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

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Calling All Potential Freelance Writing Superstars

Although Twitter (check my profile here) was primarily meant to share status updates and about what’s going on in your life, lately I find it has become an important sharing tool where people don’t hesitate to share links and pictures, just like they would do in any other prominent social media platform.

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.

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How To Share Simultaneously On Twitter & Google Reader Using Friendfeed

I have always been a believer of the fact that to be successful in a business the only skills you need is spotting talent, convincing those with the talent to work with you and then managing them.

I am sure those are the most important skills for a person to succeed in business, be it an offline business or an online one. However, apart from that I think there are certain essential work specific skills which a person should possess that would allow him to run his business with greater efficiency.

Lets talk about an online business. It could be a blog, an e-commerce website, a membership site or an affiliate marketing business. If you have an idea related to any of these formats, you could just go out and hire people who could set up a blog or a website for you. So you see even the basic knowledge of things like HTML and FTP isn’t needed to get started.

But when it comes to running a business and managing day-to-day activities, it’s always good to have a basic knowledge of certain important aspects of your business.

For example, lets say you’ve got a Wordpress blog which brings in a good sum every month. You’ve hired writers for producing content and a tech guy to take care of any technical glitches the blog might come across sometimes.

Now, one day you suddenly find that the blog is down since it has got to the Digg front page or due to some other reason. It could be a minor issue related to a plugin which can be easily taken care of by disabling it. But if you don’t have the basic knowledge of Wordpress and how things work in a Wordpress blog, you can do nothing except contacting your tech guy. And if he isn’t available at that time, you lose out on a huge number of visitors.

Recently, I faced a similar situation. I was working on a landing page template for one of my affiliate campaigns and needed some changes to the format. I don’t know CSS and never bothered to learn it. I always had my designer friends help me out in one way or the other. But this time, it was an odd hour of the day and I couldn’t find any of my friends online. Consequently, I had to postpone the work for the next day.

Later, when I consulted a friend on the issue, he found that it was just a minor CSS related hack which was needed. If only I had the basic knowledge of CSS, I could have easily resolved the issue myself.

So, the idea is to have the basic domain knowledge. You don’t need to become an expert on it. If you are an entrepreneur or aim to be one, process expertise will always be more important than the domain knowledge.

Having said that, here are some of the essential skills I think one should have if he is thinking about starting an online business.

• Knowledge of HTML and CSS.
• Knowledge of FTP.
• Some basic content producing skills.
• How blogs work and how to install a blog platform on a particular domain.
• How Wordpress works.
• Basic knowledge of Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ).
• How RSS feeds work.
• Knowledge of Google Analytics.
• Basic knowledge of social media marketing.

The nice thing about these skills is that they can be acquired easily. There are huge number of resources online which help you learn these things. And believe me, none of them is rocket science.

Are you running an online business or thinking about starting one ? What are the skills you think is important in order to succeed in your business ?

Photo courtesy : nyki_m

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Essential Skills You Need To Run An Online Business

Ever wondered how this amazing thing called the internet was created ? When and how the first time computers were connected to form a network ?

Here’s an excellent video I came across which answers those questions in about 8 mins. Check it out !

Thanks Mani.

View more great posts at Jeet Blog

History Of The Internet ( Video )

If you are running a blog which attracts a decent number of pageviews then comment spam is probably one of the things which you have to deal with on a daily basis. Of course we have Akismet, the old and trusted plugin which does a pretty good job in stopping Wordpress comment spam but still there are times when spam bots are able to dodge it and enter your main comments section.

Also, you might want to go through the comments moderated by Akismet to check if it has marked some genuine comments as spam. That’s what I used to do until a few days back when I found that Akismet was blocking around 3 to 4 thousand comments per day. Moreover, the number of spam comments which bypassed Akismet’s filters were increasing everyday.

Hence I started to look for a solution and that is when I came across this post by Shoemoney, where Jeremy talks about a plugin which closes comments on older posts since he found that those were the posts which were hammered by the spam bots. And that is what I found on my blog too.

Now the plugin is a pretty old one and hasn’t been updated since a long time. So if you are on the latest version of Wordpress then what do you do ? It’s actually quite simple. Just go to Settings – > Discussion and there you find that Wordpress already gives you that option. So no need of a plugin !

I’m not sure if this feature is specific to 2.7 and newer versions or whether it was present in some previous versions too. But it certainly is a good way to fight comment spam… in fact I’d go on to say that it would help you manage your Wordpress comments better. Because it’s really not worth your time digging into posts which are 2-3 months old and answer questions which might have no relevance today. So it’s better to just close comments and trackbacks on those posts.

Do you take any extra steps to fight comment spam or to manage your comments and trackbacks in a better way ? Lets talk about it in the comments.

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A Simple Trick To Fight Wordpress Comment Spam

Who doesn’t love awards ? And bloggers are no different. Being recognized for something you love to do is always a great feeling. So if you are a blogger who has been blogging for two months or more and would love to get more recognition then go ahead and nominate yourself at the 2009 Blogger Appreciation Awards organized by Cellphones.org.

You could also nominate your favorite blog and later vote for it once the voting is open. I expect Jeet Blog to garner a few votes at the time.

Here are the important dates to remember.

• Submissions Accepted until February 28th 2009.
• Voting until March 17 2009
• Final Results March 19 2009

And here are the prizes.

• 1st Prize: 1 year of your cell phone bill on us (Cell Phones . Org) – up to $1000
• 2nd Prize: Free cell phone of your choosing (does not include plan, just the phone).
• 3rd Prize: $100 off your your next purchase at Cell Phones .org – this is transferable and never expires.

Bloggers from all countries are eligible to participate in the contest.

So make sure you nominate a blog. And please vote for Jeet Blog once the voting opens March 1.

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2009 Blogger Appreciation Awards – Nominations Open

India’s first WordCamp was held at Adobe’s offices at Noida, near Delhi on 21st and 22nd of this month. It brought in Wordpress lovers from all around the country along with some eminent people which included Matt Mullenweg, WP founder and Om Malik, editor of gigaom.com plus a celebrated blogger.

I was one of the speakers at the event and talked about certain things one should do after installing Wordpress to get the most out of it. The presentation was primarily aimed at the beginners who find themselves at crossroads after installing WP and are not sure where to start.

Here’s the presentation. You are free to download it and keep it for your reference.

The event fared quite well and the presence of Matt and Om further added to the excitement.

Here are my pics with Matt and Om. Thanks to my friend Rohit for taking them.

For more pictures, check out my flickr stream and my friend Abhishek’s flickr stream. The videos will be uploaded to wordpress.tv in due course of time.

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How To Get Started After Installing Wordpress – My WordCamp Delhi Presentation

Finally, after a long period of inactivity, this blog is back with a new look and a new focus. If you are reading this post in your feed reader, I urge you to visit the site and take a look.

There are some minor changes which still need to be made but if you find anything broken, please do email me at abhijeet at jeetblog dot com.

There have been multiple reasons behind the dormancy of this blog. Those include my involvement in other projects which primarily relate to starting new sites, affiliate marketing and freelance writing. Also, contrary to the state of this blog, my personal life has been quite active during this period which further delayed the relaunch of this blog.

But going forward, I am sure I will devote a lot of time writing on and communicating with you through this blog. This blog now has a new focus in terms of content and I am sure you will enjoy the change.

What’s New ?

Here are the major changes.

Design

Firstly, the blog has undergone a redesign. It’s a completely different look and is based on the Thesis Theme which has been customized by Kristerlla.

The previous design was custom built keeping in mind that it is being built for a tech blog. Hence, the change in the design became necessary because as I mentioned, there is a change in content and to some extent, the overall motive of this blog.

You will notice that I haven’t gone overboard with the design. It is a simple design with a single sidebar. Also you won’t find any adsense on the posts going forward.

I hope you like the overall look and the simplicity of the design.

Newsletter

By now you must have noticed a big opt-in box on the right sidebar which asks for your name and email address. That’s the Jeet Blog Newsletter and I suggest you to subscribe to it immediately. Why ? Well, here are the reasons.

1. The newsletter is different from the blog. It is not meant to deliver blog posts to you by email. We have a separate tab for that in the subscribe section. The newsletter will contain some advanced tips and strategies which would help you to make money online and be productive while doing the same.

2. Subscribing to the newsletter doesn’t mean that you start getting loads of emails. No, that’s not the case. This newsletter, like the blog, is meant to deliver value. I would send you an email whenever I find something really valuable to share.  That could be once or twice a week. Not more.

3. Finally, the newsletter gives me a chance to share some of my undisclosed projects and strategies to succeed online, which I might not always want to share publicly here on the blog.

Hope you are convinced now. So go ahead and subscribe to it. It’s free !

Content

And now comes the change in focus which I’ve been talking about.

Jeet Blog started as a tech blog with occassional tips on blogging, social media and related stuff. And it started doing pretty well. But I realized later that this blog may not become one of the top tech blogs due to various reasons, one of them being the name which sounds more like a personal blog.

Also, as I explored other opportunities online, I found myself taking great interest in stuff like internet marketing, affiliate marketing, meta-blogging and social media. And, like any die-hard blogger, I found myself quite eager to share what I’ve learnt.

Hence, out of that eagerness, I have decided that I’ll cover those topics here on this blog. So this blog can now be regarded as more of an internet marketing blog rather than a pure tech blog.

Now, before the tech enthusiasts among you freak out, here are two things you need to know. First, tech isn’t completely disappearing from this blog. No way. I am a tech enthusiast and I love writing about technology. So you’ll still find me writing about the new media tools I use and the tricks which can help you get more work done. But it’s just that it will not be in the same frequency or the same manner like I used to cover previously.

I’m not sure what would be the frequency of posting going forward but as I mentioned I’ll try to deliver the maximum value. So whenever I find something interesting to write, something which everyone can learn from, I’ll write about it.

And finally, those who are wondering what about the new tech blog I was planning to launch, I actually did start a new one recently. It’s called Appscrazy. I’ve partnered with Arpit, a young and talented blogger, to produce content for that blog.The blog, as you would see is still in its early stages. But I am sure it will turn out well and I urge you to subscribe to it.

I also have plans to start another tech blog which would be more descriptive in nature. I’m still working on it so can’t say when I can launch it.

So that’s it for now I guess. I can’t think of anything else to write but stay tuned for more. If you have any questions, the comments section is all yours. I’d love to talk to you.

( Btw, if you think this was a really long post..I actually enjoyed writing on this blog after a long long time. It felt like home. )

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Welcome to the NEW Jeet Blog

It’s over a month now that I haven’t posted anything on this blog. A lot of people have wondered what I have been upto and if I have abandoned this blog. I’ve also received emails and messages from readers and friends expressing concern.

Firstly, I haven’t abandoned this blog. No way. Inspite of being launched just a few months back, this blog has done extremely well so far in terms of traffic, popularity, reader base, subscriber base and in getting links from all over the blogosphere. This is one of the few blogs which broke 200,000 pageviews mark and got 1000 subscribers plus a Page Rank 5 in the first 4 months of its launch.

It also helped me in establishing and strengthening my own brand equity. Although I have been involved in online projects for over 2 years now, this blog was the one that gave me a face and introduced me to a much wider community online. Not only did it help me in establishing strong relationships with the tech community but also helped me widen my reach in other niches, like the blogging and internet marketing niche.

I also wrote for some top blogs ( which I still continue to do, although I am currently not taking any new assignments ). Currently I am involved in some projects, many of them mostly in their initial stages and relate to the field of internet marketing.

As I came across more experienced guys out there and talked to the who’s who of the blogosphere, I was suggested that if I plan to establish an authority tech blog which should rank in the top 25 or 50 tech blogs, which of course I plan to do, then I should go ahead and rebrand this blog. That’s because the name of this blog suggests a personal blog and that could create some hassles.

Hence, due to my involvement in certain other projects and the uncertainty on what path I should take this blog, my posting schedule suffered and I just couldn’t find the time to post, for which I apologize to all of you. I know as a reader of this blog you’d expect me to write something constructive every once in a while and I accept that over the last one month I’ve failed to deliver on that promise.

Having said that, I urge you to stay tuned because soon this blog could see a major change in terms of content and probably in terms of look and design too. I figured in the end that rebranding this entire blog would be a bad idea and I better start another tech blog for that purpose. Regarding the content on this blog, it might shift towards topics related to blogging, internet marketing and about my journey online including a mix of tech tips and productivity hacks. Productivity would definitely be a topic which I’d love to continue covering on this blog. And considering the fact that I’m a die-hard tech enthusiast, tech isn’t just going away completely from this blog. But yes, I do have plans to start another tech focused blog on a larger scale. And this blog on the other hand will continue to deliver more value to its readers.

So, overall the purpose of this post was to acquaint you all with what’s cooking at my end and let you know that this blog is very much alive. This blog would remain silent for a few more days to come till I am done with some more things I’m involved with.

As always, suggestions, opinions, comments and discussions are invited. Also feel free to connect with me anytime through the following mediums.

Twitter : Profile

Facebook: Profile

Email: abhijeet at jeetblog dot com

Thanks ! I look forward to talk to you. And yes, stay tuned !

View more great posts at Jeet Blog

A Major Change Coming Soon…Stay Tuned

I’m sure you must have heard about the popular ZoneAlarm Firewall software. Zonelabs, the company behind the ZoneAlarm brand is giving away their Forcefield software with a one year license for a single computer for free only for today.

ZoneAlarm Forcefield aims to make your internet browsing more secure by isolating the browser from the computer. As the PC Magazine points out, ” The heart of the system is a “bubble of security”—a virtualization system that isolates the browser from the computer. Any browser-based exploits fail because they can’t touch your computer’s actual files or Registry items. “

You can get the free version here by registering your name and email address and they’ll send you a download link along with a license key. This offer is valid only for today and the download link which you get remains active for the next 7 days. I’ve just received my email containing the download link and license key and hope you don’t miss the chance too and get the internet security software for free.

[ via Digital Inspiration ]

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Download ZoneAlarm ForceField FREE For Today

I talked about the FEBE firefox add on in my post – 3 Useful Methods to Back Up Your Firefox Preferences. FEBE certainly was my preferred choice for backing up Firefox profile until the introduction of Firefox 3 which broke the extension. However now it has been updated with some latest features, the most interesting one being the automatic profile backup feature to the online file storage site – Box.net .

As you can see, the FEBE options window now includes a box.net option which can help you to either manually or automatically upload your firefox profile to box.net. You also have the option to upload the last backup which will upload the previous FEBE backups to your box.net account.

It’s important to note that although a free account at box.net gives you a 1 GB storage space, the file transfer size limit is set at 10 MB. So if you are a heavy firefox user with a lot of add ons and other stuff in your firefox profile then you may just surpass that limit which would mean that you cannot upload your profile unless you get a paid account with them. However it is still pretty useful since you could selectively backup just your bookmarks and extensions and upload them.

This feature could come in handy if you need to work on a different computer and need your firefox preferences. You could just install the FEBE extension first and then download and restore stuff from box.net. Since FEBE provides a lot of backup options ranging from the entire profile to just your user names and passwords, you could always download and restore selective preferences.

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Automatically Backup Your Firefox Profile To Box.net With FEBE

If you’ve got internet at home then you know that sometimes you might lose the internet for hours or for days in the worst case. Such problems do occur and if you need to send an important email to someone during this time then using a public computer at a nearby cyber cafe is the most likely option available.

But public computers are more prone to infections and could have spywares or keylogger software installed on them. Hence it’s important to ensure password security of your primary email account and make sure that it’s not stolen after you have typed it. KYPS is an application which helps you to do just that. It generates one time codes for your password which can be used for signing in to your email account.

It currently works with Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, WEB.DE, GMX and My Space. You can get from 40 to 200 unique codes for a single email account and each code is self destroyed after first time usage.

KYPS gives you two registration options – First, you can tell them your email user name and password and download a PDF file containing the codes. Then you can immediately delete your account. Of course you’ll have to trust KYPS here when they say that don’t store passwords. They also give elaborate explanations on the site to build that trust.

But if you still don’t trust them then you can just proceed the registration process without giving your password and then enter your password in a Java applet and instantly get the list of codes. Hence either way you can get the codes and use them to remove all possibilities of your password getting stolen at a public computer.

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KYPS Protects Your Passwords From Keyloggers

Imagine you are traveling and you get pick pocketed. Would be a nightmare, right ? So sometimes it’s important to have some cash saved with you which you can use in such emergencies.

But the question is where to put this cash so that you can use it anytime when you’re on the road. That’s where these Reef Stash Sandals come into picture which let you store that extra money, safely hidden away from onlookers’ eyes. Also these sandals could come in very handy if you’re going to the beach and don’t want to carry your heavy wallet. But make sure you don’t lose these sandals on the beach

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Hide Your Secrets In Reef Stash Sandals

Firefox is known for its cool and exquisite add ons and when it comes to playing with images online, there are a lot of such extensions available. However not all those add ons are compatible with Firefox 3 and not each one of them delivers the desired user experience.

Hence I decided to pick six add ons out of the available add ons for images. These six are really awesome and also compatible with the latest version of Firefox.

1. FoxSaver

FoxSaver is an awesome photo add on which converts your firefox browser to a screensaver / digital photo frame. After installing it, you get a small FoxSaver button in your status bar from where you can initiate it. It also supports Media RSS. I was very impressed by this add on without a doubt. You have to use it to experience it.

2. Piclens

I’ve already talked about Piclens in my post on incredible tools to browse Flickr photos and since I’m talking about the best firefox add ons for images, I am compelled to mention it again. It’s an amazing 3D graphic tool and definitely a must try.

3. Save Image in Folder

The Save Image in Folder firefox add on executes a very simple but very useful task. It adds an option to your right-click through which you can directly save an online image to your computer. You will first have to create or assign a particular folder in the add on options so that you can directly save the images to that folder. And if you are looking for license free stock images then check these stock photo websites to find such images.

4. Picnik

The Picnik add on makes online image editing quick and easy by adding menu options and toolbar icon directly import and edit the image in the well known web based image editor’s interface.

5. Image Zoom

Image Zoom adds a one click zoom functionality to images on the web. You could either use the options in the right click (context menu) or a combination of mouse buttons and scroll wheel. It works seamlessly with the latest firefox version.

6. Better Flickr

Last but by no means the least, the better flickr firefox extension developed by the amazing LifeHacker team adds a host of extra menu options to Flickr like more user links, photo magnifier and thumbnails enhancer. You can read a detailed explanation of it’s features here.

I hope you like these cool extensions. If you know about other such image related add ons which are compatible with the latest version of firefox then let’s hear about them in the comments.

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Six Best Firefox-3 Add Ons For Images

Today, exactly after 3 months and 15 days since Jeet Blog was launched, I was happy to find that Google has awarded Page Rank 5 to this blog.

I thank Google, all my readers and all the bloggers who cared to link to this blog. I hope I am able to write better, carry on the momentum and take it to the next level. Keep reading !

View more great posts at Jeet Blog

Jeet Blog Now Has PR 5 !

This is a guest post by Arpit Kumar from TechRaga

You are using your feed reader for getting latest posts from your favorite blogs and news sites. But do you know that your RSS Reader can do more than that and makes your life much easier? Here are some of those power tips to help you get the maximum out of your RSS reader.

1. Track Your Site/Blog

If you own any site or blog, then using Clicky ( a nice analytics tool with an impressive free version ) you can monitor your visitors and site stats. You can opt for getting updated stats in your RSS reader through this tool.

You can also monitor the count of your pages inside Google’s index by subscribing to this feed: “http://www.dapper.net/transform.php?dappName=GoogleSiteSearch&transformer=RSS&extraArg_title=Pages&v_Query=abc.com” . Replace abc.com with your URL. (Thanks Amit )

2. Read Your Email

There are situations when you can access your rss reader but not your email account. Like, in some offices where the firewall blocks access to your personal email accounts. Services like Mailbucket could come in pretty handy in such cases. Using Mailbucket you can forward your mails to xyz@Mailbucket.org and subscribe to http://MailBucket.org/xyz.xml , where ” xyz ” is your unique and personalized id.

There is also an alternative to get alerts of new incoming mails to your Gmail accounts in a feed reader. Just subscribe to https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom and Gmail will update you about new mails. You will receive Sender’s name, Subject and first few lines of e-mails. However this service requires authentication and hence doesn’t work with most of the web-based readers including Google Reader. But it works great with desktop readers like FeedDemon.

3. Get Job Updates

There are many sites offering job alerts via RSS. Yahoo Job Search is one of them. Search any query there, and if you wish to get updates about that query, just subscribe its RSS feed.

4. Share Calendar

This is a cool way to share events with others. RSSCalendar.com offers creating an account, adding events and meetings, and then sharing feeds with others. Sharing events with friends is a nice idea. You can also use Google’s Calendar service for this.

5. Read Your Tweets

You can read tweets inside your feed reader. Just Click on “RSS” in the bottom of your Twitter page and see the magic.

6. Read Orkut Scraps

This tip is for my friends in India where Orkut is the most popular social networking site. You can read your orkut scraps inside your feed reader. Go to OrkutFeeds and enter your or your friends’ Orkut profile url and enjoy reading them at a single place.

Note by Abhijeet : You could also subscribe to your profile alerts in other social networks. Most of them offer RSS subscription one way or the other. For example Facebook users can check this page to subscribe to the notifications in their account.

7. Track any webpage

Try Page2RSS for this. Enter URL of any web page here and just subscribe the RSS feeds associated to that page. You will be notified whenever this page is updated! This service is quite useful for the pages which don’t publish regular feeds. Other popular one is Feed For Free.

8. Feed your Search

If you search for a particular keyword(s) regularly, FeedMySearch is a cool option for you. You will get updates whenever a new result for that keyword appears significantly on Google’s Index.

9. Follow Someone @ FriendFeed

You can monitor someone’s online activity using his FriendFeed account. FriendFeed offers RSS subscription. Subscribe to your friends or Industry Experts to know what they are doing.

10. eBay Searches

RSSauction is a service which offers eBay Searches delivered By RSS . You can get updates about any keyword or item number inside your feed reader.

11. Track Questions and Answers on Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Answers can help you in finding answers to your problems. You can ask and answer here. You can use your feedreader to track any question there, simply by subscribing to its feeds.

I’d love to know your thoughts and more ways to utilize the RSS feed reader.

Arpit Kumar is an electronics engineering student and loves technology and the internet. He blogs about his thoughts on open source softwares and web apps at TechRaga.

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11 Power Tips To Get The Maximum Out Of Your RSS Feed Reader

If you love tracking you tasks on to-do list but usually have too many tasks in the list which further makes the list difficult to manage, here’s a dead simple to-do list for you. Known as Now Do This, it let’s you put the tasks in a box and once you’re done, it will show the first task with a ‘ Done ‘ button below it.

Once you finish the task, you can click on done and it shows the next task. Hence the idea is to take up one task at a time, finish it and then proceed to the next one instead of just looking at your long list of tasks repeatedly and thinking whether you would be able to finish them in time.

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Now Do This: The Dead Simple To-do list

While I’m not very much into mathematical calculations and the windows calculator works just fine for me, I know that students doing research online, especially engineering students would love to use an advanced online calculator which has better functions than the windows calculator.

eCalc is a free calculator which has both the basic and the advanced versions. It’s browser based and easy to work with. It’s scientific calculator has advanced features like support for complex numbers, unit conversion, base conversion, and has a built in equation solver. Those interested in using this should first watch the demo video which gives a good explanation of the advanced features and how to use them.

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eCalc – Free Advanced Online Calculator

We’ve already talked about some sites like Dumpr and Gooifier which let you apply nice and weird photo effects to your images easily and quickly.

Photofunia is another such site which lets you add some nice effects to your photos and has more options then the sites mentioned above. The images should be not more than 500 KB in size and should be in jpeg, png or gif format.

It also allows you to save the new photo as an avatar or download it to your computer. Nice site to play around with your photos.

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Photofunia Gives You Cool Photo Effects In One Click

Update: In an email conversation Ionut Alex Chitu suggested a better way to do it. It is by using this url : http://www.google.com/reader/public/subscriptions/user/-/label/FOLDER where Folder is the name of folder you are trying to export. He has further written an elaborate blog post on it.

Let’s say you love reading blogs related to different subjects and subscribe to a lot of feeds in your Google Reader. You’ve organized  the feeds under different folders and tags representing different categories. Now your friend asks you what productivity related blogs you read and demands the specific list of feeds.

The best choice is to give the OPML file which contains the list of your productivity related feeds so that he can use it to subscribe to all of them in one click in his feed reader. But like most of the other web based RSS readers, Google Reader doesn’t support export of specific feeds. So either you give him the feed urls manually or export your subscriptions and then edit the OPML file yourself.

Editing the OPML file could be difficult and time consuming for a non-developer mind. Instead one can use this workaround to extract selected feeds from Google Reader. Unfortunately Google Reader itself isn’t much of a help here and this trick would require you to download a desktop based RSS reader like FeedDemon or RSS Bandit to your computer. Both these desktop based readers support both selective import and export of feeds. So you could just export your entire list from Google Reader and import them into one of these desktop based readers. And then you could export the required feeds and hence create the opml file which you can give to your friend.

This workaround is easy and less time consuming. Both the desktop based readers which I mentioned are free and can be downloaded and installed quickly, unless you have a very slow internet connection.

If you know of any other method which is better then I’d love to hear them. Keep in mind that I’m talking about a method which just requires clicks and not playing with codes or scripts.

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Trick To Selectively Export RSS Feeds From Google Reader