The 12words Blog

An amazing online music station called Grooveshark

2010-12-04T21:55:00.002+05:30

Grooveshark ( http://listen.grooveshark.com ) Free online mp3 streaming

Grooveshark is an amazing online music search engine, music streaming service and music recommendation web software application.

The things i like the most about this service is

It contains an amazing list of songs, even telugu and hindi songs, that was pretty amazing.
Unlike other similar services it is not Geo-restricted.
the streaming is super fast, i never experienced any breaks.
You can add a list a songs to the playlist from the search results or select a radio station and listen to those songs
and above all it is free and you don't even need to create a user account for listening to music(you can of-course create one, if you want to)

There are many other options, which i have not covered here, so go a head and give it a try..

An amazing html5 powered guide to the web by google

2010-11-19T22:44:00.000+05:30

20 Things I learned about browsers and the web, a beautiful html5 demo

20 things i learned about browsers and the web is a really amazing html5 demo by google that has for a change a very useful dummy text.

Although the text used in the demo gives good insight into the world of internet, the awesomeness of the demo does not allow you to read the text.

I don't want to talk much, just go there and see for yourself (use a html5 powered browser like Google chrome, don't even think of IE)

New Priority Inbox Beta comes to gmail

2010-09-03T08:38:00.002+05:30

New Priority inbox

The much anticipated and publicized feature of gmail Priority inbox has come to your inbox (maybe some of you might not be able to see it, as you now it is still in beta). To activate this option click the red link in the top right corner that reads " New! Priority Inbox^Beta ".

For those of you who don't know what this is all about, Priority inbox is a new feature that promises to prioritize email in your inbox based on an algorithm, meaning that the most important mails related to jobs etc., will be showed first.
The interface is cluttered with important and unread mail taking the top spot, followed by the starred mail, and all the other mails at the tail.There is also a simple option for the user to manually rate a mail as Important or not. Here is a screenshot

New Priority Inbox screenshot

Three new features in blogger

2010-08-31T10:59:00.003+05:30

Click the Stats link in dashboard

Blogger has launched three new features, Blogger stats for everybody and two new gadgets Popular posts and Blogger stats gadget for Blogger in draft users.
For Blogger in drafts users you can add two new gadgets to your blog, both based on your blog stats, Popular posts which displays the list of all posts popular, and Blogger stats gadget which can be used to show off your blog visits

Happy Independence day

2010-08-15T11:34:00.006+05:30

Google Trends India results on August 15th

19 out of 20 keywords are related to Independence day

Happy independence day

deviantArt Muro is a perfect HTML5 showcase

2010-08-11T15:04:00.000+05:30

Ever wonder what HTML 5 can do, well head over to deviantart.com article to try Muro , a really cool online drawing application that uses the equally cool features of HTML5, and above all it is free to use, you can export your artwork.

I have done some scribbling myself, i don't call it art in anyway though, I'm adding some of them here.

That is my name Vamsi [Click to enlarge]

Just testing the brush [Click to enlarge]

That is my name Vamsi again [Click to enlarge]

Google wave no more

2010-08-05T12:16:00.001+05:30

Considered as the contender for the "next big thing on the internet" , and expected by Google to replace traditional email, chat systems, one of Google's most ambitious project Google wave will be shut down according to an "update" on Google's blog.

Google wave which was launched in mid 2009, as an invite-only, although users were exited about it, slowly the gloss faded out and the users stopped using it, as without friends to share this tool, this was nothing but a time-waster.

However, there are some features like live chat(char to char chat) and drag and drop that are quite useful, so Google has decided to release th code of these features along with other things as open source

Google is finding ways to let existing users export there data, before a complete shut down

Google launching multiple account signup

2010-08-03T19:13:00.000+05:30

If you are one of those Google users who have multiple Google accounts, or if you share you are using a shared computer along with your friends or family then you might have faced a situation, where you need to be logged in to more than one Google account, well, the old approach was to use different browsers or use private mode to log in to another account.

Well, Google seemed to understand the problem, as they are launching a new feature that will allow you to use multiple Google accounts from the same browser without any add-ons all you have to do is login to your Google account and goto account settings and turn on the feature Multiple sign in, you can use the link https://www.google.com/accounts/b/0/MultipleSessions too. You have to select all the check boxes to use this feature.

After setting up this feature for one account, setting it up for other accounts is very simple all you have to do is select the sign in to another account, that is displayed as a drop down if you click the email address of the account you are logged into, this will take you to a sign in page and multiple sign in will be activated for any account you log into

However, only Google reader, gmail, Google code Google calendar, and Google sites are supported as of now and you may not be able to use offline gmail and offline calendar may not work properly. Ths feature may not available for everybody as of now.

Here are some screenshots

Activate the multiple sign in option to access more than one Google account

Remember to select all the check boxes to activate save settings button
Click the image to enlarge

Setting another account for using multiple sign in is just a click away

Windows XP is still the most used operating system

2010-08-03T12:23:00.003+05:30

According to a report published by Netmarketshare , Microsoft's popular operating system Windows XP is still leading the way with a whopping 65% share of the total OS market, and an other good news for Microsoft is that windows 7 has increased its market share past vista.

Coming to the browser sector, Microsoft is still leading the way here with 60.74% followed by Firefox at 23%, however both Microsoft and Firefox has to be at there best to hold there positions as Google's chrome's usage has jumped from 3.17% in September 2009 to 7.16% in July, 2010

Maintain your anonymity over the internet using Tor

2010-07-30T16:30:00.001+05:30

Ever feared what your ISP ( or ) a Eavesdropper can know about you looking at your browsing data or listening to your network, well you are not alone, there are many people out there who feel very uneasy, at the thought of there privacy being "violated".

There are many tools that offer anonymity over the internet, but most of them are pretty expensive, and the rest may not be as reliable as you wanted the to be, however there is tool called Tor available for free download at http://www.torproject.org/download.html.en (download tor browser bundle for windows, if you are a windows user ) which uses a technique called onion routing( read Onion Routing Wikipedia Entry for more ) using which your network traffic is encrypted and relayed over several network systems( called relays), the technique is designed in such a way that any particular system will only know its previous system and the next system, thus making it impossible for any system to resolve the path or data of your network

Using tor however comes at a price, it slows down the internet connection speed, although not technically but practically, I mean to say your Internet connection speed remains the same, but since the data has to be encrypted and sent over many relay servers it will take a bit more time than the usual to view the web page.There is also an other issue, since the webpage is requested from a server in different location (it was in Netherlands for me), you may get the webpage that has been modified for that particular location.To explain it better I was expecting to see Google India web page, when i typed Google.com (remember Google redirects you to your country specific page), instead i received a Google Netherlands page.

Apply cool fonts to your web page using Google fonts

2010-07-29T10:11:00.002+05:30

Google Font preview application web page
[Click the image for a larger view]

If you want to apply cool fonts to your web site and don't want to spend money on those expensive web font directories, then Google font directory is the best option for you, styling a font is as simple as adding a some html (style sheet) and applying it to the text.

There is also a Font preview application web page where you can choose from a list of fonts and even apply some styles to them, the application generates the required html you have to add to apply the style sheet, add it to the web page you want and you are done

This is some text that i have applied a font called Tangerine, go ahead and get creative

Update - If you are not able to view the font that i have applied to the afore mentioned text, then please note that i have used java script instead of style sheet, so any browser, reader that does not allow java script won't apply the font

Simple SEO tips for bloggers

2010-07-28T19:17:00.005+05:30

I know I'm not an seo guru, to give advices on how to optimize your web page for search engines, but experience has thought me some lesson and I would like to share it.

Content is important
You may have read this many many times, but again Content will only drive quality traffic to your blogs

Social Interaction helps
As you all are aware of what social networking sites can do, i won't talk much about it

Read and comment on other blogs
reading and commenting will help you bring traffic , if you use links in the comment, but remember spamming will not help, contribute something useful through your comments and let the world decide

Title is important
as you might have already noticed search engines love titles, so use this to your advantage, use keywords that related to your business in title.For example if you want to rank high for a search phrase "SEO" then use it in the title and the body of the post, remember not to misuse this though as this may have negative results, if a search engine feels that your page is keyword stuffed without any useful content, then they will move your page to optional or omitted results.

Headings are only next to title's
Heading tags like h1, h2, ... h6 are also important as are tags like bold , search engines feel that usage of these tags for relevant content makes the webpage more readable.

Never delete a blog post
I know some of you might not agree with me, but deleting a blog post is strict no unless you really want to spend days and worse weeks trying to find dead links to the post that you just deleted. If you think a post is not contributing much to your blog, modify the post an update, but avoid deleting it as much as you can.
Dead links are really bad for a web pages, search rank

Easter egg in YouTube video

2010-07-27T21:38:00.000+05:30

Press and hold the left arrow key while playing the video

There is an easter egg in YouTube video titled "Black Screen (starring Black screen)" available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi1BcouEmio , it is a video that simply shows nothing unless you press the Left arrow key 3 or Four times while the video is playing and what you get is a simple classic snake game go a head and give it a try

Yahoo Meme - A new mini blogging platform

2010-07-26T18:42:00.000+05:30

Yahoo Meme is a mini blogging service from yahoo, that offers more than just 140 chars of text.
Meme allows its users to share text, photos, videos, and even mp3.

There is also the option to follow your friends, who or on meme, you can repost anything that you like, delete anything you don't, you can comment too.. and while sharing some text you can also use some basic html tags.

The graphics and site design is great.

Like with other "mini" blogging services, Meme also provides API's for developers who want to use the meme's data in their application. So if you want join Meme go straight ahead to Yahoo Meme

A new Look Bing webmaster tools

2010-07-24T13:05:00.001+05:30

Microsoft has unveiled a new look webmaster tools, the interface has been completely revamped to give a more easy way to manage your website.The use of Silverlight has made the whole website flicker free, instead of flickering the pages has now cool transition effect.

After you login to Bing Webmaster with your live id, the home page lists all the websites you have added to the tool, along with stats about how these websites are doing in the bing web searches

Selecting a blog will take you to the dashboard, were you can view a detailed summary of your website.

The crawl tab lets you add sitemaps of the website, it also displays the crawl stats, there are other options like Index, which displays the number of pages that are indexed, and traffic that shows the number of impressions your website has received through bing along with search queries.

To learn more visit bing webmaster tools at http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmasters/

Google launches Google Buzz Firehose

2010-07-20T15:29:00.000+05:30

Google has launched a new API tool for developers who want to access Google buzz data called Google Buzz Firehose.Google says that

with the firehose all public activities are available as they are published

The API feature that are available are comments by the user , likes by the user and shares by the user.
Looks like some one is trying hard to be in competition with twitter.
Anyway if you want to read more about this just go to http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-google-buzz-api-features-including.html
Have a nice day

Free Desktop wallpapers from Microsoft

2010-07-19T20:47:00.000+05:30

Download some amazing and interesting wallpapers that are offered for free by microsoft, they are free for personal use just go to http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/personalize/wallpaper-desktop-background and select the category you want

@earlybird Twitter’s New advertising format

2010-07-07T14:16:00.001+05:30

Twitter has found a new way to earn money, this social networking site that has recently launched promoted tweets and promoted trends for selected few publishers has once again come up with a non disturbing way to earn money through earlybird.

So what is @earlybird ? earlybird is like every other twitter account, except that is maintained by twitter and is used mainly for promoting products that offer exclusive deals for twitter community.Twitter users can get the information about these offers by following @earlybird or if someone who the user is following retweets @earlybird tweets.

So, Is this available for everyone ? – An article posted at http://support.twitter.com/groups/31-twitter-basics/topics/111-features/articles/208505-what-is-earlybird says that it us currently available only for US citizens and it will try to expand it outside US in the future

So, How can I participate ? – You can participate, either by following @earlybird or by replying to it using twitter or by doing both

If you want more info on this visit http://twitter.com/earlybird or http://support.twitter.com/groups/31-twitter-basics/topics/111-features/articles/208505-what-is-earlybird

Encrypted search with Google SSL Beta

2010-07-06T19:22:00.001+05:30

Google has a feature that many ordinary users don’t know about, it is secure searching using SSL. Yes, you can now search the web without the fear of being observed by a eavesdropper.That means you can now search without the fear that your ISP or a third party observing your connection, may be watching the content that is being passed between your computer and the Google server.However there are some limitations on using this service, it is only available for web search and once you click a link in the search results, your connection is no longer encrypted, unless of course the link in question is also an https page.

There are some limitations that are associated with HTTPS connections according to Google, they are

While SSL is a clear privacy and security benefit, we are aware of some technical limitations to SSL at the protocol level that are not specific to Google's implementation:

A determined, skilled malicious party could potentially interpose himself into the network traffic and present a spoofed certificate to the user. In many cases, this will result in a certificate warning to the user. If you see a certificate warning, the protection may not hold.

An adversary with the ability to install root certificates on the machine could potentially interpose himself into the network traffic without any warnings appearing.

A highly capable source may be in a position to sign certificates with a standard, pre-installed certificate authority (CA), which again would allow intercept without any apparent warnings to the user.

Even if all web searching occurs over SSL, a passive traffic listener may still be able to observe DNS look-ups.

If you want to try this go to https://encrypted.google.com/ (Note the https at the start of the link) and if you want to read more about this visit http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=173733&hl=en

SEO Tutorial from Google

2010-07-04T10:44:00.002+05:30

I have come across this pdf file on Google webmasters, this is an seo tutorial from Google, although there is nothing new in it, it is worth reading one time.

Visit SEO Starter Guide to read it

Update: Google released a new version of the seo guide available at http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Blogger launches Stats

2010-07-03T19:33:00.000+05:30

Blogger has launched Stats, for users using "Blogger in Draft" as there default blogger dashboard, although it is not as detailed and complete as Google analytics, it is however cool, as it is real-time, meaning the stats will be updated as soon as there are any visits, and it is integrated right into the dashboard with very easy access.

Blogger Stats Integrated into Dashboard

IIS Express, Coming soon

2010-07-03T19:21:00.000+05:30

Microsoft is planing to release IIS Express edition very soon, According to ScottGu's Blog

it combines the ease of use of the ASP.NET Web Server with the full power of IIS

For those who are thinking why would I need a Express edition of IIS when i already have a professional one, well according to the blog post i mentioned earlier, this express edition would have much more cooler features than the professional versions as of now.

And one more good thing is that it will work with windows XP, the most popular operating system on the earth (For those who doubt the popularity of XP, go visit http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp )

There is one bad thing however, there is no particular time given for its release.
So, for those who are as exited as me, all we can do is just wait

Google Voice now for “everyone” – Not quite

2010-06-23T17:04:00.001+05:30

Google has opened Google Voice for “everyone”- Wait don’t rush to create an account, as far as Google is concerned everyone means only US citizens and the rest doesn't come under the “everyone” category, may be for those who are not US citizens have to wait for Google to release it under for the “rest of the world and aliens” category, may be then the rest of world will have access to it.

For US citizens, you can login to your google voice at https://www.google.com/voice

Get Google trends data right in your inbox

2010-06-18T18:20:00.002+05:30

This group has been removed, that 's the reason i'm updating this post. For those who want to know the trends anyway, try trendzblog.blogspot.com

Hi, i have created an application, that extracts Google trends data every hour and posts it on to a Google groups i created, so if you want to get google trends data right in your box, then enter your email id in the box bellow, or click http://groups.google.com/group/get-search-trends-to-inbox to visit the groups home page.

Twitter Launches Promoted tweets and Promoted trends

2010-06-18T18:09:00.001+05:30

At last twitter has come out with their advertising model, it is Promoted tweets indeed.

So, what is promoted tweets and promoted trends ? - Promoted tweets are tweets that are posted by various organizations as a form of advertising there products on twitter, these tweets are shown up at the top of search results, for certain keywords with a yellow “Promoted by *“ button bellow it, with the * replaced by the corporation that is promoting the tweet and coming to the promoted trends, they are the same in nature, I mean they are also advertisements but this are trends and appear at the bottom of the trends list.

So, can everybody post promoted tweets and promoted trends ? – Well, I guess the answer for that is No, as twitter in an article (Click here) says that they are only testing this feature with a select few that include “Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America”.To quote exactly what is written in that article about promoted tweets

“We are launching the first phase of our Promoted Tweets platform with a handful of innovative advertising partners that include Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America -- with more to come. Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users.”

Unlike other websites, twitter has some serious conditions for promoted tweets and promoted trends, it say that promoted tweets must be useful and informative and promoted trends must be talked about on twitter, i.e, a trend cannot be promoted unless it is being talked about on twitter.

So, is this the final launch of twitters advertising platform ? – Although, it seems like one, twitter says that it is only testing this for now.To quote them

“We constantly test and evaluate different ad and promotional models. The duration will depend on the success of our tests. “

Now, we know we officially now how twitter is going to make some money..

For more on this visit twitter’s support site http://support.twitter.com/groups/35-business/topics/127-frequently-asked-questions/articles/142101-promoted-tweets