As of now there are 57 services are available to add into your account which includes famous services like Facebook, Digg, del.icio.us, Flickr, Google Reader, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, LastFM.
When you start adding services at Lifestream, it gets all past content as well so creating sort of your biography over one page. One can look at Lifestream as twitter for your entire digital life.
If you are blogger then you can show this steam on your blog as well using Lifestream badge.
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For easier access, the service already have desktop interface ready via an Adobe Air app. This means all Windows, Mac, Linux users can enjoy this service from their desktop.
I hope to see support for more services, specially my favorite Orkut soon at Lifestream.
As of now the service is in beta but their country manager Fabian Posada arranged few invitation codes for our readers. Thanks Fabian. 🙂
Invitation Codes for Lifestream:
63f6a6a6
33b93d53
ec4281f1
66186574
b9997de1
5bf212dc
e60d016f
0eb5403e
3753e15f
While signing up for Lifestream use any of invitation code above. Note that each of above code can be used only once. So hurry up! 😉
Long time back, I wrote about showing Google AdSense ads after each post in blogger.com blogs. Now I am doing exactly opposite by limiting ads to only first post on home, archives, categories pages. Johnson wants to know how I am doing it!
To do this, You need to edit famous wordpress loop. Such a loop can be found in your current wordpress theme’s index.php. There may be other files present in your theme directory which uses loop like archives.php. They may need to be updated as well.
Listed below are steps to edit loop in index.php file. Similar steps can be performed for other files too, if required.
Go to WordPress Dashboard >>Design >> Theme Editor.
Click on index.php or Main Index Template file. It will open in Theme Editor on left.
Now inside loop, i.e. after “while” line but before “endwhile” line put your AdSense codes. Exact location depend on your choice between ads before post, ads after post, etc. Important thing is you have to put your AdSense code in a if-block. below is an example…
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<?php if ($adcount == 1) : ?>
<!-- Put Your AdSense Code here -->
<?php endif; $adcount++; ?>
That’s it. Save changes and check if it works.
Variations…
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1. If you want to put ads after first two post…
In step 9 code, Change $adcount == 1 to $adcount == 2
2. If you want to put ads after first three post…
In step 9 code, Change $adcount == 1 to $adcount == 3
3. If you want to put ads after each post…
In step 9 code, Change $adcount == 1 to $adcount == 3. Yes this is same like above. Because AdSense only allows maximum three ad-units on a a single page. This way you avoid blank space created after each post when you directly put AdSense code after each post.
If you need any help, or stuck at some point, feel free to contact via comment.
First it has nothing to do with spending money on Kontera’s advertising network. Next, not only this works for free but also makes money for you on the way. The only thing you may not like is quality of backlinks. Anyway, as whole thing is fully automatic you better know it or use it.
How it works:
Many bloggers who write original content often feel hurt when they see people copying your content as it is without any credit to you. This is called plagarism and the person who is copying your article is called plagiarist.
There are two types of plagiarist in our context, one who copies from RSS feed and other one who copies from your pages.
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Now those who copies from your pages are technically newbie in blogosphere and uses blogger.com and its WYISWYG editor to copy-paste your post content.
Now if you are running Kontera, they also copies your double-underlined kontera keyword as it is. At this point, if you ever dig these kontera links in detail, you will find they have href attribute value equal to “#” (hash).
This hash (#) is used so that clicking on link should not work on your page as kontera shows small pop-up inline ads first. In simple word this # means “point to this page” only.
Now when someone copies your page with such Kontera links # is changed to absolute URL, i.e. page from which content is being copied.
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FInal effect is – All such kontera links when get publish on plagiarist blogs point to your blog post! 😉
This way you get extra backlinks without doing anything. Also you can find easily who is copying from you. 😉
In terms of SEO, these links are of bad quality since pages they are pointing to and from pages they are originating contains same content. Google and almost every search engine hates duplicate contents. Still some services just measure number of backlinks to your blog. They may count links like these.
So this is how Kontera gives me more backlinks and decent revenue of course on the way!
Tweetmarks is a service to easily organize links you share on Twitter. This service is from same guys who created TweetBeep, a Google Alert like service for Twitter.
Like their earlier service, this also provides you with plenty of options. Most interesting is one where Tweetmarks add your links to del.icio.us account automatically.
Tweetmarks is like del.icio.us for twitter. On their homepage you can see links shared over twitter. You can tweetmark links that interests you. This is same like people save other bookmark on del.icio.us. There is a separate Popular Tweetmarks section where you can see what links are popular with Twitter users. There is also a search engine to search tweetmarks!
If you are wondering about links you already shared on twitter then tweetmarks can add all of your links back through April 2008.
Update: Issue is fixed by Orkut.Looks like Orkut team is reading DW! 😉
And those who think orkut.co.in does not exist, check this post for screenshot.
Yesterday, I came across one more side-effect of orkuts countywide domains. I was using Friend Finder on Orkut, when I lost secure connection with Orkut server. I stumbled on following error, “Secure Connection Failed”…
As solution, there is not much a user can do apart from adding orkuts country specific domain, in my case orkut.co.in, into firefox exception list.
Just click on ‘Or you can add an exception…’ option as highlighted in above screenshot. Firefox will warn you about exception, but if you want to use Friend Finder and may be few more feature on Orkut, you have to go ahead.
Orkut team registered many country domains but they just forgot to buy SSL certificate for each domain. SSL certificates are domain/IP address specific.
When you access orkut from India, Brazil and few other countries, all orkut.com requests are automatically redirected to orkuts county level domains for whom digital certificates are missing. I am not sure how this will affect your security but the way Firefox 3 alert users, many users may feel scared.
Well, one should not blame firefox for there scary alerts as they are just doing their job, the best possible way. Misconfiguration in secure area just proves how serious Google is about orkut users security, again!
Many bloggers/publishers fear that they will loose control over their feeds by using a third-party feed service like FeedBurner. This post is an attempt to answer their doubts. I hope it will help all FeedBurner users at some point in time.
About FeedBurner Feed Subscribers…
There are two ways people subscribe to your feeds at FeedBurner,
Via FeedBurner email service
Using some feed reader or aggregator. Choice between online and desktop reader doesn’t matter much.
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Subscriber who use third party service like RSS-2-MAIL or RSS-2-SMS will fall under second category as they use your FeedBurner feed URL. So, essentially we need to take care of two types of subscribers.
First FeedBurner Email service…
FeedBurner allows you to export email addresses of all subscribers in Excel and CSV format. So at the time of leaving FeedBurner, you won’t loose a single FeedBurner email subscriber for your feed.
To Export FeedBurner Email Address List:
Log into FeedBurner account and select feed of your interest.
Click on Publicize Tab. Select Email Subscriptions option from left side.
Scroll down Email Subscriptions page, you will see View Subscribers Details option. Click on it.
Page will expand and you will see small Export links. Click on desired file format. A file with subscribers list will be downloaded to your PC.
Now you can use this subscribers file with other feed-to-email delivery service like FeedBlitz. There are many ways to use it so will post best of them in future.
At this point you have secured all your email subscribers. If you are still in doubt about this part, check official FeedBurner Email help page.
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Now subscribers using Feed Readers
In Feed Readers world, your feeds only identity is its URL. So control over feed URL decides your fate.
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Technically if you can keep your feed URL same while moving from one service to another, you will not loose any subscriber.
Thankfully, FeedBurner runs a service named MyBrand which gives you ultimate control over your Feed URL. It was paid service till Google acquired FeedBurner and also it requires knowledge of editing DNS record at your domain host, so many people never used it or are completely unaware about it.
I will come to MyBrand later. Lets first handle more obvious situation where our feed URL contains feedburner.com in its address, ex: http://feeds.feedburner.com/rb286
FeedBurner redirect option
When you delete your FeedBurner feed, you can use an option to redirect your feed. The redirection service will be given for a month for free. One month is again divided in two phases on timeline as below:
Day 1-15: HTTP 301 “Permanent Redirect”
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Any requests for the FeedBurner feed are sent an HTTP 301 “Permanent Redirect” response back to your source feed. This will cause most feed readers to forget the FeedBurner URL and use the new URL from that point on. Your subscribers will not notice anything.
Day 16-30: Manual Redirect
At this point FeedBurner return a valid feed that contains a single item that says “This feed is no longer active. A new feed is located at (source feed URL here)”. Subscriber can manually click on URL and change their subscription.
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After 30 days: “Feed Not Found” response.
Your feed is permanently removed and any requests will receive a “Feed Not Found” response.
This means subscribers who are using non-standard Feed readers or services like RSS-2-Email, etc will be lost. Also in rare case, if somebody uses desktop reader and for some reason fails to check updates in above 30-days windows will also loose track.
Now about non-standard feed readers, they represent very small section. As in following graph, only 6% of my readers use other readers. Please note that other does not mean non-standard readers. It may contain many standard feed-reader with small proportion of subscribers.
So in the end we can safely assume, our ~ 98% readers will migrate in the worst case. Of course, number will slightly vary depending on your feed readers distributions graph.
Only problem with this redirect option is that you can not redirect FeedBurner feed to a new third-party feed service. It only redirects to your source feed. But following sequence solves this problem too.
First use original source feed address to create a new feed service URL.
Then go to FeedBurner and select Edit Feed Details option. Now in Original Feed field put new feed URL you created in step 1.
Save changes and delete FeedBurner feed, with redirect option enabled.
This will redirect FeedBurner feed to new feed URL! I tested entire scenario and redirect starts immediately. So your feed will have no down-time while using this type of hack.
MyBrand Service…
Cool, you are still reading. Its ok, everyone want 100% results! 😉
In my case, when I started MyBrand was paid service so as of now my subscribers are divided. But if you are starting new then you can use this for complete control over feed.
To Use MyBrand Service:
As I mentioned earlier, even if this service is free now, in order to use it, you need rights and knowledge to edit CNAME record. CNAME records can be found in DNS settings area under admin panel at your domain host.
Orkut Buyukkokten, creator of Orkut is married to his boyfriend Derek Holbrook recently. It was expected as the California Supreme Court has made gay marriages legal recently. The ceremony was witnessed by Marissa Mayer, the Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google.
In the above picture, form left to right you can see Derek, Marissa and Orkut himself. (Photo by Drew Altizer via SFluxe)
When we tried to figure out who is Derek Holbrook, first Google result taken us to Derek’s facebook profile. I guess now two are married, Derek may consider deleting facebook profile in order to strengthen bond with Orkut. 😉
From their scrapbooks it seems that they got married around July 1.
You can use Orkut’s or his boyfriend Derek’s scrapbook to send your greetings to them. Most of their scraps are in Portuguese. I used Google translator to translate some of them and shocked to see that some orkut users showing displeasure on this marriage. Some of them even posted some of their personal pics on Internet. Don’t ask for links! 😉
Kontera ad-network announced an exciting deal for new publishers, bloggers. If you join Kontera in this July month, you will get 100% revenue share for rest of the month. Its double of 50% revenue share that Kontera gives normally.
In case you are hearing about Kontera for the first time, it is a type of ad-network which can be used with Google Adsense and many other advertising network.
They have many plugins which nicely integrates with existing platforms like blogger, wordpress, drupal, etc. Details about them are here. Thanks Vered for tip! 🙂
Google launched their famous Google Talk chat client for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch mobile handsets.
Just visit www.google.com/talk from your iPhone or go to this page and enter your mobile number there. Google will send you download link on your iPhone directly.
If you like new Google Talk interface for iPhones, then you can use its Google Talk Gadget version from your browser, specially from Firefox sidebar, thanks to Amit Agarwal. Just use the following links.
Till now Google Talk client was only available for Windows based operating system. This launch came as a little surprise to me as I am waiting from long for an official Google Talk client for Mac OS.
I use Adium on Mac for chat but it doesn’t support Google Talks invisible status feature, which I need more often than any other feature.
