Here I have tried to put together some easy to implement but effective tips to speed up your website loading speeds

Facebook has stopped allowing fbml to create custom tabs in Fan pages. The alternative requires a bit of more effort but is more flexible than using fbml. Here we are presenting how we created a custom tab for a client’s facebook page.

Please upload the files (HTML) to a public server which we want to display on a separate facebook server first. For eg: www.solminds.com/routemapRMNT3.html

Then we have to complete the following steps

1.  Go to www.facebook.com/developers . You can see a Set up new app button on right top of the page. We are going to create a new application.

2.  Enter a name for the application and you must agree the terms to proceed further. Finally, just click on Create application button

3.  Enter Capcha and Submit.

4.  You can view a setting page as shown below. Here, you can upload a logo for this application. Also can setup email ids, terms and conditions, privacy policies etc.

5.  Go to canvas url and give the root name of files which we want to embed  with facebook. For  eg, we have uploaded files at  : www.solminds.com/routemapRMNT3.html . Then enter http://www.solminds.com/ as canvas url and routemapRMNT3.html in tab url . Save changes

6.  Go to application profile page

7.  Click on add to my page link

8 . You can view of a list of pages which you are assigned as admin. You can add this application to anyone of these pages

9. That’s all. We can view a new tab on facebook now!!!

HTML 5 and modern website development methods

Have you ever wondered about..

Embed a video without help of any thirdparty tools/player…

Make use of hosted fonts ,i.e, user doesn’t need particular font in his system to read

Draw curved borders, circles etc ..

HTML 5 will help us to do the above all and more. It is powering browsers on its way to become a self dependant platform. HTML5 is trying to reduce the interference of third-party or external plugins and tools. Even if it is not a mature standard yet, we can easily say that web world is going to move with HTML5.

Lets check out some Tags and features. We have tried to implement html 5 standards for demo purpose at the following link also.

http://gd.solminds.in/www/html5/

1. Audio Tag

We can embed a audio on a website using a single tag . No need to take the help of any external players on front end.

2. Video Tag

In the same way we did in audio, we can embed and play video files using a tag

3. Micro data
This is an invisible property which gives more intelligence to the system

My name is Praveen.

I am an Indian.

4. Rounded Corners
Imagine about displaying round cornered boxes without using any graphics/images.
CSS
#mac {
border-radius: 16px; /* half of button size + padding */
-moz-border-radius: 16px;
height: 20px;
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#8cc0f6), to(#cfe4fa));
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #8cc0f6, #cfe4fa);
}
HTML

5. Draw Circles / Gradient fill
CSS
#circle {
border-radius: 36px; /* half of button size + padding */
-moz-border-radius: 36px;
height: 60px;
width: 60px;
border: 2px solid #ccc;
left: 50%;
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, from(#f53e0c), to(#ffbaa8));
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #f53e0c, #ffbaa8);
}
HTML

6. Usage of hosted fonts

It’s a solution of all type of font issue. User can read text with the help of hosted fonts, That mean he doesn’t need that particular font we have used on his system.
CSS
@font-face {
font-family: ‘Droid Sans’;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: bold;
src: local(‘Droid Sans’), url(‘http://playground.html5rocks.com/samples/html5_misc/Droid_Sans.ttf’) format(‘truetype’);
}
p#title2 {
font: 100% “Molengo”, Verdana, sans-serif;

HTML

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit

7. Form Fields
<input type=”range” value=”0″ />
<input type=”search” />
<input type=”text” />

<strong>Input Validation:</strong>
<!–  :invalid { background-color: red; }  –>
<input type=”color” value=”bear” />
<input type=”number” value=”abc” />
<input type=”email” value=”some@email.com” />
<input type=”tel” value=”1234″ /> HTML5 has a wide range of tags which will help us to display new generation form fields.
Some examples are as following

Please note that html5 is only supported in latest version of the browsers. Internet Explorer 9 is the only supported version from Microsoft stable. All versions of chrome and the latest firefox supports HTML5

What do a website developer chose between Cochin / Kochi or Ernakulam while targetting the website for users based in Cochin. One way would be to fill the website title with all the three but that would be wasting precious real estate which would be needed to highlight other services. If you are looking at it from an Internet Marketing perspective it would be easy to decide between the three purely going by data available. Obviously as an SEO expert, one would be keen to go with the word which most internet users use.

The google keyword tool available at this link http://goo.gl/DRBn is a good way to judge that. The screenshot below gives a comparison between the three words on the parameter of searches done on the three words. As you can see “ Cochin” is featured in more than double the searches compared to ‘Kochi’ which is number 2. So you now know why I chose the title of the blog as “ tips for website development in Cochin”

analysing between Cochin / Kochi and Ernakulam

Using google places along with google maps is an important tool for website developers to promote their website in the local community. A detailed blog on the same is posted here http://goo.gl/08tre . The placement has a verification process to ensure its a genuine business. The verification can be done by Phone / SMS and even post card. Being present in google places is also important considering mobile is going to play a key role is driving business to your site.

A note from Author : Putting in the blog an article I had written for a IT magazine some time back.

Online Tools Students can Use

When I was preparing to write this article I was a bit confused on how to present the information in a neatly structured way. The situation was made more difficult when I knew the ultimate readers of this piece would be a widely varying audience consisting of students, teachers and parents. I had to ask for expert help and I turned to the internet as I usually do these days in times like this. I used google to search for tips on article writing and came across www.wikihow.com . Wikihow is the world’s largest ‘How-to’ manual offering solutions the problems of everyday life.

Internet is the best expert on any subject in the world today. It brings together a wealth of information from encyclopedias to expert’s comments to classroom lecture notes right into the screen in front of you. The information available on the internet is not something that’s created by a single person or a group of persons. It’s created by you and that’s what makes it the most powerful medium for spreading information as well as making sure the information is accurate. The single biggest website for information on the web is www.wikipedia.com . It has information on almost every topic under the sun and if there is not some thing there, you can immediately start a topic and add information. Almost any information on Wikipedia is editable by you and anybody else can edit the information you enter too. This can naturally raise the question about the credibility of the information. While it’s true that there can be misleading information on the site, it has been found that an overwhelming majority of the articles are accurate and informative. The collaborative model used here is the hall mark of the new internet age and more and more it’s the power of the crowd that is being used to generate useful content. Another website in the same area is Google’s knol. www.knol.google.com . It uses a slightly different model in that it requires registration for any user to start an article on it or edit it. Another source for similar information is Yahoo answers http://answers.yahoo.com/

A point of caution at this point is that since internet is such an open medium, it’s usual to find all sorts of opinion expressed. There will always be widely divergent views on the same topic and it’s important to factor in the source of the article to arrive at a judgment on the quality of the article. Typically government and academic sources tend to be more credible.

Any article on online tools invariably touches upon google and I have already used it couple of times by now. As mentioned, internet is content being generated by billions of people without any particular structure to it. So it’s becoming hugely important to find the specific information that we are looking for and that’s the role played by search engines. Google, Yahoo and Live are the leading search engines in the world and helps in making our lives easier by finding the information we search for. Google has a specific tool for search when it comes to students called google scholar which can be found at http://scholar.google.com .

Coming to course material for students, the initiative by Massachusetts Institute of Technology called open course ware is very significant. This site contains the entire materials used for teaching at MIT and its open and free to anyone in the world. It even has a section for high school students and teachers which can help with their assignments and projects. The information can be found at http://ocw.mit.edu .

Unfortunately, at the moment there are not many online resources available specifically for students in India. This I believe is one of the gaps that AIM International will be trying to fulfill as part of their vision. One of the serious players in the Indian online education field is a company called Educomp with their smart class online (http://www.smartclassonline.com ) and Math Guru (http://www.mathguru.com/), Please note that lot of the features in these two sites are available only if you pay. For students who want to use a calculator online you have http://www.calcoolate.com/ .

As far as the teachers are concerned, couple of good online resources is http://www.teacherplanet.com/resource/india.php and http://4teachers.org/ .

We see that we have already come across so many sites and it is not going to be easy remembering most of them. This is where book marking come into the picture which is nothing but saving the sites for future reference. http://del.icio.us/ is a site which helps you do exactly that. Towards the end of the article I will list some other sites also which list many tools used by the academic community.

There can never be a comprehensive article which covers all tools that are out there but then that is not the idea of this article. The tools to find what you need for your particular use is out there on the Internet and use a search engine to find what you need.

Happy browsing!

Some other online resources :

http://www.readwritethink.org/student_mat/index.asp

http://www.funbrain.com/

http://kathyschrock.net/cooking/

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/web_20_backpack_web_apps_for_students.php

If you’ve logged in to your Facebook account over the last few days, there is a good chance you would have come across a contest to win a Macbook Pro being played by one your Facebook friends. And there is a good chance you would have clicked on it at least to satisfy your curiosity. This is an example of viral marketing engaged over a social network to build a fan base and more importantly win customers.

Social Media as a tool for Internet Marketing

This page shows the stats for this particular contest on Facebook and shows the power of social networks.

However, social networks are not a substitute for your website. Facebook is best used as an addition to your online presence. Sites like LinkedIn can be used for meeting new people, finding employees or meeting new business partners. Facebook & Twitter can be used for promotions and notifications.

Social networks can be used by established businesses to modern enterprises. The former can use their loyal customer base for a fan following and generate a viral effect by offering discount coupons. The direct purpose need not be sales – a fun page can be used to create brand awareness.

Social networks create a level playing field for small business. The main investment is not money, but time. Your RoI (Return on Investment) is not something that can be easily measured – but compare it to joining your industry association or going to the local chamber meeting.

Winners in social network marketing are the ones who create authentic, remarkable content – not the ones bombarding people with sales messages.

Excerpts from their site