Satish | Technotip.org

Santa Google has limited gifts for 2008 Christmas!

One of the thread answered by AdsenseAdvisor says:- “We really appreciate the work you all put into building great sites. However, we feel that gift-giving is not the most appropriate gesture this year given the current global economic climate. I know you may be disappointed, but I hope you can understand our efforts to be fiscally responsible in these times.”

With all these, some publishers are reporting that they have received gifts from Google.
Here are some of the pictures posted in that same forum.
T-shirt-mug-pen-mousepad-sticker

The gift package are said to be arrived via UPS and included Shirt, a Mug, a Pen, a Mouse Pad and Paper with Google Logo.
But some of them got only the Mug(Better then nothing!).
Google-Mug
Mug-Google-Closer-look

Each Christmas Google use to send such gifts to some of its selected publishers and advertiser(maybe for those who earn them a lot), but for this(2008) Christmas Google thinks not to spend more(to cut down its budget, due to global economic crisis!). So we think it will limit the gifts only to its top most publishers and advertisers. At the most it may send some greetings to other selective publishers and advertisers.
Above gift images look great. It may be lot cheaper in terms of cost, but gifts are gifts and are usually priceless.
If you want to get something from Google, then get GMail stickers by sending them stamped, self addressed envelops.

40 Bloggers Sharing their knowledge — Blog Blazers

Recently Stephane Grenier from landlordmax.com released his book BLOG BLAZERS: 40 Bloggers share their Secrets, to Creating a High-Traffic, and High-Profit Blog!
blogblazers
As you know we also do interviews of bloggers, entrepreneurs etc on our blog, So we were very much curious to read this book. As we stared reading this book, we could get a lot of very good blogs, which we never knew before. And the book is very interesting and informative. This book is packed with precious information, provided by the most experienced and influential people in the blogosphere. Each interview is about 5 pages long and the book contains 206 pages.
All the interviewee has shared what they have come across, in their way to success.
According to me, its a precious book for all bloggers and internet entrepreneurs. Because its good to learn from the people who have already learnt a lot.
So we highly recommend this book to everyone.
The book includes the interviews of most famous guys like:
Aaron Wall
Seth Godin
Stephane Grenier(Interviewing himself. And its really one of the best think to read.)
Yaro Starak
and many more..have a complete look at the interviewee here.
We have got many links to great articles around the web, from this book. We will share some of them in coming days.

Some of the questions asked are:

What’s your best tip for writing a successful blog post?

What are your main avenues for marketing your blog?

What was your most successful blog post ever?

What’s the most common mistake new bloggers make?

What turns you off most when visiting a blog?

What’s the best way to make money from your blog?

Which books and websites do you recommend to new bloggers?

Which five blogs do you regularly read?

and many more!

We are completely satisfied with the book and I am sure you will also get the value out of the book. And as a Xmas gift Stephane Grenier is offering Free shipping for Canadian and US orders and 5$(55%) off for international orders, till Xmas. And to avail this offer you need to purchase the book from the official website.
Note that the ebook version is only available from the official Blog Blazers website. In addition, if you purchase from the Blog Blazer website, you will have the option to select the “bundle package” which includes both the book and the ebook (the advantage being that you can click on the links in the ebook versus having to type them in).

Paperback – $ 16.95 USD (Free Shipping until Xmas)

Ebook [SAVE A TREE!] – $ 12.95 USD

Value Bundle Paperback + Ebook – $ 20.95 USD (Free Shipping)

You can just Google or visit BLOG BLAZERS Review page and see what people around(who have read it) the world has to say about this book. Its worth the money and the time spent on it.

If the shipping offer is expired, you can buy the book either from the Amazon or from the official website.

Take a look at Nokia N97 — To be released

After a disappointing iPhone sales in India(Due to its insane price), and release of many new iPhone killer phones like Samsung omnia, GPhone(HTC) and many other phones, Nokia has comeup with another smart phone(N Serious), Nokia N97. It is rumored to be released in European and Asian markets in Q2 of 2009 with a price tag of $700(Fingers crossed)!
Nokia-N97 (1)
Nokia-N97 (2)
Nokia-N97 (3)

As for now, we don not have much accurate information about this phone. What we have is, some photos and an official video. We got all the below information from YouTube videos. So just have a look at these videos:

Features:
* 3.5 inch TFT touchscreen display
* 360 x 640 screen resolution
* QWERTY keyboard with haptics
* 32GB of internal storage memory
* 5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and dual LED Flash
* GPS with Nokia Maps 3.0 app
* Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Infrared
* Accelerometer and proximity sensor
* 3.5mm headphone jack
* HSDPA
* Huge battery life, offering 37 hours of music and 4.5 hours of video
* microSD supporting upto 16GB external memory
So its total capacity would be 32+16 = 48GB! Great:)

Did you just postpone your decision to buy a mobile phone? Think again, I know that N97 is awesome, but N98 or N100 Would be much better and amazing(surly). Then would you wait for N100 to come?
Buy the present phones and change it if you really think the newer one has something really worth the change.
Only thing, which helps due to the release of these new improved devices is, companies like Nokia, Apple, Samsung, Sony HTC, Motorola etc will keep coming with newer devices with much more attractive features and price. Thus it will help the customers(most of the time, but not always!) and the people keep buying the newer once(benefiting the companies) or keep postponing the decision to buy a phone and wait until the next update! — These are just our views. Please share your thoughts about buying or changing a mobile phone. And also comment about the New Nokia N97. We would be happy to know something more from you people.

Fully integrated chat in orkut = GTalk + Orkut

One of our favorite features in GMail is its integrated Chat box. Now I have got another reason to stay logged into my Orkut account, whenever I am not blogging!
But with this integration, I think that the scrap books will become much like a testimonial page or spam book! Because most of the people will use the sophisticated Chat box instead of sending scraps to eachother and keep waiting and refreshing to see the new scraps!

And people may argue that, in offices and schools, the administrators will block the Chat box, so people will still be sending the scraps(as chat messages). But we think, if the administrator thinks that Chatbox in Orkut isn’t safe, then he is also likely to think that Orkut itself isn’t safe to be allowed to access!

Anyway, with this new feature we can:-
* Chat with your orkut friends in real time from directly within orkut.
* Control which of your orkut friends can chat with you.
* Chat with your Google Talk and Gmail chat contacts.
* Visit different orkut pages while keeping your chatboxes open.

My favorite thing would be, chating with GMail and Google Talk buddies using my Orkut account. Thats cool, isn’t it?
orkut-gmail-chat

You get full control of who can see you online, who can chat with you etc, in Orkut “Settings” page.
If you don’t see this feature enabled in your account yet, just be patient, Google will rollout this feature to all its users in a couple of days.
orkut-chat-settings

Till this feature is enabled to you, have a look at:

What do you think about the new features in Orkut? Do you think it will reach a state of facebook soon?

Do you love GMail? Then you may Love these Stickers too

Previously we wrote article when Adsense Stickers were sent to us. After that we also wrote when Google decided to send FeedBurner flame logo. It just shows that, we very much like the idea of making someone stick to our blog/product/service/brand, let it be in online world or in the offline wold.

We just love the T-shirts with our blog logo, ecards with logo etc.

Now GMail(Beta!), team has made some GMail stickers and they will send it on your way, if you take a step or two to get it!

Source: GMailBlog

One of three bookplate style stickers you can stick on anything from the inside of a favorite book to your laptop or your skateboard. (Trading with friends is encouraged — we realize the unicorn isn’t for everyone.) And there’s a sheet of keyboard shortcut stickers intended as a tool to help people learn Gmail’s shortcuts. The adhesive is a bit more removable than standard stickiness, so you can take them off once you’ve trained your fingers.

To Get The Stickers:
Just send a self-addressed stamped envelope (along with a note if you’re so inclined) to:
Send me some Gmail stickers already
P.O. Box 391420
Mountain View, CA 94039-1420

If you are really interested to get these Stickers, then don’t delay. They are giving one sticker per person, and they may go out of stock soon, as there are many GMail fans.

We are sticking our envelop, its almost ready to be sent(Oops its Saturday night now, and post service will be off for Saturday & Sunday!).
Those stickers are really looking interesting for us. What do you think about them?

Avoid Confusion between Search form and Email subscription form!

Have you ever found the email subscription form and the search form boxes confusing?

I have seen many people keying in some keywords(query) and hit the subscribe button bymistake and they will be taken to the popup subscription form and they will close it. And sometimes people put there email ID in the search form and press search button, expecting the subscription form to come!

This happens because the search form and the feedburner email subscription form somewhat look alike.

To avoid confusion it is recommended to show some message inside the box, like Subscribe now, Google Custome Search Engine etc. Take a look at the below image:
email-search-form
Along with these changes[adding custom message], changing its look is better, to avoid any sort of confusion.

So inorder to avoid confusion among your readers, just make them look different.
Do not make any changes(manually in the coding) to your Adsense Search Form, as it may be against Adsense TOS.

So the leftout option is email Subscription form. Make it look different. Add colored borders, make it thick, change the length of the email form, etc.
Here is some code to help you change the look of your subscription form:
Put these codes into your style.css (StyleSheet)

.emailformbutton{
cursor:pointer;
border: solid 1px #ccc;
background:#2683AE;
color:#EAF3FA;
font-weight:bold;
padding: 1px 2px;
}

Look at the below codes[marked area] and change your codes accordingly:-
email-search-form

And before feeling happy about the changed subscription form, just check it once, whether it is working properly or not. Some times it gives the error message like, you have not enabled the email subscription option in your account or something like that.
If this is the case with you, just check the coding once again and it should work(if done correctly), if you have not disabled the email subscription option in your feedburner account!

Use two Search forms to increase the pageviews

We have been experimenting with the Google Custom Search Engine, and we had put two CSE on our blog. As you can see, we have placed one at the top and one at the footer of this blog.

We could see that the number of search almost tripled and the page views were four to five(fluctuating) times more than before.

This is because, when people read the entire article, they will reach to the end of the page. Now they can see the “Related Articles”. And if they do not want to read those things and want something else, then they obviously need to search for it, and showing a search form at the end of the blog reminds them to search for the things they want.

People are lazy and they will not always scroll up and do a search on your blog. They may just think that the information isn’t available on your blog. And its frustrating to search for the required article from any achieve page manually!

So a search form at the footer helps a lot.

Now what about the page views?

Google Custom search engine and most other search engines which you can put on your blog, has the feature to select the websites from where it should search for the keywords. So each time someone uses your Search engine, he is likely to visit some other article of your own blog. This will just repeat and result in the increase of your page views.

There are many other benefits:-

1. You can know, what people are searching.

2. Earn a bit of revenue(if you want– Optional).

3. Increase page views.

4. Very useful for visitors.

Now to add Google Custom Search Engine to your website, just follow this article- “Add Custom Search Engine to your wordpress blog easily“.

After adding the Google Custom Search Engine to your blog, make sure that your articles are indexed..

Watch this video to know more about indexing, in Google Custom Search Engine:

Having two Adsense for Search or Google Custom Search Engine on a single page is allowed. But having more than two forms is against TOS and will also annoy the visitors!

Adding 2 search engine to this blog showed some positive results, but you need not take this as a rule. Every blog is different and results vary, so do some research and experiments on your blog and analyze the results and then decide whether to keep one or two search engine forms on your blog.

While placing the Search Engine forms, just keep in mind that, their placement also play a major role.

And also keep in mind that, you need to have more articles on your blog. If you have just 10 to 25 articles, then you cannot relay on the results. If that is the case with you, then stop the experiment and concentrate more on blogging and do further research when you have more articles.