RT @Pinboard: BREAKING NEWS: Pinboard acquires medium coffee at a $1.50 valuation. Believe this will have sitewide benefits; excited go ...

April 10, 2012 12:02 am via Mobile WebReplyRetweetFavorite

@ArpitNext

Arpit Kumar

RT @4JIT: 1 billion for Instagram is like paying 10,000 Rs for a pack of lays chips.

April 9, 2012 11:31 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@nirmaltv

Nirmal

Facebook: "We want to buy you. What price is cool with you?" Instagram: "You know what's cool?"

April 9, 2012 11:49 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@andrekibbe

Andre Kibbe

RT @JennyJohnsonHi5: Instagram is now in a relationship and it's complicated.

April 10, 2012 12:00 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@chr1sa

Chris Anderson

RT @nestguy: "Please give us all your users' data." "No way!" "Here's a billion dollars." "Well in that case... We have image filters too."

April 9, 2012 11:57 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@bgardner

Brian Gardner

RT @beastoftraal: Instabook. Facegram. Instaface. Instacebook. Factagram. Facebooam. Instagrook. Inook. Facram. Faceram. Ink.

April 9, 2012 11:20 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite

@clintonjeff

Clinton Jeff

RT @PabloVikasso: So does this mean my Facebook timeline is going to be full of images of locks, windows and other useless objects shot ...

April 9, 2012 11:19 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@madmanweb

Madhu 'MadMan' Menon

RT @RyanJCormier: Wonder which pisses Instagram users off more: release of Android version or news of Facebook acquisition?

April 9, 2012 11:19 pm via Silver BirdReplyRetweetFavorite

@tsuvik

Vikas SN

What to expect with the new Instagram/Facebook acquisition: http://t.co/iE1FsWZk

April 9, 2012 11:15 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Percival

Sean Percival

The above article - The Funniest Instagram-Facebook Tweets was published at Jeet Blog.

I’m sure you are impressed by the wall decor shown above. Ideally, such a wall art requires expert help from those who create customized wall paintings. Not anymore. HP has launched a nice web based service for Indian users called CreateYourWalls (or HP Wall Art) – createyourwalls.com.

HP Wall Art lets an average user create customized wallpaper online. HP has collaborated with an Indian firm called Arun & Rajive Pvt. Ltd who specialize in creating such wallpapers. With the HP Wall Art technology, now this firm’s expertise can be availed by users around the country easily.

You’d first need to measure the wall you want to put the wallpaper on so that you can input them on the tool while creating your wallpaper. You can easily drag and drop doors and windows. There are many more such customization options within the tool. The following video gives you a demonstration of how this online tool works.

You may choose from a number of pre-built themes and expressions to begin designing your personalized wallpaper.

Once you are done creating your wall art and place your order, the printing is done at a centralized location and it is then shipped to your place and installed by their customer service representatives. In fact, they also inspect your wall first to take measurements and show design samples that’ll fit your wall.

The pricing has been kept affordable (15-16K for a standard wall in Indian homes) and the print is eco-friendly. Overall, an interesting new service to decorate your walls.

The above article - Indian Users Can Now Create Custom Wall Art Online With HP’s CreateYourWall.com was published at Jeet Blog.

Convergence India Expo is an annual telecom event held in New Delhi, India. It attracts global companies and leaders in the telecom space, and hosts conferences, panel discussions and exhibitions over a span of 3 days.

The 2012 edition of the event was held at Pragati Maidan, Delhi and took place from 21-23 March. The conference schedule was impressive and you may take a look at it here. The theme of this year’s event was “India Goes Digital.”

I was invited to the event and decided to visit it on the first day. I decided to attend the panel discussion on “Building Business Models Around Apps/Services” as I was interested in the topic, and wanted to get some insights on business models for app developers in India and whether they exist at all.

Here are some of my notes from the panel discussion:

1. There’s still a long way to go for India in terms of smartphone as well as broadband penetration, and until that happens app developers won’t have a smooth going.

2. Vijay Shekhar Sharma of One97 pointed out that India is a diverse country where a huge number of languages are spoken and this is a challenge for app developers. They need to address the part of audience who aren’t comfortable with using English on their phone, and as it happens, this “part” is significant in number.

3. App developers need to think creatively about their business models. Annie Mathew of Research in Motion (RIM, makers of BlackBerry) gave the example of Shazam, the app that can identify songs from their tune, and how it employed an innovative technique of using SMS to get the final song name to generate revenue in its early days.

4. Payment processing woes, and the lack of usage of credit cards and netbanking for online transactions is another big impediment in the path of making money from apps in India.

5. While there are a number of obstacles in the way of development a fully fledged app economy here in India, the fact that smartphone usage continues to grow could be a sign of things to come. The developer talent pool in India is huge too and the future of business around apps/services is promising.

Overall, like the above panel discussions, most of the expo events focused on the challenges India faces in its journey towards becoming a highly connected country where things like 4G and high broadband penetration become the norm.

The above article - Notes From Convergence India 2012 Event was published at Jeet Blog.

This why twitter is flawed. You can treat it as a narrative stream all you want, but people react to the most recent tweet with no context.

January 30, 2012 8:39 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@copyblogger

Brian Clark

Quite true. It also applies to our lives, isn’t it? We tend to assume and draw conclusions from a sentence, a look, a sound, an appearance, a situation or a moment. We rarely care about the context. If we did, life wouldn’t be so much fun, right? You know, less misunderstandings, more respect for the individual, less conspiracy theories, constructive curiosity…who needs all that simplicity!

The above article - Lack of Context was published at Jeet Blog.

Copyblogger has an excellent piece up on their site that explains why the bill needs to be stopped now. I urge you to read that article word by word, and then act by signing the petition here – americancensorship.org.

If you are in the US, it clearly states what you should do but if you are not in the US, you need to scroll down a bit and put your email address in the box that says Not in the US? Petition the state department.

You need to understand that a bill like this getting passed in the US could cripple your internet usage no matter where you are in the world. That’s because whatever sites you can’t live without, like Google, Facebook etc are headquartered in the US and bound by the laws of that land. Also companies like Paypal, which form the backbone of Internet businesses around the world, are based in the US and will need to adhere to the provisions of this draconian law (if the act becomes a law that is).

Spread the word about this and pray that US Senators get some sense in their head and vote against this bill on January 24th. If it does become a law then God help the Internet.

The above article - Stop SOPA From Becoming a Law.. Act Now! was published at Jeet Blog.

Some important quotes from his story:

When I was working for Forbes.com during the early days of the dot-com bubble, I learned a vital lesson – you had to write every day to be any good and to have a complete handle on the beat. There was no way around the plain-old beat the pavement reporting.

So from the looks of it, Twitter has only acted as an accelerator for my blogging role, allowing me the luxury of writing less but reaching far more people.

Write everything as if your mom is reading your work, a good way to maintain civility and keep your work comprehensible.

Blogging is not about opinion but it is about viewing the world in a certain way and sharing it with others how you look at things.

Many bloggers tailor headlines and posts so that they’ll surface at the top of search results, making them at once easier to find and less enjoyable to read. And this decade, a lot of other bloggers mistook a strong writing voice for caustic irreverence. But most eventually learned that writing with snark is like cooking with salt — a little goes a long way.

Thanks Om for your insightful writeups. Looking forward to another 10 great years!

My 10 years of blogging: Reflections, Lessons & Some Stats Too

The above article - Om Malik Completes 10 Years of Prolific Blogging was published at Jeet Blog.

Mark on Productivity 501 has a pretty detailed article on getting an online masters degree from Harvard. If you are not in a position to get a regular, full-time master’s degree and considering an online course then you should take a look at this.

Marc Andreessen wrote on WSJ on why he thinks software is eating the world. It’s actually kinda obvious considering some or the other kind of software powers almost everything around us these days, but his article still is insightful and makes a nice read.

A neat article I came across today on learning a foreign language without spending a cent. The content is well-written and the resources mentioned are very useful.

Another one from Productivity 501 on creating an electronic signature. I think digital signatures are going to take over pen-and-paper signatures in the near future so it doesn’t harm to know how to create them quickly and easily.

The Economist had this interesting article on the decline of Asian marriage and its far reaching effects. I wonder how the governments will tackle this new phenomenon if they could tackle it at all.

The above article - Some Interesting Links was published at Jeet Blog.

So, when I received a request from him regarding a guest post, I readily agreed. I assumed he was a genuine blogger so I didn’t have to worry about the content.

I assumed he was genuine.

2. I was in the process of hiring writers for Guiding Tech, and a friend of mine introduced me to a writer, who apart from maintaining his own blog, also wrote for a number of sites, some of them being well known. I checked his articles, and found that he was good. I decided to seriously consider him for the position.

I assumed he was genuine.

Turned out that my assumptions were wrong. The first guy copy pasted the majority of content from other sites in his guest post. And the second guy, I just found out, almost copy pasted an entire article from a top tech blog, to another blog where he started writing recently.

In one of the episodes in the first season of 24, the famous US TV series, the protagonist Jack Bauer tells his assistant Nina Myers why he exposed some of his own colleagues when he found that they took bribes. Here’s what he had to say:

“You can look the other way once, and it’s no big deal, except it makes it easier for you to compromise the next time, and pretty soon that’s all your doing; compromising, because that’s the way you think things are done. You know those guys I busted? You think they were the bad guys? Because they weren’t, they weren’t bad guys, they were just like you and me. Except they compromised… Once. “

The two people we are talking about in this post aren’t someone who cannot produce quality stuff. They are the people who are capable, and know the shit. They have produced good and original content. But they decided to take the easy route once and hoped no one will find out..they decided to compromise once.

The result is that I lost faith in the first guy and didn’t publish his guest post. Not only did the guy lose an opportunity to promote his blog and get a backlink, he also lost an opportunity to establish a professional relationship with someone from whom he could have benefited in a number of ways in future.

I obviously decided not to hire the second guy. I did email him to know his side of the story though. He mentioned that he forgot to credit and he should have. For me, it wasn’t really about forgetting to credit. It was about not doing the things he could have done if he had invested some time. It was about taking a part of someone else’s work to produce a below par article that lacked originality.

It was about taking the easy route.

And as you see, sometimes, it really pays to never take the easy route.. to not compromise.. not even once.

The above article - The Easy Route was published at Jeet Blog.

You might have heard that Apple now has more money than the US Treasury. Its cash reserves are enough to buy a company like Netflix. Steve Jobs has always defended the cash reserves saying that it gives the company “flexibility and security”, and it can take “big and bold risks”, meaning huge acquisitions.

But Apple hasn’t made any huge acquisitions yet. It doesn’t pay dividends to its shareholders either. So, as far as I know, presently if an Apple shareholder wants to profit from the stock, the only way to do it is sell it when the price goes up, which has been steadily for a long time now. Dividends, however, can benefit the tons of shareholders who have never sold any of their Apple stock and do not plan to do it in the near future either.

A company needs a healthy cash reserve for the rainy days and for growing inorganically. Apple should definitely maintain a good cash pile too. But, $76 billion? Isn’t that a bit too much to sit on when there are better things to do with a part of that sum?

May be Apple is waiting to acquire Facebook or something like that, but considering the way Apple operates (innovation and organic growth), I highly doubt if we will get to see an acquisition like that from them anytime soon.

What do you say?

The above article - Apple’s Humongous $76B Cash Balance was published at Jeet Blog.

For those who do not have an iPad or another device, I have an idea – use different user profiles on your computer. One for work, and other for fun. You could also block sites like YouTube and Facebook on the work profile if you cannot resist visiting them while doing something important.

The thing about using separate profiles is that you can not only block sites but even distracting software, browser extensions and much more. Obviously, you would need to know what distracts you. It might not be very easy initially to figure out. But once you do, you can mass-block those on your work profile.

And when you need to take a break, and have fun, just switch to the other profile. That also ensures that work doesn’t come in the way of your fun time. Sounds good?

So, how do you eliminate distractions while working?

The above article - On Eliminating Distractions was published at Jeet Blog.

Working from home isn’t a new phenomenon. Most of the time you’ll find people who are self-employed – especially, freelance writers, journalists, photographers, designers et al – like to have a home office and usually work from there when they are not in the field. So, bloggers like me have now joined people like them in this commute-less(mostly) working experience.

I’ll definitely accede to the argument that working from home is something that you’ll find more and more people opting for these days. The rise of the world wide web – and the unprecedented earning opportunities it has brought along – has caused many to use it as a medium to create a full-time income source.

Moreover, even traditional office goers, who could have never imagined that they’ll enjoy the freedom of working from home, are now asking their bosses to let them do that. And surprisingly enough, most of the bosses these days don’t seem to have issues with that. If the employee wants to avoid the hectic commute and claims that he can be more productive while working from home, why not let him do that.

I think even if 5% of the skilled working population of the world starts working from home, that could result in an unimaginable decline in traffic snarls, pollution, road rages and accidents, and other such related things. That said, the grass isn’t usually greener on this side. I’ll talk more about that later but first lets see what are the advantages of having a workplace that’s just a few steps from your bedroom.

The obvious advantage is the freedom from long commutes and traffic congestions. In my previous job, it took around 2 hours to reach office from my home. Sure the company used to send an air-conditioned cab for pick and drop, but the commute still amounted to a lot of wasted time…the time I could have utilized in learning a new skill or practicing an ignored hobby.

Another advantage is the ability to set your own routine. While in some cases it might not be possible and you would still need to be at your laptop from 9 to 5, in most of the cases the person working from home has a specific work target that he needs to meet irrespective of when he works. So that means you get to decide your own working hours, the hours when you are likely to get the most work done.

You can also attend emergency family situations faster if you are always at home. Be it the kids or an ailing grandparent, you can quickly come to their rescue if something goes wrong.

So, working from home has its own charm for sure. But, as I said earlier, the grass is not always greener on this side. The lack of co-workers to talk to, and the absence an office environment could be more of an impediment than you might think. If you are someone who likes to have people around when you are working, it could be extremely difficult to stay productive and creative while working alone in your home office.

If you stay with your family, it could be difficult initially to set and follow a work routine. Your family members will take time to come to terms with the fact that you need a no-disturbance time zone to get work done. Friends and neighbors might not understand that you are “working” even though you are at home. They could come knocking at odd hours and expect you to respond and meet them amicably, because, after all, you’re at home and not in the office.

One more situation you’ll find yourself frequently in is the 24-hour working mode. The lack of set work hours could mean that you are glued to your computer screen when your family expects you to be watching TV with them. You are working when people in your previous office are done with their workday. You are almost always working.

Overall, working from home isn’t as easy as you might think. Ask me, I’ve been doing it for the last 3 years. And I have encountered a number of obstacles on the way. Obviously, I’m still doing that means I overcame them (I like to believe that I did).  But this working from home thing is definitely not for everyone.

What do you think? Have you given a shot at working from home yet? Are you thinking of going that route?

The above article - Thoughts On Working From Home was published at Jeet Blog.

There was a time – and it wasn’t long ago – when I could produce almost 1000 words in an hour. And all quality stuff. But lately, I haven’t written much. Writing, like any skill, needs practice. The more you write, the better you get at it.

Guess, it’s time I start following these 10 steps to become a better writer. High time.

The above article - Writing Practice was published at Jeet Blog.

Just got to know about this amazing WordPress deal that the guys over at Envato are offering. Believe it or not, the bundle has items over $250 but costs only $30. And the deal ends in 6 days from now.

Here’s what’s included in the pack:

• Aspire WordPress theme that costs $37
• WP-membership plugin that costs $27
• Extended Google Analytics WordPress plugin that costs $14
• PerfectPixel WordPress theme that costs $32
• Intersect WordPress theme that costs $27
• Mobility – Mobile WordPress theme that costs $32
• uBillboard WordPress plugin that costs $22
• Relevant Search WordPress plugin that costs $14
• WordPress designer ebook that costs $29
• PhotonWP WordPress theme that costs $32
• Beginner to Master WordPress Tutorial Series that costs $6
• BrandMedia PSD Template that costs $12

And all the above for a one-time fee (limited time offer) of $30! The Envato team is known for their quality offerings, be it their blogs, marketplaces or any other products. Hence you can be rest assured that all these products in the pack are first-grade.

My recommendation – don’t waste time thinking over it if your work involves WordPress in any way. Click here to buy it now!

Disclosure: The above post has affiliate links, but even if it didn’t have that option, I would have gladly promoted this amazing deal. This offer is just too good to miss.

The above article - Ultimate WordPress Deal Ever – Envato WordPress Bundle was published at Jeet Blog.

So, one might ask why the hell did I start a tech blog when the niche is already overcrowded. Well, first, I know more about tech blogging than about blogging on any other topic. And second, a crowded niche means there’s already a huge market you can tap on. You just need to produce quality stuff and market it the right way.

The end of September marked the completion of 9 months for the blog. I have to say that these 9 months, both for the blog and myself, have been a huge learning experience. There have been both good and bad times, points of immense excitement as well as complete helplessness, frequent surprises and myriad frustrations.

I thought I’ll share some of the lessons I’ve learnt along the way, here on this site. If you are planning on starting a blog, it might help to know what you are up against.

1. It’s Bloody Hard Work!

I knew blogging was hard work. I’ve been doing it since 2008. But starting a blog in 2010 and ensuring that it survives and thrives is harder. And it’s only going to get tougher from here on.

Now, if you’ve got cash in hand and can buy a blog or two, or have the resources to hire great writers and marketers, that’s a different story. But if you are planning to bootstrap a blog like I did and want to make money out of it, well, just know that it’s pretty rough out there.

The funny thing is, in just 2 years since I started working online fulltime, things have changed drastically. Building links have become harder, going viral on a social site is harder, writing unique content is harder….overall, it has become a tougher nut to crack.

2. Relationships Matter

Yes, this hasn’t changed. And this won’t change till humans exist. If I tell you that most of the success Guiding Tech has had so far was, in some way or the other, due to my network of friends in the blogging and social media industry, that won’t be an exaggeration.

I think you should start building relationships even before you start a blog. The best ways to get started is by making insightful comments on the blogs of people you admire, offering them help with something and doing it without expecting anything in return, getting them on Gtalk or Skype and initiating constructive discussions…many ways to do it really.

3. Getting Featured on Popular Sites Works

Whether it’s Mashable, Lifehacker or Problogger, if they talk about an article on your site, it’s good. It exposes your site to new people and helps to build authority in the eyes of Google. In fact, I’d go on to say that getting featured on high authority sites is much better than a short-lived exposure on Digg’s or Reddit’s front page.

You should try and seize every opportunity of having your article linked by a top blog. That could involve sending them tips, getting involved with their community and getting your presence felt, requesting those site owners for a guest posting opportunity and any other such networking/relationship building methods.

4. Digg is Dead

You might have heard this before but let me say that again: Digg is dead! Yes, I urge all the aspiring bloggers to not waste time and energy to get on the Digg front page. Gone are the days when a Digg front page brought tons of traffic and backlinks….not any more.

I won’t ask you to ignore Digg completely but don’t focus on it. Instead, focus on other marketing methods and building relationships.

5. It’ll Take More Time Than You Think

Everything will take more time than you think. Whether it’s writing a post, getting a certain number of visitors, getting a new design up and running…everything!Things just don’t fall into place within our expected timeframe.

Hence, if you’ve set certain goals for the site, I’d suggest that you revisit them and increase the timeframe for them.

6. Admin Issues Can Suck Life Out Of You

You know who’s the most efficient blogger? Someone who can write well, and also possesses considerably good designing and programming skills. If you don’t belong to this category of people, be ready to get frustrated frequently when you run into a design issue, a server issue or any other coding related problem.

The way out is to learn design and coding basics, or get help from trusted friends who can design or code. Don’t spend days trying to get that navbar aligned properly, when you know that you don’t know what you are doing.

7. Creating Action Based Goals is Better

Finally, I’ve learnt that creating action based goals like you’ll write one post each day, or you’ll tweet two links every hour, is much better than stat based goals like 100,000 monthly pageviews by August or 200 subscribers by next month end.

While you should keep an eye on various blog stats and analyze their growth or decline, lets admit it – you don’t have a lot of control over them. They are governed by factors like Google, a Digg front page, a tweet by a top twitter user etc.

What you do have control on is the work you can produce. Hence, when you set targets, it’s better to focus on what you can do and set goals accordingly.

The above article - 7 Lessons I’ve Learnt In 9 Months of Starting & Running a Tech Blog was published at Jeet Blog.

What do you think? True, isn’t it?

The above article - On Leadership and Attracting Followers was published at Jeet Blog.

It’s been a while since I started it with my co-founder Himanshu, and the response has been pretty good so far. The blog covers how-to articles, in-depth Windows guides and tutorials, and detailed posts on internet tools, software and other interesting tech related stuff.

Check it out and give me your feedback on the content. I suggest that you browse through the categories listed on the sidebar. Here are some of its most popular articles.

• YouTube Guide: Best YouTube Tips, Hacks & Resources
• 8 Cool Online Alarm Clock Websites
• The Definitive Guide To Connecting PC/Laptop to TV/HDTV/LCD

The above article - Check out Guiding Tech was published at Jeet Blog.

However, a lot of bloggers forget to exclude their own IP address in the analytics tool. That would mean bloated pageviews and visits, since you usually visit your site hundred times a day.

So make sure that you don’t forget the important task of excluding the IP address of your computer from the blog stats tool. Since Google Analytics is the most popular analytics tool used by bloggers and webmasters, I am outlining the steps here.

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account. On the page where you’ve got website profiles, there’s Filter Manager on the bottom right. Click on it.
2. Click on “Add Filter” on the top right of the box.
3. Give the filter a name, select pre-defined filter, select the filters from the drop-down menus and enter your IP address. (If you don’t know your IP, check What Is My IP Address )
4. Select the website profile from the left and add it to the right.
5. Click save and you are done. The visits from your computer should be excluded from the results now.

Did you forget to do it ? Make sure you do it now.

Update after Avinash’s comment

For users on dynamic IP addresses, the process is a bit longer because they’d have to exclude traffic from by cookie content. Google lists the entire process on this page.

The above article - Don’t Forget to Exclude Your IP From Your Site’s Analytics [Updated] was published at Jeet Blog.

So Chris Garrett procrastinates too. And so do I. It always feels nice when you find someone whom you’ve been following and learning from, is human too. Isn’t it ?

To be honest his article struck a chord with me. Not only does he frankly admit his procrastination challenges, he goes on to write about how he is coping with them. And for someone who’s been quite successful in this field, I think accepting his shortcomings openly requires true audacity.

So I thought I’ll take this opportunity to finally write an article on this blog after a pretty long time, and also talk about why this blog has been dormant for so long.

I could say that I was involved in other projects. I could say that I was too busy with more important stuff. I could say…well, I wish I could. The truth is I had been procrastinating.

Yeah, you heard it right. I neglected the blog which had a successful launch and hit the Digg front page on the first day. I neglected the blog which brought be more than 200,000 pageviews in its first month.

I neglected the blog which got me started into this blogging and internet marketing thing. And most importantly, it brought me opportunities which I never thought I could get.

Yes, I was busy. Yes, I had been doing other projects. Yes, I was doing important stuff. But never so busy that I can’t take out half an hour and write down a post here.

I think I struggled with both perfectionism and analysis paralysis like Chris mentioned in his articles. That’s what kept me away from posting here in spite of having a perennial flow of post ideas. And this wasn’t just with this blog. It was with whatever I did.

I know it’s ironic considering the fact that I have written some of the most popular articles on one of the most popular productivity blogs on this planet.

Now, procrastination isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes you should put things off to de-stress and enjoy life. However, when you find that you are putting things off too much and just not able to get started or finish a task, that’s where the problem arises.

I am pleased to say that things have been better at my end since the last month. The new year has started on a good note. I finally started a tech blog with someone, which I had been planning on since a long time. I was also able to take care of trivial tasks like installing a retweet button and the disqus comment system on this blog, which again I always wanted to do but could just never get my ass off to do.

So, yes I have been more productive lately. Although I still feel that I can improve upon that and do better, the progress has been good. And hence, you can expect posts from me at regular intervals going forward.

That was about it. It really felt good to write here after a long time. If you are someone who struggles with procrastination too, speak out in the comments. I might just share some tips and articles that helped me become more productive.

The above article - Chris Garrett Struggles With Procrastination Too was published at Jeet Blog.

You probably know by now, that your writing skills can make you some cool cash if you know how to use it. Believe it or not, people are willing to pay you lots of money to write for them, especially online businesses and publications. In fact, the demand for writers has never been greater, with thousands of mom-and-pop business looking to outsource their writing tasks.

That’s why I was intrigued when I first came across a guide called “Freelance Superstar” by Monika Mundell and Gobala Krishnan. According to the site, it’s a “complete guide to get started with freelance writing”, so it’s probably most suited to newbies who want to get in the game with a bang.

See the site here: Freelance Writing Guide

In case you don’t know who the creators are, let me give you a “brief” history.

According to their website:

“In 2005 Gobala quit the rat race, fired his boss, and decided to be a full-time writer. Working just two hours a day from his home, Gobala soon discovered that he could expand his writing career into information products, and have since produced multiple best-selling ebooks, guides and systems. Monika, who started off as a part-time writer, soon landed enough high paying writing jobs to kiss her boss goodbye too. She has written for high-profile blogs and continues to expand her writing career like a maniac on steroids.”

The product’s main guide is a well-written PDF guide that reveals key components and tips on becoming a freelance writer:

1. How to get started with freelance writing
2. What to expect from freelance writing
3. Online writing job sites exposed
4. How to attract high-paying clients
5. Regular writing vs. SEO writing
6. Regular writing vs copywriting
7. How to enhance your language and writing skills
8. How to get regular clients and stable income
9. How to get paid as a freelance writer

.. And much more.

Besides the main guide, Gobala and Monika also provide you with valuable supporting tools and documents. These are indeed quite useful and will help you save lots of time. You’ll also get:

1. Email templates you can use to solicit for clients
2. Process map for your freelance career
3. Gorgeous “Portfolio” WordPress themes
4. Step-by-step blogging video tutorials

In terms of quality and value for money, this is definitely one of the best products I’ve seen. Sure, there are lots of free blog tips and forum posts that you can refer to, but you probably realize by now that the more of those you read the further away you get from actually doing anything. Many of the forum posts are by dodgy characters who probably haven’t landed a paying client in years. Some are just too sell-contradicting to be of any real value.

That’s why I give “Freelance Superstar” the thumbs up for producing a well-written, clear and straightforward guide that anyone can understand.

To get more information, visit the site here:

Freelance Writing Guide

The above article - Calling All Potential Freelance Writing Superstars was published at Jeet Blog.

It’s a good thing I’d say if you can cope with the information overload. I have no problems with that. I love to randomly check out twitter streams of people to find new content. I too love to share nice stuff as and when I find them on the web.

My main source of information has always been Google Reader (since it was introduced of course). I subscribe to a huge number of blogs and also love to make use of its share feature.

Sometime back, it struck my mind if it is possible to share my Google Reader shared items on Twitter in real-time. I did some research and found it could be done with Twitterfeed. However, it wasn’t as real-time as I’d want it to be (though they have made some changes lately). So I went for the next option, which was doing it through Friendfeed.

Assuming you have a Friendfeed account, here are the steps to use it for getting your shared feed items on Twitter.

1. First make sure you add both Twitter & Google Reader to your Friendfeed services list.

2. Go to Friendfeed Tools and click on Post to Twitter.

3. Select the options as you see in the screenshot below. If you want people to come to the Friendfeed page and start a discussion then you might consider unchecking the “Link to source site..” box.

4. Save changes and you are done. Next time you share something on Google Reader, it gets posted automatically on your Twitter account instantly.

Do you any other interesting ways to integrate Google Reader, or any other service for that matter with Twitter ? Lets hear them in the comments.

Image credit: Byrion

P. S. I know I am back after a long time. Well, there are many reasons behind my prolonged absence on the blog, but I thought it’s better to start posting useful stuff instead of a long rant of excuses.

The above article - How To Share Simultaneously On Twitter & Google Reader Using Friendfeed was published at Jeet Blog.