Tips to increase your blog's traffic by targeting Non-English users

Most of us have our blogs in English.That's the right language choice as English is the most popular business language in the world.
BUT WAIT!!
Have you thought of people/audience/users who actually prefer to surf the web in their own language as they are not that comfortable with english.Top examples are users in China,Russia and Japan.And mind you, thats a market big enough to be explored for your products /services.Let's see what you can do to achieve it.

1.You can reach this wider audience of Non-English speaking internet users by providing them a page in their own language. To accomplish this, visit http://translate.google.com/translate_tools

to get Google Translation Service for your website/blog.
Google gives you a reliable translation service to translate and present your page quickly.This service can be implemented on a website by simply putting in a code snippet provided by Google or in the form of a widget.Recently Google launched a new addition to this service which prompts a non-english user to translate the page to her native language.

Google Chrome browser supports this service automatically.

2. Submit your blog to major Non-english directories and search engines.Though Google is the most used search engine it is still not the favorite among non-english users.In China, Baidu search engine is ahead of Google while Russians rely on Yandex search engine more.Submitting your site to these search engines will give you a foothold in these countries and bring you increased traffic from these places.

A. How to submit your site to Baidu?

Submit your website or blog to baidu (Gives a translated page)


OR visit

http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html (Chinese language page.Use Google Translation to translate)

Simply write your URL, Enter the captcha code and click the Add button to let Baidu index your site.

B. How to submit your site to Yandex ?

  

                                     visit this link   http://webmaster.yandex.ru/site/add.xml

Recently Yandex has made it mandatory to register before you can submit your site.Registration is a simple two step process. After registration you will be required to confirm that you have site management rights by pasting a meta tag in your page template.Once you have done that, click on check button and you will see a success message if everything goes well.

3. Visit this page to see more country specific search engines and submit to as many as you wish.You only stand to gain from this excercise.

When you try to submit your URL to these sites particularly Non-english ones you will need to translate non english pages to english.It can be easily done using translate services and plugins.Google Chrome automatically detects the language and prompts you to translate.Otherwise,translate pages using  using Firefox Add on or IE plugin for Internet explorer.

Be happy that now you have made your page accessible to a large Non- English speaking audience.If you have some ideas please share them in comments.

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How to See Live Twitter posts or 'tweets' on a specific topic using Google

Even if you are an avid twitter user you can not follow each and every tweet about a particular topic in tweet space.For example, if you want to know what people are tweeting about tiger woods or newly launched iPad, logging in twitter will give you tweets from only the people whom you follow.If somebody somewhere posted something very interesting about iPad and tweeted about it, you certainly will loose that info if you are not folowing that particular person or site.
Here is a better way to get latest tweets about a particular topic of your interest as they appear on twitter using your favorite search engine Google.

Lets say you want to know about latest tech sensation iPad. You open Google and type

 "iPad site:www.twitter.com" 

without the quotes.Google will show you some results which are not so impresive.
Now click on "Show options" and then click on "Updates" and voila!!

You will get a live stream of tweeets about iPad giving you interesting information and links.

You can search about any topic and get streaming relevant tweets about it in a very sleek way.Same method can be used to find updates about a topic on orkut,buzz,or any other micro blogging site.So, from now on, enjoy live streams about your favorite topics in one go!!!

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How to get maximum out of your Gmail Account using Firefox Greasemonkey scripts

If you work on the web you in all probability own a Gmail account. Also, you may be using Gmail for managing your important communication -official or personal. Many of us own multiple google accounts and we know how irritating it is to log out of one and then log in to other and then switch back. Also you want to take notes at times but don't get it in Gmail. Moreover you may want to sort mails in a hierarchical folder structure but can't do this using default Gmail Labels. You can do all this and more.How?? Read on. . .

If you are using Firefox as your primary browser (if you are not then I will recommend a switch!!) you can increase your productivity immensely using these five Greasemonkey scripts.Greasemonkey is a Firefox Add-on to use java scripts to enhance the usability of your browser.These scripts allow you to

• Add Notes to your mails
• See the attachment type in Inbox without opening mail
• Switch seamlessly between multiple Google accounts
• See your Google Calender events and notifications in Gmail
• Sort your mails in a hierarchical folder like structure

Lets take a close look at these five scripts.

1. Add Notes to your mails

Add an annotation application to your Gmail account and take notes while going through your communication.You need to log in once using your gmail account and from then on as soon as you open a mail a create note link appears in the Notes client which can be used for notes making.

All notes can also be browsed together making it an excellent to-do application as well.

Thanks to Script Author: Johntray

Install this script here

2. See the attachment type in Inbox without opening mail

Its a nice little utility that lets you see what kind of attachment is there in your mail i.e. whether it's a documnet , pdf image or zip fille. This can save a lot of time on slow connections and help you decide which mails to see first in time of haste.

Thanks to Script Author: DMaster

Install this script here

3. Switch seamlessly between multiple Google accounts

Switching between multiple Google accounts has been a major irritant for me and this script has saved me a lot of hassle.

A nice dropbox appears in your Gmail interface in place of signout button that lets you choose which account to log into.Accounts have to be added once and then you can switch quickly between different accounts.

Thanks to Script Author: Jerett

Install this script here

4. See your Google Calender events and notifications in Gmail

If you are an active Google calendar user and rely on this service to remind you of important dates and events,then this script will help you see all those important events in Gmail itself.

This will help you to communicate effectively and quickly and also to plan your appointments in accordance with the scheduled events.This Calendar opens up in a right pane and shows your current tasks/events.

Thanks to Script Author: Jeff Killingsworth

Install this script here

5. Sort your mails in a hierarchical folder like structure

Again a very handy script.You may want to arrange your mails in an explorer like folder structure to help you organize them better.This script does exactly that for you.Just install it and all that you need to do is add new labels as "Family/Dad" or "Family/Mom";this will create a folder "Family" folder has two subfolders "Dad" and "Mom" as shown in figure below.

You can SORT and GROUP mails as per your wish and click on the little "+" sign on a folder to view subfolders. Impressive indeed!!

Thanks to Script Author: Arend

Install this script here

Install these scripts and you can make the most of your Google account.If you use other scripts which help you in using Gmail more effectively, please consider sharing it in comments.

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Knoling on Google Knol : A new web 2.0 tool

Google has launched its new service Google Knol to encourage users to contribute articles on their choice of subjects.Its similar to wikipages but with a little difference.Here author's identity is their for all to see.You can log in with your existing Google account or you can create a new one if you wish.His profile, his other contributions, his ratings etc. is available to viewers. In wiki you can change whatever content you want to.In Google Knol this can be controlled by the author himself.He can set preferences to give full control to knol viewers or he can provide a moderated collaboration, where, he gets to choose what changes to make in an article.


Interestingly, everything in Google Knol is a knol...even your profile is a knol you write about yourself!!

We have Adsense associated with knol and you can monetize your articles.

It's still in beta phase and that shows up in some of the obvious shortcomings.For example there is no place to show viewers what new contributions or knols have come in.Categorization and search also needs to be improved. People write articles only to find that actually no one can find them on the Google knol or in the search also.Now search is something that we need not tell about to Google!!! So I seriously expect them to improve it ASAP.

So you can expect a new term 'Knoling' (like 'blogging') doing the rounds in days to come.

Hats off to Web 2.0!!

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Google Picasa-Manage images in style

Organizing your digital pictures can be a daunting task if you are an avid collector and have hundreds of digital pics to keep.Moreover you may want to retouch/edit/print/backup your pics on the fly while arranging them.Google Picasa gives you a great tool to reduce your image handling hassles in a major way.After getting frustrated for a long time i decided to finally do something about my pics and tried Picasa from the Google stable.Its a handy tool which lets you manage your images in a really cool way.Let's take a look at what it can do for you.


1. At first instance when you install Google Picasa your whole computer is scanned for images and all folders containing images are shown to you in a neat and user friendly interface.It can scan for videos as well but i will suggest you to keep it to pics only as not many video functions are available in the software. Picasa can be configured to scan selected folders (scan options are available under Tools menu by the name of 'Folder Manager') or you can exclude folders which you don't want to be shown in Picasa.

2. Clicking on images opens them in a picture viewer -in Picasa itself-and lets you browse through all pics in that folder.Standard features like zooming etc. are available here.What enhances the experience is the fact that almost all you may want to do to an image is possible in Picasa.You can edit image for brightness, color and contrast related adjustments.If the image is dark you can use 'Fill Light' option to light it up.You can tune the image for colors and shadows and you can choose image version from various applied effects to the selected image which are shown as thumbnails under 'Effects' menu.Beside this, images can also be edited in batch mode.

3. In same window in Picasa as above, you may find a picture tray where you can place pics from various folders by pressing the hold button.when you have selected images you have the option to email them(from Outlook or Gmail) them,print them in various sizes or save them to the disk.

4. A cool feature of Google Picasa is Collage (available under 'Create' menu) which allows you to make a collage of images placed in the picture tray.You can also create a Screensaver or movie of selected images.I tried all compression methods offered and in my view X-vid MPEG-4 option works best.You can also upload images to blogger directly.However it would have been great if uploading to image sites like flickr.com would have been provided.



5. Images can be categorized under labels and by adding stars for easy access.

6. Images can be viewed in a customized slide show or in a time line view which shows you time of image creation.

7. Images can be imported/exported from/to external drives and mediums.

8. Images can be saved to CDs and DVDs as burn disc option is available with picture tray.A thoughtful functionality is 'Gift CD' which allows you to choose images to be written to a CD which you can gift to someone special.

9. Backup facility lets you backup you images by writing them to a portable media like CD or DVD.

10. You can print images as contact sheets to be used with brochures etc.A really nice feature is 'Export as web page' which automatically saves selected images to a nice web page which can be directly uploaded to a site and made available online.

Besides this Picasa can show you EXIF (exchangeable image file format) data if available with the image.

Google Picasa can be downloaded here.

Google Picasa is for anyone looking for a clean and easy way to simply organize images and get the most enjoyment from them.Its not for someone wanting professional editing features but for general purpose users its a boon.So don't wait to handle your digital image collection in a better way.

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