A long time ago, when Firefox was still the blue-eyed boy of the web browser industry RedFly released an add-on that enabled you to see Google search result pages (SERP) with respect to different countries. It instantly became popular because it really made it easy for online marketers and web designers by letting them see Google search result pages (SERP) from different countries all with a click of a button.

Google Global  not only made it easy to see how search pages looked in different countries but it also let you customize it to particular country, city, IP address.

It not only gives you a high-level overview of how your websites performs in other countries but also lets you see how your website looks from your clients point-of-view.

Suppose, you’re based in San Franscisco and you have an SEO/PPC client based in Seattle, Washington you can now check how the results look as if you were sitting there with them!

Download Google Global extension

Let me show you how the extension looks and works -

1. First, search for any term on Google and then click on the Google Global extension on the task bar. Here we search for the keyword “movie reviews“. The page shown is the usual Google.com (US) result page.

2. Choose a country from which you want to see the search engine result pages (SERP)

3. There is no number 3! Its that simple!

Tips for Power Users -

1. Click on the Google Global extension >> Show Options…

2. You can also enable/disable personalized Google results

3. Select default SERP language

4. One of the best feature is you can also Turn On AdTest. When you turn AdTest on you won’t generate impressions for your AdWords ads! This is amazing if you’re a PPC agency because you don’t have to login into AdWords for the tool.

5. You can also add countries at your will which provides more flexibility without remembering the country-level TLD

It’s one of the most useful Chrome extensions if you’re a blogger, SEO/PPC expert or even a web designer! So go download this awesome extension from my friends at RedFly – they’re great at what they do.

Nokia N8

Nokia announced the launch of Nokia N8 during the last week of April. The world leader in the mobile phone market promised a lot and created too much expectations for people regarding the N8 which would become another crown jewel, just like its predecessors N97. If you’re too excited to get your hands upon Nokia N8 then you’ve have to wait until the 3rd quarter of 2010.

Pros

• Flash enabled
• 12MP Carl-Zeiss auto-focus camera with a large sensor
• Real video format
• 720p HD video playback
• HMID card interface to TV
• Dolby Digital sound
• Xenon flash
• 4000 x 3000 image resolution for crispier and sharper images
• Aluminium body

Cons

• Doesn’t offer anything new and innovative except the powerful camera
• Won’t be available until the 3rd quarter! (A very bad strategy to create a hype around a product that dosn’t exist!)
• Zoom : 2x for images , 3x for videos
• Touchscreen without QWERTY – typing long messages will be a nightmare
• Will be available in very few countries, initially!

Price

The N8 is priced at 370 euros which translates to approx Rs. 21500 in India before taxes! The pricing really confuses the user as to which phone among the N8 and its sibling N97 should be purchased as there isn’t much price difference between the 2 phones! Also, choosing a QWERTY phone in favor of a fancy new toy is very difficult given the price range for both is almost the same.

But as the market has shown N97 wasn’t as glaring a success as Nokia had anticipated. Some even called the N97 an iPhone killer!

While it certanly is difficult for any phone company let alone Nokia to shatter Apple iPhone dominance in the smartphone market given the depth and breadth of the app store.

Comparison of the Apple iPhone and Nokia N8

Whenever any new smartphone enters the market people start comparing it with Apple’s iPhone which is only natural given that the iPhone has become THE gold standard among smartphones.

I find it very difficult to compare N8 and the iPhone because its no Apple to Apple comparison (excuse the pun)!

Some of the hard hitting features to compare that come are -

Flash-support – It’s what made the iPhone notorious. There was a whole fiasco going over in the Flash community over Steve Job’s decision to stop supporting Adobe Flash. Adobe then spent millions in publicity to persuade Apple to take back its decision and start supporting flash again! Well the rest is history…he bottomline is Nokia N8 supports Flash.

Camera – The N8 beat iPhone (or ANY other phone in the market) over its 12MP Carl-Zeiss camera. The iPhone pales in comparison with a measly 5MP! If you’re photographically inclined then the N8 is the phone you must consider getting.

Multitasking – Both the iPhone and N8 support multitasking. Interesting thing to note is that both started supporting multitasking with the new Operating Systems introduced by both the phone giants – iPhone OS 4 started supporting it now and also Nokia’s Symbian^3 also introduced multitasking for N8.

I’d like to ask DailyPandora’s readers to share more comparisons between the 2 phones in the comment box below.

Some lessons for Nokia

Don’t try to fill new wine in old bottles – If you compare Nokia N8 with N97 and X6 you’ll come to realize that all these phone have very similar (if not similar!) feature with regards to -

• Display Size
• Dimensions
• Weight
• Video format support

Should I buy the iPhone or the N8?  ( tips for new buyers )

Both phones are great in and among themselves but when it comes to making a choice between the 2 its a difficult stance to take!

If you’re using a smartphone for the 1st time then an iPhone is definitely a better option. Many iPhone users, majority of them infact, suggest that it’s extremely difficult to switch to another smartphone after using an iPhone. Apple fanboys!

More serious users and reviewers chime that Nokia N8 might be a glaring improvement over the N97 (which was an overall failure) with its memory management, 2D and 3D graphics rendering, more sensitive capacitive multi-touch screen and the grand daddy of all camera phone a 12MP, HD supported Carl-Zeiss optical camera!

Some Lessons for Nokia

• Differentiate the brand – Can you tell me 1 peculiar similarity between Microsoft and Nokia? No It’s NOT software! Both great companies don’t know how to differentiate brands. With Microsoft it was MSN, Live and Passport all at the same time which led to confusion among users. With Nokia, it is the series and obscure, meaningless numbers – N-series, then E-series, etc Which leads to undue confusion and provides little insight to customers when making a decision to purchase phones!
• Popularize Publisize your services – Did you know Nokia provides unlimited photo storage, complete phone backup and sync, offline maps and apps through its integrated service platform Ovi? If you do then kudos to you! That’s because not many Nokia users aren’t aware of the existence of these amazing services!
• Instead of using same old features Nokia should focus on developing its marketplace by providing some sort of incentives for app developers.

I’d personally prefer iPhone although if Nokia’s interested in changing my mind I’d be more than happy to give my address

Edited: Corrected spelling mistakes, thanks to the 1st commenter of this post!

The pace at which Facebook has penetrated the social media landscape is simply astonishing. From a niche college social network to one of the most popular destinations of the web, Facebook has influenced the very fabric of the web.

First it was the like button which gave Facebook too much data on which websites people visit, the behavioral data on how people share content across the world wide web and how that data blends into Facebook’s social graph and demographics.

From the past few days Facebook is constantly advertising an alleged Yahoo! Answers competitor below its advertising sidebar titled – “Get a Facebook Sneak Peek” which asks the user to apply as a beta tester for upcoming Facebook products.

After clicking through the link you’re taken to page which states that Facebook is in a process to launch a brand new product which will be as exciting as Facebook photos and Facebook events. In case you didn’t know, Facebook is the world’s largest photo sharing website (storing more than 15 billion photos) ahead of Flickr (hosting about 4 billion images).

Facebook is directly taking an aim on Yahoo! Answers which is a massive community-driven, user-generated Q&A (question and answer) content site. It is also one of the most successful product in Yahoo! arsenal.

I think opening a Q&A site is very intelligent from Facebook’s perspective given that there are more than 400 million active users of which 50% log in to Facebook everyday! Also, the user engagement of Facebook is greater than any other site on the web.

To get things started Facebook has made it mandatory for users “to submit 3 great sample question and answers” and that they must be provocative. These “mandatory requirements” will surely help Facebook get the initial surge of content that is required to make any user-driven content site successful.

Once the product is launched, Facebook will become a stronger destination with increased time spent onsite, increased number of pageviews and more content to place relevant social ads on. Which ultimately means more money for Facebook!

P.S: Ironically, Yahoo! Answers recently celebrated its 10 millionth answer! I wonder if they could continue celebrating like this once Facebook launches its not-so-secret Q&A product!

Email services are NOT storage!

[Translate]

Before the good old days of Gmail, Yahoo! mail provided a whopping 4 MB of storage. Although 1 GB looked too much back then I’ve been running out of my Gmail storage space at an alarming rate. I’ve deleted a lot of old emails to keep my inbox storage from getting full. Most of the storage in my inbox was eaten by attachments like – photos (yes, I guess email is the largest photo sharing service!), PDF’s, presentations, spreadsheets, Wordpress backups and a lot more!

My Gmail inbox is approaching 80% of its capacity!

While there are a lot of services that let you backup files and share them with your friends without clogging their inbox with huge files that quickly consumes their storage space, not many of them are reliable! Remember, most of the corporate email services still have limited email inbox storage so sending even small files can over time fill it with less-important stuff.

BoltFile – share your files quickly, safely and securely!

I’ve been searching for a service which would let me share files with my family, friends and other contacts quickly and reliably. One service that I’ve really liked is BoltFile not only because of its intuitive dashboard but also because of the level of security, ease-of-use , and reliability it provides.

Sending a file with BoltFile is like sending email! click to enlarge

Charlie Simpson raised more than £86,000 for Haiti

If you’re in the loop you must be aware of the scale of disaster Haiti is in right now following the magnitude 7 earthquake that killed almost 100K 150K people.

But at times like these when hopes seem to shatter a kid named Charlie who is no more than 7 has raised about £86,000+ which is an astounding amount. Charlie originally intended to raise £500 but he is now 17221% (at the time of writing) ahead of his initial goal.

Charlie lives in London, UK. When he saw the pictures of the earthquake survivors in Haiti he told his parents that he’d like to organize a fund-raising event in the form of a bike-a-thon in his local park in London. The amount was collected for UNICEF and it has been nothing but amazing given that Charlie Simpson is no celebrity nor is he related to any.

Charlie covered 5 miles (8 kms) by cycling in South Park in Fulham with his dad and a friend.

The coverage of the event by BBC gave such a boost to his effort that people from all over the world are showering cheers by giving donations and spreading the word.

By accomplishing this Herculean task Charlies has created a record of donations collected in a single day.

The only inference I can get from this event is that the smallest of changes can make a big impact. Every effort counts!

US Sen. Scott Brown

Sen Scott Brown made headlines the world over when he won the seat which was predominantly Democratic seat for the past 47 years!

If you asked Sen Scott Brown about his success he’d surely give it all to his voters which he should but one of the reasons he was able to pull a majority win over the seat was his clever suse of the internet.

It is no brainer how important social media and other creative forms of reaching people have become lately. The Obama win certainly underlined the importance. Youtube. Flickr. Twitter. Google ads. He used them all to create an awareness a movement which ultimately lead to his win.

Scott Brown used similar tactics to reach his voter using creative, well-crafted. geographically targeted Google ads to enroll volunteers, collect donations and get votes.

Because Google offers an array of sophisticated tools to its advertisers – be it selecting audience within a certain geographical range by zip code or creating separate messages based on demographics and not to forget the ability to track performace of these campaigns the investment on these campaigns was a hit right from the start.

Google’s Mr Panger said that if you were located in Massachusetts you’d see a Scott Brown ad all the time on sites that were a part of Google’s content network. Of course, you could only see those ads if you were located in Massachusetts as they were geographically targeted to his voters location.

I am glad that public figures have started embracing the tools of technology to reach out the people. If only they realize the importance of staying in touch with these tools America would have better, quicker and less complex policies and also satisfied people.

via WSJ

BloggersUnite for Haiti

Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere has been hit by a scale 7 earthquake. Authorities predict the casualties might well be in the north of 50,000.  The country has had a harsh and unstable history. Most people in Haiti live on less than $2/day and unemployment is rampant.

At such an unfortunate time, it is our moral duty to help those in need. Every little bit helps no matter how small. And you don’t even have to do anything special like going there for volunteering you can provide help by making donations to NGO and other volunteering organizations.

If that is not possible you can also do your bit by spreading the word using your social presence like Facebook, Twitter, social bookmarking, blogging and even a combination of these. It is at such times that we as humans must unite and what better platform than social media?

Please email, tweet, fb your friends and request them to come forward for help.

Here are some of the ways that you can provide your help in the form of donations -

- The first organization that comes to mind when any calamity is encountered is The Red Cross. You can make financial donations to The Red Cross International Relief Fund by calling 1-800-RED-CROSS or online at http://www.redcross.org

- You can also text “HAITI” to “90999″ and it will make a donation of $10 to the American Red Cross to help with the relief efforts. It’ll be deducted from your mobile’s prepaid balance or will be added to your next bil if you’re on a post-paid plan.

- To donate $5 to Wyclef Jean’s Haitian Yele charity, text “Yele” to 501501. The money will be added to your next phone bill.

- To find out how to help the International Rescue Committee,visithttp://www.theIRC.org or call toll free, 1-877-REFUGEE.

- To donate through Oxfam’s emergency appeal, visit http://www.oxfam.org.uk

Google has a page known as Google Crisis Response with more information - http://www.google.com/relief/haitiearthquake/

If you’re a blogger please visit BloggersUnite for Haiti web page for other useful links and information. I’ll try to update this page often. If you’ve got any useful piece of information kindly share it in the comments. I’ll even include it in the main post if you want (including links to your blog or twitter or whatever).

Google Chrome Extensions

The day has finally arrived – Google can now sync bookmarks and has enabled extensions both on the same day!

I’ve restricted my use of Google Chrome for the very reason that it wouldn’t let me sync bookmarks online.

Sync your Google Chrome bookmarks online

Have you ever saved a lot of web pages on Chrome and have lost all of them due to a PC crash? Well now you can make sure that your bookmarks can survive because Google has introduced “Sync bookmarks” feature in Chrome.

To enable Sync bookmarks in Chrome click the wrench icon and then click on the “Synchronize my bookmarks…” option. It’ll present you with a Google account sign-in box. Fill in your details and Google Chrome will start syncing your Chrome bookmarks by creating a folder in Google Docs and continuously syncing your bookmarks there!

You can also sync multiple computers and make sure that all your bookmarks are organized at a single place. When I accidently saw this option today I thought it’d sync the bookmarks with Google Bookmarks which (thankfully!) it didn’t!

Extending Chrome with Extensions

One thing that was stopping Chrome from attaining mass adoption and popularity despite its speed and simplicity was that it was a totally closed ecosystem. For one, you couldn’t install any toolbars – not even the ubiquitious Google toobar! While there was a work around to it by simply bookmarking the services and docking the bookmarks bar, it was too much work and it didn’t look good often cluttering the bookmarks bar.

Google has been in beta mode for Chrome extensions for quite some time. Some of the most popular extensions include Gmail notifier by Google, IE tab, AdThwart(!), Google Translate, AdBlock(!!) and many more. One of the alarming trends I see is that among the 5 most popular Chrome extensions 2 are for blocking ads – the pillar on which Google stands and the other 2 are Google’s and the remaining one being IE tab which I guess is used by Web developers to debug and run websites made for Internet Explorer.

A few days ago, the New York Times published an article - In Allowing Ad Blockers, a Test for Google where it discussed about the concerns Google could face if the extensions really took off (as they have done!) and there isn’t much Google can do to stop it. If it does, it could backfire in a lot of ways including more publicity for the extensions and other privacy concerns.

Use the Extensions at Your Own Risk

While the extensions exponentially increase the value of Google Chrome as a browser there is a risk in using these extensions.  While installing the extensions Google displays a warning that these extensions have access to private pages and even the whole computer.

If you are reading this article, then it is very likely that you are not satisfied with your current web host. Before finalizing on a new host I’d like you to take a few minutes and go through my article – How to Choose a Web Host.

Now that you have a new place to host your WordPress blog you should make sure that you don’t lose any data during the transition. Your blog comprises of your posts, images, files, comments, themes and plug-ins. To make it a successful transfer you must try not to lose the posts, comments or images which are very vital to keep your blog from appearing broken!

Also be sure to download all the themes that you’ve customized as it can be very painful to edit the CSS and other code to make it functional as before!

If you follow the tutorial you’ll have a completely functional blog transferred over to the new host.

1. Don’t hint your current host that you’ll be transferring

One of the most important thing while transferring your blog to a new host is that you shouldn’t let your current host get the slightest of hint that you’ll be leaving them. While it is likely that they won’t do anything stupid but you never know. They can hold your website for ransom and tell you that your files got deleted “accidently” due to outage and other reasons. So it is better to be safe than sorry. So don’t tell them that you’re dumping them – atleast until you are fully up on the new host.

2. Backup your WordPress blog content

If you are not very comfortable in making a MySQL database backup then there is a very easy solution for that. You can create a backup of your posts, pages, comments, categories and tags from within the WordPress dashboard. Just head over to your WordPress dashboard, go to Tools, then click on Export. If you have more than 1 authors then select the “All Authors” option from the drop down and then “Download Export File”. WordPress will create an XML file with all the above info. Save it somewhere on your computer. The export file is usually a few MBs even for large blogs. You can also e-mail the XML file as an attachment.

3. Install WordPress on the new host –

Most of the web host these days come with a one-click install option for WordPress. It is there for a reason and you should USE IT. While installing the blog you’ll be asked to create a database. You can name it what you want but if you want to keep things simple I’d ask you to go to the config.php file located in the root folder of your directory and look what the name of the database is. In the same file you’ll also find the username and password as well as host info. Just copy-paste the same info while making the database.

If you have done everything correctly – you’ll successfully install WordPress.

4. Import the XML file

Now that you have successfully installed WordPress on your new host, time has come to import the XML backup file that you exported earlier in Step 2.

Login to WordPress > Tools >Import and select the file from your computer and upload it. Once you finish uploading you’ll see your posts, comments, pages, categories and tags. Hurray!

But we’re not done yet! While making sure that you don’t lose your blog content was our main goal we want our site to be back as before – looks-wise, function-wise and traffic-wise! So we need to import all the plugins and themes without your blog visitors experiencing major downtime.

5. Transfer the themes, plugins, images, etc

When you performed a new WordPress installation at your new host you simplified most of the steps. You basically created the structure common to all WordPress blog with folders like wp-content, wp-admin and wp-includes. Now login to your old host via FTP and download the WHOLE folder of your blog. Suppose you have a blog at http://www.example.com you should download the folder that contains all the files for http://www.example.com. It is usually located in the root or public_html folder on your host. If not sure ask the support to guide you.

6. Now change the domain’s DNS server to your new host

Once you make sure that you have fully transferred your blog it’s time to finally make the switch. Login to your domain registrar (from where you registered your domain) and go to DNS settings. If you don’t know try looking in the help section or ask their support staff to change it for you. Most hosts give 2 DNS addresses which normally look like ns1.newhost.com and ns2.newhost.com

This will make sure that your domain redirects to the new hosts and serves your website from the new host rather than the old one. It might take upto 72 hours for DNS to propagate although it is usually very less. I’d suggest you change the DNS value during the night or when the traffic to your site is lowest during the day.

While the process is very easy it might take some time and effort to successfully complete the above process. Before starting I’d strongly advise you to make a complete backup of your blog. If you don’t know how just ask your hosting’s support to do it for you. Once you have downloaded the backup to your computer only then should you start doing the above steps.

If you’re stuck on any step you can ask here or can go to http://wordpress.org/support although my experience from WordPress support hasn’t been very good. The time to receive an answer is random at best – ranging from a few minutes if you’re lucky to never. Most of the time I had to figure things out myself which I really enjoy! Be sure to tell me how you handle changing your WordPress host.

Best of Luck!

The day since Google announced Android everyone has been waiting for the “Google Phone”.  While it was pretty obvious that Google won’t get into the “dirty” hardware business, it was inevitable that Google would be keen to manufacture an Android phone according to its configurations. Google will sell the Nexus One phones manufactured by HTC and distributed through AT&T.

First, it was the Droid – a fantastic, game-changing Android phone. And now, its the Nexus One – built by HTC and installed with the fully-customized Android OS. I think the smart-phone market is going to experience some intense heat with the launch of more and more smart-phones built for the Android platform!

While I think it is difficult to dent the share of smart-phones that iPhone has achieved it’ll surely be a good alternative for consumers looking for more options and variety. I still love the iPhone though!