Tag: Internet

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A List of Top Photo Galleries – Online & Free!

Ever wanted to make a fully functional, photo rich, easy customizable Photo Gallery portal for your family photos online or just to make a commercial website to make some healthy cash be simply throwing some photos? Then check out these awesome photo systems for your basic and pro needs. All of these are open-source and can be downloaded from their respective sites easily, all for free.

ZenPhoto

A really powerful CMS specially designed for specialized gallery websites. It has almost all the features you want to need to make a gallery out of your photos for closed family group online or to make a rich collection of photos online to make cash. You will be served with some awesome functions to suit your taste. Easily customizable, easy integration with blog, are some of its glittering features. It also let you upload other type of media like videos, flash videos along with the photos and images. Along with these you can also leave notes on your photos, protecting photos with auto-watermarking are some other features.

Gallery

Also known as Gallery 2. This is mother of all gallery CMS with some lush functionality and options, both for a user and admin. It can be defined as all in one solution for photo site. It can be operated with several image processing tool kits. This is available in some more than 30 languages. It has some hundreds of features to make it best in town. This a gallery which can be used, installed and managed from a beginner to a pro user. Its free but has awesome support by the team.

Coppermine Gallery

This is the widely used system for photo galleries because of it’s easy usage and easy to configure process. Photos can be uploaded with web based uploader, FTP or even from Windows based publishing solution. Users can add comments, send pictures as e-cards, even they can make their own galleries. It works on PHP, MySQL along with Image shack for thumbnails. It is also available in most popular script installer Fantastico.

4Images

This CMS contains some most common features of all photo gallery systems. It is choice of many because of its nice themes and easy user registration. RSS feeds, enhanced search engine, advanced options for users, and extensive functions for users and image handling make it to stand among other competitors.

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TinyWebGallery

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Its elegant, its simple photo gallery solution. You won’t need a database to run a gallery with this. So if you are a beginner and want to make a gallery with no hassle and no complicated tweaking then this will let you make a gallery very easily. All you have to copy the photos by FTP to the server and it will make thumbnails of all photos. It has some drag and drop features, iPhone emotions with AJAX support.

Pixelpost

A very nice system to make photo galleries with a blog style. It let you create a website with some awesome looks, with image specific but customizable image related information. Many plugins are available for added functions for photos like Geo-tagging, Flickr integration, Spam filters, Comment Moderation, support for Cool Iris etc. This is the best best photo gallery solution to make pure photo blogs as nothing beats it.

PiwiGo

A cool photo-gallery system built by active users. Easily post and publish photos in real time. It has nice themes with powerful extensions. It let you add more functionality with an ease to your each photo. It also has a remote client pLogger to upload photos to your gallery. Users can also be added to upload photos of their own, or to edit information of existing photos easily. Users can be categorized in different modes to mange roles like a visitor, Generic, a Member, Administrator or a Webmaster.

LinPHA

It let you create a website with some ordinary looks but with multilingual support. It can easily be installed by HTML installer instead of tweaking it manually. This is another system for simple and novice users. It is developed in PHP, MySQL and PostgeSQL. It comes with basic photo gallery options along with some novice features include User management, Zip Uploads and Download feature make it to compete with other simple systems.

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These Photo Gallery systems are all open source and can be easily downloaded for free from their sites.

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P.S.: Do you know any more of them? Do share with us, and we will be glad to add it this list with your courtesy. You can also share your experience with us… simply drop us a comment below.

Links: ZenPhoto | Gallery | Coppermine Gallery | 4Images | TinyWebGallery | Pixelpost | PiwiGo | LinPHA

[Editor’s Note: This article is submitted by 3rdbrain who writes on ActivR on topics related to technolgy, CMS and gadgets. This is his first blog post on Devils Workshop.

If you, too would like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]

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News

Google launches DoubleClick Studio for Creative Interactive Advertising

Recently, Google unveiled DoubleClick Studio, a tool that can help creative teams and media agencies develop and produce rich media ads using Flash and Web technology.

Types of Online Ads:

What is a Rich Media Ad?

  1. An ad that makes use of motion graphics, audio, and interactivity
  2. Are different from display ads (like banner ads, text ads, etc)
  3. Are more engaging to viewers
  4. Lead to better results
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The Challenge?

  1. Difficult to design! Hopefully, Google will change that and make it more user friendly.
  2. Not for everyone! People who wish to use it have to request access from Google.

Features & Benefits:

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  • Full range of intuitive Flash components to build rich media ads
  • Web app to manage and improve workflow
  • Faster turn around time and enhanced productivity
  • A fully searchable archive of work, structured by clients, campaigns and creatives

According to the Google blog:

“With DoubleClick Studio, we hope to make it easier for our existing users to produce rich media ads, and to expand the number of advertisers that can make these useful formats part of their marketing strategy. This is also a good thing for Internet users; rich media capabilities make advertising even more useful, letting a viewer interact with an ad and learn about a brand without having to leave the page they’re on. And, advertisers have an expanded creative canvas within the ad itself, allowing for deeper, higher-quality content in the ad itself.”

(Source: Google blog)

Link: DoubleClick Studio

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Reviews

AppRemover: Get rid of the stubborn security software!

Have you been struggling to remove that security software from your machine and it just won’t budge? When you are looking to replace one security program with another, it becomes imperative to un-install the earlier security program before installing the new one, in order to avoid conflicts between two similar applications.

This can be a tricky deal! Completely getting rid of an application off your machine often is a challenge.

This is where AppRemover comes in handy. AppRemover is a FREE application (for personal, non-commercial, use) that completely removes applications and extraneous files left behind on a machine. Now you could thoroughly uninstall security applications such as Anti Virus and Anti Spyware from your computer.

When to use AppRemover?

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Use AppRemover when:

  1. You are replacing one security application with another
  2. Two similar security applications standstill your computer
  3. The built-in uninstall process of the program fails
  4. You have forgotten the application password

It’s easy to use!

  1. Download the file
  2. Double click on the AppRemover icon
  3. AppRemover will uninstall any detected antivirus and antispyware applications on your computer

Operating Systems it supports:

  • Windows 2000
  • Windows 2003
  • Windows XP (32 / 64 bit)
  • Windows Vista (32 / 64 bit)
  • Windows 2008
  • Windows 7 beta

Click here to download AppRemover.

If you have more questions in mind, click here

(Source: AppRemover)

(Image Credits: AppRemover)

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Reviews

Food Network Launches a New Site: Food2

Focusing to engage the younger generation through blogs and video content, Food Network has started a flashier site called food2.

Features

  • Videos: Short five minute visuals on ‘how to make a dish’.
  • Video series: From young cooks. e.g. Kitchen Conspirators, Brooklyn (A NY-based b group- Whisk & Ladle).
  • $12 Challenge: A ‘food meets love’ show, where two young chefs try to woo a bystander with an inexpensive meal.
  • How-to series: Leading viewers through how to make simple drinks and food items.
  • Blog section: Features content from recipes to other news about food.
  • Tips: Focusing on the kitchen basics.
  • Social Media: Integration with Facebook.

It should be a useful platform for its 20+ age group audience, who would be more interested in cooking quick and cheap meals.

Though Techcrunch claims it to be a new site, the blogs on the site dates back to February 2009.

The Alexa report shows traffic on the site since 1st April, though there is no data about the launch date of the site. See the chart below:

(Source: TechCrunch)

(Image Credits: Food2, Food2 Blog, Alexa)

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Reviews

Categorize your Friends on Facebook

Facebook has recently updated their Friends page, giving the users more options to organize and manage their contacts. Now, you could organize hundreds of friends into different categories making categorization and management easier for yourself. You can now divide your friends into “logical groups” like friends, relatives, college buddies, acquaintances, etc.

New Enhancements

You can…

  1. Organize people into various lists. This will not show up anywhere on your profile page, but is only for own convenience.
  2. Create Friend Groups and send bulk or private messages easily.
  3. Have up to 100 friend lists and up to 1,500 friends per friend list.
  4. Have the same friend on multiple lists as well.
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The new friends page also makes navigation simple within the friends page.

Here is the list of the the views you get now:

  1. Friend Recommendations
  2. Search
  3. Browse by Network
  4. Browse in Alphabetical Order
  5. Phonebook
  6. Recent Friends
  7. Friend List Filters

Shortcomings

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Some people might disagree and not call this an improvement at all. A few of my friends have been telling me that they were quite happy with the way things were earlier. In the earlier version also, they were able to arrange and manage their Friends lists quite effectively. Now every thing appears to be mixed up and all their earlier settings are out of order. Who has the time to sit again and reorganize everything again?

Moreover, this feature lacks privacy controls, which is a big drawback. Also, I have hundreds of friends in my network… what a painful task to go through the entire list and arrange them into the various categories. Honestly, I don’t see my self doing that. I’d rather leave them as they are.

Share your comments and let us know what you think of Facebook’s new friends list.

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News

StumbleUpon Enhances User Experience

Within a fortnight of becoming an independent company again, StumbleUpon presented its users an enhanced version of web-stumbling feature.

Adding some really cool enhancements, StumbleUpon claims that they have now finally achieved what according to them was the ultimate aim of the web based toolbar.

Have you been using the Stumbleupon’s web toolbar and wishing for a browser-free, computer-free synchronization? Well, in that case try out this new toolbar to experience all that you wished for and much more.

The Enhancements

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  • Personalized Experience – Accessible from any computer, and from any browser.
  • Web Stumbling synchronization with your toolbar – Web Stumbling could be used to rate, review and share content. All the activities get saved in personal profile.
  • Sharing – Web stumbled sites could now be shared with several friends and even your Facebook profile, at a single click.

How does it look?

The best way is to login to your account and check the web toolbar yourself.

If you don’t want to do that… have a look at it here itself:

Do share your feedback with us. Hope you like these enhancements.

Link: Stumble

(Source: Stumbleupon Blog)

(Image Credits: Stumbleupon Blog)

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Reviews

HostGator: One Months Review

There are three kinds of hosting companies – small, big & huge. Small companies host hundreds of domains. Big companies host thousands of domains and huge companies host over lakhs of domains. HostGator fails in third type, it hosts more than18lakh domains! I had heard a lot about Hostgator so decided to try it.

Aspects I would cover…

  1. Company Bio
  2. Pre-sales Questions
  3. Sign-Up & Migration Experience
  4. Review of Service & Support
  5. Pricing
  6. Conclusion & Rating

Company Bio

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HostGator is a provider of shared, dedicated and reseller web hosting services focused on the consumer and small business markets.It was established in 2003 by Brent Oxley, since then its growing leaps and bounds. The company uses ThePlanet Datacenter for hosting its servers, which is one of the reputed DC in US.

Pre-sales Questions

Before going to sign-up for any hosting service, I always ask questions. The main objective of pre-sales question is to ensure that the particular service suits me and to check the response time. I opened a sales ticket which contained 10 questions asking various things. i received answer to all my questions in about 15-20mins. Then i sent a few more question this time acting dumb, so to test their patience and how much do they care about their customers. I received answers to all my doubts in grammatically correct English. even after they, the customer rep asked if i had any more doubts i could use live chat option to get instant help. Happy with responses of sales staff , So i decided to sign-up.

Sign-Up & Migration Experience

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Sign-Up process is just like any other host. Entered few details and paid via paypal. instantly got E-mail from Hostgator giving Account details. To my surprise the Server IP, Username & passwords field very empty!. This time for help, I went to live chat. explained my problem and got missing details within 5 minutes. One more problem I faced was whatever content i upload on site didn’t show up on domain which was ordered along with hosting. I went to live-chat for help, it turn out my domain wasn’t even registered! operator said it would take 12-24hrs as domains are registered manually after fraud check. this wasn’t told to be before and i wasn’t happy. Then, i sent a ticket for data migration from old server and went to sleep.

Review of Service & Support

This is where HostGator scores most, its customer service is just awesome. After my domain was registered and site was live, I opened lots of support tickets at different time slots over a period of 30 days. the average response time was about 20minutes which is the best I have experienced so far. the service which I was on was Intel Xeon 2.2ghz with 4GB ram, the average load on server was less than 1% at all times. for testing, i moved a existing forum so i could test how they handle heavy traffic sites. just after two hours i got a mail from HG saying my site is taking lot of resources and i should move it to dedicated. to my surprise they didn’t suspend the site completely. Good, as most shared host would simply suspend your site or maybe your whole account. One more thing is that, if you aren’t happy with support response you can email owner of company, Brent. He would make sure you get all the V.I.P treatment. I even tested their money back guarantee by asking for refund, they quickly refunded my money within two days.

Pricing

Their Baby plan which has Unlimited Diskspace and Bandwidth costsunder $10 per month. Further Discounts can availed if you pay in advance. however the discount coupon can only be applied on first order and without discount the prices seem to be little on a higher side, I guess this awesome support costs

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Hatchling Plan

* $8.95 (monthly)
* $83.40 (12 months @ $6.95)
* $142.80 (24 months @ $5.95)
* $178.20 (36 months @ $4.95)

Baby Plan

* $9.95 (monthly)
* $214.80 (24 months @ $8.95)
* $282.20 (36 months @ $7.95)

The best thing about their pricing is, the have coupons which enable you to get hosting at $0.01(1 cent) for first month,so that you can try them risk free.

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Conclusion & Ratings

HostGator is one of the best company to host your site. however hostgator is more suited to small business and people with multiple websites, as it tuns out to be cheap. however if you have a single website i won’t advice you to go far HG as its little costly.

Pros: fast Support,24/7 Live chat

Cons: Big company so you won’t get customized solution you could get at small companies

Ratings

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* Pre-sales Questions: 5/5
* Sign-Up & Migration Experience: 3/5
* Review of Service & support: 5/5
* Pricing: 4/5
* Overall: 4.5/5

Tip: Try Hostgator’s baby plan risk free for 1cent for first month with coupon “BloggerToWP”

Link: HostGator-Sign Up

[Editor Note: This post is by guest blogger Gaurish Sharma. He blogs at Gaurish Sharma Live about technology.

If you too like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]

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Reviews

Most Viewed Videos Online!

Visible Measures published the first of its kind listing today of the TOP MOST VIEWED VIDEOS of all times. Visible Measures is a video tracking platform that specializes in measuring the consumption and distribution of Internet videos, and audience engagement.

The 18 hits listed by Visible Measures have crazy numbers – over 100 million views – simply staggering! The list is a diverse collection of the old and new – music videos, movie trailers, user-generated clips, and snips from TV shows.

Here is the list of top 10 most viewed videos (and most of them were viewed on YouTube!)

[Source: www.visiblemeasures.com]

Rank Title Type Views
1 Soulja Boy: Crank That Music 356,300,000
2 Twilight Movie     Trailer 266,500,000
3 Mariah Carey: Touch My Body Music 230,200,000
4 Jeff Dunham:                            Achmed the Dead Terrorist User Generated 196,500,000
5 Susan Boyle                             (Britain’s Got Talent) TV Show 186,000,000
6 Leona Lewis: Bleeding Love Music 185,600,000
7 Avril Lavigne: Girlfriend Music 176,000,000
8 Chris Brown: With You Music 175,000,000
9 The Dark Knight Movie     Trailer 172,500,000
10 Alicia Keys: No One Music 160,300,000

It is interesting to note that Susan Boyle’s video is on number five with 186,000,000 million views already in just less than a month. Impressive! She is a 47 year-old singer from Scotland, who has appeared on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ show.

To view the list of all 18 hits, go to the 100 Million Views Club.

(Source: Visible Measures Blog)

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News

Google markets Chrome with 11 short films

Google recently launched a video campaign to market its web browser – Google Chrome (a browsing browser… a new way to get online!). The video is a collection of 11 short films (mostly animated) that tell us what Chrome is all about.

The short films creatively demonstrate Chrome’s capabilities in the simplest way possible, so that even a non-techie could understand.

Christoph Niemann (the artist and illustrator of the video) said:

“Instead of thinking of what I wanted to show, I tried to think about what I did NOT want to show. I realized that when I use a computer or browse the web these days, the one thing I do NOT think about is… a computer…
…I wanted to find a simple metaphor that explains what a browser does, without showing a screen, a keyboard, the letters WWW, pixels, zeroes or ones.”

To view all of the short films, go to ChromeShorts.com. You could also view the Chrome Shorts on their YouTube channel.

Hope you enjoy watching the videos. Do share your thoughts on what you think about the films and Google’s new marketing strategy.

(Source: Google chrome blog)

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Reviews

Swinefighter – The Swine Flu Game

The Swinefighter Game – Honestly, I am not sure whether I should really call this “fun” especially after knowing how serious the subject is and how rampantly the Swine Flu virus has been killing hundreds of people around us. Some like me might say that Swine Flu is not a laughing matter, however, the Swine Flu video game (capitalizing on the lighter side of the influenza) seems to be an online hit already!

The purpose of this game is entertainment only. But, the site also offers advice from the U.S. Center of Disease Control on the do’s and don’ts to avoid the flu.

How does it work?

This game lets you kill the “killer pigs” or the swine flu virus right on your computer. (I tried it, and I wasn’t that thrilled.) Unless you are just looking at taking out your frustrations on the Swine Flu, this game seemed pretty boring to me.

When I checked that status online, it said some 5,259,544 viruses were destroyed already.

Sigh! I wish that could have helped for real.

Link: Swinefighter