Here is a cool tip on how to clean up your inbox once and for all. I have only provided instructions for gmail but I know there are similar feature sets in all the major web mail platforms such as Yahoo and Hotmail.

First thing you need to do is create a “filter“, you can do this by clicking the small link to the right of your search bar in Gmail. In other mail platforms it may be called a “rule” or something similar.

(click to enlarge)

Next, add the text “unsubscribe” into the “Has the words” field. Since it is required by the CAN Spam laws to allow users to unsubscribe from newsletters, 80-90% of newsletters will contain this text. This is the easiest way to capture the majority of newsletters in one hit.

(click to enlarge)

On the final step, there are 3 options you need to modify. First, select the “Skip the Inbox (Archive it)” option, then select “Apply the Label” and select Newsletter (or something similar). If you have not yet created a newsletter label, select “Add New” and create it. And finally select the “Also apply filter to X number of conversations below”.

(click to enlarge)

And you’re done. Now you should have a folder on the left with the majority of your newsletter emails. Just click it to view those whenever you feel like it.

The great thing about this rule, is that it will capture the majority of new newsletters too. But remember, if you sign up for a website of some sort and are waiting for a “confirmation” or “activation” email to come through, it might be in your newsletter folder. Same with lost password email etc.. Basically any email that comes from a website of any sort.

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The line up included Chad Hurley – Founder of YouTube, Jack Dorsey – Twitter Founder and Niklas Zennstrom – Skype Founder to name a few.

Michael runs a video production studio in Dublin so check him out if you’re in that part of the world.

Chad Hurley – Founder of YouTube

Jack Dorsey – TWITTER Founder

Niklas Zennstrom – Skype Founder

There were a few other great speakers including Brent Hoberman – LastMinute.com, Sloane Berrent – AnswerwithAction.com and Soraya Darabi – FoodSpotting.com. Check out all the speeches here.

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Social Network Shopping – The Dawn of a New Era

We all know about social media and social networking. It’s been a hot topic in the news, on the internet and in Hollywood. But as a business owner who runs a business in the real world, what does it mean for you? How can you actually use social media to help achieve your business or life goals?

It’s true that social media can have a positive impact on business. There are methods such as running viral competitions to mass increase subscribers and more innovative approaches such as the Old Spice campaign. But while it’s true that interacting on social media can boost brand awareness and interaction, is it really the best use of time for an employee?

Read full post…

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Its a site with videos teaching educational concepts. It starts with simple concepts like 1+1 and goes all the way into college level and calculus.

The Khan Academy is helping people all around the world, giving them access to a free, first grade education.

www.khanacademy.org

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If you don’t know, who Mark Burnett is, here is a Wikipedia excerpt:

Mark Burnett (born 17 July 1960) is a British television producer, known for creating and/or producing competition-based reality television shows such as the American edition of Survivor, The Apprentice and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

Mark Burnett’s international productions include: Amne$ia Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?, which has been produced in over 55 foreign countries, The Contender-Asia (a Thai kick-boxing version of the American Boxing-Competition show), and The Apprentice which has been produced in over 21 foreign countries.

Mark Burnett is pacting with casino and resorts giant Genting Intl. to launch a $20 million joint production venture. Mark Burnett Prods. Asia will produce original content for Asian broadcasters and license those formats in markets around the world, including the U.S. The TV venture, the first for Genting, marks the latest overseas expansion for Burnett.

For a guy who use to be in the military and worked as a nanny, his talk sounded awfully familiar to a Tony Robins presentation. Which is not a bad thing in any way as Tony Robins is a gangster (the cool kind) and I’m a self help junkie.

The interesting portion of the talk was at the end when he launched his new TV show: Sarah Palin’s Alaska.

While I am no fan of Sarah Palin, I am a fan of Mark Burnett. For his TV shows, his marketing skillz and most recently his gangster Tony Robins like jargon.

During his keynote at Blogworld, he announced this TV show for the first time by having stevegarfield whom I don’t who, but seems to have a decent sized Youtube channel, upload the first copy of the TV Trailer to his Youtube channel, tweet it out then asked everyone in the room to also tweet it out.

This is the video that was uploaded to Youtube.

The official first tweet

At the time of writing this video is currently on ~82,000 views. Not bad for 10 days.

Who knows if this tactic will work or not but I like his innovation and guts for giving it a shot. Plus its Sarah Palin so no one really gives a sh!t if it works anyway…

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I had also never been to a multi-day event, which had parties too.

One thing I have learned about myself over the last year, is that I suck at networking online. I just don’t have the patience for it. I know this may be a bit of a negative being in the online space as there is no better place to meet people who work online than online… But I just don’t like doing it. I don’t like hanging out on Facebook, I don’t like tweeting stuff, I think its weird meeting and connecting with people online.

But hey, that’s just my opinion and personally, I think its a pretty stupid one. I should do more of it. I just feel that the computer is a place of work and learning. When I am on my computer, I am almost always doing one of those things. If I am not doing one of those things, I quickly start to feel uncomfortable and need to get outside, meet some people, do some exercise, do something!

I also know this challenge I have is the opposite of many other bloggers / internet markets who find it awkward to meet and connect with people in person but have no troubles online. I guess its the salesman in me.

So when Blogworld came about, I was like a kid in a candy store. Admittedly, I only went to the full first day, then the clubs afterwards. Even though I didn’t make it to too many events the next couple of days (partly due to the seductive beckoning of the pool, partly due to my hangover), I made it to every party – and after party. I know this was almost the reverse schedule of lots of the attendees who made it to Blogworld. Whichever way you prefer to use your time, you need to make sure you use your time.

I didn’t feel there were too many advanced content courses being taught during the days, but lots of great stuff if you are just getting into new and social media.

The nights were where it was at. I met so many interesting people. Had so much fun. Spammed business cards, collected business cards, pumped my LinkedIn account oh and did I mention the fun?

Whatever the type of person you are, if you work in the internet space I think Blogworld is worth checking out. I will definitely be back there next year if I am on this side of the planet.

So what did I get out of Blogworld (besides the ability to party for a few nights in Vegas?) – contacts. I met people. Lots of interesting people. And its all about who you know right?

Here are some photos including some great content slides from Blogworld:

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So I entered my comment, as you do, and what do you know – I was selected as a winner. Yay!

Below is my winning comment:

The future of blogging will be a continual movement away from the one sided, board of director selected, opinion led information flow. A continual pressure against traditional media outlets as bloggers become the main sources of influence across all mediums including written, audio and video. Media moguls will no longer influence elections and wars, bloggers will. Bloggers will replace newspapers, radio and TV stations as truly enlightened individuals have two way conversations with their readers and deliver exactly the kind of content that they want.

Blogging will continue to remove the barriers to entry in becoming a global influential force, allowing people from all around the world – including third world countries – to step up and be heard by everyone. Something that was almost impossible in the world of media control.

I believe blogging will help create an equal distribution of information, where the people who are heard are the people who deserve to be heard because they have the strongest message. This in turn will help to enlighten the global population and eventually increase the equality of living across the world.

Now I’ve just got to get to Vegas…

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This isn’t really a tech blog but I recently moved my WordPress account to a new host and domain and thought I would share the process. I had to look through a few different posts to figure it out so I thought I would combine them into one. And because blogs may be of interest to many lifestyle designs I thought I would chuck in this post.

Moving to a New Host

Backing Up your Blog

First thing you should do is backup your blog. The easiest way to do this is FTP into your blog and copy the whole folder down onto your computer. Hopefully you wont need to touch this but its just in case. I use FileZilla, a free FTP program. Once you have FileZilla, connect useing your ip address, username and password. Settings may differ depending on your host so check out their website if you are having troubles.

Install WordPress on your New Host with your New Domain

Depending on your host, will depend on how you do this. Godaddy is very simple, you just select a wordpress hosting plan and it will walk you through the setup of your new account. I use godaddy.com hosting to manage my blog. I was using a dedicated server but it ended up being more expensive and more work with no really reward so I switched. I was changing domains anyways so I thought it was a good time. Using a hosing service like godaddy, Blue Host or Host Gator will give you easy one click WordPress install. Perfect for the non-technical. Remember to use the new domain you are choosing for the setup. At this point you should have a new basic install of WordPress attached to your new domain. I am assuming you have done this before if you are migrating a blog.

Export and Import your Posts, Pages and Comments

The export / import process is VERY simple thanks to WordPress integrating this into the platform. Simply select export from the tools menu as below.

To import, just select the import option from the tools menu and select the file you downloaded. And that’s it, all posts, pages and comments will have moved over.

Install and run Search and Replace

Install the Search and Replace plugin. This plugin will allow you to search for all content in your blog and replace it with new content. To do this you should search for your old blog, so for me it was “wordplaywithvinay” and replace it with “abstract-living”. This will fix all the links to other posts within your blog and tie up any other loose ends.

Copy your Theme and Plugins

To copy your theme and plugins, you will need to copy the wp-content folder from your old host to your new one. You can find this one directly in from the folder you have your blog installed in. You can replace the files that exist in the new directory because you only have a base install so far.

Unfortunately this method will not copy over the configuration of your old theme or plugins and you will need to manually go through each of them and reconfigure them.

Copy Widgets

The easiest way to copy over your widgets will be to open the wordpress dashboard of both of your blogs, go to the widgets tab and copy over the contents of each widget individually. You will need to change any URLs or RSS links.

Change your Permalinks

Make sure you change your permalinks to the same structure to what they were before. To do this, check the settings in your old blog under Settings –> Permalinks and copy the same settings over.

Migrate your Feedburner Feed

To migrate your Feedburner feed, the easiest solution is to change the name and address of your existing feed to the new one without changing the extension so your existing subscribers don’t see a change.

You can create a second feed for new subscribers or just continue using the old feed, its up to you.

Redirecting your Old Blog

After you’ve tested everything twice (three or four times) its time to move over your domain, the final step. To do this you will create a 301 redirect from your old blog to your new one. This step is important for two reasons.

1. It will redirect any old links that exist to your blog from external sites, including individual post links.
2. It will move all the link value from your old blog to your new one. Very important to keep your ranking in Google.

To do this you will have to modify your .htaccess file. You will find this file in the root directory where wordpress is installed. You want to edit the .htaccess file in your OLD blog.

To do this, you will need to download it, make a backup, then open it in notepad. Replace everything inside with the following lines (changing out the respective domains):

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?wordplaywithvinay\.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.abstract-living.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Upload the new .htaccess to your old host and your set to go.

This scrip will redirect your homepage, plus individual posts and pages.

I hope you have a smooth transition, let me know if you have any questions.

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I feel every single piece of communication I have with anyone is important. Unless they are friends of more than a few years you really should be following a ‘standard’ email format for EVERY email. This is not just with business either, but with every contact you make. Whether you are talking to your accountant, looking to rent an apartment or buying a fish you should follow your standard format. Your standard email format will vary depending on who you are, what you do and what kind of first impression you’re trying to give off, in other words, your identity.

There are a few reasons I recommend having a structure to how you write your emails.

• It gives you a fall back format if you’re unsure how to handle that particular kind of email
• It makes your email writing quicker as once you get the hang of it, you wont have to think about how to structure your email before you start
• And most importantly: It gives the reader an idea of what kind of person you are

Letting people know your identity, what you do and how you can help is super important. You NEVER know when someone you speak with could open up a new opportunity for you. The guy selling the fish could be your next client or boss.

You are definitely going to write many more emails (or waves) in your life, so its fair to say that writing a good email is a necessary skill and one you should take care of – if you haven’t already.

What is a Good Email?

In my day I’ve had many an email discussion with people from all walks of life. Working as a recruiter, and now as an Entrepreneur means I’ve made first contact with people from the strange to the successful. I’ve had conversations with students, scholars and salesmen with clerks, caterers and CEOs and with bankers, builders and beauticians. Out of all the types of people I’ve had email conversations with, there are few that project a professional, educated and articulate image in their writing. It’s not because they’re uneducated or can’t articulate their thoughts, it’s because they don’t put in the effort or don’t think it’s important.

As a high level rule, bankers and salesmen are the best email writers. And they should be, they get trained on how to write an email. CEOs are fairly hit or miss, as are most senior managers in large non-white collar industries. Everyone else, well, they usually suck. This is good news for you tho because it makes it easy to stand out from the pack.

A good email has many variables including your identity, who you’re contacting and why you’re contacting them. But there is a constant that flows with all well written emails and that is structure. How you structure an email says lots about your personality and thus should be taken into consideration with EVERY email you write. Not just first contact.

How to structure a good email?

Below is the general structure for a well written email. I will explain in detail below.

• Greeting
• Pleasantry
• How you got their details, call back and reason for email
• Body Topic 1
  • Situation
  • Benefits
  • Call to Action
• Body Topic 2
  • Situation
  • Benefits
  • Call to Action
• Body Topic n
  • Situation
  • Benefits
  • Call to Action
• Closing line
• Signature

Greeting

The greeting is simple. If you know their name “Hi NAME,” or “Dear NAME,” will suffice. If you don’t know their name (in the instance of contacting some businesses or a seller on craigslist open with a simple “Hello,”

Pleasantry

You should ALWAYS follow with a pleasantry after your greeting. EVERYTIME without fail. Ingrain this into your fingers so that you naturally spit it out with each email you write. There is no reason ever why your email shouldn’t have a pleasantry. Even if you are criticising someone (which you shouldn’t do over email anyways) you should still have a pleasantry to give them the sandwich effect. You will never have anything to lose by adding in a pleasantry, you will make people more inclined to read the rest of your email, you will soften criticism, and will hit the positive emotions of a few. Most will simply ignore it, but for two seconds if your time, its definitely worth it.

Pleasantries can include the following:

• I hope you’re well
• I hope all is well
• I hope the day/week is treating you well
• I hope all is well since we last spoke

Once a conversation has started:

• Thanks for that
• Thanks for getting back to me
• Thanks for your response
• Thanks for your quick response

This is also the line where you can start to display some of your personality and identity. You can add in your super-awesome-fun-exclamation-mark-loving personality or your polished articulate self.

• I’m super excited you got back to me, thanks!!!

or

• Thank you kindly for your prompt response, it is most appreciated.

How You Got their Contact Details, Call Back and Reason for the Email

This portion of the email will vary depending on the purpose of the email and how you know the person. Use your common sense to determine what to put here but here are a few points that should cover most circumstances.

How you got their contact details

This is only necessary at the start of a conversation. But adding in a line such as “I found your details on xyz website or social media platform” gives the reader a sense of where you are coming from – this is important for first contact.

Call Back Content

If you got their contact details at a networking event, party or some other scenario where you had an interaction of some sort, built some rapport and made plans to stay in contact – this is a great place to add in what I call call back content. If you spoke about a sporting event, a ski trip, kids, whatever – add a few lines in this portion of the email. This will firstly help them to remember who you are and further built rapport. It will also give them some content to bounce off making it easier and more enjoyable for them to respond.

Reason for Email

A reason for the email should be included in every new conversation, even if you’ve spoken to the person before.

• I wanted your opinion on xyz
• I have a proposition/opportunity I think you may be interested in
• I have a few things I think we should catch up about
• I have an update on xyz project or report
• I have some news I think you should hear

This should be brief as you will explain it further, but should give the reader an idea about what they’re in for. This is important when contacting busy people. Also, if the email has multiple topics (discussed below) outline them here.

“I wanted to give you an updated on xyz project and see if you were available to catch up with George on Tuesday”.

Body

The body should be broken into three parts.

• Situation
• Benefits
• Call to Action

You need to repeat these three parts for every topic in your email.

Situation

This is what is happening, the reason for the email in more detail and what needs to be done (basically what most people write in a normal email).

“I’ve just received the report back from John and we need you to look over it. It shouldn’t take too long, just need you to check the final figures and make sure the portions that relate to your team are worded correctly. We need it back by lunch tomorrow”

Benefits

The father of self help Dale Carnegie in his book How to Win Friends and Influence People states the only way to make someone do something is to make them want to do it. Unless we are communicating with friends, chances are we want something out of every email we send. The way you make people want to do something, is by explaining the benefits. You can always find a benefit for why someone should do something.

In the above example “I’m sorry for the short timeframe, but BOSS MAN is coming down hard on me to get this finished and your section is the last one we need.” – The benefit here is that he will either avoid getting in trouble by BOSS MAN if he does this on time, or he will get emotional gratification for getting you out of trouble with the boss.

Most interactions will have some kind of mutual benefit. If you’re trying to get a job, buy, sell or share something, chances are you have some type of value to offer. If you’re really stuck for a benefit you can always “owe them one” or “buy them a beer”.

Don’t forget to highlight the benefit.

Call to Action

Once you’ve told them what needs to be done, and what they’re getting out of it, you need to put in a specific call to action or next step.

In the above example: “Please confirm via email that you will be able to complete this for me by lunch tomorrow. If I haven’t heard from you by 4pm today, I will give you a call.”

Here are some other examples:

• Please contact John on this number at this time
• Please send this report here on this date
• I will call you at 4pm on Monday to come see the fish
• Please start this as soon as possible, I will call you on Tuesday at Lunch to see how things are progressing

This step assigns accountability, adds a timeframe and a specific follow up action to get things moving straight away without additional emails back and forth.

Remember: rinse and repeat these three steps for each topic in your email.

Closing Line

This is a simple line, almost a second pleasantry. Something like:

• Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or issues
• I will follow up shortly to check your thoughts
• Thanks so much for helping me out with this
• I look forward to your response

Signature

Finish off with your signature. This will include some kind of a:

• Regards
• Kind Regards
• Thanks
• Cheers

Plus your name and additional contact information such as phone number, website, social media profile etc.

Check out Wisestamp – an awesome free Firefox Plug-in that adds HTML signatures to any web email client such as Gmail. It includes integration and cool little icons for blogs and social media profiles.

Adding this information is important because if you’ve made a good impression in your email and sparked some curiosity it allows people to go off and find out more about you.

Conclusion

This may seem like lots to integrate into every email you write, but as I mentioned, having a structure for your emails will actually increase the speed you write them once the structure is internalised. Having this kind of structure will also give people a strong first impression. Not only that you are kind, formal, structured, put in effort and courteous – but the body will be a relief for people who deal with large volumes of emails as it is telling them exactly what needs to be done. There is nothing more annoying than receiving an email that you need to respond to asking for more information before you can action it.

I hope this helps you build an email structure – personalised to your own identity – that will lead to rewards in the future. Remember, some people will not remember when you write an email well, but they will certainly remember when you write on badly. So make it a habit to write awesome emails!

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I decided on this move for two key reasons:

Personal Branding

I created this blog to document my changing lifestyle and to build my personal brand. I’ve been reading lots about personal branding over the last couple of years (great simple resource to get you started is Colin Wright’s free eBook – ExileLifestyle.com). One thing I’ve found about this blog is that the domain isn’t very receptive to any keyword… there are some famous Indian dudes named Vinay and there is no way I am competing with them. Plus the domain doesn’t really give any feel to the type of blog I am trying to represent.

I have changed my personal branding page to a Posterous page with a domain of my full name vinaypatankar.com. This is already ranking second under my LinkedIn account and above my FaceBook page. I did this as more of an experiment but it seems to have paid off. I now control about half the front page of Google for the keyword “Vinay Patankar” – this blog ranks 43.

Its true that I do have a unique name which makes it easier and I was lucky that my domain wasn’t taken but its still nice to know that the front page is basically controlled by me. We are all going to have more and more of our lives posted on the internet. It is already becoming normal for potential employers to Google you. When I applied for the TEDxBKK event (which I was accepted for but couldn’t make it to) they asked me for a public online profile. Its happening so you better get used to it. At some point, some person / organisation / institution is going to post something about you on the net, be assured of it. If that happens to be a negative comment having control over the front page of Google may save you lots of stress.

Building the Blog

This hasn’t really been a serious blog. I’ve been traveling extensively and had other projects to work on. As mentioned above it was more of a personal branding thing. I have however decided to make a move to build this blog into something a little greater. It took me a while to decided exactly how to brand what I was interested in writing about. A sort of combination of travel, lifestyle design, technology, life hacking, social hacking, personal development and loads of other things. But I decided that I’m interested in these things because I am on a quest to build myself an abstract lifestyle. A life that is different form the standard template of life. A life of travel and exploration. Of failures, leanings and successes. A  minimalism empire builder. A life where I can drink with the rich, eat with the poor and dance with the nasty. A life of EXPERIENCE.

Abstract-Living will be about the things I learn on my journey of experience. Glad to see you here! M7TETTS8W5UV

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