Users cannot search for posts shared on Google+, based on queries because Google+ does not have a search feature. It is quite ironic considering it is a Google product. Just like other features still not available with Google+, we have a third-party developer who has come to the rescue.
Google Plus Search is a search engine for looking up content and profiles on Google+. Note this works only with public content.
I could also use it to search for Google+ profiles and most search queries for even posts do show the profile name of the person who shared the content.
All the posts shared public on Google Reader and Google Buzz are also available which makes it quite useful for bloggers like me to look up social interaction of my blog across Google’s social products.
Google Plus Search also has a Chrome extension and an add-on for Firefox. So until Google brings out a search feature on Google+, use Google Plus Search.
Thanks to Andrew Shen for the tip. Do drop in your comments.
Bloggers, web-designers, content developers often spend a lot of time on their browser. They also take many screen-shots which they discuss with their colleagues or simply use as content in a blog post.
My first choice browser is Chrome, and hence I looked about for some extensions which were the best when it came to taking and editing screenshots.
Screen Capture extension is created by Google and works the best when it comes to taking simple screen captures. We can take screenshots of whole page, page region, visible content and screen regions. I could also set a folder where all the images saved should be stored. Users can also choose between default version of image being PNG or JPG.
Awesome screenshot is a very popular Chrome extension, and good for capturing a visible part, selected area and also the entire webpage. It also has options for cropping, adding circles, arrows and text to explain the screenshot.
The image can be saved online on Diigo.com or locally on your computer.
Picnik is mainly a photo editing tool but its extension can be used to quickly pick out images from a webpage and edit them online. The entire page can also be sent to Picnik to be edited later. It might not strictly be a screen-shot extension but it’s editing options makes it a must have on your Chrome.
Lightshot may not take entire screen-shots but it is unique as it can take a screenshot from even outside the browser. That means users can take screenshot of the desktop itself and not just the webpage they are viewing. Also the image can be quickly shared on Facebook and Twitter or sent to a friend via email.
Minus is a great website to upload screenshots or even photos and make galleries. They also have a nice desktop tool and now with Chrome extension, it can be used to take screenshots and upload it on Minus. The best part is it can be shared on social networks and users can add captions. Unfortunately it does not have other explanatory features like adding arrows or highlight options.
There are many good online image editing online tools which allow ready-made effects to even micro-management of effects. Editing tools like Picnik are integrated into photos that are stored on Picasa.
Pixlr – o – matic is an online photo editing tool from Pixlr, which has simpler feature and not as many confusing tweaks but still allows creating nice effects.
Visitors can upload their photos from their desktops or directly take one from their webcam. It think the webcam feature would be really useful for laptop and tablet owners.
Pixlr uses flash tool and has a nice light room effect. That means when the changes are made to the image, it looks like it is under a tray being processed. I do not think it serves any real purpose except it makes the editing part very cool.
Pixlr – o – matic has a about 86 different effects to choose and mix about.
Finally the photos can be saved on imm.io or back on your computer.
Many of my Twitter friends share the music they’re listening to on Twitter and I like it. This makes Twitter a source of music, Twusic is a new startup which grabs all those music links from Twitter and you can listen to them and even re-tweet them directly from the site.
In a nut shell, Twitter + Music = Twusic.
Features Of Twusic
With Twusic, you can listen and share your favorite music on Twitter.
There’s a tweet box on every page, you can edit the tweet before sharing it (make sure you authenticated the app).
You can also follow your tweeps on Twusic to get all their shared music on your MusicLine.
While listening to music, it gives a short bio of the artist and shows a few suggestions.
You can also create Playlists (click on Add To Playlist while listening to a song), Playlists will appear on your profile page.
You also get badges based on the number of followers (not Twitter followers) you get.
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Pros and Cons
Pros: A nice way to discover music and to keep track of them.
Cons: The site is a bit buggy, they must’ve replaced the video player with a music player (like Grooveshark). Even though the video player is taken from YouTube, you can’t customize it (pausing, maximizing to full screen etc).
Twusic Demo
If you’re a music buff, don’t forget to check it out!
A wireless router does allow a great amount of freedom. Most people with a laptop will end up getting themselves a wireless router, so they can be anywhere in the house while using their computers.
Tablet computers and smart-phones usually can hook up to a wireless router which means most WiFi networks have usually more than one device connecting to it.
Wireless Network Watcher is a nifty software tool which allows users to monitor all the wireless networks that connect to your router.
Just install the software on your computer and start scanning your wireless network.
It looks up the router you are connecting into and also shows a list (as seen in image above) of all the devices connected to the wireless network along with its MAC Address.
This works only on Windows XP and onwards.
This is perfect to scan your network from time to time, to make sure no one unauthorised is accessing your Wi-fi connection.
If you’re trying to access restricted US/UK websites (or if you want to stay away from hackers), for example – Hulu, TunnelBear can do the work for you. It’s not just about accessing restricted websites, it is also for people who like anonymity.
Sites with geographical restrictions are increasing, a recent example is Spotify. TunnelBear is the easiest VPN solution I have seen, here are its features.
Features of TunnelBear
With TunnelBear, you will stop getting annoyed of geographical restrictions, you can have access to all those US/UK – only websites.
TunnelBear is fast at switching the VPN on, compared to others.
If you’re in India and want to access Hulu, then select US and turn on TunnelBear.
TunnellBear initially gives you 500 MB of data per month, although you can get extra 1 GB every month by just tweeting about the app!
You can get unlimited data by paying 4.99$ per month.
The app also gives the data usage graph after the VPN is switched on.
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Pros and Cons
Pros: Ad-free, fast connectivity and scalable data usage.
Cons: Users need to register in order to start using TunnelBear.
Get 1 GB extra data every month!
I know, 500 MB data per month is not sufficient for you. Don’t worry, you can get an extra 1 GB data by tweeting about TunnelBear. All you have to do is, click on 1 GB promo on the app footer and then a window pops up in which you need to enter your twitter username and you’re done. In a couple of minutes, the TunnelBear team will track your tweet and add the extra 1GB to your TunnelBear account (that’s why registration is needed 😉 ).
Compatibility: Windows XP or higher and Mac.
Try out TunnelBear and give the feedback through comments.
Colours can mean a lot of things. Red usually means danger, green means go and so on. Color coded charts are often used as a great way to focus on important information, especially if there is an overload of information which needs to be digested.
Twimbow is a nice online tool to manage your Twitter account using a color coding strategy.
If you are using TweetDeck or HootSuite, you might be really interested in Twimbow. It has a neatly arranged look about it and a nice search feature.
It allows tagging certain accounts with a particular colour. For example I decided to mark @Devils_workshop as must read and hence assign it the color ‘Red’.
Now while looking up the feed, just clicking on the red colored icon, all the tweets from the categorised account get highlighted as seen in the image below.
I could also drag and drop accounts into different lists within seconds. Mentions, retweets and replies are also highlighted with different colors.
Users can add multiple twitter accounts. I found it faster than TweetDeck but then I have not tested it for more than a couple of hours.
Honestly, I found it better than TweetDeck and HootSuite for it’s new approach but it does lack the feature of scheduling tweets. If you want a new approach to managing your Twitter accounts from the browser, try out Twimbow. Do drop in your comments.
UPDATE: The team behind Twimbow, citing new API guidelines by Twitter have decided to discontinue supporting the app.
In today’s world where attention spans are less and having your photos shown in a quick slide-show is better as some people might not want to look at all the photos without a preview of sorts.
Slide-shows are a great way to quickly present something on your blog website. With browsers adopting and encouraging the use of HTML5, creating HTML5 slideshows of your favourite photos from Facebook or Picasa seems like a useful idea.
Slidemypics is a website which allows users to do just that.
Visit the website and sign into your choice of social network where you have saved photos. It supports Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and SmugMug.
Add your album after you sign in and arrange the photos you want to be included in the slide-show. Users can change the order and also exclude some photos.
Users can then share these photos as a link on Twitter or Facebook. I really liked the idea of an embed code which can be used to add these photos on your website.
Next time you decide to create a slide-show of your favourite photos, try out Slidemypics. Do drop in your comments.
As a tech blogger I read a lot of stuff related to technology, thanks to Google Reader and Instapaper, these two tools makes me productive and organized. There are a bunch of tools to save links for later viewing, Read It Later, Instapaper and many more.
Faveous is a new webapp similar to Instapaper but with a different approach, here are it’s features.
Features Of Faveous
You can add links from various sources to Faveous, namely YouTube (liked videos), Twitter (shared links,favorites), Facebook (your posts), Google Reader (your starred/liked items) and many more.
To organize the posts, you can tag or filter or even favorite them.
The search feature is pretty neat and results are relevant too.
By default your Faveous page is public with a customized URL, if you want you can make the page private.
Faveous also provides a RSS feed of your links, just click on the RSS icon on the right of search bar. Initially, the RSS feed is partial but you can make it into a full feed using Full Text RSS Feed.
You can also share the posts from Faveous to Facebook and Twitter.
They also provide a bookmarklet and a few browser extensions (Chrome/Firefox) which you can get from their Tools page.
Pros and Cons
Pros: As I said, Faveous can retrieve your favorited tweets from your twitter account, once it has retrieved them you can tell it to automatically un-favorite them. If you were using Instapaper previously, you can import your Instapaper archives to Faveous.
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Cons: Instapaper transforms all the saved links into readable (plain text) format while Faveous still doesn’t have this feature. Faveous is pretty slow when it comes to retrieving the content from selected sources.
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Getting The Invitation
Faveous is in private beta and you can’t sign up unless and until you get a invite code. To get the invitation, all you need to do is, tweet about the site using the Pay with a Tweet app (you need to sign in to your Twitter account and authorize it) on the invitations page.
Faveous definitely needs some polishing but it is worth keeping an eye on it. Try it out today.
Web designers and bloggers are often sharing a lot of links with friends. Many share up to 4-5 links everyday on a particular topic. Most do this over Twitter, Facebook or chat clients like Skype. The problem is it is disorganized and a good idea is to group together links on similar topics and share them as a group.
SitePouch allows you to drop-in URLs of multiple webpages and group the together.
As you can see in the image above, you can drop in multiple URLs and create a SitePouch. This will allow create a short URL which can be shared with friends.
When a friend visits this URL, they can see the links and simply click on them will open them on a different tab on the browser. A good point is that users can see where the links are pointing towards as they are not shortened.
This is similar to Bit.ly Bundles and Bridge URL which also allow users to share multiple URLs by grouping them together. Such services can also be used for temporary online bookmarking.
Users cannot search for posts shared on Google+, based on queries because Google+ does not have a search feature. It is quite ironic considering it is a Google product. Just like other features still not available with Google+, we have a third-party developer who has come to the rescue.
