3707 items (0 unread) in 7 feeds
23:00
The rumors are true. Google AdSense ads for RSS feeds are coming next week. The ads will be contextual and CPM based. You’ll be able to manage your RSS ads via the regular AdSense dashboard.
Google will initially experiment with only a small group of AdSense publishers but will eventually roll-out the program to all AdSense and FeedBurner customers. See existing screenshots of RSS ads.
Contextual, CPM Based AdSense Ads for RSS Feeds Are Coming - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS 
23:00
The rumors are true. Google AdSense ads for RSS feeds are coming next week. Here’s a sample code that will be inserted in your FeedBurner feed for showing AdSense ads.
<a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/labnol/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/labnol/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a>
The AdSense ads inside FeedBurner RSS feeds will be contextual and CPM based - i.e., you get paid based on the number of ad impression - so the more subscribers you have, the more revenue.
And most likely you’ll see image banners in the feeds, not the regular text ads. THe RSS ads can be managed via the regular AdSense dashboard.
Google will initially experiment with only a small group of AdSense publishers but will eventually roll-out the program to all AdSense and FeedBurner customers. The layout will be quite different from the earlier screenshots.
Contextual AdSense Ads for RSS Feeds - See Sample Code - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
22:45
It is interesting to see how newspaper sare trying to connect stories published in their print edition with online content. See this clip from Business Standard newspaper.
They add a short URL after the story that print subscriber can type in their browser and read related content on the web.
And this approach may actually be helping companies drive traffic to their web properties. They work at least in the case of print advertisements that have URLs.
A new study shows that including URLs in magazine ads drives readers to advertiser Web sites. The analysis of 833 print ads in seven magazines showed that ads with Web addresses were up to three times as likely to drive readers to a Web site, depending on the magazine category.
The biggest increases came in the home, women’s service, travel and fashion categories, though not so in the financial category.
The Importance of Short URLs in Print Newspapers & Magazines - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
17:19
You may remember using the beautiful Cover Flow interface in iTunes or the iPod touch that helps you quickly browse through your music and video collection - now a similar interface is available for viewing faces on Google Images.
Go to facesaerch.com (not facesearch.com), type the name / surname of a person and start flipping the facial images served from Google Images. You can either drag the slider or use the keyboard arrow keys to navigate through the images.
And while you can search for anything, facial search on Google Images works best if you look for a real person. For instance, typing "Crow" would not looking for images of the bird "crow" but a person with crow in his or her name - like Sheryl Crow.
You may also Google Face search to determine if a person is male or female based on the first name and / or surname.
Internally, the above Face Search tool uses Protoflow which is a JavaScript library that emulates the Cover Flow effect in a browser.
Browse Images From Google Face Search Using Cover Flow Interface - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
15:49
Discovered something interesting on the web like a photo, video or a web page that you want to share with your FriendFeed friends?
Here’s a simple tip that will help you post messages and links to your FriendFeed account directly from Google Talk, Trillian, Miranda, Pidgin and other Jabber based IM clients.
Step 1: Open Google Talk software (or the Google Talk Flash Gadget) and add friendfeed@imified.com as your friend.
Step 2: Login to your FriendFeed account and note the Remote Key value.
Also See: Do You Use All The Great Features of FriendFeed
Step 3: Start a chat session with FriendFeed in your Google Talk client and send a message like this:
your_friendfeed_name/your_remote_key (see screenshot)
This authenticates Google Talk to publish on your FriendFeed account. Now you can type anything in the Gtalk chat window and it’s instantly published to your FriendFeed page.
We can also use imified service to publish new articles in WordPress or Blogger blogs via Google Talk. This technique also works with the chat feature in Gmail.
Post Links and Messages on FriendFeed Directly From Google Talk - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
14:42
You’ve seen Gmail in Hindi but now this popular email program from Google is available in all major languages of India including اردو (Urdu) , मराठी (Marathi), हिन्दी (Hindi), বাংলা (Bangla), ગુજરાતી (Gujarati), ଓଡିଆ (Oriya), தமிழ் (Tamil), తెలుగు (Telugu), ಕನ್ನಡ (Kannada) and മലയാളം (Malayalam).
I think this would cover 90% of the 1 billion strong population of India.
To switch to a different language in Gmail, go to the Settings tab and selection a different languages from the Gmail display language drop down. Don’t forget to save your changes.
Google Docs are also available in most Indian languages. Thanks Syed Abbas.
Gmail Email Now Available In Most Indian Languages - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
0:05
Like Ubuntu, Oracle has also started shipping Linux DVDs for free anywhere in the world.
Head over to this page, type in your snail mail address and Oracle will ship your their DVD set of their own Linux distribution called the Unbreakable Linux. Thanks Sathya.
Get a Linux DVD Set from Oracle - Free Shipping Worldwide - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
23:43
The creative team at Common Craft show us another great video explaining Social Media in plain English using the example of Ice Creams.
Whether you’re a big, established company or an individual with loyal fan or simply someone with ideas and opinions - social media means new opportunities to create and communicate with people that care.”
If you like to use this video in your corporate presentation, for training or to showcase it on the company’s intranet, you can buy the video from their store.
Social Media Explained in Simple English - From Common Craft - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
23:27
Call it the end of an era. The NYT says that Oxford University Press has no official plans to publish a new print edition of the multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary often considered as the authority on the usage and meaning of English words and phrases.
Visit BBC and Wikipedia to learn more about the interesting history of Oxford Dictionary the first edition of which took nearly 70 years to complete. If you have never seen the print edition dictionary before, check this sample page from the dictionary. The dictionary weighs 62.6 kilos or 137.72 lbs.
Oxford University Press will instead focus on the online and CD-ROM edition of the Oxford English dictionary. The planned Third Edition of the OED is expected to finish sometime around 2018 but will only be available electronically. Thanks Divya.
The first edition of Oxford English Dictionary was published under James Murray see here at work.
This 20 Volume Print Edition of Oxford English Dictionary Is The Last - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
20:45
If blogs, personal emails, social networks and other time wasting websites are banned at your workplace, show this to your boss.
A study of office workers in UK has found that banning access to websites at work actually decreases staff productivity.
Tea breaks and fag breaks have long been the most common types of break within office culture but the report shows that online breaks are fast becoming the most popular choice of break for office workers.
Unlike popular notion that employees waste time on the Internet, this research says that taking a 10-minute online break during the course of the working day helps reduce stress and results in a more happier workplace.
From Google News. Here’s the full report. The study is commissioned by a company that makes some popular computer games.
Related: How to Access Blocked Sites
Banning Websites in Offices Can Make Employees Less Productive - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
17:20
The new release of WordPress (version 2.6) is due in August 2008 and is compatible with Google Gears.
*this refers to self hosted WordPress software, not the wordpress.com blogging platform.
Unlike Google Reader or Google Docs where Google Gears helps you work in an offline environment, WordPress is using Google Gears for a completely different purpose and that is to speed-up your regular blogging tasks.
Let’s look at an example. Say you are moderating comments in WordPress and then switch to the dashboard view - this action will make WordPress download some web images, JavaScript libraries and CSS files in the background.
With Google Gears, WordPress will store all these ’static’ files on your local hard drive and will not download them from the web server each time you perform some action in your WordPress admin interface. Thus, it should speed up things especially if you are on a slow connection.
I don’t think you can blog offline with WordPress 2.6 like creating new posts or moderating comments. For more technical details about Google Gears support in WordPress, check this support ticket.
Also see this full list of Google Gears compatible web applications.
Google Gears and WordPress 2.6 Is Not About Offline Blogging - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
14:20
eVeek offers some extremely beautiful BlackBerry themes that can make your BlackBerry screen look and behave like an iPhone, the Mac OS X Desktop or the upcoming BlackBerry Bold. Some screenshots:
These are premium BlackBerry themes and cost $8 each but you can have all of them for free courtesy eVeek.
Open this link in your BlackBerry browser & download the themes directly or you can visit this link in the desktop browser and install the themes via BlackBerry Desktop manager. The latter option is recommended if you are subscribed to some expensive data plan.
Have tried all the skins and highly recommend that you download each of them before the offer expires. The themes are available for most BlackBerry models including Pearl, Curve and the BlackBerry 8800 series. Thanks Todd.
Related: Get More Productive with a BlackBerry
Download the Best BlackBerry Themes for Free; Includes iPhone Skin - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
23:59
While you can download documents from Google Docs one-by-one, there’s no "export all" like feature that will let you backup all online documents to your hard drive in one go.
A possible solution is that you select multiple files inside Google Docs browser and export them as a zip but the problem is that files get saved as HTML web pages and not in the standard .doc format.
Zoho has added an Import feature inside Zoho Writer that lets you bring all Google Docs documents into Zoho for editing. The Zoho-Google Docs importer can read .zip files created by Google Docs and hence it can serve as an alternate backup for all your Google documents.
The more exciting part is that they soon will include have a "mass export" feature in Zoho Writer that will let you take away all your documents out of the Zoho system in a click.
Now this should immediately appeal to Google Docs users who have never even tried Zoho yet because you indirectly get to backup all Google Docs documents in three steps:
1. Export all Google Docs documents as an HTML file.
2. Login to Zoho Writer using your existing Google Account credentials and import the zip file created in step 1.
3. Use the Mass Export function of Zoho writer to save these documents as .doc files on to your hard drive or anywhere else.
The export feature in Zoho Writer is not live yet but keep watching this space.
Related: Who Is Reading Your Google Docs Documents
Zoho Will Help Backup All Your Google Docs Documents Locally - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
15:46
Think you are smarter than Ms Teen USA South Carolina 2007? Try Statetris - an interesting game of Tetris that you can play online and test your knowledge of geography.
The Tetris board is in the shape of a map (it could be a country or a continent) while the different Tetris blocks that fall from the top are in the shape of different states (or countries if you chose a continent).
You use the arrows keys to move / rotate the blocks so that the states / countries fall in the right locations just like the original Tetris game.
Statetris is available for USA, UK, Europe and some other places. Thanks Mr. Byrne.
Here’s a video from TED where Alisa Miller explains why people in US are not aware of world news as compared to their peers in other countries.
Test Your Geography Knowledge Online with a Game of Tetris - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
12:51
Channel TEN recently featured Darren Rowse, Karen and Neerav - they are all bloggers based in Australia who generate six-figure income from their blogs alone. It’s an inspiring story so do watch the video.
I particularly enjoyed the last scene of the video where they show Darren with his son. Reminds me of the time when the CNN IBN crew were at our place - it was like 2 AM in the night but my son didn’t go to bed because they wanted to put him in the concluding scene.
The Six-Figure Professional Bloggers of Australia on TV - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
11:51
Some updates for Orkut - the most popular social networking site in India.
Sasidhar informs that Google has officially launched the Indian edition of Orkut while Thilak discovers themes inside his Orkut account. You may not see them as Orkut themes are not enabled for everyone yet.
The orkut.com site now redirects you to orkut.co.in if you visit this website from India. Orkut.in however remains a parked domain serving AdSense ads.
orkut.co.in Google Introduces Indian Edition of Orkut with Themes - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
10:29
The Windows 7 user interface was demonstrated for the first time today at D6 Conference with Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer onstage. The news created enough buzz though this Windows Vista successor is not expected to ship anytime before 2010.
Watch this video demo of Windows 7 running on a Dell Latitude XT touch-screen tablet PC. It’s like having your own Microsoft Surface computer.
Here’s another video Julie Larson Green from Microsoft giving a live demo of Windows 7 at the D6 conference.
Video Demo of Windows 7 Running on Dell Tablet PC - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
21:06
If you use a desktop based Twitter client, you may have come across the "limit exceeded" error after which the software suspends fetching new updates from Twitter for some time. Ever wondered why ?
Twitter allows you to make 70 requests per hour or roughly one request every minute.
If you have configured MyBlogLog, FriendFeed, Facebook, etc. to fetch updates from Twitter, you may be exceeding the limit frequently as these services may be requesting for updates in addition to the Twitter client.
But now there’s another reason why the client is not able to fetch updates (or Tweets) - the Twitter API documentation was updated today with the following statement:
[Added May 27, 2008] From time to time, Twitter may lower the rate limit to preserve system stability.
In that case, neither your Twitter desktop client not those external services are at fault. The only option is then to use your web browser because the API doesn’t count requests made via the Twitter website.
Also read: Most Useful Twitter Services Ever
Twitter Can Lower Your Hourly Request Quota For System Stability - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
17:15
How do you know if the Word document you wrote in Google Docs has been read by the boss or not ? Or how do you track the number of people who opened your Google Docs document that you published a public web page.
Where did the traffic come from? How long the visitors stayed? Such data is easy to track with Google Analytics but unfortunately, Google won’t let you insert JavaScript code into Google Documents. So here’s a simple workaround to help you track visitors to your documents in Google Docs.
Add Document Tracking to Google Docs:
The idea is simple. Instead of adding JavaScript to your Google Docs pages, you will will insert a tracking pixel image (visible or hidden) somewhere in the body of your document. When a recipient opens that document, the action is registered as a visit by the tracking code. Here are the steps involved:
Step 1. Go to statcounter.com (or any web statistics program) and register for a free account. Under “Install Code”, choose the following options:
Invisible Counter -> Google Pages -> HTML only counter. Statcounter will now generate some HTML code enclosed in a <div> tag. Strip everything except the IMG tag such that your final code looks something like this:
<img src=”http://c46.statcounter.com/3732481/0/e1fdff4b/1/” height=”1″ width=”1″ border=”0″ alt=”For Traffic Stats in Google Docs” />
Step 2. Open the Google Docs document that you want to track. Select “Edit HTML” option from the Edit menu of Google Docs toolbar. Now copy-paste the HTML tracking code we generated in step 1 and save the document.
You’re done. When people open the document inside Google Docs or as a public web page, they will be connected to the Internet and hence their visit will be registered by statcounter.
You get to know the exact date time when the document was accessed, the physical location of the reader, the duration of his stay and some other details like browser, OS, ISP, etc. Here’s a sample tracking report generated by my stats program.
Statcounter is also integrated with Google Maps to help you easily visualize the location of Google Docs visitors. And you can use the same technique to track email messages.
Update: The above trick is for Word documents in Google Docs. If you like to track visitors to your spreadsheets in Google Docs, you may write a Google Gadget integrated with Google Analytics and insert that into your spreadsheet.
Track Visitors To Google Docs; Know When People Open & Read Your Documents - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
15:48
‘Read At Work’ is a collection of some famous books converted into PowerPoint presentations so you can read them at work without having to worry about boss stepping into the cubicle.
The website resembles a Windows XP desktop and these PowerPoint style books are neatly arranged in different folders on the desktop.
You can double click the book name to read them in the browser. Hit the escape key and return to your standard Windows desktop.
The whole idea is to help people read books even while they are at office. Each novel has the full text but formatted like a presentation. Works across all browsers.
www.readatwork.com - Thanks Ursi.
Related hacks: Internet Surfing at Work
Read Books at Work While Boss Thinks You’re Working on a PowerPoint Presentation - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
11:25
Adobe today released the first public beta of Dreamweaver CS4, the popular WYSIWYG editor from Macromedia that later replaced Adobe’s own GoLive software.
To download Dreamweaver CS4, you need a serial number of either Dreamweaver CS3 or any of the Adobe Creative Suite editions. If you don’t have a licensed copy, you only get a 2-day free trial.
This is an intelligent strategy from Adobe. They invite all existing customers into the beta cycle, some of them may get used to the new features and will therefore upgrade when the product gets released.
Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 can be installed alongside Dreamweaver CS3 though you may run only one product at a time. The software is available for both Mac and Windows.
Available at Adobe Labs. For new features, check these screencast videos at Adobe TV.
Other than DW, Fireworks CS4 is also available on Adobe Labs and Photoshop CS4 is expected to make an appearance soon. Thanks Scott Fegette.
Download Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 - Public Beta - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
10:57
This is a very simple & non-geeky trick to help you read the latest issue of popular magazines like PC Magazine, MIT Technology Review, Popular Mechanics, MacWorld, Lonely Planet, Reader’s Digest, etc without paying any subscription charges.
You will also get to read adult magazines like Playboy and Penthouse. Best of all, these digital magazines are exact replicas of print and served as high-resolution images that you can also download on to the computer for offline reading.
How to Read Online Magazines for Free
Step 1: If you are on a Windows PC, go to apple.com and download the Safari browser. Mac users already have Safari on their system.
Step 2: Once you install Safari, go to Edit -> Preferences -> Advanced and check the option that says "Show Develop menu in menu bar."
Step 3: Open the "Develop" option in the browser menu bar and choose Mobile Safari 1.1.3 - iPhone as the User Agent.
Step 4: You’re all set. Open zinio.com/iphone inside Safari browser and start reading your favorite magazines for free. Use the navigation arrows at the top to turn pages.
For people in countries like India who are already subscribed to Zinio Digital Magazines, this hack is still useful because you get access to certain magazines which are otherwise not available for subscription via Zinio (e.g., Penthouse and Playboy).
Geeks may write a AutoHotKey script or create a "scrolling capture" profile in SnagIt that will auto-flip magazine pages and save all the images locally. Thanks Scott. And here’s a related trick on how to read Wall Street for free.
How to Read Popular Magazines on your Desktop for Free - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
20:03
Can a mobile phone or PDA device help you quit smoking ?
Conrad Morris (see here with his wife, the couple is expecting a baby boy soon) shares how he was able to quit smoking gradually using his PDA and some simple software.
"I had been a smoker for some 20 years. About a year ago that time frame really hit me hard, and with my first son on the way I decided it had to end. I had tried countless techniques before: Gum, patches, hypnosis… you name it, I tried it; nothing worked.
When I made this commitment to myself I decided to try a very simple method using my PDA (dell axim x51v) and a small piece of software (SPB time). SPB time allows you to set a reoccurring countdown timer that would sound an alarm and restart the cycle once you acknowledged the notice. I would wake up, light my first cigarette and set the timer in motion for every half hour (about my daily average prior to quitting).
Every hour it would sound, and I would go smoke. Never before the alarm and never after…just on the alarm. Each subsequent day, I would adjust the alarm by extending it by 5 minutes, maintaining my discipline: Never before and never after. After a week, my pack a day went to half a pack; in two weeks just a few smokes a day.
Now I must admit, when I got down to just three smokes a day, I stopped using the timer method and just used "meal times" as my timer: Morning coffee, lunch, and dinner. This was problematic however, as I just couldn’t seem to shake these last three smokes. My wife and I discussed it in detail and I agreed to try just the morning smoke with my coffee for a week. She would call me on my lunch and talk with me the entire time and offer encouragement when I needed and of course at dinner I had her support as well. Just one smoke a day now! Awesome.
One morning, few months after my experiment, I woke up a little later than normal and was in a slight rush skipping my first smoke of the day. I didn’t even think about it until my lunch-time phone call from my wife. I was so encouraged I tried it the next day and the next…now, one year later I haven’t touched a cigarette. Sometimes, at social events, I still feel that tugging to go have a smoke, but each day that tugging is less and less.
Like I said, not as exciting or interesting as some of your other entries I am sure, but a milestone in my life, and the lives of my family. A PDA and a simple piece of software."
*Conrad Moriss wins the HP Laptop Giveaway for his inspirational story.
How to Quit Smoking with help of your PDA / Mobile Phone - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
18:15
While there are tons of tools that let you download web videos with ease, MovAVI offers one unique feature - it can join multiple videos from YouTube, Metacafe, Break.com, etc. into one single file all by itself that you can later download in any format.
Related Reading: How to do Everything with YouTube
Using Movavi is simple - just add the different video URLs (5 is the limit) and select an output format. You can either request the combined video clip as an MP3 audio file (great for music videos) or in regular formats like iPod MP4, AVI, Flash Video & Quicktime.
Movavi will not join your videos instantly - it sends out an email when the video to ready for download. If you are looking for instant conversion, check this Flash Video Guide. MovAVI can also be used to join video files that reside on your local hard drive.
MovAVI.com [Online Video Converter]
Download Multiple Web Videos Into a Single Movie or MP3 - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
18:03
Thank you for participating in the survey - What Kind of IT User Are You?
Of the 565 responses, 68% have said that they are Early Adopters (people who tend to try out new software and hardware before most other people do) while 30% call themselves Pragmatists (people who wait for someone else to make the first move).
Eric Sink offers this advice for companies trying to engage in conversation with early adopters & pragmatists:
* Early Adopters - They’re smart, they’re interested in your product, they speak your language, and they have good ideas.
* Pragmatists - They are practical. They want no-nonsense solutions to their problems.
Majority of Readers Here are Early Adopters and Pragmatists - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
16:36
Last year, authorities at IIT Bombay decided to cut off Internet access in hostel rooms for couple of hours in the night because "students preferred to sit in their rooms and surf the net rather than interact with their mates."
Rashmi Bansal had a similar experience during her visit to the IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Indore campuses - "the dorms had a deserted appearance. People just don’t feel the need to hang out in the common area on every floor. They’d rather communicate online."
Now an amusement park in the UK has introduced PDA Free Zones where adults will be asked to enter without PDAs and smartphones so that they get to "reconnect fully with their families". Any parent seen using the PDA or a smartphone will have it confiscated by the PDA police at Alton Towers.
This decision is partly based on a research that says "kids are fed up with their parents spending more time reading their emails than having fun with them."
Some historical monuments in India like The Taj Mahal and Red Fort have also been declared PDA-free zones but for a different reason - security.
Sorry! BlackBerry Phones Are Not Allowed Inside the Amusement Park - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
11:43
Login to your YouTube account and visit the Inbox - they have totally revamped the interface and it’s much more responsive now.
You can read comments on your YouTube videos and messages from other YouTube members inline - something like the auto-preview feature in Outlook. You can even act on messages (like reply, delete, mark as spam, etc) without leaving the current view. Very cool, here’s a quick screencast:
YouTube Inbox Gets an Upgrade - Wish Gmail Was Like This - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
21:13
If you are on a BlackBerry but have trouble installing Opera Mini on your phone or if the browser fails to connect to the internet, here’s a simple workaround.
1. Open http://mini.opera.com/ in your BlackBerry browser (not your desktop web browser) and select the version that mentions "No Signature" in brackets.
You’ll see download links that say Verisign / Thawte / Multiple Certificates - ignore them and download the unsigned version for your language. Here’s a direct link.
2. Next, open this help page in your desktop to determine the APN internet settings for your mobile service provider.
Open BlackBerry Settings -> Options -> Advanced Options -> TCP and type the APN value in the space provided. You may keep the user / password field blank if no value is specified on the Opera help site.
This excellent advice is courtesy Navjot Pawera - Thanks. Opera Mini does seem like a nice alternative to the built-in BlackBerry Internet browser.
Related: BlackBerry Guide for Power Users
Install Opera Mini Web Browser on your BlackBerry Mobile Phone - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
16:25
Say you have some 5 GB of critical data (photos, documents, program installers, etc) on an hard drive that you want to save to an offsite location. You can either copy these files to an external hard drive and put it safely in a bank locker or better still, subscribe to any of the web based data backup services.
EMC Mozy, one of the most popular online backup services, charges $4.95 per month for unlimited storage. Rival Carbonite also lets you can store unlimited data for a flat annual fee of $50. Then there’s Amazon S3 where you pay 15¢ per GB of storage space per month plus an additional 10¢ per GB of data transferred (one time fee).
Now compare these rates with that of a web hosting company like Dreamhost where you can rent 500 GB of web server space for $120 per year - apply a $100 discount coupon code and the storage cost works out to be just $20 per year. This seems to be the best option but before you run that rsync utility, read the policy:
"The customer agrees to make use of DreamHost Web Hosting servers primarily for the purpose of hosting a website. Data uploaded must be primarily for this purpose; DreamHost Web Hosting servers are not intended as a data backup or archiving service."
Robyn Peterson, chief technology officer for Ziff Davis Media, was looking to store some 250 GB of his personal data online and opted for a web hosting company that offered server space at rates comparable to that of Dreamhost.
The backup process was long but smooth (Robyn is a geek). And then one fine morning, he discovered that all his files have been deleted from the web server without any notification. The tech-support team responded saying that they "have been cracking down on people using our services for backing up files." The data was never recovered.
Related: Comparison of Online Backup Services, Mozy Review
Never Use a Web Hosting Server to Backup Data from the Hard Drive - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
23:20
Techmeme Search is a great tool for for ego-surfing and for tracking news related to your favorite topics (think Google Alerts).
For instance, you may want to know when a story that quotes "Mark Cuban" hits Techmeme. Or when a story from your own blog makes it to the Techmeme homepage. Or when a story that links to your blog gets featured on to Techmeme.
You can dig this kind of data very easily using advanced search operators in Techmeme. See examples:
1. body:mark cuban - find stories that mention "mark cuban" in the content (RSS).
2. link:labnol.org - Techmeme stories that link to labnol.org (RSS)
3. sourceurl:labnol.org - find stories from labnol.org that made it to Techmeme (RSS)
Now how do you track these search result. Techmeme currently doesn’t offer RSS feeds for their search results but that is no issue as we can easily create RSS feeds for Techmeme Search via dapper.net.
Following are some ready-to-subscribe feeds for Techmeme. Just remember to replace SEARCH_QUERY with your own phrase or search operator as outlined above.
http://www.dapper.net/transform.php?dappName=Techmeme&transformer=RSS&extraArg_title=Title&extraArg_description[]=Sources&extraArg_pubDate=Date&v_Search_Term=SEARCH_QUERY
Techmeme search also supports the regular boolean operators in search phrases. You may subscribe to the feed in your news reader, the iGoogle homepage or in sendmerss for instant email alerts.
And do install Techmeme Search in your Firefox or Internet Explorer search box for quick access.
Subscribe to RSS Feeds for Techmeme Search Results - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
21:51
Someone sent this email message that contained two very large attachments - they were video files and each weighed in excess of 6 MB.
While there’s enough free space on the hard drive, such big email attachments do inflate the size of Outlook PST files thus slowing down the backup process.
Luckily, there’s a very easy solution - you can save the attachment(s) on to your hard drive and then delete them from the main email message. Here’s how:
Step 1. Right click the email attachment that you want to get rid of and choose "Save As".
If there are two or more attachments in the messages, go to File -> Save Attachments -> Save All Attachments to create a copy on the hard drive in one go.
Step 2. Right click again and select the "Remove" option this time.
The bulky file is deleted from Outlook but your email message stays intact.
Related: Backup Your Outlook PST to Gmail
Remove Email Attachments In Outlook Without Deleting the Message - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
20:59
MyStudiyo is an interesting web-based quiz making software that lets you create multimedia quizzes and also tracks reader submissions.
Register a free account at MyStudiyo, give your quiz a name and then start adding questions. You can add as many questions as you like and may even supplement quiz questions with HTML text, hyperlinks, images or even YouTube videos.
The software supports multiple choice but single answer type questionnaire and you can also add feedback to each question that is displayed to the quizzers when they submit answer for any question.
At the end of the quiz, you can ask the audience to share their email, blog URL or any other data that finally gets saved to your reports. And if you like, quizzers will get redirected to your favorite website once they hit the submit button.
The Flash quizzes created with MyStudio can be embedded to almost any website including MySpace, Facebook, iGoogle or your WordPress blog via Gigya. Here’s a sample Google quiz for you.
Mystudiyo.com | Google Quiz | Support
Related: Articulate Quizmaker - Create Quiz and Surveys
MyStudiyo Quiz: Create Flash Quizzes Online, Embed Them Anywhere - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
17:44
Here’s a quick summary of upcoming changes in Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 with regards to document formats:
1. With Office 2007 SP2, you will be able save documents to Adobe PDF format without requiring external plug-ins.
Microsoft Office 2007 will still not be able to read content from your PDF files so Adobe Reader is safe.
2. Like PDF, Office 2007 will also let you save documents in ODF format which is used by OpenOffice and is supported by almost every web office suite.
3. Unlike PDF, you will be able to open OpenOffice documents in Office 2007 for reading and editing.
4. Office 2007 customers will get an open to set OpenOffice as the default document format. That means when you hit Ctrl+S inside Microsoft Word, the first choice will be .odt.
5. The expected release date for Microsoft Office Service Pack 2 is 1H 2009.
For details, check the press release or tech analysis by Matusow and Doug Mahugh.
Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack SP2 will be a True PDF Writer - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
12:29
You may remember the FeedBurner Chicklet hack that reveals the number of subscribers a particular feed has. We can extend the trick to get slightly more detailed statistics about any FeedBurner feed provided they have activated the FeedCount service.
To get started, you should know the name of FeedBurner feed which is generally written after the slash. For example, if the URL of the FeedBurner feed is feeds.feedburner.com/labnol, the feedname is labnol.
Case A: To get the latest subscriber count of a FeedBurner feed, type the following address in your Firefox browser. Alternatively, you can start notepad and paste this web address in the File->Open dialog.
You’ll see something like this:
<entry date=”2008-05-16″ circulation=”24460″ hits=”46621″ reach=”3491″/>
Circulation: The count of people who are subscribed to this feed.
Hits: The number of times that feed was requested by different clients on that day.
Reach: The number of people who viewed or clicked the content available in the feed.
Case B: If you like to know the number of feed subscribers on any particular day, just append the dates parameter to the above address. The date should be in the format yyyy-mm-dd.
In this example, lets see how many people subscribed to the labnol feed on April 1.
Case C: In this example, you’ll learn how to find the growth / decline in number of feed subscribers over a period of time. For this we need to append two dates to the URL - the start date and the end date.
For example, lets see how the feed circulation count changed during the first ten days of May 2008.
Remember to replace “labnol” with your own feed name.
For more details, check out the FeedBurner API and FeedBurner FAQ.
Find the Subscriber Count of a FeedBurner RSS Feed on a Given Day - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
11:59
Google today rolled out a small improvement in the Gmail loading screen - it now gives you an option to switch from standard view to the basic HTML view if you are browsing with a slow Internet connection.
You can further improve the Gmail loading speed by appending the nocheckbrowser parameter to the URL as it will force Gmail to skip the default browser check. Thanks NGAC.
http://mail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser
Related: Convert PDF Documents to HTML with Gmail
New Gmail Loading Screen for Slow Internet Connections - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
23:24
If you have been following RSS feeds for a long period of time, there may be duplicate feeds present in your news aggregator that have different URLs but point to the same content on the web.
This can happen due to various reasons like:
1. Website xyz.com originally had a feed at xyz.com/feed but later moved to xyz.com/rss without redirecting the previous one. You may be subscribed to both feeds.
2. Your news reader is not smart enough to recognize duplicate feeds and doesn’t throw a warning when you try adding a feed that already exists in your subscription list.
How to Detect and Remove Duplicate RSS Feeds ? (and Reduce RSS Stress)
Whatever be the reason, it is relatively easy to remove duplicate RSS feeds from your subscriptions.
The first step is to export your entire feed subscription list as an OPML file. They are plain text files and you can view the contents in any text editor including Notepad.
The next step is to sort the content of this file. You can use the sort command in DOS / Unix or just import this OPML file into Google Docs / Microsoft Excel and use the built-in Sort feature.
If your reading list is small, simple scroll through the list to detect any duplicate subscriptions - if two or more feeds share the same values in text, title and htmlURL fields, that means they are duplicates. Make a note of such feeds and unsubscribe from them in your RSS Reader.
If you reading list has hundreds of RSS feeds, you may like to explore Excel Macros or Advanced filters that can detect duplicate records in spreadsheets.
Related: How to Embed RSS Feeds into HTML Web Pages
Trim Down Your RSS Reading List By Removing Duplicate Feeds - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
21:18
Creative has launched a pocket sized video camera called the Vado Cam to compete with Flip Video which currently is the best-selling video camcorder at Amazon.
When it comes to features, Vado and Flip video cameras are very similar - both allow one-click video recording and also sport a built-in USB connector to quickly transfer video from the camera to your PC or Mac.
So should you buy Creative’s Vado Camera or Flip Video from Pure Digital?
If you are looking to buy a new video camera to gift your dad or for your own self, here are few things you should consider before deciding between The Flip camcorder and Vado Pocket Cam.
*this comparison is between the 30 minute Flip video camera and Vado since both are in the same price range - $99.
Size & Weight: If you compare the size of these two video camcorders, Vado (represented in blue) is much thinner than The Flip camera (yellow) - the width and height are roughly the same so both can easily slip in your shirt pocket. The Flip weighs around 136 grams while Vado is just 84 grams.
LCD Screen: Vado has a slightly larger screen at 2" (640×480) while Flip’s screen size is 1.5" (280×120 pixels) - both however shoot video at 640×480 resolution but the screen display will be much better in the case of Vado.
Recording Capacity & Format: The $99 Flip can record up to 30 minutes of video (512 MB internal memory) but with Vado, you can shoot video footage for up to 2 hours since it has 2GB memory. Both record video in MPEG4 AVI format that can be viewed using any media player and is also ready for sharing on the web.
Battery: Flip Video uses the regular AA batteries while Vado is fitted with a rechargeable battery that can easily be removed - another advantage for Creative.
Paris Hilton with her Flip Video
Extras: You can attach Vado to a tripod but this tripod slot is available only in the expensive versions of Flip. Both camcorders have a TV-out port so you can watch videos / pictures on a large TV screen without a computer just like the iPod. The A/V cable is included with The Flip while you have to buy it separately in the case of Vado Camcorder.
Overall: The Flip introduced the concept of pocket sized video cameras and they have received some great reviews from experts like David Pogue and Walt Mossberg. However, Creative’s Vado camera definitely has the potential to unseat Flip from the top slot because it’s thin, light and offers much more storage space.
Going forward, I expect Pure Video to bring down the cost of Flip Ultra series to match that of Vado - that will be the perfect time to buy this as a gift for you dad.
Related: Camcorder Buying Guide: NTSC vs PAL Cameras
Compare Creative Vado Camcorder with Flip Video Camera - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
16:57
Lot of image hosting websites rely on AdSense to pay the bandwidth bills. Similarly, there are YouTube clones that aggregate web videos and monetize page-views through Google AdSense. Then we have thousands of personal blogs that are share photo galleries and web videos but have little or no text content.
Some of these websites could be doing really good with regards to AdSense revenue but Google also gives Adwords advertisers an option to block display of ads on web pages that contain only "user generated content".
Google advertisers can also prevent their ads from getting displayed on social networks and online forums where "content changes often and is harder to monitor than content in more static pages."
And the recent changes in AdSense Policies allow publishers to place AdSense unites on registration form and pages that return 404 errors but again, Adwords clients have an option to hide their ads on such error pages.
Monetizing Non-Content Web Pages with AdSense Ads Can Be Hard - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
13:22
On this day (May 16), American physicist Theodore Harold Maiman fired the first laser beam at Hughes Research Laboratories.
According to NYT, “the first laser shone with the brilliance of a million suns. Its beam spread less in one mile than a flashlight beam spreads when directed across the room.”
Google is celebrating the first laser anniversary with this new logo on their homepage.
But were you able to recognize that this is Google logo ? I couldn’t.
Can You Guess What This Logo Is All About ? - Digital Inspiration | FAQ | RSS
10:32
PCmover is migration utility from Laplink that lets you quickly move pre-installed software applications, files and program settings from an old PC to your new computer. PCmover works with all versions of Windows from 95 to Vista.
You may also use PC-mover to transfer files from a Windows PC to an Intel-based Mac running Windows XP via Apple Boot Camp or Parallels Desktop for Mac.
Install the PCmover software on both computers and connect them over a LAN, wireless network or any parallel cable. Follow the instructions in the wizard and the selected programs, files and settings will automatically get transferred.
If you’re donating the old PC and moving to a new computer, PC-mover can help you retain commercial software like Microsoft Office or Adobe programs (and even games) by moving these applications to the new computer. And if you don’t have a home network or a connection cable, you can still migrate programs via CD or DVD disks.
The software costs ~$50 but you can download a licensed version for free today only from laplink.com as part of their 25th anniversary. Don’t miss this.
Related: What Can You Do With Old Computers
Transfer Software From One PC to Another with Laplink PC Mover - Free Download - Dig
