Blogger : Custom Permalinks For Posts

W covered the news when earlier this year Google made some SEO specific updates to its blogging service, Blogger. The changes included :

• the Meta description option
• a custom 404 page
• the custom robots.txt
• a way to include alt and title tags to your post images 
• a way to mark a link as nofollow

to name a few. That made things simple for bloggers or otherwise they were producing pages that weren't that much on the SEO compliance level and also a way to customize some parts like the robots.txt for example. In turn it made things easily indexed in search engines.

The changes were good and effective and required to be precise, but there was one important area that bloggers were always restricted with. You could dive in with a perfect post content, but had to deal with irregularities sometimes when you wanted the post title to be something  descriptive but at the same time not cut short the post url in to something that was useless from a custom search perspective. If you are with us on this, Google finally made things easier. So no longer are you required to make a hack or use any tips and tricks from anywhere.

So until now we the "bloggers had no control over the" url of the post that was constructed

by Blogger service automatically based on the title you gave to the post. The post url or the permalink was there to be dealt with and was permanent without any customization to it. Not so now!

"Custom permalinks give you more control of your blog and posts. These new custom links also provide readers with more information about your post when scanning search results."

The option to the permalink would be available in the right side bar on the post editor for blogger, under the Post Settings; just as the image above. The custom art of the permalink would be only the part that Blogger usually stuffs youur post title in, like for example for this post:
http://www.socialcrunching.in/2012/07/blogger-custom-permalinks-for-posts.html 
The bold part in the URL above is what actually is the custom part in the permalink. 

 While you choose the custom url for the permalink, you will need to select the "Custom URL" option as shown in the image on the left. Then just type what suits your post in the text box. As you type Blogger will try to provide you with the preview of the permalink. In case the permalink that you are trying to create already exists, logger will try to suggest you with whatever free alternatives it may find. 

"At present, the characters allowed in a custom URL are limited to: a-z, A-Z, 0-1. The only special characters available are underscore, dash, and period." So obviously spaces are not allowed as some of you may think.

For more information on news and relative links, you may head over here.
       
 

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Divorced LinkedIn Gets a Facelift

A couple of weeks before Twitter cut out the partnering source line that allowed users to sync updates from one site to another. Thus ending the near 3yr association between the two. Although LinkedIn users will still be able to post and share their contents on their Twitter accounts by the click of a button, the reverse will no longer be possible. The announcement came via an official blog post from their head of product content, Ryan Roslansky. The reasons of the one way divorce are unclear but if you use internet daily and keep an eye on these social media news, it wouldn't take more than a couple minutes to make the best guess ;)
At the back of this one way divorce with the micro blogging service and the Member privacy issues, LinkedIn made a very unusual but very welcome changes to its site. The revamp gives the site a complete facelift as far as the home page is concerned. The all white scene is now history and a new black and greyish look is here. The header floats with you as you as you scroll the page down, a little like the ApnaCircle header updates, but while they had the company logo shifting to the left and only the menu part floating with the window scroll; LinkedIn chose to go the easy way having the whole header as floating. The color contrast they chose looks good unless you see the ad with a white background sitting right at the top of the page, just beneath the menu bar. Didn't understand the design there.

You also see a drop option just besides the search box at the right of menu. This drop tells you on which section of the site you are on. So while it says People in the above screen shot, it means that we are on the main posts page that shows us the news updates from our contacts. The moment you go to LinkedIn Today you will see it change to Updates. However, if you try and change the drop down value manually, the cursor will take you to the search box on its right. So if I change it to company, the system understands that I am trying to search for company and puts inside the search box ready to accept my keywords and wait for me to hit Enter. Sounds a bit awkward to us, or is it? Company' Product Manager Caroline Gaffney had this to say on the new changes:
"We've revamped the entire home page experience with a new look and feel to make it easier to scan and find the information that matters most to you," she also added; "This simpler and cleaner design makes it easier to navigate the page and quickly find the updates you're looking for."

Apart from the Home page, the LinkedIn Today added a few "social gestures" viz the Like, Comment and Share giving it more of a Facebook like feel!

You now can in fact follow the Trending articles and see what you are following and other suggested articles. The LinkedIn Today page, as shown above, explains the new changes and the social gestures that it got in this new revamp that the site has got after a long time.
     

Kanti Banerjee

Post Credit

A graduate from Hindustan College of Arts and Science(HCAS), Chennai, India; Kanti has been a Marketing Trainee at RealBridge Marketing Pvt Ltd. Says he has his "own religion,wch reflects me,resides wthn me,,nd transparent" !
Connect with him either on Facebook or on LinkedIn for his professional life.

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ApnaCircle Revamps Skills and Connection Requests Section

In the last couple of days, ApnaCircle and Viadeo have been busy revamping certain sections of the site and in the process giving a face uplift to the whole header and footer section. Besides the changes to header and footer there have been a nice one click recommendation confirmation feature and revamping with features on the connection response flow. And, there has been a nice little Google plus stream like feature that could be handy, we will discuss that one in just a while ;)

Header and Footer
The header and footer changes were already available to the Members of Viadeo since the past month. ApnaCircle Members got it a couple of day back and the timing couldn't be better as LinkedIn revamped their homepage as well and rolled it out to all Members during the same time it seems. We will cover that one in a different post though.

The whole look gives more of a professional feel and more so since we were used to the white look for quite some time now. The menus sits nicely and is scroll-able once you start to roll the page down with the content. Which clearly is a very helpful as the Member doesn't have to scroll back to the top again to see the menu and then choose another option. Our thumbnail however doesn't show our full photo there. You will also notice that the "pending connection message" or the "people you may know" has moved out of its customary position (above the Contacts menu) to under the Member' name. 

Its nice to see the Member photo thumbnail that we thought should have been there in the previous version of the header as well. The ApnaCircle header will have the gift wrap extra item visible on th top right, that is the new place for your points system now. The moment you hover your muse on the company logo, it starts to point the location of where it will go once you click on it. Kind of a nice look if you are not aware, good to look at. We caught the view for you in the image above.

The header menu will look like this when the page scrolls down. The logo and you see comes down to site besides the menu. The whole art visible above scrolls down with you as you move down the page towards the footer. The Google plus stream like feature that we were talking about comes in to picture here. Once the menu bar is in this scrolling position, you may click anywhere on the grey bar, extreme right or left and also besides the SMS menu option and the page will automatically scroll back to top. Very nice feature to have in case you are down on the page!

Skills Recommendation : A One Click Fun Process 
On your new profile you now have option to have your skills confirmed by people in your network. The process is useful as it gets you to move towards the top part in the recruiters list, but more than that its a fun process to do plus its so quick and easy that you may want to do it again n again, but be cautious as you may undo the confirmation that you just enjoyed doing for your connection :)

You see the "New". Start paying with it and you will see how well it works and its fun too. A couplpe of words on the news feed that this activity generates. You will have option to turn off the feed if you want right from your Dashboard settings:

The news feed for your information will look like this sorts:

Connection Response Revamp : Archive The Requests Now

The connection response page gets its own look now. We are sure people always wanted to see a way to accept multiple requests in one click. So here it is finally. You now have checkboxes to select all that you want to connect with and just one click "Accept".

Apart from this the connection response accepted message also has a nice look and you will love to see how it appears and disappears with just the apt sleep time:

There is a new page that has been added where you can archive your connection requests. At present you may feel a little edgy on this so we suggest you go an try and get settled. The archived page also has information about the past connection requests that you handled and what your exact response was. The date also gets noticed there:

Raj Dubey

Post Credit

Raj works as a Software developer in the ApnaCircle.com IT team that operates from New Delhi. He informed us about this feature on the ApnaCircle portal.
Connect with him either on Facebook or on ApnaCircle for his professional life.

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ApnaCircle Brand Ambassador Competition

ApnaCircle, India' leading Business and Career Networking portal, has started up with an initiative to create the networking and career awareness in the youth of India. The initiative called the Brand Ambassador competition will help the youth create an identity for themselves and groom as part of the campaign. This will be a chance for the participants to promote themselves on a bigger level. So if you are a college goer this could turn out to be a great opportunity and platform to get the exposure just before you get out in the competitive world out there and ",it is this Social media that bridges the gap".

The campaign started around a couple of hours back and will continue through the end of this month, with the winner being announced possibly on the 1st day of next month. At a time when the number of people getting out of the college every year seems to be on the rise per passing year, it becomes a necessity that one stands out of the crowd. Chances like these are a good opportunity, especially when they offer as much as this one does. There are Internship and Job opportunities available with ApnaCircle in case you win the event. Apart from that you will then be the official certified Brand Ambassador (certificate from ApnaCircle), your institute will receive free promotion and listing on ApnaCircle site, you will have a chance to exclusively meet Yogesh Bansal, Founder & CEO ApnaCircle.com. And a lot of other goodies are planned as well. Apart from the winner, the top 10 ambassadors will receive the Networking sessions from the guys at ApnaCircle, so there are more than a single position to compete for!

But before you get to win the offers, prizes and surprises; there is a lot of networking that you will need to do. These are the steps you need to do as you start your campaign to be the top and certified Brand Ambassador on ApnaCircle:

• Create your profile on ApnaCircle and make sure you fill all details and put a nice professional photo to go with it.
• Once you are done filling your profile, join the Brand Ambassador group on ApnaCircle.
• Like, Follow and Circle ApnaCircle' Facebook, Twitter and Google profiles and pages.
• Create a nice video with your intro details and suggesting why you should be chosen. The video will need to be a max length of 90sec.
• Upload the video on YouTube & post its link on Video tab in Brand Ambassador group page.
• After all this use the ApnaCircle network to create contacts, invite people who are not on ApnaCircle and participate in different groups, possibly creating some (meaningful ones) and making sure that they stay interactive.
• Make sure to promote your profile on the social network sites and also consider promoting your YouTube video to get as many likes as possible.

This is all that you should do and make sure you do that with a positive and interactive intent. The best of the lot would be the obvious winner. And don't forget to look at the explicit criteria that the site has mentioned on their criteria tab in the Brand Ambassador group.  Still got questions? Refer to the FAQ tab for the group.

For any rules clarification refer to the rules tab on the group' page and make sure you keep an eye on Social Crunching Group, we will be providing you with some tips on how to be leading the pack in the competition!
   

  

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Personal and Professional Google+ Profiles Merge Now Possible

If you are a Google user who uses both the normal Google+ profile and also one that is linked to your Google Apps account, you will be happy to know that Google now has option to link or rather merge the two profiles.

The merge is possible by a tool called Google Takeout. This is a new tool introduced by Google a few days back as part of the search giant' data portability initiative. The tool helps one to transfer their Google+ Circles and other information from one account to another. From the tool one can also make sure that their followers are transferred to their preferred account. For those of your who don't know, Google Apps is a Google hosted service that let institutions like business or schools use different Google products. It was only last October that Google Apps received support from Google plus.

The merge process however is a little tricky and one will need to be careful before you plan on using the transfer/merge service. The process will need to be started by clicking Google+ Circle Transfer from the Google Takeout tool. After this you will need to request the merge. Once you do that, there is a window of 7 days while you just wait on the process to get started. Once the actual process start, it will be around 2 days (48hrs) for the process to complete and... you will not be able to cancel or reverse this process now. Apart from this for these 2 days, you will not be able to perform any operations or use any of the two accounts.

After the process is done, your Circles, blocks and ignores are copied from your one account to the preferred account. However information like your source account profile' information, the posts and comments will be left nontransferable. So again, if there is any need to perform any merge please make sure you make up your mind as the process is irreversible!!

Google explains that "After the transfer is complete, your source account profile will still exist in your source account. However, it will be replaced with your destination account in other people's circles." and the guys also warns that "If you no longer need your source account Google+ profile, downgrade the profile associated with your source account and select Delete your entire Google+ profile. Before downgrading, we recommend downloading your Google+ data from your source account at Google Takeout."
For more information and the official word, you may see here.    

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Google Launches MyTrack 2.0 Android App

Initially launched in 2009, MyTrack Android App has got a makeover in the Google Play Store a couple of days back. MyTrack is an Android app that is capable of visualizing your location over time for sharing in Google Maps as well as Google Earth. This is achieved as the app uses the GPS capabilities of your phone. The initial version was used by the Google team to track HTC team Columbia during the Tour de France. A year later Google released the source code and made it open source for everyone interested to use it in their own applications.

This time as Google releases MyTrack 2.0, they have enhanced its features. The interesting ones include the ability to playback your tours over Google Earth for Android and over a period of time you can also have the aggregation of statistics to show the trends in your performance. While the new interface is supposed to be simpler and faster, for those who found it difficult with the charts and stats in the previous version may love the new improved charts and the stat tables that Google says are more easier to read.

If you are a biker or runner or hiker and in possession of an android device this link to Google Play store will be very useful for you ! However if you are a iOS, BB or Windows phone user, there is disappointment for you as MyTracks 2.0 exclusivity for Android has continued over from its previous version.
[Source: google-latlong.blogspot.in]

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Digg Sold Out: Reasons & Path Ahead

Earlier this year when Washington Post Company hired some 15 engineers from the site for some of its own social product development, it was only a matter of time till we heard Digg getting acquired. The news finally came out that Betaworks, better known for its services like bit.ly and news.me, has acquired Digg.com and the rumor was that the deal was closed for an eyebrow raising amount of $500K. Although as Digg' current CEO Matt Williams told AllThingsD, "the overall consideration is significantly larger" and includes both cash and equity. 

Matt Williams will be on the CEO position till the transition is over after which Betaworks founder John Borthwick will takeover as the new CEO of Digg. Since its launch around 8yrs ago, Digg accumulated around 350M Diggs, 28M Story Submissions and 40M Comments. So why a sold out for a company which promised more than we have seen in the past 2 yrs? According to Matt they "considered many options of where Digg could go, and frankly many of them could not live up to the reason Digg was invented in the first place — to discover the best stuff on the web. We wanted to find a way to take Digg back to its startup roots".

It sure looks like that the company really thought they lost they way. Looking to do a makeover in between the users, Digg made a revamp with the version 4.0 update that the site provided its users with in the summer of 2010. The update, dubbed as the 'new Digg', faced more challenges than ever. Poor reception, decreasing traffic made it difficult in the time of layoffs and some management changes. Soon after company' co-founder Kevin Rose left the company. He joined Google when the search giant acquired his latest startup Milk.

Digg raised a total of $45Mn in a series of fund raising roundups since its start. With one of the fund raising totaling around $5Mn, which closed last year, was said to have saved the company in tough times. Its reported without this fund raiser Digg wasn't going to last more than six months as far as the financial terms were concerned. The recent developments in the social networks raised a lot of competition for the company with users shifting their base to Facebook and Twitter; while preferring other similar sites to Digg Stumbleupon, Reddit etc also making it tough for them.

Betaworks, in the meantime seems to have plans laid out for the future of the service. The existing employees may not be moving over but its reported that the news.me team will be taking over the complete management of the site. The plans are also to turn "Digg back into a startup. Low budget, small team, fast cycles". News.me is a mobile first social news experience and the team will try to take Digg site back to its essence and revive the feature that the site was initially found for "the best place to find, read and share the stories the internet is talking about". Digg' new CEO John Borthwick said that they are "going to build Digg for 2012", suggesting some exciting news in the near future for the site and its service for users.
        

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