Tag: Featured

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Editorial

Introducing WpNginx – our new service to put your WordPress on steroids

Before I tell you more about WpNginx, our new service, let me ask you one simple question!

When was the last time you have seen Devils Workshop down?

If you are one of our reader who frequently visits Devils Workshop, chances are seeing this site down are almost nil. Downtime you might have seen here was for scheduled maintenance few months back. In fact that can be prevented also, had we more time to invest in playing with our servers. 😉

WpNginx – The magic behind our great uptime!

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Every time, fellow bloggers contact me, wondering about which hosting we are using for such great uptime, I can’t stop myself from thanking Igor Sysoev, the man who created Nginx webserver. Nginx worked for us like a charm.

You may be get a shock to know that, we now run more than 30-sites with 50K total pageviews daily from one single VPS and going through analysis of our server logs, it seems that we can handle another 50K hits daily without upgrading our VPS plan further.

On top of Nginx, we have explored many more ways to optimize websites’ performance to the level where our rtCamp.com homepage beats Google.com homepage in YSlow as well as PageSpeed like performance metrics. 😉

To get this kind of performance, we have worked very hard for months. All our efforts pulled together are now available as a service which every blogger running high-traffic blog/site can avail. Two of Devils Workshop’s contributors, Bapun (from SolidBlogger) and Sri Ganesh (from Symposiumz), already managed avail our service while we were in close-beta. You can read about their experience here.

You can read more about our new service here. More about why we love Nginx can be found here.

Link: WpNginx

p.s. just noticed this is my 600th post on DW! 🙂

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Tips

Get Best Blogger To WordPress Migration Service for FREE

(This is cross-posting of promo-announcement published on BloggerToWP blog)

This a quick post to inform all devils about a new promo we are running on our Blogger To WordPress migration service.

We are giving away our proven Blogger to WordPress migration service absolutely FREE till September 25, 2010.

As everyone moving to self-hosted wordpress platform needs webhosting, this promo is something most bloggers can benefit from.

Details about this promo offer are here.

Affiliates…

Yep. You can still earn $25 or $50 for our customers opting for free migration and theme!

You can think this as win-win-win-win deal.

Any guesses on who are fantastic-4, oops winners, here?? 😉

Links: Free Blogger To WordPress Migration Service | Affiliate Program

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Tutorial

How to Create Image Reflection in Photoshop

We can see many types of tutorial about Image Reflection in Photoshop. You can create this effect by using layer mask and gradient effect. In this post we can see how to create Image Reflection in an easier way.

You can create Image Reflection effect in a few simple steps.

I will show steps by which you will be able to take the image to the left and transform it with a reflection like the one to the right. (See image below).

Now here below I have included the original Image I will use for this tutorial.

  • Before we start please create duplicate the image.
  • Select the image layer and simply right-click on it for duplicate layer.

When we right-click on the image layer we can see this palate. (See the image below)

  • Click on it. We can also give name to this layer.
  • We can also use short cut key Ctrl+J to duplicate the image.

Now select the duplicate image layer and place it at below the Original image.

  • Now we need to reverse the image. Select the image and go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical.

Now we have got our reverse image. 🙂

Click on the below image and go to Tool bar. Now just right-click on Marquee Tool. We will see this pallet

Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and make a selection on the below image. Ideally it should be from bottom up to half-size of image like the one shown below.

Now keep choice on image and go to Select > Modify > Feather we can see this palate.

  • Select the Feather Radius value. Here I take Feather Radius value -50. Now just press delete 2-3 time as per your image requirements.

Now for make more realistic effect go to layer pallet select Opacity give Opacity value – 50%. You can adjust it as per your image requirement.

There we go. We have our Image Reflection effect.

Hope you liked this tutorial. I will try to write a few more in the future. If you know of other Photoshop tips and tricks do share them with your comments.

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Analysis

Hidden meaning behind some famous logos

A logo is very important as an identity for a company or a brand. A logo ideally is expected to be creative and interesting. Many companies do a lot or research and take efforts to come up with that one awesome logo which signifies their company. Most times such logos say something more than what appears to be.

Here are some interesting logos of brands and learn about hidden meaning behind them. 😉

Formula 1

The logo at first glance looks quite simple and boring. But give it a closer look. There you can see the symbol of ‘One’ inside the blank space between ‘F’ and red colored ‘1’.

Link: Formula 1 Logo

Toblerone

Toblerone is a company that makes chocolates. It originated in a place called Bern, Switzerland. This place is called the city of bears. You can see the outline of a bear on the mountain. Try looking for a standing bear. 😉

Link: Toblerone Logo

Elettro Domestici

ED is an Italian company into domestic electronic appliances. This logo of ED shows a black colored electric plug. But the contracts with white gives the illusion of the characters ‘E’ and ‘D’.

Sony Vaio

The Vaio logo also has a secret. The ‘va’ part represents the basic analogue signal and the ‘io’ looks like the binary 1’s and 0’s.

Link: VAIO

Baskin and Robins

Baskin and Robbins is famous ice cream brand. It has 31 flavors of ice-cream. The logo shows the letter B and R. Just looking at the pink part of the logo will show the number ’31’.

Link: Baskin and Robbins

Amazon

The logo for Amazon shows a smiley. Along with that the arrows show moves from A to Z. This logo symbolizes that they sell things from A to Z. 😛

Link: Amazon

Continental Tyres

Continental is a company which sells wheels. At first glance it looks like the simple word ‘Continental’. Look at ‘C’ and ‘o’ closely and you will see that it creates the illusion of a tyre.

Link: Continental Tyres

So these are some of the logos around with some hidden meaning. Next time you look at a logo of a brand, spend some time to find some hidden meaning. You might be surprised at what you see.

Do drop in your view through your comments.

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Analysis

The Power of 140 Characters [TDIS]

Interesting Twitter Stories It’s that time of the week when we sit back and relax, reflecting on the days that went by. Like any other person, I love my Sundays and avoid doing work which involves the use of brain :P. So instead of writing some tech article, I thought of sharing these interesting stories related to twitter that I came across over time. These are not the normal stories of someone getting sacked because of a tweet. These are stories with a difference, and show the immense power 140 characters can wield.

Case#1: Woman saved from committing suicide

A woman tweeted about committing suicide and directed one such tweet to Demi Moore at @mrskutcher. It said, “@mrskutcher getting a knife, a big one that is sharp. Going to cut my arm down the whole arm so it doesn’t waste time”.

tweet Luckily Moore saw the tweet in time and retweeted it immediately. The tweet became viral and the police station got flooded with the calls about this. Fortunately the police was successful in tracking down the woman before she could take any such step.

Source: abcnews.go.com

Case#2: Twitter comes to the rescue of people tired of waiting for train

people waiting for train Commuters traveling through Caltrain between San Francisco and Bay Area (equivalent to Local train in Mumbai or Metro in Delhi) were often left waiting for hours for the train to arrive. With no proper system to communicate about the delays, getting real time status of the train was almost impossible. But not anymore- thanks to Twitter and Ravi Pina.

Ravi Pina- a tech enthusiast and sufferer at the hand of Caltrain, created a twitter account at @Caltrain. Now the riders on board can send latest updates about the whereabouts of train to @Caltrain which is then broadcasted to all the followers. Simple but effective! Interestingly, official Caltrain employees have fully embraced @caltrain.

Source: tales.twitter.com

Case#3: Man travels for free around the world

around-the-world The latest one is about Paul Smith (@paul_a_smith), a British freelance writer, who decided to get to Campbell Island, 200 miles off New Zealand’s coast, within 30 days. He tweeted about this 28 days before he was to leave. British actor Stephen Fry came across his tweet and retweeted it to his followers. The response was amazing. He traveled around the world for free! This is how he did it:

  • Ferry ticket from Newcastle to Amsterdam (tweeter called Leanne)
  • Train to Paris (two French tweeters)
  • Free bed at a hostel
  • Train to Saarbrucken
  • Lift in car to Frankfurt (German tweeter Andrea Juchem)
  • One-way flight from Frankfurt to New York (tweeter called Owen, using Air Miles)
  • Spare bed in hotel room (tweeter from Yorkshire called Mark)
  • Travel and stay in Washington DC, Chicago and San Francisco by plane, train and car (US tweeters)
  • Flight to San Francisco (Zurich-based tweeter)
  • Car to Los Angeles
  • Free flight from LA to Auckland (Air New Zealand)
  • Ferry to South Island
  • Lift to tip of South Island (tweeter called Smiley)
  • Sailed to Stewart Island.

Source: telegraph.co.uk

Strange how kind people can be to total strangers! I am planning a trip to Pune, Mumbai and Delhi. Any tweeple here ;)?

Hope you enjoyed reading these stories as much as I enjoyed sharing them. Do share other interesting stories related to twitter through your comments. In the mean time also check out 10 Interesting facts about Twitter and 21 Interesting Facts about Google.

Categories
Tips

Are Your Comments Working For Your Blog?

comment When one starts blogging, the primary concern is to get visitors. For this, various bloggers often use different strategies. Some submit their blogs to directories, some write guest posts and some use their blog url in e-mail signature.

However, the best way to get targeted traffic is to leave comments on other blogs. If you leave a quality comment, probability of people visiting your blog increases. But how do you know if the comment you left on a blog is getting you traffic or not? Having this information is essential, because then you’ll know which blog to target and which to leave.

This tutorial will help you analyze your comment strategy.

We are going to use Google Analytics to track how are comment strategy is working, so if you are not already using Google Analytics, add your blog to it.

Step by Step Guide to Track Your Comment Strategy

  1. We are going to create a separate URL for comments. To do this point your browser to http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578
  2. Enter your blog URL in the field “Website URL”. In “Campaign Source”, “Campaign Medium” and “Campaign Name” fill some unique identifiers which you can later recognize while tracking. If it sounds confusing, just write “Comment-Name of Blog on which you are leaving comment” in all the three fields. For e.g. if you are leaving comments on DW, use “Comment-DW” in the three fields.
    creating custom url
  3. Click on Generate URL. Copy this URL and use it every time you leave comment on DW. Similarly create custom URLs for other blogs where you leave comments. Don’t worry, this URL will direct visitors to your home page (or any other page you want).
  4. Now go to Google Analytics-> View Report-> Traffic Source->Campaigns. Here you can see which blog sent you how many visitors. (It’ll take some time before you’ll start seeing this report).
    google analytics-campaigns

Tips

  • You’ll not have to repeat this process every time. Your browser cookies stores this information so that next time when you go to that particular blog, it’ll automatically fill the corresponding custom URL for you (if you have not cleared the cookies).
  • This might look like a lot of work to you if you comment on many blogs. So instead of creating separate URLs for each blog you can create just one URL and use it everywhere. You’ll get a consolidated report on how your comment strategy is working, but you won’t be able to identify which blog sent more traffic.
    This is what I did for this tutorial. I randomly picked two blogs and created one custom URL for both. See the result below.
    campaign visitors
  • You can even set up a separate custom url for guest posts. This will be useful to differentiate between the visitors coming from guest posts and those coming from comments. For e.g., I write guest posts on DW as well as leave comments on other posts on DW. I can use two separate URLs to track these two types of visitors and find what works better for me-leaving comments or writing guest posts.
  • You don’t have to visit the link I mentioned in step 1 above every time you want to create a custom url. Just use the following structure to create a custom url:

http://www.yourblog.com/?utm_source=WRITE SOURCE &utm_medium=WRITE MEDIUM&utm_campaign=WRITE CAMPAIGN NAME

Analyzing this information, you can build on your comment strategy and get more targeted traffic to your blog.

Do you use any other method to check if your comments are working for you? Share your thoughts with us.

Categories
Tips

5 Steps to writing a great post

I often interact with new bloggers on Facebook and sometimes they end up writing on Devils’ Workshop. This is when I realize that many of them have great ideas and decent style of writing but one thing they find difficult is how to layout the content to make it a great post.

We are introducing Blogger of the Month version 2.0 which might get a lot of new bloggers interested in writing a post for DW. I felt it would be ideal to write a post on 5 steps to writing a great post.

Image Credits: adaevidencelibrary

#1. Headline

The title of the post is very important. It catches your readers attention within seconds and one of the main reasons for someone looking up your post.

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  • Keep the title self explanatory. A reader who looks up the title of a post should feel they can expect certain things. eg: “How to install XYZ software?”
  • Always include your desired SEO keywords in your title. This will be your biggest SEO trick if there is one. 😉
  • Always write the title in present tense and not in the past. If the post title is in future tense then chances are you should be finishing that title with a question. eg: “Google buys XYZ company” or “Will Google buy XYZ company?”.

#2. Introduction

Now that we have a title lets go ahead with the actual content. You can roughly start with a paragraph that introduces the post to your readers.

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  • Introduction is the most important part when you start writing content. Mainly it introduces your reader to the topic at hand. For example if you are writing a post on “Google buys XYZ company” you might want to start of the post with Google recent list of acquisitions or maybe a small introduction of what XYZ company does.
  • You have all the material you want to write but have a ‘writers block’ on how to go about it. Best way to deal with it is to write in the introduction exactly why you are sharing this post with your readers.
  • Make sure the introduction is not too extensive. Ideally one small paragraph is perfect but in case its you have more to introduce try sticking to two paragraphs at the most.

#3. The main course

If your post was a menu at a restaurant then what follows the introduction is usually the main course or the main body of content written on a post.

  • There is no ideal amount of words to be used in this part of the post. For instance a detailed tutorial might be even more than a thousand words.
  • This part of the post if its too large you might want to split into parts. Like this post your are reading I have split the main course into 5 steps. 😉
  • Make sure this part of the post has screen-shots and images which is a ideal in my opinions. Ofcourse where and when to insert images is a personal choice which might change from post to post or from blog to blog for that matter.

#4. The Conclusion

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Write a conclusion to your post. This is a way to end your post on a high and every often give your readers your opinion on something and likewise ask your readers to comment and give their opinions.

  • Just like a introduction the conclusion should be precise and short. It should be simple and straight to the point.
  • I personally like writing a couple of lines of my own views on something I’ve written or reviewed. I feel this gives your post that personal touch.
  • Write a conclusion which ends with a question so your readers feel the need to engage in a dialogue with your post through the comments.

#5. Linking back to your post

Linkbacks to your post allow your readers to visit your older but related posts in a targeted way. This helps us out in improving the bounce rate of your blog.

  • Do not link back to just about any post on your blog. Make sure that the old post you are linking back to is relevant and adds something new to the reader.
  • Avoid filling your post with a lot of links to your previous articles. This is fine if your writing a round up post but on other occasions avoid making the reader think your wrote the current post only to introduce your older posts. It also makes your reader feel you are not coming up with new stuff.
  • I like linking to previous posts in the introduction section or in the conclusion section of a post. This allows me to be creative in inserting the link and play on the readers interests.
  • Also make sure the links your introduce are relevant to the post. If your current post is about programming don’t link it back to a funny post but try to link the post back from a similar category.

This are the 5 steps I use to write a good post. Some of these are my habits suited to writing on tech blog. Ofcourse this can really change from post to post but when I stick to these steps I find it easier. My steps are really based on me as a reader of other blogs and basically this is how I feel good when reading content.

If you liked this post you might want to read about 10 things bloggers must check before writing a post. Do you think these steps will help you write a great post? Do let me know by dropping in your comments. 😀

Categories
Analysis

Do we choose Google over Bing just out of habit? [ Google vs Bing ]

If you are not on Google then you are not on the internet is a statement which is not very far from the truth. We had Yahoo Search, MSN search and then came the underdog called Google which swept all competition with a simple interface and made being geek so cool that everyone wanted to “Google” something and felt like a geek if only for a few moments. But lately Google has competition and it goes by the name “Bing”

I always felt I do not use Bing just out of sheer habit of using Google but I thought it would be make an interesting discussion and so yesterday I put a question to some bloggers on my Facebook account which was “Are we using Google instead of Bing just out of habit?”

Most replied “They were habituated to Google” and some did not like Bing Search layout too much. I thought let me conduct some comparative tests by searching for a list of similar things on both Google and Bing and try to come to a conclusion if Bing is as good if not better than Google. 🙂

Do not take the scoring seriously as this is just a snap shot of 3 queries of the billions that these search engines handle everyday but they do make for some interesting insights into the two search engines.

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Search results for “Devils Workshop”

Google results

Bing Results


  • I admit that this search query was a little too obvious as I do not think someone will search for Devils Workshop but I decided to check this one out for the basic layout and how search results are presented.
  • Google which we are all so familiar with showed me easy one click access to relative searches like Images, Blogs, Videos on the side. It showed out blog first and then a Wikipedia link which is how Bing showed it.
  • Only issue with Bing was that Google showed up some links from our domain but that was not the case with Bing. 🙁
  • Bing also had two very unrelated links at the top which were sponsored links.

Score: Google 1 : Bing 0

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Search results for “Fifa Scores”

Google Results

Bing Results

Fifa World Cup 2010 is currently underway and I wondered if we looked up search results how will both the search engines show up the results.

  • This one was a tie with Bing and Google both showed the latest scores and also the live score of the current match that was happening. 🙂
  • This reinforces my view that if we took design and function out of the question probably Bing gives just as good results as Google.
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Score: Google 2 : Bing 1

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Search Results for Addresses

Google Results

Bing Results

Other than using search engines for news, software and blogging related info I also use is extensively to look up addresses and here Google wins hands down.

  • Google showed results immediately with a snap shot of Google Maps which was more about the address.
  • Bing Maps is similar to Google Maps but here Bing Maps is not integrated with its search results and that I feel is disappointing. Also the links in Bing show everything except a link to its Maps section which I find strange.
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Score: Google 3 : Bing 1

Conclusion:

Google is far ahead of Bing at the moment and with Google being the default search engine with Firefox and Chrome which is currently seeing strong growth rates at the expense of Internet Explorer will ensure Google will be used much more. Also Bing just does not have the small details which Google search provides and this might be fixed when Bing is out of beta stage. One feature of Bing I really liked is that with Bing we can create RSS feeds of our search results.

So my question to you is do you use Google over Bing just out of habit or do are there any specific reasons? Do drop in your comments. 🙂

Categories
Analysis

5 things Google might have got wrong!

When it comes to the internet Google almost always gets things right. The other day I started a discussion on Devils’ Workshop’s Facebook page about what are the things that Google got wrong or what are the things that Google failed at.

There were quite a few opinions but I thought it would make an interesting post on listing them down and why Google seems to have got these services wrong.

#1. Google Wave

This was a failure not on the technology front but from a failure at promising more and under delivering. It was unveiled at the during Google IO developers conference in 2009. It promised to change the way we used internet and more crucially it promised to change the way we use Email. Email and its basic usage has not changed over the last 10-15 years and Wave promised a revolution. When released it turned out to be a collaboration tool rather than a communication tool. Considering Google Wave is still a solid product technically it might still be a success but will it change the world? I doubt it. 😛

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#2. Google Answers

Google Answers is something not many people are aware of. It was created in 2002 and the idea was the questions asked could be answered for a price. These answers obviously had to be well researched and the charged per answer could vary from $2 to $200. Aardvark is probably a watered down free concept of Google Answers which Google recently acquired.

#3. Orkut

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I remember the days which were many years ago when testimonials, scraps and looking up who looked up your profile was a cool way to pass ones time on a social network named Orkut. Yes, Orkut has been jazzed up with a redesign and now it does have many similarities with Facebook. Orkut was never leveraged into a great product to the whole world. Google has probably not given much attention to Orkut and when the attention was given I think it is a bit too late. 🙁

#4. Google Buzz

Google Buzz was a great idea. A social network embedded within Gmail. That was a sure fire way to get people interested in it. They did not even wait for you to sign up but simply got everyone with a Gmail account added onto it. Was it supposed to compete with Twitter, Facebook or Yahoo? The point of Google Buzz is that it is simply not an alternative to either Facebook or Twitter and unfortunately for Google we do not want all our Gmail contacts to be contacts on a Social network.

#5. Nexus

Google decided to come out with its own phone, possibly to take a step forward to compete with Apple’s iPhone. It has not at all competed with iPhone and possibly the Nexus phone is doomed as lately. Apparently the sales are 70% less than what they were expected when Nexus One was released by Google. Earlier it could only be bought online but now the online store will close down and vendors will be selling Nexus One. Probably this one is bad dream that Google would like to forget very soon.

Google might not have got expected success considering their size and power over the internet but many of these products are not central to Google to survive so it won’t really have a lot of impact on Google. Also Google might be leveraging some of these services to keep competitors like Apple (with Nexus) and Facebook (with Buzz) focused on their core competencies and not try to take on Google’s core competency which is Search and Email.

Do you agree with the list or do you have more products to add? Do let me know your views through your comments.

Categories
Reviews

Top 5 Free Softwares to Reveal your Asterisk hidden password

A password is a secret word, that provides the access to the resource. As a password does the job of protecting our personals from mail accounts, PDA’s to credit cards and many more.

There might be few situations like you have registered for a services like GTalk, Yahoo Messenger, Live Messenger etc, and in hurry if you just signed in that new account. After a while you may forget the login password for that newly opened account and there it shows the Asterisk key (*****) on the messenger. This is the actual situation where you need these Software tools.

Here is my list of the Top 5 Softwares to Reveal your Asterisk hidden password

  1. Asterisk Key
  2. Password Viewer
  3. Asterisk Logger
  4. Show Password
  5. Password Decryption Software
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There 5 are best and free Asterisk Hidden password revealers. Let us check them out

Asterisk Key : Uncovers hidden passwords on password dialog boxes and web pages. It provides the State of the art password recovery engine – all passwords are recovered instantly. Best of all, it’s totally free. It supports Multilingual passwords and Full install/uninstall support is provided.

Asterisk Key

Password Viewer : Password Viewer is a Windows utility that allows you to view password fields. It enables to you to peek the password not only at the password edit boxes on different programs, but also the password input field data on a page inside Internet Explorer window ( Win2000 and later )

Password Viewer

Asterisk Logger : Applications, like CuteFTP, CoffeeCup Free FTP, Outlook Express, and others, allows you to type a password for using it in the application. The typed password is not displayed on the screen, and instead of the real password, you see a sequence of asterisk (‘****’) characters. This utility can reveal the passwords stored behind the asterisks in standard password text-boxes.

Asterisk Logger

Show Password : This allows us to view the passwords which are hidden by asteriks. If you find a textbox where there are hidden passwords, which will be replaced with asterisks, these can be easily revealed with this program, only by executing it and moving the cursor over the textbox. It’s good too in 99.99% of cases but the rest 0.01% can be very important for us.

Show Password

Password Decryption Software : Data doctor hidden password unmask utility decode any typed key board character in asterisks form **** of password text box. Recovery software is easy to use, free of cost, user friendly password reveal utility that extract password from password textbox, user login form of yahoo, gmail, hotmail, orkut, messengers and many more.

Password Decryption Software

So what are you waiting for?

Download your favorite tool for revealing your Asterisk hidden password.

Do let us know which software you use in your system to reveal Asterisk password?