Check Spelling

The spelling feature in Microsoft Word is a blessing to many bloggers. Since we are required to post our posts without grammatical and spelling errors, it is good to do some spell checking before you submit your post. In my version of Word, I do not have to do it manually, as Word does it for me and corrects me immediately, if I write something in a wrong way, or if I write a word which is not recognized.

If you have an older version of Microsoft Word, you might need to activate an option to check your grammar and spelling. You can do it by either going to Tools in the upper menu and then selecting Spelling and Grammar, or simply by pressing F7 on your keyboard. Of course, spell checking isn’t perfect and you have to spot some mistakes by yourself, but it should not be a problem if you are a careful reader of your posts.

Recently I noticed that the Wordpress platform allows bloggers for spell checking while they are writing their posts. From what I remember, this useful feature was not available in the past. Before this feature became available, many bloggers had to write their posts in Word document and then copy it to Wordpress, and then publish it. I am very happy that a feature like this exists.

Benefits of Having Multiple Monitors

If one monitor is not enough for you, you can always buy another one, if that will satisfy your needs. Both of them can be connected to the same computer if your graphic card supports that. There are many benefits of having at least two monitors:

1. You will have more than one desktop. This will give you more space to put all the necessary files you use. That can be quite handy if you work with many files like, for example, images.

2. Different monitors might be used for different purposes. One of them can be set to serve you as a working space (with emails etc) while another can be designated to serve as an entertainment station to play games, watch DVDs and listen to the music.

3. Many 3D games like Unreal Tournament or Microsoft’s Flight Simulator enable multiple monitors in order to enhance the gaming experience. Not many players have such a setup, but those who do, really appreciate it.

4. In business environments multiple monitors can be very handy as well, in order to allow employees to see more data on many monitors.

Ultimately, the decision whether to have a dual monitor setup is up to you, so you should take into account your needs.

Are Wireless Devices Worth It?

In the recent years, we have been observing the influx of wireless devices. For example, there are more and more wireless keyboards models of computer mouse available, and many computer users are switching to this type of devices. I had many different keyboards and models of mouse. Some of them were wireless, so I am going to state my opinion. First of all, I am a person who likes my computer to be reliable, and I appreciate that I do not have to change batteries in my mouse or keyboard, which are not wireless.

Wireless devices might be “cool”, but they are less reliable, because you might run out of batteries at any time, especially if you are not watching their life. Secondly, wireless devices are more expensive, because you need to buy batteries for them, and even if you use rechargeable batteries, they will not last longer than 3 years.

Finally, I can say, that it is a matter of preference. If you do not mind taking care of your batteries on a regular basis, go for wireless devices. You will feel more comfortable knowing that you do not need to connect them anywhere, and that you can get rid of so many cables surrounding your computer.

Need Motivation to Blog?

Everybody needs some motivation to make everyday decisions. Whether it is money, pursuit of fame or love, our actions are determined by many factors. When a blogger launches a new blog he is driven by something that he wants to achieve. Without proper motivation, there is no blogging. If not motivated in any effective way, a blogger can eventually stop spending time blogging and might quit the amazing world of blogosphere. In this article I would like to present a few small, but important things that keep my blogs running and make me want to spend my time blogging rather than doing something else. Here they are:

Seeing the progress of my work. Blogging involves numbers and this is what I like about it. Whether it is data on the number of visitors provided by Google Analytics that helps me see the increase of number of bloggers visiting my site, or other ways to see progress like Alexa ranking, I really like it. To me, maintaining a blog is like practicing for a marathon race where you constantly get better: stronger, faster etc. I like to think that my strength are my loyal visitors, and my speed are various rankings. To back up this point, I would like to give an example of how I am motivated right now to blog. I recently got more motivated to blog, as I am receiving more traffic, which in turn makes me spend more time writing articles.

Seeing other bloggers progress with their blogs. Nobody wants to stay behind, including me. However, I do not view blogging as a competition, but rather a social activity additionally bringing me satisfaction, way to spend my free time and money. If everybody goes ahead, then there must be some good reason for blogging.

Pinging With Feedburner

Did you know that pinging can take no time at all? Pinging is a great way to notify search engines of any new content published on your blog. This way you can receive more traffic, and your articles will be more popular in the blogosphere. Feedburner can help you achieve this without slowing down the publishing of new posts. Secondly, while it gives you customizability, you will have to monitor and manually add update services and in case they change you will have to update the list yourself.

A way to avoid it, and in my opinion, the best way to manage the pinging of your posts is to use PingShot. To enable it, log in to your Feedburner account, select your blog’s feed, go to publicize and ultimately to PingShot and after customizing it, activate it. As I indicated it is tied to Feedburner and it is a way to automatically ping various content aggregators as soon as the content changes, but additionally this list is going to be kept and maintained by PingShot, which means that all of the work will be done automatically. This is what I meant that pinging will not take you any time at all.

Instantly Growing a Blog?

There have been some cases, where a blog was only a few days old, and already had a few hundred subscribers. How is this possible? One of the secrets to instantly growing a blog is to have one established blog, and then create a new one. You can then link to it often from your old blog and mention it in your older blog.

This is a really effective strategy, as there have been blogs like AnyWired or Logo Design Love which prove that. There is a saying, which says, that it is the hardest to earn your first million. It is also true, that establishing your first blog is the most challenging.

Once you already have one blog with many visitors, then starting a second successful one shouldn’t be that hard. Another advice that I can give you, is to start a blog with a similar topic to the one that you already have. That way, if you have already an established blog and the same readers keep coming to your blog on a regular basis, they will be more likely to come and visit your new blog, once they hear that your new blog is related to your older established blog.

General Content Quality Guidelines

I have been thinking a lot about content quality lately, but I think I did not mention yet any general content quality guidelines. It is quite apparent that content quality is often subjective. On the other hand, we have to face the facts that there still exist general content guidelines that would apply to many blogs. Here they are:

• Thought-provoking. Your articles should be thought provoking. It doesn’t mean that all of them should be, but at least some of them as a lot of readers enjoy an intellectual challenge. Many thought-provoking articles are often controversial, so be prepared that not everyone might agree with what you have written.

• In a lot of cases entertainment is important. This might be especially true in personal blogs, probably less in business blogs. Posting humorous articles can make your blog more likeable by others.

• Uniqueness. Your posts need to be unique in a sense that you do not copy posts from other blogs. Your blog will not be considered high quality if you will be “copy-pasting”.

• Well researched posts. This simply means that you know what you are talking about and you might prove it by referencing to other websites or books.

How to Have More Privacy at Home

Have ever had this dilemma that you wanted your house to be bright, but on the other hand you also wanted some privacy so that your neighbors did not see every move you make? This is a real dilemma especially for those who live in colder climates where you do not see the sun very often.

Making your windows look more milky could be very expensive as you would have to replace them almost completely. I found out about another solution though which is very cheap, and will guarantee your privacy.

You can do it yourself for as little as a few bucks. You can simply paint your windows with acrylic based wall glaze. In case something goes wrong or you will no longer wish to have milky windows, you can always take a credit or a phone card and remove it by scraping it. Sounds easy enough for me.

Adware and Spyware

Removing existing adware and software from your computer requires special software. Before you buy anything new, check your current antivirus if it protects your PC against those malicious, self installing programs. Remember that it is often a good idea to use more than one program at the same time to have even better protection. Unlike most of the anti-virus programs, anti-adware and anti-spyware programs do not conflict with each other if a few of them are being used by you.

Be extremely careful while using any anti-adware or anti-spyware program that tells you that your computer is infected and you need to install a specific program or plug-in to fix this problem. Be very suspicious if a situation like that happens, as often it might be an spyware program itself which is trying to trick you to install even more malicious programs to your computer. Anyway, even thought malicious programs are very dangerous, if you have a reliable anti-spyware program installed you don’t need to panic.

However, it is important to have at least one program which will monitor whether there is spyware on your computer. I hope that after reading this you will be more aware of the dangers on internet, and because of it, will be able to avoid any problems.

Choosing a Blog Name

Choosing a name for a blog can be really a challenge, First of all, it is not easy to come up with a good name which will fit a blog, but secondly, many attractive domain names have been already taken. Coming up with a good names for a blog, and later checking them out one by one if they are taken could take hours, but with the help of sites like domainsbot.com this can be a lot easier. As a matter of fact, I know several people who got an idea for their new blog using this tool.

As an example, let’s say you are interested in the domain name goodblog.com. You will soon probably discover that the name has been taken, but the site will suggest hundreds of domains with a similar name, out of which most of them will still be available. I could say a lot about the search options, but just take a look yourself, and bookmark it if you plan to buy a domain name in the near future. I surely benefited from the site, as like I mentioned, it saves a lot of time and allows you to find the perfect domain for yourself.

Begin

Welcome! I created this blog to discuss various issues related to the Internet, blogging, technology, business and other topics.

As an avid computer user, blogger and internet user myself, I am sure that I will have plenty to share, and I hope you will like my style of writing and content of this blog.

Generally speaking, this blog will focus on the topics mentioned above, but I might also write about other interesting things.

However, I plan to focus on the mission of this blog, so don’t worry that I will stop writing about the main topics. I can’t promise how often I will be posting, but I will do my best. I hope you will learn a lot from this blog!