Time to take off the boots

Hi guys! I haven't published anything on this blog for at least an year now. All the posts that you see here are guest posts, and not by me. And I was checking my memories on Facebook and found out that on this day back in 2012 I had released my first ever web designing project "Whitebread Blogger Template" on this blog, which was called widcraft.blogspot.com. And I also realized that in 5 days this domain name will expire.

So the hard question comes - should I retire this blog? It's just $10 bucks to keep it up, should I keep it up for the readers? And paying 10 bucks isn't much, seriously. But, how fair is it for me to keep an abandoned & broken blog up?

I don't actually write anything. I don't use it. All the scripts don't work anymore, thanks to everyone who suggested to use Google Code. Most of the information is inaccurate. I have learned a lot about blogging, and I now disagree with a lot of things that I have written in the past, and I truly don't want people to read it. And dammit, I used to write like a monkey (now I write like a monkey who reads books). :)

So the question comes back - is it fair for me to provide the readers bad content? No, that's just not fair. So after a lot of thinking, I've finally decided to retire this BWidgets.

This is one of the most famous blogs I even created, and it's the only blog which started and is not ending on Blogger platform. And while I can't be 100% sure, this is also my retirement from Blogger platform, which is where I started my blogging career.

Four years of journey ends today. And this domain will go down on 10th of October, so you guys can copy whatever content you like. Thank you, fellow bloggers. :)

PS: After 10th of October, the blog and content will still be available at widcraft.blogspot.com - and I don't think it will ever get updated..

How To Recover Lost Or Deleted Pictures From Flash Card

Overview

A flash card is a data storage device with a flash memory, A USB flash card is a flash card with integrated Universal Serial Bus Interface. These USB flash drives are used for the same purpose as the floppy disks and the CDs. They are used for the storage as well as the backup of computer files. They use the mass storage standards, which are supported by the various operating systems like Windows, UNIX like systems, Linux and OS X. The Flash Cards are non-volatile nature like memory cards, solid-state drives and USB flash drives. The non-volatile nature will not require any power for maintenance of information on the chip. When compared with the hard disks they offer better kinetic shock resistance as well as faster read access times.

Images, digital clippings and pictures are often lost from the Flash card devices. There is a need to recover these items. There are some Flash Card recovery software, which can retrieve any of the lost and deleted videos, audios and the pictures and other files from such devices.

Reasons for Photo Loss

There are various types of reasons of photo loss from flash cards. These are:

Accidental Deletion of Pictures

Pictures very often get deleted due to accidentally pressing Shift + Del keys. Photo loss may often happen due to deletion of some essential pictures in place of the unwanted ones. Deletion of pictures in the flash memory card directs it not to the Recycle Bin because it is bypassed.

Memory Card Corruption

Card reader can be used to connect flash card memory cards with the computers. The photo loss situation arises due to the situation when the memory card is taken out of the card reader, while transferring from the flash memory card to the computer.

Virus Attack

The most common cause for the photo loss happens due to virus loss. The viruses cause deletion and corruption of pictures on the flash card. The file system of the memory card may get corrupt on account of the virus.

Steps of Photo Recovery by Software

Step 1: The Flash card is connected with a PC. The files types, which need to be recovered, are chosen.

Step 2: The Disk from where the data was lost is scanned. The target files are all found out. The Lost Disk drive is chosen, if the sure has lost a partition.

Step 3: After the completion of the scanning, the review shows the recoverable files in the form of a list. We use the recover option for getting the files back.

The recovered files are to be saved in a separate disk and not in the original disk, which lost the files.

Flash Card Recovery on Mac

Other than the reasons mentioned above, pictures may also be lost due to Formatting or the Reformatting operation of the digital camera. Damage to memory card can also happen due to unexpected turning off the camera. The photo rescue software for Mac OS X does not modify anything on the flash card, by writing on it. The photos are rescued from the flash card and then saved on the hard drive folder. The original file system is by bypassed and the sector data of the card is retrieved by the use of low-level access.

Flash Card Recovery on Windows

If the pictures are deleted from the flash card then the use of the flash card has to be done immediately, which causes permanent deletion of flash cards. Professional recovery software will need to be used for the retrieval of these deleted photos.

Resource: http://www.retrievephotos.com/article/recover-lost-or-inaccessible-photos-from-corrupt-USB-drive.php

Author - Jazz is a freelance writer. Her hobbies are blogging, writing about data recovery and new technology trends.

Blogging As A Legal Professional

Creating a strong, specific and informational law blog is an excellent means of drawing potential clients to your website and keeping current clients better informed of their rights. Inevitably, when the general public becomes curious about a legal situation, their first line of recourse in researching begins online. If you can create well-crafted blog posts that target specific legal issues, you’ll not only provide a valuable service. You’ll also strengthen and enlarge the reputation of your law firm.

Numerous lawyers discover that their clients are increasingly savvy about law terms and situations. However, much of the information found online can be misleading or vague. Creating a law blog, as a qualified attorney, can help to dispel much of the misinformation online. Naturally, the blog does not replace legal counsel. Emphasizing as much throughout the blog is a good measure.

In fact, the nature of a law blog is ideally suited to what online marketers and bloggers call “freemium services”. A certain amount of value, or information, is given away for free. This creates a feeling of goodwill, gratitude and familiarity. Eventually, all of that “pro bono” work translates to revenue, as a secondary tier of services are also made available, for set fees. In the case of a legal blog, any of the information you provide cannot be construed as legal counsel. Instead, every single post you create is, in effect, a “teaser”, which can motivate potential clients to seek out legal professionals for the full picture. If you write compelling, authoritative prose, you’ve already tipped the scales in your favor, of these clients seeking you out, personally.

Personal injury lawyers are among the types of attorneys who most visibly market themselves to potential clients. Many advertisements aim to communicate the lures of major accident or wrong-doing compensation to the general public. In fact, the compensation touting ads of personal injury attorneys have become so well-known in popular culture, that they even reach the point of parody in many television shows and movies.

The legal blog makes an excellent alternative to the “hard sell” approach of traditional advertising. Instead of directly telling the public to seek out your services, you are already setting up a relationship with them. Just by writing one helpful blog post, an investment of only a few hours, you can potentially reach hundreds or thousands of clients. Write the post effectively, and each person will feel that you have personally helped them out.

There’s much reward to be gained from a regular online blogging presence, and little risk involved. However, remember that there are hundreds of thousands of bloggers, who make no income at all on their hobby. On the other hand, there are a handful of superstar bloggers who have struck it rich, sometimes building up a career in blogging, and literally doing so from scratch. Whether your blogging becomes an asset to your brand comes down to one thing: content. Aim to make each post into something of genuine use to a specific audience. Do that, regularly, with a friendly, engaging tone, and you’re already well on your way to courting a larger client base.

Author - This post comes from Carter Capner. Expert legal bloggers and personal injury specialists based in Brisbane, Australia.

Using Social Media As A Real Estate Agent To Drive Sales

There is no limit to what real estate agents should be doing if they want to make sure that they are attracting the most potential clients. This is especially true when you consider the fact that the housing market is back on an upswing and many agents are doing whatever they can to generate as much business as possible. While there are plenty of traditional methods for marketing for real estate agents, including everything from mail flyers to bus stop billboards, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that social media is now the best way to reach new clients. At the click of a button, real estate agents can reach countless people through the internet and social media. Here are some ways that real estate agents can use social media as a way to drive sales.

Reach More People

One of the most obvious reasons that real estate agents should be using social media to drive sales is because it will help them reach more prospective clients than ever before. Real estate agents know how difficult it can be to pick up the phone and start cold calling prospective buyers. In most cases, some people may not even be looking for a home and their time making the call is often wasted. However, thanks to social media, real estate agents can quickly contact everyone in their friend’s list, as well as connections that they have through those friends, just to see who may be interested in buying or selling a home. This makes for a much more expedient process, which will help the agent save time.

Generate More Attention

Another great way that real estate agents can drive sales through social media is by generating more attention and showing people that they care about their services. For example, if a real estate agent sells a home to a person and that individual then posts about their purchase online, the real estate agent can then comment on the status and say what a wonderful experience it was to work with them. As other people see this, they will know that the agent is someone who cares and is willing to work hard to find them a great home.

Advertise To The Target Market

There is a lot of wasted effort that goes into marketing to target audiences for a real estate agent. They may end up sending thousands of flyers in the mail and hoping for response, when a large percentage of those people are aren’t even in the market to buy or sell a home. However, social media allows agents the opportunity to find those who are in the market, which will help lower overall advertising costs.

Use Digital Media To Show Properties

Finally, social media also affords real estate agents the opportunity to show properties to prospective homebuyers, without even having to leave their office. By uploading photos and videos of a property, prospective buyers can determine whether or not they are interested in a home and then the real estate agent can go from there. This will cut down on wasted time driving around to different showings, while also speeding up the process of selling home as well.

Social media is an incredibly valuable tool for a variety of different markets. This is especially true in the case of real estate agents who want to drive more traffic and get more attention for their personal business.

Author - This post comes from Joe at REAA, Brisbane's real estate licensing, training and certification specialists. Aside from writing and blogging, Joe is working on his fishing skills on the weekend.

Innovation Extends To Travel

Though travel planning has increasingly moved completely away from paper-and-pen legwork and now takes place largely online, this does not necessarily mean that the process is always seamless. In fact, as getting ready for a trip has become consumer-driven, every logistical step - no matter how it has been planned - has to be taken into account by the traveler themselves. Travelers need not fret about this situation: if anything, this decade has seen unprecedented advances in websites and apps trying to make the process of planning travel easier, cheaper, and less stress-inducing than ever before.

Kayak: A Search Engine for Flights and Hotels

One of the most difficult parts of making travel arrangements used to be having to compare flight prices and itineraries across dozens of websites before finally making a choice. Even more frustratingly, these flight prices sometimes changed just moments after a ticket was purchased. Kayak has become a major player in the online travel market by collecting price and ticket data for flights (even for carriers like Southwest) in one convenient search format that allows for customers to easily compare their options. Additionally, Kayak will predict whether flight prices are likely to increase or decrease, thus giving travelers a sense of how urgently they must make a purchase.

TripIt: Bringing Order out of Chaos

Even if using a travel search engine like Kayak, making travel arrangements often takes place over multiple different websites. This multiplicity of sources means it is all too easy to forget about a certain leg of the trip or otherwise be unprepared. TripIt has found success online by combating this exact problem. Travelers can email any travel information to TripIt and see it converted into a centrally located, easy-to-read itinerary. TripIt also allows these itineraries to be shared, making it quite simple for large travel groups to all be on the same page from the beginning of the trip to its conclusion.

HearPlanet: Eyes Up

Though working through travel apps might make the planning process significantly more convenient, it can also lead to spending most of a trip with one's nose practically pressed against a smartphone screen. The innovative company HearPlanet has identified this problem and attempted to solve it by making their collection of audio guidebooks available to travelers going to dozens of destinations. What makes HearPlanet more comprehensive than other audio guides is its potential for crowdsourced information: rather than being limited to traditional guidebook companies, locals or experienced travelers can add their own audio guide for those who want a more unique voice to be guiding them through their trip.

As with other sectors where technology companies have disrupted traditional business methods, travel planning has seen methods that were commonplace just a few years ago become quaint almost overnight. The common thread of the companies listed above is not simply their success online and in app form, but their attempts to transcend even the very confusion and disorganization that have been standard difficulties in travel planning for decades.

Author - This post comes from Adagold Aviation, Australia’s leading independent aircraft charter and aviation solutions company. Check out their blog to see more articles relating to the intersection between tech and travel.

How To Raise Money Online

If you are looking for venture capital, what can you do to find that capital online? Fortunately, there are many resources available for those who are looking to get the money that they need to start a business or take their business to the next level. If you know where to look, raising capital can be easier than you think.

Talk to a Business Consultant to Find Out Where to Go

A business consultant may be able to steer you toward the venture capital sites that are willing to provide money to those who are just starting out. While you may not be able to attract the attention of a large venture firm, you may be able to attract a wealthy investor who is interested in working as a private citizen to help you build your company. Alternatively, you may be able to find crowdsourcing sites through your consultant that make it possible to find several smaller investors that are willing to pitch in to build your idea.

Start Your Own Fundraising Site

Adding a fundraising tool to your blog or website can make it easy to attract donations to help your company grow. The good news is that many online tools do not require that you know how to code before you add it. All you need to do is copy code from another source and drop it into your site. From there, the fundraising application will do the work for you. You can get money from people in your local area, throughout the country or throughout the entire world.

Offer Rewards to Encourage Donations

You can offer rewards to your donors to make it more likely that they will donate. For example, you can offer a company t-shirt to those who donate $5 or a finished version of the product that your company is making in exchange for $50. Those who donate $100 or more could be eligible to tour your facilities or have dinner with you. Depending on what you are making or how popular your company already is, you may be able to capitalize on your fame to encourage those donations.

Play up the Tax Deduction People Get

If your company is a nonprofit group, it may be possible for those who donate to your cause to tax a deduction on their taxes. This means that they get to help a worthy cause and get to lower their tax burden at the same time. Making others aware of this fact can significantly increase donations to your group. However, do not tell people of this possibility unless you know for sure that donors can get that deduction as this could be against the law.

Raising capital is easier to do thanks to the Internet. You can cozy up to venture firms or ask regular people to donate to your cause of allowing your company to grow and thrive. Over time, you may be able to offer equity to those investors, which will allow them to earn a return on their capital.

Author - This post comes from Naked Business Consulting, the experts at venture capital, raising capital and franchise consulting. Check out their news section for heaps of info applicable to digital start ups.

4 Mini-Site Masters

With data costing virtually nothing, more and more companies are turning to mini-sites to promote both their products and any promotions they might have running. From free kitchen design software to beer, these sites are meant to display information that would be otherwise impossible to fit on the regular site. They allow a strong focus on a specific item as opposed to the entire list of possibilities.

Digital Decorator

Perfect for anyone looking to remodel or redesign a room with décor, color and other objects, the Digital Decorator is a free mini-site that allows you to design your own room for a chance to win great prizes. From the façade to the bathroom, this online app gives you the ability to redo rooms with well over 200 colors of paint, 300 floor finishes, 350 countertop styles and 92 room styles. Aside from acting as free kitchen design software, users receive 25% off any of their purchases at participating stores. The mini-site is as easy to use as registering.

Time for Kids

Complete with a play on words, Time’s site dedicated to children is one of the more extensive mini-sties around. Almost an exact replica of their main site but loaded with book reviews, an entire portion dedicated to Antarctica and summer video game guides, Time has gone above and beyond what could be considered a mini-site. No matter the expansiveness of the information, it is still an incredible marketing tool that aims at younger kids, getting them to associate helpful information with the Time logo.

Le Louvre

Museums are even jumping on the bandwagon by exciting and tantalizing guests through the creation of mini-sites that complement their special exhibitions. Le Louvre, for instance, is currently running 15 separate sites all decorated to fit the time period as well as the art style of the tour. Each one comes with its own level of interactivity and pieces of information regarding the exhibit, visitor information, education and credits for the sponsors. This gives newer history buffs a chance to catch up on their Babylonian or Alexandrian info before heading out, allowing them to enjoy the art more.

Disney

If we are discussing mini-sites, we cannot forget the king of integration: Disney. Each section of their website is a mini-site if only because of the vast swathes of information they provide to guests. If you are on Disney.com and want to check out their parks, the click takes you to a mini-site in a completely different fashion that links you to not only the parks but the cruise line and resorts. Clicking on the cruises brings you to yet another mini-site. This gives Disney the ability to alter and change different sections without worrying about its effect on everything else. They can also put up and take down pages as they see fit. While some mini-sites are used just for promotions, Disney displays how they can be used to not only tactfully feed users a lot of information but to expand without a complete design overhaul.

Author - This post comes from Digital Decorator, a mini site that allows people to do big things if they’re planning to design their kitchen online for free or even design their home completely using the tool. Test it out for yourself.

How To Take An Offline Business And Streamline It Online

It is harder for offline businesses to take their ventures completely online. In order for an offline business to do well online, the processes and platforms must be in place. Here is how to take an offline business and streamline it online.

Start with the customer experience. One of the easiest ways to take a business online is to focus on the customer service experience. In the beginning stages, a company should be able to field inquiries and accept payments online. This starts with having a website that is highly functional for the consumer. It is very important that a company be capable of delivering a quality customer service experience. According to one survey, 88 percent of people felt like their purchasing decision were influenced by a customer service review they saw online. DIY options for customers for customers can also reduce the amount of time dedicated to handling specific inquiries.

Next, you should be able to create opportunities to communicate with prospects online. The company should be able to efficiently handle inquiries online. In addition to fielding basic inquiries, a business should also be able to cultivate leads and engage them using email communications. And this means having a strong strategy to build a mailing list. This may be accomplished through landing pages, customer purchases, inquiries and subscription options directly on the website.

Next, a business should be able to engage mobile consumers completely online. One of the most important considerations is how well the website is designed to accommodate mobile customers. Customers are more likely than ever to user their mobile devices to access information about a website. According to research conducted by Google, 74 percent of consumers indicated that having a mobile website is very important to them. Additionally, two-thirds of mobile device users say that they are more likely to make a purchase from a company with a mobile website.

It’s important to have any brick and mortar business listed online in the various directories. Taking advantage of online directories is important because it is one of the most affordable ways to advertise a business. Doing this increases your relevancy in a niche and can improve your performance where search engines are concerned. The online directory is a very inexpensive way to generate traffic for your brick and mortar’s site. Some directories allow a business to handle quotes and transactions directly from their sites.

Take an inventory of processes regularly. This may require reviewing processes in place and identifying ways to optimize them to benefit customers. This can also mean surveying customers directly, asking them for insight on how to better improve processes. Creating metrics to assess and evaluate performance regularly will give you the insight needed to adapt processes to better meet the needs of your customer base.

After determining whether or not your business and services fit into an online environment, consider laying the foundation to support the business in an online environment. In following these steps, most offline businesses will be able to better capitalize off of opportunities available online. The best approach is to start small and gradually increase the number of processes offered online, incorporating DIY options for customers wherever appropriate while measuring performance in multiple areas.

Author - This post comes from Urban Outsource, a business that is leveraging the power of being online to get cleaners around Sydney into more houses to clean. By pooling the workforce, and attracting more customers through online channels, more houses are getting cleaned in Sydney than ever.

WordPress Is Not The Only Way People Can Create A Blog

One of the most popular methods in recent memory that people have used to create blogs is WordPress, which is a software platform that novice and experts can use to develop blogs for a variety of purposes. There are several reasons why WordPress is a popular method to develop blogs; however, one of the main reasons is based on its own popularity because people are able to find many features and themes that are aimed at WordPress users. Therefore, it is relatively easy for most people to find a WordPress theme or features to meet their purpose for a blog.

Even though WordPress provides many features and themes along with a platform that is reliable, many people prefer to use other methods for creating blogs. One of the other methods that people use is HTML. For people unfamiliar with HTML, which is short for HyperText Markup Language, it is the standard markup language used to create web pages.

When people refer to blogs, many people think that it is different than a website. However, a blog is basically a website. In general terms, a website is a group of related web pages that are served from a single domain. The word blog is used instead of the more technically correct term website because the word blog is a better reference point to the purpose of a blog, which is to chronicle specific activities on a daily basis.

For people interested in using HTML to create a blog, there are certain things that people should consider such as web design and SEO. The reason that web design and SEO are important regarding the use of HTML is because both are necessary to create a good blog. Web design commonly referred to as website design and SEO commonly referred to as Search Engine Optimization take time to learn properly; however, once the skills and techniques are learned, people can create high quality blogs that can match the look or features of any WordPress blog.

Additionally, HTML code is the backbone for many WordPress themes. Therefore, as people learn the basics of HTML, people can look at the core HTML code behind WordPress themes to make modifications to WordPress themes based on the HTML code. Also, people can view the HTML code for current WordPress themes to think of ways to add various capabilities to their HTML blogs.

Regarding website design, it is the primary component of a good website. In addition, website design encompasses the appearance, functions, and capabilities of a website, and search engine optimization concerns the structure of a website in relation to its ability to do well in search engine results for specific keywords. As people learn website design and search engine optimization, they are able to create blogs that are visibly appealing, efficient, perform well in search engine results, and provide a good user experience.

Currently WordPress is a popular method that people use to create blogs. However, HTML is also a popular method, and HTML is also a core component of WordPress themes. In relation to blogs, HTML is very important. The people who decide to use HTML to create their blogs not only have a popular method at their disposal, but these people can use their HTML knowledge to modify existing WordPress blogs that contain HTML code.

Author - To learn more about web design, visit the blog of Brisbane agency Orange Digital. There you will find posts on responsive web design, mobile web optimisation and search engine tactics.

5 Steps To Improve The Effectiveness Of Your Direct Mail Marketing

Direct mail marketing used to mean sending out a mass-mailing to everyone and hoping someone who cared about your product would first read it, and second, care enough to keep the mailing for future reference. Today, direct mail solutions start by defining the target, continue by creating a powerful message, get into gear with the delivery and finish by evaluating the entire effort.

Step number one is understand how to aim for your ideal customers. If you can describe your typical customer in terms of age, gender, locale or any other defining characteristics, you're halfway there. Work on more detail on who your target customer is and you'll then be able to purchase a mailing list customized for those demographics.

The second step is to make use of professional services at every stage in the process. Working with direct mail is not a do-it-yourself project. We've already mentioned buying a customized mailing list -- make sure your source is dependable and ready to meet your deadlines. Check out the samples and references from printers before committing to a print run.

The next step has to do with the content of your mailed message. Besides being compelling, your direct mail item should always include an action item for the receiver to do. You should also set a deadline by which the action item must be done, even if there is no such deadline. After all, you're not going to turn away a customer if they take the time to come to your store. Also include within the mailings a way such as a numerical code to identify customers who are responding to this specific mailing. It might be on the coupon a customer uses to get their free gadget or discount.

The fourth step is all about the timing. Will there be a special event occurring at your business? Any mass mailing describing the event must then, of course, be sent out and received before the event occurs. If a sale is revolving around a seasonal or holiday theme, then you do not want the mailing to be received after the special day. Direct mail solutions do not solve anything if they're received late. Be sure the company you hire for your direct mail projects knows the dates by which the work must absolutely and totally be completed.

The final step is to track your results. You must know if your direct mail campaign brought customers into your store or inspired them to call your toll-free number or prompted them to ask for a free consultation. This is the point where you use that special code you had printed on all the mailings sent out within this effort. Again, this is a time to use the professional services of a company experienced in providing direct mail solutions. Tracking and evaluating the results is just one of the many tasks these companies do as part of their normal client services.

Direct mail marketing done the right way will be a cost-effective and time-effective means of getting your message out to those customers you know are just waiting to hear from you. The right direct mail solution will help your business to make more money, a goal with which no one can argue.

Author - This post comes from Aew, a business woman who has been experimenting with direct mail marketing tactics lately. She found this blogpost on the SEMA Group's website to be very useful. When not working on the business she is employed by, Aew enjoys travelling, and spending time with her friends and family.