Adsense Search

Refer more articles on SEO series here:
http://mylearningcafe.blogspot.in/2015/04/search-engine-optimization-seo-series.html

What is Adsense Search?
AdSense for search is a free product that lets you to place a Custom Search Engine on your site to provide users with web search.

Refer below steps to setup a search engine in your blog.

• Go to https://cse.google.com/cse/
• Add a search engine for your blog
• Once setup, get the code.

Adding search in your blog right side bar

• Once you have got the code as mentioned above, go to blogger
• Click on Layout
• On the right side bar, click on "Add Gadget"
• Select HTML/Javascript
• Put in a name and put the code
• Click Save

Adding search in your posts (of your blog)

• Get the code as mentioned above.
• Convert the code, using the following URL: http://helplogger.blogspot.com/2012/03/adsense-ad-code-converter.html
• Go to blogger
• Click on Template > Edit HTML
• Make a backup of the HTML
• Search for <data:post.body/>
• Replace <data:post.body/> with

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
<<<Insert Your Encoded Adsense Code here>>>
</b:if>
<p><data:post.body/></p>

• Click Save

Adding search in your title header (of your blog)

• Get the code as mentioned above.
• Convert the code, using the following URL: http://helplogger.blogspot.com/2012/03/adsense-ad-code-converter.html
• Go to blogger
• Click on Template > Edit HTML
• Make a backup of the HTML
• Search for <p class='description'><span><data:description/></span></p>
• Put your code below it
• Click Save

Refer more articles on SEO series here:
http://mylearningcafe.blogspot.in/2015/04/search-engine-optimization-seo-series.html

Adsense on blogger

Refer more articles on SEO series here:
http://mylearningcafe.blogspot.in/2015/04/search-engine-optimization-seo-series.html
 

What is adsense?
Adsense is Google's content-targetted advertising program.
One can make money by enabling Adsense on their blog. Relevant ads will be shown on your blog (once approved).

Follow steps below on getting adsense (on blogger):

1. Apply for adsense

• Log into blogger and go to Earnings (n the left side bar menu).
• Click "Sign up for Adsense"
• Complete the application form and await approval.
• Once approved, you will get a confirmation email.
• Go to Earnings section and click on "Yes" for "Show ads on blog"
• Ads will not appear on your blog initially, it may show blank ads for 2 days.

2. Putting ad in the right side bar

• Once approved, go to Earnings > View Dashboard > My ads
• Click on "+New ad unit"
• Select the "Large skyscraper"
• Automatically it will get activated on your blog

3.Getting code for ads on your blog (not the side bar)

• Once approved, go to Earnings > View Dashboard > My ads
• Click on "+New ad unit"
• Select the type of ad you want
• Once selected, click on get code.
• Copy the code.

4. Putting the ads in the Post (below title)

• As per step 3, you have got the code for the ad.
• Convert the code, using the following URL: http://helplogger.blogspot.com/2012/03/adsense-ad-code-converter.html
• Copy the converted code.
• Go to Blogger
• Go to Template
• Click on Edit HTML
• Keep a copy of the HTML code.
• Search for "<data:post.body/>"
• Replace the <data:post.body/> with

 <div expr:id='"adsmiddle1" + data:post.id'></div>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType != &quot;static_page&quot;'>
<div style="clear:both; margin:10px 0">
<!-- Add here the code of your ad -->
</div>
</b:if>
</b:if>
<div expr:id='"adsmiddle2" + data:post.id'>
<data:post.body/>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var obj0=document.getElementById("adsmiddle1<data:post.id/>");
var obj1=document.getElementById("adsmiddle2<data:post.id/>");
var s=obj1.innerHTML;
var r=s.search(/\x3C!-- adsense --\x3E/igm);
if(r>0) {obj0.innerHTML=s.substr(0,r);obj1.innerHTML=s.substr(r+16);}
</script>

• Put your converted code by replacing the line in the above code <!-- Add here the code of your ad -->
• By default, the ad will appear below the title.
• If you want it at another place, at that place put the following <!-- adsense -->

Refer more articles on SEO series here:
http://mylearningcafe.blogspot.in/2015/04/search-engine-optimization-seo-series.html

KanBan - An introduction

Note: Refer Project management main page here

Kanban is way for teams and organizations to visualize their work and identify and eliminate bottlenecks.
Kanban is a method to gradually improve (any business function can benefit from applying Kanban).

In Japanese, the word “Kan” means "visual" and "ban" means "card", so Kanban refers to visual cards. Kanban is a concept related to lean and just-in-time (JIT) production.

Kanban was originally invented as a part of the famous Toyota Production System. It is associated with the design of pull systems and the concept of delivering just-in-time good

KanBan follows a workflow. In simplest terms, it can be a big board with cards placed for each hase.
There are numbers at the top of each phase and these are the limits.
Limiting the amount of work-in-progress (WIP) reveals bottlenecks dynamically so that one can address them before they get out of hand.

Read below for practical explanation:

The board below shows a process where there is a workflow to be followed:

1. Requirement phase (limit of 5)
2. Design Phase (limit of 3)
3. Development Phase (limit of 4)
4. Testing Phase (limit of 3)
5. Release (limit of 5)

One can see that the process cannot progress until the testers have finished a task.
This dynamically reveals the bottleneck (in this case its the testing phase).

 Once the testers have finished a task, the task is moved from "Testing" to "Release" and the workflow can now move ahead.

As the workflow moves ahead, its helps to dynamically track the bottleneck. It may not be Testing all the time. Each time (based on various factors like resources, requirement skill etc) a new phase could become a bottleneck.

 If a bug is encountered in the Testing phase, a new requirement is created for the same.

Do let me know your views.
Stay tuned for more Agile based articles.

SEO Series - Adding your site to search engines

Refer SEO series (list of articles) here

One needs to add their site (blog) to the search engine.This is pro-actively ensuring search engine crawlers (spiders) would check your site (blog).

The below URLs are used to add your site (blog) to the search engines:

• Google
• Bing

This is a basic and first step in SEO techniques.

Stay tuned for more articles on SEO.

Refer SEO series (list of articles) here

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Series

Refer to below articles (more will be added with time) on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques.

Benefits of learning about SEO:

• More traffic to your blog
• More learning (by cross sharing of learning's with subscribers)
• Your blog can rank higher in searches via search engines
• More financial earning potential.

Topics (more will be added with time):

• Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 
• Steps performed by a Search Engine
• SEO Series - Adding your site to search engines  
• Adsense on blogger
• Adsense Search 

SEO Series - Steps performed by a search engine

Refer to SEO series here.

In our previous article on SEO, I had mentioned the following:

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, refers very simple to the strategy and methodology of helping a website rank higher (seen near the top of search engines like Google) on a search return.

What is SEO (search engine optimization)?At its most basic, "SEO" means trying to get your site as high up as possible on search result pages.
This generally means more traffic to your site.
One can define it as a process of trying to make a website appear in a high position when users conduct a search with keywords.

So, to understand SEO, we should first try to understand how do search engines work?I will have more articles on this series soon.

Search engines have two major functions:

• Crawling and indexing documents, articles, images etc
• Return search results with max relevancy and importance (popular)

Steps performed by a search engine (in order):

Crawling:
Simple act of the search engine being able to find your blog and being able to crawl(read) the content.
The tool that does this is known as a spider or crawler.

Indexing:
When a crawler finds your blog, it will try to index the content. This helps it in improving its search while retrieving data for users.

Processing:
Process content and keywords to determine relevancy of the content with respect to the search made.

Relevancy:
Most important aspect where search is considered.
If your blog comes in the first couple of links in google search, you have a high chance of traffic.
Many users never ever go to page 2 in google search at all and hence to get traffic on your page, you need to ensure that your page comes up in the first couple of links in a google search.

Retrieval:
Act of search engine retrieving data for the user.

We will touch upon more aspects of SEO in next articles. 

Refer to SEO series here

Gamification for employee motivation

Ever used gamification for employee motivation?
I have.

We created a simple module initially (as a prototype):
- High Level badges on achieving a specific level
- Low level badges (area based)

Step 1:
Identify areas for your low level badges
Create areas where you would like to see your employees perform:
- Documentation
- Code Reviews
- Agile Process followed
- Unique test cases/scenarios
- Certifications
- Follow ups with different groups (during a project)
- Team work
- Trainings and presentations
- Knowledge sharing

You could have as many low level badges as you like. The areas would be based on your organization priorities or project priorities.

Associate each badge with a set of points.

As employees garner points, they would be in the leader boards for each area.

An employee will get a high level badge based on the number of points he/she accumulates.

Advantages:

• Employees have access to the area based leader-boards and that serves as a feedback on areas they need to improve on.
• This promotes a healthy environment within an organization

We have implemented it and found employees enjoying collecting points and badges.

The only dis-advantage of this model is to constantly keep inventing newer badges or challenges else it will become monotonous and die a natural death.