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Google AdSense is the best!
Posted on November 4th, 2009 No commentsIf you are looking for making some revenue by displaying ads on your website, Google AdSense is the right choice for you.
Like many others, I have a website that is new and has sometimes less than 500 hits per month. I had heard a lot about Google AdSense and how people have made decent amount of money by displaying ads on their website. I started off with applying for an AdSense account; but it was rejected because Google doesnt approve accounts for (specifically Indian & chinese) websites that are less than 6 months old.
Meanwhile, I wanted to sign up with some affiliate. Thats when I learnt that AdBrite is the best alternative to AdSense. I signed up with them and I could display ads in about 2 days. One thing that I noticed with AdBrite is that many of the times I didnt see the Ads displayed. And hence the click rate was low and the revenue was hardly seen. The Ads were also very generic in nature and not contextual.
It was about 6 months since my website was registered. So I reapplied for an AdSense account and it was approved this time. Note - While appying for AdSense account, make sure to provide the Address, Phone number details as was provided when you registered the website. Google is particular about this.I am now displaying Ads from Google AdSense. This one is beyond any sort of comparison. AdSense displays ads in just a few minutes of you signing up. I was very impressed with the quality of Ads. The Ads would exactly match the content of the website. Now, thats what I call Contextual Advertising. And guess what - I made same amount of revenue (which was small anyway, given the low traffic to my website) in 2weeks with AdSense as compared to what I had made with AdBrite in 6 months. Now I am confident that the revenue will further go up if I add more quality content to the website.
I am impressed, excited and look forward to a fruitful relationship with Google AdSense affiliate program.
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For getting blood donors, just send an SMS
Posted on July 18th, 2009 No commentsNow it has become easier to get the blood we need.
All you have to do is just type
“BLOOD
and send SMS to 96000 97000″ EX: “BLOOD B+”
A BLOOD DONOR WILL CALL YOU!!!
So please pass this message to all. It certainly would save many lives.
Its a Must to Know & Share. Do it now….Forward this to all your friends whom you care ….as the minute you spare to share this information can save somebody’s life with rare Blood Group! If you couldn’t be a Donor be a Communicator!!!
Here is an article carried by Hindu on this.
http://www.hindu.com/2008/09/09/stories/2008090958830200.htm
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ITI VidyaMandir Meet on July 11,2009
Posted on July 14th, 2009 1 commentRukmini, Murthy, Ganesh, Ajay, Sridhar, Venktu - all from the 1989 batch met in ITI Vidya Mandir High School on the 11th July 2009. It was nostalgic for all of us to go back and see our class rooms, Labs, playground, corridors etc.
The snaps from the meet are below. Its a flipbook album, you can actually flip the pages with the mouse. Click on the rectangle icon (next to the zoom icon) at the bottom left hand corner to maximize the album to fit the full screen. You can double click on any snap to zoom in/out.
The videos are here -
One more -
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Spirulina - For good health and energy
Posted on July 5th, 2009 No commentsSpirulina - never heard this term in my life until a couple of weeks back. A colleague of mine introduced this to me during one of our post-lunch walks to the nearby Juice shop. I was very apprehensive initially about mixing some unheard of herbal powder in juice.
I did some research on the web and found that this powder (the plant actually) has been there forever since the prehistoric times. It is very rich in proteins (more than soya), vitamins, minerals, amino acids and enzymes. Some studies indicate that it can cure a few infections and diseases. It is supposed to increase memory power, control diabetes, cholesterol etc
It gives instant energy and I carry a bottle of spirulina mixed juice when I go for my sports sessions in the club.
I have provided some links below which gave me some useful info about Spirulina -
http://www.healthiertalk.com/spirulina-supercool-superfood-0711
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State of Indian politics, Congress is the party for the future
Posted on June 22nd, 2009 No commentsThe political scenario, post general elections 2009, in India has taken a very interesting twist.
Sometime back it appeared like there is “tough competition” between Congress & BJP during the elections 2009; but subsequently it was a comprehensive victory for the Congress. A lot of things have changed since then. The BJP did not even give an impression of carrying out a proper postmortem and lessons learnt from the debacle. Instead the infighting within the party has just come out more in the open. This party needs a good leader; and unfortunately this has been a problem since Vajpayeeji retired from active politics. At this rate, instead of the second largest party, BJP is likely to become yet another party like CPI or DMK and so on. These are small parties who can be termed as party spoilers than someone who can create a significant impact or forming a government on their own. And the Third Front crashed even before it could take off.
On the other hand, take the Congress Party. They have exceeded people’s expectations. The strategy of gaining Uttar Pradesh was so well planned and executed. Superb! They got the best leaders at the helm - Sonia & Manmohan Singh. And Rahul is showing the right signs of becoming one of the influential and iconic leaders in the future. Congress ministers look more well-versed in their domains and look more capable than the counter parts in other parties. Congress shows clear signs of accountability, performance and the best thing is that they are bringing in youth into the mainstream. BJP is a big loser on this front.
Given the current trends, Congress party is the party for the future. It will be a while before any of the parties are even able to come close to them. The only thing is that Congress should not allow the victory to get into their head and end up doing something stupid; I guess the party is mature enough to manage that. I would even go one step further and say that they will get a clear majority during the next elections, and wouldnt need support from the smaller parties. They wouldnt need to handle messy situations like appeasing DMK and so on for portfolio assignment.
Way to go, Congress!
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TATA AIG-IRCTC Insurance Marketing agents are rude, aggressive
Posted on June 13th, 2009 No commentsI was horrified at the behavior of the marketing agents for the TATA AIG-IRCTC combined Insurance schemes. If you go to irctc.co.in website for your railway bookings, you will see an Ad indicating that you can get life insurance for Rs. 10. The offer looked interesting and I signed up for it.
The clause in the offer was that you could try the policy for two months as a trial by paying rupees ten per month and discontinue it, if you wish to and no questions asked. I later felt the policy was not worth it and decided to discontinue it.
The marketing agents started following up aggressively after that. They will refuse to talk to you in any other language other than Hindi and are very aggressive. It was almost like I was being forced to continue the policy; had to really push hard to get them to cancel the policy.
After a few days, there were calls again trying to sell me other policies. Again, the same aggressive marketing; and they bang the phone down if you refuse to give in.
May be, the other TATA AIG agents are OK; I dont want to generalize. These guys seem to be working in some backoffice or Data Center, may be from Mumbai or Delhi. Anyway, the experience was horrible and I wish I had not got into it.
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Bangalore Packers & Movers: There doesnt seem to be one that is highly recommended
Posted on May 11th, 2009 2 commentsBangalore Packers & Movers: Is there any that is clearly a recommended one?
There doesn’t seem to be a Packer that everyone recommends. I am talking about Bangalore, but my guess is that it must be true with many other cities as well. We had to recently move from one part of the city to the other. I started looking for a packer & mover (P&M). I started with yellow pages, and then collected a few more by calling JustDial Services (2333 3333).
I was given quotations on the phone and there was a total variance of about 2500 rupees. Lowest quote started from 4000 to the highest being 6500. I then started looking on the internet for reviews on the folks who had given the lowest quotations. To my surprise, I found that no matter which vendor I was evaluating there was someone on the net who had posted a negative review. A lot of these are there on mouthshut.com. Then I understood that there is no clear vendor that is a recommended Packer and Mover by most people. Some folks had mentioned to me about Agarwal Packers to be the best, and to my surprise found negative comments against them as well. Interestingly, I also discovered a few manipulations there where some vendors had posted positive comments (or may be negative comments to spoil competition’s reputation) posing as customers. So, watch out!
It had me confused as to which vendor I choose from the several quotations that I had. Finally, I realized that I had to just go by what my gut tells me and hope for the best. I selected a vendor called “Pragati Packers & Movers”.
So, How was my experience with these guys – Mixed; Good & Bad. It was good because these guys (4 workers) worked tirelessly throughout the day without even taking a lunch break. They kept assuring us that everything will be safe and they would take care of things as though it belonged to them. And they kept up this word to most part, and it was close to midnight when the entire unloading and re-arrangement was completed.
Now, the bad part. Their packing was not very professional. Towards the end of the day, as it was getting late; they skipped packing a few items and rushed into dumping them into the truck. As a result of this, a couple of our wooden furniture units had a few scratches. Another goof up was that they did not seal with adhesive tape on the Kitchen aata box, and the entire thing spilled over & created a mess. Another issue was that they came with an open truck and had forgotten to get the tarpaulin cover to protect things in case of a possible rain. It was later that someone from their office delivered it.
Summary: Pragati Packers & Movers – Go for them if you have lot of household items and want a competitive pricing. Avoid them or supervise properly, if you have a lot of expensive & glass furniture/items. I would rate them as average, 7 on a scale of 10.
Some things to note –
1. Always insist to have the Vendor come over to inspect the house & then give a final quotation. If you finalize on phone, it is likely that you will be asked for more money indicating that there more items than expected.
2. During quotation phase, ask if the pricing is inclusive of all taxes. Typically these quotations are given without Sales Tax included. And this is about 10.3% as of the date of posting this article.
3. During quotation phase, ask how many people will come and if there would be a Supervisor. If there is a supervisor, then the quality of the work is likely to be good. If you do hard bargaining and go after the guy who is giving you the lowest quote, it is likely that Supervisor is not going to be part of the team and quality is likely to suffer. Having 3 people is going to take you forever to shift the goods. There should atleast be 4 people, and one or two more would be even better.