Google Adsense Plugin for Windows Live Writer

AdSense Coder is new plugin for Windows Live Writer that lets you to add Google Ads directly into your blog posts through Windows Live Writer itself. It will also wrap the Adsense code around your text using the align attribute.

You first define different Google Ad formats that you want to include in the blog posts. AdSense Coder will then add those blocks of Javascript code to your blog posts anywhere you like.

Pretty easy to use but before you download and install the Adsense plugin, here's a word of caution.

Always avoid inserting Adsense code directly in your blog posts - always do that via templates in Blogger or themes in WordPress.

The reason is simple - if Google decides to change the default Adsense code for publishers somewhere down the line, you'll have to manually edit each and every blog posts that contains the Adsense code in order to remain complaint with the Google policies.

That situation will never arise if you put the Adsense block in a central place like the template of your blog. Thanks Stephan.

Modify PDF Documents without Adobe Acrobat

Since Adobe PDF is an output format, you cannot edit or recreate the PDF file unless the source documents are available.

Now Adobe Acrobat does allow you to apply numerous modifications to your existing PDF documents (like editing text, changing font attributes, inserting images and more) but, as you know, Acrobat is an extremely expensive software.

If you are on a budget and wish to edit PDF documents without Acrobat, the easiest option is to make edits in the original document itself and recreate the PDF using Google Docs or any of the free PDF writers.

When that is is not an option because you don't have the PDF source files, the PDFill PDF Editor (link) can help you manipulate PDF documents though it may work with password protected PDFs.

The PDF Editor is freeware and lets you make basic changes to PDF files - you can reorder the sequence of pages, crop a PDF page, add text information in header and footer, add image stamps or even merge multiple PDFs into one.

PDFill PDF editor is still limited like it won't let you edit that phone number or address in the PDF - another option is to download a trial version of Adobe Acrobat Professional - it works like a charm for 30 days.

Related: Extract Text from PDF with Gmail

Download Images From a Webpage When Right Click Is Disabled

Some websites disable the right click menu on their websites to prevent people from saving images and photographs to their desktop.

There are several ways to bypass that "right click" barrier - you can either do a screen capture, or copy that protected image from the web browser's cache or read the image URL from the HTML source of the web page and then save the image using your favorite download manager.

All the above methods work but the only problem is that they are geeky. So let's take look at another approach that requires absolutely no effort - it's called "drag-n-drop."

Just point your mouse pointer over the image, press and hold the left click button and drag that image either to browser address bar or somewhere on destkop. That's it. The image file will be instantly saved to your computer even if the right-click option was disabled (because we used left-click).

The drag-n-drop method really comes handy when the web page is opened in a window that has no menus, scroll bars or the toolbar.

Related: Bypass Flickr SpaceBall Protection

Flickr To Accept Payments for Pro Accounts Via PayPal Again

Few months ago, Flickr removed PayPal as a payment method and only those Flickr members could upgrade to a Flickr Pro account who had a Credit Card.

This was met with a great deal of disappointment in the Flickr community as existing Pro members, who were not having credit cards, could not renew their yearly Flickr pro membership.

Well, the news is that PayPal will make a comeback on November 20, 2007.

However, PayPal will now be offered as payment option in Flickr via Yahoo! Wallet. Flickr will also provide local currency support for payments made my PayPal. Full thread here.

Compare Flickr Pro with Picasa Web

PC Magazine - Give an OPML Of Your Favorite Blogs

Following the footsteps of CNET Blog 100, PC Magazine too today released their own list of 100 favorite blogs. The list includes the usual suspects but if you are new to the blogging world, this is probably a good place to quickly build your reading list.

There's something surprising here - PC Magazine decided to release a Windows based installer that will add this grand list of 100 blogs right into your Internet Explorer bookmarks.

Agree, a lot of people still use browser bookmarks to save their favorite websites but blogs are generally read and subscribed in RSS readers. PC Magazine could have released the blog list as an OPML that subscriber could import to their favorite news readers in a click.

Secondly, the PC Magazine installer will work only on Windows even though the mentioned blogs would definitely interest readers who may be on Mac and Linux.

Another surprise - Scobleizer is missing.

How to Download Contacts from Facebook To Outlook Address Book

Facebook users are not too pleased with the "walled garden" approach of Facebook. The reason is simple - while you can easily import your Outlook address book and GMail contacts into Facebook, the reverse path is closed.

There's no "official" way to export your Facebook friends email addresses or contact phone numbers out as a CSV file so that you can sync the contacts data with Outlook, GMail or your BlackBerry.

Some third-party Facebook hacks like "Facebook Sync" (for Mac) and "Facebook Downloader" (for Windows) did allow you to download your Facebook friends' names, emails, mobile phone number and profile photo to the desktop but they were quickly removed for violation of Facebook Terms of Use.

How to Download Contacts from Facebook

There are still some options to take Friends data outside the walls of Facebook wall.

1. Facebook offers the Takeout option allowing you to download all Facebook data locally to the disk (include the Facebook Photos). Go to your Account Settings page and click the “Download Your Information” link. This will include email address of your Facebook friends who have authorized Facebook to include their data in the exported files.
2. Alternatively, you can use the simpler Yahoo Mail option to export emails of all Facebook Friends. Once you link your Facebook and Yahoo account, all the email address of your friends will be available in your Yahoo address book that you download as a CSF file, VCF, as a text file or any other standard formats.

If you are on Microsoft Outlook, Fonebook is one easy (and legal) option to transfer photos, web address and birthdays of your Facebook contacts to Outlook (no email or mobile phone numbers). Update: No longer active.

Another secret program is Profilicious that will export your Facebook address book to other programs like Outlook or GMail. Since Facebook displays the contact email addresses as an image, Profilicious has an inbuilt OCR to extract the text out of that image. Update: No longer available.

Related: Add Friends Pictures from Facebook to Outlook Address Book

The Advantages of Using Gmail with Google Apps Premier

If you are also planning to sign up for a new Gmail account, consider opting for Google Apps Premier Edition that makes Gmail even better. Here are five reasons:

1. While 3 GB in free Gmail is lot of space, it can get exhausted - Google Apps gives you 25+ GB of storage space.

2. You can define a list of approved email senders and web domains - any messages from approved lists will always go to your Inbox bypassing the junk email filters. You can also block individual email senders and entire domains - messages from anyone in a blocked domain go directly to the Junk Quarantine.

3. Google guarantees a 99.9% uptime for Gmail. If things still go wrong, you can call Google's 24x7 telephone support for a solution.

4. Google Apps Premier users can hide all advertisements in Gmail that show in the right sidebar.

5. Now the top reason for using Google Apps email over Gmail - accidents do happen but with Google Apps Premier, you can recover deleted email messages from Gmail.

If you accidentally delete an email message in GMail , you will be able to retrieve the deleted message for the next 90 days by just searching for the message in the email archive.

Unlike Gmail which is free, Google Apps Premier will cost you $50 per year. Though Google is promoting the premier edition for business users, it is a good enough for anyone who finds Gmail storage limited or wants more control - $50 could be a worthwhile investment.

Al Gore's Current TV Makes Impressive Foray Into Social Networks

Current TV, which is a wonderful mix of some original programming and viewer generated content, will soon launch in a new and very impressive avatar.

While the original Current TV was limited to video, the new Current is more of a social network and bookmarking site where you can save and share videos, web pages and photos clipped from the web.

You can also upload original videos, just as before, except now your videos can be nearly anything, not just programs for Current TV.

You can watch some screenshots here of the upcoming Current TV website:

 

The most popular segment of Current TV among web users is Google Current - it provides a look (with a pinch of humor) at the current most popular search queries on Google using search data from Google Zeitgeist.

Current TV is led by Al Gore, the former Vice President of US who is also senior advisor to Google.

Add Tags To WordPress 2.3 Posts From Windows Live Writer 2008

The new WordPress 2.3 release supports keyword tagging without requiring external plug-ins like Ultimate Tag Warrior or Simple Tagging.

With the new Windows Live Writer 2008, you can easily add keyword tags to WordPress blog posts (see screen capture) though this feature is not enabled by default.

To enable tagging in WLW for WordPress 2.3 blogs, follow the steps below:

1. Download wlwmanifest.xml (with some images files) here and upload them to your wp-includes folder. [5023]

2. Add two lines of PHP code (highlighted in green) to the default-filters.php and general-template.php file also available in the wp-includes folder.

3. Goto Windows Live Writer, select the WordPress 2.3 blog and update the settings.

Voila! You will see a new input field that says "Keywords" - type any number of tags here separated by commas and they'll become part of your blog post.

More troubleshooting tips on using WordPress with Windows Live Writer.

Sidenote: I finished upgrading my second blog to WordPress 2.3 yesterday and the entire process completed in less than 15 minutes. The shift to the new WP platform was so simple as if you are just installing a new version of some WordPress plugin. Thanks Matt, your team rocks.

Merge Multiple RSS Feeds Into One with FeedBurner and Yahoo! Pipes

One of the very popular question in the FeedBurner FAQ is about merging XML RSS feeds from different sources (like Blogger, WordPress, Flickr, Twitter, Jaiku) and then syndicate the entire content as one FeedBurner feed.

This is desirable because a single feed makes it extremely easy for your subscribers to track new content and updates from you.

Though FeedBurner doesn't provide any native feed mixing service, you can use the excellent Yahoo! Pipes service to combine two or more feeds and burn them into a single FeedBurner feed.

Here's a step by step guide:



Step 1: Go to the Yahoo! Pipes website and Create a new Yahoo! Pipe.

Step 2: Drag-n-drop the "Fetch Feed" tab from the Sources tab to the main drawing panel.

Step 3: Add all the different Feed URLs in the same Fetch Feed Module (click the plus icon).

Step 4: Once you are done adding all your RSS feeds, drag the lower circle from Feed Fetch module to the Pipe Output at the bottom.

Step 5: Give some name and save this Yahoo! Pipe. Now run the pipe and you will see a new RSS feed - syndicate that feed via FeedBurner so you can even track the feed subscribers. It's all very simple.

Microsoft Releases Word 2007 Viewer for Reading docx Documents

To open a Word 2007 document without installing Office 2007, you either had to download the Office 12 Compatibility Pack or manually convert .docx to .doc format using any of the online conversion services.

The limitation with Office Compatibility Pack is that it still requires a previous version of Microsoft Office on your computer.

Not anymore. Microsoft recently introduced a free Word 2007 viewer that lets you view docx Word documents, even if you don't have any version of Word installed. You will still need to install the Office Compatibility Pack.

Other than Word 2007, Microsoft also provides a PowerPoint 2007 viewer for pptx presentations. There's no Excel 2007 viewer yet but you can convert xlsx to xls using Zamzar and then view the converted spreadsheet in Google Docs.

None of the Online Office suites (like Google Docs) currently support the new Office Open XML format of Office 2007.

Word 2007 Viewer | PowerPoint 2007 Viewer | Office 2007 FAQ

Excel 2007 Calculation Fix Weighs a Whooping 32 MB

After two weeks of testing, Microsoft today released a patch that will fix the Excel 2007 calculation errors.

Earlier, if the result of calculation in Excel 2007 is a number from 65534.99999999995 to 65535, it is incorrectly shown as 100000 in the spreadsheet.

The patch file weighs around 32 MB and that could be one of the reasons why Microsoft did not include it the regular Windows Update cycle though the patch itself is released on a Tuesday.

More details and download links on Excel Blog.

Once you apply the fix, it will update the main Excel.exe program to version 12.0.6042.5000 as well as the Graph and Office Art programs of Office 2007. This will also be a part of Office 2007 SP1.

Publish Your Twitter Tweets on Jaiku Automatically

Now that Jaiku is owned by Google, it will get lot of traction in the coming days - people who have refrained from micro-blogging so far are also likely to jump in.

If you are a Twitter addict but also want to use Jaiku simultaneously, here's a time-saving trick - you can continue sending tweets to Twitter as before (via mobile phone, web or Google Talk) and the messages will automatically appear in your Jaiku account as well. See screenshot.

This is possible because Twitter provides RSS feeds of all your Twitter messages and Jaiku can easily import that feed.

Just goto Jaiku Web feeds here and type your twitter URL (twitter.com/username). Then select the second option (as in the figure) and click Add feed.

The next time you write something on Twitter, it will also become available to your Jaiku Contacts.

Other than Twitter status messages, you can also add your Blog Feeds, Flickr photos, Digg, Facebook Status and everything else to Google-Jaiku that supports web feeds.

This Little Bird Is Twitting In The Google Campus

Google acquired Blogger in 2003 from Evan Williams who later launched another successful company called Twitter.

Google owned a service similar to Twitter called Dodgeball but for some reason, that service never got the attention it deserved and DodgeBall soon became history.

Well, Google has re-entered the "micro-blogging" space - the news just out is that Google has acquired Jaiku, another Twitter clone.

The litte bird above showed up on Jaiku homepage because the service may experiencing massive traffic at the moment.

Jaiku is not so popular as Twitter so Google may have definitely got a better deal here. Kevin Rose of Digg also runs a Jaiku-Twitter clone called Pownce.

Jaiku is currently invite only - While I have an account on Jaiku, the link to invite new friends is returning a 404.

Related: Twitter, Jaiku, Tumblr - The Future of Blogging

Is Your Google Talk Friends List Too Long and Unmanageable?

If you exchange a couple of email messages with another GMail user, Google Talk assumes that the person at the other end is a known contact and will automatically add him (or her) to your friends list.

That's the reason why many of us have long list of buddies in Google Talk (watch this video).

If the list has grown too big, try Google Talk bankruptcy - remove all existing friends from Google Talk in one go and make a fresh start.

Google Talk Friends List Getting Out of Hand? Try Bankruptcy

Camtasia Studio 5 Is Now Available - Review and Screenshots

Read review of Camtasia Studio 5 (with screenshots)

TechSmith have just released released Camtasia Studio 5. The software works on Microsoft Windows Windows XP and Vista.

The Camtasia Studio trial is fully-functional and runs for 30 days after installation. A free, 60-day account for Screencast.com is also included in the trial.

Camtasia Studio 5 is quite nicely integrated with the Screencast.com, an online service like YouTube but for sharing screencast videos. Unlike other online video hosting services, Screencast.com retains the original video quality and size of the uploaded screencast.

The World Atlas of the Internet

Internet World Maps - Visualize the popularity of Internet and Social Networking across various countries and continents. The full list includes seven interesting World Maps.

Focus Your Attention On the Current Task, Hide All Distractions

Distractions are always present when using a computer.

For instance, you are watching a YouTube video but hate the desktop screensaver that gets activated every few minutes. Or you are writing an important Excel sheet and suddenly there's a notification in the system tray that says "Your friend Rick is Online" or that "You a new email."

Here's a real scenario - I am writing this blog post in Windows Live Writer and there's Outlook, Google Talk, Firefox in the background all competing for attention.

All these little things make it tough to focus on the task at hand. If you also find yourself in a similar situation and wish you could work on the computer sans distractions, a little utility called Zorro for Windows can help you here.

Zorro is like placing a cardboard on the screen with a rectangular hole - you focus the Zorro views screen over any area of the desktop (or any running software application), hit the ESC key and Zorro will blank all the outside portion. Distractions, if any, won't be visible unless you escape the Zorro mode (i.e., remove the cardboard).

Get Zorro 1.4 for Windows and stop paying attention to stuff that's not important at that point of time. And similar to Mouse Spotlight, Zorro can be a great help when giving presentations and you want the audience to concentrate on a particular area of the slide or screen. Thanks Martin.

Related: Write Without Distractions

Google Reducing PageRank of Websites That Sell Paid Text Links

Matt Cutts has long been giving strong but indirect hints that selling text links ads (without using nofollow) or writing sponsored product reviews could harm the rankings of your blog or website in Google search results.

Google is not against text link advertising, they just don't want sites to pass link juice to advertisers. Read Matt's take on the issue:

You want my links for traffic.. totally fine..just don't make it so they affect search engines..so that's why we say use nofollow..or use a redirect which is through robots.txt

Paid links that affect search engines (whether paid text links or a paid review) can cause a site to lose trust in Google.

Two months ago, we saw that organic search rankings of a Page Rank 7 website were penalized by Google for selling text links. The ban was quickly lifted (in less than a week) after the site owner removed the paid links.

Now another instance has surfaced where Google penalized the PageRank of a site after detecting paid links.

The Stanford Daily website, which is part of Standford University, was a PR 9 website but with the recent update, Google has dropped the to PR7. The reason, you guessed it right, is paid text links.

Danny Sullivan, who discovered the drop, talked to Google about the issue and Google confirmed that PageRank scores are being lowered for some sites that sell links.

Not just PageRank, Google said that some sites that are selling links may indeed end up being dropped from its search engine or have penalties attached, to prevent them from ranking well.

Not everyone here may agree with the rules imposed by Google Government but there's no denying that Google is the single largest source of search traffic to most websites today.

By selling paid links on your site (without using nofollow), you may be making money in the short run but once the search rankings and PageRank is penalized by Google, the incoming search traffic and link selling power of your site will dilute anyway.

The Image That You See Here Is Not a Photograph

 

You may not believe your eyes but the image above is not a photograph, it's just a painting of a non-real person done using airbrush, not Photoshop.

Dru Blair took around 70 hours to paint this beautiful photorealistic image - look at the eyes, skin tones, hair curls.. they look so real.

Dru has the details on how he completed this painting dubbed "Tica" - Photorealism at its best.

Related: Fake or Real Photos