Shankar Ganesh

Every so often, you get to see this dialog in Firefox asking you whether you want it to remember your login password for a particular site or not:

This may annoy you, and here’s how you can disable it:

• Navigate to Tools >> Options in the menu bar
• Under Security, uncheck the option Remember passwords for sites
• Click Ok and move out

The dialog will never come back again.

Post slug is a mostly underused option in WordPress.

By default, if you write a blog post with the title “This is the heading”, your post permalink may be something like this domain.com/date/this-is-the-heading (if you still have something like domain/?p=55, you could change this in Options >> Permalinks)

WordPress generates these post permalinks based on your post titles. These can be very easily modified by using the Post slug option located in the right panel on the ‘Write Post’ page.

What are the benefits on modifying post slugs?

• You can use post slugs to shorten very lengthy URLs for the benefit of your readers. For example, a post titled “This url is very lengthy that I cannot remember it” will have its permalink as this-url-is-very-lengthy- that-I-cannot-remember-it. You can shorten this to anything, say for example: url-lengthy-to-remember
• You can use post slugs to eliminate less significant words like a, the, it’s, its, etc.
• Post slugs can be used for SEO optimization. You might want to write a catchy title to attract your readers, but this may have less or no significance in terms of SEO, with no keywords.
  This is another place where Post slugs come in. You might have a post titled “Have you seen the new look Google search pages?”. But for better SEO, you could modify the post slug option to google-search-pages-redesigned-review. Now you have a balance between writing titles for your readers and search engines.

But, make sure that you don’t turn permalinks irrelevant to your post titles, and also take care not to overstuff them with keywords. Share your views in the comments.

Well, another little mashup based on the Digg API has made it to the Digg front page. It’s known by the name Digg Expose and it also uses Snap Preview Shots.

This mashup is accessible via the YourMinis site. Upcoming and popular stories can be sorted according to diggs, dates and comments.

So, what’s new? Stories are depicted on the site using Snap Preview Shots, so you get a thumbnail of the website. Here’s a screenshot of Digg Expose in action, listing some upcoming stories on Digg:

Digg Expose = Digg + Snap Preview Shots

If you’ve switched to another email service from Yahoo! and there are no mails arriving there, you may want to close your Yahoo! Account. Here’s how:

• Go to this page
• Key in your password
• Confirm deletion by clicking the Terminate account button

Please note that your you’ll also be not able to access all other Yahoo! Services like Yahoo Games, etc. once you’ve closed your account, and also that it cannot be recovered back.

Twitter is getting more slow by the day, a lot of downtimes and slow responses, along with third party tools failing. Here are some Twitter alternatives to enjoy with than frown at its bad performance

Jaiku

Jaiku is a similar service like Twitter that lets you post what you’re doing on the internet. But it has some lovely additional features unlike Twitter.

• In addition to posting Jaikus (status messages) you can also customize them with icons
• You can use your smart phone to access Jaiku
• Commenting on your friend’s Jaikus is possible
• If they’re on their mobile, you could have details regarding their location, calendar and availability
• You can live stream your favourite RSS Feed entries as Jaikus on your account
• Badges are available to put up on your website

Get a Jaiku account now here.

Tumblr

Tumblr is another such service, but it’s still unique in some way or the other

• Tumblr lets you create the so-called Tumblelogs
• Tumblelogs have an URL in this form: thenameyouselect.tumblr.com
• Tumblelogs are short, little blog entries that you could use to update your status
• Tumblelogs are faster and easier to post to than ordinary blogs
• You have a variety of themes to choose from for your log
• Photos and videos can be easily added to your Tumblelog
• Your followers are listed out in your Dashboard

In short, Tumblr is a whole new way of posting what you’re doing. Get a Tumblr account here.

Plazes

Plazes is another unique one, but still it can serve in someway the same purpose as Twitter does.

• You have to pin-point your location in a Google maps mashup at first (this facility is still to come, but for now, you have to download a software to join Plazes)
• You can then know who’s nearby you
• Update your status then, a mobile version too is available
• People can subscribe to receive updates about their friends or favourite plazes
• Badges are available to put up on your site, blog or any other profile pages like MySpace, etc.

Go to Plazes

Which among these is your favourite? Or do you still prefer to use Twitter? Share your views in the comments

I was tagged by Nirmal recently to write about my favourite posts that were not so popular. So, here goes my list:

• Windows Dock applications
• Greasemonkey Scripts to enhance Google Reader’s Look and features
• Firefox: Opening multiple links with a single click
• The missing No to all in Windows Overwrite files dialog
• Greasemonkey scripts to enhance Twitter

I would like to tag Madhur, Abhishek and Vivien to share their favourite, but not so popular posts.

Posts I enjoyed reading this week:

• Yahoo! to rebrand MyBlogLog – Nirmal
• Keyboard Shortcuts for Google Search – Dj Flush
• LG’s A4 Size Paper thin Colour Display – Shashank
• BGInfo Windows system information tool – Gili
• Java Games for mobiles – Atul
• Protect your blog from Image hotlinks – Thilak
• Managing different Profiles in Firefox – Joel
• How to save DailyMotion Videos? – Subash
• Apple to develop an iPod Nano like iPhone? – Madhur
• The Cute factor – Ilker
• Create Flowcharts online – Keith
• Skype to launch gaming portal – Ashish

Google is reportedly in acquisition talks with Feedburner, a feed management service that has become a favourite of bloggers, and other content publishers.

Feedburner, the so called Google Of Feeds, may be worth a $100 million.

What will Google get out of this?

• It is rumoured that Google may try to expand their RSS Ads market with this acquisition, and may even offer features to help users integrate their adsense ads (or even DoubleClick ads, for that matter ) with their feeds easily.
• Google’s Blogger service can be further enhanced with Feedburner. And it’s possible that Google may provide Feedburner completely free (you now have to pay for some advanced statistics for your feed)

And who knows? Many more…

There’s no official word yet, and the Vecosys report says that though their source is good, they’re still not 100% sure that this would happen.

Anyway, let’s wait and watch as it unfolds…

References:1, 2

Bubbl is a very impressive Web 2.0 tool that allows you to create mind maps online. It’s interface is based on Flash, and has developed a lot since it was launched.

Lovely features it has:

• Each bubble unit can be created by pressing the Enter or Tab button
• Zoom in/out using your mouse wheel
• Click and drag empty space to move around the sheet
• Undo-ing is possible
• Bubble arranged automatically, and you can click and drag the arrow in the top left of the bubble to manually position them
• Control panel to manage multiple mind map sheets
• Each unit can be customized to change its colours
• Printing feature to print your sheets
• Collaboration is possible, and you could give your friends read-only or full access to you sheets
• Your mindmaps can be embedded into your site, just copy paste the code provided
• Export sheets as XML, HTML or image files

Here’s a sample sheet as an image:

Bubbl.us – Brainstorming made simple

This is funny.

Google has topic specific search engines and there’s one for Linux available at http://www.google.com/linux. This one helps you to search Linux related pages easily.

But here’s how Google calls it in its Advanced Preferences page, after the Universal search redesign:

Google.com/linux searches Penguin friendly pages.

Linux related pages are designed for Penguins?