Windows Live Writer comes with a default spellchecker which is quite helpful for identifying typos. However, one thing that Windows Live Writer lacks is the ability to correct grammatical mistakes. Such mistakes are not always caused by lack of knowledge about the English grammar but can often be the result of typos which might not fall in the realm of spelling mistakes. For instance, you can easily swap the word “weather” with “whether” or “an” with “a” due to concentration lapses and common typing mistakes. While these words are not spelling mistakes, such errors however, can result in horrible grammatical mistakes. A solution to this problem is now available with an open source plugin called Grammar Checker Plugin.

Grammer Checker Plugin uses ‘After The Deadline’ web service to check for spelling, style, and grammar mistakes. If you are on of those users who is using ‘After The Deadline’ plugin for WordPress but needs similar functionality in Windows Live Writer, this plugin is godsend.

It checks for grammatical mistakes and provides you with in depth information regarding the nature of the mistake, with details about the correct grammatical format. To use this plugin, just download and install the MSI file and restart Windows Live Writer (in case it is in use) for Grammar Checker to integrate to it. To check for grammatical mistakes, highlight the text area you wish to check and click on Grammar Checker from the Insert tab.

A new window will pop-up and display the relevant information about grammatical mistakes (if any), with an explanation of the mistake according to grammatical rules. Because Grammar Checker uses the “After the Deadline” web service to provide advanced grammar checking abilities, you must be online (active internet connection) to receive grammar correction information.

Grammar Checker plugin is open source and was tested on the latest version of Windows Live Writer.

Download Grammar Checker

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Automattic, the folks behind WordPress are working hard on VaultPress. A service that allows webmasters to backup their blogs in real-time. It will be a paid service on launch that will cost $25 or less per month.

Here is how it works, you sign up for the service and install the plugin. Everything will then be backed up in real-time, including comments and small revisions. Apart from backing up the blog, it will also patch critical bugs by push updates automatically and alert you of any suspicious activity or hacking attempt.

Your data will be stored both locally and on two different locations on the cloud. If you have a large blog, I would recommend applying for beta. It is always better to be safe than sorry.

Even though, I have multiple backups; one on my local Home Server and one in remote location (managed by Liquidweb), I have signed up for VaultPress because it is tightly integrated with WordPress infrastructure.

VaultPress

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Webmasters who use WordPress on the backend to run their blog often have to face a daunting task: Moderating Comments. With millions of self-hosted WordPress blogs and billions of spam messages that are posted as comments, a need arises to make it easier to moderate the comments without having to refresh the dashboard every few minutes.

WP Comments Notifier is an opensource app which, unlike the name says, is both a desktop notifier and a place to moderate the comments. You can approve a comment, mark as spam, delete, edit, and reply all from within the nifty little tool that resides in the system tray.

It will also alert you whenever a new comment is posted, which by default is checked for after every 5 minutes.

There are three tabs on top, each representing the total comments, comments pending approval, and spam comments. Click each comment to bring up it’s moderate options.

You can edit a comment and leave a reply without having to visit the website. Astonishingly it is very stable app that never crashed during my testing.

It can be set to run with Windows startup. If you want an easy-to-use yet powerful app to keep tab on all comments made on your blog, this is a must-have app for all WordPress webmasters out there.

Download WP Comments Notifier

It is developed on C++ and works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

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Most of the time we want our website/blog content to be indexed by the search engines to gain more reputation over the Internet. But in some cases we don’t want our content to be indexed or want only a specific portion to be indexed. If you have been griping about your personal content (Personal images folder, admin folder, or folder like cgi-bin) getting indexed, here is the solution.

Robots.txt which is sometime called as Robots Exclusion Protocol is a file that is used to exclude content from the crawling process of search engine spiders/bots. If you have been familiar with the robots.txt you must have been acquaint with it’s directives like : Allow, Request Rate, Crawl-delay, Visit time, etc

ROBOTStxt is a spruced up freeware with a very snappy interface to create and edit robot.txt file. With it’s help you can keep your web/blog content secure and prevent search engines from prying into your personal content.

Here is an example of robot.txt file

User-agent: * (allows all search engine spiders)
Disallow: /secretcontent/ (disallow them to crawl secretcontent folder)

Choose a robot.txt file by going to File menu and hit ‘Open From www’ in case of opening it from website or simply hit Open to choose it from the disk. Once the file is open, use the ‘Add/Modify Entry’ drop-down box to pick any directive and set its value.

By choosing a User-agent from the list, you can make agent allow/disallow or set their attributes.

As you can see that I have added two user agents and disallowed them on my folders. Any of the directive can be chosen from the drop-down list and applied on the user agent.

It requires a minimum of .NET 2.0 Framework and works on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

Download ROBOTstxt

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After Google announced Public DNS to speed up URL resolve time, Google Analytics rolled out a new tracking technology called Asynchronous Tracking. There are reports from webmasters that Google Analytics tracking code can sometimes stop responding and slow down the overall load time of the website.

To solve this problem Google has come up with a new code which loads faster. Apart from speed it also collects data more accurately and eliminates all tacking errors when the JavaScript hasn’t fully loaded.

WordPress users: To set it up, make sure you have entered the code before the </head> tag in Header.php file as shown in the screenshot below. You will need to replace the old code with this new code but make sure you have noted down the User Account(UA) number which goes like UA-XXXXXX-X. You will have to enter this UA in the new code.

Every Analytics user have a unique User Account number so make sure you enter it correctly. After implementing this new code on my site I have observed slight increase in speed, but it is so slight that it is not observable to an average user.

Also please note that if your Analytics code fails to load sometimes, it won’t effect the web page. In other words, your web page will load just fine.

Asynchronous Tracking

It is recommended that every webmaster should enter this new code if they want to speed up Analytics and improve tracking.

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Although its not something new and most of the blogger are familiar with it, but for Google Blogger this is a pretty much new. Blogger from today, will show profile picture with the embedded comments that a visitor writes.

This feature is again made public as part of Blogger Birthday feature series. You can easily upload your profile picture when you leave a comment on a Blogger blog. Click “Add photo” in the comment preview box and upload your picture to Blogger profile. Once your picture is uploaded, every time you comment on a Blogger blog your profile image will be shown next to your comment.

You can enable and disable your profile image from Settings | Comments.

Cheers!

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Are you familiar with the widgetbox? It’s the world’s best place to find and create widgets. Flickr, Twitter, Hulu, Youtube and many others are among the most renowned widgets that are offered by widgetbox. This time in the honor of Blogger’s 10th birthday, widgetbox has announced partnership with Blogger that will allow anyone who has a blog on blogger to quickly create a widget of his blog.

You don’t need to manually update it, this widget will take care of the blog updates its-self. This widget can help your blog getting easily discoverable across the web. The widget will showcase posts, images and branding etc.

Here is a widget that is created in seconds for the Google Blogger official Blog.

Widgetbox let you build your blog widget easily and within seconds. You can customise the widget as well. For example, you can change the default colors, background with the help of themes and patterns provided by widgetbox. Your widget will be automatically updated as you create a new post. Another benefit is that you can put this widget on different sites that will eventually drive more traffic back to your blog.

Go here, provide your blog feed address, update the look and feel, publish the widget, and get more traffic. Enjoy!

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The upcoming WordPress 2.9 will include many new features and functionalities, the most biggest being Image Editor. Yes, the latest version will now include a build-in Image Editor which means you can edit the images online on the go.

WPEngineering blog has posted some screenshots which shows the Image Editor that WordPress has been working on recently. Note that it is still an unfinished product the final product might look slightly different. We have published two screenshots below.

Even though this feature has been the most demanded, personally I believe it is not needed. WordPress should instead focus on improving the security and stability of the platform and leave this image editing feature to 3rd party developers.

I bet if WordPress asked developers to create Image Editing plugin they would have received enormous responses, but they didn’t in the first place. Overall, I believe this feature could be helpful to some users out there who want Image Editing to be an integral part of the platform. Enjoy!

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Blogger has been busy announcing new features as part of Blogger 10th Birthday. This time Blogger has announced the most waited features of all, the “Read more”  link. “Read more” link on the index page was missing since its beginning and bloggers, for years, have been implementing jump break themselves by manually editing their HTML code which was complicated and error prone.

Today Blogger proudly announces the Jump Breaks.

This feature is already present in many other blogging platform. It helps you to show only a snippet of your post on the index page. Blogger will insert a “Read more” link that will lead the reader to the full post page.

This feature is available in the Updated Editor. Enable Update Editor feature under Setting | Basic | Global Settings.

There are several ways to insert the “Read more” link in your post. Notice the “insert jump break” icon in the updated editor. Insert this jump wherever you like in you post.

If you don’t want to shift to the updated editor, you can still insert the break manually from HTML. Add <!– more –> where you want to position the jump break.

So Blogger users have got the long awaited feature, use it and make you blog home page more convenient to read.

IMAGES VIA  BLOGGER BUZZ

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We usually don’t post much about WordPress but we have a whole category related to Blogging where we can sometime review interesting plugins and news. Today’s news comes as a warning to all self-hosted WordPress users. If your WordPress is not updated to the latest version 2.8.4 then you are under risk…..huge risk.

There is a new worm spreading fast that can install malware and spam in your posts published on a self-hosted WordPress blog(yes, even WordPress can be infected). Once installed, all your information becomes available to hackers. This warning unlike other previous warnings comes directly from Matt Mullengen, founder of WordPress, because….ummm…its tough to catch.

According to Matt, “It(the worm) registers a user, uses a security bug(fixed earlier in the year) to allow evaluated code to be executed through the permalink structure, makes itself an admin, then uses JavaScript to hide itself when you look at users page, attempts to clean up after itself, then goes quiet so you never notice while it inserts hidden spam and malware into your old posts.”

The vulnerability that allowed the attack was fixed earlier in mid August by WordPress and they encouraged users to upgrade to latest version 2.8.4, but most users have still not upgraded.

Those who haven’t upgraded yet, there is a good news for them. The worm is spreading quite fast and there is a chance…huge chance….that your blog might get infected. So either rejoice or use common sense! (Sorry for being sarcastic here).

Moral: When WordPress tells you to upgrade, then upgrade without question. They have a reason to tell users that they need to upgrade. If you think the guys over at WordPress are a bunch of apes, then you can ignore their advice otherwise follow it immediately.

If you think your site was hacked, WordPress has a whole FAQ there to help you. Enjoy!

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A good news for bloggers who use Google Blogger as their bloging platform. Google has announced a small but handy  functionality in Blogger to share your stuff. This feature is among many features introduced by Google on  Blogger’s 10th birthday.

The share feature is introduced as “Share” button on the Blogger Navbar.

If your blog readers are on your blog’s homepage, they can click “Share” button on the Navbar to share the blog. At the moment they can post the blog’s URL to Twitter, Facebook or Google Reader. If they are reading an individual post, clicking “Share” will let them share the post by email.

So share your stuff, build your audience and Enjoy.

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Update: It is fixed now. The problem arises when you don’t disable plugins while updating, some plugins can interfere during upgrade. Also don’t forget to remove wp-admin and wp-includes before updating to latest version.

This is a notice to all webmasters out there. If you are thinking of upgrading to WordPress 2.8.3, then you should wait until WordPress releases a fix. The biggest problem you are going to face is Widgets.

You won’t be able to move the Widgets around and most people are having such problems, including me. As you can see on the right sidebar, all widgets have vanished. I can’t move the new widgets, nor restore the one that were lost.

Note: If you are reading from feed or email, you will need to click the link in order to visit AddictiveTips and see my sidebar.

There are two types of bugs:

• Can’t move the Widgets at all, nor is editing possible.
• If you change the theme, your previous widget configuration will be lost.

The second one is rather strange due to which all my sidebar content is now lost, to restore it I need to move widgets, but then I can’t move them in the first place.

Update referring to second point: The content is not lost, but rather it has been removed from the widget in the right-sidebar(which makes it technically lost). Now to restore it back, I will need to move the widget back(which is not possible).

WordPress calm to have a solution for such problem and they list the following three solutions:

1. A number of plugins have been reported to present problems so deactivate all plugins and reactivate one-by-one to find culprit
2. In Appearance->Widgets under Screen options, try the Enable Accessibility Mode
3. Delete or refresh the browser cache

But all three points have failed to make any difference on my side, here is what I have say about these points.

Ans 1. I have disabled all plugins and still the widgets won’t move, heck even the widgets in the right sidebar won’t open.

Ans 2. This solution works for some people only. When I clicked Screen Options button, nothing happened at all.

Ans 3. Widgets still won’t move. I believe that it is not a javascript problem since I can move things easily in the main dashboard, but when it comes to Widgets, it fails.

You might not face the widget problem, but it is still better to wait. Like the saying goes, “Prevention is better than cure”.

PS…In the meantime I am trying to find more solutions to this problem, if I am successful this post will be updated accordingly. If you have any similar stories to share, please leave a comment. Enjoy!

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If you are one of those people who read my blog frequently, you would have noticed the new re-design for the last 12 hours. This is the design I was working on for the past 3 weeks. This new redesign is rebuild around Thematic Theme framework 0.9.5. Thanks to Crisiti for understanding what I really wanted and doing an awesome custom work.

For those who want to get their blogs re-designed, I would highly recommend going over to Cozmos Labs and contacting Crisiti. He is one heck of a great guy to work with!

So, What Has Changed…

The whole concept behind the redesign was to increase the branding and improve the overall navigation. As you can see on the main page, next to every post there is a logo that will tell you which category a specific post belongs to. Apart from it, there are 3 featured post on top, these posts are those that I would highly recommend to my readers.

If you click on any Category, such as Windows, you will find links of every post that we have covered before. There are 100 post links per page, you will have to click ‘Older Posts’ on the bottom to get 100 more post links, and so on. Adding links instead of excerpts gives a clutter-free look and makes navigation much more easier.

Although this redesign looks great, I am still working with Cristi to make some small changes internally. Now what do you think about this re-design? Do you love it, hate it, covet it, or want to marry it(ok this is a joke)? Pease let me know in the comments. Enjoy!

Update: We are gearing up for Windows 7 tips too and you will see lots of Windows 7 tips this summer!

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Editor’s Note: This is not a computer tip, all views expressed in this post are my personal opinion. The original intention of this post is to foster debate among readers and webmasters.

Suppose you discover a new fish species(let’s name it X) and tell your friend about it. Your friend goes to a group of people and tell them about a new fish called X without stating that it was discovered by you. Will you like it? Is this fair? Does it make a bit of sense? The answers is NO.

Now suppose another situation where you discover a new software and review it on your blog. Now your readers(both Direct visitors and those coming from RSS feeds) which include plenty of bloggers, will read about this new software and write about it in their respective blogs without mentioning that it was discovered by you. Will you like it? Is this fair? Does it make a bit of sense? The answer again is NO.

So what is this all about? It’s about using a bit of common sense. I have always tried to find the reasons why bloggers fail to credit the original discoverer and here is what I found.

Some Reasons Why Bloggers Are Afraid To Give Credit

• The competing blog’s PR might increase
• More outbound links would mean less PR
• Readers might shift to new blog and it would lead to less RSS readers
• Readers might think the blogger is too lazy to find the software himself

Busting the Blogger’s Myths Once and for all

The competing blog’s PR might increase

More outbound links would mean less PR

Yes, but No. The competing blog to which you link will obviously benefit from the PR, but remember that PR does not increase on incoming links only, if you credit a blog that is trustworthy in Google’s eye then yes even your PR can increase(since Google will find you more trustworthy). So in fact linking is a good thing.

Readers might shift to new blog and it would lead to less RSS readers

No, No, and No. Some readers would visit the credited site and might even subscribe to it, but this doesn’t mean that they would dump you. In fact, the readers would thank you because you helped them find more interesting blogs.

Readers might think the blogger is too lazy to find the software himself

Wrong. Most Readers are open-minded and they know what it takes to write a review of a software or service, so they would never think like that. In fact, when you find a new software in any blog and write about it, it’s obviously not laziness. Lazy are those who would sit and dream about taking over the world.

So What Doesn’t Make Sense

• Copying the full post with/without crediting(Mostly Spam Blogs)
• Copying an excerpt without crediting(Happens most of the time)
• Writing about a new software and not giving credit to the original blog where it was discovered(Happens all the time)

What Makes Perfect Sense

There are two ways in which you can give credit, either copy an except from the blog and link to it or write your own review of the software and give credit to the blog where you discovered it.

Ofcourse, there are times when multiple blogs write about the same product, in this case there is a possibility that these blogs share the same source. So it is perfectly normal in such cases.

So what’s the point? Honest bloggers like me try really hard to find and review the software. For others it is quite easy, simply copy the post, add an Adsense code and enjoy free bucks. So the next time some outlaw bloggers feel like stealing my content or not crediting to my little discoveries, all I want them to think is that they are stealing a poor man’s apple.

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Note: My-cool-sms is no longer free and I have updated the link with a newer site called SeaSMS.

Do you want to send unlimited SMS(Short Messaging Service) to India, UK, Germany, Norway, Poland, Ireland, Estonia, Austria, Czech Republic, Taiwan for free? It seems impossible at first, but you can actually send free SMS using my-cool-sms , SeaSMS service.

There are many similar services out there which promise free SMS service, but they never work. I thought the same when I tried this service out, but to my surprise it worked very well. I send an SMS to my cousin in UK, and he received it within seconds. This service will save enormous mobile bills. I am using it to send more SMS than ever, and truly enjoying it.

To send an SMS simply visit their website. Select the country from the list of 10 countries and enter the receiver’s mobile number. Now enter your message(should be no more than 160 characters) and click Submit.

In the next step, enter your phone number which will be displayed as a sender in your SMS. You can leave this blank too, for it is not compulsory. Next enter the verification code and click Submit.

Now you SMS has been send. You can write your name at the end of the SMS to let the receiver know that it is you. In this way he can reply to your original number, and you can send him another SMS using this online service. Enjoy!

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Hello AddictiveTips readers! Your continuous support and feedbacks has made this site a success in just 2 months and few days(was started by end of October). This post will cover everything that happened back in October, so you can have a quick glimpse one more time.

10 Most Viewed Posts

Grab a Coffee or a Coke and have a look while enjoying your drink, no need to rush.

1. How To Share Files And Create VPN(Virtual Private Network) Between Two Computers Easily
2. How To Recover Data From Scratched Or Damaged Dvds/Cds
3. 16 Free Search Engines For Finding Music Online – Start Listening Now !
4. How To Enable ‘Show Hidden Files And Folders Option’ When Disabled By a Virus
5. Top 5 New Kickass Torrent Search Engines
6. How To Recover Your Accidentally Deleted/Formatted Or Corrupted Pictures From Your Digital Camera
7. How To Speed Up Your Torrents Easily
8. How To Find The IP Address Of The Sender In Windows Live Mail, Gmail Or Yahoo! Mail
9. How To Encrypt Your Data Easily
10. How To Remove Unwanted Pre-Installed Software From Your Computer With PC Decrapifier 2

Rise In Feed Readers (Also called Subscribers)

On 1st October, 2008 there were 167 feed readers, after 30 days the subscribers doubled to 371 feed readers.

Note: I am posting these stats only to say a big “Thank You” to my subscribers who read my blog daily.

Now on the fun side, check the graph below to get an idea which Feed Readers people are using to subscribe.

Mobile Version Launched For Geeky Subscribers

If you are in love with my blog and cannot live without it for a single day, there is now a mobile version available.

Simply type m.addictivetips.com in your mobile web browser and you can read the compressed version of this site. Next time you are away from your computer, make sure to follow this blog through mobile.

The mobile version is 100% ad free, which means you will be able to browse with no ads or junks

There is a yellow bar at the end of every post that shows the address of the mobile version, it is pretty easy to remember.

New Poll for the month of November

There is a new poll on the right sidebar of this blog, make sure you don’t forget to vote, it is of immense importance to me.

Those who don’t know what is Ubuntu 8.10, you should check out their official site and Wikipedia page to get a quick glimpse. It is an open source Operating System which is totally free… and it doesn’t crash(Seriously !)

November is going to be a heck of a ride, and our team is working hard to write each and every useful tip that can help save this world from outer force(usually aliens from Mars)

Got any suggestions, questions, or feedback? Feel free to leave a comment.

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Note: This tip is for those who wants to take extra precautions, otherwise if you keep your wordpress up-to-date, you will remain secure as far I know.

I know that the title of this post is a bit comprehensive, but it pretty much explains what I am talking about. Hiding your wordpress version is the first step in keeping your blog secure and I recommend that everyone should do this to keep themselves safe from amateur hackers. Forget Professional hackers, they can hack into anything(even Pentagon). Anyway this is how you can prevent your blog from small hacks.

When a hacker wants to hack your site, he will simply check the version number and then proceed, so it is better that you prevent him from seeing your blog’s version number.

Prevention is better than cure

If you are using WordPress version 2.5 or older, simply navigate to your header.php file and remove this line,

<meta name=”generator” content=”WordPress <?php bloginfo(’version’); ?>” />

But if you are using any version greater than 2.5, then you won’t find this line because it is now generated from wordpress core engine. So the best way is to add a plugin.

There are two plugins for this which you can downloaded from here and here. I have hosted these files in my server, in case they get deleted from their original location.

Got any question, suggestion, or comments? Feel free to comment.

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Do you lack web designing skills or are you confused on how to design a website which looks professional, is attractive, search engine friendly, has columns, pictures, setup options, audio player features, setup to add photo galleries with instant uploading of pictures from your desktop directly without using a ftp software and lot more features?  Try Weebly, which is an online website creation tool helpful for designing a beautiful website or a blog within minutes and setting it up on your own domain name.

The fun filled web design experience begins with the creation of a unique username and password. After signing in, all that’s left to do is create a name for your site and begin the actual placement and site design work. And that’s where the fun begins.

Once an account is open,  you can immediately click Create a Site and get started.

The editing tools are simple drag and drop. Pick one of the Designs, then choose from Elements to find things to add to your pages, create new pages under the Pages menu and fill in the information about your site in Settings.

When you’ve added all the text, pages, photos, or other elements you want, click  Publish. The first time you publish, you must decide whether to publish on the site(yoursitename.weebly.com) or set it up on your own domain.

It  will also let you buy a Domain Name or publish a site to a domain you already own. These two options involve purchasing and setting up a domain with a domain registrar, then making sure that it has the information about where to publish your web pages.

Once your site has been published the first time, you can sign in to weebly and edit it at any time. All the sites you have will show up on the its homepage when you log in. Simply click Edit Site and you’re ready to modify or add pages.

To use Weebly, Internet Explorer 5.5+ or IE7 and Firefox 1.5+ or 2.0 on Windows, Firefox 1.5+ or 2.0 on Linux and Firefox 1.5+ or 2.0 on Mac OS X is needed.

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Images can give decent look to your Blog or Website. An average Professional Blog theme/design uses some where around 5-10 images. If these images are not optimized and are heavy in size, then your blog might load too slowly. This is not just with blogs even website do face this problem. It has become extremely important for us to Optimize And Reduce Images Size before using it in blog theme or on website. However most of Bloggers might not be professional in using Photoshop or any image editor or they are clueless on how to optimize or reduce image size. Yahoo recently introduced a web based tool called Smush -it to help you optimize the size of web images without affecting visual quality.

Smush-it has implemented Best Algorithm For Image Optimization which makes you free from all types of image optimization tedious task.  Smush-it.com is a service that goes beyond the limitations of Photoshop, Fireworks & Co. It uses image format specific non-loss image optimization tools to squeeze the last bytes out of your images – without changing their look or visual quality. You’ll get a report of how many bytes you can save by optimizing your images and all the changed images as a single zip for download. It has three options for uploading Images.

• Upload All your images from Computer.

• Use Firefox Extension for uploading images directly from your browser.
• Upload an Image by specifying URL of your images.

All the images Optimized with Smush -it are without losing image quality with maximum reduction in image size. Once the images are smushed, you can click on the Download Smushed Images which is a zip format. So all the images you uploaded to optimize, are saved in a zip file.

Smush-It is a tool for loss less compression of JPG, PNG, GIF files (including animated).

A 7% reduction in all the images on a website can mean a lot when one wants to reduce the page-load time.

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Note: This Blog’s statistics will be posted on monthly basis, they might not seem useful right now, but they will  come handy from January when I will start writing about blogging tips. If you hate such posts, you can skip it.

Update : I forgot to mention that the pagerank of this blog reached from 0 to 3 in just a month.

AddictiveTips has been alive for a month and our stats prove how loyal our readers are becoming. More and more people are looking for useful tips and we are working hard to keep up to your expectations. Before I start, I would ask you to first welcome our new author Muzammil Younus to our solid AddictiveTips team. Soon you will also find a short biography (with a picture) of every author, so that people can understand the team better.

Here are the detailed statistics for the month of September.

Blog Statistics for September, 2008

• Total Unique Visitors : 131,215
• Total PageViews : 229,097
• Average Pages/Visit : 1.75
• Average Time on Site : 1 minute 28 seconds

5 Most Viewed Posts

• Top 5 New Kickass Torrent Search Engines
• How To Speed Up Your Torrents Easily
• How To Fix ‘Cannot Delete Folder/File’, ‘Access Is Denied’ or ‘File In Use’ errors in Windows Using Unlocker
• 5 Useful Firefox 3 Hacks And Tweaks You Shouldn’t Miss
• Google Chrome : First Look And Full Review

You can also have a look at Most Viewed Posts widget in the sidebar, it will show you the most viewed posts since the blog started. I wouldn’t say which post is more helpful or useful than others, we try our best to make sure each and every post is unique and it helps our readers.

Technical profile

To make this post more fun, I have added a technical profile which shows which Browser our readers are using. I was initially using Chrome, but there are 2 big disadvantages of this browser

• Security flaws (Less secure than FireFox)
• No Add-on/Plugin Capabilities (The reason why I switched from Chrome to FireFox)

Site Usage by Countries

Feed Subscribers

The most impressive thing so far is that in just one month 153eople subscribed to the  feed. I didn’t save the picture so at the time of writing there are 167 feed readers, the details are below.

Not bad for the first month, we are gearing up to provide you with better tips in October.If you have not subscribed to the feed yet, you can subscribe now.

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Windows Live Writer (WLW) is a visual blog editor for Windows. It integrates with most blogging platforms (WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type, Blogger, and others), allowing you to see how your posts will appear in your blog’s theme, even when you’re offline. It isn’t just another text editor. As a former Notepad coder, I was drawn to WLW as I began to use more photos and embedded content in my WordPress blog. In this post you will get a glimpse of  some new basic features and ‘tips and tweaks’ to make a better Windows Live Writer experience.

New Features

Here are some new features of Windows Live Writer Beta – a part of Windows Live Wave 3.0.

1. Image Cropping

This was the feature WLW arguably needed most as cropping images is part of many people’s blogging workflow.  Since the new release I’ve had much less use for processing images outside of WLW.  (Note: this only works for images inserted from Insert > Picture.  This is not available for photos pasted directly—but perhaps that will be changed before the final release.)

2. Word Count

It’s easy to ramble when you’re blogging; I no longer need to copy and paste between WLW and Microsoft Word to see how unbearably long an article has grown since the word count can be calculated real time, as pictured below in the status bar.

3. Border Options

Little aesthetic touches like the rounded corners pictured below can help with the professionalism and consistency of a blog.  Having more options for the borders of images should be helpful for a lot of WLW users.

Tips & Tweaks

Here are some tweaks, that can make your work a little bit easier on Windows Live Writer. By default these options are not set this way, just checking onto the right option you can save a bit more time while writing your blog posts.

1. Automatically Save Drafts:

Tools > Options > Editing > Automatically save drafts - This option will let you save your posts in drafts at a specified time interval.

2. Open a new window for each post

Tools > Options > Open a new window for each post - This will save you time if you copy and paste between posts.

3. Remind me to add categories before publishing

Tools > Options > Remind me to add categories before publishing – If you use categories, then sometimes you’ll forget to set them.  This warns you if no categories are set when you go to publish. You can also select a similar category for tags too.

Default Picture Sizes

Image > Advanced > Default Picture Sizes – This option will let you automatically set the same width or height as the images in your other posts.  For instance, maybe your full size images should all be 480 pixels wide and caption images 200 pixels?  To set these options, click any image, select the Advanced tab within the task pane, and then click the icon of the ruler and drafting triangle.

Word Count In Status Bar

Tools > Options > Editing > Show real-time word count in status bar – while Word Count is always available from the Tools menu, it’s very helpful to have the word count at a glance in the status bar.

Insert Hyperlinks

To insert Hyperlinks you can use the shortcut keys Ctrl+K . If you’re a regular  WLW, Word, or Microsoft Outlook user, you’ll probably use this dozens of times per day.

Paste Special

When copying and pasting into WLW from a word processor or web browser, the formatting doesn’t always look great.  Instead of pressing Ctrl+V to paste, try Ctrl+Shift+V, which will give you options for pasting a much cleaner version:

Effects Tab

These effects won’t replace the image editing application you use but they’re a very quick way to set a sepia tone, apply a watermark, sharpen an image, etc.

Start tweaking your windows live writer now.  If you know some new tips or tweaks don’t forget to share it with us.

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Is your PC getting toasty or is your motherboard melting? Okay, I’m exaggerating, but if your components are reaching a potentially damaging temperature, I recommend that you use SpeedFan. This program monitors and reports the temperatures inside your PC using the built-in sensors on the processor and motherboard.

SpeedFan is a program that monitors voltages, fan speeds and temperatures in computers with hardware monitor chips. It can even access S.M.A.R.T. info for those hard disks that support this feature and show hard disk temperatures too and can even change the FSB on some hardware. At the lowest level, it is a hardware monitor software that can access temperature sensors, but its main feature is that it can control fan speeds according to the temperatures inside your computer.

This is what you see when you run SpeedFan without applying any settings, minus the info messages that you see on first run. To configure the setting click Configure button.

You’ll see various temperatures and their sub-menus, which are Temp01 and Temp02. If you tick a temperature, it shows up on SpeedFan. If you tick the Speed in the sub menu, it means that if temperature is too high it will affect the speed.

You can choose one or more or nil temperature to be affecting a certain speed. When you click on a temperature, you can set the desired and warning temperatures. Plus whether it shows up in the system tray. Your fan speeds will be at the minimum value if all related temperatures are below desired, will ramp up to the maximum value when between desired and warning, and go to 100% at warning temperature. Take note of how this works, and choose your temperatures wisely.

Next tab is Speeds, if you click on a speed, you see the minimum and maximum values they will be at. Plus whether to make it automatically varied. The use of minimum and maximum values has just been explained earlier.

Since we’re making it start on startup, it would be nice to start SpeedFan minimized so that it does not pop up and bug you. It is also nice to minimize on close since it’s human nature to click close and for the case of SpeedFan, it really will close if the minimize on close option isn’t checked.

This Advanced tab is interesting, as advanced settings usually are. You can select the monitoring chip and change it’s settings. For the mainboard H/M (hardware monitoring) block, you can even choose which sensor to use for the different Remote readings.

Terms/Logo:

Here is some explanation on the terms/logos:

• Flame on the temperature means too hot (above warning), and all fans will be set to 100%.
• Red on the temperature means getting hot or a temperature increase. Affected fans will be set to maximum value.
• A green tick means temperatures are ok and stablized. Fan speeds will be minimum if this temperature is around or below desired temperature.
• A blue tick means temperatures are way below desired or decreasing. No problem here. Fan speeds will be at minimum.
• Core usually means the reading from the sensor inside the CPU, which will give the same reading as CoreTemp or other such programs that read this temperature
  Remote1 usually means mainboard CPU temperature sensor, while Remote2 is northbridge/ambient temperature, although sometimes their roles shuffle around. I even had a Remote3 as CPU before. To know which is the CPU, just do a Prime95 and see which rises.
• HD0 = first HDD, HD1 = 2nd HDD etc.
• Speed01 and Speed02 – while this depends on your mainboard and where you plugged the fans to, so far my experience is that Speed02 is usually the CPU fan while Speed01 is the system/power fan or no effect.

This is a must-download for serious overclockers. While SpeedFan touts itself as a monitor for your system’s temperature and fan speed, the real reason it’s worthwhile is that it lets you easily overclock your PC and then adjust the fan speed so it doesn’t overheat.

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Blogging is fun, no doubt. But besides from writing blog posts {or entries} one has to promote his site if he wants to be a popular blogger. Traffic for blogs come usually from three ways.

The first and most emphasized one is ‘Organic’ source. Organic means natural, it is natural in a way that people come to your site by typing in keywords in the search engines like Google, yahoo, ask.

The second one is Direct traffic and it will come in significant amount only if you have made your brand name or have got popular already otherwise it will take some time to get steady stream from direct traffic.

The last and most easy method for traffic generation is social media which is also the topic of this post. There are tens and hundreds of social bookmarking sites from where one can get the readers for his blog. Newly created blogs can get much popular with the help of social media. Popular social bookmarking sites include Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious etc. Those who have control on these sites can drive traffic to their blogs/sites or their friends blogs/sites whenever they want.

Frankly speaking, I am also getting more than half of my traffic only from a single bookmarking site, that is StumbleUpon.

1-StumbleUpon

Far now, it is my favorite service because I am getting major portion of my traffic from it. At first in September 2007 when I signed up for this awesome service, I knew nothing about how StumbleUpon works but as the time passed, I became familiar with its mechanism. I came across some good friends also via this network. Their recommendation engine relies on users reviews and thumbs up and depends on user profile as well. For example, if your article gets reviewed and is discovered by several power stumblers, then it can get tens of thousands of pageviews compared to same amount of thumbs up and reviews from smaller stumblers will give you only some hundreds pageviews. In my case, I have noticed that with my one thumbs up and a review, I can drive 300-400 pageviews to a specific web page. Impressive isn’t it?

Pros: Great community of stumblers, shows sites according to your preferences.

Cons: You have to install another extra toolbar for rating sites which you like and dislike.

2-Digg

The big boss of social networking is what we call Digg. The concept of Digg lies around a graveyard. When you like an article or blog post, you can Digg it and become the first digger of the post, later on, share this with more and more people and chances are that it will get Dugg by several other Diggers. By getting significant amount of Diggs, the article reach to the FrontPage, from where one can get Digg-effect which results in generating instant traffic.

Pros: Instant traffic-boom and a needle in your stats

Cons: Digg-Mafia, Might kill server

3-Reddit

Reddit is another social bookmarking site in the line. Voting button is based on CSS mainly and thus takes less loading time than Digg. At first when you open the site, it looks minimal and simple. But behind all this, there is a powerful community of users and with support of them one can bring thousands of readers to his blog.

Pros: You can create your own Reddit page!

Cons: Splashy Reddit Ads in the bottom of sidebar. However, not to worry if you are Ad-Blind

4-Delicious

Probably the oldest social bookmarking site and was among the first to do Domain Hack but now they have moved to Delicious.com. It is acquired by Yahoo on 2005. Delicious is the site with true essence of bookmarking. You do only bookmarking there, nothing less and nothing more. Your bookmarks are classified with the help of tags. Recently, they have rolled out their new design with some changes and have added extra options. See the detailed list of changes here.

Pros: Eye catchy and simple design, bookmarks Import/Export facility

Cons: Not that much social-oriented, inclined to bookmarking only

5-Technorati

Last but not the least, Technorati is more of a blog search engine than social bookmarking site. But it is also a good way of promoting your blog across the blogosphere. Most bloggers weight the credibility of blog with Technorati’s authorities. An authority is a link back a blog gets when another blog links to it. Blogs with highest number of authorities are compiled in a Top 100 List.

Pros: ‘Add to favorites’ blogs of your choice and get informed whenever they post something

Cons: Less social interactivity

If you are using the above mentioned services already, don’t forget to add me there. My profiles links are given above

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