Mobile email from Rediff.com

Rediff.com on Wednesday launched ‘Rediffmail NG', the next generation email service that works across all mobile phone platforms including Symbian, Java and Android, as well as on all mobile phones in the market.

“India's 67-crore mobile phone users now have the advantage of being able to send and receive unlimited email, look up contacts and assign tasks to the calendar, and set reminders with the same ease from mobile devices as from their PC — and all for the lowest price available (Rs.50 a month, inclusive of data charges),” said Rediff.com India Chairman and CEO Ajit Balakrishnan.

Users of Rediffmail NG can maintain service upon switching phones which has become increasingly important with the introduction of new phone models on a continuous basis. Additionally, Rediffmail NG offers seamless service across a users phone and PC, providing instant and secure synchronisation, and full-service features including administrative control, SMS and always-on email service, he pointed out.

Pact with MTNL
Meanwhile, Rediff.com has also joined hands with Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. to offer email service on mobile phones.

The service is available for MTNL users in Delhi and Mumbai currently. The company is in talks with other telecom operators to expand the service.

Online portal in India for Grocery purchase

Here is a boon for working couples in Bangalore and Hyderabad. You need not spend lot of time in Grocery shopping anymore.


You can also save petrol, traffic and energy for something else. A new portal has come up - www.greenytails.com - that delivers the Grocery for you at your door step. The delivery is done for free as long as you order for a minimum of Rs. 300.



Greeny tails also promises to supply you with tonnes of promotion codes/coupons if you send them an email at info@greenytails.com, with subject line bearing "Request for promotion codes". The portal seems to be promising but still lots of work to be done for sure.

Create your own ringtones

Wolfram Tones is an online sound generator that can help you create 100% original patterns of music that you can download to your cell phone and use as a ringtone. You’ll get a different tone every time you press the composition button.

Using Wolfram is simple. Just select a genre or style of music for the ring tone (like Rock, Jazz, Classical, etc.) and the program will generate a completely random but pleasing tone. You can even specify how various musical instruments should be used to render the composition.

When you are done, you can either download the MIDI ringtone to your computer or you can send it directly to your cell phone via SMS as a ringtone attachment.

Search Engine by Apple?

Rumours are floating around that Apple may be building a search engine. As per tech crunch, the rumour may not be true as they have not seen any search companies losing their employess to Apple.

Gmail with Video chat

Google has added the video chat feature to their fast growing popular Gmail application.


In order to access Gmail Video and Voice Chat, users have to install the voice and video plug-in and Google takes care of the rest.

Google and the Gmail team are in the initial stages of rolling this feature out to PC and Mac machines, which means the functionality may not appear right away. But don't worry, the Gmail team guarantees that the functionality will be available to everyone in the next couple of days.

Vonage settles dispute with Sprint

Wireless telecoms carrier Sprint Nextel and Internet phone company Vonage said on Oct. 8 they had settled a patent dispute and entered into a licensing agreement.

A federal court jury found in September that Vonage had infringed Sprint patents and ordered Vonage to pay $69.5 million in damages.

Vonage said the agreement is valued at $80 million. Sprint will license its technology, which helps connect phone calls between Internet and telecoms networks, to Vonage.

New features from Google Docs and Spreadsheets

Here are some cool features from Google for their Docs and Spreadsheets application.

They say they have focused more on the following areas.

Looking pretty
Getting organized
Search that thinks ahead


Looking Pretty - Yes, you can see the difference as soon you enter. It is a lot more easier to view the contents and looks pleasant too.

Getting organized - The much awaited folders option are available now. Interesting thing is it act as a tag too!!! I defintely love the drag & drop option.

Search that thinks ahead - The search has become more or like the Google Suggest. As you start typing you start getting the suggestions based on the file names you have saved already in your account.

All these new features defintely add value to makes life even more easier for the users.


More details here

Google Calendar gallery

A new feature has been introducced to the Google Calendar application. Using Google Calendar gallery, you create, share and save your favorite upcoming events directly in Google Calendar.A lot of popular events have already been shared by a few people or companies. NBA, Disney, TLC Channel are among those few.

Click here more details

How to improve Alexa rank?

Popular blogger Maki at doshdosh.com has come out with 20 different ways to improve one's Alexa rank.

Some of them are quite obvious and straight forward like ...

1. Install the Alexa toolbar
2. Put up an Alexa rank widget
6. Write or Blog about Alexa

While there are few, well thought innovative ones ...

9. Use Alexa redirects
10. Post in Asian social networking
18. Pay Cybercafe owners


Maki's post contains a very good introduction about Alexa Rank and why would someone be interested in it? The blogger has also explained it simple terms on how to get started with Alexa. There is also section which talks about the problems and credibility of the ranking system.

Check it out for more details

Google Page Rank is just one of the factor

Danny Sullivan of search engine land has come up with an excellent article about Google Page Rank. he starts with the basic facts about page rank.

In a nutshell, it considers links to be like votes. In addition, it considers that some votes are more important than others. PageRank is Google's system of counting link votes and determining which pages are most important based on them. These scores are then used along with many other things to determine if a page will rank well in a search.

Danny goes on to say that Google is somewhat qualifying that PageRank is important but not the sole factor in how pages are ranked.

He supports this fact by illustrating with an easy example.





In the above result, you can see that Movies.com which is listed first has a PR8 score while the Internet Movie Database listed second has a PR9. The page with a lower PageRank still got the higher search rank!


Here are some more interesting points at the end of his article.


PageRank tells how important a page is, relatively speaking, compared to other pages.

PageRank is just one of MANY ranking factors used to determine ranking in search results.

High PageRank does NOT guarantee a high search ranking for any particular term. If it did, then PR10 sites like Adobe would always show up for any search you do. They don't.

The anchor text of a link is often far more important than whether it's on a high PageRank page.

If you really want to know what are the most important, relevant pages to get links from, forget PageRank. Think search rank. Search for the words you'd like to rank for. See what pages come up tops in Google. Those are the most important and relevant pages you want to seek links from. That's because Google is explicitly telling you that on the topic you searched for, these are the best.

Are Vizu Polls accurate?

I have been using Vizu Polls for a while now as part of monetization of this blog. Today I noticed a new poll and voted my choice in the given options. I found something funny in the responses screen. The percentage of responses did not sum exactly to 100%. Indeed they add upto 15.1+24.7+24.7+46.2+19.4=130.1

Has anyone else observed this?



As a blog publisher I dont care much about this issue. But I feel pity for the ones who paid for this poll. :-(

Google's Brand Value at $66 Billion

CNET News reports that Google has knocked off many traditional companies to reacg the top spot and been named the most powerful global brand of 2007 in a recently published ranking.

Google ranked first with a brand value of more than $66 billion, nearly double its value in the 2006 ranking.

According to Millward Brown Optimor, here are the 10 most powerful global brands of 2007, plus brand value:

1. Google--$66.4 billion
2. General Electric--$61.9 billion
3. Microsoft--$55 billion
4. Coca-Cola--$44.1 billion
5. China Mobile--$41.2 billion
6. Marlboro--$39.2 billion
7. Wal-Mart--$36.9 billion
8. Citigroup--$33.7 billion
9. IBM--$33.6 billion
10. Toyota Motor--$33.4 billion

How to get DVD's on your iPod ?

Vonage may file Bankruptcy !!!

Some bad news for Vonage Customers .... Vonage has just said that if their legal battles continues then they may end up filing for bankruptcy.

Here is what NY times has to say about the news ...

The filing yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission also detailed other risks from continuing litigation. They include the possible interruption of service, an inability to repay its debt and a decline in its stock that could lead to the delisting from the New York Stock Exchange.

Vonage was ordered to pay $58 million and royalties on future sales to Verizon after it lost the patent infringement case in March.

The court also barred Vonage from adding new customers while it appealed the decision.

An appeals court allowed it to continue signing up new customers ahead of a hearing to consider a permanent stay on the bar on April 24 .

Vonage’s chief executive, Michael Snyder, stepped down last week as the company said it planned to cut jobs and expenses by $30 million in 2007.

Google adds presentation feature to Google Docs and Spreadsheets

At last Google has confirmed that they are about to add a presentation software to their Google Docs & Spreadsheets family. There were already lot of rumours going around this for sometime now.

Here is what Sam Schillace, Engineering Director has to say in his post

we want to welcome the team from Tonic Systems to Google. Tonic, which we've just acquired, is based in San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia. They have some great technology for presentation creation and document conversion, and it will be a great addition as we add presentation sharing and collaboration capabilities to Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

This feature is expected to be released in summer this year.

USB Speed Typing Mouse - Keeps you company

I found this toy at Drinkstuff.com. I am not really sure if this USB device will ever get popular. Damn sure, I am not going to buy one of them but still worth going through the site to find many weird toys like these. Nice time pass. You may like a few.

This particular USB Speed Typing Mouse has a pedal and when connected to the USB port, starts pedalling based on the speed you type. You can see the rate in which the count increases on the LCD display.

Smart and Evil ways to improve your blog ranking

Have you heard of John Chow? Probaby yes, if you are old to the blog world. For the new comers, John Chow runs a blog called JohnChow Dot Com and he describes it as "The Miscellaneous Ramblings of a Dot Com Mogul". His blog can be easily termed as the bible to learn the ways to make money online.

He has shared a lot of innovative ways to improved a blog's traffic, ranking, monetization and so on. One of those ways is to write a review post just like this and link to his home page with the anchor text "make money online" and also to link back to his post which talks about the rules of this review. Advantages are that you get back a link from his high traffic, high ranked blog and he keeps going higher and higher. :-) Worth a try. What do you think?

2.5D maps from Google

Google has introduced yet another feature to its already popular Google Maps. It is to show 2.5D models of buildings. The buildings appear like a pencil sketch and gives the viewer a fair idea about the shape and size about the location. Give it a try....

Example of 2.5D map from Google

Buy and Sell Web 2.0 companies

Do you own a Web 2.0 company and would like fetch a good price for it? or Are you looking to buy a Web 2.0 company which may add to your current portfolio? Here is a new Web 2.0 which helps, people buy and sell Web 2.0 companies.


Go and Check out Web 2.0 for Sale

Fake advertisement on craiglist

You thought craglist cant harm you. It can, says Times online

Read on this interesting story...


Everything including the kitchen sink was stripped from a rental home in after an advert on Craigslist invited people to take whatever they wanted free.

The landlord of the house in Tacoma, Washington State, says the ad, posted last weekend was fake. “It said come and take what you want. Everything is free,” Laurie Raye told Seattle’s KING-TV.

Mr Raye had cleaned out the rental after evicting a tenant. After the advert appeared, the property was stripped of the sink, light fixtures and the hot water heater. Even the front door and a vinyl window were pilfered, Mr Raye said.

Neighbours said they saw strangers hauling items away, apparently looking for salvage material.

Jim Buckmaster, the chief executive of Craigslist, said that the ad was on the site for less than two hours before users flagged it down. He said Craigslist rarely encounters such false postings, despite receiving 25 million postings each month.