Devils Workshop

Is this the Beginning of the End for Flickr ?

Aditya Kane — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:26:42 +0000

Yahoo has continued its march into oblivion over the past few years. Of all the Yahoo products and services, I only found Flickr the saving grace. But it seems, Yahoo does not think much of its photo storing and sharing service.

According to Marketing Land, Yahoo has laid off it apparently 12% of Flickr staff. This includes much of the customer service team.

What exactly is killing Flickr?

Picasa from Google was hardly used by people to upload photos, especially when compared to Flickr. Flickr kept growing and has more than 5 billion images on it. But social media websites like Facebook were a challenge as people probably found it a lot more convenient for sharing personal photos. Picasa has seen a spurt in growth only after it has become integrated with Google+.

In general, the lack of innovation on Flickr over the past two or three years has made its usage quite stagnated.

Will it join the Yahoo casualty list?

I am not sure about this as yet, but it is obvious that there are big problems ahead for Flickr. Yahoo did sell off Delicious, which ended up being a good idea. Yahoo itself as a company has an uncertain future while it has gone from being a $100 billion dollar company to $22 billion over the past few years.

Hopefully Yahoo offloads Flickr to a better company and not close it down like it did with Geocities. What are your views on Flickr’s fate? Do drop in your comments.

-- This Post Is this the Beginning of the End for Flickr ? is Published on Devils Workshop .

Will Firefox’s New Tab Features Revive it’s Fortunes?

Aditya Kane — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:40:27 +0000

Lately, I have started to develop a bleak view of Firefox as a browser. The once favourite browser for me has been replaced by Chrome. I hardly use Firefox unless I want to check new updates to the browser itself. The advantage with Firefox is that, it is open and extremely customization friendly.

But not everyone wants to customize everything about their browser, just like not every browser users is a geek. So I think apart from web designers and certain power users, most people have started using Chrome.

This screenshot shared by ExtremeTech, shows a new plan by Mozilla to make the Home Tab for Firefox extremely user-friendly.

As you can see in the image above it looks a handy page.

Expected Features with Firefox 12′s default home tab

With social apps, links visible as thumbnails (borrowed from Chrome) and the option to sign-in to Google Chat, it would probably make Firefox’s home tab page the best default page on any browser.
Mozilla has secured its financial future for a while with a deal with Google, so it should now get down to innovate and make it a really good competitor to Chrome.
Mozilla needs to figure a way to get developers create great add-ons for Firefox along with being extremely use-friendly.

Firefox needs a boost!

Chrome’s growth has been pretty much at the expense of Internet Explorer but recently it has also meant that Firefox is stagnating. Even here in India, Chrome is now the most used browser while it is the second-most used browser in the world.

I think it is good for internet users to see competition in the browser market. We all know what happened when Internet Explorer dominated the browser market. Microsoft took users for granted and stopped innovating on its browser. Because of its large user-base it also sort of capped the creative space for web designers to an extent.

At the moment, users will have to wait till possibly April 2012 for this Firefox 12, which is rumoured to feature this new Home Tab feature.

What are your views on Firefox’s New Home Tab page? Will it be enough to get people off the Chrome addiction? Do drop in your comments.

-- This Post Will Firefox’s New Tab Features Revive it’s Fortunes? is Published on Devils Workshop .

Free Alternative to Online Image Editing Tool Picnik by Adobe Photoshop

Aditya Kane — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:47:43 +0000

Photoshop is a great piece of software for people who want to edit images. But most people need only minor tweaks and some changes. For such changes I find using Picnik very useful. Unfortunately, Google is shutting down Picnik, as a standalone online image editor.

I thought of searching for some good alternative and ended up finding Adobe Photoshop Express Editor. The online tool is pretty good and might not have all the features from Picnik, but it has a few good options.

Photoshop Express Editor Features

You have to create an account to access the free online editing tools with Photoshop Express.
I could upload images online and organize them into albums or folders. Users can choose to have some images public or private.
Each image can be edited separately. This pulls up an online image editor like we see in the image above.
I could sharpen the image, make changes to its contrast and other usual effects like adding text, dialogue bubbles etc.
Once you register, you can get upto 2GB free storage space for your images.

Photoshop should target Picnik users

A lot of users of Picnik, are not happy that their images stored with Picnik, will now have to be moved or downloaded locally. I think Adobe should target more users from Picnik by offering an automated tool to transfer images. Unfortunately, Adobe usually is not a very proactive about its products unless they are paid ones.

You can also try out other free online tools which allow users to remove backgrounds easily from images and also another one that allows users to quickly resize images online.

Try out Photoshop Express Editor and drop in your comments.

Link: Photoshop Express Editor

-- This Post Free Alternative to Online Image Editing Tool Picnik by Adobe Photoshop is Published on Devils Workshop .

Facebook IPO is Officially Launched!

Aditya Kane — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 02:25:31 +0000

Facebook has filed an IPO. It is expected to raise about $5 Billion. Also that might put on the path of breaking the $100 Billion barrier for market valuation. That means chances are that in a few days, Mark Zuckerberg’s company which was started from a college dorm room along with a couple of friends, will be worth a 100 billion dollars.

Facebook’s IPO filing, has revealed some interesting facts about what is the social network all about.

Firstly, on page 18 of the document, it reveals that Zynga the company behind popular Facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars is responsible for 12% of its revenues.

It also reveals revenues of $3.7 billion while an income of $1 billion.

What next for Facebook?

Facebook will probably be using the extra cash it picks up to shore up improvements to its service and its performance against upcoming competitors like Google+ or other older ones like Twitter and LinkedIn. I doubt it will be worrying much about MySpace.

It would also help Facebook a lot if it improved its image on ‘Privacy’.

With new App sharing on Timelines, we could probably see more targeted ads for brands. We might see more improvements brands being able to interact more with users via Facebook.

What will be Mark Zuckerberg’s Salary?

I was reading through the IPO document (see link at the end) and found something interesting. It seems Mark Zuckerberg is following in the steps of Steve Jobs, by reducing his base salary to $1.00 form the year 2013. A the moment he earns $500,000 per year.

What are your thoughts on Facebook becoming a public company? Will it spur it to grow more and innovate better or will it lose its edge? Do drop in your comments.

Link: Facebook IPO Prospectus

-- This Post Facebook IPO is Officially Launched! is Published on Devils Workshop .

Online Tool To Check Your Twitter Accounts Retweet Stats!

Aditya Kane — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:20:11 +0000

A quick glance on your Twitter account might give you some idea, which accounts on Twitter you most interact with. For instance I tend to retweet a lot of tweets from this blog’s feed. A lot of blogger friends of mine who interact with me a lot but use ‘RT’ instead of the retweet feature.

Retweets are important social signals. It means that many people like your content. It also could mean a higher rank for your tweet when someone searches on a topic on which you tweeted about.

So it would be useful to find some information based on how often and how many retweets you get from your followers.

Retweet Stats Features

Visit Retweet Stats and link-up your Twitter account to it. The website will look through all the data from your Twitter account.
Information can be viewed in three sections. The first one shows all the tweets with how many of them have retweets. Click on of them and you get information like how many people follow the accounts which shared your tweet.
Also you can check all the most retweeted updates from your account.
You can also check all the account you retweet the most on your account.

I find Retweet Stats, a good place to look up and check if you are actually just sharing a lot with a lot of followers or actually engaging with your Twitter followers.

If you want to make your Twitter account more efficient, you might want to check these 3 online tools to clean up your Twitter account.

Try out Retweet Stats and drop in your comments.

Link: Retweet Stats

-- This Post Online Tool To Check Your Twitter Accounts Retweet Stats! is Published on Devils Workshop .

Google to Redirect Blogspot Hosted Blogs to Country Specific Domains

Aditya Kane — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:25:49 +0000

If you are living in India and have a blog on Blogspot, this might interest you. Google is redirecting all blogspot blogs from blogspot.com to blogspot.in.

This is not for only blogs from India, but all blogs that are looked up from an IP address in India. While if you are using your own personal domain hosted on Blogspot, your domain name will remain the same.

For example that Google’s official blog which has the original URL as

http://googleblog.blogspot.com

but for Indian users, it shows up as

http://googleblog.blogspot.in/

Why is Google re-directing Blogspot blogs?

Well Twitter has decided to censor tweets based on country specific basis, so that they can conform to local laws regarding content. Google is doing pretty much the same thing.

As Google explains in the this support forum, it is trying to conform to local law agency suggestions on taking down or blocking certain content at the same time keeping it online otherwise.

For example, if a URL is deemed offensive in India and the court orders Google to remove it, it can block the link for Indian readers but it would still be available from other countries.

Will it affect Google Page Rank or search rankings?

I tried to run a Google search for .in domain of Google’s official page. The query I entered was

“site:http://googleblog.blogspot.in/”

and it returned no results. So I guess we are not going to see two separate URLs for the same content showing up in the link.

Google will probably (hopefully) make sure that it does not affect many blogs and the search juice they get.

Would love to get your views in comments about Google new move for Blogspot. Do drop in your comments.

(via Google System)

-- This Post Google to Redirect Blogspot Hosted Blogs to Country Specific Domains is Published on Devils Workshop .

How to get old Facebook photo viewer;disabling theater effect

sauravjit — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:30:18 +0000

Most of the people don’t like the new features of Facebook like profile design, ticker, questions, timeline profiles, news feed e.t.c. Personally I think these features are okay and not that much annoying as it used to be. But the only feature that I still don’t like is the theater effects of Facebook’s photo viewer. The older method was better when the photos used to get opened in a new page rather than showing it on the same page. Moreover theater effect also decreases the quality of the picture. But there’s a simple way of disabling this on chrome, firefox or even you can disable it temporarily on any browser, let’s see how you can do it.

For Google Chrome:

If you are using Facebook on Google Chrome then the simplest way to disable Theater effect is to install Revert FB Photo Viewer extension. This will give you back your old photo viewer on Chrome.

For Mozilla Firefox:

For firefox you can use facebook Photo Theater Killer userscript. Before installing this to your Firefox make sure you have Greasemonkey add-on installed. You can also use it on Chrome with Tampermonkey extension.

Temporarily disabling theater effect (any browser):

Method 1: Open a photo on Facebook. To view it normally without Theater effect just hit F5 key or refresh the page. You will see pics in classic Facebook photo viewer.

Method 2: Open a photo and check its link in the address bar. For example:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2944361161780&set=a.1207721306869.2032105.1043785484&type=3&theater

Now remove the &type=3&theater part from the end and hit enter. It will temporarily disable the theater effect for that album.

I hope this will make Facebooking better for you!

-- This Post How to get old Facebook photo viewer;disabling theater effect is Published on Devils Workshop .

You can now officially Hide Ticker from Facebook homepage

sauravjit — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:45:39 +0000

Facebook just did a small change in the homepage and added a very useful button there. It’s the “Hide Ticker” button added on the top of the ticker in your sidebar. After the launch of new design the one thing that was annoying the users most is the ticker updates. Though it’s a good way to see updates in real-time but still most of the Facebook users didn’t like it so Facebook officially added an option of hiding the Ticker. Let’s see how you can do it.

Officially hiding ticker from your sidebar:

To hide ticker from your sidebar click on the ‘Hide Ticker’ button. Can’t locate it? Just check out the screenshot below:

Now you don’t need to use unofficial extensions to hide it, simply click a link and it will disappear. Please note that you cannot hide the ticker when chat on sidebar is open.

Thanks a lot Facebook for this feature.

-- This Post You can now officially Hide Ticker from Facebook homepage is Published on Devils Workshop .

5 Most Wanted Features For iPhone 5!

Amelia — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:47:51 +0000

When the whole world was waiting for the iPhone 5, Apple announced the iPhone 4S and it was probably a disappointment for many of us. Yes, the iPhone 4S is rather good, it has an updated processor, a better camera, iOS and Siri, but still it seems to be just a small update from the original iPhone 4.

There are some features I wish the iPhone 4S had. One can not lose hope and maybe Apple will place all the following features in the iPhone 5.

#1. 4G compatibility

4G HSPA+ is the fastest network at the moment, but the new iPhone 4S does not support it – its maximum is 14.4 Mbps/downlink. There are many Android phones that are now 4G compatible and I believe Apple should also work in this direction.

#2. New design

The new iPhone 4S looks like the old iPhone 4 and that is something some users might not be happy with. iPhone phone models stand out and it would be better to see a slimmer and more lighter phone when compared to iPhone 4S. I would be pushing the boundaries but that is what Apple is famous for.

#3. More powerful battery

The original iPhone 4 has a Li-Po 1420mAh battery and the battery on iPhone 4S is only 1432 mAh, which obviously is not a big change for battery time. Also initially there was an issue with iOS5, that drained the battery too fast. The issue was fixed in the 5.0.1 update.

#4. A bigger display

The iPhone 4S has the same little 3.5-inch screen as the original iPhone 4. The display has a very good quality and high resolution (960 x 450), but people now prefer bigger screens on phones. I doubt they will upgrade their screens size significantly, as that might have some effect on potential iPad customers but it could really help people using their iPhone for accessing the internet and reading on it.

#5. NFC

NFC is one of the best technologies of future – it gives you the opportunity to pay in stores via your mobile phone. Many other manufacturers are trying to implement this feature on their phones and a majority of them run on Android. If iPhone 5 has NFC enabled on it, it probably would end up stealing a lot of Galaxy Nexus customers.

What else would you want with a new iPhone 5? Do drop in your comments.

Editor’s Note: This post was written by Guest Author Amelia . If you would like to write Guest Posts on Devils’ Workshop, join us here.

-- This Post 5 Most Wanted Features For iPhone 5! is Published on Devils Workshop .

Pinterest – A Potential Goldmine for Brands!

Aditya Kane — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:48:09 +0000

In my view Facebook and to some extent Twitter are real successes in the social media story. Google+ might be growing but it has a long way to go yet. LinkedIn is nice, but it’s focus is on professional profiles. So when a new social product come up for discussion, I get a little apprehensive.

I felt the same way about Pinterest, before testing it out. I mean what it essentially did, was allowing users to share URLs with friends on Twitter and Facebook in an organized way. Social bookmarking is not exactly something new.

That said, Pinterest is very addictive and has a simple way of sharing things you are interested in.

Pinterest Features

Pinterest as the name suggests, is like an online pinboard of things you are interested in. You need to Pin (bookmark) a page your found interesting and add a description.
One can also assign categories or pinboards. This allows people to share things in a relevant way, such as book reviews can be shared in a board named “Books I like Reading”.
Pinterest seems to be visually rich, in the sense it tries to capture your attention with images from the link you have shared rather than its title. This is a departure from bookmarking sites like say Delicious or Google Bookmarks.

Users can hook up their Twitter and Facebook account to Pinterest, and share what they pinned. Make sure you do not

A Potential Goldmine for Brands

First thing that strike you about Pinterest are the number of brands being endorsed by people. Pinterest does not really concentrate on building a network but more like a showcase of your interests. Most people share these things publicly, as it is about endorsing a product, brand, book or even a type of service.

At the moment, Pinterest is only by invitation and still is attracting a lot of interest. But the next few months will tell us, if it a social product that will continue to grow and become more interactive.

Are you on Pinterest? Register for an invite here and check it out. Also drop in your comments and views about Pinterest.

Link: Pinterest

-- This Post Pinterest – A Potential Goldmine for Brands! is Published on Devils Workshop .

Devils Workshop

Is this the Beginning of the End for Flickr ?

What exactly is killing Flickr?

Will it join the Yahoo casualty list?

Related posts:

Will Firefox’s New Tab Features Revive it’s Fortunes?

Expected Features with Firefox 12′s default home tab

Firefox needs a boost!

Related posts:

Free Alternative to Online Image Editing Tool Picnik by Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop Express Editor Features

Photoshop should target Picnik users

Related posts:

Facebook IPO is Officially Launched!

What next for Facebook?

What will be Mark Zuckerberg’s Salary?

Related posts:

Online Tool To Check Your Twitter Accounts Retweet Stats!

Retweet Stats Features

Related posts:

Google to Redirect Blogspot Hosted Blogs to Country Specific Domains

Why is Google re-directing Blogspot blogs?

Will it affect Google Page Rank or search rankings?

Related posts:

How to get old Facebook photo viewer;disabling theater effect

For Google Chrome:

For Mozilla Firefox:

Temporarily disabling theater effect (any browser):

Related posts:

You can now officially Hide Ticker from Facebook homepage

Officially hiding ticker from your sidebar:

Related posts:

5 Most Wanted Features For iPhone 5!

#1. 4G compatibility

#2. New design

#3. More powerful battery

#4. A bigger display

#5. NFC

Related posts:

Pinterest – A Potential Goldmine for Brands!

Pinterest Features

A Potential Goldmine for Brands

Related posts: