30 Years of “Hello, World”

Nice Post  from another blog:-

30 Years of “Hello, World”: I recently took a vacation the same week as the 4th of July and had lots of time to reflect upon my career to date. It was a little shocking...

Pleasant Open document format surprise

 The other day, when i asked for some details about outlets from my telephone / cellphone provider by email they replied back to me and sent an attachment (spreadsheet) in ods format which was a pleasant surprise.

 In the "past" I have only seen proprietary formats like .xls, .doc, .ppt in my emails as attachments. I used to tear my hair out when I saw haphazard tables and overflowing text whenever I opened "word" documents in LibreOffice and OpenOffice. The less said about opening Excel with "macros" in LibreOffice / OpenOffice the better. Guess, those days of excruciating pain are finally over and we can all move towards a bright future where data is shared in Open document formats.

 Three cheers ! for the silent revolution brought about by LibreOffice / OpenOffice / OASIS and co.

Reverting Disqus to older version again ?

 Disqus as a comment platform is very good and i am very thankful to them. But they has recently started "turning ON" Advertisements on my blog without my express consent. They did it once in the past and I had documented as to how I reverted back here (Reverting from DISQUS 2012 to older version) . They have done it again . I received a mail in my inbox about providing me with more revenue etc.. and I started seeing advertisements on my blog.

Mail from Disqus about the new disqus and advertisements appearing on my webpages :(

Then i had to go back to Disqus website. Navigate to Settings and under Settings navigate to "Discovery" tab .Then i had to change the "Discovery" settings from increased "Revenue" to "Just comments" and everything is back to normal :)

Simple Bookmarklet to get webpage link and title

 If are posting an article and if you want to "link" any any webpage or website from your blog or website then you need manually create a html anchor tag and you will need plugin:-

• Webpage url
• Webpage title

 To simplify things I have written some bookmarklets which you can easily create in your browsers bookmarks toolbar. You can plugin the below codes in location / url textbox when creating a bookmark or favourites. In Firefox, SeaMonkey and Opera "ctrl+D" is the shortcut to create bookmarks. After creating the bookmarklet all you need to do is navigate to the relevant webpage and then click on the bookmarlet to get the anchor tag in a popup / alert window.

• Get Link with title for webpage.
  javascript:window.alert("<a%20href=\""+document.location.href+"\">"+document.title+"</a>");
• Get Link with title and a nofollow tag for a webpage. javascript:window.alert("<a%20rel=\"nofollow\"%20href=\""+document.location.href+"\">"+document.title+"</a>"); 
• Get Link with title no follow and open in new tab or window for a webpage.
  javascript:window.alert("<a%20rel=\"nofollow\"%20target=\"_blank\"%20href=\""+document.location.href+"\">"+document.title+"</a>");  

 The below screenshot shows as to how to create the bookmarklet in SeaMonkey / Firefox after pressing Ctrl+D .

After creation of bookmarlet click on it to get webpage link

Formatting Contents inside code tags in blogger

 This post explains a simple way to format the contents in code tags in blogger. This enables distinguishing content between "source code" and  rest of the post .i.e It helps in highlighting the source code in the post. We need to use some CSS to accomplish this.

  We need to first login into "blogger.com" and then navigate to "Layout" page and then create a new "HTML/JavaScript" gadget and add the below contents inside it and save it.

    <style type="text/css">
    code.colorMycode {
    padding:0.5em;
    color:white;
    background-color:gray;
    clear:left;}
    </style>

Notes:- code represent code tag , "colorMycode" is the class you need to use the <code> tag

Screenshot of gadget addition should look like this

 When composing a post and you want to add source code you then need to open the HTML mode as shown below and plugin the <code> tags otherwise they would be rendered as it is. i.e. <code> tags will not work in compose mode.

Screenshot showing post being made in HTML mode in blogger

 When adding the code in the post you need to ensure that you add a class attribute within the <code> tag as shown below. You should use the same "class" name which is "colorMycode" as defined in the gadget above. Type the below code in HTML mode of the post editor.

<code class="colorMycode">This is sample code</code>

 To test whether the source code highlighting works you may click on preview button in the editor and check the content of code tag as shown below.

Citation :- Creating a homepage without tables

Old keyboard Died today

 Many of the posts on this blog were written using my old keyboard which died today. It almost drove me mad and I wanted to smash it onto the floor and break it into pieces. The keys in the "qwerty" row stopped working. Guess it was a meaningful death for a qwerty layout keyboard. The new keyboard has the "wasd" keys in red instead of the standard black ones. I guess gamers would love these red highlighted "wasd"  keys. I am also relieved that this keyboard doesn't have a stupid row of multimedia keys which I never liked. Incidentally this makes the keyboard look sleeker and meaner. The "soft touch" keys on this new keyboard are a welcome relief for my fingers too.

Old keyboard at the top and new one at the bottom of the image

How to generate "Link to this page" HTML code ?

 It is very easy to generate HTML links for any webpage based on the page url and page title. The following is a generic piece of code snippet when included in any page of your website will produce a link generator widget. It will automatically create  HTML code which will enable others to copy the code and refer to your site easily. It can be included anywhere in the webpage . You can find this widget displayed in the top right hand side of this blog.

 The code snippet will get the title of the page and the url of the page and store them in separate variables. Then the code create a HTML link code dynamically using two variables namely page url and title . After that it will write the generated HTML link code into a textarea.

Adding to Blogger

• Login into www.blogger.com
• Clicking  on the link with your blog name will take you to blogger dashboard
• In Dashboard click on the layout menu on the left hand side as displayed below

 

• Then click on "Add a Gadget" link and then in the pop up select HTML/JavaScript gadget as shown below.Then all you need is to use the code snippet and your link creator gadget is ready.

Code Snippet

<style>
textarea#styledText {
    border: 3px solid #cccccc;
    padding: 5px;
    font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;
}
input.styleButton
{
   font-size:12px;
   font-family:Verdana,sans-serif;
   font-weight:bold;
   color:#775555;
   width:107px;
   height:19px;
   border-style:none;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
var pageTitle=document.title;
var pageUrl=document.location.href;
urlTextValue="<a href=\""+pageUrl+"\">"+pageTitle+"</a>";
document.write("<textarea name=\"styled-textarea\" id=\"styledText\"onfocus=\"setbgcl('#e5fff3');\" onblur=\"setbgcl('white')\">"+urlTextValue+"</textarea>");
function setbgcl(color)
{
document.getElementById("styledText").style.background=color;
}
function SelecTextInTextArea()
{
document.getElementById("styledText").select();
}
</script>
<blockquote><input type="button" value="Select Text" onclick="SelecTextInTextArea()" class="styleButton" title="Select Text"/></blockquote>


Note:- Style elements adapted from here

Translate tool for websites using Google and Bing

  This translate tool will essentially give you quite a few html links which when clicked upon will automatically submit the webpage page url to translate.google.com and microsofttranslator.com where you can view the translated version of the same page. The tool depends on the availability of both the services though :-). You need to set the source webpage language in the scripts correctly to ensure that to tool works properly.

 Once the source webpage language is set. The scripts have JavaScript arraylist(s) which contain language key-value pairs where the value is displayed in the webpage and the key gets submitted as the part of the submission URL to the translation websites. The for loop in the script essentially creates the translation links dynamically by iterating through the language key value pairs appending them to the translator urls.

 The Version of the scripts from this blog which opens the pages in new window or tab and has style sheet applied to the links are further down

Google Translate(Simple)

<script type="text/javascript">
//store page url
var pageUrl=document.location.href;
//Store href beginning string
var hrefBeg='<a href=\'';
//Store href ending string
var hrefEnd='\'>';
//store anchor tag closure
var hrefClosure='</a>';
//set your webpage language here.It should be one from the below arraylists.It //cannot be "mandarin".Use  zh-CN
var myLang='en';
//Google translator url.Source page url is set as English
var transHelpPage='http://translate.google.com/translate?sl='+myLang+'&tl=';
//store the url param to indicate page url
var urlBeg='&u=';
//Store space between languages
var spacer='&nbsp;';
//Two dimensional JavaScript array to Store language label and label code
var arr = [['af','Afrikaans'],['sq','Albanian'],['ar','Arabic'],['hy','Armenian'],['az','Azerbaijani'],['eu','Basque'],['be','Belarusian'],['bn','Bengali'],['bg','Bulgarian'],['ca','Catalan'],['zh-CN','Chinese'],['hr','Croatian'],['cs','Czech'],['da','Danish'],['nl','Dutch'],['en','English'],['eo','Esperanto'],['et','Estonian'],['tl','Filipino'],['fi','Finnish'],['fr','French'],['gl','Galician'],['ka','Georgian'],['de','German'],['el','Greek'],['gu','Gujarati'],['ht','HaitianCreole'],['iw','Hebrew'],['hi','Hindi'],['hu','Hungarian'],['is','Icelandic'],['id','Indonesian'],['ga','Irish'],['it','Italian'],['ja','Japanese'],['kn','Kannada'],['ko','Korean'],['lo','Lao'],['la','Latin'],['lv','Latvian'],['lt','Lithuanian'],['mk','Macedonian'],['ms','Malay'],['mt','Maltese'],['no','Norwegian'],['fa','Persian'],['pl','Polish'],['pt','Portuguese'],['ro','Romanian'],['ru','Russian'],['sr','Serbian'],['sk','Slovak'],['sl','Slovenian'],['es','Spanish'],['sw','Swahili'],['sv','Swedish'],['ta','Tamil'],['te','Telugu'],['th','Thai'],['tr','Turkish'],['uk','Ukrainian'],['ur','Urdu'],['vi','Vietnamese'],['cy','Welsh'],['yi','Yiddish']];
//For loop to iterate over the two dimensional javascript array
for (var i=0;i<arr.length; i++) {
document.write(spacer+hrefBeg+transHelpPage+arr[i][0]+urlBeg+pageUrl+hrefEnd+arr[i][1]+hrefClosure+spacer);
  }
</script>

Microsoft Translate(Simple)

<script type="text/javascript">
//store page url
var pageUrl=document.location.href;
//Store href beginning string
var hrefBeg='<a href=\'';
//Store href ending string
var hrefEnd='\'>';
//store anchor tag closure
var hrefClosure='</a>';
//set your webpage lanuage here.It should be one from the below arraylists.It //cannot be "mandarin".Use either zh-CHS or zh-CHT
var myLang='en';
//Bing translator url.Source page url is set as english
var transHelpPage='http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from='+myLang+'&to=';
//store the url param to indicate page url
var urlBeg='&a=';
//Store space between languages
var spacer='&nbsp;';
//Two sets of single dimensional javascript arrays to Store language label and label code
var LangPair_ToDDL_keys=["ar","bg","ca","zh-CHS","zh-CHT","cs","da","nl","en","et","fi","fr","de","el","ht","he","hi","mww","hu","id","it","ja","ko","lv","lt","no","fa","pl","pt","ro","ru","sk","sl","es","sv","th","tr","uk","vi"];
var LangPair_ToDDL_values=["Arabic","Bulgarian","Catalan","Chinese Simplified","ChineseTraditional","Czech","Danish","Dutch","English","Estonian","Finnish","French","German","Greek","HaitianCreole","Hebrew","Hindi","HmongDaw","Hungarian","Indonesian","Italian","Japanese","Korean","Latvian","Lithuanian","Norwegian","Persian","Polish","Portuguese","Romanian","Russian","Slovak","Slovenian","Spanish","Swedish","Thai","Turkish","Ukrainian","Vietnamese"];
//For loop to iterate over the two dimensional javascript array
for (var i=0;i<LangPair_ToDDL_keys.length; i++) {
document.write(spacer+hrefBeg+transHelpPage+LangPair_ToDDL_keys[i]+urlBeg+pageUrl+hrefEnd+LangPair_ToDDL_values[i]+hrefClosure+spacer);
  }
</script>

 Google Translator with stylesheet and open in new window / tab customisation

<style type="text/css">
a.pastoral:link {
COLOR: #0000FF;
}
a.pastoral:visited {
COLOR: #800080;
}
a.pastoral:hover {
COLOR: #FF0000;
}
a.pastoral:active {
COLOR: #00FF00;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
//store page url
var pageUrl=document.location.href;
//Store href beginning string
var hrefBeg='<a href=\'';
//Store href ending string
var hrefEnd='>';
//Store rel param string
var hrefHoldRel='\'rel=\'external\'';
//Store the style param
var styleHolder= 'class=\'pastoral\'';
//store anchor tag closure
var hrefClosure='</a>';
//set your webpage language here.It should be one from the below arraylists.It //cannot be "mandarin"
var myLang='en';
//Google translator url.Source page url is set as English
var transHelpPage='http://translate.google.com/translate?sl='+myLang+'&tl=';
//store the url param to indicate page url
var urlBeg='&u=';
//Store space between languages
var spacer='&nbsp;';
//Two dimensional javascript array to Store language label and label code
var arr = [['af','Afrikaans'],['sq','Albanian'],['ar','Arabic'],['hy','Armenian'],['az','Azerbaijani'],['eu','Basque'],['be','Belarusian'],['bn','Bengali'],['bg','Bulgarian'],['ca','Catalan'],['zh-CN','Chinese'],['hr','Croatian'],['cs','Czech'],['da','Danish'],['nl','Dutch'],['en','English'],['eo','Esperanto'],['et','Estonian'],['tl','Filipino'],['fi','Finnish'],['fr','French'],['gl','Galician'],['ka','Georgian'],['de','German'],['el','Greek'],['gu','Gujarati'],['ht','HaitianCreole'],['iw','Hebrew'],['hi','Hindi'],['hu','Hungarian'],['is','Icelandic'],['id','Indonesian'],['ga','Irish'],['it','Italian'],['ja','Japanese'],['kn','Kannada'],['ko','Korean'],['lo','Lao'],['la','Latin'],['lv','Latvian'],['lt','Lithuanian'],['mk','Macedonian'],['ms','Malay'],['mt','Maltese'],['no','Norwegian'],['fa','Persian'],['pl','Polish'],['pt','Portuguese'],['ro','Romanian'],['ru','Russian'],['sr','Serbian'],['sk','Slovak'],['sl','Slovenian'],['es','Spanish'],['sw','Swahili'],['sv','Swedish'],['ta','Tamil'],['te','Telugu'],['th','Thai'],['tr','Turkish'],['uk','Ukrainian'],['ur','Urdu'],['vi','Vietnamese'],['cy','Welsh'],['yi','Yiddish']];
//For loop to iterate over the two dimensional javascript array
for (var i=0;i<arr.length; i++) {
document.write(spacer+hrefBeg+transHelpPage+arr[i][0]+urlBeg+pageUrl+hrefHoldRel+styleHolder+hrefEnd+arr[i][1]+hrefClosure+spacer);
  }
//This function can be used to add a target="_blank" attribute to all anchor tags //with a rel="external" attribute
function externalLinks() { if (!document.getElementsByTagName) return; var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a"); for (var i=0; i<anchors.length; i++) { var anchor = anchors[i]; if (anchor.getAttribute("href") && anchor.getAttribute("rel") == "external") anchor.target = "_blank"; } } window.onload = externalLinks;
</script>

 Bing / Microsoft Translator with stylesheet and open in new window / tab customisation

<style type="text/css">
a.microBing:link {
COLOR: #0000FF;
}
a.microBing:visited {
COLOR: #800080;
}
a.microBing:hover {
COLOR: #FF0000;
}
a.microBing:active {
COLOR: #00FF00;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript">
//store page url
var pageUrl=document.location.href;
//Store href beginning string
var hrefBeg='<a href=\'';
//Store href ending string
var hrefEnd='>';
//Store rel param string
var hrefHoldRel='\'rel=\'external\'';
//Store the style param
var styleHolder= 'class=\'microBing\'';
//store anchor tag closure
var hrefClosure='</a>';
//set your webpage lanuage here.It should be one from the below arraylists.It //cannot be "mandarin".Use either zh-CHS or zh-CHT
var myLang='en';
//Bing translator url.Source page url is set as English
var transHelpPage='http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from='+myLang+'&to=';
//store the url param to indicate page url
var urlBeg='&a=';
//Store space between languages
var spacer='&nbsp;';
//Two sets of single dimensional javascript arrays to Store language label and label code
var LangPair_ToDDL_keys=["ar","bg","ca","zh-CHS","zh-CHT","cs","da","nl","en","et","fi","fr","de","el","ht","he","hi","mww","hu","id","it","ja","ko","lv","lt","no","fa","pl","pt","ro","ru","sk","sl","es","sv","th","tr","uk","vi"];
var LangPair_ToDDL_values=["Arabic","Bulgarian","Catalan","ChineseSimplified","ChineseTraditional","Czech","Danish","Dutch","English","Estonian","Finnish","French","German","Greek","HaitianCreole","Hebrew","Hindi","HmongDaw","Hungarian","Indonesian","Italian","Japanese","Korean","Latvian","Lithuanian","Norwegian","Persian","Polish","Portuguese","Romanian","Russian","Slovak","Slovenian","Spanish","Swedish","Thai","Turkish","Ukrainian","Vietnamese"];
//For loop to iterate over the two javascript arrays
for (var i=0;i<LangPair_ToDDL_keys.length; i++) {
document.write(spacer+hrefBeg+transHelpPage+LangPair_ToDDL_keys[i]+urlBeg+pageUrl+hrefHoldRel+styleHolder+hrefEnd+LangPair_ToDDL_values[i]+hrefClosure+spacer);
  }
//This function can be used to add a target="_blank" attribute to all anchor tags //with a rel="external" attribute
function externalLinks() { if (!document.getElementsByTagName) return; var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a"); for (var i=0; i<anchors.length; i++) { var anchor = anchors[i]; if (anchor.getAttribute("href") && anchor.getAttribute("rel") == "external") anchor.target = "_blank"; } } window.onload = externalLinks;
</script>

Note:-open links in new window/tab is from this site

Reverting from DISQUS 2012 to older version

 DISQUS 2012 can really damage your blogger stats.You can find below a way to revert back to older system. I am using DISQUS in my blog for quite a few months now. I like DISQUS commenting platform a lot for it offers many features like the "Like" page button, nested commenting, trackball URL, reactions etc. which are not present in the default  commenting system in blogger. A few days ago I jumped the gun and switched from older version of DISQUS to DISQUS 2012 when  saw  the link Activate Disqus 2012 for your site » in DISQUS's website. I did not think before acting  and without properly studying the consequences of going in for the new system had taken a bite at the carrot that dangled before my eyes. From that point onwards all hell broke loose. I could not  keep track of any stats in the blogger platform.

Below is the screenshot showing how badly the DISQUS 2012 comment system has damaged the Referring URLs stats.

 Although the above un intelligent stats rendered  my blogger stats next to useless, the DISQUS 2012 system spared me further agony  by not affecting my stats pages at statcounter. Since majority of the referral URLs appear to be redirects they have a potential to lower your sites reputation. I also learned from DISQUS's website that DISQUS 2012 now uses iframe. I am not an web wizard but I did notice that frames are bad for any website's health.

 Now I have turned off the new DISQUS 2012 system though it looked much cooler than older system. I don't know at this point of time whether my blogger stats will be back to normal from now onwards. Thankfully reverting to old system is quite simple. According to DISQUS's website "You can disable Disqus 2012 off at any time at the top of your admin's Settings > General page".

 All I needed to do was login into my account, navigate to this admin page after which I located the settings tab on top right hand side of the webpage.

 Then I had to un-check the Disqus 2012 Checkbox under "Basic Settings" label available in "General" tab as shown below. One needs to ensure that the "Save Changes" button at the bottom of the page is pressed after un-checking the check box in order to confirm the changes.

 I am hoping that my blogger stats will be back to normal. All that is left to do is to wait and watch and hope for the best. I keeping my fingers crossed too ...just in case :-)

Update(03Sep2012):- The problem of redirection ULRs in blogger stats has gone away after I reverted back to Older version of DISQUS

Reflecting on 2011

Reflecting on 2011 / The year that  2011 was...

 Phew it is that of the year already ,the time all the news channels ,websites and newspapers / magazines put up articles saying "best of year" blah blah blah. Time sure flies fast.The year seemed to have just started,but we are at the threshold of another "new year". This year (2011) is memorable in many ways.There were a lot of things happening!!!! through out the world as well as in India.The most prominent feature of the year  was the unabated rise in price of petrol.This post is essentially about 2011 seen through my sewed eyes :-D.2011 as with each new year , began with a lot of promises / new year resolutions , but it unfolded as follows:-

January , 2011
==>The Arab world literally boiled over and  many countries  in Arab world namely  Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Bahrain faced social unrest. Some governments like the ones in Egypt and Libya even got overthrown in the ensuing protests over the course of the year.Tahrir Square became popular of all over the world.Sounds similar to Tienanmen square in china.Guess all town squares starting with letter "T" are political hotspots.
==>At that point of time before GOVT restored the Tamil New Year Day to the traditional date of April later in the year , Tamils  celebrated Tamil New year on Pongal day ,atleast officially :-).

February , 2011
The country was reeling under the shame of Common Wealth games expose when on  February 2, 2011, Union minister Raja  was arrested and put behind bars.This really opened the flood gates and made way for many other politicians and company CEOS to be arrested under 2G scam.

March , 2011
The year began with a devastating earthquake and ensuing Tsunami which steam rolled many cities on Japan's east coast.The worst affected was Fukushima.The nuclear reactors in the town / city Dai ichi and Dai Ni were breached by the monstrous waves.This event shook the entire world.The insights it brought are:-
==>Japan makes most of the paint pigments for automotive industry and any major event in one part of the world affects the world economy in a big way.
==>Most of coastal cities around the world including Chennai are sitting on a ticking time bomb(ref:-Tsunami) which are just waiting for the right time to go kaboom!!!
==>The inherent danger and threat that nuclear reactors pose to all the countries of the world.Not only are they costly but they are very vulnerable to natural calamities.

April , 2011

==>In a daring pre dawn raid on May 2, 2011Osama Bin Laden was killed. The commandos conducted operations fearlessly on foreign soil.This showed  that America is still a "super power".

==>Tamilnadu opted for change of power on 13 April 2011 in the sate elections.

==>India won the ICC,ODI world cup after 28 years.India won by 6 wickets (with 10 balls remaining) against srilanka

==>It was more than a year I switched to Linux
==>Kalmadi was put behind bars for involvement in CWG scam.

May , 2011
==>More shame was waiting for for the infamous UPA alliance when Kanimozhi was arrested in connection with involvement in 2G scam.She became the third Member Of Parliament of the current government after Raja and kalmadi.
==>On 16 May 2011 Jayalalitha was sworn in chief minister for a third term.
==>Mamata Banerjee in Bengal assumed power on 20 May 2011 after she successfully stopped the Left juggernaut after remaining unbeaten for 34 year.
==>Taliban & co exacted revenge by attacking Mehran base in Pakistan. The audacious attack is nicknamed Mehran attack.

The terrorist were very well trained and were equally well equipped with the latest gear. The amount of ammo that they carried with them was insane and they were using night vision goggles with other ultrasonic radio communication gear.Source:-Link

Terrorists and night vision goggles ? Even Indian army is still not equipped adequately for warfare at night
==>LHC reports creation of quark-gluon plasma.Densest Matter Created in Big-Bang Machine.There has been rising fears that very Large particle accelerators like Hadron Collider could be creating Black Holes within them and that these had the ability to destroy the world.Read more - here

June ,2011
==>Festivities arrived rather early at Ramlila ,Delhi this year. Ramdev showed how the Indian government is ill equipped to handle any kind challenge / emergency .On 27 February 2011 Baba Ramdev held a large rally of over 1 lakh people at the Ramlila Maidan, New Delhi to protest against corruption.Then he started a mass movement called  Bhrashtachar Mitao Satyagrah 4 June 2011 at Ramlila Maidan and this led to "RamLilaBagh" event.The entire episode showed how immature our democracy was.Read more about the incident here:- Ramlila_Maidan_protests 
==>Anna Hazare's anti corruption movement gathers steam.He and other civil society members decided to boycott the meeting of the joint Lokpal Bill drafting committee scheduled on 6 June 2011 in protest against the forcible eviction of Swami Ramdev and his followers by the Delhi Police from Ramlila Maidan on 5 June 2011

July , 2011
India began their disastrous away cricket series against England with a solid drubbing at Lords(Mecca of cricket).In the England v India at Lord's, Jul 21-25, 2011 Pataudi Trophy, 1st Test England won by 196 runs.Many people wondered as to how India which won the world cup couple of months ago could even have receive such a severe drubbing in the Test and ODI series.

August , 2011
==>There was mini rebirth of this blog ;-)I started blogging regularly again.
==>Facebook Overtakes Orkut in India – Another Setback for Google
==>Hazare ended his fast on 28 August 2011,after  starting it on 16 August 2011 after the Indian Government had passed the resolution for the Lokpal Bill unanimously,
==>Thailand faced the worst  Floods in 70 Years 

September , 2011
September 8, 2011 was the 10th anniversary of the twin tower attacks

October , 2011
==>Libya's tyrannical dictator for more than a decade breathed his last on 20 October 2011
==>New Gundam series “Mobile Suit Gundam AGE”  begins airing on October 9, 2011

November , 2011
==> I joined "indiblogger" on 22nd Nov 2011 


December , 2011
==>On 16th I  got my first Indiblogger rank

==>kim Jong II ,the North Korean dictator breathes his last
==>US pulls out of Iraq .The last of the soldiers too have left the country

How to Add Your Blogger Post To Search Engines ?

 What should one do after making a post in blogger ? Well,the obvious answer is to promote the blog post in blog aggregation sites ,share it in social sites in facebook and twitter.Finally ,one also needs to submit them to Search Engines  like Goggle and Bing to increase the chances of your posts showing up in the search results. If this is not done then there is likely hood that you posts may not show up in the search results


Add Your Post To Google Index
 You need to navigate to your dashboard in blogger site and then scroll down and look for "Webmaster Tools" under Other Stuff ==> Tools and Resources.
Alternatively your can use the following direct link

  On clicking the webmaster link it will take you t a page where your blogger site would have been automatically added , provided you have logged in into the google account which you are using for maintaining your blog

   Open your blog in the tool and using  the tree menu on the left navigate to "Diagnostics" ==> "Fetch as Googlebot". You can index individual pages / posts and all links in the page.Make sure that you provide the relative URL of post in the text box and hit fetch. The tools will typically take a few seconds to fetch the post and when it shows that fetching is successful hit the link "URL and linked pages submitted to index" which is right next to the fetched post. If tools gives the message "Not found"on submitting the post then you have not provided the right / valid URL.


Submission of a post

Successful submission of a link to the Googlebot.

 There are limited number of submissions  that are available ,per week and you may get and error message if you exceed your limit / quota.

You can also use the following the links in your blogs  in mass under "Site Configuration" ==> "sitemaps" in the webmasters tool. You may need to re-submit the "sitemap" after making new posts.

Feed URLs for your blog:-


feeds/posts/default <== Brings recent posts
feeds/posts/default?alt=rss&max-results=1000 <== Brings up to 1000 recent posts.You can modify the max results parameter in the above link to adjust the number of posts

Sitemap Submission

Re - Submission

Add Your Post To Bing Index

 You need to go the Bing webmaster site and submit the main URL of your blogger site and complete the captcha dialogue and hope for the best.

Bing Webmaster Tools Page

Successful Bing Submission

Add To ASK

You can submit your site to ASK formerly known as AskJeeves search engine by using the pasting the below url in your address bar of your browser and hitting return or enter button.
==>You should first obtain the feed of you blogger site which would be something like:-http://blogname.blogspot.com/rss.xml
==>Then substitute it in the following url:-
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://blogname.blogspot.com/rss.xml
==>If the submission is successful then you will get a successful message as shown below
==>If you need more info ,go here

Ping Like there is no tomorrow

 Yeah ,It is difficult to do all this each time you make a post. If there is no pain,there is no gain . Go to the following sites and submit your blog url and the full rss / atom feeds of your blog.You can instantly double your page rank and search visibility of your posts.


Tiny List Of Active pinging services:-

http://feedshark.brainbliss.com/
http://pingates.com/
http://pingomatic.com/
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping
http://www.blogpingtool.com/
http://www.pingoat.com/
http://www.millionping.com/
http://pingler.com/
http://www.pingblognow.com/
http://www.blogpingsite.com/
http://www.seo41.com/blog-ping.php
http://www.blogpingtool.com/

Note:- There is also a downside to doing these optimisations . Your site may actually be targeted by unnecessary referral traffic.


You may also use this link to submit to a entire gamut of search engines

Facebook,BloggerTrap

Facebook , Blogger Online Trap

This post is about my misadventure on a fake facebook site . The other day i was trying to post an article in my blog when i mis-typed the URL in my browser as "bogger.com" instead of "blogger.com". I hadn't realised it and suddenly the page was mysteriously redirected to another website.

Then a pop up appeared saying that I got a friend request . Those who spend most of their spare time in facebook will definitely fall for it.

After the hit "OK" button on the pop up window,it began to show a page similar to that of facebook .It showed a woman's picture with a "confirm" and "ignore" button.

Suddenly my senses snapped back and realised that this is definitely not facebook :-).The web page looked similar but definitely is not a facebook.Then i began telling myself that i should be more careful while browsing .

Please read this post and take care that you don't get fooled on Internet . There is a real danger that your login credentials and your computer may also get infected by malware ,worms, viruses etc...

==>The first rule of thumb is to be very cautious an alert while browsing Internet
==>The second rule of thumb is not to click any link in your mail or on the net unless it is from a known and trusted source

For brave souls this is the link to fake facebook site / friend request

There is similar facebook related scam that i had written about earlier :- Beware of Fake "Facebook Mails","Friend Request"

Add Personal Touch To Blogger By Adding Fav Icon

Add Personal Touch To Blogger By Adding Fav Icon
 After playing around with the various templates and applying them onto my blog an trying out the gadgets i have tried to add  one more piece  customisation to my blog by creating a fav icon.Th favourite icon not only adds a nice touch to the web page but also shows up in the bookmarks whenever you bookmark your web page in your browser.

Step 1:-
Create Icon in Pinta
The first step involves creating the icon file. I have used a tool called pinta which is a light weight image editor for which i am using to creating a simple icon file. Get your 1-click installer for pinta here
==>Open Pinta 

==>Resize Canvas To either 16x16 , 32X32 or 25X25 Pixels

 ==>Ensure that Pixel Pixel rid and Rulers are on.This will help greatly while working with individual pixels as well as aligning your icon

=

==>To create a simple text based icon use the bucket tool to cover all the pixels with a single colour

==>Type in the required Text in a contrasting colour.
==> You can Apply effects like Sharpen to make the wording crispier.
==>Also note that you can choose the required font for the  text to appear funky or stylish

==>Save the image in ".ico" format
==>Of course if you are good with image creation tools you can create varied patterns and designs and thus create nice icon files
==>Always upload the image and test whether the icon look fine.Though your design might  awesome,one uploading it to site it might not look fabulous.

Step 2:-

Adding icon to Blogger
==>After logging into blogger ,click on "design"  link of your blog
==>In the design page click on the "Edit" link of the "Favicon" gadget.

 ==>Browse your desktop,locate the icon file that you have created  and save the page.

==>After this step i would advise to close  all the browser windows and clear the browser cache and restart the blogger and view the blog.This step is needed because typically browsers cache the fav icons and they will not show new fav icon unless the browser is closed and opened.The below screen shots show the blog before and after the fav icon change

Highlights Your Posts

It will make your posts stand out in the Reading Lists in blogger if one follows you in blogger. If anyone subscribes to your blogs rss feed too your favourite icon  will get displayed.