Satish | Technotip.org

3 Simple Ways to Use Free Content to Expand Your Market

The internet is simply just one huge glob of free information. Learning how to design the atomic bomb used to be privileged know-how. The idea that anybody pays anything more than the few bucks a month for internet service in the pursuit of learning anything is kind of ridiculous when you consider just how much information is accessible simply by getting online and looking. While I can’t tell you the secrets of getting the equivalent of MD certification through the World Wide Web, I can certainly open your mind up to some simple ways to take advantage of all the free stuff out there that can help you in whatever pursuit you may be undertaking.

1. Online Encyclopedias
As demonstrated in the last paragraph, you can’t put a price on sites like Wikipedia. I know you’ve used it to look up the starting lineup for the 1976 Philadelphia Flyers and other novelty knowledge, but put it to use for the bettering of your venture. You can learn the whole history and science behind search engine optimization, direct marketing, or anything else to do with business strategy. But don’t stop there. If you plan on making gains in a specific region or would like to, read up on it! Seriously, anything in your life you aren’t sure about, especially things to do with your livelihood, just search for on Wikipedia. I bet you’ll always find an article on it. Still not satisfied? Scroll down to the article’s citations, which are typically accessible themselves online and branch off into specific facets of what was summarized.

2. Video Sharing
Our global means of reaching each other means we ought to think globally when considering our marketing. The multitudes of language in the world can be a problem. Luckily we have videos, and if you know where to look you can not only find thousands that can assist you in learning anything from cooking to calculus, you can find many that can help you start to understand the fledgling rules of other languages. I’m not saying listening to Futbol announcers talk for a few games in a row is going to heighten your Spanish speaking, but finding interactive content that introduces you to new cultures will often help you become more global without you even trying.

3. Social Media
A no-brainer. Using social networks to expand your market is not only easy it’s almost universally free. Not only are social networks by their nature viral in the way they allow the word to get out, participating in the spread of viral information can help you establish your own name even if the content in question has nothing to do with you.

Skip the pricey seminars and expensive language learning software. Don’t waste your time spending money for information and entertainment that the Internet gives you for free.

10 Ways to Effectively Run Your Business Outside the Office

In today’s mobile society, it’s not uncommon for business owners and professionals to travel extensively. While away from the office, however, it’s still necessary to keep business processes flowing smoothly. There are many ways you can effectively run your business when you travel.

1. Make the most of your mobile devices and applications. Not only is wireless network adapters handy, but when coupled with a wireless hotspot, they allow you to connect to the Internet virtually anywhere. These can be used with your mobile phone, iPod, laptop and more to keep you connected.

2. Use your digital camera to share photos that will help clarify instructions to support staff and co-workers. This is an ideal way to verify model numbers, give a clear example of a broken part, and send needed data to the home office and more.

3. Track deliveries and packages while away from the office via the Internet. By knowing your tracking number, you can easily access delivery information online and reassure a customer regarding an order, or verify a shipment’s proposed arrival time before calling the vendor to inquire.

4. Hire a virtual assistant to handle some of the routine tasks you need to do every day. This could include answering email, publishing a company newsletter, placing supply orders and more. The costs are reasonable and the assistance can be invaluable.

5. Take advantage of sites like Google Docs or DropBox to share files and documents, or store them for easy access wherever you are.

6. Use an online or iPhone app like RightSignature that allows you to digitally sign documents via your cell phone or Internet connection. This eliminates the need for faxing or printing and speeds up the process as well.

7. Set up QR Codes, two-dimensional codes that allow someone to use a QR scanner app to access additional information you supply. This is ideal when you want to provide additional product data, discount codes or even more detailed contact information.

8. Offer online versions of your product catalogs and brochures so customers can access the information without you needing to carry a briefcase full of printed materials.

9. Use your iPad or laptop for sales presentations. You can even provide the information on a CD or via email if your customer is computer savvy enough to access the information easily. This eliminates the need for carrying printed materials and lessens the chance of them being damaged by a spill or other mishap.

10. Use an online backup service such as iDrive to keep a backup of all your files and documents online. If needed, you can access the online version via Restore and know that you’ll always have the information you need on hand.

These are only a few of the many ways you can manage your business while traveling. Make use of those that work well for you and eliminate some of the stress associated with being away from the office when there is work to be done and projects to oversee.

Official Google Site Verification Plugin

Recently at webmasters tool, the site verification interface has been changed. They have implemented the tabbed interface with the intention of making it easy for the users. But still many people find it difficult to verify their site(s). Keeping this in mind, Google has officially come up with a WordPress plugin to help verify your site(s) and to provide some very useful information.

Benefits of verifying your site

Verify your blog with Google with only a couple clicks! No need to copy and paste tokens anymore; this plugin makes calls to the Google Site Verification API to automate the entire verification process.
Once your blog is verified, you can then view search statistics and diagnostic information for your blog in Google Webmaster Tools or use a growing number of other Google services.

Requirements
This plugin needs WordPress 3.0 (or higher), PHP 5.2.0 (or higher), the JSON PHP extensions, and the CURL PHP extensions. The plugin won’t activate if these requirements aren’t met.

Procedure
1. Activate the Google Verification plugin on the Plugins control panel.
2. Navigate to Google Verification under Settings on the left sidebar.
3. Click “Start Verification”.
4. Follow the authentication prompts. Click “Grant access” when you are prompted to give your blog access to the Google Site Verification API.
Congratulations, your blog is now verified!

Below are some screen shots to illustrate the procedure

Then I got this error message:

Verifying your blog…failed, due to an error:
Error calling https://www.googleapis.com/siteVerification/v1/webResource?verificationMethod=META&alt=json: (400) The necessary verification token could not be found on your site. Try Again. 🙁

I just kept on trying for 3 or 4 more times and for my surprise, the verification process was successful.

Connecting your Webmasters Tool account with your Google Analytics account

Linking to the right analytics profile..

Why verify your site?
Once you’ve verified your site to Google, you get easy access to a wealth of tools and data from all these Google products:

Webmaster Tools: Improve your site’s performance in Google’s organic search results.
Google Accounts: Unified sign-in for Google products.
AdPlanner: Get the data to make better-informed advertising decisions.
Profiles: Control how you appear in Google.
Knol: Share your knowledge with the world.
Blogger: Publish yourself.
AdSense: Monetize your site by displaying targeted Google ads.
Sidewiki: Contribute helpful information alongside your web page.
Apps: Get reliable, secure collaboration tools.
Merchant Center: Upload product listings to Google.

Note: Your WordPress installation will just authenticate your Google username and password and it will not store it. So it’s safe to provide access to your Google a/c.

WordPress Plugin link: Google Site Verification Plugin

Image Ad In Gmail

With the announcement of lesser and more relevant ads in Gmail, Google is trying to make those ads as appealing as possible. In this regard, they might have started showing image ads in Gmail.

Screen Shot: [Click To Enlarge]

Have you seen image ads in Gmail? How relevant do you find them with the content of the email ?

Buying External Hard Drive ?

Most of us using internet will fall short of storage space quickly. Obviously it happened with me shortly after I got my Dell Desktop and I was already in search of a good external storage device.

Old Story!
On 22-Dec-2010 I bought “Western Digital‘s” 1TB (Tera Byte) External HDD (Hard Disk) for Rs. 3700 + 5% VAT
I’m sure, now the rate might have gone still low, so I think it’s a good idea to get an External Hard Disk to take backup of your important Data.

Content of the package I bought:
USB2.0 external hard disk.
USB cable.
AC adapter.
Quick Install Guide.

Compatibility:
Formatted NTF for Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7
Requires reformatting for Mac OS X Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard.

Physical Dimensions
Height 8.02 Inches
Length 1.42 Inches
Width 4.90 Inches
Weight 2.24 Pounds

Metric
Height 203.82 mm
Length 36.14 mm
Width 124.68 mm
Weight 1.02 kg

As used for storage capacity, one megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes, and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. As used for buffer or cache, one megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 bytes. As used for transfer rate or interface, megabyte per second (MB/s) = one million bytes per second, megabit per second (Mb/s) = one million bits per second, and gigabit per second (Gb/s) = one billion bits per second.

Warranty
And not to forget, it comes with 3 years warranty.

Problem and Solution
So far I have heard complaint about their AC adapter, which is odd shaped and gets disconnected in the middle of a transfer! Thankfully, I have not experienced it(I waited as long as 4 months in testing) yet. But if you are experiencing such problems, then simply get a different kind of adapter and use it to plug your hard disk.

Fewer and Better Ads in Gmail

Who likes irrelevant ads ? If you have EVER observed ads in Gmail, you could have seen some irrelevant ads and that might have made you install some adons to remove ads from your GMail or you might have started developing a sense of ad blindness.

But Google Gmail team is taking more efforts to make those ads as relevant and useful as possible.

With the introduction of priority mail, Gmail algorithms can now track what’s important mail for you and what’s not. And they also know what goes to your inbox, and what label you apply to your mails and what kind of messages are marked as SPAM.

GMail intelligently using these signals to track your interests, tastes and will start showing lesser and more relevant ads which will make sense to you.
And you may have to overcome your ad blindness, as these ads may start giving you coupon codes / discount codes from your local store for the things which you are interested in.

Ex: If you’re exchanging mails with your friends about gifting flowers for your girl friend for her upcoming birthday, then GMail algorithm may track your interest and may start showing discount coupon for ordering fresh flowers from your local flower store, for your girl friend.

Some years back I had seen people complaining about these ads reading the personal emails! lol [But back then, it was a serious issue]. So here is Google’s small disclaimer:

As always, ads in Gmail are fully automated-no humans read your messages- and no messages or personally identifiable information about you is shared with advertisers.

And as always, you can enable or disable this feature by visiting your GMail accounts Settings -> General Tab -> Importance signals for ads.

This feature is also enabled in your Google Apps email accounts. It’s interesting to see that, this feature is enabled by default, once it is rolled over to your account.

+1 For You, By Google! [SEO]

In direct compitition with Facebook LIKE button, but with a even bigger impact, if executed as expected by Google.

Basically, Google will start showing this “+1” button for it’s adword ads, search results and eventually let websites/blogs add these “+1” buttons and help share/recommend good content to your friends or your “Social Circle“.

Source: Google Blog

If you are a webmaster and want to get invitation to get these +1 buttons for your site/blog, then signup for this newsletter from webmasters site.

Social Circle
Google Social Search helps you discover relevant content from your social connections, a set of your online friends and contacts. Content from your friends and acquaintances is sometimes more relevant and meaningful to you than content from any random person. For example, an online movie review is useful, but a movie review from your best friend can be even better.

Well, since this +1 signal will be one of the signal in determining the page rank or SERP position, some people will surely get prepared to trick it. Now have to wait and watch Google’s strategy to block it and give genuine search results and to be fair with the adword ads ranking.

Add Google Language Translator To Your Website: AJAX

No more playing with API. No more complex hacks.

We all know how weird translations these automated translator tools can make. But still we use machines for translation when there are no human beings sitting beside us for translating the wisdom words!

If you are into content publishing, it doesn’t make sense to skip/ignore the majority of non-English speaking audience.

We have analyzed our analytics data and we realize how important this Google Translation can be interms of traffic. Not everyone will be using Google Chrome which automatically asks for language translation when you visit a website written in some other language than the one set default for your browser.

After analyzing our blog’s analytics, we found that, people are less likely to translate and read theoretical stuffs, rather they will translate and read stuffs which are practical and solve their pressing problems.
Ex: If someone wants to install this Google Language Translator on their website, then they are more likely to translate this page and read it in their language and try to implement it. But if I only talk about how important the Language translation tool is, then people are less likely to translate and read. Hope you get the point.

The how-to’s kind of articles are more often read even though it’s in other languages. Because, people are not much worried about the language and the fluency, rather they want to know the easy steps to get some work done immediately.

1-2-3 steps to install AJAX Google Language Translator on your blog
1. Visit Google Language Translator page.
2. Configure the script as you wish.

You can select the translation of only a particular section of your blog/website, like the content section and leave off the sidebar, header and footer.
You can select the placement of the translator tool, which appears on your blog/website.

and make sure to include your Google Analytics web property ID, so that you can track the translations and the geography of the translation request etc data.
3. Add the javascript code to your blog and you are done.