I am not sure if you have noticed, but Rediff Homepage has got a makeover. It is not a drastic one, but there are some noticeable changes. Rediff had set a precedence (in India, which no one followed :)) in 2009 when it introduced a minimalistic, ad-less homepage design, which was a sea-change from previously busy cluttered interface.

While many liked it (I was one of them), there were few who did have harsh words to say. Over last couple of years, slight tweaking has taken place with few icons changing and new sections getting introduced. However, today’s change look slightly more prominent with structure, as well as color of links changing.

What I obviously hated in the redesign was the amount of real-estate given to Shopping & Daily Deals. If you consider the total Homepage real-estate over 25% of space is given to them, while the news section (which essentially is the core of Rediff) gets much lesser space.

Rediff has also changed the structure with news headlines now showing up on the left instead of earlier right.

Given the whitewash that Indian cricket team was handed down-under, Cricket section has gone out of favour. Additionally, the link colors have changed to Navy Blue as compared to earlier standard electric blue.

For a regular visitor, it may not look like much of a change, but just the fact that Rediff is giving more importance to “e-commerce” side of things rather than its core “news” probably points to changes we may see in future…

What is your take?

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Update: Looks like a new site has cropped up and has exact look & feel of Megaupload, but does not have a domain name… just the IP address – http://109.236.83.66/ . Not sure if it is someone from original Megaupload team, or an imitator… But it did not take much time…did it!

Hugely popular file sharing site – Megaupload.com – is dead. It was bought down by US FBI yesterday after a Grand Jury in Eastern District of Virginia charged the Megaupload owners of racketeering conspiracy, conspiring to commit copyright infringement, conspiring to commit money laundering and two substantive counts of criminal copyright infringement.

This action by FBI is among the largest copyright infringement cases in the world which has purportedly cost more than half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners.

Megaupload.com is a hugely popular file sharing site in India and across the globe having more than a billion visits to the site, more than 150 million registered users, 50 million daily visitors and accounting for four percent of the total traffic on the Internet.

Hong Kong & New Zealand based owner, Kim Schmitz, along with 7 other employees of Megaupload are charged & arrested in the indictment released by US Justice Department.

According to a Venturebeat article, Megaupload came into limelight due to a recent release of a music video where Megaupload CEO Swiss Beatz got some very popular singers to participate and popularize its service. See the following video.

 Hacker Group Anonymous Retaliates with Largest Ever Attack

With Department of Justice bringing down Megaupload site, hacker group “anonymous” launched biggest ever attack bringing down sites of Department of Justice, FBI, Universal Music Group, RIAA & several others.

My personal point of view is that Megaupload should not be held responsible, as they are just the platform offering file upload services. They have laid down proper terms and conditions [cached link] where in point number 7.4 they clearly state the following:

Megaupload Services may be used only for lawful purposes. Transmission, distribution or storage of any material in violation of any applicable law or regulation, including export control laws, is prohibited. This includes, without limitation, material protected by patent, copyright, trademark, service mark, trade secret or other intellectual property rights. If you use another party’s material, you must obtain prior authorization

Megaupload has taken utmost care to inform users what is allowed and what is not allowed to be uploaded on the site and if the users choose to upload copyright infringing material, they cannot be held responsible for it!

This action has set a dangerous precedence, and I wonder what the US Government plans to do with other similar sites like MediaFire, YouSendIt and Rapidshare, who provide similar kind of file-sharing services. As of now Megaupload & all their umbrella sites are down and I doubt you will see them live again ever… R.I.P Megaupload!

Additionally, if acts like SOPA & PIPA are passed, actions like these will become commonplace and will ruin the internet freedom!

I would love to hear your views on this!

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Even as Internet population in India has crossed 100 million, cyber crimes are on the rise. There are many kinds of cyber crimes – Phishing attacks, Identity Theft, Website hacking, creating Trojans / viruses (among others) all amount to cyber crimes. The reasons for cyber-crimes are vary as well. Some do it out of hate, some out of greed while some do it just for kicks! At same time some cyber attacks (if it can be called so..) are for constructive security feedback as well!

One of the main targets of attacks world over are government websites – They not only provide big coverage to attacker, but also provide with very sensitive & secretive government data. Govt. of India today published the number of cyber attacks it witnessed over last 3 years. Here are the details:

As per numbers released by National Crime Records Bureau, Cyber Crime cases registered under IT Act more than doubled, from 420 to 966 between year 2009 and 2010.

We have covered about three instances where high-profile government websites were hacked and defaced. However, the actual number of Government Websites that were hacked are quite huge.

A total number of 90, 119, 252 and 219 Government websites tracked by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) were hacked / defaced by various hacker groups in the year 2008, 2009, 2010 and Jan–Oct 2011 respectively.

Again, this is growing trend and I am surprised that authorities have not taken stern actions to curb the growth of these cyber-crimes.

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Before we start, here is a disclaimer – This article is for people who are just getting started online. Internet veterans may find it too interesting.

Internet is growing in India quite rapidly – Thousands of businesses are coming online on daily basis. However, many of them come online with very high hopes of getting constant stream of traffic to their website. However, most of them get discouraged seeing that no one visits their sites other than their family and friends. I regularly get asked from internet newbies that “How do I drive traffic to my website” or “how do I market my business online”. Like offline, even in online world you have to market & advertise your website / online business.

Again, many perceive Internet advertising to be an overnight tool to get big. But Internet marketing is no genie. Choosing the right online promotion tools to get your business noticed is a herculean task which can involve a long gestation period. Depending on various factors such as your marketing budget, time restraints, finding your target audience, benchmarking against your competitor’s promotional strategies and so on, you will need to carefully pick your internet marketing tools and options. Let’s get an overview!

Search Engine Optimization

Don’t simply rely on the fact that your business will get noticed online by potential customers who accidently bump into your brand name in ads when they are browsing. Majority of users use search engines to directly find what they’re looking for. According to one estimate, over 90% of visits to most websites is through search engines.

In such cases, you are competing with millions of other websites and webpages offering similar services or products. Increase the chances of your website to appear on the first few pages of Google by optimizing & building excellent content around your product niche. Spent time reading online the basics of Search Engine Optimization.

Experts say that if your link appears beyond the second page of Google, you’ve potentially lost your customer. Warning: This is a feat that requires unparalleled persistence. Don’t expect your business to get noticed with SEO overnight. It takes loads on patience & effort to rank well in search engines.

Online display Ads

When we’re in the shoes of a lay person browsing the internet, we don’t bother to really observe the various kinds of ads that we are consciously or subconsciously consuming. But go to the opposite side of the fence as a marketer and you’ll see the world of online ads come alive.

There are thousands of niche segments within banner ads, direct targeting in gadget and mobile ads, location targeted and generated ads, back linking, social media ads, contextual ads, printable coupon ads, video ads, in-content placement ads etc. that you can choose depending on your business requirements. Don’t fall for the pay-per-click model lure straight away. First decide which medium of paid advertising suits your product and services. Again, spend time reading on Internet about various kinds of advertising!

Affiliate Advertising

Just about every internet savvy person is jumping onto the bandwagon of being involved in Affiliate marketing with the likes of Ebay, Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction and thousands of other popular affiliate programs. Affiliate marketing essentially involves a business / merchant paying or rewarding one or more affiliates (website or publishing platforms) that bring in visitors and eventual buyers for them by promoting, reviewing or placing their products and services on their platforms.

In return, the affiliates get a percentage of the advertising revenue depending on the number of visitors and converted buyers for their merchants. Affiliate marketing has become a great way for small business owners and individuals to earn money and a great medium for advertisers and marketers to get a vast amount of low cost exposure. To get your business noticed online, take advantage of millions of Internet users waiting to promote your product or service.

Social media and Forums

Using social media as an internet advertising tool to get your business noticed online will involve creative and engaging content generation. Get more user following for your brand name by updating interesting feeds about a new launch, a product trivia or new offers on your services.

You can even choose to create a buzz around your business by publishing content related to your product – not something that necessarily sells your product each time. For example, if your business is a restaurant, you may want to invite users to upload innovative recipes and award the best recipe with a free meal coupon. Niche forums too are a great way of subtle marketing in the guise of expert advice, guest articles, stubs and link placements.

Metric Tools

Metric tools may not be direct marketing platforms, but they will give you guidance and direction on your promotional and internet marketing strategy. Metric tools will also tell you if your business is getting noticed or not. You can use Google’s Adword Conversion tracking tool to get insights on the conversion rates of your visitors, track leads, new sign ups, page views, measure the success of a particular campaign and much more.

Use Google’s Keyword tool to use optimized keywords, match keyword type, search competition on that keyword and so on. To test the effectiveness of your website, get comprehensive reports on the quality of content and images you have used, the conversion rate your website is enabling etc. through Google’s website optimizer. These are standard Google products. You can choose from a million other similar products available online.

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An online presence – What was once considered to be amusing, has now become a necessity for all businesses and entrepreneurial setups. Even many individuals are setting up their own niche websites showcasing their talents, hobbies etc.

However, most of them are not aware how easy it is to create a good looking website. Infact, there are many easy to use free online website builders that can do a perfect job for you instead of spending your hard earned money on hiring website designers and web developers. You don’t need to be a computer genius to use these because they allow you to build your website through simple interfaces that even dummies can master.

Here are 5 free Website Builders that you should look at:

Wix

Wix is an online website builder that was released in 2008. One of the strong points of Wix that stands out is the ability to create cool flash websites in a matter of minutes. You don’t need to have a design degree to come up with cool design ideas because Wix will provide you readymade templates that can be edited and tailored to your requirements.

Add to this, the ability to create a mobile website, a Facebook page and a range of ecommerce functions, Wix definitely has earned its spot in our list of top 5 online website builders. Wix also offers hosting services and other premium plans that you can check out at Wix.com

Weebly

Weebly is definitely a player to reckon when it comes to building websites online. Weebly was ranked 4^th in Time Magazine’s list of 50 best websites in 2007. That was a long time back and Weebly has evolved further into a comprehensive website builder offering drag and drop features, preset themes and templates, an easy user interface and hosting services.

And for all you tech savvy users out there, Weebly also allows you to edit CSS and HTML of a site. Signing up is free and similar to other service providers, Weebly has premium plans that you can check out at Weebly.com

Webs

Little needs to be said about Webs because it has been functioning and evolving as a hosting service and now as a website building service since 2001. Webs offers the usual array of hosting and website building services plus some great apps, statistical data and analytics, mobile sites, themes and templates to suit virtually all segments of blogging, design portfolios and businesses.

Like most other website builders, a free subscription will mean that Webs will place their own ads or banners on your website. To check out the premium plans and other features on offer, visit Webs.com.

Moonfruit

The very moment you visit Moonfruit, you are greeted by a banner that says "Pick a design. Launch your site" This is extremely comforting for non technical users who want to get a website up and going without too much hassle. Moonfruit partners with the biggies of the online industry like Getty Images, iStockphoto, PayPal and many more to give users a power packed website building experience.

Based in London, Moonfruit also claims to be the number one hosting site in UK and a stunning figure of more than 4 million websites have been made on their platform. A simple user interface, great design options and tools, ability to publish for computer and mobile platforms, blogging and other top tools bring Moonfruit to our list of top 5 website builders. Check out what’s on offer and subscription details on Moonfruit.com.

Webnode

Webnode was launched in 2008 in a Czech and Slovakian version. By 2010, Webnode was functioning on 12 different language platforms and reportedly, had more than 2 million users. The layout of this online website builder is simple and clearly laid out. With themes that support personal websites, business websites and ecommerce portals, Webnode allows a classic drag and drop usability function and an array of gadgets and widgets.

Labeled as a "quick and dirty way to build a Website or blog, relatively painlessly" by a popular blogging portal, Webnode definitely scores when it comes to ease of use. To find out more about how you can make payment gateways, business statistics, innovative designs, professional outlook and much more simply a click away, check out Webnode.com.

So there you have it – 5 sites that will help you create a great online presence at nearly no cost. Website creation is not a tough job after all!

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I guess it is true that you can take an Indian out of India but you can’t take his / her love for India. The traffic statistics for leading Indian local news sites does suggest that no matter which part of the world they are, Indians love catching up with what’s happening in India.

Comscore recently published a report on visitation to local Indian sites highlighting a key trend especially when it comes to leading local news portals in India,

Among the top local news destinations in India, most brands saw non-residents contribute a significant share of global visitors

Leading new sites like Times Of India has an international traffic amounting to as much as 36.2% of the total, while 31.76% of OneIndia’s traffic comes from outside the country. Mid Day.com and DeccanChronicle.com seem to be getting as much as 45% of their total traffic from an international audience.

Indian Newspaper Site Traffic [India & Worldwide]

Interestingly, almost every news site gets high double digit traffic from outside India. One clear explanation for this is the fact that these news sites become a window to millions of Indians residing abroad into what’s happening in India.

What is even more interesting is whether these news sites are aware of this trend and more importantly whether they are doing anything specific to cater to this audience. For example, the recent trend of reverse brain drain among senior executives is one example wherein these news sites could further the cause and awareness by reporting on the emerging opportunities in the Indian marketplace etc.

Another angle to this contribution from international traffic on local news sites is monetization strategy. I recall my conversation with a friend working with the internet ad sales of a  leading news daily and she did suggest that a variety of advertisement options are used along with a fixed price model based on total traffic numbers- irrespective of audience segmentation.

However,most leading dailies seem to extensively using the contextual advertisement via Google Adsense which works well to monetize both local as well as international audience.

If Comscore’s numbers are true the advertisers might be better off working on a audience segmentation pricing approach (if they aren’t already). Additionally, marketers can also consider the local news sites a vehicle to target a fast increasing international audience as well instead of solely focusing on the domestic audience

What are your thoughts on the growing international traffic on local news sites in India?

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I was taken aback with the numbers released by Indian Government today. According to the press release – Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) reported total of 117 Government websites were hacked in first half of this year !

Here is a look at number of websites hacked since 2008.

Yes, one can understand that with groups like Annonymous, Lulzsec becoming active over last year – incidences of hacking have increased to a very large extent – not only in India but globally as well. However, I am sure that if enough efforts are made by Indian authorities, these numbers can come down drastically!

What surprises me though is that on one side Government is going at lengths when it comes to national security – by banning Blackberry or threatening to bring down sites like Google, Skype among others. But not enough importance is given to safeguarding Government websites that carry sensitive data and amount to threat to national security as well.

What is your take on this ?

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A surprising number of web services applications seem to be built for “users”.

They tend to identify you by username (not by real name) in the apparent intention to “save time filling out another field on the form. The use experience is mostly antiseptic and designed to be efficient, not engaging.

So here’s the number one thing to keep in mind when building a SaaS / web application.

“Imagine you are the web application (in person). What would you tell me (the customer) to do with it”?

What this means is that all the menus, navigations, error messages should be words that you would use to guide me to work with you.

1. You will tell me “Sign up” not to Submit.
2. You will use verbs (actions) to tell me what to do instead. “Build. Manage. Deploy” instead of “Dashboard. Settings. Reports”.
3. You (as a person) will tell me “Date needs to be in DD/MM/YY format” not “There are errors in your application, please review”
4. If the user name I chose is likely unavailable, you’d let me know as soon as I enter it rather that after I entered 4 fields and press Sign up to find out
5. If you were to welcome me back into your home (your site) you’d say “Welcome Mukund”, and not “Welcome mukund @emailaddress.com“

The most important point I am making is to ensure that as a developer, you keep the human in mind. We like productivity, but we also love nice (pleasant) surprises.

Please do play this mind game with your web application.

Imagine you are talking to a user – as a real person, speaking to another real person. Now, look at your web application again. Do the menus, navigation labels and errors sound like what you’d tell me in person? If not, you have some work to do.

What’s your opinion?

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Eh! Does the title of this post sound a bit exaggerated in terms of the statement it is trying to make? But, probably, that might NOT be too unrealistic a target for the Indian Railways (IR) to achieve with the reach of its web portal spreading day-by-day and users getting increasingly net-savvy.

For once, even if I lack data connectivity at my premises, I would still prefer to book my ticket online by reaching out at nearby cyber café, rather than waiting for my turn in long serpentine queue at Mumbai CST’s railway reservation office or pleading with some authorized agent to book my requisite ticket.

Well, this certainly spells doom for agents involved in the trade of passenger ticketing system – at least a gradual death, is not an instant one. For agents offering online ticketing services, there’s all the more reason to shut their shops. Here’s why:

Indian Railways is reportedly set to roll-out its own e-ticketing service which contemplates to sideline transactions from travel agents and commercial organizations, in a bid to promote interest of individual users to book hassle free tickets on its web portal – www.indianrailways.gov.in.

On the other hand, IRCTC still allows travel agents to book tickets through its portal; just that it has barred them from booking tatkal tickets during the peak hours to check malpractices by agents cornering reserved tickets and easing early morning web traffic.

IRCTC has been credited for revolutionizing the face of railways ticketing in India, though it has been fraught with complaints more recently. However, a question that often hunts my mind is – with IRCTC being a subsidiary of the Indian Railways that handles online ticketing operations amongst other services, what the need is for two ticketing portals run by the same public organization?

More recently, IRCTC had blocked over 4.6 lakh user IDs to curb malpractices in train reservations and enhanced its cyber surveillance against tickets that were procured through software which gave undue advantages to agents and distributors.

But, my personal experience with IRCTC web service shows that the site fared very poorly in terms of speed from 8 a.m. to 8.30 a.m. – the initial half hour, to say the least. Furthermore, IRCTC charges Rs.10 per ticket for SL and Rs.20 per ticket for higher classes, whereas IR portal intends to levy half the aforementioned service charges for tickets booked through its portal.

While IRCTC allows individuals to book a maximum of two bookings in a day and 10 tickets in a month through a single user ID, IR’s new e-ticketing service would allow a maximum of 8 transactions per month initially.

For all those mobile internet users out there, IR is also putting on offer a mobile platform for booking online tickets for the individual users through a mobile ticketing application for the convenience of the travelers.

Lastly, a query in my mind – is Indian Railways trying to phase out agents from the system? If yes, can IR’s web portal make inroads into monopoly service of IRCTC’s cum-agent ticket booking system?

With this, I take your leave with above tough question to be answered by you :)

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1. First the catering and Now E-ticketing – Indian Railways flushing IRCTC out of job…
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