Cool Tech Tips & Tricks

Terms of Fair Use

10:50 PMWebmaster

On the issue of copyright and fair use, we refer to the article by Electronic Frontier Foundation

Intellectual Property

The Bloggers' FAQ on Intellectual Property addresses issues that arise when you publish material created by others on your blog.

Questions About Copyright

I found something interesting on someone else's blog. May I quote it?

Yes. Short quotations will usually be fair use, not copyright infringement. The Copyright Act says that "fair use...for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." So if you are commenting on or criticizing an item someone else has posted, you have a fair use right to quote. The law favors "transformative" uses — commentary, either praise or criticism, is better than straight copying — but courts have said that even putting a piece of an existing work into a new context (such as a thumbnail in an image search engine) counts as "transformative." The blog's author might also have granted you even more generous rights through a Creative Commons license, so you should check for that as well.

What is fair use?

There are no hard and fast rules for fair use (and anyone who tells you that a set number of words or percentage of a work is "fair" is talking about guidelines, not the law). The Copyright Act sets out four factors for courts to look at (17 U.S.C. § 107):

The purpose and character of the use. Transformative uses are favored over mere copying. Non-commercial uses are also more likely fair.
The nature of the copyrighted work. Is the original factual in nature or fiction? Published or unpublished? Creative and unpublished works get more protection under copyright, while using factual material is more often fair use.
The amount and substantiality of the portion used. Copying nearly all of a work, or copying its "heart" is less likely to be fair.
The effect on the market or potential market. This factor is often held to be the most important in the analysis, and it applies even if the original is given away for free. If you use the copied work in a way that substitutes for the original in the market, it's unlikely to be a fair use; uses that serve a different audience or purpose are more likely fair. Linking to the original may also help to diminish the substitution effect. Note that criticism or parody that has the side effect of reducing a market may be fair because of its transformative character. In other words, if your criticism of a product is so powerful that people stop buying the product, that doesn't count as having an "effect on the market for the work" under copyright law.

What is included in Google Pack

1:49 PMWebmaster

Making Favicon

12:55 AMAnu

Blog Promotion

Blog Promotion Secrets | blog search engines & blog directories.

9:03 PMWebmaster

Technorati and Digg are a good place to submit your blog. People look for blog content at Technorati every day. Almost every site will ask for following information.

Blog Title

Blog URL

Blog Description

Blog Keywords

Your name

Your Email

Blog Feed URL

Blog Photo

Keep the above mentioned information ready while submitting to these sites.

http://www.blogging101.com/blog-search-engines.php
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Be an Active blogger.
The more you blog the more chances there are that your blog will attract visitors. Let people comment on your blogs and reply to them when asked, this way you are building a relationship with your visitors and also getting good feedback on your post. When some of your posts start getting more attention than other posts you should follow up the article with an extended post. That will give your blog more popularity.

Help the search engines help you
Always make good use of page titles, post titles. Use titles, which accurately describe your post and make a powerful impact on the readers mind. Be aware that in most cases the visitor will read the post title in a fraction of a second and decide if he/she wants to continue reading. You have to provide an interesting and hopefully short and descriptive title. Also make sure that you format your post title differently than the article itself, like making it bold or different color, size etc. Don’t use too many capital letters in your sentences. It gives an impression of being a spam log or in short “splog”.

Using Graphics and Images.
I have to admit that ever since I got a high-speed connection to the Internet, I almost used to forget that there are still so many users who are on dial-up connections and the blog shouldn’t choke on their connection. Try to use minimum graphics and external scripts on your blog, optimize your images before using it on your blog. You can find free online graphics optimizers.

Track user hits to your site / blog
Install a hit counter on your blog/site. There are many free ones you can choose, I personally recommend statcounter. By studying the stats you can actually gain useful knowledge about the blog visitors. It will help you find out what things you are doing right and what you aren’t.

Format your content for better readability
Lets face it, We all hate to read a post where ideas are crammed into one long paragraph. Long paragraphs make the posts very boring to read through and chances are that your visitors will not even read the whole paragraph. Make wise use of text formatting features on your blog post. Split different ideas within a post into different paragraphs and try to keep your posts short. Split the posts itself and let the visitors decide if they want to read more of your posts.

Be an active commenter
Read others blogs and write comments on their blogs. You should also leave a link to your blog and you could get some visitors from that blog / website. You can also join forums, discussion groups etc. but be careful to post your comments on relevant forum topics and do not spam the forums or mail of the visitors.

Remember always that there are only two golden rules of blog promotion
Rule 1: Promote your blog today as best as you can
Rule 2: Come back tomorrow and re-read both the rules again.