I’m going with the Home Premium version, check out the comparison and pick yours!

PS: As if news of Windows 7 isn’t good enough, there’s news of Windows 8 already!

If you don’t want to read through the entire Reuter’s article, simply put: Bing (try Bing without it’s background) will replace Yahoo’s search and Microsoft’s Adcenter will be used to show ads on the search pages. Microsoft stands to gain from the increased exposure, Yahoo stands to gain from the 88% revenue sharing deal that favours Yahoo. The deal is expected to come through by early 2010.

All eyes are now on Bing, as for me, I’ve replaced the default search engine on Firefox from Google to Bing – it’s a search engine that’s worth giving a chance.

Update: WSJ has done a better job of summing up the terms of the agreement here. Excerpts:

The key terms of the agreement are as follows:

– The term of the agreement is 10 years;

– Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies, and Microsoft will have the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into its existing Web search platforms;

– Microsoft’s Bing will be the exclusive algorithmic search and paid search platform for Yahoo! sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its technology and data in other areas of its business such as enhancing display advertising technology;

– Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force  for both companies’ premium search advertisers. Self-serve advertising  for both companies will be fulfilled by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform,  and prices for all search ads will continue to be set by AdCenter’s automated auction process;

– Each company will maintain its own separate display advertising  business and sales force;

– Yahoo! will innovate and “own” the user experience on Yahoo!  properties, including the user experience for search, even though it  will be powered by Microsoft technology;

– Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement  on traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network of both owned and operated  (O&O) and affiliate sites;

– Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo! at an initial rate of 88 percent of search revenue generated on Yahoo!’s O&O sites during the first five years of the agreement; and

– Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships.

– Microsoft will guarantee Yahoo!’s O&O revenue per search (RPS) in each country for the first 18 months following initial implementation in  that country;

– At full implementation (expected to occur within 24 months following regulatory approval), Yahoo! estimates, based on current levels of revenue and current operating expenses, that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual GAAP operating income of approximately $500 million and capital expenditure savings of approximately $200 million. Yahoo! also estimates that this agreement will provide a benefit to annual operating cash flow of approximately $275 million; and

– The agreement protects consumer privacy by limiting the data shared between the companies to the minimum necessary to operate and improve the combined search platform, and restricts the use of search data shared between the companies. The agreement maintains the industry-leading privacy practices that each company follows today.

The agreement does not cover each company’s Web properties and products, email, instant messaging, display advertising, or any other aspect of the companies’ businesses. In those areas, the companies will continue to compete vigorously.

As part of my “bit”, as mentioned in one of my previous posts on poverty, I continue to support Bhookh.com in their endeavour to provide one cup of staple food to chronically hungry people. Their means of achieving the cause in itself is very commendable – from their FAQ,

What happens when I click on the “Give Free Food” button? Does it cost me anything?

Two things happen when you click on the button:
1) your click is registered with our computer server and is added to the daily results,
2) it moves you to the ‘Thank You’ page where tiles bearing the names of that day’s site sponsors are displayed. There is absolutely no charge to you; the food is fully paid for by the sponsors.

How does the site work? Who pays for the food?
The site’s sponsors pay for your daily click. The sponsors purchase tiles on the website for a certain amount of time. Bhookh.com then tabulates the number of people who click during that time frame and bill the sponsor for the appropriate amount.

In a nutshell, all you need to do to contribute and do your bit is to go to Bhookh.com and click on the big green button and unknown to you, a hungry stomach is being filled and you are being silently thanked for it. If you’ve read this post till this point, it means that you care, and the least you can do is to click through to Bhookh.com and make a difference in somebody’s life. See you at the other end.

Its been a long time in coming, but I decided enough was enough and that I had to give this blog some attention now. I’d say that this is one of the most difficult things for bloggers to do if they stray off schedule – making that first post that announces their return. It has to be perfect and anything less than that will remain as a draft for eternity until they wake up to face reality as I have now.

I’m sure many of you would have experienced this already, or will experience it in future – so here are a few tips that will help you out of such a situation.

• If its a planned vacation, start ahead by reducing your posting frequency so that your readers don’t feel an abrupt void. If you normally post everyday, reduce your posting to a few days a week during the first few weeks and reduce it further to once a week or so in the following weeks. Your readers are less likely to notice your absence if your posting frequency is low.
• Follow the golden rule of stocking up some posts as drafts so you can publish them during the course of your vacation – the more the better.
• You could also adopt the tried and tested rule and rope in some guest bloggers to post for you if your stock of posts dry up. On one hand, it will keep your blog updated with fresh content and on the other hand, it will give your readers more variety.

Of course, the tips that I mention above are only if you’re going on a planned vacation. If you’re forced to go on an unplanned vacation like I was, you’ll just have to make do by publishing that perfect return post. Here’s how.

• Start by reading up on the blogs you used to frequent before you went on vacation – it helps to give you a general idea of anything new that’s happening in the Blogosphere.
• Read some of your older posts so that you get into that rhythm you’ve been missing for so long – this post was an inspiration that I had after I read a couple of my older posts, so you can be sure it works!
• There is no such thing as a perfect post, so whenever you get an idea, keep at it and you will find that the idea develops into a post almost as if by magic – like this one has.

How it Happened

When the post went live, it was barely noticed – I was quite surprised that it didn’t elicit a single comment even from my “Active Readers”. Admittedly, I was disappointed since the post had taken the longest time and most effort to come up with and to see it looking forlorn made me wonder if the post was not written effectively enough. I was tempted to submit the post to StumbleUpon, note that I’m fairly new to StumbleUpon and have only stumbled a modest number of sites. In keeping with that, my stumble brought in only a trickle of visitors that didn’t help much in increasing the activity.

I almost let it go the next day and was brain-storming for my next post when I noticed a link in my Dashboard from Sphinn. I was pleasantly surprised since trying out Sphinn was something I had been putting on the backburner for quite sometime now. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw not one, but ten Sphinns for the same post I had almost given up on – almost. I needed no further encouragement to sign up and thank those who had Sphunn the story, and especially to Maki, who had submitted it. How he came across the post is beyond me, I do hope he’s reading this post from his RSS reader!

What followed is what Steven describes as a Domino Effect of Traffic. He explains how second tier social media sites like DZone, CSS Globe and Sphinn can be used as stepping stones for succeeding with bigger sites like Digg, Del.icio.us and Stumbleupon. In my case, what happened was, when Maki submitted the post to Sphinn, it brought along a few targeted visitors who also happened to have a power profile on StumbleUpon. Thus, when members from Sphinn found the post useful, they Sphunn it and Stumbled it. This set the domino effect into motion.

When the post hit the front page of Sphinn, it brought in a handful of unique visitors, some of who also Stumbled the post, which eventually resulted in a huge traffic from StumbleUpon – the post is still listed on the StumbleUpon Buzz page.

Digg killed my traffic

After the first day of traffic from StumbleUpon, I decided to experiment with a Digg button to encourage visitors to Digg the post and in turn, increase the traffic further. Without a lot of fan-fare, I stuck a Digg button to the post and sat back, expecting visitors from Digg to kill my server. What happened in reality though, both surprised and intrigued me – the traffic from StumbleUpon started drying up! Visitors from StumbleUpon were no longer thumbing up the post which meant that the rate at which newer visitors would come, was reduced.

I wondered if it was because the StumbleUpon effect wasn’t big enough and it was dying out after a day in a natural process. Since there wasn’t a lot of traffic anymore, I also removed the Digg button since the post had only received a grand total of 4 Diggs. I let it stay this way for a while and was pleasantly surprised to find that the post started attracting traffic again, the very same day! I attributed this to the wide vagaries of the Blogosphere and reckoned that it was just a one-off incident.

A few hours before removing the Digg button, I’d sent a few shouts to my friends on Digg to which Karen and Edgewhere kindly obliged, bringing the total to 6 Diggs. Karen also left a nice comment saying that she’d Dugg the article. On a whim, I put the Digg button back and waited yet again for the “dreaded” Digg effect – in vain. Instead, my StumbleUpon traffic began to dwindle. It didn’t take me long to put one slump in traffic and another slump in traffic together to realize that the Digg button was actually what was killing my traffic.

What could have happened was, when the visitors from StumbleUpon arrived, they saw a prominent Digg button displaying a total of 6 Diggs for the article, which is rather abysmal by any standards, effectively, impressing upon them that this was an article that hadn’t received many votes and may not be of interest to them. Thus, they would just Stumble away. This is purely hypothetical of course, but it seems to best explain the “W” in the graph. So much for the Digg effect. What you could do better, after learning from my experience of losing four days of traffic could be to use a Digg It! button that doesn’t show the Digg count, until it is up to a respectable number. I had to learn the hard way that perception is very much the reality – hopefully you’ve had it easy.

Recipe for Success

1. Do a bit of market research and determine what other people in your niche are looking for. I addressed a concern that a lot of people had – Monika was the first to suggest it to me, I soon realized that there were a few other bloggers who were also using third-party editors and many more who weren’t aware of it, like me. This created the perfect situation for the post.
2. Try to make the list as comprehensive as possible. Most people are busy and would like to see concise descriptions of all available options. Of course, it may not be possible to cover them all, but if you account for the majority, it will certainly help. A list with many items seems to do the best with Social Media – its just too irresistible to see all the resources on one page and will tempt them to bookmark/promote it.
3. Social Media helps a lot in bringing in traffic – its one medium that doesn’t distinguish between an established blog and a newer one. Bring it on your side by displaying appropriate buttons prominently that entice readers to click. Hiding the Digg/Del.icio.us count initially, until it reaches a respectable number seems to help as seen from my experience.
4. Use second tier social media sites effectively. Submit your post to as many of the smaller sites as you can at the same time – Digg, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon all factor in the time that an article becomes popular.
5. Its natural that a percentage of readers would spill over and click through to other posts on your blog – help them find your best articles by listing them right below the post. The articles listed just under my post marked as “You may also like reading” which are effectively from the Related Posts plugin, received the most hits. Unfortunately for me, not all of them were my best ones. I’m sure I would have got a better response had I placed similar articles that are also my best ones. Don’t rely on the plugin to do it for you – hand-pick them yourself for the best results.
6. Don’t kill the effect by displaying ads that are more prominent than the article itself – it reflects badly on the blog and personally, I’d just move on. Although you may be tempted to make a quick buck, hold onto the temptation and you are sure to reap better benefits later.
7. If you think your post is really good and that it could use just the slightest bit of promotion, you could ask your closest friends to help you out. But be careful not to spam them with posts everyday – that just reduces your chances when you’ve really got a best-selling post. It really is a no-brainer, but be sure to return the favour if they need some help too.
8. Remember to thank those who promote your article by sending a mail or adding them as a friend or anything else that you’re comfortable doing – so long as they know you appreciate their gesture.

The Result

The post has already got almost five times the traffic that the whole blog got in the past month. More importantly, the subscriber count has doubled in as many days and I’m still counting. (If you were one of the people who Stumbled/Bookmarked on Del.icio.us/Sphunn the post and are reading this one by RSS, this is to say – thank you!)

• Sarah, who has gained considerable experience in her stint of 3 months in the Blogosphere, shares her tips on how to attract comments on your blog. The mere fact that this post has attracted over 40 comments as of writing this, is testimony to the fact that these are tips you don’t want to miss.
• HackWordpress.com is very good at providing quick hacks to improve your blogging experience if you are a Wordpress user. They’d submitted their article on how to add edit buttons to wordpress themes and in keeping with their reputation, its a well-written article. I had followed the same steps earlier for my own theme and I’m sure its something I don’t want to do without.
• Although this one’s a bit off-topic, it makes for some very good reading and since we all go on vacation at some point of time, I’m sure you could use a few tips on planning your vacation online.

In appreciation to all those who participated, here’s the full list:

Megan Bayliss: How to Respond To Disclosures of Sexual Chile Abuse
Rishi: Tips to Get Best Out of Product Related Ad Networks
Karthik: Upgrading Your Theme to Wordpress 2.3
Aseem Kishore: How to Find Good Ideas and Content for Your Blog
Adam: Adding a Blog to Flickr
Sumesh: How to Add Plugin Function Calls Without Breaking Your Theme
Simonne: How to Get Your Favorite Stumble Upon Pages in Your Feed Reader
Shivaranjan: How to Move Self Hosted Wordpress Blogs Across Webhosts
Jacob Share: Obnoxious Guide to Environmentally Safe Job Hunting
Terry Didcott: How to Install A Self Hosted Wordpress Blog
Doug Woodall: How to Thwart the Barbarian Spyware
Joanie Raisovich: Tips for Getting Through Nano
Kryistina: Environmental Tutorial
David Rogers: How to Solve A Problem
CSS: Simple Photo Editing Using GIMP
Dee: Making Friends with A Neighbor or Co-Worker
Gal: The Best Excerises You Might Not Be Doing (Series)
Jen Lawton: How to Set Up An Online Fundraiser
Fred: How to Set Up the Wordpress Pinging Service

1. BlogDesk, a free stand-alone application, lets you comfortably write and effortlessly publish new entries to your blog. It features an ImageWizard that lets you crop, resize and rotate images. It also has a Technorati Tags Generator that lets you easily define and insert tags instead of retyping them over and over again.
2. Qumana is a free, easy-to-use stand-alone desktop blog editor, enabling you to write, edit and post to one or more blogs. You can use Qumana even when you are offline. Save your blog posts to your hard drive and upload whenever you like. Great for bloggers on the move.
3. TinyMCE Advanced adds 16 plugins to TinyMCE: Advanced hr, Advanced Image, Advanced Link, Context Menu, Emotions (Smilies), Full Screen, IESpell, Layer, Media, Nonbreaking, Print, Search and Replace, Style, Table, Visual Characters and XHTML Extras. Its free and packs quite a punch when it comes to adding extra functions to the editor.
4. WP Super Edit is a free WordPress plugin designed to give some control over the visual / WYSIWYG editor and add some functionality without modifying the WordPress source code.
5. Monsters Editor for WP Super Edit brings the magic of Fckeditor back to TinyMCE. So if you prefer TinyMCE as its concision, but used to Fckeditor’s powerful functions, then MsE is your good choice. Please do note that this is a free addon plugin to WP Super Edit described above.
6. Windows Live Writer is a free desktop application that makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts. It includes a lot of features such as WYSIWYG Authoring, Photo Publishing, Map Publishing and a Writer SDK. The Writer is a great client for Windows Live Spaces but also works with other weblogs including Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress (and many others).
7. FCKEditor is a free, full featured web based WYSIWYG html editor, it’s lightweight and is compatible with most internet browsers which include: IE 5.5+ (Windows), Firefox 1.0+, Mozilla 1.3+ and Netscape 7+. Its strong points are the excellent interface and built-in File and Upload Managers.
8. Mudbomb’s free WYSIWYG Plugin for Wordpress gives you a lot of control over your images, letting you choose the thumbnail size, the compression quality, et al. It also supports emoticons and features dictionary support.
9. BlogJet is a Windows blog client for managing multiple blogs that supports file attachments among other regular features such as an Image Manager, Youtube and Flickr support. There are both free and paid versions of BlogJet available.
10. ScribeFire (previously Performancing for Firefox) is a full-featured free blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog. You can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.
11. RocketPost is a paid WYSIWYG editor that lets you edit and upload multiple posts at the same time. It features built-in photo editing, instant photo albums, automatic linking to related posts, quote tracking, quick linking, drop caps, pull quotes and a running word count.
12. Advanced TinyMCE Editor is a free plugin that turns your existing WordPress editor into a WYSIWYG powerhouse.

If none of the above editors are to your liking, there’s one software that you are sure to be familiar with – Microsoft Word. Yes, unknown to many, Microsoft Word 2007 has native support for publishing posts to blogs running on WordPress, TypePad, Blogger and Live Spaces. Sahas explains how to setup your blog in Microsoft Word 2007 here.

To lighten myself up after the ordeal, I read up on Caroline’s post on “If Making Money Online Was a 9-5 Job” which did a good job to cheer me up. Humour always helps in getting you out of the dumps.

John leverages his 10+ years of experience online to make some very interesting observations on a few successful strategies to make money online and discusses their possible scope today, in case you would want to take some inspiration from them.

If there’s anything that I detract from the wonderful software that Wordpress is, its the fact that sometimes when I write a post, it looks like its “ready-to-go” in the Editor, but once its published, the layout looks completely skewed and not at all the way I’d meant it to look. This is particularly so when you try to publish a step-by-step tutorial such as mine on how to upgrade your theme to be compatible with Wordpress 2.3. Believe it or not, the toughest part in writing the tutorial was to get the alignment right! (I do believe it still needs some work though). Therefore, it was little wonder that I’ve decided to take Monika’s advice and give the Windows Live Writer a try. I’ll write a post about it once I’ve tried it myself.

MyBlogLog is growing in popularity each day with more and more blogs using the widget to display their readers, including myself – Ryan has made us all a very Web 2.0 looking badge that you could use in case you don’t want to display your readers’ faces.

If you’ve ever wanted to have a go at editing files of your Wordpress installation, but were too intimidated to do so for the fear of breaking your blog, Sumesh shows you how to install Wordpress on your computer so you can easily make changes and at the same time, be sure that you won’t ruin your actual blog.

When you’ve edited the files to your liking and made them look exactly like how you’ve wanted them, why don’t you show them off to others by writing great content, without making any spelling errors and submitting them to the Top 11 Digg-like Sites For Bloggers, Designers, And Web Developers?

When the visitors do come, which I’m sure they will, here are 69 Tools to Monitor, Measure, and Track Your Website from Steven.

In Your Home – Conserve Energy

1. Clean or replace air filters on your air conditioning unit at least once a month.
2. If you have central air conditioning, do not close vents in unused rooms.
3. Lower the thermostat on your water heater to 120.
4. Wrap your water heater in an insulated blanket.
5. Turn down or shut off your water heater when you will be away for extended periods.
6. Turn off unneeded lights even when leaving a room for a short time.
7. Set your refrigerator temperature at 36 to 38 and your freezer at 0 to 5 .
8. When using an oven, minimize door opening while it is in use; it reduces oven temperature by 25 to 30 every time you open the door.
9. Clean the lint filter in your dryer after every load so that it uses less energy.
10. Unplug seldom used appliances.
11. Use a microwave when- ever you can instead of a conventional oven or stove.
12. Wash clothes with warm or cold water instead of hot.
13. Reverse your indoor ceiling fans for summer and winter operations as recommended.
14. Turn off lights, computers and other appliances when not in use.
15. Purchase appliances and office equipment with the Energy Star Label; old refridgerators, for example, use up to 50 more electricity than newer models.
16. Only use electric appliances when you need them.
17. Use compact fluorescent light bulbs to save money and energy.
18. Keep your thermostat at 68 in winter and 78 in summer.
19. Keep your thermostat higher in summer and lower in winter when you are away
20. Insulate your home as best as you can.
21. Install weather stripping around all doors and windows.
22. Shut off electrical equipment in the evening when you leave work.
23. Plant trees to shade your home.
24. Shade outside air conditioning units by trees or other means.
25. Replace old windows with energy efficient ones.
26. Use cold water instead of warm or hot water when possible.
27. Connect your outdoor lights to a timer.
28. Buy green electricity – electricity produced by low – or even zero-pollution facilities (NC Greenpower for North Carolina – www.ncgreenpower.org). In your home-reduce toxicity.

In Your Home – Reduce Toxicity

29. Eliminate mercury from your home by purchasing items without mercury, and dispose of items containing mercury at an appropriate drop-off facility when necessary (e.g. old thermometers).
30. Learn about alternatives to household cleaning items that do not use hazardous chemicals.
31. Buy the right amount of paint for the job.
32. Review labels of household cleaners you use. Consider alternatives like baking soda, scouring pads, water or a little more elbow grease.
33. When no good alternatives exist to a toxic item, find the least amount required for an effective, sanitary result.
34. If you have an older home, have paint in your home tested for lead. If you have lead-based paint, cover it with wall paper or other material instead of sanding it or burning it off.
35. Use traps instead of rat and mouse poisons and insect killers.
36. Have your home tested for radon.
37. Use cedar chips or aromatic herbs instead of mothballs.

In Your Yard

38. Avoid using leaf blowers and other dust-producing equipment.
39. Use an electric lawn- mower instead of a gas-powered one.
40. Leave grass clippings on the yard-they decompose and return nutrients to the soil.
41. Use recycled wood chips as mulch to keep weeds down, retain moisture and prevent erosion.
42. Use only the required amount of fertilizer.
43. Minimize pesticide use.
44. Create a wildlife habitat in your yard.
45. Water grass early in the morning.
46. Rent or borrow items like ladders, chain saws, party decorations and others that are seldom used.
47. Take actions that use non hazardous components (e.g., to ward off pests, plant marigolds in a garden instead of using pesticide).
48. Put leaves in a compost heap instead of burning them or throwing them away. Yard debris too large for your compost bin should be taken to a yard-debris recycler.

In Your Office

49. Copy and print on both sides of paper.
50. Reuse items like envelopes, folders and paper clips.
51. Use mailer sheets for interoffice mail instead of an envelope.Use mailer sheets for interoffice mail instead of an envelope.
52. Set up a bulletin board for memos instead of sending a copy to each employee.
53. Use e-mail instead of paper correspondence.
54. Use recycled paper.
55. Use discarded paper for scrap paper.
56. Encourage your school and/or company to print documents with soy-based inks, which are less toxic.
57. Use a ceramic coffee mug instead of a disposable cup.

Ways To Protect Our Air

58. Ask your employer to consider flexible work schedules or telecommuting.
59. Recycle printer cartridges.
60. Shut off electrical equipment in the evening when you leave work.
61. Report smoking vehicles to your local air agency.
62. Don’t use your wood stove or fireplace when air quality is poor.
63. Avoid slow-burning, smoldering fires. They produce the largest amount of pollution.
64. Burn seasoned wood – it burns cleaner than green wood.
65. Use solar power for home and water heating.
66. Use low-VOC or water-based paints, stains, finishes and paint strippers.
67. Purchase radial tires and keep them properly inflated for your vehicle.
68. Paint with brushes or rollers instead of using spray paints to minimize harmful emissions.
69. Ignite charcoal barbecues with an electric probe or other alternative to lighter fluid.
70. If you use a wood stove, use one sold after 1990. They are required to meet federal emissions standards and are more efficient and cleaner burning.
71. Walk or ride your bike instead of driving, whenever possible.
72. Join a carpool or vanpool to get to work.

Ways to Use Less Water

73. Check and fix any water leaks.
74. Install water-saving devices on your faucets and toilets.
75. Don’t wash dishes with the water running continuously.
76. Wash and dry only full loads of laundry and dishes.
77. Follow your community’s water use restrictions or guidelines.
78. Install a low-flow shower head.
79. Replace old toilets with new ones that use a lot less water.
80. Turn off washing machine’s water supply to prevent leaks.

Ways to Protect Our Water

81. Revegetate or mulch disturbed soil as soon as possible.
82. Never dump anything down a storm drain.
83. Have your septic tank pumped and system inspected regularly.
84. Check your car for oil or other leaks, and recycle motor oil.
85. Take your car to a car wash instead of washing it in the driveway.
86. Learn about your watershed.

Create Less Trash

87. Buy items in bulk from loose bins when possible to reduce the packaging wasted.
88. Avoid products with several layers of packaging when only one is sufficient. About 33 of what we throw away is packaging.
89. Buy products that you can reuse.
90. Maintain and repair durable products instead of buying new ones.
91. Check reports for products that are easily repaired and have low breakdown rates.
92. Reuse items like bags and containers when possible.
93. Use cloth napkins instead of paper ones.
94. Use reusable plates and utensils instead of disposable ones.
95. Use reusable containers to store food instead of aluminum foil and cling wrap.
96. Shop with a canvas bag instead of using paper and plastic bags.
97. Buy rechargeable batteries for devices used frequently.
98. Reuse packaging cartons and shipping materials. Old newspapers make great packaging material.
99. Compost your vegetable scraps.
100. Buy used furniture – there is a surplus of it, and it is much cheaper than new furniture.

Miscellaneous

101. Turn off unneeded lights even when leaving a room for a short time
102. Once your cell phone is charged, unplug it from the charger!
103. Set your refrigerator temperature at 36 to 38 and your freezer at 0 to 5
104. When using an oven, minimize door opening while it is in use; it reduces oven temperature by 25 to 30 every time you open the door
105. Unplug seldom used appliances
106. Purchase appliances and office equipment with the Energy Star Label; old refrigerators, for example, use significant more energy than newer models
107. Turn down or shut off your water heater when you will be away for extended periods
108. Use electric appliances only when you need them
109. Use compact fluorescent light bulbs to save money and energy.
110. Shut off electrical equipment in the evening when you leave work
111. Replace old windows with energy efficient ones
112. Use cold water instead of warm or hot water when possible
113. Buy green electricity – electricity produced by low – or even zero-pollution facilities
114. Eliminate mercury from your home by purchasing items without mercury, and dispose of items containing mercury at an appropriate drop-off facility when necessary (e.g. old thermometers)
115. Learn about alternatives to household cleaning items that do not use hazardous chemicals
116. Review labels of household cleaners you use. Consider alternatives like baking soda, scouring pads, water
117. Use traps instead of rat and mouse poisons and insect killers
118. Have your home tested for radon
119. Minimize pesticide use
120. Turn off computers and other appliances when not in use
121. Copy and print on both sides of paper
122. Reuse items like envelopes, folders and paper clips
123. Use e-mail instead of paper correspondence
124. Use recycled paper
125. Use discarded paper for scrap paper
126. Encourage your school and/or company to print documents with soy-based inks, which are less toxic
127. Telecommute!
128. Purchase radial tires and keep them properly inflated for your vehicle
129. Walk or ride your bike instead of driving, whenever possible
130. Join a carpool to get to work
131. Check and fix any water leaks
132. Install water-saving devices on your faucets and toilets
133. Don’t wash dishes with the water running continuously
134. Install a low-flow shower head
135. Replace old toilets with new ones that use a lot less water
136. Avoid products with several layers of packaging when only one is sufficient (about 33 of what we throw away is packaging)
137. Use reusable plates and utensils instead of disposable ones
138. Use reusable containers to store food instead of aluminum foil and wrap
139. Shop with a canvas bag instead of using paper and plastic bags
140. Buy rechargeable batteries for devices used frequently

Don’t miss Tree Hugger’s “How to go green” series for the final 32 tips – they cover a wide-range of topics from gardening to outdoor sports.

The Sources

Its a fairly simple process to update your theme and requires the addition of only a single line of PHP code, Wordpress couldn’t have made it easier although I have to admit I had considerable help from Rich. Here are step-by-step instructions on how to do it:

1. Open /wp-content/themes/YOUR_THEME_ NAME/index.php
2. If you would like to display the tags immediately after the post,

   Add

   <?php the_tags(‘before’, ’separator’, ‘after’); ?>

   After

   <?php the_content(“Continue Reading…”); ?>

3. Replace the words “before”, “separator” and “after” appropriately. For example, my code to display the tags that you see below this post is
   

   <?php the_tags(‘Read similar posts on ’, ’,’, ‘.’); ?>

   Essentially, it means that the tags are preceded by the words “Read similar posts on”, separated by a comma and succeeded by a period.

4. Open /wp-content/themes/YOUR_THEME_ NAME/single.php
5. Repeat steps 2 and 3, and relax.

Adding a tag cloud is all the more simpler if your theme is widgetized, a widget aptly called Tag Cloud will be waiting for you in your ACP. Just add it like you normally would add a widget and you are good to go.

Do note that you need to have added tags for them to be displayed, you can test it by making a new post or editing an existing post and adding tags to them. Over time though, managing your tags could get rather cumbersome, that’s why Christine (of Ultimate Tag Warrior fame) has come up with a new plugin called the Tag Managing Thing. Quoting her, this plugin will allow you to

• Change the name and slug of the term
• Delete a term
• Split a term into multiple terms
• Merge other terms into the selected term
• Change a term to belong in a different taxonomy

That pretty much covers everything I’ll want to do with tags, for now at least.

Now comes the big question – should you use them at all? It depends.

On the plus side, tags are a boon to increase the number of pages in your blog. Since each tag gets its own page, if you have 100 posts in your blog and you were to tag each of that post with a different tag, you’d end up generating 100 new pages. Realistically though, the 100 posts may be tagged by, say 15-20 tags. Still, they would be generating as many pages. And search engines love more pages – they simply can’t have enough of them. So you will get indexed more, which in turn will give you more of a search engine presence, which eventually means more readers. Now, we all want readers, don’t we?

Then why did I say that using tags may not be ideal? Simply because the use of it depends on two things,

1. whether your theme displays excerpts rather than the entire post on Category and Archive pages.
2. if it doesn’t, it depends on whether you use the All-in-One-SEO-Pack to set the meta tags of the Category, Archive and Tag pages to “noindex, follow”

This will help you avoid the Duplicate Content Penalty which will otherwise affect you since your Category/ Archive/ Tag pages would just be a copy of your individual post page. Without adding tags, you would be having 6 copies of the same post, with the tagging feature, search engines will probably index countless copies of the same content – which is why using either step 1 or 2 is vital. Personally, I follow step 1 and set my Category/ Archive/ Tag pages to display only the post excerpts for the simple fact that I stated above – search engines love more pages. If you set them to “noindex, follow”, those pages will not be indexed and only the links on the pages will be followed, thus depriving you of an additional page – and tags introduce many more pages than Category and Archive pages ever will, which is why you would want those pages to count.

If you have any conflicting opinions, feel free to let me know about them in the comments.