web 2.0, tools, software reviews, tweaks and latest technology
Archive for March, 2007
Picnik, the Best Online Photo Editor
5 years ago
by Benedict Herold
in web 2.0
Picnik is another online image editing tool like Fauxto, Snipshot etc. Picnik is relatively new, fast and stylish flash based online photo editor. Picknic is my personal favorite now in online photo editing.
Click! Click! Click! and you’re done.
I stopped at Picnik.com today when I was searching for Picasa Web Album API, which was released earlier today. Picnik is one of the featured projects that use Google’s Gdata API. I was really amazed with this tool. I have tried couple of other online photo editing tools before but nothing fascinated me as much as Picnik. TechCrunch also reports Picnik has replaced PXN8, their Ajax-based favorite online editing tool.
Picnik is completely different application in the Web2.0 buzz. Picknik is completely Flash based their user interface is fastest among the best. The coolest part is Picnik has API based integration with most popular web albums Flikr and PicasaWeb. Picnik is an innovative tool that brings the online photo editing much flexible and simple never before. Picnik would be a better alternative to any offline photo-editing tool for simple operations like crop, resize, and more. Picnik does bundle with few advanced options like basic photo effects, borders and special effects.
Picknik is currently in free public beta and it would come with premium plan in future but the basic image editing option would be free. Picnik is currently looking for naming convention of their premium version. Picnik is released by a Seattle based start up company called Bitnik
Key Features
- Crop, rotate, and resize picture in real time
- One click photo fixing and other in-depth color editing
- Believe me it is fast than advertised
- Integrates with most of the photo sharing / printing sites
- No installation required. All online.
- Compatible with Window/ Mac and Linux
- Completely FREE during beta after that basic features will remain free
- Easy to use and fast user interface.
Picknik supports JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TGA, and TIF picture formats. Picnik can grab photos from any of the below source for editing.
- Flickr Album / Picasa Web Album
- Upload directly from computer
- Grab the photos from site directly
- Yahoo / Flickr search
- Capture directly from Web Camera
Available Editing Options
With Picnik you can auto fix the photo for color and exposure. Also it has basic Rotate, Crop, Resize, Color, Exposure, Sharpen, and Red-Eye editing options. These features come handy. Also you have unlimited UNDO options available so that you can keep editing as you need.
The advance editing option comes with basic photo effects like Sepia, B/W, Boost, Soften, Vignette, and Matte. Also you can create border easily around the picture using the border option. Also there are few other advanced options that come in bundle with premium offering.
Save & Share
Picnik supports really cool options for saving and sharing. The wide options include
- You can save directly to flickr or picasa account.
- Email the photo to anyone
- Save it locally in the computer
- Creating a flickr slideshow and share it across the website
- Email to photo sharing / printing websites
- Print the photos directly
Bottom line, Picnik is a free online photo-editing tool that can be used for basic editing purpose that reduces the burden of installing a heavy desktop application.
Try this out today and share your comment and feedback.
Extending WordPress – Plugins Used
305 years ago
by Benedict Herold
in blogging
Here is my comprehensive list of WordPress plugins that powers this blog. This list may be little help for blog author who have recently moved to WordPress.
After migrating from Blogger to WordPress , I started exploring the options of customizing and enhancing my WordPress blog.
Well, without this it would have been much harder for me to integrate Google Adsense into this blog. Adding and managing ads that needs to be displayed in your blog is much easier with this plugin. You can tag the ads and then display anywhere with the site. This plugin also support other ad networks too. If you’re thinking of monetizing your blog then you should try this out. John has a full coverage on Adsense Deluxe plugin and how to integrate it into your blog.
Thank you for this plugin, it has already blocked around thousand SPAM comments right from the day of WordPress installation (FYI: This is site is powered by WordPress around a month). TechCrunh reports Akismet blocks around 15000 comments per day . This plugin comes pre-installed with WordPress and make sure you activate this plugin. You may need an API key, which can be received by registering a free account in WordPress.com. Currently, I am not allowing anonymous comments but I may turn on moderation soon. I remember couple or more incidents in which Akismet got true comment as SPAM.
I believe a contact form should have been added into WordPress by default. Anyway I stumbled WPThemesPlugin.com and found about cforms . cform is a AJAX powered contact form that features multiple contact forms. This WordPress plugin is neat and clean.
This plugin allows you to execute any PHP codes inside the Sidebar Widget. I have installed this plugin display Top Commentators and Popular Post. By default Sidebar Widget only support HTML. This plugin is required to customize the sidebar widgets display.
The Feed management with WordPress is pretty cool and straight. But WordPress doesn’t have more sophisticated features like FeedBurner has. Anyone who powers WordPress or any other blogging platform generally prefers to burn their feeds using FeedBurner. FeedBurner provides much better reporting about your subscribers and readers. So it is mandatory that you forward all the default Feed traffic your to FeedBurner. You just configure this plugin; it will automatically forward all the default WordPress feed url traffic to FeedBurner url. Step-by-Step blog has a full instruction on configuring this FeedBurner replacement plugin.
Gregarious means Social, this plugin is great use to share the post across social networking sites. I heard about this from Wrong Advice blog, which complained about the problem with Google. Still I made my mind to try this out. This is extremely cool plugin. I have replaced the Social Bookmarks plugin by this and it has been ease to configure with my blog.
This is a default plugin that comes with WordPress and is written by Matt. It displays random lyrics from Louis Armstrong’s song “Hello Dolly” in WordPress admin dashboard. This is kind of cool plugin for most of the weird blog authors 
This is simple AJAX powered plugin that allows live preview of comments. Most of the themes have support for this by default. Moreover this is much easier to configure in any theme.
Displaying avatars of commenter would enhance the trust of comments. I was previously running Gravatar, which was defaulted with my theme Qwilm! . I was seeing more and more blogs turned to support MyAvatar that displays avatars from MyBlogLog. Power blogger John Chow also has installed MyAvatar . Finally I to decided to use MyAvatar in my blog.
Well, it’s been a passion around to track the faces of your blog readers. MyBlogLog team provided the widget plugin to display those faces in your hosted WordPress. This is quite easy to configure.
This plugin will search other blog posts that are related to the current post. This is a good way to generate extra page views and keep readers on your blog. The plugin allows you to configure how many related posts to display and gives you options for displaying them. This plugin uses keyword searching throughout the posts and same is in action in all post here.
Show Top Commentator displays top commenter in the blog. It allows you to configure the frequency, block authors and more. I have installed this plugin to improve the commenter ship of this blog. I decided to put of my blog after reading Ajay’s post on Why You should Comment on my Blog . I have not yet enable DoFollow plugin but will be doing that soon. Now there is another reason to comment my blog.
The plugin is top featured plugins that made for WordPress. The Widget allows you to customize the look of your sidebar without having to edit any PHP files (before we had to edit sidebar.php) – you just drag and drop items you want included in the sidebar and the Widget does the rest. The WordPress theme must be Widget ready in order to use this plugin or you have Widgetize the theme manually. This plugin is required for displaying other Widget plugins.
This plugin will add an option to notify the commenter on follow up comments. When a new comment is made to the post, an email is sent to the subscriber notifying them. This is help commenter to keep track of their comments and post replies if required. This will improve floating healthy comments across the post.
Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin is the best know plugin for Tagging. This plugin allows the creation of tags for Technorati, Flickr, and Delicious etc., including your own tags page for easy searching. By using tags, not only will searches be easier but UTW also can create a tag cloud. Better way to keep your blog well maintained. Lorelle on WordPress uncovers all the possibilities that can be done with UTW in this post UTW WordPress Plugin for Dummies.
This is simple plugin that display a message to reader who are new to the blog with options for subscribing to the blog feed. This plugin would increase your blog feed subscription. This plugin was developed based on the idea given by Seth Godin on How to get traffic for your blog.
Recently, I came across this plugin. I though this would be better option of receiving rating on the post from the reader. Well, I’m running out a trial of this plugin; depending on the user-interaction I may have to decide to have or remove this plugin. If you like this post rate this as well
Now I have couple of special mentions even though these plugins are use anymore. But without those plugins I would have never thought of WordPress platform and I’m thankful to them. They are New Blogger Import plugin that I used to import all the post from Blogger platform and the WordPress Suicide plugin that I used to clear up the post during the testing phase. You can read more about the use of these plugin in my post on WordPress migration.
Bottom line, all the thanks and credits goes to the respective plugin author’s. I guess and wish one day or other I will author some plugin that features in other blogs
Thanks for plugin authors once again. I’m also looking for new suggestion of other plugins.
ChaCha, a people guided search engine
105 years ago
by Benedict Herold
in web 2.0
ChaCha is a next generation search engine that powers people guided search. If you’re tried up with traditional search engines with over crowded results; then you may need to try out the guided search from ChaCha.
ChaCha offers search paired with a real guide who can help you in figuring out your search term. With ChaCha, Search Engine market gets into Social too. In Web 2.0 world it is almost inevitable to get away from social network. ChaCha relies upon powerful guide community which round near to 20K+. The guide gets paid upto $5 per search hour which is really great.
There are couple of methods to use search on ChaCha. They have got traditional search engine is good but same as other conventional one so it does not grab user attention. The real cool service is guide driven search, via an instant message screen on the page. While the search does not provide best information on net, it was fun searching with a guide. It is kind of calling directory service for finding some information.
Scott A. Jones, co-founder, Chairman and CEO of ChaCha Says,
“We wanted to solve the problem search engine users are experiencing with existing services – that is, the massive volume of search results they must sift through online. We’ve addressed the problem with a comfortable and familiar search experience that improves upon the shortcomings of first-generation search engines. Connecting experienced guides with those searching for information in real-time is a powerful thing and brings a whole new dimension to Internet searching.”
Why ChaCha?
From ChaCha About page,
The answer is that it has a dual meaning. First, “Cha” means “search” in Chinese. Second, the ChaCha is a popular, fast-paced dance. Therefore, we are named ChaCha because we are the only search engine that allows people seeking information to instantly connect online with live ChaCha Guides that lead them (much as they would in the dance) to the most relevant results on the Internet.
What ChaCha has to improve?
In my initial glance and experience with ChaCha, I see these are areas ChaCha should improve upon.
- Chacha has to rework on the entirely on it user interface. The current user interface is overloaded that does not make the navigation much easier.
- Over Crowded and Non-Contextual ads makes the user experience more clumsy
- ChaCha should develop more versatile search algorithm to guide the user with more accurate experience.
- ChaCha should put in more robust technology to fight abuse. TechCrunch reports 90$ of ChaCha is prankster. It should frame stong abuse policy.
I will be writing more about ChaCha guide functionality if i get a chance to be a ChaCha guide
Bottom line, search engines goes social too.
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