Below are the gifts of inspiration that I collected.

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3. My Nokia 5530 XpressMusic

Just bought this a week ago and love it. Below are some snaps of the same.

Absolutely love the phone.

Its available in Mumbai at approx. 11,000/-

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2. My Music. My Tunes.
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This particular model M340 caught my attention at the counter after the sales man showcased its features. Here’s the review of Kodak EasyShare M340

I was searching for a decent digital camera within a price range of Rs. 6000 – Rs. 7500. I had Olympus FE26 in mind which was 12MP costing something around Rs. 6000. I never gave Kodak a thought. But this particular model M340 caught my attention at the counter after the sales man showcased its features. Here’s the review of Kodak EasyShare M340

Price: Rs. 7490/-

Looks and Design

Its a slim black (Black Noir) camera. The reason it being so slim is that it uses a Rechargeable Li-lon Battery. The body is matt finish in the front. The LCD is good in size with 4 buttons namely Delete, Menu, Info and Review.

Features

This is the more important part. The camera has 10.2 MegaPixels and 3x Optical Zoom.

Apart from this features there is lots more that this camera offers.

• Capture beautiful HD pictures in 16:9 format
• Self Timer
• Face Detection
• Sharing of videos and photos on YouTube & Facebook
• Tagging of Images

So overall I am very satisfied with this camera. Good quality, good features all under a nice budget. I would upload some snaps soon taken by Kodak EasySahre M340. And if there is anything in particular you want to know about this camera please eave a comment.

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1. Treat your website like you treat your house.

It’s the outcome of contribution made by many creative people, who wanted to increase their learning curve. This web site is not only designed to cater to the needs of Graphic Designers, Print Specialists, Web Designers and Animators but also many young aspiring souls who want to make a flourishing career in the creative arena.

WAAPSols is aptly named. It stands for Web, Animation and Print Solutions.
WAAPSols is a warehouse for creative minds, where you can view the portfolios of some of the member designers and also avail of the free online tutorials for Adobe Products & other latest version software’s.

At WAAPSols, there are already over 100 registered members which consists of both students and instructor in various fields. Designer and animators can register and join groups, comment of other members work, learn new tips and tricks from the tutorials section and most importantly; can also blog about there recent work and get constructive reviews.

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2. Kala Ghoda, Figuratively.
3. I am here. Finally

Click on the image for a larger view.

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2. WAAPSols – A Design Community
3. My Music. My Tunes.

Having said that, some knowledge of coding or experience, is always an advantage, so that you can make custom changes. But still its not required, because your site would work well even without any changes. Well, lets get to understand each options closely.

Basic or Blog site.

If you plan to make a site wherein you will share your knowledge, write reviews, or on some particular topic on which you can write, then WordPress is the best option to choose. WordPress is a blogging platform. You can install this in a similar manner you install any other software. Many hosting providers offer options to get WordPress installed directly. WordPress is also a good option to make your portfolio site.

Below are some of the websites made using WordPress.
PratikBagaria (yes this too is powered by WP)
FashDesigns

Discussion, Groups, etc.

Now, if you want to make a site where people can come and discuss on topics, get updates and share things. For such sites there are 2 options. You can use PHPBB or Buddy Press.
Both of the names mentioned above do same kind of work, but in a totally different way. PHPBB is a forum script. A forum is a place where people can come, register and discuss on various topics. On the other hand, BuddyPress is a concept which is more close to networking sites. People can come, register and even have their blogs, and discussion groups. Each member has its own profile page, which contains updates about his blog, news and stuff.

Below are some of the forums made using PHPBB.
phpBB Community
Forum4Finance

Buddy Press can be tested using this site.

TestBP

So now its your turn to decide. Its better to make up your mind first as to what matter your site will contain and the main purpose of the site. It then becomes easy to find a solution.

Comment here or contact me if you want to get more information on making websites.

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2. Treat your website like you treat your house.
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You always want your home to have a good nameplate. This can be taken as or compared to the logo of your website or blog.

A good professional logo gives the visitors a first feel of what is inside.

Now lets move inside! Is it that when you buy a home you also buy everything you see on the shelf of the interior’s store? You may like all the painting, furniture, show pieces and all in the store, but then you don’t just buy everything and stuff it in your home. You first decide how you want your place to look like, some might even have a theme set in their mind of how the house should look like. The same goes with websites. You must not fill it will all the content you read, all the images and videos you see. Let there be some theme or some space. Give the visitor something specific to look at. Something nice.
I know you want your visitor to find everything they look for on your website and stay there for a while. But I say give only things you are best at. This way the user feels more comfortable and will return to your site, recommend it to his friends and also will signup for updates.

Lastly when your home has some thing special in it, say for example a painting or a big show piece made of glass. Do you keep it at the front of your main door. Like the visitor must forcibly notice it. No, you don’t! So why the same with websites? If you have some special thing to show to your visitors, make a place for it. Let the special thing be noticed by the visitors themselves as then they will pay more attention to it.

One more thing to add. One always keeps his home secured. Do the same with your website. Keep it protected, ask your hosting guys or some security advisor to have a review of your website and make it secure.

This is what I think and feel about making, maintaining and designing websites. Let me know your views and take on this. Some might agree and some not, but this is the fun part. Eagerly waiting for your comments.

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2. Must have Plugins for WordPress.

Many a times I use WordPress for more then just blogging, I use it for for making forums, photo gallary, portals and more. Plugins helps me to add special functions as well as integration. Here are the plugins which I always install along with my WordPress installation. They are must haves as they make your blog more friendly and organized.

Akismet

This comes pre-installed  with your WordPress Installation. It helps to protect your blog or site from Spam Comments. There is no need for any other plugin or function to stop spam, Akismet takes care of everything easily.

Adsense Manager

So you have decided to earn something from your blog! Adsense Manager will help you organize the ads. It will make blocks or your ad codes, which can be placed anywhere in your design to start showing ads.

Easy Contact

A contact page for your blog is very essential. We don’t want to say “This is my email id, you can mail me here”. This would not look nice and people don’t generally prefer mailing. Instead this plugin will make a simple contact form that can be placed on your site. It also provides spam protection.

All in one SEO Pack

This will have you optimize your site and blog for Search Engines. This will let you specify title, tags, keywords for each page or post individually.

Google Analytics for WordPress

Instead of pasting your Analytics code manually on each page or footer of your blog its advisable that you use this plugin and just enter your Websites tracking code, rest everything will be taken care off by this plugin.

Gravatar

Everyone likes to show some image besides there comment. Also, it looks nice to give your commenters a face. Gravatar will display your users image they have selected to reflect on your blog, whenever they comment.

Pages Comments

Now if your blog is very famous and you are getting loads of comments, its better to break them into pages rather than having a big vertical scroll on your page.

Subscribe to Comments

I always make a point that I install this plugin. It helps in updating everyone about there discussion. It also saves time of your users to manually come and check everytime to see if there is a new comment or reply posted. This is automatically send and email to the reader when a new comment is posted on topic of his interest.

This was just the tip of the iceberg. There is lots to discover in plugins. Keep searching and you will find many.

Let me know if there are some more plugins which you like and install it everytime, so that the same can be featured here as well.

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2. Treat your website like you treat your house.
3. I am here. Finally

Got myself a guitar.

Its Granada PRS-1. A 39″ Acoustic Medium Sized Guitar. Well, this was about the guitar.

Now i’ll tell more about buying one. I bought it from Furtado, Mumbai. The guys out there are good at suggesting the right one for you plus the deals there are good as well. I did my research before buying one. The first place I could find or say searched around was a forum called IndianGuitarTabs.com. I posted what I was looking for and my budget. I got quick replies suggesting guitar brands, places to buy, what things to consider and accessories required. I also visited Bajaao.com to checkout the rates and models. Lastly, I went down to Furtados and finalized the guitar. The finish is simply great.

I got a guitar bag and picks along with it. And I also purchased a strap and extra strings. The variety for straps was not much, but I got a decent one. It ranges from Rs. 140 to 2,000.

Now comes the difficult part, learning how to play one. I have GarageBand on my Macbook which i’ll be using to learn something for now. But learning it from a pro. is always the best.

I’ll leave you with some of my Guitar images. Do comment if you like the Guitar, the Shoots or just the blog overall.

Click to enlarge.

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1. Kodak EasyShare M340 Review

Type Font is a set of all lowercase and capital characters, numbers and punctuation marks in one size and face.

Whereas, Type Family is a name given to two or more series of the types that are variants of one design. For example, Times New Roman, it is available in upper and lower case with roman, italic and bold variants. In simpler terms, type family is a collection of fonts that are similar in design but vary is size and boldness.

Classification of Fonts.

Serif
Serif fonts have a small stroke(serifs) on the end of each characters. The serifs usually help make the font more readable. Many novels, school and college books, reference guides use serif fonts. Example of serif fonts includes, Times New Roman, Baskerville, Palatino.

Sans Serif
This is a type of font that does not have the small feature / stroke (serifs) at the end of each characters. This is the most popular fonts in use today.

Slab Serif
As the name suggests, it is similar to serif fonts. This has a rather strong, square finishing strokes at the end of each characters.

Calligraphic
It is a type of visual art of writing. It mimics the rhythm and movement of the hand. On a common basis we find this font on our birth certificates, maps and testimonials.

Open Type
Open type fonts have an expanded character set. Meaning, this type of font can have many glyphs, as many as 65,000. Open type fonts are cross-platform, and can be used without modifications on Mac OS, Windows and some Unix systems.

Script
This is a type of font with gives handwriting feel. It is handwritten type fonts usually with connecting forms or cursive.

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