A-be-ce-darian

Monday, December 18, 2006

Digg is Hot on Digg - 5 of Top 10 Stories Are About Digg

Someone said "If you want to reach the homepage of Digg, write about Digg". If you have any doubts on this quote check out the image below. Surprised!! 5 of "Top 10" stories are about Digg.

Below are the listed stories that made to top 10(for those who can't see the image properly)

1. Digg Unveils New Features - Kevin's Blog Post Explains with Video (8556 diggs)
2. Kevin Rose... OUTSIDE of Digg!!! (2104 diggs)
3. The Last 3 Years of the Digg Homepage Interface (1574 diggs)
4. Interview with Digg Team >> New Stats-New Features (1318 diggs)
5. Digg Silenty Minimizes Friends Feature (844 diggs)

And guess, if Digg had a section mentioning "Top 15" stories, there would have been 2 more stories about Digg on that list.
6. Awesome New Digg Apparel! (365 diggs)
7. The new Digg actually validates against the W3C (762 diggs)

If you analyze the stories, all are more or less related to new features introduced by Digg and one story explains about Digg's Architect Kevin Rose.

Is Digg really hot or is it just a hype?????

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Google Adsense Discourages Placing Images Next to Ads

One of the many tricks for higher Adsense click through rate is laying images side-by-side Ads. Laying an image next to an Ad makes people believe that the Ad is associated with the image and eventually they click on it.

But Google Adsense policy on placement of ads and images strictly discourages the above mentioned practice. Their policy states
"We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads. If your visitors believe that the images and the ads are directly associated, or that the advertiser is offering the exact item found in the neighboring image, they may click the ad expecting to find something that isn't actually being offered. That's not a good experience for users or advertisers.

Publishers should also be careful to avoid similar implementations that people could find misleading. For instance, if your site contains a directory of Flash games, you should not format the ads to mimic the game descriptions."
Examples that wouldn't comply with Adsense policies.

This policy doesn't mean that one shouldn't place images on a page containing Google Ads, it only asks us to be sure that the ads and images are not arranged in a way that could easily mislead or confuse visitors.

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Digg's New Incarnation With Tons of New Features

I don't know how many of you have decorated your house for Christmas and bought new gifts for your loved ones. But, the most popular social website Digg has already decorated its site and loaded it with tons of new features. A Christmas gift for Digg lovers!!

Digg's Kevin Rose has just announced some cool new features which indeed are a result of users feedback over the past few months. Also, the homepage has been revamped completely.

Changes and new features
  • Digg has changed its fixed width layout to flexible layout which is particulary helpful for wide screen monitors.
  • Navigation has been moved to the top allowing users to quickly switch between sections.
  • Topics under navigation bar are customizable thus allowing us to track only interested topics.
  • New sorting methods for popular items.
  • Dedicated section for videos.
  • Videos now can be played directly within Digg.
  • Dedicated section for podcasts. Most popular podcasts will be listed in the sidebar.
  • Podcasts can also be played withing Digg.
  • Profile enhancements.
Watch the video for new features

                                    






Source:Digg Blog

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Wednesday, December 13, 2006

IBM and Yahoo Team Up to Launch Free Enterprise Search Product

IBM with Yahoo launched a new, free enterprise search product. This product is particularly aimed at mid-sized businesses (or even large enterprises!). This new product named as IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition is perhaps the first product from Yahoo(and IBM) which is considered as a serious threat to Google.

IBM OmniFind Yahoo Edition has been designed to be simple to install and use, and can index up to 500,000 documents from more than 200 file types, like Adobe Systems’ PDF and Microsoft’s Word and Excel. This search application is available for Linux or Windows servers. Also this application can be customized and tuned to enterprise needs and supports more than 30 languages.

The look and feel of search results will be much similar Yahoo's search results but without any ads. But the search results contain links to Yahoo thus bolstering the company's search traffic.

On the other hand Google might be closely watching this new application. Google already has an enterprise application called as "Google Mini" but comes with a cost of $1,995 (including hardware) that indexes upto 50,000 documents and a more sophisticated tool at $8,995, which can index upto 300,000 documents.

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Saturday, December 09, 2006

Google Launches Click to Call Service in India

Google has announced its "Click to Call" service in India. This service is a great boon to both advertisers and customers in India. With this service companies can reach large number of customers as people in India started to embrace Internet more and more.

With this service customers can directly call advertisers that too with free of cost. Here is how it works
  • The customer has to click a green telephone button next to an ad.

  • Upon clicking the button, the ad would expand and show a window where the customer has to submit his telephone number. Then he/she has to press the button “Connect For Free.” Eventually, the user would get a direct call from the advertiser.
This is a more secure method as Google will not share our phone number with the advertisers. This service is very effective as people don't have to pay anything from their pockets while reaching their advertisers.

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Saturday, December 02, 2006

Diggers Help a Guy in Quitting His Job

If you are in a dilemma whether to quit your job or not, then seek the help of diggers(of digg.com). Yes, that is what the publisher of geekcapital blog has done. You may find this silly, but this is an undeniable fact.

Geekcapital publisher is also one among the many workers who hate their bosses. So, he quickly made a post "Get me out of this job" on his blog on November 30,2006 and made a deal with digg users that if his post reaches the homepage of digg, he will tell his boss what he honestly think about her and he'll quit his job and go to a pub with his friends.

Though he created that post for some laugh, it actually got dugg to the homepage with 7000 diggs. As promised, he eventually resigned his job. He also promised to post a video covering all those events. But unfortunately, he was threatened by his company with Legal Action as any such video coverage would defame the company.

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Friday, December 01, 2006

Psiphon : Access Blocked Sites in Countries Where The Internet is Censored

Last month Reporters Without Borders published an article "15 Internet Enemies". It lists 15 countries which crackdown hardest on the Internet. These countries block all those websites which criticize the government or their practices. If your country is one among them, then you must use Psiphon - a new software that allows users in Internet censored countries to access blocked websites via uncensored countries.

Psiphon is a censorship circumvention solution that allows users to access blocked sites in countries where the Internet is censored. Psiphon turns a regular home computer into a personal, encrypted server capable of retrieving and displaying web pages anywhere. This is a completely free software and released under GPL open source license.

Let's make it more clear, if you want to access any blocked website in your country, all you should have is a friend in a country where there are no restrictions on Internet. Now, ask your friend to install Psiphon on his computer. After installing psiphon your friend will provide you with an ID and a password along with an URL. Then type in that URL in your browser, after which you will be prompted for an ID and password. Supply those fields with ID and password given by your friend. That's it!! Now you can find a blue bar in your browser where you can type any blocked website address.

But, when a psiphon provider's computer is down or off the psiphon users will no longer have access to psiphon. psiphon users will need to wait until the psiphon provider's computer is back up and running again.

Don't forget to read psiphon FAQ

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Zoho Plug-in For MS Office - Edit Your Documents Both Online And Offline

Great news for all those who have embraced online documents and spreadsheets. But, this time the news is not from Google but from Zoho. Zoho released a cute plug-in for Microsoft office. This plug-in allows us to edit our documents both online and offline.

Using Zoho's plugin we can edit our documents offline in MS Office and save them online to Zoho account directly from within Microsoft Word and Excel without opening browser. This is a wise move from Zoho as we can experience the speed of desktop applications and store, share and collaborate them online.

Zoho architect Raju Vegesna said “People are asking for this. Till now, they have to go to Zoho.com, login, and upload documents. We have them doing this an average of five times per day. This(plug-in)will let them go straight to Zoho without having to go to Zoho.com, upload, etc.”

Now comes the big question..
Will Google try something as Zoho and release it's plug-in for MS Office? Let's wait and see.

Click here to download Zoho's plug-in for MS Office.

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