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How to Update Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook with Google FriendConnect Activities

Sid — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:18:45 +0000

Google has launched Friend Connect to perhaps aimed at a Global Social Network. Already thousands of sites have added the widgets and are using them.

While users are using the widgets and posting their activities, currently the FriendConnect System helps update these only on Orkut and Plaxo. It doesn’t provide either an RSS or a method to post these to other sites.

Well for users like me, who love to have all their web activities to be streamed this is a show stopper. Thankfully, we have the option of creating a Mashup to address this challenge.

Mashup in the context of web is defined as: “A web application or site mixing content from multiple sources”

So let’s get started. What you need are the following:

A Yahoo Account for use with Yahoo Pipes, a mashup creating tool
A Plaxo Account to capture the updates from Friend Connect
And of course registrations on FriendConnect enabled sites

Here’s how you can do this in 9 steps:

Step 1: Open the FriendConnect Setting, add Plaxo and check “Publish my activities on other sites”. Click Done. This will enable your activities to be streamed to Plaxo and be visible on Plaxo pulse.

Step 2: Log in to the Plaxo site and navigate to http://www.plaxo.com/rss. Click on “Enable” next to option “Me” as shown below. This will activate a link. Copy the URL displayed.

Step 3: Log in to Yahoo Pipes and click on “Create pipe”

This will open up a Pipe Layout.

Step 4: Select Sources->Fetch Feed and in the URL add the URL copied from Plaxo.

Step 5: Select Operators->Filter, and connect the Fetch Feed to Filter as shown in the figure.

Step 6: Now Change the Settings on Filter to “Permit” items that match “all” of the following. Under Rules add “item.title” contains Friendconnect.

Step 7: Now link Filter to Pipe Output, as shown in the figure.

Step 8: Click save and voila! you have created your Mashup!

Step 9: On the Run Screen, click on Get as RSS, copy the RSS URL

That’s it… You have your RSS of FriendConnect activities. You can use this to feed it into FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook, Lifestream and any other tool which supports RSS import.

My preference is Twitterfeed.com feeding to Ping.fm, which updates lot of social networking sites at one go.

Get a flavor of how to get the web working for you? Welcome to Web 2.0.

Enjoy!

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25GB Online Storage, Web Based Access, Welcome to Windows Live Sky Drive

Sid — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:19:58 +0000

It’s time to review another product of Windows Live, after my previous reviews.

I have been using various online storage options for quite sometime. Before Yahoo shutdown its photos service and moved to Flickr, I was using Yahoo for my online photo storage. I later switched to Shutterfly, which offers unlimited photo storage.

For my document storage, I have mostly used my Hotmail and Gmail accounts. But sharing those documents stored there with someone actually meant forwarding them.

Windows Live Sky Drive (WLSD), might just help addressing such problems.

To begin with WLSD, like all Windows Live applications needs a Windows Live ID. As you soon as you have your ID, you already have access to 25 GB of online storage, free of cost.

You can visit WLSD at Sky Drive . The following are the features that WLSD provides.

25 GB of Storage
File sizes up to 50 MB
Folders, Permissions at folder levels
Permissions at file levels
Shared Folders
Public Folders
Access permissions within people network
Photos Can be added directly from Windows Live Photo Gallery
Order prints Directly from Sky Drive through HP Snapfish.

You can add files to the folder on Sky Drive Share them as single files, folders or for photos you can share them as album. The online slide show rendered in Microsoft Silverlight is excellent.

The best reason to switch to Sky Drive is its integration with Windows Live Photo Gallery. You can pick any photos folder on your computer and upload it to the Sky Drive directly. I will write more about Windows Live Photo Gallery in a separate post.

If you have multiple Windows Live IDs, you can link them all to avoid logging in and out multiple times and keep viewing all the files.

So say if you have two Windows Live IDs then you already have 50GB of online storage. Definitely worthwhile, while rest of the services like Picasa and Flickr are offering paltry 1GB and 100MB Monthly limits.

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Get Those Folders Synced Between Your PCs and MACs, Get Windows Live Sync!

Sid — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:20:55 +0000

In my earlier posts I have introduced you to the Windows Live Applications Family and have reviewed Windows Live Writer.

In today’s post I would like to write my views on Windows Live Sync (WLS).

WLS was earlier called Windows Folder Share in its Beta. WLS uses a Windows Live ID and helps keep folders in sync between different computers. This is especially useful when you have multiple computers at home and need few files to be available on all of them, especially photos, videos and your CVs perhaps in these turbulent times .

What particularly enticing about WLS is that none of the biggies Google, Apple, Yahoo or others have a similar service available at this time and it is available for both PCs and Apple MACs.

Anyway, what WLS does is, helps you configured folders on each computer that can be shared and synced with other computers. What’s more, it also allows you to access these files from Internet, if the selected computer is online and you have granted the permission to do so. Cool ain’t it?

So, here’s how you can configure it:

1) Go to WLS software from Live Sync

2) Install it on the PC or MAC, once installed you will be prompted to enter your Windows Live ID. Enter it and you are set. You need to do this on all computers that you want to sync.

3) Go the sync website

4) Select a folder from the computer to sync

5) Then add computers which need this folder to be synced

You can also enable remote folder access, which means you can access contents of your hard drive from anywhere via Live Sync .

Sounds very simple and cool. Yes it is. As it stands I have 3 of my home computers on sync and web access enabled.

But is there a catch? Not really but a few limitations.

Can sync up to 20 folders
Each folder can only have 20000 files
Max file size 4GB

Now I don’t exactly call those limitations for personal use.

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Windows Live Services, What Are They?

Sid — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:59:33 +0000

Before we get started a quick dope on Microsoft’s status in today’s Web 2.0-3.0 era. Google clearly had a head start. It is (un)common knowledge that Microsoft could not catch up with Google’s search when Google was still new, because it was busy sorting things out with DOJ (Department of Justice) regarding its lawsuits and was banned till 2007 from any anti-competitive behaviour.

By the time Microsoft was ready, Google was an Internet Goliath, which made a PC Goliath like Microsoft become David in this Internet war.

Microsoft appointed, Ray Ozzie, as it’s Architect for future and Live services is his brainchild. Live set of services are designed to complement PC functionality in Web 2.0 Era. All the applications in Live Services are Internet aware and designed to enable accessibility and get users into the center of cloud computing.

The Windows Live applications that Microsoft offers are following:

Hotmail (Email)
Messenger (Instant Messenger)
Writer (Reviewed earlier)
Photo Gallery
Movie Maker (Vista and above)
Toolbar
Family Safety
Sky drive (Online storage)
Spaces (Blogging)
Sync (File Sync Solution)

All of these are available as a single download from Live Home . All of these services need you to have a Windows Live ID, which is free.

As it stands today Live stands 4^th top used website after Yahoo.com (1^st), Google.com (2^nd), Youtube.com (3^rd). (source: Alexa.com)

I will share a review on many of these products and a comparison with a similar tool available in my next posts.Similar Posts:

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