How To Add A Click To Tweet Link To Your Blog Or Website

Wish to add a 'click to tweet' link for each one in a list of facts or something similar?
It's actually pretty simple.

Step 1:
Head over to http://www.linktotweet.com/. Write the tweet that you want to be displayed.
Note: If you are going to include a link in your tweet, you should first go to https://bitly.com/ and shorten the URL. Then copy and use the shortened URL in your text.

Once you're done crafting your tweet, click on Generate Link Button.

Step 2:
The needed link URL will be generated right below as shown.

Copy this URL and then use it wherever you wish to.

For instance, if I wish to add this 'click to tweet' link in my blog, I generally write the text TweetThis beside the sentence to be tweeted and link it to the URL generated as above, as I have done in this post, Interesting Facts About Microsoft That You Probably Didn't Know.

You could also try clicktotweet.com and clicktoshare.me  for the same purpose. However, my personal choice is linktotweet.com because it doesn't require login and is the simplest to use.

There is a also a feature to see the link-clicks statistics on your tweet entries without registering.

Courtesy to Zoran for mentioning this in the comments via blog.agile-code.com.

Just use your CODE, and combine it with http://www.linktotweet.com/s/CODE.

So, in our sample case here, if we visit: http://www.linktotweet.com/s/S4IOUIKN we can see the stats around visits and view other things.

However, if you register, you have the possibility to manage your tweet text and see more statistics not available for non-registered users.

Interesting Facts About Microsoft That You Probably Didn't Know

• Microsoft didn't make MS-DOS, their original Operating System. TweetThis
  
  They licensed the software  for 86-DOS (aka Quick and Dirty DOS) from Seattle Computer Products, reworked it and then renamed it.

• Microsoft is involved in near-continual legal battles. TweetThis
  
  A large portion of their legal woes for the last decade centered around monopoly-like business practices that illegally blocked competition.

• At Microsoft, they like to mix work with pleasure.
  
  Paul Allen, Microsoft co-founder, was a childhood friend of Bill Gates. TweetThis
  
  Founder Bill Gates married Microsoft employee Melinda French. TweetThis
  
  Steve Ballmer, the second Microsoft CEO, was a Harvard class-mate of Bill Gates. He was Microsoft's 24th employee. TweetThis

• Chujwamwdupe, a hacker, published attack codes after Microsoft refused to credit him for finding software vulnerabilities. TweetThis
  
  Microsoft usually credits hackers by their online handle, but "chujwamwdupe" is a sexually explicit term in Polish, and Microsoft was uncomfortable with this graphic name.

• Microsoft was originally called Micro-soft. TweetThis
  
  They removed the hyphen in 1976. Microsoft is a combination of the words "microcomputer" and "software".

• Microsoft's total revenue in it's first year was $ 16,000. TweetThis
  
  In 1989, just four years later, they made $ 1 million.

• Windows was originally called Interface-Manager. TweetThis
  
  Fortuantely, the marketing department stepped in.

• WinVer 1.4, the first Windows Virus was unleashed in 1992. TweetThis

• Jim Allchin, a former Microsoft executive who retired the day Microsoft Vista was released to the public, felt that Microsoft had lost it's way with Windows Vista. TweetThis
  
  He claimed that he would have purchased a Mac had he not been working for Microsoft.

• Microsoft had made Bill Gates a billionaire by age 31. TweetThis
  
  He was knighted by the Queen of England in 2005.

• 2009 was the first year in 23 years that Microsoft reported a quarterly drop in revenue. TweetThis

• Microsoft has more than 10,000 patents. TweetThis
  
  They are one of the top five U.S. patent holders and file about 3,000 every year.

•  Microsoft is one of the biggest corporate collectors of contemporary artwork. TweetThis
  
  They have over 5,000 pieces. Their collection includes works by Cindy Sherman, Chuck Close and Takashi Murakami.

•  It's a Microsoft tradition to celebrate events with M&M Candies. TweetThis

• Microsoft interviewees are asked unusual questions like "Why are manholes round?" TweetThis
  
  They are also asked to design products that Microsoft isn't going to produce, like a coffee maker for astronauts. Microsoft uses these unique questions to gauge their creativity.

• Temporary Microsoft employees are given an email address with a dash (-) before the at (@) symbol. TweetThis
  
  Permanent employees refer to them as "Dash-Trash".
  
  P.S.: In case you're wondering how to add the TweetThis link to your blog or website, read this.

Classic Pixel Art In MS Paint By 99 Year Old

Hal Lasko, better known as Grandpa, worked as a typographer back when everything was done by hand. His family introduced him to the computer and Microsoft Paint long after he retired.

Now, Grandpa spends ten hours a day moving pixels around his computer paintings. His work is a blend of pointillism and 8-Bit art.

Meet 99-year-old Hal Lasko, The Pixel Painter. 

This film on Hal was screened at Cleveland International Film Festival and Imagine Science Films Festival and has also won the People's Choice Award at Imagine Science Film Festival.

Originally a traditional painter, Hal switched to MS Paint full-time when his vision was impaired by wet macular degeneration, an eye disease that causes blindness in the center of the vision. 

“He’ll talk to anyone for hours about his artwork,” says his son Ron. “It’s his passion. He loves to chat, and it takes nothing to get him going.”

"On my 85th birthday, the family presented me with my computer," Lasko said. "I didn't even know how to turn one on."

“When I lost my eye-sight, I wasn’t able to get the brush quite where I wanted it,” says Lasko. “So when I got into the art program on the computer, I appreciated that I could magnify it enough to be sure that I was hitting the right spot.”

Lasko says he draws inspiration from impressionism, and that his artistic influences include Edward Hopper and Paul Klee. Many of Lasko's paintings feature trees. He mentions how the poem Trees had this influence on him since 3rd grade. He recites the poem,

"I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain... "

Ending it with an additional line,

"Poems are made by fools like me, 
 I always say, paintings are made by fools like me,
 But only God can make a tree"

While he initially didn’t realize that his digital paintings could be printed, he now has a website selling prints of six different works, launched by his grandson, Ryan Lasko.

Following is one of the remarkable works by Lakso.
Image: “Looking Up” by Hal Lasko

Microsoft, the company whose software enabled Lasko to continue his artistic career, acknowledged him by featuring his work in its Super Bowl commercial.

Pursuing his passion with such dedication at this age, Hal Lasko is an inspiration to all of us.

You can connect with the amazing artist at this Facebook Page.

Five Reasons To Try Out Google+

I remember the time when google+ was about to be launched. I read about it's new feature of putting people in different circles so that you can share their updates with relevant people, more like hide it from a few people. I can also recall that Facebook said that they didn't fear google+ as the concept of circles is not sufficient enough for users to take the load of migrating. Moreover a lot of people would prefer to share their updates with the whole friend list rather than go with the complication of sharing it in various circles and I was one of the latter ones. I totally agreed with Facebook. I had presumed that google+ is a failure and never bothered to give it a try up until recently.

My first interaction with google+ might be when I started writing blogs on Blogger. There is a feature which automatically shares all your posts on google+. Even then I never bothered to actually visit the site. It was when I felt like putting an image to my Gmail account, that I visited google+ for the first time but didn't stay to surf. Finally, it was a boring, nothing-to-do day that I felt like surfing google+ and since then I've paid quite a few visits to it now and then which has made me realize that google+ actually still has a lot of hope. Here's why.

• The GIF Images
  Google+ allows the sharing of gif images which although sounds trivial, makes it a lot interesting actually.
  
  Tell me the following GIFs won't make surfing google+ fun.
  
  
  
  
  
• All the Google services are connected.
  Google has described Google+ as a "social layer" that enhances many of its online properties, and that it is not simply a social networking website, but also an authorship tool that associates web-content directly with its owner/author. It has helped them understand each user as an individual since google+ interconnects all of google services i.e. gmail, youtube, google drive, google maps, blogger etc. into a user profile.
  
  In fact, now we can even email google+ connections. Although it is criticized a lot, but in my view that was quite a smart move by Google. Our email addresses aren’t visible to someone on Google+ until we send them an email or reply to an email they sent us in Gmail. Moreover, we can control who can email us via Google+ by changing our settings in Gmail.
  So all in all, we can use it to our benefit without being spammed.
  
  
• Google+ Communities are pretty awesome.
  

          The posts are actually useful, interesting and are kept under check by moderators.

• The google+ circles aren't exactly cumbersome. 
  Whenever we 'Add' someone, it gives us the following options.
  
  We can add a person into multiple circles. Likewise, when we share something, it gives us the same options. So, it happens right away without involving any kind of custom settings and is therefore not really a task as it sounded to me earlier.
• Much lesser spams
  Spamming according to me, is terribly handled by The Facebook Team. There has been numerous times when my friends and I have reported something and Facebook just never does anything about it.
  
  One time a guy had used a cover picture of my friend's profile which was a group photo of 10 girls, as his cover picture and even added an offensive caption to it. Each one of us reported it but it is still there. In fact, that guy now uses a new cover picture of a new girls' group, clearly taken off some-one else's account.
  
  Another time, account of my friend's cousin was hacked and filled with pornographic images. She reported it to Facebook and later told me that Facebook replied her back saying that the account seems perfectly fine.
  
  Not to mention the filthy pages Facebook is full of, something which doesn't seem to bother the moderators much.
  
  Up until now, I haven't encountered any such case on google+, though probably because it doesn't deal with that many users and pictures but even then it still remains a drawback for Facebook.

   

Tool To Determine Your Personality Type By Analyzing Your Facebook Posts

We know that we are watched online, our feelings scanned by Google and Facebook to figure out what to sell us next. Now we can get a feel for what that looks like, thanks to a linguistic analysis tool released by a start-up, Five.

Five Labs analyzes the language in which we write, and determines our relative affiliation to five personality attributes: openness, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism.

Based on the initial responses to the site on Twitter, “people seem to identify pretty strongly with the personalities we generate,” said Nikita Bier, the co-founder of Five, which is working on a product for online conversations that will use similar technology. “Only about 10 percent said we were outright wrong about them.”

Part of that may be the overall vagueness of the typing, which can provoke the same kind of identification people feel for the most general newspaper horoscopes.

Mr. Bier said the point of the exercise is not precision, but to give people a sense of what social media companies are doing with us, probably with much greater sophistication.

“The predictive qualities of the five types are good for advertising,” he said. “People who are more open go to coffee shops, and have interesting apartments. You might want to give them an ad for Ikea. Neurotic people worry about their health, so you might pitch them vitamins.”

Let's see. I guess I cover all the five traits fine enough, although I never thought of myself as a very open or extraverted person; maybe online I am.
Then, you may also check the personality traits of famous people such as Mark Zuckerburg's below,
You also have the option to compare yourself to them. For instance, as it turns out, I'm actually 70% similar to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.

Then again I was disheartened when they analysed that I'm merely 24% similar to Mahatma Gandhi as I strongly believe in all his ideals.

You can also check the personalities of everyone in your facebook friend list, and here as well, compare them with yourself. Apparently, I'm not that similar to my best friend as I thought.

You can also compare your friends with each other. Quite a few options, right?

Go ahead. Give it a try and let us know how accurate it was for you.

Microsoft & Students

Not only Microsoft might be the very first exposure of IT to any student with Windows OS and MS Office, it contributes tremendously to IT students and the whole field further as well. It might be the only tech giant who works so much solely to nurture the tech-talent in students. If I gather from my experience, this is how Microsoft impacted my life.

Microsoft Virtual Academy

Microsoft Virtual Academy (MVA) offers online Microsoft training delivered by experts to help technologists continually learn, with hundreds of courses, in 11 different languages. Our mission is to help developers, knowledgeable IT professionals and advanced students learn the latest technology, build their skills, and advance their careers. MVA is free of charge, and the entire service is hosted on Windows Azure. 

 It helped me learn a lot of things in a very simple and effective way which otherwise might have been quite tedious. I even got to attend Microsoft Power Orientation Day by completing a course on it.

Massively Empowered Classrooms

Microsoft Research India is running this program to understand how online educational systems might be used to improve learning for Indian college students. Indian tertiary education is nearing the breaking point: there are millions of students demanding the best education from too few teachers who are stretched very thin. We think that online education tools (such as MEC) might be able to help, and we want to understand what works and what doesn’t. The demand of Computer Science education is particularly huge, so we thought that a great place to start with fundamental CS.

I did a course on Design and Analysis of Algorithms at MEC and I can tell you, it was great. You just don’t have to put any stress on understanding. They started from scratch and explained everything with simple yet conceptual examples.

Microsoft Certifications

Microsoft Certifications are for all levels and to complete even one of the beginner’s level is a real boost-up as it had been for me when I passed MTA.

Always helping out

I remember this one time I was really curious about cloud computing but the more I read about it the more I got confused until I came upon this video by Microsoft which explained it in a very simple, sweet and friendly way as Microsoft always does! In case you're curious too, here it is.

Microsoft Press Books

Microsoft offers many awesome free e-books which have benefited me to a great extent.

Now Microsoft is here with yet another innovative idea for students: Microsoft Student Associates Program.

Microsoft Student Associates represent their local campus as technology enthusiasts and social media/marketing evangelists. It is an initiative that focuses towards developing the leadership attributes of students in their community.

As a Microsoft Student Associate,

•  I truly, genuinely believe in Microsoft, their goals as they have stated for MVA and MEC. I really admire and respect them for it. I would more than love to be a part of it.
• I would bring as many as possible students to participate in the Microsoft courses and events as possible. My city having about 13 engineering colleges, that shouldn’t be much of a problem.
•  I keep myself very up-to-date about all Microsoft events and have a general idea about the course of each.
• I would like to work sometime in collaboration with the National Service Scheme of our college to bring the unprivileged children to attend a workshop on a basic subject. After all, the youngest person to be Microsoft Certified was of age 8. 

So do avail all these resources and keep loving Microsoft!

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• Replace "youtube" with "listentoyoutube" in the URL to download the audio of the video.
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