The prospect of setting up a business is immensely appealing and as an entrepreneur success seems easy. In actual fact a vast majority of businesses that are started with enthusiasm disappear into oblivion within five years. This can be attributed to the missing due diligence tests that need to be done at the very beginning. Knowledge and information about the methods of doing business, the product to be produced and related issues helps to formulate a winning strategy for setting up the business. Before stepping into the shoes of an entrepreneur, a number of issues have to be resolved, information gathered and a business plan prepared accordingly. The following is a list of things every aspiring entrepreneur needs to know before starting:

• The resources available- As soon as the business idea begins to take shape, one of the first things that needs to be very clear is the resources available. This includes the time that can be invested, the expertise and the amount of money that can be put in. Money is critical because no matter how small the expense, returns are unlikely to appear from day one. Every business has a gestation period of a few months. The money to be invested may be personal, or funded through loans. The entrepreneur needs to decide how much he can afford to lose, and how much burden of a loan he can bear.
• Business projections- Once the funding is in place, the next step is to carry out some research about the demand for the product being produced, the existing players in the market, the product industry and who the target clientele is, and their current buying pattern.
• Competition- Unless a product is the first of its kind to appear in the market, there is bound to be competition from similar products currently being produced and consumed. It is important to know what the competition levels are and how you are going to differentiate your product to capture some of the demand. If the names of existing businesses are known their information can be easily found on online resources like LinkedIn, CrunchBase and CBInsights.
• The Legal structure- A business may seem easy to set up, but a lot of legal formalities need to be adhered to. The structure of the business can be a sole proprietorship, a partnership, a corporation and so on. The final structure adopted will decide on the liability, ownership, profit sharing and tax obligations. If such legal issues are not decided beforehand numerous problems can crop up later on.
• Understanding the governing laws- Business in any form has to follow certain laws that govern employment, taxes, the environment and so on. It is important to be familiar with these, and the easiest option is to hire a consultant who knows them all and provide the right advice and also complete the necessary paper work.

Starting a business is a large project involving much more than manufacturing and selling, and therefore making informed decisions is much better so that complications that arise later, can be avoided.

This is a guest post by Neil Jones, Head of Online Marketing For eMobileScan. With 18 sites across Europe they are on track to become one of the largest suppliers of barcode scanner and industrial handheld computers like the newly released Motorola ES400. Specialising if offering companies the tools they need to increase productivity and lower costs.

Everyone makes mistakes, even seasoned professionals.  The SEO world is no different.  There are countless issues that can make even the best of SEO marketers seem marginal at best. Below are a few steps you should adhere to if you decide to become an SEO marketer or you are already one and you want to hone your skills.

1. Keyword Stuffing is a huge issue you should try to avoid over-doing.  Every SEO article will need the keywords because that is what makes an SEO article unique.  However, using too many keywords can do more harm than good.  Search engines are designed to look for certain words and if you have irrelevant wording or you put too many of your key words in the article or website, it will actually punish you by dropping your ranking on sites like Google and Yahoo.  Also, do not forget that readers do not like to see a misuse of wording just to get to the top.  In fact, if they see this they will probably leave your page altogether.
   
   
2. Title Tags (either too many or too little) are keyword phrasing that is specifically made to be in your headline or title.  Search engines read from the left to the right so it is best if your keyword is in the first three or four words.  If you are looking to confuse the search engines for fun, leave out your title tag and they will have to make a decision on what the keyword is.  Do not go over 200 characters in your title tag. Having more than that is a huge mistake.
   
   
3. A missing description can be one of the most damaging parts to a SEO’s career.  The description is in place to be detailed and it is one of the places where the use of keywords is important.  If you do not have a description of your article or blog, the search engines will pick anything out that it sees fit.  If you are lucky this will happen, if not then chances are you will not get ranked at all.
   
   
4. Using a very simple anchoring text can be the difference between a good ranking and a bad one.  Most SEO’s that have problems with ranking are due to a poor anchor text.  In case you are not aware, an anchor text is a set of hyperlinked words that are on your page.  They are usually underlined and blue.  There are three kinds of links: internal, deep and external.
   
   
5. Having “Alt” tags on your images can be very helpful when trying to increase your rank.  Whenever you upload images to your article or blog, re-title them to ensure you are getting the most out of them.  Make sure you have a keyword in your image’s title and ensure that it is the same one you are using for your title tag.

If you follow these simple steps, you should be able to define your SEO skills a little better and, in turn, stay away from the lower rankings.

The author, Ajeet Khurana, is a teacher, author, and blogger. He is excited about his tech blog which he treats like a son; and he invites you to read his newborn, TechnoTropis too.

Before we embark on the journey of unraveling the top-secret strategies of writing compelling web-copy that are often kept clandestine, it is important that we discuss a bit about why web-copy is treated with such importance; why is it such a vital part of your website or your online business.

Your web-copy can turn your website into a sales machine by converting your visitors into potential customers which explains the reason as to why so much emphasis and heed is paid to web-content and web-copy. In fact we’ll go as far as to say that, if “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; recollected in tranquility” is poetry, Web-Copy is a lyrical sales ballad disguised in crisp, subtle, psychological persuasion.

Startling? Surely, it is. Here’s for you 6 startling secrets of persuasive copywriting that no one wants you to know. It’s time we told you the immutable laws of web-copywriting that rule online sales.

The Mind Game

One of the finest methods of selling your product or service on the web is tapping into the desires of your target audience or market, which in turn aids you in appealing to your user’s self interest. This is exactly what we mean by subtle psychological persuasion that still stands unbeatable. You may think that a great headline with a punch would egg your users to buy, but we beg to differ here. They may be engaged in a good read, however the key to converting your words to sales is giving them what they really want and need and can identify and not what you think they do.

Don’t Compel. Provide Finesse

If you are trying to sell your product through copy that compels your readers to think that it is a sales copy, you are probably far away from making any business. It is a proven fact that the instant your readers know that your copy is trying to sell something, their defense level to the product increases by almost 80% and so does the resistance to the rest of the copy. The fact that your motif is sales generates in them a feeling that the copy is probably another sales copy on the web. Hence, persuasive finesse is the key and not on the face advertising web-copy.

Breaking Rules is Jazz

We’re often told that while writing, repeating should be avoided. But, if you have only 3 seconds left to write and express yourself, what would you write? Write your web-copy ditto as your copy has only 3 to 5 seconds to catch your reader’s attention and another 10 of body copy to keep them. Solution: focus and repeat the focus in words; as many times as you want, keeping sync with the flow. Keep it till the end and what you have is pure jazz in sales.

Lazy visitors are whom you should write for

Create a web-copy that tells them that the preliminary work has been done. All they need to do is hit the button. Surprisingly, they’ll do it. It is a fact that most of your visitors are reluctant to learn something new or go through a long copy that speaks of the product feature. They are looking for a service; they want it now and without wastage of time. Give them the readymade service.

Write What Will Make You Buy

What would instigate you to buy a product? What would be so tempting so as to make you buy a service? Harness those factors to make a web-copy that’s a sure thing. If you as an audience are content and convinced, be sure, the others would be too.

Write With a Sense of Empowerment

Keeping aside the strategies, here’s one last secret that falls in the category of mere sentence construction. Write your web-copy in 1^st person and in an active voice. It instills a sense of empowerment and connects immediately to your readers; so much so as to believe you. And when they believe you, sale in inevitable!

Simple strategies, but untold and proven! It’s time you use these six secrets to make your copy compelling.

This article has been contributed by Dhruv Kapoor from Offshore Ally. Dhruv is one of the many dedicated virtual assistants and link builders of the company. He loves anything to with gadgets, gaming, designing and blogging. Connect with him via Twitter.

Stock Photos from ShutterStock.com

Editor’s Note: Today’s fabulous topic is from “Dino Dogan” who is the landlord at DIYBlogger.NET, a writer, biker, dog trainer, singer/songwriter, and a kick-ass Martial Artist (Wait did he missed anything else). He is currently hard at work on the Human-Dog Problem Tree; a thesis in human-dog relationship. You can find him at Twitter or visit DIYBlogger.NET.

If you would like to start writing here, you can find more details and sign-up info over this page.

And this what he said:

Mad Men’s Guide to Advertising as Marketing of Last Resort

I want to share with you a long held fallacy that advertising is effective. Its not.

How can I be so sure?

The myth of advertising as an effective means of gaining new business is based on the fact that some people, in some way, at least to some extent can visibly measure the positive effect advertising has on their product.

However…

If advertising is not showing any effect on sales, then the explanation is that you need different advertising.

How convenient.

So how come advertising is so prevalent?

Long held beliefs are hard to shake.

When a business is starting out and trying to acquire initial funds, investors and bankers alike expect to see advertising budget as part to of the initial budget proposal.

Established businesses have a gay ol’ time rubbing elbows with the likes of Don Draper so they continue to include advertising budget as part of their yearly projections.

Did you know: Advertising budgets have doubled every decade since 1976. Source: Marketing Madness (Amazon Affiliate Link)

What’s a Good Copy Worth?

Copy, for the uninitiated, is any text that tries to get you to buy something. Whenever you see a pizza ad, someone had to sit down and write whatever the ad (or person) is saying. In advertising vernacular, that piece of text is called a copy.

So what IS a good copy worth?

Information Resources studied the effect of advertising and concluded that “the relationship between high copy scores and increase sales is tenuous at best”.
They were being generous.

C’mon Dino…we need advertising. It makes the world go ‘round.

Consider this.

Costco’s approach to advertising is to spend exactly $0.00 on it. And yet, they continue to outperform Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club year after year.

Here is a fascinating case study, but first, watch this.

[Direct link to video]

Foote, Cone and Belding (a marketing company) produced one of the most memorable ads ever created in their 1980s campaign for The California Raisin Advisory Board.

With the annual budget of over $40 million, the dancing raisins managed to generate nearly $200 million in revenue via the sales of secondary products (dolls, mugs, T-Shirts, etc.)

The sales of raisins skyrocketed as well, at first. Mostly due to breakfast cereal manufacturers who jumped on the bandwagon and increased the number of raisins in their cereals and joined in the advertising.

And then came the crash all tumblin’ down.

After four years, the dancing raisin campaign was discontinued and the sales of raisins were lower than before the campaign started (Forbes, June 17, 1996). The California Raisin Advisory Board was abolished shortly thereafter.

But this proves that advertising works, no?

Maybe, if you have $40 mil, but otherwise, no.

1. First, this is a hugely popular campaign. One of the best known and most effective campaigns ever produced by an ad agency, and yet…
2. The revenue was generated through the sales of secondary products (dolls, mugs, T-Shirts, etc.)
3. The sales of actual raisins went up because the product (raisins) had a B2B (Business to Business) component (the manufacturers of cereal).

So ask yourself.

1. Can I generate a hugely successful, viral campaign?
2. Do I have secondary products to sell?
3. Do I sell directly to consumer or B2B, or both?

If history is any indication, this would be as easy as catching a lighting in a jar, only to have the jar implode after 4 years.

Additional consideration.

Are you a CEO of a giant company and therefore interested only in short term profit generation or are you trying to build a long-lasting relationship with your customers?

Only you know the answer.

Coda.

The material and stats for this article have been liberally pilfered from the most excellent book on marketing called Marketing Without Advertising (Amazon Affiliate Link) by Michael Phillips and Salli Rasberry.

How much does your business spend on advertising?

How to you measure its effectives?

Have you considered alternatives?

Facebook lately turning up the buzz due to many privacy issues. They even rolled out new features almost every week. Even though it is really tough to stay in line with Facebook’s updated changes on privacy,  It could be managed by making use of the “Friends List” feature. I’m not going to talk a lot, rather I would do a pictorial (Pictured Tutorial) instead.

Facebook’s “List” feature allows you to group your contacts into various categories. You can assign permissions specific to these lists. I just want to show you a simple step by step way of implementing a permission setting to a “List“

Step 1

Click here to open and edit your Friends.

Step 2

• Now create a new list to categorize a group of your friends. For example the only people you trust to show certain things.
• Name the list according to your preference
• Add your friends into that list

Step 3

Now you have a new list of friends. Lets go to the Privacy Settings to set specific preferences for this list.

Step 4

Privacy settings has been divided into multiple areas. The rule of applying friends lists are more or less the same for each of the segment. I will go through part of a segment which will essentially give you the Idea to Implement these into other places too.

Step 5

For our practice, we are going to implement a goal. The goal is to make certain things only visible to one or more of my “Friends List”.

• Choose “Personal Information and Posts“ segment at the screen shown in Step 4
• Right side of “Bio and Quotations” you will be able to see a blue box with either “Everyone“, “Friends of Friends” or “Only Friends” label
• Click on that Blue box to see the drop down menu
• Choose the “Custom” option and a window will appear
• move on to the next step

Step 6

Now we are going to select the options for “Bio and Quotations“.

• Under the “Make this visible to” select the Drop down and change it to “Specific People“
• Now you will be able to see an edit box underneath it
• Type the name of the “Friend List” you’ve created on Step 2
• Click on “Save Settings” button and you are done!
• So my “Bio and Quotations” section only visible to the my friends under the list “People I Trust“

You can use this list on the other segments of Privacy Settings page. Just repeat the steps from Step 3 to Step 6 on each of the parts of the segments.

Tip 1: 

Many people asked me the question – How to hide all my friends my profile page from everyone? I have the answer for that. You can use a “List” to accomplish that.

Here is how:

• Create a new list. Example: “NoOne”
• Do not add any friends to that list.
• Go to “Friends, Tags and Connections” segment of your privacy settings page.
• Click on the blue box at the right side of “Friends” part and select the option “Custom” from the drop down box.
• On the “Custom Privacy” window, select “Specific People” under “Make this visible to” label
• Type in the “Friends List” named “NoOne” you’ve created which has no friends in it.
• “Save Settings” and you are done! your list of total friends will not be visible to any of your friends.

Tip 2:

I’ve came through another question – How do I stop my friends tagging me in photos and videos? Unfortunately you can’t stop it but you can hide it on your wall. Here is how:

• Go to “Friends, Tags and Connections” segment of your privacy settings page.
• Click on the blue box at the right side of “Photos and Videos of Me” part and select the option “Custom” from the drop down box.
• On the “Custom Privacy” window, select “Only Me” under “Make this visible to” label
• “Save Settings” and you are done! Now any photos or videos of you tagged will not be visible on your wall. In fact nobody will be able to see your photos or videos where you’ve been tagged in. Having said this the person who tagged you, still would be able to see you.

If you are really concern about your privacy settings you could set your privacy for “Friends, Tags and Connections” segment as the example picture below. Remember this is just an Example. I am NOT asking you to do exactly like this. These settings varies from people to people.

Well, I did tried to keep this post not long but as it seems it turned out to be a bit longer than usual. Nevertheless, if you go through this post, you will get an overall idea of implementing privacy settings by groups of friends. Even if your relatives, family and college buddies are in Facebook all together, you can still play smart without being going insane.

I can give you some Idea about List names, which should point you to the right directions.

You might want to group your friends in this manner:

• College friends List – You can assign photo albums permissions visible only to this list so you wont get burned by your mom, or even better not visible to your work mates.
• Family members List – post family photos and videos visible only to this list, so your family life is secured from others
• Colleagues List – post photos or videos related to your work only for this bunch of people

There I said it, now use your Imagination to tangle it on your end. Don’t forget to share your ideas on the comments!

Windows 7 is, finally, a great operating system.

Every version of Windows, has many services enabled, while many optimizing tweaks are not enabled by default. The reason this is so is because the installation is designed to support a very generic set of devices and hardware. The cool part of using Windows is the ability to fine tune it to your needs. Some call this tuning process “Hacking”, others called it “Tweaking”. I’m not really that worried about the name, instead I prefer focusing on the content…

Before I get all technical, it’s important that you check your hardware and choose the edition of Windows 7 that best suits your system:

Choose Windows 7 32-bit if you have:

• 3GB or less system memory
• Dual core or single core processor
• Built in graphic card
• 250GB or less hard drive

Choose Windows 7 64-bit if you have:

• 4GB or more system memory
• i7, Dual core or Quad Core processor
• Dedicated PCI express graphic cards such as Nvidia or ATI
• 250GB or larger hard drive

Now that that’s out of the way – on we go to the good stuff…

1.0 Disable Unwanted Services

Windows 7 enables services that aren’t necessarily required by default. You can relieve a huge amount of system resources by disabling these services or setting them to “Manual mode”. Configuring a service to this setting means, it doesn’t start automatically, but rather only when it is required.

How to Disable services:

1. Access the “Start Menu“
2. Type in “services.msc” in the search line and press “Enter“. (Alternately you can open the “Control Panel“, locate the “Administrative Tools” icon and click on “Services“.)
3. Go to a service property page to set it to Automatic/Manual or Disabled. Right click on the service name and choose “Properties” to access the properties screen.
   Use the screenshot below as a reference:
   

Safe Services Configuration

The configuration listed below lists a range of services you can disable to relieve system resources and yet it should provide a great experience for 95% of users. There should be little or no side effects to configuring your machine this way.

What you can disable:

1. Application Experience
2. Computer Browser (Disable this if you’re not joining any network)
3. Desktop Window Manager Session Manager (Disable this if you don’t want the aero effects)
4. Diagnostic Policy Service
5. Distributed Link Tracking Client
6. IP Helper
7. Offline Files
8. Portable Device Enumerator Service
9. Print Spooler (Disable this if you do not have a printer)
10. Protected Storage
11. Remote Registry (Disable it for more Security)
12. Secondary Logon
13. Security Center
14. Server (Disable if you’re not running on any network or intranet)
15. Tablet PC Input Service
16. TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
17. Themes (Disable if you do not want aero and good visual appearance
18. Windows Error Reporting Service
19. Windows Media Center Service Launcher
20. Windows Search (Disable it if you hardly use Windows Search feature)
21. Windows Time (Disable this if you are not synchronizing system time with Internet time automatically)

Alternative method:

Another method for getting this done is by using the Game Booster freeware. It allows you to enable and disable using a single click.

~

2.0 Disable Unwanted Start-up Applications

Certain application put start up items on the Windows registry and start-up folder every time you install them. These programs are eventually hidden and they get started every time you start Windows. It’s not a bad idea to remove some of these because they aren’t really required to load during your boot-up. Disabling these applications decreases Windows’ desktop loading time.

Using MSCONFIG:

1. Go to start menu and in the search box type ” MSCONFIG”, press Enter. The Windows system configuration tool will open. It might ask you for Administrator password before continue.
2. Click on the 4th tab “Startup“, review each of the applications, decide which one to start at boot time and which one not needed to be started.
3. Click on the Check Boxes to enable to disable any startup application
4. Press Apply, MSCONFIG might ask you to pre-boot your computer.
   

Using a freeware Windows 7 customization tool EnhanceMySeven:

1. Get the freeware EnhanceMySeven
2. Install and open the application, Click on the “Startup items”Icon.
3. It will list all the programs set to run on Windows start up. Use the check boxes on the right to Enable or Disable any programs.

   

4. EnhanceMySeven provides much more functionality than just managing startup programs, but use it with caution.

3.0 Boost Windows 7 Boot

Using MSCONFIG:

1. Go to the “Start Menu“, type “MSCONFIG ” in the search box and press Enter. The Windows system configuration tool will start. It might ask you for Administrator password before continue.
2. Click the “Boot” (2nd) tab
3. Click “Advanced Options” button
4. Select the number of processors you have and the amount of memory available. For example, if you’re using a Dual Core processor then you should select “2″ from processors drop down menu, if you have a Quad Core processor, you should select “4″ from the processor drop down menu, etc.
5. Now Press “Ok“, then “Apply“, MSCONFIG might ask you to re-boot your computer.
   

4.0 Disable Visual Effects and Windows Aero

Windows 7 comes with a wide range of visual effects which actually require a lot of system resources. If you prefer a fast and responsive machine you might want to free up the resources used by these visual effects.

1. Right click on “Computer” and choose “Properties“.
2. Click on “Advanced System Settings” from the left pane to open up the “System Properties” window.
3. Select the “Advanced” tab.
4. Under “Performance” click “Settings“.
5. Choose “Custom Options“.
6. Uncheck all the options except the last 4 in the list.
7. Apply and reboot the system to bring the changes into effect.
   You will notice the significant difference in speed
   

5.0 Disable Search Indexing

Windows 7 comes with a search indexing feature but I’ve noticed I never actually use it. It takes up quite an amount of Windows system resources. Here’s how to disable it:

1. Right-click the “Computer” icon in the desktop and select “Manage”.
2. Click “Services and Applications” in the “Computer Management” window.
3. Click on “Services”.
4. Look for “Windows Search” in the list that appears.
5. Right-click the service and select “Properties“
6. Change the start-up type option to “Disabled” from the drop-down menu.

6.0 Disable the UAC feature

Although this feature is meant for security it can be a real nuisance sometimes. Here’s how to disable the User Account Control (UAC) Feature in Windows 7:

1. From the Control Panel open the “User Accounts and Family Safety > User Account“.
2. Click the “User Account Control” settings link.
3. Drag the Slider towards “Never Notify”.
4. Click “OK” and Re-boot.

7.0 Choose High Performance Power Plan

The Power settings in Windows 7 are set for balanced power consumption by the hardware. “Balanced” is not the same as “Optimal”…

1. Double click the “Power Options” in the control panel.
2. Click the down arrow showing “Show Additional Plans” to show the “High Performance” power plan
3. Select the “High Performance” plan.

8.0 Enable and Use Hibernate or Sleep Mode

When entering Hibernation your computer writes the contents of your system memory to a permanent storage medium (nearly always a hard drive). This allows the computer to power-off yet retain the current usage state. Once the computer is turned back on the memory is refreshed with the hibernation data allowing you to resume working from the past session. Documents, applications and the desktop state are presented as they were when you entered Hibernation.

The feature is primarily designed for laptop users because it’s a very handy power-saving feature that extends battery life when your computer is idle. However, desktop users may also find this mode handy as it allows you to save power and resume your session very quickly.

Hibernation might not be activated by default on some computers, so you’ll need to manually enable it:

1. Go to Start Menu, Type “CMD” in the search box
2. Right click on CMD, Select “Run As Administrator”
   
   
3. At the Command console, type ” powercfg /hibernate on”
   
4. Go to Control Panel > Hardware and Sound > Power Options and click ” Change Plan Settings” on your currently selected plan.
5. Click ” Advanced Power Settings“.
6. Scroll down to “Allow Hybrid Sleep” and select “Off“
7. Click OK
   
8. You should now see the Hibernate option in your Shut down menu.

9.0 Optimize your Anti-Virus settings

Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware software can contribute to performance slowdowns. So much so that some users decide to go without real-time security software (not recommended for most users!).

A good way to achieve a sensible balance between protection and speed is to use an efficient anti-virus package that has a low resource footprint.

Most Anti-virus software comes configured for real-time scanning. Here are some tips to customize it for performance:

1. Select scan by executable extentions
2. Set no real-time scan for archives and big files.
3. Set the Heuristic scan mode to low level
4. Set the scan mode to “active” only when open any executable

These tips should be able to apply on almost any well known Anti-virus packages.

10.0 Turn off Unused Windows Features

There are many features in Windows 7 that most of us don’t use very often. Disabling them will really help in speeding things up:

1. Open “Programs and Features” from the Control Panel.
2. Click “Turn Windows features on or off” from the left pane.
3. Uncheck all the features you don’t use in Windows 7.
4. Restart the system for the changes to take effect.
   

11.0 Use the Tweak Power Tools

Many tweak and power tools already support Windows 7. Here are the best of them:

7Stacks

7stacks is an easy to use free app that lets Windows 7 (and Vista and XP) users have “stacks” of icons in their Taskbar (Win 7) or QuickLaunch Toolbar (Vista & XP). By using stacks, users can reduce icon clutter, and combine a group of related icons into a single icon.

For instance, if you use application suites such as Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, or Adobe CS4, you can have all the suite’s icons combined into one icon!

You can also use it to browse and access documents within a folder very quickly. Usually when you want to edit a series of frequently used documents you’d have to either launch the app, and go to File|Open, or open the (My) Computer icon and go into your (My) Documents folder and pick the file you want. With 7stacks you just create a stack to the document’s folder and open it with a couple of clicks.

~

Enhance MySe7en

Make your Windows 7 faster and even more responsive with EnhanceMySe7en

This program offers tools that take care of the registry, disk space and defragmentation, installed software, HDD temperature and other things related to system’s health.

The clean and easy interface grants you access to a comprehensive set of powerful and well classified tools, settings and tweaks.

~

Ultimate Windows Tweaker

The Ultimate Windows Tweaker offers some basic tweaking tools. For example in enables you to add more options to your context menu, or to customize Windows Explorer. It’s a simple tool, but can come in very handy at times.

~

XdN Tweaker

A very simple tool – if you want to customize a few settings only this is a good choice. Enables you to customize your explorer context menus too.

~

TweakNow PowerPack 2009

TweakNow PowerPack is a fully-integrated suite of utilities that lets you fine-tune every aspect of your computer’s operating system and Web browser.
The Registry Cleaner module provides you with a safe and simple way to clean your Windows Registry.

To keep your computer at top performance we recommend you clean your registry at least once a month.

For tweak lovers the suite’s Windows Secret section provides access to over 100 hidden Windows settings. Using modules included in this section you can easily customize your Windows like a bona-fide geek.

The Virtual Desktop module lets you run as many as four custom-designed desktop configurations simultaneously allowing you to tailor your computer screen to your mood and your work requirements.

Last but not least the suite also gives you a complete picture of all the aspects of your computer’s hardware, including detailed information about your motherboard, processor, video card, memory, hard disk and network.

~

That’s all for now!

This is quite a long post but I think it pretty much sums up every tips, tools and tweaks you’ll ever need to enhance the performance of your Windows 7.

Heavy gamers might find other more tailored lists out there but my intention was addressing the needs of most average users. Feel free to share any further tips and tweaks you’re familiar with and let me know what else I could add here to make this list even better.

Have fun tweaking but always remember to backup before making any crucial changes to your system.

Ask yourself a question, “Are you a Lazy Blogger?”. Even if you are not, these plugins will bring you to next evolution for your WordPress blog which will change the way you do blogging.

“Why do you need these plugins?”. Because, WordPress is the best and the most expandable blogging platform in the world, the plugin architecture simply gives you the power to add engaging features, improve communication and build a strong relation between you and your blog readers. Savvy? No?

Blogging is about writing great content and if your spend all your sweet time modifying your blog by hard coding then “When will you find the time to write the great content?”. Makes you think? By the time you reach over this post, you might be so proud of yourself that you have actually 23 plugins installed on your WordPress and you begin to think like you are getting professional. Well my friend, I can tell you one thing -

“Quality matters over Quantity”

Today the mission of this post is to guide you to discover the most useful, smart and efficient plugins for WordPress. These plugins will let you concentrate more about writing your content rather than spending time over managing the blog.

Carefully hand picked and incredibly handy WordPress plugins to power up your blog are included in this list. Among some popular WordPress plugins you also will discover new, not so well known or underrated but extremely useful WordPress plugins.

Just a few Notes before continue :

• Spend enough time to understand your need and purpose of your blog. An example would be a photo blog. A photo blog will require image gallery plugins etc. So sort out first what kind of blog and then add appropriate plugins.
• Do not install all of the plugins, it will simply overload your WordPress configuration. If possible test it out on your local system.
• Not all the plugins listed here are the very best but they do “get the things done”.
• Ah I just found out someone simply stolen the content and image of this article and changed the image to claim it as their own.

‘Nuff said, lets continue…

Blog Management Plugins

Managing your blog can be tedious task. Lets see how we can simplify the process of managing your blog using these plugins.

1. WordPress Backup – WordPress Backup is an essential plugin for all WordPress blog administrators. It performs regular backups of your upload (images) current theme, and plugin directories. Backup files are available for download and optionally emailed to a specified email. Don’t get caught without a recent backup of your theme or images or plugins.

   You can adjust the interval between backups and the email address to which the backups are sent.

   Note:
   a) As the size of the zip files increase, it may not be possible to email the files due to limitations of email servers.

   b) It requires some editing on PHP.INI at your server, but not all hosting service provider allows you to access that feature.

   Why do you need this?
   On a Rainy Day this will save your life.

2. WP Database Backup – Database is the crucial part of your blog system. WordPress database backup creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as other tables of your choice in the same database. It can backup database to your server as well as it can email the database directly to your inbox. Nifty? Yup, it is pretty sweet when you can also schedule the interval between the backups.

   Why do you need this?
   On a Rainy Day this also will save your life.

3. WP Super Cache – A very popular and easy to use caching plugin which generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a html file is generated your web server will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts. Yes, it is a noticeable performance improvement tool. Pretty easy to setup and configure.

   Why do you need this?
   This generates static files and reduce loads on the server dramatically.

   Alternative would be:
   

   W3 Total Cache – This is another alternative to the WP Super Cache plugin. Trusted by many popular blogs like: mashable.com, pearsonified.com, webdesignerdepot.com, freelanceswitch.com, briansolis.com, css3.info, tutsplus.com, yoast.com, noupe.com and others. W3 Total Cache improves the user experience of your blog by improving your server performance, caching every aspect of your site, reducing the download time of your theme and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.

   Benefits:
   * At least 10x improvement in site performance (Grade A in YSlow, when fully configured)
   * “Instant” second page views (browser caching after first page view)
   * Reduced page load time: increased visitor time on site (visitors view more pages)
   * Optimized progressive render (pages appear to load instantly)
   * Improved web server performance (easily sustain high traffic spikes)
   * Up to 80% Bandwidth savings via Minify and HTTP compression of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and RSS feeds

   Note: This plugin is designed for very advance users.

   Why do you need this?
   I’ve moved from WP-Super Cache to this one for some specific performance reasons but as a general blogger you can always use WP Super Cache plugin.

4. Maintenance Mode Plugin – Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. A great tool to use while you upgrade your blog.

   Why do you need this?
   Definitely you don’t want your visitors to end up on some error page while you are upgrading your blog

5. Plugin Manager – lets you to view, download and install plugins from wordpress.org from an AJAX’ed interface, instead of manually downloading, extracting and uploading each plugin. A real time saver you can say.

   Another alternative would be:

   Plugin Central – Automatically installs WordPress plugins by name and URL. Provides automatic update of multiple plugins.

   Why do you need this?
   It makes you life much more simpler for installing and updating plugins.

6. Role Manager – allows you to assign different levels of access to different contributors to your blog – for example, only allowing a user to contribute to a particular category. Comes with very detailed and exclusive options.

   Why do you need this?
   This one will give you the flexibility of managing multiple level of permissions on your blog. If you run a multi-author blog, this will become your Swiss army knife.

7. No Self Ping – Prevents your blog from sending pingbacks internally to your other posts.

   Why do you need this?
   Self-Pinging is simply annoying

8. WP-Optimize – Oh yeah, this is kinda shameless plug. I know. But Remember WP-Optimize can clean your database overhead in one simple click, cleans up your post revisions, additionally allows you to change your username and enables you to clean up your spam queue comments in a flash.

   Why do you need this?
   Enables you to cleanup your database overhead, easy and simple to use. Compatible with all WordPress 2.x databases and keeps your database in a optimal condition without going through PhpMyAdmin interface. You should run it at least once every month.

9. WPML Multilingual CMS – Allows building complete multilingual sites with WordPress
10. Pretty Link – Shrink, track and share any URL on the Internet from your WordPress website. You can now shorten links using your own domain name (as opposed to using tinyurl.com, bit.ly, or any other link shrinking service)! In addition to creating clean links, Pretty Link tracks each hit on your URL and provides a full, detailed report of where the hit came from, the browser, os and host. Pretty Link is a killer plugin for people who want to mask their affiliate links, track clicks from emails, their links on Twitter to come from their own domain, or generally increase the reach of their website by spreading these links on forums or comments on other blogs.
11. Sidebar-Login – has both a widget and a template tag to allow you to have a login form in the sidebar of your wordpress powered blog.
12. WordPress.com Stats – Automattic created its own stats system, to focus on just the most popular metrics a blogger wants to track and provide them in a clear and concise interface. Installing this stats plugin is much like installing Akismet, all you need is to put in your API Key and the rest is automatic.
13. Feedburner Feed Replacement – Forwards all feed traffic to Feedburner while letting through some important User-Agents.
14. Adminimize – Visually compresses the administrative header so that more admin page content can be initially seen. Also moves ‘Dashboard’ onto the main administrative menu because having it sit in the tip-top black bar was ticking me off and many other changes in the edit-area. Adminimize is a WordPress plugin that lets you hide ‘unnecessary’ items from the WordPress administration menu, submenu and even the ‘Dashboard’, with forwarding to the Manage-page. On top of that, you can also hide post meta controls on the Write page and other areas in the admin-area and Write-page, so as to simplify the editing interface. Compatible with WordPress 2.5 or later. Configure all metaboxes and other areas in the write-area. The new theme move the Tags- and Category-box to the sidebar, switch off optional metaboxes and other areas in the write-area. Scroll automatically to the Textbox, when you click the write-button. Many options for menu, submenu and all areas, metaboxes in the write-area, separated for all roles in WordPress. Screen Shots.
15. WordPress Mobile Edition shows mobile visitors a mobile version of the site. You have to install the theme as well
16. Google Analyticator makes it easy to enable Google Analytics on your blog and measure where visitors are coming from, what terms they are searching for, etc.

    Another strong alternative is:

    Ultimate Google Analytics – Plugin to add Google Analytics JavaScript to each page on your weblog without making any changes to your template. The plugin can also add tracking to outbound links, downloads from your own site and mailto: links.

17. Branded Login Screen for WordPress – Lets you use custom login screen instead of WordPress default. Branded Admin which lets you change the admin area is also available
18. WP Sentry is a plugin for access-restricted posting, allowing bloggers to discuss sensitive subjects without being exposed to Google or non registered users. With WP Sentry you can create user groups, specify which users or groups have access to the post. Setting any access restrictions forces the post to be listed as �private� in WordPress, so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to hide a sensitive post. Users may be members of multiple groups.
19. Absolute Privacy for WordPress provides you with the ultimate user moderation. It’s perfect for family blogs, private communities, and personal websites. It could force users to enter first and last name during registration, let users to choose their own passwords, get emailed every time an approval is waiting (with a link for quick approval), lock out all non-logged in views from your website.
20. Co-Authors Plugin – When you have a blog that is being run by multiple authors, there are times that more than one person contribute to an article. Co-Authors that will let you associate multiple authors to a post in WordPress. Co-authored posts appear on a co-author’s posts page and feed. Additionally, co-authors may edit the posts they are associated with, and co-authors who are contributors may only edit posts if they have not been published (as is usual).
21. Hide Dashboard – This plugin lets you hide dashboard features from some users. The title just say it all.
22. Pre-Publish Post Reminder – Always forget to insert your signature, thumbnail or maybe a category image? Or need a place to store your code where you can conveniently copy and paste into your post? Need to leave a note for co-authors? This is what this plugin is for – a handy reminder list on your Post Admin page.
23. Userextra On Blogs that have multiple authors, it is wise to assign authors to specific categories to avoid confusion. This plugin limits the user to publishing into the categories he/she is assigned.

Content Plugins

Empower your contents with these terrific plugins:

1. Customizable Post Listings – Display Recent Posts, Recently Commented Posts, Recently Modified Posts, Random Posts, and other post, page, or draft listings using the post information of your choosing in an easily customizable manner. You can narrow post searches by specifying categories and/or authors, among other things.
2. Organize Series – This plugin adds a number of features to wordpress that enable you to easily write and organize a series of posts and display the series dynamically in your blog. You can associate “icons” or “logos” with the various series. This version of Organize Series Plugin requires at least WordPress 2.8 to workAnother alternative would be:In Series – Allows you to easily group a series of posts into a series.Why do you need this?
   If you have multiple posts that are part of a series, this plugin will help you out by automating managing the series of posts.
3. Post Template allows you to create templates for posts with the same structure – perfect for reviews and series, and also useful to keep a multi-author blog consistent.
4. ComicPress Manager – ComicPress Manager ties in with the ComicPress theme to make managing your WordPress-hosted Webcomic easy and fast.
5. WP-Table Reloaded – Enables you to create and manage tables in your WP’s admin area. No HTML knowledge is needed. A comfortable backend allows to easily edit table data. You can include the tables into your posts, on your pages or in text widgets by using a shortcode or a template tag function. Tables can be imported and exported from/to CSV, XML and HTML. Screen shots.
6. Quotes Collection – Ajax powered Random Quote sidebar widget helps you collect and display your favorite quotes on your WordPress blog.
7. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display.AlternativeMicrokid’s Related Posts allows you to manually add related posts.
8. Yet Another Photoblog – Convert your WordPress Blog into a full featured photoblog in virtually no time. Use the full range of WordPress functions and plugins: Benefit from the big community WordPress has to offer
9. Add Signature Plugin for WordPress – This plugin lets you display a custom signature at the bottom of your posts. Simply type the text you want in the options page and configure it to display on every post, or manually display it by adding the trigger text wherever you like. You can also add in author information using the included variables – login name, first name, last name, nickname, email address, website, and description/bio. It get this information from the author’s account settings. It currently supports up to three different signature templates.
10. Insights WordPress plugin bring a powerful new way to write your blog posts. With Insights you can very quickly (in couple of seconds) do the following: search your blog for posts, edit them or insert links to them into the current post, insert Flickr Images, Youtube videos, links to Wikipedia, Google Map. Insights allows you to do all this using dynamic AJAX interface which loads the relevant information to your post in just a few seconds
11. Post By Author – This plugin will show the last X posts by the current author either at the bottom of every post, or where you manually specify in each post. Using the built-in options page, you can choose the number of posts to show, set the header text, choose to show the post dates, select the format of the date, and choose whether or not to include the current post in the list

SEO Plugins

SEO Plays a very crucial role in your Blog, so here are the plugins you need. For more SEO plugins and tools for WordPress, take a look inside the “Total solutions for WordPress SEO” post.

1. All in One SEO Pack – A must install. A very powerful Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.

   Another alternative would be:
   

   HeadSpace2 SEO – All-in-one meta-data manager that allows you to fine-tune the SEO potential of your site

2. Google XML Sitemaps – This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.
3. AskApache Google 404 – Displays unbeatable information to site visitors arriving at a non-existent page (from a bad link). Major SEO with Google AJAX, Google 404 Helper, Related Posts, Recent Posts, etc..
4. Smart 404 – Rescue your viewers from site errors! When content cannot be found, Smart 404 will use the current URL to attempt to find matching content, and redirect to it automatically. Smart 404 also supplies template tags which provide a list of suggestions, for use on a 404.php template page if matching content can’t be immediately discovered.
5. Simple Tags – Simple Tags is the successor of Simple Tagging Plugin This is THE perfect tool to manage perfectly your WP 2.3, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7 and 2.8 tags. It was written with this philosophy : best performances, more secured.
6. WP Greet Box – Show a different message to your visitor depending on which site they are coming from. For example, you can ask Digg visitors to Digg your post, Google visitors to subscribe to your RSS feed, and more! Best of all, this plugin is compatible with various WordPress cache plugins.

Comments Plugins

3rd Party Hosted Commenting Systems

Disqus Commenting System: My personal favorite. It’s a total web comments management service integrated with many popular Social Media Platforms. Namely you can comment using your facebook login, OpenID, Twitter and others. Very handy moderation dashboard and a mature product. You will need to have an account with Disqus and you need to register your blog to it first. It also sync the comments with WordPress database so if you decided not to use it anymore, all your comments will be available to WordPress. Not to mention that this system also contains a WordPress Plugin for easier sync and manageably. All comments interface is hosted by Disqus itself.

Alternative Choice 1

IntenseDebate: Almost all the same feature as Disqus commenting system with some additional options. It has it’s own WordPress plugin as well. Created by the owner of WordPress systems. I still prefer Disqus though.

Alternative Choice 2

JS-KIT Echo: Well known JavaScript based hosted commenting platform which also integrates with WordPress, provides a good number of alternative login systems and Social Media interaction for commenting.

Verdict: Disqus Commenting System. Continue to the rest of this section if you are not interested on one stop solutions or you might like to customize the features of the comments section of your blog.

Blog Comments Plugins

1. Akismet Spam filter plugin (Requires a WordPress.org free account) is an absolute must for any blog, filtering out obvious spam and holding back the dubious stuff for moderation.
2. WP Ajax Edit Comments – The most powerful comment editing solution for WordPress. Users can edit their own comments for a limited time, while admins can edit all comments.

   Note: Handy and Useful but resource heavy.

3. DoFollow is a plugin which disables the default ‘nofollow’ setting on WordPress blogs (which tells search engines to disregard any links in comments). This means that links posted in comments benefit from ‘Google juice’.

   Note: Personally I’m not using it right now because I am using Disqus.

4. CommentLuv – This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve a selection of their last blog posts, tweets or digg submissions which they can choose one from to include at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.

   Note: It has been found to increase comments and the community spirit for the thousands of blogs that have installed it. With a simple install you will immediately start to find new and interesting blog posts, tweets and diggs from your own blog and community. Visit ComLuv for more information.

5. Gurken StC is an extension of the version from Mark Jaquith (txfx.net). It supports closed-loop authentication which means that you first have to confirm your mail address, before you’re able to receive notifications about subsequent comments.
6. Comment Rating – Allows visitors to rate comments in Like vs. Dislike fashion with clickable images. Poorly-rated & highly-rated comments are displayed differently
7. Comment Redirect – This plugin redirect your first time commentators to a WordPress page of your choice. This is an excellent plugin to use if you want to thank your first time commentators. You can send them to a page where you have written some kind words for them.
8. Comment Relish – This plugin lets you send out email to your new commentators and welcome them/thank them. This is a great way to initiate the process of interaction. Keep the message short and sweet. Tag with it some resources that might be helpful to your users. Often times marketers attach freebies and other products which makes the new visitor, a loyal user to your website.

Image Plugins

1. Scissors – Enhances WordPress’ handling of images by introducing cropping, resizing, rotating, and watermarking functionality.
2. Simple Flickr Photos – Displays Flickr photos based on your settings.

   Note: This one also depends on what kind of focus you have on your blog. If you are a photographer and you host your images at Flickr then you might consider using this.

3. jQuery Lightbox – Image overlay plugin

   Another alternative would be:

   jQuery Lightbox For Native Galleries – Makes the native WordPress galleries use a lightbox to display the fullsize images.

   Yet another alternative would be:

   Lightview Plus – A wordpress plugin which implements lightview of Nick Stakenburg. Lightview does the same as lightbox, but in a much nicer way and since Version 2.0 much more. Now lightview-plus plays videos from YouTube and Vimeo.

   Another alternative would be:

   Lightbox Plus – Permits users to view larger versions of images from the current page and display simple slide shows, all in an overlay.

4. Nexgen Gallery – NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option. You need to check out the Demo Site.

   Another alternative would be:

   GRAND Flash Album Gallery – Full integrated (flash skin based, slideshow) Image Gallery plugin with a powerful admin back end.

Social Media Plugins

Lets you integrate your blog and interact with many social media platforms:

1. WP to Twitter – The WP-to-Twitter plugin posts a Twitter status update from your WordPress blog using the Cli.gs URL shortening service to provide a link back to your post from Twitter. If you have a Cli.gs API key, the shortened URL will also be filed in your Cli.gs account so that you can track statistics for the shortened URL. The plugin can send a default message for updating or editing posts or pages, but also allows you to write a custom Tweet for your post which says whatever you want. By default, the shortened URL from Cli.gs is appended to the end of your message, so you should keep that in mind when writing your custom Tweet. Any status update you write which is longer than the available space will automatically be truncated by the plugin. This applies to both the default messages and to your custom messages.
2. Twitter Widget Pro – A widget that properly handles twitter feeds, including @username, #hashtag, and link parsing. It supports displaying profiles images, and even lets you control whether to display the time and date of a tweet or how log ago it happened (about 5 hours ago, etc). Requires PHP5.
3. Sociable – Automatically adds links to your favorite social bookmarking sites to your posts, pages and RSS feed
4. SexyBookmarks – Adds an attractive social bookmarking menu to your posts, pages, index, or any combination of the three
5. Twitoaster – Twitter Conversations. Automatically retrieve Twitter Replies to your Blog’s Posts. These Twitter Replies are handled like Posts Comments, using WP built-in comment system.
6. Twitter Goodies plugin will show your tweets under Sidebar Area (Widget), Post and/or Pages
7. Twitter Friendly Links – The plugin creates a shorter link for every blog post, so instead of http://kovshenin.com/wordpress/plugins/twitter-friendly-links/ you can use http://kovshenin.com/712. Sweet, huh?
8. Digg Digg WordPress Plugin WordPress plugin that is used to generate social vote button, which include Digg , Reddit , Dzone , Yahoo Buzz , TweetMeme (twitter) , fbShare (facebook) and Polladium buttons.
9. WP FollowMe is a wordpress plugin that allow you to add a twitter “Follow me” badge on your wordpress blog.
10. BackType Tweetcount – The BackType Tweetcount plugin shows the number of tweets your posts get and allows users to retweet.

    Another cool alternative would be:

    Easy Retweet – Simple and effective retweet button for your blog posts.

11. Tweet Blender – Similar in functionality to Twitter’s own widget but has support for multiple authors, hashtags, and keywords all blended together. The plugin can show tweets from just one user (as all other Twitter plugins do); however, it can also show tweets for a topic which you can define via Twitter hashtag or keyword. But there is more! It can also show tweets for multiple authors AND multiple keywords AND multiple hashtags all blended together into a single stream. View Screen Shots.
12. Add to Any: Subscribe Button – Helps readers subscribe to your blog using any feed reader, such as Google Reader, My Yahoo!, Netvibes, Windows Live, and all other RSS readers. The button comes with AddToAny’s customizable Smart Menu, which places the services visitors use at the top of the menu, based on each visitor’s browsing history.
13. ShareThis – The ShareThis WordPress plugin provides a simple way for users to add your post to many social bookmarking sites, or to send a link to your post via email, AIM, Facebook, Twitter and more

    Another alternative would be:

    Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button – Help readers share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, and over 100 more social bookmarking and sharing sites. The button comes with AddToAny’s customizable Smart Menu, which places the services visitors use at the top of the menu, based on each visitor’s browsing history

14. Gigya Socialize – Increase Registration and Engagement using Facebook Connect, Twitter and OpenID. Demo Site.
15. Facebook Connect for WordPress – WordPress plugin that allows direct integration of WordPress blogs with Facebook using Facebook Connect.
16. WordBook – Bring your WordPress blog posts into Facebook, and enabling users to comment and share those posts.
17. Last.Fm Records – This plugin shows CD covers on your WordPress weblog. It connects to last.fm and grabs the list of CDs you listened to recently and tries to find the cover images at last.fm
18. Postalicious is a WordPress plugin that automatically posts your delicious, ma.gnolia, Google Reader, Reddit, or Yahoo Pipes bookmarks to your blog. The exact details of how your bookmarks are posted are very customizable and are designed to meet your specific needs. Postalicious uses the pseudo-cron functionality introduced in WordPress 2.1 to schedule automatic hourly updates. If you do not have WordPress 2.1 or later installed, you will still be able to use Postalicious, but you will have to perform the updates manually
19. WP-Email – Allows people to recommend/send your WordPress blog’s post/page to a friend.

Widget/Presentation Plugins

1. My Link Order – Allows you to set the order in which links and link categories will appear in the sidebar.
2. Video Sidebar Widgets – A video sidebar widget using WordPress 2.8 Widgets API to display videos such as Vimeo, YouTube, MySpace Videos etc. Requires at least WordPress 2.8.1
3. About Me widget – Add an “About Me” widget to your sidebar.

   Note: Not really necessary but it still depends on your choice. It’s not a good thing to clutter up your sidebar.

4. Advanced RSS – This plugin creates a new RSS widget. You can use this to replace the built in RSS widget or along side it. It is substantially more powerful than the built in widget in that you have complete control over how the feed is displayed via XSL templates. The plugin also includes an admin page for creating, editing and deleting the xsl templates, along with running tests to ensure your environment supports the required features. Additionally some plugin-wide options may be configured
5. Sidebar Photoblog – An easy to use photoblog plugin helps you to share your daily photos on your sidebar. With photo archive, nice effects and ability to show random photo.
6. Top Commentators Widget – Adds a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site. Adapted from Show Top Commentators plugin at Personal Financial Advice
7. Flexi Pages Widget – A highly configurable WordPress sidebar widget to list pages and sub-pages. User friendly widget control comes with various options.
8. Get Recent Comments – This plugin shows excerpts of the latest comments and/or trackbacks in your sidebar. You have comprehensive control about their appearance. This ranges from the number of comments, the length of the excerpts up to the html layout. You can let the plugin order the comments by the corresponding post, or simply order them by date. The plugin can (optionally) separate the trackbacks/pingbacks from the comments. It can ignore comments to certain categories, and it offers support for gravatars. It only gives extra work to the database, when actually a new comment arrived. You can filter out unwanted pingbacks, which originate from your own blog. And it is a widget.

   Another alternative would be:

   WP-RecentComments – Display recent comments in your blog sidebar.

9. Facebook Dashboard Widget – You can display your Facebook friends status updates, posted items and/or notifications on your WordPress dashboard. Require WP 2.5 or above.
10. List Authors Widget – This plugin display a list of authors in your WordPress Sidebar Widgets linking to the authors.php page

Banner and Advertise Plugins

1. AdRotate – Make making money easy with AdRotate. Add advanced banners to your website using the simplest interface available!
2. Easy AdSense – Easiest way to show AdSense and make money from your blog.
3. WP-Insert: Allows insert any type of content fragments inside your posts, can be used as a AD Manager also.
4. Sponsors Slideshow Widget – Widget to display a certain link category with images as slide show.
5. Author Advertising Plugin – Specially for multi author blogs. This plugin allows blog admins to create a revenue sharing program utilizing one of the many advertising programs out there i.e Yahoo, Google Adsense, Amazon, Allposters etc.

Other Plugins

1. PayPal Donations – Easy and simple setup and insertion of PayPal donate buttons with a shortcode or through a sidebar Widget. Donation purpose can be set for each button
2. Contact Form 7 – Simple, flexible but efficient contact form plugin

   Another alternative would be:

   cForms II allows you to create multiple and customizable contact forms across your blog, including multiple forms on the same page.

3. WordPress Download Monitor – Manage downloads on your site, view and show hits, and output in posts.
4. WP-CodeBox – WP-CodeBox provides clean syntax highlighting and AJAX advanced features for embedding source code within pages or posts.
5. WP-PageNavi – Adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog
6. PollDaddy Polls – The PollDaddy Polls plugin allows you to create and manage polls from within your WordPress dashboard. You can create polls, choose from 20 different styles for your polls and view all results for your polls as they come in. All PollDaddy polls are fully customizable, you can set a close date for your poll, create multiple choice polls, choose whether to display the results or keep them private. You can even embed the polls you create on other websites. You can collect unlimited votes and create unlimited polls
7. Category Icons – Assigns icons to categories with WordPress 2.3 or higher.
8. TDO Mini Forms – This plugin allows you to add highly customizable forms that work with your WordPress Theme to your website that allows non-registered users and/or subscribers (also configurable) to submit and edit posts and pages. New posts are kept in “draft” until an admin can publish them (also configurable). Likewise edits can be kept be automatically kept as revisions until an admin approves them. It can optionally use Akismet to check if submissions and contributions are spam. TDO Mini Forms can be used to create “outside-the-box” uses for WordPress, from Contact Managers, Ad Managers, Collaborates Image Sites, Submit Links, etc.
9. WP-Print – Displays a printable version of your WordPress blog’s post/page.

   Another alternative would be:

   Bunny’s Print CSS creates a stylesheet for printing so users printing pages from your blog can avoid endless pages of widgets, comments or other page furniture (including design elements).

10. Easy Popular Posts shows you your most popular posts – useful to install in a sidebar (you’ll need to put a line of PHP in the sidebar template for this).
11. GD Star Rating – GD Star Rating plugin allows you to set up rating and review system for posts, pages and comments in your blog. You can set many options for displaying the rating stars, and also add widgets into the sidebars for displaying top ratings and other statistics generated by the plugin. Plugin includes advanced settings panels that will allow you to control many aspects of rating. Plugin also supports multi ratings along with thumbs based ratings. Plugin supports use of cache plugins and dynamic loading of data using ajax
12. GD Press Tools – GD Press Tools is a collection of various administration, seo, maintenance, backup and security related tools. This tools can be integrated into the various WordPress admin panels, can perform maintenance operations, change some aspects of WordPress, see detailed server settings and information. Plugin can also track posts and pages views for various popularity lists. Some of the features don’t work with every version of the WordPress
13. RSSImport – Import and display Feeds in your blog, use PHP or the Shortcode.
14. Smart Archives Reloaded is an enhanced version of the Smart Archives. It’s easier to setup, there is no code editing required, it features better caching and now you don’t need to wait when publishing a new post and provides you settings page to choose how you want the archives displayed.
15. ProPlayer WP Plugin will help you to put videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Metacafe, Dailymoition on your blog in any FLV Player. It’s highly customizable with support of 27 skins and in addition you can play mov/mp4/h264/mp3 files too. Plugins includes Rating video, Visualizer for audio files, Displaying watermark. By default JW FLV Media Player is used.
16. Smart Youtube is a WordPress plugin that allows you to easily insert Youtube videos in your post, comments and in your RSS feed. The plugin is designed to be small and fast and not use any external resources. Smart YouTube also supports playback of high quality videos, works on iPhone, produces xHTML valid code and allows you to view videos in fullscreen.
17. WordPress e-Commerce Plugin is e-Commerce platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards and usability. This plugin makes it easy for you to accept payments online via Google Checkout, Paypal, Authorize.net, Payment Express. You can also tweak your site to look however you want utilizing WordPress PHP template tags, shortcodes and widgets.
18. Breadcrumb Navigation is an excellent supplementary navigation system specially for CMS because it helps in site usability. The plugin we are going to share in this article reveals page hierarchy. It is a very good addition to the design because of usability and it also provides SEO benefits because it links to the path hence increasing bot activity in page indexing.
19. WP-Typography – Have you ever wished that you can have rounded quotes, show ellipses, your hyphens don’t get mixed up, yes WP-Typography takes care of that. This plugin is not required for everyone, it is just for those who care about minor details.

Conclusion

This is my current list of smart, efficient plugins; yet it’s inevitable that there are other plugins out there which I am not aware of at this moment. Do you know one or maybe few? Feel free to suggest me your favorite plugin using the comment form. I will try my best to keep this post updated with your suggestions.

“Digital photography work-flow” is a systematic series of process to capture, develop, sort, organize, export and backup your digital photos.

I’m just a beginner photographer and I am learning photography in the hard way. My only teacher is Google and Flickr community. Walking along the path to the learning photography I actually realized that it is required to have a systematic work-flow for your digital photo processing. Slowly by many trial and error I’ve found a simplified way to capture, develop, sort, organize, export and archive my digital photo collection. Professional Photographers might have more efficient systems for their own digital photo processing which I would love to learn from them. Moving ahead, lets see how we could organize our overwhelming collection of digital photos.

1. Capture the Photo
   
   This is the very first step, obviously you need to start taking your photos before you process them. I try to shoot every day but due to my day job it is not always possible. Always try to take advantage of every minute you can shoot. Sometimes this can be walking down to a coffee shop downstairs or 10 minutes of walking to the bus stop. Photography is about capturing the moments. If you are a photography enthusiasts I would strongly recommend to take a specific timeout frequently for taking photos. Always seek for destinations you can take photos, you can search online or ask your friends. Specially on those dull and boring weekends you can plan for a trip to a nice photographic place, spend as much shooting you can do from various angles and from various arrangements.
   
   What you should bring along with you while you are on a photography trip? Well for starter your camera bag should include your camera body and your lenses, travel charger for both your camera and flash batteries, remote shooting tools (if possible), lens cleaner, extra memory card, portable USB hard drive/flash drive and a fast card reader. Also don’t forget your Tripod, which could be seriously useful during this long trips. If you have a laptop, don’t forget to bring it along. Keep your name cards handy in case you meet new people who you might want to exchange your photos. Well it looks kind of overwhelming but trust me I found myself in situations where I needed almost all of these things. TIP: Always try to shoot in RAW mode, which gives you maximum flexibility while developing the photo.
2. Transfer Images to Computer
   
   I use a high speed USB card reader. All card readers are not the same. Spend the extra bit to get a high speed card reader. Off load your photos and keep your main memory card free for use. Usually when I plug in my card reader, Canon’s “Camera Window” software automatically loads. This software has options to pull all of my images off my memory card and puts them into folders on my computer titled by date taken.
   
   After my images are transferred to my Computer I put the card back in the camera and delete the images off of it. So my card stays fresh to take the next batch of photos. TIP: If possible download your photos to your computer as frequently as you can.
3. Import and Sort
   
   This step I use Adobe Lightroom software to Import my photos into the Lightroom catalog. After the import process, I go through all the photos with the photo flagging process which allows me to approve and reject the photos I like. These photos are the selections I’m going to process later. These selection might not be the very final one but at least these are the one worth processing. In general I will pick about 10%-30% of the photos from the total shoots. TIP: Always try to review your photos before start developing.
4. Develop
   
   On the previous step I’ve already Imported and flagged out the photos I want to process. I will switch to Lightroom “Develop” mode and adjust those photos. These adjustments are non-destructive to the RAW format and you can always reset it back to original. Basically I do various adjustments on contrast, exposure, color temperature, brightness, fill lightening, blacks, clarity, vibrance and saturation.
   
   An example of developing photos in Lightroom, you can see the difference

   I’ll also use the vignette controls to create the optimal vignette to make the photo more classy. Lightroom provides more powerful tools which I’m not covering here right now. That is for you to explore.

5. Export
   
   Once I’ve developed the images, I’ll export multiple JPG version of it into a “Exported” folder on my hard drive. Basically I use 2 different type for the JPG files for Exporting. First is the highest quality JPGs possible and second is the one optimized for web uploading such as Flickr and Facebook. The high quality JPG files can be edited by Photoshop for further enhancement and second export is web optimized JPG which are smaller and less DPI for easier uploading and “on screen” viewing.
6. Organize
   
   This step I’ll go back to Lightroom and switch to the “Library” mode and assign specific keywords or group of keywords to the photos. Keywords are very important for search and indexing. Usually I include the all the places and possible terms related with a photo. For example if I took a photo of the lake at Kelana Jaya at midnight, I would include the keywords like “Selangor” “Kelana Jaya” “Lake” “Landscape” “Water” “Long Exposure” “Night” with that photo. Also I will rename the imported folders to a more meaningful names. For example the imported folder name was “2009-10-17″; I will rename it to “2009-10-17 Kelana Jaya Lake”. There are more possibilities for renaming folders but this format of renaming is helping me out this far.
7. Backup your Photos
   
   Once a days photos organization is done, I will transfer that day’s selected RAW files folder into my external backup drive. Currently I have two Maxtor 1 terabyte drives for backup. Afterward I will take my finished and exported JPG files and divide them into two categories “Class A” photos and “Class B” photos. Once the photos are sorted into these 2 categories I will backup them to the external drive too.
   
   Photo Archive folder organization.
8. Publishing
   
   Publishing the files includes publishing to Flickr and Facebook albums. I specifically use 2 windows software for this purpose. First one is Flickr Uploader for Windows and the Second is the Adobe Photo Uploader for Facebook. Both of them are free and really simple to use.

Well, that is pretty much of my photography work-flow process. Yes, it might not be the most professional one but it is my current work-flow till I get to learn more about it. Please fill me in, share your thoughts and ideas about how you manage your “Digital Photography Work-flow” or simply to discuss matters related to the topic. You are always welcome to suggest or discuss more efficient methods. Say hi or drop me a reply at twitter. I try to keep my Flickr updated time to time so why not become my friend at Flickr.

To Schedule Automatic Backup of your Data, you need to download a free tool SyncBack Freeware V3.2.19.0.

Now Install the tool and Launch it. It will ask you to create your Backup Profile as shown in following figure.

After that, it will ask you the type of profile you want to create. Back up profile is mainly used to take Backup of your important data to external hard drive, another directory in the hard disk etc. Whereas Synchronization Profile is mainly used to synchronize Data between two directories. In this Article, I will discuss the Backup Profile Method. Now select the Backup profile and Click Ok. The new popup window will Open and ask for the profile Name. Give a relevant profile name, so that you can identify the profile in case you need to edit it in Future.

After That Select the Source Folder which contain your important data and destination folder where you have to take backup which in our case would be flash drive. The Third option is Sub-dir which gives you an enhanced selectivity menu so that you can set permission for each individual file and leave behind the not so important data

In this Screenshot, I have selected my Program file Folder as Source Data and the Back Folder in My Flash Drive as Destination Folder. Also I have selected “Let me choose which sub-directories to include” option in sub-dirs row so that I can select the specific files.

Now, as we have selected the directories, next thing we have to do is to schedule our backup on daily or weekly basis depending on our requirements. To Do this Click on Expert Tab and then Misc Tab. After that hit the button Schedule as shown in figure

After That Set your Own Schedule, when you want to take the backup of your data and hit OK. Now you know that you data would be safe is something Bad happens

The Other Important feature is Email Notifications so that you can know that the Backups you had scheduled are completing successfully or not. To do this just Hit the Email Tab and enter your email details so that you know the status of your backups.

I have discussed just few features of this tool, but it contains lot of other features like backup over the network, uploading data to your FTP Server etc which you can learn easily after exploring the software.

Gagandeep Singh is working as an Internet Marketing Executive for Fortepromo, Which Create Custom Flash Drives for Various Businesses. Contact Fortepromo now, For your Imprinted Flash Drives.

Mikeyy is variant of an internet worm spreading through the Twitter stream disguise itself under a short url, which looks legitimate but it’s not. It hijacks the twitter user account who clicked on the disguised link.

What it does?

• It takes over your twitter account and spread messages using your username
• Changes links and profile information
• It spreads messages like “Twitter, freaking fix this already. >:[ – Mikeyy” and “This worm is getting out of hand Twitter. – Mikeyy“

How to remove it?

• First of all close down your desktop applications like Twhirl and any other.
• Turn off javascript from your browser or get the firefox extension NOScript, it disables any javascripts by default.
  
• Now load your browser and edit your twitter profile, delete of anything that you didn’t put there.
• Reset your password as soon as you can.
• If your account is locked you can always ask twitter for a reset password option here
• Now some additional option for the users of TweetDeck 0.25, this version of TweetDeck allows you to see a short url preview before launching it. Enable that option first in settings
  
  Enable the option in settings page

  
  Sample preview of a short url

Additionally:

• Check your system with a virus checker such as Kaspersky antivirus or SpyBot Search and destroy.
• Stop going to visit the Web Profile of any twitter user for the moment until it’s completely sorted out.
• Use TweetDeck for safety as described above.
• Regularly keep eyes on the Trends listed at http://search.twitter.com and additionally you might find the solution over there too.

As you can see from the first Image of this post a lot of people is being infected and exploited. Even though twitter uses pretty little personal information but this kind of security holes can bring panic to the entire network. If you follow the steps above, you should be out of the panic zone in no time.