This post should not be considered as just a mere rant. This actually works for job interviews and in my experience of the few that I have attended, it has certainly got the positive attention of the recruiter. So, how does it work? By definition, blogging can be at different levels – personal – which is focussed on personal likes/dislikes etc and hence, is already driven by some niche. The other end of blogging is – professional blogging – which is primarily done by people who earn their bread and butter by means of blogging. Such are writers who majorly write about specific areas – such as Technology, Blogging, Making Money Online, Entertainment, Television, Pop culture etc. They are the next generation of press reporting, and arguably pose a threat to the traditional news reporting. Such is the impact that News reporters and the likes have resorted to Blogging online. So, coming back to the question is how does Blogging add value to one’s resume?
It seems like a moment of triumph. Seems like what started as a silly hobby, and having fought many obstructions and other temptations and having not given up after almost 3 years of blogging, has finally paid off. I got my first interview published on an e-mag called Pakspectator.
It is an online magazine encompassing different topics and they feature interviews of writers, passionate bloggers, webmasters et al. I believe that I belong to the second kind. They contacted me and I couldn’t help say anything but yes. Very soon, they replied me with a long list of questionnaire which included questions on my blogging experience etc.
An excerpt:-
Is there anyone from your past that once told you you couldn’t write?
Oh yes many, including my English teacher back at school. I never gave standard answers which were marks friendly.
If you could pick a travel destination, anywhere in the world, with no worries about how it’s paid for – what would your top 3 choices be?
New York- Big Apple
Cupertino – Home of Apple
Tokyo – Home of Jap-Anime
How bloggers can benefit from blogs financially?
There are ways to generate income through blogs. Though I do not blog professionally, and haven’t made a reasonable income from my blogs, there are bloggers who make their entire living from it, and even make a killing. I am still searching for the answer to this question myself.
Is it true that who has a successful blog has an awful lot of time on their hands?
It might be true, and might not be as well. I blog whenever I can. It does not come across as a hindrance to my work (may be the other way around is true). But I do know of people who have very tight schedules but also regularly maintain their blogs which are successful as well.
Leaving aside the bandwagon of celebs (read Bollywood celebs) who cash in on their celeb status to catapult their online presence, there are in fact people with demanding careers who also blog and do a commendable job at it too.
You can read the full interview here. I feel so elated and a bit like a snob as well. Good going Sujoy!!!
It has been a good 6 months since the launch of Techkeyla. And well, I was very happy with the O2-20 Theme that I had for this one. But it has been here since day one. And well, the itch for a change in the theme had been troubling me for quite some time. It actually began when I saw the Underscore theme of Upstart Blogger. I loved the simplicity of the Theme, the Underscore in the Title, and the clean white background. But then, I had issues with its Post Width and its sidebar size. And then, I saw Chris Pearson’sCutline 1.3 -3 Column Split. Instantly liked the whole simple layout, white blackground and well, the rotating header image. The theme is widget ready.But needed some changes to be done. The original theme can be downloaded here. ( Download Link ) And well, did the following changes.
Edited the Header Images. Created a few customised ones with GIMP. Front Page: Kept the theme of my previous Techkeyla intact for the Front Page header. It shows the 3 pillars of what TECHNOLOGY is today. Apple – Google -Microsoft. Moving on to the Single Post page, I included the gadgets that rule the web space today. From the iPhone to the 360, PS3, Wii, Guitar Hero et al.
Sprout is an online content creating tool which enables users to create sophisticated multimedia web content on the fly in a very quick and easy way. It is as easy as probably MS Paint. Just drag and drop. Sprout is for free and the best part is you can just go ahead and create your sprout without signing up for an account. The signing up does come into the picture when you want to save your sprout, publish and manage it. We’ll cover all those steps here in this post. But first, let’s build some demo sprouts and check out how cool they are. Go to the official website here, and click on Get Started. You will get the option of just go ahead and start building your sprout, or sign up for an account. I’ll first create a few sprouts just for the testing purposes.
So, now you’ll be on a page where there are a few templates to choose from. And well, you can choose to start from a blank slate as well. You can preview each template to choose one suitable to your tastes or just go to a blank slate if you experiment with all the options. It is all in flash, so do remember that you would require a Flash plugin to your browser (Flash 9 is recommended on the website). And yes, it supports only IE 7 and above, Firefox 2.0+, Safari 3.x +. Cool, so we have given a title to the project, and it is now at Step -1: Creation of the Project. I have chosen a blank slate and am building a sample sprout for this post titled Techkeyla (surprise!!).First, you can choose a suitable size of the page. The options available are just more than enough and you can choose from standard Youtube video sizes to Adsense head banner sizes to even full pages of 960X800. I have chosen a Youtube video size as I am including it in the post itself. Now you can add some really cool stuff. Right from Google Charts to Videos to Slideshows. And even polls and News Feeds.I’ll add a slideshow and the images that I have used are from my website itself. You can really go nuts with the options that are available, and creating flash based widgets have never been so much fun and easy.
Next up, is step 2: Saving and then Publishing. So, I guess, it’s time to create an account. And now that it is done, I can go ahead and publish my Sprout entitled-Techkeyla . It’s just another flash slideshow, but you all know it is so much more than that. Hope you like the slideshow which is a journey of my past posts in images.
And yes, these Sprouts can be published across many platforms viz. Facebook, Orkut,Bebo, Blogger, MySpace ,you get it. I’m really looking forward to creating some really cool ones . Hope you enjoy sprouting as well.
This post should not be considered as just a mere rant. This actually works for job interviews and in my experience of the few that I have attended, it has certainly got the positive attention of the recruiter. So, how does it work? By definition, blogging can be at different levels – personal – which is focussed on personal likes/dislikes etc and hence, is already driven by some niche. The other end of blogging is – professional blogging – which is primarily done by people who earn their bread and butter by means of blogging. Such are writers who majorly write about specific areas – such as Technology, Blogging, Making Money Online, Entertainment, Television, Pop culture etc. They are the next generation of press reporting, and arguably pose a threat to the traditional news reporting. Such is the impact that News reporters and the likes have resorted to Blogging online. So, coming back to the question is how does Blogging add value to one’s resume?
