Tech Reviews

Happy Friendship Day

2009-08-06T04:30:00.000-07:00

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” – Walter Winchell

This is a new one to me! Apparently, Friendship Day is the first Sunday of August and was declared as a holiday in US in honor of friends by a Proclamation made by US Congress in 1935. Since then, World Friendship Day is being celebrated every year on the first Sunday in the month of August.

This beautiful idea of celebrating Friendship Day was joyfully accepted by several other countries across the world. And today, many countries including India, celebrate the first Sunday of August as Friendship Day every year. Celebrating Friendship Day in a traditional manner, people meet their friends and exchange cards and flowers to honor their friends. Lot many social and cultural organization too celebrate the occasion and mark Friendship Day by hosting programs and get together.

This holiday has been celebrated since 1935 and I didn’t know about it?
Thank goodness, I’ve always celebrated my friends. My garden is full of beautiful friends. Some are lifelong friends, some are new friends and most recently, I have had old friends walk back into my garden.

I am blessed. They have carried me through hard times. They have celebrated the good times. We laughed together and cried together. They loved me through my stupidity, my silliness and my helplessness.
I celebrate you on Friendship Day!

“A Friend is someone who knows all about you and loves you anyway!” – Unknown

Nokia Surge to be connected stylishly

2009-08-04T03:30:00.000-07:00

Nokia have revealed the Nokia Surge smart phone that seems to be just beyond imagination. This elegantly looking cell phone features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and 2, 4 inch QVGA display. This whimsical slider allows staying connected whether it is SMS, MMS, IM, email or AT&T Video Share. This smart phone looks amazing while its standard QWERTY keyboard offers comfy typing experience.

The Nokia Surge comes with 400 hours of stand by time or 4, 7 hours of talk time. Its memory can be extended up to 8 GB via micro SD card with 128 MB of shared memory available. For perfect shooting experience, there is 2 mega pixel camera which take high quality images while recording video in QVGA quality. For those who like corresponding via such social networking sites as Twitter or Facebook, the cell phone sports JuiceCaster.

The Nokia Surge is already available in the USA for a modest sticker price tag of just 79, 99 USD. The smart phone is powered by the 3G network and has a fashionable design while still being slender. The Nokia Surge comes with Flash support so you can easily view most of the web sites in HTML or even watch your favorite YouTube clips. Designed in the USA, this charming cell phone allows 4X digital zoom while recording video.

AT&T Mobile Music feature makes it possible to listen to your favorite music and download it right from eMusic mobile, Napster Mobile, XM radio and so on. The Nokia Surge supports AT&T Video Share which seems to be an innovation for the USA and makes it possible whether to share live videos recorded by your smart phone or take part in a voice call all wirelessly. The Nokia Surge also has a media player and FM radio for those music lovers.

Another important feature includes AT&T Navigator that offers audible alerts in case of an incident or a slowdown. The Nokia Surge comes with polyphonic ring tones, 2.5 mm audio jack. This striking cell phone allows networking at HSDPA speed of 3, 6 Mbps. The Surge also features GPS, Bluetooth and USB connectivity.

The Nokia Surge appears to be a Symbian S60 smart phone which supports 850 and 1900 MHz WCDMA (3G). The Nokia Surge measures 98 x 58 x 15 mm and weighs 124 grams and is powered by 1500 mAh battery.

ElectriLite electric vehicle to harness both sun and electricity

2009-08-04T03:29:00.000-07:00

If you have no experience of zero emissions driving, here is a very noticeable three-wheeled vehicle which is able to fill the gap. Called the ElectriLite, this marvelous model is designed by Omni Instruments which runs on both electricity and sun. The car curb weight is just 350 lbs while weight is distributed on its three wheels. If you are keen to go for a joyride, this stunning vehicle is able to seat 2 passengers.

Being an ecologically friendly model, the ElectriLite electric vehicle is able to reach a maximum speed of 40 miles per hour while traditional steering is replaced with a high tech joystick coming with a mounted throttle, light control and brake. The car is expected to be able to run on its electric engines and you may feel free once the batteries are dead as there are extra systems to keep your vehicle on the go.

The first choice is to use 2 pedal generators which are able to produce 400W each while the second option is to harness solar panels positioned on the roof and producing 100W and 60W as long as it is sunny. Additionally, there is enough space for a 1KW fuel cell, so the vehicle seems to be ready to go.

Thanks to these sustainable systems, the car offers a 50 miles driving range excluding its alternate sources or 100 miles when they are used. According to the company, such a car can be constructed for about 3500 USD with a final bid to be no more than 5000 USD. The ElectriLite electric vehicle features 90 inches wheelbase, prime voltage of 42 / 36 volts so running on its 200 AH of NiMh batteries the nominal range of 100 miles is guaranteed.

Cheetah GPSmirror to assure driver safety

2009-08-04T03:28:00.001-07:00

Every driver has those moments where he or she is distracted. While driver distraction causes 80 per cent of road accidents, there is a nice driver safety gadget which is designed to keep you safe on the road. Called the Cheetah GPSmirror, this clever device comes equipped with built-in GPS system that will let you know about those speed cameras as you drive by.

Additionally, the Cheetah GPSmirror features a speedometer display along with compass so you hardly get lost. This driver safety system has a voice alert option that keeps you informed of black spots as you approach them, speed cameras or red light cameras. Compared to ordinary mirrors, this smart mirror comes with an anti-glare coating which boasts a wide angle of visibility and is perfect for night driving.

The Cheetah GPSmirror gets signals from 24 satellites and offer both audible and spoken alerts to let you know about hazardous areas to come. Using its 4 buttons positioned under the mirror, the driver will be able to personalize his or her GPS locations. So if you want to be warned about this or that hazardous intersection, you can program it.

If you are about to kick your speedy driving habit, you may set the mirror to alert you when you drive faster than it is allowed. The Cheetah GPSmirror can be easily connected to your PC though the USB port but it does not support MAC. It comes packed with cable together with USB port, power cord and GPS mirror cleaning cloth.

The Cheetah GPSmirror is able to detect all kinds of red light camera or speed camera whether you are in USA, Canada, Europe or Australia. The GPS mirror also features visual time display. So if you want to stay tuned while keeping your safety at a high level, this tricky gadget will be useful.

TASER X3 multiple shot stun-gun to immobilize bad boys

2009-08-04T03:25:00.000-07:00

Well known electroshock weapon producer Taser unveils its high tech three-shot Taser stun gun. This shooting bad boy is designed to fire 3 shots and it is expected to be officially announced on 27 July. Once it is recharged, there are another 3 shots available so that you could easily immobilize a potential attacker with no serious injury caused.

The Taser X3 stun gun comes equipped with laser sights while its updated monitoring and information recording makes this electric shock state of the art. This stun gun is extremely rugged making it possible to use it in those unfavorable conditions like water, dust, salt fog and freezing temperatures.

American electric shock seems to be a powerful target shooter as there are some extra shots readily available had the officer miss the attacker. The Taser X3 features improved safety interlocking design and despite of being loaded, the stun gun shows both warning arcs and gain compliance. In order to avoid static discharge, this smart stun gun has fire control circuitry.

This self-defense weapon stands out in a crowd with all its modernized features including its ability to record charge and voltage for any potential neuromuscular incapacitation. Its lasers are designed to display where the bottom and top probes are going to reach while is able to regulate laser trajectory to find out where the rest of the shots are fired.

USA tops the spam charts relaying 1 in 6 spam e-mails

2009-07-22T04:40:00.001-07:00

Sophos has revealed its latest global spam figures for the second quarter of 2009 and the U.S. continues to top the charts relaying 1 in 6 of all spam messages sent. What that means is one in every six spam messages sent is done through a compromised machine located in the U.S.

With these figures Sophos has suggested that the U.S. needs to look in its own backyard before looking overseas for cybercriminals. Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos said:

Barack Obama’s recent speech on cybersecurity emphasised the threat posed by overseas criminals and enemy states, but these figures prove that there is a significant problem in his own back yard. If America could clean up its compromised PCs it would be a considerable benefit to everyone around the world who uses the net … All web users need to properly defend their computers from attack, and pledge to never act upon spam messages.

Compared to last year Russia has seen a significant drop in the amount of spam relayed through the country. Now it only relays 3.2% in 9th position where as last year it was second with 7.5%. Columbia has now left this so-called Dirty Dozen and Poland has seen an increase in spam taking it from tenth to sixth this year.

How to Make Free Or Cheap International Calls Using VoIP

2009-07-21T04:46:00.001-07:00

Most of us have some friends and family living, studying or travelling in different parts of the world. In the past, expensive international call charges meant that people often went for weeks or months without actually hearing their loved ones’ voices. These days, though, all that has changed. Thanks to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, it’s now possible to call anyone, anywhere, at any time, for as long as you want - and it’s cheap, if not free.

Airmail letters, telegrams, long-distance echoes … it’s time to relegate all these to history. These days, thanks to email, it’s easy to communicate with people all over the world. Email and messaging services allow you to read, almost instantly, what someone has written to you. And now VoIP technology means you can make international phone calls using broadband, too.

These calls can be free, as long as you’re prepared to accept some limitations. For more flexibility, you can sign up with a VoIP provider that offer low-cost monthly call plans.

Free international calls
Typically ‘PC to PC’ enables you to make free international calls. To enjoy free international calls, you, and the person you’re calling, both need the following.

1. a computer or laptop
2. a broadband connection
3. a headset/ microphone/ speaker (these may be integral to your computer)
4. an account with a VoIP provider that allows this type of calls, such as Skype or MSN.

This system suits many people. But it does have its drawbacks:

• you are tied to your computer, as is the person you’re calling;
• you need to make sure that you’ve both signed up to compatible providers that will allow you to talk to each other (usually, this has to be the same provider, though is starting to change);
• it is totally independent of your traditional landline service, so you can’t just pick up the phone and dial any number you need/want to, it has to be PC-to-PC;
• you can use this to make a calls to other landlines or mobiles, but if you do, you will be charged for the calls by the minute;
• you often find it’s best to agree in advance a time to call the other person, by email, so with a PC-to-PC so that you ensure you catch each other at each others PC;
• the call quality isn’t as good as that of a regular landline or mobile phone.

Many people are happy to put up with these limitations, because the calls are free. So if this set-up suits you, then that’s great.

Cheap international calls
You may, though, decide that you want the flexibility of making calls using a traditional home telephone instead of through your PC with headsets. If so, you could consider signing up with a VoIP provider that allows this.

With this method, you sign up to a paid call plan with a VoIP provider. The VoIP provider will send you an adaptor that allows you to plug the base of your normal handset into your computer or router. This uses VoIP technology to make ‘phone-to-phone’ calls. The only difference is that the calls go through your existing broadband connection - and not through a landline.

It means that you can simply pick up the phone and dial a number, as before. The person you’re calling doesn’t need to have a computer, or broadband. The call quality is so good that the person you’re calling won’t know you’re using VoIP.

How much you pay depends on the call plan you choose. You can choose one that includes just a few European countries, for example, or the US and Canada, or one that covers many more countries around the world. Whatever you go for, the monthly cost will be capped. As long as you call only the countries listed in your call plan, you’ll pay exactly the same subscription, each and every month, for unlimited, anytime calls. No unpleasant bills!

So, if you’re looking to make cheap international calls, it’s simply a matter of working out which suits you best. Then free or cheap calls are yours to enjoy.

Costas Kariolis - Online Marketing Manager of Vonage UK. Vonage are leading low rate VoIP providers for home & small business users. Offering cheap phone calls and free international calls to landlines via an internet phone service for a set monthly fee.

Review: Gateway P-7808u FX gaming notebook

2009-07-20T09:29:00.000-07:00

The relatively new Gateway 7808u FX Edition is the first model in the company’s P series of gaming notebooks to have a quad-core processor. This series gets a new model number each generation so the 7808u may seem like an all-new laptop, but it’s incredibly similar to two systems that we previously covered here on Geek.com, the P-7811 and P-171, as well as two newer models, the P-7809u FX and P-7805u FX.

The chassis, exterior, interior, keyboard, trackpad, display, and sound are all just about the same as previous models, so for the bulk of your reading check back to the previous two articles. If you want the short version here goes: everything is solid. Don’t expect the best-in-class for a system at this price, but Gateway doesn’t skimp. The keyboard and trackpad are acceptable, the display can be finicky if you are playing a game with a lot of dark tones (like Fallout 3) but it’s quite workable, and the build quality, despite featuring a lot of plastic, is fine. The system does generate quite a bit of heat but it is all sent out through a vent on the left side, so it doesn’t heat up the computer itself much. It’s not built for traveling, but in my time with the 7808u and the previous models in the series I haven’t had any serious mechanical problems.

There are two things that potential buyers should keep in mind about the build. The first is that the design is quickly becoming outdated (if it already isn’t). It’s been around for a few generations and it’s about time for a refresh (Gateway, come on, check out the Alienware M17x! Sure it’s more expensive, but let’s move things along…). There is nothing particularly wrong with it and Gateway is using the same design in the next generation (P-7809u FX, P-7807u FX, and P-7805u FX) but it’s about due for a refresh. Secondly, the 17-inch display runs at 1440×900 which isn’t terrible, but it would be nice to see it at 1920×1200. There is no Blu-ray option, but as soon as there is one you can bet there will be a 1920×1200 display.

The big change with the 7808u is that this is the first system in the lineup to go with a quad-core processor. This is the first significant change to the FX series in some time, as previous updates have generally just seen small changes to the processor or graphics. Combine that Core 2 Duo Q9000 with 4GB of RAM, GeForce 9800M GTS graphics (with 1GB of memory), and a 500GB 5400RPM disk and the system is more than powerful enough for today’s games, but on the same note it doesn’t reflect as stellar a deal as previous models. The price is up to $1799 (thanks to that quad-core processor) but don’t worry, deal hunters still have the option of the Gateway P-7809u FX at $1249 (and the same graphics).

Free Firefox plugin allows torrents hidden inside PNG image files

2009-07-19T09:47:00.001-07:00

A website called Hid.im posted a Firefox plugin that makes sending torrents to people a simple matter of accessing an image, right-clicking and choosing “Save Torrent As…”. The Hidim Firefox plugin uses the open-source portable network graphics (PNG) file format to encode it data through an image which appears like this:

This JPG image displays graphically what three separate PNG files would look like, as they were created on Hid.im to demonstrate the image. These files are (top) sameer verma - olpc photo dvd.torrent, (middle) legaltorrents collections - web development icons superset.torrent and (bottom) politics apocalypse - oppressed by the authorities remix sources.torrent. They will not work with the Firefox plugin. Visit the Hid.im site to right-click on the original PNG images there on the front page to test the application.

Internally within the 2 pixel tall PNG file the data is arranged in reverse vertical columns, proceeding from left to right as in the following layout:

The torrent data is stored in place of what would otherwise be valid 24-bit red,green,blue (RGB) pixel values, which is what the internal PNG file format uses to determine each pixel’s color value. By having a value from 0-255 each for red, green and blue, a single pixel’s color within an image can be determined. In the Hid.im implementation, the RGB color data is replaced with bytes from the torrent data, thereby making the image appear like static or snow on the screen, while actually conveying real data underneath.

In order for the plugin to determine whether or not a particular PNG file is an actual Hid.im image, and not just one which looks like it, it looks for this embedded sequence of characters, which appears at the beginning of the file: [104, 105, 100, 105, 109, 32, 105, 115, 32, 116, 111, 114, 114, 101, 110, 116, 115, 33]. These characters correspond to the following ASCII sequence: “hidim is torrents!” (in lower-case).

If that character sequence is found, then the following data within the PNG file is used to extract a torrent, which according to the website’s example, appears in the following format, with each section separated by colons:

Line length (bencoded integer)
Filename (bencoded string)
sha1 hash of the .torrent file (bencoded string)
data (bencoded string)

The bencode (pronounced Bee-encode) structure is the encoding format used for P2P BitTorrent applications, and is native to their internal structure. Bencoding supports integers, strings, lists and dictionaries (which are a list of associative arrays). There is some sample source code on the Hid.im website showing how the Bookmarklet (the encoded torrent data file) can be converted, and saved to disk.

Right now the application is open source. It’s limited in size to a 250KB PNG file, but is governed by the extremely loose MIT License, which would allow for greater length PNG files to be created quite easily. The MIT License states:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

The extremely free nature of the MIT License was chosen because the application’s creator, Michael Nutt, desires it to be made into a wide web standard. Right now there is only the Firefox/Safari plugin, but he hopes that since it is open source with such a free license structure, it won’t be long until other browsers are supported.

Windows 7 day one pre-orders in UK outpace total Vista pre-orders

2009-07-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

US and Canadian customers were recently able to buy upgrade versions of Windows 7 via a pre-order discount. That policy has changed and pre-order customers must now pay full price. Still, that has not kept UK consumers from buying Windows 7 on pre-order at record pace.

According to BBC News, Amazon reported Windows 7 sales in the first day (eight hours of sales) surpassed the entire 17 week pre-order sales period for Windows Vista. UK residents are currently paying £50 pounds for the home version, and £100 for the professional version (both of which are full versions), which is notably less than the US buyers will pay today on Microsoft’s website at $199.99 and $299.99, respectively.

The analyst company IDC is predicting 177 million copies will be sold by the end of 2010, with 50 million of those being sold exclusively in Europe. That would translate to revenue in all areas related to Windows 7 software and services around the $320 billion mark.

The recent $1.3 billion fine and EU antitrust ruling against Microsoft means UK buyers will not be receiving a native install of Internet Explorer. It will have to be installed separately.

ABSOLUT VODKA launches iPhone application

2009-07-18T19:45:00.000-07:00

It seems most brand names are finding the marketing value in creating an iPhone application. The latest submission is from ABSOLUT VODKA whose new application called Drinkspiration has a number of features including an interactive encyclopedia of drink recipes. Best of all, it’s free.

The application also comes with a social component because once you find a recipe you like you can then recommend it. That recommendation can be based on spirit, taste, weather, time of day, bar vibe, sound volume and real-time drink trends. The application also has GPS capabilities which allows users to share status updates through Facebook and Twitter that includes not only a real-time drink choice, but the user’s location as well.

Another feature of the mobile application is that it gathers information of the international nightlife scene and makes that accessible to users. There is a world section where people can see what drinks are being ordered in real-time according to global location.

Circuit Strike.One v1.1 update: Still brutal, only smoother

2009-07-18T19:44:00.000-07:00

A brutal iPhone shooter released last month strikes back with an updated version that resolved annoying frame rate issues and added nearly two dozen design tweaks that smooth out a couple of rough edges. With new treats and the same 99 cent price point, Circuit Strike.One v1.1 is one of best-valued updates for your iPhone.

We enjoyed quite a lot playing this brutal Neuromancer-styled iPhone shooter spiced up with inertia-based physics and zero-gravity battlefield. The game puts you in control of a ship inside a computer network, going head-to-head against a sysadmin who sends out turrets, drones, ships, trace routes, and intelligent AI after you. As noted in my review and preview of the game, problems with the frame rate and a too steep learning curve somewhat spoiled this otherwise perfectly fine shooter. Although the 1.0 version did maintain comfortable enough frame rate most of the time, there was a noticeable lag during complex rendering, like when you destroyed the data core.

Although this might pass unnoticed in other shooters, Circuit Strike.One’s fast-paced, brutal concept means that even a brief lag breaks your concentration, quite possibly leading to the loss of life. Simply put, eye-candy pushed the iPhone over its limits, resulting in lag above our comfortable level. H.Grenade, the U.S.-based developer behind the game, has updated the graphics engine and the game code to fix these issues. Having played the 1.1 version on my iPhone 3G, I noticed that the lag is mostly gone now, resulting in more enjoyable gaming experience.

The 1.1 update fixed issues with the frame rate - no more unexpected lags in the heat of the battle.

Charge your portable gadgets with the Solar Charger Vest

2009-07-17T05:18:00.001-07:00

Being a combination of style and high technology, this sustainable gadget is capable of charging your favorite portable devices on the go. Wherever you go, you can be free from those flat battery situations. Dubbed the CVFR-S09 Solar Vest, this green contraption is designed for active people being on the move while making your life easier.

The CVFR-S09 Solar Vest has a lot of pockets for your electronic gizmos and features all the cables, battery pack and other connectors that allow charging the most popular electronic devices. Despite of the fact, the canvas of the vest is soft to the touch, it is a durable tissue. Its 4 laminated solar panels are designed to be water resistant, so you will not have to be worry about your solar vest when it rains.

When you are indoors or in a shaded area, you can easily detach the solar panels so as to put them in sun light to make your vest working even if you have a rest. The solar power is captured by 4 solar panels while you are outside with the solar power being stored in a high capacity battery positioned in the front left pocket.

So once your electronic gadget’s battery is dead, you may easily connect it to the battery to fully charge it. The CVFR-S09 Solar Vest is plug and play device coming with a rechargeable battery with 8 800 mAh of power. Solar panels have 6W with 3.7V with voltage adjust option.

The CVFR-S09 Solar Vest features 8 power connectors and 7 device connectors, 8 front pockets, 1 back pocket, Zipper and Velcro fastener. The Solar Vest is available in black and brown colors with a price tag of 140 USD.

The CVFR-S09 Solar Vest comes with light indicators with green shining when power is more than 80 per cent, orange lighting when power is between 30 and 70 percent and alarming red for gadgets that have less than 30 per cent of power.

A portable batter charger measures 120 mm in length, 70 mm in width and 22 mm in diameter while solar panel dimensions are 135 mm in length and 600 mm in width. The CVFR-S09 Solar Vest measures 600 mm in length and 600 mm in width. Other features include AC Input Port, USB Power Input, DC Output 1, DC Output 2, 5V, 6V, 9V and 12-20V output.

With heat protection, discharge protection, over charge protection, short circuit protection, this tricky gadget appears to be very safe and clever. This environmentally friendly gadget comes with USB extension cable as well as English manual.
This mouth watering gadget turns out to be an ideal solution for almost everyone whether you like camping, fishing or other outdoor activities or you need to stay in contact all day long.

AcceleGlove to be a whole-hand input device

2009-07-17T05:17:00.001-07:00

This useful gadget called AcceleGlove is capable of recording the motions of your fingers as well as hands and all you need is just to wear it. This means that being wired with sensors, these smart gloves are able to keep you abreast of a wearer motions. Additionally, the gloves feature an interaction mode … Revealed by AnthroTronix, Accele Glove is easily programmable and records every movement your finger or hand makes.

This smart glove is available at 499 USD while having a smaller sticker price tag compared to other alternatives. The Accele Glove features software suitable for using Java if are about to program it for desired application. Previously, the product was developed for US Department of Defense robotic control. What is good is that you are able to use it in video games, physical rehabilitation or training.

Its accelerometers are placed below your fingertips and as your hand moves the accelerometers are able to detect three-dimensional orientation of your moving fingers. The data can be sent to your PC via USB cord connected to the top of the glove’s wrist. The glove is constructed from breathable nylon mix which is stretchable to be able to sit perfectly on your hand along with open fingertips for easy typing.

The arm link is composed of stretchy fabric attached to a tiny microcontroller wrapping below your elbow and coming around your biceps. Its potentiometer assesses your elbow flexibility while its accelerometer measures the arm rotation. The Accele Glove makes it possible for its user to control many devices including video games so the contraption appears to be a nice gadget for gamers.

The arm link is also able to evaluate your wrist location as regards your shoulder and determine your wrist location as regards the rest of your body in order to start recording its motions. AnthroTronix is expected to adapt its production for use in law enforcement, controlling a robot in space, firefighting and so on.

Even if a surgical procedure is needed or you want to learn American Sign Language, this tricky device could be of avail. It is up to you whether or not you want to write your own software for your glove to be able to analyze your gestures so AnthroTronix’s plans are to create a novel version of the product to be able to detect gestures.

E-Tracer and X-Tracer to be electric cabin bikes from Peraves

2009-07-17T05:16:00.000-07:00

It appears to be an ecomobile cabin bike which is very astonishing. And if you are obsessed by two-wheeler driving, this cabin bike is an ideal choice. Cabin bikes producer Peraves is here to offer environmentally friendly two wheelers. The electric cabin bike is all about sustainable driving. The first replica called the E-Tracer is all electric model which is reported to be faster than its BMW powered counterpart.

The second driving miracle appears to be the X-Tracer which includes Super Ball engine to drive at over 100 miles per gallon. These ravishing cabin bikes are fully enclosed and are expected to be on the market some time this year. These vehicle concepts are jaw dropping making it possible to get a green driving experience.

The Monotracer is a newly retrofitted model which features BMW K1200 power coming with 130 horsepower. The fuel capacity is 14 gallons while reaching a speed of 155 miles per hour. The 2 wheelers feature stabilizing wheels Also, the 2 wheeler comes with heating and A/C, handlebars and throttle. The Monotracer is available at 73 500 USD.

Shoot your movie while on the go with the Sanwa bicycle stand

2009-07-17T05:15:00.000-07:00

Have you ever thought of cycling all around the city while having all your driving experience recorded? The next gadget is specifically designed to make your dream come true. It turns out to be possible to record your own videos while cycling while image stabilization is recommended in order to make your recording run smoothly.

This ingenious gadget called Sanwa bicycle stand offers a new vision of what is happening on the road so you will have to attach the Sanwa bicycle stand to the handle of your bike. The Sanwa bicycle stand is easily adjustable and appears to be a perfect solution for shooting on the move to make your riding memorable.

The Sanwa bicycle stand measures 97 × 40 mm so optionally you are able to attach it to the tree so that to analyze your driving experience while having a lot of fun. The Sanwa bicycle stand is not going to take a lot of room as it is very compact. This wonderful bicycle stand seems to be available in Japan for about 14 USD so it is quite affordable.

3-in-1 Digital Compass for a fun journey

2009-07-17T05:14:00.000-07:00

For all those who like trekking and exploring new places here is a smart gadget to give you directions. This 3 in 1 compass seems to be digital and it also has a clock for you to be more organized. Another advantageous point of this electronic device is a thermometer which makes sure the weather is right for your scheduled holiday.

Its high legibility LCD screen with a backlight provides you with all the information. The good thing is that you can use it both indoors and outdoors while thanks to its specific design you will be able to easily attach your compass to the windshield of your car, canoe or outside of your tent if any.

So if your camping season is due, you may easily take it wherever you go as this is an ultra portable device. This 3 in 1 compass is retailed for 25 USD and it appears to be a helping hand for those who lead a nomadic life style while letting you know where it is a right direction, what time and temperature it is.

007 Electronic Cigar to kick the habit

2009-07-17T05:13:00.000-07:00

Called the 007 Electronic Cigar, this gadget offers 24 various nicotine density cartridges. It might look like a real cigar, but this one glows with the red light once it is inhaled making it possible to smoke without danger to your health. The new generation is expected to be health conscious and be able to smoke artificially if any.

The electronic Cigar’s inner body is constructed from stainless steel along with the outer layer coming with plastic making it look like a real cigar. Smoking this artificial cigar resembles the real smoking with the only difference it is not dangerous. These real looking electronic cigars are powered by a single AAA 360mAh rechargeable battery which is included.

Among its 24 nicotine density cartridges, there are 6 of 24 mg, 12 of 18 mg, 4 of 12 mg nicotine cartridges as well as 2 zero nicotine cartridges. The idea is to help smokers to kick the habit while starting a new healthy life style. Possible the best advantage of the electronic cigar is that you are able to smoke it even in no smoking areas.

That said, this state of the art electronic cigar appears to be an ideal gadget for a new era smokers. Whether you use a high density charger at 24 mg, medium density charger of 18 mg, low density charger of 12 mg or non nicotine cartridges, the useful time for the cartridge will be about 300 puffs. The Electronic Cigar measures 145 mm in length and 12 mm in diameter.

CTA Digital USB travel kit for smart traveling

2009-07-17T05:12:00.000-07:00

If you are the one who needs to have all your USB gadgets handy, here is a perfect idea. Called CTA digital USB travel kit, this all-in-one comfy gadget comes with USB mouse, Ethernet cables and ear bud headphone which are retractable for easy commuting. Well, all the technologically skilled travelers would be pleased to use it once outdoors.

The CTA digital USB travel kit is available for 34, 15 USD. This smart travel kit offers 4 attachments for connecting all your USB devices. Its headphone, USB mouse and Ethernet cable all come equipped with retractable cords.

Whatever USB peripherals you have got, this ultra portable travel kit will make your outing useful and comfy. Its Ethernet cable makes sure your connecting to an Ethernet network is very intuitive while traveling with this amazing travel kit will make you an active USB user on the move.

votes vote! EdgeStar Countertop Dishwasher designed for clever dishwashing

2009-07-17T05:11:00.000-07:00

Kitchen life would be much more arduous if there were not dishwashers. With this smart dishwasher titled the EdgeStar portable countertop dishwasher that features enough storage capacity for 4 regular place settings, your kitchen chore will be much more easier. The EdgeStar portable countertop dishwasher is capable of saving more water than when you have to wash up.

Not only is it able to save water, the EdgeStar portable countertop dishwasher appears to be able to save energy and storage space that you always lack in your kitchen. Additionally, the EdgeStar countertop portable dishwasher has a stainless steel interior, a rinse agent dispenser to eliminate water spots on your dished, spray arm along with a silverware basket.

Measuring just 18 and a half of inches, this handy dishwasher can be easily placed in small areas while an included connect faucet adapter makes it possible to connect it to nearly any kitchen faucet. If you like your kitchen to be designed in a modern way, this fabulous dishwasher appears to be a cool gadget and now you can arrange all your kitchen appliances in a new way.

Besides, the EdgeStar countertop portable dishwasher comes packed with an internal water heater which is capable of heating water up to 158 degrees Fahrenheit. Those plates which measure 11 inches in diameter will be easily fit in the dishwasher. This high durability kitchen beauty is retailed for 200 USD. With this smart dishwasher you save water, power and space. Is not it a good idea for your kitchen? The EdgeStar countertop portable dishwasher seems to be very intuitive with its easy to use controls.

Hydrogen-powered Circulus to turn 360 degrees

2009-07-17T05:10:00.000-07:00

If you are sick and tired of being in those heavy traffic situations and you tend to use ecologically friendly products, this marvelous concept car will be your favorite model. This interesting car concept turns out to be powered by hydrogen. Called, Circulus this smart car is capable of turning 360 degrees which makes it highly maneuverable.

This ecologically conscious car concept feature one of the kind design as well as powerful capabilities including omni directional wheels or shape shifting rear. If your technological appetite is not yet satisfied, this breathtaking three wheeled car features one spherical front tire which makes it so maneuverable turning 360 degrees effortlessly.

This concept idea might be quite useful in those congested roads, so every experience driver would appreciate it. Two tires at the rear are designed to gain more stability on roads as well as ideal braking abilities. Its spherical tire is fuelled by an independent motor which seems to be operating on hydrogen.

Its motor is mounted at the rear part of the car. Its side body panels are constructed from recycled plastic along with polyurethane also used for seats construction. As for the rest of the parts, they are supposed to be made of aluminum making sure the car is light weight.

Calvin Klein USB Sunglasses to store your data

2009-07-15T19:41:00.000-07:00

Calvin Klein has unveiled its new vision of futuristic sunglasses called USB sunglasses. Not only are these smart sunglasses protect your eyes from the hazardous UV rays but also are they able to store the data. These fashionable sunglasses feature a USB flash drive positioned in the arm of the sunglasses and include 4 GB storage capacity.

The Calvin Klein USB sunglasses appears to be a clever way of storing your data thanks to its removable right arm which can be easily transformed into a flash drive. So you can easily and safely go for a walk in sunny days with these pretty sunglasses to get back home using your flash drive ready to operate.

The Calvin Klein USB sunglasses are expected to hit the market in October with a price tag of 199 USD. This pretty nice summer sunglasses can be readily used wherever you are without need to search for your flash drive.
The advantage of the USB sunglasses is that you wear stylish sunglasses while being protected from the hot sun. These marvelous USB sunglasses could come in handy while getting a sun tan on the beach with an easily accessible flash drive.

Stay connected while keeping your phone protected with the Nokia 3720 classic

2009-07-15T19:37:00.000-07:00

Trend setting Nokia has created a flashy cell phone to be rated as the most rugged replica. Christened Nokia 3720 classic, the model appears to be leak resistant, dust resistant and shock resistant mobile boy. Is not it an ideal phone yet? This splendid mobile phone features a 2 mega pixel camera and preloaded Nokia maps including 1 GB micro SD card.

The Nokia 3720 classic handset supports Bluetooth 2, 1 connection, has an FM radio, a media player and a web browser. It is loaded with QVGA display measuring 2, 2 inches with LED flash to be used for your camera, so you can also use it as a flashlight. While other rugged devices weigh too much, the Nokia 3720 classic is really compact measuring 115 x 47 x 15, 3 mm and weighing at just 94 grams.

The battery life is also budding which appears to be able to last up to 7 hours of talk time or 18 days when on standby mode. The Nokia 3720 classic mobile phone also supports triband GSM 900, 1800, 1900 MHz. This fabulous Nokia 3720 classic features high durability materials so it is even strong enough to withstand paintball gun shots leaving many Nokia lovers just speechless.

This eye candy is expected to retail for 175 USD. Nokia 3720 classic is specifically designed to operate under rugged conditions, so it does not really matter if it rains or shines, the model is trustworthy and quite operational which seems to be suitable for any environment. So if you are the one planning a long lasting holiday, here is the answer to stay connected while keeping your cell phone protected.

claim

2009-07-15T19:30:00.000-07:00

p2ezixv3rk

4 Steps to Increase Your Blog Traffic Beyond 1,000 Daily Page Views

2009-07-13T23:39:00.000-07:00

One of the most common complaints that I hear from bloggers is the fact that no matter how hard they try, they can’t grow their blogs past 100 or so daily page vies. Those early days are indeed the hardest, because you need to put hard work in without the certainty of achieving results.

If you are in that same situation, here is a simple strategy that will certainly increase your blog traffic and make you break the 1,000 daily page views mark. In fact, the strategy could be used even if your are already over that number but have reached a traffic plateau lately.

Just make sure to execute the 4 steps as planned and to spend the two hours and a half every day (obviously if you have more time available you can expand the time spent on each of the four steps proportionally).

First Step: Killer Articles (1 hour per day)

Spend one hour brainstorming, researching and writing killer articles (also called linkbaits, pillar articles and so on).

Notice that your goal is to release one killer article every week. If that is not possible for one every 15 days. So the one hour that you will spend every day will be dedicated to the same piece. In other words, expect killers articles to take from 5 up to 10 hours of work.

If you are not familiar with the term, a killer article is nothing more than a long and structured article that has the goal of delivering a huge amount of value to potential visitors. If you have a web design blog, for example, you could write an article with “100 Free Resources for Designers”. Here are some ideas for killer articles:

create a giant list of resources,
write a detailed tutorial teaching people how to do something,
find a solution for a common problem in your niche and write about it, or
write a deep analysis on a topic where people have only talked superficially

When visitors come across your killer article, you want them to have the following reaction: “Holy crap! This is awesome. I better bookmark it. Heck, I better even mention this on my site and on my Twitter account, to let my readers and friends know about it.”

Second Step: Networking (30 minutes per day)

Networking is essential, especially when you are just getting started. The 30 minutes that you will dedicate to it every day could be split among:

commenting on other blogs in your niche,
linking to the posts of bloggers in your niche, and
interacting with the bloggers in your niche via email, IM or Twitter.

Remember that your goal is to build genuine relationships, so don’t approach people just because you think they can help to promote your blog. Approach them because you respect their work and because you think the two of you could grow together.

Third Step: Promotion (30 minutes per day)

The first activity here is the promotion of your killer articles. Whenever you publish one of them, you should push it in any way you can. Examples include:

letting the people in your network know about it (don’t beg for a link though),
letting bloggers and webmasters in relevant niches know about it,
getting some friends to submit the article to social bookmarking sites,
getting some friends to Twitter the article, and
posting about the article in online forums and/or newsgroups.

If there is time left, spend it with search engine optimization, social media marketing and activities to promote your blog as whole. Those can range from keyword research to promoting your blog on Facebook and guest blogging.

Fourth Step: Normal Posts (30 minutes per day)

Just like a man does not live by bread alone, a blog does not live by killer articles alone. Normal posts are the ones that you will publish routinely in your blog, between the killer articles. For example, you could publish a killer article every Monday and normal posts from Tuesday through Friday. Here are some ideas for normal posts:

a post linking to an article on another blog and containing your opinion about it
a post informing your readers about a news in your niche
a post asking a question to your readers and aiming to initiate a discussion
a post highlighting a new resource or trick that you discovered and that would be useful to your readers

While killers articles are essential to promote your blog and bring new readers aboard, normal posts are the ones that will create diversity in your content and keep your readers engaged.

2 Easy Tips to Download Youtube Video

2009-07-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of software to download Youtube video on the internet , but using this simple tips you don’t need to install any software. You can directly download the video only using your browser. Ok follow this 2 method to download the video

Method 1:

When you open the video Youtube on the internet, copy script below and paste on the address bar in your browser

javascript:if(document.location.href.match(/http:\/\/[a-zA-Z\.]*youtube\.com\/watch/)){document.location.href='http://www.youtube.com/get_video?fmt='+(isHDAvailable?'22':'18')+'&video_id='+swfArgs['video_id']+'&t='+swfArgs['t']}

For example:
1. Open video Youtube

2. Copy the script that I mention above then paste on the address bar, then pres Enter

3. Save the video to your PC, using this method the format of the video is .mp4

Method 2:

Download Youtube using KickYouTube.
When you find the YouTube videos you like then type the word "kick" to the URL immediately in front of the word youtube.

For example :
Load the URL for the video in your browser:
http ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abcdefghij

Insert the word "kick" between the www. and the youtube.com section of the URL:
http://www.kickyoutube.com/watch?v=abcdefghij

Below are the steps after you insert the word "kick" and press Enter on your keyboard:
1. Choose your video format then click GO

2. Right Click Menu DOWN

3. Click Open Link In New Tab or Open Link To New Window to save the video

Like this post? You can comment me.

Find and Remove Broken Links From Your Blog

2009-07-11T08:44:00.000-07:00

You may never like to see signs like "Road Ends Here", "Dead End" or "Under Construction", similarly search engines also do hate blogs with links which lead to no-where. So one of the Search Engine Optimization techniques involve removing all the broken or invalid links from your blog.
As it is not easy to find each and every broken link on your blog, so you can rather use this simple tool which can easily scan your blog for broken links: Broken-Link-Checker

After checking your blog for the invalid links, simply either edit or remove them.

Other than this tool, there is an other way too. You can sign up at Google Webmaster tools, where you have to submit your blog's sitemap. Then with frequent updates and reports from Google, you will be shown a list of links on your blog, which no more exists. But these are ONLY those links which are on your own domain. So it is better to use both of the explained methods.

Invesp Launches BlogRank

2009-07-11T08:28:00.001-07:00

If you have been blogging for a while, you probably how important it is to network with bloggers on your same niche, right? The problem is that sometimes it is tough to find those bloggers. Technorati does not have a breakdown by niche or categories. Some blog directories do, but they don’t have too many indexed blogs to be worth it.

Thinking about that problem the guys from Invesp.com launched the BlogRank service. They are tracking over 30,000 blogs, and they use a proprietary algorithm to rank those blogs inside each category. The interesting thing is that apart from the overall rank, you can also check the rank for individual factors, for example the blogs with the largest RSS readership or lowest Alexa rank.

The first release has 50 categories, but they are planning to expand it to 500. It is worth a bookmark if you often find yourself trying to find good blogs on specific niches.

Now You Can Use Dynamic Subject Lines for Your Feedburner Emails

2009-07-11T08:27:00.002-07:00

This was probably the most requested feature in the history of Feedburner. Until yesterday, if people subscribed to your blog via the Feedburner email service, all the subject lines of your emails would be static, containing either the name of your blog or some other text that you would specify.

This is obviously annoying because subscribers can’t know what the email is about before they open it. On Daily Writing Tips we have close to 10,000 email subscribers, and at least once a week one of them would email us asking how come the subject lines only contained the name of the blog….

Well, good news (spotted by Problogger and Technotip). Feedburner was probably working on that feature already, and today they finally released it.

Now you can use the code ${latestItemTitle} to make the subject line of your emails equal to the title of your latest post. Once logged in Feedburner, you can do this under “Publicize” > “Email Subscrptions” > “Email Branding.”

You will find the code there, with some examples of how you can use it. Cool stuff.

6 Ways to Speed Up Your Site

2009-07-09T23:20:00.001-07:00

The load time of websites is one of the most important factors affecting its usability; most Internet users will just skip a site altogether if it fails to load within a couple of seconds. Below you will find the summary of the “Speed Up Your Site” series. Those are simple yet effective ways to make sure that your website is running fast. You can click on each point to read the article with comments from the readers.

Optimize Images: always use the “Save for the web” feature included on image editing software. Images represent the heavier load on virtually any website so make sure you are optimizing them. Alternatively you can also turn to an online image optimizer.
Image Formats: apart from optimizing images it is important that you choose the right format. JPEG format is suitable for photographs or true-color images. The GIF format should be used with flat-color images like logos or buttons. PNG works very similar to GIF but it supports more colors.
Optimize Your CSS: most websites are designed with CSS nowadays. Make sure to aggregate and clean your CSS. CleanCSS is an online tool that will merge similar selectors, remove useless properties and remove the whitespace from your code.
Use a Slash on Your Links: when a user opens a link on the form “http://www.domain.com/about” the server will need to figure what kind of file or page is contained on that address. If you include a slash (/) at the end of the link the server will already know that this is a directory page, reducing the load time of the site.
Use the Height and Width Tags: many people forget to add the Height and Width tags on image codes. Those tags will make sure that the browser knows the size of the image before loading it. The result is that it will reserve a spot for the images while loading the rest of the page, speeding up the whole process.
Reduce the HTTP Requests: when opening a web page every object (images, scripts and the line) will require a round trip to the server. This latency can add several seconds to the load time of your site. Make sure to reduce the number of objects and to combine CSS files and scripts together.

Google PageRank Update

2009-07-09T19:17:00.000-07:00

Google is updating the PageRank scores as you read this. What is PageRank? According to Google:

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; for example, it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Using these and other factors, Google provides its views on pages’ relative importance.

Notice that in reality what is being updated is the toolbar score, which is the value that you see through the Google toolbar when visiting websites. The “internal” Pagerank, the one used for ranking websites on the search results, is actually constantly updated. You can read more about this topic on a very detailed article from Search Engine Land titled “What is Google PageRank? A Guide for Searchers and Webmasters.”

By the way if you want to check what Pagerank your website will receive you can use the Live Pagerank online tool, it looks like Daily Blog Tips will become a PR 5.

Calculate Your Google Supplemental Index Ratio

2009-07-09T19:16:00.000-07:00

Successful bloggers know the importance of learning SEO concepts. One method of measuring the SEO health of your website is to calculate the ratio of your pages in Google’s supplemental index.

What is the supplemental index?

In short, its nickname is ‘Google Hell’ and it is a place your website does not want to be. The supplemental index is a secondary index for lower ranking pages. Pages found in the supplemental index tend to be crawled less often and will never be assigned Page Rank. As a result, these pages tend to appear lower in organic search results. There are many reasons why pages lose rank and fall into the supplemental index. Here are the most common:

Low quality content (1 line posts)
Internal duplicate content noise or scraped posts
Lack of external links
The number of query string parameters exceeds Google’s algorithm

Calculating your supplemental index ratio

There has been numerous posts in the SEO community on calculating Google supplemental index ratios. Unfortunately, most of the queries to determine the number of pages in the supplemental index were deprecated and no longer return the correct results. These queries include:

site:www.yoursite.com *** -sjpked
site:www.yoursite.com *** -sljktf
site:www.yoursite.com *** -view
site:www.yoursite.com *** -ndsfoiw

Since supplemental queries seem to have a limited lifetime, a more stable way is to find the number of pages in the main index (those that have a higher chance of appearing in search results) and subtract it from the total number of pages indexed.

Total Pages Indexed = site:www.yoursite.com
Pages in the Main Index = site:www.yoursite.com -inallurl:www.yoursite.com

Pages in Supplemental Index = Total Pagex Indexed - Pages in the Main Index

To calculate your supplemental index ratio you simply divide the number of supplemental pages by the total number of pages indexed (the lower this ratio, the better). Below you will find some examples:

Website	Pages in Supplemental Index	Total Pages Indexed	Supplemental Index Ratio
www.seobook.com	90	2260	3,9%
www.dailyblogtips.com	60	521	11,5%
www.copyblogger.com	116	574	20,2%

How can I make my ratio better?

Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines. Many tips can be found in the previous article Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips
QC + QL = No Supplemental Index. The best way to pull your pages out of the supplemental index is by providing quality content (QC) that will get you quality links (QL). Search engines will start to view your blog as an authority and will place your page in the main index. You might get lucky and through internal linking or site association other pages may also be removed from the supplemental index.
Be patient. New blogs tend to have ratios above 75% for a number of months. This is because of low traffic and a lack of quality links. Keep posting quality content and your ratio will improve.

10 Tips for Writing Better Posts

2009-07-09T19:13:00.000-07:00

A blog is only as good as its content. Increasing the quality of our blog posts can bring traffic, inbound links, social bookmarks, subscribers, comments, and other rewards every blogger works hard to achieve. This post lists ten simple things you can do to produce better posts, every time.

1. Write headlines that promise value. The reason numbered headlines are so in vogue is that they’re incredibly specific about what the reader will get by reading the article. You can be both specific and gripping without numbers, however, as long as you use your headlines to give readers an enticing preview not of what your article is about, but what it has to offer. A good strategy is to think of your headline as the sign on a door you want readers to open: what kind of sign would make the reader want to peek inside?

2. Begin with a gripping lead. A great headline will get your readers to open the door, but the strength of your first paragraph will determine whether they step inside. The first few sentences of your posts should expand on the headline and get more specific about what the content has to offer, whether it be entertainment, humor, information, or important facts.

3. Signpost your logic with sub-headings. I tend to go against the grain in my reasoning for using sub-headings. As far as I’m concerned, sub-headings help your visitors read, not simply scan. Good sub-headings give readers an angle to approach the following paragraph, help interlink your ideas, and break up complicated thoughts into manageable chunks.

4. Utilize whitespace and images. Whitespace is the empty space in your blog layout (whether it’s white or not). Whitespace around your text makes it much easier to read, and a simple way to introduce more whitespace into your posts is to use frequent paragraph breaks. Another strategy to make your posts more readable is to break up your posts with relevant and illustrative images.

5. Weave appropriate links into your words. A good rule of thumb: whenever you write a string of words specifically relevant to content you’ve seen elsewhere, or a previous post you’ve written, turn those words into a link. There are a great number of benefits to doing this. You may be noticed by those you’re linking to, you can get traffic from trackbacks, it can encourage readers to explore your blog, and it adds another layer of depth and detail to what you write.

6. Suggest further reading. When appropriate, direct readers to other content you’ve written on the topic at the end of your post. Some bloggers do this with the ‘Related Posts’ widget, but you’re more likely to capitalize on reader attention of you suggest the links within the body of your post, while they’re still in ‘reading mode’.

7. Engage the reader. A simple strategy for increasing your comments is to ask readers what they think. Opinions are much more freely given than experiences, so asking for opinions is likely to produce better results.

8. Rigorously edit what you’ve written. Check for typos, make sure your links work, check that your logic is clear and your formatting is displaying correctly. Fixing up your posts at a later date may cause the post to re-appear in feed readers, which won’t be appreciated by those who’ve already seen it.

9. Make it shorter. Delete unnecessary words, sentences, and paragraphs. Retain only the minimum amount of information needed to make your point. Readers are more likely to commit to reading something they know they will finish. You don’t need to make every post you write short, but you will always benefit from making it shorter.

10. If you have the time, let your posts marinate. When you’ve been working on a piece of writing for an hour or two it can be hard to look at it with fresh eyes. You’ve probably noticed how different a piece of writing can seem when you re-read it a few days later, once you’ve had time to forget the thoughts behind each sentence. Letting your posts sit for a time will allow you to better look at your work from the perspective of a reader, and work out what needs to be improved.

5 Steps to Write Effective Articles in Less Time

2009-07-09T19:12:00.002-07:00

Do you sit in front of computer for a long time to create a single blog post or article? Does it take too much thinking for you to come up with an effective article? If your answer was ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you should continue to read the post. Whether you are a blogger or a freelance writer or an article marketer, you need to write effective articles quickly. If you are doing one of those as a full time job, you must really use your time properly and try to write more articles in less time. Here are few things you should do when you sit to write an article or blog post.

1. Close Every Other Application

Ever installed any software? Few of them ask you to close other applications when installing it. The same should be followed when you sit to write an article. Close the chat client first. This is probably the one which eats up most of your time. Next, close your email client. Don’t have any other application open, other than your writing software. You should not open any of the applications when you are writing the article. You can open your browser when you want to look for some reference, but close it again as soon as you are done. Don’t check your blog traffic stats, AdSense earnings or anything else as well.

2. Do Research Before Writing

It is always better to do a little research before writing the article. This will help you to write an effective article. The quality of the article will show clearly that you have researched. Almost every blog post that hits the front page of social bookmarking sites is well researched and structured. By doing research, you also make your article longer and in depth.

3. Prepare a Schedule

Preparing a schedule will help you in saving time. Set a time for each and everything you do for the article. You can allocate 30 minutes or whatever you are comfortable with, for writing the article itself. Set 5 minutes for selecting an image. Also have 10-15 minutes for collecting references and coming up with a catchy headline. Within an hour, you should be able to create some top notch content.

4. Proof Read At Least Once

This is very important and most people skip this due to lack of time (or patience). This will prove to be costly when you are writing for some other person or for a client. Once you finish writing the post, read it once. If you have written many articles and don’t have time to proof read all of them, hire a person to do the work for you.

5. Do the Editing Till You Are Satisfied

Once you have completed writing the article, do the formatting works. Place the image at the right place. Give credit to the image author if needed. Preview the article. If it is what you wanted, publish the article. If not, continue with your editing and formatting. Add quotes to the post to make it more effective. Tie any loose ends.

Writing quality articles in short time is not an easy task, but if you prepare yourself and use a structured process soon you will be cranking paragraphs like there is no tomorrow!

9 Steps to Better Blog Post Ideas

2009-07-09T19:12:00.001-07:00

Content is king. We’ve all heard that a million times and most of us have seen first hand that the content truly will make or break a blog. One of the single most powerful influences on the quality of blog content is the originality of ideas. A talented author can develop a well-written article, but if it covers a topic that’s been beaten to death it won’t make much of an impact. Likewise, an average writer can create a wildly successful blog post with the right idea.

Too many bloggers rush into writing the post and the importance of idea generation gets overlooked. Improving your idea generation skills is one of the most effective things you can do to improve your results.

Here are 9 Steps to Generating Better Ideas:

1. Make Time for It

Make idea generation one of your priorities, and recognize its influence on your success. Just like you need to set aside time for writing blog posts, you also need to designate time for developing ideas for posts. There are plenty of activities with your blog that can consume your time, but don’t do so at the expense of working on new ideas. Without leaving time for it, you’ll find yourself sitting at the computer searching for a topic to write about, and the results will suffer.

2. Have a Brainstorming Session

Rather than trying to come up with one post idea at a time as you need them, sit down and crank out as many ideas as you can. Write down all of your ideas. Many of them will not turn into anything usable, but that’s ok. Get your creative energy flowing and you’ll find yourself having more than enough great ideas to develop. Several months ago I wrote an article on brainstorming techniques for bloggers.

3. Use Mind Mapping

Mind mapping is a method of brainstorming that helps you to visualize your ideas and to build on them with other related ideas. This method can really help you to develop ideas for posts on particular subjects and topics as you can visualize all of the different aspects and you see the possibilities for useful blog posts. Darren wrote an excellent guide to mind mapping a few months ago at ProBlogger.

4. Outline Posts Before Writing Them

If you are typing your posts with little or no direction you will have disjointed articles that are less productive than they could be. I find it to be very helpful to outline every post before I actually write the content. This may require some research, depending on the topic, but it will make the writing process easier. It also helps you to identify ideas that really don’t develop into quality posts. From the outline you should have a pretty good idea of how well you can develop the post, and you’ll know pretty quickly when an idea isn’t worth the time of trying to write the full post. This way you will be spending your writing time on ideas with better potential.

5. Keep a Journal

Although it is extremely helpful to have specific time for brainstorming, you’ll still have some ideas that hit you at random times. In these situations if you do not have a journal or notebook for jotting down ideas you’ll probably forget more of them than you will remember. My notebook is one of my most valuable possessions. It has more ideas and outlines than I’ll ever have time to write. Sure, some of them are pretty bad, but whenever I need a post or whenever I have time to sit down and type, there’s always something of quality there waiting for me.

6. Take Your Ideas and Plan a Posting Schedule

I find it to be very helpful to plan out my posts a week in advance. Every weekend I’ll look through the ideas that I have been working on, and I’ll select the ones that I am going to finalize and publish during the upcoming week. This helps me to avoid last minute posts that don’t have much of a point except to get something published.

7. Don’t Publish Something Unless You Are Happy With It

If you finish a post and you feel that it doesn’t live up to your standards of quality, either keep working to improve it or just get rid of it. It’s never fun to give up on an idea that you’ve spent some time on, but that is better than publishing something that could lower your readers’ opinions of your blog.

8. Improve Your Title Writing Skills

Some bloggers start the process of writing a post by first coming up with an attention-grabbing title and then working from there to develop the content. While this may not always work, it is a different method that can help to give your writing process a spark.

The titles of your blog posts will have a huge impact on how many people actually read what you’ve written. If you’re going to spend your time researching, writing a post, and proofreading it, why just publish it with the first title that comes to mind? Coming up with the best title usually takes a few attempts, but it will be well worth your time. See Daniel’s post 3 Rules for Writing Effective Titles for a little bit of help.

9. Analyze Your Results

Part of creating posts that attract attention is knowing what types of content have worked well for you in the past. Most bloggers check their stats regularly, but often times this is not done with much detail. Have you ever gone back over several months’ worth of stats and really analyzed what types of posts consistently drew the most traffic and comments, and which other types of posts and subjects drew very little interest? When I took a more detailed look at the stats from my own blog I saw some interesting trends that I hadn’t noticed before, and that knowledge has helped me to produce ideas for posts that perform well.

Improve Your Search Rankings with Internal SEO

2009-07-09T18:58:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year I wrote a post about the stimulus package that passed Congress in February. I titled the post Government Stimulus Package because I thought the only thing it was stimulating was government. I got lucky with this, because apparently a lot of people searched for the phrase “government stimulus package” to learn about what was in it.

The post did ok on Digg and Reddit, nothing spectacular but it brought in some traffic. It may have gotten a few other links, but not a ton. A few days after the post was published, I noticed that I was getting some traffic the search engines. The post was on the front page of Google, around 6 or so for the keyword phrase “government stimulus package.” This is the first step in improving your SERPs.

1. Look at Your Stats

Find out which pages you are getting traffic to from the search engines and what keywords are being used to get there. This is where we need to focus. Improving your ranking for a term from 7429 to 43 takes your traffic from 0 to 0. If you can improve from 9 to 1, you will see a huge increase in traffic if it is a phrase that people are searching for.

Now that we have a few pages that are getting some traffic and the keywords they are getting it from, we have to do a little keyword research.

2. Keyword Research

The first step is to find out which phrases we want to target. Look at the keywords that are getting the most traffic and find out where you currently rank. You could use your web analytics program for this, and then check the rankings on Google.

At this point, you can also use a keyword search tool to find out how much traffic each of these phrases gets.

Now we want to focus our efforts on the terms we rank the highest for that get the most search traffic.

3. Internal SEO

Have you ever written anything similar to this before? Go through your archives and find where you have mentioned this topic before. Update the old article with a link to the new one using the keywords you are trying to rank for.

If this is a topic that people want to know more about, consider writing another post or two expanding on the first one. In each new post, link to the original article with one of the keyword phrases you are targeting.

Next, go back to the post you are hoping to rank higher. Is the keyword already in the article? Consider making it bold. Is there a section where the phrase would make a good header? Consider adding it. Don’t stuff the article full of keywords as you still want the people that come to enjoy your writing. However, if these changes can be made without affecting the quality, they may help improve your ranking a little bit.

These things do two things. They show the search engines what your pages are about (hopefully the keywords you are targeting) and they show them that they are important pages. The more links you have pointing to the page, the more important you are making it in Google’s eyes.

4. Watch your Rankings and Traffic Surge

I went back to my post and made the keyword bold when I used it. Then I went through the archives and found another post that talked about the stimulus package and added a link to the new post. I also wrote a few more articles in the following weeks that talked about the stimulus package, so I linked back in each of those as well. The result? I moved up to #1 in Google for the phrase “government stimulus package” before it passed. It brought thousands of visitors to my blog, and the week that the bill passed is my highest traffic week ever.

The part of this that is really powerful is that all of this was done several days after the article was posted. The regular readers had read it already, and anyone who was going to link to it already had. I was then able to move from #6 to #1 in Google simply by telling Google what the page was about and that I thought it was important. Never underestimate the power of linking to yourself internally.

I have since dropped behind irs.gov and recovery.gov, but that post has been viewed more times than any other. It also gave me a valuable lesson in SEO that has helped increase my search traffic to many other posts as well.

Use forums to promote your blog

2009-07-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

A very simple yet effective way to promote your blog is through the use of online forums. The first thing to do is to find a couple of forums related to the topic of your blog and register up. Big-Boards.com is an excellent resource to find large forums. Currently they track almost 2000 of the largest online boards on the Internet.

Once you pick a couple of forums and register up you will need to customize your profile. Most of the boards allow the user to create a signature, make sure you use it to place a link to your blog with a small description of what users will find there.

Now you are set, just engage in the discussions and contribute with useful information, so that people will want to check out your signature link.

How to Attract More RSS Subscribers - For Real

2009-07-07T07:14:00.000-07:00

Building a loyal RSS readership is the most difficult part of blogging. Driving traffic, hitting the Digg front page and building links can all be fluked by being in the right place at the right time; but impressing somebody enough for them to want to read your blog every day is far harder.

Most of the worlds 50 or 100 million blogs will go through life with just a handful of readers before the writer decides to call it a day. Have you ever wondered how some blogs seem to attract new readers like a moth to a flame? Do you look at sites with thousands of readers and wonder how they do it?

Blog posts and tutorials designed to help you increase your readership focus on basic elements such as positioning your feed link above the fold etc. I’ve included these points in a basic checklist at the end but will be focusing on the more advanced methods of readership building in this article.

Citations from other bloggers

The first thing I did when starting BlogStorm was to sit down in front of my Netvibes RSS reader and look through all 200 feeds to try and figure out how I found them and why I subscribed to them. The results were very revealing and I found that most of the feeds added in the past 12 months were added after a personal recommendation from another trusted blogger. Only about 3 of the feeds were discovered after spotting the site on Digg or a similar social network.

Making use of this statistic is simple - you need to make sure lots of trusted bloggers with large readerships recommend your new blog. Of course this is easier said than done.

My method was to make sure the blog had something different to offer my readers and to use this as a marketing strategy. The internet marketing blogosphere is so saturated that for a new blog to start from nowhere offering unique advice was refreshing and a lot of people were happy to link to it.

I also spent a lot of time emailing all of my Gmail address book contacts to individually introduce the blog to them and make sure they knew all about it. Don’t beg for links, just make sure they know about your blog and who you are.

Gaining citations is a hard process and involves interacting with bloggers one at a time over periods of weeks, months or years. Sometimes you won’t ever get a link from them but if you know a blogger and have communicated by email they are much more likely to recommend you to their readers at some time in the future.

Pillar articles

The first five articles on a new blog are without doubt the most important. You need to establish a theme for your blog so that people know what type of posts to expect and prove to people that not only are you a great writer but that they really should subscribe to your blog.

Get these first few articles right and you can gain a few hundred readers in the first week.

Linkbait

Linkbaiting is a great strategy but it needs to be done in the right way. There is little point in hitting the Digg front page with a “Top 10″ article as thats not going to earn you any citations from popular blogs, unless you are just wanting to drive traffic. The key aspect of linkbaiting is to craft your linkbait in a way that is likely to gain you links from authority blogs and news websites. Hitting the Digg front page will send you a nice traffic boost and probably give you link from hundreds of sites that scrape the Digg feed, but unless your content is linkable you won’t see a boost in readership from it.

For me the main benefit of linkbaiting is to gain citations from other bloggers but its also a good strategy for driving what I call brute force traffic.

Traffic Bait

At the start of my promotion I wanted to raise awareness of my blog so I set about trying to drive as much traffic as I could in the hope some of it would stick. I call this brute force traffic and it’s a fun but not very effective strategy.

300,000 visitors later the fact that most of it doesn’t stick is only too apparent. Visitors from Digg and other social networks don’t subscribe to your feeds for the simple reason they visit maybe 50 new sites every day and can’t possibly subscribe to them all.

The main benefit of traffic bait is to drive natural citations and build brand awareness. If somebody doesn’t subscribe the first time they come across your site maybe they will the next time.

Your content

Regular readers don’t normally like to read loads of linkbait posts all the time. It’s very important you publish a mixture of very high quality posts and linkbait posts to keep your regular readers happy.

Give people a reason to read

People subscribe to blogs for a whole variety of reasons. Before you can attract a new reader you need to be able to understand why they might want to read what you have to say. If you write about the latest gadgets you need to break the news before Gizmodo and offer better reviews than Engadget if you want to be noticed. Internet marketing bloggers need to produce tips and articles that will help their readers make more money online.

Persuade your visitors their lives would be better if they subscribed to your blog.

Checklist: 7 easy ways to increase your readership

Use a large RSS button in a prominent area on your page
Offer email subscriptions
Email people who forget to confirm their subscriptions
Hold contests only for RSS readers
Add a note to the bottom of every post pointing out your RSS feed
Show off your stats with FeedBurner
Include a link to explain what RSS is for your non internet savvy readers

How Popular is Your Site?

2009-07-07T05:36:00.000-07:00

Popuri.us is a simple web tool to check the popularity of your website. Here is a list of factors that it takes into consideration:

Google Pagerank
Alexa Rank
Compete Rank
Google Backlinks
Yahoo Backlinks
MSN Backlinks
Technorati Links
Delicious Bookmarks
Bloglines Subsribers

Tools for Displaying Online Visitors

2009-07-07T05:35:00.001-07:00

If you have a popular website you could consider displaying the number of online visitors. It will give you and your readers the idea of how many people are reading the blog at any given time, what hours of the day are the most trafficked ones and so on.

Below you will find three online tools that offer this feature. Bear in mind that you should avoid using those counters if the average number of readers on your blog is really low; after all you do not want to give a reader the impression that he is the only one reading your stuff.

whos.amung.us: it is a widget that can be easily integrated into any website. There is no registration required and you can even choose to hide the widget so that no one else will be able to access the statistics.
24Log.com: the service requires registration, but it offers several buttons and styles to choose from. Additionally you can also define the time frame that will be used to compute the number of online users.
Myonlineusers.com: this is a very simple service that will display the number of online users through a text link. You just need to integrate a Javascript code into your template.

Monetize your blog with Auction Ads

2009-07-06T09:31:00.000-07:00

Auction Ads is a new advertising network (owned by Shoemoney Media Group and MediaWhiz) that will enable bloggers and website owners to monetize their blog by displaying eBay auctions. A lot of people have already reviewed the service extensively, so instead of reinventing the wheel I will just link to the best reviews around the blogosphere, check it out:

If you enjoy this article please comment me. Thank you!!!!

Making Money Online is About Getting Big (and Not About Jamming Ads on Your Website)

2009-07-06T09:29:00.000-07:00

I see this far too often:

Guy reads on some blog or website that it is possible to work from home and make thousands of dollars from the Internet.
Guy gets excited and creates a website or blog.
Guy starts getting some traffic, and right after he jams his website with all kinds of ads. CPM banners, 125×125 buttons, Google Adsense, Kontera and so on.
Guy wonders how come he is just making $100 monthly after a lot of hard work

When I come across those small websites hammered with ads I get the impression that the owner is trying to milk every last penny out of the visitors that are coming there, instead of trying to grow the site itself.

Sure depending on your luck and skill you might end up making a couple of hundred dollars every month. But is that what you are aiming for? Even if you manage to reach $1,000 monthly. Is that your ultimate goal?

The problem with this approach is twofold. First of all when you pack your website with ads all over the place, you will damage your reputation. Some readers will think that you are just trying to make a quick buck, and they will probably never return.

Secondly, when you try to make as much money as possible from a website that is not even getting 1,000 uniques a day, you automatically start with the wrong mindset. You adjust your goals accordingly, probably limiting your growth potential.

Now you might ask: “what about sites like TechCrunch or Mashable that also have ads all over the place?”

Well, those websites already have a very big audience, and huge credibility on the market. Once you are at that stage, you probably can pull off an ad-heavy layout without facing too many problems. But I am sure that when Michael Arrington started TechCrunch his main goal was to make the blog an authority on its niche, and not to squeeze money out of his early visitors.

Note that even those large websites never blend ads with the content, or use intrusive forms of advertising like pop-ups and in-text ads.

The takeaway message is: if you want to make money online, aim to get big and credible first, and then monetize it.

Is your blog cross-browser compatible?

2009-07-06T09:28:00.000-07:00

People usually design a website or a blog for one specific browser, and that is the browser they use to navigate. Should they load the site on a different browser, however, it is probable that some unpleasant surprises will appear.

Most of the new websites are based on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a technique that allows developers to have more control over the look and feel of the pages, making sure that the elements are consistent throughout the site.

Unfortunately not all browsers interpret CSS commands on the same way, creating discrepancies such as misaligned sidebars, overlapping text and the like. The only way to solve the problem is to test your website on the many different browsers that people might use to access it.

Now, installing on your computer a version of every single browser out there would be time consuming, to say the least. What if you could find a service that takes screenshots of your site in different browsers and report them back to you?

That is exactly what Browsershots.org does. All you need to do is to type the URL of your site, select the browsers you want to test and wait some minutes to see the screenshots. The service includes all the versions of IE, Firefox, Safari and Opera and you can even select different screen resolutions.

Check the load time of your site

2009-07-06T09:25:00.001-07:00

Everyone knows how annoying it can be having to deal with websites that take forever to load. There are recent researches, in fact, confirming that 75% of the Internet users do not return to sites that take longer than four seconds to load.

In order to check the load time of your site you can use an online tool called “Website Speed Test“. It allows you to enter up to 10 websites, and the results display the size of the website, the total loading time and the average speed per KB.

By the way I would suggest keeping your load time below 2 seconds. In the near future I will post an article with tips to make your pages load faster.

Test Everything on Your Website

2009-07-06T09:18:00.001-07:00

What if you could find a single place to validate your HTML and CSS, test the SEO aspects of your site, check your performance in the social bookmarking sphere and even control the status of your server?

That is exactly what Test Everything stands for. This online service groups together over 100 web tools and applications for website owners. The tools are divided into 8 categories, and inside them you will pretty much anything you could need, from ping testers to graphic generators.

If you enjoy this article please comment me. Thank you!!!!

Website Spell Checkers

2009-07-06T09:16:00.000-07:00

Having spelling mistakes all over the place can really undermine the credibility of your website. But what if you don’t have the time or patience to spell check everything yourself? Well, there are some resources that you can use for this purpose.

The Online Solution

TextTrust appears to be one of the best online alternatives. I inserted the URL of Daily Blog Tips into their free trial utility and within 30 minutes I received an email with nine sample pages from my site that contained spelling mistakes.

If you Enjoy this article please comment me. Thank you.

SEO for WordPress and Calculating Your Blog Value

2009-07-06T09:07:00.002-07:00

Two interesting things that caught my attention around the blogosphere lately. The first one is a really extensive SEO guide for WordPress by Joost de Valk. Joost is a professional SEO, although you might also know him for the many WP plugins that he coded already. Anyway on this guide he cover several steps to make sure that your WordPress is getting as much search traffic as it should. Here are the sub-topics:

Basic Technical Optimization
Template Optimization
Advanced Technical Optimization
Altering your blog’s structure for high rankings
Conversion optimization
Comment optimization
Off site blog SEO

What is XML?

2009-07-06T09:07:00.001-07:00

If you are a blogger, you probably came across the term XML before. It is all over the place. But what is XML after all? And more importantly, should you care about it?

XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. Basically, it is a markup language created to transport structured data across different systems and platforms. There is an article over W3C titled “XML in 10 Points,” which gives an introduction to this language. The 10 points are:

1. XML is for structuring data
2. XML looks a bit like HTML
3. XML is text, but isn’t meant to be read
4. XML is verbose by design
5. XML is a family of technologies
6. XML is new, but not that new
7. XML leads HTML to XHTML
8. XML is modular
9. XML is the basis for RDF and the Semantic Web
10. XML is license-free, platform-independent and well-supported

After reading the article you realize why you should care about XML (or at least understand how it works). XML was created to facilitate the use of structured data across the Internet, and it is already becoming the standard for applications and platforms that try to accomplish that.

RSS, for instance, is just a modified XML format which carries the headlines and main content of your blog.

Notice that XML will not substitute HTML, but rather complement it. HTML is concerned with how data looks (on a website, for instance), while XML is concerned with describing the data itself and its structure.

The main difference between these two markup languages is that HTML has fixed tags, while in XML the tags need to be defined by the user or by the platform (that is why it is called extensible).

Many people think that Web 3.0 will be the semantic web. We can’t say for sure, but XML will probably be there, as the standard tool for transferring data across the Internet.

How Search Engines See Your Website

2009-07-06T09:05:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered how Google and its pals see your website? There is a little tool called SEO Browser that can help you here. Basically you just need to type your URL and it will display the information that search engines see when they crawl your site.

This can be useful to see what elements are not being considered, in what order your content and links appear and so on. They also have an advanced analysis mode where you will be able to see several SEO factors from your site, including meta tags, page size, load time, text to page weight ratio and more.

BecomeABlogger.com Is Open Again

2009-07-06T08:59:00.000-07:00

This Monday Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick are re-opening their BecomeABlogger.com course. If you don’t have a blog yet, or if you are just getting started with the whole blogging thing, this is probably the best course online for you. Why? Because it covers the A to Z of blogging, and all the lessons are video tutorials, so you can actually watch Yaro talking and showing things on his desktop.

Here are the 8 modules of the course (each of which comes with several videos inside):

1. Get Your Blog Up And Running Fast And Free
2. How To Optimize Your Blog For Maximum Search Engine Performance
3. How To Create Powerful Content For Your Blog, Consistently and Without Fail
4. How To Use Images On Your Blog To Make You Stand Out From The Crowd
5. How To Create A Different Dimension To Your Blog By Adding Audio
6. How To Breathe Life Into Your Blog Using Online Video
7. How To Create Multiple Streams of High Quality Traffic To Your Blog
8. How To Make Money From Your Blog

The course costs $47 per month, and it has a duration of six months. The cool thing is that after the six months you get lifetime access to the members area, the private forum, and to all future updates that Yaro might make to the course. The last time Yaro opened this course they got so many members that they were forced to close the doors for some time. This time around they will keep the new registrations open only for 5 days.

10 Essential Legal Points for Bloggers

2009-07-06T08:58:00.000-07:00

Every day, millions of bloggers post content online. Millions more people read and comment on blogs. With all that communication, some interesting legal issues are bound to arise. This article looks at 10 major legal points that bloggers must know and offers some suggestions about how to work with them.

1. Develop a “legal consciousness” about blogging. Like any publications, blogs frequently create legal questions. However, there is no need to fear those issues. Instead, being aware of the possibility of such concerns will help you identify them and manage them effectively. This article presents some of the most common legal issues that arise.

As you read it, consider how those issues apply to your blog. Also, it is good to develop the habit of looking for legal questions as you post new content on your blog. Using the major points in this article as a guide, you can ask yourself, “Are there any potential legal problems here?” whenever you update your blog. This simple practice will help you identify important legal questions and resolve them before they have a chance to cause problems.

2. Read carefully and understand the agreements related to your blog. Depending on how you host, manage, promote, and monetize your blog, the exact agreements you enter will vary somewhat, but here are some common agreements that will affect most bloggers:

* Web and blog hosting agreements, including terms of service and acceptable use policies;
* content-sharing agreements and licenses;
* syndication agreements; and
* affiliate, revenue-sharing, and advertising programs.

You should assume that these agreements are valid, enforceable contracts that you must follow. Of course, if you have questions about any agreements or policies or their validity, you should consult with a lawyer to learn about your rights and duties. However, it is reasonable to expect that in most cases you will have to abide by these agreements as you operate your blog, so it is worth your time to become familiar with them.

3. Adopt basic legal policies for your blog. Most blogs can benefit from a “terms of use” agreement. This policy explains how visitors to your blog may use your site and its content. It is the fundamental agreement between you and visitors to your site. The particulars of terms of use agreements vary from one blog to another, but some common provisions include disclaimers of warranties on any of the content, limitation of the blog publisher’s liability, restrictions about how the blog’s content can be used, netiquette policies governing comments posted on the blog, and so forth.

A privacy policy is also an important document for blogs today. Participants in blog conversations are concerned about identity theft and the security of their information. Establishing and following a privacy policy for your blog assures visitors that their personal information will be protected and encourages them to join the discussions at your blog. Here at Daily Blog Tips, Aditya Mahesh recently outlined the basic points that all good blog privacy policies have. Following those points will give you a great start on developing a privacy policy for your blog.

User-generated content (UGC) is becoming an increasingly important source of potential legal disputes. Content-sharing sites may be the most obvious example of participatory media and UGC, but blogs allow users to generate content in the form of comments. A useful policy for UGC will answer the following questions:

* who owns the content that users post?
* how can the blog’s publisher use the UGC?
* how can other users use the content?
* do visitors to the blog have the right to change or remove their content?
* how will you handle UGC that infringes upon another person’s intellectual property rights or is illegal?
* how will disputes over UGC be resolved?

Please note that the questions listed above are just starting points. A complete UGC policy will answer those questions and several others that apply to the particular kind of blog you publish.

4. Protect your copyright in your original work. Unfortunately, a lot of blog content is being copied and used all over the Web without the permission of the content’s creators. Preventing copyright infringement and plagiarism can be difficult and costly, but there are some simple things you can do to address the problem.

* display a copyright notice conspicuously on each page of your blog;
* register your copyright in your blog with the United States Copyright Office or the copyright registration authority in your country;
* license your work to your blog’s visitors (Creative Commons offers a number of standard licenses that you can use, if you don’t want to create your own from scratch); and
* learn more about the problem of online plagiarism by reading authoritative information, such as Daily Blog Tips’ “Blog Plagiarism Q & A” and Jonathan Bailey’s PlagiarismToday site.

5. Respect others’ content and do not infringe upon it. You can avoid many disputes in the blogosphere if you respect others’ copyrights and trademarks. Here are a few tips to help you avoid infringing on others’ intellectual property.

For copyrights:

* assume all content, whether online or offline, is protected by copyright unless you are certain that it is in the public domain;
* get written permission to use copyrighted content and store that writing in a safe place in case you need it later;
* always acknowledge the source of content and, if the copyright owner requests a certain format for the attribution, use it;
* follow best practices related to copyright law; and
* be extremely careful about “fair use” of copyrighted works. The legal factors that determine whether a given use of copyrighted content is a “fair use” may look simple and obvious, but they can be very difficult to apply in practice. If you are unsure about whether your proposed use is a fair use, consult with a lawyer. Even if you are sure that you are making fair use of a copyrighted work, you will still be wise to do everything you reasonably can to obtain written permission to use that work, to avoid the possibility of disputes later.

For trademarks:

* show the trademark symbol (”®” for registered trademarks, and “TM” for common law trademarks) immediately after the trademark;
* follow the trademark owner’s guidelines for using the mark in blogs and commentary (for an example of such guidelines, see the LEGO® Fair Play policy); and
* do not suggest that the trademark owner approves of your content, endorses your site, or is affiliated with you. Instead, display a statement prominently that says you are not affiliated with the trademark owner and that the owner has not approved or endorsed your blog or its content.

6. Before you post statements of fact, be sure those statements are true. Obviously, very few bloggers will intentionally publish false information. However, in the rush to cover topics quickly, ahead of other bloggers and ahead of the mainstream media, bloggers face increasing pressure to “get it first and get it right.” Unfortunately, though, sometimes speed comes at the cost of accuracy. Sacrificing accuracy can cause at least three big problems for the blogger.

First, someone may accuse the blogger of libel because he or she misstated the facts.

Second, you and your blog will lose credibility. In the short term, lost credibility may cost you readers and advertisers. In the longer term, lost credibility may affect your ability to successfully publish other blogs.

Third, if you are selling goods, services, or information through your blog, misrepresenting certain facts can subject you to liability for fraud and violation of applicable consumer protection laws.

7. Consider special problems that can arise in the workplace.

Several disputes have arisen between employers and employees over blogging. Some bloggers have even lost their jobs. There are a few basic rules to follow in the workplace to avoid problems.

If you are an employee, don’t blog on your employer’s time or using your employer’s computer systems or network, unless you have your employer’s explicit written permission. Such practices are likely against the employer’s rules and you probably don’t have any legal right to use the employer’s equipment for personal blogging.

An exception to this general rule occurs when you are writing content for an official company blog that your employer sponsors. In that case, you have the employer’s permission, but you should verify that your blog postings comply with the company’s policies for online content. If you are not sure about the applicability of your employer’s policy, ask your manager.

If you are an employer, make sure your employees understand your company’s policies about blogging. Your blogging policies should be in writing and you should ask employees to sign a statement that says they have read and understood the policy and agree to comply with it. As with any other policies, you should enforce your blogging policies consistently and fairly.

8. If you publish a collaborative or group blog, make sure all the contributors know their rights and responsibilities concerning the blog and its content. The more people you have contributing content to a blog, the greater the potential for disputes. To avoid conflict, it is useful to develop a written agreement with the other bloggers that addresses, at a minimum, the following points:

* who owns the copyright to the individual blog posts?
* who owns the copyright to the blog as a whole?
* can individual bloggers republish their blog posts on other blogs or in other publications, whether online or offline?
* under what circumstances may individual bloggers remove their blog posts from the group blog?
* do bloggers retain any interest in the blog’s content, including in their individual contributions to it, after they leave the blog?
* who is entitled to revenue that the blog generates?
* who is responsible for paying the blog’s expenses?
* how will disputes among bloggers be resolved?
* how will the various affairs of the blog be concluded if the blog ceases publication?

9. Blog anonymously, if your identity, reputation, or personal safety are at risk. In some cases, the only reasonable way to communicate your message–and to make it likely that you will be able to continue blogging–is to blog anonymously. While some countries, such as the United States of America, guarantee a legal right to communicate anonymously, exercising that right on the Internet is not necessarily easy because a blogger may leave various clues about his or her identity at numerous points in the blogging process. While a complete discussion of the technical means to blog anonymously is beyond the scope of this article, here are two resources that will help you navigate those technical issues.

* The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)
* Reporters Without Borders, “How to blog anonymously,” in Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents.

10. Learn more about the basics of the laws that affect bloggers. There is much more to the law of blogging than a brief article can cover. Moreover, as blogging becomes more popular, blogging law is developing rapidly. Therefore, learning about the legal issues of blogging is an ongoing process.

Happily, there are several good resources available to help you stay up to date on legal matters. One source of information is bloggers’ conferences and conventions. Those meetings often hold sessions or workshops that present the latest legal developments that bloggers need to know. Additionally, there are several online publications that explain the law in much greater detail and provide a variety of examples to guide you through the legal maze. Here are a few samples of those texts.

* Daily Blog Tips, “12 U.S. Laws Bloggers Should Know“
* Electronic Frontier Foundation, Legal Guide for Bloggers
* Colette Vogele, Mia Garlick, and the Berkman Center Clinical Program in Cyberlaw, Podcasting Legal Guide: Rules for the Revolution

Bonus tip: Get periodic legal checkups of your blog.

Although this article presents a do-it-yourself approach to identifying and managing the major legal issues you are likely to face as a blogger, you can also benefit by having a lawyer conduct a legal checkup of your blog periodically, perhaps once each year. An increasing number of lawyers now offer preventive services such as legal checkups and those preventive reviews can help you identify and correct potential legal problems with your blog and learn about some of the more recent developments in the law that concern bloggers.

It's Cool Trick with Google Images

2009-07-06T05:51:00.000-07:00

It is cool trick of google you will be surprised just follow the steps.

1. First go to Google Images : images.google.com

2. Search for anything you want like "flowers , cats , dogs,etc"

3. Next, you'll see lot of image thumbnails as usual...

4. Now,Just copy and paste following code in your address bar and press Enter.

javascript:R= 0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI= document.images ; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i<DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math. sin(R*x1+ i*x2+x3)* x4+x5; DIS.top=Math. cos(R*y1+ i*y2+y3)* y4+y5}R++ }setInterval('A()',5); void(0)

And see what happens.. surprise for you....
If you enjoy this post you can comment me.

Submit your Site to Top Search Engines

2009-07-05T07:45:00.000-07:00

If your site or blog is new then Search Engines will take time to crawl and add your site to their database.

Submitting your blog or site to search engines is THE most important way for visitors to find your site or blog.

Everyone wants to see their site on top search results of search engines.

If you also want top the search engine placement for your site then don't wait for the search engines to automatically find you.

Just manually submit your site to them. Submitting your site or blog to search engines should be one of the immediate steps to take just after creating your blog.

Here are some submission links of top search engines from where you can manually submit your site.

Google

Yahoo!Search

Windows Live Search

Cuil

You can use also free service of "Submit Express" which submits your site to 20+ top search engines at once.Submit Express

If you like this article you can comment me.

How to use Google to access blocked websites

2009-07-04T09:45:00.000-07:00

Google is more than just a great search engine. Using Google Translate, you can bypass your (company, university, school) firewall or proxy server and access blocked websites.
Of course this is based on the premise that Google is not being blocked by your organization. I highly doubt that any admin would be so brave as to deny you access to Google!

On to business, here how to access blocked websites using Google:

- Open your web browser
- Type or copy the following into your browsers address bar:

http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=www.blocked.com

- Be sure to replace www.blocked.com with the address of the site you want to access.
Example usage: If Facebook is being blocked by my organization I would type:

http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=www.facebook.com

- You will now be able to freely browse your previously 'blocked' website.

How this works is fairly simple. Using the above address, you tell Google to 'translate' a website of your choice from English to English (hence the /translate?langpair=en|en)

Google then fetches the website on your behalf, quickly 'translates' it for you and then passes it back to your web browser. This tricks your organization's proxy/firewall server as the website you requested effectively originates from Google (a trusted website) and not from a blocked website (Facebook in our above example)

CES 2009: Asus Builds PC, Touchscreen into EEE Keyboard

2009-07-01T04:21:00.000-07:00

We must admit that Asus is one of the most innovative companies in the field of computer hardware, the manufacturer single-handedly pushing the “netbook” and “nettop” concepts onto the market via its EEE brand. However, it looks like they're not about to stop anytime soon, since, for this year's CES, they've come up with yet another crazy contraption, the EEE Keyboard, which is, without a doubt, the most complex product of this type ever developed.

And that's not necessarily due to who knows what hi-tech typing-related functions or features. No, the EEE Keyboard is much more than that, it's actually a fully-functional computing system (although I wouldn't go as far as calling it a PC) that has been adapted in order to fit the ultra-slim form factor of a keyboard.

What's really interesting about this thing is that it could actually represent the future of home entertainment systems. And that's because it has been equipped with both UWB (ultra-wide band) HDMI and Wi-Fi b/g/n wireless modules, which means that users could very easily stream videos from the Internet and then directly to a wireless-HDMI enabled HDTV.

Numerous connectivity options
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As we can see from the photos, the device also sports a rather OK array of “wired” interfaces, including here USB 2.0, HDMI, VGA, Ethernet and audio in/out ports. Furthermore, the device has been equipped with a very useful 5-inch touchscreen, which grants fast and easy access to various shortcuts, media browsing or a virtual mouse.

Now, as mentioned right from the start, this device is solely in prototype phase for the time being. However, as our colleagues from Engadget have managed to find out, the EEE Keyboard showcased at CES is actually a near-final prototype, Asus planning to start mass production for this thing as soon as possible. And if the price is right, then the Taiwanese company might have yet another hit product in store of us.

Carbon Fiber Biometric Scanner Door Will Set You Back $15,000

2009-07-01T04:19:00.000-07:00

This Carbon Fiber Biometric Scanner Door is definitely one of the coolest carbon fiber items so far, cooler even than the carbon fiber car wheels. However, its price is also probably much higher. Thus, one of the most important features of this home and of office-use door is probably its price tag, since, no matter how high-tech a door could be, you must ask yourselves what could it do for 15,000 US dollars.

For this absolutely huge amount (as far as a door is concerned, that is), you will get a custom made carbon fiber door that features a biometric finger print scanner for the lock, in order to deliver an enhanced level of security. This biometric scanner is also made of carbon fiber. But, before adding any more details, you should know that this is not a mass produced item, but rather a collector's item, judging by its ridiculously high price.

The Carbon Fiber Biometric Scanner Door was commissioned to Choate Carbon in Brazil by a businessman who wanted it for his home lobby elevator area. The door was manufactured using vacuum bagging, 300k twill (2X2), divinycell and polypropylene honeycomb core, epoxy resin, and finished with a matte lacquer with U.V. additives.

Being an example of both high-class and proficiency (safety-wise), this carbon fiber biometric scanner door is guaranteed to be worth its price (the manufacturer issues this quality-related statement, of course). Too bad it's only available to a few chosen ones, otherwise, you'd see such a door in any home or office. The design is quite modern, the materials used are high-end and the door looks fabulous. The handle is simply an inset into the door, which is great…it adds to the simplistic modern aspect of it.

In other words, if you need an expert in carbon fiber designs, Choate Carbon from Brazil is definitely the company to go with. The only sad thing is that you'll have to be loaded in order to afford their work.

How to Protect Your Notebook Against Theft

2009-06-30T19:45:00.001-07:00

The world we live in was already extremely dangerous before the economic crisis hit, but things have gotten down the hill, with the level of crime rising almost everywhere. Of course, you shouldn't really go paranoid (yet) and imagine that you'll become a target as soon as you leave the safety of your own home, but taking some precautionary measures when working on your notebook in a public place is always a good idea, especially if the data you're handling is rather sensitive.

Some people might say that there's no way their notebook or netbook can get stolen. Well, these people are actually wrong, since, in some cases, a single moment of distraction is enough for a thief to grab your portable computing system and run away.

Given this situation, we've compiled a set of... well, we wouldn't really call them “tips,” but rather good ideas, that might help you prevent the loss/theft of your beloved notebook.

1 - Try to be careful where you work (or take your laptop out of its bag)

Well, this might seem like a no-brainer, and indeed, it is. So, if you really want to hold on to your notebook, it's perhaps a good idea to try and work in a fairly safe environment. In other words, if you're given the choice between a coffee shop (Starbucks, for example, since they also have wireless Internet) and a badly-lit back alley with a history of violence, try the former.

2 – Don't ever lose sight of your notebook

Be careful where you leave your notebook
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In general, it's a very good idea to keep your notebook and notebook bag available at hand at any given moment, wherever you might be. If you constantly keep an eye out for your portable computing friend, the chances of it going MIA will seriously decrease.

However, if you happen to store your device away from you, be sure to place it in a location that's out of sight, as inconspicuous as possible. For example, if you're leaving your notebook or notebook bag in your car, don't place in on the rear seat of your vehicle... put in the trunk and close it.

3 - Use a notebook's Kensington security lock

A Kensington lock-based security system
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Pretty much every portable computing system out there comes packed with a Kensington security lock, namely a small opening on one of its sides, which can be used for attaching a special security cable to the respective device. This could really come in handy when you're working in a public venue (like the coffee shop mentioned above). So, you can simply attach the security cable to the notebook, and then to some solid item that can't be easily moved (such as a handrail, a heavy table, etc.). It's always a good idea to secure it using a solid lock. This way, nobody will be able to simply pick up your notebook and run away with it.

Of course, while attempting to steal it, the thief might drop the notebook on the floor and render it useless, but I guess that repairing a damaged system is always cheaper than buying a whole new one.

4 – Try to conceal the fact that you're carrying a notebook

Conceal your notebook
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The market is filled with all sorts of interesting and attractive bags designed specifically for notebooks. However, thieves are quite familiar with this issue, and for this reason, it's perhaps a good idea to try and hide the fact that you're actually carrying around a notebook. You can do so by simply using a normal piece of luggage (such as a satchel, a briefcase, a normal bag, etc.) instead of the specialized bag. This way, the chances of a thief marking you and your notebook as a target will seriously decrease.

5 – Leave a permanent mark on your notebook

Laser etching... a bit to the extreme
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While this might affect the overall look of your notebook, it is also very likely to deter a thief from trying to steal it. The reasons are very simple, actually. Most thieves steal stuff in order to sell it, and selling a notebook that features a particular design, or its former owner's name and address engraved right on top of the case might prove to be an extremely difficult task.

These are only a few ideas we found to be useful, but if you have more, please don't hesitate to share them with us, by using the comments section below.

Security and Privacy Gurus Plead to Google for Default HTTPS

2009-06-30T19:41:00.000-07:00

Thirty seven security researchers, professionals, privacy advocates and academics have sent a letter to Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, asking him to consider encrypting all connections to Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar by default. Google has openly replied that it is considering such an implementation and will start tests on small groups of users.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) refers to HTTP connections that benefit from a form of encryption. This protocol has been supported by all major browsers since as far back as 1994, and Google already enforces it in order to protect sensitive data passing through Google Voice, Health, AdSense and Adwords.

The technology is also available for Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar, but it requires users to opt in to it, either by manually adding the https:// extension to the URLs or, more recently, by enabling it as a default on the Gmail Settings page. The experts signing the letter sent to Google claim that this feature is not advertised enough, nor is it easy to locate for the average user.

Furthermore, they maintain that the performance impact of having it enabled by default for everyone is negligible, compared to the security benefits. To back up their request, they exemplify with both theoretic and real-life attack scenarios where ill-intent individuals could or did sniff the unecrypted data passing over wireless networks. Previously demonstrated man-in-the-middle account hijacking attacks based on stealing session cookies are also mentioned.

"We strongly urge you to follow the lead of the financial industry and enable HTTPS encryption by default for the users of Google Mail, Docs, and Calendar," the world-renowned security and privacy minds write to Eric Schmidt. "As Google’s own help page notes, mail inboxes often contain 'sensitive data… like bank statements or online log-in credentials.' Given the huge threat posed by identity theft, it is vital that Google take proactive steps to protect its users from these risks," they conclude.

In a post on the company's Online Security Blog, Alma Whitten, software engineer within Google's Security & Privacy Teams, publicly responds to this report. "We're currently looking into whether it would make sense to turn on HTTPS as the default for all Gmail users," she announces. "[...] The additional cost of offering HTTPS isn't holding us back. But we want to more completely understand the impact on people's experience, analyze the data, and make sure there are no negative effects," she goes on to explain.

In this respect, the company plans to start trial tests on "small samples of different types of Gmail users." It is also noted that, "Unless there are negative effects on the user experience or it's otherwise impractical, we intend to turn on HTTPS by default more broadly, hopefully for all Gmail users."

On the downside, connections over HTTPS are slower, because, compared with HTTP, the data needs to also be encrypted and decrypted at both ends, resulting in bigger delays. This might be unnoticeable in countries where the broadband connection is the standard, but might pose problems for users living in underdeveloped regions, where dial-up Internet access is still the only affordable option.

ATI Catalyst 9.6 Driver Suite Available for Download

2009-06-30T19:39:00.000-07:00

Advanced Micro Devices, the world's second largest vendor of computer processors and graphics processors has just announced the release of its latest Catalyst Driver Suite, version 9.6. As with previous driver releases, the new version has been designed to provide users with a number of performance increases, while also fixing some of the known issues in various applications. Catalyst 9.6 is now ready for download, here at Softpedia, providing you with support for your own Dragon platform, or any other computer systems that are built using the latest Radeon GPUs.

According to the release notes, AMD's latest suite of Catalyst 9.6 drivers includes the following:

RadeonTM display driver 8.62

HydraVisionTM for both Windows XP and Vista

HydraVisionTM Basic Edition (Windows XP only)

WDM Driver Install Bundle

Southbridge/IXP Driver

CatalystTM Control Center Version 8.62

Already available for download, the new drivers will add support for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 users, with a main focus on a select number of GPUs, ranging from the 24xx-series to the latest 4xxx-series. In addition, the new releases also add support for several AMD Multimedia Family GPUs, AMD FireStream GPUs and the latest 3000-series chipsets.

The new drivers will also provide users with a number of performance increases in several gaming applications, according to AMD. Testing them on a platform that included a Phenom II 940 processor running at 3GHz, an ASUS M3A79-T(790) motherboard, 4GB of DDR2 RAM and Microsoft's Windows Vista.

Download NVIDIA GeForce 186.18 WHQL-Certified Drivers

2009-06-30T19:37:00.001-07:00

Having recently introduced its new range of graphics processing units for portable computer systems, the GT200-based 40nm parts, NVIDIA has just decided it's time to provide its fans and consumers with a new range of graphics drives, specifically designed to improve performance and fix known issues. The new GeForce 186.18 WHQL-certified drivers have been designed to provide users with support for their GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100 and 200-series desktop GPUs, but also for the increasingly popular Ion motherboard GPU.

According to the release notes of the latest solutions, users will be provided with numerous bug fixes, most of which address applications supported on the Microsoft Windows XP 32-bit. In addition, the new release also installs NVIDIA's new PhysX System Software, version 9.09.0428, providing GeForce users with an enhanced visual experience in some of the latest gaming applications on the market. Designed to bring support to users of Windows XP, Vista and 7 operating systems, these new drives will also deliver some performance increases, especially for those upgrading from the previous 185 release.

NVIDIA notes that performance in several 3D applications will be increased in release 186, by comparison to the 185 version. Although results may vary for each user, depending on several factors, they should see the following improvements:

Up to 25% performance increase in The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena

Up to 22% performance increase in Crysis: Warhead with antialiasing enabled

Up to 11% performance increase in Fallout 3 with antialiasing enabled

Up to 14% performance increase in Far Cry 2

Up to 30% performance increase in Half-Life 2 engine games with 3-way and 4-way SLI

Up to 45% performance increase in Mirror’s Edge with antialiasing enabled

Download Firefox 3.5 Final

2009-06-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

The wait is over! Firefox 3.5 has reached the end of its development process. The gold build of the open-source browser from Mozilla, formerly codenamed Shiretoko, was finalized on June 29, 2009, and is now available for download (links are live at the bottom of this article). Mozilla is planning to ship Firefox 3.5 today, June 30, but at the time of this article the availability of Firefox 3.0's successor hasn't yet been announced officially. Still, the final development milestone of Firefox 3.5 has already been wrapped up and the bits went live on Mozilla's FTP servers. It is only a matter of Firefox 3.5 being released to web, but you needn't wait, just grab Firefox 3.5 from the links below for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

“The team here at Mozilla has been working hard on creating features, enhancing performance and adding other awesomeness to Firefox 3.5, and we’re very excited about sharing it with the world,” revealed Mozilla's John Slater on June 29.

Firefox 3.5 has been launched over a year after the release to web of its precursor, Firefox 3.0. Version 3.0 shipped in mid-June 2008 and went on to set a world record for the most downloads of a newly available browser, in excess of eight million in just the first 24 hours. Subsequently Mozilla announced that it was starting development of codename Shiretoko, a browser referred to well until the first half of 2009 as Firefox 3.1. Version 3.1 was rebranded 3.5 to show that the latest iteration of the open-source browser was indeed a major version.

Firefox 3.5 will be available in “more than 70 languages – get your local version. [The browser will come with] improved tools for controlling your private data, including a Private Browsing Mode. Better performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript
Firefox 3.5 Final
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engine. The ability to provide Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation. Support for native JSON, and web worker threads. Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering. Support for new web technologies such as: HTML5 and elements, downloadable fonts and other new CSS properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 offline data storage for applications, and SVG transforms,” Mozilla revealed for the RC3 build, which was as close to the final milestone as possible.

Groundbreaking Panthera Leo Concept Electric Mower

2009-06-27T07:40:00.000-07:00

Husqvarna Panthera Leo appears to be a trend setting concept super mower giving your much more comfortable mowing experience whether you are about to mow down the long grass in the big field or do a little yard work. With many people willing to have a garden in the future, this ground breaking mower affords an ideal opportunity for self-sustaining experience.

This ecologically friendly mower is powered by lithium-phosphate rechargeable batteries to be lasting 2 hours if fully charged. Panthera Leo mower includes a sophisticated LCD display as well as sensors being capable of keeping you informed about the recommended speed and cutting height of mowing. Furthermore, this intelligent display lets you know when you about to on a steep area or going to strike an object.

Not only is this a fashionable super mower, but also is it a mighty ride-on mower concept to make the mowing process easy and convenient. A team of well skilled designers and engineers were developing this powerful environmentally friendly super mower which appears to be a perfect solution for the future sustainable mowing.

Panthera Leo mower is constructed from recyclable materials breaks the mold of the old gas-guzzling mowing thanks to the zero emissions technologies. This high performance Panthera Leo mower features a battery to be charged at any electrical point and it seems to be operating silently. Panthera Leo mower features 5 powerful brushless electrical engines coming with a sound-absorbing cutting deck making its operation running smoothly.

This all-electric Panthera Leo mower has advanced exterior looks and its beautiful sleek design while its three individually suspended cutting decks and can be easily adjuted from narrow to wide lawn areas ranging from 85 cm to 120 cm. To get a perfect cutting result you will need to manage your super mower by special paddles placed on the steering wheel.

With this silently working super mower, there could be no more worries about disturbing your neighbors. Additionally, your clever LCD display will inform you about the battery status or other service needs. Its mighty electrical engines are easy to both clean and maintain. With its intuitive dashboard you will be overjoyed to keep mowing.

Yamaha’s Gen-Ryu hybrid concept bike to boggle your mind

2009-06-27T07:26:00.001-07:00

This looker appears to be a hybrid concept car called Yamaha Gen-Ryu offering low emissions driving while being powered by gasoline or electric hybrid engine. Showcased at the Tokyo Motor Show, the Yamaha Gen-Ryu hybrid bike seems to be geared up for mass production. This 600 cc hybrid bike does not use petrol instead it uses an electricity generator driving the rear wheel while charging its on-board battery.

Once the battery runs out, its petrol engine kicks off and moving silently while the gasoline engine starts to provide more power when needed. This marvelous Yamaha Gen-Ryu hybrid bike is supposed to have the inline 4 cylinder engine along with a powerful generator and an electric engine. Its mighty R6 engine and high performance electric engine both provide performance of 1000 cc.

This model is light weight while its YZF-R6 600 cc engine is outstanding. Being a combination of comfort, perfect steering control, this bike is amazing in many ways. Its frame is made of light weight aluminum CF die-cast structure while huge diameter wheels as well as its long wheel base makes this replica a standout.

Night time driving is enhanced by a cornering light system especially at intersections and turns while its vehicle-vehicle distance warning system takes your security to the next level. Additionally, the Yamaha Gen-Ryu hybrid bike features a noise concealing system to make your driving running smoothly.

Other intelligent features include rear view monitoring system via a CCD camera and LCD display for the best of your vision, a short wave tandem intercom system, music player and hand off cell phone function and a voice navigation function. The Yamaha Gen-Ryu hybrid bike comes with massive overhangs and its cool white leather upholstery.

Its ring gear is attached to the electric engine thought a clutch while the four planetary gears are installed on a disk operated by the petrol engine with the sun gear to be linked directly to the generator. Once the electric engine is operated, the planetary gear disk will stop turning while the planetary gears makes it possible for the outer ring as well as the output sprocket to rotate.

The computer will assess what mode to use with a possibility to use the combination of electric and petrol modes at the same time. Instead of traditional forks, here we have a hub center steered front suspension. There are no more LED headlights, instead of that a standard single lamp is mounted. Additionally, the model offers its unique brand new chassis. This intuitive super bike requires no clutch while simple braking technique makes your driving simple and comfortable.

You may feel free on the roads as you will have no troubles sitting with a dead battery as its petrol counterpart charges it keeping you from constant plugging in to the mains.

Powerful underwater memory with the Underwater 5MP Digital Camera

2009-06-27T07:23:00.000-07:00

If you feel like recording an underwater world, this imposing digital underwater camera appears to be an ideal choice. Called “Underwater 5MP Digital camera”, it combines the record quality as well as its affordability. This awesome camera is a plug and play gadget, and offers 5 Mega pixels resolution.

This high performance underwater camera records video at 18 - 20 frames per second coming with SD cards of up to 2 GB to provide around 65 minutes of high quality video. This underwater bad boy features a digital aqua pack and is rated to be water proof up to 15 meters provided by its water resistant case.

You will be able to play the recorded video as well as pictures right on your TV set. Additionally, if you want to snap a regular video you may easily remove its water proof case and enjoy recording. Besides, you will be able to use it as your standard web camera. This multi functional underwater camera is powered by 2 AAA batteries.

So if you have a long distance journey, you are able to bring some extra batteries for those emergency cases. Its flash memory is 16 MB while 8 x digital zoom coming also with of 18 - 20 FPS video mode at QVGA with sound supported. In addition to that, there is a voice recorder feature as well as TV output along with a cable.

Loaded with a pouch and wrist strap, this underwater camera is ultra portable. The underwater 5MP Digital camera measures 11, 5 cm in length, 8 cm in width and 6 cm in height. The camera is suitable for people aged at least 16 years old. This perky camera requires USB cable included, has a user guide for better comprehension as well as 2, 0 inches full color LCD display.

Thanks to the hardware interpolation, this bodacious camera is capable of shooting 12 and 8 MP resolution images. Moreover, this underwater gadget offers a TV AV cord, camera software CD, resolution sensor with option to snap 5 MP, 3, 1 MP, 1, 3 MP and 300 K resolution pictures.

Other features include easily adjustable flash function with auto flash, auto flash with red eye reduction option, flash off, fill-in flash and slow sync, white balance adjustment with auto, daylight, cloudy, fluorescent, tungsten, sunset and custom mode, Ulead Photo Software, timestamp function, self timer-function and easily mountable tripod.

This cool camera is capable of displaying pictures taken on your TV set while is covered by one year warranty. Besides, its multi lingual interface comes in 8 languages including English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, traditional and facilitated Chinese.

The King of Pop Michael Jackson is no more..... :(

2009-06-27T07:18:00.000-07:00

Michael Jackson, the 'King of Pop', who 'Moon walked' to the hearts of millions with his mesmerizing music and signature break dance in the 80s, died of a suspected cardiac arrest just weeks before his much awaited comeback concert 'This Is It'.

Jackson, 50, christened 'Wacko Jacko' for his bizarre lifestyle, sex scandals and numerous plastic surgeries, died last night after collapsing at his Bel Air mansion in Los Angeles.

The singer was taken to Ronald Reagan UCLA medical centre here by the fire department paramedics after they failed to revive him.

Lieutenant Fred Corral, of the Los Angeles County Coroner's office, said Jackson was pronounced dead at 2:26 pm (0256 IST) local time.(06/26/2009)

"It is believed he suffered cardiac arrest in his home, however, the cause of his death is unknown until the autopsy results are known. Our family requests that the media please respect our privacy, it is a tough time for us,"

New era terrain concept Terrena

2009-06-22T04:33:00.001-07:00

Do you like kooky driving both on off paved or on a gravel surface, this mouth watering terrain concept called Terrena with its wonder working wheels. Conceived by designer Marcos Madia Terrena concept car has daredevil looks and a really powerful engine under the bonnet. But what is makes stand out in a crowd is its ground breaking wheels.

Terrena concept car comes with its unique tire system with a capacity to shift wheels’ dimensions which turn out to be an important factor on the off road conditions. This new generation off-road vehicle comes equipped with fixed rims to provide better handling in different dimensions. Its wheels’ sensors provide a high efficiency visibility keeping track of what is happening while turning.

This futuristic super car appears to be an ecologically conscious vehicle with its green but powerful 650 hp V12 hydrogen engine while its exterior is loaded with flexible material to provide high efficiency security. This ecologically friendly replica is designed to be driven in American terrains. Its tire system makes it possible for a driver to be adapted to different road conditions.

The off terrain monster comes with enhanced wheel diameter and decreased width and increased height. Signals transmitted by its sensors make the wheels turn wide when good road conditions are detected while vehicle height lowers to fix the car in a more stable position and provide a quick running capacity. Now possible collisions can be averted while the high level of safety if guaranteed. With clean technologies, the sustainable off road driving could be possible.

New generation of extra-terrestrial vehicle - Chevrolet Aveo

2009-06-22T04:30:00.000-07:00

The Extra-Terrestrial Vehicle is a promising car which is designed by Mike Vetter and his in the Car Factory Company based in Florida. Looking like another planet car, this futuristic model appears stand out in a crowd. Called Extra-Terrestrial Vehicle the car is available for 86 000 USD, quite pricy but it can be easily your car of choice as this is a custom made vehicle.

It goes without saying this remarkable is car and features a traditional Chevrolet Aveo heart however you choice depends on you so there are many alternatives to choose from. And if you turn out to be a sugar daddy, you will be fascinated to drive such an unrealistic model. Well, if you a ready to start hitting the roads with this out of space looking car, you are welcome but be ready to turn heads of everyone wherever and whenever you go.

Tips to Make Your Blog or Website Popular

2009-06-19T23:57:00.000-07:00

Many webmaster ask this question to SEO experts that how to make my website or blog popular quickly. For them I would say that there is no shortcut of success. All you need is to be fair in whatever you do and have patience. You will see the positive results. In this post, i will explain few points, if followed can lead your website to big success.

Unique Contents:

The first and very important step to make your website a big hit is that you should provide unique contents. Never copy the contents from popular website in a hope that you will make your website popular very soon. There are advantages of providing unique contents. All big poplar websites will link back to you if your content is unique and have some importance for their users. More and more popular websites will start linking back to you. Your authority will increase. You will receive more backlinks and hence more Google PageRank value as well as more referral traffic.

Hold Your Visitors:

This is another art you should know. You can get traffic from many sources but if your website is not able to hold this traffic, your website is not able to turn this traffic to re- visitors, your website popularity will never increase. A website is popular because of re-visitors. If users feel that your website is worth visiting again, it's your win and sign of the popularity of your website.

Here are some points on how can you hold your visitors-

* Unique content will hold visitors.

* Website navigation should be easy. User should easily get what they are looking for.

* Never try to make your users fool by providing misleading information.

* Never distract your visitor from your website contents.

* Some kind of regular visitor participation like poll, survey, contest etc.

* Keep away your website from Spamming

Provide New Contents:

Update your contents frequently. Search engines like new contents. Fresh and unique contents will keep your SERP up and high SERP will turn into high traffic and hence more chances of your website to be popular. For a single service or product provider websites, they can focus more on quality of their services. Always try to keep your website search engine friendly in order to achieve high SERP.

Active participation in Related Niche:

Active participation in related niche websites, blogs to pull traffic as well as to put our website in front of users of other websites is required. More exposure your website will get, more likely users will come back to your website. The form of participation could be blog commenting, forum posting and article submission etc.

If you like this post please comment.

5 Tips to Increase Google Adsense CTR

2009-06-19T23:55:00.000-07:00

Click-through rate or CTR is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. A CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad on a web page by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). For example, if a banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and one person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1 percent.( Source: Wikipedia )

That was the definition of CTR, Now here are few tips to increase the CTR of Google Adsense, so that you can earn more revenue from this service.

Tip 1: Blend Ad is the easiest way to increase the CTR of Google adsense. Blend ads give a feeling to the visitors that the ads are the part of information and visitors click on those ads.

Tip 2: Adsense placement is another factor that plays in your adsense earning. The placement of the ads should be in such a way that it should be visible to everyone coming to your website or blog. it should be placed on the area where traffic is high.

Tip 3: Traffic is very important to increase the CTR of Google Adsense. More traffic you get, more number of clicks will be generated.

Tip 4: Experiment with your existing adsense placement. Keep on experimenting till you reach to a level, where you can decide which placement is better.

Tip 5: Content is very important. You should have interesting contents on your blog or website. Attractive contents let visitors lost in your blog or website. Quality contents can sure bring higher CTC to your adsense.

Hope you found this article useful.If you like this post please COMMENT.

Increase Your Web page hits now

2009-06-19T23:52:00.000-07:00

What u need to do is,you dedicate a browser for it…

You need to make a batch file(ie, .bat extension) with the following lines in it..

@echo off
:1
start C:\Progra~1\Intern~1\iexplore.exe “http://yoursite.com“
ping -n 10 127.0.0.1 >nul
taskkill.exe /im iexplore.exe
goto 1

you can change the value ‘10′ time wait.

DEPENDING THE NET SPEED,YOU CAN SEE THE INCREASE IN PAGE HITS

Adsense and SEO Optimization Tips:Earn High Income From Sites

2009-06-19T23:51:00.001-07:00

1.Choose a high paying niche without too much competition.
Target a specific audience.You can search traffic for particular keywords and include such keywords in your post.

use keyword tool for it…

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

2.Put your targeted-keyword on Page Title and posts.

3.AdSense Earning = Impression-count x Click-though-rate x Cost-per-click x smart-pricing-factor.

Impression count is basically referring to your traffic. It means the number of times AdSense block is displayed.

Click-through-rate (CTR) is ratio of clicks per impressions. It can range from 0.1% to 30%, but most commonly around 1% to 10%.

Cost-per-click (CPC) is the earning you get per click. While traditionally it refers to the amount advertisers pay for each click, it can also mean the amount publishers get for each click.

Smart-pricing is AdSense method to determine how valuable clicks from your site is worth. If clicks on your site doesn’t provide good value to advertisers, e.g. from visitors’ geo-location that seldom translate to sales, you will only get a fraction of the supposed CPC.

4.Submit your website to directories for inclusion, e.g. dmoz.org, yahoo directories and other plog directories.Submit your URL to search engines for crawling.Create and submit your sitemaps to Google Sitemap (sitemap.xml) and Yahoo (urllist.txt). Optimize for different engines as well. You are very likely to face less competition than in Google.

5.Forum generally have high impressions count, but very low CTR.

6.Try to focus more on what visitors want from your site.New visitors have higher chance to click on the ads than regular visitors, thus higher CTR (click-through rate).Regular visitors have higher chance to recommend your site to others.

7.Get domain name that contains your targeted keyword.Try to update your site regularly and add more posts each day so that crawling will be done by search engine immediately.

Google Phone,Gphone Vs Apple Iphone

2009-06-19T23:50:00.001-07:00

Now,we are in market of these competitive products and we need to choose which it is Best.here are the attractive features…

1.Google Phone,Gphone is tagged at $179 which is nearly $20 less than cheapest Apple iPhone available in the market.
2.Apple took just 74 days to sell 1 million first-generation iPhones and only a weekend to sell 1 million 3G iPhones. Google and T-Mobile obviously can’t expect that type of reception, but 500,000 to 700,00 units shipped before 2009 is not a Big deal.
3.Google has laid out for devices suggest that manufacturers include cameras for photo and video, and built-in Wi-Fi technology to access the Web at hot spots such as airports, coffee shops and hotels.
4.Google always had strong advertising plans ans strategies,which can be thought like,this will be another great means to provide and publicize their ads.
5.Google softwares will be freely available in the Google phone,which will provide access to all sectors of our work field.
6.Google phones be designed to work on carriers’ fastest networks, known as 3G, to ensure that Web pages can be downloaded quickly. Google suggests the phones could include Global Positioning System technology that identifies where people are.
8.Google does not deny or admit to existence of Google phone prototypes being floated around to wireless operators such as T-Mobile USA, AT&T and Verizon Wireless.
9.another cool feature would be USB connection, that offers up the phone as a USB drive and as a phone, with the USB drive part offering up PC launchable apps.

but on the other hand,
10.iPhone software and user experiece cannot be topped in a low cost phone. Apple iPhone is so well designed and easy to use … offers much more than any phone on the market - full Internet experience and rich video/music experience to name just a few. And it’s integrated with Leopard OSX.5 and will evolve via firmware upgrades. iPhone is great now and will only get better.

Discover Free Tools Available on Web For Better Rankings

2009-06-19T23:42:00.000-07:00

Most of us are unaware of the automated tools available over internet.There are lot many sites which provide ample tools which prove handy in all fields like SEO,Rankings,Search Results etc.Many would ultimately fall into sites which pay for search results.But,it is a hidden fact that there are still thousands of sites available in all fields free of cost to help you to become master of all.
Refer AUTOMATED TOOLS for fast access to those sites ,which are clearly listed with their domains and explore the hidden world now.You can make your websites on top of all search engines by checking the relative positions of keywords and implementing the keywords which suits your site best.

Be Protected from Spywares and Viruses

2009-06-19T23:34:00.000-07:00

It has been found very difficult these days to protect our system from various malwares and viruses which are developed day to day.Our usual anti-virus softwares and other spware protectors have database which are not updated frequently.So these softwares cant detect any of the new virus which enters your system which ultimately leads to foramtting and losing of your important datas.Virus can be from any device like external drive or USB, or can be activated by running of certain softwares or can be even from system startup.
One of the best tech tips around is to install antivirus software to keep your PC safe.It has many attractive features like

* Automatic Updates
* An enhanced Scan Engine
* Real-time scanning
* One of the fastest Antivirus scanners on the market
* Anti-Spyware
* E-mail scanning

K7 AntiVirus 7.0 makes regular updates and system scans and ensures that every single part of your PC is thoroughly scanned, with potential threats being cross-referenced with the very latest virus databases.Try out and compare the performance with other Anitivirus softwares available in present market technology.

co-ride with Strida 5.0 SX Limited Folding Bicycle

2009-06-19T23:31:00.000-07:00

This Strida 5.0 SX Limited folding bicycle is capable of folding up just for 5 seconds and is rated to be one of the most stout, light weight and compact bicycles of the class. Its designer Mark Sanders revealed his best folding cycle called Strida 5.0 SX Limited.

This nice looking folding bicycle comes with extended handlebars, a comfortable to seat classic style leather seat as well as 18 Schwalbe high pressure tires to be a faster rider. Strida 5.0 folding bicycle is reputed to feature the tiniest footprint of its full-sized counterparts.

A very handy feature is that it is very easy to store, whether you plan to place it in train or leave it in your closet. Weighing just 22 pounds, you will not have troubles lifting it. Its triangular sturdy frame is rust resistant which is made from light weight aluminum.

Thanks to its silent grease-free kevlar belt you will have no more your pants torn up. This black colored riding miracle is a single speed bicycle which can be ridden up to 50 000 miles due to its high efficiency Kevlar greaseless belt drive.

Its grip is also made of leather for the best to your convenience. Thanks to this perfect bicycle you will get more responsiveness while its extended handlebars make it possible for tall riders to have more leg room.

Its new geometry is amazing while your upright seating with high road visibility is guaranteed by horizontally placed handlebars. Unparalleled features include its short wheelbase, clean belt and gearless chain. When you need to fold it, magnets will do it for you.

The Strida 5.0 SX Limited folding bicycle also incorporates cable disk brakes, welded bottom bracket and luggage rack holding up to 6 kg. When in folded mode, it measures 114cm x 51cm x 23cm and is priced at 950 USD.

16GB Mechanical Memory Key

2009-06-19T04:04:00.001-07:00

Listen up, .steampunkers: Have you been having a hard time finding an appropriate USB thumb drive to wear on a gold chain next to your pocket watch? Artype’s 16GB Mechanical Memory Key is a handcrafted beaut, with materials that include Purpleheart for the case and twenty-six rubies. When this device is drawing USB power it glows green from beneath the gears, taking you back to your days as a hacker during the reign of Queen Victoria. Sadly, the device pictured above has already been sold, but at $165 a pop we’re sure this particular artisan has plenty more of these guys in the works. Two more glamor shots for you after the break.

Loop pointer – smart motion controlled mouse

2009-06-19T04:02:00.001-07:00

HillCrest Labs has engineered a new kind of mouse that applies motion sensing technology. Called Loop Pointer, this intelligent mouse makes it possible for its users to keep control over cursor with just a movement of the wrist.

This remote control mouse appears to be compatible with PCs, Macs and PS3 and is expected to be priced at 99 USD. Additionally, this bracelet shaped mouse is capable of operating as a 10-foot interface controller with you pointing it at your screen.

The constantly growing users who have their personal computers connected to the TV sets will have now a capacity to browse, surf the Web in a new never seen before way. The Loop Pointer features only four buttons as well as a scroll wheel.

This smart mouse is a plug and play device with its elegant design. In order to use the Loop Pointer you will need to connect USB 2.0 transceiver which is included into your personal computer or device if compatible.

This flexible high performance mouse makes it possible for its user to be comfortably seated with you holding the Loop pointer at your preferable position and navigate the Web. If making a presentation is what you need, the Loop pointer is the best device giving you as much simplicity and comfort as possible.

If you use the PS3’s web browser, you will have no troubles navigating the Net. This high precision device operates regardless of its orientation, so you can easily point it at the floor to keep working. The Loop pointer turns out to be controllable from standing position or even if you recline.

In addition to that, this wireless mouse features a tremor removal function due to Hillcrest’s technology, which is capable of detecting whether or not movement was intentional including natural hand shaking. This intuitive mouse applies radio frequency technology thanks to which you will not have to point it directly at your screen.

So you will be able to turn around at a rate of up to 30 feet to feel comfortable every moment you use it. The Loop pointer can control your cursor at any angle even if you are behind the closed doors and you will not need to install any additional software as it has a regular USB ports.

The Loop pointer happens to be the first in air remote provides an easy and quick wireless connection and is powered by 2 AA batteries which are included. The Loop pointer measures 1, 2 inches in width and 4, 8 inches in diameter which is about the size of CD. It is available in black color along with silver toned buttons while weighing just 4, 9 ounces.

First solar powered cell phone in India by Samsung

2009-06-19T04:00:00.001-07:00

Samsung India has revealed the worldwide first solar powered mobile phone. This solar powered model can be easily used in sun lit areas. This environmentally friendly cell phone is already available in the Indian market to be rated as one of the biggest worldwide growing markets.

Its modest price tag of just 56 USD makes it a highly affordable product. About 40 hours of solar charging is enough for the battery to be fully charged. The Crest E1107 is capable of produce enough power for 5 - 10 minutes of talk time after just one hour of sun exposure.

In addition to that, the Crest E1107 includes MP3, FM radio, a flashlight, games as well as so called fake call option, making it possible for the user to get rid of unwanted calls. This eco friendly cell phone is also expected to be launched in Europe, Southeast Asia, Southwest Asia, and Latin America this month.

This hybrid solar powered cell phone can be optionally charged via electrical outlets like when it is cloudy. This wonderful cell phone is possible thanks to the state of the art technology developed by Samsung. The Crest Solar can be a good money saver being a good mobile phone for budget conscious users.

The Crest Solar also boasts mobile tracker feature to automatically alert its user in case the SIM card is altered or send a SOS message in case of emergencies. Additionally, there are some localized features like profile screening intended for bikers in the Southeast Asia for safe driving so it might be your cell phone of choice.

6 FREE ways to DOUBLE your blog traffic in less than a week

2009-06-18T04:59:00.000-07:00

Everyone want's traffic.You set up a blog with great content but,no one is visiting your blog,so what's the use of it.So, you need atleast a decent amount of traffic and what's great than getting that traffic for FREE?
So,here is the good list of 6 Free ways to get traffic to your blog.

1.SEARCH ENGINE:Yea! it brings lots of traffic to your blog.There are millions of people search in the search engines like Google,Yahoo,msn everyday.So,if your blog has so many good posts and is well indexed by google,etc..you will get a good amount of traffic via search engines.There are a few steps to look at if you want a decent amount of traffic from the search engines like "submitting your blog sitemap to google",yahoo to index you blog pages very quickly.And the other important one is adding meta tags to your blog.If you follow these two simple steps,then you will get a decent traffic(massive traffic if your content is good).

2.Submitting your blog to Blog Directories:You may know this before,submitting your blog to blog directories will bring you a good traffic.
Here is a good list of blog directories(there are so many directories,but the below one's will bring you a good traffic).Most of these blog directories ask you to register before you submit your blog.My suggestion is,create a new email address solely for this purpose so,your personal emails are not flooded with the emails sent by the blog administrators,etc.
You can find the Blog directories list here.

3.Participate in forums,groups,etc:Just go to google and enter your [major keyword + fourm] or [keyword+groups] and search.Suppose,your blog is about blogging,then search 'Blogging forum'.You will find some forums,groups related to your site.Register in the forums and post articles,etc with a link back to your blog(as a signature).Answer questions,clarify doubts and provide a link to your blog.But,Dont' SPAM.

4.Social Bookmarking:Social Bookmarking is another way to build good traffic to your website/blog.If you don't know what Social Bookmarking is
"Social Bookmarking is a practise of saving Bookmarks,tagging the posts with keywords in a website".Bookmarking means saving a specific website url(address) in your browser that you wish to visit later.There are so many Social Bookmarking sites like del.icio.us,digg,furl,technorati.
One good thing about these Social bookmarking sites is,you will get instant traffic.Just register with them,store your bookmarks,tags,.. and you are done,See your site meter blasting with traffic.

5.Submit Articles to Article Directories:Submitting articles to article directories is another effective way to build more traffic.By submitting to them,your articles get massive exposure and gain you more traffic.
Some of the popular article directories are goarticles.com,ezinearticles.com,articlecity.com,etc.
There are hundreds of article directories,just google it.

6.Leaving Comments on other blogs:Leaving comments with a link back to your blog is another good thing to do.Leaving comments in the related blogs is more useful and it also increases your pagerank.Always leave good comments and don't Spam(by placing links like'click here' like that).

IF U LIKE THIS POST YOU CAN COMMENT.

XR3 – prodigious 3 wheeler hybrid car

2009-06-14T01:48:00.001-07:00

The XR3 is a plug-in 3-wheeled hybrid that was specifically designed to be as light weight as possible. This XR3 hybrid is capable of reaching 125 miles per gallon which is more than fantastic. Being ready to be produced, this beautiful hybrid car comes with its hybrid system making it possible for 200 miles per gallon.

Before the production phase, it will be necessary to run some tests and do some modifications if needed. You should not worry even if you run out of fuel as its smart li-ion battery set is capable of producing enough power to cover at least 40 miles.

Using diesel power alone, this curved three-wheeled plug-in hybrid is capable to achieve 125 miles per gallon while 225 mpg would be possible if run in tandem with its electric power. Weighing just 1480 pounds, it will be possible to reach a speedy acceleration.

The XR3 plug-in 3-wheeled hybrid offers some operation modes with battery electric only, diesel only or hybrid mode with 225 mpg. This super hybrid is designed by Robert Riley and features its polished composite shell as well as high efficiency engine.

This do it yourself hybrid can be built for about 25 000 USD not including its assembly and parts. Its electronic battery is rechargeable via plugging it into a wall socket. The XR3 is not yet sold - instead its plan can be bought from its designer in DVD.

The assembly itself is not complicated and can be easily fulfilled by those having some technical skills. Logically, if interested, you will be able to produce your own hybrid with more fuel efficient engine. This hybrid car is capable to carry two passengers.

It stands to reason, that the car built by yourself would be a perfect example of how technically trained you are while giving you’re a lot of pleasant moments. Its cost could be reduced up to 7 500 USD depending on some technical solutions.

Plug-in cars are expected to be the next generation of hybrid vehicles. Its two front wheels are powered by combustion motor while its single rear wheel is powered electrically. Using its dual power mode, the XR3 will provide a fast acceleration.

The frontal body of the hybrid as well as its canopy can be removed. In order to guarantee some safety features, the hybrid’s frontal part is filled with foam in order to absorb frontal collision happened at a low speed. For the same reason, the hybrid’s sides are foam filled to prevent it from side impact.

The foam filled parts range from 5 inches to more than 10 inches in thickness. The design of the XR3 three wheeled hybrid car is capable to withstand a collision with higher efficiency than what the standard car can offer. The car’s deceleration is possible due to regular seat belts.

Seating side by side with someone driving on a public road will no doubts make you stand out of a road. Its wheel base amounts to 88 inch while track is 66 inch. Its height is 43 inch with Kubota D902 tractor engine, advanced DC 8-inch motor as well as VW Type 1 transmission. So get prepared to build your own dream.

Water Building Resort to be a swanky water making hotel

2009-06-14T01:46:00.000-07:00

This is not a joke, as this sustainable building called Water Building Resort is capable of converting the air into water. It is needles to say that due to global warming we could be lacking of water. Designed by architect Orlando de Urrutia, this ecologically friendly building is set to become the first building with such a capacity.

In order to obtain solar power, De Urrutia plans to have a facade facing to the south with mounted photovoltaic glass. Its northern façade features some gratings permitting ventilation with Teex Micron Atmospheric Water Generators designed to turn condensation and humid air into potable water.

Working at its full capacity, an AWG system is capable to make from 35 000 to 109 000 gallons of water on a daily basis. This intelligent water building resort is projected for humid areas. Shaped like a drop, it appears to be much more than a drop the ocean with a restaurant, an aquarium, sport gyms, exhibition rooms as well as spa cervices.

Its water purification facility is expected to be located on the bottom floor to remove contaminants from the rain water and sea water to finally make it drinkable water while its technological investigation center is committed to control the quality of water.

Not only does it produce potable water but also has it a thematically created design, shaping like a drop of water. Its solar energy producing photovoltaic glass is going to harness solar power with light coming through it. This environmentally friendly hotel has also a staggering architecture.

The facade of this swanky hotel is engineered to face the sun to make most use of its energy in order to purify water. Its TeexMicron generator is designed to operate in a humid climate with temperature varying from 20 to 40 degrees centigrade with 30 to 95 percent humidity.

This sumptuous resort also comes with wharf while having both an indoor and outdoor aquariums. This sustainable building includes a filter system, desalination designed to clean marine salt water as well as a water tank. The water cleaning system makes use of evaporation and condensation happened at night. The TeexMicron is capable to produce of up to 5 000 liters of water which is downright exciting.

Onda Velocita to be a sumptuous eco powerboat

2009-06-14T01:45:00.001-07:00

This is Onda Velocita, a super sumptuous yacht. This powerboat concept is environmentally friendly which incorporates high tech materials and traditional design language. No batteries are needed to power the electrical appliances of this powerboat.

The Onda Velocita roof features the photovoltaic cells which are capable to produce power to the on board batteries. This means that you will not need to run the engines while boating in a sunny day. This enticing powerboat includes a classy interior which is luxurious too.

Its clever roof construction of the main cabin features a fitted domed skylight which is capable of being opened while emergencies or for fresh air access. So, in the fullness of time, we will know whether or not this super powerboat becomes a reality.

This eco friendly solar powered powerboat is not what we are used to, with no carbon emissions produced while sailing. With Onda Velocita, you are going to get a clean and green sailing experience. In order to reduce powerboat’s weight, fiber glass and carbon fiber were used.

Inspired by the manner water laps against a beach, Onda Velocita eco boat features a seating area with fitted table. In order to come into seating area or to its deck, you should enter the sliding doors placed at the back of the upper structure.

Among its sumptuous features, you will find the laminated teak wood which blends with seating area and cabin trim. Additionally, the Onda Velocita comes equipped with a galley kitchen and a bathroom, shock resistant wine rack which is cushioned as well as covered entertainment area.

Nokia N86 8MP to be a brand new 2 way slider

2009-06-14T01:43:00.001-07:00

A brand new Nokia N86 8MP is born. Measuring 103, 4 x 51, 4 x 16, 5-18, 5 millimeters and weighing 149 gram including its battery, this model worth seeing. This appears to be a 2-way slider with spring assistance mechanism.

Nokia N86 8MP has a smart display featuring a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels (QVGA) coming with up to 16, 7 million colors, brightness control, ambient light detector, orientation sensor as well as its active matrix OLED.

Did I mention its power management? Its BL-5K 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery is capable to provide a talk time of up to 6, 9 hours for GSM, 4, 5 hours for WCDMA, 11 hours for VoIP over WLAN. Its stand by capacity is up to 363 hours for GSM with the same time needed for WCDMA.

Nokia’s browsing time amounts up to 7 hours including packet data. You will be able to enjoy having video playback time up to 7 hours for VGA 30fps while QCIF 15fps comes with up to 5, 5 hours. Nokia N86 8MP also boasts video recording time of up to 3 hours with video call time of 3, 2 hours.

Keep listening to your favorite music with Nokia N86 8MP offering up to 30 hours of music playback time or 18 hours if you listen to it through FM transmitter. However, the aforesaid operation times may be varying depending on usage, radio access as well as operator network configuration.

Nokia N86 8MP includes numeric keypad, covered keys, menu key, S60 keys, clear key as well as send/end keys. In addition this glamorous cell phone has media, zoom, game keys, short slide keys for media control, zoom and gaming, camera and volume keys, voice commands, keypad lock switch, breathing menu key as well as charging indicator LED.

Nokia N86 8MP incorporates flight mode, automatic switching between GSM bands as well as quad-band EGSM 850/900/1800/1900. Its memory is fascinating thanks to its micro SD memory card slot which is hot swappable permitting maximum of 16 GB while its internal memory is 8 GB. Its random access memory amount to 74, 7 while read only memory is 77.

This model features WLAN Security with WPA2-Enterprise, WPA2-Personal, WPA-Enterprise, WPA-Personal and WEP and is TCP/IP supported. Nokia N86 8MP is capable of serving as data modem while is MS Outlook supported with possible synchronization of your contacts, notes and calendar.

Its high speed circuit switched data allows maximum speed 43.2 kbps while GPRS class A, multi slot class 32 comes with maximum speed 107/64.2 kbps (DL/UL). Nokia N86 8MP includes WCDMA 900/2100 with maximum speed PS 384/384 kbps (UL/DL) and HSDPA of maximum speed 3.6 Mbps (DL). Its Bluetooth version 2.0 comes with enhanced data rate.

Among Bluetooth profiles, there is dial up networking profile (Gateway), phone book access profile (Server), headset profile (Audio Gateway), file transfer profile (Server), object push profile (Server and Client), device identification profile, basic imaging profile, hands free profile (Audio Gateway) as well as remote SIM access profile (Server).

This intelligent cell phone has micro USB connector coming with mass storage class support while 3.5 millimeter AV connector. Stereo audio streaming includes advanced audio distribution profile, audio/ video remote control profile as well as generic audio-video distribution profile.

In addition, this cell phone is digital home supported, including mobile transfer protocol support, UPnP support as well as local and remote SyncML synchronization support. Nokia N86 8MP is available in indigo black color. You will be able to use AMR, WMA, AAC, AAC plus 64-tone polyphonic, MP3 as well as video ring tones.

You will be able to customize your wallpapers, ring tones, screen savers and other options. Among supported applications you will find Nokia web browser coming with mini map, Quick office with Quickword, Quickpoint and Quicksheet, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash Lite 3.1, zip manager, Nokia maps, Nokia pictures, Nokia download, Nokia mobile search, Nokia N-Gage.

Additional applications include Java APIs for Bluetooth (JSR 82), Java CLDC 1.1, MIDP 2.1, PDA (JSR 75), Scalable 2D Vector Graphics API for J2ME (JSR 226), Nokia UI API, Advanced Multimedia Supplements (JSR 234), Wireless Messaging API 2.0 (JSR 205), Location API for J2ME (JSR 179), J2ME 1.1 (JSR 184), J2ME Web Services Specification (JSR 172), Mobile 3D Graphics API for Security and Trust Services API for J2ME (JSR 177), Mobile Media API 1.1 (JSR 135), SIP API for J2ME (JSR 180).

This mobile phone is Windows Live supported but needs downloading of the Messenger application. You are able to download to your S60 device more applications using the download client by visiting www S60 com with a lot of free of charge applications. Its software platform is very intelligent with Symbian OS version 9.3, Automatic UI rotation, Voice commands, Active standby, S60 3rd edition, feature pack 2 and FOTA (firmware update over the Air).

Zeo Personal Sleep Coach to provide you with good quality sleep

2009-06-14T01:41:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had troubles getting a good night’s sleep which has a restorative power for both our body and your mind? Whether you suffered from insomnia or were nervous enough to fall asleep, you may now change your nocturnal life for the better with this intelligent device called Zeo personal sleep couch.

Introduced by Zeo, this clever sleep fitness concept seems to be an ideal solution for your sleepless nights. This personal sleep coach is capable of giving you the information on how much how well and how deep you were sleeping during the night. Once the information is received, you will get it shown on your Zeo’s digital bedside display.

Previously known as Axon Labs, Zeo features a smart headband to be worn while going to sleep which is designed to transmit your personal sleep information wirelessly to your digital display. This perfect sleep concept is what is going to give you enough sleep so that you feel fine during a day.

The information received is then being sent to SD card where it is going to be stored with you having the opportunity to upload your personal information to the myZeo Personal Coaching site. If you have a good night’s sleep but wonder how much time you sleep, how often you wake up during the night and how long was it necessary for you to fall asleep, this sleep gadget is definitely what you need.

If you are interested in having such a sleep restoring widget, you will have to pay a 399 USD price tag for it. Zeo headband is light weight so you would not experience difficulties sleeping with it while its display could become your best friend in telling you about your sleeping habits. The whole date is received from your brainwaves to be detected by Zeo headband.

There are at least 70 million people having sleep disorders with 80 known types of them while insomnia is reported to be the world’s third health problem going after headache and cold. Looking like a sleep clock radio this intelligent device will wake you up refreshed with full of energy, what else could you be dreaming of?

Casio Ana-Digi electro-luminescent sport watch - best for traveling

2009-06-14T01:39:00.001-07:00

If you enjoy traveling, this Casio’s combination of analog and digital wrist watch is a brilliant idea. This stainless steel looker boasts a fashionable black sporty resin band to give you a comfortable wearing. Whether you practice a sport or travel a lot, this time piece will accompany you elegantly.

Its round silver stainless steel case sports a black stationary bezel framing a grey dial face. Casio Ana-Digi electro-luminescent sport watch has aggressively looking pointed hands as well as small Arabic numerals display along with small minute indexes. This splendid wrist watch also comes with afterglow backlighting.
Its nice looking dial face houses a large digital readout with high legibility of a second time zone, which is non-negotiable a perfect option for every traveler. Casio also features a world time function along with 29 time zones of 27 cities, city code readout as well as day-light saving on/off.

This elegantly made Casio Ana-Digi electro-luminescent sport wrist watch also include some important features with 12 or 24 hour formats, auto calendar available until the year 2039, 60 minute range countdown, four daily alarms along with one snooze alarm as well as 1/100 second stopwatch coming with a 60 hour capacity including elapsed time lap time, first and second place time and split time.

Casio Ana-Digi electro-luminescent sport time piece is a high precision watch with ±30 second accuracy per month. This lovely wrist watch is rated to be water resistant up to 100 meters protecting it from possible splashes and can be used for swimming, snorkeling and even limited depth diving.

This sporty monster is powered by Quartz movement and is covered by a one year warranty. You will be able to protect your Casio with the help of mineral crystal preventing it from being scratched. This digital watch is designed for men and weighs 16 ounces, has a 42 mm case diameter, 22, 6 mm band width with case thickness of 16 mm.

Plug and Play: Researchers Expand Clinical Study of Neural Interface Brain Implant

2009-06-13T07:18:00.000-07:00

Having proved in 2004 that plugging a sensor into the human brain's motor cortex could turn the thoughts of paralysis victims into action, a team of Brown University scientists now has the green light from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) institutional review board to expand its efforts developing technology that reconnects the brain to lifeless limbs.

Brown's BrainGate Neural Interface System—conceived in 2000 with the help of a $4.25-million U.S. Defense Department grant—includes a baby aspirin–size brain sensor containing 100 electrodes, each thinner than a human hair, that connects to the surface of the motor cortex (the part of the brain that enables voluntary movement), registers electrical signals from nearby neurons, and transmits them through gold wires to a set of computers, processors and monitors.

Review: Western Digital My DVR Expander 1TB eSATA

2009-06-13T00:58:00.000-07:00

The My DVR 1TB expander from Western Digital is an easy and cost-effective way to add approximately 1,100 hours of SD recording capacity or 140 hours of HD recording capacity to your TiVo HD, TiVo HD XL, or TiVo Series3.

At only $169.99, it provides you with a cheaper alternative to get the same recording capacity of a TiVo HD XL (which carries a $200 premium over the TiVo HD) with the purchase of a TiVo HD that you can later expand.

The My DVR Expander sits external to your TiVo and is about the size of a large paperback book – 5.6 inches x 2.2 inches x 6.8 inches. It needs to be plugged into your AC and into the eSATA port on the back of your TiVo.

Once the device is properly setup, you basically forget that it is there. Kudos to the designers for not putting any annoying bright and blinky LEDs on the front. It simply has a soft amber glow indicating that it is powered on. It also has no buttons or switches to confuse you and runs extremely quietly. I tested this by letting it run just a few feet from my bed and it never disturbed me.

The process of hooking up the My DVR Expander is not at all like adding external storage to a PC… in which the external device gets a new drive letter and you have to manage how you will distribute your storage across the multiple volumes. In true TiVo fashion, the recordings simply “spread out” across all available storage. It is nothing that you have to think about our manage.

The downside of the content being spread across all volumes (i.e. “striped” across your internal drive and the external expander) is that if you unplug the My DVR device from your TiVo, several things happen:

You can’t take any recordings with you to another TiVo or to a PC. (This is probably on purpose due to content restrictions.)
You lose most if not all of what is recorded on your TiVo. (This seems like an oversight to me. There should be an advanced menu setting on the TiVo that lets you safely detach the volume and copy back anything that you have space for on the primary drive.)

The fact that you lose most if not all of what is recorded on your TiVo is the most surprising. I would hope that this will be addressed in a future revision of the TiVo software. It seems they’ve made it way too hard for you to ever upgrade to a larger Western Digital My DVR expander that might come to market down the road. (There is reason to believe this could happen given that they’ve recently upgraded from a 500GB product to the 1TB model that I reviewed.)

Duracell unveils a new auto USB car charger

2009-06-13T00:50:00.000-07:00

If you travel a lot for your job, you probably carry several important gizmos that require a USB connection to keep them charged up. So you undoubtedly understand the importance of keeping these gadgets charged between appointments. Duracell also understands the importance of having some power insurance, just in case you can’t recharge your gadgets with your standard wall charger.

Duracell has announced a new USB Auto Car Charger that is a low profile charger that fits almost entirely inside the DC outlet of a car or other vehicle. When you plug in the charger to the outlet, the device illuminates with a blue light so you know that it’s got the juice to pass on to your USB powered devices. The charger includes three different connectors so that it will work with devices that support standard USB, mini USB, or micro USB ports.

Unfortunately Duracell has not announced when their new USB auto charger will be released or the price point. But once it does, this is something you should definitely keep on hand if your access to AC outlets is limited.

Actor Liev Schreiber Discusses Videogames, Wolverine and Convergence

2009-06-13T00:39:00.001-07:00

Fans who’ve been waiting anxiously to see the complete version of 20th Century Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine will get their wish on May 1. While Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman, wasn’t a fan of comics as a kid, his co-star, Liev Schreiber, who plays Sabretooth, was a devoted X-Men fan. Schreiber also grew up on arcade games and Intellivision, making him the perfect cast member to talk about the new movie, its comic book roots and Activision’s videogame adaptation. Schreiber talks about making the blockbuster movie, why he identifies with the dark side of his character and why gamers will probably never like a Hollywood adaptation of their favorite game in this exclusive interview.

What videogames do you like to play?

I love Rock Band and I’ve had a considerable amount of fun with Halo and Call of Duty.

What opportunities are videogames opening up to Hollywood creatives these days?

What are they opening up to creatives? Well, certainly they’re providing us jobs as long as we get to do the voiceovers. Let’s just hope that the technology doesn’t get so good that they replace us altogether.

What’s this experience been like for you, not just being in the game but the whole Wolverine movie experience?

I was always a huge Wolverine fan when I was a kid. It was such a departure from other comic books. Before that everything was like Justice League and men in tights jumping over tall buildings. Wolverine was like the introduction of the anti-hero. I think for a lot of kids, particularly those adolescence who feel like outsiders and pariahs, the concept of the mutant as hero was something that was really infectious and really took off. It’s cool to be a part of something that was part of my childhood and something that I know that is still attracting hundreds of thousands of fans every day.

With the success of The Dark Knight and now Wolverine, what impact do you see these types of movies having on getting kids back into comics?

I’m pretty certain they will. For me, there’s no replacing those comics that I was reading back in 1977 or 1978. They were so good.

What was your favorite moment in making this movie?

I think it was working with the stuntmen on the wire for the four-legged run. Coordinating that movement where I leap into the air and the guys assist me with my rear end as I landed on my feet and then assisted me on my front end as I picked up. It was incredible. I must have gone upside down and done flips at least eight times every time I got in the wires. Learning to do that was such a treat.

It must be cool to be in the movie after reading these comics.

Completely. I felt like pinching myself every day.

What do you like about Sabretooth?

For me it was his darkness. There’s something about Victor (Creed) that he represents the dark side in all of us that we’re at war with. It’s like that old ying and yang concept that there can’t be great good without great evil. There can’t be light without darkness. Everyone wrestles with their own nature. For me, Victor is the embodiment of that nature that we’re trying to suppress and that we’re trying to deal with. It’s so much fun to play that.

We waited a long time to get to the great comic book movies out there today. Do you see any correlation in videogame adaptations for the big screen, after sitting through so many of them that just didn’t work?

It’s possible. I don’t know. It seems like there are a lot of them going into production right now. I’m not really sure which ones they are.

They did Tomb Raider in the past.

Oh yeah, Tomb Raider did pretty well, didn’t it?

Yeah, it did well, but gamers didn’t like it. Do you see games as good fodder for movies?

I’m not sure about games. Part of the thing for gamers is control, you know what I mean? It’s first-person control. It’s their world. They’re moving through the world. I don’t know if gamers are up to let go of that control because that’s kind of the pleasure of the videogame. But we’ll see.

Where do you see the future convergence going with movies and videogames?

I think it probably has something to do with the Internet. I just think it’s this huge content monster that is really still in its infancy. And as people network on it and develop it more and more we’re going to see more interesting outlets for content and networking.

Mozilla, Opera upset over IE8 as default browser in Windows 7 RC

2009-06-12T22:48:00.001-07:00

Mozilla and Opera may be jumping the gun a little here, but both companies have already spoken out about IE8 in Windows 7 RC. The reason being it is automatically selected as the default browser when upgrading your machine – even if you previously had another browser set as default.

Mitchell Baker, chairwoman of Mozilla said:

Our initial review suggests this is a blatant use of the Windows operating system to change the market dynamics of browser usage … What we’ve seen so far is a clear example of why and how Microsoft’s Windows monopoly damages competition in related products.

Hakon Wium Lie, chief technology officer at Opera added:

This issue highlights the problem with the browser market. It’s certainly something we would want to discuss

Microsoft is trying to calm their fears stating that the Windows 7 release candidate is just a test version of the operating system and not the final version. Presumably they intend to ensure users can set (or keep) their preferred browser as default in the final release of the OS.

Mozilla aims for stability with Firefox multi-processor project

2009-06-12T22:46:00.000-07:00

Mozilla has started a new project called Content Processes that will see a version of Firefox developed that takes advantage of multi-processors and splits the content displayed in each tab and the UI between different processes on your PC.

The project, which will see Firefox start to work in the same way as Google Chrome, has several advantages over the current Firefox implementation. The main one is a much higher level of stability and a crash in one browser tab not meaning an end to your entire Firefox session. The responsiveness of the UI is also expected to be improved and overall performance on a multi-core machine will be noticeably better.

The first deadline for this new version is July 15th, but it won’t be a fully featured version. On the project page Mozilla’s goal for that deadline is as follows:

Get something hacked together as quickly as possible. This is probably not the Firefox chrome, but a really simplistic page with a URL bar.

Realistically we can’t expect to see a usable version with multi-processor support until sometime next year, but it’s good to see Mozilla working on such an enhancement. Read more at Mozilla Links

Intel, Microsoft, Dell and Panasonic looking for WiGig - faster home wireless

2009-06-12T22:45:00.000-07:00

We have Wi-Fi, WiMAX, WirelessHD, WHDI, but the new buzzword for higher-speed at-home wireless networking is WiGig — short for Wireless Gigabit Alliance. And not just for peripherals, but also for cell phones, TVs and video cameras; basically anything that has wireless data transmission needs.

WiGig is the name given to a new association created to develop “an even faster wireless technology”, that is expected to be at least 10x faster than Wi-Fi. It’s greatest strength (and potential weakness in some people’s eyes) is that it will only operate over short distances, such as within a single room (or possibly two) by operating in the 60 GHz band.

Intel, Microsoft, Dell and Panasonic have all teamed up to form the association. Their effort will compete against other approaches to in-home wireless data transmission, including SiBEAM’s WirelessHD — which connects set-top boxes and Blu-ray players to TVs; and Amimon’s WHDI, which uses a Wi-Fi-like technology for the same purpose.

WiGig will provide enough bandwidth to fully transmit an entire DVD in 15 seconds, which is about 6 Gigabits per second. Its range will be limited to about 30 feet max, with notably drop-offs in throughput beyond 15-20 feet. Within 10 feet it will have its strongest transmission range, making it ideal for nearby entertainment center components.

Is Intel on the outs with Microsoft? Pushing Moblin with Novell

2009-06-12T22:43:00.000-07:00

Last week Intel and Novell Inc. announced “broad efforts to closely collaborate and encourage original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and original design manufactures (ODMs) to adopt Moblin, an optimized open source Linux software platform” that Intel has targeted with their Atom-based CPU, one that’s used in netbooks and other Atom-powered mobile systems, including MIDs.

Intel and Novell “signed an agreement outlining their plan for collaboration”. Novell also announced it will create a Moblin-based product for netbooks “that it will take to market to a wide range of OEMs and ODMs”. Novell will also establish Novell Open Labs in Taiwan to aid in the adoption of Moblin, working with the Taiwan Moblin Enabling Center (MEC), which is a joint effort between Intel and the Taiwan Institute for Information Industry. Their task will be to validate designs for Moblin compliance.

In 2007, Intel launched its Moblin software and even at that time raised questions about their continued support of Microsoft-based products. The effort largely remained under wraps, however, until resurfacing last month when The Linux Foundation became host to the Moblin community (as what many at first thought was an April Fool’s joke — it wasn’t).

Doug Fisher, Intel’s VP of Software and Services Group, and GM of the System Software division, said:

Novell has taken a significant leadership role in the Moblin community since joining the effort late last year, and today’s announcement will extend Novell’s level of involvement. The combination of Intel Atom processor-based platforms and Moblin-based Novell software will provide even more opportunities for OEMs, ODMs and the broader Moblin community to deliver excellent mobile Internet solutions.

The part which makes Geek.com question Intel’s loyalty to Microsoft was given a voice through this signed agreement by Ron Hovsepian, Novell’s President and CEO. He said:

We are extending our involvement with Moblin because we believe that it provides a richer mobile Internet experience. The emergence of such mobile computing platforms as netbooks presents a significant growth opportunity. We believe that Moblin-based Novell software on Intel-based platforms will offer OEMs and ODMs exceptional solutions for delivering a full Internet experience on such devices.

Moblin is currently in its alpha release stage and appears just like any other graphical form of OS, though its boot time is reportedly only “a few seconds”. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger screenshot

Web site navigation - importance and tips

2009-06-11T19:57:00.000-07:00

You should always remember that a web site is designed for visitors NOT for yourself or your boss. And why do people come to your web site? They come in search of information. Hence it is very important that you structure your site in such a manner that visitors are able to locate information quickly. Put yourself in the visitors' shoes. Let us say you come across an online banner advertising a good deal on an iPod. Wouldn't you first like to go through the complete details and gather all information before you go ahead and punch in your credit-card number? The same holds true for any visitor to your site. Prospects would first like to go through the information your site offers and then place an order.

Five important tips for a good web site navigation system

Good web site navigation Tip 1
Always link the logo on a web site to the homepage.

Good web site navigation Tip 2
Place navigation system on the left or the top, just below the header. Do not try to design out of the box unless you are sure of what you are doing.

Good web site navigation Tip 3
Have consistent navigation throughout the web site. For example, do not have the navigation system placed horizontally on one page and vertically on the left in another. An exception to this rule can be the homepage which can differ from all other pages.

Good web site navigation Tip 4
In addition to linking the logo to the homepage, be sure to have a link called "Home", "Homepage" or equivalent in the web site navigation menu. Ideally a web site navigation menu consists of links to the homepage, "About Us", "Contact Us", "Site Map" and other important pages of the web site.

Good web site navigation Tip 5
A good site map and navigation menu on a web site will cut down the number of clicks required to move from one page to another. A thumb rule for good web site navigation is to keep the number of clicks from one page to another at 3.

Microsoft renames new WGA “Windows Activation Technology”

2009-06-11T19:54:00.001-07:00

Any one who runs Windows as an OS for the past few years will be well aware of what Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) is. But Microsoft have decided that the name no longer fits the functionality and will be changing it for Windows 7.

The new name we’ll have to get used to is Windows Activation Technology (WAT), which was announced via a Q&A session with Joe Williams, general manager for Worldwide Genuine Windows at Microsoft. One of the questions asked was whether the anti-piracy experience on Windows 7 was similar to Windows Genuine Advantage on Windows XP. He responded by saying:

Fundamentally the goals are the same. The guiding principle is to enable the customer to know when the software they are using is genuine and licensed and help them to do something about it if it’s not. However the technology used in Windows Vista and Windows 7 is fundamentally different from that used with Windows XP. It consists of new code and the latest methods for protecting Windows in ways that can only really be achieved with the components that are built in to both Windows Vista and now Windows 7. For that reason the anti-piracy features in Windows 7 — and future versions of updates of the technology for Windows Vista — will be referred to more accurately as Windows Activation Technologies. We will continue releasing Window Genuine Advantage updates for Windows XP-based systems.

We can therefore expect to see WAT rolled out with Windows 7, but also appear for Windows Vista too. Ultimately, Microsoft want to make it easier to ensure your copy of Windows is genuine and hope that WAT will achieve that goal.

Microsoft to raise $3.75 billion from unsecured note debt

2009-06-11T19:52:00.000-07:00

Microsoft announced today as part of the $6 billion debt authorization approved by the company’s board back in September, 2008, that they would seek to raise $3.75 billion in senior unsecured notes. This is the first time in Microsoft’s 35-year history the company has raised funds by purchasing debt.

The notes will be issued in three groups:

* $2 billion in 2.95% short-term notes, maturing June 1, 2014 (5 years), which is 95 basis points above U.S. Treasury notes.
* $1 billion of 4.20% long-term notes, maturing June 1, 2019 (10 years), which is 105 basis points above U.S. Treasury notes.
* $750 million of 5.20% long-term notes, maturing June 1, 2039 (20 years), which is 105 basis points above U.S. Treasury notes.

Microsoft will use the net proceeds for general corporate purposes, which “may include funding for working capital, capital expenditures, repurchases of stock and acquisitions” — though there are no specific or defined plans for the money.

Microsoft is expected to close all details of the note offering by next Monday, May 18, 2009. A prospectus is available from J.P. Morgan Securities, Morgan Stanley & Co, or other underwriters. The bond issue has received a triple-A rating from Moody’s Investors Service.

Review: Microsoft SideWinder X8 Gaming Mouse

2009-06-11T19:40:00.001-07:00

In this review we’ll be looking at the SideWinder X8 gaming mouse in this review. In the past we’ve looked at the original SideWinder with its very cool metal buttons and scroll wheel, as well as the SideWinder X5, an affordable take on the original. The SideWinder X8 tweaks the design of the X5 while going wireless and moving from a 2000dpi sensor to 4000dpi. The X8 also jumps up to $80, which is the highest price for a SideWinder so far.

On the exterior the X8 is almost the same as the SideWinder and the X5 so be sure to check back to those reviews for comments on the shape of the mouse, the fit in the gamer’s hand, the contours of the design, and button placement. The X8 is very similar to the previous two, but some changes were made and we now have a more angular mouse than in the past. The X8 uses a 10-button design like the original (the X5 has nine) with the layout being: two primary buttons, the scroll wheel, three sensitivity buttons below the scroll wheel, one in the palm rest, forward and back buttons on the side, and a macro-record buttons in front of those two. This seems like a lot, but all you will really need to rely on during gaming are the two primaries, the wheel, and forward/back so you generally will just be tracking five. The X8 also has had its LCD restored so users can one again see what dpi setting they are running (4000, 1000, and 500, by default). The feet are replaceable and two extra sets made of materials with slightly different textures (some are slicker than others) are included, hidden away in the wireless transmitter. Swapping sets takes just a few second per foot.

Personal contact lens displays: The transparent OLED done one better

2009-06-11T19:38:00.001-07:00

If you’ve ever dreamed of having vision like Star Trek’s Georgi LaForge, seeing things beyond what’s actually there in the real world, even zooming in on the far off… well then you may need therapy, but apart from that there’s an emerging reality in a related field of science which may soon produce contact lens displays which augment the real-world experience.

Imagine an integrated, autonomous system designed to augment your visual experience with information relevant to your personal surroundings and immediate circumstances. Such a system would allow you to have access to information beyond your personal abilities, by providing reminders or cues that may not have otherwise occurred to you.

For example, the visual cues could be providing real-time GPS navigation which, rather than constantly looking over at your TomTom or Garmin, is naturally there with arrows, even being completely superimposed over what you’re naturally seeing, such as highlighting the exact path the car needs to take. Or, suppose you’re at a dinner party and you approach someone you met at a business meeting last year. You can’t quite remember his name, but in your heads up display — through some form of camera face recognition and access to a database — it pulls up not only his name, but his business line, family, and recent news which may be pertinent. You see all of this in real-time, but he just sees you. And when you say “Hi, Bill! How are Margie and the kids? And did that deal with XYZ Corp ever go through?” He’ll be impressed beyond words.

The truth is he probably won’t be, because when these devices are ready for such an application it’s probable he’ll also have one. And then I suppose it will come down to the geek level of how comprehensive each other’s database is: “Hi, William H. Tucker, III. How are Margaret Eleanor and your two kids, Christian Joseph, 11 and Amy Elizabeth, 8? And did that refinancing deal with XYZ Corp last October ever go through — I believe you were speaking with Danny Thompson?” To which he replies, “You know, Rick C. Hodgin, I’ve been following your articles on Geek.com in recent weeks … what’s up with all these sidelong allegories?” Okay, point taken.

The Eye

At the University of Washington (UW), and several other research centers around the world right now, the technology exists to create limited visual inputs which relate to tiny light sources embedded within the contact lens. While these were not physically enabled in the device linked below (meaning they did not illuminate due to no external power source hookup), they were physically present on the contact lens. Researchers believe any light presented by the lens at this stage would be interpreted by the eyes as being present and subsequently affecting the vision, but it would not be in focus or in any way usable.

In short, the technology necessary to create images or “data portals” as described above are many years away. And in fact, the technology necessary to make this kind of image appear is also quite distant.

Clean profile URLs for Facebook users

2009-06-11T05:12:00.001-07:00

So what’s the best aspect in Twitter that makes us like it more than Facebook, excepting of course the position updates? not including a doubt, its the clean URL that we get to choose for our Twitter profile. Facebook, on the other hand, does not let you do so and powerfully assigns an ID to your profile which is not only very unattractive but also extended and neglectful. But a recent post at the Facebook blog suggests that it’s quickly going to offer clean URLs to users and it’s calling it as Facebook usernames.

So as you see above, Facebook username is going to be nothing but a clean URL for your

Facebook summary which includes your username, making it easy for you to publicize your profile with pride and will also let other Facebook users remember the URL to your profile,in case they have a approval.

This will also give the users an edge in search engine results for their name as the

keyword, especially users like me who are very concerned about their web presence.

The feature will be live on June 13, so make sure to grab the URL for your profile as soon as probable as it will served on a first-come, first-serve root. Let the countdown start.

Hacker seeks fame, claims he stole Steve Jobs’ Amazon information

2009-06-11T05:08:00.001-07:00

As if Steve Jobs doesn’t have enough problems, a self-identified hacker with the moniker of “orin0co” claims to have broken into Jobs’ Amazon.com account. Although he says he has Jobs’ credit card number, he says “I didn’t misuse it.” A wise decision on the part of someone already up to illegal shenanigans. If anyone can pull the strings of technology to trace that hacker, it is the founder of Apple Computer.

It appears that the hacker’s goal is to discredit Apple’s claims that the Mac is a relatively safe computer to use. His e-mail rant reads more like a missive from a publicity seeking, wanna-be-geek fellow. His failed attempt to sell the information he claims to have gleaned from Jobs’ account indicates too much TV time. He apparently believes he can profit from blackmail. He also, more likely mistakenly, thinks he can hide behind a secure Hushmail account.

Mr. orin0co wants us to believe that Jobs is a shop-a-holic who purchased 20,000 items in the last 10 years. That’s a lot of time in front of a computer ordering a lot of stuff. Once ya get it all, where ya gonna put it? From his typical attire at WWDCs, it doesn’t look like many of those 20,000 purchases ended up in his clothes closet. Jobs might not be a dresser, but he’s not a dummy when it comes to computer scams. It’s doubtful he fell for any phishing expedition.

Phishing is a well known sport among people who refuse to get a real job, and Amazon.com is a frequent target. Phishers have escalated their techniques and created a new scheme called spearphising or whaling. The scam is the same old story, but the targets are high ranking corporate officials. iDefense Labs outlined this new scheme last June, saying that over 1,000 corporate users were hit each month. Jobs’ profile certainly fits that of a “whale,” but the hacker just may get swallowed up like Jonah. You can’t mess with a big fish and not get caught in the wake.

The reaction to the rumor has been mixed. Mostly disbelief, with no comment from Amazon.com, nor Apple. We wonder what orin0co’s next move will be as he chases infamy.