Is it a death knell to unlimited calling to India?

A decade earlier, the weekend would be a virtual get together because Indians would call their family and friends from the US once a week and speak to everybody at home. This was because the calling rates were exorbitant.

A while later, calling rates dropped and then came the VoIP technology. Vonage sensing the opportunity was the first one to offer unlimited calling to India and a whole lot of other countries. Indians in the US rushed to sign up. 
It would not cost the earth even if you wanted to call up to find out about Indian recipes and the ingredients behind a dish. You could call your mom, aunt or even your granny and speak for hours while cooking the perfect tummy-yummy, finger-licking Indian dish with the step-by-step instructions given on the phone right then. 
The rates were low and everybody was calling home; even the lady who joined her husband after marriage would call up her parents and talk for hours and discuss everything - the lack of domestic help to aid her with daily chores; the tattooed couple next door who were not married but had kids; about the lamp post opposite her apartment window and its efficiency; and yes even talking to the family pet that was in India.

Others came in as well – Allvoi, Unovon, Ooma, to name a few, to capitalise on this and started offering the services. It certainly was truly UNLIMITED calling by all means.

Today it seems we are again looking at the dark pre-2006 era.  With all the telecom carriers increasing the call rates to India by a whopping 250% in March, every VoIP provider of services would be forced to increase their monthly charges and offload this cost of burden to their valuable customers. This would be felt across by the entire Indian community when they see their monstrous bills in about a month’s time.  Else the VoIP would have to force the customer to limit their calling, thereby bringing in an end to the era of ”Unlimited Calling”.

Source: http://greatandhra.com/viewnews.php?id=45000&cat=10&scat=25

You Can Now Play Angry Birds on Facebook

Popular multi-platform game Angry Birds is now available on Facebook, hours ahead of the official launch in Jakarta at 12AM EST.

The Facebook app, as you might imagine, features the same disgruntled avians and addictive gameplay you’ve seen in mobile and desktop version of the game.

It will also feature added social components, brand new power-ups, and Facebook-exclusive levels.

Angry Games has been downloaded over 700 million times since its release for Apple’s iOS in December 2009, and with Facebook’s 800 million users, it’s bound to hit one billion soon.

Thanks to the success of the Angry Birds, game maker Rovio emerged as a gaming powerhouse, and it’s looking to go public as soon as 2012. Right now, the company is worth more than $1 billion, according to CMO Peter Vesterbacka.

Check out the trailer for the Facebook version of the game below, and try out the game here.

Source: Mashable

13 Ways to Get More Pinterest Followers

Pinterest – the web’s latest social media craze, is a great way to build awareness for your blog or website. But as with most social media promotion techniques, your ability to influence others through your Pinterest presence is limited if you don’t have that many people following you in the first place.

So today, we’ll share a few techniques that can be effective for building up your Pinterest following. Try applying a few of these ideas to your own Pinterest profile and watch your number of followers soar!

Tip #1 – Tie In to Your Existing Social Networks

One of the fastest and easiest ways to get more Pinterest followers is by tying your account to your existing Facebook and Twitter profiles. Doing so (and setting up your permissions correctly) means that every new item you pin will be displayed to your followers on these networks. Since you already have established connections with subscribers on these sites, you’ll find that many of them elect to follow your Pinterest profile naturally.

Tip #2 – Make it Easy to Pin Your Content

Integrating Pinterest buttons into your blog posts, product pages and other areas of your site can help boost the number of times your content is pinned and lead to new followers for your profile. Because Pinterest is still relatively new, simply having these buttons in place provides a visual reminder for people to subscribe to your profile and engage with your content on this new site.

Tip #3 – Create Boards to Supplement Your Posts

Alternatively, why not create a Pinterest board that’s built around one of your blog posts. For example, if you run a dog training tips website and recommend several different products in a new blog post, create a Pinterest board tied to this post that shares these recommendations in a visual way. Doing so makes your content more engaging and gives readers a reason to follow your profile.

Tip #4 – Pin Regularly

As with any social media site, determining how often to pin new content involves finding the ideal balance between posting so little that there’s no value in following your profile and posting so often that people get annoyed with your constant updates. For best results, aim to pin between 5-30 new items a day, depending on the number of active Pinterest boards you maintain.

Tip #5 – Improve Your Board Naming Structure

Giving each board on your Pinterest profile a fun and unique, but understandable, name is a crucial part of attracting new followers. Since many subscribers elect to only follow the boards that are most relevant to them, it’s important that your board names make it immediately apparent what each of your boards are about.

“A board about morning routines could be named “Morning Routines” or “Morning To Dos,” but if you name it “Rise and Shine,” people will know it has something to do with mornings, but no idea that it’s morning routine ideas.”

Tip #6 – Curate Your Own Pins

If you only ever repin content from others, you aren’t bringing anything new to the table, which gives Pinterest users even less of an incentive to follow you. Instead, create your own new pins based on content you find on other social networking sites or from resources you’re familiar with that haven’t yet been featured extensively on Pinterest.

Tip #7 – Follow Other Pinners

On Pinterest – as on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook – following other users (especially power users with thousands and thousands of unique subscribers) is a great way to get your content noticed and spread across a much larger network of people. To find other pinners to follow, search for a few of your industry’s general keyword phrases on Pinterest and take note of the users that appear to publish the most content and have the most followers. Follow these users yourself and repin some of their content – many will return the favor by following you back and sharing your pins with their networks!

Tip #8 – Arrange a Pin Exchange

While it’s considered inappropriate to pin your own content too frequently, you can always team up with other site owners or retailers in your industry to organize a “pin exchange” that allows more of your content to be seeded on to Pinterest without your direct involvement. A group of friends who all sell items on Etsy, for example, could arrange to share each other’s content on Pinterest in order to build recognition without appearing too “scammy”.

Tip #9 – Expand Your Boards

It should go without saying, but when you offer plenty of different boards across a wide variety of interests and topics, you’re creating more opportunities for people to follow you. While it’s a good idea to create boards that are relevant to your website or business, consider creating boards on your personal hobbies and activities as well to reach a larger group of people.

Tip #10 – Pin Newsworthy Content

As mentioned in Tip #6, if you want to build your number of Pinterest followers, it’s important that you be seen as a “thought leader” in your industry – not just someone who repins content from other people. To increase this perception, try to be the first to create pins for news items within your industry. You could even create boards to feature new products that are released in your niche, making you the “go to” pinner serving your field.

Tip #11 – Use Pinterest to Create Tutorials

People love tutorials, and the unique visual display of Pinterest makes it ideally suited to create tutorials that other users can follow. As an example, say you run a site that teaches affiliate marketing to website owners. Using Pinterest, you could create a “step-by-step” tutorial board, in which you feature links to different articles from around the web on topics like choosing affiliate products to promote, building traffic to your site and improving conversions. Create tutorials on topics that you know will interest a number of people and you’re sure to pick up more followers for your account.

Tip #12 – Write Searchable Pin Captions

One of the ways that people find new Pinterest users to follow is by searching the site for interesting key phrases in order to uncover new pinned content. If your pins don’t appear in these searches, you’re losing potential followers that could have subscribed to your boards. For this reason, it’s important to integrate relevant keywords into your pin captions. Don’t simply stuff your pins full of meaningless keywords, but at the same time, don’t use basic captions like, “So funny!” that don’t give Pinterest users or the site’s search engine any information about what’s going on in your pins.

Tip #13 – Use Good Quality Pictures

Because Pinterest is such a visually-focused site, the quality of the images you use in your pins will go a long way towards attracting new followers. If the Pinterest bookmarklet doesn’t automatically capture an attractive image (or, if there are no good images used on the source content page in the first place), manually create the pin on your own using a high quality, visually appealing picture from a Creative Commons image directory.

Source :- searchenginejournal

Type This Into Google for a Valentine's Day Surprise

Romantic math geeks, your moment has arrived. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, go ahead and type (or paste) this into Google search:

sqrt(cos(x))*cos(300x)+sqrt(abs(x))-0.7)*(4-x*x)^0.01, sqrt(6-x^2), -sqrt(6-x^2) from -4.5 to 4.5

Twitter user @Huckberry tipped us off to the fact that typing in the algebraic equation plots several different functions on a graph that forms the shape of a heart.

The series includes various square roots, absolute values and cosine functions — mathematical functions often taught in high school math courses. The plotted lines change direction due to the absolute value function flipping the sign of the x-coordinate, creating a mirror image across the y-axis.

The “cos(300x)” part of the formula was also written to make the line go quickly up and down as it traces out the interior of the heart. This creates the colored-in effect. Meanwhile, if you change the “300″ number in the equation to “500,” the color fills up the heart. That part of the formula is related to frequency.

Although the equation wasn’t written by Google, this is not the first time users have been able to type in certain keywords into search for a seasonal surprise. For example, type “Do a barrel roll” and the word “askew” into Google. Check out some more fun search tricks in the gallery below — and let us know in the comments if we’ve missed any.

Source:- Mashable

Chrome 17 Offers Pre-Rendered Web Pages, Malware Protection

Chrome 17 has just been released, offering pre-rendered web pages and malware protection. If you’re a Google Chrome user (and haven’t blocked automatic updates) you’re now using version 17 of the browser.

As is typical for Chrome, the update doesn’t add any drastic changes, but it does include a few new features. Most noticeable of these is pre-rendering. When you enter a URL into the omnibox and it auto-completes, Chrome will begin to load that site before you press enter. If you’re on a fast connection the page might seem to appear instantly because it has been rendered before you were done typing the URL.

I’m a Chrome user myself, so I took this feature on a test drive. It works as advertised. Sites will sometimes load instantly. Your connection speed will determine how well this feature works for you.

The other feature added by Chrome 17 is protection from files that contain malware. Whenever you download a file the browser will check it against a list of known bad files. If the file is executable, it also checks to see if the site you’re downloading from is known to host malware. Any suspicious results from these queries will cause a warning to appear.

The idea of Google checking your downloads for malware might cause privacy concerns. If so, the “Under the Hood” section of the browser’s preferences includes the option to disable it.

Source: Makeuseof

Pinterest – More Than Just a Pinboard

Having revealed itself just over a year ago, Pinterest has recently surpassed 10 million users, a fact which itself proves that Pinterest has evolved from a clever start-up into a fully-fledged network in its own right.

Already loved by many people, the concept of Pinterest is to create a number of pinboards/scrapbooks of all the things that you as an individual ‘like’ in the digital environment. Recently this has started to turn into endorsement as Pinterest has opened its doors to more users and also welcomed brands in with open arms.

What is the potential benefit for brands and their respective digital PR / social media agencies? Brands can achieve benefits from the network without even being on it as an official presence, the primary focus of Pinterest is content first and foremost. Below are some further thoughts on what could be the most important aspects of Pinterest for brands moving forward:

Retail –

The gifts section is the perfect portal for ecommerce promotion, and the network will ensure that the items that resonate with the audience the most are the ones that achieve the most visibility. Just add a price to images and they will be added to the gift section of the site – great visibility, and for free.

Follow/pin it button –

As well as being able to add the Follow button for Pinterest to a website, to me the most interesting aspect of Pinterest’s buttons is the ‘pin it’ button. Brands with a great deal of high quality imagery and video content on their website could stand to benefit significantly, since once pinned the content isn’t just on Pinterest for everyone to see and reshare, it’s also possible for users really interested to click back through to a website. This could be a hugely influential traffic tool for brands in future, not to mention a great way of generating SEO value from backlinks too.

Use of search –

Pinterest’s internal search function is great – you’re able to find people who have tagged content relevant to a brand, find pin boards that are relevant to a brand, or a locale should the brand be a local business (posting to a shared board for “London” for example to get visibility of users specifically in London). This could be a great way for brands to proactively market on the network without actually being too intrusive for other users, whether done through employee accounts (more natural) or a branded account. Obviously having employees pinning brand content on the network is also a huge plus in itself.

Ultimately, Pinterest is a way of people creating a scrapbook that is a digital representation of their interests in pictures – perhaps (like Path) a strong element of what Facebook timeline wants to be. It represents a shift in social media that is increasingly pointing to the fact that brands need to become part of users lives to the extent that they are represented on their digital social media ‘scrapbooks’ in order to reap the most benefit. It will be very interesting to see how Pinterest evolves over the next year – we could see some entirely new trends emerging as a result. One thing is certain – in Pinterest content is king and brands that can create unique pictures and videos that are intrinsically shareable for a mass audience will be the ones that get the most out of it

Source: socialmediatoday

Google Chrome Update Brings Faster Browsing

The new stable release of Google’s web browser Chrome brings several improvements, most importantly faster browsing and more protection from malicious downloads.

From now on, when you start typing in Chrome’s address box (or omnibox, as Google calls it), as soon as Chrome autocompletes the URL you’re likely to visit, it will prerender the page, making your overall browsing experience faster.

As far as security goes, Chrome now does checks on executable files you’ve downloaded from the net. It matches the executables against a whitelist – a list of programs known to be safe – and if it can’t find the file there, it does some additional checks. For example, if the site you’re visiting hosts a high number of malicious downloads, Chrome will let you know.

The update comes just one day after Google announced Chrome for Android mobile devices.

Google also promises some updates to Chrome OS for the “near future,” including a new image editor and an improved Verizon 3G activation portal.

You can download the latest version of Google Chrome here.

Pinterest: Covert Affiliate Link Scheme Exposed

Although nearly every start-up and fledgling company battles to find new ways to monetize its users, Pinterest appears to have been secretly capitalizing on its customer base through the use of affiliate links. The two year-old social network site, which allows users to “pin” photos, recipes, and products to a “virtual pin-board,” has quickly grown to millions of visitors per week and is one of the top traffic referral sources on the Internet.

According to a recent discovery, which was made public by digital marketer and blogger Josh Davis, Pinterest is modifying links to ecommerce sites to include their own affiliate tracking links. Now, when a Pinterest user clicks through a “pin” on Pinterest and makes a purchase at an ecommerce site, Pinterest receives a percentage of the sale. Pinterest has been using the skimlinks service, which automatically adds affiliate links to any products that may be associated with an affiliate program, to quietly modify the links.

Davis said the following of the automatic affiliate link-swapping in his post:

“I, like many people, don’t have a problem with Pinterest making money off of user content. The links are modified seamlessly so it doesn’t affect the experience. Pinterest likely should disclose this practice to users even if they aren’t required to do so by law, if only to maintain trust with their users.”

Even though the majority of Pinterest users will not have a problem with the rapidly growing site making money off of affiliate links, it is a questionable decision from both a business and ethical standpoint to not disclose this fact to Pinterest users. If Pinterest wants to regain the trust of its users, they should fully disclose the details of the affiliate program and issue a statement as soon as possible.

Source :- Search Engine Journal

Twournal - Get Your Tweets In PDF Format

For anyone passionate to Tweets, you probably twitter more than 20 times a day. When you regularly tweets, you gradually end up developing a tale made up of exciting articles, personal ideas, and spur-of-the-moment images. Before you know it, you have actually designed an online journal.

Although Twitter posts is fantastic for obtaining those normal periods, it is certainly not so fantastic when it comes to re-visiting them. It is certainly not like Fb where you can click around on your image albums; Twitter posts needs A LOT of scrolling down.

And if you would like to look back and keep those moments easily accessible, you would be pushed to discover a way of dispatching those twitter posts into a fun and reader-friendly format.

Well here is an excellent tip off on how to get those twitter posts off the stream and into digital format.

Launched just last week, Twournal is a brand new service that allows you to turn your tweets into print. They publish your tweets in a stylish and professional looking book complete with front cover, dedication page, and photos.

Twournal offers hard copies of your tweets starting at $15 (USD). However, it has the more appealing option of getting a free PDF version you can easily download and view in your PDF reader.

The best part is you can personalize your publication. For both hard copy and electronic editions, you can choose to include replies, determine which twitter posts you want your publication to start and end at, and get your cover custom made with a picture of your own choosing.

As mentioned, you can also include Twitter photos which you posted on Twitter in your book–a great option to jazz up the presentation of your tweets. For these, Twournal supports Twitpic, Tweetphoto or Yfrog posted pictures you can include in either colour or black and white.

Of course, you’ll need to provide Twournal with access to your account, and the time it takes to complete your Twitter PDF book depends on the number of tweets you want included. Twournal even has seller options for you if you’d like to put your Twitter book up for sale.

Google Plus Promotes Network and New Security Features to Young Teens and Parents

Google+ announced that the rapidly growing social network is now available to teens ages 13 and up. Although minors can sign up for and use Google+, the social network also introduced new privacy and security changes designed to protect underage users.

Bradley Horowitz, Google’s VP of products, said the following of the new target demographic in a Google+ post:

"Teens and young adults are the most active Internet users on the planet. And surprise, surprise: they’re also human beings who enjoy spending time with friends and family. Put these two things together and it’s clear that teens will increasingly connect online."

The launch of the new Google+ Safety Center includes the following parental control features for teen accounts:

Sharing Content—

When a teen tries to share content with someone outside their circle, Google+ will encourage them to think responsibly.

Receiving Notifications—

The default setting only allows the teen to share with people that are in their circles and blocking someone they don’t know only takes on click.

Hanging out with friends—

Since Google+ Hangouts enable people to use video to connect face-to-face, Google+ will remove a teen when a stranger joins the Hangout. However, the teen can rejoin the Hangout if they choose to.

In addition to an explanation of the Google+ security features for underage users, the Google+ Safety Center also provides valuable resources to teens, parents, and educators. For example, teens can find helpful information related to digital reputation and online bullying.

Google+, which has approximately 90 million registered users, is undoubtedly hoping that the number of registered users will increase dramatically as a result of making the network available to underage users. Although the social network has grown at an unprecedented pace, it faces an uphill battle against Facebook, which has over 800 million users.

Prior to yesterday’s announcement, users had to 18 or older to join Google

Source:- Search Engine Journal

How To Tweet More Content From Anywhere On The Web

Here an interesting update coming from Tweet publishing Tool Buffer. The app was reviewed here on SEJ a few months ago. It allows you to add tweets to your Buffer which are then posted at conveniently spread out intervals throughout the day. So you can add a lot of tweets in one sitting without drowning your followers in a flood of tweets.

One of the pitfalls mentioned by readers was the lack of a fully fledged Firefox plugin they could use to Buffer tweets from anywhere on the web.

The team has been busy and published the fully functional Firefox add-on today. You can download it from inside the App, or if you’re already a Buffer user you can download it from here.

The Features

The new add-on boasts a set of interesting features, which are already available for the equivalent Chrome extension and Safari extension.

• You can Buffer tweets from any webpage by clicking the Buffer icon
• You can Buffer Retweets from inside Twitter.com

* Use the keyboard shortcut “ctrl+alt+b” to bring up the Buffer Box

* Highlight some text on a page and then click the Buffer Button to make it into a Tweet

The recent feature add-ons with Buffer make for an even simpler sharing experience. Co-Founder Leo Widrich stated that “It is our goal to make genuine, optimised sharing on Twitter from anywhere on the web even simpler. The creation of the Firefox add-on is hopefully a big step towards sharing from no matter where you are online”.

You can give Buffer a go here: BufferApp.

5 Free Browser-Based P2P File Sharing Sites With No Size Limits

Most email programs only allow for up to 10MB at a time so email was not an option. Who wants to put it on a USB drive and drive over to their friend’s house?

Any one to just send it to them. No hassles. No installing funky programs. No waiting to upload to some server in cyberspace and have them wait for it to download again. So what to do?

Let’s narrow down what the file-sending needs (or wants) are:

1. Free – as in no charges whatsoever
2. Browser-based – no installation of some program and, therefore, cross platform
3. Peer to peer – no waiting for uploading and downloading; just the send time
4. The ability to send large files – no file-size limit

We all have standards, don’t we? Check out these five choices which meet the criteria shared above.

FilesOverMiles

FilesOverMiles does what it sounds like it does: it helps you send files over miles.

Their subtitle “Browser-to-browser Filesharing” tells us that it fits our criteria. When someone sets up a file to send, a URL is created. Just share the URL and stay online for the actual sending.

JetBytes

I like the name “JetBytes” because it speaks to the speed in which peer-to-peer transferring actually affords.

This file sharing site makes it easy referring to “on-the-fly” transfers and all that. Be careful, just as in any of these peer-to-peer tools, don’t try to open the created link yourself. Doing that will only be letting you download the file back to yourself and blocking your friend from downloading it. No too smart.

PipeBytes

From the site: “Instantly send music, movies, presentations or any other files to anybody!” Thanks, for telling us what any of these peer-to-peer tools do for us. OK, I’m just kidding around.

You’ll notice that PipeBytes actually gives some sharing options. You can either send the recipient the URL or a pick-up code which they’ll enter at the home page. Easy-peasy either way.

xFiles

Oh, you have to love the name for this one. Some weird television show is creeping around in my mind now.

All sci-fi weirdness put aside, this file sharing site puts peer-to-peer into easy to understand words: “Exchange big files directly without uploading to a server.” If you are transferring peer-to-peer, the uploading and downloading all happens at once making everything quick and easy.

Dushare

Dushare is a tool not recently mentioned here on MakeUseOf. You can share a file peer-to-peer, password protect it, and even chat while the transfer takes place because who wants to pick up a phone?

Seriously though, out of all of the rest of the file sharing sites mentioned here, Dushare has the prettiest looking website design. Oh, and in case you are wondering what sequence things will happen in, you have some nifty icons showing you. You can’t beat that.

You’ll notice that there wasn’t much to say about each of these tools. That’s because they all pretty much do the same thing: send any sized files, directly to another person quickly, easily and for no charge. And that’s about all they do. Test them out and see which performs the best and which is the easiest to use. Then come and tell us in the comments which is best.

USA vs Algeria World Cup Match Could Set New Internet Traffic Record

The dramatic ending to the World Cup match between the USA and Algeria could set a new record for Internet traffic.

We’ve been watching Akamai’s Net Usage Index, which tracks visitors per minute on more than 100 of the major news sites in Akamai’s network. In the minutes following Landon Donovan’s game winning goal in the 91st minute of action (which sent the U.S. to the round of 16), traffic spiked to 11.2 million visitors per minute, which moves the event past the 2008 presidential election as the second highest traffic spike of all-time.

Today’s number was also likely pushed significantly higher because England and Slovenia were also playing a suspenseful World Cup match at the same time. The plethora of World Cup breaking news briefly knocked Yahoo Sports offline and also caused issues at Twitter –- though the latter has been somewhat of a regular occurrence during the World Cup (on a related note, tweets containing “USA” spiked to 6% of total tweet volume).

The overall traffic record was set earlier this month during the first day of World Cup action, where traffic exceeded 12 million visitors per minute. We’ll wait and see what the final numbers are from Akamai, but for the moment, it looks like Donovan’s goal will go down in Internet history at least as a solid number two.

Source: http://mashable.com/2010/06/23/usa-vs-algeria-world-cup/

3 Fascinating Search Engines That Search For Faces

Thanks to the internet, our private lives are more and more exposed online. The amount of data every individual is adding appears to be a drop into the ocean. Does that thought make you feel safe? Think again!

Search engines are becoming ever more smarter in managing the massive amounts of data they are facing. In fact, face search and facial recognition are just a few of the many tools. When used the right way, they quickly unravel what an individual has been up to.

Here are three face search engines that may give you a thrill. Let’s see what they reveal about you or your friends.

1. facesearch – Face Search Engine

his search engine is as harmless as it can get. It searches for faces based on image tags. So you query the search engine for a name and it will return all matching images containing faces. And as you can see in the example below, it doesn’t appear to be very accurate at that.


Did you know you could make Google search for faces only, by adding a small bit of code? When you go to Google Image Search, enter your query and then add “&imgtype=face” (without the quotes of course) to the end of the URL. It will give you similar results as facesearch above.

2. PicTriev – Face Recognition Search Engine

PicTriev goes one step further by actually searching for similar faces. So what you do is upload a portrait shot or any face photo in .jpg or .jpeg format, with a size no larger than 200KB, and the search engine will return matching images found online. You can also run a demo with a selection of famous photos.

For demonstration purposes, I used one of my funny photos. The approximate age of 20 is very flattering and I’m happy that PicTriev recognized that I was mostly female. Unfortunately, however, my face matches mostly with that of males. Surprisingly, it didn’t come up with any pictures of me that are available online.


It works much better with celebrity images.

3. Viewdle – Face Recognition Video Search Engine

Viewdle is a facial recognition video search engine, powered by Reuters Labs.

It analyzes videos frame by frame, searching for faces. Moreover, it adds contextual information to the face recognition data by converting speech to text. All of that is combined in an index, which allows to search for the right person, in the right clip, at the right moment. In other words, it helps you find information and people in videos.

At this point Viewdle can only find famous faces. Just type in a name at the bottom left and you’ll be forwarded to the search page. Here you can also enter a keyword to narrow down the results. Advanced search allows you to refine the search results by picking a video channel and time frame for the video.

Obviously, this type of indexing is highly useful for TV stations, for example to browse their archives for relevant material.

Source:- http://bit.ly/cKLw4B

Nurph Creates An Instant Chatbox On Any Site

Chatting has become something of a second nature to a lot of people. It’s cheaper than SMS or telephone, and still covers that mind-blowing distance.

However, people have a lot of problems thinking out of the box on this one. Quite literally. There’s always a need for preparation. Installing the right applications, building your network. It’s nothing compared to the freedom of real life, where you can bug almost anyone you walk into.

There’s a notable exception to this rule; website chat rooms. Although more common on smaller, amateur websites, chat rooms give that real-life feel to a website, giving ‘customers’ the ability to interact with their hosts, or fellow interested parties. Perhaps set-up and maintenance is holding website hosts back. Nurph takes that out of the equation as well.

Nur.ph

It’s incredibly easy to create a site-specific free chatbox using Nurph. You don’t even need server-side access! Allow me to explain how it’s done.

There are two ways to Nurph a website. First, point your webbrowser to the Nurph website. There enter the URL of a site – any site, even a YouTube video – and hit Go.


Nurph will open the specified site, and overlay it with a chat box. Notice that the URL points to a shortened nur.ph URL. Anyone visiting the website via Nurph, or following the shortened URL directly, will be able to access the chat box.


Nurph uses Twitter for sole identification, which is actually about its only real downside. If you don’t yet have a Twitter account, you’ll have to sign up before you’re able to use Nurph. On the other side, with the need for identification, this makes for an immediate moderation barrier.

Luckily, you don’t need to pass through the Nurph website every single time. To use the Nurph bookmarklet, add this link to your browser’s bookmarks bar. If you want to generate a chat box-ed URL, simply hit the bookmarklet while you’re on a webpage.

Personal & Business Uses

If you’re a website administrator or blogger, you can use Nurph to add a chatbox to your site. Even if you’re using GUI-side-only services like Blogger, Tumblr or Twitter. Simply generate the URL and put it on a prominent place on your blog, profile, or Twitter page.

Nurph also suggests making it into your homepage, so people have a chance of chatting with the website owner a couple times per day. Using a service like Nurph, and promoting your site through it, not only adds to user satisfaction, but can keep them on your site exponentially longer, and thus increase your ad revenue.


But there’s no way Nurph is only interesting for professionals. Users can Nurph other websites than their own and, if well-promoted, help you discover like-minded individuals. This is especially true for community websites and discussion forums.

Source: http://bit.ly/cUCZwg

Google Chrome Powered Netbook in Two Weeks?

Still remember that quick poll which Loren did several months ago when Google announced that the Chrome OS will be targeted primarily for netbooks? Majority of you voted that you will buy the Google Chrome powered netbooks when it comes out. Well, better psyche up yourselves folks as reports had it that the first of such netbook will soon be launched.

Actually, let me retract a bit here. The said Google Chrome powered device will be demoed at the upcoming Computex 2010 electronics fair happening in Taipei on June 1-5. And guess which brand will be the first to run the Chrome OS? – The lucky manufacturer is none other th an Acer. What’s not clear here is what the Acer device will be? Is it going to be a netbook, tablet or smartbook?

A Google Chrome powered netbook seems to be the easiest route for Acer. But given the renewed popularity of the tablet, thanks to Apple’s iPad Acer might also demo a tablet instead. But then, if Acer wants to come up with tablet PC of their own that will rival the iPad, they can just use the Android OS.

A netbook running Google Chrome OS would certainly be more exciting than a tablet. Acer has already captured the netbook market, it would be safer and more practical for them to concentrate on netbooks instead.

Going back to the question, and modifying the premise a bit – are you still going to buy a Google Chrome powered netbook given that the iPad is already out?

Source : http://bit.ly/czIdPi

Nachofoto – Real-time Image Search Engine

You may have noticed the past year that both Google and Bing are doing real-time searches that are including tweets and other information. This is extremely useful when keeping up with trending topics. I wanted to give you a quick run down on this new real-time image search engine called NachoFoto that I came across. When searching images in this, you’ll find that the results are directly correlated to the trending topic and news that has recently occurred. For instance, the recent Times Square bomb scare- NachoFoto Search Results.

When searching in Google, you might see something like, Google Search Results when searching for the same Times Square bomb scare. They also have “hot topics” and “trends” which you can find only in text, on their trending topics page.

As I mentioned before, you can also see trending topics that people are searching, image wise. It’s almost like going into Twitter and clicking the trending topics there to see what people are saying. On NachoFoto you can see the same, however, it’s in images. Another feature that is unique to this search engine is that static words, such as “golden gate bridge” will most likely not yield a result, because nothing significant changes over time. It would become on the map when a huge event is trending in regards to that particular topic.

The “NachoBot”, as it’s so fondly referred to, crawls and indexes images on the web using a “load spreading” technique. By doing so, it will reduce the strain that occurs on the server when being indexed. It’s very light. You can also choose to exclude the NachoBot from crawling and indexing your page in your Robots.txt file how it’s written below-

* robots.txt example: Include this in your robots.txt file:

User-agent: Nachobot Disallow: /
* Robots META tag example:

Include this in the head section of your web-page:

* Nachobot META tag example:

Include the following in the head section of your web-page:

There isn’t really too much to say at the moment, as this is just coming out and becoming well known. Keep your eye on it though because it has a great idea behind it and it fills a need that we’ve been lacking from Google, Bing and Yahoo!. Hopefully they will all follow suit and implement something like this. Do you think we’ll need to start marketing differently if we want our images to show up there? How does their algorithm work, and how can we push to rank in the forefront of the search results? I guess this will all come to surface as time goes by and it becomes more mainstream.

Source: http://bit.ly/dv7PPX

Google Now Lets You Drag Images from Desktop to Gmail

The Official Gmail blog just made a brief post announcing a new Gmail feature. So this means that Gmail does not only allow you to drag an attachment from your desktop onto Gmail but images as well.



Basically the new Gmail feature combines two features to allow Gmail users to drag email attachments and images as well. And its pretty simple to use as well. All you need to do is to drag the image in, resize it before sending the email.

Incidentally, this new Gmail feature currently works for Google Chrome only. But Google promises to make this available to other browsers as well.

So, if you’re fond of attaching files and images to your email messages, you’d might found this new Gmail feature useful.

Source: http://bit.ly/aoZwoW

Google Integrates a Virtual Keyboard to Search

Google has just rolled out a new search feature that would benefit those who search using non-English language. If you’re one of these people you’d be glad to know that Google search now features a virtual keyboard that would let you type search keywords in your own language.



Wait, it’s not really a touchscreen virtual keyboard like what the iPhone and other touchscreen phones have but an “onscreen keyboard” which you control using your computer’s keyboard. You can either click on the virtual keys or by pressing the corresponding keys on your computer’s keyboard.

You will see this virtual keyboard if you use Google search in any of the non-English languages supported by Google’s virtual search keyboard. A keyboard icon will appear on the left-most corner of the screen which when you click on it will bring out the virtual keyboard.

Google Releases Official Buzz Share Buttons

Google’s next order of battle for Google Buzz – Share Buttons. If you’ve felt envious of sites such as TechCrunch and Mashable which were quick enough to come up with their customized Google Buzz Share Buttons, Google will now let you do the same without having to hack through some codes and all. And it’s also the official Google Buzz Share Button.


So Google announced that starting today expect to see Buzz buttons around the web particularly on sites such as The Huffington Post, Glamour, YouTube, Blogger, MySpace, GigaOM and more. These buttons will make it easier for you to share and post interesting items you encounter around the web to your Google Buzz account.

In addition, independent sharing widget provides such as “Share This,” “Shareholic” and more have started implementing the Google Buzz share button.

If you want to have a Google Buzz button on your own sites/blogs, you can easily do so by getting the codes from buzz.google.com/stuff. You can customize your button in a few clicks, copy the Javascript code, paste it to your blog/site code and you’re good to go.

And while you’re there, you might also want to grab the code for putting a follow me on Buzz button as well. This will make it easier for your friends and fans to follow your Buzz posts.

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-releases-official-buzz-share-buttons/19981/