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Showing posts with label Blogger. Show all posts

15 Best Image Search Engines to Find Photos

Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at 2:10 PM Posted by Souras

What to find a great photo or perfect celebrity picture? This list of best image search engines will help you find interesting photos in the easiest way possible. You will learn about hidden preferences, unique features that will make you searches images like a professional and actually find the best images possible. Check them out… and see their test results on Aishwarya Rai.

Imagery

Imagery is my favorite image search engine due to the intuitive interface. This has a cool tabbed search interface to browse your searched images. Just keep searching new image terms, which keep compiling in new tabs, click to load full size image at the bottom or in new window. Loads 20-100 images at a time in ajax-y fashion. Best for research and keep collecting all your search images easily. You can tweak preferences to select JPG, GIF or PNG, sort by size, sort by black and white, grayscale or color and of course get safe for work images too. Test

Google Images Search

Google Image Search is probably the most common image search engine you might have used. Gives you thousands of image results very fast. But a limitation is you need to click to the image source page to see the full size image (Power it up with Google Image Ripper to get no more thumbnails and load full size images directly). You can sort images by JPG, GIF, BMP or PNG, sort by b&W or color, with an option for extra large images. You can also search news content and faces too! (Face test). Improve Google Image Search results using the Google Image Labeler. Use more filters to stop that NSFW image with moderate filtering or strict filtering. Test.

Yahoo! Image Search

Yahoo Image Search will find photos and clicking on images will take you to the source page with a framed interface, with an option to mail to a friend. You can opt for color and b&w by quick links. Select photo size with a wallpaper mode too which gives you images on all usual desktop sizes (Test wallpapers). It gives related searches too at the bottom of results. Its also powers the AlltheWeb search engine. Test.

Ask Images

Ask Images Search will search your desired images and suggest ways to expand or narrow your search for better results. A unique preference is finding buddy icons (Test). It will suggest related information from Wikipedia, videos from Youtube, news, profiles and more. Test.

MSN Live Image Search

MSN Live Image Search searches through all images of your choice. One cool option is to search “Showing only images of your desktop size” to find that ideal wallpaper even if you do not know your display settings. Another cool feature is you can drag images from the search results to a scratchpad and create a photo collection. Find related results. You can adjust a slider to see smaller thumbnails and fit in more photos. Test

AltaVista Image Search

AltaVista Image Search has similar search results, with an option to select graphics and buttons / banners too. You can also quickly sort by a huge range of prefixed desktop sizes and very useful to find wallpapers for your desktop (Test 1024×768 wallpapers). Clicking on “more info” below those images will take you a list of all webpages that host that same image. Test

Picsearch

PicSearch claims to index 2 billion images on the web. All images are output-ed as thumbnails and click through to a framed page with the original source. Selecting the preferences you can select only animations only. You can also sort images by various image sizes based by pixels (Test <50px). And they are family friendly images by default, which cannot be changed. Test. It also powers Ditto.

Exalead Image Search Engine

Exalead will let you change the background to black or white. Then you can customize it to find few prefixed size desktop wallpapers. It can also search faces. You can again choose color or B&W and image sizes. You can click on options to view direct image links with no frames. Or click the image to browse the images and their source sites in frames. Test.

Pixsy

Pixsy will let you search and extract images from popular free image hosting services Webshots, Photobucket, Sevenload, SuperiorPics, ViewImages etc. Switch the media type to Images in the drop down options. Clicking the image will take you to the framed page, where you can browse images, and see source page. You can email or save to ‘My Pixsy’ too. Test.

Visoo

Visoo uses the power of its Visual Content Analysis to provide highly accurate information on the visual content contained within digital images, information that cannot be obtained from any other online source. With Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, it recognizes text in graphics and images and can even analyze colored type or transparent text on any background. You can also check the People option for face recognition and select no banners.

Netvue

Netvue is another cool image search tool. The images are organized as a slideshow, you can regulate the slide show speed and even turn it off. Browse thumbnail images to a central window, with links to original full size image source. Test

Flickr

Flickr Images - Its the top image sharing community on the web sharing their best photos with you. Many unique photos can be found, many personally photographed and with copyrights reserved. You can browse in detailed or thumbnail view. Another option is to sort by View: Most relevant or Most recent or Most interesting (test) as judged by the community. Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, which means you can use their content with some rights reserved. Test.

Webshots

Webshots is another huge photo sharing community where people upload their choicest photos and share them. Lookout for copyright issues in these photo album collections. They have a desktop software to have fun with your wallpapers and screensavers. Test.

Photobucket

Photobucket is a huge resource of great images. It is a free online image hosting service that gives webmasters a free alternative to host large images, saving their server bandwidth. Most images might not have a copyright notice, so beware before reusing. Test.

Getty Images

Getty Images Search - They are famous for those unique stock photos you find on magazines, newspapers and corporate new blogs worldwide. Browse through their huge collection and find unique images not indexed by other search engines. In the multiple options, select only Editorial Images (All Editorial, All time). You can also sort by Horizontal or Vertical. Register to get price quote. Test.

Corbis

Corbis is another popular huge database that provides stock Images. You can search through Rights Managed, Royalty-Free images. You can search by Photography and Illustrations too. But you need to register with Corbis - to license the best images available, view and download large images with no watermarks, use personalized lightboxes to store and share your favorite images and license and download images online. Free stock photos can also be found at Clipart.com, FreeFoto, Stock.xchng

Warning on Usage - Image search engines help you find the best photos and images online, but that does not make them yours to crop, edit and photoshop. Many of these images you find are copyrighted and for personal use. Some photos are shared with limited creative commons licenses and some rights reserved. Enjoy them but lookout for the copyright notices and if you are allowed to reuse them.

Run Custom Code On Selective Blogger Posts

Monday, February 9, 2009 at 11:46 PM Posted by Souras

Often we want to display ads on selective posts. By default, once the ad code has been added to blogger template, it appears on every single blog post. Suppose, we do not want to show ads on About, Contact and Archive pages. Or we want that posts having more than 10 comments should get image banner ads instead of text ads. Suppose you have a multi author blog, and you want that every author runs its own ad code on the post written by them. Or you may want that posts with tag 'Software' display no ad or only display only image ad. How to do all this? Well, here is the solution.

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Display Author's Own Ad Code On His Post

Suppose, there is a multi-author blogger blog owned by Alex, Peter and Melinda. They all have Adsense accounts and want to display their own ad code on the posts written by them. How to achieve this? Let's see...
The following code will run each author's own ad code on the post written by them. In this example, the ad will appear at the end of post body. If you want to display the ad just below the post title shift the if...else section above the <data:post.body/> line.

<data:post.body/>
<b:if cond='data:post.author == "Alex"'>
/* Put Alex's Adsense Code or Custom HTML/JavaScript here */
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:post.author == "Peter"'>
/* Put Peter's Adsense Code or Custom HTML/JavaScript here */
<b:else/>
/* Put Melinda's Adsense Code or Custom HTML/JavaScript here */
</b:if>
</b:if>

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Run Custom Code On Selective Posts

Let's take one more example. Suppose, we decide not to show any ad on About, Contact and Archive pages. Or we may decide to run some custom code instead of Adsense ad on these pages. To achieve this, our template code must identify the correct page while reader is opening it in the browser. How to achieve this? Let's see...
Every post in blogger has a unique post ID associated with it. This post ID is generated when the post is published. Drafts do not have any post ID associated with them. First open your post in blogger editor, in our example, it's Contact page. Now see the URL in your browser's address bar. You will find the post ID at the end of the URL, as shown in the image below.

Copy this code in notepad and close the post. Now add the following code in your template.

Note: Replace xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx with your post ID

<data:post.body/>
<b:if cond='data:post.id == "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"'>
/* Put Custom HTML/Javascript Code here */
<b:else/>
/* Put Regular Adsense Code here or leave it blank to show no ad */
</b:if>

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Run Custom Code on the Basis of Comments

Here is one more possibility. Let's say, a blogger may want to run custom code on posts having no comments or having more than 5 comments. On the other hand, he may want that posts having comments between 1 to 5 display regular Adsense ads. How to achieve this? Let's see...

Possibilities and combination's can be infinite. I just took an example to explain the trick.

<data:post.body/>
<b:if cond='data:post.numComments == 0'>
/* Put Custom HTML/Javascript Code here */
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:post.numComments > 5'>
/* Put Custom HTML/Javascript Code here */
<b:else/>
/* Put Regular Adsense Code here or leave it blank to show no ad */
</b:if>
</b:if>

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Run Add On Custom Code Based On Post Tags (Categories)

Here is one more example. Suppose, you want to run custom code on all those posts having 'Software' tag (Category) associated with them, in addtion to your regular Adsense code. How to achieve this? Let's see...

Note: Replace Software with your Tag (Category)

<data:post.body/>
<b:if cond='data:post.labels'>
<b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
<b:if cond='data:label.name == "Software"'>
/* Put Custom HTML/Javascript Code here */
<b:else/>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:label.isLast != "true"'/>
</b:loop>
</b:if>
/* Put Regular Adsense Code here or leave it blank to show no ad */

NOTE: You can shift these codes to appropriate place in the template according to your needs.

10 Things Bloggers must Check Before Publishing a Post

at 1:58 PM Posted by Souras

Many a times, after hitting the ‘publish’ button, I realized what I missed out or what additional things could have been done to attract more visitors. Later on, I realized the need of a checklist that I should make use of before hitting the ‘publish’ button. I discovered that the checklist really helped me out, as such I wanted to write about it, to help budding bloggers and other Co-authors of this blog.

Catchy Headline:
To attract maximum people to read an article, an article must have a good, simple and a catchy headline.
Opening Contents:
You must avoid writing off-the-topic and bogus things on the opening lines of your post, specially in the first paragraph. If you do so, many readers will go away from your blog ultimately affecting your blog and its credibility.
Spell Check:
This is another important aspect, every blogger must practice. If yuo mkae scuh splleing erorrs, agian it mya aeffect yuor bolg. You can imagine how annoying spelling errors are, from the preceding line. So, you must never forget to run spell check before you feel, your post is ready to be published.
Grammatical Errors:
Again, by this point your readers will judge you and your writing skills which ultimately would affect your earnings and revenue. So, after you complete writing the whole article, read it back atleast once to find any grammatical errors.
Bullets & Text Formatting:
Readers usually tend to read the whole articles in brief, as such highlighting important things and making use of bullets should really help.
Images:
There’s a famous saying “A picture is worth a thousand words” and I too feel the same. If you make use of a related image, it will further add stars to your article. Also, do never forget to rename the image relating to the contents of your blog as it is good for SEO.
Alignments:
To make your post look decent and give an appealing look, I strongly feel, you should never publish your post leaving the whole text unaligned. For aligning the article you should prefer ‘Justify’ option. Also, if any images are used you must align them with proper margins and wrapping.
Back-Links:
On the bottom of every post, you must add links of various things your wrote about in the whole article. For example if I am writing an article about ‘Opening a new Gmail account’ then on the bottom of post I should link to related pages like Gmail | Registration | About
Sources, Credentials and Related Articles
Never forget to add links and give credits to those blogs or websites where you basically saw the articles you are writing about. By this your readers may not blame you, upto some extent, if the information you blogged about is false. Also adding up related articles on the bottom of every post is another tactic many pro blogger follow. This way, you can keep your readers stuck to your blog ultimately resulting in increase of your revenue and profits.
Categories and Tags:
Not to mention, this is the most important thing you must look. This will help your blog reader to browser your blog posts category wise and would also be helpful for locating similar articles.

Page Navigation Hack for Blogger (Blogspot)

Monday, November 17, 2008 at 1:00 PM Posted by Souras

Most of the people think that page navigation hack is only for who blogs at Wordpress. But here is the hack for those who use blogger and want to add page navigation to their blog. This hack will show page number instead of text link older posts, as shown in following screenshot

page_navigation

You can see live demo here.

Now this involves two things - adding some CSS code and javascript code to your template. All steps are explained below.

Steps:

Log in to your blogger account and navigate to Layout section. Now go to the Edit HTML tab.
Search for line

]]></b:skin>
Add CSS in this file above that line.
Now search for this code or related in your template (no need to expand widgets)