A Handful of Useful WordPress Plugins

Earlier we shared with you the plugins that we use in your blogs. Today, we are updating that list with another six of them.

1. Popularity Contest

Popularity Contest keeps a count of your post, category and archive views, comments, trackbacks, etc. and uses them to determine which of your posts are most popular. There are numerical values assigned to each type of view and feedback; these are used to create a ‘popularity score’ for each post. Very useful when you want to offer your visitors the best of your posts.

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Jyothy Karat – In love with ambient light

The adage “A picture is worth a thousand words” has never been more meaningful. The above video, made by Jyothy Karat, helped an old age home secure a firm roof above their head.

Jyothy Karat Bio | Site | Blog | Twitter | Contact Achievements : Youngest member of Project “Unsung” spearheaded by photographer Mahesh Bhat Participant in the Angkor Photo Workshop in Siem Reap, Cambodia Worked as a Photo Editor at AOL India Technique: Photo Documentary (Professional)

At a first glance, photos taken by Jyothy are deceptively simple. But they never let you to leave them behind. A lover of ambient light, she weaves magic with her camera. I had a chat with Jyothy and I tried my best to learn some of her ‘secret ingredients’ on Photography.

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Sriram Guruswamy: “I love to use natural light for Photography”

All these evocative colors are captured by a man known as Sriram Guruswamy.

Sriram Guruswamy Bio | Site | Portfolio | Flickr | Contact Awards : VFXY Weekly pick award – 26.5.2008; Winner – TCS Shutterbug Award; 14 times featured as ‘Spotlight’ in Aminus3.com Technique: Portraiture (Amateur)

Sriram is an IT engineer by profession who believes that photography is more than just the click of a button.  A devotee to the fine art of photography, he excels in telling a story using the stillness of life. His urge to travel to the lesser known places in India has developed his body of work over the last four to five years. An avid fan of Indian classical music, he enjoys caricaturing and is a self-confessed foodie!

I tossed a handful of questions at him to understand what makes this man click on almost every single day.

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Tutorial – Photographing Full Moon – A newbie Guide

I have always been amazed by the fantastic pictures of moon taken by my friends, like the one shown above. Whenever I see a full moon while walking back to my room after office hours, I used to curse myself for not taking my camera along. After a couple of misses, I was waiting for my next chance. Next time, oh, the next time I made sure I clicked one (As a matter of fact, many). This post is about this attempt and the lessons learned thereby.

Necessity

A moon!

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A Dozen Apps for Ubuntu Users

I am a big fan of wubi. No other distro but Ubuntu supports installing a linux OS inside windows. So I find myself shift+delete-ing Ubuntu installation once a new one arrives. Over the years, I’ve narrowed down a dozen apps I find installing immediately after the OS itself. This post introduces my favorite (and useful) dozen.

Hamster Time Tracker

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A Beginners Guide to Buying a DSLR (from a Beginner)

I wanted to make a transition from P&S to DSLR. So I asked Google, my all-knowing ever-faithful friend, “What should I do?”. The keeper-of-all-knowledge promptly dumped thousands of camera reviews in front of me to choose from. “Oh my!” - I pinched myself.

When I started searching for a DSLR buy, I didn’t know anything except comparing spec sheets of different camera models; and of course how a DSLR looked! Quickly something became clear to me. Either I have to read reviews written on countless camera models by scores of people or I can ask a learned friend.

I chose the latter. For me, it was Urvesh. If you don’t have anyone, don’t worry, you can start your research from this post

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A Handful of Must Use GMail Features

GMail is my favorite mail client (online and offline) because of its clean, sleek, fast interface. Over the time, I have started to enjoy some of its little-appreciated features. This post tries to give proper credit to the oft-overlooked goodies that are buried among the many touted.

Keyboard Shortcuts

This feature allows to easily navigate through the web interface. By default, Keyboard Shortcuts are disabled in a GMail account. You can enable it from Settings -> General -> Keyboard Shortcuts on . Once the setting is saved, you can press “?” to see all the listed key accelerators.

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Photography – Reliable DSLR/Lens/Flash Review Sites

Trust is a little hard to come by – especially in online sector. I spent the last two weeks in search for a “good’ DSLR. With a little (read: a lot of) help from one of our guest authors, I finally managed to buy one. During that search, I chanced upon a couple of sites that are trustworthy. This post is meant to recognise their hard work and dedication.

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A Beginner’s Guide To Screencasting In Linux

“With great power comes great responsibility”
- Uncle Ben (From Spiderman)

Linux is a free and open powerhouse which demands some quality time to get used to. Once tamed, it will give you powers like never before. But more often than not, you will be crippled by the lack of right information about Linux and its touted killer features. One such section is screencasting and the associated video post-production.

This post details three most useful and most-often left out laymen tools for video mastering.

1. Screencasting
2. Video Watermarking and
3. Video Editing

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In Search Of the Best Google Chrome Plugins

The best always stands out in the crowd.

But sometimes the crowd is so huge that we need someone else to point them out. This post tries to accomplish just that. With tons of Google Chrome plugins available for our use, choosing the “few” useful ones could be time-consuming. Presented below are a dozen plugins that I found useful (with a little help from some of my friends).

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