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Reviews

AOL Reader Launched: Just in time to export your Google Reader feeds

Since Google announced they were shutting down Google Reader, there has been a scramble by smaller feed readers products to try and get as many people to migrate to their service. While Feedly, seems to be the biggest beneficiary, while there are still some other alternatives around. AOL has just announced a feed reader, that allows users to migrate their RSS feeds from Google Reader to AOL. Visit reader.aol.com to sign-up for the beta service.

AOL Reader is in beta, but in the hour or so I spent on it, it looks pretty stable. It has some very basic features built-in like sharing posts to some of the popular social networks.

I also saw some advertisements from AOL on a right sidebar. Personally, I am not a fan of adverts on any service I use, but the ads on AOL Reader are not much of an distraction for me to think of not using the service.

AOL Reader lacks on some fronts like there is no native Android or iOS app for the reader. This is a web only service at the moment. It also lacks integration with any 3rd party services like Flipboard which is very popular with tablet users. But I think that will change as AOL Reader already has released an API for developers.

AOL Reader is very basic and very beta at the moment. So I won’t exactly be moving away from Feedly, which is now my default Google Reader alternative for a couple of months. But it is good to see more services getting into RSS feeds. I guess RSS feeds are not going to die anytime soon.

Link: AOL Reader

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News

Facebook allows Photos within comments: Only for Profiles not Pages

Facebook has rolled our a new feature that allows users to upload images in the comments section. I saw this new feature on accessing Facebook from my browser a couple of days ago but it had disappeared yesterday. Then late at night I saw this option again available on my profile.

You will see a new camera icon at the comments field. We can upload images from our computer within the comments. Though this is a nice step by Facebook, I was a little disappointed that it does not allow you to first choose from your own photos you already have on Facebook but expects an upload.

Also these photos comments are not available on Facebook pages but are available on Facebook groups. I think this is rolled out to personal profiles mainly because it is easier to control who comments on your Facebook posts.

Facebook’s iPhone and Android apps do not have this new feature but comments with images can be seen on it. I guess a new app update will hopefully bring the option of adding images in comments from the phone itself.

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News

Google Person Finder to trace missing people at Uttarakhand floods

The recent floods at Uttrakhand has devastated many districts in the state of Uttrakhand. While thousands are being evacuated, like most natural disasters there are many people who are missing. Google has a person finder page put up dedicated to finding information on missing people because of the Uttarakhand floods.

Google person finder is not compiling official records of missing persons but it allows anyone to put up information of people who are missing. There is an option to update this information on a person you might have information about too. Currently at the time of writing this post, there seems to be over 1300 records being tracked.

The data is open and not verified by Google but crowd-sourcing probably helps out getting a lot more information out there. Also as the administration fights the floods and updates their official lists but not in a centralized manner, Google’s person finder could be a boon.

Link: Google Person Finder – Uttarakhand Floods

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News

Facebook brings Video on Instagram to counter Vine

Facebook has today released a Instagram Video, a new feature that allows users to create fifteen second videos. There are 13 filters that can be applied to the video before publishing it. This move is targeted at Vine which last year was acquired by Twitter.

Vine allows users something similar and has become very popular for Twitter users. Instagram for video has some very good features in-built like video steady-cam that allows videos to look better even when taken from a mobile phone.

When Instagram was bought by Facebook, they first hit back with removing Twitter cards on Instagram. This stopped users from seeing a preview of Instagram images shared on Twitter. Twitter hit back by having their own image filters built into their mobile apps. The a popular service called Vine which allowed 6 second video uploads was acquired by Twitter and its growth has been exponential even though it was initially only on the iOS platform.

Overall, I still find these videos are too much style over substance. But considering its popularity, it would be interesting to see if Google has similar plans with YouTube.

Try out Instagram Video by updating the app on your phone. Or you can download them from the links below. Do drop in your comment.

Link: Instagram 4.0 Android | iPhone

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Tips

SharpKeys: Turn your Caps Lock key into a Google Search key.

From all the keys in our keyboard, not many users use the Caps Lock key as much. Hence, why not convert that into a much more useful key? With a application called SharpKeys we can do exactly that. For example, I have mapped the Caps Lock key into a Google Search key. So next time I want to use Google search, I simple click on the caps lock key.

SharpKeys Features

  • Download SharpKeys from the CodePlex and install it.
  • Click “Add” to start the remapping.  For the “FROM” key choose “Special:Caps Lock(00_3A)”
  • For the “TO” key, choose “Function: F10(00_44)”. We map it with F10 because this key is not exactly used a lot.

  • A message will be displayed of the successful change.

  • Restart your computer. Now you can check out that the caps lock key does not work anymore.
  • In your desktop, right-click and select New >> Shortcut.
  • Enter the location of new shortcut.

  • Choose a name for your shortcut. The name does not matter in the actual process.

  • A new icon will be created in your desktop. Right-click and select “Properties”.
  • Type F10 in Shortcut Key box, click “Apply” and then “OK”.

Press the caps lock key and Google search will open. The caps lock key is no more used. The majority of the users do not really use that key and so turning this into a more useful key will help with productivity.

Do try it out and drop in your comments!

Link: SharpKeys

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News

Skype’s Releases Free ‘Video Messaging’ Feature to All Platforms

It was a few months back when Skype announced a ‘beta’ feature that lets users to send video messages. The ‘Video Messaging’ feature is now out of the beta and is available as a free service to all customers. This new feature is available in all the major platforms that Skype is on.

This new “Video Messaging” feature is available on Windows Desktop, Windows 8, Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android and BlackBerry. One interesting thing to note is that, this new feature is not available on the Skype for Windows Phone yet. It’s quite surprising to see that even though Skype is a part of Microsoft now, this new feature is not released for the Windows Phones. However Skype for Windows Phone users can continue to receive these video messages, but cannot send them.

Video Messaging is completely free. You can send unlimited video messages to all your Skype friends. Earlier when it was in the ‘beta’ mode, the number of video messages was limited to 20 for a free user and limited to Premium users.

Capturing a video message is really easy than you can imagine.

  • Tap on the Skype contact to whom you want to send the video message.
  • Tap on the ‘Video Message’ button.

  • Tap on the record button.
  • Record the video. You can preview the video before sending.
  • To send the video, tap the ‘envelope’ icon.
  • If you want to redo the video, you can delete it and shoot the video again.

The recipient can see the video message as soon as he/she opens his/her Skype account. These video messages can be recorded for 3 minutes. And also, these video messages are stored in the Skype database for a maximum period of six months. If you want to keep these video messages forever, you’ll have to move to Skype Premium.

via (Skype’s Blog)

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Reviews

Chatology makes iMessage more tolerable, lets you search messages easily

I love how Apple baked IM functionality into iPhone’s Messages app instead of building a separate iMessage app. This is something I look forward in Google’s Hangouts. iMessage is a pretty good service by Apple, except that it just doesn’t work. It’s almost the most annoying thing, both on OS X and iOS, for many reasons.

To start off, server down times for iMessage have been very frequent. Adding to that, there are times when your messages would be delivered a little late to your recipient. The worst thing though, is searching through messages. Most of the times, the chat balloons get misplaced and overlooked. The app even gets freezed for no reason.

Flexibits, the company which made Fantastical, a popular Calendar app for OS X and iPhone – has now released Chatology, a better way to search your chat logs.

The interface is pretty self explanatory. You’ll see a three pane layout, showing messages sorted by time. You can choose the time period. If you’re specifically looking for images/links in a chat log, you can filter that way using options in the third pane. Search works fine, and the results are highlighted with the search term. It’s also much snappier compared to searching on Messages for Mac.

Chatology is a paid app, costing 20$. That’s probably a bit too much for an app which ‘fixes’ things, but if you use iMessage at work, exchanging reference material with your co-workers, then it perfectly makes sense to get this app.

You can give the app a try for 14 days. Hit the link below to download it (it won’t be available in Mac Appstore).

Link: Chatology for Mac

Categories
Tips

Get Official Twitter Analytics Data on Your Tweets

Twitter has opened up analytic data to all users. This data was previously only available to advertisers. The analytic dashboard will show up stats on retweets, replies, favorites for every tweet you publish. The analytics dashboard also displays how many people are unfollwing your account.

How to use Twitter Analytics!

  • Visit the URL ads.twitter.com and sign-in with your Twitter credentials. The first page will show you the option to advertise. At the top left corner on the page, we can see an option to look up “Analytics”.
  • The analytics data is very basic and the graph shows a 6 hour increment. You might want to check some interesting details like at what time of the day your tweets get maximum engagement or what kind of tweets have a maximum impact.
  • I saw there is also a “Follower” option on the analytics dashboard. But when I used it on my account, it showed there was not enough data to display. I guess this could be because I do not have like thousands of followers. But the follower analytics displayed is supposed to be based on location, gender and interests.

The basic idea behind all this is for Twitter to make it lucrative for users to spend more on advertising on Twitter. The data by no means is all the data that is made available to advertisers but it is good enough to spend some time over and get ideas for maximizing your impact on Twitter.

Link: Twitter Analytics

Related: Find the best time to schedule a tweet.

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News

Official Google App Engine for WordPress Plugin Released

Google App Engine, the cloud computing service platform has recently started support for PHP. WordPress is probably the most popular PHP based software used, so it is no surprise that an official WordPress plugin for Google App Engine was released. The plugin is mainly useful for functionality like sending email using the Mail App API and also uploading and serving media from Google Cloud Service.

This plugin is not meant for general WordPress users as they will need to know how to deploy PHP applications on Google App Engine. The plugin will over-ride some core WordPress functionality, mainly the email and media upload functionality.

Useful Links

The plugin’s code has also been uploaded to GitHub.

Categories
Reviews

Instashare releases a beta for Android devices

I’ve reviewed Instashare previously, it’s an incredibly simple way for sharing files between iOS and Mac. And now, it’s time for Android.

Sharing files between devices – it’s a really simple and obvious thing which many of us do regularly. Yet it’s unnecessarily complex. There are many apps which fall in this category – Bump is a good example. But it needs a working internet connection and takes a lot of time for transferring big files.

Then there’s NFC, much simpler way to share files, although pretty limited considering that many phones of today don’t have it. Also, laptops/desktops obviously don’t have it. At last, there’s Bluetooth, it’s reliable and cross platform, excepting iOS devices.

Even Apple released AirDrop for iOS, at WWDC, but it’s pretty limited.

Instashare doesn’t have the problems you face while using Bump, or NFC, or Bluetooth. First, it’s really simple. You open the app on your phone, drag and drop a file and done. Secondly, it works via WiFi and Bluetooth – even on iPhones and iPads.

The Android app is pretty self explanatory, you just have to select Instashare in Android’s share intents menu and the file will then be visible in the app, ready to share with other devices.

There’s no limit what so ever, on file size or type. A Windows app is also on its way.

The app isn’t yet released on Play store, it’s in beta and you can request access for it.