Independent Analysis: AI, SaaS, and Revenue Growth Strategy

Upograde your computer memory with Memoryx.com Originally uploaded by shashiBellamkonda Warning ! geeky post ahead ! My Desktop is a pentium 4 with a processor speed of 2.53 GHz. Its about 6 years old but serves my purpose. Of late I have been feeling limited by the 512 RAM it has. When you are faced with a slow computer you consider your options : upgrade it or buy a new one. I use my laptop more than my desktop so I decided to just upgrade it. Here is what i did: a) From my desktop I went to memoryx.com b) Using the tool it deteced my computer and told me what i had already . Suggested 4 different combinations. c) You can order online from them or take the specs and shop around. d) I called them 1-866-636-6799 and a friendly guy answered all my questions and said i could call tech support and they would walk me thorugh installation if I needed help. e) I asked for a price match $3 and they did it ( OK. I am a cheap guy:) f) 2 day shipping was $9 g) Except for UPS having is...

Do you Listen to NPR? When I first came to the US over a decade ago, a good friend of mine told me about NPR and since then I am a fan. I listen to 88.5 WAMU whenever I can and that is sadly only while driving. NPR is a great public institution and I hope more people will listen and support NPR. Update: Dec 29th : Linda Thanks for pointing out that NPR shows can be downloaded on iTunes.

When Bill Marriott first started Blogging I posted the news in a previous Blog post : Bill Marriott on the Move Today I saw that the 2007 holiday greeting from Bill Marriott is posted on YouTube. Bill Marriott's blog is actually a podcast. He travels a lot -yet I am happy he finds the time to post .His blog in my opinion follows best practices. I like reading his blog and I am a regular subscriber and a occasional commenter. Happy new year and congrats Mr. Marriott on your Blog. look forward to your posts in 2008.

NPR story click here to hear I got alerted to this NPR story by @podcastjunky Megan Evins who writes the blog Podcast Junky . I was thrilled to listen to this story. Its about how Blogging is becoming more and more mobile. The story also mentions the Susan Reynolds story without mentioning names I guess for privacy reasons. Andy Carvin currently "Polishing off a mojito with a plate of jerk shrimp, black beans and plantains." somewhere in Florida - created it and fellow Tweeter Jonny Goldstein is featured. Great job Andy. Update 12/29/2007: Clarification from @PodcastJunky (Thank you !- sb): My podcast is kind of a review show. Actually its more of a "best of" show were I talk about and promote other podcasts.

I am having a wonderful Holiday vacation. Along with spending time with the kids I am also catching up on some reading . Here are some observations on what I have been reading: I am awed by the fact that as I am reading the Book "Naked Conversations - How Blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers" ,I occasionally exchange Tweets on Twitter with co-author Shel Israel. Naked Conversations has a lot of the examples of small businesses using Blogs . There is an example of Thomas Mahon and his Blog English Cut where the custom tailoring business can become more successful using Blogs. Horsefeathers - a Bar in North Conway , NH -used Social media to retain as well as expand its guests . The blog address seems to have changed from the one the book mentions. The blog is now at http://horsefeathers.tumblr.com/ . The author's of Naked Conversations hope to get the local plumbers to blog - In my new role at Network Solutions I hope we can make that happen ( Network S...

To all my friends in the Blogosphere, Twitter, and Facebook and in my offline life I would like to make an exciting announcement. I am moving from Product Management into a new position within Network Solutions leading Social Media strategy. It’s a win-win situation – I get to do something that professionally excites me and the company gets to use in-house resources to establish a listening post within Social Media. What will change? My personal blogs/microblogs will continue – I already have a disclaimer that the opinion on my blogs is mine and not that of Network Solutions . I have been blogging for 2 years and participating in forums and social networks as an individual. I am excited and passionate about meeting and connecting with new people. In the new role I will be looking forward to communicating with customers and others who want to reach out and communicate with us. You may be asking yourself, What are our goals at Network Solutions ? We as a company have reinvented oursel...

I have been watching this episode of Twitter vs. T-mobile erupt since last evening. I am a T-mobile customer but use my Web browser to use Twitter mobile (m.twitter.com)so i am not affected. Now I am not on a unlimited SMS plan so each SMS from Twitter costs me .10 cents I hate paying that so thats the reason why i do not use Twitter SMS much. At the social times launch party I did feel the need to use SMS for direct responses to my tweets from the party. I am puzzled by a few things in this T-mobile-twitter episode: a) Why do this on Friday ? I have not seen any response from T-mobile but I did see a response from Twitter at getsatisfaction.com . By the time Monday comes the T-mobile brand may have suffered a lot of damage just by their silence. b) One customer did get a scripted response from T-Mobile which may have done more damage. i wish they had just said they do not know and will try to get an answer. c) Mkrigsman has written a post on ZDnet to explain the motive : Twitter /...

Mobile post sent by shashib using Utterz .    Replies .   mp3

Mobile post sent by shashib using Utterz .    Replies .   mp3

As of today, and forever forward, Movable Type is open source. This means you can freely modify, redistribute, and use Movable Type for any purpose you choose. Now Word Press has competition. You have the choice of using them or Movable Type for your blog that you want to host on your own hosting account. Thinking of moving I am sure there are easy ways to move from your current blog to this version. The experts will have ti chip in here. read more | digg story

I have been called many names and now Jason Falls says - "Shashi Bellamkonda, an Internet junkie and thinker from D.C." at http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/2007/12/12/twitter-aftershocks-what-to-do-with-jeremiahs-conversation-now/ . I am thrilled so I am blogging this link. His post says that we should do something about the new followers we have and add value. What is twitter Tuesday and how it changed many lives - read it here read more | digg story

SmallBusinessComputing.com has a poll where readers can vote for the favorite small business technology tools. Here is a link to the ”. Small Business Technology Tools poll to check it out. The deadline to vote is January 8, 2008. In the interest of full disclosure—Network Solutions is nominated in the category ‘Web Hosting Product of the Year

A Google Groups thread is tracking a major problem for hundreds of Gmail users. Many users were noticing that their Gmail accounts were all of a sudden disabled. read more | digg story

Great Blog post from Jeff Pulver on the Led Zepplin concert with pics and video read more | digg story

Mobile post sent by shashib using Utterz .    Replies .   mp3

This is my second post referring to a Forrester Analyst today. I was just on Peter Kims' Blog - "Being Peter Kim" He is @Peterkim on Twitter. He announced that the report on microblogging for marketers is now free (You will need to register) here. The report is a great resource to hand out at work to the traditional Marketers. One of the statements of the report "6% of US online adults use Twitter regularly" caused a controversy that Peter talks about. I agree with the key takeaway from this report - The audience is growing and Marketers can be smart about it and do it right in a channel where the barrier to entry is low. The podcast of interview with Jennifer Jones at Marketing Voices/PodTech Microblogging For Marketing is interesting. Thanks Peter for making the report free. In other news @CharleneLi ( another well known Forrester analyst ) posted a Tweet today that CBS was in her opffice filming her Tweeting :) Good for you

| View | Upload your own Thanks to Jeremiah Owyang - Web Strategist who posted the link on Twitter.

R.I.P. Marc Orchant by ZDNet 's Dan Farber -- A week after suffering a massive heart attack Marc Orchant passed away today. Marc was part of our ZDNet blogger team for a few years and well known and respected in the tech blogger community. Marc’s good friend Oliver Starr posted the sad news here. I’ve known Marc and his wife Sue since he started [...] There was a very emotional moment as you read 1000's of Twitters on the passing of Marc orchant. Jared Goralnick (@Setjared) said it for all "There was not a kinder, more balanced (or productive) person. He always made time for everyone. This is so horrible." Oliver Starr used his Blog to coordinate the news. Marc was a guest blogger at ZDNet. We connected in Twitter in Nov . I did not have the previlege of meeting him yet I feel the void left behind by his passing away. My condolences to his family.

Jesse Stay wrote this script that you can install on your own server so you no longer have to worry about following those that follow you on Twitter. Run this script, it does all the work for you! Comes with a blacklist to specify those you don't want to follow.Script is here : http://www.jessestay.com/articles/2007/11/14/auto-follow-those-that-follow-you-on-twitter/ read more | digg story

My impression is that both the houses of legislature adopt technology very fast and have lead to success of companies. RIM ( research in motion) owes a lot to its success to the adoption by both the US senate and House of Representatives. If you are a Twitter user you can "follow" @HouseFloor you can get tweets directly from the US House of Reps. The US Senate Tweets as @SenateFloor To follow either of these Twitter feeds you can sign up for Twitter and then search for them using the search box on the right of the Twitter Home Page. 'Follow" measn that once you add them to your following list you will receive their updates on your Twitter homepage. I am happy to see these legislative bodies embracing technology very fast. Here are some sample Tweets from @HouseFloor Suspension Vote: H R 236 North Bay Water Reuse Program Act of 2007: Passed 358-55, 18 .. http://tinyurl.com/2kz87u about 5 hours ago from twitterfeed Icon_star_empty Suspension Vote: H CON RES 147 ...

Nicole shares her tips from her travels all over the country in her Blog at nicolespag.com I have personally suffered by not taking tip 3 seriously. Must read blog post if you travel

eMail Our Military is sponsoring a mail drive to show support for the troops during the holidays. Whether you support the war or not, the men & women of the military currently deployed could use your comfort while they are away from home. Please pitch in and help. See the Efforts of emailourmilitary.com here When a determined person decides to help bring cheer to the troops help comes in from all corners. It is a pleasure to spread the word for emailourmilitary.com . Please pitch in to help . Your help is needed today. read more | digg story

I was excited when I discovered Pandora. I felt the same excitement when I read GigaOm's Blog post The founder of this company Songza is 23 years old. You cannot download any songs just listen to them and of course buy them. Songza is a combination of a music search engine and a song jukebox. I punished it by bringing up names that are popular in the Asian music scene only and still Songza delivered. Songza has a lot of respect to the user's time so there is no registration , just open Songza.com and start listening. I will be using this a lot in the coming days .

TechnoSailor- Aaron Brazell posted this link on Twitter for flightwait.com . I quickly compared the Flight Delays for BWI(Baltimore Washington International) with IAD ( Washington Dulles Airport) And there was a world of difference. BWI showed all green And IAD was almost all red, yellow and black. The colors denote the delays. Green 0-15 minute delay Yellow 15-60 minute delay Red 1-2 hour delay Black More than 2 hour delay It is a good Google MAps mash up with Data provided by FAA. Very simple functionality - search by airport or by zip code. I put in my zip code and it did not ask me for my preferred airport (BWI) but defaulted to IAD. If I am at airport and nothing to do I would be browsing this site

Social Media is all about people helping themselves and others by sharing knowledge. I was surprised to see a number on my caller id that i could not identify beyond the number. So I used Google and got a result at http://800notes.com . The site lets you post your experience with unidentified callers and lets you search for others comments on that number. I think there is definitely a use for this. i would prefer companies identify themselves when calling so you do not have to investigate on your own. It's not a perfect world so I was happy that I found 800notes.com. They have a form that lets you report numbers but I am not sure where. This site is a good idea and its a form of social media too.

While Community Manager Roles have extended for many years how do companies who are dealing with the new citizen journalism coping. What is the Community manager's role now. Where do you go for resources? Connie answers these questions in her post. She along with Jeremiah Owyang are really helping by sharing their experiences and providing resources read more | digg story

I am visiting a cousin who is a small business in the NJ/NY area. Every year when we meet up we exchange tech thoughts and I give him tips on how to concentrate on running his business and get technology to work for him. His questions this time were: a) How to get automatic backup between his home computer and his home computer. b) What anti virus software to use? c) How to prevent BHO's from hijacking his browser? d) How to migrate the dos program that his business has been using last 10 years. I spent a few hours giving him some answers. I was happy to answer his questions because helping am ll business succeed is what I do at work. I have been reading the Small business Survival Blog of Becky McCray . her Blog helps answer questions for Small businesses in rural areas and small towns get help. This is a great blog. It is a must read for small business. Becky McCray also has a Friday Brag Basket where anyone can post their brag or introduce themselves and gain help from her and...

The term of the future is "hyperconnectivity' Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google has said that the first thing he does on the morning is check email. I am tempted to check my mail the first thing on many days but its not to see if my millions have become billions, I am usually looking for new Twitter emails. Going back to the topi cof Hyperconnectivtiy I am connected everywhere I go to the Internet due to my T-Mobile Dash. The only exception is while driving. I am averse to testing while driving. I do enjoy the convenience of Jott With Jott I can call Jott and speak my thoughts and Jott transcribes my voice (yes even my 'Southern" accent) and makes a text post on my Blog or on Twitter. IT has a great voice acitvated menu so you dont have to search for the "1" or "2" button on your phone to choose from the menu. Jott can also send emails to people on your Jott addressbook - A great feature for people like me who commute for 45min to 1 hr kne way each...

LinkedIn users average around 60 connections ( San Francisco-based executive headhunter Ron Bates has the most LinkedIn connections with 33,540 direct contacts) The average number of LinkedIn connections for people who work at Google is forty-seven( Source link below) Average user of LinkedIn probably belongs to at least 3 to 4 groups that are meaningful to their professional life. The average LinkedIn user is 39 and makes $139,000 a year. 89,000 are chief executive officers, and nearly half a million others occupy another job in the C-suite Links to sources: * http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/01/ten_ways_to_use.html * http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=groups_faq * Smartcompany Update: A Valleywag post has the stat that in October Linkedin grew 189% vs. Facebook 125% . Alarm:Clock post talks about the stats from Hitwise Visits to LinkedIN are up 323% year-over-year, its still mostly used by early tech adopters. Hitwise points to the prevalence of GMail users to show that LinkedIn is ...

I am not sure if all cell phones can be charged using the Laptop USB connection - I love it that I can do that with the T Mobile Dash. Since I use the cell phone for email, twitter and facebook I can run the battery down pretty much in 3 to 4 hours if I am out of the home or office. PLugging the laptop in and doing work while the T-Mobile Dash recharges is a great convenience and i love it. All it needs is a USB cord.

This blog post is from a few months ago. But it is a very important issue for people to watch out for . This goes to show that you should be very careful where you buy or even search for your domain. This story needs to get a at lot of attention so I am Digging it again. read more | digg story

always wondered what the Yahoo game plan in this space was. They may be losing executives but they must have some amazing homegrown talent that can come up with new ideas. The future of both email and start pages is in social networking, according to Yahoo, but what's really at issue here are two concepts that Yahoo execs didn't name explicitly, but which will be familiar to most of the readers here. RSS and Attention Data. read more | digg story

Podcamp DC EDU - 11-10-07 Originally uploaded by Joel Mark Witt Shashi Bellamkonda (me) Talking to Whitney Hoffman of LDPodcast a free weekly podcast/internet radio show about learning and learning disabilities. Original Photo from Podcamp EDU 2007 Courtesy Joel Mark Witt

Michael Wesch in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University created this video and posted it to YouTube. The video has so far had 803,906 views since it was posted. I came across this video from Joel Mark Witt from Marylandzoo.tv who showed thsi video before his presentation at the PodCampEDU 2007 at the American university. Great video please spread it to friends.

Joe Mark Hewitt made everyone take their phones and cameras out and take video at the same time. here is the Video i took from my T-Mobile Dash. I am sure these will be available at a central location later. Enjoy.

A list of 99 different ways to promote your blog globally In the Social Media. Also read this article http://tinyurl.com/2fy2s9 which ategorizes all the Social Media sites in the World. Add new sites in the comments fields and I will update the blog posting. read more | digg story

Look at MarylandZoo.tv to watch Joel Mark Hewitt ride camels.

Amazing resource on Podcasting : http://davidwarlick.com/ Wiki for PodCampEdu2007 http://podcamp.pbwiki.com/PodCampEDU Rods Pulse Podcast http://rod4jefferson.blogspot.com/

Tammy Munson : PodTalkDivas.com Website resources: PodcastPickle.com Phonecasting.com Juice.com Pod cast tools: h2zone Olympus ws200 flip Tools: Audacity GarageBand AudioAcrobat Slabpcast.com Podcast411.com podcastingunderground.com podcasting.about.com podcasting4teachers.com

Presentation from PodcampEDU2007b is at http://andycarvin.com/vlogging101/podcamp-edu.ppt Andy Carvin's Blog This is a more interesting Blog from Andy Carvin!

I wrote about Chipin in a previous post. Today on Twitter Michael Bailey posted a link to his Blog and talked about his products and his struggle for launching them. Its a story that resonates with many of us who dream of building our own thing or have the next big idea or even just start our own business. Is the formula for success being quick to market ? Should we wait for everyhting to be perfect or do we let users drive our features ? This is every online product innovators dilemma. Some have taken the risk and succeeded and some succeded without taking the risk. Where will Mobasoft go ? You could turn this into a reality show and make this successful and shape the future for Mobasoft. You can chipin at http://www.mobasoft.com/wordpress/?p=161. Remember the guy who got $1M by making people buy a pixel on his homepage for $1.

T-Mobile Shadow sets the standard for Windows Mobile usability by ZDNet 's Matthew Miller -- I was reading one of my favorite mobile sites, Mobility Site, and saw that NY Times writer David Pogue apparently had a chance to try out the T-Mobile Shadow and provided his thoughts. I am not quite sure how much time he actually spent with the device since I think he missed a few features [...] I am going to strongly think about this phone when I replace my T-mobile Dash which has excellent value. Blogged with Flock

Mobile post sent by shashib using Utterz .    Replies .   mp3

I was reading Jeremiah Owyang 's posting on the  Facebook Announcement yesterday. Jay answers some good questions. I think since he mentioned that they had a Foresster page established but not yet published it gives you the opportunity for corporations to start building a page but not yet publish it. Corporates please take note of Jeremiah 's Quote : "Please, before you rush in and create a Facebook page for your company, consider the overall strategy, and use the POST methodology that we prescribe: People, Objectives, Strategy, and then finally Technology."  I have some questions that I did not find answered on Facebook or other sites: How should corporations deal with  Abusive comments and outright spam? Should corporations turn the wall off ? What are the ramifications? Will corporations have the ability to delete comments or moderate them? Anyone care to answer them? This may be helpful for anyone wating to answer the question. Blogged with Flock

My friend Steve Dembo is doing a very noble thing. He is raising money from his online and off line friends for Habitat for Humanity . Extremely noble motive and a great thing to do. What is amazing is that he is using Chipin.com to make it easy for anyone to make a contribution. Please visit his Blog and make a contributio n Chipin gives you the option of a target for fund raising and by answering a few basic questions you are good to start collecting money for a noble cause. What's the purpose of your ChipIn? How much money do you need to collect? When do you need the money by? How would you like to collect your money? You can get widgets that you can add to a blog or website . You can even embed the ChipIn widget on MySpace, Typepad, Blogger, and Netvibes. I believe Chipin has a FacebookApp too. Chpin uses Paypal to collect the money and gives you a dashboard to check the progress of your goals.

Mobile post sent by shashib using Utterz . Replies . What is Utterz? You can start podcasting from your phone using Utterz . You can participate in the network and reply to anyone else's Utterz or create your own group and exchange views. The cool thing is the ability to do this independent of your PC. If it is a weekend or night and you have unlimited night and weekend minutes you will like using the feature to listen to everyone's Utterz. I liked listening to the Utterz Topic of the day and the responses while driving. What I do not like about it : The prompts are all numbers without the voice option. While driving and using Bluetooth I would rather be able to say "1" or "6" in my "southern accent" than try to manipulate keyboard on my T Mobile Dash. That is probably illegal if i cross the DC line. It is a great tool and has a lot of uses in the social media. using Utterz I post directly to the audio portion of this post.

I have been complaining about the restrictions on cellphones in the US by the cellphone companies a lot. I probably should be happy with today's announcement of a Open Phone Operating system. Everyphone has a Operating System that runs the phone just like Windows runs PCs. If you have a phone with an internet connection the chances are that your phone has one of these operating systems: Symbian, Palm, Openwave, Windows Mobile. Google has announced that it will introduce the Android OS with its partners in a Open HAndset Alliance( Both Phone companies and device manufacturers will use for cellphones) Google, T-Mobile, HTC, Qualcomm, Motorola, Sprint and others. The phones with this platform will be available in the Summer of 2008. So if you are in the market for a phone today go right ahead and buy it. 3 Billion people already use Mobile devices (http://www.infosyncworld.com/news/n/8528.html). When Android is established by the end of 2008 - the other factors not changing ( example ...

The Washington Post has two exciting articles. one was on the start up week end and the other is about the start ups in general in the DC area - very interesting to read. listen Building a Community Byte By Byte Web's New Field of Dreams Emerges in D.C Powered by Jott

When I first tried Flock I had given up on them. When they came back with their latest avatar they have done a good job. Flock is a free makes it easy to connect with your social media sites and your RSS feeds. When I open flock i have my Flickr photos running as a loop on top ( I can choose any F lickr feed or a random feed) I have a side bar called "My World" that gives me access to my accounts that I have specified for example : Blogs, Twitter.... When Flickr sees a page with a media element or a feed its tells me with a subtle message on my browser window and the coolest thing about it is the "Sow me how " button . Clicking it will present the button in such a obvious manner. This is the friendliest design I have seen in any web application. There are a couple of plug-ins that I have to check. Off technology it seems like the flock guys are absolutely plugged-in. They have a community ambassador Evan . You can actually contact him by AIM, Skype , GTalk...

Hi, this is my first post while driving using using Jott. I want to experiment with this and see if I could post this to my blog without actually doing anything that they [...]. listen Powered by Jott This post was made by me from my cellphone while waiting in the Halloween traffic jam on the beltway. Very cool. Jott transcribes your voice and converts it to text.

I saw Seth Godin Twitter yesterday on domain names. Seth is quoting from a Wired magazine story from 1994 by Josh Quittner . Josh was trying to evangelize the use of a domain name to McDonalds corporation and that companies’ pay much attention to domain name registration back then. (I was surprised that Wired was online back then) Takeaways from Seth’s Post : A) “There's only one neighborhood for business online” = .com domain name B) Have “ a domain that matches what you do” – his example C) “Don't hesitate to create multiple domains for your efforts” for “Visitor focus” D) “If you're looking to start an online business, consider finding a great domain and build the business around it, not the other way around.” Here is an idea I got from Clay Newton’s Blog post. where he registered http://clay.newton.name/ to point to his FaceBook profile. How about making .name the standard for the social media. I thought the idea was cool. Reasons for people to get a .name A) Keep bu...

Everyone is waiting with bated breath. Chris gives a fantastic insight into what to expect. Marc Andreessen has a good post explaining OpenSocial from a tech angle http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/10/open-social-a-n.html Marketing angle: http://www.christopherspenn.com/2007/10/31/google-opensocial-and-marketing/ read more digg story

What's a pebble? They’re often first generation adopters. they are followed by swimmers, surfers and others.Most of the people in Twitter fall into one of those three categories, they’re early adopters, tech influencers, and what Forrester calls “creators”.People use 5 to 7 mediums to communicate everyday. See what everyone uses at this post. read more | digg story

It pays to have friends in high places : Om Malik is doing his first conference, on the future of television and the web. It's Nov. 14th in SF, it's called NewTeeVee Live, and it's got a killer speaker lineup, and I am sure the conference will be a hit. Om has graciously offered a 15% discount off the early bird registration for folks in John Batelle's network. It's a steal at $399, the discount will take that down to somewhere near $350. Head to: http://newteeveelive.eventbrite.com/?discount=JBATFNF to get the dicount. Company: GigaOm Job Title: NewTeeVee Live Description: http://newteevee.com/2007/10/12/announcing-the-newteevee-live-schedule/

There are some pretty good programs to use for Screenshots. A lot of companies use Snagit Snagit currently has tools to upload screenshots directly to your blog. HEre are two free programs that are good for making screenshots on your computer cropper M5Snap thatKim Komando mentioned in her newsletter today. I like cropper except it doesnt let you scroll the page to get the whole screen. Mw5Snap seems very user fiendly.

The web 2.0 conference coined a term Addressbook 2.0. The basis is that if we had an addressbook integrated across all communication tools and social network platofrms that we were members of, then we can be contacted by friends using email, phone, IM or social "nudging" or "poking" depending on where we were. I love this. I was looking at my addressbook which is synchronized by Plaxo and found several outdated contacts and many outdated email addresses. I wish I had a way to run this through a program that told me some of these addresses do not exist and Palxo charges me for removing duplicates from my addressbook. More power to AddressBook 2.0 http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/02/social_network_1.html#commentsemr

Source: http://www.sltrib.com/technology/ci_7185839 Still not sure which is more eco-savvy, farmed or wild salmon? Snd a txt msg. The marine conservation group Blue Ocean Institute has launched a cell phone-based service to send you text messages with the information you need to make smart seafood choices. Next time you¹re at the seafood counter or in a restaurant and can¹t recall whether farmed catfish is managed in an environmentally sustainable fashion, send a text message and within seconds you¹ll have the Institute¹s take on it. The group also is launching FishPhone (http://fishphone.org), a Web site formatted for Web-enabled cell phones and PDAs. To use the texting service, send a message to 30644. In the message, type FISH, followed by the name of the seafood in question, such as tuna. The service covers more than 90 species, and suggests alternatives to options that pose environmental concerns. Aside from any standard text message fees by your cell ph...

Key findings from the study include: 32% of welcome emails include a discount, reward or incentive, down from 34% last year62% of welcome emails asked the subscriber to white list them by adding an email address to their address book, up from 49% last year79% of retailers sent out HTML welcome emails, up from 69% last. The remainder s read more | digg story

With more people accessing websites through mobile web browsers, it might be time to redesign your site or create a new one with them in mind. read more | digg story

He is a nice guy. Amazing speaker and always jovial. Hear His video here Launch in external player

Slideshare is a great site kind of a youtube for powerpoint presentations. It is worth a visit every now and then.

Steven Teo writing in smallbiztrends.com has some pretty cool sites listed. From sending pictures of your food from your phone for nutritional analysis to giving you the nearest restroom location.

Rohit Bhargava in his blog posting : Idea Bar: Self Destructing Emails has an interesting idea about how to make emails that you need to receive but dont need to keep in your inbox for ever manageable. The key question is here who should make this happen. Is it the reader of these emails or is it the sender of these emails. My take: When you setup the account and agree to receive these notifications then you should have the option to set the emails to destruct and have the ability to choose the period you want to keep them. Blog software can have a default option for these notifications to just expire and delete. Network Solutions Email has the ability to set your outgoing email to expire in minutes, hours or days. Some interesting thoughts and discussions in these posts : ThinkAbdul.com and on WebmasterWorld .

Hitwise reports that www.hillaryclinton.com is number 3 among websites for the key candidates of 2008 Presidential elections based on US Internet usage for the week ending September 15, 2007.Its strange that www.fred08.com is number one and I am not speaking politically. The page rank for www.fred08.com is 4 and www.hillaryclinton.com is 6. read more | digg story

Washingtonpost.com, launched a new interactive feature that will examine controversial claims and statements made by presidential candidates involving important national issues. The weekly feature, called "FactChecker," will post topics, then invite readers to help uncover and verify the facts behind candidates' positions and statements. The Post also said that it plans to make "FactChecker" available as a widget for users to add to personalized web pages. Who is the first "Victim" See http://www.washingtonpost.com/factchecker . read more | digg story

I read this in the Newsweek and this will be useful when the kids go to college, two websites where you can rent text books and save money. textbookflix.com and BookRenter.com The websites will give you details fo terms and conditions of the rental.

Its funny that DirecTV starts including MTV India in ints package and never informs its customers. Heck ! tehy could have a got a lot of goodwill from subscribers like me. ANyway I was very happy that MTV channel is now back and its so cool that I can see ads that are targetted for a Indian audience. BRU Cappucino flavor who ever heard of this before. MTV India makes me nostalgic. From 1992 to 1997 I enjoyed the spread of Stellite TV and the explosion of TV channels in India. It was truly a revolution, there was not even a law governing satellite TV when it started. If you were cosy enough with the cable operator you could ask him to swithc the satellite to a channel of your choice. Well now I am at the mercy of Comcast and DirecTV. DirecTv is the better evil. They have moderately priced packages. I subscribe to Hindi Direct which includes Star Plus, Star One , Star News, NDTV, THe Cricket channel, DoorDarshan National. When I signed up for the DirecTV Hindi Direct package it include...

I am sure a lot of you may have already discovered this. Instead of s[ecifying a single homepage in IE7 you can specify multiple Pages to open in tabs. To do this you should follow these steps. How to set multiple homepages in IE7: 1) On your browser menu click on "Tools" 2) Click on "Internet Options" 3) In the text box for the hoempage you can enter te URLs and press enter to add multiple URLs. 4)Click "OK" to save your settings. Everytime you open your browsr all the homepages will open in tabs. If you need to customize the tabs further you can click Tools>>>Internet Options and under the general tab click on "settings". You can choose to customize how tabs are created or opened. Some good things with IE7.

Problems with cell phone companies in the US: a)No freedom to buy any phone and use it with a provider b) You have to stay too long with a provider because of all the fees. c) The monthly fees approach does not work as even if you do not use the cellphone often enough you still pay a lot of fees.The pay as you go approach is still not very good or mainstream. Again Tmobile excels- got a prepaid plan for my daughter which is 1000 minutes for 100 dollars and the minutes are valid for a year. If you renew again beofre thier expiry their validity is extended. But most companies seem not to care about customers value for the service provided. A bill is being introduced to ease the pain for cell phone consumers. We should absolutely write to our senators to support this bill. Cell phone companies are stiffling creativity by selling locked phones. Though TMobile is pretty good with unlocking them read more | digg story

I remember 1998 when there was such a buzz about Google among the early adopters and thos with their ear to the ground on tech news. I switched my home page immediately to Google. It looks like Cuill is generating the same buzz. According to TechCrunch . They are already talking funding and some of the commenters have reported that Cuill is already crawling the web. I am looking forward to the war of the engines. Specially one from Xooglers.

I spent a lot of time this weekend tryign to make sense of all the ways you can process, save, share photos. There was a time when photos simply meant taking the film to the grocery store and add them to a album and you were done. Today as soon as you connect your camera you are faced with choice - Picasa, windows, Sony, Canon, all vying for attention. To this I added a new dimension _ PhotoShow by Comcast. COmcast lets you hav this cool Photo organizer and editor from SImpleStar for free for being a subscriber. I am impressed. I have all my computer pictures playing on my computer to nice music all day long with just 3 or 4 clicks. Comcast I realized has a lot of great tools now if you are a Cable subscriber. Photoshow costs $39.95 if you have to buy it. I am a fan of Picasa, but there are other programs that I like Picnik , Jetphoto. I have subscribed to photo storage apps like Slide, RockYou and photobucket. The Idea is integration being able to upload pictures to one place and th...

I was excited to see two entrants into the space that is very similar to NetFlix. A kind of Netflix for books. If you are a avid reader then this is going to be very great for you and will save you a lot of money buying books. BookSwim.com Has Books only starting at $19.99 with free shipping only way BooksFree.com Plans start at $9.99 and they have a collection of books and audiobook titles. If you have a long commute like me you probably have the XM Radio / Sirius or the Jack Diamond Morning Show which is a favorite if mine for many years. The other thing that I do is listen to NPR . In my opinion one of the greatest things about the Montgomery County Library is that they have a good collection of Books On Tape. I love playing the books on tape and sometimes the plot gets so exciting that either I wish the traffic was more or linger in my car in the parking lot till the chapter is done.

MSN has teamed up with WorldSpace to offer Indian language Radio stations online. They are offering the indian language Radio Stations for free for 24 hours. I am not sure how I landed on this page but I was pleasantly surprised to AR Rahman, Chiranjeevi staring back from me from this website. I had seen billboards in Hyderabad for WorldSpace even though I did not meet anyone who actually owned one. They are the XM/Sirius equivalent in Asia and Africa. In fact WorldSpace was one of the founding companies of XM. To subscribe you have to pay $9.99. The signup page was not working when I tried it. If you want to buy a radio for US servicemen In IRAQ Worldspace sells their radios at SkyBox . The World space channel list is here. it would also make a nice gift to people back home or even for expats going on assignment to Asia, Europe or Africa. I always knew that if anyone offered Indian radio for cars I would definitely subscribe. In India today there are so many radio stations. I enjoyed...

LCD vs Plasma 720p vs 1080p 2HDMI vs 3 HDMI I never thought these are the kind of decisons you have to make. I am buying a TV and I plan to do it the old fashioned way . Go to a store and "kick the tires". I remember the time when we bought our first Tv in 1977 in India and we had no choice. I think we bought a ECTV ( company run by the Indian Govt) and I cannot tell you whats the screen size was but it was black and white. We were living in a middle class colony in Madras (now Chennai) India. As we were early adopters ( first to buy a TV) - we had a lot of company of people who would plan their visit to us after 6 p.m when the TV programs would start and it was such a novelty. Outside every TV owning house you would find crowds of people watching from outside the doorway. My first TV when I setup home in Moscow in 1989 and it was a Panasonic imported from Denmark (At that time only foreigners living in Moscow could import foregin goods). So now I am pretty much partial to Pa...

This incident is a reminder, how dependent we are on computers. I cringe to think of what the passengers went through after maybe 8 to 13 hours of flight time. On the way back from a recent trip to India we transited through London on a day when the airport was recovering from a severe storm on July 20th. We waited for a hour on the tarmac till the flight got a gate. Even that one hour was long enough, my normally quiet son was hungry and we didn't carry enough baby food due to the "liquids not allowed" bru hah and luckily the crew decided to open the galley again to give us some baby food. Emirates Airlines rocks. ! I read news reports that it took 3 hours for the the network providers staff to come to troubleshoot. I am appalled at that. A network outage is an emergency and the response should have been faster. I hope there are some lessons learned here and they start having onsite support technicians. I am sorry for all the people who were stranded that day, but this ...

I was thrilled to receive a email introducing Zagat.mobi - the mobile restaurant review portal. Access to this is free from mobile devices. No matter which city in the world I am in I can depend on Zagat.mobi to give me the best reviews from customers themselves of restaurants. I think restaurants will benefit from having their own .mobi web sites and then linking to thme from lsitings in search engines and in review sites like Zagat. BuildMyMobi is the right product for restaurant owners to build their own websites.

I am really excited that Network Solutions has launched a new product called BuildMyMobi a mobile website creator. It is a easy way for anyone to build a website for a mobile phone themselves and costs just $20 a year. People save money by using the mobile site builder as the alternative is to hire a web designer who has to specialize in the mobile web. Businesses can build a mobile website and put their information on a BuildMyMobi website to help customers who look for them on cell phones. More and more people are looking for businesses online or a business's mobile web site. A internet enabled phone is carried everywhere and as phone carrier speeds increase the internet experience on phones is getting better. BuildMyMobi - Wap website creator / Mobile website creator will help searchers looking for more content on mobile devices. Mobile web sites have a lot of uses - Taxi services, Limo rentals, school websites can publish schedules, Restaurants put their menu, retailers pu...

I have been using a plugin to Firefox called Google browser Sync . I use at least 3 computers each day - work, laptop, home computer. After installing the plugin on all 3 it helps me coordinate my Firefox settings on all 3. I leave work and when I login at home the same websites I last opened in Firefox will open at home. Of course its a choice. You can choose to say no and open a new web site. This is just my opinion and I have no idea of any privacy concerns here but I find it very convenient.

In full disclosure I work for this company - Network Solutions and I am proud of this product ImageCafé Easy Website Building Tool . Its the most amazing ,easy to use application for business owners and other non technical consumers who want to build a web site without knowing anything about HTML or other web technologies. When my son Anshul was born in 2005 I had his ImageCafe website up and running with his new born pictures, a Guestbook and a poll within 2 hours of his birth.All my friends and relatives were thrilled to see his website so soon. The flexibility to customize the colors, image themes and other elements of the website is simply amazing. Network Solutions offers a 30-day free trial of Image Café . For more information about this free trial, please visit the free Image Café Test Drive. To learn more about ImageCafé Web Site Creator and how to build a good web site, please visit networksolutions.com.

Its frustrating to US consumers that their cell phone choice is limited by the company they choose. Skype has filed a petition with the FCC to allow consumers to use any phone on any network. No more begging companies to unlock your phone. If approved this is going to revolutionize the way we think about cell phones and cell phone contracts. read more | digg story Source:

I am sure choosing a cellphone is usually a frustrating experience. I recently shopped for a cellphone and after 2 weeks of research chose the T-Mobile Dash. Its small and handy and on my next trip to New York I am leaving my laptop behind. The dash with the data plan gives me access to internet and I can find the information i need. Some of the times I wished I had a smartphone have been - a desperate need to compare the online prices of a car seat. Trying to find the restaurant in rockville that I had forgotten the name. In the past one year I have made a lot of progess technologically having entered the GPS, bluetooth dialling from the car and now I am a smartphone owner My company uses OWA( outlook web access) and the T-Mobile Dash easily syncs with the outlook so I can receive my work email and sync my calendar easily. Here are some sites that have helped me in my choice howardforums.com , slickdeals.net , Dash Wiki. In the short time I have installed some free mods and softwar...

I just read Bill Marriott's Blog at http://www.blogs.marriott.com . He says that he cares enough to get the Marriott's customers the best technology in the rooms and prefers to hire the best technological talent to achieve that . Probably as the old adage says "Hire the best talent and keep out of their way?". In my opinion Bill Marriott's entry into the Blogosphere is a clear signal that Corporate America is taking notice of the exploding new media. Look at the comments on his Blog - ranging from compliments on the rewards program to asking for a courtesy rejection letter from HR. There is one comment on internet not being free at expensive hotels. All this is good for Marriott to hear and cuts down several channels. The Blog achieves Bill Marriott's goal "talk to your customers directly -- and hear back from them" For my part I' m eager to hear more from Bill Marriott and can't wait for the astro-turf story he has promised. Bill also says t...