This iconic Situation Room photograph, captured at the White House,
has now been viewed more the 2.5 million times on the web. There’s
little information available about the photograph but if you download
the full-size version,
you can get details about the camera model, the camera settings and
even the software that were used to edit this picture before it was
published online.
This information is stored in every digital
image, in the form of EXIF tags, and you can extract it using Windows
Explorer or with the help of even the most basic image editing software.
In the case of mobile phones, your pictures may even include location
information thus giving others an idea of the exact geographic
coordinates where that shot was taken.
How to Remove Camera and GPS Data?
If you are planning to
share your personal photographs over email or on a public website (like
Tumblr), it may sometimes make sense to remove the camera data and the
location information from the images before putting them online.
There’s a free Windows utility called QuickFix
that can help you here. Simply drag-n-drop the photographs in the
QuickFix window and click the Clean Metadata button to remove all
identifiable information from the photographs. It creates a new copy and
won’t overwrite your original photographs.
QuickFix will not only
delete the EXIF data and the GPS location information from your
photographs but also the IPTC and XMP tags that may have added by the
photo editing application.
Microsoft also offers a free utility called Pro Photo Tools that you may use to edit as well as delete common metadata from digital photographs including the GPS location.
An Alternative Way to Remove EXIF Information
If
the photographs are in one folder, you can easily remove the EXIF data
from one or more of these photographs using Windows Explorer itself
without requiring any additional software.
Select all the images
files, right click and choose Properties. Now hit the Details tab and
click on the “Remove Properties and Personal Information” link. The next
screen will give you an option to remove the various metadata that is
embedded inside the pictures. Simple.
Let’s say you have two computers on your desk and, in an effort to
save space, you want to operate them using a single pair of keyboard and
mouse.
There are two solutions here. If the computers are connected to the same network, you can use software programs like Input Director or Synergy to operate them with a common keyboard and mouse. In the other scenario where the machines aren’t connected, you can get a KVM switch to share one keyboard and mouse between them.
A Better Alternative to Synergy and KVM Switches
My work
setup is quite similar to what you see in the illustration above and I
have been using the Input Director software all this while to control
the two Windows PCs with one keyboard and mouse. Input Director is
reliable and (mostly) works without problems though it does require some understanding of the Master and Slave concept.
Last week, I switched to a new Windows utility called Mouse without Borders and find it so much better than my previous solution. Wondering why?
The
best part about Mouse without Borders is how easy it is to set up. You
install the utility on all your Windows computers, enter the security
code provided by the software and your computers will get linked. This
is almost as simple as pairing a set of Bluetooth devices.
Once
installed, you can not only use the same keyboard and mouse across your
computers in a seamless manner but you can also drag and drop files
between them. This is so convenient. Earlier, I had to create shared
network folders or had to use Dropbox to transfer files but now I can
simple drag them from desktop A to desktop B as if they were on the same
computer.
With the Mouse without Borders utility installed, you
can also send screen capture of one desktop to another by pressing a
hotkey or from the system tray menu. After having used the tool for
about a week, I never experienced a crash though I did have problems
sharing clipboard especially when the copy operation was done inside a
Flash application.
Mouse without Borders can only be used to
control Windows based computers. If your work environment involves a mix
of Windows, Linux or Mac computers, Synergy could still be the only
good choice for you.
Would you like to know which websites are linking to any of your web
pages? Or how many incoming links (or backlinks) have you “earned” since
yesterday? Here’s how you use use Google Analytics to find out who’s
linking to you.
Step 1: Sign-in to your Google Analytics Account and open the “Standard Reporting” dashboard for any of your Analytics profiles.
Step 2: Click the Traffic Sources group in the left sidebar followed by Social – > Pages.
Step 3:
The next screen of Google Analytics will have a list of the most
popular web pages on your site (sorted by traffic). Click on any of
these pages to view its incoming links report.
Step 4: Google Analytics will open the Social Referrals
report for that page. We need to switch to the Activity Stream tab as
shown in the next screenshot.
Step 5: On the Activity Stream page, switch to the
Events tab (next to Conversations) and then click on any of the “green”
Trackback icons (they also have permalinks) to get a list of all
external website that are linking to that particular page.
Step 6: This is the last step. Select any of the
Trackbacks on the page, choose the down arrow and select “View Activity”
to know the exact page URL that is linking to your website.
Tracking Backlinks – Bonus Tips
It may take a few steps
to access these TrackBacks report the first time but you can add it as a
widget to your Google Analytics dashboard for quick access anytime
later (look for the “Add to Dashboard” button at the top of the page).
These
reports display backlinks per page but if you would like to see the
backlinks of your entire website, go to the top of the report and “Click
All” to remove the Page filter.
If you would like to know how
many new sites have linked to your websites in the last day, just go to
the Date Range and change it to “Yesterday” or you can even choose
custom dates.
HD video
mostly refers to web video with display resolution of either 1280×720
(720p) or 1920×1080 (1080i or 1080p – full HD). YouTube, at the moment,
only supports
720p HD resolution with a 16:9 (non-square pixels) aspect ratio and
24fps frame rate. Watch the clip to know how a 16:9 widescreen video is
different from the 640×480 4:3 standard definition video.
Ok, so let’s get started. You need the following software to make 720p
HD videos for YouTube with any fake black border around the video:
1. Camtasia Studio – download a 30 day trial for free. This will act like a virtual high definition video camcorder for your computer screen.
2. Apple QuickTime – for encoding with the H.264 video codec for HD quality on YouTube.
3. Any computer with a decent processor – long HD videos may take some time to render on a slow machine.
When you begin the screen recording process, make sure that the recording dimensions are set to 1280 pixels x 720 pixels.
From
the Camtasia Recorder, go to Tools -> Options, change video
configuration to manual and set the screen capture rate to 30 frames per
second. Under audio format, use PCM with 44.100 kHz 16 bit Stereo. Save
these settings and record your screencast video.
Once you are
done with the recording and editing process, it’s time to produce your
screencast video in HD format for YouTube. You may either use the MP4 or
MOV formats for the output video as they both use the same MPEG-4 /
H.264 codec.
HD Using .MOV format
Open the Production wizard in Camtasia (choose "Produce video as")
and select "custom production settings". Use Quicktime Movie (mov) as
the output format and under QuickTime options, use the following
settings:
HD using MP4 format
Select Flash Output
(MP4/SWF) in the Production wizard and use a template with no controls.
Under video, select MP4 with a frame rate of 30 fps and change the
audio options to at least 96 kbps. Manually set the video dimensions to
1280 (width) x 720 (height). The MP4 settings are courtesy Matt Pierce.
Upload HD to YouTube
Now that your HD screencast is ready, upload the file
to YouTube. Once the video is uploaded and available for viewing, you
may not immediately see the "Watch in HD" link as it can take anywhere
between 5-15 minutes for YouTube to provide an alternate HD format.
If
you see a green bar on the video page that says "this video is still
being processed. Video quality may improve once processing is complete,"
it means that YouTube could recognize your recently uploaded screencast
video as HD.
How to Embed HD YouTube Videos
If you like to embed
HD videos from YouTube into a web page such that readers can directly
watch the high definition version of the video without having to click
the "HD" button in the YouTube player, just add &ap=%2526fmt%3D22 to
the YouTube embed code in two places:
If that was a bit confusing, view the source code of this page
that also includes an HD screencast created with Camtasia.
Linking to HD 720p YouTube Videos
You now know how to embed
an HD video clip on a web page but consider another scenario where you
have to link to an HD video on YouTube.
If you use the default
video link provided by YouTube, it would only show the standard quality
video unless someone hits the HD button on the YouTube player.
To
directly link to the high-definition version of the video, simply add
&hd=1 to the video URL and anyone who clicks that link can watch
your screencast video in widescreen and full HD quality. See example:
Standard Quality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lsbA8RhiI Full HD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lsbA8RhiI&hd=1
YouTube HD Alternatives
Other than YouTube, you may upload HD screencast videos to other sites like Vimeo, blip.tv, Motion Box or even Daily Motion
which is not just free but imposes no limits on the video duration and
file size. Feeling confused? Check this detailed comparison of HD video sites on CNET by Josh Lowensohn to understand which site would suit your requirement best.
I
am quite happy with the HD quality of YouTube videos and best of all,
the service is absolutely free with no bandwidth limits. If you are
looking to further widen the reach of your HD video clips, check other
services that may help you upload videos to multiple sites at once.
The web is like a
battleground where you are continuously fighting against so many factors
to grab the attention of the reader. He has unread messages in Gmail,
someone pinged him on Facebook – there are so many distractions that it
will be hard to hold his attention. If your content is short, precise
and well-presented, he will appreciate it.
People on the web
have short attention spans – they’ll read the headline of your story and
probably the first few lines and then zoom off. Thus you should use the
inverted pyramid
approach to catch their attention – put the most important parts of the
story at the top that can be seen without using the scroll bar.
The
headline is almost as important as the story because it will be visible
in search engines, RSS readers, email newsletters and social shares.
Good headlines are like short summaries of the article but free of
jargon – the reader should be able to guess what the article is all
about just from the headline itself. Here are some good headlines.
Eye-tracking studies suggest that people don’t read web pages, they scan pages in an F-Pattern.
Thus you need to present content in such a fashion that important parts
don’t go unnoticed. Add a table of content if you have a long article.
Use headings and sub-headings (like h2, h3, etc.), add captions to
images, use italics or bold text to emphasize important points and put
interesting information in pull quotes. Use short paragraphs and each
paragraph should convey exactly one idea.
When you are writing
on the web, you are writing for a global audience and therefore you
should avoid using jargon or complex language in your content. Make no
assumptions – you know what NSFW stands for but not everyone does so
spell out the acronyms. Use humor and slangs with care as what’s
considered funny in your culture may not be so in other countries. Also
use the Readability Test to know if people who are less fluent in English can easily grasp your writing style.
Sometimes
you have to use numbers in your content that can be difficult to
visualize. For instance, the US spent anywhere between $4-$6 billion
fighting the war in Iraq. How big is that number? If you can add another
number to the same story saying the US spent X amount on medical
research or that Y amount is enough to feed million people, your readers
will be able to connect better with your story. Apple didn’t stress the
number of pixels in the new iPad, they said it has more pixels that
your HDTV.
When you are writing about a product, a service or
maybe a restaurant where you had dinner last night, try to put yourself
in the shoes of the reader and think what additional questions they may
have related to that topic. Your content should answer all of them. Your
aim should be create a page that is the best resource on the web for
that topic. Use Five Ws, a proven journalistic technique, to get the complete story on a subject.
Make
sure that all information in your content is accurate and comes from
trusted sources. If you are using facts in your content – like the
average age of an African elephant is 70 years – you should cite
credible sources to support that fact.
If you have an idea for a
story, don’t publish it right away – think over it for a day or two,
edit and the final product will almost always be better than your
initial draft. Darren Rowse calls it the idea marinating process.
When
you are writing on a not-so-unique topic that dozens of other sites
have covered in the past, analyze what others have missed or how you can
make existing content better. For instance, you can include fresh data,
you can include quotes from experts, you can create videos around the
topic, you can present information in an alternate form – like a chart, a
presentation or even as an ebook.
Spend some time reviving your
old content. Sometimes your content doesn’t get the attention it
deserves and it just sits there in the archives gathering dust. You can
use Google Analytics to learn about stories that didn’t click with your
readers, analyze the missing pieces, think how you can make the content
better, and push it again. If you include “factual” content on your site
– like which is the most popular social site – this kind of data needs
to be updated regularly because that what your readers will like.
The
content that you create must be readable across difference devices and
platforms that your audience are on. Often times we create content that
looks good on the desktop but that quality is lost as soon as we switch
to a different device – say a mobile phone. That’s a missed opportunity.
If you have embedded YouTube videos in your content, make sure you
offer an alternative thumbnail that links to the YouTube video for
environments that don’t support Flash or HTML5.
Users will
consume your content in different forms. Some will save your stories to
InstaPaper for reading later, some will print your articles as PDFs
while others may send your stories to their Kindle. It is important that
your content looks good when it is saved across different mediums. Do
not ignore the print stylesheet because if you create good content, some
people will print it on paper.
The
first image and the thumbnail image of your story, or the image that
your have specified inside the OpenGraph tags, should be clear,
high-quality and predictable. That’s because these images will appear
when your stories are shared on social networks like Pinterest, Tumblr,
Facebook and even Google Plus. You may have a great headline but if
the attached image thumbnail isn’t great, the story can sometimes go
unnoticed.
The other reason to have good images in your content
is that they “pause” a reader when he or she is scanning your content.
Use an image format
depending upon the content of the image – for instance, images that
have text are best served as PNG files. Avoid using stock images on your
content especially the ones that are very common. Use the Similar Images option is Google Images to determine how popular a “stock image” is and if it returns too many results, don’t use that image.
Do
not ignore video. It does take some effort to produce videos but it
will be well worth the effort. YouTube is the world’s second largest
search engine and if your produce video content, you have an opportunity
to show up there. Also, Google is no longer a collection of 10 blue
links but a mixture of images and videos. Good videos have great audio.
Shoot and record at 720p (1280×720). Apply to become a YouTube partner
and that will help you add custom thumbnail images to your videos. Keep
you video length short, really short because it is difficult to hold a user’s attention for more than a few minutes.
SEO is no rocket science. This starter guide
[PDF] from Google covers nearly everything that you need to do to make
your good content more search friendly. Use good headlines, the content
should be scannable, use good-quality images with captions, have an easy to navigate site structure and use Sitemaps to help search bots discover your content. Here’s more useful SEO advice from Google.
You should know how people are consuming and sharing your content. The new social analytics
feature of Google Analytics can help track most of the social activity
happening on your site and, accordingly, you can put the right social
sharing buttons around your content.
You may think that Page
Views are the best indicator to determine the success of content but
that may not be the case. A reader lands on your page from Facebook,
scans it for a second, doesn’t find anything interesting and leaves.
This activity registers as a pageview in Google Analytics but the
visitor didn’t find anything useful. The metric that gives a better idea
of user behavior is “average time spent on a page” – if they are just
coming and leaving, there’s definitely something wrong with the page
content or there’s a mismatch between your headlines and the story.
You
might think that the web has an infinite appetite for content and the
more you feed it, the better. That’s not the case though. It takes
effort, time and lot of thinking to produce good and useful content and
that will clearly not happen if the goal is to publish as many words as
possible in a day.
Oracle Secure Global Desktop provides
secure access to centralized, server-hosted Windows, UNIX, mainframe,
and midrange applications from a wide variety of popular client devices,
including Windows PCs, Mac OS X systems, Oracle Solaris workstations,
Linux PCs, thin clients, and more. Additionally, Oracle Secure Global
Desktop provides access to full-screen desktop environments, allowing
administrators the freedom to use a single solution to provide access to
both server-based applications and server-hosted desktop environments
such as Microsoft Remote Desktop Services.
In the Oracle Secure Global Desktop
architecture, applications are deployed on introduce new applications or
upgrade existing ones. Users can then begin using the new software
immediately—without modifying their client devices.Centrally managed
application servers and can be accessed via a Web browser. By simply
modifying a few central application servers, administrators can
instantly
Designed to meet stringent security
requirements, Oracle Secure Global Desktopleverages open standards and
provides industrial-strength security and encryption. It helps
administrators ensure that only authorized users can access applications
and data, establishing identity by integrating with corporate standards
such as the Light-weight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), UNIX
passwords, Pluggable Authen- tication Modules (PAMs), Novell eDirectory,
and Microsoft Active Directory.
ORACLE SECURE GLOBAL DESKTOP DELIVERS :
Complete server-hosted application and server-hosted desktop access
Secure access to corporate data and applications
Easier IT management of centralized resources and applications
Remote access to applications and desktops for mobile workforce
Flexibility to deploy Windows, Linux, and Solaris applications or desktops to nearly any modern PC or thin client
Oracle Secure Global Desktop Specifications :
Installation Platforms
Oracle Solaris 10 and Oracle Solaris 10 Trusted Extensions (SPARC platform)
Oracle Solaris 10 and Oracle Solaris 10 Trusted Extensions (x86 platform)
OpenSolaris 2008.11+ (x86 platform)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (x86 32-bit and 64-bit platforms)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (x86 32-bit and 64-bit platforms)
Supported Application Types
Windows desktops and applications
Character applications running on Oracle Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, and AIX
X applications running on Oracle Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, and AIX
IBM mainframe and AS/400 applications
Web applications (using HTML and Java technology)
Supported Protocols
Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol version 5.2
HTTP
HTTPS
Secure shell version 2 or later
Telnet VT, ANSI
TN3270E
TN5250
Supported Client Operating Systems
Windows Vista
Windows XP Professional
Oracle Solaris 10 and Oracle Solaris 10 Trusted Extensions (SPARC platform)
Oracle Solaris 10 and Oracle Solaris 10 Trusted Extensions (x86 platform)
OpenSolaris 2008.11+ (x86)
Mac OS X 10.5+
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5.1+ (x86)
Ubuntu 8+ (x86)
Server Requirements
Supported operating system
1.5 GB of disk space, plus an additional 300 MB during installation
1 GB RAM
20 MB of memory (in addition to RAM) per active user on the Oracle Secure Global Desktop server (typical usage)
1 GHz processor
Network interface card
Supported Authentication Mechanisms
RSA SecurID
Windows Domains
eDirectory
PAM for UNIX user authentication
Active Directory
Network Information Service
LDAP v3
HTTP, HTTPS including public key infrastructure−based client certificates
With Exchange 2010 SP1 Microsoft comes up with following new Virtualized supported scenario :
Unified Messaging server role is now supported in a virtualized environment.
Exchange 2010 high availability solutions Database Availability Group
(DAGs)) is not supported with hypervisor-based clustering, high
availability, or migration solutions that will move or automatically
failover mailbox servers that are members of a DAG between clustered
servers.
Running Exchange Server 2010 in a virtualized environment helps customers to reduce server consolidation and licensing costs.
Now you can install Hyper-V inside VMware Workstation 8.0 only, below is
the step which you need to configure before enabling the Hyper-V role
from server manager:
Intel-VT or AMD-VT should be enable on physical system.
Right click on Hyper-V VM–>setting–>Hardware tabe–>Select Processors–>Under virtualization engine–>Check Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI
3. Edit the .vmx file of Hyper-V virtual machine and add “hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = FALSE”
in down. This option hides the fact that Hyper-V is running inside a
VM. Without this option, launching a nested VM under Hyper-V will fail
with the following error: “Failed to create partition: Unspecified error (0×80004005)“
Now you can install Windows 8 with Hyper-V enable inside VMware Workstation 8.0 only, below is the step which you need to configure before enabling the Hyper-V role.
Intel-VT or AMD-VT should be enable on physical system.
Right click on Hyper-V VM–>setting–>Hardware tabe–>Select Processors–>Under virtualization engine–>Check Virtualize Intel VT-x/EPT or AMD-V/RVI
3.Edit the .vmx file of Hyper-V virtual machine and add below line
·hypervisor.cpuid.v0
= FALSE (vo = v zero)
·mce.enable
= “TRUE”
Note:
This option hides the fact that Windows 8 with Hyper-V
is running inside a VM. Enabling Hyper-V on Win 8 and rebooting results
error messages or a BSOD unless you make the above changes to the .VMX
file before powering on the VM.
Below are the step to enable Hyper-v in windows 8 :
Login in windows 8 and open “Run” (Press Window key
+ R)
2. Open the Hyper-V manager (Press windows key for menu if it not come automatic)
Good domain names are short. It is not a coincidence that all the
three-letter and four-letter .com domains are already gone, and that the
five-letter ones are going fast as well.
There is no definite number of characters that you should aim for,
just remember that the shorter the better. If you really need some
guidance, try to go below 10 characters, and never exceed 20.
As for the number of words, one-word domains are gold, two-word ones
are good, three-word domains are average, and above that it is usually a
bad idea. Example: Quotes.com is a superb domain and probably
worth millions of dollars. ProQuotes.com is a good two-word domain worth
thousands of dollars. ProQuotesNow.com is an average domain and could
be used for a website. YourProQuotesNow.com is plain worthless.
2. They are easy to remember
Many Internet users do not use bookmarks. They just memorize the
domains of their favorite websites and type them whenever they wan to
visit one. Guess what, if your domain is complex and not easy to
remember you will lose these visitors along the way. Example: Brcwr.com is a short domain name, but is
not easy to remember at all, so it would be a bad idea to use it for
your website (unless the initials represent the name of the website or a
memorable message).
3. They are easy to spell
The last thing you want is visitors misspelling your domain and ending up somewhere else.
Avoid unusual foreign words, words that have complex pronunciation,
strange combinations of letters and anything else that might cause
someone to misspell your address. Example: CappuccinoBar.com might be problematic for
English speaking visitors. Cappuccino is an Italian word, and not
everyone is aware where the doubles are placed.
4. They have a .com extension
Organizations might prefer to register a .org domain, and companies
targeting very specific geographical regions might want to register a
local domain (e.g. .it, .co.uk, .cn and so on). Apart from these cases,
however, a .com domain is always the best way to go. This extension is
the most popular around the around, and it is already stuck in people’s
mind.
Visitors coming to your site via search engines or organic links will
pay attention mostly to the name and not to the URL. The next time they
want to visit your site it is very likely that they will just type its
name followed by a .com. Guess what, if you are not there when they hit
enter they will just go somewhere else. Example: Darren Rowse created his popular blog on
Problogger.net. Despite having a strong brand, some visitors were still
going to Problogger.com. After a couple of years Darren decided to buy
the .com version for $5,000 and redirect it to his site, so that no more
visitors would leak.
5. They are descriptive
Many visitors will come to your site through the search engines and
via direct links on other websites. That is, they will come if the
domain that they will see will be appealing.
Having a descriptive domain name will give visitors an idea of what
your site is about even before they enter it. If related keywords are
present in the domain it might also help your search engine rankings. Example: You would be able to guess what TelevisionGuides.com is about even before visiting it right?
Put it in another way. Suppose you are searching for a movie review.
You make a quick search in Google. The first result comes from
MikesLair.com. The second result comes from MoviesCentral.com. Which one
would you rather click?
6. Or brandable
A brandable domain will have a nice pronunciation, an interesting
combination of letters or simply an appealing visual effect. Sometimes
they will not be descriptive, but they can be equally efficient.
Brandable domains will make your visitors associate the name with
your website and its content. (Notice that brandable domains can be
descriptive at the same time, but that is not always the case.) Example: Kotaku.com is one of the most popular
gaming blogs on the Internet. The domain is not descriptive at all, but
the brand is so strong that gamers immediately recognize it across the
web.
7. They don’t contain hyphens or numbers
Domain names containing hyphens and numbers are cheaper for a reason.
They suffer the same problem of domains not using a .com extension or
with complex spelling.
Consider Tech-World.com. The names that will stick in people’s mind
are “tech” and “world.” Many visitors will just forget the hyphen along
the way. Eventually they will try to access your site by typing
TechWorld.com, in vain.
Numbers, on the other hand, will confuse people with the spelling.
Suppose you registered Tech5.com. Visitors might mix it with
TechFive.com, if they manage to remember the number in the first place!
