Popular Screen Capture Tool Skitch is now Available for Windows

Skitch by EverNote is one of the most popular screen capture tools for Mac and the good news is that Skitch is now also available for Windows at just the right price – $0.

You can use Skitch for quickly screenshots of anything that’s on your desktop screen and also for annotating your photographs with arrows, colored highlighters and text blocks. You can use the freehand drawing tool to mark areas while the Pixelate tool will help you blur any sensitive parts of an image – like the license plate of your car’s image.

When you done editing an image, you can either upload it directly to EverNote or drag the lower handle in the Skitch program to save that image to your desktop or attach it to your email message.

Head over to evernote.com to grab your free copy of Skitch. In addition to Windows, Skitch is also available as an app for the iOS and Android mobile platform.

Where Can I Download Windows 8 for Testing?

Microsoft today released Windows 8 to the world.

If you have a computer that running either Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7, you may head over to windows.com to buy your own upgrade copy of Windows 8 Pro (Professional) edition for $39.99 (or 1,999 if you are in India). This is an extremely reasonable price and it will stay valid until January, 2013.

Prior to releasing the full version of Windows 8, Microsoft had offered a release preview edition that allowed enthusiasts to evaluate the new software before making the switch. Now that Windows 8 final is available, the release preview edition has been pulled from the Microsoft website.

That said, if you would like to try out Windows 8 before buying the upgrade pack, here’s an easy way. Go to msdn.microsoft.com, scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll find links to download the 90-day trial edition of Windows 8. Microsoft provides these evaluation copies for developers but even consumers can download them for trying Windows 8.

A word of caution though. These are evaluation copies that will expire after 90 days and cannot be upgraded to the final edition. You should therefore create a bootable Windows 8 DVD from the evaluation ISOs and either set them up in a dual-boot environment or, better still, setup a Virtual Machine.

How to Upgrade your Computer to Windows 8

Windows 8 is finally here. I just upgraded my Windows 7 desktop to Windows 8 and the process couldn’t be smoother.

All the existing software programs work just fine in Windows 8 and the built-in Windows Store offers a plethora of new full-screen “apps” to choose from. Desktop search is so much better in Windows 8, the UI feels more snappy and the system will boot faster. You don’t need to install a separate anti-virus program as Windows Defender is already included in Windows 8.

If you haven’t played with the Windows 8 beta versions earlier, it may take a day or two to get comfortable with the new layout but overall, Windows 8 is a must-have upgrade.

Upgrading to Windows 8 – Step by Step

If you are also planning to make the switch to Windows 8 this weekend, here are 3 things you would need:

• A Windows machine running Windows 7, Vista and Windows XP. It doesn’t matter if you have computer is running Windows XP Premium or Windows 7 Home Basic.
• A valid credit card or a PayPal account to pay the upgrade fee – you will be required to pay $39.99 for the Windows 8 Professional edition.
• An internet connection for downloading the Windows 8 installer (2.05 GB). You may also order the Windows 8 installer on a DVD though it may not be necessary as it is quite easy to create your own Windows 8 DVD.

Please note that you are opting for an “upgrade” so it will overwrite your existing copy of Windows and there’s no way you can uninstall Windows 8 to switch to the previous Windows installation.

Also, your existing software programs will only be preserved if you are moving from Windows 7 to Windows 8. If your current PC is running Windows XP or Vista, all your files and data will be preserved but you will have to reinstall the software apps after upgrading to Windows 8.

Ready? Here’s how may upgrade your computer to Windows 8.

First download and run the Upgrade Assistant program. This will essentially perform a few checks on your computer and will also suggest a list of software programs / hardware devices that may not be compatible with Windows 8.

Next you need to order your Windows 8 upgrade pack right inside the installation wizard. Choose the “Checkout” option, enter your Credit Card details and the next screen will show your Windows 8 product key that you may need at the time of installation. You don’t have to write then down on paper and Microsoft will also send a receipt of your order and the Windows serial number to your email address.

Important: What you are buying is the upgrade license that will only work on an existing Windows machine. You cannot use this Windows 8 license on a new machine that you could be building from scratch. If you wish to install Windows 8 from scratch on a new hard disk, you need the System Builder that may not be available at all locations.

The upgrade assistant will now download the Windows 8 installer files to your computer. This process may take a while since it will require the transfer of ~2 GB of data from Microsoft servers to your disk.

Tip: The Windows 8 installer files are stored in the C:\ESD\Windows\Sources folder – it’s hidden so you may not find it inside Windows Explorer.

Once the installer files have been downloaded, you can continue with the installation or you may pick the second option that says – “Install by creating media.”  Here you can save the Windows 8 installer files in a single ISO file and then, from the wizard itself, burn the ISO image into a bootable DVD. This may come handy later when you want to repair or reinstall Windows 8 later but have deleted the installer from the disk to free up disk space.

Once the DVD is ready, double-click the Windows Setup shortcut (you’ll find it on your desktop) to run the setup again.

You can either do a clean install and choose “Nothing” or use the “Windows settings, personal files and apps” option to preserve your files as well as programs (recommended).  Also, if you choose “Nothing,” your personal files (anything saved inside the User folder and on the desktop) will be moved to a windows.old folder.

Choose the first “Install Now” option and Windows 8 will finish installing itself. Simple!

Download the Evernote Bible for Free Today!

Whether you are an experienced Evernote user or a newbie who is just trying to make sense of the various features available inside Evernote, here’s something useful for you.

The Evernote Bible is a $9.99 ebook loaded with tips on how you can use the Evernote software more effectively. It discusses the various scenarios where you can use Evernote, how you can perform advanced searches, how to automate Evernote with IFTTT, and encryption among other things.

My favorite part though is at the end where the author shares 99 creative uses of Evernote. For instance, since Evernote can encrypt text, you can also consider using the software as an online Password manager.

The Evernote bible is available as a free download on Amazon today. You can read it on your computer, mobile phone or the Kindle, if you have one.

Battle of the Windows 8 Start Buttons

If the absence of a Start Menu button is keeping you from upgrading to Windows 8, you are in luck. There are tools available that will put the Start Menu into your Windows 8 desktop and these buttons don’t just have a familiar look-and-feel but they also mimic the functionality of the original Windows Start Menu.

I tried about half a dozen Start buttons for Windows 8 from various developers and here are some recommendations on which ones you may use and which ones you should avoid.

Win8StartButton brings the best of both worlds. It adds a Start Menu button to your Windows 8 desktop but the layout is more like a compressed version of the Start Screen of Windows 8. When you open the Start Menu, the search box stays in focus so you can even type a few characters to quickly open any software program.

I really liked this program (it makes you familiar with the start screen) but the only issue is that some of the options are written in German.

Start8 by Stardock is “the” best Start Menu alternative for Windows 8. It offers a polished and beautiful layout with support for search and one-click access to your My Documents, Pictures and other common folders.

Also, if you aren’t a huge fan of the new tiles based Start Screen of Windows 8, you can configure Start8 such that it will boot your computer directly into the Desktop mode. A single user license is $5 though a 30-day trial is available.

Start Is Back is a still-in-development Start Menu button that looks very promising. You can customize the layout of the Start Button (including the Windows orb), there’s an option to boot directly into the desktop mode and you can even choose to completely disable the menus that appear when you hover your mouse in the corners of your Windows 8 desktop.

Start Is Back is free at this time but that will change once it is out of beta.

I also tested the Vi Orb Start Button and while it is an impressive clone of the Windows 7 menu, the software will add useless Registry Cleaner programs to your computer and may therefore be avoided.

Classic Shell was originally created to bring the Windows XP style classic menu to users who were confused with the new Start Menu designs of Windows Vista and Windows 7 (isn’t that a familiar story). The menu has since then been updated to support Windows 8.

In addition to the regular desktop-based programs, you can also use the Classic Shell to directly access the modern (Metro) apps from the Start Menu itself. The programs is free and much reliable as it has been around for a very long time.

To conclude, the $5 Start8 button from Stardock is your best bet or go with Classic Shell Menu if you are looking for a free alternative. That said, if you are new to Windows 8, play around with the system for about a week and you won’t really feel the need to have a Start Button as long as you have a dedicated Windows button on your keyboard.

Dell Offers Windows 8 for Dummies PDF eBook

Are you new to Windows 8? Or have you made the switch to Windows 8 recently but are feeling lost?
The Dell Enterprise team today released a free PDF ebook – Windows 8 for Dummies – that covers the basics of the new Windows OS especially parts that are new like the Windows Apps Store or the new Start Screen.
This is the pocket edition produced for Dell and have only a subset of topics that are available in the full edition of Windows 8 for Dummies.
Here’s the TOC.

Remove the Previous Windows Installation after Upgrading to Windows 8

When you upgrade to Windows 8, the program files and folders of the previous Windows installation are moved to the Windows.old folder.
If the Windows 8 upgrade happened smoothly and all your programs are working as expected, it may be a good idea to get rid of the Windows.old permanently as it could be holding tens of Gigabytes of precious disk space.

The Windows.old folder is huge.

How to Delete the Windows.old System Folder

Windows.old is a Windows System folder and hence it cannot be removed using the good old Shift+Delete keyboard shortcut. However, Windows does include a utility to help you get rid of this bulky folder forever. Here’s how:

1. Press the Windows key + R shortcut to open the Run box. Type cleanmgr here and hit Enter to open the Disk Clean utility.
2. Select the drive letter where your Windows 8 is installed (most likely C: drive)
3. On the next screen, click the button that says Clean Up System Files.
4. The utility will rescan your C: drive but this time, it will add a new option that says “Previous Windows installation.” Select that option and click the OK button.

Remove the previous Windows installation in Windows 8

The Windows.8 folder will now be deleted giving you plenty of extra disk space for your programs and documents. See more ways to recover disk space in Windows.

How to Convert Google Books to Kindle Format

Google Books hosts millions of ebook from the public domain (out of copyright) that you can download on Kindle (or any other ebook reader) for free.
The only problem is that the ebooks available on the Google Books website are in ePUB format which is not compatible with Kindle. You can however convert ePUB to MOBI or AZW format using a free software like Calibre and then read these Google books on your Kindle. Calibre can also convert Google eBooks to Kindle’s AZW3 format which is supported by the new Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire devices.

Convert .EPUB to .MOBI with Calibre

Here’s a step by step guide on how you can convert ePUB books to MOBI format using Calibre.

Download Google books in ePUB format

Step 1: Download any ePUB book from Google Books. Look for the label “EBook – Free” next to the book title and then choose “Downlod ePUB” from the book’s settings menu as shown in the screenshot.
Step 2: Open the Calibre software on your desktop and press the “A” key on the keyboard to add this ePUB file to your Calibre Library. Alternatively, you may click the “Add Books” icon in the Calibre toolbar and choose the first option that says “Add books from a single directory.”
Step 3: Now that the ePUB books is inside Calibre, select the book and press “C” key to open the conversion menu. (Or choose the Convert Books option from the toolbar and then click Convert Individually). Here change the Output format from ePUB to either MOBI or AZW3 (for newer Kindle models) and click the OK button.
The ebook conversion may take some time depending on the size of your source book. Press Alt + Shift + J to see the current conversion status.
Step 4. Once the file conversion is complete, open the default Calibre library (it’s usually at c:\users\<username>\Calibre Library) and double-click the .mobi file to open it inside your Kindle reader app on the desktop. Alternative, you can transfer the eBook to Kindle over USB, Wi-Fi or email and enjoy it on the go.

Useful Bookmarklets for your iPad and iPhone

The Safari browser of your iOS device (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch) doesn’t support extensions (or add-ons) but you can still add extra functionality to the mobile browser with the help of bookmarklets.
Bookmarklets, if you are new, are like regular bookmarks but instead of opening new websites, bookmarklets are often used to perform actions. For instance, you can shorten long URLs, translate web pages, find word meanings, save pages and more with a single click.

How to install iOS Bookmarklets in Safari?

In the case of a desktop browsers like Chrome or Firefox, you can simply drag the bookmarklet to the bookmarks toolbar but unfortunately, the Safari browser of your iOS device doesn’t support this style of installation. There’s however an easy workaround.
Just pick any iOS bookmarklet from the drop-down menu below and a bookmark the page in your iOS Safari browser.

Next, edit the saved bookmark and remove everything from the URL that’s before the # symbol. Click “Done” and your bookmarklet is now installed.

Safari Bookmarklets for iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch

Readability	This provides a distraction – free reading environment on the web. The bookmarklet will remove all the clutter from web pages and what you get is a clean and comfortable reading view.
Translate to English	Reading a page that’s not written in your native language? Click this bookmarklet and it will translate it to your language using Google Translate.
Shorten with Goo.gl	This bookmarklet will create a short URL of the current page using goo.gl.
Download as PDF	Lets you download the current web page as a PDF file that you may attach as an email or read it offline.
Share on Tumblr	Post the content of the current page, be it an image, video, text or something else, to your Tumblr blog.
Share on Facebook	Share any web page with your Facebook friends.
Share on Twitter	Lets you post the URL and title of the current page on to Twitter.
Send to Instapaper	Save web pages directly to your Instapaper account with a click.
Add to Pocket	Save web pages to your Pocket account with a click. This was formerly known as Read Later bookmarklet.
Pin to Pinterest	Grab images from the current web page and pin them on to your Pinterest boards.
Google Cache	If a web page is offline, you can retrieve a copy from Google Cache.
Coral Cache	If you are unable to access a web page due to ISP filtering or because of any geo-restrictions, Coral Cache can fetch a copy for you.
QR Code	When you want to quickly send the URL of a page from your iPad to your iPhone or Android phone, simply use QR Code
Google Bookmarks	Save the current page to your Google Bookmarks.
Save on Delicious	Delicious is still quite a popular place for bookmarking web pages. If you are on delicious, use this bookmarklet to bookmark the current page.
Shorten with Bit.ly	This uses bit.ly (or j.mp) to create a short URL of the current web page.
Add to Amazon Wishlist	Lets you add an item to your Amazon’s Wish List. You may even add items to the wish-list that are not listed on Amazon.com.
Subscribe in Google Reader	Subscribe to a blog with Google Reader. The bookmarklet will automatically figure out the RSS feed of that blog.
Search Site	If a website is missing a search box, you can use Google’s Site Search function to search for internal pages of that site.
Send to Evernote	Save pages to Evernote, an awesome note taking software.
Share on Google+	With the Google +1 bookmarklet, you can share any web page or video to your Google Plus circles.
Scoop.it	Scoop It is a popular content curation tool and this iOS bookmarklet lets you curate any web page with a click.
Send to Kindle	Send the current web page to your Amazon Kindle and read it later.
Share It!	You’ve previously seen sharing bookmarklets for Twitter, Facebook and Twitter but if you would like to share stuff on a different social sites – like Reddit, StumbleUpon, Hacker News, etc. – use this universal sharing bookmarkle.

Note: You may have noticed that a couple of really good bookmarklets – like the one that turns webpages into a whiteboard or the one that lets you edit web pages – are missing here and that’s because they do not work with the mobile Safari browser.

How to Remove DRM from Kindle Books

The Kindle books that you buy from Amazon are DRM-protected meaning you can only read them on a Kindle Reader or an official Kindle App. It is not possible to read your purchased Kindle books in other ebook readers like the Nook.
Amazon has these DRM based copy-protection measures in place to protect Kindle ebooks against online piracy but, as a consumer, the DRM scheme does limit your options.
For instance, you cannot create backups of Kindle ebooks that you already own and second, you cannot convert DRM protected books into other ebook formats like EPUB or PDF that can be read in other non-Amazon apps.

Strip DRM from Kindle ebooks and convert them to other formats like EPUB or PDF

Remove DRM from Kindle eBooks

Whether removing DRM is legal or not is a debatable topic, there are simple ways by which anyone can bypass DRM from Kindle eBooks. Google for “Kindle DRM Removal Tools” and you’ll find several paid options that allow you to remove DRM from ebooks with a click.
Alternatively, you can strip DRM using free tools as well as detailed below:

1. Download and install the free Kindle for PC software onyour Windows computer.
2. Open the Kindle for PC app and sign-in using your Amazon Account that you use to purchase and downloadKindle ebooks. Download the books that you are looking to convert to other formats.
3. Download and install the free Calibre software.
4. Download tools.zip and extract the contents of this file on to your desktop.
5. Launch Calibre and press Ctrl+P to open the Preference window. Choose Plugin under the Advanced group and then choose Load Plugin from File.
6. Browse to the folder where you extracted the tools.zip file and, under Calibre_Plugin, choose the K4MobiDeDRM_plugin.zip file.
7. Accept the security risk and the Kindle DRM plugin is now installed inside Calibre. Restart thesoftware.
8. Open the My Documents folder in Windows Explorer and switch to the folder that says My Kindle Content.You’ll find a bunch of *.AZW files here that are actually DRM protected Kindle ebooks.
9. Drag and drop any of these AZW file into the Calibre window and then choose the Convert Books option.Select a different output format – like MOBI, EPUB or PDF – and click OK to begin the conversion process.

Once the AZW ebook has been successfully converted, you can find the exported file inside your Calibre library. The DRM protection has finally been stripped from your Kindle ebook.

Some More Answers around Windows 8

This week’s WSJ column answers some common questions that you may have around upgrading to Windows 8.

I also did a little Q&A with Microsoft India which is shared below:
Q. I am planning to assemble my own PC from scratch. Where do I get a full license (System Builder Edition?) of Windows 8?
A: You can buy a retail copy of Windows 8 for Rs. 11,999.
Q. If I buy a Windows 8 machine, can I downgrade to Windows 7 or Vista later?
A: PCs purchased preinstalled with Windows 8 Pro will have the option to downgrade either to Windows 7 Professional or Windows Vista Business.
Q. I have a laptop computer and a desktop computer at home. Do I need to buy separate Windows 8 licenses?
A: Yes, you need separate licenses.
Q. Can I deactivate my Windows 8 license and transfer it to another computer?
A: Yes – by completely formatting your drive.
Q. If I buy a TechNet / MSDN license, am I allowed to use them on a personal computer?
A: The TechNet/MSDN license is for the developers only and can be installed on a machine used for coding.
Q. I am a student and don’t have a Credit Card or PayPal. How do I buy an Windows 8 upgrade license?
A: If you have VISA or Master Debit card, you can pay through that. Alternately, if you are a current Windows user, you can buy a retail copy of Windows 8 Pro for Rs. 3,499 at retail stores. The promo is available till 31st January 2013.
Q. Windows 8 ships with Windows Defender. Would you recommend installing any other anti-virus program to better secure the computer?
A: Windows 8 provides enterprise-class security capabilities that help keep PCs more secure against malware intrusion and better protected with easy-to-deploy data encryption as well as strong access control to resource. If you wish, you can choose to install your own third-party anti-malware products with the ability to turn off Windows Defender. That said, if Windows 8 senses that the device is unprotected for a length of time, Windows Defender will automatically start to ensure the device is protected.
Q. Is Surface coming to India anytime soon?
A: Currently, Surface is only available in eight markets including Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and the United States.

How to Add a YouTube Subscribe Widget to your Website

Do you have a video channel on YouTube? Then you may want to add this simple “Subscribe” button to your website that will help visitors subscribe to your YouTube channel with a click without having to leave your site for YouTube.
For example, here’s a “live” subscription button for my video channel on YouTube:
To embed this button to your own website, just copy-paste the following block of HTML code anywhere in your website. Then replace XYX in the subscription URL with your own YouTube username.

    <iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/subscribe_widget?p=XYZ" 
       style="overflow: hidden; height: 105px; width: 300px; border: 0;" 
       scrolling="no" frameBorder="0">
    </iframe>

Related: YouTube Promotional Banners

One-Click YouTube Subscribe Button

When you create a link from the website to your YouTube channel, there’s a probability that that visitor may fail to notice the “subscribe” button on the already crowded YouTube channel page.
However, if you add “sub_confirmation=1″ to the YouTube channel link, the visitor will get a prompt to subscribe to your channel while they are on the YouTube website. Click here for a live example.

http://www.youtube.com/user/labnol?sub_confirmation=1

Please do note that the Subscribe prompt would not be displayed if the visitor is already subscribed to your YouTube channel or if they are not logged into YouTube.

Use Windows 8 Themes with Previous Versions of Windows

The official Windows Themes directory at windows.microsoft.com hosts some beautiful themes for your Windows desktop. Some of the newer themes – like these dual-screen panoramic images – are however compatible only with Windows 8 machines.
If you aren’t planning to make the upgrade to Windows 8, the good news is that you can still extract the wallpaper backgrounds of these Windows 8 specific themes and use them on older Windows PCs.

Also see: Use Windows 7 Themes on Windows XP or Vista
The Windows theme files have a .themepack extension but the Windows 8 specific themes are distributed as .deskthemepack files. Internally, this is just another archive format that you can easily open using the free 7-zip utility.
Install the 7-zip utility and then download any of the .deskthemepack files from the Windows Themes gallery. Press F2 to rename the theme file and change its extension to .7z (you can just append .7z to the file name). Now you can right-click this files and extract the included wallpapers to your desktop.
Now you can either use these background individually or put them in one folder and then open Desktop Background under the Control Panel. Browse for the folder containing these pictures and select the ones that you would like to use on your desktop.

Route Planner Lists all your Travel Options in India

Should you take the bus, taxi, train, flight or a combination of them?
Travel website MakeMyTrip.com today introduced a new web-based tool called Route Planner that will show you the various modes of transport that you can take to travel from one city to another. You may also use the tool to plan your travel to smaller towns in India that aren’t always connected by flights or even trains.
To get started, enter your starting point and the destination city and Route Planner will display the various permutations and combinations available between the two points. It will also list the approximate time per route and the approximate fare that you can expect to pay for the trip.
The tool may come handy for planning travel to places – especially the Tier II and Tier III cities – where you have never been before though in some cases, the suggested choices weren’t quite practical.

A Better Alternative to Google Docs Viewer

The formatting is often not retained when Office documents are opened inside Google Docs Viewer

Google Docs Viewer is a useful service that helps you preview Microsoft Office files in the browser itself. The online tool can come handy when you don’t have the Office suite installed on your computer or when you would like to quickly preview the content of an online document without having to download it locally.Office Web Apps, Microsoft’s answer to Google Docs, too offer a similar online document viewer that is superior to Google’s tool as it retains the formatting while rendering the document in the browser.
For instance, here’s a standard PowerPoint presentation (PPT) in Google Docs Viewer and the same file rendered inside Office Viewer. Next, compare a slightly-complex Word document (docx) inside Google Viewer and Office Viewer. The latter retains all the styling and even the fonts look sharp there.

How to Use Office Web Apps Viewer

If you are to open an online document/spreadsheet/presentation inside the Office viewer, all you need to do is append the URL (web address) of that file to “view.officeapps.live.com” as shown in the following 
In addition to previewing Office files, the same Office Web Apps Viewer tool can also be used for embedding Microsoft Office documents into your website or blog. The embed code would be something like this:

<iframe src='https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/embed.aspx?src=http://example/PowerPoint.ppt' width='500px' height='350px' frameborder='0'></iframe>

You need to replace the actual URL of the document and may also adjust the height and width attributes of the IFRAME tag.
While Office Web Apps viewer is definitely a better option that Google Docs Viewer, a limitation is that it only works with Office Files, Google Docs Viewer can also handle PDFs, Photoshop files and even AutoCAD drawings.

Gmail Size Search Operator Locates all the Emails with Large Attachments

Search Gmail messages by Size using the undocumented “size” operator

Wondering what email messages are eating up all the Gigabytes of space that you have in your Gmail mailbox? There are Google Scripts and external web apps that let you discover all the space-hogging email attachments but you don’t need them anymore.
Gmail supports an undocumented “size” search operator that will let you quickly find all the big emails in the mailbox whose size exceeds a particular threshold. The search syntax is:

size:[size in bytes]

To give a real example, a Gmail search query like size:5242880 will list all big emails who size is 5 MB or greater while size:10485760 list messages that are bigger than 10 MB.
The size operator requires size in bytes (1 MB = 1048576 Bytes) but to make things a bit easier to remember, you can also think of the number as 1 followed by 6 zeros.
Update: As some have pointed in the comments, you may now specify the size in MB as well which makes it a lot easier. For instance, size:5MB (or even size:5M) will find all Gmail message that are 5 MB or greater in size.
Once you have spotted the large emails attachments that are taking too much space, apply the #googleDrive label to directly save those attachments to Google Drive before deleting them from your Gmail mailbox.
The “size” operator was first discovered by TechSmog.

Google+ Shows How your Website is Performing in Google Search Results

If you have previously linked your website(s) to your Google+ profile using authorship tags (or through rel=author), you can now see some important stats about your incoming Google search traffic right inside Google Plus itself.

Go to plus.google.com/authorship/analytics and it will show you Impressions (number of times your articles appeared in Google search results) as well as Clicks (number of times your articles were clicked in Google results) for the last 30 days. The report also carries similar stats for individual pages on your website(s).
Getting on the front page on Google is important (impression) but unless search users aren’t clicking on your page in search results (click), that rank is mostly wasted. That’s where good titles and meta descriptions can make a difference.
The reports in Google+ do not display your site’s exact ranking in Google Search but if the “impression” count is 100K or greater, your site is performing quite well and you probably need to work on factors that will further improve the click-through rate (or clicks).
Update: It looks like these reports in Google+ aren’t available to all publishers yet and hence the above link could be returning a 404.

How to Embed YouTube as an Audio Player

How do you embed only the audio portion of a YouTube video in your web pages.
A popular option would be that you extract the audio portion of that YouTube video and then use the Google MP3 player to embed that MP3 fil into your website. This will work but YouTube is very likely to have a problem with your approach.
The other approach could be CSS based where you embed the regular YouTube video player and then use the magic of CSS styles to hide the video inside the embedded player. See demo:

This internally renders the YouTube player using the IFRAME player and should therefore work on both desktop (Flash) and mobile (HTML5) browsers.
Without boring you with the technical details, here’s the little HTML code that turn the YouTube video player into an audio player. Simply replace the youtubeID with the ID of your YouTube video and you are done.

<div style="position:relative;width:267px;height:25px;overflow:hidden;">
  <div style="position:absolute;top:-276px;left:-5px">
    <iframe width="300" height="300" 
      src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/youtubeID?rel=0">
    </iframe>
  </div>
</div>

The YouTube logo inside then player, when clicked, will transport you to the original video hosted on the YouTube website.

An Easy Way to Access Hulu from Outside the US

Hulu.com is one of the best places on the web where you can watch movies and popular TV shows for free. All you need is a web browser with the Flash Player and you are good to go.
Hulu at this is time is only available in US but there’s an a new browser add-on called MediaHint that makes it dead-simple for anyone to access Hulu from anywhere in the world. Just install the extension and there’s absolutely no configuration required.
MediaHint is available for Firefox and Google Chrome . I was looking at the source code of the Chrome add-on and turns out that it merely changes the proxy server settings of your browser when you try accessing a Hulu video. Here’s the relevant snippet:

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {
    var usa = ['hulu.com', 'netflix.com', 'pandora.com'];

    var direct = ['assets.hulu.com', 'll.a.hulu.com', 'ads.hulu.com', 'stats.pandora.com', 'blog.netflix.com', 'nordicsblog.netflix.com', 'blog.pandora.com'];
    for (var i = 0; i < direct.length; i++) {
        if (host.indexOf(direct[i]) > -1) {
            return 'DIRECT';
        }
    }

    if (host.match(/audio.*\.pandora\.com/) || host.match(/const.*\.pandora\.com/) || host.match(/mediaserver.*\.pandora\.com/) || host.match(/cont.*\.pandora\.com/)) {
        return 'DIRECT';
    }

    for (var i = 0; i < usa.length; i++) {
        if (host.indexOf(usa[i]) > -1) {
            return 'PROXY 50.116.59.63:80';
        }
    }
    return 'DIRECT';
}

In addition to Hulu, the same add-on may also be used for accessing music site Pandora and movie-streaming site Netflix from outside the US.

SEO Tip for Blogs – Don’t Waste the PageRank

Most blogs use the following layout for their home pages and the archives. There’s the title of the post, a short excerpt (description) and a “read more” link that points to the full article. Some blogs may also add a featured image near the post’s excerpt.

A common layout for blogs

There’s one little problem with the above layout though – it wastes your Google PageRank and thus may not be the most optimal layout as far as SEO is concerned.

Let me try explaining it in simple English.

Your blog’s homepage has a finite amount of Google PageRank that is equally distributed among all the links that exist on that page. Thus, if you put 10 links on a web page whose PageRank is 5, each of those links is passed 0.5 PageRank. If you decrease the number of links from 10 to 5, each of the links will be awarded with a PageRank of 1.

In the above example, there exist 2-3 links per post on the homepage – the post title (1), the featured image (2) and the “read more” link (3). If you can have just create one link from the home page to the inner post page, the linked page will get more PageRank which may benefit them in organic search rankings.

How? A possible solution is that you get rid of the “read more” link on the blog homepage (and archive pages) and instead apply a different CSS style to the post titles so that they instantly appear as links – you can use a different font family, increase the font size and maybe apply a different color (like some shade of dark blue).

Run the iOS Simulator in your Web Browser

The iOS Simulator is primarily targeted at Apple developers for them to develop iPad and iPhone apps on a Mac. That said, if you create websites, you can also use the iOS Simulator app to test your web designs on an iPhone or iPad without actually having the device. The iOS Simulator includes the native Safari app that is very close to the real thing.

The iOS Simulator app is only available for the Mac but if you are Windows or Linux, you can use the Browser Stack tool to run the “official” iOS Simulator directly in your web browser without installing any software.

To get started, create an account at Browser Stack and then choose “iOS” as the platform. Put your website URL in the input box and choose an iOS device – they offer the iPhone 3GS/4/4S/5 and iPad 1/2/3 loaded with various version of iOS. You can also switch devices while you are inside the iOS Simulator (see the above screenshot).

This is like you are connecting to a remote Mac using your browser and that computer is running the iOS Simulator app. While you are inside the Simulator, tap (i.e., double click with your mouse) the Safari icon and launch any of your websites.

Unlike the fake emulators, what you are now using i very similar to the actual Safari app that available on a physical iOS device except that you have to use the mouse and not touch gestures to interact with the app.

The free plan offers 30 minutes of testing. And in addition to the iOS Simulator, Browser Stack also includes emulators for various Android devices.

Geotag your Tweets with any Random Location

On Twitter, if you do not wish to reveal your geographic location in your tweets, you can either completely disable the location feature from Twitter settings or you can can attach some random (read, fake) location to your tweet.

For instance, here’s a recent tweet that specific my location as the White House in Washington DC though it was written from a place that is at least 8000 miles away.

Fake your geographic location on Twitter

Attach any Location to your Tweets

Now most Twitter mobile clients won’t let you attach random locations to your tweets but there’s a web-based app called PleaseDontStalkMe.com that may come handy here. Here you can pick any location on a Google Map – either drag the marker or use the search box to reach an exact address – and tweet.

Since the Twitter website no longer displays the app name that was used to send that tweet, your followers on Twitter are less likely to know that you faked your location in the tweet. Do remember to limit the length of your tweet to 140 characters else the tweet would fail but without offering an explanation.

You can geotag your tweets from the Twitter.com website as well (click the Location icon near the tweet button) but in that case, you can only attach a city-level location to the tweet and not an exact location.

Play any YouTube Playlist with VLC Media Player

Do you know that VLC Media Player, the world’s favorite video player that supports nearly every video format, can also play YouTube videos on your desktop without requiring the web browser or the Adobe Flash player.

To get started, open the VLC player, press Ctrl+N to open the Network URL dialog and paste any YouTube video URL in the input box.

The Benefits of Watching YouTube Videos with VLC

The streaming videos will play inside VLC Media Player just like any other local video file while offering some additional benefits not available inside the standard YouTube player. For instance:

1. You can choose Video -> Always on Top inside VLC and the YouTube video window will stick to the foreground while you work on other tasks.
2. Press the Loop button in the player controls and the YouTube video will play non-stop in a loop (also possible with Chrome add-ons).
3. You can change the Playback speed of the YouTube video and make it run slower or faster than the normal speed.
4. Use the Tools -> Take Snapshot option to capture a screenshot image of any frame or scene in the YouTube video.
5. Watch the YouTube videos without the ads. I played a couple of movies and music videos inside VLC and none of them carried any pre-roll ads.

Play YouTube Playlists inside VLC

VLC, by default, only supports single YouTube URLs but it also possible to import an entire YouTube Playlist into VLC and watch all the videos in sequence.

You can watch an entire playlist of YouTube videos inside VLC Media Player.

Here’s the trick. Right-click and save this file to your desktop. Now open the VLC installation folder (%ProgramFiles%\VideoLAN\VLC) and move the .lua file into the exiting /lua/playlist folder.

Restart the VLC Media Player and choose Media -> Open Network Stream. Now paste the URL of any public YouTube Playlist here and the enjoy the videos.

Track the Browser Size with Google Analytics

Google Analytics reports the “screen resolution” of the visitor’s computer but skips the other important metric which is the size of the browser window. These two numbers will be approximately similar if the browser window is kept in maximized state but not otherwise.

Take a look at the example below. The screen resolution of the desktop is 1920×1080 (this is the number recorded by Google Analytics) but the actual browser window size (where your website is displayed) is a little over 900×600 pixels.

Google Analytics displays the Screen Resolution and not the actual Browser Size of the visitor.

The screen resolution is a less-useful metric and what you really need to know is the actual size (or range) of the browser window of your visitors. This data can be easily gathered through Google Analytics – simply copy-paste the following code snippet just before the closing </body> tag of your website template:

<script type="text/javascript">
 var width  = window.innerWidth  || document.body.clientWidth;
 var height = window.innerHeight || document.body.clientHeight;

 width  = Math.round(width/100)*100;
 height = Math.round(height/100)*100;

 var size = width + "x" + height;
 _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Browser Size', 'Range', size]);
</script>

It calculates the actual height and width of the browser window and then rounds off these numbers to the nearest 100. For instance, a browser size of 985×1190 pixels is recorded as 1000×1200 pixels. You can then access this data in Google Analytics through Content -> Events -> Overview and then choose “Browse Size” as the Events Category.

Once you know the popular “ranges,” you can update the site layout and placement accordingly so that visitors can see all the important elements on your pages Above the Foldwithout having to use the scroll bar.

How to Search Google Images by the Exact Size

Google Images previously offered a useful “search by size” option to help you find images by their exact size (or resolution).

For instance, you could limit your search for landscape photographs to image files that were at least 10 Megapixels in size. Or, if you are were using Google Image search to find wallpapers for the desktop, you could specify the image resolution as 1920×1080 pixels and Google would only return large images with those exact dimensions.

The “exact size” search option is missing in the new Google Images but you can still limit your searches to a particular size by using the “imagesize” search operator in the query itself (see the above screenshot).

Enter the search terms as before and then add IMAGESIZE:WIDTHxHEIGHT to the query. Once you hit Enter, Google Images will remove the operator from the query but the results will only display images that match the specified size.

The search by size operators works on the mobile version of Google as well.

How to Generate RSS Feeds of Google Plus Profiles

Google Plus does not offer RSS Feeds but you can easily generate feeds on your own using a new Chrome app developed by Eric Koleda, an engineer working with the Google Apps Script team. Here’s a  sample Google+ Feed create using this tool.

Follow Google+ Profiles and Pages via RSS Feeds

Create RSS Feeds for Google Plus

To get started, launch Feed+ for Chrome and it will request access to some of your Google services. Say yes and you are all set to create RSS feeds from Google Plus. You can generate RSS feeds for individual profiles, business pages and for search results on Google Plus.

The generated RSS feeds are public and thus you, or anyone else, can subscribe to these feeds in any news reader. FeedBurner, for some reason, does not recognize these feeds as valid though I could easily subscribe to them in Google Reader.

And now that you have an RSS Feed for your Google Plus profile, you can easily cross-post updates to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn and everywhere else using the IFTTT service. You may also refer to my previous tutorial on how to publish RSS feeds to Twitterfor more options.

Update: Cross-post RSS Feeds to Google Plus

If you are to ever disable a particular Google Plus feed, simple delete it from the Feed+ app inside Chrome. Also, you only need the Chrome app for managing the feeds – the Google Plus to RSS conversion happens in the cloud.

Google Plus APIs do not include details about Circles else it would have been more convenient to have a single RSS feed per Google+ circle rather than having to generate separate feeds for every member of a circle.

A Text-only Browser Powered by Google Scripts

Text Browser is a Lynx-inspired browser that lets you browse the web in text and ignores all images and other rich content that is embedded inside a web page. Unlike Lynx and other text-only browser that require installation, Text Browser runs in the Google cloud and is internally powered by Google Apps Script.
The script will require access to your Google Docs the first you run it. This is required though the script will neither track your browsing activity nor will it access any of your documents (view the source code on ctrlq.org). Also, the script will send you an email with uninstallation instructions so you can remove the association with a click.
Once a page loads inside the Text Browser, all embedded links will also open inside the same browser automatically.

Text Browser as a Proxy Server

Why would anyone want a text browser when there’s broadband? Well, you can also use the Text Browser as a proxy server to access news articles and other websites that are inaccessible at your workplace.
When you request a web page, the script will first download the page on Google’s servers and then renders the content on your screen using Google Apps Script. Thus, even if a site is restricted, you should be able to indirectly access it through Google.
The CSS styles and layout is done through Twitter’s BootStrap framework.

How Many Windows 8 Apps are in the Windows Store?

Do you know how many Windows 8 Apps are available in the Windows Store?

The Microsoft website says that there are “tons of apps” for Windows 8 and Windows RT in the Windows Store but they haven’t revealed the exact numbers yet.
It turns out that there are 17,041 Windows 8 Apps in the Window Store (as on December 7, en-US) and if you want to dig a little deeper, download this text file as it includes a link to every Windows 8 app that’s currently available in the store .
How did I arrive at this number? Well there’s a sitemap file on apps.microsoft.com website, the domain that also hosts the Windows Store, which solves the mystery.
These always-updated XML sitemap files exist to help web search engines index the online Apps Store  and therefore should have entries corresponding to every app available in the Windows Store. The entries are  further split in 37 files (see a sample) and if you combine them all, it isn’t hard to calculate the actual number of Windows 8 Apps.

Little Known Gems for your Windows Computer

Here are some of the most useful software utilities that you wish were part of standard Windows. These tools are free, light-weight and can be installed on all versions of Windows including the newer Window 8.

1. Eraser – When you delete a file in Windows, the contents of the file can still be recovered using other utilities. Eraser lets you permanently delete a file making recovery nearly impossible.
2. Unlocker – If you are trying to delete a file (or folder) but unable to do so because the “file is in use” by another program, just use Unlocker to end all the locking processes.
3. ShellExView – As you install new programs, the contextual menu gets cluttered and confusing. With ShellExView, you can clean up the right-click menu and remove all the useless entries.
4. Everything – Windows includes powerful desktop search capabilities but Everything goes one step further. It looks for files and folders irrespective of their location  (including temporary files and system folders) and you can also use regular expressions in your search queries.
5. Always on Top – This tiny utility lets you easily keep any window on top of all other windows on your desktop. For instance, you can answer your emails, work on an Excel sheet while a YouTube video plays in the foreground.
6. SyncToy – One of the most useful software utilities from Microsoft that lets you keep different folders in sync with each other. You can configure it with Windows Task Manager to run file synchronization jobs automatically at custom intervals.
7. WinDirStat – Running out of space on Windows? WinDirStat helps you reclaim disk space by creating a visual treemap of your entire hard disk where the area of the colored rectangles is proportional to the size of the underlying folders.
8. Double Killer – This is the only tool you need to get rid of all duplicate files on your computer including images and music files. It compares the file hash to identify duplicate files.
9. TCPView – It will list all the software programs (or processes) on your computer that are accessing the Internet including the IP addresses that they are connecting to. Ignore all the columns except Process, Remote Address and State.
10. Droplr – This is the easiest way to upload your desktop files onto the web. Droplr adds a new option to your Windows “Send to” menu and also places a drop zone on the desktop. Any files that you place in the drop zone are instantly upload and the public link is copied to the clipboard automatically.
11. TinyGrab – Press a hotkey to grab a quick screenshot of anything that’s on your desktop screen and TinyGrab will put it online in a snap. The screen captures will stay online forever until you remove them.
12. Mouse Borders – Another useful utility from Microsoft that lets you control multiple computers from the same keyboard and mouse. A better alternative to Synergy.
13. KatMouse - You can scroll not-in-focus windows with the mouse wheel without selecting the window. Originally written for Windows 2000 but works in Windows 8 as well.
14. Mouse Jiggler – You computer screen may enter the “sleep” mode if the mouse or the keyboard is not used for a certain period of time. Mouse Jiggler keeps your computer awake by “faking” mouse input thus letting you watch that entire movie from a distance.
15. AltDrag - It lets you move and resize windows without reaching the borders of a window. Simply hold down the Alt key and then left-click to  drag the window or use right-click to resize the window.
16. ClipX – When you copy anything to your Windows Clipboard, all the previous content is overridden. ClipX preserves the clipboard history and lets you access your previously copied items from the system tray.
17. RBTray – Sometimes you want to hide windows instead of minimizing them to the Windows task bar. RBTray lets you minimize any window to the system tray by right clicking its minimize button.
18. MiniBin - This puts the Recycle Bin right into your system tray so you don’t have to minimize all your desktop windows to access the Bin icon. You can also also empty the bin from the system tray.
19. GearMage – Running out of space in your web inbox. Use the Gearmage utility to find and download email attachments that meet your search criteria to the local drive.
20. MailStore – If you want offline access to your emails, use MailStore as it helps you download all your emails  on the computer or even a USB drive.
21. MediaInfo - If an audio or video file refuses to play on your computer, chances are that the required codecs are missing on your system. MediaInfo will let you know what codecs are required to play the media file.
22. DropIt – It is like an advanced file sorting utility that will help you automatically copy or move files into relevant folders based on their extensions, date and other criteria. In the case of music files, you may even sort them by artists or album names.
23. Teracopy – It takes forever to copy or move files from one folder to another and if the operation is interrupted, you have to start from scratch. Teracopy improves the file copying speed and offers a detailed report in case of any errors.
24. Soluto – It helps improve the boot-up time of your Windows PC by removing unnecessary programs from the start-up routine and also delaying the launch of certain programs.
25. Sizer – It let you resize program windows to any fixed, predefined size. Quite handy when you are capturing screenshots for documentation and also for screencasting.
26. Background Switcher – It pull pictures from your Facebook, Instagram, RSS Feeds, Picasa, Google Images and uses them as rotating wallpaper backgrounds for your desktop.
27. f.lux – It adjusts the color temperature of your display based on your local time (warm at night and bright during the day). It does this by calculating the sunrise and sunset times of your location.
28. ZoomIt - It turns your desktop into a virtual whiteboard allowing your to draw /annotate anywhere on the screen using colored pens. An essential tool for presenters.
29. LockBox – Put all your confidential files into a folder and then use the LockBox utility to completely hide that folder inside Windows Explorer.
30. Safehouse Explorer – It is easy to misplace USB drives. Safehouse lets you quickly encrypt and password-protect data inside USB drives so others won’t be able to view your files and folders.