Friday, February 26, 2010

Beauty


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How Mobile Payment methods work in Social Networking and Online Games


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Mobile payment methods are becoming more and more popular these days. During last 1 year online games and social networking platforms like facebook have promoted mobile payment methods.

On facebook you can purchase virtual goods paying from your mobile phones.

According to to a research by Justin Smith (Founder, Inside Network) the market on alone virtual goods on the internet was over $1 billion in the year 2009. Different gaming website let you pay through your mobile phones

Mobile payment is becoming more popular due to its fast transaction speed. Over 70% of the global online audience does not have a credit card, but most all of them have a mobile phone. All your user needs is a mobile phone to make a payment.

Its more secured (till now, as no major security breach has been reported ) and more faster than credit card payment system.

The process of mobile payment is as easy as:

1. Enter your mobile number and click on Payment button on any mobile payment enabled site
2. A message pops up in your mobile with the secret pin 
3. Enter that pin back to the Text box provided on the same website and you are done

-You will be charged in your next mobile phone bill.

There are different companies emerging these days who provide software and infrastructure for mobile payment to websites and other businesses.

One such Company is Zong.

According to Zong :
Zong is the leading mobile payment service used for monetizing Web audiences in the social media and gaming industries. Zong gives you a new way to expand your customer base by providing an easier way to pay. Zong provides frictionless payment service in leading social networking applications, virtual worlds and in online games.

  This video will help you understand how fast and easy is mobile payment system-

 

Zong's frictionless user experience gets real results. Our customers have seen conversion rates skyrocket after adding Zong as a payment option. No billing address, no expiration date, no 16-digit card number to type. Just type something you know by heart: your mobile number.

Currently Zong is providing services in 26 countries partnering with the mobile service providers of those countries.

Wikipedia has a good article on Mobile Payment that can be read here

One of the other notable mobile payment system is paymate (http://www.paymate.co.in).

According to Paymate:
PayMate lets you link your mobile to an existing bank account, credit card or pre-paid voucher and use your mobile to make secure payments anywhere, anytime!

Features of paymate include

Convenient - Pay online, offline, or from just about anywhere.
Secure - 2-factor PIN authentication keeps you in control.
Easy - Works on any basic mobile handset or operator.
Free - PayMate’s services are free with no hidden costs!

MCheck [http://www.mchek.com] is another Mobile payment system provider in India.

These are few other mobile payment and allied service providers:

Where should I place Google ads on my pages?


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Read a good article on Google Help to know -Where should I place Google ads on my pages?

The concept is based on -identifying the place on the webpage where visitors click most as their eye sight concentrate on those locations:

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=17954


Wikipedia also has a good article on heat map here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_map

Finding on Google will also lead you to few good articles and resources on Heat Map:


To Analyze your pages, what are the hot & click-able zone on your page, you can use some free and open-source solutions. On of them is ClickHeat from labsmedia.com


One another good solution is from heatmapapi.com and can be found here:


It has Java script and dot net based solutions.

Hear is a sample use of the API:


Thursday, February 25, 2010

Watch me Live


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Live Broadcasting by Ustream

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The wireless future of medicine


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Difference in Websites and Web Applications


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Tim McLaughlin (computerworld.com) has written a good description on what is difference in Websites and Web Applications. Here is a snippet of the article. Found full article here.

There's an often misunderstood distinction in the IT world between Web sites and Web applications:
  • A Web site is typically designed for casual or infrequent usage by individuals who often do not know, or do not even want to know, too much about the deeper mission of your organization.
  • A Web application, such as an HR Intranet or portal that a company provides to its employees, is a very different system that must be optimized for a different use case.

web site vs web application

It's important to make a clear distinction between Web sites and Web applications for three reasons:

  1. To define what the site or system is optimized to do
  2. To identify how the user is going to approach the features that are being made available
  3. To pinpoint which specific use cases your designers and developers must create and test

For Web sites, consider that most users are coming through a search engine or by browsing the Web. If they are not able to quickly and easily find what they're looking for, they usually take off. The most common example would be a marketing focused, "brochure" Web site. Casual site visitors like to ease into getting to know your company and will rarely take the time to learn all of your products in their first interaction with your site.

Designing an interface that is easy to browse and navigate should be a high priority. Marketing Web sites that are difficult to navigate, or those that have poor search interfaces, experience high abandon rates, poor pull-through and fail to meet marketing goals.

Web applications are different in that their users are likely coming with a very specific goal in mind. Taking the HR portal example a bit further, consider that some of your HR staff believes that employees like to browse the HR resources available to them. Based on that assumption, they design a content-rich Web site that offers company information, articles of interests, special employee discounts, etc. In fact, the more likely scenario is that employees only tap the HR Intranet when they have to fill out a vacation request, or to update their benefits information, etc. Because these activities are performed less frequently, it's important that they be optimized for usability.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Video Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Guidelines


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I found an excellent article on Video Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Guidelines at the Blinkx website. Blinkx is one of the best video search engines on the Internet. Below is the summary of what I read.

According to the article-

This growth in high-speed access has created unprecedented consumer demand in Internet-distributed rich media and, as a result, advertisers and content producers are rapidly diverting focus from text to video-based content. In addition to content from traditional providers, user-made rich media is also on the rise. In early 2008, YouTube had grown to over 4 million videos, according to comScore. Video content is not just being created—it is being watched by millions. Nearly 140 million users in the US watched video online, streaming approximately 11.5 billion videos in the month of March 2008 (comScore).

First generation video search solutions depended entirely on metadata. Including examples are SingingFish, Altavista Video (now used at Yahoo!).

Metadata is the textual data that is applied to a piece of multimedia content in order to describe it and can include user-provided tags, an editorially written title or summary, a transcript of the speech in the video or even information stored in the video file itself pertaining to its resolution, frame-rate and creation date.

Second generation video search engines use methods such as speech recognition, visual analysis and recognition and video optical character recognition to allow software to listen to, watch and read the text appearing on the video content itself.

As well as providing more information, this approach provides objective information—if a video contains speech on a particular topic, it really is about that topic, whereas if a video has been tagged as pertaining to a certain topic, it may, actually be about something entirely different.

Few Facts I read in the article:

Metadata is often lost during conversion


Not only should you create metadata, but you should also apply it each and every time your content goes onto a new service or is converted to a new format. Just because your .mov had great metadata stored in it, there’s no guarantee that YouTube won’t ignore it if you upload it to their service

Title and description

Titles and descriptions are the text most commonly applied to videos. If a video is hosted on a structured hosting or sharing site such as YouTube, insert this information in the provided specified title and description fields. If hosting on your own website, the title and description will usually be extracted based on proximity. In order to best represent your content on generic sites, it is advisable to have just one video per page with a simple textual title and description placed near the video itself. In the case of links to the video or other tags, it is advised to use anchor text as well.

Filename

If you are linking to a specific file that is hosted on a web server, ensure the filename is a sensible and descriptive one, ideally with hyphens or some other form of separating character in between words. For example, use “climate-talks-video.wmv” rather than “videofile.wmv” or “climatetalksvideo.wmv”.

Tags

Tags are growing as a facet of search and navigation, both for video and the Internet as a whole. If you use a video sharing or hosting system such as YouTube, you will generally be given the opportunity to provide tags (and are strongly encouraged to do).

Sitemap:

Most video search engines allow the provision of a sitemap, starting-point URL or RSS feed. This invitation should absolutely be taken advantage of and used to provide the engine with a simple list of URLs that point to individual pages that host video.

RSS and Media RSS

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is an-XML based standard for publishing time-oriented feeds of information. Considered outside the remit of this paper, the RSS specification can be found at http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification.

Media RSS (MRSS) is an extension to standard RSS that allows any content publisher to widely distribute multimedia content descriptions and links across the Web. In addition to providing standard media metadata, MRSS enhances RSS 2.0 enclosures to handle media types such as video shorts and television clips (Yahoo! Search Media RSS FAQ). From the point of view of SEO, MRSS and RSS are used as a language in which to describe your video to the video search engines.

Format

Deciding on a format for your video content can be a critical decision to make with regard to how the content is going to be used. However, it makes little obvious difference to Video SEO.

Online video application stack

image

What is Closed Captioning ?


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Closed Captioning is a term used to inform that a video has some other information (in form of captions) that the user can view by activating them (by clicking or so). A video with Closed Captioning can be identified with the “CC” icon at the top or bottom of the video.

This term is widely used in Television, IP video, Internet video.

 

According to Wikipedia:

Closed captioning is a term describing several systems developed to display text on a television or video screen to provide additional or interpretive information to viewers who wish to access it. Closed captions typically display a transcription of the audio portion of a program as it occurs (either verbatimor in edited form), sometimes including non-speech elements.

The term "closed" in closed captioning indicates that not all viewers see the captions—only those who choose to decode or activate them. This distinguishes from "open captions" (sometimes called "burned-in" or "hardcoded" captions), which are visible to all viewers.

 

Watch a video to understand what is closed captioning:

 

 

Read here : On television, how does closed captioning work?

 

 

According to fcc.gov

Closed captioning allows persons with hearing disabilities to have access to television programming by displaying the audio portion of a television program as text on the television screen.

 

Read a good Article describing what are Captions in reference of videos:

Web Captioning Overview

Captions are text versions of the spoken word. Captions allow the content of web audio and video to be accessible to those who do not have access to audio. Though captioning is primarily intended for those who cannot hear the audio, it has also been found to help those that can hear audio content and those who may not be fluent in the language in which the audio is presented….

Read more…

Caption as seen on DVD

Caption as Seen in Media Player on Computer

All about Meta Search Engines


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Metasearch Engines

When you perform a search on Google, the results that you get are all from, well, Google! But metasearch engines have been around for years. They allow you to search not only Google, but a variety of other search engines too - in one fell swoop.

In a meta-search engine, you submit keywords in its search box, and it transmits your search simultaneously to several individual search engines and their databases of web pages. Within a few seconds, you get back results from all the search engines queried. Meta-search engines do not own a database of Web pages; they send your search terms to the databases maintained by search engine companies.

-berkeley.edu

 

Wikipedia says:

A meta-search engine is a search tool that sends user requests to several other search engines and/or databases and aggregates the results into a single list or displays them according to their source

 

Read a good articles on Search Engines and Meta Search Engines here at SSIR.

 

 

ZdNet Says

Meta-search engines send a user's query to multiple search engines and blend the top results from each into one overall list. A final step can involve clustering the combined results, but both meta-search and regular search engines can be clustered, so the clustering issue is separate. It’s been claimed that meta-search is inherently worse than regular search engines. We assert the contrary: meta-search has intrinsic advantages that are based on voting.

 

Hear is listed few popular Meta Search Engines:


www.dogpile.com

 image

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www.metacca.com

I found metacca’s results good and is loaded with features!

Metacca is a very powerful meta-search engine that simultaneously searches all the most popular engines such as Yahoo, Google, Live, AOL, LookSmart, Visvo, dmoz, Inktomi, Altavista, Alltheweb, and over 100 other leading search engines in the categories of Web, Images, News, Shopping, Videos, and FTP to deliver the most comprehensive and relevant results possible.

-As claimed by themselves!

image

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www.zapmeta.com

Zampmeta categorizes your search query, this helps finding the write thing you wanted to search! Additionally it lets you search within different TLDs (top level domains), e.g. .com, .edu or .biz

image

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www.monstercrawler.com

image

Myriad Search from the SEO Book

http://tools.seobook.com/authority-finder/

image

 

Clusty Search Engine

image

image

 

Article by: Sumit Pranav.
Sumit Pranav is a search technology expert based in New Delhi, India. He has done extensive studies and research on Search Engines, its algorithms and the search engine marketing models. He holds rewards from Microsoft for his research Project called ECIGS (Educational Content Identification and Grabbing System)

Live Plasma - A map based search engine for Holywood Music and movies


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Live Plasma - A map based search engine for Hollywood Music and movies

When you input a favorite movie, book, or artist, they recommend to you a world of titles or similar artists that you may never have heard of, but would most likely enjoy.

Its built in Flash and search results appear with a nice effect!
tryout - liveplasma.com



There is another similar search engine but I did not like it much : www.music-map.com

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The Myth of DPI


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different sizes of pixels The size of an image in a website layout is important. From proper alignment to getting just the right amount of white space, sizing photos and graphics properly beforehand is essential to creating a balanced look.

Images on the web are measured in pixels. Yet many people go through the trouble of setting their images to 72 dots per inch (DPI). The process of sizing them is often misunderstood.

The misconception about resolution in digital images, especially ones bound for the web, is that they must meet a certain number of dots per inch.

This is not true. On the web, DPI doesn’t matter.

When someone converts an image to 72 DPI, they’re adding an extra step with no benefit. Web pages are measured in pixels, not real-world units such as inches.

When someone asks you for a web image that’s, say, two inches wide, they’re estimating how it would appear on their own monitor. Without changing the image’s pixel dimensions, that image would appear larger or smaller on different monitors—and would even look different on the same monitor at a different resolution setting.

Pixel Size Depends on Context

A pixel (which is short for “picture element”) is the smallest unit of measure on a grid displaying a digital image. DPI measures how big those pixels, or dots, are when they’re printed.

The image below is shown in different DPIs.

sample photo at 36 DPI
36 DPI

sample photo at 150 DPI
150 DPI

sample photo at 3096 DPI
3,096 DPI

Download and open them in an image editor to see for yourself. All three look the same because they were resized, not resampled.

Resizing Changes DPI, Resampling Changes Pixel Count

There are two ways to enlarge an image: add more pixels or make the pixels larger. Likewise, you can reduce an image’s size by shaving off pixels or shrinking pixels. But shrinking and shaving are two different processes.

resizing makes pixels larger to make images, well, larger

Shown above, resizing an image changes the size of its pixels, not its number of pixels. We’re not increasing or decreasing the number of pixels, only changing how large those pixels are when printed. It’s an inverse relationship: images with larger pixels will have a lower DPI.

resampling adds pixels to make images larger

Shown above, resampling changes the image’s size by increasing or decreasing its number of pixels. Images with more pixels will contain more information and often make for richer graphics.

Web design is concerned with resampling, not resizing, because in a layout every pixel will always be the same size. A web page that measures 800 pixels wide can accommodate images up to 800 pixels wide. Making every pixel wider doesn’t change the fact that the layout can hold only 800 of them.

You can’t make an image appear larger on screen by resizing its pixels, because every pixel on the same screen will always be the same size.

Resizing and Resampling in Photoshop

Photoshop’s Image Size box (Image → Image Size) controls both the resizing and resampling of images.

Photoshop’s image size dialog box with resampling on

The “Resample” checkbox changes how many pixels fit into a linear inch—literally the dots per inch. If we turn off resampling, the only way to change the image’s size would be to enlarge its pixels for printing.

Photoshop’s image size dialog box with resampling off

With the resampling box left unchecked, changing the DPI would alter the image’s physical size (inches), but not its number of pixels.

An Experiment

Figuring out whether DPI matters on the web can be done by a little experiment. If we alter an image from 300 x 100 pixels at 72 DPI to 300 x 100 pixels at 144 DPI, how many pixels would we have?

    • Make an image 300 pixels wide and 100 pixels tall, at 72 DPI.
    • Let’s do some math. How many pixels would that be?
    • Now resize the image to 300 x 100 pixels at 144 DPI.
    • Let’s do some more math. How many pixels is that?

      The answers are:

      • 300 x 100 = 30,000
      • 300 x 100 is still 30,000

      Pixels per Inch

      The number of pixels per inch is still relevant online, but DPI settings do not affect how an image is displayed.

      Computer monitors can be physically measured in inches, and each displays a certain number of pixels. For example, let’s say a 19″ monitor shows 1280 x 1024 pixels. The user could change it to display 1600 x 1200 pixels, thus increasing its PPI (i.e. adding more pixels in the same number of inches.)

      You can try this on most modern computers. On a Mac, go to Apple Menu → System Preferences, and then click on “Displays” to see the various resolutions at which you can set your monitor. For Windows, right-click on the desktop and select “Personalize,” and then choose “Display settings.” Change the screen resolution (number of pixels) and watch as the items on your Mac or PC desktop get larger or smaller.

      Obviously, your monitor isn’t changing in size. But if you hold a ruler to the screen, you’ll see that the size of icons and windows is inversely proportional to the number of pixels displayed. For example, a 13″ laptop, a 17″ CRT monitor and a 21″ flat-panel monitor can all present a desktop that measures 1024 x 768 pixels. More pixels mean smaller icons; fewer pixels mean larger icons. More pixels in the same area give you a higher PPI; fewer pixels give you a lower PPI.

      example of the same images on differently sized screens

      The difference becomes more noticeable with other types of displays:

      • A digital billboard measuring 47 x 12 feet might use only 888 x 240 pixels (about 1.6 PPI).
      • An iPhone screen today measures 2 x 3 inches and holds 320 x 480 pixels (about 160 PPI).

      A single PNG file measuring 100 x 100 pixels would fit on both the 888 x 240 billboard and the 320 x 480 iPhone. But it would appear much larger on the billboard because the board’s PPI is 100 times smaller than the iPhone’s (1.6 vs. 160).

      The illustration below shows two devices with different pixel dimensions.

      example of the same bitmap image on two different displays

      The same image is being shown on two different displays. The differences in PPI make the image on the right-hand display appear larger, even though it has fewer pixels overall.

      You can test this yourself:

      • Create a JPG that measures 960 x 100 pixels, at any DPI.
      • Measure it by hand with a ruler.
      • Look at the same image on a computer with a larger or smaller monitor. For example, if you created the image on a 20″ screen, test it on a 13″ laptop.

      The result is that this one image would have the same number of pixels but a different width in inches. The website layout would appear in different sizes, despite identical code. (For an extreme case, look at the entire page on an iPhone; 960 pixels is fitted to three inches or less, without the file itself being changed.)

      Why 72 is significant

      Many file formats, including JPG, TIF and PSD, store an image’s DPI. If you save a JPG at 200 DPI, it will remain at 200.

      Other formats, including GIF and PNG, discard DPI. If you save a 200 DPI image as a PNG, it won’t save thatDPI at all. Many image editors, including Adobe Photoshop, assume that an image is 72 DPI if the information is not stored. (Note: Photoshop’s “Save for Web” feature discards unnecessary print information, includingDPI.)

      Seventy-two is a magic number in printing and typography. In 1737 Pierre Fournier used units called cieros to measure type. Six cieros were 0.998 inches.

      Around 1770, François-Ambroise Didot used slightly larger cieros to fit the standard French “foot.” Didot’s pica was 0.1776 inches long and divided evenly into 12 increments. Today we call them points.

      In 1886, the American Point System established a “pica” as being 0.166 inches. Six of these are 0.996 inches.

      None of the units ever strayed far from 12 points per pica: 6 picas per inch = 72 points per inch. It was an important standard by 1984, when Apple prepared to introduce the first Macintosh computer. The Mac’s interface was designed to help people relate the computer to the physical world. Software engineers used the metaphor of a desk to describe the arcane workings of a computer, right down to “paper,” “folder” and “trash” icons.

      Each pixel on the original Mac’s 9-inch (diagonal) and 512 x 342 pixel screen measured exactly 1 x 1 point. Hold a ruler to the glass, and you’d see that 72 pixels would actually fill 1 inch. This way, if you printed an image or piece of text and held it next to the screen, both the image and hard copy would be the same size.

      But early digital pictures were clunky and jagged. As screen technology and memory improved, computers were able to display more pixels on the same size monitor. Matching a print-out to the screen became even less certain when raster and vector apps allowed users to zoom in and examine pixels closely. By the mid-1990s, Microsoft Windows could switch between 72 and 96 pixels per inch on screen. This made smaller font sizes more legible, because more pixels were available per point size.

      Today, designers and clients alike understand that the sizes of items on the screen are not absolute. Differences in screen size and zoom functionality are commonplace. But 72 is still the default.

      PPI Means Better Legibility at Smaller Point Sizes

      Higher PPI is great for legibility. More pixels per inch make letterforms easier to read. It also means that images and text must be larger (in pixels) to be readable.

      examples of text at different point sizes and resolutions

      The text sample above has been resized from two different PPI settings. The top row has smaller pixels (i.e. a higher PPI), so 8 points is the smallest legible font size. Text in the bottom row is barely legible at 10 points.

      As PC monitors surpassed the pixel density of Mac monitors in the mid-1990s, websites built on Windows boasted smaller font sizes, much to the dismay of Mac users. Today, screens for both platforms enjoy pixel densities high enough to make the differences moot.

      Elastic Web Images With Modern Browsers

      We know now that DPI alone doesn’t change an image’s size on the web, and we have no control over which device an image is displayed on. So, are an image’s pixel dimensions the only thing that matters? Yes… for now.

      Fluid-width layouts, which change according to the browser’s size, can better accommodate a range of devices and monitors. Modern browsers, from FireFox 3, Safari 3 and Internet Explorer 7 and up, are better than older versions at scaling images on the fly. The max-width CSS property forces images to fit their container but not grow past their actual size. For example:

      sample photo 800 pixels wide

      p { width: 25% } /* A quarter of the content area /
      img { max-width: 100% }

      sample photo 800 pixels wide

      p { width: 50% } / Half of the content area /
      img { max-width: 100% }

      sample photo 800 pixels wide

      p { width: 75% } / Three quarters of the content area /
      img { max-width: 100% }

      sample photo 800 pixels wide

      / No width set for the paragraph */
      img { max-width: 100% }

      Here we see one 800-pixel-wide image fit into four different-sized paragraph elements. If the page width were flexible, resizing your browser window would expand the image—but not past its original 800 x 323 pixel dimensions. It would never become distorted, or “pixellated,” from over-expansion.

      Preparing images for the web means planning in pixels. If someone asks for a 2-inch graphic for the web, ask them, “How big are your pixels?”

      Written exclusively for WDD by Ben Gremillion. Ben is a freelance web designer who solves communication problems with better design.

      In which media does resolution count? What’s the best way to size online images? Share your ideas below.

      If you find an exclusive RSS freebie on this feed or on the live WDD website, please use the following code to download it: V6aS0V

      Collapse this post

      - Taken from Webdesigner Depot

      Google Buzz Tips


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      Google Buzz Tips

      Here are some tips that help you use Google Buzz in new interesting ways.
      1. Send direct messages.
      If you'd like to send a private message to someone, type @ and use Gmail's autocomplete feature to find the email address of your contact. After typing the message, make sure that the private option is selected, click on "Post to other groups" and create an empty group. You could call it "No one", "Empty group" etc. Now you can send your message.
      When you send a private message, Google Buzz lets you select one or more groups that will receive message, but you can also include the contacts in your message.

      2. Disable email notifications.
      When someone replies to one of your Google Buzz messages, Google sends an email notification to your Gmail account. If you don't like the notifications or they clutter your inbox, create a filter that archives or deletes all the messages that are labeled "buzz" (a built-in Gmail label). Make sure you typelabel:buzz (you could also use is:buzz) in the "Has the words" box and ignore Gmail's warning.
      3. Add more connected sites.
      Google Buzz lets you import content from services like Google Reader, Picasa, Blogger, Twitter, Flickr, but it's not obvious how to add other sites. Let's say you want to add your FriendFeed profile or the feed of your site. To do that, you need to make sure that the site links to your Google Profile or to one of the services that are associated with your Google Profile.
      Google explains how to add a link to your profile and how to include a special markup (rel="me") that offers more information about the link.
      <link rel="me" type="text/html" href="http://www.google.com/profiles/your.username" />
      Unfortunately, you can't connect the site immediately after you add the link. Google needs to crawl the site before updating the connections. "When the site is re-crawled the mutual claim will be verified and feeds associated with the site will be made available within Google Buzz for the verified user."
      4. Link to a Google Buzz message.
      If a message is public, it has a permalink that could be used to share the discussion. Gmail shows the links without having to use additional options, but it's not obvious that the timestamp of the message is actually a permalink.

      5. Quickly open Google Buzz.
      If you've enabled keyboard shortcuts in Gmail, type g b from any Gmail view and you'll open Google Buzz.
      Some other useful shortcuts:
      Shift+l - like a message
      m - mute (ignore) a conversation
      r - add a comment
      p / n - go to the newer / older conversation
      o - expand conversation
      6. Hide Google Buzz's counter.
      Google Buzz's message counter is distracting, so it would be nice to hide it. Unfortunately, there's no Gmail option that lets you hide counter, but you can hide the link to Google Buzz. Drag "Buzz" to the "X more" drop-down and you can hide the Buzz label.

      7. Subscribe to a Google Buzz account in a feed reader.
      Google posts each public message to the user's profile page. Open the profile page and click on the orange icon displayed by your browser to subscribe to the feed. A Google Buzz feed has an address that looks like this:
      http://buzz.googleapis.com/feeds/<USERNAME>/public/posted
      8. Find public Google Buzz messages.
      If you thought that Google Buzz's search box is restricted to your social connections, think again. Google Buzz's search feature shows the latest public messages that match your query.
      Some useful searches:
      author:<insertname>@gmail.com - find all the messages written by a specific user (you can also use a partial name instead of an email address)
      commenter:<insertname>@gmail.com - find all the messages that have a comment from a specific user
      has:photo, has:video, has:link - restricts the results to messages that include photos, videos or links (for example: vancouver has:photo)
      source:flickr, source:twitter, source:reader- restricts the results to messages imported from Flickr, Twitter, Google Reader (for example: vancouver source:flickr)
      9. Save searches
      You can bookmark your favorite Buzz searches by enabling the Quick Links feature from Gmail Labs. After performing a search, click on "Add quick link" and add a name for your bookmark.
      10. View Google Buzz photos in a slideshow
      When you upload photos to Google Buzz, they're added to Picasa Web Albums. If you click on a thumbnail, Google Buzz will open a lightbox to help you quickly navigate between images. Unfortunately, there's no option to view the images in a slideshow, but Picasa Web Albums has this feature and there's a small link that opens the photo album. Click on "view all" and you can select the slideshow option, export photos using Picasa or print photos.
      11. Add rich text messages
      You can use the same tricks that work in Google Talk to write rich text messages:
      *bold message*
      _italic message_
      -deleted message-

      12. Google Buzz on a map
      Use the address of the mobile Google Maps interface to see Google Buzz messages from all over the world. There's also a list view for nearby messages.

      Beauty


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      Beauty

      Monday, February 15, 2010

      Use of Purple color in designs


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      Read a good article describing use of Purple color in web designs here:

      http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2010/02/11/color-in-design-purple/

      Type anywhere in your language using transliteration


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      Type anywhere in your language using transliteration

      Google Transliteration IME is an input method editor which allows users to enter text in one of the supported languages using a roman keyboard. Users can type a word the way it sounds using Latin characters and Google Transliteration IME will convert the word to its native script. Note that this is not the same as translation -- it is the sound of the words that is converted from one alphabet to the other, not their meaning. Converted content will always be in Unicode.

      Google Transliteration IME is currently available for 14 different languages - Arabic, Bengali, Farsi (Persian), Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

      Get the software from here:

      http://www.google.com/ime/transliteration/
      See the installation instructions here:

      http://www.google.com/ime/transliteration/help.html#installation

      Why Google introduced "Buzz"


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      Bricks for Bread and Milk


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      Bricks for Bread and Milk

      In New Delhi there are upwards of 100 construction projects underway in preparation for the 2010 Commonwealth Games scheduled to take place from Oct. 4 to 13. These projects -- ranging from several new stadiums to a new international airport terminal -- are drawing vast numbers of migrant workers from all over India to provide the extra labor needed. Contractors, already behind schedule, are taking advantage of lax labor laws and coercing their employees to bring their children to work alongside them, promising payments of bread and milk. Above an Indian girl carries a brick at a construction site in front of the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on Feb. 3.

      Bricks for Bread and Milk



      Read more here:

      Sunday, February 14, 2010

      Gorgeous beauty


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      Create your own videos like I created at this website: http://animoto.com







      Friday, February 12, 2010

      Google Buzz Launch Event


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      Google Buzz Launch Event

      VNL, an Indian company, aims to bring solar-powered phone networks to villages


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      These cellular stations, which use only about 50 to 120 Watts of power which is low enough to be powered using solar cells and battery. With this low power consumption and the fact that they can be made self contained wireless units which needn't be connected to a grid, the technology is perfect for remote villages where it is difficult to bring connectivity by wired means or using conventional cellular towers.



      A single such station would be capable of handling hundreds of users, and needs just two people to set it up. The station can be assembled and mounted on a roof top in the short span of six hours. This small station and others nearby can communicate with a base station withing 5kms (which itself is solar powered). The base station can then communicate with the main network.


      The problem with traditional systems is, not only the fact that they need large amounts of power which necessitate the presence of a power grid, but also the cost involved. Traditional systems need customers to spend as much as Rs. 250 to Rs. 300 per month on average to make a profit, which is hard to get in rural areas. Thus their reluctance to provide coverage in such areas. VNL's system requires only as much as Rs. 90 to Rs. 100 per month per person on average from their customers to make a profit.

      Currently as many as 50 such stations have been deployed in villages in Rajasthan and there are plans to introduce the technology in Africa. The systems deployed in Rajasthan are voice only, and dont support text or data, as most end users in those areas are cannot read or write.


      It is nice to see such an innovation coming from India, and the fact that it can bring voice connectivity to the millions of people in India who are currently without any means of communication is heartening as well.

      Read more here: http://www.thinkdigit.com/Mobiles-and-PDAs/VNL-an-Indian-company-aims-to-bring_4027.html

      1Gb/second broadband speeds


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      1Gb/second broadband speeds: Google's plan to revolutionize the internet

      Wednesday, February 10, 2010

      Software Engineering Glossary from Marketing View


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      Software Engineering Glossary from Marketing View
      (or defining computer terms from a "marketing point of view"

      # ALL NEW -- The software is not compatible with previous versions.
      # ADVANCED DESIGN -- Upper management doesn't understand it.
      # BREAKTHROUGH -- It nearly booted on the first try.
      # NEW -- It comes in different colors from the previous version.
      # DESIGN SIMPLICITY -- It was developed on a shoe-string budget.
      # EXCLUSIVE -- We're the only ones who have the documentation.
      # FIELD TESTED -- Manufacturing doesn't have a test system.
      # FOOLPROOF OPERATION -- All parameters are hard coded.
      # FUTURISTIC -- It only runs on the next-generation supercomputer.
      # HIGH ACCURACY -- All the directories compare.
      # IT'S HERE AT LAST -- We've released a 26-week project in 48 weeks.
      # MAINTENANCE FREE -- It's impossible to fix.
      # MEETS QUALITY STANDARDS -- It compiles without errors.
      # OPEN SYSTEMS -- Anything with our logo on it!

      Vendor dependent variations of the above definitions of open systems:


      # USL -- Pay us for the license - & it's open.
      # OSF -- Anything IBM& DEC can agree on must be open
      # Sun -- Give me an `s', give me a `p', give me an `a', give me an `r', give me a `c' - what have you got? OPEN!
      # Microsoft -- Open Systems? Isn't that a laxative?
      # IBM - Open systems? We have 13 of them. Which one do you want?
      # PERFORMANCE PROVEN -- It works through beta test.
      # REVOLUTIONARY -- The disk drives go round and round.
      # SATISFACTION GUARANTEED -- We'll send you another copy if it fails.
      # STOCK ITEM -- We shipped it once before, and we can do it again, probably.
      # UNMATCHED -- It's almost as good as the competition.
      # UNPRECEDENTED PERFORMANCE -- Nothing ever ran this slow before.
      # YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT -- We finally got one to work.

      find out few more funny things here

      Tuesday, February 9, 2010

      Amazing Online painting software-sumopaint


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      Today I found an amazing online painting and graphics design software called sumopaint.
      It's full featured, similar to photoshop. Can be extremely useful if the machine you are working on has not photoshop installed.

      Its free, developed in flash and flex.
      find it here:

      http://www.sumopaint.com/app/
      here is a screen-shot:

      sumopaint-online painting software

      Friday, February 5, 2010

      My achievements in videos


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      My achievements in videos
      For my software Magic Brush and Spamocide
      in Intel Science and Engineering Fair, and Science Talent Discovery Fair










      Tuesday, February 2, 2010

      Introduction to MySQL on Windows - a must read e-book


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      Introduction to MySQL on Windows - a must read e-book

      get it here (free)

      http://port25.technet.com/videos/research/MySQL_Windows.pdf

      Online store of Good collection of caps of different shapes, colors, style and size..


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      Online store of Good collection of caps of different shapes, colors, style and size..

      http://www.headict.com/

      Getting list of Fields and associated information from a Table


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      Getting list of Fields and associated information from a Table (in SQL server) also called table schema:

      select column_name,* from information_schema.columns
      where table_name = 'TaxiMaster'
      order by ordinal_position

      Monday, February 1, 2010

      Guidelines for Content Optimization and website design


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      Content Optimization

      There are aspects of the optimization process that gain and lose importance. Content optimization is no exception to this. Through the many algorithm changes that take place each year, the weight given to the content on your pages rises and falls. Currently incoming links appear to supply greater advantage than well-written and optimized content. So why are we taking an entire article in this series to focus on the content optimization?

      The goal for anyone following this series is to build and optimize a website that will rank well on the major search engines and, more difficult and far more important, hold those rankings through changes in the search engine algorithms. While currently having a bunch of incoming links from high PageRank sites will do well for you on Google you must consider what will happen to your rankings when the weight given to incoming links drops, or how your website fares on search engines other than Google that don't place the same emphasis on incoming links.

      While there are many characteristics of your content that are in the algorithmic calculations, there are a few that consistently hold relatively high priority and thus will be the focus of this article. These are:

      1.Heading Tags
      2.Special Text (bold, colored, etc.)
      3.Inline Text Links
      4.Keyword Density
      Heading Tags

      The heading tag (for those who don't already know) is code used to specify to the visitor and to the search engines what the topic is of your page and/or subsections of it. You have 6 predefined heading tags to work with ranging from h1 to h6.

      By default these tags appear larger than standard text in a browser and are bold. These aspects can be adjusted using the font tags or by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

      Due to their abuse by unethical webmasters and SEO's, the weight given to heading tags is not what it could be however the content between these tags is given increased weight over standard text. There are rules to follow with the use of heading tags that must be adhered to. If you use heading tags irresponsibly you run the risk of having your website penalized for spam even though the abuse may be unintentional.

      When using your heading tags try to follow these rules:

      Never use the same tag twice on a single page
      Try to be concise with your wording
      Use heading tags only when appropriate. If bold text will do then go that route
      Don't use CSS to mask heading tags
      Never use the same tag twice on a single page. While the h1 tags holds the greatest weight of the entire heading tags, its purpose is to act as the primary heading of the page. If you use it twice you are obviously not using it to define the main topic of the page. If you need to use another heading tag use the h2 tag. After that the h3 tag and so on. Generally I try never to use more than 2 heading tags on a page.

      Try to be concise with your wording. If you have a 2 keyword phrase that you are trying to target and you make a heading that is 10 words long then your keyword phrase only makes up about 20% of the total verbiage. If you have a 4-word heading on the other hand you would then have a 50% density and increased priority given to the keyword phrase you are targeting.

      Use heading tags only when appropriate. If bold text will do then go that route. I have seen sites with heading tags all over the place. If overused the weight of the tags themselves are reduced with decreasing content and "priority" being given to different phrases at various points in the content. If you have so much great content that you feel you need to use many heading tags you should consider dividing the content up into multiple pages, each with its own tag and keyword target possibilities. For the most part, rather than using additional heading tags, bolding the content will suffice. The sizing will be kept the same as your usual text and it will stand out to the reader as part of the text but with added importance.

      Don't use CSS to mask heading tags. This one just drives me nuts and is unnecessary. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) serve many great functions. They can be used to define how a site functions, looks and feels however they can also be used to mislead search engines and visitors alike. Each tags has a default look and feel. It is fine to use CSS to adjust this somewhat to fit how you want your site to look. What is not alright is to adjust the look and feel to mislead search engines. It is a simple enough task to define in CSS that your heading should appear as regular text. Some unethical SEO's will also then place their style sheet in a folder that is hidden from the search engine spiders. This is secure enough until your competitors look at the cached copy of your page (and they undoubtedly will at some point) see that you have hidden heading tags and report you to the search engines as spamming. It's an unnecessary risk that you don't need to take. Use your headings properly and you'll do just fine.

      Special Text

      "Special text" (as it is used here) special is any content on your page that is set to stand out from the rest. This includes bold, underlined, colored, highlighted, sizing and italic. This text is given weight higher than standard content and rightfully so. Bold text, for example, is generally used to define sub-headings (see above), or to pull content out on a page to insure the visitor reads it. The same can be said for the other "special text" definitions.

      Search engines have thus been programmed to read this as more important than the rest of the content and will give it increased weight. For example, on our homepage we begin the content with "Beanstalk Search Engine Optimization …" and have chosen to bold this text. This serves two purposes. The first is to draw the eye to these words and further reinforce the "brand". The second purpose (and it should always be the second) is to add weight to the "Search Engine Positioning" portion of the name. It effectively does both.

      Reread your content and, if appropriate for BOTH visitors and search engines, use special text when it will help draw the eye to important information and also add weight to your keywords. This does not mean that you should bold every instance of your targeted keywords nor does it mean that you should avoid using special text when it does not involve your keywords. Common sense and a reasonable grasp of sales and marketing techniques should be your guide in establishing what should and should not be drawn out with "special text".

      Inline Text Links

      Inline text links are links added right into text in the verbiage of your content. For example, in this article series I may make reference to past articles in the series. Were I to refer to the article on keyword selection, rather than simply making a reference to it as I just have it might be better to write it as, "Were I to refer to the article on keyword selection rather …"

      Like special text this serves two purposes. The first is to give the reader a quick and easy way to find the information you are referring to. The second purpose of this technique is to give added weight to this phrase for the page on which the link is located and also to give weight to the target page.

      While this point is debatable, there is a relatively commonly held belief that inline text links are given more weight that a text link which stands alone. If we were to think like a search engine this makes sense. If the link occurs within the content area then chances are it is highly relevant to the content itself and the link should be counted with more strength than a link placed in a footer simply to get a spider through the site.

      Like "special text" this should only be employed if it helps the visitor navigate your site. An additional benefit to inline text links is that you can help direct your visitors to the pages you want them on. Rather than simply relying on visitors to use your navigation bar as you are hoping they will, with inline text links you can link to the internal pages you are hoping they will get to such as your services page, or product details.

      Keyword Density

      For those of you who have never heard the term "keyword density" before, it is the percentage of your total content that is made up of your targeted keywords. There is much debate in forums, SEO chat rooms and the like as to what the "optimal" keyword density might be. Estimates seem to range from 3% to 10%.

      While I would be the first to admit that logic dictates that indeed there is an optimal keyword density. Knowing that search engines operate on mathematical formulas implies that this aspect of your website must have some magic number associated with it that will give your content the greatest chance of success.

      With this in mind there are three points that you should consider:

      1.You do not work for Google or Yahoo! or any of the other major search engines (and if you do you're not the target audience of this article). You will never know 100% what this "magic number" is.
      2.Even if you did know what the optimal keyword density was today, would you still know it after the next update? Like other aspects of the search engine algorithm, optimal keyword densities change. You will be chasing smoke if you try to constantly have the optimal density and chances are you will hinder your efforts more than help by constantly changing the densities of your site.
      3.The optimal keyword density for one search engine is not the same as it is for another. Chasing the density of one may very well ruin your efforts on another.
      So what can you do? Your best bet is to simply place your targeted keyword phrase in your content as often as possible while keeping the content easily readable by a live visitor. Your goal here is not to sell to search engines, it is to sell to people. I have seen sites that have gone so overboard in increasing their keyword density that the content itself reads horribly. If you are simply aware of the phrase that you are targeting while you write your content then chances are you will attain a keyword density somewhere between 3 and 5%. Stay in this range and, provided that the other aspects of the optimization process are in place, you will rank well across many of the search engines.

      Also remember when you're looking over your page that when you're reading it the targeted phrase may seem to stand out as it's used more than any other phrase on the page and may even seem like it's a bit too much. Unless you've obviously overdone it (approached the 10% rather than 5% end of the spectrum) it's alright for this phrase to stand out. This is the phrase that the searcher was searching for. When they see it on the page it will be a reminder to them what they are looking for and seeing it a few times will reinforce that you can help them find the information they need to make the right decision.

      Final Notes

      In an effort to increase keyword densities, unethical webmasters will often use tactics such as hidden text, extremely small font sizes, and other tactics that basically hide text from a live visitor that they are providing to a search engines. Take this advice, write quality content, word it well and pay close attention to your phrasing and you will do well. Use unethical tactics and your website may rank well in the short term but once one of your competitors realizes what you're doing you will be reported and your website may very well get penalized. Additionally, if a visitor realizes that you're simply "tricking" the search engines they may very well decide that you are not the type of company they want to deal with; one that isn't concerned with integrity but rather one that will use any trick to try to get at their money. Is this the message you want to send?


      This text is an extract from a good article :
      Content Optimization SEO Articles by Beanstalk

      How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell - The Oatmeal


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      How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell - The Oatmeal