Web work

WordPress Embeds – images and videos the natural way

Those of you who, like me, were using WordPress for a very long time, as well as those who got into WordPress recently, probably don’t know that WordPress can embed images and videos into posts and pages without using any plugins at all. Even though there are plenty of plugins available (for example, Smart YouTube), you don’t always need them.

As per WordPress Embeds page, all you need to do is add URL to image or video in your post or page. Just make sure that the URL stands on its own line and that it’s not linked. Alternatively, you can use [embed] short code. WordPress supports quite a few popular sites – YouTube, Vimeo, Revision3, Flickr, Google Video, and more. The support is based on the oEmbed format.

Of course you’ll get more power with specialized plugins, but for many bloggers out there this built-in support will be more than enough.

Recommendation engine that finally makes sense – Google +1

I’ve heard plenty of rumors about an upcoming Google social network. I have no idea if they are true, and really I don’t care. I have enough social networks as it is. But what I haven’t heard about until now is Google +1 – a new recommendation engine that Google is trying out.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAyUNI3_V2c]

At first, when I read about Google +1 and that it was yet another attempt for recommendation engine for Google search results, I didn’t think it was interesting at all. There were a number of tries in that area – some of them long gone, some still alive. I’m talking about results reordering via drag-and-drop, starring of result items, and others.

All of them shared the same problem – promoting items from within search results doesn’t work very well, because the user hasn’t yet visited the page itself. He’s eager to navigate away from the results. And on top of that, page title, description, and a thumbnail aren’t always enough to make a judgement.

On the other hand, recommendation engines are doing pretty well with social networks like Facebook, Digg, Twitter, and others. Every other page on the web has a share button that supports one or more social networks. And people use those. Even though sharing pages on Facebook and Twitter might be useful, it isn’t as useful as increasing the karma of those pages in order to rank them higher in your future search results.

That’s where Google +1 comes in. It makes perfect sense. Now you can search Google, visit the results, and +1 those of them that you liked (and, of course, those of them that support the Google +1 sharing). Not only it would be trivial to push those +1 to other social networks, but also now users have way more stimuli to share things, since that would improve their own search results.

Google +1 is yet available to everyone. Google will take some time to roll it out. But if you want to try it out now, you can enable it on experimental page.

Social Media Infographic

I remember seeing thin a form of a tweet, but it’s so much better as an infographic:

Via Geeks are sexy.

Switch to Gmail

Gmail blog announces Switch To Gmail – a new website that should assist all those who haven’t switched yet. On to of that they added email migration support for another 14 domains – mostly Asian Hotmail, Live, and Yahoo sites.

This announcement is surprisingly close to the recent accusation of Chinese government interference:

“This is a government blockage carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail,” a Google spokesperson said.

What your email provider says about you

Hunch Blog runs a rather massive statistical study of users of different email providers – Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, and AOL. I’ll just copy the snapshot of findings here for my own quick references. But you, you should have a look at the original article.

AOL users are most likely to be overweight women ages 35-64 who have a high school diploma and are spiritual, but not religious. They tend to be politically middle of the road, in a relationship of 10+ years, and have children. AOL users live in the suburbs and haven’t traveled outside their own country. Family is their first priority. AOL users mostly read magazines, have a desktop computer, listen to the radio, and watch TV on 1-3 DVRs in their home. At home, they lounge around in sweats. AOL users are optimistic extroverts who prefer sweet snacks and like working on a team.

Gmail users are most likely to be thin young men ages 18-34 who are college-educated and not religious. Like other young Hunch users, they tend to be politically liberal, single (and ready to mingle), and childless. Gmail users live in cities and have traveled to five or more countries. They’re career-focused and plugged in — they mostly read blogs, have an iPhone and laptop, and listen to music via MP3s and computers (but they don’t have a DVR). At home, they lounge around in a t-shirt and jeans. Gmail users prefer salty snacks and are introverted and entrepreneurial. They are optimistic or pessimistic, depending on the situation.

Hotmail users are most likely to be young women of average build ages 18-34 (and younger) who have a high school diploma and are not religious. They tend to be politically middle of the road, single, and childless. Hotmail users live in the suburbs, perhaps still with their parents, and have traveled to up to five countries. They mostly read magazines and contemporary fiction, have a laptop, and listen to music via MP3s and computers (but they don’t have a DVR). At home, Hotmail users lounge around in a t-shirt and jeans. They’re introverts who prefer sweet snacks and like working on a team. They consider themselves more pessimistic, but sometimes it depends on the situation.

Yahoo! users are most likely to be overweight women ages 18-49 who have a high school diploma and are spiritual, but not religious. They tend to be politically middle of the road, in a relationship of 1-5 years, and have children. Yahoo! users live in the suburbs or in rural areas and haven’t traveled outside their own country. Family is their first priority. They mostly read magazines, are almost equally likely to have a laptop or desktop computer, listen to the radio and cds, and watch TV on 1-2 DVRs in their home. At home, Yahoo! users lounge around in pajamas. They’re extroverts who prefer sweet snacks and like working on a team. Yahoo! users are optimistic or pessimistic, depending on the situation.