As you might know, today is my Birthday. Yes I turn 21 today and I am proud to present the ‘Swoosh Away’ theme for Wordpress. This is the first theme that I have made for people to download and it is free.

You can view a live demo at http://themes.angadsodhi.com
You can download the file from here.
Here’s a screenshot of the theme:

Click to view larger image

Creating this theme from scratch was fun. I have a few people to thank whose posts were very useful:

• New page menu function in WordPress 2.7
• Display your tweets without a plugin
• How to add a dynamic sidebar in Wordpress?

Theme properties:

• Widget-ready
• Fixed width
• W3 XHTML valid
• Designed with SEO in mind (eg <h1> appears just once on every page and that is the poast title)
• wordpress 2.7 ready (I presume it shouldn’t have problems with wordpress 2.8)
• Threaded comments (requires Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin included in download package)

The most difficult part was naming the theme! With thousands of WP themes already available, it has become so difficult naming them. I’ll be grateful if you can suggest me a better name.

Please let me know how you like the theme. Even if you don’t end up downloading the theme, please do let me know what you think about it. Comments and suggestions are always welcome! I’m coming back from a long layoff so please help me spread the word. Digg it or tweet it if you like it.

Psst: I plan to make many more themes before my next semester starts. If you like this theme, please subscribe to this blog. Expect a much better premium theme in the weeks to come!

If you have been following me on twitter, you would know that about two week ago I won a cool iPod nano from Motive Interactive in the Zac Johnson Affiliate & twitter contest. The green (or rather ‘Apple’ green) beauty arrived 2 days later and I haven’t put it down since! Thank you Motive Interactive.

Twitter contests are fun. You just have to tweet about the contest and you are in! Contests cannot get any simpler than this. They help the contest holder gain followers and it gives you a chance to win something really cool!

About Motive Interactive:
Motive Interactive is a performance-based (CPA, CPL, CPS) advertising network that has great Advertiser and Publisher Solutions. That are rather new but very good. If you haven’t joined them yet, signup now! Motive Interactive also has many more twitter contests so do follow them at @motive where they also tweet about exciting new offers.

Motive is still giving away an iPod nano a week in the Shoemoney Las Vegas Challenge contest.

As quoted from the official post,

Three Ways to Win:
1.) Join Motive Interactive and earn within any of the Commission Levels above during the month of June. Contest tier prizes only awarded to new Motive affiliates signed up through this blog during June 2009. YOU HAVE TO SIGN UP THROUGH THIS LINK TO BE ELIGIBLE
2.) Follow @Motive and Tweet this contest on Twitter. Just “tweet” the following from your Twitter account and you are automatically entered to win a new iPod Shuffle each week.
“Follow @motive and join Top Rated CPA Affiliate Network Motive Interactive to make money and win big prizes! http://xr.com/s1g RT 2 WIN! “
3.) Blog about this contest promotion. If you have a blog, simply link back to ShoeMoney’s contest blog page and talk about this contest. Then you will be entered to win a new Xbox 360 Elite plus two games.

Thus, you can win an iPod nano everyweek just by tweeting about the contest and win an Xbox 360 by blogging about the contest the way I have done here.

If you are good with Affiliate Marketing, you stand a good chance of winning some even bigger prizes:

Network Earnings Prizes
$500,000+ Tier – Vegas VIP Prize
. 1st Class flight for two to Las Vegas
. Fairway Villa for two nights
. $5,000 in cash
$200,000 – $499,999 Tier
. 1st Class flight for one to Las Vegas
. Wynn – The Suite Life Package : Parlor Suite 2 nights
$100,000 – $199,999 Tier
. $4,000 in cash
$50,000 – $99,999 Tier
. 2 tickets to UFC 100 with accommodations and flight for 2 for 2 nights
$25,000 – $49,999 Tier
. Sony Plasma TV
$10,000 – $24,999 Tier
. Xbox 360 Elite plus Halo 3 and NEWEST UFC XBOX GAME
$3,000 – $9,999 Tier
. iPod Touch 32GB
$1,000 – $2,999 Tier
. Best Buy Gift Card

More details can be found at the official post about the contest.

Motive also gave me a nice “What’s your motive” tshirt. Loved it guys. Thank you once again, Luke. (Sorry for the late post. I was busy with exams) Here are some pics:

Simply love the color!

This is on the back of the tee.

The nano and the tshirt. Hope to win many more!

Psst: It’s my birthday tomorrow! Even this blog celebrates it’s birthday tomorrow. I turn 21, my blog 2!! Expect a bit of a surprise here tomorrow..

I was asked by 4cheapwebhosting.com to review their services. I had a look around their site. So here it goes: If you want me to review your site or services, drop me a message via the contact form.

Finding a good host is vital for any website’s success. You don’t want your website to have thousands to hits daily only to crash abruptly. Downtimes have a really bad effect on public memory. They don’t go down well with advertisers either. And since you have to choose a host before you have actually started your website, most newbies end up with hosting packages they don’t actually need or a hosting package that is way smaller than their needs.

An ideal host would have the following features:

• 100% uptime guarantee
• 24/7 customer service
• Live chat support
• A good forum that has plenty of big daddies on it
• Regular backup facility
• It should be cheap and affordable

Choosing a good host can be rather intricate. Have your work cut out simply by visiting 4cheapwebhosting.com and check out their affordable web hosting packages. This site can be exceptionally useful specially if you are planning of moving to new servers. That way you know your exact needs and can find your ideal host easily.

For newbies, they have a very unbiased list of hosts. Do a bit of research on them and choose wisely. Hosting packages have been classified into categories such as linux / windows hosting, ASP / PHP / JSP scripting, MySQL databases (you generally need them for blogs and CMSs), multi domains etc.

There are more than 400 packages to choose from. You can even have a word with them just to be sure you are getting the best. Take your pick wisely.

Relevant links:
http://www.4cheapwebhosting.com

This week’s edition of the SuperSundayVideo was suggested to me by my friend Satish from SatishSays.com

I was fascinated when I first heard the term ‘electric sitar’. If you don’t know what a sitar is, jump over to youtube and search for ’sitar’. Niladri Kumar has tweaked this traditional Indian string instrument. Check out both videos.

For the second video, you’ll have to head over to YouTube because embedding of that video has been disabled upon request. The music video is called Priority and can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQU5eGg8wcM. It has a Hindi intro to it, so just skip ahead if you don’t get a clue.

I am simply spellbound. I’ll just let the video do the talking!

This is part 2 of the series on the developments in Dubai. Do check out part 1 here. Simply breathtaking.

The Burj Dubai. Construction began in 2005 and is expected to be complete by 2008. At an estimated height of over 800 meters, it will easily be world's tallest building when finished. It will be almost 40% taller than the the current tallest building, the Yaipei 101.

This is what downtown Dubai will look like around 2008-2009. More than 140 stories of the Burj Dubai have already been completed. It is already the worlds tallest man made structure and it is still not scheduled to be completed for at least another year.

This is what downtown Dubai will look like around 2008-2009. More than 140 stories of the Burj Dubai have already been completed. It is already the worlds tallest man made structure and it is still not scheduled to be completed for at least another year.