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Back from Hibernation

Ashwin — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 14:02:22 +0000

I haven’t written a Blog Post for a month now. I know it and there were various reasons – which do not warrant a mention now. But I am back now and promise to slowly get back to my pace.

I made a couple of major changes to my Blog. One is a Design change – a very minimalist and simple design now decorates my Blog. And the other is a change in the core topic of the Blog – I will be focusing more on using Social Media and other low-cost techniques for Marketing Small and Medium Business.

Being an Indian Blogger, I will also start focusing more on Indian Market and Business. And again, a lot of nice content will start flowing through the Email Campaigns. So make sure to subscribe there!

That’s it for now – but keep watching this space for lots of interesting posts. Have a great week ahead!

links for 2009-06-12

Ashwin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:03:08 +0000

Windows 7 Themes | Windows 7 News

Save More Money with these 10 Real Time tips

Ashwin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 04:05:26 +0000

If you are part of the Corporate World and depend on it for your “bread and butter”, then this is a must read post. Provided you aren’t living under the caves, “credit crunch” must have found a place in your day-to-day vocabulary. There is RECESSION! Companies are trying all means to cut costs, trim down work force, make profits and survive!

With so much of uncertainty, it is high time that you revisit your expenses (a.k.a. spending habits) and find ways of saving more money. I am sharing a few “non-biting-non-difficult-to-the-point” tips to help you save more money… without an increase in your wages!!

Get rid of Credit Card Debt…. and then the Credit Cards. You would then feel the joy of not having to pay your Credit Card bills every month!!
Revisit your Mobile, Fixed Line and Broadband plans. If you are in the so-called “Unlimited” plan, find out if you can move into a “limited” plan based on your usage, with a decrease in monthly rentals
Start Eating at Home more often. If you are married then reduce the frequency of visits to your favorite eatery. If you are unmarried, then learn COOKING! This tip also helps your health concerns
Look for vehicle pooling options to go to work. If you are driving a 4 wheeler all alone, for say 5 kilometers, it is mandatory that you stop doing it. Look for some colleagues who can join you (or you can join them). In either case, share the fuel expenses, which means more money in your pocket!!
Revisit your Insurance plans. Insurance plans are wonderful, but you lose more than you gain if you survive the premium period. (I think this is true in majority cases…). If you are paying a hefty premium, try to reduce the Sum Assured (and hence the annual premium) to match your family needs
Stop buying Books every month and join a Quality Library. If you are like me, grabbing at least 2 books every time you cross the Bookstore, then learn to resist your temptation. A better alternative is to join a quality library in your neighborhood and you would be surprised to find the book expenses reduce by more than half (all without sacrificing your reading habits)
Pay your bills on time. This is applicable to all your bills and makes sure that you never have to pay the penalties. I use Google Calendar to send me reminders via SMS, to pay my bills. You can use this, if useful
Transfer a fixed sum to your Savings account, right on Day 1 of the month. Make sure you never touch it for the rest of the month, unless required. The results will speak for themselves!!
Keep your vehicles in good condition. If required, get it serviced at a quality workshop. It is an investment, to keep your fuel bills under control!
Switch off electrical appliances at home, when not used. Make sure all unused appliances are switched off (including the power outlet), especially in the nights. This can definitely save a few rupees in your electricity bill

I can keep adding but “10″ is always a magical number. I will stop here, as this is already a good start for better saving habits. Feel free to add more useful tips, as comments to this post.

Photo Credit: colros on Flickr/Creative Commons

Blog Upgrade

Ashwin — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 14:09:28 +0000

A new look, a new host, a new domain but the same blog. Feed readers – check out my blog and let me know your feedback.

JBoss Seam – Technical Presentation

Ashwin — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 04:53:40 +0000

I made an internal presentation yesterday on JBoss Seam. Since it is nothing confidential and I had done it on my personal interest, I wanted to share it with the public.

If you happen to use this, please send me the feedback on the content and the style of presentation. I am working hard on my presentation skills and your feedback would be valuable.

HP Magic Giveaway

Ashwin — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 03:58:15 +0000

HP Magic Giveaway is back. Contests for winning these prizes (about $6000 worth from each blogger), will be listed in the next few days in the respective blogs. The complete list of participating blogs can be found here. There are about 50 of them.

Keep watching these blogs for further updates and the contest details. Man, their visitor and subscriber rates are gonna shoot up!!

“Starring” favorite pages in Firefox 3

Ashwin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:39:08 +0000

Ardent Google Reader and GMail users must be familiar with “starring” items. This is primarily used to “star” favorite posts or emails, to be read later and remove the “star”, once they’ve been read. So “starring” works more like a temporary bookmark.

How would you extend this concept to “starring” Web pages? Firefox 3 provides a nice feature to mark a particular web page to be read later and remove it from the list once read.

1. Go to Bookmarks -> Organize Bookmarks (Ctrl + Shift + B), and move the “Recently Bookmarked” under the “Bookmarks Toolbar” (This will enable easy access)

2. Once the Web page is open, Click once the “Star” button in the Address bar

3. Now you can find the web page added to the “Recently Bookmarked” menu in the “Bookmarks Toolbar”

4. Once done reading the page, Click on the “Star” button in the Address bar again and select “Remove Bookmark”

This will help you to “Star” web pages, read them later and easily remove them once done. Hope you find this tip useful.

Sliderocket moves into Zeta mode!

Ashwin — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:26:33 +0000

Sliderocket, a Flex based online Presentation tool, is moving away from Beta version to a paid service. They call it Zeta mode, where existing users or new users can Sign up for a fully enabled Trial Version, free for 30 days (without any Credit Card information).

Sliderocket is very elegant, with RIA features inherited from Adobe Flex. I see a huge similarity in the UI Design with Acrobat.com.

Currently following features are supported by Sliderocket:

Create Presentatation using the online editor
Import Powerpoint Presentations as Images (non-editable) or converted into Sliderocket slides (some powerpoint features may be lost)
Publish your presentations over the web, that can be accessed from anywhere
Collaborate by sharing the presentation in a meeting
Statistics on the visitors to your Presentation
Using Offline Player to view Presentation. Right now, there is no option to export presentations into the traditional formats

Following are some features that are really useful when creating presentations:

Insert Images directly from Flickr and upload Flash files from the hard drive
Plugins for some extended functionality. Right now I can plugins for Inserting Famous Quotes, Word meanings and Snow fall effect. This might be useful when more useful plugins are introduced

Sliderocket has different pricing plans available. The Free plan doesn’t enable some crucial features like offline player access and limits sharing over the web. Also, only the Business Plan that costs about $20/user/month enables Web meeting, which I find a drawback. One can do this free of cost with Google Docs.

So, let us hope that they come up with more Presentation layouts and designs and some productive plugins.

Capgemini and Amazon WS collaborate on the cloud

Ashwin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:41:53 +0000

Such a collaboration was waiting to happen. Many of us were right in assuming that Cloud Computing might be the way that the organizations would go, during economic downturn. Capgemini is taking a step in the right direction, by building expertise to deploy enterprise services on the cloud.

Capgemini has announced a collaboration with Amazon Web Services, to form a Center of Excellence that would initially work on the following Enterprise use cases on the cloud: Microsoft Sharepoint (What about Azure??), Oracle ERP (hmm…. Force.com platform??) and Application Development/Testing. This will help in validating the Amazon Web Services Platform and the result would encourage more Enterprise customers to move on to the cloud!

Yahoo! Deals

Ashwin — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 17:44:11 +0000

Yahoo! Shopping have come up with a beta service – Yahoo! Deals. As Yahoo! puts it – Yahoo! Deals is an ideal tool for the shopping season, when economy is slumping and consumers are turning to online purchases, for better deals.

Following are the features of Yahoo! Deals in short:

Daily Deals – A Mash up of Computers & Networking, Home & Garden, Clothing & Accessories deals from Woot!, Dealnews, Amazon, etc.

Coupons – Online coupons from vendors like Nike, Apple, Toys R Us etc., that can be saved for use by registered users

Storewide Sales – A massive collection of discount sales & promotions, across variety of stores with discount codes

Weekly Ads – Collection of electronic circulars by retailers in the neighborhood, useful before embarking on a visit to the shop

Also Yahoo! Deals helps in finding the cheapest gas based on the Zip code.

You can read more about Yahoo! Deals here.