Redesign season has really caught Google as earlier last month it re-designed parts of Gmail with changes in icons and also new contact cards being revamped. Google Docs has be redesigned quite a few times and Gmail over two months as seen its share of new features with drag and drop attachment.
Google News has recently been redesigned and most of it is not very visible or apparent. But the one thing that stands out is how you can now share news very easily.
As seen in the image above Google News links can be shared across most social networks. Personally I like using Google News as it really sorts the new out for me and also has a local emphasis on the content that is filtered in. This new redesign is not available for people outside US, but if you change the content to US centric this new format is available.
Google News seems to be a much under utilized tool from Google if compared to other services Google provides.
What do you think about Google News? Do let me know through your comments.
If you are an office going twitter addict, you must have got disapproving glances from your colleagues every time you log in to twitter or its desktop client alternatives.
Today I came across a wonderful tool –TwInbox, which is made just for this situation. This tool integrates very nicely with Outlook, which every working professional keeps open throughout the day in office. Using it you can access Twitter through Outlook, see latest tweets, post messages and retweet about something. All this without your boss noticing :).
How to Install
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1) Download TwInbox and run the exe file. Before that, close outlook.
2) After the installation is complete, restart Outlook. You’ll see a new toolbar at the top of Outlook window.
3) Click on TwInbox->Options. Here you’ll be prompted to enter your Twitter login details.
4) You’ll now be asked to specify a folder in Outlook where the tweets will be stored.
5) You are now ready to use twitter from Outlook.
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Some tips to use TwInbox effectively
1) You can add multiple twitter account to TwInbox. For that simply go to TwInbox toolbar -> TwInbox -> Options and add another twitter account.
2) The toolbar at the top shows the latest tweet received in any of the accounts that you added.
To see all the tweets for a particular account, go to the folder that you mentioned while doing the installation. You’ll see separate folders for each of the accounts that you added. The tweets are neatly arranged in sub-folders- Home, Direct, Mentions.
3) You can even create separate folders for every sender by going to Toolbar -> TwInbox ->Options -> Edit Account ->Preference.
4) To post a new message, hit New button in the TwInbox toolbar.
Read other ways of using TwInbox effectively on their FAQ page.
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Who will find it useful?
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1) Like I mentioned, if you want to use twitter from office without your boss noticing, you will find this tool helpful.
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2) If you are a business professional using twitter to promote your products, you will love this tool as you no longer need to log in to twitter, which will save your time.
The biggest advantage of the tool is you can use Outlook’s powerful features like auto-archive, Search etc. with it. And did I tell you it is free :).
A great way to get an idea about how well a internet company is doing would be to read tech blogs. The more the number of times a company and its services are reviewed and mentioned, you can be assured that the company is building and maintaining a momentum. This is where Yahoo lags behind against almost every big internet brand.
I came across Yahoo Pulse and was told that it would rival Google Buzz. So I decided to check it out and mid-way realized that this might be another mistake by Yahoo.
If you are familiar to Google Buzz which almost everyone is thanks to them embedding it on Gmail, you will find Yahoo Pulse pretty similar to Buzz. Pulse does have better features when it comes to privacy as atleast at this moment I do not see it in your Yahoo Inbox by default.
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So basically Yahoo Pulse allows you to share photos, messages, videos and even sync your Facebook wall messages with your Yahoo contacts without the need for leaving the Yahoo environment. Great! But the worrying part is how many still want to remain in the Yahoo environment?
Why Yahoo Pulse can rock.
Yahoo Pulse plans to allow users to tap into Facebook. To the extent that we might be able to play Mafia Wars and Farmville along with use all features of Facebook through Yahoo Pulse. This further being integrated with Yahoo Mail might mean a user would not need to visit another website at all and use Yahoo for all purposes.
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This is great news for loyal Yahoo users and might improve some numbers.
Why Yahoo Pulse will not rock.
I remember using Yahoo Meme a couple of times. It was supposed to rival Twitter and to be honest it has better features than Twitter does. But Twitter had cornered the market when it came to micro-blogging. Yahoo Pulse will meet a similar fate to Yahoo Meme as it is not offering something newer for users but just something better.
Also Yahoo concentrating on allowing its users get more Facebook updates seems to be a short term view. Yahoo cannot allow users to use Facebook on one side from its own environment and still compete with Facebook. It is like a Twitter application competing with Twitter!
It just will not succeed as Yahoo is building a growth strategy which is dependent on Facebook’s success.
So are you using Yahoo Pulse? Do you think Yahoo Pulse could save Yahoo the company or will it turn out to be another famous mistake by Yahoo? Do drop in your comments.
World cup has been started on 11th of June and its fever is already gripped the whole world. Sites like Google and Twitter already brought new flavors to enjoy the event. The latest addition in the list is Microsoft Bing. It launched a new Facebook application known as Fan Flair by which you can edit your photos. You can visit Facebook fan page of Microsoft Bing and add an application easily.
It lets you add some effects on your Facebook photo. Effects include flag, football and scarf of your favorite team to support it. To start with the service you have to visit a Bing’s official Facebook page.
Go to Fan Flair tab and click on “Get started” button.
It will redirect you to “Request for Permission” page. Click “Allow”.
Now the application will ask you to select your photo. You can use your profile picture or choose one of the photo of your own albums. Here I selected the profile picture.
Now select your favorite team. Mine favorite is Brazil therefore I clicked on Brazil’s flag.
Select your flavor. There are total three flavors: scarf, ball and flag. I selected all the three. ( You can see it in the screenshot given below). You can select only one of them or two of them.
After selecting the flairs you can post your photograph to your wall to show your support to others. If you don’t want to show it in your wall then you can save it to your Facebook photos.
I have been using twitter for past six months. Its really a great serviceand it helps me to interact with my followers . Besides this , I am also great fan of some amazing twitter apps .Following are Twitter apps which i use regularly .
This application is used to combine multiple twitter profiles . We can post to an unlimited number of profiles from a central location. We can also track @replies and messages from the dashboard.
This application is useful for managing and viewing detailed data on your followers or the people following you. Clean tables are sortable by followers/following, follow ratio, # of tweets, etc. Bulk unfollow or block if needed is very useful.
This application is useful for managing your Twitter background image and profile photo. Through this we can also change the background of twitter at mentioned time .
Which Twitter App did you like the most? Drop your views in the comments.
Twitter engineers are working twitter api to make the micro blogging website, a robust and flexible social networking tool for its users. As an initial step in this regard, twitter has started to roll out “You Both Follow” feature, to the users. We have already talked about the importance of this feature and along with the tools that allow you to see mutual followers on twitter.
Certainly, this was one of the features that twitter was missing and should have been introduced a some time ago, but as they say,”Better late, than never”, its good to have it for the expansion of Social Media. With “You both follow” feature, you can see the people that you and other twitter user have in common on the sidebar of the twitter page. This feature will be helpful in managing social connections on twitter, especially when you receive a new follower, and you wish to know how it came to know about you.
Do you have it?
Being in test mode, currently the feature is tested on 10 percent users only as revealed in a tweet by Nick Kallen, an engineer at Twitter. Third-party apps like Mutual Tweeps, ReFollow, Twitual, Twtfrnd already provide the feature to compare two twitter users based on their common followers. And, if you can’t wait to see what this feature is all about, then you must read: Browser Plugins to See Mutual Friends on twitter.
Let us know if you have “You both follow” enabled in your twitter account!?
This is a guest post by Robnish, if you like to wrote for Devils’ Workshop do read about our guest blogger program.
I am not an authority blogger for the topics related blogging, money making, membership site or else but eager to share my experience here because of changes and development encouraging me I got In my last 70 days blogging.
According to technorati and alexa report we are in competition with the more that 5,66,000 new bloggers who are registering on the daily basis, more than 3,22,200 blogs who are active on the daily basis, more than 23,20,210 blog posts are getting posted regularly and last stat but not least and most competitive one that more than 10 bloggers are posting at the exact blog tittle on the day-to-day blogging schedule.
Now you should be aware about why to start a blog just now :-
Here are some of the observations during the practice of blogging and experiencing the day by day challenges and situations on the go, below is the list that will make you more aware of the practice and making it as a component of your hobbies that can give a lot and more than your imagination regards the hard work in network of peoples.
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1. Personal development :- It is the most effective and effects every blogger without informing him or her. In my case I was weak in writing a post to let you understand but now after starting my weblog you can check and compare to the current posts to earlier ones, I was not well-known with the terms like entrepreneurship, business and personal development but now I am learning and learning for sharing with them who likes to be student.
2. Entrepreneurship :- Most of us are starting a blog for making some positive use of our leisure but slowly and slowly it turns in opportunity for our self to build a business or medium to gain new relations, name and fame automatically.
3. Blog for business :- In it the most popular in business owners to occupy their market online as a professional blogger and that’s why business blogs are increasing to explore their services and policies to current customers and to build new ones around the globe.
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4. To help who needs :- Peoples have a great place for helping peoples around the world in any particular area which is well known to him or her have better dealing with the same situations ever. It’s like a book you can complete in smaller parts with the different combination of time period, and the peoples may get help by getting in contact by searching their need in search, directories and forums.
5. Entertain and become a star :- This point comes under personal branding and you may get the promotion of your talents in the peoples around the world using some promotional social media websites like facebook, twitter, and youtube will help to show you in demand and after some time your name will get mention as a web celebrity and will get invitations for being a real and live star in the public.
Over to you
I got published this post here only after getting 70 days learning as a blogger but you may be better in sharing your experiences and recommendations to the readers below in the comment section.
The internet began as a fish market. There was a lot of noise and a lot of energy but no real system for people to search things online. Then came Google with its Page Rank Algorithms and managed to index web pages more efficiently and relevantly than any other website.
This made Google search the internet giant it is today. But will this giant be in trouble in the future? Could Google’s Page Rank Algorithm end up being irrelevant in the future? The answer probably lies with social networks.
What exactly is Google Page Rank?
Google calculates the Rank of a webpage based on the number of backlinks it has. A backlink is considered to be a like a vote or recommendation by one website to another. This backlink is also comparatively weighted as a backlink from a website with page rank 10 is better than page rank 1.
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So basically now search results and its relevancy is really calculated by the Page Rank and keyword relevancy. Higher Page Rank usually means higher organic traffic to your website. That’s why you will see bloggers every 3 months getting excited about Google Page Rank updates.
So how could Google Page Rank’s die?
No, it is not going to happen in the next 2-3 years and it will probably take a decade for Internet traffic to be less dependent on Page Rank. The threat for Page Rank comes from Twitter and Facebook.
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A lot of people ReTweet something they find interesting or share on Facebook. They subscribe to blogs by looking up Facebook pages and Twitter handles. I know many people who never visit DW site but only look up random posts on Facebook.
The impact of social networks on internet traffic was never really factored in by Google. This leaves a gaping hole in Google giving a high rank to a web pages on the number of links. Today with almost every mobile phone has a Twitter and Facebook app. Many people look for best options to buy things online by taking opinions of their friend on Social Networks.
Now Google and its backlinks system is still pretty much the most perfect way to value a website as far as relevancy is concerned but what if Facebook keeps growing its influence like it has for the next 5 years?
Will a Facebook “Like” be more important than a back-link? I think there is a chance that it might happen and when it happens it could spell the beginning of the end of Google’s Page Rank Algorithm.
Are social networks overrated?
Are social networks and their influence a little overated? Most social networks grow large enough on investor money and become truly large. Then they get sold to a very large company like Microsoft or Google.
Twitter has still not really started to monetize its website and Facebook numbers are also not as impressive when it comes to earnings through their advertising platforms. So are social networks after all destined to be not really big money spinners? If so, then Google probably has nothing to fear form Facebook.
But then again, I am sure 10 years ago someone was writing somewhere that Microsoft had nothing fear from Google. 😛
What are your thoughts on how internet traffic will be generated in the future? Do drop in your views through your comments.
“You have been tagged in a photo by your friend Xyz. Click the following link to view Xyz’s album http://……”
This is a kind of notification I used to receive lot of times a week! And with an excitement to see which photo I am tagged in – I used to follow such links to get equally disappointed. Everytime.
I am not a very great fan of tagging photos or getting my profile tagged in a photo which does not show me at all. Many times on Facebook, people keep tagging their friends in absolutely any image they upload. This could be a real fun for many genuine shares, but not all! I then finally unchecked option of “Allow tagging” on my social networking profiles!
This photo-tagging is now going on to a different levels by not limiting it to the famous networking sites. This may make life easier for people seeking information and may be difficult for those not willing to share information.
Face.comare the makers of a photo-tagging application on Facebook. They are now sharing their API with public. Which means that everyone can integrate their face detection and recognition technology with own websites, applications and services.
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This open API is in alpha stage now and is available for free to use. See overview
How it can be used?
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Imagine you were enjoying your weekend night with friends in a club. You saw a beautiful girl or a handsome boy there. You exchanged smiles. But somehow you were unable to get her/his name. Later, never managed to know even a word more. Sad, wasn’t that?
Now, if you have applications developed by this API installed on your mobile phone then all you need to do is take a photo and ask that application to search for all the information associated with that photo (person) including links to social networking profiles.. Then you can see their Name, Facebook, Twitter profile links and so on… !
But I have my doubts.
I think this is one of those technologies which is not going to be liked by every user. If you’re a developer, this could be a nice value addition to your websites or applications.
What do you think of photo-tagging? Would you like to be able to use or share information this way? Let us know.
We all know importance of Social Networking Websites for blogging. But sometimes it becomes tough to manage all of them effectively, to manage all my social networking accounts I use Sendible. Sendible is an online service which allows you to handle all your social networking for following Social Networking Websites:
This is user-friendly service which enables you to update and schedule all your social networking websites easily. Sendible is kept on updating its services like recently they added a feature to schedule your buzz and still there are many features which are going to be added in Sendible.
I prefer to use Sendible because I can do lots of things without much hassle such as:
Sending Email messages on various social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and many more.
Sending SMS, National or International, that too for free.
Tracking and responding to all the things said about you or your blog on Social Networking Websites along with posting the RSS feed of your blog automatically.
Scheduling messages on recurring schedules which is very useful while using Twitter.
Getting Reminders to my mobile phone through SMS or emails.
You can also Import all your Facebook friend’s birthday to calendar in Sendible.
You can register for free account as well as for paid account on Sendible, according to your requirement.
Which service you use to save your time on social networks ?
