IT Posts...

Opening statements in the murder trial of George Zimmerman featured sharply different versions of the events that led to the death of teenager Trayvon Martin and offered major stylistic contrasts, with the prosecutor beginning with curses and the defense attorney telling a joke.

Senior Editor and Washington Bureau Chief

Cook is senior editor and Washington bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor and host of the Monitor's newsmaker breakfasts.

Mr. Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of the 17-year-old while serving as a neighborhood watch volunteer in February 2012. Zimmerman called 911 to report a “suspicious person” in the neighborhood and has pleaded not guilty, saying he acted in self-defense.

Prosecutor John Guy's first words to jurors quoted what Zimmerman told a police dispatcher in a call shortly before the fatal confrontation with Mr. Martin. "F------ punks. These a-------. They always get away,” the Associated Press quoted him as saying. A Fox News reporter in the room said “jaws in the jury box dropped” in response to the unusual courtroom language.

In his 34-minute opening statement, prosecutor Guy disputed Zimmerman’s assertion that he acted in self-defense after being attacked by Martin. Zimmerman “didn’t have bruised knuckles, he didn’t have swollen hands. The only injury to his hand that was capable of being photographed was a small abrasion on his left ring finger,” Mr. Guy said, according to a CNN live blog.

The prosecutor argued that Zimmerman was profiling Martin, who is black, as he followed him through the gated community where Zimmerman lived and where Martin was visiting the home of his father’s girlfriend. He said Zimmerman viewed the teen, who was wearing a dark hooded shirt on a rainy night, “as someone about to a commit a crime in his neighborhood."

Zimmerman did not have to shoot Martin, Guy said. “He shot him for the worst of all reasons: because he wanted to," Guy said, according to the AP.

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Blog Feeds are used to deliver blog updates to subscribers. The new Layout Blog Templates contain a big "Subscribe to Posts : Atom" link at the bottom of the post. However it is better to put a big orange RSS feed icon at the top of the sidebar to attract subscribers.

When Google bought Feedburner Blogger introduced a new setting in the Settings--->Site Feed subtab : The Post Feed Redirect URL (See picture below) :

This is a sensitive setting and due to lack of understanding of how it works many Bloggers are closing down their blog feed by putting wrong links in this box..........................

(Atom Feeds)
http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/atom.xml

(RSS Feeds)
http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/rss.xml

Replace 'MYBLOG' with actual blog name. Blogger does not allow any customization of Feeds except for choosing 'Short', 'Full' or 'None'. Also you cannot know number of your subscribers. To customize your feed you have to 'burn' blog feed at Feedburner.com

http://feeds.feedburner.com/DummiesGuideToGoogleBloggerBeta

Login at Blogger.com

Click Settings link for your blog on Dashboard.

Click Site Feed subtab.

Scroll down on page and paste the Feedburner Feed URL for your blog in this box :

What it does is to redirect all other feed addresses to the Feedburner feed address. So subscribers getting updates through :

http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/atom.xml

or

http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/rss.xml

or

http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

or

http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

are ALL redirected to the Feedburner Feed URL.

1. Do NOT paste Blog Feed URLs in this box!

2. Copy and Paste the Feedburner Feed address for your blog here. Do NOT type it as typing is prone to typo errors.

3. Do NOT enter Feedburner address of some other blog here!

4. Do NOT enter any other URL here! It Is meant ONLY for the Feedburner Feed URL for the same blog. OR if you are using some other service like Feedblitz.com you can also enter their feed URL here.

If the wrong URL is entered in the Post Feed Redirect URL box it causes :

1. Prevent blog feeds from updating.

2. Gadgets dependent on blog feeds like Recent Comments Gadget, Previous Posts Gadget, Table of Contents gadget etc. will stop functioning.

3. Loss of blog traffic or visitors.

4. Gadgets on other blogs depending on your blog feed will stop functioning.

5. Yahoo Pipes or other Feed aggregators depending on your blog feed will break down.

6. The Blog List gadget depends on Blog Feeds. If someone has added your blog to their Blog List it will not show the latest blog update.

7. The Reading List on your Followers' Dashboard will stop getting blog updates.

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In early July, Samsung will unveil three new tablets in the US: the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1, the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0, and the Galaxy Tab 3 7.0. 

All three tablets are part of the new Galaxy Tab 3 line, which Samsung first introduced back in early June. Confused by all the numbers? Here's your quick primer: The Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 is the smallest of the bunch (the 7.0 refers to the 7-inch display). Samsung says the device is "compact enough to easily slide into handbags or a jacket pocket so that consumers on-the-go will appreciate its compact size and lightweight design." 

The 7.0 is also the cheapest of three-tablet Galaxy Tab 3 line, at a relatively affordable $199. And the spec list, for that price, is actually pretty decent: the Android 4.1 operating system, a 3-megapixel back-facing camera, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 1.2-GHz dual-core processor. 

Samsung is positioning the Galaxy Tab 3 8.0, meanwhile, as a kind of beefed-up e-reader.

The 8.0 (price tag: $299) ships with "reading mode" technology, which Samsung claims can "optimize the display to deliver perfect illumination and tone for comfortable paperlike readability in a variety of lighting conditions." The 8.0 also gets the Android 4.2 operating system and app multi-tasking. 

Last in line is the 10.1, a premium device priced at $399. Besides the bigger frame, the Tab 3 10.1 is equipped with a 1.6GHz dual-core Atom chip with 1GB of RAM, the Android 4.2 operating system, and a screen resolution of 1280 x 800 – the better to watch movies and play games, Samsung notes. 

So how will these new devices – and especially the flagship Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 – stack up against similar offerings from Samsung's competitors? Well, Sascha Segan of PCMag.com isn't particularly optimistic. 

"Other than the Intel play [on the 10.1], I'm a little underwhelmed here," he writes. "At a $399 price point, it's obvious that the Tab 3 10.1 isn't going up against flagships like the Asus Transformer Infinity or the latest iPad, but I'm also concerned about the upcoming Asus Memo Pad FHD 10, which has the same Intel chip and a higher-resolution screen at a potentially lower price."

Launch date for the Galaxy Tab 3 line is July 7; pre-orders open this week. 

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.

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The carefully planned journey of Edward Snowden from Hong Kong to Russia – then to Cuba possibly, before ending up in Ecuador to seek political asylum? – underscores just how many countries, big and small, are happy to have an occasion to stick it in the eye of the United States.

The US and the Obama administration in particular are quick to emphasize the importance they give to the human rights of the citizens of the countries they are dealing with. Needless to say, however, those countries don’t always take well to American lesson-giving.

With the case of Mr. Snowden – a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked details of top-secret American and British surveillance programs and who is now sought by the US on espionage charges – those countries have a chance to turn the tables on the US.

In a conference call with reporters Monday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said, “I simply do not see the irony” – that countries whose human rights records are deeply questioned by international rights groups, as well as by the US, seem to be the ones most willing to aid Snowden in his flight from US justice.

China is accused of broadly limiting personal freedoms and targeting dissidents, Russia received an international black eye last year for the high-profile prosecution of members of the Pussy Riot feminist punk-rock group, and Ecuador is under fire from rights groups for a succession of laws limiting personal freedoms – including one this month that prohibits news organizations from publishing classified or confidential government documents.

As Secretary of State John Kerry quipped as he was questioned Monday about the countries on Snowden’s seeming itinerary, "I wonder if Snowden chose Russia or China for assistance because they are such bastions of Internet freedom.”

But those countries’ human rights records are “another matter,” according to Mr. Assange, the noted leaker of sensitive US diplomatic cables who has himself been living at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for more than a year to avoid extradition to Sweden.

Assange did say that “no one is suggesting that Ecuador is engaging in the kinds of abuses the US” is committing on a large scale internationally – which he said range from the Obama administration’s program to “hack and spy on everyone across the entire world” to President Obama’s “assassination program in other countries.”

The US is “trying to bully Russia and other states” into turning over a legitimate asylum seeker, Assange said, adding, “No self-respecting country would submit to ... the bullying by the US in this matter.”

Assange said Snowden is en route to Ecuador, where he expects to apply for asylum, but he declined to offer any details of Snowden’s route, other than what was already known Monday morning – that Snowden on Sunday had flown from Hong Kong to Moscow, where he was said to have remained in the airport’s transit areas.

Snowden had been expected to take a Moscow-to-Havana flight Monday, but he was not on the plane when it departed, according to numerous reports.

Snowden is still expected to make his way from Moscow to Quito, Ecuador, via Cuba and Venezuela, according to other sources – two other countries with antagonistic relations with the US that in the past have jumped at the chance to make problems for Washington.

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The micro blogging site Twitter.com is in the news with rumors of Google trying to take it over flying fast and furious! Jay Leno and Ellen DeGeneres have started twittering. It is being used by everyone from revolutionaries storming the Moldovian parliament and Egyptian bloggers to protest an unlawful imprisonment.

Click above picture to follow me on Twitter. Here is how to get started on Twitter and increase traffic to your blog.....................

In the next step you can check if any of your contacts are already on Twitter and follow them automatically. You can skip this step and land up on your Twitter home page. The status box is on top from where you type in your 'tweets' to tell the world what you are doing. Below that are the updates showing latest tweets from people you are following. If you had clicked the image at the top you will get my tweets showing up. Notice that they contain links to my blog posts.

In the sidebar is your profile at top followed by statistics (Number of followers, How many you are following and Updates) and icons of your followers. Now customize your twitter by clicking Settings link at the top of the page. Use the Picture tab to upload a picture. In the Account tab enter your real name and blog address in the fields provided and save settings.

Clicking the above button will result in this popup window :

Enter your Twitter Username instead of 'YourID' in the box and then click Customize button. This will activate the 'Add Widget to my Blog' button. Click it to get the 'Add Page Element' window as shown below :

Select your blog from the drop down list and click the 'Add Widget' button. This will add the Follow Me on Twitter badge at top of this post to your blog sidebar. No further coding is required. Any viewer clicking on the image will be added as Follower to your tweets.

In future posts I will discuss how to show your tweets on your blog, how to twitter blog posts automatically and tips on how to use Twitter more effectively without spamming.

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As the Egyptian opposition's demands for the resignation of President Mohamed Morsi and fresh elections gain momentum, the beleaguered president's supporters are slamming the opposition as secular and hostile to Islam. 

In the deeply religious country, it is a serious criticism, and it has brought many Egyptians to Mr. Morsi's side. But his opponents point to support from the leading voice of the Sunni establishment in Egypt. 

Earlier this month, Ashraf Abdel-Moniem, a conservative preacher and a vocal supporter of Morsi, declared that it was obligatory for Muslims to confront, even kill, anyone protesting against the government. The head of Al Azhar University, Egypt's leading Sunni institution, disagreed saying “peaceful opposition to the government is acceptable in Islam.”

Since, the political temperature in Egypt has only risen.  At least two people were killed and scores injured in clashes over the weekend between supporters and opponents of Morsi. 

The ongoing conflict between some Islamists – who see the attempt to topple Morsi as an affront to his electoral mandate – and the opposition has plunged Egypt into the “deepest crisis since the Jan. 25 revolution,” says Khaled Fahmy, a professor at the American University in Cairo. (Editor's note: Khaled Fahmy's name has been corrected.)

A broad coalition of opposition groups – dubbed Tamarod or “Rebel” – is planning to hold protests beginning June 30 and lasting until Morsi is removed from office. They say Mr. Morsi has spent the last year shoring up his party's control of Egypt's institutions instead of stabilizing a shrinking economy and mounting energy shortages.

With his number of allies shrinking by the day, Morsi has turned to a handful of salafy Islamist groups who see his government as the first step towards an Egypt governed by their interpretation of Islamic law. Morsi's salafy allies have threatened to use violence to preserve his presidency. “Not necessarily the Brotherhood,” says Mr. Fahmy, “but people to the right of the Brotherhood are taking things into that direction.”

In a bid to show its street strength, the Muslim Brotherhood organized a day-long rally on June 21 in Cairo's Nasr City neighborhood.

“Yes to Islam, no to violence, no to secularism!” shouted supporters at the rally, which drew hundreds of thousands of people from all over Egypt. “There is no shame in sharia (Islamic law),” read a sign held by a protester.

Sabry Gaad, a teacher who attended the protest, said he is not a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but opposes Tamarod because “they are against sharia.” He questioned the group's claim that it had widespread support – Tamarod says that its campaign to gather 15 million signatures on a petition calling for new elections is close to reaching its goal.

Former President Hosni Mubarak suppressed religious groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, routinely jailing the Brotherhood's members – including Morsi – and charged them with supporting violent Islamist groups.

Since his election Morsi has pushed for the release of many Islamists jailed under Mubarak, including leaders from Al Gamaa al-Islamiya (GI), a former militant group that renounced violence a decade ago after a 1990s insurgency that killed hundreds of civilians and security officials.

At the rally last week, Assem Abdel Maged, a GI leader, warned that the opposition sought to overturn a democratic mandate to implement Islamic law in Egypt. "Some who lost at the ballot box want to take power through anarchy," he said.

Mr. Abdel Maged has previously said the Tamarod campaign is led by “communists, [Mubarak loyalists], and Coptic extremists,” who are “hostile to Islam.” Safwat Abdel Ghany, a leading member of the group, said earlier this month that the Tamarod campaign was not a campaign in response to economic problems, but a “war on Islam.”

Not everyone agrees. “Egypt is a religious country, we love Islam,” said Ahmed Marghani, a dentist from Alexandria who attended the pro-Morsi rally. “But we do not need sharia … people do not need laws to control them.” 

Marghani said he simply wanted to make sure Morsi, a democratically elected president, was not toppled by an opposition that did not respect the country's constitution.

Amal Sharaf is one of the founding members of the April 6 Youth Movement, which began as a campaign to support factory workers in 2008. It helped organize the 2011 protests that toppled Mr. Mubarak and backed Morsi in the 2012 elections because his only opponent was Ahmad Shafiq, a former Mubarak regime member.

She rejected the claims that the opposition is predominantly secular, implying the accusation was merely a vote-getting tactic. 

“[The Brotherhood] is mixing politics with religion,” Sharaf says. “To win people's votes, their attention, their sympathy. The 15 million signatures we have are not from atheists..they are using religion in a very cheap way.”

In fact, acknowledgment, if not support, of the opposition's grievances has come from a number of Islamist quarters.

The Al Nour party, the country's largest party of ultra-conservative salafis and the second-largest party in the government after the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party – has refused to participate in the pro-Brotherhood campaign. While he does not support calls for a fresh election, Al Nour spokesman Nadr Bakr denounced pro-Brotherhood rallies by Islamists as “only fostering the current crisis, which harms the country and its economy."

“We hoped Morsi would turn Egypt into a new country,” says Ramy El-Swissy, another founder of April 6, “A sovereign country based on human rights and equality for everyone....but he started to work for his own benefit, for his own Brotherhood.”

“We will never accept this, after two years of fighting the old regime and then the military council.”

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As Google Video will be discontinuing uploads bloggers will now have to turn to Youtube to showcase their videos on their blogs.

Uploading videos directly to Blogger can also frequently cause errors like this :

"Sorry, there was an error uploading your video. Please contact support and include the following information: Blog Id:******* Video Id:68e2ght***" "

Now YouTube allows you to create a customizable video player like this one :

This video player is a collection of Official Blogger Help Videos on Youtube. To create a video like this one.............

1. Login to your Youtube account.

2. Upload your videos from PC.

3. Or open the videos you like and click the Favorite link below the video player to Add that video to your favorite videos.

4. Go to Youtube Custom Player Creator page.

5. Choose the various options to customize the player.

6. Click My Videos to load your videos or My Favorites to load your favorite videos and click Select button.

7. Click Generate Code button and copy the code provided.

8. Login at Blogger.com

9. Click New Post button on Dashboard.

10. In Post Editor click Edit Html tab in upper right corner.

11. Paste the code in Edit Html tab of post editor and click Publish Post.

12. Click View Blog to enjoy your video.

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“We are ourselves stories, telling and being told.” This is the central claim of Rebecca Solnit’s mesmerizing new book, The Faraway Nearby.

In Solnit’s view, we build our world and ourselves out of stories: we are always listening to them or telling them, adapting them or creating them, sharing them or hoarding them. “Where does a story begin?” Solnit asks. “The fiction is that they do, and end, rather than that the stuff of a story is just a cup of water scooped from the sea and poured back into it.” For Solnit, the world is stories all the way down.

"The Faraway Nearby" is, at its core, an examination of the storytelling impulse, though “examination” is far too stuffy a word to describe this delightful book. Solnit wears many different professional hats – she’s an award-winning historian as well as an activist, critic, and public intellectual – and "The Faraway Nearby" is itself a strange mixture of genres.

At times, the book reads like a work of literary criticism, as when Solnit offers interpretations of Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein" and Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen.” At other times, it reads like cultural anthropology, following folk tales as they are passed on from generation to generation, culture to culture, shifting and sliding in the process: “Stories migrate; meanings migrate; everything metamorphoses.”

At still other times, it reads like a memoir. Running like a thread through the book’s labyrinthine structure is Solnit’s account of her mother’s struggles with Alzheimer’s, a disease that is so terrifying precisely because it breaks down a person’s sense of self, the story that person tells about how he or she got from the past to the present. Solnit imagines her ailing mother as a “book coming apart, pages drifting away, phrases blurring, letters falling off” – she is, in short, a story that is being untold.

"The Faraway Nearby" isn’t so much a single, coherent argument about the nature of stories, as it is a series of meditations upon the subject. Solnit understands “story” in the most encompassing sense. Illness, she argues, is a kind of story – here is how I moved from health to sickness. So are legal cases, with the defendant and the prosecutor each trying to convince the jury of a particular narrative; so is history; so is the life of a nation; so is the life of an individual; the list goes on.

The sheer quantity of stories that Solnit gathers together in one place is staggering. She offers her thoughts on "The Chronicles of Narnia" and on "The Buddhacarita," on the Inuit story of the “Skeleton Woman” and on the German fairy tale “The Juniper Tree.” "The Faraway Nearby," in other words, doesn’t tell a story about stories. It tells stories about stories, drifting from one narrative to the next, using each story as a springboard for broader considerations. This rhizomatic structure is simultaneously bewildering – you find yourself wondering how you got from Che Guevara to the Roadrunner in a matter of pages – and exhilarating.

Despite its digressive style, "The Faraway Nearby" does put forward several concrete claims about the nature and purpose of storytelling. Solnit argues that stories, both in the telling and in the listening, allow for an expansion of the self that can lead to empathy. The word empathy, Solnit tells us, comes from the German Einfuhlung, which means “feeling into,” and it is by listening to another’s story, by imagining their story as our story, that we come to recognize and care about existences other than our own. (Solnit regularly uses etymology to clarify her own language. Even individual words, it appears, have stories to tell.)

If stories can lead to empathy, then they also can lead to a rigidity of mind and spirit: once you’ve told yourself a story about something – another person, another race, another world – it’s hard to un-tell it. Solnit describes the “temptation of a neat ending, that point when you bring the boat to shore and tie it to the dock and give up the wide sea.”

Solnit’s own book refuses this temptation. Ends are never tied up but always lead to new beginnings; one story simply gives way to another and another and another. As Solnit writes, “The quest is the holy grail, the ocean itself is the mysterious elixir, and if you’re lucky you realize it before you dock at the cup in the chapel.”

Anthony Domestico’s reviews have appeared in the TLS, the Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He is the book columnist for Commonweal.

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The red panda that had gone rogue from The Smithsonian National Zoo has been found in a bush in Washington D.C.'s Adams Morgan neighborhood.

The once-lost animal, a male named Rusty, is just less than a year old and has been on exhibit at the zoo for just three weeks, after arriving from Nebraska in April. The precocious escapee had last been seen in his zoo pen Sunday evening and was not there Monday morning, at which time the zoo sounded a “Code Green” alert for a missing zoo animal.

Rusty was believed to be still within the zoo, keeping his summer vacation local and hiding in a tree, zoo staff said. It was considered reasonably unlikely that the red panda had high-tailed it toward the White House to express his thoughts on animal conservationism or skipped the country altogether to China, to holiday with friends there.

“It is most likely that he has not really left the vicinity. He would have to have some very strong motivation to leave the area,” spokeswoman Pamela Baker-Masson told The Washington Post.

Well, that strong motivation might have been there: a determined bachelor’s last hurrah. The zoo has one other red panda, a female named Shama, and told The Washington Post that it had been planning to breed the two. And the enterprising panda could not have chosen a better neighborhood for its prenuptial jaunt: Adams Morgan, a section of D.C. noted for its young and throbbing club scene.

How the partying red panda escaped is somewhat mystifying. The wires on his cage, which deliver a small electronic shock, were on and functional. 

The red panda, which looks something like a mix between a cat, a bear, and a (miniaturized) giant panda, is considered a vulnerable species, with just some 10,000 of them in the world, mostly in China but also in Bhutan and northern Nepal and Myanmar. It is only distantly related to the giant panda and is more closely related to weasels and raccoons.

The zoo’s giant pandas are still in their pens, and are sleeping happily, the zoo said.

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Welcome to 2009 and your spanking new blog you created at Blogger.com. 

Photo by Ben30

What are the next steps you should follow to make blogging an instantaneous and painless experience? How to be a successful blogger using only point and click and some fast keyboarding? Here are some fast tips for the ultra n00b................

The first thing when creating a blog is to select a short and sweet URL or blog address. You can change this afterwards also by login at Blogger.com and then go to Settings>>Publishing>>Blog Address. If the address is not available you can get a Custom Domain Dot Com address for only 10$ US and also get rid of the 'blogspot' in the address.

Do not change the blog address if more than two months have elapsed because you will have to start all over again from scratch with respect to the search engines. You will also lose the traffic going to the old address!

After creating a blog speed up getting it on the search engines by submitting blog to them and verify ownership using Google Webmaster Tools.

Creating posts and inserting pictures in your blog is made easy thanks to Windows Live Writer.

For optimum blogging experience download Firefox browser on a PC with a broadband connection. For checking your emails use Thunderbird. To follow and subscribe to latest blog updates use Google Reader. All are free!

Never delete the account used to create your blog. DELETING ACCOUNT DOES NOT DELETE YOUR BLOG. 

After creating a post open the post page in browser by clicking on the post title. Then from browser menu click File>>Save Page As and save it to a backup folder on your hard drive.  You should also backup your entire blog periodically. Backup your blog template (Login>>Layouts>>Edit Html>>Download Full Template)and widgets in same folder. Periodically record the folder to CD or DVD-ROM to insure against hard disk failure. Invest in a USB drive and synchronize backup folders to it. This will prevent piling up of backup CD/DVD-ROMs.

Keep passwords secure with Keep Pass - a free password encryptor and manager.  In your Google or Gmail account settings enter a secondary email account.

Open a Paypal account and put in some donation links in your blog.

On the Main Page of the blog show only an expandable summary of the posts followed by a Read More link. This makes the main page load faster.

Burn your blog feed at Feedburner.com and copy the new feed url and paste it in Settings>>Site Feed>>Post Feed Redirect box and save. Now you will be able to know your full subscriber count. Put in a prominent Feed Icon at the top of your blog sidebar so viewers can subscribe to blog updates.

Lastly add content regularly at least thrice weekly.  Do not make very long posts and add pictures and videos inbetween to break the monotony. Add Labels and social bookmarks to all posts.

Enjoy!

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The Blogger Archive Gadget shows only the post titles of the latest month (in Hierarchy mode). The rest of the months and post titles are hidden behind small black arrows which have to be clicked to reveal them.

The Feed Gadget shows only the latest five posts if used along with your blog feed. Here is The "Shows All Posts Blogger Gadget Installer" which when added to your blog enables your blog readers to add/show ALL your blog posts in their blog.

This gadget can increase traffic to your blog and also after installing it on your blog you can with one click add all your post titles as a blog archive on your own blog.........

Change 'MYBLOG' to the actual subdomain of your blogspot blog. That is if your blog address is http://example.blogspot.com put in 'example' in place of 'MYBLOG' in the code below :

This code converts your site feed (1000 posts) :

http://MYBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?start-index=1&max-results=999

into Javascript code at this site.

The code generated in Step 2 is in HTML.  It will work if you paste it directly in a HTML gadget in your blog.  However we need to provide it to our readers in a gadget to place on their blog.  To do this we need to convert HTML characters like '>' and '<'.  You can do this the hard way by converting each character or the easy way by using sites which provide this service free.  Copy the code generated in Step 2 and paste it in the box provided at the HTML escape site. 

Click the Encode button.  A fresh code text box will appear lower down.  Copy the code in it.

a) Changing "MYBLOG.COM" to your actual blog name.

b) Copy code given in Step 2 above after the encoding process and paste where it says "PASTE CODE FROM STEP 2 HERE."

Put the title of the HTML gadget as "Get ALL Posts from THIS BLOG."
Save the HTML gadget. It will look like this :

Enjoy!

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In a previous post we saw how to add a Google Map to blog. Sometimes having a simple map is not enough. Markers are used on a map to identify points on the map. See picture below (Click on picture to enlarge it):

In above picture you can see a Google Map with Markers in my test blog. Here are the steps to put such a map in your blog......................

STEP 1. Get a Google API key for your blog.

In the first step you have to generate a Google API key for your blog here.
Put a check in "I have read and agree with the terms and conditions (printable version)" box by clicking it. Paste your blogspot URL in the text box and click Generate API Key button. Copy down the key generated.

STEP 2. Modify the Template Code.

Login at Blogger.com

Click Layout link under Blog Title on Dashboard.

Click Edit HTML subtab of Layout tab.

Scroll down in Template Code box and change :

TO :

Save Template.

STEP 3. ADD HTML GADGET in sidebar.

Login at Blogger.com

Click Layout link on Dashboard under blog title.

Click Add Gadget link on Page Elements subtab of Layout tab.

In popup window scroll down and click HTML/Javascript Gadget.

Copy the code below and paste it in Contents window of the HTML gadget :

Customize the above code by :

1. Paste in the Google API key obtained in Step 1 where it says "PASTE_YOUR_GOOGLE_API_KEY_HERE".

2. Put in the latitude and longitude of your map center in this line :

map.setCenter(new GLatLng(37.4419, -122.1419), 13);

3. The above code will add 10 markers at random locations. For more information checkout the Google Maps documentation.

Save Gadget.

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Labels

Gadget by The Blog Doctor.

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Archives in the real world is a place where we deposit historical records and documents. In Blogger Layout Templates the Blog Archives is a place on your blog page showing all your blog post linked titles. The Classic Templates show only ten previous posts.

Since the default Archives gadget which comes with every Layout template shows only the latest month posts we have used various methods to create gadgets showing all post titles. The latest method uses JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) to extract linked post titles from your blog feed.

It can be installed with two mouse clicks (using the widget installer from Beautifulbeta) and no coding is required...........

You will get a dialog window (disable any popup blocker) :

Click on picture to enlarge it.

Under 'Widget Title' type in whatever title you wish. Under 'Customize Widget' type in your blogspot subdomain (That is the part which appears before 'blogspot.com' in your blog address.) Then click Customize button. The 'Add Widget to my Blog' button will become active. Click it to get the next "Add Page Element' window :

Click on picture to enlarge it.

Here you can select the blog to add it in. You can add this to other blogs also to promote traffic to another blog. Type in a title for the widget and click the blue 'Add Widget' button at the bottom. Then click View Blog to see the result :

If you have lots of posts be ready for a long sidebar. If you want to have an archives widget in a smaller space check out Gadget No 29 - Scrolling Posts Gadget on My Gadget Showcase Blog.

1. Easy to Install in two clicks only. Native Blogger Gadget/widget.

2. No coding knowledge required.

3. Uses Google Code.

4. Shows all (max of 1000) blog post titles.

5. Post titles linked to Posts.

6. The credit link is generated by Javascript and so does not generate a linkback to my blog. It is only for information for other bloggers who may wish to install it. So please do not remove it.

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Despite early summer temperatures in the 90s Monday in Boston, the ultimate wintertime sport will be played in the "Cradle of Liberty." Game 6 of the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup Final between the Boston Bruins and Chicago Blackhawks, with Chicago up three games to two, will be played at 8 p.m. Monday night at the TD Garden in Boston.

The two "Original 6" franchises have put on one of the most entertaining and enthralling Stanley Cup Finals in recent years. The Bruins and Blackhawks split the first two games in Chicago before splitting the next pair in Boston. Game 4 was akin to Mrs. O'Leary's cow starting the Great Chicago Fire for all the goals, 11 in total, that were deposited in both nets last Thursday night (Tip of the cap to NBC's Mike Emrick, who referred to the action as "fire wagon hockey").

Game 5 Saturday night in Chicago saw the Blackhawks use their team speed to create numerous scoring chances against the Bruins. Forward Patrick Kane, who had been relatively quiet earlier in the series, came alive with two goals, one in the first and one in the second period, to take control of the contest.

Despite a 2-0 deficit early in the third period, Boston finally got its offensive game in gear. Defenseman Zdeno Chara, who also hadn't made much noise offensively for the B's, finally blasted a slapshot past Chicago goalie Corey Crawford to close the gap.

However, Crawford and the Blackhawks did not permit the Bruins to get any closer and won, 3-1, and now stand one win away from capturing the Stanley Cup, the trophy bestowed on the NHL championship team.

Two significant players, one for each club, were knocked out of Game 5 due to injury. Chicago captain and center Jonathan Toews who absorbed a heavy check in the second period of Game 5. But he has told USAToday.com that he's fit enough to play in Game 6.

The other, Boston center Patrice Bergeron, who also left the game in the second period with an undisclosed injury, is a big reason the Bruins are even in the Stanley Cup Final. Bruins head coach Claude Julien said Monday his assistant captain will suit up and skate just prior to the game.

"I'm feeling confident he will play," Julien told reporters.

At this stage of the season, both teams have players nursing various degrees of injury. The keys for both teams Monday night remain as they have throughout the series.

For Chicago, they need to continue using their team speed to create offensive pressure on the Bruins defense and goalie Tuukka Rask. Short, quick passes between hard-skating teammates have produced multiple scoring chances. Being one win away from a title, Blackhawks forward Patrick Sharp knows they can't let up against Boston.

"It's a heck of an opportunity we have [Monday] night," Sharp told reporters Sunday. "You've got to look at the team we're playing against. They've been in much worse situations than this and they've been able to rally back and fight for their lives."

On the Bruins side, their forwards will need to be very involved in defending against the Blackhawks attack and moving the puck the other way.

"Well, it takes an extreme amount of awareness of everybody on the ice," Bruins defenseman Andrew Ference remarked to NHL.com. "Our defensive game relies on a five-man unit picking up their assignments and just being ultra-aware of positioning and where the threats are."

Once in Chicago's end, Boston skaters need to keep shooting the puck towards Crawford's catching glove side. Nine of Boston's 13 goals scored in the Finals have beaten the Blackhawk goalie in that spot.

The Bruins have eight victories out of 11 games at home during these 2013 NHL playoffs. They'll need to continue that kind of effort if they want to reach Game 7 Wednesday night back in Chicago. Two years ago, Boston was down, three games to two, to the Vancouver Canucks before winning the final two games to capture the team's first Stanley Cup in 39 years.

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Blogger offers a great method to change your blogspot address to a DOT COM address by buying a Custom Domain for only 10$ US.

Using a Custom Domain gets your blog a brand new address without losing traffic, search engine position or Google Page Rank (Page Rank is only lost temporarily).  Your blog is still hosted by Blogger free of charge with unlimited storage (for posts) and unlimited bandwidth and no security worries.

Your new domain is managed by Enom.com or GoDaddy.com and the 10$ US is paid to them. Blogger does not manage domains..........

Email From Google Apps.

After successfully completing the transaction for buying the domain you will get a confirmatory email from Google Apps. This is what it will say (For domain XYZ.COM) :

Hello Abcdef xyz,

Welcome to Google Apps!

Congratulations on completing your purchase of XYZ.com. Your new domain has been registered with eNom/GoDaddy and will expire on Month  Day, Year. Your domain will be automatically configured to work with the Google Apps services you select. We're excited to help you offer powerful communication and sharing tools to all your users.

If you haven't already created an administrator account for your domain, click the following link:

https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/setup/XYZ.com/BIG_NUMBER?hl=en

Once you have set up an admin account for your domain, you will have access to the Google Apps control panel. Here you can monitor the status of your services, manage your user accounts and email lists, create web pages, and customize the interface and services to your organization's needs. Through the control panel, you can also view and edit all your DNS settings, update your WHOIS information, and renew your domain before it expires. Please keep your WHOIS info up-to-date so that eNom/GoDaddy can contact you with important domain registration information. To access the control panel in the future, you can bookmark :

https://www.google.com/a/XYZ.com.

Your services will be activated shortly. You can now create user accounts to give your users access to all the great services you have signed up for, including email, IM, and calendar. As services are activated, your users can immediately start sending email and setting calendar appointments. It's that easy.

At any time, if you get stuck or if you want to tell us about your experience with this service, you can find more information and get in touch through our help center :

(https://www.google.com/support/a).

Sincerely,
The Google Apps Team

First Login at Google Apps.

To change your CNAME and A records for your domain you have to first create a Google Apps account. To do this click the link in the above email :

https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/setup/XYZ.com/BIG_NUMBER?hl=en

You will get the login screen at Google Apps :

For Username and Password enter the same as those you used for login at Blogger.com when you bought the domain.

Then select a username and password for your administrator account, and review the Terms of Service.

If you cannot login go here to reset the password.

Login to Domain Manager.

After successfully logging in at Google Apps. Dashboard click the Domain Settings link and then the Domain Names link. Lastly click Advanced DNS Settings to find the information to login to your GoDaddy or Enom.com account.

After login at GoDaddy or Enom.com change the CNAME and A records for your domain.

Free Google Apps. Goodies.

Google Apps. is free for use and offers the following goodies for Bloggers :

1.  Free Gmail email for your domain. For example I created one at  vin[at]blogdoctor[dot]me.

2.  A Start Page for your domain which is an iGoogle personalized page. Here is my start page.

3.  Google Sites.

4.  Google Talk :

To chat with me click above button and add :

as contact.  To add such a badge to your blog go to :

http://www.google.com/talk/service/a/MYDOMAIN.COM/badge/New

Replace 'MYDOMAIN.COM' with your actual domain.  Customize the badge and copy and paste the code in a Html page element in your blog.

You can also add the Google Talk Gadget to your blog :

To add this gadget go here, customize the gadget and copy and paste the code given in a Html gadget or in Edit Html tab of Post Editor.

Now visitors to your site can chat directly from your web page.

Enjoy!

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This post is NOT about adding your blog sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. It is about creating a sitemap page in Blogger which contains the links of all the post titles in your blog.

Such a sitemap page is commonly seen in other blogs and prominently linked to from the Main Page. Blogger does not have such a sitemap page. Instead it has the Blog Archives in the sidebar. To save space these show just the latest month posts and the rest can be accessed through drop down arrows. This hides most of your posts from the noobie viewer. Creating a sitemap page is then the only option to show all posts in one page................

1. Login at Blogger.com.

2. Click New Post button on Dashboard under blog title.

3. Post Editor will open.

4. Put title as "Blog Sitemap.".

5. In the post editor type in a few introductory words like I have done in my sitemap post.

6. Publish post.

7. Click Edit Post link to open post again for editing.

8. Click Post Options link in bottom frame of Post editor.

9. Change the date to any date in the recent past.

10. Publish Post.

11. The Post will not appear on Main Page since it has been backdated. This is the only way to change the post order in Blogger.

This will place the Contents table gadget in your blog. Use Click and drag on Page Elements subtab to drag the gadget below the posts column.

The gadget is now seen on ALL blog pages. The next step is to place it only on the Sitemap page. To do this first we need to get the permalink of the sitemap page we created in our blog. Look in the Blog Archives gadget and expand all the arrows to see the "Blog Sitemap" title we gave to the post. Click on the ttle to open the post page. Copy the permalink from the address bar of the browser.

1. Login at Blogger.com.

2. Click Layouts link under blog title on Dashboard.

3. Click Edit Html subtab of Layouts tab.

4. Click Expand Widgets Template checkbox on top of the Template Code box.

5. Wait for the page to refresh.

6. Scroll down to locate the code for the Table of Contents gadget.

7. Modify the code as shown below (Put in the red lines of code) :

WIDGET CODE

Replace the CAPS : BLOG_PAGE_URL with the permalink of your blog sitemap post.

8. Save Template.

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