I recently had a great opportunity to write something about startups at pluggd.in, and which I had to accept (I mean who lets such great opps to pass by :) ).

So I wrote about some of the points that I realized one should ideally do a reality check about, before joining a startup. And as it turns out, and as I had imagined before starting off, this really pissed off some of the startup janta (to say, the employers..a.k.a founders, co-founders).

It actually is a very debatable topic, and as an employee, I could probably argue till death with all those startup guys who thought the post was “misleading”. Actually it’s funny how these guys call it “misleading”. Aahhh…so much for the buzzword “startups, entrepreneurship and the eco-system” where employers always want it their way…huh..!

Read the whole story here at pluggd.in

Quick post here.

I own a few domain names that I had bought earlier, and now due to my new project, I am in great need of finance asap. So I decided to sell one of the domains that I own.

Timesofblogs.com is a premium domain if you are looking to do anything for the blogging world in the blogging world :) . I initially wanted to set up an online blogging magazine, on the lines of some great magazines like ALA, SM, etc. But due to the time constraints, I’m unable to give in much effort in this project right now. Anyone willing to do this, can go ahead. This is a really lucrative area right now, with wordpress openly saying that it is registering at least a million blogs every month. So obviously, anything aimed at that large crowd will gain traction pretty quickly.

In case if you are interested, or your friends are, then just spread the word around. Mail me here, along with your price, and we will discuss things out.

The obsession of internet

Another set of cartoons from my analyst-cum-recently-turned-cartoonist friend Shikhar Vaibhav. This time, it’s on the topic of “Too much obsession with the e-world”. Ehe, I just had to tell him to not make such cartoons anymore; he’s literally fooling with our jobs - the web people :D

Cheers for this set of cartoons again, for capturing the exact notion of what is happening in the world these days. I am actually convinced I should take a break and play some football over the fact that I spend almost 16 hours each day over the internet :)

It’s been exactly a month today since I first got my 16GB iPhone (after waiting for a week to get my preferred color - white), and I thought to do a small review on that.

First up, iPhone is NOT entirely meant for mobile addicts. Instead, as apple’s main business strategy, the focus always has remained on a particular segment of users who are tech-savvy, web-people just in love with this beauty. So, please no hard feelings if I contradict some of the popular notions about iPhone doing the rounds in the Indian blogosphere since it’s launch in August (or rather since it’s price launch).

• The iPhone is Sturdy - Believe it or not, the gadget only looks fragile and weak, but in reality it is pretty robust, and as in my case, it easily stands out falling on a very hard surface. I just happened to drop it on the floor, and literally stopped breathing for the time since it slipped out of my hand till I picked it up and noticed that it didn’t even have a scratch (forget the point of breaking the delicate beauty). I can say the same for any Nokia phone, but when it comes to Sony Ericsson, I am not too sure. I have had a similar experience with a Sony phone that I held previously, and boy-oh-boy it was a nightmare after that.
• No Bluetooth ?? - Not exactly. The iPhone supports bluetooth, but it does not support communicating with other similar devices apart from bluetooth headset, and maybe some other apple product. It is a definite problem, but in any case I have never used bluetooth too much for sharing and transferring data with my friends previously also. So, it really doesn’t make any difference to me, but it might (will) make a difference to a lot of people. Though the good news is that the bluetooth sharing can be easily achieved using software updates. So watch out for all the firmware updates from apple; we might soon have bluetooth in iphone, as like other phones.
• No custom ringtones too?? - Not exactly again. I have the starting guitar seconds of the song “pichle saat dino mein” as my ringtone. Although, it is a little tricky to set your custom ringtone. Either you have to buy a song from the apple store and then convert it into a ringtone (which will effectively cost you $1.98 for that!!) or you can have a software like “iPhoneRingtoneMaker” to do all the dirty little stuff for stuff while you sit back and just select your favorite song. But again, iPhoneRingtoneMaker will set you back by $8 one time. One can get the pirated software from anywhere on the internet for free. I actually did the same :)
• Battery Life is superb - Yes indeed. One full recharge will probably last for a maximum of day and a half if you are using the iPod a lot (as I do), playing games, browsing etc. Using it only as a phone, the battery lasts for an average 2 days.
• App Store ?? - A lot of apps. A lot of good apps (the point of my next article). And a lot of good apps for free
• iPod - Too good. The earphones just blast off with quality sound. All the music management is done by iTunes and synced to the iphone. A new update to iTunes is addition of a feature called “GENIUS”, which is basically a smart music suggestion system. You choose a song, and it helps build a list of similar songs that you may find interesting to listen to at that moment.
• Camera - The camera in the iPhone is just a mere 2mp camera, but effectively, the camera is equivalent to any 3.2mp camera in terms of picture quality. The iphone also lacks video capture, which is one of the biggest negatives for people who use the camera a lot to shoot videos (I do :) )
• The touch screen - It’s big ! It’s clear ! And it just moves on your fingers ! :) . In terms of the user interface and the design, nobody can actually beat apple right now (not even google with the G-Phone). The interface is just too intuitive to not to love it :)

Although the list is exhaustive, I just chose to write a few points that I felt were more important than a lot of others. So far, my experience with the iphone has been excellent (although if you plan to buy the iphone, then buy an LCD cover immediately, or the scratch marks will ruin the fun), and as a friend of mine asked me - “Do you recommend buying the iPhone ??” - my answer would be “Yes, if you are a connoisseur of beauty and design, or else just wait for six months and buy the phone for 25k”.

But really, whatever be the case, I do not expect the iPhone to be available for 16k. Those of you, who expect this, and are writing all s**t since it’s actual price was revealed, my only suggestion would be - do not try to judge beauty when you don’t know how to value it.

This has to be one of the better iPhone apps - the wordpress app for iPhone. Nice nice :)

This definitely is one of the top 10 iPhone apps….easy to use, hassle-free and just enough for the main purpose of blogging - reading and writing :)

Just wish they add image support too soon, or maybe I am unaware of it right now.

Whatever happens, it is a great little app.

So, it’s been like ages since my last useless post, on even worthless topics. Umm (just trying to be a little modest there)

So, I just chalked out certain areas that I have been dying to write about in the last few months, and hopefully, I’ll be able to blog on certain of these topics in this week.

And yeah, I did change my blogging engine to Wordpress from Typo (no offense to Typo or anyone, but Typo just doesn’t seem to work on MT), and talking about MT - I switched over from ASO to MT hosting (more on that in the next few posts). And yeah, I also booked a 16GB Apple Iphone (white) amidst all the hoopla and controversies surrounding the price of this supaaa kewwll gadget (again. more on that later)

In the AD-age, when online advertising is growing by leaps and bounds, the search for the perfect ad network is still a delusion. In a recent survey by McKinsey Quarterly about online marketing (requires free registration to read), a large number of companies (major part of which are Fortune 500 companies) do plan to invest even heavily (if not doing already) in online advertisements. And not surprisingly, companies are in the search of new and unexplored methodologies / ways for online advertisements. The bottom line is, companies are ready to shell out money, but on newer medias

Undoubtedly, the report also carries a lot of stress on blogs, and how companies are looking at consumer generated content for marketing and advertisement. Cashing on these opportunities, are 2 of the major players who are doing exceptionally well in the text link ads business (apart from paid writing ads), notably Text-link-ads.com and Linkworth.com

Going by the bloggers’ choice, it seems that it is a much better option to use text-link based advertisement media rather than sponsored blogging, since quality advertisers with brand names and lot of investment in ads, prefer link-ads over sponsored blogging. And on the question of why - simply a lot of technical and functional reasons, and the impact on their business. No doubt, companies prefer to have a sponsored group on facebook, spending more than $30000 per quarter for the same, rather than have Mark Zuckerberg write a blog entry for them (which I doubt will be any less than $30000 !! :p ).

There might be some in the crowd who would still prefer reviews, going by the fact that there are some blogs which make more than even $1000 for one small little piece of writing that goes on their blog (a.k.a review article), but then again, they are the exceptional ones. When we talk about blogging, we mean everybody - the general lot, cause that’s the target for companies who are willing to spend millions of dollars on text link ads or some other forms of creative buys. What the average blogger needs is to have a simple method of monetizing his blog, and what the companies need is a creative way of advertisement.

In the next few articles, we will go deeper into the web and the advertising world, and try and find out the next big upcoming ideas on creativity.

Huh..!!..So much so for a new blog. If you are reading this post, then I guess you are super-free. Do something else man; if nothing else than watch this GMAIL users (behind the scenes as these folks call it..!!) video here on youtube.

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Rest laterss

:D