If it is Friday, it must be Sydney.

That was the title of a travelogue that came into my possession several years ago. It came through snail mail with my full name and address. Knowing it to be a SPAM, I was about to throw it into garbage but changed my mind to read the contents first.

Inside, I saw beautiful photographs of many important places in Australia and a fairly thick brochure that contained hundreds of hotels in all the major cities in Australia.

Generally, we (my family) used to arrange bookings in hotels where they provide full guidance to sight seeing because they know better than others and the service is dependable.

For the best amenities a Sydney Hotel can provide, Castle Hill hotel is the best choice. From there one can go to Australian National Maritime Museum is located in Darling Harbour, The Chinese Garden and more.

Since there are many water sports and other entertainments in Darling Harbour, one can choose to stay in a Darling Harbour Hotel. Of late, travelers to Sydney head straight to Darling Harbour because of varied dining and entertainment options such as King Street Wharf and Cockle Bay Wharf.

Then there was one small brochure. It was about Melbourne city, Melbourne hotels, and prominent eateries and local transport. Hmmm… not a bad idea to stay in a Melbourne Hotel as it seems.

Melbourne is famous for continental foods. One can enjoy a delicious Korean meal, or choose to eat in Carlton for Italian delicacies. It seems, Sydney and Melbourne both enjoy a temperate climate.

I was glad that I opened that snail mail. I have stored the contents even today.

Image: Darling Harbour; courtesy: Wikipedia

A Russian dating site.

Of late, the Internet is getting populated with dating sites dedicated to particular communities or nation. I am sure, many will welcome this idea.

The reason for so many marriage failures is attributed to incompatibility and that is a result of marriage between two diverse ethnic groups. They are world apart from beliefs, culture and tradition.

In this context, dating websites dedicated to different communities offer a chance for stronger marriage relationship.

The most prominent feature about this dating russian bride online site is the projection about Russian women’s priority about marriage. Russian and Ukrainian brides are different from brides of other countries because marriage is normally their main priority from early age.

This dating website called Lovers Planet facilitates union of a diverse community of single Russian women seeking men for marriage and romance.

I saw a few photographs of Russian women at Lovers Planet. Yes, I fully agree that Russian brides are famous internationally as the most beautiful women in the world.

Have you seen Indian Television.

If not, then don't unless you want to see a website stuffed with ads only on their front page.

I expected something interesting from Indian Television but even to know about them, I had to strain my eyes to find the proper link because their entire home page is cluttered with advertisements and that too displayed in a very disorderly manner.

What they about themselves?
" Started in 1999 by Media and Television analyst Anil Wanvari, Indiantelevision.com is the first online information and interactive service focusing on the Indian Television and Media business. Its user base has grown over the past eight years; making it India's most widely read online Media, Advertising, Marketing & Satellite Television resource."

Is it? May be so because otherwise they could not have procured so many sponsor ads. Ii seems they have received several awards but for an ordinary visitor, there is nothing in it.

This website is created for media people only. It features on cable channels and satellite TV. Yes, I enjoyed reading some inner stories about Kalaigner TV, ZEE talkies and so on.

This website is big store house of information for TV buffs.

Tools from Highfivez for blog promotion.

As per their recent(the first) newsletter, HighFivez has brought out wide range of buttons and badges to incorporate directly into our blog.

It is similar to other buttons we are familiar with like 'Digg'. With this we can enable our readers to easily HighFive our posts.

Just click on the link titled "HighFivez Toolz" in the footer of the site. Then you can either Enter the information about the post into the form or just snag the code to be altered through your blog.

Free Advertising
They are rewarding the most active members with free promotion on our site. During each month, the HighFiver with the highest HighFivez score will be eligible to have a blog of their choice displayed on our home page for the following month.

This is a wonderful news really for bloggers. We can show off our work to all of oour fellow HighFiverz for just being an active member. Click the "Featured Blog" link on the home page to view the current month's Top 10.

Another great news is that they have added a Forum for us to discuss and read about a wide variety of topics relevant to bloggers.

Plug & play VoIP phones from Nimbus.

“Internet Telephony soon”-our local daily reported today. So, at last, India is waking up to the latest technology call.

However belated it may be, it is a welcome sign. It is better late than never-right?

I wonder which telecom giant is going to bag the contract. Netizens like me may be aware of Nimbus VoIP phone systems that are supposed to be the best in the world today.

Anyone may look upon on xpandercommunications.com in the Internet. They offer plug & play VoIP phones that work anywhere there is broadband and web control panels where you re route your extension, manage voicemail, and click to dial users, Nimbus VoIP phone systems give businesses complete and total control over their phones & features

An individual may not fully grasp the advantages of VoIP but any businessman will immediately grab this opportunity because of nil maintenance cost when compared to the traditional EPBAX (electronic private automatic branch exchange).

VoIP phone system is clutter free and extremely mobile.

Why Satrnum changed to Friend2friend?

Frankly speaking, I could not find the reason why Starnum changed its name to Friend2Friend but that is not the purpose of this blog post.

This is a great website for frequent shoppers online where they can recommend the product they like and earn commissions which they can pocket or donate.

What I like about this website is the clarity with which the steps are explained about how you and I can earn the commission for the product we recommend.

How it works:
They have partnered with 400 stores. You search for any category of product.
I quote them for the next step.
"From the search result list, click on the "Recommend This" button and edit the options as you wish. Then click "Add to My Recommendations". You will be asked to signup for an account, which is free. Having an account allows you to track your product recommendations and manage your commissions."

Here is the third and interesting step.
From your member area, you can create a widget for the product you recommend and place the widget in your website or blog. When someone clicks on it, they are brought to Friend2Friend website and read your recommendation. If then they decide to buy, they will be directed to the respective online shop and from then on, they will take care of the transaction for you.

This is just my idea of owning an online shopping mall.

Go to the website to get the detailed concept.

See the widget I created on this blog. It is about a book by Dr.Wayne Dyer. The making of this widget was pure fun and easy.

Enter the Indian Thought Terminus.

It is a pure chance that I stumbled on to Mutiny.in, the Indian Thought Terminus where discussions and debates on various sensitive and sometimes nonsensitive issues are held.

What I like about this website is the name-Mutiny is just perfectly fits the theme of the blog.

First I was attracted to the topic about Chinese wanting to participate in the 2015 cricket world cup.

Then this issue of the tolerance power of Indians-a must read topic by every mature Indian.

Anyone can contribute to this blog after meeting certain terms and conditions.

Read your feeds through IM.

I am reading my subscribed feeds through email only. I am not using any web based tool.

But most generally read either with an online reader or with a desktop too. Now there are other means to read your feeds. For example, one opt to receive the news feeds in their IM client.

The Instant Messenger (IM) has become a communication tool of consequence for many and is fast becoming popular in receiving real-time content alerts. If you wish to receive updates from your newsfeeds on your IM client, in real-time, take a look at the service Anothr .

Of course, you need to be in the logged in state in your IM such as Skype, Google or MSN and you must have already added 'Anothr' in your contact list.

You can subscribe to a feed by directly entering its URL on the IM chat window for the contact Anothr. And to unsubscribe, enter the feed address with the symbol ‘-‘ prefixed (like ‘- http://host-name.com’).

Inspired by: The Hindu

The news feed merger.

This RSS feeds aka Web Feeds industry is fast developing into explore new technological frontiers.

I think the Internet users have not yet fully realized its potential though Internet market veterans are utilizing them to their financial advantage. Yes, sponsored ads through RSS feeds have already captured the market and bloggers (yes, me included) have started earning money through this system.
I have subscribed to feeds of various blogs and websites. For this I use several Feed providers ans feed readers. It would be nice to merge all the feeds under one service to read-won't it?

Here is an article I read in "The Hindu" yesterday about what I have in my mind.

"You can create a personal feed (by combining your personal feeds taken from services such as your blog, your del.icio.us account and feeds from other similar services subscribed by you) or a group feed (by combining feeds from different sources). So, if you are working on a topic, say ‘biotechnology,’ collect all the feeds related to this subject and generate a single ‘group’ feed by combining them. To add new feeds into this composite feed easily, ‘afeeda’ provides a bookmarklet."

And we know to use this browser based bookmarklet and share it with the public.

Afeeda allows you to bring all your favourite RSS sources together into a single feed. Of course, one must have their own feed reader to read the feeds.

Join review bloggers blogroll.

How about getting linked from several bloggers? You get traffic instantly from various corners' of the blogosphere.

You can see the widget at the right side bar that displays all the bloggers who are on the blogroll of review bloggers..

Joining these kind of network of bloggers will certainly help building backlinks. However there is one condition though. The criteria is such that ONLY blogs dedicated to reviewing products, services or media will be considered.

If you are also interested and if you qualify, click on the 'Join Review Bloggers' link placed at the bottom the widget.

Listen to your own posts! Free podcast.

Just when I was wondering where to learn podcasting, I came across Odiogo.com which offers a brilliant free service to your blog posts. It will give you a 'Listen to' button which is placed at the top left of your every posts. hen anyone clicks on the 'Play' button, your blog posts is read by an impeccably clear voice that even I can understand the accent.

Turn readers into listeners, and transform your blog into a high quality, ad-supporting broadcast that can vastly expand your audience reach!

• Automatic podcast generation
• “Near-human” quality text-to-speech
• Drag-and-drop integration on your blog
• Detailed download statistics
• Make money from embedded ads
• Leverages RSS feeds of all blogging platforms such as Typepad and Blogger

If you´re interested, go to odiogo.com and sign up for free. They will send you an email with further instructions and then you can generate your code and paste it into your sidebar.

Gratitude: Chilli Technology

Adsense alternative by ASK.com

I think I am the last person to report this news of ask.com's proposal to launch a contextual advertising like AdSense.

Don't blame for this belated news readers, I happen to read about only now in DP forum.

As per netpox:
"Ask.com claims that they reach 34 million unique users per month via their network sites, which include Match.com, Ticketmaster, and Evite. Ask.com plans to inform content partners of their revenue share up front, rather than leave them guessing about the fluctuations in eCPM."

In spite of the promised transparency, I don't think they can compete with Google which even Yahoo's YPN is not able to do it.

I won't be tempted to sign up. Besides, whats the fun?

Why Croesus was a wealthy king?

I take the liberty of writing a bit of ancient history that will surely interest you.
Croesus was the king of Lydia in 560 BC. He is credited to have minted the first gold coin and whenever we invest in gold coin, we all owe him the gratitude he deserves.

Croesus was renowned for his wealth— Pausanias noted his gifts preserved at Delphi— and in Greek and Persian cultures his name became a synonym for a wealthy man; in English, expressions such as "rich as Croesus" or "richer than Croesus" are used to indicate great wealth.

Though I would like to possess one the gold coins that King Croesus issued, I will compromise one for the more beautiful modern American Eagles gold coins.

And, I depend on Monex Deposit Company (MDC) to buy my gold coins because of their 30 years of reputation as a precious metals dealer. If, God willing, my next purchase from Monex will be a gold bar.