Hyperlinks in Comments

How does one add hyperlink to the comment on a Blog?

I saw an hyperlinked comment first on this blog for this post. Thats it, I wanted to know how that is done. It hardly took few minutes to know that its the regular html code inserted into comment form. Once done, automatically blogger renders it in html. Never knew this, great to know it! :)

Ex. adding a hyperlink:

< a href =" url">text to display < / a> (without spaces)

replace url with:
http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2007/06/introduction-to-blogging.html
leave the quote marks

replace text to display
with:
An Introduction To Blogging

An Introduction To Blogging

----------------------------------------------------------------

Here is an useful post on

Keeping comment spam off your site and away from users

Complete list of Google Blogs by Categories...

Many a times, we had seen a long list of Blogs of Google displayed to the right side on Gmail Blog or official Google Blog. Now they have removed the long list from all these blogs and produced a link to its complete directory, well categorized. Here is the link. They are divided into five categories

• Google-wide
• Products
• Ads
• Developer
• Region
  

Hyperlinks in composed (g)mail

Long back, when I had just started using Internet, i.e. 4yrs back, I did not know its A-B-C-D. Was worse than a six grader who knew how to e-mail & chat. In these initial stages, for the access provided we could not create any mail id. Thanks to my friends, they gave me one from their many existing ids, Yahoo! being my first. Thats how my journey into this world of internet began.

I got the usual stuff of forwards. I used to get excited and also shocked at the kind of stuff that was coming in e-mails, high quality yet so easily. There it began the stream of forwarding mails to all my friends. One thing I never liked was the history of the mail sent across while forwarding, clearly tracing to its remotest possible source, which was never deleted by the one who was forwarding. It adds to nuisance and takes time to reach the actual content and purpose of the mail. I never wanted that feeling to appear among people whom I was sending these mails. Thus Ctrl+H was deleted. At the same time, I never wanted any of my friends to know from where these mails were coming to me. If they come to know of it, then I become redundant, right? :) So, deleting history added an extra share towards this cause.

Yet there was one more thing that could let others know about the root of a mail, hyperlinks on the images. But, there was nothing one could do to get rid of it. We could not see the html* part of a mail to remove href on a image. We lived through it. Then came the upgradation of gmail to newer version from the older version. In that version, when we clicked on an image or text having an hyperlink, one could

• Go to that link
• Change that link
• Remove that link

Finally, there was someone who felt the same need as me. But apart from this, there was one more addition in this newer version. If it was an image, it provided options to resize the image to Small, Medium, Large, leave Original or Remove it. When clicked on image with hyperlink, this image bar alone appeared instead of hyperlink bar. But to the comfort to some piece of mind, there was another way around to achieve removal of hyperlink from images, inspite of non appearance of hyperlink bar; 'Link' image in the RTF. One could remove hyperlink by clicking on it, since if there was an hyperlink, it would be in active stage and re-clicking it, removed any hyperlink attached. That eased the process of cleaning up hyperlinks as well, thus subsequent forwards from me, leaved out all the trace of its origin*.

But from last few days, this feature is not working. Clicking on hyperlink image, is bringing up a box to add a link, even to an already hyperlinked image. Disappointment. In last few days, this is the second bug in Gmail [FIRST POSTED HERE]. Gmail, what has happened to you!!!

* Show Original option in gmail gives us the html part of the mail. GMail does not show the client-ip, though in some mails I did find there existed a client-ip from where a particular mail was sent but those ips could not be linked to any location. Yahoo! and Rediff give this information, in their headers which when entered into some sites like this, searches for a client-ip mentioned in its header and traces it to the possible location .

FM Radio

I was never clear about these 90 something point something else (93.5, 92.7, etc.) odd sounding numbers on radio. Though I never made a serious effort to know more about them, honestly did not know if anyone would know about them. But today, as a continuation to my impressed impression of Mumbai FM, I hit the search button again with the key words Mumbai FM, this time in Yahoo! (imagine my days...!)

No. Not that I felt Yahoo! would give me better search, but I know of one person who hosts Mumbai FM (later learnt that it is given at a price). That person's directions (years ago) were to go to Yahoo! homepage and give a search with 'FM' and 'his name' as the key words. I did the same today, learnt about the cost, and its existence years ago. Thus ends the pursuit.

These 90 something point something else are radio stations. Great, this much I knew even before. But what I understood is these are radio stations similar to companies like McDonalds. How McDonalds has its outlets in many parts of the country, radio stations like 93.5 FM (with same frequency) captures different cities. Thus, Mumbai as well as Bangalore have 93.5 FM.

There are very attractive websites for each of these radio stations. These frequencies have got their own names:
91.1 FM - Radio City
93.5 FM - Red FM: Bhajate Raho
98.3 FM - Radio Mirchi: Its hot!
104.8 FM - Meow: Thodi Meethi, Thodi Catty (I was wrong in thinking of this as a show on 104.8 FM in my earlier post)
Finally there is one webpage, currently not rendering at all. So, no idea how good it is: Mumbai FM

Airtel - loads of offers...

Today browsed a bit of Airtel site; wanted to know if there was a possibility of online recharge or topups payment, now that I had my fully funtional SBI account. Found that one could recharge or top-up or pay any of its bills online. For that one has to register. But currently, registration form is not getting populated in my browser. Will try it out later sometime, on some other system.

Accidentally found that Airtel is providing some features which are good, two of them being

• LMTS - Lost Mobile Tracking System
• Phone Backup
  

 Complete details here (for Prepaid)

Mumbai FM

This time when I was in Mumbai, on a regular day, I did not as well as could not remember of listening to FM - Radio Mirchi. But on the final return journey from Mumbai, my bro reminded me of it as a good TP (time-pass) and I switched it on. I could not but stop enjoying it to the fullest, all the way appreciating the life in it.

Many a times, on journey to Bangalore, I got disappointed with its FM...I had expected something like Mumbai's but it was completely out of shape with multiple Kanada interruptions or rather it sounded like Hindi interrupting the Kannada transmission.

Whereas in Mumbai FM, I was so flattered by the innovativeness and creativity that was going on in the conversational part of FM that I was confused to the extent of not knowing which channel to listen to. All were equally enthralling. Some shows names were like KBC - Kachraye Bollywood Contest, Meow - Thodi Meethi, Thodi Catty. Listening to them in the glistening lights of the night traffic of Mumbai, on a 6-laner with bright malls passing by...was a sight to feel and enjoy.

I got this link to listen to Mumbai FM

http://radiotime.com/region/c_100849/Mumbai.aspx

All the channels are not operational, only few.
If anyone can let know of any other website(s) with multiple operational streams, do let us know...

LCD monitor - how to select?

This web-page gives a good overview and detailed understanding that goes into a LCD monitor. Hopefully, it would be helpful not only as knowledge, but also a handy reference while a buy

http://www.ruggedpcreview.com/3_technology_lcd_selection.html

Blog Feeds inside Gmail ... No you don't have to click on Reader

At one time I'd asked about seeing Google reader feeds from within Gmail? This might be useful:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/tip-customize-your-web-clips.html

Thanks to Hari.

Tried it for a start with Ramnath's blog.
Sits cutely above your Inbox, where you usually find feeds from news sites etc. There should be a way to color them, no ?

Doubt Gmail dots

All of us know of Gmail dots as a feature which helps us creating multiple pseudo gmail ids for fun, for security, for avoidance of Spam. But for last few days (to be precise, 5 days), my gmail id is giving trouble.

Has anyone seen such type of a message box while emailing??? Ofcourse, hats off to Google to have even thought of a scenario when its From: address was in doubt. But why suddenly it started giving this trouble no idea.

Plus, while loading one particular gmail id (not all gmail ids, only this ONE), it is getting stuck at the Loading Page with Done status. After changing http:// to https://, it is going through. For other mail ids, it is automatically adding the S-part of the secure SSL, but not for this mail id. I thought may be because of the option under Settings 'Always Use https' or 'Dont always use https'. But not finding any difference with change in these options...any views?

Update 1: Observed that in Google Chrome, even with http:// Gmail is loading completely, whereas it was not in Firefox. Still it does solve the mystery why it was happening for one gmail and not for any other gmail id. Though today, it has loaded properly, completely, do not know when again it might crop up unless the bug is fixed.

Google Chrome features

Here are few more Google Chrome features - some known, some unknown

1. Show the list of recently visited pages from the current tab: right-click on the "Back" button. This also works for the "Forward" button.


2. Undo closing a tab: press Ctrl+Shift+T or open a new tab and check the "Recently closed tabs" section.

3. Focus on the default search option in the address bar: type ? before entering your query.

4. Perform simple calculations and unit conversions using Google Calculator by simply typing the expression in Google Chrome's address bar (or "omnibox"). To copy the answer, select the suggestion.


5. If you need more space in a textarea, resize it by dragging the lower right corner.


6. Monitor the resources used by a web page - right click inside the page, select "Inspect element", switch to the "Resources" tab and reload the web page. You'll see a list of images, scripts and objects loaded from the web page and you can sort them by size or by loading time.


7. Detach a tab and open it in a new window - just drag the tab outside the active window. You can also add it back to the original window using drag and drop.


8. After downloading a file, you can copy it to the desktop or to any other folder by using drag and drop directly from Google Chrome.


9. If the search engine of a site supports OpenSearch, you can add it to Google Chrome's search box by simply visiting the site and performing a search. The domain name automatically becomes a keyword and you should only type the first letters from the URL until you see "press Tab to search example.com". Then press Tab and type your query.


You can also manually add search engines, by right-clicking on the address bar and selecting "Edit search engines". Here's one example, where you can see that you need to find the URL for the search results page and replace the query with %s:

Name - Wikipedia
Keyword - wiki (that's what you need to type in the address bar)
URL - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s

You can also use the keywords for other kinds of services: for translating web pages, for bookmarking pages online or simply as aliases for web pages (omit "%s" from the URL).

Name - Google Translate (English)
Keyword - trans
URL - http://translate.google.com/translate?u=%s

10. Do you want Google Chrome without Google's branding and with an open source license (BSD license)? Check Chromium, the open source project created for Google Chrome. You can install the latest snapshots for Windows or download the code and build it in Windows, Mac, Linux.

To install Chromium in Windows, go to the most recent directory from this page (it should be at the top) and download mini_installer.exe. Note that these snapshots could be less stable than the version available at google.com/chrome and you may need to manually update Chromium.


Source: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-chrome-tips.html

Downloading Google Help files

Google has got a superb Help which caters to almost all the needs of a user. But what if we want to download them and make them available offline? Append ?fulldump=1 to the address of a Google help center. This doesn't work for all Google services, but here's a list of addresses that dump all the information from a help center (note that the pages are very large and are frequently updated):

Gmail Help: http://mail.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Google Calendar Help: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/?fulldump=1

Google Docs Help: http://docs.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Google Spreadsheets: http://docs.google.com/support/spreadsheets/?fulldump=1

Google Presentations: http://docs.google.com/support/presentations/?fulldump=1

Google Reader Help: http://www.google.com/support/reader/?fulldump=1

Google Video Help: http://video.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

YouTube Help: http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/?fulldump=1

AdSense Help: https://www.google.com/adsense/support/?fulldump=1

Analytics Help: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics?fulldump=1

Google Desktop Help: http://desktop.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Picasa Help: http://picasa.google.com/support/?fulldump=1

Google Toolbar for IE: http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/?fulldump=1

Google Toolbar for Firefox: http://www.google.com/support/firefox/?fulldump=1

Google Earth (PDF): http://earth.google.com/userguide/v4/google_earth_user_guide.pdf

To convert the HTML pages to PDF, try doPDF for Windows or any other free PDF printer. This Wikipedia article also has a list of PDF converters.

Passwords or Passfaces?

Instead of entering Passwords (characters), one enters password through faces ('characters' ;-) )
Details here...

Increased security on mail ids in Google Groups

Today I happened to go to Google Groups to see if there was a possibility of uploading videos or photos. It does give an option on uploading files, but need to find out if explicitly there is a way to upload photos and/or videos.

What in the process was observed is that Google Groups has added increased security in not letting anyone see mail id of any member. In Yahoo Groups, one can see the mail id of a member directly. Whereas in Google Groups, it shows first few characters, then replaces the rest with elipsis '...' appended with @domain name.com. If one has to see the mail id completely, a screen to enter CAPTCHA appears [WHAT IS A CAPTCHA] [HOW STRONG IS GOOGLE'S CAPTCHA]. After the verification here, complete mail id is shown.

Impressed with added security implying extra work for spammers...

Myth, Mystery & Truth

There is a website hosted by Barbara and David Mikkelson, a married couple from California called Snopes.com.

It's a website you can visit to find out if something is true or not. It's 100 percent dedicated to finding out the truths and falsities of urban legends, modern day myths and any other stories that travel around the Internet and the realistic world. They provide references wherever possible.

This read should be educative as is many other stuff found other. Have fun going through it.....

Blogs I'm Following...Face Recognition on PicWeb

Blogger:
Sure, its been missing our eye for quite sometime. Unsure when it was introduced, but today discovered it.

One can display on the Blog, who all are following that Blog.

Its like, if I  am fan of the contents of a blog, and I want everyone in the world (or only myself) to know that I am following all the proceedings, new posts at that blog, then I have to just click on the link 'Follow this Blog', and I will be added to the display-list of all the bloggers who follow that blog.

This feature has to be enabled at an individual blog level so that 'Fans' show to the world (or themselves) that they are fans of the particular blog. When one becomes fan of a blog, it is at the Blogger Profile level...quite obvious though :)

What exactly have they done? They have integrated RSS feeds....If I am subscribed to RSS feeds of a particular site (either through Google Reader or any other FeedReaders), I am becoming 'fan' of the content of that site. By adding this feature, they are just making the identity of all those people who have subscribed to their blog (willing the subscriber wants to reveal his/her identity) known to the world. FeedBurner just displays number of subscribers, where this one shows the profile pic with link to their profile on that site. This is a step towards integration of Blog and Google Reader. I can easily mark myself as a fan of a feed in Google Reader. Vice-versa, a particular site gets subscribed automatically to Google Reader when I mark myself as its fan.

What is Following?
How do I add Following gadget to my Blog?

You can see me following Google Student Blog  :)
And I need to see, how many follow my blog! :o)

Update 1:
In Google Reader, it gives option to "hide blogs you follow" under Settings -> Preferences -> Misc -> Show followed blogs from Blogger (check or uncheck it)


Picassa Web:
Addition of Face Recognition into PicWeb has taken globe by a storm (officially called 'Name Tags'). There are multiple forums, blogs, sites talking about it, reviewing its credibility, durability, and usefulness. Let me give my own comments on it.

I have tagged about 340 photos (agree, the count does have some duplication). Stunning thing is, it groups similar faces and tags them in one go. It has kind of solved one of the biggest research problem on generic face recognition and their grouping (Raghu sir to confirm and authorise). This grouping is irrespective of a person wearing a cap or not! :)

Okay, so one part is it is: groups images together (ofcourse, not 100% of pics are grouped in one go. Might be due to difference in the angles of face, complexion, light balance, etc.). After we tag few pictures, it provides suggestions for tagging a new pic(face) / group of pics(faces). If I have tagged name 'Raghu sir' (this name/mail id comes from the contacts list of Gmail) against a pic(face) of his (which was framed by internal process of PicWeb which takes few minutes to finish its processing), then if there comes another pic or group of pics of Raghu sir, then one of the three name suggestions for the pic is invariably Raghu Sir. When I observed this, I had to appreciate the brain behind this working.

It first identifies a face, then continuously it compares with already tagged face and suggests that name which closely fits it. For one of the pics, it gave me only one suggestion and that was 100% correct!!!
Link to read up. Theres a lot to it, no doubt. But these things, were something I could not stop myself from appreciating.

People are welcome to share their experiences...

Vulnerabilities in Google Chrome

GChrome does have promising features which are not part of any browser till date like Task Manager (which shows each open window as a process, the way it deals with each tab. This helps when a window/website crashes since each Tab/NewWindow is a separate process and crash of one window/website will crash only that process saving all other tabs. It displays the memory taken by each site apart from CPU usage implying 'blame where blame belongs'); drag tab out to a window; defining which all sites to be opened on startup; incognito browsing; creating own Desktop, Menu, Quick Launch icons reserving the whole window page for this application; added heavy Java engine compatible for all heavily loaded Web Applications.

Before its launch, a 38-page online comic book was released discussing Google Chrome

This article talks about Five best features of Google Chrome

A article to not get carried away with GChrome: Dont get hooked on Google Chrome hype

Vulnerabilities GChrome are discussed here. Indeed a good read
DoS vulnerability hits Google's Chrome, crashes with all tabs
Google Chrome vulnerable in carpet-bombing flaw
Google Chrome, the security tid-bits

Microsoft has incidentally released, as expected, buggy next IE, IE8.
Details here: A look at Microsoft's release of IE8 beta 2


.

Office Hair by Chrome Window

GChrome: Sure all have heard already about Google's release of yet another product - Google Chrome, its new browser. Few highlights are there, but it still has quite a long way to go to become best. But we do know it will live upto it.

• News on Google Chrome
• its Download page.

Few things that I liked hearing about it are: Non empty blank page on New Tab or Window, Thumbnails preview of most visited sites, Contents of this page, all-in-one search box...

HairCare: Who does not want to look good with hair on top of our scalp. But its always the lack of info that leads to that situation or maintains us there or worsens as expected. Dr. Reddy's has come out with a site to popularize the facts of this Hair Loss and its treatment. Went through the site. Was impressive. Here is the link (Hair Aware). Worth a go.


Web Windows Office Live: Ah! Microsoft's answer to Google Docs - Web based access to Microsoft office utilities. Folder Explorer UI looks similar to GDocs. Did not work out any documents on it. They claim one can have 1000+ documents online. Arent we happy with unlimited documents online with GDocs! Here is the link. For logging-in, you do not have to have a Windows LiveID, any mail id can be used as a log in.