Have you been on a blog where you just type in the search query and a dropdown box shows the relevant search results? I liked the idea as it saved time for the reader by not loading the search page of your blog and they get an idea, which articles on that subject have been written.

Today I discovered a nifty service from Sikbox, that allows any blogger to add a “Live Search” box to their blog.You can see the search box in the Right Sidebar, just below recent posts. On the site you can just key in your domain and see the live search results for your blog right there. If you like what you see you can install it on your blog.

Try Sikbox "Live Search"

It has some nice features, very easy to install on the blog, quite lightweight as they claim and you can change the how the search box looks and how the results come up as well. They give you an option to customize the Search to your hearts content.

Sikbox "Live Search" Features

The process of installing the live search on the blog is fairly simple. You just have to give your domain, you name and email address. Then you can select the theme you want, the number of search results you want to be displayed, and the code is generated for you. YES indeed, its that simple. No messing around with the template files and complicated coding(something I am not very good at). So this was perfect. As the content of your blog grows, you can increase the number of search results. You can try and use the “Live Search” box on the right – just type in youtube, google and yahoo as keywords.

Custumizing Sikbox "Live Search"

I am using the Minimalist Template as of now, but maybe I will make it look better byselecting another theme. If you like the idea of saving page loads getiing live results on the Fly, try out Sikbox “Live Search”. You would like it too.

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Gadget Advisor

Yesterday I came across a really cool looking Gadget and Tech Blog – Gadget Advisor. The first thing that attracted my attention was the sleek looking design, nothing overdone, everything was in proportion. As described by the author the site focuses on the product releases and news items that are the most significant, useful, or particularly cool, not on the everyday Tech News, which anyways would become redundant in a few days.The blog is not about detailed huge posts but keeps the content to the point and precise. You dont have to wade through the huge article to find what is important, the blog just puts forward, the information you would need.

Going through the archives, which is just two months old, I found several interesting articles like the one about Online Backup Services. The article clearly describes what is written in the Title. In short crisp paragraphs, information about the various Online backup services is given, and the reason why they are good or  well, not so good.

Universal Remote Control

Some other interesting posts were about a Network Media Player and about the Universal Remote Control. The Network Media Player review describes the product, the good points which make it a better choice over other players. As you can see the product images are quite cool.

The Universal remote Control from Logitech is deemed to be the best choice in Universal Remotes.  You can check out the blog if you like upcoming Technology blogs.

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Audio and Video are an integral part of Computers nowadays. The MP3 format revolutionized music on computers. With time, a lot of other formats came in. You can now find music and videos in formats ranging from MP3 to OGG, Acc to Wma and video in Mpeg, MP4, FLV and AVI and many more. There are times when you want to transfer music to your portable media player or maybe share it with friends, but the format is not recognized by the Player or your friends dont have software to run AVI formats videos. This and many more reasons have made it essential for us to keep a video or audio converter program in our computers.

Blaze Media Pro Dashboard

While hunting for a good Media converter I recently came across the Blaze Media Pro software. Just to try it out I downloaded its trail version. I believe we can find a good free software for any need, but the sheer range of functions Blaze Media Pro had, intrigued me. Its not just the conversion of formats, but features like extraction of audio from videos, full fledged lyrics search for songs, video encoder, video decompiling, MOV converter, CD Burning and converting online flash videos into required format were some of the cool features that attracted my attention.

Video Converter Options

Lyrics-Search

Its like with this software on the computer, I had the power to control and turn any media format into any format I required. In addition, an extensive list of over 30 effects and color adjustment operations allow for powerful video enhancement and alternation. You may want to change the format for any reason, for getting a better quality from your audio or video files, or simply compressing files to save space, this software has it all. You can check out the 15 days trial Blaze Media Pro provides, I am sure, you would find it quite useful. You can check its exhaustive list of features here.

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Website Uptime Monitoring and Tracking is important for any site owner. One should be aware if his site is working okay or the server has tanked or having some issues. If the server is having issues, the owner can contact his web hosting company , and make them sort this out quickly so that he doesn’t lose many visitors. Website Uptime Monitoring services, ping you web host every few minutes to check if your site is working okay. If the server goes down, these services alert you via email or text messages.

Recently Amit from Digital Inspiration carried out an independent survey about the best uptime monitoring services on the Internet. He has covered total 8 services – 4 paid and 4 free services. Pingdom (paid service) came out on top because of its frequency of checking the website (its pings every website every 1 minute).

Although I agree, pingdom is one of the best services, I think there are quite a few free services that would do the job. If you dont have a very high traffic website or you are just starting out or you prefer a good free service to paid ones, you would be satisfied with the free services we have compiled below.

Best Website Uptime Monitoring Services

Out of the above services, I found Server MOJO, BasicState, LogicReach and Mon.itor.us to be the best Free services. UptimeDog is also good, but, there just one catch. They want you to display in your site that its is being monitored with their service, but the interval is just 2 mins, so displaying their could be worth it.

Service URLs:

1. UpTimeDog
2. Site 24x 7 Free
3. UptimeParty
4. SiteUptime
5. WatchMouse
6. BasicState
7. Montastic
8. Logicreach
9. Mon.itor.us
10. Server MOJO

Sign up with a couple of services, and you would know how well your webhost is performing and you would know at anytime if your site is down. If you found this information useful, feel free to share it with your friends or aubscribe to our RSS feed for more useful posts in the future.

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Google Adsense Logo

If you have some experience with Adsense advertising, you must be knowing that you can separate your Ad blocks into specific channels, so that you can see which ads on your site are performing better than the others. Also this helps you to know the underperforming ads and fine tune them, by either changing the placement or the looks or type of the ad unit.

This is an extract from the Inside Adsense Google Group, which is a great place to get tips about optimizing your Adsense Ads to make them perform better:

Tips for Optimizing Adsense Channels:

As you may know, you can set up your custom channels so that they’re
targetable by advertisers – these targetable custom channels are known
as ad placements. By selecting the ‘Allow advertisers to target this
channel’ checkbox on the channel creation page, you can enable brand
advertisers to target their content to your audience directly on a CPM
or CPC basis.

How to make your Channels reach the Right People:

Creating ad placements allows them to show up in AdWords,
so that advertisers who create placement-targeted campaigns can include
your content directly. What many publishers don’t know is that this
also makes your content available to Google’s internal sales teams, who
work closely with many advertisers looking to target a certain audience
or type of content. With this in mind, we thought it would be important
to mention a few best practices which will help advertisers and our
internal sales teams target your content to help you maximize
revenue.

Naming your Channels:

First: Take time to make sure your channel names and
descriptions accurately describe your content and audience. By
including descriptions that closely reflect your content, you’ll also
attract advertisers from those areas. Naming and descriptions are
important.

Changing names of your Channels:

On that note, our second tip: Be very careful about changing
the name of an ad placement. If an advertiser has already targeted one
of your specific channels, the channel will become unavailable to the
advertiser once you change its name. If you wish to rename a channel,
we recommend creating a second channel with the new name, and then
attaching both channels to your ad unit. Remember, you can attach up to
five custom channels to an ad unit.

Best Ad format for Adsense:

Third, use the 300×250 medium rectangle, opted in to both text and image ads.This is one type of  targetable ad unit that’s in high demand by Google’s CPM advertisers.We recommend placing these units in line with your content, and describing them as they relate to the content. This combination of format and placement enables advertisers to use image, text, or rich media (including gadget ads) effectively.

Ad format tips for Adsense:

In feeds, we recommend opting in to both image and text in all ad units,
as many of these advertisers only target with image ads into feeds.

Importance of good content for Adsense ads:

Finally, as always, the most important tip for maximizing revenue from your
ad placements is to create quality content that is visually appealing and
attracts a quality audience. Many brand advertisers look at all placements
before placing an advertising order to make sure the destination sites are in
line with their brand and attract the type of audience they wish to
target for a particular campaign.

Posted in Inside Adsense Google Group,
By Steve Olechowski -
AdSense Product Manager

If you want to stay updated about the latest happening in Google Adsense and get great tips for Optimization of Ads, you can check out the Inside Adsense Google Group.

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Although since 2007, it has been said that Technorati isnt doing well and it is up for sale, they have held their ground. Dave Sifry, the CEO of Technorati had responded that Technorati isnt for sale and it seems he knew what he was talking about. Technorati has been doing okay so far, even though after the advent of Google Blog Search, they lost out on lot of major clients (WordPress now uses Google Blog Search instead of Technorati for tracking incoming links).

Sale or No Sale asides, Technorati is well known for the State of the Blogosphere Reports they publish every year. They have released it in 5 parts. You can read the entire report here. This is one of a kind report where we get a birds eye view about the blogosphere as they track blogs from 81 languages, 66 different countries and 7 different platforms. The image below shows some concise information about the BlogoSphere:

Technorati -State Of the Blogosphere for 2008

The 5 parts of the report are:

1. Who are the bloggers? Link
2. The What and Why of Blogging. Link
3. The how of Blogging. Link
4. Blogging for Profit. Link
5. Brands Enter Blogosphere. Link

The report is quite detailed as expected. If you dont have time to read it, i would just state the summary of each part. I have linked to each page of he report, you can just click on the one that you want to read.

Part 1 – Who are the bloggers is a description about the Blogger himself. They have shown the demographics of the Age, Gender, Location and Topics in the blogs.

Popular Blogging Topics- Personal and LifeStyle is still most Popular<br>

Popular Blogging Topics- Personal and LifeStyle is still most Popular

Part 2 - The What and Why of Blogging answers several questions like, Why does one blog, Are they worried about giving up their identity on a blog and if yes, why do want to conceal their identity.  This part is interesting to read as they have represented everything graphs and charts for quick grasp.

Blogging Identity

Part 3 – The how of blogging has covered areas like Time Spent on Blogging each week, If bloggers employ anyone for blogging, the frequency of posting, various Tools used by bloggers and How they attract Traffic to their blogs.

Average Time Spent on Blogging Every Week

Average Time Spent on Blogging Every Week

Part 4 – Blogging for Profits, tells us, how many advertising mediums bloggers use, How they manage advertising and reasons why bloggers dont have advertising on blogs.

Advertising on Blogs

Advertising on Blogs

Part 5 highlights the role of well known brands in Blogging – This indicates how mainstream blogging has become and its here to stay and thrive, as brans receive excellent exposure, reviews and recognition via blogging medium.

Perception about Blogs and Blogging.

Perception about Blogs and Blogging.

According to this chart 71% believe that blogs are becoming a serious source of information and 51% get their news and entertainment via blogs. These are huge figures and its just beginning. Blogging it seems would replace the mainstream media sooner than later!

[Read more on DBT]

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Whether you are a Network Admin or not, you should check out Pstpanic.com. I stumbled across this site when I was looking for pst related troubleshooting and found a fun game for Network Admins. Network Admins are troubled people. They not only have to tend to the computers and servers going down, but also removing of viruses and taking care of corrupted data, especially PST Files.

pstpanic

Where is My PST?

If you are wondering what PST Files are here is some information :

.pst, which stands for “Personal Storage Table” is a filename extension associated with Personal Folders files used with certain Microsoft products. Personal Folders (.pst) files are used to store local copies of messages, calendar events, and other items within Microsoft Outlook etc.

And guess what some PST files can grow large enough to be 2-3 Gb and if they get corrupted, its a pain recovering them.

So its the job of the unfortunate Network Admin to recover the files of the guy who didnt care to delete the trash in his PST files and let it go upto an extent that it got corrupted.And believe me this is a frustrating job to do.

Troubled NetWork Admin

Where did it go?? - A network Admin in trouble!

Here lies the concept behind PstPanic.com. They have given the Network Admins a chance to vent out their frustration by displaying how frustrated they really are , by submitting a picture and getting a chance to win some cool prizes along the way.You can browse through the photos submitted by others, and vote for them. The ones with the highest rating wins this online competition.

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Recently while looking for reviews and prices of Apple ipod,  I stumbled across a superb Online Computer Store -  Superwarehouse.com. What first attracted my attention was the listing of products in the left sidebar. They have huge range of selection sarting from Printers, Printer Supplies, Monitors, Scanners, Digital Cameras, projectors, Storage Media, Apple Products and many more. Not only the listing for the actual equiment was exhaustive but the number of brands listed was awesome.

Apple - New ipod touch

Apple - ipod Touch

So while looking for ipods,  I focused my attention on the new Apple ipod Touch, and I was impressed by the detailed description of the product. The description included, but wasnt limited to the Overview and Features, Detailed Specs, Warranty Provided and the Customer Reviews, which would help you make a informed decision.

I was also interested in looking at an option which I could use while I was excercising or going for a jog. Nothing seems to fit the bill better than the iPod Shuffle.

Apple-ipod-shuffle-silver

iPod Shuffle Silver

Superwarehouse provided me with ample choice to select and compare the version I really wanted. The product pictures are pretty impressive and are quite detailed.

The selection of products across the site is quite impressive. they claim to have over 50000 products listed from almost every well known Computer related brand.

Well don’t just take my word for it, if you are looking for a good deal and a huge selection of products, Superwarehouse is the way to go.

The awareness and importance of Rehabilitation is not commonly known. People who are addicted to drugs or suffer from alcoholism, generally need help from experienced people or institutions to help them get over their addiction. If someone you know is suffering form addictions such as alcoholism, drug addiction, eating disorders, the best way is to get someone experienced to help them overcome that addiction or disorder; and one of the best places to get help is Cliffside Malibu.

Cliffside Malibu

CliffSide Malibu Rehab Center

The Alcohol Rehab Center at Cliffsidemalibu is one of the best. They understand the gravity of the issue and know how difficult it really is for a person to give up an addiction and they gradually walk the person through the process. The surrounding areas are quite and peaceful, and the beaches nearby in the beautiful Malibu, California, help you to relax.

Cliffside Malibu also offers different treatments for Drug Detox if you haven’t been able to give those up. They have experienced and well trainder Treatment Councellors who would be with you as your friends while they help you recover from your addiction. Again, the wonderful ambiance at the Rehabilitation center works wonders.

Cliffside Malibu is a well established institution, with long standing experience in the areas of Drug or Alcohol Rehabilitation. To know if you are in need of an Alcohol Rehab, you can consult with their Treatment Concellors on the phone @ 800-501-1988. After consultations you make a decision about taking the control of your life back, although with a little help from them, which is not a bad thing at all.

Its the beginning of a New Year, and its a fresh start for all of us. Its time to let go of any or all of the disappointments that you may have faced as a blogger.Although I started blogging 6 months back, as a blogger the last 3 months have been very productive and inspiring for me, because of some great support from my blogger friends and decent success with the social media. I would also like to thank all my readers who take some time out to comment on some posts they like.

The success of a blog is measured in various terms like the Traffic Rank, Number of subscribers, activity on the blog (comments) and buzz about the blogger in the Social Media.There are quite a few things that I have learned from blogging last year and I would like to share some things that are critical to follow and commit to, if you would like to get better results for your blog.

1) Plan a schedule carefully and stick to it:

You might have a 9 to 5 job and you barely get time to blog, or maybe you are a full-time blogger, who gives all his time to blogging. Either way a proper schedule will help propel your blog to the next level. If you follow a schedule you can get more things done and be more productive. I have seen that I have always been able to post regularly and get more subscribers, traffic and activity on my blog if I follow a schedule.You should plan well so that you can accommodate reading blogs, posting on your own blog and social networking properly. Try and keep a track of not only of posting time, but how much time do you dedicate to reading other blogs, skimming through RSS Feeds and interacting in Social Networks.

Also, keep a notebook ,or a diary or a cell phone, to note down ideas. No Idea is a small idea and with some brain storming, you can make it a big one. Noting down would help you accumulate some nice concepts to write about in the  future or a rainy day. It is also effective against writers block.

2)Write for your readers,but don’t ignore the search engines and Social Media:

Before you write every post, think how would this benefit my readers. Will writing this post add value to my blog. Will this post be valuable from a year from now? Its not always that a post can fit all these criterion. Sometime you need to blog about a special offer or a free service, which may not be valid for more than a few days. But don’t make this a regular feature. Make sure every post you write benefits the reader in someway.

As on this blog, I don’t have a clearly defined niche. I am a technology enthusiast who is a interested in blogging and involved in social media. What I write is about technology that would benefit bloggers and regular internet users. As I learn about new tips that would benefit any of these 3 niches, I write about it. And this is why The community I have around this blog are people who are interested in any or all of these niches.

Writing for search engines is important as, after the tons of traffic you receive from social sits starts waning, the search engines provide a constant source of quality traffic.You should try and make sure each post has proper SEO attributes and use a plugin like AIO SEO Pack to get maximum benefit from search traffic.

Also try and build a culture around your blog, in which you encourage your readers to submit your articles to social media, if they are good enough.

3)Start building a community around your blog:

Building a community around your blog can be a difficult task,but if you invest time in it, it will pay both in terms of loyal readers and also regular traffic and promotion. In order to start building a community you should first set a minimum number of subscriber number, like about 500 to 1000, as small communities tend not to work very well.

Get your readers involved by helping them out in any way possible. If you are a technology blogger you can ask them to send technical queries. Same goes for other niches. Not only would you help readers and build goodwill, but also get great ideas for future posts.

Surround yourself with bloggers from your niche to keep abreast with the latest happenings and to learn from collective experience, what works and what doesn’t and plan the content accordingly. You can also build a community and connect well with other bloggers by either offering to guest post on their blogs or letting them guest post.

4)Link to blogs in your Niche:

One of the mistakes I made last year was not to connect to some excellent content produced by bloggers in my niche. You can start a post which would contain some of the best work produced from around the blog-O-sphere, related to your niche. This has two advantages. Not only would you provide you readers with valuable content but also get get appreciation from a fellow blogger for linking.

Think about it for a second. You work on a post for several hours and create value for your readers. If some fellow blogger appreciates this and shares it with his readers,he would not only provide some good content for his readers but also get your gratitude. You can make great friends in this process. I missed this last year, but from this year, I would share with you some of the most original and well written content from around the web, from now on.

5) Don’t pretend to be A-List, Be an A-List blogger:

What does an A-List blogger have that you do not?? Hmmm….Answer anyone? Traffic you say. Yes, thats correct, but you don’t have enough of what he does : Value Packed content. All A-List Bloggers, have been known to be different from the crowd. Creating head turning, jaw dropping, link baiting content. Its not that tough really. If you take some time out (about 30 mins everyday) for contemplating, how you can write about an already written story from a different angle, you can make heads turn too and get more back links than you had imagined.

If you dedicate some time to read 30-40 blogs, you can note some idea, about a post that you a different opinion about or may be written in a different way. Another way is to check out the archives of A-List bloggers and apply the same procedure to write about things differently from your own point of view. From reading various blogs in your niche, you can generate and record ideas for future posts or follow up articles on your own past blog posts.

6) Become an expert in your niche:

As I mentioned in the point above about answering questions from your readers would be really easy if you are an expert in your niche or have an open mind to learn about new things about it. But before they ask any question, you need to prove you have a good knowledge by writing authoritative posts which pack some solid content.
Reading and following a lot of blogs in your niche would help you understand, what works and what doesn’t. Skimming through a lot of feeds daily would help you a lot in generating ideas for posts.

The day you are able to engage readers in this activity, you can safely assume that you have decent knowledge about the niche and now you can move towards more ambitions projects.

7) Create resourceful posts:

Take a Pledge. Pledge that you would invest time for creating at least one resources related post for your readers every week. If not every week then every fortnight. These are the kinds of post that have the highest rate of success among your readers and social media. Not only will this a source of perpetual traffic, but also would be accessed and bookmarked the most.

I have written just one resources post last year about Top 50 YouTube Tools and Resources on the web. I examined my traffic and feed stats for the last 4 months and I have seen that this post has been most visited and clicked on through all these months, and brings in traffic from search engines and social media alike. I now think If I had invested time in writing resources post every week for last 3 months, I would have a much better traffic flow and subscriber base.

8)Create backup for the unseen future:

When I speak about back up, I am talking about 2 things. The literal backing up of your blog and creating content for the future for days you just cant find time to post.

I learned a very important lesson a very hard way last year, when I almost lost my blog to a server crash. I moved from a cheap web host to a reliable host after that but the damage had already been done. I was able to recover all my posts, but lost all comments and had to re-upload all the pictures in the post. Make sure you back up your blog atleast once per week so that in case something goes wrong you would have things backed up and you would not lose out on all the hours of time you invested in writing for your blog. I have written a guide about backing up your blog, if you are interested in knowing the process.

There are days when you would not be able to find time to post. Either you have some important business to attend to or you have a writers block. One way or the other, in order to stick to a schedule you would need to post something. According to the resolve of being an A-List blogger you can’t just post anything. So for such a rainy day, keep some posts in your arsenal, that can be posted anytime. Make sure they are the kind that provide value and can be posted anytime.

A very good example of such posts would be resource posts that have very few resources, like 3 or 5 resources about your niche. But not only would you not break the schedule but also provide some valuable content to your readers. Your regularity would be appreciated in the long run.

9) Create a strong social presence:

2007 was the year of Social Media. Bloggers who were aware about this at the beginning of the year, not only strengthened their social profiles but also capitalized on their reach on these networks. A strong social network presence would help you build a brand name for your blog and for you as well, and get boatloads of traffic.

To build a good presence, you should at least dedicate a couple of hours for your favorite social bookmarking and networking sites, submit good content and connect with fellow bloggers and people who like the same stuff you do. A strong social presence give boost to your traffic and branding in more ways than you can imagine.

10) Encourage Readers to Subscribe and Stay:

Getting readers is easy compared to the task of making them stay. First, You are doing nothing wrong, if you ask visitors of your blog to subscribers 2-3 times on the blog, or maybe use some tricks to get their attention for subscription. You work hard to create content and you can tell the readers that subscribing would help them to stay updated with more good content that is in the pipe line, so that they don’t miss it. You can use subscriptions encouragement plugins or can ask visitors to subscribe manually by posting the link in between the posts, which reminds me, do subscribe to this blog, if you would like to get good tips about Blogging, Technology and Social Networking.

I have lost boatloads of subscribers when my blog crashed. I needed to work even more to get those 200+ subscribers back. This is something that isn’t common but you should prepare for it. There are many plugins that can spice up your feeds. In the feed you can remind the readers, that you are a good content producer and if there is no activity on the blog for a couple of days, they shouldn’t just go ahead and unsubscribe, but wait, as time interval in between indicates a great post in the making. You can use these words to encourage present subscribers to stay.

Following any and all of these resolutions would take your blog to a higher level in all the “terms” we use to measure the blogs success. This is not a compiled list of resources, but something I have learned and shared with you to help you in a little way I can, to propel your blog to the next level.

If you think any more tips that may benefit bloggers, please feel free to share them in the comments!

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