If you’re an online publisher, then Google is king.  Whatever content you’re pushing to the web, you’re going to want Google to index it properly, and serve it up in its search results.  There are lots of guides on basic text and blogpost optimization out there, but what about other types of media like images, video, and audio?  Here’s a simple guide to follow so you can make the most of your multimedia content.

First things first, the general rule of optimization is to ensure a descriptive file name and URL which match what people may be searching for.  This is crucial when it comes to Google deciding if your content is relevant to search terms.  If you want to refine it, you can try using the Google keywords tool to determine search volume. 

Tip 1. How to Optimize SEO for images

Tagging of images is essential for Google’s understanding of what your image actually is.  Pay close attention to your ALT and TITLE tags when you upload an image to the web.

1. ALT attribute is an important part of search engine optimization. It describes your image to search engine and when a user searches for a certain image this is a key determining factor for a match. 
2. TITLE attribute plays a lesser role but is important for visitors as this text will automatically appear in the tooltip when mouse is over the image.

If you’re using WordPress, you can try SEO Friendly Images, which is a free optimization plugin that automatically updates all images on your website with proper ALT and TITLE attributes.  What this plugin does is, it changes these tags based on your image file name and your post URL.  This is a quick one click solution helps optimize all your images at once.

Tip 2. How to Optimize SEO for videos

Sitemaps are Google’s way of understanding and indexing your videos.  Check out this video for a bit more detail on this.

To get more tips on submission of setting up an mRSS feed so you can automatically submit sitemaps of your videos in the correct format, you should visit Google’s Video sitemaps page.

Tip 3: How to Optimize SEO for Audio

1. Text Transcripts: There are several ways to optimize for audio, but the best way is to have actual transcripts of your audio on your web page.   No matter how much you optimize, having plain text is always more Google friendly.  Consider recording in conjunction with speech to text software if it’s more efficient.
2. Descriptive Metadata: Changing your ID3 tags to give really descriptive titles and comments which are embedded within the file.  If you’re changing a few files you can simply right click the file in Windows, then go to properties, then summary.  From there you can edit all the attributes of the file.  If you’re handling this for multiple files you may want to use freeware like ID3 Tagit to help you along.

Do you optimize your content on your website of blog?  Tell us about it in the comments :)

Foursquare is a mobile application that is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide, and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things. Foursquare lets you "check in" to a place when you’re there, tell friends where you are, and track the history of where you’ve been–and who you’ve been there with. Foursquare challenges you to explore your city in new and fun ways by earning points, winning mayorships, and unlocking badges and specials for trying new places and revisiting old favoritesvia Foursquare help page

In Foursquare, Mayorships are special titles given to people who visit that place more than anyone else.  Here’s how to pick and plan your mayorship battles efficiently.

Why bother with mayorships?

• Makes it easier to grab the Super Mayor badge which requires 10 simultaneous mayorships.  (Trust me, you’ve got to play the game to appreciate collecting virtual badges)
• Bragging rights and points (As with any gaming network)
• Special mayor offers. Businesses are increasingly becoming foursquare aware, and as a result checkins and mayorships are becoming more and more incentivized in order to drive outlet loyalty (Some outlets give free coffee to mayors for example)

So how do you do well here?

WhenWillIBeMayor is free service which tracks where you’ve been on foursquare, and shows you how many checkins you have left to take over the mayorship of any particular venue.  This allows you to at least grab low handing fruit, or a least get a view on how difficult it is to grab the mayorship of your favorite hangout. 

This website also allows you to check stats on what type of places you visit, and to even monitor selected venues if you want to keep an eye on them.

There you have it, an easy way to do well, and pick your mayorship battles. If you’re never tried Foursquare, give it a go – it’s LOADS of fun :)

Bonus tip: if you aren’t the outgoing mayor grabbing type, you may want to try gomiso, the foursquare-like site for people who stay at home and watch TV (but still want to connect).

Security should always be a major concern when using the Internet or posting content online. If someone gets a hold of your personal information or breaks in to one of your online accounts, whether it is your email or a WordPress blog, then you are at risk of identity theft and hijacking of your accounts. Anyone who breaks in to your account could steal your private content, post spam, steal your WordPress account or use it to gather email addresses to send spam to.

Thankfully, there are ways of protecting yourself and your Internet accounts from malicious threats to your privacy and it is important that you take all of the necessary precautions to keep yourself safe online. You can secure your WordPress blog from unauthorized access by installing some of the plugins that are available for download at the WordPress plugin directory.

Most of these are easy to install and do not require any attention from you once they have been set up. They will prevent anyone who should not have access to your WordPress blog account from getting past the very basic password protection that is provided when you set up your account.

1. How to hide your login screen : Stealth Login

A simple, but effective way of preventing people from breaking in to your WordPress blog is to hide the login screen. You can do this by installing a plugin such as Stealth Login, which will create a specific URL or web address that you will use when logging in to your blog, or performing admin on your account. This means that there will be no link to login from the public pages of the blog. When you want to login, you will simply go to the custom URL that you have chosen and sign in as normal.

This plugin also protects your login page by preventing anyone from going directly to wp-login.php, which is the default setting for WordPress. This plugin can prevent anyone from gaining unauthorized access to your site, even if they are able to guess your password, by hiding the login page from them. This can also prevent programs called bots from getting in to the blog through the wp-login.php file.The new login URL and options can be controlled through the settings panel.

2. How to ban selected users : User Locker

The User Locker plugin can help to prevent anyone from making multiple attempts to access your blog. This can prevent them from cracking your password by trying hundreds and thousands of different guesses. When you sign up for a WordPress account there is no limit on the number of attempts that can be made to login to your blog.

This is a major security flaw as it opens the way for unauthorized access through what are known as dictionary and brute force attacks. These simply try every possible password until they gain access. The user locker plugin places a limit on the number of attempts at logging in which can be made. If this is exceeded, then the account will be locked and it will be necessary to request a new password or contact the WordPress Admin in order to get back into the blog. This means that only you can get into the account.

This plugin also allows you to block specific user accounts from accessing the blog, even with the right password. This means that you can ban anyone who should not be accessing the blog from getting into it.

3. How to prevent brute force hacking : Limit Login Attempts

A similar plugin is the Limit User Attempts login. This has the same effect as the User Locker plugin, placing a limit on the number of tries to login that are allowed. The Limit User Attempts Login can limit login attempts through both the normal login process and the use of special cookies. It blocks any Internet address from making further login attempts after a certain number of failed tries to access the blog.

4. How to prevent unauthorized automated access : SpiderSquash

The SpiderSquash plugin is designed to prevent automated computer programs such as spiders and bots from gaining access to your WordPress blog. It works using complicated statistical methods in order to recognize bots and automated access attempts. The SpiderSquash plugin has access to a global database which is built up by all SpiderSquash plugins around the world, and to which yours will contribute if it detects any new bots.

Your account will be protected against any bot that is listed in the database. Whenever a new bot is discovered by SpiderSquash, it is added to the database and you will become protected against it. This plugin needs to be uploaded and activated on WordPress.

5. How to Encrypt Your Logins : Login Encrypt

The Login Encrypt plugin prevents anyone from stealing your access details by hiding or encrypting your password when you enter it and send it to the WordPress site in order to login.

This is a similar idea to the one that protects your credit card details when they are sent as you shop online. The information is sent in a way that can only be read by someone who knows the encryption code that was used by the sender. If it is intercepted by someone who is trying to find out what your password is, they will be unable to read it.

6. How to make your login process more secure: Chap Secure Login

Another option for encrypting your password and making the process of logging in to WordPress more secure is the Chap Secure Login plugin. This plugin also encrypts your password, but it uses a different method of encryption, known as the chap protocol. It is an alternative to the Login Encrypt plugin. 

7. How to ensure stolen passwords only work with a single session: One-Type Password

As well as keeping transmission of your password secure, it is possible to protect your WordPress account by using the One-Time Password plugin to generate a new password every time you login. You may be familiar with this idea if you use a certain type of secure wireless network. Some people have a system that uses unique, automatically generated passwords to get access through their Wi-Fi network, rather than a set phrase.

The One-Time Password plugin prevents anyone from accessing your account if they manage to intercept or steal the password you are using since each password will only work for a single session. The minimum requirements for this plugin are WordPress 2.8 and PHP 5.0.0. IT should work with both Internet Explorer and Firefox, but there is no guarantee that it will be compatible with other browsers. This plugin is ideal for anyone who accesses their WordPress account through shared computers, particularly in insecure environments such as internet cafes, where there could be viruses that might record keystrokes and so be able to steal passwords. It conforms to the Internet Engineering Task Force RFC 2289, which means that it is reliable and well designed.

8. How to tell if your WordPress account has been hacked: WordPress Last Login

Protecting your WordPress account from unauthorized access is very important, but there is also a plugin that can tell you when your account has been compromised. The WordPress Last Login plugin will tell you who was the last person to sign in to your account and when they logged in. If the last log in was at a time when you do not remember logging in and if the IP address is different from the usual one, then it’s likely that someone else has been accessing your account. An IP address is like a phone number for your computer.

You can find out what your IP address is from various websites or by looking for it manually on your computer, but you can also just keep an eye on the IP addresses that have been used to access your WordPress account. You will soon begin to recognize the IP address or addresses that you use, and therefore you will be able to tell if there is any unusual activity. If there is unauthorized access, you should quickly change your password and add some new plugins to enhance your security. You should also check your computer for viruses.

What do you do to secure your WordPress experience?  Tell us in the comments :)

This post was guest-written by Christopher Shepard from who writes webs hosting tips and reviews at Webhost Gear

News on the web is fleeting, here today; gone today. Oh, there’s plenty of information throughout the day but tracking it all down can be time-consuming. And you know you’ll miss something.

Well, no worries. There are plenty of news portals – collections of RSS feeds on newsy topics. The king of the hill for RSS aggregation is PopURLs, but there are other alternatives as well.  Each is a little different. Each has a political slant (any publication does) and each has a unique set of features. 

So, to keep you in the loop throughout the day, check out the latest news on these news feed aggregation sites that will save you lots of time

1. How to get aggregated tech news

Tech news for the masses. There are tons of geeky websites that are slathered with technobabble. web20 delivers the tech news that affect all of us, not just the web demographic.  Information overload on Twitter? No problem, simply visit this website & you will get all the latest tech information from top tech websites all in one page.

So, web20 places its editorial focus on the tech world, but it’s the tech world that affects us all. Bookmark it.

2. How to get aggregated news on any search term

The site for news junkies, addictomatic is user friendly, offering a home page with broad categories including games, sports, fashion, gossip and a bunch more.

Unlike any other PopURL wannabes, addictomatic allows you to choose any news you want to browse by simply typing in your keyword in the search bar, sort of like Google, except it is for real time news. Moreover, you can personalize your own results by collecting all the search terms into one page.

Check out the “Hot Topics” at the top of the page so you can sound smart hanging around the water cooler that day at the office.

3. How to get aggregated news from the top social bookmarking sites

Feeds from digg, del.icio.us. news.google, newsvine, reddit, wired and tons of other sources, The Weblist doesn’t make any promises it can’t keep. No graphics. No editorial comment. You decide what’s worth reading from a broad selection of topics.

As the tagline says ‘What people are clicking on today’, this website mainly take the news off some of the Internet most popular websites, whether it’s video sites, social media website or blogs. 

The addition of social bookmarking services like digg gives The Weblist a “people’s portal” feel. If you like your news straight up and neat, you’ll want to stop by this site daily. There’s always something new.

4. How to get aggregated news optimized for your mobile phone

Good news, bad news scenario here. Individurls does offer a slew of feeds, that’s a fact. Bad news is you have to create an account to log in and see what’s behind the curtain.  Best part about Individurls is that it is optimized for your mobile phone. If you love your iPhone so much till you don’t want to use your lappy, Individurls is a neat service that gives you the latest news from several tech blogs in one slick & smooth page.

Standard technology, but the complete customization equips you to create your own news portal with all your favorite links in one place. Hey, if you want total customization, Individurls is what you’ve been looking for.

5. How to get aggregated news arranged to you in pictures

Create your own news grid with this slick site. There’s a hot topics link, a sources link (to add credibility), a customizable user grid and drop downs of menus on everything imaginable.

If you are a fan of hot news with fancy graphics then this website is for you. While it’s main focus is on world & local news, every headline is put together with screenshots of the news at Newser homepage, making the news look much more attractive than any other text-only websites.

The combination of fast news fast and the ability to customize your own grid based on recommendations from the editors at Newser makes this site a favorite among web browsers looking for good stuff to read.

6. How to get aggregated news from on any given topic

Alltop tries to be all things to all visitors, offering a smorgasbord of newsy tidbits. Alltop casts a wide net when it comes to news feeds, coving a wide range of topics from sources as varied as The New York Times to Wired – quite an editorial range.

At first glance it may seem similar to PopURLs, but if you look at it carefully then you will know it’s much more larger than Popurls. Whether it’s tech or sports, there’s nothing you can’t find at Alltop – The Wikipedia of real time news.  All the best sites on any topic already handpicked for your reading pleasure.

7. How to get aggregated productivity tips

A totally tricked-out site, WorkingTips is loaded with tips, suggestions, news, beautiful pix and a totally Zen view of goings on around the globe.

If you are sick of working overtime then this website will help solving your problem. Loaded with productivity tips from several quality blogs & sites, your performance in working field will be seriously boosted by tips & suggestions from these experts. 

8. How to share aggregated news and get some rev share

Slick graphics and pinpoint navigation makes Newsbeet one of the most visited aggregators for those who want their news now.

While creating your own Newsbeets page, you can implement your Adsense html code to earn ad revenues via clicks on your Newsbeets page. Besides that, your readers can even submit their own content & vote for their favorite stories.

Nothing gets better than earning some nice side income by promoting your own community, isn’t it?

Conclusion

So, whether you want the news handed to you on a silver platter, you want to create your own online news aggregation or you want to see what people are digging about, there are plenty of portals that’ll give you the latest scoop on what’s happening out there in the real world.

This was a guest post written by Edward Khoo who blogs about blogging & internet tips

1. SpaceTime 3D

SpaceTime 3D is a visual search engine which uses Coverflow, the amazing Apple interface which allows you to elegantly flip through snapshots of different websites.  It works for Google, Wikipedia, Youtube and image searches.

2. Cooliris

Cooliris started off as a simple Firefox extension but has grown to encompass the iPhone as well, and can now be integrated directly into other websites.  It uses an ‘endless-gallery’ approach where users can quickly scroll through a whole wall of images, news items and videos.

3. Middle Spot

Middlespot allows you to get a visual preview of search results which corresponds to a description in the search engine sidebar

4. Spezify

Spezify returns all types of media related to the topic from photos, to audio, to web pages, to twitter mentions, and more.  This is probably my favorite of the lot because it just fits everything together in a cohesive manner.

Do you use alternative search engines?  Tell us in the comments!

Travel websites can only tell you so much about a place.  To get the real deal, you’ve got to find a local and pick his  brain to find all the hidden gems a destination has to offer.  Here are 3 websites which make it much easier for you to tap into local knowledge.

1. Live@SG – The easiest way to ask about Singapore

This is a brand new initiative by the Singaporean government to get locals involved and help out foreign guests who have questions about Singapore.  Feature wise, Live@SG is a simple easy-to-use platform where you can search for answers quickly, read popular topics, and ask a question yourself if you don’t find what you’re looking for.

For easy reference, Live@SG splits up questions to different categories so you can better understand the country, what to do, and where to go.

It’s still very new, but because it’s backed by Singapore itself, you can be sure it’s community will grow steadily and the site will become increasingly useful.  They’re also running a contest to reward people who ask questions and participate on the site, so in the long run because the crowdsourcing is so locally focused, this will no doubt quickly become the best place to learn more about Singapore. 

So, whether you’re a curious tourist or a brand new expat, do give Live@SG a try if you want to know more about Singapore.

2. 43places – Where you share your wanderlust

43places is a casual site where people can share their travel experiences, mark where they have been, and share tips with fellow travelers.  If you’ve been to a particular location (or live there), you can also sign up to answer questions about a country.

3. Travellr – Q&A for the inquisitive tourist

Travellr is an interesting service which routes your question to a relevant local person in real time.  By doing this, it compensates for the size of it’s small community by giving speedier answers. 

Disclosure: This post was sponsored by Live@SG.  Views expressed are my strictly my own, and opinions were not dictated by the sponsor.

Twitter spam can be quite a problem when you tend to follow people back out of courtesy.  There are literally tons of bots and fake accounts out there who are merely interested in selling you dodgy pharmaceutical goods, and questionable MLM schemes.  Here are the top 10 free tools for dealing with Twitter Spam. 

1. How to sniff out potential spammers

TwitBlock is a web app which scans your entire twitter base and provides ‘spam ratings’ to each follower and sorts them according to accounts which are most likely spam.  You can then easily check on their account & block them right away they are spammers. 

2. How to quickly delete DMs from spammers

Spammers have a terrible tendency to either send your auto-DMs or flood your DM inbox.  What you can do to combat this, is to use DM Deleter, a simple bookmarklet and quickly remove all DMs from any given user.

3. How to automatically grade your twitter followers

It’s often too troublesome to analyze each and every follower to determine if they are legit.  TweetBlocker is a tool which grades all your followers based on likelyhood of spam so you can quickly zoom down to certain lower grades (eg. F grade followers) and block them all at once.

4. How to detect and unfollow inactive accounts

Technically this isn’t spam, but inactive followers just adds to clutter.  If they’re not going to say anything on Twitter, why bother following them?  UnTweeps helps you list down all the accounts which hasn’t tweeted recently (you can define this range), and allows you to instantly unfollow them.

5. How to not get spam – a preventive measure

Twit-etiquette be damned, if you don’t know the person, you shouldn’t be obliged to follow them back.  This unwritten common courtesy rule of following someone back made sense back in the day when Twitter was small and relatively pure.  Now, this behavior just makes you an easy target for spammers who just want to you mutually follow each other to push products on you.

6. How to analyze your followers properly

If you’re going to report someone as a spammer on twitter, you may at least want to check their profile out first. Tweetpi Geeky Cleanup has one of the most comprehensive follower stats I’ve ever seen.  From how many replies a user has sent (to measure interaction), to the links tweeted ratio (to avoid ramblers), to the number of times they were retweeted by others(to measure credibility), you really get a full suite of info at your disposal.

7. How to manage the people you’re following

While some services focus on analyzing follwers, Twerpscan analyzes both followers and people you’re following and allows you to bulk block and unfollow people you think are spammers based on their usage patterns.

8. How to search Twitter and get clean results

The problem with searching for popular twitter topics is that spammers also know what the popular topics are, and tend to use their hashtags in their tweets just for the sake of showing up in other people’s searches. 

You can get cleaner results by using Clean Tweets, a Firefox extension which eliminates twitter search results from accounts less than 24 hours old, those with have several hashtags, and allows you to ban people altogether from search results.

9. How to monitor Twitter topics without being overwhelmed by spam

Tidytweet is a twitter search and feed monitoring service which works a lot like Clean Tweets, but is much more flexible.  It allows you to create customized RSS searches, and allows you to to automatically remove all retweets, @replies, foreign language tweets, tweets from new accounts, and tweets with multi-hastags.

10. How to report spam to twitter

This is perhaps one of the most direct ways to deal with spam.  You can either report a spammer by going to his profile and clicking ‘report as spammer’ on the right sidebar, or you can also send a DM to the @spam twitter account and it will help you take care of things.  This method works best when you’re reporting people on an adhoc basis because most of the tools above involve bulk actions.

How do you deal with Twit-spam?  Tell us in the comments :)

In conjunction with Blog Action Day, here are 3 tech-savvy ways to help with one of the most serious issues of our generation – Climate Change.

1. How to have fun while saving the world

Carbon Rally is a eco-community where people can discover and commit to small, positive actions over time. People on the site could propose great ideas for saving energy and reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and the community would choose the best ideas to address climate change to pursue as a team.

The collective impacts are tracked, and it can show the power of many people getting the job done together.  You can ‘compete’ with friends or people from around the world to take up these small challenges and see how you can make a difference.

2. How to easily find green products

Ecoseek is a search engine for eco friendly and green products. Their mission is to connect consumers with eco-friendly products, manufacturers and local earth-conscious retailers.  Here you’ll find everything from baby products to furniture. 

All items listed are tagged to show how it’s eco friendly.  For example, you’ll be able to gauge whether it’s recycled, manufactured in a sustainable process, organic etc.  All so it’s much easier for you can make an environmentally conscious purchase.

3. How to easily find carpool buddies on facebook

Carpool is a facebook app which allows you to cut down your carbon emissions by sharing rides.  It’s quite robust in functionality and allows you to:

• view rides in your network
• search them
• manage your frequent locations using Google Maps
• determine how far a detour you need to drive to pick someone up
• Track all the rides you’ve shared, and the miles you’ve traveled and calculate your reduction in CO2 emissions

Always a useful green app if you want to help cut down your carbon footprint when you travel.

Remember, green vanity apps are important, but they don’t mean anything until you do something about it.  Go out, and change the world, and address climate change!

Are you participating in Blog Action Day?  Tell us your blog post in the comments!

Google, in its venture to expand its empire beyond search has a project that allows users to try experimental applications known as Google Labs. This revolutionary, hi-tech virtual playground for exploratory users feature some of the most creative and useful applications around. Here are some of my personal Google Lab favorites.

1. How to find out what people are searching for

The Google Trends tool, with its recent enhancements has been developed to provide an insight into extensive search patterns of what people are presently searching for, such as what they’ve searched for in the past. The interface of this Google Labs tool is exceptionally simple, and enables you to compare up to five multiple search terms.

In today’s fast paced and changing world this tool may be valuable for advertisers and search engine optimizers looking for ways to judge how best to position their ads and websites, and to track buzz in general.

2. How to find similar images

Google Similar Images is an experimental service consists of the ability to upload an image and then search for similarities. Now this is truly something that can appeal to users who may not quite fancy searching up for things the conventional way using keywords, as sometimes using keywords can be a little tedious when many other links unrelated to what you are searching for pop up.

What makes this Google Labs app cool is you can just click on the link of an image you like and it narrows down the image search results to exactly what you’re looking for. So for those in the creative industry like arts, designs or even those who just want to have fun with images, this may stand out as an awesome search tool.

3. How to track a news topic over time

Google News Timeline is a handy research tool for online scribes. It presents Google news information in a graphical and chronological timeline. This timeline incorporates a number of different sources, including new and archived news, blog posts, and media.

It is a great search and sorting tool that gives you the ability to sort results by day, week, month, year or even decade.  The snapshot of this Google Labs tool is constructive and gives one the access to easily see how a story or event has been progressing in the news.

4. How to create a set of items from a few examples

We often use keywords on typical search engines, so how does Google Sets differentiate itself from the rest of the crowd? Well, instead of looking for related links, the tool focuses on related words. It takes your initial keywords and suggests others that are related in meaning.

If you are looking for synonyms or new alternatives in campaigns, Google Sets is a brilliant tool that will bring much success and difference.

5. How to search for audio using Android

With Android appearing on the scene as Google’s new mobile platform, it was inevitable that Google Labs would try to break ground on it. Its prototype software is Google Listen. It’s fundamentally a way of searching and organizing pod casts and other online audio content.

If you happen to be a music junkie who owns an Android handset, you can look up for your favorite shows and stream it immediately or add it to your listening queue for later utilization.

6. How to turn your Android phone into a Sky Map

“Awesome” is an understatement for this amazing application. You don’t need to be an astrologer to download this application and have some serious fun. What’s so great about this tool? It’s a star map that uses Android’s GPS capabilities to display planets, constellations and other celestial objects in an area of the sky.

Once you have this application installed on your Android hand phone, just face the phone towards the sky and be amazed by the mesmerizing display on your screen. With Sky Map, the sky is not the limit anymore.

7. How to Index the Audio WITHIN Video Files

I used to see stuff like this on CSI and always wondered if it was possible to get my hands on it. After seeing Google Labs’ revolutionary product – Google Audio Indexing, I guess its close enough. Google has started indexing what is being spoken in its video and YouTube clips to enhance search results for video.

Using speech recognition technology to convert audio into words, they are then indexed into Google search so that you can look for a particular video clip by merely entering keywords into the search engine.

8. How to Turn Your Android Phone in to a Places Directory

Places Directory is a handy tool that runs on the Android platform and is Google’s version of a help mobile. If you are on the road and want to know what’s hot and what’s not, download this application on your Android phone and follow the link. Based on your phone’s current location you will be able to obtain a directory of nearby places.

You can then browse through the various categories to look for hotels, banks, shops, etc, see their distance from you and even pull up their locations on Google Maps. For backpackers and active travelers or even for those who just hate to stop and ask for directions, this may be the application for you.

9. How to Track Routes on Your Android Phone

If you love the outdoors, then this is one Google Labs application you might want to try. It pretty much depends on how it works for you. My Tracks is an application that is available to Android users everywhere. It empowers users by recording precise route using GPS tracks and visualizing live statistics while you are running, biking or hiking.

These include aspects such as speed, distance and elevation, essential pivotal information to any outdoor activity. Once you are done, just stop the recording and you can quickly and easily review your route map, elevation, profile, and workout stats.

This post was written by Aaron Pek.  Join our writing crew to share your knowledge too!

Do you use Google labs, or any of the apps above?  Tell us about it in the comments!

URL shorteners have really taken off in recently, largely due to Twitter’s continued growth.  Although services like TinyURL have been around for years, never has there been so much demand to cut down the number of characters used in a single message. 

There are literally hundreds of URL shortening tools around, but here are 11 of the most unique twists to the service.

1. How to combine multiple links into a single short URL

MultiURL is a free service which allows you to combine multiple links into one short link that you can quickly and easily share with your friends.  It makes the process of sharing multiple links at once much easier and faster. 

Depending on your choice, when you click through on a MultiURL link, you can either view a summary of all the links in one page, or navigate through all the links using a web-based toolbar.

2. How to warn people that your Short URL is NSFW

Ever clicked a link and felt embarrassed with the content in front of your co-workers?  Ever caught unaware because the funny link your friend sent was a little beyond funny?  If for some reason you may need to send stuff like this to others, it make be good practice to use NSFW.in. 

This free service gives a warning that the link may be (Not Safe For Work) NSFW.  Spare your friends and colleagues the awkward moments.

3. How to shorten URLs and post to StumbleUpon at the same time

Su.Pr is StumbleUpon’s new URL shortening service which is packed with great features.  Having something posted to StumbleUpon ensures it will be exposed to a good number of people within the network.  What sets it apart though is it’s scheduling feature which helps you identify the optimal times to post (highest traffic potential) and schedule as many posts as you like — then post in one-click to Twitter & Facebook. 

It also has a very powerful tracking suite to view your traffic, clicks, referrers, Stumbles, and retweets stemming from your shortened URL, all in 1 place.  This free service is currently in lic beta but you can follow their Twitter account for updates and and access codes to use the service.

4. How to make a URL extra long

Sick of short URLs?  Buck the trend with HugeURL.  This service takes a normal URL and turns it into an extremely long URL (which works perfectly fine).  No, there’s no good reason I can think of for this except maybe to freak people out or perhaps to win a bet on who can come up with the longest URL for a web page – but it’s all in good fun :)

5. How to quickly snip URLs on Windows Mobile

ceSnipURL is a little Windows Mobile utility which allows you to shorten URL’s to make them more friendly for use in twitter and sms messages or mobile email.  Rather than go through a more cumbersome web based short URL service on your mobile, this app makes for a much snappier way to get the job done.

6. How to shorten URLs and give extra assurance of safety

Shuurl goes the extra mile in giving viewers of your short URL assurance of safety.  Not only does it tell you where the shortened URL points to, it provides a thumbnail preview of actual link and a safety rating from the ‘Web Of Trust’ so you know what site you’re about to visit is definitely safe.

7. How to track other people’s Short URL stats

More than a one-off URL shortening tool, bit.ly is a fully fledged service which helps you track and understand how widespread links become and how many clickthroughs were obtained, and their conversations on Twitter and Friendfeed.  Stats are not limited to your own links, and you can check any URL out there.  All this and the fact that you’re able to shorten and post directly to Facebook and Twitter makes this one heck of a powerful tool.

8. How to track online marketing campaigns through short URLs

Unlike bit.ly where all the stats are public, Cli.gs stats are private and incredibly comprehensive. 

Cli.gs also tracks in real time of who tweets your link, who shares it on Friendfeed, who links to it, who blogs about it, who writes a blog comment about it, and more. Not just that, Cligs does that for the destination URL too! All in one handy interface.  Finally, it allows you to share different links on different services like Twitter, Facebook, and email and track the traffic and watch it spread across services.

9. How to setup your own URL TinyURL Like Redirection Service in 2 Minutes

The only problem with URL shortening services is that most of them don’t have a solid business model yet so if they decide to shut shop in future, all your existing short links will become broken or point to non-existent 404 pages.

To prevent yourself from running into such a situation, you can consider setting up your own URL shortening service that will run on your own domain (or web server) and the short URLs will therefore resolve throughout the lifespan of your site.  If you’re interested, check out the tutorial here.

10. How to get a really,really short URL

Tinyarro.ws is a free service which uses unicode and thus makes it possible for them to have many more combinations of characters, and hence make the shortest ever tiny URLs.

11. How to find out where your short URL points to

‘Long URL Please’ doesn’t really shorten your URLs.  In fact, it does pretty much the opposite.  It shows you the original URL of any shortened URL on your screen so you can reduce uncertainty when clicking on links you’re not sure about.  This is really a good safety tool especially before visiting shortened links from an unknown source. 

It works with most of the most popular URL shorteners (72 of them at last count), and is available both as a firefox extension and as a bookmarklet.

Do you use URL shortening tools?  Tell us more in the comments!

Twitter is an incredible communication tool which can also be somewhat daunting if you’re not used to a constant stream of information flow.  Here are several ways to make better sense of the Twitter so you’ll enjoy your experience more.

1. How to properly understand #hashtags on Twitter

Ever find yourself looking at Twitter and wondering what all this talk about #motrinmoms means?  or searching Flickr and not understanding why someone would tag their photo #ip4?  Hashtags can be notoriously difficult to keep track of, so Tagalus is a free service which lets users define tags so that others can understand what they’re talking about. 

Other users can even vote on definitions and decide which best describes the given tag.  Tagalus also has a bookmarklet feature so you can lookup hashtags with a single click.

2. How to filter topics in real time on Twitter

Twitter is essentially a sea of conversations, so tracking certain keywords can be very useful especially if you’re trying to find out what people are saying about your company or product.  One of my favorite tools to do this is Monniter. 

This is a free service which lets you track multiple keywords in multiple columns, and it streams in any mention of them in real time.  Which means you can essentially set up a tracker for you and your competition in a jiffy.  If you’re looking at tracking tools, you can also try twendz, and twitterfall.

3. How to find the most popular links on Twitter

If you’re a fan of PopURLs which lists the most popular content on the web, then you’ll certainly enjoy TwitURLs which is essentially all the most popular links, pictures and videos being shared on Twitter and updated every minute – which stays true to Twitter’s real-time nature.

4. How to group your contacts in Twitter

Once you start following a large number of people, conversations come in thick and fast, and it can be overwhelming if you try to keep up. 

One way to get around this is to use a Twitter client like Tweetdeck, where you can group your contacts up in a more organized manner.  For example, you can have all your ex-classmates in one column, and colleagues in another – that way it’s much easier to keep track of certain groups of people.

5. How to understand how much time you’re spending on Twitter

Want to know how much time you’re spending (sorry – investing), on Twitter?  Tweetstats is the perfect tool for analyzing usage patterns to see how you actually go about Tweeting information, how often you do it, when you do it, and what you tend to tweet about.  Another useful stats engine to consider is TwitterAnalyzer. 

6. How to find relevant people to follow on Twitter

Finding and following people outside your usual social circle can be an interesting way to branch out and meet new people.  This however is most useful when you’re connecting to people who have similar or relevant interests to you. 

My favorite is Mr.Tweet where it analyses your profile and helps your discover relevant people to follow.  Other Twitter directories like JustTweetIt, and WeFollow are also excellent ways to find people who match you to follow.

7. How to get Twitter basics right

If you’re completely new to Twitter, this PCMag article on the ‘Top 10 Twitter Tips for Beginners’ is an absolute must read.  This covers all the basics of how to start using Twitter effectively.  This article covers everything from retweeting to mobile tweeting. 

If you’re interested in learning how to build followers, you can always try these tips from Guy Kawasaki of Alltop.com and Kevin Rose of Digg.com.  If you need a twitter dictionary to help you with more twitter terms, try twittionary.

Hope those tips were helpful, and do follow me @friedbeef :)

How often do you tweet, and what do you Tweet about?  Tell us in the comments!

Online video streaming has been the rage for some time now – and we can view countless videos through sites like YouTube and Metacafe – but what happens if you find a video you really like and would like to store it for offline viewing or to watch it on a mobile device?  Unfortunately, we are limited only to streaming as there is no option to download the videos on YouTube. Well, fret not as we have at our disposal easy-to-use tools that make downloading such videos possible.

1.  How to Download Videos with One Click

KeepVid.com is a web-based video downloader. Perfect for those who are on the go or do not wish to install additional applications on their computer, KeepVid oozes simplicity and idiot-proof video downloading. To download YouTube videos, simply copy the URL of the YouTube video page you wish to download, and paste it in the Keepvid Textbox. A link will then appear which allows you to save the .flv video file to your computer! As an added bonus, KeepVid can also download videos from several other video streaming services such as Metacafe.  It also comes with a bookmarklet so you can download any video you’re watching with one click.

2. How to Download Videos Directly from the URL Box

Another funky and ingenious method to download videos from YouTube is to add a kiss to the video you wish to download, literally! How would you do that? Simple, just add the word ‘kiss’ in front of the ‘youtube’ word in the URL and press enter. You will then be brought to the download page with a link to the .flv video. For example, say we want to download this Super Bowl video. The original URL would be “http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jxyYwrKIKQ”. Now just add a kiss, and make it “http://www.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=9jxyYwrKIKQ” for the download. Simple as that! Java is required for this website to work, though.

3. How to Convert .flv Videos On The Fly

Now this is a tool you won’t want to miss! Vixy.net is both a web-based YouTube video downloader and converter! While many popular media players such as Windows Media Player and Quicktime aren’t capable of playing back .flv extensions (which YouTube videos are streamed in), Vixy.net solves those problems by offering a free conversion service along with any download. After entering the URL of the desired video, just choose the file type you wish to convert into (there is AVI, 3GP, and MOV, among others). This is a truly convenient way of making YouTube videos more accessible to other media players.

4. Where to Find YouTube Download Software

For those who fancy having gadgets and utilities lying around their computer desktops, YouTube Downloader is the perfect tool! As a free download from Download.com, this nifty little program can easily download YouTube videos – just copy and paste the video URL and press the button! Its additional feature includes a built-in video converter to convert downloaded .flv files into other more convenient formats.

5. Where to Find an Awesome Firefox Plugin to Download Videos

Firefox fans rejoice! Now there is a quick and convenient way to extract your favorite YouTube videos using this add-on. Besides YouTube, this plug-in supports other video streaming sites including Metacafe, Google Videos and Dailymotion, among others. Just surf like normal and when DownloadHelper detects a downloadable object, its icon will animate, allowing you to download the streaming video.

Would you download a youtube video?  Tell us in the comments!

This guest post was written by Chan HH.  If you’d like to write for Friedbeef’s Tech, just drop me a line.

Internet users in the U.S. watched 12.7 billion online videos in November, an increase of 34 percent versus a year ago.  With that many videos available for viewing, it’s no surprise that search is becoming increasingly important.  Here are 7 different free ways to search and find the most relevant videos.

1. The best way to search YouTube with thumbnails

Inspired by compfight the Flickr search engine (which I love),  Wibe7.tv is a mosaic based search which displays a huge number of thumbnails on screen so you can do a quick visual search.  If you need more information, just hover your cursor over an image, and a description will appear. 

2. How to use freeware to speed up your searches

With Ashampoo Clipfinder, you can find and immediately download videos from YouTube, Veoh, Google Video, sevenload, Dailymotion, MySpace, MyVideo, ClipFish, and many more at the click of a mouse. 

3. How to search and avoid fake videos

Do a search for any popular subject and you may find yourself baited by spammers or pranksters who litter online video sites with fake videos.  One way to weed them out when you do a search is to use Videosurf.  What this gives you is a set of time-series thumbnails for the search results, so you can peer within the videos and can decide whether or not to load up the video.

4. How to search multiple sites at once

Many sites crawl and search multiple video sites but few do it as well as Purevideo.  This service goes beyond traditional video sites and crawls practically everything which has a video.  Arranged and categorized well, this is a great stop if you want to find videos.

5. How to add YouTube Search directly to Firefox

Firefox comes with a one-click solution where if you look at the search box at the top right of your screen, and see a glowing arrow, you can add search engines to the list.  So all you need to do it go to YouTube.com, and you’ll be able to click on the arrow and add YouTube video search.  From then on, you’ll be able to search within YouTube from the Firefox search box.

6. The quick and dirty way to search YouTube

YouTube Fastsearch is a homebrew webpage which uses a script to search and retrieve YouTube pages.  It works better than the original YouTube search engine for two reasons.  One, you can mouse over any video, and it will quick preview by showing you images within the video (this is another great way to avoid fake videos).  Two, you can watch the videos directly from the search page saving you the bandwidth of having to load up a fresh page every time you want to see another video. 

7. The coolest way to search YouTube

Cooliris has got to be the sexiest most elegant way to search YouTube.  Available for Firefox, IE7, Safari, it’s hard for me to do justice to the interface by describing it in text, so here’s a video of it in action :)

How do you search for videos online?  Tell us in the comments!

It’s safe to say that Pandora and Last.fm has changed the face of Internet radio completely by doing such a good job of matching song playlists to users that it’s almost scary :)  Having said that, there’s always going to be a place for traditional Internet Radio stations because of their personality.  After all, many of us still enjoy tuning into a radio station every once in a while even though we’ve got our iPod loaded up.

The issue then lies in discovery, because of the sheer scale of Internet Radio where there are estimated to be at least 100,000 Internet Radio Stations streaming worldwide!  So how do you quickly pick out a station that you’ll probably like?  One Llama is a free service which allows you to discover Internet Radio Stations, by understanding what you like, then recommending relevant stations to you.

How One Llama understands your music tastes

By allowing you to search for artists or tracks, and showing you which stations have played them recently, it makes initial guesses as to what you may like.  If you choose to register for the service (you don’t have to – and registration is free anyway), One Llama will analyze the tracks you listen to online, and constantly refine its recommendations to continuously fine-tune its recommendations to you. 

How One Llama Makes its recommendations

Radio One Llama is constantly updating its database so that it "knows" the characteristics of each of over 30,000 stations, including their entire playlists.  It crawls Internet Radio stations and analyzes the data for patterns of similarity by artist, track and genre. They also have an accurate measure of what is being played when and where, and how often – so that users can search by location and popularity.  By matching what they know about the available music, and what you like – One Llama manages to come up with pretty good recommendations.

The Beef

Overall, this is a pretty useful service – and always useful to have up your sleeves in case your workplace bans Pandora and Last.fm :) .

Do you listen to streaming music online?  Tell us in the comments!

Ever wonder if a particular website was really down, or if it was a bad Internet connection which was keeping you out?

downforeveryoneorjustme.com is an extremely simple free web service which tells you if the site is down from their end as well.  Just type in the web site’s name, press, a button – and presto – No more wondering if the rest of the world has the same problem as you :)