Top 10 features that Apple stole from Windows | Windows - InfoWorld

I am not very good in keeping promises, but this time I will make an exception :) I promised a while ago that I will create a WLW plugin for the Social Bookmarking Tool that would ease the process of creating social bookmarking tags automatically for the blog posts. So, finally... I release this version of Social Bookmarking Tags generator which will be a plugin in Windows Live Writer.

Once you install it, you will need to reopen your WLW, and you should be able to see the following icon in your WLW Insert section...

Click on it, and you should see the following...

The only two things you need to enter are URL and Title. Unfortunately, you won't get it until you publish the blog post using File -> Publish to Weblog in WLW!

So, here are the steps which you need to take now...

1. Compose a blog in WLW, and click on File -> Publish to Weblog
2. Once you publish, you should be able to view your post automatically (ensure that File -> View Post after Publishing is checked). Go back to WLW and point the cursor to the end of the post.
3. Now copy the URL from your browser and click on the Insert Bookmarking Tags link in your WLW
4. Provide URL and Title in the dialog box which comes up and click on Done. You should now be able to see a bunch of icons as shown in the end of this post.
5. Publish again!!

Whenever any visitor likes your blog post, he will be able to click his favorite icon and bookmark your post without any hassles now!

Also, you can get a nice effect when you hover over the links if you modify the stylesheet in your blog site (a one time configuration). Please check this link and see the CSS and Javascript configuration section... http://blogs.msdn.com/rahulso/archive/2007/04/14/social-bookmarking-tool-1-1.aspx
Until next time
Rahul

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Rahul Soni's blog : Social Bookmarking Tags for Windows Live Writer

Sometimes viewing pictures in rows and columns can be dull. Luckily, there are a number of services dedicated to making the photo search and viewing experience more interesting. Here are 8 resources that provide a new approach to searching and looking at pictures online.

Which are your favorites? Let us know in the comments.

PicLens

PicLens is a neat Firefox addon that lets you search through thousands of images and videos on a stunning 3D wall or on full screen mode from sites like YouTube, Google, Yahoo, Picassa, Facebook, Photobucket, Flickr, DeviantART, and more.

Once you launch the PicLens application on your browser, you can search for images and videos by keywords and by selecting the site you want to search. You can also simple click the ‘Discover’ button to let PicLens bring you the latest images, news, and videos from around the Web. You can zoom into pictures by clicking on an image or by using the scroll button of your mouse. There is also a new beta version of PicLens, rechristened Cooliris Beta, that lets you share pictures and videos from its 3D wall to your friends through email. For Wordpress bloggers, there is a plugin for creating picture and video slide shows on a blog.

Imagery

Imagery is an image search engine that displays search results in a whole new way. Whenever you search for something using a particular keyword, you will see the resulting thumbnail images in an online Web album gallery style and text free. Mouse over each picture and you get the option of going to the source page of that particular image or of opening the image in a new window. If you simply click on an image, it will open below the thumbnail gallery (see screenshot above).

You can set the number of image results Imagery will show you per page, or define the type of files like small, medium, large, black & white, grayscale, color, or on file extensions such as jpg, png, etc.

Zleek

Zleek allows you to create photo albums called Zleek Books, in amazing layouts and share them with your friends and family for them to comment on your pictures. What makes Zleek special and different from other online photo albums is that it allows you to go beyond the rows and columns positioning of your pictures and create collages in a manner that you choose. You can resize and rotate your pictures on the Zleek Book page, choose from multiple backgrounds, and set the album sharing permissions settings.

Interestingness

Interestingness, as the name suggests, creates stunning collages of up to 500 pictures from Flickr that you can feast your eyes on every day. Just keep the site as your homepage and rest assured you’ll be greeted with pleasant images every time you open your browser.

WebMynd

WebMynd is a Firefox addon that tracks the sites you visit and displays them in an attractive visual playback, whenever you want, online or off. WebMynd stores the screenshots of websites you visit on your computer hard drive and the text is sent and stored in its server. You can choose which websites WebMynd stores on your computer and which ones to ignore.

WebMynd provides a reel view in which you can see the screenshots of your visited sites one by one or the grid view wherein you can see the thumbnails of the various sites you visited. WebMynd also integrates into the Google search results page whenever you run a search and displays its results alongside the Google search results on the same page.

Compfight

Compfight is a Flickr search tool that displays images from Flickr without any frills. So if you are just looking for pictures without descriptions, Flickr user names, comments, and other details, you might just want to use this tool. You can search by tags or ‘all text’. The tool also has some features like filtering by Creative Commons or commercial use pictures, safe search, and displaying picture dimensions on mouse hover.

Blackr

Blackr is a neat bookmarklet that you can use to view a Flickr picture on a black or white background, without any of the text, comments, and other details that come with it on the Flickr site. You can choose to have a white or black border on the picture as well.

When you are viewing a picture on Flickr, just click the Blackr button on your browser bookmarks toolbar and viola, you will see just the picture minus everything else. If you want a search engine that displays pictures on a black background, try Flickriver.

Photoree

Photoree is to pictures what StumbleUpon is to websites. You can set your preferences about what type of pictures you want Photoree to show you. You can also rate the pictures and those that have been up-rated by you will automatically get included in your personal gallery.

8 Cool Tools for a Different Photo Viewing Experience

By Jr Raphael , PC World , 12/22/2008

Sponsored by:

The Internet's been around in some form for decades. It wasn't until the mid-1980s, though, that the Web as we know it started coming together -- and those precious dot-com domains started getting snatched up.

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Take a quiz to see how much of techie you were in the 1980s.

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As we finish out the tech-centric year of 2008, we thought we'd take a look back at the Internet's oldest commercial Web sites -- the ones registered back when chatting about "the Net" was as socially acceptable as wearing Jedi garb into a crowded nightclub. So grab your light sabers, dear friends -- we're boarding the Millennium Falcon and heading back to a virtual galaxy far, far away.

The Internet's First Dot-Com

Let me set the scene for you: The year was 1985. MS-DOS 3.0 was the PC operating system of choice, most commonly run on the top-selling Tandy 1000 personal computer.

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A newly formed company called Dell was getting ready to release its first machine, the "Turbo PC." The Commodore Amiga 1000 was also about to hit the market.

That same spring, the first dot-com domain was registered with the sale of symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. The site belonged to a computer manufacturer known for its Open Genera Lisp and Macsyma computer algebra systems.

Symbolics declared bankruptcy in the early 90s but is still under operation with new owners. That means symbolics.com is the Internet's oldest still-functioning dot-com domain -- and, I must say, it still looks like it was designed in 1985.

Other highlights: Some of the other early dot-coms are domains we know well. The ninth recorded registration went to hp.com on March 3, 1986. IBM bought its domain a couple of weeks later. AT&T followed in April, and Apple joined the club after another year. Unfortunately, the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine only goes back to the mid-90s, but even in 1997, you can see how relatively low-tech apple.com looked compared with the snazzy standards we enjoy today.

Some other noteworthy notches on the dot-com timeline that didn't make the first 100: Microsoft bought microsoft.com in May 1991; PC World entered the online world in April '92; Yahoo reserved its dot-com home in January of 1995; and Google grabbed google.com in September 1997.

As a heads-up, one conspicuous omission that may catch your eye: anything remotely pornographic. (Those 2400 BPS modems didn't make for great image transmission.) Allow me to satisfy your curiosity, though: Sex.com first surfaced in 1994. Porn.com came into existence about a year later.

The Full List

All right, prurient interests addressed, ready to check out the full list of dot-com pioneers? Brace yourself, and dig in.

1. symbolics.com: March 15, 1985

2. bbn.com: April 24, 1985

3. think.com: May 24, 1985

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4. mcc.com: July 11, 1985

5. dec.com: September 30, 1985

6. northrop.com: November 7, 1985

7. xerox.com: January 9, 1986

8. sri.com: January 17, 1986

9. hp.com: March 3, 1986

10. bellcore.com: March 5, 1986

11. ibm.com: March 19, 1986

12. sun.com: March 19, 1986

13. intel.com: March 25, 1986

14. ti.com: March 25, 1986

15. att.com: April 25, 1986

16. gmr.com: May 8, 1986

17. tek.com: May 8, 1986

18. fmc.com: July 10, 1986

19. ub.com: July 10, 1986

20. bell-atl.com: August 5, 1986

21. ge.com: August 5, 1986

22. grebyn.com: August 5, 1986

23. isc.com: August 5, 1986

24. nsc.com: August 5, 1986

25. stargate.com: August 5, 1986

26. boeing.com: September 2, 1986

27. itcorp.com: September 18, 1986

28. siemens.com: September 29, 1986

29. pyramid.com: October 18, 1986

30. alphacdc.com: October 27, 1986

31. bdm.com: October 27, 1986

32. fluke.com: October 27, 1986

33. inmet.com: October 27, 1986

34. kesmai.com: October 27, 1986

35. mentor.com: October 27, 1986

36. nec.com: October 27, 1986

37. ray.com: October 27, 1986

38. rosemount.com: October 27, 1986

39. vortex.com: October 27, 1986

40. alcoa.com: November 5, 1986

41. gte.com: November 5, 1986

42. adobe.com: November 17, 1986

43. amd.com: November 17, 1986

44. das.com: November 17, 1986

45. data-io.com: November 17, 1986

46. octopus.com: November 17, 1986

47. portal.com: November 17, 1986

48. teltone.com: November 17, 1986

49. 3com.com: December 11, 1986

50. amdahl.com: December 11, 1986

51. ccur.com: December 11, 1986

52. ci.com: December 11, 1986

53. convergent.com: December 11, 1986

54. dg.com: December 11, 1986

55. peregrine.com: December 11, 1986

56. quad.com: December 11, 1986

57. sq.com: December 11, 1986

58. tandy.com: December 11, 1986

59. tti.com: December 11, 1986

60. unisys.com: December 11, 1986

61. cgi.com: January 19, 1987

62. cts.com: January 19, 1987

63. spdcc.com: January 19, 1987

64. apple.com: February 19, 1987

65. nma.com: March 4, 1987

66. prime.com: March 4, 1987

67. philips.com: April 4, 1987

68. datacube.com: April 23, 1987

69. kai.com: April 23, 1987

70. tic.com: April 23, 1987

71. vine.com: April 23, 1987

72. ncr.com: April 30, 1987

73. cisco.com: May 14, 1987

74. rdl.com: May 14, 1987

75. slb.com: May 20, 1987

76. parcplace.com: May 27, 1987

77. utc.com: May 27, 1987

78. ide.com: June 26, 1987

79. trw.com: July 9, 1987

80. unipress.com: July 13, 1987

81. dupont.com: July 27, 1987

82. lockheed.com: July 27, 1987

83. rosetta.com: July 28, 1987

84. toad.com: August 18, 1987

85. quick.com: August 31, 1987

86. allied.com: September 3, 1987

87. dsc.com: September 3, 1987

88. sco.com: September 3, 1987

89. gene.com: September 22, 1987

90. kccs.com: September 22, 1987

91. spectra.com: September 22, 1987

92. wlk.com: September 22, 1987

93. mentat.com: September 30, 1987

94. wyse.com: October 14, 1987

95. cfg.com: November 2, 1987

96. marble.com: November 9, 1987

97. cayman.com: November 16, 1987

98. entity.com: November 16, 1987

99. ksr.com: November 24, 1987

100. nynexst.com: November 30, 1987

(Domain record data provided by iWhoIs.com)

For more PC news, visit PC World. Story copyright PC World Communications, Inc.

 

Nowadays it is very common to hear about online security vulnerability with email and domains being stolen by unauthorized third parties. As a frequent internet surfer, how are you going to ensure your Gmail is safe from being attacked by phishers and prevent your private information from being stolen by third parties?

You never know or suspect the email is actually sent by phisher as the web page looks like a legitimate site you have visited before. Phishers can imitate as banks, email, online merchants, payment services providers and even governments that you may be confused with what they have claimed and follow the instructions to enter your username, password and other private information on the site. All these information can be used by phishers to steal your bank money, open new credit card applications under your name and etc. In order to prevent or minimize such incident from happening, there are few tips you can apply to prevent phishers’ attacks:

• Examine if there are any suspicious filters which are not created by you
Access to your Gmail account, go to Setting -> Filters, then verify if there are any filters which are not created by you. Delete them right away if there is any.

• Disable Forwarding and POP/IMAP
Access to your Gmail account, go to Setting -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP, disable forwarding, POP and IMAP if you have not used them.

• Be alert when being asked for sensitive information.
Any email or link in the email asking about your user name, password, bank account number or other personal information need to be cautious before submitting those information. Bear in mind that most of the legitimate websites never ask for sensitive information through this channel.

• Do not click on suspicious links in email
If you receive an email asking for private information from a organization which you know of, instead of clicking on the link directly from the email, go to the organization website directly by typing the address in URL. If there is something you need to do, usually there will be an announcement on the homepage. If you can’t find any information from the homepage, don’t hesitate to call the respective party to find out more.

• Use a browser that has a phishing filter
Use the the latest versions of browsers such as Firefox 3.x, Internet Explorer 7, and Opera 9.x which have included phishing filters for safer web browsing experience without being interrupted by these kind of phishing activities.

• Do not be deceived by “great offers” or fantastic advertisement
Whenever you have received any online offers and requires you to enter private information, don’t be too excited and make sure that it is really safe or try to find more information.

Tips of How to Prevent Your Gmail from Being Hacked by Phishers » My Digital Life