Tech

Twitter uses the “river of news” format to present your timeline. The most recent tweets of your Twitter friends are at the top and these get pushed down as new tweets enter the timeline.

It’s like sitting on the bank of a river, watching the boats [in this case, tweets] go by. If you miss one, no big deal. You can even make the river flow backward by moving the scrollbar up.

As you scroll down you go back in time, to older items.

The “River of News” style of Twitter helps you quickly scan through updates but there are downsides – if you follow a large number of people on Twitter, you can sometimes miss important news in this sea of updates.

Personalized Twitter Newspapers

If you sometimes find the default format limiting, here are two nice alternatives – Twitter Times and Paper.li. They will help you read Twitter updates like an online newspaper where messages are no longer sorted by time.

Twitter Times (example) determines the most important tweets in your timeline (based on retweets) and puts them on the top. Paper.li (example) arranges tweets in categories and if there are any videos or pictures in the timeline, they are also embedded in the same newspaper page.

 

What’s really unique about these Twitter newspapers” is that they will automatically fetch the full text of web pages that are mentioned in the tweets of your friends so you can read them inline without leaving the “newspaper.” And they are excellent “noise filters” as well.

The downside is that they are not “instant” so there will always be a mismatch between your Twitter Timeline and your Twitter Newspaper.

For more tips, check out The Twitter Guide.

Twitter Newspapers

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

Microsoft Outlook and some web email clients (like Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail) support a tri-pane design – the folders appear in the left sidebar, email messages are at the center and then there’s a handy reading pane that you can add to the right side of your messages or at the bottom (see the screenshot above). 

The reading pane is useful because you can quickly preview the contents of your email messages without having to actually open them thus saving you some time.

Gmail doesn’t have a standard reading-pane but they’ve added something similar called “Sneak Peak” that also lets you preview messages in your mailbox but with a simple right-click. You can think of Sneak Peak in Gmail as a floating reading-pane that can be activated on-demand – see screenshot.

To enable this feature in your Gmail or Google Apps for Gmail account, hit the Labs icon, search for “Message Sneak Peak” and select “Enable.”

You can view any email message with a right-click but this feature won’t work inside the “Spam” folder though it works for Trash.

If you don’t plan to add this feature to your Gmail mailbox, you can still view emails without changing the current view – just hold the Shift key while clicking on any email message and it will open in new window.

Gmail Gets a more Practical Reading Pane

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

The wall painting that you see in this photograph is not another expensive work of art but a computer generated sketch made by tracking movements of the mouse cursor.

Would you like to have something similar for your own desktop? Get IOGraph.

IOGraph is a free tool that captures your mouse cursor movements and then “outputs” them to a white canvas. Just run the program, let it record your mouse movements in the background and you will be absolutely amazed to see what you get at the end of the day – the painting is a brilliant reflection of your own busy day.

Picture credits: Anatoly Zenkov

The lines in the painting represent cursor trails while circles represent areas where the mouse cursor was inactive. The bigger the dot, the longer the stop was.

IOGraphica is available for download on Windows, Mac and Linux though you would need the Java Runtime to use the app.

You may also want to check out Win-o-meter, a free Windows utility that will track how many miles your mouse may have travelled in a day. Thanks Veronica for the tip.

Related reading:

• Create Music by Painting with your Mouse
• Create Paintings with your DNA
• How to Clean your Mouse

Capture Your Mouse Movements as Modern Art

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

Google AdSense is an auction based advertising system so your advertising revenue (or CPMs) will automatically go up if more advertisers choose to target your website.

The system, in simple English, works like eBay. You (the website owner) are selling ad space and the buyers (in this case, advertisers) are competing against each other to grab that space. The bid amount will therefore increase as more buyers enter the auction process thus benefiting the seller (you).

Increase your Site’s Visibility on the Google Ad Network

Advertisers are using tools like DoubleClick Ad Planner to determine which websites on the Google Ad Network they should target and you therefore need to ensure that your website is both visible and discoverable in these tools.

For instance, here’s a public listing of my blog on Ad Planner. This report is like a marketing brochure that you are handing out to an unknown number of prospective clients daily through Google and therefore it always should have updated information.

Advertisers can see the type of ads that are accepted on the site, the traffic details (pulled from Google Analytics), the topics that are covered by the site (categories) and other information that will help them quickly decide whether or not they should include the site in their campaigns.

In this video, Vijay Vachani of the AdSense team will walk you through the steps that are required to add your website to Google Ad Planner.

Step 1. If you have not added your website to Google Webmaster Tools yet, do that first. Sign-in to Webmaster Tools using your Google Account and add the site URL.

Step 2. Once your site is verified, go to the Publisher Center of Google Ad Planner and include the site** to your Ad Planner profile. If you have just added your site to Webmaster Tools, it may not immediately show up in Ad Planner.

Step 3. Finally, click the “Edit Site Info” link to assign a good description and relevant categories to your site. Google will automatically present a rough estimate of your site’s traffic to advertisers but you can give them a more accurate picture by allowing Ad Planner to use data* from your Google Analytics account.

In addition to creating your own Ad Planner Profile, you may also want to implement these three simple yet effective suggestions by Lauren Weitzman to attract advertisers:

• Always allow text and image ads on your site.
• Create channels for placement targeting so advertisers can target specific slots on your site (see #16).
• Always put the main ad unit above the fold.

[*] When you share Google Analytics data with DoubleClick Ad Planner, the same data may also be displayed in Google Trends for Websites.

[**] You might want to use Chrome or Firefox when using Google Ad Planner because some of the features of the site don’t work in IE.

AdSense Tip -- Attract New Advertisers to your Site

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

Here are some screenshot images of Google’s latest search interface spotted by a Twitter user. Unlike the previous Google redesigns, this one is unique because it includes colorful icons – something you rarely expect to see on a Google search page.

The new Google design is not live for everyone yet so you may or may not see it on your computer. All screen captures are courtesy Jeremy Zilar (@silencematters) found via Lidija Davis and Mathew Ingram.

Screenshot 1: Google Discussions (web forums)

Screenshot 2: Google Real-Time Search (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

Screenshot 3: Google Main (regular web search)

Screenshot 4: Google Books Search

A More Colorful Version of Google [Screenshots]

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

It’s rare to find teachers who have a good sense of humor but Matthew Weathers, who teaches Maths at the Biola University in California, is definitely an exception.

In this video, you can see Matthew taking a Maths class as usual and suddenly there appears a shadow on the projector screen that rearranges his desktop icons won’t even let him shut down the computer.

The video was obviously an April Fool’s prank, a very clever one though, and it immediately become viral on the web registering over half a million views on YouTube in less than a week.

How the “Projector Shadow” video was made?

If you are curious to know how the Maths teacher made that brilliant shadow video of himself, here’s the trick in his own words.

Matthew used a basic video camcorder, a personal voice recorder, screen capturing program (he suggested Jing) and some video editing software (Video Studio, Adobe After Effects, Motion, and Final Cut) for the video.

It’s not just about the tools though, you obviously need to be creative and a bit tech-savvy to imitate this.

Maths Teacher Reveals his ‘Video Shadow’ Trick

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

“Do you want to view only the webpage content that was delivered securely?”

If you open a secure web page inside Internet Explorer 8 (one that begins with https  like the Gmail web site or even Amazon.com), you might see a security warning dialog that says -- “This webpage contains content that will not be delivered using a secure HTTPS connection, which could compromise the security of the entire webpage.”

This is annoying because IE won’t remember your choice and the warning message will appear every time you visit that page or web site. It basically means that the secure (https) web page that you are trying to open contains images and other elements that are hosted on a non-https location. They call it mixed content.

Disable “Mixed Content” Warnings in IE

If you would like to disable this security warning forever, go to Tools -> Internet Options and select the Security tab. Make sure the “Internet” zone is selected and then click the “Custom Level” button. Scroll-down the list of options and set the “Display mixed content” setting from “Prompt” to “Enable.”

This video screencast explains the whole problem and the fix in detail. The mixed content issue can only be fixed by the web developer, you are only suppressing the warning in the browser.

Fix this Annoying Security Warning in IE 8

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

Slideshare has an excellent collection of PowerPoint (and Keynote) presentations but you need a web browser with Flash player to watch any of these presentations.

If you are using a mobile phone (like the iPhone or BlackBerry), Slideshare will automatically render the slides in an image format so you can view them even without the Flash player (This however won’t work with embedded presentations).

Alternatively, if you are using a desktop browser or if SlideShare is unable to detect your mobile’s web browser, you may use the following workaround to “force” Slideshare to render the image format instead of Flash.

Open any Slideshare presentation page in your browser and add the word “mobile” just after the .net/ as shown below:

Regular: http://slideshare.net/labnol/write-a-successful-blog Mobile: http://slideshare.net/mobile/labnol/write-a-successful-blog

The mobile version of Slideshare is still “work-in-progress” and the above workaround may therefore not work with all presentations but you can give it a try (especially if you have an iPad). Thanks @Armano.

SlideShare Presentations without the Flash Player

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

The World Database of Happiness has been conducting surveys for decades to measure the level of “happiness” across the world.

The data, until now, was only available in raw form but the very creative folks at GOOD Magazine have converted it into an easy-to-digest infographic where the “smile” in the “smiley” represents the happiness graph of a country for the last three decades.

Speaking of happiness, you should also check the Gross Happiness map on Facebook that shows how the happiness level of Facebook users fluctuates over time and the days when they’re feeling most happy. Facebook has data for US, Canada, Australia and UK.

Thanks Charis Tsevis for the tip.

How Happy People Are in Various Countries?

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

This is a current snapshot of the Techmeme home page. Stories highlighted in red are about Apple (iPad, iPad Apps and iPhone OS 4.0) , green color is for Google (Buzz privacy) while stories about Microsoft (‘Pink’ event and Zune HD) are in blue.

There are plenty of reasons to be excited about the iPad but too much Apple news can cause iFatigue.

Also see: Techmeme Time-Lapse Movie

Techmeme = 70% Apple News

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

The first Chrome ad that aired on TV was actually a stop-animation video that was created in-house by employees of Google Japan.

Now a second animated video ad for Google Chrome has surfaced on the web that is brilliant just like all the other Chrome commercials and there’s a very strong Tokyo connection again. To know how this video ad was created, check this photo gallery.

New Stop-Motion Ad for Google Chrome

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

If you are curious to know how your website design looks like on the 9.7” screen of an Apple iPad, you can either borrow your friend’s iPad for some time, order one for yourself from eBay (if you don’t live in the US) or just read this.

Step 1: Start your Firefox (or Safari) browser and change the user agent string to that of the Apple iPad. You may use Google Chrome as well but it just takes lot of effort to change user agents in Chrome.

Step 2: Disable the Adobe Flash plug-in from your browser settings.

Step 3: Open iPadPeek.com and type the URL of any website in the built-in Safari browser of the “virtual” iPad.

This tool will render websites in landscape mode by default but you can click the top edge of the iPad image to switch the page orientation from landscape to portrait mode and back.

The screen resolution of your current desktop is probably much higher than a iPad (which is 1024-by-768 pixels) so this tool may not exactly simulate iPad’s web browser but its as close as you can get without the real thing.

Related: How to Completely Test Your Website

You may use the site to view other iPad-friendly websites like Google, Yahoo! News, Facebook, Gmail and so on. There’s an on-screen keyboard as well that gets activated when you click the address bar (just like the real iPad) but it’s non functional.

The tool is open-source and you can grab the full code here. Thanks Orli for the tip.

How Does your Website Look on an iPad?

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

If you haven’t been to the YouTube website recently, you should because they have completely redesigned the video pages. The new design might load a little quicker on slow connections but it looks too minimal and even incomplete to me.

Anyway, this story has nothing to do with the color scheme or the layout of the redesigned YouTube website – its about an extremely important feature that some feel has gone missing in the new design.

YouTube (old) had a star rating system that would let anyone with a Google Account rate YouTube videos on 1-5 scale. This simple feature saved us from wasting countless hours on YouTube because if a video had low user ratings, you  immediately knew it was not worth your time and you could skip to the next one.

YouTube has now replaced the “star rating” system in the new design with a “Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down” rating system that gives you only two choices – you either like a video (5 stars) or you don’t (1 star).

Most user prefer to see the ratings of a video before hitting the play button but for some unknown reason – may be to boost page views – YouTube is no longer displaying the ratings of videos on their pages. If you rate a video, the overall ratings appear but not otherwise.

Fortunately, YouTube has not dropped the ratings completely and there’s a simply way by which you can see the ratings of any YouTube video without having to rate it. Just click the drop-down arrow next to “views” of any video and you’ll find what you are looking for.

Alternatively, you may install these extensions for Chrome and Firefox and you’ll get the star ratings back in the main video page just like the good old YouTube design.

An advantage with extensions is that they’ll add star ratings to videos displayed in the YouTube search results as well so they’re more handy.

Related: Star Ratings Widget for your Blog

How to See the Ratings of any YouTube Video

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

If you are in the US, you can buy the iPad right now from any of the Apple or Best Buy stores in the country. For everyone else, there’s eBay.

While Apple is not “officially” shipping the iPad to international (non-US) addresses, there are lot of people in the US who managed to get the iPad on day zero and they have now put their units up for sale on eBay at a premium, of course.

Apple iPad on eBay with International Shipping

The average price of a 16 GB iPad model on eBay is around $650 (plus international shipping charges) while the 64 GB version of the iPad is going under the hammer for around $900. That’s like a $200 premium on the list price plus you will be responsible for shipping costs and custom duties, if any.

One of the eBay listings for a 16 GB iPad (that ships worldwide) has received over 24 bids and that does indicate the excitement around the device in international markets where Apple is yet to introduce the device.

eBay has also setup a microsite at ipad.ebay.com where you can quickly find all the Apple iPad related listing without having to search the regular eBay marketplace. Some of the listed sellers are “power sellers” with a very high reputation so it’s fairly safe to buy from them as long as you don’t mind paying the heavy premium.

Apple iPad Now Shipping Worldwide via eBay

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

It’s not uncommon to find music videos and pirated movies on YouTube but you may be a little surprised to know that the world’s most popular video sharing site has now become a haven for software piracy as well.

People are using the YouTube site to not only share serial numbers of software but there are tons of step-by-step “tutorials” (see screenshot) explaining how one can activate virtually any popular software title or video game that’s out there. Some of these videos have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

I was recently looking for reviews of Camtasia Studio 7 on YouTube (that was released just a day ago) and though there weren’t any reviews of this popular screencasting app, there were quite a few screencasts on YouTube explaining how to get this $300 software for free.

Surprisingly, all the search suggestions made by YouTube itself pointed to these unlicensed software. I am not sure how YouTube determines what phrases to suggest in the drop-down but it does indicate what people are searching for on the site.

The auto-suggestions were pretty similar for queries like “Microsoft Office 2007” and “Adobe Photoshop CS4” – both very popular software programs.

There’s one possible reason why pirates may be turning their attention to YouTube – traffic. YouTube videos, due to to Universal Search, are more likely to appear on Google’s first page of search results and that could bring enormous amount of traffic.

Underground websites hosted in China and Russia are very unlikely to make it the front pages of Google for popular queries but with the help of YouTube, they possibly can.

YouTube’s Next Big Headache – Software Piracy

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

Apple’s marketing strategy for a new product (like the iPad) works something like this:

Phase 1 - Steve Jobs will announce the product in an “invite-only” event weeks before the product is actually due for shipping.

Phase 2 - Apple will send review units to a very select group of people (let’s call them the Inner Circle). These reviewers get to test the product (secretly) for days and, on a pre-decided date, they can push their reviews online.

Phase 3 – Consumers can now buy the product. That’s the day when you see long queues of people camping outside the Apple retail stores.

We’re still in Phase II of the iPad launch – the first reviews are in and everyone seems to be pretty impressed with the Apple Tablet Slate.

Also see: How to Deliver a Presentation Like Steve Jobs

The Inner Circle of Steve Jobs

If you compare the launch of iPad with a previous Apple product (say iPhone), you’ll notice one major change – Apple seems to have expanded their “inner circle” and, for the first time, they’ve sent review units to at least one person who is a popular blogger but not part of the mainstream media.

The list now has 10 names including (clockwise):

• The Wall Street Journal (Walt Mossberg)
• The New York Times (David Pogue)
• USA Today (Jefferson Graham & Edward Baig)
• Boing Boing (Xeni Jardin)
• The Root (Omar Wasow)
• TIME (Stephen Fry)
• PC Magazine (Tim Gideon)
• ABC News (Neal Karlinsky)
• Houston Chronicle (Bob LeVitus)
• Chicago Sun Times (Andy Ihnatko)

AOL’s Engadget and Gawker’s Gizmodo are the biggest gadget sites in the world and they probably draw more eyeballs that most mainstream websites put together but they’re not part of the Jobs’ circle yet.

Update 1: The old graphic has been updated to include the picture of Bob LeVitus instead of Dwight Silverman. Thanks Dwight!

Update 2: Some more people have received review units from Apple though only after the first reviews were in. These include Natali Del Conte of CNET (CBS News) and Michael Gartenberg of ComputerWorld.

The New Inner Circle of Steve Jobs

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

A typical job résumé, or curriculum vitae, is often a long and boring Word document highlighting your education, work experience, your interests and other achievements.

This format has been around since the “snail mail” days and it still works but, in the tough job market, if you really want to create something memorable that will immediately catch the attention of your prospective employer, try building a Visual Resume when applying for your next job.

In a Visual Résumé, you narrate your story in pictures. The slides have minimal text though you may include multimedia elements like a video of a talk you delivered at some conference or even audio narration.

Visual Résumés – Examples

Here’re some good examples of visual résumés that may inspire you. You can even apply some of Jobs’ presentation techniques (like no bullet points, ever) to make your résumé all the more impressive.

Visual Resumes won’t replace the traditional CVs yet but HR teams, who are often responsible for scanning a pile of resumes, won’t mind clicking through a few slides and, who knows, your creative and out-of-the-box thinking might just help you land your dream job.

Your Next Résumé Should Look Like This!

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

This may not be the most beautiful desktop wallpaper out there but it surely is innovative and different. All it has is an empty bookshelf and a computer desk inside a room – you can creatively fill it up with icons of your frequently used programs, folder shortcuts, control panel icons, etc.

To get started, open this template, right-click and set it as your desktop background. Then drag some icons from the Start Menu on to your desktop and arrange them on the bookshelves and the table (here’s mine).

If the icons don’t line up properly on the shelf, just right-click on your desktop and turn off the “align icons to grid” setting. And if your are using a netbook with a small screen, use this template instead.

Found via Herman Miller – Thanks Barb Hernandez.

Organize your Desktop with a Simple Wallpaper

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

“What’s your favorite website for buying gadgets in India?”

Unlike the US, there aren’t many online stores in India that sell electronic gadgets so when I asked this question on Facebook, there were quite a few interesting responses.

Sumant Srivathsan wrote:

20north.com has a significant markup on US prices, not to mention ridiculous S&H charges. eBay isn’t too bad, as long as you’re careful about researching the seller well. There’s virtually no e-commerce destination that can compete with Lamington Road/Palika Bazaar/Ritchie Street. The silent reality of shopping in India is that price sensitivity rules even at the top end of the price chain.

Pankaj Jain wrote:

Excluding eBay, I find it strange that Indian online stores are so highly priced compared to brick and mortar stores. I almost always buy gadgets online in the US for better prices and great service. The India online story baffles me because personally, I find most of the stores in Palika Bazaar, etc. to be filled with thieves looking to slit my throat and would much rather buy online but prices are too high. Amazon needs to dip it’s toes in Indian water to get the game going.

Praveen Deepak wrote:

I check out the prices on ebay.in and end up bargaining for a lesser price on SP Road, Bangalore. Works for me ! :D

People don’t mind buying gadgets from eBay as long as the seller has a good reputation but in general, gadget fans are really disappointed with the state of online shopping in India. You don’t get the latest gadgets, the prices are always on the higher side and the user experience on most of these online gadget stores is often pathetic.

GadgetsGuru.com IndiaPlaza.in FutureBazaar.com ebay.in Rs 17,874 Rs 16,500 Rs 18,400 Rs 15,500 IndiaTimes Rediff Shopping Infibeam.com 20north.com Rs 16,644 Rs 20,549 Rs 17,499 Rs 18,525

As an experiment, I compared the price of an iPod Touch 32 GB across all the ‘known’ online gadget stores in India and the numbers were almost in line with what other people had written on Facebook. You expect stuff to be less expensive online because the overheads are less but it’s a completely different story here (see chart above).

Today, Google India introduced a new comparison shopping tool that, they say, will help you compare prices of products from different India stores on one page. I tried it to get an idea about the price of an iPod Touch in India and the results obviously don’t give the right picture because the tool relies on price information from gadget websites which are just too expensive.

Do you buy gadgets from online stores in India? Don’t forget to share your experiences in the comments section!

Do You Buy Gadgets Online in India?

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

     

TechSmith today released a new version of Camtasia Studio, the popular screencasting software that is available on both Windows and Mac platforms.

I have been using the Windows version of Camtasia Studio 7 for sometime now* and there are quite a few new features in this release that will make it easier for users to edit and produce screencasts and presentation videos.

[*] The Mail Merge screencast was recorded using Camtasia Studio 7.

If you are already using an older version of Camtasia, the first change that you’ll immediately notice in Camtasia Studio 7 is the revamped UI -- they’ve moved from the classic XP like blue design to a black glass-like but non-transparent interface. The vertical task bar is gone and instead, you have a tabbed horizontal bar that gives you quick access to all the various editing tools but you can no longer hide this area.

When you create a set of screencasts, there are couple of elements that are common in every video. For instance, the intros, the background music, the title clips, watermarks, transitions, etc. won’t necessarily change with every video.

Camtasia 7 has therefore added something called libraries that lets you arrange all these “common” elements in one place so you can easily reuse them later. You may also use Libraries in Camtasia to bookmark all your frequently used transitions, call-outs, title designs, etc. so you can quickly access them in your next screencast movie.

One of the most useful features in version 7.0 is “cursor” effects. When editing a screencast, you can either completely hide the mouse cursor from the final video or, if the cursor is barely visible, you can even increase the size of the pointer in few easy steps. This is a brilliant feature though I did notice some erratic cursor jumps in one of my videos even when the effects were turned off.

Like the cursor, Camtasia Studio can auto-capture the keyboard strokes that you hit during the screen recording and these keystroke combinations can be displayed over your video just like a text caption (see the screenshot below). Earlier, if you were to display a key stroke, you could only do that manually.

With Camtasia Studio 7, you can produce and upload screencast videos to the YouTube website with a single click. You just have to record the screencast, type in your Google Account credentials and Camtasia will upload the videos in the 720p HD format as long as your recording dimensions are 1280x720 (HD).

That said, there are areas where Camtasia still needs improvement. For instance, the built-in title editor is very basic and there’s absolutely no support for rollovers and closing credits. As a workaround, you can produce title videos in Windows Live Movie Maker and import them into Camtasia Studio.

Camtasia does have support for captions (or subtitles) but you can’t export these “closed captions” as text files. This feature, if available, can be quite useful because sites like YouTube can not only read caption files but they can even translate them into other languages (your videos can therefore reach a bigger audience).

The above video playlist will walk you through all the other enhancements that are part of CS 7. You can download a 30-day trial from CamtasiaStudio.com.

The other good news is that TechSmith is giving away two licensed versions of Camtasia Studio 7 here. To qualify, just share links to some of your screencast videos through this form and if you win, I’ll send you the registration key via email.

Camtasia Studio 7 is Here! [Giveaway]

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.