The Techbay

Internet Retailers Might Be Facing Their Hardest Christmas

2012-12-24T23:11:00.001+05:30

A record number of Americans took to the Web to order holiday gifts after retailers flooded their inboxes with offers of extra discounts, free shipping and easy returns. But a storm bringing heavy winds and snow to much of the Midwest on Thursday -the heaviest shipping day of the year -could mean that some packages might not make it under the tree in time for Christmas.

That's a headache for retailers, shippers and customers alike who already were experiencing problems because of the surge in shipping this year.

So far, no major disruptions have been reported. Wal-Mart, the No. 2 online retailer behind Amazon.com, said no orders have been delayed. GSI Commerce, which handles online shipping for 70 retailers including Aeropostale and Godiva, said they are monitoring the situation hour-by-hour and so far, deliveries are being made on time. By the time the storm hits the Northeast on Friday, it should be a wintry mix of rain and snow — nothing bad enough to delay deliveries.

Still, the storm's timing couldn't be worse for the world's largest package delivery company, UPS. Thursday is the Atlanta-based company's busiest day of the year. Before the storm shut down service in some areas, it expected to move 28 million packages on Thursday, nearly double an average day.

Both UPS and smaller rival FedEx Corp., which is based in Memphis, Tenn., have extensive contingency plans for blizzards and other inclement weather, including scores of meteorologists on staff to redirect planes and trucks and planes at the ready to replace others that can't take off. The storm led UPS to halt all pickups and deliveries in some parts of Iowa and Nebraska. It had to re-route packages destined for the Des Moines airport, from which many shipments are then moved by truck to their final destinations across the Plains states. Instead, it's moving those shipments out of its hub in Louisville, Ky., until the skies and roads clear, and expects most of the delays to be worked out this weekend.

Even before the storm hit, shipping delays were irking some. Ronni Kenoian, a 24-year-old consumer marketing manager, ordered a $150 bracelet set for her mother-in-law on Dec. 4 at Alex and Ani, a jewelry company based in Cranston, R.I. She expected it to arrive within seven to 10 business days. Her credit card was charged but Kenoian said she received no tracking number for the package. With no sign of the bracelet after a week, she phoned and emailed the company but her messages went unanswered. She tried to send a post on social media website Twitter and got a response to send her order number to the company, which she did. Still, nothing.

Finally, on Monday evening, she got word that her package would arrive Tuesday, two weeks after placing her order. She also received a coupon for 15 percent off her next online purchase. But the damage had been done.

"On a scale of 1 to 10 of how frustrated I am, I'm like a 12," she said. "I will never, ever order from their website again."

Alex and Ani CEO Giovanni Feroce said the delay is a result of the growing company trying to satisfy a major surge in demand: orders more than tripled this year to $3.3 million from $672,000 last year. Alex and Ani had boosted promotions too, offering free shipping and 10 to 15 percent off on four key days throughout the season, compared with just one day, Cyber Monday, last year.

"Although it is statistically impossible to get close to 50,000 orders perfect since Cyber Monday, we will always do our best to do just that," Feroce said in an interview.

Almost all retailers offered more free shipping this year. Nine out of 10 retailers planned to offer free holiday shipping, according to Shop.org, which is part of trade group The National Retail Federation.

And free shipping wasn't just an incentive for early shoppers. More than 46 percent of the major online retailers emailed their subscribers on Monday Dec. 17, a.k.a. free shipping day, with offers to ship gifts free with no minimum purchase. Fewer than 10 percent made that offer last year, according to marketing software company Responsys.

That spurred shoppers to spend more — online shopping is expected to have risen 17 percent this holiday season to a record $43.4 billion, according to comScore. But with that increase came logistical problems, and not just at small retailers. Karla Neville, 31, who works in national event marketing in New York, was enticed by Gap's offer of 30 percent off everything. She ordered a sweater, belt and tie for her husband from Banana Republic's website, which is owned by Gap Inc.
Gap separated the order into two and sent the sweater and tie by FedEx and the belt by UPS. Neville never received the belt, discovering online that the UPS package had been returned to Gap for reasons unknown. She doesn't want the belt anymore, just a refund.

"I no longer feel confident that if they re-ship it I will get it in time," she said.

Gap spokeswoman Edie Kissko said that the company sometimes sends items separately depending upon what part of the country the order is shipped from and its destination, a common retail practice known as "split shipping." Gap did not comment on the specific incident.

When shipping goes wrong, all is not lost. Good customer service can save a bad experience.

Charles Hansen III, 49, a consultant in Falls Church, Va., tried to buy a salad spinner from a secondary seller on Amazon's Marketplace, but it came crushed in the mail. He dreaded contacting the seller through the online Web form required, but the seller ended up getting right back in touch with him and sent him a new salad spinner within a few days. He didn't even have to send back the crushed one.

"I was apprehensive. I thought 'Oh, great,' especially when I got to the Amazon website and had to go through this cumbersome process," Hansen said. "But I was pleasantly surprised. If it had wound up being a bad experience I could see doing a lot less online next year — but it turned out very well."

Source: Samantha Bomkamp | Huffington Post

Hot and Trending 10 Paid Apps from the iTunes Store

2012-12-15T19:57:00.000+05:30

Check out the 'Hot and Trending' apps of the world from iTunes Store for your i-devices.

1. Angry Birds Star Wars

Category: Games | $0.99 BuyNow on iTunes →

2. 1Password

Category: Productivity | $7.99 BuyNow on iTunes →

3. WhatsApp

Category: Social Networking | $0.99 BuyNow on iTunes →

4. Block Ops

Category: Games | $0.99 BuyNow on iTunes →

5. Toca Hair Salon 2

Category: Education | $0.99 BuyNow on iTunes →

6. iPNP 2012

Category: Entertainment | $2.99 BuyNow on iTunes →

7. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

Category: Games | $4.99 BuyNow on iTunes →

8. Bloons TD 5

Category: Games | $0.99 BuyNow on iTunes →

9. Ski Safari

Category: Games | $0.99 BuyNow on iTunes →

10. Bad Piggies

Category: Games | $0.99 BuyNow on iTunes →

We will keep updating this table of Hot & Trending iTunes paid apps. So Bookmark this page or Subscribe to our feeds.

Article Submission: Intro & 15 High Traffic Directories

2012-12-15T14:21:00.001+05:30

Introduction to Article Submission

An article submission web site or directory contains a large collection of articles written on a variety of topics. Many directories pay the author for writing articles.

Similar to submitting guest post, these sites review your articles before publishing to the public. This helps to eliminate low quality submissions, including duplicate articles, spam and rewriting existing articles.

Are you wondering how they will help your business?

Hundreds of articles are submitted daily to various article directories. Article submission is one of the successful and well known method of link building, similar to guest blogging.

Benefits of Article Submission

✔ Increase Popularity & Improve Organic Search Results: The Articles submitted to directories contains an Article Resource Box at the end which is used to tell the readers about you and your business. And if the article becomes popular, thousands of links point towards your website and think what happens, these links will increment your position in the search results.

These incoming links are precious in the eyes of Search Engines and increase your site's page rank

✔ Establishing Expertise: Publishing good, clear and splendid articles, increases your reputation in the web world, and thereby people will trust you and your business. This will encourage more clicks to your site resulting in long term traffic.

✔ Massive Exposure: Well written articles trigger readers’ interests. Get targeted traffic to your websites as your high-quality articles are easily accessible to a large number of publishers and webmasters for reprint on their websites. Reaching more people will improve traffic rate to your site.

How to write an Effective Article

Considering the popularity and high page rank of the directories, if the article is poorly crafted it will not attract visitors. The Article you write shall be crafted with a foresight, as creating an original, clear, and interesting article will help boost your website traffic as the sole aim is attracting visitors to your website. In this information age you can find large amount of information within a single click and you only have a very brief period of time to hold the visitor’s attention else they will move to the next source. Craft your articles with proper sections (an article is divided into following sections):

Title
Keywords
Summary
Body
Resource Box

Guidelines

Have a good knowledge on the topic you are writing about
Researching before writing an article helps to create quality and effective content
A Good Article begins with a Good Title
Write articles in 400 to 800 words
Create article summary which should be of 2 to 5 sentences, which tells your reader the benefits of reading the article
Pay attention to Grammar
Write in such a way that it will captivate readers attention throughout the article
Once you finish your article, proof read at least once
Write a brief Biography (Resource Box) about you and your business where goes the link to your site

List of 15 High Page Rank, High Traffic Article Directories

1. Article Alley
2.   isnare Articles
3. Articlesbase
4.   Ezine Articles
5. Ignite Point
6. Gather
7.   Any Articles
8.   Article Blast!
9.   biznopedia
10. Article biz
11. Go Articles
12. Wikihow
13. ArticleCity
14. Sooper Articles
15. Squidoo

Well, I hope you find these guidelines informative. Wishing you every success ☺
Thanks for reading this article.

Kim Dotcom Posts Screenshots Of New Mega Website

2012-12-09T12:51:00.000+05:30

Kim Dotcom, founder of Megaupload, recently tweeted about his new Mega website which is set to be relaunched on 19 January 2013, the one year anniversary of police raid on his mansion. The Mega Service will be hosted at the New Zealand based domain Mega.co.nz.

The Mega Service currently features an e-mail sign-up, which keeps the members updated with newsletters and the launch of the Mega service. Every User will be given their Cloud Drive on 19 January for downloading and uploading files.

Mega Screenshot 1: Encryption Key Generator. twitter.com/KimDotcom/stat…
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) December 7, 2012

The first screenshot shows that Mega will comprise of 2048-bit RSA encryption keys

The second screenshot shows a Sign-up page asking you to enter Name, E-mail address and a password to register for the service.

The third screenshot included the best part in the new service by Dotcom- which included Sorted Folders feature, Trash Bin, Inbox and a Contacts Menu in the left sidebar. So the new Inbox and Contacts suggest that you will be able to contact other users and keep updated with what others are doing.

The File transfers session shows the file name, size, transfer type, status with a progress bar and the percentage, speed, elapsed time and the remaining time.

Kim is very enthusiastic and shows his enthusiasm for the new service on twitter

Get ready for Mega Love :-)
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) December 7, 2012

Let's see what Kim has for us and how he changes the world with his upcoming Mega service.

Featured Image Source: Fairfax Media| Getty Images

Google+ Introduces Communities - A Powerful Discussion Forum

2012-12-08T21:51:00.000+05:30

You might have noticed an additional tab 'Communities' in the Google+ left sidebar. The Google+ introduced this after it hit the milestone of 235 million active users, a few 100k behind its rival Facebook. The Communities is basically a trump card of Google against Facebook Groups.

The new added feature allows users to create public or private communities on certain interests, topics, hobbies or organization. In simple words, the Google+ communities is just discussion forums within the Google+ networks.

The new feature has the capability to share with your community with any +1 button across the web.

Vic Gundotra- Senior Vice President, Engineering for Google said that "Today Google+ is the fastest growing network thingy ever. More than 500 million people have upgraded, 235 million are active across Google and 135 million are active in just the stream."

If you are interested in the Google+ communities and would like to create a community of your own visit https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities and click 'Create a Community' and then follow the Instructions.
You can also discover and join different communities by clicking the 'Join Community' Button at the top right of the respective Community page.

Read how Google+ Communities make Google+ for everyone at Why is Google+ Communities so great? by Mike. Here he mentions how he finds Google+ communities is better than you think.

What you think about the new Google+ communities, share your comments below.

5 Firefox Shopping Add-Ons To Save Money Online

2012-12-03T15:31:00.000+05:30

People these days are becoming more careful when they shop online. In this holiday season you could use these 5 Firefox Add-Ons to save money to buy more gifts. These top add-ons will help you find the best deals for your shopping in the web.

1. eBay Sidebar

eBay Sidebar is an official add-on created by eBay Inc.With this sidebar add-on you will be notified of any eBay activity helping you to top the bids and get the best deals. You can always check your eBay progress by signing up.
Add-On Homepage | Add to Extensions

2. Boo.ly Shopping

This is a simple add-on that transforms your search engines into a dynamic shopping tool. Boo.ly helps you save money and time online. Booly will add price comparison, money saving deals, and up to date coupon codes to your search results, product pages and online stores.
Add-On Homepage | Add to Extensions

3. Window Shopper

WindowShopper is a add-on that provides visuals of the products, so that you get a better idea of the product you are buying. You can also click on the picture of any product featured in any website to also to compare prices, find deals, and to get coupons.
Add-On Homepage | Add to Extensions

4. PriceBlink

PriceBlink is an amazing add-on which helps to find the lowest prices for any products and will also find coupons or free shopping codes from over 4,000 U.S Merchants. The PriceBlink has a special feature of showing the shipping charges along with price comparison results. A major disadvantage is that the stores provided are not available to some places.
Add-On Homepage | Add to Extensions

5. Shopping Assistant

Think that you found the best product at a best price. Would you like to know if you are spending more? Shopping Assistant can help you if that's the case. When you search for a product in a retailer's website the Shopping Assistant comes for your assistance. It shows you similar products from popular shopping websites such as Amazon and eBay. It includes price history for each product sold on Amazon, which will help you know if you're spending more currency.
Add-On Homepage | Add to Extensions

Wow! Now that makes the holiday shopping easy and savings for you. Happy Holidays and Happy Shopping.

Featured Image Source: Tim Boyle| Getty Images

2012's 12 Most Popular YouTube Videos

2012-11-17T16:51:00.000+05:30

YouTube has defined a new era of Online videos and this year, it was like we have experienced an all new YouTube. YouTube was so popular among the people that, a single video was watched 5 times per day. Hence it is the #3^rdmost popular website in the world after Facebook and Google.

This year's trademark hits from YouTube includes Psy's "Gangnam Style", Justin Bieber's "Baby", LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem".

READ MORE : Gangnam Style Mashup's turn People Crazy

YouTube holds the title when it comes to online videos. Thus it can be understood that most popular videos in YouTube are the most popular videos. The more the views, the more the popular the video. You can find the total views of the video just below the video.

We also love Viral Videos. Let us know what was your favorite YouTube Video of 2012?
Here is the list of the Most Popular and Watched videos of 2012.
Click on the Snapshot to view the Original YouTube video.

Which one was your favorite?

The views is as on 16 November 2012
Featured image Credit: Rachael Towne

8 Best Windows 8 Business Apps to Increase Productivity

2012-11-16T21:10:00.002+05:30

Windows 8 has begun to provide its users with productive apps transforming these Window s devices into productive devices. At the very least, downloading these business apps will help you when it comes to doing business. Have a look at these sweet as sugar Windows 8 Business Apps.

1. Skype
The class leading communications service provides everything from instant messaging to video chats to voice calls. Skype can also be docked into the side of the screen allowing you to attend calls while getting things done in your main window.

2. Box
When it comes to business-class cloud storage people turn to Box than Microsoft SkyDrive. Box’s Business and Enterprise option include features like 99.9% uptime guarantee, document collaboration, full text search, Salesforce.com integration and restorable version histories.

3. Evernote
Evernote is an optical-character recognition software engine. It’s a powerful service that keeps your notes, to-do lists, pictures and audio, video organized and synced across every major devices- phone, tablets and PC’s.

4. Microsoft Map
Map is an important app, everyone would like to have a map application. Windows 8 Microsoft App provides information such as directions, density of traffic, lists of nearby malls and restaurants.

5. YouSendIt
Sending documents off to colleagues and customers are made easy by YouSendIt. YouSendIt allows you to send files that are much larger than an average attachment, as most email servers cap at 25MB in size. YouSendIt allows you to upload files of up to 2GB to a cloud storage and then share a link to that file with other people. But free subscribers are limited to 2GB storage and get capped at 50MB file transfers.

6. Invoice 360
Invoice 360 is a free software which provides handful of customizable invoice templates that can be used to create a professional pricing bill in seconds. Invoice 360 provides option to print, generate PDFs, share soft copy via Win 8 Share Charm.

7. TeamViewer Touch
TeamViewer app is a great business app for business and enterprise. Tons of companies uses TeamViewer software which includes business-friendly encryption and authentication tools. The Premium version of the app is required for remote meeting and collaboration tools.

8. Microsoft Lync
Microsoft Lync, Citrix Receiver and Rackspace Cloud have the option to provide up to date information about your colleagues and customers, access your documents and files, check out your applications or check in the status of company servers.

Do you use any other business app in your Windows 8 OS or do you use any of these, let us know that in the comments.

Pope Benedict To Get His Own Twitter Account [Report]

2012-11-11T17:57:00.002+05:30

According to a Conservative American News Media report, the Pope will be sharing his opinions and church news through his personal twitter account.

Pope Benedict XVI to get his own personal Twitter account |
Source : Wikipedia.org

The tweets will be pointing to his weekly teachings (catechesis) and whatever he will be doing on that day.

In June 28, Pope Benedict XVI launched Vatican's news portal, tweeting from Vatican's English language account, @news_va_en. "Dear friends, I just launched News.va Praised be our Lord Jesus Christ! With my prayers and blessings, Benedictus XVI." the Pope said through an iPad device.
Thousands of people re-tweeted Pope's announcement and it also increased his followers count.

The Vatican said that new Twitter account would belong to Pope Benedict XVI but as he is not using a computer the tweeting will be mostly done by someone else.

The Associated Press reported that a papal spokesman, Rev. Federico Lombardi said that the details about Pope's handle would be released when the Vatican officially launched the account.

Internet Study Tools: A Student’s Best Friend

2012-11-11T16:17:00.000+05:30

In this time and age, students would rather browse over various websites to look for study sources. Going to the library or joining a study group had become a thing of the past. Different web tools replace the tasks that used to be filled by thick encyclopedias or volumes of study tapes. Today, the Internet becomes every student’s most trusted friend.

Now let us narrow down the different student activities and match the top Internet tools for it. These are just some of the student-friendly tools that are mostly for free and will not put a dent in the usually tight student budget.

For Keeping A To-Do List
We all know that students live a very hectic life. A normal day could be filled with classes, org meetings, extra curricular activities and homework completions. They can easily get their schedules all mixed up without any type of schedule organization. That is what web tools like Evernote or Todoist are for. These tools can help students sync their notes between their computers, the web and even their mobile phones in just a snap. With their help, no schedule or activity will be missed.

For Bookmarking Important Study Sources

Unless students have photographic memories, they need a tool to help them keep tabs on every informative websites that they manage to stumble upon. Good thing there are available tools like Delicious and Deskhot to keep these important sites on hand whenever needed.

For Easy File Sharing
Group projects require all student members to spend time with each other. Yet not everyone have the all the luxury of time. So instead of huddling together to share information, students can get the help of only tools like Google Drive and Wikia to make things easier. Simply add all the members of the group in one page, upload the file, and then share. It's very simple, right?

For source citing
When writing dissertation or any other type of academic paper that uses a quoted source, it is very important to put a proper citation to avoid being accused of plagiarism. Yet there are students who find this task a bit time-consuming. That is why study tools like EasyBib and CiteThisForMe are born. It makes the very daunting task a whole lot easier.

There are other helpful Internet tools available online. Some are for free, while some can cost more than the others. Feel free to add more in this list by writing in the comment box below.

ABOUT Aobheann :
Aobheann Reeves is member of The Kelly Writer’s House of the University of Pennsylvania. She is majoring in Creative Writing, while working part-time as a freelance writer. She enjoys spending her free time with her friends in weekend trips to the country or joining campus fun runs.

Learn More About Google New Compose Mail Pop Up Window

2012-11-09T17:59:00.000+05:30

Google is recently testing their new Compose mail pop up window in Gmail. The pop up Compose window is just like the pop up chat box, so you are able to browse other e-mails. The pop up window opens over your inbox without taking to new page. You are able to check other e-mails for referencing and for any other specific information.

New Compose Pop up window

With the new featured compose box you can also have multiple compose windows opened at the same time just like the chat box. It also allows better multitasking.

I personally love this new compose mail feature as I am a person who uses the middle mouse button to open links in a new tab and multitasking is so much important to me.

The new 'Compose' pop up dialog box has all the necessary features that are required for sending an e-mail.

SEND messages to more than one e-mail address and the ability to add Cc and Bcc recipients
Format text - font size, bold, underline and bullets
Add Attachments
Embed links and Images
Save drafts
Discard drafts
Spell Checker
Swicth to plain text option
If you have multiple Gmail accounts linked, you can choose e-mail address to send the e-mail from.

As you can see from the above image, the new feature also changes how you reply or forward e-mails. You have to click on the recipients field to modify who you are replying to and now you have to click on the down arrow if you want to reply, reply to all, forward or to modify subject.

The new feature allows to resize the compose window.

The three buttons at the top right corner of the compose window are

Minimize button

Pop-out button : Opens the composer in a new browser window.

Close button

You can give a try to the new Gmail Composer loging into your Gmail account and then clicking the 'Compose' button in the left sidebar. Then you will be asked if you want to use the new feature or not. Click 'Try it Now' to activate the new compose feature and 'Not Now' does not activate it presently, and you can activate it later.

Disabling the New Compose Pop up window

Now most importantly, how to disable the new Compose e-mail feature and revert back to your old compose. Click the bottom right arrow mark in the new pop-up window and select Switch back to old compose. Your done.

Shoot your comments below about the New Gmail e-mail Composer

Obama's Celebration Photos Becomes Facebook's Most Liked Photo In History

2012-11-08T16:14:00.003+05:30

Barack Obama after winning the Presidential election second time, Obama shared a photo in Facebook which suddenly became most liked photo in Facebook. The picture shows the president Barack Obama embracing his wife Michelle Obama with caption, 'Four more years'.

Obama's most liked Facebook Photo

With around 4 million likes this Barack Obama photo is the most liked Facebook photo of all time. The same photo is also trending in the microblogging network Twitter and became the most retweeted tweet in the Twitter history.

This popular Obama photo has around 4 million likes, 5.4 million shares and 1.9 million comments. This photo has been retweeted 774,315 times as on Thursday morning.

Barack Obama's 'Four More Years' Is The Most Retweeted Tweet In Twitter History

2012-11-08T12:30:00.001+05:30

Four More Years |Source: Barack Obama

President Barack Obama after winning the U.S Presidential election announced his win on Twitter at 11: 14 p.m ET Tuesday :

This happened because of you. Thank you.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2012

Obama then posted a tweet written with a signature -bo.

We're all in this together. That's how we campaigned, and that's who we are. Thank you. -bo
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2012

At 11: 16 ET p.m ET he followed his previous tweet which simply says 'Four more years' with a photo of Obama and Michelle embracing.

Four more years. twitter.com/BarackObama/st…
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2012

At the very next moment, the tweet gained more than 500,000 retweets and had been retweeted 774,315 times on Thursday morning. This photo tweet became the single most-retweeted message in the history of Twitter - the Twitter Government announced in their tweet.This photo is also trending in Facebook social network.

Minutes after winning re-election for a second term, @barackobama has his most retweeted tweet ever. twitter.com/BarackObama/st…
— Twitter Government (@gov) November 7, 2012

Also the Election Day (#election2012), with 33 million tweets became the most tweeted about event in the U.S political history. Twitter usually sees a hop in the traffic during big events, such as Christmas Eve or the New Years Eve but the Election Day saw a sustained jump in the Twitter's traffic -says report.

Obama added another tweet saying 'Thank you' accompanied by a Instagram photo on Thursday morning to thank his fans.

Thank you. instagr.am/p/RvkYbfmueB/
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2012

The Twitter microblogging network has shared some Election Day stats in their blog.

Obama's tweet broke the popularity record set by Justin Bieber (@justinbieber) in September, whose tribute to a fan who died of brain cancer gained 223,479 retweets.

Meanwhile Mitt Romney has increased his social media presence compared to John McCain (Republican Presidential candidate, 2008) and Barack Obama has retained his social media presence.

Cool Windows 7 Transparent Themes Free Download

2012-11-05T10:18:00.001+05:30

Kudos! Today I have come up with 5 cool Windows 7 Themes that are awesomely transparent. You could feel the right edge of transparency with the real feel of Windows 7.

Shine 2.0 Theme for Windows 7

Shine 2.0 Theme Desktop

Shine 2 Theme | Source : zainadeel, DeviantArt

Download : Shine 2.0 (RAR file)

Clear White Theme

Clear White Theme | Source : shule

Download: Clear White Theme (RAR file)

Ezlo Port to Windows 7 Theme

Ezlo port to W7 | Source : FediaFedia

Download: Ezlo (ZIP file)

Windows 7 Glass Energy Blue

W7 Glass Energy Blue | Source : kusagami

Download: W7 GEB (RAR file)

Lamborghini Theme

Lamborghini Theme | Source : iDR3AM

Download: Lamborghini Theme (ZIP file)

Wishfull Dream Final

Wishfull Dream Final Theme | Source : se7ensinner

Download: Wishfull Dream Final (RAR file)

Lucid Theme for Windows 7

Lucid Theme | Source : nopd11

Download: Lucid Theme for Win7 (RAR file)

Your Turn
Now it's your turn if you find any important, to be known transparent windows 7 Themes let us know in the comments below.

10 Cool Google Tricks To Try When You're Bored

2012-11-03T12:53:00.000+05:30

Are you Bored, eh?

Today I have got the cure for you. Open a New Tab in your web browser.

Open Google to start Googlin'

1/ Now, Google 'the loneliest number'

2/ Google 'do a barrel roll'

3/ Google 'zerg rush'

Zerg Rush

4/ Google 'tilt'

5/ Google 'anagram' and take a look at the 'Did You Mean' below the query

6/ Type 'Shift + F12' in any Google Docs spreadsheet

7/ Guitar games : Play the Guitar

8/ Type 'Googleplex headquarters in Mountain View, California' into Google Street view map or just click on this link.

9/ Moon 3D : Visit the Moon

10/ You could practice becoming the world's fastest clapper.

Still bored....? you could check out these videos World's Fastest Reader, The Smartest Person.

Niche Blogging for Mommy Bloggers

2012-10-25T18:05:00.000+05:30

The Mommy Bloggers or generally Female Bloggers' has been around for more than several years now. These are the most important people in the world. The mom blogging community comprises of a wide range of blog topics. Mommy Bloggers are those with at least one child in their household and has contributed to a blog or turn to a blogs for advice. 14% of all American mommies are Mommy Bloggers. In a study conducted by Scarborough Research, Out of 3,900,000 mom bloggers in United States 500 mommy bloggers are considered influential among other mothers.

These mommy bloggers are influencing every social media from Twitter to Facebook to Pinterest to Quora. Mom bloggers also turn to each other for advices, they network, they talk and they ally, which is attractive to advertisers and brands.

Blog Topics for Mom Bloggers
The first task to face by any would be to choose a Niche which she is going to pursue. It’s difficult to think of all possible ways you can go and to consider a strong niche for your blog. It’s your courage to choose your niche that you think will work and will be long lasting. There is lot of advice out there in the web on how to choose the blog niche – your choice of topic that you are going to blog. This list of over 300 topics can help you choose the right niche for you.

Choose a niche that you think will work and will be long lasting

You do not want to limit your topic to just one, most of the bloggers consider few related topics to blog.

Academics & Education: Adult Education, campus life, classroom resources, colleges and universities, curriculums, education and politics, elementary education, home schooling, homework help, libraries, literature, research and reference, vocational education, special education

Animals: Animal rights, animal videos and photos, breeding, pets, species, research & studies

Arts & Entertainment: Acting, anime and comics, architectures, artists, art culture, books, creative writing, dance, gaming, kids' entertainment, movies, photography, poetry, reviews, television, trends, visual arts

Business: Advertising industry, careers and jobs, CEOs, coaching, copywriting, design, entrepreneurship, home business, human resources, marketing, outsourcing, business-product reviews, project management, public relations, reference, research, unemployment, sales, small business, training

Communications/Personality: Advices, debate, humor, multimedia, photo blog, podcasting, video blogging

Crafts: Crochet, beading, home decorating, ethnic crafts, fabric arts, glass arts, jewelry making, kids' crafts, knitting, leather work, mosaic, craft patterns and downloads, paper crafts, pottery, quilting, scrapbooking, needlework, sewing, soap making, spinning, stamping, weaving, woodworking

Computers: Online safety, hardware and software, privacy, security, tutorials

Environment: Activism, eco products, environmental education, global warming, green living, industry, nature, natural baby resources

Events: Conferences, event planning, local, party planning, recreational events, seminars, web events, weddings

Food & Drink: Alcoholic beverages, baking, cake decorating, cookbook reviews, dining, entertaining, food critic, healthy eating, international food, organic cooking, recipes

Health & Well being: Addictions and recovery, allergies, alternative health, breastfeeding, dieting, disabilities, diseases, fitness, gluten-free living, healing, infertility, life coaching, medicine, meditation, men's health, mental health, personal care, pregnancy, psychiatry, psychology, public health, stress, suicide prevention, women's health

Home & Garden: Antiques, construction, entertaining, gardening, holidays, home decor, home repair, homemaking, landscaping, kitchen and bath, organizing

Industries: Advertising, agricultural, architecture, automotive, broadcasting/media, finance, government, health care, industrial, investing, law and legal, packaging, property management, publishing, real estate, textiles

Internet: Blogging, Internet marketing, programming, social networking and social media, search engine optimization, web design, web development

Music: Artists/bands, awards, composition, genres, history, instruments, lessons, lyrics, notation/chords/tabs, regional, reviews, news/gossip

Personal: Advice column, children/teens, family, journal, life transitions, parenting, personal development, relationships

Politics/Government: Civil rights, commentary, international, legislation, lobbying, local politics, military, peace, presidential studies, terrorism

Pop culture: Beauty, celebrity, entertainment, fashion, gossip, popular brands and products, television shows, trends

Religion/Philosophy: Denominations, ethics, history, metaphysics, schools of thought, spirituality

Science: Anatomy, anthropology, archaeology, astronomy, biology, geology, oceanography, physics, research, zoology

Shopping: Books, cameras, clothing, coupons and discounts, children's products, fashion, fine living, gadgets/tech, gifts, home decor, office, reviews

Society/Culture: Adoption, charity, civilization, community development, controversy, criminal justice, death, ethnic issues, family issues, feminism, genealogy, LGBT, men, mythology, rural living, seniors, social security, suburban living, violence, volunteering, urban living

Sports/Recreation: Competitions, gaming, hobbies, individual sports, leisure, martial arts, memorabilia, motorcycles, Olympics, outdoor recreation, physical education, sports, racing, sporting activities, sporting events, sporting goods, sports role models, team sports

Technology: Cameras, companies, computers and tablets, electronics/gadgets, engineering, innovations, mobile, networking, news, tech companies, technology entrepreneurs and thought leaders, tools

Travel/Places: Destinations, budget travel, camping/RV living, family travel, international, local guides, travel photography, vacation planning

Features of niche blogging
Cost
The major cause for the popularity of niche blogging is the cost. Bloggers can quickly and easily create a blog for free. Like this marketer can determine the growth and development of the selected niche before making a large investment of time and money.

Adaptability
Trends often change over time and it’s important for marketers to stay up-to-date on current trends. Adaptability also refers to the ability to update the information on the niche blog at will. A great feature of blogs is the ability to add new articles on a daily, or more frequent, basis.

Also each post is alike to a stand alone webpage allowing the blogger to create articles independent of each other.

Generating traffic
Visitors are a major concern for a website to be profitable. Normal websites require search engine optimization (SEO) or paid advertisement in order to gain visitors. Blog services like Blogger, on the other hand, incorporate Really Simple Syndication (RSS). The niche blogger can inform various online directories of the blog's existence in turn they provide links to the blog. Like this the directories act as a marketing tool for the niche blogger. Link exchange systems such as Addiply.com also allow bloggers to give and receive advertising clicks or views by the penny's-worth, without the imposed minimums of AdSense. Simpler still is the use of a Blogroll of similar blogs with some reciprocation.

Knowledge
You should have considerable knowledge of the topic you have selected as your niche. In-depth knowledge and quick research skill is an important feature you should need for writing. The best way to get some idea about your niche is to spend more hours at the beginning months which will also boost your blog's traffic. Know and connect with people who are blogging in the same niche/topic.

Google to launch New Devices at Android Event "The Playground is Open"

2012-10-22T11:31:00.001+05:30

Not to be upstaged by Microsoft's Windows 8 launch on the 26th and Apple's probably-the-iPad-mini event on the 23rd, Google has just sent out invitations for an Android-related announcement on Monday, October 29 at 10:00am ET. The invitation reads, simply, "The playground is open."

Although the invitation didn’t detail what might occur, the headline — “The playground is open” — suggests it will have to do with Google Play, the company’s newly-rebranded Andriod Market.

Google will unveil several new devices and a software update at its scheduled October 29 press event. The company will be talking about new Nexus phones, perhaps including the rumored model from LG. The timing of the announcement backs up this theory—new Nexus phones are typically announced at the end of the year. It's also possible that we'll get some official details on Android 4.2, follow-up to Jelly Bean.

How Amazon Saves a Ton of Money

2012-10-17T01:00:00.000+05:30

With $48.1 billion in net sales last year, Amazon is certainly the leading Internet retailer. But how does the company fare in other areas, such as employee satisfaction and corporate social responsibility?

Not so well, according to an infographic from MBAOnline, a website that curates business information from the top minds in the blogosphere.

In fact, Amazon seems to put saving money ahead of many other priorities. For example, on a 102-degree day in June 2011, 15 workers in an Amazon warehouse collapsed from the lack of air conditioning, six of whom needed to be rushed to the emergency room. And despite a $5 billion cash reserve, Amazon donates nothing to charities — if an employee wants to deduct a donation from his or her paycheck, he or she has to pay an additional fee.

But Amazon surely knows how to cut corners. The company removed the light bulbs from all of its vending machines to save $20,000 a year.

Do you think Amazon’s money-saving initiatives go too far, or do you think it shows good business sense? Share your opinion with us in the comments.

Source: MBAOnline.com Matt Petronzio|Mashable

Little Nemo Comic strip - Google's Biggest Doodle So Far

2012-10-15T16:29:00.000+05:30

Today’s (October 15) interactive Google Doodle commemorates Little Nemo, the main character in the comics strips of Winsor McCay, published in the New York Herald and the New York American from 1905 to 1914.

The strip was debuted on October 15, 1905 — exactly 107 years ago. While not a big success in its time, the strip was later adapted for the theater and influenced many artists, including comic book writer Alan Moore and children’s book author Maurice Sendak. The Doodle itself is animated and interactive, gradually expanding into the biggest Doodle we’ve seen.

The interactive and animated Google Doodle celebrating the nightly dreams of the little boy called Nemo begins with Nemo dreaming about falling from his bed into a hole and being rescued by Princess Camille. After a series of little adventures, Nemo, falls out of his bed. In the different panels of the Winsor McCay Little Nemo Google Doodle the letters of the Google logo G-O-O-G-L-E appear in a chronological order.

The logo only works in modern browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer 9 and 10 but not in Internet Explorer versions 7 and 8.

His first major comic strip series was A Tale of the Jungle Imps by Felix Fiddle, which appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer over more than 40 instalments.

McCay's comic strip work is credited for influencing generations of future artists.

Google Affliate Ads for Blogger Launches in United Kingdom

2012-10-15T15:09:00.000+05:30

Earlier this year, Google launched Affiliate Ads for Blogger in the US and added new enhancements in June. The positive results and feedback received are very promising, and Google launched this gadget to Blogger users in the UK!

“When people share words, thoughts and photos on their blogs, they’re sharing their passions with the world,” said product manager Ali Pasha at the time. “Here at Google Affiliate Network, we see that many of our publishers use Blogger, and often times they’re passionate about brands or products that they believe in.”

How to get Started
Bloggers can go to the “Earnings” tab in Blogger and sign up for AdSense, and access the Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger gadget when they write a new post. From that point, just select a relevant affiliate ad from the “Advertise Products” gadget, and publish your post. When someone clicks on the ad, you can earn a commission.

Participating UK Advertisers
Bestbathrooms.com, Cheapsuites.co.uk, Crooked Tongues, Diamond Manufacturers, eFlorist, Hudsonreed.com, Perfume Click and The Snugg are among the advertisers participating.

How to Join Google Affliate Ads
If you’re an advertiser interested in participating in Google Affiliate Ads for Blogger, please reach out to your Google Affiliate Network account team or contact Google UK if you’re not already working with Google Affliate Team.

6 Sci-fi Gadgets That Actually Exist

2012-10-06T07:00:00.000+05:30

Ever watched a science fiction television show or movie and suddenly wished all the futuristic gadgets being portrayed were real? To many people’s surprise, quite a few electronic devices and gadgets currently on the market emulate those seen in sci-fi shows and flicks.

Items similar to the underwater car from the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me and the jet-pack from The Jetsons are already being produced for consumers.

So, while we haven’t yet witnessed the real-world incarnation of Star Trek’s famed holodeck, many of the futuristic science-fiction gadgets and devices you dreamed of as a kid have in fact become a reality, In the following infographic you will be able to check out 6 Futuristic Science Fiction Gadgets That Actually Exist.

BitTorrent App- Now Download Torrents in Android

2012-10-04T23:30:00.000+05:30

Nobody in the present modernized world will be unaware of the Torrents. You might have downloaded many stuff on your PC or Mac via Torrents.

But did you thought of it for your mobile device. Yes, you do not want to depend on a particular device anymore -- you can now download the stuffs right into your Android device using the Official BitTorrent App anywhere, anytime.

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An Ad Free version of Pirate Bay.org - thePirateBay.ee

BitTorrent, a popular peer to peer file sharing protocol released their Android App in their Google Play Store for free. This app is presently in the early Beta version dedicated by the BitTorrent.

BitTorrent for Android is a nice, sleeky and handy torrent app, with the ability to download various types of large files directly to your smartphone or tablet. The app has a simple, easy-to-use interface and offers super fast downloading of files. The beta version is currently free, and there’s no speed or size limits! It lets you search torrents on the web and the results are displayed in a new browser window. The torrents automatically open up with Bittorrent and the downloaded files are saved by default to the Downloads folder on your SDcard. You can also set a preferred save location before downloading a file.

Click on the Android Cover to Download the BitTorrent Beta App from Google Play Store

How Big Are The Porn Sites

2012-10-04T00:30:00.000+05:30

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a person in possession of a fast internet connection must be in want of some porn. While it’s difficult domain to penetrate — hard numbers are few and far between, we know for a fact that porn sites are some of the most trafficked parts of the internet (and it is).

According to Google’s DoubleClick Ad Planner, which tracks users across the web with a cookie, dozens of adult destinations populate the top 500 websites. Xvideos, the largest porn site on the web with 4.4 billion page views per month, is three times the size of CNN or ESPN, and twice the size of Reddit.

LiveJasmin isn’t much smaller. YouPorn, Tube8, and Pornhub — they’re all vast, vast sites that dwarf almost everything except the Googles and Facebooks of the internet. While page views are a fine starting point, they only tell you that X porn site is more popular than Y non-porn site. Four billion page views sure sounds like a lot, but it’s only when you factor in what those porn surfers are actually doing that the size and scale of adult websites truly comes into focus.

THE CALCULATION
The main difference between porn and non-porn sites is
The average duration of a visit:
a) For a news site like Engadget or Mashable, an average visit is usually between three and five minutes; enough time to read one or two stories.

b) The average time spent on a porn site, however, is between 15 and 20 minutes. Then you need to factor in that most websites are predominantly text and images, while the largest porn sites push streaming video.

When you load the CNN home page, you’re talking about a couple of megabytes, and then maybe 500 kilobytes if you load an article.

When you stream porn, assuming a low resolution of 480×200, you’re looking at around 100 kilobytes per second X 15 minutes = 90 megabytes. Then you need to multiply 90 megabytes by the number of monthly visits, which is around 350 million for Xvideos. This comes to around 29 petabytes of data transferred every month, or 50 gigabytes per second. To put this into comparison, your home internet connection is probably capable of transferring a couple of megabytes per second, which is about 25,000 times smaller.

In short, porn sites cope with astronomical amounts of data. The only sites that really come close in term of raw bandwidth are YouTube or Hulu, but even then YouPorn is something like six times larger than Hulu.

STORAGE & INFRASTRUCTURE
While it obviously varies from site to site, most adult sites will probably store in the region of 50 to 200 terabytes of porn. This is quite a lot for a website, only something like Google, Facebook, Blogger, or YouTube would store more data, but in a world where 2TB drives are cheap and plentiful, this isn’t ultimately a very large amount.

Actual hardware requirements are almost impossible to derive [which aren't publicized], but in case of a large porn site we are probably talking about racks of quad-CPU servers, gigabit switches, and load balancers. Software-wise, most large porn sites will use a very-high-throughput database such as Redis to store and serve videos, and a light-weight HTTP server like Nginx to serve up the web pages.

Finally, bandwidth. Referring back to our Xvideos example (based on an Ad Planner estimate), a large porn site will have to have enough connectivity to serve up 50 gigabytes per second, or 400Gbps. Bear in mind this is an average data rate, too: At peak time, Xvideos might burst to 1,000Gbps (1Tbps) or more. To put this into view, there’s only about 15Tbps of connectivity between London and New York.

PORNO- THE REAL WORLD EXAMPLE

YOUPORN

The second largest porn site on the web, YouPorn(adult content) was kind enough to furnish us with some real-world facts and figures. You’ll be glad (or scared) to know that the estimated 'DoubleClick Ad Planner' figures are actually quite a lot lot lower than the reality.

YouPorn hosts “over 100TB of porn”, and serves “over 100 million” page views per day. Which equates to an average of 950 terabytes of data transfer per day, almost all of which is streaming video. This is around 28 petabytes per month, which means our 29PB estimate for Xvideos is on the low side; it probably serves 35 to 40PB per month.

It gets better! At peak time, YouPorn serves 4000 pages per second, equating to burst traffic in the region of 100 gigabytes per second, or 800Gbps. This is equivalent to transferring more than 10 dual-layer DVDs every second.

On the software-side of things, YouPorn’s primary data store is 100% Redis, with MySQL used as an admin tool to manage and add data to the Redis cluster. The site used to be primarily programmed in Perl with a MySQL backend, but in 2011 Perl was switched out for PHP and MySQL replaced with Redis. Nginx acts as the HTTP server, with both HAProxy and Varnish both used to load balance.

The Redis server deals with 4 Million queries per second, and between 8-15GB of data is logged every hour (visitor logs, behavior data, and so on). We’re told that this software stack should be capable of scaling up to 200 million views per day.

Sadly, we didn't get any information about the hardware infrastructure.

A single porn site accounts for almost 2% of the Internet’s total traffic. There are dozens of porn sites on the scale of YouPorn, and 100's that are the size of TechCrunch or your favorite news site.

It is probably not unrealistic to say that porn makes up 30% of the total data transferred across the internet. The internet really is for porn.

What People will be Talking about on Reddit in 3012

2012-10-03T14:54:00.000+05:30

The Redditor gonzoblair has produced this fantastically comprehensive and twisted vision of what the Home page of Reddit might look like in the year 3012, thousand years from now.

Click to see a larger Image. Awesome right, so be sure to mention your favorite links in comments.

Best Search Engines For Online Book Readers - I

2012-10-03T12:38:00.000+05:30

If you are a Bookworm or if Books are your best friends who splurges time reading them. The Books can really change your way of living. The Internet has proven itself as valuable resource for all types of readers.

Reading your favourite book is fun but hunting for that book online for a full read is a challenging tasks too. So, if you are having any difficulty in finding exactly what you need.

Then we have something for you, we have gathered a list of search engines that can help you find the best results for your searches.

1. OPEN LIBRARY
Open Library is an online project intended to create “one web page for every book ever published”. Use this Open Source Reading Site to find e-books, classic books and more.

2. THE ONLINE BOOKS PAGE
The Online Books Page is an index of e-text books available on the Internet hosted by the library of University of Pennsylvania. Users can search this web page to find e-books by Title name & Author.

3. AMAZON
Even before the Kindle the website was favorite of Book buyers. Amazon.com is the World's largest Online Retailer. This is one of the best places where you could find book information, reviews and prices.

4. BARNES & NOBLE
Barnes & Noble is the largest book retailer in the united States,and they has an excellent search function that can help you find just about anything from their webpage.

5. INTERNET PUBLIC LIBRARY 2
The Internet Public Library 2 (IPL2) has resources by subject, special collections created by the IPL2 community, books for Kids and Teens & even newspapers and magazines to check out online.

6. QUESTIA
Questia is an online commercial digital library of books and articles with an academic orientation, with a particular emphasis on books and journal articles in the social sciences and humanities.

7. GOOGLE BOOKS

Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search and Google Print) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using 'optical character recognition', and stored in its digital database.

8. ISBN
Most of you will be familiar with this term ISBN (International Standard Book Number). On the ISBN.nu website you can search Title name or certain words in the Title if you aren't remembering the Title Name, Author, Subject or even using the ISBN number.

9. EBOOK ENGINE
Through EBook-Engine, you will be able to find free e-books from various sites mainly GetmyEbook.com, Gutenberg.org, knowfree.net and EbookTakeAway.com.

10. SCRIBD
Scribd has lots & lots of free e-books. Scribd is the Youtube of Documents, by this you will know what I meant. You will be able to Search books by different categories in here.

Keep connected with us. We will soon Update with the next part of the "Best Search Engines For Online Book Readers Series".