WordPress is a great and most popular blogging platform for it possibility to extend functions with plugins. WordPress Plugins make blogging easier for all of us who have chosen WordPress as our content management system. Google is best known as a search engine and Internet giant, bul check what Google can offer for WordPress users. This post lists the most useful Wordpress plugins related to Google starting from XML Sitemaps and ending with FeedBurner subscribers counter.
This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.
Google Analyticator easily adds Google Analytics tracking support to a WordPress-powered blog. Google Analyticator also comes with an easily customizable widget that can be used to display specific information that is gathered by Google Analytics using the Google Analytics API.
This plugin adds the possibility to tag and segment all outgoing links, so you can see whether a click came from a comment or an article. It also adds the possibility to track just the domain, instead of the complete link, so you get a better view of how much traffic you’re sending where.
This simple plugin lets you optimize your landing pages (as posts or pages) using the Google Website Optimizer without needing to edit the HTML code of the theme.
Google Doc Embedder will allow you to embed a PDF, PowerPoint (PPT), or TIFF file directly into your page or post, not requiring the user to have Adobe Reader, PowerPoint, or other software installed to view the contents.
Easy AdSense provides a very easy way to generate revenue from your blog using Google AdSense. With its full set of features, Easy AdSense is perhaps the first plugin to give you a complete solution for everything AdSense-related.
This plugin allows you to easily insert Google Map or Google Earth Plugin Maps into your blog.
The Google AJAX Translation WordPress plugin provides a quick, simple, and light way to add translation to your blog. A “Translate” button can be added to the bottom or top of posts, pages, and/or comments.
The default search engine that ships with WordPress is not the best search engine and bloggers every where should make the switch to WordPress Google Custom Search plugin. This plugin is a drop in replacement and works with minimum hassle.
A well-optimized and reliable plugin that connects to the FeedBurner Awareness API to retrieve your readers count, that you can print out in plain text.
What do you think about these plugins? Do you use anyone from this list? Might we haven’t listed your favorite Google related plugin? Share your thoughts in comments
We are huge fans of Animoto, the very straightforward mash-up tool that lets you take images, put them to music, and turn them into incredible video slideshows that simply draw the eye.
Now the image remixing platform is opening its doors to a new kind of media that takes Animoto videos to the next level: video clips.
That’s right: your Animoto videos can now include short video clips that expand the Animoto experience in a completely new direction. The result is something to behold.
Here’s How Animoto Video Clips Works
The new Animoto feature utilizes what the company calls “Cinematic Artificial Intelligence” technology to analyze video clips and weave them together with images you upload to create Animoto videos that are eye-popping while synced to musical clips that have been central to the Animoto experience.
It works like this: you can upload videos, up to 200 MB in size, from your computer, Flip, iPhone 3G S, and other media. You can then pick out short clips from these videos – up 5 seconds for standard, 10 seconds for premium videos – and place them into your animation, just like before. You can even control the sound. You can choose either to keep the music playing and mute the audio (default) or to activate the clip’s audio and take the music volume down by half.
There’s always been a lot of appeal to Animoto videos, and they just became a lot more versatile and useful. Animoto’s even partnered with iStockphotoiStockphoto
to provide about 200 stock videos for users to use in their animations.
Animoto videos have always spoken for themselves, and the video clip feature always seemed like a natural evolution for the platform. That doesn’t take away from the coolness factor, though. And to demonstrate that have a look at these examples: ANIMOTO
Quite a few of you use Gmail's custom "From:" to send messages with one of your other email addresses listed in place of your Gmail address. Since these messages are sent by Gmail's servers but "from" a non-Gmail address, we have to include your original Gmail username in the "Sender" field of the message header to comply with mail delivery protocols and help prevent your mail from being marked as spam. Most email programs just display the "From" address and not the "Sender" field, but some (including versions of Microsoft Outlook) show these messages as coming "From username@gmail.com On Behalf Of customaddress@mydomain.com" which really annoyed people.
We heard your request for another option that wouldn't show the "on behalf of" text loud and clear, and now there's a new option that does just that. Instead of using Gmail's servers to send the message, we'll use the servers where your other email address lives. Since Gmail isn't the originating domain, we don't have to include "Sender" info in the header. No more "on behalf of."
Here's the difference. All custom "From:" addresses used to work like this:
Now, if your other email provider supports POP and/or IMAP access, you can choose to send your message like this instead:
To switch to this new method, go to the Accounts page under Settings, and click "edit info" from the "Send mail as" section. Then choose the option to "Use your other email provider's SMTP servers."
We recognize that your other address might not have a server that you can use to send outbound messages — for example, if you use a forwarding alias rather than an actual mailbox, or if your other email provider doesn't support authenticated SMTP, or restricts access to specific IP ranges. For this reason, we've kept the original method as well. Check out our Help Center for further details on these two "send mail as" configuration options.
If you use Google Apps Premier or Education edition and would like to send mail as another address within your domain or within an aliased domain, no sweat. We do all the work behind the scenes so your original username won't be listed in the "Sender" header, and your recipients won't see "on behalf of."
The Kevin Marlain Rachele Travis Marcus website is now integrated with Facebook meaning that site visitors no longer need to register to leave comments on the site. Simply click on the Facebook Connect logo on the bottom of each blog post to use your Facebook id to post comments on this website.
Voice your opinion. By letting policymakers know just what we think of the "clean feed" Internet filter, we can bring about a policy change. You can help by contacting your representatives and spreading the word about this campaign.
Sign the petition. Although a petition signature is no substitute for personal contact, every bit helps. Sign the petition here.
Contact Senator Conroy. Contacting the Minister will let him know that his constituents, the Australian public, are not on board with his impractical plan. Call the Minister. There's nothing like a personal phone call to get the message across. Call the minister's office on (03) 9650 1188 and let them know your objections. Write to the Minister. A personalised letter to the Minister sends a powerful message: We don't like the policy, and we care. Letters can be sent to the Ministerial office: Senator Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002 If you're not sure what to say, you might wish to use the following as a template: Dear Minister, As an Australian and an internet user, I have serious concerns about your mandatory Internet filtering initiative. Given the importance your Government has attached to modernising Australia's broadband network, pursuing a policy that can only slow down and increase the costs of home internet access seems misguided at best. Australian households are diverse, and most do not have young children, so mandating a one-size-fits-all clean feed approach will not serve the public well. I don't think it is the Government's role to decide what's appropriate for me or my children, and neither do most Australians. Given the amount of Internet content available, the Government will never be able to classify it all and filters will always result in an unacceptable level of over-blocking. I feel that the time and money could be spent in better ways both to protect children and improve Australia's digital infrastructure. Australian parents need better education about the risks their children face online. Trying to rid the Internet of adult content is futile, and can only distract from that mission. Sincerely, Internet User City, State Email the Minister. Although not as effective as a letter or call, every bit helps. Email Senator Conroy at: minister@dbcde.gov.au.
Contact your local representative. Your local Member of Parliament is your representative and wants to hear about your concerns. Let your member know that you are unhappy with this policy. Not sure who to contact? Find your local member's contact information.
Contact your ISP. Your Internet Service Provider is probably just as worried about this policy as you are, but letting them know your concerns will help in their own efforts. Not sure how to contact your ISP? This list may help.
What is the Government's plan? Although the final details of the filtering plans have been kept under wraps, the Minister is on record as being firmly committed to a mandatory clean-feed internet to Australian homes, schools and public computers. A trial of filtering software by ACMA has already been performed, with a "live" field pilot to follow later this year. We must act fast before millions of dollars are squandered on this technically impractical and democratically unworkable solution in search of a problem. What do we know so far? - Filtering will be mandatory in all homes and schools across the country.1
- The clean feed will censor material that is "harmful and inappropriate" for children.2
- The filter will require a massive expansion of the ACMA's blacklist of prohibited content.3
- The Government wants to use dynamic filters of questionable accuracy that slow the internet down by an average of 30%.4
- The filtering will target legal as well as illegal material.5
- $44m has been budgeted for the implementation of this scheme so far.6
- The clean-feed for children will be opt-out, but a second filter will be mandatory for all Internet users.7
- A live pilot deployment is going ahead in the near future.
What we don't know is just as important. - What age level is the country's Internet to be made appropriate for? 15? 10? 5 years old?
- Who decides what material is "appropriate" for Australians to see?
- How are lists of "illegal" material compiled?
- Who will maintain the blacklist of prohibited sites?
- How can sites mistakenly added to the list be removed?
All of us want to see children protected from content that could be disturbing or harmful. The clean-feed filter is not a good way to go about this, and could actually reduce the safety of children online.
There are technical issues. The clean-feed, if attempted, will be a technical disaster. The Internet does not work in a manner that would let a filter be effective, and the World Wide Web contains far more content than could ever be effectively rated by a Government organisation. The host of technical hurdles include: - Like asking Australia Post to filter out objectionable letters, a filter would require ISPs to examine all web traffic, causing enormous expense and technical headaches.
- A filter will slow Internet access down by up to 80% according to a Government report.4
- Even the most accurate software the Government has tested would incorrectly block 10,000 sites in every million.4
- The ACMA would be overwhelmed with the task of maintaining a blacklist. Millions of web sites, with the list changing on a daily basis, would need to be monitored by Australian bureaucrats - an impossible task.
- Only illegal material published on web sites could be targeted, completely missing other methods of distribution such as BitTorrent.
- Any determined user - including children - could bypass the filter quickly using an anonymizer service, open proxy, or VPN connection.
- The clean feed would be less customisable and effective than a PC-based filter.
In short, as the best experts in the country unanimously agree, Conroy's plan does not make sense technically.8
There are free-speech concerns. Although the initiative is intended and marketed as a tool to help protect children from the dangers of the Internet, this paternalistic scheme raises some troubling issues that affect all Australians. As a source of daily information, the Internet increases in importance every day. Do we really want the Government of the day deciding what Australian adults can and can't see? Do we want Australia to join a censorship club in which Burma, China and North Korea are the founding members? - The list of prohibited sites will probably be secret, so it will be hard to know what content the Government has effectively banned.
- Filtering will be compulsory in all homes, even where there are no children.
- It is unknown whether there will be any way to have content removed from the prohibited list.
- How far will the list go, now and in future? Will it filter out material on sexual health, drug use, terrorism... even breastfeeding? Euthanasia and anorexia have been touted by Government MPs as topics worthy of filtering.9
The Clean Feed is bad policy. In short, even if it worked the filter would be terrible policy. By censoring the entire country's Internet access down to the level of a child of indeterminate age, it robs Australian adults of ability to make their own decisions about what content they view. - Most Australians don't want the filter.Support for this overly broad policy is virtually non-existent, even from child-protection organisations. A recent survey shows that 51.5% of Australian net user strongly oppose the plan, while only 2.9% strongly support it.10
- One size doesn't fit all. A single filter list can't deliver results that are appropriate for all parents, teens and children, with no way to customise the filter for your household.
- The protection for children is minor at best, an illusion at worst. The clean-feed does nothing to protect children from real threats like cyber-bullying, online sexual predators, viruses, or the theft of personal information. It may provide a false sense of security to parents, reducing effective monitoring of their children's online activities.
- The money is better spent elsewhere. The filter will cost tens of millions of dollars to attempt. Yet the Government's own studies admit education is more effective than filtering in protecting children, and that "content risks" are less dangerous than other risks.11
- No other democracy has a scheme comparable to the clean-feed. Comparable systems in Europe only filter a handful of illegal sites, and then only to prevent accidental access. 12
Further Reading Websites In the News Analysis of the policy Further documents
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This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.
Google Analyticator easily adds Google Analytics tracking support to a WordPress-powered blog. Google Analyticator also comes with an easily customizable widget that can be used to display specific information that is gathered by Google Analytics using the Google Analytics API.
This plugin adds the possibility to tag and segment all outgoing links, so you can see whether a click came from a comment or an article. It also adds the possibility to track just the domain, instead of the complete link, so you get a better view of how much traffic you’re sending where.
This simple plugin lets you optimize your landing pages (as posts or pages) using the Google Website Optimizer without needing to edit the HTML code of the theme.
Google Doc Embedder will allow you to embed a PDF, PowerPoint (PPT), or TIFF file directly into your page or post, not requiring the user to have Adobe Reader, PowerPoint, or other software installed to view the contents.
Easy AdSense provides a very easy way to generate revenue from your blog using Google AdSense. With its full set of features, Easy AdSense is perhaps the first plugin to give you a complete solution for everything AdSense-related.
This plugin allows you to easily insert Google Map or Google Earth Plugin Maps into your blog.
The Google AJAX Translation WordPress plugin provides a quick, simple, and light way to add translation to your blog. A “Translate” button can be added to the bottom or top of posts, pages, and/or comments.
The default search engine that ships with WordPress is not the best search engine and bloggers every where should make the switch to WordPress Google Custom Search plugin. This plugin is a drop in replacement and works with minimum hassle.
A well-optimized and reliable plugin that connects to the FeedBurner Awareness API to retrieve your readers count, that you can print out in plain text.
What do you think about these plugins? Do you use anyone from this list? Might we haven’t listed your favorite Google related plugin? Share your thoughts in comments
