Nice Ideas

Just letting out a few things I thought I wanted to tell ...

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Website on financing

I was looking for some info for my finance project and came across this website that offers great info on finance matters. Thrift Scot is basically a UK based website, but a great one, if you are simply looking for info on financing your needs using credit cards, remortgages or loans. I personally was benefitted by using the info on home insurance, since that is something I was really looking for.

This apart the website also provides good advice on your current and saving bank accounts, how to maximize your benefits out of this. And if you stumbled on the site like me, you would also enjoy their analysis of the financial news. The opinions and comments provided is really good, and you would appreciate it, especially if you also enjoy financial news.

Overall, a great website for all the stuff related to credit cards, mortgages, loans and related stuff.

India starts 20-20 today


India starts off playing its first game of the new exciting format of cricket, the 20-20 today against South Africa. This should be very pleasing to the ears of the present Indian team since they should find it easy, especially since the last few games that they have played have themselves looked not to last for more than 20 overs for the side.

But then, an official 20-20 match would require some hard hitting. Now, I wonder who is going to take care of that...

Friends best lenders

You know how it works out in my friend's circle? Everybody borrows money from everyone. This is because, as none of us is working, all of us fall short of cash at some point of time or the other. So, maybe I sponsor hundred bucks to my friend, and he sponsors 120 bucks the next day at some other place. The remaining, we just correct it out in the night canteen where I would buy him a parantha.!

But loans in real life cannot always be this easy. But what is interesting is the kind of new ventures started to make loaning as easy as how it is amongst our friends. For example, the PayDayCashAdvance portal helps people looking for loan to choose the lender for the payday loan who will most suit their purposes and needs. This is to reduce the emotional tension that would be there otherwise. Way to go!

The Book of Mozilla

Ever seen this hack? Type in about:mozilla in the address bar of Firefox, and you get a red screen with the following verse written.


And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced.
But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird.
The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire
and thunder upon them. For the beast had been
reborn with its strength renewed, and the
followers of Mammon cowered in horror.

from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15

MySpace marketing

MySpace is proving to be the new platform for lauching your product. No matter it be on your own 'make money from home' product, or your home-made music video. And MySpace is famous because it gets you publicity through viral marketing. In fact, if you Broadcast your product to your own friends, chances are that they get talked about amongst the other friends of your direct friends. The result is quite great.

Now, BadderAdder has come up with a product that lets you add friends on auto-pilot mode. That means,this MySpace friend adder lets you add hundreds and thousands of friends to your list quite automatically. Your proposal for friendship gets accepted too most times, since it is always a matter of pride to have a huge list of friends. So, once you do that, you can very easily market your product through broadcasts and blogs, which get read so often.

BBC to have its own Digg on TV

User-generated News content has become quite famous after Digg came. This is because it gives the users only that news which they want to hear and know more. The other story, no matter if it is of the top most priority shall be rejected if the user did not want to hear.

Okay, I have a few grudges against Digg which I shall share later. But since atleast superficially this concept is a winner, BBC has taken to this. Now, BBC shall feature a news telecast based entirely on user-generated content.

Meet online pals

Meeting new people online has been a craze ever since the beginnig of the Internet era. Earlier, it only used to be random people online, and if they ever shared your interests, you could get close. But now, newer and newer ways of online networking are getting popular. For example, Lifeknot, a free social networking site is based solely on different activities.

This kind of networking helps you to know what the other person is interested in right from the start, so you know the kind of discussions you can have. You can meet new friends who are interested in over 1200 activities. This is why most guys at lifeknots now have the lifeknot gadget on their Google Personalized pages.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Proof of Digg Abuse

Oh well..I had been logged on with UserSubmitter.Com for such a long time to make this one post. However, I found no entries to digg all these days.

For those who are unable to follow, UserSumbitter is a website that has been created simply to abuse the Digg system of 'digging' interesting stories. It pays $0.50 every time you digg one of the stories that they ask you to.

I have taken a printscreen of three stories that have been out there on top simply through paying the members of UserSubmitter money. You can make quite a few inferences:

The guys who submitted those stories have to be Spammers.

You can go to their submit history to have an idea of stories that 'could' have been there through the SPAM route.

Since the three stories out there in the picture namely this, this and this
are definite SPAMs, you can list out all the diggers and those common diggers between the three stories 'could' be making money out of Digg.

Click on the picture below to see how UserSubmitter makes money

Weird images from Google Earth

Time and again, people have stumbled upon interesting and weird images on Google Earth(or Maps, whatever).

Here is a nice list of some of those. Please add any more you know in the comments.

Jesus Loves You

Bermuda - Two Holed

Another American street

Guess this scratch

Flying Car

Dutch diamond

Another Dutch diamond

An airplane amongst the cars

An airplane parked high above!

World's largest insect

American Indian enjoying his iPod

Monday, November 27, 2006

Car classifieds

Many people who move to USA, students mainly, find it necessary to buy a car, and used cars are the most preferred, as they are cheaper than the new ones, and also, you get a better deal. After all, who is going to know that it is a second-hand?

There are quite a few classifieds on new & used cars which can be of use to both, the prospective used cars buyer, and also the seller. You can also view the value-content of the cars, like their fuel economy, mileage, etc beforehand, so that you can make sure you are buying the car that shall be perfect for you.

PS: Make sure you read the possible scams that can be floating around as well.

Plant with eyes

Okay, this is just a fake, or atleast that is what I presume it to be. But, found this, and so presenting it here. The video is of a plant with eyes..looks bizarre, but a nice one to see.

While plants can have mouths to catch prey, why not eyes!??

Natural Health supplements

Sometime back, I was doing a project report on one of our pharma companies, as part of my academic submissions. I had made a recommendation that there should be a website that caters to online customers, who can make use of the companies offerings.

Incidentally, I came across N101. N101 is a website that is catering to natural health supplements. And right now, it's kinda popular because of the 30-75 percent discount on the popular brands like Nature's way, country life etc that they are offering.

Not just this. N101 Nutrition being the authority website on natural skin care, beauty, and vitamins, they also offer free shiping on many products with cheap prices. I guess you should check it out. A website for health care is always very necessary.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Indian army - Pakistani cap?


Today's issue of Mumbai Mirror carried a news report on the recent recruitment drive by the Indian army in Jammu and Kashmir. Nicknamed "Mission Career", a play of word with the popular movie "Mission Kashmir", this recruitment drive was received well with the local people as hundreds of thousands of potential candidates turned up for the event.

What was ironical was that the picture that accompanied the news. One of the potential candidate wore a cap of the Pakistani cricket team. Now, please do not mistake me to be belittling the effort of one of our Kashmiri brothers turning up to make his contribution to the Indian army. But, just that, I found the picture not only interesting, but also ironical at a time when there is rumours about possible infiltration of ISI men in the Indian army

Digital aliens

Have you touched an alien?Or atleast seen it? If the only aliens you have seen are those on the age-old movies, then here is a new interesting way to see and feel them. Here is a company that offers you a chance to adopt one of them. They are electronic ones, which you might have come across on eBay. But, now available at much cheaper rates through the website alienadoptionworld, you get them in test tubes, and also can feed them!exciting!??

So, how shall I die?

Any idea on how you are going to die? Here is a nice picture on the various odds that you die in one of these different ways. This picture is originally taken from the National Safety Council website which also has an exhaustive list of the original sample list from which the below diagram was made.

Effective Publicity management

Advertisements do not work anymore. Not just on TVs, but also anywhere else like in Newspapers or internet. That is why, of late postive positioning through articles has become the key way to publicize. This is not something new as PR firms have been using these ways for a long long time.

But of late, this has also become a key way to publicity for smaller firms. PR firms like Publicty Guaranteed(For more information, visit http://www.PublicityGuaranteed.com) charge only as much as $195 for an article with good visibilty on newspapers like the Standard Democrat. This rate steadily increses to something like $2850 for articles on Washington Post, which deliver the maximum results.

China's innovative population management

China is a country so concerned about its population and resources. So, when the population shot above the head, what did they do? They did not educate the people on breeding less. Instead they put in a law. Ok that was manageable.

Here are a few other innovative policies. China was blessed with a less mighty nation called Tibet. So, under the pretext of some kind or the other, China invaded Tibet. Today, they have happily laid their population under the area of both China and Tibet.

China has also made sure that the optimization of the new resource goes fully tapped by chasing away the existing population of Tibet into exile.

It has been around sixty years since China invaded and occupied Tibet. The Tibetan population, now in India, are now totally Indians by nature. They speak Indian languages as fluently as native Indians. They do however yearn to go back to their hilly nation. But then, is that more important than China's population management? No.

So, China continues to live with it. Inspit of Tenzin Tsundue, a Tibetan national showing his angst by climbing the hotel tower where Chinese premier was housed when he came to India and displaying a 'Free Tibet' banner. Inspite of Tsering Lhakpa setting himself on fire last week, when Hu Jintao, the Chinese President was on an India tour.

But these don't matter. Because, China is on a more extensive population management policy. Today, they have moved further and hold Indian territories of Arunachal Pradesh, and Aksai Chin (part of Kashmir, which Pakistan gifted to their Chinese friends)

Great going Chinese..All the best to your population management policy. Till you get things in order, we shall take good care of our Tibetan friends.Do not worry about our own in-house population problems.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

New book on the Yeltsin era

When Boris Yeltsin was heading Russia, he was supported to the top by a young banker named Alex Konanykhin. However, the KGB, the Russian equivalent of FBI captured his fortune, and kidnapped him. He however escaped Russia with his wife to USA.

The US government has now been trying to deport him to Russia, where he is for sure going to be killed. Alex has now come up with a stunning new memoir. Named 'Defiance - the story which made headlines worldwide', the book website has greater hair-raising stories to tell.

So, if you are looking for the book of the season, you know what to buy,right?

English Wikipedia completes 1.5 million

The English Wikipedia has now stockpiled over 1.5 million articles. What began as a pilot project sometime back, is now a huge success. It has beat all other encyclopedias. I am sure not even the founder would have thought his project would be such a success.

Kudos to all those who have made their own bit of contribution to Wikipedia.

Affiliate marketers

I came across this book on affiliate marketing sometime back. Okay, I am a seasoned failure on internet marketing, as I myself confessed sometime back here. And after reading this ebook, I realized why I could make make money at home, while some were so successful at it.

This is because, there are some basic facts, as is given in the ebook that I forgot when I took to affiliate marketing. For example, I even tried selling stuffs that are so highly competitive. I learnt the necessity and the mechanism to choose the best paying and niche market. This very much helps.

And if you are wondering who the author is, it is a person called Jeremy Palmer, who made more than One million in affiliate commissions last year.

Nice ad

Found this nice ad on an article on viral advertising. So, thought it fit to put it up here to do a bit of viral advertising myself. Shows how the company fights with a bear to get in the best salmon for you!

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Resource for Nintendo

Here is a great resource to play free online games. This was one of the first few websites to offer free Nintendo games. While that has been sometime, and now you have a lot of places to choose from for that, I must tell you that this website has its own characteristic.

Pakistani pop

Pakistan doesn't have a great film industry, and even the local population thrive on the pirated movies that come from across the border in India. But then, of late, I have been listening to a lot of Pakistani music,pop that is, and I believe, they really have atleast a lot of talent.

My favorites - Jal.

Singing is not the end

A career in voiceover is one of the upcoming exciting trends for actors and musicians. Like, this is a much more lucrative job, and much more easy to start off compared to say, singing.

Like, a singer has to have all the necessary talents, like the perfect voice, music talent, and of all, visibility. Voiceovers are easier in the sense, they do not need as much of an investment as singing. It is probably for this reason that even singers are now turning to voiceacting.

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Lara makes century - Just one behind Sachin

Brian Lara hit an amazing 77 ball century today to equal Sunil Gavaskar's tally of 34 centuries. Sachin Tendulkar is only one century ahead at 35.

Now, I can predict the headline in our dear Indian newspapers tomorrow. While it is going to be 'Congrats Lara' all the world over, it is going to be 'Is this the end of Tendulkar era?'.

This guys, I tell you are the biggest duffers you would ever find on the planet. They shall comfortably forget the innumerable injurieis that has hit the little master over the past two years; something that is only a consequence of the person having played for the past 17 years for his country.

But then, if these things are remembered, how can the hype and biting headlines be made? Who cares for that 33 year old. We needed him only during those years when the Indian team only had this one man playing, and the rest ten were there only because cricket can be played with eleven players.

Monday, November 20, 2006

PPP's new advertiser

Payperpost, the leading paid-review website that has been creating ripples in the blogging world has now obtained a new advertiser from HP. This is exciting stuff not just for the company but also for its bloggers, and other stakeholders.

An advertiser like HP means more credibility. This means, the word about PPP would spread much more faster now. This means that more advertisers will be willing to be part of this great network, which means the bloggers get more to write on. All this means that it is going to be one big gala time at the PPP!

China sees threat in Wikipedia

Sometimes I think if Chinese are duffers, or is it the economists who predict a Chinese overtake of US who are that. Ok, even if China overtakes US as the biggest economy, people there are going to be no better than what they are now.

Censorship is the buzz word all the year round, and that's the beauty of China. For instance, now, China has blocked access to Wikipedia. Oh! come on, of all websites, the Chinese government bans Wikipedia!!!

I have not even purchased books for my exams next month, because I am going to study all from Wikipedia, and here is a country that thinks this is a greater threat than Osama!

I have a suggestion. When Hu visits India next week, he should be given a lecture on all the popular websites and their utility. Maybe, Hu can understand when told in Hindi....

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Disclosure Policy

This policy is valid from 19 November 2006


This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. For questions about this blog, please contact XooX (s.anand1 AT gmail dot com.


This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.

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Saturday, November 18, 2006

Gates uses iPod

Maybe that was the reason he wanted to make a Zune..Gates has praised iPod calling it "Phenomenol, unbelievable and fantastic". Yes, I agree with him. iPod has taken over personal music completely.

Gates would agree too when he said that Zune, which Microsoft very recently launched as a competitor to iPod, was very modest compared to its rich original from Apple.

Friday, November 17, 2006

CRM for Businesses

It is often said about Customer Relationship Management - it is not how much you remember about your customer, but how much it helps in serving him better. The new range of CRM softwares are out here to do just that.

Relenta is a new CRM tool that is now popular in business circles for the exciting options it offers. Like, first and foremost, there is nothing to download and install; it is all up and running in no time. This besides, it is been most talked of because of its effective use of email, which brings down your costs in marketing next to nought. It has an effective email integration and also automated email marketing tools.

Now, it shall be interesting to see how the competition among CRM builders moves.

Blog Statistics

As a blogger, it is always important for you to know if your blog is read at all!This is because, if you get to know that nobody's is actually reading your blog, then why write in the first place.

It is for this reason that it is critical to have a referral statistics to know where the traffic is coming from, if there are new links to your blog,etc. I use something which most of the bloggers here use, Sitemeter. But, as Colleen in Geeky Speaky says, there are many more ways to know your statistics. Her Geek website uses a plug in for referral stats. And, it can be used to find the referring domain, unique visitors, last page viewed, etc.

Now, as I had already mentioned earlier, these referral stats are important to know what your readers want you to write on. Hence, such plugins can help geeks to know where their website or blog is heading to.

YouTube is not THE ONE

YouTube and Google Video are the only two I regularly use. But, PC Ancestor has a rather nice list of websites apart from these two. Some of them also let you edit your video clips. Check their section on cool video sharing websites.

Angelina's bodyguards arrested

Okay, I knew this was coming. Over the past few days, Angelina's bodyguards were making as much news as the actress herself. There were small news bits of them pushing and shoving the people gathered at the sets of the movie based on Daniel Pearl, for which Angelina and Brad Pitt are right now in India.

Now, in a shooting at a school here in Mumbai, the guards had crossed the limits, pushing parents, including women, and school children. Those freakers had called 'bloody Indians' on a few..

Now, this can't get noticed darlings, and they now stand arrested. Though out on a bail as of now, these guys, I pray God, should have a tough time for sometime now..

Antonio here

This is a must see video. I will tell you a trivia at the end of the post. In this video, the person tries to mimick the master impressionalist Antonio and his catfish.

The video starts off with the person, one eye closed, draped in what looks like a bathroom robe, announcing "Hello everybody! It is me, Anthooonio"..

This video is hilarious..in the sense, I have always found Americans not being able to speak other accents properly. But in this one, you will never, for a minute guess that this guy is an American..Ok, by the way, if you want me to tell what the so-called 'trivia' I was talking about is, okay, let me put it as a question. Who's the person on the video?
Answer: Ted Murphy, the founder of PayPerPost, the exciting new paid-to-review service for bloggers..

Were Shoaib and Woolmer pals?

The recent Champions trophy was not the best of times for Shoaib Akhtar. Okay, he never got to bowl a ball because he was sent off for drub abuse. But after the tournament got over, the ICC official accompanying the Pakistani team, col. Amit Kaul told the media that things were not right between Shoaib Akhtar and coach Bob Woolmer, and he reportedly 'slapped' Woolmer in the bus that the team were travelling in.

While even Bob Woolmer denied it, he had also said that he and Shoaib were great pals anyway.But a recent video posted on YouTube (taken from the Indian news channel Headlines Today) shows that even if Shoaib had not slapped his coach, they could still be on not-so-good terms.

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Fuel prices rising

The fuel prices have been increasing with every passing day. Though there has been a slump over the past few days, if you look at a long-period perspective, petrol is getting unaffordable for the common man.

One way forward is to go electric. But that just doesn't seem to be happening. I shall not go into the controversy that is surrounding this issue. However the other way is quite easy. It is through improving the performance of the vehicle for the same quantity of fuel.
Tornado Fuel Saver are devices that help increasing the turbulence inside the engine, which, if you have studied automobiles, increases the air speed, improves mileage and horsepower, thereby making the vehicle run longer for the same quantity of fuel. This is, in fact, growing at a huge demand, and the prices of these devices are also very affordable, which makes it a good alternative to going electric.

How to chat from Orkut

Orkut introduced this new 'chat from Orkut' feature. Okay, it is not strictly that. You will have to anyway come to gTalk to do that. But if you go to settings in Orkut now, you have an option to set your gtalk status visible on Orkut.

So, next time you are online, a green light comes next to your name on Orkut so that your friends can ping you for chat.

Search Engines for every use

As I had written in one of my posts yesterday, Search Engines seem to be the new hotspot for businesses. There are now search engines for every use. Now, if you want to buy a credit card, now, you have a search engine just for that very purpose.

This Search Engine is well, so very comprehensive and includes credit cards for people of all credit types. One thing I liked in the website was the categories they have made to include things like airmiles, low interest, rewards, student cards etc.

So, the next time you want to purchase a card, you know where to go, right?

Indian schoolboys amass a 721 run partnership

It is not just team India who is gearing up for the world cup, it is actually the whole of India. I cannot think of any other explanation to what was an amazing effort by two young teenaged school boys from Hyderabad who created history by scoring a partnership of 721 runs against St. Patricks school.

Mohammad Shahbaz Tumbi scored 324 not out and B Manoj scored 320 not out. Oh my god! I want you both to go to West Indies now!

And if you are stunned by this, so were the opponents who were bowled out for a paltry 21 runs!!!

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

Employee Motivation

If you take any organization, employee motivation is of extreme importance, not just because it will help the company meet its billed objectives, but also reduce attrition, make the employee like the organization and give his hundred percent.

Thats why companies are flocking to Motivation speakers. For example, American Express recently had a motivation workshop conducted by the best selling author of 'Speaking of Success', Bill Todd. Bill Todd is actually a phenomenon these days,since many companies are realizing the importance of his motivation speeches in increasing business sales and profits. I checked out his website, and the free audio seminars on his site were quite useful.Please click now ! so that you can download the seminars too...

China China pissing bright

China never ceases to piss me off. The Arunachal Pradesh issue is still raging between the two countries ahead of the Prezzie's visit next week. While my gut feeling says that the timed 'opinion' of the ambassador is all part of the script, I choose to officially not claim it.

By the way, there was this first seminar on 1962 Indo-China war, and the 'eminent scholars of South Asia' hailing from China had this to say:

"India entered into Tawang, the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama, in 1951. For Tibetan Buddhism Tawang is important


This particular dialogue was muttered by one Professor Sun Shihai, who is the deputy director at the Chinese academy of Social Sciences.

.......Sorry, just back after an hour. Was laughing all the while at this freaking remark. Okay, if Tawang is important for Tibetan Budhism, why the hell should you want it? You hold Tibet all right, but the entire population of Tibet, including the Dalai Lama himself are now on an exile in India.

My one week old nephew is squeaking out this:
"Do you people only amass lands or do you also let the rightful people live there?"
Good question :)

Google in 1960

Have you ever wondered how Google would have looked in 1960!?? Ok, that is a hypothetical question, but got this from Internet tech blog, and thought was cool. Maybe Google really took six weeks to deliver their results ;-)

Is MBA enough?

In a recent management article, the author had made quite valid points. He asks, with the same Drucker principle and Kotler mantras being taught over and again at management schools, is MBA really losing its value? Quite a valid point in that MBA is meant only for seasoning future managers. Nothing, if you want to start your own business or harnes your entreprenuerial skills.

However, if you ask me, I would say that not everything is bad. Steps are being taken in this direction. Trump university, for example, has recently started a new course specifically meant for corporates to learn the art of buying a business. In fact 73 steps are taught to even evaluate a business. Such a course would help entrepreneurs, who dream of buying potential profit companies, and turn them to cash cows.

Al Jazeera starts its English News Channel

Al Jazeera, the rather infamous Arabic news channel, most often perceived to be Osama Bin Laden's mouthpiece by the Western Media,has launched its news services in English. The company said the move was to counter the market dominated by CNN and BBC.

The English news channel shall be radically different from the Arabic service and shall concentrate on all of the developing world.

I feel really pleased to hear this. Now, Osama is officially recognized and permitted to speak in English and deliver his master plans in the language Dubya understands!

Search Engine market competition grows

Ever since Google spilled the beans in showing how lucrative the Search engine market is, there have been newer Search Engines, each trying to outperform Google with their own niche and quality of results. One of the niche not targetted very much so far has been the multi-linguism of the Internet using population.


Megaglobe - International Search Engine is a new search engine that has been developed to target this very special segment. Programmed to cater to populations that speak over 45 languages, this search engine truly helps bridge that one gap that has always existed on the internet. Also, with the developers of Megaglobe opening their search engine to publishers for advertisements, very similar to Google's very own Adsense programme, the competition is only increasing.

Though there are hundreds of Search Engines and their own publisher programmes so far, I am particularly interested in Megaglobe simply because I am curious to see how this multi-linguism of Megaglobe will take base. With increasing globalization and with people speaking more than one language, this is the sort of search engine that everyone will be preferring to make use of.

Nice Ideas in the Media

It was a pleasant surprise this morning. Nice-Ideas had carried out an article yesterday on the recent war-of-words that has arisen between the Indian and Chinese officials regarding the disputed areas of Arunachal Pradesh.

This article had surprisingly been listed in the Blogger's Park section of the Mumbai Mirror, the tabloid Mumbai supplement of the Times of India, India's largest selling newspaper.

I guess this will prompt me to write more and more, simply because it feels good to be recognized!

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Hate the winter

Back at my hometown, the weather is always hot and warm. But over the past five years, I have always spent my winter in cold areas of the north. Though cold winter is something I learnt to enjoy, it is particularly difficult to take care of your body in this period.

The main problem I face every winter is the dry skin. It is like, sometimes, I cannot even laugh or smile. You know how it is when the face simply dries up for lack of humidity. This also causes my lips to crack like hell. In short, I simply hate to see myself on the mirror.

You can take care by opening up to moist air. But, which is good? Warm moist air or cold moist air. The page about differnet kinds of humidifiers must be useful in this regard. I would suggest you to visit humidifierinformation.com for a complete guide to buying a house humidifier

Chinese in glass houses

Mention Human rights violations and even a month old baby would speak out 'China'. Such has been the glorious past of this great nation. China has held Tibet captive for decades now, so long that all the Tibetans who were out to India on an exile have even started speaking the local languages so fluently and naturally.

And inspite of holding such a huge mass of undeserved land, the Chinese don't seem to be stopping. China has always cried out loud on Arunachal Pradesh, India's eastern frontier with China being a Chinese territory. And yesterday, barely a fortnight left for the Chinese president's India visit, the Chinese ambassador to India made a claim that India is holding Arunachal Pradesh, which was Chinese territory. India has replied back, "Shut up bloke, we want to keep the atmospehere positive when your Prez is coming. If you want to open up Arunachal Pradesh, we shall only be too obliged to open up Kashmir's Aksai Chin region, which Pakistan so dearly gifted you after the '65 war...

Innovative HR policies

Human Resources knows no bounds. Herzberg and Maslow theories are not sufficient to keep your employees motivated at the work place. It is probably with this understanding that companies have started to innovate their methods to keep employees happy.

A recent trend in the software industry is to gift customized products to the employees on their birthdays. It is said that the more emotional your gift seems to be, the more loyal the employee will be at the work place.

Take this for an example. The HR department knows you and your family inside out. And suppose they gift you two flash drives, one with your name, and the other with your wife's name laser-engraved on it. Wouldn't that make you feel special.

Or how about the HR department remembering the birthday of your son or daughter and present a flash drive with his name engraved on it. Atleast your son will not want you to leave the company. In fact, knowing this trend, there are even companies that offer such customized products at the same rate as normal flash drives. This, I feel, is a great HR technique.

Indian meteor hit caused Dinosaur extinction

A team of German scientists have concluded that a meteor that hit India more than 65 million years ago caused the extinction of the Dinosaurs. According to them, the meteor, named Shiva ( the Hindu god of destruction) by one of the scientists hit the Indian plateau. This coincided with a million year long volcanic eruptions along the Deccan Basalt region. The huge efflux of greenhouse gases during this period caused the death of the dinosaurs.

Earlier, it was believed that a meteor hit in Mexico was responsible for the huge animals of the 'Jurassic Park'.

Our new house update

If you have been following my blog, you know about the new house we have bought. I recently suggested to my dad that we should not stick to the existing layout. I said, "Maybe, we should go for some extreme home makeover!!" This is like something that we might have often come across on TV shows.

I sugegested that we too go for that kind of an extreme makeover. My dad has not still fully accepted to it. But I just browsed through some websites on home makeover solutions, and I pretty much guess he is also now willing to get it done.

After all it is our ONE home, and unless the finance minister at home doesn't accept, I can only keep dreaming!Right?

No more fat aunties on Indian

The recent entangle surrounding India's national carrier is about how fat can air hostesses be.

Indian, previously Indian airlines had recently fired eleven air hostesses for having put too much of fat, and the airline claims that they being the ambassadors for the company as such, need to be more thin and western looking.

The airline also claims that fat hostesses can't take quick action in case of a terrorist attack. Now, wow! if that was one main reason for firing the fat women, why not replace the air hostess fleet with one line of armymen. Atleast this time around they can earn much more for doing something much easier...

Monday, November 13, 2006

Sword collection

If you have been to a home of a Sikh family, you would have observed the sword that is preserved there. It is according to their faith that they keep the sword at their house.

Actually, talking of swords, I remember the TV series that used to be aired when I was young, called the Sword of Tipu Sultan. During the period, swords were in such a frenzy. Actually, it is not just here. World over, swords have always held their pride of place,either in the form of Japanese martial arts, Ninja or Samurais, etc.

I am really amazed how this medieval weapon of war has survived to this date. It is actually a passion for many to collect swords. So many infact that there are websites dedicated to the same these days.

This one thing is surely making a huge comeback.

Adobe India CEO's son kidnapped

In a daring daylight kidnap attempt, the three year old Anant, son of Adobe India's CEO Naresh Gupta was kidnapped, when he was on his way to school.

He was accompanied by his maid. Naresh Gupta is in Hong Kong and is returning. Now, is this a new way to thwart companies growing here,or is simply a case of kidnapping a rich dad's son. I fear the former simply because at the end of day, the family is yet to receive any ransom note or anything like that..

One thing is for sure. Our country requires a lot of security (Internal as well as external) from here on. Where is the money going to come from?

Get Over eBay

eBay is soon turning to be a hotspot for churning out millionnaires. There are simply so many of them who have made a living out of eBay. There have been so many books written by those claiming they are successful, or seminars held.

After all this, there is now a software to help you get into sniper mode and win your bids. Usually, what happens is that when you make a bid,others can view the things you are bidding on when they view your page. What Bidnapper does is, it helps you protect your bid until the last minute, which in a way nullifies competition. Also, others cannot view the items you are bidding on.

I believe with more and more people buying such softwares, you will start becoming unsuccessful if you do not make the switch too.

Damn the polls

Times of India carried the results to the poll it had carried in its previous edition. The question:
Sachin Tendulkar is focussing too much on ads and not on cricket

And the options

Yes, he is getting too much distracted
Both can go hand in hand
It could affect others in the team

Now, what the f*k. What kind of a one-sided question was that and look at the unanimous judgement that has been heaped..How will I answer that No, that's none of your business stupid Journo..

Basically, why the hell do newspapers carry such out-of-the-senses polls? Now, I knew these guys had nothing beneath their scalp a long time ago. Don't keep proving it over and again please.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

Now International is next door

Now I have simply started loving it. Heard of Pingo? It is an awesome service that provides cheap international prepaid calling cards. I mean, you save hell a lot of money using Pingo to any other.

Not just that, I got $5 free international prepaid calling cards simply for signing up. Now, $5 converts very well here, so I have got this added advantage as well. After that, I referred Pingo to my cousin in Florida. That added $5 more to my international prepaid calling card amount. Added to this, I signed up as an affiliate to their referral program, and got a free international prepaid calling card. I just had to email them at affiliate@pingo.com

The service is cheap in the sense, if I had to call from USA to India, then the calling card rates will be INR 3.50. This is truly amazing. I spend that much in calling Chennai from Mumbai!!

Hahaha now it's Hersheys

I have always sympathesized with Cadbury for having taken the brunt of all health attacks. In India they were under fire for chocolates with worms. Now, more recently, they were under fire in UK for Salmonella affected chocolates, after which they had to recall more than a million bars.

Now, finally the limelight has shifted to someone else. The American chocolate maker, Hersheys is now under controversy for Salmonella infections in Canada.

More details here

Get Paid to Blog

Do you own a blog? Do you like writing? Then this is the one for you. PayPerPost is a website that is sponsored by advertisers who want their products to be popular through word-of-mouth publicity and this, they achieve by paying for bloggers who review their products.

How does it work?

It is so simple. You are given the website or product to review. If it interests you, you review the product and after approval, which normally takes two to three days, you stand to get paid.

All you need is a Blog!!

PS:
If you are signing up, please..please do use my referral link s.anand1[-at-]gmail.com

Angelina in Mumbai

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, along with their kids are in India over the past one month shooting for the movie, that is based on the slain American journalist Daniel Pearl.

They had all along shot the movie in Pune. Now, as part of the movie, they have now come to Mumbai. The unit will soon move to Pakistan to complete the remaining part of the movie.

Impact of 'Point of Sales' in your business

There have been many times when I have been frustrated at the queue because the person at the counter was taking too long to finish the transaction off. It has happened even in big name shops in my locality.

Here is where, you need a good Point of Sale software. This is the software that the cashier at the counter makes use of to make the bill for you. D-POS is one of the cheap POS softwares available, that is also so good in its quality. It has all the features of all the high priced softwares, with even hands-free style.

So, if you are looking to have a POS in your business or atleast want to suggest one to your neighbour shop that takes so long to make a bil, suggest this one.

Saturday, November 11, 2006

Burger King Outsources

Over a million have already watched this video. Even though I am myself Indian, this video was pretty funny..

Shows no matter whether the jobs stay in US,or move to India or China, the condition that the customer is put into never changes...

Friday, November 10, 2006

45 to Christmas

Christmas is fast approaching. While the festival is not celebrated as exuberantly here as in the West, Christmas is still a very rejoiceable time, with visiting friends and family, and planning for the new year.

I came across this band called Greener. They claim that the Greener's Christmas Song was downloaded by over a million times last time around. My friend actually played the song to me. Man, it is awesome..

Their website claims that this time around, a portion of the proceeds will be given to AIDS/HIV prevention. Just thought I shall pass the message over here...

Google Dance

Recently, I had published a post about MyLot.com ripping off its customers by paying peanuts for the sh!tty job that they were supposed to do there on the website.

Two days after the post was published, the blog post started appearing on the front pages of Google for MyLot.com related searches. While I was happy to see so many people visiting my blog for the searches, I was shocked to see the search result suddenly go off the listing.

Since my experience with MyLot had not been good, even when I reported their modus operandi on their forums, I suspected, this was yet another of their work to get my page deindexed.

Believe me, I know a bit of SEO and knew this was not possible unless I wanted. Now, thanks to Amit Agarwal from Digital Inspirations, I got to know that this delisting was because of a phenomenon called Google Dance, which happens occassionally.

Now, I am back to waiting to see my page getting indexed back.

What is a Business plan

Right now, I am working on a Business Plan contest that is being held in our MBA institute. Let me tell you, what a business plan is. It is a report prepared to analyse the market where you are trying to establish yourself. This includes studying the customer preferences, performing SWOT and PEST analyses, analyzing the demand for your product, planning your budget and promotion strategies etc.

Though it may look very common-sensical, it becomes extremely critical and important since one bad move here can destroy your company. It is here that the numerous business plan help center come of help. Most of these business plan guides operate online and can prove to be of great help if you want to start your own business. For example the GrowThink's Business plan guide is one popular one. Here you can have access to numerous calculators, free reports, databases etc, which can be of help.

After all, that is why probably the business plan guide is downloaded more than 50K times every year!

Trivia...

Let me try some trivia now..Ok..try answering this question...
came across this one somewhere and it was indeed pretty funny to hear the answer. Might be easy if you are an avid American movie buff...

What is common to all these men?

Mag directory

In one of the articles on website growth, a popular internet marketer had to this to say, "The only way web can grow now is by adding value to what already exists." I guess it would suit MagazinePriceSearch.com a lot.

This is primarily a magazine database. But then, it is more of a search engine to look for magazines of any particular category. The best part of the website is the ability to compare prices of magazines from over 24 online stores, and to choose the one that fits your budget.

Magazines at MPS are available under topic category as well as under price. I would like to bring your notice to the quite a few magazines for business and management students too. Being an MBA student, I feel this indeed was a useful link.

The best Diagnosis tool out here is free!

Google has been commended by researchers for being able to carry out the diagnosis of even the most complicated of illnesses. Researches found that with over 3 billion medical articles out there on the internet, complications, even such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease can be detected with just a few strokes of the keyboard.

Sergey Brin and Larry Page would not have thought on this line, would they have?

Source

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Conferencing on Internet

Internet is highly transforming the ways children learn maths. An educational tutor institute in India, called Career Launcher has been coaching American kids on subjects like maths, all over the internet. Now, taking this idea up are so many freelancers, who feel they can also put their knowledge to use by taking lessons over the internet.

Technology leaders in video conferencing system like Life Size seem to have cashed in on this with highly appropriate video conferencing tools. And education is not their only forte, since they also cater to a host of other tools that are required for video conferencing in other areas of the industry.

I have tried their phone once, and the quality, I must say, is very good; equal if not greater than the other leaders in the industry, though the price of Life Size is comparatively cheaper.

The inexpensive side of London

According to a recent article, the popularity of London hotels have been increasing over the past few years. However, there are other articles, which also suggest that London Hotels are notorious for being expensive.

I did some research on the internet, and this is what I found. Not all hotels in London are expensive. It is always possible to locate cheap hotels in London. All you need is a bit of research and price comparison.

After all, when you tour England, save the best for the best. Why spend it on some costly hotel room..!

Need a new contractor :(

Sometime back, I had written about the new construction work that is on at my new house near my Grandma's house..remember?

Well, that is heading towards a sure shot disaster. Since I was away from home, I had told my dad over phone specifically to only call the building contractor from our previous house to make all the room modelling activities. This was because he was from the local contractor service who we knew very well..

But instead my dad called up a guy working on another building in the same flats.Take a guess on what he should have done!? Yes, exactly. He mixed up things to be done on the two houses.

Since all houses in our flats are of the same design, the room models do not differ very much. So, probably that was the reason for this mishap. This guy painted our walls in green and theirs in cream while it was supposed to be the other way round. Their bathroom tiles were replaced, when it was us who requested for it. My God! Can somebody be more irresponsible.

Fact is, the other house owners are selling it off, while we are moving in. So, while they do not kinda mind how their house looks, we are very much specific onto this. My dad told all that happened last evening. Clearly,even he was not able to be there on the spot because of office work, and he got to know about all that happened only at the end of the day.

We are not paying those guys. Let us see what they do next. Need a new contractor!..

English in England

With the recent surge in the number of Asians emigrating to England, a new kind of problem has arisen. A lot of these Asians, predominantly those from Pakistan and Bangladesh do not know to converse in English. This is particularly difficult in the kind of city London is.

This is not the only problem in language. A lot of native Britishers too have some kind of the problem or other with English. It is because of all these problems that a lot of new English schools in London have started. Though English course in London can be easily availed, still a lot of people who need help in the language have been of late, been enrolling to these London English Schools.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Freebie versus Paid

When I started blogging, one of my friends who I started with insisted that we should go for a paid , hosted blog. I was like, but why!? He pointed out that we could have our own domain name, freedom etc. But then, no matter what your blog gets to be seen only if it is of good quality, right? That has been my policy, never pay for something when you can have the same thing for free, when there is no compromise on quality.

For example, why do we need to pay when you can have free stuff for babies? Same way why do you need to pay when you can have free stuff for pets?

Eventually, whatever our needs are, if you pay for it, I can always get it as a free stuff . It is only the ends matter, and in the end, you and I end no different.

Real Estate peaking

Here in India, property values are peaking like never before. There has hence been an amazing rise in the value that everyone these days are investing in property, mainly land and houses. Worldwide too, this phenomenon is growing.

PropertyMartOverseas is a website that started out as a magazine that deals with properties overseas; from all the world over. It is hence useful in knowing the property value trends in different places. This apart, this website also has quite a good number of articles on overseas properties and stuff. I was browsing the web for a case study on realty in India while I stumbled on this very good resource. Hope it might be of help if you are also planning to buy houses abroad.

Web Clip on gmail

Have you noticed the web clip that appears on top of your gmail inbox? It is kinda cool. In the sense, keep clicking on the arrow mark next to "web clip" and you can see previews of dictionary words, jokes, news, sports, etc.

Now, i no longer need to check elsewhere for some cool stuff...

Vitamins for the body

I have recently taken to playing a lot of badminton. I don't play with a lot of strategy, but I just keep hitting hard; it kind of gives you a lot of energy. These days, I play something like two hours everyday, and to support this, have started taking nutritional supplements.

There are not good stuffs available here in my place, but found good amount of info online at CheapVitamins. It was great to find the right kind of vitamins and supplements at the site. In fact, the vitamins and supplements available at CheapVitamins.com were sort of economical too that I did not even have to ask dad before making a purchase on his card!

Microsoft launches Virtual Earth 3D

Microsoft and Google seem to be taking their war out from the land to space. MS has now taken on Google Earth by launching Virtual Earth 3D. While as of now, only a select few US cities are available on a full scale 3D view from space, MS plans to expand this to 5000 cities in a five year period.

Plans don't stop here. Microsoft has been sendind teams to take millions of photos all through streets of important cities to take visitors on a virtual street tour. This could prove a real boom segment now that both the big horns are onto it.

While Google still holds the advantage with better premium features, and access to larger number of cities right now, the future could hold brighter prospects for both the companies. Do not worry, we, the customers are always winners!

Doc review


Heard of Vimo? It is a site where you can compare your healthcare products. Now, Vimo has come up with a 'review your doc' section. All you do is review a doctor you have recently visited. In return for this, you shall be eligible for five free music downloads from emusic.com

The best part is there is nothing of the sort of entering your credit card no., etc. In fact, I do not even have a credit card. I have already reviewed my dentist. Thinking of what to download!

YouTube - Invention of the year

YouTube, online video sharing website that was recently acquired by Google has been named the 'invention of the year'. What shot the website into such a prominence was its ability to suddenly catapult amateur home video makers into celebrities to enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame.

YouTube was founded by Stan, Hurley and Jawad Karim and shot into such a prominence, that there arose a lot many clones, including Google coming out with their own Videos, before acquiring the founder of such a service.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

George Davison

Being an MBA student, I am always interested by businessmen themselves. I have heard experiences of some who had lost millions, and still kept hope to get back all that they lost. These are simply inspiring stories.

Recently, I came across the blog of one such person, George Davison. If you have heard of InventionLand; it is a Pittsburg based product development company;George is the founder of this company. He is an inventor himself, and his recently launched blog strives to serve new and upcoming inventors and product developers with Business and entrepreneurial tips.

It is a still new, and I have already subscribed its feed. I am after all going to be an entrepreneur one day, and I definitely don't want to miss my tips.

George Davison's Offical Website

American kids getting rounder

MacDonald's is seemingly causing much concern to American health. A study has shown that the average belly fat of American kids has increased by more then 65 percent in 16 years since 1990. This is a growing concern since belly fat is a clear indication of bad health.

Clearly, fast foods and internet are making children more and more couch-potatoish. Maybe now, body mass index should also be a parameter in evaluating children in school!!

Source

Learn SEO

As a webmaster of XooXonline.Info, I used to advise people on the kind of SEO techniques that they need to follow to quickly index their site and increase their search engine rankings.

Nowadays, though I have moved, I still like advising on such subjects. Remember that SEO and PPC related information should be got from only those resources which are really effective. Like, I always recommend Apogee SEO blog for any SEO related queries. I think it is worth the time you spend there.

Websites pushing actors out of the closet

Here is a recent article on how websites are pushing the actors out of the closet. Neil Patrick Harris, a popular TV actor recently admitted that he was gay. This was first reported by a Canadian website. Neil's publicist first denied the claim, but then had to finally accept it because that had gotten popular by then.

Free Poker

Last week, my sister had called me up. She had been trying her hand at Casinos and Poker games for quite some time. Like me, she too always loses money at it. Well, me and my sister do not play them for money. But then, it is a good past time and it is always cool and awesome if we can also make some money out of it.

I told her that it was really unbelievable that she won. She then told me about the friends she made at VegasPokerPro who taught her tips on how to play poker and other games. She was infact complimenting about the website itself. VPP, as everyone there on the community call it, is a place for Free Poker. In fact, VPP has all the necessary resources for playing Poker. You have a dedicated Poker forum where you can talk all the Poker strategies; things that you need to learn from the pros to start winning too.


I visited the website, and I should tell you that it is not just free, but you also stand a chance to receive a free Poker Bonus gift. Here is a chance dude to turn yourself up into a professional Poker. Happy playing.

Corruption rankings

I do not know how much I can trust the transparency index that is out every year on the country's corruption and transparencies. This year 163 countries took part, and as usual, the Scandinavians rocked this year too. Finland bagged the top honours for being the cleanest, while Haiti was the lowest.

The reason I do not want to believe them is that some of the parameters used are not globally uniform. For example, in some places, it is always common to accept and give complimentary gifts. But officially this is always registered as a bribe. I don't mean to say that things are great in India. Indian corruption levels are way too high, but then, some of it is also exagerration.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Heritage of UK

One of my friends who is doing his MBA in UK had recently sent me photos of his recent trip to Bath UK, Brighton, and Chester. I am really impressed by the places. I just wanted to know more about the place.

You have a good resource for the same at heritagecities.com

It is a new website on this, but this website is a real reflection on the kind of place that my friend was talking about. I now really want to visit UK just for these places.


Apart from thses places, you can also take a llok at Oxford, all of which reveals the heritage wealth of this region.

Water Vs. AIDS

Melinda and Gates foundation must probably rethink their strategy. Probably they need to put some money now for access to clean water rather than for AIDS awareness.

According a UN report, 2.6 billion people do not have access to clean water, and this killing more people than AIDS.

Now, we need to list the priorities...

Fancy dresses online

Come Halloween or Christmas, Fancy dress competitions are always a treat to the eye. It is sometimes funny to see little kids that dress themselves in different kinds and move about as if they were Dracula or as if they are going to kill you.

But, procuring the right dress for a fancy dress is always a problem. Now, it is possible to also procure fancy dresses online. Fancy Dress Costumes for of all kinds are now available at Escapade. Just visited the site for a window shopping. I’ll be there the next time there would be a fancy dress competition here.

Good deals on phones

I was looking for some good deals on the latest mobile phone. There are quite a few resources on the internet for mobile phone deals. In fact, I got my Nokia from one of these only. You can, as a customer also purchase packages from these websites.

My advice would be to study your options fully, be it contract phones or any other kind. When you have the resource, why not use it!? So, study the choices, make a decision and then buy your phone. What I am trying to say is don't buy simply because someone else has it.

Postie Patrol on at it again

PayPerPost is back with its Postie Patrol. What happens in Postie Patrol is that the PPP team hits the street with some weird 'Do it to Win it' challenge. This time, the team on a Big Blue monster truck hit the streets with a $400 challenge : Eat an entire Mondo XL Silician pie of a pizza,and if you do, you win it.

Simply watch this video. It is truly awesome.

For those of you who still did not get it, PayPerPost is an online Blog-marketers network which occassionally rocks the streets with such events. This is the second time PPP is organizing this.

Tallest man in the world

An Ukrainian is unofficially the tallest man in the world since his claim is still not been recorded in teh Guiness book of records.He measures 252 centimeters. The guy still in the records is a Mongolian who measures something of 237 centimeters.

Now, I am embarassed to mention my height. LOL.

Source

Online Money Borrowing

This could possible set a new trend in the future. In an innovative means to reduce the bureacracy of banks, lengthy procedures, and also to set in competitive lending rates, Zone Of Possible Agreement or ZOPA has been set up.

This is a website where both the lender and borrower are the members of the same website network. There are no definite lending rates set. Anybody wishing to lend money can set his own interest rate. This means better deals since a higher rate would mean no takers.

Also, it is much more quick and easy, since there is absolutely no paperwork and everything is done online. I think with all these positives, ZOPA could soon be a household name, not just for those looking for a quick loan, but also for the lenders who could very well treat this as an online investment method.

Sachin - Grand entry into global advertising


If you are an Indian and if you are sane, you shall love Sachin. He has been my idol amidst all his ups and downs. He has served world cricket for 17 years now, yet his charisma and my admiration for the God has never faded.

Now, Asia's leading sports agency, World Sports Group(WSG) has signed a deal worth millions of dollars to take Sachin's advertising campaigns global. Till now, he has remained the highest paid Indian Sportsman with an earning of over Rs.1170 ($1 = Rs. 45 approx.)per minute.

What has made him catapult to this height is not just his performance over all these years, but also his integrity, and character that has stood the tests of time.

Om Sachinaya Namaha!

Sunday, November 05, 2006

Favorite cars

Ever since I purchased my new Ford, I have developed a passion for cars. All my wallpapers over the last two months have all been of cars. But man, I must tell you, Mustang is the most beautiful car ever made.

I simply don't feel like replacing its wallpaper with anything else. What is more beautiful is that it is not just me. All the guys I met at a Mustang website forums are simple like me. I believe it's now time for me to start learning about the technical aspects of the car. The forum is the right place to start...

MyLot.com ripoff

It is amazing as to how websites try and rip off visitors under the aegis of paying money to do anything silly on the internet.

MyLot.com is a forums website that claims to pay money for simply posting on their site. This is very similar to what DigitalPoint.com did to their forums. But then, that was clearly mentioned as not paying since the beginning, and was merely to reward the loyal users.

But MyLot.com is a clear rip off, with luring visitors to post hundreds of posts everyday. I tried to venture into the site and ask the people there about their so-called success. Members were very forthcoming. One had already made $8 in "just 3 days" and her advice - 'Keep posting all day.She posts 500 odd posts everyday.

Now, what kind of bullshit was that!? 500 posts(mind you! they demad quality posts and not one liners) and $3 a day!!?

I made an attempt to bring the members there to their senses by making a thread on what a rip-off it was.

It lasted only three minutes and two replies. It had been deleted :)

PPP is awesome

Fifteen days ago, I was browsing through Liew's blog. He was talking about a website called PayPerPost where people get paid for simply posting on their blog. No, I was not excited. I am a seasoned failure on the internet having tried all possible kind of scams on the internet.

In fact, I can now sniff out these scammers on the internet. So, here I visited the site. It looked good. So, I signed up since I had one blog which I did not update that frequently, and so could try on that.

But now I tell you, these fifteen days have been the most awesome times in my life. I love doing things on the internet, and here I am reviewing websites and web services, and PPP, as most of us there love to call it here, has been paying me great. Four of my ten posts are already approved, and according to their rules, I shall officially be paid only after 30 days. But I am not worried. They have a transparent forum where I get to meet other posties, and some of them have been paid things like $1000 already. And mind you, this one's still in beta and not more than 3-4 months old.

Love you PPP

Orkut to merge with gTalk

According to a post on Digital Inspirations, Orkut, the popular social network site from Google shall soon merge with gTalk. This means that from now on, you can chat with gTalk not just with friends who you have on the chat list, but also with those on gmail as well as the friends who you have on Orkut.

I think Google has taken this socializing segment of the internet users very seriously. Atleast they will find a huge chunk of users now from Brazil and India.

Websites that MOVE you!

My dad is a government employee, which means that he is transferred to different locations every now and then. This was such a big headache because apart from finding a new house, new school for me and new workplace, we also had to move all our things in and out of houses everytime.

Earlier, it used to be like you find a packer and mover, discuss the rates, and get it moved. It was such a cumbersome process.

Now, things have become very simple. Websites on Self Storage Directory - Moving.bz make things so amazingly easy. In fact, websites as these provide moving services, for all kind of transfers right from one shift to the next street to the other end of the globe.

And how does it go? Just three simple steps to receive a quote for the kind of transfer you need and then enjoy your time while they get things done for you.

Very Very Colorgbful!!

Here is a graphic that has been made out of all the possible 16777216 possible combinations of Red,Green, Blue; the primary colors that are used to make the secondary colors.

Isn't that very innovative!?Click here for the link.

Friday, November 03, 2006

eCampus to provide concessional rates to students

eCampus coupons are now available at CouponChief.com , the very popular and exciting website for online coupon codes. As per this, you can now get upto $10 off on any purchase more than $200 plua a free T-shirt. If it is less however, you can still avail a free shipping offer, provided the purchase is more than $49.


For those who do not know eCampus, it is a dealer of new and old books, including textbooks for students.

Tag in the new Madonna

Brand recall is an oft-quoted phrase in management. And if Madonna were a brand, what do you recall when I mention Madonna? Is it her as a singer, a mother, an author, or Britney Spears ;-)

But now, Madonna seemingly hopes to change all that. She has decided to adopt a 13 month old Malawian boy names David.

Clearly Madonna is now trying to be a humanitarian.

Mortgage Fraud - Protect yourself from it

According to a recent agency reports, the suspected mortgage fraud in the US is up 35 percent. This is a whopping increase and is surely unwelcome in the once-booming housing market.

So, how do you protect yourself from this. My advice will be to get to understand the ins and outs of borrowing intelligently and making smart home loan decisions. There are a lot of resources available online for this.

Sites like PersonalHomeLoanMortgages.com are very helpful for those who want to learn about mortgages,mortgage refinancing, mortgage brokers, etc. Also, since sites as these are protected through SecureTrust, customer data is also protected. Also help is available in the form of extensive mortgage directories and help advice forums.

Tomatoes, the cause of Salmonella outbreak

The recent Salmonella outbreak in the US has been attributed to have come from the restaurant tomotoes.

So what does Salmonella cause. It simply causes fever and non-bloody diarrhoea which resolves within a week.

Looks like this should calm the minds of those who started jumping up and down over a report that Cadbury chocolates had indications of Salmonella in them.
Yes, it is a fault on the part of the company. But it is bound to happen in such an industry. Maintain your calm babes..

Voice acting jobs go online

Have you heard of Johnny Geoge? Well, you might not know him, but would have definitely listened to him if you have been following the various medical series on Discovery Channel.

Johnny,like hundreds of others are a new breed of voice actor, who have been recruited online for providing their voice to the various television and radio stations. Even reputed international channels like ESPN, NBC, and Coca Cola use the services of online voice actors web service like Voices.com

Their blog, Vox Daily is an extremely popular site among those interested in voice acting, voice actors, celebrities, and getting started in voice overs. Vox Daily also covers independent pro voice talents working from home.

Surely, everyone have been finding their destiny online!

Digg modifies algorithm

Digg has so far been getting low on quality because too many stories were submitted, and more importantly useless ones were also been dugg, so that even mediocre stories started to appear on the main page.

Now, to improve quality, Digg.com has come up with a new algorithm wherein different categories of stories need different number of diggs to reach the top.While categories like Technology now need upwards of 60 from the original 20-40 to make to the top, lesser popular ones like Sports still need lesser diggs to make it to the front page.

PINKS on SPEEDTV

In a recent edition, Hot Rod Magazine called the popular TV show,'PINKS' as "the hottest car show on television". Watched by more than two million viewers every week, this show, hosted on SPEED TV has also become the most watched weekly series on SPEED.

PINKS is basically a classic 1950s Drag race, where contestants are pitted in a best three-out-of-five format. The loser eventually hands over his title(pink slip) to his or her vehicle.

Don't forget to tune into SPEEDTV for the all day marathon of PINKS followed by the premiere of PINKS All Out on Nov 23rd.


this is a paid opp. this post sponsored by Speedtv.com

Yahoo to launch food site soon

Yahoo Inc. shall soon be launching a food site. This site shall give users info on different kinds of recipes, info on restaurants etc. This new site can be viewed at http://food.yahoo.com.

Not just this, people can also watch videos of recipe preparation. I guess if properly marketed, Yahoo can lauch a huge offensive on this very profitable segment which has largely remained outside the realms of corporate cyberworld all this while.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Book on Middle East Conflict

"Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict" is the name of the book by Obadiah Shoher,the nickname of a veteran Israeli politician. This book has been banned from advertising on Google, sales on Amazon, web-hosted on GoDaddy. The reason being it is of "unacceptable content".

In the book, the author deplores the myths on both the Muslim and the Jewish sides and advocates political rationalism for bringing a solution. According to him, the present Israel is doomed because a nation defined in religious terms cannot survive in a secular state.


Check the blog of Samson Blinded, and also download their book for free.Over 78 million have already done that.

Things you did not know about eBay

1. eBay maintains four copies of most of its databases.

2. It takes 30 minutes to build the ebay.com site - in the last 2.5 years, there have been 2 million builds.

3. On an average, eBay.com runs into issues for about 50 seconds per day.

4. The site averages more than 1 billion page views per day.

5. Users trade about $1,700 worth of goods on the site every second.

6. The site currently has about 600 million listings and about 204 million registered users.

7. The world's time zones provide a kind of natural load-balancer. When there's surge in traffic from US, that's generally when Europe [the second-largest region using eBay] is asleep - and vice versa.

8. eBay engineers have to add about 10 terabytes of new storage every week to cover new transactions.


Source: eweek.com
Thanks: Digital Inspirations

Installing power jacks for laptops

After one of my friends in the US got into trouble trying to install power jacks all by himself for his laptop, I thought I should mention that it is always better for you to get it done through someone who is an expert in doing such stuff.

As for my friend,after his goof-up, he did not have anybody who was experienced in the installation in his area; so he finally got it done at PowerJacksOnline.Com. They are specialized in Laptop DC Jacks, and claim to have done it 12,000 times before.

Certainly I wouldn't mind giving it to them even if someone offers to do it for free. I love my Compaq!!!

ML analyst suggests MS-Yahoo merger

A Merill Lynch analyst has suggested a merger between Yahoo and Microsoft, which he estimated would be in a better position to take the competition with Google head on.

Both Microsoft and Yahoo are struggling to keep pace with Google in the online advertising market as more and more advertisers are rushing to Google due to the huge exposure it gets them, though prices are comparatively higher there.

I believe even if this happens, the public will still view Yahoo and Microsoft as two different entities, and Google should retain its online niche supremacy, which I think should help Google retain leadership atleast for the near future..

Need for Speed

My need for speed is going to reach a pinnacle this weekend. Guess what? It is the live coverage of the Valencia Grand Prix in the MotoGP series.

The more exciting part of the coverage on SpeedTV is the automotive news that comes as part of 'The Speed Report'. I love listening to the analysis of "why" and not simply "how" things happened. I simply love the expert analysis here.


this post sponsored by Speedtv.com
this is a paid opp

Great Milestone on Internet : 100 million websites

A great milestone was achieved in October this year. The Internet now has 100 million websites with domain names and content. Among them more then 47-48 million websites are actively updated.

This information comes from NetCraft, an Internet monitoring company since 1995. At that time, there were only around 18,000 websites. The number of sites grew to 50 million sites only as late as 2004.

Now, with an added vigour due to blogging as well as many websites making money out of it, that number has increased dramatically to 100 million now.

It's a great news. Check out for more.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

How to improve website popularity

I was recently chatting with an online friend of mine on how to improve blog popularity, readership and Search Engine Optimization. He was also talking to me about me becoming an affiliate to different products on the net, and actually selling products on the internet.

Actually Anik(that's his name) is a self-learned SEO expert who now runs his own website on SEO and affiliate marketing. His advise was to refer to online forums for discussions on affiliate marketing and SEO opportunities and discussions. Discussing this with other webmasters help to a large extent.

A good example of such a resource, I would suggest will be to discuss SEO strategies - RevenueSource.com. If you participate in the site, you will observe the kind of quality suggestions and feedback you shall get. This is the way to go about to increase Search Engine rank and make a profit out of websites.