Internet Utilities

What are some best practices for indicating breadcrumbs? (Video) - Google Webmaster Tool Tips and Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 03:52:00 +0000

Bauer from Hamburg, Germany asks: "Google is showing breadcrumb URLs in SERPS now. Does the kind of delimiter matter? Is there any best practice? what character to use best?"

Source: GoogleWebmasterHelp

What's New in Firefox 3.6 Video - Firefox Channel

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 03:48:00 +0000

Mike Beltzner, Director of Firefox Development, gives an overview of what's new in Firefox 3.6. Download Firefox 3.6, for free, at Firefox.com.

Source: firefoxchannel

State of the Index 2009 (Video) - Google Webmaster Tool Tips and Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 03:46:00 +0000

Matt Cutts talks about what Google has done for users, web developers, and webmasters in 2009.

See the slides here:
http://googlewebmastercentr...

Source: GoogleWebmasterHelp

YouTube Direct: Getting Started Guide, Video - Best of Google products and services GoogleDevelopers

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 03:02:00 +0000

Jeff Posnick narrates a screencast detailing all aspects of getting started with YouTube Direct, from required downloads to configuration to deployment.

For even more information about YouTube Direct, see http://code.google.com/p/youtube-direct/

Source: GoogleDevelopers channel

Google Chrome Extensions: Launch Event, part 1 video -

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:15:00 +0000

Video Footage from the Google Chrome Extensions launch event on 12/09/09.
In this part, Brian Rakowski, product management director, provides an update on Google Chrome and explains why extensions are important for the Google Chrome team.

Source: GoogleDevelopers channel

Google Chrome Extensions: Launch Event, part 6 video -

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:14:00 +0000

Video Footage from the Google Chrome Extensions launch event on 12/09/09. Nick Baum, product manager for Google Chrome's extension system presents the gallery approval process, gives tips to extensions developers on how to make their extension successful and discusses the team's short term plans.

Source: GoogleDevelopers channel

Google Chrome Extensions: Launch Event, part 5 video

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:12:00 +0000

Video Footage from the Google Chrome Extensions launch event on 12/09/09. Xmarks, eBay and Google Translate present their experience developing an extension for Google Chrome.

Source: GoogleDevelopers channel

Google Chrome Extensions: Launch Event, part 4 video

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:10:00 +0000

Video Footage from the Google Chrome Extensions launch event on 12/09/09. Aaron Boodman and Erik Kay, technical leads for the Google Chrome extensions team discuss the UI surfaces of Google Chrome extensions and the team's content not chrome philosophy. They also highlight the smooth, frictionless install and uninstall process for Google Chrome's extensions system and present the team's initiatives in the space of security and performance.

Source: GoogleDevelopers channel

Google Chrome Extensions: Launch Event, part 3 video -

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:08:00 +0000

Video Footage from the Google Chrome Extensions launch event on 12/09/09. Erik Kay and Aaron Boodman, technical leads for the Google Chrome Extensions team demonstrate how to build, debug and share a Google Chrome extension.

Source: GoogleDevelopers channel

Google Chrome Extensions: Launch Event, part 2 video -

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 02:58:00 +0000

Video Footage from the Google Chrome Extensions launch event on 12/09/09. Aaron Boodman and Erik Kay technical leads for the Google Chrome extensions team present a quick history of the extensions system of Google Chrome and discuss its design principles, focusing on why extensions are webby.

Source: GoogleDevelopers channel

Twazzup and App Engine, Video - Best of Google products and services, GoogleDevelopers

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:51:00 +0000

An interview with the developers behind twazzup.com on how App Engine helps them run their application.

by GoogleDevelopers channel

Easy Video Project Ideas - You Tube Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 10:24:00 +0000

Wanna create your own video and need some inspiration? Here are some creative ideas that could work for anyone, gathered from and inspired by the YouTube community.

Very special thanks to those whose clips appear in this video. They are:

1. maddogza - "make YouTube your voice" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVe_Iu...

2. GiR2007 - "take a camera into the kitchen" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG5gO4...

3. ArtieTSMITW - "make strange noises and faces" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPx266...

4. thecomputernerd01 - "interview your grandparents" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpCEx1...

5. jaaaaaaa - "pick up an instrument and play an original tune" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mbiql_...

6. Urgelt - "recite a spooky story" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lBkuz...

7. NeilCicierega - "put on a puppet show" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm...

8. kamapazzo - "create art in unlikely places" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCQZ2T...

9. fallofautumndistro - "make a flipbook and animate it" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUNd6y...

Got a great project idea? Leave a comment on this video.

Head to the Creator's Corner, our all-in-one hub for uploaders, including tutorial videos, guides to creator-specific features and a blog -- http://video-creativity.blogspot.com -- devoted to videographers and all the cool stuff you make.

Source: YouTube Channel

Now Stop Typing, Start Dictating Emails on your iPhone - Useful Tools and API's

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:55:00 +0000

Nuance, the makers of Dragon NaturallySpeaking (the world’s most popular voice recognition software), have released a new iPhone App that lets you dictate emails, blog posts, SMS text messages or any other text straight into your iPhone without having to use the keyboard.

Called Dragon Dictation, this voice recognition app for your iPhone sports a minimal interface. Just tap the screen and start dictating. Your speech will be recorded and transcribed into text that you can then send as an SMS, email or copy it to the iPhone clipboard and paste into any other iPhone application.

The Dragon Dictation app is available on the iTunes store as a free download for a limited time but only in the US store. That means you’ll not be able to use the Dragon application if your iTunes account is associated with a non-US address.

To correct any dictated text, you can either top on a word to get a drop-down list of alternative suggestions or you can tap the keyboard icon on the bottom left corner and use the standard iPhone text editing feature.

The voice transcription happens on Nuance servers (and not on your phone) so you’ll need an active Wi-Fi or 3G data connection to send your recorded voice and receive transcribed text back from Nuance.

Dragon Dictation is available for original iPhone 2G, 3G and the latest iPhone 3Gs but your phone must be running at least iPhone OS 3.1.

The company is also working on a separate voice recognition app for search that will let you search Google, Bing, and other search engines using voice commands. The Google mobile app for iPhone too includes voice recognition capabilities but with Dragon Search, you’ll be able to search multiple places in one go include YouTube and Twitter.

Source: www.labnol.org

Know The Best Performing Banner Sizes for AdSense - Adsense Tips and Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:46:00 +0000

Google AdSense can provide banners ads in eight standard sizes but if you are not too sure which of these sizes will perform best on your website, read this.

The graph below shows relative click rates (CTR) for all the standard banner ad sizes (relative to the classic "full banner") and as is obvious from the picture, the ad performance or click through rates are much better for larger ad units.

If you are using a medium 300x250 rectangle format on your site, it may be a good idea to do some split testing (for say a week) and then probably replace that unit with a large 336x280 rectangle. Similarly, try squeezing in a wide skyscraper in place of that 120x600 Skyscraper that you may be having on your site.

And while it is easy to include a 728x90 Leaderboard in almost every site design, make sure that it is not the first unit in your HTML source as it is not always the best performing unit.

Another interesting point here is that the 125x125 square ad format, which is now quite popular among the blogger community, seems to attract lower clicks than even the 468x60 banner of the "geocities era" so your advertisers may not be feeling very happy about this.

The AdSense support site also suggests something very similar:

The formats we’ve found to be the most effective are the 336x280 Large Rectangle, the 300x250 Medium Rectangle, and the 160x600 Wide Skyscraper.

Also, wider ad formats tend to outperform their taller counterparts, due to their reader-friendly format. The wider ad format also lessens the likelihood of readers leaving the ad unit altogether.

The above chart was shared in an online webinar by the AdSense optimization team and you can download the full report from DoubleClick.com. Worth reading.

Source: www.labnol.org

Some photo tagging applications on Facebook add links to bad sites in "your" photos and your innocent Facebook friends

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:35:00 +0000

If you have not logged into your Facebook account for some time, I suggest that you do so now. Once you are logged-in, click the "Photos" tab on your Facebook profile and what you see there might surprise you.

It’s your own personal photo album on Facebook but none of these pictures of odd-looking cartoon characters, horoscope charts, photo collages, friend graphs, etc. have been uploaded by you.

What photo tagging applications can do to your Facebook profile

The culprit, as you may have guessed, are these Facebook applications that tag random images with your name and the tagged image therefore shows up in your Facebook profile page without you doing anything.

What’s the problem?

These "collages" not only make your Facebook profile look very unprofessional but there’s something else to worry about as well.

Some photo tagging applications on Facebook add links to bad sites in "your" photos and your innocent Facebook friends, who are just randomly browsing your pictures, might fall in the trap.

What can you do?

The simple way is that you remove your name tag from the tagged photo and it will be instantly removed from your Facebook photo album as well.

Next you should find the Facebook application that you friend used to create that photo collage in the first place and block that application forever so that your other friends are unable to use that application to spam your Facebook profile page.

Also make sure that you get notifications each time someone tags you in a photo. You can control this setting from the "Notifications" tab on the Account Settings page.

Photo tagging is the one of the most popular features on Facebook and, probably for this reason, Facebook doesn’t offer a simple setting that will prevent other users and applications from tagging you in photographs. You can however hide "photos tagged of you" from the privacy page so that the images don’t appear in your public photo albums and are visible only to you.

And as a precautionary measure, visit the authorized apps pages to make sure that you haven’t authorized any Facebook app to tag images of other people on your behalf. If you find one, just click the cross to remove that Facebook app from your profile permanently.

What can Facebook do?

When you are tagged in a photo by your friends (or a Facebook application), the tag is automatically approved and the picture appears in your profile. All we therefore need is an extra privacy setting that would let us to approve tags before a tagged photo appears on our profile page.

Facebook won’t let developers add apps to your profile without permission then why do they allow them to add pictures to your profile without asking.

Source: www.labnol.org

What are some running gags at Google? (Video) - Google Webmaster Tool Tips and Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:55:00 +0000

Alex asks:

"What is the most common running gag over there at Google?"

Source: Google Webmaster Central

Google Announces Automatic Captions on YouTube (Video) - You Tube Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:18:00 +0000

In Washington, DC, Google announced the preliminary roll-out of automatic captioning in YouTube, an innovation that takes advantage of our speech recognition technology to turn the spoken word into text captions. We also announced that if you have a transcript of your video, you can upload it to YouTube and we'll time the captions for you.

Over 60 accessibility leaders from the National Association of the Deaf, Gallaudet University, AAPD and other organizations joined us to be the first to learn about these new features.

Read more about the announcement: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/1...

Source: Google Channel

Which search feature would you add to Google? (Video) - Google Webmaster Tool Tips and Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:15:00 +0000

PaddyMoogan from the UK asks: "If you could improve one thing or add a feature to Google search right now, what would it be?"

Source: Google Webmaster Central GoogleWebmasterHelp's Channel

Music search feature launch highlights (Video) - Best of Google products and services - Google Search

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:11:00 +0000

Highlights from our recent music search feature launch event. http://www.google.com/music

Source: Google Channel

Graph from Adify should give you a good idea, The Average CPM Rates Across Different Verticals

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:49:00 +0000

If you are curious to know the average CPM rates for online advertising across verticals, this graph from Adify should give you a good idea.

CPM trends across verticals

Except Food, Entertainment and Real Estate, the CPM rates for display ads have declined across industries in the last three quarters which is quite good news for online advertisers but not so good news for web publishers and bloggers.

For some unknown reason, this Adify Report excludes the Technology sector which also commands high CPM rates (the CPM rates for tech industry were around $15 inQ2 2009).

CPM = cost per thousand ad impressions.

Source: www.labnol.org

How to Send Mass Emails Using Gmail? Don’t Get Locked - Best of Google products and services - Gmail

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:02:00 +0000

The holiday season is near and you want to send personalized email greetings to all your friends, family members and customers using the standard Gmail (or Google Apps with Gmail) service.

How to Send Bulk Emails using Gmail

Since the web interface of Gmail doesn’t support personalized emails, you should connect your Gmail account with Microsoft Outlook (via POP3 or IMAP) and also import the Gmail address book into your Outlook Contacts.

Now you can use the mail merge feature of Outlook to send personalized messages to every single Gmail contact from the desktop.

This may sound like an easy plan but there’re strict sending limits and, if you aren’t careful, Google may even block your Gmail account temporarily for up to 24 hours and you’ll neither be able to send nor receive any emails during that lock-out period.

Email Sending Limits in Google Apps

If you are using Gmail with Google Apps, you cannot send messages to more than 500 unique email addresses per day.

For instance, if you send one email to Person A and another one is addressed to Person B and C, you have already exhausted three slots (out of 500) even though only two messages left your Inbox.

Email Sending Limits for Gmail users

If you want to send bulk mails using a regular Gmail account, the rules are similar.

You can only send out emails to a maximum of 500 recipients during a 24 hour* period but if you are using a desktop client (like Outlook), that limit is reduced to 100 messages in a day.

[*] The Gmail help site mentions this limit as 500 recipients per message but a Google employee on the Gmail support site has confirmed that this cap is not just per message but per day.

Workarounds for sending mass emails

With all these limitations in place, Gmail is obviously not the best option for reaching out to a very large customer base. However, if you have no other option, it may be a good idea to plan well in advance.

For Gmail: Distribute the mail merge process over 2-3 days so that you never exceed that 100 messages per day quota.

For Google Apps: You can either upgrade to a Premier edition or create multiple accounts in Google Apps as each will have its own 500-recipients limit.

Source: www.labnol.org

Learn how to video chat in orkut, Video - Best of Google products and services - Orkut

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:20:00 +0000

Watch this video to learn how to talk face-to-face with your friends using video chat inside orkut. All you need is a webcam and a small plugin - free at http://google.com/chat/video

Source: Google Channel

How can I remove old content from Google's index?, Video - Google Webmaster Tool Tips and Tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:17:00 +0000

Sebastian from Germany asks: "We still have old content in the index. We block them via robots.txt, use 404 and delete them via Webmaster Tools, but Google keeps it. What can we do to quickly delete content from the index?

Source: Google Webmaster Central

Google & Food Network Celebrate Thanksgiving, Video

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:29:00 +0000

Marissa Mayer and Food Network's Alton Brown celebrate Thanksgiving with new themes and gadgets for iGoogle. http://google.com/gourmetth...

Source: Google Channel

Google Chrome OS Open Source Project Announcement, Video

noreply@blogger.com (Rita Thakkar) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:26:00 +0000

Google Chrome OS is an open source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the web built around the core tenets of speed, simplicity and security. http://www.chromium.org

Source: Google Channel