Best Advice 7 Tech Idols Ever Received

The most successful people in every industry, including technology have received a piece of precious advice, at some point in their life from someone, which turned the course of their life and made them what they are today.

 
Richard Parsons, Former chairman of Citigroup considers the advice from Steve Ross, former CEO of Time Warner as his life changing one: "Just remember, it's a small business and a long life. You are going to see all these people again."

 
Business Insider compiled a list of such best tips the executives ever received and shared over the years. Here are some of the lessons received by the tech icons like Bill Gates to new world tech stars like Ben Silberman of Pinterest.

 

Marissa Mayer, VP,Google

 
“My friend Andre said to me, ‘you know, Marissa, you are putting a lot of pressure on yourself to pick the right choice, and I have got to be honest: That is not what I see here. I see a bunch of good choices, and there is the one that you pick and make great’. I think that is one of the best pieces of advice I have ever gotten.”

 
-From an interview with Social Times

 

Eric Schmidt, Google -->

Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google

“Find a way to say yes to things. Say yes to invitations to a new country, say yes to meet new friends, say yes to learn something new. Yes is how you get your first job, and your next job, and your spouse, and even your kids."

-From the book “The Best Advice I Ever Got” by Katie Couric.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook -->

Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook

When Sandberg was thinking she would not accept an offer to be Google’s general manager, Eric Schmidt told her, “Stop being an idiot; all that matters is growth.” She says that is the best advice she ever got.

Larry Page, Google -->

Larry Page, Co-founder, Google

"In graduate school at Stanford University, I had about ten different ideas of things I wanted to do, and one of them was to look at the link structure of the web. My advisor, Terry Winograd, picked that one out and said, 'Well, that one seems like a really good idea.' So I give him credit for that."

-From an interview with CNN Money

Bill Gates, Microsoft -->

Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft

"Warren Buffett has taught me a lot of things, but he got me thinking very early on that at some point I'd have the opportunity and responsibility to give the wealth back. And so, literally decades before the foundation got started I was reading about philanthropists from the past … what they'd done and how it worked."

Ben Silberman, Pinterest -->

Ben Silberman, Co-founder, Pinterest

"Don't take too much advice. Most people who have a lot of advice to give - with a few exceptions - generalize whatever they did. ...Every company carves its own path, and (founders) are under pressure to make their startups look like the last successful company everyone remembers."

Richard Branson, Virgin Group -->

Richard Branson, founder and chairman, Virgin Group

 
"My mother always taught me never to look back in regret but to move on to the next thing. The amount of time people waste dwelling on failures rather than putting that energy into another project, always amazes me. I have fun running ALL the Virgin businesses — so a setback is never a bad experience, just a learning curve."

 
-Taken from an interview with The Good Entrepreneur.

Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

 
Berkshire Hathaway director Thomas Murphy once told “the legendary investor”:

 
"Never forget Warren, you can tell a guy to go to hell tomorrow - you don't give up the right. So just keep your mouth shut today, and see if you feel the same way tomorrow."

 
-From an interview with Yahoo

Microsoft's First Ever Tablet To Be Revealed Today

Microsoft can no longer wait watching iPad eating up the entire PC marketand challenging its software, which runs on millions of systems worldwide. That may be why for the first time after 37-years, the company is going to offer a computer of its own creation.



The device is aimed to kill Apple’s iPad and is expected to be launched in Microsoft’s big party today. According to people familiar with the subject, the tablet is expected to run a new version of Windows and will have access to an e-books store using the Barnes & Noble’s technology. Microsoft on April had announced a strategic partnership with B&N, with an investment of $300 million into the business named “Newco.”

 
Microsoft’s decision to enter into the market is likely to be the outcome of tablet explosion lead by iPads. Tablets are causing a huge threat to the PC market. It has already reached eight percentages in size of PC market and is expected to grow to 40 percent by 2016.

 
With the introduction of device, Microsoft is also following its rival Apple, who was successful in integrating its own hardware and software. "If Microsoft wants to control the entire user experience and the entire quality of their products, they have to build their own hardware," said Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a Redmond-based market research firm.

 
But according to many, Microsoft has a big risk of capturing the tablet market due to the existence of many competes including manufacturers who use Microsoft’s software. There are also new anticipated players into the space including Google, which is redy with its tablet.

 
“If it’s true that Microsoft is going to produce its own tablet, it’s a major turning point for the company and shows just how breathtakingly the landscape has changed in a just a few years,” said Brad Silverberg, a venture capitalist in Seattle and former Microsoft executive.

 
Microsoft’s had earlier failed with Zune, a music player introduced to compete with iPod.

Search for right SubReddits : Increase Website Traffic

In our previous post i have discussed about Reddit and how its a powerful back linking tool to gain enormous traffic to your blog. Now it’s quite important that if you want the real audience to reach you must submit your links to the right sub-Reddit.

What is a Sub-Reddit

A Sub-Reddit is actually a custom sub forum on Reddit where links related to a particular field are collected and displayed.What makes them so very special is the fact that you can make a subreddit about anything and make it private or public. Subreddits allow you to follow very specific areas of interest.

How to Search for right Sub-Reddit

Well there are hundreds of Sub-Reddit that continuously feed the Reddit community. Finding the right Sub-Reddit would help you to reach for links of your interest and submit links to the right community.Well one of the easiest way to find the Sub-Reddit is to look for the main theme of your post and search it on the Reddit to see where others are submitting the similar posts.

If you are submitting a link to Reddit make sure that you don’t just submit it to the main Reddit or else your link would be lost in the millions of the links. Try to find the right SubReddits and submit it there to gain the most of the attention required.

Find A SubReddit List

Well if you want to submit your post to a Sub-Reddit you can always use following sites to find the appropriate Sub-Reddit.

Use Reddit to search for SubReddit

Well Reddit maintains a list of the most active Sub-Reddit, that have been active on the front page recently. You can browse and also search for the appropriate Reddit over there using the search bar.

Using The List of Sub-Reddit

Alternatively there are these three very best sources that maintain a list of the SubReddits:

MetaReddit.org



MetaReddit is the most organized of the three sites that I am going to mention here.The site has a very simple and minimalistic design that makes it quite user-friendly. You can search through subreddits by keyword, tags, or logo.You can even monitor all new comments, submission titles and self-texts posted to Reddit for a word or phrase using its monitor feature.

Subreddits

SubReddits also provide a list of the popular SubReddits with the most popular ones displayed on the front page. The site has a very clean look.

Sub-Reddit Finder

Sub-Reddit Finder is also a good source to find the Sub-Reddit with many tools. Although i found this site a bit confusing to use.The site also offers many filtered results like ‘What Reddit are hot ?’ and much more.

Google’s latest OS android 4.0.3

Till now galaxy Nexus is the only handset running Google’s latest OS android 4.0.
But Google recently announced its latest OS Android 4.0.3 which is an advanced release of Ice cream sandwich.
From the side of Android developers it is declared that the new OS will come with new optimization and bug fixes for android based tablets and smartphones.Apart from this optimization,there’s a small amount of new API’S for developers.Android 4.0.3 bring optimization and bug fixes to ICS.Google has listed some of the new API’S in ICE CREAM sandwich. Which includes a social stream API in contacts provider, calender provider enhancement, new and defined camera quality and accessibility refinements.This new API lets apps show users what the people they know are doing or saying along with photos and other contacts information.New camera capabilities enables the apps to manage video stabilization.There is also improvement in graphics ,spelling checking and many more.

How to Open Facebook at School and Office

These days most academic institutions and corporate offices block popular social networking websites like Twitter, Facebook and Orkut so that students/employees don’t waste their time chatting with their buddies or checking their status updates and focus on being more productive instead. However if you are addicted to Facebook but are unable to access it due to Facebook being blocked at school, college or office, here are some methods that will let you open Facebook and access it without any hassles:

1. Change the DNS Server

Most sites including Facebook are usually blocked at schools, colleges and offices by blocking it in the DNS server itself. But you can easily bypass it by switching to some other DNS such as OpenDNS or Google Public DNS. Only a while back some websites including Youtube & torrent sites were not opening up in my PC. No matter how many settings I tweaked, I was unable to access these websites. I had heard of OpenDNS, so I decided to change my DNS settings to those of OpenDNS. Right after I did that, I was able to access all of those websites without any problems. Fortunately, you can do the same since changing your Internet’s DNS setting is quite easy. If you are using Windows, go to Control Panel > Network Connections and select the connection that you are currently using. Right click on it and click on Properties. Then choose Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).

Click on the Properties tab and check the “Use the following DNS server addresses” option. Now enter the following values in Preferred DNS Serverand Alternate DNS Server respectively (OpenDNS):

• 208.67.222.222


• 208.67.220.220

2. Using Gmail

Since Gmail can never be blocked by any institution or office, you can use it safely for accessing Facebook indirectly. All you have to do is to add a gadget by going to Gmail Settings > Labs and looking up the ‘Add any gadget by URL‘ option. Click on “Save changes” button.



Return to the Settings page and you will see that a tab called ‘Gadgets‘ has been added. Click on it and enter the following URL in the ‘Add a gadget by its URL’ field and click add. Here’s the URL:

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/104971404861070329537/facebook.xml



After adding this gadget, a Facebook gadget will appear at the bottom-left of your screen, just below the Chat. Click on expand and login to your FB account. When you first login to your account, a ‘request for confirmation’ screen will appear. Simply click on the Allow button. Once logged in, you can easily update your status and read all recent status updates by your friends.

3. Using Opera Mini

Another method to open blocked Facebook is by using the web version of opera mini browser. Just download Opera mini simulator that functions exactly as the Opera mini browser would do on any mobile phone. In order to access Facebook, you will have to use the mobile version of Facebook –http://m.facebook.com.

4. Edit the Hosts File

Here’s a simple trick you can use to unblock Facebook on the computer you using.




Go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc

Right click on hosts file and open it with notepad

Add these 4 lines at the end of the file:

125.252.224.88 facebook.com

125.252.224.88 www.facebook.com

69.63.181.12 apps.facebook.com

153.16.15.71 upload.facebook.com

153.16.15.71 login.facebook.com

Now save the file.

5. ScrapBoy

Scrapboy is a desktop application that allows you to manage Facebook, Myspace and Orkut from your desktop. Just enter your Facebook login details andaccess Facebook directly from your desktop. You can change notification options from the Notifications tab in the Preferences window of Scrapboy.



Do you know of any other methods to open blocked Facebook? Share them with us.

A Beginners Guide to Reddit : Using Social Media Increase Website Traffic

Reddit very well claims to be “front page of the Internet.” It allows members to post links of online articles, pictures, videos and other multimedia.Reddit is known to increase your site’s traffic by many folds. Very often the site is looks quite confusing to use so here is a beginner’s guide to use Reddit to increase traffic to websites.

Reddit follows a very strict rules to avoid any spammer and thus you need to follow some basic guidelines to make sure that you are not banned as a spammer.Let’s begin our guide with creating an account.

Login / Register at Reddit:

Login or registering an account at Reddit is quite simple all you need to do is to click on the Register link on the right hand corner and register a new account. You don’t need an E-Mail account to register with Reddit but then you must provide it cause it will ask for one later after a few submissions.

Submit a Reddit :

After you have logged in if you are at home page the you’ll get something like the image above to submit a link. If you are on a sub-Reddit page then the link will be available at the bottom of the page.

Try not to submit a link at the main Reddit page or your message will get lost among thousands of other postings . It’s always better to select an appropriate Sub-Reddit to submit your link.

 Submitting To Reddit

Before submitting to Reddit or to a Sub-Reddit you must read Reddiquette which is an informalexpression of Reddit’s community values as written by the community itself.

Here is how you can submit a link to  Reddit community:

The screenshot above is the same as you’ll see when you are about to submit a link to Reddit.

Title

Title would be automatically suggested if you click on the Suggest title button. However you may want to edit the title a bit to make it even more interesting and magnetic. Make sure that your title should not sound like a Spam.

URL

URL is the link that you want to submit to Reddit.

Choose a Sub-Reddit or Reddit

A Sub-Reddit is a sub-section on Reddit which would be a collection of links of a particular genre.Like Sub-Reddit “programming“would contain links related to discussion and news about computer programming.

If you are submitting a link directly from the main Reddit then by default this entry would be filled in as “Reddit.com“. Make sure that you change that to some suitable Reddit if you are seriously serious about making some traffic for your site.

There are chances that when you submit a link to a Sub-Reddit they don’t immediately show your link, don’t panic some Reddit take time to show the links.

Submit to Reddit

Now correctly fill in the CAPTCHA code and click on submit button.

So now that you have submitted your first Reddit link its time to check if your submission was accepted and not marked as spam. Often because of too many links from the same site your links may be marked as spam. to check if your link was accepted or not do following;

Check if the submission was accepted or marked Spam

Click on the Left hand corner link to the Sub-Reddit that you have submitted your link to. After that the main page of the Sub-reddit would appear.

Click on the NEW  link to view the latest links that have been submitted to the Sub-Reddit. If for some reason your link is not shown up there wait for around fifteen minutes and if still no success than ping the moderators about the issue.

Everything you need to know about HTML 5 and its impact on SEO

HTML goes back a long way. It was first published as an Internet draft in 1993. The ’90s the HTML version 2.0, versions 3.2, and 4.0 (in the same year!), and finally, in 1999, version 4.01 were released.Since then the focus of web standards shifted to XML and XHTML, and HTML was put on the back burner. But looks like HTML was quite stubborn and thus refused to die, it saw its rebirth as HTML 5. It was a result of work of a few people who started the Web Hypertext Application Working Group (WHATWG) in 2004 and created the HTML5 specification. W3C published the first working draft for HTML5 in 2008. While HTML5 is still under development it is quite essential to understand its basics to get the most out if it.

HTML gives search engines the needed context they need to understand what’s contained in a web page. A search Engine won’t look at how beautiful your site looks, it won’t make a difference to the crawlers whether it’s having all the glitter and sparks or not, though it may affect your visitors. To understand the way a Search Engine Crawler works you may Download Lynx a web browser that displays only text and attributes, you may be able to view your website from the eyes of a Search Engine.

So What’s New in HTML 5?

Well if you look at the HTML5 websites and applications you may feel that it is more of a programming language, but the truth is that it’s the same old HTML with some new markup tags and attributes, which make web designing easier than ever before. It’s backward compatible with HTML4 and thus you need not learn it from scratch. The new semantic tags, web page segmentation, the new link types, improved Media Handling with and tags are just a few important new features that we will discuss in this article, that are sure to affect your SEO strategies.

And what are the features that affect My SEO and How?

HTML5 is based on various design principles,

• Compatibility


• Utility


• Interoperability


• Universal access

With these four principles around HTML5 has made sure that it is coded in an intelligent way to move a step closer towards semantic web.

Well anyone who has been in the game of SEO will be surely aware of its basic pillars:

• Search Engine crawlers indexing your pages in their databases


• Speed , faster loading WebPages are ranked high


• Quality (not quantity) of links, pingbacks.

HTML5 promises to deliver all of it to you, but in a bit more intelligent yet simple way.

Web Page Segmentation for enhanced Search Engine Indexing

Remember HTML5 is all about evolution and not more of a revolution. Thus it has introduced simple yet effective way to arrange our code so as to make it more semantic and express it better.  For example, Google when analyzed, found out that many a people were using common ID names for DIV tags ,like DIV id=”header” to mark up header content. The problem here is that DIV tags don’t add semantic value or give context to what’s inside it.

Here comes the evolution with HTML5, with the new elements such as,< header>, <article>, <aside> and <footer>, the segmentation of the web page becomes more meaningful. Once HTML5 becomes widely accepted search engines will surely look for these tags for better understanding.

Presentation and Content

Although Content is often considered as the King in a Blog or website, nowadays it’s the way of presentation (read: SEO) that matters a lot. With the new Tags to separate various sections of your page HTML5 gives you a way to affect your SEO. Those of you who have designed websites in the past must have tried to divide your pages into various sections like Headers, footers navigation, sidebars etc. for better classification so as to make it easier to understand which part contains what information, the same is now very smoothly done with the help of HTML5 tags like <header>, <article>, <aside> and <footer>, etc.



<article>

Article tag is just the perfect way to define the main contents of your page. With so many different information on the same page, the <article> tag offers you to indicate the content of a web page, blog post, comment, article . It would help directing the search engines to pay more emphasis to the article (i.e. the main content) via this tag. For further reading read http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-article-element

<section>

The new <section> tag can be used to identify separate sections on a page. A<section> tag can be used to group content together and may contain further<section> tags to create the subsections. This is quite similar to sections and subsections that we see in a book. This allows
each section to have its own heading, giving search engines a clear hint of what the content in the section is all about. Thus search engines can get a better understanding of how the web page is segmented and structured.




<header>

A header element is used to set the header section of a document and represents a group of introductory or navigational aids. Often they contain the standard h1 to h6 heading elements, i.e. the hgroup elements though not necessary always. Header should not be confused with hgroup elements (standard h1 to h6 heading elements) actually headers may contain may contain all sorts of content, from the company logo to the search box. So now instead of using <div id=”header”> for header section you can directly use <header>,as it offers better semantics.

<footer>

Traditionally footers of two types, 1^st those of text type, which basically carry a copyright info, email, and the second one is the Web2.0 Footers with larger area and which carry Categories , links and content in them. In a Web page footer is located at the bottom and usually contains the copyright information, links to pages etc. etc. about the page, although, it isn’t necessary to be that way. A Footer element represents the footer content of its nearest sectioning element.

Footers have been described as the most abused part of a website which is often given the least care. Thus while search engines might not pay much interest to them as header, they do have their own role in SEO. For example a good footer with adequate links extremely helpful to search engines, especially if your navigation appears as graphic elements. At the same time, it’s helpful to users, who can navigate to another section without scrolling back to the top.

The <header> and <footer> tags can be used many times on one page, thus providing a very flexible layout.

<nav>

The purpose of this element is to summarize a group of links that serves as a collection of offsite links, document or site navigation. It’s a common practice by many developers to use <ul> and <li> tags for navigation and then style these elements as menu items. But this practice often leads to confusion between a list that has links in it and a list that is simply navigation. However you can also use<ul> and <li> tags with <nav> .

<aside>

It is used for related content or pull quotes. It usually contains the content which could be considered separate from that content. Such sections are often represented as sidebars

All these elements and sectioning elements can be styled with CSS. They may not have an effect on Search engine ranking now but in future search engines will definitely be taking advantage of these elements as they crawl and index pages.

Different Link Types for improved links

Other Major improvements are Link Types. Anyone with even the most basic knowledge of SEO is aware of the importance of hyperlinks in and out of a web page. It is not a hidden fact that search engines study links in a web page to see what web pages it points to as well as to see what web pages point to it, and many bookmarking sites have grown along this concept of linking. HTML5 gives a better way of managing these links with new Link Types. It helps the crawlers know that what type of hyperlink the link actually is. Attribute values likerel=”author” and rel=”license” essentially allow us to describe our links better.

A full list of link types can be found over here.

A Plugin Free Environment for enhanced Webpage speed

HTML5 provides native support for many features that used to be possible only with plugins. Very often plugins present problems like them being not installed, disabled, blocked and more over they are difficult to integrate with the rest of an HTML. This is where HTML5 introduces its native functionality. The native elements such as and can mean increased interoperability with search engines. Thus search Engines will easily index our audio and video content as well. Various websites are already gearing up to adopt HTML5.

For example to insert video, use a <video> tag and set its src attribute to URL containing a movie. You can also display playback controls by including thecontrols attribute, thus removing the need of a flash player. However using this codec can also put you in trouble if the user is using a browser that doesn’t support <video> tag or the media codec is not supported.

I want to know more about HTML5

Well after reading this post if you wish to learn more about HTML5 we have a few recommended sources that may help you learn more about this wonderful technology:

• http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html


• http://html5doctor.com

If you found this post interesting consider leaving a piece of comment.

A Complete Guide on Getting Your Blog Indexed by Google within 24 Hours

A common problem faced by most of the bloggers is getting their blog indexed in Google or any other major search engines. If you’re blogging on Blogger-hosted blog, then you don’t have to worry about getting indexed in Google as all your entries or posts are shown in Google Search Results immediately at the instant time you hit the “Publish” button. But, it’s really frustrating for Self-hosted WordPress users and especially new bloggers who really have to do everything manually to be indexed in Google.



Here, I would like to share some of the ways which I’ve used when I migrated from Blogger to WordPress where I’ve successfully indexed my homepage (Blogger Bits ) within 24 hours and all my posts in Google in just 14 days.

After creating your blog, just follow these simple steps and you’ll see your website in Search Engine Results within 24 hours for sure. (100% working)

Step #1: Install “All in One SEO pack plugin” for WordPress

This is the first thing that I’ve done immediately after migrating to WordPress. Installing the All in One SEO pack plugin. Although I do not have any basic knowledge/ experience of using WordPress before, I’ve read a lot of articles about the use of this great plugin which is really essential to every WordPress users. This plugin enables you to add post title, description, and keywords for every individual posts for better Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) and hence maximizes the chances of getting organic traffic from Google very soon after blog being launched.

Step #2: Add your site to Google Webmasters Tools

Log into Google Webmasters Tools with your Google account and add your blog/site by clicking the ‘Add a site‘ button. Then, type the domain name you wish to add, and click ‘Continue‘. You will have to verify your site using aMETA Tag. Copy it go to your WordPress Dashboard > Plugins > and paste the META tag in the ‘Additional Home Headers‘ at the bottom and ‘Update‘ the info. Then, click ‘Verify‘ on Google Webmaster Tools and you are done.

Step #3: Submit your Sitemap to Google

Install Google XML Sitemaps plugin for WordPress. This plugin will generate a XML sitemap which you can submit to Google Webmasters Tools or any other search engines to better index your blog. Once you’ve activated it in your ‘Plugins‘ page, you’ll see a ‘XML-Sitemap‘ link under ‘Settings‘ menu. So, build your XML sitemap for the first time by clicking on “Rebuild Sitemap” button. So, your sitemap URL will be looking like thishttp://www.yourblogname.com/sitemap.xml orhttp://www.yourblogname.com/sitemap.xml.gz. So now, go to Google Webmasters > Site Configurations > Sitemaps > Click on ‘Add a sitemap‘ button. Now, type ‘sitemap.xml‘ in the text area box which comes after http://www.yourblogname.com/ and click “Submit” button. This great plugin will automatically update your sitemap every time you publish your post.

Step #4: Adding your site to Google Analytics

First, sign into Google Analytics using your Google Account. Then, you will have to add your Website’s URL, Contact information, accept User Agreements and finally you’ll be provided with a Tracking Code. Copy the code and go toWordPress Dashboard > Appearances > Editor > Footer.php and paste the code right above the </body> tag. This step is important to track your visitors, traffic sources, page views and more.




Step #5: Site Stats and Valuation sites

This is another simplest way to tell to Google that you page does exist. Usually, most of us have come across site valuation sites which tells you “How Much Does Your Site Worth?” These sites already have good place/rankings in Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines. So, when you submit your site and check your site’s value there, it will automatically create a special page for your blog/website (like this, this and this ). This will help your site to easily get indexed by Google. Here is a list of such sites:

Alexa, About The Domain, Stat Brain, Stimator, BizInformation, Websiteoutlook,QuarkBase, Whois, Cubestat, BuiltWith, URLfan, SiteValueCheck, Business-Opportunities, NinjaWebsiteAppraiser, MyWebsiteWorth, Estimix and etc.

Step #6: Social Networking and Bookmarking sites

Register an account with top Social Networking Sites such as Facebook ( Facebook fans page ), Twitter, Orkut and bookmarking sites such asStumbleUpon, Technorati, Digg, Delicious, and etc.  As they have a good reputation in Google, they will make Googlebot to have a glance at your site. But, remember to use your site name like thiswww.facebook.com/yourblogname or twitter.com/yourblogname .

Step #7: Blog directories and communities

Add your blog to top directories such as Technorati, BlogCatalog, Bloggernity,GlobeofBlogs, Blogged, OnTopList and etc. This is the most easiest and effective way to get free quality back links from websites with higher Google page ranks.

Step #8: Link Exchanges

Link exchange is one of the ancient but effective way for people to get exposure to their website and get indexed. But usually, no body wants to exchange link with a blog with zero Google Page rank and no Alexa rank. Though, you can try to exchange link with your friends and peers who already have websites with good rankings or try free link exchange services such as Link Market where you can exchange links with other people.

So, if you’ve followed each and every step that I’ve mentioned above, I bet that your site/blog (at least your homepage if you’ve just started your blog) will be indexed in Google Search Engine results within 24 hours. Try to check for those links by typing “site:www.yourblogname.com” in Google Search.  Good luck.

If you have any other good tips or techniques, please do not hesitate to share with us in the  comments below.

A Short Guide to Meta Tag Optimisation

In my last post i shared some of the best places on web to share you blog link . Backlinking is only a small part of the science or to say the art of SEO. To get the most out of your website it’s quite essential that search engines can identify your website and its content in the ever-growing internet.For this apart from having a good domain name and backlinks what you need to focus on is having a good list of Meta Tags.

So what are Meta Tags?

Meta tags

Well to be on top of SEO proper Meta tags are of paramount importance. Meta tags are actually the keywords that are included in the head of your web page, in-between the HTML tags, <head> and </head>. These tags were introduced by various search engines to better index the websites. Now provided the fact that most of us use search engines to surf the plethora of information on internet it is essential to get on a high search engine ranking .

So what are various Meta Tags?

There are various meta tags ,used to send different values to the search engines depending on the websites they are used with. Here is a list of the most common ones that are a ‘must have’ .:

Title,Keywords,Description,Abstract,Language,Robots.

Optionally these tags are also used

Owner,Author,Expires,Charset,Classification.

So what are these Tags and What information do they carry?

So now that we know what meta tags are lets see what data do these tags carry with them .

Title:

<TITLE>TechBU-A WordPress blog</TITLE>

Well the title tag is perhaps the most common and important part of your blog apart from its content. You must try to keep it concise and include the most important keywords in it.

Description:

<meta name= “description” content=”How to optimize your Meta Tags to get your website higher in search engine results.” />

Description tags are actually displayed by the search engines along with your title so these should describe your web page. Since many search engines will only display the first 20 characters it should be precise.

Keywords:

 

<meta name=”keywords”content=”Abstract,blog,Description,Keywords,language,Meta“>

This tag was previously used by search engines to determine rank you pages,it is no longer used by the major engines. The tag is a list of keywords and phrases. Each Keyword or keyword phrase is separated by a comma. Google doesn’t uses this tag, however if you include this tag the don’t use very long keywords.

Robot tag:

<META NAME=”ROBOTS”  CONTENTS=” index or noindex ,follow or nofollow“>

This tag is not generally used to rank your pages its just used to tall the search engines that which page is to be indexed and which they should just leave.

Here are the cases where you can use the meta tags:

<META NAME=”ROBOTS”  CONTENTS=” index ,follow“>

In this case the search engine will index(cache) your page and will follow all the links.

<META NAME=”ROBOTS”  CONTENTS=” index,nofollow“>

Here your page will be indexed but no links will be followed.

<META NAME=”ROBOTS”  CONTENTS=”noindex ,follow“>

Don’t index (cache) this page, but do follow the links.

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>

Don’t index the page and don’t follow the links.

So does that mean just Meta tag optimization will give me High PR?

Well you see meta tag optimization is just a part of the vast science of SEO.To get better indexed in the search engines meta tags will help you, but they ain’t gonna be a dramatic change . One must follow other SEO tips like backlinks, etc also But at the end of the day Content is the King so make sure you have  viral content. 

[HOW TO] Show Stars Ratings on Google SERP

Google introduced the Rich snippets in their search results a long time ago, in 2009. But still a lot of Bloggers aren’t aware of how to utilize it to drive more traffic from Google Search Results. Like Author image next to contents make good impressions to Googlers. Star rating also added more credibility and a sense of trust to Googlers. Like you can see below how star ratings looks on search results. If you have Google authorship too, your image with name will move at the bottom of the result. So, now you can say that your name is highlighted two times when your single star rating post is indexed

How to Show  Star Ratings in Google Search Results for WordPress?

• Install & active Author hReview WP Plugin via WordPress Dashboard


• Goto Settings ‹ Reviews

Now you will be taken to Author hReview Settings. Mark according to your wish if you want to display rating on Homepage or below single post.

You can also increase the width of Review box, choose  Alignment and what color of the button should be?  Below you can see the settings i made for my blog.

After doing the above configuration it’s still not over that you will get star ratings on all your posts or in a particular post. At the time of creating a new post you will see a panel of  Review Setting Box added at the bottom. In that you are required to enter Name of the product you are reviewing, Product type, Author Name, Product Version, Affiliate Link, Price, Review Summary, Select Rating (our of 5). After publishing the post you would see a new beautiful review box at the starting of your post containing all the details in the review settings.  If you at the Author hReview settings have selected to display rating below single post . You would see a box at the bottom of your post containing summary of the review, Price of the product , Editor rating and More details buttons.

 




Additionally with Author hReview plugin, you also get a widget called Recent Reviews Containing all the reviews along with ratings you have done in your wordpress blog.

 

If you still have doubt whether you have done all the things alright. You can use the Google Rich Snippets tools to see whether your posts are having star ratings or not.

6 Wild New Patents: The Future Of Tech

New is always better, says Barney Stinson. We agree. New developments in technologies keep making our lives better and convenient. Tech giants keep filing patents for discoveries made by their R&D teams and are constantly involved in patent infringement lawsuits. This shows how competitive the market has become. We bring you a list of 6 wild patents filed by leading tech companies that will pleasantly surprise you.

 
1. Diary Free Calorimeter
Company: Microsoft

How would you like to have a device which could act as your dietician and trainer? This might soon turn into a reality as Microsoft has files its patent for a device which is your quintessential calorimeter.

The device will estimates nutritional caloric intake by periodically monitoring weight and sensing physical exercise, which can then be used in a calorimetric model derived from regression analysis of a population.

The device will be a wrist strap on which will sense heart rate, body temperature, skin resistance, motion/acceleration and velocity. This device is a super intelligent trainer and dietician combined.

 

2. Nose Bridge Sensor

 

Company: Google

Google glasses sound like one hell of a gadget if we go by the patents that Google has filed for it. The latest one is the nose bridge sensor.

Google glasses need to have a number of sensors which will work better if placed in a forward facing part of the device. Hence the nose bridge is the ideal spot for a video camera, a sonar sensor, an ultrasonic or possibly a microphone.

This technology could also be used to switch the device on when the presence of the nose is sensed between the nose bridges. The possibilities sound very interesting and we can’t wait to see how it turns out.

 

3. WiFi and GSM Landmarks and Neighborhoods for Location Based Services

 

Company: Microsoft

Every other location today has some form of wireless landmark information such as a Bluetooth or Wi-Fi access point. This new patent by Microsoft will capture and then send the information from these landmarks to mobile devices.

This new technology will create a complete map of the area for a mobile device based on the information provided through the visible access points.

4. Method, System, and Apparatus for Patient Controlled Access of Medical Records
Company: IBM

IBM’s patent will allow different platforms to access controlled medical information for patients, the information will be provided only when permission is granted by the patients.

The information stored in networks shall be shared with hospitals, pharmacies, research institutes, emergency services, laboratories, physicians and insurance companies. This technology can help save lives in case of emergencies and mishaps.

 

 

5. Method and Program Product for Preventing Distribution of an E-Mail Message
Company: IBM
This latest patent will surely come in handy for all the corporate and for people running them. Using this technology a user receiving mails will not be able to forward it to unintentional users. The mail will be received only by the recipient and will not be sent or forwarded to a third party.

 

 
6. Automatically Generating Nodes and Edges in an Integrated Social graph
Company: Facebook

Facebook has recently files two patents and one of them is a method for maintaining a data store for nodes and edges. This technology will be used to understand what information from a user is shared.

The technology will make it easier for Facebook to understand concepts Facebook users use to connect to other users. Because of this technology making recommendations will become easier.

Google pays almost $18.7 million to get domains - .google, .youtube, .goog and .plus

Google wants love. But so do six other companies. They are after .love, actually, a new "top-level domain" that could catch on as .com, .org and .net did.

Love might not prevail, but chances are, at least one of the domains in 1,930 applications for new extensions will. The domains are the letters that follow the dot in Internet addresses, and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, known as ICANN, revealed the new requests on Wednesday.

Google proved to be one of the more ambitious applicants. It spent almost $18.7 million applying for more than 100 top-level domains, some expected, some not. Not surprisingly, the search giant wants .google, .youtube, .goog and .plus. It was the only applicant vying for .fly, .new and .eat. But it is going to have to fight Johnson & Johnson for .baby,Microsoft for .docs and .live, and Amazon for 17 top-level domains: .wow, .search, .shop, .drive, .free, .game, .mail, .map, .movie, .music, .play, .shop, .show, .spot, .store, .talk and .you.

Amazon also went after .tunes, .got, .author, .smile, .song, .joy, .bot, .like and .call. It does not appear that Facebook applied for any domain. Apple applied for .apple.

The most sought-after extension is .app, with 13 applicants though not Apple, which popularized the mobile application.

"The Internet is about to change forever," said Rod Beckstrom, chief executive of ICANN.

ICANN is expected to approve hundreds of these extensions, the first of which should be in use by next year. ICANN set the application fee high, at $185,000 a name, to try to discourage frivolous bids; still, more than 200 terms are being sought by more than one bidder. ICANN decides who gets ownership of the contested top-level domains.

ICANN will evaluate applicants in batches and consider various objections. Among the objections it will consider are those from rights holders. It would have very likely thrown out an application for .microsoft from an entity that is not Microsoft. The most common objection is likely to be the "limited public interest condition." In those cases, people might object to a profit-making company like Google owning a generic top-level domain name like .love or .fun.

The geographical origin of the applications demonstrates the increasingly international nature of the Internet. While nearly half of the bids are from North America, more than 600 have come from Europe and about 300 from the Asia-Pacific region.

More than 100 of the applications are for extensions in non-Western alphabets. While so-called internationalized domain names have been phased in since 2010, the current expansion could accelerate the globalization of the Internet, Beckstrom said.

"That is going to mean a lot to the people in countries who maybe feel they haven't benefited fully from the Internet," he said.

While there are already several hundred dot suffixes, many of these, including country-specific domain names like .co.uk, come with restrictions. There are only a handful of so-called generic top-level domains, including .info, .net, .org and the popular .com - which, according to supporters of the expansion plan, is running out of capacity for accommodating the digital world's ever-growing addressing needs.

The expansion creates an opportunity for marketers, who will be able to develop websites with addresses ending in their companies' brand names, or an entire category of products or services, like .music or .insurance.

There is also a lingering question about whether the new suffixes are needed at all. Some top-level domains that ICANN has created in previous, smaller expansion rounds have attracted little interest. Many consumers find websites via search engines, rather than typing in an exact Web address. Others are increasingly using mobile applications, rather than the open Internet.

"This is an opportunity for brands, cities and countries to step out of what was this very limited - in my view - environment in which they could promote their brands," said Alex Berry, senior vice president for enterprise services at Neustar, an Internet registry service that is working with clients like New York City, which is seeking the .nyc name. "This is a positive, a once-in-a-generation opportunity that we'll look back on 10 years from now and say, 'Wow."'

The .wow domain, by the way, is sought by Google, Amazon and the online content publisher Demand Media.

Researchers Find Online Photos are Worth Much More than 1,000 Words

The next time you pull out your smartphone and snap a photo of a landmark to upload to Facebook, think about the broader implications: Not only are you sharing your experience with your friends, but you’re contributing a small piece of data that could one day build a model of the world.

Researchers David Crandall of Indiana University and Noah Snavely of Cornell University are developing algorithms to create models of patterns based on the vast troves of photographs uploaded to Facebook, Flickr and other photo-sharing websites each day. Not only can their models be used to build 3D representations of a place, but they can also shed light on the people who visit those places.

“This analysis can also generate statistics about places, such as ranking landmarks by their popularity or studying which kinds of users visit which sites,” Crandall and Snavely wrote in an article that was published last month in the academic journal ACMQueue. “At a more local level, we can use automatic techniques from computer vision to produce strikingly accurate 3D models of a landmark, given a large number of 2D photos taken by many different users from many different vantage points."

Crandall and Snavely suggest that photo-sharing sites can be used to model human behavior at given points in time and history. The implications are huge for marketers and could offer an explanation as to why Facebook has made a recent push into expanding its photo and mobile offerings.

There are, of course, limitations to the techniques, which will likely be overcome in time. Photo collections have an extreme scale and an unstructured nature, the researchers said; many different people take photos with many different cameras from largely unknown viewpoints, which complicates the ability to build the models.

Building 3D Models

The paper demonstrates how Crandall and Snavely were able to use 6,500 photos publicly shared on Flickr to build a computer-simulated reconstruction of Old Town of Dubrovnik in Croatia.



The advantages of using social media are clear: Such models can be built at a relatively low cost and don’t require costly site visits or surveys. The problem faced by the researchers is in developing algorithms that can extract useful data from the “noisy data” that flows through the typical API stream.

Mapping the World

Most photo-sharing sites allow users to share more information than just the photo; the time and date a photo was shot, the location and even the type of camera used can be collected. Already, the researchers have been able to put together a list of the most-photographed places in the world (New York, London, San Francisco, Paris and Los Angeles round out the top five) and the five most-photographed landmarks (the Eiffel Tower, Trafalgar Square, Tate Modern, Big Ben and Notre Dame).

But the data can reveal so much more, including what types of people visit those places. Beyond that, algorithms are being developed that can effectively map how people travel through highly photographed places like Manhattan:



“We can infer a user’s social network with startling accuracy based only on such patterns,” the researchers wrote. “After observing that two people were at about the same place at about the same time on five distinct occasions, for example, the probability that they are friends is nearly 60%.”

To entice people to take more photos in places that aren’t photographed as frequently as, say, New York or Paris, the researchers have been experimenting with gamification. One such effort known as PhotoCity allowed them to collect 100,000 photos of the Cornell and University of Washington campuses by offering points to players who took photos at specific places.

“Imagine all of the world’s photos as coming from a ‘distributed camera,’ continually capturing images all around the world. Can this camera be calibrated to estimate the place and time each of these photos was taken?” the researchers concluded. “If so, we could start building a new kind of image search and analysis tool - one that would, for example, allow a scientist to find all images of Central Park over time in order to study changes in flowering times from year to year, or that would allow an engineer to find all available photos of a particular bridge online to determine why it collapsed. Gaining true understanding of the world from the sea of photos online could have a truly transformative impact.”

 

Gmail Notifr

Gmail Notifr sends you notifications about the received e-mails and other events in your Google account. It supports multiple accounts, checks mail at a specified interval, has Growl and sound notifications and has no background daemon processes installed as Google’s official notifier. Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5+ (Leopard).

Yahoo! Battles It Out For Internet Search Crown

With its new release- the Yahoo! Axis, a search application that is introduced for the Apple gadgets like iPhones, iPads and iPad Touch, Yahoo! has already started its quest for regaining the top spot as the most preferred search engine. Offering high speed querying capabilities, the Yahoo! Axis has also launched itself a pc version as a plug-in software that can be used with Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and other browsers that support HTML-5.

 
From the old blue lines that showed the matching lines from the search query to a preview of the page, which helps in providing the required information, the Yahoo! Axis has simply revolutionized searching. Instead of pre-fashioned clicking, the Axis helps users to “swipe” across a stream of pages and the required pages can be viewed by simply dragging them from the row.

 
Special Projects Product Management Director Ethan Batraski said "Yahoo! is still very much in search, we continue to flourish." Batraski also added "We removed the entire search results page from the equation for a game-changing search experience,” He continued "You will never have to use Safari ever again."

 
The Yahoo! Axis provides easy tweeting, bookmarking and emailing. Also this app has brought new idea of synchronizing devices, which helps to share the information from one gadget to another.

 
Yahoo! really finds this innovation will boost their quest for the top spot, as earlier this year saw Google being elected as the most preferred search engine with 66.5 percent followed by Microsoft’s Bing with 15.4 percent and Yahoo! pushed to 3^rd spot with 13.5 percent of queries to handle.

6 Things That Can Ruin Your CV

1. Being too Subjective:

 
A CV can only be effective when the contents in it are in points. If it is in points it is very easy for the HR professionals to understand as well as it is helpful for them to grasp and draw meanings as soon as possible as they are suppose to review innumerable number of applications in a day. A resume must always be brief and to the point.

2. Unrelated job experience and hobbies:

 
Many job seekers make the mistake of filling in all the irrelevant information about their job experience and hobbies. It is better to avoid when it is not necessary, instead give all the relevant information on your job experience or anything which is related to the job you are going to pursue for which you have applied. While mentioning the hobbies, it will be good if you mention if you have something relevant to the post you are applying for.

3. Information about family members:

 

< br /> None of the organization is concerned about their employee’s family or relatives. Though there are some cases where some of the recruiters ask the potential employees about their immediate family background during the interviewing round, it is not relevant to mention the uncles and aunts’ name in your resume as it can create poor insight.

4. Marital Status:

 
Many make the mistake of including the marital status on the resume because the recruiter doesn’t judge or govern the first impression of their potential employee on the basis of marital status. It is just the relevance of your capabilities and your talent which matters a lot for them to match the job profile.

5. Religious outlooks:

 
Almost all the companies are unbiased when it comes to their religious outlooks and it should definitely not as well as should not make any sought of difference while choosing their employees even if they follow different religion.

6. Mentioning the word CV or Resume on the top:

 
It will be absolutely clear to recognize that it is a CV or Resume with the content it contains in the letter. So, it can be foolish if you start your resume by mentioning it as CV or resume.

Anyhow, this doesn’t mean that you should always follow fixed guidelines while building your profile. If you are innovative you can very well be appreciated by everyone. It will be your choice on how you are going to present your resume, but keep in mind if it is mentioned in point format it is really helpful for both you to impress the recruiters as well as for the recruiters to review the resume as fast as possible.