Archana Online.com

Off late, I have been changing the blog theme quite often. Have you noticed that? I guess I have been bitten by the theme bug again. It happens to me sometimes, whenever I see someone’s blog with beautiful theme. The footer of that blog will contain the theme name and if not licensed by the blog owner, will also contain the theme provider details from where they got the theme. Often, such sites will contain numerous other themes too for free or for premium.

I guess its the girly nature to change the theme often. I have seen professional people sticking onto just one theme for months. Mostly they use premium themes, which costs above 50$ for single user license. I never delete my old themes unless I dislike them or they are not compatible with the new version of WordPress.

There are the popular smashing magazines themes for free to start with. But then, every individual has their own taste. And for me, I always go for  right-sided 2 or 3 column sidebar, with more space for blogpost, and options for customization. But there are some other small factors like the font and the base colors and the header image used which also helps me in streamlining the choice. Though can be customized easily, I am too lazy to do that, when I consider that I don’t have a permanent header image of my own and there are so many other codings like managing adsense code and other third party widget codes to be placed with every theme.

As of now, I have plans to change again within few days to Blue Grace theme after sailing through Kepple and Silverlight. Lets see how it goes. And those who have email subscription, please check the site out in between so that you don’t miss the action!!

The photofunia.com site enables you to blend your images on various ready-made photos. A sample one is given below.

All are catchy photos with special effects which will boost your spirits high. The website uses mostly face detection algorithms to cut out your face alone from the image you supply from your computer/pc. It also enables to save to Imageshack for easy usage in internet sites or save as Avatar to use in forums and as thumbnails or to save the entire image to your desktop and that too for free!!!

Computers, gadgets, gizmos, toys etc are the keywords which entices geeks and techie freaks. I am not sure how I got attached to such crazy things. Whenever I saw a mobile in someone’s hand,  I would peek it wondering what model is it, if not the number, whether it is high end or low end, or whether mine is better than his or hers etc etc. And then I used to satisfy myself that its expensive and has that n this problems and would appreciate my mobile in the end. But now, with more and more new gadgets and smartphones available at cheaper prices than before, I have started drooling again!

Long back, in childhood, I remember Appa playing with his toolkit containing screwdrivers, variety of spanners, pipe wrench etc. He had his own ways of fixing household appliances which interested me. Being the youngest daughter and spoilt brat that I am, I was like a tomboy for him, helping hands in his maintenance works. I fascinated his calculators and his expertize in mathematics. I am not sure from where he bought them, but I remember using a manual calculator, rather a mechanical abacus kinda device (googled and found its called Addiator). Then there was the digital diary, where in I stored most of my known contact numbers and imagined that I was a serious businesswoman! Those were the times, when mobile phones were too expensive to be bought and when pagers and walkie talkies ruled the world. I used to envy my friend’s father’s pager when she used to talk about it. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to the 5th episode of the Webscape Tidbits. This time, I have just few links compared to the ten given in the last post.

1. Ever wondered if you could write a secret letter to someone and blurt out your feelings? Ever imagined how people go about suppressing their emmotions or waving it off in the form of a curse, or forgiveness or play of life? Ever wished that you could convey your wishes to the old friend whose whereabouts is unknown? So there is one such website where your could post/submit your letter to the mailbox and they will publish the letter for you if you are lucky!

2. I had been going through this phase of life many times and even recently. I am sure, any blogger, who writes casually do fall for the disease of writer’s block sometime or the other. There are many ways to get out of this, by either taking up tags, or writing random thoughts or by bouncing back automatically with time. There are websiets which says how to overcome the writer’s block by keeping on writing, no matter what nonsense it is…. Great!

3. As mentioned earlier about the bookshelf, there were time, when I was crazy with books, and thought I would be a great reader and follow the paths of great writers by reading a lot..During those times, I searched for top reads or best sellers etc, and came across this site, which mentions about the 100 must read books. Now, apart from few classics, I haven’t even heard of those books ever. Nevertheless, its a great site, which contains reviews of so much books, including the plot too!! Saves time in selecting a book!!!!

4. These days, I have been smitten by blogomania, which means to stumble upon blogs, and read blog posts, and if the disease is on the high, you even subscribe to it, through Google reader or any other bookmarks! So although the below blogs may have been already popular, I came across them only recently, and few of them made me laugh so much that, if I had an award and trophies for humourous blogs, I would have given them right away….

a. Domain Mazimus – Strange blog title I know, but it gives the explanation too…
b. Mirror Cracked – Another cupid victim!
c. This music gives you, rather gave me, a refreshing wave of Chennai thoughts and memories, along with this good personal blogger from Chennai…

Soft music and rather addicting right??? Though I would now prefer to fast numbers so as to prevent my blackmailing trap of random thoughts pulls me in. So listening to Pyaar ki yeh kahaani suno from the film Honeymoon travels Pvt. Ltd. Absolutely mesmerizing dance performance there!!! So while I enjoy the music and stumble across various websites, go along and take a break or if you don’t want to, keep following me on twitter or read on other episodes of Webscape!!!

Hope you all enjoyed this episode of webscape. Keep pouring in your suggestions at so n so. Till I come back with another Webscape escapade, this is Archana aka crazy bluediamond signing off..

I love Google. From the time, I knew about searching information on web, Google was my supervisor. Earlier, when emails were luring people onto internet, I was also a victim of Yahoo and Hotmail and Rediff. Since Gmail, I have never looked back. If I self-analyse, I could see that I use Google products more than anything for online purposes. Starting from the popular Orkut and Gtalk, I have moved on to use Adsense and Analytics and Webmaster Tools for blogging technically, Notebook and Reader as blogging assistant tools, Picasaweb for all my photo albums, Toolbar for efficient browsing, Bookmarks for storing my favourite sites and so on. There are other tools like Youtube and Blogger which I use occasionally for reading. And few of the old tools like Groups and Alerts which I have stopped long back.

Now its Google Chrome from today.! Will it mesmerize me in the same way as its brother products did??? The comic ad looks promising! Lets wait n watch.

There are times in life… When you wished to cry loud, leaning on someone’s shoulder, clinging onto them to your heart tightly… Or to blast onto their ears of your success or achievement… When you just want to smile at the nature’s beauty admiringly and want to cuddle up in someone’s arms… Or to release the impounding pressure of the heart and tension from your mind and to find solace and peace… There are times in life you wished you could just hug someone… without any desire, without any shame, without any name, without any relationship, without any gender bias, seeking love….
I didn’t knew it was possible…

Stumbled across the Free Hugs organization recently, and the video, which reminds you the essential craving in you to hug someone in your life. Quite a good initiative, but I really wonder, whether in the land of conservative people down in the South India, whether this concept would be accepted ever? Food for thought!

Webscape is back. I would try not to miss them again, but it actually depends on the various stumbled sites of mine, and based on how others help me out in providing and discovering links through their sharing methods.

1. http://firef.ly/ – For people who use Facebook, might have noticed that you can chat with people who are visiting the site at the same time along with you. I guess Firefly is similar kinda application that can be used on any site…. But useful only if many are visiting the site simultaneously!

2. YouTube Video Download Tool – Recently, owing to the extreme availibility of my broadband connection, I am watching more and more you tube videos. But the wait for it to load completely is terrible. Hence this download tool is extremely efficient in downloading all the clips to watch at a later time. You need FLV player to play them.

3. Stumbled upon the cool wallpaper links from Smashing Magazine.

Read the rest of this entry »

Netvibes: This site can be used for free as a collection of all feeds almost like My Yahoo or My Msn. It contains lot many modules and can be easily customized by the drag and drop feature.

Online FTP: Some people suggest inbuilt FTP from the browsers. I am yet to try such apps, but as of now, I use this online ftp method to access the ftp server of the blog.

Cheer up: A good guide to cheer you up whenever you feel low. It contains all the encouraging words for you to boost your spirits. Read on. You may feel that the nanny is available on net!!! Thanks to Ashwin for the link.

WordPress Plugins – Again!: Nowadays whenever I stumble upon blogs or sites, I have a special interest towards the sites or blogs wherever the word “plugins”, “themes”, “blog”, “earn” etc. Here are the few 3 I have in my list:

Life Hack
Tech Corner
John TP

Frequent mentioning of the plugins might have given you a hint already that I am planning to install lot many plugins and try them out, so you can expect another related post on the same.

And if you find any delay in between the posts, hang on, I may be just thinking how to jot it down…:D