Looks like Digg is up for a major overhaul, one that will completely translate its image and reputation, hopefully to better heights. From what I’ve heard and seen, Digg is taking some real bold steps. Completely changing the game they played, reversing the table.

Image courtesy – RWW

As we all know, Digg was both famous and notorious. Famous for its “Digg Effect” and notorious for its “Non-democratic” ways of giving all the powers to top-diggers, who are long time (some not so long time) diggers who has the power to make or break a story. They are influential, and has mostly an army of fellow diggers who vote for their stories, making them to the front page. Now we all know that this isn’t easy as it sounds. There are games being played, hate groups, blind fans, a bit of racism, and all that stuff. Now, you can disagree with me in vain but we all know that if a normal guy (lets say inactive guy or fairly active guy) submits a story, its no way making it to the front page. You need to be an “insider”.

You have to have an army of diggers whom you should suck up to requesting for diggs.

You should monitor the story every hour and see how the diggs come “naturally”.

You can’t just pass the story link via email, but share the upcoming page link, and ask them to find your story from the page.

Trade diggs, reddits, stumbleupons etc.

Stay up late night if you’re on the “other side” of the world to get maximum exposure for your story.

And all that s**t.

So digg is democratic yeah, but all these games are played under the hood. I’m not saying that Digg allows all these on their own, they probably aren’t aware of it and as and when they come across a website/digger that tries to game the system, they ban it as well. But that wasn’t enough.

Now that the new digg algos and designs are coming up, I’m hoping there’ll be some fresh and new change coming in for the good. We’ve heard that it will take away the powers from top-diggers and give it to the people, but how effective its going to be ? I don’t know. Its very likely that the clever ones will figure a way out to manipulate it further, but hopefully, they won’t do it quick, and as they do it, digg gets clever as well.

Have you been using Digg ? How easy /hard was it for you ?

Are we running for too much customization these days ?  Good old green-black-blue serps seems to be a thing of high-school now. Any ways there’s no stopping Google form customizing its search result pages. And this time, its introduced a brand new option, that which will enable you to bookmark websites that you like right from the result pages.

It works something like this. You search for something on Google, and you like the 13th result. You just click the star seen right next to the listing and click it on, just like the Gmail star.

And next time when you do the same search on Google, you’ll see the earlier starred results right on top of the normal listings !

Magic ? Well, no. In fact, Google this is what Google did.

Google Bookmarks + Google SERPs = Google Star !

If you check your google bookmarks right after you starred a website today, you’ll see that it appears in your bookmarks history.

If you’ve been using Google bookmarks anything like me, then your SERPS already will have lot of bookmarks on the top area for most of the searches ! Just like this.

So, if you have not been using Google bookmarks, get used to it. Or get used to the stars, its the same difference

Almost one month after the release of Google Buzz, Google is now looking for your ideas on product improvement.Well, they have been doing this for almost all of their major products now, so don’t even dare think that they heard you bitching about it on Twitter, no. This is a standard procedure.

There has been lot of comments over how better could Google Buzz be, soon after its launch and now is the time to actually tell Google about your ideas.You can post your ideas to improve Google Buzz on the panel and if others consider it valid (and vote for it), your idea can go directly to the Google laboratories

Don’t bitch just do – says Google (okay I made that up.) Act fast, go post your idea here.

There’s an update from a Google Employee (unofficially though), that for some webmasters the number of indexed pages shown in Google Webmasters Tool for their website showed up incorrectly in the last few days and that Google is actually working on the problem which might have been fixed by the time you are reading this now.

There have been minor glitches with Google Webmasters Tool recently, so you know what to do when you find something bizzare. Just relax and wait for another day, if you found it (and is genuine), Google would have already found and fixed it.

Did you get any glitches with Google / Webmasters tool recently ?

Aten Design Group is up to some fun these days. They’re inviting you to the funeral services of IE6. Here’s what the “invitation” looks like.

Internet Explorer Six, resident of the interwebs for over 8 years, died the morning of March 1, 2010 in Mountain View, California, as a result of a workplace injury sustained at the headquarters of Google, Inc. Internet Explorer Six, known to friends and family as “IE6,” is survived by son Internet Explorer Seven, and grand-daughter Internet Explorer Eight.

Funeral services for Internet Explorer Six will be held at 7pm on March 4 at Aten Design Group, 1629 Downing Street, Denver, CO 80218. Those unable to attend the funeral are asked to send flowers.

You think that’s funny ? Well, they’ve gone ahead and even put up a webpage for the event. And…you could RSVP if you’re attending the event.

Nice to see some creative stuff here. Good job by Aten group !

Google Goggles seems very promising, is it not ? Eric Schmidt thinks that it can help you in situations like being in an “other language” restaurant, trying to figure out what the menu is, and then you click the menu’s photo, Goggle it and it gives you the English translation. Sounds amazing !

If you didn’t know yet, Google Goggles is the next (one of the) big things from Google. Its a technology by which you can snap pictures and get to know everything about it, much like the OCR technology, but this time its the pictures.

So you click the pictures of that apple, goggle it, and wallah ! Google tells you its a fruit, red in color, which if eaten a day, will keep the doctor away and all those interesting facts you needed to know. But what if you clicked on something that Goggle doesn’t know ? Like a new gadget ? Not any stupid gadget, let’s say an iPad ?

Well, Google images won’t  tell you what an ipad is at the moment, if at all, it gives you wrong information. (via Labnol).

Would Google rely more on OCR or Google Images ? Or both ? If yes, how effective will it be in finding what we really need to find (read – what we already don’t know).

Well, we have to wait and see a prime time table release, before we can comment but still – what would you use Google Goggles for ? Why would you ?

Hootsuite is getting better and better and better, with the new BarnOwl release, it just got awesome ! Don’t believe me ? Check out the new features.

1. Follower Management just got easier with Klout socre!

Now, you can manage all your followers right inside the dashboard. It shows all your followers and allows you to sort them based on Klout score, activity level etc. Very, very handy.

2. Link tracking and Analytics

HootSuite helps you gather intelligence by tracking which messages generate clicks – including breakdowns by time and by region. Easily share your success with chart printing plus CSV exports for custom reports and PDF printing. Oh did we mention custom URL parameters? If you know what there are, you’re definitely excited.

3.  Save messages tweets as drafts (just like in blogging)

Now, save tweets as drafts for later use, so you can procrastinate. You can pick up drafts later and finish the tweet process at your convenience. Much like in blogging, but I’m not sure if this will help many. We’re all instantaneous people, is it not ?

4.  If you love lists, play with them in plenty.

Lists have suddenly become so cool. And you won’t run out of them on Hootsuite. You can pull your twitter lists to Hootsuite and then drag and drop avatars from the adjacent window. Hah ! How easy can it get ?

And that’s just some of the new features, there are lots more. Check it out yourself.

So when are you making the shift from Tweetdeck to Hootsuite ?

It came off as a blow on the face of the freelancer’s community in India, when on this month Feb (2010) PayPal declared that they are halting all transactions with local banks in India temporarily and that those who have been dealing with PayPal cannot withdraw money to their banks, citing discussions with business partners and “stake holders”. There has been very little improvement after this and an update says that the situation will take months to get fixed, and until then you cannot withdraw money to your bank accounts.

The freelance community in India is huge. There are web designers, programmers, coders, content writers and lot of other professional service freelancers who depend on PayPal for their payment solutions from clients outside the country, mostly from the U.S. And PayPal, though notorious for their non-friendly behavior has been the monopoly in this field. Until now.

While many are still waiting for the “ban” to get over, and hoping to get their locked money out of PayPal, it is really possible that you can withdraw the money to a bank account from PayPal, through a work around that is.

You have to register for another service called Xoom, which offers pretty much the same service as PayPal. Enabling you to send and receive money to India. So, if you have your money locked in PayPal, go right away and register on Xoom. And then follow these steps.

1. Register at Xoom, if you haven’t yet.

2. Login and use the form in the homepage to fill in the details (amount to send in $).

3. Next up, Xoom offers three ways by which you can withdraw your money from PayPal.
- Withdraw on the same day to any of the 4351 branches of Punjab National Bank in India. (Cash Pick Up)
- Withdraw cash to any of the banks in the list. across towns in India. All major banks included. Entire list here.
- Send a Demand Draft via Blue Dart courier service, who will deliver the DD to your doorstep.

4. Now select PayPal and Xoom will redirect to your PayPal account, where from you can withdraw your money via xoom.

5. All you got to do is withdraw the money to your own account, or any friend of your’s who might have an account with either Punjab National Bank or the other banks.

Trade off and the fees involved.

Xoom cuts a small amount as fees for the transactions. Example, $15 for Cash Pickup of $200 on the same day. Or $13 for direct bank deposit on the same day for $200. The good thing is that the exchange rate of Xoom is great compared to PayPal. At the time of writing this, its at INR 46.0031 for $1.

This method is completely legit. Just that so many people are used to PayPal for its ease of use (until now). But Xoom is one of the easiest methods for sending money to India.

I think this method should be a blessing for those who have their money stuck with PayPal, who even seem to charge for failed transactions to withdraw money to Indian bank accounts (because of their fault). For those who would like to save on fees and stick to PayPal for loyalty, its only a matter of waiting for er…a few months ?

First off, happy Valentine’s day to all. If you’re reading this post on email / rss feeds, I strongly suggest that you head over to the blog and check it out. Because, guess what ? There’s a brand new design in place. And I’m excited because its not just a design change but a complete revamp of the old DailySEOblog as you know it. DSB is now DailyBloggr and here’s why.

We’re not moving away from SEO, but with SEO as the core strength, its growing into many more related fields like Social Media, Web Master info, Web Trends and all that come in between. In fact, most of these categories and articles already existed, but the SEO label was kind of over powering it and some of them went un-noticed which wasn’t fair, I thought. So we have the same content, in fact better content, more articles, more categories, more news, more reviews, more user participation and a whole new brand – DailyBloggr.

I’m really looking forward to your feedback on this, positive or negative, feel free to scribble them down on the comments area.

Oh and by the way, while you drop by you’ll see a lot of changes. Here’s a brief idea about them.

First off, the new design has been done by Aravind Ajith of The Design Superhero. He did a great job in fulfilling my expectations. We’ve been trying a lot of experiments for the last few days and having a great time learning new stuff with the challenges that came across. I strongly recommend Aravind for any WordPress related gig, design, coding or anything. He’s very good at it. Feel free to let him know of the bugs/suggestions you find on the site.

Overview New Features Added.

- Better Comments with social integration.
You’ll see a new, clean and structured comment system in place where facebook and twitter has been integrated in a very simple yet effective manner. I’m not a big fan of third party integration in comments so all those tools have been avoided, and I wanted something simple and fun. So we added two extra fields into the comment form namely facebook and twitter IDs. Which users can use if they wish. Those who are social media mavens (many DailyBloggr readers are) will find this useful as filling these info will add those social network profile links to your gravatar. People who don’t want to use it can ignore it though – same old comments style.
The comments show up in a sort of tree structure where each reply can be seen right under the parent comment, visually distinct and making it easy to figure out how the conversations happened.

- Social Media integration. If you liked the article, everyone else will know for sure.
If you RT or Facebook share the articles, there is a small (rather) box on the top right of every article, where all the recent retweeters will be shown. A better RT button and Facebook share button too. This is an experiment, and not quite fool proof, so please feel free to help me test it.

- A better homepage layout.
No big deal actually, but a faster loading homepage with snippets and one click access to all major stories is always nice.

- Better focus on the article content and lesser distraction elsewhere.
The most important change is that now the focus is on the content more than anything else. Not the logo, not the other stories, not the fan badge or anything else, but the content. But if you wish to look around, there are other stuff as well.

- A speculative placement of ad banners.
Here’s the thing. The blog makes money only through ads. And I wanted a better ad placement, with a better click through ratio and better visibility for advertisers not compromising on the content readability. The 125×125 square ads are so 2008, so I wanted to try something new. We have a new ad area above the fold, near the navigation area, with excellent visibility (can’t get better than this), and reduced Ad-Blindedness, if you know what I mean. Ads in no way are obtrusive to the content, but at the same time promises a better visibility for the advertisers. I’m sure you’ll get along with this feature.

So, that’s pretty much it. I hope you all like it and stay with me for the endeavors ahead, I bet its going to be thrilling times.

Meanwhile, I’m leaving the site in your hands now, its all yours to test and rip off, play with it and feel free to let me know of your thoughts and opinions. Cheers !

Looks like there’s a new scam sprouting up everyday on facebook, apart form the security threat speculations that is.

The latest to hit is the “Facebook Gold” accounts scam, to which many have already fallen for.

A group of people created a group called the “Facebook Gold” members group which promises of a special status on Facebook if you joined the group. Well, it doesn’t promise anything in writing but leaves you to figure things out, but first you got to join the group and do a few things.

Before joining the group this is what it asks you to do.

1) Drag and drop the Facebook® Gold™ logo (yes, the one on the left) onto your desktop. Upload it as your new profile picture – and you’re away!

2) Copy and paste the following into your status:
Official BETA tester of Facebook® Gold™ account

3) Copy and paste the following comments on your friend’s…

Doing this much will itself make your profile turn fake by being the groups brand ambassador, when you yourself don’t have a clue of what this thing is. If you look at the group members, you’ll find that all of them have the same logo and the same status. This creates curiosity among your friends and more will join soon, and I guess that alone is the groups motto.

To spread an idea that doesn’t even exist. You join the group thinking you’ll get an elated status only to know that you just gave a false message to your friends by doing so.

Clever spamming strategy by the creators huh ? I’m not sure if joining the group will harm your account, I doubt it. Anyways, the false message is all they’re looking for, and clearly many are jumping in.