While making a few posts on my fan page, I noticed something really cool. All fan pages might find this trick very useful.
Typically facebook adds “Like”, “Comment” links to each post. But then share is a very important viral button that will allow fans of the page to share the post on their wall.

The Trick:
When sharing a post from blog or web page, do not post the page URL. Instead create a short url from http://bit.ly and post that link to the fan page wall. This will add an extra link to the post

comment, like, share

I always wanted to share photos and videos so my parents (in India) can see their grandsons growing up. But the whole process was so cumbersome that I sent pictures occasionally all at once.

Before iPhone (or smartphones):
Step 1: Take photos on a digital camera | Capture video
Step 2: Download to laptop
Step 3: Attach to email (3 or 4 pics per email or 1 video)
OR
Step 3: upload to photo site | youtube.
Step 4: Ask all your everyone to create an account with the photo site so they can see the photos

After iPhone
Photos: Now I take photos on my iPhone, I auto sync it with my facebook account, and auto sync my facebook to my blog using fotobook plugin.

Videos: I use qik on my iPhone to capture videos. Videos are auto synced with my qik account and my video stream is embedded into video page on my blog.

Now I can share the photos and videos without any hassle. Its all automated.

In 2007 when i attended Ycombinator start-up school session @ Stanford, Paul graham made a very intersting comment “It’s ok to do a start-up if you don’t have have funding, idea, office….But it’s very difficult to do a start when you are married”

Here is something I would like to add to Paul’s #lbl…

Important: If you have a co-founder for your start-up, it is very important that you share the same ideas, values and goals for the start-up. Make sure you don’t compromise on any aspect of it.

Very Important: If your co-founder is married, make sure you have the buy-in from his/her family. If you don’t, then you are going to run into a lot of problems executing in situations where your start-up needs a lot of time and attention to get through the dip

Today i logged into my youtube account after long time. I had almost forgotten about some of the video tutorial I had created for Mosnaps.

Twitter stream is almost like a stock ticker. And when you  are following over 1000 it is difficult to follow any conversation. Also the global trending topic might not be relevant to many. So for a few months i have been working on a Local Trend concept “Localshouts.com” with my limited php and mysql skills. Localshouts will show trending topics by city and amongst people you follow. The idea is to give you host topics at a glance instead of scrolling through the stream. You can read more or chime in  on keywords that interest you.

I’m glad today that twitter sees value in such a service too. Twitter is launching a new feature that does exactly what i was trying to do with localshouts (except trend amongst people you follow).

I was able to finish localshouts for omaha (where i live).

techcrunch: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/09/twitter-to-rollout-a-new-api-for-location-based-trends/

My post on localshouts: http://www.harishb.com/?p=102

This week i launched my pet project http://littlebookoflearning.com acronym: #lbl

#lbl project is a knowledge collective that makes finding and sharing learning fast and easy.

The Problem:
Most times when we encounter a problem we turn to search engines to find an answer. Search engines treat the search term as just keywords without any context. Your are presented with pages that have higher density of your keyword.  Search engines don’t really know if that page has an answer for your question or if that page even has an answer. All they know is that page matched your keyword. It could very well be a broken thread of a forum with too many mentions of that keyword or search engine optimized page that is trying to sell you something.

The answer to your question/situation:
You are most likely going to find the answer in a blog post. There is tons of good posts in blogs where bloggers share their experiences about a situation or task and how they solved for it. The topics are infinite from simple programming examples, tutorial, How-to stuff, pregnancy, travel and more ….you name it.

Little Book of Learning takes these wonderful collection of learning posted in blogs and offers an easy platform for people to discover learning without having to waste time clicking through irrelevant pages.

Setting up google mail for a domain is actually very easy. You can find a lot of help by just googling.
Where i got most confused is where and how to change the MX and CNAME record in my web host admin panel. Interpreting text explanation can sometimes be confusing and i did screw up. So here is a screenshot of how it should look.

Changing CNAME will allow you to access mail by typing http://mail.yourdomain.com instead of http://www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com/

See below:

When you reach 600 plus followers, it becomes very difficult to follow conversation. Following your tweet stream is almost like watching real time stock trades. Here is an opportunity! A twitter web/mobile app service that shows emerging topic trends for your city, amongst your followers and people you follow.
Just like twitter trending topics, but very personalized.