Thursday, August 31, 2006

FireFox Beta2 Improvement of The Theme

The second beta of Firefox 2 includes a slick redesigned chrome, in addition to the features already available in beta 1.

Mozilla hired Radiant Core, a company from Toronto, to design the new theme. IT Business says that the "criteria for the [theme] proposals included that they respect native OS look and feel (Firefox runs on Windows, Macintosh and Linux platforms), that the themes appear modern and contemporary with current Web and client apps and appear consistent across platforms."


So now we have translucent buttons, an improved search box and new tab strip that shows the active tab prominently. There's also an arrow next to the last tab that hides a list of all the open tabs.

Update:
After Downloading, I found that this saves itself as another browser, in other words, it doesn't update your old FireFox, but it does save your links (pheww). It has a spell check for when typing which underlines in read, then right click and choose the correct word, pretty cool. They also added a little Close Button on every tab so you don't have to right click.

Source | Download FF Beta2 Windows, Mac | Digg This Article

Picasa's 503 Message Error

Picasa's little problem with Webalbums is now fixed, it was a problem with their server, but no content of anyone was lost. Just alot of pissed off people when they couldnt get into Web albums. Allthough it was strange that I uploaded pics when Web Albums was down and they uploaded fine. But hey, its fixed now so no worries :)

Picasa Web Albums

Creating Image Spam Filter For Gmail

The new groovy thing for spammers is not to e-mail text with spam, ohh no, they have to go the extra mile. Now they attach images with text in them so they can fool you. So I tried this, it is working for now, but some spam is getting in through anyway. So I need to see this in more deeply. But try this filter, it does block SOME image spam.

Has the Words | multipart/related .gif
X Has attachment

And to forward everything to the trash (which will automatically clear after 15 - 30 days.)
I tried that, since I check my e-mail various times a day it did work, but I dont know about people that dont check their e-mail for a long time if this tactic will work, ill post more comprehensive image spam filters once I get to test them all.

Blogger BETA, Template Editing

Blogger

Blogger beta now has activated the Raw Template Editor! as in the HTML edit, so now you can add all the meta tags and descriptions you like :D

PChuck's Tips on Raw HTML Editing In Blogger BETA Template

Blogger Beta | Google Groups Blogger Help Group

Analytic's Tips For Optimization

Google Analytics

Google Analytics recently gave a few tips in their blog about optimizing your results and your site in general using analytics. Here are 2 that cought my eye.

Create a funnel path and goal that mimics the expected navigation
You designed your site, so you know how you expect your users to navigate through it. Create a funnel and goal that mimics the expected path that your site is designed for.
So this means for you to Goal Track your main portals of your site. So, this way you where people are going, gives you a better idea of your visitors.
Give it a few days
Give your site a little while to perform, and let Analytics collect at least 3 or 4 weeks of data. Weekends, special events, and holidays may lead to skewed results so giving your site some time to perform enables you to get more reliable, indicative metrics.
So dont expect to put in the code and GET results a day after, let it sit and wait a while, this way you get more comprehensive stats

Google Analytics is a very good utility, but, as all things, it takes time to settle and take impulse.

Official Google Analytics Blog Post | Analytics | Digg This Article

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Google Earth, New Layers

Last night Google published and announced an update to the Google Earth Community (GEC) layers. These layers show blue "i" icons in Google Earth which show placemarks posted in the forums when turned on in the Layers pane on the lower left of GE. For those of you who posted in appropriate forums (some of the forums are not included in the layer) before August 18th, your placemarks should appear now. You may have to zoom down lower heights to see more of the placemarks. Since it's been a few months since the last update to this layer there are probably tens of thousands of new placemarks now available. Fortunately, the layer has sub-layers broken down by category (based somewhat on the forums at the GEC). This can help you eliminate unwanted placemarks.

New Google Earth Layers

In addition, Google has added a new layer called the "Featured Content" layer. Right now this includes the following: Turn Here, Jane Goodall's Gombe Chimpanzee Blog, and Discovery Channel's National Parks Tour (links point to earlier stories about these collections at GEB). My guess is that Google will rotate featured content from the GE Showcase web page through this new layer.

Written By Frank Taylor,
"Google Updates"

Google Earth Showcase | Google Earth | Digg This Article

Adding HTML to Gmail Messages

The Digital Inspiration weblog has a step-by-step for adding HTML to Gmail messages.

For those of you who have tried inserting an image or table in Gmail, you've probably noticed that Gmail won'tt really allow embedded HTML (at least not in a traditional sense). In order to embed HTML, you actually need to copy the rendered HTML from either an existing web page or WYSIWYG HTML editor and then paste it into Gmail. Doing so allows you to insert your own tables, divs, images, etc. into Gmail pretty easily.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of embedded anything in emails (give me plain text, please!), but for those of you who have been missing HTML in Gmail, Digital Inspiration's method should do the trick. If that method isn't your cup of tea, you might also want to try the Gmail Skins Firefox extension, which allows you to embed HTML directly in Gmail.

The Tutorial | Gmail | Digg This Article

Download Books From Google

Starting today, you can go to Google Book Search and download full copies of out-of-copyright books to read at your own pace. You're free to choose from a diverse collection of public domain titles from well-known classics to obscure gems. They made it a PDF download so you could not copy paste. So you can go to google books and download books :)


Google Book Search


Here are some Classics:
* Ferriar's The Bibliomania
* A futurist from 1881's 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century
* Aesop's Fables
* Shakespeare's Hamlet
* Abbott's Flatland
* Hugo's Marion De Lorme
* Dunant's Eine Erinnerung an Solferino

Official Google Book Search Blog Post | Google Book Search

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Google Talk and Skype!

The Google Talk Blog announced that they will be adding Skype to the "Other Clients" compatible area :)

Google Talk's got a new gig. Google and eBay have signed an agreement around text-based advertising and "click-to-call" advertising, in which Google Talk and Skype will power voice calls between customers and merchants.

Just as exciting are our plans to explore interoperability between Google Talk and Skype, making it easier for our users to chat with one another. This is just another step in our commitment to interoperability via open, industry standards.


Just another chat client added :) BUT this is a big step towards being compatible with other chat clients, and not to mention Skype is from Yahoo, and Yahoo nad Google collaborating is a BIG deal.

Official Google GTalk Blog Post | Press Release | Other IM Clients | Digg This Article

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Blogger Beta: Current Possibilities

So Gav, in the Googolians Forum Blogger Beta: A Significant Improvement, asks the $64,000,000 question

Hey I just have one question, can I upgrade my old one ?

After some consideration, my answer is
Not if you value your blog, if it has any content or features, or if it's indexed by the search engines. In other words, No.

After much consideration, and examining known issues - Design Deficiencies, and Problems, I have to say that I do not recommend upgrading any existing blog, that's at all mature and has content and value to you.

I am going to recommend a parallel (mirroring) strategy.
  • Develop a new blog, as a Beta. Make its visual characteristics as close to the current (unupgraded) blog as possible.
  • Use FeedDigest, or another custom feed service (FeedDigest is free), and build 2 feeds, one from your Classic blog, the other from your new Beta blog. Install the feed from one onto the other, and vice versa.
  • Then start blogging to the Beta blog, when appropriate.
  • Note the design deficiencies, and known problems, when considering each of the above steps. There are still bugs in the Beta. Don't subject your current, valued, blog to Beta just yet.
Details>>>Real Blogger Status: Migration From Blogger Classic To Blogger Beta

Google Corporate Packages

CNet reports that Google will expand Gmail for Your Domain into a much more interesting offer. Google will start to offer Google Apps for Your Domain, a hosted service that includes Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Page Creator. The service is mainly targeted at businesses, universities and other organizations, as it allows them to provide the same great Google experience in a customized package.

The service is free, but Google will start to offer a premium service with larger storage, ad-free and with support at the end of the year.

Google Corporate

The offer will most likely be more substantial in the future, with the addition of Writely, Google Spreadsheets and other applications. Google tried to be more attractive for corporate users by creating enterprise versions for Google Desktop and Google Toolbar, but without much success.

Google Apps for Your Domain | More Info on Google Apps | People's Thoughts | Digg This Article

Google Book Search, Searching Libraries

Google Books Logo

Google has added to its service for finding books the ability to search local libraries.

Queries in Google Book Search, which is in beta, automatically include results from the new Library Catalog Search feature, and a "find libraries" link. Clicking on the link sends the user to another page where local libraries carrying the book will be listed, based on the user's zip code.

So you wont even have to leave your house to see if the library has the book you want. Although it might take time for Google to get to ALL libraries and keep them updated.

Google Book Search | Learn More About Searching Libraries | Digg This Article

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Google Notifier for Mac

Google Notifier for Mac is formerly Gmail Notifier, which is for you “easy access to your new Gmail messages with a quick preview of the message subject, sender, and snippet.” But now, the Google Notifier combines the Timely reminder, for your upcoming Google Calendar events, including date, time, event title, and location, and became the powerful Google Notifier!

Free File Hosting at FileHive.com

Mac Gmail Notifier | Thanks Haochi! | Digg This Article

Ernesto Tracked By Me!

Ernesto is a tropical storm in the Atlantic right now. The first Atlantic tropical storm of the season with a real chance to build up to a threat for the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico is moving down hurricane alley right now. You can track the position of Tropical Storm Ernesto using this excellent Hurricane

Free File Hosting at FileHive.com

Google Earth | Satellite View On Ernesto | Digg This Article

OK Go Dancing On Treadmills Video

This is a british band named "OK Go" which was made dancing on treadmills. Its a pretty cool video



Official Google Video Blog Post | Whatch in Google Video | Digg This Article

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Captchas and Online Games

This is a pretty long video, but it's still worth the time to watch. It discusses these issues, and more.

  • What is a Captcha, and why is it not the ultimate protection against automated attacks?
  • Why do I see a Captcha sometimes, when I'm looking at pictures?
  • Why are there so many free online games?
  • How does Google Images get their pictures labeled so accurately?
Captchas and Online Games: Human Computation (Luis Von Ahn: July 26, 2006)

Call Users From Gmail

Free File Hosting at FileHive.com

Garett Rogers found a Gmail feature that lets you call users WHILE your writing e-mails or checking them. This is quite usefull for people that dont use Google Talk and use the Chat feature in Gmail.

Source of Inspiration | Gmail | Digg This Article

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Google Talk's 1 Year Old!

Happy Birthday to Google Talk! Two years ago, Eoban Binder proposed idea of a Jabber-based Google IM service. A year ago, Google launched Google Talk. Tomorrow, Happy Birthday to Google Talk!

Google released a new version of Google last week to celebrate GTalk’s first birthday! Ionut found an easter egg that if you turn your computer date to August 24, you will get a special logo for GTalk, as shown at right.

Blogger's 7th Birthday

Free File Hosting at FileHive.com

7 years ago, Blogger was launched by Pyra Labs, today, Blogger is celebrating their birthday with a new logo (for a day, I guess). Blogger is credited for helping popularize blogging. On August 23, 1999, Evan Williams(co-founder of Blogger) posted on his blog,

We just launched a cool new tool at Pyra. It’s called Blogger. It’s an automated weblog publishing tool. Unlike Pitas, which, don’t get me wrong, is cool, Blogger FTP’s your updated weblog page to your own server after each post. This means you can have everything “under the same roof,” as Jack put it the other day. You retain complete control. In fact, no one even has to know you’re using Blogger. It just makes your life simplier. Check it out. (Coming soon: Automated XML channel creation.)


The new logo with the dog is because of that whole “1 human year = 7 dog year” thing.

Source of Inspiration | Read More... | Thanks Haochi | Digg This Article!

We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.

This seems to be a common problem now. Maybe it's the whole problem. OK, we can dream anyway.



This problem has been commonly associated with blogs that started out as Classic, and were migrated to the Beta template.

We suspect (but can never be sure) that Blogger Support is working on this symptom, which appears to have several possible causes.

One cause is corrupt feeds being added to the layout. When you see the error, go to the Layout Editor, and look at any feeds that you added to the blog. Edit each one. One or more will show "Invalid URL". Delete any feeds with that error.

Another possibility originates with having multiple contributors, and may be caused by multiple contributors changing the layout simultaneously. I'm not sure whether there's an easy solution to this. Blogger Development may have to add template locking.

I've also observed problems caused by moving layout objects, using drag and drop. If an object is easy to create, you may want to extract its code, and add it in another location. Then delete the old object.

We are currently tracking this issue, in RBS Beta: Corrupted Template?. You will find several threads in the Google Blogger Help - Troubleshooting forum.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Google Merchandise

Google Store

Ok, I was snooping around the Google Store this afternoon and found this cool iPod skin, bike shirt, Gum, Flshdrives ect... all by Google!

Google iPod Skin Google Bike Riding Shirt Google Gum Google USB

Now I find this to be very cool, considering the clean way they place their logo on things. Google store has free shipping for UPS Ground Continental "For a Limited Time Only". They also have a very flexible Return policy

All merchandise is guaranteed for workmanship and quality for one year from date of purchase. If, for any reason, you are not pleased with your order, please return the item.

Very cool! no other search engine has this :)

Google Store | Return Policy | New Items!

Monday, August 21, 2006

Googles, Fly Over Google Earth

Googles Logo

Goggles is a Game made by Mark Caswell. In this game you can fly over "Google Earth's" images of your choice, between, London, Dublin, New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, Boston, Philadelphia even Mars and Moon! and many others. You can fly over this using your arrow keys to move around and you can go up and down, if you go down completely you will blow up your plane. You can also shoot little balls into the air and hit things.

Goggle's Interface Flying Over Goggle's Shooting Over Goggle's Crashing

Mark Caswell posts some updates on the interface of his game, to see them scroll down. As, "PLEASE NOTE: this game is a beta! It's not actually finished yet and I hadn't intended to release it." so this is still not finished meaning he will add more things to it. So if you want to have some fun, check Goggles out!

Goggles | Read More | Mark Caswell's Blog

Sunday, August 20, 2006

GTalk - Adding Contacts

This is totally kewl.

My bud already had GMail, so I send him an invitation to GTalk. I simply typed his mailbox name ("@gmail.com" already filled in) into the invitation form, hit Next, then Finish.

I went to IM him on MSN Messenger (where we had been in conversation for an hour or so), to tell him to read his email. By the time I got back to MSN Messenger, I see a GTalk popup

Hello.
Thanks to GMail and GTalk integration, the GTalk invitation went straight into GMail. When he opened his email, it was a single click and it installed. No download, no restart system.

Obviously (and I say this with some irony), you do not want unknown and untrusted applications installing automatically, in most cases. Some people (and if you're of this mind I support your concern) may not go for this at all. But if GTalk and GMail are this tightly integrated, there are hopefully some security precautions involved. It's not an unknown application routing an invitation thru an unknown email system, it's GTalk sending an internal message to GMail. It's fast, and it works.

In other words, if your bud has GMail, and if he trusts your judgement, you are seconds away from having another GTalk contact. If you don't have GTalk, get it for yourself. It has its limitations, but it's lightweight, it installs easily, and it works.

Here is yet another version of
I spent longer typing this than the scenario described actually took.
Try it.

Google Analytics Instant Signup

Google Analystics Blog Logo

Google Analytics recently announced in their blog "We're open! Instant access now available" which means that they got rid of their 24-72 hour wait for the invitation code. Which was a mayor turn off for me, and I'm sure for you all too.

If you don't know what analytics is, its a way to track your site that Google has provided. All you do is put in a META TAG as you would do with Sitemaps and it is tracking your site for activity. They give you bar graphs and pie charts of different things like Visits and Pageviews, New and Returning, Visits by Source (meaning referring links). And they also provide "Goal Tracking" which is a way that you can keep track of a special post you made in your blog, or maybe a specific part in your site that you want to keep track of. They have a very good utility called "Site Overlay" which tells you which links of the interface of your site are being clicked the most and others that are called "Dead Links"

Site Overview Goal Tracking Links View

Analytics also lets you have up to 10 people in your account, by this I mean, you can have 10 people that can either look at the reports of your site, or 10 people that can create a Sub Account and keep track of their site. So if you have friends that have websites, invite them to get the most out of your account.

Source of Inspiration | Google Analytics | Analytics Google Group | Take a Tour

How Tos of the Google Calculator

Free File Hosting at FileHive.com

Most people don't even know that there is a Google Calculator, the google calculator, obviously, is used for numbers, cash currencies, cooking measurements,

Numbers

When you are using it for numbers, here are a few pointers.
  • Use * for multiplying
  • Use / for dividing
  • Use ^ for exponents, like 2^2 (2 to the power of 2)
  • When using fractions use parenthesis
  • When working with roots, type (root)th of (number) as 5th root of 32
  • When working with Weight, type the force in parenthesis as (160 pounds force) * 4,000 feet

  • Example Search for numbers

    Cash Currencies
    Here is how to search on the change of currencies
  • Type the type of money then "in" and the currency your looking for, like 200 USD in Yen
  • When trying to figure out how much is a cash currency versus the other without typing the name of currency just the Country, type currency of "Name of the country" in "Name of other country" money, like currency of Brazil in US money.

  • Example Search for cash currency changes

    Cooking Measurements
    When changing cooking measurements do this.
  • When changing measurements type the measurement "in" the measurement you want to change it to, like half a cup in teaspoons

  • Example Search for cooking measurement changes

    The google calculator has been around for a while now, but people have yet to find out how it works. To run the google calculator you don't need to have a specific link, you can just type your equation in the Google homepage and you will get the same result.

    Source of Inspiration | More Instructions | Digg this Article

    Saturday, August 19, 2006

    Google Checkout Video

    Google Checkout

    Google Checkout is now getting accepted in more and more shopping sites every day, including Dick's Sporting Goods, Timberland, Buy.com, StarbucksStore, Zales, GNC among others. With their simple and easy to use "Checkout" procedure they provide, you can buy your items in a snap. This video shows how easy it is to get started and use it.



    Google Checkout is still fairly new and because of their on-going
    approach to fraud prevention they havent yet made an appearance on the Big Online Shopping Sites like Amazon, Overstock and E-Bay (E-Bay don't think so because of their feud a few weeks back). But they are promising much. So lets see in a few months where they are.

    Source Of Inspiration | Google Checkout | Digg thie Article

    Small Insight on the Googlebot

    Most people dont really know the inner workings of the Google Bot, or how it travels and sees your site. Vanessa Fox posted some very helpfull Q & A (questions and answers) about the google bot.

    If my site is down for maintenance, how can I tell Googlebot to come back later?
    You should configure your server to return a status of 503 (network unavailable) rather than 200 (successful). That lets Googlebot know to try the pages again later.

    And this is usefull info cause ive seen this happen a couple of times when im searching for forums.

    Is it better to use the meta robots tag or a robots.txt file?
    Googlebot obeys either, but meta tags apply to single pages only. If you have a number of pages you want to exclude from crawling, you can structure your site in such a way that you can easily use a robots.txt file to block those pages (for instance, put the pages into a single directory).

    I cant even remember how many times people have asked this, even I did when I was starting my first website. This is the best tip she could give to make people stop asking!

    What The Googlebot Wont Index
    This is your robots.txt file.

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /

    User-agent: Googlebot
    Disallow: /cgi-bin/



    Googlebot will crawl everything in the site other than pages in the cgi-bin directory.
    For this robots.txt file:

    User-agent: *
    Disallow: /


    Googlebot won't crawl any pages of the site.

    Now this is helpfull info if you have a Forum and maybe you set up a Staff Forum or a private forum for members that donated or something, and you dont want the bot to index that part, because eif it does when they click the link they will get a message that says, "You dont have permission to access this page"

    So these are just some tips on how to control the Googlebot in your site.

    Vanessa Fox's Entry | More Info... | Tools For Webmasters

    New Google Desktop

    Google Desktop

    Google has released Google Desktop4, and this is the best version they have had in a long time. In this version they took out some known bugs they had before, like the IE Bug that
    Let Hackers Phish With Google Desktop
    , among others. Also they have added 410 Gadgets or "Utilities" as I like to call them, with all ranging from these topics News, Tools, Communication, Finance, Fun & Games, Google, Sports, Lifestyle, Technology, and more!

    They have also made it a "Side Bar" instead of a bulky searchbox in your start bar. There is also a Mac version coming in late November.
    Google Desktop Sidebar Google Desktop for Mac

    And they made the new version multilingual now, they cover 26 languages. read more...

    The whole thing takes a few minutes to set up because of all the options they give you, but its all worth it, you have everything organized and placed where you want.

    Official Google Desktop Post | Get Google Desktop4 | Digg this Article

    Friday, August 18, 2006

    Google Video's Shortcomings

    Free File Hosting at FileHive.com

    Google's video service is easy to use, but is it coming short when it comes to programs you actually want to watch

    The websites that allow you to upload videos is growing every day, which most have short clips of spoofs, odd videos, extreme, and informative videos. Some offer instant uploading like YouTube, and some edit videos, like Google. Now I know google edits videos for profanity and course words. Just like this video I uploaded, which they "bleeped". I know this is good, so we can keep it clean, but, this is also a turn off for some users, not because of the bleeping part, but because of the time it takes for it to get accepted and be "Live". Because of all the people uploading, it takes time to edit the video.

    The Good: An endless supply of viral and funny videos, and a simple upload procedure.
    The Bad: Some videos are paid, and a poor selection of them, and users are limited to their controls.
    The Ugly: Good for a few laughs, but not the place to see The Complete Season Of CSI.

    So Google Video is a good utility from google, but because of the edit and the strong selection of what they let online its a bit of a turn off. Now what I ment by saying "not the place to see The Complete Season Of CSI" is that, I have the complete 5th season of The Sopranos, and I uploaded an Episode to see if they would accept it. I ended up getting warned, you do the math. Google Vdeo is a good utility, according to the user's intents and needs.

    Yahoo's Imitation Of Google Sitemaps

    So, I was submiting my feed to yahoo this afternoon, and I came across this new look (of the submition page)which is not such a copy of Google's Add URL Page but thats not what im trying to point out here.

    I found a link that said "Manage Your Site And Get Indexed" so I clicked it, sounded interesting, and it is a COMPLETE copy of Google Sitemaps. Here is a screenshot of "Yahoo Site Explorer BETA" and "Google Sitemaps"

    Yahoo Site Explorer BETA Google Sitemaps

    You can see that the "Add Site" box is at the same place as Google has it. The feeds row is in the same place, the site veryfied row is also in the same place. The "Delete Selected Sites" is in the same place. The only changes I can see are that Yahoo has a searchbox on the top of the screen. Also I noticed that Yahoo does not have all the indications Google has, like "robots.txt Analysis"

    Allthough this is kind of a rip off, I think its good that yahoo and google are one step ahead of MSN, Yahoo has a very smart "Yahoo Slurp Spider". And people (well I do) like to get, not only google, but more search bots to get indexed in different places. So I think this was a good move from Yahoo, but lets see how Google takes this Rip Off.

    If you want to get Yahoo Site Explorer click this link,

    Thursday, August 17, 2006

    Picasa Web Albums

    http://picasaweb.google.com

    Its a pretty cool utility, you can upload your pics to the internet but with picasa, and they give you 250MB of space to upload! (You are currently using 15 MB (6%) of your 250 MB.) The only downside I can see of it is the fact that you have to use Picasa2 BETA to upload them. But it makes it easier because you have complete control, and Picasa Scans your computer for all Pictures, I found pics I never knew I had! They also give you a sub-domain so all your friends can see your pics, mine is http://picasaweb.google.com/gavilan1010 just so you get a peek, and considering its google thats a pretty sweet SHORT URL. People can comment on your pictures and you can add captions (as in a little cloud with text) Online.

    Here are some snapshots

    ACP Of Picasa Web Albums How Others See Your Web Album The Comment Box

    Although I think they did an amazing job, I think there is still some room for improvement, like multiple users in one account, like analystics, this way friends can post their pictures and share them online, plus, they can fill up one account instead of just having 1 person with an empty account. And if they would let people edit their templates, now what I mean by this is, to let them add Meta tags and meta descriptions, this way they can keep track of their site with analystics, submit their page to SiteMaps.

    So if you have lots of pics upload them and let others see in a organized, clean and cool fashion

    Writely is Now Open for Registration!

    writely

    Go Writely! Writely is now open for registration to anyone! If you don’t already have an Writely account, come and get one! All you need to have is an email address, and a password, it’s just so simple! I assume that you already know what Writely is, if you don’t, take the official tour, or look it up on Wikipedia. The Writely team kept their promise, they open the public to register by the summer. If you are using Writely to publish your blog, you should be careful of the little security hole that Writely shows your password in their “Blog Site Settings”. Just a note.
    read more | sign up

    Wednesday, August 16, 2006

    Blogger Beta: Edit, and Manage, On The Fly

    Here we have a winner.

    I can't count how many times I've been distracted by blog updating, where I have gotten into the habit of keeping an open window (Firefox tab) open for each blog that I'm working on. One window to make the changes (edit content or make setting changes), and another window to view the changes. And if you have multiple blogs, and / or multiple blog posts that you're updating (maybe making a forward / backwards pair of links), you can really rack up a collection of windows.

    Of course, you have the Pencil at the end of each post (if enabled) for edit on the fly. This would put you into post editor mode. But after you publish your change, and want to view the result, you would select View Blog, and it would open another window (tab). Arrrgh.

    But with Blogger Beta, to add or change a post, or make a settings change, select Customize from the Blogger navbar. Want another blog in your library? Select Dashboard from the Customize view, and get a menu of blogs. When you're in Customize or Dashboard view, and you want to see the blog, select View Blog.

    That's all you need to do to switch back and forth.

    I know I'll find things I don't like. But unless it's something really broken, I can't imagine not wanting to upgrade all of my blogs immediately.

    And, by putting something useful in the Navbar, there is a real reason for having the bloody thing there in the first place. How many folks are going to be asking

    How do I hide the Navbar?

    now? Not me, anyway.

    Colour me impressed.

    (Edit 8/20): Have you ever just added a post, looked at it in real form, and immediately known that it needed editing? Have you ever not? With Beta, when you finish typing a post (edit or new), you hit the Publish button in the Post Editor. This takes you to a screen with several choices
    • View Blog
    • Edit post
    • Create a new post
    Select View Blog, and there are your changes. Decide to change something, hit the Back button in your browser, you're back at the previous screen. Select Edit Post. Now you're back in the post editor, in the same post again. No refreshing the post list (for a new post), no searching the list (period). Just back where you need to be.

    Just one more detail. Probably not the last though.

    Tuesday, August 15, 2006

    Ten Things Google Found To Be True

    These ten things Google suggests are mostly their releasable insights to their success, what they suggest is very very practical and usefull

    1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
    2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.
    3. Fast is better than slow.
    4. Democracy on the web works.
    5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.
    6. You can make money without doing evil.
    7. There's always more information out there.
    8. The need for information crosses all borders.
    9. You can be serious without a suit.
    10. Great just isn't good enough.

    If you want to read more on how to apply these concepts to your site, or blog please read the details here Ten Things Google Has Found To Be True

    New Version Of Google Talk [1.0.0.95]

    Google hasent yet to relese the new version in IT'S website but, as always, the system leaks and other places get the download. They have added a "Voice Mail" feature that you can leave a voicemail to a contact that is offline or busy and they can hear it later, even if they have the old version. Also they have added the most requested feature "File Transfer" which you can send ANY type of file

    "Google Talk now has file transfer! Your friend will also need to have 1.0.0.95, but currently it does not look like you need any ports to be opened, making it a very handy and extremly useful feature to have

    A small percentage of users (such as those behind restrictive proxies) will not experience the highest level of file transfer speed possible. "

    So the file transfer thing might take a while for all your friends to get, but hey, its a start. Other than that, they did not add much more, although they did get rid of all the bug problems.

    To download the new version you can go here http://www.customizetalk.com/ at the very lower left corner click "Testing version:1.0.0.95" and click run.

    Here is the link post to the Ofiicial Google Talk Blog Entry and here you can see what they have added new on Google Talk

    Google Video Updating Equals HUGE Pay Out

    Here is what happened after the revision of Google’s homepage: The Video link replaced the Froogle and Groups. The chart below shows that Google Video’s traffic from the homepage surged from 50% to 70% in a single day.

    Free File Hosting at FileHive.com

    That is A W E S O M E

    MS06-042

    Rumour has it that Microsoft will be re-releasing MS06-042.

    Stay tuned.

    Chuck said here's a blockquote.

    Yay

    So where's the beef?

    PChuck's Network
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