You might have noticed that I've not been updating for the past few days and are wondering why. Well, my partner and I are busy getting ready the necessary switch from Blogger to a self-hosted Wordpress blog. Now, the URL is much shorter and it's somehow quite easy to remember - TechXav.com. This domain name has been in my mind for quite a while for the past few months but I didn't take any action to purchase it. Just recently, I suddenly realized the need to make the switch as most bloggers regard Wordpress as the "state-of-the-art" platform and of course it makes a blog looks more professional with the wonderful plug-ins.
Actually, it was someone from WebHostingRevealed who sponsored the web hosting account. Great thanks to him! Without him, maybe I would have to take a few months more. By the way, although the theme wasn't designed by either me or Zhou Tong, but we took a lenghty two days to complete the updates and customizations. I would say it was tough. Probably it was because we aren't familarized with the tools and of course the PHP (although Zhou Tong knew the basics).
I was too excited to launch this new blog and have planned to do it yesterday night (Singapore time). However, we're stucked with the expandable spots and we couldn't find any possible solutions on the web. We have tried using the Blogger's tag and it only works on the Opera and Internet Explorer 7 and 8 but unforutnately not possible on the popular Firefox and Chrome. In the end I've managed to solve the problem by downloading the Less plugin and inserting the tag on every posts.
Even though the process of switching from Blogger to Wordpress is fun and exciting, but it was tough sometimes. There is still another problem which we haven't solve yet - that is the incorrect match of the logo in the header. It looks fine in my Firefox and Chrome but on the other hand, it doesn't seems right on IE. Also, I've encountered errors while trying out with my new email address - contact@techxav.com. Most likely these problems will be solved within these few days.
There is not much changes between KidTechGuru and TechXav. I've added some new features such as of course a new logo, tabbed widgets and a page numbers navigation on the archives page and search results page. I'll still continue to add more features over the next few days and if you've stumbled across any errors or something not right on TechXav, please drop me a note at my temporary email at kidtechguru@gmail.com. I'll try my best to edit it if there is a need.
Besides customizing the blog theme, I've change the Feedburner feed details to http://feeds2.feedburner.com/techxav and I wonder if there will be any downside when I do so. I've been pondering over whether to change my Twitter username to TechXav. I think I should and I've already done so!
In today's risky online environment we recommend using Web of Trust in a layered approach to security. This popular browser add-on warns you about risky websites to help you avoid spyware, browser hijacking, identity theft, phishing and other Internet scams.
How WOT works? Web of Trust, is an online community for reputation rating that lets Internet users exchange knowledge of websites and their services on the web. As you search with Google, Yahoo!, Wikipedia and other popular sites, you will see a tiny icon beside the link—green for go, yellow for proceed with caution and red for stop. WOT warns you about sites that can damage your computer or attempt to steal your personal data. The website rating information, currently over 21 million websites, is updated continuously by the user community and trusted sources such as listings of malware and phishing sites.
The shared information on a site's reputation includes trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy, and critical in today's Internet environment, child safety. Many Internet users who have used WOT have noticed that the user driven approach often gives more accurate ratings than automated ones. Furthermore, WOT provides reputation ratings regarding vendor reliability and child safety, where human input is crucial. This concept of "people driven security" cannot be over emphasized – it's the new wave in computer security.
WOT is a free Mozilla recommended security add-on that also works with Internet Explorer. Download it from http://www.mywot.com/download
Supporting facts:
WOT has been downloaded over 3 million times
Information on 21 million websites
WOT users can contribute by rating and commenting on websites
WOT also receives information from a large number of trusted sources, such as PhishTank, hpHosts, DNS-BH Malware Domain list and Artists Against 419.
Now the whole world is in financial crisis and we can say that the Internet is in winter. "Web 2.0" was created and defined in a brainstorm in 2004 as the "platform". Most websites are still using advertisements to earn money, because all of them think that the Internet is a big media.
Is it true that the Internet is a large media now? Well, at least I don't think so. We can only say that Internet was a big media when Web 1.0 was very popular, as the core of Web 1.0 is "contents". Content-matching is a really wonderful way of earning money and this has lead to many successful Internet corporations such as Google, Yahoo, etc to implement this idea. But now we are no longer in Web 1.0 environment - we need to change. Some websites like Facebook are using social advertisements and of course it's much better than traditional ones as users will pay more attention to social advertisements since it's related to the functions of the website.
I've found another way of how to earn money in Facebook but before we talk about this, I shall tell you about the focus of advertisements.
Do you know why advertisements can help us to earn money? When you see an advertisement, you may be interested in this product or service. This mindset will then "ask" you to click the advertisement to learn more about it. In the end, you may even purchase this product or enjoy this service. But why you can see the right advertisement that matched your interests very often? This is because when you're looking for something on the Internet, the content-matching will start working. Hence, you can get most attractive advertisement waiting for you to click on it.
However in platforms, it's quite different. As you're reading your friends' profile on Facebook, you may be interested in talking to your friends or playing with the interesting applications. This is when the folks in Facebook put up advertisements at the sidebar related to fan pages or applications. I personally feel that most users will be less interested in advertisements as compared to the usage of the platform. Therefore, private ad sales isn't a good idea in social networks websites. It would be better if some of these platforms offer subscription plans that provides exclusive features which the free account doesn't have. For example, the Flickr's PRO account which cost users $24.95 annually allows users to upload unlimited images storage and access to origninal files.
I remember when CNN played videos in Facebook which has attracted tons of users tp watch them. CNN is working with TV companies to promote its videos is. So wow do they promote? In traditional way, we may consider about advertise our videos to get more viewers. But CNN is very clever. The folks there have thought of a very good idea - why not play the videos in popular websites directly? Finally, CNN's videos have managed to attract thousands of clicks and users were posting comments to give their thoughts and opinions of them.
Why CNN can successfully promote its products and services? The money is not important, the idea is the most important! That is the new thing in Web 2.0.
After much considerations, I've found out that CNN was actually doing Channel Marketing. They used a channel from social networks websites. One of the advantages of Internet is "instant" and by letting more people know means money! To use advertisement is good, but you need to match. Otherwise, many visitors cannot get the perfect advertisements and ignore them. You will then lose the opportunity to earn money from these visitors. But using Channel Marketing is different. You don't need to show anything to all users, all you need is to discover a channel and how to get more visitors without paying more.
Channel Marketing for Web 2.0 websites also benefits the owner of the websites. Their pockets will get deeper as Channel Marketing can create value! Creating value means making money and they can them by giving out the channels.
After thinking more about this, I've found out that there are many channels we can use and a part of them have been used before. For example, using channels of search engines is called SEO, using channels of video sharing websites is called Video-Marketing, and using channels of business sites is called e-Business.
Is the focus of Internet-Business is turning away from advertisements and gearing toward the channels? Well, only time can tell the truth.
It's quite surprising for one to find out that his or her neighbors are using Twitter when you didn't even know about it. This is when Nearby Tweets comes in handy in helping you search Twitterers living near you. By punching it details such as location, keyword and search radius (measured in miles), it will present to you the 50 recent tweets that match your selection you've made earlier on.
If you play with this Web app and was lucky to stumble across a similar face - that is either your friend or neighbor living near you, follow him or her on Twitter and they will be surprised to see you on the social platform.
The downside of this app is that it doesn't provides very accurate stats. As a frequent Twitter user, you should have known that when users sign up, it doesn't requires them to provide their location and some even leave the option blank. Therefore, there are actually many of them who are not included in the database.
In today advanced world, an increasing number of applications have been moved to the Internet, because Rich Internet Applications don't have any limit about installation or operating platform. This type of applications is called "SaaS"(Software as a Service).
The focus of Web Applications is Web Design as perfect Web Designs can bring great functions of applications. Therefore Web Applications should provide simple, direct and wise interface, so that users can finish tasks faster and easier.
Web Applications are very popular these days and today I would like to share with your guys 10 wonderful designs. These widgets can make our applications user-friendly, and of course, they are very beautiful!
1. On Demand Interface Elements
In interface design, simplifying is an important factor. Users need more time to familiarize your applications especially if you've added too many widgets on the main interface. Hence developers need to insert lesser elements, but try not to cancel any useful and crucial functions.
When you click the search text field of Kontain, you can see a menu with categories so that you can refine your search to view the results you want.
There is a great way to create better interface - hide all the advanced options, and everything that is complex. You can try using a pop-up menu or window to do these things. Besides that, doing a research about the click frequency of all the elements is also possible.
When you click the "Search" button of CollabFinder, it won't redirect you to another page just like other websites. Instead, there will be a pop-up window for you to start searching.
2. Professional Widgets
Choosing the right widgets is very important, you can use different statements for different widgets. Some professional widgets will be better than others in several specific places.
Above is a calendar widget which allows you to choose a date.
A calendar widget is one of the professional widgets because it's better than pop-up menus as you can choose date directly.
APY calculator of MyBankTracker uses a slider to let you select different combinations.
Implementing a slider is also a good idea. Of course you can input numbers but sometimes it can make you life easier as you need not to use keyboard. All you need is just your mouse! Also, you can see the range of the data easily.
3. Disable Pressed Buttons
When a form is being posted, there might be a problem - that is duplicate posting. If you click on a button several times, it can cause this problem. However, it isn't tough to prevent this. In server-side, you can check the data when posting and using scripts is enough. But in client-side, you can just disable pressed buttons, that is very easy and useful.
Yammer will disable the button when you are posting. Of course, I suggest you to check it again on server-side.
4. Add Shadows for Pop-up Windows
Adding shadows for pop-up windows and menus not only make them more attracting, but they can also highlight the display of a new window or menu.
This type of skill is always used in desktop applications because it can grab your attention easily. However in Web Application, this skill is very important too.
There is a wide shadow in the login window of Digg.com. You can use CSS style or Javascript to get this effect.
The project switcher of Basecamp use a light shadow.
5. Tell You What To Do
If some pages don't have any data, you should let the user know more about it. You can try using some samples but remember not do this frequently.
If there is nothing to query, we can use some useful short messages instead of blanks. Just tell your user how to start, for example, a project manager can list the projects by users, but if there isn't any projects, you can put a "create your project" button instead. Even though it may includes this type of button already, but something is better than nothing.
In Campaign Monitor, when you are ready for creating a new e-mail activity, it will bring you to the right page.
Using this skill can let your users to try out more services and I think some of them will continue using the services in the future. Show every procedure will help users to understand the application's features and advantages. Displaying the most important options is enough for users because all they want to know the main direction instead of a detailed explanation.
Use tips instead of blanks can encourage the users to create more contents and help you prevent users from leaving the page. It also helps the users to now your application more.
If you haven't created any form yet, you can see a big and friendly message in Wufoo, it encourages you to create a new form.
6. Active Effects
Many Web Applications have their own custom button styles. Many of them are using text + image backgrounds but you need an active effect to show that the applications is fast and improve the user experience.
Your visitors may be redirect to your login page but they haven't registered yet. Maybe they want to try out your application but they don't know that they are required to register first.
Don't have an account of Delicious? That doesn't matter, you can see a link forwarding to the sign-up page.
Goplan uses a colourful button forward to sign-up page.
Put a register link on your login page can make users' life easier, because they do not need to find register page.
8. Relative Navigation
You need to think about what is the users' needs. You don't need to put the same navigation everywhere and you should know where the users may want to see the navigation.
A good example is the Microsoft Office 2007, the toolbar has been displaced as the Ribbon Widgets. Web Applications should do that too by showing the navigation that users only need.
There is a similar navigation of LightHouse and it includes two-level tab-menus.
9. Pay More Attention At Key Functions
Not all widgets have the same importance, for example, when you're creating a project, you have two options - Create and Cancel. As you know, the Create button is more crucial so you can give them different types of style that can highlight the Create button.
LiteHouse's options include a button and a link, you can see that they do not have the same importance.
10. Embed Videos
If I say that images and text can help you to know the features of a application, then I think video is better choice. Demos in video is very important for Web Application.
GoodBarry puts a video on home page to show the products, it can tell you where to start.
MailChimp's Management Panel includes a video to help new users.
Some Web Applications embed videos to tell the users more features and using video demos is a great way to show your products as videos are directly perceived through senses.
In conclusion, these 10 great ideas are useful for designing and can also be tips for you to enjoy the Web Applications. I believe that Rich Internet Applications can be the next focus of the Internet!
Finding a particular image on several platforms such as Google Image Search, Flickr or Photobucket for your project work might be quite tough and sometimes we have wasted a significant portion of our time doing this. However, with Ginipic, an excellent image search desktop-based app, can help us solve this problem. After using the the free software for the past half an hour, I'm pretty impressed by the amazing interface that Ginipic offers. Not only that, you can now search from multiple image search engines, photo-sharing websites or your own picture folders simultaneously.
The usual way people browse for photos is that they head to for example Google Image Search. After finding what they want, they would download it to the hard disk. Next, copy and paste the image to their Powerpoint presentations or a Word document. Sounds familiar right?
You can eliminate some of these steps I've mentioned above when using Ginipic. Basically, all you need to do is to enter a search query and simply drag and drop the image to anywhere you want. Besides that, there are options whereby users can also post it to blog, save locally, share with your friends on social networks or set it as wallpaper.
When you search for an image, Ginipic will present to you the search results in thumbnails cluttered together. You can then preview the full size by clicking on it. Even though it allows you to view many of them at once glance, but I feel that one will get confuse as there are at least 100+ thumbnails in one page! Another downside is that it doesn't provides a short description that accompanies with the photo just like Google Image Search.
This clever app will filter out the duplicates from multiple sources so that you would not be able to find similar images on the search results page. The Advanced Search feature gives you the ability to customize your queries in each source.
Currently, Ginipic only supports the Windows OS but sadly not the Mac OS yet. It requires your computer to have installed Microsoft .NET Framework in order to run the software.
Chad Wyatt of PrettyTweet emailed me regarding his newly launched WYSIWYG Twitter background designer that helps you create custom Twitter background for your profile without forking out money to pay for professional designers or struggle figuring out some complicated features in Adobe Photoshop.
After selecting a template, you'll be directed to the editor which you can then upload your own image or logo either from the web or computer. The image adjustment feature enables users to alter the image size, rotation, a drag-and-drop image positioning, etc. Other key features includes adding your own text in two layout options, change text colors, change text sizes and change text position. When you're satisfied with your work, PrettyTweet will send the image to your email and from there you can upload it to your profile.
The downside of PrettyTweet is that it only offers default Twitter backgrounds which doesn't seems special to me at all (even though Kevin Rose uses it). However, I believe that Chad Wyatt and his team will try to expand the list by adding more new and amazing ones. Of course it would be great if PrettyTweet were to partner with TwitterGallery (a website that provides really cool themes) to help Twitterers to design their custom Twitter background. Most likely it would be a success and the number of people joining Twitter is increasing significantly everyday!
Midway Games Inc. (NYSE: MWY), a leading interactive entertainment software publisher and developer, has recently announced a planned global ship date of the end of March, for Wheelman™, the upcoming open-world driving game starring action-film megastar Vin Diesel as an expert driver for hire. Set in picturesque Barcelona, the game is scheduled to be available in stores everywhere by the end of March, 2009, for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and personal computers.
Co-produced by Vin Diesel and created in close partnership with Diesel's video game production company Tigon Studios, Wheelman is being developed by Midway Studios - Newcastle Ltd., a Midway internal studio that has assembled an international world-class team fusing proven industry veterans with a AAA track record and future emerging talent focused on creating high quality, best-in-breed gaming experiences.
"We're designing Wheelman to play like a Hollywood blockbuster," said Vin Diesel, Wheelman star and executive producer, Tigon Studios. "Playing this game will be just like taking control of the greatest car chases from feature films, except this time you're in the driver's seat."
"Featuring Vin Diesel and set in Barcelona, Wheelman is a title with enormous sales potential," said Martin Spiess, executive vice president, international of Midway Games Ltd. "We're making a multi-million dollar marketing investment to make sure that gamers around the world are ready when Wheelman goes on sale worldwide, which we have planned for the end of March 2009."
Midway is working closely with Vin Diesel and Tigon Studios to create an all-new property that is expected to eventually lead to a feature film, with a script that is already in development.
"This is not just another run-of-the-mill, licensed Hollywood knock-off," said Matt Booty, president and CEO, Midway. "Wheelman features evolutionary new game design mechanics like cinematic super moves and vehicular combat. Once you experience Wheelman's Vehicle Melee, you'll never want to play another driving game without it!"
Vehicle Melee allows gamers to sideswipe pursuing enemies with a simple flick of the joystick Wheelman's devastating "slam-n-ram" maneuvers can be carried out in all directions, just like you'd see in a Hollywood-style car chase.
Inspired by Hollywood's most famous action-sequences, Wheelman will deliver powerful cinematic moments throughout the game's compelling storyline.
For the most up-to-date information, screens and trailers for Wheelman, log onto www.wheelmangame.com.
About Wheelman Action film megastar Vin Diesel and his Tigon Studios are again blurring the lines between entertainment mediums, this time collaborating with Midway in the design and production of Wheelman to ensure an edge-of- your-seat gaming experience. Diesel's voice and likeness will appear as the game's main character, expert Wheelman Milo Burik.
Combining spectacular Hollywood-style stunts with a gripping storyline, Wheelman provides an adrenaline-fueled, cinematic thrill ride guaranteed to leave you breathless. Vin Diesel stars as an undercover agent and highly skilled driver who must infiltrate the Barcelona underworld to gather intelligence surrounding a covert heist. Posing as a driver-for-hire, he ends up caught in a crossfire of corruption and chaos while trying to stay one step ahead of local law nforcement and rival gangs.
About Tigon Studios: Based in Los Angeles, California, TIGON STUDIOS was founded in 2002 by Vin Diesel with the goal of breaking new ground in interactive franchise entertainment by bringing strong story, high production value and interesting and intelligent characters which can exist in multiple mediums, simultaneously to the gaming and film & television industries. TIGON focuses on creating properties that can be launched in both mediums.
The only game production company founded by a major motion picture star, TIGON combines a film industry style business model with veteran talent from the gaming industry to produce the highest quality of interactive entertainment. In its unique role, TIGON works closely with both the developer and the publisher of its games to ensure clear creative vision and quality in each title. By combining the strengths of traditional film development with the innovations of the video game world, TIGON is in an exclusive position to ensure streamlined production across various platforms.
The first game produced by TIGON, Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, was a critical hit. As a producer on the project, Diesel co-designed the game and rendered voice-over and motion-capture service. The Chronicles of Riddick game was published by Vivendi-Universal Games, developed by Starbreeze and released simultaneously with the film released by Universal Studios. By following this model of cross-market development, TIGON is the future of interactive entertainment.
About Midway: Midway Games Inc. (NYSE:MWY), headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with offices throughout the world, is a leading developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software for major videogame systems and personal computers. More information about Midway and its products can be found at www.midway.com.
Want to make your tweet stands out in your followers' timeline, well some Twitterers would capitalize several words to emphasis it or just the first letter of each word. Here's another useful tip that helps your followers to notice your tweets much easier. That is by inserting cool characters such as a heart shape, an aeroplane, happy face and even the rook, knight and pawn symbols found in the International chess.
Known as TwitterKeys, you can select from over 100 different characters from this collection and copy and paste it in your tweet. It's developed by Boris and Sander of The Next Web.
How to get more visitors? The content below are simple tips to help you promote your contents. Maybe you have used some of them, and also there should be some tips you have ignored. In this post, you can know a lot of promoting ways. Before you read below, you should know that web promoting is a long-time process, you should have target and plan, and also should be ready for doing this.
1. Add title for every webpage
Add a 5-8 words title for every webpage. The title should be simple and short, and make sure it can represent the most important content. Title will be displayed as a link in search engine results, so you need to attract the visitors via writing a attractive title. Also, you need to add your website name in title and a few important keywords. All webpages should have different title.
2. Add description via META tag
Beside title, search engines are interested in META tag too. This is a description to describe the contents. And also you can add some keywords into META tag. But now META tag seems not really useful, but SEOers often do this.
3. Add your keywords in bold font
Search engines attach importance to bold font text, because text in bold means important content. So make sure add a few keywords in bold font, and try not to use image as title. Remember, add a few<> tags will be helpful, but add a lot of them will be dangerous.
4. Make sure your keywords in the first paragraph
Search engines hope that they can find a few keywords in first paragraph. Google loves the webpage which is in every 100 words there are 1.5-2 keywords. Other place you can put your keywords in to ALT or COMMENT properties.
5. Navigator must be clear enough
Some webmasters like to use frame or iframe in webpages, that is a serious problem for search engine. Although search engine can find your content page, they may cannot find your navigator to find more. If you use Javascript or even Flash in navigator design, though the navigator will be very beautiful and wonderful, the search engine cannot deal with these types of navigators. You can add another navigator in links at footer of webpages. Also, some spiders do not like dynamic pages with arguments, so you need to try to avoid link to URL with "?", and you can use urlrewrite instead.
6. Create special pages for a few important keywords
SEOers do not recommend to use bridge pages to cheat search engines, these pages will let the whole website be in danger. But you can create some special pages include different keywords or key phrases. For example, you do not need to introduce all your services or products in one page, you can use many pages to do this, so that every page can have its independent keyword.
7. Submit your website to search engines
It seems not very useful at present, but if your website is really good and search engines have not capture your website, you should submit by yourself. Remember, do not use any software to submit your website automatically, that is unhelpful and dangerous.
8. Adjust your main content to get better rank
You can change the most important pages or default page and let them get better rank. Some software can help you to check your rank, and compare your rank with other websites in keywords.
9. Submit your website to main directories
Make sure your website is in Open Directory, this directory provides contents to main search engines. It is very important for Google.
10. Be professional
Make sure your website has a focus, like Education or Finance, because professional website can have a lot of fixed visitors and target customers. You can submit your website to professional Yellow-Page system, that is useful sometimes.
11. Request the links exchange
You can ask some similar websites for exchanging links. The best choice should not be the big traffic websites because the webmasters will ignore you, you can consider about smaller websites. Friend-link should be an independent page. Remember, notice the quality of target website.
12. Write articles with your website address
You can write some free articles and publish them to professional news websites, you can use short description about your website to promote it. You can get a lot of links if you can successfully do that.
13. Print your website address on Name Cards, Printings, Books, etc
That's a traditional way but it is really useful sometimes, make sure your domain is easy to remember.
14. Promote via traditional media advertisements
Traditional media should not be given up. Both newspapers and magazines are really helpful for you if you can show your website address on them. Please put your website as add-ons, to remind the reader to find more at your website. Professional magazines are even better, because the target readers are fixed.
15. Provide free services
Everyone love free services. Free services can help you to attract more people to visit your website. Create free services need a lot of time or money, but they are really helpful to promote your website. For example, provide free mail services, free information publish, or any other things you want. Something special or interesting will be even better.
16. Publish some news
Find some valuable event about your website, like interviews about you. You can publish them on your website. Or even create some news about your website and publish them to news media.
17. Add a footer in all your e-mails
Most of the E-Mail systems support to add signatures, they will add as footer of all the mails you have sent. Add signatures about your website can help the recipient to find you.
18. Create mail list and send mails to your users like news or promotions
That is the best way to let your users know more about your website. You can ask your users to submit their E-Mail addresses for you to send these mail, you can use mail list to make it easier. But remember, do not send any SPAMs!
19. Organize A Contest
Why not hold contest? It can attract a lot of visitors and try to let the prizes be amazing. The prizes can be promotions or your products, that is really useful to get more visitors.
20. Ask your visitors to add your website in bookmark
You can add a bookmark icon on your default page, it will be easier for visitors to add your website, but you should never force to do this.
21. Exchange advertisements
Just like exchange links, but you should exchange the banners, size can be much larger than links.
22. Paid for advertisements of search engine
If you need, you can pay for advertisements, the best choice for ads is search engine, because search engines sell attentions from visitors. You can use CPM or CPC for your ads.
23. Paid Placement
Another PPC mode from search engines, nearly all search engines have this service except for google, you can pay for a better place or rank.
24. Submit your website to 'compare and purchase' websites
It is a easy way to promote your products, but if your websites do not sell anything, you can ignore this tip.
That's all. 24 simple tips, if you can do all of them, you are doing a successful social-network marketer!
For those who don't know what an ASCII art is, well according to Wikipedia, "ASCII art is a 20th century art movement that utilizes computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant character sets with proprietary extended characters".
In short, it means creative text-based art. There are actually quite a number of softwares and apps that lets you create a graphic from a text. One of them is the Text Ascii Art Generator developed by Patorjk. It offers a wide choice (at least 300) of different interesting fonts that you can't even find them in Microsoft Word. Besides that there is an aligning feature that helps you make your graphic on the left, right or center. The default is the boring black text display but this generator is thoughtful enough and allows users to add some beautiful colors in their work.
You can even type in real-time which means that as you type in the text-field, the graphic will appear in the display below almost instantly. After you're satisfied with your work, copy and paste the symbols anywhere you want.
By the way, I've taken some time to search for a few wonderful and amazing ASCII art pieces you've probably never seen before. Here they are -
Both Snipt.org and Snipt.net seems to have similar domain names and the features are quite similar too. What Snipt.org does is that it allows Twitterers/programmers to share their code snippets on the micro-blogging platform by helping you to shorten the URL so that you can post it on Twitter. On the other hand Snipt.net acts like your database that enables you to store your frequently used commands or code snippets.
Just like Twitpic but in text form, Snipt.org lets you upload source files of over 100+ common programming language such as actionscript, c, java, javascript, MySQL, Python and many more. The best and most important feature which Snipt.org provides is that it preserves the formatting of your code and colored text according to the programming language itself for easier reading.
After playing with it for a while, I feel that it still needs some small improvements like having an upload option to upload soruce code files from the hard disk as sometimes users may make errors while copying and paste.
However, overall, this free and easy-to-use tool is indeed useful especially for programmers who want to others to download their source files to create some programs or to even troubleshoot a problem such as fixing a bug. If you're not a programmer and need to find a particular source file, you can trying to search it by entering the name and select the programming language to refine your search.
Yahoo has been on the top of Amazon's Alexa rank for quite a long time, with the search engine giant - Google tailing closely behind. Just recently, it has overtook Yahoo and was crowned the number one website in the world based on number of traffic, according to a report by the folks at Alexa.
Even though it has passes Yahoo in terms of "Yesterday" and "1 Week Avg" ranks, but one of the Alexa team member - Geoffrey Mack said on the blog that "Google will need to keep it up if it is going to surpass Yahoo in the 3 month average rankings, which is the official ranking number shown in our lists."
It's the first time Google has became number one on the web discovery machine which ranks websites and blogs according to the amount of traffic they have received. It's known that Alexa grabs data from multiple sources but didn't clearly explain how. Many Internet users especially webmasters criticized the inaccuracy of the ranking.
For the past few years (I think), Yahoo has been on the top although Google seems to have more users than the US search company. So what's the reason? Well, it's because Yahoo operates mainly on yahoo.com unlike Google.com which has many domains TLD's and redirects each user according to his IP to a specific TLD.
Do you think that Microsoft and Yahoo both don't have the brilliant minds to take part in the competitions in the Internet market? Internet needs more young corporations to build the brighter future. Microsoft is good at software but bad at Internet, MSN department can only use advertisements to earn money. Yahoo is a wonderful beginning of modern Internet, but now it is facing a crisis. How about the next generation of Internet?
Some newer corporations like Facebook, MySpace, Digg are recommended to invest by Internet analysts, and they got a lot of investments from Venture-Capital. But all of them either use traditional way to earn money or do not have any idea to earn money, do you think they worth their market capitalization? So invest them is quite dangerous, their P/E may be too high for investors. But there are some corporations use special ways to earn money. One of them is one of the biggest Internet corporations in China, and today I want to introduce it to you. That is "Tencent"!
You Cannot Imagine How Can it Earn so Much Money!
You may not know Tencent, but you should have heard QQ before, in QQ International version, you nearly cannot find any advertisements(Not the Chinese Version, it includes a few advertisements). Even in the applications like QQMail, QQBar, QQGame, QQBookmark, QQNetdisk, you cannot find any advertisements! But according to the the 2008 Third Quarter Results of Tencent, you can know total revenues of Tencent in this quarter were US$296.9m, and revenues from IVAS(Internet Value-added Services) were US$205.4m,r evenues from Mobile and telecommunications value-added services (MVAS) were US$54.6m, however, revenues from online advertising were only US$36.5m!
It is quite different from other Internet corporations, it is really hard to find the Internet corporation which is very strong and powerful without a lot of advertisements revenues. You can find that the main revenues come from IVAS, do you know how powerful the IVAS is? In China, there are total 300 million Internet users and 800 million QQ IDs, and more than 1 million users are using QQ IVAS, the percentage is really small, only 0.33%(normal value), but every all of the IVAS users need to pay RMB 10-50 per month, then it becomes a really big number, and quite near the IVAS revenues. Remember, only 0.33% of total users have paid.
Features of Tencent's Products
1. QQ - Main product and the best IM in China
Do you know that QQ has beaten MSN in China, grabbing more than 90% market share in IM. According to the 2008 Third Quarter Results of Tencent, total registered IM user accounts increased to 856.2 million, active IM user accounts(monthly) increased 3.9% QoQ to 355.1 million and peak simultaneous online user accounts for IM services recorded 45.3 million.
QQ used to be a imitation of ICQ, but it changed a lot in past 8 years, the main functions are: Contacts, Talk, File Transfer, Remote Help, Groups. Some advance functions are: Save the Message History online, Transfer your files when the contact is offline, Capture the screen and send, and also some functions for enterprise.
Now, QQ is becoming the best way for everyone to study Chinese, and I think there will be more and more users use English to communicate with contacts via QQ. The reason is QQ is internationalizing, and Tencent released the official website of QQ recently, that is I'M QQ(http://www.imqq.com/). You can download the English Version of QQ and start your journey at registering a QQ ID.
There is something I forgot to tell you, QQ can run in nealy all operating systems, it supports Windows(2000 or newer), Mac OS X, Linux with X-Window Graphic Mode, and also perfect for the operating systems for Loongson CPU.
2. QQMail - Full functions without ads
Which E-Mail service do you prefer? GMail? Yahoo! Mail? or Hotmail? Of course, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail should not be the best choice because they have no POP3/IMAP/SMTP services for free, and both of them have the footer advertisements. But GMail is quite different, it only shows the advertisements when you are reading a mail, and GMail includes full client functions like POP3/IMAP/SMTP. But I think QQMail is even better, because it not only includes full client functions, but also includes some useful applications like Online Storage, Notepad, RSS Feed Reader and Mail List. You can even find that there is exactly no ads in QQMail, anywhere, very clean.
The domain is quite wonderful too, it is @qq.com, a very cute domain, and you can use your QQ ID as the username or use your own username. There are some problems about QQMail too, that is the speed problems, QQMail don't have any oversea server at the moment, but Tencent is doing with that.
3. QQGroups/QQBar/QQCommunity
These three are different products, but the cores are the same - "dealing with people", MSN also have the function like QQGroups, but it is quite different in QQ, Group File Sharing, Group Audio/Video Meeting and Group Club are great ideas in QQ. Only the VIPs or Very Active Users can create QQGroups.(Can you see the power of IVAS now?)
QQBar is just a online dymanic forum. Everyone can create a forum with a special name, like "NBA Bar", "IT Bar", "Facebook Bar" or any name you like. People can discuss in bars, that is really helpful for followers. That is dividing people into different bars.
In QQCommunity, you can also get great feelings by dealing with people, it is nearly the true community, that can help you to solve problems or get better life.
Unfortunately, QQBar and QQCommunity can only be in Chinese at the moment, we can only hope Tencent release the International Version one day.
The things above are all the features of Tencent's Products that I can tell you. Also, you can find out more about them.
Conclusion
Do you think that this post is really like a investment report? I think so, I really suggest you to consider about investing Tencent(Trade Code 0700 in SEHK), because it is internationalizing! I hope Tencent can successfully provide all services in English. And the first step of Tencent is release official website in English and the English Version of QQ and QQMail.
If Tencent can finish internationalization successfully, I think Tencent can beat MSN and Yahoo in the future!
The world's most popular free desktop mapping software - Google Earth, said on Monday that there are releasing an advanced 3-D mapping technology that enables users or even geographers to explore the amazing underwater world as if you're swimming. The folks there said that you can even swim through undersea canyons as deep as the Mariana Trench and encounter creatures like a critically endangered, prehistoric fish called the coelacanth.
To starting using this new feature, you would have to head to the Google Earth website and download the Google Earth 5.0 beta. Next, put a check mark next to the 'Oceans' layer in the Google Earth software.
Google has partnered with dozens of content providers so that you can receive the best mapping experience you've never enjoyed before. Some popular ones includes BBC, California Academy of Sciences, DOER Marine, National Geographic Society and Stanford University, Hopkins Marine Station.
We can discover new places including surf, dive, and travel hotspots and shipwrecks. Exploring 3-D shipwrecks like the famous Titanic incident is also possible. As a geography student, I feel that this new Google Earth is really benefitcial as it can help me study georaphical locations and the underwater world. This is hardly experienced in school and I hope teachers will use this impressive mapping software as a teaching tool.
Of course, every software or apps have their own downsides. For Google Earth, it doesn't allows users to zoom down and then in the water to see shipwrecks.
Google board member and former Vice President Al Gore, who attended the event at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, called the latest version of Google Earth "an extremely powerful educational tool" that he hoped would influence the Climate Conference in Copenhagen later this year.
Dedina said the ability to see the ocean floor used to be reserved for expensive scientific studies.
"It is hard for me to identify ocean hot spots to present to policymakers," she said. "Now I have the capacity to cost-effectively zoom in on my desktop and print what areas need to be conserved and what the potential impact of human activities might have on the area."
If you don't have any Adobe software to manipulate your PDF documents, then I would suggest you to head to MergePDF which helps you combine multiple PDF files together for free and quickly. Since it comes free, it definitely has some limitations such as a maximum of 10 input files and individual file size must be 5MB.
Also, all uploaded files are immediately removed from the database after you've downloaded your combined PDF document due to security issues. MergePDF comes in handy especially if you access PDF documents frequently and sometimes when people send you a file in different parts, you can easily merge it using this useful and simple tool.
Another alternative tool is the popular PDFHammer. Not only does it provides a similar feature of merging documents, it's also a web-based application that helps users re-arrange pages in any way you want and delte individual pages.
There are tons of website value calculators out there on the web and none of them are special to me - just taking into account of basic features such as technorati authority rank, alexa rank, Google Pagerank, number of backlinks from major search engines, website history and many more. Some of these estimators include WebsiteValueCalculator, YourWebsiteValue and Dane Carloson's project using Technorati API.
You might have heard one of them before but there is one new start-up called Stimator which really impressed me at first look especially its wonderful interface. Touted as a "A Real-Time Website Value Estimator", this free tool enables you to find out how much your website is worth by grabbing data from multiple sources such as the stock market taken from Yahoo Finance (I don't think any developer have implemented this great idea).
Besides collecting information from financial markets, it also takes in the account the strength of a TLD (Top-Level Domain). As the founder explained on the side, "Top Level TLDs are more valorize than Regional or Local TLDs. Also, and comparing Top Level TLDs, there are some differences in how our calculation is made. ( ex: .com and .info are subjected to different factors ). Why? For us, and comparing two websites with same " absolute value ", the market will react different if TLD is .com or .info. They could have the exact same number of backlinks, PR, traffic, popularity... but we think you would prefer the .com one."
Of course, you should take the final calculations too seriously as what has presented to you is just an estimation and there are even more factors that need to be look at.
According to the site, there are close to 9,000 bloggers who have already performed a curious check since it was launched. So what makes Stimator so special? Well, as I've already said earlier on, it looks into other important factors that other ordinary website value calculators don't have. Even though the calcuations might be slow as compared to the rest, but it really "entertains" the users by showing us what type of calculations it's doing at the moment with the increasing numbers instead of just presenting to you a boring loading symbol.
Stimator is currently in beta and is one of a projects developed by Meozon.
Two months ago, I've posted an article related to the world's most popular micro-blogging platform - "Top 3 Twitterers Of Each Country In the World Based On Number of Followers". Today, I've spend an hour or so to compile data from multiple sources to form this wonderful list of the "Top 30 News Websites Using Twitter Based On Number Of Followers".
Follow these news websites on Twitter by clicking on their respective links to receive the latest news update directly on your Twitter profile:
In past 8 years, the main force of Internet was Web 2.0.There are many platforms which are defined as Web 2.0 Platforms. But nearly none of them can give you the source code, so how can we create a Web 2.0 website easily by ourselves? Never mind, well the Open-Source Community can solve this problem - there are many imitations of Web 2.0 Websites, and a lot of them are Open-Source Web Programs or Web Scripts.
There are many imitations of Web 2.0 Websites, I think only a few people will make a summary about them. Now, I want to let you know these websites and their special functions and features.
1. Imitation of Digg - Pligg As you know, Digg is the most popular Social News website, and its function is really useful, it changes the way for us to get news. Pligg is a Open-Source CMS that it is quite like Digg.com, and it includes some extra functions like Tag and link to Social Bookmark websites.
2. Imitation of Wikipedia - MediaWiki I am not sure whether the MediaWiki can be the imitation of Wikipedia, because they are both supported by the same foundation. It is also a very powerful Open-Source Web Program and it includes all functions of Wikipedia, everyone can use this program to build a wonderful wiki-site.
3. Imitation of YouTube - AlstraSoft Video Share Of course, YouTube is one of the most successful Web 2.0 websites, but it is also a sample for a lot of Video Sharing websites. AlstraSoft Video Share is a PHP+MySQL tool that you can create your own YouTube very easily, and you can also get support (such as servers, bandwidth, etc) from AlstraSoft if your website is creative enough.
4. Imitation of Yahoo! Answers - Askeet Yahoo! Answers is a really popular Web 2.0 Q&A website. Askeet is completely copy from Yahoo! Answers, but it is Open-Source. The special function is users can digg(vote) and decide the featured questions. You can use it freely according to the MIT License.
5. Imitation of MySpace - PHPFox MySpace is the most popular online space in US, and of course it can bring a lot of Open-Source Programs. One of the most wonderful one is PHPFox, this is a application which is written in PHP and includes the functions like Groups, Blogs, Forums, Messages, etc.
6. Imitation of Netvibes, Pageflakes - AlstraSoft StartPage Another project from AlstraSoft, it is a AJAX StartPage, I think you may never heard Netvibes or Pageflakes before, but I think you should be familiar with StartPage. You can add some RSS Feeds, or Widgets very easily to a StartPage. Built-In AJAX can improve the user experience a lot.
7. Imitation of delicious - Scuttle Of course, the focus of Social Bookmarking is delicious, one of the yahoo websites. I think no one can catch up with delicious in Social Bookmarking in 3 years. But if you want to start your journey with Social Bookmarking, Scuttle is really perfect for you, however, the official website of Scuttle has been closed, but you can get the latest version of this program on SourceForge.net.
8. Imitation of Facebook - UCHome with Manyou App Platform Facebook, the core of Web 2.0 in past 4 years, is the biggest Social Networks website in the world. If anyone think a website or a platform can be as popular as Facebook, then I believe that must be UCHome, which is the most popular SNs platform in China. UCHome is a SNs website program, and Manyou is a developer network, the target of applications won't be only the users of one website any more. If you write an application for Manyou, then nearly all SNs websites will be able to use your application. They are really wonderful things come from China.
Before you launch a blog or a platform, most probably you would ask your friends of their thoughts and opinions regarding of it. However, some of them aren't expert in this field and could only answer several basic questions. This is when one site called Feedback Army offers a great service that allows you to submit questions and receive responses from 10 different professional reviewers.
It provides an usability test that enables webmasters to check whether users are able to understand their sites or not. Since user-friendliness is very important especially in platforms as it affects users' experience, they can also ask if it's easy to use. Basically, those reviewers act like an user and write their feelings and opinions regarding one site.
Of course Feedback Army doesn't comes free since it's being reviewed by experts. For a single request, it cost $10 and you can even apply for a refund if you aren't satisfied with the service. Don't trust the site because it isn't very popular? Well, you can head to the samples section and find out the feedback the site owner received.
You might have noticed that I've not been updating for the past few days and are wondering why. Well, my partner and I are busy getting ready the necessary switch from Blogger to a self-hosted Wordpress blog. Now, the URL is much shorter and it's somehow quite easy to remember - TechXav.com. This domain name has been in my mind for quite a while for the past few months but I didn't take any action to purchase it. Just recently, I suddenly realized the need to make the switch as most bloggers regard Wordpress as the "state-of-the-art" platform and of course it makes a blog looks more professional with the wonderful plug-ins.
The shared information on a site's reputation includes trustworthiness, vendor reliability, privacy, and critical in today's Internet environment, child safety. Many Internet users who have used WOT have noticed that the user driven approach often gives more accurate ratings than automated ones. Furthermore, WOT provides reputation ratings regarding vendor reliability and child safety, where human input is crucial. This concept of "people driven security" cannot be over emphasized – it's the new wave in computer security.
