Track Specific Portions of any Web Page with FireClip

In this screenshot, I am tracking portions of multiple web pages from a single location. The portions include the top headlines from WSJ.com, latest currency rate from Google, topics that are currently popular on Twitter and weather forecast again using Google search.

A lot of this information may not be available as RSS feeds but I can still check for updates across all the above web pages by simple reloading the above start page.

This was made possible through Fireclip, a Firefox plug-in that lets you select and slice out specific portions of any web page and puts them all on a single page.

You can later reload this page to track all clipped portions in one go without having to go to those sites to check for changes or new information.

For example, I can go to Google to determine the current exchange rate (e.g 1 USD in INR) and then clip out just the relevant portion, that lies between the search box and results, with Firelip. Watch video.

Video Screencast: How to Track Web Pages with FireClip

Microsoft introduced the concept of Web Slices in Internet Explorer 8 to help you monitor web sites from the browser itself but with a small limitation - it the website owner who actually decides what parts of his or her website can be subscribed to as a slice.

FireClip, as the video demonstrates, lets you clip any portion of any web page. Geeks may also want to try this Ubiquity tutorial to access portions of another webpage from anywhere else in Firefox.

Find Images from a Specific Country with Google

The advanced search page for Google Image Search has been totally revamped and, while this is mostly a cosmetic change, it does have one new option – search by region.

You can pick a country from the drop-down and Google search will give preference to images that are either physically hosted in that part of the world or are served from a country-specific top-level domain (like .in or .co.uk).

To give you an example, a search for “movie posters” on Google Image Search with the region set as United States is likely to display posters from Hollywood movies while the results would be very different if the region were set to another country while leaving every other search parameter same.

Screenshot A: Search for Movies (region: United States)

Screenshot B: Search for Movies (region: India)

Internally, search by region adds a new “cr” parameter to image search URL with the value equal to the country code.

Google Chromebooks go on Sale at Amazon

Google Chromebooks are now available for purchase at Amazon.com. They won’t ship them to non-US locations but if you can’t wait to get one, use a package forwarding service.

The base model - Acer Cromia ($380) - features a 11.6” display with a dual-core Intel Processor and 2GB RAM while the slightly-bigger Samsung Series 5 model ($430) sports a 12.1” display with an Intel Atom processor and the 2GB RAM.

Google notebooks, or a better word is netbooks, are light and seem to have an impressive battery life but am still not sold on the concept of “everything running from the cloud.”

How do you sync your phone or tablet when you can’t install the necessary software (like iTunes) on the computer. Will your exiting hardware - like printers, external hard drive or your wireless mouse - work with a Chromebook when there are no compatible drivers? Will it let you work if the Google Cloud itself is down?

Google will be adding offline support for Google Docs and Gmail to the future releases of Chrome OS. They could be useful as your second computer that you primarily use for browsing the web or for watching vidoes but in the current state, I think these $250 netbooks probably offer better value for money. Yes, they won’t boot in 20 seconds but you get to do everything else that's possible on a Chromebook and much more.

Here's an impressive promo video of Google Chrome Notebook in case you missed it before.

Use your Browser Address Bar as a Calculator

You know this, right? If you have set Google as your default search provider, you can use the browser’s address bar as an instant calculator.

Simply enter the calculation in the address bar, Google will compute the answer on its own servers and will send you the result as a “search suggestion.” You don’t even have to press the Enter key.

This works with IE and Google Chrome while in the case of Firefox, you’ll have to type the expression in the browser’s search box instead of the address bar.

Your Browser as a Calculator without Google

You can also perform calculations inside the browser offline without requiring Google.

Go to your browser’s address bar, type javascript: followed by any calculation and hit Enter. The calculation will happen inside the browser itself as shown in the screencast:

Axel Rauschmayer, who first wrote about this technique on 2ality.com, suggests that you can even perform complex calculations with JavaScript, something which is not possible with the Google Calculator.

Here are some examples that you may try or check Mozilla Docs for a complete list of Maths functions that are supported in JavaScript.

1. javascript:Math.random() [Find random number between 0 & 1]
2. javascript:Math.pow(3,9) [What is x to the power of y]
3. javascript:Math.sqrt(32) [Find the square root of a positive number]

Tumblr Blogs Can No Longer Import RSS Feeds

Maybe this is more ammunition for people who think that RSS is dead.

Since its early days, Tumblr has offered a useful import feed feature to help you bring content from other sites – like Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Blogger, etc. – into your main Tumblr blog. Technically, you could import content from just about any external site into Tumblr as long as there was an RSS feed available.

Unfortunately, as @Shripriya first noticed, Tumblr has quietly dropped support for importing RSS feeds into their system. Tumblr’s support site still has a page on how to use Import feed but the feature itself has been removed, thus denying you the ability to use Tumblr has a lifestreaming service.

The last auto-fetch request into my Tumblr blog was made during the first week of June and that may be the date when they dropped support for RSS imports (you can still export your Tumblr blog as an RSS feed though).

I am little surprised at Tumblr’s approach here but that doesn’t mean you can’t bring your external content into Tumblr – they do offer a simple API that can write anything, including RSS feeds, to a Tumblr blog but you’ll have to take the help of a developer to get that thing working for your blog.

The Most Disliked Videos on YouTube Ever

Nathan Yau at FlowingData has created a reference poster that highlights the most disliked videos on YouTube of all time. I have added an image map to Nathan’s poster so you can click on the video thumbnails to watch the corresponding video directly on YouTube.

There are five music videos of Justin Bieber that make it to the hate list but the award for the most disliked video on YouTube, and thus on the entire Internet, goes to Rebecca Black for Friday – 81 million views and 1.6 million dislikes.

Charging

Here’s a device that could be useful to millions of households in India and elsewhere who have mobile phones but sometimes not get enough electricity to charge their phones.

TES NewEnergy, a company based in Japan, has created a new USB based charger that can charge your mobile phone without requiring electricity – all it needs is a heat source which could be as simple as a pan of boiling water or even a campfire.

The device, known as Pan Charger, converts heat into electric energy and that can charge any cellphone, MP3 player or other mobile device over a USB connection in 3-5 hours. Thetech specs say that the USB connection also has a built-in radio and a lantern – things that you often need when there’s no power.

Pan Charger is already available for purchase in Japan according to an AFP report but, at $299 a unit, it is not a very affordable option. That could however change as the company does have plans to introduce the device in other developing countries.

Pan Charger isn’t the only device that can charge mobile phones without a power outlet. There’s Yogen, a hand-powered charger that works like a Yo-yo. You attach the cell phone to Yogen over USB and pull/release the cord for a few minutes to charge the phone.

The best idea however comes from Kenya. They have turned a bicycle into a mobile phone charger – ride your bike for a few kilometers, which most villagers do anyway, and your phone is charged.

Send HTML Emails with Gmail and Google Docs

All popular email programs – from web-based Gmail and Yahoo! Mail to desktop-based Microsoft Outlook to the mail app on your mobile phone – are now HTML (or rich-text) capable. Thus, your email messages can have custom fonts, inline images, lists, tables and other formatting similar to a web page.

But there’s one little problem - how do you write an HTML email?

The built-in WYSIWYG editors, like the one shown above, offer basic functions for formatting text but there are things you cannot do. For instance, how do you insert a 3x5 table inside a Gmail message? Can you right-align an image and wrap text around it similar to Word?

All this is easily possible in HTML but since your email program won’t let your compose a message directly in HTML, you’re stuck.

I have two easy solutions for this problem. The first is HTML Mail – here you can write an HTML message and send it yourself or anyone else with a click. The tool has a simple WYSIWYG editor but you can also switch to the code view and compose messages directly with HTML markup.

There’s another alternative that uses Google Docs to send HTML mails from your Gmail account itself. It works for both Google Apps and regular Google Accounts.

First make a copy of this Google Docs sheet and then choose Gmail –> HTML Mail to authorize the sheet to send mails from your email account. Once authorized, choose GMail –> HTML Mail again and now you should see a form for sending mails. Fill in the various fields, write any HTML code in the Message field and hit send.

You can use the previously mentioned WYSIWYG editor to generate the HTML markup and copy-paste that code into the Google Docs form. Also, if you wish to send the same message to multiple recipients at once, just separate their email addresses with commas.

The Google Docs option internally uses Google App scripts (class GmailApp) and you can find the full source code under Tools –> Script Editor. So the next time you want to create a more professional-looking email newsletter that has tables and other complex formatting, you know where to go.

Create your own Facebook Book

wser.

If you have been active on Facebook for some time, you’ll love Social Memories.

This app analyzes your entire Facebook activity since June 2009 – your status updates, photo albums, events you’ve attended, places you checked-in, friends who you frequently interact with, etc. - and turns all this data all into an elegant printed book.

Every page of this book is made of beautiful infographics offering new insights into your Facebook activities like when are you most active on Facebook, where do most of your friends live, your most popular Facebook pictures, etc. The way this data is presented in the book makes it all the more interesting.

The Facebook book would cost you around $32 (with international shipping) but you don’t necessarily have to buy one to get all these interesting insights.

The Facebook App will create a Flash version of the book that you can view in the browser itself though the resolution is not good enough for printing. You can also save selected pages of the book as photos in your Facebook profile. Impressive! Thanks Ilya Vedrashko.

All-in-One Google Search

short for What Do You Love?, is a new website from Google that lets you search across all the Google Products from one place. The final home for WDYL, according to the HTML source, is likely to be google.com/whatdoyoulove but its not live yet.

Type in a query and WDYL will display the top search results from Google Images, Blogs, Maps, News, Books, YouTube, and other Google Search properties – neatly arranged on one page but there’s one element missing – web search.

Also, it looks like safe search is currently not enabled for Google WDYL so you may sometimes encounter NSFW results for regular queries. For instance, I searched for “Gmail” and the top photo result in Picasa was that of a woman on a beach.

Full credit goes to MG Siegler for discovering WDYL.

Find Videos that were Recorded at a Particular Location

Would you like to know if there are any videos on YouTube that were shot near a particular geographic location - say in your city or, if you zoom-in further, near your school?

When you capture a video on a cell phone or digital camera that has GPS, the co-ordinates (latitude and longitude) are saved in the video itself and YouTube can extract these to determine the location of your video. Alternatively, if your camera doesn’t offer the location feature, you can always geotag videos manually while uploading them to YouTube.

The only little problem is that YouTube doesn’t offer an easy for you to search videos by location but there are alternatives.

For instance, if you are on Google Maps (or Google Earth), you can zoom-in to a specific area of the maps and then turn-on the video layer to see videos recorded at that location (see screencast). Google says that it displays only the “best videos” in the video layer or videos that have an average user rating higer than 3 stars.

The other more comprehensive option for searching videos by location is Jotpix. Jotpix determines your current location from the browser and will automatically show local videos nearby or you can key in any address to see video around a specific location.

Unlike Google Maps, Jotpix doesn’t filter geotagged videos by ratings but you can limit your search by category as well as the date when the videos were uploaded. And as you move around the Google map, the search results will change automatically. Give it a try!

View Contents of a Zip File Online with Google Docs

Consider this. Your friend sends you a 10 MB zip files as an email attachment and you are not too sure what files are inside that archive. It could be a slideshow with pictures of cute cats, that you would definitely not like to open, or maybe something more important.

Earlier you would have to download that entire 10 MB files to your computer just to see whether it is of any use but not anymore. The Google Docs viewer, the standalone app and the version that comes integrated with Gmail, can now handle both .zip and .rar formats in the browser itself.

That means you can browse the contents of an attached zip file online without having to download it. If there any Office documents or Photoshop files or even another zip file contained inside, you can view their content as well in the same Google Docs viewer window.

There’s another scenario where this feature will come handy.

Say you want to download a zip or rar file from a website but before doing so, you would like to confirm what’s inside the file. In that case, just copy the URL of the zip files and paste it into the Google Docs viewer like in this example.

Google Docs can handle ZIP and RAR formats but for extracting other archive formats like gzip or for opening password-protected ZIPs in the browser, check this tool.

Also see: A Better Alternative to Winzip and Winrar