As you can see that despite the fact that Google+ has been introduced only recently, it already supports some innovative and strong features for which Facebook has no answer. One of most prominent is a feature called Google+ Circles that allow a strong control on managing your Friends in groups, and despite its powerful nature its easy to use. Another one Google+ Hangout that allows to do for example group chat with up to 10 people.

Of course, there are some aspects where Facebook still excels for example Facebook pages for businesses, Facebook games and Facebook questions as Google+ has no answer for any of these for now. But this is to be expected from an application that has been around for years. I am pretty sure with the passage of time Google+ will acquire these features and likely even more! Competition is always good in any market segment you know (at least for the users)!

Facebook vs Google+: Head to Head Feature Comparison [Infographic]

PocoDoc provide a number of optimization levels ranging from 2 to 18, with 18 being the lowest optimization (bigger file size) and 2 being the highest optimization (minimum file size). After performing the optimization PocoDoc also presents a comparison of the file size of the optimized and un-optimized versions of the document.

You can download the PocoDoc for Windows for free from here.

In fact, there is an online version of the application also available from here. Advantage is that you don’t need to download any software. Interface is similar to the free software download that is mentioned above.

How to Reduce/Optimize The Size of Your Microsoft Office & PDF Documents Using PocoDoc ?

This software I am referring to is called Free FLV Converter and as it’s name implies is available for free. It will allows to download streaming video files from most of the famous video sharing sites. It has a built-in search module that will allow to search and list all the related video files according to your search string. Number of search results can also be adjusted. By default search results are presented in detailed view mode and can be sorted on a number of parameters such as date added, no. of views, video name, duration etc. A thumbnail mode is also provided to have a visual clue of the video files. Some people may actually prefer the thumbnail mode. In any case a video can also be previewed by clicking on the Play button available on the left side. To download the desired files just checkmark them and press the Download button and all the selected video files be added to the download queue in the Turbo downloader tab(second tab).

A very nice thing about this software is that it will allows to set the output format for the downloaded files such as PSP, IPod, AVI so that the downloaded FLV files will be automatically converted to the desired format after downloading. If you don’t want to convert the downloaded files then select No Conversion from the Format drop-down. Other options can also be adjusted here such as output audio,video codec, screen size, aspect ratio etc.

This is a very convenient and useful software particularly if you want to download multiple files and then convert them to a suitable format at once such as to transfer to you IPod or PSP. However note that it is not as general purpose stream downloader as Grab++, for example it will not allow you download streaming audio files, flash files(swf), and rm files. But still for video files downloading from the supported sites it’s convenience can’t be beaten.

You can download Free FLV Converter form Koyote Soft.

Source: gHacks.net

Fastest Way to Download and Convert Multiple FLV Files from YouTube and other Video-Sharing Sites

But now it is going to have some competition from the open source world because Piwik has released a web analytics tool that supports many of the features of Google Analytics and because it is open-source these features can be customized to fit the specific needs of the niche of a particular website . Extensive support is provided for the third-party plug-ins to add new features. As with Google Analytics simple java-scripts are used to track the statistics with only one but important difference that this analytic tool will be running from your own server. Statistics can also be embedded in the user website and/or dashboard for easy monitoring.

A live demo is available here to give an idea of the looks and functionality. Interface looks pretty good for a starter. You can download the latest version(alpha) from the official website. Installation is pretty simple after you have uploaded it to the server. PHP 5.1 and a Mysql database is required for the proper functioning. They also have a Why is Piwik better than the competition? video so check it out as well.

I have also downloaded it today and will test it out on my local WordPress installation to see that how it fares as compared to Google Analytics.

An Open Source Alternative to Google Analytics is on the Rise

Now SendAlong an online web-service comes to rescue. It allows to send large attachments to any email account through their web interface so you don’t even need to login to your own email service such as GMail etc. You can also specify a custom message that will send in email that will provide some context to the attachment you are sending. In practice data is stored on their servers and the email is sent to recipient with your message and download links. You can also specify a password for the attachments (and send the password in the message so that recipient can open the attachments).

Process is pretty simple just take a look:

1. Just like a regular email enter email addresses to send the files to.

2. Choose the files to upload.

3. Click to send.

4. Enter a password to protect your message(optional).

There are a number of packages available but a basic package is provided for free that will suffice to send attachments of up to 100 MB in size. Free package also has a cap of 1GB upload in a single month. If your requirements exceed these limitations you can also signup for paid accounts. Most expensive Pro account will allow to send attachments of up to 2GB in size! I think it is a bit too much and for most people free account should suffice.

There are some other limitations as well for example the data retention period that in case of free account happens to be 3 days. As the data is actually stored on their servers it has a plus point as well, that is you do not need to worry that your attachments may fill-up the email box of your recipient.

Just try out this service now and see if it is convenient for you.

Send Large Attachments to ANY Email Address Easily

1. Understand

You will have a chance to read the story that how this don’t click experimentation project started,  some stats and how to stop yourself from mouse clicking the hard way (look at the above picture and you will get the idea!).

2. Learn

You will learn the Click History, Click Ergonomic and Commercial Clicks (the one’s that make you rich folks, understood).

3. Explore

This is the real meat as don’t click philosophy will be put to test in actual user interface. I particularly liked that how you can replace the button clicks with mouse gestures. There are three ways to simulate button clicks here.

1. By wiping your mouse form left to right or vice versa on the button.
2. By moving the mouse in a circular motion on the mouse, this one also avoids the accidental mouse clicks.
3. And by hovering your mouse over a button for a while.

4. Communicate

Here you will be able to express your idea about the project for example if you liked it or not. Credits to the people that were involved or helped in the project. You can also contact the developers of the DONTCLICK.IT project from here.

I don’t think we will see these kind of innovative and novel interfaces in main stream anytime soon but nevertheless it is good to try these concepts and who knows that someday we will see a mouse without any button at all!

So test drive this site now and find out that if you can get rid of good old clicking habit!

Please! DONTCLICK.IT

I actually discovered it when today morning I logged in to the MyBlogLog and the interface seemed a bit strange. I refreshed the page but it remained the same. After that when I visited the Techcrunch this was story on their front page. I am not really an active member of MyBlogLog community but new interface does seems very nice to me. So what do you think about the recent changes?

MyBlogLog Interface Changed with All New Activity Stream

• It has built-in multi-monitor support and you can set different options, such as if the same image will displayed on both the monitors or a different image for each one.
• Usual options such as the interval for the desktop wallpaper switching, image border and multi-monitor configuration can be set for every mode.
• For the Pictures mode it supports the creation of multiple sets.
• You can set the way pictures will be displayed on the desktop such as stretch, center, tile, scale and over-stretch.
• Also supports the advanced(composite) modes for the desktop background such as Mosaic, Montage or a Scrapbook of the pictures. This is supported for all the modes except the Pictures mode.
• Support for online photo services is pretty extensive for example when using Flickr you can:

- Select images from everybody, from a specific person, from a specific pool or from a specific time period etc.

- Multiple photo-sets can be chosen and the above mentioned options can be set for each of the photo sets.

- Set the option to choose the most interesting images only.

- Save all downloaded photos.

- Ignore photos with specific tags.

- You can display your private images (authorization required for Flickr and Picasa).

- Use the largest available image size.

• Can show a desktop calendar.
• Can be forced to use only the pictures that are in landscape mode.
• Display pictures greater than a specific resolution.
• Apply image effects to the images in real time such as grayscale, sepia etc.
• Can auto rotate the pictures based on the EXIF information.
• Stop switching pictures when a screen-saver is running.
• Only switch the background if the system is in idle mode.
• Stop switching backgrounds if a specific application is running.
• Run a specific program after switching the background.
• Import and export all the configuration settings from with in the program.
• An image browser is provided to view all the images downloaded and saved to show as the desktop background from the Flickr for example.
• And numerous other options that I will leave for you to explore!

A Powerful Desktop Background Switcher for Windows that Supports Flickr, Picasa & other Online Photo Sharing Services

Actually it works this way, that you will register on their site transfer some funds to the account to buy the votes and than wait for the magic to happen. On the other hand users can also register on the site with a valid Digg account and they will be paid 1$ for each Digg. This is the way their system works. They have a similar system setup for StumbleUpon in case you want your story to be Stumbled. You can also direct them to rapidly boost YouTube views of a posted video through the Diggs and Stumbles.

Of course this method of taking your story to the front page on the Digg is not going to be encouraged by the Digg and users that are casting votes under this scheme may get banned by Digg in case they found any smell of it. But it seems that Subvert and Profit do employ some tricks to protect their army of Diggers from being banned. Looks like a quick and great way to get popularity overnight but don’t forget to beef your hosting server and website to withstand the avalanche of traffic that will be coming your way!

Source: Connected Internet

How to Make to the Digg’s Front Page Guaranteed!

- Before PHP Speedy – 14 requests that took 4.44 seconds

- After PHP Speedy – 4 requests that took 1.1 seconds

In order to install PHP Speedy you should:

1. Download and unzip the PHP Speedy package into its own directory

2. Point your browser to the PHP Speedy directory

3. Follow the installation instructions

Author is also planing to release a WordPress plugin for the PHP Speedy. I am still not sure that if WP-Cache and CSS Compress plugins will work correctly with this one,as many of us WordPress bloggers are using them currently to improve the page loading times.I think I will personally wait for the WordPress plugin before I apply it to my website. But nevertheless people are already experiencing significant speed gains by using it for example Evertron at Connected Internet has experienced significant gains by using it on his own website.

Source: Connected Internet

Substantially Decrease the Page Loading Times for your Website using the Php Speedy