This was supposed to be a weekly feature, but nevertheless, I’ve decided to put it up now. Here is a list of posts that I found interesting over the last fortnight.. Time for some more link love!

• Brown Baron has made a list of 12 Top Videos from YouTube. Though I’ve seen most of those videos, it certainly is hilarious to watch anytime!
• Skellie talks about 5 Powerful Techniques to make your posts stand out. As always, Skellie’s posts are just too good to miss out and this one’s no different
• Sizlopedia gives us 3 tips for optimizing and increasing Adsense CTRs and revenue in general
• Ram from Teknobites tells us about a new service, Hellotxt that allows updating of  multiple microblogs simultaneously
• Sumesh discusses about Google and the PR Penalties being dished out and wonders if it’s fair?
• Ashwin reviews Om Shanti Om and gives a few points which I totally support. Retro Junk it is..
• Shankar talks about 5 free tools to remove junk files from your PC
• Rajesh gives us the method to create folders from within MS Office Applications

That’s about it I guess.. If I’ve missed out any other interesting posts, do let me know!

K–12 is the North American designation for primary and secondary education. It represents the education from Kindergarten to 12th grade which is essential for students. Schooling is generally not a very cost-effective affair and considering spiraling costs over the recent years, it may leave more than a hole in one’s pocket.

Free Homeschooling

If you are worried about the high education costs, here’s how it can be tuition-free. K-12 Free Homeschool offers a service that helps in the schooling of kids a economical affair. Basically, the aim of the service is to provide a free online homeschooling to people who are unable to afford it. The service extends free schooling from Kindergarten all the way upto the 12th grade.

How it Works

The service is sponsored by people concerned with education and also certain corporate sponsors. Hence the service can be offered for free to eligible students. To use the service, the most essential requirement is that of a PC at home and a good internet connection. You will need to download the Homeschooling Software and install it on your PC and you are also provided with a login area at the site for both parents and students.

Course and course materials will be provided free of cost, but a $4.95 fee is necessary for each tuition-free course for shipping and handling purposes. All the core-curriculum courses are completely free of charge and optional electives are offered with discounts from 50-75%. You can check out the K-12FreeHomeschool.org Course Catalog for details. In return, there may be ads on the tuition pages which help in funding the service

Enrollment Criteria

Since sponsorships are limited every year, the number of students selected is not very high. You need fulfill certain criteria before applying for the course. The service is still in beta testing and that’s another reason for the low acceptance rates. If you are entered into a waiting list, you need to wait for a 2-5 day period before a spot opens up.

Course Content

The free online homeschool is pretty similar to real world school in the sense of the curriculum and course content. Also, regular assignments, tests and quizzes are conducted regularly to keep the kids active. 300 days of instruction is provided every academic year for a particular course. Also, the time spent learning every day can vary according to the child’s capabilities.

K-12 Free Homeschool provides all the necessary support features for the students in the form of forums and live chat support as well. A secure interface is provided for the main course area to provide a safe learning environment for children. Do try out the service if you are interested in free online homeschooling.

If you would like a Comprehensive Featured Review like this on Siteguide, contact me for details.

First, it was disposable email addresses that you could use for registrations and now it is Disposable Phone Numbers. Imagine that you are signing up on any site that may not be too reliable with user data. If asked for your phone number, then giving them your real phone number would mean receiving endless calls by telemarketers and others, thus invading your privacy.

The Solution

The simplest solution to this would be to use disposable phone numbers that can expire when you want them to. This way, once the number expires, people calling in at that number won’t be able to reach you. You can do this if you feel the calls are getting bothersome. Numbr.com provides you with disposable phone numbers for you to use in such cases

What Is Numbr?

As I said, with Numbr, you can generate a disposable phone number and you can redirect this number to your original phone number. You can set the disposable phone number to expire in an hour, a day, a week or a month depending on how long you want it. To generate a number, simply visit the site and click on “Get your Free numbr” or call (415) 234 5678 and you get yourself a number with an area code.

Features

There are several features to manage your number effectively as well. You can select an alternate number to redirect your call to if your original number is busy or unreachable. You can also choose to get a disposable number with the area code similar or near your location. The other features include

• Rejecting callers with blocked caller IDs from calling
• Rejecting numbers of suspected telemarketers
• Setting a “do not disturb” in the night for different timezones
• Forwarding calls to voice mail directly
• Activate voice mail for missed calls
• Get an email of incoming call history and more

You can also use the iNumbr widget to embed on your site. In this, you can record a personalised message for your readers and they can call you using the widget as well. You can make the disposable number expire by pressing ‘0′ on your phone’s keypad while taking an incoming call.

The only disadvantage is that this is open to US Numbers only. I would have loved to try out a service like this, though. Do you think you would find use for this service? If you’ve used it and it works, do let me know. Thanks for reading!

Assuming you are writing about a site or reviewing a product, a nice screenshot of the website would a wonderful addition to the post. And it is an accepted fact that images increase the chance of people scanning through the post. But including screenshots of webpages is difficult if you need to manually do a print screen, copy-paste, crop and then upload the image.

WebSnapr 2.0

To simplify this process, WebSnapr 2.0 provides you with free screenshots of any website that you want. On the WebSnapr homepage, you are able to view sample screenshots by selecting a size and entering the website address. The amazing thing about WebSnapr, unlike Browsershots, is that the screenshots are obtained almost immediately. I had to wait a maximum of 3 seconds for the screenshot to be queued, taken and received.

There are 4 default screenshot sizes which you can use. However, these 4 sizes represent the majority of screenshot sizes used around the web, so you won’t have any problems with them. The larger the screenshot size, the more time it takes to get the screenshot.

Using Screenshots On Your Site

The most important use would of course be to, implement this on your site. For this you need to do the following steps. (more…)

How active a blog is, is primarily decided by the number of comments or responses that each post on the blog gets. The more the comments, the more the buzz surrounding the blog. High traffic does not necessarily mean more comments.

It is the quality of the posts and the content in them that determine the number of comments. Comments on a blog indicate the level of interaction a blog has with its readers and are very important in determining the loyalty of visitors and readers. Here are a few tips that can definitely help in increasing comments on a blog.

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