Leaning with Intent

Archive for the ‘Web’ Category

Working on your blog is not always easy, so it is important to work on it in an efficient way. This will ensure that it will take you less time to write an article, and that the quality of the article will be higher. There are a couple of things that you can do to improve blog productivity:

• Have a list of URLs that you can visit for ideas of topics to write about. Every writer needs some inspiration. Who knows, you might get inspired and write your best article after finding some interesting topic to write about.
• Research the topic you are interested in more carefully. You may want to search for related posts about it on other blogs. Write only about topics you have knowledge about. Posts that contain a lot of useful information and reflect the knowledge of the writer are going to become popular.
• Use the best browsers. For example, your browser should allow tabbing. No doubt that Firefox and Opera are currently one the best browsers, but even IE has some useful features, although probably not as many.
• Store ideas for articles that you will want to write about in the future. There is nothing worse than running out of ideas.

Remember, whatever you do, make sure you enjoy it as your readers will be able to feel your enthusiasm or lack thereof.

Torrent engines allow the distribution of very valuable materials. A lot of them are non-copyrighted and perfectly legal for distribution, but unfortunately some of them are pirated materials. That is why from time to time major Hollywood Studios accuse torrent directories such as torrentspy.com of distributing pirated material. In case of torrentspy.com, they won the battle. The court ordered torrentspy.com to pay $110,970,000 for distributing 3,699 films and shows. In my opinion, this number is quite hilarious, as I doubt that torrentspy.com has more than a couple of thousand of dollars lying around. Having said that, it is a decisive victory for Hollywood Studios, and even though they will probably not receive this amount of money, they definitely made a point. This is a great example of how justice works.

There is a bit different situation with MPAA, which has been vigorously engaged in fighting piracy for many years. The question arises if lawsuits will really help them win this war. MPAA has filled a lawsuit against a site that allegedly profits from piracy by indexing and posting links to what is believed to be pirated content. What is really interesting about this case is that MPAA was giving away free publicity to a mostly unknown site. Many people flocked to this site, which I prefer not to mention, to check out the site and see what it offers. This was especially true as there was a risk that it could shut down permanently. This site might have actually benefited more from this lawsuit than it had to lose.
As you see, there are some battles won against distributors of illegal content. However, there are also some battles that are lost. It is important that companies choose their battles wisely, because they cannot win all of them.

We often like to read news in order to stay informed about the most important events. Generally, we simply want to know what is going on in the world. Where are many ways we can have access to news, such as through a newspaper, magazine, TV, or even the Internet. Actually, reading news on the Internet is very popular these days. Not only you can read news online, but you can personalize it, so that you will stay informed about the things you really care about. To get started visit news.google.com and click “Personalize this page”. You can delete sections, increase or decrease the number of stories shown in each section, or even add different categories. This is a great way to read news, as you will feel that the news site is really optimized for you to have the best experience.

Do you want to know how to obtain a free hard drive? I might not be able to tell you how to obtain a regular one, but you can get an Internet virtual drive by utilizing Gmail. You will need to have a Gmail address, but these days it should be quite easy to obtain. Secondly, you will need to download the Gmail Drive shell extension and install it. You can do it by visiting this link: softpedia.com/get/Internet/E-mail/Mail-Utilities/GMail-Drive-shell-extension.shtml. Once installed, this software is going to create a virtual file system around your Google Gmail account. What this means for you, is that you will be able to save and retrieve file directly through Internet Explorer. Of course, the transfer rate of files is going to be a lot slower compared to copying files between your regular hard drives. On the other hand, since it is completely free, it is useful anyway. I must admit that I really appreciate the ability to back up my files this way. There are many users who use this Gmail drive on a regular basis. I would like to encourage more people to benefit from this free hard drive, as I am aware of the fact that not many Internet users know about it yet.

Benefiting from various technological advancements can give a lot of satisfaction. However, what we need to remember is that being obsessed with some aspects of technology is not always good. I am talking about excessive email checking. It is quite possible that in the future there will be meetings of people called “email checkers anonymous”. Let us discuss our this topic for a while. First of all, there are people who are addicted to checking email so often that it ruins their personal life and well-being. Very often the problem is that instead of spending quality time with their family, people often work too much. However, in case of excessively checking emails, you are not even going to get paid by anybody. One might say that it does not take that much time to read emails. However, you have to remember, that checking email is often associated with not only reading the message, but also responding or taking other actions. There is also no point checking email if you know that it might contain a message about some potentials problems at work, which you cannot solve until next Monday anyway. If you are tempted to check your email too often, talk to somebody about it. Ask this person to help you in some way.

Even if you have a small niche blog, you can have the ability to influence your niche. Influencing others is one of the things that each person wants to do. We want others to respect us, and know that what we said or did, influenced their way of thinking about many different things. Naturally, if you want to influence other blogs, their authors, as well as other readers, you have to put some work into it. Here are some of my thoughts about how you can influence other people by having a blog of your own:

Apart from the points that I gave, try to get involved whenever there is something interesting happening. This includes forums, top lists, and other places.

Internet Explorer enables you to add search providers and even switch them easily. This feature is especially useful, if you want to search for a specific item, for example a book, through your favorite search engine. The good thing is that you do not have to be limited to one search engine, as it is natural to have at least few search engines, which you might want to use. It is also a good idea to set one of your search engines as a starting page. This way, every time you open your browser, your favorite search engine will appear and you are ready to use it. To get started you should locate the Instant Search Box at the top right. It should have the name of the selected search engine written inside the box. Next, click on the arrow to the right of the magnifying glass and choose “Find More Providers”. Now you can add search providers and select the one you had in mind. From now on, you can change the search provider whenever you wish without any problems. Google is probably a good choice when it comes to search engines, but there are also other overlooked search engines.

Would you like to hear some email tips? You have probably seen BCC before many times, and were wondering what this abbreviation stands for. By using BCC, you can send your email to many people without them knowing who the other recipients are. Whereas CC stands for Carbon Copy, BCC is a abbreviation for Blind Carbon Copy. As using CC enables other people to see who else received a message, there are many advantages of using BCC over CC:

Overall, Blind Carbon Copy ensures privacy of your recipients, so in many situations this will be the biggest advantage of using it.

It seems that there is a very large group of Internet users who are downloading music without paying for it. They are not only downloading a few mp3 files, but around half of them are claiming that they are actually copying whole hard drives full of music. On average, it is reported that people download approximately 50 tracks without paying for them. Is there any way to force people to pay for music? It is hard to say, but I am quite sure that the best way to do it is to offer the consumers what they want. Why not give them access to the whole library of music for, let us say, 10 dollars per month, or allow them to download 50 tracks per month for some reasonable fee? There are many ways to do so. In the United States the legal system becomes more hostile against those who download music that is copyrighted. In fact, it becomes more and more difficult for people in the US to download any music at all, as they might be afraid of the consequences. If this is the case, they are left with the option of purchasing music, which they might not be able to afford. Why not offer them a more reasonable price? Why not sell music at a lower price? This solution that would allow people to buy more CDs at a reasonable price and would probably reduce music piracy.

There is no doubt that there are a lot of websites on the Internet. While some of them have very valuable content, some of them are poorly designed, and may not be that attractive to visitors. There are so many websites on the Internet of different quality that this was one of the reasons that bookmarking sites were created.

The way bookmarking sites work is that you create an account on one of the bookmarking sites, and are given an option to categorize the sites of your choice according to your preferences. What do you do once you have your bookmarks ready? You share it with your friends that you can meet on one of those bookmarking sites. They also mark their favorites and are willing to share their favorite sites with you. This way websites that have something valuable to offer are being recommended, and consequently visited by a higher number of people. It does not mean that less valuable sites are not going to be visited at all, but it simply means that those websites that have proven to be really useful will get acknowledged. Many webmasters bookmark their own sites in order to boost their popularity, and there is nothing wrong with it, as long as a person does not abuse it. Overall, I believe that bookmarking made the experience of surfing the Web a lot more enjoyable. Do you visit bookmarking sites yourself?