Author: Aditya Kane

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Editorial

Monday Morning Blues [09th Nov 09]

Here comes Monday and it starts a new week for us here at rtBlogs. The previous week has been quite a busy week with the launch of our new blog WpVeda. Also a post I have written at DW got referred by a reputed tech blog website called Computer World. 🙂

monday_morning_blues091109

WpVeda: A new blog about WordPress

WpVeda is our new blog on rtBlogs network and dedicated to WordPress. Why wordpress you might ask? But this is a blog which will not cover daily news about WordPress instead will be a playground for ideas and projects around WordPress.

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The concept of WpVeda germinated with an idea to have an internal wiki for rtCamp employees. We felt later that giving our developers a public forum to showcase their talents would be more inspiring and hence now we have WpVeda.

Pleasant Surprise

At the cost of looking like I am blowing my own trumpet I must share with you that Deepak Jain last week noticed that a post I wrote on DW about Microsoft Security Essentials was featured with credits in the popular tech blog Computer World. It was shared as a part of various views on Security Essentials by Richi Jennings a independent consultant who writes for Computer World.

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We did not get a many posts from our guest authors for DW last week, so in this section I have included a couple of posts from WpVeda which you might find interesting along with a post of mine which has got most comments over the last week.

Follow DW on Facebook and Twitter

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News

Twitter wants to cut down irrelevancy on trends

The latest ace up Twitter’s sleeve will be a project that will reduce irrelevancy on trends. Trends seem to be a great way to follow news items or current events on Twitter. But now a days the moment a trend is up on Twitter it gets inundated with many spam and unrelated tweets which are trying to desperately switch your attention somewhere else.

With the recent add-ons like Lists and Retweet, clearing up the junk in Trending topics just might make Twitter the preferred website to follow events online.

Twitter_trends

Twitter Trends and problems with relevancy

  • Trends are a way for users to promote information. I was looking for the cricket score and following #cricket and I found that almost 1 in every 4th tweet there was irrelevant.
  • The reason irrelevancy comes into the picture is not always because of spammers but it also happens inadvertently. Sometimes people end up discussing something unrelated when on that particular trend because of the open nature of Twitter.
  • Twitter has promised that it will devise a way to make trending topics more relevant and cut down the tweets from spammers.
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What Twitter might do?

I had discussed Bing Twitter in a past article which is a feature with the search engine Bing that allowed search users to look up relevant Tweets about a particular topic. I think Twitter will take search engine results and other ways Tweets are looked up online to rank them within a trend for relevancy. I think all of this will take place behind the scenes as Twitter did announce in its blog that the results of Twitter trends becoming more relevant won’t be seen immediately but see over time gradually.

Follow me on Twitter: @bombaypirate

Follow DW on Twitter: @Devils_Workshop

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Tips

Friend Connect: How it can micro-target adsense?

Friend Connect is quite a potent way for website owners and bloggers to become micro-sensitive to visitors. There are many new changes with this service and it allows for a greater amount of information to be shared in the form of interests and hence allowing visitors to find relevant people and websites online.

How will Friend Connect help?

Friend Connect will allow visitors on a website to share information through member gadgets and can have relevant ads from Google Adsense using information taken with the various interactive web gadgets. For example if you put up Nokia as your favorite mobile maker while on a mobile review website, Friend Connect will get you relevant Nokia ads with Google Adsense.

This can be quite handy as it will actually increase the chances of someone clicking on the ads being displayed on the website. This may not be very handy for big websites as the assumption with Friend Connect is that all your visitors might have a Google account especially for certain features but it is very handy for bloggers as it is mainly an interactive tool to help make the content on your website sensitive to what visitors are interested in.

friendconnect_google

What is Friend Connect?

  • Friend Connect has a lot of new gadgets you can add-on to build a community for your blog. It allows you to send newsletters, gather users’ interests and review data.
  • It allows you to exchange messages on the website via poll gadgets or interests’ section can be included on to a website using HTML code which is generated by Friend Connect.
  • A neat way to get feedback about your blog with Friend Connect is their Ratings and comments web-gadgets which can be great way to get instant feedback on the content of a website.

Links: Adsense Blog

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Tips

The terminal for all things you have on Google

Google has often said that it plans to be the one stop shop for organizing all information that is online. But if you have 10 different and not necessarily interlinked services and products it can end up being unstructured. This is where Google Dashboard comes into the picture and becomes a central nervous system for everything you might have on Google.

Google_dashboard1

The idea of Google Dashboard is quite simple. Imagine that you have settings of Google Docs, Gmail, Google Chat, Blogger, Orkut, Google Talk and You Tube on one single page. That page is Google Dashboard. It is a single service which helps to set and access data for most of their services.

Google Dashboard

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  • Many people have expressed concern at all the data Google has as they use various services at various times and lose track of it.
  • Dashboard is built with an aim to let users keep track of what exactly they store on Google.
  • Google claims and I think correctly to be the only company to offer such a service.

I don’t see the average user on Google who uses Gmail or Google Search to find Google Dashboard all that interesting, but it can be a handy tool for webmasters around the world who are using Google Apps and services like Adsense and Analytics.

Below is a video presentation about Google Dashboard from their blog.

Link: Google Blog

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News

Twitter wants to Retweet

Retweet is fast becoming a favorite feature amongst Twitter users to spread the word and has been incorporated into many Twitter apps. To Retweet from the Twitter website you still have to copy-paste the message with ‘RT’ at the beginning. That is about to change with Twitter announcing that it will soon roll out Retweet function on its website.

This could be ominous as a lot of casual users of Twitter probably use a desktop application only so they could easily organize the accounts they follow and also Retweet their favorite tweets. With Lists and Retweet functions Twitter might actually hurt twitter based desktop applications out there. Finally it also might help a lot of new users on Twitter to be not too confused. A familiar first Tweet for someone new on Twitter is often  ‘Figuring out how Twitter works’ 😉

Twitter_retweet

What to expect from retweet?

  • It is clear from a previous thinking out aloud exercise by Twitter is that it will have some sort of visual feature to show up the Retweets.
  • One way is when you moved the mouse over the Retweet it will show up more details the another approach could be a separate list where you can access all Retweets. I cannot confirm this as my Twitter account is not amongst the privileged ones Twitter is testing this functionality on. 😉
  • Another interesting feature which does not exist upto now is removing Retweet. Almost certainly there will be an option to remove a Retweet that you have made. The reason mainly could be a way to allow people to curb the spread of rumors on Twitter which has been happening a lot recently.

Follow on Twitter @bombaypirate @Devils Workshop

Image Credit: The WWW Blog

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News

MSN homepage to undergo a makeover

The MSN homepage will be undergoing some changes very soon. This won’t be just restricted to its style and format but also will have some added functionality. I looked it up on the Bing blog which made the announcement. I used the preview version of MSN homepage which will be available by next year.

The Old and the New

New Version (preview)

msn_homepage_new

  • The new version seems to be distinctly white and a lot less blue which has been the hallmark of the MSN homepage for over 10 years now. Also the logo looks different and minimalistic.
  • The new version looked a lot less customizable but that is probably because it is still in preview mode and hence might not have all the functionalities.
  • From the homepage I can access a feed from Hotmail. That is not a novelty as I can do that with the old version too, but the new one allows me to get feeds from social networks like Windows Live, Facebook and Twitter.
  • I also found that Bing search has been integrated in a more wholesome way. The information with Bing search results will take into account the zip code you are living in. This will be a way to localize search content. MSN has had success with this by localizing weather and news updates by using the zip code of the person logged into the homepage.

Soon to be Old Version

msn_homepage_old

Comparing the two, it is obvious that MSN is trying clean up it’s act and prefers to let people explore the website rather than bombarding them with information.

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News

Yahoo Search gets musical

Yesterday I wrote about Google trying to help people search for music with Google Music Search. I wondered about other search engines and how good they were while handling music related search queries. This is when I came across an article online which was announcing how Yahoo Search was also a great way to search music.

While Google has made its Music search more subtle along with its Search Engine, Yahoo seems to do a better job with it. Taking a closer look I realized this was not at all surprising considering Yahoo Music, a beta product was being promoted with the search results.

Yahoo Search for Music

yahoosearch_music1

  1. The first thing that is striking is the way there are links to listen to music. Most of these links allowed me to listen to songs through Rhapsody. There is also another link to listen to more songs. This leads you directly to the Yahoo Music page. This is still in beta stage and I think later on Yahoo might push the service more aggressively.
  2. Music videos are also something that is crucial to sell music and I could look up related videos of my search query. This looked a lot similar to how Google Search deals with music queries. I wonder who got inspired by whom. 😉
  3. Finally to the left there are related links to Wikipedia, VH1, Rhapsody and Last fm. This is where Yahoo Search will be looking to monetize this search feature with tie ups with Rhapsody. This enables the user to buy music online.

I did not get to check out Google’s Music Search as it is still work under progress and mainly restricted to the US. But I liked what I got from Yahoo and felt that we do not have to like everything that Google does and there are still some reasons to visit Yahoo. 🙂

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Reviews

Repair Internet Explorer with IE Utility

A couple of days ago I came across a great software to fix the Internet Explorer browser. I did not have the opportunity to test it until yesterday when a friend had his IE browser crashing. It is called IE Utility which fixes the Internet Explorer browser by re-registering 89 .dll and .ocx files.

IE_utility01

IE Utility

  • All I needed to do was download the .zip file. Extract its contents and run IE Utility.
  • It registered the .dll and .ocx files and fixed the IE browser which was crashing.
  • This is a great utility for systems which have suffered malware attacks and have their IE browser acting up.
  • Usual method of restoring the browser is to re-install it. This is not easy especially with Vista. Also re-registering .dll files by using .bat files can be quite tedious and confusing.
  • IE Utility does this all by itself after you run the software. It works with IE7 and IE8 on Vista and Windows7.

IE Utility can be download from The Windows Club a website owned by Anand Khanse and IE Utility is developed by Raghu Boddu.

Links: The Windows Club

Categories
Analysis

Is Internet Explorer’s fate tied to Windows7?

Over the past few months if you are following news about how Internet Explorer’s market share has been falling consistently to such an extent that some experts believe that the market share which is almost two-thirds will fall below half in the next 2 years. I want to share some trends and why I think Internet Explorer’s fate seems to be tied to Windows 7.

Image and stats taken from marketshare.hitslink.com

Browser_mktshare_oct

Market Share in October 2009

  • Internet Explorer has a market share of 64.64% which is still massive, but it has been falling over a percent every month for almost two years.
  • The market share loss is massive considering the the fact that almost two years ago IE had a market share over 78%.
  • This loss of market share is almost exclusively picked up by Firefox and more recently even Chrome has picked up the numbers.
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Why Internet Explorer is losing the plot?

  • Looking at browser version’s market share, IE 6 is 23.30 % which is now smaller than Firefox’s 24.07%.
  • This is a ominous sign and shows how popularity of Internet Explorer is tied up with the Windows OS. IE 6 was a default browser with Windows XP. Windows Vista which did not go down well with consumers saw its pre-installed IE 7 version still having a share much less than IE 6.
  • If IE6 is more popular than the IE7 and IE8 at the moment, it looks like that people after using IE6 end up migrating to Firefox or Chrome. Obviously if a older version is more popular than the new one, we can safely say that Internet Explorer has got its newer versions completely wrong.

Why is Windows 7 sole hope for Internet Explorer?

  • One thing that holds out hope for Internet Explorer browser is how well received IE8 has been. Internet Explorer 8 when released back in April 09, has managed to catch up and consolidate. It seems to have done so at the expense of of IE7 but that still means people like using IE8.
  • Microsoft’s Windows 7 comes pre-installed with IE8 as its browser. If you notice the lackluster performance of Vista has hurt IE7, that means IE8’s numbers will be hugely reliant on how well received Windows 7 will be.
  • Windows 7 has had pretty good reviews and it might save Internet Explorer for the moment. But the heady days of having 80% of the market share with their browsers are probably a thing of the past for Internet Explorer.
  • When Google releases it thread-bare Chrome OS, it might push up the numbers for Chrome Browser. Because of the reliance of IE on Windows, Chrome OS will probably hurt Internet Explorer much more than Firefox.

Links: Browser Market Share | Browser Version Market Share

Categories
Tips

Google Reader: Look up total subscribers of any blog

To subscribe to blogs I use Google Reader. It is a simple interface and has a decent system of organizing various blogs you are following into different folders. I felt what it lacks are details on how many people are following a particular blog using Google Reader. But I realized there is a trick to finding that information out. It is not really a feature within Google Reader but an inadvertent trick.

How to look up total subscribers on a particular Blog?

  • It is quite simple. Once you are logged into Google Reader, on the top left had corner you can see the ‘Add a subscription‘ button. Click on it and search for the blog you want to look up. It does not matter if you are already a subscriber as it will still show up in search results.

googlereader_trick1

  • The results will show up on the right side with links to relevant blogs that you can add. Next to the link displayed are the number of subscribers to the blog using Google Reader. (see image below)

googlereader_trick2

A few more functions and tips for using Google Reader

  • Another great way to sort out which blog you actually end up reading or skipping in Google Reader is the ‘Trends‘ link which is below the ‘Home‘ link. This shows up statistics which throw light on subscription trends and reading trends. This includes information like how many posts from a blog do we actually read. 😉

googlereader_trick3

  • Also while using Google Reader another few handy tips are that while reading a post if you want to visit the original article at the blog’s website just press the ‘V’ key and a new tab is opened with the page where the article has been published originally. Also pressing the ‘T’ key you can toggle the article as unread or read.

Hope you find the tips useful and if you have anymore to share do write in your comments. 🙂

Link: Google Reader | Reader Keyboard Shortcuts