Cyber Imprints

I just discovered that I can send text messages to cellular phones through Gmail. I made this discovery after my brother sent me a SMS using his Gmail account. This new functionality of Gmail is cool because it will enable me to send urgent messages to anyone on my contact list in case that they are not available online.

The text messaging service of Gmail reminds me of Chikka, which I used when I was a college student. Chikka is a software that can be downloaded and installed on computers for free. Chikka enabled people to send few text messages from their computers. People replying to Chikka from their cellular phones are charged at a rate higher than what is charged on phone to phone text messaging. Chikka is useful back then but it seems like that the app did not become popular, possibly because of the limitations and the expensive charge of their services. I don't know if Gmail text messaging system will gain popularity amongst cellular phone users or Gmail users. But one thing is sure, the text messaging is a useful functionality of Gmail.

Using Gmail text messaging service is easy. All you have to do is to type the phone number on the space located below the “Send SMS” label on the left side of the Gmail window.
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Press “Enter” after typing the phone number. This window will show on your computer screen:
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Type-in the name of your contact and press “Save.” A window will pop up at the lower right of the screen. You can now send SMS to your friend from your Gmail. All you have to do is to type in your message on the pop-up window and press “Enter.” This is as easy as sending message when you are chatting online.

The text messaging service of Gmail gives Gmail users 50 free text message for each day. The recipients of your message will be charged with the usual fees when they reply to your message.

I am glad that Gmail thought of this new service. This will be very useful during emergency situations when I need to send text messages but I have zero balance for my cellular phone load.

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Visit Before the Eastern Sunset and read about the delicious hopia from Salazar Bakery.

Also visit Ahab Reviews and Tips and read about Korea's Ecotrade.

Follow me in Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr and YouSayToo.

I bought a “.com” for my blog, Ahab Reviews and Tips, four months ago and one of my problem is to return my blog to PageRank 2 (PR 2), which my blog enjoyed when its URL still has “.blogspot.com.”

Increasing a blog's PageRank entails a lot of work because it requires the blogger too get as many backlinks to his blog as possible. I did the usual technique of placing the new URL of my blog on many websites in the Internet. I submitted my blog's link to blog directories. I used my blog's new URL when commenting on other blogs. I posted my blog's link on a forum. I even placed the link to my blog on guestbooks found on government websites. Sadly, my efforts were fruitless and my blog continued to stay on PR 0. The PR dry spell ended when I discovered YouSayToo.

YouSayToo is a community for blog promotion and Adsense revenue sharing. YouSayToo shares blog posts from its members by getting the blog's RSS feeds. YouSayToo accepts RSS feed from blogs hosted on Blogger, Wordpress, LiveJournal and Tumblr. YouSayToo will post new blog posts few minutes after publication. I already placed all of my four blogs on YouSayToo so what I wrote on those blogs can also be seen there.

As an online community, YouSayToo allows its members to become interconnected. So far I already have six contacts on YouSayToo, with two of them being my friends on Facebook. I am not an active member of the YouSayToo community and I hope that I can devote some time in the future to strengthen my presence in the YouSayToo community.

One of the features of YouSayToo is the rating feature. Members can rate other members blog posts. The higher the rating, the more popular your blog post is. The rating feature is similar with the ones found on Digg and Reddit.
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A post on my Tumblr blog got 9 votes.

Benefits of Using YouSayToo

The best benefit that I got, so far, from YouSayToo is that it gives my blogs the essential back links. Links to my blogs is important because they factor in the computation blog's PageRank. Ahab Reviews and Tips PR increased from PR 0 to PR 1 because of YouSayToo. The technique in placing back links on YouSayToo is to include the links on your blog posts. When YouSayToo pulls your blog post through the RSS Feed it also pulls the links within that post. I usually link my posts across all of my blogs. At the end of this post, you will see that I placed links to my other two blogs. Another technique that is useful in YouSayToo is internal linking.

Another benefit that I enjoy is that YouSayToo drives visitors to my blogs. I looked at my blogs statistics and it shows that a handful of visitors came from YouSayToo. Thus, YouSayToo became a good way for me to promote my blogs and increase readership.

Another benefit that I saw is the additional revenue for me. YouSayToo offers it members to post Adsense ads on the member's YouSayToo blog feeds. The revenue that is earned is shared between the blogger and YouSayToo. You can also place Amazon Ads on YouSayToo and it is also subject to the same revenue sharing as Adsense. You can also refer a friend in YouSayToo and a percentage of your friend's earnings on YouSayToo will also be added to your earnings.

Last benefit is that of belonging to a blogging community. YouSayToo boasts of a big community and anyone can easily strike friendship with like-minded people on YouSayToo. I am yet to explore this benefit of YouSayToo.

Some people are concerned that YouSayToo might affect the blogs PR because Google might penalize their blogs because of duplicate contents. Google will not penalize bloggers because the duplicate content is found on YouSayToo. If Google penalizes for duplicate content then YouSayToo will be the one that will receive the penalty. The increase of my blog's PR from zero to one is an evidence that my blog was not penalized because of YouSayToo.

The benefits of YouSayToo are plenty that is why I invite all bloggers to join me in YouSayToo. Please add me as your friend in YouSayToo.

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Visit Before the Eastern Sunset and read my review of the Mang Inasal restaurant.

Visit Ahab Reviews and Tips and read about posture correction cushion.

Follow me in Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr and YouSayToo.