Wow – the browser wars are back with a bang! We wait ages for a new version of Internet Explorer and then two come at once (almost). There’s a nice summary on the Register this morning about the new versions of various browsers. If you’re in the mood you can download:

• Chrome (Win)
• Firefox 3.0.7 (Any)
• Safari 4 beta (Mac + Win)
• Opera 9.6 (Any)
• Internet Explorer 8 (Win)

The interesting part is that the chosen battleground at the moment is JavaScript. (I guess people care less about standards than we all thought). As the Register article shows, people are trumpeting the various JavaScript engines as being significant new features. They are interesting in abstract, but what people care about is:

• Does it help me do what I want to do?
• Does it do cool stuff

The cool stuff tends to come first – for example the Register article links to a couple of cool Google Chrome Experiments:

• A bouncing ball
• A gravity effect on the Google home page

These are clever demonstrations of JavaScript coding using the new <canvas> tag. I had never heard of canvas before this morning, but it looks like it has been around for a bit. It is part of the emerging new standards (HTML 5) for web development and these experiments work on newer browsers. They both worked fully on Safari 4 for me, the gravity effect was patchy in Flock (based on Firefox 3). Even though I knew nothing about <canvas> before, I’m interested now.

The web gets better with more and more innovations. We dont see just pages but an application in your browser. But still many “what if” questions arise in our mind while using any browser. My all time favorite Google tries to answer all your questions by developing innovative products which makes your jobs easier and makes you feel like you work on your desktop application. May be to put an end to (better) “browser thirst”, Google Chrome is going Live in sometime from now.
Google Chrome is Google’s open source browser project. This is the most awaited open source browser from Google which is built upon Apple’s Webkit and Mozilla’s Firefox.

Some of the features in Google Chrome:

• Its a “multi-process design” which  means “a bit more memory up front” but “less memory bloat.”
• Chrome includes a Javascript Virtual Machine called the V8.
• Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window unlike those seen in Firefox and IE7.
• If there is any bug in your browser, you’ll only lose the one tab but not the browser itself. You’ll get a sad tab denoting that it is crashed.
• The browser has an address bar with auto-completion features called ’omnibox’. This is something like “suggestions”. It lists the web page’s title as you type in the addressbar and open that page when you choose the title without having typing the address of the site.
• Chrome will have storage (Gears), process management, memory management, Input (w/ something Flash-like for camera, mic access), Output (rendering).
• Chrome has a privacy mode - Incognito similar to IE’s InPrivate.
• Constantly downloads harmful sited to avoid malware and phishing attempts.
• and more…

In Chrome’s words

“I am not a browser but an Operating System”.

Have a look at this comic to know more about the Chrome’s features.

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FONTE: Generazione-internet.com

I have gone through so many forums discussing about the Object tag issue in IE6. The issue was that IE6 does not support Object tag and if Flash content has to be displayed, then dynsrc is the only option. But I faced a different issue with Object tag in IE6. I wanted a Flash banner to be linked to a site. Instead of using the code “on (release) { getURL(“www.aaa.com”) }”  in ActionScript , I tried the below HTML code,

<a href="aaa.com"><Object ......></object></a>

Ofcourse, this is not the proper way of linking a page to a flash. But, just tried and this was working fine in IE7 and not in IE6. I guessed that this should be the same issue “IE6 does not support Object tag”.  So I tried many methods to make it work both in IE6 and IE7. But all in vain. Later I found out the problem. It was really stupid. The issue was object tag cannot be nested inside a tag. This was fixed when I added a div between a tag and object tag. Even div shouldnt be nested within a!!! But why is this working? Also, how the former code works fine in IE7? Is this called an enhancement in IE7? Really funny!

Title Element also plays an important role in Search Engine Optimization. Every webpage must have a Title.
<title> SEO and Title Element </title>

The title must have two or three of your site’s keywords which should enumerate what your site is all about. It is recommended to have the title less than 64 characters as it will be truncated if long. The Title should be relevent to your page’s content as this will be the one displayed with description when your site is listed in the search results and this will be the one which will be read first. Search engines have title as an important factor to rank your site. Avoid using symbols and special characters. It is better to give few words in the Title as grammer also matters. Two or three words doesnt require grammar check. Also, Title will be the default bookmark name while user bookmarks your site.

This is my first blog on SEO and I’d like to start from META tags. We all know the use of “meta” tag. The name itself defines that it gives a meta information about our page. Lets start from the base.
What is meta information? How is this playing an important role in SEO?
Description and Keywords are the meta informations.

Why should we give Description and Keyword in the meta tags?
There is something called ODP (Open Directory Project). ODP is nothing but a web directory of Internet resources. Its like a library hierarchically arranged by subject – from broad to specific. Your website will be evaluated by a team of experts and included in this directory. They provide a title and description for your site based on their evaluation. When your site is listed in the Search result in any search engine, by default this description will be displayed as a snippet for the web result. Search engines like Google, MSN uses ODP while Yahoo! uses Yahoo! directory. In order to avoid the Search engines to get ODP data, you’ll have to specify your own description for your site. The reason for avoiding this is, the description given by ODP is outdated and will not have the current status of your website. This is the reason to have our own updated description.

This is the right place to use meta tags where you can give the description and you can assure the search engines not to use data from ODP and Yahoo! directory. To avoid ODP data, just include robots meta tags. This robots meta tag is used to exclude the content. It is used only when you are unable to upload or control robots.txt file. The robots.txt file will have some set of instructions for robots(spiders) to index the content of your site. This file should be placed in the root directory of your site. The robots meta tags are just the replacement of this txt file.
This is how you give the robots meta tag,

<meta name=”robots” content=”NOODP”>
NOODP – NO ODP data

This is supported by Google, MSN.

In the case of Yahoo!, you can use NOYDIR to avoid Yahoo! directory data.

<meta name=”robots” content=”NOYDIR”>
NOODP – NO Yahoo! Directory

To specifically prevent any particular search engine to use the ODP data, you’ll have to specify the meta tag with the following names
<meta name=”googlebot” content=”NOODP”>

<meta name=”slurp” content=”noydir”>

<meta name=”msnbot” content=”NOODP”>

But it will take some time or may be days to see your description. In the case of using the default description, you dont have to worry about site ranking. Site ranking is no way related to this since it is based on the search algorithm and not on how your site is classified in the web directory.

This is how meta tag bids an important role in SEO.

Google’s next step in improving Gmail is its new feature in Gmail chat. You can set your mode to “Invisible” in Gmail chat. This is something which I was expecting from Google all these days. Also, if you are signed in AIM in Gmail, it will show you offline on AIM Network too. This feature is there for past 2 months but I noticed this yesterday only :P  

I think this is better instead of “Busy” mode. Why to show yourself Busy if you are not willing to chat? Better stay offline and chat with whom you want. sounds stupid?

But this new feature is not avaliable in Gtalk. Also, you cant be in Invisible mode in Gmail chat, if you are signed in Gtalk. This is something groggy. Lets wait for this feature available in Gtalk too.

Following the addition of Colored Labels in Gmail,  Google now adds support for 37 languages in their Gmail service.
Just go to “Settings” menu and choose your language.

This roll out will be avaliable in the following existing Gmail features,

* Colored labels
* Group chat
* Rich emoticons
* A new contact manager with a three-pane layout
* A number of smaller features, such as new shortcut keys and the ability to bookmark individual emails with your browser.

Google said this roll out may break in some 3rd party extensions including scripts which directly modifies Gmail’s code.

Computerworld reported today that Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo for $44.6B

Microsoft Corp. today offered to buy Yahoo Inc. for $44.6 billion in cash and stock to better compete with Google Inc. in the market for online services.

CEO Steve Ballmer made the offer in a letter to Yahoo’s board of directors yesterday, telling the board that he would release the letter this morning.

On a conference call this morning, Microsoft’s president of its Platforms & Services division Kevin Johnson called a combination of Microsoft and Yahoo a more “credible” alternative to Google in the online advertising and services market.

“By combining the assets of Microsoft and Yahoo, we can offer a more competitive choice for consumers, advertisers and publishers,” he said.

There have been rumors of this for quite some time:

• 2005: ZDNet speculated about Yahoo and Microsoft teaming up to better compete with Google: “As it turns out, in true enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend fashion, Yahoo and Microsoft have a mutual problem in Google. … Given that Yahoo and Microsoft were already chummy with each other on the multimedia front, why not merge their walled gardens to increase the utility of both in hopes of heading off any more defectors (end users) from taking in oodles and oodles of Google (at the expense of everyone else). ”
• 2006: SearchEngineWatch blogged that “Yahoo & Microsoft Have Talked Partnering, Merging”
• 2007: BusinessWeek reported “In the battle of online search, Microsoft is again courting Yahoo, according to media reports”

Of course, you could probably pick any two technology titans and find enough written about them to connect a thread.  But this seems more than random chance since there are obvious synergies, but one issue that makes me question the long term value.

Looking at it from a marketing point of view it’s a very good move.  Yahoo offers strength in web advertising, social computing, and web-based email where Microsoft is weak.  They have overlapping (and expensive) assets in search and categorization that can be consolidated and trimmed.  They also offer great talent and intangibles around web 2.0 and a disruptive, creative mindset.

From an infrastructure point of view I’m a bit more dubious.  Yahoo seems to favor the kind of Java, Unix, and open source tools (Apache, FreeBSD, Perl, PHP, Linux) you’d expect out of a young company out to challenge the powers that be.  If Yahoo has a huge number of very bright programmers that are almost religiously dedicated to Unix-based platforms and development they may not want to switch.  For scale reasons I’m sure Microsoft would allow this subset of the company to continue along that Unix path (I’m not saying they’d force mass conversion at the point of a sword), but it would take some restraint not to try injecting Windows servers and .NET into newer offerings and slowly alienate the staff. 

So, in summary, I think from a financial view it probably looks good (win/win for both sides), from a marketing view it looks good (fills in weaknesses of Microsoft and allows for consolidation of operations), but longer term the risk associated with the assimilation of Yahoo into Microsoft (and therefore the odds of capitalizing on the assets they are acquiring) may be even higher than normal for tech companies.

Framing a photo is really a fun. Also it will add a professional look. Upframr allows you to frame your photos in an easy way.Just choose a frame, upload the photo and press “continue”.  Your photo will be framed.

To upload the framed photos to flickr, just sign in with your flickr account and upload the photos directly to your account.

Here is a sample. I have framed the upframr logo

Note: You can upload only .jpg photos.

Ask.com, the fourth most used search service has launched AskEraser to delete your search activity from the Ask.com server.You can see the link “AskEraser” in the top right corner of the home page.

Once you click the link,it popsup a window asking whether to turn on AskEraser or not.Once you turn it ”On”,  it will remain “On” for all its services like Images, News, Blogs, Video, and Maps & Directions.

Read more about AskEraser here.

Gmail has come up with cool colored labels.I think most of you might have noticed this.When you move the mouse over the labels,a small downarrow appears which on clicking shows you a small color pallette.Choose any color.

You can even remove the color and rename the labels.

It also lets you to remove a label from a mail you are viewing by clicking on the label’s X button.

Yet another interesting news is you can chat with your AOL IM buddies with the Gmail Interface itself. 

My All Time Favorite Google will never stop updating its products :) .Here is something interesting for you from Google.Hope professional Gmail Chatters might have guessed already .

For others,here is the tiding.Google has come up with two important features in Gmail for us to chat more handily.One is the most expected colorful “Emoticons” and the other is “Group Chat“.

To start the Group chat,Just click on the “Options” in the Chat window and select “Group chat” to invite persons to join your chat room.Add the persons’s name and click “invite”.

Next one,is the smiley face next to “Pop-out”.Just click on that to choose different smileys.If you still wanna be away from these colorful smileys and want to stick to the old one, Google isn’t letting you down.The old one is also available as the default smiley.

Note: These interesting features will work only with the latest version of Gmail.

If you still have any doubt regarding emoticons, hit this.Or hit this to know more about Group chat.

You all are aware that Yahoo! Messenger users can chat with MSN Messenger users without having changing the clients.Likewise Google has made VOIP possible between GoogleTalk,Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger for free.

Open Google Talk and add service@gtalk2voip.com as your Gtalk friend and then send the following message to your friend who is on MSN or Yahoo!.

msn:friendID@hotmail.com
yahoo:friendID@yahoo.com

For Voice chat,follow the same by sending the following message.

CALL yahoo:friendID@yahoo.com
CALL msn:friendID@hotmail.com

I have just added service@gtalk2voip in my Google Talk.Will try it later and let you know how it works.

Read this to know more.

I have been using Fiddler for past few days.Fiddler is a very useful development tool to understand the behaviour of the page by allowing you to inspect all HTTP traffic between your computer and the internet.That is,it will list you the files that are used to generate the page.It is nothing but a HTTP Debugging Proxy.

Download fiddler from here and install(Ensure that you have .Net Framework 1.1[atleast] installed).Open Fiddler(you can see it in the toolbar)

 and Run the Page.It will log all HTTP traffic between your computer and the internet.The Request Builder Tab allows for custom Http request to be created and submitted.

How to use Fiddler with firefox?

Once you install fiddler in your system,some script files will be added.Those script files will be inside “My Documents”(\My Documents\Fiddler2\Scripts\).In that you will find BrowserPAC.js file.

Open Firefox.Goto

Tools —> Options  —>  Advanced  —>  Network Tab

Click “Settings”.Select the option “Automatic proxy configuration URL“.Then type the location of the “BrowserPAC.js” file. It should be like “C:/Docs&Setting/[system name]/My Documents/Fiddler/Scripts/BrowserPAC.js” Click “OK”.Now Fiddler can be used with Firefox also.

There are many other features but I have very less knowledge in that.I’ll update this blog once I get an idea of other features.

Looking for a tool which lets you to get more information on anything which you read on any web site?Similpedia is specifically designed to give you the results on Wikipedia.

Just enter the URL of the site(of the format http://….) or a paragraph of text of at least 100 words.Similpedia will find related content on Wikipedia.But it is limited to the content that is been provided on Wikipedia.

There is also a Similpedia bookmarklet for Firefox, letting you find related content for any web page you’re visiting.You can also include the Similpedia Website Tool or WordPress Widget on your site. It will automatically analyze the content of your page and find related content.

You can also install the Add-on on your Firefox browser and select any paragraph,right click and select Find Similar.

Have more that 2 email accounts and got tired of logging onto all accounts everyday?Fuser is there to help you out to check all your emails in one place.

Fuser is a free service that lets you to manage all emails and social networking from one website.Fuser supports are AIM, AOL,POP3, Comcast, IMAP, Gmail, Hotmail (MSN and Windows Live), Netscape, Outlook, Yahoo and SquirrelMail.
Inspite of viewing messages from all of your accounts together, you can also reply to them as with a normal webmail client.
Fuser will also organize your messages according to their original account, making searching for the right message easier. You can create your own folders for additional organization preferences, and filter your message content by subject and date.
Fuser can’t be used as an email backup system as it does not store your emails. Once you delete a message from one email client, this action will be reflected in your Fuser account as well.

It supports two social netwroking sites MySpace and Facebook messages as well.I don’t have Facebook and MySpace account.So i dint try.
Just register and add your email account details or social networking account details to Fuser.

Wanna add voice to your blog instead of just writing,adding images and links???Use Sketchcast – a special tool for bloggers.

Sketchcast is an awesome tool for bloggers which gives you a new way to communicate something online by recording a sketch.Simply login to the site,click the “Start recording draft” button and start a new sketch by drawing on the screen,with an option to add voice recording.After finishing,stop recording.

Sketchcast will automatically produce a URL which you can send to others or you can publish the sketch by placing it on your blogs or websites.You can use sketchcast for a creating a tutorial, demonstrating something, or just for fun.

Sketchcast also gives you your own channel where you can store your sketches so other people can view them or it can also be subscribed in iTunes or to your RSS feed.

The site is already available in nine languages including Arabic,English, Spanish,French,Italian,Chinese, Japanese,Dutch and Portuguese.

This is the quick and easiest way of explaining something by drawing while blogging.This is really a cool tool for tech-savvy bloggers.Just have a look at my sketch.(it may look stupid! )

I came across an interesting tool, TouchGraph – a Java based application, which shows you the connectivity between the related websites graphically.It is somewhat similar to VisuWords.But this gets data from Google Database and renders an interactive graph.

First make sure you have the latest version of Java.Then simply type a keyword and click ‘Graph it!‘.Each URL is represented by an icon which surrounds a big circle.Each circle represents a website.The icons around the circle are the websites related to the main circle.Click on any of the circles and you can expand them to see what is in turn linking to them.
On hover over one of the icons brings up a small box with the name and URL of the site.Clicking on that box will make it the center of the graph and force more links to form from that point.Choose the options,whether you need just the title of the website or the URL.

TouchGraph also offers Amazon browser to explore related books or albums and a Facebook browsers which lets you see how your friends are connected.

The idea is really cool but you can use it only to enjoy your spare time.

CSSFly is a Web2.0 tool lets you edit CSS and HTML code live in your browser.This lets you open a frameset with the site in a frame and the site’s markup in the other frame, allowing you to edit.You can also choose of how and where the frames open, i.e. markup on the top,right, bottom or left.

For every change in the HTML or CSS Code, the display-container will be refreshed.
Add the CSSFly bookmarklet to your browser and edit the CSS.

The difference between CSSFly and other developer toolbars is, CssFly is not a browser add-on.You can use it within any browser.

While reading a blog or any website,you may come across some unknown terms.To explore deeper about the terms you will go through Wikipedia or if it is related to pictures,you will visit Flickr or any photo-sharing site. And if the term is not in your native language, you’ll probably use Google Translator.This is also a better way to inquire into.But,most of the time,you will feel lazy to do so.

To save your time,HyperWords allows you do all this in your current webpage itself, without visiting any other site.With HyperWords, you can select any plain text on the web page and choose anything from the context menu.For pictures,choose Google images or Flickr and it will show you the best matching picture in the menu itself. Follow the same for Wikipedia entries too.

The next best thing is about translation.Select a text and choose the language.HyperWord will do inline translation.The actual text on the webpage will be replaced with the translate version.It’s pretty fast.See the sample below.The text is being translated from English to Portuguese.(This is the first line of my previous post)

It will not work in IE or Opera. So,Firefox users,click here to download.