Friday, October 17, 2008

Why do we need stock markets?

This article has made it to the front page of digg written by Alec Chrystal. Here is the excerpt:

A key reason for forming a company is that the shareholders of a modern company have "limited liability". This means that a shareholder can lose what they paid for their shares in a company but they are not liable for the debts of the company beyond that. This is not true in, for example, a partnership, where partners are jointly liable for all the debts incurred.

Investing in company shares is thus potentially attractive, as shareholders get a share of the profit of the business but know that the worst that can happen is that they lose the value of the original investment.
Read more at Why do we need stock markets ?

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Trick to get out of a bad date

I have stumbled across a interesting site called Getmooh. It helps you, as it tagline says, "Get me out of here". The site makes free call to your phone at a pre-determined day and time. There are several recordings like baldwin to a girls voice,etc. You cn use this as a reason to leave whatever you are doing.

How it works?

Getmooh is an automated call back service. It is designed to help you escape a variety of situations by calling you automatically on your phone at a pre-specified time and playing you a recording which will either instruct you on what to say to elude your tormentor(s), or which will simply give a convincing sense of you being on an important call.

Creating a Call

To use Getmooh take the following steps:

1. Select the international dialling prefix of the phone you want to call.

2. Enter the local number of the phone you want to call

3. Specify the time at which you want to be called. Use the calendar icon () to select a time. (For notes on time availability see notes below).

4. Select the recording you want played to you during the call. You can listen to the full recording in advance by selecting it and then clicking "play sample". This will give you an idea of what to expect and let you hone your acting skills.

5. Click "Continue". (If Getmooh recognises you it will say "Add Call" and the process will complete). Otherwise....

6. Enter your email and your password. (See Getting a password below).

7. Click "Add Call".

8. That's it!

Getting a Password

To get a password so you can Create Calls:

1. Click on "Get one now" which appears by the password field.

2. Enter your Name, Email, Intl' Prefix and Mobile Number

3. Your password will be texted to you! So ensure the number is right.

4. Click "Send me My Password by SMS"

5. When you get the password go back to the Main Window and enter it.

6. Anytime you return you can use the same password!

Retreiving your password

To get your password again:

1. Repeat the same steps for signing up

2. Your password will be re-texted to you

Notes

1. Caller ID Policy: Getmooh run a very simple Caller ID policy. At the end of every call, the mobile number of the person who placed the called is read out very distinctly by a computer generated voice.

2. Availability of minutes: Getmooh can only make a certain number of calls a day. As people add calls, the minutes available get used up. Select the closest time to when you want a call. If the time you need is completely booked out we apologise...we are working to increase the number of calls we can make all the time.

3. Number of Calls: You can only use the service for a maximum of two calls a day! If you need more than that you should consult a health professional.

4. Prank or Crank Calling: If you are going to set a call for a friend be sure that if they call us and identify themselves as the owner of the number we can happily verify who gave them the call.

5. Why is Getmooh free?: Because Google exists.

Firefox 3.1 takes the browser war a step further

Yesterday Mozilla announced that Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 was available for download. This brings with it a whole new raft of features and improvements:

  • Web standards improvements in the Gecko layout engine
  • Added support for CSS 2.1 and CSS 3 properties
  • A new tab-switching shortcut that shows previews of the tab you’re switching to
  • Improved control over the Smart Location Bar using special characters to restrict your search
  • Support for new web technologies such as the
There is special character support for the Awesome Bar (for example, you can restrict the search to your history by typing ^, or search only bookmarks using *, or tagged pages with +, if you want to match only text in the URL type @, and for title and tags only use #).

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Why tech websites and blogs should not use third-party advertising like AdSense

Technological websites are money makers. The more how-to related articles in your sites the more visitor you tend to get. Internet related sites too get good traffic.
So in order to monetize from it you need to put ads on it. The first choice is of course Google's Adsense due to it's good CTR and CPC. Then there are several like chitika, ypn, bidvertiser, etc.

However, the problem is that most of your users would be geeks,(not true for reviews website as non-geeks will also vist for reviews) they probably might have embraced Firefox and most probably might have installed addon called Adblock Plus which blocks most of these ads.
You might have noticed that impression shown in your adsense stat is less than the actual impression. So, how to go around this?

The option is to have direct advertising hosted on your own server. As the url of the ad will be different(adblock plus works by detecting ad url like pagead..... for adsense) adblock plus will not be able to block this. But, make sure your url does not contain the word "ads", "sponsored",etc.
However, visitors can block these ads manually. But then only regular visitors would do this. Search engiene visitors will see your ads and hopefully click it.