I wanted to pass VNC setup file to my friend as I wanted to show him few things remotely. I was not able to send it through gmail due to gmail security issues (Gmail is very secure and very powerful, see how I handle over 100 mails a day with Google tricks). Then I zipped it and tried but the same message came back.

So how can we send it then? It is very easy when you know else it is as tough as running Bill Gates OS. Here is the simple trick

Follow the steps for a smooth sail

1. Sender End: Rename the file to some other extension. I renamed it to UltraVNC-Setup.removeit-exe-removeit
2. Receiver end: Just rename it by removing removeit parts. Very simple but very helpful.

Take care and read my other posts on gmail, orkut and various HR and technical issues.

One of my colleague asked me to help him with URL Canonicalization. I had mentioned about Canonicalization (both at domain level and URL level earlier), I think I did it in company Intranet. I will find it and add it to this post. He also referred me to a post where it was mentioned. I generally end up writing big comments on various blogs, so decided to post it here instead.

Redirection from /index.html to /. Example if someone types http://www.idealwebtools.com/index.html we will take them to http://www.idealwebtools.com/.

Why I might not do it

• Reason1: It is very much natural
• Reason2: Almost 99% of the website will never do it, so it is a problem at google’s end, they need to solve it.
• Reason 3: Very important, when a person is coming to index.html I am redirecting it to / which is making my customer wait.

Why I might do it?

• Reason 1: Only from links point of view and to help Google. SEO benefits (may be)
• Reason 2: Technically both these files can be different too.

SEO advices from Matt Cutts
He says google does it work but still fails sometimes.

Q: What is a canonical url? Do you have to use such a weird word, anyway?
A: Sorry that it’s a strange word; that’s what we call it around Google. Canonicalization is the process of picking the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. For example, most people would consider these the same urls:

* www.example.com
* example.com/
* www.example.com/index.html
* example.com/home.asp

But technically all of these urls are different. A web server could return completely different content for all the urls above. When Google “canonicalizes” a url, we try to pick the url that seems like the best representative from that set.

More at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/seo-advice-url-canonicalization/
and http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/canonicalization-update/

Let me think more carefully about it. What is your opinion, should we do it?

Some helpful links

1. Master guide for canonicalization by JD (he is a gem, he helped me a lot with htaccess issues) -
   http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/3208525.htm

Some tests

1. Linking to mattcutts blog using different URL, first with id =2
2. Second with id=3
3. Second with id=4
4. Second with id=5
5. Linking to with index.php
6. Linking to with index.php and id =2
7. Linking to with index.php and id =3

I got an email from Krishna Srikanth with a link to PHP 5 PPT. This is an old PPT, “Introduction to PHP 5″ presented on September 22rd 2004 at Toronto, Canada by Ilia Alshanetsky. Hope it helps.

The days when you get over 100 mails you need more than 2 hands to reply. I have many email accounts (official and personal) and till some time back I had problems in handling all at the same time. I hated outlook for the complexity it offered me (I am using three computers, one desktop and one Laptop in office, one desktop at home). Configuring outlook every time and exporting the mails was a messy stuff. Moreover I had saved some documents inside mail accounts which was needed during meetings where I was not carrying the laptop. I liked the way Gmail handled my accounts and the simplicity it offered me. I could upload my files and access it easily. I liked its search too. Google made my life even easier with Gmail multiple account handler.

Even with these features I was finding it difficult to answer all the emails. I tried arranging it with various labels but it did not work for me. At the end of the day checking all folders (labels) was again complex. Sometimes I forgot to answer some important emails because of the overloaded inbox or multiple folder arrangements. The unread mails had higher chances of getting an answer, I used to forget about the read ones.

Now I have started using one label (to-reply). If I get an official mail on Sunday eve, instead of adding a task for it I will label it with “to-reply” and forget it for Monday, similarly a personal mail will be labeled “to-reply” during office hours. This allows me to reply at my ease without forgetting the important emails. Now

1. I handle all my mails using one master account.
2. I read all mails whenever I want to read and reply with ease.

Other useful resources on mail management

• Three solid Gmail productivity tips by Matt cutts
• Turn Gmail Into Your Personal Nerve Center
• More Ways to Use Gmail as a Personal Nerve Center

Finally I am back home after spending some 58 hrs in office. Slept for 10 hrs and feeling a little fresher. Google uses blogs as their major communication tool. Google has many official blogs to communicate with its users. There are many Googlers who own a personal blog as well (many of these blogs are not active, see the list below). Also there are few who are ex-employees with a personal blog (see the list below).

Who is the smartest of all these?
Last year at AIMAA meet I talked about creating brands inside brands and took his blog as an example. He has created his own brand being inside Google. His blog is referred everywhere on the web. Everyone seems to love his everything. A post about his cat being sick got him 99 comments. He must have hired one person to handle comments. Yes, I am talking about none other than Matt Cutts. http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/.

Meet the dumbest Google Blogger
Jen worked for Google between January 17, 2005 and January 28, 2005. It looks to me that he started the right thing in a wrong way. According to him, “i thought i could make connections to real people in the outside world and get first hand feedback”. Mark Jen is known for being terminated with cause by Google, Inc. for distributing corporate secrets in his personal blog, 99zeros.blogspot.com. Now he blogs at blog.plaxoed.com.

Smartest	VS	Dumbest

Did Matt cutts learn blogging from Mark’s Mistake? Mark stopped the Google blog in Jan 2005 and Matt Cutts started from July 2005. Enjoy Google and Google blogs

Blogs by Google employees

1. Adam Bosworth’s Weblog (Adam Bosworth)
2. Alpie.net (David Alpert)
3. Beyond Satire (Ellen Spertus)
4. Bo Cowgill.com (Bo Cowgill)
5. Brightly Colored Food (Chad Thornton)
6. Continuations (Christine Davis)
7. CrazyBob.org (Bob Lee)
8. Dave Barr’s Journal (Dave Barr)
9. Doctor Awesome
10. Douwe Osinga Thinks (Douwe Osinga)
11. Ego Food (Chris DiBona)
12. Fury.com (Kevin Fox)
13. Goldtoe Lemon.Nut (Jason Goldman)
14. Graham’s Page of Stuph (Graham Waldon)
15. Hixie’s Natural Log (Ian Hickson)
16. Joe Beda Eighty Percent.net (Joe Beda)
17. …that she might be a sufficient reason for young Candide (John Hawkins)
18. Kimbalina.com (Kimbalina)
19. Kraneland (David Krane)
20. Marked for Dearth (Mark Ayzenshtat)
21. Massless (Chris Wetherell)
22. Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google and SEO (Matt Cutts)
23. Natala la la la … (Natala Menezes, also at MSN Spaces)
24. Nelson’s Weblog (Nelson Minar)
25. The Oliver Project (Oliver Deighton)
26. Otaku (Cédric Beust)
27. Ovidiu Predescu’s Weblog (Ovidiu Predescu)
28. persistent.info (Mihai Parparita)
29. Piaw’s Blog (Piaw Na)
30. Rahrah feminista (Lilly Irani)
31. Shellen dot com (Jason Shellen)
32. Shumans.com (Shuman Ghosemajumder)
33. snarfed.org (Ryan Barrett)
34. So Many Games (Greg Stein)
35. Sowbug (Mike Tsao)
36. The Other Eighty Percent (Chip Turner)
37. Vedana (Eric Case)
38. Weschan.com (Wesley Chan)
39. Xenomachina (Laurence Gonsalves)
40. xdelta (Josh Macdonald)
41. Youngpup.net Journal (Aaron Boodman)

Some Ex-Googlers…

1. Biz Stone, Genius (Biz Stone)
2. Evhead (Evan Williams) - He was the CEO of pyra labs (Blogger creator)
3. Mark Jen’s Life @ Plaxo (Mark Jen)

(list collected from blog.outer-court.com anbd other sources), please let me know if you come across other blogs. I will also go through the list once again.

Writing after some long time as was busy with designing new salary structure. Also was busy with the Inferno Blog hunt (which is going great guns with over 170 blogs). Indian Web business is heating up with the new generation becoming more Internet Savvy because of cheaper broadband (Rs 500 for a month with great speed and download limits).

Read the stories of successful businessmen/businesswomen and you will find that they started the business with very less amount like Rs 15,000 (+ Rs 15,000 , Reliance) or Rs 10,000 (Infosys). During late 80s this was quite some amount (worth atleast Rs 1,00,000, present value).

For a startup web business all you need is $10 - $ 50 per month and one or two quality brains who are ready to spend 20 hrs a day. Web business is more of a brain business than the power of money investment, infrastructure, man power e.tc. Lets take it point by point that why a web business is a pure brain business :-

1. To implement an idea you do not need a shop (a shop will cost you atleast Rs 50,000) of your own, a simple web page will do. Domain charges $9 per year, hosting (with ssh and required programming platforms) $5.
2. Advertisements - With blogs, social networking sites, free chat rooms, free emails this is absolutely close to $0 affair. You will just need a viral idea. Other means of advertisements will cost anything over Rs 10,000 (min).
3. Hiring people - You do not need a lot of staffs, just 2 programmers with quality brain can start the work and a billion dollar company can be run with just 50 staffs. Even you do not need offices, just get hold of people who can work from home and earn money through your platform. In the initial phase of project you may have to spend some additional amount on them but later on they can earn their own salaries.
4. Everything else is free. From a webserver to a script everything comes free. You just need the right brains to make it work for you with some modification.

Some Stories which look real

• YouTube (founded by 3 in Feb 2005, was sold for $1.65 billions with just 67 employees) :
  
  Money is no more a barrier in Web business. It is the real brain tussle. Google with few billions won’t be able to beat Youtube (which started with just 3 members and was sold with just over 60 members) they can just accept the defeat and buy success through them. YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal.
• Digg (founded by 4 in Nov 2004) :
  
  It Started out as an experiment in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson. Taking bigger news companies with an idea.
• Del.icio.us (founded by 1 during Late 2003 and acquired by Yahoo for some 15-30 million dollars)
  
  The site came online in late 2003 and was founded by Joshua Schachter, co-maintainer of Memepool. It is now part of Yahoo!.
• Wikipedia (founded by 1 in Jan 2001 and now has over six million articles in 250 languages)
  
  Wikipedia was launched as the English Wikipedia on January 15, 2001, as a complement to Nupedia, an expert-written and now defunct encyclopedia. The project is now operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization created by Jimmy Wales, and has over six million articles in 250 languages, including 1.6 million in the English edition. Wikipedia has steadily risen in popularity since its inception and currently ranks among the twelve most-visited websites worldwide.
• MyBlogLog (founded by 2 in Mar 2005 acquired by Yahoo in 2007)
  
  The company has deployed close to 100 million profile cookies, signed up 14 thousand blogs in their first year and more than 1000 blogs currently display MyBlogLog widgets.

There are more such stories (blogger, skype messenger, hotmail, urchin …) and I will also cover the Indian Stories. I have already seen Indian doing great in this field and still calling many Techno-leaders to pinch in.

Here is a creative way of creating gmail accounts (first hand method), sorry if illegal (why should it be illegal, it is just a free account creation?). Creating gmail account with invitations is just a big pain and everybody needs to create and manage various accounts. I prefer gmail accounts over others for obvious reasons (as they are the best).

This image will explain it properly (Life can’t be simpler).

Some notes

• Sometimes an invitation to an email id which does not exist may not work so send it to your friends.
• Use two browsers to avoid logging out.

Enjoy Gmail and you can use the gmail multi account manager to manage more than one gmail account.

I am sorry for not blogging for quite few days. I was busy with our new office and some work related to Inferno. Now the team will take it from here. My part if over for Inferno and got some time for blogging (Another thing: Today I went for root canal).

Story of the day, there has been some major changes for the broadband services in kolkata. Let me put that into various points (w.e.f from 1st Jan 2007, a very happy new year to all Internet users.)

1) Modem getting cheaper (Modem Rental)
Earlier

Now

2) Home plans getting even cheaper
Look at the downloading limits, it is increased 2.5 times. I will getting a downloading limit of 2.5 GB instead of 1.0 GB (which is welcome change). Also the extra charges are reduced.

Earlier

Now

3) business plans getting cheaper
The downloading limits are increased. It will be a great help to smaller companies. I welcome the change.

Earlier

Now

For more details you can visit http://www.calcuttatelephones.com/tariff_broadband.shtml. These changes are required to improve the internet penetration level in India. Computers are getting cheaper as well, now a person can spend Rs 20,000 and get a highly configured computer. Happy surfing.

As I wrote earlier that multi email accounts can be managed using one gmail account. Is it protecting my identity (my primary email account details)? On the surface it is hiding your primary email but not at a technical level.

We use some ids which are anonymous and the person should not come to know the sender (this is used for some internal communication for improvement, we are using it with inferno team).

Let me again use the screenshots for better explanation with a step by step description:-

1. I am sending an email to xyz(at)gmail.com(Manojit) using aji(at)aimk.org. aji(at)aim.org is an additional email account added to my primary account ajiissac(at)gmail.com.
   
2. My friend Manojit gets the email. On surface it looks as an email from aji(at)aimk.org
   
3. Even while reading Manojit can’t figure it out.
   

How can Manojit figure out then?
How can Manojit figure out that it is sent by ajiissac(at)gmail.com (who is managing another email id aji(at)aimk.org)? It can be done by Looking at the full header of the email. Click on the “reply down” and choose the option “show original”.

You will get the full header where the sender is ajiissac(at)gmail.com not aji(at)aimk.org and thus anyone can figure it out.

In the above example it is not a problem as there is no harm if my primary email id is exposed but take a different case where anonymous@gmail.com says “You are doing the right thing, please correct yourself Mr Manojit.”.

Now if Manojit figures out that it is not anonymous but ajiissac then the purpose is lost. In short Multi Gmail Account manager is not safe if you do not want to disclose your identity (your primary email account).

Before I rush back to Church for the special Christmas prayers I thought of penning down an important blog posting for the Inferno’s Technical team. This is about managing multi email accounts using big G’s Gmail (It may be not safe, know why). It is much simpler than what many thought. Here I go with more images and less words (oops if one image == 1000 words, then worth almost 5000 words :)).

Characters of this play

1. ajiissac(at)gmail.com - My mail account
2. aji(at)aimk.org - Seasonal account
3. aji(at)idealwebtools.com - Official account for idealwebtools.com

After fixing AIMK email accounts (Now it is working with Google, I have pointed the MX records to google) I have already fixed it for aji(at)aimk.org. Lets fix it for aji(at)idealwebtools.com.

What do I mean by fixing?

1. All the mails coming to aji(at)idealwebtools.com should come to ajiissac(at)gmail.com.
2. I should be able to send email from ajiissac(at)gmail.com using aji(at)idealwebtools.com.

Part 1 is relatively simpler. Just do a forward and it will work (Do let me know if you need help with it). The second part is somehow new to many.

Sending as aji(at)idealwebtools.com from ajiissac(at)gmail.com

1. Go to settings > accounts
   
2. Click on “Add another email address”. You will get a pop up (some pop up blocker can blog this). Fill in the pop up box (you can also specify a different reply to email).
   
3. After clicking on the “next step” from step 2, you get this screen in pop up box. Click on “Send verifiication”.
   
4. Check you email (for me it was aji(at)idealwebtools.com) for verification code. I got the verification code and entered into the last screen of the popup box.
   
   You are done.
5. Start sending email as aji(at)idealwebtools.com from ajiissac(at)gmail.com using the drop down.
   

Wasn’t that simple? If you have learned something new, do drop a comment (just kidding). Once again Merry Christmas, enjoy the season and Thank God for all his benefits.