Simple animation to explain complex principles

Simple animation to explain complex principles

1, aircraft radial engine



2, oval Regulation



3, sewing machines



4, Malta Cross movement - second hand movement used to control the clock



5, auto change file mechanism



6, auto constant velocity universal joint

6.gif

7, gun ammunition loading system



8 rotary engine - an internal combustion engine, the heat rather than the piston movement into rotary movement





# Via World Of Technology. HowStuffWorks see from the attached three car engine diagram:

1, inline engine - it's cylinders lined up side by side



2, V-type engine - cylinder arranged at an angle of two plane

3, boxer engine - cylinder engine arranged in two planes relative

31 Questions to Ask About Your Characters

As writers, we know more about our characters than we can ever manage to tell our readers.

Characterization is revealing the personalities of the people in your fictional world by giving evidence: facial expressions, clothing style, attitude, actions, and social interactions. These details allow your reader to make instantaneous judgments as to what kind of people your characters are.

The more you know of about your characters—the more comfortable you are with their daily habits, preferences, insecurities, mannerisms, beliefs, loves, hates, desires, histories, etc.—the easier it will be to portray them on a page. Your characters’ behaviors determine the future of your story. To know where your story is heading, you must know how your characters are going to act in certain situations, and therefore, you must know who your characters really are.

Wisely selected details can reveal character in intriguing ways. No, the reader doesn’t necessarily need to know what brand of underwear Sally prefers, what kind of vehicle Kenny drove in high school, or what secrets Ben kept from his ex-girlfriend—but YOU do. While these details may not be important to your plot line, they are indicative of certain character traits, and gives them more depth. The more you know about your character, the more authentic your character will seem on the page.

Is it possible to write a successful, meaningful story without knowing the type of alcohol Kelly keeps in her apartment? Absolutely. But somewhere in the following list may be a key piece of information that will help shape your story. Here is a list of question to ponder when fleshing out your characters:

1. How many shoes do they own? What types?

2. Are they on social media? Who’s in their profile pictures with them?

3. How many romantic relationships have they had?

4. Are they right- or left-handed?

5. What charities do they donate to?

6. What are their biggest fears?

7. How much money do they make?

8. What is their ethnicity?

9. Do they speak with an accent?

10. What did they dress as for Halloween last year?

11. What are their email addresses, blogs, and websites? Passwords?

12. What are they superstitious about?

13. Are they allergic to anything?

14. What hobbies do they have?

15. Do they keep secrets?

16. What are their astrological signs?

17. What are their taste in movies, books, and music?

18. Do they have scars?

19. What are their feelings on gay marriage, abortion, legalization of marijuana, or other controversial topics?

20. Any tattoos or piercings?

21. What does their handwriting look like?

22. What is their religious background?

23. Where do they like to shop?

24. What is their relationship like with their sibling(s)?

25. Do they have enemies? How did they make them?

26. What are their ambitions? Do they have a “five-year plan”?

27. What are their political preferences?

28. What do they habitually keep in their cupboards, medicine cabinets, and purses?

29. What are their favorite outfits/pieces of clothing?

30. What do they keep in remote storage?

31.  Are they night owls or morning people?

The Ultimate Content Marketing Checklist: 40 Questions to Ask Yourself before Publishing Your Next Blog Post

The beautiful part about content marketing is that it can bring you thousands of social shares, new email subscribers, and tons of comments, but only if your blog posts are masterpieces and you do content marketing right.

But content marketing has so many elements to it that it’s really easy to forget them, right?

To help you succeed, I’ve created a checklist. If you hit at least the majority of the items on the list below, your content will perform well.

Headline

Here are the questions to ask yourself when crafting a headline:

1. Would someone type my headline into Google? – If they would, then you are more likely to get more search traffic.
2. Does my headline evoke curiosity? – Curiosity-evoking headlines tend to get more clicks.
3. Is my headline short and to the point? – If your headline is longer than roughly 57 characters, it will get cut off on Google’s search results page.
4. Is my headline clear? – Clarity is important. If people don’t know what they are clicking on, they will bounce right off your site.
5. Am I using emotions? – If you can invoke a common desire within your headline, it will appeal to more people.
6. Does my headline contain any popular keywords or phrases? – If it doesn’t, don’t expect to rank for any terms on Google.

Introduction

Every blog post should contain an introduction. Here are some of the questions to ask yourself when creating an introduction:

7. Am I hooking my readers? – You can do this by asking a question within your introductory paragraph.
8. It is concise? – You want to get into the body of your post as quickly as possible. Three paragraphs is typically long enough.
9. Does it provide a detailed overview? – Once people read your introduction, they should know if the post is a good fit for them.
10. Did I include a picture? – You should start your blog post with some sort of media. Whether it is a picture or a video, it should be something that entices people to click through.

Body

When writing your blog post, make sure you ask yourself:

11. Did I use subheadings? – They make it easier for your readers to read and skim your content.
12. Are my paragraphs fewer than 5 lines? – Your paragraphs should never be more than 5 or 6 lines. Anything longer will make your content seem overwhelming to read.
13. Am I creating a conversation? – You should be using the words “you” and “I” within your content. It will create the illusion of a conversation.
14. Did I italicize my questions? – Italicize questions within your post. It will make your content seem more personalized.
15. Am I telling a story? – Your readers will be bored unless you keep them hooked. There is no better way to do this than to tell a story.
16. Am I using media to enhance my content? – From charts and images to video and audio, media will help personalize your post.
17. Is my content concise? – If your content is filled with fluff, no one will want to read it.
18. Am I trying to act smart? – Using fancy words and talking down to your readers is a great way to lose them.
19. Did I tie in any current events? – Using Google and Yahoo news to identify trends will help you generate content that will bring in traffic.
20. Which emotion am I appealing to? – Your content should appeal to certain emotions such as humor or anger. Pick one or a few of them, and use them throughout your content. The goal is to put your readers through an emotional roller coaster like soap operas do.
21. Did I format my post correctly? – From bullets to block quotes, the formatting tools WordPress provides will make your content more digestible.
22. Did I link out to anyone? – Link out to other websites when appropriate. This way, you can email those sites once you publish your post and ask them to share it on their social profiles.
23. Did I mention any experts in my post? – Including other people’s quotes an opinions within your post, you will help your content gain more credibility. Plus, you can also ask those experts to share your content via the social web.
24. Did I back up my claims? – You can’t make claims and expect not to be questioned. Using stats and data will help you create trust with your readers, and it will brand you as an expert.

Conclusion

When wrapping up your post, ask yourself:

25. Did I end my post with a question? – This is a great way to help you generate more comments. Also, italicize the question.
26. Was I able to summarize my post within 3 short paragraphs? – A summary should be short and to the point and provide the gist of your post to your readers.
27. Is my summary shorter than 200 words? – If your summary is longer than 200 words, you are rambling. Ideally, it should be around 100 to 150 words.
28. Did I leave things open? – Your post shouldn’t read like a final verdict on a subject. Instead, invite your readers to participate in a conversation about it.
29. Does my conclusion encourage people to read my content?– Some people will scroll down to your conclusion before reading your content. If it is enticing, they will scroll back up to read the rest.

Promotion

Before you publish your post, ask yourself:

30. Am I publishing my post during the ideal time and day? – There is a science to content marketing. This chart will tell you when to publish your content.
31. Should I publish the post on my site or someone else’s? – The best place to publish your awesome content is typically on someone else’s site. This blog post will explain why.
32. Am I collecting emails? – You shouldn’t publish content unless you are collecting emails. Emails are the best way to get people to come back to your site.
33. Do I have a lead magnet? – A lead magnet entices people to give you their email addresses. You can offer a free ebook or a PDF in exchange for an email.
34. Do I have social sharing buttons throughout my post? – From using scrolling social plugins like Flare to placing click to tweet links within your post, encourage social sharing any way you can.
35. Did I create a list of social profiles within my space? – Every time you publish a post, you should do outreach, asking people to share your content. I still do this even though I get hundreds of thousands of visitors each month.
36. Am I using social media meta tags? – If you aren’t, then your content won’t do as well as it could when shared on the major social networks.
37. Did I mention my expert sources when sharing? – Including their user names in your tweets will increase the likelihood of them re-tweeting your content.
38. Have I direct-messaged influencers on LinkedIn? – It’s a simple tactic that can help generate more shares. Read this blog post for template messages for LinkedIn.
39. Have I re-purposed my content? – By turning your blog post into a PDF or a slide deck and sharing it on the web, you can get more traffic. Just submit these different versions of your content to sites like Slideshare, and you’ll see more traffic. Make sure you adjust the content, however, as you don’t want to be hit by a duplicate content penalty.
40. Have I shared my content more than once? – You should be sharing your post at least 2, if not 3 times, on social channels like Twitter. Not all of your users will see your content the first time you tweet.

Conclusion

By asking yourself the above 40 questions, you’ll quickly find out if you are doing everything you need to ensure your content marketing success.

Don’t worry if you aren’t doing everything on the list… Just look at this post. I didn’t leverage every tactic. But the more you do leverage, the better off you will be.

So, what other questions should you ask yourself before publishing your next blog post?

7 Questions to Ask On Your Blog to Get More Reader Engagement

Have you ever been ‘talked at’ instead of had someone ‘talk with’ you in a real life conversation? It doesn't feel good to have someone talk AT you.

It leaves you feeling like you might as well not have been there at all.

Blogs can be like that and in this post we explore the power of asking questions on your blog and I share 7 types of questions you can ask to increase reader engagement.

The 7 questions are:

• What Do you Think?
• How Do you Feel?
• What Will You Do?
• What is Your Opinion?
• What is Your Story?
• What is Your Experience or Example?
• What Have you Been Working On?

Of course there are plenty of other types of questions – what type do you ask and how do you find people respond?

Note: you can get the full sized version of this video at YouTube here.

THE #1 QUESTION YOU SHOULD BE ASKING YOUR BLOG READERS

837When I was in college, I had a professor who was fresh out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (better known as MIT) and in his first year of teaching. He was a brilliant linguist – a genius if ever there was one – but his first semester teaching undergrads at B.U. wasn’t going so hot.

Did you ever meet someone who was so smart that they couldn’t connect with other people? Well, for about six weeks, the other students and I had this professor pegged asthat guy.

We struggled and wrestled with the course material, wading through stacks of academic articles for which we simply had no context. We weren’t connecting the dots. It was clear our professor knew everything there was to know about what he was teaching, but we were all just missing the point.

I stayed up late nights reading, met with classmates at the library, and even skipped an ultimate frisbee tournament to try to wrap my head around everything I was supposed to know. I thought I was doomed to fail a class in my major, in a subject I loved.

But right after midterms, Paul did something we didn’t expect.

He asked us what we were struggling with.

::

Have you ever taken off your blogging cap and asked whether you were really helping your readers? Whether you’re making a difference in their lives and not just hitting “publish” three times a week because that’s what good bloggers do? (tweet this!)

I can’t remember exactly what our issues were at the time, but I do remember that from that point on in that class,everything changed. He started giving a different kind of lecture, one that started with questions and ended with all of us students arriving at new understanding.

Where Paul had been almost an adversary – something we’d have to overcome if we wanted to get a decent grade for the class – he became our coach and advisor, helping bridge the gap between what we didn’t already know and what we needed to master. He became my favorite professor, and I’m sure I told more than a few people to take classes from him.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU, BLOGGER?

I’ve already touched on writing for that one ideal reader, focusing on helping that person overcome challenges, solve problems, think differently, or be inspired. But if you’re somehow missing the mark, if people are coming to your site and leaving without so much as a comment, then you need to ask the right questions.

Even if you only have a handful of subscribers so far, what made them subscribe to your blog? What was the thing that caught their eye? Why did they decide that instead of just reading the content they came for and leaving, they should agree to hear from you more often and become part of your community? What are the things you’re doing well, and which of their problems have you not solved yet?

(but Jeni, you said just the #1 question!)

I did, and here it is:

What do your readers struggle with, and how can you add value to their lives?

If you’re smart, you’ll use the answers to all of these questions to plan your next steps on your blog – at the very least, what posts you need to write to really help your existing readers. But this process will help you do something even more powerful than getting to know the people who already read your blog – it will help you step up your game and blog better for your target audience as a whole.

And having a better blog, friend, will help you connect with new audiences, with more subscribers and a growing community that is passionate about sharing your work with others.

SO TELL ME:

What questions are you going to ask today? How are you going to ask them?

What are you going to do once you have the answers?

Share this post, then leave me a comment below and tell me how you’re going to start (or keep!) connecting with the readers who need you.

Drive Traffic To Your Blog With Your Reader’s Questions

Their questions are the answers you need for your great blog ideas.

The worst question is the one unasked. Unless you’re a blogger — then it’s the one you didn’t know people were asking.

Answering your reader’s questions is your goal. Yet how many times have you sat in front of a computer screen trying to write a blog post and desperately wondered what answers your readers wanted?

For free, Quora tells us exactly that. Quora isn’t as big as Facebook, or Twitter, and it isn’t exactly a household name, but around 1 million users isn’t chump change.

Connecting Knowledge To People

What is Quora?

Quora is a place where questions are answered. Think of it as crowdsourcing knowledge, connecting people who know and people who want to know directly.

You can ask a question, find out if someone else asked the question, or answer a question. Using a points and user voting system has helped to cut down on spammy or useless questions and answers, making Quora a valuable resource. Quora also has boards, which are collections of anything you find interesting on a particular topic. These are similar to Pinterest’s boards, or Springpad’s notebooks; people can follow your boards. You can find out more about Quora here.

Be An Expert And Get Ideas

How can Quora help my brand, when most people haven’t even heard of Quora?

Quora gets 50 percent of its traffic from search. People arrive there looking for answers, meaning they’ll naturally connect with whoever can help them. It’s not as big as Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers when it comes to people asking questions, but it’s growing steadily based on the quality of the answers found there. Quora specializes in answering very specific questions and is populated by experts, scientists, and users who are actually knowledgable in their field.

So, what is the value to you?

1. Build Reputation: Establish expertise by selecting topics that have questions you want to answer. Fill out your topic-based biography, and answer the questions confidently. Let people find you and your brand because they realize you are an expert.
2. Get Ideas: Use the questions people are asking as the inspiration for blog post ideas. If these are things people want to know on Quora, chances are pretty good there are other people who want to know the same thing.
3. Connect To Others: Get communication started with others in your own industry and those who are customers of your industry. It’s the classic networking scenario.
4. Get Answers: Ask your own questions. Find out the answers from very knowledgable people. For free.

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. — James Thurber

Make Quora Routine

How should I use Quora to be better at marketing?

Set aside time each week to visit Quora and search on the topics covered by your blog. Compile some of these questions and turn them into blog posts. Use the questions to create the headlines if possible, since that is what people are specifically asking. (Note: Do NOT copy the content of those who have answered the question! Answer the question in your blog with your own knowledge.)

Find questions you can answer, and answer them well. If you have a question to ask, and you have enough Quora Credits, do so. Then, share these questions and answers on Twitter and Facebook.

Follow boards and topics that are related to your industry. You can even subscribe to these through RSS and read them in a feed reader, or in TodayLaunch. To find the RSS feed, use the Quora topic link (e.g. http://www.quora.com/Social-Media-Marketing) and add /rss to the end of it (e.g. http://www.quora.com/Social-Media-Marketing/rss)

The reason we blog is to solve our reader’s problems. Quora is where we discover problems we weren’t even aware they had. What are some of the ways you find blog topics that answer the questions your readers are asking?

Stray elephants trample seven to death

BLANTYRE:  Seven people including one child have been trampled to death by rampaging elephants that strayed from the southern Liwonde National Park into a nearby village, police said Tuesday.

The two beasts charged into Nyambi village, trampling an eight-year-old child, a 75-year-old man and five others who failed to outpace the gigantic mammals.

"This was the highest death toll caused by elephants in recent memory," said Andrew Mayawo, a police spokesman from Maching district.

The elephants were later herded back to the national park with the help of police and environmental experts, Mayawo said.

"The problem is that the villagers have vandalised the barbed wire fence which keeps the elephants at bay." (AFP)