Author: Aditya Kane

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Video

Create RSS feeds for any website with Google Reader [Video]

I like reading blogs and following them. I do not usually visit the website unless I want to comment on a article. Hence I use Google Reader to keep track of all my favorite must read blogs. There are some web pages which do update but unfortunately there is no RSS feed for you to keep track of them. Rahul Bansal did review Page2Rss which allows you to create a RSS feed of any webpage.

Google_reader

But I was pleasantly suprised that now I can create RSS feeds for any webpage through Google Reader.

Google Reader

  • Log into your Google reader and click on Add Subscribtion.
  • Just enter the web page address which you want a RSS feed to be created.
  • For instance I wanted to check if Google India home page had a RSS feed, as it did not I created it with Google Reader.
  • So next time Google India has a new Doodle I will be notified through Google Reader.

google_reader_rss_webpage

Here is a video of how this feature works.

I think this is a cool feature and now I can keep an eagle eye on any webpage I want monitor for changes. Along with options of using send to feature of Google Reader, this one will surely make me stay with Google reader for a long time to come. What do you think about this new feature? Let me know through your comments.

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Tips

Get backup of Gmail contacts and attachments on your computer

Personally I use Gmail’s Offline feature for being able to compose or access certain emails in case I my internet connection is acting up or if its not stable. But I like this new add-on software called Mailbrowser and I liked the easy way I could access contacts and attachment files at one side.

mailbrowser

The good thing you will love about Mailbrowser is that it is not a web application and hence your personal Gmail details are not really stored online or on a 3rd party server. They are saved on your hard-disk itself. 😉

About MailBrowser

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  • MailBrowser works with Internet Explorer or Firefox. It saves all attachments and your contact list on to your computer.
  • I did not have to log into Gmail to access my contact list or attachment files.
  • A simple couple of clicks enabled me to send an email to someone in my contact list or even access the mail in which the attachment was received.
  • It works with the browser and I tested it with Firefox. The tab neatly sits to the right hand side of the browser.

I was initially apprehensive about why you might need this extra bit of software to save your Gmail contacts and attachments on your computer when I already had Gmail offline on my computer. MailBrowser would actually be quite useful as you can sort of use it like a mail client. You can free up space on Gmail and delete old attachments. It is not a standalone software so it cannot be compared to mail clients like Outlook but its compatibility with browser does make it worthwhile to try out.

Link: Mail Browser

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News

Google search gets better with highlighting of synonyms

Google has recently commented on its new search engine tweak which is to show synonyms in bold with keywords. This means if you search for a word which has a synonym, it will search for results with both keywords. A synonym is something that essentially has two differnet words with similar meaning. For example movie tickets and film tickets can mean the same thing.

Most search engines did not bother with synonyms as it was a little tricky. Here I give you the example of the words Film and Movie which might mean the same. But sometimes the context of a sentence can cease to make these words synonyms. For instance if you are searching for x-ray film then the search engine searching for the keyword ‘movie’ is quite useless.

This what Google has changed to its search engine. It has got its search engine to understand the context of the words and their synonyms and then give results.

Google Search for keywords Film Tickets

google_synonyms_keywords1

You can see that the results that are highlited are both Film and Movies when movie was never entered.

Google Search for keywords X-ray Film

google_synonyms_keywords2

You can see that the results highlighted are only about keywords X-ray film. No movie keyword around at all.

Why is this a good thing?

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A lot of words people use in one country might not be used as often in another. For instance in India we say ‘I am going to see a film’ but in the US ideally the sentence would be ‘I am going to see a movie’. This means someone from India is more prone to enter search results for ‘film’ rather than ‘movie’. This ability of Google search to highlight words with similar means within the context makes it easier to give us relevant results. Also for bloggers like us its good news that our websites wont have to contain the specific keywords for showing up on search engines. This probably means good news for good content and bad news for people looking to trick search engines.

If you come across more examples of synonyms showing up on Google search do let me know through your comments. 😉

Link: Google

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News

Blogger allows creating pages: Will it stem the migration to WordPress?

A lot of bloggers using Blogspot will now heave a sign of relief as now they have the option of creating pages just like the way you can create pages while using WordPress.

One of the main reasons for a lot of people to use WordPress has been the option of creating static pages. This allows the professional touch to a WordPress blog with static pages for About Us, Contact and Terms of Services. Blogger has many 3rd party methods to create pages on a blogspot blog but none from Blogger itself.

blogspot

How to create a pages on Blogger?

  • This feature is not yet available on your blogspot url. You need to sign into its draft version. Just like Google has Labs page for showcasing and testing new features and applications, Blogspot has draft. You can sign into draft by clicking here.
  • Now that I logged into my draft blogger account, all I needed was to go to my blog’s dashboard and visit the Posting section and I saw a new tab named ‘Edit Pages‘.

blogger_create_page

  • I could create pages and also add them to either blog sidebar or to blog tabs under the header. Just create a page and you will be prompted automatically to select with the pages widget.

blogger_create_page_widget

Blogger trying stop the migration?

I still think that Blogger is something that people love using for its simplicity. The sheer number of features do make WordPress a little daunting for someone starting out as a blogger. But most times when a bloggers has a decent following starts to look to migrate to a WordPress hosted blog. Even the founder of DW, Rahul Bansal first started writing on a Blogger but then moved to WordPress. He even wrote a post on how to migrate from Blogger to WordPress.

WordPress has the ability to create pages which does make a first choice for many developers as it is not just blog oriented. Blogger with the option of creating pages will obviously make it better for blogspot fans to stay on and not migrate.

What do you think? Will Blogger give WordPress competition in the future?

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Tips

Log into multiple Gmail accounts on Firefox [Video]

I am sure a many of you have Gmail accounts and if you frequent internet a lot you might have two or even Gmail accounts. Sometimes for a backup, sometimes to keep work and personal related emails separate majority of us might have two Gmail accounts. For instance I have two accounts, one was a personal one, the other I use for testing purposes, like I used it during this post. 🙂

If you have two Gmail accounts and need to use them often it can be a bit of a bother considering when you sign-in with one account you cannot sign into the another account on the same browser. Rahul Bansal did write about it previously on how to go about using different profiles on firefox at the same time.

Recently I used another method by using a Firefox add on for using two Gmail accounts at the same time. For using this add-on you need to have Greasemonkey installed on your Firefox browser. If you are using Windows with Firefox you can install Greasemonkey from here.

If you need a complete guide to installing Greasemonkey on Firefox click here.

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Google Account Multiple Login

  • Gmail Multi User Login works only after you have installed Greasemonkey.
  • Download the add-on by clicking here.
  • The add-on is installed and you can use Gmail multi user login. 😉
  • Once this add-on is installed on Firefox it replaces the Sign-Out link to the right hand top corner of your Gmail account with a drop which allows you to log into another Gmail account.

Here is a video of how the Add-on works.

Go ahead and try it out and let me know what you think about this add-on through your comments.

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Reviews

Do manual web crawling and look up site maps

Any one using a search engine is aware of crawlers that move across the internet finding us relevant links trying to go along with the relevancy of search key word that you enter. One of the main ideas of Search crawlers is to look up relevancy from one site to another and using Page Ranks its easier for it to find relevant information. A web crawler decides that the higher the page rank the more relevant is the information.

Google has tried allowing use to crawl the web for results manually byintroducing Wonder Wheel and Google Swirl for image search. These tools are high on eye candy but I think need to improve on relevancy of results. When I first used walk2web I was impressed with it’s presentation style but did not really use it much for getting to know how useful it can be.

web_crawling_walk2web

About Walk2Web

  • Walk2Web allows you to enter a URL of a website you want to navigate or look deeper into and has a cool interface to show important links.
  • It usually shows to the right hand corner links with some basic information. You can click on the link and takes your to the blog article directly.
  • I gives you something of a site map of the URL you are  digging deeper into. With internal links and other links you can get start exploring from one link to another which basically resembles manual crawling. While you click individual link it also produces a screen-shot to the right hand side.
  • This tool can be quite useful to get a visual simulation of how your website will be looked up or deconstructed by a search engine.
  • Apart from this I think its a must use for blog owners. As often blogs keep growing and your website might not well organized. How well organized or unorganized your blog site is can be easily found out by checking out how you can make your way around on the website.
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Take the example of Devils Workshop. If you enter the keywords ‘Join Devils Workshop‘ in Google you will get a link to our page which has details on joining us. This is great but if you join DW you also end up automatically joining rtBlogs network. One of our blogs is Facebooknol which is dedicated to Facebook related to posts.

If you enter on Google ‘Join Facebooknol‘ you will not get a link to Facebooknol for joining up. I was unaware of this until I used Walk2Web which did not show ‘how to join’ links with all our blogs except Dw when crawling through their internal links. 😉

Guess it helped us a bit to figure our and start working on a plan to clean up our blogs better. Hope you too find it useful. Do let me know through your comments.

Link: Walk2Web

Categories
Analysis

When should you not use shortened urls?

URL shortener services are dime a dozen out there on the internet and with the popularity and rise of Twitter I do not think that its about to change any time soon.

At DW we have covered many posts on short URLs from Bit.Ly to Goo.gl. There is a growing trend of some people using short URLs at places other than Twitter and that seems to be a disturbing trend. So I thought I would list down instances where I personally feel a shortened URL is inappropriate.

url_shorteners

Facebook:

Shortened URL on Twitter is fine as sharing a link to a blog can be almost impossible within the limit of 140 chars. But that rule doesn’t apply to Facebook and there is no reason to share short URL links on Facebook. Even if you do share a short url make sure you have comments along them so that the person who might click on the short URL will know its a valid link you are endorsing. One of the first virus to have infected Facebook was spread through a short URL. It would send private messages to people with accounts with short URL. People ended up clicking on it.

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Twitter:

There is no option but to use shortened URLs on Twitter but never post a link without a comments. You have no idea for checking where that short URL is leading, and hence accompanying text msg about what the URL is all about an absolute necessity.

Email:

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Again the same rule applies that if you do post a short URL you have to accompany with a description of where the URL leads the person clicking on it. I have not seen this trend often on Emails but it does happen sometimes. It can be annoying to the person reading as he has no way of checking where the URL leads him. Ideally never use short URL in emails as it seems like either you are spamming or maybe you want to hide the link for some reason.

I follow these rules and its better to have your own rules especially if your are a blogger. Short urls are great for Twitter but also a very handy way for sending you down to a infected website and making you vulnerable.

My advice is avoid using a shortened URL when ever possible. What do you think?

Categories
Reviews

Get traffic stats of any website with Chrome and Firefox

If you are using Chrome and interested in stats about the website you are viewing on the browser you will love this extension for Chrome. Its named SitezMeter and allows the user to easily look up details while on a website. About 3 months ago I did review Alexa toolbar for Firefox and started to search for something similar for Chrome. Here I came across SitezMeter extension for Chrome.

SitezMeter add-on can be really handy for SEO and SEM specialist along with being a must have for webmasters and website owners.

sitemeterz

About SiteMeterz

  • SiteMeterz works with both Firefox and Chrome. It displays information you need in a pop up instead of providing you with links to some website.
  • The pop up includes an overview of stats of the website you are viewing with the browser.
  • I could see Google Page Rank, Alexa Ranking and Compete Rank.
  • I could also compare websites and their relevant stats within the extension or add-on.
  • There were some graphs to make the stats more interesting but I do not think they could be called a serious representation of data. It is more sensible to think of the graphs as representative of trends.

Go ahead and try out if you like looking up site traffic details and rankings. If you have Firefox click here for the add-on. If you have Chrome click here to install the extension.

Categories
Analysis

What do Google and Bing think about each other? [Funny]

This one is not really a serious analysis of Google and Bing. It is neither a serious discussion about what these two search engines think about it. But I guess sometimes the truth seems to spill out unknowingly. Richie has published a funny post on what does Google think about other websites. Here I bring to your what does Google and Bing think about each other.

Google Search has a feature called Search Suggestions which drop down suggestions as you type in a query. Now Bing also comes with search suggestions.

What does Google think of Bing?

google_think_bing

What does Bing think of Google?

bing_think_google

Hope you liked it and now let me know what you think about it? 😉

Categories
Reviews

Use a dictionary in Chorme browser to improve vocabulary [Video]

If you love to blog or write you might like to sit with a dictionary even though it is quite impractical. Not just so that you avoid spelling mistakes but also get the exact context of a word you come across. Many of us might not have English as our first language of choice and this can be a bit of a problem when articulating exactly what you want.

The dictionary can be added through an extension in the Chrome browser and I am quite enjoying it. While writing this post I have already used it in twice and hence decided to record the video on how I can use different words or improve my choice of words using this extension.

use_dictionary_browser

An example is the word ‘articulating’ that I used before. It was not my first choice of word and I was planning to write ‘explaining’. But while reviewing part of the post I tested the extension. (See video at the end of the post)

About DictionaryTip

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  • A simple double click gets the dictionary started.
  • It has options to look up related information from dictionary.com, Wikipedia and much more.
  • Ironically when I added Google Dictionary it seemed not compatible with the extension.
  • It is quite easy to use with a popup appearing of your the dictionary after double clicking on any word of the text your are reading.

Video

What do you think? Will it help you improve your writing or even vocabulary? Or will you find it interesting just for a quick reference of a word you came across but were not sure about it’s meaning. Let me know through your comments.

Download: Dictionary Tip