Go-Wave: A Blog dedicated to Google Wave

Hello to readers of Tech Bangalore! I am writing this post to announce another blog from me which is not a Tech Blog, not on Mobile Phones too, not on Hacking & off course not on free GPRS trick . A blog completely dedicated to Google Wave. The idea is to create a single place to get updates/news about Google Wave & to review all interesting Robots & Gadgets. All posts will be nicely categorized & tagged which makes it easy to find robots & gadgets.

Check out the new blog at www.go-wave.net

If you are still wondering what is this Google Wave is about, check this video: A Simple video on Google Wave

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I made this presentation long back to present in a Blogcamp. But due to technical problems, I was unable to present it. So just thought of sharing it here. If you are in blogging from years, you might already know all the points mentioned in it!

Search Engines plays major role in getting traffic to blogs. Getting links from others is really important to make your Blog to list in higher places on search results. The more links you get from others, the more value search engines gives to your blog. But this is really tough to achieve. Easier way is to find good website/blog direcotories & submit your blog. Blog-Watch is one of the popular blog directories online with google PR5. Blog-Watch is created by Arun Vijayan (@mixdev) & maintained by myself & Arun.

Unlike other Blog Directories which simply take submissions, Blog-Watch has social features where others can rate & review your blog. One more really nice feature in Blog-Watch is each blog submission will get it’s own page! Like for Tech Bangalore I got http://www.blog-watch.com/blog1813.html.

Request to Bloggers:

Blog Directories will loose it’s PR if nobody links it. These directories must be community driven to keep & improve the PR of the directory. I request all bloggers to link back from their blogs & improve PR of directory. This is beneficial to all of us.

Link: www.blog-watch.com

Though I started photo blogging long back, not shared it with anyone. www.bangalorepix.com is the photo blog I started long back. Photos posted at Bangalore Pix are live pictures. I posts them from phone itself once I take them. I am using Flickr’s post to blog feature which creates unique email ID to post pictures. Sending pictures to that ID will not only posts it to Flickr, but also specified blog. I am also using twitterfeed to post tweets about the new photo entry to Twitter.

The Big Idea:

The big idea behind this photo blog will come into picture in long run. There are drastic changes happening in Bangalore due to Bangalore Metro & few road widening projects. As I keep posting pictures of different streets, popular places of Bangalore, in few years you can see how the place was looking before & now. And that’s keep continuing! I have taken this as my lifetime project & keep posting till my end! It will be a great experience to look back at old pictures taken years ago.

Right now I am using Nokia E66 to post the pictures, but picture quality is not so good since it has 3.2 MP camera. It will be great if somebody sponsors a good camera phone (Nokia? Sony Erricson? Samsung?)

Getting a hosting for my blog in my initial days where earnings were almost zero was a big challenge for me. I used credit card & payed it in installments! You need not to take that much risk now. Surpass Hosting is offering a good deal for this Valentine’s named “One Love”. Surpass hosting is offering it’s “Power” shared hosting plan for just $1 for the whole year. “Power” actually costs $4-$7 per month depending how many months you are paying in advance. “Power” plan includes 500 GB disc space, unmetered bandwidth, cPanel, 99.9% uptime & hosts upto 10 domains. This plan doesn’t include a domain, that’s too much to expect for 1 dollar! My friend Santosh bought the same offer last year & he is satisfied & refers all his friends to Surpass Hosting. He owns the blog www.harmlessgeek.com which has decent traffic of around 1.5k page views everyday.

This offer will be available from 14th Feb to 16th Feb. This is the right oppurtunity for starters to get a room for their blogs. More details to grab the offer here http://surpasshosting.com/one-love-2009.php

After a long time from it?s announcement, Google started to roll out Friend Connect. Today I got an ivitation from Google to enroll in for Friend Connect. Friend Connect is a service for website/blog owners to engage users. Friend Connect allows user to become member for a website & find if any of their friends are browsing same website. Visitors can use their Google Account to become member of a Friend Connect enabled site. Members can also invite their contacts & recommend a website. You can have a look at Friend Connect present at the top of Tech Bangalore. That’s the member widget which enables users to become member. Friend Connect also offers so many other widgets like Wall Gadget, Review/Rate widget & many more to engage users. These widgets also allows users to see reviews/posts from their contacts. Here is a few screenshots of member widget present on ControlEnter Sidebar.

Time to announce “Best Commentator Award” for the month of September. It’s a easy pick for me, and it is Deepak Jain. I don’t have any specific comment to mention here, because Deepak has commented on many posts & resolved many issues which were asked by TB visitors.

Congratulations Deepak, you will receive an email shortly on how to collect your 2 GB Pen Drive!

How fast this post got loaded? Should be noticable improvement in speed! TB has seen improvements in traffic every month. My previous host was unable to handle this traffic even after implementing caching mechanism. In any shared hosting service there will be limitations on number of simultaneous PHP threads & CPU load. When a site exceeds these limitations it ends with an error message.

Tech Bangalore is now moved Media Temple (mt) which is grid based hosting service. Many of the world top blogs including Tech Chrunch are on Media Temple (mt). So, Tech Bangalore might never go down from now on & also loads faster

Just noticed on my adsense account that USD to INR conversion bug has been fixed

USD to INR conversion rate is displayed as 1:45.780. That’s good news for all adsense publishers

Something went wrong in my adsense account yesterday. Since this is month end, I was checking whether payment got issued or not. And I was shocked & freezed for a while! My adsense account payment details showed conersion rate as 1 USD = 1 INR!! USD 497 after conversion should be somewhere around 22,000 INR, but it was showing INR 497!

Yesterday midnight I published this screenshot on Flickr which grabbed the attension of many, may be Google also. I got a mail from them after a couple of hours like this:

Hello,

We’re writing to let you know that your AdSense account is displaying an
incorrect exchange rate for your most recent AdSense payment issued on
September 23, 2008. While the exchange rate is incorrectly listed as 1:1,
please rest assured that your payment has been issued with the correct
exchange rate. You can expect your check to arrive according to the normal
delivery time, within two to four weeks.

If you normally receive communication from us in a language other than
English, we will provide additional information in your preferred language
next week.

We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043
USA

It looks like it’s getting displayed wrongly in my adsense control panel, but the check which is being sent should be having proper amount. Have to wait till the check comes to clarify.

Update:

While submitting this post to Digg, I found it’s not only me! Many other indian adsense publishers may be facing the same problem. Here is another blogger who is facing the same problem Http://blog.jalwaa.com/?p=97