Unlike Google io2011 the live transmission protocol will not be available but Apple will officially upload event videos recordings after the few days of event, which will require Apple device to view it.

But still, Apple fans can follow some famous sites for Live KeyNotes

• Engadget (Live Video Feed)
• Gizmodo
• Gdgt
• Macworld
• TheNextWeb

However  a Channel on UStream also claims to provide live video streaming of the event, but it’s not a verified link. You can also get constant updates by following hashtags like #WWDC2011 and #WWDC. In spite of this, we will be also covering updates via our Twitter accounts @cietro and @TechCline.

It’s been 3 years that I am working as a freelancer professionally and have experienced every kind of clients from all over the world, including the irritating ones and also, the good ones. While talking about good ones, I’m referring towards those clients who understand your proposal in first attempt and appreciate you. And while talking about irritating ones, I’m referring to those clients who never get satisfy and keep asking for more. Most of you freelancers might give them a title of “Client from Hell”.
Today I am about to discuss the Five most common challenges which almost every freelancer faces. I don’t expect a one side communication on this brand new site. So if you have anything to add in this article, you are most welcome to leave a comment and have your say.

Self Discipline

Having self discipline is main key to success in your freelancing carrier. The time management and every other regularity come into it. The basic difference in 9 to 5 regular job and freelancing is organization discipline and self discipline. In an organization, there is a boss to keep the discipline and there is always a thread, as soon you quit following these regulations you are out. However in freelancing, disciplines matter much more than it. Your clients’ reviews about your recent work are gateway to your next bigger projects, and for it you need to provide their projects within the fixed time in order to have healthy testimonials from them and self discipline is the only way of keeping yourself on the track.

Going Solo

Another challenge in freelancing is working all alone. Well it is recommended to hire an assistant to manage your finance and other tasks, weekly, in case you are earning more than 100 dollars a day. The biggest problem with working solo is not having any person on your back to cover your work in case you are having fever or any family emergency. Your clients might not want to hear any excuses from you once you are in the deal, and it might just effect your reputation online if you don’t deliver the project on the time. So the solution for it to have a social links with the people from same field, and when you see yourself in trouble and not seeing yourself getting done with project in the required time, forward the work to your any friend, and pay him/her if necessary.

Lack of Experience

Your client might not want to hear “no” from you on any task in the project assigned to you. And of course you will also not want to say “no”, no matter you have never did this task before or not sure how to get it done. Actually freelancing is not all about utilizing your practice from your previous work, it also about keep learning new things and preparing yourself for newer things in future projects. You should have spirit of accepting challenges and also have an attitude of “can do it”.

Shortage of Resources

That’s true; you can start your freelancing carrier with less than 1000 dollars. In start, all you might need is to have domain name and hosting account to host your portfolio site and a notebook or a simple desktop. But as soon the work load start getting increase and you have multiple things to do, such as designing, developing and content writing etc, you will start to hate your slow and cheap machines and will dream of a bigger one with heavy ram and bigger and multiple screens to do your work in less time. And of course, you will have to keep improving your workstation from time to time to save your time and to enjoy latest software updates. In freelancing, you are the only one of to take care of your financial needs including equipment expenses. However in offices, your organization will provide you the workstation and other required stuff to make it easy for you to complete the work in less time.

No Holidays

The best thing about 9 to 5 job is holidays with full wage. Means, you can enjoy your holidays without losing salary. But in freelancing, holiday means “no earning”. The most relieved moment for you can be the project submission and payment receiving moment.

:: As Published on CIETRO by Saad Irfan (Cietro’s blog has been closed and few of posts are getting re-published on TechCline)

Maintain a healthy and a modest Profile

The basic thing which you need to get start or to hunt for freelance project via job boards is to have a healthy and modest profile on the site. Your profile reveals your online reputation as your employers always give review about your recital, and you don’t have any room of any mistake there. It is better to have no profile than having bad reputed profile. Do include your recent projects, according to site terms and conditions and also write your specialties visibly.

Narrow your search with precise terms

Before getting start with your search for projects, write down your specialties. It will lesser the time span for searching part. Don’t include your expertise in which you are not experienced enough as you have to be very professional in making and maintaining your profile. Don’t include your private contact or private email address in the profile, even if you are permitted to add according to site policy. It will lead you to many troubles in case something goes off beam. That is why I mentioned, be modest while composing your profile. Arrange a separate email address and include your secondary contact number if you want to have it.

Came across some ideal projects? Can you do it?

Once you have came across some ideal projects, go through every single word of the job post and make sure none of assignment is out of your expertise. Don’t bid for any project in case you are not entirely confident about it, no matter you having bad timings in hunting any project. Bidding for the projects you have not experienced of, will only lead you to have a profile full of bad reviews.

Do some spy job to avoid disturbing employer

Another essential step you should take is to check employer’s profile for his recent offers and reviews. Don’t bother to bid for the project in case you have found any bad review or didn’t like his profile. Doing some spy job is only way to avoid disturbing clients, as you will not have any option but to complete the project once the deal is on.

What offer others are making?

Don’t overlook to check all the recent bids on that project and also go through the offers which bidders are making for project. It will help you to compare yourself with them and will help you in better way for making an offer. Try to be more specific than others when making offer.

Bidding Factor

In my opinion, it is your profile and reviews which decide how big a bid you should make. In case you have a profile with bunch of positive reviews, you are good to go for making a higher bid. So even if the client visits your profile he will not have any hesitation in accepting your proposal after reading recent reviews made on your work. However, if you are a newcomer to the site, and don’t have any or much reviews mentioned in your profile, you should make an average bid and make a promise of quality product. Try to be experienced and qualified person in your words as for yet your proposal statement is the only way of attracting the employer.

Keep checking the job post for recent updates and biddings

After making a bid on the project, bookmark the page and keep checking the job post frequently to know what bids and what else proposals are being posted by other bidders.

Won the Bid? Be humble while replaying back

If you have got yourself a deal, be humble while replying and assure the employer of delivering the quality product in expecting time. Ask for maximum raw and prepared content/ data which he can offer you. Remember, more the data you have, more it will be easy for you to get done with the project efficiently and in lesser time.

*Logos used in photo are copyright and trademark of respective owners

:: As Published on CIETRO by Saad Irfan (Cietro’s blog has been closed and few of posts are getting re-published on TechCline)

The story came as quite surprising as the total cash Microsoft having is $32.6 billion in tangible assets and Nokia’s worth is around $32 billion. In case Microsoft goes for this deal, at least more than $32 billion would be require to windup the deal.

Just few days ago Microsoft closed the deal of $8.5 billion with SKYPE to acquire the company. Microsoft is willing to use SKYPE to achieve big targets including using the community of 170 million active users (SKYPE) for its strong existence in Smart Phone technology. Microsoft also said, the integration of SKYPE will not be limited but will be available across Xbox Live, Windows Phone and other devices and systems. However Microsoft also promised to provide SKYPE on non-Microsoft platforms as well.

In addition to this, few months ago Microsoft also had a successful deal with Nokia to launch Nokia smartphones running Windows Platform. The devices are not rolled out yet, but will be available in market soon. In short Microsoft got itself a great deal.

After all this huge investments and deals, if Microsoft is still willing to acquire mobile unit is quite risky in terms of finance. Now few questions are worthy to ask here.

Nokia is the king in the mobile industry, and not just limited to manufacturing smartphones but also low and mid price GSM phones also known as disposable phones. Due to this reason Nokia is the most trustworthy brand for 3^rd world Countries and South Asian Countries. In case Nokia get itself a deal with Microsoft, the first preference for Microsoft will be to focus on smartphones running windows platform. So it might take down the crown from Nokia if the shipment of low and mid range phones gets affected.

This deal will not only affect its relations with other companies but also HTC, one of the most important partners for Microsoft for manufacturing Windows running phones.

Furthermore, this story came up when Nokia just announced to re-brand its services and change the name from Ovi to Nokia for all services working under Ovi name.

The time it was introduced, Google Blogger was the only reliable tool available on the web but it had and still has some limitations. Such as Blogger don’t provide self hosting facility and people love to have complete command on the playground they working on. However WordPress not only allows on-host WP hosting but also self hosting. Here we will be talking about Self Hosted WordPress. Unlike Blogger, WordPress provided the complete control over the code which encourages the developer bloggers to do more for it. In start it was also just another startup with big goals. But what made this Platform one of the best available platforms out there? we will discuss it here.

It’s Open Source

People love open source. They are easy to understand, manageable, secure, optimized for most of the systems, designed to keep improving and in case something goes wrong, patches and help is always on the way free of cost. The WordPress is purely built for the purpose of providing an ease for self publishing on the web, free of cost.

It is simple & User Friendly

It’s very simple how you make/edit/delete users and posts in your WordPress. The admin panel is user friendly and makes it easy for normal person to use it without any professional help. The Documents and Codex on WordPress official websites are designed very well and provide complete assistance on how to use it.

Highly Customizable

It is highly customizable and you can transform it on any platform you want. The wide range of Frameworks including Thesis, Genius, Catalyst etc make it easier to customize it on the go or add/integrate new features with the help of just few built-in function.

Quick Install and Ready to Go

The installation of WordPress doesn’t include any rocket science. You just need to have basic knowledge of FTP and Database. Even if you don’t have that knowledge you still can Google it and will come across hundreds of detailed articles describing and illustrating the WordPress installation method. Besides as it is one of the most popular platform out there, hundreds of web hosting providers “one click WordPress installed” facility. All you need to do is to request them, and they will do it on your behalf.

Improving all the time

Since its open source from very first day, it keeps improving, the feedback from the users and developers make it more improved. If you want to contribute for this great open source, you are always welcome to write for it. The first edition of WP with Plug-ins support was introduced in 2004 in Version 1.2 (Mingus). The updates didn’t stop rolling out and it was improved more and more in every new update.

Complete Command on your System

Once installed, you have complete command on the system. You have the access on everything you ever stored on it and best thing is even the source code is with you which allows you to make further changes you want.

The advance commenting system allows you to edit or block unwanted comments in just few clicks. Another exciting part is, you can customize it for search engine optimization with pre-defined or your own methods.

It’s more than just a Blogging Platform

Willing to use it as CMS, E-commerce, or Portfolio Showcasing? You got it. The after plug-ins and widgets will help you to transform your WordPress into anything you want. In start it was just introduced as personal publishing system to encourage bloggers to own their platform and do more with less, but latter the contribution of some amazing developers made it more than a blogging platform and in result now it can be used as CMS, showcasing Portfolio, Video or Picture Gallery, Corporate Site or even Online Store (with the help of e-commerce plug-ins).

Help is always just few Clicks away

The WordPress not only have professional developer users only but also the users with no code experience. To provide support to such normal users, WP official website is also running support communities where top notch developers also contribute by giving answers to the problems.

The crazy range of Plug-ins and Themes

The most exciting part of WordPress is the huge collection of Plugins and Themes. The official gallery on WordPress site showcases the high quality themes designed by passionate designers including some of world famous designers. And most of them are free of cost; however there are hundreds of design studios providing high quality premium paid themes according to the needs of the users.

Highly integrate able

Unlike other platforms, WordPress is quite integrating with other codes. The developers can customize or integrate it with their other networks. Such as many big news companies are running their News Website built in core PPH but News Blog running on WordPress, and they have integrated them seamlessly. Since its open source, so it allows all kind of plug-in development including Site Traffic Tracking, Spam Protection, Video Gallery and other Plugins.

The Future

The world is moving fast towards micro-blogging but still WordPress has managed to keep its place stable as the need of publishing detailed articles never going to end. Today almost every tenth site is running on WordPress platform, and it is only because of its reliability. Developers are still looking its future bright and still prefer to work for WP development instead of going for some other platform development.

First thing First, Make a Backup

Having an updated backup with you is a sensible step, but sometimes your hosting provider’s automated systems do it on your behalf. By and large hosting providers do create backup copy in every 48 hours, and this duration may vary with different hosts. For premium users they keep an updated backup which get updates every day, so in case something goes erroneous on their side or by you, all they have to do is to run backup files and your site will be back on track. However, in case you are moving to new host; you have to make a backup of all the files from FTP server and Database server. Most of the hosting providers don’t provide the remote access to the Database servers, so if you want to download database files, its little tough job. But if you are using any open source software like WordPress or Joomla running at backend of your site, you can help yourself with the plug-ins or built-in function. In case you are using WordPress for your site, you can have your backup within minutes, depending on the size of database. Just go to tools>export section and download the file for reference and this file will help you on fresh copy of WordPress installed on new server.

Notify your Audience

Notifying your audience is the best thing which you can do preserve your site respect. Place a sticky post or drop an email to the subscribers to notify them about possible downtime or bouncing back. You can utilize your social media accounts as well to notify your audience about server migration.

Purchase the Hosting Account from New Host

Now purchase a hosting account on new host. While purchasing, you will have 2 options, one is to buy new domain and other is to transfer existing domain. In my experience, you might face more downtime in buying hosting domain with existing domain. The reason is, domain transferring is a long procedure which need verifications from many departments and during that transferring procedure you might face little mean attitude from your old hosting provider. In this procedure first you have to request your existing service provider to unlock your domain as you want to migrate to new provider, and request them for AUTH CODE. During domain unlocking, service provider might take long time to convince you to not leave but can’t stop you with any force as you are the primary owner of domain. But of course during this your time will be wasted. Once you get the Auth Code, you will have to forward it to your new hosting provider and they will complete the procedure including whois record modification on your behalf, which obviously takes time. That is why I don’t really like that procedure but still many people prefer it.

In other option, you can purchase an account with some extra domain in case purchasing domain is essential by new hosting provider. When you are done with the purchasing step, you will receive FTP and Hosting Account access information of your new server.

Files & Database uploading procedure

The majority of the superior service providers can help you with that. All you have to do is to request them for migration. Just tell them you are coming from another service provider and have left it because of the downtime etc. in reply they will welcome you and will ask for the FTP and Hosting Account user name and passwords. Its okay, you can trust them now as these companies do keep a dedicated team for hosting migration cases, and they will upload all the files and database on their own. In case your new hosting provider turns out to be mean or don’t provider migration assistance in your purchased package, help yourself with the backup which you made from old account.

When should you migrate?

Deciding a right time for making the final step is pretty harsh. The best thing is, you go through your recent traffic log and highlight the days and timings in which you had lesser traffic. Remember, the more your site stays down, the more and more traffic you lose from spiders and social networks. Take a DNS changing step during highlighted time period.

Change the DNS and let the bouncing start

DNS alteration step is bit tricky but customer support of your new hosting provider can be really helpful. All you have to do is to go DOMAIN WHOIS Settings section from your old hosting account and have to replace NameServer 1 and NameServer 2 with the new parameters which your new hosting provider gave to you. Now the bouncing game has begun. It will take 24-48 hours to propagate the new DNS worldwide on every channel. During that period, people from Asia might be redirecting to your old server address in case the region channel record is not updated and people from Europe might be redirecting to your new Server address if the channel DB has been updated.

So what about the users which are still being redirect to your old server in that period? Well in case you still having relations with old hosting provider and didn’t move to new server with same domain, your site will be still up there. And a sticky note placed by you on your site will let them know about server migration.

Domain Transferring Procedure

In case you didn’t transfer to new service provider with the existing domain, you might want to transfer your domain as well so you don’t have to make site payments on two different providers. Now request your old service provider to unlock the domain and request for Auth Code and forward it to your new hosting provider and request them to affiliate it with newly existed account. After a standard procedure you will receive an email from Online NIC dept on your primary email address and will ask you to confirm the request.  Once done, you are good to go and your domain will be transferred and get locked on new service provider within 1 or 2 working days.

:: As Published on CIETRO by Saad Irfan (Cietro’s blog has been closed and few of posts are getting re-published on TechCline)

Got an idea? Stick to it

The basic thing you need about blogging is an idea. Yes an idea is gateway to everything. Got an idea? You think you can write on it? Good, get start, and stick to it. Don’t poke your nose in other unrelated topics, as you might not be able to cover them in proper way as you should be or your audience expect from you.

Utilize available sources

If you already having a site running, place an introductory banner or link to your new Blog on the sidebar or footer of that site. It will introduce your URL to spiders, as your old site might already have lots of spiders visiting your site every day. And trust me; spiders are really good in catching new URLs by sliding from one link to other link, because that is what they are programmed to do.

If you are a guest writer at any blog or site, use that URL in author bio. You should also ask to that site admin for little help in social media promotion. If he is kind enough to help you out, request him to suggest your FaceBook Fan Page to his fans.

Know your Audience

What kind of audience you are expecting on your site, as suggested by your site name and slogan? Give value to readers. By value I mean, don’t be mean when designing site layout. Your focus should be only to attract readers not to start earning money from first day by placing lots of advertisements on top and bottom of article. Be patient, and let your blog earn a name, and once the traffic is increased, you are good to put some ads on site and earn some bucks.

Branding

No doubt, Brand designing is truly important to grasp the attention on social media. An attractive logo on your blog and FaceBook fan page will increase the odds of fan chasing. Your logo stays with you from first day and the more it get spread on internet, more brand promotion you get.

Planning SEO & SEM Strategy

No problem if you don’t have any SEO or SEM specialist in your team. When the term blogging comes in mind, the name WordPress also rings the bell, as it is a most common blogging platform and available with variety of plug-ins, including plug-ins for search engine optimization. Help yourself with a SEO plug-in. You can find yourself free and pro versions both, depending on your needs and budget.  Don’t just adopt random URL structure, but decide and adopt according to your topics. If you are planning to publish articles on daily bases, use the permalink which includes date, month and year of published article. If you are planning to run blog magazine or not sure about publishing ratio, use the permalink with a category name in it. I will not get deeper in too much detail about how to set these permalink, just want keep it short. But mark my one suggestion. Don’t alter the URL structure again and again as it will cause to lose heavy amount of traffic from outer links. Read my article on Aext magazine about SEO Strategy.

Be patient

Being patient about hard work is a wise thing. Don’t rush to judge the outcome of your hard work. For any new URL it takes time to get a good Google Page Rank and Alexa Rank. Keep adding features and channels to increase more and more possible ways of increasing traffic, but by fair means only. Don’t do anything stupid or don’t practice any unfair (blackhat) means that you end-up with getting black listed your URL by Google.

One thing more, in case you are planning to utilize the domain which was already registered to any person in past. Do check the history of that domain to avoid any trouble.

:: As Published on CIETRO by Saad Irfan (Cietro’s blog has been closed and few of posts are getting re-published on TechCline)

One thing should be understood; every profession has its own charms and stresses. And there are some professions, in which only the people with keen interests survive. Blogging is one of them, and requires the passion of writing a lot.  People with interest of making money only, can’t survive for long.

In this article, I will highlight the few handy tips, which will guide you what to consider for successful blogging.

Write only, what interests you

The most common reason of getting fail in blogging is lack of interest of the writer about the topic. Don’t compare yourself to a political writer if you are technology geek. Write only what interests you, no matter its rare. But think of it as your field, where you can express yourself more possibly.

Exclusivity

Always remember, there are thousands of blogs out there breaking and publishing the news and articles on similar topics. And majority of people likes to read news only from bigger sources, unless you are a part of it. But if you are running your own new born news media blog, you need to give something unique to the readers to develop their interest towards your article. Once the reader has realized about your credibility, he will surely come back to read your further articles.

However, it doesn’t mean; you should only write on a unique topic. Certainly not, because in case you are publishing the news on some famous topic, which has been already covered out there by some other sites, if your article is having something more interesting for the readers then readers will love to read it. But again, first you need fan chasing, which is only possible by making a magnificent entry in blogging world by publishing some really great posts on your blog.

You and Your Audience

Once you are having traffic on your site along the comments from the readers. Start re-considering your writing style. Listen to your readers and their suggestions, because it’s for your own good. You can choose the topic to write which interests you, but the final product should also interest the readers.

Don’t bore the reader with text only articles

This can be most harsh part for you during finalizing the post, if you are not having a dedicated graphic designer for your blog. However you can search for pre-made pictures, and display it with photo credits. Graphical representation plays an important role in making your article successful. Reader might be not interested to read your article, but the glittering images can force the reader to go through whole text for once. So always use big impressive images to present your ideas or the title of the post.

Broad your Research

It’s good if you come up with a new good topic, and you start writing it and publish it, but it will be more if you do little research as well on the topic on which you are willing to write. It will give you facts and figures about the topic, which makes your article spicy for the readers.

Keep it short, and easy to read

Keep your article short and clean, because people prefer to consume less time on reading any article. Avoid cluttering and mentioning unrelated content. Especially the introductory price of the post must be according to topic, don’t lose the reader by making your reader bore or confuse about the topic.

:: As Published on CIETRO by Saad Irfan (Cietro’s blog has been closed and few of posts are getting re-published on TechCline)

In this step to step guide, I will be guiding you to make a custom ringtone out of your favorite music track.

To get start you will be needing iTunes, the software which is essential for your iPhone and Computer connectivity. If you don’t have the iTunes, you can get the latest copy of it from the link given below

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download

1. Open the iTunes and navigate to the tab called “Music”, the one highlighted in the picture

2. Pick your favorite song, and hit the play button and let the music play for duration of 0:24 to 0:40 seconds maximum. As soon the song reaches to this duration, stop the music.

3. Now right click the same song and select the “Get Info” from the Menu.

4. Move your cursor to the “Options” tab, and checked the “Stop Time:” and set the value to desired duration, such as 0:25. And hit the OK button.

5. Now right click the same song and select the “Create AAC Version” from the menu. As soon you hit the “Create AAC Version”, a new file will be created right under the selected file.

6. Now right click on the NEWLY generated file and click “Show in Windows Explorer”.

7. Here you need to change the file extension. To allow yourself to make this change, go to “Folder Option” from the same folder. (Organize>Folder & Search Options), and uncheck the field “Hide extensions for known file types” and return back to that folder.

8. Now you should be able to see file extension as “m4a” with the file name. Now change the file extension by renaming the file. Change extension to “m4r” instead of “m4a”.

9. Once you are done with the renaming the file, icon of the file should change and should be recognized as a Ringtone as shown in image.

10. Now double click the file to open, it should be automatically opened to iTunes under the tab of “Ringtones”.

:: If you are unable to see “Ringtones” tab. Navigate to “Edit>Preferences>General”  and make sure the Ringtones field is checked.

11. Now simply SYNC your Phone via iTunes and you are good to go.

12. After syncing your Phone, unplug the phone to navigate to “Settings>Sounds>Ringtone” and you should be able to see the newly generated Ringtone.

Enjoy your new Ringtone.

Special thanks to my friend @saadbassi for the tip.

In article, writer mentioned about Mark’s conference outside CA office where he makes an announcement about the permanent shutdown of Facebook as his company is causing disturbance in his life.

Most of people didn’t even bother to verify it from any reliable source and kept sharing the post on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. As soon the social media fans came across this news, anxiety was created among them and they tried to verify it from different sites, but were unable to have any comments on that news. In point of fact, the site which published this article is a humor or a parody site which is famous in publishing false news. At the moment I am writing this article, the site weeklyworldnews is unavailable because of server load, which shows how this false news or publicity stunt resulted into heavy traffic to the site.

First when I saw this news getting discus among my social media friends, I was surprised why this news is not on TV or sites like BBC or CNN. So you people don’t have to get worry, the Facebook is not about to get close as there is no confirmation of this news from Facebook’s officials. So chill out, and enjoy being obsessed to Facebook.