Wednesday, 3 July 2013

New Google+ badges and follow buttons can be used in Blogger

This Quick-tip introduces the new Google+ plugins that Google released in late June 2013


quick-tips logo
Recently, Google+ Developers blog announced a vastly improved set of Google+ plugins for use with websites.

Most (all?) of them are not yet available as Blogger gadgets, so you have to get the code from the Google+ resources site, and add it to your blog like you would add any 3rd party code.

The new options include a more "industry-standard" follow on Google+ button, and new badges for Pages, Communities and Hangouts, as seen here. (I've previously explained why you might like to have a G+ community alongside your blog.)

They are configurable (size, dark/light, style, etc) - but  you need to work out how to apply the configuration settings to the code.   That said, I've added them to this site without any configuration (see the top of the sidebar), and the default options appear to work well. And it's not actually as hard as it looks: in general you just follow the pattern of:

  • Changing   https://plus.google.com/{pageId}     to link to the "thing" (Page, Community, Profile) that you are displaying in the badge.
  • Using the "<div class="g-page" data-href="https://plus.google.com/{pageId}"></div>" form of the code, ie the one that's completely inside a "div" statement.
  • Adding extra information to it using "data-"   for example,   "<div class="g-page" data-href="https://plus.google.com/{pageId}" data-layout="landscape" data-width="200">


There is one interesting sentence in the announcement:
"Existing badges will stick around for up to 90 days, giving you time to configure the new version for your website. After 90 days, we'll automatically upgrade any Google+ badges to the new design."
I wonder how that will relate to the Google + gadgets that are available in Blogger's Add-a-gadget function now - maybe they will be automatically be changed too.   (In 90 days ... yeah, right ...)

Open Source Never Dies

The beauty of open source is that projects never officially die as long as the source is available.

Some classics simply keep moving forward because of this.  They get written off, domains expire, progress seems non-existent, but then somebody with a bit of knowledge and drive does something and the project is alive again!  That is the beauty of Free / Libre & Open Source Software.

Super Tux

The last Super Tux release was 0.3.3 in March 2010; that isn't even labelled stable.  The last stable release was, y'know I couldn't even find out.  It was before 2007, that's all I know.

Progress is slowly made though behind the scenes - something more obvious since the project recently acquired a forum with FreeGameDev.  There are several 'clones' (a GIT term) that have been worked on in the last year or so, with the master branch receiving plenty of love this year.

One of their problems is that some things are hard to find out without quizzing the developer(s).  For example, the editor for the development version is a separate project (as explained here), but that doesn't appear to be documented for the time being.

Status: Release required, Web News or Blog required

Extreme Tux Racer

Now here's a blast from the past.  Extreme Tux Racer, long ago losing its domain/forums, has come back to life seemingly from the brink.  With the forums moved to Sourceforge, there's been a stream of development activity.

(I even helped by managing to acquire admin access to the project in order to give it to the new developers.)

And it isn't just background noise; version 0.6 beta1 has been released!

Still, without a website or much PR beyond the forum they could do with a few fresh faces.  Forums can be quite closed communities - if you don't check it, you wouldn't know of this release.  I bet they would appreciate some feedback, so check it out if you can.

Status: Website required, Outreach required

Other News

Are there any other open source games that look stalled on the surface but are coming back to life?  Comment!

How to Generate and Add XML Sitemap?

An XML, also called Google sitemap, is necessary for a blog or website which helps search engine crawlers to crawl and index content on your blog easily. Blogger blogs with .blogspot sub-domains contain an xml sitemap on them which is generated automatically and kept updated with your latest content. The sitemap of blogs with .blogspot sub-domain can be accessed athttp://yourblog.blogspot.com/sitemap.xml and you can submit it directly to Google Webmaster Tools or anywhere else, but when you add your custom domain to your Blogger blog, the xml sitemap couldn't be accessed anymore and thus you need to manually configure XML/Google sitemap for your Blogger blog. To do so, follow below simple steps:

1. Visit http://ctrlq.org/blogger/ and generate XML sitemap for your Blogger blog by entering your blog URL there
sitemap-generator-blogger
2. After the generator generates sitemap for your blog, copy the generated text from the box
add-xml-blogger-sitemap
3. Now go to Blogger dashboard, select your blog and then go to Search Preference section in Settings
blogger-search-preference
4. In search preference, select Yes in front of Enable custom robots.txt content? and paste the sitemap content in the box which you have generated in first step
custom-robots-blogger
5. After pasting the content, Save changes

You are all done! Now whenever Google will crawl your blog, it will first look robots.txt file on your blog as it always do and then will crawl your entire blog. This XML sitemap doesn't need to be submitted in Google Webmaster Tools also and you don't need to update it after you generate and add it to your blog. All latest posts are fetched via atom.xml on your blog and your latest content is automatically suggested to Google bot. Thus your blog content will get indexed easily. Enjoy!

Additional: You can also use this free XML Sitemap Generator for sitemap generation.



Sunday, 30 June 2013

Data Dealer, an interesting project to fund!

The the last Kickstarter game project we featured was sadly not successful and with only 11 days to go it doesn't look too good for Data Dealer either. But this HTML5 and CC-by-SA licensed game project comes with a pretty cool idea and is quite playable already.



It centers around the idea that services like Facebook & Google really arn't in the business of bringing you a good service (aka "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold") and makes a ironic game out of that.

Here is game-play trailer to give you an better idea:



Or try the current demo on their webpage.

Now of course as we have all recently learned (or at least got confirmation about), the reality is even more twisted than just the private business side of things. But over the revelations of the mass surveillance by the NSA & Co., we should still not forget that all those big internet companies arn't victims by far either.

P.S.: My best wishes go out to Mr. Snowden! You are a hero of our generation.

Asus Transformer AiO P1801 Specs Review and Price for Sale

Asus Transformer AiO P1801 is the only 18.4 inch touch screen Windows 8 PC equipped with i5 (3.1 GHz) processor. Its complete wireless features make it something more than just a PC. Most fascinating thing about "Asus Transformer AiO P1801" is its screen. It is touch sensitive and detachable, Which means it can be used a tablet PC. When you use it as a table you get an option to choose between Windows 8 and Android OS.



Asus Transformer AiO P1801

Asus Transformer AiO P1801 Specs

As a PC As a Tablet
Operating System Windows 8  Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
Display 18.4 inch, Screen Proportion(16:9) Same
Full HD 1920x1080 Same
178° wide viewing angle Same
Touch Screen Multi Touch (10 Fingers Touch) Same
Processor i7 3770 Processor  (3 Options) NVIDIA Tegra 3 Quad-core CPU
i5 3350P Processor 
i3 3220 Processor
Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce GT730M 2GB Same
Memory 4 GB DDR3 expandable upto 8 GB 2 GB DDR3
Storage 1TB Up to 2TB SATA Hard Drive 32GB eMMc Flash
Wireless Data Network 802.11 a/b/g/n Bluetooth V4.0 802.11 a/b/g/n Bluetooth V3.0 EDR
Camera 1.0 M Pixel Same
Speaker 2 x 3 W 2 x 1.5 W
Dimensions 466 x 162 x 267 mm (WxDxH) 466 x 18 x 294 mm (WxDxH)
Weight 4.1 kg 2.4 kg