Has anybody noticed that printers are very emotional, moody beings that need to be talked to, cursed at, or even blackmailed before they print a page?
We had a small HP printer which was so emotional that we reached the point of patting the printer and talking to it before giving the print command. One bad word, and the printer would throw the printed papers all over the room. Let me list the reasons why I think printers are alive:

1. They usually play hard-to-get, and don’t print the first time you give the print command.
2. When you try to cancel a print command, they play high-handed and refuse to cancel it.
3. Sometimes, they become over-enthusiastic and print out all those copies you gave ages back, but cancelled ages back too.
4. After a lot of fuss with printing, sometimes you just need to restart the printer, and it would behave like nothing happened and print normally.
5. If you give it too many papers to print, it will try to find some fault with your command and stop obeying.
6. It loves throwing the papers it printed all over the floor instead of neatly stacking it in the allocated place.
7. If you have an urgent document to print, it will suddenly say that there is no ink or give all kinds of error messages.
8. Home printers are usually more fussy and non-professional compared to office printers.
9. If my printer happens to read this blog entry, it will never again print all its life.

So be good to your printer. Say good words, praise it liberally when a page was printed well, and don’t give it too much work. It helps to have a good relationship with your printer.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I am reading the travelogue, “Travels with Charley” by John Steinbeck. And I hereby declare that I am not a travelogue person. I usually read a book from the preface and finish it at the very last page, without skipping anything in between.
But here, I am not compelled to return to the book. Reading that book has become more of a chore than a hobby. So it’s good-bye to travelogues, at least for the time-being.

But I am in no way underrating the author, John Steinbeck who won a Pulitzer prize for his novel “Grapes of Wrath”, and also a Nobel prize in the year 1962. John Ernst Steinbeck III is an American writer of German and Irish descent who wrote twenty seven books in all. One statement I loved in the book is ….that he is not one to compromise quantity over quality. He says that people, when they become old, they become laggard and over-cautious, thus compromising quality of life over quantity, or the number of days you would live.

Think about it… isn’t it so appropriate for every situation? When you buy lots of clothes for less money rather than one or two good clothes for more money? When you go to a restaurant and choose the low-price buffet over the a la carte? When you try and finish off a lot of work in a hurry without looking at the actual quality of work?… And so on…..

It is nice to have a book, an interesting book, waiting for you when you have some spare time. I’ve always loved reading. When I was smaller, I used to dream that I could finish reading all the books in the school library or the municipal library and then brag to others that I have read it all….With age came wisdom and a realization that this is impossible.
Reading still remains the first love. In the last couple of months, I read 4 books and enjoyed it all.
Five boys – Mick Jackson.
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Final Diagnosis – Arthur Hailey
Travels with Charley – John Steinbeck

All four are very very different in their styles, story lines and speed. Five boys is about a small unsuspecting countryside to which a war comes quite unexpectedly. Pride and prejudice is the classic featuring love and prejudiced lovers. Final Diagnosis is the fast-paced life in a hospital with tragedies, victories, personal adventures, suspense, drama all packed into one. Travels with Charley is the first travelogue I am reading.
Have not finished reading this, and that is why I said it is nice to have an interesting book waiting for you when you have spare time.

And what joy! I have also got the next book lined up. “Twilight”, one of the four-book series from Stephenie Meyer. This one seems to be quite a rage among youngsters now. And I am yet to test and see whether I would still enjoy those books that youngsters love. Let’s wait and see….

Liveperson.net for online chat

The good points are:
1. Beautiful technical support
2. Customisable chat buttons (though they only have pictures of females on the chat screens)
3. They gave me a discount on the monthly charges, which is $99/month.
4. They offered to design a chat button based on the website design. Haven’t made use of that yet, since our internal team designed a good-looking button already.
5. Admin panel is very easy to navigate, with options for modifying look and feel of the screens, providing canned responses etc.
6. Reporting is really good. Sessions, complete transcripts, time stamps, details of the person, navigation of the visitor etc.

Not time to discuss whether the chat option was effective in generating leads. But I would definitely recommend Liveperson. net to somebody looking of a reliable online chat platform.
Happy chatting!

Mongoosemetrics did not work for us. We were forwarding the number from Mongoosemetrics to a VOIP US number, located in India. The call forwarding did not work.
Sad to say that I cannot give a review here after using the software.

Call option on website using mongoosemetrics

That is how we came across Mongoosemetrics: the tool that helps you to easily put a local US number or a toll-free number on your site, and get a record of calls received on that number. There is a free trial available with 245 mts of free calling. After that they charges are $.16/mt. Normal charges are $39/month + $9 for a toll-free number or $10 for a local number.
The top features are:
1. They give you a trackable number. Toll free numbers would be available immediately whereas local numbers would take 1-2 business days.
2. Mongoosemetrics keeps a record of the number of calls received on that number. Any call to that number is routed through a page on your website where we have to put a code. That gives you a record of the number of calls.
3. The calls can be mapped to a local number.
4. Email alerts with incoming caller’s phone number, duration, time of call can be activated.

I am still in the research stage. Not started using it yet. Will write a better review after using it for sometime. Hope this helps you in your online marketing.

I have been doing keyword analysis for PPC campaigns or generally for websites for the past 3-4 years as part of Online Marketing. Can’t say I have perfected the technique, but I can say that there is more complication to keyword analysis than what meets the eye!

I have been using Wordtracker, Overture, Google keyword tool and other tools offered by different PPC engines. But now zeroed in on Google keyword tool, since Google brings most of the traffic to the website I work on. Google keyword tool used to show monthly search volume and average quarterly search volume earlier. Now they have modified the headings to “Local search volume: April” and “Global Monthly Search volume”. Advertiser competition is still given as a scale and not an actual number.

Just giving some interesting facts here.
1. Did you know that there were 110,000 searches (approximate average monthly searches, over past 12 months) performed globally for the keyword “3d modeling”, whereas “3d modelling” had 40,500 searches? So your page on 3d modeling should have just one “l” and not two, if you have done good keyword analysis. Some terms like this are easy and straight forward. But there are few others that are more complicated.
2. The term “clipping” has 201,000 searches, whereas the term “image clipping” has just 1600 searches. So do you call you service clipping? That could mean so many different things. If I call a service image clipping, will I be targeting the wrong keyword. This would need some more research and discussion with the sales team to find the right keyword. One dilemma I am on now.

So do you keyword analysis right and you would reap better rewards in your online marketing. Don’t trust your instincts and go wrong, when there is such a great tool telling you what exactly your customers could be searching for.

IPL 2009

But all the same, I wasn’t very happy when Jayasurya scored the first boundary and not Tendulkar. And overjoyed when Jayasurya got out, and Tendulkar didn’t. As I said, I am a true-blooded Indian.

Didn’t get to watch many matches after that. I have a 5-year old, pogo-and-nick-loving son at home.

Inspite of thinking that all this is such a huge waste of money, what with movie-stars spending millions, bidding for players of their choice…..and the slump in viewership since IPL is being played in South Africa…. I still like cricket and all the buzz around it:)

Twittering away

But Twitter is said to be the next big thing after Google, or maybe even overtaking Google. Today I read about this device called Kickbee, a band that can be worn on the wrist by pregnant moms. Each time the baby in the womb kicks, this band with some sensor would detect that and put a post on Twitter saying ” I kicked mommy at so-and-so date and time”. Ain’t that funny. Let alone hearing about what others had for their breakfasts, I can also hear when babies of expectant mothers kicked them! Maybe those extra kicks were for being so silly!

All said and done, Twitter is growing in userbase and uses. Just watch out for the new developments!!