• The Goal: I started out this blog as my voice in blogosphere but I lacked any goal, I just wanted to talk about stuffs that I learned and used this blog to share that knowledge to everyone. I just kept walking without any knowledge, but soon I realized that I must focus on something, something that I liked, something specific. Just as time passed the importance of some goal became even more important. Here I am not talking about the goal as in The Goal to reach $1000 per month within next 365 days, but I mean to say something bigger than that, the final goal of this blog. The "objective" of this blog. If I want to start this blog all over again that first thing I would do is to set some fixed goal.


• Am I Alone: I know, no one wants to be alone. But I want to be alone. No its not a bad feeling, as a matter of fact everyone wants to be alone in blogosphere.Oh! by alone I mean unique, one of its kind. I started talking about things that I liked but soon I realized that there are many who know more about them and can express them in much better way then me. Repeating them and not giving anything from my side was not the reason I started this blog.

Now that I have spent quite some time blogging I can answer Darren's question: If I had to start my blog again then the first thing I would do is get this the this blog's goal clear - To be THE BEST resource blog for blogspot blogs. There are many blogs which gives tips, templates and lot of things for blogspot blogs, but they are scattered all over the blogosphere. I wish to make this blog One Stop blog for all their needs. I know most of the bloggers reading this use Wordpress, Typepad etc but I want this blog to cater to new bloggers needs. I like programming and I have interest in designs, so I can safely say that I would be able to do justice to my work.
This post is written as part of If I had to Start My Blog Again - Group Writing Project

Tags: blog, bloggers, blogspot, tips, templates, resource site, problogger

There will be a total of 5 winners, each winning: $1,000, a content site with 500 pages, 1 hours consultation with Lee, and more. Total value of all prizes, as given on the site, is over $20,000. You can see the full list along with forum rules at their contest page.

1. www.hinduunity.org
   
2. mypetjawa.mu.nu [American right-wing blog]
   
3. pajamaeditors.blogspot.com [American right-wing blog]
   
4. exposingtheleft.blogspot.com [American right-wing blog]
   
5. thepiratescove.us [American right-wing blog]
   
6. commonfolkcommonsense.blogspot.com [This is isn't even in English!]
   
7. bamapachyderm.com [American right-wing blog]
   
8. princesskimberley.blogspot.com [Long defunct]
   
9. merrimusings.typepad.com [Defunct American right-wing blog, but now at http://www.merrimusings.mu.nu ]
   
10. mackers-world.com [American right-wing blog]
    
11. www.dalistan.org [They actually mean www.dalitstan.org which is currently down]
    
12. www.hinduhumanrights.org/hindufocus.html
    
13. www.nndh.com [Dead URL]
    
14. bloodroyaltriped.com [Dead URL]
    
15. imagesearchyahoo.com [Dead URL, but it wouldn't be a blog!]
    
16. www.imamali8.com [They probably mean imamali.com but somebody mistyped]
    
17. www.rahulyadav.com [Computer geek at IU Bloomington - not a blog at all - banned merely for his links to the BJP, RSS, etc]

On last Wednesday Amitabh Singhal, a spokesperson of the Internet Service Providers Association of India told that this ban would be lifted in next 48 hours. according to this news-

"An advisory is being sent from ISPAI to member ISPs saying they should configure their Domain Name Servers (DNS) in such a way that they block only the sub-domains DoT wants blocked," said Singhal, adding, "It would help if, in future, DoT could also mention the mechanism by which sites should be blocked."

According to the latest developments these ISP might also be penalized. From one press release -

As such the DoT has now directed all the ISPs to strictly comply with the order dated 13th July 2006 and provide unhindered access to Internet except for the websites/webpages which have been specifically mentioned in its orders issued from time to time.

The DoT has further sought explanation from the erring ISPs as to why action be not taken against them for blocking unintended websites/webpages.

Now that 48 hour deadline is about to end all we can do is wait and watch DoT's next step.

Tags: blogger blogs banned, india isp, typepad, geocities

From last couple of days I am not able to see any of blogspot blogs. First I thought that the problem was with blogger(usual updates) so out of curiosity I posted about it in digital point forum, but the fellow members checked and told that it looked all fine to them. Then I thought that the problem might be with my network setting, but that was also not the case, now from another thread I came to know I am not alone and that it seems that the Indian Government might have asked some ISPs in India to ban the blogger.com.

So I decided to do a little checking myself. And surprisingly when I tried to ping the blogs I could not reach the site.

click image to enlarge

next I did a trace route to the blog and as expected the site was unreachable.

click image to enlarge (some details blurred for security reasons)

And blogger.com is not the only site that got banned by ISP but geocities and typepad blogs are also not accessible at the moment.

IF BloggerCollectives groups is to be believed that this banning order came from non-other then President's office. One of the members wrote that:

Today, I received a call from AirTel, and they confirmed that enquiries to their Delhi head office had revealed that they indeed had received instructions to block certain sites. When I asked where the directive to block sites came from, I was told that it came from the President’s Office. The caller did not have any information on the specific sites that were to be blocked.

I wonder what might have caused this action. Some says that the reason behind this is because of the blogs that are bad-mouthing Indian Government, while other believe that its just a temporary issue. Whatever the case many, the fact is that Indian bloggers are stuck at the moment. Lets see how this thing affects Google's adsense. If a blogger is targeting only U.S visitors then it would surely benefit him but on the other hand if all those adsense publishers cannot access their blogs then its possible that Google's earning would also go down.

And all this happened the day before I received my adsense PIN :(

ps: I am posting this with my editor so lets hope that it gets through the ban successfully. (keeping fingers crossed)

Technorati Tags : blogger, banned, blogspot, isp, president, blog, india, indian government

Only time will tell if this PR update is going to stay or not but for now I am a very happy man!

You just have to ask and google would send you $100 check, or at least that's what these publishers are thinking. Many publishers are trying to make some easy money by click frauds. And no, they are not doing this in some hush hush manner but they are inviting everyone to join their i-click-your-ad-you-click-my-ad kind of club. And the most funny thing is that all this is happening right under google's own eyes. Think about it - Most of these publishers start their blog on Google's Blogger.com, then they as put Adsense Ads to make easy money and finally they are using Google's social networking site Orkut.com to get the clicks.

The chain is very simple. All they have to do is visit the blog links given in the most current comment, click some ads, then post their own blogs links for next one to follow. And this chain is not even new. It started on 10th of Jan and on the day of writing this post there were 144 post in total. Here are some snapshots of the page for those who don't have Orkut account.

first page of the thread (click to enlarge)

144 comments at the time of writing this post(click to enlarge)

Technorati Tags : google, adsense, click, fraud, orkut, social, network

Recently I came across one of the post at Google Adsense blog where they talk about some positive feedback from Terri Wild who participated in the beta test of google video ads. According to them "Not only did Wild see a revenue gain from the click-to-play video campaign itself, but switching to the larger Medium Rectangle format resulted in an additional jump in clickthrough rate and a 42% increase in eCPM."

Though not many publishers have seen video ads but still I am interested to see some on this blog. I wonder what kind of "contextual videos" would be suitable for this blog. I believe more media oriented your blog is more likely you would get those ads. Sites on cars, workouts and music seems to score more in adsense video ads.

If you are also interested in having some video ads then make sure you are showing one of these three video format ads:

• 336 x 280 (Large rectangle)
• 300 x 250 (Medium rectangle)
• 250 x 250 (Square)

Technorati Tags : google, adsense, video, ads, format