Essentials for Blogging

So in my last post, Essentials for Blogging, I mentioned some tools that you as a blogger could use effectively to overcome the limitations of your particular hosting platform. Through a combination of tools, you could optimize your blogging experience and make your blog better looking, easily accessible, noticed and promoted. Executed properly, you can achieve results that far exceed the results of a single hosting platform. Users who have dedicated blogging platforms, even those who have dedicated hosting services do sometimes use these tools to effectively monetize or popularize. In the end, readers not only get a far better experience, they also remember the difference your blog makes. As they say content is king. Once someone reads your content, you are sure he will bookmark you and return to your blog again and again like a dedicated worshipper. But why will he look at your blog, if he doesn't even notice it. If you are not able to reach the reader, whatever you write is only for you to see.

So, you have to make your blog noticeable, reachable, provide that extra something which other bloggers don't. And you have to know your readers.

All these to work, you will need tools/services, which at present are not offered by any blogging platform. If they offer some features, then they miss out on the others.

Do not worry. Learn to integrate and disintegrate. In this post I will try to list tools/services which you as a blogger will find very useful. Among these tools are :

Blog Host : A place where the blog will be hosted. There are many blog hosts all over the net. All of them offer various services. Some for free, some free to try, and some paid.

Image Hosts : A picture is worth a thousand words. And most of the Blog hosts do not offer a decent picture storage facility.

Hit Counters : Did anyone read your blog? Who read your blog? Where do they come from? When do they read your blog? How many times did someone check out your blog? Which of your posts did they read? What search terms did they use? Which link did they follow? The answer to all these questions is a Hit counter.

Syndication : XML? RSS? ATOM? Which type of feed does your blog use? Your RSS Reader cannot read ATOM? Get them converted.

Mailing list : Let your users subscribe through their email. Send them new posts by email. Keep them informed of new posts.

File Storage : So you recorded your sweet baby’s first footsteps and want the world to see? Did you say it was 100mb? And you can’t email such a big file? Use free hosting service to upload your files and let the world watch the next superstar take the first step to glory.

Feed Readers : You have to have a decent feed reader. Why? To read what others are writing about. Everybody blogs. And if you read other people’s blog, and comment on it. They and their readers will come and check out your blog.

Though, right now I can’t think of anything else, I am sure there are many more tools and services which a blogger can effectively use to his/her advantage.

To get the ball rolling, lets see the contenders for the Blog Host category.

Wordpress: You can get a blog started in less time than it takes you to read this
sentence. All you need is an email address. You’ll get your own
WordPress.com address (like you.wordpress.com), a selection of great free and customizable designs for your blog (we call them themes), 3 gigabytes
of file storage (that’s about 2,500 pictures!) and all the other great
features listed here. You can blog as much as you want for free, your
blog can be public to the world or private for just your friends.

Blogger : With its unique brand name, with the might of Google, its become one of the biggest blog hosting platform. Not only it allows you to host multiple blogs, it has recently started allowing photos to be hosted at blogger too. With 31 templates to choose from, a blogger can create a personal identity. With the knowledge of CSS and HTML, any one can make a new template. Now with Google Adsense integration, its more bang for the buck

LiveJournal - Website and client software for maintaining an online journal/weblog and keep track of friends journals. Boasting a total of more than 9 million users, a user can join for free. Though, there are many account upgrades possible, if you feel like shelling out $3 p.m. Free users cannot completely customize their blog. They can post only 6 pictures, compared to 15 for upgraded users. An upgraded user also gets a subdomain like username.livejournal.com

Yahoo 360° - Create your own place online. Share photos. Create a blog. List your favorites, send a blast, and more. Blogs, Photos, Friends, LAUNCHcast, Lists, Groups! Even I am not sure what Yahoo 360 wants to be.

Xanga - Xanga is obsessed with one thing: helping people publish content to the web. As a free user you get 200MB of photo storage, while premium users get 2GB. A premium user also gets to post 99 profile pictures. Whew! A premium user can also download their blogs. If you can afford $4 p.m., then go for it.

I am sure this is not an exhaustive list. Do inform me of others worth mentioning.

Up next on the list are Image Hosts :

ImageShack® - provides free web hosting for images with direct linking allowed (hotlinking). It can be used to share pictures with friends, post images on message boards. It can also be used to direct link images from your personal website or eBay auction. No signup required. Powered by highly reliable Linux dedicated server network. Limitations: File size limit 1024 KB; File types allowed: gif, jpg, jpeg, png, swf (Flash); Images that have not been accessed in over a year will be deleted.

Photobucket.com - is a free image hosting company for ebay, online auctions, classifieds, message boards, blogs, live journals, and online photo albums. You can easily upload, categorize, add titles and delete images as needed. Direct linking is allowed. You can upload up to 20 pictures at once. Photos larger than 512 KB are automatically scaled down. Limitations: 50 MB storage space; 2500 MB/month bandwidth; 512 KB file size limit; Extensions allowed: .jpg, .png, .gif, .bmp, .swf (Flash files); Images must not contain any weird characters (numbers and letters only). The uploader converts bmp and tif to jpg. You can view the most recently uploaded pictures.

PicsPlace.to - offers free web hosting of photo pictures, image files, and Macromedia Flash file format. No signup required, and Hotlinking allowed (direct linking of uploaded images). Can be used for ebay auctions, posting images on message boards, your personal web site or wherever you want. Your pics are freely hosted on a fast dedicated server. Supports free webhosting of JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP and SWF files up to 1.5 MB; No diskspace or bandwidth limitations; Inactive files will not be deleted from their server.

4FreeImageHost - allow images of up to 500K picture file in either jpg, jpeg, gif or png format. Hotlinking is allowed. Signing up is not required to upload pics, but you can choose to register and create a free image hosting account so you can manage your uploaded images. Registered users can also get the code for their images again or delete them. Their service can be used with message boards, eBay auction listings, blogs, etc. Their server will keep images online at least 60 days.

Things you learn from the movies

Things you learn from the movies:

1. If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St Patrick's Day parade - at any time of the year.
2. All beds have special L-shaped top sheets that reach up to armpit level on a woman but only waist level on the man lying beside her.
3. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.
4. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off - even while scuba diving.
5. The ventilation system of any building is a perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building without difficulty.
6. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do.
7. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris.
8. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.
9. When paying for a taxi, never look at your wallet as you take out a note - just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.
10. If you lose a hand, it will cause the stump of your arm to grow by 15cm.
11. Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their family every morning, even though the husband and children never have time to eat them.
12. Cars and trucks that crash will almost always burst into flames.
13. A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium.
14. Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.
15. All single women have a cat.
16. Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant.
17. One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at one.
18. Creepy music coming from a graveyard should always be closely investigated.
19. Most people keep a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings - especially if any of their family or friends has died in a strange boating accident.
20. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involved martial arts - your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessor.
21. During a very emotional confrontation, instead of facing the person you are speaking to, it is customary to stand behind them and talk to their back.
22. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your room will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish.
23. Dogs always know who's bad and will naturally bark at them.
24. When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.
25. Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch-enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gases, lasers and man eating sharks that will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.
26. Having a job of any kind will make all fathers forget their son's eighth birthday.
27. Many musical instruments - especially wind instruments and accordions - can be played without moving the fingers.
28. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they're going to go off.
29. It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting.
30. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.
31. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you bump into will know all the steps.

10 Shopping Tricks That Stores Hate

Stores are always trying to get you to do what they want. But what if you refuse? What if you do what benefits you and not the store? Aside from outright fraud, what are the things that you can do to come out ahead? We've put together 10 tips that will help you save money, but probably won't help the store. That's why they hate them. And you.

Buying Loss Leaders and Leaving: Loss leaders are products that a company sells below or at cost to lure customers into the store.

Why They Hate It: They do not want you to waltz in, buy up all the loss leaders and leave. Often there are limits to how many of each you can buy, if you see something in the ad that says "limit 3 per customer" you may have found yourself a loss leader. Buy it and get the hell out.

Using Credit and Paying it Off on Time: Sometimes stores will offer a "6 months, no interest, no payments" offer on big ticket items. Pay it off on time, and you've used their money for free.

Why They Hate It: These offers are not just to help you buy stuff, it's to trick you into paying more for the item than if you had paid cash. Some people take the cash they would have used to buy the item and put it in a high yield savings account. Then they buy the item with credit and wait until 5.9 months later to pay it off. They've just used someone else's money for 6 months for free. Ha, ha, ha. These offers are dangerous, however, because if you miss a payment or don't pay the full balance off on time, you'll get socked with interest since your date of purchase. The rates are often outrageous, so this tip is only for seriously organized Type-A people.

Saying NO to the Extended Warranty: Stores play on the fact that electronics are a big investment, scaring you into buying an Extended Warranty. Don't do it.

Why They Hate It: The Extended Warranty is basically just a trick to get you to pay way more for the item than you need to. It's very, very, very profitable for the retailer. If you don't believe us, believe Consumer Reports. If you're worried about not having an extended warranty, purchase your electronics with a credit card that offers extended warranty protection. Lots of them do. Just paying for your crap with a credit card can double your warranty, so tell that sales clerk to get bent.

Activating Your Own Phone With A Cell Phone Company: You can buy a used phone, or an unlocked phone, for full price and avoid signing a contract.

Why They Hate It: Cell phone companies want you to sign a contract. They need you to sign a contract. They burn with desire for you to be under contract with them. Cell phone stores sell 2 year contracts. That's what they sell. Not phones. So get a phone, then call the cell phone company and activate it. No contract needed. They hate that so much.

Shopping in the Store But Buying Online: Stores are just places where you can look at things you will later purchase for cheaper online. Look at your new laptop. Try it out. Ask questions. Buy online.

Why They Hate It: They've paid for a store, the electric bill for the store, the employees to answer your questions, and those nice little plastic bags that they want to put your purchase in. Whoops.

Buying 1 When its 2 for $5: "2 for" deals are bull. You can buy one. You can buy 3. "2 for 5" or "5 for 10" means, "Please for the love of Jesus buy this and get it out of the store." You can pay the unit price. (Laws may vary nationwide)

Why They Hate It: They want you to buy more stuff than you need!

Opening A Store Credit Card To Get A Discount, Then Cutting It Up: This is one from our dear Mommy. Mommy buys a bunch of stuff at once, opens the store credit card for the 20% discount, pays it off and cuts up the card. She did this every year when buying our school clothes. We're sure they hate her with the force of a 200 mega-ton bomb, but she still saved 20%.

Why They Hate It: Credit card companies make money from interest and fees. No activity on the card, no interest and fees.

Using Websites to Track 30 Day Price Guarantees: Stores have "30 day price guarantees" to make you think they have such low prices that they're not going to get any lower. They may, but they also know you're not going to keep shopping for some crap you already bought. Solution: There are websites that will watch your purchase for you and email if it drops in price during the guarantee period.

Why They Hate It: Because they have to give you money. No store ever likes to give you money.

Buying Seasonal Items at Clearance Prices (For Next Year): Seasonal items are a big deal for retailers and once the holiday is gone they need to make room for the next one. Their haste makes waste and you can take advantage of it. Buy now for next year. Another good idea is to buy "seasonal" candy after the season is over. So what if your M&Ms are brown and orange or red and green. Still tastes like awesome.

Why They Hate It: Stores want you to buy their seasonal crap at full price, when its most profitable, not during clearance when they sell it at cost or below.

Buy "Accessories" on Ebay Rather Than Paying Huge Markups: Retailers will often discount a big ticket item only to charge ridiculous prices for "accessories" that they will harass you to the point of madness to try to get you to buy. Expensive connectors, cables, controllers, leather lotion for your stupid coat you just bought, blank media, storage, etc. Buy this crap on eBay or at least research what it really costs at a retailer that is not trying to screw you. Case in point: Cables. Best Buy sells the Monster Ultra Series 8' HDMI Video Cable for $119.99. On Ebay the most expensive "Buy it Now" price for this cable is $74.95 with $9.95 shipping. For the exact same thing. And that's for a crazy brand name cable. There are 8' HDMI cables on eBay for $8.

Why They Hate It: Accessories are very profitable. If you got a good deal on a TV, you probably believe them when they say you "need" to spend hundreds of dollars on cables.

Getting w.Bloggar to work with Blogger Beta

Getting w.Bloggar to work with Blogger Beta

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I signed up for Blogger Beta. Only to find out that none of my posting softwares work. I earlier used to use w.Bloggar, and had been using Windows Live Writer for the last few days. I downloaded w.Bloggar's latest version and tried setting it up with my new Blogger Beta blog. Behold the Beta Gods. It said my username/password didn't match. I realised it was not connecting to the beta interface, but rather to the old Blogger interface. And the old Blogger interface cannot login a Google Accounts username/password.

Being a lazy person, I searched the net first to see if womeone else had come up with a solution. My search yeilded no results. So I tried to play with the w.Bolggar account settings. Luckily, I got it right in the first attempt. Anyways, I decided to share this info with you all. So here is a step by step with screenshots (click on them to enlarge).

Getting w.Bloggar to work with Blogger Beta :
Requirements :

1. A Blogger Beta blog
2. w.Bloggar
3. Internet connection

Instructions :
Step 1 : Fire up the account selection box in w.Bloggar. You can reach it by Clicking on File, Select Account or by pressing F9

Step 2 : Click on the Icon next to the account name.

Step 3 : Selct New

Step 4 : Select "Yes, I want to add it as a new account"

Step 5 : Select Custom from the drop down list and fill in a name for you account. Select Ping if you would like to notify Weblogs or Technorati upon updates. Click Next.

Step 6 : Keep the settings as is. Click Next.

Step 7 : In the Host field type in "beta.blogger.com". (Without the quotes, of course!)

Step 8 : In the Path field type in "/api". (Without the quotes, of course!). Click "Next"

Step 9 : Type in your Google Accounts username/email and your password. Select "Save password" if you would like w.bloggar to remember your password.

Step 10 : Click Finish. You are done.

Do send your comments and feedbacks.

Yahoo Virus Removal Procedure

This brand new virus is now everywhere. It is spreading so fast as it targets users of Yahoo Instant Messenger. Users can protect themselves by not clicking on links sent to them by other users or contained in Yahoo! Messenger status messages of those contacts on their contact list.

If your computer is infected with this powerful Trojan /virus, it sends the nsl-school.org url to all of your friend list in yahoo messenger using your ID and expect that in only a few hours many of your friends will get infected with it.

So how to remove this manually from your computer ?

1. Close the IE browser. Log out messenger / Remove Internet Cable.
2. To enable Regedit
3. Click Start, Run and type this command exactly as given below: (better - Copy and paste)
   REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
4. To enable task manager : (To kill the process we need to enable task manager)
   Click Start, Run and type this command exactly as given below: (better - Copy and paste)
   REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableTaskMgr /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f
5. Now we need to change the default page of IE though regedit.
   Start>Run>Regedit
   From the below locations in Regedit chage your default home page to google.com or other.
   
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
   
   HKEY_ LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
   
   HKEY_USERS\Default\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
   
   Just replace the attacker site with google.com or set it to blank page.
6. Now we need to kill the process from back end. Press Ctrl + Alt + Del
   
   Kill the process svhost32.exe . ( may be more than one process is running.. check properly)
7. Delete svhost32.exe , svhost.exe files from Windows/ & temp/ directories. Or just search for svhost in your comp.. delete those files.
8. Go to regedit search for svhost and delete all the results you get.
   
   Start menu > Run > Regedit >
9. Restart the computer.

That's it now you are virus free.