Tab Notifier is one of the solution to this problem. Tab Notifier is an add-on for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers and it displays notifications on the desktop if the title of the tab being monitored changes. For example, If I have Facebook opened, Facebook displays the no. of notifications in the title of the page. So if you have Tab Notifier installer, you will get a desktop notification with each new update of Facebook. The same goes for the case with all other websites. Tab Notifier is a good solution but it has a few limitations. It can’t detect any changes in the website in question if the title doesn’t change and remains the same upon each update to the website. It also can not detect any changes while the browser is not open or even the website tab is not opened.

Download Tab Notifier add-on for Firefox

Download Tab Notifier extension for Google Chrome (Please note that this link is of the author’s website where you can download Tab Notifier for Google Chrome. I couldn’t find Tab Notifier in Google’s app store.)

If you don’t like Tab Notifier, there is another add-on – Update Scanner which can check for updates on selected sites after a specified interval of time. All the notifications will be given within Firefox so you will need to have Firefox opened although you don’t need to keep the website tab opened all the time. The changes to the pages will be highlighted automatically. Although Update Scanner is available on the latest version of Firefox i.e, Firefox 10, I wasn’t able to install it on Firefox 11 beta.

Download Update Scanner Firefox Add-on

After installing Update Scanner, press Alt-U and the update scanner sidebar will open. You can add sites to be monitored from there.

If you still choose the email to be the best method of getting yourself notified, there is another solution that you can choose. You can use the services which let you send the feed updates to your email. I am listing a few RSS feed to email services:

FeedMyInbox ( I personally use this)

Feed2Mail

reblinks.therssweblog.com

RSS Fwd

Blog Alert

All these services require RSS feeds to be enabled on the sites to be monitored. If you want to follow a site which does not have RSS feeds enabled, you can use these services:

Change Detection

Change Detect (Registration required)

I hope this information will be helpful for everyone and will make us better and more productive. What is your favorite method of staying up-to-date?

Image credit: Secure Website : WWW by BigStockPhoto

In addition to being all web-based, uploading is drag and drop making it that much easier. Below, is how to upload, what browsers Hopper works with and how the search feature works. Take a look-see and let us know what you think in the comments.

Getting started with Hopper

The signup is one of the simplest of any app I have signed up for. It only asks for an email address and a password. That’s it… no, really, that’s is.

Uploading files to Hopper

When you are logged in, you are ready to start uploading. There is a square on the screen. If you are using Chrome or Firefox, drag the file you’d like to upload into this square.

Searching for a file on Hopper

There is a text bar at the top of the page. When you enter part of the file name, the date of the upload or file type a list of matching files will pull up. As you are typing, the files start to filter out all of the possibilities.

Downloading Files from Hopper

Downloading a file is almost as simple as uploading one. To the left of the file names, there is a spot where you click to download. In the screen grab, you can also see the short URL if you want to share the file with someone else. When they click on the link, the file is downloaded to their machine.

When you click on a text file, Hopper has a built in text reader so the file is opened and readable right on the screen. You can’t edit the document in Hopper, you need to download it then upload it again.

How Hopper different than the other cloud storage option

I think Hopper sets itself apart from the rest with its simplicity. They didn’t try to add in a lot of features. Hopper is simple to upload and simple to search for your files.

Easy sharing of files via a short link is great for anytime you need to send a file to anyone. Copy the link and send it how ever works best for you. Other services offer this too, but with some cloud storage web-apps, it is more difficult to share files this way. They want the person receiving the file to be a user too.

Conclusion

I found Hopper to work better in Firefox than with Chrome. I didn’t see any extensions that would interfere, but for some reason in Chrome, the short links didn’t show up. Other than that one thing, Hopper worked great for me. I like how easy it is to upload and share files with other people. This is a feature I use a lot with Dropbox from my android, but seems to be lacking from the web version of Dropbox.

What cloud storage service do you use and why?

1. Search

This simple tool allows you to search Google’s image database safely and easily as thumbnails or full size images, with download ready links so you don’t have to open the source site to retrieve it.  Just right click on the image for easy storing and saving. The simple and clear layout of the images displayed, enables you to pick the perfect image for your needs.

2. Settings

For those of us that guard our eyes and the eyes of the young ones around us, the tool bar allows you to browse images in “Safe Mode” to avoid any inappropriate pictures from being displayed.

You can also customize the size the images are displayed, by selecting from Large, Medium, or Icon.

The last setting in the toolbar allows you to decide if the URL of the image should be displayed.  Even if you decide to display it, you don’t have to open it to retrieve the image but It’s an option if you wanted to view the source site.

3. Viewing

As you see above, you can view the images in several different sizes but you can also view full size pictures in a slide show mode. To do this, click on the image you would like to see in full size and either use your arrow keys to see the rest of the images or click the “Next” button.

Of course, there are a few image galleries like Flickr and Photbucket  that are gaining in popularity, but you need to sign up for an account and sign in every time you want to search the database. Again, wasted time. If you need something quick, easy and safe to use on a daily basis, Google Image Ripper is a great option. If you like Google Image Ripper but don’t have good luck with it due to your Internet speed, a Firefox plugin called Greasemonkey provides more of an image selection and faster download times for Google Image Ripper.

Which image gallery is your favorite?

The short explanation of the Facebook Cover Art is this: when you are out someplace and you take a really great picture, you can create a new Cover picture and upload it right to your Facebook Timeline. Below is the specifics of how it works.

Using Facebook Cover Art for Android

When you open the application, you will be prompted to grant access to your Facebook account. This is important to do because if you don’t grant access, you can’t upload the new Cover art.

Once you have granted access, you are ready to get to making your first Cover picture. To start, you will want to find a picture you have taken. There are a few places you can look for a picture. You can choose from images on your phone, in your Facebook news feed or pictures you have already uploaded in your Facebook albums. These choices are listed across the top of the application’s main screen.

When you have found a picture on your phone that you want to use, press Use Photo in the bottom right of that screen. You will be asked to choose what you want to do with the picture: use it as a profile picture, as cover art or seamless mode.

Using pinch to zoom, you will need to resize and move the picture so it fills the area and looks the way you’d like it to.

When you have the picture the way you want it to be, you will have a preview of how it should look. If all is well, then click on Upload and Share. You should see a popup telling you to head over to m.Facebook.com and select the new picture as your new Cover art.

Other options for Cover art

There is a bunch of pre-made Cover art packaged into Facebook Cover Art for Android. If you don’t have any interesting pictures to use, try one of these.

What works well and what didn’t

The process was pretty easy to figure out and complete but there were a couple things I couldn’t get to work. These issues may have been related to my device specifically so do not let these hinder you from trying out Facebook Cover Art for Android.

When choosing pictures from my device, there were a few pictures that didn’t want to work. I believe they were pictures from a home screen wallpaper application I previously used. The other problem I had was, the end result of the Cover I created was not 100% the same as the end result. It took a little playing around to get the picture in the preview (before uploading) to be centered and look the same as the end result on Facebook.

Conclusion

I really like this application. It makes using your pictures for a Cover really easy. For people who are on the go more than at a computer, this is a great way to change up your profile on the fly.

Share your tips for using Facebook while mobile in the comments below.

2. Extract the zip file. Open the backup.php with a text editor and edit your database and Dropbox credential.

Optionally, you can create a backup folder in your Dropbox and insert the name of the folder to the backup.php. Your database will then be backed up to this folder.

3. Save and close the file. Upload the whole backup folder to your server. Note the uploaded location relative to the server root.

4. If you are using cPanel for your web hosting, log into it and go to the cron job section.

5. Create a new cron job. You can set the time and frequency to backup the database. Under the command field, copy and paste the following command:

/usr/bin/php -q /path-to-backup-folder/backup/backup.php

Change the “path-to-backup-folder” to the location (relative to the server root) where you upload the backup folder.

6. Save the cron job.

That’s it. Now, your server will backup your database and upload it to your Dropbox account.

Note: This is a generic method for backing up any database on a Linux server. However, if you are using WordPress, there are plugins that you can use to back up your database to Dropbox. One thing to note: if you have a big database, using the plugin to backup your database will use a lot of system resources and and might slow down (or even crash) your WordPress site if your server is not up to par.

Image credit: Backup word on white keyboard by Big Stock Photo.

1. Create An Account

• If you are new to YouTube, you can set up an account in a flash using your Google credentials. If you don’t have a Google account, then create one and return to the YouTube sign in page.
• Once you have an account, a channel will automatically be created for you. To begin adding video, click the “Upload” button in the top right corner. The video will be added to your channel. To view your channel, click on your username at the top of the screen.

2. Link Your Accounts

• On the left side of the screen, under the “Subscriptions” tab, you will see “Social”. This is where you will begin the steps to link your social media accounts to your YouTube channel.

• In order to start sharing your content and viewing your contact’s video feed, begin by connecting your social media accounts. Connect your Google+, Facebook, Twitter and Orkut accounts by clicking “Connect” next to any you want to share content to. It will prompt you to sign into those accounts during the setup process, but not again after it is linked. If you ever want to unlink an account, simply click “Disconnect.”

• Once you are connected to your social media accounts, the feed on your YouTube channel will auto-populate all the video’s that your friends and social media contacts have been watching.  You can get a better feel for your subscribers interests by clicking their name. Doing this will bring you to the social media account from the social network the content was shared on. This method is fine for specific viewing but not the best way to see who your audience is. A better way to build better content and gauge demographics and interests, is by using YouTube Analytics.

Linking your social media accounts will save you time, by seamlessly updating all linked accounts whenever you upload or favorite new content. This method will increase the exposure your content receives, increasing your chances of creating viral material.  Whatever method you choose to promote your business, make sure that all of your social media accounts represent a cohesive view of your business.

Setup

Dropbox Automator has a simple interface which allows you to set rules to be applied to files that you place in your Dropbox folder. To begin with, however, you need to grant the software access to your Dropbox account. Considering the large number of security breaches that have taken place in 2011, I was a little wary about providing access. My solution was simply to create a new Dropbox account for testing this neat little app.

Use

After granting the app access to your Dropbox account, using it couldn’t be more straightforward. You assign a folder for the set of rules you wish to apply, and then assign the rules for that folder. You can stack rules too, so that it will, for example, convert and e-mail a file.

One thing to be careful of is not to create two rulesets for the same folder that act on the same filetypes. If you do this, you risk creating a never-ending loop. I found this out last night when I did just that and ended up with over 400 e-mails in my inbox for the same two files! What should have happened is that once one ruleset was completed, it was supposed to move the two files to a subdirectory called “processed”. I have a feeling, however, that these files were locked by the other automation process and as a result could not be moved.

Round-up

These shortcomings aside, Dropbox Automator is a powerful tool that has the potential to save you a large amount of time and make your life easier. For example, I do some of my invoicing in Microsoft Word, for customisation purposes. When I have finalised an invoice, I can put it in the Dropbox Automator folder and it will get converted to PDF and emailed to my inbox so all I need to do is forward the attachment on to the end client. This saves me selecting “save to PDF”, and browsing to the attached file in my web browser, and waiting for the file to upload. It’s not a huge amount of time, but if you group all the times I’ve done that together, it probably adds up to a lot.

Conclusion

In conclusion, if you have any use for such automation features, I recommend giving it a try. Please post feedback below if you do.

Dropbox Automator

The following five websites help developers and designers to validate websites and check the website code for any sort of error.

1. W3C Markup Validation Service

The W3C Markup Validation Service allows users to validate their websites by either providing a link to the HTML, XHTML, SMIL, and MathML file or by either uploading one in the same format, as mentioned before.

If you just need to check a specific part of code, you may manually punch in the code in the “Direct Input” tab to validate it.

There are various options available such as the Character Encoding option, showing source, showing outline or cleaning up markup by HTML-Tidy that you can choose before clicking “Check” to validate the code.

W3C Markup Validation Service

2. FAE

FAE, short for Functional Accessibility Evaluator, is a clean, easy to use website that allows users to validate the websites and get a rating of many different factors such as – Navigation & Orientation, Text Equivalents, Scripting, Styling and HTML Standards.

The website also breaks down the HTML Standards into smaller subtopics such as Titles, Sub-headings, Navigation Bars, etc and gives you a rating. Any sort of bug/error adds to the rating under the “Warm” or “Fail” heading.

FAE

3. Browser Shots

The Browser Shot is a nifty little website that allows web developers, and designers to check how their website looks on different browsers on various operating systems. This is something that every web developers need to do, but do not have the means to do it.

Using the service is easy. All you have to do is type in the URL of the website you want to check and tick the browsers that you want to see. Click “Submit” and you will see the a screenshot of the website for each browser.

Browser Shots

4. Pingdom Tools

Pingdom Tools is an online website that allows web designers and developers to test the load time of a page, the DNS health for the server on which the website is being run on, and also the speed at which a website connects to the server (ping rate).

To test any of the following items, just visit the website, enter the URL link of the website in the URL-link box, and click “Test Now”.

The website will automatically do the processing and display to you the required details you have asked for – Page load time, DNS Health or Ping Rate.

Pingdom Tools

5. W3C Link Checker

The W3C Link Checker is just like the W3C Markup Validation website; except that it is more widely used.

The W3C Link Checker allows developers to find any sort of issues in links, anchors, and referenced objects in a web page, CSS Style Sheet.

To check for any errors, just provide the W3C Link Checker website with the link to your HTML or CSS style sheet file and click “Check”. It will then automatically do the required proof-reading of the document and display any errors in the document to you (if any).

W3C Link Checker

If you are a web developer then you should try out, and use these websites as they not only make your work more “bug” free but also improves the whole site browsing experience for the users.

Image credit: ollesvensson

Some may see this as adding clutter, others may see it as way to add more personalization. Others yet will see it as another reason to make Facebook their main social hub. Whatever the reason, here is how to add Apps to your Facebook Timeline.

What Timeline apps are available?

For starters, there are about 80 apps at the time of this writing. You can check them out at the about apps page. Many of these you may already be using, either on your smart phone or a web app. Some examples of available apps are UrbanSpoon, Pinterest, TripAdvisor and Rhapsody.

How to add an app to your Timeline

You may already have some apps posting to your timeline. To see if you do, you can follow these steps:

At the top right corner of your Facebook admin page (the page where you can see the feed with all of your friend’s updates), click on the tiny arrow. Now Select Account Settings.

Select the Apps tab from the left sidebar.

These are the apps you have already granted access to post on your Timeline. This is also a good time to clear out any apps you do not want to have access to your Facebook account.

Add new apps to your Timeline

To add new apps, you can go to this page and click on services you already use or would like to use. When you click on the links you will be taken to that site and asked to sign in with your Facebook credentials.

Then you will be asked to grant access to post to your Timeline.

That’s about all there is to it. From that point on, when you use an app like Snooth, it will post to your timeline what wine you are tasting.

Timeline app settings

You can adjust the settings of the applications. If you don’t want the applications posting things on your Public Timeline, you can make the adjustments or even eliminate the app from posting to your Timeline. Here’s how:

In the apps tab, the one where you can see all of the applications you have granted access to, you can click on the application you want to limit. In this tab, you will see an drop down box to set the privacy limitations.

If you look just above the privacy drop down, you will see the option to remove the ability for the application to post to your Timeline.

Conclusion

There are certain things I would want on my Timeline. There are times when it is fun to go back and see what you were saying and interested in a year ago. There are also applications I would not want every single activity or song posted and etched into Facebook history.

Overall, I like how easy it is to add an application and how easy it is to limit who sees the updates from these 3rd party applications. Just remember to go back every so often and clean out unused applications.

Do you like the idea of applications posting to your Timeline or do you think it will cause clutter?

1. Content Filter

This filter allows you to search specific videos or all results that contain a specific keyword. Select the video you want to see analytics for, and the data will change the charts to display just that item’s data.

2. Geography

In this tab, you will see a break down by state, country or region. Viewing this kind of data isn’t just good for targeting your audience, it can be really cool to see that people all over the world are watching and sharing your content.

3.Date Range

As the title suggests, this tab controls the period of time you want data from. It’s always good to do week to week and month to month comparisons to make sure your channel viewers are interested and engaged in sharing your content.

Note: If you want to return to the full channel view, simply click the x in each category box.

View Reports

After you have uploaded your video, you should be tracking the number of views it gets each week, as well as the source it was viewed from. Your content may have a million views, but without knowing your audience, it will be difficult to know if you are communicating your message effectively.  The Views Report tab will give you an overview of channel views. You can dig even deeper to target the exact audience for your content by using these additional reports:

1. Demographics Report

Here you will see the age, gender, geographical location of viewers as well as the playback location which, shows you where people are watching your videos online. Use this data to create follow up content that will attract higher view counts.

2. Traffic Sources Report

This is definitely a report you will want to track weekly. With insight into where views originated, you can determine if video’s are gaining exposure directly from your YouTube channel or if it has been embedded on a blog or social media site.

3. Audience Retention Report

To improve your audience retention rate, keep content length at approximately 2-3 minutes. Create interesting content that will grab the viewers attention from the start, and keep them focused and interested through the remainder of the video. The Audience retention Report will show you how much of a particular video people tend to watch. This will be vital information as you create follow up content.

4. Engagement Reporting

The Engagement Report is broken down into five sections: subscribers, likes and dislikes, favorites, comments and sharing. Each category adds valuable information to your reporting and should be considered for production of future content. Here I will go into the two most important categories:

5. Subscriber Report

Having and increasing subscribers is important, but learning what brought them to your channel to begin with is more important. With the Subscriber Report, you will be able to see a list of subscribers and what video actually drove them to become subscribers. Again, this data will help you create like content to keep bringing viewers back.

6. Sharing Report

Knowing where your content is shared most, and what social channels are pushing your content, will indicate where you need to create a presence. The sharing tab will help you narrow that down by showing you how many times a video has been shared and the service it has been shared through

7. Data Reporting

You will likely be tracking all the data you have collected about your channels and videos on a spreadsheet. Every report tab in YouTube Analytics has a “Download Report” tab in the top right corner of the screen. It will download your report into a CSV file to open and use in Excel or Google Spreadsheets.

If you are thinking about monetizing videos using Google AdSense, the reports will show which videos are monetizable, and what your total estimated earnings would be if you chose to monetize them. With this type of comprehensive analysis, you will increase your channel traffic and continue to build bigger and better content if you use the reports to your advantage.

There are so many ways to use this data. Let me know what part of the YouTube Analytics you would you like to see more in depth!

There are a plethora of file storage and file sharing services available on the web. Many of them are free for a limited amount of space (often around 2 to 5 GB). For a lot of people, this type of service is sufficient, but if you want your own file storage system, need a lot more space, do not want to pay a third party service, and already have your own web hosting account for your website, ownCloud is a free and open source option you should definitely consider.

Installation

ownCloud is a simple PHP web application that will work on most Linux and Unix servers. A typical installation server will have Apache HTTP Server and MySQL or SQLite (if you do not want to use a database server). If you are running your own dedicated server or VPS, your Linux distribution may already have the ownCloud packages in its default repository. For example, to install on an Ubuntu server, simple type:

sudo apt-get install owncloud

It will automatically install dependencies, such as Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Once the installation is complete, you can point your browser to http://yourdomain/owncloud and start the “First Run Wizard”.

To install ownCloud manually, do the following:

1. Go to owncloud.org and download the latest version
2. Extract the contents of the archive to your computer. If you have SSH access to your server, you can upload the archive first and extract with

   tar -xjvf owncloud-2.x.tar.bz2

3. Copy the extracted files to the directory of your choice within the web-accessible documents directory of your server (i.e. public_html, htdocs, etc.)
4. Set the permissions. If you have a shared hosting account, use FTP or SFTP to create a directory called “data” and set the permissions to “750″. Then, set the permissions of the “config” directory to “777″. If you have root access, you can use this command:

   chown -R www-data:www-data owncloud/

   Replace “www-data” with whatever the name of your Apache user is.

5. Point your browser to http://yourdomain/owncloud to complete the installation
6. Enter a username and password for your administrative account
7. If SQLite is detected, ownCloud will use it by default. Alternatively, you can enter your MySQL database information in the “Advanced” section.

Using ownCloud

The software for ownCloud was developed by some of the developers of KDE and is designed to work with free and open source operating systems, unlike some proprietary cloud storage services. You can use your web browser to upload and manage files, but you can also use WebDav to connect to your files directly from your desktop file manager.

In Dolphin, follow these steps:

1. Click the “Network” option in “Places” or go to “remote:/”
2. Click the “Add Network Folder” button
3. Keep the first option, WebFolder (webdav), selected and click Next
4. Give the connection a name and enter your ownCloud username
5. In the “Server” box, type your full domain name
6. In the “Folder” box, type the relative path to your owncloud installation (i.e. /owncloud/webdav/owncloud.php)
7. Check the box next to “Create an icon for this remote folder”
8. Click Save and Connect.

After entering your password, it should connect to your ownCloud folder. You can now drag and drop files just as you would with a folder on your computer. Moreover, KDE apps are all integrated and should be able to use the folder as well.

Cloud Freedom

ownCloud gives you the freedom to use the cloud on your terms however you want. You can access your files from anywhere, just as you would with a proprietary cloud service, but the files and software are yours. You will not have to worry about privacy or the safety of your data. For more information about ownCloud in general, visit the project’s website. For more detailed install instructions, including those for other operating systems and web servers, see this page.

1. TagCrowd

TagCrowd is a website that allows you to create a tag cloud from plain text, a link or even an uploaded plain text file with the words to mention in the tag cloud.

Using the service is really easy, just enter the words you want to visualize in a tag cloud fashion and configure the settings. Click “Visualize” to see your tag cloud.

If you want to find out the most searched words of a website, just enter the link of a website in the URL bar and you will be displayed the tag cloud for that website with the most visited/searched words bigger than others, and the least visited/searched the smallest.

TagCrowd

2. Wordle

Wordle is an online tool that allows users to create world clouds, or tag clouds in a more different fashion and layout.

As with TagCrowd, you can create a tag cloud based on plain text, a URL link or del.icio.us user name. Once you create the tag clouds, you can edit the layout, change the colors and even arrange the words in a different manner to bring creativity to your tag cloud and make it look more special.

Wordle

3. ToCloud

ToCloud is an online website that allows visual representation of some text as a bunch of words based on a weight associated to each word. Using ToCloud on a blog, news website will allow users to find about topics that are being discussed.

Just enter the link to the blog/news page to find the tag clouds for that website, or enter the text you want to visualize in the tag clouds. You can even enter some “Stop Words” to filter out words that you do not want visible in the tag cloud – these may include abusive words, junk, etc.

ToCloud

4. Tagul

Tagul is a website that allows you to create tag clouds in a creative way.

Unlike other websites, you need to first start an account on Tagul. Only then you can enter the words or choose a website for which the tag clouds need to be generated. Once the tag cloud is created, you can change the fonts of different words, change the color and even the position of the words to arrange them in a manner to form a symbol or anything you want (heart, horse, etc).

Tagul

5. Tagxedo

Tagxedo is another online website that allows for tag clouds to be created. However, unlike other websites, they allow you to create tag clouds from more than just URL links and plain text. Tagxedo is a website that even allows you create tag clouds from Twitter ID, Del.icio.us, and RSS (lookup).

You can choose the shape if you want to arrange the tag-cloud in one, or just choose the classic shape to arrange them in a normal way. You can further edit the tag-cloud later on if you want to.

Once done, you can save the tag cloud in an image format, a print format or for the web if you want to embed it on your website or blog.

Tagxedo

There you have it folks, these are some of the five websites on the internet that allows you to create a tag cloud from different things – text, URL, Twitter ID and much more.

Image credit: Big Stock Photo

1. Business Card Land

Business Card Lard is a simple and easy to use website that allows users to create free online business cards and download a PDF of the design, in high quality, to be printed later on – or just use for online purposes.

The designs found on the website are simple and plain, not too fancy. These cards are good for anyone who has a small – very small business.

Using the service is easy. Just pick the business card design you want from the design page, choose the size, enter the information you want to display on the card, choose the color and background and finally, make the PDF of your card.

Business Card Land

2. Business Card Star

Business Card Star is a website similar to Business Card Land (above). However, the designs found on the website are a little more creative and more than just your average simple, plain ones.

To make a business card, click the “Create Card” button and register for an account. Once the account is made, choose the design that you like. You will then be required to enter the required business information after which you can choose the color, the background, the image and even the text.

Once done move onto the next step to make the “back” of the card after which you can save the design and create a PDF for it.

Business Card Star

3. BizCard Creator

BizCard Creator is one of the simplest ways to create a business card online. Not only is it quick, but it is also free and has many card designs to choose from.

Just click the “Biz Card Creator” button, enter the required information for your card and move on to design the card according to your needs and requirements.

Once the card has been made, you can get it printed or saved on to your computer for later use if you want.

BizCard Creator

4. Degraeve

If you want to create a much more professional looking card, and not one of your simple, plain cards that lack any aesthetic design, you have to try Degraeve.

Degraeve is a website that allows people to create business cards for free and in seconds. Not only that, but the designs are simple and look very professional.

Just enter in the details of your card, choose the size and design it a little more to end up with a PDF that you can use to print your cards later on. It depends on where you get them printed from of course.

Degraeve

5. FreePDF Cards

This is another business card creating website, which resembles and works on the basis like Degraeve (mentioned above). If you want a professional, simple looking card, do try it.

Upload your business card information, the logo of your company (if you have one – make one if you don’t) and then move to design your card and finally download the PDF format file of your design which ensures that your card design is held in its finest quality and perfect size.

FreePDF Cards

6. Zazzle

Zazzle is a website that not only allows users to create their very own custom designed business cards, but also gives them the feature to get the cards printed and shipped to their doorsteps – all from Zazzle.

Another great feature on Zazzle is the fact that you can use your very own complete design to make the card – not bound by any default template, design or anything. The orders are shipped in 24 hours with a full color printing.

Zazzle

Conclusion

There you have it folks, these are just some of the websites that allow business cards to be created. These websites are best suited for small – medium businesses. In addition, if you have a creative designing agency or so, it would be much wiser to hire a professional artist/company to do the business cards, for as I said, “they represent your brand and make a brand identity”.

Image credit: Big Stock Photo

Over the past few years, I have amassed a great collection of ebooks, albeit in pdf format. I have recently got myself a tablet and found that reading pdf ebooks on the device is a tiring task. While some of the ebooks are formatted properly, others come with 2/3 columns layout and moving from one section to another is rather distracting. Converting these pdf ebooks to epub/mobi format becomes an necessary task.

1. Calibre

Calibre has always been my favorite ebook manager. Without a doubt, it is also the best tool for converting your ebooks from one format to another. Calibre is available for Windows, Mac and Linux and it supports a variety of file formats, ranging from pdf to epub, html, mobi, txt, rtf, zip etc.

To convert an ebook from pdf to epub/mobi, first add the book to your Calibre library. Next click the Convert Books (you can choose to convert individually or to batch convert all your books in the library). Change the output format to either epub or mobi. Edit the metadata and cover image. Lastly, click the OK button.

2. Zamzar

If you want a quick solution to convert your pdf files and is not keen to install any software, Zamzar is the one for you. Zamzar is an online conversion tool that allows you to convert files from one format to another. It supports a variety of files format, ranging from images (jpg, bmp, gif, png), videos (mp4, avi, 3pg, ogg) to ebooks (chm, mobi, epub, pdf), and many more formats.

The usage is easy.

1. Go to Zamzar.com.

2. Upload the pdf file that you want to convert.

3. Select the output format (.mobi in this case).

4. Enter your email address.

5. Click Convert.

The converted file (download link) will be sent to your email address.

3. Online Convert

Online Convert is another online conversion tool that you can use. What makes it different is that you can select the device that you are converting the ebook for so it can format the ebook accordingly. In addition, you can change the ebook title, author, add border to the pages and change the input encoding. Also, you don’t have to leave your email address (for those who are worry of receiving spam). Once the conversion is done, you can download it immediately.

Conclusion

As with all conversion, the final format will not be exactly the same as the original format. For some pdf files that are properly formatted, you shouldn’t have problems with the converted ePub/mobi format. However, for some pdf with complicated or badly formatted layout, you might experience some formatting issue in the converted format.

What other ways do you use to convert your pdf files?

Image credit: BigStockPhoto

The Basics

Under the Settings in your Twitter page, there is a Design Tab option where you can change the appearance of your Twitter profile. There are two main parts here: custom background and color scheme.

Sign into your Twitter account. Click on your username to get the drop down menu where you will begin. Select Settings, and then Design to view the options available in the Twitter Design tab.

To change the background, simply select “Change Background Image” and browse your files to upload a custom image. Alternatively, you can choose a design from the themes given.

Next, you may want to click on the “Change Design Colors” to change the color of the tweet background, text, links etc.

Customizing the Background

Changing the background is easy, but choosing a background with the right dimension is a challenge. Keep in mind that viewers of your profile may be using anything from mobile devices and tablets to large screen monitors, so the size and position of your logo on the background can determine whether your followers can see it or not.

The Twitter page is fully optimized for 1024px screen, so it would be foolish for us to use a 1024px width background as it will be completely covered by the Tweet section (and it will look awful on a large screen). An ideal size would be 1440px as that gives you extra space of 250px to include your logo and some messages. Of course, this also means that your followers need to be using a screen of 1440px and above to view your full background. You can also go with 1280px background, but you only have about 100px of space to play with.

If you only want to upload a small photo of yourself, do take into consideration that Twitter will align all your images to the left. If your photo is not the correct size, it will be truncated by the Tweets section. As can be seen in the screenshot below, I adjusted the image to 230 x 150 and uploaded it to my profile. Twitter aligned it to the upper left corner of the background. Remember to leave approximately 20 unused pixels at the top of the image to align with the timeline. You may think that the image is cut off but navigating to your profile will display how it will look to viewers.

Color Scheme

Next, you need to customize the text and background colors to match your background image. Click the “Change Design Colors” button. Open a color pallet and drag your mouse around until you find the shade that works with your background. If you’re using FireFox as your web browser, use the ColorZilla add on. It’s designed to read color from any pixel on the screen giving you a hex code that can be entered rather than trying to guess at a color. Be sure to change each tile so all the elements match your new design.

Customizing the color scheme will require some creativity, and that is not something we can teach here. Here are some resources that you can use to spark your creativity.

1. Themeleon

If you want to get your creativity on and have a profile page like nobody else, head over to Themeleon. It’s a free template design site that has over 600,000 design patterns to choose from. It’s endorsed by Twitter and linked directly to your Twitter page so it’s seamless. There are endless possibilities of design and customization in this site where you are sure to make your page far from standard!

2. Free Twitter Designer

This site has the same principal as the Twitter Design Themes with a few more trendy options. The custom images tab allows you to size the image from the control panel without having to go back and forth into an image editing software. The application is easy to use for any experience level.

3. Twitter Backgrounds.com

Choose from hundreds of unique backgrounds made by their in-house PhotoShop experts. The designs include everything from cool patterns to popular musicians and sports teams. One click upload makes it fast and easy to create a profile page that represents you.

4. Twitter Backgrounds Gallery

Here you will find a showcase of inspiration for any Twitter fan to express individuality. The collection is made up of selections and recommendations by other Twitter users. If you need inspiration for your profile, go see what cool things your fellow Tweeters are creating!

Image credit: IconPedia

Activating Facebook Timeline

You can activate your Timeline by heading here:

Activate Facebook Timeline

You will need to click on the link in the bottom left of the page.

Once you activate the Timeline, your page will refresh. You will need to click on your profile to see the major changes.

Where to start

You may want to take the tour. It will give you a good run-through on the newest features. You will get an idea of how to add new pictures like a Cover.

What is a Cover?

Think of a Cover like a background on Twitter or Myspace. The difference is, the Cover is the header for your page. Your profile picture will appear in the bottom left corner. There are some people who are already crafting some really creative Covers. Here are a couple sites you may want to look at to get you started.

• Facebook Profile Covers
• FB Cover Pix

Here is what a cover looks like pre-download.

Adding a Cover

Depending on if you are using a Cover from a site or your own picture, there may be different steps. In the end, you will just need to click on the Add a Cover link in the top right of your profile header.

You will just need to select a picture, either by uploading one from your computer or your already uploaded photo library.

Once you have the picture ready and selected, you will need to drag it into the correct location. If you are doing something a little more creative, this will make it a bit easier to make a fun Cover.

Using the Timeline

You have probably peeked at your profile page to see what the timeline looks like. It looks different, huh? Well you or your friends can skip through your past updates. Off to the right, you will see a little timeline. You can use this to skip through your Facebook past.

When you click on a month or year, you can see the highlights for that time.

You can also see all of the posts from your past by clicking the Highlights drop-down.

Promoting or hiding old posts

There are always pictures or things in your updates that you don’t want to relive or show off. If you want to hide these posts from the timeline, there is a pencil icon next to each post in your timeline. If you click it, you are given the option to hide it or even change the date.

If you would like to promote an update you are proud of, you can click the star. This will stretch the post across the full length of the timeline. If you click the star again, you will minimize again.

Privacy settings

There is an option in the privacy setting tab to limit what the public and friends of friends can see. You can change this if you are not comfortable with people Facebook stalking you.

Conclusion

Even though the cosmetics greatly changed with the addition of the timeline, the change also brings more usability and room for future improvements. I have to say I like looking back and see what kind of nonsense I posted in the past. Some of the past updates bring back some funny memories. I also thing I am going to have some fun with the Covers.

What do you think of the changes?

While Facebook is addictive, it can be annoying as well. Some of its feature like the news ticker, chat box etc. can be a great distraction and many important news are buried deep in the feed while junk message and spam keep finding their ways to your stream. Luckily, we don’t have to suffer in silence. Here are several browser extensions that you can use to tweak the behavior and theme of Facebook.

1. Social Fixer

Social Fixer is a is a free browser extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera (sorry, IE is not supported) that improves the Facebook site by eliminating annoyances and adding lots of great enhancements and functionality.

Once installed, Social Fixer will run you through a series of configuration options. You can get it to show a Post Action toolbar at the top of each news feed, a “Control Panel” at the top of the Facebook page, force the news feed to appear in chronological order and hide the “Top stories” entry.

You can sort the news feed into their own tabs, depending on the application that your friends use to update their Facebook status.

It even allows you to fix the chat behavior, by turning off the chat sidebar on the far right and restore the popup chat list, or if you prefer, hide the chat dock completely.

The best thing about Social Fixer is that you can change the theme of your Facebook page so it looks different from others.

Social Fixer

2. FB Purity

FB Purity is available for both Chrome and Firefox browser and it helps you remove application spam and clutter from your Facebook homepage.

Unlike Social Fixer that runs you through a tutorial to configure the options, FB Purity options window is hidden inside Facebook and you will likely miss it unless you make conscious effort to find it.

Once you have installed FB Purity, go to Facebook and click on the “FB Purity” link at the top of the page. This will open up the option window.

From here, you can select which application, messages, notification, stories, event etc. to appear in your news feed. You can also set the font size and create a list of filter to block spam messages from showing up.

In addition, you can hide any of the boxes on the right sidebar. Under the “More Application” section, you can select which boxes can show up in your screen.

If you are capable of whipping up CSS code, FB Purity also allows you to define your own CSS rules to determine the look and feel of your Facebook page. I would appreciate if the developer can provide a set of pre-defined CSS rules so we just need to modify the value rather than having to code from scratch.

FB Purity (Firefox extensions)
FB Purity (Chrome extensions)

3. FaceTweak

Facetweak is a Firefox only extension that have a rather different set of configuration options from Social Fixer and FBPurity. Once installed, you will be able to configure whether to auto-login to Facebook when you visit the site, to make the header fixed so that it doesn’t move when you scroll down the page, to enable bigger photos, better album, Google Calendar integration etc.

Under the Social tab, you can configure whether to auto confirm friends requests (which I strongly discourage you to do), add a reply button to comments, highlight friends birthday on your home page and many more.

Lastly, FaceTweak comes with a number of themes that you can apply to your Facebook page.

FaceTweak

Conclusion

While the above mentioned three extensions allow you to modify the layout and behavior of Facebook, their functionalities are quite different from each other. Personally, I prefer the FaceTweak extension because it comes with auto-login and the fixed header feature which I need it most. Since I am using Firefox most of the time, it doesn’t really bother me of a lack of Chrome extension. However, if you are a die-hard Chrome fan, you probably want to go with Social Fixer or FBPurity. Let us know which one is your favorite, or if you are using any other way to tweak Facebook.

We have discussed plenty of tricks to secure WordPress, and enabling SSL encryption for your login session is yet another useful way to secure your blog.

If you are not aware, while using SSL encryption, all your data are encrypted before they are transmitted over the web. The encrypted data format data format makes it very difficult to be read by the other users.

To enable the SSL Security to your WordPress blog, you will need to have a SSL Certificate (consult your web host if you don’t have one) and then you can follow the below procedure to make it work with your blog.

• At first, Open your site directory either using cPanel File Manager or the FTP. I would recommend to use the File Manager instead of FTP.
• Once you reach the files directory of your WordPress installation, open the wp-config.php file.
• This is the WordPress configuration files and it is the most important in the whole WordPress system. After the file is opened, add the below code and save the file. You can add the code anywhere in the file, there’s no certain place for it.

/* Enable SSL Encryption */
define(‘FORCE_SSL_LOGIN’, true);
define(‘FORCE_SSL_ADMIN’, true);

• From then on, your WordPress site Admin area will always load with the SSL Encryption. If your site domain is http://www.mydomain.com, it will load the admin area of the same with https://www.mydomain.com/wp-admin.

There are so many advantages of using the SSL for your site. The above process will force WordPress to use SSL encryption for the Administration area. It is not necessary to enable SSL encryption for the frontend (unless you are running a blog shop) since all the confidential information, like the Username and Passwords are used only in the Admin area, not anywhere else.

Image Credit: Reevoo.com

TagMyDoc is one web service that does exactly this. It embeds QR code onto your documents. During a keynote presentation, meeting, discussion or video conference, your friends/colleagues/co-workers can scan the QR code in the document and have the document downloaded to their devices instantly.

The usage is simple. You just have to visit TagMyDoc.com, upload a file and it return a QR code immediately. You don’t even have to sign up for an account to use it.

Download the file, open it and you will see the document tagged with a QR code.

If you decide to sign up for a TagMyDoc account, you will be able to track your documents and sort them into various folders. More importantly, you are able to choose the position where the QR code is embedded and add a password to protect the download.

The premium version ($2.99 per month) even allows you to tag a folder, upload multiple files at once and versioning system for your documents. If you have tons of documents that you need to share and handle every month, $2.99 is actually a great deal for all those conveniences.

At this moment, the service is still in beta and it is still lacking in features. Under the Downloads section, you can see that a plugin for Microsoft Words and PowerPoint is coming so you can tag the document directly within the Office suite. Mobile application for iOS, Android and Blackberry is on the way too.

One thing that I hope it can implement is the ability to sync the documents with my desktop (just like Dropbox) so I won’t have to upload the files/documents every time I make changes to it.

What do you think? Does embedding a QR code on your document works for you?

TagMyDoc

However, by clicking that box saying that you understand the Terms and Conditions, you are still just as bound to abiding by them if you read them or didn’t. This means the Terms and Conditions aren’t there to read as much as they are there to hold you to something you would be willing to do.

In this world of business that is conducted online, the people placing the Terms and Conditions on their website or software probably aren’t reading it either. Google shows over 20,000 Terms and Conditions generators out there to generate the wording and code to make it easier for business and websites to place it on their site or add it to their software package.

In lieu of being a speed-reader, the best way to know what you’re agreeing to before you click that box is to skim the text. There is so much information contained within this text it’s often laid out in outline form. It starts with roman numerals, and includes indents with capital letters, regular numbers, lowercase letters, etc.

Much of this is information you don’t need to read. Looking at the above sample, you know who the buyer is. It’s you. Why read the text explaining what it is? If you know what the word conspicuous means, there’s no reason to read most of the next five paragraphs. Simply skim it to make sure they aren’t applying a different meaning to it.

There are a few words you want to pay particular attention to while skimming, and perhaps read those areas a little more in depth. One of those words is liabilty. This pertains to how you will be held responsible for buying or using the software, app, or website. You want to be sure you know what you are agreeing to with this.

The other words you want to pay close attention to are “fees”, “compensation”, or anything else that translates into money going out. That’s always my fear when downloading software. I’m always afraid that while it says it’s free, I’ll be expected to pay after a certain time or when I use it a certain way. Be absolutely clear with this wording to be sure you don’t get stuck paying for something you don’t want to.

EULAlyzer

If you need even more understanding being following a few key terms, there is software out there that will help you understand the Terms and Conditions of software. EULAlyzer is a Windows-based software that will tell you how safe the software you are about to install is, and also helps analyze that Terms and Conditions agreement highlighting the key phrases that you should pay particular interest to.

By skimming and ignoring portions of text that either don’t pertain to you or are explanations of terms you already understand, and by knowing where to go for more help when you need it, you will be able to click that checkbox at the end with much more confidence. You can change hours of boring reading into minutes of skimming, skipping, and double-checking.