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Facebook launches Timeline Movie Maker

vrreddy — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:55:16 +0000

Facebook launched “Timeline Movie Maker” app today, as the name suggests this app allows users to create a movie out of their Facebook Timeline content. As Facebook pushes Timeline feature to all the users it makes sense to release this app, as it will promote the Timeline feature, a clever advertising indeed. Once created you can share it on Facebook for your friends to watch.

The app itself is simple to use, when you visit the site you are greeted with a graphic that reads Timeline Movie Maker and make your movie button. You need to give permission to the app to access your basic info, email address, your profile info including, activities, birthday, likes, location, religious views, photos, posts, videos, and pretty much everything in your timeline. If you are comfortable with doing that you are good to go. But if you are unlucky like me that you didn’t upload at least 75 photos you need to do that in order to make your first movie of your social life. Once it is finished you can remove any image, change music and edit the check-in.

It is a joint project between Facebook and Definition6, the app is aimed to turn all your memorable moments from your timeline into a short movie that you can share with your friends. But right now there is no way you can share it on YouTube, this functionality might be added at a later stage.

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Google, Facebook, Microsoft and others team up to fight phishing

vrreddy — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:53:15 +0000

Webmail giants Google, Microsoft, Yahoo teamed up with Facebook and others to lay down standards for an anti phishing. The alliance formed by these companies is known as Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC for short).

What is phishing?

Phishing is way of stealing sensitive information from unsuspecting users through email spoofing, the phishing email messages pose as they came from legitimate businesses and directs users to enter personal information in web pages identical to the legitimate ones.

Most of these phishing scams end up in Spam folders of webmail accounts, but average users might think that it may be legitimate and click on those phishing mails.

PayPal is also involved in the group, and PayPal is now blocking around 200,000 fake PayPal messages each day by working with Gmail and Yahoo Mail. With the new standard in place lot of fake messages from other sites can be blocked from entering users email boxes.

The DMARC protocols are based on existing technologies, including the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). Both are common mail security protocols. SPF verifies the IP address of the email’s sender, while DKIM vets the structure of the email’s content, comparing it to encoded information coming from the sender.

If things work as they planned and everyone cooperates we might see an improved spam free webmail system soon. But sometimes spammers are on step ahead and find ways to circumvent these technologies.

Via Wired

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Twitter can censor tweets by Country

vrreddy — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:48:39 +0000

Twitter announced today that it can now block tweets on a country-by-country basis, that means Twitter can now block content which violates local laws without blocking the content for the entire world. Twitter already censors some content based on DMCA takedown requests, but till now this censorship is global.

Twitter says “As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some countries want to block specific information, for example France and Germany want to block pro-Nazi content as twitter explains, in these type of cases now twitter can block content only in that country allowing the rest of the world to see. Twitter will also notify users if their content is blocked and the takedown requests will go to the ChillingEffects.org/twitter website like what Google does for censorship requests.

Twitter has not yet used this ability to restrict any tweets, going forward it may do so based on local laws and government requests to block content.

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PayPal launches app for sending money to Facebook friends

vrreddy — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:27:47 +0000

PayPal launched a Facebook app for sending money to your Facebook friends, allowing friends to easily exchange money through the largest social network. The app is simply titled “Send Money“, and it seems is quite easy to send money to friends.

Along with the money users can also send an eCard, PayPal has provided sample cards for occasions like Birthday, congratulations etc.

Although there are other alternatives to send money to Facebook friends via PayPal this is the easiest. There is no transaction fees for these peer-to-peer payments through Facebook, but usual PayPal fees will apply. “The PayPal and Facebook infrastructure have now merged,” PayPal’s Anuj Nayar says. “This is another way to personalize the act of giving money.” Anuj Nayar told Mashable.

Since its free to send money through Facebook, it might get popular with users.

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Quick and Easy Ways to Block Time-Wasting Websites on Your Computer

Srikanth AD — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 20:16:44 +0000

If some of your favorite sites are killing your productivity and sucking the life out of your working day, following are some quick and easy ways to block those interesting but time wasting websites on your computer. Help yourself!

LeechBlock

LeechBlock is a Mozilla Firefox productivity extension that enables you to quickly block time wasting websites. You just need to specify which websites to block and when to block them.

LeechBlock allows you to block upto 6 sets of websites. You can block sites within fixed time periods or after a time limit. LeechBlock also provides you with an option to set a password for access to the extension options.

Invisibility Cloak

This script runs only on Mozilla Firefox and requires Greasemonkey extension. You can add and remove sites to be blocked from the Firefox tools menu.

BlockSite

BlockSite is another Firefox extension which blocks websites of your choice. Interestingly, this add-on will disable all hyperlinks to these websites as well. Instead of the hyperlink, the link text without the click functionality is displayed.

BlockSite also enables you to block a whole ranges of websites by using the wildcard symbol (*). For instance, by using “http://*.microsoft.*” and “http://microsoft.*” most of microsoft websites can be blocked. The wildcard symbol (*) indicates that there may be zero or more random characters at that place. This a convenient way to block a range of sites in short time.

StayFocused

StayFocused is highly configurable Google Chrome extension that allows you to block or allow entire sites, specific subdomains, specific paths, or even specific pages.

StayFocusd increases your productivity by limiting the amount of time per day that you can spend browsing time-wasting websites.

MinutesPlease

Without having to register or install any software, control your web time quite easily with MinutesPlease. Just specify time limits for websites and control the time you spend of addictive websites. It’s simple to setup and saves you a lot of time.

KeepMeOut

KeepMeOut is another website which helps you cut down the time spent on addictive websites. With KeepMeOut web service, you can just specify a URL and receive warnings if you are visiting that site within the specified time period.

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5 Handy Sitemap Plugins for WordPress

Srikanth AD — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 10:42:44 +0000

Maintaining an up-to-date sitemap for your website is a good practice from an SEO and usability perspective. If your website or blog is based on WordPress, there are many handy plugins that enable you to maintain an automatically updating XML sitemap. To help you choose from some of the best plugins for maintaining an XML sitemap, following are some handy choices.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin generates an XML sitemap which will help search engines to better index your blog. A sitemap is an easy way for crawlers to access URLs on your site and to go through the complete website architecture. Thus by maintaining an XML sitemap, you can provide an easier way for crawlers to retrieve links on your site more efficiently. With support for all kinds of WordPress generated pages, Google XML Sitemaps is a great way to maintain a sitemap for your website or blog based on WordPress CMS. Additionally, this plugin notifies all major search engines every time you create a new post.

As the sitemap is updated automatically, one need not manually edit and update links – which can be tedious. Thus, to de-clutter your sitemap and maintain it effectively, Google XML Sitemaps is a feasible solution.

Dagon Design Sitemap Generator

This plugin creates a XML sitemap for your WordPress powered blog or website. From its own options page, this plugin is highly customizable via the WordPress admin panel. Some of its key features include: support for multi-level categories and pages, category/page exclusion, multiple-page generation with navigation, permalink support, choose what to display, what order to list items in, show comment counts and/or post dates, and much more.

WP Realtime Sitemap

This plugin makes it easier for your to show pages, posts, tags and, categories as a sitemap without having to make modifications to your template or code in HML / PHP. Hierarchical listing of pages and categories, option to reorder links in the sitemap, WordPress shortcode support to include the sitemap within pages and posts are some of its key features.

WP Shopping Cart XML Sitemap

This plugin automatically adds products and categories from the WP E-Commerce plugin to your XML sitemap, thereby enabling search engines to discover your online shop in an effective way.

Google XML Sitemap for Videos

This WordPress plugin enables you to generate Google Video Sitemaps (XML) using all YouTube videos that you may have embedded in your blog posts. Your Video Sitemap will include web pages with videos embedded from YouTube or which links to videos on YouTube.

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Four Useful Sites for Resume Building

Srikanth AD — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 04:43:36 +0000

Are you on a job hunt? creating a perfect resume can be a tedious task. There are many online resources which enable you to create elegantly styled resumes in short time. Following are some useful websites with handy features that enable you to create and edit profiles online.

VisualCV

A VisualCV is web based, multimedia resume that portrays a comprehensive picture of you professionally and allows you to stand out from the crowd. VisualCV can be used for professional networking, job searching, business development, and personal brand management.

VisualCV Portfolio enables you to easily add and manage your work samples, images, videos, certificates, or other interesting details. So, its a great place to manage a portable resume and showcase your work to provide employers with insights into your work abilities and strengths rather than using a traditional resume.

Resume Bucket

ResumeBucket enables you to upload your resume quickly and allows you to search for jobs in your local area. ResumeBucket offers convenient access and easy-to-use editing for your resume. Once you upload your resume, it will converted to a webpage in short time and then, you can add the webpage URL to a site, blog, or social media sites.

Your revision history will be saved on Resume Bucket so, you can experiment with changes and switch back to a previous version of your resume, if need be. Apart from resume building, you can view metrics like how often is your resume being viewed. In addition, you can manage communication with other ResumeBucket users via the Message Center.

Linkedin is a professional networking site which enables you to search for jobs and build a standard profile page to list your education, work experience, interests and skill sets.

Just like facebook or Twitter, you can update your status on Linkedin and join groups related to your interests. Linkedin also allows you to acquire endorsements for your work, and add applications like a blog feed.

Resume Social

A social resume community, where you can post your resume online and get feedback from other users. Once registered, users can build a resume and improve it by gaining feedback and comments from other community members. Resume social also has a section for sharing cover letters and follow-up letters.

You can make use of pre-built templates to post your resume online with Resume Social. Apart from resume building, you can search for jobs based on a geo. location. And, go through resources, tips from experts to gain valuable career advice.

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Facebook mobile app for non-smartphones

vrreddy — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 10:31:23 +0000

With the increasing number of smartphone users several web services are offering applications for smarthpones. Facebook, the popular social network has applications for smartphones like iPhone and Andriod phones and they are popular as well. Not everyone in the world is using a smarthpone still the majority of the population uses feature phones.

Facebook released an app for the feature phone users, the app is co-developed by Snaptu. The new app works on 2500+ devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, LG and other manufacturers. Facebook says, the app provides a better experience for feature phone users. Features of the app include easy to navigate home screen, contact synchronization, and fast scrolling of phots and friend updates.

The app is now available to download from m.fb.snaptu.com/f

You can use the app free for first 90 days on 14 different mobile carriers around the world. The app will come to other carriers with this deal soon.

List of carriers launching today

Dialog (Sri Lanka)
Life (Ukraine)
Play (Poland)
StarHub (Singapore)
STC (Saudi Arabia)
Three (Hong Kong)
Tunisiana (Tunisia)
Viva (Dominican Republic)
Vodafone (Romania)

Launching soon

Mobilicity (Canada)
Reliance (India)
Telcel (Mexico)
TIM (Brazil)
Vivacom (Bulgaria)

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5 Web Services to Convert PDF and MS Word Documents

Srikanth AD — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:38:00 +0000

PDFs and Word Documents are the most popular document formats used in the digital world. Bills, books, resumes, magazines, application forms,etc are all created as PDF or MS Word Documents. With it’s usage becoming increasingly popular there are times when you need to convert a document from PDF to MS Word or vice-versa.

You can find various applications and online services that allow you to convert PDFs and MS Word Documents. Some are free whereas some come with a price tag. In this post, we bring you 5 free web services that enable you to convert PDFs and Word Documents.

1. PDF to Word – PDF to Word is a free tool by Nitro PDF that offers high quality conversion of PDF Files. It enables you to quickly and easily create editable DOC/RTF files from PDF files. All you got to do is upload the PDF file, select the output format (DOC/RTF) and enter your mail address. The converted file will be sent to your mailbox within a matter of few minutes. You can also check out their free online Word to PDF conversion tool.

2. Free PDF to Word – Free PDF to Word is a simple and easy-to-use online web service that enables you quickly create formatted Word documents from any PDF files. Some of it’s features include form recognition, hyperlink detection, table recovery, rotated text recovery and much more.

3. Doc2PDF Online – Doc2PDF Online is a simple tool by BCL Technologies that lets you create a PDF file from a variety of formats that include DOC, RTF, PPT, XLS, HTML, JPG and much more. However, one of the major drawbacks of this tool is that the max. size of the file should be 2MB.

4. PDF Converter – PDF Converter enables you to convert your PDF files to DOC, XLS and RTF formats. It lets you convert protected PDFs and also extract images from the PDF files in JPG or PNG format.

5. Zamzar – Zamzar is a free online file conversion tool that supports various file conversions. It lets you convert your PDF files into doc, epub, fb2, html, jpg, xls, png and much more. It also enables you to convert your image files and document files into PDF. In addition to this, it also handles various other file conversions.

We hope you found the above listed tools very useful. If you know any other PDF or DOC conversion tool that you would like to share, tell us about it via the comments section.

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Manage Online Event Registrations Easily with Eventzilla

Srikanth AD — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 14:19:08 +0000

Organizing an event is not an easy task. There are various things that goes into making a successful event – finding sponsors, promoting the event, selling tickets, setting up the event location and much more. With social networking becoming increasingly popular, people have now started promoting their event using social networking services such as Facebook or Twitter.

In this post, we bring you one such service that helps you easily promote your event as well as sell tickets online – Eventzilla.

Eventzilla is a really nifty service that provides you an easy way to accept registrations and payments for your events as well as to promote it online. It is an affordable online registration and ticketing software for anyone hosting an event. It is simple and easy-to-use.

Event Page

Eventzilla lets you create your own professional looking event page in minutes. On this page you can publish the details regarding your event such as event date, time, venue, price, agenda and much more. People can register for the event or even buy tickets directly from your event page.

Setting up an online registration form is pretty easy and does not require any programming knowledge. Eventzilla also enables you to easily keep track of your attendees as well as manage cancellations.

Event Promotion

In addition to managing online registrations and payments, Eventzilla also helps you in promoting your event online. It lets you promote your events by enabling you send free e-mail invitations as well as promoting it on social networking services such as Twitter or Facebook.

Pricing

Eventzilla is free if your event is a free event. But, if your event is a paid one and requires attendees to buy tickets then Eventzilla charges you $1 for every ticket sold.

Eventzilla is a prolific web based service for anyone organizing an event. Be it a seminar, a conference, a music concert or even a private party, Eventzilla is just the right tool for promoting your event, selling tickets and keeping track of your attendees.

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