Exceptional bloggers have the ability to…

 

1. Be unique. Give your readers something no-one else can give.
2. Write dirty. Readers can’t form a relationship with information alone.
3. Acknowledge feedback. Never let an email go unanswered, even if you write back to say you don’t have the time to answer right now!
4. Omit unnecessary words.
5. Weave outbound links into your content. This will add another layer of depth to what you write.
6. Be consistent. Establish a blogging rhythm readers can follow.
7. Be vulnerable. Get to know readers on a personal level.
8. Recognize opportunities and take them.
9. Keep an orderly and constructive comments section.
10. Write captivating headlines without resorting to hyperbole.
11. Listen to feedback, both positive and negative.
12. Acknowledge when you have made a mistake.
13. Have the courage to reverse bad decisions, even if you invested time, effort or money in them.
14. Be prepared to invest considerable time into one post.
15. Format text for clarity and readability.
16. Write posts which can be scanned, but:
17. Be gripping. Encourage readers to consume every word.
18. Approach existing ideas in new ways.
19. Recognize which blog elements are useful and which elements are clutter.
20. Understand social media.
21. Give without expecting to receive.
22. Avoid self-indulgence. Blog selfishly.
23. Stay motivated. Find a way to satisfy both your readers and yourself.
24. Communicate with other bloggers.
25. Do not close yourself off from competitors. Learn from them.
26. Answer every question that comes your way.
27. Be resilient in the face of personal attacks and criticism.
28. Embrace simplicity.
29. Pay attention to what others write about your blog. You can learn a lot from it.
30. Don’t be afraid to say a lot in just a few words. Length does not directly correlate with meaning.
31. Be ambitious. Don’t under-sell your abilities.
32. Be audacious. Innovate, experiment, create a spectacle.
33. Demonstrate why you’re an expert.
34. Care about spelling, grammar and expression.
35. Break out of generic looking themes. Be visually unique.
36. Use stories and anecdotes effectively and to illustrate a point.
37. Disagree with others respectfully and convincingly.
38. Spend time constructing links into your blog.
39. Get involved in your niche. Comment on other blogs writing on your topic and become part of the community there.
40. Take an interest in your commenters. Respond to them, visit their blogs, offer assistance or answers.
41. Create a navigable list of categories. 10-15 provides a balance between specificity and usability.
42. Select images which help convey the meaning of your posts. Differentiate between images with relevance and pure eye-candy.
43. Give credit where credit is due. It’s better to reference and acknowledge sources too often rather than too little.
44. Provide archives. It can be disorienting not to know how long a blog has been in existence. Some readers prefer chronology to category.
45. Carefully mind your reputation. Be conscious of the way you conduct yourself in spaces outside your blog.
46. Develop a unique logo or icon for yourself or your site.
47. Do more than aggregate and post links. Even if you are pointing elsewhere, make yourself and your reactions the central focus.
48. Don’t link out to the same sites again and again. This makes it easy for readers to skip you and go straight to the source.
49. Be honest about your shortcomings.
50. Feed the need for self-improvement. Help your readers become better at something.
51. If something has been said before, don’t say it again. Conveying the same meaning in different words is not new content.
52. Build a collection of links you could use to support future blog posts.
53. Return favors. Help those who help you.
54. Develop a basic knowledge of HTML. You will be surprised how many opportunities you have to use it, either to tweak your template or gain control of your blog posts.
55. Read great writing. It will lift the way you write.
56. Write ahead. Always keep a few posts unpublished for periods of busyness, laziness, or emergencies. This will help ensure real life does not negatively affect your blog.
57. Keep organized. Make notes of blogging to-dos, develop schedules and stick to them. You will be much more productive with a structure in place.
58. Write guest-posts. You will be surprised at the opportunities a solid idea and a polite email can open up for you.
59. Offer to help other bloggers. Aside from possible indirect benefits, it’s just good karma.
60. Understand that whitespace is not wasted space. A blog full of ’stuff’ is a claustrophobic blog.
61. Differentiate between spam comments or trackbacks and legitimate ones. Delete trackbacks from scrapers. Don’t reward them with backlinks.
62. Understand that you will not succeed by being a doppelgänger. The harder you try to make your blog’s content resemble that of a more popular blog, the more likely readers are to head to the original instead.
63. Make it easy for readers to submit your articles to social media, but don’t over complicate the process.
64. Be prepared to part with widgets that do not benefit your readers.
65. Understand the value of social proof, as well as the damage caused by its absence.
66. Be transparent. Disclose your biases and affiliations, particularly when it comes to potential profit.
67. Recognize when advertisements are negatively impacting on your blog. Be willing to part with or change them if necessary.
68. Understand that there is a simple correlation between the effort poured into a blog and its quality. There is no secret to popularity; it is achieved mainly by hard work.
69. Don’t measure your success against the achievement of goals you have no direct control over. Traffic levels, RSS subscribers and Technorati rank are all outside your control. Aim to achieve goals for which the only variable is you.
70. Keep track of milestones. The result will be something you can look to whenever your morale is low.
71. Understand the true worth of traffic statistics. Once you do that, you’ll realize there’s no benefit to be had in checking them more than once per day.
72. Don’t sit in your blog’s email account. Check it once in the morning and once at night. If you are not sticking comments in moderation you can cut this down to once per day.
73. Strike a balance between blogging and real-world commitments. Don’t sacrifice what’s important for the sake of your blog, as this is a surefire way to cripple your motivation in the long-term.
74. Brainstorm ideas in advance. Don’t think of a topic as you stare at the blank screen. Make the most of times when you are inspired and develop a catalog of post ideas you can browse as soon as you have the time to write.
75. Ignore tradition. Don’t be hampered by established ideas on what a blog, or a blog in your niche, can be.
76. Overcome the taboo against banning commenters, if necessary. Most of us, thankfully, will never have to consider this, but some will. If a commenter is doing nothing but making your comments section a horrible place to be, or continuously bothering you, be willing to reject their comments. The belief they have in being able to say whatever they want is not worth more than the happiness of you and your readers.
77. Focus on what you’re good at. You will gain more by utilizing your strengths than trying to develop weak skills into something half decent.
78. Recognize that most ideas are simply new combinations of old ideas.
79. Learn from other bloggers. Ask questions of those you admire.
80. Read blogs outside your niche. They will teach you new ways of doing things.
81. Read feeds quickly and efficiently. This will allow you to extract the maximum amount of information in a minimum of time.
82. Be a source of solid knowledge. Before presenting something as true, make sure you have verified the facts.
83. Don’t focus on generating links at the expense of value. Lately I’ve seen a number of blogs hold contest after contest. The bloggers were so busy promoting them that they stopped creating actual content! You are not moving anywhere if, for every new reader you gain, an existing one becomes disillusioned with your blog.
84. Use numbered headlines in moderation. Too many can fatigue readers and decrease their impact.
85. Avoid making unsupported claims. If you pull statistics out of the air for the sake of grabbing attention, readers may become skeptical about your honesty.
86. Choose the right words. You don’t need to be Hemingway, but putting effort into the way you express yourself will pay off.
87. Suggest, don’t command. There is a difference between giving advice and presenting what you write as the be all and end all. I have seen a number of bloggers giving advice while simultaneously implying there will be negative consequences for not following it (you will lose lots of subscribers, for example). Be aware that you are not the supreme authority on how things should be done, because readers certainly will be.
88. Be involved with your commenters. If you don’t have time to respond to each comment, at least acknowledge those who’ve put significant effort or thought into their responses. There is nothing worse than spending time on something only to have it ignored.
89. Allow readers to search your blog. A search bar is incredibly easy to implement and the result is a powerful tool for your users.
90. Be aware of SEO, but don’t let it control you.
91. Get involved in a forum relevant to your topic. This is a simple way to build your public profile and promote your blog. It’s enjoyable, too.
92. Don’t go on hiatus or ‘take a break’ from blogging. Many bloggers experience times when their passion for blogging wanes. Rather than going on hiatus commit yourself to low-intensity blogging for the duration of the slump (links, short posts, and so on). Many blog readers see the word ‘hiatus’ or ‘break’ as a euphemism for ‘I’ve given up blogging’. A few easy posts here and there will show them that you’re still thinking about the blog.
93. Weigh up effort required vs. reward. Your time is precious, so be mindful to use it on the tasks which provide strong returns. For example, five guest posts on new blogs is unlikely to yield the same rewards as a single guest post on a highly trafficked blog.
94. Bring the most important details to the top of your About page. Your credentials should come before anything else, because this is what new visitors to your About page are most interested to know.
95. Subscribe to your own feed and make sure it is in good health.
96. Chat to your readers. Allow them to add you to Gchat, or to your instant messenger service of choice. You can develop a more solid relationship in five minutes chatting than you can across a series of emails.
97. Be inventive with how you promote your blog. Brainstorm new strategies for generating inbound links, though you should always ensure they are ethical.
98. Be observant. When you see content which has become popular, ask yourself why. Consider how you could adapt these characteristics to the content you create.
99. Ask questions of your readers. It is difficult to give your readers what they want when you don’t know what that is. Don’t spend hours trying to guess what that could be. Ask them! Most of the time they will be more than happy to tell you.
100. Avoid being stubborn. If you consistently receive complaints or negative feedback about an aspect of your blog, consider scrapping it — regardless of how dear it is to you.
101. Murder your darlings. Not everything you write will be great. Not every word or paragraph you commit to the screen should be kept. Learn to mercilessly cut out writing that is sub-standard, even if it means scrapping an entire post and starting again.

(c) http://www.skelliewag.org/101-essential-blogging-skills-67.htm

Windows 7: First Hands

courtesy: Thinknext

YouTube - Windows 7

India becoming too expensive for tech firms

Have to find somewhere cheaper to exploit

OUTSOURCING TO INDIA may soon become a thing of the past for small to mid-sized technology firms, due to the increasing costs of rent, salaries and a looming end to the government’s tax holiday.

India’s technology, and especially software industry, has seen spectacular growth over the last few years, tripling in size to reach an astounding $52 billion. But it seems that the bubble may be about to burst.

The slowing US economy is having a big impact on India’s future as a market for outsourced business, with foreign firms tightening their belts as India’s currency strengthens, and operational costs soar, not to mention the fact that skilled manpower is becoming scarcer, and those available are demanding higher salaries. To add to tech companies’ concern, the government tax policy is also looking a bit uncertain.

Sankaran P. Raghunathan, president at the IT SME Association, an umbrella for 3,200 small to mid sized IT firms, told the WSJ's Marketwatch, "operating in India has become extremely difficult because of the government's fiscal policies."

He added that under the current Indian tax laws, software companies can take advantage of a tax holiday for income they make out of products manufactured at designated software-technology parks, which lowers taxes to between 12 and 15 per cent, as opposed to peak corporate tax, which stands at 33 per cent. But the tax legislation is nearing expiry in a year’s time, leaving an uncertain future ahead.

Big companies won’t necessarily be as affected as their small counterparts however, because they can take advantage of legislation allowing them to set up their own special economic zones, where they can keep their taxes to a level of between 18 and 22 per cent.

President of Nasscom, another umbrella organisation, Som Mittal, said in a statement that the industry hasn't yet given up hope for the government to extend the tax holiday, saying “we believe the government appreciates the issues that are there, and we still have one year to get this going."

Still, until the future looks a bit less shaky, foreign firms might have to consider relcocating somewhere cheaper than India

Intel's G35 failure needs a fix

 

TO SAY INTEL has botched graphics over the past few years is being kind. Now, the G35 is shaping up to fail in all the same ways as its predecessor, the G965. If you remember, the G965 was promised to have features such as T&L in hardware and other shader model levels that it simply did not deliver. They were coming, it was said, just wait for the next revision. That revision was delayed, sometimes to make it compatible with the Broken OS [means Vista here folks!], sometimes to prioritise video, sometimes because the moon wasn't in phase with Venus.

In the end, the G965 has yet to deliver the promises made at launch. That launch was at Computex 2006, June. As of this writing, it is Q2 2008, and the launch features are still not implemented. What a shame. G965 was heralded as the first of a new programmable graphics architecture, flexible, fast and power sipping. Intel didn't add 'works' to the list, and it is badly missed. The first spin, called G965 was supposed to do DX9 with all the Shader Model (SM) goodies in hardware, and as soon as MS got the Broken OS out the door, DX10 would soon follow.

If you are still waiting for the G965 DX10 drivers, well don't. Due to unfixed bugs in the architecture, it is never going to happen, but at least you got your DX9.0x. Newer variants of the 965, specifically the 965GM and it's relatives did have the bugs patched, and will have DX10. Someday. Maybe. We hope. Next driver release. Unless...

A year or so after the G965's release, it was supplanted by the G35, which other than changing the naming scheme, offered a slightly wider and faster GPU core. Ironically, it came out before the G965 had it's drivers in the pseudo-working state they are in. Yes, G965 never worked right for it's entire lifespan, and has only been mostly posthumously patched.

Back to the G35. That part was a second generation of the architecture, fixed bugs, faster and wider. It came out months after the Broken OS, so DX10 should have been there out of the gate, right? Should have been, but wasn't. DX9 with all the SM goodness as well, right? Well, hell no. They just got much of that working a month or so ago. DX10 is promised in the next driver revision - quite soon from what we are told.

There are two problems with this. First, is that they have been promising the next revision panacea for two years, and there are more confirmed checks in the 'will never work, sorry' column than the 'works' column. Call me fatally skeptical here. Second is that the G45, the successor to the G35 will be out in within weeks of the 'working' driver.

Yup, you read that right, the G35 is going to be the second Intel GPU to utterly fail, it has really good odds of being supplanted before it ever works. Will it work? I really think this one will, but I have only been wrong eight or nine times before when thinking that. Intel has the sort of track record that rivals AMD's Barcelona promises, just twice as long.

G45 is set to be released in about a few months, in the same quarter as the 'working' G35 drivers. It is in effect a slightly wider and faster G35, and Intel has promised about 1.7x G35 performance. If you consider that G35 gets about 650 on 3DMark06 with 'well tuned' drivers, that would put G45 at about 1100. If the drivers function.

If you recall, I said that I was indeed hopeful that the G45 would work more or less right out of the box. Why do I make such obviously marginally sane claims? Because the G45 is a direct descendant of the G965, and almost all of the driver work can carry over.

If Intel only started work on the drivers from the day of the chipset's public release, it has had two years to fix things. Likely as it looks, moles deep in the Intel GPU division tell me that this is not the case, they were working on drivers before the G965's release. Gasp.

The same holds true for the upcoming G43 and G41, instead of putting them on an older i945 based cores, the budget chips are actually on the newer programmable G965 cores. So, if the G45 works, so should the 43 and 41. If it doesn't, well, there is the next revision, and Windows 7 is right around the corner in Intel driver years.

In the end, it all comes down to the fact that Intel can't get a driver out the door to save their lives. The GPU cores are pretty OK, they do the job, they aren't Nvidia level laughable on power, and as long as you don't look at 3D, they are mostly functional.

Intel was partially hobbled by an architecture that didn't work out; programmable is fine if you have enough horsepower to to the job. But sources tell me the major problem with the early iterations of the architecture was that there was simply not enough horsepower. This bodes well for the G45 working, but casts a long shadow over G43 and G41.

Scrambling to make up for it with driver tweaks was a losing game, so things never worked. Distracting people from making the promised release functions to add Broken OS support and video tweaks was simply stupid. If you are thinking gross management failure along with technical failures, you may be right there too.

So, short story, G965x never worked before it was supplanted. If G35 works before it is supplanted, it will be by weeks. G45 has a shot, but we have heard that before. What a mess.

Barcelona appears in ten different flavours

Finally...

AND SO TODAY is Barcelona day. AMD has finally announced the broad availability of its quad-core server chip, some six months after it was officially launched and never have the fortunes of a company been so dependent on a single sliver of silicon.

"We're off to the races now, and the product is out," John Fruehe, worldwide market development manager at AMD appears to have told Dow Jones. "All of the fixes are in place, and everything looks wonderful," he said.

Barcelona's launch back in September 2007 acquired the aura of a farce when for months afterwards samples of the chip failed to appear. AMD identified numerous errata with its native quad core technology and wisely pulled the product rather than have its customers' servers fall over, which would have been even more catastrophic.

At the launch AMD salesman Alberto Macchi denied to the INQUIRER that the chip was six months late even then. A fact acknowledged by none other than Hector Ruiz just a few days later. AMD has barely spoken to us since.

AMD announces ten OEM validated platforms featuring the chip today. Top of its list of hopeful fellow travellers is HP which has been touting Barcelona-based systems for some time now.

Randy Allen hyped the partnership in a statement today. Allen, who is corporate vice president and general manager, of AMD's server and workstation division, said HP was continuing to "respond to customers who see the benefit in our unique Direct Connect Architecture with some of the industry’s most innovative designs."

Barcelona will be slipped into some HP Proliant G5 servers announced recently. Allen described them as a major leap forward and take advantage of the increased performance, energy efficiency and sophisticated virtualization and power management enabled by the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor.”

HP seems to be offering eight of AMD's ten validated Barcelona platforms. In all, there are ten platform out about in the channel Allen said; "Channel partners uniformly display strong commitment to their customers’ business requirements and are among the first to deliver the technical innovation that Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors add to each of their distinctive product lines. ”

Personal Statement: Top 10 Rules and Pitfalls

Writing the Personal Statement: Top 10 Rules

1. Strive for depth rather than breadth. Narrow focus to one or two key themes, ideas or experiences
2. Try to tell the reader something that no other applicant will be able to say
3. Provide the reader with insight into what drives you
4. Be yourself, not the 'ideal' applicant
5. Get creative and imaginative in the opening remarks, but make sure it's something that no one else could write
6. Address the organisations's unique features that interest you
7. Focus on the affirmative in the personal statement; consider an addendum to explain deficiencies or blemishes
8. Evaluate experiences, rather than describe them
9. Proofread carefully for grammar, syntax, punctuation, word usage, and style
10. Use readable fonts, typeface, and conventional spacing and margins

Writing the Personal Statement: Top 10 Pitfalls

1. Do not submit an expository resume; avoid repeating information found elsewhere on the application
2. Do not complain or whine about the "system" or circumstances in your life
3. Do not preach to your reader. You can express opinions, but do not come across as fanatical or extreme
4. Do not talk about money as a motivator
5. Do not discuss your minority status or disadvantaged background unless you have a compelling and unique story that relates to it
6. Do not remind the organisations of its rankings or tell them how good they are
7. Do not use boring clichéd intros or conclusions

• "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is..."
• "This question asks me to discuss..."
• "I would like to thank the admissions committee for considering my application."
• "It is my sincere hope that you will grant me the opportunity to attend your fine organisations."
• "In sum, there are three reasons why you should admit me..."

1. Do not use unconventional and gimmicky formats and packages
2. Do not submit supplemental materials unless they are requested
3. Do not get the name of the organisations wrong
4. Do not incorporate technical language or very uncommon words

10 Steps to a Successful Career Change

This helped me when I was looking for some confidence

Interested in a new career? If so, it is important to take the time to evaluate your present situation, to explore career options and to choose a career that will be satisfying for you.

Ten Steps to a Successful Career Change

1. Evaluate your current job satisfaction. Keep a journal of your daily reactions to your job situation and look for recurring themes. Which aspects of your current job do you like/dislike? Are your dissatisfactions related to the content of your work your company culture or the people with whom you work?

2. Assess your interests, values and skills through self help resources like the exercises in What Color is Your Parachute. Review past successful roles, volunteer work, projects and jobs to identify preferred activities and skills. Determine whether your core values and skills are addressed through your current career.

3. Brainstorm ideas for career alternatives by discussing your core values/skills with friends, family, networking contacts and counselors. Visit career libraries and use online resources like those found in Job Search websites

4. Conduct a preliminary comparative evaluation of several fields to identify a few targets for in depth research.

5. Read as much as you can about those fields and reach out to personal contacts in those arenas for informational interviews.

6. Shadow professionals in fields of primary interest to observe work first hand. Spend anywhere from a few hours to a few days job shadowing people who have jobs that interest you. Your college Career Office is a good place to find alumni volunteers who are willing to host job shadowers.

7. Identify volunteer and freelance activities related to your target field to test your interest e.g. if you are thinking of publishing as a career, try editing the PTA newsletter. If you're interested in working with animals, volunteer at your local shelter.

8. Investigate educational opportunities that would bridge your background to your new field. Consider taking an evening course at a local college. Spend some time at one day or weekend seminars. Contact professional groups in your target field for suggestions.

9. Look for ways to develop new skills in your current job which would pave the way for a change e.g. offer to write a grant proposal if grant writing is valued in your new field. If your company offers in-house training, sign up for as many classes as you can.

10. Consider alternative roles within your current industry which would utilize the industry knowledge you already have e.g. If you are a store manger for a large retail chain and have grown tired of the evening and weekend hours consider a move to corporate recruiting within the retail industry. Or if you are a programmer who doesn't want to program, consider technical sales or project management.