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It’s been 8 months since I first started blogging. I’m not a pro-blogger, but still I have come up with a few tips that I think will be found useful by the new bloggers. This is my first attempt in giving out tips. :) And that also with a bunch of links from some of my favorite blogs.

1. Own Domain: Your domain should be small (10-12 characters are enough) one and easy-to-remember. For more tips on choosing domain names, read Shaun’s article.

2. Good Host: If you have a self-hosted blog, then host it on a reliable host. Make sure your is a reliable one, has no downtimes and has 24/7 support. (If anyone has written a good article on importance of good web-hosting, please let me know below. I’ll add the link here.)

3. Nice Theme: You should have a nice, clear and simple template. Don’t make it full of images, because that will increase the loading time of your blog. Remember, your theme gives the first impression of your blog. Read Nirmal’s post for more info. on selecting a theme.

4. Feed Button: Place the feed link/icon in the first fold of your blog. The feed icon should not be too big or too small. Use a medium sized icon depending on your blog layout. For more tips, visit Shankar’s place.

5. Comment on other blogs: Well, yes. This is important! Or you, yourself, won’t get any comments on your blog. So, this is a must. When I started out blogging, I used to be very lazy in commenting on other blogs, but the result was that I hardly got a comment the whole week. Read more tips by Brown.

6. Reply to comments: It’s good to respond all the comments given on your posts. Your blog looks more active this way. Don’t ever piss of your readers. If you do want to do, read some tips to piss of readers by Shaun and read another good article on how to increase comments on your blogs by Nirmal.

7. Participate in discussions: Participate in discussions on other blogs.Participation doesn’t mean you start spamming. Make a comment related to the topic. This will help your blog gain some exposure.

8. Join Link Directories: Join as many link directories as you can. It gets you link backs, and link backs help you get a higher PageRank.

As this is my first attempt in giving out tips, I’m sure there will be many points I’ll be missing. Feel free to point out my mistakes, or add more tips below. I’d appreciate them all.

Faster Gmail For Slow Connection Users

If you haven’t noticed, Gmail has rolled out new improvements today, to their Loading interface while signing in for Gmail. It now has a new loading screen with a loading bar that shows the progress of how much Gmail has been loaded and an option to load your Inbox in basic HTML.

Dial-up users or slow connection users can click the link Load Basic HTML while Gmail loads and it will open much faster than before. You won’t the usual Ajax-powered Gmail, but still, you can at least check your mails if you are in a hurry.

Gmail’s loading times have also been reduced to a great extent. Previously, Gmail required 24 requests to load the Inbox, but now it has been reduced to only 4 requests. [Via BlogsDNA]

Here’s what Gmail team has to say:

We’ll keep working to make Gmail faster — there’s a lot we’re doing right now — and we’ll give periodic updates as we get improvements out. (And hopefully you’ll notice some of them too.)

You can also reduce the loading time by appending the nocheckbrowser parameter to the URL [via Digital Inspiration]. This will force Gmail to skip the browser check. You can use the following URL for this purpose:

http://mail.google.com/gmail?nocheckbrowser

If you’re an AMD processor users, you must have been greeted by the Blue Screen of Death, after installing Windows XP SP3 on rebooting their computer. The error begins with something like this: STOP: 0×0000007E (0xC0000005 and contains the error text SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED. And after this, the computers reboots again and keeps repeating this.

Windows XP SP3 apparently copies an Intel power management driver to the computer that was not there before the installation of SP3 and that is said to be the cause for the restart bug. But thanks to HP, a fix has been given for this bug.

The following fix can only be used if you use a non-Intel processor and encounter the restart bug after installing Windows XP Service Pack 3. Below are the fixes given by HP and Microsoft:

Remember: Make sure you make a quick backup of your system using System Restore. And also backup your Registry entries.

HP’s Fix For XP SP3 Restart Bug:

* Boot Computer in Safe Mode
* Use Windows Explorer to browse to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers
* Right-click intelppm.sys and rename it to XXXintelppm.syx
* Restart Windows

If the computer is unable to boot into safe mode do the following:

* Press F8 during startup and load the Microsoft Windows Recovery Console
* Type the number that corresponds to your Windows installation
* Log in as an administrator
* Type cd c:\windows\system32\drivers at the command prompt
* Type rename intelppm.sys XXXintelppm.syx
* Restart Windows

Microsoft’s Fix For XP SP3 Restart Bug:

* Boot the Computer into Safe Mode
* Press Windows R, type regedit, hit enter
* Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\Intelppm
* right-click the Start entry in the right pane and select modify
* Enter 4 in the Value Data box
* Close regedit, restart the computer.

I hope this fixes your restart problem in Windows XP after installing to SP3.

Well, did you know you could hide your files in a JPEG file? For this, you will only need to download WinRAR. You just need to have a little knowledge about Command Prompt and have WinRAR installed.

Ok, lets begin…

1. Gather all the files that you wish to hide in a folder anywhere in your PC (make it in C:\hidden - RECOMMENDED).
2. Now, add those files in a RAR archive (e.g. secret.rar). This file should also be in the same directory (C:\hidden).
3. Now, look for a simple JPEG picture file (e.g. logo.jpg). Copy/Paste that file also in C:\hidden.
4. Now, open Command Prompt (Go to Run and type ‘cmd‘). Make your working directory C:\hidden.

5. Now type: “COPY /b logo.jpg + secret.rar output.jpg” (without quotes) - Now, logo.jpg is the picture you want to show, secret.rar is the file to be hidden, and output.jpg is the file which contains both. :D
6. Now, after you have done this, you will see a file output.jpg in C:\hidden. Open it (double-click) and it will show the picture you wanted to show. Now try opening the same file with WinRAR, it will show the hidden archive :).

Done! :D

You can also upload the image (output.jpg) on image host and share it with others :D.

Newsgator gas released a new version of FeedDemon, the best RSS reader for Windows. FeedDemon 2.7 includes several bug fixes, many new features and tons of performance improvements.

The most notable newly added feature is the “Find Feeds“. Now you can subscribe to multiple feeds related to your query at the same time. And best of all, FeedDemon is still free!

Download FeedDemon 2.7

For some reason, the FeedDemon home page still says FeedDemon 2.6, but if you download it, the installer is actually for FeedDemon 2.7.

Via [Digital Inspiration]

Can this get any better for YouTube addicts? Now you can download multiple videos from YouTube at once and while downloading, you can even convert them to any format. This application can download videos from any YouTube page, or from individual channels, playlists, favourites, users and group pages.

This batch downloader works only on pages with more than one YouTube video. But remember, it won’t work on the Search page. May be we’ll get this feature in the future releases, but at the moment, it doesn’t work. The Download button activates on selected pages only.

YouTube Batch Downloader

How To Batch Download YouTube Videos

In order to download videos using YouTube Batch Downloader, open the page contaning videos or video links, and press the Downlaod button. Your videoes will start downloading instantly.

Where Are the Videos Saved

Wondering, where did all the downloaded videos go? No, they didn’t got lost. You can find them at My Documents\My YouTube folder. They are sorted by YouTube publisher usernames.

No Pause Or Stop Feature

The only thing I didn’t like about this tool is that it does not have button, or option to stop or pause downloading videos. There is no way this can be done unless you close the application itself.

Firefox 3 logo Finally, the development on the Firefox 3 browser is starting to wrap up. By the end of May, Firefox 3 will enter into the Release Candidate stage. And it’s expected that the long-awaited browser will hit the market in June. It was on their forums that Firefox 3 is targeted towards June.

Firefox 3 is expected to be one top-notch browser, because the pre-release versions have been tested out by about 1.2 million users! I’ve tried out all the Firefox 3 pre-releases, even before it got into Alpha stage, and have seen the remarkable performance improvements in it.

You won’t find any extraordinary or notable new features, but the performance enhancements are awesome! The memory usage Firefox 3 beats out most of the main steam browsers, including Firefox 2! I’m glad Mozilla didn’t compromise on performance just for the sake of a few new features.

We’ll start getting the Release Candidate versions from late May. According to the Mozilla Developer blog:

If no new showstopper issues are found in RC1 it will become Firefox 3 final. If we find any critical issues we will continue to release new Release Candidates until we are ready for final ship.

I still have a feeling that hey won’t be able to do it in one Release Candidate release. I mean, if we look at the release history of Firefox 2 and 3 (below), I’m sure Firefox 3 will have at least 2 Release Candidate releases before the final product.

Firefox 2

Alphas: 3
Betas: 2
Release Candidates: 3

Firefox 3

Alphas: 8
Betas: 5

Well, that’s it from the Mozilla team. This time they’ve focused more on performance enhancements than adding new features. I was hoping to see a new theme. But.. Nevermind. Better luck next time!

I’ve been getting lots of emails and requests to add more Orkut themes. I made a few searches and found some themes that worked well with Orkut. All the other old themes don’t work with Orkut now. So that’s why I decided to share some new and working themes.

First you have to make sure that you meet all the requirements before you can start using these themes.

Requirements:

Mozilla Firefox (Don’t have it? Download from here)
Greasemonkey (An add-on for Firefox. Read more)

Free Orkut Themes

Now it’s time for the themes. Below is the list of all the best themes available at the moment. Let’s kick off the list with some Emma Watson!

Emma Watson Theme

Emma Watson Orkut theme