September, 2011

How To Migrate From Stand-alone bbPress to bbPress plugin

Hope you know about the latest buzz in the WordPress world!! They have released the stable version of bbpress WordPress plugin to the general public and it is called bbpress 2.0

The main advantage is, you do not have to worry about the WordPress integration anymore, because it’s now an extension of WordPress and it integrates with WordPress seamlessly.

What if you were using stand-alone versions of bbpress so far and now want to switch to the latest bbpress plugin without losing your valuable content.

There is a easy way to do this.

Goto WordPress Plugin Directory, download bbpress plugin and install it, as you install any other normal plugin.

Now inside your WordPress dashboard, under Tools, click on Import.
Now click on bbPress Standalone(Import your bbPress standalone board.)

Make sure to backup everything before proceeding further.

Now give the path to bb-config.php file of your old installation. and hit proceed.

Once the process is completed, you can check it by renaming the old forum installation folder to something else and check working of new forum by visiting yourdomainname.com/forums/

How To Double Your YouTube Partnership Earnings: Instantly

If you are a YouTube partner, you might have read a lot of advice articles in those early days of your vlogging(as it is called!) to increase your earnings. Some of them are:
1. Produce and upload videos consistently.
2. Get more subscribers.
3. Treat your YouTube page as landing page.
4. Get more and more traffic.
5. Have your own website.
6. Build your list etc etc..

and yes all these are still true. But how much time will it take to do all these things?

To Increase YouTube Partnership Earnings: just enable Instream ads on all your videos. After this, start with those website building, list building, body building etc!

Steps To Enable Instream Ads:
Step 1: Log into your YouTube account.
Step 2: Click on Videos under My Account.
Step 3: Now click on “Edit Info” under the video for which you want this Instream ads to be enabled.
Step 4: Under “Info and Settings” tab, broadcasting and sharing options -> Click on “Advertising Option”.
Now Enable:
Allow InVideo advertising for this video.
Allow AdSense overlay advertising for this video.
Allow Instream advertising for this video.
Instream Formats:
Enable Standard Instream for ads
Enable TrueView Instream for ads

Step 5: Now follow the same procedure for all the videos, individually.

For lengthy videos we can even enable: Pre-roll ads and Post-roll ads and can specify the time of appearance of these ads on our video. And this is treated as allocating the ad slot on our video time line.

Ad Slot:

Please enter the times at which natural breaks occur in the content of your video. Mid-roll ads will be shown at these times, subject to YouTube policy which limits their frequency. Ads must be spaced by at least 7 minutes, including the pre-roll.
Show pre-roll ads
Natural breaks in mm:ss OR hh:mm:ss (do NOT use mm:ss:ff):
Mid-roll ads will be shown at these breaks:
Show post-roll ads

CPC or CPM ads?
There are lot of confusion among YouTube partners about their earnings. I have seen people asking about the ad type and the match between their YouTube views and the number of impressions and earnings in their adsense account!

But I find it quite simple. The number of views in your YouTube account and the number of impressions in your adsense account need not be same. As most of the text based ads which are shown on your videos are not counted towards impressions. So these numbers usually vary a lot.

Instream ads and pre-roll, post-roll ads are basically CPM ads and you can expect very good returns if you have viral video or valuable videos that people are already watching.

Ads or No Ads
It depends on what kind of stuffs you are sharing. If you are uploading shit load of crap, then ofcourse the viewers will get even more pissed off by these Standard Instream ads, TrueView Instream ads, Pre-roll ads, post-roll ads and whatever. But if you are providing valuable content for free, then your viewers would surely be happy for you, as you earn while they learn from you.

And these ads may not be suitable if you are producing short videos. Imagine how it feels to watch ads for 15 seconds for a video of 30 to 50 seconds. Doesn’t quite look good, right?

Listen too much or too little, you would fail. Do your research, apply your mind:
People who usually say NO ADS are the once who have full ad in their video i.e., they might have a product and the video may be a pitch to it. So these people usually get on to YouTube trying to sell their shit, so they resist other ads and advice others also stay away from those silly looking cheap ads.
Having our own product is nice for income. But I still find ads as a good source of income. And I love the idea of sponsorship, wherein we give everything for free, help people, and these sponsors or advertisers pay us for our hard work, our viewers get value, advertisers get exposure, we get to make some money for our effort: and it helps us keep the service free. Win-Win-Win.

Haven’t seen Instream ads ?
These Instream ads won’t run in all countries all the time. My guess is, it does run most of the times in United States, United Kingdom, Australia etc. But when there are high paying advertisers in any country these Instream ads start showing up(geo-targeting), hence your earnings go up.

For Example, in India, Bollywood is a big industry. When there is big banner movie coming up, they highly invest in YouTube ads and hence we see these Instream ads show up often. We just have to enable this and watch for the increase in revenue $$

Even before I got into YouTube partnership program, I use to really enjoy watching these instream video ads. They are so creative and high definition ads which will surly catch your viewers attention and try to entertain them.

Over To You:
To enable Instream ads or not is left to individual choice. I’m just informing: How you can Double or even Triple Your YouTube Partnership Earnings….instantly, without almost doing anything.

Google’s +1 On Adsense Ads: Demo Video!

Well the +1 button has even made it’s way on Adsense ads.. yes starting from October 2011 Google’s +1 button along with the people(your friends) who pressed this +1 button will be shown at the bottom of Adsense for Content ads and Adsense for Mobile Ads.

Example on Google’s blog:

For example, take Susan, who sees an ad for a good deal on flights. She +1’s the ad, thinking her friends might value this deal. Now, when Susan’s friends and contacts are signed in to their Google accounts, they’ll be able to see Susan’s picture across the bottom of the ad, with a note saying she +1’d it.

Susan’s friends and contacts will also be more likely to see the ad. While the dynamics of our ad auction aren’t changing, the ad will now be included in the auction for the pages Susan’s friends visit, as we know recommendations from friends can be a strong signal of an ad’s relevance.

Source: Adsense blog

My question is: will Susan click on the ad first or the +1 button ? If Susan click on the ad, then how can she click on +1 ? On the other hand, if Susan clicks on +1, then “how does she know if it’s a better product without even first visiting the site?”

So, basically this +1 will help big brands build up their tribe with these creative ads and recommend others to view it too. So I guess, this feature will increase the click through rates of big brands or recognized ads more and the one’s with highly creative ad.

Google Adword Promotional Ad
Google has already started showing Adword ads featuring this +1 and giving $75 for the first time users! Below is a video of the ad which appeared on our blog today.

To Opt-out of this feature: For publishers
Step 1: Log into your Adsense account.
Step 2: Click on “Try the new AdSense interface” at the top right corner.
Step 3: “Allow & block ads” tab.
Step 4: In the left hand sidebar, “Advanced settings” under Blocking options.
Step 5: Click on the check box, to enable or disable:

i. Interest-based Ads Preference: Show ads based on user interest categories. Visitation information from my sites may be used to help create interest categories.
ii. Third Party Ads Preference: Allow advertisers to use their audience information to deliver more relevant ads to my site.
iii. Social Ads Preference: Allow the use of +1 related features and social annotations in ads.

Adsense for Mobile:
I’m particularly interested in seeing how this could work on Adsense for Mobile ads. I’m so much into using my Xperia Arc and hence many android Applications.
It would be nice to have +1 in the adsense ads which are shown in these applications.

On mobile, the +1 button will replace the existing ‘g’ logo and recommendations will appear for several seconds, then fade out.

And no, clicking on +1 button won’t generate any revenue in your adsense account directly. Google hopes, it would increase the CTR(Click Through Rate) of your ads and hence your revenue will be increased.

+1’s will be one additional signal that help determine an ad’s relevance. All eligible ads will continue to compete in the ad auction, and we’ll continue to show the ones that will generate the most revenue for you. +1 button clicks are not counted as clicks on ads. Although you won’t receive any revenue for +1 button clicks, +1’s will help AdSense to deliver more useful ads to your users, which we think will result in higher returns over time.

For adword users though, it would help get more exposure. But the normal auctioning will continue..
As publishers we get the option to opt-in or opt-out of these Social Ad Preferences, so no complaining around. Opt-in or Opt-out, it’s left to you.

Enhance your Blogging Experience with Select Bowser Add-ons and Plugins

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

Bloggers know that running a blog is not a simple task: it takes a lot of time and effort to ensure that your blog is constantly updated with valuable and unique content and that it’s aesthetically pleasing—aesthetics play a huge role in attracting a strong audience; and as many bloggers may already know, without a strong audience it’s very difficult to earn revenue from your blog(s). But there are certain web browser “add-ons” that can simplify the way you go about running your blog, can help you appear higher in search engine rankings so that you increase your traffic, and can even make the blogging experience more engaging for your readers—and the best part? They’re all free. To learn what these add-ons are, continue reading below.

1. ScribeFire Blog Editor:

This add-on, which is designed to “fire up your blogging,” acts as the ultimate organizational tool to maintain your blog(s)—it allows users to post, edit, add tags, write notes and save post drafts all from a designated central area. It even allows users to add photos to your blog(s) by simply dragging and dropping images from your desktop –no need to upload or copy and paste any links. The add-on is available for most of the major web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox and Safari and supports most major blog platforms, including WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, and Tumblr just to name a few.

2. Zemanata:

One of the easiest ways to gain trust from your readers is to post content that is backed by authoritative and reliable sources. This add-on is a convenient tool that simultaneously formulates a list of relatable links, tags and spam-free news articles and supporting images as you type your posts—you can even filter the results to find copyright free content. This way you don’t have to waste precious time scouring search engines to find what you are looking for. This add-on also supports most major blog platforms, including WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr and works on most of the major web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

3. All-in-One SEO Pack (plugin):

If you decide to only download one add-on designed to improve search engine rankings, this is “the” add-on to have—this free extension helps you do pretty much everything: it automatically generates Meta descriptions and helps you generate keywords; it helps you create titles for the best optimization; it gives you suggestions so that you can create the best page navigation links and canonical URLs; and it even helps you avoid posting duplicate content which can get you in all sorts of trouble with search engines (your site can get suspended and you might just get sued for copyright infringement). And with more than 8 million downloads to date, the plug-in has proven to be effective time and time again. This add-on is unfortunately only available for WordPress users.

4. Tin Eye:

This add-on is the perfect addition for bloggers who want to improve the quality of their photos. This is how it works: the add-on uses “reverse image” software to locate either the original source of an image you found so that you can give proper credit or check its copyright; or you can upload a poor quality photo to find a higher resolution alternative. This add-on supports all major web browsers.

5. Broken Link Checker (plugin):

Ask any SEO expert and they will inform you that one of the major no-no’s is containing broken links in your blog posts. Not only will search engines not file and store pages with broken links (which ultimately harms and weakens your rankings), but your readers may lose trust in your site all together—how reliable do you seem linking to sources that lead to dead, 404 sites? But even if you’re careful about writing the correct HTML coding sometimes sites just expire. Here’s where this particular plug-in comes to the rescue: it monitors all of the content in your blog, including new and old, and regularly checks for broken links found in posts and comments so that you can immediately correct the issue. This add-on is only available for WordPress users.

6. Outbrain Ratings:

This add-on, which is technically more of a widget, is great because not only does it allow users to rate your posts as the title suggests (which can help your audience be more engaged with your blog), but it also can suggest other posts that are related to the one they are currently reading—this adds traffic and increases page views to both new and old articles/posts. Like all the others, this widget supports all major blog platforms and web browsers.

7. Translate Gadget:

An excellent way to increase your number of followers is to make yourself accessible to non-English speakers. In order to do this, all you need to do is simply download this add-on which allows your foreign readers to translate your blog content to their native tongue.

8. Google Analytics (plugin):

Lastly, there is no point in trying to make your blog the most recognizable blog the internet has to offer if you don’t even know if people are visiting your site. With this plug-in however, you will be able to monitor and keep track of all your web traffic so that you can know if all of your hard work is paying off. This plug-in will not only allow you to see outbound clicks and page views associated with each author and category, but it will also give you some great insight into your readers’ behavior—it can show you what kind of content your audience favors and is more likely to read so that you can cater to them. Available for WordPress users.

Author Bio:
This is a guest post by Nadia Jones who blogs at online college about education, college, student, teacher, money saving, movie related topics. You can reach her at nadia.jones5 @ gmail.com.

How to Edit Videos in YouTube

Now YouTube offers basic editing tools, to edit and add effects to the uploaded videos and you can retain the same content ID to it even after the edit and save.

Note:
Videos with over 1,000 views and videos with third-party content can only be saved as new videos once edited.

Features:
Trim: You can edit cut and remove the unwanted ends of the video.
Rotate: You can rotate the video.
Stabilize: Revoke Shaky Camera Motions.

I’m Feeling Lucky: One-click fix for lighting and color.

Fill Light: Values from 0 to 5.
Contrast: Values from 0 to 5.
Saturation: Values from 0 to 5.
Color Temperature: Values from 0 to 5.

There is a “Revert to Original” button, so that you can revert to the original, if you do some mistake while editing. So, fear not, give it a try!

Effects: To add effects to the video..chose the effects from the library. YouTube with collaboration of Picnik, has made this effects look effective with just click of a button.

Finally after all the edit, hit the “Save” button at the top right hand corner to save the changes or just click on “Cancel” to cancel the edit.

Audio tab: Swap out the audio soundtrack on your video with free tracks from the library.

So give it a try, and let us know what you feel..

Sony Ericsson Xperia Review: Cons

I purchased Xperia Arc on June 01, 2011 on my birthday. And to remind you, Samsung Gallexy S2 wasn’t released yet, and I knew it would cost more than Xperia Arc!

There are many other better smart phones available already in the market for the same price. I took this for Rs. 26650 in the month of June 2011. So I still think, it’s not a bad deal.

Cons of Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc:
1. It sucks..as it does not have a front camera 🙁 Hence you can’t enjoy video calling. What an idea sur ji! 3G ka satyanas.

2. Charging port. Its damn problematic. The charger pin is like fork and if you slightly miss while plugging, it will straightly strike on your mobile screen and cause big deep scratches.(It has already happened with me 🙁 )

3. If you decide to take off your memory card for some reason, you have to switch off the phone, remove the phone battery and then the memory card. Dude its 2011, make it fast.

4. If you disconnect your wifi, while some applications using the net is still ON, the phone freeze’s for some time, and a message pops up and asks if it has to force shutdown the app or wait till it recovers the shock!

5. It doesn’t have fake calling, like that of Samsung Monti!

6. The pouch which comes along with the phone is neat, but WTF it doesn’t have a locking system. I mean, the phone immediately slides out of the cover and falls off. No protection at all. So this nice cover is of no use, we have to take new pouch if you don’t want your phone to fall off.

7. Speakers: Sony Ericson speakers are so popular for its quality. But the battery dies in less than 8hrs.

8. Battery Backup: If used with wifi, it lasts for about 12 – 14hrs. But I once used the phone to chat with my friends for 12hrs and the battery lasted for 12hrs. Very bad.
It has got a huge battery, so thought they would have improvised it. Better luck next time.

9. Bluetooth automatically sets to invisible mode. Have to make it “Discoverable” each time. And in the beginning people may think that the phone has soon Bluetooth connectivity issues.

10. Biggest of all…. it takes a lot of time to boot. What boot time you may guess of a smart phone ? 10 seconds, 20, ok 30 ?
Well Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc takes almost 3 minutes to boot.

11. Phone freezes even when you are chatting with multiple friends and you switch between messages very fast: And well, that may be because I’m too faster than the mobile processor.

12. You can’t send sms’es to multiple contact at once. And believe me, it’s really a smart phone.

13. No 1080p HD recording.

14. And I personally didn’t like timescape app.

15. The camera click button in the side is very small. You can’t even properly hold it and press.

16. The charger wire and the USB cable(which is same: 2 in 1) is too short. We need to have a chair or table to place the phone while charging and while using as a USB device.

17. Doesn’t have a built in voice recorder..thank god we have some apps which does it. But again, inbuilt voice recorder could have been cool.

18. The charger and USB slot in the phone is too small and is very tight, so we can’t unplug the wire so easily. Over time, this slot is prone to damage quickly.

19. On the home screen we can pinch the screen to see the overview. But in the overview mode, the time stops updating!! We need to exit the overview mode inorder to see the proper time again(if we don’t have the time displayed in the upper top right corner).

20. You can’t take screen shot directly on your device(without connecting it to a PC) without rooting the phone. update: Hope this is solved with OS upgrade.

21. Threaded messaging(SMS) is cool, but once you have a lot of messages in the thread, it takes a lot of time to open and sometimes freezes and asks if it has to force close it 🙁

22. There is no quick spot to know what apps are running in the background.
This list will grow as and when I find some faults with the device..

So should you not buy this phone ? Well, don’t come to that conclusion yet. But yes, there are already a lot of better smart phones in the market, so you surly have a lot of alternatives. But Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc isn’t that bad too. Please subscriber to read the Pros of the phone…soon to be published on this blog 😉

For more photos, videos and specs info: Gifted Myself: Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc!

Do You Have ‘Subscribe Button’ on Your Facebook Profile ?

Facebook is now allowing you to get updates from others public status updates via Subscribe Button.
For you to subscribe, the person you are interested in must enable this subscribe button

Facebook is now allowing you to get updates from others public status updates via Subscribe Button.

For you to subscribe, the person you are interested in must enable this subscribe button.

If you want to add ‘Subscribe Button’ to your Facebook profile, simple goto http://www.facebook.com/about/subscriptions and click on Allow Subscribers button.

Now you can see, subscription and subscriber info links along with the profile info, wall, photo, friends, Notes links below your Facebook DP.

Hear from interesting people
You’ve always been subscribed to friends. Now you can hear from journalists, celebrities, political figures and other people too. Click the Subscribe button on someone’s profile to get their public updates in your News Feed.

Fine-tune your News Feed
Use the Subscribe button to choose what you see from friends and others in News Feed. For each person, you could hide all game stories, see just photos, limit updates to life events and more.

Why do all my friends have a ‘Subscribed’ button?

You’ve always been subscribed to your friends. With the Subscribe button, you can choose which of their updates you get.
Why don’t all profiles have a Subscribe button?

Only people who allow subscribers will have a Subscribe button on their profile. If you don’t see the button, you can’t subscribe.
How do people subscribe to my updates?

After you allow subscribers, a Subscribe button will show up on your profile. Your public updates will appear in people’s News Feeds once they click this button.
If I allow subscribers, what updates will they see?

Subscribers can see only the things you share publicly. They can also choose how many and what types of these public updates they get.

You can subscribe to my public updates here http://www.facebook.com/technotip 😉