Social Networking Google Plus 8 Quick Tips and Tricks

 Google Plus (aka Google+), Google's new social network, might offer the right mix of sharing and privacy to woo you away from your Facebook account. If you don't know how to use it, though, it's just a confusing mess of circles and contacts. So we've assembled a few tips to help you get started.

Tweak your email notification options. By default, Google Plus will spam your Gmail account with notifications for practically anything involving your new account. You can go to the Google Account options to uncheck all of the ones you don't want to get, thereby reducing your Gmail traffic considerably.


Change your profile's field-sharing settings. Your Google Account has certain basic fields that it can share with anyone -- but you don't have to go along with maximum sharing. Open your Google Account Profile and privacy settings, click Edit visibility on profile, and then click the individual profile fields and determine how public you want to make them.

Disable resharing. Google Plus may make it easy for you to segregate who you share your information with, but your connections have no such limitations, meaning that something you share with a select few can still spread like wildfire across your networks. Nevertheless, you can disable resharing of a certain post after
 posting it: Just click the arrow in the upper-right-hand corner of the post and then click Disable resharing.

Check your Incoming feed. Unlike Facebook, Google Plus lets people share things with you even if you're not following them. Thus, you'll want to check your Incoming feed now and then to see whether you're missing out on anything interesting from someone you don't follow. Think of it as a spam folder that occasionally contains something interesting.

Use the Your Circles option while sharing. Google Plus's Circles system is great for letting you use your Plus account to set barriers between the various groups of people you want to share things with. If most of what you share on Google Plus isn't especially privacy-sensitive, however, use the Your Circles sharing option to automatically share items with all of your circles and avoid the trouble of clicking each individual circle.

Start some Sparks. In addition to following people, you can search for interesting stuff to share about particular topics in the Sparks section on the side menu of the main page. Click Sparks, and search for things that you're interested in or browse through the featured topics; if you want to pin a search on your sidebar for easy future access, click the Add Interest button under the search field.

Click through profile pictures. You can easily cycle through other people's profile pics by clicking on them.

Add some basic formatting. As with Google Talk and Google Buzz, you can add basic text styles to some of your Google Plus text. Paired asterisks (*text*) make bold text, paired underscores (_text_) make italics, and paired hyphens (-text-) make strikethroughs.

Top 10 Inventors Killed By Their Inventions

10.Henry Winstanley

 

Henry Winstanley was the a famous English lighthouse architect and engineer who constructed the first Eddystone lighthouse. Winstanley wished to test the lighthouse’s strength and so demanded to be inside it during a storm. The lighthouse collapsed, killing Winstanley and five other people.

 

9.Alexander Bogdanov

 

Alexander Bogdanov was a noted Russian physician, philosopher, economist, science fiction writer, and revolutionary. One of his many scientific experiments involved ideas of possible rejuvenation through blood transfusion. Having given blood transfusions to many notable people, including Lenin’s sister, Bogdanov decided to give himself a transfusion of blood from one of his patients who suffered from malaria and tuberculosis. He died from the infections shortly after.

 

8.Cowper Phipps Coles

 

Cowper Phipps Coles was a distinguished Royal Navy Captain who invented a rotating turret for ships during the Crimean War. After the war, Coles patented his invention and set about building his own ship using this revolutionary design, having seen it adapted for other Royal Navy ships. His ship, the HMS Captain, required several unusual and dangerous modifications however, including a so called “hurricane deck” which raised the ship’s centre of gravity. On the 6th September 1870, the HMS Captain capsized, killing Coles and most of its 500 person crew.

 

7.Karel Soucek

 

Karel Soucek was a Canadian stuntman famous for inventing a “capsule” (really just a modified barrel) and riding down the Niagara Falls in it. He survived, although suffered some injuries. In 1985, he convinced a company to finance a barrel drop from the top of the Houston Astrodome in Texas. A special waterfall was created from the top of the 180 ft structure, with a plunge pit at the bottom. However, the stunt went wrong, and Soucek hit the rim of the pool instead of the centre, causing the capsule to splinter and severely injure him. He died the next day. Evel Knievel called it the most dangerous stunt he had ever seen. His capsule is on display at the New York State Museum.

 

6.Franz Reichelt

 

Franz Reichelt was an Austrian tailor who was famous for creating a strange overcoat/parachute hybrid that he claimed could sail its wearer gently to the ground or even to fly. He conducted his experiment from the first deck of the Eiffel Tower, and in front of a group of spectators and a camera crew, proceeded to fall straight down. He died immediately from the impact.

5.Otto Lilienthal

 

Otto Lilienthal was a pioneer of human aviation who became known as the Glider King. He was the first person to make repeated successful gliding flights. Newspapers and magazines in many countries published photographs of Lilienthal gliding, favorably influencing public and scientific opinion about the possibility of flying machines becoming practical reality after ages of idle fantasy and unscientific tinkering. On a flight on the 9th August 1896, Lilienthal fell 17 meters, breaking his spine. He died the next day. His final words were, “Small sacrifices must be made!”

 

4.William Bullock

 

William Bullock was an American inventor whose 1863 invention of the rotary printing press helped revolutionize the printing industry due to its great speed and efficiency. Bullock died while trying to repair one of his printing presses, by getting his foot crushed under one of the machines while trying to kick a pulley into place. His foot later became gangrenous, and Bullock died during an operation to amputate his foot.

 

3.J. G. Parry-Thomas

 

John Godfrey Parry-Thomas was a Welsh motor-racing driver and engineer. He had always dreamed of breaking the land speed record set by Malcolm Campbell, and set about creating a car to do it. He developed a car, named Babs, which had many modifications, such as an exposed chains connecting the wheels to the engines. On the 27th of April 1926, Parry-Thomas broke the existing record, before raising it to above 170 mph the next day. The record stood for a year, before Malcolm Campbell broke it in 1927. On trying to reclaim his record, one of the chains snapped and flew into his neck, partially decapitating him. He died instantly.

 

2.Thomas Midgley Jr

 

Thomas Midgley was an American chemist who invented both leaded petrol and CFCs. Though lauded during his time, he has come to be known as having “had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth history” and “the one human responsible for more deaths than any other in history” due to his inventions. He eventually contracted Polio and lead poisoning and was left disabled in his bed. This caused him to create an elaborate system of pulleys and ropes in order to lift himself from bed. He died at the age of 55 after being strangled by one of his pulleys and is notable for the fact that both his inventions, leaded petrol and his pulley operated bed, contributed to his death.

 

1.Marie Curie

 

Marie Curie was a French-Polish physicist and chemist who is famous for discovering a host of new elements, including radium and polonium, as well as the theory of radioactivity and the isolation of radioactive isotopes. She was the joint winner of the Nobel Prize in 1903 (along with her husband Pierre). She died on July 4, 1934, from aplastic anaemia, almost certainly contracted from exposure to radiation. The damaging effects of ionizing radiation were then not yet known, and much of her work had been carried out in a shed without any safety measures. She had carried test tubes containing radioactive isotopes in her pocket and stored them in her desk drawer, remarking on the pretty blue-green light that the substances gave off in the dark.

Top 10 Untranslatable Words

10.Toska

 

Language: Russian

Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases, it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

 

9.Litost

 

Language: Czech

Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, remarked that “As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.” The closest definition is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.

 

8.Prozvonit

 

Language: Czech

This word means to call a mobile phone and let it ring once, so that the other person will call back, saving the first caller money. In Spanish, the phrase for this is “Dar un toque,” or, “To give a touch.” Intriguingly, this word can be translated into languages other than English.

 

7.Torschlusspanik

 

Language: German

Translated literally, this word means “gate-closing panic,” but its contextual meaning refers to “the fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages.” This partly explains why so many older people wish to ‘recapture their youth’ – in order to try re-establish their, perhaps, passed opportunities.

 

6.Wabi-Sabi

 

Language: Japanese

Much has been written on this Japanese concept, but in a sentence, one might be able to understand it as “a way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay.”

5.L’appel du vide

 

Language: French

“The call of the void” is this French expression’s literal translation, but more significantly it’s used to describe the instinctive urge to jump from high places.

 

4.Ya’aburnee

 

Language: Arabic

Both morbid and beautiful at once, this incantatory word means “You bury me,” a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person, because of how difficult it would be to live without them.

 

3.Duende

 

Language: Spanish

While originally used to describe a mythical, sprite like entity that possesses humans and creates the feeling of awe of one’s surroundings in nature, its meaning has transitioned into referring to “the mysterious power that a work of art has to deeply move a person.”

 

2.Saudade

 

Language: Portuguese

One of the most beautiful of all words, translatable or not, this word “refers to the feeling of longing for something or someone that you love, and which is lost.” Fado music, a type of mournful singing, relates to saudade.

 

 

1.Mamihlapinatapai

 

Language: Yagan (indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago off the coast of South America)
“The wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start.” This explains so much for my failures with women.

Top 10 Differences Between the North and South Poles

10.Metamorphoses

 

The arctic area is located in the North Pole region and has a natural melting cycle during which almost half of the ice shelf melts away in summer, only to freeze again in winter and come back to its original size. During winter, the arctic ice shelf has a surface almost equal to that of the US. However, an unsettling study has recently revealed that the 3.5 km thick ice shelf from Greenland is melting away so fast that half of it could disappear by the end of the century. Other studies suggest that the whole Arctic region could become iceless during summer, in less than a century.
On the other hand, the Antarctic region, or the South Pole, does not show the same regular melting cycle because its ice shelf has almost the same size and shape throughout the twelve months. Recent studies have also shown that the Antarctic region is melting away as well, not because of natural processes, but because of the global warming effects. Should all the ice from the South Pole melt in one day (which won’t happen in the near future), the seas and oceans would rise by 60 meters, specialists say. Interestingly enough, the Arctic region melts faster because it is submerged and the ocean currents accelerate the process, whereas the Antarctic region is made of stony bedrock which is less, or not at all, influenced by such phenomena.

 

9.Hole in the Ozone Layer

 

There is a hole in the ozone layer just above the Antarctic region which, now, is almost three times bigger than the US continental surface. The ozone layer above the Arctic region is getting thinner and thinner, as well, and there is no hole in the North Pole’s ozone layer just yet. Of course, a hole in the ozone layer does not mean that a physical breach actually exists there. The term is used to describe the phenomenon by which the chemical substance, the ozone, which wraps the Earth and protects it against solar radiation, has been severely damaged, and in some places, is even gone.
The ozone losses from the northern hemisphere are lower compared to those from the southern hemisphere because the higher Arctic temperatures prevent the forming of the polar stratospheric clouds which destroy the ozone. Nevertheless, the temperatures from the North Pole’s stratosphere have gradually dropped in recent years, leading to significant losses in the ozone layer.

 

8.Cold and Freezing Cold

 

The South Pole is much cooler than the North Pole. Actually the Antarctic temperatures are so low that snow never melts in some parts of this continent. The average yearlong temperature of this region is -49˚ Celsius, which makes it the coldest place on Earth. In contrast, the average winter temperature in the Arctic region is -34˚ Celsius, and goes up by a few degrees during summer.
The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth was -89.6 ˚Celsius and was reported at the Vostok Base, near the geomagnetic South Pole. The Arctic region is an ice shelf and this is what makes it more vulnerable to climate changes.

 

7.Polar Bears and Penguins

 

Most people think that polar bears and penguins share the same habitat. However, this is a false idea rooted in commercials and post cards. Penguins actually live in the southern hemisphere only, this means in the Antarctic region, where they have no natural continental predators. If penguins and polar bears lived in the same region, then polar bears wouldn’t have to worry about their food source.
But they don’t, therefore penguins have evolved into flightless birds and adapted their wings into flippers, which come in very handy when performing various nautical maneuvers. On the other hand, polar bears are the largest land predators and an endemic species of the northern hemisphere. They rule over the icy northern area of the Arctic Ocean and feed on seals, sea cows and sometimes even on stranded whales.

 

6.Black Gold

 

Almost half of the world’s remaining oil deposits lie under the ice from the northern part of the Arctic Circle, according to estimates published by the US Geological Survey. For this reason, Russia is already claiming a monopoly over a large part of the Arctic region, thus hoping to exploit the deposits from the Lomonosov ridge, an aquatic protuberance from under the Arctic Ocean. It stretches over more than 1,800 km and allegedly hosts up to 10 billion tons of crude oil.
The US is also claiming its part, and is sending ice breakers to mark the US territory near Alaska. It is thought that oil deposits exist under the continental crust of the Antarctic region as well, such as the Ross Sea, but the Treaty of the Antarctic strictly forbids any oil exploitation activities in the region, for the time being.

5.No Man’s Land

 

Despite symbolic images featuring daring explorers triumphantly digging flags in the ice of the South Pole, the Antarctic continent is the only place on Earth that belongs to nobody. No traces of indigenous people have been discovered yet, and the region is governed by the Treaty of the Antarctic, which stipulates that the territory itself, and its resources, should be used solely for peaceful and scientific purposes.
In contrast, more than four million people live inside the Arctic circle, both in small villages and in towns, such as: Barrow, Alaska; Tromso, Norway; Murmansk and Salekhard, Russia. People rarely set foot on the Antarctic territory and they do so only on research and scientific grounds.

 

4.Ice, Ice Everywhere

 

The southernmost continent of the planet hosts 90% of all the ice on Earth, which makes up for 3/4 of the global freshwater reserves. Due to this fact, some have even considered the idea of cutting large chunks of ice and using them for quenching the thirst of arid areas. In fact, Prince Mohammed-al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia even planned to dislodge a 100 million ton iceberg from the Antarctic region, and take it to the Arabic Peninsula. In comparison, the North Pole has far less ice then the South Pole.

 

3.Continent vs. Ocean

 

The Arctic region is basically a frozen ocean. In contrast, Antarctica is a continent in itself, based on bedrock and various landforms, such as mountains, valleys and lakes, all surrounded by the ocean. In fact, Antarctica is home to the famous active volcano Mount Erebus (pictured above).
Ironically enough, from a social and political standpoint, the Arctic region, which is made up of ice only, is the place where the interests of many countries converge: Canada, Greenland (part of Denmark), Russia, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the United States. As stated before, the South Pole belongs to no country, and it has never been colonized nor populated by Eskimos.

 

2.Polar Vortex

 

An interesting phenomenon occurs near the geographic poles of the Earth, namely the polar vortex, which is a massive cyclone forming near the vertical edges of the planet. Polar vortexes are located in the middle and upper parts of the troposphere and the stratosphere.
They surround the polar areas and are part of the so-called “polar front” – the climate boundary between the polar area air masses and the neighboring warmer areas from both hemispheres. The Antarctic polar vortex is stronger and lasts longer than the Arctic one. This is due to the large land regions concentrated in the high latitude areas of the northern hemisphere, which create the Rossby atmospheric waves, thus diminishing the intensity of the vortex. In contrast, there are not too many factors able to influence the vortex from the South Pole.

 

1.Magnetic Field and Mineral Deposits

 

Since the Antarctic is a landmass, a lot of minerals can be found in the bedrock: nickel, gold, silver, platinum, iron. Obviously, there are no such minerals in the Arctic ice.
Speaking of the magnetic poles of the Earth, one is near the north and the other near the south. When we talk about the magnetic north pole, we refer to the geographic area with the same name, although the north pole of the Earth’s magnetic field is actually in the south, and the south pole of the magnetic field is located in the north. For this reason, compasses do not show the magnetic north, but the geographic north of the planet. However, it has been established by convention that the magnetic north is near the geographic north and the magnetic south is near the geographic south.
The planet’s magnetic poles do not coincide with its geographic poles because the magnetic field of the Earth is changing. Unlike the geographic poles, the magnetic ones actually move, and this could be considered a common feature of the two poles. The difference is that the magnetic north pole (the south of the magnetic field) is no longer located right in the Arctic region but is moving towards the East at a rate of 55-60 km every year. The magnetic south pole (the north of the magnetic field) still overlaps Antarctica, but is also moving westwards at a rate of 10-15 km per year.

Top 10 Largest Impact Structures on Earth

10.Kara Crater

Kara is a large impact crater found in the Yugorsky Peninsula, Russia. It is estimated to be about 65km (40.3mi) in diameter and over 70 million years old. The crater is originally believed to have been over 120km (74.5mi) in diameter, but much of it has eroded away and the rest has been covered with millions of years’ worth of sedimentary layers, leaving no evidence of its existence on the surface.

9.Morokweng crater

Morokweng crater, or Morkweng impact structure, is a large meteor impact crater found buried beneath the Kalahari Desert, near the town of Morokweng in South Africa. The crater is said to have been formed by a 3km (1.8mi) diameter asteroid, and caused a crater at least 70km (43.8mi) in diameter. In 2006, a group of scientists drilling into the site discovered a 25cm (9.8in) diameter fragment of the original asteroid, at a depth of about 770m (842yards) below the surface. Several smaller pieces were also discovered on the vicinity. This discovery was very unusual, as drilling on large impact structures had never produced such fragments, and it had previously been believed that all large asteroids vaporized almost entirely on impact.

8.Puchezh-Katunki

Puchezh-Katunki is a meteor crater in the Chkalousky District, in Russia. The crater is 80km (49.7mi) in diameter and is an estimated 167 million years old, placing it in the Jurassic era. The crater does not lie exposed at the surface but appears as variations in vegetation and terrain. This crater is one of the only craters of the time frame, which is not associated with extinction.

7.Acraman crater

Acraman crater is a deeply eroded impact crater in the south of Australia. Its location is marked by Lake Acraman, which is a perfectly round lake which formed at the impact site. The crater is estimated 90km (55.9mi) in diameter and is estimated to have occurred about 580 million years ago. The large size estimate would imply an energy release on par with 5.2 x 106 megatons of TNT. Evidence of a huge collision can be found as far as 300km (186.4mi) east of the crater.

6.Chesapeake bay impact crater

Chesapeake Bay impact crater was formed by a bolide (crater forming projectile) that hit the eastern shore of North America about 85 million years ago. It forms one of the best preserved “wet” craters, and is the largest crater in the United States, and comes to about 90km (55.9mi) in diameter. The build-up of sediments over the rubble of the crater has formed Chesapeake bay as it is known today. The initial impact caused great devastation, as within seconds of the impact, millions of liters of water, sediment and broken rock was sent miles into the atmosphere. On the descent it created a tsunami that was so large and powerful that it possibly covered the Blue Ridge Mountain range.

5.Popigai Crater

Popigai crater in Siberia, Russia, comes in tied with Manicouagan crater, as the 4th largest verified impact crater on earth, and it is just about 100km (62mi) in diameter. The bolide impact happened over 35 million years ago. Geologists were fascinated by the Popigai crater for decades before any investigatory expeditions where under taken, as the entire area was off limits due to diamond mining in the area. Finally, in 1997, investigations were under way. The bolide was identified as either an 8km (5mi) diameter chondrite asteroid, or a 5km (3.1mi) diameter stony asteroid. It was discovered that the shock pressure from the initial impact instantaneously turned graphite all along the ground, within a 13.6km (8.4mi) diameter of the impact site, into diamonds.

4.Manicouagan Crater

Manicouagan Crater is one of the oldest impact craters on earth, and is situated in the Cote-Nord region in Quebec, Canada. It is estimated to have been created over 215 million years ago, by a 5km (3.1mi) diameter asteroid. The crater is a 100km (60mi) diameter, multi ringed structure, with the most prominent feature being a circular lake, about 70km (43.4mi) in diameter. This crater also forms the largest in an array of craters believed to be a multiple impact event.

3.Chicxulub Crater

Chicxulub Crater is a huge ancient crater, buried underneath Yucatan Peninsula, in Mexico. The crater is more than 180km (110mi) in diameter, making it the 3rd largest confirmed impact structure on earth. The impacting bolide that formed the crater had to have been at least 10km (6mi) in diameter. The age of the rocks show that the impact structure is roughly 65 million years old, and falls right at the end of the cretaceous period. After almost 20 years of research, on all fields, scientists have concluded that the impact at Chicxulub triggered the mass extinction at the K-T boundary, including those of the dinosaurs between the cretaceous and tertiary periods.

2.Sudbury Basin

Sudbury basin, or Sudbury structure, is a huge impact structure in Ontario, Canada. It is the second largest confirmed impact crater, as well as one of the oldest.
The original crater is believed to have been a lot larger than the current 200km (120mi) diameter crater that is there today. They believe that the bolide that created the crater was over 10km (6.2mi) in diameter, and struck the earth 1.849 billion years ago. The impact was so intense that it scattered debris over a 1,600,000km2 area around the point of impact. Rock fragments from the impact have been found in Minnesota, over 800km (497mi) away.

1.Vredefort dome

Vredefort crater, or dome, is the largest verified impact crater on earth, and can be found around the town of Vredefort in the Free State Province of South Africa. The asteroid that hit Vredefort is estimated to be the largest to hit earth in the last 4 billion years, and was over 15km (9.3mi) in diameter. The resulting crater is just over 300km (186.4mi) in diameter, and its huge size has earned it a title as a world heritage site. It was originally thought that the dome was caused by volcanic eruptions, but in 1990 it was declared that a huge bolide caused the impact structure, as tell-tale shatter cones could be found for miles around. The crater is currently under threat due to the possibility of mineral deposits around the edges, which could result in huge mining industries, destroying a part of this marvel.

Bloglines: RSS Feed Reader With Options

Catching up on your blogs, news, and sites is no simple matter – unless you have a RSS reader, that is. RSS feed readers combine all the stories you care about into one place and some, like Bloglines, help you find new feeds as well.
Bloglines is a RSS feed reader that breaks the feed managing task into tabs (feeds, blog, clippings, playlists, forums, search) but to get a grasp of what it can do, let’s begin with feeds. Under the Feeds tab two panels open up – the left to show you what your feeds are, and the right for the feed content. As we see items we are interested in we can clip them (save them for later), blog them, or click on the headline to open up the original story. Links for sorting, collapsing the feed to only titles, subscribing, and keeping the items new (so you will see it next time you open up the reader) are on the top of the panel.



Navigationally, Bloglines has divided everything into the tabs and links, but throws in hotkeys to speed your reading of the feeds. To offer another way to read the feeds Bloglines has made Playlists, a way to create custom lists of only the most important of your feeds, listing the headlines in list or glimpse view (grouped by feed in a headline list). For users that are looking to streamline their reading, but don’t want to lose their favorites, Playlists are a way of having a quick list and a full feed (Feeds). Heavy users may also want to be notified of new items in their feeds, for which there is a downloadable notifier (Mac, web, PC) that lets you know.



One of the interesting features of Bloglines is the ability to create a blog – either a private or public one – with clippings of the news items you think are important. If you like to share what you find with others this is an easy way to do so. Rather than clipping urls to stories and emailing them, just direct people to your blog url (bloglines.com/blog/username), or they can use your blog’s url to be up to date with everything you would like to share. You can also write your own posts or annotate the clips you’ve decided to post. To allow users to post to the blog remotely Bloglines also has added an email subscription feature that creates a temporary email to post on the blog. Anytime you want to post something on your blog, you email that address, and it is posted.



Most users will find the blog a useful alternative to Clippings, where users “clip” and save stories for later viewing. Bloglines also offers Clippings, as well as an easy link for emailing a feed item, but the ready accessibility of the public blog (and its annotations) make it a useful feature not only for sharing, but archiving.
To find new feeds Bloglines offers a search field (under the Search tab), where users can search by keywords for posts, feeds, citations, and the web, even creating a separate feed for the search. If you wanted to keep tabs on a specialized occupation, ostrich handling for example, creating a feed for the post search of ostrich handler would give you an up-to-the-minute tab on any instance of ostrich handling on the web. Users with preexisting feed accounts can easily import (or export) their feeds through a link under the Feeds tab.
Suggestions come in the form of a “related feeds” link in the reading pane and additional features on the navigation panel (Feeds, left side). The link for “Top 1000″ brings you the most popular feeds, the “Image Wall” brings you an ever changing post of pictures from the blogosphere, and the “Recommendations” link.
Bloglines’ flaw exists in the brevity of the capture from the RSS, which is not always the fault of Bloglines, but to counter the sometimes cryptic synopsis users are forced to click to the original source more often. That said, Bloglines is a capable reader which has a range of options for personal or group use. Users who find feeds as they browse the web will like the bookmarklet that can be put in the browser toolbar for quick feed adds, and site owners may like the Bloglines button to include their site in someone’s feed, or the blogroll script from Bloglines that lets users share their feeds. To find Bloglines, or other readers like it there is the Listio search: RSS+manage.

Wazala, a simple and beautiful store front for your website or blog

In today's economy you need to make getting paid as easy and straightforward as possible. You may be one of the ever-increasing amount of self-employed people with a product, craft, or digital goods to sell. The ability to easily sell your work without a lot of upfront costs or effort is the essential key to success for making money on the net. Personal branding encourages everyone to have their own websites, but many people don't know how to add a shopping cart, or how to choose one of the other more complicated ecommerce services, plus they don't want to pay a pricey web designer. Wazala makes adding a shopping cart to your existing blog or website simple, easy, and affordable for even the least internet-savvy entrepreneur.



Wazala's ecommerce software allows any website or blog to have an online storefront and shopping cart in 15 minutes. That's right...in the time it takes to watch half of Entourage, you can set up your products and add the widget to your website! You also don't have to be an internet genius or a funded company to get it started. You can sell five items for free, or choose from the paid packages of small, medium, and large depending on how many products you have for sale. Instead of selling your handmade jewelry on Etsy and your merchandise on eBay, you can attract visitors to your own website and keep them there. Not sending your loyal followers somewhere else just to buy from you helps you build your brand.



The store widget is smoothly integrated into your website. By default, Wazala displays a small red tab in the upper-right of your site that when clicked opens up a separate window on top of your content. This way you don't have to create a new page for your shopping cart, and the design of your website remains untouched. They don't try to brand your website with their name - only the word 'Store' is on the button. The design of Wazala is simple and elegant so it does not clash with any design tastes.



Wazala is intelligent. You can "favorite" items and add items to a cart. It saves the cart and favorites so customers can take their time shopping and come back later if they need to. You can add descriptions and multiple pictures to each item you sell so customers always know exactly what they are purchasing. It nicely attaches to your PayPal account, Google Checkout and Authorize.net which are known, trusted, services. Being able to shop within your own website and make secure purchases makes your business professional and efficient.



If you do not have a website or a blog to host your own store on, Wazala will create a store for you with yourownname.wazala.com. One very cool feature is the ability to choose a unique background picture from Flickr's creative commons. Just browse the images and select a theme that matches your store's personality.



The shopping cart software can host products, services, and digital downloads. With its versatility, it is great product for the photographer selling her own stock images, the crafter looking to sell his items, the collector wanting to sell antiques, the company selling their products, the painter wanting to sell his paintings, and so on. It is an affordable solution to a do-it-yourself approach to sales, for only a small amount of money (or free), and 15 minutes of work gives your business the potential to make a profit. Start your own website, quickly add the Wazala store widget, and start making money.