Here is an example of a set of photos turned into a collage using the online tool

To create your own collage of photos, just browse to the Shape collage online tool and paste the URL of your photos. Next, choose the shape of the collage and hit the “Create collage” button. Your collage will be created and you can instantly share your collage with everyone, embed it in your blog or email it to your friends. (also see: How to turn Pictures into cartoons)

The only downside is that you cannot use the photos stored behind a password (e.g Facebook account or Picasa web albums).

If you want to create a collage of photos stored in your computer, download the desktop tool. The desktop tool is available for Windows and Linux. No signups or registrations are required and you can create as many collages as you want.

Create Photo Collages of Different Shapes Using Shape Collage

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When you may need to use Google docs to Post Blog entries ?

There may be couple of situations where you would like to use Google docs as a blog editor and post blog entries directly without intervening the blog’s dashboard or any desktop software.The situations are :

A : You have a group of people willing to write articles but they do not have knowledge of Wordpress, Blogger etc. All they want is a simple interface from where they can post to your blog.

B : You are at an internet cafe or some other place and do not want to disclose your blog’s dashboard in front of everyone.

C : You do not use any Blog editor to write blog entries. You are in Love with Google docs and want to use it fully. (also read : Post blog entries from Microsoft Word )

Add your blog’s theme in Google docs

At first you need to set up the blog’s theme in Google docs so that you can get the same environment and feel while you are writing your article. This involves saving the CSS and design of your blog template in Google docs and using it while you post.

1. Open Google docs and create a new document where you will be composing your blog post.

2. To have a feel of your blog’s design and template it is advised to edit the css of your document.Just go to Edit—>css and paste the css styling of your blog template.

The theme may not match exactly with your blog’s theme as you have to include the required classes in the Html source of the Google document that you are composing. But anyhow, you will get a rough idea about how your post may look inside Google docs.

2.Set the page width to fixed size so that while you write your post, the page fits in the exact dimension and you can accommodate the necessary media in proper places.To set fixed width go to View—>Fixed Width page.

Writing your Post

Start writing your Post in the Google document.

Adding images : To add images in the post go to Insert –> Image and add an image from your computer.If you want to add an image from the web just paste the image url as shown below

Insert a Video : Unfortunately you cannot add a YouTube video in Google docs because some time ago Google has rolled out this feature.

4. When you have finished writing your post, preview it from Share—> view as web page.

Publishing your post

After you have finished editing the post, you will want to publish it in your blog.Go to Share—> Publish as web page. Now you will have to set up your blog’s settings.

Google docs will ask you in which Blogging platform you want to post your blog article. You can post this blog entry on Blogger,Wordpress.com,Squarespace,Livejournal,Blogharbor and Blogware.

Just select your blogging platform and enter the username and Blog title ( in case you have multiple blogs in your account ).The username may or may not be equal to the username of your Google account. You can use any Blogger username to post your blog entry. That means, you can post your blog post to any blogger blog provided you have the username of that blog.

Publishing your post in self hosted Wordpress platform

If you want to publish your post in self hosted Wordpress platform , then select “My own server” and switch to the “Movable type API”.

Set the path of the URL field as http://www.yoursite.com/xmlrpc.php. After that just fill in the username and password of the blog and you are ready to publish your post from Google docs itself. But before doing that you should test the settings and configuration. click on the test button to make sure everything is working fine.

Note : If the test fails there may be a problem in your Wordpress settings. You must enable the XML-RPC protocol from Wordpress to post a blog entry from external blog editors like Google docs, Windows live writer etc.

If everything looks good click the OK button and click on “Post to blog”. Bingo ! You have just updated your blog from Google docs itself.

Editing your Post after it is being published from Google docs

You can edit the post the same way as you do inside Wordpress. A new post is made available instantly and you can fill in all the details after your post has been published.

The only downside is that you cannot save any post as draft and neither can you assign Categories and tags and fill in other necessary details like the All in one seo pack from docs itself.

A good collaborative tool and if you have a team blog consisting of novice authors, it would be better to let them start blogging from Google docs.

How to use Google Docs as a Blogging Tool and Post Blog Entries

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Upload multiple photos to Flickr using your email account

Many users still prefer the old school way – using email.Please refer to this guide on how to upload multiple photos in your Flickr account using email only.

Flickr Scheduler: Batch upload photos to Flickr at a scheduled time

Flickr scheduler let’s you batch upload photos in your Flickr account and that too at a particular time.Using this software you can create a queue of photos to be uploaded in Flickr. You can change title of an image, add description, tags and also choose who can view your uploaded photos.

The uploader keeps a history of the uploaded photos and also shows you your remaining upload quota.You can also view the uploaded photos in your Flickr account from the desktop. As for back up, this tool makes it easy because you can import and  export all your configuration data, settings and profile credentials.

This software works in Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Take a Screenshot and upload it to your Flickr account

If you are looking for a one click solution to take a screenshot and upload the photos in your Flickr account, then use Webimager.It is a portable application that can be used to take screenshots on your desktop and upload the images in your Flickr account.

You can set the title,description and tags of the image that you upload.Very useful utility for Flickr fans who regularly share screenshots with others.

How to Batch Upload Photos In Flickr at a Scheduled Time

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Earlier we have seen ways to download individual Youtube videos in your preferred formats and how to download Youtube videos as audio files.

Here is a nice desktop tool that can download entire video playlists as well as individual Youtube videos in your computer in MP4, AVI and FLV format. You have to just paste the playlist  Url and it will auto fetch all the videos in the playlist and save the videos in your computer in the format you want. (also read : Youtube Tricks )

Here are the complete steps involved to download an entire YouTube video playlist  :

1. First Download and Install FreeYoutubeDownload.

2. Run the application and just paste the playlist url.

3. Select the folder where you would want to download the videos and hit the download button. All the videos in the playlist will be fetched one by one and then downloaded in your computer.

The best thing about this free utility is that you can select the file formats (AVI, FLV and MP4).The only downside is that you cannot resume your download if you quit in the middle.

Download All the Videos of a YouTube Playlist – Desktop Tool

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Google background changer is a Firefox add-on that let’s you change the background of Google home page and the search result pages with a custom image of yours. You can use an image stored in your computer or you can even use an image from the web.

Here is how the Google homepage looks with my image used

It’s really cool right. Note that you can also replace the name “Google” with your chosen name. ( also see : Replace The Google logo with Your favorite Google Doodle in Firefox )

And here is how the search result pages look

Auto rotate Images in the Google homepage with a Custom image of yours

This is what makes this add-on fun to use. You can auto rotate a gallery of pictures to appear in the Google homepage as page background. The chosen set of pictures will be automatically added as page background as you reload the Google homepage or any search result pages.

To do that, browse to the add-on preferences and click “Use gallery”. After that just navigate to the folder where you have saved all your images. That’s it. Now every time you open the Google homepage, you will have a different picture as page background. ( Related : Auto rotate desktop wallpapers )

Share your Google homepage background with friends

Okay you have installed the add-on and have set your image in the Google homepage. Now what ? You can share the background with your friends by emailing them, or posting a link at Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites.

Just after you have changed the background, the add on will ask you whether you want to share this background with any of your friends. One of the best Firefox add-ons i have ever seen. It can be used to fool a friend for sure.

Add Your Image to Google homepage as Page background

• Replace The Google logo with Your favorite Google Doodle in Firefox
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• Published Google documents will soon appear in Search engines
• 9 ways to Search Multiple Search Engines together

Searching for lyrics of your popular songs over the web can be a pain. Every time  you have to type, search different sites for lyrics and save them in your computer. How about a tool that can automatically fetch lyrics of songs in Windows media player or winamp ?

Just install the Winamp plugin or Windows media player lyrics plugin from  Lyrics plugins and you are done.Start playing a song and you will have the lyrics of the song automatically inserted.

Note : You must be connected to the internet to fetch the song’s lyrics. This feature does not works if you are offline.

Furthermore,  a user can supply lyrics of a song to the lyrics plugin database. If any song lyrics is not available the plugin gives you an option to type the lyrics and submit it. After you have submitted the lyrics of the song it becomes available to everyone. A great idea and a real time saver.

See the Lyrics of a Song in Windows Media player and Winamp

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Use Google Sidewiki without Google Toolbar – Bookmarklet

You can read the Google sidewiki entries from Chrome, Safari that do not support the Google toolbar. Just drag and drop the following bookmarklet in your Bookmarks toolbar :

Google Sidewiki Bookmarklet

When you are reading a webpage and wish to read the Sidewiki entries just click this Bookmarklet. It will open a new pop up window containing the Sidewiki comments. You can even write a new Sidewiki entry about that webpage from the pop up window.

Write a Sidewiki Comment of your Blog that will always appear on top

If you have a blog or website then here is a little trick that will allow your sidewiki comment to be in top of all other entries in every page of your blog.

Just add your site in Google Webmaster Tools and verify yourself as the owner of your blog. Browse to the homepage of your site and sign in to Google sidewiki using the same Google account used for webmaster tools. After that write your Sidewiki comment. This comment will appear on top of all other sidewiki comments on your homepage.

Note : This trick is also true for all the other pages of your blog.

Google sidewiki Firefox add on

If you don’t want to use Google toolbar and love using Firefox, go for The Google sidewiki Firefox add-on. It works in the same way as a sidebar and you need to press the sidewiki button in the status bar. The downside is that the sidewiki comments aren’t auto refreshing.

How to track Google sidewiki Traffic to your Blog

You can actually track how many people are visiting your site by clicking the Google sidewiki links using Google analytics. Following are the steps involved to track Google sidewiki traffic to your blog :

1. Log in to Google analytics account and select a date range for which you want to measure the traffic details.

2. Switch to the “Visitors” tab and select “Referring Sites”.

3. Select “Google.com” from the list of referring sites.

4. Choose “Referral path” from the dropdown and you can see how many visitors clicked the links in Google sidewiki to arrive in your Blog.

Post Google sidewiki Comments Directly in your Blogger blog

You can post your sidewiki entries as individual blog posts in Blogger. While on a webpage use the Google sidewiki to insert comments and these comments can be published to your Blogger blog, with a reference to the original article. Following are the steps involved to post to your blogger blog from Google sidewiki :

1. When you are on a webpage open the Sidewiki sidebar. You should be signed in to your Blogger account while posting the Sidewiki comment.

2. Click on “Write an entry” and write your comment. Give your comment a suitable title as this title would be used as post title in case you want it to publish to any of your Blogger blogs.

3. Select your Blogger blog and Hit the publish button. That’s it. Your sidewiki Comment will be posted as a new blog post in the blogger blog and will contain a back link to the original story.

Here is a short 1 minute screencast of the above process :

How To Send Google SideWiki Comments To Your WordPress Blog

If you have a blog in Wordpress , you can import all your sidewiki comments into it, much in the same way as mentioned above. The resulting comments can be published as a new blog post using the wp-o-matic Wordpress plugin. Gary Conn, has written a wonderful guide on how to import Sidewiki comments in Wordpress.

Watch the following screencast for step by step instructions :

How to View All your Google Sidewiki Comments

To view all of your Google Sidewiki comments, browse to your Google profile page. Switch to the Sidewiki tab and you will have all your Sidewiki comments listed in order of date of posting.

Well, that’s all about the Google sidewiki Tips and tricks. If you know a specific trick which i left out, please let us know through the comments.

Google Sidewiki Tips and Tricks

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To change the Google logo you will need the Favorite Doodle Greasemonkey script. It can replace the logo in Google homepage and search result pages with your personal favorite Google Doodle. You will still see the new logos released by Google on special occasions, events and dates.

How to choose your Favorite Google Doodle

Install the Greasemonkey script and browse to the official Google logo gallery. Once you find your logo, hit the button that says : “Make this my favorite Doodle” and it’s done. (also read : Add Your Image to Google homepage as Page background)

You will then be redirected to Google homepage containing your chosen Google logo. In case Google releases a new logo, the custom logo will be overwritten for that day so that you don’t miss the new Doodle releases.

Replace The Google logo with Your favorite Google Doodle in Firefox

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According to the Official announcement of Google :

Using feeds for discovery allows us to get these new pages into our index more quickly than traditional crawling methods. We may use many potential sources to access updates from feeds including Reader, notification services, or direct crawls of feeds

The biggest advantage of Rss and atom feed crawling would be fighting the post duplication issue. There are a lot of lazy people out there who just copy and republish content using your feeds. With this new feature, Google will crawl your feed sooner and any post duplication will add to your benefit as the Googlebot can identify the original source.

Let Google crawl your Blog’s feed

To allow the Googlebot to crawl your feed check your Robots.txt file. Generally the robots.txt is placed in the root directory of your blog and it should not block the Google-bot to index and crawl your feed.

e.g If your robots.txt file contains any of the following lines then it is blocking your Rss feed to be crawled :

User-agent: *
Disallow: /feed

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /feed

You can check the status of your robots.txt file from Google webmaster central reports or by entering http://yourdomain.com/robots.txt in the browser address bar.

Till now, Google generally used incoming links, sitemaps to index and crawl websites. With the addition of Rss and atom feeds newer websites won’t find any problem getting their blog indexed.

Google includes Rss and Atom Feeds for Crawling and Indexing Webpages

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Twit Wall :

The concept of micro-blogging was so liked by Michael E. Carluen, the product development guy at 365labs, that he started his own & named it TwitWall.

It has a very easy to use interface with many other useful options. Login with your twitter account or create a free account for TwitWall there.

While you tweet you can add title to your tweet & then the longer tweet as the content. Most common formatting features are available. You can also add files or even a podcast to your tweet. Whenever the post is submitted it lets its readers to share it on Facebook and many other platforms & also a scheduled retweet which is pretty neat.

While the post is tweeted in Twitter it shows the title as a tweet & a shortened url which links back to the published content in TwitWall shown above.

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Twitlonger :

Stuart Gibson came up with this app. This is one hell of a tool, much easier to use than any other. The best thing about it is that security is no more a concern. They do not need your passwords anymore. They made a switch to Oauth for the authentication issue. Anyways you can revoke access to Twitlonger anytime you choose without compromising your password.

Well tweeting is a pretty easy stuff easy here with no more utilities like adding files or sort of stuff. Simply text is all you can do. but that’s enough for us I think. Add as many as you need to talk.

Well in your twitter homepage, a selected part from the text will be shown with a shortened url that links to the original text in Twitlonger micro-blogging website.

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XLTweet

This is also something pretty easy to use while you need to post long tweets. Just type in the text, provide your Twitter account username & password & hit “Tweet This!”. Some most common text formatting options are available also. The twitter view is similar to the earlier two tools.

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TxtBin

This tool lets you add the text & save it first & then generate a txtb.in shortened url of the text that you just entered.

Once the url is generated you will be prompted to “Tweet This” to your Twitter account which shows the url as a tweet. Tweet it then.

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TinyPaste

Well as we know, anything and everything is virtually possible with Mozilla Firefox. It actually has an Quick Paste addon which lets you generate a tinypaste shortened url of any selected text & then copy paste that to your Twitter account as a Tweet & thereby post long tweets.

Well you can also do this without installing the add-on. Go to the Tinypaste website & do the same stuff of generating a tinypaste shortened url & then paste it to your Twitter.

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Tweet Cut

This tool is a neat tool, which simply looks for some common words in your long tweet that can be abbreviated to a smaller word. Like “to” – 2, “members” – membrs, “dedicated” – dedic8d etc. Though the technique is pretty decent, but it is effective only if your text contains the words to abbreviate in their glossary. Else it simply doesn’t work.

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Maxi Tweet

This is not necessarily a good way to tweet a longer tweet, but the reason I have enlisted these here is the concept of compressing tweets employed here.

The concept implied her is just called XX5, which is a decrypted text that can be read with bare eyes. Well just write down your tweet fine tune it with compression meter. And now tweet it.

Though if you use too much compression the tweet will simply look awful like the one shown below.

Well this is certainly not the tool to post long tweets for now, but hope it gets better in coming days. You may also like to read 10 Twitter tools that actually save your time.

On an ending note I must say that there are many more tools that are still out there or are just waiting to come which will post long tweets for you. The listing here is strictly based on the tools I use the most. Well, it would be nice, if you could share some more of them in the comments. Happy Twittering guys !!!

How to post long tweets that are more than 140 characters

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