RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. This is a renowned web technology and gaining popularity day by day. If you are a busy person who is highly involved with the internet and rely on the internet heavily, RSS will save your valuable time. If you access certain websites like news sites, blogs, weather sites daily to find the updates, instead of accessing them directly you can use their RSS feeds(if available) and read them all in a single RSS reader. Then all you have to do is opening the RSS reader and read the updates. By doing this, you can also read only the updates that you want and ignore others. Many websites provide RSS service today as they have understood the importance of having such a service.

I have listed the 5 most popular free RSS readers below where you can download them from download.com.

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KlipFolio

Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista

Developers’ intro:

KlipFolio is the world’s smallest and most configurable personal dashboard. It can be used to monitor anything online, such as weather, stocks, Hotmail, news, RSS feeds and even auctions, right on the desktop. With KlipFolio, you don’t have to give up your desktop to stay on top of what matters to you. And with over 4000 Klips available for download—all small, resizable, customizable and skinnable—you’re sure to find exactly what you need to stay ahead of, well, everyone.

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RSS Bandit

Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server, Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1

Developers’ intro:

RSS Bandit is an RSS and Atom reader written with the .NET Framework. Features include the ability to view news items in customizable newspaper views, the ability to synchronize the read and unread state of the application across multiple computers, the ability to expire items so they get deleted after a certain amount of days, fine grained control of how often items are downloaded, support for password protected feeds, reduced bandwidth consumption by using HTTP conditional GETs and GZIP encoding, search folders, viewing comments directly in the reader without going to the site, posting comments from the reader, integrated Web search, tabbed browsing, and security settings for disabling unsafe browser features like ActiveX.

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Snarfer

Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server/Vista

Developers’ intro:

Snarfer is an easy, fast and free approach to enjoying RSS, ATOM, and XML feeds. Snarfer comes with hundreds of feeds to choose from, includes a tabbed browser and has wizards to help you construct complex searches for EBay and Craigslist that update as new results become available. Snarfer can synchronize with the free Bloglines service so you can access your feeds from another location (like the office or an Internet cafe) with a browser.

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YeahReader

Requirements: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista

Developers’ intro:

YeahReader is a program for reading news feeds in RSS, RDF and Atom formats, and podcasts. The program provides all basic RSS reader functionality such as a convenient feed update system, proxy support, and pop-up update notification. Besides this, YeahReader has such features as built-in blog client that will allow you to quickly write messages to your LiveJournal, Blogger, WordPress or Delicious blog, OPML and support. Version 2.22.235 includes unspecified updates.

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Mighty Ticker

Requirements: Windows 98/Me/NT/XP/2003 Server/Vista

Developers’ intro:

Mighty Ticker is an RSS ticker. The clean and elegant desktop news ticker enables online, personalized RSS news feeds from Web sites selected and controlled by the user. Information from your news sources is discreetly scrolled on your PC desktop while you work or play. For those of us who need streamlined news feeds, Mighty Ticker is the answer. Mighty Ticker captures and displays streamlined data at the speed of the Net. Why is this beneficial? Because the tool carves out just the information you want from a mountain of data availed by the Internet. Forget about specialized programming, additional fees, and trying to kluge something together, Mighty Ticker does it for you.

Make sure that you download one of these which suits your computer system and requirements.

If you are not familiar with Google AdSense, Please read my post on “Googe AdSense Basics” before continuing further with this post.

I’m going to let you know about the way I got approved for Google AdSense. This is a proven method and I didn’t have any trouble yet. I’m not quite sure whether Google will make actions to change their approval policy after finding this method. But still it is OK with them.

If you are going through the standard way, first you have to build a quality website according to AdSense guidelines. And then you have to host it with a web hosting service provider. If you know web designing, then you can reduce the cost for both of these. But otherwise you will have to spend at least few hundreds of Dollars. And there is a possibility that Google will reject your application for AdSense, if you haven’t followed the guidelines. The method that I’m going to describe here won’t make you any of above mentioned troubles.

If you are familiar with blogs and blogging you know about blogger.com which is a blogging service provided by Google. If you don’t have a blogger.com account, it is free to sign up for an account. For this you will need an email address of Gmail. You will need it for applying for AdSense also. Therefore if you don’t have these or one of this membership (blogger.com and Gmail), first get the both memberships. When you register with blogger.com you can create your own blog with modifications. Then publish your blog. Then go to the administrative panel of your blog and click “Template>Page Template”. Then click the “Add a Page Element” link and a pop up window will appear as below.

You will find “AdSense” element there. When you click “ADD TO BLOG” button in that element, you will be directed to the AdSense registration page. Fill all the required fields in the application form correctly and submit it. Hurray! You are done. Google will approve your application within 2-3 days. You don’t have to worry about the possibility of rejection of your application as blogger.com is a one of their services. Once your approval confirmed through email(Gmail address you registered with), you are free to put your AdSense code in any website that you like.

I hope that you gained something after reading this post. I wish you all the best with your internet business.

Image courtesy : http://blogs.sun.com

Open source software (UNIX and its plugins, other software) and web applications (Servers, forum applications, email applications, programming languages, etc.) have attracted the people all around the world. And they are gradually becoming the dominant in many areas. This is due to many important characters common to these open source software. I will describe some of them in this post.

The most significant attribute of any open source software or web application is the complete availability of the source code. This enables the developers to customize or improve these software and applications according to their requirements. Most of these are available for free download and usage. And they have a huge user and developer community around the world. Many of them contribute to the improvements of the software or web application. If anyone gets stuck with open source software or a web application, he/she can get help from the user and developer community. This is very important and economical compared to the high priced software and their vendors.

Open source software and web applications are always more reliable compared to others. When there are any bugs (errors) anyone can report to the main developer or company and they will fix it in the next release version.

As most of them are freely available and reliable, more than 50% of the computer users around the world use at least small open source software or a web application. But when it comes to web applications, open source web applications are dominating. For an example, if you take web hosting, Apache Tomcat server is dominating as a reliable and less complex server. And most of these tomcat servers run on UNIX based systems which are also open source. Due to this most of the web hosting services charge less for web hosting plans hosted in UNIX servers compared to Windows servers.

In my personal view, I think that the open source software will make the world happier and a safer place to live in the coming future. They will definitely win the competition with high priced software and web applications and more and more people will embrace the open source software and web applications saying BYE to the highly priced ones.

Many individuals and small companies try to find freelancers for their projects. This is mainly due to the reduced cost. But truly speaking it is little risky compared to general way of handing over projects (handing over projects to professional companies). I thought to discuss some important points which will definitely reduce the above mentioned risk.

When you select a freelancer there are certain things to consider before handing over your project. You can find freelancers through bidding websites or by other ways. First thing you must find out is the freelancer’s experience. And you must also check his previous work related to your project scope. Many freelancing websites provide these details. And you must do a small research on the past activities of the freelancer and his records. This will reduce the risk of abandoning your project by the freelancer without completion. You can reduce this by finding a freelancer from a reputed freelancing site like www.rentacoder.com which will save you legally.

Always don’t go for the lowest bid if you are finding a freelancer from a website. Sometimes the lowest bidder might not do your work well. You must check his/her profile and track records more than the amount of the bid. When you publish the bid request, publish your full requirement. Always let the freelancer to communicate with you to clarify his/her doubts. If you do changes when the project is underway, the freelance may reject your changes and sometimes he/she will stop it continuing further. And make your payments on time.

After handing over the project and the freelancer started his work it is a good practice to request weekly or daily reports on the progress of the project. By doing this you can track the progress of your project and check the freelancer’s ability. Then you can predict about the completion time of your project. Always remember to give time as much as possible for the completion of the project. Otherwise you might lose the quality of the completed project.

These are the main important factors that you must consider when handing over your project to a freelancer. I will add more posts if I find more. I Wish you good luck on your project!

Freelancing has become the main source of income for many people around the world. It has become popular as it gives a big freedom for the freelancer. A freelancer doesn’t need to work under someone else and the boss is himself/herself. He/she decides what to do and when to do. But there are certain things that you must be aware of if you are planning to become a freelancer. I will explain one by one which I feel that you must be aware of before stepping into the freelancing field.

The most important thing is that you must have a sound knowledge on the subject that you are planning to get freelancing jobs. For an example, if you plan to become a freelancer in software development, you must have a thorough knowledge in one or more programming languages and other related technologies. Otherwise there is a great chance that you will lose the project and your membership on the freelancing site and your reputation. And definitely you will lose your career as soon as you start. Therefore you must gain a sound knowledge in the relevant area before you step into freelancing even how much you are impatient.

Let’s assume that you have gained a sound knowledge on the area that you plan to become a freelancer and you are ready to start your career as a freelancer. Next thing you must do is identifying your scope. It means, you must have a good understanding on your strengths and weaknesses. You must try to overcome your weaknesses if possible. And you must also have a good skill of time management as it will definitely play a major role in your freelancing career. If you are not confident about time management, you must do a research in the internet and learn the basics.

Now you are ready to start your career. The next thing you must do is, finding a freelancing offer. The easiest and efficient way is finding a website which provides freelance offers. You will find many if you do a Google search. Some of them ask you to pay for your membership. Some provide free registration. You can choose any option. But before registering, you must read their payment policies and other related legal conditions. You have to make sure that you are properly paid without any cheating, safely. Most websites charge a percentage of your bid on the project as a commission. You have to agree with it as it is very hard to find good projects by your own. www.rentacoder.com is a good website according to my personal view. But you might not find projects which suits your area of expertise. There are many websites that you can go.

You have become a member of a freelancing website now and ready to bid on projects. First thing you must do is, read the project description and understand its requirements and decide whether you can complete it 100%. If you are not clear on something, contact the project owner and clarify your doubts and problems before bidding. Many websites provide message facilities between the freelancer and the job owner. Use it. If you are confident that you can bet on the project, then don’t go for a higher bet at the first time. You must build a good recognition in the community first. Don’t care much about your income from the first few projects. The most important thing is winning a bid. And keep in mind to use a professional way of communication with the project owner. And always, always deliver the 100% completed project on time or before the dead line. This will increase your recognition.

If you follow these guidelines, you will definitely start your freelancing career with a good start. Always keep in mind that you must be honest with your projects. Otherwise you won’t be able to continue with your freelancing career for a long time. Wish you good luck in your freelancing career.