A Simple Way to Protect Images from ‘Casual Copying’

If you don’t want other people to download images from your website, don’t put them online because – the way the web works - it is almost impossible to prevent someone from copying or saving your images.

However there’s one little trick that may discourage the less-technical people from casually copying, or even hot-linking, to your web images. To give you an example, try saving thefollowing image to your computer using the standard “save as” option.

The “save picture” option under right-click is still available for the above image but instead of downloading the actual photograph, all it would save is a blank image. Also, the URL for the image (under Properties) would appear as some junk characters (it’s called a data URI) and thus would deter the non-techies from hotlinking to that image.

Here’s how you may implement something similar for your own images:

The standard embed code for an image looks something like this:

<img src="photograph.jpg" width="500" height="250">

What you need to do is change the value of the src attribute to point to a blank image and then add a new style attribute to render the actual image. Also make sure that the value of the height and the width parameters are exactly the same as the actual image.

<img style="background-image:url(photograph.jpg);"
     src="data:image/gif;base64,
     R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw=="
     width="500" height="250">

This is like overlaying a completely transparent screen over your photograph and anyone trying to save the image will end up downloading that screen instead of the image.

Obviously, there are simple workarounds to get around the above method. For instance, a copy of the full image will still be available in your browser’s cache. You may look at the HTML source or may even save the image using screen capture but again, these techniques may not always be known to the non-technical users of your website.

http://www.labnol.org/internet/protect-photos-from-copying/19992/

Google Chrome is now Bundled with Adobe Reader

Not long ago, the Google Toolbar was bundled with some popular software programs including Skype, Adobe Reader, Real Player, WinZip and more.

Next on the bundled software list is probably Google Chrome. If you are on the Adobe.com website to download Adobe Reader X, you may also be prompted to install the Google Chrome browser on your computer (screenshot).

This looks a strange combination to me for one very-obvious reason.

A majority of people could be using Adobe Reader primarily for viewing PDF files on their computer but the newer versions of Google Chrome include a built-in PDF viewer by default. Would people still want to install Adobe Reader on their machines when they’ve already got Chrome, courtesy Adobe?

Yes, Adobe Reader is a more powerful and capable software that Chrome’s PDF viewer but for reading simple PDFs, wouldn’t the latter tool just suffice?

http://www.labnol.org/software/chrome-with-adobe-reader/20123/

Create Photo Collage/Grid-View Of Your Facebook Friends

Here’s a small little trick in Facebook that allows you to create a grid view or photo collage out of your friends list. This is how I do it:

1. Click on Friends tab.
2. Proceed to More tab.
3. From "Choose an option" dropdown, choose any of the dashes "—"
   

Photos of all your friends will be displayed, each in 50×50 pixels forming a grid view. Have fun.

How to “Friend” Someone on Facebook & Hide It From Your Status Updates

I’m sure that this has happened to you before. Someone you have ties to, whether it’s a co-worker, your boss, or even worse, a parent, has finally discovered social networking and wants to be your newest Facebook friend.

For me personally, that’s no big deal. I’m fairly open about my online activities. Everything I write, Digg, or otherwise share goes through my FriendFeed to my Twitter then ultimately onto my Facebook (my, that sounds naughty). Besides that, just about everyone I’d consider a co-worker is already on Facebook, and would have little issue about my other Internet activities.

Putting all that aside however, imagine for a moment that I worked at Domino’s Pizza and that I don’t want my boss to know that I just became a fan of Papa John’s (writing this one’s gonna make me hungry). Here’s what I would do to hide Facebook status updates and keep that fact confined to my closer friends:

On your Facebook home page, you should see the ‘Settings’ menu close to the search field on your upper-right. Open that menu and go to ‘Privacy Settings’.

On the next page, you’ll have four choices: Profile, Search, News Feed, and Applications. What you’ll want to edit here are your Profile privacy settings.

By default, everything on your profile is limited to your Friends and your Networks (your first Network is likely your city of residence, but you may have joined more). From the screenshot above, you can see that I’ve limited everything on my profile to my Friends andtheir Friends. Anyone else who visits my profile will only see that I have a profile, but will not see what’s on it.

In my example, you’re going to want to edit the setting on your Status Updates, since you don’t want your boss to know that you’ve “fanned” the competition. Click that dropdown menu and then select ‘Customize’.

You may want to tweak your overall privacy setting here, but what we’re aiming for is the “Except These People” list at the bottom of this dialog. Type out the name of any of your Friends to restrict that person from viewing anything in your Status Updates.

For all you faithful Facebook fans, we’ve got a lot of tips and tricks on how to make the most of the site. If you have any privacy tips or concerns to share, please drop them in a comment

How To Schedule Facebook Messages

Sendible lets you schedule Facebook messages ahead of time so you can send messages to your friends, customers or colleagues in the future.