Satish | Technotip.org

Facebook Further Explaining Their Policy

A couple of weeks ago, Facebook updated their “Terms“. And there was a lot of discussion about it in the blogosphere, forums and on twitter. According to the new Terms, Facebook now reserves all rights to the “User Content”, means any photos, text, link, audio, video, designs, ads and anything else that you Post on or through the Facebook Service. “Post” means to upload, post, transmit, share, store, link to or otherwise make available on or through the Facebook Service, even if you choose to close your account on the network or if your account gets banned or disabled for some reason.

While its a good practice to read the privacy policy and then signup for any service, but have a look at the lengthy terms on every social networking, social bookmarking, social media sites. If you keep on reading them, you will just have to keep on reading them(as they get updated now and then, making it more complex!).

After reading the changes made by Facebook many people expressed their disappointment. Totally Facebook was in News at many places.

Meanwhile Mark Zuckerberg(Founder of Facebook) wrote a blog post to clarify the issue. You can read the entire story, at On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information.
Here is an important excerpt from the post..

Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information.

Another concern was, Facebook reserves all rights to the “User Content”, even after you choose to close your account on the network or if your account gets banned or disabled for some reason. Here is what Mark Zuckerberg has to say

When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work.

Mark Zuckerberg also assures(in the blog post) that they wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want.

One thing to note here is people who want full ownership and control over their information can turn off access to it at any time, by changing things in their settings panel.

Facebook claims that these changes in their Terms will be made simpler and more clear over time.
For now the issue is bit cleared and Facebook got a lot of attention in a short period of time(Kind of viral marketing 🙂 ).

Update: Facebook reverted to its previous terms of service, with this public announcement from Mark Zuckerberg.

In the blog post, he writes, “Going forward, we’ve decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don’t plan to leave it there for long.”

Make Money From Orkut

Yes you read it right.
Its possible to make money from Orkut, using OpenSocial.

What is OpenSocial?
OpenSocial is a set of common APIs for building social applications across many websites. OpenSocial consists of both JavaScript APIs and Google Data APIs.

How do I create social apps using OpenSocial?
Social apps are initially created in the same manner as gadgets: with your favorite text editor or within the Google Gadgets Editor. They then can be augmented with the OpenSocial JavaScript APIs, where they can fetch and post social data about friends and activities.

What resources do I need to create an OpenSocial gadget?
Other than a good idea and a few minutes to write JavaScript and HTML, you don’t need any. Google will do all the hosting for you if you want, but you are also free to use your own servers.

Now coming back to the topic, how do you earn the money?
Many of you might be thinking that, nobody can make good income by developing and monetizing the gadgets. But hey there are some gadgets which are so viral and many people use it, so I hope atleast those guys who developed such viral applications will surly earn a good income from it.
Just come up with an innovative idea, which can be converted into a gadget and which will be very much useful for Orkut users. Finally put it into action. There is a lot of difference in coming up with an idea and putting it into action. Learn some basics of programing and then refer to the huge documentation by Google and convert your idea into a gadget.

You can make money by developing gadgets even for FaceBook, Hi5 etc. But Orkut started using OpenSocial recently.

Watch the video for more clarification and proof.

Can I make money on Orkut?
Here is what in the video:-
Yes!!
The lawyers are working out the details, but here are our basic principles:

Canvas page belongs to the app – keep money you earn there.
Advertiser happiness – they want some control over where their message is displayed.
Profile page is user’s face to the world – we should only show content that user has authored or put there.

[We can already see ads in the gadget canvas page of Orkut.]
Now you can start from here to learn from the basic, how to develop a gadget. We hope it won’t take a lot of time to come up with a simple, sample gadget. But remember, all gadgets will go a strict review by Orkut team and they let only those gadgets that they think are valuable for Orkut members.
So invest some time in getting an innovative idea and then start executing it or just start learning about creating the gadget and in the process of learning you will get some good idea(that’s how it works with me).

What I feel is, to get an application viral effect, we need to solve a user problem or provide a very useful application(gadget). If we just come up with a very innovative gadget and if it does not solve any user problem or needs then it will just be in the list of innovative gadgets and not on the users profile.

Download YouTube Videos Officially

Everyone knows that video sites can be addictive. So YouTube had been the 4th most visited site for many years.
It comes to no surprise that people like to watch videos and want to download it to their computers or some other video players, to watch it offline and whenever they want to watch. There are many sites and software to fulfill these needs, those sites and software are also very popular.

Recently YouTube has officially announced that it is now giving video owners the chance to offer their property for download, either for free or for a small fee. Furthermore, the videos will be assigned to a specific Creative Commons license, which will govern how and where they can be reused and altered. Payment for the purchase of the videos will be made by GoogleCheckouts(Ofcourse) and a new My Purchases tab, which is already been incorporated into everyone’s account, will allow you to keep track of what you’ve bought.
You can also visit the Google help forum for any clarifications and recent modifications.
YouTube-Official-launch
Now does this move from Google(YouTube) make any difference to you? Hope not! As many people use to download the videos using some thirdparty software and websites. Now this move will surly hurt those thridparty software and website owners to certain extent 🙁

Since the purchase of YouTube, Google have been paying a lot for the maintenance, development and lawsuits coming on its way!
Hope its trying to get back some money. Recently Google started showing sponsor ads on its homepage, which pay them a lot. It launched adsense for video to adsense publishers. After that it started embedding ads into the video. Now its giving the authority to its users(uploaders — it means the owner of the video!) to charge some fee or to give it away for free.
YouTube-Official-launch
This move will certainly attract some business people in this niche to get started with YouTube, as they constantly search for some means to get the customers for their videos.

Update: “Download this video” link is not seen below every YouTube video because this feature was not available at the time of upload of those videos. New video uploads will have this, if the owner(one who uploads) of the video is willing to give it for free download.

Does this official announcement make any difference to you? And do you think there will be more active users who will be willing to give their videos for Free ? Please share all your opinions about YouTube(The largest Video portal in the internet).

Eye Tracking and Mind Mapping by Google

Google recently conducted eye tracking and usability test, and found some interesting results.

Some of the things to note in the research are:-
1. Most users scan only the first 2 results and their focus fades while going through the rest of the results.

2. Google Experience Research team has also found that people evaluate the search results page so quickly that they make most of their decisions unconsciously.

3. People tend to scan the search results in order. They start from the first result and continue down the list until they find a result they consider helpful and click it. You can see in the below image[Heat map] that the users attention moves in “F” shape.
2-goldentriangle
Above heat map like image is called as Golden Triangle by Google. The bigger the dot, longer the person spent time looking at a particular part of the page.

4. The team wanted to incorporate thumbnail images to better represent certain kinds of results. But they had a concern that showing thumbnails of images and videos would effect the higher order results. But the studies showed that the thumbnails did not strongly affect the order of scanning the results and seemed to make it easier for the participants to find the result they wanted. Interestingly enough the thumbnails also seemed to make it easy for people to skip over the results with thumbnails when those results were not relevant to their search.

Here is what Google say about the eye tracking and mind reading:-

To help us get some insight into this split-second decision-making process, we use eye-tracking equipment in our usability labs. This lets us see how our study participants scan the search results page, and is the next best thing to actually being able to read their minds. Of course, eye-tracking does not really tell us what they are thinking, but it gives us a good idea of which parts of the page they are thinking about.

Here is a video clip shows in real time how a participant involved in the study scanned the page. That’s how fast the eyes move when scanning a page

Google also use this eye tracking and usability test on Google News and Image Search. And Google also uses interviews, field studies and live experiments, to compliment and to support its eye tracking and usability test results.
These results can be made use of properly by web publishers for the placement of ads and banners. But interestingly enough, Google did not mentioned about the usability of their CPC ads on the SERP(Search Engine Result Page), in their eye tracking tests. But we know that, Google runs a serious of tests before making any changes for their ad placement and the background of those ads etc. So its always ideal that we run similar tests on our blog and know which part of our blog receives more visibility or user attention. By knowing these things we can easily get the attention of more audience.
Source: GoogleBlog

Code To Show 125X125 Ad Banner On WordPress Sidebar

During the early days of this blog, we had some problem in showing adsense ads of 125×125 format on our sidebar. We wanted to have four 125×125 ad banners(as shown in below image), but we were unable to align it properly. After some research and getting help from online friends we could overcome this problem. Now we are sharing this, in order to save some of your time, who may also be facing the same problem.

Its easy to show image ads(direct advertisers ad banner) in the side bar. But if we want to show ads using some adnetwork(Ex:- Adsense, Adbrite, Bidvertiser, BuySellAds etc), its bit difficult to properly align the ads(as shown in above image).

First the simple one. If you want to show some ad banners(which does not use JavaScript or any other scripts). You can use the following code:


<h2>Sponsors</h2>
<!-- insert ad blocks instead of fake images -->
<a rel="nofollow" href="destination-url">
<img style="margin: 0 15px" height="125" width="125" 
src="image-url"
 border="0" title="insert title" alt="insert title" />
</a>

<a rel="nofollow" href="destination-url">
<img height="125" width="125" 
src="image-url" 
border="0" title="insert title" alt="insert title" />
</a>
<a rel="nofollow" href="destination-url">
<img style="margin: 0 15px" height="125" width="125" 
src="image-url"
 border="0" title="insert title" alt="insert title" />
</a>
<a rel="nofollow" href="destination-url">
<img height="125" width="125" 
src="image-url" 
border="0" title="insert title" alt="insert title" />
</a>

But the same can’t be applied when you want to show some JavaScript enabled ads(Ex:- Adsense, Adbrite, Bidvertiser, BuySellAds etc) in above mentioned style.
To do that, add below code to your style.css


.bigblock {
  width: auto;
  height: auto;
  padding: 15px;
       
}

.left-top {
  width: 125px;
  height: 125px;
  background: url(images/125x125.jpg) no-repeat;
  margin-bottom: 10px;
       
}

.left-bottom {
  width: 125px;
  height: 125px;
  background: url(images/125x125.jpg) no-repeat;
  }

.right-top {
  float: right;
  width: 125px;
  height: 125px;
  background: url(images/125x125.jpg) no-repeat;

}

.right-bottom {
  float: right;
  width: 125px;
  height: 125px;
    background: url(images/125x125.jpg) no-repeat;

}

.clearblock {
  width: 100%;
  clear: both;
}

Now insert below code wherever you want to show the ads(Ex:- sidebar)


<div class="bigblock">
<div class="right-top">Ad code</div>
<div class="left-top">Ad code</div>
<div class="clearblock"></div>
<div class="right-top">Ad code</div>
<div class="left-bottom">Ad code</div>
</div>

That’s it, you are done. You can play with above coding to customize it further to blend with your blog design.
Hope it helps, atleast for some of you.

Google Bus on Indian Roads

Google announced the launch of Internet Bus Project[on February 3, 2009] – a mobile bus designed to showcase the benefits of Internet to the people across the cities of Tamil Nadu[A state in India].
Google India Product Manager Prem Ramaswami said, “It is like a pilot study (for us). More than 19 per cent of Tamilians prefer Google Tamil for accessing the Internet and that is also one of the reasons to launch the bus project from Tamil Nadu,”.

Below video is really inspiring:

Its mainly aimed at people who are not aware of the power of Internet. This projects main aim is to showcase how the Internet can make everyday life simple through services like search, email, social networking, maps and others. The Internet Bus will be loaded with useful and informative content in English and Tamil.

Prem Ramaswami also told that this was like a pilot project for them and based on the response they get from this project, they would continue it in other states as well.
Google_bus_India
Inside_Google_bus_India

Follow Google Bus route:
03 Feb Chennai
05 Feb Vellore
06 Feb Krishnagiri
07 Feb Salem
11 Feb Erode
12 Feb Tiruppur
14 Feb Coimbatore

18 Feb Dindigul
19 Feb Madurai
23 Feb Tirunelveli
25 Feb Nagercoil
27 Feb Tuticorin
02 Mar Pudukkottai
03 Mar Tiruchirappalli

06 Mar Thanjavur
08 Mar Kumbakonam
10 Mar Neyveli
12 Mar Cuddalore
13 Mar Tiruvannamalai

If you are located in any of these locations or near by, then make sure you visit the bus and get the information. Do not expect any advance information, as this project is focused on people who do not know more about internet.

For more on photo updates: visit Picasa.
To track the route and for further info about the project keep watching Internet Bus Project.

How Much Is Your Tweet Worthy ?

Some time back, I wrote about a company called TwittAd that lets you auction off ads on your Twitter profile page. Now, the company is sponsoring WhatsYourTweetWorth. A site where you enter your Twitter username, and it tells you how much your Tweets are worth based on how many followers you have and how often you participate in conversation with others in twitter.

I don’t know about its accuracy. We got a 33.41$ per month. hmm..now that’s not bad, considering the amount of time I spend on twitter. This number will go high over time, if we get more number of followers and if we participate in twitter actively.

It also seems to take into consideration, how many people we are following. So I don’t know how accurate this tool can be!

As Twittad deals with advertising on users Twitter profile, whatsyourtweetworth.com helps Twittads publishers to get a rough estimation of how much money they can expect from their twitter profile in the auction.

I wonder, what would happen if they manage to get advertisers who can pay such price to advertise on a single page i.e., Twitter profile pages.

Actually we are not writing to analyze its accuracy, but we just wanted to share with you all that such a tool also exists.

Are your tweets too costly? 🙂 Follow me and drop me a line @technotip