Pagerank 0 updated to Pagerank 5 in 5 Months

Pagerank Update phase 2 swinging blogs' Pagerank going up,down and up again!
Etienne
has mentioned in a contrasting result on Blogs' Pagerank increasing,on
par and further decreasing after a phase 2 action at the Google
Pagerank Lab.Lets have a look at who are the blogs that are doing the
right techniques in the Link Popularity section,who are on par with
their older pagerank and some naughty blogs that had done something
evil,resulting the Google Pagerank guys to demote them further
(Etienne's Research and my add-ons)
The Climber Board
Copyblogger - Jumps to Pagerank 7
Problogger -Climbs back to PR6 (Congratulation Darren!)
DoshDosh - Climbs to PR6 (Congratulation Maki!)
Cashquests - Climbs to PR5 (Congratulation Kumiko!)
Garryconn - Climbs to PR5
Washington Times - Climbs to PR5
AndyBeard -Climbs to PR4
Bloggingbits -Climbs to PR4
BloggingTips -Climbs to PR4
Zac Johnson -Climbs to PR4
AutoBlog - Climbs to PR4
Etienne - Climbs toPR3 (Congratulation Etienne!)
Dailymoolah - Climbs toPR3
John Cow - Climbs to PR3
Charleslau - Climbs to PR3
Jobmob - Climbs to PR3
Worldofangel - Climbs to PR3
Courtney Tuttle - climbs to PR3
Shamoneymaker - Climbs to PR2
Spaceinfluence - Climbs to PR2
Slyvisions - Climbs to PR2

Those That Stays
Adesblog -Remains as PR5
Washington Post -Remains as PR5
New Scientist -Remains as PR5
Engadget -Remains as PR5
Sun Times -Remains as PR5
Seattle Times -Remains as PR4
Tuaw - Remains as PR4
Joystiq - Remains as PR4
Seroundtable - Remains as PR4
John Chow - Remains as PR4
Searchenginejournal - Remains as PR4
Quickonlinetips - remains as PR3
Netbusinessblog -Remains as PR3
Paulamooney - Remains as PR3
TylerCruz Remains as PR3
Carlocab - Remains as PR3
Blogging Secret - Remains as PR3

Relegated Further
Natewhitehill -Drops to PR4
JohnTP -Drops to PR3
Entrepreneurs-journey -Drops to PR3
Seattle Times -Drops to PR3
Rotorblog - Drops to PR2
Earnersblog - Drops to PR2
Michael Kwan - Drops to PR2

But last but not least,Constructicle Boy (which is myself) climbed from Pagerank 0 to Pagerank 5 in 5 months!?Gosh!!!Something if not everything that I have done is hitting the jackpot after jackpot.Ding Ding Ding!And I do not recommend buying Pagerank links as they are considered unnatural.


Conspiracy Theory of Pagerank?
Blogstorm
mentioned in his blog that a respectable source has leaked out on part
of the Pagerank logarithm coding that triggers the massacre pagerank
demotion of A-list bloggers and websites.

$spammers=file_get_contents(" Your blog or website URL which Googles blacklisted to slap you");
$pos = strpos($spammers, $domain);
if ($pos === false) {
$newpagerank=rand(0, 10);
} else {
$newpagerank=rand(0, $pagerank);
}

Huh?Is
that true?Conspiracy Theories say yes!A-list bloggers say yes!Blogger
like myself says possibly.That could really spells the word that Google
hates : Spammer

How to get Slapped by Google?
Like what Daniel said,Penalties are bound to be if there are your blog is turning into an advertising competitor to Google Adsense and into a Link Farm.
Or you can make your blog into a Spam Farm! ;)

Check your Pagerank too!
Maybe..just
maybe Google will give you a good Halloween surprise by increasing or
decreasing your Pagerank.A good way to check is thru Digpagerank as they provide Pagerank checks from over 700!!!! datacenters.Surely it cannot be wrong.

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How To Sell Your Site For $1000

If you’re looking to make a quick $1000 by selling your site - here’s how to do it!

There is a rule of thumb on the internet that a website will generally sell for ten times it’s monthly earnings.

So if you want to sell your site for $1000, you’re going to need to make $100 per month from it. Sound hard? It’s not really that difficult and history has shown that it can be achieved by a site that receives just 100 hits per day.

Here’s how you’ll make your thousand dollars:

1. Text link ads - You’re going to sell links from
your site but instead of charging ridiculously high prices, you’re
going to sell them for only $1 each. Sell ten of them.

Money made: $10

2. 125×125 banner ads - You’re going to set up six of these ad spots and sell them for an unbelievably low $5 each.

Money made: $30

3. PayPerPost - You’re almost guaranteed to make money with PayPerPost. It’s not a struggle to write two sponsored posts per week and most will earn you at least $5 per post.

Money made: $40

4. 480×60 banner ad - Placed at the top of your site next to the header, this is a prime piece of advertising space and you’re going to guarantee it’s sale by selling it for just $10 per month.

Money made: $10

5. Feed ads - With a regular posting schedule, ads in your feed will receive a lot of impressions. No doubt that you’ll be able to sell an ad in your feed for just $5 per month.

Money made: $5

6. Site review - Whether it’s through ReviewMe, PayPerPost Direct or via your readers, selling a great review of a site for just $5 is a steal that will have advertisers running to your site.

Money made: $5

GRAND TOTAL: $100 per month!

Congratulations! You’ve just earned enough money that will see your site sell for $1000. Making money online is easy, isn’t it?

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Youtube Catcher: Youtube and Other Video Downloader Tool

Looking for a good solution to download Youtube
and other video sharing site videos, Youtube Catcher is for you.
Youtube Catcher can download videos from Youtube, Google Video, Myspace
Video, Yahoo video Dailymotion Stage6 Veoh.

The downloaded videos can be exported to various formats like
MPG,AVI, MP4,3GP, 3G2, WMV, PSP, MOV, FLV with the quality you choose.
You can set the encoding options such as size, framerate, aspect, video
codec, fileformat, audio codec, audio sampling, quality, motion search,
etc.

You can encode your videos to standard formats as DVD,VCD,IPOD,PSP,
etc. It also supports “Authentication” in YouTube, so you can download
private videos if you have athorization.

Videos downloaded from other sites with other tools can also be converted to other formats using this tool.

This tool supports Batch file processing, just paste the links in a
plain text file, and YouTube Catcher will download all the videos to
the specified folder, you will not have to wait one by one anymore.

Youtube Catcher Works on: Windows 9X/NT/2000/XP/Vista. It can also run on linux if you can install WineHq.

Donwload Youtube Catcher

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GIMP 2.4 Released

GIMP, the popular open source alternative to Adobe Photoshop has been upgraded to version 2.4 with lot of new features.

GIMP now comes with Tango style Icon set to provide a consistent
look on Windows, Mac and Linux. New features includes improved
selection tools, brushes scalability, changes in menus, improved
display when zooming in or out. See the release notes for full list of features.

Along the lines of this release GIMP website also got a new dark design.

Download GIMP

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Time to update your affiliate links

Text Link Ads is sending emails that they have changed their URL
structure and all the affiliates had to change to the new URl, they are
suing tiny URL. I guess this move is because of the Google’s move on
penalizing sites selling text links.

Whatever may be the reason, if you have posted these links inside
some posts its going to be pain to update all those links, because TLA
says in one week the old links become inactive.

To avoid this in future and also to hide your affiliate links from
Google use redirects for all the affiliate links, this way they don’t
look annoying like tinyurl links and you just have to update one link
in future if something like this happens. Personally i don’t like
tinyurl links and i never click those links because you never know
where they will take you.

Here i will show you how can you setup redirects of affiliate links.

1. Using .htaccess

Using .htaccess file you can set redirects quite easily if you are on a linux hosting and using apache server.

For exaple you are going to add a redirect to Text Link Ads referral link, add the below line to your .htaccess

Redirect /tla http://tinyurl.com/3e2xbo

Now replace all your TLA referral links with http://www.yoursite.com/tla

What the above code does is whenever some one clicks on the link
http://www.yoursite.com/tla it redirects to the url
http://tinyurl.com/3e2xbo.

2. Using rederects in webpages

<html>

<head>

<meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">

<title>Text Link Ads</title>

<script>window.location="http://tinyurl.com/3e2xbo";</script>

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2; url=http://tinyurl.com/3e2xbo">

</head>

<body>

<p align="center">If the page doesn't reload automatically

Please <a href="http://tinyurl.com/3e2xbo">click here</a>.</p>

</body>

</html>

So your visitors will never see the ugly tinyurl link. Don’t forget to replace all my links to yours if you use this code.

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40+ Free Windows Apps For You

You,
i got lot of feedback for that post and my readers suggested some
excellent programs to be included in that list. So here i am listing
all those programs which i have missed in my earlier post. Do check the
earlier post for the complete software list.

The list is in random order. Most of these apps serve as alternatives to commercial windows apps.

I am sure that there may be some useful programs which i have missed
here, if your favorite application is not listed here comment or shoot
me an email i will include that in this list.

Security:

1. Open Antivirus:

OpenAntiVirus is not another virus scanner to put on a computer!
OpenAntiVirus is a platform for people seriously interested in
anti-virus research, network security and computer security to
communicate with each other, to develop solutions for various security
problems, and to develop new security technologies.

2. Truecrypt:

Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP/2000 and
Linux. Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as
a real disk. Encrypts an entire hard disk partition or a storage device
such as USB flash drive. Encryption is automatic, real-time
(on-the-fly) and transparent.



3. ClamAV:

ClamAV application is primarily for unix based systems but now a
windows version is available. This version needs a emulation layer like
CygWin

4. RogueScanner:

RogueScanner is an open source vulnerability management tool that is
used to gain greater network visibility. This enables you to quickly
identify and remove rogue wireless devices that may provide back door
access to your critical data and infrastructure.

5. Keepass:

KeePass is a free/open-source password manager or safe which helps you
to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your
passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a
key-disk. So you only have to remember one single master password or
insert the key-disk to unlock the whole database.

6. Clipperz:

Clipperz is a free and anonymous online password manager. Local
encryption within the browser guarantees that no one except you can
read your data. Nothing to install. (earlier review)

7. SoftPerfect Personal Firewall:

The SoftPerfect Personal Firewall is a free network firewall designed
to protect your PC against attacks from the Internet or via a local
area network. SoftPerfect Personal Firewall offers customizable
security using user-defined rules for packet filtering. It works at a
low level and also allows you to create rules based on non-IP protocols
such as ARP.

File Transfer / Sharing:

1. WinSCP:

WinSCP is an open source free SFTP client and FTP client for Windows.
Legacy SCP protocol is also supported. Its main function is safe
copying of files between a local and a remote computer.

2. PuTTy:

PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator.

3. ShowMyPC:

ShowMyPC is now a Community for Remote Support providers. Providing
tools for Instant Support to Service Providers and Users. It started as
an open source Desktop Sharing and Remote PC access project, an
alternative to subscription based sites like WebEx or Gotomypc.

4. Ares:

Ares is a free open source file sharing program that enables users to
share any digital file including images, audio, video, software,
documents, etc.

Multi Media

1. Media Player Classic:

Media Player Classic (MPC) is a compact free software media player for
Microsoft Windows. The application has a similar look and feel to the
old light-weight Windows Media Player 6.4. Underneath, however, it is a
completely different application which has all the options and features
one might expect from a modern media player.

2. Media Coder:

MediaCoder is a free universal batch media transcoder, which nicely
integrates most popular audio/video codecs and tools into an all-in-one
solution. (earlier review)

3. Hanbrake:

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded
DVD to MPEG-4 converter, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

4. musikCube:

musikCube can be an alternative to iTunes to manage your music collection.

5. popCorn:

popCorn is a desktop-oriented MPEG-1 audio (MP3) and video software
capable of playing data streamed directly from the network.
Compatibility with existing media servers is provided by the support of
the industry standard RTSP protocol.

6. ImgBurn:

ImgBurn is a lightweight CD / DVD / HD DVD / Blu-ray burning application. It supports all windows versions.

7. AVS Disc Creator:

Write your data to CD, DVD and Blu-ray Discs quickly and easily using FREE AVS Disc Creator.

8. DVDStyler:

DVDStyler is a cross-platform DVD authoring application that makes
possible for video enthusiasts to create professional-looking DVDs.

9. mp3mymp3:

Record any audio playing on your computer as mp3 or wav file with
mp3mymp3 recorder. It can record any sound originating from your
computer, it works by recording all audio through your sound card.
(earlier review)

10. Youtube Catcher:

Youtube Catcher can download videos from Youtube, Google Video, Myspace
Video, Yahoo video Dailymotion Stage6 Veoh. The downloaded videos can
be exported to various formats like MPG,AVI, MP4,3GP, 3G2, WMV, PSP,
MOV, FLV with the quality you choose. (earlier review)

11. Media Portal:

MediaPortal is an Open Source application ideal for turning your PC /
TV into a very advanced Media Center. MediaPortal allows you to listen
to your favorite music & radio, watch and store your videos and
DVDs, view, schedule and record live TV as a digital video recorder and
much much more.

12. VirtualDub

VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows
platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP), licensed under the GNU General Public
License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor
such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations
over video.

Video Editing Tools

1. Vivia-The Video Editor:

Vivia is a video editing program for Linux and Windows. It provides
extremely easy editing of clips and transitions in real-time, along
with multi-camera support for editing scenes that were recorded by more
than one camera simultaneously.

2. MiNi Video Studio:

MiNI Video Studio is a program for non-linear video editing. It means
this application allows creating of a movie from other movies in a way,
that the elements of the final movie overlap, creating a series of
layers, that can be rendered one by one, or all at once.

3. DVD Flick:

DVD Flick aims to be a simple but at the same time powerful DVD
Authoring tool. It can take a number of video files stored on your
computer and turn them into a DVD that will play back on your DVD
player, Media Center or Home Cinema Set. You can add additional custom
audio tracks as well as subtitles of your choice.

4. OpenVIP:

OpenVIP editor. It provides a user-friendly GUI to the core and is
based on the timeline concept - you place multimedia files on the
timeline, apply filters, transitions…

5. Avidemux:

Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering
and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD
compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs.

Image Viewing & manipulation

1. Irfanview:

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista.

2. Paint.net:

Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that
run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface
with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide
variety of useful and powerful tools.

3. XnView:

XnView is a free software to view and convert graphic files, really simple to use. It Support of more than 400 graphics formats.

3D Graphics:

1. Art Of Illusion:

Art of Illusion is a free, open source 3D modelling and rendering
studio. It is written entirely in Java, and should be usable on any
Java Virtual Machine which is compatible with J2SE 1.4 or later.

2. OpenFX:

OpenFX is an Open-Source 3D modeling, animation and rendering suite. A
powerful feature-set includes a full renderer and raytrace engine,
NURBS support, kinematics-based animation, morphing, and an extensive
plugin API.

Office / Productivity

1. AbiWord:

AbiWord is a open source and fully cross-platform word processor.

2. Launchy:

Launchy is a free windows utility designed to help you forget about
your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager.
Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your
documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few
keystrokes! (earlier review)

3. Cygwin:

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows. It consists of two
parts: A DLL (cygwin1.dll) which acts as a Linux API emulation layer
providing substantial Linux API functionality. A collection of tools
which provide Linux look and feel.

4. Pandora Recovery:

Pandora Recovery is a powerful free tool that provides its users an
effective way to attempt recovery of permanently deleted files.
(earlier review)

5. CCleaner:

CCleaner is a freeware system optimization and privacy tool. It removes
unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and
freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your
online activities such as your Internet history.

6. Wink:

You can create presentations or screencasts with Wink in just minutes,
you can record mouse movements or take screenshots of your application
and save them as flash files. (earlier review)

7. Freemind:

FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping software written in Java. The recent development has hopefully turned it into high productivity tool.

8. jetToolbar:

Despite Microsoft’s best intentions, the Start Menu isn’t everybody’s
cup of tea. If you’re looking for an alternative way to launch your
programs, take a look at jetToolBar. During installation this well-done
utility creates 14 default categories, registers shortcuts for many of
your applications, and adds bookmarks for recommended Web pages.

9. MyUninstaller:

MyUninstaller is an alternative utility to the standard Add/Remove
applet of Windows operating system. It displays the list of all
installed application, and allows you to uninstall an application,
delete an uninstall entry, and save the list of all installed
applications into a text file or HTML file.

10. Flashget:

Flashget is a freeware for downloading files. It uses MHT(Multi-server
Hyper-threading Transportation) technique, supports various protocols

11. ZScreen:

ZScreen is an open-source screen capture program that allows for
region/window/full-screen screenshots. It can FTP screenshots and put
the URL in your clipboard in a single keystroke. It supports automatic
custom naming conventions with variables. It can also interface with
image editing software.

12. CamStudio:

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your
computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its
built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean,
bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

13. Libra

Libra is a library software to organize your stuff: Books, Audio CDs,
Movies, & Games (for a start). Hook up your webcam, and Libra turns
it instantly into a barcode scanner. Point your webcam towards the
barcode (in any orientation) on the back of your books, DVD’s or CD’s
and Libra will auto-retrieve the product information automatically, and
add it to your library. Its free for non commercial use.

Web / Development

1. PSPad:

PSPad is a freeware programmer’s editor for Microsoft Windows operating systems, useful for people who:

2. HTTrack:

HTTrack is a free and easy-to-use offline browser utility. It allows
you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local
directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images,
and other files from the server to your computer.

3. NOTEPAD++:

Notepad++ is a free source code editor (and Notepad replacement), which
supports several programming languages, running under the MS Windows
environment.

Google Pack

I haven’t listed any of the programs from Google Pack because most
of the users are aware of these. Except one or two all the programs in
this pack are must have for anybody, if you havn’t downloaded google
pack get it from here

Miscellaneous

Virtual Box:

VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for
enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely
feature rich, high performance product.

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20 Open Source Windows Apps For You

Some of the commercial software like Photoshop are so expensive that
an average user can not afford to buy it. Lately I am looking for some
free or open source alternatives for windows programs and i was amazed
with the range of programs available. Here i will list some of the open
source or free programs as alternatives to windows commercial programs.

1. 7-zip

7-Zip
is a open source file archiver program for windows. It supports packing
and unpacking of 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR format files and supports
onlu unpacking of RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and
NSIS. It provides better compression ratio than WinZip for ZIP and GZIP
formats. It is an alternative to programs like WinZip

2. Audacity:

Audacity
is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds.Audacity
can be used to record live audio, convert tapes and records into
digital recordings or CDs, edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, and WAV sound files.
cut, copy, splice, and mix sounds together.

3. Blender:

Blender
is a open source free software for creating 3D animations. Blender can
be used for modelling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, skinning,
animating, rendering, particle and creating interactive 3D
applications. Blender has robust features et similar to programs like
3ds Max and Maya.



4. ClamWin:

ClamWin
is a Free Antivirus for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP and 2003. ClamWin is a
good alternative to commercial softwares like Norton, McAfee etc.
Clamwin features include High detection rates for viruses and spyware,
Scanning Scheduler, Automatic downloads of regularly updated Virus
Database, Standalone virus scanner and right-click menu integration to
Microsoft Windows Explorer, and Addin to Microsoft Outlook to remove
virus-infected attachments automatically.

5. eMule:

eMule is a open source peer to peer file sharing (P2P) client tool.

6. Feedreader:

Feedreader
is free desktop RSS aggregation tool. “Feedreader automatically
downloads updates from your favorite Web sites. So, it eliminates the
need for you to constantly monitor multiple Web pages, while allowing
you to immediately identify and retrieve new articles”

7. Filezilla:

FileZilla
is a free, open source FTP client for Windows. It supports FTP, SFTP,
and FTPS protocols. It has all the essential features required for a
FTP client. The main features of FileZilla are Ability to resume
Uploads/Downloads, Site Manager with folders, Keep Alive system,
Timeout detection, Firewall support, SOCKS4/5 and HTTP1.1 Proxy
support, SSL secured connections, Upload/Download Queue, Drag&Drop.

8. Firefox:

The
best cross platform supported web brwoser available on the net, it
doesn’t need any introduction and many of you might be using. The wide
range of Firefox Add-On’s make this the most powerful browser for all
types of users. Firefox is an alternative to Microsoft Internet
Explorer.

9. GIMP:

GNU
Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) is free open source raster graphics
editor for manipulating photos or images. GIMP is an excellent software
and alternative to expensive photoshop, it is used for photo
retouching, image composition and image authoring.

10. hugin:

hugin
is a open source easy to use cross-platform panoramic imaging tool.
Using hugin you can assemble a mosaic of photographs into as complete
immersive panorama, stitch any series of overlapping pictures and much
more.

11. Inkscape:

Inkscape
is an open source vector graphics editor. Inkscape is a good
alternative to commercial vector graphics tools like Corel Draw, Adobe
Illustrator, Freehand or Xara X. Inkscape uses Scalable Vector Graphics
(SVG), an open XML-based W3C standard, as the native format. It can be
used to create web2.0 buttons, banners, logos, icons etc. (see earlier review)

12. Juice:

Juice
is a free open source cross-platform podcast receiver application. It
is used to download podcast media files, such as oggs and mp3s. Using
juice you can schedule the podcast and juice will let you know when a
new podcast is available. The downloaded files media files can be
automatically copied to a digital audio player.

13. OpenOffice.org:

OpenOffice.org
is the open source office suite similar to Microsoft office available
to different platforms. OpenOffice.org is a collection of applications
with the features similar to Microsoft Office. The Components include
Writer, Calc, Base, Impress, Draw, Math, Quickstarter etc.

14. PDFCreator:

PDFCreator
is a free program for creating PDF documents from windows programs.
Once installed, it allows the user to select PDFCreator as their
printer, allowing almost any application to print to PDF.

15. Pidgin:

Pidgin,
formerly known as Gaim is a multi-platform instant messaging client
that supports many commonly used IM protocols. Pidgin is a free
software and supports IM’s including Yahoo, Google Talk, Jabber, MSN,
AOL, ICQ etc.

16. Programmers Notepad:

Programmer’s Notepad is the free, open source, text editor for programmers.

some of the features of Programmers Notepad: Code Folding/Outlining,
Docking tool windows, Excellent external tool support with
user-configurable output matching, Export to HTML (using CSS) and RTF,
Word Wrapping

17. Scribus:

Scribus
is an open source desktop publishing (DTP) application. It has some
nice page layout features and can be used as an alternative to Adobe
PageMaker, QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign. “It can also create animated
and interactive PDF presentations and forms. Example uses include
writing small newspapers, brochures, newsletters, posters and books.”

18. Sunbird:

Sunbird
is open source desktop calender application from Mozilla foundation.
Sunbird is a cross platform, open standards application built on Mozill
Toolkit.

19. Thunderbird:

Thunderbird
is the open source desktop email application from Mozilla foundation.
Thunderbird has the best features in the industry. “Thunderbird 2
features many new enhancements to help you better manage your unruly
inbox, and stay informed. Thunderbird 2 scales to the most
sophisticated organizational needs while making it easy to find what
you need.”

20. VLC Media Player:

VLC
Media Player is a open source media player from VideoLan project team.
It is the best media player available in the net, it plays almost any
file format available. It also supports streaming protocols. It is a
good alternative to different media players.

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Tips For Bloggers " 5 Essential Time Saving "

We bloggers have funny lives. Blogging means so much to us yet
people think we waste time on blogging. We virtually live in two
worlds, and both these worlds can be very demanding at times.

So how do you manage time to cope with the duties in both worlds and still have plenty of time left to enjoy yourself?

Trust me, I’ve struggled to manage time just as you do, and I know
your pains. So without further ado, here are five time saving tips that
I have come to rely on to get the best of both worlds.

1. Write batches of posts

This is the most useful technique I have just come to appreciate.
Write when you are most prolific, have a lot of free time, and there
are no disturbances around to break your concentration. Write till your
fingers hurt. You won’t even feel bored or worn out once you get into
the flow.

Currently, I can write up to 5 posts in a row, and then my eyes start making out faces in the words.

With so many posts written beforehand, you’ll feel immensely
relieved later on when you are supposed to churn out posts under
pressure. And, of course, if you are very prolific and have plenty of
free time everyday, you can write so many posts in 15 days that you
won’t have to write a word for next three months!

2. Cut down the time you waste on seeing your stats go up and down

I am sure most bloggers are addicted to seeing all kinds of stats
about their blog, just as I was until a week ago. I would sometimes
feel the urge to check my traffic stats right in the middle of writing
a post, and after fiddling around with stats for a while, I’d check out
new referrers, and, ultimately, lose track of time in hopping from one
link to another.

This is highly unproductive and absolute waste of
time. I’ve learned to keep myself from checking stats every 10 seconds,
and now I hardly have any urge to peek at the stats more than twice a
day.

Stats are not going anywhere. They accumulate while you do something
more productive. You can always delve deep into your stats at the end
of the day and explore them to your heart’s content.

3. Keep a schedule

Similar to above, we bloggers are also prone to checking email and
our hourly earnings, diving into feed reader to see if there has been
updates, and doing all kinds of useless stuff. As a result, we waste
precious hours and hardly get anything done.

So, you have to sort this mess by tidying up your routine in a
time-saving yet effective manner. Here’s how I manage my schedule after
logging into the Internet.

First thing I do early on is check my inbox for new emails. Then I
go on and check out my traffic stats and my AdSense earnings. When
done, I go to my blog’s dashboard and check new comments and new
incoming links, and then close down the browser. I don’t do anything
that might capture my attention unnecessarily. The whole process takes 15 minutes to complete.

Now that I’ve satisfied my urge to see what happened during the time
I was sleeping, I move on to do real life or virtual life work.

Next, I come back at noon and reply to emails, comments, and
conversations on other blogs and forums I am active on. This usually
takes just above 30 minutes.

I, then, move on to check out my social media profiles and browse around for a while on StumbleUpon and Digg. This can take an hour or more depending on the kind of content I come across.

Then I come back at night and go straight into my feed reader, and
in a fifteen minutes or so I am full of inspiration and new ideas. So I
settle down to write and keep on writing until I have written two or
three posts. This can take a lot of time if my creative juices refuse
to flow for some reason. But who cares? Nights are long and peaceful,
and I am bound to put together at least one post in an hour or two.

If you add up the time I spend on all the above activities, it amounts only to 4 hours per day, on average. Compare this to 8 to 9 hours
of my post-organization life and you’ll clearly see how much time I’ve
managed to save just by restricting myself to a defined schedule.

4. Organize your tools of the trade

• Organize your desktop - Keep the most used tools
  right on your desktop, and delete all other shortcuts that do nothing
  but add clutter. Similarly, if you are on Windows, keep your start menu
  and quick launch tidy by removing and uninstalling the unwanted
  shortcuts and programs.
• Organize your browser - Keep all the toolbars
  turned off unless you need them. If you are a Firefox user, make use of
  bookmarks toolbar and keep your most visited pages organized in
  separate folders.
• Use an offline post editor - Usually, you don’t
  want to be distracted when your are focused on writing. Writing in the
  web browser is a distraction in itself. You know, the usual urge to
  load up another page in a separate tab is sometimes quite irresistible.
  Using a desktop blogging client such as Windows Live Writer can be used to avoid such unnecessary distractions.

5. Post every alternate day

Finally, if you are really pressed for time, consider cutting down
your post frequency. Posting an article everyday is not necessary. On
the contrary, I believe posting less often is much more beneficial for most bloggers.

from Blogging Bits | Filed Under Blogging

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Google Analytics to Boost Traffic

Google Analytics is a great free statistics
tool that provides comprehensive statistics on your site, and those
statistics can be used to help you boost your traffic. It is pretty
simple to install by simply inserting a snippet of code on your site.
Try to use something like a header or some piece of code that is on
every page, or in Blogger simply insert it into the html.

Considering how expensive some stat programs are, or the fact that
some of the free ones require an icon or image linking back to their
site, this is extremely valuable. In particular, this is great for
bloggers who might lack money to spend hundreds on a decent stats
package.

Once it’s loaded, you can simply visit the Google Analytics page for
detailed statistics. While the usefulness of this information might not
be obvious, there are many ways you can mine this information to help
you drive more traffic and better optimize your site for search engines.

Google Analytics Dashboard

This is the main page of the Google Analytics site. Even right here,
you can gather some useful information. You can see the number of
visits, percentage of new visitors, and average time on site over an
extended period. A key statistic here is the bounce rate option in the
top right pulldown menu. Look for trends here, and also find out if you
have a lot of visitors who hit your site and immediately bounce out.

Then you can play with your site to see if you can improve those
numbers. Add more internal links, for instance, in blog posts to
encourage internal clicking. Change your color scheme or tinker with
your design, and wait to watch your bounce rate to see if it’s impacted.

Google Referral Tracking

One of the best tools of the Google Analytics is the ability to
analyze your Google (and other search engine) traffic. You can look at
trends to see how many referrals you are getting from various search
engines, pay-per-click ads or external links. From the dashboard, just
click on “traffic sources.”

This
is a gold mine of information. If you click on a particular source,
like Google, you can see a graphic of referrals over a period of time.
This will tell you, for instance, if Google referrals have dropped off,
which should be a concern. It’s also nice when you get a bunch of
traffic from a social bookmarking site. That will show a whole bunch of
page-views, but can mask a drop-off in search engine referrals.

Better yet, examine the keywords. You can use this information to
expand on phrases where you are ranking well, or to revise pages that
currently drive traffic for totally irrelevant to your site. You can
also click on keywords, and then click “bounce rate” at the top right.
That will show you which keywords bring bad traffic that doesn’t stay
on site.

Google Analytics Map

Another
great feature is the Google Analytics map. If you’re running a general
interest site, it could be easy to overlook this cool feature. But you
can even use it just to see, for example, that you get a decent amount
of traffic from a specific country. That can help you cater your
content to that audience.

You can even narrow your statistics down to the city and state
level, which could be useful if you find you have a large audience in a
particular city.

Content Statistics

Use the content statistics to determine which pages are the most
popular, or which have high bounce rates and might need to be improved.
You can view your top content by title or by URL. You can also see
which content is keeping people on the page for the longest time, or
serve often as exit pages.

Google Analytics Downsides

Anything free can’t be perfect, right? There are a few downsides to
using it. For one thing, you are giving Google access to detailed
statistics on your site. There is also a lag in reporting, so the
statistics are not real-time. In the post, Three Reasons Google Analytics Fails for Seo, Eric Lander writes:

If you are serious about search engine optimization,
Google Analytics is NOT for you. I know it’s tough to look past the
(non-existent) price tag, ease of use and conversion tools — but trust
me when I say that Google Analytics is a flawed program for your needs.

So it’s important to know there are downsides. For many sites and
blogs, these aren’t crucial and probably aren’t reason enough to avoid
using this great free program. It also shouldn’t be your only source of
statistics, and you can use resources like Google Webmaster tools and
your hosting provider’s log tracking.

In the end, though, it is a great tool (certainly for the money) and
is especially important if you are not currently using detailed
statistics. This post just covers some of the basics, but there are
many uses for these statistics. If you currently use Google Analytics,
what’s your favorite use?

from Type a Mom | Filed Under Search Engine Optimisation

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20 Best Favicon Online Generators

Favicons (favorite icons) are the small images that are associated with
a website. It will be displayed on address bar, tabbed browsers and
your bookmark list. Therefore, creating an outstanding favicon is
particularly important for website branding. The basic guidelines for
design a good favicon are “simple” and “unique”.

Here is the simple steps for beginners to set up favicons,

1. create a favicon (16 x16) for your sites;

2. upload favicon.ico to root directory;

3. copy and paste the code to header section;

<link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico” type=”image/x-icon” />

4. reload your sites and finish!

It is more complex if you want the favicons also work well at IE,
for more information you might take a look the links at the bottom. And the generators below is selected from almost 50 favicon tools on the web. Simply drop me a message if you have any better suggestions.

Favicon Generators

Favicon.cc - a new web 2.0 feel favicon generator.
You can draw by yourself or import images to generate favicons, and it
also have a live preview function at the bottom. Recommended!

256pixels - raise a daily favicon design challenge via different topics. Great idea and worth to take a look.

Favicon2dots - unique Japanese favicon creator from any website URL.

Converticon - generate favicons from URL or your computers. Beware, sometimes it will have annoying pop-up ads.

FaviconTool - the coolest interface favicon generator.

Webscriptlab Favicon Generator - we mentioned this site before at 13 Online Generators For Web2.0 Design before.

Flavicon - they also offer custom favicons service.

Favicon Generator and Gallery - at this site you might choose the size of favicon before generation, and they also have a awesome favicons showcase.

FaviconGenerator.com - clean favicon generator.

Dagondesign Favicon Generator

Favicon.ru

Faviconsfor.us



More Here

13. http://www.degraeve.com/favicon/

14. http://www.antifavicon.com/

15. http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/ - probably most popular one.

16. http://www.favicon.jp/ - Japanese site.

17. http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/ - DynamicDrive tool.

18. http://www.faviconprime.com/

19. http://shaheeilyas.com/favicon/

20. http://www.faviconfactory.com/

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Pipe Your News Ticker

Via the Hacks Authors' Blogs feed, we find Jim Bumgardner's Pipes Picayune & Daily Tube mashup news ticker:

Headlines from a BBC RSS feed
are fed, via Y! Pipes, to my news ticker, which is implemented in
Flash. Click on the spinning newspaper to read the story in full on the
original website. This widget can work with any RSS feed, but I'm using
the BBC because they tend to write short pithy headlines which fit my faux newspapers better.

You can include this widget (as well as others offered in Jim's bog post) in your own blog by copying the <iframe> code and specifying which feed you want to use.

UPDATE:

In the comments, Jim points out that he's now added an easy-to-use form for generating custom RSS tickers. Check out this feed of Hackszine: