July, 2010

100 Writing Mistakes To Avoid In English

We all know how important communication skill is in this corporate world. Without good communication skill it is hard to get a job, even though the candidate is good in his field. So communication is the key.

In online world as well as offline world, it is important to write without making silly spelling mistakes, usage mistakes and grammar mistakes. For a blogger its important to make sure what he is trying to convey is properly reaching his readers. And most importantly, if you have a online service then good communication skills, proper error free writing skills are crucial. Your prospects must understand what you are trying to convey them.

Couple of weeks ago I came across a ebook titled “100 Writing Mistakes To Avoid”, on Daniel’s DailyWritingTips.com

The Book Covers:
Small Introduction.
Spelling Mistakes To Avoid.
Usage Mistakes To Avoid.
Grammar Mistakes To Avoid.
Punctuation Mistakes To Avoid.

Here is one sample excerpt from the ebook:

less/fewer:

INCORRECT: This box contains less fire crackers.
CORRECT: This box contains fewer fire crackers.

Less is used with uncounted nouns: less soup, less intelligence, less forage.
Fewer is used with countable nouns: fewer voters, fewer apples, fewer commercials.

Unlike other English grammar books which are lengthy(takes a lot of time to read) and complex to understand, “100 Writing Mistakes To Avoid” is simple, straightforward and concentrates on just 100 important writing mistakes, avoiding which we can instantly improve our writing.

Author of the ebook:
Born in Chicago, Maeve Maddox has lived, studied, and taught English in the United States, France, and the U.K. Her educational qualifications include a B.A. (Hons) in English from the University of London, and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. She is also a published author of both fiction and non-fiction.

If you want to learn basic English Grammar first, then have a look at DailyWritingTips.com and signup for their blog’s RSS update and receive “Basic English Grammar” ebook for free. Also grab “100 Writing Mistakes To Avoid” ebook soon, as the price of the book will be raised to ~~$19.99~~ $9.99 after 1000 people have purchase it. Now the cost of the ebook is $9.99, and its a steal at this price. Kindle Edition is available only for $11.99.

How to Choose Your Phone’s Operating System

This is a guest post by Susan White. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

The problem with smartphones is that they’re only as smart as the people who use them. So when you’re buying one of these gadgets, it’s important that you choose the underlying operating system with care.

Some phones run on Windows Mobile OS, others on Palm’s OS 5, and yet others on Nokia’s Symbian OS. BlackBerry addicts don’t choose anything other than RIM’s BlackBerry OS and the same goes for iPhone aficionados who don’t look beyond Apple. And although late to the party, Google’s Android is proving to be a hot favorite. So how do you decide on your operating system if you’re not too particular about the phone you use?

mobile-os-iOS, BlackBerry, Symbian, Android, Palm

If you want a BlackBerry or an iPhone and nothing else, then you’re not going to be scrutinizing other operating systems too closely. The only decision you have to make is the model you want from RIM and Apple.

You would do well to choose the latest models, mainly because of the latest news from Apple – OS 4 for the iPhone is almost ready and it is compatible only with the iPhone 3G and 3GS models. According to the grapevine, OS4 will allow you to multitask (perhaps Apple has taken all those criticisms about the iPad to heart), store more than 2000 apps on your phone in personalized folders, and also put all your email (from different accounts) in one unified folder.

And nothing can beat a BlackBerry when it comes to push email services – if you’re connected to your job and the world via email, this is the best phone to own.

So moving on those who prefer other models of phones, if you choose a phone with a Windows platform, most phones come with Windows Mobile 6.5. While the interface is slick and the multimedia operations great, this OS is generally buggy and induces one too many complaints. If you’re used to Windows Mobile, you’ll probably want to stick with it, but if you’ve found it slow and buggy in the past, you may be wanting a change.

Palm’s new OS 6 has not taken off really well, but it doesn’t really have to with OS 5 still ruling the roost. You don’t have to worry about your phone hanging too often because of too many applications clogging your memory, what with one application closing automatically when you open another. And although multimedia is not its strong point, Palm users are not a worried lot because it has other pros going for it.

Symbian lags behind the rest in terms of both ease of use and advancements, those who are used to Nokia smartphones prefer this OS to any other.

Android is Google’s baby, and like any other product from this tech giant, it delivers what it promises. Because it is used in a variety of phones like HTC, Samsung and Motorola, it is available in different designs based on the phone company. And best of all, it has edged out the Apple OS as the second highest selling OS in the first quarter of 2010, next only to the BlackBerry OS.

So choose your poison based on your needs; read varied reviews and talk to friends who own different models, but make the choice on what you really want to use your phone for.

About Author:
This article is contributed by Susan White, who regularly writes on the subject of High Speed Internet. She invites your questions, comments.

Amemeber: All In One Solution For All Your Online Selling

I have seen many plugins that cost from a range of $95 to $800 that are used for creating membership sites, or some sort of sites that allow accepting payments.

Every other software script is built to solve any one particular problem. That is good, if someone has only one problem to solve and has a lot of money to spend!

But what if you want to create a membership site and also sell your ebook on the same site. And you have multiple income streems and you don’t want to depend on a third party website service to accept payment for you and then send it to your paypal a/c.

Amember is the solution. It doesn’t cost you a whole lot,.. its a great script which costs ( ~~$199.95~~ ) $179.95 – for single domain license. You will also get a license key for installing this script on your local machine(local host — wamp, mamp, xamp ).

There are various plugin’s which support integration of amember with WordPress, vBulletine, phpList etc. Below is a complete list.

aMember Pro ($179.95 for lifetime license with 6 months of free updates)
WordPress plugin (Free lifetime subscription)
“One-Time download” plugin ($30.00 for 6 months)
4Images plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
@Mail integration ($60.00 for 6 months)
CopperMine plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
Dokeos plugin ($40.00 for lifetime subscription)
DruPal plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
Expression Engine plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
FusionBB ($40.00 for lifetime subscription)
I-Rater plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
Incremental content plugin ($60.00 for lifetime subscription)
Invision Board Plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
Joomla plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
ListMail plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
MamboServer plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
OpenRealty plugin ($70.00 for 6 months)
OsCommerce ($40.00 for lifetime subscription)
PerlDesk plugin ($20.00 for lifetime subscription)
Phorum plugin ($40.00 for lifetime subscription)
PhotoPost integration ($40.00 for 6 months)
SMF plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
Serendipity plugin ($40.00 for lifetime subscription)
Vanilla Integration ($40.00 for lifetime subscription)
WowBB plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
XOOPS plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
e107 CMS plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
phpBB3 plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
phpFox plugin ($40.00 for lifetime subscription)
phpList Integration ($40.00 for lifetime subscription)
phpNuke Plugin ($40.00 for 6 months) details
phpWebSite plugin ($40.00 for lifetime subscription)
punBB plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
vBulletin3 plugin ($40.00 for 6 months)
Facebook integration gate (new)

Some of these plugin’s cost $30 or $40 and the license in for lifetime. But WordPress integration plugin is free and its licensing is also for lifetime.

If you ever decide to sell something online make sure you check out amember, you will surly love it and save a lot of money in the long run of your business. See it as a good investment.

I wanted to explained how to install the script, but I advice you not to try this yourself. If you run into problem it will be difficult to analyse the root cause for the problem and solving it may take a lot of your valuable time. The good news is, you need not spend in hiring a professional to install it for you. In fact, once you purchase amember software you will get a one time free installation service.

Some of the things to know:
1. Security: Amember is a secure software for accepting money online. But I still recommend not to use this to accept credit card payments if you are on a shared hosting. If you are serious about your business then go for a dedicated server.
2. Troubleshooting: When you run into trouble with your script, contact amember support team directly. I had a minor issuse with my php.ini and Alex from amember sorted out the problem very quickly. And with all those email exchanges I had with the staff, I feel that their support staff is technically very strong.

Amember For Membership Sites:
Recently I setup a membership site for one of my clients and used amember and wordpress alone to create a very good, simple to navigate and maintain membership site.

You can run membership sites with recurring payments and also sites where you have multiple levels of memberships like: Silver, Gold, Platinum membership etc.

Basically I had installed WordPress two times. One in the root and the other in a directory called members. The root WordPress is like anyother WordPress powered blog. Its intended to be a public blog. Another WordPress installation was protected using amember and the access was allowed only to registered members. Its so simple and easy with amember.

Affiliate System To Boost Your Sales/Bussiness:
Amember also has a built-in affiliate system, which doesn’t seem to be as powerful as the dedicated affiliate system software out there. But it does its main job properly, that is, tracking the incoming affiliate traffic, setting the cookie and assigning the commission. What I would love to see is a graphical stats(pie chart, bar chart in the stats for visual representation) and some option to convert any link on the website into a affiliate code.
For example, people should be allowed to link to news letter page instead of sales letter page using their affiliate code. There are manual ways to do that of course, but a automated tool would help.
What I like the most about amember affiliate system is, we can assign affiliate code automatically to everyone who is signed up as a member(we can enable or disable this option easily in the admin area).

On the administrator side of affiliate system, it does a lot of great job. It has option to set first month affiliate payment percentage and percentage for rest of the month etc – we can even set subsequent months payment to null. This model is very helpful where members pay monthly fees and affiliate get commission for each of the payment their referrals make in the subsequent months.

Members area of amember:
In members area, members will have the option to manage their news letter subscription, there is a news letter archieve page, and affiliate statistics(that is the number of clicks, conversion etc).

With all these nice experience with amember, at one place I was stuck-up and felt like a stupid myself! That is, when I forgot my admin panel password and there was no way to recover it 🙁
I think amember purposefully have not included a option for password recovery for admin panel(other members who have signed up for your service have option for password recovery. Its only in the login page of admin panel that doesn’t have a password recovery option.)

That’s just a lesson for rest of you, don’t forget your admin panel password – you will be in trouble!

Things I like about amember:
1. Costs less.
2. It has a super easy DB backup system.
3. Integrates with a lot of open source scripts.
4. Has a lot of payment options. Including the popular PayPal.
5. Sophisticated mailing system(You can integrate it with aweber using plugin. But it works just fine even without aweber.)
6. Simple affiliate system.
7. Free installation(very important!)
8. Report import/export option.
9. DB repair option.
10. Recurring billing.
11. Good Support.
12. Active forum.
13. Good Documentation about all the features and options.
14. Members area user interface is very simple, easy to understand and get use to.
15. 30 days free trial.(very important)

What I don’t like and want to be improved:
1. Not so pleasing user interface in admin side.
2. Would like to have visual representation of stats in affiliate system.

Server Requirement:
PHP 4.3.0 or later
MySQL 3.22 or later
Unix/Linux hosting

Before you purchase any membership software or any other software for selling your products, go ahead and download the free trial of amember and try it. Remember, you get a 30 days free trial of amember.

Update: Alex informed me that, there is a nice tool to recover admin password. Here is the link aMember CP login/password.
It can be reset using this tool: FixAdmin

Top 7 Technical Mistakes Bloggers Make

This is a guest post by Ishan Sharma. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

It’s easy to get lost when you are new. After all, there’s too much to manage! You have design, content and what not. In all this mess, it is easy to make small mistakes.

Recently, I had a very bad experience when a friend’s blog got messed up because of some configuration problems and we had to setup WP and design from scratch! So I thought about writing a post that would save bloggers from making common mistakes and here they are:

Using A Free Service
Using a free host like Blogspot and WordPress.com seems good from far. But there’s a big problem with this option! You don’t own your content, the host does! Recently, blogger blocked and even deleted a lot of blogs. Among the victims was a customer who had 60,000 subscribers! Now, blogspot team is either nuts or using bots(which is likely high, considering it’s a property of big G) for blocking blogs.
In any case, the point is that you can loose a lot if you use a free platform. Consider getting a self hosted WordPress blog and while doing that, avoid the following mistakes:

Using “Cheap” Hosting
Many bloggers would move to a hosting company but would look for cheapest or worst – a free host. And the features they get are:

Regular outages.
Awful support.
Slow loading times.

Remember, you get what you pay for. Do not fall for the “unlimited bandwidth” and other tall claims! Before buying hosting, research well and shortlist 2-3 hosting companies and then compare them. It is also advisable to contact friends using different hosting companies.

Using Your Host As Domain Registrar And Vice Versa
Keeping both hosting and domain with same company is a really bad idea. Yes, there may be some discounts involved but it’s a bit dangerous.
Imagine something bad happens with your hosting company and there servers crash! Now, if you have both domain and hosting with them, your site will be completely down.

If you have domain with a different registrar, you can at least redirect it to a new page explaining something bad has happened. It won’t retain all the visitors but hey, a bird in hand is worth two in the bush!

Wrong Permalink Structure
No explanations for this one, just a quick question: Which one is better and easy to remember out of the next two URLs?

http://myblog.com/?p=123
http: //myblog.com/my-post

Of course it is the second one unless you have got a super photographic memory! Not to mention that it is also better for search engine bots(and they don’t have photographic memory even if you have! 😉 ).

You should always use a informative permalink structure for post. In WordPress, this can be easily changed by going to Settings → Permalinks. Set the structure to custom and in the text box, enter /%post-name%/ for structure like the second example. For more permalink structures, see WordPress Codex.

Using Too Many Plugins
Plugins add lot of functionality to WordPress. But the main problem with them is that it is easy to get carried away with them.
This was a mistake I made when I was new to WordPress. I fell in love with lot plugins and in first month, I had some 60 plugins active at one time. Now, you can imagine how slow the blog would have been. Thankfully, I realized it soon and uninstalled several useless ones. Now, I have around 30 plugins and performance is better.
As a rule of thumb, you should not install more than 25 plugins unless absolutely necessary and delete the inactive ones.

Not Tracking Stats
If you don’t know your stats, you are missing a lot. Using stats you can know where your visitors are spending more time on your blog, from which page they are leaving the blog, bounce rate etc. With all these data in hand, you can tweak the blog and significantly improve your blog and your readers experience.
And another thing is tracking feed subscribers. For this, you can use FeedBurner. You can use your platform’s default feed without any problems but FeedBurner has lots of advantages. First of all, you can track number of readers(although inconsistently). You can offer free e-mail subscriptions and also add AdSense to monetize your feeds.

Not Taking Backups
Taking backup is something you should start doing today.
Anything can go wrong at anytime and having a backup locally(i.e. on your hard disk) may be the only security measure. You should setup a automatic backup for your blog using a plugin like WP DBManager. For detailed tutorial, take a look at this tutorial: How To Backup A WordPress Blog.

These were top 7 mistakes that new bloggers tend to make. Do you have any tips for new bloggers? Do share with us in comments.

About Author: Hi, My name is Ishan Sharma. I am a teen entrepreneur and I love blogging and WordPress. I blog at Blogging
With Success about Blogging Tips and WordPress. If you need any type of help with your WordPress blog/website, I can be found at WordPress Blog Experts.

Top 10 Sure Principles for Effective Web Designing

This is a guest post by Buytemplates. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

1. Clear, easy web-pages:
The first step to make a website effective and striking at the first glance by the user is to make the webpages clear. The Krug’s Law of usability focuses on this very aspect—that it becomes very obvious to the user on how to utilize the website, and achieve his objective.

2. Catch the User’s attention:
It is important for the website, if used for advertising, to use techniques like emboldened fonts, moving texts, marquees, graphics, and Flash videos, images to grab the attention of the user and concentrate it on the key topics. However, it must be kept in mind that user is not confounded with too bright and confusing meshes of objects on the screen. Use this technique moderately to gain success.

3. Impressive Content:
The content of the website is actually what the user ends up reading ultimately, and hence, is one of the most influential factors for effective websites. The content should be to-the-point, easygoing, impressive in readability, and clearly understandable. Use of objective language, plain and clear statement which are at the same well written enhances the appeal of the website.

4. Concentrate on Functionality:
Users like to know clearly what functions the website offers. Displaying One-Two-Three step procedures for the users, by breaking up a task, has proved to be very effective to guide the user in a simple friendly way towards his goal. Clearly establish what the user’s next step would achieve.

5. Respect the User’s Time:
Websites which take the users to long time-consuming procedures for their own purposes, or play with the user’s patience generally tend to annoy the user. Requiring the user to fill out long details and make accounts before allowing him to do general tasks is an unnecessary task and negatively impacts the website.

6. Simplicity is still the golden rule:
Keeping the website simple is strongly recommended. This is because users enjoy navigating through simple websites in which they don’t have to comprehend much. From the color scheme to the boxes to the page structure, don’t overdo or overcomplicate things.

7. Special Effects:
Keeping it simple and using special effects at the same time is an art. Most websites incorporate special effects like Watercolors and Transparency into their web-design.

8. TETO:
This is a popular technique to keep checking and properly maintaining the website. TETO, or Test Early Test Often, which recommends regular testing and debugging of the website, so as to keep a check on problems which usually tend to occur. Testing is considered as very imperative to website design, since it can solve problems which the designer might not have predicted.

9. Communicate:
A good website talks to the user, providing him with clear concepts and ideas. Use of a clear structure and organization helps a great deal.

10. Optimize Load Time:
Users are annoyed when made to wait. Figure out and rectify if the website takes longer than usual to load. Load time should be optimized for effective websites.

Author Bio:
Buytemplates.net is a web products hub offering scores of inexpensive web templates and brochures. The site presents readymade website templates like SharePoint templates, Joomla templates, marketing brochures, and many more along with an affordable template customization service.

The 10 Most Useful Features of iOS 4

This is a guest post by James Adams. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.
The new OS for the iPhone promised to bring many new features to the table, further positioning the sleek little gadget as the best in the world. You can send email, play games, and call friends, but iOS 4 allows you to do it more easily. Here are just ten of the new features.
iphone4-ios
1. Custom Dictionary
Are you constantly seeing words that are spelled correctly highlighted because they are in your field? Now, you have a custom dictionary at your disposal. The dictionary has been updated in iOS 4 to rival the one that was issued for the iPad. You can add your new words to the OS’ dictionary.

2. Folders
With folders, you can put your iPhone applications together based on the criteria that you specify. You don’t have to bother with the clutter of having applications everywhere. You can even custom name the folders.

3. Email Scheduling
Don’t worry about going through the hassle of shutting down your mail application just to open your calendar. You can do these tasks simultaneously with the new OS. You can have your email open and then open a new application simultaneously to set a date in your calendar.

4. YouTube Zoom and Rotate
Now you can choose the way that you want your YouTube videos played. If you want to show everything in portrait mode, you have that option available. You can use the portrait mode for small clips to get a taste of the video and then shift to landscape to get the best picture. You are also able to zoom in on the parts that you want to get a better view.

5. Locking Rotation
This feature allows you to pick an orientation and have your iPhone stay with it. You will no longer have to contend with applications firing up without your permission. You can lock your iPhone with the press of a few buttons, and release it just as easily.

6. iBooks
You can shop for books any time that you want to on the iPhone. iBooks gives you a virtual library at your fingertips, making downloading new books fast and easy. Whether you’re on the road or just sitting at home, you’ll always have a book to read.

7. Web and Wikipedia Search
At one time, you could only search internally through email. Once you’ve put iOS 4 on your phone, you can search through Wikipedia and the Web to find all of the things that you need. This makes the iPhone even more of a must-have gadget.

8. Continuous Wi-Fi
Your iPhone will now stay connected so you don’t have to go back and forth with restarting applications. Your music will keep playing in the background if you’re streaming. Your Skype will stay up even when the phone itself goes dark.

9. Photo Rotation
Take the photos that you want, then resize them to your needs. Your pictures can be resized to four sizes: small, medium, large or actual size. You can rotate the pictures to your pleasure, customizing it for easier transportability.

10. Playlists
Playlists are now available to the iPhone users using the iOS 4. You can create a playlist, add or remove songs, and arrange your music to your liking. You can control your music more easily at the touch of a button.

With the new iOS 4 features, you have more functionality at your fingertips. Check them out at your own risk, you might be playing with your iPhone for hours.

This article is contributed by James who is a staff writer at a leading supplier of ink cartridges where he covers new product releases such as the HP 901XL ink cartridge as well as writing about art and design on their blog.

Target Advertising – What We Can Learn?

Target advertising has become a major success in web advertising industry. We see this in action every day on most of the websites.
Google has implemented this into their adwords system so the ads may seem more and more relevant and according to the user interest.

Example Ad:
Orkut has a lot of users from India and it collects various user data like internet speed, demographics etc — get a clue from their advertise page This is used effectively for advertising.

Video: Airtel Broadband ad on Orkut — Target Advertising

Airtel broadband ads are more targeted to low bandwidth users and these ads show the ease of uploading photos to Orkut using their high speed internet connection.

Take away message:
1. We can learn how to advertise our content, product, service effectively.
2. We should sell at a place where we have our potential customers.
3. The ad copy must convey the message properly.
4. Showing the result in action.
Ex: Showing how your product has helped someone reach their goal or improve their business or life.