Display relevant Google Adsense ads on your site

Very often, I see Google Adsense ads in my blog, which are not related to the content I write. This not only lead to low CTR's but also low Page CPM. But not any more..

Today while browsing through the Google Adsense help center, I found that Google Adsense has a feature called Section Targeting by which we can help Google display ads relevant to the content.

What is Section Targeting ?

A typical post page on a blog contains the post, the comments and the omnipresent sidebar. It is highly likely that the comments and the sidebar contain irrelevant content compared to the post body. So the main piece is the post body and Google has to display relevant ads to that.

Using Google Adsense section targeting, now you can do just that .

How do I implement section targeting ?

To implement section targeting, you'll need to add a set of special HTML comment tags to your code. These tags will mark the beginning and end of whichever section(s) you'd like to emphasize or De-emphasize for ad targeting.

The HTML tags to emphasize a page section take the following format:

<!-- google_ad_section_start -->

<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

For highest impact you should wrap your entire post body and post title with this bit of code.

How do I make Google ignore some sections of my post page ?

You can also designate sections you'd like to have ignored by adding a (weight=ignore) to the starting tag:

<!-- google_ad_section_start(weight=ignore) -->

<!-- google_ad_section_end -->

You can implement this if needed in the sidebar section of your pages.

That's it, now just sit back and wait to see Adsense ads related to your posts. According to Google it will take some time around 2 weeks for the changes to be reflected.

In case you need any help in modifying to your Blogger template to make these changes, feel free to contact me.

Download Microsoft Windows Vista Wallpapers

The best collection of Microsoft Windows Vista wallpapers ever.

Brajeshwar has uploaded all his Vista wallpapers to Flickr. The wallpapers also include the official Windows Vista wallpapers bundled in the latest build of Windows Vista.

You can save any of the following images directly by right clicking and selecting "Save Target as" in Internet Explorer or "Save Link As" in Mozilla Firefox.

So no more searching for Vista wallpapers. These wallpapers are high resolution, so they will fit your widescreen laptop too.

If you want all the wallpapers as a pack, the zip is also available.

Here are the Links :

Flickr set of Microsoft Windows Vista wallpapers

Windows Vista Wallpaper Pack

Windows Vista r5381 Wallpapers [All official vista wallpapers till date.]


Found Via - VistaStyles

Microsoft & Dell create Windows Vista PC

Microsoft and Dell recently partnered up to create a super-cool custom PC in celebration of Microsoft releasing Windows Vista to manufacturing earlier this month.

Have a look at the system specs:

* Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Processor
* 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX
* 4GB RAM Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM @ 667mhz
* 1Terabyte RAID SATA HDDs (2x500GB)
* 48x Combo + 16x DVD+/-RW Double Layer Burner
* Dual TV Tuners (Analog)
* Dell 30" Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor
* Full 5.1 Surround Sound

This hot baby has a Windows Experience Index rating of 5.2! . Here are some pics of the cabinet.



Via The Windows Vista Blog

Utilizing Google Webmaster Tools

This post has moved to my new blog. Please visit the link below. :)

http://www.manast.com/2007/04/08/ultimate-bloggers-guide-to-google-webmaster-tools/

Discover Hidden Sound in Microsoft Windows XP

Did you know, there is a hidden sound in Microsoft Windows XP that you have never heard..

To hear this sound:

1. Go to My Computer ---- > Tools ---- > Folder Options


2. Under the "View" tab, check "Show hidden files and folder" and uncheck "Hide protected system files".


3. Now navigate to the drive where Windows XP is installed.So if C:\ is the drive where Windows XP is installed, go to C:\WINDOWS\system32\oobe\images


4. There you will find a file Title.wma.Open in with your favorite media player and listen to it.
   

Source : http://www.metacafe.com/watch/298664...n_music_track/

Yahoo & Microsoft embrace Google Sitemaps

Its official.Microsoft and Yahoo search engines now support Google Sitemaps. Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have joined forces to support the sitemaps protocol and enhance it further.

Google has made this announcement in the Google Blog today. The Google Blog states :

Last year we published the Sitemap 0.84 XML protocol as a free and easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about URLs on their web sites so that search engines can more effectively crawl them. We released it under the Attribution/Share Alike Creative Commons license in the hopes that other search engines would adopt the protocol too. And today, we're excited to announce that Yahoo! and Microsoft are joining us in officially supporting the Sitemap protocol.

This not only gives prominence to Google sitemaps but is also good news for webmasters because now by creating a single sitemap they can help all three major search engines crawl their sites better.

Now Google, what about adding a sitemap to Blogger blogs ?? That would help a lot.

Source : The Google Blog

Blog using Google Docs & Spreadsheets

With Microsoft entering the blogging arena, by releasing a beta version of Windows Live Writer how can Google be behind. And we all know Google, it always introduces online services. Yesterday when I published a post to my blog, there was a note from Google telling that now we can post from Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

So here it is, Google now has its own blog posting tool. Instead of going for creating a separate service, Google has instead added blog posting capability to its online Google Docs & Spreadsheets service. Now you can write a document in Google Docs & Spreadsheets and then publish it to your blog. The new option to publish to a blog is available under the Publish tab in Google Docs.

How will this help you ?

You get a rich post editor with fancy features like undo and redo and spell check right inside the blog poster. So no more going to your blogging platform's clunky blog post editor and type there. You can use the excellent editor of Google Docs and then post the article to your blog after finishing writing it.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets besides supporting posting to Blogger also supports a large number of blogging platforms including Wordpress. So you should not have any problem configuring the settings to post to your blog. Considering the facility is quite new, Google had done a good job.



What can we expect in the future ?

As time progresses, we can expect Google to add advanced features like adding Technorati tags to the posts. This will give a full fledged post editor which will enable anyone to post anything anywhere.

P.S. - Google Docs and Spreadsheets supports posting to Blogger Beta. You can also automatically categorize your blog posts by tagging your documents with a category name you already use on your blog site.

Visit Google Docs & Spreadsheets

SiteTimer analyzes why website is slow

This post has moved.

http://www.manast.com/2007/04/20/analyze-why-your-blog-loads-slow-using-sitetimer/

Get your own @live.com address

A new way to get a @live.com e-mail address has been found. Get your favourite @live.com address before Microsoft discovers this leak.Just follow the following simple steps.

1. Goto this page to start registering your windows live account.


2. Press the sign-up button and you will be presented a form to sign up for a hotmail account.


3. Copy the following javascript injection code:

   javascript:function r(q){} function s(q){e[q] = new Option(a[q],a[q])}; r(e = document.getElementById("idomain").options);r(d="live.");r(a = new Array("hotmail.com","hotmail.co.uk","msn.com",d+"com",d+"com.au",d+"be",d+"ca",d+"co.uk",d+"de",d+"fr",d+"it"/*mEss.be*/,d+"nl")); for (i=0;i<a.length;i++){ s(i ) }alert("Success - additional domains added!");
   
   



4. Paste the code in your address bar.


5. Hit enter, if all went well it should show a message box telling you "Success - additional domains added!".


6. Now you can select a multitude of domains, fill out the form and you are ready to go!

Source : Mess.be

Ultimate Blogger Beta Hacks List

Blogger Beta, a new platform of Blogger and a new space for people to experiment on to bring out new functionalities in it.

Here is a list of all hacks for the new Blogger which I have found so far.
P.S. These hacks will not work for the old version of Blogger.

1. Peek-a-boo Navbar - Avatar explains how to make the navbar Peek-a-boo which appears only when you hover your mouse on top. Makes you blog look really cool, without losing the functionality which it offers.


2. Recent Comments in the sidebar - Ramani shows you how to display a list of recent comments in your blog's sidebar.


3. Random Rotating Banners - Gabriel shows you how to display a random header image to your visitors everytime they visit your blog.


4. Peek-a-boo comments on Home Page - Singpolyma explains how you can get peek-a-boo comments to display on your home page.


5. Expandable posts with peek-a-boo view - Ramani shows how to put post summaries in your home page and 'Read More' links below them which display the full post on being clicked.


6. Latest Posts Display in Sidebar - Ramani explains how you can use the Blogger Beta feeds to display a list of recent posts in your sidebar.


7. Adding a second sidebar - For those of you who would like three column layout for your blogs, Hans shows you how to add a second sidebar.


8. Add a menubar to your blog - Hans shows you how you can add a Wordpress style menubar to the top of your blog.


9. Social Bookmarking icons - Hans explains how you can put icons of social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Furl etc. below your posts.These icons allow your reader to bookmark your post easily.


10. Labels as Tabs - Hoctro shows how you can get your labels as navigation tabs below your header.


11. Dropdown menubar - Alastor shows how to get drop down menubar items in your Blogger Beta blog.


12. Peek-a-boo linklist - Singpolyma has written up some code to get peek-a-book link lists in your blog.


13. 4-in-1 Search Box - PurpleMoggy shows you how to get a cool search box on your blog.


14. Display your Technorati Rank - PurpleMoggy has written up some cool Javascript to display an automatically updated Technorati rank of your blog.
    

Apply these hacks and give your visitors a whole new experience.

I will update this list as and when new hacks come out.So keep visiting... :D

Zamzar :: Free Online File Conversion

Zamzar is a site which will convert your files to the format of your choice and then e-mails the link to download the converted file to your e-mail. The service does what it means, convert files without the need to download and install any paid software.

Here are the file formats which are supported for conversion.

Image formats

bmp, gif, jpg, png, tiff

Doc formats

csv, html, doc, ods, odt, pcx, pdf, ppt, ps, rtf, txt, xls, xml

Music formats

aac, ac3, amr, au, flac, m4a, mmf, mp3, ogg, wav, wma

Video formats

3gp, avi, flv, gvi, ipod, mov, mp4, mpg

Lots of choice, you will never need to search for software to convert a file again. So visit Zamzar now and give it a try.

Himesh Reshammiya's new movie : Aap Ka Suroor

Double lol...Himesh Reshammiya is making his debut as an actor.He is playing the lead hero in the movie "Aap Ka Suroor". The promos are already on TV.

Himesh as hero...God knows what the producer was thinking..

Anywayz, watch the promo of the movie ...

Why I deleted my Orkut account ?

A few days ago, I deleted my Orkut account.Orkut is a great tool for social networking but it is put to wrong use by its users.

The root of all problems is the Scrapbook feature of Orkut.Whatever may be the real use of this feature, it is put to wrong use.I receive fucking scrapbook messages on Orkut everyday.

One writes "hi what is the syllabus for tomorrows test..Scrap me with the page nos" .

My question : Am I supposed to type the page nos to that idiot?

Another one writes "Why are you not sending scraps to me? Have you forgotten me ?" .

My question : How can I forgot somebody when I had met him 2 days ago ?

The next one writes "woot woot , I have more scraps than you"

My question : So, whats the big deal ?

And yes another dumbo writes "i am online in orkut.come we will chat..".

My question : Orkut is meant for chatting.. I thought IM 's do that..

People measure their importance by the number of scraps and fans they have... Full idiots...
Sigh, Google should provide a feature to disable scrapbook for users like me...

My wishlist of features for Blogger Beta

The Blogger Beta gave a new version of Blogger to all those who were getting annoyed by the recent outages in service and lack of features such as categories. By introducing Blogger Beta, Google has put Blogger into a process of continuous development.

Blogger Beta introduces the concept of labels which are nothing but categories, new template tags and a very user friendly drag and drop template editor which is somewhat similar to widgets in Wordpress. But as usual I am not satisfied. Here is my wishlist of the features I would like to see in Blogger Beta.

I will keep on adding to this list... :)

1. Inline Comments Form - The pop-up comment form is too old to continue. Its time to introduce an inline comments form in the lines of what is available in the Wordpress blogs.


2. Ability to edit post slugs - Post slug is that part of your post which appears in the address bar of your browser. The ability to use custom slugs would help in better SEO. Also the present character limit on the post slugs needs to be increased.


3. Custom domain name - This is one feature which should be introduced as soon as possible. Most of the bloggers on Blogspot would like to use their own domain name while hosting their blogs on Blogger.
   
   Update : 14/01/07
   Yay!, Blogger has added custom domains feature for the New Blogger and that too for FREE. Here is the Blogger Buzz post announcing custom domains in new Blogger.
   


4. Host files other than images - Blogger gives 300MB space to host images but what about other file types like Javascript files. This would be a welcome addition for most of the bloggers who would like to offer some files for download on their blog.


5. A sitemap - Google should add a sitemap to all Blogger blogs. This would help in better SEO of blogger blogs. This should not be difficult considering that sitemap is a concept of Google itself.
   


6. Post excerpts on home page - Yeah, nobody wants to clutter their homepage with long posts. A better option would be to provide a facility to put a few paragraphs of the post on the home page and then put a "Read More" link which would lead to the full post page.