Monday, December 31, 2012

How To Add External Links To Your YouTube Video ?

An extremely interesting news for YouTube publishers. You can now embed links in your YouTube videos using the annotations feature of YouTube. These hyperlinks may either point to your website’s homepage or to any other internal webpage of a site that is associated with your YouTube account or channel.



Thus, if your YouTube video explains how to boil an egg, you can insert an annotation linking to your blog post where the steps are described in greater detail. Or if your video contains a news footage, the annotation may point to the text version of the new story hosted on your own website.

The links are click able and work even if the YouTube video is embedded on to another website. Here are some YouTube videos where I have enabled URL annotations.

How to Add Links in your YouTube Videos


Before you can embed links in your YouTube videos, you need to associate your websites with your YouTube channel (in case you haven’t done it before).

Sign-in to your Google Webmasters account and click the site name that you would like to associate with YouTube. Then go to Configuration -> Associates -> Add New User and enter the email address that is associate with your YouTube channel. Now your website is linked to your YouTube account.

Next, go to youtube.com/verify and associate your phone number with your YouTube channel. Phone verification is essential for YouTube to enable extra features in your account which includes videos URL annotations and the ability to upload videos of unlimited length to YouTube.

Once the account is verified, open any of YouTube videos and click the “Annotations” link to create and edit annotations for that video. Here you’ll see a banner that says “Enable your account for external annotation links” – click the “Enable” button and you are all set to create annotations to external websites now.

While you are inside the Annotations edition, click the Add annotation button to create a new annotation and choose between Speech Bubbles, Notes, Spotlight or Label. Select the “Link” checkbox, choose “Associated Website” from the drop-down and paste the URL. Publish and you’re done.

One more thing. While you can place annotations anywhere in the video player, it may be a good idea to avoid the lower third as the area is often used to display ads.

Friday, December 21, 2012

How To Send Web Pages To Your Mobile Device Remotely

Send live URLs to your mobile device and control them remotely without the need for the user to reload anything.

Framote is new tool that helps you share “live” URLs that can be controlled remot

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Super Amazing Tips and Tricks To Redesign Your Website.

 

1. Old Google Analytics reports helped me determine all the non-English languages that were most popular with visitors. I used that data to order the various languages in the translation drop-down above.

2. All clicks on social sharing tools (like delicious, StumbleUpon, etc) are again tracked via Google Analytics. This helps in keeping the layout less cluttered as we can remove services that are less frequently used.

3. A lot of people still prefer to print pages so there’s a separate print stylesheet that removes all the non-essential stuff from the pages while printing. The same format is available when saving pages as PDF which is another hugely popular option.

4. If you look at the subscription buttons in the top right corner of the page, the RSS readers are placed in the order of popularity using data from FeedBurner.

5. The mobile friendly version of the blog is implemented using Google Reader. The difference is that the Google Reader page is rendered inside a frame so you have an easy to remember web address.

6. There’s a dedicated search page powered by Google Custom Search – this makes it easy for people to search DI from the address bar of new browsers like Chrome (see #4).

7. There are detailed pages like About Me, FAQ, Tools & Widgets, Press, etc. These small things do help in converting a casual search visitor into a regular reader. And please don’t feel shy in writing about yourself because nobody else is going to do that for you.

8. Always add a detailed Advertising page to help potential advertisers get an idea about advertising rates and different ad slots available on your website and RSS feeds. I use Google Ad Manager for managing all the direct advertising campaigns.

9. Always create an HTML sitemap of your site that is different from the regular XML sitemap. The whole idea is that search engines should be able to discover all pages on your site within two levels.

10. Common files like CSS, JavaScript and images are now hosted on Amazon S3 – this helps reduce the number of incoming connections (and load) on the main web server thus improving overall performance.

11. I ran a heat map test using CrazyEgg for about a month to determine the right placement of certain section of this site.

12. The blogroll page received a huge response from readers and also helped me build relationships with certain bloggers whom I read regularly but never got an opportunity to interact before.

13. The actual content is served from www.labnol.org while the images are served from another sub-domain at img.labnol.org. Why? Since browsers create only a limited number of connections to one site, serving images from another location probably speeds up loading.

To know how this can be implemented, read  WordPress Tips & Tricks.

14. Divya Manian played a major role in the redesign of this website.

15. Whenever possible, I try adding text captions to images as that helps improve rankings in Image Search engines thus bringing indirect traffic.

16. I moved from Blogger to WordPress about an year ago but didn’t move the old Blogger articles in WordPress since that would break all the organic rankings. Looking at the current traffic on the old blog, I think that was not a bad decision – something you may wish to consider when planning to move to your own domain from blogspot.com or wordpress.com.

17. I take my Google Webmaster Central reports very seriously – Big G is responsible for ~90% of the search traffic.

18. I try to use short URLs (aka post slugs) for articles taking a hint from Matt Cutts.

19. AdSense ads are not displayed on articles for three days from the date of publishing. Thus people who follow the site regularly don’t see ads.

20. The new design uses section targeting and that has definitely helped in increasing the overall relevancy of AdSense ads.

That’s about it.  Anyone can now register at DI and going forward, we’ll have separate profile pages for all the members to promote their sites and feeds.

Should you have any questions related to the redesign, please put them in the comments.

Friday, December 14, 2012

How To Send a Free Fax To Anywhere in the World From Internet.



If you don’t have a fax machine at hand, or if the cost of sending an international fax seems prohibitive, this should interest you.
Send Fax for FreeSend an online fax for free to any fax machine in the world

HelloFax, the online fax company, has recently partnered with Microsoft and now lets you send up to 50 pages per month to any fax machine in the world for free. All your need is a web browser and a Microsoft account (your Hotmail or Windows Live ID should also work).

To get started, go to hellofax.com/skydrive and click the “Sign-up with Microsoft” link. Once your are signed in, just upload any document and put in a fax number (with country code) to send your first online fax. Once your fax has been successfully delivered, a copy of the outbound fax document will be automatically saved in your SkyDrive.

You can use HelloFax to send Word documents, PDFs, text files, images and several other popular formats. You can also pull in documents directly from your SkyDrive, Box, Dropbox, Evernote and Google Drive accounts for faxing.

Your free account will only help you send faxes to other numbers but in order to receive faxes, you’ll have to buy an incoming fax number that costs around $7.99 per month.

Update – If you don’t have a Microsoft account, go to hellofax.com/googledrive and use your Google Account to sign-up for HelloFax.  You will still get credit for sending up to  50 faxes per month for free for a maximum of 6 months.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Find the Person Who Sent You An Email

Find the Person Behind an Email Address


You get an email from a person with whom you have never interacted before and therefore, before you reply to that message, you would like to know something more about him or her. How do you do this without directly asking the other person?

Web search engines are obviously the most popular place for performing reverse email lookups but if the person you’re trying to research doesn’t have a website or has never interacted with his email address on public forums before, Google will probably be of little help.

No worries, here are few tips and online services that may still  help you uncover the identity of that unknown email sender.

#1. Find the sender’s location

Location of Email Sender

Open the header of the email message and look for lines that say “Received: from” followed by an IP address in square brackets. If there are multiple entries, use the IP address mentioned in the last entry.

Now paste the IP address in this trace route tool and you should get a fairly good idea about the location of the email sender.

#2. Reverse email search with Facebook

Facebook email search

Facebook has 450 million users worldwide and there’s a high probability that the sender may also have a profile on Facebook.

Unlike LinkedIn and most other social networks, Facebook lets you search users by email address so that should make your job simpler. Just paste the email address of the sender into the Facebook search box and you’ll immediately know if a matching profile exists in the network.

If you are able to locate that person on Facebook, download his profile picture and then upload it to Google Images (click the camera icon in the search box). This acts as a reverse image search engine so you can locate his other social profiles where he may have used the same picture.

#3. Check all the other Social Networks

You can use a service like Knowem to quickly determine if a profile with a particular username exists in any of the social networks.

If the email address of the send is something like green_peas@hotmail.com, there’s a probably that he or she may have created accounts of some other social network using the same alias “green_peas” – put that in knowem.com to confirm.

#4. People Search

Reverse Email Search

Finally, if nothing works, you should try a people search service like Pipl and Spokeo – both services let you perform reverse email lookups but Spokeo has a more comprehensive database than Pipl.

Other than regular web documents, Spoke also scans social networks and even the whois information of domain names to find any bit of information associated with an email address. However, some of the results returned by Spokeo are only available to subscribers.

How Can You Create Fake Screenshots

Don’t believe everything you see on the Internet because screenshots can be easily faked. Sometimes these fake images are for pure fun – like you putting your picture on the cover of TIME magazine, sometimes they may be deceptive.

facebook wall

My favorite is Wall Machine – a service that lets you you create fake screenshots of Facebook walls and other Facebook related activity – like X is now a friend of Y or Z changed their relation status on Facebook. Every part of that screenshot can be customized including the conversation text, the profile images and you can have as many comments on a Facebook post as you like.

Another service – iFakeText – lets you make screenshot images of text messages exchanged on an iPhone. Just enter the text of the SMS conversation in a proper format and generate the screenshot.

I also like Fake Tweet Builder for creating screenshot images of Twitter conversations that may or may not have happened. The screenshots of individual tweets look extremely real and you may also use customize the profile pictures, the name of the Twitter client and how many times a particular tweet has been retweeted.

Ticket-o-Matic lets you print boarding passes of any popular airline, Fodey generates newspaper clippings while Expense Steak creates PDF receipts of restaurant bills and office supplies for a given amount. When you print these receipts on paper, they’ll look real but there’s little potential for misuse as they carry old dates.

Finally, if a web form makes it mandatory to fill the street address or the phone number, use this website to generate random data for putting into that form.

101 Most Useful Websites In The World

The 101 Most Useful Websites of 2012


The 101 Most Useful Websites on the Internet is a frequently updated list of lesser-known but wonderful websites and cool web apps.


Most Useful WebsitesPresenting the 101 most useful websites of 2012. These sites, well most of them, solve at least one problem really well and they all have simple web addresses (URLs) that you can memorize thus saving you a trip to Google.

The Most Useful Websites and Web Apps



  1. screenr.com – record movies of your desktop and send them straight to YouTube.

  2. ctrlq.org/screenshots – for capturing screenshots of web pages on mobile and desktops.

  3. goo.gl – shorten long URLs and convert URLs into QR codes.

  4. unfurlr.come – find the original URL that’s hiding behind a short URL.

  5. qClock – find the local time of a city using a Google Map.

  6. copypastecharacter.com – copy special characters that aren’t on your keyboard.

  7. postpost.com – a better search engine for twitter.

  8. lovelycharts.com – create flowcharts, network diagrams, sitemaps, etc.

  9. iconfinder.com – the best place to find icons of all sizes.

  10. office.com – download templates, clipart and images for your Office documents.

  11. followupthen.com – the easiest way to setup email reminders.

  12. jotti.org – scan any suspicious file or email attachment for viruses.

  13. wolframalpha.com – gets answers directly without searching   –

  14. printwhatyoulike.com – print web pages without the clutter.

  15. joliprint.com – reformats news articles and blog content as a newspaper.

  16. ctrql.org/rss – a search engine for RSS feeds.

  17. e.ggtimer.com – a simple online timer for your daily needs.

  18. coralcdn.org – if a site is down due to heavy traffic, try accessing it through coral CDN.

  19. random.org – pick random numbers, flip coins, and more.

  20. pdfescape.com – lets you can quickly edit PDFs in the browser itself.

  21. viewer.zoho.com – Preview PDFs and Presentations directly in the browser.

  22. tubemogul.com – simultaneously upload videos to YouTube and other video sites.

  23. ctrlq.org/dictation – online voice recognition in the browser itself.

  24. scr.im – share you email address online without worrying about spam.

  25. spypig.com – now get read receipts for your email.

  26. sizeasy.com – visualize and compare the size of any product.

  27. myfonts.com/WhatTheFont – quickly determine the font name from an image.

  28. google.com/webfonts – a good collection of open source fonts.

  29. regex.info – find data hidden in your photographs – see more EXIF tools.

  30. livestream.com – broadcast events live over the web, including your desktop screen.

  31. iwantmyname.com – helps you search domains across all TLDs.

  32. homestyler.com – design from scratch or re-model your home in 3d.

  33. join.me – share you screen with anyone over the web.

  34. onlineocr.net – recognize text from scanned PDFs – see other OCR tools.

  35. flightstats.com – Track flight status at airports worldwide.

  36. wetransfer.com – for sharing really big files online.

  37. hundredzeros.com – the site lets you download free Kindle books.

  38. polishmywriting.com – check your writing for spelling or grammatical errors.

  39. marker.to – easily highlight the important parts of a web page for sharing.

  40. typewith.me – work on the same document with multiple people.

  41. whichdateworks.com – planning an event? find a date that works for all.

  42. everytimezone.com – a less confusing view of the world time zones.

  43. gtmetrix.com – the perfect tool for measuring your site performance online.

  44. noteflight.com – print music sheets, write your own music online (review).

  45. imo.im – chat with your buddies on Skype, Facebook, Google Talk, etc. from one place.

  46. translate.google.com – translate web pages, PDFs and Office documents.

  47. kleki.com – create paintings and sketches with a wide variety of brushes.

  48. similarsites.com – discover new sites that are similar to what you like already.

  49. wordle.net – quick summarize long pieces of text with tag clouds.

  50. bubbl.us – create mind-maps, brainstorm ideas in the browser.

  51. kuler.adobe.com – get color ideas, also extract colors from photographs.

  52. liveshare.com – share your photos in an album instantly.

  53. lmgtfy.com – when your friends are too lazy to use Google on their own.

  54. midomi.com – when you need to find the name of a song.

  55. bing.com/images – automatically find perfectly-sized wallpapers for mobiles.

  56. faxzero.com – send an online fax for free – see more fax services.

  57. feedmyinbox.com – get RSS feeds as an email newsletter.

  58. ge.tt – quickly send a file to someone, they can even preview it before downloading.

  59. pipebytes.com – transfer files of any size without uploading to a third-party server.

  60. tinychat.com – setup a private chat room in micro-seconds.

  61. privnote.com – create text notes that will self-destruct after being read.

  62. boxoh.com – track the status of any shipment on Google Maps – alternative.

  63. chipin.com – when you need to raise funds online for an event or a cause.

  64. downforeveryoneorjustme.com – find if your favorite website is offline or not?

  65. ewhois.com – find the other websites of a person with reverse Analytics lookup.

  66. whoishostingthis.com – find the web host of any website.

  67. google.com/history – found something on Google but can’t remember it now?

  68. aviary.com/myna – an online audio editor that lets record, and remix audio clips online.

  69. disposablewebpage.com – create a temporary web page that self-destruct.

  70. urbandictionary.com – find definitions of slangs and informal words.

  71. seatguru.com – consult this site before choosing a seat for your next flight.

  72. sxc.hu – download stock images absolutely free.

  73. zoom.it – view very high-resolution images in your browser without scrolling.

  74. scribblemaps.com – create custom Google Maps easily.

  75. alertful.com – quickly setup email reminders for important events.

  76. picmonkey.com – Picnik is offline but PicMonkey is an even better image editor.

  77. formspring.me – you can ask or answer personal questions here.

  78. sumopaint.com – an excellent layer-based online image editor.

  79. snopes.com – find if that email offer you received is real or just another scam.

  80. typingweb.com – master touch-typing with these practice sessions.

  81. mailvu.com – send video emails to anyone using your web cam.

  82. timerime.com – create timelines with audio, video and images.

  83. stupeflix.com – make a movie out of your images, audio and video clips.

  84. safeweb.norton.com – check the trust level of any website.

  85. teuxdeux.com – a beautiful to-do app that looks like your paper dairy.

  86. deadurl.com – you’ll need this when your bookmarked web pages are deleted.

  87. minutes.io – quickly capture effective notes during meetings.

  88. youtube.com/leanback – Watch YouTube channels in TV mode.

  89. youtube.com/disco – quickly create a video playlist of your favorite artist.

  90. talltweets.com – Send tweets longer than 140 characters.

  91. pancake.io – create a free and simple website using your Dropbox account.

  92. builtwith.com – find the technology stack of any website.

  93. woorank.com – research a website from the SEO perspective.

  94. mixlr.com – broadcast live audio over the web.

  95. radbox.me – bookmark online videos and watch them later

  96. tagmydoc.com – add QR codes to your documents and presentations

  97. notes.io – the easiest way to write short text notes in the browser.

  98. ctrlq.org/html-mail – send rich-text mails to anyone, anonymously.

  99. fiverr.com – hire people to do little things for $5.

  100. otixo.com – easily manage your online files on Dropbox, Google Docs, etc.

  101. ifttt.com – create a connection between all your online accounts.


 

If you enjoyed the above list, also check out the expanded version The Most Useful Websites which now offers a collection of 150+ undiscovered and incredibly useful websites to enhance your productivity.

Changelog and Updates


The following websites were part of the original list but they are either no longer available or have been replaced with better alternatives.

01. virustotal.com – scan any suspicious file or email attachment for viruses.
02. isnsfw.com – when you wish to share a NSFW page but with a warning.
03. truveo.com – the best place for searching web videos.
04. tabbloid.com – your favorite blogs delivered as PDFs.
05. warrick.cs.odu.edu – you’ll need this when your bookmarked web pages are deleted.
06. tempalias.com – generate temporary email aliases, better than disposable email.
07. whisperbot.com – send an email without using your own account.
08. errorlevelanalysis.com – find whether a photo is real or a Photoshopped one.
09. google.com/dictionary – get word meanings, pronunciations and usage examples.
10. wobzip.org – unzip your compressed files online.
11. namemytune.com – when you need to find the name of a song.
12. snapask.com – use email on your phone to find sports scores, read Wikipedia, etc.
13. pastebin.com – the site has been blocked in India.
14. encrypted.google.com – Google now redirects all logged-in users to the https version of google.com by default so this is no longer necessary.
15. bounceapp.com – replace this with a version that works on mobile.
16. dabbleboard.com – a online virtual whiteboard that will shut down in August 2012.

Super Power Tools Of Your Windows Computer That You Don,t Know About.

Little Known Gems for your Windows Computer


This is a list of little-known but essential software utilities for Windows that are free, light-weight and add new and useful features to your computer.

Windows Software Utilities

Here are some of the most useful software utilities that you wish were part of standard Windows. These tools are free, light-weight and can be installed on all versions of Windows including the newer Window 8.

  1. Eraser – When you delete a file in Windows, the contents of the file can still be recovered using other utilities. Eraser lets you permanently delete a file making recovery nearly impossible.

  2. Unlocker – If you are trying to delete a file (or folder) but unable to do so because the “file is in use” by another program, just use Unlocker to end all the locking processes.

  3. ShellExView – As you install new programs, the contextual menu gets cluttered and confusing. With ShellExView, you can clean up the right-click menu and remove all the useless entries.

  4. Everything – Windows includes powerful desktop search capabilities but Everything goes one step further. It looks for files and folders irrespective of their location  (including temporary files and system folders) and you can also use regular expressions in your search queries.

  5. Always on Top – This tiny utility lets you easily keep any window on top of all other windows on your desktop. For instance, you can answer your emails, work on an Excel sheet while a YouTube video plays in the foreground.

  6. SyncToy – One of the most useful software utilities from Microsoft that lets you keep different folders in sync with each other. You can configure it with Windows Task Manager to run file synchronization jobs automatically at custom intervals.

  7. WinDirStat – Running out of space on Windows? WinDirStat helps you reclaim disk space by creating a visual treemap of your entire hard disk where the area of the colored rectangles is proportional to the size of the underlying folders.

  8. Double Killer – This is the only tool you need to get rid of all duplicate files on your computer including images and music files. It compares the file hash to identify duplicate files.

  9. TCPView – It will list all the software programs (or processes) on your computer that are accessing the Internet including the IP addresses that they are connecting to. Ignore all the columns except Process, Remote Address and State.

  10. Droplr – This is the easiest way to upload your desktop files onto the web. Droplr adds a new option to your Windows “Send to” menu and also places a drop zone on the desktop. Any files that you place in the drop zone are instantly upload and the public link is copied to the clipboard automatically.

  11. TinyGrab – Press a hotkey to grab a quick screenshot of anything that’s on your desktop screen and TinyGrab will put it online in a snap. The screen captures will stay online forever until you remove them.

  12. Mouse Borders – Another useful utility from Microsoft that lets you control multiple computers from the same keyboard and mouse. A better alternative to Synergy.

  13. KatMouse - You can scroll not-in-focus windows with the mouse wheel without selecting the window. Originally written for Windows 2000 but works in Windows 8 as well.

  14. Mouse Jiggler – You computer screen may enter the “sleep” mode if the mouse or the keyboard is not used for a certain period of time. Mouse Jiggler keeps your computer awake by “faking” mouse input thus letting you watch that entire movie from a distance.

  15. AltDrag - It lets you move and resize windows without reaching the borders of a window. Simply hold down the Alt key and then left-click to  drag the window or use right-click to resize the window.

  16. ClipX – When you copy anything to your Windows Clipboard, all the previous content is overridden. ClipX preserves the clipboard history and lets you access your previously copied items from the system tray.

  17. RBTray – Sometimes you want to hide windows instead of minimizing them to the Windows task bar. RBTray lets you minimize any window to the system tray by right clicking its minimize button.

  18. MiniBin - This puts the Recycle Bin right into your system tray so you don’t have to minimize all your desktop windows to access the Bin icon. You can also also empty the bin from the system tray.

  19. GearMage – Running out of space in your web inbox. Use the Gearmage utility to find and download email attachments that meet your search criteria to the local drive.

  20. MailStore – If you want offline access to your emails, use MailStore as it helps you download all your emails  on the computer or even a USB drive.

  21. MediaInfo - If an audio or video file refuses to play on your computer, chances are that the required codecs are missing on your system. MediaInfo will let you know what codecs are required to play the media file.

  22. DropIt – It is like an advanced file sorting utility that will help you automatically copy or move files into relevant folders based on their extensions, date and other criteria. In the case of music files, you may even sort them by artists or album names.

  23. Teracopy – It takes forever to copy or move files from one folder to another and if the operation is interrupted, you have to start from scratch. Teracopy improves the file copying speed and offers a detailed report in case of any errors.

  24. Soluto – It helps improve the boot-up time of your Windows PC by removing unnecessary programs from the start-up routine and also delaying the launch of certain programs.

  25. Sizer – It let you resize program windows to any fixed, predefined size. Quite handy when you are capturing screenshots for documentation and also for screencasting.

  26. Background Switcher – It pull pictures from your Facebook, Instagram, RSS Feeds, Picasa, Google Images and uses them as rotating wallpaper backgrounds for your desktop.

  27. f.lux – It adjusts the color temperature of your display based on your local time (warm at night and bright during the day). It does this by calculating the sunrise and sunset times of your location.

  28. ZoomIt - It turns your desktop into a virtual whiteboard allowing your to draw /annotate anywhere on the screen using colored pens. An essential tool for presenters.

  29. LockBox – Put all your confidential files into a folder and then use the LockBox utility to completely hide that folder inside Windows Explorer.

  30. Safehouse Explorer – It is easy to misplace USB drives. Safehouse lets you quickly encrypt and password-protect data inside USB drives so others won’t be able to view your files and folders.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

How To Save Web Pages to your Google Drive

You can save web pages, images, PDFs, and other web content to your Google Drive with a simple click.


The Google Docs team has released a new Chrome add-on that will help you save full web pages to your Google Drive with a click.

You can choose to save web pages as HTML files, as Google Documents or as .mht files where the entire page (including the CSS and JavaScript) is packed into a single web archive file that can later be viewed inside Internet Explorer (and also Firefox).

save-to-google-drive

Send any Web File to Google Drive


This isn’t just limited to saving web page but works with other types of web content too.

For instance, you can right-click any image on a web page and save it to your online Google Drive account. The add-on can be configured to save a static screenshot image (PNG) of the current web page. It can also be used for saving audio, video, PDFs and even Office files from the Internet to Google Drive though it would fail if the size of the file exceeds 25 MB.

All files are saved in the root folder of Google Drive and there isn’t a way to change the default save location. Also, the add-on will initially save the web pages /images to your local computer and then uploads them to your Google Drive. They aren’t transferring stuff directly in the cloud.

You don’t however need the Google Drive app on your computer for this to work.

Online Stores Offering Big Discounts Today (12.12.12)

All the popular shopping websites in India – from Flipkart to Infibeam to IndiaTimes – will offer discounts and deals during the next 24 hours.


Shopping Websites in India

The concept of Black Friday or Cyber Monday is virtually unknown here in India but Google is trying something similar with the launch of GOSF, or the Great Online Shopping Festival, that will begin in the next hour (12/12/12).

Google India has partnered with most of the popular online shopping websites in India – from Flipkart to MakeMyTrip to FirstCry – and all these stores will offer discounts, cash-backs and other deals during the 24-hour period.

The list of partnering sites is long but here’s a quick glimpse of what some of them plan to offer.

  • IndiaTimes Shopping is offering a 12% discount on every item listed on their website if you use the coupon code GOSF12.

  • At Flipkart, you get flat 25% off on all clothing brands.

  • Shop for Rs 1999 or more and get 10% off across all products on Infibeam with the promo code ILOVEDISCOUNTS.

  • BabyOye.com and FirstCry.com are offering a flat 15% discount on all products with coupon codes BOFLAT15 and FC121212 respectively.

  • GoIbibo.com offers Rs 600 off on all domestic flight bookings with the coupon code GF600 while ClearTrip offers Rs 1212 cashback with the coupon code CLEAR1212.

  • Myntra.com offers flat 20% discount on their entire catalog with the coupon code GOSF.

  • eBay India offers up to 24% discount on Nokia Lumia and Samsung Galaxy series of mobile phones including the Note II tablet.

  • Zovi will offer 25% off on all footwear products with the coupon code C121212.


All the deals will be valid only on 12/12/12.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

How to Download All Your Data From Facebook

Facebook has added a new download button in your account that will help you move all your data out of Facebook as a zip file. It will have all your photos, videos, status messages, events and everything else that you may have ever uploaded to Facebook.

The process, as demonstrated in the following video, is extremely simple. Just go to your Account Settings page and click the “Download Your Information” link.

How to download the “missing pieces”


If you have been staying away from Facebook all this while because it was a one-way street, now is a good time to reconsider that decision because the data lock-in problem has been solved.

There are however some things that you won’t find in the zip file. These include:

1. Your photos uploaded by other people

Facebook lets you download stuff that you have uploaded but if there are pictures of you on Facebook that were uploaded by your friends, they won’t be available in the zip.

In that case, you should use Fotobounce, an excellent app that can download all the photos where you were tagged with a click. Fotobounce is available on both Mac and Windows.

2. Facebook Phonebook

Facebook provides a neatly formatted phonebook with contact numbers all your friends who have shared them on Facebook. You will miss this data in the exported zip but there’s a workaround. Later, you can import this file into Excel or Google Docs, strip the unnecessary text and you again have a nice list of names alongwith phone numbers.

Update: Sorry but Facebook seems to have removed the phone book page recently.

3. Email Addresses of Friends

This I think is another important piece that you’ll miss in the exported data – email addresses of your existing Facebook contacts. If you move to another social site, how do you invite your existing network to the new place when you don’t have their email addresses.

Facebook doesn’t offer a way for you to export contacts but you can use this trick to get all the email addresses out of Facebook without breaking any rules. Connect your Facebook account with your Yahoo! Address Book and you’ll get the data you are looking for.

How To Protect Your Files And Folders using Password

Do you have files and folders on your computer that you absolutely don’t want anyone else to see? Or do you even carry important documents on those easy-to-misplace USB drives?

If the answer is yes, you should download a copy of SafeHouse Explorer – it’s a free and easy-to-use file encryption utility that will hide all your private files from prying eyes in few easy steps. You may use the tool to password protect files that are residing on your computer’s internal hard disk or even on external USB drives.

Tutorial: Encrypt and Password Protect your Files and Folders


SafeHouse Explorer, in simple English, works something like this. It creates a hidden storage area on your disk to hold all the files that you want to protect. These files and folders are hidden from normal view and will only become visible when you enter the correct password.

Here’s a more detailed tutorial on how you can protect your files with SafeHouse Explorer.

Step 1: Download and install the SafeHouse Explorer program to your hard-drive

The software works with XP, Vista and Windows 7 (both 32 and 64-bit editions). It is also portable so you may run it directly without installation.

Step 2: Once the installation is complete, click the “New Volume” button to create your hidden storage that will house your various files and folders.

You may either create one large volume to store all the “private” files or you can create multiple smaller-size volumes each corresponding to the type of files that they’ll store. For instance, you may have one volume for storing confidential documents and spreadsheets while another one could be for hiding those “personal” pictures and so on.



For step 2b, choose a volume size based on the size of the folders that you’ll be storing inside that volume. The “Pre-initialize Volume with Random Data” basically means that your virtual drive will be filled with random data if there aren’t enough files to fill complete that volume. Use the default “on” setting.

Step 3. Now that your volume is created, open Windows Explorer (Win+E) and you’ll see a new “virtual drive” under My Computer. Just drag and drop any of your folders and files into this virtual drive and they’ll instantly get protected using encryption.

Once you have added all the files to the “protected” volume, make sure you delete them from the original location as the original copy is unencrypted and therefore anyone can open it without requiring a password.

Step 4. Switch to SafeHouse Explorer and choose File – > Close Volume to lock up the files. Congratulations. You have successfully created your first encrypted and password-protected folder on your computer that you can only access after typing the correct password.

access protected files

To access your protected files, simply navigate to the folder that houses your SafeHouse volumes and double-click the corresponding volume file to open it. Type the password and you should see all the files and folders under a virtual drive in Windows Explorer again.

Encryption is obviously a complex subject for most of us but what you’ll really like about SafeHouse Explorer is that it hides all the technical details from the end user.

Encrypt your USB Flash Drive and Email Attachments


The tool will also be extremely handy for people who carry around important and confidential files on USB drives and external hard disks.

Instead of copying files and folders to your external disk directly, first encrypt these files on the hard-drive (as explained above) and then copy the encrypted volume (the .sksk file) to your external disk. Now even if the drive gets misplaced, the finder won’t be able to read any of your files and, since the software uses 256-bit encryption, it will be nearly impossible for anyone to crack your password.

Similarly, you can add an extra layer of protection to your sensitive email attachments with SafeHouse. Encrypt the files, send them as email attachments and communicate the password to the recipient over another medium (like phone).

Saturday, December 8, 2012

How to Save Money on Stock Photos



If you need some high quality images around a particular theme for your design project, be it web or print, there are dozens of stock photography sites out there that may just have what your looking for.
Stock PhotosResearch stock photos on Google Images before hitting the buy button!


Tips for Buying Stock Photos


That said, stock images can be a little expensive so you may want to do a little research before shelling out your hard-earned money on these images. Here are some tips:

Tip 1: Before finalizing any stock photo for your design project, always ensure that the  image is not overused. You can easily determine this with the help of Google Images.

First download the thumbnail image from the stock photography website and upload it to images.google.com. Hit the Search button and then click “More Sizes.” If you get too many results (as in the screenshot above), the selected graphic is too popular on the web and you may want to pick a different photograph.

Tip 2: Some stock photographers may choose to sell their images on multiple websites but the pricing will often vary across  these different sites. There aren’t any “functional” price comparison sites for stock photographs but you can use Google again to discover stock websites that offer the best deal on a particular photograph.

First copy the extract description of the image from the stock photography website and paste it into Google – put it in quotes for an exact match. Also, add the word “stock” to your search query to limit your search results to stock photography websites. Now select the “Sites with images” option under “More Search Tools” (see next screenshot) to quickly know if the underlying stock website offers the same image or not.

Now you can visit each of these matching sites to see if any of them offer better deals.
Google Sites with ImagesFind if an image is available on other stock photography websites?


Friday, December 7, 2012

How to Sign-up for Google Apps for Free

Google Apps is no longer free. If you wish to have a branded email address that reads like myname@mydomain.com instead of myname@gmail.com, you will have to subscribe to the Business edition of Google Apps and that will cost you at least $50 per year.

You have options though. You can either configure your web domain with Outlook.com (for personalized email addresses) or, if you prefer the Gmail interface over Outlook, you can use the Mail Fetcher option inside Gmail to manage your Outlook emails from within Gmail.
Google Apps Free You can still sign-up for Google Apps for Free using the App Engine route.

How to Get the Free Edition of Google Apps


Alternatively, here’s a quick and simple workaround that will still let you sign-up for the free edition of Google Apps even though Google has officially retired the free edition – all you need is a free Gmail or Google account.

  1. Go to appengine.google.com, sign-in with your Google Account and create a new Application. You may fill in any dummy date and click the “Create Application” button.

  2. Open the “Dashboard” and on the next screen, click the link that says “Application Settings.”

  3. Scroll down a little and choose “Add Domain” to associate a domain with your App Engine application.

  4. That’s it. Now you should see a special link* to sign-up for the free edition of Google Apps. You may either use your existing domain or buy one through Google Apps.


[*] You have to access this link through App Engine as Google Apps checks the HTTP Referrer information before serving up the sign-up page for the free edition of Google Apps.

Also, the Google App Engine website says that you only get a single-user Google Apps account when you sign-up through App Engine but in my testing, I could create additional users as well inside Google Apps.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

The 25 Super Best Wordpress Plugins Ever

The year is coming to a close, and if 2012 has taught us anything, it’s that WordPress is still the most widely used free, open source content management system (CMS) out there.

While the extensive adoption of the platform obviously benefits users, as it means there are going to be more developers creating plugins and designing themes that WordPress users can employ to spruce up their blogs or websites (in both appearance and functionality), it also presents a bit of a nagging problem. The issue is that there are so many options to select from, which makes it very difficult to differentiate the good from the bad.

Luckily for you, Website Magazine editors recently compiled a list of the 25 best WordPress plugins for websites of all shapes and sizes, just in time for the new year. However, if there's a plugin we may have missed, or you disagree with a selection, feel free to leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Jetpack
If you want to get your hands on one of the best WordPress plugins around, why wouldn’t you want one developed by the creators of the platform? Well, Jetpack is just that, a plugin that is meant to expand the capabilities of your site by harnessing the cloud power of WordPress.com. There are a number of great features you can utilize, including displaying site analytics, creating photo galleries and even spell checking your copy, among many others.

Disqus
Don’t let the punny title fool you, Disqus is one of the best comment systems available. The tool allows users to add comment functionality to their site/pages, giving visitors an opportunity to engage with the content (and the brand). Those interested in building a community of users on their sites should get Disqus ASAP.

Social Toolbar
Social media has become a necessity for most Web professionals, so it’s more likely than not that you’re on at least one (and probably more) social networks. Why not show off your social prowess with Social Toolbar, a plugin that places a toolbar at the bottom of your blog/site to display links to all of your social network profiles. But that’s not all it does; additional features including sharing buttons, a full display of your latest tweets and more.

WP Google Fonts
A big part of having a sleek design for your blog or website means utilizing cool, appropriate fonts that really invoke the spirit of your brand. Unfortunately, most generic font packs are limited in what they offer. That’s why you should download WP Google Fonts, which allows users to easily incorporate a slew of new fonts from the Google Font Directory into your WordPress theme.

WPtouch
Mobile is hot, and any successful Web strategy must include a mobile-optimized site. For WordPress users, the fastest and simplest way to accomplish this is by using the WPtouch plugin, which will serve up mobile visitors a different theme. This comes complete with a new device-optimized and user-friendly version of your content.

Gravity Forms
One of the most important aspects of working on the Web is gathering consumer data to use in the future, and the best way to go about doing that is by using forms. The Gravity Forms plugin is able to create any kind of form you may need in a flash, regardless of its complexity. This can include email signup forms or extensive applications.

WordPress SEO
Look, even with all of this social media hullabaloo, SEO is still one of the most important practices that a site owner can conduct to increase his or her audience and generate more revenue. WordPress SEO from Yoast is one of the better plugins for search engine optimization, featuring XML sitemaps, customizable title and meta description options, RSS optimization and social media optimization – and that’s just for starters!

W3 Total Cache
Want to make your WordPress site run up to 10 times faster? Check out W3 Total Cache, a powerful plugin that caches every single element of your site, so readers can read your post in no time. Use this plugin to reduce download times and provide transparent CDN integration.

NextGEN Gallery
Everyone loves images, and the more you can (appropriately) add to your site or blog, the more likely you are to drive traffic and interest users. So why not add this fully integrated image gallery plugin? It is absolutely chock-full of features, which offer a lot of flexibility in creating gallery content, such as the ability to add watermarks to images, create slideshows, use different display themes and organize pictures into albums, among many others.

Digg Digg
As aforementioned, social media plays a big role in Web success these days, and accruing Likes or +1s (or other social seals of approval) on your content is a great way to get it (and your brand) noticed. Use the Digg Digg plugin to integrate the most popular social buttons into your WordPress site, which can be configured to display in various locations.

All in One SEO Pack
The All in One SEO Pack is the most comprehensive search engine optimization plugin available for WordPress users and remains one of the platforms most downloaded plugins ever for a good reason. It’s especially useful for new users or those who aren’t terribly familiar with coding. In includes Google Analytics support, as well as other features like custom post types, canonical URLs, automatically generated meta tags and much more.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator for WordPress
Create a fully customizable sitemap for your WordPress website with this plugin from Dagon Design, which gives users multilevel categories, pages and permalinks support. You’ll be able to choose which links you want to display, the order their shown in, comment counts and post dates to make your site more searchable for, uh, search engines.

WP e-Commerce
This is one of the most popular and easy-to-use e-commerce platforms available for WordPress sites. WP e-Commerce offers a 100 percent customizable experience with easily modified templates, in addition to community support, integration with multiple payment gateways (including PayPal, Authorize.net and Google Checkout), various marketing and SEO features, checkout capabilities with SSL security and the ability to manage orders and shipping from within the plugin. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. To say this plugin is “feature rich” is a massive understatement.

Sociable
Make your content more social with Sociable, which will automatically add links to your favorite social bookmarking sites on your posts, pages and RSS feeds.

Google Analytics for WordPress
Google Analytics is the widely adopted, fully featured analytics platform from one of the Web’s leading companies, so it makes sense that it would eventually be turned into a plugin for WordPress users. With this plugin, you can easily track your WordPress site or blog and use a lot of fancy custom variables to track the metadata on your pages, such as author, single or multiple categories, post type, publication year, tags and more.

FeedBurner FeedSmith
Have a bunch of different RSS subscribers that you don’t know how to manage? Never fear! Just use FeedBurner FeedSmith to detect all of the possible methods through which users can access your original WordPress RSS feeds, and then redirect them back to your FeedBurner FeedSmith feed to track every single subscriber.

Akismet
If building a community is an important part of your Web strategy, you no doubt allow your visitors to comment on and discuss your content. Unfortunately, as your traffic increases, so will the amount of comment and trackback spam you receive. Luckily, this popular plugin from Automattic checks comments and trackbacks against the Akismet Web service, and if they’re found to be spam, they’ll automatically be moved into your WordPress installation’s spam folder. You’ll never have to get your hands dirty.

Google XML Sitemaps
Google just does it all, doesn’t it? With this plugin, you can generate an XML sitemap that will help search engines – and not just Google, but Bing, Yahoo and others – better index your WordPress website, which means crawlers can see all of your site and retrieve data from it much more quickly and efficiently.

WP-DBManager
You’re probably well aware of the delicate nature of working with digital content, likely because some mishap or other in the past has led you to lose a substantial amount of work before you were able to back it up. Don’t let that happen with your website or blog; instead, download the WP-DPManager plugin that allows you to optimize, repair, backup and restore your database. You can also delete backed up content, drop/empty tables and run selected queries. WP-DPManager even supports automated backups, optimization and repairs.

Contact Form 7
This simple, yet flexible contact form plugin allows users to manage multiple contact forms. Also, they can customize their forms and mail content by using some simple markup. Contact Form 7 also supports various security enhancements, including Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA and Akismet spam filtering.

Editorial Calendar
Managing a blog can be a hassle, but never again with the Editorial Calendar plugin that lets users see all of their scheduled posts and when they’ll be posted and offers drag-and-drop functionality to change post dates, draft management, quick edits of post titles,  content and times and the ability to manage posts from multiple authors.

All in One Favicon
Website owners and bloggers can easily add a favicon (the small icons next to the URL in the address bar, the page name in a browser tab and/or the page’s name in a bookmark list) to their websites and WordPress admin pages. The All in One Favicon plugin offers complete upload functionality and supports all three favicon types, ico, .png and .gif, which can even be animated.

WooCommerce
WooCommerce is one of the best e-commerce platforms for WordPress users, allowing users to turn their websites into fully functional, highly customizable online stores that deliver enterprise-level quality and feature. This includes a PayPal standard gateway, Mijireh checkout, free and flat rate shipping functionality, Google Analytics and international and local shipping and local pickup, among many others.

ShareThis
This social media plugin enables WordPress users to seamlessly allow visitors to share the site or blog’s content on up to 120 different social channels, including email, Facebok, Twitter, Google+ and more. With ShareThis, users can do more to engage their audiences and increase traffic. Plus, the plugin features customization functionality that means it can be seamlessly integrated into a user’s site.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin
YARPP may be just "another related posts plugin," but its also the best. It provides a site or blog’s visitors with a list of posts and/or pages that are related to the entry they’re currently reading. Site owners can use this plugin to introduce their readers to other interesting, relevant content on their site.

Simplest Way To Create a Multilingual Website.

Are you interested in having a multilingual website? This is a tutorial that shows you how you can do that in PHP.


php-multi-language-site

php-multi-language-site


The first thing we need to do is to create a couple of files that will contain the text for each of the languages that will be supported by the website. For demo purpose I have chosen English, Spanish and German. Make a directory named “directory”. In this directory create 3 files: lang.de.php, lang.en.php, and lang.es.php. In our main file (index.php) we will include a file (common.php) containing a piece of code that gets the requested language. Here’s the content of those 3 language files:

lang.en.php


01.<?php

02./*

03.------------------

04.Language: English

05.------------------

06.*/

07.

08.$lang = array();

09.

10.$lang['PAGE_TITLE'] = 'My website page title';

11.$lang['HEADER_TITLE'] = 'My website header title';

12.$lang['SITE_NAME'] = 'My Website';

13.$lang['SLOGAN'] = 'My slogan here';

14.$lang['HEADING'] = 'Heading';

15.

16.// Menu

17.

18.$lang['MENU_HOME'] = 'Home';

19.$lang['MENU_ABOUT_US'] = 'About Us';

20.$lang['MENU_OUR_PRODUCTS'] = 'Our products';

21.$lang['MENU_CONTACT_US'] = 'Contact Us';

22.$lang['MENU_ADVERTISE'] = 'Advertise';

23.$lang['MENU_SITE_MAP'] = 'Site Map';

24.?>



lang.es.php


01.<?php

02./*

03.-----------------

04.Language: Spanish

05.-----------------

06.*/

07.

08.$lang = array();

09.

10.$lang['PAGE_TITLE'] = 'Título de la página de mi sitio web';

11.$lang['HEADER_TITLE'] = 'Mi sitio web de la cabecera título';

12.$lang['SITE_NAME'] = 'Mi Sitio Web';

13.$lang['SLOGAN'] = 'Mi lema aquí';

14.$lang['HEADING'] = 'Título';

15.

16.// Menu

17.

18.$lang['MENU_HOME'] = 'Inicio';

19.$lang['MENU_ABOUT_US'] = 'Sobre Nosotros';

20.$lang['MENU_OUR_PRODUCTS'] = 'Nuestros productos';

21.$lang['MENU_CONTACT_US'] = 'Contáctenos';

22.$lang['MENU_ADVERTISE'] = 'Publicidad';

23.$lang['MENU_SITE_MAP'] = 'Mapa del Sitio';

24.?>



lang.de.php


01.<?php

02./*

03.-----------------

04.Language: German

05.-----------------

06.*/

07.

08.$lang = array();

09.

10.$lang['PAGE_TITLE'] = 'Meine Webseite Titel';

11.$lang['HEADER_TITLE'] = 'Meine Website-Header Titel';

12.$lang['SITE_NAME'] = 'Meine Website';

13.$lang['SLOGAN'] = 'Mein Slogan hier';

14.$lang['HEADING'] = 'Position';

15.

16.// Menu

17.

18.$lang['MENU_HOME'] = 'Heim';

19.$lang['MENU_ABOUT_US'] = 'Ãœber uns';

20.$lang['MENU_OUR_PRODUCTS'] = 'Unsere Produkte';

21.$lang['MENU_CONTACT_US'] = 'Kontaktieren Sie uns';

22.$lang['MENU_ADVERTISE'] = 'Werben';

23.$lang['MENU_SITE_MAP'] = 'Site Karte';

24.?>



As you can notice, some constants are created using the define() function. In every file the defined constants have the same name, bu the values is different. We will output the values of the constants inside the index.php file. Therefore we will see different text every time we will call other language file.

Determine the right language


Let’s analyze the common.php file:


01.<?php

02.session_start();

03.header('Cache-control: private'); // IE 6 FIX

04.

05.if(isSet($_GET['lang']))

06.{

07.$lang = $_GET['lang'];

08.

09.// register the session and set the cookie

10.$_SESSION['lang'] = $lang;

11.

12.setcookie('lang', $lang, time() + (3600 * 24 * 30));

13.}

14.else if(isSet($_SESSION['lang']))

15.{

16.$lang = $_SESSION['lang'];

17.}

18.else if(isSet($_COOKIE['lang']))

19.{

20.$lang = $_COOKIE['lang'];

21.}

22.else

23.{

24.$lang = 'en';

25.}

26.

27.switch ($lang) {

28.case 'en':

29.$lang_file = 'lang.en.php';

30.break;

31.

32.case 'de':

33.$lang_file = 'lang.de.php';

34.break;

35.

36.case 'es':

37.$lang_file = 'lang.es.php';

38.break;

39.

40.default:

41.$lang_file = 'lang.en.php';

42.

43.}

44.

45.include_once 'languages/'.$lang_file;

46.?>



After we determine the value of $lang, we use switch() to compare its value with some different values, and execute a different piece of code depending on which value it equals to. After the value of the $lang_file is determined, the script will include the necessary language file. As you can see I have used sessions to register the value of $lang. This way users can navigate through the whole site and see the content in the chosen language (lang=[language here] does not need to be passed in every URL). Additionally, I have used cookies to store the selected language in users computer for 30 days. When the visitor will come back he will see the site in the language that he previously selected.

How if the website’s language requested?


In this demo I have chosen to use some image flags, each image having a link to index.php?lang=[LANG HERE]. So, to see the site in german we will use the German image flag which links to index.php?lang=de.

Lastly, the constants values should be outputted in the page. Examples:

for document title


1.<title><?php echo $lang['PAGE_TITLE']; ?></title>



for header menu


1.<ul>

2.<li><a href="/"><?php echo $lang['MENU_HOME']; ?></a></li>

3.<li><a href="about_us"><?php echo $lang['MENU_ABOUT_US']; ?></a></li>

4.<li><a href="our_products"><?php echo $lang['MENU_OUR_PRODUCTS']; ?></a></li>

5.<li><a href="contact_us"><?php echo $lang['MENU_CONTACT_US']; ?></a></li>

6.<li><a href="advertise"><?php echo $lang['MENU_ADVERTISE']; ?></a></li>

7.<li><a href="sitemap"><?php echo $lang['MENU_SITE_MAP']; ?></a></li>

8.</ul>







Wednesday, December 5, 2012

How To Create Multi-Language websites in PHP











Would you like to provide multi-language support on your site? In this article, we discuss three different ways in which you could organize your site to support multiple languages. We do not say that the three ways discussed in this article are the only ways of achieving the goal but this could be a good starting point.The three methods discussed in this article are:1. Dynamic Content Generation
2. Site Replication, and
3. Selective Replication

Let us now discuss these three methods, and also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each.

METHOD 1
Dynamic Content Generation
Although this method is a very complicated way of organizing your site to support different languages, it could be an option if you have only two languages, or even three to support on a fast server. It is also a good idea to use this option only if your site is not huge.


In this method all the text of the site is stored in a database. Every page carries a variable (a session variable or a query string) to identify which language the site is to be displayed in. Based on that, the content is pulled out from the respective tables for the language chosen, and displayed.


You might now be wondering, what about Graphics? You have two choices. If the amount of graphics that your site uses is very minimal, you could consider storing them in the database itself as blob fields. Another way is to simply open up a new table with the following structure:









NameEnglishGermanFrench

Stored in this manner, you could give each image a name, and store only the relative paths to the different images in the database. When pulling it onto the client page, get the path and pull it out from the file system.

The messages can be stored in the database in a similar format, except instead of "Name" use a unique ID for each message. This message can then be called in the necessary pages of the site. You could also declare an array which you include in all pages, that contains all the messages. Please take care to keep the message numbers constant once assigned because if the messages re-shuffle, it could be a tedious task to re-do all the messages on the site.

This method has many disadvantages. A few significant ones are:

  • There could be a performance degradation of the site if the amount of content of the site is huge.

  • Editing the site would require you to either directly edit the content in the tables, or alternatively provide an admin panel to edit the content of each page on the site!

  • The load on the database is too high which could lead to lower performance



As you can see, this method is good for small websites that have less content and graphics. Providing for a complete administration panel for the content is a big thing in itself, and the reliability can never be guaranteed.

METHOD 2

Site Replication


This is one of the most commonly used methods on the web. In this approach the main site, which is in the default language of the website, resides in the root folder of the site. This basically is how a website is when it's a single-language site. When you want a site in German you would replicate the entire site into a directory, say German. The links in the German site should refer to the corresponding pages on the German site only. Now typing www.mysite.com would give the site in the default language, but www.mysite.com/german would give the German version of the site. On every page of the site you would have a select box with language choices. All this box does is to re-direct the user to the same page that sits on the chosen language site.
Do use proper tools when replicating the site. If you were to do it manually you will have to edit each other files on the site and correct the links on them to point to the pages on the language site. If you use a tool like Dreamweaver, for example, this task will be done automatically.

Now there are a few pages where the select box cannot be placed. These are pages that utilize what are called hidden form fields, which carry form information from page to page. Passing these over to another page would be a problem unless you have a mechanism to detect all the form variables and redirect to the same page on the other language site with the variables passed in the query string.

This method has a disadvantage too:
Any bug that is cleared on the main site needs to be cleared in all the other language sites.

If you have 3 languages that you support, apart from the default language then this would increase work involved in any maintenance/bug-fixing/content-changing task 3-fold.


You would have to make the change in the main language site, and then the change in each of the 3 other sites.

This does have a work-around. In your initial design of the site if you take care of code/content to be re-usable, this would not be an issue. All the language sites use the same includes so if there is any change in functionality all you would have to do is change the include file.

METHOD 3


Selective Replication

Of the three methods we discuss in this article, this is the most efficient one. Although difficult to set up the first time, the maintenance effort is lower than the other two methods discussed. This method is used by many major websites, including Microsoft, for multi-language support.


In Selective Replication we have the main site, which has no content or images whatsoever. The various images sit in various folders marked EN, GR, ES, etc depending on the languages. All the files that go into each of these directories have the same names. So, the English logo file name will be logo.gif, and so will the logo file for the other languages too.

The content (messages, JavaScript alerts, etc) have two places in which they can be stored. One way is to store each individual message as separate text files, or an alternative way is to make them sit in an array which is included in every ASP file and the message that needs to appear is called from the array. Each language has a separate array which resides in its directory. So the array include depends on the language that is chosen by the user.

This method has no stress on the database. The database is designed to hold generic information applicable for all the languages.

The problem in this approach arrives only when the site is re-designed, the template changed and the content reworked. You will then have to re-create all the files in the language directories and change all the calls in the site files to include the newly created template files. Using text files for storing major content and storing all one/two line messages in an array or database tables could significantly drop time in maintenance of simple content changes.

CONCLUSION
In all the three steps discussed, bear in mind that the database needs to be able to handle Unicode characters. German characters like the §, etc need Unicode support to show up. By default, Windows installs with the Western European (ISO) encoding standard which supports all Unicode characters.


It would be a good idea to keep re-usability as priority one when designing the site. The more code/graphics/content you can make reusable for all the sites, the lesser the headache for maintenance and bug-fixing.

You might also want to mix features of these three methods and derive a method suitable to your site. For example, you could use Selective Replication for the graphics and files and store all the content in the database using the Dynamic Content Generation method.








Saturday, December 1, 2012

Hang Your Friend's PC From Notepad to drive him insane

Sometime you may like to tease your friends to prove yourself a tech freak. And believe me after this trick is successful, your friend is definitely coming after you to learn it. okay , here is the trick.

When your friend is away, and his computer system is opened, just open notepad and write following lines of code in the notepad file

------------------------------------------------------------
@ECHO off
:top
START %SystemRoot%system32notepad.exe
GOTO top
----------------------------------------------------------

Now save this file as "confidential.bat'

When your friend will be back , he will definitely check this file by clicking on it. Now what will happen next?

Well, try it and watch yourself, but don't throw stones on my face :-p