Microsoft trueSpace: Free Alternative to 3ds Max, Google Sketchup

trueSpace is a 3D modeling and animation software for Windows that lets you create realistic 3D scenes from scratch, walk-throughs, games, etc. You can also import characters created in other software like AutoCAD, 3ds Max, Adobe Illustrator, etc.

trueSpace used to sell for $600 but then Microsoft acquired the company and released trueSpace as a free download probably in response to SketchUp that’s owned by Google.

The idea is to let users create building and landscapes for Virtual Earth just like one can use SketchUp to create 3D models for Google Earth (SketchUp review).

If you are from the education community, you’ll especially love trueSpace for simulations.

Like with any other 3D authoring software, there’s a steep learning curve involved with trueSpace but if you are looking for a good alternative to 3DS Max or Blender, Microsoft trueSpace is available at a price that may be hard to beat.

Believe In Superstitions? Avoid The Word "me" In Product Names

If you are superstitious and believe that names can bring (or deny) good luck, avoid giving your products a name that ends with "me".

This is not a recommendation of any soothsayer but just a personal observation - there are least three product names that end with the word "me" and were either a complete failure and or faced a very "rocky" start.

1. Windows Me - Windows Millennium Edition (or Windows Me) was a successor to Windows 98 but PC World dubbed it as one of the worst version of Windows ever and included Me in the "high-tech hall of shame."

2. .me Web Domains - GoDaddy recently made a much-hyped announcement that it will begin accepting application for .me web domains. Chaos followed and GoDaddy’s mismanagement brought lot of "bad reputation."

3. Apple Mobile Me - You rarely see buggy products from the iPhone inventors but Mobile Me (formerly .mac) is definitely one. Apple customers have lost thousands of important emails in the past few days while some did not have access to email for over a week thanks to this new cloud computing platform called Mobile Me.

The service received enough negative press and this comment from a former Apple fanboy sums up the sentiment best - "We’re not just angry. We feel betrayed for having been Apple’s greatest PR reps for many, many years."

Is the word "me" to blame for this fiasco ?

Steve Ballmer on How Microsoft Plans to Compete with Google

This excerpt is from a recent email by Steve Ballmer where explains Microsoft’s strategy for competing with Google:

"We’ll make progress against Google in search first by upping the ante in R&D through organic innovation and strategic acquisitions.

Second, we will out-innovate Google in key areas - we’re already seeing this in our maps and news search.

Third, we are going to reinvent the search category through user experience and business model innovation. We’ll introduce new approaches that move beyond a white page with 10 blue links to provide customers with a customized view of their world

Create Screen Mockups & Web Page Prototypes in Firefox with Pencil

With Firefox, you can do much more than simply browse web pages. Pencil is a free add-in that lets anyone sketch complex GUI screens or web page prototypes in Firefox without even being a graphic designer.

Pencil includes a set of stencils that you can place on the drawing campus. Right click a shape to edit basic properties like color, border, opacity, etc. Alternatively, you may also drag images from the desktop.

Like other illustration software, these shapes can aligned with each other or can be grouped to prevent accidental edits. The drawing can be exported as a PNG image.

The Pencil Project

Learn the Art of Writing Search Engine Friendly URLs from Matt Cutts

Search engines always take into account the title text and keywords used in the URL of a web page while determining rankings of that page in search results. The influence may be small but keywords mentioned in the URL do carry some weight.

For instance, if all other factors remain same, a web page at abc.com/iphone-review may rank higher for a search query "iPhone review" than, say, xyz.com/best-phone or xyz.com/apple-phone-review because of the keyword iPhone that’s present in the URL.

*Most blogging platforms allow you to write custom URLs (aka post slugs in WordPress). If you are on Blogger, read this hack on how to create your own permalinks.

Now if you’re keen to master the art of writing good URLs that are descriptive and search friendly but without getting into any black hat SEO tricks like keyword stuffing, follow the style of Matt Cutts. He generally uses descriptive titles for blog posts but his URLs are short, neatly written and use only relevant keywords. Some examples:

Title: I do not wish my screensaver to lock my computer, thank you.
URL: disable-screensaver-password

Title: Get your search fix with two videos
URL: free-search-seo-videos

Title: Protect yourself: get a free credit report
URL: free-credit-report

Title: How to back up your Gmail on Linux in four easy steps
URL: backup-gmail-in-linux-with-getmail

Title: How to stop junk mail
URL: stop-junk-mail

Title: I love my pedometer
URL: best-pedometer

Title: Crap. My Ubuntu machine won’t boot
URL: ubuntu-freeze-no-resume-image

Title: What are the best iPhone applications?
URL: best-iphone-application

The above list is pretty self explanatory and may have given you a good idea but let’s just walk through the important points:

1. Search engines generally ignore common words like "the", "a", "are", "is", "of", etc - your URLs will therefore do just fine without them.

2. Phrases like "How to do this" or "Which is the best" or "What are the options" or "When did this happen" make titles attractive but you need not put these words in the URL.

For instance, Matt is using the URL "best-iphone-application" for a page titled "What are the best iPhone Applications." In another example, the url is "stop-junk-mail" for the article "How to Stop Junk Mail."

3. If something important doesn’t fit in the page title, put it in the URL. For instance, the URL of a page titled "Get your search fix with two videos" is like "free-search-seo-video" - so you have two new words ("free" and "seo") in the URL that were not in the title but do help in describing the underlying web page.

4. Use hyphens (or dashes) to separate keywords in URLs though Google can now also read underscores.

Google probably assigns some fixed weight to your URLs which gets distributed across different words used in that URL. Now the weight per keyword will obviously dilute when you have long URLs.

Therefore, it will help if you can manually create URLs with lesser number of keywords but they should also be relevant to the context of your content. It requires a little extra effort at the time of writing your blog post but the may reap good benefits in the long run.

Twitter Hot Trends - Too Easy to Game ?

A topic is considered "hot" on twitter if enough people use that word or phrase in their tweets. Now yesterday, one of the the hottest topic on Twitter was "Google Massacre".

Google Massacre, as you may have guessed, is just another PDF ebook on Google AdWords that promises "quick money."

The reason why this term managed to top the Twitter popularity chart is simple - someone created dozens of fake twitter accounts and published the same message on these accounts at the same time.

While this was quickly removed from Twitter Trends but all these "fake" profiles continue exist.

Read Latest News & Articles Related to your Delicious Tags with Jaxly

You use del.icio.us bookmarks to save all your favorite links at one place and put tags to describe each of these web pages. Jaxly does the reverse - it helps you discover fresh stories on the web based on your del.icio.us tags.

You assign your delicious username and Jaxly will fetch the relevant tags - click any of these tags to see the latest stories from the web related to that tag.

Jaxly sources content from Daylife so it’s an interesting blend of regular blog stories and those from traditional news sources.

Send a Web Page via Email as PDF Attachment with PDF Download

PDF Download is an all-in-one PDF toolkit for Firefox that just got even better.

It features a new "web to PDF" feature that enables you to send a web page as email attachment in PDF format. Alternatively, you can save the web page as PDF to your local drive.

Unlike other desktop based PDF writers, PDF Download will convert web pages to PDF online so you need not wait for the conversion to finish. The PDF will arrive in your inbox as soon as the conversion is complete.

There are no ads anywhere in the PDF file and conversion is more or less perfect. If you frequently send web pages to your own email account for reading later, you will find PDF Download particularly useful as it will send a copy in a single click without prompting your for an email address.

PDF Download - The PDF files may be printed in either Portrait or Landscape mode. The same add-in can also be used for converting web PDF files to HTML pages.

What Search Keywords Bring Traffic to Google.com?

The top search result on google.com for the query "google" is google.com. Can you think of any other keywords and/or phrases for which google.com shows up at the top ?

Kallout Brings Web Search Inside Office Documents, Notepad, etc.

Kallout is simply brilliant. It’s a tiny Windows utility that integrates web search inside Microsoft Office documents, Outlook email, text files opened in Notepad or even PDF files that you may be reading inside Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Let’s see how Kallout works with Microsoft Word - you make a text selection inside a document and there pops up a contextual menu with links to various search engines. Pick any one and search results get displayed inline in a speech bubble dialog as in the screenshots above.

You may also check this video screencast to get a better feel of Kallout:

With Kallout installed, one can also read Wikipedia articles related to the selected word / phrase without leaving the current app. If there’s a YouTube video or a Google Map, you can view that inline as well as in the following screenshot - YouTube inside Notepad.

Kallout is something really innovative and will save some boring trips to the web browser while you’re doing a report in Word or finalizing that presentation in PowerPoint. All the information you would need can be retrieved with a simple right click.

Cropper Screen Capture Lets You Control Output Image Quality

Cropper for Windows is a simple yet versatile camera for the desktop screen that is unique in two ways - you have full control over the quality of image captures and second, there’s built-in support for email templates and Amazon S3.

When you activate Cropper, it brings up a nice semi-transparent window that floats on your screen. You can resize / move the capture window using the mouse or arrow keys and click to complete the capture.

Like most other freeware screenshot programs, Cropper also supports JPG & PNG but you also have full control over image quality so you can effectively control the output size of screen grabs.

There’s a countdown mode for delayed captures. Cropper also includes support for email templates so you image meta data is automatically added to the message body.

And if Amazon S3 storage for storing screenshot images, Cropper can automatically upload the image to your S3 account and copies the URL of that image on to your clipboard for easy pasting in an email or a web page.

Quickly Access Desktop Icons and Files from your Web Browser

You may find this simple tip handy if you always have a web browser running on your desktop screen in maximized mode.

There are instances when you need to access program shortcuts and files placed on the desktop.

Now instead of minimizing the browser to access these files, you can simple create a shortcut in the bookmarks toolbar of your browser that points to the desktop folder. Click this bookmark and you’ll be able to browse through desktop content within the browser.

To create a bookmark pointing the desktop, open this address - file:///c:/Users/ - inside a new tab in Firefox. Click your user name and then drag-n-drop the "desktop" folder to your bookmarks toolbar.

Turn Off Picture Thumbnails in WordPress & Save Web Server Space

When you publish a blog post that has a screenshot or a picture, WordPress will automatically create two image thumbnails in your uploads folder on the web server.

Image thumbnails are required for photo galleries or if you are embedding a smaller image in the blog post that links to the full size version but in other cases, these "extra thumbnails" simply occupy precious space on your web server.

To permanently turn off these image thumbnails, Gene suggested a simple workaround in this WordPress Tips article.

Open your WordPress dashboard, go to Settings -> Miscellaneous Settings and clear the height and width fields under "Thumbnail Size" and "Medium Size." Save changes and WordPress will no longer create thumbnails.

JPG, PNG or GIF: How to Choose an Image Format for Screenshots

The quality of screenshot images and illustrations used on your website can make a difference.

You may use the good-old Print Screen key or any of the professional screen capture tools to grab your desktop but the basic requirement remains same - the output image should be sharp and that the file size be well within a reasonable limit.

Now PNG, JPG and GIF are the three most popular image formats for sharing screen captures on the web. Of course there’s another format called BMP but people rarely use that for obvious reasons.

Text & Clipart - If you are capturing text (like a block of source code or Google search pages or a navigation menu), always use GIF or the PNG format - the screenshots are clear and file size remains pretty low.

Regular Desktop Windows - If you need to screen capture a regular window on your screen, dialog boxes, Windows Explorer, DOS command prompt window, Google Maps or even splash screens - use the PNG format.

The advantage with PNG is that it preserves all the colors and yield a much sharper output when compared with JPG. See this Photoshop splash screen for a comparison between JPEG and PNG quality.

Videos & Photographs - If you doing a still image screenshot of a video (YouTube Flash video player), Google Earth, video games, Flash animations, desktop wallpapers or photographs (like Flickr) - always go with JPG instead of PNG because the image file size would be smaller without much degradation in the quality.

To give you example, this Wall Strip video on YouTube would take around 92kb when saved in PNG format but that would fall to 20kb if we changed the format from PNG to JPG. Surprisingly, there isn’t any remarkable difference in quality.

Update: We still got five licenses of SnagIt 9 to giveaway.

Convince Your Site Visitors to Upgrade their Web Browsers

Old web browsers are not just insecure, they also pose a problem for web designers as they have to design sites while keeping the older versions in mind.

If you like to help people upgrade their outdated browsers, Pushup has created a script that can be easily integrated in any blog or website.

This JavaScript checks the version of your site visitor’s browser and will show him an upgrade link if a new version is available - see screenshot.

Your site visitor can either click the link to install the new release of his browser, or choose to be reminded after a time you specify.

iPhone for WordPress Application Now Live on iPhone App Store

Something for WordPress bloggers who also have an iPhone.

The WordPress App for iPhone is now live on the iPhone App store. Download it here for free (requires iTunes). This iPhone app supports WordPress.com hosted blogs as well as self-installed WordPress blogs (version 2.5.1 & above).

New Google Search Interface Looks More Useful - See Screenshots

Google is testing a new search layout that lets users decide if they would like to see longer text excerpts, dates, places and even images inside regular search pages.

You also have the option to limit Google search results to fresh pages only (like show pages created since last month) without using the "Advance Search Page".

To start with, users are presented with a "Search Options" link that brings up a list of relevant options in the right sidebar. All screenshots are more or less self-explanatory.

1. Show pages created in the past month.

2. Show Search Snippets with Longer Text - this may also be a blessing for screen scrappers who make websites using content from Google Search pages.

3. Show Dates & Places in Search Results Snippets - If Google can recognize any content in the web page that looks like a date or a place, it will be show in the search pages while the regular content is shown in light color.

4. Show both Images & Text from Web Pages - This may a good option when search for images galleries on Google. You can do something in Google Image Search using the site: operator but here, the text snippets and images appear side by side.

Google Using TinyURL Service for Shortening URLs in SMS Search?

When you perform a web search on mobile phone using Google SMS, the SMS text message you get back from Google has two parts - web search results and a short URL that redirects to the relevant Google search page.

For instance, Google sent an SMS message with this short URL - m.google.com/u/xva9Ot - for a search query like "Global Warming."

Now if we to use the services of TinyURL for converting that same Google page into a shorter URL, the resulting address would be something like this - tinyurl.com/6xbo7q.

Noticed a similarity ? The redirection code generated by TinyURL (6xbo7q) and Google SMS search (xva90t) have six characters each.

Since this can just be a coincidence, let’s look at the HTTP Response generated by Google that clearly says "tinyurl_server."

Google is either using TinyURL service for generating short URLs or there’s another possibility - they may have developed something similar in-house but gave it the same name "tinyurl."

Microsoft Referrals for Windows Live Toolbar and OneCare

Google will end their AdSense Referrals program next month - this will even apply to software programs like Firefox and the Google Pack that convert fairly well on technology & software related websites.

If you are looking for alternatives to AdSense Referrals, try Microsoft Affiliate. This is much like the AdSense Referrals program though limited to two products - Windows Live Toolbar and OneCare, an anti-virus software from Microsoft.

Windows Live Toolbar is free and Microsoft will pay you $1 for every successful installation on a computer based in US. You can promote the Toolbar on your blog either through banner ads or regular text links.

In the case of Windows Live OneCare, you get paid $3 for every download completed on a computer that’s located either in Canada or US.

The difference between Amazon Affiliates and Microsoft Affiliates is that the former will pay you a commission per sale while Microsoft pays per unique download of the trial software that may or may not convert into a sale.

Windows Live OneCare - Sample Banner Ad

To get started, fill this form. A Microsoft representative will contact you the next day if the application gets approved. Then integrate the referral code in your website.

Sync Files Between Local Computers & FTP Sites with GoodSync Pro

GoodSync is an easy-to-use Windows utility to help you keep files and folders, spread across different places, in sync with each other.

The software may be used to sync files between multiple computers, removable drives, USB sticks and even remote FTP sites.

GoodSync offers two modes - backup and synchronization. The backup mode will only copy changed files from source folder to the destination but in case of synchronization, the folder contents at either sides always stay the same including deletions.

GoodSync has a useful timer option so you can configure the program to automatically download (or even upload) certain important folders from the FTP server to your local hard-drive after, say, every 12 hours.

And as in the screenshot below, the software can be configured to auto-start at any time of the day / week via the Task Scheduler in Windows. This is handy if you do not like to run backup or sync jobs ever day.

GoodSync is a commercial software and costs around $30 but we got five free licenses of GoodSync Pro to giveaway - just put a comment below and you may be one of the lucky five who’ll get a free copy of GoodSync Pro.

Tazti - Free Voice Recognition Software for Web Search & iTunes

Tazti (pronounced as ‘tasty’) is a free speech recognition software for Windows that lets you search the web, control iTunes and navigate social websites like Facebook or MySpace using voice commands.

Tazti may no replacement for Dragon Naturally Speaking since it cannot do dictation but the fact that it is completely free may attract people who want to surf the web hands-free as much as possible.

For instance, when you say "search google" or "search flickr", it takes you to the relevant search engine in your browser. Your next command will be treated as the search query. If you are searching for something unusual, say "spell search google" and then spell the word character by character.

You can also create custom a speech commands and associate them with hyperlinks, software programs or any file on the desktop. Here’s a video demo of Tazti:

Like with any other speech recognition software, you also need to train Tazti. If multiple people use the same computer, they will have to create separate profiles.

The software didn’t work on my Vista machine due to some missing Visual Basic component so am not in a position to comment on the voice recognition accuracy but will update this once the problem gets fixed. Meanwhile please share your experiences with Tazti in the comments.

Watch Buzz Around any Topic in Real Time with Spy

If you use blogs, FriendFeed or Twitter to monitor buzz around your favorite topics (say iPhone launch) - do check out Spy.

Spy looks for conversations happening on Twitter and FriendFeed around any search topic and presents them in an auto-refreshing vertical timeline.

To get an idea, check the following time-lapse video of Spy that captures iPhone related conversations.

Drug Scams on Google Sites

Google Sites, a free service that allows anyone to create a wiki style website in seconds, may be the new hunting ground for scammers for one simple reason - all web pages hosted on Google Sites have an address beginning with sites.google.com.

Now when there’s a page in search results with google.com in the URL, it can easily create a false impression among newbies who may think that the underlying web page bears some association to Google even though there is none.

Here are some other instances of online pharmacies that are currently live on Google Sites and selling drugs illegally.

New Blog Readership Numbers from PEW Internet Study

Pew Research Center for Internet has released some new numbers on blogging and blog readership using data of US based adults. To give you an example, only 11% on Internet users in US read blogs on a typical day while 42% claim to have read blogs at least once.

While there are enough people reading blogs, the survey number does hint that a majority of online Americans (58% to be exact) have never read a blog or have no clue about blogs.

Use Sleipnir Web Browser as Portable Internet Explorer

You may have never heard of Sleipnir but it is one of the most popular web browser in Japan that is now also available in English.

The browser is extremely fast and supports the rendering engine of both IE & Firefox so you can change engines on the fly if you encounter a website that supports only one particular engine.

Here are some screenshots of Sleipnir:

Almost every feature in Sleipnir is customizable and the browser is therefore especially popular among geeks and advanced users who can fine-tune it according to their needs.

When you select some text on a web page, there’s a nice magnification lens that appears after a brief interval allowing you to do more things with that text selection.

IDG says that Sleipnir has a 9% share in the web browser market of Japan. I’ll probably not dump IE, Firefox or Opera for Sleipnir browser but it’s definitely a good attempt and worth keeping a watch.

And for mobile profession who like to carry their computer on a USB Drive, the portable edition of Sleipnir (download page) may just do the trick - it runs on the IE engine by default though you also have the option to use the Firefox Gecko engine.