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.

western-digital-hard-disk-cover

western-digital-hard-disk

western-digital-hard-disk-sideview

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.

5 Steps to Organizing and Optimizing Your Blog

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

As a person who has worked in the self-storage industry for years, I’ve come to understand the importance of neatness and organization. I’ve seen my share of well-organized and well-maintained storage units. I’ve also seen units where I’ve opened up the storage unit door only to be overwhelmed by a room full of chaos.

Avoiding Blog Clutter
As an avid reader of blogs, I often get the same feeling when I read a blog as I do when I open up a storage unit door. Some blogs are a pleasure to read. The subject matter is clear, the points are thoughtful and concise, and the message is consistent. In other words, the blog is well organized and well written. However, others remind me very much of the cluttered storage unit. The message is disorganized, the flow is uneven, and the writer’s thoughts ramble all over the place.

Which type of blog would you rather read?

organized

When people first open a door to any establishment, and the initial appearance is one of orderliness, they feel good about where they are and what they see. If they are able to find what they are looking for, they feel rewarded and are eager to return again and again. People react the same way to blogs. If the blog is well organized and a person finds what he is looking for, he is likely to jump on board…and then come back for more. So how exactly does a writer go about avoiding blog clutter? Here are five steps to keeping your blogs organized and clutter-free:

Step 1: Formulate your subject matter well. OK, so you know what you are going to write about, but how well do you know the topic? Do your research! Preparation is half the battle.
Formulate the exact question or questions you want your blog to answer. Then start writing down everything you know or learn about your topic that relates to these questions. Brainstorm if you must. Include everything that comes across your mind and everything you found in your research. You may not use all of it in your blog but that’s OK. You will have the information you need in front of you and you will have reviewed the topic in your mind. Now you are ready to organize that information.

Step 2: Construct the outline for your blog. Most blogs are like sandwiches: an introductory paragraph or two, the meat in the middle, and a wrap-up at the end. The introduction usually gives your readers the answer to the subject question(s) right away and then the “meat” explains the reasons for this answer. Most often, these reasons are in the form of bullet points (or a list). Jot down the titles of these bullet points. Let’s say there are five of them. Now you have the skeletal outline of your blog: an introduction, five bullet points, and a conclusion—seven sections in all. So take every piece of information you wrote down in step 1 and, one by one, place it in whichever of these sections it best fits. You will end up with seven sections, each one populated with several pieces of information that you can use to write about that section. Now, do the actual writing, or more precisely, let the blog write itself – one section at a time.

Step 3: Make it easy to read. One of the reasons you use bullet points or lists is because they catch the reader’s eye and are easy to scan. You should carry the same philosophy
throughout your blog – make it easy and pleasurable to read. Express your thoughts in a simple straightforward way. Inject the prose with humor and don’t be afraid to let your personality shine through. If your blog is interesting, people will read it!

Step 4: Don’t lose your focus. Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away and start to ramble. Don’t fall into this trap. Focus on your message and stay on point. Make sure that every sentence you write within a certain section of your post is fully related to the point you are trying to make in that section. Nobody wants to read a long-winded ramble. Get to the point and then move on!

Step 5: (When you think you are done) Read, re-read, and then re-read again! Proofreading is essential to anything you write and blogs are no exception. It works even better when you
step away from it for an hour or two and then go back and proofread. You will catch silly mistakes, faulty spelling, and grammatical errors. But even more importantly you will be putting yourself in the shoes of your readers. You can see if the content is clear, easy to read, and easy to understand. You will be able to see if the sequencing is logical and how smoothly each section flows into the next. And you can also tell whether your blog is interesting and captivating enough to hold a reader’s attention. If not, go back and keep tweaking until it looks just right.

Blog clutter is easy to avoid. The key is to not let the clutter build up in the first place. If you plan and organize your blog from the outset, your blog will be like a storage unit with neat shelves and a place where everything belongs. Make your readers feel good about your blogs. Avoid the clutter and you will get them coming back for more.

Kenneth McCall is director of IT for storage. In this role he builds the systems that help customers find the best self storage units for their needs.

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.


Gmail-improved-ads-coupons

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.

google-translator-guide

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.

Way To Sponsored Tweets: BuySellAds

Ever since the talks started around the web regarding monetizing Twitter and the apps which are built around twitter, Sponsored Tweets has been hot topic!

We also tried Sponsored tweets and we were somewhat successful with it: Guide To Make Money Via Twitter: We Hate Spam Too!

But if you have been making money online, then you know the risk of depending on only one source of income. It is the same for advertisers too. They can’t rely on banner ads only. So BuySellAds might have thought of giving another popular option for advertisers.



As sponsored tweets concept has been controversial ever since its inception. But what BSA is doing right is, it’s giving full control in the hands of advertisers and publishers. Advertiser can select twitterer’s based on some criteria and publisher will decide if he or she wants to send out that tweet or not.

One other interesting thing is, the minimum amount per tweet is $10; and you can fix anything above this.
This makes it interesting, as some of the blogs charge as low as $10 to $15 for banner ads, and now they are having the opportunity to earn $10+ per tweet!

This also makes sure, the advertisers are mostly big players and mostly have better product.

We have to wait and see how successful BSA will be with this new advertising format.

Note: All the sponsored tweets will be forced to include Ad in it. Hence the disclosure.

Want to know how to get more Twitter followers ?
Then you would love reading this: 60+ Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers

Animate your story or create a video slideshow: YouTube

YouTube has made creating memorable slideshow’s and video’s even easier by integrating GoAnimate, Stupeflix Video Maker and Xtranormal Movie Maker.

Now capturing/creating that nostalgic moments of your life, like, the last day of your college, college trips or family trips or your baby’s birthday or anniversary slideshows or videos is at your finger tips.

Goto http://www.youtube.com/create click on your favorite app and authorize it. Now create your slideshow or remix video and directly publish it via your YouTube account.

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slideshow-animate-services

authorize

To revoke any unintentional authorization, goto “My Videos” -> “Account Settings” -> “Authorized Sites” Manage third-party access to your YouTube account.

Adsense Ads With New Label

This is a quick short post about the upcoming changes in the adsense ads.
Hope you have noticed the “i” icon that expands to an “Ads by Google” label in the bottom corner of some of the adsense ads. This icon will soon change to an arrow icon which expands to show “AdChoices” label.


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adsense-new-shoe-store-ad

Here is an except from Google blog:

We’ll soon start to change our in-ads notice icon to a new icon that expands to an “AdChoices” label. These notifications were developed by the online advertising industry’s Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising to more proactively give users notice and choice about the ads they see. With the change from our “i” icon and “Ads by Google” label to these new notifications, we hope to show our support for this cross-industry initiative, and to increase our users’ understanding about ad choices through adoption of an icon they’ll see on ads across the web.

Source: Adsense blog