Author Archives: Sara

Add Images to Tweets with Ease Using New Twitter Feature

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Twitter image upload share photos on Twitter camera icon

Last week Twitter released a new feature allowing ou to upload images to your tweets easily.

You can upload any image that’s up to 3MB in size. It will then appear as a link in your timeline and when the tweet is clicked it displays the image in the details pane.

The images themselves will be uploaded to twitter.com but they will be hosted on photobucket.

Don’t worry if you want to use services like Flickr, Twitpic or yFrog they’re still supported by Twitter.

For more information about this new feature check out Twitter’s Documentation on Image Uploads.

London gets Social to catch Rioters and Looters

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London looter showing off stolen goods

and the award for dumbest looter goes to...

As many of you may have heard there has been rioting on the streets of London, and just as the rioter and looters turned to social media to organise their attacks the Met Police and other people opposed to the riots have done their bit to try and bring those who are responsible for the destruction to justice.

Here are links to blogs and flickr accounts I’ve found so far with pictures, tweets and other sources with photos of looters:

Let us know in the comments if you’ve found any other sources of looter images.

If you have any information about looters or rioters you can fill in an anonymous contact form on the Crime Stoppers site.

Londoners also used twitter for good when they organised riot clean ups (Check out #riotcleanup) in affected areas. Hundreds flocked to the streets armed with brooms and bin bags to help clean up the mess and destruction left by to rioters.

For more info about riot cleanups visit the Riot Cleanup Site, or check out #riotcleanup on twitter.

UPDATE: MET Police have launched a new site to identify London Disorder Suspects.

Proof that IE users are Stupid!

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Proof that IE users are stupid

A recent study by a Consulting  firm AptiQuant has conclusively* proven that IE users have a lower IQ than users of Firefox, Chrome or Safari!

The study conducted on some 100, 000 users took a free online IQ test.

The results showed IE users tended to have an IQ in the low 80′s, whereas Chrome, Firefox and Safari users showed scores of over 100. But if you want to be really clever you should use a browser like Opera or IE with Chrome Frame, those who took the test on these browsers had IQ levels of over 120.

AntiQuant has been threatened with legal action by loyal IE users, but whether anything will come of this is yet to be seen.

*So it may not be conclusive but if you have a lower IQ you’re more likely to use IE

UPDATE: So it turns out this story wasn’t true!

Facebook, Twitter and +1 Tracking on Webmaster Tools & Google Analytics

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Google announced on their Webmaster Tools Blog that they are now tracking social media interactions with your site.

Webmaster Tools Plus1 TrackingIn Webmaster Tools you may have noticed a new menu section appear in the side bar.

Search Impact Report shows you how the click through rate of your organic traffic has been affected by +1′s (Click the image for Search Impact Report Screenshot).

Activity Report shows you how many times your pages have been +1′d both on your site and in the SERP.

Audience Report show how many individual users have +1′d your site, as wells as some demographic and geographic information (this information only shows up after a significant number of users have +1′d your site).

Check out our post on adding the Plus1 button to your site if you don’t already have it.

Google Analytics Social TrackingIf you use the new version of Google Analytics you will have seen a new Social menu item is now available with three reports:

Social Engagement Report shows you metrics of visits when users had some sort of interaction with your site. (Click the images for a screenshot of the Social Engagement Report).

Social Actions Report displays the number of each of the social interactions you are tracking on your site.

Social Pages lets you compare social interactions that occur on pages on your site to see which pages have the most interactions.

 

This tracking allows you to track social interactions from Facebook, Twitter, +1, Del.icio.us, LinkedIn and probably many more.

The Google+ Project (Googlebook?)

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Google began testing their new product Google+ today. Only a small number of people were invited for testing… I wasn’t one of them :(

I did however take the interactive tour of Google+ and I’m pretty excited about some of the features it has to offer.

Google+ Circles:

Similar to Facebook friend groups you can add your friends to different “circles” so you don’t share stuff with your parents (or boss) that you don’t want them to know!

Google+ Friend Circles Feature

Just drag and drop!

Google+ Sparks:

Sparks sounds like the ultimate boredom killer (unless you have no interests). You add topics, categories or any other interests and Google+ sparks will find videos and articles it thinks you might like… Cool, but a bit stalker -ish.

Google+ Hangouts:

This is probably the coolest feature of Google+! It allows yo to have video conversations with your friends. You can limit it to particular friends or have an open “hangout” where anyone you know can join.

Each participant has a small video at the bottom and the person who is talking (or talking the loudest) has the main video at the top.

Google+ Hangouts Video Feature

 

There are also some mobile specific features Google+ has.

Mobile Google+ Instant Upload:

Take a photo and it can be instantly uploaded to Google+ into a private photo folder, then you can put it into whatever folder you want later. This is convenient but a bit worrying if you take photos you don’t want to appear on the internet EVER!

Mobile Google+ Huddle:

This is very similar to Facebook chat however, it allows whole Google+ Circles to participate in the chat rather than just single participants. This sounds like a pretty good feature if it works well… I can never get Facebook chat to work on my phone :(

All in all I’m pretty excited about Google+ when I’m finally able to use it :P

What do you think? Were you one of the lucky few signed up to use it? Let us know in the comments!

New Google Black Layout for 2011 – Google turns to the dark side!

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Google has been testing a new black naviagtion bar with a grey search bar background.

As per any change that occurs on the internet users are complaining. They claim that the new black navigation bar ruins their custom Google homepage.

New Google layout 2011
Click for larger image

Google is always testing new positioning, colours and many other slight changes to all their services, this one is just one of the most noticeable visual changes this year.

If you’ve seen it let us know what you think of the new Google layout. Did it ruin your custom Google homepage?