Simple English can make this happen since it makes them go through the essence of the passage as a result what we expect is accomplished. Indirectly, this level of English ensures that whatever you write has clarity and has a boundary to what exactly you wanted to convey instead of making the reader get distracted from the theme. You might had experienced the difference yourself often. It allows the readers worldwide to go with flow and understand the implications made by the author.

It happens to be a fact that without the need of complex usage of words and phrases a relatively more simple line can make a significant influence. This gives them a chance to think about what they read a moment ago. So the author gets succeeded in his goal to sustain the thought. If you are direct and specific enough then obviously it will make the emotions if any in the passage be punched into the minds of the readers. A precise and clear passage will avoid any kind of boredom since people are busy enough to go away and have no time for you.

If you are trying to attract the audience to you alone in order to show off then there would be a trade off in the content. If things are done with ease then you stay focused on the writing by keeping in view the end users of your contribution. Now instead of making readers puzzled with your ideas it would be great if you stay more aligned and clear. Think always whether whatever you are writing will create boredom to the reader. The main motive of a blogger must be to make users get addicted to it and this can be possible only if the author is selfless.

So make sure that all your content has clarity, specific, easy, concise, smaller too. Emotions and facts will be a value addition. A universal appeal is strongly recommended. The end product will be simple and fetch what the users want. All other things simply follow.

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If you are hosting your blog on Blogger, and you recently moved to your own custom domain, then this is a simple hack to increase your Feedburner Subscribers count.

Recently, feedburner gave the option of combining Blogger’s default atom feeds with your feedburner.

All you need to do is go to your Blogger account’s Settings page.

Click on “Site Feed”. Use the empty box of “Post Feed Redirect URL” and paste your Feedburner feed URL.

From now onwards, all your feeds will be combined. Anyone wishing to subscribe to your blog will get your feedburner feed.

Now, you may ask how does that increase the subscribers count.

The redirect URL settings add your previous (atom feed) subscribers who subscribed to your blog. Hence, you have combined all the readers count at one place.

After setting your redirect feed URL and saved your settings, check back your feedburner stats after 2 or 3 hrs.

Voilla, the subscribers count would have gone up. Provided your blog had readers before you burnt the feedburner feed.

There are many people out there who want to study abroad but can’t do so because they can’t be able to leave their home due to financial or other problems. So, Microsoft and Cisco type companies have made learning process easier for them. Such companies have introduced many programs online like 1Y0-259, PMI-001 etc. Many websites are giving brain dumps for 350-001 online courses which help you to pass the exam with ease. In order to certify your expertise in installing and maintaining a Microsoft windows server 2003 network then select 70-291 course and to support the users and troubleshooting a MS Windows XP OS go for 70-271 course. Both courses helping guide is easily available on line free or at economical prices. The different online websites provide many study materials for N10-003 exam but it is very difficult to find the best website which is giving best material for guaranteed success in the particular exam. If you are interested in Voice over IP then Cisco has designed 642-432 course especially for VOIP techniques. You can do 70-528 web-based client development course in order to verify your skills.

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If you are living in Australia, you know that there are few things that are not written in the same way as others do. One good source to get used to the Australian spellings is to refer the Macquarie English dictionary. For instance, Australians prefer to use ‘-ise’ for ‘prioritise’ instead of ‘prioritize’. But, when I typed the ‘ise’ firefox will show as an error.

Quick fix (for only firefox): Tools –> Options –> Advanced–> General –> Languages — Add ‘English [Au]‘ to your list and hit ‘Move up’ till it reaches the top of the list.

Another way to overcome this problem is to edit the “Custom.dic” file that comes with the most of the applications such as Word, Outlook or Firefox.

Where to find the custom dictionary file to edit:

Firefox
C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Mozilla\Profiles\ \persdict.dat

Word / Outlook /Powerpoint
C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\Microsoft\Proof\Custom.Dic

Now, all set except the typing of every word in the dictionary file, you can do this manually by typing one word per line.

There are pre-built custom dictionaries available for free around the web. For Australian English (rejoice), such dictionaries are available at justlocal.com.au (courtesy of Kelvin) for FREE.

You can download the dictionary for openoffice.org and use it for firefox, outlook or word. For instance, download the kelvin_en_AU_V2.2.0.zip file from the site and unzip it. You will find a text file that can be opened with notepad. Copy and paste the list into your application’s custom dictionary.

There’s also an Aussie slang dictionary available at their blog.

That’s it, a perfect spell check from next time onwards.

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Imagine if your personal information can find way into the computer screens of baddies, the consequences will be unimaginable. Am I scaring you? Not at all. Just follow some news items.

Who has the responsibility for protecting you online? The answer is not a firewall program or your ISP. You should protect your privacy – You are responsible for your online safety.

What you can do to protect your privacy?

1. Use nicknames only.

2. Create an email-id to sign-up for newsletters / social networks.

3. Check if an E-business site is Verisign secure (Click on the logo and verify it).

4. Post only thumbnail photos.

5. Never tell your personal information. E.g. Real date of birth.

6. Don’t tell everything (share your personal problems) about yourself to an online friend. Wait until you gain some trust.

7. Do not think everyone is good.

8. When someone asks for your postal address, ask why?

9. If someone is offering free money, then there is something wrong.

10. Do not blog your personal details.

from Geek And Poke’s Future of Web by Oliver Widder

Related Readings:
EFF’s Top 12 Ways to Protect Your Online Privacy – very exhaustive, lists some online tools and services that help you to protect your privacy.

CDT’s online guide to online privacy: Top Ten Ways to Protect Privacy Online

Get safe Online – an expert blog that has excellent blog posts, tips and resources on being safe online.

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Meg in her Recounting Australian Blogs has posted these questions. I have been thinking to write on these lines for a while. So, Here are my thoughts.

What ideas do you have for promoting Aussie blogs and bloggers?

1. Telly (television) will be my first medium to promote blogs and blogging. Do a special episode (or a series) about Blogging in prime-time shows such as current affairs, today tonight.
2. Running an advert on a newspaper is the next best thing. Even if we put together 50 cents each, we can publish an ad on the Sunday newspaper. The promotion lines could be ..”Start a blog, Change Australia”, “Express yourself with a blog” (dont laugh!).
3. Running a “Great Aussie Blogs” contest and let the readers vote on blogs under different categories.
4. Creating an awareness on different blogging media and platforms – I mean people can microblog with twitter, tumblr . Not only text – audio blogs, photo blogs, video blogs as well, there are plenty of opportunities.
5. Create blogs for your friends, parents and grandparents. We don’t have time, but there are people out there who have plenty of time. Ask them to blog, anything.

Do you think we do enough (considering the above named local blog searches and directories)? What are we lacking?

Blog directories, aggregation, rankings are good (from blogger’s perspective). But, it lacks the interaction from readers. I would like to see a blog posts aggregation page – which shows Most read posts, Most commented posts, Recent posts, Recently updated blogs (the last two things are already done by australian index) and a voting feature for the readers (a thumbs up or thumbs down sign).

How often do we stumble upon to a fresh aussie blog? Not often. We should work on a model where blogs can be discovered by readers – a stumble upon like toolbar (it could be web based as well) for australian bloggers. How about featuring a “Blog of the Day” on the Directory’s home page

There are plenty of such ‘Aussie Blog Directories’ but none of them is complete – all have rss aggregation, rankings and a search. Not enough if you want to develop a blog portal. As a reader, I enjoy reading a regional language (Tamil) portal named Thamizmanam (they have an English portal but – it didn’t go well). Another similar blog portal is Thenkoodu (in the same language). I can list the features they have if anyone wants to develop such a blog portal.

We can have forums – but people never would be the first to start posting in it. So, post a topic and invite people (pro bloggers) to write on a specific topic like this, “What ideas do you have for promoting Aussie blogs and bloggers?“. Everyone will chip in with their ideas.

If you were to set up a new domain for promoting the aussosphere what would you do with it?

I would develop a site from the reader’s perspective. Easy to browse, plenty of things to get lost into – is it a dream?

If you have more ideas, comment here or even better write them in your blog (a blog post gained).

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It would be lovely if you create a podcast blog, but there is a free web service available that allows you to convert your blog posts into audio content directly. When you sign up with Odiogo , your readers will see a podcast option, something like ‘Listen to this post’, below every blog post.

When they click on the link, they can listen to your blog post. Readers can subscribe from their iPhone as well. No software install is necessary.

It is based on a similar feature ‘Read the document aloud!’ – as seen on the Acrobat Reader.

Why wait, reach more audience. For Free.

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Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked ‘Whats up?’ to which they replied "We are waiting for the rest of it". To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.

One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when they introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the "Did you mean…" feature. This instantly doubled their traffic, but they had some interesting discussions on how best to place that information, as most people simply tuned that out. But they discovered the placement at the bottom of the results was the most effective area.

The infamous "I feel lucky" is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.

Orkut is very popular in Brazil. Orkut was the brainchild of a very intelligent Google engineer who was pretty much given free reign to run with it, without having to go through the normal Google UI procedures, hence the reason it doesn’t look or feel like a Google application. They are looking at improving Orkut to cope with the loads it places on the system.

Google makes changes small-and-often. They will sometimes trial a particular feature with a set of users from a given network subnet; for example Excite@Home users often get to see new features. They aren’t told of this, just presented with the new UI and observed how they use it.

Google has the largest network of translators in the world

They use the 20% / 5% rules. If at least 20% of people use a feature, then it will be included. At least 5% of people need to use a particular search preference before it will make it into the ‘Advanced Preferences’.

They have found in user testing, that a small number of people are very typical of the larger user base. They run labs continually and always monitoring how people use a page of results.
The name ‘Google’ was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for ‘Googol’

Gmail was used internally for nearly 2 years prior to launch to the public. They discovered there was approximately 6 types of email users, and Gmail has been designed to accommodate these 6.

They listen to feedback actively. Emailing Google isn’t emailing a blackhole.

Employees are encouraged to use 20% of their time working on their own projects. Google News, Orkut are both examples of projects that grew from this working model.

Google has a mantra of aiming to give back each page with in 500ms, rendered.
Quote: Give Users What They Want When They Want It
Quote: Integrate Sensibly
Google believes in giving surprises. Thats why they keep things closer until the D-day!
via http://alan.blog-city.com/an_evening_with_googles_marissa_mayer.htm

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Ideas. Your Ideas. Opinions. Your Opinions. This is an era where you will be valued on your ideas and thinking. These are the valuables you should develop and preserve. You have to absorb the information and develop your own views / ideas on that. If you write in an exam whatever is given in the textbook, what value YOU are adding. Think, Try to be original.

The popularity of Blogs – such a nice example. Everyone wants to express their own ideas, views, opinions and thoughts. Others just love to read about you, they want to see YOU in your writings!

So, Think on YOUR OWN. Express yourself

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How do you get hold of such free schwags. If you happen to visit the web conferences, tech fests and seminars, you will get a loads of such stuff.

If not, you can email them using their contact page and ask them. Not all the web companies encourage the users openly as the following few.

Flickr Schwags: FREE
For example, Flickr says in its blog page that if you need stickers, buttons, balloons – you could send an email to them. I did and got a pack of goodies which are really cool.

“When you are organising a flickr meer, if you let us know in addition to adding your event to the Upcoming Flickr group — we can send you some Flickr schwag: stickers, buttons and name tags. Please include your postal address and let us know as soon as you can, ideally, at least a month before the event.” – Flickr blog

Visit http://www.flickr.com/help/contact to let them know you want some flickr goodies. Within few weeks, the parcel should arrive you.

Feedburner Stickers: FREE

Taking a cue from Flickr, now Feedburner provides stickers, but you need to send them some pre-paid, self-addressed envelopes to their address.

Read this announcement on the Feedburner official blog.

Startup Schwag:
There is much an easy way, if you can shell some out some money ($25-$30), startupschwag will collect all such cool schwags (with one T-shirt guaranteed) every month to your address.

There was a startup named ValleySchwag which got shut down earlier because, they could not cope with the users demand. Now, the home page link leads to a 404 page.

Other FREE Stickers:

You can get a free 2007 Ferrari Stickers given away by Shell.

Have you requested such goodies from companies? Whats your experience?

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No, they are not the BIG Pro, A-list bloggers. They are like you and me, our nice, friendly next-door-bloggers, they often produce a stunning post that you wish you had written. Here’s a collection of such 25 top blog posts in five categories that are most-read by their readers. We can all learn something from each of these posts.

1. Utility Posts: You post something useful for everyone (blogger), if your post is convincing, readers will celebrate it. Do not think any topic is known to everyone. There are billions of people who still wants to know what a blog is. Keep your language simple, show them in a clear, concise steps.

Top 5 Steps for Choosing a Blog Theme – Meg is renowned for posting such easy-to-understand, jargon-free, illustrative articles at her blog Dipping into the Blog Pond. I would suggest her to make a “popular page” showing such posts.

Reframing: The sweetest idea for content ideas – Andrew addressed a most pressing issue faced by every blogger in this post. How do we develop ideas for blog posts, to create unique yet, special content which no one else can do.

Should you eat that – Tara, a nutrition student publishes the recipes she tries and the tips on our dietary, eating habits. The blog title Should you eat that reflects the utility for you – to help you to choose your food wisely. If you are looking for recipes, you should bookmark the blog Cook almost anything.

How To Replace the Color Wheel in Your Samsung DLP Television and Save $400 – You don’t need to go looking for such Do-IT-Yourself posts somewhere. Write your own experience how you overcome an issue, a tip that you have developed to solve a problem. That’s all the world is looking for – write from your own experience. This post published by Scott received 594 comments and has excellent photographs to illustrate every step he talks about.

How I stopped a bandwidth thief – Swollen pickles wrote a series of excellent posts to stop a person who stole the bandwidth by direct hot-linking of images. It teaches a lesson to the evil-doers and to you on how to handle if you are in such situation.

2. Surprise Posts: Surprise posts grab your attention at once. You know you want to click and see what’s in there (they are referred as click-baits). You can make that happen with catchy, cheeky titles or opening sentences.

Rate My Ass – The title itself surprises you to know the content.

Amazing Upside Down House – The weird stories such as these are powerful crowd pullers.

Avoid Risk, Sure. Then Die! – Richard wrote a book, “Punk Marketing“, which is based on the mantra that, if you are afraid of risks, then you sure, are ready to die.

And now for an important announcement from the Prime Minister – Lizbee’s picture blog post has a real signature of the Prime Minister of Australia in it.

Australia’s Bizarre Sporting Fortunes – Knowing most of Australians love sports and like reading about them, Mark would never need another better topic other than this.

3. Popular-by-Demand Posts: Every one wants to know your success story (even if there is a pun) or a miserable failure and wants to get inspired or get a good laugh. These posts are always popular among readers, if only you do not disappoint them in delivery.

Snoskred made 5 million dollars online – How much money you could have made if the “spam marketers” were really very generous in their dealings? On a serious note, this post is an eye-opener.

How to grow your blog by over 2000 per cent in one month! – If you are a blogger, you know what it means to grow by 200%, let alone adding another 1800%. Alister who calls himself as “Blogologist” (Did I say that correctly?), posts the techniques he used to get more readership, more links and more comments.

13 signs that someone you know may have an eating disorder – A list of any sort is sure enough to attract your readers. Aussie mum posts a list of signs to check if you or any one you know might have an eating disorder.

Vinyl Beauties post series from Vanessa shows the vintage collection of vinyl records (music album) she presents the cover images in the series. Eye-catching.

How to Turn 300 Contacts Into 3.3 Million: My LinkedIn Network – Des at Thinking Home business talked on how you could develop your social network at a phenomenal rate.

4. Breezy Posts: They are lengthier but compelling enough to keep your attention till the very end of the post. A travel diary, a personal experience, book / restaurant review or just tips from your own life would form this category.

Relaxing weekend ingredients – Jaycee lists the essential ingredients for a successful, soothing weekend at her blog Semantically Driven.

How To Do A Mini Debrief With Traumatized Friends – Megan talks about dealing with a tough situation where most of us would keep silent.

Adelaide to Darwin Backpacking Road Trip Overview – Neerav often writes about his trips (backpackers reviews, travel tips) around Australia (I would like to travel around Australia as well). His travel diary is fascinating as well as informative.

B is for Boracay -It’s all about fantastic beach and real good time!

Personal post about Long Distance Relationships – A short post on her thoughts but I liked it instantly.

5. Analytical Posts: Start with a burning question and provide convincing arguments and you get a successful blog post. You can compare two services or even produce a list of ten best things.

Why Do Blogs Fail? – Dan at The Wrong Advices analyses the reasons behind why bloggers loose interest and close their blogs one-fine-day.

Why Most People Fail at AdSense – Lisa tells her ‘Hodgepodge theory’ on Adsense.

Why StumbleUpon is a better than Digg for promoting your blog posts – This is one of my favourite post where I compared at the stickiness of readers visiting from two giant social network sites.

Why Is Firefox Still Way Behind Internet Explorer? – Everyone hates George Bush. Any Australian whom I speak to hates John Howard. But, they get elected all the time. Everyone seems to love Firefox, but? I would recommend a serious discussion such as this one would be open to your readers. You can ask your readers to tell their reasons then, you can write a round-up of posts.

NO WATER, NO FUTURE AUSTRALIA – Jules shares her wise words on the Melbourne Water’s ‘Your water, Your future’ (now changed as Our water, our future) campaign and tips on changing the strategy to voluntarily involve people in environmental activism. Here’s Your water, your say group.

25 posts from 25 bloggers, now you know why the readers liked them all. Now is the time for you to speak, what type of blog posts you enjoy writing and why? Comment on.

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