How To Change USB Flash Drive & Hard Disk Drive Background Images Easily

How many times you have felt to rename or set auto play option for your USB flash drive, Of course you can definitely achieve this with some registry tweaks and hack but we can’t expect all computer users will know how to do it. For all those users here is three free tools to do this job easily for you

1- customize my drive.

Customize my drive is utility for customizing and personalizing your fixed as well asremovable drives. This Customization includes changing name, image, auto play options and several other setting which can’t be easily customized.

Features of Customize My Drive 1.0.0.2

· Customize USB pen drives or any removable drives, fixed drives, CD/DVDs, floppy disks and many other media
· Give your drive a name and an image (supports *.gif, *.jpg, *.jpeg, *.png and *.bmp files), so you don’t have to search endlessly for a *.ico file
· Select AutoPlay options
· Add your own shortcuts to your drives right click menu
· Run any file type (not limited to .exe, .bat or .txt)
· Fully portable
· Single file application (very small size)

Screenshot of Customize My Drive 1.0.0.2

Customize my drive is fully portable app hence you don’t need to install to use it. Customize my drive require .Net Framework to be installed on your computer.

Download Freeware Customize My Drive 1.0.0.2.

2-USB Personalizer.

USB Personalizer is a small tool that allows you to customize pendrives, ipods, and cellphones. You can select one background and icon for each folder in your pendrive, it also let you manage the files un your pendrive.

USB Personalizer

Download USB Personalizer.

3-Drives Background Image Easily change drives background images for your drives.

Drives Background Image is a useful tool designed to help you a background image to hard disk drives, floppy disks, USB flash drives and other kind of mass storage disks.

Features of Drives Background Image

1. Auto detect Available Drives

2. Set or Remove Background To Multiple Drives

3. Set or Remove Icons To Multiple Drives

4. Auto Recover Default Icons

5. Changeor Update Drives Text Colors without Losing Background

6. Drive Preview In Real Time

7. Double Click On Drive Opens Drive

8. Transparent Effect, Icon Preview

9. Icon Sent To Tray So No Taskbar Space Used

Drives Background Image

Download Drive Background Image.

Screensavers Tweaker Helps You To Customize Windows 7 Screensavers

Windows 7 comes with unique & beautiful screensavers like Bubbles, Mystify, Ribbons, Lines and Aurora. However if you are looking for way to change settings for each of these screensavers then you will be disappointed since Windows 7 doesn’t allow any changes for any of default screensavers.

Here is an interesting potable app System Screensavers Tweaker which lets you to change settings for each of the application Windows 7 screensavers.

For e.g for bubble screensaver you can change bubble radios, amount of bubbles, transparency etc.

System Screensavers Tweaker

Download System Screensavers Tweaker.

Upload Files to Rapidshare From Desktop with QUpload to Rapidshare

In past we have covered several Rapidshare downloader tools now here is yet another tool for Rapidshare. QUpload to Rapidshare is a very simple, easy to use application designed to enable user toupload their files to Rapidshare.

QUpload to Rapidshare supports all three types of Rapidshare account viz. Free Users, Collectors Account & Premium Account.  Once file is upload to Rapidshare, File upload links as well as file delete link will be displayed.

QUpload to Rapidshare

Download QUpload to Rapidshare.

DNS Jumber Helps You To Change DNS Setting With Just On Click

DNS Jumper another very useful portable tool for those who use different DNS settings for different purposes.Manually changing DNS settings is cumbersome task but with DNS Jumper changing DNS could become one click work. DNS jumper also comes with option to switch to GoogleDNS, OpenDNS, ComodoDNS etc.

DNS Jumper also has option to switch back to default DNS settings.

DNS Jumper

Download DNS Jumper.

Bye Bye MyBlogLog : Yahoo Shutting it Down Next Month!

MyBlogLog, one of the hottest social networking tool for bloggers, which was purchased by Yahoo! in 2007 and begin offering blog site analytics tools both as free and paid service, is now finally shutting down. Eric Marcoulier, co-founder offered following comment: "So much of your company's long term sucess when it's acquired is based on the amount of executive juice it has. The only way it survives and flourishes is if you’ve an executive champion who promotes it internally. Shortly after we were acquired we were transfered away from our champion and under someone who didn't feel the same way about MyBlogLog. In those circumstances, things simply slow down. "For any startup that has earn outs, and this didn't affect us, you've got to keep in mind that in 3 months you could be reorganized and the new guy could shut you down. The picture that gets painted early on when you have your product champions can change in a heartbeat and it's important for entreprenuers to consider that when looking at the deal terms."

How To Install Meebo Bar on Your Blog Or Site

As we know Meebo launched a new content “Meebo Bar” that once integrated into a websites, automatically recognizes content on the site, like photos and videos, and makes them drag and drop shareable anywhere. and after it was only available for the large social websites like Mashable , the meebo team posted on their blog the day before yesterday that they will make meebo bar avaiable for all websites and blogs even for free blogging systems like blogger, wordpress, and many more as you can read below

Last month we shared that there were over 100 partner websites that have integrated the Meebo Bar. Up until now only larger partners like Mashable and The Hollywood Reporter could sign up for the bar. Many users who run their own websites or blogs have been asking if they could get the Meebo Bar as well. Today, we are excited to announce the beta availability of the Meebo Bar for everyone!

We can guide you through setting up the Meebo Bar if you have a blog hosted on TypePad or Blogger or if you are hosting your own site using Wordpress or Movable Type. We also support other platforms like Tumblr or any self-hosted site.

Like you would expect, the Meebo Bar allows your site visitors to sign in to Meebo to chat and drag-and-drop to share photos and videos. Now you can also add a slew of new buttons to the Meebo Bar on your site. We’ve put together a bunch of buttons that we think partners and bloggers might want to make available: a Facebook Fan Page, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Lala, Meebo Me, Stumble Upon, Digg, RSS and more!

So, if you have your own site or blog and you’d like to give the Meebo Bar a try, head on over to http://bar.meebo.com

You can post a picture to all your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or Email, or you can IM a video to any friend, in real-time, on your buddy list. It also lets users chat live with friends on the site you’re visiting, from FanPop to Justin.TV, and lets you bring in your friends from other places who you may want to chat with, like from Facebook or AIM. To get meebo bar on your site, write an email.

Soyuz Crew Arrives Safely At Space Station

Astronauts and cosmonauts embark on construction and scientific research mission.

Three astronauts arrived safely at the International Space Station and are set to embark on a mission that will see them undertake construction work and scientific research at the orbiting platform.

The crew, consisting of NASA astronaut T.J. Creamer, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Soichi Noguchi, docked with the ISS at 5:48 p.m. EST Tuesday.

Their Russian-made Soyuz rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Sunday.

The crew linked up with Expedition 22 members already aboard the ISS, including station commander Jeff Williams, of NASA, and cosmonaut Max Suraev, who is station flight engineer.

They've got a full itinerary in the months ahead.

Cosmonauts Kotov and Suraev are slated to conduct spacewalks in January from the Pirs airlock, which is part of the ISS's Russian segment. Also in January, Williams and Suraev will reposition the docked Soyuz spacecraft from the end of the station's Zvezda service module to the new Poisk module.

In February, the crew will greet the arrival of a Progress unmanned resupply ship as well as the crew of space shuttle Endeavour's STS-130 mission.

Endeavour will deliver the new Tranquility node and cupola, one of the last remaining segments of the station to be installed.

Construction of the ISS is set to be fully completed by 2011. NASA plans to cover many of the mission's highlights live on its NASA TV Web site.

Crews from the previous ISS mission, Expedition 21, returned to Earth last month.

iPhone 2010 May Have 5MP Camera

The current supplier of camera chips for Apple's iPhone, OmniVision Technologies, says it got a whopper of an order from Apple for 2010. Not only will it supply Apple with 40 to 45 million imaging sensors, they will rate 5 megapixels.

Despite the iPhone 3GS' 3.2-megapixel camera, the iPhone still lags the competition when it comes to taking really good pictures. There's no doubt the iPhone 3GS is much improved when compared to the iPhone 3G, but it simply can't compete with the imaging capabilities of some Nokia, Samsung and Sony Ericsson devices.

That's what makes this new report coming out of Taiwan so juicy.

DigiTimes reports that Apple has awarded it with a new contract for 2010. The current contract was to supply Apple with between 20 to 21 million 3.2-megapixel sensors in 2009. For the 2010 iPhone, Apple has doubled the order to 40 to 45 million. That speaks a lot about how successful Apple thinks its device will be next year.

Apple has had a good 2.5 year run with the iPhone. Heck, it was the top-selling phone in the U.S. from January 2009 through October 2009. (It'll probably win the last three months of 2009, as well.) Apple clearly thinks that whatever it cooks up for 2010 is going to be a huge seller. Starting with a 5 megapixel camera certainly won't hurt Apple's chances, but more megapixels don't necessarily make for better images.

Microsoft Word Gets Facelift

Court-ordered patch removes custom XML tools from Office 2007 components.

Microsoft has issued a patch for its Office 2007 product that brings the desktop suite into compliance with a court edict.

The 2007 Microsoft Office OPK Master Kit Download, available on Microsoft's OEM Partner Center, strips Word and other Office programs of custom XML editing capabilities.

"The following patch is required for the United States," Microsoft said in a message on the site.

The move comes after an appeals court on Tuesday ordered Microsoft to stop selling Microsoft Word 2007 and other Office 2007 products by Jan. 11 because the software infringes on a patent held by a Canadian company. The judge also hit Microsoft with a $290 million fine.

In ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals struck down Microsoft's appeal of a lower court's finding that Word 2007, the most current version of the product, infringes on a patent held by Toronto-based i4i Inc.

I4i originally sued Microsoft in 2007, claiming that an XML editor built into Word steps on its patent. In August, the U.S. District Court for Eastern Texas found in favor of i4i, prompting Microsoft's appeal.

The appeals court on Tuesday upheld the Texas decision.

"In this case, a small company was practicing its patent, only to suffer a loss of market share, brand recognition, and customer goodwill as the result of the defendant's infringing acts," the court said in documents published Tuesday.

The ruling means Microsoft can't sell versions of Word that can open documents saved in the .XML, .DOCX, or .DOCM formats that contain custom XML. Those formats were at the heart of the patent dispute. DOCX is the default format for the most current version of Word, which is included in Microsoft Office 2007. Custom XML is used by businesses to link their corporate data to Word documents.

The patent, No. 5,787,449, describes how programs go about "manipulating a document's content and architecture separately."

The court left an out for Microsoft. The company can continue to sell Word 2007 after Jan. 11 if it removes the offending technology from the product. The patch appears to signal Microsoft's willingness to comply with the order.

"With respect to Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007, we have been preparing for this possibility since the District Court issued its injunction," the company said in a statement. "Therefore, we expect to have copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Office 2007, with this feature removed, available for U.S. sale and distribution by the injunction date," Microsoft said.

Microsoft Office, which includes Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, accounted for more than $3 billion in worldwide sales in Microsoft's most recent fiscal year and is used by literally millions of businesses and consumers for everyday tasks like word processing and spreadsheet creation.

What is New In Firefox 4 For Windows

We've already seen some early concepts for Linux and Windows and there's even an easy-to-install Strata 4 theme (called Strata40) for current versions of Firefox, but let's take a look at some new mock-ups (for the Windows version), shared by Mozilla contributor Stephen Horlander on his personal blog (via dsq).

1) Apps Button: One of the benefits of the App Button is that it is similar to the way Microsoft is treating its native apps and Office. Another benefit is that the placement is closer to where the Menubar would be and therefore it is more familiar. Several variations of the App Button have been explored:

Various factors of consideration include what color to make it, whether or not to have an icon, just an icon, icon and text, part of the tab bar, a separate button or attached to the top of the window.
2) Refining Toolbar Button Appearance: Some initial work has gone into making the toolbar buttons more visible on light backgrounds and more crisp and dimensional (pressable).
3) Location Bar: Some very early visuals have been created for reevaluating site identity. Also the location bar is now properly recessed instead of floating.
4) Retain Separate Search Bar: With the LocationBar containing an increasing amount of functionality it may be best to retain a clear distinction between the two fields.
5) Bookmarks Widget: On a default profile or existing profile that hasn’t modified the Bookmarks Toolbar it will be hidden by default and the Bookmarks Widget placed in the Navigation Toolbar.
One more thing: if tabs-on-top is not desirable you can change to the classic tabs under the navigation bar:
Tabs on top:

Classic tabs:

As you can see, Firefox will remain fully customizable so if you don't like something in Firefox 4.0, you can always use the classic appearance of a certain Firefox feature. Another thing to consider is the themes: you will always be able to change the way Firefox looks by using a theme.

What do you think of these new Firefox 4 (Windows version) mock-ups?

backupify Offering Free Unlimited Storage Accounts Until 31 Jan 2010

Backupify backs up all your online accounts (Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Google Docs, Zoho, Photobucket, Wordpress, Blogger and so on) to the cloud, normally for a nominal fee, but until January 31, 2010, all Backupify accounts will be free with unlimited storage.
After this period, the service will be paid again, but anyone signing up for an accout until January 31 will have an forever-unlimited free account.

How To Download And Install Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta 2 In Linux

For Linux 32bit you will have to go here first to download Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta 2

To install Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Beta 2 in Linux:

1. Go to /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/ or /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer (it depends on how you installed Adobe Flash Player) and rename libflashplayer.so tolibflashplayer.so.old. Please note that to do this using Nautilus, you must open it as root:
Press Alt + F2 and enter:

Linux terminal $:
gksu nautilus

If you want to do it using a terminal, simply:

-for /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/:

code<#>
sudo mv /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so.old

-for /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer:

code<#>
sudo mv /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so.old

The reason for renaming the old flashplayer to .old is that if the new Flash Player 10.1 beta 2 doesn't work properly, you can always go back to the previous version.

2. Extract the archive and copy the file called libflashplayer.so from the archive you just extracted, to the /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin or /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer folder.


Terminal alternative:

code<#>
wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/flashplayer10_1_p2_linux_121709.tar.gz
tar -xvf flashplayer10_1_p2_linux_121709.tar.gz && cd install_flash_player_10_linux/

Then, depending on the location of your libflashplayer.so file:

-for /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/:

code<#>
sudo mv libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin

-for /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer:

code<#>
sudo mv libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer

For Linux 64 bit the new alpha version of Adobe Flash Player 10 for 64bit Linux is available for download. Before installing it, it is advisable to make a backup copy of the old Flash Player version:

Linux terminal $:
sudo mv /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/libflashplayer.so.old

Then, to install the new version, extract the downloaded archive (download link at the end of the post), use the terminal to navigate to where you extracted it and run this command (this assumes you have a symbolic link in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/ for /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/ libflashplayer.so) :

Linux terminal $:
sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/flashplugin-installer/

If you don't have a libflashplayer.so symbolic link in /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/, also run this command (thanks to JellyKernel):

Linux terminal $:
sudo cp libflashplayer.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/

Download Alpha version of Adobe Flash Player 10 for Linux 64bit

How To Transform Firefox 3.5 to 4.0 With Mockup Theme

The Full Guide To Install Mockup Theme

1. Move the stop button after the urlbar, and the reload button straight after the stop button (this is essential to merge the stop and reload buttons together).
2. Now you can install the theme as usual. To do this, open the addons window and drag the file "strata40_v02.jar" from the following archive: [link] into the window.
3. Go here: [link] to download the Firefox addon, Personal Menu. Once you have it installed three new toolbar buttons will appear after the stop / reload button. You can customize these as you wish, or remove them like any other toolbar button.
4a. This step is for Vista and Windows 7 users only. Go here: [link] to download an addon called "All Glass Firefox Mod" (based on Glasser). Once installed it will give everything a nice, glassy, "aero" look, like most Vista or Windows 7 applications (such as IE7/8).
4b. Install the Firefox addon, Stylish, found here: [link]
4c. Bundled with the archive containing the theme is a txt file. Open this in any text editor such as Notepad or Wordpad and copy the contents to clipboard. Paste the contents into a blank Stylish style. Name it something like "Strata40 - Glasser Fixes" and make sure it is activated. This will fix up a few things that were overridden by the glass addon.
5. Go here: [link] to download an addon called "Fission". Once this is installed, go back to the archive included and extract the file called loading_progress.png. Put this file somewhere safe, so it won't be deleted. Go into the "Fission" addon's options and click "browse" and select the png file. This will let you have a small loading bar underneath the urlbar, like in Firefox 4.
6. Go here: [link] to be able to use the urlbar as a search bar too. You may now remove the search bar next to the urlbar.
NOTE: For Firefox 3.6 users, you may need to download something called Nightly Tester Tools and use it to over ride the compatibility check of the above addon, as it is only compatible with 3.5.
If you are running XP or 2000, skip step 4a to 4c.
More info & support: Spewboy @ Deviantart

Blackberry Service Down Again

Users complain of e-mail service that is slow or non-existent.

Research In Motion's Blackberry e-mail service suffered a significant outage for the second time in as many weeks.

"Some Blackberry customers in the Americas are currently experiencing delays in message delivery," RIM said in a statement. 

"Our technical teams are actively working to resolve this issue for those impacted. We apologize for any inconvenience," RIM said.

The problem appeared to arise early Wednesday, as users flooded Twitter and other social networking sites with posts in which they complained their Blackberry service had slowed to a crawl or was down altogether.

The disruption comes about a week after RIM was hit with a massive outage that curtailed Blackberry service throughout much of North America.

That outage hit Blackberry services offered by numerous carriers, including Sprint Nextel, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and Canada's Rogers. The trouble appeared to be limited to RIM's consumer-oriented Internet service, and did not affect corporate users who send messages through a BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Some users on a Blackberry forum dubbed "Crackberry" have been less than impressed with RIM's service of late.

"It feels like almost a monthly occurrence that I see BIS outages reported," wrote forum member DrewDT. "Isn't e-mail reliability one of the cornerstone's of BlackBerry's reputation and success?" wrote the member.

Blackberry CEO Jim Balsille has taken heat lately from some customers and investors, who charge that in the past year he spent too much time trying to purchase the National Hockey League's Phoenix Coyotes, instead of focusing on RIM's products and services.

RIM shares were off sharply Tuesday, down 3.61% to $71.21 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Orange Telecom “iPhone within iPhone App” iPhone Simulation To Another Level - Video

“ iPhone Within iPhone” A promotional augmented reality app by Ogmento. Developed to promote the iPhone launch by Orange Telecom Israel. Point your iphone to an Orange logo and watch a virtual iPhone appears hovering over the logo. Use finger gestures to turn the iphone around, zoom in or out , you can even launch an iPhone app on the simulated iPhone , they are not real apps , i think it would be a real fun if they are real but this is just sci-fiction

12 Powerful SEO Firefox Plugins To Make Blogging More Professional – 2010 Collection

As we all know that Firefox is the most popular and most downloadable web browser. Firefox has amazing collection of add-ons for everything you can expect. Here are some great SEO add-ons which will boost productivity for many SEO task.

1 Foxy SEO

Foxy SEO Tool is a Firefox addon toolbar that provides quick and easy access to a multitude of search engine functions such as Google Site, Yahoo! Site Explorer, Live Fromlinks. Also included are famous web traffic analysis sites such as Alexa, Compete, Quantcast, popular statistic aggregators like Quarkbase and WebSiteOutlook. You can check a site’s listing in important directories like Dmoz and Yahoo! Directory, buzzing Web 2.0 sites such as Technocrati, Wikipedia, Digg, Delicious and links to useful network functions like Whois, Geotool, Internet Archive, etc.

2 SEOBlogger

SEO Blogger allows you to find the most sought-after keywords for your subject without ever leaving your blog editing screen.

3 RankQuest

RankQuest SEO Toolbar provides quick access to more than 30 intuitive SEO tools. Alexa Rank and Page Rank provided by Alexa and Google respectively ensures the popularity of the site.

4 SEOpen

SEOpen Provides some basics tools to help for search engine optimization. Including google backlinks, yahoo backlinks, PageRank check, http header viewer, and more.

5 Niche Watch SEO Research

Niche SEO Research Tool provides you the technical info regarding competitor websites in serps.It gives you backlinks number, indexed pages, keyword occurences on the page, page rank.

6 SearchStatus

Display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Compete ranking and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and other SEO tools.

7 Flagfox

Flagfox addon displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website’s server and provides quick access to detailed location and webserver information.

8 YSlow

YSlow analyzes web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance based on a set of rules for high performance web pages. YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the Firebug web development tool.

9 KGen

KGen (Keyword Generator) is an extension that allows you to see what keywords are strong on visited web pages. Than, you can retrieve them for social sharing (tag filling) or webmastering/SEO.

10 SenSEO

SenSEO is an extension checking the most important on-page-SEO-criteria and calculating a grade of how good your site fulfills these criteria.

11 SeoQuake

SeoQuake is a programme, which allows user to view a large number of SE parameters on the fly. SeoQuake for Mozilla Firefox consists of three functional parts: SeoToolbar (requested parameters are shown in a separate toolbar in the browser), Seobar (requested parameters are shown in a separate, fully customizable with CSS, HTML block) and output of requested parameters on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). ATTENTION! Frequent use of big amount of parameters may lead to the ban from SE. In this case, you will need to delete cookies and change proxy server.

12 LinkChecker

LinkChecker allows webmaster to quickly check the validity of links on any webpage.

How To Guide : Use Robots.txt File To Have Full Control Over Search Engines Robots

Robots.txt file can be used to prevent search engines from indexing the parts of your web sites. Some times you don’t want to index sensitive pages of your web pages then robots.txt file can be useful. Also robots.txt file is a good option to avoid duplicate content penalties by search engines.

As name suggest robots.txt is a plain text file. The path of the robots.txt file should be as follows:

http://www.example.com/robots.txt or http://blog.example.com/robots.txt

Always include Robots.txt file in root directory and not in the subdirectory. As when any robot visits your site it will first look for Robots.txt in root directory and if file not present at that location it simply assume that you want to index all your web pages.

Let’s see syntax of Robots.txt file:

If you want to allow all Robots to index all your pages then include this Robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

Here User-agent means all Robots visiting your site to crawl the pages.

If you want to ban all Robots from indexing your site then include this Robots.txt file:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

To ban specific Robot from indexing pages, include code like:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /

To ban some web pages like /Category directory with all sub pages:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /Category/

To allow only specific Robots to index your pages:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Here you can make one mistake. Do not add specific robot ban after Disallow:/ i.e

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow:

Will ban all Robots including Googlebot from indexing your web site.

Many sites have duplicate content penalties. If same content is accessible from two or more different url’s then it’s said to be duplicate content. If you have /category or /Archive directories then you have chance of having duplicate content penalty. Either show posts excerpt on Category and Archive pages or use robots.txt to ban indexing these pages. Then your Robots.txt file will be look like this:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /category/
Disallow: /archives/

See the complete list of Robots and more guide on Robots files. And tools to validate Robots.txt file.

Keep in mind that it’s not mandatory to all Robots to follow the robots.txt file. Don’t rely on Robots.txt file if you have very sensitive data and don’t want to get that indexed by any means. Use other ways like password protected files.

Also banning most part of your web site is not a good SEO idea. Search engines will not visit the sites having most part banned from indexing.

One last important thing, if you are using sitemap.xml file to submit your sitemap to search engines then make sure that all the url’s submitted in sitemap.xml file are crawlable and you have not accidentally banned any url in Robots.txt file.

It’s always a good idea to use Google webmater tools to validate your Robots.txt file. Here you can check whether specific url’s are allowed or banned to Robots. (Google has added features in Robots.txt tool to report syntax errors. Also you can include your sitemap.xml file in robots.txt file)

How To Transfer Any FeedBurner Feeds To Another FeedBurner Account

FeedBurner introduced new feature to transfer complete RSS feeds from FeedBurner account to other FeedBurner account. This transfer of feeds includes complete RSS and email subscribers.

This feed transfer feature is very useful if you want to move your all feeds to new account or in case if you sell your blog you can transfer all feeds to new website owner’s FeedBurner account. This complete feed transfer process is very simple. You just need to provide the email address to whom you want to transfer your feeds. The new feed owner will get a notification and a new link for completing this feed transfer request. This feed transfer request is valid only for 72 hours and if the new owner not accepts this request in 72 hours you need to issue a new request.

Here is the simple 3 step feed transfer procedure:

1) Sign in to your account.
2) Click the title of the feed you want to send to someone else in the My Feeds list, and then click “Transfer Feed…” You will then be prompted to enter the email address of the publisher to whom you wish to transfer this feed.
3) Enter this email address and submit the form.

Transfer will get complete when new publisher accepts this transfer request.

Unfortunately above steps will not applicable for feed transfer if you are part of FeedBurner ad network. In this case you require creating new feed transfer address like “feeds.feedburner.com/newfeed” which is accepted by new owner with same feed name.
See the complete feed transfer procedure here.

How To Guide : Making Your Blog Posts More Attractive By Images

How many blog posts get added to web each day? Certainly millions. Do you think on how to make your post different than the crowd? Probably it’s the time to think now. Attractive post design is a key part to grab the user attention. You can make your post more attractive and readable using images.

Photo by masaaki

Images enhance your blog by increasing visual interest of the user. Generally people don’t have time to read your whole blog post till end. Most of the readers don’t have time to read your content till the end. Moreover if your posts are without any design, text highlights or images then reader will leave the page by reading first few lines only.

How to engage users in your content? Obviously killer content comes first. But if your post looks attractive then user will get more engaged till end of the post.

This post basically focusing on following elements:

• Where to find the images?
• How to capture and enhance images from different tools? (like SnagIt tool)
• How and where to embed images in your post?

Where to find images for your blog post?

This is a big question. Many bloggers think that images available on internet web pages are free to use. But these images are copyrighted to some people. Do not use copyrighted images on your blog. Fortunately you can download free images from some legal sources.

Sources to download the images:

• Stock.xchng
• Stockxpert
• Yotophoto
• Free photos bank
• Free images
• Flickr images
• Google images

To know more resources probable you want to check the post 100 legal sources to download images.

These are some popular and quality image sources. Some are charging a small amount for downloading the images. Most of the Google images are copyrighted images. So you can’t use them. My best source to get images is yahoo Flickr.

Flickr is extensive collection of free images. Many Flickr users offered images to download under Creative commons license. You can download images filed under Creative Commons license and you can use them in your blog post by giving a photo credit to original author. To know different Creative commons license types visit Flickr.

How to search for Good images of your interest on Flickr:

1) Once you visit this flickr page click on “See more” link to view more images under that license type.
2) You can search images with specific title or tags. By default you will see “Most relevant” images.
3) Click on “Most interesting” link to get images that will catch user attention. Search for images as per your requirements. Then you can download these images with different sizes.
4) Click on image of your interest. Then click “All sizes” link to see all available sizes for that image. The available image sizes are:

• Square (75 x 75)
• Thumbnail (100 x 100)
• Small (240 x 240)
• Medium (500 x 500)
• Large (1024 x 1024)
• Original (3692 x 3692)

5) Select the image size you want to use and click on “Download image” to download it to your local hard drive.
That’s it!

Now you have the images that you might want to enhance. Focusing on particular part of the images using image magnifying and marking with arrows can be done using image processing tools like SnagIt.

How to capture images using SnagIt:

SnagIt is a very popular tool for capturing and processing of images. Though it is not freely available you can download one free SnagIt version 8.0 from here.

You can almost capture any type of image from SnagIt. Following are some of the great features of SnagIt tool:

• Make movies of your desktop actions
• Capture scrolling window web page
• To capture all images from a web page
• Extract text from a window
• To insert watermark on your images
• Enhance images by inserting text and marking with arrows
• To magnify specific part of the image

How to capture widely used image formats using SnagIt:

1) Capture Window or Full screen: You can capture full window or full screen for the web page of your interest. This feature is extremely useful when you want to show screenshots of particular web page. Like if you are writing post on “How to drive traffic from Digg?” then you would like to insert digg screen snap in your post.

Open SnagIt software then select-> Window then click on red capture button on right bottom. The image will get captured and will be shown in SnagIt editor for enhancements. If this web page snap is too big to fit into your post then you can resize image using “Resize Image” option. Keep the aspect ratio same in this case. This way you can fit the image in any of your page.

(Image: Digg screenshot taken from SnagIt)

Also see Example of different web site Screen shots used in post content.

2) Capture scrolling web pages: SnagIt can capture web pages requiring to scroll down. You can capture whole page from top to bottom and can resize it to place anywhere you want.
Just select SnagIt option “Scrolling window” and select the scrolling direction by mouse. Capture the complete web page and resize its width or height to fit it to your page.

Also see live example of full web page image used in post.

3) Download all Images from web page: Specify a web page from where you want to download all the images. All images from this web page will be saved to your hard drive. Keep in mind that images you are downloading should not be copyrighted to use it on your web page.

4) Extract text from message window: You can capture the text of error messages windows. This is extremely useful when you want to report any specific error to other webmasters or readers through your post. All text from popup error message window can be extracted and saved to disk.

5) Record desktop movies: You can record desktop movies of small size using SnagIT.

6) Enhance images: Put watermark on the images, enhance images by inserting arrows to point some image part. If you want to spotlight or magnify specific part of the image, you can do so using SnagIt image editor.

See the examples below:

(Image enhancements using SnagIt)

Also see live Example of image Spotlight and Magnify.

7) Save images with different formats: You can almost save image in all formats. Some of the popular used formats are: JPG, GIF and PNG to reduce image size.

How and where to embed images in your post?

You should be very careful while inserting images in your blog. Your blog design should not get break by inserting large images and images at wrong places. Also do not overuse images in any post. Keep in mind that images are just to support your content and not vice versa.

Popular places to place image in your post:

To avoid placing all the snapshots in this post I will link to each of the sample post to see the image placement example:

1) Top right or left corner of the post: This is very popular place used nowadays by most of the bloggers. For this place you can use square or rectangular image formats. This also makes your RSS feed more interesting to read.

Example of Top right Corner image placement.

2) Rectangular image just below the post title: Place image just below the title of your post. This should be rectangular image and should fit to your post page width.

Example of rectangular image placed just below the post title.
Example of image placed below title and some content.

3) Place images in between the content: You can support your writing by placing images just at left, right or middle of your content. This makes post very attractive and interesting to read.

Example Images placed in between the content to support your writing.

4) If you are writing a “How-to” resource post then for each resource title you can place the image or resource company logo at left cornet just below the resource title.

Example Resource logos under each resource title.

Conclusion:

Hope this article will help you in all aspects of Finding free images over the web, capturing, enhancing and using these images in your blog post. This will definitely make your post stand out from the crowd. Good content, good post design and marketing of your article, these are the three key points for successful blogging!

Apple Updates iMac Firmware

Apple has released a firmware update for its 27-inch iMac, fixing problems with the all-in-one computer's graphics cards.

The fix is for the ATI Radeon HD 4670 and 4850 graphics cards made by Advaced Micro Devices. The update corrects unspecified problems that Apple says "may cause image corruption or display flickering."

Buyers of the 27-inch iMac have posted numerous complaints on the company's support forum. Among the problems cited were flickering, cracked, or yellow-tinged screens. Apple declined to comment on the problems.

The 27-inch iMac, the largest of the line, was introduced in October, along with a 21.5-inch model.

The computers have been very popular, at least among early buyers who are typically Apple buffs. Mac sales at U.S. retailers in October and November were up 74% from the same period a year ago, with the majority of those sales iMacs, according to NPD Group.

The large number of orders could explain a delay in shipping 27-inch iMacs, experts say. While the 21.5-inch version ships in 24 hours, the larger model takes two weeks. Apple has apologized for the delay, saying it is "working hard" to fill orders.

Despite the strong early sales, its too soon to say how successful the latest iMacs will be. Analysts will be watching whether the trend continues beyond early adopters. Sales of the 27-inch model will be particularly interesting because research shows that people typically prefer desktop monitors at around 21 inches.

Along with Mac desktop sales, Windows desktop sales also have been on the rise. During the same October/November time frame, sales of Windows desktops rose 5% from a year ago, according to NPD. The increase is seen as significant, because sales have been down each of the previous months in 2009.

iPhone 4G June 2010 !! Rumors and Concepts

is it really that apple have decided to launch a new release of iPhone in June 2010 or it is just a rumors , while i was hanging a round YouTube videos i met a video by Techradar that maybe deserve a little attention about iPhone 4G, some will consider it as a bull shit and other will see that it might be really interesting

And this is another two interesting videos about some concepts and expectations about how will the new iPhone look

 

 

At the end these all videos just from Youtube  users imaginations nothing official , i just believe that apple will amaze us

eToolz Free App To Check PageRank, DNS, Whois, Traceroute And More For Windows Users

Linux users have a tool called Network Tools which comes by default in most distributions which allows you to check the Whois of an IP or domain, traceroute, ping and so on (sure, all these are available as cli-tools, but I'm talking about GUI here).
Windows users, however, don't have a similar tool built-in, but for this, they can use eToolz, a portable, free application which includes some of the most important networking tools like NS-Lookup, Ping, TraceRoute and Whois. It allows also to check E-mail addresses (MX-Server) and to search/convert domain names showing DNS entries (A, PTR, NS, SOA). eToolz supports also international domain names.
Note: the application starts in German, but you can immediately change the language under the "Sprache / Language" option in the window.

Download eToolz Free

Cool Aid Colored Fountain In Vegas Center By WET - Video

Without a doubt, the physical "Center" of the new Las Vegas superdevelopment CityCenter is a shimmering circular fountain tucked into the glass curves of the anchor hotel Aria. It seems pretty enough until you start to notice something you've definitely never seen before. Was that a hot pink splash? Electric blue? Wait a second--colored water? In the middle of the day? That eye-defying spectacle, and four more like it, are brought to you by WET, the Sun Valley, California-based design firm that turns natural elements into high-tech entertainment.

WET's signature work can be found up and down the strip--there are perhaps no fountains more famous than their work at the Bellagio, where streams of water spout high into the air to Frank Sinatra tunes. But when WET got tapped for CityCenter, its CEO Mark Fuller wanted to do something that would test their creative limits. "Instead of doing one piece, why not do a bunch of pieces and let people discover these wild experiences?" Fuller led me on a treasure hunt to all five features during the CityCenter opening to explain WET's seemingly-impossible alchemy.

Two of the features, although visually stunning, were created more for their auditory purposes. Four two-story cable-suspended glass walls made by Joel Berman use tiny drips of water to make a soothing zen-like buzz in an indoor restaurant. And a 270-foot arced waterwall with waves of water pattering over tiny chunks of slate block out any vehicular sounds in a hotel traffic circle. (For any of you already getting concerned about fountains in the desert, all WET's water is reclaimed, purified with a reverse osmosis process and dumped back into circulation.)

It's the other three features that are the true showstoppers, starting with that Kool-Aid colored fountain. Using projected light directed with motorized mirrors, WET is able to laser-focus a splotch of color anywhere on the fountain, making it hundreds of times more intense than a traditional spotlight. But just getting color in daylight wasn't enough. WET re-engineered their proprietary multi-axis, motion-control underwater robots so they could aim two one-inch streams of water 20-30 feet in the air and have them collide into hot spots--"watersparks"--with a new level of precision the industry had never seen before.

At the center of the Daniel Libeskind- and David Rockwell-designed Crystals, a dozen plexiglass cylinders shoot up from the floor in the same random angles as Libeskind's walls. This is Halo, and contained within those innocent forms are spinning vortices of water. The vacuum-sealed cylinders suck and spin the water in and out of their volumes, like continuously filling and draining bathtubs. The violent, raging water spouts literally dance--sometimes stretching the length of the tubes and sometimes bursting wildy out of their tornado shapes. "You could give a whole physics lesson here," says Fuller, watching people embrace the tubes to feel their energy. WET even managed to break a few rules of fluid dynamics: Thanks to the ability to introduce water tangentially, forcing the vortex the other direction, WET can even make water spin backwards, Southern Hemisphere-style. That's miracle-grade water.

Finally, at the entrance to Crystals closest to the Strip, people wandering in from the scorching desert heat will be confronted by pillars of ice that reach up to 15 feet into the air. Frozen underground on metal rods and pushed up into the space from below, the dozen ice towers of Glacia are sculpted with as much precision as the kissing swans you'll find at weddings. WET's artists can control the way the ice appears using different levels of aeration and water-pics, but the best parts are done by nature, the slow melting and refreezing process that renders them into cold, drippy candles. After staying up for a week or so, the cores are brought below and refrozen. An eerie soundtrack by the Grateful Dead's Mickey Hart uses manipulated sound waves from--where else?--space. "He told us he was reviewing patterns of energy that were coming back from the raidio telescopes," says Fuller. Appropriate for the Hoth-by-way-of-Krypton vibe.

Afterwards, Fuller took me underground to Glacia's freezing chamber (sorry, no video allowed). Exiting Crystals through a nondescript door, we walked down three flights of stairs into an employee parking lot. Stepping into a concrete walled room in the center of the parking lot was like stepping into some kind of giant popsicle-making command center. The foot-plus diameter cylindrical PVC tubes hung suspended into a large hole in the floor. Massive counterweights attached to cables hung around them, ready to hoist the cores up or down into the space. Along one side of the room was a floor to ceiling electrical box, where a mess of wires led to a control panel where WET's artists could control every aspect of Glacia's look--from the freezing process, to controlling air bubbles in the water, to the water-jet 3-D modeling of the cores as they slipped from the cases--with a few button taps.

Since no one's ever done this before, one early problem WET encountered is that hardly anyone believes it's ice. So WET did their audience a service: They placed one core close enough for people to reach. This tiny human-sized chunk becomes the difference between knowing if it's real or not: They prod each other towards it, daring each other to touch it. The looks on their faces afterwards reveal shocked, unadulterated realization: Yes, WET has created the world's largest--and most beautiful--12-pack of Push-Pops.                                                                                                                   Via Fast Company

Hulu Add Caption Search To It’s Website

The battle for search-result relevance has a new front: Hulu. The Web-streaming TV company has just added the ability to search captions so you can hunt for a keyword in the text of a show you like. On top of that, they've added analytics about which parts of each show are being viewed the most. Is this a maneuver to beat Google?

The feature is currently in beta test mode inside the Hulu Lab (which sounds like Google right from the start). But it is fully operational and lets you "search the captions for thousands of videos across hundreds of shows." The idea's pretty simple, it's essentially a keyword search function for any show that has closed captions packaged along with the audio and video.

Why on Earth would you want to do that? Well, it's an excellent way to sate your curiosity: Imagine a character in a show refers to a real-life person that you're not familiar with, and you're not even sure how to spell their name. A quick caption search should be able to give you the answer, and among the search results you'll probably be able to find a video that will furnish you with the details you need to know (Hulu's even got a hover-preview function built into the results so you don't have to see the whole clip). The other reason it's useful is if you want to watch a particular episode of a show you like, but can't remember which exact episode it is: Search for some keywords you remember, and you should be able to quickly work out which one you want.

Along with this familiar search system, Hulu's also implemented what it's dubbed a "heat map." For any show with closed captions and enough user views and searches, a pop-up graph is available that charts user interest as a function of time through the show. Hulu's not saying exactly what metrics it's using to calculate the results, but it does cite the map as a useful way to navigate to a popular part of the show (making it easy to find, say, the bit of the Colbert Show that everyone's talking about without you having to hunt through the whole thing). The graph would seem to be a handy curio for most Hulu users, but it's easy to imagine media business and advertising folk finding many uses for the data. And Hulu, in its blog announcement about the new system, even provides a more light-hearted example: Want to know when Morena Baccarin slinks onto the screen in the pilot episode of V? Check the heat map:

The reason Hulu's doing all this, of course, is to keep its users engaged and logged onto the site. The search function is an extremely clever way of attracting you back to watch a show you half-remember. And that, of course, is in Hulu's interest as it tries to grow viewing figures in it's battle to beat cable TV and be the Web's TV channel. Given the recent lucrative (reported $25 million) tie-up between Twitter, Bing, and Google, maybe Hulu's even hoping that its caption feed can earn it some licensing dollars with a similar search engine deal. Though perhaps Google's not a viable target, with its interests definitely focused on developing YouTube: It too has experimented with captions recently, but as an automated system for user-submitted clips.                                                                                                                                          { Via blog Hulu }

Grsync Free Open Source Rsync GUI For Easily Synchronizing And Backing Up Folders “ Windows, Mac, Linux”

 

 

Grsync is an open source rsync GUI (Graphical User Interface) which works on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Rsync is the well-known and powerful command line directory and file synchronization tool.

You can use it for easily data backup. For instance, since Dropbox does not have it's own back-up tool . you can use Grsync to synchronize some folders you want to back-up with your Dropbox folder. Obviously, you can also use it with Ubuntu One or a network drive.

Grsync is VERY easy to use: just choose the origin and destinations folders.

 

 

Grsync features:

    * Most commonly used rsync options available, additional options may be specified by command line switches
    * Saves multiple settings with customized names (no limit on number of "sessions")
    * Can do simulation or normal execution
    * Captures and prints rsync output nicely on a own window and log to a file
    * Parses rsync output to display progress bars and other information
    * Highlights errors and show them on a separate window, for better and faster control over rsync runs
    * Can pause rsync execution
    * A good number of translations available
    * Can run custom commands before (and stop in case of failure) and after rsync
    * Shell script for batch, crontab use etc. provided (grsync-batch)
    * Can import and export sessions on file; i.e. share your settings with people!
    * Rsync backup made easy!
    * Needs rsync installed on the system (command line tool only, no need for server-side daemon) and GTK
    * Available for free and with sources!

Once you install it, Grsync is available under Applications > System > Grsync.

Download Grsync (packages available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux: Maemo, Suse, Mandriva and Slackware). Ubuntu users: Grsync is available in the Ubuntu repositories. To install it, simply open a terminal and paste this:

sudo apt-get install grsync