@atomicpoet's Guide To Twitter Nirvana

For once, I'll shut my mouth and let someone else speak about the secrets of successful Twittering. Here is a collection of thoughts of @atomicpoet which I compiled from his Twitter stream. It's about what you can expect from Twitter and what Twitter expects from you.

First, what matters most is quality of followers, not quantity. This is true for any other site, and it is applicable to Twitter.

What you got to do is find content that excites these "quality" followers. Make THESE people happy.

Out of the thousands of followers you have on Twitter, the quality followers will actually only number maybe a few hundred -- at the most.

Now, what are "quality" followers? They retweet, they share news, they interact with you on a regular basis. Impress THESE people.

Before you do anything else, find quality content. Here's the golden rule: if it impacts YOU, it will probably impact someone else.

Once you find quality content, schedule it. This creates presence on twitter, creates anticipation, and spreads it to more people.

The shorter the tweet, the better. Short tweets encourage retweets.

Now, if someone responds to your links, even if it is just a "LOL", respond back. Create conversation. Engage with the "quality" followers.

Do NOT thank people for retweets. It's a waste of time and clouds the feed. If you want to thank them, retweet them in kind.

If you retweet, make it be something you yourself would tweet. Your followers always want good quality content.

iFrames, whether it is a Digg or ow.ly iframe, encourages these "quality" followers to spread the media.

Remember, you are not looking to impress the "casual" follower. You are looking to impress the quality follower.

What you need is a mechanism to make it easier for quality followers to share media. The ow.ly bar and DiggBar does those things.

Once they are at the site, these people use the bar to retweet, submit to Digg, Reddit, SU, or send an email. It works for them.

Now, as with many awesome inventions, what may be good for one person is loathed by another. Content creators HATE iframes...

BTW, what kind of game is social media? It's kind of like Secret Santa. You are looking for partners in win-win.

Content creator, meet social media guy. You both love quality content. Let's work together!

One final note. Twitter is NOT social media. Nor is social media anything new.

Twitter is one interesting component of social media, but it is a tiny fraction of what it is.

You would find @atomicpoet blogging at atomicpoet, and while I was on his blog, the post How I Find Amazing Content didn't fail to catch my attention. Here, he describes how to find quality content. He is also a must follow on Twitter.

If you liked this post, then tweet this for the benefit of your "quality" followers. And if you are a first time visitor, subscribe to my RSS feed.

Polaris : Desktop Reporting For Google Analytics

Needless to say that Google Analytics is one of the most powerful web analytics that ever was. But let's admit it, more often than not it becomes quite a tedious task everytime to login to your Google Analytics account and browse through all the data just for a little piece of data. Desktop brings Google Analytics on the desktop with it's new product Polaris.

Polaris is an Adobe Air application for Google Analytics. With 8 standard reports and swift navigation, Polaris is the must-have application for every stat-lover. Features include drag and drop date widget, explore traffic on the Google Maps report, top content report, viewing AdWords ROI metrics et al, all of these while removing the load time of the Google Analytics website. It increases the usability and a richer experience. Polaris is free for a single website/profile integration. For multiple websites/profiles, Polaris comes with a $15/year price tag. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Support is available through a dedicated email Customer Service.

You can download Polaris from here. The download for both the free and the full edition is the same. During the setup you will be able to select which version you need, and you can always upgrade later. It has both Express Install (which installs both the Adobe Air files and the application) and Manual Install.

Do try out Polaris if you want to bring the power of Google Analytics to your desktop, and provide the developers with your valuable feedback. And if you are a first time visitor on The Chronicles of R, then subscribe to my RSS feed.

How To Become A Power StumbleUpon User

On April 13th, after almost 2 years being a subsidiary of eBay, StumbleUpon became an independent company once again. Prior to that, during the month of February, it had crossed the 7 million users mark. But inspite of these achievements, StumbleUpon does not get the publicity that it deserves.

Why should we be bothered about StumbleUpon?

Because it drives traffic, and in huge amount at that. And although the StumbleUpon traffic is notorious for having an itchy finger, yet one cannot deny it's potential for sending huge traffic which can range from 10 visitors per day to 10,000 visitors per day! But not just everyone can get registered on StumbleUpon and start driving traffic to their website. For that one has to become a Power StumbleUpon User or what we call a Power Stumbler.

So who are these bozos?

Just like we have Power Diggers and Power Reddit users, we also have Power Stumblers. They are not what StumbleUpon calls a Top Stumbler. A Top Stumbler may or may not be Stumbling to drive traffic, and there is no guarantee that a Top Stumbler would be able to drive traffic. StumbleUpon defines a Top Stumbler as a person who is the most active and helpful community member. Unfortunately, they may be active, but more often than not they are not helpful. On the contrary, a Power Stumbler, who may or may not be a Top Stumbler, has the ability to drive immense traffic to any website they want. And more often than not, these Power Stumblers are helpful.

So how to become a Power Stumbler?

Well, becoming a Power Stumbler is pretty simple but, yes ladies and gentlemen there's always a but, it's time consuming.

First of all, create a StumbleUpon profile if you haven't already. Then Stumble 10 really interesting articles per day within your niche, give them a Thumbs Up and write a review for them. Then find out who Stumbled those articles, you would be able to get that from the StumbleUpon toolbar itself and also from the review page. Stumble their profile and write a review for them. Then discover some really interesting articles (not from your site, not yet) and add them to the StumbleUpon network.

Do these for a 5-7 days, then start sending 10 friendship requests a day to other Power Stumblers. They might accept your request, if they don't cancel those pending requests after 2 days. StumbleUpon is a social networking site, so you must socialize in order to succeed. Continue this for another week or so. Remember to give a Thumbs Up and a review (if possible) to all the articles that your StumbleUpon friends share with you. Try to engage in a conversation with them, try getting some tips from them.

Continue this till you have about 900 Stumbles and 300 reviews. After that discover one of your articles, write a good review and share it with your friends on StumbleUpon. Don't ask them to give it a Thumbs Up, write something like "I hope you like this as much as I did" and enjoy the flow of visitors.

Here is a list of some of the Power Stumblers who has helped me a lot. You can befriend them if you want to.

DocNicole
TJClassic82SU
JohnHaydon
DeFrosting
MrMunchies
SuperFreak69

If you like this article, then please give this a Thumbs Up. If you want you can also add me on your StumbleUpon network. Also, if you area first time visitor, subscribe to my RSS feed.

Backup Firefox Passwords (Manually)

Every once in a while there arise a need to re-format out computers. One of the main reasons being that, over time our system becomes slow due to code rot. And during these situations, our main concern remains data backup.

Now data backup is still rather easy, you can simply burn all your data on a CD or a DVD with the help of a CD/DVD Writer and a Burning Software. But what about backing up the username and password of all the sites that you have setup on Firefox? If you are worried about this then I have got good news for you. Taking a backup of these is just the matter of a few minutes.

All you need to do is, go over to your Firefox profiles folder on your computer. You would be able to locate your Firefox profile folder from here. Inside your Firefox profile folder there would be another folder with a random name. Inside that folder select the files key3.db, signons2.txt and signons3.txt and take a backup of those files (preferably on a CD/DVD). The next time you install Firefox after formatting your computer, simply go over to your Firefox profile folder once again and paste those 3 files. Wasn't it simple? If you want, you can also transfer them to your laptop or any other computer where you want to have all the username/password data for your Firefox profile to be available.

Now if you are worried about how to take a backup of your bookmarks or export them to another browser, since Firefox 3 saves it's bookmarks as a JSON file by default, then here's how you can do that. And if you are a first time visitor, then subscribe to my RSS feed.

How To Locate The Firefox Profile Folder

Being able to locate your Firefox profile folder can be a bit tricky, yet it's very useful to know it's whereabouts. Here are the locations of your Firefox profile folder on different OS.

Windows 95 (without Desktop Update)
C:/Windows/Mozilla

Windows 95 (with Desktop Update)/98/Me
C:/Windows/Application Data/Mozilla

C:/Windows/Profiles/<Windows login/user name>/Application Data/Mozilla

Windows NT 4.x
C:/Winnt/Profiles/<Windows login/user name>/Application Data/Mozilla

Windows 2000 and XP
C:/Documents and Settings/<Windows login/user name>/Application Data/Mozilla/Firefox/Profiles

Windows Vista
C:/Users/<Windows login/user name>/AppData/Roaming/Mozilla

Unix
~/.mozilla/

Mac OS X
~/Library/Mozilla/

~/Library/Application Support/

You can also consult this Mozilla Knowledgebase article for further details.

7 LinkedIN Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

Creating a powerful LinkedIN profile is an art. And inspite of the fact that LinkedIN is one of the simplest services that I have ever used, I have found lots of people making a few common mistakes. These mistakes often ruin their chances of building up a strong relationship with their prospective employers on LinkedIN.

Here are 7 common LinkedIN mistakes that people often make. I have also provided some suggestions on how to avoid these mistakes.

1. Sending an invitation without a personal note attached - When you are sending an invitation, make sure you edit the body of your invitation to prompt a recollection. This can be done when you go to the 'invite page.' At the bottom, you have the option to add a 'personal note' which may be edited to reflect your personalized message. This would reduce the chances of your invitation getting rejected.

2. Sending direct connection requests to unknown people - Click on the 'Get introduced through a connection' link if this person is connected to someone already in your network. This would again reduce the chances of your invitation getting rejected. Remember, if your invitations keep on getting rejected because of your connections stating that they don’t know you, your account would be restricted. And then, the next time you would like to invite someone, you would be required to enter their email address.

3. Not adding a photo to your LinkedIN profile – Not only adding a photo increases the percentage of completion of your profile, but it also adds credibility to it. Remember, LinkedIN is a professional network, so avoid using photos from LOLCats and the likes on your profile.

4. If you think that someone might not accept your invitation, then in order to avoid account restriction, withdraw that pending invitation. Click here to know how to withdraw pending invitation on LinkedIN.

5. Keep your profile updated – Many people I know do not have an updated profile. It’s hara-kiri. It ruins the main purpose of joining LinkedIN at the first place. Right after you have left a job, or joined a new one, make sure you have updated your profile.

6. Not having a custom profile URL – Create a custom URL for your LinkedIN profile. Try using your name or something similar that would help people recognize you. It would also be easier to remember. Also make sure to add this URL on your email signature or any other place, it increases your visibility and reach.

7. Not adding a link to your blog/site – This is the best place to display what you do. And your blog/site is your best portfolio. So be sure to add a link to your blog/site so that people would notice it.

These are only a few of the best practices on LinkedIN, if you think you know some more, please add them in the comments. And if you are a first time visitor here, subscribe to my RSS feed.

Quality Control In Airtel Customer Service Is Dead

A few days back I had to call up the Airtel customer service to get the GPRS settings for my phone. And that unfortunate call made me realize that the quality control for Airtel customer service is either sleeping or has been dead for years.

The Customer Service reps were not only rude, they were outright arrogant! During the course of the call when I pointed out a simple fault on their part, instead of apologizing one of the reps started to shout at me over the phone. When I asked for his supervisor, he refused and when I insisted he simply disconnected the call. I called back and got through another rep, only to be told that his supervisor is busy on another call and would not be able to receive calls till next morning! Quite a long call he must be on, huh! Then when I asked for the name of his supervisor, the rep told me that they are not allowed to divulge the name of their supervisors, which made me wonder whether I have called the Airtel customer service or the Pentagon!

Later thought when I threatened of complaining the supervisor did call me, of course with a fake US accent. He gave me a canned response that "this was an isolated incident" and that "it would be taken care off". When I said that I was not satisfied they way he was treating the problem and would like to speak to his supervisor, he said that he does not have a supervisor! So the supervisors of the customer service reps reports directly to the Board of Director!

Later when I emailed my complaint to the Nodal Officer, he too replied with a canned response that "this is an isolated incident" and "it would be taken care off". And in his reply, the Nodal Office signed off as "Nodal Officer", I guess even he is not allowed to divulge his name, even though I knew his name and had addressed him with the same on my first mail.

Now let me tell you a bitter truth, this is not an isolated incident. It cannot be, 3 reps including 1 supervisor has the audacity to say over a live recorded call that they are not allowed to give out the names of their supervisors cannot be an isolated incident. And I am sure, if you call up the Airtel customer service tomorrow you would be treated the same way. Because they don't have a Quality Control, and they know that even if they screw up on a call it would not cost their job. I would not be surprised if they ask you to go to the Deuce. And the fact is that neither the Customer Service nor the Nodal Office is bothered about their customers. They all pretend to be doing their work, when half the time they don't even know what they are supposed to do.

If you have a similar story to share, feel free to add it in the comments. You can also comment on my Facebook profile, if you happen to be on Facebook, where I would be sharing this link.

For the uninitiated, Airtel comes to you from Bharti Airtel Limited, India’s largest integrated and the first private telecom services provider. So much in the name of Customer Service from a telecom giant. And sorry about using too many exclamatory signs on this post, but I simply couldn't help being exclaimed.

5 Steps To Twitter Branding

The past one year has seen a tremendous growth of Twitter. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month.

And so, brand owners have started to crowd Twitter to promote their brands. If you are planning to do the same, here are five things that are a must for the success of your brand on Twitter.

First of all, think about a decent Twitter handle. If possible, use your brand name for your username. If you are an individual brand, then use your name for your Twitter handle. No one is going to follow you if your Twitter name is hdsghdjkfd.

Second, before starting off with your collecting followers marathon, add a few tweets to your profile. Nothing can be more put off than viewing a profile with no tweets.

Third, create a bio which should reflect what you do. If possible, add a link to your site or blog. But try and make it a little bit catchy. You can check my profile bio on Twitter here.

Fourth, add a picture on your Twitter profile. And do not post a picture of a celebrity, unless of course you are the one. You can also put the logo of your brand.

Fifth, create a good Twitter background image. There are lots of services available today for creating a professional Twitter background. It should contain details about your brand, your other contact details and possibly a good photo.

Remember, this is just the beginning. But the first impression is often the last.

Change : The Only Constant In Our Lives

The only thing that's constant in our lives is change, it's continuum ad infinitum. And those who can adapt to change are the people who succeed. If you cannot change, if you cannot adapt yourself to change, you would be left alone. And like Confucius said, "They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom".

There are some big changes coming up on The Chronicles of R. These changes were inevitable and I was well prepared for them. The Chronicles of R was a personal blog, I usually posted my works as a poet, few things about my love for R and occasionally, a few technical articles. But today, with daily visits of 2000+ visitors on an average, The Chronicles of R must take a more professional shape, and it should remain that way.

The Chronicles of R would continue to mold into the shape of a tech blog, it would represent my views about the latest trends in the technology, social media and marketing arena, and how these can help in building relationships and delivering values. I would also be guest posting for BlogCritics and TechnologyProfessionals, and continue to write blurbs for Technorati whenever I get a chance.

So would I not be posting about R anymore? Of course I would. Without R there is not me! But R would have a new home, something only for her. You would not miss out on anything. So where would be R's new home? You can find the Dreams of R here. This would contain all my future poems, books and movie reviews et al. And it would be the dream house for R and me. Whatever was posted till now about R on The Chornicles of R would remain here, you can head over to the archives to go through them as I would be removing the tags from the main page.

Your suggestions are most welcome. Do let me know what more you want to see on The Chronicles of R and at Dreams of R. And a special thanks to Kelley for suggesting this wonderful name, Dreams of R. It's as beautiful as her imagination.

How To Hide Files Inside A JPEG Image

Hiding a file inside an image file does not need any special steganography tools. All you would need is a simple Zip utility like WinRAR or 7-Zip which almost all of us have installed in our computers. But still, just in case you don't have one installed in your computer, you can download the latest copy of WinRAR from here.

Next, create a folder in the C: drive, name it anything you want. In our example we have named the folder Test. So the path of the folder would be c:\Test. Now copy all the files that you want to hide including the image file in which you want to hide these files inside the Test folder. After that, select all the files that you want to hide inside the image, right click on any one of them and, since in our case we are using WinRAR, select Add to Archive from the right click menu. Next, choose the option to save these files into a .rar archive, give it any name (hidden.rar in our case) and save it inside the Test folder.

Now you have 3 things inside the Test folder, the files that you want to hide, a RAR archive of those files and an image file (let's say it's name is image.jpg) inside which you want to hide those files. Fire up the command prompt by clicking on Start > Run and typing CMD and then hitting enter. Inside the Command Prompt box type cd c:\Test to go to the Test folder. Then type copy /b image.JPG + hidden.rar image.jpg and press enter and voila, your image files contains the hidden.rar file hidden inside it. Now you can put it up on a public server like Tinypics or anywhere else for everyone to access. But only a selected few, who you want to would be able to retrieve those hidden files from this image file. And how would they do that?

Well, to retrieve those hidden files from this image file one can either simply change the extension of this image file to .rar and open it using a zip utility, or simply right click on the image file and select Open With and select it to open with WinRAR or any other zip utility.

Note : This process works only with .rar extensions and not .zip or any other extension. So you would not be able to do this through WinZip as it does not support archiving into RAR format. And you can hide files of any format inside the image file.

How To Know Whether Someone Blocked You On GTalk

Many a times you must have noticed that a few of your contacts on GTalk haven't been online for quite some time. Ever thought that they might have blocked you for some reason? Would you like to find out who are those people who have blocked you on GTalk? Here's an easy way to do that.

Have you tried Pidgin yet? In case you have not, Pidgin is a chat client which allows you to chat across multiple networks simultaneously. What it means is that you can chat with your MSN, GTalk, Yahoo and other online buddies all at the same time from one single IM client. If you don't have Pidgin installed, you can download it's latest version from here.

Once you have installed Pidgin, add your GTalk account with it. Now all you need to do is click on Buddies, then Show and then click on Offline Buddies to view the contacts who are offline. Then right click on the contact who you think has blocked you and click on Get Info, when a Buddy Information box would pop-up on the screen with a his/her profile information. If that person had blocked you, the profile of that person would not appear inside the Buddy Information box.

So go ahead and find out who's been naughty with you on GTalk lately, or maybe it's the other way round.

How To Shoot Yourself In The Foot

Here are some ingenious ways to shoot yourself in the foot. Ladies and Gentlemen, please choose your weapon.

370 JCL
You send your foot down to MIS with a 4000-page document explaining how you want it to be shot. Three years later, your foot comes back deep-fried.

Ada
After correctly packaging your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the gun, pull the trigger, scream, and shoot yourself in the foot. When you try, however, you discover that your foot is of the wrong type.

Algol
You shoot yourself in the foot with a musket. The musket is aesthetically fascinating and the wound baffles the adolescent medic in the emergency room.

APL
You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out how to do it in fewer characters.

Apple
We'll let you shoot yourself, but it'll cost you a bundle.

ASP.NET
Find a gun, it falls apart. Put it back together, it falls apart again. You try using the .GUN Framework, it falls apart. You stab yourself in the foot instead.

Assembly
You try to shoot yourself in the foot only to discover you must first reinvent the gun, the bullet, and your foot. After that's done, you pull the trigger, the gun beeps several times, then crashes.

Brainfuck
Just looking at the gun gives you a migrane, so forget about actually shooting it.

BASIC
Shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol. On big systems, continue until entire lower body is waterlogged.

C
You try to shoot yourself in the foot, but find out the the gun is actually a howitzer cannon.

C++
You accidentally create a dozen clones of yourself and shoot them all in the foot. Emergency medical assistance is impossible since you can't tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at others and saying, "That's me, over there."

COBOL
Using a COLT 45 HANDGUN, AIM gun at LEG.FOOT, THEN place ARM.HAND.FINGER. on HANDGUN.TRIGGER and SQUEEZE. THEN return HANDGUN to HOLSTER. CHECK whether shoelace needs to be retied.

COMAL
draw_pistol
aim_at_foot(left)
pull_trigger
hop(swearing)

Concurrent Euclid
You shoot yourself in somebody else's foot.

Cray
I knew you were going to shoot yourself in the foot.

csh
After searching the manual until your foot falls asleep, you shoot the computer and switch to C.

CSS
You shoot your right foot with one hand, then switch hands to shoot your left foot but you realize that the gun has turned into a banana.

dBase
You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and are promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next version of the gun is the one that is scheduled to actually shoot bullets.

DOS Batch
You aim the gun at your foot and pull the trigger, but only a weak gust of warm air hits your foot.

Eiffel
You create a GUN object, two FOOT objects and a BULLET object. The GUN passes both the FOOT objects a reference to the BULLET. The FOOT objects increment their hole counts and forget about the BULLET. A little demon then drives a garbage truck over your feet and grabs the bullet (both of it) on the way.

English
You put your foot in your mouth, then bite it off.
(For those who don't know, English is a McDonnell Douglas/PICK query language which allegedly requires 110% of system resources to run happily)

Forth
Foot in yourself shoot.

FORTRAN
You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes, then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets, you continue anyway because you have no exception-handling ability.

FTP
% ftp lower-body.me.org
ftp> cd /foot
ftp> put bullets

Hewlett-Packard
You can use this machine-gun to shoot yourself in the foot, but the firing pin is broken.

HTML
<a target="http://body/lower-half/leg/foot.appendage"> Shoot here </a>

HyperTalk
Put the first bullet of the gun into the foot of the left leg of you.
Answer the result.

IBM
You insert a clip into the gun, wait half an hour, and it goes off in random directions. If a bullet hits your foot, you're lucky.

Internet
You put your foot in your mouth, shoot it, then spam the bullet so that everybody gets shot in the foot.

Java
After importing java.awt.right.foot.* and java.awt.gun.right.hand.*, and writing the classes and methods of those classes needed, you've forgotten what the hell you're doing.

JavaScript
You've perfected a robust, rich user experience for shooting yourself in the foot. You then find that bullets are disabled on your gun.

LISP
You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which
you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which
you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which
you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with which
you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds...

Machine Language
Before you can shoot yourself in the foot you must disassemble the gun at the atomic level and then reassemble it. After you do this, you find that the bullets require a special operator so the gun doesn't work.

Microsoft
Object "Foot" will be included in the next release. You can upgrade for $500.

Modula-2
After realizing that you can't actually accomplish anything in this language, you shoot yourself in the head.

Motif
You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory, the bullet, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.

NeXT
We don't sell guns anymore, just ammunition.

Paradox
Not only can you shoot yourself in the foot, your users can too.

Pascal
The compiler won't let you shoot yourself in the foot.

Perl
You shoot yourself in the foot, but nobody can understand how you did it. Six months later, neither can you.

PHP
You shoot yourself in the foot with a gun made with pieces from 300 other guns.

PL/I
You discover 6,752 different guns for shooting yourself in the foot. Before you can decide which one to use, you starve to death.

Postscript
It takes the bullet ten minutes to travel from the gun to your foot, by which time you're long since gone out to lunch. The text comes out great, though.

Prolog
You tell your program you want to be shot in the foot. The program figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn't allow it to explain.

Python
You try to shoot yourself in the foot but you just keep hitting the whitespace between your toes.

Revelation
You'll be able to shoot yourself in the foot just as soon as you figure out what all these bullets are for.

RPG
First you define your gun, bullet, and firing pin. Then, you define your foot, toes, and toenails. Then, you open chamber and load the gun. Then, you cock it. Now you're finally ready to shoot yourself in the foot.

Ruby
Your foot is ready to be shot in roughly five minutes, but you just can't find anywhere to shoot it.

Smalltalk, Actor, et al
After playing with the graphics for 3 weeks, the programming manager shoots you in the head.

SNOBOL
If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot.
If you fail, shoot yourself in the right foot.

SQL
SELECT @ammo:=bullet FROM gun WHERE trigger = 'PULLED';
INSERT INTO leg (foot) VALUES (@ammo);

UNIX
% ls
foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
% rm * .o
rm: .o: No such file or directory
% ls
%

Visual BASIC
You'll shoot yourself in the foot, but you'll have so much fun doing it that you won't care.

Visual BASIC.NET
You spend a fortune on a high-powered, self-cleaning, self-aiming, automatic handgun with unlimited ammo, only to realize it takes a year to pull the trigger.

Visual FoxPro
You mock other sharpshooters for not being able to shoot both feet at once, but when you try to do it yourself you realize that you can't properly handle the Microsoft.gun ActiveX.

VMS
%SYS-F-FTSHT, foot shot
(fifty lines of traceback omitted)

XBase
Shooting yourself is no problem. If you want to shoot yourself in the foot, you'll have to use Clipper.

If this made you laugh, then I am sure you would also like the 50+ Funniest Quotes Ever. And if you are a first time visitor here, then do subscribe to the RSS feed.

Top Paying Adsense Keywords For Auto Blogs

Auto blogs are in abundance today. And most of them resort to Google Adsense for their advertising needs. But most of the auto bloggers don't know what are the top paying keywords for auto blogs. Here is a list of some of the top paying keywords suitable for an auto blog.

cheap auto insurance
cheap car insurance
car insurance quote
online car insurance
online insurance quotes
car insurance rates
auto insurance rates
cheapest car insurance
car accident lawyer
car insurance
car hire alicante spain
car loans
travel insurance
california car cheap insurance
car century insurance
car insurance philadelphia
auto insurance quotes florida
california auto insurance quotes
auto insurance quotes california
car
new jersey auto insurance
auto insurance quote
car accident attorney
car law lemon
car insurance seattle
car insurance ny
car commercial insurance
car chicago insurance
aarp auto insurance
auto direct insurance
car hire malaga
car hire cyprus
car cheap hire spain
car hire murcia spain
car rental alicante

If you happen to have an auto blog, then write keyword rich articles with these keywords to maximize your earning.

Oracle Buys Sun Microsystem

Today in a press release it was declared that Oracle has agreed to acquire Sun Microsystem. This deal happened after IBM withdrew it's offer to buy Sun Microsystem earlier this month. The press release says that the transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said in a statement that "The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class enterprise software and mission-critical computing systems,". He also said that "Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system - applications to disk - where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves. Our customers benefit as their systems integration costs go down while system performance, reliability and security go up."

@breakingnews confirmed until the deal closes, Oracle said that each company will continue to operate independently, and it is business as usual. Till now this news is confirmed by New York Times, Reuters, Bloomberg et al.

TechCrunch reported that Oracle calling Sun’s Java "the most important software" it has ever acquired, although MySQL has not been mentioned as of yet. Further reports are yet to arrive, so stay tuned to The Chronicles of R to remain updated about this story. And if you are a first time visitor, consider subscribing to my RSS feed.

Getting Started With Google Ad Manager Webinar

On April 21st at 11:00 AM PDT, Google is hosting a Webinar to help publishers get an overview of Google Ad Manager. The Getting Started with Google Ad Manager Webinar will feature a live demo of the Ad Manager, the Google Ad Manager team would share the best practices, and would help you to get started. You can sign up for the webinar here.

Ad Manager is an ad management solution from the stable of Google which is targeted towards smaller to medium direct sales teams. It can help you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your directly sold and network-based inventory. If you are a publisher and operate a website with reserved and network ad inventory, or if you sell your ad inventory directly to advertisers or plan to sell directly to advertisers in the future then Ad Manager is the best solution for you.

Right at this point of time, Ad Manager is in it's Beta period. It integrates with your existing ad network(s) and you can also enable your AdSense account with it, so that you can deliver the highest paying ads. Although the Adsense inclusion is not mandetory. It automatically maximizes your CPMs and you save cost by cutting down on IT and hosting expenditure, so you have a higher ROI.

Ad Manager is FREE for now. However, according to Google Ad Manager may not always be free at all volumes, for all features or add-ons, or for all uses. But you need not worry about it as, it's specified in their terms of service that they would provide at least 90 days notice before implementing any fees. And within this period if you want you can opt out of the service. Support for Ad Manager comes in the form of an online help center and a moderated user forum. For advanced services like ad trafficking, consultation and training, you can also contact a certified consultant from Google.

There are a number of alternatives available to Ad Manager, which includes OpenX and Pubmatic, which was a TechCrunch40 finalist. But if you are planning to go by the Google brand name and give the Ad Manager a try, you can sign up here. And here are some optimization tips and some more reviews for Google Ad Manager:

Optimization Tips, TechCrunch review, Pro Blogger review

Don't forget to share your success stories with the readers of The Chronicles of R. And if you are a first time visitor here, then consider subscribing to my RSS feed.

Reduce The Load Time Of Your Blog

One of the most important factor which determines the success of a blog is it's load time. Take StumbleUpon for example, it's users are notorious for having a very short attention span. If you cannot attract their attention within the first 30 seconds, the next site is just the click of a button away. So if you blog takes too long to load, chances are that you would never be able to leverage the true potential of StumbleUpon or other related social sites.

With their limited template designs, numerous widgets for additional functionality, most of the Blogspot users face this problem, and they complain their blogs of being sluggish. So here are some tips to increase the load time of your Blogspot blog.

1. Decrease the number of posts shown on the home page. You can edit it from your Blogger dashboard by going to Settings > Formatting tab. I would say something less than 10 would be a nice idea.

2. You cannot avoid using JavaScript and links on your blog, just make sure that you place them towards the bottom of your blog, just above the tag. And if you must use them as a widget, then put them towards the bottom of your sidebar.

3. Try to use less images, video and other multimedia files on your blog, they hugely increases the load time of a blog.

4. Try and reduce the size of the images that you are using, better you put up a thumbnail which would point to the actual full-size image.

5. Use the Picasa album for you uploading your photos.

6. Try to use JPEG images instead of PNG or GIFF.

7. If possible, check for cross browser functionality.

8. Try to avoid using too many widgets.

9. Make sure your template code is valid.

10. In case you are using custom CSS, put it towards the top of the page.

These are only some of the tips that would help your blog load faster. If you think that I have missed some major point, please put them in the comments. And if you are a first time visitor, consider subscribing to my RSS feed.

A Simple Yahoo! Pipes Video

Yahoo! Pipes is one of the most powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web. Like Unix pipes, simple commands can be combined together to create output that meets your needs. Here's a video that teaches you the basics of how to use Yahoo! Pipes.

If you are a first time visitor, consider subscribing to my RSS feed.

Merging The Power Of Twitter and Technorati

Since the dawn of the Twitter effect, the main focus of the Twitter users remained to be able gain more targeted followers. One of the best ways to achieve this is by registering your Twitter account on a Twitter directory. But with so many Twitter directories available on the internet, I would suggest you to first get your Twitter account listed on Technorati, which is one of the biggest blog directories. Here is how you can get your Twitter account listed on Technorati.

1. Login to Technorati (create an account if you haven't already).

2. Go to Claim a new blog under Claimed Blogs section in your Technorati account.

3. Enter the complete URL for your Twitter account, e.g. http://www.twitter.com/rajtilak and click on Begin Claim.

4. Next, to complete your claim you would be asked to publish a code. From the code, take out only the URL part and Tweet it.

5. After you have Tweeted it, click on Complete Claim. Once you have done this, you have completed claiming your Twitter account on Technorati.

6. In the end, just don't forget to add the tags, which would determine your niche readers.

So register your Twitter account on Technorati now, and while you are at it favorite my blog on Technorati. Also, consider subscribing to my RSS feed.

Posterous : The Simplest Blogging Platform

A few days back a friend of mine was complaining that her institution does not allow her to logon to Blogger or any other blogging platform, and thus she is unable to continue blogging. The only thing that they are allowed is checking their emails. So I introduced her to Posterous.

Launched in mid 2008 by Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan, Posterous is the simplest blogging platform available today. I don't say that, Mike Arrington does and I do agree with him. You don't need to create an account, you don't need to login to their website, simply mail your posts to post@posterous.com and you're done. They would instantly reply back with your new posterous at http://yourname.posterous.com. The subject line of your email would be the title of the post, the body of the email would be the content.

What's more, you can even attach photos, video, MP3's, and files. The video would be displayed in a custom Flash player on your blog, the photos as an image gallery and other documents like PDF files would be displayed in a Scribd embedded widget. So the next time you take a snap on your iPhone, the new blog post of that photo is just an MMS away. Moreover, when someone comments on your blog, you would receive an email notification (if you choose to) and you can reply to that comment simply by replying to that post. You can even add a Posterous bookmarklet and start posting using that. It captures the photos, videos and text on a page for you to select, and once you have selected them and written your comments (if any), your next blog post is ready to be published with a single click.

Now if you have started thinking that Posterous is for first timers, then think twice. Some of the biggest names in the industry, including Mike Arrington, Guy Kawasaki also have their blogs on Posterous. And with the plethora of advanced features offered by Posterous, like Google Analytics integration, HTML in blog posts, automatic iTunes-ready podcast feed, autoposting to other sites and blogging platforms like Facebook, Tumblr, Xanga, Twitter, integration with custom domain, one can hardly call Posterous a beginner's blogging platform.

Posterous offers an XML feed for your blog. You can also subscribe to other's Posterous blogs, but for that you need to create an account. Creating an account is pretty simple, give you email id and a password for your login, customize your new blog and you are ready to go. They have a pretty comprehensive FAQ section, still if you need help you need to mail your queries at help@posterous.com.

So what are you waiting for, send an email to Posterous and start posting. You would find my blog here. And if you are a first time visitor on The Chronicles of R, consider subscribing to my RSS feed.

Your Feet

When I cannot look at your face
I look at your feet.
Your feet of arched bone,
Your hard little feet.
I know that they support you,
And that your sweet weight
Rises upon them.
Your waist and your breasts,
The doubled purple
Of your nipples,
The sockets of your eyes
That have just flown away,
Your wide fruit mouth,
Your red tresses,
My little tower.
But I love your feet
Only because they walked
Upon the earth and upon
The wind and upon the waters,
Until they found me.

~ Pablo Neruda

Export Your Facebook Calendar Using fbCal

fbCal is an online service, created by Mixin, to help Facebook users export their Facebook birthday calendar and event calendar.

The calendars generated by fbCal are either in iCalendar (.ics) format or as an RSS feed. So they may be imported to all programs that use iCalendar files. This includes Apple iCal, Mozilla Sunbird, Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook. Alternatively, with the RSS feed you can also subscribe using any standard feed reader. Your subscribed calendars would get updated whenever you refresh your calendar after there was a change in your Facebook friends or events.

In order to get your calendars, you must first log into Facebook and give permission to fbCal to access information. fbCal uses the Facebook Developer Platform, and abides by all rules set forth by Facebook to protect it's user's privacy. No personal information is stored by fbCal about it's users.

To import your calendars to Apple iCal, you can follow these steps:

1. From within iCal, choose "Subscribe" from the "Calendar" menu at the top of your screen.

2. Enter the full URL (listed above) to the desired iCalendar file in the "Subscribe to:" box and click "Subscribe".

3. iCal will then download the calendar and bring you to a screen which allows you to give a title to that calendar. Check the "Refresh:" checkbox and select "every day" which will instruct iCal to check for updates to the calendar on a daily basis.

Although they don't have dedicated customer service or technical support, fbCal has a Facebook group maintained by Frederic Sidler and Bob Baldwin who are the Owner and the original developer respectively. As of now, the fbCal group on Facebook consists of 350+ users.

You can start creating your Facebook calendars using fbCal from here. And if you are a new visitor on The Chronicles of R, subscribe to my RSS feed.

Make Money Using JobThread

Finding a new job after being handed a pink slip, in this tough time of recession, can be a pretty daunting task. That's why most of the prospected employees have resorted to social networks to find their future employers. And if you happen to be a blogger/publisher, then there is a great potential for you to start earning money in this field of job searching.

JobThread is an online service that helps provide your readers their dream job, while you earn some money and traffic. Launched in November 2003, JobThread, Inc. is a privately held company based in New York City. Featured on some of the leading publishers like Read Write Web, Slashdot, Wired, Silicon Alley Insider et al, JobThread offers JobThread widgets as well as a complete Job Board solution for established sites with high traffic and a large niche audience base. What's unique about JobThread is that it targets the passive candidates that don't click on the job boards by presenting relevant jobs on the sites.

Earnings are calculated based on a number of factors including the quantity and quality of traffic your Widget generates. The publisher chooses how much they would like to charge recruiters to post jobs on your site, the value of which ranges from anywhere between $5 to $1000 per posting, and JobThread shares the revenue on a 50-50 basis. There are no setup fees, hosting fees or maintenance fees of any kind. Earnings are paid out using PayPal when you exceed $20 USD in earnings.

The JobThread widget is fully customizable. You can choose a site category to target your niche readers. Moreover, you can provide your own keywords to further narrow down your niche audience. You can also use dynamic keywords by passing the keywords parameter in the widget URL in a comma separated list of keywords, and which can include negative keywords.

JobThread has a dedicated email customer service for publishers and employers which can be reached through their Contact Us link. So in case something goes wrong you know where to send your hate mails to. Registering with JobThread is a painless process and takes only about a minute or so, right after which you can customize your JobThread widget and put it up on your site/blog. so decide who your niche audience are, jot down your keywords, get registered with JobThread from here and start making money.

And if you are a first time visitor here, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feed.

Iron Man Vs. Bruce Lee

Iron Man vs Bruce Lee @ Yahoo! Video

Entrecard : An Epic Fail

I wrote previously that the ad network introduced by Entrecard is an epic fail. I was right. The ad network was supposed to be launched in approximately one weeks time, it took them more than two weeks for the same.

Initially there were talks of revenue sharing, cash outs and all other such big jargons were thrown into the conversation. Now, Entrecard says that -

Revenue generated from these paid ads will go to fund our future operations, feature development, more servers, and all that good stuff, as well as a war chest to cash out all your credits with (or all the credits of those who wish to cash them out!). So please approve paid ads proudly knowing you’re supporting Entrecard and the only true virtual economy in the blogosphere!

It's like saying that I'll be using your blog for selling space to third party advertisers, and the moolah that I earn from that advertising goes in my pocket. Why, because I want you to feel proud that you are supporting me!

To add to the injury, bloggers who would be using Entrecard to display those paid ads would not even be credited in terms of ec, which is the virtual currency in Entrecard! I myself had approved about 15 paid ads and my ec never changed from 309. It looks like Entrecard is in dire need of charity but is quite ashmed to ask for it, so they developed this new business strategy.

And Entrecard is so user friendly that they do open forum threads about the issues being faced by Entrecard users, there goes a dialogue between phirate, who is from the development team, and a certain jegan414, who is a senior member. And jegan414 asks questions which are typical and are aimed towards supporting Entrecard than discussing any real problem like the structure of the cash flow the the bloggers are generating for Entrecard. And a significant answer from phirate about "exposure for the buck" goes something like this -

We're not sure how the impact of paid adverts will impact EC advertisers on the same spot to be honest. I'll do anopther post in a moment discussing this issue.

Isn't that wonderful bloggers! And on top of that, when Entrecard could not answer the flow of questions, they simply closed the thread. After all bloggers are supposed to blog, not ask questions, right?

Honestly, I am not here for charity. If you want ad space on my blog, you either need to pay for it or give me some value return. If you cannot, then I would simply leave. And that is exactly what I did. I had mailed the accounts department for deletion of my account. Was it a big decision? No.

Entrecard, when it started, looked promising. But a lack of proper business strategy has made it an epic fail.

Let's Disqus It

One of the most important aspect of a blog is the commenting system. A blog cannot flourish without comments and so, the commenting should be made easy and easily customizable to the needs of the readers. For that we have a very powerful service called Disqus.

Disqus, which is pronounced as "discuss", is a free service and tool for web comments and discussions. The Disqus comment system can be plugged into any website, blog, or application. It makes commenting easier and more interactive, while connecting websites and commenters across a thriving discussion community. With Disqus, you would be able to track all your comments from different websites on your Disqus profile, and you would be able to display it as a comment blog.

Disqus supports almost all of the major blogging platforms which includes Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, Movable Types, Typepad et al. The key benefits of using Disqus are manifolds. For websites, publishers and bloggers, Disqus brings the power of threaded comments and comment ratings, powerful moderation and admin tools, it filters out spam, trolls, and unwanted commenters, enables the visitors to become a real community, provides moderation by mobile/email service. Moreover, Disqus also intregrates Facebook Connect and Seismic Video commenting.

The commentators and readers can harness the power of tracking and managing comments and replies across various websites and blogs at one place, easiness of commenting using the Disqus system, reply to their comments through emails or mobile, one-click editing and republishing of their comments and of course, even if the websites in which you have left your comments goes bust, you would not lose your comments.

If you are a blogger or a publisher and would like to setup Disqus on your site/blog, then I have got good news for you. Setting up Disqus is very simple. All you need to do is register at Disqus, which takes about a minutes or so. And then follow the instructions given there, which are not only simple but also contains screenshots to make the installation procedure more lucid.

The only slight glitch that I found with Disqus is while installing it in the Blogger platform. If you already have comments on your Blogger blog, then either you can choose them not to be visible or they would be visible the way they are. But Diqus would not append them under the Disqus commenting system, which is pretty lame considering Disqus does appends previous comments on the Wordpress platform. But other than this one issue, I found Disquss to be a very powerful commenting system.

You can sign up with Disqus here. You can also choose to sign up as a commenter. But before that, if you came here from StumbleUpon and did like this review, then please give this a Thumbs Up if not a Thumbs Up and a Review. And you if really liked this review, then do share it with your friends and help me spread the word.

[P.S. This is my Disqus profile.]

30+ Power Tweaks For Firefox

The best thing about Firefox is that it's highly customizable, either through plugins or internal settings. In fact, there are many settings that are not exposed through the Tools > Settings menu. To change these settings you need to tweak the prefs.js file where Firefox stores all it's internal settings. But it's difficult to edit the prefs.js file and it's easier to change these settings through the browser window.

Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter, and you'll see all the settings currently enumerated in prefs.js, listed in alphabetical order. To narrow down the hundreds of configuration preferences to just the few you need, type a search term into the Filter: bar. Click the Show All button or just clear the Filter: bar to get the full list back again. But before you start toying with the settings in about:config, remember to backup the prefs.js file.

Once you have a backup of prefs.js, fireup about:config and change the settings which you want to from the list.

1. When you are typing an URL in the Address Bar (Smart Location Bar), a dropdown list of suggestive URLs becomes visible. The default number of URLs that are shown is 12, but you can configure that using the browser.urlbar.maxRichResults key. Double click on that and input the number of URLs that you want Firefox to show. If you want to disable this feature, set the value to -1.

2. If you are not satisfied with the default Firefox color profiles, it also has an Advanced Color Profile feature available. But enabling this make Firefox a bit sluggish. So if you are not concerned about performance but image quality then you can enable this feature by modifying the gfx.color_management.enabled key. It's default value is set to False, you need to change it to True.

3. When you have opened too many tabs in Firefox, it shows a scrolling bar so that the 100px width is conserved. If you don't like this feature and would like Firefox to display all the tabs, however small they are, you can disable it using the browser.tabs.tabMinWidth key. The default value of this key is 100, to disable it you need to set it to 0, to display tabs of different width you can set a value lower than 100 (example : 75).

4. Every tab on Firefox has a Close X button on it. Some people love them, some don't. You can change it's behavior using the browser.tabs.closeButtons key. It's default value is set to 1. To display a close button on the active tab only set it's value to 0, to display close buttons on all tabs set it to 1, to display a single close button at the end of the tab strip set it to 3 and if you don't want to display any close button at all set it to 2.

5. If you try to open a bookmark, Firefox usually replaces any existing tabs with the newly opened pages. So avoid this you need to modify the browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace. It's default value is True, to open bookmarks by appending new tabs to the existing window instead of overwriting existing ones, you need to set it's value to False.

6. Firefox automatically save your session every 10 seconds so that, in case the browser crashes, it can restore all your tabs. While this is a useful feature, some users find it irritating. To disable this function, toggle the value of browser.sessionstore.enabled to False, it's default value is True.

7. When you are browsing in a fullscreen mode, the Firefox toolbar by default is set to autohide. It appears only upon mouseover. If you want to view the toolbar at all times, set the value of browser.fullscreen.autohide to False. To autohide once again, set it back to True.

8. When "Save Link As..." is being used, Firefox request the content disposition header from the URL so as to determine the filename. If the URL did not deliver the header within 1 sec, Firefox will issue a timeout value. This could happen very frequently in a slow network connection environment. To prevent this, set the Browser.download.saveLinkAsFilenameTimeout to any value higher than 1000, which is the default value and equals 1 second (1 second = 1000 millisecond).

9. If you are a developer and use the View Source function often, then you can as well make Firefox open the source file in your favorite Editor. For this you need to change the view_source.editor.external to True, it's default value being False. And then change the value of view_source.editor.path, which would be set to blank by default, to the path of your favorite editor.

10. When you are installing a Firefox add-on, you usually have to wait for several seconds before the installation process starts. To avoid this, set the value of security.dialog_enable_delay to 0 to start the installation immediately. It's default value would be set to 2000 (2 seconds).

11. When minimized, Firefox allows the Windows memory manager to swap out some of Firefox's physical memory space to disk. This allows other programs to use the physical memory that Firefox was hitherto using. By default this feature is turned off. To enable this change the value of config.trim_on_minimize to True.

12. Want to use an extension that is not compatible with your version of Firefox? Well, although it's not recommended, you can do it by right clicking on a blank area and select New > Boolean, then enter extensions.checkCompatibility in the first field and False in the second field. Then create another value by again right clicking and selecting New > Boolean, enter extensions.checkUpdateSecurity in the first field and False in the second field.

13. Unlike it's previous versions, Firefox 3 backup the bookmarks file in places.sqlite rather than the usual bookmarks.html. But these are not compatible with all browsers, so to make Firefox save the bookmarks as bookmarks.html, change the value of browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML to True.

14. To increase offline cache so that, in case you don't have access to internet connection most of the time, you can still continue to work offline, change the value of browser.cache.offline.capacity from 512000 (in KB) to any higher value.

15. Many of us use the in-page search of Firefox. Now this in-page search is not case-sensitive. To avail of the case-sensitive in-page search feature, set the value of accessibility.typeaheadfind.casesensitive to 1. It's default value is 0 which sets it for case-insensitive search.

16. If you double-click on a single word on a web page, Firefox usually also includes a trailing blanks space. If you don't want this trailing blank space to be included in your selection, set the value of layout.word_select.eat_space_to_next_word to False.

17. If you are not satisfied with the default zoom level and want to see something by zooming it even more, then all you need to do is set the value of zoom.maxPercent, which has a default value of 300, to any higher value for a greater zoom-in. For a greater zoom-out, change the default value of 30 for the zoom.minPercent to anything less.

18. You can set the URL bar to Autofill when you are typing an URL. To do this, you need to change the value of browser.urlbar.autofill to True.

19. Unlike in Windows or Mac, Firefox does not select the complete URL when you click on it in Linux. Instead it places the cursor at the insertion point. If you feel that Firefox is discriminating you as a respectable Linux user, then change the value of browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll to True.

20. When you are using the search box at the top right hand corner of the browser, it would display the search results in the current tab. If you want Firefox to behave well and not do this again, simply change the value of browser.search.openintab to True to open the search results in a new tab.

21. To change the number of simultaneous connections Firefox will make at any one time to any number of Web servers, change the value of network.http.max-connections, which has a default value of 24, to anything between 24 and 32. Although people do use values upto 64, but any value above 32 really does not cause any significant changes.

22. To enable "pipelining", an experimental feature to speed up the loading of most web pages, set the value of network.http.pipelining to True. Along with that, change the value of network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to anything between 16 and 128, although I would personally suggest 16. And if you are using a proxy, be sure to change the value of network.http.proxy.pipelining to True.

23. To enable spell check for single line text boxes, which is enabled for multi line text boxes by default, all you need to do is change the value of layout.spellcheckDefault to 2. To disable spell check altogether, set it to 0. Use spell check to avoid any Freudian slips in your documents.

24. By default, Firefox waits 250 millisecond before it starts rendering a page. If you want Firefox to start rendering any webpage immediately, change the value of nglayout.initialpaint.delay to 0.

25. In Firefox 3, a script is given a time period of 10 seconds to respond, after which it issues a unresponsive script warning. If you are on a slow network connection and would like to increase the script execution time, all you need to do is change the value of dom.max_script_run_time to any value greater than 10 (which is the default value).

26. This is mainly for Windows users. By default, Firefox 3 automatically initiates a virus scan a downloaded file with the default anti-virus application. So in case you are downloading a large file, it could take a long time for the whole scanning process to complete. To disable the anti-virus scanning you need to change the value of browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone to False.

27. Web pages (and web servers) can ask a browser to automatically refresh a page after a given timeout. This can be helpful (as in the case of a webpage whose content is updated constantly) but it also can be irritating. To prevent this you need to change the value of accessibility.blockautorefresh to True. It with disable refreshing a page automatically when is present (or Refresh HTTP headers), display a browser message indicating the refresh and allow the user to follow it manually.

28. Firefox 3 usually allows the history sidebar to group pages by browsing session as well as by last visit, which can be a useful distinction when trying to find a previously-visited page. But if you like the Firefox 2 look better than this, then change the value of browser.history.showSessions to False.

29. In Firefox 3, extensions use one of the following approaches for updates: an SSL-encrypted update URL, no update URL at all, or an update key/hash for verifying the validity of the update. If an extension does not use one of the mentioned methods for securing updates, Firefox will prevent it from being installed. So if you want to install some extension which does not uses these update methods, simply set the value of extensions.checkUpdateSecurity to False.

30. Firefox 3 by default accept cookies from a site irrespective of whether you have previously deleted cookies from that site or not. To prevent this, simply set the value of network.cookie.blockFutureCookies to True, it's default value being False.

31. By default Firefox 3 automatically fills the sign-in forms with known usernames and passwords on appropriate sites. If you don't want this for security reason, set the value of signon.prefillForms to False and Firefox would act as though there are multiple usernames/password pairs remembered for the form (fill password after username has been manually typed).

If you liked this post, then be sure to check out the 50+ Essential Firefox Extensions For Designers and Developers.

A Simple HTML Search Widget

As I had promised earlier, here is the code for the HTML search widget. I have tested this widget only on the Blogger platform, if you do try it on any other platform do let me know whether it is working fine.

This HTML search widget give you a comprehensive search result. But unfortunately it does not have the fancy customization options that you get with the Lijit widget. You can place this HTML search widget even inside a blog post. You can see a demo of this search widget here.

To install this HTML search widget, all you need to do is copy/paste the code in a HTML/JavaScript Gadget or inside a post.

<p align="center"></p><form id="searchthis" action="/search" style="display: inline;" method="get"> <input id="search-box" name="q" size="25" type="text"> <input id="search-btn" value="Search" type="submit"> </form><p></p>

Do let me know whether you found this useful.

Milestone Of Success

Where did we come from?

So what's going on with R, me and The Chronicles of R? A lot, to say the least.

First of all, last Tuesday The Chronicles of R touched the 3000+ unique visitors per day mark. And now we have 1500+ unique visitors per day on an average. 1500+ unique visitors per day, can you believe that! Imagine that you are in a theater and you have 1500+ people listening to you speak, isn't it thrilling? Sure it is.

Secondly, yesterday The Chronicles of R got a PR 3 from a PR 0. As you all know that right after I shifted to this new domain, all my PR, backlinks and everything else was gone *poof*. They simply vanished into thin air. And that's pretty natural, as Google treats a new domain as a new site. I have explained that in a bit detail over here. But I was not afraid of losing my PR and backlinks for one simple reason. Because I believe. Yes my dear Constant Readers, I believe and belief or faith, as you might call it, can move heaven and earth.

So what did I believe in? I believed in two things. One, I had faith on my Constant Readers, that is you. I knew that PR or no PR, you would be able to differentiate between pure trash and a good read. And you did, even when I had a PR 0, you visited my site and I really appreciate it. Without you, The Chronicles of R would not have been what it is. The second thing that I believed in was myself. Till the time you don't start believing in yourself, you would not be able to move an inch ahead in the path of success. If you cannot convince yourself that what you are doing is good, how would you convince those thousands who would visit your site daily! So, believe in yourself.

Third came another big achievement. The Chronicles of R crossed the 50,000 visitors mark. Today we had the 50,000th visitor on The Chronicles of R. It was a very special moment.

One of the most important thing that had happened in the last few months is that I have made lots of friends. Here's I would like to mention two of them, only two of them because the complete list would be quite lengthy. So please don't take offense if you don't find your name here, I love you all.

The first person who comes in my mind is John Haydon. John, based out of Boston, MA, is a singer, blogger, a social media expert and a very good friend. When I landed up on his blog the first time, it was then that I realized what I was missing. He has written some brilliant articles on social media. He has a very unique quality as a blogger and loves to make his readers feel unique. How? Well, that's a surprise. Do visit his blog and find it out for yourself, but don't forget to leave a comment or two, he really loves to hear from his readers. You can find John on my friend's list on Facebook.

Second person I befriended was Rohini from Crazy Quilt. Although I knew her for quite some time now, yet, we hardly used to interact. But since the last few months, she had been a regular visitor on my blog and vice versa. And only when I started to follow her blog regularly did I understand that she has a unique way of putting things across to her readers. She never falls short of enthusiasm and loves to converse through the blog comments.

The next big thing that happened on The Chronicles of R is that it got mentioned by two bloggeratis. Once by Hugh McLeod of Gapingvoid, and then by Annie of BlogU fame. I would really like to thanks both of them.

Where are we headed?

Well this is surely not the end. A lot remains unsaid, unheard, untouched, unseen, and lot remains unsung. But to take The Chronicles of R to the next level, I would need all your help dear readers. Because it's only you who can make The Chronicles of R a success. And I believe in you.

And today, as a mark of gratitude, I want to gift you something. An eBook (PDF) called Deep Secrets of Successful Blogging, which contains the secret to successful blogging from 30 experts, including bloggeratis such as Darren Rowse, Chris Pirillo, Andy Sernovitz, Chris Betty, Aaron Wall and a lot more. It's FREE, absolutely, completely, no sign-ups required, although you can leave a comment and let me know how much did you enjoyed reading this eBook. I would love to hear from you. Simply click on this link and start the download.

The War Of The Search Widgets

Every site should have a search widget on it, because it's not possible to go through either the archive or the labels/categories to find one particular article. But with so many different options available, it pretty difficult to choose which search widget to use. So here's a list of some of the major search widgets available in the industry and their pros and cons.

Google Search

There are 3 flavors of Google search. One for the users of their Blogger platform, this is an internal widget which can be added from the list of widgets available to those bloggers. Second one is the search widget that comes from the Adsense account, this would helps you to earn some cash while you put your readers at ease by giving them the option to search. Third one being a customized Google search, which is mainly for corporate users and more often than not, comes with a prices tag. Now almost all of these search widgets from Google has the same sets of pros and cons. First and foremost, these widgets are downright ugly. So if you are concerned about the aesthetics of your site, my suggestion is don't use a Google widget. Moreover, they are not pretty accurate. Yes, you heard it right, the Google widgets are not 100% accurate. I have tried it myself and it came up with certain results, which were the most common ones, omitted. And on top of that it requires a huge space for displaying the Ads. So if you wanna save screen real estate, this is a strict no no. The only good reason that I find why one would place Google search on their site is to earn money. Otherwise, Google search widget is an epic fail.

BlogCatalog Search

This is a free search widget for the users of BlogCatalog. This has a very aesthetic look like an AJAX application, although it's the least customizable. It's a tad bit more accurate than it's Google counterpart. And it displays the search results on a BlogCatalog page, so you don't need to worry about screen real estate. But here the problem is that along with the results, this widget also displays related stories from BlogCatalog. So chances of your bounce rate increasing is pretty high, which at the end of the day, is not good for any site.

Lijit Search

This is by far the best search widget that I have ever used. It's completely customizable, comes with some nifty features like including your Flickr account, blogroll etc in your search domain. And on top of that they have come up with a revenue sharing system. And even the search results are pretty much comprehensive, so I find no reason why someone should not be using Lijit. I would love to discuss the full benefits of Lijit search, but that would require a fully dedicated article to do this unique search widget justice. And as you can see that I already have put up a Lijit widget on my blog, why don't you try it out yourself and see it's benefits!

A Simple HTML Search Widget

For quite sometime I have used a simple piece of HTML as my own search widget. It gives you the most comprehensive search result, sans the frills of revenue sharing and other nifty features that exists in the other widgets. And I am not pretty sure whether it works with platforms other than Blogspot. I will publish the code in another article and you can try it for yourself.

So out of these four major search widgets, Lijit outweighs the rest. But users may disagree. Some would love to depend on the brand Google. And for those who wants to build a community, they might go for the BlogCatalog widget. Which one would you use? Do you know any other search widget other than these? Do leave your valuable comments, and in case you found this article informative, share it with your friends or on various social networks using the button below.