Who has been set up at a page, Google Friend Connect, always had two files to upload. This resulted in some problems, because even though the files were on the server, did not display the gadget. This has changed for the developers now.

Anyone who already uses Friend Connect can now safely delete the two files canvas.html and rpc_relay.html from its server. All necessary codes are now loaded from Google’s servers itself (less bandwidth costs for you :) ).

To get started with Friend Connect features, all you have to do is submit your website’s name and URL after logging into www.google.com/friendconnect.

More updates: Google Webmaster central Blog.

Not very long ago we discussed about 5 phishing scams on twitter, and now its time to write some quick tips to help you avoid Twitter scams:

1. Be very careful signing up for work-from-home services connected with Twitter, and make sure you know exactly what you’re signing up for.

2. Don’t sign up for services that claim they’ll get you more followers.

3. Before entering your Twitter password on any sign-on page, check that the address bar shows http://twitter.com/. Beware of anything that uses another word on either side of “twitter.”

4. Change your password frequently, and immediately if you think your account may have been compromised.

5. Be wary about clicking on links, even ones that appear to come from people you know. Get to know those you are newly following before trusting any of their links.

6. Make sure your Internet security software is up to date so that if you do click on a bad link it will alert you if it takes you to a malware site.

7. Don’t automatically follow people who follow you. Visit their profile page and beware of anyone whose tweets consist mainly of links, or who appears to be following lots of people but has hardly posted any messages.

8. Never give away confidential information about yourself in a tweet, even if it all seems perfectly innocent.

9. Carefully check out programs that sign on to Twitter for you and fetch your messages. They can increase your security but they also need your password — so make sure they’re legit by doing a search first. Popular legit services includes TweetDeck and Twhirl.

10. Simply don’t believe any message that says you won something. You didn’t.

Hope this helps… Any tips comments, please post them below!

Flickr is growning fast and it seems to be the most popular photo-sharing service. There’s a lot you can do with your Flickr account using some Tips which includes use of 3rd party applications to get your job done, fast and easily.

flick hacks

1. Download Photos from Flickr

There are few apps that let you download Flickr photos in a snap. Flickr Down (for windows), Mac and Linux users Flump.

2. Create Embeddable Slideshow (for blogs, forums or any website)

FlickrSlideshow, Flash Slideshow let’s you quickly create slide-show from a photostream you specify it. It can be your favourites, and frien’d sstream or even your own selected photos. It makes it easy to embed them inside any forum, blog. other good ones are FlickrIn, FlickrSlidr.

3. Bulk Upload your Videos and Images

jUploader is a cross-platform java based tool that lets you bulk upload images to various photo services including Flickr. It’s fast and smooth. If you are a Firefox user, you can try Uploadr too. For videos you can try Uploadr.

4. Best Flickr Search Engine

Inbuilt Flickr search is limited in various ways. Switch to PictureSandbox. Or you can go to flickr.com/ and start search.. There are some nice improvements (like ajax realtime search results) on flickr.

5. Copyrighting, Watermarking & licensing

If you plan to copyright or protec your images from theft, you can consider watermarking them. But, editing each image in Photoshop or GIMP could be tedious. The best way out is to use inbuilt Picni or an advanced one like PicMarkr.

6. Advanced Image Search

Google does offer a pretty advanced image search in which search criteria can vary from resolutions to color scheme of the picture. Such things can be done with Flickr too using MultiColr, it does a good job in searching for color schemes within Flickr photos.

For advanced shapes search, try Retrievr, you can draw a sketch of the smiley face and this tool will try to retrieve pictures that match your sketch. It couldn’t be better than this.

7. Get your Flickr Developer API:

The best and native one is still Fllickr REST aPI. The basic goes around the REST call:

http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/?method=flickr.people.getPublicPhotos&user_id=39547538@507&api_key={apiKey}&per_page={thunbLayout.count}

Hope this helps ya all.. Do you have any other tools that you want to share? Share it with your comments below!

Related Post: Flickr from Yahoo, really? we know that!

Google is back on the offensive, with a major promotional campaign to get the word out about organizations switching to Google apps for their daily computing needs.

The campaign, called “Going Google” has a very clear target: Microsoft Office. A series of advertisements will begin touting how and why some 3,000 organizations are signing up to use Google apps each day. But the crown jewels of this campaign will be billboards on four major U.S. highways that will give a new message about Google apps everyday for a month.

Google launches advertising campaign for Google Apps, kinda like a Public attack on Microsoft. The Google Apps displayed ads on large billboards in the U.S. Already 1.75 million users have already changed to Google Apps.

Google speaks specifically to businesses that use Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes. In some U.S. cities like New York, Google has large panels of ads on which each day a different banner would be posted promoting Google apps. Today there is “just heard about Google going. I want to know more.” (Especially from one  belongs to “going Google”. I want to know more.)

Here is a quick video of “Google Going”:

We are working on a new theme for iGoogle Watch Blog. Once the new theme is ready, we would continue posting updates about the Google!

So, stay tuned :)

Thanks
iGoogle Watch Team