Top 10 Keyboard Shortcuts You Should Know

Using keyboard shortcuts can greatly increase your productivity, reduce repetitive strain, and help keep you focused. For example, highlighting text with the keyboard and pressing Ctrl + C is much faster than taking your hand from the keyboard, highlighting the text using the mouse, clicking copy from the file menu, and then putting your hand back in place on the keyboard. Below are our top 10 keyboard shortcuts we recommend everyone memorize and use.

Ctrl + C or Ctrl + Insert

Copy the highlighted text or selected item.

Ctrl + V or Shift + Insert

Paste the text or object that's in the clipboard.

Ctrl + Z and Ctrl + Y

Undo any change. For example, if you cut text, pressing this will undo it. This can also often be pressed multiple times to undo multiple changes. Pressing Ctrl + Y would redo the undo.

Ctrl + F

Open the Find in any program. This includes your Internet browser to find text on the current page.

Top 10 Steps in Writing an Effective e-mail

Below is a listing of our top 10 tips for writing an effective e-mail. Following these suggestions will get you a better response from your e-mails and make e-mailing more enjoyable for you and your recipients.

Keep your e-mails short

Less is more. The shorter you can keep your e-mail while still relaying your message or question the better. At most we suggest no more than three paragraphs of text.

Make the subject line clear and easy to read

The subject of the e-mail should contain enough information to let the recipient know what the e-mail is about.

Make the e-mail personal

Always include the name or alias of the e-mail recipient. If you want the e-mail to be even more personal include your real name in the e-mail as well.

Tips for Keeping Your e-mail Inbox Clean

Below is a listing of our top 10 tips for keeping your e-mail inbox clean. Following these suggestions will help allow you to keep your inbox clean and your e-mail experience more enjoyable.

Setup rules, filters, or labels

All e-mail programs and online e-mail services today have rules, filter, or label system that enables you to automatically move and otherwise organize incoming e-mail. Using this effectively can help organize your e-mail and get to what's most important first. Below are some suggestions for rules we'd suggest setting up first.

• Move important and unimportant e-mails to a folder of their own.
• Highlight or set priority to certain addresses. For example, a rule could be created to highlight any user that's found in your address book.
• Filter out common spam words that get into your inbox, e.g. Viagra.
• In programs that support it setup a rule to mark messages that may not be important as read. This can help eliminate the stress you get when opening your e-mail and seeing hundreds of unread e-mails.
• If you're getting a lot of spam filter your e-mail through Gmail. 

Top Internet Tips and Tricks

You don't need the http:// portion of a web page

When typing an Internet address you do not need to type http:// or even www. in the address. For example, if you wanted to visit Computer Hope you could just type computerhope.com and press enter. To make things even quicker, if you're visiting a .com address you can type computerhope and then press Ctrl + Enter to type out the full http://www.computerhope.com address.

Quickly move between the fields of a web page

If you're filling out an online form, e-mail, or other text field you can quickly move between each of the fields by pressing the Tab key or Shift + Tab to move back a field. For example, if you're filling out your name and the next field is your e-mail address you can press the Tab key to switch to the e-mail field.

Tip: This tip also applies to the buttons, if you press tab and the web developer has designed correctly the button should be selected and will allow you to press the space bar or enter to push the button.

Tip: If you have a drop-down box that lists every country or every state you can click that box and then press the letter of the state or country you're looking for. For example, is a drop-down box of States in the United States you could press u on the keyboard to quickly scroll to Utah.

Undo Closed Internet Browser Tab

Oops did you mistakenly close a tab you didn't want to close? Press CTRL + Shift + T to undo a close tab. Pressing this more than once will undo multiple closed tabs. This feature works in all major browsers including Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Opera.

Top 10 Google tricks

Below is a list of our top ten Google tricks many people who use Google don't know about.

1.Definitions

Pull up the definition of the word by typing define followed by the word you want the definition for. For example, typing: define bravura would display the definition of that word.

2.Local search

Visit Google Local enter the area you want to search and the keyword of the place you want to find. For example, typing: restaurant at the above link would display local restaurants.

3.Phone number lookup

Enter a full phone number with area code to display the name and address associated with that phone number.

5 Tips On How To Make Your Blog Visitors Stay Longer

The length of time that you can keep your visitors on your website can be a crucial factor in determining how successful your blog will be.
Simply getting traffic in the form of thousands of unique visitors daily is meaningless if the time they spend on your site is less than a few seconds or your bounce rate is more than 95%.
There are certain things you can do in the way you present your pages and posts which will maximize the chances of your visitors sticking around for a longer period on your site.
The longer people stay the greater your opportunity to monetize their visit or convince them to take your desired call to action.
A call to action is an Internet marketing term which refers to the primary action that you want your visitors to take when they land on your page or website. One example of a call to action  is where you want someone to click your “buy now” button and purchase your product. Another might be that you want to get people to download your free ebook after signing up as members.
Below are some tips which will help you to keep the attention of your visitors or at the very least keep them interested long enough to stay and explore your site and ultimately perform the call to action you want them to.

How to Increase Your Online Persuasion Abilities

Persuasion techniques for the Internet are often quite different to persuasion techniques which are used in face-to-face situations.
In contrast to the art of face-to-face persuasion, the online world means you are unable to read physical cues such as facial expressions and body language, which in turn means that you can’t instantly adjust your delivery based on these cues.
On the Internet, your website and its various pages is mainly responsible for the task of persuading your visitors to buy your products or services.
Thus, persuading people on the Internet usually means anticipating what people want or what action they will perform next.

6 Tips to Help Ignite Your Creativity and Increase Your Success

When it comes to achieving success on the Internet or anything in life for that matter, it probably isn’t a secret that having some capacity of creative spark or talent can increase your chances of attaining your goals.
But what makes some people more creative and successful than others? Is creativity something genetic and does that mean those who aren’t blessed with this gene are doomed to never be creative or successful?
Well the simple answer is that creativity is something which we are ALL born with but some people lose it more than others as they grow older. If you observe young children playing you’ll know what I mean when I say we all start with a propensity for some kind of creativity which is usually fueled by curiosity.
Many people lack a creative spark because they stopped doing the simple things which leads to creative ideas in the first place.

The 3 Ingredients of The Secret Sauce of Successful Blogging

With millions of blog websites already in existence and many more sprouting daily, you might already be aware that there are a relatively small number of incredibly popular and successful blogs out there on virtually any topic you care to think of.
When you visit a number of these successful blogs you quickly see a common thread – there is a certain quality inherent in most of them and furthermore, they provide something useful or amusing for the people who follow or visit them.
Conversely you may have also come across a disproportionately larger number of not-so-good blogs that don’t seem to provide any usefulness or make any sense because they are so poorly put together or badly written or jammed with so many spammy advertisements that the first word that comes to mind when you see them, is “junk”.

How to Handle Negative Comments

If you run an online community service where others are encouraged to participate with their own thoughts, you’re sure to come across negative comments throughout your blog or forum’s life. While negative comments may be one of your greatest fears as a social media participant, they are a reality. Furthermore, the way that you deal with negative comments can either make or break your online reputation—and the reputation of your business.


Check out the following tips on dealing with negative comments in the online arena:

 1. Walk Away

Whatever you do, do not respond to negative comments immediately. Chances are that you’re fairly upset or offended by the comment or comments, and replying while in an emotional state of mind isn’t the best way to deal with negativity on your blog or forum. Instead, give yourself a couple of hours (at the very least) to sit on the negative comment. Then allow yourself to respond.

11 Ways To Boost Your Blog Readership

Starting a blog is an exciting venture. Whether you’re doing it to help promote your business or just as a personal enrichment activity, it’s your chance to broadcast your ideas to the world. But, as excited as you are about your posts, it will take some time before you build up a significant reader base that is also excited about your posts.
Here are eleven easy tips you can utilize to help boost your blog readership from the beginning of your online writing adventure. Follow these tactics and you’re likely to see a boost in stats in the days and weeks that follow.

1. Network

Get involved in the blogging community and network with other bloggers. If they start to mention your blog in their posts, their readers will be intrigued and will check out your blog. There are forums and special events that you can participate in to meet with the other bloggers. You can also network by reaching out to other bloggers whose blogs you respect.

7 Steps to Profiting from Niche Affiliate Adsense Sites with WordPress

I’ve turned into quite a fan of Google Adsense.
Here is a way that anyone can make money online without having to sell anything.  And given that selling on the internet is one of the hardest skills to master, the Adsense program provides a way for newcomers to internet marketing to make their first bit of passive income without getting bogged down with the ins and outs of conversion and payment processing.
Yet, at the same time, it can be a complete waste of time if people go about it the wrong way.  The most common mistake I see is poor ad placement and optimization, followed closely by keyword optimization for terms that don’t pay!
Having made decent money from Google Adsense for over a year now, I wanted to create a quick 7 step plan that can be followed to generate an income online.  And here it is…
Quick disclaimer: don’t expect instant gratification from this strategy – it can take anything from a few weeks to a month to start receiving traffic from the search engines and therefore make any money.  But, when you do, it’s very easy to scale everything up.

10 Tips to Increase Your Sales Page Conversion

If you are selling something online then you need to pay attention to the conversion rate of your sales page. The conversion rate can vary wildly and is totally unpredictable but even an one percent increase in conversion rate can make the difference between losing money or making profit.

What is Conversion Rate?

In online marketing conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who take a desired action (for example: make a purchase or click an ad).
You can think of conversion as pouring traffic into a funnel where they get filtered on different levels and at last the remaining portion gets converted. Usually a large portion of the traffic will leave the sales page right after they land. A majority of the remaining traffic will abandon the sales page when they see that it does not fit their need or they want to do research or compare the price with other sites. The small remaining portion of traffic consists of customers that have already researched the products or were referred from another site and are looking to make a purchase.

6 SEO Strategies That Can Generate Highly Targeted Traffic

Developing SEO strategies that can drive an immense amount of traffic to your site within a month is not an easy task, especially if you want your site’s visitors to convert into profits. Generating highly targeted traffic or visitors that have the intent of availing the services or products that you are offering is the best way to really earn from your website.
The good news is that there are many ways that you can do to hasten the process of having your site noticed by people who are in need of the information, services or products that you provide. Here are some of the ways that you can do to generate specifically targeted online visitors in under a month.
1. Target easy to rank long-tail keywords through blog posts
If your site has no blog section yet, then you better start including one. Blogs can benefit your business in so many ways, and consistently driving traffic to your site is one of them. Using long-tail keywords in your blog posts’ titles (eg. How to learn SEO), can extremely help your site’s performance in terms of traffic generation, seeing as this strategy can very much take your blog posts on top of SERPs without further improving them through off-page optimization or link building.

Monetizing a Site Through AdSense

There is a lot of misconception about Google AdSense; many marketers see it as one of the most rudimentary ways to monetize your site. As such many markets prefer to build affiliate sites, spend an age writing sales driven content, building email lists to try and sell on the back end, but the most important aspect of getting the sale is completely taking out of their hands, once you send traffic to the merchant they are the ones you have to rely on to push your traffic through their checkout page. If the merchant you are promoting has a poor sales funnel you will suffer.
This is not the case with AdSense, once you get the click then your job is done and your money is in the bank of Google.

7 Advantages to Using PayPal to Buy Online

PayPal is one of the largest online payment processors in the world. After rising to prominence through its partnership with Ebay, online merchants all across the Internet accept PayPal as one of their accepted methods of payments.
Those who have never used PayPal may wonder why so many people use it as their only way to pay for online purchases. After you review the following seven advantages to using PayPal to buy online, you will likely want to start using PayPal yourself.
1. Credit card security: When you sign up for a PayPal account, you type in the credit cards and bank accounts you wish to use for purchases one time on the PayPal secure system. Once that is accomplished, you never again have to disclose your credit card information online. By paying with PayPal, you keep your credit card information private, meaning that you can shop without worrying about a hacker downloading your account data from your online merchant.

10 Plugins to Improve the Usability of WordPress Blogs

WordPress is a quality platform that many of us use. It is very popular and has much to offer. In fact, there are almost too many options in terms of plugins and widgets to add to our blogs. These may make our sites look great and add value to what we are offering, but they can bloat the blogs making them slow to load and at times producing a cluttered look and other problems.
The good news is that there are plugins that address this problem and improve the performance and user friendliness of our blogs. Since usability is an essential for maximum profitability these are well worth considering. Here are 10 plugins that will surely improve the usability of your WordPress blog.

10 Ways to Proofread Articles Faster

No matter how much a person enjoys writing, almost everyone has a concern for writing clearly and accurately, without errors in grammar or spelling. Although proofreading can avoid embarrassing and costly mistakes, the pressures of deadlines and fatigue often cause the proofreading process to fail.
Saving time and producing better work are concepts that appeal to most writers. The increased output combined with increased quality represents a surefire approach to building a writing career. To help writers improve their proofreading skills, here are 10 ways to proofread articles faster and more efficiently.


1. Pay attention to your personal weaknesses: Often writers find themselves consistently spelling the same words incorrectly. Although misspellings often derive from a mental block or a lack of familiarity with a word, they can also result from a flaw in typing skills that causes your fingers to hit an incorrect key combination or from a keyboard that is defective. By understanding the cause of typographical errors and to the most frequently misspelled words, writers can discipline themselves to be extra attentive when those words come up.

Blogspiration: Finding New Blog Topics

It’s easy to find blogs that are, for all intents and purposes, “dead.” Plenty of people feel inspired to start using a blogging service or a social networking service (especially Twitter), then blow it in the follow-through; the blog gets a handful of posts, then the user loses interest in their blog, quits writing new content, loses or never establishes a reader base, and thus never gets a chance to make money. With no readers to buy potential products and no readers who might click on advertisements, the more likely way for bloggers to make money, the blog does nothing but occupy space, taking up domain names and usernames that other bloggers might have wanted for their own, more serious projects.

10 Fundamental Ways of Building Customer Trust

When your business is online only, the first (and sometimes only) contact that clients have with you is through your website. Creating trust is absolutely essential, since trust generates repeat business. Here are ten ideas to gain that valuable online trust.

1. Visual Distinction: Customers associate with the branding that you offer yourself. Present a professional image by placing your logo on every page and keeping the same format on all of the pages within your site. When customers see that particular format, you want them to recognize it as yours.
2. Recognition: Let clients know about the recognition that your company has received. A real referral and award is some of the best public relations that you can ask for. Don’t forget that the awards that you receive can be verified by your customers.

10 Tips for Writing an Autoresponse Email

If you are using an Autoresponder service (eg. AWeber, GetResponse, MailChimp etc) then chances are that you will be writing auto-response emails that will get sent out to your subscribers once they subscribe. Every piece of communication that you send adds to the overall impression that a customer has of your product or service. Autoresponders can be used for simple acknowledgments, newsletters, or even series of newsletters. Here are ten tips about autoresponder use.

1. Acknowledge your customers

Send an email to thank your new users for signing up to read your newsletter. This reminds those users that you have received their opt-in request. It should also give your customers an idea of what they should expect in your writing as well as how frequently they should expect to receive it.

Tips On How To Become A Better Blogger

This is a follow up article for the How do I Start a Blog and Make Money Online series that we have been publishing on this blog to help the newbie’s get started with a blog. This article covers some good practices that you should develop to become a better blogger.

1. Chose The Right Topic For Your Blog

There is usually a big debate on which path to go down when choosing the topic of your blog. Some will advice you to find a niche that people spend money in and focus purely on the profitability. Others will say don’t go for the money at first, focus on your passion because things that you personally enjoy and know about will be easy to create good content on and in the process you will make money. I will leave it up to you to decide but I can only suggest that you consider both sides of the story before making up your mind. Some people can remain motivated because of the process, not the topic but that doesn’t work for me. I need to enjoy the topic.

10 Fundamental Ways of Building Customer Trust

When your business is online only, the first (and sometimes only) contact that clients have with you is through your website. Creating trust is absolutely essential, since trust generates repeat business. Here are ten ideas to gain that valuable online trust.

1. Visual Distinction: Customers associate with the branding that you offer yourself. Present a professional image by placing your logo on every page and keeping the same format on all of the pages within your site. When customers see that particular format, you want them to recognize it as yours.

Web Analytics 101 – Learn Which Analytics Data You Should be Using

If you are running a small website, chances are you’ve already heard of Web Analytics. If you haven’t, it is a tool for measuring traffic of your website. It provides data on the number of visitors, page views etc to gauge the popularity of the site. For many people, using analytics is limited to watching how many more visitors have come to the site, and repeating the figures to potential advertisers. If used smartly, analytics is also a marketing tool, an e-commerce tracker, an ad tool, and the list goes on. In this article, we’ll have a look at basic ways to use the analytics.

Choosing an Analytics Software

First of all, you need to have an analytics software set up for your website, which mostly means signing up for an account of an analytics provider, and adding a few lines of javascript code to your pages. Google Analytics is the most widely used analytics tool. It’s also free and integrating it in a WordPress site is just a matter of adding a plugin to your site! If you like to have choices, you can search the Internet looking for some other alternative solutions. This article lists a number of analytics software and their pros and cons.

Site Speed is Now a Search Ranking Factor for Google Search

Google has officially made site speed one of the factors for search rank (there are over 200 ranking factors). So now is a good time to read the WordPress site optimization tips post and put some plan of action in place.
Now, you have no reason to go into a panic mode just yet. Optimizing your site for better performance is always a good thing from a usability point of view but Google has indicated that only about 1% of search queries and even fewer search results will be affected from this change at this stage.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Ad – Which One Should You Choose?

Pay-Per-Click or PPC in short, is an effective marketing scheme for the Internet. If you have a personal blog/site that attracts moderate to high traffic, and you want to generate some revenue from it then PPC is a very good option for you. There are many companies, including the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! etc. that offer PPC ad-serving applications for webmasters and publishers. After registering with the company, all you have to do is put some Javascript code or HTML in your pages and activate the advertisement. The company tracks how many times the ads have been viewed and clicked and makes your payment at the end of the month.

In this article we will take a look at some PPC ad serving applications and try to help you decide which one could be the best option for you.

Tips to Make Ubuntu Boot Faster

Ubuntu is pushing the Linux desktop movement forward. Since it’s inception in 2004, Ubuntu has released over 10 versions so far, each one improving on its predecessor. It remains one of those few operating systems, that boots really fast. Still, if you are one of those brave hackers who likes to tune your machine to maximize efficiency, here are a few tricks on how to make Ubuntu boot faster.
Word of caution: These tune ups have been tested on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Haron. I haven’t upgraded it as it has been pretty solid and stable release. So if you’re on a newer(or older) version, I suggest you do some research before applying these tricks. And of course, always keep back ups. Have Fun!

10 Common HTML Mistakes to Avoid

The following is a list of common HTML mark up mistakes made by front end developers. Whether you are a newbie web designer, or a programmer who wants to try his hands in UI designing, try to avoid these mistakes.

1. Don’t place Block elements within Inline elements

An HTML element is displayed as Block or as Inline by default. Block elements, such as divs and paragraphs, make up the structure of the document. Inline elements reside in these blocks, such as anchor and span tags. So you should never put blocks inside inline elements.
Wrong: <a href="#"><h2>Block inside Inline</h2></a>
Right: <h2><a href="#">Inline inside Block</a></h2>

2 Simple WordPress Blog Optimization Tips and Tricks

I have been pretty busy with the WordPress plugin development lately, so didn’t get a chance to write any posts for a few weeks. I think it’s about time I share a simple but effective website performance improvement trick with the readers of this site that I have been using on all my sites. If you haven’t read the WordPress site optimization tips and tricks already then you should read that first.
This trick involves changing some of the dynamic wordpress queries to static ones which in turn reduces the number of database queries and improves site performance. This does require a little bit of PHP knowledge but it’s really basic stuff.
In your WordPress theme’s header and footer you will see many statements similar to the following:

bloginfo(‘home’)

Secret Keyword And Unique for Google

Google is the largest and most comprehensive search engine today. You may not know that google has turned out some of the uniqueness of its search results. Try typing in the search as shown below.
You can try using a keyword below and you can see the uniqueness of the code.
 
1. askew
Go to google search engine and enter the keyword Askew.
Then you will see the search results screen and the text in italics.

How to Make Amazing Wallpapers Just using Photoshop Paint Brushes Quickly

Photoshop paint brushes are a cool thing if you know how to use them. In this photoshop tutorial I have provided a step by step guide on how to make amazing wallpapers by just using Photoshop paint brushes. I have included the paint brushes and the photoshop file (psd) that I used in this Photoshop tutorial in the download section below if you wish to download them.
You can look at some examples of wallpapers that you can make by just using photoshop brushes on the Wallpapers page of this blog. In this tutorial we are going to look at creating the following wallpaper:

So open your Photoshop application and let’s get started.

How to Open/View Excel 2007 files without Excel 2007 Software

If you ever get into a situation whereby you need to open/view an Excel 2007 file (.xlsx) but the computer you are using does not have Excel 2007 installed then these tricks could come in handy. This was particularly very helpful to me when I was checking my email from my friends computer and I received an Excel 2007 file as attachment that I wanted to view immediately but my friend’s computer didn’t have Office 2007 installed.

How to Create Strong Passwords that are Easy to Remember but Hard to Break

I don’t need to tell you the importance of using strong passwords when creating user accounts online. Passwords are keys to accessing your online accounts or your computer. Using strong passwords are vital in protecting your identity and stopping others from hijacking your account. In this Post I have shared a trick to create strong but memorable passwords that I learned a few days ago.

What is password strength?

According to WikiPedia:

Password strength is a measurement of the effectiveness of a password as an authentication credential. Specifically, it estimates how many trials an attacker who does not have direct access to the password would need, on average, to correctly guess it. The strength of a password is a function of length, complexity, and randomness.

25 Very Useful Photoshop Keyboard Shortcuts

Working with Photoshop can be quite time consuming for both beginners and advanced users. Once you have worked with photoshop for a while, you will find that lot of the times you are using the same menu items or palette buttons. Photoshop has approximately 690 keyboard shortcuts. Here are some shortcuts for Photoshop users that will significantly improve the editing efficiency when using this software. I use Photoshop frequently to design icons, logos etc for website design and I find these set of shortcuts save a lot of my time when using Photoshop.

How to Create and Display Favicon to Make Your Site Stand Out in The Pile of Bookmarks

Favicons are a great way to make your site stand out from the crowd. It is also very easy to implement too. In this post I have explained how you can easily make a favicon and use it on your site.

What is Favicon?

Favicon is short for favorites icon. This is the icon that shows up on the left side of the browser’s address bar. Favicon is also known as bookmark icon, website icon, url icon or shortcut icon. Size of a favicon is 16×16 pixels.

How to Make a Favicon Easily in Photoshop

1. In Photoshop open a new file (make sure the image size is 16 x 16 Pixels).
2. Design your favicon. You can either start from scratch, use a picture, or a section of a picture.
   Note: The image size is rather small so I advise not to use a picture with a lot of graphic content.
3. Save the favicon you created as ‘favicon.ico’ (you can save the image as .png or .jpg and then rename it to .ico)

You can even use MS Paint to make favicons too… all you have to make sure is that the image size is 16×16 pixels and the filename is ‘favicon.ico’.

Top 15 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques I Forget to do

Search Engine Optimization is a very hot topic in the World Wide Web. After all, everybody wants to rank higher and come up on the first page of Google search and get more traffic. I have identified and made a list of top 15 SEO practices that I tend to forget quite often. These simple SEO techniques if practiced properly can make a significant difference as to how my pages are ranked in the Search Engine Queries.

1. Use rel=”nofollow” tag on low value links to not pass the page rank juice. For example ‘Read the rest of the entry’, ‘About’, ‘Contact’ etc.
2. Use proper anchor text for interlinks. Don’t use ‘here’ or ‘there’.
3. Optimize the images, always create alt tags and write description in the alt tag.
4. Use search engine friendly permalinks. Make sure the URLs do not have ‘&’, ‘?’, ‘!’ etc characters.
5. Use hyphens (-) between words to improve readability.

quivalent of UNIX Grep command in Dos/Windows

You can use the ‘type’ and ‘find’ command in Dos/Windows to get the equivalent output of the UNIX ‘cat’ and ‘grep’ commands. The ‘find’ command can be very useful when you are trying to search for a specific text or phrase over multiple files. The ‘find’ command also comes in handy when searching for all the occurrences of a specific text or phrase in all the files under all the sub-directories of a given directory.

The Type Command

The ‘type’ command in Dos simply displays the contents of a text file or files. To see the content of a file simply enter the following in the command prompt:
C:>type “filename”

The differences between Power (Watts) and Energy (Kilowatts-hour, kWh)

Before you can start saving money by cutting cost on unnecessary electricity usage in an attempt to live a greener life (Essential tips to start living Green today), you need to understand Power and Energy and the units of power (watt) and energy (kWh), what they mean, how do you use these terms etc. I have tried to give a high level explanation on the differences between watt and kilowatt-hour (kWh). Feel free to add your thoughts through the comment are below.

What is Power and Energy?

Simply put, Power is the rate at which work is performed or energy is transmitted. Energy is the capacity of a physical system to perform work.

Good Domain Name Picking Tips for Your Blog Setup

The first thing that comes to my mind when setting up a blog is getting a good domain name. In this article, I have described why I think it is important to choose a good domain name upfront. I have also explained how you can pick a good domain name for your blog or website followed by some domain name picking tips and general outlines (“dos” and “don’t s”).

Why pick a good domain name for your blog

Apart from many other reasons, you want to pick a good domain name for your blog site from the start because most likely you will be stuck with that domain name for the rest of the blog’s life. You may change the domain hosting provider from time to time depending on how reliable your current domain hosting provider is but the domain name will remain the same. The reason I say that you will be stuck with that name is mainly because changing the domain name is kind of like starting all over again from the start and you don’t want to do that once your site is established and getting regular traffic. You will start with ’0′ Google Page rank and will have to work your way up again if you do change the domain name in the middle. The Alexa rank and other ranking metrics will drop too because all these rankings are associated with the domain name. So the bottom line is that you want to pick a good domain name that you can live with from the start. Now, the question is how?

List of useful and frequently used DOS Commands

This list of DOS commands is very useful when repairing Windows after a system crash when Windows doesn’t load and the only option you have is a Dos command prompt. Use the “help” command to find the usage and details of any particular command e.g. C:\>help copy

• CHDIR – Displays the name of or changes the current directory.
• CHKDSK – Checks a disk and displays a status report.
• CLS – Clears the screen.
• COMP – Compares two groups of files to find information that does not match.
• COPY – Copies and appends files.
• DATE – Displays and/or sets the system date.
• DEFRAG – Optimizes disk performance by reorganizing the files on the disk.
• DEL – Deletes files from disk.
• DELTREE – Deletes a directory including all files and subdirectories that are in it.
• DIR – Displays directory of files and directories stored on disk.
• DISKCOMP – Compares the contents of two diskettes.

Find out which web hosting company offers the cheapest and reliable web hosting solution

I have been looking for a good web hosting company who offers cheap but reliable web hosting solution for quite a while. The keywords here are cheap and reliable and for some reason these two words do not want to go together very well  . If you are willing to pay big money then you have nothing to worry about… your options are endless. My focus is finding that sweet spot where reliability meets affordability. I update this page with my findings on affordable web hosting solutions. Hopefully this information will be of some help to someone looking to find a good web hosting company.


I am very strict when it comes to the reliability of the web hosting company. Server uptime is very important for anyone who has a website doing whatever business that they are doing. If your site is down when a visitor or customer goes to your site then you are losing traffic and business. In addition to losing temporary customers, if your site goes down frequently then there is a good chance that your customers will get annoyed and will try to avoid coming to your site in the future.
Most web hosting companies guarantee 99.9% Server uptime but in reality a lot of them do not deliver 99.9% server uptime that they guarantee. Most of the time you won’t even know that your site was down and you lost customers. None of your visitors complained doesn’t really mean that your site was up 100% that month.

Protect your WordPress site/blog from comment spam trick

I got caught with this trick once so I decided to share this with other web masters who don’t know this already.
In WordPress the default settings for comments (Settings->Discussion) are set as the following:


So the requirements for a comment to appear are:

• Comment author must fill out name and e-mail.
• Comment author must have a previously approved comment .

This is all good until someone decides to be all nice about your site and make a true nice comment so you approve it and then becomes a spammer. Since you already approved one of his comments before so now he can post a spam comment with links everywhere without your permission.
This is how this trick works:

WordPress Plugin for Simple Google Adsense Insertion/Integration

Easy to use WordPress plugin to insert Google Adsense to your posts, pages and sidebar by using a trigger text or calling the php function.

There are many plugins and services which can add Google Adsense to your WordPress site. However I found that even though something like Adsense Manager or Adsense Deluxe provides a lot of customizable options, it can be overwhelming and isn’t really simple enough for people who are new to WordPress or for people who simply want to insert Google Adsense to their site in a few clicks.
I found that most of the time I only use two or three types of Google Adsense units in various places and posts throughout my sites. Google’s Adsense policy mentions to not have more than three adsense block in one page anyway. That’s why I wrote my own Simple Adsense Insertion Plugin for WordPress, to focus on having 1-3 Google Adsense codes saved and use them where ever I want on my site by inserting a simple trigger text to my posts,pages and sidebar.

How to Uninstall and Reinstall WordPress

In this post I have explained how you can uninstall and reinstall WordPress. You will rarely think about uninstalling/reinstalling WordPress on your site unless you start having ‘Apache security mod rewrite and htaccess’ issue like myself.  I decided to Reinstall WordPress on one of my sites after trying numerous fixes to solve the issue and getting no result. Some people uninstall/reinstall WordPress to start over from scratch. Anyway, whatever the reason is, you can uninstall and reinstall WordPress the following ways.

Cut Onions without tears

If you use onions to cook from time to time and is annoyed with the whole onions making you cry then here are a few cool tricks that you can do to stop your eyes from crying when you cut onions.

Why do Onions make your eyes watery?
When cutting through an Onion, the onion cells get cut too which releases a gas that reacts with water and creates sulfuric acid which causes irritation. The eye then releases water to dilute the acid which makes the eye watery.

How to prevent your eyes from watering when cutting onions
The most effective way is to run the onion under water before cutting it. So peel the onion and run it under water before you chop it.
- Use a sharp knife (sharp knife cuts the onion cells cleanly and hence less juice is released from the Onion)
- Use salt or bread crump on the knife.
- Put the onions in the freezer for 10-15 minutes before cutting them

Candle wax on the carpet

From carpets, fabric, and upholstery: Harden the wax by pressing ice against it. Scrape off the wax with a blunt knife, and then cover what is left with a sheet of kitchen paper and ironing over the top with a cool iron. Do not touch carpet fibers directly with the iron. Remove any remaining marks on carpet or upholstery with a dab of methylated spirits (test on an nconspicuous area first), and wash fabric on the hottest setting it can stand.

How to get rid of stains and marks on wooden furniture

Alcohol spots and watermarks can be removed with a cream metal polish (test on an inconspicuous area first), then faded areas can be disguised with ash or shoe polish; grease marks on unsealed wood can be sprinkled with good old talc, which you then cover with kitchen paper and press with a warm iron to absorb the grease; fill in small scratches with matching colored wax crayon or shoe polish.

Minimize the start up time of your Windows computer

If your computer is taking too long to start up and you want to minimize that time then here is a tip as to how you can control the applications that Windows starts at Startup time and make your computer boot fast. You don’t have to be a computer expert for this either.

To put it simply… at startup Windows goes through a list that has all the application names that it will start. Many of those applications you don’t use or need at startup time like Yahoo Messenger and etc. You can modify the startup application list on your own cause if you need an application later you can always start it manually. In the end your computer will startup quicker. For example you can always start ‘Msn messenger’ later when you want to chat with your friends/family, no reason for Windows to start it at startup at every Windows boot. It will also make your computer run faster as those applications are not taking the system resources anymore

Reduce your website’s bandwidth and storage usage

If you are looking for a quick and easy solution for using big files (movie files for example) on your website without wasting your website’s bandwidth and storage then read on.

When you host a media on your website it takes the storage on your site and when the users view that media it takes up your bandwidth too. If the media file is small then you probably don’t have much to worry about. But when you want to use some media files that are large in size then it can have a significant impact on your site’s storage and also when the users view it, it takes up your bandwidth. Now if you have limited storage and limited bandwidth on your site like mine then you can try this method that I use to save bandwidth.

Say for example, you want to host a movie file. you can upload that file to YouTube and link to that file from your website or embed it on your website. The bandwidth is always taken from the site truly hosting the file. So if you embed the video from another site(YouTube in this case), anytime a user buffers and plays the video, the bandwidth (for the video) is taken from the original host, not your site. Also you save storage on your site too.

Bank card or Credit card plastic bag swiping trick

Have you ever had trouble swiping your Bank/Credit card at the checkout? Here is a card bag swiping trick for you.

The Problem:
Bank card or Credit card doesn’t work when swiped.

Solution:
Wrap the card in a thin, clear plastic bag and swipe it again.
Arrange a replacement of the card.

What can cause my Card to have bad reads?
The likely problems are dirty or scratched stripe, or erased stripe.

Prevention:
One way to prevent this is to use a thin layer of tape on all your cards from new.

Why does this trick work?
The card reader has a small induction coil that detects a succession of magnetic and non-magnetic zones in the card’s magnetic stripe. When the card is pulled through the reader, each magnetised zone makes a small electrical pulse as it passes the coil. The zones are arranged to encode the data needed to complete a transaction.

Improve your daily productivity, 7 must use Google products!

Google has already won the search engine war. Everyone already knows that online search means Google. But many of us don’t know or haven’t explored some of the many cool products Google has beside its search engine. If used correctly, some of these products can significantly improve our day to day productivity and efficiency. In this post I have given a very brief overview of seven Google products that I use on a daily basis.

Gmail
Gmail, is a free POP3 and IMAP webmail service provided by Google. Tired of having to refresh all the time to see if you have got new mail in your inbox? Gmail uses POP3 which means your mail will pop up in your inbox as they arrive; goodbye to the good old endless refresh!
Gmail has a much better spam protection than other webmail providers. Which means you don’t have to spend fifteen minutes every morning trying to work out which emails are important and which ones are spam!
Organization of your mails through the usage of ‘Labels’ is a very easy and an efficient way to manage your emails. Gmail offers many more cool features that I will leave up to you to explore if you haven’t already.

How to control access of the web crawlers or web robots to your site

There are numerous reasons as to why or when you should control the access of the web robots or web crawlers to your site.  As much as you want Googlebot to come to you site, you don’t want the spam bots to come and collect private information from your site. Not to mention that when a robot crawls your site it uses the website’s bandwidth too! In this post I have explained how you can control the access of the web robots to your site through the usage of a simple ‘robots.txt’ file.

What are web robots or web spiders?
Web Robots (also known as bots, web spiders, web crawlers, Ants) are programs that traverses the World Wide Web in an automated manner. Search engines (like Google, Yahoo etc.) use web crawlers to index the web pages to provide up to date data.

Stop the cell phone thieves

Here is something worth knowing if you have a mobile phone …
Have you ever wondered why phone companies don’t seem interested in trying to prevent the theft of mobile phones? If you have ever lost, or had one stolen, and if you are on a plan, you still have to pay the plan approximately up to 24 months, and you have to buy another handset and enter into another contract. This is more revenue for the phone company. There is a simple way of making lost or stolen mobiles useless to thieves and the phone companies know about it, but keep it quiet. To check your mobile phone’s serial number, key in the following on your phone:
star-pound-zero-six-pound ( * # 0 6 # ) and a fifteen digit code will appear on the screen.
This is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it in a safe place. Should your mobile phone get stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset, so even if the thief changes the sim card, your phone will be totally useless.
You probably won’t get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can’t use/sell it either. If everybody did this, there would be no point in stealing mobile phones.
You may want to share this with those friends who have cell phones.

Prevent liquid from exploding when boiling in the Microwave Oven

when you boil liquids in your microwave. It may not be necessary, but it won’t hurt anything either.
The explanation for the explosion is described in the UNWISE MICROWAVE OVEN EXPERIMENTS website as following:
Things are different in a microwave oven. The water gets hot but the container usually does not. There are no “boiling-bubbles” triggered by a hot metal pot. Without those bubbles to cool it, the temperature of the water rises far higher than 100C°. We call this “superheated water.” Superheated water is just waiting for some sort of trigger which will let bubbles form and allow boiling to commence. If the water becomes hot enough, a few bubbles will appear, but these quickly rise and burst, and the water isn’t cooled much at all. In the microwave oven, even if your mug of water is bubbling slightly, don’t trust it, since it’s temperature has risen so high above 100C° that bubbles are appearing spontaneously. If some unwitting victim should pour a soluble powder into the superheated water, this will carry thousands of tiny air bubbles into the water. Each of these micro bubbles expands into a 1cm steam bubble, and the result is a huge “explosion” of hot froth. It’s just like dumping ice cream into root beer, but the froth can be so violent that the hot water sprays into the air.

Keep your refrigerator and freezer fresh and smell free

Place an open box of baking soda in both the refrigerator and the freezer. The baking soda will absorb the bad smell quickly. This will keep your fridge fresh and smell free. Every six months you will need to change the boxes. After you are done with the boxes just toss them in the bin.

Query or show a specific post in wordpress

If you are looking for php code or a plugin for your WordPress that takes a post ID and returns the database record for that post then read on. This is very helpful when you want to show a specific post on your homepage or other pages to get more attention. It allows you to design your homepage or a page with the post(s) that you want to be shown on the page rather than the 10 recent posts that the WordPress automatically chooses for you.