While stumbling the internet I came across a lot of websites using illustrations and they blew my mind.

So I decided to try my hands on Adobe Illustrator CS3. After practicing for about one week today I have created this illustration. I am really happy with the final outcome of today’s work and I need your feedback.

Please rate this illustration and provide your feedback. Thanks in advance.

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Of course I never intended to be out of touch and I got an invitation to attend a blogger’s meet in my town. So there I was, how could I miss a chance to meet people of same interest. My wife always complained that because of my blogging and passion for web-development, I never socialized…. We hardly got to go out together. Well now she is the one MOST EXCITED about it.

I have all the resons to be equally excited and enthusiastic about it. We landed in the pouring and waited outside the conference room where this meeting had already started. I was really excited about the meet and forgot to carry the required info (phone numbers) with me. However thanks to the knowledge of hotel people about blogging, they didn’t even know what we are here for, but there was only one meeting they had organized that day. I couldn’t control my pulse and jumped in to the room to confirm if I was at right place. Well that was the beginning of the great time!!!

Well it was an informal meet so we started with the introductions in the most informal and wacky way… another brain child of Mr. Bakshi’s great sense of humor. Well the idea really worked. Everybody seemed to gel along pretty well and very comfortable with each other. Truly a community of like minded people, we had all the talent and skills.

Thanks to Gaurav for initiating this idea to city beautiful and Mr. Bakshi’s & Rajesh to organize a great and lively event.

Not to forget the great experiences and leanings I got to share with all the founder members, as we now proudly call ourselves.

Last but not the least I wanna personally thank Abhinav Sood, Jasdeep Singh, Abhishek Vaid, Sameer Relan, Rajesh, Sorabh Dutta, Preeti, Sukhbir Kaur and my lovely wife Reet to share their experences and motivate me to write again.

Other readings about Chandigarh Blogger’s Club

Gallery

If you are residing in Chandigarh or nearby please

Join our club and be a part of us.

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Go to your Start Menu and narrow down the scope of the search. In other words try to narrow down what you are looking for. Instead of a general term use something more specific. There are two ways in which you can do this.

The first way is called the Registry hack and for that this is what you have to do. Make sure you take the registry backup before changing anything in there.

Step one: Open up the registry editor using the word regedit.
Step Two: Guide to HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Software > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > Explorer and then choose the Advanced key.
Step Three: Locate and then right click on the Start_Search Files and then select the Modify key.
Step Four: You now have to change the Value to Zero.
Step Five: Then restart your Explorer.exe or you can simply just reboot the computer.

If this method does not work for you then you can try this:

Step One: Using your mouse right click on the Start button and then choose the Properties key.
Step Two: Then click on the button that says Customize.
Step Three: Then see all of the checked items, uncheck the Search Communications.
Step Four: Then reset the search files to the setting Don’t Search for files.
Step Five: Click the Ok button.

I hope this helps, stay tuned for more tips and tricks on Microsoft Windows.

To speed things up in Windows XP try a few steps listed below and If you are using Windows Vista click here for tips to make it faster.

Clean Desktop
Items on your desktop such as icons and wallpaper consume memory and take time to display. If they’re not needed, remove the wallpaper and replace it with a coloured background (i like it black), and clean up unused icons by moving them to a Unused Desktop Shortcuts folder on your desktop.

Steps

Right-click on the desktop
Click Arrange Icons By -> Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard
Follow the on-screen instructions

Disk Defragmenter
Run Defrag to defragment your hard drive so files are faster to access.

Steps

Click Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Disk Defragmenter
Click Defragment

It might take sometime to complete the process so you can leave the computer alone and grab a cup of coffee or have lunch

Clean Registry
If you have added and removed a lot of programs over a period of time, you should consider cleaning up your computer’s Registry. Be very careful to choose a program to do this task as there are lot of spamming software’s available for free. Try searching for a good software at www.download.com and please go through the reviews submitted by users.

Clearing Startup Items

Remove any programs that load automatically at startup and which you don’t need or use. Click here for detailed info and steps to use this utility.

If things get too slow and out of control, consider backing up all your data, settings and device drivers and perform a clean reinstall of Windows.

I hope this article helps, in case if you have something to share please add your inputs in the comments below.

In terms of Search Engine Optimization there are two Meta Tags which are really important and these are Meta Keywords and Meta Description tags.

Sample Meta Tags:

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Meta Tags</TITLE>
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="This line will be displayed in search results below the title">
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="keywords, meta tags, meta tags seo">
</HEAD>
<BODY>

Meta Description Tags

The content of meta description tag is displayed below the title in search results however now a days this info is ignored by most search engines as meta description tag is often misused with misleading or even false information about a page.

It doesn’t mean that we should stop using this tag as some search engines still index the contents of meta description tag for its search results. If we don’t specify meta description tag, the search engines will usually extract first few lines from the body text.

Normally search engines will index the first 140 - 160 characters of meta description tag content. I would suggest use the description thats sells the page and make sure its the summary of the page content.

Meta Keywords Tags

As the name suggest Keywords are the important words and phrases which describes the content to find out more about keywords and all related terms check out my previous post on All about keywords and search engine optimization.

Content is the king, most of the search engines rely more on the content and if you use the keywords in meta tags its an advantage and help search engines to correlate the most relevant information to display in search results. Before selecting the keywords do some research as described in my previous post.

Share your Inputs

Please feel free to provide your inputs in the comments. The next post in this series will be about HTML Tags and Search Engine Optimization, if you have any questions about HTML Tags and SEO please drop me a line and I will answer it in the upcoming post.

Here’s a list of Run Commands Shortcuts that you can use in windows XP

Accessibility Controls - access.cpl
Add Hardware Wizard - hdwwiz.cpl
Add/Remove Programs - appwiz.cpl
Administrative Tools - control admintools
Automatic Updates - wuaucpl.cpl
Bluetooth Transfer Wizard - fsquirt
Calculator - calc
Certificate Manager - certmgr.msc
Character Map - charmap
Check Disk Utility - chkdsk
Clipboard Viewer - clipbrd
Command Prompt - cmd
Component Services - dcomcnfg
Computer Management - compmgmt.msc
Date and Time Properties - timedate.cpl
DDE Shares - ddeshare
Device Manager - devmgmt.msc
Direct X Control Panel (If Installed) - directx.cpl
Direct X Troubleshooter - dxdiag
Disk Cleanup Utility - cleanmgr
Disk Defragment - dfrg.msc
Disk Management - diskmgmt.msc
Disk Partition Manager - diskpart
Display Properties - control desktop
Display Properties - desk.cpl
Display Properties - control color (with Appearance Tab Preselected)
Dr. Watson System Troubleshooting Utility - drwtsn32
Driver Verifier Utility - verifier
Event Viewer - eventvwr.msc
File Signature Verification Tool - sigverif
Findfast - findfast.cpl
Folders Properties - control folders
Fonts - control fonts
Fonts Folder - fonts
Free Cell Card Game - freecell
Game Controllers - joy.cpl
Group Policy Editor - gpedit.msc (XP Prof)
Hearts Card Game - mshearts
Iexpress Wizard - iexpress
Indexing Service - ciadv.msc
Internet Properties - inetcpl.cpl
IP Configuration (Display Connection Configuration) - ipconfig /all
IP Configuration (Display DNS Cache Contents) - ipconfig /displaydns
IP Configuration (Delete DNS Cache Contents) - ipconfig /flushdns
IP Configuration (Release All Connections) - ipconfig /release
IP Configuration (Renew All Connections) - ipconfig /renew
IP Configuration (Refreshes DHCP & Re-Registers DNS) - ipconfig /registerdns
IP Configuration (Display DHCP Class ID) - ipconfig /showclassid
IP Configuration (Modifies DHCP Class ID) - ipconfig /setclassid
Java Control Panel (If Installed) - jpicpl32.cpl
Java Control Panel Cache Viewer (If Installed) - javaws
Keyboard Properties - control keyboard
Local Security Settings - secpol.msc
Local Users and Groups - lusrmgr.msc
Logs You Out Of Windows - logoff
Mcft Chat - winchat
Minesweeper Game - winmine
Mouse Properties - control mouse
Mouse Properties - main.cpl
Network Connections - control netconnections
Network Connections - ncpa.cpl
Network Setup Wizard - netsetup.cpl
Notepad - notepad
Object Packager - packager
ODBC Data Source Administrator - odbccp32.cpl
On Screen Keyboard - osk
Opens AC3 Filter (If Installed) - ac3filter.cpl
Password Properties - password.cpl
Performance Monitor - perfmon.msc
Performance Monitor - perfmon
Phone and Modem Options - telephon.cpl
Power Configuration - powercfg.cpl
Printers and Faxes - control printers
Printers Folder - printers
Private Character Editor - eudcedit
Quicktime (If Installed) - QuickTime.cpl
Regional Settings - intl.cpl
Registry Editor - regedit
Registry Editor - regedit32
Remote Desktop - mstsc
Removable Storage - ntmsmgr.msc
Removable Storage Operator Requests - ntmsoprq.msc
Resultant Set of Policy (XP Prof) - rsop.msc
Scanners and Cameras - sticpl.cpl
Scheduled Tasks - control schedtasks
Security Center - wscui.cpl
Services - services.msc
Shared Folders - fsmgmt.msc
Shuts Down Windows - shutdown
Sounds and Audio - mmsys.cpl
Spider Solitare Card Game - spider
SQL Client Configuration - cliconfg
System Configuration Editor - sysedit
System Configuration Utility - msconfig
System File Checker Utility (Scan Immediately) - sfc /scannow
System File Checker Utility (Scan Once At Next Boot) - sfc /scanonce
System File Checker Utility (Scan On Every Boot) - sfc /scanboot
System File Checker Utility (Return to Default Setting) - sfc /revert
System File Checker Utility (Purge File Cache) - sfc /purgecache
System File Checker Utility (Set Cache Size to size x) - sfc /cachesize=x
System Properties - sysdm.cpl
Task Manager - taskmgr
Telnet Client - telnet
User Account Management - nusrmgr.cpl
Utility Manager - utilman
Windows Firewall - firewall.cpl
Windows Magnifier - magnify
Windows Management Infrastructure - wmimgmt.msc
Windows System Security Tool - syskey
Windows Update Launches - wupdmgr
Windows XP Tour Wizard - tourstart

Need an Answer? Try Search or Post it Here

Stay updated with more answers, subscribe to my RSS feed.

Check out a few features of this theme:

- 3 column layout with separate files for advertisements
- Custom Pages to embed Google Maps, RSS News from other sites
- Custom HomePage and Blog Posts Page
- CSS Navigation with description of links
- Valid xHTML, CSS Layout
- Google Maps, Image Gallery and External RSS with custom pages

Above all - Everything done as per the owner’s requirements and within timelines

Checkout Live Demo (basic features) or visit www.VoteForKuwait.com

I love to hear about my work so please provide your feedback via comments

If you would like a Custom/Unique Word Press Theme for your blog or a Custom Web site, Check out my Portfolio and Get In touch.

As promised in my previous post I am going to write about the next and most important element of Search Engine Optimization.

Keywords
If you have been reading about Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing you must be seeing references to the term keywords. Keywords are nothing new, previously they were known as buzzwords and in today’s internet era this term has gained a lot of popularity. A lot of companies are making fortune with keyword marketing and SEO services.

Keywords contained within a Web page are the most important element to achieve high search engine rankings. Every aspect of Search Engine Optimization is based on the keywords.

Keywords are used by search engines to determine whether or not your web pages will address the needs of Internet users that are conducting a search.

When users search for some information, a business, services, resources etc they use certain keywords to find the information, the more keywords that are found on your web pages, the more likely your web page will be listed as a response to a user’s query.

For example: If I need some information about "Personal Loan Services" i will write this keyword in Google, Yahoo or any other search box and the back end search query will display the links to web sites that contain the information about Personal, Loan, Services. These three words will be highlighted in the results.

The search results will be different if I use "Personal Loans" as a keyword. So to get the most relevant information users normally use the basic terms like "Personal Loans Services in New York" if they are finding services for personal loans in New York.

Now your web-page position depends on what keywords you have used to optimize the your web site.

Should I optimize my Web site or each Web-Page?
Its very important to understand this concept because optimizing only the homepage will not get you the desired rankings and traffic. Each page contains different information so you should take each page very seriously. All techniques needs to applied on every page of a web site and you will get what you are looking for.

How to choose Perfect Keywords?
When you started your company or developed your products, you no doubt sat down with your friends, relatives and business partners and discussed the needs of your target audience. If you haven’t done Brainstorming before launching your products you know much more about the results of your approach.

When you start your SEO campaign it is important to brainstorm search phrases that are likely to bring qualified visitors to your web site.

Sit down with your friends, co-workers and business partners and discuss which keywords are relevant to the products and services you offer.

Compile an initial list of 5-10 search phrases that you feel best represent your company and which you believe people would type into a search engine when trying to find you.

Know Your Competition: Before finalizing a keyword, perform a search on Google, Yahoo, MSN or other search engines and click on the first page in the results. Now carefully check if that web-page is a real competition for your web site. If yes check out what keywords they have used on that page and you will get more ideas for your web-pages.

What Keyword tool should I use?
You can always search for "Keyword Tools" and you will get a lot of web sites providing this service for free or they will charge to display more than a few keywords. Now if you are smart enough you can use different tools to research for Keywords without paying anything

I have found a few tools that are good for Keyword Research and If you know any please share best practices via comments below:

Web CEO
Free software for SEO, try the free edition if you like it you can buy the paid version however I am happy with the free version

Google Trends - You can compare searches by separating with commas.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool - A very nice tool for keyword research

iWebTool - Lists keyword searches for a day and month

OverTure.com - Good tool for keyword research

WordTracker - Lists top 100 only gives you a link to buy WordTracker for next 1000 long trail - Play smart

Need your help to increase the list please suggest other good and free tools in comments.

Keyword Frequency
Keyword frequency refers to the number of times a keyword or phrase appears within a web page. The more times a keyword or phrase appears within a Web page, the more relevant the page is likely to be for someone searching those keywords. But one should not abuse the system by repeating the same keywords over and over again.

Keyword Density algorithms will vary from engine to engine. What page text is indexed will also vary. But, fundamentally, if your keyword (or phrase) occurs 5 times in every 100 words viewed by an engine, your keyword density will be 5%. I will refer to this term more when we talk about other topics listed below.

You can check the keyword frequency here: LinkVendor.com

Keyword Density
Keyword density is the ratio (percentage) of keywords contained within the total number of indexable words within a Web page. In general, I suggest using a keyword density ratio in the range of 2-8%.

You can check the keyword density here: LinkVendor.com

Keyword Prominence
Keyword Prominence is all about improving the prominence of keywords by placing the important keywords at the top of the page or closer to the start of a web page. The best place to use the keywords in the text is at the top of each page, preferably the main page.The closer your keywords are to the start of the page or the start of a sentence, the better. Some search engines also consider the bottom of the page you should also insert keywords at the bottom as well.

Keyword Proximity
This term refers to the closeness between two or more keywords. Some engines, such as Google, use the concept of "keyword proximity" as part of their ranking formulas. Try to put your keywords as close together as possible and make sure your sentences are clear.

We will discuss it in later posts when we talk about HTML tags and Search Engine Optimization.

Avoid Spam
Search engines are really smart, so make sure you don’t try to play games with them. If you use same color as background or tiny text that is barely visible Search Engines will give you -ve rankings so My suggestion is not to use any of these tricks because 0 is always better than -1

Stop Words
Stop words are common words and characters ignored by most search engines.

e.g. a and are as at be for from he his I in is it of on that

Never ever use these stop words in your keywords as they will be ignored by Search Engines. To reduce the amount of storage space required to index web-pages and to enhance the speed of search results Search engines consider these words as stop words. So I would recommend don’t stop Search engine’s bots with these small words.

I have tried to explain all about Keywords and their importance in Search Engine Optimization, If you find something missing please post it in the comments and I will update the post as user comments and you will get full credit to make this information more helpful.

Please leave your comments and links to useful resources.

Upcoming Posts

• META Tags and Search Engine Optimization
• HTML Tags and Search Engine Optimization
• Link Popularity
• Search Engine Submission
• Directory Submission
• Link Exchange
• SEO Free Tools & Resources
• General Search Engine Optimization FAQ’s

I will be covering all these topics in detail in my next posts so stay tuned or subscribe to my RSS feed.

1. Where to Start?
2. Should I hire a professional?
3. What all needs to be done to optimize a web site for Search Engines?
4. Why Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines are ignoring my web-pages?
5. How to get a better ranking in search results? and the list continues…

Here I am going to explain all you need to know about Search Engine Optimization and getting better ranks in search results however your opinion is very much important so please leave your comments below.

What is Search Engine Optimization?
If you are new to this term its very important that you know the basics and importance of Search Engine Optimization and before explaining this term I would like to ask you a very simple question.

What’s your browser’s homepage?

While researching on this question I found that almost 16% of users stick with About:blank that’s a blank page waiting for you to enter your faviorite URL. Others have their home page set to Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Community Websites, Web Portals or personalized home-pages with other websites.

Now all these pages have one common feature - "The Search Box"

According to a research done by forrester.com, 80% of Internet users reach websites through Search Engines so its a great way to increase the traffic to your website.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) involves making Web Pages more search engine friendly to promote them as the most relevant results for internet users. Search Engine Optimization is basically about the difference between achieving top rankings in the search results, which can result in thousands of monthly visitors or just a bunch of web pages hosted on some server and testing the patience of the users to search till the last page of the results and the chances are your website is not even listed there.

Search Engine Optimization includes keyword research, optimizing the essential META tags and HTML tags, Link Popularity, Search Engine Submissions, Directory Submissions to bring in targeted traffic that is organic, i.e., from search results.

Upcoming Posts

• All About Keywords and Search Engine Optimization
• META Tags and Search Engine Optimization
• HTML Tags and Search Engine Optimization
• Link Popularity
• Search Engine Submission
• Directory Submission
• Link Exchange
• SEO Free Tools & Resources
• General Search Engine Optimization FAQs

I will be covering all these topics in detail in my next posts so stay tuned or subscribe to my RSS feed.

According to Google, Webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.

Now the question is: How to find high-quality websites?

This can be done by exchanging links with other sites manually or submit the website to link exchange directories, but I found it really time consuming and not an efficient solution. Moreover it’s really easy for search engines to find links from such directories, and very soon the website may disappear from the ranking and search results.

So, What’s the easy way to exchange links with quality websites and get better Page Rank in search engines?

TNX.net

While researching about Link Exchange I came accross a lot of link exchange networks however I like and joined TNX.net as its a great advertising platform that targets both advertisers and publishers equally well and has some advantages over the others.

As a publisher you get the opportunity to earn TNX points which can be used for various purposes simply by displaying TNX text ad links on web-pages. And If you are an advertiser and want to improve your site ranking in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Live.com and others this is a very cost effective solution of getting high-volume, non-reciprocal links from thousands of websites that are part of TNX’s program.

Benifits for Advertisers:

Cost Effective: Purchasing Links is very cost effective e.g. one text link can be purchased for just 1 point, with 1,000 points available for just over a dollar. Traffic comes from both direct links and search engines and the more traffic you are getting there are more chances of converting it to $$.

Links on Internal Pages: The best option I found is to buy links on internal pages. Its actually a very nice concept as Google displays the pages with relevant content, not just the home page of the website. You can well imagine the advantages of this concept.

Convenient interface: With TNX’s well-organized Ad Campaign wizard, creating an ad campaign is easy. You can set the parameters for the sites where your ads should appear on: website categories, geo-location, number of Yahoo Backlinks (YB) and Google Page Rank.

Research Before Buying Links: TNX provides a calculator which help you to calculate how many links you will get, based on the parameters you chose and your spending plan (in TNX points).

Benifits for Publishers:

Earn Money: Now this the most important discussion on the internet and you will find endless results in Google or Yahoo if you search for "earn money" or "earn money online". As a publisher You’ll be able to sell links on every page of your website, instead of just the main page so whenever link on your website is sold to one of the advertisers, you get paid. The more pages you have on your site, the more links you can sell.

Promote Your Website: You can use the points earned by selling links to advertise your website which will improve your website position in search engine results. You can even sell points to TNX or other members in the network. Isn’t it Great!

Convert Points to Dollars: Once your site is approved and ads start appearing on your site you start to earn TNX-Points. These points can cashed in at anytime for dollars, or they can be used to buy links on other sites. 2,000 points are given away for free just for registering with TNX, and another 5,000 points for each site that you add to the network.

Lifetime Referral Scheme: TNX also have a very attractive Referral Scheme, where you earn 10% of all TNX-points that any Publisher that you recruit earns, or an Advertiser spends. This is a lifetime payment, so over time a substantial income can be generated just by referring users to the network.

Some more features:

TNX.net provides a free tool for advertisers to make paid links look natural for Google. Click here to read more about this feature.

Right now there’s a special offer from TNX.net and you can Get LINKS from 5,000 quality websites for FREE!

So what are you waiting for? Click here and try it yourself..