We right now have no plans to make any major changes to DW theme. But we need some artwork for our new, upcoming two blogs. Yes, rtBlogs network will be introducing two more blogs by the end of July. Like current blogs in our network, you will get chance to write and earn on those blog as well once blog goes live but till for all creative minds out there, here is a small contest.
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About our upcoming blogs…
We are planning to launch 2 new blogs on different but related topic. Name and some other details are below.
1. BlogVeda
This will be our blog for all new bloggers. Main focus of this blog will be blogging, SEO, online money making and related topics. We hope many of our readers will find this useful.
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This blog will have some special sections. We cannot reveal more details about this at present but I hope name and this small intro is sufficient to get you started.
2. WpVeda
WordPress is backbone of our blog network and is also focus of our parent company. Initial idea was to create a wiki for internal usage where our developers can dump helpful information related to wordpress making collaboration easier. This idea is now base of our new blog dedicated to wordpress.
This will be more developer centric blog with less frequent update. We will share wordpress tutorials, themes and plugins form this new blog only. This blog will also have occasional web development and web designing tutorial.
Logo Design Contest Details
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There are two separate logo design contest for each blog with cash reward of $50 for each logo.
You can submit logos for both blogs. You can win both contest if you are exceptional designer.
Last date of submission is July 15th, 2009 10:00 AM (IST).
Winner will be declared on July 20th, 2009 alongwith winners of previous contest.
If we do not receive any quality submission, this contest will be canceled.
Google is not game for any editorial roles in India, reports PTI. This means that any objectionable content on its network will not be censored by Google, but will only address complaints to remove it within a specified time frame, between 10 minutes to 24 hours.
Google India Managing Director Shailesh Rao says:
“Google does not censor. It is unlikely that we will take a proactive role (in controlling content). Google should not play an editorial role… But once objectionable content is found out on the site, the timeline to remove objectionable content is anywhere between 10 minutes and 24 hours.”
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The frontier of content publishing is vast and will always create some sort of debate or discussions – good, bad, ugly. Because of this, Google does not want to be in charge of setting the “right” rules or the extent of freedom of speech permissible in India.
Rao adds:
“It is amazing how much dialogue and engagement and discussions on an ongoing basis can resolve issues and misunderstandings.”
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What is Censorship by Google?
Removal or omission of information from its services in order to comply with local governments’ censorship laws or with the company’s policies.
Content censorship depends from county to country…
For example:
In Germany, Google censors certain Nazi websites like Stormfront.org.
In the US, Google censors sites containing child pornography, Google’s Sergey Brin stated.
In China, Google also censors human rights groups, like HRW.org (Human Rights Watch), but many other things as well, like Taiwan independence, names of current and past presidents, names of locations, historical events and so on.
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Government concerns in India
With Google Earth (a downloadable application) users can access database of satellite photographs that have been stitched together.
The government had drawn up a list of places it considers sensitive, which is expected to include military bases and government buildings.
The government is worried over detailed images of sites as nuclear power plants, official buildings and the offices of security services.
Google would continue to talk to the Indian Government about any security concerns it may have regarding Google Earth.
(Update: Submissions for this giveaway are closed. We will update about winners via separate post on July 15, 2009. Till then, you can participate in this new contest with $100 cash prize.)
Dear All Devils,
Today Devils Workshop has completed 3 years and like previous anniversaries, you will get lots of surprises, which is our way of thanking to all who love & support Devils Workshop through out the year!
So here we goes…
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#1. Free search engine & other optimization services for 2 wordpress blogs
As part of our anniversary celebration we are offering our search engine & other optimization services for 2 lucky blogs. If you run a wordpress blog, you can participate in this. Sorry guys but those who take pain or pleasure in writing for Devils Workshop should get more perks! 😉
This package covers things like optimization configuration, theme and other part of your wordpress blog for better performance in search engine as well as humans. It is more like consultancy with technical support. We normally charge $300 for this and it takes around one week to tweak a blog!
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#2. Free Blogger To WordPress Migration for 2 blogs (and more)
After our mega post on Blogger To WordPress Migration we received many requests regarding paid migration service. We normally charge $200 for it but we decided to give away this service completely free for 2 of our readers, including guest authors.
So if you are running your blog on Blogger (Blogspot.com) and looking for experts to migrate your blog to WordPress (self-hosted), then this is your chance.
To participate:
Simplyfill up this form. It is common form for both. Check appropriate check-box on form at the end. Date of last submission is 19th June 10:00PM (IST).
Above services are worth $1000! But I hate one thing about them! They are all for bloggers. What about non-bloggers???
Well this is not the end. As per our promise, we will keep surprising you for rest of the month and in next round we will surely bring some gifts for non-blogger readers. 🙂
Feedback please…
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As you might have noticed, many things has changed on Devils Workshop in last year. We are looking forward for few more big changes in coming days to give you our best. Please help us improve by giving your valuable feedback.
Let us know what do you think about Devils Workshop? Do you miss something here on DW? Do you want something to be changed?
We are open to all suggestions, criticism and anything you speak from your heart!
Thank you all for helping DW subscriber count 5000 mark!
Shockingly sad! Computer Science Professor, Rajeev Motwani, 47, one of the key players behind the creation of “Google” was found dead in his swimming pool in California on Friday. Rajeev Motwani had mentored Google founders – Larry Page and Sergey Brin, during their PhD at Stanford University.
Cause of death?
The cause of death still appears to be unclear. Motwani could not swim, so there is a possibility that he slipped into the pool and drowned.
Sergey Brin (celebrating Motwani’s life) writes in his blog:
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“Officially, Rajeev was not my advisor, and yet he played just as big a role in my research, education, and professional development. In addition to being a brilliant computer scientist, Rajeev was a very kind and amicable person and his door was always open. No matter what was going on with my life or work, I could always stop by his office for an interesting conversation and a friendly smile.”
“Eventually, as Google emerged from Stanford, Rajeev remained a friend and advisor as he has with many people and startups since. Of all the faculty at Stanford, it is with Rajeev that I have stayed the closest and I will miss him dearly. Yet his legacy and personality lives on in the students, projects, and companies he has touched. Today, whenever you use a piece of technology, there is a good chance a little bit of Rajeev Motwani is behind it.”
More about Rajeev Motwani
Motwani grew up in New Delhi and was born in Jammu, India. He had moved to the US for his doctorate in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley after his B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT, Kanpur.
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He also co-authored another seminal search paper “What Can You Do With A Web In Your Pocket”.
He was also an author of two widely-used theoretical computer science textbooks, Randomized Algorithms and Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation.
Prior to his involvement with Google, Motwani founded the Mining Data at Stanford project (MIDAS), an umbrella organization for several groups looking into new and innovative data management concepts. His research included data privacy, web search, robotics, and computational drug design.
He was an avid angel investor and had funded a number of successful startups to emerge from Stanford. He sat on the boards of Google, Kaboodle, Mimosa Systems, Adchemy, Baynote, Vuclip, NeoPath Networks (acquired by Cisco Systems in 2007), Tapulous and Stanford Student Enterprises among others. He was also active in the Business Association of Stanford Entrepeneurial Students (BASES).
He was a winner of the Gödel Prize in 2001 for his work on the PCP theorem and its applications to hardness of approximation.
He served on the editorial boards of SIAM Journal on Computing, Journal of Computer and System Sciences, ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data, and IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.
He leaves behind his wife, Asha Jadeja, and two daughters.
No matter what people think about professional blogging, we are doing amazingly as professional bloggers in our lives at rtBlogs.
As this is month of 3rd anniversary of Devils Workshop, we decided to expand our family by opening few more full-time positions. What could be the better way to celebrate! 😉
So here we go…
Full-time Blog Editor
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To all our fellas who are blogging from some-time and still wondering if they can take blogging as profession, here is the opportunity!
You only need to be good and passionate blogger. We don’t care which school you are from as no school teaches how to blog!
If your English is good, feel free to apply! Details and application form can be found below.
Blogger of the month is our new initiative to encourage good blogging standards and help new bloggers improve their blogging skills.
Starting this month, things will be changed for DW guest bloggers forever!
First, the story so far…
More than a year ago back Devils Workshop opened for guest bloggers, with a difference. Unlike many other blogs where you submit your posts as guest only, Devils Workshop offered dedicate login to all guest authors treating them as co-bloggers, making sure they get proper credit and exposure for their work! One step ahead, we appreciated your efforts and opened revenue sharing program so that you can get paid for your posts transparently.
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Even though revenue sharing took away all the focus, main motive behind community blogging was to create a system where experienced editors like Swati and Deepak can spend time on improving blogging skills of new bloggers. But with volume of guest posts Devils Workshop receives, managing things manually was too painful.
Thanks to our coder Radhe, who created a new plugin for wordpress MU, which makes things easier for our editors’ team. They can find info about you easily, communicate with you in single click and most importantly can rate posts using different parameters.
The plugin is right now under testing cycle but it will take care of old posts as well. Hopefully, our editors will get a chance to use it by tomorrow. As this plugin interface will be accessible to editors and admins only, we have decided to give you a sneak preview of how things will look like. Below is a box added on post-editor screen (available to editor team only).
Enough about plugin for now. Lets move to main course! 🙂
Bloggers of The Month…
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As you can see above all guest posts will get rating. Editors will give points based on many factors.
English – be kind enough to run spell-check atleast. Use windows live editor for blogging. 😉
Presentation – Use headers like h2/h3 to highlight sections of your articles. Add screenshots wherever possible! Break posts in small paragraphs. Things like this will be considered.
Ethics – Spend some-time on linking back to other sources you may use in post. Do not excessively promote anything particularly. We hate links that open in new tab or window. Do not force or irritate visitors!
Tools – Use blogging tools that generate nice markups and respect web-standards. We recommend using online wordpress post editor or windows live editor. Never use Microsoft word!
Post Topic
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This is one factor that will be considered most. A user posting a tutorial or nice post like posts in ‘featured’ category will definitely gets more points. Do not look at my announcement posts in featured category. 😉
Important thing to consider is that, write quality article! One article like this will definitely get more points than 10 news or review posts. So spend time on writing good quality and original article. Let me repeat.. Original articles please! 🙂
Actually there is nothing wrong in covering news as long as you add your analytical views to it. Lazy people copying news with copied screenshots will not get any points!
Comments and accountability!
Many time we notice people just come on DW to write one guest post and get a backlink to their blog! Well, we do not have problem with giving link juice and whatever else we can give to our fellow bloggers but what hurt us that some guest bloggers do not answers comments and queries asked by visitors.
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So we made our ranking algorithm consider accountability while answering comments. So always answer a question asked on your post. If you don’t know the answer, let your visitor know. Don’t keep them waiting!
Reward…
In addition to direct revenue from ads running on your posts, you can win $100 monthly prize! We are planning to add more rewards and prizes.
Apart from consistent ad revenue and chance to win big monthly prize, most importantly, you will get free suggestions & feedback about your blogging skills. This will help you in long run! 🙂
We have more exciting plans but we will unveil them on right time! 😉
For time being, if you haven’t joined DW as blogger join it and start posting.
Those who are already in, don’t forget to update your profile!
Dear DW readers, first thank you all for giving amazing response to Virgin-IHL contest held on DW. We received 24 valid entries for contest till 1PM yesterday. After that we closed comments but some readers sent their entries via email which will not be counted. You can see all valid entries here.
About our judge…
Before we announce winner of the contest, we like to thank our judge and Indias #1 blogger Amit Agarwal for giving his valuable time. 🙂
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Amit, as we all know is the authority over Internet & technology so naturally he is the best person to choose a winner when question is about Internet. Most of us who follows Digital Inspiration know about Amit Agarwal very well but still if you like to know more then check this.
Now its time to announce winner!
The question was…
Is Internet your preferred medium over TV for sports and entertainment? Why?
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and Amit finds Sagar as winner. Sagar’s answer was…
Can i watch vintage cricket star’s list and their performance on TV, how am i suppose to compare Internet and TV.
Can i watch AR rahman concert again and again on TV.
The
We congratulate Sagar and request him to send this postal address to us on “contact@rtcamp.com”. A gift will be sent to you from our sponsor Virgin-IHL Contest!
Credits & Thanksgiving…
So here we reach end to this week long event hosted jointly on our 2 blogs CricTalks and Devils Workshop!
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We like to specially thanks Monisha Mansukhani (from Virgin Mobile) for all the help and support she had offered to us all the throught the contest. We also like to thank Abhishek Jain who linked us to folks at Virgin.
And finally thanks to all our readers and fellow bloggers for their participation and making this event wonderful!
More is on the card…
Those who missed prizes or participation, please do not feel bad about it. Next week we will be celebrating 3rd anniversary of Devils Workshop. So stay connected for a bigger blast! 🙂
Call for sponsors…
We will be having our own prizes and give-away in what we are planning to be a week-long celebration on DW! But if you like to sponsor a contest or anything else on DW, please get in touch with us via “rahul@devilsworkshop.rsites.dev6.rt.gw”. We are open to all kind of sponsorship and ideas.
I will reveal more about the upcoming event soon! Till then keep reading Devils Workshop! 😉
Unexpetedly Google updated the page rank. Last update was around first week of April 2009.
The good news here is that Devil’s workshop got a page rank of 4 from previous page rank of #3.
In simple words Google page rank means your website authority in the terms of Google. Google page rank depends on many factors but the most important one is linking to good neighbor hood and adding quality to your post.
Linking to bad neighborhood is a clear no in terms of Google and it will hurt your website authority.
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Here are few simple plugins for WordPress which will help you to improve your blog ranking and authority :
All In one SEO plugin or Platinum SEO plugin : By default wordpress is SEO friendly, to get the maximum out of your wordpress blog post, it’s good advice to add keywords and meta description. Use any of these plugin and that will take are of it. My recommendation use ALL in one SEO plugin.
Broken link checker plugin : This plugin checks for broken link in your blog posts and will alert you on your wordpress dashboard.
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Nofollow post plugin : In some cases you might need to link to some spam or bad websites. In this case you case you can use this plugin to add a nofollow link attribute and thus stop passing your precious link juice to this websites.
There are almost 100+ other SEO based wordpress plugins which you can use to improve you on page SEO of your blog.
Do let us know about your favorite SEO plugin and trick and update us about your Google page rank?
