GMail Interrupted

Gmail going down for 2 hours was a news strewn across dailies in India - but the news is illusive to spot on Google News unless you specifically search for the term "GMail"

• http://ibnlive.in.com/news/going-offline-gmail-turns-into-gfail/86177-11.html
• http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Internet-/Gmail-turns-into-Gfail/articleshow/4183985.cms
• http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/3354845.cms
• http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=af1fd991-7462-4e55-9876-9cca59a1d42d
• http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=b5234e72-61b1-4117-b311-736b4b0474f3
  

ET has a soundbyte from Akhilesh Tuteja, Executive Director, KPMG, IT Advisory 

"This may have been due to an attack led by thousands of PCs controlled by a few people who may have directed them to crash the email service's servers or Google might have been alerted of such an attack. This does not put the data to risk, but availability of the data is definitely a problem," KPMG executive director Akhilesh Tuteja told ET. "This means Google now needs to differentiate between machines and human beings," he said. 
    
 "This is a sign of Google wanting to differentiate a real user from an attack, so that it can allow only genuine users (or human beings) and curb anymore similar attacks," said Mr Tuteja. These attacks cannot be prevented, but one can continuously monitor their sites to keep in place a back-up. 

Dapper goes Commercial

Dapper reinvented itself as an Ad Serving company ... but the good news is that the old Dapper tools for slicing/dicing, web-scrapping pages is still live ... mow moved to a new domain open.dapper.net :-)

It was interesting to see Dapper NOT announcing it changing its corporate focus but simply announcing the old tools to have moved to a new URL - check out excerpt of the mail below: 

The Dapp Factory Moves to open.dapper.net Dear nikhilkulkarni, Over the years we've been moving full steam ahead toward our business model, while continuing to offer Dapper.net's bevy of feed creation and transformation services for free.  We shall continue that tradition with the launch of open.dapper.net - the place to find the tools you know and love to create RSS, XML, Google Gadgets, and your world of content. Don't let the new look-and-feel over at the main dapper.net page bum you out :) You'll notice some changes there: the focus on our revolutionary dynamic ad creation and trafficking tools, the addition of a few sections that were previously not there (Advertisers, Agencies, Publishers, etc.) and the obvious omission of the Dapp search box. There's a link to open.dapper.net that will take you to a familiar sight (or site, for that matter).  But go ahead and bookmark that new address now!

About Better Presentation Skills

Source: http://blog.slideshare.net/2009/02/03/4-multimedia-learning-principles-that-will-improve-your-slides/#more-976

There are slides that are ugly but work. There are slides that are visually stunning but have zero learning value. In this post I want to:

1. Distinguish between the two aspects of slide design which explain this: graphic design and instructional design. Instructional design helps people learn. It does this by taking into account how people learn from different media. Graphic design is how you place objects on the slide so that you end up with an aesthetically pleasing result.

2. Explore how you can implement effective instructional design in your next SlideShare presentation.

Olivia Mitchell has been a Toastmaster, a management development trainer for a major bank, and a political candidate in New Zealand. Now she teaches others how to become more confident and effective presenters - through face-to-face training courses in New Zealand (Effective Speaking) and her blog Speaking about Presenting.

Also read her blog post on importance of design in a PowerPoint presentation. 

Bill Gates talks education

In his talk Bill recommends a new book called Work Hard. Be Nice.: How Two Inspired Teachers Created the Most Promising Schools in America. He likes the book so much he said he's sending one to every TED member. Later in an on-stage interview with Chris Anderson (that's what the sofa was for), Bill stated again how he thought the need to transform education was really America's greatest challenge. I wish you could see the interview with Chris, it really was the best part of his talk (TED will post the interview separately later). Bill was funny but also very serious about his commitment to spend the rest of life — Bill Gates 2.0 if you will — trying to change the world through his foundation. 

http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2009/02/testjkhhjkh---------testjkjh.html 

Kolki.com .. peculiraly designed site

http://www.kolki.com/

...they have 28 ventures ... and counting ...

http://www.network18online.com/

 

They have 28 ventures ... and counting ... some started up some aquired ...but they are doing what conglomerates did .... DIVERSIFY ... in the online space !!

 

Some Gyan on "organic" conversion of site's users

Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_web_app_autopsy.php

.... it is interesting that Wufoo and Feedburner have a lower conversion rate to the free services than BlinkSale - even though BlinkSale asks more questions during the registration process.

It is also interesting that RegOnline has a much lower percentage conversion rate to free accounts than the other services, but then has a higher percentage of accounts that end up becoming paid members. It was noted that RegOnline has the highest organic result for the search term 'Online Registration' in Google - so this may have something to do with the poor conversion rate to free accounts. As you'll see in the slides (you have downloaded them right?!), RegOnline also has the highest revenue per customer by an order of magnitude.

19 mistakes online businesses make

 

One of the best examples of e-commerce in India, irctc.co.in, does not need social networking to get about 200 thousand unique visitors every day. Your bank would have to do some real hard soul searching before having forums as part of their on line transaction portal.

Go read it in full: http://www.dare.co.in/strategy/business-essentials/19-mistakes-online-businesses-make.htm 

Source: 

 

Blogger Help Group not maintained

This post could have been a longish rant about my query on blogger forum/ help group posted 2 days back not being answered, but for my chance finding as seen in the screenshot above.

Not answering questions on time was ok - but it seems the Blogger team does not even bother to read through or filter the questions that are posted on the blogger group anymore. And so, the cracker has posted information about Bangalore Sex workers contact details and no one has even bothered to remove this post from the group... 

Way to go guys ... just reflects how well users are being supported through your 'beta' service!!