Manas T

Puzzled ? Google Reader has just announced a new feature which will enable you to read your RSS feeds in Google Reader even when you are not connected to the internet.

This feature enables you to read your 2000 most recent items even when your computer is not connected to the internet.To use the offline features of Google Reader, you will first need to install the Google Gears plug-in for your browser.

An offline version of Google Reader which could be used without the internet, was at the top of the feature requests for most of the Google Reader users. And Google has now done this without creating a standalone software. Instead you can now use the same old Google Reader interface offline and read the latest 2000 items of your RSS feeds.

And this is just the beginning. These offline features are enabled by Google Gears, an application that lets web sites store their data on your local computer using only your web browser and Google Reader is the first to be supported. GMail & Google Docs offline version may also be coming soon.

I am still trying to enable the new offline feature in my Windows XP Firefox browser and I have had no luck yet. And it looks like others are also having problems enabling offline access for Google Reader on the Windows platform. Gina Trapani of LifeHacker was also unable to use Google Gears on the Windows box. But she got it to work on the Mac Firefox instead. Damn! I wish I had a Mac.

And here is the official announcement at last.

Yahoo! Publisher Network has added PayPal as an option of payment for its publishers. So if you are using YPN as a source of income for your blog, you can now get your payments via Paypal.

More significant in this blog post, is YPN reducing the minimum payout to 50$ vs the Google Adsense $100 minimum. This might cause new publishers to go with Yahoo instead of Google since it is much easier to make the first $50.

Now only if Google Adsense would lower the payment threshold from 100$ to 50$ …

Almost every blog design uses unordered lists to display the different items in the sidebar. By default unordered lists have only three different types of bullets (disc, square and circle) which are not very good looking to the eye. By using custom bullets you can make your blog design unique and more appealing to your site’s visitors.

How To Use Custom Bullets

For using custom bullets you need to add a bit of CSS to your blog’s stylesheet.

Blogger users can add the following code bits just before the ]]></b:skin> tag and WordPress users need to add the following code at the end of their template’s style.css file.

1. Disable the default bullets

The code is as following :

ul { list-style:none; margin:0 0 0; padding:0 0 0; }

The above code disables the default bullets and also makes indentations set by your template (if any) zero.

2. Add The Custom Bullets

The code is as follows:

ul li { background:url(arrow_right.png) no-repeat left center; padding-left:20px; margin-bottom:10px; }

Replace the url field with the location where you have placed the image to be used as bullet. To move the bullet up or down to align with the text properly, replace center in the above code by custom values (use 1px, 2px etc. and see which value works better).

For example,

background:url(arrow_right.png) no-repeat left 1px;

You can also increase the padding and margin values in the code above to space the individual items in the list a bit more elegantly.

Save your template and exit. View your blog, you should now have custom bullets in your blog.

Some Custom Bullets For Use

In case, you are wondering where you can get good bullets, then your problem is solved. Here are some icons from the fabulous famfamfam silk icons pack which you can use for your blog.

Just right click on the bullet you like and save.

Microsoft Office PowerPoint Presentations tend to become bloated especially when you have used a large number of images in the presentation. And the actual problem occurs when you need to e-mail the presentation or fit it in a Floppy Disk (yes some people still use it). Here is how you can drastically decrease the size of your PowerPoint presentations in some simple steps.

How To Compress And Optimize PowerPoint Presentations

1. Open your Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.
2. Click File —> Save As …
3. In the Save Dialog Box, click on Tools — > Compress Pictures..
4. If you are going to print your slides later check “Print” else check Resolution as “Web/Screen”. The Web/Screen option gives smaller file sizes.
5. Also check “Compress pictures” and “Delete cropped areas of pictures”.
6. Click “OK” and click “Apply” if confirmation comes up.
7. Save your presentation under a different file name.

Now check the size of the new PowerPoint presentation. It will be less by at least 50%.

Puzzled by the title ? Yes, you can indeed earn money for receiving SMS ads on your mobile. mGinger is a new beta service which will pay you money for receiving ads on your mobile. At first I thought this was yet another spam service which will fade away after some days. But after reading their website, I think that it is indeed possible to receive money for getting ads on your mobile.

How mGinger works ?

Once you sign up with mGinger and verify your e-mail and mobile number, you will start receiving SMS advertisements on your mobile. For each ad that you receive, you will be paid 20 paise. You can receive a maximum of 10 messages per day. But as with any other online money making service, the actual earning starts when you start referring your friends to mGinger. For the people you refer, you will receive 10 paise for each ad that they will receive. Similarly, for each of the friends that your referrals refer, you get paid 5 paise for each ad. Keep on counting, and you have an easy earning for receiving ads on your mobile.

Whats more ? mGinger has provided a calculator on their homepage to help you calculate how much you can earn.

FAQ’s on mGinger

1. Will I get spammed with ads ?

Definitely not, you choose how many ads you want to receive (5, 7 or 10). mGinger will never send you more messages.

2. Can I unsubscribe in the future ?

Yes, you can unsubscribe from mGinger anytime you want. But you will never again be able to register with that mobile number again.

Register with mGinger

Bonus Tip : With mGinger, you can set the time when you want to receive the ads. So if you want you can set the time to be somewhere around 3:00 AM in the morning so that the ads do not come in the way of your work.

P.S. – This service is presently available only for India.