Month: October 2009

Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 Is Out

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Mozilla has released the latest  beta 1 version of Firefox 3.6.This latest Beta version of the upcoming Firefox version was built on the Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering engine, which includes many improvements for web developers over the previous versions.

The Features:

  • Built-in support for Personas, so now your Firefox can be personalized fully.
  • Built-in Plugin-Check feature to alert users about outdated plugins , Web version of which was announced recently.
  • WOFF font format support
  • Enhanced JavaScript performance that improves browser overall responsiveness and startup time.
  • New CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies support.

Download Firefox 3.6b1 (Windows):

Firefox 3.6b1 windows download

via Mozilla Blog Post

How To Verify Blogger blog in Webmaster Tools

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There has been some changes of late, to the verification process in Google Webmaster Tools for Blogger.com hosted blogs. The “Webmaster Tools” auto-verification link from the Blogger dashboard has been removed leaving Blogger blog users to have no other choice but to opt for verification through adding a HTML meta tag.

GWT plus Blogger logo

Webmaster Tools has outlined this process in simple steps.

Steps:

Sign in to Webmaster Tools

1)Click the “Add a site” button on the homepage of Webmaster Tools

add a site in webmaster tools

2) Just enter you blog’s URL (like techrena.blogspot.com for instance) and click “Continue” button.

3)Select the “Meta tag” verification method from the drop-down list

get verification meta tag

Copy the meta tag code that has been generated.It should be something of the form <meta name=”google-site-verification” content=”X…….X” />

Now open Blogger.com in a new tab or window and don’t close this Webmaster Tools page.

4) Now Sign into blogger.com and go to Dashboard and go to Layout section of your blog, under the Layout, select  “Edit HTML”

5) Paste the meta tag verification code it into the <head> section, before the first <body> section

edit template html and paste meta tag verification code

[Image : Google Webmaster Central blog]

6) Click “Save Template “

7) Go back to Webmaster Tools page which you have kept open and click on the “Verify “ button.

You are done and your blog has now been verified in Google Webmaster Tools.

Configure Google Friend Connect For WordPress Blogs

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Google Friend Connect made its debut to WordPress.Google Friend Connect was previously available only to Blogger blogs through a simple gadget (although you can insert in any other non-blogger sites). Now there’s a more simpler way to this for WordPress , thanks to Mauro Gonzalez, Globant who developed this FriendConnect plugin  plugin to extend GFC to WordPress blogs.

He adds in a guest post in Google Social Web blog,

This plugin allows your visitors to authenticate using any OpenID account such as Google, Yahoo, or AIM and then comment on your posts with no need to complete a registration form.

Now, Let’s see how to setup Google Friend Connect for your WordPress blog:

Step 1: Go to google.com/friendconnect and add your new site details

Google Friend connect adding new site

Step 2: Once you have added you blog’s details, find your unique site ID of your site and note it down.

GFC site ID wordpress

Step 3: Download Google Friend Connect  WordPress Plugin and upload it to plugins folder in your WordPress installation.

Step 4: Under Settings in your dashboard visit ‘FriendConnect’ to configure that plugin.

Enter your site ID in the filed Google FriendConnect ID:

Google FriendConnect wp plugin configuration

Step 5: You can customize the GFC using various colour schemes.

Step 6: If you want to add various GFC widgets, visit widgets tab, you’ll find the widgets like

‘GFC Members’, ‘GFC Recommendations’ & ‘GFC Site Wide Comments’

GFC widgets wordpress

you can also try out various possible settings under them to find out which one best suits your blog.

Bing Brings Twitter Search

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Twitter Search right from Bing!

Bing has today announced that It has integrated Twitter search in the universal Bing search, which now lets you the latest real-time tweets for your favorite topic or from the ‘Hottest topics on Twitter’.

Bing is also letting users know the ‘Shared links about Hottest Topics’ that the majority number of users are sharing.It’s known that Bing was previously gained access to the tweets of celebrities to include them in Bing search for testing purposes.

Twitter is providing Bing access to the overwhelming deluge of public, real-time tweets rushing in from all around the world so they can help you find those that make the most sense right now.

Twitter Team in their Blog Post

Bing and twitter search

The deal seems to have worked out and now Bing has access to all the tweets data of whole public in Twitter and this information is available via a simple Bing search.

At present the this is restricted to the US users.

Link:Access the Bing’s Twitter Search.

WordPress 2.8.5 – Security Hardening Release is Out

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Popular Blogging Platform WordPress has released the update to the earlier version as WordPress 2.8.5 terming it as the “Security Hardening Release” with the following changes:

    • A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
    • Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.
    • Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.
    • Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.

WordPress 2.8.5 Download wordpress logo

The Issues:

Many bloggers today have reported some minor issues while upgrading to version 2.8.5

An error message

“Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 2354671 bytes) in …”

was prominent among the issues raised by the bloggers.

The fix to this issues is pretty much simple:

First disable all your plugins while upgrading and revert to the default theme of WordPress.

Now perform the auto-install upgrade to WP version 2.8.5.You’d have a very smooth upgrade.Now try to enable all your desired plugins.Now you may find that some plugins are still causing the above said error message.

Here’s the fix for it:

Open your FTP client, and open wp-config.php file in your WordPress installed directory.Add the following line:

define('WP_MEMORY_LIMIT', '64M');

This would increase the amount of memory that is being consumed by the PHP script.

    • A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen.
    • Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated.
    • Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins.
    • Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins.

YouTube Launches Real-Time Comments Search Similar to Twitter Search

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YouTube is testing a new feature ‘Real-Time Comments search’ and this feature has been launched in ‘TestTube’ where in the YouTube engineers and developers test out the upcoming features.

This new search however, is pretty much similar to that of ‘Twitter Search’.

“The full comment will appear on a continuously updated results page, and “trending topics” indicates the hottest topics of conversation on YouTube at that particular moment.”

[Access Real-Time Comments Search Page]

youtube comments search Twitter search

Like Twitter search results, YouTube also displaying  ‘Trending topics’, the hot searches that are being made in YouTube right at that moment.

Similar to Twitter, search results get updated whenever a new comment arrives (It has to be that way, since they are meant to be real-time updates).

Mozilla Plugin Check Lets Firefox users to Keep Plugins Up to Date

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Mozilla has announced the launch of Plugin check webpage intended to check for insecure and outdated plugins of Firefox.At present this tool can check only 15 plugins (do not confuse with Add-ons).This also warns the user when they are not up-to-date and need to be updated.

Right now the Plugin-Check page can only be accessed through Firefox but in future Mozilla is willing to extend this to all browsers.

Mozilla Plugin Check Page

Before this, only Add-ons were being checked for update leaving plugins as such.This lead to emergence of various attacks through those vulnerable outdated plugins, hence it became a primary concern for Mozilla team to identify such plugins.

Firefox 3.6 Beta is set to be launched on the next Wednesday.According to Mozilla team,Firefox 3.6 will warn users when they visit any web site that needs to run on an outdated plug-in.

Disable Ads in FeedDemon Reader In Easy Steps

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FeedDemon the most popular desktop RSS reader has many good features to boast of but from the time since it became Ad-Supported (from the version 2.8) free RSS reader, ads have started rolling on the left corner of the client .The user has to purchase a serial to completely remove those ads which are annoying at times.

FeedDemon Deck Ad Before Blocking

If you are looking for a way to at least stop those ads too keep rolling in your FeedDemon, here’s a workaround:

FeedDemon uses Deck Network Ads which runs through the server northmay.com, so all we need to do is to deny access to northmay.com from your computer.This can be done in many ways, though the much simpler trick would be to add the following URLs in the ‘Restricted Sites’ option in Internet Options that are present under settings in Internet explorer

(This works since FeedDemon uses IE to connect to the internet)

URL:

*.northmay.com

The result would like this:

FeedDemon Deck Ad After Blocking

Let me know if anyone is facing problems with this or also do post a comment here, if anyone has a far better idea than this, your suggestions are welcome.

Alternative: As mentioned earlier. FeedDemon has come up with these ads only from Version 2.8, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get FeedDemon stable version 2.7.

Final Word:As,  Nick Bradbury of FeedDemon says this software needs support from people and Techrena urges all FeedDemon lovers to do the same and without that support we may not see our favorite reader anymore..

Gmail Emerges As No.1 Email Service in India

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Google’s Gmail has probably officially took the honour for their outstanding features provided to the users allowing Gmail to takeover it’s rival Yahoo mail as the top email service provider site in India.

According to an online audience measurement and analytics organization ViziSense, Gmail has managed to get 18.2 million users in India to use its services at a growth rate of 2.82 % in September 2009 and 6.63 % in the previous month August 2009.

The classic Yahoo mail India, which continued to stay at No.1 till the last month had to settle with No #2 position with a negative growth of -7.69 % and with 16.8 million users approximately.

Gmail overtake Yahoo mail India

Yahoo Mail which dominated as the most popular email service in India is loosing ground to Gmail .But for the big internet company which has recently launched ‘It’s You’ campaign in India to attract more users, this news may not be so encouraging .

Probably it’s time for us to say- “Wake Up Yahoo !! ” 🙂