Google has released its goo.gl URL shortener to the public

Google has released its goo.gl URL shortener to the public, and created a standalone website so that anyone can use the service to shorten and track the URLs they share via social media sites and e-mail.

The phrase “Google it” is getting a whole new meaning today; the search giant has just released its goo.gl URL shortener to the public and created a standalone website so that anyone can use Google to shorten and track the URLs they share via social media sites and e-mail.

Goo.gl initially debuted last December as a feature integrated into other Google () products. Google’s newly public URL shortener competes with a myriad of other popular services, Bit.ly () being the most notable of the bunch.

The company claims that its shortener boasts stability, security and speed. The former two are especially important as several other services have been plagued by both downtime and malicious parties masking deceptive links. Goo.gl features automatic spam detection, and “near 100% uptime since our initial launch,” according to the company’s announcement.

The product also comes with expected URL-tracking features. As a goo.gl user, you can log in to your Google account to view URL history, traffic sources, referrers and visitor profiles for countries, browsers and platforms.

Google is known to hide bonus easter egg features in its products, and goo.gl is no different. Earlier today, Google engineer Matt Cutts tweeted one such easter egg — add .qr to a shortened goo.gl URL and you’ll create a QR code that, when scanned, will redirect to the original URL. It’s a quirky additive that makes goo.gl all the more friendly for brands and marketers experimenting with QR codes. A Twitter () tipster also informed us that you can add .info to the goo.gl URL to check out analytics.

As for why Google is going public with goo.gl, it’s anybody’s guess. Initially, goo.gl was designed because the company didn’t want to rely on other URL shorteners for the same purpose. Our guess is that it’s another small part to the much speculated about social strategy. After all, Google is the business of URLs, and URLs are the fabric of the social web. What’s your take? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Cloud Burst, Cloud Computing

It’s the right season to go chasing clouds–in a manner of speaking. So we present the ‘seriously dumbed down guide to cloud’–the hottest term in computing
Ever so often, in your company’s IT department, you’ll hear someone say, “Why live in the desktop when you can live in the cloud?”
At this point, nobody is going to blame you if you wonder what the IT department has been smoking. It might pay to get on board though, tiresome as it may seem. After all, you just finished mastering “wet lease” and came to terms with “rainmaker”, and now there’s “cloud” to contend with. In the world of jargon, there’s never a drought, is there?
But the good news is that “cloud” and “cloud computing” are swiftly saturating, lurking in the corridor of every company that wants to bring down costs and be liberated from the “tyranny of the geeks”. In other words, IT departments are simply using the term—made sexy by Google’s Eric Schmidt in 2006 to describe his company’s approach to Software as a Service (SaaS)—in a bid to describe the client-server model (hang in there, we’ll translate this too, in just a moment).
Everyone’s cloud-surfing
To begin with, we’ll get rid of your chief anxiety-inducing question: What if I don’t use cloud? Am I a technological troglodyte?
Chances are really low that you are not already using cloud computing. If you use a Web-based email service (such as Hotmail, Yahoo, Google, GMX or Gawab), you are already using “cloud”. Congratulations.
But this might leave you scratching your head and asking, “So, what’s new then?” Well, what’s new is that cloud computing has now begun to radically change the IT business, transforming it for large and medium enterprises as well as for individuals such as you and me.
Assume you have a small business or run an NGO. Using a Web-based email service helps you do three invisible things: move the load of computing from your desktop or laptop to a machine owned by someone else on the Net; stop adding storage space or backup devices as the volume of your emails grows; and not purchase the software on which the email runs. Yes, as a business and as an individual, you are not buying software licences any more. And you are still on the right side of the law. How cool is that? Because anyone who runs a business is familiar with the nightmare of buying additional licensing as the workforce grows (for specifically business-related cloud computing services, see “Nine ways to live among the clouds”).
Even if you’re not a business owner or manager, but have used Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Photobucket, YouTube or Vimeo, you are a veteran cloud user. If you use Google Docs to store, share and collaborate on your documents, you have moved a step ahead on the cloud computing platform and qualify as an advanced user. And if you’ve begun to use Wikis for content management and collaboration, you are perhaps a cloud computing champ. In fact, you are qualified to use terms such as “distributed-access workspace” just to confound everyone and effectively keep competition anxious.
The SaaS syndrome
At this point, you may wish to describe cloud computing as “Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like electricity”. That’s the simple Wikipedia definition. Notice how it also carefully includes a rough-around-the-edges definition of SaaS.
When you put software on the Web and make it accessible to multiple people, you get SaaS. “Because SaaS can be designed to be modular and ‘pay-as-you-go’, it has become the hot option over software that you buy, own and keep paying licence fees for even when you are not using all the features of the package,” says Darshan Jadav, CEO of Pune-based Widget Factory Software, a decade-old company that has expertise in financial software and offers small and medium businesses with supply chain management capability in cloud.
Fundamentally, Widget Factory brings SAP-style resources to small firms in the area of pay, accounts, inventory management and control, HR management, business intelligence and reporting tools. What providers like Widget Factory enable for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is the ability to use and pay for what they need, without having to worry about platforms, infrastructure, software upgrades, availability, backup and crashes. “Best of all,” points out Jadav, “they don’t need an IT team to run around managing complex technology. Cloud takes the headache out of computing.”
It’s raining convenience
What cloud does is reduce start-up costs for enterprises by bringing down investments in hardware, controlling spiralling software and hardware upgrade outlays and shrinking IT maintenance crews.
But what does it do for you and me?
To begin with, thanks to cloud computing, you can work from anywhere and access your data even when you are not on your own computer. Your data and software applications are available to you regardless of where you are, as long as you can log on to the Internet.
Besides, with your data living in cloud, you become machine-independent—whether you have a PC or a Mac at your disposal, you can access your data just by opening a browser.
So if your computer crashes you needn’t worry about your data—just move to the next terminal and continue working. A few months ago, Vishal Bali, the CEO of the Wockhardt Hospitals group, lost his laptop. It wasn’t the hardware that he was worried about—he needed urgent access to data to continue with his meetings. Perhaps, if the data were maintained in cloud, there would have been a silver lining.
The dark cloud?
But there is probably good reason he didn’t put it there. Because cloud computing usage is also going through a serious reality check on the security front.
No one wants sensitive company data to sit on a computing grid that is shared by others—including the competition—unless it is secure. So the question is, what happens if your cloud computing provider’s systems are hacked or compromised? A June 2008 Gartner study, Assessing the Security Risks of Cloud Computing, said cloud computing had associated risks in the areas of data integrity, recovery, privacy and even legal issues such as regulatory compliances (for example, you may not be comfortable with local privacy laws where your data is being stored if it differs from your own country’s) and auditing. These issues are being addressed as standards are being developed by Cloud Security Alliance (www.cloudsecurityalliance.org) and other organizations.
Meanwhile, SMEs and individuals don’t need to get overly apprehensive. What large enterprises—and governments—are debating is somewhat similar to what we were wondering about a decade ago when we walked around with floppy disks: What if I lose the disk? We lived through that, right?
DRIVING A DIFFERENCE
Honestly, what’s so great about cloud computing? Here’s an off-the-beaten-path (but on the road) example to set you thinking.
You own a car. And you plan to keep it for the next 10 years. Aren’t you lucky the car does not have an onboard computer? Because if it did, the computer would be outdated in a couple of years. Which is why auto manufacturers are reluctant to install powerful computers on the dash, preferring to have simple things such as GPS devices there. But if you could install a device that accesses the computing power in a cloud, it would make for a killer app. The thrust here is on keeping it relevant through the life of your investment, since a car’s life spans 10-15 years on average. So, while the actual computing device would remain the same, the cloud computing power behind it could keep improving, providing the car with a value-for-money feature that you don’t have to pay to upgrade.
NINE WAYS TO LIVE AMONG THE CLOUDS
Cloud-based services beyond email and social media that you may want to explore
Comindworks
www.comindwork.com
Meant for project management on a reasonably large scale. Assign tasks, create and share Wiki-style information, track projects, store project artefacts, maintain to-do lists, even create Gantt charts, workflows and milestones. Pay-as-you-go pricing.
Basecamp
www.basecamphq.com
Basecamp is a project management and collaboration product of 37Signals (a Web-based software firm). Adidas, Hard Rock Café and DHL are just some Basecamp users. Works with a variety of mobile phone apps for third-party planning, reporting, time tracking, billing and invoicing applications. From $24 (around Rs1,200) per month onwards.
Box
www.box.net
A lighter competitor to Basecamp, with document and project management capabilities, such as Office-on-the-go. Has a free version.
PBworks
www.pbworks.com
Content management and sharing tool for business, education and personal use. PBworks is great to use when you have a community sharing information, such as a birdwatchers’ club or a cooperative housing society. It’s also ideal when you are collaborating with customers or collating data, such as an NGO that wants to capture knowledge from a variety of different sources, or from organizations to individuals. Pricing will depend on the services you want to use.
TWiki
http://twiki.org
Flexible, industrial-strength, open-source Wiki tool for collaboration, document management, and creating and using a knowledge base. In use by global enterprises such as consultants, mobile service providers, IT support companies, publishing firms, travel agencies, career matching services and so on. Pricing will depend on the services you want to use.
SalesForce
www.salesforce.com
From $5 a month upwards, this suite of applications hosted in the cloud helps manage sales contacts and capture leads from your website. It lets you use lead management, reporting and analytics as well as delivering scalable CRM (customer relationship management) tools. Used by Su-Kam and Bajaj Finance, among others, in India. Pricing will depend on the services you want to use.
Novatium
www.novatium.com
This is a Chennai-based company with outstanding credentials and an approach that lets it stick its neck out: Novatium provides Desktop as a Service, Software as a Service, and a complete virus-free computing environment. Novatium markets thin clients: low-maintenance machines that connect to a central server, from where software and data is accessible for computing. Novatium turns all computing into a service, like a utility: You pay for it when you switch it on, much like electricity. Makes a great option for educational institutes that want to offer computing power to all their students, but don’t want to make a large upfront investment in hardware and an IT maintenance team. Pricing will depend on the services you want to use.
Google AppEngine
http://code.google.com/appengine
Lets you host your applications without having to own the hardware. This is a really low-cost and reliable solution for start-ups that need to build and test applications before moving on to their own infrastructure (if at all!). Each app costs $8 per user per month. No payment required while the app is in development.
Dropbox
www.dropbox.com
Data files (video, photo, music, docs) spread across your laptops, desktops and mobile phones can be replicated across all the devices by just updating them in one place that is hosted in a cloud. Makes data loss impossible and makes sharing a breeze—just share the appropriate folder you want with anyone. 2GB storage free. Dropbox, in turn, uses Amazon’s S3 cloud storage service as a back-end. Pricing will depend on the services you want to use.
Arun Katiyar is a content and communication consultant with a focus on technology companies. He is a published author with HarperCollins and has extensive media experience spanning music, print, radio, Internet and mobiles.

Make Money Online

Every body needs money to live a peace full and happy life. So now day money is called vitamin M as no one can live without it. If we have less vitamin a, b, c, d, e and k then we can enjoy the life the way we want but without this vitamin M it’s impossible to enjoy the life the way we want, we need.

 How to make money online? It is the question that has made everybody to worry. Each person is running towards making money. People spend most of the time, may be 15 hours a day to make money, and even they could not reach the target they want to earn they will not hesitate to spend more time.

Internet is not only the tool of entertainment, its bit more then it. There are number of genuine opportunities to make money online. And the biggest advantage of making money online is the fact that it allow us to work from home.

One more good way to make money online is Blogging. We all know that there are great possible to build a handsome paying career with blogging. We can have unlimited opportunity to monetize our blogs.

Here I am showing you some over all easy ways to make money online.

• ·         You can earn money with Ebay.
• ·         Earn Money through blogging.
• ·         Make money by doing Affiliate Marketing.
• ·         One other way to make money online is forex trading.
• ·         Google adsense is the most popular and easiest way to make money online.
• ·         By writing articles and web content also we can earn money online.
• ·         You can also earn money online by selling the E-Books.
• ·         Another great way to make money online is ClickBank.

These are just overviews of making money online, now I would like to discuss the way how we can earn online by doing above activities in my next article.

Why An Employee Leaves the Job???

Now days it’s a major issue for well known organization as well as small business that their employees are leaving the jobs. If the organizations want to remain their prestige in market and really understands the value of their employees the management of the organization should look in to the matter and if required has to interfere for the same even with HRM as well as personally with the employees. It’s very much important task for an organization or a business company to remain the experienced, honest and capable employees now days.

The success of company or business is built on work proficiency of employees and their abilities, when a capable, experienced and an honest employee leaves the company then company may have lose. To have another employee instead of the current, provide him guidance may take time and money, and it happens that company can not get the new employee as the old one in same salary too.

In this case company should compromise with less experienced person if it gives importance to the employee, it may be harmful to company, and if the company goes to the same experienced person with high salary then organization has to face the other employees that may be a reason of unity of an organization. It is not fact that each time an employee leaves the job just because of less salary; other so many factors are responsible for it. Some times an employee does not leave the job but he leaves the senior person, manager or supervisor. There may be many departments in a company; if the movement of leaving and hiring an employee is happening to a single department then it may fault of manager or the head of the department.

When a Manager behave with the employees as machine, when he takes the work forcefully to reach the targets then employee feels as misbehave, and he has to leave the company. In fact he leaves the manager not the company. When manager can not promote an employee, asks to follow the rules very rudely, can not manage for the progress of an employee then the employee feels his future in dark, and the result is that he has to leave the company. If he could not leave the company then he will work as a machine and loses his efficiency of work that may harm the organization.

Some managers behave either in the way of relationship or follow like British government “Divide and Rule”. Such managers have fear of unity of all the employees that unity of all the employees may harm to his own self so to keep a command on all the employees he tries for disarray between employees continuously. He has been partial to the employees who move around him and injustice to an honest employee. At this time an honest employee will be pessimist and when he gets the chance he leaves such manager. Such manager can be harmful to the organization in long term.

Some Managers keeps the employees away from required tools or facilities under the reason of frugality, so employees get troubled in work to complete it in proper way within time limit and manager will blame on that employee. E.g. if a marketing manager gives allowance with a sales man can not have his two times’ bread, or he has to take long time to travel in such cases the sales man get tired and will do less work and can not achieve the targets and be pessimist. At this time if he gets an opportunity he will join the competitor. The organization may harm with a great loss when an employee join the competitive company. If this employee had get good clients with his own ability and has developed personal relations with clients then it may happens that the organization lose the clients too.

Some managers get fear from the persons who are working under his supervision, so he never gives an opportunity to his lower level person. Even don’t take their advice while taking the decisions, if it’s the chance to get appreciation the manager will always try to prove that he has done that job at all although the second level person has done 90% of job. At this time that second level person will ever try to get appreciated and when ever get opportunity leaves the organization. If the organization will try to find out the actual reasons why employees are leaving the job and take proper actions against them it can save its prestige as well as precious Manpower.

Use Orkut and keep in touch with friends & relatives.

Who does not know Orkut???

In this high tech world, where every thing is being done online now within few seconds either it is the issue of money transaction or generating the business as well making branding of a new product. Online world has made every thing quick and easy in the last ten years, It will be strange if some one does not know Orkut.

Orkut is an online community which has made easy to be in touch with friends and relatives. It has also helped to keep update our self by its photo sharing and scraping services. Now a day people do not wait for a mobile message or a phone call of friends, they just wait for a single scrap, and be in touch with their loved ones.

Some times I feel that Orkut has bring our past communication method once again.
Earlier people wait for a mail of their friends and relatives on some occasion or in festival, same way now they wait for a single scrap on Orkut for the same. Orkut has reduced the distance between our friends and relatives.

I would like to share some Advantages and Disadvantages of Orkut over here, hope they will surely give you better idea of using Orkut.

Advantages of Orkut:

• Any one can get registered with Orkut within a few minutes.

• We can create a detailed profile, with which we can give and get an idea about our self as well others that can be editing any time.

• We can make n number of friends in Orkut.

• We can send n number of scraps to our friends and relatives.

• We can also create and share our photo albums with Orkut.

• We can also be fan of our loved ones; as well can send teaser and much more.

• We can create and share our favorite videos while using Orkut.

• Play games or number of good applications.

• Send free SMS on friends’ mobile.

• Promote or get promoted your self, product or services that you offer to people.

• Send personal messages to friends if you don’t want others to read :)

• Write good testimonials to impress the friends ;)

• We can create the events too.

• We can get updates of our friends and relatives.

• We can create an app and can add them to Orkut.

• We can share and hide our self, as well as everything that we have done with our Orkut profile from every one too.

The list can be long and long but these are the main advantages that any one can have with his or her Orkut profile. :)

Disadvantages of Orkut:

• If you have not done proper settings for your account any one can search and see your profile, photos, videos, scraps and every thing you have done with your account.

• The most effective disadvantage that I feel just today is, if you have any friend named X, on orkut, you have installed skype in your system, and has contact the same name X you will find Skype icon with the person who is in your orkut id. It means you will think it’s the same person that you have added in orkut but it may be that both the persons are different so be aware of this. :)

So keep this both Advantages and Disadvantages of orkut in mind, while scraping, messaging and photo sharing.

Don’t forget to enjoy video sharing too. :)

Save your computer from Facebook virus

Since last week I am getting the email from Facebook that includes below message.

Subject: [virus Win32/Oficla.DI trojan] Facebook Password Reset Confirmation! Customer Message.
From: support@facebook.com

Dear user of facebook,

Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed.
You can find your new password in attached document.

Thanks,
Your Facebook.

Such emails have an attachment of .zip file, if I want to try to save it or to download it it shows virus alert. First of all I think that it might be true as it looked genuine, but when I tried to open and save the attachment and tried to reset my password it showed a virus alert.
Steps to keep your computer safe from Facebook (and other) Virus.
• If you want to reset your password indeed don’t click any link of such kind of emails that ask for the confirmation.
• Please don’t try to download any attachment; especially any .zip file. However, either Facebook or any other website does not send us any attachment to reset our password.
• Kindly use latest version of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browser.
• Use PhishTank website to check if you suspect any website.
That’s it for the moment!

Rules and Benefits of Submitting articles in Ezine Articles.com

Today while discussing with my friend about getting free back links I get inspired to write about this.

Article submission is a good way to get free one way back link for any website. Any SEO wants to get free back link for his own site as well as for client’s website, either it’s a service providing website or just a small website having 5 to 10 pages.

Ezine Articles.com is one of the best article submission website to submit articles free. One can generate good back links through this website by submitting good articles. Ezine is one of the best just because it provides free article submission to authors initially as well as it has good relevant and pure high traffic. I am saying initially because it has limits of free article submission. One can not spam with this website.

Here good, relevant and pure words have some definitions. Yes the things are well maintained over here by categorization. One can not submit any article to any irrelevant category, Ezine has its own editors’ team to check and verify articles quality and all the relevant things.

Benefits of using Ezine articles are as below:

• Ezine provides Free article submission
• Ezine provides Expert author status
• One can create free profile with own photo.
• Our article can appear on the high-traffic home page just within 48 hours
• Pure and Well categorization
• Impartial human editors.
• Free back link to a website on three keywords.
• Generate rss feed for each article
• Good, pure and relevant traffic.
• If article is good instant publishing
• No one can use, write or publish your article twice.
• You can post article up to 5000 words
• One can resubmit the article which is not published because of any issue.

I can say that if you get expert author status on Ezine, you can submit or publish your article on any website any where across the globe. 

Keep in mind these rules while submitting your article on Ezine articles.com:

• Post your article in appropriate category, irrelevant categorization may stop your article being published on the website.
• Place your own photo don’t use any irrelevant image.
• If you are submitting your article free you can not use more then 3 keywords in author signature.
• No one can use
• Keywords should be comma separated
• Don’t post half articles or just paragraphs.
• Don’t post an article that have less then 250 words.
• By previewing the article we can have idea of spelling mistakes and can make it correct.
• Don’t post any copied articles.
• Post the original articles written on your own only.

So what are you waiting for?? Just go to ezine and submit articles absolutely free, and get impressed your client as well as earn an expert author status.

7 BIG advantages to submitting an XML sitemap ...even when your site is already using an HTML sitemap

As you know, an HTML sitemap is a single webpage that is essentially a list of links to all of your site's web pages. It provides a means by which a searchengine spider can easily find and crawl all of your site's pages. On the other hand, a XML sitemap (aka a Google Sitemap, although it's used by Yahoo and Microsoft as well) is a special file that provides searchengines with specific directives about what pages to crawl and how often.

Searchengines are not required to strictly obey these directives but they do tend to use them as guidelines.
Every site needs an HTML sitemap. An XML sitemap, on the other hand, is not strictly necessary. But there are several advantages to having one...

You increase the chances that search engines will find all URLs you want indexed. You can set a priority and last modification date on your more important pages to ensure more regular crawling. Your sitemap data is integrated with your other site data in Google Webmaster Central, making these associated tools even more useful.

Google states that XML sitemaps are particularly useful if...Your site has dynamic content.
Your site has pages that aren't easily discovered during the crawl process, such as pages featuring AJAX or Flash.

Your site is new or isn't well linked. Google crawls the web and finds pages by following links from one page to another. If your site isn't well linked, it may be hard for Google to find and index all of your pages. Your site has a large number of pages that aren't well linked to eachother, or are not linked to at all.

While an HTML site is a must-have, an XML sitemap is nice-to-have—but not necessary. However, if your site has pages that are difficult to get or keep indexed, an XML sitemap is the best way to keep search engines instantly and continuously informed of changes to your web site while telling it specifically which pages you would like to be given priority in the indexing process.

Brand Management Part-2 Brand Equity & Brand Franchise

Brand Equity
Regarding my previous post about What is Brand management? here is some more details about Brand equity & Brand Franchise today. Brand equity refer to the marketing effects or outcomes that grow to a product with its brand name compared with those that would grow if the same product do not have the brand name. At the base of these marketing effects is consumers' knowledge. We can say in other words, consumers' knowledge about a brand makes manufacturers/advertisers respond differently or adopt properly expert actions for the marketing of the brand.

Brand Franchise:

An arrangement between a brand name producer and a wholesaler or vendor that gives the wholesaler or vendor the private right to sell the brand producer's product in a exact territory. This arrangement is usually done by contractual agreement over a period of time. A brand franchise allows the wholesaler or vendor to sell the product in a noncompetitive market and therefore to set price boundaries as the traffic will bear.

"What is Brand Management"???

Today while having a cup of coffee, one of my friend asked me that what is brand management, and his question awake me to think on it. I found that are very low awareness about this topic so I decide to write something what I know about the brand and brand management.

Well, Brand management is nothing but the application of marketing techniques to a specific product or brand. To show the value of product to customers it is required to increase brand franchise and brand equity. The people expect quality products, from a brand name and they continue the future purchase with the same brand, same way marketers see a brand as an implied promise that the level of quality should be maintain for the same product.

Now question arise here what is brand Franchise and brand equity? In my next post I am going to cover these two topics in detail.

Here is the Basic Idea about Brand Management.

Brand management is just an application of Marketing the Product or Brand.

In a competitive market, while making a comparison it may increase the sales more. The manufacturers may get more charge for the product. The value of the brand is determined by the amount of profit it generates for the manufacturer. This can result from a combination of increased sales and increased price, and/or reduced COGS (cost of goods sold), and/or reduced or more efficient marketing investment. All of these enhancements may improve the profitability of a brand, and thus, "Brand Managers" often carry line-management accountability for a brand's P&L (Profit and Loss) profitability, in contrast to marketing staff manager roles, which are allocated budgets from above, to manage and execute. In this regard, Brand Management is often viewed in organizations as a broader and more strategic role than Marketing alone.