It is said that ' The first impression is the best impression ' . You may not trust this in your own life but when it comes to the internet, the first impression is always the best. And you have only one chance to make the first impression.
I am telling you this from my personal experince. When I started blogging, I told my friends right from the start. But at that time I did not have many articles in here. So they were not really interested. Then I had to work really hard to persuade them to look into my blog again. If I had waited till today, then I would be having lots of readers. So this is what I learnt...
If you are a new blogger or the owner of a new website do not tell your friends that you have a blog or a website. Wait till you are sure that your blog is ready. And be sure that you are targetting your readers. Make sure that the best articles are on the homepage. Thats where you have to give an idea of what your blog is about. Else they will back out.
And For the newest bloggers here is another tip... Be focussed. That was one more of my mistake . I was not really focussed. Target your readers rather than your self. And if you are writing about lot of topics be sure to label it and display the labels on the home page.
And if you are planning to advertise, wait till you have enough loyal readers. Else every one will think that you are blogging for money alone. Thanks to Nigel for this grand tip. Once your blog gets into the stream, then you can monetise it.
One more thing. The first thing that you should add to your blog should be the subscription option. Then even the first reader will have a chance to keep track of your posts. Remember the golden rule " First Impressions can be made only once "
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Do Not Share Your Half-Baked Blog / Website
Google Is Constantly Updating Orkut Secretly... Here are the Available Updates
Google always surprises its users and I think that makes Google special. When they launched Gmail they did not give any news about its launch date. So it was a surprise when users could have One full GB of storage space ( At that time a Hotmail account had 8 MB storage ). And Google did that launch on April Fools Day ( April 1 ). Do you know what Google usually does on April 1st..? They cheat its users. Last year Google cheated by promising a free internet access system through the water network of the toilets. But in 2004 they offered Gmail which many of the uses thought was a fake offering, but that created lots of speak about Google and ofcourse Gmail.It increased the word of mouth popularity for Gmail.
And back to the matter, Google is maintaining that level of secrecy to updates made in Orkut too. Gmail had not updated orkut for a very long time. But now they are doing it almost every week. I was amased when one day a new notification window came up, telling me that I had a new scrap. That was an update to Orkut. Then one day Updates from other users started coming on the Orkut home page.. oops another update. And one day I visited the settings page. Hey there was another bunch of updates there which I had not noticed. And I am sure many of you would have noticed these updates and would have wondered why Orkut did not tell me about this update.
I think Orkut needs to tell its users of major updates on the Profile Home page just like the way they give security tips they can add another bar to display updates when they are present. Then all the users can take advantage of the new features.
Some of the new additions are :
* A Notification Window that pops up when you get a new scrap
* Updates From Friends displayed on your Home page.
* Now you can hide the birthday reminders on the Homepage
* You can hide your updates
* You can hide profile vistis ( you wont be shown in their ' Recent visitors ' coloumn )
* You can set the visibility of your scrapbook, videos and photos, testimonals and feeds. You can limit the visibility to your friends alone
* You can show/hide your Orkut information in Google search
See your settings page to get hold of these updates. And yesterday, it was my mother's birthday. Its a nice thing that her birthday fell on the valentines day. She is my valentine for ever. lol
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Old Bloggers! Its Time to Upgrade To The New Blogger
Are you an old blogger still using the age old blogger..? I was one untill yesterday. I had not upgraded to the new blogger cuz i was afraid of losing the templete design. And I kept searching the net for better blog templetes but none of them worked with the old blogger. So I decided to change and As you see in here, I feel much much better. I wish I had done this some 6 months back.
With the new blogger you can edit and update template very easily. You have lots of xml templates on the internet to choose from. So you can make your blog look realy good. If you are still using the old blogger templates, just select the ' Pick New Template ' Link on the Templates area of your Blogger dashboard. And you will be asked to upgrade. Go ahead and upgrade and unlock a whole new world.
You can find cool templates at www.finalsense.com or www.pimp-my-profile.com . Just search for that on Google and you find a lot more for yourself.
Its Time to change yaar !
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Beautiful Blues
Blooming Beautiful Bluish Flower Pictured at my home. The flower seems to be curiuos of the camera. lol
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Send Free SMS To Any Mobile In India Using GPRS
Do you have a Mobile phone with a GPRS connection.. ? Then this is for you. A website named www.160by2.com is offering a service whcih allows users to send sms to any mobile number in India for free. Your message can be 80 characters long. The remaining 80 characters is filled up by advertisments chosen by 160by2. So basically its a new kind of advertising program. And now you know why it is named 160/2. 80 for the user and 80 for the advertiser
Here is the procedure :
- Visit 160by2.com from your desktop, and sign up giving your personal details and mobile no.
- You will recieve a password as sms on that mobile number and will be asked to change the password
- Go to 160by2.com from your web browser on the mobile and sign in with the username and password.
- Type in the recepient's mobile no. and the message and click on send.
- You are done !
Some Good things about 160by2 :
- The service is free.
- Messages are delivered really fast.
- We can make a contact list online, so its easy to add recepients.
- And 80 characters is a decent length.
- The mobile version of 160by2 uses very less bandwidth ( about 4 kb ). So those who are charged per kb of data transfer wont be charged.
Some not things about 160by2 :
- There is no option to count the no. of characters. So you do not know whether you reached 80 or not. And even if we exceed 80 characters the message is sent with the first 80 charchaters. One way to get rid of this problem is to type the message in the phone's ' Write Message ' area ( The place where we write the normal sms's, there we have a character counter ) and copy the text to 160by2.
- This is available in India only. No International SMS is possible.
Related:
Secret Spaces on Your Computer : The System Volume Information area
And one important thing : The system volume information area is cleared when you clean up the disk or when you delete the restore points. So make sure that you are not storing files on the root directory which usually users clear at regular intervals.
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The Night Mode - Motion Photos
If you wish to know how these photos were made, then read my article on creating them. [ http://millionclues.blogspot.com/2007/06/create-fantastic-effects-with-your.html ]. Its a pretty simple trick and anyone can try.
Ghostly Streaks
The hues of the dusk when captured from my moving car. It gave a wonderful effect as you can see here. And one good thing is that this pic matches very well as a desktop wallpaper with the default windows XP Theme.
Red Bulb! Blue Bulb!
Can you guess what this is..? My dad told it was drawn in Photoshop. My sis said it looks like Jalebi! but believe me its a real photo. I moved my camera in front of the indicator lamps of my Inverter while the camera was in Night mode ( Read the page that the above link points to ).
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Orkut Scrapbook is More Like a Junk Mail Folder
One Good thing about scrapbook in orkut was that each and every message was personal unlike the forwards that we recieve in our inbox. Each message was one-to-one. But with the advancement of third party tools like powerscrap and all, once can now send common scrap to all friends with just a few clicks. And this is taking the beauty of Orkut scrapbook away.
These days my scrapbook looks much like a junk mail folder. And to add to that there are many new viruses in there that sends the same message to all our contacts without our knowldge.
I dont know any ways to get rid of the problem, but if anyone reading this knows one please tell me ok.Maybe one way is to warn the spamming friends and delete them if they persist spamming. And if someone from google is reading this please not that if you leave this unchecked, people will loose all the intrest and stop orkutting. And that is something you dont want..right..?
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More of the Nature Caught in my Cam
Somemore of the natures beauty caught in my little camera.
Emergency FlashLight In Your Nokia SmartPhone
I have seen a software which when installed on your phone, keeps the display on for infinite time or till the battery dies out, so that you can use your phone as a flashlight for emergency purposes.
Here are some ways to keep the display on without any such softwares:
* The key combination to lock the keypad is to be used. Its a combination of 2 keys, first one is the left selelctor key ( In Nokia7610 ) followed by the '*' key. Press the first key followed by * and do not release the * key. Now the display stays on untill you release the * key.
Make sure that the background on your standby mode is of light colours so that you will get more light.
* One another method is to record a video of something white at some place where there is amble light. Usually Smartphones keep the display on while a video is being played. Now play the recorded video and the display stays on.
Tested on Nokia 7610 and must work with similar phones.
Wishing you a Happy and Prosperous 2008.
Good Luck!
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