Information Technology Blog

Archive for June 11th, 2010

Starting this week, Google introduced new gadgets leveraging Opensocial to all iGoogle users in the U.S. With the new social gadgets, users will be healthy to share content, play games and collaborate with friends right on their iGoogle page. A few examples of the new social gadgets include:

Content Sharing - NPR enables users to browse through latest headlines crossways a variety of categories and share the stories that interest them with friends. With the Flixster gadget, users can rate and review movies or browse what films their friends have reviewed or found interesting. Users can now also view their friend’s favorites comics stories or post comments with the GoComics gadget.
Games & Fun – The Scrabble and Chess gadgets enable users to play two of their favorite games with their friends or the public at large. Users can also see which of their friends has the biggest brain or immerse themselves in a New York Times Crossword where they can complete a given week’s puzzle with the help of their friends.
Communication/tools - Users can share multiple lists with friends with the social To-do gadget. It’s simple to add and remove items, mark items done, change priorities and edit item descriptions with friends or family. The Social Pictures gadget enables users to upload and share their albums from Flickr and Picasa, as well as browse their friend’s albums or top Photos.

As part of the launch, Google also introduced two new features on iGoogle called a “Friends group” and “Updates.” A “Friends group” is a list of friends users can create based on a subset of users’ Google Contacts to be healthy to interact and share social gadgets with. “Updates” grants users to see what their friends are up to by sharing gadgets, photos, ratings and more from the social gadgets on their iGoogle page. The new social features are absolutely optional and can be disabled on any social gadget if users do not want to take advantage of the new features. In addition, not all gadgets on iGoogle are social-enabled and those which are will be marked with a special icon.

iGoogle’s mission is to swiftly connect users to the information that is most useful and important to them in an easy-to-use and customizable format. This is just the beginning and Google will continue to offer their users more choices that enable them to create a powerful and personalized homepage. For developers and content owners, social gadgets grant more possibilities for building rich and compelling gadgets. In addition, not only can developers take advantage of iGoogle’s growing audience of users to promote their gadgets and drive additional awareness and traffic back to their websites, but they can also acquire revenue from their gadgets on iGoogle by placing ads in the canvas view mode of their gadgets.

Related Gadget Articles

Some caches have puzzles or other challenges to overcome (e.g. the store is on an island reachable only by canoe). One interesting type of challenge is a night cache–a geocache that is designed specifically to be found in the dark. This adds mystery, excitement, and uniqueness to the geocaching experience.

Steps

Try finding someone else’s night store before making your own (if there are any in your area). That might give you ideas of what to do or to avoid.
Select a type of challenge. Reflectors are often used to mark a path since they can be very hard to spot during the day. From apiece reflector, the mortal has to use a flashlight to find the next reflector until they reach the store container. Be creative! See the Hints below for some other ideas.
Find an appropriate size and type of store container. Nothing special is needed for a night store container, but think about whether people might be disappointed to find a micro-sized container after going to all the work of hunting down your store in the dark with flashlights. Also, it is harder to see by flashlight, so camouflaging and hiding it too well might just frustrate people.
Select a location for the store and get permission from the owner or responsible agency. Make sure it is accessible and innocuous to be in after sunset…like some parks, travel trails, and public land such as say forests.
Test your challenge to make sure it works correctly. It can be good to have a friend try it to make sure your instructions make sense and the markers are easily found.
Report the store on the geocaching.com website so others can find it. See the link below.

Tips and Warnings

Many normal caches can be found during the day and at night. Try to set up your night store so it can only be found in the dark to make it special
Some auto parts stores carry reflective tape which can be used as inconspicuous markers
Reflective tacks like FireTacks (see link below) are acquirable for much more camouflaged markers
Specify ‘Night Cache’ in the store study in case people don’t read the description before driving to the coordinates
Specify if there are any time requirements, such as ‘the gate gets locked at 11PM’
Make sure to re-check your store periodically in case any reflectors fell off, were damaged, or are obscured by new foliage.
Set the Attributes for your store to include ‘Flashlight Required’ and ‘Recommended at Night’
If you have a series of reflectors, make sure you can’t see multiple reflectors from any one spot (unless it’s intentional). Also, make sure you can clearly see from one to the next.
It’s good to have a helper or two who can stay behind while you try to place the next reflector so you know if it’s visible (and to make sure it’s not visible from two reflectors back).
It can be helpful to tell people how many reflectors there are, or how to refer the final location
Try combining a puzzle with your night cache. One store I tried recently has people count the reflectors at certain stages to compute digits of the final coordinates.
Be creative! Have the individual look for landmarks lit up at night, use a solar-charged flashing LED, etc. One store I went on takes you into the woods where you have to look for a little glowing stick…supposedly left by an alien ship rumored to have crashed there!
Consider including coordinates for a parking area. It might be harder to tell where to park at night, and it’s helpful to have your car’s coordinates in your GPS since the darkness can be disorienting
Make sure to follow the guidelines for normal caches in addition to the night store notes here.
When using reflective tacks, make sure they are firmly anchored. If they’re only stuck in bark they might start out or the bark might peel off.
Reflective tape on trees might not stick well enough unless anchored with a tack, nail, screw, etc.
Make sure to note any hazards people might encounter such as poison ivy, holes, tripping hazards, etc. If the area is too dangerous, don’t use it.

Resources

http://www.geocaching.com/

http://www.firetacks.com/

Related Articles

How To Geocache With A Garmin Streetpilot C330 GPS

How to Select a Location to Hide a Geocache article

How to Create and Hide Your Own Geocache article

How to Do Night Geocaching article

Cache Listing Stipulations / Guidelines

Hiding Your First Geocache

Report a New Cache

Find more Garmin related articles from search form.

The Drupal Technology is used to build websites. It is one of the most modular open source web content management framework that adds a lot of emphasis on collaboration. The designing of the this technology application is such, that it needs to be customized according to the stipulation of the project. But a limitation of its customization is that, these changes are done by overriding or adding new modules to the application. Drupal technology is exclusive and unique, because it separates content management from content presentation.

Drupal Technology website applications are used to build any kind of World wide web portal, websites based on e commerce, online stores and even corporate websites. The software is extremely dynamic an can be utilized to create any kind of website, as a matter of fact it has also been used to create online directories and e-learning sites.

The Drupal Technology is secured by thriving security team that responds to each threat in order to keep the software safe. It is backed by a 24X7 online community, site administrator, designers and software developers who work continually to superior the technology.

Drupal technology of web content management is not only used to create online trading sites, but it can also successfully create, instant messenger, it can also be used to include audio and video facilities in the sites along with pic galleries. This content management system is absolutely innocuous and secured.

The fact that Drupal can easily enable the customization of its websites according to the individualized stipulation of the site projects makes it even more one-of-a-kind and a favourite of the developers.

The Drupal CMS Technology is also a search engine friendly method, which has resulted in simple and effective ranking of the websites constructed by this technology to rank well in the search engines.

The ideal way to utilize the Drupal technology is to get your website created in the CMS technology through a reputed web solutions company that has expertise in the field. Web designers who are trained in drupal technology will be healthy to help you alter the Drupal templates according to your stipulation and ready your website according to your own desire.