When I was in school, my teacher would advise me always to make a diagram or flowchart of things I learnt, so I could understand and retain more. Making diagrams and charts is a great way to explain to your readers new ideas, trends and concepts emerging out of data.
Webmasters can create complex graphical charts and then embed them into their website by using Google Charts. It is a product on Google Code and basically useful to create charts from databases or data from Google Docs.
Just look up Image Chart Editor and view a host of different chart types you can select from.
Along with different types of charts, there is also the option of creating new charts from ground up. This gives a great amount of flexibility.
Once done, you can tweak the HTML code if you want, which can then be copied and entered on your website, so visitors can enjoy the diagram charts on your website.
Cookies are one of the main components of a browser, they are used to store logins etc. Many ad agencies store cookies which track you all over the web. These cookies will personalize the ads you see on the web. Most of the people don’t like this as this is kind of privacy intrusion and may be you’re one of them. If you are so curious to know the sites which are tracking you, there are a few tools to do so.
Collusion
Collusion is an interactive way to know who’s tracking you, in real-time. It’s actually a Firefox add-on, once it’s installed, head on to their site(on Firefox) and start browsing as you would normally do. After a few seconds of browsing you will see an interactive image showing dots which correspond to sites.
Features of Collusion
An interactive way to track your trackers in real-time.
Each dot correspond to a website (which is tracking you).
The red ones are confirmed trackers and the grey ones are not confirmed, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t track you.
Hover your cursor over a dot to know more about it.
Unfortunately Collusion doesn’t have a feature to block the detected trackers, but Firefox has an inbuilt feature to block trackers, you can enable this feature from the options window (image below). Link: Collusion
Ghostery
As Collusion is Firefox-only, Chrome users can make use of Ghostery which is quite similar to Collusion but also gives an option to block trackers.
Features of Ghostery
When you load a website after installing Ghostery, you get the trackers and respective info under it (as shown in the image).
Click on More info to get extra information about the trackers, you can view what data each tracker collects from you.
Block trackers, this one is an experimental feature. If you’re not satisfied with Ghostery’s performance in blocking trackers, you may try Keep My Opt Outs for Chrome.
Link: Ghostery Do you really care about privacy? We like to hear that in the comments.
Here’s is a 3rd party application that allows you to migrate all your facebook friends into your Gmail or Google+ (actually to Google Contacts) account.
Just follow the step by step guide to use Friends to Gmail, a Facebook app that extracts your Facebooks contacts in .CSV format and then lets you save it on your computer and then tells you to import it on Google Contacts.
Moving Facebook Contacts to Gmail Contacts
Go to friendstogmail website and click on “Connect with Facebook”
Make sure you are logged on to your Facebook account and now authorize this app to use yor personal information.
Now wait for a few moments while the application processes your friends
Copy the data now generated and save it in a text file with the extension “.csv”.
Now point your web browser to http://www.google.com/contacts/ .Sign in with your desired Google Account and select Import. Browse to the facebook.csv file and click on Import.
Now all your contacts have been uploaded into to your Google Account, which can be accessed via Gmail or Google+. You might also be in can also move all your Facebook albums to Google+ with a Chrome extension.
If you’re on Dev or Canary channel of Chrome, you might have observed the little cute cup cake icon on the extreme top left corner of Chrome.
Previously Chrome profiles feature used to be in about:flags, but now Google integrated into Dev and Canary channels of Chrome. This one is one of the best features of Chrome, why? Read on.
Creating New Chrome Profiles
To create a Chrome profile,
Click on the cup cake icon, under Chrome Profiles, click on New Chrome Profile.
A new window pops up, in the window enter the profile name, select the icon and click on Create.
Use Chrome Profiles For Faster Browsing
I have many apps, extensions installed in my default profile of Chrome, now certainly those apps will lag the browser. Now, to make your Chrome faster, all you have to do is, just make a new Chrome profile. Make sure you don’t install any extensions, user-scripts or apps in it, use that profile only for browsing. Pretty simple.
Do you like this feature? Let us know through the comments.
Thinking that you’re a power user of Google services? Think again, I might be able to prove you wrong. 😉
We know, Google is much more than a search engine and many of its services are overlooked by many people. Here are the top 6 Google services you may not be knowing about but are pretty nifty.
#1. What do you love?
Previously mentioned WDYL (What do you love) shows results from different Google products for your search query. This one is extremely useful when you’re researching a topic or a person. Get started by entering a search query, you get results from Youtube, Google Blog search, Maps, Translate and many more Google products.
PostRank is an aggregator of social engagement data, it has been acquired by Google recently. PostRank also has developed many widgets and plugins, one such plugin is PostRank extension for Chrome. This extension filters out the most popular posts from the normal ones, it uses social statistics (Tweets, Facebook shares etc) to determine the quality of a post.
Currently available only in USA, Google Offers helps you in finding the best deals in your area. All you have to do is, just subscribe to Google Offers and you get notified of amazing deals in your area. If you’re interested in any offer, you can buy the voucher via Google Checkout, print it and use it.
Photovine is a smart phone app made by Google which promises to make photo sharing more fun. It is still not released but you can always ask for an invite.
With Google Wallet, you can transform your smart phone into a wallet. Google is currently working on smart phones with inbuilt card readers, so the only plastic you need to carry is your phone. The card reader scans your credit card and stores virtual version of it in the micro chip of the mobile, so the next time you shop online, you can just tap and pay.
A Google a Day is a fun game where you get a new puzzle everyday and you need to use your search skills to solve it. Geeks love it. Checkout Inside Search if you’re looking for some Google search tips.
Google Plus has sparked off a good number of third-party extensions and online apps. As more and more people adopt Google+, we might find it a little over-whelming to follow many public profiles. A good idea would be to have a RSS feed of that particular Google+ profile, so we can easily follow it via Google Reader or other RSS Readers.
In came to know in a blog post, about plusfeed.appspot which allows creating RSS of Google+ profiles.
Creating RSS Feeds of Google+ Profiles
First look up the Google+ profile you are looking to visit. Every profile has a unique ID number which is also part of the profile’s URL.
Just copy that number as shown in the image below. I decided to follow Larry Page (Founder and CEO of Google) on Google+.
Now append that number to plusfeed.appspot.com/ so it looks something like plusfeed.appspot.com/106189723444098348646.
This will create a RSS feed of the page, all that is left to do is to add the URL into your Google Reader and you get a feed of the Google+ profile’s posts.
Personallly I never really liked Facebook, but because all my friends are on it, I caved in and got myself an account. This also meant that when it came to sharing photos with friends, I chose Facebook. Now we have Google+ which I have started to like a lot. I wanted to move all my Facebook Albums on Google+ and needed a quick automated solution.
Thankfully, I use Chrome as a browser and the Move Your Photos extension is perfect to move my albums from Facebook to Picasa.
Moving from Facebook to Picasa
First download and install the Move Your Photos Chrome Extension. It’s icon should appear next to the address bar on Chrome.
Login to Facebook from the Chrome extension. Also make sure you are logged into Picasa or Google+ account on the same browser.
The “Request for Permission” page loads up for accessing your Facebook Albums. Click on Allow and new page loads which might take a few moments.
This new page has all your Facebook Albums listed with all photos in them being displayed as thumbnails. Users can select each album or even single photo from a particular album. After you have selected the individual albums and photos in them, click on Upload.
This will create the Albums and transfer the selected images with the same album names as they are on Facebook.
This simple extension on Chrome, can quickly transfer and move your Facebook profile to Google+ and would suit ideally people looking to upload images in both services or planning to use Google+ albums as some sort of backup of Facebook photos.
Google+ is still in private beta but developers have already put their mighty efforts and built many extensions, bookmarklets, add-ons, userscripts, web apps and much more! This post lists all those tools (webapps, extensions and everything in between) which can make Google+ better in all aspects.
#1. Color Plus
Let’s start with the most basic tool. Most of the geeks/bloggers (including me) didn’t like the color of the Google bar and many wanted to customize it, there are many ways to do this. If you’re on Chrome then Color Plus might do the work for you. Using Firefox? No worries, there’s a userscript for that.
Shortens your Google+ profile URL, hopefully Google will introduce this feature in the coming days. Just choose a nick name, enter your profile ID and you’re done! Your shortened URL will be something like this – http://gplus.to/nickname
Some say that the best feature of Google+ is its integration with the Google bar, no doubt, it’s a wonderful feature but it may make a bit unproductive as it follows you everywhere (on all Google sites).
ADVERTISEMENT
Block Plus removes the Google+ integration from the Google bar and you may continue doing your work than concentrating on Google+ notifications. Another Userscript, Google+ notifications blocker, does the same thing but eventually works on all browsers.
This is a nice addition to Google+, Plusbar is a bookmarklet which converts Google+ into your entertainment dashboard. You can watch BBC News, Al Jazeera, Nasa TV and many other live streaming channels directly from Google plus.
This is just the opposite to Block Plus, Surplus makes it easy to check your Google+ updates on non-Google sites. Apart from checking updates, you can also post links/normal text. You can also turn on desktop notifications and sounds in the options.
PlusFeed allows you to follow Google+ posts of anyone by subscribing to their feed. To get the feed address, replace Google_plus_ID in http://plusfeed.appspot.com/Google_plus_ID with your Google plus ID and subscribe to it using your RSS reader.
Even though Google+ is liked by most of the beta testers, only a very few of them left Facebook and decided to choose Google plus as their primary networking tool. So, as with the arrival of Google+, the +1 button has got some meaning and many started +1’ing (along with liking) their favorite articles.
Like +1 combines +1 button and like button into a single button, so that you can save a few seconds. Your +1’s won’t appear instantly, it may take a minute to appear.
Share your Google+ posts on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with a couple of clicks. Just click on Share on.. present beside the Share option and choose the site on which you want to share the post.
Pretty self-explanatory, it’s a directory of all the people who signed up for Google+, it detects your area and shows user suggestions. Apart from acting as a people directory, it is also a showcase of Google+ statistics and top Google+ users which I found interesting.
While Find People on Plus shows some mild statistics of every Google+ user, Google+ Statistics is better if you want to checkout graphs, following trends etc. You might know about Twitter Counter, the same guys have built Google+ Statistics.
You can also track your Google+ statistics by signing up using your Google account. It also provides a statistics widget which you can embed on your site.
This chrome extension will help you in exporting all your Facebook photos to your Picasa account. If you’re migrating to Google+ then this one will be handy, as you don’t need to manually export the photos.
You need to login to Facebook and grand permission to the app, as this app has become popular lately, it may take more time to migrate the photos.
With GTools+ you can customize the interface of Google+ such as editing the Google bar components, changing the position of the chat box, pinning the Google bar to the top and much more. It can also be used for translation and to setup notifications for Google+, you can even customize the color of notifications.
There are many extensions and add-ons to post sync your Google+ posts with Twitter and Facebook, but this one is extension-free. You just need to authorize the app in Twitter and Facebook and post a Google+ update of the authorization string you get (share it with only + Agent G).
Once you have done that, you can sync your Google+ posts by simply sharing the posts with +Agent G.
When it comes to success of a new social network, it depends to a large extent on how excited are third-party developers are about the new service. I have already written about Google+ profile URL shortener and today I came across a directory for Google+ users.
Find People on Plus is a directory of Google Plus users. It indexes profiles and shows data like how many people are following that particular profile along with how many people that person follows.
It is ironic, that the most followed person on Google+ at the moment is Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.
The directory also allows looking up people by location, gender, interests and other details. It also has some nice stats like what occupation is the most popular on Google+.
Also which city has the most Google+ profiles. At the time of writing this post, it had indexed just shy of a million profiles. Other than finding new people, I find it more useful to look up Google+ usage stats and trends.
Do try out FInd People on Plus and drop in your comments.
Google+ has been here for a week now. As we are exploring it, we are finding various tricks to add more functionality to Google+. We discovered a Chrome extension that lets you share Google+ posts and updates on Twitter.
Tag people: Use + or @ before the name. You can even tag someone who is not in your circle- (just like twitter).
Drag and drop to share your photos and videos – a feature similar to that in Gmail.
Edit your post after publishing: The small arrow at the top right of the post is very useful. If after posting an update, you realize that there has been some mistake, you don’t have to delete it. Just click on the arrow, it’ll give you an option to edit your status. You can also edit your comments after posting.
Disable reshare:This option is also available from the small arrow at the top right of the post. This is useful when you send a message to a selected group of people, and you don’t want someone from that group to share it with others.
Disable Comment:Use this feature when a post is getting spammed with comments.
Mute others’ post to remove it from your stream.
Do you know any other shortcuts or tips? Share it with us through your comments.
