Last month, I posted about ReadAir – an application to read Google Reader from desktop. Now one of the top free desktop-based feed reader, RSS Bandit has added support for Google reader.
RSS Bandit nicely synchronize with Google Reader. If your read an item from Google Reader in RSS Bandit, it will be marked as read and will not show-up again when you log into online Google Reader.
RSS Bandit supports Newsgator already and with added support for Google Reader it will attract many users. Personally RSS Bandit will be my first desktop-based feed reader from now on.
Its free but only for Windows and it requires latest .NET Framework 3.5. Although RSS Bandit is small, please note that .NET 3.5 setup is approximately 200MB in size, so go for direct download if you have slow connection.
A desktop blogging client is a software which help you write blog posts from your desktop without logging into your blogs admin section. They normally have better WYSIWYG editors than those online post editors among and support blogging to multiple blogs. Also most desktop blogging client works offline so that you can write posts anytime from anywhere and you will need Internet connection only at the time of posting. Sounds great piece of software, isn’t it?
Like other useful software categories, you have many desktop blogging client to choose from. But on Windows, Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer dominates by its largest list of features and attractive price tag of $FREE.
Windows Live Writer is by any standard the best desktop blogging client ever made, and its much better than most paid alternatives. I paid $20 for ecto on Mac but its not even close to Windows Live Writer.
Anyway for Windows user, below is list of attractive features Windows Live Writer offers…
ADVERTISEMENT
Supports Most Blog Providers: WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, Windows Live Spaces, TypePad, Movable Type, and many others. Automatic blog configuration makes setting-up blog easy.
Post to multiple blogs: Themes are automatically detected for each blog. Switching between blogs requires just two clicks.
WYSIWYG Editor: While copy-pasting something from web, formatting is preserved. Also the editor generates valid markups by auto-removing inline CSS most web-pages add unnecessarily.
Spell checker: Inline spell checker helps you polish your text. Remove common spelling mistakes and remember your spelling suggestions.
Easy Hyperlinking: You can hyperlink to old posts easily. Also set link to open in new window or mark it NOFOLLOW.
Category & Tags: if your blog supports category and/or tags like WordPress, they will be integrated automatically. Support for add/edit is there, also preserve hierarchy if any.
Photo Publishing: Add photos to your blog post without uploading them first. Supports advance features like image resizing, transitional effects, shadowing, bordering, etc. Also provide field for ALT attribute value, good for SEO.
Web Preview Feature: One step ahead, it shows how your blog post will look on final website.
Drafts & Scheduling: You can store unlimited drafts locally or post them to server. You can also set a blog post to publish later or post old draft with current timestamp.
Maps & Direction: Built-in integration with Live Maps. Adding Google maps is also easy.
(Author’s note: This week I am planning to write more on making blogging task easier. If you have any question about anything related to blogging, please ask via comments below. I will try to answer them all.)
FaceSaerch is new image search engine where you can search face-pictures by name of the person, place, etc. Search results are powered by Googles image search.
The results are organized is iPhone like slide-show format which makes navigation simple. Below is sample search result when for Rahul Bansal…
For Facebook Users…
For facebook users they have a unique service to track friends update. Just login to facesearch update facebook application and you will see a page like below…
Here are some cool features…
Friend-list can be scrolled easily. Clicking on their picture will take you to their facebook profile.
List will be automatically scrolled in real-time, whenever any friend update her status. Also the status update is shown at the top of his facebook display pic.
You can poke and message your friends from same page.
You can update your own facebook status from same page.
I wonder if they are planning to extend a service like this to Orkut/MySpace users. Thanks Tejas for tip.
Google Alert is a service which let you subscribe to email notifications for any keyword on the web. On similar lines, using TweetBeep you can subscribe to any keyword on twitters public timeline.
This is useful if you are interested in knowing who is tweeting about you, your company, your domain or anything of your interest.
Creating account is very simple and once its done you can add unlimited alerts for any keywords or domains. Domain link alerts works even if they are shortened by a service like TinyUrl.
You can automatically ignore alerts from your own twitter account. Also replies to your twitter username (ex. @rahul286) can be ignored while subscribing to alerts of your own username.
One more thing… you can also monitor tweets of a particular twitter user for any keywords!
Long wait is over now. You can download final release of Firefox 3, worlds best & fastest browser!
We covered some new and exciting features of firefox 3 here.
On personal front, I have only one firefox extension, orkut scrapbook flooder, in public domain which is not updated from long time. I have to make few changes to it so that it continue to work on final version of Firefox 3, which I will do next week after coming back to Pune.
I am currently at my hometown and internet connectivity here is so poor that downloading firefox 3 will take more than a day (in best case). Anyway you guys have fun with firefox 3, I will join you soon.
In the meantime, please let me know about new features you like in firefox 3.
Kontera recently launched a bunch of plugins to help bloggers from different blogging platforms easily integrate kontera ads and thus make more money alongwith Google Adsense. Yes, Kontera is among very few well-performing ad networks which can be used alongwith Google Adsense. 🙂
The new Kontera solutions include:
A One-Click Blogger.com widget – All you have to do to get ads on your blog is login to your account and hit the “Kontera it” button.
A WordPress plugin enabling quick implementation and customization of the ads on WordPress blogs.
The Joomla and Drupal plug-ins providing the users of these open source content management solutions with faster and easier Kontera integration.
I personally prefer adding kontera codes manually to keep my plugin list short but bloggers who are not-so-techie can use suitable plugin from above list.
Lifeinlines or LiL is a new microblogging platform by Onelife Knowledge Services, an Indian startup. Lifeinlines is aimed at hobbyist bloggers and dairy writers who loose in fast pace of life after enthusiastic start beyond few posts or diarywriters who like to record their life but lost in its fast pace!
In their own words, “As you go about your day, Lifeinlines helps you capture and record your thoughts, feelings and experiences. So whether it’s waking up to the sound of music every morning, surviving a torturous presentation by a superior or getting teary eyed while watching your baby take his/her first step, Lifeinlines is your life… in lines.“
Lifeinlines is nicely integrated with everyday technology you use. You can SMS the sweet though just crossed your mind or simply capture the folk song at street and MMS it. If you are an online bug like me just keep posting via email/messenger or simply use their web interface. LiL is always there!
Apart from convenience, you also get a choice of assigning a level of privacy to everything you say or tell. You can choose to keep some things to yourself, whisper it to someone special, share with your best friends, close friends, all friends or make it public by a simple click. This nice multi-layer privacy is something every microblogging till date failed t incorporate.
Currently invitation only Lifeinlines will be open to all soon. Personally I can invite 25 friends, so if you want to tell story of your life, just post a comment with “Invite me” words in it. Thanks Ankur for inviting me… 🙂
Updates: Forgot to mention…
An input mode, voice 2 web – making a phone call to record your voice which is instantly posted to the web.
No post size limit… So this can be used for normal blogging too… 🙂
Arvind created a new apps for orkut user which let you add Gtalk widget on your account so that you can chat with all your Google Talk friends from orkut.
This integration although unofficial strongly prove demand for better gmail chat & orkut integration. I have seen many friends switching to facebook and enjoying their recent chat feature and I hope Orkut will answer back soon with a better integration.
UrTurn offers reward points to users based on their activities on social networks like facebook. These reward points have cash value and can be redeemed for prizes like iPhones or sold for cash on the UrTurn marketplace.
Activities includes, as expected, adding UrTurn application to your facebook account, inviting friends to use it. You will also get paid for daily activities like uploading photos, adding new friends, updating status on facebook.
A point-activity chart is shown below….
Also check list of prizes you can redeem UrTurn points for!
As of now UrTurn is only available for facebook. They will be soon coming on MySpace as a widget. They have no donut for orkut users as of now, but considering recent support for third-party applications on orkut, they will soon arrive their too.
I am yet to figure out the the business model of UrTurn, but real problem will be different. If this app become a hit, there will be many like it, and together they will rise increase spam on social networks.
Google Image Labeler is a feature of Google Search that allows you to label images and help improve the quality of Google’s image search results.
How does it work?
You’ll be randomly paired with a partner who’s online and using the feature. Over a two-minute period, you and your partner will:
View the same set of images.
Provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see.
Receive points when your label matches your partner’s label. The number of points will depend on how specific your label is.
See more images until time runs out.
ADVERTISEMENT
More details, tips & example are at this services’ page.
Now what’s so cool about this?
Many services ask user to contribute directly or indirectly and they have a group of people who moderate user contribution. Now such a human-intervention is impractical considering huge number of images being indexed by Google’s image search.
Now as described above, this random partnering approach removes any server side intervention completely. So the Google’s job is getting done without recruiting any human!
Whats in it for you?
All you get is points for your contribution. Anything about prizes or monetary benefit is not mentioned anywhere, but considering Google’s history of being generous, it will not be a surprise if top contributors receive any gift from Google in future. 🙂
