Google Glitch..creates a fuss!!!!!!!!

I had a most peculiar web experience yesterday,since I saw Google flagging each and every site with a warning "This site may harm your computer".

I feared a moment,is my PC really infected with a virus?Since Google wouldn't flag such messages for each and every site ,I visit.

However,I was happy to see that this warning lasted for about 30 minutes and went off.Then I came to know that,it was really a wrong flagging by the Google.

This is an official statement form Google:

Marissa Mayer has now explained the error on the Official Google Blog. She puts it down to human error after a ‘/’ was mistakenly put in an update sent from the non-profit StopBadware.org to Google . The result was every URL in Google’s database being classified as “malware” until the stray ‘/’ was removed.

Hope Google wouldn't excite its users with such warnings!

IMAGE SOURCE: TechCrunch

Ten years of Google

Trace the path of the search engine giant Google from 1999.This amazing video shows how Google evolved gradually over the years.

Create your own iGoogle themes!

One week ago, Google Blog announced an official tool for building themes for iGoogle. "Now, you too can capture memories and images on your iGoogle homepage by building a custom theme. We've just released our new tool for creating iGoogle themes. It's an easy way for iGoogle users to spruce up their personalized homepage without needing to know how to use XML, etc. All you need is an image, and we'll provide the rest."

The idea is great as people will always like to see a personal photo on their homepage. As usually, iGoogle managed to make another mistake: the theme creator page has been down until today.

Now that it's finally available, you can see the tool is very basic and it only lets you upload an image, choose a header text color and a theme color. It's very difficult to crop a photo so that a certain region is visible, the color palette doesn't include too many options, you can't find the themes you've created to apply them to other pages and you need to accept a license agreement after creating a new theme.


If you need more control, try the two advanced editor previously mentioned or create your own XML files using iGoogle's API.

Microsoft Tag...Life is never so easier!

Microsoft Tag creates unlimited possibilities for making interactive communications an instant, entertaining part of life. They transform physical media, advertising, billboards, product packages, information signs, in-store merchandising, or even video images)—into live links for accessing information and entertainment online.

Microsoft Tag is a light weight application that can be run from your mobile phone.

How it works?

Microsoft Tag simply takes a snap of the “Tag” in the target device and converts it to a live link and directly takes it to a site. This helps to instantly connect to more information and entertainment thereby avoiding the nee to performs search or type long URLs.

After the application loads, you’re presented with some icons and a red square overlaid on the image coming from your camera. What you see below is an image of the application when my phone’s camera is pointed at the Microsoft Tag website on my computer monitor.

As I center the red box over the picture of a device with a tag in the lower left hand corner of the website, the tag is automatically read and performs an action.

Microsoft Tag in Action:

Consider that you are standing in a bus stop. There is a “unique tag” associated with the board placed in the bus stop. You can simply take a snap of the “tag” present in the board. Microsoft Tag automatically analyzes your code and fetches the relevant information about the bus timings.

Thus Microsoft Tag makes life easier and simpler by completely eliminating the need for search, offering “Instant information and entertainment”.Microsoft Tag is all said to form the next generation services for Mobile platform.

Best online Image editors! -Goodbye Photoshop

Image editing is always fun with Photoshop.

What if ,I don't have a photoshop?

Here is a list of free online image editors and lets' check it out:

Sumopaint:

Sumopaint is a free online image editor and a perfect alternative to Photoshop.
It has some of the great features like Layers support,red-eye correction,Rotate,Resize ,Shape tools etc.This editor has a easy to use interface and files cab be uploaded/downloaded to computer with greater ease.

Fauxto

Fauxto is a Flash-based Photoshop look-alike. It is the only layer-based online tool that we know of, and is by far the best of the bunch. But if all you are looking for is photo editing, and you aren’t familiar with Photoshop, Fauxto will frustrate you with its complexity. And if you are already familiar with Photoshop, chances are you have a copy already. Fauxto is lovely to look at and it is a really nice example of Flash in action, but I’m not sure who their target market is.

Picnik

Picnik is the new kid on the block, and they’re the best so far. It is also Flash based, it is the fastest of the bunch and the user interface is the most intuitive. Once you are done editing, you can transfer your photos directly to Flickr. Picnik has replaced Ajax-based PXN8 as our favorite online photo editing tool.

Picture2Life

Picture2life is an Ajax based photo editor. It’s focused on grabbing and editing images that are already online. The tool selection is average, and the user interface is poor. There are some bugs on the site. Photos can be transferred to Flickr, 23 and Imageshack after editing.

Preloadr

Preloadr is a Flickr-specific tool that uses the Flickr API, even for account sign-in. The service includes basic cropping, sharpening, color correction and other tools to enhance images. The fact that Preloadr is designed specifically to work with Flickr may not be an advantage - some of the other services are just as good or better and also offer Flickr integration.

PXN8

PXN8 is the best of the Ajax based editors (and the best overall until Picnik launched) and has a great user interface with the main features highlighted on large icons. The basic “enhance” feature does a very good job of fixing the obvious problems with pictures. Edited photos can be transferred to Flickr or Webshots’ AllYouCanUpload service.

Snipshot

Snipshot, previously called Pixoh, is another very-good Ajax-based editing tool that stands out because of its above average design and the fact that they have an API into their service. We prefer the features and UI of PXN8, but just barely.

Google discontinues retundant services!

It's a disappointing news for all Google fanatics as Google decided to close many services that were either redundant nor very successful Google's core business.

After Google acquired YouTube, Google Video morphed into a video search engine, but you could still upload videos. Unlike YouTube, Google Video didn't have a limitation for the duration of a video. "In a few months, we will discontinue support for uploads to Google Video. Don't worry, we're not removing any content hosted on Google Video -- this just means you will no longer be able to upload new content to the service," mentions Google Video Blog.


Google Notebook, one of the best Google services, is also about to be discontinued. "Starting next week, we plan to stop active development on Google Notebook. This means we'll no longer be adding features or offer Notebook for new users. But don't fret, we'll continue to maintain service for those of you who've already signed up." After launching SearchWiki, Google Search removed the integration with Google Notebook and the integration with Google Bookmarks turned out to be a bad idea. The project was probably discontinued because it couldn't become a part of a more significant service, but it's disappointing to close a project that gained a lot of visibility and could become a clipboard for many Google services.


Jaiku, the microblogging service acquired by Google, will migrate to Google App Engine and will no longer be actively developed. "As we mentioned last April, we are in the process of porting Jaiku over to Google App Engine. After the migration is complete, we will release the new open source Jaiku Engine project on Google Code under the Apache License. While Google will no longer actively develop the Jaiku codebase, the service itself will live on thanks to a dedicated and passionate volunteer team of Googlers. With the open source Jaiku Engine project, organizations, groups and individuals will be able to roll-their-own microblogging services and deploy them on Google App Engine. The new Jaiku Engine will include support for OAuth, and we're excited about developers using this proven code as a starting point in creating a freely available and federated, open source microblogging platform."


Other services that will be discontinued include Google Catalogs, a database of mail-order product catalogs last updated in 2006, Dodgeball, a mobile social network acquired by Google in 2005 that stagnated after its founders left Google, and Mapshup Editor, a project that will be replaced by the more powerful Google App Engine.



"Google engineers have long been at the top of the heap when it comes to the Google pecking order. Now, neither products nor engineers seem to have a protected status, as Google goes into the grim economic times predicted for 2009," writes Danny Sullivan. Google closed 3 new offices, slowed down hiring and no longer encourages wild experiments.

"Matt [Cutts] insisted that the early spirit of freedom and experimentation was still there in the culture. But when I pressed him on whether even Google could afford that luxury in harder times, he admitted that people like him now had perhaps to be a little more focussed on the bottom line. But he said the one day in five spent on personal projects was not being discarded," reported BBC News.

Source:Google Operating System

Google results in 3D cube!

        Bored of the normal text displayed in Google search?

        Here is the all new way of looking how the Google search results look.

        SearchCube.com provides a 3D preview of the Google search results and website loads faster even for slow bandwidth connections.

        Try it yourself here:

              

Operating Systems for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks is an emerging technology and proves highly fruitful in the areas of surveillance,temperature sensing and remote management.

In this post,I am listing the resources which I have gathered over a period of time regarding Wireless Sensor Networks.

From the above image,one can understand that Wireless Sensor Network are capable of communicating remotely with each other,thereby forming a network and send data to a remote computer.

I am embedding a documentation which I have done in the field of Wireless Sensor Networks and I believe that it can serve a s a small introduction to Wireless Sensor Networks.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Colleges and Univers Education nanork nesc

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website?

Learn how to embed almost anything in your HTML web pages from Flash videos to Spreadsheets to high resolution photographs to static images from Google Maps and more.

Embed RSS Feeds in Web Pages:

Go to this page, replace the feed URL with your own feed, use the default color scheme or change it to something else and then click Get Code. You’ll get a JavaScript snippet that can be easily placed in the sidebar of your blog.
If you like to embed feeds from multiple sources, merge all of them into one using Yahoo Pipes and then pass the combined feed to the Google Gadget. You can also use RSS widgets like WidgetBox or YourMinis that are done in Flash and not JavaScript.


Embed High Quality or HD YouTube Videos

To embed a high resolution version of YouTube clip in your web pages, first make sure that “Watch in High Quality” or “Watch in HD” link exists next to the YouTube player as most videos are only available in standard format.
Next copy the YouTube embed code and append &ap=%2526fmt%3D18 (for high quality) or &ap=%2526fmt%3D22 (for 720p High Definition) to the URL value of the movie parameter in both instances (see YouTube HD example).
Embed MP3 music and other Audio
If you like to embed audio files like songs, podcasts or interviews in your web pages, use Yahoo! Media Player - its a free Flash music player that automatically detects all links to MP3 files in the current web page and turns them into a music player.  Another alternative is the Google MP3 Player.
To embed other audio formats like 3GP, Midi, Real or Windows Media, it may be a good idea to convert these files into MP3 using Zamzar so that they play on almost any web browser.

Embed Flickr Photos and Slideshows

To embed an individual Flickr photograph in your blog, click the "Share This" link (available next to the photo title) and choose embed it. Flickr requires that the embedded image should link back to Flickr and this built-in embed option automatically takes care of that requirement. (see example)
To embed a Flickr photo slideshow in your web page, open any Slideshow in a new page (see example) and choose "Customize HTML" from the embed option (see example). Here you can specify a custom size for your Flash slideshow so that it fits just right into your web page.

Embed Picasa Web Albums

When you open a photo album inside Picasa, click the link in the right sidebar that says "Link to this album" and choose "Embed Slideshow". You can use the same approach to embed individual photographs that are available inside Picasa.

Embed Events from Google Calendar

Click the drop-down arrow next to any Google Calendar and select Calendar settings. Open the Google Embeddable Calendar Helper program by clicking the customize button and choose elements that you want to display or hide in the calendar.

Embed Very Large Photographs

To embed really large images in your blog, you may either use Deep Zoom or the Google Maps viewer. These programs break your photographs in small tiles and you can even pan / zoom across these images very similar to the default interface of Google Maps.

Embed Charts and Graphs in Web Pages

My personal favorite is Zoho Sheet – any chart created inside Zoho Sheet can be published as an external image without exposing the full spreadsheet. If you are interested in creating charts with low volume of data, use Google Charts. 

Embed GIF Animations and Screencasts

GIF animations (see example) are a perfect way to embed short screencasts in web pages as they require no plugins and auto-play inside feed readers. You should upload GIF files to your Flickr account as it preserve all the frames while lot of other image hosting website will drop anything after the first frame.

Embed Chat in your Blog

If you like to chat with visitors who are currently on your site, get the chat widget from Meebo Me and place it in the sidebar of your website. Visitors show up in your Meebo buddy list so you can strike up a conversation, answer questions, or just keep tabs on guests. Also see some more options to embed chat in blogs.

Embed Word Documents

Upload your document to Scribd and they’ll give you the embed code in Flash. Scribd supports both doc and the new Office 2007 docx format in addition to Open Office documents. Even Barack Obama is using Scribd to upload his public documents and upcoming plan.

Embed PowerPoint Presentations

While the popular choice is Slideshare, you should also consider using Issuu (best web application) for presentations that are either large or formatted in the form of magazines or catalogues (see example). The only downside is that Issuu accepts PDFs so you need to convert the presentation before uploading onto Issuu.

Embed Spreadsheet Data

Both Zoho Sheet and Google Docs allow you to publish a range of cells from a spreadsheet into a web page but the embedding process in Zoho is less complicated - select a range and choose "Publish" from the contextual menu to embed that range into your web page.

Embed Adobe PDF Files

To embed PDFs in a web page, you can either use Issuu (for magazine style PDFs) or Scribd for PDFs has either have lot of text or have a top-to-bottom reading layout similar to Word documents.

Embed Flash (SWF) or Flash Video (FLV)

The best option to embed Flash content is via swfobject. It improves the overall user experience by providing alternatives in case Flash is missing and your Flash content also becomes more searchable. This tutorial has all the files and other details to help you get started with SwfObject 2.
Related: How to Embed FLV Flash Videos

Embed LinkedIn Profile
If you wish to display your LinkedIn profile in the sidebar of your blog, try LinkInABox. People (site visitors) can read a summary of your LinkedIn profile without leaving the site.

Embed Google Maps in Web Pages

Embedding a Google Map in your website is now almost as easy as adding an image – just open the Static Maps wizard, search for location that you want to embed and specify the dimensions of your map. They’ll provide a simple URL that actually points to a static image of that map.  

Embed Another Webpage in your Blog

If you like to embed another website into your web page, your best bet is an IFRAME tag also known as an Inline Frame. Just set the SRC value to the address of the web page that you want to embed into your current HTML document. You could try IFRAMEs for inserting live search results from Google into your web page without having to worry about APIs.

Embed Windows Media or QuickTime movies

While it is possible to embed mov or wmv videos in web pages directly using the OBJECT tag, I recommend that you put these videos onto blip.tv and then embed them in web pages as Flash video.  That’s because your visitors can then play the video without extra plugins and two, they always have the option to download the video in the original format from blip.tv servers.

Embed Other Fonts in Web Pages

Most web pages use universal fonts like Arial, Times New Roman or Verdana since they are installed on most computers and hence your web pages will render correctly. If you want to try something different and render pages in fonts like Microsoft Calibri or Adobe Garamond Pro that are only available on some machines, all you need is sIFR – it lets you use almost any font for your web pages using JavaScript + Flash and is perfect for writing “newspaper style” headlines.

Embed your Lifestream in a Web Page

You have a presence on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, Facebook, Amazon and a dozen other online places. It can get really tough for friends to track you at so many places so what you should do is create an account at FriendFeed, import all the different services that you use and then use the FriendFeed Badge to embed your lifestream activity on your main site. You can also create Lifestream with Google Reader.


Source: Digital Inspiration

Most useful web applications of 2008!

Here goes the list of most useful web applications of 2008.

1. Zamzar – Your cell phone records video in 3gp format but Windows Media Player cannot play these files. Your client has sent a document in Office 2007 format but you don’t have the software to read it. What you therefore need is Zamzar, an online service that can convert images, videos, audio and documents from one format to another without downloading any software.

2. Spypig – This is an email tracking service that will send you a notification as soon as someone opens your email. SpyPig works with web based email (like Gmail, Yahoo!) as well as desktop email clients like Outlook and Thunderbird.

3. Photoshop.com – This is like a light version of Adobe Photoshop that’s both free and requires no installation. You also get 2GB of storage space for saving those editing photographs online plus there’s a mobile version of Photoshop.com available for Windows Mobile.

4. Sumo Paint - While image editing apps like Photoshop Express or Picnik offer almost everything to edit your photographs online, a limitation with these tools is that you cannot use them to create new images from scratch. That’s where Sumo Paint enters the frame.

5. Skydrive – This is an online storage service from Microsoft where you can store files, photos and documents forever for free. You get 25 GB of storage space and the size limit per file is 50 MB.

6. Wakoopa – You have seen social networks for senior citizens, for women, for pets, for toddlers and so on but Wakoopa is different - it’s a social network for software. The service tracks software and web apps that you frequently use and then recommends other software programs that are popular in your social circle.

7. Screen Toaster - You can record all your on-screen activity with Screen Toaster without downloading any software. When you hit the Stop button, the recorded video clip with auto-upload to the web and the quality is pretty good. See some more online screencasting apps.

8. Posterous – Posterous may look like another Tumblr style micro-blogging platform but it’s actually the best cross-publishing platform on the web. You can use the service to write blog posts, publish photos, uploaded video or even send tweets - all through a simple email message.

9. Truveo – Not exactly a web app but this search engine from AOL lets you find and play videos from all over the web including YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv and other video sharing sites. Truveo also indexes video clips from news and entertainment websites.

10. Joongel - If you can’t find the information you’re looking for on Google, use Joongel as it will help you search other web properties from one convenient interface. Joongel works with blogs, images, social websites and more.

11. Iterasi – Web pages change frequently and some of your favorite websites may not even exist after few months. Iterasi will help you save an exact copy of web pages in a click so even if the original website goes down, you’ll still have all the stuff to read.

12. RescueTime - This will help you understand how you spend your time on the computer and the Internet. There’s no need for you to enter any data manually as all time tracking is done behind-the-scenes automatically.

13. Ping.fm - This service lets you interact with blogging sites and social networks through SMS, IM clients, desktop apps or the good old-email. Just send a message to ping.fm and your current status will be updated simultaneously across all the different social networks.

14. Meebo – If you have friends using multiple IM clients, you’ll find Meebo pretty useful. This is a web based IM client that lets you connect with friends on Google Talk, Facebook, Yahoo! Messenger and other popular IM clients from a central location without downloading anything.

15. Animoto – Slideshows are boring so Animoto turns your pictures into very interesting videos (or should I say movie trailers). The final video is produced in widescreen format and the quality is extremely impressive.

16. InstaCalc - This is an interesting mix of an calculator and a spreadsheet application much better than your default Windows calculator. Instacalc also supports unit conversion and you can embed the calculations in web pages while maintaining the interactivity.

17. Live Mesh – Mesh is a must-have service for people who work across multiple computers. Just add some folders to Mesh from one computer and access that content from anywhere else. Other than cloud storage, Mesh also offers remote desktop capabilities with copy-paste support. Also see comparison of Mesh with Live Sync.

Source:Digital Inspiration

How to do everything with pdf

Adobe PDF is the best format for sharing documents because they are compact, the formatting is preserved and most computers / mobile devices / ebook readers can easily handle PDF files.

Here you’ll learn how to do just about everything with PDF documents without buying Adobe Acrobat. You can edit PDF files, combine multiple files as one, add signature images to PDF pages, fill PDF forms online, add clickable hyperlinks to existing PDF documents and so much more.

Adobe PDF Guide and Tutorial

Q: First things first - How do I create PDF documents on my computer without Adobe Acrobat?

A: Get a copy of DoPDF - it installs as a virtual printer driver on your desktop just like Acrobat and lets you print PDF files from any Windows application including images, documents, emails, websites, etc.

Q: I don’t want to install software just for converting a bunch of documents to PDF. Do you know of any alternative?

A: Upload your documents to Google Docs via the browser and then export them as PDF files. Simple.

Q: A client just sent me a PowerPoint presentation by email. Since I am travelling without the laptop and my mobile phone cannot read PPT files, what should I do?

A: Forward that email message (with the PPT attachment) to pdf@koolwire.com - they’ll convert the presentation to PDF and email it back to you immediately. Most smartphones and web enabled mobile phones can read PDF files.

Q: How do I directly save a web page as PDF without having to save that page as an HTML file first?

A: Go to PrimoPDF, type the URL of the web page and they’ll send you a PDF version of that page via email.

Q: How can I convert PDF files into other formats like Word documents, images, HTML web pages, etc.

A: You can upload the PDF document to Zamzar and convert it any formats like doc, html, png, txt or rtf (rich text format). Alternatively, you can convert PDF to HTML using Gmail.

Q: How do I create a single PDF package by merging files of different formats.

A: Try Loop PDF - it’s a free service that lets you combine multiple documents, images and even web pages into a single PDF file.

Q: How do I merge two or more PDF files into one? Can I also change the page order?

A: You can grab PDF Fill - it’s a versatility PDF editing tool that lets you combine PDFs from the desktop. PDF Fill can also help you rearrange pages in any order or for rotating pages inside a PDF.

Q: I want to extract some text from a PDF and use it in my Word document. What is the best option?

A: Go to PDFTextOnline and upload your PDF - it will extract text from the first 10 pages of your PDF document (to start) and will also show the PDF bookmarks, document properties, and form data (if available).

Q: I can’t get the above trick to work since I have a scanned PDF.

A: You can extract text from scanned PDF documents with Google Search. It’s not an instant process but probably the only free solution we know of.

Q: I have some restricted PDF documents on my computer in the sense that they neither allow printing nor can you select text with the mouse.

A: Get the PDF Unlocker - its a free Windows utility that will remove all common restrictions around a PDF file without requiring any passwords. Alternatively, you may use the online service at ensode.net that will remove all the printing or copying/pasting related restrictions from your PDF.

Q: Some PDF files on our company’s intranet are protected by a password that no one can remember anymore. Can we still open them?

A: Check this article - How to Open Password Protected PDF

Q: I am looking for a service that would let visitors download my articles as PDF files.

A: Add the Web2PDF button anywhere in your website - it converts web pages to PDF files on demand and also keeps a track of all PDF conversion related activities on your website.

Q: Someone sent me a PDF document in Chinese but I can read only English?

A: You can easily translate PDF files using Google Translate and Zoho Viewer.

Q: How can I add annotations or text notes to some of my PDF documents?

A: Get the PDF-X Viewer - it’s like Adobe Reader but with some extra features. You can add comments, annotations or even paste images to your PDF pages. You can also add annotations, call-outs and text to your PDFs online with PDF Escape.

Q: How do I read PDF files online without desktop software?

A: You can open PDF documents in the browser with PDFMeNot without requiring any software. See more options.

Q: Can I fill PDF forms online without Acrobat Reader?

A: Sure, go to PDF Filler, upload the PDF form and start typing. PDF typewriter works by converting PDF forms into images and allowing the user to type right on top of the images.

Q: How can I add watermarks or even my (real) signature to a PDF document?

A: First draw your signature in Paint (or other photo editing tool) and save it as an image. Make sure you crop all the blank portion that lies outside the signature. Now open the PDF document inside PDF-X Viewer and copy-paste that watermark / signature image. Simple.

Q: I have a PDF book that contains some 200 pages. Is there a way to extract selected pages from that book and save it as another PDF.

A: You can either PDF Merge or PDF SAM (split and merge) to extract pages from a PDF document.

Q: How can I protect my PDF documents with a password?

A: Upload your PDF file to PDF Hammer, set a security password and export it as PDF again.

Q: A PDF document has lot of links but I can’t click them as they are in plain text. How do I make them clickable?

A: Go to PDF Escape, upload the PDF and then place hyperlinks anywhere on the page.

Q: Which online service(s) would you recommend for uploading PDF files on the web?

A: My favorite is Issuu - they have built an excellent PDF viewer inside a beautiful interface. You can also use Issuu to embed PDF files in your own website. Next recommendation is Scribd - it’s a more popular service so your PDF document would get more eye balls.

This is one of the posts I liked very much and I wish to share with everyone!

Source: Digital Inspiration