Tech News Beats

With the advent of technology and applications like Google Earth and Google  maps, terror planning has become a lot more easier for terrorists. This has been confimed by one of the terrorists arrested by the Mumbai police who was part of the ghasty terror attack on Mumbai. Azam Amir Kasav, a resident of pakistan told they learned about the minute details of Mumbai localities through Google Earth. For those who are not sure, Google Earth is an application which lets you view all localities via bird eye view.

While I am very much against red tape but such incidents will definately warrant some kind of control on sensitive data. However, I am not sure how this may work as it is very tricky. At the same time, a wholesome ban is not welcomed.

Google has came up with a unique service called Google SMS which offers the power of Google search engine on your mobile phone via SMS. So now you can search all you need on a simple sms enabled mobile phone by sending a SMS. Earlier, such search features were only available on internet enabled mobile phones.  With Google SMS you can know cricket scores, Indian Railways train schedules & ticket status, horoscopes, movie showtimes, restaurant information etc.

To get started, SMS ‘help’ to:
9-77-33-00000

Later, you can just send the query by SMS to 9-77-33-00000 and google will send the send the answer back by sms. The best part of this service is that there is no premium or hefty charge for sending these sms, rather standard SMS charges will apply. Also, the incomming messages from Google is free. All GSM/CDMA mobile operator networks are supported (Aircel, Airtel, BPL, BSNL, Idea, Reliance, Spice, Tata, Vodafone).

Website: http://www.google.co.in/mobile/default/sms/

Google recently unveiled voice and video chat right within Gmail. The best thing is it is free and requires Windows XP or later versions of operating systems. You can download it free and install in a minute. All you need to get started with this is a webcam and Google has tied up with Logitech and Buy.com to offer quality webcam at lesser prices with free shipping till 30th November 2008. So get going and see and hear your near and dear ones right from your Gmail.

Google recently announced in their official blog that they are going to scan all old newspapers by partnering with the publishers and will convert them to e-papers in their original format. They will be accessible online and will be searchable at http://news.google.com/archivesearch.  Earlier, the only medium of information was newspapers before radio and television. So there are tons of info which are now out of our reach. Once these info are made accessible online, we can put our hands on valuable info and can check precisely what was the news on a particular day. Google, the master of online search has millions of webpages indexed in its servers and now with this they are going to index pages of history too. It is indeed a good initiative. Read more at the official Google blog.

Ok you have created a new website or blog and you are looking to make some money. If you think that monetizing your site goes against your ethics then this post may not be for you. But most blogger or site creators look forward to atleast recover the domain and hosting cost. I dont think that is asking for too much. As a beginner what do you look at? At first make sure you have atleast 100 unique visitor every day. Then beginning with ad networks is probably the best way.

An advertising network or ad network is a company that connects web sites that want to host advertisements with advertisers who want to run advertisements. Increasingly Ad networks are companies that pay software developers as well as web sites money for allowing their ads to be shown when people use their software or visit their sites.

Ad networks serve advertising on your website and share advertiser revenue for qualified clicks each time your site’s visitors click on ads. An advertising network (also called an online advertising network or ad network) is a collection of (often unrelated) online advertising inventory. When it is clear that the environment involved is the Internet, companies who run or administrate such networks are also called Advertising Agents or simply Agents.
Source: Wikipedia

You do not need too experiment much. Experimenting with too many ads in the beginning could become a hindrance in your user experience. You can close your eyes and choose Google Adsense. At any given time Adsense will win among all ad networks hands down. Adsense serve ads on your site matching its content. Adsense pays based on CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and CPC (cost per click). In beginning since your traffic may not be huge, you will be getting paid mostly when your visitors will click the ads on your site. In order to receive payment you need to reach the threshold amount of $100. It can take time depending on where you are located. Have patience and you will come up. Do not click on your ads or encourage your users or anyone to click on your ads as this goes against Google Adsense’s Terms and Conditions. Dont get greedy. In order to make a few quick dollars you may get banned from the Cash Cow program. Adsense works good in any region of the world, so you can try this without any hesitation.

To earn more you need to optimize the position of the ads as some position and size of ads get more clicks. Also, blending the color of the text with your site is a good thing. For blogs, you may try the adsense heatmap.

Now do you implement Adsense ads on your site?

Simply create an Adsense account and choose the size, color of the ads etc through the wizard. Lastly copy/paste the codes on any location on your site you deem fit. Within 10 minutes your ads will start displaying. If you are using wordpress, then you can use a adsense plugin. Which requires you to just upload the plugin in the wp-content/plugin folder of your wordpress installation and activative it by going to the plugins tab. For wordpress 2.5 under “Settings” you will find Adsense tab, click on that and enter your Adsene publisher ID. Also, configure the size, color etc and you are done.

Here is list of Adsense plugins for wordpress:

1. Adsense Delux at: http://www.acmetech.com/blog/2005/07/26/adsense-deluxe-wordpress-plugin
2. Adsense Injection

If you are using Blogger then you you can implement Adsense from inside Blogger, as Blogger is also owned by Google.

Recently Adsense announced that now publishers located in HongKong and Hungary can receive their earning from adsense ads via Electronic Funds Transfer(EFT). In all of the countries eligible to receive EFT, HongKong is the second Asian entity after Japan. If one have quick look on the list of countries where Adsense EFT is available, you can see most of them are European, North American, Australia, New Zealand etc. Only two Asian entities feature in that list viz. Japan and HongKong. Israel is the only country in the middle east to have this facility. To avail EFT one just need to enter their bank details in their Adsense account, billing info section. I am not sure why some services which can benefit both the parties immensely are not extended to all the countries. Let us try to see a few reasons why EFT has not been extended to other Asian countries like India and African countries. Security could be one of the reasons which could have tied Google’s hand. In case electronic transfers, if there is some fradulent activity there is no chance to re-check or take remedial action once the transfer takes place. While such kind of online scams are quite common in African countries, but that may not be the case in India. Cyber laws in India has been revamped recently.

EFT should be made available in as many as countries possible definitely keeping in mind the security aspect. It helps the publishers to get their earnings instantly without waiting for the check to reach and at the same time it saves Adsense money. So it is mutually beneficial to both. So when EFT is becoming available in India?