Posting on My Blogs

While going through the web traffic details and other statistics for my blog some weeks back, I realized that I had posted more than 150 articles in the last year or so when I started blogging more regularly.

I guess this is remarkable for someone who doesn't do this full time. I hope to continue with this pace in the future as well.

I don't think I can claim to the completeness and correctness of the facts, figures and information I provide on my website. However, I do try my best. In fact that's precisely the reason I thought putting disclaimer as part of the Terms of Use will be useful.

Posting on the blogs gives me an opportunity of self-expression and a way to vent out the thoughts, aspirations and frustrations. I love to write and express my thoughts and my blogs help me in making this possible.

I have full control over penning my thoughts in the manner which I desire. And due to the web technologies, making it available widely is taken care of.

The Internet and web technologies, I believe, are great equalizers. I guess for everyone like me who is a 'regular guy' or a 'common man', this makes it possible to get a platform for expressing and presenting one's views and thoughts at one's own full control.

Of course, self-restraint and self-control is needed to make sure it doesn't hurt others opinions and sensitivities. I have tried my best to take care of this aspect.

I hope to continue writing more and more and better and better, going ahead in the future. And must say a big thanks to the Internet and web technologies which makes this possible!

Death of Human Sensitivity

Few months right since morning, the TV News Channels (almost all of them like NDTV India, NDTV 24x7, India TV, Star News, Aaj Tak, Zee News, IBN7, Headlines Today, etc.) were repeatedly telecasting the video footage of the very shocking incident of a police officer (SI - Sub-Inspector) bleeding to death somewhere in the Tirunelveli district of the state of Tamil Nadu in India.

The fleeting images of the policeman raising his head, flailing his hands in despair at the onlookers for some help in relieving him of his enormous pain and suffering have stayed will and will stay for a long time to come.

This case highlights the death of sensitivity of one man towards another man. And while watching this shocking incident just one thought ran across my mind - it could have been me or you or for that matter, anyone of us instead of that helpless police officer.

The media seems to have found it more offending than usual perhaps for the reason that the men who appear to be mute spectators at the scene of this incident are those with power (politicians, government officials) and could have easily helped the dying SI had they wished to.

Just a parting thought and a very relevant question – how many of us (including those in the media) would stop and help a man lying injured on the roads due to accidental injury or something more gruesome like what the helpless police officer had to go through?

How to Make Changing City Easier

In my experience, changing city in India is never easy. Moving oneself and one's family is first part of changing city. Second part involves moving the household goods (for which one can avail the services offered by the 'Packers and Movers'). The third part which involves 'settling down' in the other city (and requires changes to documentation concerning oneself and family) is probably the most time-consuming and cumbersome.

I want to explain the third part in detail and talk about ways this can be made smoother. The main point is that if someone moves to another city on temporary basis (even though it may last couple of years - for example, one goes to another city for doing an engineering course which in India takes 4 years), he or she shouldn't be made to worry about the third part.

Here are the typical problems one faces on the third part, especially for temporary move to another city. Many of these do apply to even permanent move:

1. Telephone, mobile number:
For land line, it may probably not be possible to have unique number which can be used from anywhere in India. But for mobile, this is entirely possible. There should be nothing called 'roaming' and hence no 'roaming charges'. Mobile taken in one city should work with no difference in all other cities.

2. Car registration number:
Cars should be registered once in its lifetime and shouldn't need to go through change in registration number every time it changes city.

3. Ration card:
Ration card should have unique id which needn't be changed on change of city. It may be a good idea to combine this with the unique identity scheme that the Government has initiated.

Priorities for My Properties

One thing is sure, my areas of interest remain unchanged. Last year, in the very first year of the existence of my website on a domain name owned by me, I created wikis and blogs around Business Excellence, Personal Excellence and Excellence in General. In addition, I created two blogs (including this one) to capture my personal opinions and activities.

I don't see the need to extend beyond the areas I have decided to focus on. What I do see is the need to build more content on my website, especially content with multimedia - videos, presentation files, pictures, figures, etc. I also see the need to structure and integrate the content in an improved manner which will make moving across the entire website easy and interesting.

Another aspect I want to focus upon is on attracting higher volumes of traffic to my website. This will increase the likelihood of getting feedback from the site visitor's so that I can identify opportunities for improvement. Not only that, this will also help in monetizing my website. I am not expecting to become millionaire through this route but am surely expecting to earn enough to pay the monthly hosting charges. In any case, even if I fail in this endeavor I intend to go on paying the monthly hosting charges by myself. The thrill of expressing my thoughts and ideas is simply too much for me to do otherwise.

2009 - Oh what a year it was

For all and one, as an individual, 2009 was quite eventful in many ways, both on the personal and professional front.

2009 was “good, bad and ugly” and not just “good and bad” as has been the case in the past so many years.

One would tend to feel there is probably no better way to describe one's own experience than to use the phrase “good, bad and ugly”.

This is based on the name of the very famous western movie “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, et al.

For the world economy, it was a devastating year which challenged the fundamentals of doing business.

The world economy saw a massive contraction in growth rates cutting across all developed, developing and under-developed countries.

Most of the corporate organizations had to revise their revenue and profit margin targets for 2009 downwards as compared to 2008.

Employees cutting across all sectors of economy and cutting across all countries added lot many buzzwords to their workplace vocabulary

• job cut
• lay off
• retrenchment
• firing
• rightsizing
• downsizing
• furloughs
• mandatory unpaid leaves
• outplacement
• job offer withdrawal regret letter
• ‘asked to go’, etc.

This was probably also a time when the above buzzwords overran and overpowered the usual management buzzwords we hear so often while working in the corporate world like:

• TQM
• BPR
• Efficiency
• Effectiveness
• Productivity
• Quality
• Six Sigma
• Process Improvement
• ISO, etc.

Of course, revenue protection and cost reduction remained very much there and in fact grew in stature to become major themes for corporations battling for their survival.

All said and done, the experience of 2009 was a drive down the hell ho.e

And it aptly be summed thus, “2009 - Oh what a year it was!!!”

How to Say I Don't Know Your Language

India is a country with amazing diversity. From Kashmir in North to Kanyakumari (Tamilnadu) in the South, and from Gujarat in West to Kolkata (West Bengal) in the East extending upto Tawang (Arunachal Pradesh) in the North East, the quantum of diversity one would come across is amazing.

The above also holds true for the languages and dialects spoken across the length and breadth of India. The number of languages and dialects spoken in India would, in fact, easily run into an extremely high number.

Almost all Indians are generally comfortable with their Mother tongue, be it Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Malyali, etc. Many of them know and understand Hindi also (that's probably what makes Hindi movies coming out of Bollywood so very popular). Anda good number of Indians know and understand English as well (which is increasingly and extensively being used for business communication).

Amidst the diversity as explained above, I have realized over years that when one goes to any place/state it is a good idea to learn to say "I Don't Know Your Language" in the local language of that place/state. I have been to many parts of India in the last so many years and whenever I used to visit any place/state in India I used to find out and learn "How to Say I Don't Know Your Language". This list, I feel, will be helpful for others as well so I thought of compiling it and putting it on my website. Here you go...

Language (State) - "How to Say I Don't Know Your Language" in that Language
Kannada (Karnataka) - "Kannada Gotilla"
Bangla (West Bengal) - "Amaake Bangla Bujte Paadi Naa"
Marathi (Maharasthra) - "Mala Marathi Ait Nahi"
Tamil (Tamil Nadu) - "Tamil Teriyadu"

Monetizing Web Properties

Around more than a year back, I became sort of quite serious about creating and managing my web properties (websites and blogs) on the Internet. Incidentally, I created my first web property (a blog) many years ago.

And right from the time I created my first web property, I have constantly heard about people making money through their websites andblogs . I have also heard a lot about the Google Adsense and Google Adwords program and text-linked ad programs like Infolinks and Kontera.

In addition, I have also read numerous articles on the Internet around this theme such as:
1. How to monetize your website or blog?
2. Making money from your website or blog
3. Tips on how to make money from your website or blog

So finally, inspired with the above I have also got my account open in some of these money-making schemes. It may help generate few dollars if not more. But more importantly, however, I think putting ads on my web properties would be an indirect method of validating the content type and relevance of my web properties vis-a-vis the target visitors in my mind.

On this front, I can say, the ads which are appearing on my websites and blogs have been very useful. They have helped me confirm that the type and quality of content on my website has been created quite effectively!

Designing My Web Properties

While designing my web properties I follow one basic rule - have a simple and clear looking design (theme and content organization). This allows me to spend my efforts on content creation and organization rather than technical maintenance of the web properties.

Why do I want to focus on content creation? I have read in many articles and blogs on the Internet that what matters the most for a website to have high page rank is just its content quality. It's a fact that most of the visitors reach a website these days through a search engine. There are many theories behind how search engines rank a website but all of them seem to agree on at least one factor - compelling content for the target visitors. I just want to focus on content quality as I believe that content quality makes a site search engine friendly.

And why do I want to focus on content organization?. Content organization is also important so that visitors can navigate through a website once they reach it. Besides content organization makes it easy to maintain the content. I want to focus on content organization as well as I also believe that structured content organization makes the site maintenance friendly.

Upgrading TikiWiki Module

One of my earlier personal website with own domain name and hosted by Hostmonster was built using the TikiWiki module. At the release of newer versions of TikiWiki I used to get the message for upgrading everytime I used to login to the Control Panel.

I thought it will useful for others using TikiWiki and Hosted Web Services to list the steps down to upgrade. So, here are the steps:
1. Login to the Control Panel (cpanel) of your website
2. Click on 'Simple Scripts' - this is under the section 'Software / Services'
3. Look out for messages for upgrading the installation
4. Follow the instructions thereafter until upgrade is complete

I also noticed that I needed to upgrade the Database version too. Here are the steps for the same:
1. Login to your website Admin Console. If Database upgrade is needed, a message about the same will get displayed. A link for upgrading the Database will also be available as part of the upgrade message. Before clicking on that link, complete steps 2 to 5.
2. Click on 'File Manager' under the section 'Files'
3. Go to the folder that contains the Database files
4. Find a file with the name 'lock' and remove that file - it seems 'Simple Scripts' creates this lock file during installations and upgrades
5. Find another file with the name 'local.php' - this contains the username/password for the Database
6. Click the upgrade link (only after steps 2 to 5 are complete) and supply the Database username/password, as requested
7. Follow the instructions thereafter until upgrade is complete

Unethical Credit Card Companies

Many credit card companies have perfected the art of cheating customers. Some of the unethical practices are listed below:

1. The cheque a customer drops in the drop-box goes missing (and it is done deliberately with a malicious intent). The customer is informed that his cheque was not received and he will have to bear the late payment and finance charges.

2. The cheque dropped by a customer is not processed deliberately until a few days after the due date. And then the customer is informed that he will have to bear the late payment andfinance charges.

I had a really bad experience with one of the "branded" credit card companies. I was wrongly/unethically charged for late payment (unethical practice 2). I agreed to pay the ethical/correct/fair amount and dropped a cheque in their drop-box. And then they informed me that the cheque was not received by them (unethical practice #1).

I communicated with someone who was holding the position of "Asst Vice President - Customer Service". After this experience I was wondering how come this person got to this position? She should have been actually given the designation of ""Asst Vice President - Customer Harassment".

Anyways, I have canceled this credit card and am fighting it out with them.

A Really Bad Accident

While going to the office many months back I happened to see a horrible accident. A vehicle had gone over a woman lying dead on the road... both of her legs seemed to have been cut apart and were lying on the road.

It was a bad sight and made me feel very sick. And I guess anyone who has seen anything like this would empathize with me. Words fail me as I try to write this post. I guess road safety is an important aspect that all of us should not only be aware of but MUST practice.

This makes me really scared... And in an overall perspective it teaches us all to be nice and good to others as any day may prove to be our last day. All our achievements, worries, happiness, etc. could leave us in no time.

Regulatory Body for the Housing Sector

There’s an urgent need for establishing a government authority to regulate the real estate companies – on the lines of TRAI or IRDA. In today’s context, home should be seen as an essential commodity and not a luxury. After all we do say that all humans need and deserve “roti, kapda and makaan” – out of these three, makaan is the one that costs significantly more than the other two.

The recent strain on the entire real estate industry has made the “proverbial wolf to come out of the sheep’s clothing without any pretensions whatsoever”. Even in earlier days, the builder community was not known for ethical business practices.

My own experience in dealing with one of the top builders of NCR has been very painful. I went ahead with the booking of a property relying on the builder’s brand image. After having failed to get home loan for making the down-payment I tried to get refund but have been made to go in circles just like what you see on a “jalebi”.

I am still trying hard to settle this matter – either get the builder to hand me a list of banks who have pre-approved the project (so that I get loan) or get refund of the money.

It is true that many customers are requesting for refunds (even the genuine buyers). The primary reason includes the delays and indefinite waits which home buyer s have experienced since the last quarter of 2007. On top of it, builders have taken money from home buyers even for those projects which have not got approvals from government authorities and banks. The poor customers are in a fix as they cannot afford to pay additional amounts to the builders since getting home loans disbursed these days is next to impossible.

In the above situation, either the government should step in to settle the matter or like good old capitalist rules of game the builder files for bankruptcy and pays the home buyers whatever salvage value is possible.

Numerology Based Baby Name Selector

While searching for a good name for my daughter (few years back when she was born), I developed an excel-based utility to select a name based on numerology.

The Numerology Based Baby Name Selector is a useful utility that can be used for selecting the name of you baby boy or baby girl as per Numerology calculations.

The utility is developed using spreadsheet.

Click here to download the Numerology Based Baby Name Selector

Moving to My Own Domain

After careful considerations of many factors which included the "money" involved with purchasing a domain and a hosted website, I finally went ahead and bit the bullet!

I purchased a domain which came along with a hosting package I bought from www.hostmonster.com. The domain name is my nickname that I have been using for quite sometime now.

I was maintaining four blogs on www.blogger.com and have moved them to my own domain. Just to make sure that the visitors to my existing blogs don't have any difficulty in reaching here I have posted about the move to this domain on all the four blogs.

The web platform I decided to use is TikiWiki. This decision came about after extensive trials of various web platforms like TikiWiki, Drupal, Joomla, MODx, BuddyPress and few more.

Tikiwiki provides a comprehensive platform that can be used to create web content of various types such as blogs, wikis, articles, forums, etc. I am currently using the blogs functionality and will soon start working on buildinjg wiki-style content. The admin console offered by TikiWiki seems quite easy to use. Especially for someone like me who doesn't want to get into the techie-mode for maintaining a website, it seems to be just the right solution.

Creating Personal Website, Blogs and Wikis

Here are few learning that I had in the entire process of streamlining my web assets - personal website, blogs and wikis:

1. Blogger is the best in my opinion as it seamlessly integrates with other Google services. Also, I felt more comfortable with managing my blogs using Blogger than with Wordpress or with the other Wordpress-based blog site that I used.

2. Blogger does not provide great themes as compared to Wordpress but that is fine as for a blog the main strength should be its content rather than other aspects.

3. Importing a blog from Wordpress into Blogger is quite time consuming. There is a converter available for this at http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/ but the quality of conversion is not upto the mark. I found an innovative way to do it though - I will explain more about this in later posts.

4. Blogger has the option of adding "Label" to posts, whereas Wordpress provides "Category" and "Tag" options. I felt that Label option is fine as it could be used both as a category or as a tag. Anyways, for any post, both the "Category" and "Tag" have to be very close (or at times same) as they would refer to the same content.

5. Weebly is an excellent website builder. My suggestion is to start with a free version and when you have enough eyeballs move to the Pro version. I also intend to follow this path.

6. I used http://feedburner.google.com/ for generating the RSS feeds of my blogs and can say that this is simply a great tool. When I was trying to connect my Blogger blogs to Weebly personal website, I found problems with the simple RSS feed that Blogger was generating by default. Blogger allows you to use the feed from FeedBurner instead of the default feed. Once I did that it worked fine for me. I will explain more about this in later posts.

Managing My Blogs

I am now maintaining four blogs :-

1. Personal blog (this one)
2. Blog on business and business excellence
3. Blog on life and personal excellence
4. Blog on the world and excellence in general

The first one will have random thoughts and musings that occur to me. The other three are for the specific topics as mentioned above. The idea behind this change to the way I plan to manage my blogs is to make sure I have specific blogs for specific content.

Streamlining My Personal Website, Blogs and Wikis

In the last 3 years, I have spent considerable efforts in experimenting with many ideas and tools for streamlining my web assets - personal website, blogs and wikis.

1. I deleted my personal website which was on http://geocities.yahoo.com/ and first moved it to http://www.weebly.com/, then to a hosting company (www.hostmonster.com), then to google apps and finally to the google sites. The movement out of geocities was, in fact, not really a movement; it was rather a fresh creation from the scratch. The geocities site was created by me in 2003 or perhaps in 2002 - not very sure now. I had virtually stopped updating it for all practical purposes since 2005.

Note - As per the information on their site, Geocities is closing down later this year.

2. I had a personal blog right since 2005 but I was hardly updating it. Recently I created few more blogs on certain niche areas of my interest. This all was done using Blogger - http://www.blogger.com. Then I decided to move them to http://wordpress.com/, and then again decided to move them to another Wordpress-based blog site. And finally, I have moved back the whole of it to Blogger. And I think I will continue this way going forward.

3. I am still stuck on my wikis. I never had any so have created one using http://www.wikidot.com/. Overall, I am okay with it though it needs one to learn the Wikidot language. I will post about my experience later on when I am able to bring it up.

From "Made in Japan" to "Made in India"

I would like to see the above transition happen. I think that will mean something for us as Indians. This is not a reality today as we all know. Making 'Made in India' a name to reckon with requires serious effort from all quarters - government bodies, industrialists, professionals, academicians and even ordinary citizens.

This should really start with us - the ordinary citizens. If we demand high standards everywhere, the service providers will soon need to change gears to meet up with the enhanced expectations.

The other side to this is: can we really afford to do this? With a significant majority struggling below the poverty line and having to constantly worry about their next meal, this idea sounds Utopian.

What's the way out then? Not sure... business excellence in this context should probably encompass all walks of life and must include the business of governing a country in addition to what we normally understand from the word "business".

Health Before Wealth

Health should come before wealth.

It may seem like wealth can buy health but this is a misconception.

A wealthy person can use his wealth to keep healthy but only to a certain extent.

Wealth or money can be used to purchase the food, medicines and equipment required for staying fit and healthy.

An illustrative list of food, medicines and equipment for protecting or enhancing health is given below.

Health Foods

• Exotic fruits and vegetables
• Organic farm produce
• Health drinks, protein shakes

Health Medicines

• Vitamin supplements
• Immunity booster pills

Health Equipment

• Treadmill
• Body Relaxer
• Sauna
• Weights

The first and foremost requirement to stay healthy is to cultivate a healthy lifestyle.

Once health deteriorates beyond a certain point the food, medicines and equipment listed above may not be of much use.

And in such a case even the entire wealth of a person would fail to buy health.

You should strive to cultivate healthy lifestyle and earn health rather than trying to buy health. You must Be Wise About Your Health.

And always remember that, health should come over wealth.

3 Quick Tips on Health and Fitness

Health and Fitness is a concern for everyone. Being healthy and fit makes one enjoy life to its fullest. How to be healthy and fit?
1. Eat well
2. Take adequate rest
3. Exercise regularly