site during the month.


"Search providers dominate Wikipedia's referring traffic because of
itsscope and value as an information resource," said Michael Pond, media
analyst,

Nielsen Online. "The site's rapid ascent, with audience levels comparable to
popular brands such as eBay and MySpace, demonstrates the success of its
collaborative nature -- readers can edit entries and add information. This
consumer involvement has led to an increase in blog mentions of Wikipedia,
which builds the site's relevance and credibility."

In the past five years, Web traffic to Wikipedia has skyrocketed, increasing
nearly 8,000 percent from April 2003 to April 2008. Year-over-year growth rates
indicate surges where Wikipedia gained traction in the online marketplace (


Table 2: Web Traffic Growth at Wikipedia (U.S., Home and Work)

April     Unique Audience (000)   YOY Growth
2003                       700            NA
2004                     2,082           197%
2005                     6,753           224%
2006                    25,970           285%
2007                    45,934            77%
2008                    55,820            17%

Source: Nielsen Online

Will Facebook catch up to Myspace in traffic?

Top 10 U.S Social Networking Sites for May 2008

Google Chrome Review

After having successfully launched their own webmail service, RSS reader, online suite and many other apps, having a Google web browser was only a question of time.

Google Chrome has joined the so called web browser battle with a neatly designed web browser which, in spite of being still at a development stage, already shows a lot of potential.

The first thing that caught my attention when launching Google Chrome for the first time was its minimalist design. Besides a couple of bars and a couple of buttons, there’s nothing else on the interface to steal screen space from the websites you visit – not even a status bar, as it automatically shows and hides whenever it’s necessary.Another feature I loved is the fact that Google Chrome uses the same keyboard shortcuts and mouse wheel combination as Firefox. With a zero learning curve, you immediately feel at your element and there’s no need to start testing new shortcuts or reading the documentation. Other similarities to Firefox in Google Chrome include a complete download manager (which reminded me a lot of the Download Status bar extension) and a handy password manager.

If you don’t want Google Chrome to track down your browsing movements, try the incognito window. This special window won’t save anything about your session (no browsing history, no cookies, etc.), so no breadcrumbs will be left after you close it.

But if there’s a feature that makes Google Chrome really stand out, that’s having separate processes for each one of the tabs you open. That means that you can check the amount of system resources used up by each tab, and close any of them in case of trouble without having to shut down the whole browser.

That said, I don’t think Google Chrome is perfect yet. Like I said before, it’s still in development so there’s still plenty of room for it to grow and improve. I must say I had some stability issues when trying to install the Flash plug-in, and that I was totally unable to make the Java Virtual Machine work – which eventually prevented me from using certain web services. Despite these flaws, I really liked Google Chrome and I think it may become a serious option when choosing your web browser. Only time will tell.

Google to Launch New Web Browser - Chrome

Mountain View (CA) - Google had a big Labor Day announcement – stating that the company would launch at beta version of its “Chrome” web browser in more than 100 countries on Tuesday.

Do we really need another web browser, next to Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera? Google thinks so and hopes to outshine all other web browsers with a new browser that has been designed from scratch with a purpose not only to display text and pictures but to run applications. Google claims that Chrome can do this faster and in a more stable and more secure way than its rivals.

“We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser,” Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management and Linus Upson, engineering director at Google, wrote in a blog post. “What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.”

According to the post, we can expect a browser that has a “streamlined and simple” user interface: “Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.” Below the simple surface, however, Chrome is described to be able to run “today's complex web applications much better.” The browser is promised to be released as Open Source.

“We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren't even possible in today's browsers,” Pichai and Upson wrote. Both emphasized that Chrome isn’t done and may need much more work, so all we should expect is an idea of what Google is working on. “We're releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We're hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.”

In our mind, the most recent releases of Firefox 3, Opera 9.52 and IE8 may not be perfect, but they are very good browsers with lots of product development, engineering and market experience behind each of them. Google certainly has built up our hopes that it will reveal a browser that can trump all three – and we can’t wait to see if that in fact is the case.

How to Export Firefox Bookmarks to Delicious

The easiest way to do this is to use the del.icio.us plugin. Once you install it just go to del.icio.us in the menubar > del.icio.us website > import bookmarks. You will have to be logged in to do this step.


If you don't wan to use he plug-in it is possible to upload the bookmarks that you have in Firefox manually as well.

Once you are done backing up your Firefox bookmarks, you are ready to export them into a HTML file. To do so

1. Click on Bookmarks in the menubar
2. Click on Organize Bookmarks
3. Click on File and then on Export

Then a window should pop-up prompting you to choose a file name. Just choose a file name and remember where you saved it.

Log into your del.icio.us account and click on settings in the upper right hand corner of the window. Then click on import / upload.

Here, browse for the HTML file that you just created, and then choose your desired settings. Once you click on the import now button, delicious will automatically start importing all the bookmarks. Once its done, all you're bookmarks will be stored on delicious forever, and you can access it from anywhere.

Google Adwords Quality Score Update

Google has made certain important quality score updates in their algorithm. Please read excerpts from their blog -

In July 2005, AdWords introduced minimum bids for keywords based on Quality Score. This system allows us to show very high quality ads to Google users, while also giving advertisers control over their keywords. Since 2005, we've improved Quality Score in many ways, such as the inclusion of landing page quality and landing page load time as factors. Along the way, we've also received much helpful feedback from both users and advertisers.

Today, we'd like to let you know of further improvements we'll introduce in the coming weeks -- based, in part, on this feedback. First we'll outline the key points, and then dive into the details:

• Quality Score will now be more accurate because it will be calculated at the time of each search query
  
• Keywords will no longer be marked 'inactive for search'
  
• 'First page bid' will replace 'minimum bid' in your account

A more accurate Quality Score

Most importantly, we are replacing our static per-keyword Quality Scores with a system that will evaluate an ad's quality each time it matches a search query. This way, AdWords will use the most accurate, specific, and up-to-date performance information when determining whether an ad should be displayed. Your ads will be more likely to show when they're relevant and less likely to show when they're not. This means that Google users are apt to see better ads while you, as an advertiser, should receive leads which are more highly qualified.

Keywords no longer marked 'inactive for search'

The new per-query evaluation of Quality Score affects you in that keywords will no longer appear as 'inactive for search' in your account. Instead, all keywords will have the chance to show ads on Google web search and the search network (unless you've paused or deleted them). Keep in mind, however, that keywords previously marked 'inactive for search' are not likely to accrue a great deal of traffic following this change. This is because their combined per-query Quality Score and bid probably isn't high enough to gain competitive placement.

'First page bid' will replace 'minimum bid'

As a result of migrating to per-query Quality Score, we are no longer showing minimum bids in your account. Instead, we're replacing minimum bids with a new, more meaningful metric: first page bids. First page bids are an estimate of the bid it would take for your ad to reach the first page of search results on Google web search. They're based on the exact match version of the keyword, the ad's Quality Score, and current advertiser competition on that keyword. Based on your feedback, we learned that knowing your minimum bid wasn't always helpful in getting the ad placement you wanted, so we hope that first page bids will give you better guidance on how to achieve your advertising goals.

It's worth mentioning that the impact of these changes will vary from advertiser to advertiser; some might see no changes to their ad serving, while others may see a noticeable difference. As always, we recommend optimizing ads to prevent them from receiving a low Quality Score.

Putting it all together

Here's an example to illustrate how per-query Quality Score works:

Nancy's Dairy advertises on the keyword 'milk.' Nancy's ads perform better on the keyword 'milk' in the U.S. than in Canada. Her ads also perform better on the query 'milk delivery' than on 'milk,' and better on certain search network sites than on others. Instead of one static Quality Score and minimum bid that determines whether the keyword 'milk' is eligible to trigger an ad for all search queries, we will now determine eligibility dynamically, based on factors such as location, the specific query, and other relevance factors. For that reason, Nancy's keyword 'milk' will be able to trigger an ad for search queries where it's likely to perform better, i.e., in the U.S., on 'milk delivery' and on certain search network sites.

We're working to update the AdWords API and AdWords Editor so that, in the future, they will support first page bids. Until then, both the AdWords API and AdWords Editor will continue to show the minimum bid field. However, the information shown in this field will be based on the new per-query Quality Score. You may keep current with upcoming API releases on the API Blog and learn about upcoming AdWords Editor releases via the AdWords Editor Forum.

Finally, please note that we'll release these Quality Score changes to a very small segment of advertisers within the next day or two, so that we can gather feedback before launching to all our advertisers. We will, of course, post again in advance of the time that these changes go live for everyone.

In the meantime, please see this comprehensive list of frequently asked questions for more information.

Gmail Introduces New Privacy Settings

Google has come up with a brilliant idea of introducing a privacy setting in Gmail that shows information about your last activity on your account and also whether you are logged onto the account via other device. You can also check out the details section and access more info like how many devices are you logged on from and also the IP addresses. What more, Gmail also introduces a remote log out feature using which one can log out of every device other than the one currently being used.

Now how cool is that?

Customize the Way Your Gmail Looks

Are you tired of looking at the plain, old and boring Gmail User Interface (UI) that hasn’t been changed ever since 2004? Even though Google has been constantly rolling out new features for its services, it has never bothered to update the UI for many of its services. For example, take a look at how Gmail looks in its present state.

Gmail is high on features compared to the other email services out there, but it seriously lacks on the UI front. Google may have its own reasons for not rolling out a new look, but that doesn’t stop us from customizing it our own way, does it?Here’s how a customized Gmail looks.

There are other kinds of looks available too, but we’re only focussing on the one by Globex Designs. Let’s take a look.Here’s what you need:1. FireFox 2+ (FireFox 3.0+ is highly recommended)First, visit the following URL and download and install the ‘Stylish’ extension for FireFox.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2108

You need to restart your browser to complete the installation, so make sure you save all your work before you do that.Next, proceed to visit the following URL.

http://www.globexdesigns.com/gmail/gmail.css

Now, all you need to do is right-click on the Stylish icon in the bottom right of you browser and click on ‘Add File to Stylish‘ and you’re done. Visit http://mail.google.com. If you did everything correctly, this is how the sign up box will show up.

Cool, isn’t it?

iPhone Killer? Samsung Omnia

Very Useful Blog Add-Ons

Here’s a collection of most useful blog add-ons or extras that can be easily integrated with any website and will help in enhancing your visitors’ experience.

All these 15 add-ons are free and you don’t have to be a geek to use them on your site.

1. Google Talk Badge - This badge will enable site visitors to get in touch with you quickly. They won’t need a Google account and the badge is enabled only when you are online. Alternative is meebo me.

2. Web2PDF Online - Love this. People can download your articles as PDF files with a click. The PDFs are free of any advertising and you also get full access to stats so you know what articles downloaded most, etc. (example)

3. Zoho Creator - If you ever need to create web forms for your blog, use Zoho Creator. It lets you customize the form layouts, there are no data limits and best of all, readers can upload file attachments while submitting the form.

4. HP Blog Printing - This makes your blog printer friendly. Visitors can pick blog posts that they want to print and only the text + images get printed. Everything else including banners, sidebars, etc. are cut off from the printed version.

5. Outbrain Ratings - The is the best way to add ratings to your blog posts. Outbrain offers two extra advantages as well - your readers can find more stories related to the one they are currently reading and two, they can rate stories even from feed readers.

6. ShareThis or AddThis - They help reduce clutter on your blog by neatly arranging icons in a CSS drop-down that appears only on mouse hover. Both are similar though I prefer AddThis as it is loads faster and allows branding.

7. Google Feed Wizard - This is useful if you have to embed RSS feeds in your blog - you can create blocks in either horizontal or vertical format. If your need options other than AJAX, try these RSS widgets or the static Google Gadgets.

8. Skribit - This is again a great tool to get feedback and opinions from your site visitors.

For instance, you can put up a question like "What should I write about" or "How Can I improve" in the sidebar and readers can add opinions anonymously. They can even vote on suggestions left by other visitors. See example.

9. who.amung.us - This helps you and your readers know how many people are currently on the site and what pages are they reading. No sign-up required and amung.us will even tell you the exact location of different visitors on a map.

10. Eco Safe Badge - This badge allows website visitors to send a full copy of your web page to any email address in HTML or PDF format. Alternatively, they can download a PDF version of the page in a click. The whole idea is to discourage visitors from printing web pages.

11. Meebo Rooms - This allows visitors on your website to interact with each other inside a chat room. Other options worth exploring include Google Lively but again, Lively requires installation at the client’s end.

12. Scribd iPaper - If you frequently link to PDF files and Microsoft Office documents like doc or xls, the Scribd iPaper add-on will make sure that your content remains accessible even to readers who don’t have Microsoft Office or Adobe Reader.

You simply copy-and-paste a small block of code into your webpage, and QuickSwitch converts all the documents in your blog into Flash Paper format hosted on Scribd. If you only link to PDF files, try PDFMeNote script.

13. Yahoo! Media Player - If you have an audio blog or frequently link to MP3 files, integrate the Yahoo! media players in your blog template - this auto-detects any MP3 links and creates an embedded player so you are saved from all the hard work.

14. Translate Gadget - This lets your non-English speaking visitors translate articles from your website in their native language using Google Translation.

Alternatively, you can create your own translation box with language flags or through a different translation service.

15. Digg Your Blog - A good Digg widget that doesn’t get much attention.

Unlike the regular "Digg This" buttons, this widget creates a list of posts from your own blog that are currently getting votes on Digg. Put it in your sidebar to highlight "recently popular" content.

Most Popular Social Bookmarking Services

If you ever wanted to know how people are storing or sharing content on the web, this graph says this all. It shows a list of most popular social services that are used by netizens to share or save web pages.

Email continues to be the most favorite mode for sharing links on the Internet followed by Facebook and Digg though its a formidable lead.

These statistics are provided by ShareThis and if you compare these numbers with what AddThis provided an year ago, you’ll see an interesting trend:

1. More people prefer sharing links on social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace rather than the regular social bookmarking services like delicious.

2. Windows Live is gaining ground and appears almost as popular as Google Bookmarks. The gap was very wide last year.

3. Don’t discount Technorati yet. It looks like lot of people do add blogs / websites to their "Technorati Favorites" and it’s more popular than say Diigo, ma.gnolia.com or Mixx.com.

Using You Tube Videos to Get into Google's Top 10

According to "Ask A Ninja" here are some internet video facts, "In March 2008, 11.5 billion videos were viewed online. There's 10 minutes of video uploaded every second. In a single week, more Americans watch videos on YouTube than the top
10 network television shows."

Watch: http://www.askaninja.com/futureofvideo

You better get those screencasts, or slideshows with voiceovers prepared and uploaded. The evidence is clear, short "how-to" videos, or "what's in the box" videos are proving to be very popular and drive the most traffic.

This is especially true if Google is allowing Universal Search Results in your market. Go do a search and find out. If videos are appearing in the search results, that may be your fastest way into a competitive market.

If you have PowerPoint on the PC, or Keynote on the Mac you're all set. All it takes is a short slide show with a voiceover. But if you've never done a slideshow before, pick up a copy of Garr Reynolds' "Presentation Zen" at any bookstore, and prepare to dazzle your viewers.

If you prefer to use a screen recorder for show and tell, turn to CamStudio or Camtasia on the PC, ScreenFlow on the Mac, to create a short 3 minute "how-to" clip, on something that you figured out how to do. It could be a software tip, how to use a social bookmarking site, how to FTP a file to a server, just about anything.

Once you have your video file, you can visit YouTube & upload your files. Or if you prefer to upload your files once, and have a professional service do all the submitting.

Either way, slidecasts and screencasts are great ways to make video fast. And if Google is showing video mixed with search results in your competitive market, that's your fastest route to the top.

Using Google As a Currency Conversion Tool

Google has a neat built-in currency converter which when used properly will allow you to convert any currency value to another. To use Google’s built-in currency converter, simply enter the conversion you’d like to be done into the Google search box and hit “Enter” or click the search button. Note - enter the query as shown in the example above.

Google Regrets $1 Billion Investment in AOL

According to Google’s 10-Q filing, Google is regretting their $1 billion investment in AOL for 5% of the company. They have determined that AOL looks like a lemon, and they will never see any return on their investment.

Based on our review, we believe our investment in AOL may be impaired. After consideration of the duration of the impairment, as well as the reasons for any decline in value and the potential recovery period, we do not believe that such impairment is “other-than-temporary” at June 30, 2008 as defined under FSP 115-1

This is a pretty heavy statement — future profits that they would have hoped to generate from this major investment aren’t looking like they will ever exist, but it doesn’t appear that investors in Google are cashing out because of this filing either — at least as of right now.

In AOL’s second quarter, they saw profits drop to $1.1 billion — that’s a 29% decrease in subscription revenues. It’s definitely not looking up at AOL.

Google Makes Gmail More Secure

Last week Google launched a new feature that lets you keep track of computers that are logged into your Gmail account — a tool that will put the minds of people who are suspicious of unauthorized account access at ease. But what about people snooping your internet traffic? The session viewer they released isn’t able to solve that kind of problem.

To increase the level of security in Gmail again, Google is now giving users the option to make sure Gmail always uses SSL — effectively making an encrypted connection to Gmail and preventing people from sniffing your internet packets. To set this feature up, log into Gmail, go to “settings”, then make sure the option to “Always use https” is selected. Push “Save” and you’re done. Next time you go to www.gmail.com, you will notice it automatically redirects you to https://www.gmail.com.

[image from Google Blogoscoped]

This has been a commonly requested feature for a long time — in fact, people wanted it so bad they took matters into their own hands. There is a Greasemonkey script for Firefox that does precisely what Google has implemented, and not suprisingly, it is the fourth most installed Greasemonkey script for Gmail on userserscripts.org.

Using Google To Find Whois Details

Few people know that you can use Google itself as a Whois Lookup tool! According to Googlified, this service was already launched by Google back in 2004 but was taken off after 2 weeks of its release. This time Google has partnered with DomainTools to provide the Whois records.

To use the Whois Lookup service provided by Google, just go to Google and type in “whois yourdomain.com” to get creation and expiry dates of the domain. Click on the link to get detailed information about the domain on DomainTools.