Blogger Features and Limitations

Blogger is a free blogging platform by Google and the free blogs are hosted as a subdomain of blogspot.com. It is completely free and can be used to create a simple blog without any technical knowledge. Anyone with a Google account can create a blog on Blogger without making any payment.

Q. How many blogs can I have on Blogger?
Ans: You can creates up to 100 blogs on Blogger using a Google account. I think that will be more than enough!

Q. How to create multiple blogs using a Google Account?
To create more blogs, follow the steps below
Login to your Blogger account.
In the Blogger Dashboard click on the title of your blog on the top-left side. In the drop-down click on New Blog... link to create a new blog.

Now provide the title and address for your blog as you have done for your first blog to create the blog.

Q. How many collaborators can be added to a blog?
Ans: You can have up to 100 collaborators or authors to your blog.

Q. What is the maximum number of posts I can have on my blog?
Ans: There is no limit for number of posts or pages you can have on your blog. Blogger provide an image storage limit of 1 GB. Uploaded photos or videos will count towards your storage limit if:
If either the height or width of your photo exceeds 2,048 pixels.
The video is longer than 15 minutes.

There is a limit of 200 characters for labels for an individual blog post

ReadPDF - Utility to Extract Metadata from PDF Files

ReadPDF is a freeware utility I have created few years ago to extract metadata from PDF  Files.

The utility will extract title, author, keywords,pages, creator and producer and save them to a tab limited text file which can then be opened in MS Excel.

The utility can only extract metadata embedded in PDF file. It cannot OCR and extract text from the files.

Download from here

How to Embed PDF file on Website or Blog through Google Drive

Google Drive offers the facility to embed your PDF document in any Blogger post or webpage. You need to upload your PDF file to Google Drive and share the document publicly.
The PDF File provides an HTML code to embed the file in your blogger post.

How to Embed the File

• Sign in to your Google Drive and upload the file
• Enable file sharing and select Anyone with the link can view option
• Double click the file to open it. File will be opened in preview mode. Click on the More options icon (the three dots icon on the right hand side of Google Drive) and select Open in New Window. 
• You can also paste the sharing link in the address bar to open the file in new window.
• Click on File->Share->Get Embed to link to get the code to embed the file (earlier this was under the three dots icon)

• Click on Embed Item option and a popup window will provide you with the code to embed the file in any webpage or blog post

• Select the HTML code and copy it.
• In the Blogger post window, click on the HTML tab
• Right-click in the Blogger post window and then click "Paste" to paste the HTML code.

• You can change the width and height options

That's it.

MS Excel - Change Text from Lowercase to Uppercase using Excel Macro

Recently we had to convert all text in an excel file containing a list of books to uppercase. Here is an Excel macro to get this work done quickly.

Copy the code given below

Sub AllTextToUpper()
    Dim myRng As Range
    Dim celRng As Range
    On Error Resume Next
    Set myRng= Cells.SpecialCells(xlCellTypeConstants, 2)
    For Each celRng In myRng
        celRng.Value = UCase(celRng.Value)
    Next celRng 
End Sub

Open the Excel file and press Alt+F11 (Hold Alt key and then press F11). This will bring up Miscrosoft VBA editor. Paste the above code as shown in the image below.

• Close VBA Editor and come back to Excel (Or press Alt+F11 again)
• Now Press Alt+F8 (or Click View->Macros->View Macros). The following dialog box will be visible.

• Select AllTextToUpper and then Click Run
• All the text in your excel sheet will be converted to Uppercase

Note: Please save your original Excel sheet before running macros. This action cannot be reversed.

Anyflip - Convert your PDF into Flash & HTML5 flipbook Free

Anyflip.com provides you a free flipbook publishing platform to convert your PDF into an interactive, realistic Flash & HTML5 flipbook in minutes. It has got a free version and a pro version. The free version have certain limitations, but you will be able to create the flipbooks and publish them online free.

Now, let us see how to create a flipbook and to publish it on a blogger post.

• Visit http://anyflip.com and click on Create Account or you may login with your Google or Facebook account
• Once logged int, click on Quick Upload

Click on image to enlarge

• In the select version, select Flash and click OK
• Next, click on Upload your PDF button and select the PDF file (Your PDF must be less than 150 MB). You can add/modify the title, description, keywords and category here. Permission to download file and adding labels are available only for PRO version.
• You may also select a template from the Template tab, add toolbar and set the flash display settings on the Advanced Tab
• Depending on the file size uploading and converting may take some time, so please be patient.
• Once finished converting, your flipbook will be displayed as in the image below.

Click on the Embed button and you will be presented with four options - IFrame Embed, Lightbox Embed, Button Embed and Text Link. Click on IFrame Embed tab, if it is not already selected and set the size of the frame below.

• Now select and copy the code

Embed the Flipbook in Blogger Post

• Login to Blogger account and click on New Post
• Click on HTML button below the Post Title
• Paste the code copied from Anyflip inside the body and click on Publish button to publish the post.

How to Embed e-Newsletter on Blogger Using Scribd

The e-Newsletter created in MS Publisher can be embedded in a blogger post after uploading to scribd.com which is a popular open platform for publishing and sharing documents of all kinds.

Free Library Software for School Libraries

Library Automation - School Library Management Software

Effective management and utilisation of the library resources in an School Library requires incorporation of modern technologies as the Librarian alone has to do all the tasks in the library. This always causes delays in assisting the students to get the information they require as well as circulation of books to maximum number students in library periods alloted to the classes.

To facilitate the effective use of books the School Library has started computerisation with the Library Management Software developed in house by the Librarian. The software provides facilities for catalogue search, circulation of books and magazines, reservation of books, reports, class library management, fine collection, library statistics etc. Reports on the books issued, reservation status, search book by member and accession number, book suggestion and selection, budget expenditure and more for KV Libraries are available.

All the library resources are barcoded. Access to OPAC is provided through library websites (Intranet and Internet).

If you would like to try this free software for your library, you may download it from the link given below.

Snapshots of Library Software

Data Entry for Books

Circulation of Books

Issued Books Report

The library management software is free and may be downloaded from the link below.

Download

If you would like to use the software for your school library contact at kvklibrarian [at] gmail com with your details.

Please fill up the form for getting the download link. There will be four rar files. Download them all.