Clear writing checklist for your blog or small business website.

I have always been awed by the power and influence of a well written article. It is quite amazing how a well written article can influence your readers views and can help in increased sales and  a positive return on investment. And not to forget all the back links that you get with people talking about your article all over the Internet.

It really doesn’t matter whether it is print or online media, a well written post has always been able to pull readers and investors, and the most important thing is - people really listen to you if its well written.

Quite recently I got a chance to attend a Clear Writing seminar here in Toronto. I learnt a lot from the seminar and I would like to share a few pointers with our readers.

I know a lot of you are small business owners and Online marketers and I think this article will really help you to take your writing to the next level.

And I am very sure that you (yes, I am talking to you) already are aware of the impact of a clear and well written article and know that it can do wonders for your small business blog or website.

Why is it important to know your audience before you start writing?

Before you start writing, spend some time on knowing your audience. This way you can target your writing more effectively. Writing for low graders is entirely different then writing for a highly educated class of readers. And if you are not sure just stick to the basics and you will do just fine.

Here is a list of very basic and easy to follow clear writing pointers -

1. Font

• use at least 12 point
• use serif font
• use simple fonts rather than fancy ones
• use regular proportion rather than extended or condensed

2. Justification

• left justify your text
• let the right side run ragged
• Do not centre, except for headings

3. Colour

• have a good contrast between background and foreground colour
• use dark print on a light background
• avoid textured backgrounds
• do not put text on top of pictures

4. White Space

• use white space freely
• leave space between headings and text
• try 1 inch margins and 1.5 line spacing
• use block paragraphs rather than indented ones
• wehn using columns, use two rather than three

5. Emphasis

• use bold type to emphasize words or headings
• avoid italics and underlining
• make headings consistent
• use text boxes to separate essential information from the text
• avoid using all capitals

6. Pictures

• use pictures that relate directly to the text
• put pictures to the side rather than behind the text
• use pictures to illustrate difficult words

7. Words and Sentences

• use simple words and short sentences
• replace complicated words with more simple ones
• if you must use a difficult word, define it
• keep sentence length to 15-18 words
• for lower grade level materials, try 12-15 words per sentence

You can always email me or send me your feedback if you have any questions or need help with your blog or small business website. You can email me at - info[at]coolwebdeveloper[dot]com

Featured Articles WordPress Plugin

Today is an exciting day for us. We have kicked off our Featured Articles Wordpress Plugin Marketing Campaign.

Featured Articles WordPress Plugin - Campaign Landing Page

BETA version of this Plugin will be available for testing from 15th June onwards. We are calling in all the BLOG owners to volunteer for BETA testing of this Plugin.

We are running a WordPress Plugin contest where 50 BLOG owners from a list of  Subscribers will be chosen randomly and will be provided Featured Articles WordPress Plugin for testing purposes.

And the MOST exciting news is, these 50 BLOG owners will receive a FULL version of Featured Articles Plugin for FREE!! ($20 value) once we launch it on 15th of July 2009.

I invite my fellow bloggers and wordpress users to subscribe to the list here -

 

Join our growing list of Featured Article BETA testers (and receive a FREE Featured Articles Plugin worth $20 once the contest ends)

How thought turned into an idea?

I have always noticed a website visitors lack of attention to existing articles or banners thus loosing a lot of conversion value. It’s called Article / Ad Blindness, and every civilized human in the world has it.

“Ad Blindness is a term used to denote the state of conscious or subconscious ignorance of advertisements placed in a web page by visitors…”

We did check a lot of other Featured Articles Plugins available but none fit our need. They were either hard to install and implement or need code level access to pass the post ID’s as parameters. We wanted to use something that is simple and can be managed entirely by using WordPress Settings Console. We were not able to find a single Plugin that fits our need and thus Featured Articles WordPress Plugin was born.

Here are some COOL features of Featured Articles WordPress Plugin -

• Complete Management of Plugin by using the Settings Console in WordPress.

• Select the Height and Width from within the Management Console.

• Capable of creating Multiple Instances of the rotator, thus providing you the ability to rotate separatearticles on separate pages / templates.

• Ability to rotate BANNERS / ADS from within the same Management Console.

• Proven to increase conversion rates, and reduce Bounce Rates.

• Provides you with a new medium to present anything worthwhile to your visitors.

• Flush all the pending changes with a single click thus removing the margin of error.

As said above we do need a handful of smart BLOG owners for testing our product. And as a bonus reward for helping us we will offer this Plugin for free to those BLOG owners once we launch the FULL version.

If you think you will be able to help, please sign up and we will send you the plugin once the BETA is released. We will be selecting a list of 50 bloggers for testing this amazing product.

Does Google’s new CAPTCHA experiment fails at Accessibility testing?

Recently Google released two new experiments from there newly structured Google labs. One of these new experiments is aimed at improving CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) effectiveness and user experience.

What is CAPTCHA?

CAPTCHA tell Computers and Humans apart and is employed to prevent automated computer systems from signing up at sites or posting comments. Most of us have used CAPTCHA at some point and time while surfing internet. Its that image that you need to recognize and write the letters into an input box to validate yourself as an human filling the information.

The report released by Google, called “What’s Up CAPTCHA?” (PDF) outlines a new version, which uses image orientation, forcing a user to adjust randomly rotated images to their upright orientation.

The major benefits of our CAPTCHA technique over the traditional text recognition techniques are that it is language independent, does not require text-entry (e.g. for a mobile device), and employs another domain for CAPTCHA generation beyond character recognition. This CAPTCHA lends itself to rapid implementation and has an almost limitless supply of images.

And as per Google - “We ensure that our CAPTCHA can not be defeated by state-of-the-art orientation detection systems by using those systems to filter images that can be automatically recognized and oriented“.

Does this technique meets Web Accessibility standards?

Well, I think this fails miserably when it comes to Accessibility. Normally for a regular CAPTCHA control using distorted text we see some associated audio files for physically challenged. So you play that file, enter the text and you are good to go.

But using this new technique - How will someone with bad eyesight or no eyesight at all (or some sight related disability) be able to select the right image? Google engineers might have to put some though into this. Unless this issue is being taken care of I dont see a majority of web sites start using this technology.

I would also like to mention here that Web Accessibility is a legal requirement in some states and can not be bypassed without some serious legal consequences.

Do you have suggestions for Google? or if you want to express your own views regarding this articles then you are more then welcome to leave your comments at the end of this article.

How to save your data if world comes to an end in 2012?

Try searching for 2012 on Google and you will get approximately 232,000,000 hits. So what is 2012? and what is all the hype about?

The 2012 Doomsday Prediction is a present-day cultural tradition proposing that cataclysmic and apocalyptic events will occur in the year 2012. You can read more about 2012 Doomsday Prediction on Wikipedia.

Though I don’t really buy the idea. And I am in no way suggesting that world will come to an end in 2012. But I do think world will end some day and this make us wonder -

What will happen with all the earth’s data?? Are we backing up our data somewhere outside earth??

I think we as earth’s intelligent inhibitors should be responsible for saving all the intelligent data (information) that we have collected so far. This will save a lot of work for our future generations to come (i.e. if some of us are lucky enough to survive).

Saving data at a remote location outside earth will be important to make sure that our future generations doesn’t have to start from ground zero.

There is a lot of important data we have collected so far about earth’s evolution, about all the medical advances etc. and this needs to be saved. And don’t forget a lot of this data is analyzed in a number of BLOG posts, written by and ranging from NASA’s scientists, world’s renowned astrologers and doctors etc.

So what really are our options?

Backup data on Moon

Well, there is some good news here. TransOrbital of La Jolla, California is taking this and other proposals for marrying high-tech and the Earth’s only natural satellite seriously. The company is getting ready to send a commercial mission to the moon and intends to send servers, data, handheld computers, and digital cameras along for the ride.

We’re the only company licensed to send a commercial mission right now," says Dennis Laurie, TransOrbital president and CEO. "We’re shooting for the first quarter of 2004." On December 20 of 2002, the company launched a rocket to test telemetry, positioning, and other concerns in preparation for the upcoming mission. TransOrbital had to obtain approval from the US State Department and the military to gain its license, and has also been consulting with officials at NASA. The licensing process took two and a half years, according to Laurie, and involved getting a specific license to take pictures from space.

Read more about TransOrbital.

Backup data on Mars

Though this will be a perfect setup. Unfortunately there is nothing available right now. But I am pretty sure one of the Backup and Recovery companies will read this article and will probably start working towards this … hopefully :)

Backup data on a man made satellite

This is another good option but with a bit of risk involved as the satellite will still be in close proximity to earth. And in the event of some magnetic changes or due to impact, we might lost the satellite or the data or both.

Backup data in the ionosphere above earth

If we are able to save data in electrons this is going to be a good option. Read more about Ionosphere here on Wikipedia.

Though in this day and age we are able to save data in living cells. I will not suggest this as this might be of no use if the cells are destroyed by some catastrophic event either natural or man made. Well, with that comment I will conclude this article. If you think you have a better idea then please leave your thoughts in the comments section below.

Are you Web 2.0 yet? Check against this list if you are not sure.

I am expecting our readers reaction to this article’s title as something like - What!! another web 2.0 article? … I don’t believe this.

I know the hype around Web 2.0 is over and how web evangelists are talking about the death of Web 2.0. But I think a lot of people are still not doing it right. So I have gathered a brief list of characteristics of Web 2.0 web sites.

Checklist of characteristics for Web 2.0 Applications -

• Internet as a platform
  Your Application is delivered entirely through a browser, or even a micro-browser that resides on a handheld device such as a PDA or mobile phone.
• Collaborative environment
  Your app act as a hub for sharing content. Your app or site is fully controlled by users i.e. Users may supply, even control, the published content.
• Social Networking
  Your app include features that connect people with common interests.
• Mashups
  Your web app site allows third-party applications to integrate both data and functions from existing ones.
• Rich media interfaces
  Your Web app uses Flash, AJAX or any other kind of Rich Media interactions. Compared to the original concept of the Web as a collection of HTML hypertext documents, user interfaces are now more dynamic and more interactive, incorporating a variety of media including audio and video streams and voice interactions.

So if you think you have Web 2.0 site, think again and check against this list.

Now after reading the article - Do you really think you have have a web 2.0 app? or if you would like to add to this list Please feel free to leave your comments at the end of article under comments section.

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