Sunday, August 31, 2008

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.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

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.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

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

Monday, August 25, 2008

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.

gtalk 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.

save_as_pdf 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)

zohocreator 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.

print 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.

rating 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.

feeds 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.

vote 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.

visitors 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.

eco 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.

meebo 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.

scribd12. 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.

media 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.

translate 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.

digg 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.

social-bookmarks

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.

addthis

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.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

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.

gmail-https-setting.png
[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.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Google Introduces Site Search Function Below Site Links

















In addition to providing site links in their search result pages, Google appears to have introduced a "Search Field" enabling visitors to directly search for specific information while on the results page. Have a look at the results returned above while I searched for "VH1" today.


Friday, August 8, 2008

Google Search Provides Olympic Event Schedules












Find out when events in your favorite sport are going down in a single Google search: Simply enter the event name and "Olympics" into the Google search box to see upcoming dates and times, like
tennis Olympics, or diving Olympics.

Google to sell its Performics search marketing unit to Publicis Groupe

Google has decided to sell its Performics search marketing unit to the France-based advertising holding company Publicis Groupe.

Performics had been owned by DoubleClick, and ever since Google’s acquisition of that company in March 2008, Google has been expected to unload Performics.

The conflict of interest is pretty clear, given that Performics advises clients on how to maximize their visibility on Google, writes New York Times.

Launched in 1998, Performics currently has over 130 search engine marketing (SEM) clients and nearly 200 search marketing specialists with employees in US, UK, Germany, Australia, Singapore and China.

“Publicis Groupe has been a leader in the advertising industry for decades, and we believe Performics’ growing business will benefit from being a part of it,” Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO, Google, has said.

Maurice Lévy, chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe, has said, “The acquisition of Performics will not only bring critical mass to Publicis Groupe’s formidable Search capabilities, but it will also enhance our affiliate marketing and overall performance marketing offering.”

Google Content Gets Enhanced

New enhancements that Google has announced today and that will be available in the coming months are the next step in the integration and in enabling standard industry functionality on the Google content network:

Excerpts from their blog -

# Frequency Capping: Enables advertisers to control the number of times a user sees an ad. Users will have a better experience on Google content network sites because they will no longer see the same ad over and over again.
# Frequency Reporting: Provides insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign, and how many times, on average, people are seeing these ads.
# Improved Ads Quality: Brings performance improvements within the Google content network.
# View-Through Conversions: Enables advertisers to gain insights on how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad. This helps advertisers determine the best places to advertise so users will see more relevant ads.
We are enabling this functionality by implementing a DoubleClick ad-serving cookie across the Google content network. Using the DoubleClick cookie means that DoubleClick advertisers and publishers don't have to make any changes on their websites as we continue our integration efforts and offer additional enhancements.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Social Media Growth Rate


According to VNU.net, nearly half of the online adult population around the world is a member of at least one networking site, with Facebook and MySpace between them housing over 170 million monthly active users.


Other social media activity is also continuing to grow at a frenetic pace. According to Wave3 research of active users:

* 394m watch video clips online
* 346m read blogs
* 321m read personal blogs
* 307m visit a friend's social network page
* 303m share a video clip
* 272m manage a profile on a social network
* 248m upload photos
* 216m download video podcasts
* 215m download podcasts
* 184m start their own Blog
* 83m upload a video clip
* 160m subscribe to an RSS feed

(According to Wave.3 Social Media Tracker - Universal McCann)

Friendster gets $20 million Funding & a New CEO

Friendster is not dead yet. The pioneering social network announced on Tuesday that it has raked in $20 million in venture funding led by IDG Ventures and has hired Richard Kimber as its new CEO.

Kimber was hired from Google, of all places, where he served as the regional managing director in Southeast Asia. That's key for Friendster, which has seen most of its recent growth in the Asia-Pacific region, to the point where it's now the No. 1 social network in countries such as Singapore, as well as the Asian leader overall, according to ComScore. Friendster has been translating the site into different Asian languages and focusing on growth there rather than trying to patch things up in the States.

He takes over from Kent Lindstrom, who will remain on Friendster's payroll after serving as CEO since early 2006. Founder Jonathan Abrams left amid the site's U.S. decline, and he now runs an invitation start-up called Socializr.

Baidu’s Q2 Profits Up 87 Percent

Chinese search engine Baidu (NSDQ: BIDU) reported its Q2 results today, and its profits came in at 265 million yuan, or $38.6 million, versus 141.9 million yuan ($20.7 million) a year earlier, beating the average expectation of $35.5 million from analysts. Revenues doubled to 802.6 million yuan ($117.5 million) from 401.3 million yuan ($58.8 million) a year earlier, a 100 percent increase. The company expects another uptick in Q3 on account of increased Olympics traffic.

IDG: Although all of Baidu’s revenues come from its China operations, CEO Li said “Our Japan operation is progressing well,” and that the company spent 30 million yuan there during the quarter. He said that Baidu will “open a research and development center in Shanghai later this year to serve Japan-related search applications.” Release here.

Google Launches Music Onebox- Free Music Service in China

Google announced the launch of a new music service called Music Onebox which will offer users a brand new archive to choose music from, in a simple and legal manner.

"We are launching Music Onebox to give users an easy and legal way to find the music they're looking for, and to give music labels and publishers a new channel to distribute, promote and make money off of their valuable music content," a Google spokesperson explained.

The service, available only in China, will be promoted through the company’s home page by directing users searching for a certain song or artist to the Web site www.top100.cn. The service allows downloading and streaming tunes, blocking out all users outside the country.

The financial backing is ensured by Chinese basketball superstar Yao Ming and according to the company’s officials, the money coming in from the advertising contracts will be split between the Web site, music labels and publishers.

The reason why such a strategy was first considered for China is mainly related to the fact that the music companies keep searching for ways of breaking into the market and reaching the same status achieved in the United States and Europe. Once the promotion campaigns will take full effect, the Web site’s traffic will rise and the clients will demand more space for their ads, it is expected that Music Onebox will become a major success for Google.

"This legal music service will help users avoid dead links, slow downloads, inaccurate search results, and poor quality or incomplete songs," Google’s officials explained in a statement, referring to the virtually inexistent paid music download system, which leaves music enthusiasts with the sole option of turning to unsecure and low quality pirated versions of their favorite songs.

Sunday, August 31, 2008

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.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

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.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

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

Monday, August 25, 2008

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.

gtalk 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.

save_as_pdf 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)

zohocreator 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.

print 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.

rating 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.

feeds 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.

vote 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.

visitors 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.

eco 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.

meebo 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.

scribd12. 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.

media 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.

translate 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.

digg 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.

social-bookmarks

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.

addthis

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.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

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.

gmail-https-setting.png
[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.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Google Introduces Site Search Function Below Site Links

















In addition to providing site links in their search result pages, Google appears to have introduced a "Search Field" enabling visitors to directly search for specific information while on the results page. Have a look at the results returned above while I searched for "VH1" today.


Friday, August 8, 2008

Google Search Provides Olympic Event Schedules












Find out when events in your favorite sport are going down in a single Google search: Simply enter the event name and "Olympics" into the Google search box to see upcoming dates and times, like
tennis Olympics, or diving Olympics.

Google to sell its Performics search marketing unit to Publicis Groupe

Google has decided to sell its Performics search marketing unit to the France-based advertising holding company Publicis Groupe.

Performics had been owned by DoubleClick, and ever since Google’s acquisition of that company in March 2008, Google has been expected to unload Performics.

The conflict of interest is pretty clear, given that Performics advises clients on how to maximize their visibility on Google, writes New York Times.

Launched in 1998, Performics currently has over 130 search engine marketing (SEM) clients and nearly 200 search marketing specialists with employees in US, UK, Germany, Australia, Singapore and China.

“Publicis Groupe has been a leader in the advertising industry for decades, and we believe Performics’ growing business will benefit from being a part of it,” Eric Schmidt, chairman and CEO, Google, has said.

Maurice Lévy, chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe, has said, “The acquisition of Performics will not only bring critical mass to Publicis Groupe’s formidable Search capabilities, but it will also enhance our affiliate marketing and overall performance marketing offering.”

Google Content Gets Enhanced

New enhancements that Google has announced today and that will be available in the coming months are the next step in the integration and in enabling standard industry functionality on the Google content network:

Excerpts from their blog -

# Frequency Capping: Enables advertisers to control the number of times a user sees an ad. Users will have a better experience on Google content network sites because they will no longer see the same ad over and over again.
# Frequency Reporting: Provides insight into the number of people who have seen an ad campaign, and how many times, on average, people are seeing these ads.
# Improved Ads Quality: Brings performance improvements within the Google content network.
# View-Through Conversions: Enables advertisers to gain insights on how many users visited their sites after seeing an ad. This helps advertisers determine the best places to advertise so users will see more relevant ads.
We are enabling this functionality by implementing a DoubleClick ad-serving cookie across the Google content network. Using the DoubleClick cookie means that DoubleClick advertisers and publishers don't have to make any changes on their websites as we continue our integration efforts and offer additional enhancements.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Social Media Growth Rate


According to VNU.net, nearly half of the online adult population around the world is a member of at least one networking site, with Facebook and MySpace between them housing over 170 million monthly active users.


Other social media activity is also continuing to grow at a frenetic pace. According to Wave3 research of active users:

* 394m watch video clips online
* 346m read blogs
* 321m read personal blogs
* 307m visit a friend's social network page
* 303m share a video clip
* 272m manage a profile on a social network
* 248m upload photos
* 216m download video podcasts
* 215m download podcasts
* 184m start their own Blog
* 83m upload a video clip
* 160m subscribe to an RSS feed

(According to Wave.3 Social Media Tracker - Universal McCann)

Friendster gets $20 million Funding & a New CEO

Friendster is not dead yet. The pioneering social network announced on Tuesday that it has raked in $20 million in venture funding led by IDG Ventures and has hired Richard Kimber as its new CEO.

Kimber was hired from Google, of all places, where he served as the regional managing director in Southeast Asia. That's key for Friendster, which has seen most of its recent growth in the Asia-Pacific region, to the point where it's now the No. 1 social network in countries such as Singapore, as well as the Asian leader overall, according to ComScore. Friendster has been translating the site into different Asian languages and focusing on growth there rather than trying to patch things up in the States.

He takes over from Kent Lindstrom, who will remain on Friendster's payroll after serving as CEO since early 2006. Founder Jonathan Abrams left amid the site's U.S. decline, and he now runs an invitation start-up called Socializr.

Baidu’s Q2 Profits Up 87 Percent

Chinese search engine Baidu (NSDQ: BIDU) reported its Q2 results today, and its profits came in at 265 million yuan, or $38.6 million, versus 141.9 million yuan ($20.7 million) a year earlier, beating the average expectation of $35.5 million from analysts. Revenues doubled to 802.6 million yuan ($117.5 million) from 401.3 million yuan ($58.8 million) a year earlier, a 100 percent increase. The company expects another uptick in Q3 on account of increased Olympics traffic.

IDG: Although all of Baidu’s revenues come from its China operations, CEO Li said “Our Japan operation is progressing well,” and that the company spent 30 million yuan there during the quarter. He said that Baidu will “open a research and development center in Shanghai later this year to serve Japan-related search applications.” Release here.

Google Launches Music Onebox- Free Music Service in China

Google announced the launch of a new music service called Music Onebox which will offer users a brand new archive to choose music from, in a simple and legal manner.

"We are launching Music Onebox to give users an easy and legal way to find the music they're looking for, and to give music labels and publishers a new channel to distribute, promote and make money off of their valuable music content," a Google spokesperson explained.

The service, available only in China, will be promoted through the company’s home page by directing users searching for a certain song or artist to the Web site www.top100.cn. The service allows downloading and streaming tunes, blocking out all users outside the country.

The financial backing is ensured by Chinese basketball superstar Yao Ming and according to the company’s officials, the money coming in from the advertising contracts will be split between the Web site, music labels and publishers.

The reason why such a strategy was first considered for China is mainly related to the fact that the music companies keep searching for ways of breaking into the market and reaching the same status achieved in the United States and Europe. Once the promotion campaigns will take full effect, the Web site’s traffic will rise and the clients will demand more space for their ads, it is expected that Music Onebox will become a major success for Google.

"This legal music service will help users avoid dead links, slow downloads, inaccurate search results, and poor quality or incomplete songs," Google’s officials explained in a statement, referring to the virtually inexistent paid music download system, which leaves music enthusiasts with the sole option of turning to unsecure and low quality pirated versions of their favorite songs.

Saturday, August 2, 2008