Google Image Search Lets You Filter Results with Specific Color

The Google Operating Systems Blog is running a post on a little tweak to Google Image Search that lets you filter your results based on a specific color. You won’t see the option to filter image results by color in the main Google Image Search though. But GOS was kind enough to share this trick to get the option running.

Say for example your use the keyword “blue lagoon” on Google Image Search, this will give around 1,2500,000 hits according to the Image Search results. Now this is all well and good, but the results could actually contain other irrelevant items.











Now how about using the URL given by the Google Operating Systems Blog:

http://images.google.com/images?q=bird&imgcolor=red

replace bird with the word “lagoon” and the color red to “blue” and compare your results with the previous image search using “blue lagoon”. They are definitely different. You’ll get lesser results using the URL right?










It’s really a pretty simple search filtering option but could save you a lot of time scrolling through numerous search results when conducting image search. No words yet though as to whether this will be rolled out as a full-blown feature of Google Image Search.

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Twitter Hashtags guides

What is a Twitter hashtag?
A hashtag is a way to unite global Tweets around some particular topic. Basically, these are tags that that help those who seek similar content discover your Tweets. According to the official source:

"Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They’re like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag."

Hashtags are getting more and more popular (despite the fact some people are against them wishing their Twitter stream to be metadata-free and “as human a form of communication as possible”).

Anyway, I do use hashtags and find them fun, so I am sharing a few tips and resources below.
Where can I find what hashtags people are using?
#hashtags.org is the first place to find most recent and hot hashtags. It also shows each hashtag popularity trend when you hover over:













Twemes.com is another useful resource for discovering new hashtags and tracking those you are interested in. It has a hashtag cloud and also offers RSS subscription to any hashtag stream:










Wthashtag.com is a user generated wiki of hashtags. If you don’t know what any hashtag means or how to use it, you can use the site search and get a well-compiled entry explaining the meaning of the hashtag:

* When it was first discovered;
* Description;
* External links;
* Live stream using the hashtag:













How are hashtags used?

Generally, a hashtag is a great way to increase your Tweet visibility. However they should only be used if your Tweet adds value to the topic (so don’t insert # sign before each word).

Remember, that hashtags are tracked by people, so don’t waste their time by [I #eat #ice-cream #now] type of messages (this is also likely to rip off your followers). As an example, here are a couple of cases when using a hashtag makes sense:

* To categorize your Tweets based on a particular topic or for a particular purpose - e.g. #followfriday is a fun tradition to recommend your friends (and the whole universe) new people to follow:










* Hashtags are widely used to live-blog an event. This makes following an event much easier (check our recent post on how hashtags help Shane Jones to follow SEO conferences). It is recommended to set your hashtags before starting to live-blog;

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Facebook Connect for iPhone

Facebook has announced Facebook Connect for the iPhone, which enables users to take their Facebook friends, identity and privacy with them wherever they go. Facebook Connect for the iPhone provides the first live social experience for iPhone and iPod Touch applications, as users can now connect with their Facebook friends to play games -- whether their friends are at home on a computer or on their iPhone.


Facebook has announced Facebook Connect for the iPhone, which enables users to take their Facebook friends, identity and privacy with them wherever they go.

Facebook announced the new capability on March 14 at the South by Southwest (SXSW) 2009 conference, noting that there are nine applications currently live in the iTunes app store, with more to launch in the coming days.

Developers can get started taking advantage of Facebook Platform APIs to add social context to all kinds of iPhone applications.

Facebook Connect for the iPhone provides the first live social experience for iPhone and iPod Touch applications, as users can now connect with their Facebook friends to play games—whether their friends are at home on a computer, or on their iPhone—and share restaurant reviews on the go, location-based status updates, and more.
Users can go to the iTunes app store to see the first nine applications:

* Who Has the Biggest Brain by Playfish
* Movies by Flixster
* iBowl and Agency Wars by SGN
* Urbanspoon
* Tap Tap Revenge 2 by Tapulous
* Whrrl by Pelago
* Live Poker by Zynga
* Binary Game by SayEight

In a March 14 blog post, Joe Hewitt, the engineer who built Facebook for iPhone, said:

"A few months ago, we announced Facebook Connect, an extension of Facebook Platform that makes it easy for you to bring your friends with you all over the Web. We're now expanding this to Apple’s revolutionary iPhone and iPod touch, making it easy to connect with your Facebook friends in your favorite applications from Apple’s App Store.

"If you've used Facebook Connect on the Web, this will seem pretty familiar. You can now use Facebook Connect on your iPhone in the same way you can for a website. Simply download any application featuring Facebook Connect and log in using your Facebook account from your iPhone. Then, you'll be able to easily find your Facebook friends. They will be able to see the same profile information as they can on the site, controlled by your privacy settings. You can also share what you’re doing with your iPhone applications with all of your Facebook friends by publishing stories back to your profile."

Facebook officials said several developers are working on Facebook Connect for iPhone applications that will begin to be released shortly.

"In the coming days, many more applications will be available in Apple's App Store so keep checking back," Hewitt said. "If you don't see your favorite iPhone application soon, ask the developer to implement Facebook Connect -- together we can make your application experience on the iPhone truly social."

Meanwhile, according to Gareth Davis, another Facebook engineer who wrote a March 14 blog post, "Facebook Connect easily lets developers make their websites and desktop applications more social. And with the explosion of iPhone apps over the last year, we want iPhone developers to reap all the benefits Facebook provides."

Added Gareth:

"If you develop apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch, you can now start making those apps more social. With just a few lines of Objective-C code, your users can log in to Facebook from within your app, find their friends, then share what they do in your app back on Facebook, which opens up exciting new opportunities for your users."

In addition, he said that now your iPhone apps can enjoy the benefits that Facebook Connect sites and Facebook Platform apps already enjoy, including:

* Making API calls so your app can access users' profiles and share information on Facebook.

* Publishing to Facebook via Feed forms.

* Asking users for extended permissions, like offline access, so you can still interact with their data when they're offline.

Meanwhile, Limbo, one of the largest mobile social networks in the United States, today announced that Limbo for iPhone and iPod touch now features Facebook Connect for iPhone. iPhone and iPod touch users can link their Limbo and Facebook accounts, enabling automatic status and activity updates that are shared between the two accounts.

With Facebook Connect, Limbo members can see their Facebook friends on Limbo without their friends having to be Limbo members. They can also view the status of their friends on Limbo based on their Facebook status message, or automatically set an “On Facebook” status for members who are logged on and active on Facebook.

“Our members want a new way to share their experiences from their iPhone or iPod touch with friends who may not yet be Limbo members,” said Jonathon Linner, Limbo’s CEO, in a statement. “Now that Limbo features Facebook Connect for iPhone, they can easily share and distribute information and experiences with their friends via Facebook status updates, requests and notifications. The location-aware emphasis of the Limbo application enables users to find and meet up with their friends to increase face time and real world experiences. This makes it even easier to connect with friends in the real world, not just online.”

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Mozilla Fennec Browser Is Firefox for Mobile Devices

The new Mozilla mobile Web browser called Fennec is similar to Mozilla's open-source Firefox browser for laptops and desktops. The early beta version of Fennec, launched on March 17, is intended as a way of collecting feedback and raising interest in the mobile browser. Mozilla says the Nokia N810 Internet tablet is the best mobile and wireless device for experiencing Fennec 1.0, but users can also download Fennec to computers running Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Mozilla's Firefox Web browser has a new mobile sibling—Fennec.

Mozilla released the first beta version of Fennec on March 17. Mozilla describes it as being for testing purposes only, to get feedback and to encourage developers to port existing add-ons and invent new ones for mobile use.

"One of the main themes of Fennec was to try to minimize the amount of typing you have to do as you make your way around the Web," Madhava Enros, the lead user interface designer for Fennec, says in an introductory video on the blog of Mozilla developer Stuart Parmenter.

With Fennec, Parmenter wrote, Mozilla increased zooming speed, improved start-up performance, enabled plug-ins that let users watch videos, and "improved bookmark management and support for bookmark folders."

Fennec also makes it easier to search the Web, remembers pages where users have been, optimizes screen space for mobile content and remembers passwords, reducing typing and doing more work so the user doesn't have to.

Fennec 1.0 was designed for the OS2008 Maemo software platform running on the Nokia N810 Internet tablet. Everyone, however, with a computer running Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X or Linux is encouraged to download Fennec and get it running.

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