Indian Television needs location based Ads

Technology has advanced, and it makes no sense
to show ads for cold creams in southern parts of India,
when the mercury drops in northern states.

Update(3/12/2010) : I think one such company is Amagi, which provides
location based ads for television in partnership with many
cable operators such as Hathway, Digicable etc.

In order for them to be able to extend their business to DTH providers,
such as Airtel,Tata Sky etc., they will have to place their software into
their set top boxes, which currently do not have that much RAM.

Indian athletes need to get sexed up

Joseph Abraham - gold winner in Asiad 400m hurdles

This is Joseph Abraham, unintentionally displaying his well-chiseled bod after winning a gold for India in Asiad'2010. Even with his mustache, I will be ready to sign an advertising contract with him if he's willing to go topless in the ads.

He, along with other Indian athletes who have won medals in Asiad and Commonwealth, should be among the best paid athletes from the advertisers' point of view. Especially the female athletes, if they could project a sexy image of theirs, taking a cue from female athletes worldwide. They already have good bods, fantastic achievements. All they need is that oomph factor!

Some simple search engine optimizations for your website Tehelka.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, Nov 22, 2010 at 3:11 PM
Subject: Some simple search engine optimizations for your website
To: feedback@tehelka.com, editor@tehelka.com


Dear Sir/Ma' m,

I am a big fan of Tehelka and I read most of its content online.
Needless to say that you have an enormous corpus of very
high quality content. At the same time, I think, you have
not put enough effort towards search engine optimization(SEO).

Why do you need SEO?
 To make your website profitable, you are showing Ads.
---- To get more clicks on ads, you need more people to visit your site.
--------To get more people on your site, you need to ensure that your site
 is ranked highly in search results of Google/Yahoo etc.
------------Search engines will rank you site highly, if you follow certain simple
guidelines provided by them.

What are those guidelines?

1. The simplest of all, which Tehelka.com is ignoring is not giving a meaningful

title on every page. All your webpages have the same title : 

<title>Tehelka - India's Independent Weekly News Magazine</title>

which is useless from a user's and search engine's point of view.

So, give a meaningful title to every page. 

For e.g. this page : 

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main47.asp?filename=Ne301010Ananth_Kumar.asp

can have the same title, as that of the main article : 

Ananth Kumar fostered a revolt.  The ploy boomeranged

2. Use meta tags

Meta tags help a search engine in understanding what your web page is about.

For example : http://www.chakpak.com (a popular bollywood portal) has these meta tags on their main page: 

<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Chakpak - Your Bollywood Adda - India's most comprehensive website on Bollywood, provides encyclopedic information including bollywood news, movie videos, reviews, wallpapers, quiz, discussions & more on Indian movies, actors & actresses"/>

<meta name="keywords" content="bollywood India, bollywood online, hindi bollywood, old bollywood, Indian movies"/>

3. Use meta tags on every page : 

Not only should you use the meta tags on your home page, but

every page.

Books on SEO : 

http://www.flipkart.com/art-seo-eric-enge-stephan-book-8184048513

http://www.flipkart.com/seo-warrior-john-jerkovic-book-818404867x

In short, I want Tehelka to become so profitable, that it never has to wind up

its website to cut costs. To become profitable, you need to become popular/more accessible

without compromising on your content. With SEO, you can do just that.

Let me know if you need any more help.

--

Another Mig Crash

While appearing for various engineering entrance examinations during 12th standard,

I had appeared for NDA's entrance examination. I cleared the examination but

could not go for the interview due to time constraints.

Now looking at the number of MIG crashes, that sounds like a great decision I made.

There have been roughly 70 crashes in last 4 years, and many many more before.

I can only sympathize with the dead pilots' family and thank my stars that I am not

one of them.

Hampi - more

Queen's bath : 

Vitthal temple : 

Bazaar ouside the Vitthal temple - supposedly in the empire sandalwood was more precious and gold/diamond used to be sold by cupfuls in these bazaars. There are 3 such bazaars.

Bazaar ouside the Vitthal temple - supposedly in the empire sandalwood was more precious and gold/diamond used to be sold by cupfuls in these bazaars. There are 3 such bazaars.

Vitthal temple entrance

King's balance : 

Earlier here used to hang a balance, where king was weighed with gold/grains which was distributed among the poor.

Mango tree restaurant : 

View of Tungbhadra river from Mango tree restaurent - notice the red color of the water due to the ongoing mining nearby.

View of Tungbhadra river from Mango tree restaurent - notice the red color of the water due to the ongoing mining nearby.

Nrisimha Lakshmi Temple :

Lakshmi is missing - since that part was broken. Even the band connecting the knees was added recently.

Hampi

Numbers of some guides :
S. Chandra : +919449458740 (chandradabbi@yahoo.com)
Nagraj: +919480510871

1. Most of the temples in Hampi, have their main statues stolen/broken from their Garbhgrihas.
It's because locals/foreign attackers knew/believed that below the main statues there is lot
of gold/precious metals. Hence, in most of the temples, puja is no longer performed, since
according to Hindu beliefs, puja is not performed in temples with broken statues.

2. On the walls of the many temples, one can find images from Kamasutra - of different positions.

3. In order to find out which temple belong to which deity(since many of the statues are stolen),
archaeologists looked at the statues of the Dwarpalakas(gatekeepers). Jai-vijay indicated
a temple of Vishnu/Krishna whereas Nandi/Bhringhi indicate a Shiv temple.

4. Major expenses for this one day trip:
(i) Tatkal reservations for two in SL category, to-and-fro from Bangalore-to-Hospet (542*2 = 1084/-)
(ii) Hampi Guide : Rs. 700/-
(iii) Auto for touring Hampi: Rs. 350/-
(iv) Lunch at Mango tree (Mango lassi + Mango tree special thali + Cashew nut currey + 2 extra chapati) = Rs. 275/-
(v) Night meals at Naivedyam, close to the Hospet railway station(Rs. 170/-) (Veg Biryani, 4 Tandoori roti, Kadai Paneer)
(vi) Laxmi Guest House(Behind the tourism office, close to the Virupaksha temple), from 10AM to 6PM : Rs. 200/-


Bade Ganesh Temple : 

View of hillocks from bade ganesh temple

Bade Ganesh statue

View of hillocks from Bade Ganesh temple

Chhote Ganesh Temple : 

Chhote Ganesh Temple - Front

Chhote Ganesh Temple - Back - Parvati hugging Ganesh from behind

Choote Ganesh temple : Bade ganesh ji was a temple for the elite, so it has a Garbhgriha for the deity,
whereas this temple is open for all without any garbhgriha. Built by a trader for commoners.

Sister stones :

Underground temple :

King's palace :

Aqueduct

Secret chamber

Food plate for soldiers - made of stone - notice the 4 holes at the corners for vegetables/chutneys

Stepped stone water tank

Janana enclosure :

Mahauts' residence

Watch tower - eunuchs used to guard the Janana enclosure

Lotus Mahal

Another watch tower at Janana enclosure

Chambers for 11 royal elephants

Chambers for 11 royal elephants.

Badava Linga :

Mastakabhishek used to be performed through the star shaped roof

Badav Linga

Gopura Krishna Temple : 

Entrace of the Gopur Krishna Temple - in the left corner a Kamastura position(lady on the top)

Virupakash temple : 

One of the few temples in Hampi where puja is still performed, also famous for the inverted shadow effect of the main tower.

Programming as a mechanical job

Source : The Pragmatic Programmer

Conventional wisdom says that once a project is in the coding phase,
the work is mostly mechanical, transcribing the design into executable
statements. We think that this attitude is the single biggest reason that
many programs are ugly, inefficient, poorly structured, unmaintainable,
and just plain wrong.

Coding is not mechanical. If it were, all the CASE tools that people
pinned their hopes on in the early 1 980s would have replaced programmers long ago.
There are decisions to be made every minute—decisions
that require careful thought and judgment if the resulting program is
to enjoy a long, accurate, and productive life.

Swine flu vaccination

took it on 5th November, at Goyal hospital, Jodhpur.
It consisted of Agrippal S1 and Vacciflu-S.
Though I am not sure if it's enough to take one dose.
Somewhere I read that you need to take 2 doses
for it to be effective.

Cost : Rs. 850/-

Diwali photos

Some photos clicked this Diwali :