Analytics September 2, 2010
Posted by admin in : Techie , add a commentWorking with google analytics.
Analytics data for the site waamax.com
Engineer January 16, 2010
Posted by admin in : Techie , 2commentsA mathematician and an engineer are sitting next to each other on a long flight. The mathematician leans over to the engineer and asks if he would like to play a fun game. The engineer just wants to take a nap, so he politely declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks.
The mathematician persists and explains that the game is real easy and lots of fun. He explains, “I ask you a question, and if you don’t know the answer, you pay me $5. Then you ask me a question, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll pay you $5.”
Again, the engineer politely declines and tries to get to sleep. The mathematician, now somewhat agitated, says, “Okay, if you don’t know the answer, you pay me $5, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll pay you $50!”
This catches the engineer’s attention, and he sees no end to this torment unless he plays, so he agrees to the game. The mathematician asks the first question. “What’s the distance from the earth to the moon?”
The engineer doesn’t say a word, but reaches into his wallet, pulls out a five-dollar bill and hands it to the mathematician Now, it’s the engineer’s turn. He asks the mathematician “What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down on four?”
The mathematician looks up at him with a puzzled look. He takes out his laptop computer and searches all of his references. He taps into the air phone with his modem and searches the net and the Library of Congress. Frustrated, he sends e-mail to his co-workers all to no avail.
After about an hour, he wakes the engineer and hands him $50. The engineer politely takes the $50 and turns away to try to get back to sleep.
The mathematician then hits the engineer, saying, “What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down on four?” The engineer calmly pulls out his wallet, hands the mathematician five bucks, and goes back to sleep.
[source: engineeringhumor.com]
Why project management matters? November 25, 2009
Posted by admin in : Techie , add a commentBecause it depends entirely on the project managers and not on the project management tools. I am a great believer of Agile manifesto which suggest that individuals are always well over tools.
So no matter how good and sophisticated tools you use, they are only as good as the person using it.
Looking back to move forward September 20, 2009
Posted by admin in : Insight, Techie , add a commentRegardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.
From Norman Kerth, Project Retrospectives
Principles behind the Agile Manifesto August 30, 2009
Posted by admin in : Techie , add a commentWe follow these principles:
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer
through early and continuous delivery
of valuable software.
Welcome changing requirements, even late in
development. Agile processes harness change for
the customer’s competitive advantage.
Deliver working software frequently, from a
couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a
preference to the shorter timescale.
Business people and developers must work
together daily throughout the project.
Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.
The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
Agile processes promote sustainable development.
The sponsors, developers, and users should be able
to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Continuous attention to technical excellence
and good design enhances agility.
Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount
of work not done–is essential.
The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.
Source: Principles behind the Agile Manifesto
Microsoft Bing! - The Name. June 3, 2009
Posted by admin in : Insight, Techie , 1 comment so farThis week “Bing” has become a buzz word after Microsoft unveiled its new approach to challenge Google. Well changing name doesn’t hurt that much.
But as the history suggests, “bing” isn’t a word Microsoft will opt to for its one of the elite services. When I digged in a little further I found what it really meant.
Bing will evoke neither a type of cherry nor a strip club on “The Sopranos” but rather a sound — the ringing of a bell that signals the “aha” moment when a search leads to an answer.
The name is meant to conjure “the sound of found” as Bing helps people with complex tasks.
Well Bills Gates would be a happy man if people would start “Binging” things in future. Till then continue “Googling” it. 
Personalized Twit-T Details May 22, 2009
Posted by admin in : Living, Techie , 1 comment so far
my personalized twitter t-shirt
If you want a personalized Twitter T-Shirt here are the details:
Details:
Twitter id:_your_twitter_id_ (eg. rkwagle)
T-Shirt Size: _your_tshirt_size_ (eg. 42; i am 5′8″, so you know what’s your perfect size)
Email the details at: mytwittertshirt@gmail.com
Each T-Shirt cost NRs. 575
That’s it. Happy Twitting!!
4 Google Adwords Mistakes to Avoid March 23, 2009
Posted by admin in : Insight, Techie , add a commentPay-Per-Click campaign is a fabulous way for online Internet marketing. But running ads on Google adwords and being successful can be very complicated and time consuming process. These methods are very error prone and can cost your dearly if not done properly.
Common Adwords mistake could be:
1. Having only single adgroup in your campaign:
Google doesn’t favor the lack of differentiation. Infact the primary thing Google loves is to give its users the best online search experience. This means the ads should be much targeted along with its keywords.
Single ad group means, all the keywords direct to the same ad-copy. This signifies that the keywords in the ad group are not strongly related. So the way to beat this is by placing highly relevant keywords in an ad group and ad copy that perfectly matches the ad group.
2. Keywords not optimized:
keywords that produce sales/conversions need to be regularly optimized and expanded. The maximum cpc (cost-per-click) bids needs to be revised so that your keywords are always competitive. Continuous monitoring of the keywords and the results should also be marked with the change in the ad copy too. Split testing could help you to achieve both. Aim for more targeted keyword and the ad copy which would results in the better quality score, low cpc and higher sales.
3. Google analytics not set up or set up poorly:
In order to get the best results out of your Ad words campaigns and your website, you really should be using Google’s Analytics tool. It is free and probably the best way to manage your online marketing as it provides a detailed and clear picture of what your website visitors are actually doing while visiting your website.
There are many things you can do with Analytics to improve results, but generally speaking what Analytics does is it allows you to see the factors that directly result in enquiries and sales. This means you know what works so you can replicate, and what doesn’t work so you can eliminate it.
4. Website not optimized:
After all the hard work in optimizing and managing the keywords, ad group and ad copy it would be fruitless if you lack the better landing page or website. All these efforts should be back up with an excellent website that gets those sales.
Your landing page should be very relevant to your keywords and your ad copy for the prospects to convert into sales. Highly targeted and relevant landing page is rewarded by Google quality score which in turn works in favor or your successful PPC (pay-per-click) campaign.
Of course, doing all this can be very tiring, complicated and time consuming. But so does the rest of the things if you want to be the best.
Happy Cranking!
How To Beat a Low Google “Quality Score”? March 16, 2009
Posted by admin in : Techie , add a commentGoogle shows the ads based on the ad rank and quality score does has a bigger influence in the equation. Google Chief Economist, Hal Varian explains on how the Google quality score is based on 3 chief factors. The contributors to quality are:
1. CTR (click-Thru-Rate): This is the biggest contributors to the quality factor contributing about 60% to the score. CTR usually explains the user feedback to the ads and the ad copy.
2. Relevancy: Google place importance on relevancy contributing about 30%. Google checks the relevancy of the search query to the ads and the keywords. Google make sure that only useful ads are shown on the context of search query, ad copy and the products for the good quality score.
3. Landing page: The landing page does matter to the quality score contributing about 10% to the quality score. For good quality score, the landing page should have relevant original content, quick load time, no or very few pop-ups, and transparency about the nature of business and should be easily navigable.
Make sure you have it all, what Google values for a good “quality score”.
Too Good To Be True! March 11, 2009
Posted by admin in : Techie , add a commentGood things in life comes for free. Worried about the suitable hosting plan for you? I was like you a few months before and i came across 000WebHost
It does have all the necessary tools and features like other web hosting companies. The only difference however is that - It’s Free!
Here are some of the highlights:
Free cPanel Web Hosting with PHP5/Mysql - no advertising!
Free web hosting package packed with advanced features for hosting & building professional dynamic websites.
Free web space with all the web hosting tools you could possibly ever need.
The package includes:
- 1500 MB of Disk Space, 100 GB Bandwidth
- Host your own domain (http://www.yourdomain.com)
- cPanel Powered Hosting (you will love it)
- Over 500 website templates ready to download
- Easy to use website builder
- Free POP3 Email Box with Webmail access
- FTP and Web based File Manager
- PHP, MySQL, Perl, CGI, Ruby.
- And many more..
Get started => Register now @ 000WebHost
Wordpress & Skype February 5, 2009
Posted by admin in : Techie , add a commentI was looking for the skype plugin in wordpress so that the site visitors could see my status, chat with me or even call me. The original plugin in the wordpress.org is a heavy duty with lots of features and different configuration options.
But as I was looking for rather simple solution, that didn’t fit. Luckily I found something that would exactly fulfill my purpose.
Just use this code in your sidebar.php to get your skype connectivity from your wordpress.
Skype:<img style="border: none;" src="http://mystatus.skype.com/smallicon/[your_skype_id]"
alt="" width="16" height="16" />
<a href="skype:[your_skype_id]?chat">chat</a> |
<a href="skype:your_skype_id]?call">call</a>
Here's how it Gets.
Skype:
chat | call
A Day Without My Notebook January 31, 2009
Posted by admin in : Living, Techie , 2commentsIt’s really very tough (surprisingly). I never thought it would be that difficult. This experience was painful coz’ I wasn’t at all ready for it. At 6 pm we left our office [and our bags and notebooks] for a movie. When I returned at about 9:30 for my notebook, i realized i don’t have a key for the entrance door (thanks to the one who changed it recently). I went home all alone.
The first question “What am I gonna do before I call it a day?”. As there was no notebook, there was no internet. what about some music, movies, may be a bit of work, a short article, some good reads in pdf??
Damn! Then I realized that all the alternatives I had, they are all tied up with my notebook. I felt terrible lack of resources.
It’s too romantic to say but “I won’t last a day without you”.
Financial Situations for Dummies January 24, 2009
Posted by admin in : Insight, Techie , 1 comment so farFor most of us (including me), it has been a tough time understanding about the current global financial situation. Here’s something that will help people like us to understand it better.
How we reached the situation of today?
Once upon a time in a village in India , a man announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10.
The villagers seeing there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.
The man bought thousands at $10, but, as the supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their efforts.
The man further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.
Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer rate increased to $25 and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!
The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now act as buyer, on his behalf.
In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: ‘ Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when he returns from the city, you can sell them back to him for $50. ‘
The villagers squeezed together their savings and bought all the monkeys.
Then they never saw the man or his assistant again, only monkeys everywhere!
Welcome to WALL STREET….!!
source: unknown
Eating Your Own Dog Food January 23, 2009
Posted by admin in : Techie , 2commentsHow often does this happen? I mean using your own application that is under the development phase. Reason: if you feel comfortable and convenient using it then only you can expect the same with your customers.
Our flagship product ‘My Desire’ (no, it’s not a porn site) is a Multitask/Multiproject management tool. And we have been using it for our own internal projects and task management. There’s no lying when I say that MyD was developed using MyD.
Our intentions behind eating our own dog food: Use it yourself even if it has bugs and limited features and functionalities until it frustrates you to the extent that you have to fix it or live with it. In fact it’s a learning curve. We have so many ‘Aha’ moments using it for our daily use. Many features were added as we felt the necessity of those things (yes we listen to our customers and client too).
Many of the features which we (programmers and developers) thought cool were confused by our clients. e.g.: in Myd we previously had this feature of displaying the internal panel window in three stages, minimized, maximized and normal view. For developers, minimizing a panel would create enough space for other windows. However it was not the expected behavior for the normal users as they have seen very few of those kind of minimizing windows.
Back to the dog food. Now in MyD, we have various features which are the result of our own personal requirements that we felt necessary. Lately I accidently accepted a task that was assigned to a group of which I was a member of but the task wasn’t of my domain (this is the task assigning functionality of MyD). Mistake. Now I can’t undo it. That was one of the ‘Aha’ moments. We need the undo feature in the myd product.
Eating your own dog food indeed helps you to make you more aware of your product. Instead of client Mr. X complaining about the lack of the feature or a bug, it’s always good to find that within your team. So use your products to make it better.
Btw, when are we adding that ‘undo’ feature to MyD? .. Dev? .. Prashant? .. Klaus?
Book Review “Waiting For The Barbarians” January 22, 2009
Posted by admin in : Techie , add a comment
“The Magistrate lives peacefully in a garrison of the Empire located in the frontier of a country (South Africa is never mentioned, though suggested), which from time to time has been attacked by barbarians. The arrival of a general from the big city, however, brings horror to the town, dragging in barbarians to be tortured and reveal plots against the Empire.
Soon after, the Magistrate feels attracted to one of the barbarian women. She’s been left one-eyed and injured in one foot. The Magistrate takes care of her and the gossip spreads among the settlers.
The military authorities in the big city hear about it, and the Magistrate is punished by the same Empire he defended: he’s exposed to public shame, isolated, tortured to reveal the ‘attack plans’ he made with the barbarians and the woman, and finally freed, but condemned to live like a beggar.”
