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Monday, April 30, 2007

Personalize your credit card - ICICI Bank's latest addition

How many of us would love to customize our credit cards rather than have the same drab silver/gold/platinum colors. Quite many I guess. I personally would love to have a credit card with the Firefox logo on it. :) Here is probably my opportunity to get that done now. :D

ICICI Bank has come up with an option to personalise your credit card with any image you choose. It is called the ICICI Bank Picture Credit Card and you can use pictures taken with a digital camera, pictures taken with a mobile phone pictures taken with a mobile phone, scanned images etc etc.

To get a clear image on your ICICI Bank Picture Credit Card, your digital image must be at least 640 x 480 pixels in size. If your image is smaller than that, it may not look very good on the card. Oh and by the way, as always, everything that is good in this world is charged. This card will cost you Rs. 200 and you can change the image as many times as you want, each time you change, the charge is the same!

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Update on mGinger

mGinger reports on its website that its first sms campaign for Travelmart India to be a great hit! mGinger's total payout stands at Rs. 908.60. The maximum individual payout was Rs. 2.80 and I got Rs. 1.05. :D. Not bad huh!

Friday, April 27, 2007

First sms ad from mGinger

A few days back I had written a post on mGinger explaining why its business concept should work in India. Looks like they have started off today, or so it seems as I received an sms ad from mGinger this morning. It was an ad by Travelmart India with giving out a special offer followed by a mobile number. My immediate reaction was to login to mGinger to see if there is any change in my earnings. Check out the screenshot. It says that I have earned Rs. 0.20 because of the ad I got this morning and a referral earning of Rs. 0.80 thus summing up my earnings at Rs. 1. :) That's good for a starter I guess. Now I am gonna wait and watch till my earnings reach Rs. 300 so that I can redeem it.
All those who want to give mGinger a shot can do so through this link.

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

How to Truly Impress A Client!

One of the email fwds I got today.. And a good one too. Check it out!

I was in the airport VIP lounge en route to Seattle a couple of weeks ago. While in there, I noticed Bill Gates sitting comfortably in the corner, enjoying a drink.
I was meeting a very important client who was also flying to Seattle, but she was running a little bit late.
Well, being a straightforward kind of guy, I approached the Microsoft chairman, introduced myself, and said, "Mr. Gates, I wonder if you would do me a favor."
"Yes?"
"I'm sitting right over there," pointing to my seat at the bar, "and I'm waiting on a very important client. Would you be so kind when she arrives as to come walk by and just say, 'Hi, Ray,'?"
"Sure."
I shook his hand and thanked him and went back to my seat.
About ten minutes later, my client showed up. We ordered a drink and started to talk business.
A couple of minutes later, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Bill Gates.
"Hi, Ray," he said.
I replied, "F*** off, Gates, I'm in a meeting."

;-)

mGinger helps you pay your phone bills!

Welcome to the world of mobile ads. After the ads on blogs/websites, this one had to come.

When Google Adsense was introduced like any other blogger, i added it to my blog so that I could earn some pocket money. Fortunately or unfortunately, I never kept my blog up to date and never really earned anything out of it and therefore lost any hope of earning thru Adsense. I'm sure a lot of people have had similar experiences like mine. Now this is probably something different.

Would you like it if someone sent you ads to your mobile and also paid you for it? If yes, then read on!

mGinger is a service which sends ads to users based on their preferences. You get paid 20p for every ad sent to your phone. Wait, but that's more! For every advert that your friend receives, you get 10p and for every advert that your friend's friend receives you get 5p.

The mGinger website also gives a sample calculation as to how much a person can earn in a month. If you get 10 ads a day and you have referred 10 friends, and each of those friends have referred 10 other friends, then you will be earning Rs. 1,860/- per month which I guess will cover your mobile bills :) Thanks to mGinger if it really works out!

Seriously speaking, not a lot of people are going to say no to this kind of money every month. After all, it is only going to be a few extra smses per day. Infact, I only stand to gain from it.

This reminds me of an article based on a SMS research conducted by Intellect - Lintas Media Services, Research & Technologies which says that 66% of the respondents are willing to accept advertising through SMS on their cell phones.

You can sign up for mGinger with this link.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Duplicate File Finder

Duplicate File Finder is an awesome but simple and effective tool developed by Brooks Younce Software to locate duplicate files in one or more selected search paths or drives. It scans the files and compares them based on a byte for byte comparison, which ensures 100% accuracy. You can then choose to delete the selected duplicate or original files. There is also a 'Fast Searching' option for comparing large files. 'Fast Searching' compares the first and last 10 mb of large files, thus ensuring 99% accuracy.

Duplicate File Finder
is ideal for disk cleanup and for people like me who may have downloaded the same file many times by mistake :D. I saved close to 1 GB because of this tool!

The tool is only 110 kb and you can download it from here.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Recuva - File Recovery

Many a time we delete files by mistake and by the time we realise, it is too late. Here is a software called Recuva from Piriform (yeah, they are the same guys who developed CCleaner) which helps us recover deleted data

Recuva is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses!

You can download Recuva from here.

Update Checker - filehippo.com


Would you like to be reminded about updates available for the all the softwares on your computer? Check out Update Checker, a tool created by filehippo.com.

Update Checker will scan your computer for installed software, check the versions and then send this information to filehippo.com to see if there are any newer releases. These are then neatly displayed in your browser for you to download.

What's more, the tool is only approximately 100kb to download. So why wait, download it from here.

Addicted to the internet??

Wanna know whether you are an internet addict or not? Take up the Internet Addiction Test created by the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery and you will know for yourself!

If you are interested in Internet Addiction and want to know more, read this study report.

To take the test, click here.

Agloco - Earn money online by browsing.

I'm sure most of us have probably had one or two emails from close friends and from not so close friends trying to get us to join AGLOCO by now. If you haven’t, then AGLOCO is a new service that will be finally launching this week that allows advertisers to reach you directly while you surf and search the internet, by adding a small toolbar called the Viewbar at the bottom of your browser.

The incentive for users to join is that they not only get paid for their own surfing and searching, but also for any of their friends that they refer. Though I'm not sure about the whole thing, I’m prepared to at least give it a go.

To join Agloco, click here.

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Fire Tune - An awesome Firefox tuning tool

Fire Tune is an awesome tool created by Totalidea Software with a very simple interface and does a very good job of tweaking Firefox according to the users' preferences. A snapshot of the interface is shown below.


The tool is less than a mb in size and doesn't take more than 2 min to setup. You can download it from here.

Apart from Fire Tune, they also have tweaks for Windows XP/Vista and Outlook 2002/2003/2007. Check out the all their products here.

And for all those who haven't used Firefox, you can download it from here.

Orbitfiles - 6 Gigs of free online storage

Orbitfiles helps you backup 6 gigs of your files online for free and share them with your friends.They have 2 plans - a free one and a paid one (obviously!). You can sign up for free here. However, with the free account, the maximum file size that can be uploaded is 100 mb. They also give an option of a paid account which offers 70 GB at $20 per year.

And what's more, you can earn money thru Orbitfiles too. You can invite all your friends to join Orbitfiles and earn cash! You will get $0.10 for every referred user who confirms his account. I know it is not a lot, but then, something is better than nothing!

Friday, April 6, 2007

Domain Name Prices To Increase 7%

Verisign, the domain name registry that controls the .com domain (as well as .net and others), just notified its registrars (the companies that actually sell domain names to end users) that the wholesale price of .com domains will be raised 7%, from $6/year to $6.42/year.

This means registrars, particularly discount registrars like GoDaddy with little margin to play with, to raise their prices by roughly the same amount.

And with roughly 65 million .com domain names registered worldwide, Verisign just added $27 million dollars per year to their bottom line. ;)

Thursday, April 5, 2007

iPhone killer by a 15 year old!

Here is another iPhone killer, only the difference is, it is designed by a 15 year old Korean high-school student studying in Canada. Check it out here. It's nicknamed butterfly and its for all those slide phone lovers!




Top 10 SEO ranking factors

SEOmoz have just released version two of their Search Engine Ranking Factors Guide. It is the result of the collective wisdom of the collective wisdom of 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization. The contributors rated each factor on a scale of 1 - 5.

Top 10 positive factors were:

1. Keyword Use in Title Tag
2. Global Link Popularity of Site
3. Anchor Text of Inbound Link
4. Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure
5. Age of Site
6. Topical Relevance of Inbound Links to Site
7. Link Popularity of Site in Topical Community
8. Keyword Use in Body Text
9. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
10. Topical Relationship of Linking Page

Top 5 negative factors were:

1. Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
2. Content Very Similar or Duplicate of Existing Content in the Index
3. External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites
4. Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links
5. Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages

And the most controversial factors were:

1. Manual Authority/Weight Given to Site by Google
2. Relevance of Site's Primary Subject Matter to Query
3. Participation in Link Schemes or Actively Selling Links
4. Duplicate Title/Meta Tags on Many Pages
5. Global Link Popularity of Linking Site
6.
Quality of the Document Content (as measured algorithmically)
7.
Domain Extension of Linking Site (edu, gov, com, ca, co.uk, etc)
8.
Server is Often Inaccessible to Bots
9.
External Links to Low Quality/Spam Sites
10.
TLD Extension of Site (edu, gov, us, ca, com, etc)

The complete SEOmoz report can be read here and it is highly recommended.

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Straight from a child's mouth!

Out of the mouths of children…!

1. A nursery school pupil told his teacher he’d found a cat, but it was dead.

“How do you know that the cat was dead?” she asked her pupil.
“Because I pissed in its ear and it didn’t move,” answered the child innocently.
“You did WHAT?” the teacher exclaimed in surprise.
“You know,” explained the boy, “I leaned over and went ‘Pssst’ and it didn’t move”

2. A small boy is sent to bed by his father. Five minutes later…..”Da-ad….”

“What?”
“I’m thirsty. Can you bring a drink of water?”
“No, You had your chance. Lights out.”
Five minutes later: “Da-aaaad…..”
“WHAT?”
“I’m THIRSTY. Can I have a drink of water??”
I told you NO! If you ask again, I’ll have to smack you!!”
Five minutes later……”Daaaa-aaaad…..”
“WHAT!”
“When you come in to smack me, can you bring a drink of water?”

3. An exasperated mother, whose son was always getting into mischief, finally asked him “How do you expect to get into Heaven?”

The boy thought it over and said, “Well, I’ll run in and out and in and out and keep slamming the door until St. Peter says, ‘For Heaven’s sake, Dylan, come in or stay out!’”

4. One summer evening during a violent thunderstorm a mother was tucking her son into bed.

She was about to turn off the light when he asked with a tremor in his voice, “Mummy,will you sleep with me tonight?”
The mother smiled and gave him a reassuring hug. “I can’t dear,” she said. “I have to sleep in Daddy’s room.”
A long silence was broken at last by his shaky little voice: “The big sissy.”

5. It was that time, during the Sunday morning service, for the children’s sermon.

All the children were invited to come forward. One little girl was wearing a particularly pretty dress and,as she sat down, the minister leaned over and said, “That is a very pretty dress. Is it your Easter Dress?”
The little girl replied, directly into the minister’s clip-on microphone, “Yes, and my Mum says it’s a bitch to iron.”

6. When I was six months pregnant with my third child, my three year old came into the room when I was just getting ready to get into the shower.

She said, “Mummy, you are getting fat!”
I replied, “Yes, honey, remember Mummy has a baby growing in her tummy.”
“I know,” she replied, but what’s growing in your bum?”

7. A little boy was doing his math homework. He said to himself,

“Two plus five, that son of a bitch is seven.
Three plus six, that son of a bitch is nine….”
His mother heard what he was saying and gasped, “What are you doing?”
The little boy answered, “I’m doing my math homework, Mum.”
“And this is how your teacher taught you to do it?” the mother asked
“Yes,” he answered.
Infuriated, the mother asked the teacher the next day, “What are you teaching my son in math?”
The teacher replied, “Right now, we are learning addition.”
The mother asked, “And are you teachingthem to say two plus two, that son of a bitch is four?”
After the teacher stopped laughing, she answered,
“What I taught them was, two plus two, THE SUM OF WHICH, is four.”

8. One day the first grade teacher was reading the story of Chicken Little to her class.

She came to the part of the story where Chicken Little tried to warn the farmer. She read, “…. and so Chicken
Little went up to the farmer and said, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”
The teacher paused then asked the class, “And what do you think that farmer said?”
One little girl raised her hand and said, “I think he said: ‘Holy Shit! A talking chicken!’”
The teacher was unable to teach for the next 10 minutes.

9. A certain little girl, when asked her name, would reply,

“I’m Mr. Sugarbrown’s daughter.”
Her mother told her this was wrong, she must say, “I’m Jane Sugarbrown.”
The Vicar spoke to her in Sunday School, and said, “Aren’t you Mr.
Sugarbrown’s daughter?”
She replied, “I thought I was, butmother says I’m not.”

10. A little girl asked her mother, “Can I go outside and play with the boys?”

Her mother replied, “No, you can’t play with the boys, they’re too rough.”
The little girl thought about it for a few moments and asked, If I can find a smooth one, can I play with him?”

11. A little girl goes to the barber shop with her father.

She stands next to the barber chair, while her dad gets his hair cut, eating a snack cake The barber says to her, “Sweetheart, you’re gonna get hair on your muffin.”
She says, “Yes, I know, and I’m gonna get boobs too.”

You can make/receive in-flight calls on planes soon

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation may soon allow domestic airlines to permit passengers to use mobile phones and access mail on PDAs while air-borne.

In India, Kingfisher Airlines could be the first airline to implement it. The airline has sought government permission and has started talks with German telephone equipment company OnAir to install technology allowing passengers to use GSM mobile phones while in the air.

Under this new technology, GSM phone signals will be transferred from the cabin through a satellite to a GSM network on earth and connect the in-flight caller to the receiver of the call.

Source: Business Standard