Collaborate With Others

Would you like to collaborate with other bloggers? Grou.ps is a service that promises to deliver all of the collaboration tools you may need, in one place. You can run of the tools just by using a single login, instead of going to different websites to use a specific collaboration tool. Grou.ps supports wikis, photos, links, blogs, calendars, chat, forums, maps, profiles, and subgroups. I have to admit that it is a quite long list. They also allow modules by which users can pull in their data from other third party services such as Flickr, Digg, or even blogs. Let us hope that there will be more sites like this coming out in the future, as they can be quite useful in many circumstances.

Find Parking Space

Looking for a parking space is never easy in large cities. Ultimately, the outcome is that people waste valuable time looking for a place to park. Fortunately, technology may help us in this challenge as magnetometers are able to detect whether a car is parked near it. Those magnetometers would be connected to a network, which would mean that drivers would be able to find parking space by accessing their phone, as they would have a sort of map that would let them know which parking spaces are not taken. The idea is great and it is going to be implemented in some cities in United States. However, I do not think that this will reduce traffic congestion, as it will make driving a car even more desirable.

Technorati Favorites and Link Exchanges

Have you been recently focusing on attracting more readers to your blog? Were you looking for bloggers who would interested in link exchanges? Perhaps what is the most effective way of achieving your goal is to subscribe to Technorati. Once you are a Technorati member you can participate in various link exchanges, or even organize your own. Usually, anyone having a Technorati account and a blog which is not loaded with spam or copyrighted material can participate in such programs. Let me give you an example of how such a link exchange can work. Basically, there are two ways a person can participate:

1.Through Technorati favorite exchange. In such a case you would simply need to favorite other participants by clicking on their link. Next, you should post a comment with a link which would allow others to favorite you. The organizers of such contests usually promise that they will favorite participants as soon as possible. If for some reason they would forget, simply remind them by posting a comment on their blog.

2. Another way to participate is to follow some additional steps. Those steps include publishing a post on your blog with a link to the post of the contest organizer as well as links to other participants. In your post you should explain the rules of the link exchange. Other bloggers will in exchange link to your own post. The best part about it is that everyone involved will benefit in some way.

There are many bloggers who participate in such programs. If you would like to exchange links with them simply visit their websites. You can find their websites by doing a search for link exchanges on Google. I would also like to encourage you to organize such link exchanges on your own.

Practicing Writing Skills

In this post I want to discuss practicing writing skills. I am not talking about just any writing techniques, but about the ability to sell your content. Let us imagine that you are listening to an audio advertisement. In this audio advertisement the announcer usually only has a short time to present the message that is supposed to attract customers to the product he is referring to. When it comes to our blogs we do not have any time limit to put our message across, as we can write as much as we want. However, it is generally better to keep our posts concise so that our readers will benefit the most without spending too much time reading a very long message.

I suggest practicing writing short posts that are supposed to present some value to the reader. You may later read them yourself in order to examine if the message is really as valuable as you hoped it to be. A successful blogger needs to write in a way that is interesting to his readers, so that is why practice is essential. Another important aspect is the ability to understand your reader base. What are the interests on your visitors? What makes them excited? Those are the questions you should know the answers to.

Multitasking

In today’s world we are being encouraged to multitask. When you drive a car, you might be required to talk to your children or on the phone, eat while watching the news etc. While multitasking can be tiring, it can actually be a lot of fun. It allows you to do at least two things at the time, and thus use your time more effectively. There are many activities which can be combined together like, for example, eating and watching TV.

Why would you just look at your food, if you can watch news at the same time? Additionally, many doctors argue that talking with full mouth is not healthy, and thus it is not the best idea to talk with family members while eating a meal. Many children and teenagers do their homework and watch TV simultaneously. This might be more difficult, so I would not recommend it in most situations.

However, if someone can focus on doing his homework while listening to music or watching TV, then there is nothing wrong about that. I know that many people dislike multitasking, but in many situations it is beneficial. In my opinion, you do not have to worry about multitasking as long as you use your time more effectively this way. Some people can concentrate on a lot of different things at the same time. However, if multitasking is making you tired, then you should consider doing just one thing at a time.

Are Computers an Investment?

Some people might say that buying computers is an investment; however, it depends in what situation you are. If you are using a computer for work, then indeed it is an investment. On the other hand, buying a computer that has all of the newest components is not an investment at all. That is because computer components are getting less expensive each year, and there are almost no other products whose price drops so much. That is why I suggest you buy a computer with a processor, graphic card, and other components that you are really going to fully utilize, instead of being tricked by commercials into buying something very expensive that will get outdated soon anyway.

OpenID and Blogs

Last year Google changed its policy concerning the way bloggers can comment on blogs hosted by Blogspot. To leave a comment, a person who does not have a Google account will be able to use an OpenID login for that purpose. This will be the same login used for popular services like WordPress.com, LiveJournal, and AOL Journals. What does it mean for bloggers who have their blogs hosted on Blogspot? The benefits include the reduction of the amount of spammers that flooded our blogs. It also saved us precious time that otherwise we would have to spend deleting worthless comments. I think that unfortunately these changes also reduced the number of comments in general. However, in the end it was probably worth it.

Email and Your Blog

As a blogger it is a good idea to have an email address that can be solely used for your blog, unless you have a contact form on your website, which enables your readers to contact you. Since having an email dedicated to your blog seems to have many advantages, it is a good idea to make sure that your email account is always reachable and that it has free space for incoming messages. You can make sure this happens by registering at such places like Gmail.

Gmail allows you to store over 6GB of data, which means that you never have to delete your emails. You can always access your messages, which gives Gmail an advantage over other free email accounts which unfortunately are quite often under maintenance. For me the most important thing is accessibility, so that is why I recommend Gmail.

However, I am sure there are also other reliable companies that might offer similar quality of services. Of course, they might not always be free like Gmail is. It is also not a secret that Gmail gained so much popularity, because it is backed up by one of the largest Internet giants: Google. Google has the financing and traffic to make such projects work.

Inflation - God provide us with a solution to all

The boost in prices as intended against a set principle of purchasing power of the population in a nation may be described as Inflation. It is generally calculated with the help of CPIs or Consumer Price Indexes which takes into account the prices of goods purchased by consumers. The prices of the goods purchased are calculated by the GDP deflator.

Inflation forces lots of pressure on people in the world economy today, and this is normally faced by the industrial sector, exports sector and people of fixed income. Inflation has the power of increasing the price of a product for more than 100%. Inflation has made most of the citizens unemployed. There are lots of chaos and confusion in the country due to inflation. I believe something super naturally has to happen to tackle this inflation.

Economy today - Exports and Imports

Before seeing the economy today we shall get to know what is gdp of a nation. It is nothing but the transfer of commodities and services from one country to another in terms of cash constitutes the gdp on a nation. Gross exports are always greater than the gross imports for most of the nations.

The universal style is that the industrially superior developed nations account for the principal share of World exports but of current developing nations like China and India are becoming more and more major exporters in the World scenario.

The sell to other countries growth rate of the world during fiscal year 2004 was roughly 22 percent, a huge raise from about 6.0 percent in 2003. In the last fiscal (2006) imports improved drastically in relationship to earlier years but on the other hand it could not surpass the slowing exports.

Reason 3 for inadequacy of the forces of supply and demand

The third reason why the market forces of demand and supply may be considered inadequate is that some of the basic structures of our economy that are called its infrastructures are still in an undeveloped stage. The nature of the market being what it is, these structures cannot be built rapidly through the market mechanism alone. For example, out economy cannot develop without more roads. We cannot develop without more roads. We cannot control floods, nor generate power on a large enough scale, not irrigate the millions of hectares of our land without building large river valley projects.

Now where and how can a road be sold so that it would be profitable for somebody to produce it quickly? How can we, seeing the long run benefits of a large river valley project sell the idea of a dam for a price to builders? If we cannot, how would it otherwise be possible for someone to find it profitable to invest the thousands of crores that such huge projects need?

In an underdeveloped economy like India the social and economic infrastructures are necessarily in a very rudimentary state. Huge investments of thousands of crores of rupees have to be made to build up these structures of irrigations, power, transport, communication and other social and economic services. It is argued that the market forces if left to themselves would never make it profitable enough to produce these on a large scale in our economy in a short span of time.

Reason 2 for inadequacy of the forces of supply and demand

The second reason why the market mechanism may not serve social purpose adequately is that market forces only represent the consumer’s self interest, as expressed through his or her purchases. But the same individual himself or herself may express a different social interest if asked.

Let us take a simple example. Suppose an economist has to sit on a committee to advise the government on what the rate of duty on a good should be. He would have to consider the need of the economy and thing of the good of the other people also, not only his own. If he has to devise the rates of duty for different kinds of goods, he would no doubt do it on some social consideration.

He would not simply try to see, for example, that the goods which he himself buy get off lightly, he may even recommend that some goods that have high demand in the market may be made more difficult to buy and sell, for example, cigarettes. In short, our social consideration determine what we thing ought to be done in the matter.

However, what we thing ought to be done need not be what suits us best personally, we would want to pay as low a rate of duty as possible. We would like to see that the price of the goods that we buy is low. But out social values may still be quite different and make us recommend higher rates

Reason 1 for inadequacy of the forces of supply and demand

The first reason is that the forces of market supply and demand do not represent the economic need of all the people equally in the way, say, voting by ballot represent their political need in a democracy. Market demand is naturally weighted in favor of those who can spend more on their purchases. Therefore, the rich man’s luxury makes a greater claim on the resources of the economy that the poor man’s necessity. A private car might, for this reason, be more profitable to produce than a public bys, even though the latter solves the transport need of a far large number of people.

For the same reason, from the point of view of supply, the allocation of resource for production between cosmetics and medicine, between cinema houses and hospitals, between big city building and rural housing and so on, does not reflect the choice of everybody’d need equally. For example, the poorer people may want the medicine, but the rich may more effectively demand the cosmetics. The poor may want the hospital service by the private investor may still find it profitable to build the cinema house. And market by supply catering to the need of the stronger economic groups because voting for allocation of resources thorough the market does not go by the rule of one person one vote. The mechanism is weighted in favor of the larger spender of investor.

Protect Your Income

Making money online is a relatively new way to have an extra income. While there are some great opportunities out there to make money, there are still many people who are concerned whether this is a reliable source of income. While it is true that no one usually guarantees a regular income, you can protect yourself by minimizing the risk. The best way to do it is to have multiple streams of income. This way even when one source of income will no longer be profitable, you will still have many other ways to earn money.

There have been a lot of cases where Google banned users from AdSense, and sometimes it was without a valid reason. It would really help if online companies had more respect for online entrepreneurs, and did not ban them without at least warning them once. Until that happens, I suggest focusing on creating multiple streams of income. What I would like to advise you to do is to find at least one reliable source of income.

Once you start making money from this source, start looking for other ways. Even if you do not find any new opportunities, you will still be making money from the first source. Sooner or later, you will find other ways of making money. This way even if your new ways of obtaining money will not work out, you will still have a reliable income from your first source.

Link & Feed Exchange Programs

If you are looking for a way to drastically improve your Technorati rank, multiply the amount of RSS readers you have, and expose you to new blogs, I encourage you to participate in link and feed exchange programs. Having higher rankings and more readers will result in being more respected in the blogosphere. This in turn will give you even more traffic. I am going to give an example of how such a program can work.

The idea behind it is simple. It is based on the premise that all bloggers want readers and link backs. So how does it work? You simply copy a list on your blog. This results in link backs for your blogging friends. If a particular program is also a feed exchange, you then click the RSS feed link to subscribe to all of them. Then you add yourself or even a few other bloggers and their feeds to the end of the list. You then publish it on your blog.

The reason such programs can be so successful is because the news of such an exchange will spread very fast on the blogosphere. Just imagine if 10 people would do this, and later 10 more after them. That would result in your blog obtaining 100 link backs and 100 feed subscribers.

Should You Put a Photo on Your Blog?

Here are many bloggers who wonder whether they should put a photo of themselves on their blog. I think that it depends on circumstances and on the blogs niche. However, there are some reasons why it might be a good idea to implement a photo. One of the first things that many visitors do when visiting a blog is to look for a picture of the author. That is because this way they can find out with whom they are dealing with. It might also help them in knowing how to approach a blogger. In most cases, people are more likely to deal with somebody that they know some things about. If they like the picture of somebody, they might be more likely to visit that particular blog again.

Blogs Limited to One Topic?

There are thousands possible topics that a blog can have, and it is going to be up to you to choose the one you are the most interested in. You may get an idea to blog about search engine optimization, or maybe you also got a few other ideas not directly related to this particular subject.

There is a chance that there are a few other things you are fascinated about that you would like to write about. Are you worried about starting a blog that would cover more than one topic? I think that there is nothing wrong about blogging about two or three different topics on your blog. After all, there have to be people who also share your interests.

While staying focused on the topic of a blog is a very important factor in retaining visitors, writing about a few topics might even attract more readers that will come to a blog in order to read about a variety of topics. Of course, there has to be moderation in everything so it may not be a good idea to blog about a dozen unrelated subjects. That is because there may not be that many visitors that have interest in all of the topics you would discuss.

High Quality Websites

Do you think there are too many websites on the Web? I think that most Internet users agree that each website should contain some useful information. However, the truth is that there are many websites that are copies of other sites, or simply contain outdated information. What a typical Internet surfer expects from websites is that they contain some valuable information, unique content, or useful services.

On the other hand, we do not need sites that are just copies of other websites. That is because such sites are simply not that useful. Many people set up a website and later abandon it. Unfortunately, this decreases the value of such a site, as most information on such website might get outdated very easily.

How fast should an economy grow?

Today we shall see how fast or at what rate should an economy grow. There can be no obvious answer to this question. Each society in each generation must decide between present and the future need according to its own urge for growth. In our economy, decisions in this respect have been made continuously through the five year plans. For example, the more we opted for heavy industries producing capital equipment capable of producing further capital, the greater was the base of production made secure for the future. But greater also was the sacrifice for the present generation.

It must go to the credit of our people that over the past forty years they have not insisted on the easy option of avoiding all current sacrifices in consumption. They have mad sure that future generations will have a stronger capital base for the economy and have permitted the large diversion of resources from consumption to investment in the plans.

But to make sure also that the economy does not break down, the burden of sacrifice in consumption by the people must not the intolerable. It is only when economic growth takes into account considerations of social justice, and fair distribution that an economy can take the hard decisions necessary for economic development effectively.

What is meaning of economic development?

We in many occasions say that our economy is a developing economy. But what have you understood by the term economic development. Each society not only has to think of the present but also to prepare for the future. We not only build for our won comfort and security today but also make provision for our children and grandchildren. It is, however, one of the facts of man’s economic life that something cannot be had for nothing.

If we devote our resources towards the production of some goods then we must surely forgo the advantage of having some other goods. Our resources can be put to many alternative uses but their total stock at any time is limited. Therefore, to make sure that we or our descendants shall be well provided for twenty years from today, we must keep aside something from what we produce today and not use up all of it.

But how does one exactly provide for the future? To make sure that we shall have enough clothes twenty years hence we cannot simply store up some clothes today. What we have to do is to maintain the capacity for production intact, over the years, so that the output level can be maintained every year. In order to maintain capital equipment intact, while it is being subjected to wear and tear through use, we naturally have to spend some otherwise useful resources on equipment. Each year, therefore, the economy must be ready to devote a part of its resources no to consumption but to maintaining its capital equipment intact by repairing or replacing it. This is the only way that the output level can be maintained over the years. Using resources in this way for equipment rather than for consumption is called investment.

War Against Technology

Technology has been a blessing to virtually anyone who had contact with it. Technology has also contributed to the quality of life we have. We live in times when technology is generally easily accessible, but there is still a lot of work to be done to spread new innovative technologies into an average Joe’s household. That is why many countries signed a World Trade Organization agreement which prohibits taxing of many new technology products.

While it sounds reasonable, it seems that some organizations/countries seem not to care very much about it. In this case I am talking about the European Union. It violated this agreement by taxing products including LCD monitors, cables, and satellite boxes, instead of supporting them. The question is, does European Union realize that it is impairing the continued technological development?

There are also other examples of many officials do not fully appreciating our technological advances. For example, last year the Chicago Transit Authority removed the ads for the Grand Theft Auto IV game. Grand Theft Auto is a game which involves driving and shooting in an action-arcade environment which is based on action movies. In a sense it is like an interactive movie, as it has an interesting plot and the player can make many decisions. Why would the CTA remove the ads?

I think that fear of the unknown, and having double standards is the only way it can be explained. CTA would not remove indecent posters which contain nudity and disturbing images, but it is quick to react to technologically advanced entertainment. Once people were afraid of movies, right now they are afraid of games. I hope that the war against technology will not continue for long, and that it will be easier for average consumers to have access to the newest gadgets and devices.