Why Blogs?

If the above data doesn’t sound tempting to you then get a load of this. Experts believe this explosive and unheralded growth of the blogging industry is bound to continue for some more years to come. Today, blogging is increasingly being considered as a highly effective marketing tool and there has never been a better time to start your own personal blog than now! Based on the outcome from a recent survey conducted by research firm MarketingSherpa, blogs are the #4 most effective tools for sales leads generation. Their excellent responses to search engines and webspiders have made them very endearing and valuable. They are also the fastest way to build websites – if you don’t know how to build a website in HTML you can use a blog instead.

Blog History

Derived from the term “Web log,” blog is a simply a web page or a website that is partly an online journal or diary, and partly an open forum on which readers can comment. You can either update your blog on a daily basis, or write as per convenience on a weekly, monthly, or any other frequency basis.

Typically, blogs are short, expressive entries (around 200-300 words) and may or may not include photographs, links, etc. Blogging is a technique which needs to be practiced in order to improve. Since blogs are open to everyone, other readers can post their comments or reactions to your writing and continue the dialogue further.

The world of blogs or “blogosphere” literally has several thousands of blogs on every topic you can think of! While many of the blogs are hosted on public blog sites such as Blogger, Windows Live Spaces etc, others are hosted on business or individual websites.

Blog for Profit or Fun

Whether you decide to start your own blog for fun, social interaction or for profit and business expansion, blogging is just plain fun. Moreover, like other marketing tools used by marketing experts, blogs are at their effective best when used correctly. So, even if you a novice at blogging our suggestions will show you how to start your very own profitable blog.

- Sell advertising space. When you sell text links or banners on your blogs, you are essentially selling advertising space to other businesses for the promotion of their services or products. This blog strategy is only going to work if your blog enjoys high page rank on Google and other search engines.

- Offer affiliate advertisements. As a blog owner, you may wish to promote your affiliates by offering visitors links or banners to their products/services. But this would involve setting up your entire blog around the affiliate product or service. You must concentrate on building links to specific website pages for targeted traffic.

- And the simplest way to make profit from blogging is by allowing Google Adsense or any other ads on your blog. Whenever visitors click these ads, you will make money. You can visit www.google.com/adsense for more details. As you can see, there are many ways in which you can not just start your own blog but also make money from it. Use the strategies that are viable for you, match your skill level, and can fit your personal schedule.

Blogs for Business

However, even if you are starting a blog just for social interaction and sharing of ideas there is no harm in make some money as well. If you are starting a blog for business purposes then remember that your competitors are most likely using blogs as well to reach to their customers more effectively. A business blog will help you educate your customers about your business while also making it easy for you to keep pace with a dynamic market.

Simply said, blogs allow your audience to submit their comments, interact with you, exchange dialogues on the information you share with them, allowing you to constantly improve your services and expand your reach at a level where it counts.

A personal blog is a smart statement, so why not start blogging now!

As you probably know, the crop tool is a quick and easy way to cut down the image and canvas while only keeping a portion of the shot that you want.

Today I’m going to share some tips that I have found very useful as a video editor,and have met some graphic designers as well who didn’t know you can do this in one step.

The crop tool, a scalpel icon located in the left toolbar, is used by dragging a box over an area of your image and hitting enter to crop. You can constrain the proportions of the image by aspect ratio or a set size in pixels or inches etc.

This makes it the most commonly used Photoshop tool for video editors, before bringing pictures into the editing timeline. Photoshop has much better “math” for dealing with resizing of images than video editing programs do, so it’s suggested to use it for any still image manipulating instead of using video editing tools.

An unknown feature of the Crop tool among many video editors and some graphic designers, is the ability to make an image bigger.

When you think of cropping you might think cutting out a piece of an image to make a new one is what it’s for. Which is true but also if you zoom out enough to see the outside of your canvas, you can drag the crop box outside of the boundaries; then perform the crop to both enlarge the image and the canvas in one move.

So with the ability to select aspect ratio or pixels, this is absolutely the most awesome tool for video editors in particular, as it does 3- 4 things at once; resizes the canvas, resizes the image to selected aspect ratio and uses only your selected portions of the image.

Hope you found this tip useful. Use this for minor tweaking of image size, not for doubling the size of an image as it will probably start to pixellate.

Another cool thing to use the crop too for is perspective change, see this free video from the adobe how to series to learn how. What do you use the crop tool for the most? Leave a comment and let us know.

You can include pictures, hyperlinks to your websites, MP3s and videos. Much depends on the type of blog you have and who is the provider, but WordPress allows more than Blogger or Blogspot, especially if you have downloaded it to your own website. However, it is also more complicated and you might prefer to start off easy and then work your way up as you become more familiar with what you are doing. Many cPanel web hosts offer WordPress facilities.

The basic components of a blog are:

Title: You can use the title to label your posting.
Category: You can add a category to keep blogs on similar topics together.
Body: This is the main content of the blog.
Trackback: This allows other sites to link back to your blog.
Permalink: This is the URL that goes with every blog that you write.
Comments: This allows readers to make comments on your blog – some good, and some bad.

By means of just one or two templates you can easily create new pages. It’s a bit like having a website and copying your home page as a template for all the rest of the pages, only the blog template is blank with spaces for the title, category and all the other aspects of your blog. The blogging websites that you sign up with offer a number of templates and you can choose one and literally start blogging immediately.

Blogging can be more that just your own personal thing, and you can join groups that blog about specific topics, such as football, movies, music, blogging, etc, etc. You can all share your expertise and knowledge and some are literally operating as forums. You can also use your blog to advertise a product, and to drive traffic to your website, while others have no website and use their blog as their sole communications window on the internet.

I could go on all day about what you can do and, sometimes, cannot do with a blog, but the best way is to get started and then find what you are capable of. The best way is to log onto the blog provider of your choice and sign up for a blog. Most newcomers to blogging find it easiest to start blogging from a provider’s website, and then graduating to installing blogging software on their own website

This is a bit trickier, but it allows you use all the plugins that allow total personalization of your blog so that it is completely unlike that of anybody else. You cannot use plugins when you run your blog from the provider’s site, whether it is WordPress or any other blog. You cannot beat having your own blog software and being able to design any page that you want.

However, although this sounds great to be able to do, on the whole you are likely best to start blogging from the blog hosting site, and then graduate to your own website once you are comfortable with blogging. You will have enough to take in and learn when you upload to your own web space without having to worry about how blogging works.

Blogging is fantastic fun, and it can also be very profitable. However, there are specific techniques involved in making money using blogs, and it is very easy to get your fingers burnt if you are unaware of the pitfalls and the right way to do it. Nevertheless, blogging can be very rewarding, both personally and financially, so best of luck, and get blogging now. Don’t leave it a minute longer because you might have a lot to learn yet.

Once you have learned how to start a blog, then you can think of running your own from your own website.

Social bookmarking is a great way for internet users to share ,organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources.

they are hundred or Evan thousands of social bookmarking networks ,but we try to collect only the best ones with high page rank and do follow links.so here is our new list of

dofollow social bookmarking sites

Page Rank 8

Reddit.com 326

folkd.com 1325

Page Rank 7

EbaumsWorld 1479

propeller.com 1841

metafilter.com 2021

care2.com 2197

connotea.org 4784

tipd.com 13603

Page Rank 6

dzone.com 2568

sphinn.com 6799

mylinkvault.com 7303

kirtsy.com 10206

kwoff.com 15160

Page Rank 5

indianpad.com 3833

a1-webmarks.com 5625

searchles.com 7385

spotback.com 7561

tagza.com 7615

corank.com 8601

designfloat.com 8950

plime.com 26072

buzzup.com 36303

linkatopia.com 56051

scoopit.co.nz 76903

Blogs / “weblogs” or blogging are the newest gift of Internet technology to people all over the world. These are updated posts, crop up entries or personalized life snippets, of mundane or bizarre in nature. For most, a “blog” is a personal, unedited, and authentic journal meant to be shared in an online community. Blog site is a place where bloggers can publish anything; his thoughts, feelings, photos, special events, experiences, comments on issues and so on. It is more of an online diary with videos, links, documents, newsletters and opinions on just about any topics you are interested.

Blogs are made to welcome the insights and opinions of all and therefore, should not be written to sound intimidating and too formal. This kind of blog is a sure way to put off the readers. In the basics of blogging, conversational tone would be more appropriate to reach the desired audience.

Blogging is all about individuals reaching out to other individuals. Having a blog has its own set of advantages:

- Freedom of Expression. If you want people to hear you out and give their own opinion, this is the best way to create a line of communication.

- Networking is at its best. Having a blog is a good platform for exchanging genuine ideas from consumers to you as marketer of a certain product. Sound opinion and point of view is better than just showing the price quote.

- Excellent advertising platform. Blogging is a new way to advertise products, a refreshing change from the traditional advertising outlets and it is cost-effective.

- Gauging public opinion on products and services. The key is nice and catchy titles with new ideas presented in your content. This is an assurance of quick and repeated responses from your readers. Blogs is an excellent spot for the exchange of ideas between the seller and the consumer. Good for measuring public opinion regarding services and products, even political and business matters alike.

- Useful tool for internal communication. This will help your company to build a knowledge-based community of employees. Also good for harnessing employee relations and identifying human resource issues in advance.

- Other benefits like search engine optimization (SEO) will help your blogs to be seen often by as many people as you wish. This is very good exposure for your products and services.

Many blog hosting services are available on the Internet. But the basic question is which one of the services will be the best to start off your business blog program- Business people are usually clueless to recent technological innovations which would help them maximize their marketing potentials. For these beginners, it is best to study first the services offered by blog hosts. An ineffective business blogging program may damage marketing opportunities instead of enriching them.

A company may decide to do the following depending on its capacity and needs: 1) Host their own blog service, 2) Pay someone else to host the service, or 3) Setup a “blog aggregator page” and ask the employees to select their blog hosting services individually. There are paid and free services available for individuals.

For business blogs, they are required to have the latest blogging features; if not, this will prevent them from maximizing their marketing, public relations and SEO potentials.

Keep in mind that blogs should have the following basic essentials:

COMMENTS. Welcoming comments provide opportunity for dialogue. In business blogs, they are a good customer feedback mechanism. This helps develop better customer relations based from loyalty and trust. Blogging is an innovative way to converse with your customers.

TRACKBACK. This helps in maximizing company and product exposure. Through this service, consumers can get back to you for more posts and updates without the difficulty of locating you. If your blog is popular in a specific online community chances are links going back to your blog site are everywhere online, other blog sites or even websites.

CATEGORIES AND TAGS. These both help in classifying blog searches for ease of navigation and on site search. Categories act as libraries because it classifies posts by subject matter such as business, distance learning, e-commerce, online auctions, etc. Tags, help in the classification, especially in the blog search engine Technorati. Possible customers and new clients locate blogs about certain topics of interest by just clicking the tags.

RSS FEED. Really Simple Syndication is the feed from your blog that is sent out over the internet, and collected through the various newsreaders and aggregators.

If your company is to establish a business blogging program, considerable options should be made available by the hosting companies shortlisted for the services. Free blog hosting services are popular but they are much appropriate for individual online journals. Paid blog hosting services offer unlimited packages best for your company’s needs. You may want to suggest checking out some blogs that use the host first, read and examine their layout and design. Another important thing to consider is a reliable technical support the host has.

After, choosing the blog host, a team should be ready to plan the design and structure of the blog: The team should:

- create a style that meets the needs of the audience;

- establish an open, credible tone;

- schedule weekly updating of blog – ideally, a few times a week;

- include weblinks of other website and blogs;

- blog post should be in the “first person;”

- focus on the business blog objective; and,

- maintain an honest, engaging conversational quality.

Remember, whatever the look, style and content found on your blog is a reflection of you and your company.

Looking back at Apple’s press event yesterday, it seemed like each new iPod was intended, at least in part, to right the wrongs of 2009. Let’s take a closer look:

iPod Shuffle

When introducing the fourth-generation iPod Shuffle, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said people like last year’s addition of Voiceover, a feature that dictates playlists and song information, but they “clearly missed the buttons” of the second-generation Shuffle. By moving buttons onto the earbuds, Apple prevented people from using their own sets without pricey adapters. It didn’t help when some of Apple’s own earbuds malfunctioned, forcing a replacement program. Jobs said the new Shuffle combines “the best of both worlds,” which is a nice way of saying Apple messed up with the button-free model.

iPod Nano

As Jobs recounted the iPod Nano’s history, he only talked about how new generations got aluminum cases and bigger screens. He avoided mentioning the third-generation Nano’s addition of video playback, or the fifth-generation’s video camera. That’s probably because the new Nano has neither. I don’t see this as a problem; it’s more of a response to the iPod Touch’s increasing popularity. Selling the iPod Nano as a Flip video camera competitor wasn’t working, and that angle no longer makes sense now that the iPod Touch has cameras. By shrinking the new iPod Nano and removing video, Apple is trying to find a place where the device isn’t overshadowed by its big brother.

iPod Touch

A teardown of the 2009 iPod Touch revealed an empty slot for a camera, suggesting that the device was at some point supposed to take pictures and video. Jobs said the camera was absent because Apple wanted to keep prices low, but rumors suggested that a technical defect forced Apple to pull the cameras earlier in the year. Whatever the case, Apple isn’t so concerned about price anymore — at $229, the 8 GB version is $30 more expensive than last year’s model — and now the iPod Touch has front- and rear-facing cameras.

Bonus Non-iPod Device: Apple TV

It’s not an iPod, but Apple TV has been an afterthought for Apple since its launch in 2007. Jobs said the product isn’t a hit, even though the people who own Apple TVs love them. Now, the strategy for Apple TV revolves around affordability. The device is now $99 instead of $229, without the big hard drive of the previous generation, with an emphasis on renting $4.99 first-run HD movies and 99-cent Fox and ABC TV shows. If Apple was going to take part in a new battle for the living room, it had to reboot Apple TV.

“The sex scenes are explicit and sometimes violent, but the main theme of the story is love.”

3-D movies cost much more to film than regular movies, and also take twice as long to make, but that isn’t stopping director Christopher Sun from tackling this project full-force. He is doing his best to bring audiences an in-your-face porn like nothing that’s been experienced yet—and, in IMAX, no less. However Sun also maintains that there is more to his film than hardcore erotica. “The sex scenes are explicit and sometimes violent, but the main theme of the story is love,” he said in a Reuters article. We’re thinking this is going to be a little scary. It’s one thing to have fancy flowers and mystical creatures jumping out of the screen at you, but giant wangs, towering va-jays and all of the, um, “excretions” that accompany them? We can’t help but feel a bit wary. And then there’s the whole question of whether this movie is going to lead to an entire IMAX theater full of dudes pleasuring themselves because, well, that’s just creepy. But 3-D cinema is pervasive right now and Sex & Zen has already spawned some followers. A 3-D, pornographic version of Avatar is in the works, as is a 3-D remake of Caligula. So grab your buddies, your special glasses and get ready to have your eyes and senses assaulted by three-dimensional genitals. Who knows? You might enjoy it.

Every day, brokenhearted people everywhere are tormented by Facebook status updates, online photos, tweets and even Foursquare notifications, that remind them of the existence of whatever asshat just rejected them. Yes, technology has brought us a new, special kind of torture—the kind that forces a guy to see provoking snippets of information about his harpy of an ex, Monica, in his daily Facebook news feed. It’s subtle but effective. For example, he sees that, Brad, Monica’s d-bag co-worker who was always hitting on her, just wrote on her wall: “Hey Mon, glad we FINALLY got to grab that dinner last night. ‘I recommend the meatballs.’ Bwahahahaha.” Comments like this are posted all the time and they are lethal for the recently dumped because they send the dumpee into a tailspin of overanalysis and wild conjecture: “Oh, they went to dinner? What, are they dating now?” “Why did he put ‘finally’ in all caps? Because he’s been biding his time for her to be available? I knew it!” “What the hell is that quote about the meatballs? He’s obviously talking about his own balls. That skank gave him head under the table at the Italian restaurant where they went on their first romantic date!”

Not surprisingly the Interwebz has spawned numerous applications designed to counter the very demons it created. CBS recently put together a roundup of these services. For example, those suffering from TMI online about their ex can got to BlockYourEx.com and download a browser plug-in that blocks any mention or image of your reviled ex-lover on Facebook, Twitter and Google search.

Do you want to obliterate all traces of your former flame from your cell phone but lack the spine and the ability to do it yourself? There’s an app for that. For 99 cents you can purchase the EraseUrX iPhone app. Then there is iDump4You, a site that does what all people secretly wish they could do when they want to break up with someone: Have someone else do it for you. Avoidr.org allows neurotic Foursquare users to figure out which places their friends haven’t checked into, the idea being that you can avoid an emotional run-in with your ex at the local neighborhood watering hole.

All of these services are well and good, but we’d like to remind folks that will power is, in fact, still an option. If you don’t want someone to be on your radar, take them off of it. Here’s a novel idea: Instead of downloading a plug-in, how about you just don’t go to their page? Sounds crazy, but it works. Those pesky status updates can disappear from your life, too. Simply block the offending person from your news feed. And while the Internet does make it difficult to ignore certain people, it also makes it incredibly easy for you to rid yourself of a problem in one quick step—it’s called the delete button. Oh, and they’ve got one of those buttons in your cell phone as well. Try it sometime.

While Microsoft Hardware is busy marketing their latest Arc Touch mouse, they’ve not forgotten the others lying around the shelves. Microsoft has re-skinned their Wireless Mobile 4000 Series with six new designs. Won’t you get attracted by mouse with names like Micro, Botanic, Cosmic, Downtown, Crania and Pirouette? Available soon in September for ‘only’ $39.95. So, make sure to have a look if you’re shopping for new mouse lately.

[Microsoft via Engadget]

A normal looking headphone, very innocent looking, but might get you killed. This is Panasonic’s latest noise cancelling headphone, RP-HC700. The retro-inspired cans will kill 95-percent of surrounding noise, and will ship them in black or white hues if you need some fashion sense while ignoring your girlfriend (or mum) whining. Other specs include 40mm drivers, a 10Hz to 30 kHz frequency range and 15 hours of noise cancelling with a single AAA battery. Well if you wish to kill some zerglings during the night, and can’t stand your mum whining you to get to sleep (or your girlfriend, for whatever reason), just throw in ¥20,000 ($237) next month and you’re set to go. Though, I must warn you that you might lose your life for ignoring them far too long. Whether it’s worth it or not, is up to you.

SOURCE via Akihabaranews