comScore: Graph analyses the traffic

The statistics from ComScore show that there has been a little increase in traffic than the normal traffic that the social networking site was getting usually. In January this year, Twitter got 21.79 million unique visitors which was pretty much higher than that of 21.25 million visitors (calculated on July 2009). There was a 3.1 percent increase in the traffic, in December when compared with the traffic in the previous month. So, the real time search which was introduced on December 7 has caused a great impact on Twitter’s traffic.

Experian Hitwise collects some data on this aspect. The graph above shows the increase in the traffic that is driven to Twitter through Google. There has been a 9% increase in the traffic that Twitter got from Google in the time period of December 5th to February 13th.

[Image Source]

Auto-Follow Is Abandoned

This was one of the positive points for Google Buzz. People could easily get started with Google Buzz. When I started with Google Buzz, I was following about 35+ people.  But, for people who are getting Google Buzz feature now, will not have the auto-follow feature. Instead they will be asked to follow people whom they know. Like the following image. Now, that’s a good change!

Auto-Integration Of Picasa And Google Reader

Yes, even this is removed. When I joined the Buzz, two sites were already connected – Picasa and Google Reader. This surely invades the privacy of a person. Even this has been removed in order to protect the privacy of its users. This can also be seen in the above picture itself.

Also Read: How To Access Gmail In Google Wave

Buzz Settings Now Integrated In Gmail Settings

Didn’t like Google Buzz? You think it’s a disturbance in your account. You think it invades your privacy. No need to follow that long tutorial to hide Google Buzz. Google Buzz team has added this option in the Gmail settings to hide the label “Buzz” from your account!

Now, with these changes Google has certainly protected the privacy of its users to a certain extent. But what about this flaw? We have to wait and see what Google does about this!

]]> http://www.techmonk.com/3-changes-that-might-save-google-buzz-from-becoming-fail/686/feed/ 0 http://www.techmonk.com/tools-that-helps-you-to-tweet-from-gtalk/672/ http://www.techmonk.com/tools-that-helps-you-to-tweet-from-gtalk/672/#comments Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:27:21 +0000 Pramodh KP http://www.techmonk.com/?p=672 Many workplaces say a big NO for social sites like Twitter, Orkut or Facebook. But, most of us are addicted so much to those sites that we cannot leave without them. Today, I am going to introduce you people to some tools that will help you to tweet from Gtalk!

TwiTalker

Twitalker is a nice and simple tool. You can send and recieve tweets from your friends through IM. You can even send direct messages and @ replies to your friends using this tool. You need to verify your account by pinging the access key to their bot. You will be guided through detailed steps to set up your account.

HelloTxt

This is a nice tool that helps you to update your messages not only on Twitter but also on Facebook and other sites simultaneously and instantaneously. To use this service, you have to register at hellotxt.com. After registering, add im@hellotxt.com to your chat buddies list.Verify your account with the code they give and you are ready to update! However, with this bot you cannot receive tweets through IM.

Excla.im

This is again a tool to integrate Gtalk with Twitter.All you need to do is just set up your account and start updating the statuses. However, even with this tool you cannot receive tweets from your buddies.

Twip.me

With this tool, you can not only integrate Twitter with Gtalk but also with your Jabber account or Yahoo! Messenger. However, you can only update tweets through this tool.

TweetSwitch

TweetSwitch is probably the most latest of all the other tools I mentioned above. This works like a charm. It sends and receives updates instantaneously. This has lots of features integrated in it. You can configuure your account to receive only DMs, mentions or tweets. More than that, you can set up multiple accounts so that if you are offline on one account, then you will be receiving it on other account.

My Recommendation

Personally, I recommend TweetSwitch. It has great features and looks like a nice stable service. I liked its features like redirecting tweets and also quickness in updating messages.

I have listed out a few tools that will help you to tweet through Gtalk. If you know any other tool, then pleas share with us through comments. Feel free to add suggestions to my post.

Recently, Raju(Technically Personal) had written an article about how to edit Google Docs in Google Wave. I found that very useful and interesting, thanks Raju. He had used a gadget called as IFrame. I went a step ahead and tried to integrate in a similar way with that gadget, my Gmail account. But, it turned out that the page was getting redirected to my Gmail account itself.

Today, I found a great gadget that could help us integrate Gmail in Google Wave. Well, there is no specific name for the extension, it has just been called “Gmail”.

Follow these steps and add the bot to your Google Wave account.

Now, click on “Add gadget by URL” button. (This button would resemble a small jigsaw piece.) You can refer to the pic below.

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/100080069921643878012/gmail.xml

This is how it would look after it is added!

Enjoy Waving!

P.S. If anybody hasn’t got a wave invite, then I am giving out a few. Just check this article out:

Get Google Wave Invitations By Just Commenting And Retweeting!

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.

Filetac.com is a online tool which helps  you to convert any uploaded file into .zip file. With this online tool in hand, there is no need of downloading any other converter to convert your files. The user-interface is also pretty simple to use. All you have to do is,

1. Add the files you want it to convert into .zip format.
2. After you upload them, click on “Compress”.
3. Download the .zip file that is obtained.

That sounds simple, isn’t it? However, this tool has a small disadvantage. You can add only files. A complete folder cannot be added due to the size restrictions.[Max upload: 10MB]

Overall, this tool is pretty handy while you are at your office work, or literally anywhere.

Recommended reading: Send Files Online Using PipeBytes

Via [Sites To Use]

Today, I found a very nice video on Youtube that will explain you how Windows 8 would look. I would like to remind you that this is just a concept and is in no way related to the real Windows 8 that would be released.

Source: roxgod666

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

Getafixx is a gtalk/gmail bot that helps you to find experts in any field. It connects you to experts in various fields, so that you could clarify your doubts with them. To connect with them, this is what you have to do.

Add this bot to your Gtalk contact list.

getafixx@voicetap.in

After adding this bot, just ping once and it will guide you through the remaining process. A recent post at Tech Bangalore has written a detailed conversation between the bot and the user. Check that here. The interesting feature here is that the creators of this bot have made even the registration of your account through pings!

In this post, I would like to deal about some of the technical aspects about this bot. After your registration is successful, it asks you to enter the topic you would like to contact the experts for. You have to enter the desired subject preceded by “Search”.

After doing so, the bot will search for experts online and give a unique ID for you to ping the expert. First, you need to connect to the expert by using this syntax, connect @Unique ID. Now, you will be connected to the expert. You can discuss about your doubts with the experts and end the chat.

You too can become an expert!

Yes, if you want to help other people and show off your expertise in any field, you can even become an expert. To do this, you need to use this syntax, Expert <Your expertised categories>. That’s it.

Here are some commands that could help you while using this bot.

- To search, type search [your query] (Example: search IIT)
- To speak directly with the expert (if you know his unique ID) type connect @[unique id] (Example: connect @5)
- If you want to allow / disallow any details from going to the expert, please type details followed by Y / N
- To change your expert categories at any time, please type expert.
- To view experts currently online, please type online.