Mixx Gets Serious About Community Building

Category: Tips and Tricks    |    1,629 views    |    Add a Comment  |   

Digg competitor Mixx just launched an extension to its groups feature that founder Chris McGill describes as “Ning for social media”.

Users can now set up Mixx community sites on their own subdomains (see ours here). Administrators have the power to brand them visually, post editorial content, and even make some revenue off advertisements. Others can join as members and begin submitting items as they would regularly on Mixx. All submissions (stories, images, and videos) can be made just to a particular community, or to the Mixx site as a whole as well.

Read more…

 

MySpace Opens Up The Data Pipe With Full Launch Of Data Availability

Category: Technology, Tips and Tricks    |    875 views    |    Add a Comment  |   

MySpace was the first of the Big Three to announce tools for third party sites to integrate MySpace user data into their services (called, collectively, Data Availability). A day later Facebook announced Facebook Connect, then came Google Friend Connect three days after that.

Today MySpace is fully launching Data Availability (look for it this afternoon at developer.myspace.com), and any third party developer can now build applications using their APIs. Google’s product remains in a test phase with a handful of sites (example), and we won’t likely hear more from Facebook until their F8 conference in late July.

MySpace is taking a much more interesting approach than Google, which controls data sent to third party sites via an iframe. MySpace is actually streaming data to these sites, which allows for true integration between the services, not just a bolted-on social tool.

Developers can access any publicly available profile data from a MySpace user and integrate it into their site. This includes a user’s name, picture, bio, social graph (list of friends), and other information. Users authorize the data transfer via a one-time secure OAuth login to MySpace from the third party service. The service is then allowed to access the data.

Since actual data is being streamed out of MySpace, they have a strict terms of use policy that forbids third party sites from storing or caching the data, other than the unique MySpace user id of the user. Each time a page is rendered the third party must re-request the data from MySpace via a set of APIs. That means any changes by the user to their MySpace profile data or friends list will be instantly applied across third parties who access the data.

Like Google and Facebook, users will be able to revoke access by any third party via a privacy control panel on their MySpace account:

 

How to Translate PDF & Word Documents with Google Translation

Category: Google    |    1,038 views    |    Add a Comment  |   

google translate pdfSay dad bought you a digital camera from Japan but the problem is that the PDF manual that came with the camera is also written in Japanese.

How do you quickly translate that PDF file into an English document ?

Solution: If the PDF document is not password protected, you can easily convert it into another language via Google Translate.

The idea is that you extract the text from the PDF file and pass it to Google Translate. Here’s how:

Step 1: Open Zoho Viewer (review) and upload the file(s). Other than PDF, you may also upload common Office file formats like doc, xls and ppt.

Step 2: Zoho Viewer provides a unique URL for each of your web document. Go to Google Translate, type that web address, select a language pair and hit the Translate button. Voilà!

Important: If the source document is multi-lingual, you should considering uploading to Slideshare since they handle foreign languages slightly better than Zoho Viewer. See a sample document from Zoho and Slideshare.

Slideshare will create a text transcript of your PDF document that can you pass on to Google Translate for converting into another language.

You may even extract text from PDF documents using Adobe Reader itself but again, this program doesn’t work too well with all languages.

 

Custom domain for New Blogger (formerly Blogger Beta)

Category: Blog, Google    |    1,403 views    |    Add a Comment  |   

Custom domain is a fairly new feature available recently for bloggers using the New Blogger platform. Most bloggers using Google Blogger do not have their own domain. Instead, they have a sub-domain in the form of http://yourblog.blogspot.com.

Some people are not too happy to use a sub-domain for their blog, as the sub-domain does not belong to them, but to Blogger. Some also have the opinion that it is less prestigious to use a sub-domain, rather like using your home for a business office which then therefore command less respect. If you are of that opinion, this is where custom domain comes in. You can register a domain for your blog and Blogger can host it free for you. And not only is it free, you do not have to bother with the hassle of using FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to publish your post. And you can use the new features available for New Blogger like Layout, drag and drop, Label list, etc.

Some bloggers are still not satisfied with just having their own domain, and want to host the blog on their own with a third party web host in addition to having their own domain. In this case, in addition to having pay for the annual renewal fee for the domain registration, you will have to pay monthly or yearly hosting fees. Depending on which web host you choose, you may also have to bother with limited bandwidth, etc. If your blog attracts high traffic, you may have to pay more for more bandwidth, etc.

If you are using your blog for business purposes, it is probably good to have your own domain for your blog. You will then have to register a suitable domain name. Now getting a suitable domain name may not be easy as many domain names have already be taken up and the one you want may not be available. This is where www.buydomains.com comes in. You can search for suitable and available domain name using their search box or their Advanced Search Tool.

If the searches don’t turn up anything, you can use their new New Domain Alert to alert you of new available domain names.

Now you can also make a business of blogs that you start. You can register good domain names which you think may be of great value to someone, but who may happen to be late on the scene. You can then put up your domain name for sale at Sell Your Domains.

If rather than just parking the domain names, you start blogging and build up a good PageRank for the blogs. A domain name with a good PageRank can probably fetch higher prices. A PageRank of 5 is not too difficult to get if you put some work into it. Your blog will then fetch a good price

In addition, if you join the Google AdSense and place contextual text and/or image ads., Google search boxes or Google referral text or buttons on your blogs and get it up to earning a decent income, your blog can fetch even higher prices as there are people looking for ready made revenue generating blogs and are willing to pay for them. If you want to go that route, I can help you. Just comment in any of my blogs or email me. And when you are ready, just put the blog/s up for sale at Sell Your Domains.

 

Introducing Google Analytics Seminars for Success

Category: Tips and Tricks    |    884 views    |    Add a Comment  |   

AdWords has been offering Seminars for Success in cities across the country to very positive reviews. Delivered by industry professionals hand-picked by Google, the seminars are one day courses offered solely to help advertisers get the most out of AdWords.

Now, as recently announced on the Inside AdWords blog, we’re joining AdWords in offering Google Analytics Seminars for Success. Similar to the AdWords seminars, these are led by the most knowledgeable professionals from our very own Google Analytics Authorized Consultant program, with an agenda and content created by both the seminar leaders and our own Google Analytics team. The first seminars are now open for registration and are beginning on March 25 in both San Francisco and Raleigh-Durham.

We’ll be offering two different levels of Analytics Seminars:

Introduction & User Training - designed for those who want an introduction to Google Analytics, setting up Analytics, exploring the user interface, and analyzing reports.
Here is a list of topics that will be covered:

  • Introduction to Google Analytics
  • Reports Interface
  • Administrative Interface
  • The Importance of Goals
  • Real-world Case Studies
  • What Do You Want To Track?
  • Optimizing AdWords and PPC Campaigns
  • Introduction to Experimentation and Tracking

View complete course description

Advanced Technical Implementation - designed for more technical users who want to do advanced testing, tracking, and code customization.
Topics include:

  • Successful Web Analytics Approaches
  • Creating A Data Driven Culture
  • Google Analytics Overview
  • Goals and Funnels
  • Advanced Profile/Filter Combos
  • Advanced Tracking
  • Code Customizations
  • Introduction to Urchin Software

View complete course description
Analytics and AdWords Seminars will be coming to the following cities in the next few months:

Analytics
March 25 - San Francisco Bay Area - Analytics: Introduction & User Training
March 25 - Raleigh - Analytics: Introduction & User Training
March 26 - San Francisco Bay Area - Analytics: Advanced Technical Implementation
March 26 - Raleigh - Analytics: Advanced Technical Implementation

AdWords
March 24 - San Francisco Bay Area - AdWords: Beginner & Intermediate
April 7 - San Diego - AdWords: Beginner & Intermediate
April 28 - Dallas - AdWords: Beginner & Intermediate

Sign up 7 days before the seminar date and we’ll even throw in a $50 AdWords advertising credit. (View the terms and conditions of advertising credits.) You’ll find more information about these seminars, including course outlines and registration instructions at http://www.google.com/awseminars. And of course, if you’d like to be informed when