Being Yogendra

25 Places to Find Awesome Stock Photos — Free and Cheap

2009-05-05T00:51:00.001+05:30

25 Places to Find Awesome Stock Photos — Free and Cheap

This is REALLY COOL... some great stock photos for using EVER
StockVault
Pixel Galerie
Free Range
MorgueFile
EveryStockPhoto
Stock.xchng
Openphoto
Unprofound
PhotoRogue
Geek Philosopher
Woophy
PhotoRack
FreePixels
Design Packs
FreeFoto
Pixel Perfect Digital
Free Digital Photos
Public Domain Photos
Free Historical Stock Photos
NationsIllustrated
Kave Wall
Free Stock Photos
ImageBase
Cepolina
Abstract Influence
Image After
WOW.. itn't this great?

Flicker Macro Photos

2009-04-23T23:43:00.000+05:30
Here goes my latest dapper on Flicker Macro Images

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Lead Management through Web 2.0

2008-12-04T14:20:00.001+05:30

Here is a very good research on lead management through web 2.0

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Meditation

2008-12-04T00:56:00.001+05:30

Some great cartoons @ www.everydaypeoplecartoons.com

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Picnik.com: Great online photo editor

2008-12-01T23:41:00.001+05:30

I tried a few things on Picnik and it works GREAT. Not slow when you consider that its online and has lots of features, without much complication.

I reached here, thanks to StumbleUpon and this great post
10 Free Web-based Alternatives to Photoshop
Enjoy..

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Social CRM... be careful.

2008-11-25T13:58:00.001+05:30

With the launch of Siebel 8.1.1 and innumerable discussion / blogs across
the web community, the Social CRM (or CRM 2.0) has suddenly come to a
limelight... so much that it almost looks like a "classic bubble"... getting
bigger by day, and possibly waiting to burst if we dont be careful (and help our
customers to do so too!!)

Every company and every CRM consultant is now saying that "Social CRM" is
the future, and, it is to an extent. Our employees and our customers are
incresingly getting used to product reviews, company reviews, chats, blogs,
twitters, gadgets, widgets and the RSS feeds. And its fair that they will expect
the same environment on the work or while they buy something.

But this is not a reason to go overboard on Social CRM investment..
especially the IT investment. We need to evaluate "each option" in Social crm
very carefully.

Here are a few things i could pull out of my hat:

What does your company sell.. to whom?

There is no point in having a Consumer Discussion Board for a company which
sells industrial adhesives... When you buy any machine / product, do you really
care which adhesive is used in the production? And if the anser is a big "NO"
(or better.. "do they use adhesives... why?") then there is no reason why that
company should run a forum for end consumers anyway!!

So it makes more sense in B2C companies or some companies that produce end
consumer products but sell it to Businesses (CPG industry for that matter)

Social CRM... for whom?

When you plan for a Social CRM strategy, you need to think whom are you
targeting through it? Is it your employees (if yes is it higher management, your
sales staff, your service staff, your own support staff?) or your Partners or
actually the customers. The tool type, display content, data security and
targeting entirely depends on who is going to use it and WHAT'S IN IT FOR THE
ORGANISATION & THE USER!

You need to take a "hard-look" at these things otherwise the CRM 2.0 just
becomes a money-drain just because it looks "cool" on the new iPhone and some of your already
spoilt employees love it.

What is the activity?

CRM has three main pillers: Marketing, Sales and Service. (Arguably the
forth one PRM!). You need to take a call on which piller you are targeting
through the Social CRM strategy. In true sense, you should try to touch your
customer to enable them give valuable feedback. But other functions like
Marketing and Sales are also equally ciritcal. Best practice would be to combine
all three into a bunch of tools and make them available for the customers..
easier said than done!!

How do you track down the Internet?

Hearing to customer chatter on the web and proactively reaching out to them
to convert their grivances into opportunities to make them loyal >> sounds
good. very good. But how much of this is "process" and how much is "system". I
look at this piece more of a proess, where the "human" tough is paramount not
the systems. If you have a system that can help you track that easily...
great... but do you really think you need to develop all this yourself when its
already available free with great search engines, alerts, twitter analytical
engines and what not! What's important is what do you do with the amount of
noice you can already hear.. how do you reach to the customers and truely
resolve their grivances.

Data or Junk?

Now consider opening the flood gates of blogs, forums, chatting, picture
sharing, video sharing.. within months you are going to store terrabytes of
data... have you figured out what to do with all that data (or junk). do you
intend to store each of this data in your CRM system against each customer /
prospect / member.... i would say BAD IDEA.

So catching hold of the "Right Data" and using it in your CRM is much
harder than it seems when you collect all that data!!

With this, i take a pause to my long drown narration.

I love social CRM (the fact that i am writing this in blog and not it a
mail is telling itself)! But the key is not to go overboard only because its the
"in-thing"!

Your comments are highly valuable!

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Cartoon on Bailout

2008-11-24T21:28:00.001+05:30

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Google Search in India on SMS!!

2008-11-21T00:38:00.001+05:30

[Via TekRaja]
A great news for those, who don't have the enabled phone in India : Now
you can search Google via SMS and that without paying any premium charges!

Just sent your queries to 9-77-33-00000 and get
information about cricket scores, Indian Railways train schedules &
ticket status, horoscopes, movie showtimes, restaurant information and
more. To get started sms "help" to 9-77-33-00000.

The best side of this service : you will be n't charged @ Rs. 3/- like
other similar services. Just pay standard SMS charge and enjoy the SMS
search.

To see the query format visit this page. Here, you can try an interactive demo too, and view results just as they'd appear on your phone as SMS.

Cheers!

Related :

Send Free Picture SMS
How to get alerts of new e-mails for FREE
How to get more than 250 Tweets per week from Twitter
Google SMS Channel : Free Group SMS service
Post Tweets via SMS at Cheaper rates
CAT scores via SMS and e-mails

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Dilbert on Internet time wasters!!

2008-11-20T15:40:00.001+05:30

This is the condition i get into so many times...
not that i am proud of it.. but funny.

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CleanAfterMe: Good tool to go invisible

2008-11-12T20:28:00.001+05:30

Copied from techraja

CleanAfterMe is a small tool which helps you in deleting all types of traces and logs from the computer.

The features of CleanAfterMe :

Deletes files and Registry entries that are automatically
created by the Windows.
Cleans Cookies, History, Cache, Passwords of Internet Explorer.
'Recent' folder, the Registry entries that record the last opened files.
Temporary folder of Windows, the event logs, the Recycle Bin, and more.

Now, the Best thing about CleanAfterMe : CleanAfterMe is a portable application.
Hence, You can carry it with your USB drive and run it without any installation and without leaving any trace in the
Registry.

So, carry it with your pendrive and use it when you have to work on a shared or public computer. It deletes all your logs and traces and keeps your activities and data private.

CleanAfterMe

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Battery & Charging: Anyone really innovating?

2008-11-12T20:25:00.001+05:30

Every time my cell-phone goes dead or my battery shows red signal, i wonder why there is absolutely no improvement in the battery life in past decade?

We have gone from b/w screens to color screens and not touch screens. We have improved from basic call / text messages to real time internet access... but where is the battery support for all these features.

We all saw what happened to iPhone 3G as compared to old iPhone... the battery life sucks.

The story is not too different with Laptops.. most of them give 3 hours backup time when they are "brand new" but as you start doing some serious work on it, within months the life comes down to 1 hour or even less. (Seriously, i have some friends who cannot use the laptop if the power is not supplied continuously... which defeats the purpose of having a laptop in the first place)

So my question is, why are there no new advancements in the battery technology?
why does it still take 2-3 hours to charge the battery? If the storage space can go from 1mb to 20gb in 5 years, why does the battery talk time go from 1 hour to 20 hours?
Are our researchers too concentrated in solving the storage problems and ignoring the energy problem?
We talk about Global Warming 1000 times a day, then is it rocket science that if we can change the charging technology and make our devices use less power for more time, it will save our earth (i know i am stretching the too far, but i really mean it!!
Any comments welcome!! Am i missing some thing REALLY BASIC here?

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Odiogo.com: Text to Speech RSS.. real time

2008-11-11T10:23:00.001+05:30

I was reading a marketing related blog and found a link

Thought looks interesting and landed up on odiogo.com...

Still to explore it fully but looks cool and this is something that i was looking for, for a while.

I use NaturalVoiceReader for almost 3 years as i am too lazy to read myself and generally can make more sense of documents if someone read it for me and i just keep an eye over the text..

Hope i will use this more often and will come back with a complete review.

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Timeboxing

2008-11-07T14:44:00.001+05:30

I have been hearing about Time-Boxing... and may be doing it sometimes...

This is a good article which talks about in detail!!

I wish i will be able to do this effectively... at times i tend to linger and read too many things which are relevant, alright, but takes too much time than the importance of it to me and to my organization..

good opportunity to stop it and start TimeBoxing

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Selling Wisdom

2008-11-07T12:57:00.000+05:30

Copied from here
Jonathan Farrington’s blog is always packed with incredibly valuable wisdom that any sales manager or business owner can use.

Now he’s packed all the best of his posts and those contributed by others into a nice, neat e-Book that you can download and take with you.

If you’re leading a sales effort and you want to be sure
you’ve got your eyes wide open to potential challenges and
opportunities, I highly recommend giving this a read!

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BusinessListening.Com

2008-11-04T14:02:00.000+05:30

Cool site.. has some interesting material on how to listen! Highly useful at office as well as at home

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Dilbert on ERP Deal

2008-10-27T12:01:00.001+05:30

Interesting

Self Portrait: This is Imagination

2008-10-23T13:59:00.000+05:30

This is a beautiful picture by Enzo Maisano on

And he was kind enough to share the setup as well.

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Social Technology Ladder

2008-10-21T12:13:00.001+05:30

Found this very interesting!!

Copied from one of the forrester blogs .. here is the link

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Live Trains: Lovely experiment

2008-10-17T16:32:00.001+05:30

http://www.swisstrains.ch/

Its an alpha version of a real-time train map. Tracking the Swiss train system, SwissTrains gives
you a glimpse of the trains as they make their way around Zurich and
surroundings.
The red circles marked with an S represent the trains,
while the red squares make up the stations. Clicking on any station
reveals a schedule with arrival and departure times.
If you click on a
moving train and click follow in the drop down menu, you’ll get a
bird’s eye view with satellite images of the train as it
traverses the country.
Street names and stations are listed as well in
the hybrid map view.

Its a beautiful example of a live-meshup.

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Financial Crisis Cartoons (Part 2)

2008-10-13T19:42:00.001+05:30

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Financial Crisis Cartoons

2008-10-13T18:57:00.001+05:30

Looking at the cartoons through a cartoonist's eyes:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26761901/displaymode/1107/framenumber/1/s/2/

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Google in 2001

2008-10-01T10:57:00.001+05:30

Google has brought back the index from January 2001
to show how many things have changed in almost 8 years. At that time,
Google's index included 1,326,920,000 web pages and it was the most
comprehensive index of a search engine.

Google explains that the
index from January 2001 is the earliest available. "Well, for various
technical reasons that are too boring to go into, earlier versions of
our index aren't readily accessible. But we did still want to offer
users a chance to search an older index as a way of looking back at web
history, and the January 2001 index is the best we can do."

It is extremely interesting exercise... do click on the "View old version in the internet Archive' link for a few results to see the web pages as of 2001 itself.

You will not believe how much world has changed in last 8 years.
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10 Meeting Basics

2008-09-29T12:23:00.001+05:30

Found a very good article on Meetings Here

You've
been sitting in the meeting for 93 minutes. It feels like 93 days. It was supposed
to last an hour, max, but the Senior VP is in the room, and the point of the session
was to discuss his pet project, and no one wants to be the first to crack. Everyone
else is busy making gratuitous points designed to flatter Mr. Big. You're entertaining
fantasies about throwing a cream pie, or worse, at the blowhard who just won't
stop talking about how successful the project will be. You know it's doomed to
fail; it's the high-tech equivalent of selling ice to the Inuit.
You're asking yourself, who's in charge here? How did all these
reasonably well-intentioned people get so far out of whack? And, more to the
point, how can this juggernaut be stopped?

Since mass laryngitis is not an option, you need the Ten Commandments
of Meetings. Moreover, you need to post them prominently in meeting rooms so
that everyone can begin to follow them – especially the leader. Remember that
even Moses had trouble with his unruly flock from time to time, so be prepared
for the occasional outburst of the modern corporate version of Baal worship.

Thou Shalt Always
Know What Time It Is

The clock is God in meetings. Out of respect for the commitment and sanity
of everyone who attends, meetings should never run over the time allotted.
Especially regularly scheduled meetings. If the session gets bogged down
in an issue, table it for another meeting. If the meeting must conclude
by taking an action or decision, then schedule it accordingly. Tell all
the participants before the meeting starts that it will go as long as
necessary to reach the stated conclusion. Don't mislead people by minimizing
the amount of work involved; that kind of trickery will only come back
to haunt you.

Thou
Shalt Not Forget the Main Reason for Meetings

The only good reason to have meetings is to do something together that
you can't do better alone. In business, meetings have three primary purposes:
communicating, administering, and deciding. Of these, the first and last
are most worthwhile. But the focus of all three kinds of meetings should
be action. They should either be communicating the intention to take an
action or the results of action that has been taken, administering a plan
of action, or deciding among alternative actions. If you find yourself
calling meetings – or going to them – that have some other purpose,
you're wasting your time. And everyone else's. Find something else to
do.

Thou Shalt Remember
the Golden Rule of Meetings:

Praise in Public, Criticize in Private

Shut off public criticism when it arises. It's extremely destructive
to morale and should be prevented. Indeed, much misery could be avoided
in the business world if all members of the corporate community would
remember a simple fact: if they are working for the same employer, then
they are all on the same team. Corporate politics we will always have
with us, but that doesn't mean that we have to accept them tamely. Help
your vocally critical teammates by making it clear, in advance of each
meeting, who is in charge, how long the meeting will last, and what the
point of the meeting is. Then deal with attempts to take the meeting in
other, more vicious directions as simple misunderstandings of the agreed-upon
ground rules. Politely but firmly steer the meeting back to the right
terrain.

Thou
Shalt Not Convene Meetings Outside of Normal Business Hours

Of course there are times when this commandment must be
broken, but they should be reserved for real emergencies. People who schedule
meetings for evenings and weekends are merely advertising the embarrassing
fact that they have no life - and they're expecting others to give up
theirs. That kind of person should not be allowed to run anything, much
less part of a modern corporation, because they lack the basic humanity
to do a good job. Surviving in the fast-moving, devil-take-the-hindmost
business world of today requires good peripheral vision as well as keen
understanding of the work involved. Those without the necessary life balance
can't possibly understand that world they're in or see around the next
business corner.

Thou
Shalt Not Use Group Pressure to Logroll Conclusions

It is simply wrong to use meetings to pressure people into agreeing to
actions or ideas that they know to be immoral or illegal in order to promote
the business of the corporation. Group pressure is a powerful force, especially
where jobs are at stake. Don't misuse it to get people to stray from the
straight and narrow, or bend the rules, or set the quotas dangerously
high, or cut corners on quality, or any one of a thousand such activities
that go on every day in misguided organizations everywhere. Your corporation
has a set of values. If it doesn't include adherence to a code of ethics
and the rule of law, change the values or find values or find somewhere
else to work.

Thou Shalt Not Use
Meetings to Destroy Others' Careers

There is enough room in every meeting for a disagreement without making
it personal or destructive. More than that, it's wrong – and politically
unwise. Modern corporate life has become so ephemeral and its denizens
so transient that your past is bound to come back and face you again,
and sooner rather than later. A petty triumph at someone else's expense
at one job may well prove seriously embarrassing at your next job. Resist
the temptation. Curiously, the unstable nature of today's workplace has
encouraged people to take the opposite attitude. The thinking seems to
run, "I'll never see these people again, so why not cut loose?" But the
opposite is almost certainly true.

Thou Shalt Keep the
Personal and the Corporate Distinct

There's nothing wrong with having friends at work. But meetings are not
for social calls. To be sure, a certain amount of socializing at the beginnings
and endings of meetings is part of the grease that keeps the well-oiled
corporate machine running smoothly. But the balance should be clearly
kept on the side of business. Too much socializing will lead to resentment
among the others at the meeting who are not part of the party. More than
that, it's inefficient, bad for business, and corrosive for your soul.
You need to have a life outside the corporate one. If you find that all
your socializing is taking place in business meetings, it's time to change
a few things.

Thou Shalt Remember
that the Best Model for Meetings Is Democracy, Not Monarchy

Resist the temptation to railroad your fellow participants into a decision
you want. You need to lead by moral persuasion, not by virtue of your
title. Brute force is not the appropriate mode for meetings, though jujitsu
sometimes is. As a leader, you should always strive to understand the
sense of the meeting. If you want to issue edicts, publish them in the
media available to you. You don't need a meeting to announce a new course
of proceeding that is not up for discussion. And watch out for other participants
in the meeting trying to take control. Hijacking a meeting is a cherished
corporate game, but a nasty one. It's your job as a leader to prevent
that from happening.

Thou
Shalt Always Prepare a Clear Agenda and Circulate It Beforehand

It is more than courtesy – it is good efficient business practice to
think hard about the purpose, nature and structure of a meeting before
it takes place. These thoughts should be codified in the form of an agenda
and circulated to all participants well in advance of the meeting. Time
enough, at any rate, for the participants to prepare whatever they need
to in the way of reports, plans, proposals, or the like. Far too often,
people who call meetings grossly underestimate the amount of preparation
required of the participants.

Thou Shalt Terminate
a Regularly Scheduled Meeting When Its Purpose for Being No Longer Exists

If you can no longer clearly state the reason for having
a regular meeting, it's time to kill it. Purposes change, and when the
meeting has lost its reason fortaking place, be the first one to put an
end to it. All periodic meetings should have a stock-taking every few
sessions to determine if the meeting still has a purpose. It's just one
way to fight corporate bloat and bureaucratic encrustation. Of course,
for this discipline to work, you must have decided what the regular meeting
was for when it was begun. Goal-setting is just as important in meetings
as it is in the rest of corporate life.

The only meetings that people wish had run longer are those
magical ones that take place when lovers first set eyes upon one another.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that your business meeting is that
thrilling. Keep its timing, purpose, and tone in perspective. Live to
meet another day.
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Savalee Marthi Movie (2007) Songs

2008-09-20T03:56:00.001+05:30

Savalee Marthi Movie (2007) Songs

Classic songs thanks to Ashok Patki, Devaki Pandit, Arati Ankalikar and others

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Arati Ankalikar Tikekar (Esnips Songs)

2008-09-20T03:22:00.001+05:30

Arati Ankalikar-Tikekar Classical Songs esnips.com

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