HashOut

Wanna travel around the world with a shoe string budget? Couch surf...

by Aziz on Thursday, March 08, 2007
Find a couch for your trip to any part of the world, Free!Are you planning to backpack around the world but don't have an overflowing bank account or an address book of friends and family in all corners of the globe willing to offer a free bed? Here's the latest in budget traveling - couch surfing. Dreamed up by money-conscious travelers, the Couch Surfing Project is an online interactive site that matches budget travelers with hosts who are happy to offer their couches/beds free of charge. Instead of an anonymous noisy hostel, you're a guest in a local person's house.

Couchsurfing.com aims at not only bringing travelers and hosts together but to:

Make the world a better place, and we believe that the surfing of couches is a means to accomplish this goal. CouchSurfing isn't about the furniture- it's not just about finding free accommodations around the world- it's about participating in creating a better world. We strive to make a better world by opening our homes, our hearts, and our lives. We open our minds and welcome the knowledge that cultural exchange makes available. We create deep and meaningful connections that cross oceans, continents and cultures. CouchSurfing wants to change not only the way we travel, but how we relate to the world!


Like other social networking and dating sites, every user is linked to the other users he or she knows in the system through a network of references and friend links. The site, however, strictly prohibits dating and harassment. It records and monitors all communication between members for safety purposes. The site also provides the facility to verify members' name and address so that travelers and hosts can feel safe about making friendships with strangers. » Continue reading

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How to create expandable post summaries with the new Blogger?

by Aziz on Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Dexter wants to know how I created the "» Continue reading" links on the non-post pages to make the length of my posts shorter on the index and archive pages so that the readers can have a quick glance at the posts and click "» Continue reading" if they decide to read the complete post. With this trick, you can choose to display an arbitrary amount of text from any part of the post you desire to display. It is quite useful, especially on archive pages, where you have lots of long articles all on one page. This feature requires you to have post pages enabled.

Blogger's original instructions for expandable post summaries to the old Blogger template and Beta (now new Blogger / Blogger v.2) template is available here. However, that page is not without any faults and omissions like the other google.com pages, which are published in haste.

In Step 1: Conditional CSS (for layouts)

New Blogger templates or Layouts do not have a style-sheet by default. The styles are enclosed within the <b:skin></b:skin> tags. It is not possible to add the conditional <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'><b:else/></b:if> tags within the skin tags. You have to add the conditional CSS within <style></style> tags outside the skin tags. Simply insert the following lines anywhere between the <head></head> tags.


<style>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'> 
   span.fullpost {display:inline;}
<b:else/>
   span.fullpost {display:none;} 
</b:if>
</style>


Please note that using this hack will just reduce the amount of information that is displayed on the screen. The full content of the posts is still downloaded to the Web browser and available behind the screens (view page source) which means that there won't be any improvement in the download speed of the page. If you know of a hack that can help reduce the download speed of the index and archive pages by omitting the unwanted part of the posts from the page source, then please do hashout! » Continue reading

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Adsense Status Google Gadget for Google Desktop Sidebar

by Aziz on Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Adsense Status Google Gadget add-on for Google Desktop SidebarDo you know that there exists a Google Gadget for Google Desktop software that displays your latest AdSense earnings status?

Adsense Status is a plug-in for the Google Desktop sidebar. With Adsense Status, you can view your Google Adsense earnings for Today, Yesterday, Last 7 Days, This Month, Last Month, Since Last Payment and All Time. It displays informaiton like page impressions, clicks, page CTR, page eCPM and your earnings from Adsense for Content, Search and Referrals.

You can download Adsense Status here.

Note: To use Adsense Status, Google Desktop is required. » Continue reading

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How does a Google Adsense payment check look like?

by Aziz on Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Yet to receive your first Google Adsense cheque? Wondering how it would look like when you receive your cheque! Don't worry, you have to wait no more. Here, take a look at one.

Google Adsense cheque » Continue reading

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Star Placeholders

by Aziz on Tuesday, March 06, 2007
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences award ceremony runs into over 220 minutes and the not-nominated stars hardly sit out the entire show. But on TV have you ever seen empty seats? No!

Star PlaceholdersEnter, seat fillers (in pic). These unobtrusive seat ornaments are pushed to fill the seat when a Penelope Cruz or Hugh Jackman vacates it. All this is just for the TV audience. And the Oscars are held sans air conditioning, as it is difficult to cut out the buzz of compressors with boom mikes all over the place!

Source: The Week » Continue reading

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The paid content (blogs) debate

by Aziz on Monday, March 05, 2007
Quite a number of bloggers are discussing the idea of charging readers to access content, particularly blogs. Sahar Sarid's mindful research and analysis of the trends in the business models of Newspapers, Radio and Television boil down to the point that a subscription based revenue model is "inevitable" for the blogosphere.

Pay to read blogsHowever, as Scott points out, one cannot generalize on such facts in the case of blogging or for that matter any online service that provides content in the form of text, images, audio or video as the Web has been around for more than a decade and most content online is still free. Also, the paid media business models such as newspapers and magazines have lost considerable amount of audience to the free ad-supported online media.

According to Scott, only those content providers such as Seth Godin and Darren Rowse, whose content is equivalent to what one may get from a paid consultant, can take advantage of the subscription based business model.

Also, only those blogs/websites with a decent amount of popularity can take advantage of this business model as content behind pay walls are hard to get linked to from other websites/blogs and definitely impossible to get indexed thereby resulting in a poor readership. » Continue reading

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Deceiving the camera to get the desired color balance

by Aziz on Monday, March 05, 2007

White balance set to 'Daylight'-Neutral color balance

White balance set to lower color temperature, resulting in cooler color balance.

White balance set to a higher color temperature, resulting in warmer colors.
Higher Kelvin temperatures give 'Cool' colors whereas lower color temperatures gives warm colors. Yet, it is suggested that we set a higher color temperature on a digital camera to get 'warmer' colors.

We set White Balance on a digital camera to compensate for the color of the existing light source. If the color of the light is orange (as with incandescent bulbs), the subject will take on a orange color cast.

Since we don't want the color cast, we set the White Balance to 'Incandescent', thereby telling the camera that in this orange colored light, we want our whites as white. Once that happens, all other colors will reproduce correctly.

During daytime (say 11.00am), by setting your digital camera to a higher Kelvin temperature you are deceiving the camera in to believing that the available light is 'cooler' (that is, 'bluer') when actually it is not. So the camera, assuming that the light is 'bluer' (that is, 'colder'), compensates in the opposite direction by making the image 'warmer'. » Continue reading

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