Tweet from Gnome with Pino

Are you looking for a ‘good’ Twitter client for Gnome? Not happy with Twitux? Try Pino. It’s a new Twitter client for Gnome-based desktop environments. It’s a very lightweight app with minimal dependencies. The latest version supports Identi.ca updates and multi-accounts, among many other features. You can shorten longer URLs on the fly with goo.gl and is.gd. The latest version is an experimental version.

If you are using Ubuntu, use the following command-lines to install Pino, 
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vala-team/ppa
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:troorl/pino 
sudo apt-get update
apt-get install pino
More installation instructions can be found at the download center.

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Add a Google Buzz Button with Buzz Count
Last week I posted how to add Google Buzz button to your Blogger blog. This is a follow-up of that post. But the following hack can be added to any website — whether running Blogger or Wordpress. Since Google Buzz API doesn't provide any function to count the number of shares in Google Buzz, we'll be using Bit.ly's API to count Buzzes. Please make a back-up of your template (or html files) before making any changes. I will assume a couple of things,

Step 1

Get your Bit.ly API key. Add the following lines inside the <head> tag. 
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://bit.ly/javascript-api.js?version=latest&login=YOUR_LOGIN_ID&apiKey=YOUR_API_KEY"></script>
Replace YOUR_LOGIN_ID and YOUR_API_KEY with your credentials.

Step 2


Add these lines of code inside the <head> tag.
<style type='text/css'>
.btn {
background:url("http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_FX3RmPElUpc/S3tw51HNEtI/AAAAAAAAAz8/b9aPyAAwBl0/s144/buzz-button.jpg") no-repeat center center;
width:50px;
height:58px;
position:relative;
text-align:center;
}

.btn a {
position:absolute;
bottom:0;
left:0;
display:block;
height:17px;
width:50px;
}

.btn span {
position:absolute;
right:0;
left:0;
top:5px;
font-size:14px;
font-weight:bold;
letter-spacing:0.1em;
padding:3px;
color:#ffffff;
}

</style>

Step 3


Add the following code where you want to show the button
<div class='btn'>
<a href='LINK_TO_SHARE_IN_GOOGLE_BUZZ' class="buzzbutton"></a>
</div>

Replace LINK_TO_SHARE_IN_GOOGLE_BUZZ with the link. If you're using Blogger, you can find the link here. If you're using Wordpress, you can find the link at TricksDaddy. Do not remove the class ("buzzbutton").

Step 4


Add these lines of code just before </body>.
<script type='text/javascript'>
/***
Buzz Count Script using Bit.ly API.
Abhisek Dutta (http://ad1987.blogspot.com/)
***/

//get all anchor tags with buzzbutton as the class
urlContainer = {};
hashContainer = {};
function getAllButtons() {
anchrs = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
btns = new Array();
for(i=0; i<anchrs.length; i++) {
if(anchrs[i].className == "buzzbutton") {
btns.push(anchrs[i]);
}
}
return btns;
}

var btns = getAllButtons();

for(i=0;i<btns.length;i++) {
long_url = btns[i].href;
urlContainer[long_url] = i;
BitlyClient.shorten(long_url, 'replace_link');
}

function replace_link(data) {
for (var r in data.results) {
doc = data.results[r];
break;
}
short_url = doc['shortUrl'];
hash = doc['hash'];
hashContainer[hash] = urlContainer[r];
btns[urlContainer[r]].href = "http://bit.ly/"+hash;
BitlyClient.stats(hash, 'getStat');
}

function getStat(data) {
var clicks = data.results.clicks;
var hash = data.results.hash;
span = document.createElement("span");
span.innerHTML = clicks;
btns[hashContainer[hash]].parentNode.insertBefore(span, btns[hashContainer[hash]]);
}
</script>
That's all you have to do! Let me know if it works for you in the comments section.
P.S. This is inspired by Mashable

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Control Website Addiction and Stay Focused with ToVisitOrNot
Are you addicted to Facebook? Can't think of life without your friends' timelines on Twitter? Spending too much time on Orkut? Cannot stay productive on a permanently connected world? Well, ToVisitOrNot may help you!
ToVisitOrNot creates modified URLs of sites with a minimum time period between two successive visits. You can visit the sites using the modified URLs. But if you visit it more often than the specified time period, ToVisitOrNot will show you a warning message. Very simple idea but very unusual in its use.

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6 Best Online Collaborative Text Editors
Whether you're a developer or a finance guy or a simple computer user, at some point of time, you must have shared documents with your colleagues. After you shared the documents, if you make any more changes, you have to send them as attachments with your email. Amid loads of works you do everyday, this might be a pretty boring repetitive work. This process would have been easier if the recipient could see your changes as you type. Online collaborative text-editors are the answer. Simple, easy and saves time. You don't have to share the document — just share the link!

Google Docs

Probably the most popular text-editor online. Google Docs is simple to use and share. You can share the documents with certain Google users or the public. It's good for showing your works but may not be the best to keep track of who-edited-what since the main purpose of Google Docs is to provide an online alternative to MS Office. As a result revision options are not that structured.

WriteBoard

WriteBoard is a product of 37Signals. As with most of their products, WriteBoard is super simple and easy to use. You can protect every writeboard you create with a password and username. Every WriteBoard has a URL that is almost unguessable. You can invite collaborators to share and edit Writeboards. Changes are highlighted in different colors, making it easy to keep track of the changes and their authors.

Mozilla Bespin

Bespin is a beta application from the Mozilla Labs. Its simplistic approach to text-editing and sharing may find a lot of takers. But it may not be the best option for an average computer user. It uses various commands to do certain jobs which otherwise would have been easily done with simple UI. It's more like Nano for the web. Bespin allows you to do complex jobs like SVN controls or search-and-replace with regular expression. Perfect for geeks and Linux users.

EtherPad

Etherpad is open-source and can be run on your server. When Google announced Wave, many of its collaborative features were already available with Etherpad. Finally Etherpad was acquired by Google!

Etherpad is "the most frictionless way to get people on the same page" (Drew Houston, Dropbox). From colour hightlighting to online chat with collaborators, Etherpad has all the features you can ask from an online text-editor. You can even export your texts as HTML files. Etherpad has a time slider to keep track of times when certain changes were made. Creating a new pad is just a click away!

CollabEdit

CollabEdit is aimed for programmers working online. It supports syntax highlighting for a number of programming languages including C, Perl, PHP, HTML, XML, Visual Basic. Like Etherpad, CollabEdit supports chat among collaborators. You can download the document as a txt file. Its simplistic approach may find many takers among the programming fraternity.

Amy Editor

AmyEditor probably has more features than any other online collaborative editors. The interface resembles Mac OS. AmyEditor supports syntax highlighting (of almost all languages), tons of keyboard shortcuts, templates of multiple languages, multi-tab editing, and tons of features. You can edit and add code snippets for frequent uses. It offers a console with logs. Perfect choice of programmers.

Tell us your choices in the comments section.

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Create Beautiful 3D Image Slider with CU3ER

A lot of web-developers shudder at the thought of embedding Flash on their sites. But Flash can be a good thing if it is used as less as possible and content is separated from Flash elements. If you are looking for image slider with nice 3D effects, CU3ER has got it!

CU3ER is a Flash-based solution to show off your featured content, recent posts, recent projects, or (for a professional layout) services and features a company offers. It is simple to use and well-documented. Even if you’ve never used Flash elements, the documentation will teach all you need to know.

Cu3er (pronounced as kju:bər) can be customised via XML files for settings and configuration of the slider images and transitions. Cu3er uses two directions for 3d transitions — horizontal and vertical. But it allows to create your own custom transitions.

Cu3er is free and can be used for both personal and commercial projects.

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Add a Google Buzz Button to Your Blogger Blog
Google's Buzz is the new service with which Google has made its efforts to make its own contribution to already-oveloaded social media scenario. Whether it can stand out in the crowd or becomes yet another failure, only time can tell. But it's always good to let your readers share your posts on social media sites. Here's how you can add a Google Buzz button on your Blogger blog.
Update: I made a post on How to add a Google Buzz Button with Buzz Count. Do check it!

For 'New' Blogger Users

If you are using the 'new' Blogger templates, add these lines of code where you want to show the button: 
<a expr:href='&quot;http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=&quot; + data:post.url + &quot;&amp;title=&quot; + data:post.title + &quot;&amp;srcURL=&quot; + data:blog.homepageUrl '><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FX3RmPElUpc/S3VkcrkMk4I/AAAAAAAAAzc/XkmkEsom8OQ/s144/googlebuzz.png" /></a>

For 'Classic' Blogger Users


If you are still using 'classic' Blogger templates, here is the code you should put just where you want the button to show up:
<a href='http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>&srcURL=YOURBLOG.blogspot.com'><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FX3RmPElUpc/S3VkcrkMk4I/AAAAAAAAAzc/XkmkEsom8OQ/s144/googlebuzz.png" /></a>

Replace YOURBLOG with your blog name.

Let me know if you are having trouble using this code.

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Download OpenOffice 3.2
Open-source office suite, OpenOffice has released the newest version — version 3.2 with many bug-fixes and enhanced features some of which are available throughout OpenOffice applications. This release marks the 10th anniversary of OpenOffice suite. With over 100 million downloads recorded in total, OpenOffice stands as a serious contender for the market share taken by Microsoft Office.

The new features include:

  • Faster start-up time
  • OpenOffice now provides improved support for many proprietary file formats including, .docx, .pptx, .xlsx and others
  • Impress, the Latex editing application now has commenting feature making it easy for collaborative users
  • Chart wizard now has a new format — Bubble
  • Calc — default calculator gets lots of new features including better handling of copy-paste and better usability
You can download OpenOffice from the download center. The installer includes Java Runtime Env so that you don't need to install it separately.

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4 Fresh Free Icon Sets for Your Next Design Project
We love free icons. While designing for a client, the first thing (after choosing the color-scheme) one thinks of is the matching icon set. Here are four fresh icon sets that are free to use and looks good!

Iconic Icon Set

103 Icons for free in two different formats — raster and vector. Iconic comes in 14 different colors. So you can easily choose the right color that matches your color scheme.

Download: Some Random Dude
License: CC SA 3.0

Free Set of Office Icons by IconShock

Designed by IconShock, this set of icons has 5 icons of commonly used office items. Available in both PNG and AI format.

Download: Vandelay Design
License: Free for personal and commercial use

Vector Social Media Icons

This is a set of 50 social media icons. Icons are available in 2 different sizes and 3 different formats — PNG, GIF and EPS.

Download: IconDock
License: "You may use or modify the icons for any purposes. However, you may NOT resell or distribute the icons. If you use these icons, please place a link to http://icondock.com"

330 Free Letter Pressed Icons

A collection of beautiful letter-pressed icons. It includes three PSD files so that you can drag-drop icons into your designs and add styles to them. From objects used everyday to social media icons, the icons are simplistic in look and feel.

Download: Creative Nerds
License: CC

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10 Reasons Why You Should Start Your First Blog with Blogger

It has been a topic for debate among bloggers about whether Blogger or Wordpress is the better blogging platform. There’s no doubt Wordpress has the edge. But if you are a new blogger trying to make your mark in blogging, Blogger is the best option you have. Here are some reasons why you should choose Blogger and no one else!

Free & Easy Sign up

When you are starting off as a blogger, it is likely that you are not going to invest anything except your time and talent in blogging. Since Blogger is free, you can go with it

Custom Domain

If you're not happy with blogspot.com sub-domain, you can create your own custom domain and host the same blog through Blogger.com. And it costs much less than hosting a Wordpress site — generally, domain registration fee for a year is less than $10. If you already own a Blogger blog and pondering over the idea of buying your own domain and hosting it with Blogger.com, you can check this article for more information.

HTML Control

Wordpress.com is free and lets you use custom domains. But you cannot edit the HTML and tweak its functionalities. Blogger does allow you to edit HTML (and CSS) of your blog. Because of this, you can use hundreds of Blogger templates available online.

Blogger Hacks

Blogger has many shortcomings when compared to Wordpress. But power bloggers and developers have made many tweaks to Blogger templates to have features that only Wordpress can boast of. My long-time favorite has been Hackosphere.

Better Integration with Google Products

Since Blogger is a product of Google (Google acquired it in 2003), Blogger's integration with other Google products is better. From FeedBurner to Google Analytics to Adsense, you name it. With new features coming in everyday, you don’t have to worry about integration.

Adsense

Once you strike the right chord and your blog is successful, it's time to earn some money from it. And what's better than Google Adsense. You can show your Adsense ads in a Blogger blog. Unfortunately, Wordpress.com doesn't let users show Adsense ads on their blogs.

No Bandwidth Limitation & 100% Uptime

Hosted on Google's server, Blogger blogs have 100% uptime guaranteed and there's no bandwidth limitations on the content you show. These days, you can't expect 100% uptime from any hosts & even Dreamhost and Rackspace goes offline.

Features

Blogger provides some of the coolest features, like email blogging, feed redirection, openid integration, mobile blogging, multi-language support etc.

Exportability

If you want to move from Blogger to Wordpress, you can export your blog easily. You can even have a backup of all your posts.

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Watch How Google Came up with Nexus One

Google has posted a new video on Youtube Nexus One channel showing how the concept and design of Nexus One came up. This is the first of the series of videos to be posted on YouTube about the process of how Nexus One came into being.

From the video it is clear that Google’s been working on Nexus One for a long time. Right from the days when Android first came up, Google was indeed working on a phone. The rumor-mills were not entirely wrong. It is also evident that working with HTC on Android taught Google about the problems most phones face. With Nexus One, Google has made its effort to make a phone without those shortcomings.

This video also shows why Nexus One has two mics — a first of a kind in a phone. If you want to watch the remaining episodes of the series subscribe to the Nexus One YouTube Channel.

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Blogger Adds Pages
One of the most awaited features on Blogger has finally arrived — you can now create static pages on Blogger blogs, a feature only Wordpress had till date. This is big update for all blogger’s using Blogger as their blogging platform and a big step forward in the growth of blogger as a platform.

The feature was already available in Blogger in Draft but now it's open for all. To create a page in Blogger, all you have to do is to go to Posting > Edit Pages > New Page and create a new page. But unlike Wordpress, Blogger has a restriction in the number of pages you can create — currently Blogger allows only 10 pages for each blog.

In case you are using custom templates, you have to add the following lines of code in your template. 
<div id='crosscol-wrapper' style='text-align:center'>
<b:section class='crosscol' id='crosscol' showaddelement='yes'/>
</div>

Put the lines just here you want the list of pages to show up. But if you are using "Classic" templates, there’s no way you can create pages.

[Via Blogger Buzz]

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Generate Favicon of Any Domain with Google

If you are regular with Google Reader, you must have noticed it got favicons all over the feed-list a few months ago. Now, it seems that you can also use Google's technique to add favicons to your web-application. And this favicon is generated directly by Google. Just a little playing around with the URLs can give you the edge.


Here are some of the favicons generated by Google:

  • Techcrunch:
  • Digg:
  • Google:
  • Gmail:
  • Yahoo! Mail:
  • Blogger:
You can generate favicons of any domain by using the following bookmarklet. Just drag and drop it to your bookmarks bar and click to generate.

The favicons generated are all 16x16 in dimension. If no favicon is found on the domain Google returns a default icon. Remember the favicons are returned on a domain. So if you add "http://www." before the domain name, it won't work (i.e. it would return the default favion.)

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