When we think of SEO, we all think of optimizing content and web pages. But images also play an important role in driving traffic to your site.

Here are a few tips from Google Webmasters to optimize images for Search Engines.

Informative image names

If the image names are self explanatory, it increases its visibility e.g., chandni-chowk.jpg instead of IMG456829.jpg. Always use keywords in image name.

Appropriate ALT text

The alt attribute describes the content of an image. This information is used to determine the best image to return for a user’s query. An alt text should be a description not keywords. Filling alt attributes with keywords (Keyword stuffing) results in a bad user experience and can cause the website to be counted as spam.

Content around image

The page the image is on and the content around the image (including any captions or image titles), provide search engines with important information about the image. It is recommended to provide good, descriptive titles and captions for your images. It is good to place images near the relevant text.

Don’t embed text inside images

Search Engines can’t read text embedded within the image. It is good to put content in HTML rather than in the image.

News Feed is your Facebook homepage where you get updates from your Facebook friends, Pages etc.

If you don’t want to hear regular updates from some of your Facebook Friends, you can hide them from News Feed.

Hiding someone from News Feed

Take your mouse to the news item, a X button will appear in the right-to corner of the news item.

When you click the X button, it will ask you to hide the person or mark as spam. Click on Hide button to hide the friend.

Unhiding  hidden Facebook friend

1. Scroll down to the bottom of your News Feed and click “Edit Options.”
2. Remove your friend from Hide section by clicking on  X button against your friend’s name.
3. Click “Save” to save your changes.

More Settings

• You can adjust the number of friends visible on your News Feed.
• Type a name under Show more to add more friends to show on News Feed.
• To hide, use text box under Hide section.
• To edit recommended friends, click on “View recommended friends” link.

I had commented on a photo of my friend’s wedding on Facebook. When I checked my inbox an hour later, there were 22 comment notifications from Facebook.

It really get annoying when you comment on someone’s photo and there after you receive a long trail of emails. But there is a way to stop getting these emails.

Simply go to the Notifications tab of the Account page.

Facebook Notifications Settings

Deselect Comments after you on a photo and Comments after you on a photo album options under the Photos section.

Facebook Photos Notification Setting

I have updated Map Categories to Pages. It has auto-insertion capability now.

New Features in version 1.1:

1. Option for auto-insertion of the Pages on Category pages
2. Option for auto-insertion of Posts on the Pages which belong to the same category

To enable the features, goto the Map Categories to Pages settings page.

Choose the appropriate option to enable the features. It also provides the option to specify Header text and style to display just before the posts list on the Pages, e.g. header=Related Posts&before=<h3 class="title">&after=</h3>.

• header – heading text just before the posts list.
• before – Opening HTML tag (with CSS class or style) to insert just before the post titles
• after – closing HTML tag to insert just after the post titles

Read Assign Categories to Pages in WordPress for more information.

WordPress has different options for organizing posts. One of them is Categories. The categories can only be assigned to posts, not to pages in WordPress. But sometime you might want to categorize the pages as well. Here are a few cases.

1. To display related posts on a page.
2. To display pages and categories in navigation menu in mixed order. WordPress provides the two different functions to display a list of Pages and Categories. But it doesn’t give the option to setup a navigation menu mixed with pages and categories, like the example given below. In such a case you can map pages to categories and use them as category pages. Obviously it will need some changes in the template.
   • Page 1
   • Page 2
   • Category 1
   • Page 3
   • Category 2
3. To display pages on the category pages with the posts.

How to map Categories to pages

Add following lines of code in the function.php of your theme directory. If you don’t have a function.php in the theme directory then you can add it using any text editor. You can also download the plugin which I have made from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/map-categories-to-pages/.

function add_category_box_on_page(){
//add meta box
add_meta_box('categorydiv', __('Categories'), 'post_categories_meta_box', 'page', 'side', 'low');
}

add_action('admin_menu', 'add_category_box_on_page');

It will show the category selection box on the right side on “Edit Page” page.

Template changes

You will also have to edit the page template to use categories. You can use standard category code on your page template. Take a look at http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_the_category and http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags/the_category.

Here is a small piece of code to build a page of posts. This example uses the styles from WordPress default theme.

<?php
global $post;
$cats=array();
foreach(get_the_category() as $category) {
	$cats[]=$category->cat_ID;
}
$showposts = -1; // -1 shows all posts
$do_not_show_stickies = 1; // 0 to show stickies
$args=array(
   'category__in' => $cats,
   'showposts' => $showposts,
   'caller_get_posts' => $do_not_show_stickies
   );
$my_query = new WP_Query($args);

?>

	<?php if( $my_query->have_posts() ) : ?>

		<?php while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post(); ?>
			<?php
			//necessary to show the tags
			global $wp_query;
			$wp_query->in_the_loop = true;
			?>
			<div <?php post_class() ?> id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
				<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title_attribute(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
				<small><?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?> <!-- by <?php the_author() ?> --></small>

				<div class="entry">
					<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry »'); ?>
				</div>

				<p class="postmetadata"><?php the_tags('Tags: ', ', ', '
'); ?> Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?>  <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?></p>
			</div>

		<?php endwhile; ?>

	<?php else : ?>

		<h2 class="center">Not Found</h2>
		<p class="center">Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn't here.</p>

	<?php endif; ?>

Displaying pages on Category pages

When WordPress fetches the posts from database, the default post type is ‘post’. So even when you have mapped a page to a category, it won’t display the page on that category page. The post type needs to be changed explicitly on the category page. To change the post type, add following code in function.php.

//call a function just before the query runs to fetch posts
add_action('pre_get_posts','change_post_type');

function change_post_type($var) {
	if(is_category()) {
    	    	$var->query_vars['post_type'] = 'any';
            	//it will change the value to 'any' from the default value of ;post';
            	//can be any, attachment,  page, post, or revision.
            	//'any' retrieves any type except revisions.
	}
}

Orkut is well integrated with gmail chat. Now you may also notice “Online friends” tab in the left-bottom corner of orkut.

Orkut: Online friends tab

Click on the tab to expend and see the online gmail contacts.

Orkut: Online friends list

Gmail automatically sign into chat when you logon to Gmail.

To avoid this sign out chat before you sign out the Gmail. It won’t automatically sign into chat next time you open Gmail.

Stop Gmail to sign into chat automatically

Surprised!!!

According to Unit Convert widget in Mac OS X’s dashboard US$1 is equal to INR 1.419.

Unit Converter : Conversion of USD to INR

And one British Pound is equal to INR 22.649.

Unit Converter : Conversion of British Pound to INR

That is not all, INR 1 is equal to INR 0.222.

Unit Converter : Conversion of INR to INR

This isn’t only on one Mac. I have tried it on three other Mac’s on different locations in Delhi, India and the results were similar. The exchange rates are provided by Yahoo Finance.

Unit Converter : Exchange rates provided by Yahoo Finance

Think what would be the impact on the economy if these exchange rates were correct…

Gmail now shows progress bar when attaching files to messages. It shows progress bar next to each attached file. It also gives the feature to attach multiple files at once.

Attachment Progress bar in Gmail

Advance attachment features required Flash.

If these new features are not working for you then check settings on General tab of the Settings page. The features can also be set to the basics from this page.

Gmail attachment setting