Well, this works for a blog or a basic site, where you would like to give information about yourself or your small business, get feedback, run surveys, write articles, even place ads to make some money. If you want to create an e-commerce site, where you want to sell stuff, accept payments, etc., then these instructions are not for you.

OK, let us get back to the basics. Assuming that you already have a domain name (if not, get one now), there are three main ways you can set up a site with free hosting from World’s leading Internet companies:

1. Blogger from Google
2. Google Sites
3. Office Live Small Business

Part 1: Setting Up Your Domain on Blogger

In Part 1 of this article, I am going to explain how to set up your site using blogger.com. But I am not trying to create a blog, you ask. OK, I will also tell you how to make your site not look like a blog. Let us start with the steps.

Step 1: Creating a free blog on blogger.com
Create an account on blogger.com and create a blog for your site. It is easy and self explanatory. If you have a google account, use that to sign in, otherwise I recommend you create one. If not, you can use any email address to create an account. After creating an account create a blank blog site, and may be start with a simple test post. It doesn’t matter what name you choose for your blog, but it will be nice if you use the same name as your domain. For example if your website is example123.com, use example123.blogspot.com as your blog address. If the name is not available, don’t worry. choose any name that is available and you like.
(Click here to watch a little video on how to create a blog on blogger.)

Step 2: Telling Blogger Your Domain Name
Now that your free blog is set up on blogger, it is time to change your example.blogspot.com address to example.com. Here’s how to do this:

- On your blogger dashboard, click on the “Settings” link against the blog you wish to link to your domain.

- Under Settings, Click on Publishing. You will see the following message.

- Click on “Switch to Custom Domain”.

- On the next screen, click on “Switch to Advanced Settings”.

- On the next screen, enter your domain name. Just below the text box for domain name, click on “setup instructions”, which will link you to this page. Leave the setup instructions open in a separate page.

- For basic settings, say “No” to “Use a missing files host?”. Enter the Word Verification, and click on “Save Settings”.

Step 3: Telling Your Domain Registrar Where to Go
Now complete the instructions given on the setup instructions page. For this you need to visit your domain registrar’s site, e.g., if you registered your domain from Godaddy, go to godaddy.com. This step basically consists of setting up your CNAME and A NAME records. At this point don’t worry what these NAMEs mean. Your CNAME needs to point to ghs.google.com. Setting up your CNAME is enough to direct your domain www.example123.com to your blog, but you need to set up the A names to make sure even example123.com (without the www) points to the same blog. Once your DNS settings are complete, it may take several hours (sometimes upto a day) to be active.

Step 4: Setting Up Your Blog Template
While the DNS settings take effect or “propagate”, let us take some time to customize the blog.

- On your blogger dashboard, click on the “Layout” link against the blog you wish to customize.

- Use Page Elements, Fonts and Colors to change the look of your blog. You can also Pick a New Template from, or search the web for thousands of templates others have created for blogger.

Now if you are actually using this site for your blog, you don’t need to go to Step 5. If you want your site not to look like a blog, then read on.

Step 5: Making your blog look like a non-blog site
You will need to do several things to make your site not look like a blog.

- Hide or Remove Blogger Navbar: Follow instructions on this page. Or better still, use a non-blogger template that has a built in code to hide the navbar. If in doubt, ask in the comments section below.

- Under Layout > Page Elements, click on “Edit” under “Blog Posts”, and uncheck all unnecessary fields like Date, Author, Time, Comments, etc. Also under Layout > Page Elements, delete any unnecessary sidebar elements. Use sidebar to add a menu to your site.

- Various pages for your site will have to be created by going to the Posting tab. Create the pages and use the current date for the page you always want to appear on the front page. For all other posts, use an old date. Remember, you will need to keep the date for the front page later than all other pages. That is how blogger.com will know which page to show first when someone visits your website.

- Under Settings > Formatting, choose “Show 1 post” on the main page.

That is it. Your website is ready to go. Questions? Concerns? Go ahead, ask in the comments section.

Google has lived up to its promise and today it announced that Urdu and Nepali have been added to the mix.

Majority of the new languages added are Indic languages, apparently due to the multiplicity of scripts used for these languages.

Automatic transliteration needs to be configured in the Custom Search control panel using the Language settings. According to the Google Custom Search blog “It will enable conversion of Roman characters to the above languages, allowing users to search for content in these languages. After you turn transliteration on, you can select the specific transliteration languages your users can use.”

Until now, there hasn’t been a good way to send email to friends and family in Hindi, my native language and their language of choice.

Thousands of other email users, including me, have been writing emails in Indian languages for years. I must have written my first Hindi Gmail soon after I started Gmail in 2004 (screenshot below). And the method has been pretty easy – as easy as enabling the Hindi keyboard in my Windows, which is the right way to compute multilingually. There have been a number of other ways of writing in Indian languages directly into your email box too, even if you don’t count the copy-paste online editors, like the one on this site.

So, thanks Google once again. But please don’t claim this couldn’t be done before. It’s just that you have made it a little bit easier for newbies. People used to IMEs (Input Method Editors) will continue doing it the “proper” way. Google made exactly the same claim when they added Hindi typing to Blogger two years ago, when Hindi blogs had already been in existence for a few years. Come on, don’t lie, Google!

You think five seconds are enough? I don’t, but who has more time to hold a mail?

To activate this feature, click “Labs” on your Gmail settings and scroll down almost to the end.

Now that you are on this page, look over all the cool features Gmail labs provides. I like the “Forgotten Attachment Detector” which looks for words like “attaching” in your email and then reminds you if you havent attached a file. I am also going to try “Multiple Inboxes” and “Custom keyboard shortcuts”.

Call 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-4664-411) toll free from your phone. You will be asked the name of city and state where the business is. Next, you will be asked what type of business, or name of the business, and depending on the number of results, you will be connected right away, or given a list to choose from. For example, I wanted to make an appointment for an eye exam. I called the number, stated the city and state, and then the name of my optical store. I was connected right away. If I need the number, I say DETAILS. The voice recognition capability of this service seems to be better than any other system I have tried so far, but in the event of the system not hearing you right, or if you just changed your mind about what you want, say START OVER.

If you are calling from a cellphone, you also get the option of having a text message sent to you with the details. Or, if your phone is web enabled, you may get a map link sent to your phone. Here‘s a list of all the voice commands you can use, and here’s a short (one and a half minute long) video from Google demonstrating the service:

I figured one could also use the service to save long distance charges in some cases. Let’s say you want to call the hotel you will be staying in, in another city. Use GOOG-411 instead of calling long distance.

Looking at the comments to the above video, it seems there are concerns raised by people over the nature of this service – one being that Google is using the voice samples to better their voice recognition capability. Well, I for one don’t care. They also talk about another service, which they claim is better: 1-800-411-SAVE. Gotta try that one too.

Windows-XP/2000 and later come with input method editors for Hindi, and it is not rocket science to activate them. These allow you to write Hindi directly in Blogger’s edit box or Gmail’s, or in Wordpad or MS-Excel. So do a few other tools – like Baraha. But if you don’t want to activate them, there are a number of online or offline tools where you can type and copy-paste to the edit box. These include Uninagari, created by yours truly.

Since I use Windows Hindi IME, I can switch between Hindi and English with a mouse-click or a keypress, so Blogspot’s new feature is redundant for me, and for a whole lot of existing Hindi bloggers who have already found their tools to write Hindi. But if this feature wins Hindi blogging community some new converts, it has done some job. So, thanks Google. Also for bringing some more attention to Hindi blogging. Please make your headlines more in sync with the news in future. Your announcement has pissed off a few old-timers in Hindi blogging. Another thing to note: this new feature has enabled Devanagari script on Blogger, not just Hindi. Devanagari script is used to write not only Hindi but a dozen other languages. A more appropriate title for your post would have been “Devanagari blogging made easier on Blogger”.

I moved into a new housing community last year and the streets are not yet shown on any map website. Even a year after people started living here, even satellite maps show the place as a large construction site. Which makes me wonder how often do these websites update their data. So, if I am inviting people over and want them to look up driving directions on the internet, I know it is not going to be possible. So, I have to give them directions myself. Now Google’s My Maps gives me a way out. All I need to do is draw a few lines for roads, and fix a balloon (placemark) for the location of my house, save it, keep it unlisted and send a link to my guests. When they click on the balloon, they get an option to get driving directions, which of course gives directions to the nearest listed address. Good enough for me.

To each placemark, you can add a title (road name, building name, whatever), and a description. The description is a text box that lets you add html. You can use the html to embed images and even videos.

TiSP (BETA) was simply too good to be true, and still I fell for it. It claimed that TiSP (BETA) was a free broadband service working “by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines”. If I “signed up” they would send me the installation kit free and after a lot of dirtying my hands connecting it to my commode, I would have free wireless broadband internet. I clicked the “get started” link and got to the install page, which got me nowhere, except the FAQ page. The FAQ page had links to the custom install page and list of (water) companies that support TiSP, and they all ended up at the not found page. They even set up a support group, which already has over a thousand messages. And a blog post to boot, to announce the service.

In the meantime, my wife was swooning over the new free photo-printing service from Gmail. It said it could print our emails and mail them to us, supported by advertising, and also..

Photo attachments are printed on high-quality, glossy photo paper, and secured to your Gmail Paper with a paper clip. MP3 and WAV files will not be printed.

Why wouldn’t they print MP3 and WAV files I wonder?

If you don’t have live internet access on your PDA, you can look up driving directions before leaving, and transfer them to your PDA. There are also GPS devices available, that you can hook up to your PDA, and these come with map software that you need to install on your PDA.

If your phone is web enabled, you can also send the driving directions to your phone. Yahoo maps site allows you to send a link of the directions to your phone. Your phone needs to be web enabled in addition to being SMS enabled.

What if all you have is an ordinary cellpone – no PDA, no mobile internet? Google maps, allows you to get directions on the phone, from just about anywhere. Just open the text message editor on your phone, write “directions xxx to yyy”, where “xxx” is the source address and “yyy” is the destination address. The addresses can be in complete “123 anywhere street 45678″ form or just the zip codes, or airport codes, or “city, state” form. Once the message is composed, SMS it to 46645 (GOOGL). This works with all major mobile providers in the US. In a few seconds, you will get back text messages giving you the desired directions. Since most directions are more than a screenful, the directions will come in the form of several messages. Remember, though, that depending upon your plan, your mobile provider may charge you for sending and receiving the text messages. You can also test drive this application here. For example, if you were in New York and needed directions from JFK airport to La Guardia, send “directions jfk to lga” to 46645. This returns a set of 4 text messages, the first one of which will look like this.

Don’t get lost again, for want of correct driving directions.

What remains to be seen is how Google integrates it into its online suite of document applications. Jotspot was certainly a competitor to Google docs. Now, will Google Docs gobble it up just like it did Writely? Or will Jotspot maintain its identity like YouTube did, at least thus far.

Whatever the case, everyone involved seems to be a winner. Google did away with a competitor, Jotspot guys must have walked away with a bunch of dough, and the users are going to get for free what they were used to paying for. Moreover, getting aquired by Google is no less than an ultimate award for most startups.