For All The Techcrunch And Slashdot Fans

If you are a techcrunch reader or slashdot user, you would love this feed reader which I’m going to talk about in this post. Most people use google reader as the feed reader and I’m no exception to it. But I also use this feed reader called snarfer. I have blogged about this reader before and I have been using it for more than a year now. It is a free software.

Few months ago, snarfer started adding message styles and guess what? They have techcrunch and slashdot style message options. They also have few other styles like outlook express style, ALA style and bleached style. But those who read techcrunch a lot wouldn’t want to miss their blog theme in their feed reader too.

Here’s how the techcrunch theme looks like:

Slashdot Theme In Snarfer:

You can install these themes very easily.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Install snarfer

2. Once you have done it, look for an option called “Add Message Styles” in the left sidebar

3. Select a theme you want to have and install it

4. To apply it to your feeds, go to Tools->Options and click on the appearance tab

5. Select the theme you installed and click on apply

Start reading the feeds in the theme you like.

If you need any help regarding this, please post it in the comments.

Creative Commons – A Site To Be Bookmarked

I know many of you already know about creative commons website. It is, in my opinion, a must-bookmark for every blogger. There are many reasons why you should bookmark this site. You may want to find an image and that time, flickr maybe down for you. At these times, you can use the creative commons site to find images that permits you commercial or derivative use.

Also you might want to add a video to your blog post. You find a lot of videos online, especially in youtube. But can you use them or modify them? Not all of them. You’ll have to make sure you have the rights to modify the video before doing it. Creative commons site lets you to do this. You can search for videos that let you to modify them.

Most of all, there are some interesting audios that you can find for commercial and derivative use from this by using this site. This site only acts as a search engine that gets you the links to pictures, videos and audios with any type of use you desire. A must-bookmark site for all bloggers.

Smorty Announces Mini Store Advertising

Smorty, a paid to write review site, has come up with the In-Text advertising method. The site which is well famous for it paid to write reviews opportunities has started the In-Text advertising which Kontera is pretty famous for (made famous by John Chow actually!). If you are new to making money online, I suggest you to read this blog on how to make money online.

What Is In-Text Ads?

In-Text Ads is something that appears like a normal link but with a double underline. It will show a popup advertising when the mouse is placed on the link. It looks more like a normal link that readers, sometimes, get confused and click it unknowingly and gets redirected to a new link.

When You Get Paid?

You don’t get paid when someone places their mouse over the link or you don’t get paid for every impression on your blog. You get paid only when the ads are clicked. The difference between Kontera and Smorty is that smorty will be showing products that are available in Ebay, Amazon and such sites in the popup box.

Surely something for bloggers who are trying to make money online. Will you be trying Smorty’s In-Text advertising or mini store (as they call it) method? Please share your views in the comments.

It Is Twitter Through Out The Web

Twitter is a social media site which is used to update your friends on what you are doing within 140 characters. I don’t know why the 140 characters limit. That should be another big story I guess. I don’t know why, but there is a lot of blog posts on twitter in the recent days.

Twitter is good and I use it everyday to get new friends and to have touch with those who are already my friends. Suddenly, many blogs have started to write about twitter. The reason? Well I don’t know. I have written a post on twitter too. You can read that post here which emphasizes on how to get more twitter friends.

Fine, let’s see few blogs which have blogger about twitter and also some other references.

Take a look at the Social Media category of Sphinn, a social media site which I like.

Social Media Category in Sphinn

The above is the link to the hot topic in the social media category of sphinn. You can see many blog posts in the hot topic column about twitter.

Also many big blogs have started to write about twitter.

Search Engine Land had a post about twitter. It was on the topic “Twitter Wrote This Column For Me“. It was a very interesting post filled up with the answers of the people to the questions asked in twitter.

You can also read Read Write Web writing on Twitter. It was on “How We Use Twitter For Journalism“.

So what is the reason behind sudden increase in the number posts about twitter? Please share it in the comments.

You can also add me on twitter here.

Struggling To Update Your WordPress? Here Is A Solution

Image Source: The Real Jon Gos

Every time WordPress releases an update, I see few people struggling to update it for their blog. I hear it in forums. People always ask for a way to update to the newer version of WordPress. I have also seen few bloggers paying money to update to the latest version. If you are one among them, keep reading the post.

Most of you, by this time, would have heard about the WordPress automatic update plugin. If not, I’m going to talk about it in this post. That is the solution for your problem. WordPress automatic upgrade plugin does the job for you in updating to the latest version of WordPress.

Here are the steps involved in handling the plugin:

1. Download the plugin (Note: Also read the information given on that page. This is very iportant.)

2. Upload it to /wp-content/plugins/

3. Activate the plugin from your admin page

4. Backup your blog before doing anything (This is also very important)

5. Now, go to Manage->Automatic Upgrade and then select the option for automatic upgrade

6. It will take you through the process and will tell you to do few things

7. Tada! You have upgraded to the newer version of WordPress

Note: I have tried this and it worked for me. But it does not re-activate all my plugins which I had to do manually. If someone of you knows why I’m getting that problem, please tell me.

Hope you won’t have any trouble from now on. Do tell me how it worked for you.