CuteWriting

In the normal Blogger feed widget on the sidebar, you know that when you put in the feed URL, it fetches only the latest five articles. In this short post, we will see a workaround to enable more entries (10 or 20) in this feed using FeedBurner. If your feed is not burnt with FeedBurner (FB) , go ahead and do it. Make sure your original feed URL doesn't have any restriction on the number of posts, because, if it restricts posts to 5 (as in my feed; see why I did so) , this tweak will not work. For instance, the normal feed URL of Blogger feed is like this: "http://in-store.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default" . In its place, if you put this URL, "http://in-store.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=5" it will not show more than 5 posts. Here are the steps to enable this tweak Step 1: FeedBurner Dashboard Go to FeedBurner dashboard for your feed and choose Buzz Boost from the Publicize tab. This feature enables displaying your feed as a HTML file ...

If you have a publication like mine, you may be addressing a number of topics/categories. And some of your readers may be interested in only one of these topics. They may wish that they got only posts on 'creative writing' or 'blogging tips'. In professional publications like news sites and blogs like the Huffington Post , you have the option to subscribe to posts related to specific topics. Here, we will show you how you can enable this on your Blogger blog, with label syndication. Make sure that your blog has enabled feed syndication and supports labels (which we call categories/topics). For feed syndication settings, go to Site Feed under your blog's settings; labels are enabled whenever you put in keywords at the label text field while publishing new posts. The tweak involves syndicating content published under specific labels. The following is the feed for a specific label: http://blog_name.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/label_name In this URL, re...

Here are some sentences: If I got the first class, I would go and join a Medicine program. If I had worked hard, I could have got through in the examination. If I work hard, I will definitely pass this time. These examples show three different forms of conditional verbs. The first one is an improbable (unreal) condition, second, an impossible condition and the third, probable (real) condition. Now, we will see where to use which. Real (Probable Condition) This condition has a result happening in the future, based any present event. This is called real condition because there is every probability for it to happen. The first part of the condition (the condition status/if part) is usually expressed in the present simple form, and the result part is expressed in future simple. Examples: If Mark is home, I will pay him a visit. Joe will be here any moment, if the traffic is smooth. The systems will work just fine, if you follow my instructions. In some situations, the real...

[This Is an Important Post for You; See the Conclusion] As the days pass by, web spam is on the rise . Even Google's inimitable algorithm to rank the worthiest content seems to fail at times. It's why we miss a lot of great information due to the mere lack of enough backlinks or funds to place advertisements, and get a lot of spammy links on the first few search result pages. With the world's most popular search engine at their hand, Google is an information hub. It has been given the ultimate power by God to make or break any business today. That's why spending a lot of money on this search engine is more and more important. As Uncle Ben says (and so far one of my most loved quotes): "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility", Google has an enormous responsibility on their shoulders. In this case, helping them improve their index and remove more spam content from the web is a responsibility for every individual. Here are my recommendations to Google an...

Look at this sentence: Jim tried to carefully talk to his friends about the mishap, but he failed miserably. This sentence uses an awkward grammatical construction called a split infinitive—one in which the adverb (carefully) splits the infinitive (to talk). That sentence looks rather weird due to the use of it. Here other examples: Sarah, I have to firmly ask you to go out. The shower trickled as a first step to slowly run out. Why Should You Avoid It? You obviously wouldn't say: "I have to hard work to achieve my ambition", when you mean "I have to work hard to achieve my ambition". Here, the word 'hard' is the adverb modifying 'work'. Using a split infinitive in this case looks rather awkward. So definitely, you have to avoid split infinitives in your writing. Several grammarians today argue that split infinitives are no longer a mistake, or it is a myth that split infinitive is a mistake. But good writers should definitely avoid s...

Freelancing online isn't easy. Quite a bit of thought and planning goes into it, and it is a long-term process. But a well-built freelancing career means a lot. It can get you not only permanent writing jobs earning you high amounts of money, but also jobs in newspapers as citizen freelance journalists. Here are some tips to earn high amount of money writing online. 1. Keep These Resources Ready for Reference If you wish to get a great freelancing job, then here some resources you should check out. These invaluable links are updated daily with new freelancing jobs. You should be able to find great writing opportunities through them. Subscribe to their RSS/Atom feeds. Freelancing/Blogging Job Boards PoeWar Writing Job RSS Feed : Updated daily with new writing jobs Blogger Jobs : A great resource for blogging jobs. Writers Weekly : Another great resource for writing projects Problogger Job Boards : Gives feeds for blog network jobs, co-blogging, corporate/business bloggi...

Recently, a reader queried me this little doubt. How do I show the HTML/JavaScript codes on my Blogger posts? So, I decided to post it as a tidbit here. Your HTML code has tags, enclosed in angle brackets (< and >). All you need to do is replace these angle brackets with these: In place of < , use &lt; and in place of > , use &gt; . Keep everything else the same and publish your code, it will be shown as code itself on the published post. Example: In place of this code: <a href="http://cutwriting.blogspot.com">CW</a> you will use: &lt;a href="http://cutewriting.blogspot.com"&gt;CW&lt;/a&gt; Copyright © Lenin Nair 2008

On May 12, 2008, Google announced it's website social networking feature, Google Friend Connect ; it's now a preview release available to all. This post is a deeper review of this service. Many professional bloggers upgraded their blogs to include their own topic-specific forums for better user interaction. Some bloggers went ahead, created their own social networks from services like Ning (here is a review of Ning ), and some others incorporated the Open data access APIs provided by such social networks as Facebook , MySpace , Hi5 , and blog networks like BlogCatalog , MyBlogLog , etc., to their own blogs (the BlogCatalog/Facebook widgets you see on blogs). Google's Friend Connect is a service that builds upon all of these services. It is a social interaction snap-in for blogs/websites using which anyone from anywhere with any kind of identity can be a member of a blog . Virtually, you can allow sign ups on your blog, without taking up much of your resources or eng...

Copyscape is a great service and is there for a long time. But this is not an entirely free service. For a particular URL, in a month there can be only five searches with Copyscape. Also, only one page of search results can be seen with it. For more freedom and offline content copy alert, you need premium service. Here we have a better plagiarism catching service, Copy Alerts [Important Update (dtd: 18, May, 2009): Copy Alerts service is no longer active. It's only an ad-filled page now] . I have been using this for some time and find it very useful. You can set up a copy alert within this for your blog or for any important page in it. If anyone copies the content and puts in the public domain (accessible to all), the Copy Alerts automatically sends an email to our inbox. Setting up a Copy Alert is so easy. It doesn't even require you to sign up an account. You only need to go to the site, and put in the URL you want to be alerted about and your email address. If you put...

Most bloggers have a problem: What will I write today? They are starting their day with an intention to post something into their blogs, not build their knowledge in the niche or read their feed subscriptions. This is really going to affect your blog after some time, because your thirst for post ideas may not always be quenched, and your quick posts may make blog substandard. Here are ways to start a blogging day, which will culminate in one great end-of-the-day post or more. 1. Start Your Day With Your Feeds Every blogger is expected to have a number of niche and off-niche important blogs subscribed to in his feed reader. There is no alternative to this. Start your day reading these feeds and learning what's new. This will give you an idea of what you can write for the day. 2. Have a Notepad Ready Always keep a notepad ready to jot down the day's topic ideas. You will automatically generate topic ideas as you continue to read the feeds. You will find different perspect...

Online jobs are easy to find. Even in the DP forums , you can see several people prepared to haggle with you for your skills. I recently found one such person, who goes with an Indian woman's name at DP forums. I don't know the real identity of this person, but she was prepared to pay me for my writing. Let's start this post with that story. I decided to go ahead and see if the job is appropriate for me. She (I will call this person she) told me a price: 3 dollars per article, for several articles. She said she had need for quite a few articles—about 10 or 20 of them, if I remember right. And she said that these articles were to be posted in two or three important websites she owns. She also gave the URLs of these websites, which already had some of her own articles. As I am an established freelancer with Constant Content , earning about 50 dollars per article (of about 400 words), I told her the pay was really low even for an article package. I told her I needed at lea...

Here is a presentation I prepared detailing the basics of Yahoo search engine optimization. Major guidelines as to the content quality, links, sitemap submission, etc., are covered in this tiny presentation. We can look deeper into optimizing a site for Yahoo in another post. Make sure you post your comments. Here goes the presentation: You can use this code to embed this presentation to your blog/website: <div style="width:425px;text-align:left" id="__ss_741470"><object style="margin:0px" width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=yahoo-search-engine-optimization-guidelines-1226410556572049-8&stripped_title=yahoo-search-engine-optimization-guidelines-presentation" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed src="htt...

Yesterday, in the news, Burmese blogger, 28-year-old Nay Phone Latt was sentenced to imprisonment for 20 years and six months for the charges including slandering a high state official. Also arrested and sentenced were Latt's colleague, Thin July Kyaw and Saw Wai, another dissident, for two years each. And the person they mocked? Military leader Than Shwe. The cartoon and poem Latt posted in his blog, nayphonelatt.net in Barmese meant, "Senior Gen. Than Shwe is foolish with power". Though Mr Latt was arrested in January, the sentence was announced only yesterday. It broke down thus: fifteen years for offenses in Electronics Act, two years for creating public alarm, and three and a half years for offenses under the Video Act. Blogging is a way to broadcast opinions, and people should be completely free to deliver their opinions wherever they want. This incident should be regarded as an outright assault on human rights by a senior leader, who is expected to protect i...

If you are using the popular tweak in Firefox browser, to detect Nofollow links right from the page itself (nofollow comment links are shown in special font and style), detailed here , then you need this post. I found that there are a few new comment systems, such as Disqus comments , that may show the comment links as normal links. So, you may think that the blog is DoFollow, while it is actually NoFollow. These systems use a JavaScript code to enable comments. So, make sure you check the source code of the page to see if any of the links is displayed in the source at all before commenting for link juice. An example of the blog that uses this is marketer, Jim Kukral's . With this, I am starting this new little post category, Blogging Tidbits, which, as opposed to Blogging Tips, will have lightweight tip posts. Copyright © Lenin Nair 2008

Yesterday, I received a comment at my press release distribution sites list . Lenin, One factor not included in your list is which sites are indexed by Google News. You can check this by going to Google News and doing a search such as site:BigNews.biz (just swap out the URL for whatever site you want to check on) this will check to see if the press releases from that site are listed in Google News. Many are not, and Google news can drive a huge amount of traffic. The suggestion made through the comment is very valuable and I pointed out it in my reply. You have to check and see if the press release site is actually listed in Google News before working with it. It is a good indication of how valuable the site is. Here we have some guidelines for writing effective press releases, as well as some press release templates from the Microsoft Office and Open Office galleries. What Is a Press Release for? A press release is any news announcement made by an entity, including individuals...

You know pretty well about the subject-verb agreement. The plural subjects have to take plural verb form and singular, singular verb form. But I found that several writers make simple mistakes with certain nouns, containing such words as 'everyone', 'none of', 'everybody', 'all', 'some', 'each', 'every', etc. Here are the guidelines. These Words Are Singular The words that are regarded to be singular and take only singular verb include these: Every Each Any Everyone None Neither...Nor Either...Or Nobody Not any Nothing A little Examples: Each student has to be approved for participation. None of the students was approved. Neither Tom nor Brad is acting in this film. Everyone has to agree to the terms. A little water has to be found. Usage of Either...Or and Neither...Nor In Either...or and Neither...nor there is room for ample confusion among grammarians. If both nouns are singular, obviously the verb...

Here is another news on the new American President. Mr. Barack Obama is praised by a linguist, J J Payack, president of the Texas-based Global Language Monitor on his acceptance speech in Chicago. According to him the Obama speech ('Yes, We Can' shown in video below) compares favorably with a number of historic orations. [CNN reported this story a while ago.] Payack said: His goal was to be understood by the widest possible audience during his victory speech, and he seems to have done a great job doing it. He's at his best communicating directly and forthrightly with this audience and using different types of rhetorical devices Well, that's really a laud for Mr Obama. What less is expected of one of the greatest students of the Harvard Law School anyway. Payack also reported the grade points the famous speech given by history's most prominent politicians. The scores ran thus: John F Kennedy: 10.8 for his Inagural speech. Ronald Reagan: 9.8 for his 'Te...

A serious development yesterday might surprise all. The campaign computers used by the candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain are reported as having been hacked into by an unnamed foreign entity in the mid-summer. [News sources at the bottom] CNN reported that the hack may have been initiated by a foreign government or organization with aim to investiagate the policy positions "in order to gain leverage in future dealings with whomever is elected." Another source affiliated to CNN also reported that the FBI approached both McCain and Obama campaigns to investigate the problem, though the campaigns hired private companies to solve the issue. Though there is no correspondence as to who the foreign entity is, the Times Online reported: in what appears to have been an intelligence-gathering operation by Russia or China, it has emerged. The hack was reported and thought of as a computer virus that seemed to access important personal information in a sophisticated manner f...

When I created my blog, I jump-started into it first. I didn’t think what I wanted to do. That’s behind the failure of first two blogs I had. The first one on technologies, reviews, movie reviews, etc., and the second on cooking recipes. Later on 12th March, 2008, when I started this blog, I had a view in mind. I had planned and chosen my goals thoughtfully, and that is behind the long-term success of this blog. Here are the things you need to know about blogging before you get into it. 1. Choose Your Niche As we always say, choose the niche, in which your passion lies. Choose that niche which you can dedicate full time to. When I chose creative writing and blogging as the niche for this blog, I knew that it would keep me going forever. 2. Choose a Name Wisely Having a great name for your blog is very important. You need to sort out as to whether you should have a chic fantasy name, a long-term regal name, or a niche-keyword name: Difference between: Dosh Dosh , CopyBlogger , a...

I found that there are quite a few blogs and websites that solicit for advertisers by showing off fake statistics. Here is a presentation to help you choose your advertising partners wisely to get laser-sharp traffic. Here is the presentation: Use this code to embed this to your site: <iframe src='http://docs.google.com/EmbedSlideshow?docid=dhq4mhh4_85tf9jzfs' frameborder='0' width='410' height='342'></iframe><br/><font face="Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif" size="1"><a href="http://cutewriting.blogspot.com/2008/11/purchase-ad-blog-free-marketing.html">Provided by CuteWriting</a></font> The best traffic comes from search queries, and not from social spamming. You shouldn’t purchase ad from a site just by listening to the sumptuous stats proclaimed by the blogger. Demand an analytics chart of the actual monthly traffic stats before purchasing the ad. Look for how many visi...