If you remember, long back when Google Chrome was launched there was a very interesting feature in it. It was called “Application shortcuts”. As far as I know, many people don’t use it or even know about it.

Creating an “Application shortcut” for a webpage lets you access that webpage as an application in a separate standalone window right from your desktop with a click. This is one of the unique features in Google Chrome.

Advantages of Creating Application Shortcuts

There are many advantages of creating application shortcuts.

1. You can visit your “most visited” sites easily right from your desktop.
2. There are no address bars in the applications to disturb you.
3. The “Application shortcuts can be placed anywhere you like, on Desktop, in Start Menu or even in Quick Launch bar.

So, knowing the advantages of this feature, let us know how we can create an application for IPL.

Creating an Application for IPL

In creating an application for IPL, we just take advantage of the Youtube. We already know about the live telecast of all the matches on Youtube’s IPL Channel.  So, we can create a application shortcut for that channel.

To create an application,

1. Go to Youtube’s IPL channel.
2. Make sure that you have selected the same tab and click on the “Control the Current Page” button on the top right corner in Google Chrome.
   

   Click on the button highlighted

3. Select the first option in the drop down menu- “create application shortcuts…”
4. A new window will popup with the title “Gears”. In that select the option where you want to place the application shortcut.
   

   Check the options where you want to see the shortcut

5. You are done. You just created an awesome and simple application for the IPL channel. Good job!
6. Now, click on the shortcut and it will open a standalone window in Google Chrome which loads the Youtube’s IPL channel.
   

   This is how your IPL application looks!

Hope, you enjoy watching the IPL matches in your new application. Share it with your friends if you liked this trick. You can even browse some more tricks and tutorials I have written.

Google Chrome’s extension database is growing at a great rate, giving a tough competition for other browsers in the market. As there are lots of extensions in its extension gallery, I thought of listing out an extension for each Google service. Here is a list of extensions for different Google services.

• Gmail – Google Mail Checker
• Google Reader – Google Reader Notifier (Official)
• Google Buzz – Google Buzz Checker
• Google Voice – Google Voice (Official)
• Google Tasks – Google Tasks
• Picasa – Picasa Web Albums (Shows the latest comments on your albums and list of your albums)
• Orkut – Orkut Chrome Extension
• Google Talk - Google Talk Pro (Pops up Gtalk window when clicked. Dual Chat also included)
• Google News – Google News (Pops up with the latest stories)
• Google Translate – Google Translate
• Google Wave – Google Wave Notifier
• Google Maps – Mini Google Maps (Pops up Google Maps)
• Google Earth – Google Earth (Pops up Google Earth)
• Youtube – Fast Youtube Search
• Blogger – BlogThis (Official)
• Google Calendar – Google Calendar Checker (Official) (Enables you to quickly see the time left for your next meeting)
• Google Docs – Docs PDF/Powerpoint Viewer (Official)
• Google Sidewiki – Google Sidewiki
• Google Analytics – Straight to Google Analytics

Note: These extensions are selected based on the popularity and number of users, using them. I have no personal opinions on these extensions. Even though, I use a few extensions I have mentioned in the above list, I haven’t used all of them. Use these extensions at your own risk.

Did I miss any other Google service above? or Do you know any other extension for a Google service? Feel free to comment below.

Recommended Reading: Bollywood Themes For Google Chrome Browser, Add Bing Search in Google Chrome

Recently, when Wordpress 2.9 was released I saw it was supporting something called rel = “canonical”. I wondered what it was and googled for it and found this element was pretty much useful and interesting. So, I thought I would share this piece of information on my blog.

You might have seen many URLs pointing to the same/similar page many times. For example,

• www.example.com
• example.com
• www.example.com/index.html
• example.com/home.aspx

These type of URLs may cause search engines to look at your content as duplicate and thus your search engine rankings may go down. In such cases, using canonical elements can reduce the problem.

So, What’s the deal with rel =”canonical”?

When many URLs point to the same or more exactly, similar page then that results in duplicate content. Bloggers, SEOs and website owners avoid this by using  301 redirects, which redirect the search engines to the new URL. This rel=”canonical” element has a similar functionality. While 301 redirection works across different domains, rel=”canonical” works only within a domain. However, canonical elements even work for sub-domains too.

How To Use The Canonical Element?

Using the canonical element is very simple. All you need to do is put a piece of tag/element at the top of your non-canonical page. For example, consider two URLs like “http://www.example.com” and “http://www.test.example.com”. Now, if both the URLs lead to the same page, search engines consider it as duplicate content. To avoid this, you can add the canonical element at the top of the non-canonical page (http://www.example.com).

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.test.example.com/>

Note: This should be added to the head section of the page. (i.e., after <head> tag.)

Imporant:

If you add the canonical tag to both the pages, this creates an infinite loop. In such cases, search engines have the rights to decide which is better.

Canonical elements do not direct the search engines to a different page, but instead just gives a suggestion to go to that page. To be short, canonical tags are not directive, they are just suggestions. If you have two URLs say, http://www.example.com and http://www.cartoon.example.com which are completely different and you try to add canonical element between them, search engines may not consider it. So, you can add canonical tags only to same or similar pages.

So, this canonical element can be of great help to bloggers who blog from blogger platform. Blogger users often suffer from duplicate content issues. Using canonical tags can reduce this. For more information about this, you can watch the video by Matt Cutts, Google engineer below.

Feeds are a great source of information. Many of us subscribe to new and interesting feeds everyday to be updated with information. However, all the feeds will not be equally interesting. Some may be less interesting when compared to some others. So, it becomes difficult to maintain the feeds as they increase in your reader. Today, I have brought you people a simple trick, that can help you combine two or more feeds into a single feed.

Before proceeding to the procedure of how to combine/merge two or more RSS feeds let me explain where and how can this be helpful.

• As I said in the above paragraph, this trick might be helpful in categorizing interesting feeds and non-interesting feeds, or rather less interesting feeds.
• Suppose you have a few really informative sites that you never want to miss. In such a case, you can merge multiple feeds under the name like “My Favorite Feeds”.
• Categorizing the feeds based on different subjects. Suppose you have feeds related to different fields. In that case, you can combine multiple feeds based on the subjects the feed contains.

I hope you got an idea of how this trick can be helpful to you.

Procedure

To be frank, I found this trick while I was working with Yahoo! Pipes. People who don’t know about Yahoo! Pipes can refer to the Wikipedia article linked. (Hover the mouse over Yahoo! Pipes)

1. After signing in, you get a dashboard type screen where you can work on your project.
2. Click on “Sources” in the top-left corner.
3. Drag and drop the module “Fetch Site Feed”. The number of modules depends of number of site feeds that you want to merge into a single feed. I am explaining with three sites here.
4. After adding the modules, enter the site addresses of all the sites. [Note: You need to enter the site address and not the feed address]
5. Now, you need to use an operator to combine all the feeds. This is the “Union” operator. To use this, go to the operator tab and drag “Union” module to the dashboard.
6. Now, pipe all the “Fetch Site Feed” modules with the “Union” button. [Refer the pic below]

   

7. After you do this, you need to create the RSS feed. So you have to add “Create RSS feed” module. To add this, again go to the “Operators” tab and drag “Create RSS Feed” module.
8. Select the suitable preferences and connect the lower end of this module with result. The upper terminal should be connected to the “Union” operator.

   

9. That’s it. Now save the pipe and run it!
10. You can even subscribe to that feed in your reader. You need to add the resulting pipe URL in your RSS feed reader.

Any doubts regarding the tutorial can be discussed below in the comments. Do leave feedback through comments. They are valuable to me!

I hope you loved this tutorial. For more tutorials, tips and tricks subscribe to my RSS feed here!

SEO I Did To This Post

SEO Title: Combine Feeds | FeedBurner Combine Multiple RSS Feeds | Using Yahoo Pipes

I used Google Insights for search that I had discussed about in my previous post here. Found that keywords like “FeedBurner” had more popularity, so just used it in the title.

SEO Excerpt: Here is a simple trick to combine different RSS feeds into a single RSS feed. Merging multiple RSS feeds helps you in many ways.

If you observe a little deeper, I have used to keywords. “Merging” and “Combining”. So, both types should get attracted.

SEO Tags: feedburner combine multiple rss feeds, combine multiple rss feeds, multiple rss feeds combination

Running down through a large list of programs to find your favorite one is a very cumbersome and boring task. Even while searching for important folders, it is time consuming to browse the whole computer. Mouse Extender is a excellent free tool that helps you to group any applications, files or folders under one middle click.

Mouse Extender is a quick launch tool that helps you to launch your favorite applications, or even access your important files and folders with a single click. This application is not just a typical quick-launch tool. It has even more extra-ordinary options, that you may not be expecting from it. Today, we will have a look at some unique features of this tool.

Creating Tabs

What would you expect a “middle-click application” to have? Just a simple box, that holds all rubbish? No, you are wrong. This application has an option to create tabs. You can make a set of your important docs in one tab, and create a new tab for your favorite games and so on.

me_add_tab

Adding Web Pages

Do you visit any site very often? You want  a website always at your fingertip? Then this feature will help you do that. You can enter URL of any webpage and add it into your quick-launch library.

me_add_web_url

Also Recommended:  Categorize Your Icons On Desktop Using Fences

Customize The Added Icons Of Files And Folders

This is a superb feature. After adding an application or a file, you can even customize them. You can set a different icon, change the name and so on.

me_edit_item

Shutdown, Sleep Or Hibernate

A really awesome feature! You can even schedule hibernation, shutdown or even sleep time with this “so called SIMPLE” application. So, this acts even as a shutdown timer!

me_shutdown_timer

I found this app to be very interesting and hope even you people will. This application gives its users more than expected. I have listed only the unique features of this applications. It still has numerous interesting features. Check them in this video.

SEO I Did To This Post

SEO Title: Shut Down Download Timer Cum Quick Launcher Tool For Windows – Mouse Extender

Yes, this is somewhat a ridiculous title. I have inserted the keyword, “shutdown timer” in the title. There is a very strong reason for this which I am going to let you know today.

SEO TIP: Always analyze the keywords you use in the titles using, Google Insights for Search. This is a tool that helps you to see the search intensity of any keyword you enter. I will teach you how to use this tool with this example.

First of all, I entered three keywords related to my posts, quick launch tool, quick launch program, quick launcher. Quick launcher got the highest number. [Check this link if you want]. After doing this, I even wanted toadd the Shut down timer feature in the title. So I searched it along with these three. To my surprise, I found that “shutdown timer” was more trending that all the three.[Check this link]

This is the reason why I have used “shutdown timer” at the beginning and  then “quick launcher tool”. So, today you have learned how to use a new tool, Google Insights for search!

SEO Excerpt: Here is a simple tool that acts as a shutdown timer cum quick launch tool. You can schedule shutdown, hibernate or sleep timer using this tool. But it is basically a quick launch tool

I have used two main keywords here. “shutdown timer” and “quick launch tool”. These are the main keywords that bring traffic as well as highlight my post content.

SEO Tags: shutdown timer, computer timer, timer download, pc shutdown timer, shutdown timer vista, quick launch tool, quick launch toolbar

It needs a little bit of explanation here. I have taken these keywords from the Google Insights for Search analysis. This would get me more traffic because I have exactly aimed at what people have searched for and will search for.

There has been a lot of hype of Google Wave! Many of them are already using Google Wave, but on the other hand there are people who are searching for invites. So, I have brought this offer to people who have not got their Google Wave Invites yet.

I have got about 16 Google Wave invites and am waiting to send to people who don’t have them. If you want to

What You Have To Do To Get An Invite?

Nothing big.

1) Just leave a comment that you need a Google wave Invite here.

2) Retweet/Stumble this post.

Your job is done! After getting few comments (requests), I will do a lucky draw and if you are lucky enough then, you might get the Google Wave invite.

P.S.- Please do not try to spam or comment multiple times. Those comments will be rejected and no invite will be sent to them.

If you want to be updated about the winner of the lucky draw, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or else follow me on twitter @pramodhkp

Decreasing bounce rates of a blog is a tough job for any blogger to do. Bloggers use many techniques like Internal Linking, Related posts etc. to reduce the bounce rate of a blog. Recently, when I was surfing, I found a website with an addon. This addon would make a compact encyclopedia of all the related information and show it through a link. I found this pretty useful and hence decided to share it with you people.

Apture is an addon that helps you to reduce the bounce rate of your blog. This addon helps you to insert multimedia to your blog posts and in turn makes your readers dig deeper through your articles. Apture is compatible for almost all common blogging platforms such as Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad etc.

Links you usually offer directs the readers to a new page and hence many readers are hesitant to click on those links. Apture is different here. If you link to a Wikipedia article using Apture, it’s pretty easy for readers to reach it. When the pointer hovers on the link, a pop-up appears enabling users to read the article there itself.

I am using this addon right now and this is how it will show up when you hover the mouse here. With this addon, you can also link to your previous related articles as I have done in the link above.

Apture helps you to find reference articles, when you are writing articles that need information right from your editor. It uses Wikipedia and other trusted sources. The sites that you can access through Apture are Flickr, Wikipedia, Google Books, Yahoo! Youtube and many more.

It also helps you to add relevant images or videos to the links. Overall, the link you provide through Apture will be a compact encyclopedia for the readers. It also helps you to embed the document itself into your blog post and hence making it more convenient for the readers. This is how an embedded link looks.

You can also check out how Apture would work on your blog or website here.

Don’t you think this addon is amazing? Share your thoughts about this addon through comments! If you liked this post, then don’t forget to subscribe to my RSS feed for more such amazing articles.

SEO I Did To This Post:

SEO Title: Blogger/Wordpress Addon For Reducing Bounce Rate Of Blogs

There are certain important things to note here. I have used “Blogger/Wordpress addon”. This adds more keyword relevancy to the title. The googler is pretty much likely to search for any of the two keywords, “Wordpress” or Blogger”. Another important thing to note here is, I have used “Blogger” first and then “Wordpress”, this is because there is less competition for the keyword “Blogger” than “Wordpress”. The more nearer the keyword will be from the starting of the title the more better it is.

SEO Excerpt: A perfect addon for reducing bounce rate of wordpress or blogger blogs.Add links from various sources and make visitors to dig through your site content for a long time.

Nothing much to explain here. Usual things. Write keyword-oriented excerpts in order to rank higher.

SEO Tags:reduce bounce rate of blogger blogs, reduce bounce rate of wordpress blogs, bounce rate reduction, addon for reducing bounce rate.

All possible search terms that a googler could search for.

Tweaking browser configuration increases its efficiency and further enhances one’s browsing experience. There are lots of tricks that you can do with browsers using its about:config editor. Here is a set of tricks and tweaks which  I am sure most of you don’t know.

A general note: To perform the below tricks, you need to login to the preference editor of your browser. To do this, in the address bar, type “about:config” without quotes. Firefox will show you a warning message. Ignore it and click on “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button. Now, you are in the preference editor. Follow the instructions to perform each trick.

1) Remove Favicons From Tabs

You might have seen small icons on the tabs and the address bar in Firefox. These are known as Favicons. They were first introduced in IE 5, which was soon adopted by Firefox. They usually represent a site’s logo.

These favicons, even though small, consumes memory sometimes. Here is a tweak that can help you to disable those favicons in your browser. In the “Filter” option, enter the keyword “favicons”. You will get a list of preferences. Among those, search for this: browser.chrome.favicons. Double-click on it to change the value from “true” to “false”. Restart Firefox.

Now, instead of seeing the site’s favicon you will see the “document” icon on the tabs and address bar.

2) Remove Or Tweak The Position Of Close Button In Firefox

Firefox 2.0 had many new features added to it. Among them, one was “Close” button on every tab. As you have seen there is a close button on tab that you select. You can tweak the behaviour of this tab button using the following tweak. In the “Filter” option enter the keyword “tabs”. Select browser.tabs.closeButtons from the list of preferences.

Now, this preference is a boolean and has many values. The default is set to 0. Here are the valid values and their functions.

• 0 – This is the default. The Close Button will be on the active  tab.
• 1 – This value places the close button on all the tabs.
• 2 – Hides the close button from all the tabs.
• 3 – Displays the close button at the end of the tab strip.

3) AutoCopy To ClipBoard

If you are a linux user, then you might be knowing that selecting the text simply, copies the text into the clipboard. Here is a Firefox tweak to make it work like that. In the “Filter”option type “clipboard” without quotes. You will see a preference saying clipboard.autocopy. Double-click on it to change it to “true”. Now select any text and paste it somewhere. You can paste the text without using the “copy” command!

Also Read: Opera 10 Tips and Tricks

4) Change Your Toolbar Style To Make It More “RAM-Friendly”

This is a very good tweak, if you are low on memory but still want to use Firefox. It tweaks the toolbar. It is also a boolean and ahs many values. The valid values and its functions are given below:

• 0 – Displays toolbar buttons with icons only.
• 1 – Displays toolbar buttons with text only, no icons.
• 2 – Displays toolbar buttons with both icons and text. [Default]

This will help you to lessen the memory consumption by choosing alternate styles.

Also Read: Change The Tab Size In Firefox

5) Get Another Firefox Window Inside A Tab!

Well, this sounds amazing, right? Yes, you can get another usable firefox window inside a tab. To make this possible, enter the following URL in the address bar: chrome://browser/content/browser.xul. [See the pic below.]

If you liked this article, and want to be updated with more Firefox Tips and Tricks like this, don’t forget to subscribe to my blog here.

Firefox, with countless number of services stands out ot be one of the best browser.Some of those unique features of  this browser is tabbed browsing, password remembering etc. Here is an other option in firefox reviewed for you readers to take your browser to the utmost efficiency.

I have often seen many people asking “How to get the “Remember Password” option back after pressing “Never for this site” button?”. So I thought of writing a post on this. You can get back the “Remember Password” option even though you have accidentally pressed the “Never for this site” button. Here is the way.

Visit Tools>>Options in Firefox and then click on the “Security” tab. Click on the “Exceptions” button in the dialog box. (i.e. in the passwords section). In the dialog box opened, remove the link of the site for which you want to get the “Remember Password” option.

After you are done with this successfully, you will get a “Remember Password” option, the next time you login to the site.

Revealing all the details of your posts in the homepage itself is really boring. This is because it makes the homepage very lengthy and also will not look attractive. So, in order to make your blog more attractive and also make your homepage short and sweet, you have to use excerpts to your posts. This also sometimes increases the page rank because of the number of links that increase. That is why you often see that the homepage of a blog has higher page rank than other pages of the blog.

You can add excerpts to the blog in the following way:

First add the following piece to your blogger stylesheet in the layout options.( Note that style-sheet means the portion between <style> and </style> tags.)  This piece of code is for people using classic blogger template.

<MainOrArchivePage>
   span.fullpost {display:none;}
</MainOrArchivePage>

<ItemPage>
   span.fullpost {display:inline;}
</ItemPage>

If you are using other than the blogger classic template from a third party, then use this code:

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
   span.fullpost {display:inline;}
<b:else/>
   span.fullpost {display:none;}
</b:if>

(Make sure that you backup your template before manipulating through them.)

What we did here was, we told the template to create a span class “fullpost” i.e., to have a option called full post which appears only on post pages.

After you have done the above steps, you have to check the expand widget template option.

Now we are creating Read More Links for every post.

For classic templates:

Search for “<data:post.body/>” tag in your template file and below that copy the following code.

<MainOrArchivePage><br />
   <a href="<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>">Read more!</a>
</MainOrArchivePage>

For other templates, copy the following code into your stylesheet after the tag “<data:.post.body/>”

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'><br />
   <a expr:href='data:post.url'>Read more!</a>
</b:if>

After this save your template. Your work with the template is done. Now while writing the posts add the following tags

<span class="fullpost"></span>

The syntax for the above code is something like this:

Here is the beginning of my post. <span>And here is the rest of it.</span>

Or, instead fo typing the above code everytime in the post, save it in the “post template”. (This is present in

“settings>formatting”)

That’s it. The job is done. You can now see that there are excerpts or summaries created in your homepage. Enjoy!!

Via Blogger Help