10 of the Best Google Apps Ever!

I am a big fan of Google and its products. I really love the company for its continous innovation among new and useful services for the average user. Google is my personal homepage and my life on the net starts from Google and ends at Google. I use services like GMail, Google Reader, Webmaster Services almost everyday.. Well here are some of my favourite services from Google and mind you they are ranked in the order of my preference…

• Google Search

Well actually this had to be the number one, since Google is all about helping us find things. I decided to drop its rank to zero simply because most of us use Google for the sole purpose of Search and nothing else..

• GMail

I think gMail has made email all the more simpler than ever before. Keeping with the google’s trend of keeping things simple GMail remains my favourite mail client. Built with the one of the best spam and anti-phishing filters gMail also manages to keep the bad stuff out of my inbox..

• Google Adwords and Adsense

Most people say that it was Google Adsense that actually revived the internet. By allowing a large scale of people to monetize their site, we saw the emergence of a new breed sites, the main purpose of them was to earn money thru adsense. Before adsense the internet was dying, there were hardly any sites that were added to the web everyday.

• Google Reader

This is one of the best products from the Google Stable. A Feed reader that makes it easier to find the news that you are looking for and its simplicity really amaze me. Its neat layout and easy to use AJAX enabled layout allows anyone who is a feed junkie to make his life all the more easier.

• Webmaster Services

Now this is a really cool service from Google. Webmaster Services allow you to optimize your site, prepare sitemaps and host of other things that helps Google index your site better.
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5 sling-shot ways to build traffic to your blog

With 70 thousand new blogs being created everyday (Technorati http://technorati.com/weblog/2006/02/83.html) getting traffic to your blog can be an overwhelming task, and many new bloggers abandon blogging because very few people turn up to read their posts. A decent amount of traffic is essential for many reasons. Some bloggers want to disseminate their pioneering ideas and opinions. Others publish content to generate advertising revenue. Many entrepreneurs use their blogs as PR platforms. The more your ideas spread, the greater is the impact they create.

There are a few a reasons for this…

The first reason is personal. I myself am studying ways to increase traffic to my own blog i.e 33rockers. I’ve been blogging for more than 5 months now and I’ve never made a concerted effort to increase traffic until now. Consequently, my blogging has always been haphazard. You are motivated to write more if you know there are people reading your thoughts and are sharing their own opinions with you. For this you need lots of traffic because only 3%-4% of your visitors leave genuine comments on your blog. Even if they don’t leave comments, a steady increase in traffic means your audience are increasing. So this post is also, sort of, a recent manifestation of my (relevant) traffic building efforts.

The second reason is logical. When you start a new blog, the biggest hurdle after “what to write?” is “how to get people to read it?” So once you know how to get traffic to your blog, you can create your blog with confidence. You can also work parallel: you can initiate at least some actions that can build a decent traffic by the time you’ve got a solid blog under your belt.

So here are the 5 sling-shot ways to build traffic to your blog:

Visit other blogs and leave comments

I mention it as the first most point because it puts your name, and your link in front of many blog readers, especially if you interact on a popular blog. Don’t just leave comments for the sake of leaving them. Think about the post carefully, and then think about what more you can add. In the beginning it seems difficult because you feel like an outsider, but once you start interacting regularly you feel like a part of the discussion. I’ll stress, only leave comments when you have something really to say. Randomly leaving your links in the comment boxes is a “sure-shot way of not getting traffic to your blog”.

Put others’ links on your blog

Just as you want your link to appear on other blogs, other bloggers too want their links to appear on your blog. Again, don’t just randomly select the links; they should some way or the other be related to your blog’s topic. For a few
months it may seem like a one-sided affair (you putting everybody’s link and nobody linking back to you) but as the traffic on your blog gradually builds and as you regularly post interesting topics, the other bloggers will recognize the worth of linking to you.
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Blog Juice Calculator

Blog Juice Calculator Determine the “blog juice” for your blog using this tool from Text-Link-Ads and compare with various other blogs from the blogosphere. Juice is determined from your Bloglines subscription, Alexa rank, Technorati rank and inbound links in Technorati.

Firefox is gaining Market Share

Firefox the flagship browser of Mozilla is gaining huge amount of popularity. According to W3Counter’s Global Stats Firefox now has a market share of about 27% and IE has reached an all time low of 66%. It also seems that Safari is fast gaining ground according to the stats published by Arstechnica.

According to Arstechnica Internet Explorer usage reached all time low of 82.10 percent, whereas both Firefox and Safari have reached a all time high. Firefox’s market share is now 12.46 percent and hold second place in the browser race. Safari holds the third place with a market share of 3.53 percent. Down here is a screenshot of the Stats published by W3Counter and Arstechnica..

Stats by W3Counter

Stats by Arstechnica

w00t my 100th Post

Well 33rockers turned 100 today. Oh come of it, I was just joking.. This post happens to be my 100th Post. Time to celebrate I guess. But to tell you one thing, Digg and Del.icio.us have also decided to join my Party.

Yesterday my Post 13 Great Firefox extensions for web Professionals got featured on the digg homepage. Since then I am getting about 4000 visitors every hour. Due to the post being dugg, I have also made it to the del.icio.us Hotlist.. 33rockers is only 5 months old and I am happy that it has managed to pull in some popularity on its own..

I would like to thank all my readers for the kind support that they have given. For those of you who aren’t rocking as yet start reading 33′Rockers..

Fix Google Reader in Opera

Google Reader now works just fine in opera. thankx to the reader.js [get it!] . All you have to do is …

• Right click in the page of your google reader, click edit site preferences
• Go to scripting and see the box for choosing a file there? type in this…
• C:\Program Files\Opera\profile\cache4\reader.js
• and make sure you place that reader.js file in the folder of opera as indicated above.
• and you are done! refresh the page, have fun!

PS: If you are the person who wrote that wonderful javascript file, get in touch with me. will add your name for credits. you deserve it:)

Thanks to Syn

Make your MySQL upto 10x Faster

MySQL is a rock solid, lighting fast database server which has been designed for two factors speed and performance. It is the Ferrari of databases: Light weight, fast and Built for the high speed tracks!

I still hear an awful lot of stories from owners whose databases are running two slow. In my experience, the three main places to look for problems are:

• 1. Faulty Database Design
• 2. Bad Queries
• 3. Server factors

Faulty Database Design

Proper database design is the single most important factor for the ensuring performance and maintainability of the database. Here is what you need to answer when designing a table: Can I reduce the size of data that each row will have? Here is what you can do:

• 1. Use unsigned numeric values when the application will not store negative numbers. Like the “quantity ordered” of an item in an ecommerce application is never going to be -$125.
• 2. Use Variable length values instead of fixed length value i.e. used varchar instead of char.
• 3. Do not use unnecessarily large field sizes

For most ecommerce application “unsigned smallint” is more than enough to store inventory count. A field described as “unsigned smallint” can store a max value of 65535.

• 4. Don’t ignore normalization

it helps prevent unnecessary repetition of data. The part B of this is, don’t overuse normalization. If the table will not grow in size significantly, there is no point in normalization. For example, if the user table has just 20 rows (i.e. 20 employees in a company), all attempts of normalization are wasted.

• 5. Use Keys

Don’t decide keys by “The customer id has to be indexed in the order table”. If the order table is being searched 90% of the times by “order date”, it makes more sense to index “order date”.

Remember, how a table will be used should determine how it is designed. Spending time here will save years of frustration.

Bad Queries

It sounds too good to be true but you wont believe the number of developers out there who completely suck at writing queries. There are two types of bad queries:

• a) Unnecessary Queries

These are the queries that shouldn’t have been made in the first place. The only way to avoid this is asking, “Do I really need this data?”

• b) Inefficient Queries

These are the queries that do not use the underlying table structure or MySQL functions in the correct way.

Here is a starting point to start looking at problem areas

1. Unnecessary usage of “Select * “statements when the entire processing is being done on a single column. The more data is fetched from the server the more work MySQL has to do and more bandwidth it takes.

2. Using sub-query instead of a join. On a properly designed database, joins are incredibly fast. Using sub-queries just shows a lack of knowledge.

3. Improper use of Keys. This is especially valid for range checks. Remember to use the “Explain” statement to check the usage of keys and then use the “use key” statement in your “where” clauses to force key usage.

Server Factors

Everything done correctly, there still may be some server factors that may be causing the system to be slow. These are:

• 1. Hardware related
• 2. Server configuration related

Here is what you can do about the hardware:

• 1. The more RAM is on the system the better it is. MySQL frequently fetches data from the RAM and more the RAM is on the system, the better it is.
• 2. Buy the fastest possible RAM! A slower RAM is just irony.
• 3. Once you are settled with the RAM size and speed, look for processing speed. MySQL can use multiple processors.

Once you are satisfied with the hardware, there are a set of variables in “my.cnf” that you must look at:

• a) key_buffer_size:

This describes the memory available to store the index keys. The default is 8 MB but you can set it to 25% of the RAM.

• b) query_cache_size:

This value is by default 0. if you have a lot of repeating queries like in reporting applications etc, make sure you set this value high.

• c) table_open_cache:

This determines the number of table descriptors that MySQL will keep in the cache. The default value is 64. But, if you have 100 users accessing a table concurrently then this value should atleast be 100. You also have to take into considerations joins etc. Thus, this value should also be kept high.

I hope this article will take one step further in unlocking the mystery of slow servers and help solve some of the problems.

Thanks Site Reference

10 tips to make your site load like a rocket

Have you been wondering why many people come to your site and leave as soon as they come.. The reason is fairly simple, the time it takes to load your page.. Having your pages to load fast has many advantages, it means more vistors and more revenue to your site. Here are some tips for you to make your pages faster.

• 1. Use images sparingly.

Images may enhance the appearance of a website but it greatly increases its loading time. While optimizing images will make the pages load faster, overuse will not have the desired effect. For example, if you use over 75% of your page content as images chances are that your pages will load very slow.

• 2. Use HTML to design your pages

HTML when used well can be very effective in creating fast loading pages. You can create simple and elegant sites using plain HTML, CSS and few images.

• 3. Minimize animated gifs and flash usage

Wherever possible use very few animated gifs and flash files. As much as they enhance web page appearance they usually bog down the loading times so use sparingly.

• 4. Use background images

Instead of using full images, use background images for headers and footers. In this way you get to use a strip of the image of uniform design instead of using an image 779px wide.

• 5. Avoid using Javascript and flash scripts

Most of these scripts contribute greatly to slow loading pages because they usually have to load some items first before they are rendered. For example, Javascript drop menus are very useful in creating seamless navigation but unfortunately increase page load times significantly. Consider using CSS with which you can have drop down menus.

• 6. Optimize your HTML

One of the reasons why pages may load slowly is huge page size as a result of useless or repeated HTML tags. Validating your site is one way of optimizing your HTML.

• 7. Avoid using multimedia files

Unless your site is an entertainment one don’t use multimedia files especially as background music unless you absolutely have to. Providing a download link or an online player is better than using the files as background music.

• 8. Use Templates

Using templates will not only ensure uniformity throughout your site but will enable subsequent pages load faster because the structural images will have cached and thereby reducing the load times significantly.

• 9. Optimize images

Using an image editor like Photoshop, or Ifarnview, images can be optimized to load fast depending on their intended use. Appropriately resized and cropped images will greatly reduce the loading times of a page and at the same time maintaining their integrity.

• 10. Check your loading times

Finally check your loading times using plugins such as Fasterfox in Firefox to see how long your pages are taking to load.

This article was written by Hilum Mburu, the lead web developer at http://www.simbahosting.net a web hosting & design solutions firm.

13 Great Firefox Extensions for Web Professionals

I am basically a web designer and I use a lot of tools to get my job done. As of today Firefox remains my favorite browser simply because of the vast number of plugins it offers. Well here are some of my favourite plugins for web design and development..

HTML Validator (http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/) validates web pages to the W3C HTML standards with a simple green check in the corner of the page if the page validates, a red check if it doesn’t, and a yellow exclamation point if there are warnings. It also includes an enhanced view of source code that allows you to see where errors are within the code.

FireFTP (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/684/) free, secure, cross-platform FTP client that provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers. This eliminates a piece of software for those of you who use a separate program for FTP.

Professor X (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2823/) lets you view header information without having to view source code. The page “slides” down and Professor X shows you the contents of the page’s head element, including Meta, Script and Style content.

NikkelWHOIS (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2646/) view the WHOIS information for any page by clicking the button on the top-right of the browser.

IE Tab (http://ietab.mozdev.org) sick of swapping between Internet Explorer and Firefox when testing out a web page you’re developing? With IE Tab you can view Internet Explorer in a Firefox Tab!

FireBug (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1843/) an advanced debugger console that lets you monitor your JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Ajax.

Codetech (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1002/) web page editor that has the feel of Dreamweaver. An amazing extension for anyone doing web design that doesn’t want to fork out a few hundred dollars for Dreamweaver.

Server Switcher (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/2409/) easily switch between sites on your development and live servers by clicking the switch server icon.

SEO for Firefox (http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html) pulls useful market research data right into Google’s and Yahoo!’s search results, including Google PR, Age, links, Alexa rank, WHOIS, and more. It also adds a few helpful links to the top of the search pages, including Google Trends, Google Traffic Estimator, and the Overture View Bid tool. […]

Google in the Uncyclopedia (Funny!)

I must say, I love their image search, I can type in anything I want and I’ll get such sexy naked pictures in return and the best part is no one knows! Wait, the government monitors these now? Oh, dear….”~ Oscar Wilde on Google Image Search

“I’m going to fucking bury that thing, I have done it before, and I will do it again… I’m going to f*cking killâ„¢ Google”
~ Steve Ballmer on Google

“Don’t Google the question Moss!”~ Chris O’Dowd on Google

Google is the world’s most popular file-sharing network, powered by their patented EvilRank technology.

History of Google

The word ‘Google’ is derived from the latin word googlus which can be translated variously as “search engine that finds great Pr0n“, “The Great Satan”, or “Error 404: File Not Found”. Google Inc. began on the 6th of June 1996 (66′96)as a highly secret government program focusing on the effect of blank pages on Internet users. After three years of subjecting hapless Internets users to the pages, the project collapsed under fire from top government officials for failing to collect any data whatsoever.

In January 1998, the project was sold to individual investors Sergey Page and Larry Brin, who sold off the unused blank pages to the highest bidders. Two months later, the project was resold at half price, with only a few pages remaining, to Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

The two new owners revamped the pages to include a text box, for users to type in what they were looking for. Users were presented with the pages when individual machines sensed users’ frustration; meanwhile, Sergey and Larry were standing by at their desks, waiting for queries. At first, the queries were written down by hand, a painstaking process. When Larry contracted carpal tunnel syndrome, a new idea had to be brainstormed, and Sergey delivered: log the queries to disk.

Google Inc, as we know it today, was born. Larry, using a new voice recognition system, began creating pages in response, creating the first Internets search engine and named it Page Rank in honor of himself.

Google Today

Now Google is a popular porn page that costs users hundreds of dollars to use. Google Inc has made many innovations, not the least of which was offshoring Larry’s Page Rank system to a team of typewriting monkeys in Singapore. Thanks to the funding from the record-breaking IPO, Google serves billions of almost-blank pages (all of them with text boxes) to millions of users every day, and has expanded services to include maps, shopping, email, video, and midget bowling. Google’s motto is “Don’t be hatin’” or “Don’t be latin’” depending on the distance.

During the War in Iraq, Bush used Google to search for WMD. He’s still surfing.

Google and China

Google has recently become an arm of the Communist Party of China. Anyone searching for information about Tibet will receive the message “did you mean Norman Tebbit?” Following Google’s expansion into China, Uncyclopedia was banned from Google search results for tirelessly championing the rights of all people on earth to the accurate, unbiased, and uncensored information available through Uncyclopedia, as well as repeatedly using the words “Democracy” and “Human Rights”. Also an Uncyclopedia admin accidentally ran over Sergei Brin’s dog which probably has something to do with it.

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