Ever since social networks came to the mainstream, “sharing over the internet” has been acquired new dimensions. Sharing interesting links has now attained the status of a hobby. People needed neat & simple ways to do this; and there came URL shorteners (services that creates a shorter URL from a given long URL). There are hundreds of them on the web (my favourites being lin.cr & is.gd. There are many more, like, moourl, tinyurl, url.ie etc.)

But, you should be aware of their malicious potential. Any service could be misused. The case is no different for shortened URLs. Malicious links could be contained in such shortened URLs, whose target link is unknown to the user. When tried to shorten an already shortened URL, the service said: “This usually means you tried to link to is.gd itself or another URL shortening site. Links to these sites are disabled to stop spammers hiding abusive links behind a chain of shortened URLs.”

Look at some of the possible threats:

The link associated with the LOGOUT button in Orkut is http://www.orkut.com/GLogin.aspx?cmd=logout. Now that link could be converted to something like http://ab.cd/ef Clearly, clicking on that link will log you out of the site. This is only a simple example. Think of situations where, these could be used to (yes) DELETE your account, gain ownership of communities, copy/modify your personal information, perform restricted operations etc.

Now you know how dangerous these could get. (It is when I wrote this post, I understood why Orkut and several other social networks delete those shortened URLs posted by its users!!)

But, these are extremely useful services (especially at twitter, where there is 140-character-limit) and shouldn’t be ignored because of such threats. I just wanted to say, be careful while following a shortened URL; you never know where it takes you or what it does!!

Update: I came across a GreaseMonkey Script that Restores a TinyURL and shows the original url in a tooltip on mouseover.
Update: Here’s a script that Automatically changes all tinyurl links to preview.tinyurl, so that you know where they are trying to send you.

If you want more URL shorteners than I listed, you may head here to read a long list of URL Shorteners: http://lin.cr/nu
(Don’t worry. This link is SAFE )
Lin.cr is created by Aalaap Ghag

We all have a DigiCam and we keep clicking almost every moment of our lives. And then, we upload them to photo sharing sites so as to share with our friends & family. While sharing your photos online please keep the following in mind.

• It’s your personal life. Don’t make it too public.

• Understand that the potential viewers of the photos are not only those who invite, but includes anyone searching the Internet.
• So, whenever you share personal or sensitive photos, make sure you mark them as PRIVATE or PROTECTED. That is, just make sure that, the photos could be viewed only by those who invite.
• NEVER upload your images where you have no control over the display/accessibility/management of your uploaded photos.
• Use only quality services to upload like Flickr, PhotoBucket, PicasaWeb etc.
  

Keep these things in mind and protect your privacy online.
Have you been following these guidelines? Or have you had any experience where, leaving your images public caused you some sort of trouble? What’s your opinion about the billions of images being uploaded to the internet?

[[You may download the PDF Version here ]]

Introduction

Ever since I got my broadband connection, the greater portion of my life was online. I learned many new things, which i might never come across, if i was not a netizen. Here, I share with you - my dear readers - How to be a COOL netizen.

The Bare Basics

Broadband connectivity, a powerful customizable secure browser (Firefox being my favorite), and a desire to explore the never ending web!!

Now that you are ready for the ride, we’ll look for stuff that will make the journey more dashing.

1. E-Mail & IM (needs description??!!)

You’ll need that everywhere. So have one for yourself. It is advised to have a private as well as another publid ID. You may choose any of the webmail giants (GMail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL) to get you one. Almost all of them provides unlimited storage & similar features, so, it’s completely upto you to decide.

SignUp for atleast one Instant Messaging service. (All the above mail providers provide IM service)

2. Socialize and Interact

2.1 Social Networking Sites

Since you want to be a netizen, you need to have contacts in the web just as you have in the physical world. Think no further and signup for a social networking service. There are many and while choosing one consider the following:

· Register for a service which is popular in your region/country (India=Orkut!!)

· Join only those services, which clearly ensures your safety online

(Get the full list here)

You may join Twitter, (a service to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: “What are you doing?”). Know More about twitter here. Once you’re familiar with these and have some contacts online, you may join services like FriendFeed.

2.2 Forums

Forums are web hangouts were, netizens interact each other based on interests. There are millions of forums out there, just for any category (Even, there is no Wikipedia entry listing forums!). So, the best way to decide on one is to ask those who use them.

3. Blogs

The best way to stay updated is to regularly read blogs. There are hundreds of thousands out there. There are both Corporate Blogs & Individual Bloggers (like me, Shankar, Nirmal, Sumesh). Doing a search for your interests on GoogleBlogSearch, Technorati etc. will take you to blogs which deal about the content you need. Once you’ve found one that suits your interest, it’s easy to find more of that type. It’s better to be a reader at many blogs, so that you get many flavours. (For info on staying updated with many blogs, see the RSS section below)

4. Get The Content Delivered To You (RSS)

RSS - Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0) - is a “family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts.”

Let’s put it simple. Every blog and many sites have a feature called “feeds”. You subscribe to the feed using any RSS Reader and any new articles/posts made in the blog/site will be delivered to the RSS Reader by the website/blog. So, if you subscribe to (say 5) blogs, all the new content from those 5 blogs will be there in the RSS Reader for you to read. Thus, you need not visit individual blogs/sites. This is a simple, extremely useful service, but not everyone uses it. I wonder why!! (You can subscribe to my blog here).

4.1 RSS Readers

There are both Online & Desktop clients available (Get the full list here). I personally use Google Reader and you can have a quick, neat tutorial here.

5. Social Bookmarking

This was a Web 2.0 phenomenon and was an immediate success. There started many Social Bookmarking services, which allowed you to share interesting websites and articles you come across on the web. These portray the “hot topics” of the moment, so that we get to know what the world is talking about. The giants in this business are Digg, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Reddit etc. You can have a long list here. (Take a practical lesson by bookmarking this post/blog if you liked this!!).

I prefer StumbleUpon, because it is much more than just a social bookmarking service. With just a toolbar, StumbleUpon learns our likes/dislikes and shows us cool websites based on our interests. You can also submit “your discoveries” to it.

5.1 Automatic single-page aggregators

I would like to speak about popurls.com which “is the dashboard for the latest web-buzz, a single page that encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from the most popular sites on the internet.” This is an incredible service. There is another one similar to popurls.com: theweblist.net

6. Content Publishing (Speak Out!)

If you want the world to know your thoughts, or if you want to share your knowledge with others, or if you just want to vent your emotions, you CAN. There are many free personal publishing platforms which help you to setup a blog for yourselves in minutes. The leaders are WordPress (This blog is WordPress-ed!), Blogger & LiveJournal. You need not be a techie or a programmer to have your blog up and running. You can start with any one of those mentioned, or you can host your own domain and power it up with any one of the platforms.

7. Content Sharing (File/Photo/Video)

7.1 Share Your Stuff

The whole web is based on the spirit of sharing and you too can share anything you want. You can share files (eg: Rapidshare), images (eg: Flickr) and Videos (eg: YouTube). You can also make money from your content through programmes like, MetaCafe’s Producer Rewards Programme etc.

7.2 Take the Shared Stuff

Downloads are the sweet part of the net-life. You get music, movies, apps, pictures, videos, just anything you want. It is necessary to have a download manager ready for you, so that you may batch-download, pause/resume downloading etc. List of Download Managers.

And there is p2p (peer-to-peer), the king of file sharing. More than 75% of world’s bandwidth is used for p2p. It needs a category of its own, and you may learn more about p2p here & here.

Conclusion

You can get more Web Apps and services here & here.

There’s still more to say. These are only the basics to guide you; even sky is not a limit here.

Note To Wanna’-be Netizens: Are you ready? Any Questions? Put it in the comments.
Remember, Never drop the desire to explore more.

Note To Netizens: Have I missed something important? Use the comment section to let me know.

[[ N.B. You can download this guide in PDF format here. ]]

This Article by aravindjose.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 India License.

You would’ve read my first ever scoop which was on ImageShack launching a new Torrent Service. I blogged it on 30th March and till then a search for “imageshack torrent” showed up nothing in google. After few hours, my post was the only one about the launch, listed in the google search for “imageshack torrent”. The post raked in 6700+ views in just 6 days. It made me (a newbie blogger) feel great.

A guy named, baramunchies (http://digg.com/users/baramunchies) submitted the article to Digg and at the time of writing this, my post has a total of 22 Diggs.

Today, I googled “imageshack torrent” and the results were all on the “launch of New Torrent Service From ImageShack”. Almost all posts were made on or after 5th April. The search result showed the p2p-news-giant, TorrentFreak (acclaimed of reporting latest scoops), in the 6th slot with their post dated 5th April.

Even then, their post was digged a whopping 990 times (as at 23.00 IST, 6th April) just in a single day.
Remember, the SCOOPer got only 22 diggs in 7 days.

Yes, I KNEW that TorrentFreak is among the 50 most popular domains featured on the frontpage of Digg.
And now I KNOW a SCOOP is NOT a SCOOP, unless you are that reputed.

What do you say?
(P.S. I was not complaining. The AIM OF THIS POST is to explain, how important is a solid reputation for your blog to be read & digged)