It's been more than a century since photography knocked on our doors but it still remains a powerful to tool to convey emotions and feelings. It is one of the most expressive and enduring way for us to capture and share experiences. It's hardly strikes as a surprise when we take note of the fact that photo sharing sites were some of the first social sites to hit the web. People love to click pictures and then share them with their friends and family.

In the present times, Facebook, Flickr and Google Picassa dominate the photo-sharing websites' space on the internet. These sites provide users a great, easy-to-use platform to share photographs and videos with their friends and family, online acquaintances and even random people on the web. Now in case, you are kind of bored with these same websites after using them a repetitively, there are several other photo sharing alternatives available on the web.

Let's take look at some of them

SmugMug

It is paid photosharing service on the web. Mashable says its prime focus is making easy for users to showcase and organise pictures - whether they want to sell them or not. There are no bandwidth caps and you can upload and share an unlimited no. of photos. Your photos can password-protected, you can add watermarks, and share them on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr quite easily.

Now the thing with this service is that it is paid. There are Basic, Power and Pro versions of SmugMug and they are priced in ascending order. SmugMug Pro is ideal for a professional photographer who can avail the service for $20 a month or $150 a year and also avail tons of e-commerce options. It also has dedicated apps for iPhone, Android, and iPad.

Smugmug(dot)com

Instagram

Instagram is an easy-to-use iPhone app using which the users can upload photos on Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, and Foursquare. Filters and customizations can be easily applied to these photos. The application is compatible with any iPhone or iPod Touch running Ios 3.1.2 or above. What sets it apart from its counterparts is its ease of sharing, browsing and commenting. The best thing about it is that comes for free.

Instagram had more than 100,000 downloads in its first week of release.

Instagr(dot)am

deviantArt

Often abbreviated as dA, deviantArt is an online community showcasing various forms of user-made artwork. Headquartered in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, devianArt aims to provide a place for any artist to exhibit and discuss works of arts. Photography finds a dedicated spot in this website.

devianArt consists of 14.5 million registered members and receives about 1,40,000 submissions each day. It is a free service and is gaining rapid popularity on the web.

Deviantart(dot)com

picplz

It is a photosharing app that makes sharing of photos on Facebook and Twitter like a walk in the park. Users can browse, comment and upload photos using this website. However, the core focus of this service is the mobile phone. It enables users to apply amazing photo effects and turn “average into amazing” as is claimed on its website. 'Cross Process', 'The 70s', 'Russian Toy Camera' etc. are some of the effects to choose from.

Picplz is free and is available in the App Store or Android Market.

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There are a lot of hep cats out there in the offline world, but they can be a bit quiet about sharing what they like with other people. Fortunately, there are huge flocks of rad birds online! Tweeting birds, actually. The kind that like to tweet all day about how many worm-selling websites they have ranking in the SERPs and enjoy retweeting the silly videos their bird friends sing about. It turns out that after a while, those bird friends can be pretty hard to get to join your flock! This week, Jen Lopez, our community manager, talks about how we managed to increase our total bird/Twitter followers by 250% to over 27,000 people.

Oh, and make sure to check out the surprise ending! Valentine's Day is coming up soon, you know...

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There would be multiple Consolidations, Mergers, Change of Strategies by lot of VC-invested companies by 2015.
..

Product based eCommerce companies:

Lot of interest seen in recent times by VCs. LetsBuy, Snapdeal, FashionAndYou, Flipkart, and so on, Infibeam as well (though still not part of any portfolio yet). Future of eCommerce companies will depend completely on two factors:

- Internet penetration in India > 200 Mn by that time
- Improvement in eCommerce transactions (Infrastructure + User Comfort)

The rate at which investments are made are much higher than rate of growth of both the factors mentioned above – which in a way may be good – as all invested companies will act as catalyst in growth and get new set consumers on-board.

If we see an IPO exit for atleast one of product based eCommerce companies that will be awesome;  One or Two VCs in India (without naming any here) have been actively investing in eCommerce space. There may be a very high possibility that they may merge two or more portfolio companies to form an large entity, which may be just a good acquisition target for Amazon or an IPO exit.
..

Group Buying companies:
 
Was surprised (like many others?) with GroupOn‘s decision of acquiring SoSasta. There are established players in Group Buying space, I’m sure GroupOn has seen some merit and synergies. For existing leading players like SnapDeal, Deals and You and Taggle – they will continue to grow and have to.

Possible exit for them will be Google (since they are starting with Google Offers) or an acquisition by eBay; or maybe GroupOn India may now want to expand presence with one more acquisition. Not to forget that LivingSocial will also come knocking. Now that eBay has ventured into Group Buying space – it has much higher accountability as deals are now served by eBay and not marketplace. eBay India may acquire someone if they decide to have an experienced them to execute this business vertical.

Expect one very large player to enter Group Buying space in next 1-2 months, if well executed – in all probability it may give tough challenge to current market leaders.

Unfortunately many small players will hit the dead pool (few of them have already) due to execution challenges, expansion costs, and lack of operating revenues to keep going as the model is very easy to replicate, but not easy to scale with thin-margins and high acquisition cost.
..

Online Travel Companies:
 
Clear IPOs for Yatra & Cleartrip. Will be great exit for all invested players. GoIbibo and ezeego1 are also leading players in travel domain – Goibibo’s exit may depend on ibibo’s overall plans, ezeego1 may raise capital through markets directly bypassing VC route.

Redbus is promising, they are very high on number of transactions – ticket size may be lower compared to Airline tickets, but % margins will be definitely higher. In all probabilities – Redbus may too hit an IPO or will be an acquisition target for Yatra or Cleartrip (listed travel companies by then as MakeMyTrip has acquired Ticketvala)

I hope someone in Indian Government thinks of the opportunity of listing IRCTC on stock markets.
..

Ticketing eCommerce:
 
BookMyShow will expand to more geographies – they have presence in Malaysia & New Zealand. To get to more such markets, they will require more capital – further investment and definite IPO candidate. Reliance ADAG is trying to make it big in entertainment through BIG – they might knock doors.
.

Technology Companies:
 
Pubmatic (industry’s first yield optimization player) may get acquired in few years. It faces good competition from AdMeld & Rubicon Project, however none of these yield companies are focusing on small publishers (the long tail) which may be the key to larger success.

iYogi by all speculation is IPO bound. Slideshare is leading in its segment and may be a great exit story. Fusion Charts is another one that may be acquired for technology and customers; and so is Martjack.
..

Advertising Networks:
 
Existing players – Tyroo, Komli, Ozone Media, AdMagnet and others. Do not forecast a immediate exit for these players – the number of players in this segment has been same for long time (no new entrants) – and otherwise too existing players seem to looking outside of India, are they hinting saturation of market? The frequency of acquisitions of pure advt-networks has decreased outside India (no big news in so many months?).

There is no distinct advantage over each other and offerings (if Vizisense is treated as product outside of Advt-Network). Would have been great to see an situation like AdMax Network (owns up majority market share in countries they operate – very tough competition to Google as they have leveraged on local language audience which is majority).

Google has played a flattener by opening up its unlimited inventory on Doubleclick exchange through Google Certified AdNetworks program. Post which the publisher development story may have taken some hit, but wondering why have not the Indian Advt Networks integrated on Google’s Doubleclick exchange yet – expand you publisher network!

InMobi which is now the largest mobile advt network (outside of Google/AdMob) – maybe one of the biggest exits through Nasdaq IPO. There is no immediate need for Google to buy another mobile advt network – that leaves IPO as only logical exit unless AOL, Yahoo or Microsoft realize that they haven’t looked at the mobile monetization business seriously.
..

Matrimony Portals:
 
BharatMatrimony (Consim Group) would be going for IPO in coming times. Not aware of any investors in Shaadi.com (although there are in Mauj & Fropper), if business is profitable and there are no investor pressures – unlikely to see an IPO from them (at least before BharatMatrimony).

Read somewhere that Jeevansathi has abandoned markets in South India (not sure of this), however its already a part of listed InfoEdge group, spin-off very unlikely as numbers are reported as part of InfoEdge.
..

No Clear Exits:
 
SMS GupShup, Guruji, mCommerce companies (PayMate, mChek and others) are few companies I am not convinced of having an clear exit strategy. (Someone do throw light on this)
..

Promising Startups:
 
The next wave of promising startups in India will be product-driven companies. Although the eco-system to fast acceptance of technology products is not so strong right now – it will be in coming years. Emergence of interesting start-ups like Practo, Zaakpay, Grexit, emo2, Workasaur are first steps in that direction.
..

Hoping to see many success in next 5 years! Best Wishes

source: beingpractical

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With today's economy the way it is, more and more business owners need to evaluate their website, and revamp it to turn it into a presales tool, or lead generation machine, or even a revenue producing cash cow. Can it be done? Of course it can, it just takes a few simple tweaks to turn on the profits with your website. In the past, there was so much business to go around, anybody could put up a webpage, and hope for the best. Not anymore. Now your website needs to be crisp, clean and focused with laser like precision on your niche market. If you don't have a niche yet, take some time to identify your three classes of customers, and create a unique website for each of them. This can be as simple as additional pages in your directory that are customized for each group of customers, the frequent buyer, the first time visitor and the clients you want to convert to lifelong customers.

The first step to revamping your website is to determine the goal of the page. If you want visitors to take an action, then each portion of the page should be a process to move them toward that action. Feature benefits that your customer finds important. A lot of businesses fail here because they spend too much time promoting features and what they consider important about their product. Here's the secret: your customer doesn't care. They don't care about bells and whistles, they only care about what you can do for them. So tell them. Be point specific and limit the page to one or two salient points. K.I.S.S. it, always.

The second step is to remove everything that doesn't matter. You need a short testimonial or three that speaks to the specific benefit, but don't feature the whole story. Pick an awesome customer story, pull the pertinent quote and feature it with a link so they can click and read the rest of the story if the visitor so chooses. Remember that white space is your friend, action verbs move the pace forward toward the goal. Be simple. Be direct. Remove the rest.

The third step is utilizing landing pages that are targeted to your niche market. The landing page has a specific goal that is unique to your niche, and may involve a free premium, such as a video course or eBook or free newsletter to give away. Each landing page can be customized to the niche you serve, and you have the right to change it up and test which layout draws the best response.

The fourth step is to always have a giveaway. Your giveaway should be remarkable, it should be worth talking about, it should be something visitors will want to forward to their friends and family, something they want to talk about at the water cooler the next morning. Make your giveaway the top ninety percent of the best information you have. Your visitors will think, "Wow, if this is what they give away, I wonder how much better it is when they charge for it!"

Finally, add a blog to your site and fill it full of valuable information every single day. Become a resource your clients can rely on for truth, honesty and information they can use to build profit or create a better life. A blog is a way to start conversations with your clients, which can help develop new product lines, or introduce new ways to monetize your existing products that you may not have considered.

If you follow these five simple steps, you can turn your website into something more than a static boring online brochure. You can turn it into a destination that your clients and customers visit again and again to gather more information and to learn how they can do more business with you and increase your revenue fast.

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'What are 10,000 deaths? Statistics. What is one death? Tragedy', Josef Stalin, the Communist tyrant who ruled the Soviet Union for close to 30 years, once famously said. Substitute the word death/s by layoff/s and you get the point.

While the job situation in India was really grim in 2008, it is likely to get terrifying as 2009 progresses.

While labour-oriented sectors like textiles, real estate and housing bear the harshest brunt of this fallout other sectors like financial services, banking, information technology, business process outsourcing, automobiles, oil & petroleum, retail, media -- only to name a few -- are seeing layoffs like India has never seen before.

In essence, the shadow of job losses will loom large over India for some time to come.

Companies do take advantage of your situation and try to get good talented people with lesser amounts.

Tales of how employees across ranks and levels are being sacked as the dark shadow of recession grows longer and longer.

• Make a good portfolio as liquidity is important.


• Learn... Learn... Learn.


• Realise your potential and be positive. If you are talented, you will surely get a job.


• Never think that bad times won't come.


• Save some money for bad times.


• Have an offer ready when you know the situation is getting worse.


• Spend wisely; try to minimise your extra expenditure.


• Build a strong network of people at your workplace.


• Save minimum 6 months of your salary in your bank which will help you when you are without a job.


• Don't be greedy -- be satisfied what you have.


• Stay with one company for quite some time before switching jobs.


• Realise your potential and be positive -- if you are talented, you will surely get a job.


• Build a good rapport with job recruiters for these people can help you when you lose your job.


• If your parents are dependent on you, better take a family health insurance; keep some cash aside for their medical needs.


• In these times if your company puts you on the bench start looking out for a new job immediately.


• If you have the money and the resources, upgrade your skill sets.


• Understand that you lost your job not because you are inefficient but because companies are laying off to cut costs; if you were not talented or inefficient your company wouldn't have hired you in the first place.


• The company is running a business, not a charity. So it can be expected to take suitable action in the best interests of the business. Don't take it personally or as a personal failure.


• Security does not come from the Job you are doing or the company you are working with. Security comes from the knowledge and skills you have developed over the years which keeps you ahead of the crowd. Keep upgrading your skills so that you are always employable, even in the worst of the economies.


• Keep your eyes and ears open for trouble in the company. Coz u never know when you will be next.


• Avoid knee-jerk reactions. If your company lays-off people, don't panic. You survive coz you are either needed or are a good performer.


• Once you are laid-off, keep your expected salaries for potential recruiters at a reasonable level. If your expectations are too high, you wont even get an interview call.
  


• Never trust people at office. They will never be yours.


• Love your work and not your company because you never know when your company stops loving you.


• Make sure you have enough money to sustain yourself and your family for at least 4 to 6 months in such emergencies.


• During this crisis, if possible, have another offer in hand, just in case your company decides to sack you. This happened in my case and I just like many other employees trusted the speech given by CTO and did not look for other job opportunity. In fact I refused a couple of offers during my tenure with this company since I felt I had given my verbal commitment to the company to stay for at least 4 to 5 years.


• Never trust any speeches or commitments given by senior management employees during such financial crises as you never know when they might go back on their word.

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We gonna talk here about the direct advertising and alternates to google adsense or how can you increase revenue using google adsense. I would be writing directly which is coming outta Amit’s mind in his presentation.

Stop Feeling Shy

No social service. You can only survive when you have advertisements on your blog.

Big is Better

160x600is better for maximize ad revenue and 300 x 250 px advertisements are good cause you can include, videos pictures and slideshow of images.

Where to put Ads

Users see the page as a “F“. Brighter colors are prefered as suggested by google.

Experiment with colors

You can do it with A-B testing like try different colors and all.Can match font color, style with your content.

Color Schemes

You can Blend,complement or contrast the Ad color. Dark color will go with contrast color scheme.

Improve Relevance

Section targetting in adsense.

Heading

Sub heading

Content

Reader Comments

Comment 1

Comment 2

Comments usually do not have stuff about the content, instead it has lots of adjectives. So we need to optimize in such a way so as to avoid the comments, ajectives. Now how to do it ?

Do not put ad tags near comments and the content which is repeating like subscrive to buttons etc.

Site Search

• Do not assume that readers know how to search. Make the search button look prominent or easily viewable.
• If you write long articles, try putting the search button at the end of the article.
• Host search on a seperate domain like search.labnol.org

CPM, CPC or Link Units ?

The best performing ad units are Text Ads, after that are CPM based , multimedia ads, like videos , images etc. CPM ads pay you even when the user do not click. “CPM ads let you earn from the users who think you are a moron” Amit says so

Placement Examples

Search on the top. Link unit near the header or after the post. You can have a sky scrapper displayed in your bottom right corner of the sidebar.

You can use CrazyEgg

Your Images

Do not ignore image search by google. They really bring you lotsa revenue. You can get lotsa CPM from images sometimes even more than your content.

Flickr for traffic

Post images on the flickr, interesting once and you can actually convert those users to your blog readers.

Why Link ?

• Help Search Engines
• Authority
• Good Anchor Text
• The Dreaded Back Button

A good anchor tag helps a lot to search engines and link exchange. When the user comes to your site and hits back button to go back to the search engine results, then its a bad bad thing for you, because search engines register this action and that is bad for your page rank.

Learn Analytics

Use Google Site Analytics.

Typical Mistakes

• Diluted title/slug
• Too many pages with similar titles/content - Make life easy for advertisers
• Wasting Visit - NOINDEX, FOLLOW for tag pages
• Allowing Stop Words in Comments
• Smart Pricing
• Feeling Complacent

Steal Ideas

Continue to experiment.Examples

• Adsense Case studies
• Media Sites - CNN, NYT, Network i8, etc.
• Premium Publishers
• Webmaster World - Seniors and Preferred Members
• Official Google Guides jensense, problogger, barry schwartz ,chris pirillo

Adsense Alternatives

• ADiFY
• Blogads
• amazon.com
• technorati
• tradepub
• nautanki.tv
  

Selling Direct Ads

It takes lotsa hard work and time. Spot the area where u want to display direct ads and experiement that area with google ads and then calculate what you are earning from there and then you can decide the price for direct ads.You can use Google Ad Manager to manage ads.

ok that was all from Amit Aggarwal.

Thanks to his wonderful session

Cheers!!
Sanjeev

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Still don’t understand why we’re in a recession? Is all that mumbo-jumbo about sub-prime mortgages, collateralized debt obligations, frozen credit markets, and credit default swaps making your head spin? The Crisis of Credit Visualized explains it all with simple pictures, in plain English.

For his thesis work, creator Jonathan Jarvis “explores the use of new media to make sense of an increasingly complex world.” With these videos, he succeeds beautifully. In an increasingly chaotic media landscape, sometimes only a college student’s YouTube upload can make sense of anything.

(Via Bluejackal.)

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You have a telephone, right? You have a computer, right? You want to save money, right? BAM, you are a VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) candidate.



It is inevitable that VOIP will replace traditional telephone service at some point. The only question is when should you jump in?



VOIP is quickly becoming more reliable and receiving wider acceptance. In fact, phone companies are already taking advantage of the technology to provide cheaper long distance rates. Like any emerging technology, however, there are kinks in the system that are still being worked out.



Advantages



VOIP has many advantages over regular phone service. One primary advantage is its low cost. If you have a fast Internet connection (DSL or cable), you can make PC-to-PC phone calls anywhere in the world FREE. PC-to-phone connections usually have a charge, but probably still cheaper than regular phone service.


You can sign up with a VOIP service provider for a monthly fee and get unlimited calls within a specified geographic area. For example, some VOIP services in the United States allow connections anywhere in North America for no extra charge. International calls are charged at a modest rate.



Another advantage is its portability. You can make and receive phone calls wherever there is a broadband connection by simply signing in to your VOIP account. This makes VOIP as convenient as e-mail. When you're traveling, you simply pack a headset or Internet phone; then you can talk to family or colleagues for next to nothing.



Phone-to-phone VOIP is also portable. Internet phones are small and light enough to take anywhere. When you sign up with a VOIP service provider, the Internet phone or adaptor used by that service is assigned a unique number. This 'phone number' remains valid, even if your VOIP service is in Los Angeles and you're connected to the Internet in London. When plugged into a broadband connection, anywhere in the world, you can make and receive calls as though you were at home .



Features like call forwarding, call waiting, voicemail, caller ID and 3way-calling, are included with Internet telephone at no extra charge. While you're talking on the phone, you can send pictures and documents at the same time.



Disadvantages



There are a few glitches that still interfere with the technology's broad acceptance by the public. Lack of continuous service during power outages and emergency calling are the 2 biggest hurdles.


Conventional phone service continues by the current supplied through the phone lineduring a blackout. This isn't possible with Internet phones. When the power goes, there goes VOIP service. Battery backups and power generators that provide electricity are the current solutions to this problem.


A major concern involves emergency 911 calls. For the most part, VOIP services aren't useful in emergencies. Traditional phone equipment can trace the locations of calls. Emergency calls are diverted to the nearest call center where the operator can identify your location, in the event you can't talk. With VOIP, there is no way currently to determine where Internet calls are originating. There is an emerging standard called e911 however, which is attempting to solve this limitation.


VOIP also has sound quality and reliability problems. Data sent across the Internet usually arrives at its destination scrambled. E-mail and documents can be reassembled in the correct order when it arrives. Voice data also arrives scrambled, but it's more complicated because of the real-time nature of VOIP. Some data packets may have to be dropped when they don't arrive in time, in order to make voice connections with the least delay. This can cause brief silences in the audio stream.


Distance and speed of the connection determine the amount of data lost. Some networks receive more traffic and thus are more likely to cause audio dropouts. One way to provide high quality audio connections is to create dedicated data paths.


With the incredible amount of work dedicated to VOIP, these disadvantages will no doubt be resolved withinin the next 2 years. It is expected that by then VOIP will have widespread consumer acceptance.

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Is the end of Yahoo Search Marketing near? Yahoo has announced that they are running limited tests of AdWords sponsored search ads (or Google AdSense for Search, which are AdWords served in the search results of non-Google search properties) beside Yahoo Search results.

Yahoo says that the test will apply only to traffic from the Yahoo.com site in the U.S. and will not include Yahoo!’s network of affiliate or premium publisher partners, like the Newspaper consortium or other Yahoo partners. Yahoo says that the test is expected to last up to two weeks and will be limited to no more than 3% of Yahoo! search queries.This test is a direct result to the Microsoft takeover attempt, even though Yahoo is not admitting it :

Yahoo!’s board of directors is exploring strategic alternatives to maximize stockholder value, including exploration of potential commercial business arrangements. The Company noted that the testing does not necessarily mean that Yahoo! will join the AdSense for Search program or that any further commercial relationship with Google will result. The Company further stated that it would not comment on the nature or timing of any potential relationship.

Back to the beginning of this post. Will Yahoo dump Yahoo Search Marketing and replace it with Google AdWords?

I seriously doubt that Yahoo will throw away or sell their search marketing technology, which outdates Google AdWords in its core history. Yahoo will more than likely use Google AdWords to power the terms or industries which Yahoo is not bringing in as much revenue for.

OR Yahoo will probably serve Yahoo Search Marketing results for the first sponsored search results, then supplement secondary results with AdWords, in a similar fashion that Ask.com has done with Google or Microsoft did with supplementing adCenter ads with Yahoo.

This isn’t the first time Yahoo and Google have worked together, since Yahoo gave Google its start more or less when the company let Google power Yahoo search results earlier this decade.
Hopefully more news will come out of this relationship as it develops, especially if Yahoo can generate much and a response from Microsoft on this Google Yahoo partnership is eagerly expected.

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MailShadowG is an application that will allow you to sync Outlook with Gmail. MailShadowG is a product of Cemaphore Systems, a California based company, promising to eliminate the exchange server related costs and sync web based email products like Gmail with Outlook.

MailshadowG released today as a beta service for companies. The best part of the service as it claims, syncing email, calendars, and contacts between outlook and gmail. The syncing is done two way, from outlook to gmail and gmail to outlook.

With MailShadowG, you can synchronize Microsoft Outlook with a trusted Internet email provider like Google, by mapping the repository that exists in Exchange (for email, calendaring and contacts) to these backend systems.

By using a Google as your data repository, you can eliminate the need for expensive infrastructure, hardware, & co-location facilities.

What’s more, MailShadowG can enable any external email service providers to act as a Microsoft Exchange server. No other solution on the market can effectively connect a backend email service provider directly to the enterprise and maintain a bi-directional synchronization of your email, contacts and calendars.

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South Korea's top automaker Hyundai Motor said Monday it signed a five-year agreement to enter India’s rapidly-growing luxury bus market.


The deal was signed with auto parts maker Caparo India, part of the London-based Caparo Group. Hyundai Motor will provide parts and production technology for the Aero buses, while Caparo India will build a 1,500 units-a-year factory in Chennai, the Korean firm said in a statement.


The plant will begin production in early 2009, it said, adding the complete-knock-down (CKD) deal would help Hyundai cement its leading position in India.


Hyundai said India's luxury commercial vehicle market is expected to grow fast thanks to rapid economic development and rising demand for such transportation.


The company now has commercial vehicle CKD plants in China, Vietnam, Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Iran.


Separately, Hyundai said it would sell a revamped version of its Elantra compact car in China under a Chinese-language brand name from next month.


The new name combines two characters that produce the sound "weidong," which means enjoyment and dynamism in driving.


Hyundai officials said the revamped Elantra, which is available with either a 1.6-litre or a 1.8-litre engine, will target young urban customers.


Hyundai with its affiliate Kia Motors comprises the world’s sixth largest auto group and controls more than 70% of the domestic auto market.

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Continuing its growth momentum, the country is set to surpass US to become the second largest wireless network in the world with a subscriber base of over 300 million by April, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) said on Monday.

“During the first half of April 2008, India’s wireless subscriber base that currently stands at 250.93 million will surpass that of the US to become the second wireless network in the world,” Trai said in a statement, adding that the country’s monthly wireless subscriber addition is highest in the world in the range of 8-9 million a month.

Currently, China is the world’s largest wireless network, adding around 6-7 million subscribers every month. This is far more than US, that has the current subscriber base of 256 million, which is adding about 2-3 million subscribers in a month, according to a US-based wireless operators association CTIA.

According to the figures released by Trai, with around 8.49 million telephone connections added in February as compared to 8.74 million in January, the country’s total number of telephone connections has now reached 290.11 million, as compared to 281.62 million in January. This has resulted in an overall tele-density of 25.31% at the end of February as against 24.63% in January. Moreover, the total subscriber base, including wireless and wire-line would also cross 300 million mark in April, it added.

In the wireless segment, 8.53 million subscribers have been added in the month of February as against 8.77 million subscribers added in January 2008, resulting in a total wireless subscriber (GSM, CDMA & WLL(F)) base of 250.93 million at the end of last month.

However, in the wire-line segment, the subscriber base has slightly decreased to 39.18 million in February as compared to 39.22 million in January. Total broadband subscribers base has reached 3.47 million by the end of February 2008 as compared to 3.24 million by the end of January 2008

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Rank  Website                Market Share

1.    www.google.com         5.37%
2.    mail.yahoo.com         4.91%
3.    www.myspace.com        4.49%
4.    www.yahoo.com          3.86%
5.    mail.live.com          2.29%
6.    www.ebay.com           1.91%
7.    search.yahoo.com       1.68%
8.    www.msn.com            1.33%
9.    www.facebook.com       0.93%
10.   www.youtube.com        0.73%
11.   images.google.com      0.52%
12.   www.gmail.com          0.5%
13.   search.msn.com         0.49%
14.   www.wikipedia.org      0.47%
15.   my.yahoo.com           0.4%
16.   mail.aol.com           0.37%
17.   www.ebaymotors.com     0.35%
18.   www.pogo.com           0.35%
19.   address.yahoo.com      0.34%
20.   www.amazon.com         0.34%


Source: Hitwise

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With a fleet size of 750 aircraft worldwide, at least 3,90,000 annual flights across 170 countries, and a 20-year history, the US pioneer in fractional aircraft ownership, NetJets has its eyes set on the Indian market.

NetJets announced Ashish Chordia, CEO of Shreyans (luxury distribution company), as a strategic partner for India. It is likely to announce its first Indian customer shortly.

The Indian strategic partner will help NetJets build a sales relationship with high networth Indians and corporates.

“We have a base of at least 5000 high networth individuals on our radar and they are all our potential customers. We will also be looking at big corporates to push sales in India,” said Chordia.

NetJets, a unit of billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc, is planning expansion in India after foraying into the middle-east market and establishing itself in Europe with 140-owned aircrafts. But its attempt to penetrate the China general aviation market failed recently.

“India is a new frontier for us. We are currently exploring the right ways to enter the market. There has been a 400 percent increase in the number of NetJets business flights to and from India in the last four years We are open to all opportunities we can find here. We have long-term plans and we have financial strength,” said John A.

Colucci, Executive Vice President, NetJets, US. As a business practice, NetJets invests a lot of money in the infrastructure of the country it is present in. The company will offer services to destinations in Europe, North America and the Middle East.

Though it has light cabin aircraft like Cessna and mid-sized jets like Gulfstream 4200 in its fleet, it is the large cabin aircraft like the Gulfstream and Boeing business jets that will be used for long-haul India flights by the company.

Fractional ownership as a concept is at a nascent stage in India and there are only a few players like Manav Singh (Club One Air) and the recently announced joint venture between Singapore start-up company BJets and Tatas. NetJets is an established player and has advantage on its side.

“We can offer fractional ownership of an aircraft even for 25 hours because we have the largest fleet size of private jets in the world and we can thus talk about economy of scales,” said Robert Dranitzke, Director, Marketing Communications, NetJets, Europe.

The company will bring the same offers in fractional ownership into India as it has done in Europe, US and Middle East: Fractional ownership price pro-rated from the market price for an entire aircraft, and then have a guaranteed access between 50-400 hours annually depending on the size of the aircraft and the essential fees to be paid. For an Indian, for 25 hours, it will roughly work out to be a crore a year.

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The highly anticipated Voice Coaches Network at Voices.com is rolling out several new tools to help people who want to find a voice over coach locate, listen to and contact the voice teacher of their choice using an innovative web platform accessible from anywhere in the world via the Internet.


As part of the Voices.com Voice Coaches Network, instructors are given free publicity and the opportunity to educate on a pro bono basis via the Voice Over Experts podcast. Voice trainers can also have their articles and upcoming workshops posted on the VOX Daily blog as well as special mentions on Voice Over Times, the online news source for the voice over industry.


The Voice Coaches Directory is the newest addition to the network and lists dozens of qualified voice over instructors situated in North America and overseas. The benefits to both the teachers and students are immediate and immense. No other service provides the quality of direct accessibility to voice over trainers with the unique trait of having an audio lesson accompanying their featured listing.


Applying for the Voice Coaches Network is easy and can be done online at the following URL:


http://www.voices.com/voice-coaches-network.html


To visit the Voices.com Voice Coaches Directory, go to: http://www.voices.com/voice-over-coaches.html


To learn more about Voices.com, visit: http://www.voices.com


About Voices.com


Voices.com provides an online marketplace, facilitating transactions between business clients and voice-over professionals employing a comprehensive suite of web-based services. Clients that have worked at Voices.com include NBC, ESPN, PBS, The History Channel, Reader's Digest, Comcast, Nortel Networks, Bell Canada, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, ING, Western Union, Ford, GM, Jaguar, US Army, the US Government and more.

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Web designers have an incredible opportunity to participate in an active community of designers and to learn from others at the same time. There are countless resources online for designers, and the community around these sites is very strong. If you are a designer you should be actively involved in one way or another. Here is a quick look at seven ways to participate in the online design community.

1. Read and Comment on Design-Related Blogs
There are plenty of great blogs that cover all kinds of design-related topics. Some of my favorites are Smashing Magazine, Web Designer Wall, and CSS-Tricks. You'll read tons of informative content, and by getting involved you'll get to know a lot of skilled designers. Don't limit yourself just to the major blogs though. There are hundreds or maybe even thousands of smaller blogs that have strong communities and good content.

2. Start a Blog
Taking it one step further, by running your own design blog you can build your own community of readers and make your own contributions by sharing your knowledge with others. Popular bloggers are always well-known throughout the community. There are thousands of readers interested in design tutorials and articles, so there are opportunities waiting for you.

3. Use Niche Social Media
The design community is fortunate to have several strong niche social media sites like Design Float, DZone, and Pixel Groovy. These niche social media sites, and other smaller ones, are great places to find the best articles on all aspects of design, and they can also provide valuable networking opportunities with other designers. Set up a profile and start sharing links and voting for your favorites.

4. Participate at Forums
One of the best ways to use your knowledge to help other designers is to participate at forums. There are thousands of questions asked about design on forums throughout the internet, which provides almost endless opportunities for you to show your knowledge and be of help to others. Likewise, you can also use forums to ask your own questions or just to get to know other designers. Some of the top forums include Digital Point, SitePoint, and Webmaster-Talk.

5. Participate at Community Sites
In addition to niche social media sites and forums, the design community also has a number of sites that allow users to interact in other ways. CSS Globe is one example. Here you can sign up for an account and share links with other users, or you can write reviews of specific designs. Another popular community site is CSS Drive, which has design news, a gallery, and forums. There are countless other sites where you can get involved with other designers and build professional relationships.

6. Write for Community Sites
Several of the popular community sites, including CSS Globe and SitePoint accept article submissions. By writing for one of these community sites you will quickly gain valuable exposure to the entire reader base. If you have writing skills and you're interested in sharing your knowledge with other designers, this is an excellent way to make a contribution to the community.

7. Start a Community Site
Finally, one last way to get involved in the design community is to start your own site. Yes, there are already plenty of community sites out there, but there is room for more if you have some good ideas about how your site can contribute to the community as a whole. Community sites that have some unique twist of benefit to readers will always be able to succeed.

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Yahoo laid out its golden parachute plans for all of its full-time employees Tuesday, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing outlines two change-in-control severance plans, should the Internet search pioneer find itself under new ownership, aka Microsoft.

Yahoo, which is facing an unsolicited buyout bid from Microsoft, will offer both full-time employees and executives anywhere from four months to two years of severance pay, depending on their job title.

The parachute, or cushion, will kick into effect should that employee lose his job within two years after a new owner takes over, should she get terminated without cause, or if the employee decides it's time to leave for "good reason."

Jerry Yang, Yahoo chief executive and co-founder, is also eligible for the severance package. But for Yang, his golden parachute would only net him $2 at the most, given he only earns an annual salary of $1, according to PaidContent.

Yahoo said the severance packages are designed to accomplish several things: "help retain the employees, help maintain a stable work environment and provide certain economic benefits to the employees in the event their employment is terminated (under certain circumstances)."

The golden parachute also includes health and dental coverage for the length of employees' severance awards, as well as reimbursement of outplacement services up to two years, or a maximum of $15,000, depending on job title.

This bodes well for both Yahoo and Microsoft. Yahoo wants to retain its workforce, whether it prevails over any hostile takeover attempt, or whether it walks down the aisle to a friendly merger with a desired suitor.

Microsoft, as well, would hope to retain key Yahoo employees to aid the software giant in any integration plans.

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Today at the Mobile World Congress in Spain, Yahoo announced a mobile app called oneConnect that will be available in the second quarter as part of the upcoming release of Yahoo Go 3.0. I have not seen a demo of this myself, but it sounds like a much-needed integration of messaging and social apps. OneConnect will pull together contacts from your mobile phone, Yahoo address book, and social networks, including:

Bebo
Dopplr
Facebook
Flickr
Friendster
Hi5
Last.fm
LinkedIn
Myspace
Twitter

You will be able to see whether your contacts are online, recent messages, status updates, uploaded photos, and other activity streams for each one. Of course, you will also be able to send them messages via e-mail, IM, and SMS. The mobile app will save SMS and IM conversations as a single thread, even if you are texting and the other person is using Yahoo Messenger. The app also supports AIM, MSN Messenger, and Google Talk.

A feature called “Pulse” will give you the most recent updates of all your contacts across all the social networks it monitors. You’d see, for instance, that your girlfriend just added a photo to Flickr, your business partner just updated his Facebook page to say he landed in London, and your brother just sent out a Twitter. It is like Friendfeed or Spokeo on your mobile phone, tied to your address book so that you can message your friends based on what they are doing.
Yahoo didn’t invent anything here, but simply integrating all of these services is powerful stuff. If you think about it, oneConnect is a mobile portal for the social Web. It connects you to your friends online and then gets out of the way.

One app that can pull together all your friends’ activities from social sites across the Web and present it in a consistent way should strengthen Yahoo’s position on mobile phones. Except on a few advanced handsets like the iPhone, the browser is not yet the ideal user interface for interacting with the Web on your mobile phone. A dedicated mobile app like oneConnect, which itself will be part of Yahoo Go, makes much more sense. But there are only so many apps you can launch on your phone before feeling overwhelmed. This fits in nicely with Yang’s “starting point” strategy. There can only be a few starting points on the mobile Web, and Yahoo is well on its way to being one of them.

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The current production release of Firefox is version 2, but developer releases of version 3 have been available since November 2007. Today Firefox released the beta 3 version of Firefox 3. You can download it here.

I love version 3 of Firefox since most of the memory leak issues on Macs seem to have been fixed (I added it to my list of top applications in December based on that). But a lot of key plugins don’t work yet on Firefox 3, and a lot of sites break when viewed through it as well. Because of that, I’ve switched back to version 2 for now. A list of known issues is here.

Firefox currently has around 17% market share among browsers, second only to Internet Explorer.

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Silicon Alley Insider reports that Ask has just launched a news site called Big News in partnership with Digg that, from the looks of things, only partially incorporates social news functionality.

There were rumors just earlier this week that Digg was white labeling its technology for Ask. However, Big News is more akin to Google News or TechMeme than to Digg. The bulk of the news items collected and displayed from around the web are identified algorithmically, not socially.

Digg’s only clear influence on Big News shows up in the footer of the site, where you can view the current top five Diggs and five stories collected by Big News algorithmically that haven’t been Dugg yet. This real estate will help drive traffic to Digg and encourage the identification of interesting news stories. What does Ask get in return? That’s not altogether clear, although SAI hears that “Digg ratings factor into the site’s algorithm.”

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