My Weight Reduction Plan

Posted by Zombie Head | 6:55 AM | | 2 comments »


Recently I received a message from the author of 'My Weight Reduction Plan' blog. He seems to be on a mission of cutting off few extra pounds. Here's what he has to say:



Hi,

I am on a weight reduction mission and following a 30 days schedule to lose my 10 Kgs, along the way I'll be sharing my tips and daily routines about how am I gonna do it. Kindly support me by giving me your important feedback.

My Weight Reduction Plan
http://myweightreductionplan.blogspot.com/

Orkut Community:
http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=51771838

I hope everyone will benefit from experiences.



I reckon this is going to be very interesting as this guy has set himself a seemingly impossible target. Let's see what happens.


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Blogger Templates: Darkspark

Posted by Zombie Head | 12:01 AM | 1 comments »

10 Blogging Secrets You Must Know


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Blogger Templates: 8 more...

Posted by Zombie Head | 11:57 PM | 0 comments »

Blogger XML Templates: 8 more...


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Blogger Templates: Picasa Web Albums Slideshow with Fullscreen


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Gmail Drive, not Google's ?

Posted by Zombie Head | 11:59 AM | , | 1 comments »

Gmail Drive is a third-party application that allows utilisation of the humongous greater-than-2-GB Gmail mail box as storage space. As mentioned, it is a third-party tool, meaning Google does not support its use. From Wikipedia: “GMail Drive is an experimental package that depends on but is not provided by Google. Changes in Google’s Gmail system may render Gmail Drive temporarily or permanently inoperable. Google’s terms of service for Gmail do not explicitly ban or permit Gmail Drive or the use of Gmail space for files other than email. Heavy use of a GMail Drive can trigger at least a temporary suspension by Google.”

Once installed, Gmail Drive creates a virtual drive on your system, and this is visible along with the other drives in My Computer. Unlike other drives, this one does not have a drive letter associated—it is just Gmail Drive called Gmail Drive. Use GD as you would any other drive on the system. Double-click to open the drive. If you haven’t logged in yet, a pop-up will ask you to do so. Once logged in, you can see the files that already exist in the drive. Right-clicking on the drive and checking its properties will show the used and free space.

To store files, you copy and paste as you normally would in the case of any other drive. GD integrates into Windows Explorer and shows up under the “Send to” options when you right-click on a file. Since the data needs to be uploaded to the drive, the speed of your net connection will dictate the process time.

In case you’re wondering if there’s a way to know if the mailbox is being used—you’d be dead not to notice! What Gmail Drive does in the background is send an e-mail with the file as an attachment. These show up in your Inbox as sent by “me”. All file manipulations, like creating of a new folder and transferring of files between folders, will also show up as e-mails in the Inbox. If you uninstall Gmail Drive, the files in the drive will still be accessible from your Inbox.

In conclusion, GMail Drive is a handy application that allows putting the Gmail mailbox to better use. But given Google’s dis-pleasure regarding extensive use of the tool, it is not recommended for users planning to store and retrieve large files frequently on a daily basis. While it does accomplish its core task of uploading files to Gmail without hassles, the semi-polished nature of the product cannot escape a frown.


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Google Hello, End of GTalk?

Posted by Zombie Head | 3:13 AM | | 1 comments »

After Google Talk, Hello is another Instant Messaging (IM) service by Google, with a different take. It is an application for sharing digital images with friends—no Web sites and no e-mail required to share your photos with Hello. The only requirement is that both the sender and receiver need to have the Hello program installed. Get it at www.hello.com.
Picasa launched the Hello service under the Google’s umbrella to share photos using P2P. You can share with your friend while chatting—no resizing high-quality photos or wasting time waiting for the images to upload. Blogger users can also upload photos and add captions directly through Hello. It also has Bloggerbot, which is in your buddy list, and directly uploads photos to your Blogger blog. At present, Hello only supports JPEG files.

What it does?

You can send images using IM and simultaneously add comments
and chat with your friend. The receiver will receive images in a few
seconds (depending on your connection), and then the images can
be saved or printed. If you’re well-versed with IM messengers, then
using Hello should be a piece of cake.

Your photos and chat are secure, as the application connects
you by peer to peer networking even when your firewall is on. All
chat and photos transferred are protected with 128-bit Advanced
Encryption Standard (AES) encryption.

Friends List

This is the list of all your friends on the Hello network. When you’ve got pictures to share, look here to see who’s online.



Sending Pictures

Hello keeps a library of your recently shared pictures, so you can find things quickly without browsing through your files.


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Trackback your blog.

Posted by Zombie Head | 9:06 AM | | 0 comments »

A Trackback is one of three types of Linkbacks, methods for Web authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking, and so referring, to their articles. Some weblog software programs, such as Wordpress, Movable Type, Typo and Community Server, support automatic pingbacks where all the links in a published article can be pinged when the article is published. The term is used colloquially for any kind of Linkback.

Trackbacks are used primarily to facilitate communication between blogs; if a blogger writes a new entry commenting on, or referring to, an entry found at another blog, and both blogging tools support the TrackBack protocol, then the commenting blogger can notify the other blog with a "TrackBack ping"; the receiving blog will typically display summaries of, and links to, all the commenting entries below the original entry. This allows for conversations spanning several blogs that readers can easily follow.

Followup Links:


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On the internet, everyday we are bombarded with a lot of data (data could be in many forms news, photos, songs).

  • RSS Feeds (Really Simple Syndication) combined with the RSS Reader helps us in reducing the number of sites to visit to almost zero for any new data.

  • Mash ups helps us in aggregating, filtering, sorting of the data.
The Mashups tools which are emerging are easy to use (just drag and drop). Examples of few of the tools are:

I have tried out Yahoo Pipes and its pretty much to easy to create a mashup. The power and easiness can be best explained by looking at the source of a mashup in Yahoo Pipes. Yahoo Pipes by default publishes all the mashups as a RSS feed also.

Example: Flickr Photos Pipe

This yahoo pipes mashup picks up all my favourites photo websites and aggregrates the items and gives it as a single RSS feed. Look at the source of yahoo pipes which quickly explains you on the aggregation happens.


  1. Picks up all the links added as favourites in delicious with a specific tag (in this case the tag is "tag:special" / "tag:feed")

  2. For each site, get all the items (i.e. news items)

  3. Aggregrate all the items

  4. Sort the items in descending order of publishing date / time

  5. Publish the items and get it as a RSS feed
I used this RSS feed in any RSS Reader to view the photos. Also through this, whenever I come across a new photo site I am interested in, I just tag it in delicious and it automatically comes up in the feed.


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mGinger is an innovative and wonderful idea of IIM grads.Read on to know what mGinger is all about. The following article has been taken from the mGinger portal itself.

With mGinger we, mGinger employees and you who have joined, have started nothing short of a revolution. A revolution in the advertising space. It is a new concept, a new paradigm.

Aren’t advertisements a pain?

• You switch your TV on wanting to watch your favourite show and what do you get? A horde of Ads.
• Switch on your radio…same deal.
• Try reading some news and more ads.
• Hoardings, Tele-marketing calls, carpet-bombing SMS ads.

The list goes on and on….
They tax our brains, squeeze out our energies and turn us into zombies.

But take a second and think about this:
What if they request for your permission before exposing you to ads? What if you are exposed to only those ads that are relevant to YOU at that point in time?Then, the nature of the exposure changes. Ads turn into “Usable Information”. They empower you both in terms of knowledge and profit.

mGinger is a revolution because for the first time in Indian history, the users are asked for permission. The users are asked for their interests. The users are requested for a convenient time and convenient number of ads per day.

Then, should you get paid for such useful information?
No! Because the information itself pays you (since you will use it).
But, the ground reality is, however precise your targeting gets there always remain some out-of-control variables which decide whether the information is useful or not. mGinger pays you for this wastage since it taxes your mind and time.

We welcome all of you to this revolution where each one of you gets empowered, gets to lead and gets the power to tell the big advertisers what you would like and what you wouldn’t. Every advertiser would like to become your friend and this gives you a chance to tell them how. Mind you, this will be a ground-up and a tough fight. A fight because we are going against conventionality, against a wildly prevalent attitude of taking us consumers for granted.But, eventually we will win because we believe it is the right way.






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An introduction to RSS

Posted by Zombie Head | 10:01 AM | , , | 0 comments »

You've just come across a blog that has interested you a lot. You've also read all the 64 posts in that blog. But the last post is on March 8th, 2007 and you're not sure when the next post would come. You've bookmarked the page and open it each morning to see if there is a new post.

You've also discovered a nice news site and bookmarked it. News items are published at the rate of 5+ every hour. Unfortunately, details behind the sitting postures of Mr. A and Mrs. A in their 'celebrity' wedding don't interest you much. You would like to just glance through these news and read details of only those news that you are really interested in.

Cutting the story short - various sites, various frequencies, various interests and you want to read them all. 2 or 3 favourite sites would be fine with bookmarking. But what do with a list of 50+ sites consisting of news, stories, videos, photos, reviews, and the sites on the other side of the Web.

RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication' (latest expansion). It is part of something that is called Web Syndication. Answering the recent question arising in your head, it just means sharing a part of a site's information with other sites, applications, and more in a common format. So, RSS is one such format.

"When people ask me what RSS is, I say it's automated web surfing. We took something lots of people do, visiting sites looking for new stuff, and automated it. It's a very predictable thing, that's what computers do -- automate repetitive things." - Dave Winer (one of the programmers for RSS)

Requirements:
1. Feed
So, an RSS feed is actually a portion of the website content in a particular XML format. It also resides in the servers along with the regular site for the various 'feed readers' to read. If you are using the browser, you should be able to see an orange indicator at the right end of the address bar which implies than an RSS feed is available for that site. Other notifiers could be present in the page itself. Random info - Cricinfo provides 12 RSS feeds.

2. Readers
You'll need a 'reader' to display the XML feed from the sites in a nice user-friendly view with other related bells and whistles.

a. Desktop Readers:
You need to download a .exe and install it. You can add your feeds to it. FeedReader and SharpReader are two freewares the poster found in FileHippo.

b. Readers in your browser:
Reading feeds right along with the browser is a fun idea as it goes along with your browsing. Firefox has 'Live Bookmarks' through which you can view the titles of the various items (headlines?). If you want to try it out, just click on the orange icon mentioned in the previous point and save it to your 'Bookmarks Toolbar'. You can see the bookmark reveal a drop-down having a list of titles.
However, most would want something better in functionality. There are some good extensions that help you in managing RSS feeds almost like a desktop reader. There is a link right at the end about a few of the Fx RSS addons. Try out RSS Ticker. It is something like the 'running news' on 24x7 news channels.

c. Online readers:
This is about using sites as a reader. The main advantage of this is that it is online and you can access your feeds from almost anywhere on Planet Earth. The poster uses Google Reader while Netvibes (has a whole world in it) has a faithful following too. [Others?] Google Gears now caches content so that it can be read later even without a net connection.

3. Adding the feed to the reader
Clicking on the orange icon helps you add the feed to Live Bookmarks, Bloglines, My Yahoo!, Google Reader or any other desktop reader you might have. If you are using an online application not mentioned, just add the URL and the reader will pick up the RSS feed.

Feed length
Feeds can be complete or partial. As implied, partial means you would have to read the rest in the main site. E.g. Autoblog and Blogger provide complete feeds while IBN provides only partial feeds (thanks a lot to them for that).

Anything other than RSS?
Oh yes, a recent standard called 'Atom' is supposed to be superior to the RSS format. However, no need to think too much about the details as most feed-readers gobble both formats with ease.

Conclusion
Hope you've settled to whichever method you are comfortable with. You will soon realize that you are covering a lot more online. Read your news, catch up on the latest videos, see who's editing what in Wikipedia, monitor the latest eBay auctions and of course, wait for your fav blogger's post.

Quoting from some blogger - Now, you don't go to the sites; the sites come to you.

However, soon you'll start being curious about what your neighbour is browsing or you'd want to know what's the latest news that has grabbed peoples' attention. Group, community, social, sharing - just remember these words till the next post in this series.


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Ever heard of Firefox? I
hope most of us are quite comfortable playing with Firefox and are currently viewing this page in the same. If not, you may like to read about this web-browser here. Not convinced? Bear with me till the end of this post.

An amazing aspect of Firefox is its add-ons. Browsers like Opera have a lot of inbuilt features that are done by Fx add-ons, but still, the large community involved with Fx results in a much larger variety. I am listing some of my favorite add-ons that I use almost on a daily basis at home.

1. The first thing I install after installing Firefox is Restart Firefox. It adds 'Restart Firefox' under the File menu and makes it easier to get-out-and -come-back when your browser is faced with a problem [After installing add-ons, an option is present by default to restart Firefox].
Update: It seems 'Restart Firefox' is no longer supported. I am now suggesting Quick Restart. This has a keyboard shortcut too. [Install]

2. Next, I go for Tab Mix Plus. In short, this extension takes the experience of Tabbed browsing a step higher. You can change the tab sizes, get multi-row tabs, mouse-based tab-operations, modify link properties and a whole lot more. It also has Crash Recovery but I use Fx's Session Restore. [Install]

3. Time to color your tabs now. Colorful Tabs is a nice add-on that gives colors to various tabs. The colors are not too dark. You can also adjust how dim the non-active tabs should be. Personally, I wish I could give each derived-link-in-new-tab the same color as the from-tab with newly opened blank tabs getting new colors. Still a great add-on for having a colorful tab-bar. [Install]

4. Want to listen to music without moving away from your browser? Use Foxy Tunes. This add-on allows you to control quite a few media players like Winamp, WMP etc from your browser window itself. VLC Player support is missing though. [Install]

5. There is some pleasure in knowing that your onsite friends are working while you are at home browsing away. FoxClocks could help you keep track of various times across the globe. You can even make multiple clocks to be displayed on your status bar. [Install]

6. In the busy schedule that we are faced with, it is natural that we forget some important tasks. Though in office it is Outlook's Calendar that helps me, ReminderFox is what I use at home. Daily tasks such as to make a call at some time, go for dinner, go online etc. are covered and so are annual formalities [wishing birthdays/anniversaries]. [Install]

7. In sites like Pligg etc., you might come across links that are not clickable links. Linkification will convert all such links (including mailto: ) to clickable. [Install]

8. Now and then we come across sites that are 'IE-only'. Many a site don't behave well with non-IE browsers. IE Tab is a good solution. All it takes is just one click at the bottom-right section of the status bar to switch from Fx engine to IE engine and your IE-only site is out there in Fx too. [Install]

9. Winding it up with an add-on I use sometime. Specifically designed for people who can't post in English. :) Leet Key helps you to type in 133t. Just go to a text box and type your message and watch it appear on screen in 133t. Impressive.[Install]


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PTC (Paid To Click) websites let you make a few bucks everyday with little or no effort. All you have to do is click a few ads, read a few mails or complete a few surveys. Many PTC websites require you to click on an ad and view it for 30 seconds, wherein your account will be credited. When your account balance reaches the minimum payout value, you can request for a payout. Payments are generally made to a PayPal account. Staying active in a number of these programs can earn you steady and regular income. A lot of PTC users pay their entire monthly bills with revenue earned from PTC websites!

Many of them are fake and plenty of others get bankrupt or close their business. So, I have carefully compiled a list of 'best of the best' programs which I have personally tested.





AdBux pays $0.01 per click and $0.01 per referral click. It has a large consumer base of over 300,000. Payments are made via PayPal. Minimum payout is $10.
Signup for AdBux





bux.to is one of the best PTC websites. It became very famous in very little time.In this program each click is worth 0.01$ Minimum payout is $10 via PayPal. There is a 100% 1 level referral commission. In other words you get 0.01$ for each click your referrals do! They accept members from worldwide.
Signup for bux.to





With Cash Crate I have found it very easy to consistently make a good amount of money every single day simply by taking part in surveys and doing free offers.There is a minimum pay out of $10.The $10 payout can easily be reached in less than a day’s worth of participation!

Cash Crate gets paid by the advertisers for our participation and they pass 75% of that money back to us. That is how they are able to stay in business and the earnings stay sustainable.
Signup for CashCrate





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US Downloader Guide!

Posted by Zombie Head | 3:53 AM | | 0 comments »

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.


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