Linking AdSense with Analytics is fairly easy (see video) but consider a slightly different scenario:

You are maintaining two separate Google Accounts – your first Google Account (say adsense@gmail.com) is configured with AdSense while the other account (say analytics@gmail.com) is associated with Google Analytics.

How do you then link these two accounts so that you can track AdSense and Analytics data from the same dashboard?

If are facing a similar issue, here’s a simple solution courtesy Akanksha Shukla:

Step 1. Login to your Google Analytics dashboard using your existing Google Account (analytics@gmail.com).

Step 2. Create a new user in Google Analytics from the User Manager. Set this user’s email address the same as your existing AdSense account (adsense@gmail.com) and select the Access type as “Account Administrator.”

That’s it! You will now be able to login into Google Analytics using your Google AdSense Account and can also track the performance of ads from the same dashboard. You can only link one AdSense account to one Google Analytics account.

Linking Analytics with another AdSense Account

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

If you are a frequent commenter on TechCrunch blog, here’s a slightly disheartening news for you – TechCrunch has stopped displaying user comments on all stories that are older than 10 days. Your comments have not been deleted from the actual WordPress database but they aren’t putting them on the site anymore.

For instance, this TechCrunch post on Nexus One by MG Seigler has 104 comments but if you look at the actual page, you’ll find none. The same is true for all the other blog posts in their archives that are older than 10 days.

Why Blogs Remove Comments

Some blogs automatically turn-off the commenting feature from posts that are older than ‘n’ days to avoid spam but they rarely hide existing comments from their old posts. I can think of two reasons why TechCrunch may have taken this step:

1. When you have hundreds of comments on a page, it increase the size (bytes) of the page thus increasing the load-time. Matt Cutts from Google earlier hinted (see video) that site speed may be factor in page rankings and that partially explains why TechCrunch wants to limit the size of their pages.

2. Comments always have rel=nofollow so they don’t pass any link-juice to the commenter’s website but the problem is that they still dilute the amount to Google Juice that gets passed to other “dofollow” links. By removing comments, you are passing more concentrated juice to editorial links.

Popular gadget blog Engadget recently had to shut down comments because of anonymous trolls but they at least informed their readers before implementing the change.

It would be great if Arrington too, who is rightly getting all the good press for his handling of the TechCrunch bribery scandal, could share a few details about their new comments policy with his loyal readership.

[*] In the following video, Matt Cutts told WebProNews that page speed may soon be a factor in Google Search.

..a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast. It should be a good experience, and so it’s sort of fair to say that if you’re a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don’t want that as much.

TechCrunch Removes Reader Comments From All Older Blog Posts

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

This works nicely but there’s one area where Google is still lacking – image search.

Steve Jobs introduced the much-awaited Apple iPad to the world on January 27, 2010. The news was covered by almost every blog and news website, millions of tweets were written for the iPad and thousands of images and videos from that Apple event were shared on sites like Flickr and YouTube.

With so much excitement around the device, the disappointing part is that though a week has passed since we saw the first iPad unit, Google Images still has no clue about the existence of this Apple device.

Try a simple search for “iPad” on Google Image search and you’ll only see mockups but none of these images represent the official Apple gadget. Move to page 2 and you’ll find that the story is no different.

In this quick test, Bing did manage to find some images of the Apple iPad on the first page of search results but the top slots were still occupied by mockups.

The surprise winner here was Yahoo. It not only returned the best results for “iPad” but also had a section called “Recent Images” that pulled the very latest photographs of iPad from news stories. Google seriously needs to implement something similar for their “real-time search” as well.

Screenshot 1: iPad search on Google Images

Screenshot 2: iPad on Bing Images

Screenshot 3: iPad according to Yahoo!

The Problem with Google Image Search

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

The app, aptly named as Memorize Now, works something like this.

You copy-paste the text passages that you want to remember in the space provided and then hit the “memorize” button. The app will then replace certain words from the passage with blank spaces and you are required to recall the hidden words. You can always hover your mouse over a black space to reveal the hidden word.

If it sounds a little confusing, watch this quick screencast from Molly that explains all the good features of Memorize Now visually.

The Memorize Now app was initially created to help people memorize Bible verses but you can use it to memorize virtually any kind of information (including the plays of William Shakespeare).

On a related note, here’s another excellent video that shares some very practical tips to help you memorize lines. My favorite tip is the one that says -- “Memorize your lines on an empty stomach; that’s when the hormone dealing with memory is most active!”

Related: Memorize Text with Tachistoscope

‘Memorize Now’ Can Help You Memorize Long Pieces of Text Quickly

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Nokia Diagnostics is a free utility that can help you troubleshoot and resolve common problems with your Nokia phones.

For instance, when you need to configure your Nokia device on a different Internet Connection (like moving from one Wi-Fi network to another), Nokia Diagnostics can automatically identify the right Internet settings for you.

The utility can also help you test the phone’s battery charger, the loudspeaker and even the earpiece.

Nokia Diagnostics works with all S60 5th edition devices (like the N-series, Nokia 5800, etc.) while support for 3rd edition devices is expected soon.

Related: Test your BlackBerry Phone for Problems

Troubleshoot your Nokia Phone Problems with Nokia Diagnostics

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Google has added an interesting face morphing app in Orkut. The app takes your profile image from Orkut and smoothly morphs it into your friend’s profile image while filling the path  with public images of other Orkut users who have matching faces.

The application, known as People Hopper, is part of Google Labs but for some reason, it didn’t work with my Orkut account. Contrary to what you may think, face morphing in Orkut doesn’t due “face recognition” and is just a simple matching to find similar pictures.

First, faces are automatically detected in public profile images and normalized for improved contrast and size. Then, for each image, we find other publicly available profile images that are similar to one another. Then, when you pick a friend you want to be your end match, we just hop along similar public images, step-by-step, until the connection is made!

If you don’t want your Orkut images to show up in another person’s morph, you can click here to exclude your Orkut profile from the Google experiment. For extra fun, you can extract the individual images from the morph sequence and turn them into an animated gif.

Google Brings Face Morphing to Orkut

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

To celebrate the launch of their 2010 Core Processor Family featuring Turbo Boost technology, Intel India is running a “Turbo Tips” contest here on Digital Inspiration for the entire month of February.

Intel Turbo Tips Contest

The Digital Inspiration blog, as most old-timers would agree, is all about using software tools, gadgets and web applications in a smarter and more productive manner. The contest is around the same theme.

To participate in the Turbo Tips contest, all you have to do is submit one smart tip on just about any topic – it could be about computers, healthy living, saving money or time, improving digital lifestyle, going greet or anything that will help people get smarter and productive.

You can choose any platform for sharing your turbo tip – you could write the tip in text, send us photographs (say, you have a very smart workspace), upload a video or even create a presentation – it’s your choice.

Click here to submit your tip

You are free to submit as many tips as you like using the above form. We’ll pick one winner every week and one grand winner at the end of the contest.

The weekly winners will receive some cool digital music players from Sony while the grand winner will get a brand new laptop with 2010 Intel Core i5 processor (with Turbo Boost of course).

This contest is open to all Indian residents who are above 18 years of age except the state of Tamil Nadu. All prize schemes as defined under The Tamil Nadu Prize Schemes (Prohibition) Act, are prohibited in the state of Tamil Nadu. This is the only reason why Intel India had to exclude TN from the contest.

For detailed terms and conditions, please click here. Should you have any queries, please send me an email at amit@labnol.org.

Enter the Intel Contest on Digital Inspiration

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

With the Flickr Camera tool, you can not only see the quality of shots captured by actual consumers in real-world situations but you may also compare the relative popularity of various camera models over time.

Google today introduced something similar in Picasa Web Albums – see example.

With Picasa (the online version, not the desktop software), you can either search for public photos that have been shot by any particular brand of cameras (say Nokia or Nikon) or you can limit your search to photos that have been taking using a specific camera model (say Nokia N95 or Canon Power Shot A3100IS).

Like Flickr, Picasa Camera Search works with camera phones as well as regular digital cameras. The feature is available under search options in the sidebar.

 
Related: Interesting Uses of Camera Phones

Looking to Buy a Cameraphone or a Digital Camera? Picasa Can Help!

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

To add your own Twitter profile in the WeFollow directory, you just need to grant certain read & write permissions to WeFollow, choose a city and any five tags, and you are done. Your profile will get listed under the relevant tags and you’ll also get own profile page on WeFollow – see example.

What’s the problem then?

When you add (or update) your Twitter profile to WeFollow, there’s a default setting that says “Update my twitter URL to be my WeFollow profile.”  If you are in a hurry and don’t read the fine-print, the URL in your Twitter profile will automatically be replaced with your WeFollow profile.

There are quite a few Twitter profiles now that are pointing to WeFollow though I doubt if the profile owners are aware of the fact that their blog URLs have been replaced in Twitter just because they failed to uncheck a default setting.

It just doesn’t make sense to point your Twitter followers to a directory listing when you have your own website.

Quick Note to Twitter Users Who are Listed on WeFollow

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Unlike most other companies in the hardware business, Google doesn’t offer any phone support for Android / Nexus One. Customers can either report problems on public forums or, for more specific issues, they can reach Android support via email but the response can take up to 3 days.

Well all that could soon change as a new requirement posted on Google’s Job portal strongly suggests that Google is working hard to bring direct phone support for Android / Nexus One Customers.

As Phone Support Program Manager for Android and the Nexus One, you are responsible for ramping up and managing operations of Google’s telephone support for our direct-to-consumer Android/Nexus One customers.

The optimal candidate will have direct experience in call center and partner management to drive customer satisfaction around their support experience.

The person will be based in Mountain View but Google will probably outsource the actual phone support job to another vendor.

Google Adding Direct Phone Support for Nexus One Customers

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

If you find your existing setup a bit inconvenient and are looking for ways that will help you print documents from the same printer but wirelessly, here are some choices.

Turn any Wired Printer into a Wireless Network Printer

More new printers these days are network enabled so you can just attach them to your home network using the Ethernet port (or over Wi-Fi) and print from any other computer in the home network. However, if you are using an old USB based printer, you can use a wireless print server to turn that wired printer into a wireless one. 

Wireless print servers are small devices (they look like mini routers) that have a USB port. You just have to connect the printer to this wireless print server using a regular USB cable and the printer will then become available to all other computers in your wireless network.

Here’s an overview of some of the most popular wireless print servers:

Netgear WGPS606 – This is both a wireless print server and a wired router.  It has two USB ports so you may use the device for sharing up to two printers over the wireless network. The same print server can also help you connect four different computers to the network even if they are not fitted with wireless network adapters. Costs around $60.

Linksys Print Server – This wireless print server from Cisco makes it easy to access all the functions of your all-in-one printer over the wireless network.  The Print Server can connect most USB based multifunction printers to your network using an Ethernet cable or Wireless-G. The print function works like any other print server but for scanning or copying, a user can request exclusive use of that function until his task is complete. Costs around $80.

HP Wireless Kit – If you like to turn your wired HP printer into a wireless one, the HP Wireless Printing Kit could be a good choice as it integrates fully with all features of your printer, including print, scan, and fax. It comes with a USB transmitter that you need to insert into the computer for wireless printing. The advantage is that you can print wirelessly even if you don’t have a wireless network. Requires Windows and costs around $75.

If you don’t have a wireless network at your place, you can consider getting a Bluetooth adapter for your printer. You need to attach the Bluetooth dongle to your computer and print wirelessly though the range will obviously be limited. Check your printer manufacturer’s site if they provide a Bluetooth adapter for your printer model.

Should You Buy a Wireless Print Server?

Before you invest in a wireless print server for your printer, consider this.

Today, most multifunction printers include wireless capabilities and can therefore connect directly to your wireless network without any additional hardware. Some of these printers are available in the $100 range. With this in mind, does it make more sense to purchase a new printer instead of buying a wireless print server for your existing printer? 

Here are some possible scenarios:

• If your current printer is relatively new and you paid more than $100 for it, then it may be more economical for you to simply purchase a wireless print server instead of purchasing an entirely new printer with the same features.
• If a wireless printer in not available in your area, you can buy a regular USB based wired printer and get someone to ship you a wireless print server. This would incur less shipping costs than ordering a wireless printer.
• Some wireless print servers can be used as wireless routers. If you do not have a wireless router at your place, you can opt for a wireless print server as it will not only turn your printer wireless but you also get to setup a wireless home network.

Also see: Secure Your WiFi Home Network

How to Make Your Wired Printer Wireless

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

The URL structure that you see on this blog uses the following custom format:

/%category%/%postname%/%post_id%/

So if I am writing an article on WordPress Tips under the Blogging category, the URL of that post will look something like this:

http://labnol.org/Blogging/WordPress-Tips/1234/

Here are some reasons why I chose such a permalink format:

#1. The URL structure is SEO-friendly and also looks clean in snippets that are displayed in search engine results pages.

#2. The structure doesn’t contain dates. I generally try to write “timeless” blog posts that should stay relevant for a longer period of time and hence skipped the date completely from the URL – the date is anyway displayed in blog articles and sometimes even in search snippets as in the above screenshot.

#3. Google News includes quite a few multi-author blogs in their index and one of their technical requirements says that all article URLs must contain a unique number. If in future, this blog grows and gets included into Google News, I won’t have to alter the permalink structure because there’s a unique number already in the URL – it’s called Post ID.

#4. Words in the URL are separated by hyphens and not underscores as suggested by Matt Cutts in one of the WordPress camps.

The Problem with this URL Structure

Now before you use a similar permalinks structure for your own blog, let me share a problem – this structure can make you site a little slow. That’s because WordPress will have to run some extra queries each time to figure out whether the URL matches a WordPress page or an individual post.

For performance reasons, it is not a good idea to start your permalink structure with the category, tag, author, or postname fields. The reason is that these are text fields, and using them at the beginning of your permalink structure it takes more time for WordPress to distinguish your Post URLs from Page URLs (which always use the text “page slug” as the URL), and to compensate, WordPress stores a lot of extra information in its database (so much that sites with lots of Pages have experienced difficulties).

They have raised a ticket for the above issue but it won’t be fixed until WordPress 3.0 so you are better off not using the structure that I am using.

What’s the Best Permalink Structure

If you are looking for performance, the best permalink structure would just have the /%post_id% in the URL. That’s however not very SEO-friendly so you may consider going for a structure like the one below (there’s no trailing slash).

/%post_id%/%postname%

I know you can change the permalink structure anytime (Tools -> Permalinks) and WordPress will do a 301 redirect from the old URLs to the new ones but that might push your site out of Google’s index for some time so there’s a bit of risk involved.

An Efficient Structure for WordPress Permalinks – Don’t Make the Mistake I Did

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

While the iPad surely looks like a great device for reading books or for surfing the web from the couch, very few people outside Apple (except Stephen Colbert) may have had a chance to use the Apple tablet first-hand.

Therefore, whatever little we know of iPad’s battery life is based on the technical specs that say — “up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video, or listening to music” — followed by this lengthy disclaimer:

Testing consisted of full battery discharge while performing each of the following tasks: video playback, audio playback, and Internet browsing using Wi-Fi. Video content was a repeated 2-hour 23-minute movie purchased from the iTunes Store. Audio content was a playlist of 358 unique songs, consisting of a combination of songs imported from CDs using iTunes and songs purchased from the iTunes Store.

Internet over Wi-Fi tests were conducted using a closed network and dedicated web and mail servers, browsing snapshot versions of 20 popular web pages, and receiving mail once an hour. All settings were default except: Wi-Fi was associated with a network; the Wi-Fi feature Ask to Join Networks and Auto-Brightness were turned off. Battery life depends on device settings, usage, and many other factors. Battery tests are conducted using specific iPad units; actual results may vary.

Thankfully, you don’t have to read through this boring disclaimer as Jobs recently offered some direct hints on iPad’s battery life to WSJ’s Walt Mossberg.

Steve says that iPad will offer ~140 hours of continuous music playback provided the screen display is turned “off” while the battery will last for ~10 hours if you use it for reading books. Steve says that the iPad chip [A4] doesn’t use much power but the screen does. I guess the numbers would be similar for web surfing as well.

The Battery Life of iPad According to Steve Jobs

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

You love a particular product and by becoming a fan, you can show your appreciation for that product to the world. That is one of the reasons why I am a fan of Google, O’Reilly, Creative Commons, and a dozen other pages on Facebook. I also admire the work of people like David Pogue and Matt Mullenweg and hence have become a fan of them on Facebook as well.

The other popular reason why people become fans of Facebook pages is because they get access to official news updates, videos and even exclusive deals. For instance, if you become a fan of iTunes, you get to download some 20 songs for free. Bing uses their Facebook page to showcase new cashback offers while office supplier chain Staples uses Facebook to share coupons and upcoming deals.

The Problem with Facebook Pages

Facebook probably has millions of pages (anyone can create any number of pages) but you can use this link – facebook.com/pages – to browse through the entire list sorted by categories and popularity.

When you become a fan of any particular page on Facebook, the Facebook system will treat that page like one of your friends. That means any updates from the Facebook page will appear in your regular news feed and therefore the probability that you may miss seeing that important update becomes very high especially when you have a huge network of friends on Facebook.

The solution is however simple – you can either add your favorite Facebook pages to your browser bookmarks and make it a point to visit them once per day or, for something more simple, try the following services.

Track Facebook Pages via Email or RSS

One of my favorite services for tracking Facebook Pages is NutshellMail (they do twitter equally well).

You just have to link Facebook with NutshellMail using Facebook Connect (no need to share your password anywhere) and the service will send you a daily snapshot of Facebook pages that you are a fan of.

While it can track all your Facebook pages, it may be a good idea to select only a limited number of “important pages” for track else the daily email message can run into a few Megs because the email will have everything that’s posted on the wall of that Facebook page. Founder Mark Schmulen told me that they are working on excluding “user” comments from the updates but that’s not done yet.

If you like to track only “official” updates from Facebook pages and not the comments written by “fans”, you should use the RSS option. Facebook now provide RSS feeds for all their pages that only include updates, videos, pictures, etc. posted the page admins.

For instance, the feed for Digital Inspiration page is available here. The URL will have a similar structure for all pages but for the page ID. You can subscribe to RSS updates in Google Reader or use a service like FeedMyInbox / FeedBlitz to get Facebook updates directly in your email inbox.

How to Track Your Favorite Pages on Facebook

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Well, here’s a very handy flowchart that covers most fast food chains and should help you make the choice. Large version available on TopCultured.com.

Which Fast Food Restaurant Should You Choose?

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Since ink is still the most expensive component in the print workflow, you can reduce printing costs of documents if you can figure out ways that will decrease the consumption of ink while printing. For instance, when printing a document in Microsoft Word, you can switch to “Draft output” and the toner will last much longer.

Use a Font with Holes

An interesting option to help you save ink is Ecofont. Ecofont is like the popular Arial font but it has these little holes punched in the letters. These holes aren’t really visible in the printed document (that uses standard font sizes like 11px) but will save money as no ink is required when printing these dots.

Ecofont is available for download on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. It may not be a good idea to use Ecofont in client communication but you can definitely consider using this font for personal or internal use.

Printing Web Pages with Custom Fonts

If you are printing web pages, I highly recommend Readability – this is a bookmarklet that will not only remove images, ads and other clutter from web pages but will also replace the font that was originally used in the formatting of that page.

Readability can sometimes remove sections from web pages that you would like to see in the print version. If that’s also a problem for you, check out PrintWhatYouLike.com – this is also a printing bookmarklet but it gives you complete control over the page layout including the font family that is used for rendering that page (see video demo).

Both the above bookmarklets require a live internet connection to work. If you are looking for an alternative that will work offline, check out Green Print – they have a free version for Windows though the Mac edition costs a few bucks. Another good option is Smart Web Print from HP but that’s only available on Windows.

Which is the Best Font for Printing Documents

Now consider the third scenario. You have a document – say some training material or presentation handouts – that you want to print without sacrificing readability.

Fonts like Arial, Times News Roman, Courier, Helvetica, etc. are generally available on every machine but which one among them is the most economic typeface when it comes to printing?

Matt Robinson recently conducted a fairly unique study to determine the ink usage of these different typefaces. They used ballpoint pens to hand draw the same text at the same size but using different fonts and here’s the result.

Garamond* followed by Courier turned out to be the most economic fonts of them all while Impact and Comic Sans consumed the maximum ink. This is definitely not a “scientific study” but you still get the idea.

[*] Most Harry Potter books are set in 12pt Adobe Garamond.

Which Fonts Should You Use for Saving Ink

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

This infographic by Gerson Mora fits all the popular websites that we use almost daily in a 3D transparent globe. Creative stuff.

If you are new, you may also want to check this map of all my favorite websites.

All The Popular Websites That You Use Daily

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Some great news for movie buffs.

You can watch some of the popular Bollywood movies on YouTube for free using this page. These are full-length videos so you can just connect your computer to the TV screen, grab a snack and watch movies from the couch with your family.

The collection is currently limited to Hindi movies from film producers like Shemaroo Entertainment, Rajshri and UltraHindi. And like most other YouTube videos, you can embed these movies on your site as well.

For example, here’s one of my favorite Bollywood movie -- Sarkar (the Indian version of The Godfather starring Amitabh Bachchan). I can watch this movie anytime, anywhere as long as I have an Internet connection.

The movies are available in both High Quality and Standard Quality versions. For a list of full-length English movies that are currently available for viewing on YouTube, go to this page. Thanks Brajeshwar for the tip.

Watch Bollywood Movies on YouTube

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Why Online Reputation Management is Important

Around 70% of hiring managers in in US have rejected candidate just because of their online reputation. The chart looks at the various types of online information that have led companies to reject candidates.

Tomorrow is Data Privacy Day and this research (download PPT) was originally commissioned by Microsoft as part of the same initiative.

Other than Microsoft, Google, Intel, AT&T are also part of the Data Privacy Day group. You should also check their site as it contains some excellent resources on how companies, students and parents can better protect their online information.

Why Job Seekers Should Worry About Their Online Reputation

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

If you have ordered a Google Phone from the UK and the device reached you in time, you should be feeling lucky because quite a few Nexus One customers in UK are still waiting for their shipments to arrive.

No, there’s no shortage of Google phones but because of a shipping goof-up on the part of either Google or DHL, some of these phones have been shipped to Uganda (UG) instead of United Kingdom (UK).

@minty978 writes:

Google have dispatched my phone to the wrong address. From my point of view it makes more sense if google dispatches a new phone to my correct shipping address, and you sort out the return of the phone in Uganda at your own pace with DHL.

@baabaa90 writes:

My phone was sent to Uganda too.  It took 2 weeks in total to get my phone as it bounced across three continents.. I’ve asked Google for compensation for the delay!

@sein writes:

My phone has been in Uganda for 5 days.. I’m started to get pretty tired of waiting the unknown amount of time that they are going to be there… if they are ever actually going to leave.

The phone of @dogie got shipped to Singapore instead of UK:

I have emailed again and again under every single possible category of question, even filed a dispute with google (about google *sigh*) and EVERY time I have received a bot answer.

Google Employees are actively participating in such complaint threads, Google even refunded the shipping charges in some cases but people aren’t happy for two reasons – first, they had to wait for long as the phones were shipped to the wrong address and second, there’s no way they can speak to a real person at Google for support.

Shipping Goof-up: Some Google Phones Land in Uganda instead of UK

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.