Question: Why do we have to shorten URLs? Think: Have you sent a link in email and the recipient replied, "I could not ope the link, could you re-send?" Answer: We shorten URLs because they become Easy to remember, Prevent link breakage, Useful in character limited sites like Twitter and they are much more cleaner, clearer and neat. Take this example, compare these two URLs:
The two links above leads to the same destination, but, look at their lengths, which one would you prefer? Agree with me that, the original URL is too long to fit in a single line. Now, if it is to be shared "as is", it can easily loose a letter when moving from one inbox to another thus rendering it "dead link". To prevent any unnecessary chaos to the recipient/end user/receiver of the link, we thank for abbreviated and short URL services. So, in our example above, the long URL can be shortened to just goo.gl/fb/yRVf5 making it easier to share especially if one is using social networks such as twitter or facebook where characters are limited.  In December last year, Google introduced it's own URL shortener - goo.gl The introduction of goo.gl saw a competetion with other widely used URL shorterners like bit.ly (common in Twitter - they also have their own URL shortener - t.co) also, worth mentioning are tinyurl.com and shorturl In it's initial release, goo.gl was only internally integrated into other Google products such as News, Blogger, Maps, Picasa Web Albums, and Moderator, but people have been asking for a direct way to use the service. Google heard and listened and now it has given goo.gl its own website for everybody to use. Why introduce goo.gl when there are already other URL shortening services? I believe Google, just like any other big company, wants to have ultimate decisions for their product; own service they can control at anytime, should a problem arise. I don't think there is any big company that would 100% trust any third party application, especially in this era where phishing, scamming and security threats are high. If they can make it from the scratch, surely they won't shed any $ in trying to buy 3rd party apps. Google says, it is intending to make goo.gl the stablest, most secure, and fastest URL shortener on the web. Read more at Google's Social Web blog (forget not to check out it's Firefox addon - goo.gl lite) NOTE: As said earlier, not everybody is your trusted friend online. Some people may abuse the short URL services to deceive others in order to scam or indirectly steal from them. To protect yourself from unknown dangers, you may want to uncover, unhide and unshorten any shared URL, i.e. checking for it's genuitniy. Some anti-virus programs have a service that can scan links, but if you don't have one, you can still use the online services that can do the job for you, click here to read an article I published earlier with a list of some of those webs. Add Comment GMail is rolling out Priority Inbox! 30/08/2010
The ever growing, best eMail client the I have ever used is rolling out yet another service, this time a Priority Inbox. How does this one work? Read part of a post from GMail's official blog by Doug Aberdeen: People tell us all that time that they’re getting more and more mail and often feel overwhelmed by it all. It’s time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a reply. Today, we’re happy to introduce Priority Inbox (in beta)—an experimental new way of taking on information overload in Gmail. People get a lot of mail that isn't outright junk but isn't very important, so we've evolved Gmail's filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this unimportant stuff from the important ones. In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.  Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread,” “Starred” and “Everything else”: As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages for you. You can help it get better by clicking the or buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important. (You can even set up filters to always mark certain things important or unimportant, or rearrange and customize the three inbox sections.) Priority Inbox will be rolling out to all Gmail users, including those of you who use Google Apps, over the next week or so. Once you see the "New! Priority Inbox" link in the top right corner of your Gmail account (or the new Priority Inbox tab in Gmail Settings), click here to take a look (YouTube video).  Best image-to-text Converter: TopOCR 24/08/2010
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is a method of extracting texts from scanned text documents such as photos or images embedded in a PDF. In order to be able to perform this task, you need to use an OCR tool. There are a number of online OCR's that can do the job, some better than others but, TopOCR atop all the free OCR I have tried so far. TopOCR comes in handy for those who can not access the internet all the time or if one wants to cut off their internet and kwork just offline. It provides a side-by-side comparison of the image and the extracted text so you can compare, proof read and make any necessary corrections before sharing the texts. Download TopOCR from www.topocr.com/topocr  Cool web of the day: Tube2Tone 22/08/2010
The name says it all. The site, Tube2Tone.com gives you the ability to convert your favourite youtube video into a ringtone. Seethe screen shot below. Using Tube2Tone You can download YouTube Videos to Tube2Tone Server, watch them and convert them to ringtones without having to register an account. To see other available options, visit the website : www.tube2tone.com  Cool microblogging platform: meetog 19/07/2010
 At meetog.com you can post texts, photos, videos etc and share the link with others. It is also a good platform to to create and store an official online resume or CV for easy reference. Meetog is simple and very easy to use. Try it todday at www.meetog.com Probably some of you have come across the acronym NSFW, it simply means, 'Not Safe For Work' and this is usually a prefix some people may put in the 'subject' of an email to warn you about the content you are about to see, that it could potentially be not safe to open at work place for work and office regulations. Now let's say if you receive a lot of links in your emails at work without a warning and wonder if you should or should not open them, and you think you'd really like to have a peek and see what's in that website (because obviously you can't wait until you get home or that person demands your opinion on that site or may be you don't have internet access at home?) what do you do? Here is where VariablySFW comes in. This is a website that you can paste the URL of a site you want to visit and scroll a little bit to see what's in before you decide to 'proceed' or 'close' the page. Initially you will see a black screen, all you have to do is drag the bar to increase transparency and visibility for the comfort level of your eyes. Website: www.variablysfw.appspot.com TIP: If you don't see the empty box where you are to paste the URL, you can simply add the URL at the end of the forward slash "/". For example: if you want to sneak peek at wavuti.com simply open www.variablysfw.appspot.com/ and add wavuti.com at the end i.e. www.variablysfw.appspot.com/wavuti.com These links will be helpful in instances where you want to format text document but come short of the normal editing tools such as Microsoft Word, Open Office, GoogleDocs, Zoho etc. Basically, these links have the ability to uppercase, lowercase, flip, reverse or transform any text. Will let you copy and paste the results into an e-mail, word doc, powerpoint or just about any application. The links: (1) textfixer.com (2) convertcase.net (3) UppercaseIt.com (4) caseconverter.com (5) thesentencecase.org (6) online-html-editor.org and (7) string-functions.com/case.aspx  The joys of technology are never without some sorrows. We have heard of people getting their email addresses hijacked, people have lost their important information because they have never been able to recover the lost addresses. This usually happens in many ways and one of them is through key logging, literally meaning, harvesting people's personal information such as username (login ID) and password where computers are shared by different people. To prevent yourself and others from this kind of information stealing, you can install Spy Shelter which has a free anti-key logging service. It claims to prevent computers from trojans, root kits and other malware attacks. Website: www.spyshelter.com  Axess.im is simple a platform that let's you create your own personalized page that you can put personal information, business details, or contact address and numbers to share with others. Careating an oline page is a way of the future, just convenient for those who do not want to own a blog or pay for a website or share social network pages like facebook, twitter, hi5 etc., which sometimes contains stuff they would not want everybody to see. In this case, it is useful to have a personal page that contains only certain information in the form of a resume or CV or business card that lives online for easy to access to potential employers or customers. Axess.im says all the pages created with them will not be deleted or expire unless they violate their Terms of Use. For more on this and any other FAQ's and to create a page, please visit www.axess.im Cool site of the day: globalfloodmap.org 23/06/2010
Concerned about global warming and melting ice caps? Make use of Global Flood Map to see how many inches the seas must rise before your city is underwater  Use the interactive map by entering in any number of inches – the map will show what areas would be flooded or at risk and the left side bar will display the number of people displaced. Click on individual points for current elevation, elevation after sea level rise, and the number and percentage of people losing homes. Global Meltdown: Find Out Which Cities Get Flooded First Global Flood Map uses NASA satellite data to show what areas of the world are under water and at risk for flooding if ocean levels rise. Change how many inches the sea level rises and watch the land start to disappear. As sea levels climb, Global Flood Map changes its color coding to show you what areas are flooded, at risk for flooding, and safely above sea level. Use the sidebar to see how many people across the globe are displaced by flooding. --How Soon Will the Sea Come to You?-- Customize your search by entering in the name of your city, state, or country, or click on individual points for more information – current elevation, elevation after sea level rise, and the number and percentage of people losing homes in that area. The dark blue dots represent land submerged underwater and the lighter blue-green dots represent land at risk for flooding. The left side bar displays the number of people displaced by continent and country. --Is it True that Sea Levels Are Rising?-- According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), global sea levels have risen 7.87 inches since 1870. Over the past century, sea levels rose an average of 1.7 millimeters per year, but are currently rising at a rate of 3 millimeters per year since 1993. eMail: info@maplarge.com Website: globalfloodmap.org  | Vitabu vya WatanzaniaBofya picha ya kitabu unachokitaka ili ujinunulie nakala
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