Today i found something really weird. I was making a small change to this theme (actually made Pings and Comments separate) and wanted to test out in all the browsers. So i opened up my Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, Opera and the recently launched Safari for Windows. After checking everything in all the browsers, i presses Winkey + M, which is meant to be a “Minimize All” command. But, the Safari windows was still maximized. All others went down to the taskbar. I tried few more times. The same happened. I am one dumb man when it comes to System bugs, so, i thought “Might be due to the fact that Safari looks different from other Windows ?”. What a crazy doubt. Anyway, to clear this up,i opened my Pownce Adobe Air application. It obeyed it very much.

So, might this be a consequence of the never-ending MS-Apple war ? Who is to be accused for this ? Lol.

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78%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?
I came across this cool quiz on Matt Coddington’s blog, who recently sold his Net Business Blog for $13,000. The quiz is cool and i love the syringe to the left.

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Wouldn’t it be coll if you could just sit back and have coffee while your Wordpress upgrades itself automatically. Yup, thats what this plugin does. Upgrading has always been a pain to bloggers and it is one of the main reasons why they opt for remotely hosted solutions like Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. Wordpress Automatic Upgrade(WPAU) is a plugin that automatically upgrades your wordpress version to the latest files provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions.

WPAU does more than just update your blog. Here is a list of what it does :

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins.

Kudos to the developers for making such a useful plugin. You can read more about it here on Techie Buzz.

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Do you know that adding pictures (relevant or irrelevant) can get your readers more involved into your post. Yeah, its true. Visual appeal is what reaches your readers first. So, here are some reasons why you should be using pictures in your posts.

1) Adding pictures to every post

This works with most blogs and the main factor is the pictures you choose. Dosh Dosh is a successful blog that adds a picture to every blog post. Everything is a comic image (i don’t know where Maki gets them from). I like this practice very much. Also, TechCrunch uses a picture on every post. They put up the logo of the company they write about. I do that here too, when i write about websites.

2) Adding pictures to Lists

Lists are always the best ways to get your readers to read through the entire post. Adding a picture to a list adds even more flavor to it. Darren Rowse did this wonderfully in his “18 Lessons I’ve learnt as a Blogger“. After seeing the first few images, i was eager to know what picture was used when i was scrolling down.

3) Adding pictures to explain something

This is the best way of inserting pictures into posts. I use a lot pictures, when i explain something. For eg, the recent FeedRinse post. Also the gadget blogs like Engadget, Gizmodo etc.. have pictures of the gadgets in each post and that is why they are successful. Can you imagine an Engadget without pictures ranking #1 on Technorati or a picture-less Gizmodo ranking #3. Never.

So, if you are doing it already, start making your blog look more attractive by adding more pictures to your blog. Just be aware and don’t add too much of them.

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A day ago, i wrote about AideRSS, a way to manage your feeds, if you are subscribed to too many of them. I also mentioned about FeedRinse, an alternate way to filter your feeds. The key different between AideRSS and FeedRinse is that AideRSS allows you to “read what matters”, while FeedRinse allows you to read what matters YOU. That is, AideRSS automatically fetches the best posts/good posts and provides them to you. But, with FeedRinse, you can supply the necessary conditions for a entry to appear on a feed. Take a look at the picture below :

That is self explanatory. Right ? The options are that you can either Block the post or Allow the post after setting conditions. And there are other options available too. Check out special screenshot made by me :

FeedRinse gives you better control over what you read. That is why i would prefer FeedRinse over AideRSS. I’m not against AideRSS. It does good what it aims to do. Just that my personal preference would be for FeedRinse.I think i needn’t explain how FeedRinse works because their Tour page explains it very well. That page is the best of its kind that i have ever seen. Too see FeedRinse in action, check out the below image :

Those were the conditions that i set up on my own feed and the output feed is here.

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I’m very happy to announce the launch of GotChance’s new Gadgets blog. This blog will be no mass media as Engadget or Gizmodo is. But, i will post about the gadgets that i come across on the web that i like. It will be mainly the Geeky and Techy gadgets. You can Subscribe to the Full RSS Feed, if you would like to be updated. Also if you’d like to write for GotChance Gadgets, feel free to contact me. Hope you enjoy the stuff.

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With the rate at which the Blogosphere is growing, there are hundreds of thousands of blogs created daily. They include some great ones too, which tempt us to subscribe to its Feed. Gradually the list of blogs in one’s RSS Reader grows into 10s and 50s and even some 100s. I, personally use Netvibes as my feed reader, and i am subscribed to around 40 feeds. So, it gives me around 100 new entries daily and its really impossible for me to read all of them. Thats where services like AideRSS come in handy. AideRSS is an intelligent assistant that saves time and keeps you on top of the latest news. We research every story and filter out the noise, allowing you to focus on what matters most.

So, what does AideRSS do ?

AideRSS uses a unique scoring system called PostRank™ (ranging from 0 to 10) to categorize posts from a certain blogs into Best posts, Great Posts and Good posts. It takes into account the number of comments, del.icio.us bookmarks, Technorati links, Bloglines conversations, Diggs and Icerocket conversations and compares them with other posts from the same blog and assigns the relative score called PostRank™.

Your post need not have thousands of links and Diggs to have a PostRank™ of 10. It is relative. If a post on your blog receives 5 comments on an average and if a particular post receives 15, it ranks higher. It doesn’t matter even if 100s of comments are made on blogs like TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb etc… So every blog has its own best posts. Thats very logical.

On a whole it is a very useful service and i’m sure i am going to use it and many will too. You can go here to subscribe to filtered feeds from GotChance. Kudos to Ilya Grigorik for creating such a wonderful service. There are also Screencasts available.

There is also another service available for Filtering feeds called FeedRinse. AideRSS allows you to read what is good and what everyone likes. FeedRinse is completely different from AideRSS. It lets you choose what you want to read. I’ll write about it in my next post.

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