How to Chat With Your Facebook Friends Using Skype?
10:36 PM | 0 Comments
Facebook is all about connecting with your friends. It might not be the best chatting client, but it isthe largest database of people online, since around 901 million people use Facebook actively. Many of you might know about Skype. It is one of the best chatting and IM, and the best voice chat services in the world. It so happens that now, you can integrate the best chatting service in the world with the world's largest database of profiles, and you've got yourself a powerful recipe to connect with the people around you that you love. Yes! You can now use Skype to chat with your Facebook friends and video call them without visiting Facebook.com!
Get the latest Skype
For this feature to work properly, make sure your Skype is up to date. Simply go to theSkype website, and download the version of Skype appropriate for your platform. currently, tis feature is only available for Skype on Computer. But Skype is working on adding more devices and platforms, so hang in there while you connect :)
Connecting Skype With Facebook
To connect your Skype to Facebook, simply Click on View on the Skype Menu bar, and click on Skype Home. A new Skype windows will open up. Click on the cog icon as shown in the image below.
Once you click it, you'll see an option to 'Connect to Facebook'. It you don't see it, that means you're already connected! Now, go over to your Skype main view and click on the Facebook icon next to Contacts.
Once you click it, you'll see all your friends who are online on Facebook. You can talk to them or call them just like you would on Facebook. Cool, huh?
This is a very useful piece of functionality. It will expand the contact lists of many people, hence making it easier for them communicate with their friends, and that is what Skype aims for. here's what they said: "We are on a mission to connect over one billion people and our continued partnership with Facebook brings us one step closer to this goal."
I wouldn't say one step. Rather, Skype is 901 million steps closer to their goal, since there are so many people on Facebook. I would recommend one thing though. Don't turn on notifications from Facebook on Skype, because people are always coming and going on Facebook, so they might irritate you :)
If you have any question, or are facing any problems regarding this topic, we might be able to help you. Just shoot your comment below. Cheers :)
Bitly - a New Realtime Search Engine For You!
12:52 AM | 0 Comments
What is the Realtime project?
No, it isn't another search engine like Yahoo or Bing that've been inspired by Google. Well, inspired maybe. Competition, no. Bitly's Realtime is a different sort of search engine. It can be thought of as a cross between Google's search, and Twitter's Trending topics.
Bitly has been hard at work expanding its business influence. In January, it updated its enterprise dashboarding system, and it redesigned its structure in May, which made it more of a Social Bookmarking service than a URL shortner. With a latest round of funding by Khosla Ventures, and the announcement of this new search engine, it's pretty clear Bitly wants to make a much greater mark on the internet.
How does it work?
Bitly's Realtime is aimed at providing users with the most viral news at the moment from around the world. It tracks every URL that has been shortened, and then shared on social media. The top links clicked every minutes are listed in the Realtime news feed.
That isn't the power of the project though, far from if. The really useful feature comes with the search filters. It has really easy to use search filters. Like any search engine, you can search for news based on keywords. You can also bring up targeted results based on country, and even audience's language. Just like Google's site search feature, you can search keywords from any single domain (such as mybloggertricks.com).
The most powerful features though, are search by Topic, or search on social media. There's a list of topics you can choose from. Additionally, you can choose from among five social medias presently, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, and Ameblo (a Japanese Social network-cum-blogging community). You can, for example, search for "best strategies" (keyword) for "advertising" (topic) on Twitter (social network).
Join the service now!
For bloggers, every new internet service that they can somehow use is a possible opportunity. A lot of you might already be shortening your links to share on Twitter and other social media. If you already are using Bitly, then there's good news for you! Your content might get searched, making your content viral and reachable to a whole new audience you never knew existed!
Remember that this search engine relies only on the data from links that have been shortened using Bitly. If you've never used Bitly to shorten your links, then your content will not be searched, simple as that!
This service not only encourages users to use Bitly's link shortening service, but also to share their content on social media. The incentive being a potential for a lot more traffic. Millions of people are looking for the most popular and recent news at any time. The Realtime news feed could be another source for them. This is a whole new concept, and has a lot of potential to grow. Well played Bitly. I'm sure many others will now follow their lead.
So get yourself registered with Bitly now, and start shortening and sharing to get your awesome content listen and become reachable to millions of people worldwide!
How to add Google+ Updates Gadget to Blogger
12:49 AM | 0 Comments
Luckily, Google+ to RSS offers a free service enabling us to generate an RSS feed for our personal profiles and pages which we can add to a simple Feed gadget in Blogger.
Take a look at the sidebar to see this technique in action and read on to find out how to add a Google+ updates gadget in your own Blogger site.
To get started, head over to Google+ to RSS and create a feed for your Google+ profile. You'll need to log in using your Google+ account to allow the app to access your profile stream:
Read more »
Page Navigation with Arrow Keys in Blogger
10:35 PM | 1 Comments
In this tutorial, I offer a very simple Blogger template hack which can be used to navigate between newer and older posts on any page where the "blog pager" is present (including index, search, archive and item pages) using the left and right arrow keys.
Try out this functionality on my latest Blogger template release and read on for details of how to add this function to your own Blogger-based site.
There are two main steps to add arrow key navigation to our Blogger template:
- Edit the "Blog-Pager" element in the template HTML
- Add a simple script just before the closing </body> tag
Once we've added the relevant code, you'l be able to navigate to older posts and pages using the right arrow key, or to newer pages using the left arrow key.
Add the required code to your Blogger template
First we need to edit the "newer" and "older" links in the Blog-pager element of our Blogger template.
Go to Template>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard and ensure you have checked the Expand widget templates box near the top of the page.
Using your browser's search function, locate the following section of code:
<div class='blog-pager' id='blog-pager'>
<b:if cond='data:newerPageUrl'>
<span id='blog-pager-newer-link'>
<a class='blog-pager-newer-link' expr:href='data:newerPageUrl'expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + "_blog-pager-newer-link"'expr:title='data:newerPageTitle'><data:newerPageTitle/></a>
</span>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:olderPageUrl'>
<span id='blog-pager-older-link'>
<a class='blog-pager-older-link' expr:href='data:olderPageUrl'expr:id='data:widget.instanceId + "_blog-pager-older-link"'expr:title='data:olderPageTitle'><data:olderPageTitle/></a>
</span>
</b:if>
Edit the text highlighted in bold red so they appear like this instead:
<div class='blog-pager' id='blog-pager'>
<b:if cond='data:newerPageUrl'>
<span id='blog-pager-newer-link'>
<a class='blog-pager-newer-link' expr:href='data:newerPageUrl' expr:title='data:newerPageTitle' id='newer'><data:newerPageTitle/></a>
</span>
</b:if>
<b:if cond='data:olderPageUrl'>
<span id='blog-pager-older-link'>
<a class='blog-pager-older-link' expr:href='data:olderPageUrl' expr:title='data:olderPageTitle' id='older'><data:olderPageTitle/></a>
</span>
</b:if>
The easiest way is to replace the code in your template with the replacement code above.
Next, locate the closing </body> tag in your template. Immediately before, paste the following section of code:
<script type='text/javascript'>
window.onload = function()
{
document.onkeyup = function(event)
{
var kGo = (!event) ? window.event : event;
switch(kGo.keyCode)
{
case 37:
window.location.href = document.getElementById('newer').href;
break;
case 39:
window.location.href = document.getElementById('older').href;
break;
}
};
};
</script>
At this point, it's advisable to preview your template. If you've made any errors when editing your code, this will be apparent in the preview. You can also test the new functionality by pressing the right arrow key while on the preview page.
If all is good, proceed to save your template and enjoy the keyboard shortcuts for navigating through your site.
You may want to let visitors know that they can navigate to newer/older posts using the arrow key as this is not a default feature of Blogger. For example, you could add a widget in your layout explaining the arrow key navigation.
What do you think?
I hope this quick tutorial was useful in helping you enable simple keyboard navigation between posts on your site. Please feel free to leave your thoughts and comments below.
Google PageRank Update August 2012
10:32 PM | 0 Comments
Well there comes just a new update on Google's Page popularity algo on 2nd August 2012. The PageRank toolbar has started showing new ranks for all websites worldwide. The update this time seems a major one and there could be no further expectation of any new changes within the next 24 hours. The last update was on May 3rd and third last was on February 6th. The duration gap has now become constant. Google rolls out these updates quarterly, after every three months. The next update and last update of this year is expected anytime between November 1-10 2012. PageRank as you all know is a numerical weighting scale between 0-10. Websites that are recommended by related niches via backlinks rank higher on PR scale and get the benefit of faster crawl and index rate. Blogs with higher PR are crawled faster compared to those with lower PageRank. For example a PR 7 webpage is crawled several times per minute compared to a PR 5 page that is crawled once every minute. The faster the robot crawls your pages the greater the chances for you to drive organic traffic from Google and build readership.
The PR for MBT remains at 4.0 and same is true for SEM which remains at 2.0. My main focus these last months have been Alexa Rank and I must congratulate all our readers for taking MBT to attain an Alexa Rank of 7K. MBT now counts amongst the very few Google blogs that has AlhamdulillAh crossed the 10K boundary. SEM has amazingly reached 29K within just 6 months and is improving daily.
How important is PageRank?
PageRank is a successful link analysis algorithm that differentiates Google from its Market competitors. This algo is and was the backbone of Google's popularity when Larry Page and Sergey brin first introduced this new giant search engine's functionality in September 1998. SEO professionals and internet marketers have now started measuring a website's popularity in terms of PageRank and Alexa Rank. PR is good to attract paid product reviews. Business owners do pay well if your blog has a stable PageRank, at least 3.0
But PageRank comes last in my priority list. Read further to find why.
Google Web Spam Head, Matt Cutts himself says that what is more important is your Content and not the PageRank. Watch this useful video:
Why your PageRank is not increasing?
Your PageRank did not increase? If yes then don't get frustrated and start understanding the concept first. PageRank is not sequential and surely not proportional to the number of incoming links. It is an automatic system that depends on quality links pointing your main domain. I have already written a detailed post that explains every single question revolving around your mind:Do you need several backlinks?
It's a myth that PR depends on getting hundreds of backlinks from niche websites. A single link from a high PR blog can change your rank from 0 to 4. Some guest authorshave already experienced this with us before. You must not waste your precious time commenting on forums and blogs just for the sake of low quality backlinks. Keep yourself limited to just 4-5 blogs that you may read and interact with. Build a relationship with your favorite authors and once you succeed in winning a respect in their eyes for yourselves, you can then start guest posting at these blogs without any hesitation.
- Guest post on at least 4 Blogs (where you comment) with PR > 3
- Make your Post of at least 1K words
- Make sure your blog is well designed, presented and contains at least 25 posts. You must provide a solid reason so that the author may offer a link.
- Produce a post that is related to the author's niche
- Make it presentable, sound mature and to the point
- Never try to promote yourself or your blog on a guest post, talk about the topic only.
- Add images and video to make the post stand out
Do not fool yourselves
Site rankings do count well but give your first priority to quality content only. Write more and publish more. Do not waste your online working hours in finding tweaks to somehow increase your PageRank. Instead do a lot of reading and Work on your SEO skills and build readership. There are many blogs online with PR 6.0 but they are not well versed with marketing strategies to use in order to market their blog and make a living out of it. Neither PR nor Alexa are as important as readership. I have always emphasized on the following priority list:
- Readership First (i.e. Posting quality content)
- Traffic second
- Alexa third
- PageRank Fourth
What is the Maximum PageRank achievable by a blog?
So far blogs that are managed by a single author or 2-6 authors could succeed in achieving a maximum of PR 6.0. I have not come across any blog with zero investment to have attained a number greater than six. Normally large businesses that have strong marketing backup rank high because the investment is huge. Blogs like search engine land, seomoz, mashable and techcrunch are corporate websites that have several hired authors who write tons of articles per week. Many people are involved behind its promotion and management and they are often backed by both print and electronic media.
So if you are a dedicated blogger then achieving 6 should be your goal. Remember Pagerank does not decide which blog is good and which is poor, its only an algorithm that tells whether a site is well recommended online or not. Reputation of any blog depends only in its strong reader base and quality updates.
What's your PageRank?
Do share with us your updated PR values and feel free to ask any SEO related question. I just hope this new update was a calm one for most of you. If you have seen a sudden positive jump then well done, if your Rank remains the same then thumbs up but if your PR has dropped then don't get demotivated and start working on the simple PR formula we shared above. Nothing works better then this technique so make yourself prepared for some quality guest posts and work with patience because you have a lot of time. i.e. 3 Months. The next update could occur anytime between 1-10 November 2012. Peace and blessings pals! :>
Now Connect Your Blogspot to a Google+ Page
11:48 AM | 0 Comments
If you log into your Blogger dashboard today, you'll notice a new Google+ tab which can be used to integrate our blogs with Google+.
For some time, we have been able to link our blogs with a personal Google+ profile. Now we are also able to connect to a Google+ page for business, organisation or brand!
If you haven't already connected your Blogger site to a Google+ profile, go to the Google+ tab in your dashboard and click the button to upgrade:
To read full news please click here
For some time, we have been able to link our blogs with a personal Google+ profile. Now we are also able to connect to a Google+ page for business, organisation or brand!
If you haven't already connected your Blogger site to a Google+ profile, go to the Google+ tab in your dashboard and click the button to upgrade:
To read full news please click here
How to add a music player in Blogspot (blogger)
2:06 AM | 1 Comments
Customize your posts with permalinks
1:56 AM | 0 Comments
Earlier this year we introduced a suite of new SEO features that help ensure your blog, posts, and images are accurately indexed so they appear correctly in search results. Today we’re happy to introduce another feature that enables you to more effectively customize your search preferences - custom permalinks.
When you write a post, Blogger automatically generates a permalink based on the title of the post. Until now, blog authors have had no control of the permalink. Custom permalinks give you more control of your blog and posts. These new custom links also provide readers with more information about your post when scanning search results.
If you prefer to use a custom permalink, you can do so via the “Permalink” option in the Post Settings box.
When you write a post, Blogger automatically generates a permalink based on the title of the post. Until now, blog authors have had no control of the permalink. Custom permalinks give you more control of your blog and posts. These new custom links also provide readers with more information about your post when scanning search results.
If you prefer to use a custom permalink, you can do so via the “Permalink” option in the Post Settings box.
To create your own URL for a specific post, simply select “Custom URL”, and enter your new URL in the field below. If you wrote the post in June of 2012, your new URL will look like this:
The bolded area is the portion of the URL that is customizable.
If the custom permalink you entered already exists, Blogger will attempt find a free one for you.
At present, the characters allowed in a custom URL are limited to: a-z, A-Z, 0-1. The only special characters available are underscore, dash, and period.
Click here to read more about custom permalinks in the Blogger Help Center.
Happy blogging!
The bolded area is the portion of the URL that is customizable.
If the custom permalink you entered already exists, Blogger will attempt find a free one for you.
At present, the characters allowed in a custom URL are limited to: a-z, A-Z, 0-1. The only special characters available are underscore, dash, and period.
Click here to read more about custom permalinks in the Blogger Help Center.
Happy blogging!
Dharmendra, Amitabh, Sanjeev& Amjad Khan on the set of Sholey 1975
1:01 AM | 0 Comments
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