Technotip.org - Part 35

Digg.com to replace its SHOUT feature

Digg.com has decided to replace its infamous Shout feature with Share the story on Twitter, FaceBook and email. And this feature is expected to be rolled out to all users this weekend.

Its inevitable for Digg to give importance to Twitter and FaceBook which has grown up so fast.

Many bloggers and online marketers feel that this move from Digg will be welcomed happily by its users.

This move has both advantages as well as disadvantages:
Advantages:
1. There will be constant exchange of traffic between twitter, FaceBook and digg. This is advantage for Digg, as people will not forget Digg over time 🙂
2. We feel connecting with people as more fun in Twitter and FaceBook than to be friend in Digg.com, where the main intention to make friendship may be to get more Diggs!
3. This gives more reasons to join Twitter and FaceBook, if you yet don’t have an account.
4. Now we can expect the end of monopoly of Digg power users! Now it may be the turn of Twitter power users 🙂
But we can convince a twitter user to re-tweet our tweets, if the story is really interesting. But in Digg, people will most probably ignore our requests as 90% of them would be spam 🙁
5. Spammers can not easily target Twitter and FaceBook users, as we are more choosy in following someone. And others can’t hurt our privacy.

Disadvantages:
1. We can not connect with like minded people on digg!
2. We need to be popular somewhere else to get our article to the front page of Digg!
3. We may start getting more spam mails than ever before, if not handled properly.
4. Spammers may try more innovative means to spam Twitter and FaceBook.

We can already see the integration of Twitter, FaceBook and EMAIL as means to share the stories in DIGG BAR. But the Digg bar wasn’t received by digg users happily. Only way Digg can improve itself is by constant testing, testing and testing, and implementing things according to user feedback.

What do you feel about this move from DIGG ?.

Interview with BuddingBloggers + Contest

Today we have Satish Gandham, UG student from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, a blogger @ GeniusHackers.com and the founder of BuddingBloggers, for the interview. Whats interesting about him is, through BuddingBloggers program, he is providing free domains and top class ad free hosting and lots of other freebies for able bloggers. He was kind enough to give us a interview. So we could ask more about his new service BuddingBloggers.

Here is the interview:-

1. What is BuddingBloggers service about ?

The common problem faced by many bloggers during the initial stages of their blogging career is not having a reliable hosting and a domain name. So we are going to provide able bloggers with free domain names, top class ad free hosting, and freebies like premium wordpress themes. We motivate them and keep them inspired.

2. What are the long term benefits for you, as a company? Because you do not even show ads on the websites that are hosted by buddingbloggers!

We place our badge and our sponsors badge on the participants’ blogs, that will help us build our brand. We also place 5 sponsored links (Like the blog rolls) on the blogs, that will help us pay the domain and the hosting fee. We will also place ads on your support blog, right now there isn’t enough traffic any, I prefer clean look over the few cents from adsense.

3. Under Whose name will the domain be registered?

I’m currently registering the domains under my name, later they will be transferred to w3mixx.Com, My future web solutions company.

4. If someone already have a website, and needs to terminate as he/she is not able to pay for his domain and hosting. In such case will you provide free hosting, for already existing domain and transfer the hosted files to buddingbloggers?

Yes, We will renew the domain and provide free hosting.

5. Is your program permitted only for bloggers?

Our program focuses primarily on bloggers, but we are also open to people who are keen to make their web presence felt.

6. Please share about your business model.

We just want to help upcoming bloggers, and build a strong community, where a member of BuddingBloggers gets a special respect among the bloggers community.

7. How are you different from your competitors? And what do you do to standout off the crowd?

We provide top class web hosting. We will never shut down. Our service is almost ads free, we provide guidance and technical support. We organize contests to keep the bloggers motivated. We have prizes for the best and innovative bloggers.
For every participant we accept, we set some reserve money which will back him up in case if we ever have to quit this project. (This is not to hint that we are going to quit some day,” Hope for the best, plan for the worst”)
Your blog is completely secured with BuddingBloggers, we will never let you down.

8. Do you place any ads on the sponsored blogs?

We don’t place any ads except for the small sponsorship badge and 5 unobtrusive text links.

9. Is BuddingBloggers affected by the “First mover advantage theory”. As I see that there were and still are some other services giving free domain and hosting.

We haven’t done full fledged advertising yet, so can’t comment on that.

10. Why do you think people will use your service?

One obvious reason for which i would have wanted to use this service 2 years ago.
“They either don’t have money or don’t have the credit card or paypal to pay for the domain and hosting”

11. What are the common mistakes that people do, after registering their domain/hosting from buddingbloggers?

The common mistake I see is when they apply, Most of the applications we get are incomplete, and we simply ignore them.
They can not expect us to give a free domain name if they don’t have the patience to fill the application.
Once they are in, its our mistake if they screw up or not active. We either have not selected the right participant or we haven’t provided the right support.

12. How big / small is your company?

Our company is very small at the moment, I work from my hostel. HackMinded @ HackersLane.com and Saurabh @ vlovers.com (participants of BuddingBloggers) help me in reviewing the applications and maintaining the forum.
We don’t have any physical office right now. We may have one after I get out of college next year.

13. Can we know about the configuration of the server you use to host the websites?

We are currently having a VPS at Doreo, we will soon be moving to a dedicated server. We are planning to setup our own data center next year.

14. What about the uptime records of the servers?

Doreo has literally 100% up time, they are pricey and they provide the value for the price.

15. Do you think, a serious blogger who want to earn his living from his blog should go with his own domain & hosting or he has to obtain it from BuddingBloggers?

I think they should join BuddingBloggers, we are providing all the services for free including the technical support, joining BuddingBloggers will give more exposure to their blog.
We have lots of contests and freebies to keep them motivated.

16. What are your advice for a person who is new to blogging and want to create an account with blogspot.com or wordpress.com ?

If you are serious about blogging, buy your domain and start with wordpress as you blogging platform. If you cannot afford to buy a domain or hosting, give us a try.

17. What are the strict rules(policies) that your customers should follow, in order to be your customer?

Have the passion for blogging and blog regularly.

18. Earning opportunity using your services?

Participants can monetize their blog in every possible way, we don’t place ads from any ad networks. So they can use adsense, adbrite, bidvertiser, chitika, clicksor etc..
They can also write some sponsored posts.

19. What are the future plans for BuddingBloggers?

We want to build a strong community and give it a status where people take pride in being a member of BuddingBloggers. In future people who can afford to buy own domain and hosting may join BuddingBloggers just to be a part of the community.

20. You are having a blog which is already popular, did this add to the popularity of buddingbloggers?

Yep, I blog at GeniusHackers.Com, I think it is popular 🙂

21. Is this your full time job?

No, this is not my full time job. I’m doing my final year of Bachelors in Chemical Science and Technology @ Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.

22. How do you define success?

Success is reaching the goals you set for yourself, at the end you should be happy with what you have done and be able to enjoy it.

23. Is there a story for the birth of BuddingBloggers. If so, then please share with our readers.

I started blogging for fun, my first blog was huntme.wordpress.com. I had no plan to monetize my blog initially, I started getting 1000+ page views per day within 10 days.
This traffic going useless bothered me, so I offered some downloads related to the posts on some free web hosting account and monetized that page with adsense. The results were quite good. When everything was going smoothly, one day my blog was suspended as i was diverting traffic from it to my downloads page with ads. After that i had to hang around with some free web hosts as I was not having a paypal account or credit card to pay. When this wordpress and other free posts kicked my blog out after getting established, all the time and effort I put in my blog for months was wasted.
Now I have an established blog and making enough money from it, so I wanted to prevent at least some bloggers from facing the problems I had in my early days of blogging career.

24. Please share the story of “your journey to blogging” and online world as a whole.

I started blogging just to improve my writing skills, I blogged for myself. Luckily people liked what i wrote and my blog was successful 🙂 , unfortunately that was banned. Then I had to hang around with some free webhosts, until I found a web hosting company accepting payment from online bank transfer. I bought a domain and hosting, from then there is no looking back 😀 .
I used to spend lot of my time on developing new content, tweaking the blog look and design. PHP and HTML/CSS that I learned as a hobby came in very handy in maintaining the blog. I won a premium theme in a contest at BlogOhBlog.Com, that premium theme gave a new look and authority to my blog. That’s the first tipping point of my blog. Then there was blogging idol contest @ DailyBlogTips.Com where we had to increase our feed count, I started a rapidshare give away. That kicked my feed count from 500 to 6000+ in 3 months (Unfortunately i couldnt win that contest as this idea stuck to me when the contest was about to close )

Hope you all enjoyed the interview. For more details and latest updates about the service visit BuddingBloggers. And please pass this interview link to all your friends to whom you think it will be of some use(ad free, Free hosting + Free Domain ). And please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Contest: Tweet this article and we will select one lucky winner and will give you a domain(of your choice) for free. The domain will be registered in your name for 1 year, and you are free to host it anywhere. I sponsored this contest to motivate people to spread the news about BuddingBloggers service, it will surly help many people.
Even though you are not in need of a domain, please make sure that you tweet about this article, it may help someone following you.

RT: Enter the chance to win a free domain. Follow @technotip, visit http://bit.ly/kM7dH and RT to help your followers

New Look for Webmasters Tool

In 2006, Webmaster Tool began as a way for webmasters to submit Sitemaps.

webmasters-tool-redesign — Webmasters Tool Re-designed

The important aspects in this redesign are:
1. Faster loading.
2. Easier navigation.
3. More search query list, to which our site appeared in search engines.
4. Display thinks in the form of table. Looks very clean and readable.

Over all the redesign is impressive. And there is no major feature added or removed from the previous version.

Adsense Cheque Received via Blue Dart

After a long wait, we received the Adsense cheque from Blue Dart. It arrived nicely packed with Google India, Hyderabad office seal on it! We really miss those Singapore, Buffalo and New York seal 🙂
blue-dart-adsense-cheque
The tracking code is now available in all Indian publishers adsense account and can be found in their payment history link, if they are eligible for payment.

AdSense Account > Payment History > Payment Issued – Details

Here is the full mail which adsense team sent to us:

Hello,

We’d like to inform you that your most recent AdSense check has been shipped via Blue Dart. You can now find a Blue Dart tracking number in your AdSense account. For your convenience, we’ve also included this tracking number here: XXXXXXXXXXX.

You can use this number to track your payment at www.bluedart.com . Please contact your local Blue Dart office if you have any questions.

Thanks for your patience.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Note that, Blue Dart had informed Adsense team that they are unable to reach some of the publishers as they have invalid address!

Here is the exact email from Adsense team, that some of my friends received:

Hi,

We are in the process of delivering your recent AdSense payment via Blue
Dart. However, Blue Dart has informed us that they are unable to deliver
to the address currently listed in your AdSense account. We therefore ask
that you update your address by following these steps:

1. Log in to your AdSense account
2. Click on the ‘My Account’ tab
3. Click the ‘Payee Information [edit]’ link
4. Edit the appropriate fields
5. Click ‘Save Changes’

Once you have made the changes, please contact Blue Dart to ensure proper
delivery of your payment.

So please double check your address and make sure everything is upto date.

As this is the first time adsense cheque delivery from Blue Dart, it had some issues(late delivery) and we hope that it will not happen in the future. I think Blue Dart had not expected such a huge number of adsense publishers in India 🙂 . Thanks for Google for making this service free of cost. And the best thing about Blue Dart is, we can track our cheque by using the tracking code in our adsense account and searching for it in bluedart.

If you guys are waiting for your cheque then make sure your address is upto date. And if everyone else got the cheque except you, then the reason may be..Blue Dart is not able to service all areas throughout India. If you live in a location they don’t service, your check will be sent by Registered Post and should reach you within 2-3 weeks of the mailing date.
More chances that your cheque is on the way. Have a great week end. Cheers!

Google Chrome ads on TV: Google launches its 1st TV ad

Google trying all means to promote its browser, Chrome. Google had never advertised on traditional TV. response when it first launched. But as for today, there are only 1.4% of internet users using Chrome.
A couple of months ago, Google Japan team had produced a fun video to demonstrate how clean and simple Google Chrome user interface is. This video went viral in the blogoshere/and internet as a whole, by seeing this positive response, Google has decided to make the video reach more people.

we talked to our Google TV Ads team to see how we could show the video that our Japan team developed to a wider audience in a measurable way. Using some of the results from our placement-targeted ads on the Google Content Network, we designed a Google TV Ads campaign which we hope will raise awareness of our browser, and also help us better understand how television can supplement our other online media campaigns.
So today, we’re pleased to announce that we’re using Google TV Ads to run our Chrome ad on various television networks starting this weekend. We’re excited to see how this test goes and what impact television might have on creating more awareness of Google Chrome.
Source: GoogleBlog

Google Bus on Indian Roads [Bangalore]

Google announced the launch of Internet Bus Project[on February 3, 2009] – a mobile bus designed to showcase the benefits of Internet to the people across the cities of Tamil Nadu[A state in India].
Google_bus_India

This project was limited to Tamil Nadu and Google had promised to visit other areas, if they get a good response to the program. Now as we had guessed, Google Bus will be seen on Bangalore roads(Karnataka).

Featured Internet Bus Video:-

Internet For Communication:-

Internet For Information:-

Internet For Education:-

Here is the list of places and schedule for the Google Bus:-
04 May Kolar
06 May Mandya
08 May Mysore
13 May Bengaluru
14 May Hassan
17 May Arsikere
18 May Shimoga
21 May Bhadravati
24 May Chikmanglur
27 May Tumkur
30 May Chitradurga
02 Jun Davangere
06 Jun Hubli-Dharwad
11 Jun Belgaum
15 Jun Gadag
18 Jun Hospet

To know more about the Google program, read our previous article @ Google Bus on Indian Roads. You can also look at more pictures on that earlier post.

Next stop for the Internet Bus
Bengaluru (Bangalore). Arriving on 13 May for 1 days.

If you are staying in any of these places, then consider visiting the bus. Do not wait for the bus to visit you 🙂

And if you are one of them to visit the bus, then please share your thoughts about the Google Bus program with our readers.

Download Windows 7 For Free And Use It For A Year, Legally

Windows 7 BETA was available for download only for testers, MSDN and TechNet subscribers, but interestingly Microsoft has now released its much talked Operating System for public download.

Here’s what you need to know:
Source: microsoft.com

This is pre-release software, so please read the following to get an idea of the risks and key things you need to know before you try the RC.

You don’t need to rush to get the RC. The RC will be available at least through July 2009 and we’re not limiting the number of product keys, so you have plenty of time.

Watch the calendar. The RC will expire on June 1, 2010. Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you’ll need to install a non-expired version of Windows before March 1, 2010. You’ll also need to install the programs and data that you want to use. (Learn more about installing Windows.)

Protect your PC and data. Be sure to back up your data and please don’t test the RC on your primary home or business PC.

Tech details/updates: Before installing the RC, please read the Release Notes and Things to Know for important information about the release.

Keep up with the news. You can keep up with general technical information and news by following the team blog. And, you can get non-technical news, tips, and offers by subscribing to the monthly Exploring Windows newsletter.

Keep your PC updated: Be sure to turn on automatic updates in Windows Update in case we publish updates for the RC.

Installation: You can install the Windows 7 RC on a PC running Windows Vista without backing up the PC—but we encourage you to make a backup for safe keeping. If you’re running Windows XP or the Windows 7 Beta, you’ll need to backup your data, then do a clean installation of the RC, then reinstall your applications and restore your data. If you need to do a backup, please see How to back up your PC for more details and a suggestion for how to backup a PC running Windows 7 Beta or Windows Vista.

To install and use the RC, you’ll need to know how to:

Troubleshoot problems. You’re pretty much flying solo, so you’ll need to handle your own tech support, and rely on other RC testers for their know-how

Burn an ISO file to make an installation DVD

Install Windows

Backup and restore your PC

Set up a network

Create and use a system recovery disk

To learn more about the Windows 7 RC, see frequently asked questions.

System Requirement:-

Internet access (to download Windows 7 RC and get updates)

A PC with these system requirements:

1 GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor

1 GB RAM (32-bit) / 2 GB RAM (64-bit)

16 GB available disk space (32-bit) / 20 GB (64-bit)

DirectX 9 graphics processor with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

There are 2 versions of Windows 7 for download, 32- and 64-bit versions available in five languages: English, German, Japanese, French, and Spanish.

Do not hurry and download the wrong version of the OS, and realize later that it doesn’t support your current system. This public download will be available till the end of July 2009 and its not limited to specific number of users, so take your time and test your system specifications before starting to download.

Windows 7 is rumored to be released some times in June – July 2009. So you will be still using this free public download version even after the final version of the Operating System is in the market. And more interestingly you will keep receiving the updates till 1 year.
Note that there will be no official system to support users queries, but there are geeks who will be eager to help you at any time, so I think its a worth thing to download and try on your system(if your system meets the requirement). So far our experience with Windows 7 is just awesome(or better than Vista!).

Here is the link for you to register and download Windows 7 for FREE.