As we become mobile, one of the biggest challenges is managing the applications and the files on different devices like personal computer, work PC and mobiles. In the era of Web 2.0, desktop applications like office suites, image editors and feed readers are getting re-engineered as online services by the Internet giants Google and Yahoo. I’m listing some of the online services one must use in day to day life.
as an online office suite
Create and store documents, spreadsheets and presentations online. It is possible to convert Google documents to MS office formats and back. Google spreadsheets provides an enhanced library of functions including import XML or HTML import and stock quotes. Documents can be shared with other users in view or collaboration mode. Document’s version history is maintained well and you can revert back to any older version of the document. A more generic use is embedding shared documents on web pages and blogs.
and 
as photo storage and sharing platforms
Upload, organize and share the photos online. Organize the photos by albums and give proper details like date, place and people names. Storage limit is a major drawback with both of these services. Flickr’s free edition provides unlimited storage space but allows you to access only the 200 last uploaded photos while Picasa provides 1 GB space
for sharing videos
Upload and share your videos. I use YouTube more as a storage space for my personal videos. Shared videos gain easy reachability thanks to the large user base of YouTube
for online feed subscription
Subscribe to your favorite feeds and read them online. Mark and share the favorite items with friends. For me, using Google Reader has become a routine like checking the inbox.
Google Notebook for organizing notes
Collect and organize plain text notes very easily. Notes could be organized as notebooks, sections and notes. There is a Firefox plugin to integrate notes with the browser
Delicious for managing bookmarks
Bookmark the favorite pages and manage the bookmarks online with delicious rather than marking pages as favorites in browsers of different machines. Bookmarks are centrally managed and periodically synced with the browsers. Add meaningful tags while bookmarking a page, so that it could be easily searched later. Don’t miss this firefox plugin which helps you to add bookmarks right from the browser and helps you to locate the page by typing in the tag name or page name
for managing clipped texts from favorite pages
While Delicious stores just the URL of the page and the tags, Clipmarks allows you to store the contents as well. Clipmarks comes handy when you want to clip and bookmark a part of a web page. Create an account and install a suitable clipmarks plugin for your browser from the download page. While browsing a page, just press the clipmarks button, select the content you want to clip and again press the clipmarks button to store the contents. You can make multiple selections in a page and clip them together. Just the text is stored and images are not. Clips exceeding 2000 characters can’t be shared and have to be stored privately.
Meebo for Instant Messaging
Login to the IMs of Yahoo, GTalk, MSN and AOL with a single meebo sign in. With meebo, you will be freed from installing multiple IM clients and multiple logins. Chat history is centrally located. To view a chat log, you don’t have to remember from which machine you logged on.
for task management
Create and manage your tasks with RTM. It integrates well with GMail and Google Calendar. So you can access the todo list right from your Gmail.
This question arose in my mind after I designed the embed code of my Google Analytics Widgets based on inline frames. The iframe based design was more comfortable because I could keep the widget’s dimension under my control without depending on the embed code. Rather, I can do anything within the frame’s source page like adding dynamic hyperlinks.
My big mistake here was that I wrongly guessed that search engines treat these hyperlinks as back links as the iframe is embedded on another site. But what I saw was that the search engines treated the links to my page from within iframe tags worser than the nofollow links. I didn’t find any back links in Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo Site explorer. Next, Ravi gave a feedback that iframe in the embed code made him wary.
Finally, I decided to break the embed code into plain HTML without any iframe in it. Now, to the crawler’s view the embedded widget code appears as if it is originating from the same site and the links in the embedded code have now become back links. This also gives an an option to the user to remove the back links, if he/she doesn’t want to add credits to the widget creator.
Compare the two embed codes yourself,
iframe based embed code :
<iframe src='http://www.yemkay.com/apps/SiteAnalytics/GAEmbedImage.aspx?wid=07d59e9b-f1aa-4511-a0a6-b66b4e7a08a6&vars=%26daterange%3d1%26from%3d%26to%3d%26subreport%3d3%26sparkline%3dPageviewsSparkline%26summary%3dPageviewsSummary%26width%3d200%26height%3d200&width=200&height=200'></iframe>
Plain search engine friendly embed code :
<a style='text-decoration : none;' href='http://www.yemkay.com/apps/SiteAnalytics/' target='_blank'><img style='border: 0px none;' alt='Loading…' src='http://www.yemkay.com/apps/SiteAnalytics/HitCounter.aspx?wid=7b2bc7bf-17b1-41c3-968b-6b66499a6f7c&vars=%26subreport%3d3%26summary%3dPageviewsSummary%26since%3d20070101' title='Google Analytics Widgets' title='Hit counter powered by Google Analytics'></img></a>
But I’m yet to find out how search engines treat iframes? Do they index the frame sources as well? And if they do so, do they treat the links on the source pages as back links?
Five months after submitting, Google has started indexing this website. Yahoo and Live started indexing within a month after submission, but Google took so long. This time line below taken from Google Analytics shows the traffic driven by search engines to this site. Note the peak after Google has included this site in its index.
Audience : For those who love cricket in any form and with broadband connectivity.
ICL has started with a bang. They have gone online too.
Visit the ICL homepage and click on the VIDEO link. The link will be available only during the game. The video streaming is powered by Microsoft’s SilverLight technology and you need to download the ActiveX control if you don’t have one. (Don’t worry, IE will take care of that…)
I managed to embed the player here (Donno if this is legal…). Click the link below to watch ICL matches right here…
Watch ICL Matches here
BCCI also can follow this and telecast their matches online. But they are money minded people and would definitely charge for that. On the contrary, ticket rates to ICL matches are as cheap as 100 Rs. and they definitely deserve more attention.
AJAX என்றால் Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. இந்த முறையினால் ஒரு வலைப்பக்கத்தை Refresh செய்யாமலே, தகவலை பரிமாற முடியும். அதனால் தான், Google Docs சாத்தியமாயிற்று, மீபோவும் சாத்தியமாயிற்று. இந்த நுட்பத்தை பிரபலப்படுத்தியது கூகள் சஜஸ்ட். பல இணையங்களும் இப்போது அஜாக்ஸ் முறையில் மாற்றி எழுதப் படுகின்றன.
அஜாக்ஸ் ஒன்றும் புதிய தொழில்நுட்பமில்லை. மைக்ரோசாப்ட் தனது அவுட்லுக் மென்பொருளுக்காக XMLHttpRequest எனும் javascript கிளாசை உருவாக்கியது. இந்த கிளாஸ் மூலம் HTTP பரிமாற்றங்களை browser side coding மூலம் பண்ண முடியும். ஆனால் அதன் பலம் அப்போது தெரியவில்லை. கூகிள் வல்லுனர்கள் அதை உருவாக்கி சில இணையங்களை உருவாக்க, பின்னர் browser-களிலேயே XMLHttpRequest சேர்க்கப்பட்டது. அஜாக்சின் பயன்கள்,
- இணைய பக்கத்தை reload செய்யாமலே ஒரு பகுதியை மட்டும் update பண்ண முடியும்.
- JSON, XML, HTML முறைகளில் தகவல்களை பெற முடியும்
- ஒரே நேரத்தில் பல பரிமாற்றங்களை கையாளலாம் (Asynchronous)
இதனால் அஜாக்ஸ் இணையங்களை desktop மென்பொருள்களுக்குரிய அம்சங்களை உண்டதாக உருவாக்க முடியும்.
அஜாக்ஸினால் சாத்தியமான இணையங்கள் சில,
இந்த இணையத்தை உருவாகும் போது, அஜாக்ஸ் பற்றி படிக்கும் வாய்ப்பு கிடைத்தது. Shop பக்கத்தில் உள்ள, “Ask for more details” என்பதை கிளிக்கி, பூர்த்தி செய்து submit செய்யவும். சிறிது நேரத்தில் அந்த லிங்க் தானாக சுருங்குவதை பார்க்கலாம். அப்படியென்றால் அஜாக்ஸ் முறையில் அனுப்பிய HTTP Request-ற்கு response வந்துவிட்டதென அர்த்தம். இந்த response-ஐ வைத்து, இணைய பக்கத்தின் ஒரு பகுதியை மட்டும் XML DOM முறையில் update செய்து கொள்ளலாம்.
இந்த பக்கத்தில் அஜாக்ஸ் முறையையும் பழைய முறையையும் அருமையாக compare செய்து பார்க்கலாம்.
