How to easily check who are following you back on Twitter and who are not

It was staring me at the face but I had to see it as a tweet from one of the twitterers that I follow that it struck home. For those of you who have not yet got on to Twitter, I can only say that you should. It is great. Go to Twitter.com and get a Twitter account.

For those who know about Twitter here is how you can see who amongst those you are following, who are not following you. On your Twitter home page, towards the top right you will have three numbers and buttons below each. Click on the button that says 'following'. See image below:

Now you will go to a page which will show you all the poepl who you are following. Just look under each name, all those which have 'Direct Message' written under them are following you back, and those who don't aren't. Simple.

Now you can happily un follow all those who aren't following you back. This becomes important as it is said that you can not go beyond following 2000 people, unless you already have 2000 followers. I am not very sure about this one, but something of the sort is there. Anyways, it is a very useful thing to know.

How to sleep better in 5 simple and effective steps.

A good night’s sleep can help you get over any trouble and get ready to take on any challenge. The problem is that many of us find it difficult to get a good night’s sleep. I am about to tell you 5 simple steps that will definitely improve your sleeping ability. They are simple and easy, and they will over time make a definite difference.

Point 1

The first thing to be done is that one must sleep with a clear mind. By a clear mind I mean a mind that has been emptied of all the worries, tensions, excitements and happenings of the day gone by. This can be done in many ways, but one very simple way is to lie down and mentally feel a wave of calm white light rising up from your feet to your head and leaving you calm. Then look into your head and with a pair of mental hands start pulling out thoughts (imagine it to be like sticky bubble gum and you are pulling the thought out firmly with you hands) from your mind and washing it off in a river of white light. One by one remove all the things that have given you tensions, worries, excitement or whatever. Now your mind is calm and ready for a good nights sleep.

Point 2

Another simple method of getting better sleep is to wash your feet in warm water just before sleeping. You can step into the bathroom and wash your feet with warm water running directly from the tap or in a bucket. Some people also prefer to have the water in a low plastic saucepan near their bed, and then dip their feet for a while and then go off to sleep. Some even take a warm water bath before sleeping, but I feel washing the feet is more effective.

Point 3

This one works for some and doesn’t work for others. It’s more of a trick really, but what’s the harm. Pick up a very difficult to read classic, say ‘Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce’. Now force yourself to read and UNDERSTAND ten pages of the book. It’s important to try and understand, that’s what’s going to make you drowsy. If it’s going to work for you it will start working by the time you reach the second or third page. Then close the book and switch off the lights.

Point 4

Drink Chamomile tea (without sugar and milk) before sleeping, it helps you relax and makes you drowsy. Drinking a glass of warm milk is also considered good, but not for everyone. So, nice herbal tea like chamomile is a good way to prepare for sleep.

Point 5

Another useful tip that works for some and works against some is ‘visual stimulation’. Do not get your eyes too stimulated before sleeping, by watching TV or a DVD or playing a computer game or surfing. This creates images inside your head that take a long time to dissipate and allow you to sleep. However, there is a flip side to this. Some people find it to be almost a ritual to watch some TV, or surf or play a game before they sleep. So use this tip with care, try it for a few days and see what works better for you.

Over all you need to be aware of what makes you sleep better. This will happen only if for a month or so you actually watch your habits and behaviour just before you sleep and even a couple of hours before you begin the process of sleeping. Things like what you ate, what you watched, what you did, whom you talked to, what your emotional state was, were you happy or disturbed, were you tired, did you just laze around all day etc. etc. You are the best person to actually find out what is the best way to improve your sleep. However if it is a very serious insomnia problem, you MUST consult a medical authority, or a doctor who will be able to direct you to the right expert.

Hope you get a great night’s sleep tonight!

How to search more effectively - Part 1

Hey what is there in searching, just go to Google and type in what you are looking for and hit the search button. And what do you get, a whole mountain of sites with leads to search through before getting to that particular information you want.

Maybe for regular searches get you the best results right away, but when you have to search for something that is a little specific and not readily available, then what do you do? Try many combinations of the search words and hope that you will get lucky.

Frankly, most times you are unable to get satisfactory information even after searching for hours. I won’t say that I can show you how to search for anything and get the perfect results, but I can surely make your search a whole lot more effective.

Point 1

Let us begin with the basics. Did you know that if you want to search for a specific combination of words, then putting the words within double inverted commas (“ and ”) will get you only those search results that have those words in the exact sequence and one after the other?

This is the very simplest of ways to refine your search. Let’s say you are looking for any information on James Davis who lives in Illinois. Go to Google and search for ‘James Davis Illinois’. You get all search results with the three words mentioned anywhere within the webpage. Now put the words within double inverted commas and search in Google – “James Davis Illinois”.

You will get much fewer results and in every result the words ‘James Davis Illinois’ appears together. Makes it so much easier for you to find the correct James Davis isn’t it.

Point 2

Now, let me tell you a further tip on how to get better search results. Using your common sense and your imagination, just think that if this person’s name was being mentioned in an article, write-up or anywhere, what would the most likely construct of the sentence be. In all probability it will be ‘James Davis from Illinois’ or ‘James Davis from Illinois’ or ‘James Davis living in Illinois’.

Now do a search of these phrases within double inverted commas. You will get even better results. A simple modification but improves your chances of finding information about the person. You can use this technique to search for anything. Just imagine what the thing you are searching will appear as when written as a part of a sentence, and search that phrase in Google within double inverted commas.

Point 3

Now, let’s get a little advanced. Do you sometimes look for the definition or the meaning of a term or word by searching for it on Google. And when you search for the word, results appear where the word or phrase has been used as a part of a sentence or write-up, without showing any meaning or definition. So what do you do? Well you just write the word ‘definition’ with a colon (:) in front of the phrase or word whose meaning you are searching for. Let’s say you were looking for the meaning of ‘best-of-breed’. Just search by typing in ‘definition: best-of-breed’ (without the single or double quotes, I have put the words within single quotes so that they are seen as separate from the sentence), and you will get its meaning and definition right away.

Point 4

A very simple thing that stares u in the face yet few of us use is ‘Cached’ under each result. It is very useful because many a times when we see the results it shows that the page does not exist, that’s when you can click on cached and get that very page as it was recorded on Google. Just make sure you make a copy of whatever you need quickly as the cached page may be deleted very soon.

Point 5

Now let us enter the arena of Google Search Operators and . Don’t be intimidated by the term, they are merely a way of saying words and terms that help refine your search. There is a huge list of operators and what they do, but when you see it, your mind gets a little boggled. So what I am going to do here is tell you just a few of them, so that you get a taste of their power. Once you are comfortable with them, I will point you to the webpage where you will find a bigger list.

minus sign -

Let’s start with ‘-’, the minus sign. It exclusdes the word that is qualified by the minus sign. Before I explain any more, let me tell you that the sign is useless unless you give a space before the minus sign and no space between the minus sign and the word you want excluded.
Example: You want to search all about cats but not about Siamese cats. Your search query will be [cats –siamese]. If you search [cats-siamese], it will be considered a hyphen.

star sign *

The star sign * is very useful. It is the wildcard sign. Let me give an example. Suppose you want to know what was invented by Alexander Graham Bell, search [Alexander Graham Bell invented *], and you will know the answer. You can use your own imagination about how many ways you can use this symbol while searching.


The OR operator

The OR is a very useful operator too. You want to know all the Hollywood movies that were made in either Canada or Ireland, then you will search [Hollywood movies made in Canada OR Ireland], to get the best results.

Well let me stop here for this first part. The rest will be in part two that will be coming very soon.

How to decide what to blog on

This article’s title sounds like a no-brainer, but it actually isn’t.

Most people start blogging to express themselves, whether through random thoughts, or as a way of keeping daily records of their lives or travels, by writing poetry or short stories or by putting up their photographs.

In most cases what begins as a mish mash of things slowly but surely begins to take a shape. After making several posts, the blog begins to take on a distinct personality. It becomes a blog on a certain topic, subject, issue, reason, genre or even of a certain kind of tone (say humorous or sarcastic).

For most people it gets very difficult to decide beforehand what they are exactly going to blog on. What their blog’s topic or even tone and style will be. All of this develops as the blog develops.

This article will give all the regular netizens and blogging newbies simple guidelines on how to decide what to blog on. It will act like a simple guide on how to choose a blogging topic, subject, genre or tone.

By sheer common sense, the simplest way to decide on what your blog topic should be is through elimination. Let us begin by eliminating one of two basic kinds of blogs – the personal blog and the non-personal blog.

Very broadly, blogs can either be personal or non-personal. Personal blogs are about your own thoughts, views, artistic self-expression through art, music, poetry, videos or anything at all of a personal nature.

Non-personal blogs are based on anything that is not of a personal nature. It could be on other people’s views, thoughts, lives, art, music, interests etc. and may or may not have your own added views in them.

Let us take examples to explain this better. Suppose you start a blog in which you write about your experiences while traveling across the world, it becomes a blog about you, and what happened to you. It becomes a personal blog.

On the other hand if you have a blog that is centred on the best movies being released in Hollywood, it become a non-personal blog. Even if you express your views on these movies, they are non-personal, because your main subject is not you, or anything created or written basis your own experiences or self-expression.

Well, let us now assume that you have eliminated non-personal blogs. Now you are left with the arena of personal blogs. Personal blogs can be broadly and very rudimentarily divided into three types – your experiences, any form of self-expression or your personal views.

If you now decide to eliminate self-expression and personal views, you are left with experiences. Blogs on personal experiences can of many kinds, but let us for the sake of simplicity take these: Travel experiences, Daily experiences, Professional experiences, Recreational experiences, Spiritual Experiences, Relationship experiences.

Suppose you zoom in to recreational experiences, then you have a plethora of choices – eating experiences, partying experiences, sports experiences, cinematic experiences, theatre experiences and others.

Now, lets us suppose that you decide to eliminate all except eating experiences. You have finally come down to a very specific topic to blog on. You will blog on all the gastronomic experiences you have in the course of your life. Be it eating in an obscure restaurant in your home town, or having the local food of Hawaii or the special dinner your wife cooked. You will be writing on your experiences with food, and that becomes the topic of your blog.

Quite simple, but there is the hurdle of a large number of choices. However this hurdle becomes a blessing, because you will never be able to identify all the choices, and will maybe identify only a few of the. The good thing about that is that is that if you could not think of certain choices, it is because you actually aren’t even interested in them. Thus they get automatically eliminated.

Similarly if you had eliminated personal and chosen non-personal, you would go about in a similar manner to eliminate the choices and reach the right one. As a rudimentary example, we could say that there are choices like celebrity, technology, finance, books, nature etc. Using the same method as we did for the personal blogs, and with your imagination and common sense, you will be able to quickly find out exactly what you want to blog on.

So, happy blogging, and choosing what you want to blog on.

How to start blogging

Blogging is a wonderful way to express yourself, send out news, keep an online diary, share with friends and family and even earn. But how does one start blogging?

It is easy to blog. Let me show you the simplest way.

1. First create an email account with gmail (if you already have one, then use it to create your first blog). Lets just assume that it is myfirstblog@gmail.com.

2. Now go to http://www.blogger.com/

3. Here click on the button 'Create a blog'

4. You reach a web page where there will be a form that you have to fill. You will need to fill in your email id (myfirstblog@gmail.com), a password for your new blog (this will be used to enter your blog and start writing blog posts), a display name (this is the name that will be associated with your new blog) and you will need to fill in a word for verifying that you are human and not a automated computer filling the form (this is called word verification).

5. When you click on the 'Continue' button, you will go to a page where you will need to fill in some more details.

6. You will have to fill in a name for your blog. Don't worry if the name is already taken, just keep ing it a little and you will soon find that you have hit upon a unique name.

7. Click on the 'Continue' button.

8. You have now created your blog, and are ready to write your first post.

9. In the blog title give a heading ot your post (say 'My first blog post'), and in the bigger box write the text for it.

10 Click ont he button 'Publish Post' and your blogging has begun.

Now when someone types in the url of your blog, they will see your post. If you want to add another post, you just need to go to http://www.blogger.com/, and using your email username and password you can enter you blog area, where you can make as many new posts as you want.

So happy blogging, and stay tuned for more on different options to start blogging!!

Do write your queries, views and comments, so I can answer them in the next post.