This is a guest post by Kate. She is fond of reading, writing and travelling. Recently she read an article on samsung series 9 review. These days she is busy writing an article on samsung galaxy y s5360 review for her blog.  If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

Are you a pro shooter struggling to lug in every single tool in your rucksack? Cameras are heavy; tele and wide lenses are no different either. On top of that, carrying a laptop is a real pain on your neck.

Are you a foodie, relish every culinary indulgence and love to share them on your blog? Or, you could even be a mother who wants to capture every single experience in your toddler’s life.

Every one of you can make use of the new iPad. With ‘5 MP’ ‘five-element’ lens, it won’t replace pro-lenses or cameras but can definitely serve amateur uses.

However, we are not too worried with its photo-taking capability. Rather, we want to magnify its photo and video editing and sharing feats. New iPad’s Retina display is probably the best and vivid most visual option right now in mobile device segment. Besides, you get a whole bunch of apps to make life easier with photo and video files. Read on to know them.

iPhoto ($4.99)

It is Apple’s standard photo editing app you get in iLife suit. This app allows importing photo and image from every possible camera and scanner; you won’t need separate driver software. After importing images and photos you can label them, tilt them and sort them in groups. You can also individually manipulate them with basic editing tools like, crop-resize, red-eye reduction, contrast-brightness adjustment and few others. With AirPlay you can share photos straight from iPad to other i-devices.

Photoshop Touch ($9.99)

This is Adobe’s iPad version of Photoshop. Well, you can’t expect Photoshop CS5 finesse; however it comfortably takes care of your basic editing requirements. You get layers, filters, selection and adjustment tools. So, even pro-shooters can work on their JPEG files for a while. Do you want t remove any part in your photo? Just select that and use Refine edge tool.

Photogene for iPad ($2.99)

Since a long time, it is photographers’ favorite app. It works wonder with tiny P&S cameras or with heavyweight DSLRs. Other than its wide range of photo editing tools, you can also work with RAW files. That’s a boon for Pros. Go out, shoot, transfer onto iPad and fiddle with the image – you get an instant idea what you have got. Besides, you also get to work on big size images.

Snapseed ($4.99)

Apple crowned it with ‘App of the year’ tag in 2011. You can do almost every editing work to make your shot a head-turner. However, with auto correct features, it is more useful for armatures; serious photographers can make use of its different filters like, Drama, Grunge or Vintage. It comes from Nik Software.

PhotoSync ($1.99)

It’s not easy always easy to get photos and images on your iPad despite Dropbox and camera connection kit. With PhotoSync, it could be a breeze. You can transfer to and from your desktop and other mobile devices. Not even individual files, you can get large group of image files with just few finger tabs.

FX Photo Studio HD ($1.99)

This is another easy to-work-on app with many useful tools. It sports 194 filter, effects, overlays and frames. You can use masking tool for painting any specific effect on photo. So, just capture a frame, put it under this app and publish on line.

Halftone ($0.99)

Do you love to give your shots a comic makeover? Then this must be your best choice. It’s no simple photo filter app. Instead it allows doing funny stuffs with your photo. You can change paper style, add captions and speech balloons and change graphic presentation. Once done with funny edits, you can directly post them on social networks or print them in postcard sizes for mailing.

8mm HD ($1.99)

 Do you cherish watching old flickering movies? You can produce one of them with your iPad. Just get this app. It offers different lens styles and film effects. Just for an example, you can shoot with Super 8 lens and using Noir. Check how things are coming out. Not satisfied? Try other option because there are whole bunch of them.

PhotoToaster ($1.99)

In case you don’t like auto-corrects and love tweaking things manually, this could be your app. Color-correction or lights adjustment – you are only limited by your imagination. Get loads of preset filters and effects at fast and furious speed.

Pixlr-o-matic (free)

Unlike other apps, it’s free; but that doesn’t make it any less able. You get enough filters and effects. Change overlays, borders and use those built-in effects to roll out a stunner. You can also use randomizer to check out how things are panning out. Don’t know when you’ll fall in love with any particular look!

So, our beloved lens-men and lens-women! Take your iPad out and let the desktops and laptops RIP.

This is a guest post by Nadia Jones who blogs at accredited online colleges about education, college, student, teacher, money saving, movie related topics. You can reach her at nadia.jones5@gmail.com.  If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

With the dawning of the digital era, printed texts and written books are being replaced. While there was a huge uproar from book junkies and purists over the digital switch early on, much of that has faded now. Paper books are still popular, but many people (including the initial objectors) have hopped on the eBook bandwagon and are generally happy with the experience. Kindles and Nooks have won the heart of many literary purists who at one point swore reading on screen could never provide the literary experience that paper pages does.

One thing that the eBook industry has struggled with from the start is the lending process. Books have a wonderful way of uniting reads because friends can share meaningful reads with one another. You can pass a beaten up and worn out book to a friend and it can really mean something. What many kindle users (including myself) may not have known when they first started using their device is that you too can share your kindle buys with friends.

How to Lend Kindle Books

The first step in lending a book you’ve purchased on your Kindle to a friend is making sure that the book you have is lendable by the publisher’s standards. As eBooks become more popular, more and more publishers will get with the program when it comes to allowing lending. However, as it stands the lend-ability of eBooks can be spotty. When you link to your Kindle Library from your Amazon account, you can look at the details of each book you’ve purchased to see if they are available to lend. Do this by clicking the + sign button near each of the book icons. This will display a window that explains that a book can either be loaned out or cannot. If you can lend the book, there will be a button that says “Loan this book” next to it.

You can also check to see the lending status of a book from you Kindle when you are purchasing a book in the Kindle Store. The product detail page will show whether lending on that purchase is “Enabled” or “Disabled”. If the book that you want does not have lending “Enabled” and you know you’ll really want to lend it you, you can wait to see if the publisher changes their policy. However, this may take a long time or may never happen at all.

Loaning it Out: When you find a book that is loanable all you have to do is click the “Loan this book” button in your Amazon account page for the book. A pretty self-explanatory window will appear where you enter the recipient’s email address, name, who it’s from, and a personal message if you like. The person you are sending to has up to seven days to accept the loan, but only 14 days to keep the loaned book to read.

While lending is not available on every purchase you make from your Kindle more and more publishers are catching on to the craze. If e-books are truly hoping to replace paper books, then they are going to have to offer the same things paper book offer plus some. While they certainly have the “plus some”, the lending process is one area that e-books have been behind on for several years. Amazon’s lending policies are a huge step for e-books and a wonderful way to share your e-reads.

This is a guest post by Joe Pawlikowski. He edits BBGeeks, a site dedicated to helping BlackBerry users get the most out of their devices. If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

When you announce a device in September for an anticipated first quarter release, you’re setting yourself up for abounding speculation. Research In Motion tried to get out ahead of the tablet market in 2010 when they announced the BlackBerry PlayBook. But even then they admitted that it would be a while until the official release. In the interim we heard rumors galore, some good and some bad. Yet one struck me at the time as a wonderful idea that had zero chance of happening.

At some point in early 2011, we learned that the PlayBook would support Android apps. The rumors were vague at the time, but sources pointed to two possibilities. The first was what actually happened: RIM would create an Android Player and allow developers to easily port their apps. That’s not a terrible solution, especially for a platform that lacks for apps. The only problem is that the number of apps available to RIM is necessarily limited:

Key features which will be unavailable to Android apps running under the compatibility layer on the PlayBook and future BlackBerry devices include Android’s famed battery-sucking Live Wallpaper, SIP and SIP VoIP, anything built using the Native Development Kit, apps containing only App Widgets, and apps containing more than one activity tied to the Launcher.

In addition, any packages which rely on Google Maps, in-app billing services, Android’s text-to-speech engine, or the cloud-to-device messaging system will all be rendered unusable under the company’s runtime system.

While these limitations don’t render the Android Player completely useless, it does mean that eager PlayBook users will be disappointed when they finally see what’s available. The pressure is back on RIM to attract developers that can fill out its library and replace many of these incompatible apps. That’s going to take some time, and RIM doesn’t exactly have a lot of time. The PlayBook is already six months old, and it doesn’t even have email, calendars, and contacts yet. By the time RIM gets all these updates out, it will probably be time to start thinking about the follow-up product.
The second rumors tantalized at the time, and in hindsight it absolutely should have been the path RIM took. The rumor: The PlayBook would be an Android tablet. This likely wouldn’t have been a pure Android tablet, as we saw in the spring with the Motorola Xoom. Instead it almost certainly would have been more along the lines of the Amazon Kindle Fire. That is, it would have run Android, but it would have been distinctly a BlackBerry tablet. That’s really the beauty of Android: anyone can build code on top of it and create something distinctly their own. RIM would have benefitted greatly from this, in a number of ways.

Read more: What BlackBerry Needs To Go High-End

First, it would have given them a viable product at launch. When RIM launched the PlayBook, seven months after announcement, it came with little fanfare. Some BlackBerry users enjoyed it because of its integration with a BlackBerry smartphone. That is, they could get email, contacts, and calendars by bridging their two devices. But even then, it took a while for the PlayBook app library to grow. If they had launched with Android they would have had a full app library, plus all of the email, contact, and calendar features of Android. Gmail users would have loved it, and even those who don’t use Google services would have a number of external email options. It would have been a complete tablet.

In the meantime, RIM could have continued to work on its own tablet offering. As we’re starting to see, they do have something going with the BBX platform. Heck, it was easy to see that they had something going with the PlayBook. Despite its incompleteness, the PlayBook clearly has the potential to compete in the tablet market. But if RIM had released an Android tablet in early 2011, they could have been far along on their own tablet platform by now. In early 2012 they could have released a BBX-based PlayBook, complete with email, contacts, calendar, and, with a little luck, a relatively large catalog of BBX apps.

It’s easy to understand why RIM wanted to release a tablet in 2011. They had fallen behind in the smartphone race, and the tablet market was just starting to develop. By getting out ahead of the pack they might have made an impact. Yet I can’t help but think that they would have been better off creating an Android-based tablet to start. They would have then had enough time to work more on their own model, making sure that it was a complete product at launch. Unfortunately, they’re still running out an incomplete product. Even when the native functions drop, I have to say that I’m more excited about the Samsung Galaxy Tab. It’s a shame that RIM couldn’t have jumped on that Android bandwagon, both for the present and for the future.

This is a guest post by Paul who believes in the importance of using VoIP. He can also help you with the best internet and phone packages. If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

Decades ago, when the ability to make phone calls to people from all over the world was announced, it heralded a great new world. People were so excited at the kind of progress we have made and very few people could hardly believe we would be where we are today.

Then, it was very difficult to make phone calls, and only the rich could afford having a phone in their home. How things have changed. Now, we can make phone calls and even see those we are calling through the 3G technology. Over time, a lot of new things have happened, and one such thing is the introduction of the VoIP technology. This article will be giving you 4 benefits of using VoIP technology instead of a mobile plan with your ISP.

Benefits Of Using VoIP

1. Cheap Call Rates

One thing about making phone calls is that it has always been expensive. Developing a technology for people to make phone calls isn’t something just anybody can do, and the few ISPs who controlled the system either charge excessively for it or make people go through ridiculous long-term contracts. Communication is an essential part of our lives, and if not free, I believe it should be relatively cheap. If you’re tired of the excessive price you are being charged just for using the mobile calling system then you need to start using the VoIP technology. Most VoIP services allow you to make cheap calls to any part of the world for a cheap monthly, or yearly free, and there are even VoIP services that allow you to make a limited amount of free calls every month.

2 .Save Money on Mobile Purchases

A lot of us spend more money on devices that help us make phone calls than we can ever imagine. We spend money buying the right mobile phone, we spend money on the sim cards we need to make phone calls, we spend money on activating and recharging our mobile phone regularly, and some of us even spend money on long-term ISP contracts. This isn’t a problem as far as the VoIP calling technology is concerned. You can easily get high quality calling services to suit your needs for very cheap prices.

3. Save When You Travel

A lot of us love to travel the world and see cool places and people from other parts of the world, but aside from all the expensive airline tickets and travel fees we have to pay, we also have to go through the ordeal of paying excessively to communicate with our loved ones during our travels. One disadvantage to using your ISPs mobile calling technology when you travel is that you get to pay roaming fees; you have to sign special contracts and do some other irritating things. If you decide not to use your ISP you might end up paying excessively to use another ISP in the country you are travelling to and all that ends up sucking a lot of money from our pockets. With VoIP, you don’t have to worry about all that since you don’t need a sim card or an ISP. The only thing you need to make VoIP calls is an internet connection, and you can easily get that from any part of the world.

4. Get Better Quality Calls

Many people will think that VoIP calls will be of a worse quality because of how cheap it is, but that can only be farther from the truth. VoIP calls are generally known to provide a better experience than most mobile calling technology, and you also don’t have to pay heavily to enjoy better quality calls.

This is a guest post by Joe Pawlikowski. He edits BBGeeks, a site dedicated to helping BlackBerry users get the most out of their devices. If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

There was a time when the BlackBerry was not only the highest of high-end smartphones, but it was one of the only practical smartphones on the market. Competitors such as the T-Mobile Wing and the Motorola Q came and went, but none matched the relative completeness of the BlackBerry. Their dominance extended into 2007, when they released their 8800 line, which at the time was state of the art.

And then along came the iPhone, which made the BlackBerry seem primitive by comparison. Year after year Apple released a new model, each one creating more distance between the iPhone and the BlackBerry. In 2008 Android entered the game, and by 2009 Android, too, had surpassed the BlackBerry in terms of practical usability.

Both Android and Apple represent the high end of the smartphone market. As Simon described in a recent guest post, the BlackBerry has been relegated to mid-range. That’s a tough place for the former kind to reside. Yet the BlackBerry’s placement is indisputable. Even with their new devices, which contain high-end hardware, they remain behind both the iPhone and Android platforms. It raises a weighty question: what would make RIM high-end again? Here are a few things they need to do with their future phones to make it happen.

BlackBerry Needs To Go High-End By

Attract Developers

One place where both Android and iPhone pummel the BlackBerry is in software. If you browse through the Android Market, the App Store, and App World, you’ll see the first two filled with popular, useful apps, while App World lags far behind. So many of the apps in App World are local radio station apps and e-books. Those inflate the overall numbers, but detract from the quality.

Part of the problem with previous BlackBerry platforms is that they weren’t attractive to developers. It wasn’t just the declining market share. The platform itself didn’t really attract developers. If RIM wants its future phones to gain any clout, they’ll have to make it attractive for developers. That means, first and foremost, avoiding Android’s issues with multiple device sizes. But it also means making it easy for developers to get devices and APKs ahead of releases, so they can create new apps and update their existing ones.

The main point:

if a smartphone lacks the hottest apps, people are going to ignore it. BlackBerry, Palm, and Windows Mobile learned this the hard way. If RIM is going to succeed it needs to make apps and software a priority.

Installing The Best Hardware

Thankfully, RIM has already shown signs that they’re minding the hardware. Starting with the AT&T BlackBerry Torch 9810, RIM has released a series of device with processors that rival the best on the market. Their screens feature improved resolution, and the devices themselves feel full and durable.

This is quite a departure from previous BlackBerry models. Even in 2010 RIM was releasing underpowered devices  that  couldn’t take full advantage of the device software. But clearly that has changed.

The status quo — even the higher-end status quo — will not hold. RIM needs to keep up with the market and continue creating devices that contain the best hardware the market provides. They do seem on this track. Not only does their  latest line have improved hardware, but they’re talking about dual-core chips in their next line. That will keep them    on a level with Apple and Android.

There is more to a device than hardware, of course. But a modern smartphone line cannot succeed without high-end  hardware. As long as RIM evolves with the market, they should be fine on this front.

Changing The Game

Herein lies the biggest challenge for the BlackBerry, or really any smartphone brand that wants to compete. Why did the iPhone take the nation by storm? Because it redefined the smartphone. Why did Android eventually catch up? Because it provided features that the iPhone did not — and it evolved continuously while the iPhone remained static. If the BlackBerry wants to make a comeback, it has to redefine something we know about the smartphone. It’s not exactly an easy task.

Yet it’s something that BlackBerry will need if it’s going to again reach the highest end of the market. Filling App World with better and more popular apps is a necessary step along the way, as is stocking devices with high-end hardware. But there’s little chance that the BlackBerry will make a dent in the iPhone and Android dominance if it merely toes the line. Android and iPhone have already set the standard. Anyone who wants to compete with them has to raise the bar.

What can they do to change the game? That’s the beauty of all this: no one really knows until it happens. There are endless possibilities for RIM to ponder. But whatever it is, it has to be two things: 1) something that neither iPhone nor Android offers, and 2) something that people want, but don’t know that they want. If they knew they wanted it, we’d likely see it on smartphones already. But RIM’s challenge is to find something that’s missing and bring it to light. That’s what’s going to bring them back to the high end of the smartphone market.

No one said it would be easy. But the path is there for RIM to re-enter the high-end smartphone market. They’ll have to take pages from both Android and iPhone and then combine them with what has worked for the BlackBerry. But most importantly, they need to give us something new. Something that we didn’t even imagine possible. Otherwise they’ll be just another smartphone manufacturer that is constantly playing catchup with Android and iPhone.

This is a guest post by Simon. He writes on behalf of Best Mobile Contracts, the leading phone comparison website in the UK.  If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

The smartphone industry is developing at a faster pace than ever before. Dual core processors have not long been on the scene but are already about to be replaced by quad core. 3D screens have just made an appearance in recent months and so by the same logic we should be seeing 4D screens by the end of the year. No not really, but the technology is developing at such a rapid pace that today’s cutting edge smartphone can quickly turn into tomorrow’s mid-range piece of nostalgia. Here are 5 best top end phones.

So what are the current top of the range smartphones? The devices that are pushing the boundaries and setting benchmarks for all others to aspire to? Let’s take a look at 5 of the best smartphones that are offering excellent combinations of all the latest technological wizardry in the palm of your hand.

Galaxy S2 

Samsung’s current flagship Android phone is a real powerhouse of a smartphone, and currently the biggest selling Android phone on the planet. It has already become the first phone to knock the iPhone 4 from its position of dominance, and with little more than Siri being on offer to differentiate the iPhone 4S, it has the potential to cripple Apple’s latest efforts too.

The central highlight of the Galaxy S2 is its 4.3 inch Super AMOLED Plus screen. Samsung have a lot of knowledge when it comes to producing screens, what with being one of the largest producers of television sets in the world and all that. Super AMOLED Plus is currently the best technology on offer for smartphone displays, and is only really challenged by the iPhone 4/4S’ Retina Display.

One thing the Galaxy S2 has over the iPhone though is its size. iPhone screens are still a pokey 3.5 inches, making some things like games, videos and web browsing a little less enjoyable than they should be. The Galaxy S2 does not suffer this problem, offering the perfect compromise between large screen and comfortable phone.

Along with being one of the slimmest phones around the Galaxy S2 also received a lot of attention upon release for its 1.2GHz dual core chip. This is slowly becoming less impressive though, with talks of the S3 having a quad core 1.8GHz chip*, and phones like HTC’s Sensation XE already possessing a 1.5GHz dual core.

*It is unlikely that the S3 will actually be quad core, although the technology is not far off

Sensation XE

The original Sensation was HTC’s answer to the S2, although in terms of sales it didn’t manage to do quite as well. This was surprising considering the almost cult like following that HTC have within the Android community, especially regarding HTC Sense. Many ‘Fandroids’ will drool over Sense while at the same time being quite disdainful for Samsung’s TouchWiz.

The XE is an updated version of the Sensation which comes with a few minor hardware upgrades, but most noticeably now comes with Beats Audio music features. Beats Audio is a company that was founded by US rapper Dr Dre and who produce a range of high quality, albeit highly priced, headphones.

HTC recently purchased a 51% stake in this company for $300 million. A whole $300 million just so that they could add better music support into their upcoming phones – the Sensation XE and Sensation XL being the first of these.

The XE comes with a better loudspeaker and some Dr Dre headphones thrown in. Although, these are in-ear plugs rather than top of the range DJ headphones. The Sensation XE also includes improved music software and improved bass for listening to music.

On the hardware side of things, the XE has had its processor ramped up to 1.5GHz dual core, as already mentioned. In truth, the original Sensation came with the same processor, but it was underclocked to just 1.2GHz. Despite the additional music features, garish red paint job and additional boost to processing and memory performance (768MB RAM), the Sensation XE will cost quite a bit more than the original Sensation.

For music loving Android fans though it may be the phone of choice. The best bit is you don’t even need to be a fan of Dr Dre.

Xperia Arc S

The Xperia Arc S is the next big thing in Sony Ericsson’s line-up, and promises to improve on the deficiencies of the original Arc. Unfortunately Sony Ericsson has still not joined its competitors Samsung and HTC in the dual core market, as the Ray still comes with just a single core 1.4GHz processor. Still, this extra boost removes the minor stuttering problems of the original with things like the Timescape social media widget that blemished an otherwise smooth and seamless phone.

Not much else has changed from the first Arc, but considering that the first Arc was one of the best Android phones going, this is no big deal. The Arc S has a 4.2 inch LED backlit LCD screen that offers some of the best visuals on a smartphone this side of the Galaxy S2′s Super AMOLED Plus.

Although it doesn’t have the control pad found on its Xperia Arc sibling, the Xperia Arc S does have some excellent entertainment features up its sleeves. This is not in the form of any gimmicky feature like PlayStation support or a 3D screen, but simply because Sony are a company with a long standing history when it comes to entertainment. This knowledge makes its way into their phones, and the Xperia Arc S is the best phone from Sony Ericsson at present.

Some of these little tweaks include the option to go to related YouTube videos from your phones music player. The ability to get the Arc S to load to music player automatically once you insert your headphones, and even just little Sony apps like TrackID that can help you identify new music. Although all these things might seem minor and trivial, they vastly improve the musical experience of on a smartphone for die hard audiophiles.

HTC EVO 3D

Is 3D the next big thing in the world of smartphones? Maybe, maybe not. But either way, at present there is only a very limited selection of 3D phones to choose from. In the UK, there are just two: the LG Optimus 3D and the HTC EVO 3D. While these are fairly evenly matched in terms of hardware and specifications the EVO 3D is a better smartphone. Partly because of a few technical aspects that make it perform better than the Optimus, and partly just because it is made by HTC and not LG.

So what can you do with the EVO 3D that is so great? Well for starters, it comes with a 3D screen that uses what is known as a parallax barrier. This doesn’t offer the sort of 3D experience you would expect at the cinema when watching a film like Avatar, as it essentially works via a little bit of brain trickery rather than 3D glasses. The screen can control the viewing angles of pixels so that each eye sees a slightly different image. This plays on the parts of your brain that deal with depth perception, causing the brain to make it appear 3 dimensional.

The EVO 3D also comes with dual 5 megapixel cameras allowing you to record your own 3 dimensional home movies and capture stereoscopic images. If all of the 3D features of the phone start to give you a headache after a while, then you can just switch them off and use the EVO as a normal smartphone. The technology has a long way to go yet before it becomes commonplace, but if you want to partake of the current 3D craze then the EVO 3D is currently your best option for doing so at present.

Google Galaxy Nexus

Google has to date only released two smartphones under their brand name, and while being impressive devices featuring the latest versions of Android they have not been all that successful in terms of sales. The first Nexus phone, the Nexus One, went on to be sold by its manufacturer HTC as the HTC Desire – which was one of the bestselling phones of 2010 and a phone that truly cemented HTC’s position at the forefront of the industry.

Google’s second phone, the Nexus S, drew a lot of inspiration from Samsung’s Galaxy S and Galaxy S2 smartphones, and curiously came with a curved glass panel on its touchscreen. The third Nexus phone, which will apparently be called the Google Galaxy Nexus (or maybe Nexus Prime), will also be manufactured by Samsung and will be the first Android phone to come with Ice Cream Sandwich.

Android Ice Cream Sandwich will be Google’s answer to iOS 5. Not that it needs to be, as most of the new additions to iOS were features taken from Android in the first place, such as the slide down notification menu. Even so, iOS may have pushed the bar slightly with the addition of Siri, the virtual voice assistant, and it will be interesting to see what big feature Google will add into ICS to compensate.

The Galaxy Nexus comes with a hefty 4.65 inch screen and a staggering 720p screen resolution. It will have LTE support (where available), a 5 megapixel camera with 1080p video and a very impressive 1.5GHz dual core processor making it only equalled in power by the Sensation XE. Impressive hardware indeed, and if Google can provide the software to back it up with via Ice Cream Sandwich then we could already have an iPhone 4S killer on our hands.

Google and Samsung plan to launch the phone in the coming week, with plans for Galaxy Nexus deals to go on sale by the end of the month. The phone was supposed to be launched earlier, but the event was postponed by Google and Samsung to honour of the death of Steve Jobs

This is a guest post by Namanyay Goel. Namanyay is a Graphic Designer and a blogger. You can read his blog here.  If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

Thinglink is a new tool for bloggers to add interactivity to their blogs.

“Thinglink tag editor lets you define interactive hotspots inside an image — from a THING (an object, a person, or a place) to a LINK (a shop, a blog post, or anywhere you like)”

Thinglink is an interactive tool that lets you add interactivity to images. Using Thinglink, you can link portions of  the image (things) to other sites, or give some informative text, or a music file (link).  Images can have multiple links added to them. Thinglink tool has to be added to websites (You can add it to Blogger, Typepad, WordPress and many other. WordPress instructions can be found below). To use it, you have to open Thinglink in a separate tab, and your website/blog in one tab. Then you can edit images to add interactivity.

Pros

The best feature of Thinglink is that you can advertise and earn money from your Images using Amazon Affiliate. Also, as it is not widely known, the factor of surprise and awe will be a lot more. It is very useful to Bloggers as -

• It is an easy way to make people focus on what you want.  Tag “things” to descriptive text, or to a site, or some music, to get people’s attention.

• It can act as multiple captions. Just tag your image, and you’re good to go. It’s also better than the traditional caption, as the traditional caption doesn’t allow music, or links.

• It adds interactivity to your site. This means that users will spend more time on your site, thus decreasing your bounce rate.

• If a person shares it, you earn a backlink. This is one of the best things about Thinglink. The images are easy to share and if you tag the image with your site’s name, you are sure to get a click.

• It works on mobiles too.

• You can add music to images: This is especially useful if you are promoting something. Music in images is synced with SoundCloud. Music can be embedded on Album art, posters, etc.

• It’s Free!

• No watermark.

How Can it be Used

This is a guest post by AbieL. She is a free lance writer and professional blogger who also blogs about shoebuy and ebags coupon codes for a discount shopping site, YouLoveCoupons. Recently she has shared in her blog ebags discount and online shoes discount code. If you would like to write for TheDolt’s Blog, do read our page Be My Guest; Write A Guest Post.

To continue my series of articles about Google Chrome extensions, which I published here, here is another list of Google Chrome extensions that bloggers would find useful.

Being a blogger myself, I know how difficult it is to manage blogs, inserting pictures to blogs, put watermark to pictures and a whole lot more. That is why plugins and extensions that works with Google Chrome are a bloggers best friend especially since Google Chrome has a lot of effective and multipurpose extensions.

Here is a run down of 30 Google Chrome Extensions for Bloggers

Best 30 Google Chrome Extensions for Bloggers

1. Zemanta:

Won’t you love it as a blogger if you can get suggestions and recommendations for images, articles, links or tags for a particular word as you type? Zemanta does that. It has a spam free database of 200,000 news sources and blogs so you will be able to write a much informative blog post.

Zemanta supports WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type, Drupal, Joomla, Tumblr and other blogging and CMS platforms.

2. Blog This:

This extension is very helpful for those who use Blogger as their blogging platform. With this extension, a blogger can just click Blog This and it will open a mini interface to create a blog post which contain a URL of the website that you are on plus text that has been highlighted on the page.

3. TypePad Blog It:

Just like Blog This, it allows for single click blog posting of text, images and videos from the current page to the TypePad blogging platform.

4. Google Dictionary (by Google):

This extension will let you view definition of any word by double clicking on it.

5. Google Reader Notifier:

This extension is very helpful so you will be alerted for news feed from blogs or site that you are subscribed to. The Google Reader Notifier will display the number of unread items in your Google Reader account with an icon next to the URL bar. Clicking the icon will open a preview of your reading list in a pop up window or a new tab.

6. Goo.gl:

This is a URL shortener service by Google. It also saves the shortened URL so the blogger can use it later for his post or for posting in social networking sites to share the URL of his published article or blog post.

7. Chrome Chikitizer:

Instead of going to a site to get shortened version of URL, this extension will let you get shortened or tiny URLs directly from the Chrome browser.

8. Untiny:

We often receive URLs in their shortened format and the Untiny extension will give you the original URL of the shortened or tiny version.

9. WiseStamp.

It works like the Signature feature in Outlook in that it will allow you to create multiple Signatures and select from it when sending an email using your Gmail account. With this extension, you will be able to add the link to your social media Profiles like Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Linkedin, Skype, Gtalk, promote your latest blog post and Twitter tweet and even add your Company logo.

10. Day Hiker.

This extension will help you manage your schedule as it will display your schedules and tasks from your Google calendar in a toolbar format. It has countdown, reminder badges and even an alarm clock.

11. RemindMe.

Since bloggers are always online and they have a list of online tasks to accomplish, this extension can come in handy to give them reminders as they browse the web.

12. Stay Focusd.

There are a lot of distractions online. You can spend the whole day tweeting with your friends especially if you are discussing about coupon codes and vouchers from your favorite online store or you can watch streaming online and many more. This extension will let you be productive while online as it restricts access to site that you will flag as time wasting or you can just specify a certain time where you can access this site. This will be a big help in avoiding temptation, which will allow you to do more work.

13. FastestChrome:

As the name implies, this extension makes you do things fast and easy as it allows bloggers to do the following directly from the Chrome browser: make text URLs clickable, show definitions and information of highlighted text in a bubble and allow for endless page loading.

14. Shareholic:

Bloggers love to share information with their co-bloggers like if they find news on the latest blogging tools, or even just shopping finds like finding coupon codes and discount vouchers for online sites such as shoebuy and ebags. With this extension, you can easily share any website directly from the Chrome browser to Facebook, Twitter, Email, Gmail and more. It supports 100++ services and it loads instantly so it does not affect the performance of your Google Chrome.

15. Add This:

This extension will allow you to share a web page, like the website of YouLoveCoupons, to over 300 services like Facebook, Twitter, WordPress. Aside from sharing a website, you can use this extension to email or print the webpage.

16. Drop.io:

This extension allows you to drop images and other media from any website to your drop and you can use those images in the future.

17. Google Images Large Images:

Bloggers love to browse for pictures that they can incorporate in their blog post and they usually do it by doing a Google search (that is what I always do). This extension will show the actual size of the image when you do a mouse over instead of just seeing the thumbnails in the preview page.

18. Image Cropper:

Does it come a time when you want to include a certain portion of a web page as an image to your blog post? With this extension, you can crop img HTML element, CSS background images for any HTML element and images in PNG format.

19. Webpage Screenshot:

This extension allows a blogger to make a screen shot of the whole page to an image file thereby making it easy to include a screenshot of a page to a blog post.

20. Picnik:

This is a very useful extension for editing photos as you can do it directly from the Chrome browser. You can also share the photos directly to any blog or social networking sites without the need to save it to a hard disk.

21. Ibrii:

This cool extension will allow bloggers to snip an image, text or video from any website and share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, and more instead of sharing the whole page.

22. SEO Status Pagerank/Alexa Toolbar.

Page rank and Alexa rank is one of the most important metrics for a blogger as this greatly affects SEO of a website. This toolbar is a simple and light weight add-in that gives bloggers Page Rank and Alexa information of any website.

23. Silver Bird

This is a Chrome extension that lets you send tweets without the need to visit Twitter.com.

24. Facebook Notification.

Since social media is one tool that bloggers use to promote their site for SEO, this extension will be a great help to manage their Facebook accounts as it gives red notification when they receive messages and friend request.

25. Digg for Chrome.

This extension is for those who love Digg as you can Digg directly from the Chrome browser. It also shows the number of Digg for the website that you are currently viewing.

26. WordPress Checker:

If WordPress is the platform that you use for blogging, then you will find this extension very useful. You can approve, trash, reply, or mark as spam the comments without opening the WordPress site. This also support multiple blogs so you can add as many WordPress blogs as you want so you can manage all comments for all your blogs in one window.

27. SplitScreen:

This extension is so cool as it will allow you to open two different websites at the same time. The extension will ask for two URL address and will display both site in one window.

28. Live Website Editor:

This extension lets you edit a page, live from the browser directly.

29. Color Blendy:

With this extesnsion, you can blend colors direct from the browser without the need to open Adobe Photoshop.

30. dotEPUB:

This Chrome extension will allow conversion of any webpage to an Ebook in Epub format so bloggers can read their favorite content while offline.