Is the Person Male or Female? Identify Gender from the Name

Can you identify if a person is a male or a female based on his or her name?

Knowing someone's gender ahead of time helps especially when you are replying to email messages or initiating a voice conversation for the first time.

If you also have trouble identifying the sex from the name itself, here's a simple tip - use Facebook.

Just type the name of the person in Facebook search box and make an educated guess based on the profile photos of Facebook members that turn up in the search results.

Click the name tab which is just next to "All Results". When you are not sure which part is the surname, perform separate searches for the first and second part of the name.

I recommend Facebook over other social networks like Orkut or MySpace since Facebook has a more global audience and therefore the probability of finding people with similar names will be much higher.

Warning - it's not a foolproof method. For instance Indian names like "Laxmi", "Somya", "Manu" and so on are equally popular among males and females.

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How to Sell PDF Documents and Photographs Online

Torsten is looking for a convenient system to sell his PDF eBooks on the internet - as soon as the user makes the payment via Credit Card or PayPal or Google Checkout, he should get a link to download the file in his email inbox and the link should expire after a given time.

PDF eBooks - or for that matter any downloadable product including blog templates, Flash presentations, MP3 music, podcasts, video clips, digital photographs, ringtones, software utilities,.. can be sold on the web very easily through a service called PayLoadz Express.

All you have to do is upload the file (that you want to sell) to PayLoadz and they'll immediately give you a link where your site visitors can click and buy the document through PayPal or Google Checkout. It's an extremely smooth transaction.

PayLoadz will also expire the download link after a limited time and also monitors downloading IP addresses to prevent excessive downloading of the file. There's no transaction fee if the monthly limit is $100 and the size of the uploaded files is less than 50 MB.

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How to Explain del.icio.us Bookmarks To Your Mom

The brilliant and very creative folks at Common Craft have released another video to help you explain social bookmarking websites like del.icio.us, Furl.net or Magnolia to the the not-so-techie crowd in very simple English.

Show Page |Download Video [.MOV 42MB] Full Transcript [Author: Lee LeFever]

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Change the Thumbnail Image of your YouTube Videos

The still thumbnail image, that appears in the YouTube Player while the video is loading, is generally the center frame of that video. For instance, if a YouTube clip is 3 minutes long, YouTube will capture the frame at position 01:30 and make that as a thumbnail.

While it has been impossible to set your own poster frame (unless you are a YouTube partner), YouTube does offer three thumbnail options and lets you pick the image that you want to set as the default thumbnail for that video.

Here's how it works - if your video clip is x seconds long, YouTube will generate three image thumbnails at x/4, x/2 and 3x/4 seconds. Video publishers can pick the frame that best describes their video.

To set a custom poster frame in YouTube, click the "edit video info" button next to your video description (you should be logged in). Pick one of the three video still images and click save. That's it.

Related: How to Upload DVD to YouTube

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Lot of News to Catch Up On? Mark Everything As Read and..

I am partially offline during the weekends - just check my email but the newsreader client is turned off.

So when I fire the RSS reader on Monday mornings to catch up with the lost news, it shows few hundred unread articles waiting for attention and it's virtually impossible to deal with so much content.

Do you ever face a similar dilemma ? If yes, here's a very simple two-step solution to help you reduce RSS fatigue:

Step 1: Open the root folder of your RSS reader, right click and select "Mark All Feeds As Read" - you'll feel so much happy and relieved.

Step 2: Next open the following sites in your web browser so that you don't miss anything important or interesting:

» Scobleizer Shared Items - The most well known blogger and videographer in the Silicon Valley is also an avid blog reader.

Robert Scoble probably reads every blog on the planet that even has 1% interesting content and he will religiously share each and every story on his Google Reader linkfest blog that's worth a read. It's like Scoble doing all the hard work of filtering the best content for you. Highly Recommended. RSS

» Techmeme River - When you have to quickly catch up on missed content, you'll find this Techmeme river of news view also very helpful - it's the same Techmeme but in a different and more attractive costume.

Unlike the main Techmeme.com site that shows what's hot in the blogosphere at any given moment, Techmeme River shows all the hot stories and headlines arranged in reverse chronological order just like any blog. [Paging Gabe Rivera, please give Techmeme River an RSS feed.]

Just a note, the sites listed here will only satisfy the appetite of people who are hungry for the latest Technology and Silicon Valley news. 

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Turn Your Printer and Scanner into a Copier Machine

Got a printer and scanner but no Xerox copy machine? With no effort, you can combine the printer and scanner to build your personal digital photocopier machine and make copies of your documents at the click of a button.

This is possible through iCopy, a free software utility that combines the scanner and printer into a versatile copier that requires no installation - you can even run the iCopy software from a USB drive.

Here's how iCopy works - you insert the document / paper inside the scanner, enter the number of copies that you want and hit the big blue copy button.

iCopy also provides you control over the image settings and quality so that the final document copies consume less ink during print. It works with all printers and any TWAIN-compatible scanner (nearly all scanners are TWAIN compatible).

iCopy Photocopier software is available at sourceforge.net.

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Baidu.com - a Warez Search Engine

Is Baida.com a search site like Google China or is it a warez search engine linking only to underground sites that distribute pirated software?

For instance, if you search for "Photoshop CS3" on Baidu, the top 3 results will point to illegal sites where the software is available as a free download. Adobe China website, a site that should ideally have been at the top of search results, is way below at number six.

You'll have similar experiences with other very expensive software like "AutoCad 2008", "Google Earth Pro", "Camtasia Studio", "3DS Max", "Maya", etc.

In case of Dreamweaver, the Adobe website never made it to the Baidu front page of results. Instead, what you see at the bottom of the results page are query suggestions to help you find serial numbers of other Adobe Software like Illustrator, Flash CS3, Indesign, etc using Baidu.

With such high levels of software piracy in China, it's no big surprise that Baidu is the seventh most popular website on the Internet according to Alexa.

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How to Write a CV - The #1 How-To Search Query

Job seekers are looking at the web for advice on writing a good curriculum vitae or CV.

HitWise says that "How to Write a CV" is the most popular "How To" search query in UK followed by "How to have Sex" and "How to Make Money."

Contrast that with US where writing a resume in at #5 while the top question in the minds of web users is "How to tie a tie".

The other How-To searches that are popular in either of the countries include "How to kiss", "How to lose weight" and "How to get pregnant."  Pretty interesting.

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Download Flickr Photos Protected by Transparent spaceball.gif

John writes: "How do I download a private picture from Flickr Photos that's blocked from downloading?"

Normally, you can save pictures from Flickr (or any website) by right clicking the photograph and saying "Save Image As.." but in the case of protected Flickr images, all you will see on the desktop is a blank 1x1 pixel placeholder image called spaceball.gif

When a Flickr member has set download permissions to disallow his/her photos from being downloaded, a transparent image is overlaid on the actual photo so the right-click method fails.

How to Download Private Flickr Photos

You may either use the good-old Print Screen or any of the methods listed below to bypass the Flickr image protection:

For Firefox: Goto Tools -> Page Info -> Media - Scroll down until you see that Flickr image in the Media Preview Window. Click the Save As button.

In IE, Opera, Safari or Firefox: Right click the Flickr web page and chose "View HTML source" - now search for "spaceball.gif" in the HTML source. You'll find the full location of the protected image enclosed in the <img src=".."> tag just before the tag that encloses the spaceball image.

You can also download Flickr Images in a batch or refer to this Flickr Guide for more related tools.

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How to Add Google Adsense Ad Units in Blogger Blog Posts

DI reader Nauzer Elavia is facing problems while trying to integrate the Google Referral Adsense text links in the middle of his Blogger blog posts. [this is also applicable for standard Google Ads]

If I put any JavaScript code for Adsense (including referrals), either the ads don't turn up or just the raw Adsense code turns up or some other than Google Ads is displayed instead of the referral link units.

This is a very common problem when you try to mix Google Adsense code with your blog posts. The simple solution is to remove all the line-breaks from your Adsense code.

Here's an example using the Adsense referral code for downloading Firefox with Google Toolbar:

BEFORE (the code generated by Adsense Control Panel):

If you copy-paste the code as such in your blog editor, it will turn up as a blank area on your blog. If you look at the HTML source, you'll see that the line break <br> tag has been appended after each line cause the Adsense Javscript to break.

AFTER (remove the comments tag and all the line breaks after ";" and ">" by hitting the "DEL" key)

With the above changes, your Google Ads will appear as expected inside your blog posts.

Warning - do check the Adsense Program Policies. The Adsense rule book says that "Any AdSense code must be pasted directly into webpages without modification." So you may want to check with your Adsense rep if they are OK with the above changes. They may agree to your requests if you a valid case. For instance - split A/B testing.

Related: Suppress the JavaScript Warning in Blogger

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Do You Own Multiple Blogs or Websites? Cross-Link Sites Carefully

If you run multiple blogs on topics ranging from shoes to iPods to food, think twice before you cross-link those unrelated sites since that will not bring any Google Juice to either of you sites and may even have a negative effect.

In response to "I have many different sites. Can I cross-link between them?", Shashi Thakur of the Google Search Quality Team says:

Before you begin cross-linking sites, consider the user's perspective and whether the crosslinks provide value. If the sites are related in business -- e.g., an auto manual site linking to an auto parts retail site, then it could make sense -- the links are organic and useful. Cross-linking between dozens or hundreds of sites, however, probably doesn't provide value, and I would not recommend it.

Now this raises lot of questions. For instance, do we display only those blogs in Blogrolls that are interesting to our readers? What about blog networks like Weblogs Inc. or Gawker or B5Media that cross-link to all their sites in every post ? If Google is not giving enough weightage to unrelated links, let's just hope they are not penalizing sites for cross-linking.

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CBC Journalists Cannot Add News Sources as Facebook Friends

CBC is probably the first media company who has framed a formal "Facebook Policy" for their employees.

The policy says that CBC journalist should avoid adding sources or contacts as "Facebook friends" (the common trend is that when journalists interview someone, they often connect with each other on LinkedIn or Facebook after the conversation.)

Here's the reason stated in the CBC Facebook policy document:

"It may compromise your work by letting friends see other friends on your network," the policy document says. "It may also not be in your interest to identify yourself as a 'friend' of a source on their network."

"In the context of basic reporting, you do not want one source to 'see' what another source says, nor do you want your private 'conversation' with a source becoming public. Adding sources as 'friends' makes the management of this much trickier."

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Use Secure GMail and Yahoo! Mail for Better Security

Rob demonstrated to a live audience how he can successfully hack into web based email programs like GMail, Yahoo Mail! or Hotmail using the IP Address and user name (login) without requiring any password.

Let's not go in the very technical details but he used some sniffing tools called Ferret (to copy the GMail cookies to his computers) and Hamster (to use the cookies in his browser).

What can you do to prevent someone else from reading your GMail or Yahoo Mail?

Rob's method works when you are using the HTTP mode to access your email (http://www.gmail.com/). Therefore the trick is to always use Secure Login.

See: Recovering a Hacked GMail Account

Here's what you can do to safeguard your email in public wi-fi hotspots - use https:// instead of http:// - the entire session will be encrypted and the cloning cookies method will fail.

For GMail:  https://mail.google.com/mail/
For basic HTML version of GMail - https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=html

Alternatively, you can install the CustomizeGoogle extension of Firefox that will always force the SSL mode in GMail incase you forget to manually type the https:// GMail URLs.

Related: Recover Yahoo! or GMail Passwords

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Where to Buy Original Windows Really Cheap?

If you were to buy the Home Basic edition of Windows in North America, it would cost your ~$200. The price for the same software is $250 in Canada, $200 in India, $350 in UK and Europe but in China, Microsoft is selling Windows Vista Home Basic DVDs for $66 only.

The price cut in China is introduced to lure buyers away from pirated versions of the software.

But will this latest move to cut prices help Microsoft China win new customers? Probably not because even at $66, the Vista DVD from Microsoft costs $65 more than the prevailing Vista rate in Chinese software market which is a mere $1.00 (cost of media).

And this Microsoft tactic to slash prices is sure to attract strong reactions from customers in other countries where piracy is virtually non-existent and Vista sales are good but the prices are high.

This follows previous reports that Bill Gates was not too worried about the widespread software piracy in China since that ensured the customers won't more to other alternatives like Linux.

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Create Desktop Wallpapers from Google Maps Satellite Images

Bored with your existing desktop wallpaper? How about creating a wallpaper on your own using picture tiles from Google Maps.

With some free software, you can turn the interesting aerial photographs available on Google Maps website into a beautiful wallpaper backgrounds for your desktop screen. They look all the more stunning if you have wide or dual monitor setup.

Here's a step-by-step illustrated guide to walk you through the process of creating wallpapers from Google Maps imagery data.

Before we get going, we need to know the exact resolution of our desktop screen. Right click anywhere on the Desktop and choose Properties. Open the Settings tab and take a note of your screen resolution. If you have an extended dual screen, you need to multiply that width by a factor of 2. I use a dual monitor so the desktop wallpaper dimensions would be 1680*2 by 1050 pixels in my case.

Now let's get to the actual process of making a desktop wallpaper background from the satellite images available in Google Maps (or any other mapping services like Yahoo! Maps or Windows Live)

Step 1. Search the location on Google Maps by typing the city name, state or country. You then right click any area of the Google Map and select "Center Map here". This will be your starting point. (we use Statue of Liberty, New York) for our example.

Step 2. Maximize the view area of Google Maps - Press F11 to open your browser in Full Screen mode.

Step 3. Capture screenshots - You save a snapshot of the Google Map as an image using Print Screen or any screen capture program. Then pan right (or left) a couple of times so as to slide the map in that direction but make sure the new image has some overlapping area with the previous screenshot. [The panning arrows are in the extreme top left corner pointing to four different directions]

Capture the Google Map again and save it to a different file. Repeat the process until you saved some five different images.

Step 4. Stitch all the Google Maps' images saved in the previous step. You may use GIMP, Photoshop, MS Paint, AutoStitch or any Panorama software to stitch the various Google Maps photographs into one composite wallpaper. If you have SnagIt, the SnagIt Editor allows you to insert any number of images that you can drag around to fit the layout.

Crop the stitched image to match your desktop screen resolution that we noted in the very first step. That's it.
If you have time, you can extend the desktop wallpaper idea to create very large wall posters from Google Images for your room.

Also see: Find Date when Google Maps Images were Taken

Legal Issues: Google Maps Terms of Use

You may not delete or in any manner alter the copyright, trademark, or other proprietary rights notices appearing in map information, including photographic imagery. You may not use the imagery in any commercial or business environment or for any commercial or business purposes for yourself or any third parties.

I hope this is agreement with Google Maps TOS as long as we preserve the copyright information on the map and don't use it for commercial purpose (like you cannot sell Google Maps wallpaper).

Also see: Create Time-Lapse with Google Street View

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Prevent Visitors from Downloading your Website Images

Technically it is impossible to protect web pictures from leeching since most browsers will first download a copy of the entire image from the internet to the local cache before rendering.

Some webmasters try to disable right click on their webpages so that visitors cannot access the "Save Image As.." command in the menu but that trick can be easily defeated by disabling Javascript or using Firefox. Image Maps are another option but the sliced images can be saved as a whole using any screen capture program.

So what's a good alternative if you are very eager to protect you images on the internet ? One option is is convert your images to SWF Flash objects before uploading them to the web but if that sounds too impractical, try swfIR (SWF Image Replacement tool).

swfIR is a very simple technique to prevent image download from your website - instead of adding the standard <img> tag for embedding pictures, you define the image location in Javascript and the image will then wrap inside a Flash movie on your webpage.

What's so nice about swfIR is that it lets apply nice visual effects to your images including borders, rounded corners, small rotations and shadows without actually modifying the original image.

Tech savvy users can easily download the image by looking at the HTML source code of your web page but for the not-so-geeky crowd and image leech software, all they'll see is a blank Flash movie.

Update: The service mentioned in this article in no longer available but here's an updated technique - Protect your Online Images from Copying

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Google Custom Search with Adsense for Blogger or WordPress Blogs

How to implement Google Custom Search with Adsense in Blogger or Wordpress Blogs? [I have seen Adsense Search performing much better (in terms of CTR and revenue) after switching from the standand Adsense for Search to the more customizable Google Custom Search.]

If you are looking for new ways to maximize Adsense Income from your blog or website, it makes more sense to use Google Custom Search with Adsense on your site instead of the regular Adsense for Search program. Here are some reasons:

1. Adsense for Search allows minimal customization of the Google Search Box and you are limited to white, black or gray colored search boxes. In Custom Search, you have complete control over layout and branding provided the custom changes comply with the Adsense TOS.
2. For site specific search, visitors can either search the entire web or just the pages of your current site. In Google Custom Search engine you can completely remove the "web option" and let visitors search just the sites you want - there are no radio checkboxes.
3. Ads are always displayed at the top of search results in Adsense for Search which may not be the most optimized layout for all blog websites. In Adsense Custom Search, you can chose to have ads at the top and right, top and bottom or just in the right sidebar similar to what you see on Google.com.

To use Google Custom Search with Adsense in blogs hosted on Blogger or Wordpress, you have to use a workaround since these blog do not allow adding new pages which are essential for hosting the search results page.

First, create a Custom Search Engine. Type your blog URL(s) in the "Sites to Search" section and choose "Show Ads on Results pages". Then connect your Google Co-op account with Google AdSense through the "Make money" tab in your search engine's control panel.

Next click the "Code" tab and open "Search box and search results code for your website" - Specify where you want the Google Ads to appear and click Save changes.

Create a new HTML webpage in FrontPage or any WYSIWYG editor such that it look very similar to your blog homepage.  Now copy-paste the "Google Search Results Snippet" from Google CSE page to your local HTML page. Save the changes and upload your webpage to your Dropbox. Make the file public and get the link.

Copy the full URL of this HTML webpage and paste it in the URL box of your Google CSE Code panel. Next copy paste the Google CSE Search Box snippet in your blog template and Save.

For self-hosted Wordpress blogs, you can create a new page with post slug that says "search" and paste the Google Search Results snippet inside the page.
More AdSense - Custom Search Tips

1. If you have narrow site layout, use the Watermark style branding and it shows the Google Logo right inside the search box.
2. For best CTR, use the Top & Right Ads option.
3. Stretch the Google Search Results across your page width [like 800px].
4. Never link to your search results pages from blog posts - that's against the Adsense Rule.
5. Don't provide Google Toolbar buttons for your Adsense Search pages - that's also against the rule.
6. Do not modify the height of Adsense Resultset - that will break the layout in cases when just a couple of pages are available for certain search queries.

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iTunes Trick: Stuff More Songs and Podcasts in Your iPod

If you have lower capacity iPod like the 1GB nano, this trick will help you stuff more music and podcasts into your MP3 player.

You have a large collection of MP3 music and audio-video podcasts on your hard-drive that you want to copy to the iPod or burn them onto a CD disk using iTunes.

But before you plugin the iPod to your computer and transfer the music collection, you may easily cut out all the long silences, crowd applause and all the other boring intros / outros from the songs that will otherwise occupy precious space on your iPod drive. Now what is the most effective way to do this?

Use iTunes to Trim Unwanted Portions from Songs and Podcasts

For editing songs, you can either use any of the MP3 cutter software or your favorite iTunes which employs non-destructive editing meaning the original song file will not be modified though the unwanted portions are still removed from the music file that will be copied to your iPod or CD.

Here's how you do it. Play the song in iTunes from beginning, pause where the boring intro ends and note the time. Now skip the playhead to the location where the unwanted outro begins and note this time as well. [see red arrows in the iTunes screenshot above]

Next, we'll instruct iTunes to copy just the music between the specific time period and skip the rest. Right click the song -> Get Info -> Options. Enter the Start Time and End Time that we noted above. Click OK.

When you transfer this to the iPod, iTunes will remember your preferences. If you want to permanently edit the song, right-click the song again in the iTunes playlist and select "Convert selection to AAC" - it will appear as a new song in the same playlist.

Related: iTunes Tricks for Podcasting Fans

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Tucows Answers: Dummies Guide To Your Tech Problems

Tucows, which was once a major website for download freeware and shareware software, has changed gears. They have moved into the territory of Yahoo! Answers providing solutions to the most common "How To" tech problems.

The one big difference here is that unlike Yahoo! Answers where it's all user-generated stuff, the Q&A content on Tucows is written by staff though others can rate or add comments.

The software download directory still exists at Tucows but clearly the current focus is to popularize their new "solutions" section. When you do a search on new Tucows.com, you get mix results - they can either be pointing to answers to the problem or to the software itself.

You may however have problems recognizing content that is sponsored. For instance, the story on "How to Save YouTube Videos" suggests a commercial software and the article itself has been written by software vendor. The advertorial piece therefore misses those tons of free alternatives for recording YouTube videos.

Tucows.com | Screencast Demo |Thanks Joey deVilla

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When Animals Invade the Google Homepage

When fishes, flies, worms and dogs invade the Google website, humans protest.

A high resolution video is available on blip.TV. YouTube version here.

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