Mayan Civilization - A different approach

December 21, 2012 is over and we are still alive in this world, which proved wrong that world will end. Let me first make it clear, whatever I have given here is my view and not to harm anyone's belief.

Mars Colony (80000): Private spaceflight company, SpaceX is targeting a huge Mars colony of 80000 people. CEO, Elon Musk confirmed this on his talks about Mars Settlement Program, which will start with 10 people first, costing $500,000 per person for a trip. "At Mars, you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it into something really big," Musk told an audience at the Royal Aeronautical Society in London.

Assuming this 80000 count is reached and people start new civilization in Mars, say after 50-100 year. Why not extraterrestrial creatures, assuming they are advanced developed in technology like us, dont think of migrating to earth. If some extraterrestrial elements found Earth to be opt for their living and migrated some thousands and thousands of years ago and had their own civilization? Why not Mayan civilization is one such well advanced civilization? Why not someone from their generation launched similar Earth sharing process ? Why not this Mayan civilization come down to earth and settled for years before they disappeared suddenly ?

Dream House - PreFab Technology

Fastrack world and everyone wants everything immediate, which is in human's control (ofcourse God has his own pace...). The fast approach has been adopted in everything we do and it has started in construction business too. Earlier we used to construct overbridge which took years of years and huge man power, but now its time of prebuilt structures. Yes the overbridges, overhead rail tracks, commercial buildings have got into prebuild technology which is what we are seeing daily.

It has now interested many individuals to adopt in their dream house too, because they want their dream house as soon as possible. PreFab (PreFabricated) technology is what it is called. The whole process is get the layout, design them in the software, and it provides the strcutural elements to construct the house. Even though it sounds simple, the design part takes the complete time and once that is ready and soundproof, its only to fabricate the structures and fit them in the desired place. Structures are not just the walls or pillars, but the software is capable of giving the list from a screw till plumbing, wiring details in advance. So most of the time is spent in designing the complete house and finalizing it.

Many of you may wonder by this time, that this technology is for small house, which is not. It is followed in multistory commercial buildings so far, but slowly catching up interest in residencial house segment too. A structural house and finished house will look something like this. All are heavy duty casted steel under pressure which gives the entire support and life. These casted streel structures are made in the same way rail tracks are made, so now you should be understanding how much they can withstand. Already readymade kitchen, wardrobes, staircases have entered into residential segment and its now part of any house construction. Humans are the most creative creature and they have thought of taking this readymade concept to the complete house.

Lets discuss few things about their life and pricing. Experts who are into this business have guaranteed 40-50 years of strong life for a prefab structure, which is slightly less than a 80-90 year building using concrete, motar, bricks, but think of the designs our grand grand children will have after 80 or 90 years. So even the plan we dream may not be liked by our grand childrens and it is either altered or demolished and reconstructed in modern way. So 40-50 years sounds good compared to the ready made concept. Now about the pricing, it is roughly going to cost Rs.1300-1500 per sqft construction including labour, which is the same incase of traditional way of building. The greatest advantage of prefab building is they are easily refitted any number of times. Roads 20 years back are not in the same level, many houses built 20-30 years back are somewhere below the road atleast 5 feet below, but incase of prefab structures, they are easily disassembled, and the basement level can be increased above road level after 20 years and the structure can be assembled again, which is almost 20% cost of demolishing and reconstructing the house after 20 years.


This prefab technology is slowly picking up speed in Indian market. Many commercial institutions have come up with plans to build a township for their employees using prefab technology in the same way, and bulk orders are finished soon with in the specified time.

Go Green Initiative - ECO Friendly Homes

With modern design and beautiful interiors, my friends bungalow in Bangalore looks like just another building made of concrete and bricks, while its not. they moved into its new home two years back, which

• Harvests rain water for drinking and cooking. 
• Treats waste water in the garden. 
• Has a basement which gets day light and is visually connected with the rest of the house.

Overall cost for consutructing Allamsetti house was around Rs 1,350 per sqft, including construction and fittings. This is the same as what we would have spent to build a traditional house.

Green Apartments
With an increase in awareness about conserving resources and lowering the carbon footprint-the amount of greenhouse gases an entity emits-going green is the in thing in the real estate market, both residential and commercial. More and more developers are marketing their buildings as eco-friendly. Pirojsha Godrej, executive director, Godrej Properties Ltd says "The awareness level of Eco friendly homes is much higher in case of commercial projects. We have started getting enquiries about such residences. As consumers become increasingly aware of the advantages of living and working in an eco-friendly environment, we will see a gradual increase in interest in such properties."

All properties being advertised as 'green' or 'eco-friendly' may not be so. Many small- and mid-sized builders call their projects eco-friendly just because they have lawns and landscaped gardens, which is incorrect, because a lawn consumes four times more water than the native species. 'eco-friendly' label is a eyewash, so what are the criteira to call a building GREEN? How are they evaluated ?

• Site planning and eco-friendly building design
• Preservation and protection of top soil and landscape during construction
• Heating, air-conditioning, ventilation, lighting and electrical and water heating systems
• Optimisation of building design and structure to reduce demand for conventional energy
• Integration of renewable energy sources to generate energy
• Water and waste management
• Selection of ecologically sustainable materials for construction
• Indoor environmental quality (indoor thermal and visual comfort and air quality)
• Conservation of soil during construction and proper top soil for vegetative growth
• Renewal energy-based water heating system such as solar water heaters

Who validates all these factors and certifies this Green building?

Institutions such as Indian Green Building Council (IGBC), which is part of the CII, and the Association for Development and Research of Sustainable Habitats (ADaRSH), a joint initiative of Teri and the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, analyse buildings and give them ratings based on parameters such as design, construction materials, energy efficiency, ventilation, lighting, and water and waste management. Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment (GRIHA) by ADaRSH has been made mandatory for new government buildings, which must score at least three Griha stars out of five.

An eco-friendly home also helps you get loans at cheaper rates. State Bank of India charges lower interest rates for the first three years for loans taken to purchase properties in green projects which reduce carbon emissions and promote renewable energy. You also get other incentives from the bank.

With active support from the government and the private sector, green buildings will soon become the norm. "Corporate houses such as Infosys, Wipro and Tata have a policy to occupy only green buildings. Two years from now, only green buildings will be in demand.

Earth Quake Experience - 11 April 2012

It was an adventurous day for many of us today... It all happened around 2.30pm Indian time, I visited our new office, RMZ Millenia, Perungudi,  Chennai, along with my colleagues. We went to the top floor of the building to have the wonderful panoramic view, and were enjoying the view. Suddenly came an announcement alerting us about the earthquake. Many of my colleagues even felt chairs shaking, felt giddiness, some even were kidding what happens if we slip from top floor and this announcement proved the scene happening around, Yes its earthquake.
Everyone from the building started evacuating, some running to ground floor, some of them who felt the quake were really in shock, tensed, sweating and what not. All of them were calling their loved ones and alerting, mobile signals were jammed, all roads were jammed because 90% of organization have asked their employees to leave home and be safe. I somehow managed to take few snaps of the employees assembled outside RMZ campus.
Tsunami alert has been announced in more than 28 places. What am wondering, is this something related to one of the incidents of DEC 21 mayan prediction? Am visualizing one scene from 2012 movie... We will know only after DEC 21, hope we get chance to it after DEC 21 :)

Reliance Fresh.... Is it really FRESH ?

Today I happened to visit Reliance fresh store in Chennai. Once you enter the shop, you wont miss the catchy 50% off on MRP offer, anyone will try that. I went there to have a look at the offer and was surprised, infact shocked to notice it was all expired goods on display with reliance's new label, new dates and price.
The product on display was cheese of top brands like britannia, amul... The actual package date of britannia cheese was 05/11(top left in the image), and it is clearly mentioned "best before 9 months of packaged date" (bottom left in the image), so it ends on feb 2012, but the new label pasted by reliance shows packed on 15.9.22, first question is what date is this? Did they make mistake of typing 22 instead of 11? Ok assuming it was a mistake on the year, and correct date is 15.9.11. Since the date is now changed, expire date the (already expired) product is now Jun 2012.

Is reliance trying to sell this expired product by faking the date as September 2011? Which is extending the expiry by another 4 months. And to attract customers to purchase this expired product, they announce 50% offer. Who is benefiting from this scam? Is it britannia or reliance? As per retail market policy, expired goods can be returned back to manufacturer, then why reliance isnt doing this? which raises the doubt on britannia, who might have made a deal with reliance. 


Can we stop this somehow. I dont know which goverment department will take action on this? even if inform will they take action against a bigretail player? hope media will reveal this to public and create awareness for not going behind such offers from reliance fresh.

Rich Get Richer..... Audi Helps...

"Pre-budget diesel variant offer:Loan of Rs.24 Lakhs for 36 months at 0% interest*. The Audi A4 is a piece of engineering that manages to combine technology with aesthetics to create a unique automotive experience. With features like the integrated safety system with 8 airbags, the MMI for one-touch access and the Xenon plus headlights with LED daytime running lights, the Audi A4 is sporty, sophisticated and quite simply, the best that money can buy."

Benz landed in India a long time back, then came BMW, and now its Audi's turn. They have ramped up the sales in Indian market, by direct dealers in majority of Indian Cities. Today I noticed an advertisement for Audi A4, comes @ 28 Lakhs - 38 Lakhs (in rupees), ex showroom price. This is equivalent to 1000 sqft land in most of the commercial areas, ok that is a seperate topic to be discussed, lets come to the point. Anyone who is ready to buy a car at that price is obviously going to be big shot, and why this person needs a loan is my first question. I agree these are marketing strategies by the manufacturer, but they can attract customers with some other idea. Assume Audi sells around 1000 cars in India in this scheme, so 1000 Cars * 24 Lakhs = 240 Crores, which is given @ 0% interest to people who are already rich, with a simple 6% interest/pa, it approximates to 15 Crores. 


Why government does not monitor this? why are they always behind middle class families, rising tax for the small cars, which middle or upper middle class is buying ? Instead they can levy huge tax for high end cars, anyway the rich is going to pay them which they are affordable. We middle class are as-usual keep fighting for our rights, but the Government favors the rich who is getting richer and helps the ruling party to become richer.

Mistake by "The Times of India"

Two days back I was going through railway budget in Times of India newspaper... Being a top newspaper I dint expect any mistakes to happen. Sure there should be many rounds of proof checking, corrections before printing...

Surprising to see that there was a mistake on 15 march 2012 Times of India page 12, I took a snap of that, where anyone can notice the mistakes in the bullet points for Andrapradhesh, Madhyapradesh and Gujarat. The editor has just copied pasted the same text given for Kerala.

Maximum readers will just look for the bullets like me and the surprising part is how did the newspaper guys miss this... Anyways lets hope that these kind of mistakes ae not repeated.

Tax Saving Using One time Investment Plan

Its time for financial year end and all are seriously looking for investments to save tax. As per income tax policy, we have a exemption for 1 lakh investment under 80C. What all this 80C contains is a question which many ask me. Also they want to know the best plan to invest in, another group of friends ask for plans which are single time payment, because they do not want to commit to certain amount every year :) 

First  and foremost, this 1 Lakh covers Provident Fund(PF), so it is enough if you invest only the remaining amount. You can also pay the remaining amount to PF voluntarily. Here is some of investment plans which are considered under 80C and one time payment.

National Savings Certificate (Indian Post Office) - 100% guaranteed minimum returns of 8%, for every Rs.100, you will get Rs.161 on the 7th year. The interest returned on the 7th year will be taxable.

Equity Linked Savings Scheme (ELSS - Market based) - Returns are not guaranteed in this scheme, this is like investing in share market, lock in period is 3 years. The returns are purely based on market performance.

5yr Fixed Deposit - 100% guaranteed minimum returns, Interest % varies between banks. This is simple FD, but the lock period is 5 years.

LIC Bima Bachat - This is from LIC, and it covers life insurance for us. the returns are minimal, because it covers life insurance. Lock period varies and starts from 9,12,15 years. To be simple, for a sum assured amount, and the age of person insured, LIC calculates a single time premium. After every 3yrs completion, 15% of the insured amount will be returned. On maturity sum assured will be returned with loyalty bonus, if any. Note the word "if any", which is based on LIC profit performance. There are many such single premium insurance plans announced by private sectors, but I have discussed about LIC plan alone here.

Happy Investing and Saving Tax.

Kingfisher Crashes, Real reason revealed

Recent Shocking news is downfall of the castle, Kingfisher Airlines. But how did it underwent so much loss, when the liquor tycoon, Vijay Mallya, established his empire around the world holding 50% of beer market and 1/3rd of liquor market.

• Where did all the money go ? 
• Where was the actual salary paid ? 
• Who got profited from Kingfishers airlines ? 
• Now why is Government getting involved in this matter ? 

There are hundreds of question going around, judge the real reason from the pictures posted below.

Bad Time for Apple - After Steve Jobs

Motorola has won a formal injunction against Apple in Germany. The court of Mannheim informed that Apple infringed upon two of Motorola’s European patents:

• Method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system. 
• Multiple pager status synchronization system and method. 

Motorola issued the following statement: “As media and mobility continue to converge, Motorola Mobility’s patented technologies are increasingly important for innovation within the wireless and communications industries, for which Motorola Mobility has developed an industry leading intellectual property portfolio. We will continue to assert ourselves in the protection of these assets, while also ensuring that our technologies are widely available to end-users. We hope that we are able to resolve this matter, so we can focus on creating great innovations that benefit the industry.”

Apple made the following statement: “This is a procedural issue, and has nothing to do with the merits of the case,” Apple said in a statement. “It does not affect our ability to sell products or do business in Germany at this time.”

Bodhidharma - Why was he forgotten ?

Bodhidharma, buzzword recently around India, including me, because of the film 7zham Arvivum (Seventh Sense), where Suriya acted as Bodhidharma, directed by A.R.Murugadoss. Bodhidharma was not totally forgotten in India, after watching the film, I started researching, why Indians did not remember him, why we lost him, is everything true told in the film?

1. We did not forget Bodhidharma, Before this film was released, there were many reference in Indian sites which talk about Bodhidharma, Fact is he was less known in India.
2. When we remember great Thiruvalluvar (2nd century BC - 8th century AD), why Bodhidharma (5th century AD) was forgotten ? Bodhidharma did not contribute to India, his education was in India, but his medical, defence, art talents were all to China, whereas Thirukural is classic of couplets by Thiruvalluvar.
3. Did we loose only Bodhidharma ? No, Everyone knows about Siddhar Boganathar, we have him in many temples even now in South India. He is well known in China as, "Bo-Yang", "Lao-Tzu", founder of Taoism, he is frequent traveller to China to teach and spread his knowledge. 
4. Why do we still remember Bogar? its because of his contributions to Indians. Lord Murugan Status in Palani, is to be made by Bogar himself. It is also said, that Bogar helped Engineers who built Lord Brihadeeswarar Temple with his ideas to lift tons of stone to a remarkable height.

I am not against the film, but the way it is projected, as if we forgot our ancestors, which is not the case. I agree that our skills, learning are all slowly lost in this modern world, but there exist a group which is still researching on this topic to bring them back, 7zham arivu is one milestone in bringing it back. After this film, Bodhidharma will only be known as a person born in Kanchipuram and left to China, but he wont be one reason to be proud of, because we are already proud to be Indian for lot more reasons.

20 minutes is not enough to talk about Bodhidharma, some strange facts about him

• He lived for 150 Years
• He was seen alive after 3 years of his death
• He cut his eye-lid to stay awake during meditation
• He practiced meditation for 9 continuous years facing a wall
• He failed to make a favorable impression in southern china and then traveled to northern china

Be Smarter: Chrome Tips for Google search results

This is for Google Chrome users, who are about 18%. 70% of google search, is returned in the first two pages, but how many of us have browsed through all the search pages? How many of us feel irritating to click Next everytime to see the next page results. Everyone of us would have thought this atleast once, to have all the search results in single page. It is now possible with Google Chrome Extenstions. gInfinity is an free extension from chrome web store, which displays 100 search results in one page and when we scroll down to the bottom, it automatically extends the search result by another 10. Good reason to switch to Google Chrome :)

11/06/2011 Update: After installing gInfinity in my machine, I noticed that it works only for www.google.com and not for other country specific google sites, like google.co.in


11/07/2011 Update: Chrome automatically updated and now it works for google.co.in

Does Google accept itself as Search Engine ?

After learning about Google easter eggs, I thought there would be many competitions to Google, and how it tries to maintain its market share. Unfortunately there is a big competition between Google and Bing, as soon as Bing was launched, it occupied 5% of search engine market share, slowly it occupied 30% of market share. This is amazing, but Google somehow got serious on this and was suspicious on Bing copying Google.

Now funniest part of the story is, Does Google consider itself as search engine, today I tried few search in Google and was surprised to see the search results.

Go to Google.com and search for "search", My thought was, since Google is the top search engine, it will come in the search result as top one, but rather I got this strange result. Interesting part is, few months back, Google accused Bing of copying their search results and proved it also, but the top search result for the word search is Bing, then Yahoo, then Dogpile etc etc, I found Google search somewhere to the end of the page. Ok, assuming search is something very common, I tried the next keyword "search engine" and it came to me as a surprise again, Google search never returned back on first page. Does anyone know of this strange behavior? Any reason why this would happen in Google?

Google's Weapon - hiybbprqag, mbzrxpgjys

Weapons, they are not just killing mechanism, but also used in cyber world for exposing rivals, Google tops the world search engine market, but slowly lost its share to Bing, from the time it was launched. Bing started with 5% market share, but slowly growed in to 30% market share. Main reason is Internet Explorer, which dominated the world in browser market, since it was Microsoft product, they provided option to type search keyword in address bar and press enter, so the text is search using Bing search engine.

Google's first weapon was Chrome, its home made browser, which not only provide a bouquet of browsing features, but also integrated the same searching through address bar concept, but the search engine used was Google. Doing all these, Google was suspecting Bing always, whether it copied search results from Google.

Google's second weapon was pattern search comparison between Google and Bing search results. Search for torsoraphy in Google, which return this

In this example, Google searches for correct spelling , tarsorrhaphy, even though it was entered incorrectly. Same search at Bing, manages to list the same Wikipedia page at the top of its results as Google does for its corrected spelling results: Got it? Despite the word being misspelled — and the misspelling not being corrected — Bing still manages to get the right page from Wikipedia at the top of its results, one of four total pages it finds from across the web. How did it do that? Great Mystery huh!!

Google's third weapon was sting operation, where Google created new words, hiybbprqag, mbzrxpgjys which does not exist in real world, and induced unrelated search results when searched through Google. After a couple of weeks this program was launched, Bing was caught giving same results for the words formed by google, see screenshots below for better understanding.

With this Google publicly went saying "Bing Copies Google". Wait this is only first part of the story, only Google's point of argument, but Microsoft in return denied this, which I will discuss detail in my next article.

Google Hidden Secrets Unvieled - Easter Eggs

This Internet Giant has been doing many things their own way, which most of us still do not know, until it is shared by some one through social networking sites. The expression " do a barrel roll" has become a trending topic on Twitter after internet users discovered a new feature on Google that makes the screen perform a 360-degree spin on typing the phrase into the search box.

The barrel roll game does not seem to function on all browsers but appears to work best using Firefox and Chrome. There are many such easter eggs, which are hidden in Google, some of them

1. do a barrel roll - Type "do a barrel roll" in search text box and press enter
2. askew - Type "askew" in search text box and press enter
3. Google Calculator - Type "answer to life the universe and everything" in search text box and press enter
4. Google Calculator - Type "once in a blue moon" in search text box and press enter
5. Google Logo - Type "ascii art" in search text box and press enter to see Google logo in ascii format
6. recursion - Type "recursion" in search text box and press enter to see Google suggests to search for recursion again
7. Google Gravity - Click here to see it live

Semordnilap - Derived from Palindrome

PALINDROME, every one should know this term, I knew this term while doing my engineering, during a computer programming session. For those who do not know what is Palindrome, here it is, any word which forms the same word when written in reverse order is a Palindrome, for example, MALAYALAM is same when spelled in reverse. A list of all palindrome words can be found in http://www.palindromelist.net/ , funniest part is palindrome is not a palindrome word :)

"PALINDROME IS NOT A PALINDROME, BUT

SEMORDNILAP IS A SEMORDNILAP"

Now a derived version of palindrome is SEMORDNILAP, hope everyone will face it difficult to pronounce it, atleast I had difficulty pronouncing it :), ok how did this word derive from? it is palindrome written in reverse order, and what does this word mean? Any word which forms a meaningful different word when written in reverse order is a semordnilap. for example LIVED -> DEVIL, there are many words like this, a complete list can be found in http://kgfamily.com/files/semordnilaps.html

Intersting part of this word is, GOOGLE has only 10000 search results for this term. atleast the least search results I have seen so far for a meaningful word in google.

Save Anna Centenary Library - Support Please

Support by signing @ SAVE ANNA CENTENARY LIBRARY - PLEASE SIGN HERE

As a citizen, student, reader, we should oppose Tamilnadu Government's decision to shift Anna Centenary Library to DPI complex. As public we are directly impacted by this decision. This library is Asia's Largest library with state of art facilities. Now it is time to call back this decision by signing this petition. 

When Anna Hazare fights against corruption, why this decision is not taken to Him? Why public money is wasted in such decisions? This is also one way of corruption, When such decisions are taken, public voting has to be conducted, but I believe public will give 0% support only for this decision, when government takes such decision, it is our responsibility to raise our voice against such decisions.

Advocate Prabhakar has filed a Public Interest Litigation in High Court opposing this decision to shift. Some highlights of Anna Centenary Library

• South Asia's Largest Library
• Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State had lauded the library during her visit to Chennai on 20 July 2011.
• 9-floor library building houses a total area of 333,140 sq. ft and has a capacity to accommodate 1.2 million books.
• The library is designed to accommodate a total of 1,250 persons
• An auditorium of 50,000 sq. ft. with a seating capacity of 1,280
• An amphitheatre on the terrace that can accommodate more than 800 persons
• Two conference halls with capacities of 151 and 30 persons
• A dedicated children's section, spread over 15,000 sq. ft. has a fun-filled theme-based reading area with multimedia kits and storybooks.
• CCTV cameras have been installed in 493 locations in the building.
• Collection of 550,000 books

Let us sign this petition as online signature campaign to stop shifting OUR library @ SAVE ANNA CENTENARY LIBRARY

More details of Anna Library

http://annacentenarylibrary.blogspot.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Centenary_Library
http://themadras.in/annacentenarylibrary
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Anna-Centenary-Library/176926392345414

Earn through Social Networking Sites (SNS)

In my previous post, Is Social Networking Sites (SNS) really required ? I discussed, how we are wasting time in Social Networking Sites (SNS), I do not tell, its complete waste of SNS, but as humans we should find ways to be productive from waste also, so when SNS are useful, why dont we make them more productive, at times use them to make money also, here are my findings of famous SNS and how to make money from them. First thing we should do is increase our contact in SNS, increase followers, increase friends.

Create an account in Amazon Associates and link it to orkut profile's wish list, which will drive traffic to Amazon, when your friends click to see what it is, and if by chance they buy something from Amazon, you will be paid for it.
Sponsored Tweets You just sign-up as a Tweeter, with your Twitter sign-in information, then wait for Advertisers to “hire” you. If you’re a Tweeter that’s relevant to their product, brand, or service, and the price is something they’re willing to pay, then they’ll send you an invitation to work with them. You can either choose to work with them, or decline the offer. If you choose to work with the Advertiser, then you’ll get paid afterward.

Direct Advertisement – If a lot of people are following you in ‘twitter’ or in other words if you have a ‘wide reach’ to a large number of twitter users, you can probably look into direct advertisements for monetization.
Recommendation – You can recommend a particular product or service on behalf of your advertisers & peruse your followers to take an ‘action’.
Promotion – You can help your advertiser to promote a new product or service to your twitter followers.


Paid Review– This is pretty much like the direct advertisement, however the only difference would be, instead of blindly suggesting a product or a service to someone, you can actually do some ‘paid reviews’.
Sponsored Contest– An advertiser may want to run a contest via a popular twitter user to get feedback about his product & services or just to create some brand awareness.
Affiliate Marketing - This is an area where every one can really look into. For instance say when one of your followers is asking for suggestion to choose a web host, you can always suggest him the best one from your experience but at the same time use your affiliate link which can earn you some quick cash.
YouNews is yet another digg clone where members can bookmark and share interesting links. Interestingly, they have an orkut application which is a good idea to gain popularity quickly and reaching masses on orkut. Interestingly, YouNews offers revenue sharing with it’s users which may attract youth on orkut.
Advertise your company, its products and services by using direct ad feature provided by orkut, facebook, linkedin. This allows you to create custom, targeted advertising campaigns designed to attract customers and help you make money
An indirect source of funds: develop applications under contract for third parties. A number of companies have been posting contract jobs over at the Facebook’s developer forums. There exists a large gap in the supply and demand of available Facebook application developers; as a result, finding potential clients to charge reasonable rates should not be a hassle
Sell services within Facebook through micro-payment transactions. PayPal payments made for accessing premium services could potentially yield reasonable income depending on the application’s purpose, size, and prospective users.
Ether is a website that you can make money on by giving advice to people over the phone or by chatting. But now, you can use their new application on Facebook to make money while giving advice to people over the phone. If you’re good at giving advice, this may be the way for you to make some extra money on Facebook. Also if you know a second language, this app makes it easy to teach others and make money. You set the rates and Ether provides a number that individuals can call. The call will then be forwarded to your personal telephone number.
With MusicBlaster you can put a simple little music store on your Facebook, and sell music from BlastMyMusic.com. You earn 5% for each song sold. The cool think about this app is the fact that you can help your favorite band or singer to sell their music while you make money, as well as helping them to gain more exposure.
The name says it all, its the good old Garage Sale, but a “Facebooky” Garage Sale. Simply add Garage Sale to your profile page and list every thing you want to sell. When someone buys something, Garage Sale automatically bills the buyer’s credit card and lets you when to ship the item. Your money is deposited directly into your Pay Pal account, or you can request payment by check. However they charge a 5% commission on the total sales price, but that’s all. No other fee for setup or anything like that.
Shopit is a free Social Commerce Network that gives users the ability to buy, sell or trade any product or service. Simply add a free store to your Facebook and sell anything you like. Another easy way to make money on Facebook.
FT was founded in 2007 by an Iranian-American named Nima Khakpour. This app is more for the artists to sell their music. So, if you are an artist, FlameTunes enables you to sell your music on your Facebook. You can also use it to sell music on MySpace.
Remember when you setup your first lemonade stand in your community? Well, this app allows you to use the same concept, combining commerce and community, and have a lemonade stand in a digital (Facebook) neighborhood. Basically you add what you want to sell to a lemonade stand, and put it on your Facebook.

Is Social Networking Sites (SNS) really required ?

Can anyone tell, why social network came into this internet revolution, for obvious reasons, to connect people, both known and unknown having similar interests. Slowly competition increased and then came chat rooms, a little more with social network sites like orkut, facebook, linkedin, google+ and many more started to evolve, but has anyone thought what we do after registering with social network sites and updating our hourly status in those sites.

"Are we losing our privacy posting our live status there?"

One very good reason, everyone accept is connect with school mates, college mates, old friends irrespective of  which part of the world we are in. I would say social networking sites should take the credit in connecting them. A recent research revealed, what people do in Facebook.

• 15% of Facebook users update their own status.
• 22% comment on another’s post or status.
• 20% comment on another user’s photos.
• 26% “Like” another user’s content.
• 10% send another user a private message

What purpose does it really serve? Did anyone think of this ? Pew Research Center has released their statistics of facebook usage.

People just love to look at pictures. That's the killer app of all online social networks. Seventy percent of all actions are related to viewing pictures or viewing other people's profiles. The biggest usage categories are men looking at women they don't know, followed by men looking at women they do know. Women look at other women they know. Overall, women receive two-thirds of all page views. 

Little about Twitter, which restricts 140 characters of text messages? 90% of Twitter posts were created by only 10% of users, because the technology uses words without photos to communicate. MySpace, which we can say, almost dead even though there are around 70million users, 3 times greater than Twitter, but still does not have high page rank. 

For few years people were behind Orkut, then moved on to Facebook, now Google+ has emerged with lot of features which facebook does not have. One such feature is Hangouts, where we can initiate video conferencing with maximum 10 people from different circles. We have control on the circles which can participate, ofcourse no control on the users from the circles. Facebook tied up with Skype for video conferencing, but it is one-to-one video chat, which gtalk already has. A great reason for people to move to google+ is this. Another reason is Google Docs, which is another product of Google, so it integrates well with Google+ to share between friends, colleagues and others, which Facebook and other SNS does not have.

If we discuss, it is never going to end, I will talk on how SNS can be useful to us, can be used productively, can be used to make money. One last thing which needs our attention is QUITTING these sites, slowly we have piled up lots of personal information in these websites, did we ever think how easy is it to quit these sites taking backup of all the information stored, like contacts, photos, documents.

Thnk, Think once again well before we spend time in Social Networking Sites.

Print Only Required Content (PORC) - Green Ideas

Green Green Green, wherever you go, Individuals, Government, Organization are moving Green Revolution, There are many initiatives taken to reduce global warming across the world. Recently government has passed bill, to charge for plastic carry bags, so customers are forced to bring their own paper or jute bags. Let us also participate in this revolution and do what can be easily done by us, ofcourse without any charge.

Recently I came across a website, PrintWhatYouLike, cool website, which provides support to print what is only required by us, ie., we can remove unwanted images, headers, advertisements, background colors, margins, etc etc and what not. This website takes in the URL you want to print, and classifies the whole content into blocks, which can be removed, formatted, and then finally print what is required for us, now this saves us pages, saves toner ink, which is cost effective for us and as well a small contribution from us to EARTH.

This is now helping all webdevelopers, website owners to provide an advanced PRINTER FRIENDLY version of their webpage. Steps to generate the link for printer friendly version is

" http://www.printwhatyoulike.com/print?url=encoded url "

for example, printer friendly version of my blog will be
http://www.printwhatyoulike.com/print?url=http%3A%2F%2F2bnamed.blogspot.com%2F
URL Encoding reference is in http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp
Save Paper, Save Earth. Think before you print next time