All of us have noticed that name on the Adobe Photoshop splash screen - Seetharaman Narayanan.
The Indian name that stands out of the rest. Probably because others don’t have long names. The fan club at FlickR proves his popularity!

But it sure will get more interesting if you learn more about the man - “Seetha” as he’s lovely called.

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A masterpiece Design

There are only a few blogs on the blogosphere that stands out in design. Even when we have a powerful tool available – that’s CSS – not many are willing to work on it and rather concentrate on the content part of it, and more likely the SEO part of it. Fair enough!

But here is a bog that I came across lately which amazed me because of the impact it made visually on me. Marvellous work!

This one is by John Oxton, and is named Joshuaink. The flowery design is truly a master piece if you ask me as it doesn’t clutter the blog content much. And I love mentioning about this guy to friends! Well deserved attention. Check out for yourself.

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The Ad-Alergy Syndrome

Dear readers/seo’s,

This is not the result of any case study by any foreign university/Ad guru.

Now that I have lost your attention, I move on.

This is my learning – from the blog directories, the blog user communities and the blogging experience that I’m part of. I hope this is of interest to all.

One quick question – When you visit other blogs, apart from commenting, linking and of course reading, what else do you do?

I was interested in the “ad clicking” part of it to be precise.

I wonder how many of us actually click the ads on other blogs/sites?

Let me assume – “Not very often” – for an answer.

The reasons being that –

Many of us are SEO’s and are well studied/aware of links/comments/post links/directory submissions/organic and inorganic traffic and all that stuff.

All of us know about Google AdSense, how to brilliantly mask them in between our posts.

All of us know how to distinguish between contextual ads and the rest of it.

All of us are well aware of the Google ads – no matter how well they are masked in the posts/how attractive the images are those are put in line with them.

All of us have Google Adsense in our site/blogs and expect all other visitors to click them while you wait.(Cleverly forgetting that they too are doing the same)

Now I wouldn’t want to get over-enthusiastic and believe that 90% of bloggers(or those who manage to create a blog) are SEO’s and are looking for ways to earn money. There are genuine bloggers too who write genuine stuff related to their profession or interest. But the fact that all(almost) of them have Google AdSense on their blogs, disappoints me.

If I take a wild guess that all the bloggers, who own a AdSense account are non-clickers and avoid ads on other sites/blogs – then the final question is –

Who are the actual clickers on the ads?

1 – Are they novices who cannot distinguish between a well masked google ad rectangle and a genuine post? – If yes, what percentage of surfers are they?

2 – The clicks generated on the so-called “Ad gurus” sites are from genuine sources(novices as above said) or not?

3 – Now, you may argue that if “they” are making good money then there have to be clickers – be it novices or whatever. But, ignoring their fairly lower population, out of the other major chunk of pro-bloggers how many DO NOT avoid Google ads(unless in a revenue shared forum!)

I’m worried the results will have to show some really disappointing figures – So I’ll leave it for you to zero in.

Image courtesy - Darren Rowse,Problogger.net

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Hi Blogosphere,

Let me make it clear and loud I’m looking for links from fellow bloggers to my blog. Let me see what the reply is, and how many are actually willing to share the world.

For those who are willing to share links with me, here is my anchor text.

Anchor text - A daily dose of Internet
Link to - http://dailydose4me.blogspot.com

Please contact me whichever ways possible!!!

FInger’s crossed!

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Hello Amit Agarwal,

If you are listening, here is a tip to your blog, that will increase your CTR 200 percent(as the gurus say…)?

This is only a suggestion to you – My guess is that you may not have noticed this point or that you may have tried it already – well, if you haven’t here I am.

I see that the blog has an Ad-Link unit placed on the left-hand panel of the blog, after which there is the feedburner “subscribe” and the technorati “add to favourites” link and after which there are the “recent hits” category! Fair enough – I guess the idea was to categorize things at distinct corners.

But, I wonder how many clicks actually land on the Ad-Link unit?

I saw an opportunity here.

I think it would be better if you can roll up the “feedburner - subscribe to email” and “technorati favourites” up to the top(right below the about the site link) and, bring down the Ad-link unit right above the “recent hits” category.This can be achieved by creating a table on top of the recent hits category and placing the ad-link unit in it.

The benefits –

- The Ad-link unit looks similar to the recent hits category and thereby identified more by the visitors as a clickable region.

- More ctr

How you do it.

1.Upload the following image(table background) to imageshack or on blogger.

2.In your HTML code, goto the !! div class = 9 !!(replace ! by <>) tag (Right after the SUBSCRIBE BY EMAIL) and create a new table.

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I found this cool trick on Lyzazel’s blog

But, ive modified it slightly!

Go to any site that has images. For example (what is more interesting), go to images.google.com and search for anything what comes into your mind. Then, copy and paste this into your address bar and hit enter:

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.getElementsByTagName(”img“); DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position=’absolute’; DIS.left=(Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5)+”px”; DIS.top=(Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5)+”px”}R++}setInterval(’A()’,5); void(0);

You might have noticed that i’ve brightened a tag “img” in the above code. If you know a bit of webdesign and html, you may think of any tag similar to img that websites use like:-
a - ahref - links
font - text
b - bold text
form - forms

and replace the img code in the aboce snippet.

And if you come with a cool experience, let me know please.

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This is interesting. Did you know that all you need to repair scratched CD’s are Brasso and Tooth paste? Yes this is true even though unblelievable!

I saw articles on cleaning and repairing scratched CD’s with toothpaste on many websites, but didn’t quite believe it. But it seems working with many people - i guess there have to be some truth in it. But i havent tried this with any of my CD’s yet!!

All of the articles, astonishingly say the same thing - wipe with a cloth dipped/wiped with toothpaste/brasso and wash teh CD with water!! (I still have my doubts with this part). They say you cant really repair the CD if some certain layer beneath is destroyed, but works fine with small scuffs and scratches.

Here’s the article that tells you how to do it

Here’s another one that shows the difference between a scratch and a scuff

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Here’s something Interesting!! Some Movie news - Hey no gossips - again a “tech issue”

What a shame on Yahoo!

Do they not keep checking their links manually for authenticity and precision - I must assume a BIG - No !

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Haven’t you always wanted to save those video files on Youtube / Google videos and metacafe?
It’s truly boring/tiring to save those url’s for your favourite videos, and everytime copy-pasting it to see them.

Here’s an easy way to get out of the loop and start saving the video streams into your hard disk.

Install this teeny - weeny Firefox installer and your’e done.
You will first need a firefox browser first www.getfirefox.com

DOWNLOAD THE FIREFOX EXTENSION HERE

You will also need a FLV player to view the downloaded files.
Here a few good ones to select from.

FLV Player

VLC player

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