Blogger or Wordpress

What you get for free

WordPress.com is a commercial venture. It’s a way for the kind souls who have put time, money and a whole load of effort into the open source and free-to-download WordPress blogging engine to make some money back. They do this by making it stupidly simple to set up and maintain a blog, while introducing some rather hefty limitations for experienced users.

A free WordPress.com account offers:

• A blog, which you can turn into a full-on static or hybrid (part blog, part static) website.
• 3GB of free storage for posts and media.
• Publicize, a tool for connecting your blog with social networks.
• Free statistics for tracking visitors.
• Access to hundreds of non-premium themes, many of which can be customised further.
• WordPress.com access from mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and BlackBerry.

WordPress.com designates the following as premium upgrades:

• Custom Design ($30 per blog, per year) adds custom CSS (not PHP editing) and fonts.
• Custom Domains ($13 per domain, per blog, per year) removes the .wordpress.com part of your URL.
• Guided Transfer ($129 one-off payment) for transferring your WordPress.com site to your own web-host for greater independence and freedom.
• Ad-free ($30 per blog, per year) removes any possibility of WordPress.com showing adverts on your blog to non-logged in visitors.
• Premium themes (priced per blog for the lifetime of the blog).
• A redirect ($13 per blog, per year) for redirecting traffic from yourblog.wordpress.com to your new domain.
• Additional space (priced per amount) for storing more posts and media.
• VideoPress ($60 per blog, per year) for uploading, hosting and embedding your own videos on your WordPress.com blog

Conversely, Blogger is not a commercial service. It was acquired by Google in 2003 who have since kept it ticking over, with a few redesigns and some recently-added new templates. The rather ancient Blogger features page (ancient because it explicitly mentions uploading to Google Video and easily accessing iGoogle, two of Google’s many dead projects) promises users access to all features. There are no upgrades, no fees for adding a custom domain, and all the customization options thrown in that Blogger has available.

Included features worth noting are:

• A template designer for customizing your blog’s appearance.
• Free hosting, free Blogger (or Blogspot) sub-domain and option of using a custom domain (either registering through Blogger or using one you already have).
• The ability to add media to your posts, with no quoted maximum storage space.
• Quick access to Google’s advertising schemes.
• Pages static content on your blog.
• Mobile access via iPhone and Android apps, as well as SMS or email blogging.

It would seem that despite WordPress having the plugins and themes markets sewn up, Blogger still offers more for those looking for a free service.

The Sign-Up Process

WordPress.com allows you to register for an account with an email address, username, password and URL. Blogger is a Google service, and just like YouTube, requires a Google account. If you already have a Google account then this makes signing up a painless affair, but if you don’t (highly unlikely, unless you have something against Google), you’ll have to register for the whole package. This also means if you do have a personal Google Account but want to distance yourself from the topic you’re blogging about you’re going to have to create a new account, and also deal with Google’s messy multiple-account management.

Google’s sign-up process doesn’t indicate that you do not need to supply a mobile phone number or an email address, despite asking for one. Conversely WordPress.com only asks to fill out four fields but will also run a check for the URL you enter and try to sell you a premium domain (which costs to register, and requires an account upgrade to use on WordPress.com) as well as pointing out the flaws in the free account you’re about to register.

Managing Your Blog

Both WordPress and Blogger have centralized areas from which to manage your blog empire, which are separate to the settings for the blogs themselves. The two areas are equally attractive and usable, with both services featuring an area to read blogs you follow as well as the various outlets under your control.

On WordPress this takes the form of a deep attractive blue theme with a tabulated layout that allows you to quickly switch between reading, overseeing blogs and managing analytics in addition to a quick post button.

Blogger houses all of this on the one page, with a quick compose button found next to the blog title itself. Beneath this are new posts from the blogs you have chosen to follow on the service. It goes without saying that you can’t follow Blogger blogs on WordPress.com and vice-versa, though it would be nice if we could all get along

In Conclusion,

I'd highly recommend you to use blogger to create your blog, it gives you alot of facilities and comfort and easiness for free. 

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Take Telescopic Photos with your smartphone

Casual Telescope

Well, you won't Believe it, but you have to.. you know what. You can use your smartphone to take telescopic images!!! yeah yeah you can see the rings of Saturn, the clouds of distant nebulae. All you have to do is create a simple smartphone mount and you can see crisp images right from your backyard observatory. Russ McAllister from Cabot, Ark., designed this rig for his iPhone and posted the plans on Instructables.com (search for "iPhone mount for telescopes"). Google Nexus 4 can now also be used. Annnddd I'm gonna teach you how to make this protocol.

All you need is:

• Conduit hanger (should fit snugly on eyepiece)

• 6-in. bolt (make sure it fits hole in base of conduit hanger)

• 1-in. bolt

• L-shaped corner bracket

• Washers, nuts, wingnuts

• Two pieces of wood, cut from ½-in. stock: 4½ in. x 3 in. and ½ in. x 3 in. (We used plywood.)

• Rubber bands 

Instructions 

Step 1: Wooden Base Create shelf for phone by gluing small piece of wood (A) across large piece (B). Using drill and jigsaw, cut a horizontal, 2-in.-long slot (C) wide enough to fit 1-in. bolt, as shown. (Slot allows you to adjust positioning.) Cut a rabbet around the slot, on front, to recess bolt head. Next, attach L-bracket (D) to back of wooden base using the short bolt and wingnut. 

Step 2: Assembly Insert 6-in. bolt into conduit hanger base (E); secure with washers and nut. Attach L-bracket to long bolt using washers and nuts, as shown. 

Step 3: Mounting Attach conduit hanger to eyepiece. Use rubber bands to attach phone. Loosen wing- nuts to adjust lens position. 

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Experience of Shifting to Our New Home

Hmm, Today we (mom, dad, younger sister and me) shifted to our new home in Islamabad, its on rent, so we had a lot of luggage, it was really really huge, we hired 2 trucks yet we took a lot of stuff in our car. When we shifted we took the luggage off the truck and kept it in home... After that a 4 HOURS hard work was required to set and arrange that stuff!!!, and get the home ready to live in, its now my first night in my new home's room... I arranged my room really well, its a little bigger than the old house, but unfortunately our internet (wireless wingle) is really slow here :(... I am looking forward to get a connection of land-line internet, that would be much better. The first time I bought the car in our home, which was pretty difficult due to narrow gate, you may be astonished that I'm only 13 and driving, but in our country Pakistan, everything is possible... I bought the car from just 1 mm distance on both sides of gate... well, this experience of shifting was really awesome. Did you ever shift to a new home?.. share your experience with me. (comment)

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