WordPress 3.3 Now Available:

The developers of the popular blogging platform WordPress have released version 3.3 just a few minutes ago. WordPress 3.3 update notifications should appear right in the admin interface of the blog. Users can use the internal updater to update from within the admin interface, or by downloading the new version from the official site to update manually.

The What’s New page at the WordPress Codex highlights the – many – changes of the new version. WordPress admins will instantly notice several changes to the applications admin interface. A new toolbar is displayed on top of the dashboard that combines the features of the admin bar and the admin header.

The new bar links directly to plugin and theme updates, comments awaiting moderation and the New menu with options to create new content on the blog. (There is a function to remove some of the elements that are shown in the admin bar. Credits to Sergej Müller)

Another change are “fly-out” menus in the admin interface. All submenus of a menu are displayed when you hoover the mouse over the menu. This saves a click and improves the admin’s workflow.

WordPress editors will notice a new file uploader. The developers have done away with the four upload buttons for specific type of media, and replaced it with a single button. The new uploader supports drag and drop operations and file browsing to select files to upload. Support for rar and 7z files have been added to the file uploader.

WordPress admins who switch between themes regularly will notice that widgets are not lost anymore when they do that.

A video has been created that highlights several of the new features.

The WordPress backend has been updated as well with hundreds of bug fixes and performance improvements. It is to early to tell if the improvements will have a significant impact on the blog’s server resource usage or loading times.

Have you updated your blog to WordPress 3.3 yet? If so, what do you think of the new version?

Google Chrome now Has Built-in User-Agent Switcher:

For cross-browser testing and to emulate sites on other devices till now we relied on extensions (like The User-Agent Switcher for Chrome) and by adding command line switches to chrome to change user-agent string inGoogle Chrome, now you don’t need all this since it’s built right into dev tools of Chrome now, current dev version has it.

Built-in User-Agent Switcher for Chrome

All you need to do is open dev tools (use Ctrl +Shift+I shortcut instead) from the wrench menu and click settings icon at the bottom, select or enable override user agent and select the browser or device you want to emulate and reload the page.

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[Thanks to François Beaufort]

Google Chrome now Has Built-in User-Agent Switcher is a post from: techdows.com

YouTube for Schools: All the TED Talks, None of the Cat Videos:

YouTube has launched a new initiative called YouTube for Schools, which will enable educators to open up classrooms to the wide world of educational content on YouTube without all the junk. Open Internet access in schools is tricky, with all the distractions and time-wasters out there, so Google is taking this step to make educators’ lives easier.

Network administrators can turn on YouTube for Schools to give school computers access to the vast library ofYouTube EDU content from partners such as the Smithsonian and TED. The content is organized into topical and grade-level playlists. You can view the lists at youtube.com/teachers.

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YouTube for Schools allows unfettered access to educational videos without any of the YouTube stuff that’s inappropriate for school. Schools can customize their YouTube portals with playlists and topics tailored to their curricula. And teachers can find videos arranged by topic and grade level to help them formulate lesson plans.

In 2010, Google’s launch of encrypted search ran afoul of school network administrators by clashing with theChildren’s Internet Protection Act, a federal law that would have required schools to block Google. Google had to move encrypted search to a new, separate domain to fix the problem. With this specialized version of YouTube, it looks like Google has figured out how to better serve the needs of schools.

YouTube has run some interesting educational promotions this year, such as a contest to perform your science experiment live from space.

Read more about YouTube for Schools on the YouTube blog.

Do you think YouTube is a good educational resource?

Improve Your Google Search Skills [Infographic]:

Don’t limit yourself to just plugging in simple search terms to Google; check out this infographic and learn a search string search or two.

You don’t need to limit yourself to searching just for simple strings; Google supports all manner of handy search tricks. If you want to search just HowToGeek.com’s archive of XBMC articles, for example, you can plug insite:howtogeek.com XBMC to search our site.

Improve Your Google Search Skills [Infographic]:

Don’t limit yourself to just plugging in simple search terms to Google; check out this infographic and learn a search string search or two.

You don’t need to limit yourself to searching just for simple strings; Google supports all manner of handy search tricks. If you want to search just HowToGeek.com’s archive of XBMC articles, for example, you can plug insite:howtogeek.com XBMC to search our site.

Clear Your YouTube Viewing History, Workaround:

Did you know that YouTube saves information about every video that you view on the video hosting site when you are logged into your Google account and also when you are not? And that those video views are saved indefinitely by the service?

The saving of YouTube video views may be a privacy issue to some users. While you could say that logging out of your account after using the computer resolves the issue, it is not that easy. Why? Because YouTube keeps track of viewed videos even if you are not logged into a Google account or a YouTube account.

Just visit the site, make sure you are not logged in and start watching a video. Once you are finished visit theYouTube History page. You should see that video listed there along with other videos that you have watched in the past while logged out of your Google or YouTube account.

YouTube uses cookies to monitor a user’s viewing history even if they are not logged in. Is that a privacy issue? I say it is, especially if you are not the only user who uses the computer.

To make matters worse, there is only one option to delete the viewing history. Visit the YouTube viewing history page. Actually, you need to visit the page twice if you watch videos when you are logged in and logged out.

You can delete individual videos by selecting them first and clicking the remove button afterwards, or all videos with a click on the clear all viewing history button.

This triggers the following prompt where you have to confirm the removal.

If you are never logged into Youtube or Google when viewing videos on YouTube, you can clear the viewing history automatically by deleting all YouTube cookies regularly (for instance on shutdown of the browser). Check out How To Clear Individual Cookies In Google Chrome or Selectively Block Cookies on Internet Explorer and Firefox In Realtime).

Users who are logged into their account when they view videos need to clear the viewing history manually regularly if they are concerned about their privacy.

There is another option for users who do not need a YouTube account but want to view videos. The core issue here is that YouTube will record the history when they are logged into other Google services. One option would be to launch YouTube in private browsing mode. Chrome users could use the Ghost Incognito extension to automate that process. This would log out the user automatically when logged in, and also clear cookies and other data on exit.

Does anyone know a better way of clearing YouTube’s viewing history? Let me know in the comments.

Clear Your YouTube Viewing History, Workaround:

Did you know that YouTube saves information about every video that you view on the video hosting site when you are logged into your Google account and also when you are not? And that those video views are saved indefinitely by the service?

The saving of YouTube video views may be a privacy issue to some users. While you could say that logging out of your account after using the computer resolves the issue, it is not that easy. Why? Because YouTube keeps track of viewed videos even if you are not logged into a Google account or a YouTube account.

Just visit the site, make sure you are not logged in and start watching a video. Once you are finished visit theYouTube History page. You should see that video listed there along with other videos that you have watched in the past while logged out of your Google or YouTube account.

YouTube uses cookies to monitor a user’s viewing history even if they are not logged in. Is that a privacy issue? I say it is, especially if you are not the only user who uses the computer.

To make matters worse, there is only one option to delete the viewing history. Visit the YouTube viewing history page. Actually, you need to visit the page twice if you watch videos when you are logged in and logged out.

You can delete individual videos by selecting them first and clicking the remove button afterwards, or all videos with a click on the clear all viewing history button.

This triggers the following prompt where you have to confirm the removal.

If you are never logged into Youtube or Google when viewing videos on YouTube, you can clear the viewing history automatically by deleting all YouTube cookies regularly (for instance on shutdown of the browser). Check out How To Clear Individual Cookies In Google Chrome or Selectively Block Cookies on Internet Explorer and Firefox In Realtime).

Users who are logged into their account when they view videos need to clear the viewing history manually regularly if they are concerned about their privacy.

There is another option for users who do not need a YouTube account but want to view videos. The core issue here is that YouTube will record the history when they are logged into other Google services. One option would be to launch YouTube in private browsing mode. Chrome users could use the Ghost Incognito extension to automate that process. This would log out the user automatically when logged in, and also clear cookies and other data on exit.

Does anyone know a better way of clearing YouTube’s viewing history? Let me know in the comments.

Bring Auto Save Feature To Notepad With AutoSave [Plugin]:

Word Processors like MS Word can recover your data in case the system shuts down, reboots or the document is accidentally closed due to system crash. This document recovery option gives users the security of saving their data from accidental deletion. If you’re an avid Notepad++ user and need auto-save feature to automatically save the documents after defined amount of time, add Auto-Save to Notepad++ plugin list. The extension lets you create an auto-save schedule, so that you can customize the 1-time auto-save option as per requirement. Apart from custom auto-save option, it can automatically save your current document upon application losing focus.

Like all Notepad++ plugins, you can install AutoSave either by downloading the DLL file or from Plugin Manager. If Notepad++ fails to download the extension from Plugin Manager, download the plugin DLL package (link given at the bottom of the post), unzip the package and copy AutoSaveU.dll to Notepad++\plugins folder, followed by a restart of the application itself. First off, click Plugins menu, and then select Options from Auto Save sub-menu to configure document auto save settings.

Auto Save Options dialog lets you auto save either current or all opened documents. You can change default auto-save time interval, exclude documents larger than specified size (KB), enable auto-save option when Notepad++ loses focus, and configure  auto-save versions naming settings.

In Unnamed/new files section, you can choose Ignore/do noting option to ignore the unnamed files, ask for file name before saving them, or specify the location for saving overwrite and auto-recover versions. AutoSave is compatible with Notepad++ version 5.7 and higher. We tested it on version 5.9.3.

Download AutoSave (DLL)

Google Retires Knol, Wave, Friend Connect, Gears:

Larry Page, the new CEO of Google, is continuing to retire Google services (check out Google retires Google Buzz for additional information about previous retirement waves). This time a set of not overly-popular services face termination: Google Knol, Wave, Friend Connect, Search Timeline, Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal, Bookmark Lists and Google Gears will all be discontinued in the coming months.

Users who visit the Google Knol start page see a big announcement on that page stating that “Knol will be moving to Annotum on May 1, 2012″. Google Knol was a Wikipedia-like online service to which Google users contributed articles to. Knol, unlike other services, can be migrated to Annotum, a multi-user WordPress site. Knol users alternatively have the option to download their articles to their computer.

Google Knol will be available until May 1, 2012. The service will be taken offline at this point in time. Knol users can still download or migrate their articles until October 1, 2012 when those options expire as well. Users who migrate will benefit from automatic redirects of their articles.

For Google Wave, the options are nearly the same. Google Wave will become read only on January 31, 2012 which basically means that users will not be able to create or edit waves after this point. Users have until April 30, 2012 to download the Wave data as PDF documents to their computers. There is also an option to export wave to an Open Source project called Workaround that is based on the Apache Wave code base.

Google Gears is deprecated and will no longer be available as of December 2011. The open source project allowed users to make and use web applications offline.

Other services that are discontinued include the Search Timeline feature which displayed a search term’s popularity over time in the search results, Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal which was an effort on Google’s part to drive down the costs of renewable energy, Friend Connect which could be used to add social features to web sites and Bookmark lists, which allowed users to share bookmarks.

Larry Page is hell-bent to slim-down Google’s operations. Getting rid of services that are not overly popular and concentrating on services that are may be a way to please share holders and make the company more profitable. These service discontinuations on the other hand can have an effect on the overall trust that users have in Google. Why would someone want to use a Google service that is not as popular as Gmail, if there is a chance that Google’s CEO will announce a fourth wave of retirements in the coming months.

Google Analytics Rolls Out A New Look Packed With New Features [News]:

Following their other products, Google is officially rolling out the new Google Analytics, complete with a whole new look and some interesting new features. This change has been happening over the past few weeks, and some of you may have already seen the change beginning to happen in your Analytics. Over the next few weeks, Google will gradually make the new look the default to all users, so if you’re still using the old version, make the most of it because it won’t be around for long.

The most prominent change to Analytics is, of course, the looks. The new look keeps the orange and blue theme, but is much smoother and a lot less cluttered. The menus have become much easier to use, and a convenient “Home” tab has been added.

Among the new features you will find Real-Time Analytics, which lets you view what is happening on your website while it’s happening, new and sophisticated ways to track conversions and their causes, upgraded mobile analytics and the ability to create separate dashboards for different products.

Some features, such as Flow Visualization, which illustrates user navigation, are still rolling out, and you might not see it on your dashboard yet. But don’t worry, it’s all coming. Just switch to the new version if you haven’t done so, and give some of the new features a spin.

After you’ve done so, let us know in the comments what you think of them, and of the update in general.

Source: Google Analytics Blog