This year fortune magazine had ranked Google as the best place to work for. It is no wonder that they are able to bulldoze the entire opposition including Yahoo and Microsoft when it comes to innovation!
Do you know that Google gets over 3000 job applications per day? Check out the following video to know more about the Google workplace and why they are number one!
One of the frequent mails I get these days are from people asking how to access Myspace when it is blocked by firewall at office or school.
Here is the big disclaimer: If it is blocked, it means that you are not supposed to access the Website. Especially at work, if you use one of the methods listed here and get caught, you might loose your job!
Now admins employ two types for firewall blocks.
The first type actually blocks a fixed set of sites. In this case you can use any proxy sites available on the net and surf. Or you can setup your own proxy by getting a hosting account.
The second type actually blocks sites based on the content it has. Things are pretty hard in such a case since even when you go through the proxy, the content still gets filtered.
Now if you are really desperate, you can checkout my Top 10 ways to access banned Websites. Some recent proxy servers are given in the comments section.
You can encourage blog readers to subscribe to the FeedBurner feed by providing auto discovery mechanism and also by providing a linked Feed icon.
But even after modifying auto feed discovery to point to FeedBurner feed, sometimes visitors will still be using the default Wordpress feed. This happens when they directly type in the Feed URL or when the feed reader uses the default Wordpress feed URL.
Now this is something which you want to discourage. There are mainly two reasons. First, you want to see the actual subscriber count. Secondly, you may want to leverage FeedBurner monetization.
What you need is a Wordpress plugin which will redirect default Wordpress feed traffic to FeedBurner feed. FeedBurner plugin written by Steve Smith (Ordered List) is the best one I think.
Installation is as simple as copying the plugin and then configuring your FeedBurner feed URL. You can also customize your comment feed URL.
Recently I came across InstaCalc, an online calculator. Initially I thought - “what the heck, who will start a site on a calculator?” But after using it for sometime I quickly realized that it is infact a brilliant idea!
Here are a couple of things that makes this unique,
1. Ultra fast calculator with immediate preview of results. You can also create and use equations.
2. You can create complex calculations and share them. For example, check out the Youtube Analysis.
3. You can embed calculations to a blog/site. InstaCalc can also generate charts and graphs. Embed feature is not yet available for graphs.
According to Guinness book of records, Attukala Pongala event is the world’s largest annual gathering of women. In 2007, it is estimated that over 2.5 million devotees attended the event on a single day!
Attukal Pongala is an annual event at the Attukal Bhagavathy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala (Southern state of India). This event witnesses the participation of thousands of women devotees, who flock to the temple to offer Pongala.
Women gather in the early morning and boil rice mixed with other ingredients in the open field. This offering is supposed to please presiding deity.
Only women are allowed to participate in this festival. So on the pongal day, the city is virtually sieged by Women from far away places.
Kerala Tips is currently running the Kerala Blogger Awards 2006. The total prize money is Rs. 10,000 and the winner will take home Rs. 6,000. The idea is to find the most popular Kerala Blog in 2006. There are even prizes for 2 lucky voters (Rs. 500 each).
Since there weren’t many nominations, all the blogs are put up for voting (35 blogs in total). I somehow hate the idea of blog jury. I think it is upto the readers to decide which is best!
The voting is open(a bit complicated) now and will close on March 16th. Please vote if you happen to be a reader of any of these blogs.
Disclosure: I am one of the sponsors for the event.
Domains are extremely cheap these days. So as a domain registrator, it is difficult to make some nice cash. But if you adopt the following technique, you might be able to make a good amount of money with minimum effort and time.
Find domains with non-working/incorrect email addresses that are registered with you.
Shortlist valuable domains from the above list. Look at the traffic, links and domain name value.
Ask your relative/friend to backorder the domain.
Send mails to the wrong/incorrect email asking the domain owner to correct his email address(!)
After 8 weeks, delete the original registration and transfer the domain to your friend/relative.
Wired is supposed to be a cool tech reporting site. But unfortunately it is owned by the same company which owns reddit. I have nothing against reddit. It is a good source to find interesting links.
But paying someone to destroy your competitor’s reputation is hardly commendable.
Here is a summary of what Wired’s reporter Annalee Newitz has done,
1. Annalee creates a blog about “photographs of crowds“. It is supposed to be very badly written.
2. Then she submits the blog to Digg.
3. Then she contacts user/submitter and pays $450(!) to buy digg votes.
4. The story gets over 100 diggs. Eventually it is buried.
Consider this. Suppose Pepsi hires a lot of bloggers to write bad articles about Coca cola. Is it possible? Obviously yes, if you pay enough you can find bloggers who do that. But is it ethical? Obviously No. Does that make all bloggers irresponsible? Obviously No.
What is interesting is this. She paid for 430 diggs and got around 100 only! On top of it, the story is buried. Frankly it only shows that Digg works, probably a bit slow.
I guess some people gets irritated when someone else becomes successful
You can encourage blog readers to subscribe to the FeedBurner feed by providing auto discovery mechanism and also by providing a linked Feed icon.
Domains are extremely cheap these days. So as a domain registrator, it is difficult to make some nice cash. But if you adopt the following technique, you might be able to make a good amount of money with minimum effort and time.