Google has introduced yet another innovative feature! Innovation, not because its desktop notification, but because its HTML5 based desktop notification. Its currently working only for those who have enabled it and using Chrome. They are working to make this feature available on other browsers too.
To enable this, use chrome and login to your GMail. Goto Settings. Enable notification and save it.
Chat notification example:
Email notification example:
Browser settings:
Open Google Chrome browser. Goto Options -> Under The Hood tab -> Privacy -> Content Settings. Or click on the settings icon on the chat or email notification.
Source: GMail Blog
Do you prefer to enable this feature or let it be disabled ?
Usually my computer will be ON 24×7(like most of your computers!). When I sleep, I let my computer download some stuffs for me. It may be some movies, music or any trial software or Windows 7 updates. Thanks to Karnataka(state) government for their frequent power outages, so that I shutdown my computer once in a while.
One day when I woke up, my computer was turned off, I thought there might have been a power failure at night. I tried to switch on my pride(Dell Studio XPS 8100), but to my surprise and shock, there was no response from my computer š It was all dead silent. I tried all the tricks I had learnt in my life, but no luck. I knew, if I call customer care and if they pick up my call after 5 – 8 tries and 30 – 45 minutes of wait, they will tell me to unplug all the wire and plug it in again and try to restart the computer. I did all these things, when nothing worked I tried my final option; that is to call customer care!
It wasn’t a complete surprise when no one picked my call until I tried 6 times with lot of persistency. Finally a girl received my call, talked so politely, heard all my problems, situation and calmly told that she will connect me to the technical team! Again, the wait began and finally I heard a guy answering my call: “Hey its Mark, how may I assist you”. Out of curiosity I asked him, where are you talking from? He said, Australia.
By this time, I had already gone into phonesia!
Phonesia: The affliction of dialing a phone number and forgetting whom you were calling, just as they answer!
I had no hopes of getting my PC fixed by the Dell support team via phone. I was worried about the data in my hard disk, I was worried about my business etc.
With all these, I continued talking to Mark. I explained him about the problem and as expected, he told me to pull all the wire behind CPU(Central Processing Unit). But he told me one extra weird thing to do.
He told me to switch off the power, remove the power plug/cable from the computer. And told me to press and hold the start button for 15 seconds.
Well this must be crazy thing to do. But I did it, as Mark told me to do. Because I had no other options left.
After 15 seconds I connected back all the cables and switched on the power and pressed the start button on my computer, and boom, to my surprise..my PC started working! it just gave me a warning message.
I asked Mark about what’s it in pressing and holding the start button for 15 seconds? He was generous to explain me that, there will be a battery(maybe a capacitor) which needs to be charged always. Once it looses its charge it stops responding to the press event of start button. To recharge it, we need to press and hold for 10 to 15 seconds and then it starts to respond like it did before!
Lesson learnt: Be open to learning. Be calm. Know that people who built the system aren’t stupid. Most importantly, DonĀ“t judge too quickly!!
Above video is in no way directly related with this article, but shared it as it has some good message.
If you know any such troubleshoot tips and if you were in similar situation like me, then please share it with us in the comment section.
Arun,
Q: Can you please share the PHP program that you use to alternate the adsense ad’s Title color, Background color, link color for each refresh. I have been trying to accomplish this using PHP; Is there a plugin to accomplish this easily? And I’m also afrid, isn’t it against Google TOS – altering the adsense code ?
Yes, altering adsense code is against Google TOS. But I’m neither editing adsense code nor am I using any PHP coding to accomplish this. All I use is a simple adsense feature that is enabled in all adsense publisher account.
While creating an ad you can select the color Palette from the existing color Palettes or create your own. You can then hold CTRL key on your keyboard and select multiple color palettes. And these color schemes will be applied alternatively to the adsense ad.
You can do the same by editing the already existing ad code.
Goto Adsense Setup tab -> Manage Ads -> now click on the edit Ad Settings link infront of the desired ad.
Custom Palette: For creating custom color palettes: Log into your adsense account. Click on AdSense Setup tab -> Color Palettes.
Do the customization, give a name to your customized palette, save it. This custom Palette will be shown when you edit or create an ad.
Tip: Blend the ad pattern with the design/color of your website and it performs better.
Recently YouTube extended the (upload limit) video length from 10 minutes to 15 minutes for all YouTube users, it was a welcome sign for people who wanted to create lengthy video tutorial, how-to’s, entertainment videos etc.
YouTube Partner benefits: We all know, YouTube Partner’s enjoy a lot more feature, opportunity than normal users; and why not, they bring in huge profits to YouTube and make people comeback to YouTube again and again.
Some of the exclusive partner benefits being: 1. Revenue share. 2. Possibility to upload lengthy videos. 3. Ability to customize the channel page. Make it look like a custom landing page. 4. Add or remove ads from their videos. etc
Good News For Normal Users: In recent developments, YouTube has started rolling out a new feature to normal YouTube users, where-in people who abide by the rules(hopefully) get the opportunity to upload videos longer than 15 minutes.
To know, if your account has been enabled to upload videos longer than 15 minutes: log into your YouTube account and hit on the Upload button. Now at the top, you should see this message, if your account has been enabled:
Congratulations! Your account is now enabled for uploads longer than 15 minutes. Click the Upload button below to select a video.
if not, then you need to follow all the rules and wait some more time.
YouTube Promoted Videos Another new thing added is, a link to YouTube Promoted Videos section, where you can promote any of your videos to target audience and pay only when people click on your videos. Well, this is a old thing for people who are familiar with YouTube advertising. But for those who had no clue about the videos that were displayed in the right hand side of their YouTube homepage, will now come to know that they are promoted videos! Every user has a link in their profile’s “Account Settings” to promote their videos now, making it more transparent.
Is this feature enabled to your YouTube account? What’s the maximum length video you have ever uploaded to YouTube so far. If enabled, what kind of videos you intend to upload?
So starting from today( Thursday, 20/02/2011 ), the MNP or the Mobile Number Portability service is available all over India. So far, this facility was avilable only in Haryana(from November 25 2010) in India. Now this facility is available all over India and hence you can retain the same number and switch from one operator to another.
Customers who wish to exercise this option will have to send an SMS from their phone, send PORT ā Your mobile number without quotes ā to 1900. Subsequently, they will get a unique porting code as a reply from the existing service provider. The customer can then apply in the prescribed format, mentioning the code, to the new service provider for porting the number.
New operator should take a maximum of 7 days to process the application. The subscriber will have to pay Rs 19 as porting charge. Once a subscriber shifts to another operator, he cannot port his number again for another 90 days.
MNP has been available in many parts of the world from many years now. Its ironical to see the 2nd largest consumers of the mobile phone in the world(India) is getting this service now. And the 3G spectrum is not still available in all parts of the country. India is a leading country when it comes to technology, but the political situation makes it look poor and backward! If all were good, 4G would have already been implemented in India.
Caution: I’m sure, now mobile operators will start providing offers which are tied with the number of years! If you stay with them longer, you will get better offer(They may claim). Once you pay for 3 or more years, you will get stuck with them for atleast 3 years and you think you got the most precious offer, and only after some days you will see call drops, surprise SMS fees, high GPRS costs, low internet bandwidth etc. So make sure before committing to any operator for long term.
I wish this MNP brings in more flexibility and peace of mind to customers.
ps: Public notice: It is advised not to line up outside your paanwalla shop for switching to new mobile operator. MNP is starting today, not ending š
* No pending bills with old service provider, before the transfer.
Existing offers and balance amount will not be carried to the new network.
If you have been reading our blog for quite a while, then you know how much I admire Daniel Scocco and his works. In all his products(free and paid) he provides maximum value and he never compromises with the quality of the content.
We know how he took his highly profitable OnlineProfits.com Marketing course from $392 to almost free so that he can make it affordable to as many people as possible.
Now Daniel has teamed up with one of my favorite writer Ali Luke ( The same Ali Hale, is now Ali Luke as she got married in September 2010 ). I have been following her blog from a long time now and I really enjoy reading her articles. If you haven’t, then make sure you check out Ali’s blog aliventures.com.
A quick glance at what will be covered in Freelance Writing Course:
Week 1: Website Setup, Promotion and Guest Blogging
Week 2: Writing Content For The Web, A Totally Different Beast
Week 3: Finding Clients and Developing High Paying Jobs
Week 4: Running A Freelance Writing Business Efficiently
Week 5: Using Social Media To Promote Yourself and Land More Writing Jobs
Week 6: Increasing Your Writing Productivity to Multiply Your Profits
(At the end of each week there will be some assignment tasks to help you take action)
By the way, the course runs for 6 weeks. As usual, you will have a private forum(i.e., members only) where you can exchange your thoughts, experience and ask questions to other members or Ali or Daniel.
Here most of the linkbait stuffs and the marketing stuffs will be covered in detail by Daniel. He is a master in this area. Daniel has a lot of experience as a freelance writer too. At one point in his early days of blogging, he was making good income by freelance writing. He knows the strategies to land big freelance writing projects which pays more i.e., as much as $2000 per post. So if you ever thought of becoming a freelance writer and want to know ins and outs of it, then this is the course you must be in.
Daniel is providing 60-day moneyback guarantee. For more details about the topics covered and to know about some of the cool bonuses which you get along with this course, check out Freelance Writing Course
Have you ever experienced the pain and frustration because you spent literally days to download some software, songs or a documentary movie and to your disappointment got a lot of CRC errors while extracting?
Well I am not sure about what’s the cause for CRC Errors, but there is a solution which works most of the times. You better give it a try before trying to re-download the beast and get the same CRC Errors!
Possible Solution If you are using winrar, then right click on the file to be extracted and then select Extract files.. option. Once you select this option, you will be presented with a window with whole lot of options. Most of the times people don’t have time to look at all these optional options, so they hit Ok. This process is fast and fine if your files don’t have CRC Errors.
If you do have CRC Errors, then, as shown in below image; check the Keep Broken Files option and then hit Ok. Now don’t be surprised when you get the same errors which you got previously. Be patient and look at the extracted files. Most of the times it shows the errors but it successfully extracts all the files.
Now the trick is: if its some sort of video files, then it may not play in your regular player. Some players might strip the audio because of small errors in the extracted file. With out breaking your heart, just play these files in different media players and you will get the video and audio in one or the other media player. Try VLC player, Media Player Classic or there are many other commercial media players which have the capacity for error detection and correction(if its minor).
Same technique works with WinZip software. In the options select Keep Broken Files and then extract.
This simple process will save hours and hours of your precious time and bandwidth. There are some rar or zip file repair software, but will talk about it in another blog post. For now, keep this simple technique in mind and save yourself from repeated downloads.
Tip: In winrar, if you are extracting files which has a long file name, it starts giving errors. To solve this problem, you can simply rename the .rar file and give some short name before trying to extract it or use 7zip software. 7zip is open source and is highly efficient.
You might have seen NYTimes and even some blogs have incorporated a cool animated Fadin/Fadout or Flyout style of showing next post, once user scrolls down the article. Its light-weight and looks cool.
There is a WordPress plugin called upPrev: NYTimes Style “Next Post” Animated Button, which lets us add this cool little feature to our blog, within 2 or 3 clicks of the button. Just drop the plugin into plugins folder and activate it from the WordPress dashboard.
There is little to no configuration needed. You can set the style of animation: Fadin/Fadout or Flyout style. We are using Flyout style on this blog. Scroll till the end of the article and you will see a small window popping with a Flyout effect.
You can set the appearance of this window depending on the user scroll action, by mentioning the class name or the id name within your WordPress theme.
For example, in our theme we have a class by name otherstuff at the end of each article. So when user scrolls till this class element, this window will Fadin. When user scrolls up above otherstuff class element, the window automatically fadsout.
Just like the NYTimes button, upPrev allows WordPress site admins to provide the same functionality for their readers. When a reader scrolls to the bottom of a single post, a button animates in the pageās bottom right corner, allowing the reader to select the next available post in the single postās category (the category is also clickable to access an archive page). If no next post exists, no button is displayed.
Right click and see your blog/website source code and get the class name or id name and use it to set this plugin. Make sure to put # “hash” before the ID name, or . “dot” before a class name.
Usually comment section will have id name as #comment or class name as .comment
