Gaurav Dua launched a new tool for Orkut users which allows you to send automatic replies to scraps. This can be used on lines of vacation responder feature found in popular mail services.
At the time of signing up, you need to give your orkut login information and also write scrap text once. Reply scrap text can be anything. As an example you can write, “Hey I am out on vacation, will revert back to you on Monday”.
Next you will get a code which you need to embed in your scrapbook.
Now, whenever anyone send you a scrap, they will get set reply message automatically.
Next you can and his scrap is either kept or deleted from your scrapbook depending on the option you choose at the time of singing up.
You can change settings/scrap deletion option from control panel you will get at Orkut Plus. Your received scraps are also stored in your scraps page there.
This is really good, easy to use service for Orkut users who are not yet addicted to Orkut.
All you have to do is, subscribe to his blog feed via email and post about this event on your blog. This giveaway has deadline of September 20 and winner will be selected randomly.
Earlier Gagan gave two free Rapidshare premium accounts in similar event. This is very good-old tactic new bloggers use to promote their blog.
Anyway, if you are blogger and looking for free Rapidshare premium accounts you can check this event.
I use torrent to download all the stuff I need from Internet. If you like downloading via torrents too, you can check 5 best torrent search engines here.
Two great services – del.icio.us and reddit, both with their own unique features that make you keep going back to them. Wouldn’t it be great if you can use power of both social sites above at one place!
delicious proves that collectively, people tend to pretty accurately tag items. OTOH, while social news sites like Digg, Reddit and the zillion other clones (and forks) tend to focus on comments and the community aspects, their taxonomy tends to be very rigid. So, I thought of marrying the two ideas. The idea is hardly original, I’ve read about it a quite a lot of times on various blogs and programming.reddit. But whenever I talked about this, the universal response from my friends and acquaintances has always been on the lines of “Social News is pretty much a solved problem, there’s little or no room for any further improvement in that space”. Tagz was born as an experiment to see how well would a chimera of these two concepts fare in the wild.
Update: This unlimited offers is back again for first 1111 customers. Sign-up now. ($50 discount promo code included in link). (Read more…)
Our webhost, Dreamhost is celebrating their 10th Anniversary by giving unlimited bandwidth and storage space for new accounts for lifetime. The only catch is, you have to signup till September 10.
Dreamhost already allows unlimited websites, databases, users on any account. With this added two perks, you will get completely unlimited webhosting service. Also with every Dreamhost account you get one free top-level domain registration for lifetime of your account.
We are using Dreamhost for more than a year now, so if you have any question regarding Dreamhost, you can use our forum to get your doubts cleared. Of course, you can contact their support team as well. 🙂
Congratulation to our webhost – Dreamhost for completing 10 years!
Google launched their first public version of open source browser named Chrome. As of now available only for Windows, this browser will most probably eat into Microsoft’s Internet Explorer’s market share. Well this is good news for web developer guys as IE always made it hard to develop standard compliant websites.
Anyway here is our take on chrome…
Speed: As expected, Gmail, Google Reader and many Google services performed better in Chrome browser. If you use Google services heavily, you may consider switching to Chrome. Apart from that I haven’t felt much difference compared to Firefox. Anyway if you like to go by stats, here is speed test comparison for Chrome, Firefox & IE 8 beta by Kevin Purdy at Life Hacker.
Crash Control: Every tab you use is run independently in Google Chrome, so if one tab crashes, it won’t take the tab with your inbox down with it. This is something I really loved it. In Firefox, it happens many time that some a badly coded website crashed entire browser.
Incognito browsing: This is a browsing mode in Chrome which when enabled, stop recording your surfing history. You can use this mode for visiting porn sites from your dads laptop without ever getting caught! Firefox people can enjoy this feature via Stealther extension.
Task Manager for Tabs: Pressing Shift+Esc keys instantly open the task manager for tabs. You can find out which tab (aka site) is slowing your browser and kill it. This is possible in Chrome because of crash control feature mentioned above.
Domain-Highlighting: This feature highlight root domain of a website in address bar. This way one can have quick look at which site they are actually visiting. This is nice approach to prevent phishing. Again firefox users can have this feature using Locationbar2 extension.
One question still remain unanswered. Why did Google need to create a web browser when something great like Firefox already exist. Below is quote from a page on Chrome site.
Since we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if you started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.
Here is video story behind Google Chrome…
Overall, Chrome seems great in features although user interface is not quite appealing. And most of “new” features chrome is marketing on are already available for Firefox via its thousands of plugins. It would be great if Google Chrome somehow manage to support Firefox plugins. They will surely provide support for plugins soon. Atleast support for Google Toolbar is expected soon. Also Chrome versions for Mac and Linux are underdevelopment.
Everytime someone says promo code, I remember not using one while signing up for Dreamhost and so loosing $97 in discount. 🙁
I made a mistake as I was new to Internet and had no one to help me out. But when I realized my mistake, I started searching and ended up on this site – RetailMeNot.com. Since that day, I never missed any promo code or discount coupon.
About RetailMeNot…
Its a very simple but highly useful, one of its kind site where users/site owners/service provider share promo codes they know with site name on which they work. Then as a consumer, you go to RetailMeNot, type website name in its simple search box and hit enter. Search result page instantly show promo codes with small description, ranking, user comments and other info.
ADVERTISEMENT
To get better idea check RetailMeNot page for GoDaddy. Yes, you can bookmark RetailMeNot pages for sites where you shop often!
RetailMeNot Firefox Addon…
Now if you are a lazy consumer, then you can use RetailMeNot Firefox Addon to automate promo code hunting. This small firefox addon checks if promo code is available for site you are visiting automatically. If promo codes are available then a small notification is shown on top side of page which lists few top ranked promo codes and link to page consisting all promo codes.
It may happen RetailMeNot have no promo codes for site you are visiting. But it does not mean promo codes don’t exist for that site. Or there may be even better promo code exist at other places in some cases. For example, check Dreamhost page on RetailMeNot. They do not have any of Dreamhost special promo codes worth $200 discount!
So whenever in doubt, use google to find promo codes that are not listed elsewhere. 🙂
Almost a year ago I opened Devils Workshop for guest authors as well as co-authors. Now its time to take this initiative to the next level with our new revenue sharing program, which will allow all authors to display Google AdSense content ad unit all of their posts.
What makes this revenue sharing program unique is that ONLY your Adsense content unit will be shown on your posts. In fact if you are irregular blogger or don’t want to go through hassle of maintaining your own blog, then you can earn much more through this revenue sharing program as every post you publish here will be read by large reader community.
Also if you are a niche blogger then you can use Devils Workshop as a platform to publish your off-topic articles. As an example, lets assume you have a dedicated blog about Google but you recently discovered something really cool which is not at all related to Google, rather than tipping off another blogger you can publish it here by yourself.
If you are an active blogger, then I bet you already heard about Pepperjam Affiliate Network and their lucrative $10 sign-up bonus offer. If you haven’t joined Pepperjam or planning to join it later, this post is reminder to rush up as sign-up bonus and other Pepperjam offers are available till 31st August.
Overview of Pepperjam offers:
1. $10 New Publisher Sign-Up Bonus – You are eligible for a $10 bonus just for signing-up for Pepperjam Network. Only thing you need to do is join Pepperjam via any referral links.
2. Flat $7 for each referral – For the entire month of August the Pepperjam Network Publisher Referral Program will pay publishers (aka, affiliates) a flat $7 for every new publisher referral. Now if you are a blogger, then you must join Pepperjam within 2 days to get $10 sign-up bonus. You can use last day to refer your blog visitors to Pepperjam via your affiliate links.
3. Blogger Incentive Program – Yes, there is still some money. Pepperjam publisher / blogger will receive $10 for each post they make (up to 5 per month) that promotes Pepperjam Network or any Pepperjam Network tool. Of course, your post need to be pre-approved by them. I already got late to try Pepperjam, so I am posting this straightaway so you don’t miss your sign-up bonus. But you can contact bloggers@pepperjamnetwork.com prior to making your post to gain approval of the topic.
Beyond these offers:
ADVERTISEMENT
Above offers are lucrative enough to make you join Pepperjam. Honestly, I joined Pepperjam for $10 sign-up bonus. But when Google closed their Adsense product referral program, I really wanted to go for some alternatives.
I tested commission junction & Chitika long time before. But after more than 100K impressions, they failed to make any money for me. I haven’t tried Chitika Premium ad unit yet. Widget bucks worked little bit for me but I had more advertising space to offer in this blogs sidebar. So after going through some alternatives, I finally put Pepperjam ads there.
Its too early to comment about Pepperjams performance, but I am hopeful because of following reasons:
First and most important, I liked product lists they are offering. I found many relevant programs for this blogs topics. Ex: text-link-ads, SEO Moz, etc.
Next I liked PepperjamAds section where one can create single ad-unit for all approved advertisers. The best thing about PepperjamAds is text-links it shows. I really hate flashy animated product image ads. Of course you can get image ads for any of your advertiser if you want. If you like to have preview of PepperjamAds, check vertical skyscraper ad unit in this blogs sidebar.
With the Pepperjam is launched and kind of money they spent on giving bonus/rewards, they must have very large publisher base now. This makes its attractive for advertisers and I already pointed out that I am really surprised to find highly relevant advertiser for this blog. Something I failed to find on years old commission junction.
That’s all for the day. Thanks Amanda (Coleman) for clearing my doubts about Pepperjam. 🙂
There are times when you want to make a change across all your posts. Consider following examples:
I have a dedicated page for firefox on this blog with AdSense’s firefox download code. Earlier I used to link that from every “download firefox” link. But as Google retired there AdSense for referral program, I thought its better to send visitors directly to official firefox download page. So task was to replace all link of type A with type B.
I kept open this blog for guest authors from long time. Earlier, I used to send interested people to registration page. Then I created a dedicated page about joining Devils Workshop. And so I needed to replace all links.
Gaurav Dua of Orkut Plus first moved his blog from blogspot subdomain to .org top-domain and for some unfortunate reasons, again shifted to .net domain. In all these transitions, links remain in-tact, but speaking for my posts I would love to give links which will not redirect. Technically its not bog deal but from user experience point of view its good thing. Again task is to replace all links of type A and B with type C.
Then there is another top blogger Darnell Clayton from Inside Orkut who started with blogspot subdomain but with time registered top level .COM domain.
OK enough about links. Now lets come back to some text. Gaurav Dua of Orkut Plus started his blogging career under nickname Jerry. He no longer uses that name but my old posts had it. So here I wanted to replace Jerry with Gaurav in my all posts.
Looks like there is lots of work to do when you encounter such examples in your blogging career. Of course if your on Blogger then you have to edit each post manually but if you are on wordpress. there is a plugin for everything.
Of course, those who comfortable with MySQL can directly write queries to do such jobs but I still advise using Search Regex wordpress plugin.
With this plugin, you can not only do search and replace of any text but can also preview changes first. All form one page! Power users can also use regular expressions too.
Just noticed on my blog that AdSense referrals units are showing blank space. As Google announced earlier about AdSense referral program’s retirement, this came as no surprise.
Speaking for this blog specifically, apart from Firefox referral, AdSense referral program never worked well. I joined Google’s alternative affiliate network form some time, but yet to test its performance. I tested few affiliate networks in past and will most probably use PepperJam and Chitika soon.
Firefox referrals used to make 10% of all my AdSense earnings and it would have been great (atleast for me) if Google continued to promote Firefox. But it seems that Google got enough toolbars all over the web!
Anyway as a blogger first thing you should do now is to remove all AdSense referral codes from your blog. You may still see some referral earnings till September end in your AdSense account as explained in earlier post.
If you have any alternative referral program for firefox or in-general please let us know. For time being, I have switched to non-profit Spread Firefox community for firefox promotion.
Just noticed on my blog that AdSense referrals units are showing blank space. As Google announced earlier about AdSense referral program’s retirement, this came as no surprise.