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Blogs that are on Blogger or WordPress can add the wonderful Outbrain star ratings widget to their blog posts.

This ratings widget has been under a closed beta for some time but they finally made a public release today.

Outbrain Ratings widget is light, requires no registration and intuitive - visitors can hover the mouse over the five stars and click any of them to rate your current blog post.

Even if you have a regular website that's not a blog, this ratings widget can be installed on your site as well.

You need such a rating widget to get feedback from all those reader who are subscribed to your blog aren't contributing to the discussion because they are probably too lazy to write a comment.

Give them a system like this ratings widget that requires no effort and they'll be happy to say if enjoyed or disliked reading your blog post. Get the Ratings Widget here.

If you are using Windows Live Writer to insert ratings in your blog posts, make sure you remove the link breaks from javascript else this may not work.

Ticker Symbol Lookup in Yahoo! Finance

When I wrote this story comparing Google Finance with Yahoo! Finance, the one area where Google had a lead over Yahoo! was ticker symbol search.

While Yahoo! Finance required you to enter the exact stock ticker symbol in the search box, Google Finance would offer matching suggestion as you type the name of the company or stock symbol.

Today, Yahoo! Finance have enhanced their quote lookup search box and it looks even better than Google - you can now find quotes for a company even if you don't know the stock symbol.

The other nice addition is multiple search - you can look for stock symbols of multiple companies in the same search box - just separate the names by comma. When you hit Go, stock data for all those companies will appear on the same summary page.

Upload Pictures to Flickr From Windows Live Photo Gallery

This is exciting news for people who use Flickr for storing photographs on the web but prefer Windows Live Photo Gallery on the desktop for managing their picture and video collection offline.

Microsoft today released a new version of Windows Live Photo Gallery that lets you send pictures to Flickr directly from the desktop using Windows Live Photo Gallery. You can also bulk upload images and folders to Flickr using this new feature of Photo Gallery.

upload flickr pictures

Like the official Flickr uploader, this one from Microsoft will also resize your pictures before uploading them onto Flickr (optional). You can also specify the photo set where that picture should be uploaded to.

If you operate multiple Flickr accounts, Windows Live Photo Gallery lets you add them all to the Flickr uploader.

You can download this Flickr enabled version of Windows Live Photo Gallery through Windows Automatic Updates (kb943550) or the common Windows Live Installer here.

Can You Spot This Secret Feature In Facebook

facebook friends collage

Here's a simple question for anyone who has been on Facebook for some time now.

How do you create a photo collage of your Facebook Friends (as shown above) without using any of the available Facebook Apps or third-party tools.

And no matter how large your Facebook friends list is, the whole process should not take more than 2 seconds.

Hint: This secret feature is available right inside Facebook though Mark Zuckerberg and his team never told us about it.

Answer: Once you finish exploring all the options in Facebook, read the solution.

How To Save PowerPoint Presentations Out of Google Docs

Before you upload PowerPoint PPT files to Google Presentations for editing, make sure you know that the opposite is not possible yet.

Unlike other members of the Google Docs family, Google Presentations doesn't have an export function so you cannot download your edited PowerPoint slideshows out of Google Presentations in PPT, PDF or any other popular formats.

Update: This is no longer required, you can now easily export PPT files from Google Docs.

Google Docs does allow you to download the presentations as a ZIP, which is a mix of HTML, CSS and JPGs, but again that's not a very useful or convenient format.

Considering that PPT is such a universally accepted presentation format, it is quite safe to assume that PowerPoint export feature will meet Google Presentations very soon.

But if you are getting desperate to get those PowerPoint slides out of Google Docs now itself because the boss wants them, the good old Print Screen key can be your friend.

Open the Google Presentation file in the browser that you want to import back into PowerPoint - then hit the "Start Presentation" link on the top left (or hit Ctrl+F5) to play the slideshow in a new window. As the slides progress in the browser, hit the Print Screen key each time, add a new slide in PowerPoint and insert the clipboard contents by pressing Ctrl+V.

It's not the most practical solution because the slides are now still images and therefore non-editable - but then something is better than nothing.

The print screen technique can also be used for sharing presentations created in Google Docs on any of the PowerPoint hosting services like SlideShare, Scribd and more.

Technorati Blog Search Is Useful Again; Rolls Back Recent Changes

technorati blog search

The two very useful features of Technorati - Charts and Blog Directory - mysteriously disappeared after Technorati decided to shift focus from a blog search engine to a multimedia search engine.

The move may have backfired for Technorati and so they decided to revert the changes pretty soon.

Other than charts and blog directory, you can also sort blog search results by authority like before to filter posts from blog sites that have very low or no incoming links.

Another major enhancement is that Technorati Topics have made it to the front page of Technorati. It shows a live stream of new and popular blog posts arranged in categories.

Video and Photo search features are still available but the tag search is now different than regular blog search - they are no longer clubbed together.

Pretty good move by Technorati. It will continue to remain one of favorite blog search engines on the web. Also hoping they resume publishing the quarterly State of Blogosphere reports as well. Thanks Dave and Richard.

Related: What's Hot on the Internet

What Will Happen When Google Becomes an Adult ?

predict the future

The Forbes magazine today launched a new feature called the "The Future" where they invited personalities to predict trends and technologies that will become popular in the near future.

An extremely intelligent prediction about Google's future comes from David Ewalt where he says - Over the next 10 years, Google will solidify its hold on the world's information, and as it adds data service to its portfolio, it will give away free Internet access and phone service around the country. In 10 years, the company (and its ads!) will be omnipresent in American lives.

David also expects that Google will lose the cool factor - Expect Google, at 19 years old, to be regarded much like Microsoft is today - bloated, monopolistic and oppressive.

There's a very interesting quiz as well where you have to guess about events that are likely to occur in 2008 - Will Google hit $900? Will the richest person be from China ? What will the exchange rate be between the U.S. Dollar and the Euro on December 31, 2008?

The quiz is US-centric but fun nevertheless. Forbes will send you an email in January 2009 sharing your quiz score.

Google Adsense Plugin for Windows Live Writer

Insert Adsense Code in Blog Posts

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

yahoo paypal flickr errors

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.

pc magazine blogs

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.

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.
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.

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