Junglee.com : Welcome to the Jungle

Here comes Amazon.com at last as Junglee.com, a company (domain name) that Amazon had acquired in 1998.

Junglee.com is still in its beta and offers 1.2 crore products, 90 lakhs of them are books, from over 14,000 brands and hundreds of retailers. Some of the big retailers listed on Junglee are homeShop18, UniverCell, Hidesign, Gitanjali, The Bombay Store, Fabindia, Bata India Limited, Dabur, Microsoft India Store, Reebok, Indiaplaza, bookAdda and Amazon.com.

Due to government restriction on FDI in multi-brand retail, Junglee.com is just an “Online Shopping Service” which helps user to compare price and availability from other e-retailers. You cannot buy products directly from Junglee.com. As of now IT’S NOT AN E-RETAILER and acting as a postman.

Few Observations:

• Price offered by Amazon on junglee.com is just a currency conversion from dollar to rupee. Check the snapshot given below. I searched for a book on jungle.com, 4 Indian retailers + Amazon are offering this book. Look at the price differences there. Amazon is selling that book 10 times costlier than others, also note the price offered by amazon, its 2,430 rupees and 40 paise. Where the heck does this 40 Paisa come from?

I wasn’t expecting this from Amazon. All my high hopes of Amazon India went down the drain.

• Existing Amazon users can login using their Amazon credentials. Users can then review products and even ‘Like’ products as well as sellers. "Hey Zuck, I think you should take a closer look of Amazon’s like button. Forget about raising 5 billion$ by going public, just hire a lawyer, pay him few hundred thousand dollar and get few billions from Amazon." :P
• 
  Junglee doesn’t have prices from FlipKart, myntra, infiBeam and Yebhi.
• Indian retailers can sign up for Amazon Product Ads to list their products on Junglee.com and advertise their product selection to drive targeted customer traffic to their websites and physical stores at zero cost. To get their products on to Junglee, retailers have to sign up for an account, upload their product catalog and Junglee takes care of the rest.

Do you think, Amazon is so dumb that it is helping its own competitors to grow their businesses?

Here is the master plan: By providing a common platform to consumers and retailers, Amazon knows what a customer wants and what are the prices offered by other Indian retailers (competitors) in real time. So it’s simple, Amazon will be selling products cheaper than what other Indian retailers are offering. Eventually, this will kill the competition.

Amit Agarwal (the author of leading tech blog labnol.org) has developed a bookmarklet that lets you compare prices of books on Junglee.com with that of Flipkart and Infibeam in one go.

Check this out “Is Junglee Cheaper than Flipkart or Infibeam?”

Read more... :)

HTML5, the future of the web.

More and more game companies are turning to the HTML5 web format to create cross-platform games. The latest is Pangalore, a social and mobile game startup based in Seoul.

Pangalore was founded in May to create games that can run on multiple platforms by using HTML5 as their technical foundation. Pangalore built from scratch a game engine that can work within the limits of HTML5, said Doyon Kim, chief product officer and co-founder of the company who runs the office in San Jose, Calif., in an interview.

Pangalore is announcing two new Facebook and mobile games today: Artfit and Wild West Solitaire. Both are slow-moving, cartoon-like titles that accommodate the main weakness of HTML5 now: slow speed. Pangalore is also working on two more titles, Pop the Candy and Bubble Prince, for release later. Kim says the company will release titles every couple of months.

“The benefit of HTML5 games is that you can start them on one platform and then finish them on another,” Kim said. “We designed our games from the start to be multiplatform games.”

While young, the company has a big staff. It has 25 employees and funding from NHN, the largest online game portal in Korea. The good thing about HTML5 games is they can run on just about any platform, from Facebook to Android phones and tablets. It runs on browsers on mobile devices, PCs, and Macs. Pangalore is also making native format games for the Apple iPhone.

Kim said that deeper strategy and role-playing games are in the works as well, using the Unity 3D game engine. Those games, including a simulation title, will be coming in early 2012. Among the team are some experienced game creators including those who created Ragnarok Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game with 3 million players in North America.

The games are free-to-play and are accessible from a single Facebook account that works across all devices. Kim co-founded the firm with Brian Kang, former chief executive of Gravity and a former venture capitalist. Kim previously founded Dialpad Communications, Opinity and Spotplex. Rivals included other HTML5 game makers such as Moblyng and Zynga.

The Wild West Solitaire game sets players on a card-playing journey along the historic Oregon Trail, where you race against the clock or friends to play solitaire challenges. Artfit is a falling blocks game where players must place the pieces into forms to score points and advance through increasingly complex levels. Over time, HTML5 is expected to show better performance so that a wider variety of games will be playable on it. Pangalore hopes to be ready when that happens.

Read more... :)

Facebook Now Has Over 800 Million Active Users

It has been announced that the world’s most popular social networking service has reached over 800 million active users.

The 800 million figure isn’t just the total number of signups, these are 800 million active users: users who have logged in to Facebook at least once during the past 30 days. Now that’s a big, big achievement for FaceBook!

Read more: http://blog.dreamstarts.in/facebook-now-has-over-800-million-active-users/

Read more... :)

WDYL.com by google – What Do You Love?

www.wdyl.com is Google's new product based search engine that was launched quietly today. WDYL (What Do You Love?) lets you search across all the google products like 'Google Translate', 'Google Trends', 'Google Books', 'Sketchup', 'YouTube', 'Google Alerts' at one place.

As usual the user interface of WDYL is very simple and clean with single search box with a button image of white heart on blue background. Cute... The interesting part is that when you brows WDYL without www., you get a 404 (page not found) error.

Type in search box and click on heart, WDYL will display search result from different google’s products on single page neatly arranged in a grid format. There’s a slider on the left part of the page which you can move to quickly access bottom of the page. A big thing that is missing here is Google search result. I think Google search result was supposed to be the first one to be included in this. I have no idea why Google has excluded "Google Search Result" from WDYL?

The concept of WDYL reminds me of iGoogle, a service that lets you add simple apps/websites to your own personalized portal. Overall, it’s a cool idea. You will be able to browse more of the found content without leaving the page. I also found out a few Google products that I didn’t know existed. Cool Idea but I can’t see much use of it in long term. I am including WDYL in my Google’s failed products list. Just another failed product by Google.


WDYSAWDYL (What Do You Say About WDYL(What Do You Love?)?). Why don’t you try out WDYL with different search query and share your interesting discoveries and experiences with me through comment to this post below?

Read more... :)

Google to scan 250,000 old British Library books

Google Books has an ambitious mission statement: "Google Books is an effort to make all of the knowledge contained within the world's books searchable online."

That's a tall order, but the company will make a dent in it with a new agreement to scan 250,000 books from the British Library.

The books, pamphlets, and periodicals are all out of copyright and come from between 1700 and 1870. This is a nice companion project to the British Library's new 19th Century Books app that will eventually put thousands of old books on your iPad.

To put it in perspective, these books were generated during some famous events you may have heard of, including the French Revolution, the invention of rail travel, and the end of slavery. Google will foot the cost for this mammoth digitizing effort.

The digitized books will be available free online through Google Books and the British Library site. Readers will be able to view, copy, and share the text for non-commercial uses.

Thank you Google. I appreciate it.

Read more... :)

Internet Explorer 9 : First look

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is upcoming new browser by Microsoft. Microsoft has released its Beta version 3 days back on 28^th October. Internet Explorer 9 is Hardware-accelerated HTML5. Internet Explorer 9 moves rendering of text and graphics from the processor, to the graphics card. That means, your website’s contents/images will be clearer and video will play smoother on Internet explorer – 9. When I first came to know about IE9, I had few questions in my mind.

1. is it fast enough?
2. is it compatible with different versions of windows?
3. What are the new security features in this new browser?
4. is it good/cool enough to win back former IE users who have migrated to Firefox, chrome and other browser?

Geek’s review:

The first thing which disappointed me a lot, was the system requirements. IE9 is not supported in windows XP & is only for windows 7 and Vista (32 and 64 bits). Thus answering to my 2nd question of compatibility. Sadly Microsoft has ignored its best OS the Windows XP. How hard is it for Microsoft to make a version compatible to windows XP? I still do not understand why Microsoft is wasting money and time on Vista & why Microsoft wants to kill windows XP?

Any way you can download its beta version from http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/internet-explorer/download/ie-9/worldwide, the size of the installer is around 19 MB and installation is very slow, frustrating and forces you to restart your system after installation. But in the end I was able to install it on my laptop.

First look of IE9:

Ya, it's impressive. It is clean, simple and very minimalist. The address bar box works both as address bar and the search box. Browser options like home, file, history, bookmarks and tools are shifted to top right of the browser and represented by 3 icons only.

Pin website: IE9 has this very impressive feature to pin your favorite website in task bar as apps. You will just need to drag the favicon from the IE9 box down to your taskbar so that whenever you want to open this website just click on the icon in taskbar.

But how much is the use of this functionality is still to be seen? I really do not want to fill my task bar with different websites. Or my task bar space will not be enough for it. As a developer I would like to develop an app or add-ons which will show me the option to choose the website from pined websites when I do a right click on my task bar. Actually this will be very useful for the user if we integrate this option with “pin the website” feature. Regarding to website apps pining functionality I would say it’s new, refreshing but not much useful.

HTML-5 Test (How well does your website support HTML-5?) : Microsoft says that IE9 supports HTML-5 and CSS-3. But when I did html-5 test on http://www.html5test.com/ IE9 scored only 96/300 when firefox 3.6 scored around 130 and chrome scores 231 out of 300. IE9 is lacking behind in HTML-5 support by a huge margin in comparison to chrome and firefox. But ya, there is definitely an improvement from IE8 to IE9. IE 8 scores only 26 in HTML-5 test.

Speed/Security/other features: I can clearly see IE9 is faster than firefox 3.6 but slower than chrome. IE9 has no default ad blocker integrated with it. IE9 uses SmartScreen filter that warns you if the website that you are visiting contains threats.

Finally, Microsoft has realized where search box should be open when we press Ctrl-f. In IE9 it gets opened in the top of the browser just below URL bar, not like IE 8 which opens search bar in the middle of page.

Well, IE9 is cool, cleaner, simpler, fast and secure. Now all 3 browser giants are at equal level. Browser war is on now. This is a very good move by Microsoft to get back it's browser market share. It will be very interesting to watch how browser users will reply to IE9. For me, all three are equals now. I have more option now. But still my priority will be chrome-> Firefox -> IE9.

Write your IE9 experience or your questions about IE9 as comment to this post. Remember IE9 is still in Beta version. Use it on your own risk.

Read more... :)

GOOGLE INSTANT : Search Before You Type

8th September, The day when Google officially announced and added another milestone to make search easier, faster and efficient. Google Instant gives result as you type. you will get your search result faster than your typing speed.

I have been using it since the last 2 days and I have only one sentence to describe this i.e. “It’s mind blowing.” Here is some more insight to Google Instant and my first impression of it.

Features of Google Instant:

There are mainly 3 features of Google Instant:

• Instant search result: you get your search results before you can type. As soon as you start typing, Google Instant automatically shows results for a popular search that begins with those letters . You get your results before you finish typing your query and hitting enter.

• Predicted result: Google instant predicts what you are going to type next and gives predicted search query in search textbox in gray text. This predicted search query remains until you type next character.

• Scroll to search: Using up and down arrow keys you can scroll to suggestions and you get a updated search result page as you move on the suggestions. No need to click on “google search” button, no need to hit "enter" anymore.

Google says that Google Instant saves 2-5 seconds per search query and I can clearly see that it is saving our search time.

Also, Google has integrated safe search in Google Instant. If you want to search any uncensored adult things, Google Instant doesn’t suggest anything. You will need to hit enter in order to get search result.

Is it really effective? Generally, when we search anything, we have search query or phrases in our mind and we search or type accordingly. Here in Google Instant for every character, the search result page is being loaded or refreshed. The screen is flickering with results while typing query. I think this is very distracting to user.
Also I can not see any improvement in the quality of search results. It is fast and instant but search results are same as what we get in normal google search.

I think Google Instant is targeted at mobile phone users who are going to be the major revenue sources for google in the upcoming years. Predictive search result is similar to predictive text options which are used in smart phones and designed specifically to expedite the speed of typing on tiny keyboards.

Overall, I really like the instant results and seeing how the results change with just the addition of one letter. It will be interesting to see how the public take to it and adapt themselves to new search techniques.

Please let us know your views and experiences of Google Instant.

Read more... :)

AdSense : Now serving multiple ad networks

I received this e-mail (mentioned below) from Google AdSense Team last week, announcing new feature of AdSense. Now AdSense will be serving third party ad networks along with it's own Adwords.


Hi,

We have launched a new capability in AdSense allowing Google-certified ad networks compete directly within AdSense, which means that advertisers from these third-party networks will be able to compete with AdWords advertisers to show on the Google Content Network.

These new capabilities will automatically be enabled for your account, and you'll see a new section in your Ad Review Center where you can allow or block specific ad networks or all networks except AdWords. Please note that we'll gradually be adding new ad networks to AdSense accounts over the next few months, so you won't see any immediate impact on your ads or your earnings.

To ensure the quality of the ads that appear on AdSense publisher websites, Google will certify all participating ad networks for adherence to our standards for user privacy, ad quality, and speed. Some participating ad networks use targeting methods similar to Google's interest-based advertising to show more relevant ads to users on the sites they visit. These ad networks won't be permitted to collect data from your site for the purpose of subsequent interest-based advertising, but we'll allow networks that comply with user privacy guidelines to show ads using these tools. Publishers can opt out of user interest targeting from these ad networks, and Google has changed our requirements for third-party ad serving to reflect this.

We are currently only accepting ads from Google-certified ad networks in North America and Europe, but we will make this feature available to ad networks in additional parts of the world in the future.

Sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

This feature didn't impress me at all but has raised some questions in my mind.
Why AdSense is going to serve third party network?
Is Google AdSense running out of advertisements and advertisers?
Does Google want to prove that It's ad network is the best by providing a common platform for every other network?

I think this new feature will be a killer for many ad networks. As stated in this e-mail, Google still approves the Ad networks for quality, privacy, speed etc. So, there is a chance that some high profitable ad networks may not clear Google Test. Well, I hope that from this new feature, publishers will have access to higher paying ad networks which will increase their ad revenues.

Your views and comments are welcome.

Read more... :)

FireFox 3.6

You often see a pop up window in order to upgrade your older version of firefox. More than 1 million users have downloaded and installed firefox 3.6 since its launch in mid January.

I have observed that since last week or two this pop up is appearing rather frequently. Does this mean that Mozilla is aggressively forcing us to upgrade our firefox?

This popup window appears after 60 seconds of keyboard activities and comes with 3 options "Ask Later", "No Thanks" and "Get the New Version". If you opt for "Ask Later" the popup window will come after 24 hours. If you chose - "No Thanks" and decide later to upgrade firefox, you will just need to run "Check for Updates" from help menu.

Performance: According to Mozilla, Firefox 3.6 is some three times faster than Firefox 3.0, and about 20% faster than 3.5. The most noticeable new feature in the new Mozilla browser is Personas, which allows users to personalize the look of Firefox. Other new features are, a "plug-in updater" that will detect out-of-date plug-ins, "form complete", and open video and audio via HTML 5 for full-screen display and poster frames.

Firefox 3.6 is not a major release so please do not expect any revolutionary changes in web browser technology.

Should we dump IE (Internet Explorer)? Tell me your answer as comment to this post.

Read more... :)

Bing VS Google : Head-to-Head

Promises are like crying babies in a theater, they should be carried out once. So I am back to keeping one of my promises; as I promised in my last post to come up with the " comparison of search results of Google & Bing".

Hats off to SEO specialist Paul Savage who has made this very basic web service, which lists all the results for your search queries on Google and Bing side by side, so you can compare which one produces the better results for the keywords you enter, on a single page. I played around with it , and this is what I felt:

The comparison:

Main Page Size: Both have almost equal page size, 14KB with 4 http request and 15KB with 1 http request for Google and Bing respectively. Page loading times are almost equal for both the search engines.

UI: I liked the concept of the front cover photo changing every day. When you float over it, you find the hidden "Easter eggs" that lead you on some interesting and unexpected links. So, full marks to Microsoft's Bing.

Web Search Results:
Web search results are almost the same for a simple search query. When I searched "geekonnet" the initial results on both search engines are almost the same.

Image Search: This is a place where bing needs a lot of improvement. When I did an image search on myself, google gave me results from linkedin, Twitter, Facebook ..etc. Bing didn't give me any relevant image search result. Well, bing's mouse over features are good. But the image search is really bad.

Video Search: Almost same, mainly from youtube and other video streaming sites.

Well, Bing reached at 2nd place in the search engine war, after google, ahead of yahoo search and ask.com. I predict that the market share of google will remain unchanged but bing will take away yahoo's and ask's market share. I am definitely not shifting to bing, from google; what about you? Here is a poll on the right side of this post. So, "Are you moving to BING?" "Yes","No" or " I don't care".

Read more... :)

Bing : A Google Killer???

Recently, I wrote about Wolfram Alpha, a computational search engine. I also wrote about Cuil last year. Definitely they are not google killer. But they have killed themselves by the hype created before launching.

So now we have another new search engine to unveil, this time from Microsoft. But doesn’t Microsoft already have a search engine called Live Search? Yes they do, but they’ll be killing that off in the next few days.

Bing: which type of name is it? I asked the same question to one of my friend who works for Live Search. He replied “Dude I have no idea what does it mean and why they are shutting down live search”. Well, what's in a name? All we want a good search engine.

The most significant change is that Bing now organizes search results into categories. it’s a “decision engine” that will help consumer to make decisions about travel, health, and shopping. Microsoft also launched a new site, Discover Bing, that goes into all the details of how Bing works and the decision process behind the creation of it.

As we can see the snapshots given below, there are mainly 3 columns on its main page. Left most is “Explore”, basically categories like images, videos, shopping, news, maps and travel , The middle one is for searched result and the last one is for “similar links”. I am not sure whether this last column is for sponsored link or not. It also has suggestions (not a new thing for today’s search engines). The software giant is set to launch an $80 million to $100 million campaign for Bing while Google spent $25 million on all its advertising last year.

To know more about Bing watch this 2.47 minutes video.

Bing is going to be launched on 3rd June worldwide. I am eagerly waiting for that day. Currently I can’t say anything about its search results but I am highly impressed by it’s categorized search. This is something new for search engines or you can say an improvement to the search engines.

I never used Live Search. I don’t see myself giving up Google, especially given the default Firefox browser integration. But after seeing Bing’s features , definitely I would like to use it and also would like to compare it’s results with google’s results.

Read more... :)

Wolfram Alpha (The Good, The Bad or The Ugly ? )

A few days ago another internet search engine named Wolfram Alpha was officially launched. It was the hottest topic in my friends circle and amongst my batch mates . People were spamming and filling each others mail box. Their main queries were, will this search engine survive in front of a giant like Google? or will this search engine produce better results than Google? Did they implement semantic search? Etc.

I used it for a few hours and found some good and some bad results. I also compared it’s search results with Google. I will explain all of this and more in the latter part of this post. But the thing that interests me the most is Wolfram's profile.

Stephen Wolfram, a British prodigy who earned his PhD in Physics at the tender age of 20 . He published an article on particle physics at the age of 16 and entered Oxford University at the age of 17. He wrote a widely-cited paper on heavy quark production at the age of 17. This same person made a calculation and graphing software package called Mathematica, the only fully integrated technical computing software. No doubt he is a genius but we are here to explore Wolfram Alpha.

Is Wolfram Alpha a search engine?
Search engine is a tool which enables one to find what he is looking for on the Web. For example if you search "geekonnet" on google or on other search engines, it gives all the websites where "geekonnet" is present. If we search the same query on Wolfram Alpha it gives information about geekonnet like daily page views, domain information etc. The site's best trick is its ability to make calculations for certain types of queries. It tries to dissect a question into its components and then performs calculations using its own source materials to compute an answer. The results are presented as a sleek collage of tables, charts and graphics.

It would be unfair if we call wolfram alpha a search engine. Wolfram Alpha is a "computational knowledge engine." In simple word a " question answering system". It is interesting to know that whatever result you get on Wolfram Alpha you can also get the same result on google within 3 to 4 searched result links.

Some facts about Wolfarm Alpha:

1. Wofram Alpha's page is 18 times havier than google's home page: I compared the size and dowloading times of wolfram alpha and google on www.websiteoptimization.com . I found that the homepage Wolfram Alpha is 18 times heavier than Google's home page. The size of Google's home page is 14.449 KB with only 4 HTTP requests. But I found that the homepage of Wolfram Alpha is struggling with a size of 257.411 KB along with 37 HTTP requests. Google page takes only 3.75 seconds to load on a 56Kbps modem. whereas Wolfram Alpha takes 59.93 seconds to load on the same 56Kbps modem.
   No doubt wolfram Alpha needs a huge website optimization.
   
2. Wolfram Alpha is built using Mathmetica: Wolfram Alpha is built primarily using Mathematica; it contains 5 million lines of symbolic Mathematica code.

In short Wolfram alpha acts like a nerdy accountant who is equipped with the latest set of calculators and endless stacks of books and encyclopedias. Wolfram Alpha is completely useless for me. I don't think I will ever use it. But I am not entirely happy with Google. Google still uses the same old search algorithm based on page rank and key words. If any Google guy is reading this post, here is a question for you : When will you implement semantic search in Google?

PS: Dear readers please write your views and experiences about Wolfram Alpha as comments to this post.

Read more... :)

Is New FaceBook another Twitter??

It was 4^th feb. of 2004 when faceBook was released for the first time. A website that changed the definition of online social networking. This was not just a social networking website but also a new way to advertise products online. It integrated e-business, e-marketing with a social networking website. So, the results of this were not surprising. In 2008, it achieved the milestone of 100 million registered users, and hundreds of thousands of apps, communities etc. Currently facebook is the world’s 5^th most visited website. It gets more than a billion hits per month and each facebook user spends on an average 19 minutes per day. No doubt facebook has emerged as one of the best among the social networking websites.

Everything was fine till March 12^th 2009, when they launched the new user interface. It was horrible for facebook users. If we observe carefully we find that facebook is going to be the next twitter. But why the hell? I think one twitter is enough for us.

Vote here : --->

Do you like new FaceBook?

I believe the response from the users of facebook must have been very frustrating for the facebook’s interface development team. When I read the official post about the new layout, I got shocked. There are more than 7,000 comments, I went through initial 5-6 pages of comments. Believe me, I didn’t find any comment in the favor of new layout. Every one was shouting “Give me back my old facebook !!” or “new layout sucks !!”.

So, what are the problems with the new layout?

I think, the first mistake by facebook is that they were unable to understand the mentality of users. Users of faceBook were not mentally prepared to adopt the changes which happened all of a sudden. See the basic mantra behind the success of any social networking website is to create addiction for the website in the heart of users. People were addicted to using old facebook. They could not digest the unwanted changes. If the changes would have been gradual they might have adjusted well.

The second mistake which I noticed is the presentation of the new faceBook. They tried to put more and more stuffs in a single page. It makes faceBook more confusing. See, providing more and more fun stuff and apps is nothing without good presentation. If you see facebook carefully now it has only 3 columns, left (The feed), Middle (The updates) and right which have the information about publishers and rest of the page is blank. Why are they not optimizing the blank space in the page?

This new interface is a killer from the apps developers prospective. In old layout new app had high probability of spreading over the network. In the new Facebook, apps have been almost completely killed off. They’re still there, but now users have to look for them in individual profiles. So In new facebook layout apps have low spread rate. This will also affect the development of faceBook.

GeekOnNet is conducting a poll as shown above whether you like or not the new layout of the facebook. Please give your opinion as Yes or No or I don't care. If you have any suggestion, write as comment to this post.

At the end I would say, please don’t make facebook another twitter. One twitter is good for us. Follow me on twitter.

Read more... :)

100 Blog Tips, I Learnt in 2008 Part-II

You have already seen 50 blog tips which I mentioned in 100 blog tips part-I. Here are the rest of 50 tips. Believe me making a list of 100 tips was not easy at all. But still I managed to complete it.

• 51. use meta tags wisely


• 52. learn the basics of SEO


• 53. use pictures whenever possible


• 54. create value for your readers


• 55. place ads wisely


• 56. be patient


• 57. consider getting a co-blogger


• 58. submit your articles to directories


• 59. share what has worked for you


• 60. share what has not worked for you


• 61. read world’s top blogs.


• 62. experiment with Google Adsense


• 63. make it easy for visitors to contact you


• 64. use titles effectively, search engine optimized


• 65. offer email subscriptions


• 66. always answer to questions


• 67. always answer to comments


• 68. use Technorati


• 69. write with a personal touch


• 70. become an expert in your niche


• 71. always give your own opinion


• 72. participate in blogging competition


• 73. get to know other bloggers personally


• 74. organize your categories


• 75. talk directly to your readers


• 76. put functional links on your footer


• 77. put social bookmarks at the start of post


• 78. Use EntreCard


• 79. Use shoutbox


• 80. Do blog hopping


• 81. Use ReddIt


• 82. Learn basic of CSS


• 83. Teach others about blogging


• 84. Twitter


• 85. Learn about backlinks


• 86. Write article for others article directory


• 87. Bold your keywords


• 88. DO keywords research


• 89. Keep watching total no. of backlinks


• 90. Don’t be a jerk


• 91. Respect your audience


• 92. Be real


• 93. Write for the readers not for the search engines


• 94. Interlink the blogs within the contents.


• 95. our blog should be easy to subscribe


• 96. Speed in downloading


• 97. Never attempt Black Hat SEO techniques


• 98. Learn and make improvements from previous mistakes


• 99. ................


• 100. create a “100 list” like this

Dear reader if still I am missing any tips, you can write as comments to this post.
PS: Thanks for voting :)

Read more... :)

100 Blog Tips, I Learnt in 2008 Part-I

Sorry folks for the delay in post. I am very much busy now a days with some geeky stuffs. The second interview of an extremely successful entrepreneur is ready, will publish it very soon. :)

I prepared a list of 100 blog tips, I have learnt in 2008. These tips actually work. Using the basic tip of blogging "Post shouldn't be too long" I am going to post this list in two parts, 50 tips in each post. Here are first top 50 tips:-

1. Final year of your Engineering, start blogging today

2. Write about something that you love a lot, I like internet surfing

3. If you are serious about blogging buy your own domain

4. Make sure your domain name resembles with blog topic

5. Use short and easy to remember domain name

6. Use BlogSpot

7. Use BlogSpot widget

8. Use simple and attractive template

9. Customize your blog template

10. Choose a specific topic for blog

11. Content is king

12. Blog with consistency

13. Write at least 3-5 posts a week

14. Proof read

15. Interact with other bloggers

16. leave meaningful comments

17. Backup your blog

18. Participate in online forums and communities

19. Put a link of blog on your signature (:P)

20. Use trackbacks

21. Use social bookmarks

22. Join various type of blog networks. Eg. I am the member of Mumbai Bloggers group

23. Use all type of social networking websites to publicize your blog

24. Put URL of your recent post as your IM’s status

25. Write “Top 10″ lists

26. Use Shout box

27. Write “How to” articles

28. Write about Startups

29. Write interviews of successful entrepreneurs

30. list your blog on directories

31. Ask questions to your readers

32. Use Feedburner

33. Use sense of humor

34. Encourage readers to subscribe

35. Link exchange with other bloggers

36. Have some spare posts for emergencies

37. Encourage readers to digg your posts

38. Stumble your post

39. Put an RSS subscription icon on every single page

40. Use “series” of posts

41. Return comments

42. Write about how to increase blog traffic

43. Write about How to blog

44. Use readable fonts

45. Break long posts in more parts

46. Experiment with different revenue sources like adsence, bidvertiser, chitika

47. Use Google Analytics

48. Have an "About Me" page

49. Create your own "Advertise with me" page

50. Read as many blogs as possible

Remaining 50 tips will be coming in next post. Write your views and suggestions. It encourages me. :)

Read more... :)