The first is the blog of the cyber-activist, a community of rebels with keyboards who hammer away at the established and non-questioning way of looking at things, usually with a pet cause that they champion, such as governmental policy reforms, or environment friendly measures that can be adopted by everyone. The other is the world that hides behind the overt activism, providing it instead with the guns and the ammunition of magical followership, sharpening the knives of technique, and researching into methods of marketing and selling causes to a sufficiently large number of readers to make your blog attractive enough to advertisers.

These two worlds coexist very harmoniously since they not only feed off each other, but also strengthen each other’s case. So you have the women’s rights activist learning from the blogger who writes about 24 ways to drive more traffic to your blog. It is a perfect case of you scratch my back, I scratch yours. The problem I faced with this realization was that I didn’t really fit into any of these two categories.

Most of my blog posts are way too long to sustain the attention of the average blog reader. (Which explains why I rarely find comments on my posts, since most of them have nexted me before they reach till there!) My blogging is a catch-all, with commentary and news that encompasses the ridiculous and the sublime, the useful and the trite. I have no niche that I write for, no one cause (beyond ethical living) that I feel very strongly about, and no tips that I can offer anyone after the introductory “be kind to yourself.” I blog because I believe in the power of writing to change lives for the better, and that is all that there is to it. I blog because I feel it is the best way I can use my gift of communication to make a difference to my life and times. Done.

Being a voracious reader, and having an open mind much of the time, I have, however, imbibed some of the mystic and unwritten laws of the blogosphere. While I wait for inspiration for my next random post, I thought it prudent to put them in my words. These are the three lessons that I have learned that have made me feel good about what I do, as well as helped me earn readers, respect and returning visitors.

1. Create

Writing is about creativity, and not keywords and SEO tricks. Those are the herbs and garnish on top of the dish. If you focus on creating a great piece of writing every time you sit to write, you will build up readership across time without fail. If instead you just focus on the garnish, you will perhaps get a large volume of crawler traffic but lose readers who come looking for substance.
Write because you want to get what you have in your mind out there in the open. Write because you want others to benefit from what you have benefited from. Write to create value in the lives of your readers. Write each post to make your reader think, to free them from suffering and to empower positive changes in their lives. Write each post as if you have been given 10 minutes of prime time on a national TV channel. Write each post as if it were the only thing of importance. Write for human beings, and not search engines and traffic fakers. Write what will make a difference to a human life, and not your blog stats and advertising revenue. If you do not have anything significant to say, don’t write, but if you do, put your heart and soul into it.

2. Organize

Clarify your thinking. Declutter your blogging life in terms of topic, tools, and technique. If there is a single recurrent theme in your writing, make it central to your blog, and hive off other posts either to another blog of your own or as guest posts on other blogs. A prominently displayed list of labels or categories sorted by most frequently used can help keep your off topic posts lower down on your readers’ radar.

A common advice for bloggers is to write short sentences and paragraphs. Decide if your target audience includes readers who cannot get past dependent clauses. Even if your preferred style is a convoluted one, go over your choice of literary devices, and get rid of the ones that clutter your writing. Look out for repetitive techniques, topics, sentence structures, words and phrases. Everyone has a finite vocabulary and it is natural for you to return to the comfort of the familiar. Exercise your reading skills, expose yourself to uplifting literature and varied styles of writing, and explore a broader range of subject matter and different genres in order to add depth to your own writing. Refrain from peppering your posts with links, but learn to throw in just a few links of real value and relevance.

3. Persist

The modern generation of Internet users have a terribly ADHD way of looking at content (that is what writing on the internet is called, content!) which is compounded by the immediacy of how the worldwide web works. Blogs that do not update frequently tend to be fall to the bottom of the pile. This does not mean you have to sit with your finger on the publish button even in your sleep. However, it is a proven fact that consistent and frequent publishing of content tends to keep your blog more alive than otherwise. (I tested this out by republishing older content, and it still worked in terms of new readers, but cost me a good chunk of my regular readers.)

There will be days when you do not have a clue what to blog about, or days when you just can’t find the motivation to break out of your blogger’s ennui. Those are the very days that you need to flex your blogging muscles and nip the writer’s block in the bud. Allow it to grow, and it will sink its roots in, and convince you that it is okay to give the writing habit a break. When faced with such a speed breaker, pull out your some-day list and write from it, or spend time reading other blogs to find motivation. Fake it to make it, take an older popular post of your own and rework it into something more lively and pertinent to the present time, or surf the news channels to find something that will lend an unusual perspective to what you have said over and over on your blog. No matter what, write regularly and update your blog frequently.

These three lessons are timeless in that they apply as much to a newbie blogger as they do to the masters of the craft. With these simple tips (and if you re-read the post, you will see that there are tips within tips within tips out there), you can be confident that what you are attempting to do will stand the test of time and prove to be of real value to your readers.

Subhorup Dasgupta is a Hyderabad based writer and educator who spends his time listening to music, drinking tea, painting, cooking, reading and watching crime shows on TV. When he is able to make time from this hectic schedule, he blogs at  on random topics.

That is, you weren’t able to see how many visitors were visiting your site at that particular moment, what pages they were visiting, where they were coming from and so on. Some competing services offered this feature, though, and many people loved it.

Well, no longer. Yesterday Google announced a bunch of new features to Analytics, including real time tracking. Here’s a quote:

The web is getting faster, and not just the speed of the pages, but also the speed of change. Before, it was fine to build a website and modify it only when new products were launched. All of us avid Analytics users know that’s just not good enough. We need to be constantly on the lookout for problems and opportunities.

Currently, Google Analytics does a great job analyzing past performance. Today we’re very excited to bring real time data to Google Analytics with the launch of Google Analytics Real-Time: a set of new reports that show what’s happening on your site as it happens.

If you use Analytics and want to use this new feature you’ll need to switch to the new interface, and then look for “Real Time Reports” under the Dashboard. The feature should be available to all users already, so check it out.

Want a practical example of how this can affect your website or blog? Just think about SEO. Great part of optimizing a site for search engines is understand how changes you make on your site affect your rankings, but you need to separate correlation and causation of factions, else you’ll never understand what is going on.

Last week I came across an interesting infographic on this topic, and I figured it would be nice to spread it around. Here’s the link on SEOMoz: Correlation vs. Causation (A Mathographic).

If you are in a hurry, though, here’s what you need to know about those concepts:

Correlation is a concept from statistics that measures the relationship between two things. A positive correlation means that when one thing goes up, the other goes too. A negative correlation is the opposite, when one goes up, the other goes down.
For example, when the demand for a certain product goes up, its price tends to go up as well, so there is a positive correlation between the two things.
Causation, on the other hand, means that one thing will cause the other. For example, when you exercise the amount of calories you are burning per minute will go up, as the former is causing the latter.
Correlation and causation can happen at the same time. In the example above about exercising, for example, there’s both correlation and causation in place.
However, having a correlation doesn’t imply that you also have causation, and this is where most people get confused.
For example, there is a positive correlation between the number of firemen fighting a fire and the size of the fire. However, this doesn’t mean that bringing more firemen will cause the size of the fire to increase (this is called reverse causation).

If you want to get a more in-depth analysis or read more examples check out Wikipedia’s page on Correlation and causation.

Fire up the Windows Explorer and navigate your way to the %SYSTEMROOT% INF folder. What the heck is that thingy with the percentage signs? It’s a variable. For most people, %SYSTEMROOT% is C:Windows. For others, it may be E:WinXP. Get it? Okay, on with the hack! In the INF folder, open sysoc.inf (but not before making a BACKUP copy first). Before your eyes glaze over, look for the line containing “msmsgs” in it. Near the end of that particular line, you’ll notice that the word “hide” is not so hidden. Go ahead and delete “hide” (so that the flanking commas are left sitting next to one another). Save the file and close it. Now, open the Add and Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel. Click the Add / Remove Windows Components icon. You should see “Windows Messenger” in that list. Remove the checkmark from its box, and you should be set. NOTE: there are other hidden system components in that sysoc.inf file, too. Remove “hide” and the subsequent programs at your own risk.

Initially experts believed that only Internet Explorer 7 was vulnerable to the attack, but now Microsoft confirmed that all versions of IE including IE8 Beta 2 and other Microsoft products like Outlook Express are vulnerable to the attack.

Reports say that more than 20 lakh computers so far compromised security due to this IE bug.

By using this flaw hackers can take control of the user PC and steal passwords and other important information.

Go Back to Where You Left Off in a Document

Quick Word Deletion
You can delete entire words with your keyboard. Just put your cursor at the beginning of the word and press Ctrl+Del together. This is very useful when editing.

Customize Line Spacing and Alignment
The Ctrl key is your best buddy when you want to experiment with line spacing and alignment variations. Ctrl+1 provides single spacing, Ctrl+2 provides double spacing and Ctrl+5 provides 1-1/2 line spacing. Ctrl+R right aligns a paragraph, Ctrl+L left aligns one, and Ctrl+E centers one.

EXCEL
Instant in-cell graphs
Use the repeat (REPT) function in Excel to create a bar graph inside cells. REPT looks like this: =REPT(“text”; number_of_times). For instance, REPT(“X”; 10) gives you “XXXXXXXXXX”. For in-cell bar charts, the trick is to repeat a single bar “|”. When formatted in 8 point Arial font, single bars look like bar graphs. Of course, number_of_times can also be substituted with a cell number.

POWERPOINT
Annotate during Presentations
While giving a slide show presentation, right-click in the active window then choose an annotation item from the Pointer Options submenu, such as Felt Tip Pen or Ballpoint Pen. You can write directly on the slides: underline words, draw a picture, whatever. To return to normal use, and move onto the next slide, select Arrow from the submenu.

Here’s how to create a group schedule in Outlook 2003:

1.   Open the Calendar folder and click the View Group Schedules button on the toolbar
2.   Click New, enter a name for the new group, and click OK
3.   In the resulting group schedule dialog box, click Add Others and choose Add from Address Book
4.   Select the people (or resources) whose schedules you want to include and click OK
5.   Click Add Others and choose Add Public Folder if you want to add a calendar stored in a public folder

The dialog box should now show the free/busy times for the selected people and resources. If you do want to schedule a meeting, just click Make Meeting and choose an option to create either a new meeting request or a new message with a selected individual or all individuals in the schedule. Use the Zoom drop-down list to choose the amount of scheduling information to view.

One of the worst inconsistencies in Windows is what actually happens to files when they’re dragged. Dragging from one place to another on the same disk ends up moving the files, while dragging from one disk to another copies them.

If you’re just dragging EXE files, a shortcut is created, and the file is neither copied nor moved. To cope with this, follow the following instructions:

• To copy a file under any situation, hold the Ctrl key while dragging.
• To move a file under any situation, hold the Shift key while dragging .
• To choose what happens to dragged files, drag them with the right mouse-button, and a menu will appear when the files are dropped

The main aim of Cuil.com is to break the monopoly of Google, but also change the surfing culture among users. Cuil is a start-up by husband-wife team Tom Costello (CEO of Cuil) and Anna Patterson, president, along with former colleagues Russell Power, vice-president of engineering, and Louis Monier, vice-president of products. Cuil has got venture funding of about $30 million from Tugboat Ventures, Greylock Partners and Madrone Capital Partners.

At Cuil, search index spans over 120 billion web pages, which is much larger than any existing search engine including Google (almost thrice its index span). The results are based on content and relevance. Popularity and audience traffic take a backseat. Though Cuil claims the largest web-page index, for most queries it displayed fewer total results than competitors. Google and Yahoo let the user page through all of the results while Cuil significantly limits what one can see, offering about 23 pages of results in total.

Another interesting aspect of Cuil is the safe search option which filters all possible ‘obscene’ results. Of course, the definition being relative. Also, there is no tab on user search pattern and history. Cuil does not fix spellings and provide results as you type the key words, unlike Google. So, chances are if one types ‘Now Delhi’ instead of ‘New Delhi’, Cuil will still get quite a few desired results without any spelling suggestions!

Indexing more pages, providing relevant results and slicker presentation are the features which Cuil is banking on to attract users. It remains to be seen whether it’s able to strike the right chord among users.

Despite early problems suffered by the newly-launched search engine Cuil last week, it has performed better than Google in a relevance test. The test by web monitoring firm NetApplications times how long a surfer spends on a website that it has been redirected to by a search engine. In the tests, people using Cuil spent 9.65 minutes on a site, whereas those using Google spent 9.37 minutes. Yahoo’s average was 8.57 minutes.

Google may be the de facto leader in search today, but will its lead last forever? With services like Mahalo and Cuil gaining attention and Microsoft willing to pour continued billions into its quest for online dominance, Google’s rivals are legion, and they’re hungry.

Step1: Header Declaration
<%
Response.ContentType="Application/vnd.ms-excel"
Response.AddHeader "content-disposition", “attachment; filename=""cpse-"& Month(Date())& Day(Date())& Year(Date()) &".xls"""
%>

Step 2: add this XML snippet where you want your image to appear:

<!–[if gte vml 1]><v:shape

id=”_x0000_s1075″ type=”#_x0000_t75″ style=’position:absolute;margin-left:3pt;

margin-top:7.5pt;width:71.25pt;height:71.25pt;z-index:36′>

<v:imagedata src=”http://www.southdreamz.com/wp-content/themes/palz/images/SouthDreamZ.jpg”

o:title=”NYC_logo-cpse”/>

<x:ClientData ObjectType=”Pict”>

<x:SizeWithCells/>

<x:CF>Bitmap</x:CF>

</x:ClientData>

</v:shape><![endif]–>

Finally, you might need to change the values of width, height or anything you want, but please leave the absolute path where the image resides on your server. I’ve been struggling with this problem for weeks. Hope this helps.