Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Technorati Integration:

Its interesting to see how various websites try to integrate the content from your previous sites to the new one.

Here is one example of integration of My Blog into Technorati, They call it the Blog claim.

There are two ways to integrate you Blogger content into the Technorati:

1. Providing the Blogger Username and Password, I will not recommend it if you have single account to maintain other Google products.

2. Technorati spider will crawl your blog when you place the link they provide you like below:

Technorati Profile
What ever it is as long as its syncronized, I'm happy!!!


Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Travel Websites - You won't believe


I'm not sure what to say, in some way it looks really funny in other terms I'm not sure how the airline / travel industry itself can give such a stupid quote.


I used kayak.com to search for a air fare between MAA(Chennai or Madras, India) and BOM (Mumbai or Bombay, India). The kayak engine works perfect as they are supposed gives the best deal which is less than $200.


But what made me think is, A airfare of $1007 for these two domestic destinations in India, See below:



Like you see this live quote is from orbitz.com, I decided to select that deal and see where it is going to take me and how.

According to the deal, I should travel like below:


Leave
MAA > CMB Jet Airways 252 Wed 6 Jun 12:15 PM Wed 6 Jun 1:35 PM
CMB > BOM SriLankan Airlines 143 Wed 6 Jun 6:20 PM Wed 6 Jun 8:45 PM

Return
BOM > DEL Jet Airways 370 Wed 13 Jun 3:45 PM Wed 13 Jun 5:45 PM
DEL > MAA Jet Airways 726 Wed 13 Jun 6:55 PM Wed 13 Jun 9:30 PM





Basically to reach a domestic destination it will be made as international. CMB stands Colombo, Sri Lanka.


The destinations are reachable within 2 hours by flight journey but look at this quote and think how smart these deals are offered as cheaper deal. Unbelievable!!

Friday, March 02, 2007

Apartments in Central Jersey (Avenel, Edison, Woodbridge, Iselin area)

These 4 locations are very optimal for commuting to NYC because of the NEC trains from NJTransit.

But you won't believe how bad the apartments are maintained by the management companies in these areas, I'm going to write about what I've seen and experienced over several weeks while I was in the apartment hunt.

The first and foremost thing I found out was these areas are completely dominated (I even say monopolised) by Apartment Management company named MIDDLESEX MANAGEMENT. They operate a website called bestrentnj.com and you can go and visit to any property listed by them.

Since these areas are heavily populated by Indian Community which has the highest possible level of tolerance when it comes to bad things happen to them (they think its part of their fate written in their head), these managment rats capitalize over that, I will explain how these rats live.

On any of the properties listed by website bestrentnj.com you can experience the following:

1. Welcoming tendency for a new renter is really 0%, they look at you like a piece of junk because 98% of these apartments are already occupied. This is across all of the apartments maintianed by MIDDLESEX MANAGEMENT.

2. The policy for each units under managment is 100% different, for example let say you have to break the lease for un-expected reasons (like you have to leave the country since you visa is over), if you ask them before hand one will say you have pay rent till it gets rented even if you are not staying and they will not give your deposit back as well and they will have a fine of $400, please note these are not clearly written in the documents, so you will come to know only when you sign the lease. Some of them will say you have to give a notice 60 days before and you will loase you security deposit.

3. There is a nice website called http://www.apartmentratings.com/ Go here and read the review for each and every apartments. For every 2 - 3 bad review there will 1 super duper review from these managament rats. Their presence will be always as anonymous and their review will always be their apartments are the best. I will give the sample how these rats show they are the rats:

4. Don't think these apartment are cheap they run from $1400 - $1875 for a double bed room in these areas, with no maintanence, however you will not get any single bedroom apartments at all.

5. Some places especially in avenel area's street thug casualities is very common.

Example 1:

Very Lovely
From: -Anonymous-

Date posted: 11/29/2006

Years at this apartment: 2006-2006

We have been living here for years and we are quite happy
all together.Nice people, nice location, good school system and good shopping
near by.


Example 2:

A wonderful community
From: -Anonymous-

Date posted: 11/29/2006

Years at this apartment: 2006-2006

My family and I have been living here for years and although there are problems from time to time, the maintenance people move quick and the
management office is very efficient.Most importantly to me is the fact that the
people that live here are so very good, kind and helpful.



But the real life scenario is totally different:

I will have to show some examples of the real review and experiences people had from the same website, atleast you can save some gas on no going to these places:

Example 1:

My first year was good. They were quick to respond to the few requests that
I had. But I am going on my third year and I have noticed a decline in the
service. Parking has gotten worse, they swiched over the laundry service so I
don't use that anymore. I use the laundromat on the corner. Most of my neighbors
do the same. Maintenance barely fixes anything anymore. In the last 6 months I
had no air conditioning during the heat wave (they fixed after calling for days
and staying home to make sure that I could call again when they didn't show up).
But it stopped working withing a couple of days.

No water, a pipe burst suddenly they said, but that wasn't the first day
that I was home and had no water. My windows don't shut completely and they
never fixed that so I pay for heat that's going out the window. And recently I
called the office to set a move out date cause I don't want to renew my lease,
but can't move out on the day that it is up. They put me on hold for like a half
hour. And then I called back and got a machine, left a message and two weeks
later haven't heard anything from them. I'm thinking they figure if they don't
call me back the lease will just automatically renew and they've got me for
another year. So I probably wouldn't reccomend this place for longer than one
year or so.

Example 2:

I stayed there a couple of months . The management is pathetic . the walkways
are full of cigerrate buds !!!!..we didnt got hot water and had to complain more
than 7-8 times to get it permentantly fixed . Apart from that the area is
beautiful with enugh greenary and close to edison train station . As usual its
the casual attitude of the middlesex mngmt which makes things worse !!! .

GO AND CLEAN THE CIG: BUTTS



I'm sure 97% of Indians live in here and if they don't stand up for their basic right these rats are going to be as ignorant as possible and creep all your money and you won't even get a desenct residence to have the peace in your life.

For others, Before you rent read the reviews visit the place and experience how the manager respond to you and take a took at the entire unit finally decide if thats the place you want to live.

I will write about Jersey City Apartments next week, one hit is these are upscale rats...

Believe me I lived in various other states in united states and I've never such a lasy ignorant apartment management workers like new jersey. In other states you can see such ignorance in one or two apartments, but in central jersey you can see every where.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Rats in NYC fast-food restaurant become stars for a day - Feb. 23, 2007

No matter how many times these kind of things got mentioned in the news, people eating from the fast food chains must realize diseases are not coming towards them, instead they are going near them especially in Newyork City.

Tips for a healthy eating in NYC:

1. Avoid green food especially salads, these are the most raw sources of any kind of bacteria and no salad maker cleans the salad with hot water, even if it is cleaned there is no 100% guarantee the bacteria like E.Coli are removed, by a hand wash. These things will die only when it is cooked.

2. If you take water from the tap make sure to put through the microwave for about a minute so that it becomes a warm water.

3. Go to a restaurant / cuisine instead of a fast food chain and avoid salad instead substitute with a soup.

4. Avoid sushis, this is the most common entriee item and most raw form of food and put your health at risk. I have seen in my office itself people got sick because of these sushi.


Be Healthy!

Friday, February 16, 2007

Day Dreaming

This is kind of a nice thing which is created in our brains, because this helps solve a lot off issues.

How?

Lets say for example, you had a fight with your better half while you are rushing to the office and you are really not in mood to work because of that, If you don't work you are going to create a cascaded effect to some one else which larger than you, I meant the company.

To avoid such stuff, Day Dreaming can really help.

If you don't know how to day dream, i'm gonna teach how, when and what to day dream.

How to day dream?

This is really simple, I'm not going to ask you to go to Bali or Hawaii like stress control people do.

Step 1:

Instead, Take the thing which was bothering you lot.

In our example your better off had a fight in the morning... and that was your most bothering to you for now.

Step 2:

Assume everything happened as a dream.

Step 3:

Try to re-draw visually what happened as narrative as possible.

Step 4:

See what each character is doing.

At this point you can see the following things:

1. You will see for yourself what your mistake was.
2. You might see yourself funny at places the way you reacted.
3. Your creativity will definetely improve because you are able to visualize yourself.
4. There no better thing than what you know about yourself.
5. At last you just dreamnt of your issue, so why to bother, start the new day happily.

When to day dream?

You can day dream when you enough free time and energy. Avoid this in meetings and at your desk. The good location is if you commute via train or bus you can do that, but make sure you remind your stop to get off. If you don't commute take a break during lunch in park or a calm place.

What to day dream?

Mind has no boundaries, dream what ever you want let it be costructive as much as possible.

Happy Day Dreamin!!!

Friday, February 09, 2007

Google Toolbar Spy Activity


This is a professional way of spying and certainly overriding the user's wishes. Here is the activity details:


You need to have IE 7.0 to monitor the activity. IE 7.0 comes with a search provider option where you can select the default search engine you want. This work proper when you don't have the Google Toolbar Installed.

If you install the Google Toolbar you may notice the following activity:

All i did is try to change my default search setting from Google to Yahoo, Couple of times this was not happening... That seemed little weird...

At the third time I noticed a small G icon in the task bar which is launched by the Google Toolbar, The executable which runs in memory is GoogleToolbarNotifier.exe.

When you click on that icon it launches a new dialog box like below:



The reason why i'm saying this as spy activity is because, it didn't launch this dialog when I was changing the provider, instead it adds a little taskbar icon which will prevent the change automatically.

Only when you click on the little G Icon this window will be popped.

For an average computer user this is really a worst information and invading the privacy of what they are doing, you have no clue what else this toolbar is capable of including the search terms you are using with your ip address to do some demographics without your notice.

There are plenty of contextual marketing compaines busted over last few years because of popup blockers and lawsuits, but look here BIG G is doing something sneaky?

hm... When a company goes public it makes a lot of difference...

G

India won't be a superpower until it alleviates poverty - Feb. 9, 2007

My View:

This article by Cait Murphy really triggered me a little bit but these guys won't give up saying these sort of things for making money on their way for their article.

So, there is no point in refelecting to this guy's words which has not much meaning to it, but I would like to speak up to my nation.

First of all,

Did India officially declared its a super power?
No. Then why do these guys worry as if it was wrongfully declared.

But, Will it be a super power?

Yes. It will be. The Young generations are geared and marching towards it. These sort of articles won't stop the growth of a nation not even a single bit. May be it may kill few doubtful enterprenuers, but they will join back to fuel the economy when they decide they should never make their investment decisions on bare articles like this.

I'm not sure how he came up with this article by just doing a search query and deciding that India is proclaiming itself as an super power and did some statistical analysis of what UNICEF say about India and finally saying so much criticism with bare assumption.

Taking assumption as a base line,

Why should not Indians think their country to become a super power?

Its all about optimisim and we dream to become a super power and we think we can.

Ofcourse you (Cait Murphy) are writing this article from core of center of optimism which is New York.

On a final note I want to say one thing and ask one thing to this guy:

Say:

When we declare India a Super Power all your concerns will be in its bay, don't worry.

Ask:

Have you ever wondered what a billion people can do?

If not start wondering because its happening now.


G

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Removing a URL or Website from Google

Key for this action: Removal is better than Redirection especially with search engines.

With the follow up to the previous post I wanted to removed the build-reciprocal-links.com related content from my website indexed by Google. I know there is an automated system.

Its hard to find from the Google Documentation, So I decided to provide the direct link here:

http://services.google.com/urlconsole/controller

The good thing with this system is you can track the status of your submission.

Please make sure you remove the content in your web server first before submitting here because the URL Console will check for the existence of that page if exists the action will fail.

The other options to remove your content from Google are Meta based and robots.txt based.

To know more about them use the below link:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35303

Note:
Meta based and robots.txt based may take significant amount of time since the Googlebot is busy in searching the world. If you need an immediate action the url controller is the best way to handle you situation.

Finally, before doing these things make sure you back up your content just in case you need them back and this is heavy action and might hurt your ranking if mis-used.

G