Increase Blog Traffic (No Problem)

Over the past couple of days, I've noticed that my blog has been viewed considerably more. Yes I have done some Google sleuthing and discovered websites that give tips on increasing blog traffic. Its as simple and takes little to nothing at all to setup.

1. Do a Google search on "Increase Blog Traffic"
2. Read what they offer and muse over if some of the options are available to you.
3. Follow up and actually do what they say because:
• they have done this from experience
• they know what they are doing, obviously since the link was found on Google's first page search

Ok, sounds simple right? Yes and No. Beware of scamming. In other words just follow some of the steps that I did.

1. Noticed how other blogs are setup, some have rss feeds and other promoting blog websites, hint look at mine ------->
   
2. Blogtoplist sign up there and you will definitely get hits to your blog
3. Search out other blog promo sites, such as technorati, buzzerhut.com
4. Sign up with StumbleUpon, Reddit, or Digg and submit your site
5. Lastly sign up with Sitemeter, this will tell you how many people visit your blog

Ok alright now your ready, and hopefully getting increased traffic to your blog.
Additional steps, such as linking, correctly labeling and creating a title that increases search traffic.

Gimp Update

Well after many frustrating breaks, going from Photoshop to GIMP was not an easy task, tools were relatively the same with a few difficulties here and there, such as the scale tool and gradient tool. Layers behaved similarly to Photoshop as well. Setup was a breeze and was fast with no problems, although at first finding where to download the program took a little time. Program design was a bit impressive compared to Photoshop, as all the tools are displayed and there respective calibrations shown when clicked on. As far as availability of tools, I have yet to explore them all and have to remove it from the ratings list.
As Far the ratings goes like this:

1. A Rating for Ease of Install and Initial Setup - 9/10
2. A Rating for Overall program design in terms of layout of tools (easy to difficult) - Medium (Some Frustration) 7/10
   
3. A Rating for Amount of tools available for photo manipulation - N/A (Still need to Explore and Tryout)

Next is the test banner that I have put together using GIMP.



There it is, I thought I have done a wonderful job in creating this banner with 0 experience using GIMP.
The image comes from a Desktop Background with the color taken out of it, originally blue on white background that has been desaturated and colors inverted to white and black. The text is the font Scriptina, which can be downloaded Here, however the gradient color is from a background color, with an overlay blend mode and transparency set to around 62%.
Put all this together and Voila the image is made.

As a side note to all, read the manual before using, it will help greatly in figuring out how to use the program better and more efficiently.

Gimp

Today, I decided to download GIMP and see what everyone has been talking about. I am very familiar with Photoshop and as far love the program, however as seeing as the laptop is the only computer that is available to me, I have opted to get GIMP and look at the comparision to Photoshop. I will post and update with my ratings on 3 subjects.
The 3 areas of rating will be:

1. A Rating for Ease of Install and Initial Setup
2. A Rating for Overall program design in terms of layout of tools (easy to difficult)
3. A Rating for Amount of tools available for photo manipulation

For this test I will create a proper banner for packetstealer

New Game

Hey everyone, just got a link from a friend that all you gamers out there should take a look at.
The game is called Shattered Horizon. Here is a link to there site, Shattered Horizon check it out and don't forget to watch the trailer, it looks awesome.

TV Shows Automatic Downloading Using RSS

Ok, torrenting is a bit of a hard point for some people, and many a times a controversial subject for some, but I find myself more and more doing other things in life than watching t.v. I find that downloading and watching is much easier because:

• You can watch it anytime and at your own pace
• No commercials at all
• Sometimes the download is of better quality and sound
• More options for portability

Now knowing these points, I will tell you how you can setup a hassel free way of downloading shows with little to none difficulty. Ok, so the one way I go about doing this is to first introduce and explain how RSS feeds work. RSS -"Really Simple Syndication" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS) is a web feed that is published to the web that contains a list of summerized text, links or other data. This allows for followers to be able to be updated 24/7 any time and on a timely basis using a RSS reader, such as firefox inbuilt rss reader. Now how will RSS help me? Well here is my setup, My laptop uses a torrenting program such as uTorrent (http://www.utorrent.com/) which has a rss reader included. Now once that is installed we can start adding TV shows rss feeds. The site that I use is http://eztv.it/ they have rss feeds for lots of tv shows and are pretty reliable. The rss feeds and links can be found here http://www.ezrss.it/ . Now if i wanted to download every week the tv show "House" i use ezrss and using the search button I search for House and click on exact match. I then am returned with a list of the shows, I look at the page and in the title header "SEARCH RESULTS" I will see "Search-Based RSS feed" click on that.

Now in Firefox a page will come up with a list of the episodes and at the top will be a subscribe button and a drop down menu, subscribe to that and add the link to the toolbar for easy access. When the rss feed is added to the toolbar, right-click the link and select "copy link." Now open up utorrent, and look for add rss feed, and paste the link in there and select smart-ep filter (later I will show how to customize the link so that there is no double downloading of the show)

However, for those of you using, IE8, a similar page will come up and a subscribe button will appear as well. after subscribing the feed will be under favorites>rss feeds and you can also right-click and select cut.

Now open up utorrent, and look for add rss feed, and paste the link in there and select automatically download episodes and also select smart-ep filter. Once added the rss feed will show up on the side, now select the feed by right-clicking on it and select rss downloader, select the feed from the list and in the "save download" location select the location on the hard drive where to download the shows. Once done that press ok and now you are done.

Once the rss feed is added to uTorrent, everytime a new show is published to the feed, uTorrent will automatically start downloading the tvshow, now as long as the uTorrent is running and internet access is available, the tv show will now automatically download. Amazing, I will be adding photos for better step by step explaination.

Hope this helps people, and please comment.

Money and Blogs

Although the thought of adding ads using google`s adsense program, I`m a little reluctant to try out this. I fear that these are just a way to scam people, maybe increase traffic to the blog. Anyone else try this google adsense at all, any tips or success stories, comment me up or post a link to your sight. I will research it myself and get back to everyone on the progress. Heck, I will even put together a step by step tutorial if things work out.
Gotta go, updates will continue without a doubt.

packetstealer is up and running

Obviously people are wondering what this blog is about, well I'll tell ya what sort of things that will be posted:

• Stumble posts that I think everyone should read to expand there knowledge base (mostly on computer subject)
• Creative Pictures
• On-going topics that are debatable
  
• Software and Hardware articles that make life more easier
• And more, to be decided or that I may find relevant

Anyways, look around feel free to comment on the blog as I continually update.