Follow these instructions.

Go to the Google Chrome Shortcut on your desktop or toolbar and right-click on it. Choose Properties. Look for the Target field.

Add this line:

- -pinned-tab-count=x

to the end of this string in Target. C:\Users\name\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe so it looks exactly like this:

C:\Users\name\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe – -pinned-tab-count=x

Now all you have to do is change the X to represent the number of tabs that you want to make permanent on the chrome browser and it will look like this every time you open your browser:

Simple as that!

Thanks to Addictive Tips for that info. Was exactly what I was looking for!

Here’s what I’m talking about.  The new app for Google Goggles.  Take a photo and get the details.

Whats your thoughts on this technology and its future?

Most of us in the industry knew this was coming and there was speculation as to the effect it will have on the results in both relevancy and of course with Search Engine Optimisation. Many people joined the initial google testing experiment that allowed them to gather data on social search and allowed us to see what the results where of doing various searches under different conditions, such as when your logged into your google account and when your not, different geographical locations and of course trying to account for your particular social network and the influence it will have on the results but from the information in the post I think Google have went even further. (I can see some SEO’s starting to scratch their heads right now).

Google Social Search

According to Google (and aside from suffering a minor baby boom in their offices) they have been enjoying the creation and integration of social search as they see it as a major way to increase the accuracy of results for individuals due to the trust factor involved with a social network.  For example, when you perform a search, traditionally you count on Google to return the most relevant results for that search but once that process is complete, you are basically at the “mercy” (for lack of a better way of putting it) of the resulting website, its information, content and brand.

Once you establish that the website is authentic, something we do very quickly if the brand is recognisable such as Amazon, E-Bay or similar, we continue the decision making process about the host site and whether we wish to continue the transaction, book the flight, make the enquiry or contact them by phone etc. and now social search brings a whole new aspect to this process.

Social Search Consequence

By including your own social network in the results, effectively Google are increasing the need for a good quality brand, integrity and high level of service from businesses as we can see references to the products, the recommendations, the complaints or the company name from a group of people that are on line, connected to you and whom you already know and consequently trust (to varying degrees of course) and the experiences that they have had with the subject you are searching for.

Having found someone who has already experienced something first hand, and whom you have a relationship with, you cna then gather feedback and information about the matter at hand directly and on a much more honest and reliable level.

Basically, companies (and indeed individuals) need to be on their toes now if they want to maintain standards in their every day business practices and this will mean offering much more personal, polite and direct customer service.  Not a bad thing in my opinion!

Social Search Setup

Their is no Opt in or opt out of social search it seems and Google have said that results will appear whether you are signed in with your Google account or not.  This in itself has annoyed some people as it means the standardisation of results, where the number 1 result for “Product A” is he same for both you and me, has effectively been disrupted (but not removed yet) as depending on the size of the searches social network and their activity, the social part of search will serve to produce different results for each and every individual and this cannot be managed or manipulated by any third parties in the same capacity as a website can be created and coded or grown to place for specific search terms in results.

This will in itself make for a very interesting year ahead and a very different view of search engines.

Anyway, have a watch at the video below to see what other features social search will include and if you feel like it, don’t be scared to pipe up and leave your opinions on social search and what it means in the comments below.  I would be very interested to hear another point of view.

Peter has explained in his post and in the comments that he has been in communication with the Independent.co.uk newspaper over a matter of copyright infringement when they used a photo that he had taken , and applied “All Rights Reserved” terms to and which they decided to ignore.

As far as I can see this has occurred, and I am basing this on the information on Peters Flickr page, which I have no problem doing because he has quite comprehensively included the email thread and correspondence between himself and the contact at the Independent newspaper and he has approached the whole situation correctly and properly in my opinion.

The newspaper however, have not. I would suggest that you have a look at the thread and comments in their entirety as it makes for very interesting reading, for me, mostly because it shows how there is a serious lack of understanding about the nature of the Flickr site and its Terms of Service, or in other words, they thought, “Lets have that, its on the internet so it must be free, oh what’s that All Rights Reserved thing, ignore it no one will notice and sod the Terms and Conditions everything on Flickr is free”.

Horrible and inexcusable conduct from a national newspaper who should know better.

The first obvious change is the inclusion of local business analytics reporting showing impressions and actions taken on your local listing and a list of the words used to reach it.  The second is the addition of a “coupon” system that can be used as an advertising incentive offering on your products or services. Its also a distinct possibility that I just haven’t logged into the business enter for so long that I never noticed the stats, but regardless I thought it was worth mentioning.^^

Check out the screenies below.  At the moment I’m still trying to figure out how this relates to Google Analytics.

Google Local Business Center Analytic and Reporting

Google Local Business Center Coupons

If you have a google profile you can login and set up your local business listing, it wont take long, add its location and details to google maps and your off.

The impossible triangle is used to, quite forcibly, to describe to people the stark reality of choice that needs to be made in many aspects of our lives. I use it with clients to help them make up their mind the route they would like to take with projects and the effect it will have.

The impossible triangle has quite a few names. The Impossible Triangle, the Reality Triangle, Triangle of Truth, Quality Triangle and the Essential Trade-off Triangle are only a few. Its not complicated, in fact its so simple it hurts.

The Impossible Triangle.

Look at the triangle below and ask yourself any important question regarding something that needs to be done.

Then choose any two of the options, but only two.

The point is that there will always be a trade off in some form or other in anything and everything we do according to this idea.

Which two would you choose?

Twitter has reached the next stage it seems with the launch of  Twiddeo. Still in beta stages at the moment those smart alecs over at Twiddeo have worked out how to integrate Videos into the users Twitter updates and the twitter timeline.

Described as:

Twiddeo is a powerful but simple service that let’s you do one thing very well:
Twitter updates with Video.

Upload from the web, your camera phone and record from your webcam.
That simple, that straightforward, that great!

This certainly looks like a titter addicts and video junkies wet dream! A great little feature in the tools section is the use of the Grease Moneky Script developed by Firefox to allow the videos to be viewed directly in the Twitter time line.

Looks like we are in for even more direct communication, or almost!

Now the email isn’t exactly saying that Twitter will officially and actively stop or block accounts that employ the Auto Follow feature, far from it in fact, its addressing one particular account which had requested this feature be turned on via twitter support.

Without reading into this to much I don’t think Twitter will remove or prevent the auto follow feature employed by various third party apps.  What this email signifies is that Twitter themselves do not condone it officially but they also understand that it is employed by twitter users and apps in different circumstances and for different reasons.

Personally I believe that any valuable twitter account will not employ auto follow.  Plain and simple.  No excuses. Why would I think that.  Lets look at the advantages and disadvantages of using  Auto Follow:

Reasons to use Auto Follow

• You never have to use twitter, you simply let it all build up.
• I can show off to my fiends by talking about how many followers I have.
• I don’t have time to follow all those people back.
• Its easy.

Reasons to NOT use Auto Follow

• You have no idea who you are associated with.  There may be porn sites, or worse, in your group.
• You gain more from less people by actually knowing them, helping, interacting and trusting.
• You control the flow of information relevant to you.
• The higher quality your network the more business you will gain and provide and the more money you will make in the long term and in repeat business.

In the meantime though, things will continue as they are with thousands of people utterly convinced that the number of followers they have (even if 90% of those followers are bots) actually means something and the marketeers merrily building as many lists of lists of lists to sell their flash in the pan products too the unsuspecting few who have been duped into following them. I wonder if they actually make any money and when did credit cards get issued to bots…weird.

Anyway:

Biz Stones Email about Auto Follow:

Hi There,

I’m contacting you because you have a Twitter account for which
we enabled something called “autofollow.” This is not a public
feature, it’s something we did for a limited set of accounts
such that they automatically follow any account that follows
them.

We’re going to discontinue autofollow because this behavior
sends the wrong message. Namely, it is unlikely that anyone can
actually read tweets from thousands of accounts which makes
this activity disingenuous.

However, we understand that there may be exceptions such as
applications built using our API or the ability to exchange
direct messages. There are also some who think it’s simply
polite to follow back other accounts.

While we’re going to stop supporting autofollow, we’d like to
find a way to support the other goals folks are really trying
to accomplish. Please feel free to reply to this email and let
us know how we can do this better together.

Thanks,
Biz Stone, Co-founder
Twitter, Inc.

Why is it then, that this always happens to me?

I always seem to find something really interesting and cool when I should be focusing on the job at hand. Now usually I can put it aside and come back later but this grabbed my attention for some reason, totally and completely. Maybe it was the simplicity, the brand or the idea itself but I thought, “that is genius”.

Using Twitter is great and I always use TweetDeck but this web app makes me want to go back to the web.  Whats it about, well its groups really, simply groups (or in this case crowds :P) of your friends and associates on twitter.  I know TweetDeck also supports groups but this is a little different and the one super thing about it is that its the last made tweet, on a single page, at a glance.

For monitoring very specific people within your twitter list, this can be and excellent tool, personally I have always wondered what I am missing when I am not online and this crowd manager has helped me stay one step ahead and even better it only takes me seconds to use it.

Instead of me going on and on about it though, skip on over to the site, whats it called?  oh sorry, its called:

http://www.crowdstatus.com/

Oh and one other thing.  After you create your crowd, theres a public link you can send to people to allow them to see your crowd as well. Check out my Irish Crowd!

Yahoo have just released a new piece of software today, called SideLine,  that bears a striking resembelance to TweetDeck.  The offical site description reads like this:

Sideline is an Adobe® AIR™ desktop application built with the Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI). It allows users to create and group custom queries by topics of interest.

Sideline is an open source application released under the BSD license. The first beta release is out and the code is hosted on github. If you experience difficulties with the Flash “Install” badge on this site you can find the manual download here.

Without further delay I’m going to download it and give it a spin, will let you know what I think of it soon.