How to Upload MP3 Music Files to Flickr or Picasa Web Albums

While most people use Flickr for uploading photos and videos, one can also use photo sharing websites like Picasa or Flickr for hosting MP3 songs and other audio files.

For instance, these Flickr pictures are identical but the one on right is actually an MP3 file.

To hide an MP3 file into a JPEG image, copy the MP3 file and a picture into a folder. Open the command prompt window (Start –> Run –> cmd) and switch to this folder. Now run the following command:

copy /b my_picture.jpg + my_song.mp3 my_new_picture.jpg

Remember to replace my_picture and my_song with relevant file names. Next, upload the my_new_picture.jpg file to Flickr. The MP3 song picture will look just like any other regular photograph that you share on Flickr.

When you want to download that MP3 file from Flickr, open the relevant photo page, go to “All Sizes” and download the original sized image. Change the file extension to MP3 and enjoy the music using Winamp*.

And not just MP3 files, you can upload virtually any filetype to Flickr using the above trick including PDFs and Microsoft Office documents. But you may also want to consult Flickr policies to make sure that they don’t ban you for this.

Some People Still Buy Gmail Invites from eBay

Though anyone can register a Gmail account for free without an invite, some people are still selling Gmail invitations on eBay.

And looking at the bids, it is obvious that there are buyers for Gmail invites on eBay as well though the selling price is generally less than a dollar.

Am not sure if selling free digital products on eBay is considered “scam” but it is surprising to see that eBay also maintains a special page (search.ebay.com/gmail) dedicated to such Gmail “products” – and this page enjoys a pretty good rank in Google

The Most Popular WordPress Plug-In is Abandoned by its Author

This chart will help you quickly visualize the popularity of “All In One SEO Pack” plug-in in the world of WordPress bloggers.

This SEO plug-in, that can help your WordPress blog rank better in Google, has been downloaded more number of times than any of other 2.3k WordPress plug-ins on the Internet according to wordpress.org.

It is perfectly compatible with the current release of WordPress but the sad news is that the author of this plugin (uberdose) has decided to abandon his baby and will no longer release new updates in future.

There are no reasons specified except this brief message - “This plugin is no longer supported or maintained.”

Maybe “uberdose” is busy with other projects but he should consider handing over the reigns to another developer in the WordPress community so that this great plugin maintain its rank in the popularity charts.

Notify Twitter About New Blog Posts From Windows Live Writer Itself

This is something very useful useful for bloggers who use Windows Live Writer and are active on Twitter. As soon as you publish a new blog post using Windows Live Writer, you can notify your Twitter followers about that article.

Windows Live Writer will also shorten the URL of your blog article so you have more space for writing text in your tweet.

Here’s how to ping Twitter from Windows Live Writer:

Step 1. Download the file Twitter.WriterPlugin.dll and copy it to the following directory:

C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins\

Step 2: Go to Tools –> Options –> Plug-ins –> Twitter Notify and fill it with your Twitter username / password.

That’s it. When you are done publishing a new article in your blog, Windows Live Writer gives you an option to share that post with your Twitter followers.

Desktop Blogging Clients for Linux

Praval is looking for a desktop based offline blog editing software for Linux (Ubuntu) – something on the lines of Windows Live Writer. Here are some suggestions from the extremely helpful Twitter community:

1. Scribefire – A hugely popular Firefox extension for blogging that lets you blog from the comfort of your browser. Supports almost every blog platform and is frequently updated.

2. Flock – This Firefox like browser has built-in blogging capabilities. Open the blog editor in the browser, drag-n-drop content from anywhere and publish.

3. Bleezer – This Java based WYSIWYG blog editing software can upload images to your web server and includes a spell checker but the developer has not updated the software since a long time.

4. BloGTK – This is a pretty popular blogging software for Linux that supports Blogger, Movable Type and WordPress but again, no new updates since long.

5. Drivel Journal – Another blog editor for the GNOME desktop though sort of abandoned now.

6. KBlogger – This is a blogging application for the K Destkop Environment. It integrates in KDE Kicker and is also available as a standalone application for KDE 4. Supports Blogger, WordPress, MetaWeblog API, MovableType API, GData API, etc.

You may also consider blogging through Google Docs, imified for IM or even OpenOffice though the Sun Weblog Publisher add-in costs some money.

Can You Depend on Online Storage Services That Are Free ?

When DivShare launched in 2007, they offered unlimited storage space and would accept files as large as 200 MB. You could even hotlink to images hosted on Divshare from your own blog / website and thus save bandwidth bills.

A year later, DivShare announced that files hosted on DivShare servers will be inaccessible to visitors from Asia because online advertising was weak in that region. This limit did no apply to DivShare customers who had a paid account.

Another service called Streamload MediaMax made its debut at CES 2006 and offered 25 GB of free online storage space with no restrictions on file size. They did manage to create a substantial user base because the offered space was much larger than any of the competing services.

But in April this year, MediaMax changed its name to “The LinkUp” and asked all existing free members to upgrade to a pro-account else their files will be removed permanently.

Obviously, old MediaMax customers like Poonam and Dr. Mike aren’t happy because their own data is locked by another company – the files will be lost forever unless they pay. Scary situation indeed.

Determine The Shortest Path Between Two Wikipedia Articles

The shortest path between two Wikipedia articles is defined as the minimum number of clicks required to move from one article to another. This can be used to discover connections between topics that are completely unrelated.

For instance, if you are on the Wikipedia page of Microsoft, it would require just two clicks for you to reach the page of Saddam Hussein.

The route will be Microsoft –> 1990 –> Saddam Hussein

Six Degrees of Wikipedia is an online tool that will help you find the shortest route between any two pages on Wikipedia using links.

Unlike real world where distances remain constant if you move from A to B or from B to A, it’s not so in the case of Wikipedia. The distance going from Article A to Article B is not necessarily the same as from Article B to article A.

Stephen Dolan made this interesting tool using Wikipedia Dumps that contain all the Wikipedia stories in XML format minus the images and history.