Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Move your blogspot domain to your own domain easily.

On the surface, it sounds a bit daunting to do it, but really, it is very simple. In fact, if you don’t have a domain name, Google offer the option to register a domain for $10. I’m not sure if this includes private registration, but I’m guessing it doesn’t, so I would recommend using a registrar like Godaddy where you can get a domain for around $9/year with private registration for $7 per year.



GoDaddy.com

  1. Log in to your account at www.godaddy.com.
  2. Open the Domains tab and select My Domain Names. You'll be directed to the Domain Manager page.
  3. Click the domain that you'd like to use with your blog.
  4. Click the Total DNS Control And MX Records link at the bottom of the section entitled Total DNS.
  5. Click Add New CNAME Record in the box labelled CNAMES (aliases). If you've already created a CNAME record for your blog's address, click the pencil icon next to the existing CNAME record.
  6. For the Name, enter only the subdomain of the address you want to use for your blog. For example, if you picked www.mydomain.com as your address, enter www here.
  7. Enter ghs.google.com as the Host Name. Specify a TTL or use the default setting of 1 hour.
  8. Click OK, and then click OK again.
Login to blogspot.com
1. go to Settings: Publishing
Then, in the line marked Your Domain, put in the exact address you want your blog to publish on - for the most part, that will be www.{domain}.{tld}, however, you can use any prefix you wish. You will not need to worry about the missing files host, however you can read the help file on that if you wish.

Click save and you are done.

Tuesday, January 03, 2012

Five tips for speaking

Most people feel a little nervous before giving a speech. Practice and preparation can make it more bearable. Try these tips to make more effective presentations:

1. Know the room and the audience! Arrive early, walk around the speaking area, check out the lighting, and practice using any visual aids. Greet the audience as they arrive to turn strangers into friends.
2. Practice, practice, practice. If you are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with your material your nervousness will increase. Practice your speech and revise it if necessary.
3. Stay loose! Move your fingers, toes, arms, and legs. Make funny faces in a mirror. Keeping your body loose will help your mind.
4. Don't apologize. People want you to succeed and assume you will not make mistakes. Focus your attention on your message and away from your own anxieties.
5. Try, try, and try again! Experience builds comfort and confidence. Take every opportunity to speech and watch your fears melt away.

USA or India and When should you move back home ?

These are some factors that many consider to move back to India from USA. These slides contain summary of all the points that me and my friends and relatives discussed over this topic in the past 4 years. These slides has some good analysis.

http://www.slideshare.net/sureshmadhuvarsu/us-or-india-decide-soon-before-its-late



 




Good Powerpoint presentation

Presentations can be very easy or very challenging based on the speaker, audience and the topic. Though there is no math formula to make a presentation to stand out, there are few tips that would surely help you.
  1. Introduce the topic. Why should audience pay attention to this presentation ?
  2. Provide the facts, context.
  3. Whenever possible use the 10-20-30 rule. 10 slides, 20 minutes, 30 as the font size
  4. Contrast the colors – background and foreground.
  5. Never use fonts that are hard to read.
  6. Don’t put too much of text (unless its training slides).
  7. Don’s use more than one picture in a slide.
  8. If you use pictures or graphs then provide the credits.
  9. If there are multiple presenters, make sure that there is a natural transition.
  10. When starting a presentation or ending it, make sure its done gracefully. Don’t do them abruptly.
  11. Choose examples wisely. Don’t use too many examples that may lead to more questions
  12. Spell check the content. It seems silly but many presentations has misspelled words.
  13. Make sure that the sentences are complete. The presentation slide deck itself should be self-sustaining.
  14. If you use a graph/statistic make sure that you describe what it is. Don’t just put the graph there.
  15. Acknowledgement and source of the facts, figures and graphs should be mentioned “somewhere” in presentation.
  16. Finally, provide takeaways, summary.
Good luck for your next presentation! Remember that everyone wants to present like Steve Jobs. But there is/was only one.

I would be glad to hear other view points.