Frontier India Technology

I wrote a piece on how Bing should differentiate from Google. Right now, Google and Bing are in the middle of a heated row. Google is accusing Bing of copying search results. Bing says that it is listening to its own search data.

Here is my thought on the issue. Google is getting to be a technological leader which is not “now” understood by its users. Google is basically a “big” website search engine. It has already kicked the ladder it has climbed, i.e, the once starry eyed small websites and web users. These users made Google what it is today. On the other hand, Microsoft was always the mean guy, who never cared about the smaller guys. Isn’t this the reason why we supported Google? Now, Google, Microsoft and China are similar. They are great firewalls.

Google has taken technology to such a scale that it has become the internet itself. It is as authoritarian as China. Bing has no other option but to copy Google search results. It is both good and bad.

But, for us, at least, we have an alternative search engine for now. The problem is that both will be showing the same results. Once, Bing can get some attention to itself, hopefully it will innovate and move on to the next level. We also have twitter and facebook to nurture further.

While we still love Google we hope it will start listening to us again.

The googles famed heap map dosen’t work for me. I have tried to experiment it for my site. (frontierindia.net) .

Look () at the google heat map. It shows minimum focus on the middle of the page.

Surprisingly, my ad works on the right hand of the postpage. I have tried it many times. When I try to put that advt on the right side (see where I have put X in red), the ad revenue goes down. I have tried googles F shaped ads on another site of mine. But, it does not work. Does anyone has the same experience?

The places, I have marked 1 and 2 in red and circles are the highest revenue generators.

Sometime back, one of the military forums copied and pasted some of my content without adhering to the terms and conditions. The owner of the forum has taken measures so that his physical location cannot be traced. I emailed him via his forum contact. He replied from his live.com email service. He said that he is not responsible for what a user posts oh his forums. I tried reasoning his that he is responsible for his sites content. he was adamant and I was helpless. The cost of going behind him legally was very high.

Today, Google Adsense came up with this interesting post. Read this “Keeping tabs on the hundreds (or even thousands!) of videos, blog posts, photos, tweets, and comments that can come in every day is a massive undertaking. However, you are ultimately responsible for all sites on which you have placed your ad code, regardless of whether you own or have produced the content.”

Unfortunately, they did not have Adsense so that I could use Digital Millennium Copyright Act – Google AdSense to deter them. But, I just wanted to make it a point that in future some webmaster gives this excuse, they can be deterred. If you see an adamant webmaster who uses adsense, use this form to contact google adsense. Hopefully he will be deterred.

Microsoft has rolled out its webmasters tools and Bing search widgets etc. The problem is adoption. The option that Big gives us is passive. There is no attempt to dole incentives to the users. Bing is hardly exciting. Go to Bing webmasters tool, add your link and then forget about it. If you are a general site owner, you could at the most add its search widget. it has an ad campaign tool. Then… nothing!

A good part of the world is looking out for a competition to Google has already turned itself into a Microsoft or China. Google or die has been the internet equivalent of Windows or die on PC’s. Google grew taking the blogosphere along with it. Another of the issues is Googles ever toughening rules on what it wants in its search, news and adsense network. It resembles the great firewall of china.

Google which once thrived on blogoshpere is now becoming an exclusive big websites search engine. If your website is big, then you are in, else you are out. It is not possible for bloggers to survive on only exclusive content. Even if a small blogger manages to write a exclusive content, they will never be featured on top of the keyword list as the big websites are already sitting pretty on it. Google is no more about freedom or co-existence.

This could be the loose brick of google and an opportunity for bing to take a lead and create an alternative internet.

With effect from 1 March 2011, Paypal users are required to comply with the requirements set out in the notification of the Reserve Bank of India governing the processing and settlement of export-related receipts facilitated by online payment gateways (“RBI Guidelines”).

In order to comply with the RBI Guidelines, our user agreement in India will be amended for the following services as follows:

1. Any balance in and all future payments into your PayPal account may not be used to buy goods or services and must be transferred to your bank account in India within 7 days from the receipt of confirmation from the buyer in respect of the goods or services; and

2. Export-related payments for goods and services into your PayPal account may not exceed US$500 per transaction.

If you use VLC media player on Compaq or HP, be warned. I sent my compaq over to the HP service center. The issue had nothing to do with speakers. But, the HP service station dude warned me to use VLC Media Player sparingly.

He told me that if VC media player is installed, HP won’t replace the speakers as it damages the speakers. But, again there is a catch. What he said was “we see the state of the speaker, and if we do not find the damage we replace it.” He also said that “we understand that a lot of videos don’t work without VLC.”

Best way is to keep your default media player to Windows Media Player and use VLC as a last option.