An ad lover like me? Then here is a post just for you. This is the top 100 adertising campaign of the century, click http://adage.com/century/campaigns.html to explore more. I had some more collections at hedir.com but now it is not visible. Let me see if I can upload all. See http://ajinimc.hedir.com/2006/03/10/the-axe-effect/ and http://ajinimc.hedir.com/2006/03/11/creativity-has-no-limits-best-t-shirt-line/ too. Have fun

Weekend is coming again! I will recommend you to read blogs, here is one which you will love to read http://www.elise.com/recipes/, rest of the week you can go through other technical blogs.

(Yummy, Yummy)

I am trying different things with wordpress to make it faster, optimized and targeted. Meanwhile if you find some bugs please let me know. Thanks. Meanwhile enjoy some of the pics, this is from our previous office

More pics at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/82641663@N00/.

I was sick of deleting all the spams from gmail which never wanted me to delete any mails. I started spamming spammers, not only the unknown once but also the known ones. People used to send me a lot of articles, common messages through orkuts and other social networks. I started spamming them back but sending them my blog url. I used to do this for all marketing offers as well. Did it worked I do not know but I got a reply which was quite unexpected one.

First mail from amina_ldris@walla.com

Dear Sir,

I am Amina Idris from the State of Kassala in the Eastern part of Sudan. I recently lost my husband who until his death was a serving officer with the SPLA here in Sudan. He died in the cause of performing his duties under the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS).
Before his death he was privileged to have served close the powers that be in my country and this exposed him to huge sums of money of which about $7.5 Million was left to my surviving son and I.
I am contacting you because I need a big favor from you as regards receiving these funds on our behalf and help us invest it in a profitable venture. Due to my inexperience in matters of business, I am willing to give free rein of affairs to you in the day to day running of such a business venture.
Please if you are willing to assist me, don’t hesitate to reply and indicate your interest as soon as possible.

Thanks and best regards.

Amina Idris

My reply

I am interested please visit my blog http://www.idealwebtools.com/blog/

A reply after few days (looks like a reply, not sure)

Dear Sir,

I know how surprised you were to have received my mail. Sorry for the unsolicited mail I sent out of despiration. Please know that I am really in need of help here regarding the safe investment of my funds.I am a refugee as you already know and I am in serious need for someone to assist me and my son in investing our funds.

The issue here is that I need someone like you in view of your high status, a person I can trust to help me put into meaningful investment this money which was left to us by my late husband. I will like to know you better and as such I will like you to send me some sort of identification so that I can ascertain who I will be entrusting so much money to.

I am open to any good suggestions as I will not hesitate to give you complete control of what ever business you suggest as soon as you provide me with a comprehensive business plan and we formalised the necessary procedures that will help me take possesion of the funds. You assistance will actually require you to travel over here in Thailand where we are currently residing as refugees reason being that I cannot travel out of Thailand at the moment due to my status as a refugee. My documents are still under processing.

I sincerely await your response.

Sincerely
Mrs.Amina Ldris

Have you tried spamming spammers? It is fun esp you sometimes get replies from marketing guys.

During recent meetings I was asked to broadcast the list of blogs I read on a day to day basis. Sorry for the delay but here it is. Apart for this I do follow about.com various sections for the financial knowledge on mortgage, credits, debts, insurances, loans and other laws. Wikipedia is there for all the terms I have a query on. I also read http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/.

Sorry could not write in detail, here is my opml file (I will try to keep it up to date) from my google reader. I use my reader almost 5 times a day (once in early morning 6:00 am, after reaching office and before starting my work 9:00 am, lunch hrs 2:00 pm, after finishing work at office 6:30 pm, at 11 pm at home) and will keep the unread post close to 0 every time.

(more…)

If your company is keeping a watch over the H-1B visas, here is some interesting news for this year,

On Tuesday, the U.S. government announced that this year’s limit on H-1B visas had already been reached after only one day, the first time in history the annual cap had been reached so quickly. Since 1990, American employers have relied on the visas to hire skilled foreign workers for up to six years, often in computer- or engineering-related jobs.

Politicians may work towards it

The reason for the surge matters: Congress is expected to hold hearings on raising the limit later this year, and will surely question why the quota was reached so instantly. Technology companies argue the surge is further proof that the quota must be increased, while opponents say there are enough Americans to do those jobs already.

The gap in “ability to innovate” is reducing faster than the gap in “living standards and environment for innovation”. Till few months back I was rejecting any abroad offers, which I am taking it seriously now (including a research offer and a one month seminar options). Till now my focus was on learning. I was getting enough time to learn and innovate but now I am feeling a little frustrated. With no current abroad offers I am looking for one. Why I want to move abroad,

• I want to focus on some research topics with my job and sadly I am not getting any such environment here. We do not have good universities which focus on research, all focus on education.
• Industrial peers (students by attitude) who believe in innovation and research. In India we take our jobs as jobs, a way to earn money. I want to get into an environment where we can spend some time on innovation (with no upper limits for failure count).
• A little speedy life.
• To experience the cultural diversification.
• Income, expenses and taxes balancing out offering no chuck(net disposable income converging to a different zero with value almost equal to 0) for additional purchases.

There are pluses and minuses for every decision but a change takes care of few minuses making the whole equation a positive one. Lets see what the life has to offer.

Do I need a website? What will I do with it, I am just a singer? Web presence for catering service! I don’t think it makes sense. I deliver Pizzas, how will web presence help me, forget it its too complex for me! Thats a feeling among many businesses, very rightly so as they have not seen or have experienced the power of Internet.

I liked the line by Jason of Google, “Sometimes you hear about things that are big, and you see them and see that they are big, you rationally understand that they are big, but you don’t really understand that they are big until you experience them.”

(Internet is a threat/opportunity for every industry, you will have to face the music anyway)

Magazines are less read these days as blogs/daily web updates are taking care of the need (some adopted this new platform but some are history). With social networks and web 2.0, web is a way to empower your business with a better communication platform. People presume web to be a sales platform (esp in countries like India, where Internet business is in its early stages).

This week’s brand equity caught my attention, which I can summarized as the alpha of Indian Web business. Major businesses are trying to capture the young generation through web (Guys, it is going to be tougher than you thought), most of them trying to follow the successful formula. Do not forget that web is a village, where two shops are not needed so better be original.

Summary of the blog post: Use Web as an opportunity today or as a threat tomorrow, choice is yours. Web culture is catching up in India too.

With all the meetings, ppts, excel salary docs, TT practice, AGM docs for non-profitable organizations (and …), I was learning driving as well (thanks to our CEO for forcing me learn this as a company task). Today we had the exams (so had to bunk the meetings), from 12:00 noon to 4:30 pm it was a long wait and less testing. I was just asked to drive some 300 meters with one left turn, he checked how I start, first gear, second gear and speed control (all went fine :)). Then some 5 queries based on traffic boards and signals (all went fine) followed by photos, invisible signatures (thats what I was told about digi signatures). Finally it is done and passed, you can congratulate me.

Things that I have not learned (or not taught)

• Driving with left hand over the side seat.
• Driving with mobile on.

Along with the driving exams I had to make some last moment investment to save tax (Oh God, Huge taxes again), invested in ELSS and HDFC Unit Linked Insurance. We had a series of lectures (with sales pitch but followed by tough scrutiny from our tech team members who prefer the word earning and spending over saving).

I will be taking a leave on Saturday as I am really really tired. Also will finish all my pending mails on Saturday.

Sorry, for last few days I am not able to answer all the mails that is hitting my mailbox (Buzy Buzy Buziness life, you see). Also I am not keeping well, little feverish. I will be taking a day off this week and hopefully will be answering all your mails. Thank you for your patience. Keep mailing, let it reach the 1000 unread mails count :).

Whos line is it anyway? Who is crossing it? Why? How? When? You may not have answers to all these questions but certainly you know that someone is crossing someones line somewhere with some reason using some bad strategies. My previous post “When is the next bandth?” attracted a lot of opinions, active comments and some emails. Tomorrow is another bandth.

Some of the bandth facts I agree to

• For people like us who blog or talk about these injustice, these are just numbers or count. For the ones who lost their loved ones only know their loss.
• These bandths are the only way to protest or force powerful men to take actions. Sadly our system does not offer a better working option.
• Industrialization is important and so is agricultural growth.
• Bandths bring no solution but create more. It pollutes our culture.

I am just hoping that our governments will learn a better planning method by these worst examples of unplanned, forced and pushed growth plans. I had tears when I saw the massacre footage on TV, may this happen to no one ever. I will be working from home tomorrow.