How to Choose a Free Website Hosting Service

For first timers and casual webmasters (like myself) free services are particularly appealing even if they are restricted and lacking in features. These days there are hundreds of companies who offer free web hosting but most them of them have some sort of a catch in order to force you into opting for one of their paid plans to gain greater freedom on the net.

The following is a beginners guide to web hosting mentioning a list of features that are available for free and are particularly helpful to webmasters.

1. MySQL and PHP support.

MySQL and PHP are very important and you can run a very limited number of applications without them. For example even a basic WordPress blog requires a MySQL database and PHP support. Apart from this a lot of popular applications such as Movable Type require Perl for proper functioning.

2. FTP Access

FTP access is very important to maintain a website because every time you need to upload something you will be needing it. Even if you have browser upload facilities it is not always very reliable, specially when dealing with relatively large files, in which case FTP is the best and easiest method to achieve your end.

3. Bandwidth

Bandwidth is basically a measure of the maximum amount of traffic that your website can receive within a given frame of time (usually one month). Assuming that you are hoping to get at least a few visitors to your website apart from yourself and family you should look for a web host which provides bandwidth in excess of 200MB/month at least. For a very realistic estimate a text-based website which has received around 200 page views will expend 90MB bandwidth.

If you are considering photo blogs or Vblogs (video blogs) you should only consider web hosts providing over 500MB data transfer per month.

4. Advertisement

A lot of free web hosts monetize their service by forcibly  placing banner or pop-up ads on your website. Some include a footer text like “Click here for free web hosting”. If it is a purely personal blog these advertisements hardly pose a problem. But otherwise it somehow seems to undermine the credibility and authority of your website, not to mention become tiresome to your readers.

5. Diskspace

Depending up on the nature of your site this may be either your most important or your least important concern. For most purposes a disk space of above 500MB should be quite sufficient and a lot of web hosting companies provide more than that. However, if you are planning on creating your portfolio and get your high resolution photos or HD videos online you might be a touch hard put to find a free host with sufficient amount of disk space. (the maximum I’ve ever heard of is 50 GB and that’s a bit rare).

6. PHP cURL and fsockopen enabled are two other important features for a web host but these are very rare in case free web host provider. I’m not sure exactly what purpose these two features serve, but I can guarantee you one thing: If you are looking to use any auto blogging   applications chances are they won’t work without cURL and fsockopen enabled.

This is basically all you need to know in order to find yourself a descent web host. In case you get stuck, never mind, I’m planning to do another article discussing my experiences with some of the larger web hosting companies that provide free hosting.

Zurker : Own a Social Networking Site for Free !!!

Have you heard of Zurker yet? It is a new Social Networking sites which claims to be more fun than Facebook and is making no bones about the fact that toppling Facebook as the number social networking site is their main ambition--and that should tell you something about what its creators think about the potential for Zurker. However, it has one major difference from Facebook, Myspace and just about any other social networking sites--it is owned by its members and you get paid for Zurker's success.


How does the payment structure at Zurker work?
Zurker assigns its member vShares for every new successful referral. And I am very happy to say that Vshare isn't another one of those abstract revenue sharing rating points. Instead Vshare is simply a virtual share and will become a real share once Zurker get 1 million members. The value of one Vshare is one-millionth of the evaluation of Zurker. So here's the catch: only the people who refer the first 1 million people will be awarded Vshares. So it is best to join Zurker as soon as possible to maximize your chances of referring new members.


This is actually a great earning opportunity considering that Social Networking sites are some of the greatest money makers in the cyber world and even if Zurker falls way short of Facebook's $50 billion evaluation and is evaluated at just $50million (and that is quite a conservative estimnate considering Myspace fetched close to $600million and Bebo $800million), each vShare (which you are getting for free) will still earn you $50! Now that's not to shabby.


Other features of Zurker
Apart from this radical new development, Zurker has all the features you would expect in a social networking site. However, for obvious reasons Zuker doesn't allow multiple accounts  and they are also planning to go open source sometime in the future. Another point to note about Zurker is that it has already introduced country specific TLDs (like in Blogger) and this shows that they are more than willing to adapt to the present scenario, which has now become almost a prerequisite for success on the internet.


The future of Zurker is still quite uncertain, but it has been building up members at an impressive rate and is already of PR4 site with an Alexa rank of around 58000. So I will definitely reccomend you to check out Zurker specially as it is completely free and easy to use. 


Note:At present Zurker is in beta testing and you cannot sign up without an invitation. So ince you don't have one feel free to use mine (or click on any of the links to Zurker in the article above):
http://www.zurker.in/i-123003-ajdsilrbdk

Catasia Studio : Screencast Software Review

If you are looking to create computer based video tutorials or demos to promote your products and applications then the easiest way to go about it is by using a screencast software which captures all the actions going on on your computer screen and directly renders it to popular video formats which can be used in just about any which way you want.

Though there are a large number of free online and offline screencasting options available on the internet, it is quite likely that if you are trying to produce a video with any degree of professionalism then you would want to use a paid screencast software, and sooner rather than later. Here is a look at one of the more popular paid screencasting software, Catasia Studio.


Features I Like About Camtasia Studio 6
Intuitive User Interface
Camtasia Studio uses a very user friendly interface which is so intuitive that you hardly ever need to consult the help files, which themselves are are pretty comprehensive albeit compact. But to help you master the software better you can also download or stream short tutorial videos from their website.

Zoom-n-Pan
The Zoom-n-pan feature gives you great control over the camera angles (such zooming in to a particular section of your screen) and is very handy in just about any tutorial as it allows you to focus in on the relevant part of your screen in every single shot.


Caption
Caption is a very basic feature and present in most screencast software. It basically allows you to add subtitles to your video and is a very handy feature as it will almost invariably increase your audience.


Call-Out
The Call Out feature allows you to add various kinds of "boxes" inside your video during post processing and maybe used for a variety of purposes such as highlighting text, drawing special attention to a part of the screen  or to simply blur out sensitive information from the screencast.

Drawback of Camtasia Studio 6

I had just two issues with my Camtasia Studio 6 software:

1. It is slightly difficult to get the aspect ratio right in order to get the maximum possible screen area for your video. Further, if you are using captions they too tend to eat up quite a bit of screen space.
2. The Youtube version of the rendered videos often turn out to be of a slightly lower quality than expected as per the preview.

 Pricing of Camtasia Studio 7

The latest version of Camtasia Studio available is Camtasia Studio 7 and it is priced at a marginally expensive $50 for the individual license and also offer a host of different licensing options.  

Make Money from Product and Movie Reviews

Out of the several ways you can make money on the Internet, one of the easiest and most popular is by writing product reviews. Most review sites are free to join and offer either upfront or residual payment for reviews you write for them. The following is a list of the most popular websites that pay you for your reviews:

1) Review Stream: Review Stream is one of the few websites on the Internet that accept international members as well as pays upfront. Set up with an aim to pay for every review published with them, it is one of the best places to earn substantial money on the net. They accept reviews of almost everything and anything under the sun, ranging from books to softwares to local restaurants.

The amount they pay for reach review varies between $1.25 to $2.5. Apart from that they buy slightly inferior reviews at a bulk rate, which is the normal rate divided by five.

2) Epinion: Epinion is another major player in this industry but unlike Review Stream they only offer a passive revenue sharing for your reviews. They encourage you to write reviews on products available on their store and a percentage of the sales made by them is distributed amongst the authors. This does not mean that you cannot write a negative review on Epinion as they pay you even for negative reviews.

3) Ciao!: Ciao! (Not to be confused with Ciao.com) is another major website dealing with reviews and is probably powered by Bing!. However they do not accept international members. Ciao has specific websites for different countries such as Ciao.co.uk for the United Kingdom, and Ciao.it for Italy. If you live in any of these countries then I can assure you that Ciao has one of the finest revenue-sharing policies out there.

4) Softwarejudge: Softwarejudge accepts reviews of only softwares. For every review published on their site that pay you a minimum of one dollar but it might go up to as much as $50. However the cash redemption process of Softwarejudge is slightly troublesome and you’ll probably have to write quite large number of reviews before reaching their payment threshold of $100.

5) Squidflix: It is a subsidiary of Squidoo and is dedicated solely to movie reviews. You simply need to choose a movie, decide whether you love it or hate it, write hundred words about it and Squidflix will do the rest. It will display Google Adsense and Infolinks(optional) advertisements on your Web page (or lens as they are called). Apart from that you can also easily integrate Amazon and eBay modules and earn through referrals by displaying related products available on Amazon or eBay.

6) Shvoong: Shvoong accepts reviews of all most all forms of published text ( such as books, news etc.) as well as websites and movies and the site pays 10 per cent of the revenue generated from your reviews.

7) Gomolo: It is probably a subsidiary of Shvoong and specialises in Indian and especially Hindi films. Its revenue-sharing policies are same as Shoovng.

Leading Microstock Sites

Wouldn't it be nice if you could somehow rake in a cool passive income from your holiday photos? Well actually you can do just that by signing up for a microstock site! Microstock sites essentially connects small time or amateur photographers willing to sell their photos to publishing houses willing to buy them.

From the seller's perspective, the biggest advantage of using a microstock agency is that they seldom claim exclusive rights to your photos meaning the same photo can be sold over and over again. From the buyer's perspective also, microstock is often preferred over regular stock photos because they are a lot cheaper (often costing less than $1 per photo).

Following is a list of some of the most popular microstock sites available to international citizens.

iStockphoto

A subsidiary of Getty Images, iStockphoto is the oldest and probably the largest (profit wise) microstock agency. A very stringent quality control policy ensures that only the best photos get approved and it is very difficult to become a contributing photographer for them. However, they also provide industry leading contributor compensation schemes making sure their photographers can enjoy a steady and substantial income.

Apart from photos iStockphoto also accepts vectors and video clips.

Shutterstock

Another major player in the microstock industry is Shutterstock. Unlike most other microstock agencies Shutterstock operates on a subscription basis, which means instead of single photos, large publishing houses buys hundreds of photos from them at a bulk rate. This in turn ensures their photographers have a greater chance of selling a large number of photos in a short period of time, generating a sizable income. Reportedly,some contributing photographers are earning as much as $10,000 a month from Shutterstock alone.

Another great feature of Shutterstock is their support forum which contains lots of interesting discussions and tips and tricks from some of the industry leaders and is a treasure trove of information for any budding photographer.

Shutterstock is always on the look out for editorial photos and can even provide you backstage passes if you are willing to cover any newsworthy event in your locality.

Dreamstime

Dreamstime is a much smaller microstock site, but still a lot of people are making hundreds of dollars with them every month. An unique feature of Dreamstime is that they offer critical reviews of the photos they have rejected, giving the photographer a chance to either plead his case or make the necessary adjustments and resubmit the photos.

Dreamstime also allows the selling of exclusive rights at a recommended price of $350 (negotiable).

Bigstockphotos

A subsidiary of Shutterstock, Bigstockphotos have well over 3 million photos on their database. Their editorial team is a lot more lenient making it a good place to start for beginners. Unfortunately, however, at present it is rather difficult to generate any sort of revenue with Bigstockphotos.

A few other well known and reliable microstock sites include Fotolia, Crestock and Canstock Photo.

C++ Tips and Tricks for Beginners

I am learning a bit of C++ as part of my Engineering curriculum and I am picking up a few interesting tricks along the way and I thought I'd share them with other new learners of C++ hear today. This article is not meant for the pros but you are welcome to read through anyone and I hope you will be kind enough to point out any mistakes I have committed. So here goes:


Tip 1: Use Parenthesis and Logical Operators Whenever in Doubt
It is a rather common mistake to think that the computer is your maths teacher because it can interpret your mathematical expression in an entirely different manner. For example, suppose you want to accept a value and find out if it's between 500 and 1000 (ie. 500<x<1000). But you use a if loop like
if(500<x<1000) 
The computer will always evaluate it as TRUE. Why? Because it evaluates the function from left to right and because < is a binary operator the evaluation is in fact (500<x)<1000.
Now, 500<x is either 0 (false) or 1 (true) but in either case it is <1000. So the if loop always evaluates as TRUE.


Tip 2: Use Do-While Loop to Your Advantage
The main difference between the do-while loop and other common loops like the for loop or the while loop is that the checking is done at the end of the loop rather than at the beginning. Which means, no matter what the loop will evaluate AT LEAST ONCE. You can use this to your advantage in more ways than you may think and make your program more convenient to write and also create a few nice tricks. Here is a very easy trick you can perform with the while loop:
int main()
{
define your variables
int rerun;
do{
write your statements
cout<<"Enter 1 to try again"<<endl;
cin>>rerun;
}while(rerun==1);


Tip 3: Evaluate Functional Value While Using Non Linear Equation Solving Algorithm
If you are using computer programs for non linear equations solving by methods such as Regula Falsi, Bisection and Newton Ralphston, then keep in mind that the programs have a tendency of returning false roots, ie, values at which the functional value is not sufficiently close zero. So, it is best to CHECK if your functional value is actually zero before returning the answer.

Easily Designing a Portfolio for Stock Photographer

Just about anyone and everyone requires a portfolio to showcase his works and either lure in new clients or prove his proficiency in his chosen niche. A stock photographer is no different. Actually a good portfolio is a great resource for any photographer in general and a free lance photographer in particular.


If you are an up and coming freelance photographer looking for new clients or to market your stock photos then the answer is definitely "Yes". An online portfolio not only allows you to attract international clients, but provided it gains sufficient search engine visibility, it will also make attract many potential clients who has by chance stumbled on to your site.
In addition, you can use it to sell stock photos directly from your portfolio on a royalty free basis


The mantra for a successful portfolio is to showcase your success not your failures! Spend sufficient amount of time to choose just a handful of your very best photos and those which are representative of your interests and passions. Remember, in a portfolio your intention is to wet a potential clients appetite to see more of your works and quality and quantity should always be given priority.


Designing a website which matches your style of photography is vitally important as in this age of competition the slightest of margins can make all the difference between getting and not getting the commission.
Many web masters use flash animation and ready made gallery extensions to showcase their images. Undoubtedly, Flash animation is great for attracting real visitors but many web browsers along with I Pad, I Phone etc. do not support Flash. So it is always wise to have an HTML page just for back up.
If you are a hardcore pro then get a pro designer to do the job for you. Otherwise you can also design it yourself by using ready made templates and most conveniently by using the popular WordPress platform.
If you are unsure of how to go about designing your website, remember a simple or neutral design where the focus is firmly on your photos is often the way to go.




And last but not the least you need to market your website in order to gain greater visibility in the internet. A great way to catch the attention of search engines and your audience is by integrating a regularly updated blog with your portfolio where you can publish both tips and tricks as well as personal experiences and observations. If you have a large following then using a discussion forum may also be a pretty good idea.
Regular social bookmarking and maintaining a twitter and Facebook page are other ploys you may want to try.
But above all have patience, Rome was not built in a day!


Of course, the most professional approach to creating a website yourself is by using a powerful piece of software like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage. However, these software are often intimidating and rather difficult handle for the amateur developer. A great alternative to this, that will save you considerable effort (not to mention money) and allow you more time to concentrate on important things (like taking great photos) is to use ready made WordPress themes. Many of them are free and those which aren't are almost always priced below $50. Here is a look at some of the themes you might want to try out:


Gallery is a premium WordPress theme which can be used for many purposes, including a Photoblog, Portfolio, Personal Blog, Product Reviews, and more. Some of its interesting features include:


Comes in 2 styles, 3 color styles each allowing easy makeovers to make your site look fresh every time.
Widgetized Sidebar and Footer where you can display relevant text, add cool plugins or even your Adsense code
Custom Fields for Images are optional
Featured Posts (or in your case images) on Homepage
Drop-Down Menu for Pages and Categories to give a cool professional look

Unlike the above two, Photoshot from Theme Forest is uniquely designed to serve as a photographer's portfolio theme. It includes a range of features to allow you to easily create the perfect portfolio website.

FAVORITE BOX - add photos to the favorite box and view them later in a beautiful fullscreen slideshow.

Block right click (prevent images from saving)

Unique menu - unique menu style, all elements are same width and it looks just awesome.

3 Homepage variations (Slideshow, photoblog, static page) not to mention two different color schemes (light and dark)

Infinity is a free professional WordPress-theme. The theme has 3 fixed columns, thumbnails integration, Flickr, Delicious and Twitter integration as well as an attractive visual design. The theme was designed by Zhang Yichi. It includes:
3 fixed columns design
Thumbnail covers style
Flickr, Twitter and delicious integration
However, a major drawback of the Infinity Theme is that it is NOT widget ready.






nother way of using WordPress to showcase your photos is by using a WordPress Gallery Plugins
instead of a dedicated WordPress photography portfolio theme. Some of the most popular WordPress Gallery plugins include:


1. Nextgen Gallery
2. Photosmash Gallery
3. Cincopa Wordpress Plugin


A few other less popular Wordpress gallery plugins include:


1. WP Photo album 2. Picasna 3. Superslider-show 4. Lightbox Gallery 5. Page Flip Image gallery 6. Cleaner Gallery.