Mark Zuckerberg - Creator of Facebook - TIME person of the year 2010.

You must have used FACEBOOK or have heard of it from crazy fans of it. I think FACEBOOK is the one and only company in the past decade which has come so close in challenging the absolute rule of Google over the internet. The information shared today in FACEBOOK by real users is so close to all the data is poured in website and other objects that make the internet.
FACEBOOK is a fantastic way of connecting with your friends and sharing with them things which you like e.g. photos, videos, ideas, etc etc. We also have a Great Art of Living community in Facebook and its a joy to share and view things posted by our Jai Gurudev Warriors of the Internet.

So it was only natural that FACEBOOOK creator Mark Zuckerberg is named the TIME person of the Year by TIME magazine for the year 2010. Here is an Interview done by TIME Magazine.
(To pause and view the video, just click on the video itself.)

Funny searches on Google - courtesy - Google Suggest.

Now this is not the annual list which Google announces about the most searched words or phrases in the world. This is more interesting than that. Ever since Google released what it calls as Google suggest, now suggestions appear which is most likely what you are searching for ( according to them). You must have seen this. When you start typing something in Google, it starts giving suggestions which is pretty harmless.... that is until we figure out a way to use it as entertainment.
Now how does it work... this Google Suggest thing !!
Google says  "Google Suggest uses data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers."


Okie then, Google Suggest basically suggests what most people search for.... right?


Now this serious activity of searching for something can be a great source of fun... so have I discovered.....
Here are a few examples.....

Now stinking and cheap might be adjectives uncalled for but most people are intrigued about why Indians win spelling bee ? Ya that's what you have to ask about 1 billion people !!  And yes, that red dot ! lol!

Regarding Future, most people are worried about what their baby will look like.... and some are bothered about how they will look when they are older and some have already given up and wondering what heaven will look like?? 

Now this is what all Indians must be proud of .. The whole world atleast anticipates India to be a superpower..... but look at the pun here....  will India be ready for Commonwealth ?? 

Nothing much to say about this one.....  The most interesting one is not " Why did i get married" but  thats about the canadian... Since when people (in other countries) started owning Canadians ?

The Big Question ..... Why MBA ????

Two points here   

1. The Ayodhya verdict may not have solved anything but it made Nirmohi Akhara a top search in Google.           

 2. Has Google advanced so much that it can tell you the meaning of your name without you actually typing your name. Perhaps that is what is 3G.(another Q above).

You must add this to your Google Chrome Browser !

Gone are the days when a web browser used to be defined as something which renders HTML and shows you web pages. Now, its about a lot more. How much functionality it has, what innovative things you can do with it, how easy it is to use and above all how fast it is. 

The Infamous Internet Exploder ( oops.. Explorer ) held the roost for sometime that is until Firefox came to the scene and changed everything. Just we were wondering that it could not get better than Firefox, not so surprisingly Google came out with Chrome. The way Google is colonising everything web, sometimes I have a fantasy that one day we will have everything Google... Google softdrinks, Google baby food, Google buses, trains... even Google Guitars (GG).

Now talking about Chrome. It is an experience in itself. Being one of the first users of Chrome when it released in 2008, i had written THIS ARTICLE ON CHROME. Even back then on September 2008, I felt Google had made a revolutionary thing here. If you have not tried Google Chrome, PLEASE DO ! Its FREE.

The main point of writing this post is to share a few wonderful extensions to Chrome which I have come to love. Even you should try these:

1. Speed Dial. This is clearly the most impressive of the extensions. Its about two things, Quick access to your favorite websites and LOOKS LOOKS LOOKS !

Generally, in Chrome it will show a number of most visited websites. but now .....

You can permanently set your favorite websites buttons on the home page and give a classy logo as the button. The best part is you can choose how many buttons you want. You can also set a customized background image....

Look at the regular Chrome look.......

And the one after adding speed dial (BTW this is my  own homepage screenshot ! )

2. Youtube Downloader :   All of us need to download videos from Youtube sometime or the other, and I have seen people do this through so many elaborate ways. Now to end all woes, just add this extension and the download button will appear in Youtube page only, you can download flv or mp4 format.

3.  Chromed Bird :  If you are a Twitter Fan, only then use this. But if you are then its great. You can view practically everything from the add-on itself.

Let me know if you install any of these..... in the COMMENTS below : :)

          

Track visitors to your blog in real time(LIVE)!

Google Analytics is great to track your blog statistics at the end of the day. However it would be interesting to know how your visitors drop by to your blog IN REAL TIME.
This is specially important if you want to know how quick the response is to any traffic generation method you are using. For example, how quick the response is if you are declaring that you have a new post in Facebook?
or How quickly people know about this if you are using Twitter?
You not only get to know the location of your visitor and the source( e.g. twitter,entrecard,google etc) but also lot of other statistics such as the browser and the operating system used and also how did the visitor exited from your blog i.e. after clicking which link. This service is provided by FEEDJIT and the page looks something like this:

The best part of all this is, it is a completely free service and you don't even have to give your email or register or any such thing. You get the result instantaneously.

So are you eager to try this for your blog. Follow the following steps:

1. Cut and paste the following url in the address bar:
        http://live.feedjit.com/live/yoursite.com/
( Replace 'yoursite' in the above url with your website name)
       For blogspot blogs use:
         http://live.feedjit.com/live/yourblog.blogspot.com/
2. Click on the 'Turn Sounds On' button.
3. Now start a discussion in some Blog Directory such as Mybloglog,Blogcatalog etc, or send a Tweet giving a link to your blog, or submit an article to Stumbleupon or digg or do something so that visitors find a link to your blog NOW!
4. That is it, just enjoy the sweet sound everytime a visitor drops by .

Was this post helpful? reply in the comments!!

What Twitter can do for your blog?

It picked up like a wave in 2008 and according to my humble prediction it is the next level of social networking where everthing is short and instantaneous.
Well, if you have not signed up for twitter or don't know what twitter is the you may direct your browser here(Caroline has written it lucidly).


First things first, lets look at cold hard facts.Ever since the service started in late 2006,it has seen tremendous growth of the number of users maximum of which is in late 2008.According to the data provided by Hubspot, an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 new accounts are registered each day.And there were more than 5 million visitors in September 2008.I suspect it is much more right now.

So what does this mean to an average,not so geek blogger? It means that more and more people are meeting and will continue to meet at Twitter. The same concepts which made social networking sites like Facebook,Orkut,Myspace so popular etc may be applied but twitter has even more advantage. It is short,sweet,easily loaded, and you get the ideas of several people simultaneously.
So when most bloggers are busy discussing ideas,promoting products,driving traffic to their blogs/sites do you want to be left out?
Friends, twitter is the place to be in 2009!
It can do wonders to your blog in terms of traffic,ideas and networking.Most of the professional bloggers have a large following in twitter. Even Barack Obama has an account(though it was hacked some time earlier).Most of the professional networking bloggers have already taken twitter seriously and are religiously working to make the best use of this next big thing!
Darren (of Problogger fame) has even launched a separate blog for twitter called twitip.com.

So my advice to all the bloggers out there who are not twitting, is to create an account and start experimenting with this powerful social media network.
A few tips just to get started:
1.Just get to know more people with similar interests as you and start following them.Most of the blogs have a 'Follow me' button like you see on my left sidebar.If they like you, they may follow you too.The whole point is to increase the followers who actually is interested in what you have to say.
2.Twitter asks 'What are you doing?', my suggestion is not to include irrelevant act of yours such as 'I am eating' or ' I am scratching my itch'.
It might turn some of your followers off and may stop following you.
3.Learn more about Twitter etiquitte or Twitetiquitte(if you may), by reading some great articles written by Darren.

And don't forget to Follow me!:)

7 things to do after making/creating/starting a blog.

When I just started blogging, I was bewildered by the sheer amount of information to digest and apply it. At that time I would have been very happy if someone gave me a list of to-do things that would get me started to make my blogging effective as well as would be beneficial in the long run.Thus, this post is born.
This post is not meant for people who are seasoned bloggers but for those who have just started blogging and trying to figure things out.Hope it will be useful to you. Some of the things here are specially written keeping blogger blogs in mind but most of the tips apply to any type.

1.Use Google Analytics and start using Reader.

  The benefit of registering your blog with Google Analtics is that you can track the progress of your blog from the very day it is created and it feels great to see those spikes.If you have never heard about Analytics then it is a free tool provided by google where Webmasters can track a lot of site statistics like no. of visitors,visitor sources,keywords etc etc. This is a must use for all people who own a site or blog . To know more about Analytics you can visit here.

 When I started blogging I had not been using Reader, when I actually came to use it I found it to be a great tool to use.So a Reader of your choice(I prefer Google Reader) is a great way to keep track of the new articles published in your favorite blogs.More about reader here.

2.Get a nice template.
 

Customizing the template can give a great look to your blog.I have already written about this which you can find here.(blogger).
 
3.Install a nice favicon for your blog.

I have already written about this here. So follow the link and get a nice favicon for yourself.

4.Submit your blog to blog directories.

This is one of the most important things to do if you want to take your blog to professional levels.Whats the benifit of doing this.
Well, first of all people will come to know that your blog exists and you will get some visitors who are interested in what you write.
The other thing is you will get a valuable link which helps to grow your page rank,technorati rank and also helps in search engines rankings.
So which all directories you should submit.
You can find a list of directories here.

5.Use Entrecard.

At first when your blog is very new, very few people will know that it exists. Entrecard is a free service where you can advertise your blog on other people's blog by earning Entrecard credits. I have been using this consistently and it is needless to say that it is a great source of traffic. But along with that I have made many precious blogger friends through this platform.
Learn more about Entrecard here.

6.Claim your blog on Technorati.

Technorati is a directory of blogs where you can find some really cool blogs on any topic you want. It has a system which gives Technorati ranks and authority to blogs.Claiming your blog in Technorati will make your blogs presence felt in the blogosphere and you can also compare how well is your blog doing by checking your authority and rank.
Learn more about Technorati here.

7.Social Networking.

Every successful blog uses social networking to some extent to promote the blog.It not only brings quality traffic but also makes a sort of following for your blog. So start promoting your blog through the many social networking sites like Facebook,Orkut,Hi5 and many more...
Perhaps the most happening thing in networking now is Twitter. So if you haven't started twittering you can sign up here.Don't forget to follow me.
Know more about Twitter here.

I hope you gained some tips reading the above topics.Leave your feedback in the comments.I must have left out some important points, don't forget to point them out too.

What am I going to do in 2009?

Most of the personality development books today highlight the technique of "declaring your resolutions" to achieve efficiency and a sense of responsibility towards the goal which you have set.
This technique has been practiced in India since time immemorial wherein if a person realized a mistake then he would declare to everyone he meets that he would be doing so-and-so penance.
I feel this is a very powerful technique because when u tell the world your resolutions then there is a positive( maybe subconcious) pressure for you to work towards that goal and also the benifits of putting a goal in black and white cannot be emphasised enough.
So what are my plans for 2009? I have a fairly rough idea which I will try to explain as clearly as I can.
I have split the resolutions into two categories:

 Personal
1.More Sadhana(meditation), More seva(service) and ofcourse Satsang.
2.Start learning the flute.This is one of my foremost priorities and a deep wish as well . I am planning to learn the indian bamboo flute which is called Bansuri. So don't be surprised if after a year I am able to play the flute as well as I play the guitar now.
3.Work more on my fitness.

For this blog
Here are some goals which I want to achieve for this blog by the end of 2009.
1.Technorati:  A technorati authority of 100 or more.
2.Google Page Rank: I should be happy with a pagerank of 3 by the year end.
3.20% visitors from search engines. Well as of now it is only to the tune of 5% so a lot of SEO has to be done(sigh!, SEO is such a boring job).
4.Have 100 feed subscribers.
5.Increase the daily unique visits to 100.(As of now it is only around 30).
6.Make more use of Blog directories(Digg,Stumbleupon,Blogcatalog etc).


Well, a lot of work!So I better get started. Wish me luck!

Enter new year with PageRank 1!

Google has just updated the pagerank values of websites which used to be shown in the google toolbar.
If you don't know what is pagerank then put it simply, it is the indicator of how authoritative your page/blog/site is. It is calculated on a scale of ten.Higher the pagerank, greater the importance of that page, hence more prominence in searches and hence more traffic to that page.
I m glad to announce that the pagerank of this blog which till y'day was 0 is now updated to 1. Wow how ecstatic I am!

Hence I have put up the page rank button as you can see in the left sidebar.

Site which has made it to the elite 10/10 PageRank this year is CNN.com. Wordpress.com and Twitter.com is now on 9/10.
If you own a blog quickly check your page rank.Maybe it has increased !
So what is your pagerank? Check it here .
Boy, what a way to usher in the new year! I am sure Google has made a lot of people happy today!

I wish a successful and a prosperous year ahead to all the readers of my Weblog. Thank you for all your support and participation in the year 2008. You can expect a lot of improvement in all areas in 2009.(Who knows maybe a change of domain itself?)
For now,lets celebrate and welcome the year of the OX!

How much is your blog worth?

I came across through a nice tool to compute how much your blog is worth from Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog. The tool computes a dollar value for your blog using the same link-to-dollar ratio as the recent sale of Weblogs, Inc. to America Online:
How Much Is Your Blog Worth?

I would not have even given it a shot except that it was endorsed by Technorati(the google of blogging?) 
So actually all you have to do is give the url of the blog and it magically computes the value of your blog using some algorithms of technorating ranking,backlinks etc. 
I tried it for this blog and this is what came out:

        My blog is worth $2,822.70.
How much is your blog worth?

 Now I don't know what can I do with that data but it sure feels nice to know that your blog is worth something.!
This is what technorati has to say about this tool:

"We here at Technorati think that all your blogs are priceless. But when Weblogs Inc. was bought by AOL a few weeks ago, Tristan Louis did the math. He figured out how much each blog in the Weblogs Inc. stable was worth, based on their Technorati rank.
Inspired, Dane Carlson whipped up a handy little calculator with the Technorati API. Just enter your blog URL to see how much it's "worth" using the Weblogs/AOL math. Give it a try!

Let me know how much is your blog worth.

Blog building: A perspective.

"To create a blog is as easy as it is difficult to maintain it.

 If you own a blog or atleast created one(God knows what was the name before .blogspot?,long time back see!), you would know that to maintain a blog needs all the qualities required to be a good parent.You have to be
Consistent: Feeding your kid(blog) daily with nutritious food(quality posts).
Caring: Spend time on  how your child looks and what he wears(Template,Additional widgets,functionalities etc).
Provide good Education: SEO optimization?
Feel responsible for your readers.

Ever since the creation of this blog, I have been constantly learning more and more about the web,blogging etc.And I think the time has come to do some soul searching about this blog in particular and blogging in general.

This blog was created in September 2008. So after nearly 4 months and 50 posts I would like to share with my readers my learnings and achievements.

To put it frankly, with an average of 12 posts per month, I can say that I have been fairly consistent with my postings, however not without patches of absolute neglect! It takes a lot of perseverance specially in the initial stages of creating a sustainable blog because you put all your heart and soul into writing a fantastic article and all you see for the day is 10 visits and 20 pageviews and no comments! However with time and patience things change.Starting from 0, the readership(subscribed) of this blog has come close to 22+ which by no means is an underachievement, however I am not so pleased with the average no. of comments.

To comment and to attract comments is an art and science as well.And in this field the topic on which you are posting and the general views of your readers plays an important part. For example if maximum of your readers are boxing fans and you keep writing about "7 habits of highly effective people" then surely there will be a disconnect. I have to work on this regard!

The most important thing in making of a sustainable blog? Quality Quality Quality!
I have observed that for posts in which I have put my heart out and used all my knowledge and skills to give the best to my readers, it has attracted huge response.Not so for others.So if you want to build your blog from a newbie to a pro, you will need a lot of quality posts. Originality is also of prime importance because if the post is entirely original then you can express yourself better and readers can relate to you on  a personal level.
For example, my post in which I had put up my first youtube video where I had sung the song 'Imagine' had a greate response and I had an exclusive coverage in atleast 3 different blogs(and without asking for it). And of course the song is great!

And a last word about SEO, I have particularly struggled in this regard and my current traffic % from search engines is only 4%. Now if you want to build a blog with sustainable traffic flow you surely need to perform better in this regard. However, some of my articles have really done well to attract visitors from Google search. If you type the word SIKKIM or SHIVA in google image search then the links to this blog will appear in page 3 or 4, now that's not bad at all and I am sure with some more backlinks and some more work I can surely perform better.
If you are own a blog then I know that you must have similar thoughts and experience as mine, I would love to have a piece of your mind. How has your blog done?

RELATED POSTS:
How to earn from your blog.
Superb blog designs.

The most viewed video on Youtube!

P.S.This post is reposted from the archive of my other blog Tech-a-tete.

Lakhs and lakhs of videos are uploaded to youtube everyday.Ever wondered which is the most viewed video??

Well, I had thought that the most viewed video would be something to do with cokeandmenthol or George Bush perhaps, but no, the most popular video of all timeon YouTube, so far, has been Evolution of Danceby comedian Judson Laipply. It was added to YouTube on April 06, 2006
and has since gone on to attract 100,623,813 Million views.
It has 389,948 ratings.
It's had 216,032 comments, the first of which was: "That was freaking AWESOME! Thanks
for sharing!!".




According to a SMH article
at the end of 2006, Laipply is a comedian and motivational speaker from
Cleveland, Ohio. The video shows him dancing a six-minute routine
encompassing 32 songs spanning more than 50 years of music and dance.
In many ways this is your typical YouTube video - a funny, goofy, short
and clever video, in this case uploaded by and starring a
professional comedian. But there are tens of thousands of similar
videos on YouTube, uploaded by enthusiastic amateurs (mostly teens).

Incidentally, on Laipply's website there is an accompanying cat video - proving once and for all that this success story was by and for the Web.

The real magic of Photoshop!

I feel that in my previous post I have not done enough justice in praising the power which photoshop yields.So let me shut up and let the video do the talking....

The magic of Photoshop!

Ever since I saw a few things which could be done with Photoshop I have been fascinated with it.You could do almost seemingly impossible things with it. Attach someone's head to yours,change your hair colour,remove all scars and blemishes from your face,reduce weight, lose fat from areas where you want a toned up look etc. etc.

I agree that's its not a child's play to understand all the tech jargon there and apply it but surely a little knowledge of Photoshop can go a long way in the way we handle our photos and images.Specially for people who write regular blogs and are net savvy , posting and publishing text along with images , a little touch of Photoshop magic can do wonders.

This post is inspired by a very popular article which I got while in Digg : You can check out the article here:

Now time to show off. here are a few things which I did:

Photo within a photo:

Vishalakshi Mantap before and after 

 

And see how I made Guruji soak in the Rain.

 

Before

 

After

Are you impressed?

P.S. There are a couple of things I have put up in the sidebar. One is the wowzio tag cloud(the animated Blogumus was totally disfunctional as thankfully pointed out by Anand) and the other(i feel it's really catchy) is the recent posts widget which automatically parses and displays the image in the post. If there's no image, dearest guruji is always there.
So how do you like it?? Hm?

Did you try Google Chrome?

Well, the buzz all over the internet is about Google releasing its first ever web browser. Though it is still in beta stage, i feel it has already entered the league of popular browsers like IE 6,7,8, Mozilla Firefox,Opera, Netscape etc.
So have I tried it? Yes
And my first reaction would be NEAT...
Very sleek, fast and just to the point.
And some of its features are just too good not to be included in a browser.For instance, the thing where you can slide the tabs and pull a tab into a new window.
Also the incognito window thing is cool( for certain apps...he he).

To check some of the exciting features, have a view.

So whatever the world is saying about the many bugs existing and not
supporting add-ons, I feel google chrome will be a big part of the way
we browse in the future. Together with firefox, i think this was the
last nail to Microsoft's coffin.
And personally , I already like Google Chrome.Hope to see the full fledged version in about 6 months...