Recently launched in labs, Google’s group messaging service – Google SMS Channels had many bugs and disadvantages as compared to other group SMS providers like SMSGupShup, Mytoday, Vakow, etc.. After getting a lot of comments and advice by its users, Google considered making some changes and improvements on their service, and I have listed some of ’em here:
The most disgusting & buggy thing in Google’s SMS channel was that, if you were new it, you had to send ‘ACCEPT’ message in addition to channel joining message. This problem is now being solved. Infact, its a good news for channel owners ‘cos your subscriber need not bother about sending 2 individual messages now. 🙂
When your friend accepts your invitation to join private channels, you will be notified about it via SMS.
Bug of unable to search for the channels created & subscribed by you has been fixed too.
Bug of unable to view too old posts has also been sorted out.
Channel owners can now customize whether their viewers will receive only headlines or full body contents. (Refer screenshot below).
More good channels added into "Editors pick" section.
Though these improvements are appreciated and are too good, still there are more options needed in Google’s SMS channels. Some of my personal advice to them are listed here:
As Mytoday provides for its mob users, an option to schedule messages and grant publishing rights to different people to publish new posts would really be great.
In addition to 10 digit mobile number, there’s a need for a short code like 567678, 575757, etc. By this, the channel owner can create a good impression about his/her channel.
Better user interface to send customized SMS to a channel. Integrating Google SMS channels with Gtalk would be a great option.
As advised by many other users, a private channel owner atleast should have the option to view his group subscribers.
These are the only points I pointed out. If you readers too have any suggestion for them then comment form is here for you. 🙂 May be some one from Google will drop in here and read out our suggestions. 😉
I can remember, a year ago, when I was a budding blogger, I was completely annoyed looking twitter badges in each and every blog I visited. All blogs with some unique badges read "Follow us on twitter". I didn’t know what twitter was.. After few months, I was over whelmed to know what exactly it was that made every bloggers make use of it. After working on it for a fortnight or a month, I came to the conclusion – "Micro blogging". Twitter can be called as a "platform for micro blogging".
For instance, you want to know what exactly your friends are doing right now or vice versa. But it is not possible for your friends to mail you or blog about each and every thing they are doing.. It would be too time consuming and clumsy task. But twitter is a micro blogging platform where all such things can be made possible. You just need to open an account and start follow your friends, after that all their updates will be visible to you. It is like sending a group SMS to everyone who are in your network. Here you can post updates of upto 140 characters long and every one following you will be able to view those updates from you. The best part is that, unlike Instant messengers, there are several ways available to post messages (also called tweets) – from web, desktop clients (like Twhirl), mobile clients, SMS, etc. Initially you start with their website, later I’ll say about some good twitter clients.
So, if you believe us then just open an account at twitter and start following some friends. You will see that, within months, you too will be addicted to twitter. 😉 To get started, you can follow DevilsWorkshop updates @rahul286 and my personal updates @deepakjain1989
For better understanding, you can have a look on this ‘How-to’ video by Leelefever.
You would think why I am writing such bogus topic, there are many anti virus program available over the internet still why what made me write about it.. Aren’t you thinking that?? Actually I am using this USB scanner – USB Disk Security since long. But few days back when I recommended this anti virus program to a friend of mine, he was really happy to know that this software really worked fine and specially prevented auto run viruses. And then, he wanted me to post about it.
Actually this is really a nice anti virus program meant specially for USB scanning. I would personally recommend all DW readers to install it if you use any USB devices. As said earlier, this is specially meant for USB scanning, so you need to install it apart from any other Anti virus program. The main advantage of using this app is that, it blocks auto run of your USB devices and scans any them as soon you plug it into your USB port (refer above screenshot).
Some of the other advantages of USB Disk Security are:
It ensures 100% protection against any threats via USB drive
Require no signature updates
Can be used without Internet connection as it does not require any signature updates
Compatible with all other softwares and anti viruses
Easy to use
This handy and easy to use costs comes with a lifetime validity for $ 55. Trial pack of it can be downloaded here.
Well I started blogging around three month ago using blogger and it turned out to be quite interesting experience. In my view, the best way to improve your blog is to see what other are doing?
So I started observing some very nicely formatted blogs and noticed what kind of hacks and modification they use for successful blogging and tried to implement them in my own template. Voila! After hours of research and browsing, I have made a list of all hacks which are must have for a professional blog.
Back up first
It is important to backup your Blogger template (especially before attempting any template customizations). Download a copy of your template to your computer, which you can access in the future if you need to restore your theme (or your entire blog).
For Blogger XML based templates (Layouts):
Go to Layout > Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard, then click on the link near the top of the page which says “Download Full Template”. This will save a copy of your full template as an XML file to your computer.
Now lets go for some best Blogger hacks…
Expandable post hack…
This hacks gives your blog a professional look by shrinking your full post to few lines and displaying a read more or continue reading link. In many ways this hack is unique. It increases your page impressions and it also helps your blog to load quickly by just loading summaries instead of full posts. This hack has many variations. Many bloggers have modified it in their own way. Let’s see some good variations…
Variation 1
ADVERTISEMENT
Ramani on hackosphere was one of first who promoted this hack. In this version of hack, it uses insertion of codes around various location of your template. This hack is good for people who use a simple template with many hacks.
ADVERTISEMENT
One drawback is: your have to edit each of your earlier post and insert codes between them to apply this hack uniformly. 🙁
ADVERTISEMENT
The problem with this is if you use other hacks it may get disturbed which may result in the read more link disappearing or sometimes appearing after post.Codes for this hack are linked below
I used Ramani’s hacks for quite a time which required editing around the <post:data.body/> section. It created some problems for me so I found this variation.
ADVERTISEMENT
Amanda on bloggerbuster offers a better version of this hack. This is better in many ways. You can use (install) it easily and after installing you don’t have to add separate code between and at end of posts. This automatically shrinks your post and adds read more link. Have a look at codes you need to add…
This is really a simple and useful widget. It adds a paged navigation at the end of your posts. Nice way to increase your page impression and it also give option to reader to visit more of your posts in random order.
Thanks to Rias he managed to make this hack as an widget so you can add it to your blog without any hassles. This is so perfect that no variation is needed for this one. Still if you want one, you can check this one posted on Devils Workshop by Arjun.
This is very useful and productive hack. It adds a list of related posts after your post content. This is the best way to make your visitor spend more time on your blog without annoying them at all. It also increases impressions and earnings. Also as a visitor spend more time on your blog, he is more likely to subscribe to your RSS feed.
Variation 1
Rias again offers a way to do this but his method is quite complex but offers flexibility. You can try it but it involves lot of editing. Good for bloggers who are comfortable with codes!
This is more comfortable way to install this hack on your blogger template. In this version, you need to put a section of code around <post.data:body/> section and its done!
Its a very easy to use and credit goes to Jackbook for this version of hack.
Social bookmarking services are a great way to drive more visitor to your blog and find many potential readers. Services like Digg, Stumble upon, Technorati has helped many bloggers succeed. There are methods which allows you put a set of icons that link to popular social bookmarking services.
Variation 1
Well this hack is designed by Annesh and Beautiful beta. This hack is simple to use.
Just a two step process and you can add a set of booking icons that will appears at the end of your each post. You can add/remove social bookmarking icons that as per your choice.
Rahul created this hack when he was on Blogger. This supports around 30 top social boomarking services and also provide option to add all of them once or one-by-one.
Using AdSense after each post is best way to increase your AdSense revenue. It helps in getting more clicks on ads. I used Rahul’s method to do it.
This is good for people who do not use expandable post hack. The problem is, ad appears on home page as well the post pages. Look at screen shot below…
If you are using expandable post hack then it doesn’t look good to show ads on homepage. You can avoid this by adding two lines of code around codes provided in Rahul’s post…
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
"Modified Google AdSense Ad Code"
</b:if>
The above lines add a condition which prevent this hack frrom working on homepage, label(category) or archive pages. Look at following screenshot for some help…
That’s All! If you have any really good hack, please share via comments!
SMS team at Google has come up with Google SMS Search. Now you can send all your queries to 9-77-33-00000 without paying any premium charges! SMS Search offers an easy-to-use way to type in free-form searches. No longer will your questions require complicated prefixes or a tight syntax. You can learn about the interesting features and try our interactive demo at http://www.google.co.in/sms.
The Google blog says that you only need to pay the standard SMS text charges for sending the SMS query to Google – there’s no fee for the incoming messages from Google. The service is available for all popular cellular networks including Airtel, BSNL, Idea, Reliance, Spice, Tata Indicom and Vodafone.
This service is available across all operators on both GSM and CDMA mobile phones. Give it a try by SMSing “help” to 9-77-33-00000 and don’t forget to save the number of your newly found friend (Google SMS) in your phone book!
Google SMS can be used for Live Cricket Scores, Railways PNR Status, Train schedule, Stock Quotes, Horoscopes, News, Movies, Flight status, Translation, Currency Conversion, etc.
Just came across this cool stuff – TwitterMail and found that it is very useful for tweeters.. By using this service, you can send tweets using any mail program. But you would surely say why should someone use mail program for tweeting leaving behind many user friendly applications. But, with my personal experience I would say it is really worth a try. It has several such features, which I think isn’t provided by any other twitter based app.
To start using this service, you need to register with TwitterMail with your existing twitter login and then they will provide you with a unique mail id, which you need to use to send tweets. The interface is too simple, you just need to send an email with your message on the body of the mail. What I like in TwitterMail is its support to schedule tweets.
Some of the advantages of TwitterMail are mentioned here:
ADVERTISEMENT
Helpful when you use public computers with no twitter based app.. You need not sign into twitter separately.
You can send them tweets when Twitter.com is down, tweets will be published as soon as twitter.com will be up
If you get a reply on twitter, they will be right in your inbox. Yes! All new replies will be sent to you via E-mail automatically.
To get recent tweets by your friends, you can send a mail with the subject line as "Friends".
Using TwitterMail you can send tweets with more than 140 characters.
All long URLs will be converted into short ones.
You can check the complete usage guide on TwitterMail’s official page. So just give it a try and also during partying next time, do not forget to schedule a tweet about your party. 😉 Happy tweeting!!
p align=”justify”>Installation: To start using Gphotospace, you just need to visit this page and install the supported plugin. After that go to
Tools-> Gphotospace and enter your Gmail Id and password.
Key features of this plugin:
ADVERTISEMENT
Its completely free, as you just need to install the plugin and use the free space available on your Gmail inbox.
As mentioned above, the plugin uploads photos too fast. As per official sources its upload speed is 5X faster than that of Flickr.
You can avail upto GBs of free space depending on the free space left on your Gmail account.
You can upload photos, and mail them to your friends right from the plugin window.
And the best part is that, unlike other photo sharing services, its space will be increasing daily 🙂
Note: Share your Gmail login info with Gphotospace at your own risk.
Earlier we posted about Free Rapidshare premium account giveaway by few bloggers. This giveaway by bloggers can simply be said as a practice for increasing their loyal readers. I think this an awesome idea for increasing a blog’s popularity and also its regular readers. Well, you must be aware of the fact, previously the give away was just "by blogger for blogger". It means those bloggers who wanted to participate in the contest, needed to be a blogger and had to post about the giveaway on their blog to be eligible for participation.
Unlike the previous giveaway, Geniushackers.com is giving away rapidshare login details to their email subscribers. Every month new login info will be mailed to their subscribers, but the catch is, as soon you receive the email, you need to change the password of provided account. The one who will change the password of provided account will be the owner. 🙂 Alternatively you can visit this page regularly and check for a account login. I would advice Rapidshare hungry guys to subscribe to Geniushackers without waiting any more. (Even I have subscribed to it). 😉
Update (18th Feb. 2008): Now the guys at genius hackers have come up with another give away plan wherein, if you are a blogger, you have got a chance to get login details for genuine Rapidshare account purchased by Genius Hackers. For further info and to know their terms and conditions, just head over to this page.
This is a trick I personally use and I am sure, you too would like to give it a try after reading the whole article. Though I am using this trick for quite long time, but just now it hit my mind to let the world know about this trick.
Well, you may have received some mails wherein the mail id on ‘To’ field is that of the sender or some one else but not yours and you may be wondering how come you received the mail when the recipient id is not yours. So this is a quite simple trick that many of us use while sending group email. This is usually done so that others identity may not be disclosed. So let me come to the point and disclose the procedure to send undisclosed identity mails. 😉
As usual compose an Email, on the ‘To’ field either enter your own mail id or the one you can disclose to all recipients. Now enter all those ids that you want not to disclose on the ‘BCC’ field. That’s it! You are done 🙂 By this, all will receive the mail but the addresses mentioned on the ‘BCC’ field will not be visible to anyone except to the person entered on the ‘To’ field.
So, the next time while sending greetings to a group of people, do not forget to use this trick. 🙂
Its not more than a couple of days ago that I posted about how to get Scrap alerts on mobile. But many users were disappointed because using this trick they get SMS only with the name of the scrap sender and not the full scrap messages. 🙁
But you need not worry anymore. After working hard and contacting with the guys at Google, I found another trick using which you can get full messages of a scrap on your mobile as a SMS (of course it must be less than 150 Characters and not html contents). 🙂
For this, you just need to add “#both” at the end of the feed URL that you use in your SMS Channel.
If you have not yet used this trick, then you may visit this page for complete step by step instructions.
