06 August, 2013

Online Timer on Google Search

Google as an Online Timer

Do you need a simple timer to remind you of upcoming tasks like wishing someone special at perfect moment, making that phone call to your clients or other person or may you have to do some important task. There are good web apps, e.ggtimer.com for example, that let you create countdown timers in the browser quickly but you probably don’t need them anymore.

That’s because you can now setup online timers inside Google itself by entering the timer command in the search box in the following format (the word “set” is optional):
timer for <time> OR set timer for <time>
The <time> can use a combination of hours, minutes and seconds. For instance, you may use search commands like set timer for 20 seconds or timer for 1 hour 2 minutes and the timer will spring into action. When the time has passed, the browser plays a sound.

One more thing. Instead of setting the time in the search command, you can just use the search query “timer” inside Google and then manually set the timer.
This tip is courtesy Amit Agarwal. And while we on the topic of online timers, you should also check out timer-tab.com – this one lets you set any YouTube video as the notification alarm. 

Facebook Launches Tool for Creating Embedded Posts

I had previously shared a post for embedding Facebook posts in your website but looks like you no longer need it as Facebook has officially launched the code generator for embedded posts at developers.facebook.com.

Just paste the URL of a Facebook post, hit the “Get Code” button and pick the HTML5 version of the embed code. Also, the warning on the Facebook page still says that “embedded Posts are currently available to a handful of news publishers” but it can be ignored as the generated embed code works just fine for any public post shared on Facebook.

02 August, 2013

How to Embed Any Facebook Post

Facebook has added a new “embedded posts” feature to help you embed any Facebook content – you can embed photographs, videos or even regular status updates – on another website or blog. For instance, if a celebrity has shared a photograph on his or her Facebook Page, you can easily embed that image on your website by adding a single line of code.


You may embed any content that’s shared on Facebook Pages and personal profiles as long as the content owner has set the visibility of that post to Public.
There’s a small catch though. Facebook has enabled the Embedded Posts functionality for a handful of big web publishers including CNN, Mashable and The Huffington Post. Everyone else will have to wait to see that Embed link alongside their Facebook content.
Here’s the trick. Open any Facebook Post and copy the permalink (permanent URL) of that post. You can right-click the date of the post to determine its permalink. Next replace YOUR_URL_HERE in the snippet below with the permalink that you just copied and paste the modified snippet anywhere in your website. Done!

<div id="fb-root"></div><script>(function(d, s, id) {    var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];    if (d.getElementById(id))        return;    js = d.createElement(s);    js.id = id;    js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1";    fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script><fb:post href="YOUR_URL_HERE"></fb:post>


If you wish to embed another Facebook post on the same web page, you don't have to copy-paste the entire snippet. Just add a new <fb:post> element and set the value of href as the permalink of your Facebook Post.