This is part of the products, services, and website review series on Balkhis.

Every day I open Firefox and open Google to search about whatever random thing I need to know about that day. When I first heard about Bing, I didn’t even give it a second thought. I figured it would go the way of the other search engines I have tried (like Scour) that slowly faded out of my search routine. Google was my bread and butter search engine, so why the heck did I need to try another search? Television was why.

About two weeks ago I started seeing commercials for Bing. The first time the “search overload” commercials were cute, but then I started seeing the same thing seven times a day. If I hear “moms who wear jeans to match their teen’s jeans” I was going to stab the television, so to prevent premature television death I decided to try out Bing.

The first difference from Google is the colorful background that Bing has adapted. I don’t know if it is an attempt to be the ultimate anti-google, but it is kinda cool to see an image instead of the white screen that permeates my dreams. Even better, Bing’s backgrounds have these little information squares that pop up in random places when you scroll over the screen. That is not to say that they are particularly informative little squares, but it breaks up the monotony of a plain background.

Now for the actual search. Both Google and Bing offer suggestions to correct incorrect spelling, which is a plus, but there is a definite lack of cross search results on Bing. Google at least offers some image results in the web results section, but I can forgive that. Bing does have two things that I really admire, one is the related searches panel on the left side of the search results, which I am sure will give me new and interesting ways to procrastinate via search engine, and the other is the lack of ads. Now I know that Google needs to make some money too, but I am so tired of telling the web illiterate in my family that “Sponsored Links” are no better than normal links. Now I am sure that ads will come to Bing in time, but I will enjoy the lack of ads while I have it.

Image time! Google decides to take this time to remind me that lightbulb is actually two words, but Bing is surprisingly quiet. Hmmm, maybe the magic of Bing makes my spelling automatically correct? If it does I could totally dig that, but anyway onto the images. Google proudly displays its images in its little grid as does Bing. But wait a minutes, what is this? Bing’s scroll bar lets you see up to 1,000 images on one page. As someone who is prone to flip forward multiple pages only to decide on one of the first pictures I saw, the scroll bar makes things more convenient.

Who knew that there were so many light bulb videos? I certainly didn’t. This yet another place where Bing is superior to Google. As much as I love Google’s very large video on the right hand side I much prefer Bing’s grid of videos to Google’s listing. If I was looking for a detailed description of each video, then Google is my main squeeze, but for the most part Bing’s bare bones video name and images is all that I need.

Now when I do my online light bulb shopping, I am going to have to default to Google. Bing’s image and website list is decent, but Google’s bold price to the right of each listing is just too darn good. So as far for shopping (or “product search” as Google calls it) Google is the winner.

Now when I first decided to look at Bing, I didn’t think that I would find a darn thing about it that I even remotely like. Google was just too good and too easy, and I can’t resist those creative logos on holidays. But I have to say, Bing grew on me. The video search and the image search both let me see more results that Google and the related search options give me fodder for millions of pointless searches. I have to say, for the casual user, Bing would be the search engine I would endorse.

But there is a caveat. Bing isn’t for the not-so-casual user. Along with the images, videos, and web searches Google has so many other features that Bing just can’t keep up with. My Gmail, Google Scholar, Google Documents, and heck even Google Books are all things that I use each week. So until Bing can trump Google in all these things and have the recognition that Google has there is no way that it will be my ultimate choice for a search engine. Good try Bing, maybe one day you will win out overall.

Hello to all Syed Balkhi readers. I am one of the loyal readers of this blog and it has greatly influenced my blog.

My name is Satish and I am the owner of Technotip.org, a blog about blogging, SEO, WEB2.0, Traffic strategies etc. We started blogging on 18th June 2008. So its exactly 1 year for Technotip.org. We are not able to celebrate the 1st birthday due to my exams. So I thank Syed Balkhi for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts about my blog with all you guys. This opportunity is more than just celebration for me..

I started Technotip.org with the intention of sharing whatever I had learnt online for the past 2 years. I knew that blogging about blogging and monetizing that niche with Adsense wouldn’t yield much money. But my intention was just sharing. So you wouldn’t find even paid reviews on our blog.

We do interviews of successful bloggers on our blog, as we believe that learning from those who have already learn’t saves a lot of time. That’s one of the reasons why I keep reading balkhis.com .
We constantly come up with new traffic generating strategy and most of which receive a lot of traffic!, back links and thumbs up in social media sites.
Recently one of the article 60+ Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers got huge support from many “A” grade bloggers and most of them voted for it.

And all other things like conducting contests, polls etc will be periodically held on our blog. We also have a “Top 10 Commentators” list on our front page[which has the highest pagerank] to give link juice to people who participate in the conversation.

We have a lot of interesting articles on our blog. We could realize that only when we got back links from sites like labnol, quickonlinetips, techie-buzz etc!

Our aim with Technotip.org is to build a community around the blog. So we will also be starting a forum shortly, after we build a small community around our blog. We are committed to provide value to all our readers and it will be our number 1 priority.

Thanks for Syed Balkhi for providing me the opportunity to talk to you guys. All your feedback are welcomed.

I would like to see all you guys on my blog. Please make sure, you visit the blog atleast today, as its the 1st BirthDay of our blog. If you like our blog, then please make sure that you subscribe to our blog updates.

A few days back Clickbooth got my attention from @JohnChow’s Tweet when he mentioned that Clickbooth got a blog makeover from Unique Blog Design. They are asking for reviews and feedback on their design and one person will win a Flip Mino or Ipod Touch.

I landed on their blog and really liked the design. I love doing design reviews specially for big companies, so I wrote an extensive review. I think due to the length of my comment, it went directly to Akismet, and I knew that it did, so I called Eric Schechter, Clickbooth’s Social Media Guy. Turns out he is a regular reader of my blog. Who knew the world is so small. They are in Sarasota, FL. So now I have two affiliate marketing companies that I can go to in Florida. One is our good friend Market Leverage, and now Clickbooth as well.

As one of the contest’s requirement is to follow Clickbooth on twitter. I head over to their twitter profile, turned out they were already following me, and I wasn’t following them back. How rude of me. I usually follow legit and interesting accounts back. Well I started following Eric and thats how this whole story started.

Eric sent a tweet out to someone who was going to recieve a shirt. I sent him a tweet that I want a shirt as well. I got a tweet back:

I am like very cool. The next day at my doorstep, I have a package from Clickbooth that has alot of goodies not just the shirt. So make the long story short, check out the goodies.

Unlike other companies shirts, the material of this shirt is very light, and I absolutely love it for the hot weather in Florida I think I will be taking this to Pakistan with me because it will be even hotter there this summer. So Clickbooth more advertising for you in a country abroad The front looks great, although The superman clickbooth guy thats on the blog would suit the front more.

These playing cards are branded with Clickbooth both the tops and the inside. Each number have a tip for affiliate Marketing. I wonder how dorky I will look with my friends when I pull this deck out. Even if it makes me look dorky, they don’t make half the money I make haha. And more to come from Clickbooth as I just joined.

You know I have alot of notepads but I left them all in Gainesville. Now I have a set in West Palm as well.

My favorite out of all the gifts was this watch. It is so slick, and cute. My mom wanted to keep it, and I said NO! Duh, because it is mine. They also sent me 3 ping pong balls which I think I am going to give to Zain. Also they sent me the paper holders with a magnet. Maybe one day I will use those.

Anyways fellas, I have just joined Clickbooth on Friday, and I am hoping to get my application approved. After I use it, I will let you guys know how it turns out. In the meantime, you can try it for yourself by signing up with Clickbooth.

Thanks Eric for sending me all the good stuff. I will take you up on your offer for the Clickbooth Office Tour for sure after I come back from Pakistan. Follow clickbooth on twitter.

This is the first week of May and school is over. I was going to take Summer A classes, but I am not taking it anymore instead I will take Summer B which will start on June 29th. Good News, I am taking a vacation. I am going to Pakistan again I will be looking for guest posts, if you are interested than contact me using the contact form or twitter.

Did I just say twitter. Yeah I did, and I said it a few times this week. I even made a category for twitter. Twitter has sent me tons of traffic, I will release my report soon which I am sure you will enjoy because it have some juicy numbers that I was able to accomplish in the past week. Set everything aside, I have reached 1000 followers on twitter yesterday. If you are not following me, you are missing out cool links that I sent out. Also that is the reason why you was not able to suggest me the links for Sweet Monday.

If you have missed this week’s article, I would suggest you seriously go over them because the were really important and useful for the future week’s posts.

25 Reasons Why Someone Should Join Twitter (Share it with your friends who are critical of twitter)

25 Tips to Increase Your Influence and Gain Followers on Twitter (This is not one of the BS ways, real techniques that seriously will help)

9 Tips and Tools to fight spam in Wordpress

Comment Moderation – What is the Smart policy?

How to Change the default Gravatar on wordpress

Make sure you read the first two because there will be more articles coming soon for the twitter category, and if you want to get the same results as me, then you would need to follow everything step by step.

Now lets get to my favorite links of the week:

The Best 80 Photoshop Text Effects on the Web

10 Professional Looking Free CSS Menus

102 Wordpress Social Plugins

22 Professional Photoshop Image Enhancing tutorials

Remember if you are not following me on twitter then start doing so, if you want to get backlinks to your quality articles. My profile is @syedbalkhi. Also if you are interested in writing a guest blog post for Balkhis, I am looking for some for the month of June. Please contact me if you are interested. You will get backlinks and credit for your posts.

Hey Balkhis Users,

Life is about to calm down here. Only one more exam to go which is Thursday then I have a week off. I am taking Summer classes at UF, so they will start soon after. Weather here in Florida was really nice this week. I went to Lake Wauburg to swim and boating, and I really enjoyed it.

Recently I was having alot of troubles with Balkhis comments and having alot of genuine comments go in the spam box. I have fixed the problem for the most part. If your comment does not show up email me right away using the contact form. Or the fastest way would be follow me on twitter, and just hit @syedbalkhi and send me a message. But for the most part, the problem is fixed now.

For the most part, the blog is doing well and so are my other projects. I am hoping to launch them as soon as I can, so I can get to the free themes for you guys. Well thats enough about me, lets see what was going on Balkhis for the past week:

10 Top Notch CSS Principles of the Experts

20 Confessions: Being a blogger influence your life and personality [True Stories] – Amanda Roberts wrote this post about me (Syed Balkhi). All stories discussed happened in real life.

15 Sites Which will make you a Mind Blowing Designer

Think Your Blog is Fine, Think Again – Melvin from Melvin Blog.com wrote a guest post at Balkhis sharing his experience in the industry. Very inspiring post which you should read.

If you guys want to ever do a Guest Post on Balkhis simply contact me using my contact form and We can work something out.

Now to my favorite reads on the web this past week.

Twitter Eats up the World – Global visitor count upto 19 Million

5 Writing Tips for Web Designers

40 Logo Design Tutorials

15 Online Background Generators

15 Firefox Add-Ons to Tame the Social Media Addicts

Remember if your link was not included here it is probably because I did not know about it. You can suggest me your articles either via email using the contact form, or you can just follow me on twitter @syedbalkhi.