But today we would like to discuss about a small chrome extension which can help us in scheduling Google+ status updates and more.

Even though the major clients like Tweetdeck, HootSuite, Buffer app etc, are yet to provide Google+ sharing and scheduling features, there are few small players emerging out with their own application.

Do Share – Chrome Extention

Here we found a very good chrome extension called Do Share which allows users to write posts and schedule them for later to be published on Google Plus.

Below are some of the features of Do Share Extension:

1. Free Rich Text Editor

   

2. Save as drafts and edit later to post

   

3. Share with specific Circles

   

UI looks simple and better. It displays a drafted and scheduled updates right below the editor in a single page. But still it doesn’t support direct uploading of image or video.

Since Google Plus does not have a full API yet, user will have to leave Chrome open and logged in to Google Plus for this to work. This is a major drawback, but when these API’s are ready, we can see things better.

Download Do Share

Let us know if you have any other scheduling methods or tricks. Share your thoughts.

Google introduced theme development for Chrome browser as soon as it came out of beta version. And there were many developers who took time and created some amazing theme. But, did you find your favorite theme?

My Chrome Theme is a Chrome App created by the Google Chrome team to help you create your own theme. Believe it or not, within 2 easy steps you can design your theme. You can even share it with your friends!

Steps to create your own Chrome Theme

Before we start with tutorial, download and install the My Chrome Theme app.

Download

Click on new tab, navigate to apps menu in your browser. Now click on the app you just downloaded. Click on Start Making Theme button. Now follow the below 2 steps to get down with your theme!

Step 1: Background Image

Select an attractive image for your theme and upload it or use web cam to take one. The app will upload the image and show you a preview of how it will look.

Once the image is previewed, you will get an option to adjust the image. The options are,

• Fit to screen
• Fill Screen
• Tile Image
• Custom

At the bottom of this page, you have a slider with two options, Design Mode and Preview Mode. When you slide to the Preview Mode, it adds Chrome Web App icons to the theme and previews this custom theme in New Tab Page.

Once you are okay with the image uploaded and adjustment. Go to next step.

Step 2: Coloring Your Theme

In this step, you can change the color of the toolbar, new tab and background tab. You can set custom color for all these or click on “I’m feeling lucky” to let the app choose colors for you, based on the image you have uploaded.

You can skip this step to apply the default grey color.

Give a name to your theme and give a description if you want to (not mandatory). Click on Make my Theme! Button and you are done!

Here is a theme we just created.

Download

Don’t forget to share your new theme with your friends! If you know any other way of developing Chrome theme, please share it with us.

Google have finally come up with Google Drive, the Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive killer. This is a very good move by Google as it’s trying to integrate all their related products which processes files.

The only missing feature in Google Drive is, it allows sharing of photos and pics only to Google+ and Picasa. So it has to be more social to beat the other two giant cloud file storage services (Dropbox & SkyDrive).

As we already know YouTube provides a unique mobile upload ID to all its mobile verified user. Thus, using it, we can easily upload videos by sending as attachments to that ID. Here is how to send a video from the Google Drive as an attachment to the respective ID and, hence, uploading the video automatically.

Following are the steps to be followed to upload  YouTube videos using Google Drive:

Step 1: Go to YouTube Settings Overview Page

Step 2: Note down your unique mobile email upload ID

Step 3: Select the video from the Google Drive web folder

The file which I’ve chosen is of .flv format, YouTube also supports other formats, read here.

Step 4:  Enter the required details

Step 5: The video is uploaded to your account

Note: It takes some time to upload the video, but faster than the normal video uploading process on YouTube.

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Thanks for reading and do share it with your friends if you liked it and huge thanks to Ryan J for sharing this useful tip.

The new Google+ interface seems to be more promising and effective for marketers.  After more than 10 months of Google+ journey, they have undergone several changes and will increase their growth in the upcoming months.

If you’re a Pinterest lover, then you will love to have the Pinterest UI on your Google+ stream. Here’s a small trick to transform your Google+ stream into Pinterest Style UI.

Follow the steps below to get Pinterest style UI on Google+:

Step 1: Install Greasemonkey Script

Click here to navigate to the userscripts page and click “Install” button as shown below:

Step 2: Enjoy the Pinterest Style

Once the script is installed, you can refresh your Google+ stream and enjoy with the Pinterest UI

Click to Enlarge

Below is a small video tutorial by Ravi Misal, on how to install the script and get the Pinterest style UI.

Pinterest style UI for Google+ (VIDEO)

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So did you like this Pinterest UI for Google+ ?? Share it with your friends if you liked it

Pinterest is the hottest social network, where everyone is into curating the content. It is a visual collection of images and hence images are the main key players for Pinterest success.

Unlike Tineye, Google does allow us to search by images. Below is a small video which describes the “Google Search by Image”:

Google Search by Image (Video)

While we are browsing Pinterest, we see several pinned images which are either of small resolution or not from the right source. So today we are going to explore two ways to perform Google Image Search on any Pinterest Image:

1. Search By Image

Search By Image is the official chrome extension which allows us to search by images, by adding “Search Option” in the context menu of the image. To use this extension we need to right click the image and choose the “Search Option” as shown below:

Note: It also supports Firefox Browser with their latest Firefox addon

Download Chrome Extension | Download Firefox Addon

2. Pin Search

Pin Search is a chrome extension, which adds “Search” button at the top of each pin. When clicked on “Search” button, it performs Google Image Search on that Pin’s image.

Download Pin Search Chrome Extension

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Thanks for Reading and Happy Pinning

]]> http://tech18.com/187953-perform-google-image-search-pinterest-image.html/feed 1 http://tech18.com/187956-send-webpage-screenshot-pinterest-instantly.html http://tech18.com/187956-send-webpage-screenshot-pinterest-instantly.html#comments Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:17:18 +0000 Sunil Jain http://tech18.com/?p=7956 Pinterest is growing at a rapid pace  with almost 80% of Female users. It has become a very good competitor for Facebook, as most of the Retailers and Brands are pitching on it.

Pinterest allows to collect and curate content, rather than only sharing content. This virtual board is moreover for female users, but still men are using Pinterest it efficiently. Today we are going to know how can we take a webpage screenshot and send it directly to Pinterest.

Note: It works only on Chrome Browser as we’re using a chrome extension to achieve this trick.

Firstly install the ShotPin Chrome Extension by clicking here and follow the below steps to send the webpage screenshot to Pinterest instantly:

Step 1: Click the “ShotPin” button

Once you have installed the chrome extension, you’ll see a “Pin” icon next to the address bar as shown above.

Step 2: Select the area to capture

You can select the area to capture once you click the “Pin” icon next to the address bar.

Step 3: Pin it

After selecting the area to be captured, click on the “Pin” icon which is at the right bottom of the selected area. Once clicked it will take some time to process and opens the regular Pinterest Window.

Video Tutorial

Below is the video tutorial on how to use the ShotPin Chrome Extension:

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Alternative Method: Here’s an another way to send the webpage screenshot to Pinterest using url2pin → Read Here ( by @dangerdiabolick)

So how will you utilize the webpage screeshots in your Pinterest Boards??

Thanks for Reading

]]> http://tech18.com/187956-send-webpage-screenshot-pinterest-instantly.html/feed 1 http://tech18.com/187591-backup-browsers-data.html http://tech18.com/187591-backup-browsers-data.html#comments Fri, 02 Mar 2012 13:03:19 +0000 Vinay Gowda http://tech18.com/?p=7591

One of the problems all advanced browser is backing up data stored in it. Even though technology has grown, maintaining data has been a tedious task! However browsers like Chrome and Firefox have started making it possible through sync feature.

As a normal Internet Browser we do store lots of data in browser. It might be password, some form details and even bookmarking few websites! All these are meant to be for future reference. At some time, maintaining them is not so easy!

If you look at the latest Browser stats, IE is still holding a top user base. But it is still lacking sync feature which helps user in accessing personal data as and when needed. Other browsers like Opera, Safari, Rockmelt and other web browsers do not offer this functionality at the moment, and a third-party application is necessary for this sort of operation.

FavBackup : Browser Data Backup and Restore Tool!

After looking at all these issues, we found FavBackup is a right tool for many users. This as a application offers backup options for a wide range of browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari and Flock.

There is another important feature that is it can convert the Opera profile from XP to Vista or Windows 7 and vice versa. It can also convert the Opera profile from 32 bit to 64 bit and vice versa.

It is useful not only for backing up but also restoring the previously backed up profile data and settings. The backup is also not partial; it can be done in full.

FavBackup is simple and free software which can run on Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000 systems. Shockingly no installation required. Just click on the executable file and backup your data!

Backup options vary from browser to browser. These options are purely dependent on browser features.

Supported Browsers,

• Internet Explorer 6 and above
• Firefox 3 and above
• Opera 9 and above
• Safari 3 and above
• Google Chrome – all versions
• Flock 2 and above

Users can backup most of the personal data like preferences, history, cookies, sessions, bookmarks and more. Extensions and plug-ins are also included for some of them, just like the list of downloads or contacts (available for Chrome and Firefox).

Download FavBackup and make most out of it.

Download

Please share your thoughts on this tool. If you know and other tool, please do suggest. Thank you.

As a Webmaster, we always take down our sites for several reasons. It might be for maintenance, upgrades and many more. But from many years we are following the traditional way of showing the images of Under Construction and under maintenance.

But today we will guide you to take down your site for SOPA Blackout without losing the Google rankings and the indexed pages in the search engine.  Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Pierre Far, has put together a guide showing how to take down a site temporarily in the right way.

Suggestion : SOPA Blackout: How To Back Up Your Social Media Account Data

The most common scenario Google sees is: Webmasters implementing contents on all or some of their pages with an error message (“site offline”) or a protest message. The following points apply to this scenario (replacing the contents of your pages).

#1. 503 HTTP header for all the URL

< credit >

Webmasters should return a 503 HTTP header for all the URLs participating in the blackout (parts of a site or the whole site). This helps in two ways:

1. It tells Google it’s not the “real” content on the site and won’t be indexed.
2. Even if Google sees the same content (e.g. the “site offline” message) on all the URLs, it won’t cause duplicate content issues.

Google bot’s crawling rate will drop when it sees a spike in 503 headers. This is unavoidable but as long as the blackout is only a transient event, it shouldn’t cause any long-term problems. The crawl rate will recover fairly quickly to the pre-blackout rate.

Suggestions: You can use this simple WordPress Plugin which puts your blog for maintenance mode by sending 503 Errors to all the unauthenticated users.

For manually handling the downtime of your blog, have a read here.

#2. Two important notes about robots.txt

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1. As Googlebot is currently configured, it will halt all crawling of the site if the site’s robots.txt file returns a 503 status code for robots.txt. This crawling block will continue until Googlebot sees an acceptable status code for robots.txt fetches (currently 200 or 404). This is a built-in safety mechanism so that Googlebot doesn’t end up crawling content it’s usually blocked from reaching. So if you’re blacking out only a portion of the site, be sure the robots.txt file’s status code is not changed to a 503.
2. Some Webmasters may be tempted to change the robots.txt file to have a “Disallow: /” in an attempt to block crawling during the blackout. But this has a high chance of causing crawling issues for much longer than the few days expected for the crawl rate recovery. So we would suggest not to use “Disallow:/” for SOPA Blackout.

#3. Webmaster Tools

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Webmasters will notice these errors in Webmaster Tools: it will report that Google saw the blackout. Be sure to monitor the Crawl Errors section particularly closely for a couple of weeks after the blackout to ensure there aren’t any unexpected lingering issues.

#4. General advice

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Keep it simple and don’t change too many things, especially changes that take different times to take effect. Don’t change the DNS settings. As mentioned above, don’t change the robots.txt file content. Also, don’t alter the crawl rate setting in WMT. Keep as many settings constant as possible before, during, and after the blackout. This will minimize the chances of something odd happening.

These are the wise steps to be followed before you take down your site for any reason. Keep it simple. Keep a healthier relation between your site and Googlebot’s for better ranking.

Source

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Share this article with your friends and make them aware of these points. Hit comment section if you have got any question. Thank you.

]]> http://tech18.com/187478-google-guide-site-sopa-blackout.html/feed 2 http://tech18.com/187390-turn-off-google-personal-results.html http://tech18.com/187390-turn-off-google-personal-results.html#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 22:03:51 +0000 Vinay Gowda http://tech18.com/?p=7390

Google is aggressively moving by making changes to all of it’s products in terms of  User Interfaces and usages. We saw many updates from Google team these days. Recently, Google made a great move by combining Google+ posts within the search results and called it as Personal Results!

This update was very useful to many users as we get to know the most accurate search suggested by the Google+ users to whom we are connected. Yeah, we do trust our friends and their suggestion.

Google Search, Plus Your World!

Here is a video commercial of Search+.

There is a lot of talk about how it’s anticompetitive and a sign of Google abusing its legal monopoly in search to push Google+, but the reality is, “search+” as many have come to call it, just isn’t very good or useful in most instances.

Twitter slams Google!

Somewhere it irked a fellow of social media site Twitter. Lead lawyer @Twitter, Alex Macgillivray, called it a “bad day for the internet”, and suggested – as a former Google employee – that there would have been dissent internally “at search being warped this way”.

The company later followed it up with a statement, saying,

As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.

Steps to disable Personal Results

For all those who didn’t like “Personal Results” on Google search page, here is how you can turn them off permanently.

Step 1: On Google search page, head towards the search settings menu by clicking on the cogwheel in the top right corner of the screen and click on “search settings”.

Step 2: Scroll down until you see “Personal results” section and select “Do not use personal results.”

Step 3: Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on “Save Button”

You are done! Search+ is off by default now. You can still turn it on anytime by reverting back the above steps.

How many of you didn’t like the Personal Result or Search+ feature by Google? What is the reason? Share it via comments. Thank you!

Facebook is world’s top most used social networking site with almost 750+ million of users signed up. Facebook is well known for it’s simplicity in it’s UI which other social networking sites lacked.

Recently Facebook unveiled a new experimental feature called Timeline which is a replacement for older version of Facebook profile. Below is a small video introduction to Timeline:

Introduction to Timeline (Video)

Well there are few users who didn’t like this new Facebook’s Timeline feature as they are pretty much happy with the old interface and moreover the new interface is a privacy killer. Your Timeline will act as your Digital Journal which can be accessed by your friends in the form of a diary

Few months back,we had written an article on how to tackle the Facebook’s New Interface by removing the ticker which is still annoying to many users and today we are going to guide you on removing the Facebook’s Timeline feature and revert back to old interface, but just to let you know this hack works only in Firefox and Chrome Browser.

Note: This hack only removes the Timeline and reverts back to old profile interface within your browser, which means your friends will still have access to your Timeline.

Following are the 3 ways to remove the Facebook  Timeline in Chrome and Firefox browser.

#1. Remove Facebook Timeline using Firefox Addon

Step 1: Install User Agent Switcher.

Step 2: Restart Firefox browser and check whether User Agent Switcher icon is available on the navigation bar. If not then right click on navigation bar and customize by dragging and dropping the Add-on.

Step 3: Now click on switcher icon and select Internet Explorer 7 option. Refresh your profile page to get old Facebook profile back.

#2. Remove Facebook Timeline using Chrome switch

Step 1: Right click on Chrome browser launcher icon and select properties option.

Step 2: On properties window, navigate to Shortcut Tab.

• Windows Vista/7 users: Append –user-agent=”Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)” in Target Box as shown below.
• Windows XP users: Append –user-agent=”Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)” in Target box.

Step 3: Click Apply and OK. Open your Chrome browser and navigate to Facebook Profile page see the changes.

#3. Remove Facebook Timeline using Chrome Extension

Step 1: Install Timeline Remove extension

Step 2: Restart your browser and navigate to Facebook Profile page to see the changes.

Note: This Chrome extension is not working for many users. Please try your luck and let us know if its working fine with you.

Don’t go away yet! We have a question for you. Why do you hate Facebook timeline? Share your thoughts and share this article with your friends if you think it’s useful for them.