10 Writing Tips For Bloggers

There are a few things you should consider while making efforts to create flagship content.Here are some of those worth mentioning ones.Feel free to add your own points into it.

1.Write in an audience friendly style.Your aim is not to show off your
word power but to get regular readers who will come back for some content
they can understand.Simplicity attracts everyone.

2.Use sarcasm here & there.Especially when you feel you're going too deep or
technical.A small dose of sarcasm will refresh the reader's mind.He will be
receptive for more after it.

3.Be a versatile writer.Mention subjects or events outside your genre.But there is
a catch here.Don't go too far into areas of less expertise.There are chances of you appearing superficial.So use this tip wisely.

4.Write using positive words.Even if you're attacking some other writer,try not to show regret in your words.Use humour instead.

5.Before penning down controversial pieces choose your stand.If you're advocating someone or criticizing someone be ready for unpleasant responses.

6.When length posts are the product remember to break it down into short paragraphs.It shouldn't look monotonous.Use tip 2.

7.Try not to be repetitive.Try not to use the same catchy words again and again.It's true with the content also.For example if you're writing an article on "Google's acquisition of xyz",don't write like this:

Google acquired xyz,....................Before Google acquired xyz...,It was rumoured that Google will acquire xyz.

Your readers are not dumb.You don't need to be so clear.Instead you can use phrases
or sentences like:..........Before this deal.......,This event was rumoured to happen etc..

8.Look at the big picture,always.Don't get deviated from what you set out to say.So read the whole article a couple of times before you post it and make suitable changes.

9.Know[plan] the end and finish it will.It's genuinely stylish.And end is equally important as a beginning.

10.Don't let typos in.They are the worst enemies and a universal tunr-off [i'm making a point here :)].Thank those who made spell-check and start using it from today.

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How to download flagged Youtube videos?

Most of the video sites have restrictions on flagged video download and a start-up is still to start up that will do the job.Till then here are a couple of techniques to get the job done.

For firefox users
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One of the reasons i have been sticking with firefox for a while is the large pool of add-ons they have on their site.They help me get things done without using any external tool.One among such is Download helper.It traces any flv,ram,mpg,mpeg,avi,rm,wmv,mov,asf,mp3 content embedded on a page and gives a download link to that file.And yes it works with Youtube flag videos to.Not only Youtube but with all other video sharing sites including Dailymotion and Eyespot.
You can get Download helper add-on from here.
If you haven't got firefox yet,this is the perfect reason to get it.

For non-firefox users
--------------------------------
This is slightly time consuming at least for once.The alternative to Download helper is a lightweight software called Tubegrab.It is available for download at Techrepublic but to download it you have to go through a one time registration.This downloads Youtube flagged ones only.You can get Tubegrab from here.

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SpeedFan-Overclock your PC safely

If you have technically lesser knowledge about overclocking but still want to see your PC working at tremendous speeds then Speedfan is the tool for you.SpeedFan touts itself as a monitor for your system's temperature and fan speed and lets you easily overclock your PC and then adjust the fan speed so it doesn't overheat.
Speedfan is a 1.5mb download comatible with Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows 9.x, Windows Me, Windows XP and Windows Vista.It can help you a lot to find the reasons for an unpredictable reboot or for a failing hard disk. It can tell you whether you are likely to experience temperature related issues and can help you to greatly reduce the noise at work or while watching a movie.But one negative factor is that it takes lot of resources on your motherboard.
You can download Speedfan from here.

A hoax experiment and some story crafting

Last week i was reading an article on a popular virus hoax on the internet.Something in that caught my mind.For a couple of days i was wondering about "How a hoax gets spread and what makes it believable?".After referring some more resources i reached to a conclusion that crafting of the story was one of the factors that determined the success of a hoax.But the most important aspect of it was the audience.How does an audience behave to a hoax?I was now fed up with referring and decided to craft one and experience the behaviour.Not being a creative genius caused idea hindrances.Greasemonkey seemed to be the last resort.And i crafted a hoax.

The ingredients of a perfect hoax
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1. A popular tycoon (eg:Google) to attack on.
2. Assistance of facts and figures.
3. Catchy titles and description.
4. A hoax receptive audience.

The final ingredient was my point of research.And from the results i found this.

• 40% will digest it.
• 30% will get contradicted.
• 30% will get the catch.
• From that 30%,10% will respond.

And who spreads the plague?
The contradicted 30%.They spread the stuff.They discuss it in forums,forward the mails and this way a successful hoax is born.And a funny aspect is that some of them would even link to the story.Ooh la la.

Blogging and story crafting
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So what has this to do with blogging.If a hoax can get viral then why can't a classy blog post.So lets put it in blog terms.

Ingredients of a perfect blog post
----------------------------------------------

1. Topic:A problem that is common in your niche with no satisfying solution online(Google the topic).
2. A well written post with assistance of facts & figures.
3. Catchy title & description.
4. Last but not the least,a answer seeking audience.

Link well throughout the post and see the post go viral.

A COMIC STRIP FOR TODAY

101 Articles That Will Make You "A Complete Blogger"

Once you are into blogging it may eventually take you a good time to understand the roadsteps to glory,say a year.That is only if you stumble upon right information at the right time.It took me 6months to realize that social media marketing can do wonders and another two months to realize that a Linkbait [or Link Bait]is much rewarding and time worthy than link exchange.After seeing quite a few seasons come and go in my blogging journey i have learned to distinguish between quality and pure crap.So i've decided to do the hardwork for you by listing some articles which on aggregate have enough information to make you a complete blogger.

Content
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I'm sick and tired of the line "content is king" like anyone else who have been hearing it for a while now.But it's plain truth.So i'll once again repeat it."Content is the king,the queen and the kingdom".Here are afew articles that'll help you in creating A-class content for your blog.

1.10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work-Copyblogger
2.10 Tips on Writing the Living Web-Alistapart
3.Better Beginnings: how to start a presentation, book, article...-Headrush
4.5 tips for writing timeless content-Dailyblogtips
5.How to Write a Killer “How To” Article That Gets Attention?-Copyblogger
6.How to Write Killer Blog Posts and More Compelling Comments?-Frugal Marketing
7.How to Write Killer Posts?-Blogger Lounge
8.Will One Popular Post Make Your Blog Successful?-Blogmoneymakingmachine
9.One quality blog post is enough to make you famous-Blogopreneur
10.Ten Ways To Write A Killer Blog-Maryamie
11.Where to find free Photos for Your Blog?-Lorelle on wordpress

Traffic
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The gateway to money and fame.Traffic is the reward for quality content.Sometimes you will to go that extra mile to get the traffic you deserve.Here are a few articles with useful tips on attracting traffic.

12.21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic-Seomoz
13.10 Killer Ways to Increase Blog Traffic and Stickiness-Instabloke
14.How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic?-Copyblogger
15.How to Make Your Blog Rank Well in Google’s Blog Search Engine?-DoshDosh
16.25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog-Toprankblog
17.How to boost a new blogs traffic?-JohnTP
18.3 Ways to Market Blogs Using MyBlogLog-Existentialventures
19.How to Use MyBlogLog to Succesfully Build Massive Blog or Website Traffic?-Timeforblogging
20.Two More Tips to Get Traffic From MyBlogLog-Existentialventures
21.How to Make Enemies and Increase your Blog Traffic?-Instabloke
22.Search Engine Optimization Tips for Blogs-Problogger
23.Lessons from an SEO Contest-Performancing
24.8 simple SEO tips for blogs-JohnTP
25.How To Make Your Blog Sticky?
26.5 Tips to Make Your Blog Stickier-Sabahan

Linkbuilding,Diggbaiting and Social Media Marketing
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The next phase of traffic.Inbound links which will eventually get you high PR in search engines which inturn will make sure that you've good traffic coming even if you are taking a break.These same links will obviously get you higher Technorati ranks which will increase your market value among advertisers.Some well written articles on this elaborate subjects.

27.21 keys to linkbait success-Famousagents
28.Linkbaiting or Link Baiting Strategies?-Seobook
29.Some more link baiting strategies-Jimwestergren
30.2 Easy Authoritative Links that will Boost your Rankings-Earnersblog
31.How to get some link love?-Marketingpilgrim
32.101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006-Seobook
33.Top 17 Niche Social Media Sites (That Actually Send Traffic)-Tropicalseo
34.21 Traffic Triggers for Social Media Marketing-Copyblogger
35.How to get digged?-Squidoo lens
36.How to get slashdotted?-Quickonlinetips
37.10 Steps to Guarantee You Make the Digg Front Page-Seoblackhat
38.Tips from a Top 10 Digg user on how to get to the Frontpage-JohnTP
39.15 Ways to become a Digg Power user in only 48 hours-Earnersblog
40.How to prepare for the 'Digg Effect'?-I'm not a narcist
41.How Not To Get Your URL Banned From Digg?-Pronet advertising
42.Top 10 Ways to Get a Technorati Top 100 Blogger to Link to Your Blog or Website-Solostream
43.How to submit links to 60 social bookmarking sites in 30mins?-Still not a narcist
44.How to Build a ‘Digg Culture’ on your Blog?-Problogger
45.10 Remarkably Effective Strategies for Driving Traffic-Seomoz
46.Get reciprocal links by not asking for them
-Jonathanleger

Blogger's block
-------------------
Every author has to go through it and sometimes quite often.You wake up one morning and feel that you don't have any bloggable content with you and surely you're affected with a curable disease called Blogger's block.Here're a few remedies for it.

47.How to overcome Blogger's block?-Digital Inspiration
48.Tips to Help Avoid Blogger's Block-Weblogs
49.10 Productive things to do when you don't feel like blogging-Ok,i'm slightly narcist
50.When you run out of things to blog about.
51.What To Do When You Lose Your Blogging Mojo-Performancing
53.Resources for Finding Content for Your Blog-Lorelle on Wordpress

"Fan" building
------------------
Nothing is viral than mouth to mouth publicity.Your fans will do the job for you.Fans can be in the form of subscribers,community members or frequent visitors.Whatever may be the type,they are always good for the blog.

54.A Very Simple Method to Increase your RSS Subscribers & MyBloglog community members-DoshDosh
55.How to Get 100 MyBlogLog Community Members in 1 Month?-Liewcf
56.10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers-Copyblogger
57.10 Ways to Increase your Feed Subscribers in 2007-Earnersblog
58.13 Tips to Maintaining an RSS Feed Subscriber Base-Feedforall
59.27+1 Tips for Building and Maintaining a Blog Audience-Sponsoredreviews
60.How We Took a Blog From 0 to 2000 Subscribers in just 12 Days?-Northxeast


Wisdom of the blogosphere
-------------------------------------
These articles contains pieces of wisdom gained through experiences from the blogosphere.This one section has enough information which will give you the right mindet to propel your blog to heights.

61.The 120 Day Wonder: How to Evangelize a Blog-Guy Kawasaki
62.How to be an expert?-Headrush
63.Top 5 Blogging Myths-Dailyblogtips
64.Top 5 Tips to be the next Darren Rowse-Robinsongo
65.Blog Traffic: Patience Pays Off-Weblogs
66.5 ways to gauge a blogger’s maturity level-Raproject
67.The First 100 Days: Observations of a Nouveau Blogger-Guy Kawasaki
68.5 Ways to Disrespect Readers-Raproject
69.7 Productivity Hacks for Bloggers & Writers-Theoptimizedlife
70.How to Make Money From Your Blog?-Stevepavlina
71.10 things they didn't tell you about blogging-Lifebeyondcode
72.How to write a blog post-Seth Godin
73.6 Lessons Britney Spears Can Teach You About Blogging-Kumiko Suzuki
74.5 Steps to Writing the Best Blog Posts-Instigatorblog
75.Choosing a Niche for your Blog-DoshDosh
76.10 quick ways to make your blog interactive-Bestblogbasket
77.The 4 A's of Blogging-Conversationagent
78.Blogging and the Long Tail - What every blogger needs to know-Thebizofknowledge
79.101 Blog Tips I learned in 2006-Dailyblogtips
80.The top 5 reasons for not posting to your blog-Successful-blogs
81.Make something happen.-Seth Godin
82.How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)-Eff
83.10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog-Problogger
84.How To: Optimize Your Web Site-Wired
85.How to Manage Multiple Blogs?Everybodygoto
86.10 Requisites for Professional Bloggers
87.10 Tips for Bloggers-Rss-specifications
88.The Ten Commandments and Seven Sins of Blogging-Everybodygoto
89.34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog-Problogger
90.What Do You Do When Someone Steals Your Content?-Lorelle on Wordpress
91.10 Ways to Monetize Your Blog-Conversionrater
92.10 Great Blogger Temper Tantrums-Valuewiki
93.5 Tips For Long-Term Blogging Success-Blogkits
94.How to prevent comment spam in Blogger blogs?-Googleblog
95.How to prevent comment spam in Wordpress blogs?-JohnTP
96.How to prevent comment spam for Movable type blogs?-Sixapart
97.Directories for submitting your articles-Blogoprenuer
98.Don’t Be Afraid To Try New Things When Promoting Your Blog-Blog-republic
99.Better Blog Branding: 10 Ways To Destroy Your Brand-ChrisG
100.18 lessons Darren Rowse learnt as a blogger
-Problogger
101.Knock Knock!!You've just finished reading the 101th article.

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Learn things the web2.0 way with Tutorom

Everyone loves learning.Blame the boring lecture classes one has to go through in the early stages of his life for a person's lack of interest in the word learning.In web2.0 the tutor and the student are we.Atleast that's what Time magazine said last year.

Tutorom is for all those who want to learn.Topics they have tutorials on range from ajax to making tasty pizzas.You can too contribute your expertise.The site is flooded with technical tutorials.Hit posts include AdobeCS2,ajax and macromedia flash.Though tutorials on other labels like sports health aren't too many,the ones which are there are useful.They even have tutorials on screencasting.Overall a good place to spend some online time.Checkout and give feedback on what you think.

How to fill PDF forms online?

Update[july18,2008]:As one of our readers had a complaint about the site pdffiller,i have come up with a easier alternative to this.I will be shortly posting the technique as a fresh article @ Blogger Whale.Check back soon for updates





You might have indulged with pdf forms in many circumstances and might have chosen an alternate method for formfilling since you thought it to be too hard for a job.Some pdf forms cannot be filled on screen,ofcourse what they were thinking was to print the pdf and fill it manually.

Thankfully there's a solution for this problem.You can use PDF fillerand online pdf form filling tool that'll help you fill forms like IRS tax forms without dropping much sweat.All you need to do is to upload the pdf file and click on any place of the form and start typing.Then you can print or email the modified form.This can be used to fill those forms which don't have onscreen filling facility.

Determine whether a PDF form can be filled on screen

To determine if you can fill a PDF form on screen, check to see if it contains interactive form fields and check for restrictive security settings. (For more information about PDF security settings, see the Acrobat or Adobe Reader Help.)

To determine whether a form contains interactive form fields:

1. Open the form in an Acrobat product.

2. Select the Hand tool, and then drag it over fields in the PDF form. The form contains form fields if the Hand tool changes to either of the following icons:

-- An I-beam (the Text Select tool, which you use to type text in a text field).

-- A pointing hand (which you use to select an option or to check a box)

3. In Acrobat 3D, Acrobat 7, or Adobe Reader 7, click Highlight Fields and/or Highlight Required Fields in the Document Message Bar. Interactive fields will display a colored fill.

Note: If you use Acrobat 3D or Acrobat Professional, you can verify that a form contains form fields by selecting a form tool; Acrobat then highlights any form fields. On Windows XP, form fields are highlighted in blue.

In such cases you can either print the form and fill it manually or use the text box tool but Pdf filler is more flexible since it readily creates an image of the form which can be mailed directly.

Google Adsense to go for site maintenance on Mother's Day

Google adsense will take some time to spend with their mamma[not google,irony]this mother's day.You won't be able to access your account but ads will continue to run.It'll be a four hour break for adsense and reports will still track all activity during this period.
Here's the maintenance start time converted for a few cities around the world:

London – 6:00 pm Saturday
Bucharest – 8:00 pm Saturday
New Delhi – 10:30 pm Saturday
Jakarta – 12:00 am Sunday
Tokyo – 2:00 am Sunday

How to accelerate video streaming on Youtube?

Have you ever felt bored waiting for a Youtube video to stream.The best technique you used till today would be 'hit the pause button and get a coffee'.Now there's a better way if you use firefox.A new greasemonkey script Coralized Youtube makes Youtube videos stream faster.This user script uses Coral Content Distribution Network to accelerate video performance on YouTube.Install this script from here.

Alternative:For those who don't use firefox there's a solution for you people too.Download SpeedBit Video Accelerator for YouTube which also does the same job.It is basically a Web Accelerator which makes your videos stream faster and play smoother reducing buffering problems.You can download SpeedBit Video Accelerator for YouTube from here.

Feedburner hack:Prompt your unverified subscribers[via mail] to increase the deserving hype in feedcount

Feeds via mail is a great service by Feedburner to attract those section of readers uncomfortable with the idea of Rss.But going a step further to ensure everything is fine is your duty as a responsible blogger.Sometimes your subscription confirmation email may be lost in the bunch of email these users recieve and those email will be left unverified.This 'unverified email' thing is a common event happening with many bloggers these days.This will not make any blogger happy as it clinches some hard earned fans from one.But there is a solution for this.You can track out cases where this has occoured and send a reminder letter which may be the best thing for both parties.You can find these unverified mails from the 'subscription management' below 'Subscribe via mail' in feedburner.Now go to communication preferences and copy the confirmation letter message on to a notepad file and signin to the email you've provided to feedburner[because this email is the one which is used as your brand email by feedburner].Now compose a letter with that copied message and send it to all those unverified subscribers of yours.Kudos!!!You've done your part,now wait for them to play theirs.

How to make Youtube videos look good?

Squidoo mailed me an interesting lens today on prettifying Youtube videos.I must tell you it is one of the best lens i have seen in long time.Go check it out.How to make Youtube videos look good?

Quick links for 3/5/2007

I am currently working on a post.So here are a few links [worth checking] to keep you satisfied.

• How to support your favourite bloggers?After reading this post come back and support me.
• Preparing Wordpress blogs for traffic storms."Advantage Blogger blogs"
• Blogger updated adsense features
• Create a Random Photostream With Twitter, Yahoo Pipes and Flickr.

How To Get The Boss To Pay You More Money?

If you haven't yet quitted your job,this video will be of your specific interest.Enjoy!!