How to Succeed with a Blog? Learn from XKCD

Posted on May 18, 2010 by sharath

Observations are having a good relationship with your readers is amazing. Having good content is amazing.

> For humans, content is boring than good content.

> For Google, the relationship with your readers is all that matters (your popularity -> links).

So I think, that’s the reason why XKCD is popular today :

- The key to a successful blog is to create a relationship with your readers.
- I thought it was “do your updates so good that people want to read them.”
- I will discuss the generation of content on the third.
- Cool! I love the content.

How to: Add a simple Facebook share button to your Blog posts in 5 simple steps

Posted on October 13, 2009 by sharath

There’s a plugin for everything nowadays in wordpress but some plug-in just doesn’t work like we want them to work.. One of them is the Facebook share-me plugin. Although it gives you a counter just like the digg button, sometimes its really hard to customize and share it in the place where we want it on the page. So, I figured out a way to add the Facebook share-me without a plugin and you can add it in 5 simple steps in your blogger or WordPress blog posts.

Things you need:

1. A Facebook share button, if you don’t have one use the image link below. [ ]

http://thesharath.com/img/share-me-fb-button.jpg

Here is how you can add Facebook share-me in just 5 simple steps:

For Blogger blogs:

1. Write your blog post

2. Publish it

3. Now copy the published blog URL and Edit the published page again. [Eg. http://sharath-g.blogspot.com/2009/10/testing-facebook-share-plugin.html]

4. Grab this code and put in your URL

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=ENTERYOURPOSTURLHERE"><img src="http://thesharath.com/img/share-me-fb-button.jpg" alt="share to facebook button"></a>

5: Add the code to your post and republish the blog

Now try adding using the Facebook share button.

For WordPress blogs:

If you are adding Facebook share me to your Theme file, just add:

<a href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=<?php echo 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] . ' ' . $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']; ?>"><img src="http://thesharath.com/img/share-me-fb-button.jpg" alt="share to facebook button"></a>

This below script is a PHP script which automatically inputs the URL of the page.

“<?php echo 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] . ' ' . $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']; ?>“

Now isn’t that easy? Do you also have any such easy tips and tricks? Share it with us by posting comments below or you can contact us to send a tip!

Alert – Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and AOL Accounts Compromised too

Posted on October 7, 2009 by sharath

gmail, yahoo, hotmail

It was revealed that 10,000+ Hotmail accounts were compromised and all of the usernames and passwords of these accounts were posted online. It was a major security and scam issue, but it was thought to only affect Hotmail users.

Unfortunately, Hotmail was only the beginning. Google has now confirmed that thousands of Gmail accounts were compromised by an “industry-wide phishing scheme.” According to the BBC, the login data of over 30,000 Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Comcast, and Earthlink accounts have been posted online.

Phishing attacks are designed to steal your password. Here are the signs that it’s not real:

1. Google, Yahoo or Microsoft won’t ask you for your password in an email. No legitimate company will. Ever. Don’t give your password to anyone via email.
2. Even if it contained a link to a Google, Hotmail, Yahoo-looking site that asked for your password, I would be skeptical. There are some phishing sites that look very convincing.
3. It doesn’t make sense. Google, Yahoo, AOL or Microsoft has a ton of data storage capacity, they won’t be running out of space or asking your password.

10 tips to stay safe on Twitter

Posted on October 3, 2009 by sharath

Not very long ago we discussed about 5 phishing scams on twitter, and now its time to write some quick tips to help you avoid Twitter scams:

1. Be very careful signing up for work-from-home services connected with Twitter, and make sure you know exactly what you’re signing up for.

2. Don’t sign up for services that claim they’ll get you more followers.

3. Before entering your Twitter password on any sign-on page, check that the address bar shows http://twitter.com/. Beware of anything that uses another word on either side of “twitter.”

4. Change your password frequently, and immediately if you think your account may have been compromised.

5. Be wary about clicking on links, even ones that appear to come from people you know. Get to know those you are newly following before trusting any of their links.

6. Make sure your Internet security software is up to date so that if you do click on a bad link it will alert you if it takes you to a malware site.

7. Don’t automatically follow people who follow you. Visit their profile page and beware of anyone whose tweets consist mainly of links, or who appears to be following lots of people but has hardly posted any messages.

8. Never give away confidential information about yourself in a tweet, even if it all seems perfectly innocent.

9. Carefully check out programs that sign on to Twitter for you and fetch your messages. They can increase your security but they also need your password — so make sure they’re legit by doing a search first. Popular legit services includes TweetDeck and Twhirl.

10. Simply don’t believe any message that says you won something. You didn’t.

Hope this helps… Any tips comments, please post them below!

5 types of prominent Twitter scams and how-to protect yourself

Posted on September 27, 2009 by sharath

How to protect yourself as Twitter scam rise alongside the popularity of microblogging site Twitter.. 2009 has turned out to be “The Year of the Twitter Scam.” The growing popularity of microblogging sites like Twitter has sparked the rise in social networking scams.

I’m sure many of us know what twitter is all about, but for all newbies, simply put, Twitter is an Internet service where you can register for free to get your own page where you post comments and messages up to 140 characters long and that’s What is ‘twitter’ in short.

Here are the main types of Twitter scam and cures if you are affected:

1. “Easy-money, work-from-home” schemes

With this Twitter scam, firms claim they can show you how you can make money by promoting other people’s products to them. They charge a modest sign-up fee, typically a couple of dollars, but when you pay (with your credit card) you’re also signing up for a recurring monthly membership fee of around $40 for ongoing tips.

Now, there are many legitimate membership sites that charge recurring monthly fees. However, what makes these Twitter scams is that the membership explanation is either completely hidden or non-existent — and it’s almost impossible to cancel and get your money back, the only person making money from this is the twitter artist

Tip\Cure: There are many legitimate work from home jobs available, but this one is a fake – You don’t have to believe.

2. The Twitter phishing scam

Well, what did you expect? Anyplace where there’s a chance of netting someone’s personal details is a haven for phishing — the technique of fooling people into disclosing things like passwords, Social Security numbers and other confidential information. Even Facebook was not spared of the phishing scam.

Twitter phishing scammers have a number of different tricks for doing this but they mostly come down to the same fatal step, getting you to click a link that takes you to what appears to be a Twitter sign-on page where you give them your password.

Once they have that, they can pretend they’re you and use your account for evil purposes — like spreading more Twitter spam or infecting other people’s computers.

Tip\Cure: Change your password and never share it!

3. Instant thousands of followers

Do you want lots of followers? You might be tempted to sign up for a service that offers to deliver thousands of followers literally overnight.

They claim to be able to do this by identifying other Twitter users who automatically follow anyone who follows them. Some even claim they have built up databases of people according to their interests, so you can be sure you are targeting the right people with your “tweets.”

Well, they may or may not be able to do all of these things but they’re really no different from people who sell email addresses to spammers. They charge for the service, of course, and if you buy, you could end up being accused of trying to send Twitter spam and be banned from Twitter altogether.

Tip\Cure: Be real, and I’m sure people would like to follow you

4. Spreading Spyware and viruses

This Twitter scam is in full swing, using tempting messages like “Just saw this photo of you” followed by a link that, when you click it, takes you to a site that uploads malware onto your computer.

Sometimes, by exploiting the phishing technique outlined above, the message may seem to come from one of your regular followers, perhaps even a friend or relative. In reality, their Twitter account has been hijacked. There are some clever variations of this Twitter scam. For instance, one site offered a program that, when installed, supposedly would tell you who had been checking out your Twitter profile.

It did nothing of the sort. Instead, it installed spyware.

Tip\Cure: Don’t click on unknown links or install unknown applications.

5. Don’t add applications and grant permission to access your Twitter data

Although twitter conducts routine checks while approving applications, there are some applications which turn to the bad side after being approved. They try to access your information from the twitter API (once you have given them permission). Make sure, you don’t approve \ grant unknown applications permission to access your twitter data.

Tip\Cure: You can always revoke access in the twitter settings page for the applications which are misbehaving .

Have a safe tweeting!! If you have more tips\cures for all these twitter scams, please post your comments below. And as always, if you liked this post follow me on twitter or subscribe to the mYpassion RSS feed..

Some useful Youtube tips and tricks

Posted on September 12, 2009 by sharath

I watch lots of videos on Youtube so I’ve got some tricks of my own that I would like to share, which might be helpful while using Youtube. There are some tricks that you could do while loading a Youtube video.
Linking to point in video

You can easily create a link to a specific point in a YouTube video. To do this you add the time the video you want to start a link, eg # t = 45s.

E.g. A full link to a video in that case example: http://youtube.com/watch?WvJGfJQgk9kv=#t=45s. These are only the number of seconds, even minutes to add the feed: # t = 1m45s.
Start a video after certain time has elapsed

If you put a video on a website can only agree that a video is a certain time after a certain time. Thus it is useful if for example the first 15 seconds of a video can skip immediately. For embedded players is the possibility to make it start from a certain point. This is done by the embed code “& start = 15″ add to the two URLs.
Upload videos via Mobile

One possibility is to quickly YouTube videos made with a mobile phone to upload the video website. To do this you own a secret email address where you send the video back then automatically appears on YouTube. You find your unique email address on the page: youtube.com / mobile.
Download your own video

Its possible to download the videos you’ve uploaded. You can do this by going to the page (http://youtube.com/my_videos) with the summary of your videos. And you would get an option to download as an MP4 download “for that specific video.
Popup videos

Videos can be opened in a separate popup so you can leave YouTube itself. A quick pop open a video using the right button.
Automatically start videos

An embedded player is when the page is opened automatically. When a visitor opens your website a video will start playing immediately. Just add ‘& autoplay = 1′ to the URLs in the embed code.
Add tags

Once your video is uploaded you can add some tags to the video to adjust to them more. A list of these tags can be viewed at: http:// google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?Hl=en&answer=146,402 .

Disable Related Videos

In an embedded video at the end automatically related videos shows up in the video. These related videos are easy to disable through an addition to the two URLs in the embed code. To do this add “& rel = 0 ‘to the URL.

Create webcam movies

YouTube offers the ability to direct\make a video directly from the webcam (if you have one of course). It can quickly record a video and publish it online. Just go to on this page: http://youtube.com/my_webcam if you wanna give it a try.

Automatically loop a video again and again!

Videos are embedded on a website normally plays once and stops. By adding “& loop = 1″ in the URL to the video, it automatically repeats.
Shop from Youtube

Recently, even YouTube merchandise. The Google Store (googlestore.com / youtube.asp) you shirts, caps, socks, pens, notebooks and buying bibs that have a YouTube logo.

ps. Youtube is also planning on making money from paid previews for the new movies.
YouTube Channels
Once you have a YouTube account and videos you have uploaded your own YouTube channel automatically. This is reached by going to YouTube.com / user surfing event to meet then you can design.

Tips while embedding Youtube videos on your site!

Automatic HD

Videos in HD may thereby be positioned on a standard website which is not the case. To embed a video that plays in HD click the embed code on the video page on YouTube under the options, select “Play in HD ‘to. This post can also be activated by “& cf = 1″ to add the two URLs.
Hide Title on the Youtube video

Once a video is embedded, the title of the video is automatically displayed in the top left image. This title is also a code to hide by adding the two URLs in the embed code of a video. Then add “= 0 & show info” to the URLs for the title of one video standard to hide.

Hide Notes

As a user of YouTube videos with you own notes. If you have a video of yourself or someone else will embed in the notes is not possible for these notes to show. This add a new code to the two URLs in the embed code. To do this add “& iv_load_policy = 3 ‘to.
Play YouTube on your TV

There is a specially optimized version of YouTube for example a With a Sony Playstation or a PC with Media Center. An overview of the features you find on the page: youtube.com / youtubeonyourtv.

Full Screen button to delete

In the embed code of a video is the standard entry ‘& fs = 1 “included in the two URLs. By making the change from 1 to 0, it would remove the full screen button from the player.

Change colors in the embedded Youtube player

Standard if you will post a video on a website has the standard colors. The URLs in the embed code are two color particulars of which 1 is the background color and the other the border color, these are color1 and color2, both come twice. By now own values (0x back) to introduce you the color (HEX-codes) to desire change. For example color2 = 0xb1b1b1 becomes color2 = 0xFF6600 which means amber. So give the players than their own colors.

Download YouTube videos..
Download Videos from Youtube

Finally, it is possible to download videos from YouTube:

1. First is the Website mediaconverter.org. On the website you can link to a video input and you have the opportunity to watch the video in various formats to download. There is also a search function available to search for videos on YouTube to download. Media Converter is free to use.

2. Another useful website to download videos from YouTube is keepvid.com. On the website you enter the URL of a video and then a number of download links are available on the download page. You can right-click and selecting “Save target as” / “Save link as” to download.

Happy Youtubing!

Top 5 ways to help you NOT kill your blog instantly

Posted on September 1, 2009 by sharath

Passion leads to Blogging and when all the passion is gone, it leads to depression and death of the blog. Many people start blogging with the hope to reach the top but there are only few who make it to the TOP with their blogging career. When blogging, the focus needs to be on the content, visitor trending rather than on making money!

There is also lots of dilemma as to what to write about? And whenever you see something new, first thing on a bloggers mind would be “I need to blog that!” . If you are a beginner, then the first thing that you need is to let go of “I need to blog that!” factor from your mind.

Here are something’s which I personally thought would affect and kill your blog instantly.

Blog on something that you are Good at(keeping the content unique):

There are lots of blogs… I mean millions of blogs.. the only difference b\w your blog and others is the personalized content in your blog. Are you good in social media stuff? Did you notice something that none did on a social network? Now that’s worth blogging (Search engine likes fresh content).

Too many Ads\Affiliate marketing is a big NO NO.

It’s one of the main reasons why people don’t use a site very regularly.

People get the negative impression that the site is spam and since most of the ads (including the ads pretending to be content links) point to other pages on the same site (*.sys-con.com). On most articles it also does an overlay ad obscuring the entirety of the actual content. It’s an elaborate ad revenue and link share. Here is a funny picture of ads on a website and why people hate them so much.

Affiliate marketing is good to earn money, but it is a slow process, many blogger want to earn money rapidly and the end result will do some serious damage to the reputation of blog. So don’t make affiliate marketing your motto. Try to give information as your first preference and selling others product as your second preference.

Use the right social media

Promote your blog. Don’t wait for Google, Yahoo or Bing to index your site. Try joining social media sites like Facebook, twitter to promote your site for your readers and friends.

Know your grammar, re-read before you publish

I bet, I can write about 20 articles a day BUT do you think it would all have the correct grammar and people would be able to read it easily? I think NOT. There’s a famous saying “Slow and steady wins the race”, No matter how long it takes to write an article, re-read it yourself. Show it to your friends, maybe they can help you proof read your articles before publishing it to the world.

Customize your Blog design

Try to customize your blog design as much as possible, “First impression is always the best impression”. Many people visit the site more often just because of the web design and layout. The content that you post would be more interesting if the layout | design of the blog is easily Steerable. There are millions and millions of blog themes available on the web, but all it takes is your own personalized touch.

Well, for all you people who just started blogging, I hope this helps! If you like this post, please subscribe to our feeds via RSS or email, or follow me on Twitter to get faster and free updates. .

11 reasons why I hate an Iphone and annoyances – Tips and tricks

Posted on July 30, 2009 by sharath

Nothing’s perfect applies to Apple IPhones too. Here are the top 11 Iphone annoyances and what you can do about them:

Hiding apps – including the default ones

Iphone’s start screen is filled with shortcuts to prepackaged applications that come with the Iphone whether you want them or not. For example: An app for checking stocks whose shortcut can’t be removed from the Iphone interface. Although Apple’s thinks and insists us to use it, not everyone wants to check the Google’s stock price or for that matter the weather or even use calculator or notes. It sucks that the Iphone’s prepackaged apps can’t be hidden, deleted, or otherwise customized; this adds to the stubborn nature of Apple.

Can’t Run apps in the background

One of the best features of Iphone is streaming videos and radio using Wifi… But too bad it can’t be minimized \ run in the background.

Apple stores’ design is bad

There may very well be an app that suits your wildest dreams, but good luck finding it among the junk that populates so much of the Iphone’s App Store. Only a text search or sorting apps by release date will get you beyond the top 100 in each category, and even then you’ll turn up plenty of unwanted results and that’s a complete waste of time… maybe they need a show all button.

No can do contact list groups

On the Iphone, everyone’s your friend, even your boss. That’s because the built-in Contacts app won’t let you split work and personal contacts into separate groups or allow you to create custom groups. Everyone co-exists in one massive list unless you first create subsections on your computer. So what I’ve done is get an app to organize the contacts

Attach files to emails or store them

The Iphone isn’t a computer, I know that. But a Smartphone with so many capabilities and a generous hard drive should at least allow storing and sending of files. Photos and videos to be sent out directly only from the Iphone’s camera roll; also, you have no way to download Word documents and other files for editing and sending later.

Multimedia messaging

Almost every other cell phone in the market has the ability to send images to other cell phones via multimedia messaging, or MMS. Yes you can still e-mail those photos, but MMS is such a basic feature that it should’ve been in the Iphone from the start.

Bulk email management not enough… very poor

Though the Iphone’s 2.0 OS update added bulk e-mail management, it’s not very good and flexible. You can tap individual messages to mark them for deletion or movement to another folder, but there’s no “Select All” option for deleting or moving batches of mail at one time. It’s also not possible to run a search term and delete the results, so forget about easily wiping correspondence with particular people.

Jail breaking you’re way out of it

If you’re just fed up with AT&T’s service and want to stick it to the man, unlock your Iphone and switch to T-Mobile–the only other major U.S. carrier using the Iphone-friendly GSM radio band–until a better offer comes around. There’s always a chance that AT&T will punish you for being sneaky and you’re warranty for the Iphone ends the day you jail break it. For all you dare devils visit how to unlock your Iphone page by PcWorld

Where is the Bluetooth?

Right now, all you can use Bluetooth on the Iphone for are headset voice calls, and that’s it. This is sufficient for most people, sure, but we would like for Apple and AT&T to open up the Bluetooth profiles for the Iphone. This means we would like stereo Bluetooth and A2DP for streaming music wirelessly, Bluetooth tethering so we can use the Iphone as a modem, and finally we would like to have Bluetooth file-transfer protocol so we can transfer files to and fro the Iphone.

Battery drains out really fast

I always have to Turn Wi-Fi off when on the road and turn 3G off when using Wi-Fi. Sometimes I would also turn down screen brightness as much as possible to reduce the battery drain…I tend to forget that the battery won’t hold up for more than a day when its computer like functions are pushed to their limit.

Can fry an omelet on my phone too

Sometimes while streaming videos, radio or browsing on the internet the phone gets really hot… so maybe someday, I will try to fry an omelet on my Iphone and see how it cooks

Common workaround for some of the above problems – Jailbreak.

Jailbreaking is a process that allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to run unofficial code on their devices bypassing Apple’s official distribution mechanism, the App Store. Once jailbroken, iPhone users are able to download many applications previously unavailable through the App Store via unofficial installers such as Cydia and Icy. These applications can make changes outside of the application, which official applications cannot.

What do you think? Do you love your Iphone? Post your comments below. If you liked this post, please subscribe via RSS or email, or follow me on Twitter.

Know your search engine better – A closer look at Bing.com, Tips and tricks!

Posted on June 15, 2009 by sharath

Bing – Another search engine by Microsoft but this one is Good!! Now that Bing’s around for some time and is available for everyone to use, here are some quick tips and tricks that will help you do more with Bing.com and to know your search engine better.

1. Bing helps you search the Web, Images, Videos, News, Maps & more…

- Web searches:

All web searches have a “related searches” on the left side of the page. This gives you the recent & related searches that most people are commonly looking for. What’s more, you can also save the search results if you have signed into the Hotmail, Messenger, Xbox LIVE accounts right from the Bing search pages!!

- Image searches:

If you have a Facebook account and have set your privacy settings as public then don’t be fascinated to find your photo on the top of the list of Bing results. And yes, Bing also gives you many image search options like Size, Layout, Color, Style and People.

Size: allows you to filter image size types. For example small, medium, large, wallpaper sized images
Layout: filters Square, wide, tall
Color: Color images black & white images
Style: Photograph, illustration
People: just faces, head & shoulders & other.

- Video searches:

Best thing about Bing video searches is it lets you play the videos right from the Bing search window. If you only want to watch the preview of the video all you need to do is just move the mouse of the video show on the search results page.

Even the video search on Bing gives you filter options like length, screen size, resolution and source of the videos, which is really cool.

- News, Maps & More (more includes search trends):

Just like Google, Bing also provides the latest news results from all over the world and local results for the search terms and maps.
Bing has an additional feature called xRank, where you can see who and what everyone’s searching for most . This feature is something likeGoogle trends but here you can search for your favorite celebrities and compare them together .

2. Always use Bing worldwide for your searches, instead of the local search.

To explore the full version of Bing, go to this page and set English – US as your default region. You can now enjoy all the Bing features from anywhere (Global search results).

3. Add Bing to track Stock market.

Add Bing to your default search engine list on IE or Firefox!

4. Save and Email search results

With Bing, you can save your search history on to a local folder inside Bing or to your Windows Skydrive account. Alternatively, you may send your search queries to a friend via email or publish them on your Facebook wall via Bing. You’ll need Silverlight to share queries in Bing.

5. RSS Feeds of Search Results

Unlike Google or Yahoo, Bing offers RSS feeds for their web search results that you can subscribe to inside any feed reader. Your browser should be able to auto-detect the RSS feed of Bing pages or you can append &format=rss to any Bing search URL and convert it into a feed.

This RSS feature is only available for Web searches and currently not available for Image or Video search in Bing.

6. Bing quick search keywords:

Bing (and Live Search) supports a unique “contains” search operator that lets you find web pages that contain links to particular file types. Advanced keywords in Bing can give you better search results so that you find only what you want. Use the following keywords to help limit and focus your searches. Here are few keywords and examples.

Contains: – To search for websites that contain links to Microsoft Windows Media Audio (.wma) files, type music contains:wma.

Filetype: – To find reports created in PDF format, type your subject, followed by filetype:pdf.

Inanchor: or inbody: or intitle: – To find webpages that contain msn in the anchor, and the terms spaces and magog in the body, type inanchor:msn inbody:spaces inbody:magog.

Ip: – Type IP:207.46.249.252.

Language: – To see webpages only in English about antiques, type “antiques” language:en.

Loc: or location: – To see webpages about sculpture from the U.S. or Great Britain, type sculpture (loc:US OR loc:GB). For a list of language codes that you can use with Bing, see Country, region, and language codes.

Prefer: – To find results about football but that primarily pertain to the organization, type football prefer:organization.

Site: – To see webpages about heart disease from the BBC or CNN websites, type “heart disease” (site:bbc.co.uk OR site:cnn.com).

To find webpages about the PC version of Halo on the Microsoft website, type site:www.microsoft.com/games/pc halo.

Feed: – To find RSS or Atom feeds about football, type feed:football.

Hasfeed: – To find webpages on the New York Times website that contain RSS or Atom feeds, type site:www.nytimes.com hasfeed:football.

Url: – To verify that the Microsoft domain is in the index, type url:microsoft.com.

Google always fascinates me but I kind of like the new Bing now! Go on try Bing.com and you could find more …. If you liked this post, subscribe to the mYpassion RSS feed to get instant updates.

geek blog, tech blog, soup blog by sharath!

Tag Archives: tricks and tips