A website’s “visual appeal” is one of the most important factors when it comes to first impressions. Visitors make nearly instantaneous judgments that influence their decision on whether to stay and the site or bounce out of it right away.

When it comes to creating aesthetically appealing websites, you might be interested in taking a look at Wix. If you haven’t heard of Wix.com yet, let me introduce you: it’s a powerful Flash website builder that enables you to create and publish your own stunning custom Flash websites, mini-sites and other Flash content for free. More and more bloggers have also come to understand the importance of a well designed site. Many are now using Wix to add more dynamic designs into their blogs and also, to create their own custom standalone websites into which they add their RSS feeds. The connection between Wix and Bloggers couldn’t be more natural.

Similar to the Wordpress platform, Wix offers a powerful free web design solution. Read more

I am always looking for new and unique free icons to use in my WordPress theme design and web development work. Although there are a lot of free icons sets available on the Internet, but my favorites are those sets which have icons for almost every aspect of theme design, e.g., categories, tags, comments, RSS feed, e-mail etc.

To save you from the hassle of hunting around on the Internet for icons (free and usable) to use in your projects, I have made a list of my all-time favorite icon sets freely available for download.

LED Icons

• Number of Icons :- 500
• License :- Free for Personal and Non-Commercial usage
• Download LED Icon Set
  

Developpers Icons

• Number of Icons :- 105
• License :- Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
• Download Developpers Icon Set

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My apologies for not updating the blog for so many days :). To make it worth your wait, I am launching a brand new free WordPress theme called “Bookish”. This is a small sized (80Kb) theme that comes in four color variations - Blue, Red, Green and Black. The theme comes with admin options that allow you to switch the color theme, change post text alignment (left/right), Twitter ID, change the featured post category and finally an option that lets you set excerpts or full posts on your home page.

The theme is compatible with the latest WordPress 2.8, fully CSS/XHTML validated and has been tested with Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari browsers.
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Today, while browsing the WordPress website, I noticed that WordPress 2.8 Beta was available for testing. So, I decided to download it and give it a test run. Here is a list of major changes that make this release a bit different from the earlier versions.

Manage your Tags

A new sub-section has been added to the Posts section called “Post Tags” that contains all the tags that have been used so far in your blog. Just like categories, you can change the Tag name, Tag slug and also add description for your tags.

Manage Themes Better

When managing your themes earlier, you had to click on a particular theme’s screenshot and then activate or discard it from the enlarged theme preview screen. This has been changed to something efficient now. You just have to click on the “activate” link and the desired theme gets applied directly without showing you a preview (the preview sometimes used to get stuck in case a theme was broken or if a required plugin wasn’t installed). This feature can indeed save a lot of precious time. Additionally, you can also delete any unwanted themes from the same screen by clicking on the “delete” link.
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What is Adobe AIR?

If you haven’t heard of Adobe AIR yet, let me introduce you to this technology provided by Adobe. Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is a cross-platform environment that enables you to have your favorite web applications with you all the time. Since applications built for Adobe AIR run on your desktop computer without a web browser, they provide all the convenience of a desktop application. AIR allows existing Flash, Actionscript or HTML and JavaScript code to be used to construct traditional desktop-like programs.

In order to run these applications, you need to first install the Adobe AIR environment in your computer (Just like you install Flash player or JAVA runtimes). You can download the latest version freely here :- Get Adobe AIR

My 10 Favorite Adobe AIR Applications

As I use many of these AIR applications almost everyday, I have made a list of my favorite ones. These are quite handy and I am sure that you will find them useful too. I have made a folder on my desktop where I keep all the shortcuts to my AIR applications. So, here they are :-

• Font Picker :- If you have too many fonts installed on your computer, it can get very hard when you have to choose the right font type for your projects. This AIR tool shows you all the fonts installed on your computer and helps you choose which one is most suitable for a particular project.

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Affiliate marketing in an internet based marketing concept, where merchants offer commission to affiliates for selling their products or services. The merchants would require affiliate software for this purpose, which can be purchased online. Though purchasing this software would require a one-time investment, it is worth the money spent. Once the software is installed, there are no additional costs involved. This type of marketing is cheap and gives instant results. There aren’t any advertising expenses, since commission is paid to affiliates after the sale is processed. Therefore, the pre-selling costs are ZERO. This online marketing strategy should be used with various channels available on the internet. Essentially, an affiliate marketer should explore all the means of promoting sales like, SEO, keyword optimization, Pay Per Click, Pay Per Performance, Pay Per Email, Pay Per Action Adwords and so on.
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If you are a WordPress theme designer, here’s your chance to win a cool sum of $300! Participate in this contest, show off your design skills, and earn some easy money (plus bragging rights as the theme designer). All you have to do is design and code the best WordPress theme that enters this contest. There is also a runner-up prize of $100 for the second best entry. Excited? Go ahead, read the rules :-

How to Participate

Once you have finished your theme design, you should send it to me at bob[at]blogohblog.com in the form of a zip file. You should also send me your name, contact e-mail address and your PayPal address (in case you are the winner). The subject of your e-mail should read :- “April 2009 Theme Design Contest”. If your theme is complete and meets the following eligibility criteria, you will be considered as a valid participant in the contest.
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Hurray! Blog Oh! Blog has been endowed with a brand new theme which is hotter, sexier and much more functional We got a better portfolio, premium theme shop and our own affiliate program. Almost everything has been renovated. So, lets call it Blogohblog V2.0

Let me know how you like it…

When we speak of social networking, what are the few things that come to our minds? Facebook…? MySpace…? Twitter…? Orkut…? I think there is an endless list of such social networking websites. If I start listing them one by one, it will take up all my hosting space. So, do you think social networking is limited to a few neat looking websites who want to know everything I do from the morning until the moment I sleep? What happened to the times when people physically met and socialized? Every new day, a new social app/website is being created.. to do what? To make our already plugged lives more bizarre? So what is this concept of social networking? A fad, trend or just another bandwagon to hop on? I know that networking has its own advantages, but do you think that telling my friends what I ate, what I am reading, or how much I slept will make any difference in their lives? Oh yes, it will certainly make a difference to someone who wants to steal my information.

When I was little, I used to be very shy of making new friends. I used to tell my mom if I wanted to befriend someone in the neighborhood, and then she helped me out. But what now? Anyone can just sit on the computer and add a thousand friends to his already long list of the so-called friends, without even knowing that there can be a stalker, a murderer or even a rapist in that queue. But hey, its all part of the social networking gimmick! Isn’t it? Let me socialize some more and one fine day..oops.. I am dead.
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