Technology | Web | Money making | blogging guide: 2007

Saturday, December 29, 2007

AdSense Basic: Things You Need To Know About AdSense

Since I have posted a lot about advance tips and tricks you can use to make money from your blog. Let's have a break and back to the AdSense Basic. This post is for beginners in AdSense.

What is Google AdSense?
Google AdSense is a publisher program that enable Bloggers and webmasters to make money from their blogs or sites. It is very simple and easy to setup. All you need is an AdSense Account and a blog/site.

Getting Started with AdSense:
To get started with AdSense, you need an AdSense Account. You can apply for it Free at the Homepage or you can apply for it using referral links which can be found on blogs and sites.

Getting Paid:
Getting payment from AdSebse is simple too. Once your AdSense Account reach $100.00 or more, AdSense will sent you a check by the end of the month and when you receive it, you can cash the check easily.

AdSense Maintenance:
You do not need to worry about what Ads will appear on your site because it is controlled by AdSense. AdSense Ads will show relevant Ads according to your contents.

5 Adsense Tips To Boost Your CTR!

1. Adsense put the higher price ads first. So, when people click the first
ads, you will earn more. Try to make your first ads looks more attractive and
appealing. Less is better.

2. How do you view and read a site? Do you always see the main title which is
usually place at the top-left position then move your eyes to the center then
to right side? Correct right? Reports show that people will look through a
website from top-left then center then to the right. So, put your ads at a
place which will caught the eyes of visitors to your site and earn more...

3. Put your ads beside a VIDEO on your site. This can attract visitors to
click it. This step can double the CTR of Adsense.

4. Try to get more traffic too your site. Try Technorati.com and Kliks.com.
Get more readers/visitors and this will RAISE the possibility of clicks on
your ads.

5. Climb higher in blog ranking(Google Page Rank). The best is to get to the TOP. This will
ensure your blog to get a lot of attention and get more visitors. CTR will
boost and of course, more $$.

Wanna increase your blog traffc? Follow these steps

Imagine, You have a nice well decorated restaurant with nice delicious foods, but a very few customers comes in to your restaurant everyday. No profit in the end of the month, and finally you shut down the restaurant for the rest of the life. Same thing can happen with your blog. If you don't have traffic/visitors, you will not be able to continue the blog, more traffic/visitors means more money. But traffic will not come automatically. You have to follow certain things to make traffic in your site. Now I'm gonna describe those things.

Massive Traffic Tricks 1: Using Feed
What is a Feed? A Feed is a small part of your posts which is sent to the email of your readers. By using feed, your readers can be informed that your blog is being updated. So, if they are interested to your new post, they will come and visit your blog again.

This method is best if you have a lot of readers subscribed to your Feed. More readers mean more emails are being sent out and so more possibility of getting your readers coming to your blog.
Two of the best Feed Services are FeedBurner and FeedBlitz. These two feed services are the most popular services available.

Why I recommend using these two services?
The reason is that you can get more readers by using popular services. This is because people will like to use a more familiar services than using unfamiliar one. So, I recommend using FeedBurner or FeedBlitz.

Massive Traffic Trick 2: Using "Tell A Friend" service
I think that most of you are familiar with "Tell A Friend" service. This service can be found at most websites. "Tell A Friend" service is a very good service to get EXTREME Traffic to your blog.

"I'm not Kidding, it is true.":
People tend to trust recommendation of their friends more. So, when a person Recommend your site to their friend using "Tell A Friend" service on your site, that person's friend will have high probability to come and visit your site.

"Tell A Friend" Chain Reaction:
When a person recommend your site to his/her friends, their friends will probably sent out the invitation/recommendation email to more friends. This will cause a chain reaction to happen rapidly.

Look at the Chain Reaction figure below:One of your visitors recommend your blog to 2 friends. The 2 friends will recommend 2 or more friends and so on.

This will surely make the Chain Reaction continues continuously.

Within 2 weeks, you will see a very EXTREME improvement of the traffic to your blog. More and more visitors are coming to your blog and all this is automated.

What happens if your traffic is Increasing Tremendously?
The sure things that will happen is the increasing of your AdSense Earning from your blog. With massive traffic coming to your blog, you will bemaking more and more money from Google AdSensewith the less effort.

My suggestions About online earning : Don't Get Trapped

If you search for online earning opportunities in google or yahoo or any other search engines you will get millions of sites with millions of offers. BUT DON'T GET TRAPPED BY SEEING THOSE OFFERS. 90% sites are scam. They will offer you huge easy money, if you sign up with them, what you will get is frustration about online earning process. After signing up will spend huge time and effort,but at end of the month you will get nothing.Actually those scam sites trapped those peoples who are new in net and new in online earning.

DON'T TRUST ON ONLINE SURVEY,AUTO SURFING,HYIP (High-yield investment program) , DATA PROCESSING ( many of them are scam now ) , CLICK ON ADS, AND FINALLY WORK FROM HOME OPPORTUNITIES.

Here is the complete list of online scam sites, But remember every day the scammers are making new scam sites and offers,they might be not listed in my blog,but still they are scam.

Work From Home Scam Sites

Work From Home Scam Sites

Most of these scam sites ask you to pay $49 to $97 for info which is easily available for free. And once you pay, they just don't bother to reply to your emails. You may not become rich by joining these sites, but they surely do from all the money they are collecting from you. Here are the sites you should stay away from:

- HomeTypers.com

- DataEntryPro.com

- GoogleJunction.com

- GoogleCJ.com

- HomeTypists.net

- TypeatHome.com

- Xangti.com

- DataEntryWorkOnline.com

- Freewebs.com/hiearnlook

- SBPunjab.com/softonline.html

- DataSubmitOperator.com

Triggers of Scam Sites

#1 They will ask you to pay an admission fee or a deposit fee to join their site. In return, they say they will give you a secret list of companies which will offer you work at home projects. For the secret list of companies, check out Home Typist Instructions.

#2 No customer support. You might not even find an email ID in most of the scam sites. If you do, write to them and check their response rate. In most cases, you won't even get a reply.

#3 Their site is hosted on free webspace like freewebs.com. If someone says they are going to help you make money, doesn't it mean they have already made some money from the same job before? Why would someone who promises to help you make $1000s a month not have $3 to buy web hosting?

Database Of HYIP Scam Sites

This List Is Very Big so I'm not gonna type all the urls here. BUT REMEMBER 99% HYIP SITES ARE SCAM, 1% MAYBE LEGIT. SO IT WILL BE BETTER NOT TO DEPEND ON YOUR LUCK. DON'T TRY HYIP PROGRAMS.

Complete Guide to Earn Money From Your Blog

Earning money from blog is not that easy, but still it's easy if u spare 1/2 hours daily for this. You can create a blog within a minute. Check my 2 post about blogging ( how to create a blog,how to setup it or in a word Everything you need to know to setup a blog ) Now read those posts care fully.
Post 1 ( Blogging Tools and resources )
Post 2 ( Best Free Blog Hosts )

I hope u already went through my 2 posts if you are new at blogging. Now read this article carefully. After reading this article you will know how to turn your blog in to a cash machine.

Blog Monetization

PayPal - PayPal allows you to set up a donations system on your site. Your readers can click a button that will bring them to a page where they can send you some cash.
Chitika - Contextual interactive CPC advertising. Requires more screen real estate than AdSense, but tends to have higher click-through rates and payout rates.
LinkAdage - Text links and text advertisements to generate revenue from your website by way of bidding, brokering, and exchanging text advertisements.
Txtswap - If you want to exchange text links to try and bring in more users, and in turn raise the potential to gain income, this is another service to try.
Google AdSense - Almost certainly the largest single source of income to bloggers worldwide. Pay per click and per view.
Yahoo Publisher network - pay per click ads, similar to Google AdSense.
AdBrite - Get paid for text link advertisements on your blog.
Text Link Ads - One of the leading suppliers of text link advertisements.
BidVertiser - an advertising system where you set the bids for pay per click ads.
ReviewMe - a marketplace for paid blog reviews.
PayPerPost - another marketplace for paid blog posts; often criticized, not only because of the idea of paid blog posting, but also due to the fact that they don’t require full disclosure on paid posts.
BlogBurst - get your blog syndicated by the bigtime media; best blogs get paid for their content.

You can also try BlogAds , WidgetBucks , AdHearUs , Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds.

Enough ways to earn money from blog? Right? So start your own blog now. Goog luck!!!

Friday, December 28, 2007

iPhone integrated Concept Car Land Rover LRX

Land Rover is all about riding the iPhone’s coat-tails - or at least it would seem that way by the look of their Land Rover LRX concept car. What better way to get your product noticed then by associating it with the iPhone? The Land Rover LRX will get some time in the spotlight at the Detroit Auto Show next month, but we got a bit of a head start of Motor City.

We’re not feeling the lines of this concept SUV all that much (a little too Ford-y for us), but we gotta give it up to Land Rover for making the iPhone an integral part of the LRX’s interior design. The iPhone is prominently displayed in the center console, and is used to complement the all the other LCD displays in the car.

We’re sure this car will never see anything close to a production line, but it would be great to see this level of iPhone integration in a future luxo-vehicle. BMW, Audi, Land Rover - anything from one of them would be just fine by us.

Keep reading for a few more pics of the Land Rover LRX.

Land Rover LRX Concept with iPhone

Source article

Download AVG 7.5 Professional legally

For a limited time you can download and use AVG 7.5 Professional Antivirus (RapidShare & MegaUpload mirrors) for free. For those of you running the always-free version of AVG there are some advantages to making the upgrade, such as advanced scanning and scheduling options.

I haven’t installed this myself because I’ve already bought a subscription to the ESET Smart Security suite, but from what I’ve read the file that you download will automatically enter in a valid serial number during the installation process. There is no word as to how long the subscription is good for, but I’m guessing one year.

AVG 7.5 Professional retails for $29.95, and this offer is good until January 17, 2008. It can only be used for personal use.

Download AVG 7.5 Pro Antivirus for Free [RapidShare & MegaUpload mirrors]

Source

By using Personas Modify the appearance of Firefox

Firefox is not only famous for its user friendly functions and optimized browsing experience but it also gives you the ability to change its appearance using themes and skins. However installing and finding new themes is a hard job so a better alternative to change the appearance of your Firefox browser is to use Personas.

Personas is a Firefox extension that adds light weight theming to your Firefox browser.

Personas makes browsing more fun and gives your browser the ability to include online components. It also allows graphic designers to make styles for Firefox without having any coding language and keeps you from the job of installing individual theme files everytime.

Take a look at some of the Personas that I liked

Get Personas for Firefox

Just install the extension and get started in making and using new themes and appearances.

Fix Mom's PC From Your Home or Office or anywhere

Here's how to repair another system using remote control software.

My family, scattered to the four winds, has a dangerous habit of blindly clicking through software installs and downloading all kinds of junk from the Internet. That's why I hear "The PC is acting funny" a lot. Not long ago an effective fix had to wait until my next visit, but now I can repair the damage anytime from my home or office using the free UltraVNC remote control software).

You can install and use UltraVNC in several different ways; in my experience, it's easiest for the person I'm helping if I run the remote viewer on my machine, and then send a simple applet to them via an e-mail attachment that they click to automate the link to my system.

To set up UltraVNC on your PC, install the application and select Run UltraVNC Viewer (Listen Mode) on the program's Start menu. If you have a router, you may have to open a port (the UltraVNC's default is 5500) to redirect traffic to your local computer. The method for doing this varies from router to router, so check your device?s documentation or the vendor Web site.

Locate your IP address

Next, customize the UltraVNC SC (for "single-click") server, which initiates the connection. Go to download custom.zip (look for the link about a third of the way down). Open the zipped file on your PC, and double-click helpdesk.txt to open that file. Replace both IP addresses (192.168.1.102) under the [HOST] headings with the address assigned to you by your ISP. Leave everything but those four numbers unchanged. If you're routerless, visit www.whatismyipaddress.com and note the number shown there.

Most home IP addresses change from log-on to log-on (this arrangement is called dynamic IP addressing). If you need to create a static IP address, visit the free DynDNS service. You must run the service's utility to update its redirect table every time your local IP address changes? Without DynDNS, you'd have to re-edit and recompile the helpdesk.txt file every time you reloaded your Net connection.

Send them a panic button

Save the helpdesk.txt file back to the custom.zip archive. Next, browse to UltraVnc SC online creator, enter foo in the Userid field and foobar as the password, and click Browse to navigate to and select the custom.zip file. Click Upload, and it about 5 seconds you'll be told to download the custom.exe file that the remote user must click to connect to your machine. E-mail the custom.exe file (or whatever you rename it) to your family members, or post it on your Web site for them to download. When they follow the simple installation instructions that accompany it, you will see a dialog box on your screen informing you of an incoming connection. Accept it, and their Windows desktop appears in a window on your screen, ready for you to control. UltraVNC is free-but consider donating to help fund enhancements.

6 Cool Online Banking Tips

n ancient-financial times (say, in the year 2000), banks began offering small business customers the ability to bank online — for a price. Sometimes a hefty price.

You can probably guess what happened next. Business owners responded with a resounding silence. The last thing most people needed was an "opportunity" to pay for something that had been free.

Well, banks seem to have gotten the message. Fees have dropped sharply or have been eliminated on many services. The online banking offerings have increased. And more businesses are doing at least some of their banking online, lured by convenience, the ability to track their own financial activities online, and the potential of saving time.

See account activity online
"We're now seeing a lot more features and functionalities for small business owners to do more online and to manage their cash flow," says Matthew Lehman, senior analyst with Watchfire Gomez Pro, a research company focusing on financial services.

Among the online offerings becoming more common:

Check imaging
About 70% of the banks surveyed by Watchfire in 2004 were offering business clients the option of getting online check imaging.

"For the small business customer, this is like having account-tracking capabilities," says Lehman. "Small business owners can use this capability to look at their accounts and see which checks have been deposited and accepted."

Deposit ticket review
Another online feature some banks are offering: deposit tickets.

"If you are handling a lot of checks, this is a valuable feature because it gives you the ability to go back and see what you were depositing," says Lehman.

Coordination between accounts
Electronic banking is part of the general move toward allowing integration between different bank accounts.

Lehman says banks are making it easier for small business owners to link their business and personal accounts so they can make online transfers between accounts — rather than the old-fashioned method.

Payroll and other services
Virtually every online small business banker has a bill pay component, or the ability to schedule and pay multiple bills at one time. "What you're seeing more of is the capability for businesses to conduct other types of financial activities as well," says Lehman.

Among the options: Using online banking to pay suppliers, setting up direct deposits for employees, payroll services, payment of employment taxes and sending out payment in foreign currencies.

Making deposits from your desk
Burt Davis, director of small business banking with Netbank in Alpharetta, Ga., says that his institution is trying to be a leader in online services for small businesses. Among the products in the works: a system that allows businesses to automatically collect payments from customers, and a way to allow business owners to make deposits without having to leave their businesses. "We'll have a device in your business office, and you'll be able to scan a check and electronically deposit the funds without leaving your business unattended," says Davis.

This type of feature is similar to what retailers like Wal-Mart have when they take a customer's check, electronically scan it, get authorization for an electronic-funds transfer, and then give the approved and voided check back to the customer.

The services now available and under development reflect financial institutions' increased focus on the needs of smaller business clients. "At first, banks took regular consumer offerings and set them up for businesses," says Lehman. "Then they realized that the needs of consumers are not the same as the needs of a small business, so now they are adding things that are more germane to small businesses."

Banks may offer basic services, such as the ability to see your account history or to make transfers for free, and then charge extra for such goodies as wires, ACH, tax payments and so on.

Of course, anyone involved in commerce over the Internet has to be aware of threats from "phishers" and other frauds trying to break into individual and business bank accounts.

Currently consumers who report an electronic funds transfer problem within two days are generally liable for no more than $50 in losses from their accounts. Business accounts, however, don't get the same protection. If you're victimized and the bank determines that your security (or lack thereof) led to the loss, you could be out of luck. Software and firewalls as well as other security measures are essential for anyone doing business on the Internet.

Most of the online banking services offer ways for business customers to link parts of their banking activities and record keeping with information logged into Quickbooks, Microsoft Money and other financial programs.

Essential Office tools:Over 500 MS Office Templates

1. Business Forms & Correspondence
2. Business Management
3. CD-DVD Labels
4. Company Finance
5. Family & Home
6. Finance
7. Greeting Cards
8. Human Resources
9. Internet
10. Marketing
11. Nature

12. Nouveau
13. Personal Finance
14. Personal Planning
15. Post Cards
16. Real Estate
17. Sales & Marketing
18. Staffing & Career
19. Stationery
20. Technology
21. World Currency

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Nine IT Market Trends to Plan For

Year after year, technology and market conditions accelerate and IT finds itself scrambling to stay on top of project loads. Proactive strategizing helps to anticipate rapidly changing technologies and business conditions--but it also helps to determine where trends are likely to accelerate fastest.

This article takes a look at nine technology trends likely to affect IT and end businesses over the next two years.

1. VoIP, Wireless and Mobile Devices

Telcos and enterprises are making the transition to IP-based technologies, eroding traditional telephone service (TDM). The benefits are clear. Cost savings, especially for long distance service, are greatly reduced with VoIP (voice over Internet protocol). VoIP also facilitates the convergence of voice and data traffic on networks, while it establishes a platform for unified traffic management of voice and data. From an end user applications standpoint, companies are actively merging email and voicemail, another benefit of VoIP. A majority of employees are now getting their voicemail over corporate email, where they simply click on sound bites to hear messages. VoIP also provides an easy means for unified messaging on the multitude of communications devices that employees use and carry.

Unsurprisingly, the changeover to VoIP has increased reliance on mobile devices and communications strategies in the field. Cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and Blackberries are all widely used-and not just for voice-based applications. Many of these devices now host critical enterprise applications that allow for immediate response and greater productivity. This has required IT and vendors to scale applications, databases and user interfaces to the footprints of tiny devices. In this environment, usability engineering is as essential as data access and functional capability. Equally important is a set of security policies and methods that safeguard these devices.

2. Corporate Security

Several highly-publicized data base break-ins at major universities and corporations have generated negative image problems for corporations over the past few years, and business and IT executives are highly sensitized to this very important area. Regulators also are dialed in to security, notably in the healthcare (HIPAA) and financial (Sarbanes Oxley) sectors.

At the mainframe, server and network edge levels, security methodologies and mitigation strategies have matured and are continuing to evolve to meet the increased sophistication of hackers and attackers. Mature solutions are widely deployed for virtual private networks (VPNs), firewalls, anti-virus software, and data encryption.

One emerging area in IT's radar today is the security that surrounds mobile computing, which many enterprises are engaged in. What happens if an employee loses a device with critical data on it? There are now means to remotely shut down the device from a central point. Data on these devices can also be encrypted so that it is hard to decipher.

A second area of security activity is the active employment by enterprises of two-factor authentication, which involves the server providing a signon user id, the user supplying a password, and the server then creating a pathway into other systems that the application must interface with. Since several key security parameters are not furnished by the end user, it becomes very difficult for outsiders to gain access to critical data.

Including access safeguard methods like two-factor authentication is not new. What is new are new technologies that make sophisticated security measures easy to implement and to use.

Companies like Sweet Spot Solutions (www.sweetspotsolutions.com) manufacture a security thumb drive that now makes it a reality to embed two-factor authentication, virus fighting and VPN access on a single thumb drive interacting with a USB port that a network user inserts into his machine for security authorization and access. All the user has to do is to provide his password. If the thumb drive is lost, it can be immediately deactivated from a central point. The best news for IT is that constant software downloads and hand installation of security on devices across the enterprise are eliminated. If a thumb drive, typically kept on a user's key chain, gets lost--it can be immediately reported and de-implemented by the central IT administrator. This new security thumb drive has built-in access to standard VPNs (e.g., Microsoft, Novell, Cisco, etc.) and eliminates the problems users have in remembering multiple userid-password combinations for different network resources.

Another active security area is security breaches that occur within the walls of the enterprise. In-house security breaches can come from employees who inadvertently breach security policies, or from disgruntled employees sabotaging information-or from employees who are leaving the company and taking critical intellectual property with them. Corporate auditors now test for these scenarios in "social engineering" audits. They look at IT's hardcore security prevention practices and at "soft skill" areas such as employee orientations, training and security policies in employee handbooks.

3. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Over 80% of mission-critical software runs on legacy systems. The software is a treasure chest of business rules and data stores that drive critical areas of the enterprise. Enterprises have discovered that this heritage legacy can be leveraged by incorporation into new applications that are Web- and multi-platform-based. They can do this without recoding by wrapping modules of legacy code with interface-independent logic that allows these objectized modules to be used and reused as Web services in a service-oriented architecture (SOA) approach. New development platforms like IBM WebSphere allow facile development of SOA solutions. The key is getting the right persons on the IT team to collaborate with people in the end business so that legacy code can be sorted through and modularized into the appropriate reusable modules. This requires a detailed knowledge of how internal and external business processes work-along with the legacy code behind each of these processes.

The results are stunning. New application development that employs reusable legacy code modules is rapid, consistent and reliable. The developer toolsets that enable this to happen are intuitive-and they don't require developers to have extensive knowledge of mainframe technologies. For enterprise executives, SOA promises a reusable methodology that offers long-term investment protection for the intellectual heritage that began decades ago on proprietary systems.

4. Business Alignment and "Soft" Skills

SOA and other new application development strategies are only as successful as the people using them. One thing that has not changed in IT over the years is a persistent need for technologists who can identify with the end business world, and effectively communicate with the business side of the enterprise. More time will be devoted in enterprises to finding people within IT who can talk the language of business and people on the business side who can relate to the technology jargon and methods of IT. This cross-disciplinary middle ground has to be covered for business processes to be unearthed on both the business and the technical sides. The end result is the ability to recognize those critical components of legacy code (and internal business processes) that can be reused again and again in application development that addresses new marketplace and business issues.

5. e-Channels

Organizations will continue to push the envelope on commercial e-channels for business. This includes robust security measures for consumers and businesses, Web metrics and tracking, creative and dynamic content and Website compliance, and Website customization options for end users. Web technology is pervasive, as demonstrated in Web services that are becoming part of applications development and SOA. IT will need to maintain momentum in this area-and finesse on the backend of system/Web integration.

6. Collaboration

Organizations with geographically-disseminated offices are now finding attractive price and performance points for online collaboration. The push for collaborative work teams is adding a fourth "leg" to VoIP Triple Play (voice-data-imaging) with video. For effective collaborative technology, IT needs the skills in telecommunications technologies, return on investment (ROI) and quality of service (QoS) to be able to deliver video-based collaborative conferencing capabilities to medical practitioners who want to remotely collaborate on a medical diagnosis or the planning of a surgical procedure; or teams of architects and engineers in different cities who are collaborating on an urban development project.

7. Green Initiatives and Asset Management

With new technologies like VoIP, it has been important to manage assets so that when they reach the ends of their life cycles, they can be supplanted with new technology. A new dimension to all of this is the plethora of "green" regulations on the horizon for disposable hardware assets. Where do these assets go, and who pays the bill for environmental cleanup? Large enterprises in particular are likely to be on the list of payees, and IT executives need to begin factoring these additional disposal costs into asset management cycles. Green initiatives will impact return on investment (ROI) and other cost measurements that IT and others in the business evaluate technology effectiveness with.

8. Vendor Management and Partnering

So many new technologies are coming online that it is impossible for IT to address them all with internal resources. Careful vendor selection should high be on IT management's list. This should include vendors that can provide solutions that exactly fit the needs of the business in a cost-effective way-and vendors that can deliver reliability and excellent daily performance through the issuance and management of service level agreements (SLAs). For vendor management to work, talented IT administrators must monitor vendor performance and communicate with vendors to ensure that day to day goals are met. They should share strategic forecasts for corporate technology with their most trusted vendors so that vendors can anticipate future needs and be there with solutions when the time comes.

9. Open Source

Open Source (and Linux platforms) are already prevalent in IT infrastructures and embedded systems. OS will be expanding to end applications and service bureau environments as well. All of the major technology vendors have adopted strategies and partnerships for a forecasted Open Source applications market of 20% of all enterprise applications by 2012. The advantages of Open Source for enterprises are lower licensing costs; the availability of "free" software from the worldwide Open Source community; the ability to run software on low-cost Linux boxes; and vendor independence. On the flip side is IT's need for a strong governance policy to manage Open Source licenses and compliance in a vendor-independent environment.

Wrapup

This article covered nine key technology trends likely to impact IT planning and spending over the next two years. As IT executives well know, there are also other technology and business pressures to balance and contend with. At the end of the day, all of these factor into planning and budgets, and each enterprise makes a "best effort" to anticipate and fund its most business-critical initiatives. The good news is that technology advances and competitive pressures are sensitizing solution providers to the realities that corporate IT faces every day-lowering price points and creating high usability and rapid deployment of technologies that are entering the corporate supply line.

Around the Offshore IT Services World in a Lot Less than 80 Days

The old Jules Verne novel Around the World in 80 Days had Phileas Fogg racing around the world in boats, trains, balloons and elephants through parts of Europe, India, and China to traverse the globe within a couple of months. In this article, you are being taken on a tour of the global world of IT outsourcing, in the space of a few minutes.

Like the book, this includes India, Russia, China, and parts of Eastern Europe. Unlike the Verne classic, however, there is no need to visit USA or Western Europe - those being the places that now send vast amounts of software development and IT maintenance work overseas in order to reduce costs, speed time to market and focus on their core competencies.

India

India has been an Offshore IT powerhouse for over a decade now. Companies such as Cognizant Technology Solutions, Covansys, HCL Technologies, Infosys Technologies, Satyam Computer Services, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro Technologies have been working with top US and European IT providers for years.

Initially, this consisted primarily of IT grunt work. Mainframe maintenance acted as a foot in the door for many of the above companies. Then came the panic induced by the infamous Y2K bug. Many firms dumped the laborious code checking work on aging mainframes over to Indian firms more than happy to take the load. Since then, however, they have graduated into more complex Oracle, .Net and Java programming, and application design.

Shiva Balivada, Co-Founder, President & CEO of Vi TeleTechZone, a VoIP technology outsourcer based in Bangalore, India, was on the first team which showcased Software India in COMDEX 1987. That seed eventually blossomed into the multi-billion software outsourcing boom.

"I always felt that outsourcing is best described as ‘Delegate what you do not want to do yourself'," says Balivada. "Advantages are manifold, from turnaround time to cost to value addition."

Russia

But India has already been the focus on countless articles in this area. Let's look elsewhere, then, to shine the spotlight on other parts of the world that have a flourishing IT landscape.

Russia, for example, has become a haven for custom application development across the full range of application types, as well as custom R&D and design work, embedded systems development, specialized testing, software package integration and translation services. These particular skills, Gartner Group says, are highly available due to Russia's unique strengths, which it lists as follows: an elite university system; a highly skilled and ample workforce; an array of specialized expertise capable of solving large-scale, complex technical problems; and cost of labor advantage compared with the US and Western Europe.

As a result, Russia has expanded steadily over the last few years and is rapidly becoming a major destination for offshore software development business. Analysts predict that the country will have captured a 5 percent share of North American and Western European offshore services revenue by the end of 2007.

RUSSOFT, the nation's trade association of software development and IT services companies, lists companies such as Boeing, Alcatel, Reuters, London Stock Exchange and Siemens as examples of more than 250 global corporations active in Russia-based offshore software development.

"We are moving from the era of cheaper coding towards outsourcing of more complicated solutions related to core business," says President of RUSSOFT Valentin Makarov. "That's why Russia's acknowledged strong points such as high educational level and creativity are finding so many new opportunities."

According to RUSSOFT, Russia is ranked number three in the number of scientists and engineers per capita worldwide. That translates into a talent pool of over 4.7 million students, 50 percent of which are majoring in science, math, and computer sciences. And these students regularly win international programming contests. In the world's most prestigious competition, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest, for example, the country boasts several gold medals in the last few years.

"Russia is of great interest to American high-tech because of the superiority of its software engineers," says Dr. Deborah A. Palmieri, president of the Russian American Chamber of Commerce based in Denver, CO. "They have exceptional theoretical ability, which when coupled with American know-how, provides a dynamic combination."

Prominent Russian IT companies include Luxoft, StarSoft Development Labs, VDI, Reksoft and Auriga. These firms, and others like them, are even managing to entice Fortune 500 companies to open centers in Russia. Motorola, Intel, Sun Microsystems, IBM, Boeing, Dell and Nortel Networks have established large development centers in places such as Moscow and St. Petersburg. Luxoft, for example, helped Dell open two centers in Russia.

"Luxoft delivers IT outsourcing services, with an emphasis on leveraging innovative processes, technologies, and delivery models in the areas of application development and maintenance, software product development and maintenance, embedded systems development, and quality assurance," says Dmitry Loschinin, President and CEO of Luxoft. "Our client list includes Deutsche Bank, Boeing, Dell Computers, IBM, and Ping Identity."

Like Makarov, he boasts about his country's advantages when compared to India: the strong university system, a cultural fit with Western entrepreneurialism, and better geographic proximity to Europe and North America.

"When it comes to complex projects, Russia excels as it is known for the ability to offer alternatives, fluid collaboration, and full partnership (as opposed to other locales where order taking is the standard operating procedure)," says Loschinin.

"At Luxoft, 74 percent of the staff holds master's degrees, 6 percent, PhDs, and 15 percent other graduate degrees. 76 percent have 5+ years of IT experience."

He also highlights a low attrition rate (11 percent) as an additional reason to shop IT Russia. This compares well to churn levels of 50 percent or more per annum being experienced in other parts of the world. 30 percent is regarded as satisfactory, for instance, in places like India.

Luxoft customer US internet identity product firm Ping Identity Corp. for example, has felt the benefits of low attrition.

"Retention at Luxoft for 2006 is at an all-time high and the Ping Identity development center has 100 percent retention rate, which is very rare in outsourcing engagements," says Bill Wood, vice president of product development at Ping Identity.

He points out that it takes a serious investment of time to build the company inside the company (the Ping Identity team inside Luxoft). Particularly when engaged in the type of Agile programming development work that Ping emphasizes, it is vital to maintain continuity of service. Ping identity integrates Luxoft engineers into its internal teams and treats them as if they were employees. Even then, he says, agile development is difficult and only the top 20 percent of developers are suited to it.

"At Luxoft, considerable emphasis is placed on giving engineers the opportunity to learn and grow and the opportunity to use Agile development skills is a big reason for staff to remain at Luxoft," says Wood. "The collaborative effort is working."

Hungary

Russia isn't the only game in Eastern Europe, though. Countries such as Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Hungary are all growing technology hubs. Like Russia, they are reaping the benefits of one of the few positive legacies from the Soviet era - a well-established education system.

EPAM Systems, for example, has large-scale development centers in Hungary, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, as well as client support and delivery units in USA and UK. Its Hungarian customer base includes London Stock Exchange and British Telecom (BT).

It helped BT Group, one of the largest telecom providers in Europe, for example, develop a massive customer portal. BT Global Services, a subsidiary of BT Group, is a service provider helping organizations master the complexity of business communication. The company has coverage in more than 200 countries across five continents, 20,000 skilled professionals and one of Europe's most extensive IP-enabled networks. Its old online B2B system was inhibiting growth.

"It was too tightly coupled with the backend systems," says Andy Pennington, senior product manager within the Virtual Business Center (VBC) BT Global Services. "Changes were complex owing to over-engineering and we were relying on a hybrid set of technologies."

EPAM helped BT Global Services deploy VBC using BEA WebLogic Portal 8.1. It is an online B2B resource area used by more than 1,500 multi-site corporate customers. It enables real-time Web-based access to a suite of service management and collaborative applications. It supports the company's virtual IP VPN network solution. Customers can raise and review orders, as well as access interactive tickets and service requests. They can also manage their inventory and configuration changes.

To accomplish this EPAM opened the BEA WebLogic NearSourcing Center (WNC), headquartered in Budapest. It comprises more than 700 experienced BEA WebLogic and AquaLogic engineers.

"We estimate that using the WebLogic NearSourcing Center was a quarter of the cost due to the expertise and efficiency of the team as well as the relative price advantage of near-shore resource," said Pennington.

EPAM CEO Arkadiy Dobkin lists similar advantages in Hungary to those mentioned earlier about Russia. Mark Minevich, an analyst at consulting firm Going Global Ventures, takes that a stage further. He ranked Hungary fifth as an outsourcing destination behind India, China, Costa Rica and Czech Republic.

China

Finally, let's take a look at the rising star of the outsourcing galaxy - China. This country is earning quite a reputation for itself. As well as being the largest manufacturer in the world, it is about to host the Olympics, has taken over IBM's PC/laptop business (Lenovo), and is up to number two behind India as an offshore provider of IT services and software development.

The reasons for its meteoric rise in IT are many. As outsourcing to China has been in place for decades, it has helped create a mature support system for IT.

IBM, Qualcomm and Agilent Laboratories are big in China. And many more are following, with rates in China being about 20 to 30 percent less than those in India.

But cost isn't the only factor. China's high regard for education has turned it into a colossal geek factory. Its universities graduate more than 2 million per year with more than 700,000 of those being engineers. China currently has 200,000 IT professionals involved in the software export industry, with an additional 50,000 entering the workforce each year.

One major Chinese supplier is Objectiva Software Solutions, a division of Document Sciences Corporation, itself a provider of software outsourcing services. It has offices in San Diego, San Francisco, Toronto, Frankfurt, Paris and Beijing. Objectiva helps its clients develop customized enterprise software solutions (J2EE, COM+ and MS.NET), web-based and client-server applications and software for the wireless Internet.

"We have used Objectiva as an offshore development partner for over a year now, and we couldn't be more pleased with their performance," says Jay Leader, CIO of Nypro, Inc.

Headquartered in Clinton, Massachusetts, Nypro Inc. is a $1B plastics injection molding company. It services markets that need precision plastics molding, including electronics, telecommunications, consumer, industrial, packaging, healthcare, automotive and contract manufacturing.

"Our retained team members [from Objectiva] are very qualified technically, have a good attention to detail, and work very hard to meet commitment dates on project deliverables," says Leader.

Changing World

According to IT consultancy IDC, the US offshore IT services market alone is expected to nearly double in size to an estimated $14.7 billion by 2009. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 14.4 percent. The leading sectors in this surge are discrete manufacturers (accounting for 17 percent of spending by 2009), followed by retail, communications, banking, insurance, and other financial services companies. In aggregate, IDC predicts that the financial services industry will account for 28.9 percent of the total spend by the end of the forecast period.

"These firms are at the vanguard of offshore services work," says Jason Spaulding, an analyst at IDC. "Companies in these industries are dominated by core legacy applications environments, strict competitive pressure to reduce costs, and consolidation. As a result, firms look to inexpensively integrate and manage current applications while developing new custom applications."

Much of that money will go to India and China, as they vie for top spot in what has become a massive sector of the global economy. But other locales, too, are set to profit in a big way, as well as Russia and other Eastern European countries such as Hungary, look for destinations like the Philippines, Ireland and Latin America to get in on the act.

Within a decade, Western firms will have an array of mature options available that will probably make it uneconomic to perform certain IT tasks in house. That will free them up to focus on core competencies, while leaving everything else to development teams on a distant shore.

Essential Wiki Tools and Resources

Wikis, sites that can be collaboratively edited, are among the most popular tools for groups working together online. We’ve rounded up 30 of the best sites and resources - most of them free or low priced.

Hosted Wikis

PBwiki - create your personal wiki in less than 30 seconds with this easy online service. Special solutions for educational, business and personal use.

OttoWiki - build up your personal wiki to track projects or collaborate on documents online.

WikiSpaces - create simple web pages that groups, friends, and families can edit together.

WetPaint - build up public and private wikis and join one of the largest wiki communities.

ServerSideWiki - create a web-hosted wiki specifically designed for extremely fast load times.

StikiPad - a hosted wiki solution that gives you an easy way to organize your information and share it with others.

Netcipia - create free private wikis and blogs and invite your coworkers, familiy and friends.

Ziwiki - build up a free wiki site and collaborate with a large community of users.

Near-Time - create and customize collaborative wikis for your business, customers and friends.

LittleWiki - set up free public and private wiki pages that anyone can edit.

TiddlySpot - get your wiki with no installation required and make it private or public.

ProjectForum - create hosted wikis to share, discuss and review ideas collaboratively (self hosted version available too)

Socialtext - build up a wiki in a few seconds. Different plans available for enterprises and smaller groups.

WikiBios - create a wiki page and edit your own biography. You will become part of a large social network.

Wiki - create free wikispaces of up to 5 members each with 25MB storage.

Wikidot - free and professional wiki publishing, collaboration and communication solutions.

Zoho Wiki - create free hosted group wikis and edit them collaboratively.

Wik.is - create public or private wikis and easily integrate them with your existing website.

JotSpot - popular wiki creation service that is momentarily suspended after having been acquired by Google.

Wikia - a community of users that create, share and discover topics they are passionate about through wikis.

EditMe - wiki hosting service that helps non-technical users to quickly and easily build editable web sites.

Versionate - create collaborative spaces where you can share information and review it with other people.

Self-Hosted/Open Source Wikis

ProjectForum - software to create wikis to share, discuss and review ideas collaboratively (hosted version available too).

Kwiki - wiki software with over 200 plugins that let you customize the look of your wiki.

XWiki - open source wiki released under the LGPL license

Twiki - enterprise collaboration platform and knowledge management system based on wikis.

OpenWiki - software that lets you create workspaces that can be collaboratively edited by anyone or by selected users.

MediaWiki - free software wiki package originally written for Wikipedia. It’s available for everyone to use.

Confluence - enterprise wiki software that makes it easy for your team to collaborate and share knowledge.

Wiki Search / Browsing Tools

Gollum - a fast and user friendly tool that lets you browse through Wikipedia.

Qwika - search articles in Wikipedia with this tool that bridges the language gaps.

Wikiseek - another interesting service that lets you search items within Wikipedia.

WikiWix - search engine specialized in searching content within Wikipedia.

Blogging Tools and resources

An aspiring blogger can be overwhelmed with the vast amount of resources, tools, and advice for bloggers available on the net. While in no way definitive - there’s simply too much going on in this space to cover it all - we did our best to bring you a comprehensive list of blogging resources, which should be equally useful to beginners as well as veteran bloggers. Enjoy.

WordPress

WordPress Themes

ThemeViewer - The number one location to find WordPress themes to make your page cool, which you will most certainly want to do.
Templates Now - A smaller collection of WordPress themes, but still worth your while to check out.
TemplateMonster - If you want more professional quality themes then this site can be useful. They offer extremely high quality themes that you can purchase
for WordPress.
Wordpress Themes - a neatly categorized site with a huge selection of themes

Best WordPress Plugins

Akismet - The best blog comment spam prevention plug-in. Ships free with WordPress, but you still have to turn it on and keep it updated.
Wordpress Backup - an absolute must if you want to keep your archive in case of something going wrong
WP Cache - if your blog ever experiences a burst of traffic, you’ll be thankful you have WP Cache
Sitemap Generator - everyone who cares about SEO (and that should be everyone) should have this one
Preview Pane - If you upgrade/install WordPress 2.2.x, the Preview Frame has gone missing, as the developers decided to leave it out, and it is a vital tool on checking your posts, so this plug-in restores that functionality.
Facebook Photos - A nice WordPress plug-in that allows quick access to your Facebook photos and the ability to integrate them in to any post within WordPress with ease.
Flickr Photos - Same as Facebook Photos, but for use with a Flickr account.
Related Posts - This plugin lets you display all the posts you have written on the same subject near each post. It increases the chance that a visitor will spend more time browsing your blog posts.
Feedburner Feed Replacement - sooner or later, most people switch to Feedburner for their RSS needs. This plugin redirects all the RSS feeds on your blog to the Feedburner one. Might cause problems with Technorati.
Ultimate Tag Warrior - an advanced solution for all your tagging problems.
Adsense Deluxe - a great way to manage AdSense ads on your blog.
Super Archive - Creates a great dynamic archive for your Wordpress blog posts.
Stat Traq - Get detailed statistics in a very effective graphical format.
Sociable - adds all those cute tiny icons for easy social bookmarking
LightBox 2 - A fade effect that you see on a myriad of blogs you visit these days where you click the image, the background fades and then the image itself displays in full view. A very nice effect to have.

Wordpress Plugin repositories

Official Wordpress Plugins Site - The official Wordpress plugin repository is actually one of the best lists of its kind out there
Wp-Plugins - a comprehensive list of Wordpress plugins
Wp Plugins DB - another large database of plugins for Wordpress
Weblog Tools Collection - an often updated site bringing you the latest Wordpress plugins as they arrive

Movable Type

Movable Type Styles

Style Library -If you are looking for a way to make your Movable Type blog look fresh, then look no further.
The Style Contest - A collection of Movable Type Styles created from contests to create the best styles. Only the best is here.
Style Generator - Use this if you wish to take things in to your own hands and
create your own Styles for use with Movable Type.

Best Movable Type Plugins

MT Notifier - This plug-in gives you a great amount of control of notification options for your users and helps with keeping your users connected to your Movable Type blog.
InlineEditor - No more clicking through 3 or more pages to edit your posts on Movable Type, this plug-in allows you to edit through Ajax technology right on the same page as your post.
MT Blogroll - If you want to link to your favorite blogs and sites, then you need a “blogroll” (collection of links to sites and other blogs), and this plug-in solves this problem with providing you the ability to create and manage as many “blogrolls” as your heart desires.

Movable Type Plugin repositories

Official Movable Type Plugin site - a comprehensive alphabetical list of Movable Type plugins

Blog Hosting Solutions

Dedicated & Shared Hosting Services

Dreamhost - Offers a lot for a very small amount of money.
CirtexHosting - Hosting plans starting at as little as $2.
BlueHost - Another affordable hosting solution.
HostGator - Cheap shared personal hosting.
Media Temple - Grid based hosting; known to be able to sustain lots of traffic.

Paid Blog Hosting Services

TypePad - If you are a MovableType fan, then TypePad is the premiere service to be using to host your blog.
Blogsite - An enterprise level blogging and publishing platform. Multiple blogs can reside withing one blogsite. Amazing SEO visibility.

Free Blog Hosting Services

WordPress - WordPress allows you to create and host a blog on their own servers and you can display it to the world. You don’t get as much customization and functionality as if you have it hosted on your own server (for example, advertising is not allowed), but it is still a very good way to blog without paying money.
Blogger - A service owned by Google, Blogger is a way to have your blogs hosted for free and you can post as much as you want. It allows Google’s AdSense to be used.
Xanga - iXanga is a lively community of online diaries and journals. Users create their own profiles and there are many opportunities to interact with other users.
LiveJournal - LiveJournal is excellent if you wish to blog on a personal level and join a community and share your blogs among friends.
Vox - A new contender to the arena but Vox is a very nice and powerful blogging tool; not to mention free!; You receive many social experiences with this option as Vox is based heavily on community based blogging.
Tumblr - Tumblr is great if you don’t have time to blog, but still want to share something now and again. It lets you easily post videos, pictures, links, and of course you can write there too.

Mini-Blogging Services

Jaiku - Jaiku allows you the ability to post “mini-blogs” which are short blogs (usually under 140 - 160 characters in length) about whatever you decide. Jaiku also allows you to link together content from other services and social sites that provide RSS/ATOM feeds and they can be displayed as well.
Twitter - Twitter lets you say what you are doing in 140 characters or less. Recently new features have been added that have made it into a great communication tool.

Mobile Based Blogging

TextAmerica - A way to blog on the go. You blog with service by adding photos to your mobile blog and then later on you can add text descriptions and people
can see your world on the go.
Twitter - Twitter also has solid support for blogging from mobile devices.

Tips & Advice

Blogs about Blogging

About.com Weblogs - Professional blogger / freelance writer Deborah Ng covers a wide range of blogging topics for all levels of blogger, but is especially good for new bloggers.
Advanced Business Blogging - Two people who are really making money with blogs and new media and showing others how to.
Blogging for Business - Ted Demopoulos focuses “on practical business implications and uses of new media and technologies, including Blogging and Business, pod-casting, and other ‘Cool Internet Stuff’.”
Andy Wibbels - The author of Blog Wild! puts emphasises blogs for small business marketing, but his tips are useful for all bloggers.
Problogger - Darren Rowse is the definitive guide to making money with your blog.
MasterNewMedia - A site about independent publishing and social media which publishes articles showing how to create effective blogs and improve online marketing strategies.
Copyblogger - a great resource of no-nonsense information for bloggers (and everyone else who wants to learn how to write well)
DailyBlogTips - a place where you can find useful tips to improve the quality of your blog. Updated daily.
Blogging Pro - news, tips and technical support for bloggers.
Blogs in Education - a great list of useful resources aimed at those who want to use blogs for educational purposes.

Tips

10 Most Practical Blogs for Entrepreneurs - No philosophy, theory or personal rants/raves/ramblings here - just practical tips for business
owners.
Twenty Usability Tips for Your Blog - Tips for increasing the usability of your blog for your users which can lead to new and returning readers.
Big list of blog search engines - a very detailed resource for blog search engines.
Search Engine Submission Tips - an interesting list of techniques and strategies you can use to make your blog appear in relevant search results.
How to Make Money From Your Website - a practical guide that explains the differences between the different advertising systems that you can use on your blog.
25 Tips To Optimize Your Blog For Readers & Search Engines - useful tips that help your blog stand out from the crowd.
Research, Promote And Monetize Your Online Writing: A Blogger’s Guide To Twitter - a great guide by Michael Pick that shows you how to get the best out of
Twitter.
25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog - a detailed list of tips to help bloggers optimize their site for online marketing.
9 Lessons for Would-be Bloggers - Joshua Porter shares interesting lessons he learned in 7 years of blogging.
Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes - Jacob Nielsen writes down a list of the worst things you could do on your blog.
How to Become a Freelance Blog Writer - Leo Babauta shows how to become a freelance blog writer and get rewarded.
How To Prevent Running Out Of Blogging Steam - Did you run out of words? Here is what you can do when you have to face a situation like that.
13 Tips To Get Your Blog Noticed - a list of short tips to make your blog shine among the others.

Blogging Forums & Sites

Blogger Forum - This site has a nice forum with plenty of resources for helping you on your beginnings in blogging.
Bloggst - a fairly new community devoted to bloggers, and blogging, with howtos, interviews and other resources.
True Blogging - a forum completely dedicated to bloggers, blogging resources and blog monetization.
Blogger Talk - great resource for bloggers who want to share their experiences.
Bloggeries - a community for bloggers from all over the world to gather and discuss their blogs.
Webloggers - forum on marketing blogs, software for bloggers, blogging news and mobile blogging.
The Blog Herald - a source of blog and blogging related news for bloggers.

Blog Tools and Resources

Blog Search Engines

Technorati - One of the most popular search engines for blogs; its top list is one of the most often cited metrics on the Internet.
Sphere - a blog search engine that offers a contextual widget which shows related posts from other blogs.
Google Blog Search - A very simple blog search engine. It’s basically Google Search that only looks through blogs and comments on blogs.
Ice Rocket – A Google-like blog search engine.

Blog Top Lists

RSSTop55 - the most comprehensive list of blog top lists and blog submission sites on
the net.

Blog Statistics & Analysis

StatCounter - A completely free statistics and analysis tool for tracking your blog’s numbers.
Site Meter - Site Meter comes in two flavors, Site Meter Basic and Site Meter Premium and this service offers advanced analytics of your site statistics.
AWStats - A free and open-source alternative to track your site statistics.
Feedburner - A wide range of tools to spiff up your RSS feed, including HTML preview, geotagging, merging link and photo feeds, password protection, and one of our favorites - a customizable GIF-based headline animator. They can also insert ads into your feed and have both free and premium analytics.
Alexa - Alexa has the statistics for all of the internet and it lets you compare your blog to another.
Google Analytics - a free, full-featured (albeit a bit slow) analytics program from Google (ex. Urchin).
MeasureMap - another free tool for detailed analysis of your blog’s visitor habits

Blog Monetization

PayPal - PayPal allows you to set up a donations system on your site. Your readers can click a button that will bring them to a page where they can send you some cash.
Chitika - Contextual interactive CPC advertising. Requires more screen real estate than AdSense, but tends to have higher click-through rates and payout rates.
LinkAdage - Text links and text advertisements to generate revenue from your website by way of bidding, brokering, and exchanging text advertisements.
Txtswap - If you want to exchange text links to try and bring in more users, and in turn raise the potential to gain income, this is another service to try.
Google AdSense - Almost certainly the largest single source of income to bloggers worldwide. Pay per click and per view.
Yahoo Publisher network - pay per click ads, similar to Google AdSense.
AdBrite - Get paid for text link advertisements on your blog.
Text Link Ads - One of the leading suppliers of text link advertisements.
BidVertiser - an advertising system where you set the bids for pay per click ads.
ReviewMe - a marketplace for paid blog reviews.
PayPerPost - another marketplace for paid blog posts; often criticized, not only because of the idea of paid blog posting, but also due to the fact that they don’t require full disclosure on paid posts.
BlogBurst - get your blog syndicated by the bigtime media; best blogs get paid for their content.

Spreading The Word

Reddit - Social content site with focus on fun stuff, politics, science; sometimes, anything goes. Witty descriptions are obligatory.
ClipMarks - A service that allows you to save and share “clips” from web pages.
Digg - Social content site that likes technology-related content; especially Google and Apple related. Promoting your own blog - especially too aggressively - on Digg is not a good idea.
Blogmarks - another “clipping” service for saving and sharing links from the web.
Newsvine - Social news site with plenty of options and features
Netscape - Netscape’s social news portal, less oriented towards technology than both Digg and Reddit
Del.icio.us - If you need to share bookmarks or you want people to tell you about websites, Del.icio.us will allow you to do that.

Misc. Tools

MyBlogLog - Possibly the coolest blog community building tool around. Doubles as a simple analytics tool.
BlogRolling – Blogroll manager.
PollDaddy - cool polls for your blog.
BlogPolls - another provider of free polls for bloggers
Favicon Maker – simple service that enables you to easily create a favicon from an image.
Qumana - a desktop blog editor for Mac and Windows.
Blogjet - another desktop blog client, works only on Windows.
Blogarithm - enables you to track all your content at one place.
GeoLoc - a widget that shows your visitors’ locations on a world map.
JunkIWant - display your Amazon wishlist as a widget on your blog
BlogSticker - create stickers for your blog.
MyOpenId - enables you to identify yourself for various online service, using your blog address.
BlogFlux tools - several cool tools for bloggers.
ImageShack - free photo hosting service.