Reading feeds/headlines in FireFox

If you use firefox, you probably already know that firefox is much safer than other browsers, it's also highly customizable with themes and addons. Have you used the "Live Bookmarks" feature of firefox? It's a great time saver. firefox let's you bookmark the feed of the site/blog you are visiting as a "Live Bookmark"(Provided it publishes one). Everytime you explore your bookmarks, the feed is updated and headlines are shown in a submenu.

Here's how this feature is used:
After the page is loaded, look for the "dish" icon on the statusbar.

Hovering your mouse over the icon will show you if the site/blog publishes it's feed and clicking it will prompt you to save the site as "Live Bookmark". Once you are done saving, take your mouse to the "Bookmark" menu and explore the bookmark you just added. Firefox will fetch the feed for you and you will never have to fire up your standalone/web based feed readers anymore.

Never used FireFox? There is always a first time sometime.

Internet Safety for Girls

Here we discuss some general Internet Safety Issues and steps to take to improve security on the internet.

One of the most common ways by which Internet Security is compromised is by using a bug-ridden internet browser. It raises serious security concerns when a malicious hacker targets a known vulnerability in the browser. It is therefore recommended that you use a safer browser that is less prone to attacks. I have used FireFox+Google Toolbar for quite a while, I strongly recommend that you download and try it. You will see that with the help of the google toolbar, it is able to block annoying popups too. FireFox, is and always was free to use and can be uninstalled easily if you arent impressed with it.

Once the browser is secured, you should get the official updates for your operating system. Most users nowdays use Windows XP, So all XP users should get Windows XP Service Pack 2 to better defend you operating system. Get the Windows XPSP2 from any of the following locations:

• http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sp2/default.mspx



• http://www.softwarepatch.com/windows/xpsp2.html

The download can take a while as the files could be above 250 mb and make sure you have a genuine copy of Windows XP installed.

Install a good anti-virus package for protection against viruses. There are a few free Anti-Virus packages that offer decent security, such as

• http://www.grisoft.com/


• http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html


• http://www.free-av.com/


• http://www.bitdefender.com/PRODUCT-14-en--BitDefender-8-Free-Edition.html

If you are serious about internet security then you should consider using a commercial anti-virus package. Norton Anti-Virus and McAfee Anti-Virus are well known packages of which the latter is highly recommended if you can afford it.

Finally, As a layer of protection against SpyWares, download and install the following Anti-SpyWare utilities:

• Microsoft Windows Defender - [ Download ]
• Ad-Aware - [ Download ]
• Spybot - Search & Destroy - [ Download ]

Run these utilities on a regular basis to clean out the spyware junk from your system.

The tips above will improve your overall internet security, So how about a nice, friendly kiss for sharing these tips with you, Girls? ;-)

Update: Norton Security Scan is now included with the google pack, See what more is included in the google pack.

Image Hosting (ImageShack, Photobucket and more..)

Whenever you need to post an image on your blog, you will need to upload a photo to blogger directly. That however does not give you much freedom to work with the image and even renaming the image is not quite possible. It is therefore recommended to have a Image Hosting account for use with your blog. The good news is that there are many free image hosting providers that give you good features at absolutely no cost. My personal favourite is Photobucket, but below is a list of other free image hosting providers that you can use to post images on your blog. Many of them are now allowing free video hosting as well. Some of them will not require you to register with them too.

http://photobucket.com ( Images + Videos )


http://www.imagecabin.com/ ( Images + Videos +MP3 & more.. )



http://tinypic.com/ ( Images + Videos )


http://imageshack.us/ ( Images + Videos )



http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/ ( Images )



http://www.freeimagehosting.net/ ( Images )



http://www.theimagehosting.com/ ( Images )



http://www.imagevenue.com/ ( Images )



http://www.piclynk.com/ ( Images )



http://www.filehigh.com/ ( Images + Videos + Cursors )



http://www.theimageplace.net/ ( Images )



http://www.imgplace.com/ ( Images )



http://xs.to/ ( Images )



http://www.myonlineimages.com/ ( Images + Videos + ZIP & more.. )

FavIcon for Bloggers

What is Favicon?

Favicon is an acronym for "Favorite Icon". Nearly all professional sites use it nowdays. As it shows up right next to the address line of the adressbar and favorites list in Internet Explorer and probably on other browsers too. If you have your pages hosted either on paid hosting or free hosting, hosting the favicon is not a problem, however if you are using a blog service, you are out of luck as all blog providers would reject the *.ico extension. This is where you need a free service provider such as http://www.myfavatar.com/

Use this smart tool to get a favicon from an image stored on your disk. you can get an animated favicon using this free favicon tool. Just follow this link and get your favicon in seconds http://zerodollarchallenge.blogspot.com/2006/05/favicon-generator-form.html

Blogger Hits Counter

How do I find out who has been to my blog? How can I track my visitors? How can I see where my site visitors are coming from?

These are the most frequently asked questions by bloggers. The solution is to install a "Hit Counter" on your blog!

[Google Analytics Screenshots]

Once you install a Hit Counter on your blog, you can get lot of useful information about your blog. like Popular Pages, Referring Pages, Keywords, Geographical location of visitors, Browser Statistics etc.

Although there are several free "Hit Counters" from which you can choose from, there are three services which are the most popular with bloggers. StatCounter, Google Analytics and Sitemeter.

[Statcounter Screenshots]

[Sitemeter Screenshots]

Here are other hit counters(free services) with our recommended
ratings:

Google Analytics
http://www.sitemeter.com
http://www.activemeter.com
http://www.histats.com
http://www.whatcounter.com
http://www.shinystat.com
http://hitslog.com
http://www.addfreestats.com
http://www.ezwebstat.com
http://www.advancedsitestats.com

We blog for YOU! So, If you would like to help us by a donation, which
will encourage us too bring more articles like this. No amount is too
small for donations.

PageRank Link Directory

The PageRank Directory contains links to directories that accept submission of individual sites or blogs. Please feel free to browse through. I estimate that this page will become a PR2+ page over time.

Web Directory - Add URL to Search-Group.com
Eastlink Directory

ShareThis BookMarking Widget

Another free service from http://www.sharethis.com offers a bookmarking widget for your blog(s). This bookmarking widget allows the visitor of your blog to bookmark your blog in any of the popular social bookmarking sites, much like the widget from http://www.addthis.com ( read the post here for details ). you can also customize the widget to match the "look and feel" of your page.

Installing Google Analytics in Blogger

To track your site/blog using analytics you need to have an account with Google Analytics, If you already have a Google Account you can use that username/password here or you can always sign up for a free google account. In either case you need to go to http://www.google.com/analytics [ Opens in a New Page ]


After you login with your username/password, you will be in your dashboard area.


Scroll down to the bottom of the page and find the link to "Add Website Profile".

On the next screen select the option to "Add a profile for a new domain".

Click continue and on the page that follows, type the URL of your blog.

The final screen will generate two tracking codes for your blog. make sure you are on "New Tracking Code(ga.js)" tab

This is the code that you need to copy/paste on your blog. We are now going to install google analyics tracking code to your blogger blog.



Go to http://www.blogger.com [ Opens in a New Page ] and login with your id/password.



Once you are logged in go to your dashboard, where you have to click the "Design" "Layout"  link(beside the settings link) of your blog. make sure you are on the "page elements" sub-tab, where you can easily add and arrange page elements.

You will now add a gadget by clicking the "Add a Gadget" link

From the popup that appears, you can add many gadgets to your blog, this time we need to scroll down to the HTML/JavaScript option and click the "+" sign beside it to add it to your blog

This will open a final popup where you paste your code(your google analytics code) under the "content" textarea. I prefer not to give it a title because the code is invisible, so leave the title field blank and click the button to "save changes"

Getting paid for blogging?

Are you getting paid for blogging? or getting penalized by google for posting paid reviews?
It is now official that google is taking action against sites/blogs with paid posts/reviews.

Bloggers and Site Owners who were members of "Paid for Blogging" sites such as PayPerPost.com, Smorty.com, SponsoredReviews etc. must have noticed that their google PageRank has been reduced to 0.

Google's official statement in its webmaster guidelines says:

"Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results."

The guidelines add that not all paid links violate their guidelines, since "Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results"

It recommends that the links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the <a> tag "(The most preferred method in blogs) or Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file.

If a blog/site has lost its PageRank and wants to get it back then it has to comply with the google webmaster guidelines by using the above mentioned recommended practices. Once that's done, you can follow Matt Cutt's advice and read the Official Google Webmaster blog which suggests :

"The site owner can address the violations of the webmaster guidelines and submit a reconsideration request in Google’s Webmaster Central console. Before doing a reconsideration request, please make sure that all sold links either do not pass PageRank or are removed"