Debiprasad» Internet and the Web

Facebook Timeline for Pages issue on March 1st

Debiprasad — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 08:16:23 +0000

Yesterday, Facebook started preview of Timeline for Pages. Many pages started using it too. Even we did for our Discover Bhubaneswar page. Yesterday it was working fine. But today, when we posted photos on our wall, it appeared on the news feed (home), but not on the page. I tried to see what is the problem and how can I fix it for the time being. I tried to edit the photo and saw that it’s showing 2012 March — . I changed the date to 1. When I tried to click on “Done Editing” button, it said “You cannot move a story to a time later than when it was posted.”. I tried to change the date from 1 to –, and when I tried to save it, it again said that error. When I changed that to 2012 February 29, it saved and showed the photo after few posts.

There are so many bugs in Facebook. The ‘uploader’ works in your local timezone. But the ‘timeline’ works in the server timezone, which I think must be in PST. So the timeline thinks the post is not yet ready to be displayed on it. And the ‘updater’ also thinks in the server timezone. (I think ‘updater’ is a good friend of ‘timezone’, he always thinks about ‘timezone’, before update anything).

I think this problem will happen today (1st March) only. Before it should happen again on 1st April, I think Facebook Developers will be able to fix this issue. The people living in the timezone same as the server timezone or to the west will not be affected. The people staying more towards east will be affected much. So let’s not worry for today and enjoy!

How to show your Facebook profile picture as large as possible?

Debiprasad — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 06:38:51 +0000

You might have seen, some people has large images on their Facebook profile as their profile picture and some other people have tiny profile pictures. Do you want to make your Facebook profile picture as large as possible? It’s easy. Facebook profile picture has no limit on their height. But the width of the picture is limited to 158 pixels. So when you upload a photo with higher width (higher than the height) and do not crop it, then Facebook reduces the width to 158 pixels. As the height is related to the width, to show the image properly, the height again decreases to much lower size. For example, if the width of your photo is 1600 pixels and the height of the picture is 900 pixels, then after uploading it as your profile picture, the width becomes the fixed width size, 158 pixels and the height becomes 89 pixels. So your profile picture looks smaller in size.

So if you upload a portrait picture (taken with holding the camera horizontally), where the height of the image is larger than the width, after uploading, the profile picture will come larger. But if you upload a landspace type photo (taken with holding the camera normally), where the width of the photo is larger than the height of the photo, after uploading, the profile photo will come smaller.

What to do, if you have a landspace type of photo and you want to show your profile picture look larger? In this case, upload the photo to any of the album you have. Then go to that photo page. There you will find an link at the left hand side, below your photo, “Make Profile Picture”. Click on that, crop the required portion of the photo, and make that your profile photo. Make sure, while cropping the photo, make the height larger than the width.

How to follow someone on Facebook

How to follow someone on Facebook

Debiprasad — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:03:51 +0000

You must have heard about following people on Twitter and thinking the title of this post may be a mistake – it should be Twitter instead of Facebook. But I am aware that I am going to talk about “How to Follow on Faceook”.

On Twitter, when you follow someone, their tweets and the retweets they do (depending upon your following settings) appears on your time line. If some user has protected their tweets, you have to send a follow request to them. If they allow you to follow, then you can see their tweets and those can come on your time line.

But on Facebook, there is no follow concept. It’s a social media platform where you add friends. And on your homepage, you see updates from all those people (as per their privacy settings), called as “News Feed”. When you add someone, you can see their public updates on your news feed, until the person clicks on Delete Request. It’s similar to the way you see updates from people you follow on Twitter on your time line. When anyone on twitter blocks you, you can’t see their tweets on your time line, but you can see their (public) tweets. You can translate this situation in the Facebook way – you can see public updates from anyone you sent a friend request to on your News Feed. But when they click on the “Delete Request” button, their updates will not appear on your News Feed. However you can see their public updates on their wall.

So next time you want to follow someone on Facebook, sent them a friend request and add a note saying not to click on “Delete Request” button if they don’t want to add you as a friend, instead they could click on the “Not Now” button (and hide all requests to make that page clutter less). I may try this next time, some people may treat this way as stupid, but I will share the result – but before that I need to find some one worth following on Facebook.

Tip: Sagarika

Update: Recently Facebook introduced new Subscribe Button. Now you can follow anyone on Facebook, by using the Subscribe option. But if they don’t want anyone to follow them, then they can disallow the Subscribe button on their profiles. Similar to the way, people protect their tweets on Twitter.

Tip: Susanta

QT QuTee – a Quicker way to Tweet

Debiprasad — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 12:35:17 +0000

Just around an hour ago I launched my first Twitter application: QT QuTee. QT or QuTee or Quick Tweet – whatever you may prefer to call it. It enables you to tweet quickly without opening Twitter. And most importantly, you can’t do anything except that. This the beauty of QuTee. I wanted it to be quick, small and simple. What makes me to build this app? Is this app going to help you in any manner. Or is it just a waste of my time and money? The story follows…

Sometimes (actually many times) I want to tweet something; it may be some random thoughts, ideas, junks etc. I want to tweet those, so that they will be posted as my Facebook updates, on my Buzz, on identi.ca etc. I don’t want to see my twitter time line or whether someone has mentioned me or messages (now Twitter calls direct messages (DM) as messages). Neither I want to follow someone nor I want to see my followers list nor the list of people I follow. Even I am not interested to check those trending topics. What I only want is to tweet and that’s it; game over.

So just to tweet this (something limited to 140 chars) I used to need to open Twitter or any other app (client or browser). It takes much time to load and offers me many functionality which I never need at that moment. Also I get distracted by those awesome features and spend much time on those. While tweeting some random thought should take few seconds, I usually end in spending few minutes (few minutes sounds less, instead I should say a fraction of an hour). This situation prompted me to think, is there any application where I can just tweet and nothing?

I searched for an app which can enable to to tweet quickly. Mostly I found many client apps, for iphone, mac etc. and few browser plugins which claims to tweet quickly. I was not interested in those. The first reason is I don’t have those gadgets and the second reason is I don’t think they will not offer much features. I also found one browser app, twickly.com, which claims that you can tweet quickly and save time using that. It also have a drop down list, which contains options to fill your tweet box with ready made statements like “I am listening to”, “I am going to bed” etc. And there is no other features available with them, which I like. There it asks for your twitter username and password; no oAuth. I also tried that to know whether you need to enter your username and password every time you want to tweet quickly using twickly. But it does not work and says “Failure! Wrong Username / Password!”. Believe me, I used my correct username and password. Anyways, if that would be working correctly and asking username and password every time you want to tweet quickly, then it is no use. Also I don’t like a Google CSE search box, a bird image, the logo, a clock image much text and links, clouds on the sky background etc. on that website.

So, I decided to create an app of my own. I never looked at twitter API before. I thought one day I will learn it and build something which will be simple, small and quick; so that I can just tweet quickly. But the problem with me is, I just plan, but never execute those. Last night I was sharing a link, using Tweet Button. And I just looked at it and thought I could use the http://twitter.com/share url and tweet quickly. But I was feeling sleepy and decided to start working on this in the morning. After learning the document and testing this I realized that you need an url to share. This works best to share any URL. So, if you want to share any URL, Twitter Share Bookmarklet is a good option. I even tried to use this to tweet quickly from a newly opened tab. But it denied me saying that there is no valid URL to share.

In the mean while I was learning what Twitter @Anywhere API offers. Then I really liked the Tweet Box feature. And I realized that this is something I need to Tweet Quickly. I created a HTML file and added the minimum required code in it. Then I saw something need to be replaced by the API Key. So, to get the API key, I need to register my application. There I need the name and URL of the application. I was thinking to build this application for myself. So I was not interested to spend money on dedicated domain names. I was planning to name the application as QT (Quick Tweet) and to use on the subdomain of debiprasad.net as qt.debiprasad.net. While thinking about QT, the word QuTee came in to my mind. As it sounds like Cutie, I decided to search for available domain names for QuTee. I bought qutee.in and qutee.net. I decided to use qutee.in for this app and to reserve qutee.net for any future use (I am not sure whether I will be able to use it in the future and get back the invested money). And all done, Qutee is live.

What’s the beauty of QuTee?

The beauty of QuTee is it offers to tweet quickly. Nothing else. It uses less code, so it can be loaded on your browser quickly. It needs you to authorize the app, so that it can tweet for you. This authorization needed once and works forever, unless you revoke access. As most of the people stay logged in to twitter on their browser, it does not take much time to authorize QuTee. There is no other thing to distract you except a label, remaining text counter, a text box to type in your tweet and a button to tweet that message. You can close that tab/window or keep it open when you are done with tweeting. To make it faster and to save much of my time, I have planned to not to add any tracking code. So, if you are using it, then please comment here or reply me on Twitter (@debiprasad). Also remember the domain name or bookmark it, so that you can open it quickly to tweet quickly.

I was planning to say this as “The Quickest way to Tweet”. But I have not done enough research and testing to ensure whether it’s the quickest way or not. So not settled with the term “Quicker”.

What’s next?

The @Anywhere API is loading much features in the background as javascript files. And we don’t need all of those at QuTee. I have not yet checked whether those javascript files able to cache or not. So, in future I will try to minimize the time it takes to load. And I promise, I will not add any new features to this application. Hope you like QuTee and save your time while tweet quickly.

No related posts.

Twitter remembers one username on Firefox, but not the other

Debiprasad — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 07:58:44 +0000

Since few days I am experiencing this issue. I was logged in to Twitter with my primary twitter account @debiprasad on Firefox and I had selected to remember that log in. I decided to use Twitter with my primary account on Chrome and use another Twitter account on Firefox. So, I signed out, and signed in with my other username. I selected the option to remember this login (with the new account). I don’t remember exactly, but I think there was no problem for first few days. One day, when I opened Twitter on Firefox, I saw I am automatically logged in as @debiprasad. I tried to sign out, so that I can sign in with my other account. But after page loads, I found that I am again logged in as @debiprasad. Again I tried to sign out and finally it showed me home page (when no one is signed in). Then I able to sign in with my other username, with “remember me” selected.

It worked for the day. But on the next day, when I booted my computer and opened Twitter, I found that I am automatically signed in with @debiprasad. And the same story continues. It does not sign me out on my first attempt. Then it signs me out on the second attempt. Sometimes, it shows some error on the sign out url (different error at different time). When I reload that page, it shows me a new “Sign out” button to confirm that I am trying to sign out. After clicking on that it shows me Twitter home page, with no one signed in. From that day, it happens everyday, when I open Firefox for the first time.

I don’t understand what’s going on. I don’t have a clue to know whether it’s the problem of Twitter or Firefox. I am trying to find this out. And then I will update this post.

World Map of Social Networks

Debiprasad — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 07:32:39 +0000

The world map of December shows the relentless march of Facebook , close to reaching 600 million “residents.” At the moment appears to be the social network of choice for 115 countries on 132 analyzed .

Since June, the most important achievements were made in the old Europe and particularly in Poland and Hungary, two nations in which the competitor, respectively Iwiw and nasza-klasa, seemed unbeatable because of their connotation localist network effect achieved.

The only social network is to resist European Hyves in the Netherlands, although there are signs of difficulty (statistical, since Alex already be a loser, and social, has been sold to a major publisher and users have not taken well).

The other victories of the creature are found in Mongolia against Zuckerberg and Hi5 in India and Paraguay to the detriment of the social network of Google, Orkut, which now only remains strong in Brazil.

In recent months there has been a change to the preferences of Japanese who go to increasingly use social networking to the mobile device. Mixi while remaining the most widely used by web gives way to Gree Mobage Town and if we consider the use of mobile and total users.

The situation remains fluid in Armenia and Georgia (here Alexa report overtaking Facebook not confirmed by Google Trends for Websites).

Top 3 Social Networking Sites (December 2010)

A look over the shoulders of Facebook, you can see the growth of Twitter, which in some countries is the second Social Network (UK, Australia, Canada) and other check in the third position (Germany and Italy). Although LinkedIn is starting to notice its presence in Australia, Canada, UK.

Below is a poster that summarizes the evolution of social networks in the world since June 2009.

This post is originally posted at VincosBlog in Italian. I used Google Translation service to translate from Italian to English. If you can able to find any error and help me to correct it, will be great.

How to follow someone on Facebook

Online Saree Destinations in India

Debiprasad — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 08:55:38 +0000

I answered to the question “Where to buy silk sarees online?” at WhereToBuyOnline.in recently. I thought it’ll be good to share the answer here too.

RmKV is a very old and popular store for silk sarees in Chennai. There are few other good silk saree stores in Chennai like Nalli, Kumaran Silks, The Chennai Silks, Pothys etc. They all have very good collection on silk sarees and other sarees.

When come to shopping online on that stores, RmKV, Nalli, The Chennai Silks and Pothys have online stores, whereas online store of Kumaran Silks is under construction since years. RmKV and The Chennai Silks also have chudiar and dress materials for women, apparels for men and kids, whereas Nalli online store has only collection of sarees. Pothys online store have Churidar materials, Kutty Sarees (Sarees for kids) and Dhoties, apart from different verity of sarees. RmKV do not have only silk sarees there, they have Traditional Silks, Embroidered Silks, 9-yard Silks, Theme Silks, Embroidered Fancy, Printed Silks, Mysore Silks, Arangaetram Collection, Natural Silks, Casual Sarees, Tasar, Georgette, Raw Silk, Cot-Silk etc. Similarly The Chennai Silks have different collections other than silk sarees. Whereas Nalli online store have Bridal collection, New collections, Casual collections and Nalli Next collections. Pothys store have these variety of sarees: Samudrika Pattu, Parampara Pattu, Vastrakala Pattu, Leganga Sarees, Simmer Sarees, Embroidery Sarees, Kancheepuram Silks, Bridal Collections, Partywear Sarees, Printed Silks, Handloom Silks, Crepe Silks, Designer Sarees, Casual Wear, Micro Silk, London Georgette, Exclusive Collections.

I have a good shopping experience at RmKV. They have a large collection online than their competitors. They have delivered my order in just 66 hours (3 days).

In this post, I have only discussed about few online saree stores from Chennai. They are well known for their silk sarees, however they have good collection of other sarees. I will update about other sellers, when I will find them. If you know about any online saree stores, then let me know. Also, if you have any practical experience with any online saree stores, then let me know.

Buying tips on eBay.in

Debiprasad — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 19:53:18 +0000

Few days ago, I launched Where to buy online in India?. “Where to buy online in India?” is a community driven Q&A website, where you can get answers to your queries related to online shopping in India. As it’s just started, there are just few questions and answers. Many people are visiting this website, some of them are also appreciating the concept, but only few of my friends and acquaintances are posting questions and answers. I am waiting to answer many questions, but I am not interested to ask those questions myself. I am waiting for people to ask those questions and I will answer them. If this is not going to happen soon, I will ask all those questions.

I am writing a wiki page on that website on Buying tips on eBay.in. All the tips are based on my personal experience on eBay.in. I am posting those tips here too.

There are many myths regarding eBay shopping experiences. On eBay.in, eBay.in does not sell anything. It’s a platform, where sellers sell their products online. There are thousands of sellers on eBay.in. Here is few tips on how to safely make purchases on eBay.in.

You might be looking for a product on eBay.in or already got a link to the product page. In the former case, you will search for the product for sure. Also, in the latter case, search for the product name to see which other sellers are selling the similar products. If you have searched for the product first, after looking all the details on the product page, search for other sellers selling the similar product. Intelligently change the keywords and other parameters to get better results.
Check for the prices (including shipping charge) for products from all sellers. This will help you to get the best deal (in price).
Check for feedback scores of the seller. The more the number of feedback and the % of feedback score is signs for a better and trustworthy seller. Also, read few recent feedbacks of the seller, before you make the purchase from that seller.
Read all the details (product details, shipping and delivery details, warranty, guaranty etc.) before you make a purchase. If you have any doubt, contact the seller.
PaisaPay from eBay.in is a good way to pay for the purchase. You have to make the payment by your bank account or credit/debit card. You will pay eBay.in and eBay.in will pay to the seller. The seller need to ship the product within few defined days. If they don’t, you can claim to get your money back. After they ship the product, it need to be delivered within few defined days. If they don’t you can claim to get your money back.
Before paying for the cart, check for the discounts codes available. If you subscribe to the newsletter of eBay.in, you may get few discount codes occasionally. If not, you can always search for discount codes online. But valid discount codes may not available always.
After receiving the product, check whether the product is as defined as before. If not first contact the seller and ask them to resolve the issue. If they did not help you, you can complain at eBay.in and can get a good solution.

If you have any other tips or anything you want to discus on this, then please comment or reply to @buyonline_in or @debiprasad on Twitter. Happy eShopping!!!

Where to buy online in India?

Debiprasad — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:17:09 +0000

Some people love to spend time on shopping. They visit big malls, great stores or the market in the neighborhood and do what they love. I too love shopping. But instead of shopping in the traditional way, I spend my time on visiting many online shops. I buy more products online than I buy from the offline market.

Few months ago, I posted on my online shopping experiences. That became the second most popular post on my blog and in few days it’ll become the most popular one. I got inspired with the popularity of this post, my wasted time on online shops and few other factors, I am planning to write few more posts since few days. But due to lack of time, I am unable to publish them. Please be in touch, I am coming with few good posts on my online shopping experiences.

I was thinking on creating a community driven Q&A website, where people can share their online shopping experiences. They can ask question, like where they can find some specific products, or whether an online shop is good to have deal with etc. And other members can reply to those questions, as per their experience. I thought, that will be a good place to turn my wasted time (Most of the time shopping online saves your time and money. But sometime you waste more time, becoming a maniac) on online shops to some useful stuff.

Once I searched a quick but good way to build such a website. After few hours of research, I stopped the process and focused on other works. But the idea was playing in my mind. Then on last Wednesday, I did some more research on this. I checked WordPress themes which can turn a WordPress blog to a Q&A website, Qhub.com, Shapado and OSQA. Later I decided to create this website on Sapado. On Thursday, I bought the domain name, created a simple and quick logo, and did all required settings. And as a result Where to buy online in India? is running.

I thank the guys who developed and running Shapado. I also thank all my friends who have asked questions there and who are going to ask few questions to provide a kick start to the website. I request you to visit the website and ask out your queries on online shopping in India. I also request you to share your online experience by answering to the questions there. I am planning to reward top contributors the website, buy sending them some gifts. So ask, answer, vote and do whatever you can to get points and badges. If you become one of the top contributors, you may receive the rewards.

reCaptcha Fail Whale Gravatar

Debiprasad — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 09:06:42 +0000

This is the season of seminars and projects in Engineering colleges in Odisha (For 7th semester students). When I was in my 7th semester, most students were coping ready made seminars from other students or seniors. Some people search on internet for a ready made seminars. A very few students were doing research on their interested topics to create a original presentation. Most of the people stopped near Bluetooth or WiFi or any most common topic as their seminar topics. During 7th semester, I decided to give a seminar on Holographic Memory, about which I read on my favorite technology magazine Digit as it was looking promising to me. In my 8th semester, I moved a step forward and prepared my seminar on Web 2.0. Unfortunately, I only submitted the paper, did not get opportunity to explain Web 2.0 to anyone.

4 long years passed. Still most of the students are doing the same, looking for ready made seminars or preparing for seminars on common and old topics. In this post, I am going to say a few words about three interesting topics. If I would be in my 7th semester, then I must be selecting one of these three topics as my seminar topics. If by any chance, any such student read this blog and anyone of these three topics interests you, then you can choose that topic.

Let’s start with Gravatar. Gravatar stands for Globally Recognized Avatar. The above pictures are Gravatars of those people. You must have watched recent Hollywood blockbuster Avatar. If you have not watched it like me due to any reason, then you must have heard much about it. So, what’s Avatar? If you have some knowledge on Hindu mythology, then you must have heard about Dashavatar. From Wikipedia,

In Hinduism, Avatar or Avatāra (Devanagari अवतार, Sanskrit for “descent” [viz., from heaven to earth]) refers to a deliberate descent of a deity from heaven to earth, and is mostly translated into English as “incarnation”, but more accurately as “appearance” or “manifestation”.

But when it comes to computing, an avatar is a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, a two-dimensional icon (picture) or a one-dimensional username used on Internet forums and other communities, or a text construct found on early systems such as MUDs.

Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. It needs only your email id to identify you and shows your image associated with the email id. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums; Gravatar will help you to identify you on any site. If your email id is not associated with any Gravatar, then your avatar will be anyone of the Mystery Man (WordPress default), blank (seriously, nothing will be displayed there), Gravatar logo, Identicon, Wavatar, MonsterID, or any other image. Identicon, Wavatar, and MonsterID are unique for each email id.

More info on Gravatar can be found on its website and Wikipedia. If you are choosing this topic, then show one or two scenes from movie Avatar and few photos from Dashavatar of Vishnu, while explaining Avatar. This will make your presentation interesting. Don’t add more, otherwise Gravatar or Avatar (computing) will loose the weight in the presentation. Also, don’t forget to tell about Yahoo Avatars. And the MonsterID is the funniest part of this. You must be knowing few people who would be attending the seminar and the email ids of those people. Try to get the MonsterIDs of few of them (who must have a good sense of humor) and show during the presentation. As a celebration of this post, I turned on MonsterID for this blog.

Let’s come to reCAPTCHA now. A CAPTCHA is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. For example, humans can read distorted text as the one shown below, but current computer programs can’t:

The term CAPTCHA (for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas Hopper and John Langford of Carnegie Mellon University.

There are many type of CAPTCHA are available. One of which are reCAPTCHA. reCAPTCHA is a free CAPTCHA service that helps to digitize books, newspapers and old time radio shows. Normally there are computer applications which scan books and converts words to digital format. The problem with these applications are, they are not perfect. They are not able to interpret many scanned words correctly. Here reCAPTCHA shoots two birds with one bullet.

There other types of CAPTCHA are available. Like asking to solve a small mathematical problem like addition, or subtraction etc. Some show you an array of images and ask you to find the odd from the even. Some shows an image and ask how many kittens are on that image. Some shows some images and ask you to choose a word from a drop down list which is related to those images. Some CAPTCHAs also support accessibility. If you can’t read the word, then you can hear them and then type. reCAPTCHA also supports this well.

If you are choosing this topic for your seminar, then tell about the problem of spam, the CAPTCHA, then reCAPTCHA and then tell alternatives of reCAPTCHA.

And now let’s fall in love with the Fail Whale. Who wants to be fail? But the Fail Whale loves to be. The “Fail Whale” is this above graphic of a whale held up by a flock of birds illustrated by Yiying Lu (@yiyinglu on twitter). It is employed during periods of downtime by the social networking service Twitter. And to know what happened to that please click here (middle click to open in a new tab).

This is an interesting and funny topic. There is a risk in choosing this topic as your seminar. But if you take risk, then you may be star in your class.

If you choose anyone from those above topics, then please share your experience with me. Please comment below.

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