I am thoroughly satisfied with Google Reader for reading my RSS feeds but I felt its been a long time I have spent on it and it has now started to bore me a bit. So I started some search for good desktop applications which would give some eye candy and also improve my productivity while learning from the feeds.

I have found one nice solution which has relieved me to some extent and which is certainly an impressive effort in the direction of web desktop integration. Its called ReadAir. It is a really nice application for feed reading and I am impressed by its potential.  The reason I liked it was because it is built on Adobe AIR. I had become a fan of Adobe AIR when I had read about it for the first time.

Seeing a live usable application built on it was something I had waited for and ReadAir has confirmed my belief that sometime later in the future we are going to see amazing applications built for the desktops but running on the web. Mozilla Prism is a yet another effort in this field.

Okay, coming back to the ReadAir. ReadAir is a desktop feed reader for reading your Google Reader feeds. The features that I can place my votes on are:

• Easy setup and login straight into Google Reader
• Direct synchronization of read posts with Google Reader
• You can star any post directly inside it which is also visible later in your Google Reader
• Add/Remove tags or feeds from within it
• It has got a very minimalistic Interface yet its pretty neat looking
• The feed post colors and fonts are soothing to the eye
• It is quick in loading.
• Clicking on the post title marks the post as read (This is better than scrolling the entire length of the post as in Google Reader)

I was satisfied by the above basic features and also expect them to improve them in the future. Since the application is in its early days, some features can be cranky at times. For example, I found the auto update feature somewhat unnecessary. It updated the application with some new features which later started to show some errors. Also, the search is not fully functional and currently ReadAir does not support keyboard shortcuts.

Leaving apart the shortcomings, the synchronization was the best part of ReadAir. At least I have got a different reader for my taste and also due to the synchronization with Google Reader, I do not have to worry about re-reading the same posts if I happen to access Google Reader from a different location. I appreciate the commendable effort put up by Adam Mcgrath for bringing this idea to life and am looking forward for addition of more features.

Try it, its nice to have a change sometimes and I would always root for web desktop applications like these. For installing ReadAir you need to have Adobe Air installed on your system. Download Adobe Air from here.

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Enter Web 2.0, and you do not have to ponder much over lost time for waiting to get hold of a tool. In this era, whatever you think of is already available online. So without fretting just google up your requirement and you would be amazed by what kind of power the internet can provide you. Coming back to the question, I responded him coolly, to use an online photo editor! He was totally baffled at the thought. If you are too, then I might as well introduce to you the best tools for photo editing online.

Online Photo Editors

The most important thing for a photo editor is to provide the features such as, cropping, editing brightness and contrast, sharpening and blurring, resize, effects and saving in multiple file formats. In a standalone editor you are most likely to find these features. But in an online environment the features will be severely limited with regards to flexibility of usage, since they are entirely web based which make them complicated to implement. I will suggest you some nifty tools which would actually make your work easier and lot more fun. Browsing across several editors I would recommend you 3 of the most liked online photo editors.

1. Phixr

Phixr is an interesting tool which does not use Flash. It is completely Ajax based and has got the potential to give the user a complete satisfaction. The most likable feature I found in this was the ability to convert your photograph into an artistic polaroid snapshot, comment bubbles and effects. It gives you the facility of direct upload of the edited photo to numerous photo sharing sites like Facebook, Flickr, Picasaweb and so on. Moreover, its free to use.

Its not a compulsion for registering for using the tool. You can try out the demo from the photo shown on the front page itself and check the features for yourselfs. Look what I could come up in a few minutes of playing with this tool.

2. SplashUp

If you are a Photoshop addict and cannot think of any other tool besides it, then you are in for a real surprise. SplashUp, earlier called Fauxto is a very well designed application which closely resembles Photoshop. It has the same look and feel and is completely made in Flash. The bonus of using SplashUp is that you can actually save your work in its own file format so that you can continue working on it later. It is the first online tool, to give a layered editing environment and work on multiple images at the same time without your browser getting hanged up. Doesn’t that sound exciting enough?

3. Picnik

Picnik one is one of my favorites and one of the most used tools while editing photos online. This is because, Flick has recently bought it, and it has been directly integrated into flickr. This makes editing your online flickr photos even more simpler. Just go to a flickr photo and choose the Edit Photo button, which opens up in a picnik editor mode. Check out for the humorous load messages it shows. The only thing I dislike about it is it takes a lot of time to load the photo which is not the case in SplashUp.

Picnik has a lot of amazing features to offer but they all do not come for free. Yet you are free to use some commonly used features with ease. Check out for fancy text effects and custom shapes. They are surely fantastic. With a tool like Picnik you wouldn’t need Photoshop around for common usages.

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Whatever the reason may be, editing a photograph is no layman’s job. Sometime people give up half way through when they do not find the required results. I recently found a something which might make your spirit rise higher when you will notice the results you get out of it. The name of the tool is Picasa. Its a tool from Google. I am sure you must have used it many time to upload your photos to the online Picasaweb. But did you ever try making collages from it. Picasa can generate some really amazing collages out of your precious photos and make them really gift worthy or send it amongst friends as a memoir.

So here’s how you can make collages out of your photos:

• Download and install Picasa if you don’t have it already from here
• When you open it Picasa will start indexing all your image folders
• Choose a folder of which you want to make a collage from
• Now carefully select the photos which are your favorite and which you want inside the collage
• Click the Collage button in the bottom bar
• Your collage will be loaded in the dialog mode
• You might not be satisfied with the collage at first so you can try one of the 2 tricks
• Press Shift and drag your mouse pointer on the collage window. You will see a change in the layout
• Keep trying till you are satisfied with a layout
• Sometimes, you might like a layout but not how the pictures are placed
• In this case press Ctrl and drag the mouse pointer. The layout will be same but the pictures will start to randomize in their placement.
• Once you are done, hit the Create Button and specify location as the “current folder”
• The collage gets created and gives you a chance to edit the collage
• Here you can try out interesting presets which include making the collage black and white or giving it a sepia tone or soft focusing it. You can have real fun over here.
• After finishing with the effect choose file > save. A backup of the original will automatically be made
• So here you are with a amazing memorabilia of your treasured photos. Sounds simple isn’t it?
  

You can do different types of collages in Picassa. The one above is called the “Picture Pile“. The other types include:

Picture Grid

Contact Sheet

You can always edit the collage features after saving it. But however there is no provision to change the photos of it later. You would have to again do the above steps for making a new collage.

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What is the difference between Yahoo Live and Youtube?

Yahoo Live can be seen as a video conferencing portal. Get your webcam and broadcast into Yahoo Live by creating channels. The difference Yahoo Live offers from Youtube is direct broadcast from your webcam and not recorded uploads. I slightly doubt such a service getting popular when Youtube has become a brand name of sorts. It would take Google only a matter of days to offer a similar service. Where the business of Yahoo goes with the launch of live is the thing to watch out for.

Does it offer anything new?

In my opinion it does not seem to be an innovative concept. The live webcam has been around ages right from the inception of online porn webcam portals. Yahoo Live should avoid becoming one, because spammers are always on the prowl to attack new emerging systems. Something worth of interest in Yahoo Live is that, it has featured channels which includes some famed personalities performing live for free. This may be just for popularising the service. On the flip side you cannot archive the live broadcast.

What to expect from Yahoo Live?

Yahoo Live says that it is an experimental release. I am not so sure what this means but if there is something innovative to be seen in its future then Yahoo just might be able to revive its business after the downstream trend it is facing currently. Apart from the webcam streaming, Yahoo Live offers live chat, a developer’s API. The API might be of interest since it would offer features for embedding live video chat from your blog or site which has become popular these days.

Guess what, its even got a twitter feed!

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The installation of XRAY is to just drag and drop the bookmarklet on the browsers bookmark tool bar and it becomes ready for use. You can read about the usage instructions here. XRAY has been tested on Safari 2 and 3 on Mac OS X and Mozilla based browsers (Firefox, Camino and so on) on Mac OS X and Windows, and most likely Linux as well. The most exciting thing is that XRAY now works with Internet Explorer 6+ on Windows.

This is a news for rejoicing for all web designers who are stuck up with IE. Its now easier to skin a website using XRAY for testing out designs on the fly. Also they can now learn a lot from other good designs on other websites by finding out the placement of a particular element and how it behaves with the margins and padding’s. You can even click on the XRAY window for finding more about sibling elements too!

Even for Firefox users, its definitely worth a try.

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What is Windows Live Writer?

Live Writer is a power blogging tool which helps in offline blogging. If you are a regular blogger then you might have used the ScribeFire Firefox addon. But Windows Live Writer is not just an addon its a full fledged blogging platform with many blog rich features. The features are fully in synch with the Wordpress platform.

The best part of blogging in Live Writer is that, it has a facility of providing you the actual template from the blog layout while you blog. This makes you feel as if you are directly writing on your blog layout than in the standard Wordpress TinyMCE editor.

Installation Steps

• For installation of Live Writer make sure you have the following system requirements. More important that it requires a .Net Framework.
• Download the Live Tools Installer. This installer is not the Live Writer Installer. Instead it is general purpose installer and lets you select more products to install if needed.
• Start the installation from WLinstaller.exe
• Accept the agreement policy.
• Uncheck all the check boxes. They are optional utilities.
• The installer then downloads the Live Writer installation. Please be patient as it takes quite a lot of time if you have slow connection.
• You don’t have to do check anything. The installation would immediately after the download is complete.
• Follow the further steps which include putting the login credentials, blog URL.
• Allow the installation to detect the blog layout settings and post a temporary post to verify. It won’t affect your blog since no test post is published.
• Start the Writer and blast away with your writing. Enjoy!

Live Writer makes you feel as if you are working in the Wordpress environment itself. Blogging with it will surely enthral you. Try it out and you will see the difference for yourself.

Also do check out the gallery of Live Writer Plugins and also the CodePlex development zone to make your blogging experience even more enjoyable.

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But by the time I had written about the API, I noticed that people were coming up with great new ideas in order to reduce the burden of making the chart. And the ideas are practically impressive and have great scope for improvement.

A JavaScript Library
Chris Heilmann has created a script which converts simple HTML tables to charts and vice versa. He has implemented a Javascript library which generates the chart for you. So the example I had mentioned in the tutorial can be simply put in the form of the following HTML table,

<table class=”tochart size300×100 color990000” summary=”Browsers for this site, March 2007“>
<caption>Browsers</caption>
<thead>
<tr><th scope=”col”>Browser</th><th scope=”col”>Percent</th></tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr><td>Firefox</td><td>60</td></tr>
<tr><td>MSIE</td><td>25</td></tr>
<tr><td>Opera</td><td>10</td></tr>
<tr><td>Safari</td><td>5</td></tr>
</tbody>
</table>

The script pulls up all the tables present in the page which have the class set to “tochart” and puts up Google API generated charts in their place. Smart, isn’t it?

An Online Utility
The above script would definitely save your time in making the charts, but it is only created for a single type of chart, namely, the 3D pie chart. But if you require other comprehensive charts then you would have to make use of an chart generator developed by Jon Winstanley. It is a put-values-get-chart utility which makes the chart making process even more simpler. The utility takes care of all the factors required for a chart and also allows to create all types of charts.

But one element which goes as a negative aspect of this utility is that it is not flexible. You put in the value, get the encoded URL and then use it in your web page. Eventually, if you want to modify the chart later you would have to undergo the same process of putting in values again.

What I would like to see is, an implementation of both the above aspects. That is, have the put-values-get-chart utility but at the same time it should generate some XML format like the HTML table which should then used to generate the chart. In this fashion we would be able to modify the chart as and when required. Does it sound like the need of Google Chart Framework?

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• Use a server side framework to code in the chart
• Use a database to collect the report data and then code for the framework integration
• Insert chart image after generating a chart in a software
• Use some heavy JavaScript libraries which add to the loading time of the page

But if you had only a few outcomes and wished to show a simple chart in your web page to the readers of your website or blog then probably you would be fixed in a situation like this. The main reasons being:

• Use of an HTML only website or blog which does not allow server side scripting
• Lack of knowledge of using a chart framework even if you had server side scripting
• Burden of the process in creating a simple chart.
• Wastage of your precious time.

But with the power of Google Chart API in your hands all you need to know is to insert an image in your web page and watch your chart come to life. But if you are thinking that what could be the use of using a static image for showing a chart then you are wrong. The Google Chart API is so simple yet so powerful that can give you some amazing features:

• Create charts simply by using URL with some parameters
• Inserting the chart is as simple as you would be inserting an image
• The chart is created on the fly dynamically
• No need of server side coding
• No need of JavaScript to code or view your chart
• Any resolution of the chart with only a change in URL parameters
• Manipulating the parameters of the URL would change the chart
• A variety of styles to choose as per your tastes.

Doesn’t this sound pretty much magical. If the above features excite you then probably the process of showing you how to create a simple chart right in this article itself will be enchanting. So lets proceed ahead.

Creating a chart with the Google Chart API

Lets take a simple case study for our chart. Suppose you are writing an article on the trends in the usage of browser’s and instead of showing the data in tabular format you could show present the data with some visual cues. Charts are the perfect way to do it. You must have already been at a site which shows amazing chart representations for some reports. Google however does not have anything sleek yet in their chart varieties but hey they surely have simple and sweet ones.

I am taking the browser usage trends of my blog readers. According to the statistics the trends show that 60% of my blog readers use Firefox, 25% use MSIE, 10% Safari and 5% the rest.

So if I have to represent this data in the form of a chart then first of all I simply need to choose the chart type according to my liking from the various Google Chart Types. From all, I will choose the 3D pie chart. So for drawing the chart we will have to build a URL with in this fashion:

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?<parameter 1>&<parameter 2>&<parameter n>

Select the particular chart name, In my case it is p3. So the first parameter of the URL will be:

cht=p3

Now for the data, I will use the Simple Encoding technique which is indeed, simple. According to the technique my data representation would be done as follows:

chd=s:8ZKF (Four characters for the value indicate the four divisons in the chart)

We have to specify the resolution for the chart. According to my blog layout I would choose a height of 200px and the width of 400px. So the parameter would be,

chs=400x200

Titles have to be given to the data representation. So, for each of the four characters above in the data we would have to give its equivalent number of pipe delimited titles as follows,

chl=FireFox|MSIE|Safari|Others

Finally we come to the coloring part. You can specify any color you require. The API automatically shades the other chart divisions if the appropriate number of colors are not provided. I want my chart to have shades of 2 colors, blue and green so I would give the last parameter as follows:

chco=1B75DF,92BF23 (Colors have to be in hexadecimal format)

Our chart is complete! Don’t believe it?. You just have to combine the URL with the parameters and put in your browser’s address bar or click here. Google will do the rest of the stuff for you.

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=s:8ZKF&chs=400×200
&chl=FireFox|MSIE|Safari|Others&chco=1B75DF,92BF23

Inserting the chart into your web site or blog

It is very simple to insert the chart into your blog or website. Since the resulting output of the URL is an image (.png) you just have to copy the entire URL and encapsulate it into an image tag as follows:

<img src=”http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=s:8ZKF&chs=400×200
&chl=FireFox|MSIE|Safari|Others&chco=1B75DF,92BF23” title=”Browser Stats” alt=”Browser Stats”/>

You are seeing the live representation of the chart above. Isn’t this concept just fantastic? Now go ahead and start creating some visual presentations in your article and let me know about your creations.

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Timeline Search

If you want to search the chronology of certain events then you can add the attribute “view:timeline” to your query following a space. For example, you can find the timeline invention of television which dates back to the 20’s when John Logie Baird had invented it. I found out that the first laptop came about in the 80’s which was GRiD Compass. It’s strange that I could not find computer.

You can click on the timeline to find out the details of the searched query pertaining to that period. Its a nice useful feature which helps you learn more.

Search Navigation

This feature makes your search even more easier by providing you combinations of the input query that you would be likely to search in the next instant. This includes finding maps, videos, images etc. I tried searching for my Canon S5 IS which I had purchased recently.

Google makes the combinations based on the most likely keywords which were searched in the past and displays them in a sidebar. This eliminates the need of switching your views or typing in more keywords. In short, a good way to make you more lazy.

Digg Style Voting

TechCrunch reported the start of new Google Experiment which enables a user to vote the best search result pertaining to his query. This helps the user to retrieve the same result at the top when he searches for the same query again. This voting applies on to the user when he logs into this Google account and not to everybody.

I have been addicted to refine searches in Google ever since I started to use it. I believe such experiments helps us to retrieve the most minute information from the hoards of websites that lie on the web today. Which technique do you like?

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Lets say I want to buy an mp3 player but I don’t have the idea what is the ideal kind of mp3 player to purchase from the current market. There is an MP3 player section in the Electronic Goods category which sports a page full of useful knowledge about the types of MP3 players available. I did not know until now that there existed 3 types, namely

1. Hard Drive Models
2. Micro / Mini Hard Drive
3. Flash-Memory MP3 Players

The crux of the above information will definitely help an individual make more smart choice as apposed to information got by just searching out the popular brands or pestering your friends. You wouldn’t have to search for a briefing on the product anywhere else if it were not provided in a simple fashion as ShopWiki.

ShopWiki provides the list of available brands along with the list of most popular products (taken from C-NET) beneath the information. These list point out to the the array of the products a brand has or the specific model whichever you want to view. The information carried on the specific product page provides a rating for the product, its reviews and available stores. Take a look at the Ipod Nano Page. To check prices for the product at Ebay you don’t have to visit Ebay. Instead the Ebay tab will do the live check on the latest updated prices. This is something worth your time.

The best experience is on ShopWiki is to search for a desired product. The search results page is nicely represented by providing quick information when you hover the mouse on the list. There are video reviews for all the products and to specifically point of the best feature is the price meter. If you aren’t satisfied with the search based on price of the product then you can squeeze the price meter to refine your search. Besides that the brand and even the color can be selected for refining. The products are instantly updated. Check out the Grid view too.

If you want to decide for a gift then go to ShopWiki’s Directory which provides a comprehensive coverage on which gifts to choose from for any event or occasion. Check out the Chirstmas gifts section if you want to fill in those stockings at night. You can even try out the more helpful Gift Guide section to get advice on which gifts to purchase.

ShopWiki is an a truly useful concept in the world of millions of product which helps the consumer to get updated information on the products and make intelligent choices. Spending time on ShopWiki is like getting worth for every penny spent.

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