Leaning with Intent

Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

Windows XP by default already have fonts installed, but if for some reason you would like to install new fonts that are compatible with XP, know that it is possible. There will be situations in your life, when you will want to install new fonts. This will happen, if you are bored with the already existing fonts, and would like to try something new, if you want to install fonts for foreign languages, and many more. Installing new fonts is always a good idea, as there are so many fonts available on the Internet. Why should you be limited to a few most popular fonts, if you can experiment with newer, more innovative ones? This is the question that you should always ask yourself. Before you start the installation, make sure that you are logged in to your computer with administrative rights. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to Start menu and press Run option.
2. After doing so type %windir%\fonts. Press OK.
3. Go to File menu and Install New Font. Select the place where new fonts are located.
4. Select the fonts you wish to install and then choose the option “Copy fonts to Fonts folder”. Press Ok when necessary.
5. Enjoy your new fonts as you keep discovering them while using your Windows XP.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Welcome to my blog! I created Leaning with Intent 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!