Note: This blog post is an updated version of 7 Blogging Years. 7 Blogging Lessons. 7 Blogging Tips. (published 4 years and 100 blog posts ago).
Yes, that's right! It's the 11th Blogoversary of Minterest. I started Minterest (maheshone.com) as a personal finance blog in 2006, and later in August 2007, I started blogging about "Money, Internet, Investing" (yes, that was the first tagline of Minterest and now it's --- tech. marketing. mashups.).
To be honest it was literally "Just another WordPress site" and I was simply rehashing topics that were of "My interest". But there was one thing... I was learning. And the transition from Blogger.com to WordPress.org is simply amazing.
Don't Miss: Blogger vs. WordPress: The Ultimate Comparison With Pros & Cons
I started creating blogs on Blogger.com back in 2004 and was treating it like a simple publishing tool. I guess the reason why it didn't impress or motivate me much was its inability to customize things the way I wanted. When I tried WordPress I liked almost all of its aspects and found out that I liked coding as well. Oh yeah, I'm a software engineer by education but it is not the coding that inspired me --- it's the magic in "technology". Thanks to Microsoft. Coming back... I'm going to feature here 11 blogging lessons and tips that I have... learned, realized, or experienced in one way or the other over the past many, many years.
There are several to-do list apps on the web that helps you to get things done. However, the problem is finding the perfect task manager because there are so so many of them --- both free and paid.
I have tried a bunch of them over the past several years and can definitely say that there is no such thing as a perfect to-do app. It's all about your requirements as all of them offers a variety of features. It also means that if you are looking for a task manager with a particular feature then chances are it already exists.
Today, I have cherry-picked three of the best to-do apps, namely Todoist, Wunderlist, and Any.do, that are intuitive, feature-rich, powerful, and massively popular. And I have limited the list to just "3" as I believe they are the best of the best and is probably the only to-do list apps you'll ever need to get things done.
Don't Miss: The Fantastic Ten Tools (Free) To Skyrocket Your Productivity
Note: I have shortlisted, reviewed, and compared the free plans of Todoist, Wunderlist, and Any.do based on the criteria that I have set personally. But I believe it's comprehensive enough and have highlighted almost all the aspects of the aforementioned apps (citing the web as well as the iOS platforms).
It's no secret that ad blocking extensions like AdBlock, Adblock Plus, and AdBlock Pro are becoming increasingly popular today with over 200 million active users and it's costing publishers billions of dollars.
In fact, as I write this blog post, both AdBlock and Adblock Plus have over 50 million users. I was actually not using an adblocker until few months ago as I rarely click ads. So, I argued with myself why should I install an adblocker when it doesn't make any difference.
However, I tried AdBlock few months back --- when YouTube ads became increasingly annoying --- and immediately realized that it's a must-have for me. The only thing is... it's NOT the extension's ad blocking capability that I find interesting. But it's something else --- which I will explain below.
Google Chrome's Omnibox (or the address bar) is not something new to you and me.It allows us to navigate to a webpage or search the web from the address bar. And yeah, it even acts as a search engine to browse your own search and Chrome browsing history.
But did you know that it's much more than just an address bar? That it can easily boost your productivity by helping you create and add your own custom search engines?
If you're a Web 2.0 fanatic then I'm pretty sure that you often use the search engines by the popular (and biggest) web 2.0 sites like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, YouTube, etc. But the problem is, every time you want to use its search feature, you have to actually visit those websites and then use its search function.
Of course, Google Chrome automatically adds all those custom search engines when you visit those websites (even if you don't want to). That is, when you visit Amazon.com and uses its search engine, Chrome automatically adds a custom Amazon search to its list of search engines.
Like this:
It's a nice feature, right? Well, not necessarily. The problem arises when you need tailored search results and a custom shortcut key (or known as the keyword in Google Chrome's custom search engines).
I never blogged much about iCloud Mail or Yahoo Mail as I never find it useful or interesting --- except the disposable addresses in Yahoo Mail.
A disposable address lets you create up to 500 temporary email address within Yahoo Mail. You can create a disposable address any time and delete it after use. It's a good thing if you don't want to reveal your "real" email address to anyone.It's a feature that is really missing in Gmail or Outlook.com but both Gmail and Outlook.com support sub-addressing though it's not as useful as disposable addresses. Anyway, I didn't want to switch to Yahoo Mail only to get that feature. But a few years back I realized that an iCloud email address (@icloud.com) is also useful --- and interesting --- as it supports both sub-addressing and disposable addresses (sort of).
I first started creating web pages on Yahoo GeoCities, Tripod, etc. back in early 2000s. It was fun. Later, I tried blogging platforms like Blogger.com and WordPress.org and also started creating HTML web pages without any coding skills (thanks to Microsoft FrontPage). And that's how I started web development.
Now with the advent of web 2.0 people want more. People no longer like static HTML web pages with dull designs. They want rich features with a great user experience. That's how blogging platforms became massively popular.
I get a lot of emails (because of this Make Money Writing blog post) from my readers asking for a platform to share their articles or work online. And I used to recommend a blog -- a WordPress blog to be more specific. But then I realized that a blog may not be relevant for everyone as things changes from one person to another.
If you're a technology enthusiast then starting a blog makes sense. But if you're a writer and want to contribute articles randomly, then publishing on Medium.com makes better sense -- yeah, you don't have to be a tech-savvy person for that!
