Your Blog Posts Automaticaly Promoting While Sleeping

By: Avi on 9:03 PM

So, you have finished writing your killer post for your readers. It’s time to HIT publish button to welcome your readers to read what you write new. Right?

What should be your next goal with that post? Of course, promoting and sharing it with every possible way. Sharing on social media sites and blog communities are the best possible ways to attract wider audiences to blog content. Sharing on facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social networking sites can bring us immense traffic to our blog if we know what and when to be share.

Yes, I really mean it. Sharing posts on these social networking websites is worthless if you fail to target your potential readers. You must be aware with the timings when you get maximum clicks from your shared posts.

Suppose your readers or social media fans and followers used to check out your shared posts at night and you are sharing with them in morning or in noon. Then obliviously, you are not going to attract as much readers as compare to sharing posts at night. Agree?

It doesn’t mean that you should not share your posts at day time or at time when your most of the fans are not online, but targeting them at that time when they uses internet is the best and smart practice to gain more traffic from social networking sites.

But there is an issue. No one can sit online all the day only to promote blog posts. Some people used to share posts at mid day and some prefer to share at night. But what if you could get opportunity to promote your blog posts at that time when you can’t sit in front of your computer connecting with internet? It’ll be great for all of us. Right? That’s why I bring a tutorial today to tell you how you can promote your blog posts on social networking websites while sleeping at night or with busy schedule.

Let’s see what’s the whole game. 

Promoting Blog Posts To Get More Traffic

Here we have a great website named Buffer which allows us to schedule our blog posts for sharing on social networking websites without sitting online all over the day.

We can easily set our sharing timings and Buffer will automatically share our blog posts at that scheduled time on our behalf.

So, let’s learn how to use Buffer to schedule blog posts.

1. Go to Buffer and register for an account or log in with your twitter, facebook or linkedIn account.


2. Click on Install in Seconds button to add Buffer Extension in your browser.




Add Buffer Extension To Your Browser


3. Now you’ll be enter into your Buffer account. Simply click on Schedule tab to schedule your blog posts for auto sharing and add posting time there.




Click on Image to Enlarge


4. Now click on What do you want to share field at the top left corner of the page.
 
5. Add your post description and link and click on Buffer button to schedule it.
6. 
   



7. That’s it. Now your posts will be automatically share at your scheduled timings.

Additional Benefits

We are not limited to only share and schedule our blog posts for automatically sharing, there are other benefits too of using Buffer.

1. There is a cool feature that allow us to check Analytics of our shared posts to get clear view how much benefit we are getting. One of my post attract 1 Comment and 18 likes while I was sleeping.
   


2. It’s time consuming to open buffer account everytime to schedule blog posts. Right? Here we have one more cool option that is Buffer’s Extension for browser that we have already installed in step #2. Whenever you want to schedule your any post, simply open that post in your browser and click on buffer button icon at the top right corner of your page. It’ll automatically fetch all of it’s details and you just need to click Buffer button. 

In The End

This was all about that I know about buffer. It helps me to promote my blog posts on social networking sites easily. Make use of it and promote your articles more conveniently by scheduling them at a great time.

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How To Keeping Your Smartphone And Data Safe

By: Avi on 8:43 AM

Smartphones have evolved from being able to just check email and has now allowed us to do so many other things when paired with other devices. Nowadays, we can pay with our smartphones with digital wallet apps are able to store multiple credit cards. Most of our private information (together with other contact information) can be found in the apps on our smartphone through chatlogs, pictures, calendars, and notes.

This is why we rely so much on our smartphones and store so much sensitive data on it to make our lives easier. With all these sensitive data on board a tiny device, we should pay more attention to keeping it safe and away from anyone unwanted. Here are some precautions to help you.

1. Set Lockscreen Security That Self-Destructs

Leaving your phone unattended on a desk for a few minutes could lead to someone accessing it to extract lots of vulnerable information. Which is why enabling lockscreen security is essential to keeping your smartphone away from unwanted users.

This is the easiet way to defend you and your data, and pretty much every smartphone has this feature. Manufacturers know privacy is important to users.

Some thieves would try breaking the lockscreen by trying out passwords but to really keep your data safe from brute force hacking, you could enable a feature that erases all data from your smartphone after a preset number of failed attempts.

On the iPhone, it can be enabled under Settings > General > Passcode Lock > Erase Data.

By default, this kind of feature is not available on the Android, but you can enable a similar effect with a free app like Autowipe .

2. Turn Off Settings When Not In Use

Hackers are able to do all sorts of things that will surprise you. Turning off phone settings like Bluetooth, Location Services, Near Field Communication (NFC), Wi-Fi and even Cellular Data when not in use not only conserves smartphone battery but also gives hackers less access to your device.

Location Services and Bluetooth should not be turned on when not in use as apps can use lots of location data without you knowing it. As Bluetooth is constantly transmitting your devices’ location and presence, it is possible for hackers to use it to gain access and extract any kind of information found on your device.

3. Don’t Download Shady Apps

Apps are probably the only thing that can harm you by stealing your personal data. When downloading an app, make sure that all the details of the app comes from the original ‘company’ or correct developer. Some sneaky apps might even trick people to download a "New and improved HD version" of a legitimate app, so make sure you check a few app details before downloading.

For instance a mobile banking app (or any app that handles financial accounts) should come from the bank itself as seen here on the iOS App Store, and not some other seller or developer.

App ratings and comments can also tell a story. If it’s a popular bank or financial service (PayPal) app that has no rating or comments, chances are it might be fake and you should be careful about downloading it and logging in. So be sure to download apps only if it has been rated many times and has multiple comments.

4. Be Wary Of Fishy Apps And Links

Viruses on mobile platforms can be present in many ways. It can be in the form of a ‘dirty’ app that runs in the background transmitting user data. As the Android system allows third-party apps or programs to be installed (very easily), Android users may open their mobile system up to attacks if they are not wary of the apps they download to their phone.

There are however anti-virus scanning apps and other tools on Android that can detect and remove anything that can harm your privacy.

iOS users do not have anti-virus scanning apps, basically because there isn’t a pressing need for it.Apple is very strict with what gets on the App Store and will take down apps that harm its users in any way. Skip clicking on links in SMS, MMS, or even email attachments from unknown or unauthorised senders. Avoiding anything fishy altogether is very simple and should be practiced.

5. Do Not Lose Your Smartphone!

Not losing your smartphone is sometimes easier said than done. Of course no one wants to lose their smartphone, but unfortunate circustances might happen. You might have left it in a bar, in public transport, someone pickpocketed you during your vacation or you might have grabbed someone else’s phone by mistake. In all accounts, chances are your phone is good as gone.

If these things have a tendency to plague your life (some of us are serial phone-losers), installing apps that can locate your smartphone on your iOS or Android device is essential. These apps can help you locate your phone and some have the option to wipeout the data on the phone so you don’t become a victim of identity theft.

Conclusion

To be fair, there is no one mobile platform that is safer than another. With so many devices but only a handful of platforms to choose from, attackers are able to target any platform they desire and the repercussions can be quite devastating to power users. We, as users have to be cautious with what we do to and with our smartphones.

If you work extensively on with your smartphone, you might want to look to BlackBerry phones as they have encryption features in their devices. Finally, because Android is an open source platform, it is more vulnerable to attacks as hackers can easily find vulnerabilities on each device; iOS or Windows Phone are less vulnerable because their system codes are not openly shared to  the public.

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How To Add Shortcuts To ‘My Computer’ On Windows 7 & 8

By: Avi on 7:20 AM

The ‘My Computer’ icon gives us easy access to our hard drives (or SSD), removable flash drives and other network-related locations. But if you’re one who enjoys a clutter-free desktop, then maybe you can use this tweak to remove the many program and folder shortcuts on your desktop.

Here’s a way to get more usefulness out of ”My Computer” by adding the shortcuts that you need to it. This also gives you quick access to the program or folder and works very well with Windows Explorer tabs tweak like Clover. Here’s how you can add shortcuts to your ”My Computer” in a few easy clicks.

Adding Program Shortcuts To ‘My Computer’

First you’ll have to navigate to a special folder. Shortcuts placed in this folder will be displayed on ‘My Computer’.

Hit Windows Key + R and type in %appdata% into the box and click on OK.

Then navigate to Microsoft > Windows > Network Shortcuts. Program shortcuts that you place here will be shown on ‘My Computer’, it’s that simple.

Once you have placed program shortcuts into that folder, you’ll be able to see the shortcut icons on ‘My Computer’.

Adding Folder Shortcuts To ‘My Computer’

Because you can add any shortcut, you can also add folder shortcuts. To easily do that, just right click on your frequently used folder and click on Create Shortcut.

Now all you have to do is cut (Ctrl + X) the created shortcut and paste (Ctrl + V) into theNetwork Shortcuts folder, like how we transferred the program shortcuts earlier.

Adding Control Panel Shortcuts

You can also have quick access to frequently used Control Panel shortcuts on your ‘My Computer’. All you have to do is simply click and drag something from the Control Panel to the Network Shortcuts folder.

Here’s the final result of adding all these shortcuts.

Now your ‘My Computer’ will be well equipped with all your frequently used shortcuts and quick access links.

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How To Create Custom Keyboard Shortcuts For Office 2013

By: Avi on 12:55 AM

Everyone knows that common keyboard shortcuts not only improves your productivity but also increases your overall typing speed. However, not all actions on Office 2013 have default keyboard shortcuts, some of these common actions include, changing font color or size and strikethrough text.

It would be fun to have shortcuts for these actions though especially when you have to do them over and over and over again.

In this post, we’ll show you how to assign shortcuts to these actions. This trick we are showing you works for almost all commands you can find on Office 2013, namely Word, PowerPoint and Excel, the more common Office products.

Custom Keyboard Shortcuts For Word 2013

Out of the 3 Office products we’ll be featuring here, only Word has the option to use custom keyboard combinations to trigger an action. Keys that we suggest to use would be a combination of Ctrl, Shift and Alt followed by a letter.

Here are some examples:

Start Word 2013 and navigate to the Options section by clicking on File > Options.

Then navigate to Customize Ribbon and you’ll find ‘Keyboard shortcuts’; click on the Customizebutton next to it.

Let’s first explain the things you see on this new window that pops up.

Commands are the actions you normally do on Word, for example Bold and Italics. These commands are in Categories based on the tabs in Word, e.g. the ‘Home’ tab or ‘Page Layout tab.

This arrangement means you’ll easily find the command you want to customize as a keyboard shortcut.

We’ll now demonstrate how to add a keyboard shortcut to the Strikethrough command on Word. You’ll notice there is no shortcut key for Strikethrough — the ‘Current keys’ box is empty.

Click on the ‘Press new shortcut key‘ box and personalize a keyboard combination shortcut. In this case, we used Alt + S.

You can see that the combination Alt + S is not taken because it’s unassigned. This is important as you do not want to double assign a combination. After that click on Assign.

You can see all the assigned shortcuts you have for each command in the ‘Current keys’ box. If it is empty that means you have yet to assign a shortcut to the command. Click Close when you’re done.

Now whenever you highlight text with your mouse, you can press Alt + S to Strikethrough it. Again, this is not just limited to Strikethrough but any command you set with a keyboard shortcut combination.

Custom Keyboard Shortcuts For PowerPoint & Excel 2013

There are some limitations creating shortcuts on PowerPoint and Excel as you don’t get as much flexibility compared to Word. However, adding keyboard shortcuts is simpler for both PowerPoint and Excel.

Let’s use the example of the AutoSum button. When you need the values of certain fields added up together, you use the AutoSum function. It’s handy to have a keyboard shortcut assigned to that if you are doing your bookkeeping, for instance.

To add a keyboard shortcut to AutoSum, right-click on it and select ‘Add to Quick Access Toolba’r.

It’ll be added to the top left corner of Excel, in the same row as the ‘Save’ and ‘Undo’ icons.

To activate this shortcut, all you have to do is hit the Alt key on your keyboard. You’ll see anumber corresponding to the shortcut, in this case it’s the number 4 that activates the AutoSum command.

You can do the same thing to any other command or action you need to use on both PowerPoint and Excel (this also works for Word). Just right click on the button and Add it to Quick Access Toolbar.

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5 Ways To Make Your IOS Devices More Kid-Friendly And Child-Safe

By: Avi on 12:15 AM

Kids born into the tablet generation are exposed to more gadgets, devices and Internet tools than any other generation before theirs. Toddlers can navigate their way in a mobile device like a duck takes to water but they have little to no way of knowing how to be responsible with what they do to the contents of tablets and smartphones.

Anyone who has had lent a child a these devices would sometimes find apps missing, or files displaced, or even worse new purchases that were made without parental or the owner’s consent. While it is necessary to talk to them about handling these gadgets more responsibly, you can always fall back on the options available in iOS devices to better handle these mishaps.

Here are 5 tricks you can turn your iOS devices kid-friendly (applicable for iOS 6 and above).

1. Block In-App Purchases

If you have a lot of games on your iOS devices (who doesn’t?) you will need this. With your credit card linked to your Apple ID, you really don’t want to make a purchase as easy as tapping a button, especially when the person tapping it does not understand what a ‘purchase’ means.

To block in-app purchases:

1. Tap on Settings > General > Restrictions.
2. If this is your first time using restrictions feature, tap on Enable Restrictions.
3. You will be asked to set a 4-digit passcode. Enter the passcode twice for confirmation.
4. Scroll down until you see the ‘Allowed Content’ section.
5. Under ‘In-App Purchases’ toggle it OFF.

Future purchases will require the use of the passcode you have just set to proceed.

2. Disable ITunes, Installing & Deleting Apps

If you are afraid that your kids might accidentally delete off some of your apps or download paid apps without you knowing, you can avoid that disabling this feature under iTunes.

To disable app installation and/or deletion:

1. Go to Settings > General > Restrictions.
2. Under Allow, turn OFF iTunes.
3. Turn OFF Installing Apps and/or Deleting Apps.

When you turn all 3 features, the icon for iTunes and App Store will disappear from your home screen, thus making the feature inaccessible.

3. Disable Safari And Protect Data

To make your device more kid-friendly, you can disable more features under the Restrictionsoption. You can toggle OFF Safari, so that your kid can’t visit any website via the browser while they are on the device.

To protect data inside your Mail, Contacts and Calendars, under the ‘Accounts’ section, set your accounts settings to ‘Don’t Allow Changes‘.

4. Set Up YouTube Account

YouTube has a lot of great content for kids and is a favorite place for kids to find animation, music, videos and the likes online. It is best to set up an account for your child. From there, you can make a video playlist of content you think are suitable for their consumption. This will also protect your own playlist from being unintentionally tampered with.

As an added step, before handing the device to the kids to watch, enable Guided Access, so you can disable other parts of the screen to make sure they can’t leave the YouTube app, and wander elsewhere unsupervised.

5. Create ITunes Account

Not only can you give them a YouTube account, you can also create an iTunes account in their name. Then, you can either set an allowance for their app purchases, or gift them the app. With this you can control and monitor what they spend on in iTunes.

For children who are more mature with their activities online, this is also a good way to allow them to manage their own set of apps, without a credit card linked to the account. Note that if you are sharing a device with your kid, you will need to swap between accounts.

Summary

The tricks listed above are not foolproof especially against tech savvy kids who will undoubtedly one day outdo you when it comes to handling gadgets and mobile devices. So if the above mentioned methods do not work, you can always fall back on getting them to seek for your permission before they do anything on your devices.

Do note however that keeping your gadgets in working order is not as important as regularly checking in on your child‘s activities online. Keeping an open communication style allows them to speak to an adult if they have questions, or whenever that need arises.

What about you? What are your methods in handling gadgets around users of much younger ages?

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7 YouTube Tricks You Probably Don’t Know

By: Avi on 10:14 AM

Youtube is undoubtedly one of the most popular video streaming sites out there. Whether you want to check out some new music videos or find the latest tutorials to use a software or gadget, the first place that generally pops to mind is YouTube. Despite it being very popular and powerful there are some tricks and features that are still not known by most users.

This post intends to deliver tricks that will add more dimension to your experience on the YouTube platform, and allow you to enjoy some of the little-known shortcuts, hacks and special features you can use on Youtube.

1. Specific Start Time

If you want to share just a certain portion of a video with a user, you’ll notice that there is no official option to do this. Normally you have to inform others which minute they can pull to start from. Bet you didn’t know that there is a handy hack to send a link to a user or embed a certain portion of the YouTube video in your website. Skip the fluff and get to the good stuff.

Here is how it works. Consider the following Youtube Video URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LHv1FPd1Ec

After the URL link add #t=01m08s to set the starting point of the video at 1 minute and 8 seconds. Here is how it should look like:

To embed a portion of a YouTube video the process goes the same way. You simply have to add #t=01m08s to the embed code you get from the original video and paste it to your website.

Once a user plays the video, it will automatically start from the point you have specified in the embed code.

2. Auto Video Replay

There are certain times when you get obsessed with a Youtube video, whether it’s a really catchy song or a funny video. Isn’t it annoying to always have to hit replay everytime you near the end? Why not activate the looping feature?

The what now? Let’s use the same YouTube video. Just replace youtube with the textinfinitelooper in the URL and hit enter.

It will redirect you to another YouTube third-party platform where you are also provided with the option of looping selected portions of the video.

3. Auto High-Definition Video Play

Sometimes when you play a YouTube video the video quality has been set on default for you, usually at a lower quality video resolution. To prevent this from happening you can force the system to permanently play videos in an HD format.

Grab the extension called Magic Actions for Youtube available only for Google Chrome and Firefox. Enable the option Auto HD in the extension and select the video resolution you would like to be played automatically. You can also set the mouse wheel to scroll up (and down) the volume of the video.

Read Also: How To Disable YouTube Video Autoplay

4. Accurate Keyword Searching

There are a bajillion videos on Youtube so trying to find that specific Youtube video you want to watch is an adventure by itself. You might find yourself crawling through dozens of pages hoping to land the video you actually want to watch.

The solution for this time-consuming exercise is to add allintitle: before the keywords you are search for. What it does is basically provide you with only videos that include the chosen keywords.

5. Omit Keywords

You can opt for specific keywords to be in the search, or out of it. Let’s say you are searching for a tutorial about ‘register domain.’ Using the most conventional search form you will find tons of videos about how to register domain using Godaddy.

If you want to find other options that are not GoDaddy, you can always exclude the keyword from your search results i.e. ‘keyword -excluded keyword.’

Here is how it should look like.

6. Speed Checker

The most important race in the world is the red bar and the grey bar. Youtubers know what I am talking about. You can actually check the loading speeds of the video (if it makes you feel better, you know, knowing if the problem is with your connection, or the blasted video) by adding my_speed next to the address of YouTube Home Page.

If you can’t remember the URL extension, right click on any video and head to ‘Take speed test’.

You will get readings of your average video speed based on your location and can even compare speeds based on certain dates.

7. Watching Videos With A Slow Internet Speed

Youtube has released a robust feature called the ‘Feather Beta’. This feature is dedicated to users who want to run videos on a very slow internet connection. The system basically cuts down some bytes that limit the speed of video streaming in your browser.

To opt-in the feature you simply go to http://www.youtube.com/feather_beta and join the beta feature.

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