Best of BlogSolid

As promised, here are some great write ups from Blog Solid. Am providing the best article from each of the three categories there. Provided here are the introduction to the topics. Visit the provided link at its end to read the rest.

RSS - No frills guide

RSS is probably the most useful thing about the internet nowadays, yet articles explaining RSS tend to be lengthy and overcomplicated. Here’s my version:

What is an RSS feed?
An RSS feed is a list of the most recent entries on a blog. You get 2 kinds; a full feed listing entire articles and a partial feed listing only post titles or excerpts.

The benefits

• RSS saves time. You don’t have to keep going to the home pages of your favourite blogs to check if they have been updated. Just check your feeds. New items will appear at the top of the list, and by clicking a new link, you will go directly to that blog entry.

For the whole write up, visit this post.

5 Ideas for better blogging with Pictures

• “Alt text” is the additional text information for a picture and is a requirement for pictures online. Most blogging software or services allow you to write alt text for images when uploading or posting them. You can often see the alt text showing up while a picture is still busy loading. Alt text can be very useful, especially when it is clear, thorough and descriptive.
  HTML code for a picture called beach03.jpg would look something like this when alt text is added:
  <img src="beach03.jpg" alt="John playing volleyball on Sunset Beach - on johnsblog.com" />
  You may think it’s silly to add a text description to an image, since you don’t really see the text, just the image. Here are a few reasons why it is actually very important:

For the whole write up, visit this post.

Simple CSS blockquotes and Pullquotes

• When to use blockquotes
  A blockquote is used when quoting text from another source, usually another blog or website. Blockquotes are intended to accommodate a larger amount of text, so as a rule of thumb, use blockquotes when you are quoting more than one or two sentences. Don’t forget to link back to the source.
• When to use pullquotes
  Pullquotes are teasers intended to draw the attention of a viewer by giving a sneak preview of the content. They are quite common in magazines and newspapers and are usually short extracts from the article. Pullquotes are usually separated from the rest of the text by appearing in a bigger, or different font. They often contain surprising, interesting or important snippets, without giving too much away! A pullquote is a focal point on the page. Use them sparingly - more than one or two pullquotes per article, will defeat the purpose.

For the whole write up, visit this post.

Visit this pages and empower yourself with the Blog Gyan. Will keep you updated with the latest happenings. Have a great day.

BlogSolid : Solid blog resource

This morning I came across this awesome site named BlogSolid, and knew instantly what I was missing all these days. This one is like mecca for all blog enthusiasts, pro and novices alike.

For a start, the homepage itself takes my breath away. How many sites have you seen actually which are this sleek. The color combinations and old paper look is just awesome. And so are the articles. All the articles are divided into just 3 categories : -

• Solid Basic
• Solid Growth
• Solid Power

for beginner, accustomed and expert users respectively. This is in fact very user-friendly. You don't feel lost / overwhelmed in the midst of 'tag-cloud' that most 'Blog-Helper' kind of sites are sporting these days. U know pretty well where to look for something.

They've beautifully defined what blogging is all about -

A blog, or web-log, is a journal published on the Internet, containing regularly updated content. Articles, or “entries” as they are called, are archived according to the date on which they were published. Older blogs boast archives of impressive magnitude. The topics covered by blogs are as diverse as the people who create them. There are millions of blogs on the Internet.

I've subscribed to this site and presently going through its articles. I could've started from the 'Solid Power' category - 'coz I guess I'm an expert blogger. At least my friends and readers say so. But, guess what? I've started from with the 'Solid Basic' category. Huh - even the Basics here are not negligible, no matter how expert U are. They are nonetheless, a good read - just to brush up your expertise. Here I'll be linking to / posting some useful topics from there. So, keep a watch here.

My suggestion - do give it a visit; if you're interested in starting a blog. or you already blog and wish to improve your blogging skills.

Orkut : New Look

Hi there. Just this morning I came across this post of a fellow Bangalore Blogger, and man wasn't I delighted...? I knew that there was this official blog of Orkut, but never cared to check it regularly, 'coz most of the time it's full of daily useless blah blah blahs. Anyways, whenever there's something important there, I do get the news - thanks to other orkut crazy blogs like Inside Orkut. So, this news also didn't miss me.

What's the BIG news - U ask? Ok, here it is. Orkut is now getting a new face lift. No, it's yet not getting revamped into SocialStream. But it's redesigning or more specifically re-coloring it's page. Just a little bit. Page is still blue but of a lighter shade. Some rounded corners have been added and new icons that make orkut look a little more sleek and modern. Check out a screen shot of the new homepage.

Well, not all users have got this new look yet. The new look is being rolled out in phases to group of users. Not sure if anyone in India has got it yet. But hope it will by September end.

Windows magic tricks

Again I'm back with some 'Windows' magic tricks. Well, actually these are not magic in the correct sense.
U can call them as easter eggs. Little tricks hidden in the application. Check 'em out.

MAGIC #1

An Indian discovered that nobody can create a FOLDER anywhere on the computer which can be named as "CON". This is something pretty cool...and fascinating.

At Microsoft the whole Team, couldn't answer why this happened!
Try it now. It will not create " CON " folder.

MAGIC #2

For those of you using Windows, do the following:

1.) Open an empty notepad file
2.) Type "Bush hid the facts" (without the quotes)
3.) Save it as whatever you want.
4.) Close it, and re-open it.

What do U see? Is it just a really weird bug? :-??


MAGIC #3

Microsoft crazy facts
This is something pretty cool and neat... and unbelievable...
At Microsoft the whole Team, including Bill Gates, couldn't answer why this happened!
It was discovered by a Brazilian. Try it out yourself...

Open Microsoft Word and type

=rand (200, 99)

And then press ENTER

then see the magic...............................

WOW.

Tried them out? And now are you amazed. Seems like magic, huh. All these folder, notepad, MS word - we've been handling them for so long, still never came across these before.

Well, it's not some magic; Common Guys. Here is an explanation for all of them:

Magic 1

Magic 3

Magic 2

So, the moral of the story is - There's nothing like MAGIC. Harry Potter fans - don't come looking for me for that. :D
Have a great time.

All feeds @ once

Hi there. Long have I received kind of complains from my readers and friends that they have a though time keeping track of all my new blog posts. What with I having 5 different blogs of different tests. So, I thought it's high time that I gave them some solution to that. And voila, see what I got.

xFruit is a handy tool for all your RSS needs. It provides all kind of RSS services, like RSS aggregator, RSS to web/mobile, RSS to PDF/Mail/OPML, and all vice versa. Give it a try.

And BTW, here's my aggregated RSS link.

Vicky's Blogs.

Click it and add it to your live bookmark. Nothing to worry thereafter. All my latest posts from all my blogs will be displayed in a single place.

Sputtr : Your search ends here

How often do you use some search engine to find something in WorldWideWeb? And while doing so, how many times do you switch between different search engines? I guess you have bookmarked all the search engines that you use, 'coz remembering the url of all of them is really a pain.

Almost everyday a new search engine is being launched these days but at the end of the day, all of them are the same. And almost all cater to some particular domain. For example, the default Google search engine is for website search. If you wanna search for some blog, U need to visit their blogsearch page, which have a different URL. Similarly, there's different URL for news, bookmarks, videos and so on. Some search engines came up with tabbed search results where each tab displays result from different search engines. But in that case, those were results from just the websearch versions of the said engine. For example, Google or Yahoo tab displays results from default google or Yahoo engine respectively, but not from news or blog search. So, deficiency has always been there.


But now, that is history. Sputtr is here. As soon as you see the homepage [ click on the image above to enlarge ], U know that this is something good. The web2.0 look of the page itself is eyeCandy. All those round-edged, high resolution icons - neatly lined up on the page gives you the impression that they are there to solve your problem. Moreover, the icy-blue color and on-your-face font size gives it a soothing effect. You no longer need to squint your eyes to see the search term you type. Man, who designed this page...!! Gimme some tips, dude.

Ok, that's 'bout the UI. Now time to check the usability. After all, why would I switch my long trusted engine for this 'new kid on the block'...?? Well, lemme tell you that Sputtr is the underdog of search engines. It's gonna rule the web someday. Until then, lemme show you its juice.

To begin with, all that you may ever need to search on www can be done from here; be it

Website	Images	Videos / Music	News
Blogs / Podcast	Maps	Groups	Social Bookmarks
Diggs	Movie Info	Art	Social Network
Shopping	Dictionary	Reference	Library

...
[ sigh ] and the list goes on. That covers EVERYTHING. Sputtr gathers anything in any domain from the best engine for that vertical. So that you get what you were looking for in minimum number of clicks. Well, it turns out to be your one stop navigator for everything online.


The whole page is ready to be owned by you. Just click the "Customize this Page" and almost everything of the page is ready to follow your mouse command. Huge list of search engines [ as many as 92 engines grouped into 13 categories ] is available for your liking. Select any of this and click "Add to Page" - just like that; and your page is armed with another weapon. There's option to "Open searches in new window" so that every time you don't need to click your way back to the home page.
:)

Another nice thing about Sputtr is its multilingual versions. It is available in as many as 9 different languages; none of them ruining the UI of the page, as is the case with most multi-lingual search engines.

I'll give an example to show just how useful it really is. Say, I'm writing a post on 'Haneef acquitted'. All resources I'll need to do so can be obtained using this single tool. I'll just type the search term 'Haneef acquitted' in the search-box and press different buttons on the page successively [ without going to the result page ] - like 'Google News' to get the news details, 'flickr' or 'YouTube' to get any related photo or video, 'Digg' or 'Technorati' to check if anybody has already blogged about it etc. Then I can look for the meaning of some term [ that I'm stuck with ] by pressing 'Answers' or 'Dictionary' button or for a detailed description - 'Wiki'. All these results will open in a new tab. Hence I don't need to check the results -> select the one I like -> click my way back to search engine home page -> again enter the same search term for different category. Enter the search term once and click different buttons. As simple as that. Isn't that just a breeze?

All in all, Sputtr is the next BIG thing in Search Engine domain. I no longer need the search-bar addon of firefox and juggle with different search-engines. The whole wide-web is now just a click away. So, what are you waiting for? Go Sputtr.

Prevent Image Theft : Total Guide

Last Sunday I was @ the Bangalore BarCamp 4 where I gave a presentation on 'Security of Photographs in Webpages'. I wanted the presentation to be interactive and it really turned out to be totally that. Almost everybody had something to share and in all the gung-ho, I felt that no body understood the importance of the issue and how to achieve that. Arun was finding the whole discussion pointless.

"Why would we need to secure the photograph....?? If someone wants to download a pic from your site, let them. What harm can it cause you .....??"

I exactly don't remember what points he brought about, but gradually he was making sense. But I must say that his arguments apply only to a tiny part of the big bad net.

When the web is full of plagiarism, you surely need to protect your site's content. Otherwise, your hours' creativity is stolen by some crook in seconds. How about someone visiting your website, stealing some astounding photograph that U had clicked, putting it up in his own site, taking credit for it and if possible, making money out of it.... That's just like stealing of music - which is quite rampant in Bollywood music industry these days. What with 'Ya Ali' , 'Zehrili Ratein' and several such songs raging a storm of controversy.

This is just one possible misuse. There are perverts who download pic of girls from Orkut album pages et al and morph the face onto some naked model pic. to create certain 'College gal su****g' kind of pics for the blooming porn industry. U surely don't wanna see your face in that. So, better gear up.

Disclaimer : Lemme tell you here very clearly that if U upload any pic on your website for display, there's no way you can secure it 100%. If someone is hell bent on getting a pic from your website, he surely can. Aside from some easily surmountable technical tricks, there is no way to prevent an image from being stolen from a website. The best that can be done is to make it not worth the effort. And if you don't wanna sacrifice even that, better don't upload it.

Now, let's get down to business. Lemme show you some tricks to secure a pic a little bit, at least from not-so intel casual browsers. You must be comfortable with html to follow these tricks.

1 . Right Click :
The most common way to download a pic is to right click on the image and select 'Save Image As...' from the context menu. This can be prevented by disabling the right click function on your page. To do that, replace the <body> tag of your page with <body oncontextmenu='return false'>. Sometimes, this doesn't work on IE browser. For that, paste the following javasrcipt code just before the </head> tag of your page.

<script type="text/javascript">
/*
No rightclick script v.2.5
Script provided by Bikram Agarwal
http://geniousatplay.blogspot.com
Don't delete this header!
*/

var message="Right Click is DISABLEDnn COPYRIGHT;2006 "
function click(e) {
if (document.all) {
if (event.button == 2) {
alert(message);
return false;
}
}
if (document.layers) {
if (e.which == 3) {
alert(message);
return false;
}
}
}
if (document.layers) {
document.captureEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);
}
document.onmousedown=click;
</script>

This will disable right clicking on your page and hence the user won't get the 'Save Image As...' option for the image. See it in action on this page . But use this trick only if you are OK with the frustration of your site's genuine visitors. Not getting a right click context menu when they want usually irks the visitor. For example, they might simply want to 'Open Link in New Window' but will not get the option. Very first reaction then would be 'What the hell ...!!' and they might just close your page and never visit again. So, be aware of the consequences and take the plunge only if you're sure.

The most common way to steal a photo, it's most common way to prevent, has the most common way to surmount. One can easily disable javascript support on his browser and right click on the page.

2 . Transparent Layer :
2nd trick in my kitty is to use a layer of transparent image over the actual image you want to protect. To do that, paste the following piece of code just after your actual image code.

<img style="position:relative; top:-(X+4)px; margin-bottom:-(X+4)px; display:block;" src="spaceball.gif" width="Y" height="X"/>

Replace X and Y with the height and width of the actual image you want to protect.

U can use any 1x1 px transparent gif image to create the transparent layer. This trick provides a protective layer over the image in its background. This trick is quite effective as compared to the 1st trick. There's no visible difference and the mouse cursor over the image interacts with the spaceball.gif image. Someone trying to 'Save Image As...' might not understand that all he's saving is an 1x1 transparent gif image. Try this on the image in this page. See that page's source code to understand how to do it.

This trick is being used on profile photo of 'Orkut' and Album pages of 'Flickr Pro' where the user opts for it.

3 . LightBox :
There's a 3rd option of using LightBox to display your full resolution image. See it in action at my photoblog Leonardo. For instructions on how to implement it, check the LightBox instruction page

All these 3 'obstacles' can be overcome in a single shot.There's always the option to 'View Page Source' from where the image URL can be obtained and the image downloaded.

4 . Use Flash :
These loophole can be blocked by embedding the image in a flash file. Several tools are available for that such as Slideshow maker. Create a flash slideshow using your images and use this flash file to display your images on your website. Right clicking on this display will generate only flash specific menu which don't have a 'Save' option. And, the 'View Page Source' won't reveal the URL of the image, as there's actually no image, but the flash file.

But then, the whole flash file can be saved, if the user knows how to do that. There are tools that can extract individual images from a flash file. And of course, there's the 'Cache' of the browser. And above all, which breaks all possible tricks - Screen-shots.



5 . Watermark :
These were the tricks if you don't want the user to download an image from your site at all. But if you're not that damn adamant and simply want your ownership of the image to be evident wherever the image is used, U can use watermark - a simple logo of your identity. U can write a simple text declaring your ownership of the image on the border of the image. Click the image on right for example.

U might want to use this option if you don't wanna deface the image. But as U can see, this text line can be easily cropped out. Alternatively, you can place your logo on some prominent area of the image. Just like the santabanta places logo on their wallpapers. If U don't do it tastefully like them, U'll just deface the image.

Anyway, the logo can possibly be omitted from the image using 'layer' manipulation tools of Photoshop. Am not too sure of it but I think it's possible to do that.

6 . Copyright :
And if you are a professional photographer or artist, or anyway are damn too serious about your photographs, U can opt for legal protection of your photographs. Simplest option here is to upload your photographs with Creative Commons license. This way U can allow non-commercial, limited use of your photograph, but strictly no commercial use. Or you can opt for more stringent copyright policies to cover your image.

U can use the fingerprinting service of some vendors like PicScout. A unique code is embedded into your image and if the image is used by anyone else, it can be tracked with this unique code.

Now, to wrap it up, which method you use is up to U. U cans surely combine multiple tricks for greater security. But at the end of the day, as I said at the very start, all these just delays the process of download. Your pics are still not safe. So, be aware of what you're upload on net. Lemme know if you have any other tricks to share. Take care.