For the html savvy girls of today, there is a earring in town. Check this picture:

Interested? Check it out here.

For ones mathematically inclined:

Check them out here.

Popularity: 4% [?]

If your goal is to promote your blog and/or sell your products effectively on the Internet, then Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a must for you.

Search engines are the drivers of traffic and you need to rank well on them to get traffic to your blog as well as product centric web sites. It is not only that, people associate a certain amount of trust with your site if they see you high in the search results. This trust factor gives weight to your site/product and helps you achieve better conversion.

To achieve better conversion, you need good traffic, and to get good traffic you need to rank well on search engines. Ranking well on search engines can be done more effectively if you have SEO skills in your repository (or you can always employ Search Engine Optimizers).

For those who are still unsure, please read this article from CNN on How to scale Mt. Google - Getting your site on the first page can turn a hobby into a thriving business.

I have joined a new company and SEO is an integral part of the software offered. I decided it was high time for me to be at least SEO aware if not SEO Maniac.

The first thing I did, which was recommended by most SEO experts, is buy Aaron Wall’s SEO Book. The book is supposed to be the bible on SEO. It is available in the form of e-book and can be downloaded from the site for $79. The book is worth much more the price you pay for it. Aaron keeps updating the book and you get the update versions for free.

I started reading it - am on the 5th chapter - and find it a very easy read with lot of interesting concepts and techniques. I have decided to open the book for discussion by talking at a high level about the book (chapter by chapter basis).

You are welcome to share your experiences, insights and gains through this series of posts where I will talk about each chapter of the book (as I go along reading it).

So get cracking on your knowledge of SEO, you are bound to get returns.

Buy The SEO Book | SEO Book Blog - Free SEO Tips | SEO Book - Free SEO Tools 

Popularity: 4% [?]

Google talk allows you to change your status message to any thing you want. It has also provided a way for you to share the name of the music track your are listening to currently as your status message.

The way to do this is very simple:

1. Login to Google Talk
2. Click on the down arrow below your name on the top and choose “Show current music track”. You can set it with a busy icon or available icon.

It will automatically pickup the track name from Windows Media Player and display it as your status message. I tested it with Windows Media Player, RealPlayer and Music Match Jukebox but it only worked with Windows Media Player.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Matt’s life in a post titled The Authoritative Guide to Programmer Classification has classified programmers into three categories: “The Dork“, “The Geek Who Doesn’t Want to Be a Geek” and “The Geek Who Know’s He’s a Geek — And Loves It“.

The post then elaborates on how they go about their daily life. It is definitely a fun read.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Fedora is Linux operating system. It came into being when RedHat went commercial with their Linux distribution. It is an open source software.

There is a very detailed article (spanning 8 pages with graphic illustrations) titled : The Perfect Desktop - Fedora 7 which shows how to setup a Linux machine and with what software so that it is a complete replacement for Windows. The best part is that all the software on Fedora (including Fedora) is free!

Download Fedora 7

Popularity: 2% [?]

I have been facing problems recently with Google Adsense. It is not showing contextual advertisement and so the click rate had gone down. I wished there was some way to suggest Google Adsense about what advertisements to show (assuming they do not understand by default).

Recently, I ran into this post about a plugin for Wordpress called Target Adsense. It provides you great control over how Google Adsense targets your blog posts. It provides section targeting, which allows you to suggest Google Adsense what portion of text you want to lay more stress on and what you don’t. This will allow you to display ads which are more suited for your post, which in turn is more likely to result in clicks, thus allowing you to make more money.

Read more »

Popularity: 4% [?]

Speakeasy Speed Test provides a very easy flash based tool to check your broadband connection upload and download speed.

You can choose the server which is closest to you and let the tool do the rest. Watch the animation as it calculates the speed.

Popularity: 2% [?]

You can promote your blog by setting the URL of the blog as your status message in Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger.  Both these tools allow you to enter custom status message, thus giving you the power to freely promote your blog.

The way to create it is login to Google Talk, hit the down arrow below your name on Google Talk and click “Custom Message”. Type up your blog/website URL and you are all set.

Good thing about Google Talk is that it will list all the users you communicate with on using your Gmail. You also get your status listed on Orkut with your status message if you are logged in to Google Talk.

I first saw Ilker Yoldas of the thinking blog using it on Google Talk.

Popularity: 6% [?]