AdsBlackList.com is a unique project designed to enable you to dramatically reduce the amount of MFA (made for ads) and LCPC (low cost per click) sites which appear through the use of PPC systems such as Google Adsense™, Yahoo Publisher Network™ and Chitika eMiniMalls™.
To get started with this service, you’ll first have to create an account for free. You can submit your sites and the popular keywords for your site. This service uses these keywords you define for your site to generate a list of MFA and LCPC sites. You can take this list of sites and add them to the Competitive site filters in your Google Adsense account (Adsense Setup>Competitive Ad Filter). This means that ads from the filtered sites won’t come up on your site, and effectively increasing your earnings.
The free account from AdsBlackList is limited to just 200 sites, which is fine for me, since Adsense allows only 200 URLs in the Competitive Ad Filter.
Google’s just released a preview version of Google Friend Connect, which allows you to add social features on your site with minimal coding. This is still a preview release so you’ll have sign up to get into the queue.
Google Friend Connect lets you grow traffic by easily adding social features to your website. With just a few snippets of code, you get more people engaging more deeply with your site.
Here’s a video introduction of Google Friend Connect:
Microsoft has just lauched Live Mesh which provides a platform to connect various devices to share information.
Microsoft has taken the wraps off a Technology Preview of its new Live Mesh platform, which promises to connect disparate devices so they can seamlessly share information. But beyond the surface, Live Mesh portends that Microsoft doesn’t just want to compete on the Web; it wants to be the Web.
Here’s a new addon called Zementa for Firefox, which suggests content for your blog as you create your posts. This plugin currently works for Wordpress (hosted and self-hosted), Typepad and Blogger. The content suggested by Zementa are all copyright cleared so you don’t have to go trolling for content and licence issues for your blog.
I’ve installed this on my blog to see how it works, and the suggestions given by this seem to be pretty good. It adds new sidebars to the Wordpress Edit post screen for the sugestions presented.
In this article image on the right, the in-article links and the related article links below are all from Zementa’s plugin.
Adobe has just announced the beta version of Photoshop Express, which is an online service which allows users to perform basic editing and apply effects on your uploaded images. They also provide 2GB of image hosting.
Photoshop Express was created with Flex, Adobe’s free, open source framework for building RIAs. Flex applications provide a consistent, rich user experience across operating systems and all major browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and others. An Internet connection and an up-to-date Flash® Player 9 are all that are required to experience Adobe Photoshop Express. In its early phases, Photoshop Express is available to US residents-only in English. Users may experience slow performance if accessed outside of the US. Future plans include availability in other languages and countries.
Here’s a site I came across, which has a boat load of links to Open Source software. The list is divided into various categories to ease your search. So if you’re looking for open source tools to get work done, check this one out first.
Flauntr allows you to embed their services on your site for free. API programming knowledge not required! Click on the image above to see how one of the embedding methods work.
Flauntr provides 3 different ways you can embed their service on your site:
LightBox : Get a nice little graphic you can put on your blog post, panel or header. When one of your readers clicks on it , flauntR appears in a popup.
Iframe: If you want to allow your readers to enjoy flauntR without even a pop up, meaning flauntR sits right in your site.
Linkback: f you want to set up an image or set of images for editing or viewing through flauntR this is the right widget for you.
The method I used to embed code you see above this post is using their Lightbox method. If you’re running a image gallery site and would like to allow people to edit the photos straight off your site, I’d recommed integrating the Linkback method for your images.
While you’re out there, also check out their new apps - photomobilR and photoprofilR. photomobilR allows you to resize your images to fit ask the desktops of about 250 models of mobile phones! If you haven’t created a your own custom desktop background for your mobile yet, this is the right time to start.
photoprofilR is for those social network junkies to allow you to resize your photos to fit the profiles of 30 social network sites.
Bookmark and share:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Here’s an online service which allows you to edit and style your photos online. flauntR currently provides two services - photoeditR and photostylR. Both services allow provides an interface to upload images from the desktop as well as pull images from flickr though the flickr API.
photoeditR is a basic photo editing service which allows you to perform basic actions and effects on your photos. You can resize, rotate, colorize, remove red-eye and spruce up your photos here. If you’re looking for more advanced features, you’ll have to use the photostylR service which provides much more to spice up your pictures. There are predefined effects here which you can apply to your pics. Effects include digital scrapbooking style ‘compositions’, textures, light effects, overlays and colorations.
Once you finish editing your pics you can save them on flauntR in an album, download them to your system or directly send them to flickr.
Have you ever wondered how you would look if you were to appear in one of the Simpson’s episodes? Here’s your chance to find out. Head over to Simpsonize me and upload a pic of your self and out comes your Simpsonized character! You can tweak and accessorize your character to make it look more like you.
If you’ve Simpsonized yourself do share your character too here.
Here’s another shot of me outside Appu’s Kwik-e-mart at Springfield.
Here’s a cool app from Google India Labs called Google Indic Transliteration. Here’s what Google says about the app:
Google Indic Transliteration offers an option for converting Roman characters to the Devanāgarī characters used in Hindi. This lets you type Hindi words phonetically in English script and still have them appear in their correct alphabet. Note that this is not the same as translation — it is the sound of the words that are converted from one alphabet to the other, not their meaning.
When I typed in my name, here’s the Hindi text which came out of the app : वीनू थॉमस
While you’re out there, also check out their new apps - photomobil
photoeditR is a basic photo editing service which allows you to perform basic actions and effects on your photos. You can resize, rotate, colorize, remove red-eye and spruce up your photos here. If you’re looking for more advanced features, you’ll have to use the photostylR service which provides much more to spice up your pictures. There are predefined effects here which you can apply to your pics. 
