ujjWalStreet Journal

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ujjWalStreet Journal - Interesting Stuff For Interesting People
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Story of the edition | Latest Musings | Books/ eBooks | Soul Searching | Sir-Caustic | Sher-o-Shayari 
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Story of the edition [<:-)]

You don’t know Blogging?
I have observed over the last few chats that some of the readers had no clue about blogging. So here is something for them. Blogging is as simple as emailing or orkuting, it’s a simple web interface where you can login and put your thoughts (ideas/articles, messages, quotes, compilations) and publish them (Just like email). You can share the page with friends, colleagues etc. Also, people can find your page through Google and if they found the info good or relevant they have an option to comment right there (Like Face book scraps). Here is more info that should get you stared:
 1. Classic Blogging: Blog, Blogger, Type pad, Word press are most popular websites used for blogging.
 2. Blogging plus networking: How about combining blogging with social networking features like in Facebook or Orkut? Bigadda comes close to that attempt.
 3. Microblogging: Twitter has brought this interesting concept which was adapted and liked by people throughout the world. Tweets a simple one line answers to the question “what are you doin?” Your post is max. 140 character long. So, its small, fast, easy and a lot of fun. You can keep putting ideas, thoughts, links, questions or just anything that you want to share with the world. You can also tweet through you mobile phone by simply sending an sms to a specified number. Its simple and its awesome. Try it!  here>

Latest musing [B-)]

Creating a Brand of yourself (part 3)

Who knows your worth?
[Even for non-creative people]

Now that you know that you have to come up with a weblog or e-profile, lets see how you can actually create a brand for yourself through it. 

Dazzle the web: Upload your writings/ articles/ photographs/ sketches/ paintings/ commentaries/ experiences/ complaints/ answers on the web. If you wannna share your original things you can create your own blog/website and upload everything there. If you are the “other” type, still keep a blog, where you can upload your portfolio/bio/resume and contact details, So that when you comment or answer at some place, people can trace back and know about you. After all that’s what you want, right? 

Create a network: If you don’t already have it, you should create a social/professional network with your acquaintances, friends, and colleagues. It’s common sense to focus on more and more people who will be interested in your work. Though keeping just everyone might not hurt. LinkedIn/Orkut/Facebook are good for finding your acquaintances and connect with them. Through LinkedInyou can also expose your portfolio to Google searches, and that will help a lot in long run.
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uWSJ - More than 140 readers now
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Nurture the network: To use a network you should be an active member. Keep commenting on people’s work, keep raising relevant questions, and keep answering the queries others have raised. It’s also good to simply drop in sometimes and say “hi” so that your relations remain fresh. 

Market your weblog: Shameless self promotion is exactly what you need to do to popularize your weblog. As Katy Whitten has clearly stated that “If you build, they ll come” mentality doesn’t work. Even the president of US had to self promote himself and ask for $10 donations from college goers. So don’t feel embarrassed to put your blog to lime light wherever you can. Introduce it to your network. Keep a link on your profiles, v-cards, email-signatures just about everywhere. Tell new people about it. Ask them for their reviews. Whatever you do at this step, will only help you bring some interested people once. Its only the contents that will make them visit next time. Tony Hung has some extremely good pointers on how to keep your blog marketable. And Lee Odden list some 30 points to market your blog in a big way. They have discussed in detail about all the weapons you ll need to market your weblog.   

Get your stuff googlable: Its very important to have your stuff easy to find on search engines. Though number of page hits will obviously improve your page ranks, it’s still important to have your weblog SEOed (read search engine friendly). Katy again has some good pointers for it.   

Comment! Commment! Comment! : Visit other weblogs of your competitors (may be in other Areas), potential clients, arbit and comment on their posts. Its a nice way to catch attention of competitors and other readers. Also have people comment on your weblog, people love to read the articles that have a lot of positive comments. Also, the number of comments establishes your credibility and popularity instantly for a new reader. 

Have patience: 2k people took 20 years to build Taj Mahal. It takes time to build on every masterpiece. Don’t expect instant results. 

 Now how does the CASH flow in? 

Though Seth says that it might not be a good idea to earn from what you love to do. I’d still maintain that marketing your weblog can help you in lot many ways to create your brand which will eventually help you earn, if that’s your motive. Here is how…

More assignments: for the “work that you love to do”.

Lucrative Job offers: If you can establish your expertise, you can play on your terms.
Consultancy fees: Selling your ideas and getting paid for it. 

Advertisements - AdSense 

Direct Sales: if you have products or services that you can sell. 

 Keep adding more to the list… I think I should keep some for myself ;=)

(Taken from UVTimes)  (Comment here)  

Books / eBooks [8-)]

EBook: 5 Steps to Successful email Marketing is an eBook from Microsoft Office Live (small business) that tells you about convenient and cost effective way of engaging customers through email marketing. 

Book:
“That thing called Love…”
Author: Tuhin A Sinha
Publisher: Srishti
(Reviewer: Anurag Jaiswal)
It is a tale of the dilemma of love faced by a young man, Mayank who could not find girls of his age compatible enough for him. A Casanova husband, an office receptionist who is also a call girl, a wife still not able to let go of her first love, an unsuccessful husband of a successful wife, a couple which is not able to decide over having a child… Tuhin has got all the elements in this story which makes reading the book a film like experience. No wonder, as the cover of the book says, it is “Soon to be made into a feature film”.

  Rating 3 of 5.
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uWSJ – Now also attached as colorful PDF  – Thanks Yogesh for this suggestion
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Soul searching [@-)]

Douglas Adams
Earth: “This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”

Sir-Caustic[:^D]

#> Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them… - <Samuel Butler>

Sher-O-Shayari [:-*]

       Kuchh rishte sookhe patton ki tarah,

Ek halke se jhonke mein hawa ho jaate hain.

Kuchh poorane darkhton ki tarah,

Har patjhad ke baad aur jawan ho jaate hain.

Meaning:
 Some relationships are like autumn leaves, that cannot stand the winds and they fall,

 And some relationships (like ours) are like old trees, which come out green after each fall  eternalImpressions>

Claimer:
This is a non-periodic (can appear anytime) journal which focuses on revolutionary open-source/free products, services, technologies and companies that might help you and your org in variety of ways. If you like it, you are expected to hit the forward button and spread the bug. If you are receiving it as a forward and want to subscribe to this news-views letter just write to me at ujjwalstreets@gmail.com. If you wanna complain, condemn, contribute, suggest please write to the same email or blog. If you rather wanna unsubscribe, write a pleading application at the same email-id, i will think about it. -yours Ujjwal Vijendra Trivedi

Current Readership: 140 Subscribed Readers: 18 Past Readership: 94
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uWSJ -Did you forward it to your friends yet? Past editions here
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Story of the edition [<:-)]

GTD Tools (art of stress-free productivity)

Do you find it a little difficult to manage your time, when you have lots of tasks at hand, and you are not sure how to start? It happens with almost every one of us sometime or the other. Also, if you feel that you are not getting the time to do all the things that you want. Like say you might not be able to pursue your hobbies, or take time off for pleasure trips or have been simply postponing cleaning up your PC due to lack of time. You should be using GTD (Getting things done) approach. GTD is a simple and creative way of time management for increased and stress-free productivity. (Learn more about GTD)

But GTD requires a simple and handy external tool that helps you create and organize your tasks list and even remind you to complete them through emails/chat/sms etc. So here are two extremely simple, efficient and free web based GTD tools you can use:

1. Remember the milk: Is a simple todo-list organizer, it integrates with igoogle [last story], iphone, all major Instant Messengers. You can also share tasks, which means you can create tasks for the team. Also, you don’t always need to be online to use this. It works with both offline and online modes. I found it better then the other score of free software that I evaluated.

2. MindMeister: Awesome mind-mapping and brainstorming tool. Its a visual tool for brainstorming. You can do it yourself or with a bunch of other team members online, all collaborating at the same time. Then you can print it email it or share it with others. You ll need to try it once to find out how exciting it can get. 

Latest musing [B-)]

Creating a Brand of yourself (part 1)
Who knows your worth?

{With worlds biggest financial giants falling, all logic is again pointing towards the uncertainty principle. How can you create your own secure world, where you get to pursue your hobbies and even get paid for it?}

Dolly, One of my very close friend and my biggest critic (she hates my work!) asked me why should we be concerned about our e-Identities. Amit, another friend, with all scepticism, enquired “How can we create a brand of ourselves?”  Here is what Anmol thinks “I ‘ve got a job in a foreign MNC, earning a fat salary, got a few yielding investments. Every one in the company knows me. So Why should I care about building a brand out of myself? I know its cool, but I think I have other priorities.”

Its not just about being cool, in current situation (giants like Lehman Bros, Merril Lynch and likes falling) it is your economic priority number one to achieve security and creative freedom. Here are two simple questions you need to answer:

1.Is your Job secure enough? Ah difficult to answer, lets answer this, Will you be able to provide for all your expenses and commitments for next 6 months, in case you are to loose your job today?

2.Does your job lets you do exactly what you wanted to do? Are you creatively satisfied?    

You may also like to think about questions like “Is your job helping you fulfill the bigger aim of life?” And “If your Industry was to go down today, rendering you (and thousands others) jobless, what would be your Plan B?”. This series of articles would certainly help you find your answers. Only if you are ready to dare thinking about these questions. 

So, If your answer for any of the two is a big “NO”. Read on. You need to take up the responsibility to achieve your goals. You have to do what you “always wanted to do”. You want to channelize your creativity. You can become a “Creative entrepreneur”. You will not need to leave your job to do that. You can adopt an entrepreneurial approach to your own career, by taking responsibility for developing your skills, building your network and reputation, and creating opportunities for yourselves.

But how?

Here I will come up with a few generic steps on how you can begin to do “what you always wanted to do” and also make make your work pay for your bills. I would try to put in approaches for both self-proclaimed-creative and self-proclaimed-non-creative prople. You ll be able to find how exactly can you create a brand of yourself. Stay tuned!

(taken from UVTimes)  (comment here)  

iPhone Mania

There was a big ado about iPhone launch in India. Well news channels make a big ado about everything. Even Aby baby’s sneezes. But this really has been the talk of the streets. A couple of sms remiders of don’t-miss-the-launch, a dozen emails of cool-features-of-iPhone and now a week after the launch another score of emails of whats-missing-in-iPhone. And I being a techno-enthusiast cant be kept away from such a new happening. Of course I enjoyed fantasizing buying an iPhone and flaunting it everywhere. From Best bus to Office mess. Untill one day forgot to carry my cellphone to office and to my surprize I was so happy to learn that. No cellphone means no crappy calls for another free credit card. So now I dont have to lie that i have that credit card already and then feel guilty about it. Ten minutes saved. No new request for personal loans. Means I wont be tempted at the lucrative offers of no-interest-till-45-days. Another ten minutes saved. No new overly magnanimous investment-cum-insurance scheme, where I would need to waste my thoughts. All in all an extremely enjoyable accident.

So I realized that ‘I’ have been so much engrossed to this silly gadget that, now that i dont have it just this day, am finding so much new about the world. Like now I know where are the PCOs (just in case) and some other useful shops around my office, I could find (to my surprise) that the pizza and burger shops that i order from are actually so close to my office (hopping distance). I could also, enjoy the cool weather, a little more then i usually do. I could watch people in my bus and wonder how god has designed all these unique creatures and then wrote a story for each of them. In the morning I could see all faces had the same worry (about traffic and office hours). In the evening, i discovered, every face had a different story published on it. I found out what are the names of all the bus stops between my residence and my office called. Also, just for the records, i registered what sort of crowd gets on the bus from which stop. I mean its good to find a few familiar faces in bus, specifically those of pretty female co-travellers. So, i discovered that watching the world around you is more fascinating then the silly car game in N-95. And also more refreshing!    
 
So bottom line …you can save around an hour of fiddling-with-the-gizmo and spend it writing a blog. Not bad eh! Do forget your mobile at home some day and see for yourself. World Good hai!

(taken from eternalImpressions)  (comment here)

Books / eBooks [8-)]

ebook: Sorry! No donuts for you!

“Anything for you Mam”
Author: Tushar Raheja
Publisher: Srishti
A sweet college time love story. Its sure gonna make you nostalgic when you sail through those college days masti, creative mischiefs with professors. Couple of misadventures with a kiss of romance,lot of twists and turns, breath halting moments, songs(yes songs), outdoors, comedy and emotional tadka it has all the ingredients of a good Hindi movie. A nice read.  Rating 4 of 5.

Soul searching [@-)]

Boris Pasternak
Life: Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

Sir-Caustic[:^D]

> Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people. - James Lowell

What’s ujjWalStreet Journal? 

This is a non-periodic (can appear anytime) journal which focuses on revolutionary open-source/free products, services, technologies and companies that might interest, inspire and/or help you and your org in variety of ways. The latest issue is always available as email. If you like it, you are expected to hit the forward button and spread the bug. If you receive it as a forward and want to subscribe to this news-views letter just write to me (or drop a blank email) at ujjwalstreets@gmail.com. If you wanna complain, condemn, contribute, suggest please write to the same email. If you rather wanna unsubscribe, write a pleading application at the same email-id, i will think about it.

-yours

Ujjwal Vijendra Trivedi

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Current Readership:196 | Subscribed Readers:27 | Past Readership: 154

Backpack: An intranet in 30 seconds. Solution to all most all of your personal organization and project coordination issues. You can create your todo list, set reminders for yourself and for team, create group calender, store and share documents, information with team. All this and much more for absolutely no cost at all.   (Know all about it my clicking here)

Are Indians innovative?
Zoom in directly to the software industry, how many are trying to create new frameworks, technologies, widgets to make life easier. Indian software engineers have been a selfish lot. They use the technology, and the knowledge available on the www, but are pretty bad at contributing to the web. Whats the reason? Are we lazy? is it lack of resources? or is it simply because we have nothing to contribute at all? perhaps necessity for us has only been a mother of all ‘jugaad’. It is certainly not that we are not doing core technical work, it is because, the large part of industry has people with average technical skills. They are not into IT because they love it. They are here because its easy way to secure a job and earn peacefully. Jobs are plenty, and actually do not require ‘engineering’. So a person with above average aptitude can certainly make big bucks if he is hard-working. So, the focus is always towards learning things and finding ways to get things done, and not on creating or inventing an easier way. Also, there is no motivation to contribute because we might actually not realize how outdated we are. So, there is also a need to update your knowledge with latest happenings, developments in relevant technologies. If i might also take it into consideration, creativity breeds in freedom. Think about how much free we have been to choose a technology/process to provide solutions. It has always been dictated. Whom to blame? So to sum it all up the blame goes to lack of enterprise. The big software giants, have made India proud, but have seriously lamed the technical creativity and innovation. If you think you can do something about it, may be you can start doing it, and let me know.(from eternalImpressions)      

Books / eBooks

https://gettingreal.37signals.com/ : Introducing the 200 page book on smart, fast and easy way to build a web based app. It’s a MUST READ. And the best part is you can read it online… for FREE.

Soul searching