New Google Apps Guides

Google has new Getting Started Guides for spreadsheets, documents, and presentations.

These three guides cover the basics about Google Docs and have tidbits of information on features you may not know too much about. If you already use Google Docs spreadsheets, but aren't so familiar with presentations, you can read this guide to learn, for example, how to embed an online presentation in your blog.

Don't forget to send these links along to your family, friends, and coworkers who may want to get started with Google Docs.

After you're finished reviewing the guides, check our Help Center for more information. And if you have questions or want to share your suggestions and comments, visit our Help Forum.

Twitter Getting More Popular!

Twitter becomes more popular on a daily basis.
It has become the latest craze among certain celebrities.

According to Hitwise, thanks to celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey Twitter is soaring to stardom around the world,

Twitter's growth in Australia "has been nothing short of phenomenal," rocketing 1,067 percent since the start of this year, reported Alan Long, research director at the Internet intelligence gathering firm.

The number of visitors to Twitter has more than tripled in New Zealand since the beginning of the year. In Singapore, Twitter is among the 50 most popular online destinations in the country.

Twitter's share of online visits in the United States and Britain had increased by 570 percent and 621 percent respectively since the start of the year.

Oprah Winfrey has been on Twitter for a couple of weeks and has more than 560,000 followers.

Wordpress and IntenseDebate

The folks at WordPress say IntenseDebate Comments enhance and encourage conversation on your blog or website. Custom integration with your WordPress admin panel makes moderation a piece of cake. Comment threading, reply-by-email, user accounts and reputations, comment voting, along with Twitter and friendfeed integrations enrich your readers' experience and make more of the internet aware of your blog and comments which drives traffic to you!

Full comment and account data sync between Intense Debate and WordPress ensures that you will always have your comments. Comments made in IntenseDebate are automatically backed-up to your WordPress comment system, while your existing WordPress comments are automatically imported into IntenseDebate. You always have all of your comments so uninstalling is a one-click process if you change your mind.

Moderate and reply to IntenseDebate comments from your WordPress admin panel using our custom moderation page that looks and feels exactly like the WordPress page that you are used to.
IntenseDebate outputs the standard WordPress comments enabling your comments to still be indexed by search engines that ignore JavaScript, while ensuring that visitors surfing with JavaScript disabled will be able to interact with comments made in IntenseDebate.

Your trackbacks and pingbacks are all automatically synced to your IntenseDebate account so you won't have to sacrifice one bit of link love by installing IntenseDebate.

The drawbacks of course, include a more difficult method of commenting for non-users.

Find out more

Promote your new blog

When you start out, take it slowly and do not overwhelm yourself or your blog. You do not want to burn yourself out. Also, you need to take it slowly to make a proper evaluation of what works for you.

Here are some tips.

* Comment on other blogs. The blogsite holder reads them as well as their visitors. Start by leaving a comment on my blog. You can also use a site such as blogs of note where there are bound to be plenty of good blogs with plenty of visitors

* Check out sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, and Reddit . They can actually send you quite a few visitors. Don't do all at once though as your blog will become tired fast.

* Invite a fellow blogger to guest blog on your site. A reciprocal guest blog is like sharing the wealth. I enjoy the invitation myself.

* Have something that everyone wants and give it to them. Free downloads are a good way to get visits.

* Purchase advertising through Google, Yahoo or even other blogs.