Also, unlike the site itself, the contact forms have a width of about 600px so that they’ll look good on all screen resolutions. But then, why is the site wider ? It was actually a wise decision. The target audience of the site itself are blogger and webmasters, majority of whom will be having 1024×768 or greater resolution. But, the target audience of the contact forms are just the general internet users. So, it includes people who have 800×600 resolutions.

The next is that i’ve created a Twitter account for Kontactr. If you’re on twitter, don’t forget to follow @kontactr. And lastly, there is a new feedback forum for Kontactr now. If you’ve any new ideas/suggestions for Kontactr, head over to the feedback forum and post them right away.

What plans i have in mind ?

• To introduce PRO account with ability to remove “powered by Kontactr”, change the “Sent, thank you” message text and some other features.
• In general, add more features for all users.

If you’ve some ideas in mind, drop them at the feedback forum.

No, lets look into the services that OU has to offer. To start with, Opera has provided 8 services.

File Sharing & Photo Sharing

A simple and safe way to share your files between computers. Safe ? As pointed out on a blog, the URL of the OU is not ever https://. And did i tell you that your computer and Opera should be running always, if you want to access your OU service from any other computer. I’d rather choose better alternatives like SkyDrive, Dropbox etc.

Media Player

“Access your complete home music library from wherever you are” Are you kidding ? I’d rather take my music with me, than keeping my home computer running all the time for me to access its music. Of course it allows you and your friends to listen to music collaboratively. But thats sorta silly.

Web Server

This service is the one that really transforms your browser into a web server. It will come in handy when you want to show off a fancy HTML page to your friend without having to upload it to any server. I don’t see any other practical use of it. Home networks and computers are not suited for hosting websites and that is the reason people pay the hosting providers for. Even if your computer is superman and can run 24/7 without any problems, you should choose better solutions like Ubuntu Server and the like, for hosting websites.

The Lounge

This is the only service that i see some sense in. You can chat with your friends online (which everyone does most of the time) without having to rely on Google, Yahoo, MSN and the like. But i don’t see me (or anyone) replacing the favorite messengers with OU yet. Not to mention, i’m damn sure i can’t convince any of my friends to try OU. The obvious question is “Whats the big difference ?”. For an average use, why does it matter at all whether he communicates directly or via a webserver.

These are just the services that Opera offers, to start with. It provides an API for developers to creates services on. But i doubt any of them will be useful enough to convince people to use Opera Unite. So, the answer to the million dollar question “Does Opera Unite really change anything ?” is probably a negative. To the end user, it doesn’t matter whether his computer communites with a webserver or not. Anyway, we’ll have to wait and see what the developers come up with.

Now, whats your opinion ? Do you think Opera Unite will be of any use to you ?

With all the keyboard shortcuts and the "sexy" AJAX interface, Gmail was really the #1 webmail that increases your productivity and saves time. Now, with this new Tasks feature, your can further increase your productivity.

My first impressions on this :

• Its really simple to use
• Doesn’t compromise for the features either. Supports multiple lists.
• Saves time, as usual, with its keyboard shortcuts.

I’ve been using the popular Remember The Milk for my tasks, so far. Apart from that, I also have Stickies on my desktop. So, is it time to dump these ? Well not really. Actually, the Gmail inbox is one window that I have open all the time. So, it is very useful to have my tasks in there rather than a separate website. But, there is something I want to see here. I want to be able to fix my tasks in my sidebar so that they are always visible to me. Thats the real motivation. If I have to click a link to view my tasks, that spoils the purpose of having it.

Now, that being said, I won’t stop using RTM any time soon. However, I’ll stop writing tasks on the Stickes. They will be moved to Gmail Tasks.

So, what about you ? Have you tried Gmail Tasks ? Will it replace your present Tasks manager ? Share your views in the comments.

The page that appears next is pretty self explanatory. You just need to choose the colors for form text, form background, textarea color, textarea background. And, when you press OK, the required code will be displayed. To test out this without logging in, go here (note: it doesn’t give you any valid code unless you are logged into your account).

Check this out :

I’ll be implementing more features soon. Let me know what features would you like to see in Kontactr…

I’m a strong believer of the words “Code is Poetry”. I enjoy coding. Hope i get some good tasks soon…

I read about this site on Ian Fernando’s blog. Something that caught my eye was that they have used my quote (from this post) about RSS Subscribers. Though i hate the service, i feel prestigious to have been quoted along with Mark from 45n5 and John Chow(:D).

There are some reasons why one would not use RSSXplosion :

1. If you are so much interested in raising feedcount, you can sign up yourself with many feed readers or many accounts with a single reader and subscribe to your blog’d feed from each of them.
2. A common way of faking the RSS Count is to use someone else Chicklet, but linking to your own feed. This is often found out. So, instead you can display someone else’s feedcount in plain text. (though i’m displaying in plain text, i’m not faking it. you can check out my chicklet here.)
3. If you feel that the above method is difficult, you can just put some Big number in plain text and link it to their feed. Like DeafMusician(.com) which claims to have 6.24 Billion RSS subscribers. The screenshot (in case it is removed) :
   
4. It hurts your reputation once people come to know that you have bought subscribers. RX isdefinitely not going to be profitable. So, if they close down, you’ll lose all your”bought” subscribers. Better to stay away.

And coming back to this quoting stuff, though the owner of RX has got the rights to use quotes with appropriate credits, what Ian Fernando says is right :

The owner of RSSXplosion is using popular authors and bloggers to associate with this pathetic service.

What do you say ? Would you buy RSS subscribers if your count is low, or you’d better be honest to your readers ?

UPDATE: Don’t ever bother to visit the two non-linked websites. RX is useless. DeafMusician does all sort of childish things like the faking feed count, using images without credits, disobeying copyrights etc…

Then, i started searching for something better. I knew about Zookoda. So, i logged into my Zookoda account. Again, i couldn’t find a way to import my users. Also, i have read this post. So, i skipped Zookoda.

Then, at last, i came across this post from Mashable. It had a big list of Newsletter Services. All of them were paid. I’m not making much money to spend on such sophisticated services, as i was looking for something simple. If i signup with any of them, i will not use atleast 70% of their features.

So, do you know any simple, yet powerful script out there ? If so let me know… Also, if i don’t find any, i will write one myself. Also, would this make a good idea for my next startup ? Theres only Zookoda in the field of “free”, “hosted” newsletter services. I think i’ll be able to better and easier… What do you think ?

I was amazed by the simplicity of the site. You just have to enter the URL of the RSS feed that i want to display and some formatting options. Then, you get 2 types of code.

1. A Line of JavaScript code
2. 6 Lines of code for use on a Media Wiki page, eg Million Dollar Wiki.

They even allow you to use your own Stylesheet of the feed, which is very nice. Here’s an example :

A lot of hosted blogging platforms like Blogger, WordPress, Typepad etc.. are very popular. But, is it a good decision to go with these services ? Of course, yes. Isn’t is better to go with a self-hosted solution ? The answer is Yes again. So, we’ll see few reasons why you should go with Hosted Solutions and few reasons why you shouldn’t.

Why you should choose a Hosted Blogging Platform ?

1. You do not need money upfront. Many services like Blogger and WordPress.com are free of cost. You need not have your own domain name nor you need to worry about hosting.
2. These blogs are very easy to manage and also to customize them. You need not fight your way hard to install a theme or something like that.
3. No technical knowledge required. Whatever may go wrong, may it be with the blog or the hosting etc.. they will take care of it for you. You need not spend sleepless nights trying to fix it.

Why you shouldn’t choose a Hosted Blogging Platform ?

1. You can run your own ads. Services like WordPress.com don’t allow you to run your own ads which can be annoying for those who blog for money.
2. You have broader options to customize your blog. You can have your own totally custom theme. You can install as many plugins you want etc…
3. Many people consider these services are inferior. Only very few such blogs have made to the Technorati top 100. Advertisers think twice before advertising on a remotely-hosted blog.
4. These services retain the right to take your blog down for objectionable content. So, its often dangerous.

These are just my views, though many would agree on these. If you have your own points to tell, please do add them in the comments below…

So, what does AideRSS do ?

AideRSS uses a unique scoring system called PostRankâ„¢ (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 PostRankâ„¢.

Your post need not have thousands of links and Diggs to have a PostRankâ„¢ 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.

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.

If they modify their system to make it so that a blog post will be removed from their directory once it has been published by a blogger, it would be great. No one would like to have duplicate content on their blogs.

Also, they should consider a better redesign. Currently the varying font sizes look horrible and also the “radio button farm” on the choose category page.

Other than these, Bligter is a great service for those who don’t have sufficient time to keep their blog updated. However, this cannot be used as the only source of posts for any blog.

Sparky Features

• Related Links: Find sites that are similar to the one you are currently visiting.
• Traffic Trend: A sparkline showing the traffic trend from the last four months.
• Reach Meter: A neat little indicator that shows the site’s Reach.
• Traffic Rank: Shows the current site’s Alexa Traffic Rank.

Its really good news for all webmasters. I’m really excited. Lets see how the Ranking of various websites change due to the Firefox effect.

People can generate Favicons for their own website or even create and publish an icon which will be listed in their gallery. There a lot of cool generic icons available, that you can choose for your website if you don’t have one already. I’m planning to create a favicon for GotChance. Lets see how it comes.

Why is redirecting so important?

Feedburner’s Blog says, “By redirecting your feed, you can get a true picture of how many subscribers you have. Some of you might even see a few more subscribers magically appear, though results will most certainly vary. Why so? Sometimes, publishers inadvertently fragment their feed audience by offering more than one feed address on the blog itself or within their autodiscovery tags (the method by which feed readers automatically detect the address of your feed for syndication purposes). This results in some subscribers not being counted, and no one wants that in a world where everyone should count for something. By redirecting your feed, you can consolidate any straggler subscribers and greatly improve your ability to effectively measure your audience.”.

This method of posting the same content to many sites at once has now hit videos. This time it serves a better and useful purpose. Hey!Spread is a service that allows you to upload your videos to multiple video sharing sites at once. Currently it supports YouTube, MySpace, Google Videos, Yahoo Videos, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, PhotoBucket, MetaCafe, Bolt and PutFile. The reason i call this a more useful service that OnlyWire is that, the primary purpose of websites like del.icio.us, Furl etc.. is to help users organize their favorite links and one place. But this is not the case with YouTube and others. They are used so that your video will have a wider audience.

Note : Multiple is always better. I, even own a website that allows you to search over 100 different video sharing sites. The website is VidSav.com. I’m planning to sell it. So, anyone interested can contact me.

Blog comments help your site rank better in the SERPs. We hired a few people who go through a list of blogs in a database we set up and pick out blogs that are in your niche. They then read through blog posts and leave a comment that has to do with the blog post they read, that way it wont get deleted. Your backlink will then be on a targeted blog, giving you more weight in the search engines.

Everyone sees it as a really bad idea and this would lead to more Spam. Blogger’s reaction (here, here, here & here) are extremely negative. But John Chow is always different and he sees this from positive angle.

Let’s face it, all blogs want more comments because it makes the blog look active. And if the comments are related to the post topic, do you really care if it’s being done by a hired gun instead of the true commentator?

I tend to agree with this highly. When i get some nice comments related to my posts, i don’t mind if they are being paid for. But as John points out, the price is not high. $20 for 100 comments is a good price in my opinion.

As a whole, Buy Blog Comments is service that would destroy the system of blogging, thought it wouldn’t encourage Spam. This might be successful or even not, but i expect to see a lot of similar services in the near future.

As i already mentiond, Pownce is really better than Twitter (though i have to play around a lot). The only problem i’m experiencing now is the Scrolling problem. Seems that its a lot of load on the server and the scrolling is not smooth. It is the same problem that i experience on Digg Submit page (Step 2). So i assume that it due to AJAX.

If you are already on Pownce, you can send me a Friend invite. My profile is here. If you don’t have one, you can get an invite here.

After experiencing Twitter and comparing with Pownce (based on the video review), i seriously think that Pownce has got the upper hand. A lot of users might migrate to Pownce once they open up the service for all.