12 February 2013

Chrome's Giant Touch-Optimized Menu



Somewhere between Chrome 25 (beta) and Chrome 26 (dev), the browser's menu got bigger. It's now optimized for touch interfaces even if you're using a non-touch computer. I've checked the height of the menu and it's now 580 pixels, instead of 420 pixels. That's a 38% increase and it makes the interface more difficult to use for mouse users.






When you use Chrome's sync feature, the menu's height becomes 625 pixels. Here's how a recent Chromium build looks on my 1280x800 laptop and remember that most laptops sold right now have a 1366x768 resolution:






Chrome also changed the contextual menu:









10 ways to promote your blog and its posts



The majority of traffic that comes to a blog post comes within the first day or so after it's published. You can get bumps in traffic long after a blog post is published, but more often, the bulk of the traffic to a blog post comes sooner rather than later.


promote-blog-post


With that in mind, it's important to promote your blog posts and increase traffic to them immediately after you publish them. This is particularly important for posts about timely topics but applies to all of your blog posts. Following are 15 ways you can promote your blog post immediately after you publish it to increase traffic to it quickly.


1. Tweet Your Blog Post to Your Twitter Followers

Twitter is a free micro-blogging tool that allows users to publish short messages (140 characters or less) through their computers and mobile phones. Twitter launched in 2007 and nearly 1 million people were using it within one year of its debut.


Twitter is a perfect place to share a link to your blog post as soon as you publish it. There are many tools that enable you to automatically publish a link to your latest blog post on your Twitter stream, or you can share it manually.


Know the limitations of Twitter messaging:




  1. Daily Update Limits: You can publish up to 1,000 total updates to your Twitter account per day from all devices combined (Web, cell phone, etc.).



  2. Daily Direct Message Limits: Twitter limits direct messages to 250 total per day on all devices (Web, cell phone, etc.).



  3. Follower Limits: You can follow up to 2,000 people on Twitter without any problems, but once you follow 2,001 or more people, you'll face following limits. Twitter following limits are based on the ratio of the number of people you follow to the number of people who follow you.



2. Share the Blog Post on Facebook

Given how many people use Facebook, it's highly likely that people who want to read your blog posts are on Facebook, too. Therefore, be sure to share a link to your blog post on both your Facebook Profile and Page (if you have a Facebook Page for your blog).


Tip to Facebook traffic:





  1. Complete Your Profile Strategically



  2. Find Friends



  3. Join Groups or Create Your Own Group



  4. Create a Facebook Page and Become a Fan of Other Facebook Pages



  5. Link Your Other Social Accounts to Your Facebook Profile and Page



  6. Promote Your Facebook Link



  7. Be Active in Facebook by updating regularly



  8. Acknowledge and Reciprocate - spend the majority of your Facebook time commenting on other people's statuses and conversations, sharing other people's great content, responding to direct messages, and so on.



  9. create and Place a Facebook Ad



  10. Be Human in facebook




promotrblog

3. Share the Post on Pinterest

Pinterest is a visual bookmarking website that allows you to "pin" images and videos that you find online and want to save or share with others onto virtual pinboards. It's similar to popular social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, but you can only pin images and videos on Pinterest


Pinterest is a visual social bookmarking sites. If you include images in your blog posts, then Pinterest is a great place to promote them.


4. Share the Post on Google+

Google+ is a powerful tool for blog post promotion, and it shouldn't be missed. Google+ is the fastest-growing social networking site. It's a perfect place to connect with people around the world, build relationships, and drive readers to your blog. To get you started, following are 10 tips to help you increase blog traffic with Google+ right now.





  1. Create a Complete Profile or Page



  2. Connect with People – stay connecting with other Google + members



  3. Create Circles - you should create circles to categorize your Google+ connections and then place people into appropriate circles.



  4. Send Targeted Messages



  5. Publish Interesting Content



  6. Create Sparks -Create sparks to track keywords related to your blog topic and jump into relevant conversations.



  7. Host Hangouts - Google+ hangouts are video chats between up to 10 Google+ members. You can host a hangout and promote it as a small virtual webinar or tuturial session.



  8. Host Huddles: Instead of holding a tweet chat on Twitter, you can hold a Google+ huddle, which is a text chat between Google+ members.



  9. Integrate and Cross-Promote : Use social media icons, Facebook social plugins, Twitter widgets, and so on to integrate your blog marketing efforts and cross-promote your content.



  10. Be Active: Update your Google+ stream frequently with new content, and make sure you spend time commenting on other members' updates as well.




5. Share the Post to Your LinkedIn Followers

If you write a blog about a business, career, or professional topic, then LinkedIn is one of the most important places to promote your blog posts.


6. Include a Link to the Post in Your Email Newsletter

If you have an email opt-in form on your blog and collect email addresses from readers in order to send email newsletters and communications to them, then those email messages are a great place to share links to your blog posts.


7. Share the Post on Social Bookmarking Sites Like StumbleUpon

Social bookmarking enables you to share your blog posts with people who are actively looking for content.


8. Share the Post in Relevant Forums that You Participate In:


Be sure to offer more useful information and comments than self-promotional links in your posts though, so you don't appear to care more about self-promotion than the members' conversations.


Tools to add a Forum to your Blog / website:





  1. vBulletin : vBulletin is one of the most popular forum tools because it is chock full of features and functionality.



  2. phpbb : phpbb is one of the most popular free forum tools because it offers a wide variety of features even though it's completely free to use.



  3. bbPress : Even though the free bbPress forum tool was created by the makers of WordPress and Akismet, you don't have to use WordPress to use the bbPress forum tool. It's a standalone tool that can be added to any blog or website.



  4. Vanilla Forums : Vanilla Forums is a free, open-source forum tool that offers some customization options but not as much as some of the other options in this list.



  5. Simple-Press :Simple-Press is a free WordPress plugin that allows you to add a customizable forum to your self-hosted WordPress.org blog or website.




9. Comment on Relevant Blogs and Include the Link to Your Blog Post

Commenting on other blogs that are about similar topics as yours or are likely to have readers who are part of your target audience is a great way to promote your blog posts.


10. Promote Your Blog Post Internally:

Internal linking within your own blog is an important part of search engine optimization and keeping people on your blog longer. Think about how your blog post fits into your internal linking strategy.



Mobile Google Contacts Alternative



For some reason, Google doesn't offer a mobile interface for Google Contacts. Sure, you can use the autocomplete feature from Gmail to find an email address or sync your contacts using CardDav or Exchange, but there's no mobile app for Google Contacts.



I've tried to use the standard desktop interface available at google.com/contacts, but it's slow and hard to use on a mobile phone. Fortunately, Google still offers the old version of the Google Contacts site at google.com/contacts_v1 and it works a lot better on a smartphone.






Update: There's another option - https://mail.google.com/mail/h/?v=cl (thanks, Alexandre).



From Sleekbooks to Chromebooks



What happens when you take a thin and light Windows PC and transform it into a Chromebook? Here are 2 examples of laptops from HP and Lenovo that have been morphed into Chromebooks. Both replaced an Intel Core i3 CPU with a Celeron CPU, the standard HDD with a 16GB SDD and Windows with Chrome OS. HP made some additional changes and removed 2GB of RAM and replaced the 2 USB 3.0 ports with USB 2.0 ports.



The price dropped from $590 to $330 for the HP laptop and from $620 to $430 for the Lenovo laptop. The cheaper Intel CPU and the free Chrome OS license help manufacturers save about $200.














2 Websites To Create Disposable Content On The Web



disposable contentCertain things are just not meant to exist online forever. Sometimes the Internet can feel extremely constricting. Have you ever posted your email address on a forum somewhere? It goes from that forum, to the Google search engine, to a mess of spammers and scrapers, and thus the entire web. Virtually everything you publish online will exist in text for a very long time thanks to caching and archiving.


However, that’s only if an outside party (such as a crawler or spider from a search engine) can access it. Keeping things private and restricted should shield it away from search engine exposure. Adding another layer of security by eventually scrubbing that content off of the web entirely ought to put you in even better shape.


Privnote


Privnote is a way to send disposable content – self-destructing notes – online. You’ll have never felt more like James Bond.


disposable content


As shown above, this is all achieved in three simple steps. First, enter your text-only content in the note field.


create disposable website


A really great feature is the ability to be notified when your note has been read. It’s basically a read receipt. Tick the box beside that option and you’ll need to enter your email address and a reference to this particular note.


create disposable website


Create your note and you’ll be immediately given a URL that you can hand out. Keep in mind that after a single view the note will be destroyed. The note can also be manually destroyed from this page.


Here’s what my above note actually looks like to the viewer:


create disposable website


Privnote is pretty useful. Maybe you don’t trust a particular someone with an email and you’d like to put the control of its distribution in your hands. Send it as a Privnote and you’ll practically never have to worry.


disposableWebPage


disposableWebPage is fairly similar to Privnote but supports additional functionality.


create disposable webpage


Click to begin creating your page and you’ll first need to enter a page title and CAPTCHA. After, you’re taken to a page that displays all of your administrative options.


create disposable webpage


You’re given a URL that you must save to re-access the administrative properties of your page. You’re also given a master key (which I’ve blurred). You can change that master key to be something more simple and personal if you’d like. You’ll also able to set up editor keys so that your friends can join in on the project.


create disposable webpage


Shown above, you’re also able to change the expiration date of your page. By default, it’s set to 90 days. You can schedule down all the way to two days.


disposable content


The WYSIWYG editor makes it very easy to create formatted content effortlessly. Across the top, the Page tab lets you see the content of your page. Revisions will let you see all of the changes that have been made, Wikipedia-style.


Overall, disposableWebPage is the better choice if you need to share text that doesn’t look fine when completely blank of formatting. Otherwise, Privnote is just too simple and easy to brush aside. It takes a matter of seconds. Each web service serves an interesting purpose and they are both very useful.


What are some ways that you can think of to make use of these disposable content tools? Let us know in the comments.


The post 2 Websites To Create Disposable Content On The Web appeared first on MakeUseOf.



Chromebook Pixel



Chromebooks started as an experiment and ended up becoming best-selling Amazon laptops. They're so popular that more and more computer manufacturers release Chromebooks: Lenovo launched the 13-inch ThinkPad X131e Chromebook for schools and now HP launches a 14-inch Pavillion Chromebook.



Today's Chromebooks are a lot more powerful than the original Chrome OS devices, since they traded Intel's Atom for Celeron and Cortex-A15, but they're not high-end devices. Celeron is a low-end CPU, displays are average, build quality is not great. It's hard to come up with a premium notebook that costs less than $500.



Well, it turns out that Google works on a new Chromebook that features a backlight keyboard, aluminum casing and a high-resolution 2560x1600 display with touch support. Unlike the previous Chromebooks, it's designed entirely by Google. Here's a leaked ad for the upcoming Chromebook Pixel:






Nexus 10 has the same resolution and Chromebook Pixel could use the same Cortex-A15 SoC that also powers the Samsung Chromebook. It's not clear how much it will cost, but the ARM SoC is a better option than a powerful Intel CPU since the device could be a lot less expensive. If Samsung's Chromebook costs $250 and Nexus 10 costs $400, it's likely that Chromebook Pixel will cost less than $500. The first premium ARM laptop.






YouTube Background Audio in iOS 6.1



For some reason, the latest version of Apple's mobile operating system breaks one of my favorite features: playing videos in the background. It worked in Apple's old YouTube app, YouTube's mobile site and almost any other video app/site (an important exception is YouTube's official app). Close the app, double-tap the Home button, swipe from left to right and tap the "Play" button to continue playing the video in the background. In iOS 6.1, the "play" button doesn't work.






It's a great feature for music videos, podcasts, ambient sounds and it's unfortunate that Android doesn't include it and Apple (accidentally?) disabled it in iOS 6.1. Until Apple fixes the bug, you can install two third-party YouTube apps that use some undocumented APIs to support background audio: McTube and YouPlayer. McTube continues to play the video after closing the app, while YouPlayer lets you manually enable background audio.


New Interface for YouTube Channels



YouTube tests a new interface for channels. For now, the updated layout is only available for a few channels like Sorted Food, iJustine, The Pet Collective and YouTube's own channel, but it will soon be enabled YouTube-wide.



What are the changes? The persistent left sidebar and the list of featured channels limit the channel's real estate, but make the interface more consistent. Most of the features from the old interface are still available, but they're more difficult to find. For example, to find the "feed" view, you need to click the arrow next to the home icon and click "feed". The list of playlists, the featured playlists and the list of likes are buried in a drop-down. There's also a new "about" section that shows the channel description, the number of subscribers and the video views, which is used to be placed in the right sidebar. The search box is only displayed when you click the new search icon.



The channel trailer replaces the featured video for non-subscribers. "You can show a trailer that will only appear to viewers who aren't already subscribed to your channel. This is your chance to let visitors know what your channel is all about and tell them why they should subscribe."












{ Thanks, Sterling. }