Silence, Please!

Open windows and more time outdoors can also mean noisy neighbors, barking dogs and the din of speeding cars. Some people have been masking the noise with these methods:

Use your PC with Atmosphere Deluxe, you customize your own nature sound mix. Then, fed through your PC speakers, you'll hear the ocean or tropical frog pond instead of the mower across the street.

Tune it out iSplash waterproof speakers play music from an iPod or any source with a headphone jack.

Consider storm windows An outer laminated window can cut outside noise by up to 10 decibels - perceived as half the amount of sound, says one sound engineer. » Continue reading

Read more on Computers, Entertainment, Gadgets, iPod, Multimedia

How to exclude your own visits from StatCounter when you have a dynamic IP address

Vic Grace would like to exclude her visits from the StatCounter reports of her blog but does not have a static IP address. What can she do?

StatCounter provides facility to exclude visitors from reports based on a single IP address and now also by giving a range of IP addresses. This feature blocks the IP address or the whole range of IP addresses from all the projects with just one click. However, it is sometimes difficult to find out the range of IP addresses that your Internet Service Provider has been allotted. So what does one do in such a situation?

You can use a blocking cookie provided by StatCounter itself. However, you will need to have cookies enabled in your browser and also have the new StatCounter code (as of the 1st Nov 2003) installed on your website for this to work. Once you've ensured that cookies are enabled for your browser and the latest code installed on your website/blog, follow the procedure below:

1. Sign in to StatCounter
   
2. Click the spanner/wrench icon () beside one of your projects
   
3. Click Create blocking cookie
   
4. Click Stop Logging My Visits. You're done!
   

Follow the above procedure for each of the browsers that you use to view your blog/website.

You also need to follow this procedure for each of the projects individually. » Continue reading

Read more on Blogging, Webmastering

Get stumped with stump phone

What would a cricketer do if he is on tour Down Under and can't get his wife on line to convey an important message, that too on the day of a crucial World Cup match?

Indian wicketkeeper Kiran More was in such a fix during India's 1992 World Cup match against Australia, before he stuck upon a strange instrument called the stump microphone. In between deliveries, his teammates were thunder-struck to see him whisper something to the instrument. Later, he told them that he was conveying a message to his wife, who was watching the match on television, via the microphone. » Continue reading

Read more on Cricket, Sports, Tid Bits

John Chow gets at it again!

I've spotted John Chow's ad yet again on Problogger.net. This time with a different message. Here take a look.



John Chow from www.JohnChow.com has been very imaginative and creative in designing his ad campaigns which have inspired many other bloggers like Mani Karthik of dailydose4me. Click here to see his previous ad campaign on Problogger. » Continue reading

Read more on AdSense, Blogging, Marketing and Advertising

Nokia sets stage for mobile advertising with Nokia Ad Service

Nokia recently announced the launch of its Nokia Ad Service, a service similar to Google Adwords and Google Adsense, but for mobile advertising and providing an end-to-end solution for advertisers and publishers.

Connecting advertisers to mobile internet publishers

The service will enable advertisers to target and display banner, text link and interstitial advertisements on mobile internet applications and services.

Publishers will be able to generate revenue from the traffic that they generate by placing a piece of code onto the desired location on the mobile web application or service.

Nokia Ad Service will take a cut out of the advertising revenue that the publishers in the network earn.

The service is operational in Europe as of now and will be available globally in the second half of 2007.

For more details on Nokia Ad Service visit http://www.adservice.nokia.com/ » Continue reading

Read more on AdSense, Blogging, Business, Cell Phones, Gadgets, In the news, Marketing and Advertising

Wanna travel around the world with a shoe string budget? Couch surf...

Are you planning to backpack around the world but don't have an overflowing bank account or an address book of friends and family in all corners of the globe willing to offer a free bed? Here's the latest in budget traveling - couch surfing. Dreamed up by money-conscious travelers, the Couch Surfing Project is an online interactive site that matches budget travelers with hosts who are happy to offer their couches/beds free of charge. Instead of an anonymous noisy hostel, you're a guest in a local person's house.

Couchsurfing.com aims at not only bringing travelers and hosts together but to:

Make the world a better place, and we believe that the surfing of couches is a means to accomplish this goal. CouchSurfing isn't about the furniture- it's not just about finding free accommodations around the world- it's about participating in creating a better world. We strive to make a better world by opening our homes, our hearts, and our lives. We open our minds and welcome the knowledge that cultural exchange makes available. We create deep and meaningful connections that cross oceans, continents and cultures. CouchSurfing wants to change not only the way we travel, but how we relate to the world!

Like other social networking and dating sites, every user is linked to the other users he or she knows in the system through a network of references and friend links. The site, however, strictly prohibits dating and harassment. It records and monitors all communication between members for safety purposes. The site also provides the facility to verify members' name and address so that travelers and hosts can feel safe about making friendships with strangers. » Continue reading

Read more on Travel and Holiday, Web 2.0

How to create expandable post summaries with the new Blogger?

Dexter wants to know how I created the "» Continue reading" links on the non-post pages to make the length of my posts shorter on the index and archive pages so that the readers can have a quick glance at the posts and click "» Continue reading" if they decide to read the complete post. With this trick, you can choose to display an arbitrary amount of text from any part of the post you desire to display. It is quite useful, especially on archive pages, where you have lots of long articles all on one page. This feature requires you to have post pages enabled.

Blogger's original instructions for expandable post summaries to the old Blogger template and Beta (now new Blogger / Blogger v.2) template is available here. However, that page is not without any faults and omissions like the other google.com pages, which are published in haste.

In Step 1: Conditional CSS (for layouts)

New Blogger templates or Layouts do not have a style-sheet by default. The styles are enclosed within the <b:skin></b:skin> tags. It is not possible to add the conditional <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'><b:else/></b:if> tags within the skin tags. You have to add the conditional CSS within <style></style> tags outside the skin tags. Simply insert the following lines anywhere between the <head></head> tags.

<style>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'> 
   span.fullpost {display:inline;}
<b:else/>
   span.fullpost {display:none;} 
</b:if>
</style>

Please note that using this hack will just reduce the amount of information that is displayed on the screen. The full content of the posts is still downloaded to the Web browser and available behind the screens (view page source) which means that there won't be any improvement in the download speed of the page. If you know of a hack that can help reduce the download speed of the index and archive pages by omitting the unwanted part of the posts from the page source, then please do hashout! » Continue reading

Read more on Blogger, Blogger Hacks, Blogging