Chrome Extensions are Finally Here
When Google’s Chrome first came around, Firefox’s fans looked at this new open source attempt with suspicion. Certainly it was anti-Microsoft, and compared to the bloated ponderousness of Firefox, it was sharp, light on its feet and stable. A little on the defensive, they claimed that it was no surprise that Chrome was this fast: it had no add-ons the way Firefox did, to weigh it down. Well, Google has made its source code open for programmers to design extensions and add-ons for, and there are dozens of Chrome extensions available now on third-party sites: and surprise, Chrome does not slow down under the weight of these, and manages extensions which much better ease-of-use than does Firefox. For instance, you don’t need to restart your browser after you import an extension. So what kind of extensions are they that Chrome has, and do they rival Firefox’s considerable range?
Certainly there are not as many extensions available on Chrome yet; but the ones that are available, are pretty good. Here are examples of a few good ones:
Let’s say you are visiting the website of a bank or something, and there is a message at the bottom of the page that claims that the page will only display properly on Internet explorer 6 or better. We have two choices here: you could fire up Internet explorer, copy and paste the web address over there and start all over again. Or else, you could add the IE tab extension to Chrome, and Internet Explorer opens inside it. It is even ready for Windows 7.
Bubble-Translate uses the Google translate, and performs in-line translations from any supported language to yours. You install it, and an icon shows up in the address bar. Anytime you need anything translated on a webpage, all you need to do is highlight it and click the icon. The translation shows up in a tool tip.
Fittr sounds like it was named by the same person who thought of Flickr; Fittr adds features to Flickr; it gives you convenient shortcuts to use on Flickr and has better Autocomplete; and it gives you ready access to EXIF properties. Perhaps the best addition is the way it gives you the URL to any picture, that you can copy and send to someone.
The one thing that Chrome is missing is finally here; this should probably push it over 20% in market share line now.
Which Outlet Serves a Business Better – Twitter or Facebook
If you were a business looking to social networking as a way to get a boost, which would serve you better, Twitter or Facebook? The two services just happen to serve businesses (and consumers) differently with their individual strengths.
Twitter has had a Suggested User list for several months now, the purpose of it being to help people see where the hottest action is to follow. Their list is about 400-strong, and its influence on Twitter followers seems pretty strong too – most of the companies on the list have more than a million followers. Companies that did not get to be on the list, pretty much have no chance of getting that kind of popularity; and it creates resentment among those that don’t make the cut. A business planning on getting on Twitter would have to wonder about being given the short shrift.
Twitter is a public thing, not private. Some companies forget that Twitter is not personal; they go ahead and carry out personal negotiations with their customers on Twitter, like it was a text message service. Many people balk at the idea that their personal communications are just broadcast to the whole world for no reason. Facebook on the other hand, can be personal. Your communications with a company’s fan page are mostly one-way only too.
Consider this: the most prominent companies on Facebook, happen to be food and beverage majors like Coca-Cola. And Twitter is filled with media and Internet majors like CNN. Media companies need to give their followers a heads up over major stories, and they use Twitter like an RSS feed. Followers look at the links, and head over to the main website, and this fuels advertising too. The food companies don’t need to regularly put out headlines; the more low key affair they have with their consumers, is served best on Facebook.
The multinationals seem to have the best take on how to use Twitter for now. So do major Internet properties like the New York Times. If this is how the big boys make their pick among Twitter and Facebook, perhaps the small business could take a hint.
Bing has Silverlight and Google has HTML 5
Google is pulling the plug on Gears, its plug-in for all browsers, in favor of HTML 5, the web standard of the future. Adoption of HTML 5 by all should ensure that Internet works uniformly across all browsers, across all platforms. On the other hand, Microsoft has its Silverlight plug-in on the brain. The new Bing Maps that was announced earlier this week for example, needs Silverlight, and so will Internet Explorer 9, when it comes out. This completely fouls up Google’s plans for a plug-in free future. Having disparate standards on the Internet makes it very difficult for web developers to design pages that behave as expected across platforms. Browser designers use an application called Acid3, put out by the Web Standards Project to check a web browser for compatibility with web standards, not least relating to the Document Object Model and JavaScript. All the major browsers pass it with flying colors; Internet Explorer, with its proprietary standards and plug-in happy architecture, barely gets 20% in the test. Microsoft argues that their choices are not about maintaining proprietary competition, but about using the latest and the best technology out there. Using AJAX as other web browsers do, would simply be using old technology they complain.
HTML 5 would be truly cross-browser if adopted; it won’t even need Adobe Flash to play video. Certainly, Silverlight is more advanced; the trick that Bing Maps achieves with its seamless movement between map view and street-level view certainly is breathtaking. But getting people to install a plug-in is quite a headache for web developers. The effects achievable by plug-ins while very impressive, most often will not work at all because lots of people out there don’t even know how to install one. There is a video out on YouTube where a journalist goes about asking people in New York what browser they use; most of them reply “Yahoo” or “Google”. How do you get people like this to install a plug-in? The answer is, you don’t. You use an HTML 5 browser that does everything straight out of the box.
Google’s Public DNS – Is Google Doing this for a Reason or are They just being Nice?
Google has gone public with its plans for Google Public DNS, a service that will let people take on Google as their DNS provider, for reasons of what is claimed to be a better, faster and more reliable Internet experience. And Google gets a lot more data to sift through for its search research, though Google denies this. How does all of this work though? Basically, DNS is like a telephone exchange for all of the Internet. A user-friendly web address like in Google.com, is really a disguise for the user unfriendly numeric IP address underneath. The DNS service is what does the translating from the memorable website name, to the unmemorable number. Usually, it is a server, a free service like OpenDNS, that performs the service.
To implement Google’s public DNS, you can find the relevant instructions on their DNS page. But there are a few points one would do well to keep in consideration. If you use a router for your connection you need to change the DNS entry over there, and not on the PC as you normally would. That will ensure that all the computers that connect to the Internet through the router will automatically stand reconfigured. Google’s Public DNS does not play nice with Internet Protocol Version 6; and it can disable Outlook. It would be best to do your test run, on a noncritical network.
So what is it like to actually use it? When you type in a URL the wrong way, on a normal DNS server, usually, you are just redirected to some landing page full of one-liner advertisements that the ISP likes to give you. One of the benefits to using Google Public DNS is that this never happens. You only get an error message. But to make this happen, you need to have configured the DNS on the router, not the PC. Using Google Public DNS isn’t that faster, in no way that would make a difference. You could save a second in the time it takes to load a page if you’re lucky, but that is all.
What does Google gain from all of this? It could be that Google wishes to be alerted to which websites in the world are hot at the moment, in real time. Right now, unless people are searching through Google, they would have no way of knowing. If people are using Google’s public DNS, everything would get routed through Google, and they would know. Researching search is their business.
The Launch of a New Channel
The time has finally come where we can finally release Channel to the world – and although it’s not quite generated the same amount of buzz as the new Apple tablet, we know that our customers have been looking forward to it for, well, a while now!But I’m pleased to say that testing is over, we’ve dotted the I’s and crossed the T’s (we do like paperwork here in India) and Channel is now available to purchase from our customer ordering system.
As a recap of what Channel is, it’s an advanced video sharing script that enables anyone to very quickly and easily setup a website that allows people to watch, share and upload videos – just like the big sites such as Youtube, Break, Metacafe and others. You have complete flexibility over the way the site works, what members can and can’t do…pretty much everything.
One of the coolest features, in my opinion, is the paid membership option where you can give paid members that little bit extra like the option to download the video, access to a ‘secret vault’ or anything else that you want to protect.
Channel now comes with an awesome new clean interface which looks beautiful (you can check the screenshots in our sneak peak blog a few days back).
Now comes the really great part, Agriya knows that we have to take care of our customers and since Channel is an evolution of Rayzz Video Sharing we guarantee that we’ll upgrade your account to take advantage of Channel. Since virtually every file of Channel has been modified there is no direct upgrade, however we do have a script that will allow you to import your videos and members in to Channel.
- If you are a new Agriya customer then Channel costs $147 and can be purchased from here
- If you want more information about Channel, then you can get that from forum (or comment on this blog post)
- Finally, if you want to see a working live demo of Channel, click here.
Click here for more information about video sharing software.
Local Twitter Use with Google and Bing
First there was Bing with its localized content, then Twitter Local, the app ( designed on Adobe Air by the way) that helps you find out who in your immediate geographical neighborhood is online and tweeting, and now there are Bing and Google Maps (and the iPhone) offering to pinpoint tweets on a map for you, to locate where exactly in your neighborhood a tweet you are interested in emanates from. Using this kind of locating with Bing requires Bing Maps Beta and Microsoft Silverlight. Google Maps makes it much easier on you: you can just use an RSS feed of the tweet stream, that includes the geolocation. The way it is implemented is pretty amusing in itself. You are just supposed to open Google Maps, and paste into the search box the URL of any Twitter feed that you are interested in. Right away, you get a bunch of blue location balloons on the map. Click on any one of them, and you should get the tweet itself. Google Maps will even remember all your favorite twitter streams for the next time you open it.
The iPhone works just the same way; but Bing Maps, surprisingly, takes the lead in visual appeal, even compared to the iPhone. Next to Bing Maps, Google Maps clearly looks a decade old. The balloons contain little Twitter icons, and it displays tweeted pictures too. But Twitter is different on Bing (Bing calls that search engine Bing Twitter). What Bing calls a hot topic is not what Twitter calls one. Bing’s Beta version now allows Twitter results on the search page, and also a cloud of the most happening topics on Twitter, hot in Bing’s opinion, not Twitter. It may not seem like much if you don’t put stock in Twitter, but Bing’s Twitter search usually has a half minute lag to when tweets appear on Twitter. Microsoft ascribes this to the processing they have to do before they publish a search result: removing duplicates, flagging adult content, and so on. Things could improve – they are after all still in beta.
Ganging up on Google
We have been hearing for quite a while now that printed newspapers are dinosaurs of the past; that people find it much easier to cherry pick their favorite news stories with Google or an RSS feed, and newspaper companies are going out business everywhere. But it isn’t just the printed newspaper that feels threatened by the Internet; online news services like MSN and Fox News are beginning to feel it too. This has been at the center of an extraordinary development; all news content publishers want to boycott Google.
It all started with News Corp., the world’s largest media conglomerate, getting annoyed with Google for indexing all of its news stories on its search engine results, and providing a short extract. The fear is that people have learned to search for news stories on Google instead of on the news sites themselves. Google search results and Google News are turning into a mega news outlet themselves without ever having gathered a shred of news themselves. News Corp., which owns publications like the Wall Street Journal,has a two-step program in place. First it will ask Google to stop indexing any of its publications the world over. Once that is done, it will move to turn all of its news outlets into pay sites. But news Corp. is not confident that it could pull off something like this; it is looking for allies.
News Corp. has invited other major news companies to join it in its boycott; and surprisingly, it has responses. MSNBC and many regional newspapers in the US have joined hands with News Corp., in asking Google to stop featuring their news articles on its websites. Google has taken notice of these developments and promises to play nice. From now on, if any news service wants Google to stop indexing it, they will just need to make a little modification to their HTML code. News Corp will end up losing readership, but they need to give it a try, don’t they?
Why Businesses that Use Twitter can Come Off as Needy
Imagine the scene if you will: Twitter founder Jack Dorsey tries to drum up some financing capital for his great idea, and the venture capitalists keep telling him, “That sounds like a very attractive idea, but how are you going to make any money off it?” The trouble is that social media is about having fun with your friends; it is not about business promotion. Advertising and rallying a customer base around your product on Twitter may work, but not for every kind of business.
There are too many examples from the past of how businesses use a poorly managed attempt to look young and with it, and hurt the image of their business. Think the videogame chain owner in the movie Wayne’s World. A business school advertising degree cannot help anyone figure out how to be cool on Twitter. Some companies figure that they can just put their Twitter presence on autopilot: they just sent out their press releases to their followers on Twitter like automation. This can be the wrong thing to do for many reasons; people are going to figure out that you’re just sending them everything you have without thinking of the relevance to their lives. This is the reason people tune advertising out when it arrives by text message: it just seems so automated. The whole point of tweeting is to show people that you deal with them as a friend. You will need to approach Twitter as the unique opportunity it is, and think afresh each tweet, the way you would in any personal relationship. If you have an agenda to your communication, it will have to take a backseat to the personal message you have for them, every single time.
Many businesses that use Twitter, somehow feel that their feed couldn’t be considered happening, if they don’t have something to say every day.. You don’t want to turn into that annoying friend everyone has on Twitter that they don’t know what to do with. You can’t go into Twitter planning for it to boost your business. Social networking is a brand-new opportunity; not even advertising executives really understand how it works. The best you can do is to take tentative steps into it and experiment to find a solution that works for you. Experimenting is key; and it is pretty clear now that no single entity out there has really figured out the real secret yet to it.
How Serious is the Effort Against Blog Plagiarism?
The Internet goes through its fads and preoccupations just like everyone else, and going by a recent edition of Larry King on CNN, charging Web blog writers with shameless copyright ripoffs is all the rage today. What’s set this all off was last year’s declaration by the Associated Press that it intended to prosecute any blog that filled its pages with quotes from any of its news services reports, unless it was paid. There is a certain blogo-speak associated with the things people do to keep their blog pages filled. An aggregator for example, is someone like Technorati: they publish short excerpts of interesting articles, and put out the original headlines. A splogger is a lowlife who is restrained by no scruple in knocking off content from other blogs or websites, and taking on advertising for it too. Some of them are called link blogs. They do the same kind of ripping off, except that they don’t profit from it by selling advertising. They have P2P in blogging too, after all.
But just as music and movie piracy is staunchly defended by those who enable it, the torrent trackers or (the former) Napster for example, bloggers who get by on a little plagiarism defend their actions. This is shaping up to be a fight just the way it is in entertainment. Google for blog plagiarism, and you’ll come up with all kinds of blogs that discuss this, and that offer strategies to battle it. Plagiarism software like CopyScape exists to find out all instances of plagiarism out there. Once you find them, one potential way out is to block access to your blog based on information found on server logs. Some people just directly contact the plagiarists and try to shame them into desisting from such activity. Google personally hates duplicate content, and is on your side too; you could report them to Google as in violation of AdSense regulations.
Legal action usually is a last resort, because most blogs don’t make enough money to justify the expense. But it is believed that plagiarism is a passing phase on the Internet. As the Internet culture matures and settles, the quick buck artists will inevitably fade away
Facebook’s Tools for Retail Business
In the past, Internet retailers have tried to capture the interest of their clientele by creating social networks – Facebook clones of their own. They felt that if they had a social network, their regulars could post their opinions, have their friends come on and pass advice around in a friendly manner. But of course no one wants to be part of a social network just to share what they think of a store’s products. So now, Internet retailers are in the process of exploring how they can move their social networking idea to a major like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter.
People are a lot more comfortable making a purchase when they can get their friends to tell them what they think of it – even if they are only virtual friends, and not real ones. Facebook recognizes this social tendency and has released tools that will help, like Facebook Connect. When Facebook Connect is integrated into a retailer’s website, Facebook members who visit any product page will be able to see reviews written by their trusted Facebook friends. MySpace and Twitter have similar products out too. The trouble is though that these APIs are not simple to implement, and retailers find they need to invest a lot in integrating a social networking feature into their website. There are satellite businesses, like TurnTo Networks of New York, that help retailers implement Facebook Connect, charging a commission for their services.
The tool Fluid Social does this for a $1000 fee. Retailers report that visitors to their websites who use Facebook Connect while doing their browsing, have a conversion rate – from window shopper to actual paying customer – that is about 25% higher than for regular visitors. Some retailers report a 50% jump in overall traffic at their site, and attribute it to increased confidence in visitors that they can find dependable information and make a well-advised purchase.
There are lots of ways for a retailer to test the social networking waters without spending a bundle. Some try by simply using a Facebook link on their retail website. Others simply make open source coding available that would allow loyal customers to do the coding themselves and add a social networking feature to their website for free. Yet again, Facebook and Twitter may not be really that profitable themselves, but they provide an indispensable service that helps others be profitable.
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