Wikipedia has recently turned 10 years old and has planned to host over 5o million articles by 2015. Let me confess here, before I turned blogger I did not really follow blogs as much I would end up following Wikipedia entries on various topics ranging from current events to history.
In my opinion, after Google search engine, Wikipedia is one of the best innovation on the internet. Thanks to a tip by Vivek Jain, I came across news that Wikipedia is taking in applications for Campus Ambassador in India. The pilot program will start in Pune.
A Wikipedia Campus Ambassador basically co-ordinates with local universities.
Campus Ambassadors help find and recruit instructors from local universities who might be interesting is putting up Wikipedia Editing as a course students can take.
They also organize om-campus events to encourage editing of Wikipedia.
Also help setup Wikipedia help desk on the campus.
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How this helps Wikipedia?
The idea is to encourage not just use Wikipedia but also edit and update Wikipedia. Only with more users actively contributing to Wikipedia will truly help Wikipedia.
What do Ambassadors get?
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Free knowledge and collaborative writing.
Obviously it won’t do any harm to your reputation to be known as a Wikipedia Ambassador.
Ambassadors also receive a sponsorship to other Wikimedia events along with stipends for running events.
I guess the pilot program starts in Pune, because of the big number of college campuses in the city.
When television began, it led to a great number of television shows being produced and broadcast. It was an alternative to the 2 hr movie watching in a theater and mixed with news and other talk shows. But all this when it comes to revenues is secondary to live telecast. For any channel the inputs are minimal while revenues are greatest when they cover live events.
The internet is where most videos are watched. YouTube has probably hurt channel that aired music videos or shows that put together funny ads or home videos. YouTube is where a lot of video watching happens online. But all these are recorded videos and not live. Today YouTube has introduced a separate page on which you will be able to lookup and view all Live events.
Why Live Streaming is big for YouTube?
Think of YouTube as a television. We come across episodes, advertisements and the whole nine yards. One thing missing is watching live telecast of major events.
There are some websites that show online cricket, football and even news events live. Most of these website do not have much competition but now with YouTube Live, this might completely change. So websites like Justin.tv might need to watch out.
The live page shows a listing for all the shows that will be streamed live. It also has a section with links to what is being streamed live.
Revenues boost for YouTube?
YouTube might be hugely successful for Google as a product but when it comes to revenues it can do a lot better. I guess with live streaming of exclusive content revenues might get a good push with YouTube.
Check out YouTube Live and look up some live content. Do drop in your views.
Flickr has added some new sharing features to enable users to share images on various other social and publishing services. Now with a single click a photo from your Flickr account can be shared on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Blogger and even WordPress. A notable absence can be Google Buzz but then who really uses Buzz? 😛
Earlier the photos could be shared only via email.
An interesting but critical addition for the new sharing features on Flickr is how it also allows sharing photos to Blogger and WordPress blogging platforms.
It has correctly identified that blogging platforms will only add to Flickr’s visibility if allowed to share images.
I still think Flickr has got this very basic feature quite late in the day. Is this because a general lack of innovation? Over the last two years, I cannot think of anything cool regarding features when it comes to Flickr.
If you do use Flickr a lot, do check out these new sharing options and drop in your comments.
Long ago, internet was just about checking your email or looking up news in real-time. This all changed after YouTube. Videos were watched more on the computer via internet instead of the television. I am no exception and do occasionally spend a lot of time on YouTube. I also like Chrome as a browser of my choice. So I decided to share 10 great Chrome extensions for someone who spends a lot of time on YouTube.
#1. Turn off the Light
Turn Off the Lights is a neat extension that, when used makes everything around the video go dark. If your computer screen is large then this extension is very handy. It is supposed to replicate how it is to watching a movie in a cinema hall.
Auto HD is a Chrome extension that always plays YouTube videos in HD. This can usually be set to 720p while the secondary quality can be set as default. So if you are bored with turning on the HD for all the videos you play and want it done automatically, get this extension.
Lets say you have the urge to look up a video or search of one while looking up other sites. Fast YouTube Search extension allows you to search for videos without opening a new tab. This can be quite handy to search for videos on the fly and include them in an email.
Cooliris is a popular extension for looking up images and videos online. We can search for YouTube videos on Cooliris and the best part is, they are presented in a 3D layout.
Let’s say you love watching a short video over and over again. Install the Auto Replay extension and an auto replay option shows up while you watch videos on YouTube (see image above). This is a must have for a song you want to play over and over again.
Now for all those people who watch music videos on YouTube, get Music Video Lyrics on Chrome. As you can see in the image above, while watching a song you can click on the lyrics button near the address bar and get the lyrics.
Sometimes it is better to ignore all those comments. Many comments on YouTube can be slanderous or in bad taste. Use No YouTube Comments extension on Chrome. This makes sure that when a video is played from YouTube, none of the comments show up.
I am sure a slower connection can be quite frustrating when it comes to watching YouTube videos. An easy solution is to use Smart Buffer which makes sure the video is stream in one go and buffering is done in a more controlled method.
If you have an active YouTube account, then chances are you do subscribe to a few YouTube channels. YouTube Feed shows with a simple click all new videos uploaded by the accounts you are following on YouTube.
I am sure there are a few more extensions for YouTube on Chrome, but these are the 10 I have found useful and practical. If you do have more extensions to share, do drop in your comments.
Updates:
These are some of the other Chrome Extensions that were added to the post after it was published.
Smart Video Enlarger allows us to scroll comments while watching videos on Chrome browser. It resizes the video automatically and helps your not lose track of the video.
Online privacy is quite a big deal now a days. Most websites with advertisements collect user details so they can show more relevant ads, hence adding to better revenues. This is all fine but many people might not want advertising networks to install cookies on their computers. Also we might trust some networks but find certain ones not trustworthy.
If you want to stop allowing cookies being installed on your computer for usage to be tracked, Select Out is a very good service.
Just visit Select Ou page from the browser that your use regularly and select Opt-Out options.
There is a list of advertising networks which track usage stats through cookies.
Just opt-out of all the services that you do not want tracking you.
Another option with this is to have a Chrome extension, which also shows a list of networks that have cookies installed on your system (see image below).
I am sure many people like creating videos from their photo albums on YouTube. It can be easily done by Live Movie Maker but that does mean you need Windows OS on your computer. Most colleagues of mine, don’t like Windows and either work on a Macbook or use Linux.
YouTube thankfully now has a new feature that allows creating short videos of our photos albums without the need of any software. All you need is a decent browser. 🙂
Now look up the photos your want uploaded. I could choose my photo albums from Picasa, Facebook and Flickr. 🙂 Also we can simply upload them from the computer itself.
The images then appear below like a slideshow. The order of these images can be customized along with adding text to appear with every image.
Then for dramatic effect, we can even add some background music that gives a professional touch to the slideshow clip.
We are all done. Now all we need to do is hit publish and StupeFlix Video Maker will create the video and load it up on your YouTube account.
I created a video within minute using this feature showcasing rtCamp’s love for Macbooks! 😀
The only one downside I found was, we can create such videos which are only for one minute. More than one minute videos can be made with premium accounts.
Try out YouTube’s Stupeflix Video Maker and do drop in your comments.
Yahoo has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons. One problem for Yahoo has been getting into many things and not being able to focus on some mainstream products. ‘Search’ has been something that Yahoo’s share seems to be going down. Probably to stop that decline, Yahoo has unveiled a new search feature called Yahoo Direct.
How does Yahoo’s Search Direct compare with Google Instant?
Yahoo Direct is similar to Google Instant results, except it also shows trending search queries.
The results are show in a pop-up like window while you type in the query. With Google the links start appear automatically.
Yahoo says this is to make search more intuitive. I do not really see much difference but I can see why Yahoo search engine’s regular users will find this a great change.
Here is a video demo from Yahoo showcasing its new Search Direct feature.
My tip is try out Yahoo search for a day or two to get better perspective on Yahoo’s search capabilities. Are you willing to try Yahoo out or it is too little too late? Do drop in your comments.
A couple of days ago, I installed a widget or gadget (depending on weather you use Blogger or WordPress) from Dhiti which is mainly a content discovery engine. This allows visitors to discover content in a novel and interactive way. I found Dhiti a very useful service, especially if you are a new to blogging and want your readers to engage and look up more content.
There are many ways to show favourite and popular links on a blog, but with Dhiti, as it has crawled your site we get a more instinctive way of discovering new content.
Dhiti is basically a widget we can have on your blog. The first thing to do is , allow Dhiti, to crawl your blog’s content.
This content then is displayed in an interactive way which might make your visitors to stay longer on your site.
Another feature allows visitors to select content they liked reading and save it. This allows showing more preferred content in the widget.
I decided to check out Dhiti, on my personal blog. I was quite surprised to see an email from Dhiti, telling me to have the widget not on the side column of the site but at the footer. Having it at the footer would have made the widget appear a lot more uncluttered.
This was done proactively and atleast when it came to a free service, I had not seen such proactive support. 🙂
If you have a new blog and want a new interesting way for visitors to look up more content try out Dhiti on your blog. Do drop in your comments.
Yahoo, over the last few months is getting a lot of negative vibes from the tech community. This is because Yahoo had decided to close down Delicious, the popular bookmarking service. Yahoo has seen its fortune falling over the last decade and it has a list of companies, which it bought for hundreds of millions of dollars and ended up short-selling them or closing them down. There was enough anger over Yahoo’s decision to close down Delicious until Yahoo announced it was selling Delicious.
Now according to Business Insider, Yahoo has apparently found a buyer for Delicious. The price of the deal is rumoured to be about $1 – 2 million.
Why Yahoo might be selling Delicious for such a low price!
Yahoo paid something close to $15 –30 Million for Delicious. If they are selling it for one or two million, they might as well have sold it free! This also means, Yahoo might not have a planned strategy to sell Delicious for a high price.
Delicious is used a lot by many people to share bookmarks. Delicious is usually not valuable from traffic point of view, but it has high reputation.
Also, absent in Delicious is a revenue model. This means Delicious practically makes no money. Yahoo might be under pressure to get rid of a service which is not making any money.
In the meanwhile, if you are looking to move or backup your Delicious Bookmarks somewhere else, you might be interested in Google Bookmarks migration tool.
Do you have friends or colleagues you have to work with from around the world. If you do contact people from different countries, then I am quite sure you have some sort of world clock on your computer. This is crucial because, what might be a sunny afternoon for you, might be in the middle of the night for someone else. No use, calling someone in the middle of the night. Right? 🙂
I sometimes catch up with cousins from the US and Australia. Sometimes to schedule a meeting with all of them at the same time is quite difficult. The US is 9.30 hours behind Indian Standard Time and Sydney, Australia is a 5.30 hours ahead.
In this scenarios where you have to keep in mind, time zones of more than two countries World Time Buddy is a useful website.
This website makes it quite easy for setting and planning schedules, taking into account 3 or more different time zones.
Extra Tip for using WorldTimeBuddy
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Try creating a application shortcut on your computer if you are using Chrome browser. Just visit the website (http://worldtimebuddy.com ) and then look up the spanner symbol to the top right hand corner. Click on it and look up Tools. Under Tools, click on Create Application Shortcut.
This will now have shortcut to the world time clock on desktop and programs, which can be used like a application.
