I was wondering the other day as to to why do the RSS Feed button have to be typically orange always?

Although this is a standard procedure, i thought it might be just fun to try out new colours on the rss feed buttons and rotate it a bit to make it in a 3 dimensional view.

So in the place of the typically orange button, you have the three-dimensional yellow, red and blue buttons.

And i think it might be a crowd puller too, it caught your attention when you came in anyway.

So here are a few buttons i created in various colours for you. Feel free to use them on your blog.

Also, if you want to change the colour yet again to one of your favourites, you can do it yourself in photoshop, or simply get me do it for you.

In photoshop, open the image(any one), hit CTRL+U, and slide the Hue scroll bar to match one of your favourite colour > Hit Save and use the button.

Cool 3D icons can be purchased from www.fasticons.com

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Got a cool digi cam? Obsessed with photography? Well, you may be able to earn a few dollars daily then.

Wonder how? The answer is stock photography.

Anyone who has got a quality digicam, and has a flair for photography can now start clicking photos so that potential buyers can buy them from you - this is the basic principle in the stock photo industry.

To help you out there are many stock photo agencies around who have a streamlined approach to selling images. And the interesting part is that this is catching up in India too.

All you got to have is - A Quality Digital camera. Different agencies have different opinions and standard qualities, therefore it’s good if you have a high end one (above 6 MP may be), and an unending thirst to click images, also, a little bit of industry knowledge may give you that edge.

One who submits his images to stock agencies is called a contributor.
Many stock agencies accept your photos with a subscription fee, that is they buy your collection for a nominal fee and buy the rights thereby. The agency may then sell it to their clients.You do not get profits on long term basis from these agencies/libraries. But its a sure shot income once you submit to them.

And luckily there are a few agencies that work on commission basis, that is they do not buy your photos but take them from you and keep them in their collection for Free. And whenever there’s a sale to their client - you get a commission! If your photos are tuned such as to satisfy potential clients, then there’s no stopping you.Each sale to a client is a license given to them, to use the image on one or many of their projects for a particular time period. So every time they use the image you get your money. There are other licenses too that gives the client usage rights until perpetuity where you will be earning higher commissions.

This concept is more popular in the Europe,and US and is only penetrating in India. But this could be the right time to step in.

In India the licensing idea of images is pretty new.Especially, when the law is unable to curb issues like piracy. But it soon will catch up if you ask me. As of now, there are are a few MNC companies that has stepped in, like Visageimages which is an agency of getty. And there are a few clients who has started to buy images from them like Hutch, The Week and a few other Ad Agencies.

So this is the right time to clean those lenses, buy a new tripod and get on clicking! And you have been doing that all the time - so when there’s somebody to pay you for it - what the heck?

Here are a few stock agencies that are reputed in the stock image industry.
These links will take you to their contributor pages.

Alamy.com/contributors -UK Based Stock Image Library - Pays on commission basis
Getty - US Based Stock Image Library
Corbis- US Based stock Library

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This tweak is helpful for those who has a data-transfer based internet connection - and whose bandwidth usage will decide their monthly bill.

In a data transfer based internet connection plan, things could be bit tricky if you are not aware of how the billing pattern works. Normally, when you visit a site, all the images,text, and flash elements are “downloaded” and the file size collectively for these elemetns will be added to the billable data trasfered.And if the page is refreshed the whole data is duplicated (except for what is stored in the browser cache.) and is billable one more time.

So, in order to reduce the data trasfer, when visiting websites, it is important to control what is downloaded(what appears on the page, not anything you download manually) and what not.

Here is a simple firefox addon that helps you to do just this. Web Developer Plugin

Well, this plugin isn’t exactly a bandwidth controller plugin - it is infact a web designer plugin, that gives you information on the web design concepts when visiting a web site.Like for instance - the css,cookies,forms,other information,image dimensions etc. It allows you to enable/disable particluar elements on the webpage thereby helping you to see how the site has ben designed and study the framework.

Now, this is of no interest to us.

Here is how you can lower the data trasfered while visiting webpages.

In the plugin, there is an option to disbale all images in the website.Click on Images > Disable Images>All Images

This will block all the images from loading when you visit a website. It certainly wouldn’t look that good without the images but, it definetely saves alot of unwanted data transfer.

You may enable the images when visiting pages that need the images to be seen just like a image verification registration page. For this, just uncheck the All images tab just like the way you did earlier.
Images > Disable Images>All Images(un check)

Of course, this plugin has a lot more tools that will help you if you are a designer.
If this tricks helps to reduce your bill this month, i would be happy.

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Meet Mr.Suhas Gopinath, CEO of Globals Inc, The world’s youngest CEO (He’s from India).

BBC, one of the world’s leading news media recognized Mr. Suhas Gopinath as the world’s youngest CEO for his achievement in expanding the organization as a leading multi-national company offering cost-effective solutions in web, software, e-commerce, networking and mobile.
He started his love with the Internet when he was 16 and used to do a part time job at a local Internet cafe, to find money for surfing the net again!
His friendship on Yahoo chat with Mr.Clifford Leslie made way to establishing a freelancing company called Globals in the early days.With Mr.Cliffords help, Suhas did many free lancing jobs for clients abroad in web designing , and he was the only employee at the company Globals.

Today Globals is a company with 700 employees, presence in more 11 countries and with an annual turnover of 30lakh US $.

This young CEO is an inspiration to the young internet enthusiasts in India.

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Forums are unanimously selected by webmasters when looking for creating Niche websites with stickyness.

Forums are helpful in creating communities that enable users to visit your website every other time thereby increasing traffic.So the uses of forums are numerous - easy to use, easy to install, and easy end user experience.

One question always asked among web designers is - Which is the best forum pack for a website?

And interestingly, although people have differences in opinion, they agree on one thing - the decision should be based on your usage type and not a result of band wagon effect.

There are various packages around, some of the most popular ones used are PhpBB, VBulletin and SMF.

All the three are different in many aspects though are similar in function - being forums.

Some of them are paid ones, with customer support and hacker protection, while some are free and easy to use - and favourties of hackers. Some go in between.

To help web masters decide on the best forum package for their site, I’ve listed the various forum packs with their features and a comparison list on who has it and who doesn’t. It would give you an easy flowchart kind of reference as to - If i need “this” then, “this” is best and “that” is not.

This comparison chart can also be foud here

To conclude, many webmasters prefers phpBB as the best open source hosting package - but it has the following downs.
- Security issues
- Does not give your site that professional look
- Everybody knows it’s a cheap one.

But it scores in the following points.
- Has plenty of plugins and hacks available that makes it unique.
- Plenty of skins available.
- Can be integrated easily with other php based packages like image galleries.

But many webmasters prefer VBulletin if you are going for a professional website(that is if you can pay for it.)
Up’s
- Excellent security
- Good client support
Downs
- The money factor of course!
- not many plugins and hacks available as phpbb.

Hope this helped in understanding which forum to go with on your site.

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So when you last searched for something on Google, which site on the results page did you click first?

I bet it is the Second,Third or the Fourth result.

Mind you this isn’t the repeated search I’m talking about but the very first search and the very first click.

To illustrate you with a example - you searched for “Free i pod” and you don’t know anything about free i pods, you are purely dependent on the results.

Out of 10 people i asked, they agreed that -

- They will ignore the “sponsored results” with the blue background, appearing overriding all the results - at the top.(One of the reason’s being that they think it’s a forced ad, and wouldnt really help them, in getting their query sorted.)

- They are more likely to click the results “one - below” the top ranked site.(It is associated with the “Sponsored/Forced Ad” on the top.)

- They are unlikely to click on the last result on the page.(Irrelevance of course!)

Now, this throws up an interesting question - Is it REALLY worth while to be top ranked, for a keyword, or is it better being “one-below” and “2nds and 3rds” among the top ranks?

Is all the “SEO Stuff” we’ve been doing to rank first only worth a brag?

I know that most of you wouldn’t really appreciate this post or take it to believe but i would appreciate it if all the SEO’s out there would give it a thought since - Ranking your site on positions 2-3-4, could bring you more traffic than ranking no.1 - talk about wise SEO’s !

What do you think blogger?

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Here is a list of firefox plugins for Orkut.
These extension/Orkut hack helps Orkuting easier!

1. Orkut Scrapper by Binny K Mathew
Although it boasts of too many things - i guess taking off all the frills it got some kool stuff anyway!

Link Access: Orkut Scrapper allows users to visit their friends (and
enemies) scrapbook and album, or simply send them a quick email or
teaser.

Shoutbox: Users can communicate to each other off of the Orkut servers
and onto a public shout box. Although not Google Talk, this is the next
best alternative, and the great thing about this is that users can
choose whether they want a private shoutbox or simply use the public
one.

Font Styles: Not only can users change the color of their fonts when
scrapping friends, they can also also change the size as well! But the
best feature is that it allows users to send messages using their
favorite font styles, an option I wish Google’s blogger gave to users.

Translation Tools: Supports 10 indian languages for scrapping.This is a
feature desperately needed on Orkut (and needed very quick!). Although
only translating India’s main languages, this can be quite useful for
those people whose first language is not English or Portuguese.

Secret Scraping: You can send messages to your friends that they (and
only they) will be able to see simply by clicking the reply button with
“the golden key.”

This is quite handy, especially since Google does not have privacy
settings on user’s scrapbooks. You can also send scraps normally if you
would like, but the “hidden way” is much more fun!

Online Friend/Scrap Alerts: Orkut scrapper notifies you when your friends appear online or when u get a scrap.

There are more features within Orkut Scrapper, These are worth a try but no incredible stuff here!

* The ability to set an image as your background
* The ability to view images or flash items (such as Google Video’s) within Orkut
* Live preview of your message before scrapping your friend
* Creating a signature for your scrap posts
* Send a “heart message” using the text that you type
* Toolbar with all shortcuts
* Autologin to Orkut.

Download the plugin for Firefox here

2. Okut Toolbar

This plugin helps you to change the font styles and colours of your scraps on Orkut. It’s got a pretty simple interface just like the one with MS Office. Get it here

Technorati Tags: orkut hacks, scrapper, orkutting

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Performancing - is an addon to Firefox that will help you edit your blog and add entries to them(including blogger) while you are visiting other bsites.

It is simply a browser tab that sits right beneath the window and is a WYSIWYG editor. I think its pretty cool!

You got to give your blogger login and pass to it so that you can publish right away from the editor.

Some Cool features are that it has

- Technorati support, Delicious integration Ping support and Image upload.

Some downs may be that

- The security when giving your blogger login and password is doubted.

- If the buttons and window itself were compact, it would’ve been better.

Get the firefox extension here

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