The Beluga Live Web-Cam

Lost

"The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity to feel the pain."
-- Jennifer Aniston

I want to Live with You R

On May 1, 1947, Evelyn McHale leapt to her death from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Photographer Robert Wiles took a photo of McHale a few minutes after her death. On May Day, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. "He is much better off without me ... I wouldn't make a good wife for anybody". Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb.

R, I want live a happy married life with you. Please don't leave me alone.

I want to Bathe with You in the Sea

Truely Madly Deeply
[by Savage Garden]

I'll be your dream
I'll be your wish
I'll be your fantasy.
I'll be your hope
I'll be your love
Be everything that you need.
I love you more with every breath
Truly madly deeply do.
I will be strong I will be faithful
'Cos I'm counting on a new beginning.
A reason for living.
A deeper meaning.

I want to stand with you on a mountain.
I want to bathe with you in the sea.
I want to lay like this forever.
Until the sky falls down on me.

And when the stars are shining brightly
In the velvet sky,
I'll make a wish
Send it to heaven
Then make you want to cry.
The tears of joy
For all the pleasure and the certainty.
That we're surrounded
By the comfort and protection of.
The highest power.
In lonely hours.
The tears devour you.
I want to stand with you on a mountain,
I want to bathe with you in the sea.
I want to lay like this forever,
Until the sky falls down on me.

Oh can't you see it baby?
You don't have to close your eyes
'Cos it's standing right before you.
All that you need will surely come.

I'll be your dream
I'll be your wish
I'll be your fantasy.
I'll be your hope
I'll be your love
Be everything that you need.
I'll love you more with every breath
Truly madly deeply do.

Dare to Fall in Love with Me

"I've been alone with you inside my mind
And in my dreams I've kissed your lips a thousand times
I sometimes see you pass outside my door
Hello, is it me you're looking for?

I can see it in your eyes
I can see it in your smile
You're all I've ever wanted, (and) my arms are open wide
'Cause you know just what to say
And you know just what to do
And I want to tell you so much, I love you"
-- "Hello", Lionel Richie

I Want to be with You Forever

"I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you."
-- Roy Croft

I have Dreamed of You So Much

[Written by Robert Desnos]

I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.
Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make
your dear voice come alive again?

I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my
chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many
days and years, I would surely become a shadow.

O scales of feeling.

I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up.
I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who
counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and
face of some passerby.

I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much
with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom
among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow the
moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.

Unethical Marketing

[Posted by Chris Hart]

'Stir the water to catch the fish' is the latest buzz in SEO town. Although it's quite unethical yet this method of gaining visitors is quite effective and has already crafted a niche in the marketing world. And there is no harm in twisting the arm of ethics for a good cause. Moreover, this is an already proven strategy and many famous bloggers John Chow have unwittingly used this technique and gotten tremendous result.

When we say stir the water we mean to create a buzz in the blogosphere by doing something unusual. Although this is a golden rule for any corporation in any business, yet it has no doubt has it's effects on the world of blogs. Now the question is how do we stir the water? Well, you must have seen many blogger running contests, that is a part of the stirring water strategy. Make statements that catches the eye, like John Chow said 'Never Put Your All Eggs in Google's basket' which became quite famous in the blogosphere. Write articles that would provoke readers mind, beliefs or thoughts. Run your own polls and contests on your blog or your site. Give away free gifts which sometimes would costs you nothing. For example you can give away free royalty free wallpapers, or maybe codes and scripts which the users can implement on their blogs or websites to add a dash to it. This is free, but it is guaranteed to bring visitors to your site in search of what the latest bling on offer.

Again some of the other things which can help to attract visitors is criticism, deception and controversy. Although this can be a bit tricky so you need to be aware of all the consequences, yet you can Prepare your blog with such ingredients and get visitors i.e. 'catch the fish'. SO start forming new ideas for running your blog, not just for writing a post. Be innovative and you are sure to catch the fish.

Top 10 Secrets of SEO

[Posted by Chris Hart]

In my last post I spoke about how page ranking can affect your online business. Here are some rare tips on how to increase the page rank of your site or blog.

First, directories are still in abundance and are used by numerous people, thus search engines give preference to websites listed in directories. The directories comes in two flavors, free and paid. The free directories usually require link exchange, which is fine but then you should also remember that if you have many links on your web page, search engines can reduce your page ranks or rank on search engine result. So basically too much of anything is not good. Again in case of paid listing make sure that the page rank of the directory is high and it has good traffic.

Secondly, many search engines also provide sponsored links. Therefore you can pay to get listing at the top of the result page. However, you have to pay for every visitor sent to your website. This way you can get traffic very quickly.

Thirdly, you need to submit your articles to different article submission sites like Digg. Write quality articles related to your websites and/or products and then submit those same articles to good article submission websites. You can also have links in the articles thus getting backlinks and traffic at the same time.

Fourth, get as many high ranking links as possible. You can buy backlinks and many websites display links for free also such as classifieds' web page.

Fifth, join forums and online communities which are related to your websites and/or products. Discuss about your products there, you can also provide links to your website. This way you can traffic as well as backlinks.

Sixth, advertise your website in media such as Television ads, newspapers, magazines etc.

Seventh, have proper content. As I had discussed earlier that Content is King.

Eighth, always have a sitemap for your website. This help the visitors to explore the website more freely and conveniently.

Ninth, you must burn feeds for your websites. This way person get informed when there is some new content on your websites.

Tears in Her Eyes

"There is a sacredness in tears.
They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.
They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues.
They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love."
-- Washington Irving

Body-Paint Your Blog

So you have painted a new tattoo or is flaunting a new body-paint for the umpteenth time on your body? It looks cool, does it? Aren't you looking gorgeous! Why not do something similar on your blog or website to make a statement to the whole world? For this you need to use Blogstickers. What, you haven't heard of Blogstickers!

Well, Blogstickers is a free Web 2.0 service that allows you to display 5 random stickers of your choice on as many blogs or website as you want. How do they look like? Well, you can take a quick glance on the top right corner of this blog and you can get the feel of it. To use this service you are required to register on their website which is a very simple thing to do and would hardly take a minute. They would send you a mail on the email id that you would provide them during the registration process. Using that email you need to activate your account. After that you can claim your blog or website using very simply methods. You can do that either by uploading a file, providing your Blogger account user id and password or some other similar method and you are ready to go. You would then need to select the stickers of your choice and add a JavaScript code on your website or blog so that the sticker can be displayed. And you are ready to go! If you see your blog or website now you would see a stickers is displayed diagonally on either top corner of your site. And boy does it look good.

If you want to know more about these services you can subscribe to The Chronicles of R and I would keep you updated on the same. And to visit Blogstickers you need to click here.

The Long Drawn Discussion

“To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little. To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.”
- Helen Rowland

Well, yesterday for the first time R herself commented on our blog. What a joy it was! But the question remains on what women wants? Well, i'll make a few suggestions based on my own experience with women, specially R.

Well, what R said is absolutely correct. Women want the world. But don't take it literally and then go hunting for the world. Hey ma, I'm going out to get the world for your daughter-in-law, should I get something for you on my way back home? Huh! That ain't work with women. You should know what's the world of your women consists of. Who knows, maybe her whole world revolves around you!

The first thing that your woman wants is to be treated like a queen. And why not, after handling and taking care of a big baby like you she deserves it and more. She also wants you to be true to her and to take her on her face value. She would never betray you, if she has to then you wouldn't even know. So why give her a hard time with your dirty suspicious mind.

She might not always tell you her pain. Be sensitive, that helps. She expects you to understand her pain. Don't ever cheat her, that would be the biggest mistake of your life. She would definitely forgive, after all you are her man. But she won't forget.

Most women wants to live their life in a dreamworld. Help your woman's dreams come true. Let her be in her world. You would automatically become a part of it. That's how she is. She wants to gain the control of the relationship, she feels more comfortable that way. Let her introduce you in her life at her own pace, trust me the wait is worth every bit of it.

For the time being this should suffice. And why should I tell you everything about your woman! You are her man, go discover her yourself. And I don't know how far I was right in those above observations of women, but I would definitely like to hear about it from you girls.

What do you have to say women? What do you have to say R?

What Women Want...!

"The great question... Which I have not been able to answer...is...What does a woman want?" - Freud

Does someone knows the answer? Do I see any hands up? No!

How to Make Your Website SEO Friendly

[Posted by Chris Hart]

Today the most important deciding factor in the success of your online business is visibility to search engines. If you have a high ranking on most of the major search engines then almost half your work is done. Although there are millions of websites competing for the ranking positions, the best and only way to achieve it is by opting for the right SEO strategies and use the right Search Engine Optimization tools. I think the following SEO tips would be helpful for you to do the same:

The Sitemap:

The first thing that you should do while creating your website is to add a sitemap of your website. A Sitemap is a page on your website that contains links to all the main pages on your website. It would help in three ways. First, it helps the visitor as a guide or a route chart to your website in finding out the various pages on your website. Second, a sitemap increases the density of internal linking on a website, thereby increasing the SEO friendliness. Third, it helps search engines like Google to crawl your website easily.

Heading Tags:

Do use the primary and secondary keywords related to your site in the h1 and h2 tags respectively. Search engines usually give a lot of value to the keywords in these tags.

Emphasize Keywords:

Use bold and italic tags with the keywords in the content on your pages. This strategy works greatly in improving the visibility of keywords to the search engines. But make sure that you don't overdo it as too many of these tags will nullify their importance.

Meta Tags:

Meta title, meta description, and meta keywords are very important in search engine optimization. Use them wisely and make sure you find the right keywords for your site that have a high search volume and relatively low advertiser competition. I would cover it on a separate article on how to find the right keyword for your website. To know more about it subscribe to The Chronicles of R and I would keep you posted on the same.

Use HTML:

Search engines are very fond of HTML as they don't understand dynamic pages like .asp and .php.

Page Content:

Use a good amount of text on every page. Do NOT make the template intricate with the use of too many images or flash objects. Use few images, and assign the alt tags with keywords whenever you include them.

Download Music from YouTube

So you have found a good piece of music on YouTube, now you want to put it on your phone or MP3 player so that you can burst your ears listening to it endlessly. But it's a video and not in your regular audio format which you can easily transfer to your phone.

Don't worry, there are lots of free services that can help you do this seemingly unachievable feat. You need to click here and then enter the YouTube URL of the song that you want to convert and download to your computer. The URL usually looks something like this:

Example : http://youtube.com/watch?v=M3n-eiSpErk

When you click on the "Ok" button it would ask you to save the file on your computer. Once you save the file you can use it as a normal MP3 music file and enjoy it. This service is free and you do not need to register for it.

Content is King

[Posted by Chris Hart]

One of the best ways to increase the SEO ranking of your website or your blog is to publish fresh and relevant and original text regularly. This actually increase the frequency with which your site would be crawled by the search engine spiders. This greatly improves your page ranking. What happens if you do not update your site regularly? Well, it's very simple. An absence of a regular feed of articles a day keeps the spiders away. If you don't update your site regularly then the spiders would search your site infrequently and as a result the page rank of your site would drop drastically.

But the problem is that most websites do not have regular updates. This includes business websites or websites of companies that rarely have any new contents to add to their site. This causes stagnation. A very simple solution to this is to take the help of RSS feeds. For other websites like blogs, one can always resort to various copywriting strategies providing provision for adding testimonials, newsletters, reviews and comments for your website, adding new blog post or in case you are running out of topic, you can always search for sites where you can hire freelance wirters for a bare minimum amount.

But you should always remember that the content of your site must be of some practical value to the visitor and should contain relevant, useful, interesting and original content that the visitor would like to read and would come back to read something similar once again. Plagiarism is a straight no no. Using duplicate content or promotional materials like advertisements and/or brochured are not considered as content in the ideal context and would not help increase your SEO ranking.

Before publishing any content on your site you should make sure that it is not stolen or copied and pasted from some other website. If it so then your site would be marked as "duplicate content" and thus it might be excluded from indexing by the search engines like Google. There are many ways to avoid this issue, you can change the content and rewrite it and then publish it in your site. You should follow the same rule while writing reviews of products because the same would be written on the manufacturers site. So you can add exclusive comments to avoid plagiarism.

So you can say that one of the best ways to increase the raking of your site is by publishing good, relevent, original and interesting content. You can be sure it would increase the number of your site visitors within a very short period of time.

An Interview with God *ahem*...I mean an Animator

Another ardent fan of The Chronicles of R, a good friend and one of the very few most down to earth people that I have ever met, Madhurima Gupta a.k.a. Madzee with a "!" in the end is an animator in real life, or should I say reel life. I always bored her with my questions, then I thought why not ask her for an interview. Maybe this would also help the future animator to gain an insight into what the industry in reality is like. So here you go -

1. How does it feel to play God?
A: The way Bruce Almighty felt when he tried to do the same.

2. Was the path to success really smooth?
A: It Was about as smooth as a crocodile's skin. The path to pursuing ones passion is always bumpy and potholed.

3. What does it takes to be an animator?
A: Patience,Persistence and Perspicacity.

4. Since how long have you being making characters dance to your tunes?
A: My tunes?
Oh no ...the clients' tunes. And have grown pretty adept at dancing to the clients' tunes myself as well.

5. Is it really lonely at the top?
A: Not applicable.

6. What is the future on animation in and outside India?
A: By the looks of it, I mean the way animation institutes are rolling out regiments of industry-ready animators, the way innumerable studios are cropping up and surviving the rat race too, the way salaries are ever on the rise for highly qualified animators in India, and the number of international and indigenous projects being taken up. I'd say, pretty good!

7. What is the difference between characters animated by you and real life actors?
A: They're more "real" and dependable than real life ones and oh! they don't charge crores for acting a bit part in a movie and do not throw temper tantrums.

8. Which school did you attend to?
A: Lycee -- Pratt Memorial -- Xaviers -- JU-- Pentamedia.

9. How did you become interested in animation at the first place?
A: I've loved cartoons since I was a kid and always dreamed of animating them. When the industry came around and stood on its own feet, I jumped onto the bandwagon.

10. How would you define success?
A: Success is failure turned inside out.

11. What would be the one word which would describe you best?
A: Isn't this supposed to be multiple choice ?

And if you want to be interviewed do contact me and if you want to read more of this interviews then please subscribe to The Chronicles of R.

And Madhu, well no. This is not exactly a MCQ. But we'll end it here anyways. You have already hogged too much of bandwidth and limelight, so I have decided to continue this the next time over a cup of coffee maybe. Thank you very much for your time and patience.

Shakawkaw - Infected Mushroom

Drool baby, drool!

Fairies

[Thanks Debolina]

A married couple in there early sixties were celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary in a quite romantic little restaurant. Suddenly a tiny beautiful fairy appeared on their table. She said "for being such an exemplary married couple and for being loving to each other for all this time, I'll grant u each a wish".

The wife answered, "oh! I want to travel around the world with my darling husband", and the wish was granted.

The husband thought for a moment and said, "well this is all very romantic, but an opportunity like this will never come again. I am sorry my love, but my wish is to have a wife 30 years younger than me". The wife and the fairy were deeply disappointed, but a wish is a wish. So the fairy waved her magic wand and poof, the man's wish was granted.

The husband became 92 years old.

Moral of the story, men who are ungrateful should remember that all the fairies are females.

An Independent India

India have come a long way since the day it had achieved independence and we all know that we had to pay a very high price in order to achieve this independence. We were taught this in our moral science, social studies and history classes when we were in school. But the question is do we as Indians realize the whole truth of this burning sentence? It was not achieved by us, it was not achieved in a day. But do we realize these seldom thought about facts?

Whenever we think of an independent India and our freedom fighters we think of Mahatma Gandhi. The Father of our Nation. But was he the sole person responsible for achieving this great feat? He was not. Neither was it our Chacha Nehru alone who did this then seemingly unachievable task. There were numerous others. Some of them are well known to us like Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, and a lot many others who we don't even know about. What have we done for them? What have we done for those numerous unsung heroes who gave up their lives to make their dreams of an independent India come true, or those brave mothers of those numerous martyrs who sacrificed their children so that we can get a taste of an independent India? All we did was to allow shameless politicians to show their ingenuity on our hard earned money. All we did was to satisfy the egos of certain political honchos by going to the Gandhi Ghat and pray as if to show our sincere reverence when the whole country is burning with famines, communalism, riots which were created by these politicians at the first place.

This makes me think what is the celebration all about, is it just to show once a year how proud we are of our country and then forget everything the next day so that we can carry on with our daily lives? Have we ever thought what have we done for our country? We have not because we haven't really done anything for our country to make it feel proud of us. But if we really want a free India, an independent India, we need a change. Else we would fall back into the chains of slavery once again, but this time it would not be the British. It would be the filthy politics of India which would once again bind us in it's dirty chains of slavery.

Happy Independence Day to all of you. Vande Mataram.

What am I reading now?

Do you remember Tarun Tejpal? The Editor-in-Chief of the revolutionary newspaper Tehelka? Very recently he has published a novel. The name of the book is The Alchemy of Desire. Last week I bought it from The Starmark on Lord Sinha Road. I would not mind saying that it is a nice fiction inspite of the fact that I have not finished even half of it yet. He sets the mood with the powerful starting line which says Love is not the greatest glue between two people. Sex is. How true! Being a person who loves to call himself impulsive, I would still say that emotional bondings attached with physical attraction are much more stronger compared to the platonic love of old Hindi flicks. And I can say that from my personal experience of being a person who have been in and out of love quite a number of times.

The story revolves around an impecunious young couple from a small town in India who are madly in love with eachother, move to the big city. The man works hard on a novel while caring only about his endless desire for his beautiful wife. In time they leave the city and moves to an old house in the Himalayas. While renovating their new home the husband discovers a chest full of diaries maintained by the previous owner of the house. In those diaries he slowly uncovers a dark secret, a forbidden secret.

It a nice buy and is worth every penny And once you start reading it, it's pretty difficult to put it down. It is published by Picador India and the cover price is Rs325. Now while I was at the bookstore I also found another book of interest. It is CSS - The Definitive Guide by Eric A. Meyer. The publisher is O'Reilley. It's a book which would easily make a place on the technology section of your personal library if you are interested in learning the art behind Cascading Style Sheets. Moreover, if you are a serious blogger and is determined to give your blog a new look and feel, I would say that this is a must buy for you. It would start from the basics of what CSS is and how would it help you to change the look and feel of your webpage, then it would slowly move on to advanced topics which includes CSS-2. Although I don't think Eric did justice by putting away only a single chapter on CSS-2, but for beginners to intermediary readers of CSS this is a must buy.

For the time being I am busy reading these two books while at times reading a few short stories of Lovecraft, you can get those from the Gutenberg Project of Australia if you love to read an ebook. Else you can gift yourself a collection of books and novels by the master of horror.

Technology Unplugged

Finally my own Tech blog. Yes, I have started my own Technology blog which would contain all the technical updates that I used to provide over here. It would also contain the posts on SEO by Chris Hart, our guest blogger. You can click on the link below to go the my new blog. I would suggest you to either blogroll it or bookmark it so that you can access the blog with an ease.

Technology Unplugged

David Copperfield

Here is one of the magical genius of David Copperfield that I happened to receive via one of those email whose subject line starts with FWD: but to be very honest with you, this is wonderful. So without much ado, here you go -

You can see 6 different cards.
Think on one.
Just think on it.
Do not touch it
Do not click on it.
I will find the card on your mind.

Now look straight into my eyes

And think on your card...

I do not know you,

I could not see the card you have
Chosen...
...but I know exactly the card
That is on your mind...

Look! Your card is gone!

Surprised!

Well, I sure was when I first saw this. This is eerie.

Did You Last.fm Today?

So you love to listen to Gothic Rock? But can't find any groups to share your passion with? Last.fm comes to the rescue. It's a music related social networking site that has introduced us to the buzzword Scrobbling. Scrobbling is a music recommendation system. Scrobbling a song means that when you listen to it, the name of the song is sent to Last.fm and added to your music profile.

Once you've signed up and downloaded Last.fm, you can scrobble songs you listen to on your computer or iPod automatically. Start scrobbling yourself, and see what artists you really listen to the most. Songs you listen to will also appear on your Last.fm profile page for others to see.

You can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in Last.fm's music library, and would be able to listen to some individual tracks on demand, or download tracks if the rights holder has previously authorised it. Registration is required to acquire a profile but is not necessary to view any part of the site or to listen to radio stations.

Registration is of two types. One is FREE (yes, you heard it right!) and the other one is a measly £1.50 per month. A little bit about the company, Last.fm is a UK-based Internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. It claims over 21 million active users based in more than 200 countries. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for £140m ($280m USD).

Now you would not have any problems sharing your passion of music, with Last.fm you would be able to find anything, anyone, anywhere related to music.

The Death of a Dream

Every dream
Dies
It's own death.
I die
Each and every moment
Of my life.
I was the nightmare of
A sinking ship
Embraced
By the sandman
When I was abandoned
By the
Eyes of my Life.

I was left alone,
Whence
I writhed in pain
Death
Slowly took me in
Her arms
And
Looked at me with
A gleeful joy,
And then I was removed
The burden
Of my life.

And in the end
I
Lay with Death.
I was Death.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

[Posted by Chris Hart]

Search Engine Optimization or SEO as of we know it today is the name given to the collective techniques of improving the visibility of a website or a blog on the search engine listings. It refers to a list of marketing tools required to prepare a website in order to increase its rankings in the context of the result of pages of search engines and directories.

There are two main types of factors in search engine optimization:

1. On page Optimization
2. Off Page Optimization

On Page Optimization:

On Page Optimization is a technique which increases the search engine visibility of a web page using factors that are directly related to the content and structure of the website.

Features of On Page Optimization:

Title Tag: This is an area in a web page where the text is placed that shows the title of the website on the very top of the web browser window. Search engines use title tags to make a link in search results.

Meta tag description: A Meta Tag Description is a part of web page coding that gives the basic description about the website. This should focus on the website because Meta tag description plays a very important role in web page ranking.

Meta Tag Keywords: Meta Tag Keywords play the similar role as meta tag description for highlighting the importance of a website.

Keyword Density: A particular percentage of keywords used on a web page are called keyword density. A keyword must be used in a web page from 2% to 8 % for good page ranking. This technique is the backbone of Search Engine Optimization.

URL Structure: If you want your website to rank well then your URL of website must be related to the context of the website.

Now, you must be asking as yo what are the benefits of On Page Optimization. Well, to answer your question I would say that when creating or updating a commercial website two things should be kept in mind. First, the products should be made more attaractive for the viewers and second, how to gain more exposure with a broader target audience which in turn has its own benefits. This is done in order to enhance their business. On Page Optimization allows a higher page ranking based on a specific keyword or phrases. This process identifies those keywords that will benefit a particular website and uses them in such a way that it gets a higher page ranking when those keywords are searched.

Most searchers only views the websites listed on the first page of their searches because this is where the pages with higher page rankings are displayed, which translates into these pages find the highest relevance to their keyword searches. This makes it even more vital that each website comprehends the significance and the knowledge necessary to adapt their websites to benefit from Search Engine Optimization.

An understanding of Search Engine Optimization provides the website a higher ranking in the world of search engines. By taking advantage of optimization techniques, more searchers will gain faster access to the particular website. If the website has something worthwhile to offer then this strategy that should be implemented immediately.

Off Page Optimization:

Off page optimization too plays a major role in getting a higher rankings in most of the well known search engines. Off page optimization essentially refers to one very important factor and that is which other websites are linking to your website. Off page Optimization handle number of things off page to improve your search engine ranking and drive targeted visitor traffic to your website. Off page optimization is the continuous process in web site promotion. It's like making online marketing of your web site. In off page optimization you don't require to change anything in web site design or layout.

Some Important parts in Off Page Optimization:

Link Building: Link building is probably the most important part of off-page optimization.The primary means through which off page optimization is accomplished is through a link building effort.

Directory Submissions: The most important, the most obvious and usually the only one people choose to submit their website to a directory is search engine ranking.

Article: Article can be used to catapult your website into a top 10 listing on the first page of the natural rankings in the search engines.

Press Release: Press release in simple word means an announcement about specific happenings of a company and about the launch of a new product.

I hope you got a fair idea about what SEO is and how can it affect you and your blog or website. Would be publishing my next post soon, till then God bless you all.

Chris Hart : Our New Guest Blogger

I have asked a guest bloggers to join me on this blog. He will no doubt enrich it by bringing in his own perspectives and experiences from a different horizon.

Chris is a currently working as a Manager in Branding with an internet company in the South California region. Before this he was a working with a company known for their website promotional expertise. Chris is regarded as a leading expert in implementing SEO or search engine optimization.

Another ardent follower or should I say a constant reader of The Chronicles of R, he has promised to write about how to promote your blogs or websites and reach out to a larger audience. I hope even I would be able to learn something from him which would help me take The Chronicles of R to new heights. I also hope you too would be able to benefit from this too.

To find his posts on SEO or search engine optimization you need to select SEO from the list of labels.

Thank you all for making The Chronicles of R a success :)

I Want To Wake Up With You Beside Me!

If I could have just one wish,
I would wish to wake up everyday
To the sound of your breath on my neck,
The warmth of your lips on my cheek,
The touch of your fingers on my skin,
And the feel of your heart beating with mine...
Knowing that I would never find that feeling
With anyone other than you.

Don't Promise What You Can't Deliver

A new vacuum cleaner salesman knocked on the door on the first house of the street. A tall lady answered the door.

Before she could speak, the enthusiastic salesman barged into the living room and opened a big black plastic bag and poured all the cow droppings onto the carpet.

"Madam, if I could not clean this up with the use of this new powerful Vacuum cleaner, I will EAT all this dung!" exclaimed the eager salesman.

"Do you need chilly sauce or ketchup with that" asked the lady.

The bewildered salesman asked, "Why, madam?"

"There's no electricity in the house..." said the lady.

Betrayal

There I was, lying
With my arms and legs
Sprawled
All over the asphalt sidewalk.

I looked upon the sky,
My eyes wide open
As if
With sheer amazement.

I was numb, as
People
Passing by looked at me
With curiosity,
Cause I was not dead,
Not yet.

I was simply amazed, cause
I was
Betrayed!

Here comes the Snowl

How many times you had to surf through applications and sites to juggle between your email client, your microblogging sites and your favorite blogs to remain updated about all of them at once? A lot? Well then I do have a good news for you! Leading web browser company Mozilla have come up with an extension for its numero uno browser Firefox which would not only allow you to read RSS feeds from inside the browser but it would also help you to view feeds from other messaging services like Twitter without having the leave the cozy enviorenment of your browser. It is named Snowl, a short form for Snow and Owl. Well, you can figure that out from the logo itself.

Although right at this point of time it's still in a beta stage and it was announced on 6th August,2008. So for the time being there are a few limitations. Right at this point of time Snowl only supports two sources of messages: RSS?Atom feeds and Twitter feeds. Possible extension for Snowl would include additional message sources like Facebook, AIM, Google Talk, an interface for writing and sending messages to enable true two-way conversations and an API to make it easier for developers to build new experimental interfaces, e.g. an instant message view.

You too can get Snowl for Firefox from here. Try it and help Mozilla to build a better Snowl by submitting your reviews and/or any bugs that you may have found while using it by reporting the same on their site here.

An Interview with a Doctor

An ardent follower of The Chronicles of R, Anmol Kathuria is a doctor by profession. Moreover she happens to be a very close friend of mine. I had always wondered how does it feel to be a doctor, so I thought who would be a better person than to ask Dr Anmol! Here is how our conversation went:

1. How did you get interested in becoming a doctor?
A: From my early childhood this profeesion had always fascinated me. The aura, the respect that a doctor commands in both personal and profeisonal life made me see them with awe.

2. What hardships did you have to overcome during your pursuit of your career?
A: A great sense of responsibility and seriousness from the early days of med school which soon got translated into a passion to know more and learning as much as one can as the smallest failure may result in catastrophe and loss of faith.

3. Do you have any regrets about being a doctor (if so which and why)?
A: No regrets as such, but the amount of suffering a doctor has to deal with so closely and with hope and faith you are looked upon, one always wishes to do more.

4. What schools did you attend?
A: I believe formal education is not the end all and know all for a doctor. It is a continous process and I am still learning.

5. What is the greatest feat of being a doctor?
A: Seeing a person on the mend. That is the reason for which I came into this profession.

6. How did if feel when you received your doctoral degree?
A: There was a great sense of achievement, self pride with equal amount of responsibility and an intense urge to go out and do it.

7. How long have you been in practice?
A: I have been practicing for almost a decade now.

8. What do you like to do for past time when you're not in the hospital?
A: Well, I am an avid reader. My personal life is sorrounded by my books, my pet and I also spend some time on the net which is quite evident from this interview.

9. Did you have another career goal before your pursuit of being a doctor? If yes then why did you change?
A: N/A.

10.What are the 2 things each that you love and hate about your profession?
A: Love — Knowing how to treat and heal a patient is an immense satisfaction in itself, secondly I love the sense of self worth. Hate – Preset rigid and over defined career growth opportunities and contrary to popular belief this is the most thanksless professsion.

11.What legacy do you want to leave behind?
A: Healer with a smile. What more would I even want.

12.What do you do in order to mentally separate yourself from your job?
A: I have learnt to live with it.

Thanks Anmol for taking time out from your busy schedule to answer these questions. By the way, for the past few weeks even Anmol was quite curious to know about R. I hope my previous posts were able to satiate all of your curiosity about R.

From now on I would feature interviews from my constant readers and ardent fan followers of The Chronicles of R. If you too want to participate in this then forward me your name along with your profession and your opinion about The Chronicles of R on my email or through the feedback form. I would try to get back to you as soon as possible. Till then, take care and keep smiling :)

Sprout Builder

Sprout Builder is a site that generates Flash based contents that can be posted on any blog and most of the Social Networking sites. These are in the form of widgets, mini-sites, banners, mashups and several other forms of rich media contents.
Now the question is why use Sprout Builder? While using Sprout Builder, not only you do not need to any knowledge of Flash or any other coding experience, rather you would be provided with pre-built templates and dozens of components like progress bar and countdown timers etc. to make your widget creating process more easy and fun. You can easily create your sprout and then showcase it or use it to promote your blog, site or yourself!

While creating your sprout you would require to create an account with Sprout Builder, there are 2 choices. Either you can choose the FREE Standard account or you can register yourself under the Pro account which although is FREE at this point of time of writing this article, yet Sprout Builder can charge you for it in future. The difference between the Standard and Pro account is that while the sprout is being displayed, in case of a Standard account a "share sprout" bar would appear at the bottom of your sprout.

I have created my own sprout in just the span of a few mins. It's very simple and flexible. So go ahead, cerate your own sprout and brag about it to your friends!

Get Rid of Passwords : Use OpenID

Imagine getting to use the same id and passwords for all the internet sites that you use without having to worry about security, wouldn't it be a lot more convenient? yes, that day is fast approaching when all you would need to do is type in a special id and password and voila! You are logged in irrespective of the site you are using. And the name of this seemingly magical innovation is OpenID.

What is an OpenID? OpenID is a shared identity service, which allows users on the internet highway to log on to many different web sites using a single digital identity, eliminating the need for a different user name and password for each site. OpenID is a decentralized, free and open standard that lets users control the amount of personal information they provide.

The OpenID is in the form of a URL like http://your-name.identity-provider.com. This URL can be the domain name of your own website, or the URL of an OpenID Identity Provider. To validate your identity when you need to login to a site you would require to log in to the Identity Service Provider.

Using OpenID-enabled sites, web users do not need to remember traditional items of identity such as username and password. Instead, they only need to be registered with any OpenID "identity provider" (IdP). Since OpenID is decentralized, any website can use OpenID as a way for users to sign in; OpenID does not require a centralized authority to confirm a user's digital identity.

The original OpenID authentication protocol was developed in May 2005 by Brad Fitzpatrick, creator of popular community website LiveJournal, while working at Six Apart. OpenID support was soon implemented on LiveJournal and fellow LiveJournal engine community DeadJournal for blog post comments, and quickly gained attention in the digital identity community. Web developer JanRain was an early supporter of OpenID, providing OpenID software libraries and expanding its business around OpenID-based services.

As Brad Fitzpatrick said, “Nobody should own this. Nobody’s planning on making any money from this. The goal is to release every part of this under the most liberal licenses possible, so there’s no money or licensing or registering required to play. It benefits the community as a whole if something like this exists, and we’re all a part of the community.”

This statement continues to resonate today within the OpenID community.

The OpenID Foundation continues to grow its corporate membership base. While Google, IBM, Microsoft, Verisign, and Yahoo! all joined as corporate board members in early 2008, the first large media site, BBC joined the foundation in late April. Notable sites are realizing the benefits of accepting OpenID. Sourceforge, the world's largest open source development site, recently started accepting OpenIDs. As stated in their announcement, "OpenID is getting tremendous traction and we are happy to be jumping into it. It's bringing us back in touch with fresh web (2.0) technology".

Now the question is how to get your own OpenID? Surprise! You may already have one. If you use any of the following services, you already have your own OpenID:

AOL
openid.aol.com/screenname

Blogger
blogname.blogspot.com

Flickr
www.flickr.com/photos/username

LiveDoor
profile.livedoor.com/username

LiveJournal
username.livejournal.com

Orange (France Telecom)
http://openid.orange.fr/

SmugMug
username.smugmug.com

Technorati
technorati.com/people/technorati/username

Vox
member.vox.com

Yahoo
http://openid.yahoo.com

WordPress.com
username.wordpress.com

But still if you want to start afresh, there are numerous realiable sites available which provides your with your own OpenID. Some of the well-known sites are listed below:

ClaimID
http://claimid.com/

MyOpenID
https://www.myopenid.com/

VeriSign
https://pip.verisignlabs.com/

You can read more about these kind of technological reviews and updates by subscribing to The Chronicles of R. So what are you waiting for? Grab your own OpenID and get rid of passwords from your life once and for all :)

New Feature from Google - Gmail Web Clip

Do you remember the Web Clips that you view on top of your emails while using your Gmail account? These Web Clips show you everything from news to blog posts to RSS/Atom feeds to sponsored links. This is place on the top of your inbox. The clips displays some other useful informations like the source of the feed, when was the feed published and a link to the article. You can even scroll through the clips by clicking on the (>) sign to see the next clip or by clicking on (<) to see your previously viewed clips. You can even customize these clips to view topics of your choice.

To customize Web Clips for Gmail:

1. Sign in to Gmail.
2. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page, and open the Web Clips tab.
3. Browse popular clips by selecting a topic link along the left. Search for feeds
by entering topics that interest you -- use this feature like you would Google
Search.
4. Click Add next to the clips you'd like to see in Gmail.

To remove a clip, visit the Web Clips tab under Settings and click remove next to the clip. To disable clips entirely, uncheck the box next to Show my web clips above the Inbox.

Now the best part is that you can customize the Web Clips to display content from your blog. Yes, from your own blog! Can you believe it? Here's how you do it.

1. Sign in to Gmail.
2. Click Settings at the top of any Gmail page.


3. Settings Open the Web Clips tab.
4. Enter the feed URL you'd like to view in the field under Search by topic or
URL.
5. Click Search.
6. Once Gmail locates the feed, click Add so you can view it in Web Clips!

Isn't that great. Imagine seeing your feed while surfing through your email and the moment you see something that catches your eyes, you can take it out and send it to the person you think would be interested in that clip. I have already added my RSS feed in my Web Clips, have you?

To know more about similar topics and get the latest news and reviews subscribe to The Chronicles of R.

Note: Clips of your favorite RSS and Atom feeds are displayed randomly, and aren't targeted to the contents of your mail.

Kafkaesque

The word Kafkaesque is an auctorial descriptive. It means that Kafkaesque is an adjective based on author's name, other examples of auctorial descriptives are Draconian, Lovecraftian, Cartesian, Borgesian, Dickensian et al. The word Kafkaesque is used to describe the surreal concept, ideas or situations which evokes a similarity with the works of the Prague writer Franz Kafka, especially with his novels The Trial and The Metamorphosis.

These novels mostly concerns troubled individuals in a nightmarishly surreal and bureaucratic world. Most of his short stories were unfinished works which were released posthumously. He used long sentences which was a typical German influence and those could take up the entire page.

Coming back to where we started from, The New Yorker describes the word Kafkaesque "marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger: Kafkaesque fantasies of the impassive interrogation, the false trial, the confiscated passport... haunt his innocence". Whereas Dictionary.com refers to the same as "marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity: Kafkaesque bureaucracies". In The New Yorker, John Updikes says "Self-loathing and self-distrust lurk in his work with somatic unease; he is the forbear of modern man's sense of dread".

So we can say that the word Kafkaesque is a synonym for magic realism, where the protagonist experiences bizarre situations under the influence of a modern day world. For example in his work The Metamorphosis, Kafka depicts Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman who wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant monstrous vermin.

Now the reason I started writing about the word Kafkaesque is that I was reading The Metamorphosis in the past few days and was attracted by the portrayal of the Kafkaesque world. There is a hell and heaven difference between a Kafkaesque and a Lovecraftian world. Although to me the Lovecraftian world seems more real, yet I must say that Kafka's views were very powerful and sometimes disturbing. For the benefit of my readers I have made a copy of The Metamorphosis available which you can download here. You can read it for free, but before redistributing it I would request you to go through the Copyright pages.

You Complete Me

I want to hold
Your face
Within the palm of my hands,
I want to feel your face
On mine.
I want to feel your touch,
Your hands on mine,
Clinging on until the end
For love.
And a little warmth of
Your lips.
My fingers entangled
In your hair, feeling the
Softness, caressing.
I want to take
You breath inside my heart
So you run
Through my veins, so that
You become me,
And my life becomes you.
Cause you complement me, you
Make me feel complete.

An Evening to Remember

Yesterday for the first time I recited my poem in open public, thanks to Srijan. Let me first give a little background about Srijan. Srijan - which means 'creativity' in hindi - is a poetry organisation founded by Basant Rungta and some of his like-minded friends. Srijan began it's journey with a vocal recital by Pandit Ulhas Kashalkar on October 31, 2000, on the terrace of a building at Lansdowne Road. According to Basant Jee, which is how we Srijanites like to address him as, is "for artists, of artists and by artists" where small groups of artists, without any bias for any art form or expression, could meet to communicate and for companionship and inspiration.

I was invited to Srijan by Inam Hussain Mullick, who is a renowned poet and a very good friend of mine. I joined Srijan on 25th February, 2008 on the occasion of their numerous meets at their new address at "Rooftop". It was an wonderful evening. One of the most beautiful thing about Srijan is that everybody is welcome there irrespective of the fact whether they are new in the field of literature or they are veterans like Joy Goswami or Srijato Da. In that way I must say that Basant Jee's dream had come true of creating an unbiased organisation.

On 3rd of August, 2008, that is yesterday, Srijan had organised an evening called "An open House for Poets" where all Srijanites were invited to read out a selection from their poetry. It was anchored by Rimi B. Chatterjee and Srijato Da. Their were numerous Srijanites present many of whom had come a long way just to participate last evening. Many of whom were present not to read out their poem but just to listen to others read out their thoughts. I went their along with a friend of mine who also happens to be an Alumni of JUDE. I read out my poem The Child of The Moon and paid my respect to R by dedicating my poem to her which she truely deserves. It was a mesmerizing experience in itself, reading out my poem front of eminent personalities like Basant Jee, Rimi Di, Srijato and countless others.

It was a very wonderful evening which we all enjoyed thoroughly, thanks to Srijan and Basant Jee, Rimi Di, Srijato Da and everyone present there.

[Picture courtesy Mr. Basant Rungta : Financial Express]

Sing Along :-)

I always wanted to make a list of my favorite songs. The songs that I like to sing and no, not in the bathroom. These are songs that I would like to sing with a loud voice without caring much of what others mind think. These are the songs that I listen to almost everyday. I love to listen to them when I am going on a long drive, while feeling the wind on my face, when I feel like fly away with the winds of my dreams. These are the songs in which I try to find peace, trust, love, happiness, solace. These are the songs in which I try to find myeslf. So ladies and gentlemen, without much ado let me present to you a list of my favorite songs.

1. The Sound of Silence (performer: Simon and Garfunkel),
2. Tinka Tinka (movie: Karam, performer: Alisha Chenoy),
3. Zara Sa (movie: Jannat),
4. The Eye of the Tiger (movie: Rocky, performer: The Survivor),
5. Someday Out of the Blue (movie: Road to El Dorado, performer: Sir Elton John),
6. Every Breath You Take (performer: Police),
7. Unbreak my Heart (perfomer: Toni Braxton),
8. Truely, Madly, Deeply (performer: Savage Garden),
9. Have you really loved a Woman (performer: Bryan Adams),
10. It must have been Love (performer: Cher),
11. The Wall (performer: Pink Floyd),
12. Pour Some Sugar on Me (performer: Def Leppards),
13. Iron Man (performer: Black Sabbath),
14. November Rain (performer: GnR),
15. The Man who sold the World (performer: Nirvana),
16. It Smells like Teen Spirit (performer: Nirvana),
17. Susanna (performer: The Art Company),
18. Living Next Door to Alice (performer: Smokie),
19. Sun is Shining (performer: Bob Marley),
20. Girl (performer: Beatles),
21. Streets of Philadelphia (movie: Philadelphia, performer: Bruce Springsteen),
22. Iris (movie: City of Angels, performer: Goo Goo Dolls),
23. Send me an Angel (performer: Scorpions),
24. Dragula (movie: The Matrix, performer: Rob Zombie),
25. Love Bites (performer: Def Leppards),
26. Kiss from a Rose (movie: Batman, performer: Seal),
27. If Tomorrow Never Comes (performer: Ronan Keating),
28. Hotel California (performer: The Eagles),
29. Tequila Sunrise (performer: The Eagles),
30. Hello (performer: Lionel Richie),
31. Hazard (performer: Richard Max),
32. Words (performer: the Boyzone version although the Bee Gees version was equaliy good),
33. Love me Tonight (performer: Don Williams),
34. Cocaine (performer: Eric Clapton),
35. Careless Whisper (performer: Wham),
36. Another Day in Paradise (performer: Phil Collins),
37. Aye Zindagi Gale Lagale (movie: Sadma, performer: Suresh Wadkar),
38. Bheegi Bheegi (movie: Gangstar, performer: James),
39. The Sunscreen Song (performer: Baz Luhrmann)

More next time because the list is virtually endless. Till that time listen to this and enjoy!