A guest post by Arun Garg. If you wish to write one, check out the guest-posting guidelines and details.

I have very little knowledge of html or you can say I was always afraid to try my hands on coding, same happens when I was looking for a simple logo for my site. The thought of coding always restrict me doing even search on Google.

But one day I make my mind and search on Google “Free logo generator”.  I find many sites related to free logo generator but some was paid and others have very few options to edit them. I also came across Cool Text but I passed it without noticing as this site is also advertising on google (still advertising ) so I thought it will definitely be a paid site. Then I tried many sites and did not find anything useful, so I tried Cool Text and my experience with this website was really good one which i mentioned below.

What is Cool Text ?

CoolText.com which is online since 1998 (domain registered) is a website which helps you to create logo’s and button without any knowledge of designing. It provides you 38 types of logo styles & 20 types of button designs for free which you can use on your blogs and sites. Some of my favorite logos styles are Starburst, iText, 3d outline gradient, Embossed, Simple, Chromium, Felt, Glossy and Burning.

How you can use this website to generate free logo?

Choose the style you like most. When you click on that style you will be taken to a new page where you will find more options to customize it. Here you will come across a box named “design your logo” where you can enter your desired text, font (1200 fonts to choose from), text size, text gradient, background color, background image etc. depending on the style you have choosen. When you are satisfied with your desired logo you can choose from various file formats like gif, jpg, png, psd and xcf.

Now click the “Render Logo” button as mentioned in above figure and you will have your own logo which you can edit if still not satisfied, download, email and also the option to get the html code.

This is how you can create a logo easily in just 2 minutes or less . If you have tried Cool Text then share your experience with it.

The Author, arunii loves to write about blogging, gadgets & sometimes bollywood. Read more on me at about section.

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Everyone is always concerned about hosting I guess. Those who don’t have purchased a host yet, look for the right one. Others who have one, look for better options. That’s what I felt after the review of Web Hosting Geeks went live.

Checkout Web Hosting Rating. It’s again a Hosting Rating service, that looks like a variant of Web Hosting Geeks, but it sure does have more categories and more options. For those who care, these guys have been out there since 2002.

The Top 10 Hosting Rankings on the homepage might seem similar; see the Best Host Awards section. Its a monthly rating of web hosts based on the votes given by users. Awards are given to hosts on a category basis.

Web Hosting Rating also has an whole section of CMS hosts. Hosts are categorized in terms of their Support for specific CMS like WordPress or phpBB. A section on Best WordPress Hosting is there!

There are also some good articles and a wide knowledge base that might interest you. Here is one: 6 Essential Tips for Better SEO.

Hope you guys find this useful. Good luck!

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They started like everyone else. They learnt everything on the way. They never gave up, fought the battle day after day. And here they are…

Dude?

OK. This is a post honoring four bloggers who travelled way lot during the past year. They may not seem very successful in all respects, but they sure know what they are doing. Presenting, In no specific order…

Amal Roy of Computing Unleashed

Amal is a Tech Blogger from Kerala, India. He writes about Computers, Softwares, Hardwares, and shares Tips and Tweaks related to Computers. Some of his articles are so comprehensive that they ended up on the homepage of Digg. Last December he got his domain, and now this December he is on WordPress. Way to go!

Girish G of DotGiri

Most Bloggers I have met took really long time to get their First Google Adsense check, this guy did it in a matter of few months. He writes about Windows and Linux How-To’s, Tech Reviews, Computing Tips, Softwares and the Internet. He has already started expanding his network of blogs. Good luck!

S.Pradeep Kumar of HellBound Bloggers

Lately I found that he have been spending 15 hours a day on various Blogging activities. He uses that time to do research and brings them all into his blog. He writes about Blogging, the Internet, Security and Tech. You will find some amazing and useful List Posts there. A job well done

Sriraj of Sriraj Digital Magazine

The name suits it well; his blog is a real magazine. He writes about Blogging, Technology, Gadgets, Softwares and Web on one side and then on Automobiles, Career Tips, News and Sports on the other. Thoughtfully, he have provided separated feeds for each category. Grew to over 1000 RSS readers this year, congrats dude!

Wish you all a great year ahead!

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Choosing a host is one of the BIG decisions you make with regard to your blog. The host is important because it affects the very performance of a website. Changing hosts often is not practical, so you got to make the right choice.

Unfortunately, very few people have tried more than a couple of hosts, so every person you ask for a recommendation would give you a different answer. Probably you end up with the same host that your friend uses.

What if you could pass a piece of paper around and ask all your friends to rate their favorite host on various parameters, say Uptime, Support, and so on? Take a look at Web Hosting Geeks.

Web Hosting Geeks is a Hosting Rating and Reviewing service. Various hosts are grouped into different categories and users can rate them on nine different parameters (Tech Support, Customer Support, Software, Traffic, Reliability and Uptime, Space, Price, Quality, and User-Friendliness). Also a custom review in words can also be added.

The Homepage features a list of Top Ten Web Hosts of 2009 based on user ratings. The sidebar links will help you choose the right one for you. For instance, if you are looking for the best VPS hosting, just look around.

Something more interesting is the way various Hosts are grouped (see them on the left sidebar). Hosts with Free Google Adwords, Free Yahoo Marketing, and if you care for the environment (which you should do), there is a list of Green Web Hosting providers. Green Web Hosts uses Renewable Sources of energy like solar power or wind power, adopt measures to reduce CO2 emissions and recycle waste. Cool huh?

Web Hosting Geeks also have a pretty good knowledge base for the beginner. Starting from their homepage (below the fold) is a general introduction into various types of website hosting. Also you will find some good articles. Which Web Hosting is good for you, and How to make Money with Web Hosting are two articles that I choose to read and found some new tips.

They also maintain a Blog sharing tips of all kinds, SEO, CMS’s and other stuffs that interests every webmaster. The Blog, as well as the ratings are updated regularly.

Wish there was an interactive form that recommends the right host for you based on the options you choose. Like, if you are looking for a Green Host for under $10 p.m. with free dedicated IP and free domain, you would enter your options, click on submit and you would get a list of hosts matching your criteria sorted based on their rating. But you can’t ask for everything, or can you?

Hope you find Web Hosting Geeks useful. Good luck choosing your web hosting partner!

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Earlier this year, Twitter started mobile SMS updates in India with over an alliance with AIRTEL. Subscribers were charged premium rates for SMS then.

Last day I stumbled over a fresh and amazing service called SMSTweet. What’s amazing is the simplicity of the concept  and that its not backed by any Mobile service provider.

SMSTweet works based on SMSGupShup’s Application development platform and Twitter API. SMSGupShup is another venture that provides various free PC to Mobile SMS, Group SMS and other Social Messaging services in India. Messages are handled by SMSGupShup, which then updates the Twitter Status over API.

SMSGupShup uses a 10 digit standard mobile number, so the SMS sent will cost you only that of a normal SMS (national SMS in some cases) and not the premium rates. So, on the front end, you can update your twitter Status at the rate of a national SMS. Check with your service provider for SMS packs to make this even cheaper.

Upon successful updation, SMSTweet replies to you with the latest @mention of yours, so you can even carry on with a conversation via SMS’s.

How to Use SMS Tweets

First you need to provide your Twitter credentials to SMSTweet. Use any of the two ways to sign-in:

Using Oauth:
If you are online, you can allow SMSTweet to access your account using the ‘Sign-in with Twitter’ link on their homepage.

After you allow SMSTweet to access your account, you will be redirected back to the homepage. Then provide your 10 digit mobile number in the specified section on SMSTweet.

Sign-in via SMS:
Send TWEET<space>REGISTER<space><TWITTER USERNAME><space><TWITTER PASSWORD> to 09220092200

How to Update your Twitter Status Using SMS

Once SMSTweet have your details, you can start tweeting by sending your messages in the following format to 09220092200

TWEET<space><MESSAGE>
E.g.: TWEET Hanging out with friends from school. Feeling Nostalgic.

I love this thing. Simply Amazing. Hats off to Mayank Sharma, the man behind all this.

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Leave a Comment: Update Twitter via SMS at No Extra Cost

I think, URL shortener’s took off along with twitter. Before that, the only one I had heard of was tinyurl.com. When tinyurl links started getting the bad-boy image, I switched to tr.im and u.nu.

Tr.im is good; I loved their statistics and the idea of choosing custom URL’s, but now tr.im is closing down. U.NU is amazing for its simplicity and just-what-you-need style. (I don’t use bit.ly just because everyone else use it.)

Then one day, I tried Su.pr – the StumbleUpon baby. Its amazing.

The SU.PR Edge

Central Control of all your Links and Detailed Stats

Su.pr lists all shortened links along with quick stats on a single page. You can easily say, which did well and which link flopped. Statistics are comprehensive with the re-tweets, traffic sources and of course, the traffic from StumbleUpon and other sources.

Promote Your Own Blog

In Su.pr settings (above red dot) you can specify up to 3 domains. When Su.pr links are used, the target page will contain a sidebar. Links from the promoted websites that are popular on StumbleUpon will be shown here. So with every tweet your links get more exposure.

More Traffic

With the Toolbar and Sidebar in place, the links get easily thumbed up and reviewed brining more SU Traffic. In my case, the SU traffic is much more than the twitter traffic (below red).

Suggested Posting Time

Su.pr keeps track of the performance of your links, analyses them and suggests the best posting time for each day (orange). So now you know when to shoot that ace link of yours.

Schedule Tweets

What if the best posting time is at 2.00 am? Just schedule the tweet. (Green)

Post to Twitter and Facebook

Once you allow Su.pr access to Twitter and Facebook (via settings), you can post status directly to Twitter and Facebook. (Green)

Thumb Up and Review

For links not submitted to StumbleUpon yet, a “Thumb Up Now” link (pink) is shown instead of the thumbnail. You can Submit the link or write a review – the links are ready for you.

You are always Credited

Its not easy to find amazing unique links. When your tweet comes in someone else’s time line, he owns the tweet. He can choose whether to credit it back to you or not. But with Su.pr, the links you shorten always carry your name to it, you are always acknowledged.

Su.pr is really working for me, it took a couple of hours to get used to, but now its perfect. Thanks to Ishan for pulling me into it.

Which shortener do you use?

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Leave a Comment: Drive Traffic To Your Blog With Every Tweet

UNU is a URL shortening service, not very popular, but got potential.

The first time I used UNU, I was so impressed for the quality of service they gave me. Plus:

• UNU claims that they are the shortest in the market. Bit.ly and the like use 5 characters after their domain name. With UNU, the domain name itself is short and uses only 4 characters.
• The site was fast loading and suited well for my needs.
• The stats are just what you need. The others would give a lot of reports like the source of traffic and stuffs that we often never care about. Just add a question mark (?) to the end of the UNU shortened link and you will get the number of times the link was redirected. (see: http://u.nu/47×4? )
• The logo looks awesome. (Hey, design always matters)

Something else that I liked was UNU’s API. It was so easy to understand, I am not a great programmer myself, and even I got it.

Short is Cute and Fast too – Get the Bookmarklet

UNU homepage offers a bookmarklet that you can just drag and drop into your browser toolbar and when you need to shorten a URL, just click on it. But it loads on the same page. Also, there is a faster way to get the URL shortened, without using any bandwidth. I made a bookmarklet using the simple API and here it is:

UNU It!

Drag and Drop the above link to your browser toolbar. When you need a link shortened, click it and a new popup window will return you exactly what you need. (Click here for a demo)

That’s it, when you need stats, add a ‘?’ to the end of the url.

Tested on Firefox and Opera, it should work on all browsers with JavaScript enabled. If you get stuck, do let me know.

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If you use PDF’s with forms to receive feedback from people, here is the ultimate tool for your job.

FillAnyPDF lets you fill in PDF forms and share them online. You don’t even have to create the fields, you can write anywhere on a PDF! No more printouts and faxes.

FillAnyPDF is simple and intuitive. You upload a PDF, and you can write into it instantly. Open it in the editor and start writing anywhere. Also share them instantly.

To get a better idea of what FillAnyPDF can offer you, have a look at this demo page.

PDF Forms made easy

• FillAnyPDF comes with tools to Type in, or draw using a pen or Sign-off in a signature style.
• You can share your forms and invite others to fill it out. The recipient doesn’t need an account even! (I have a form here, try filling it. See, you don’t need any software!)
• You can see the entire filled out forms in one single list.
• The free account lets you save 5 blanks pages and 50 filled in pages, if you need more capacity of up to 500 blank pages and 50,000 filled in forms (of course with extra features), consider a paid account.
• Take a tour, see it all!

The form import wizard options are made with the office in mind. The optional settings let you decide when a form should expire, besides tagging and revision number.

FillAnyPDF Import Options - Watch the arrows!

I liked the concept, but was annoyed when I got logged out of my session when I was idle for sometime, I don’t think it has to be that secure, even gmail stays longer. Maybe they should allow users to choose the length of the sessions.

Though there are options to download a filled in PDF, if you wish to download all filled in copies of a single PDF, you will have to do it one by one. Maybe the developers will add an option in future.

Overall, the service looks good; quite useful and the interface is neat and handy. How did you like it? Get an account.

P.S: Did you see that FillAnyPDF accepts images too? An image to pdf converter, does that rings a bell?

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Leave a Comment: Upload PDF Forms, Get Feedback, Fill and Share them Easily

Guest Post by Pradeep Kumar S.

WordPress is an open source blog publishing software that makes blogging life more simple. Many people, including me, prefer Self-hosted WordPress blog. But hosting will surely make your wallet lighter.

In this post, I picked some trusted and worthy free Web Hosts and mostly used exclusively for WordPress.  All of them have Software Installer Script which allows installing WordPress directly. They have cool features like paid Web Hosts.

0fees.net – zero fees web hosting

0fees web hosting provides professional, fast PHP and MySQL hosting. It is powered by clustered hosting technology.

0fees Hosting Features:

• 300 MB disk space
• 10 GB monthly transfer
• PHP with MySQL databases
• 5 Add-on domains
• 5 Sub domains
• PHP Flags manager
• FTP account
• File manager
• Web mail, POP3 email

000webhost.com ($0.00 web host)

000webhost provides you top class free web hosting services without any advertising. It has Fantastico Autoinstaller which lets you install softwares like WordPress easily. There are no Hidden costs and no restrictive terms.

000webhost Features:

• 1500 MB disk space
• 100 GB monthly transfer
• 5 Add-on domains
• 5 Sub domains
• 5 Email Addresses
• 2 MySQL Databases
• FTP account
• 5 Email Accounts

Byet Internet Services

It is one of the cool free Web Hosts for WordPress. It has Vista Panel as the control panel and has Fantastico Automatic Script Installer, which lets you install many applications and popular scripts easily.

Byet Hosting Features:

• 5500 MB disk space
• 200 GB monthly transfer
• 50 add-on domains
• 50 sub domains
• FTP account
• Unlimited POP email accounts
• Online file manager
• 50 MySQL databases
• PhpMyAdmin

100WebSpace

This is also one of the cool Web Host, but there are some negatives in it. This Web Host currently not supports WordPress 2.7 and you can host only one domain. But yet, it has many other cool features. You can check its site for more details. One annoying thing is, it will force the users to have a small banner

100 WebSpace Features:

• 100 MB Disk Space
• 3 GB Data Transfer
• 5 Sub Domains
• 1 MySQL Database
• FTP account
• POP3/IMAP E-mail (No SMTP)
• PHP, Perl/CGI-BIN

I’m currently using 0fees.net. It has Fantastico Installer which lets users to install WordPress, Joomla, Dragonfly and many applications in a single click. I like its control panel very much. It is so user friendly and comes with video tutorials too.

Editors Note: Though free hosting is a great way to try out the self hosted WordPress, I wouldn’t recommend that in the long run. Uptime is not guaranteed; if your blog makes it to the digg home and the traffic takes your blog down, you miss the chance. But it’s a good way to learn stuffs and try out the self hosted WordPress.

This was a Guest Post by Pradeep Kumar from HellBound Bloggers. Pradeep is an active member of the community here and shares Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials on his blog. If you wish to write a Guest Post, you can find the details here.

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Leave a Comment: Four Free WordPress Hosts Compared

On the web, people don’t read pages first, instead they scan the pages. If you have to make them read what you write, it’s very important that you lock the eye-balls to your pages. Images added to be post for illustration can be the ‘glue’ that would make a visitor stay a lot more on your page.

Last week I had been asked where I get the images to illustrate my posts. There are lots of images on the web, but getting copyright free, quality images needs some research. I spend about 10% of my time to make a post, for image-hunting alone and some more time to edit it. Following is a list of places where I start with.

Free Quality Image Galleries

Stock Exchange: I had been using SXC from my Blogger days both for blog and other design works. Images are high quality and the search is pretty accurate. All images are bounded by the standard restrictions and the owner has to be notified for some images. You will need a free account to download any images. Images in SXC are often made with an illustrative hook in mind, so it’s the best place to find images for blogs. (The image in this post was from SXC!)

Flickr: This is a store of all kinds of images from heavily photoshoped cool ones to usual pictures from daily life. I use the advanced search of Flickr where we can specify to show just those images licensed under the creative commons. If you are on a look for images from daily life, like trains, or people or signs, turn to Flickr.
But often Flickr users prefer to get attributed for using their images, so you will have to add Image credits with every other post. You need a free Flickr account.

Google Image Search: Google has done a good job in organizing the images on the web. Google image search is awesome place to find images, but there is no guarantee on its quality or copyright, so it’s last on my list. Make sure that you visit the landing page and confirm that the image is free to use before you add it on yours.

You will probably find your images in any of these places, but still if you can’t find the best one, here is an awesome list of both free and premium image galleries. Check it out.

Don’t forget to save the images that you find while casual browsing for later use. I have a vast collection of images offline which I have collected over time. Make one yourself.

Always read the terms and conditions before you use images. Some images are free to use, but not free to edit, some need attribution, play it safe and don’t get caught

Reader Suggested Sites

Leave your favorite stock photo site in the comments and I will add them up here…

• Getty Images (See Comment. Thanks Anand)
• Compfight (See Comment. Thanks Cheth)
• Ginipic (Its a desktop application. See Comment. Thanks Nihar)
• Google Similar Images (via DollarShower)
• Finding pictures on the basis of its main colors (Thanks Gautam)

Thank you all  for the participation

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Leave a Comment: Where to Find Cool Free Images to illustrate your posts