Google+ Pages Showing in Google Search Results

Sometime back, Google added Business Pages to Google Plus and looks like the next step for them is to integrate updates from these Google+ Pages into the main search results.

Brian Pasch was searching for the word “Toyota” on Google and noticed that posts from the official Google+ Page of Toyota USA were also appearing in the search results. He later added that page to a Google Plus circle and, since he was logged in, Google was then including that circle name in search results as well.

If Google decides to extend this experiment to other Google+ Pages, it will be good news for page owners as they can have more screen estate (visibility) on the front page of Google. And with all these recent changes, you can no longer afford to ignore Google Plus.

PS: The Google+ Page for Digital Inspiration is here.

Disable the “Insecure Content” Warning in Google Chrome

When you open a secure (https) website in Google Chrome, the browser may sometimes display a security warning that says – “This page has insecure content.”

A web page contains several CSS and JavaScript files and these may be getting served from different locations. If the page is served over https but the associated files are served from a non-secure http website, the browser will throw the “insecure content” warning. Such a feature is present in IE as well though they call it mixed content.

If you are curious to know why Google, Twitter, Google Docs and other sites display the insecure content warning, open any of these sites in Chrome and press Ctrl + Shift + J. The developer’s console will open in the lower half and you’ll instantly know the files that have caused that annoying insecure content warning.

For instance, the Facebook website serves most of the files from facebook.com over https but it loads the jQuery JavaScript library from googleapis.com over http which leads to that security warning.

Unlike IE, Google Chrome doesn’t offer an easy option to disable these warnings but you can make use of a command-line switch to quickly turn them off.

Just right-click the Google Chrome icon on your desktop, or inside the Windows Start Menu, choose Properties and add the switch “--allow-running-insecure-content” to the target box. Restart Chrome to apply the changes and you won’t see that yellow bar again.

Add Websites to the Apps Section of Google Chrome

The default start page of Google Chrome, that you see when you create a new tab, has two sections.  The “most visited” section contains thumbnails of websites that you visit more often while the other section has shortcuts to web apps that you have installed from the Chrome Web Store.

The “most visited” list is auto-generated based on your browsing history but you can quickly add any of your favorite website to the “apps” section even if that site is not officially available as an installable app in the Chrome Store.

There are two ways of doing this. You can either drag a website thumbnails from the “Most Visited” section to the “Apps” section of Chrome and make that site available as an app. Or you may open a site in a separate tab and drag the site’s favicon to the Apps section as shown in the video below.

You can thus quickly access your favorite sites from the Apps section without installing any extensions. The only limitation is that Chrome won’t generate any thumbnail images for these self-created apps. This tip was originally shared on Reddit.com.

Create a Time-Lapse Movie with Google Street View

I made a short time-lapse movie today using Street View images from Google Maps and playing them all in a quick sequence with some background music. The end result, as you may have noticed in the video, is quite similar to the view that you would get if you were actually driving on that road while sitting inside the Street View car.

This may have some practical uses. For instance, you can create a time-lapse of the route between the airport and your business, add voice narration to mention the important landmarks on that route, and people are then less likely to call you for directions.

To get started, you would obviously need hundreds of Street View images. It is not practical to capture these many screenshots manually so what I have done is written a small script that does two things – it capture the screen and then advances the Street View in the browser by one step. And this runs in a loop.

Step 1. Create a new profile (or use this profile) in SnagIt that captures the screen and auto-saves the screenshot to a file in the background. Make sure that you capture screenshot images at 1280x720 for publishing a 720p video.

Step 2. Assuming that you have AutoHotkey on your computer, create a new text file and copy-paste the following lines into that file. Save the file with .ahk extension.

Loop {  Send {Up down} ; Press the UP arrow key to advance  Sleep 1  Send {Up up}  Sleep, 1000 ; Wait for the Street View images to load in the browser  Send, {PRINTSCREEN} ; Capture the screen and save the image to a file}

Step 3. Open Google Maps Street View in the browser and run the .ahk file that you created in the previous step. Once you have captured enough images, end the script by right-clicking the Autohotkey icon in the taskbar.

Step 4. Open Windows Live Movie Maker (or iMovie if you are on a Mac) and import all these images into a new project. After the import is complete, select all the images and under the Video Tools –> Edit, set the image duration to 0.2 seconds.

That’s it. Go to File –> Save Movie to create your first time-lapse video of Street View and upload it to YouTube in HD (720p).

Google Chrome Surprise Consumers

For a little more than a year, Google Chrome surprise consumers, especially critics, have gained market share by more than 4 percent in browsers. The result is quite deserved. Chrome 5 is incredibly fast browser more stable than previous versions, supports extensions, bookmarks and some very important developments like HTML5.

Google Chrome is based on WebKit, the same engine open source, whose base is built and Apple Safari, mobile platform Google Android, and several other Web tools. The difference is used in JavaScript, and thus created different interface of Chrome. Instead of traditional instruments, Google Chrome puts tabs at the top. Interestingly, the tabs can be moved to open in new windows and then re-unite in one window with multiple tabs. Another advantage of Chrome is that each tab is represented by a different process and when one of the tabs crashes, the others continue to work.

Search box and address bar are united in a new field called “Omnibox”, which includes proposals for URL addresses selected by the browser history and suggestions for search engine by default. Chrome remembers sites you’ve visited, and a new start, shows you a thumbnail most frequently visited sites. You are creating icons for fast access from desktop computers to web addresses such as Gmail and others. . In stealth mode, Google Chrome lets you surf without recording the history and without the use of cookies.

Google Chrome Surprise Consumers, 10.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating