This week's travel plans

Looking forward to visiting a new country, a new culture and a new experience this coming week. Although I have been to the Dubai airport several times on transit, this will be my first visit the the city or rather emirate. We're also planning to go to Abu Dhabi, which is said to be the richest city in the world according to Fortune Magazine's March 12th 2007 edition. Here's an excerpt of the article.

The city of Abu Dhabi sits at the tip of a T-shaped island jutting into the Persian Gulf. Wide tree-lined boulevards run through clusters of utilitarian concrete-slab high-rises and modern mirrored towers. An elegant corniche stretches the length of the city along the coast. There are finely manicured roundabouts, abundant fountains, and more trees than anywhere else on the Gulf. But it's oddly quiet - there's little traffic, few pedestrians, and no nightlife to speak of.

That's all about to change. From a helicopter you can see sandy islands covered with dump trucks and crisscrossed with empty highways sitting offshore like blank canvases. It's a stark contrast to what lies just 15 minutes up the coast by air: a landscape of cranes, yacht harbors, man-made islands in exotic formations, and what will soon be the tallest building in the world. There's nothing subtle about Dubai. Its crowded, smoggy skyline is part Miami, part Las Vegas, and all new. There's scarcely a plot of open space or an uncongested highway.

Success by positve coaching

Capella University is known to be one of the leaders in online education especially at the master degree level, and has produced students that have gone on the work for some of the best known companies across the world. Sara Orem, a faculty member at Capella University has co-authored a book called 'Appreciative Coaching: A Positive Process for Change', which discusses the power of positive coaching as a method to success, based on developments on psychology and organizational development which have shown that people achieve higher rates of success with such coaching.

According to Orem, “Rather than focusing on individuals in limited or problem-oriented ways, Appreciative Coaching guides the reader through four stages – Discovery, Dream, Design and Destiny – that inspire them to an appreciative and empowering view of themselves and their future.” Sara Orem is the principal of her own coaching firm, besides being a faculty member and coach at Capella University's School of Business and Technology. Capella University was founded in 1983 and is an accredited university that offers graduate degrees in business, IT, education, human services and psychology. The university has undergraduate degrees in business and IT. “This blog post was based on information provided by Blogitive. For more information, please visit Blogitive.com.”

PR update in progress

Google's update is going on for the past few days and my page rank has been fluctuating and showing that it's gone up to a 2 on Google Page Rank Bar in the Task Bar. I do hope that remains as the final PR, nothin quite like an increasing PR is there? Well, at least for a blogger! I simply love it and it's the best reward for continuously updating and writing on my blog.

Buying new furniture

Moving house is fun, but I'm quite dreading what I'm going to do with all the furniture I have and cannot and do not want to take with us. I am rather attached to some of the older pieces, such as a lovely bookshelf with really clean and simple lives which I've had since I was a child and a set of Scandinavian sofa's and matching coffee and side tables. What I'll probably have to do is to get a completely new set of home furniture once we find a place and start afresh. While that is a fun idea, I think an ideal house is a combination of old and new pieces, a look that gives it character as well as some newness.

Green verdict

Your Life is 76% Green

You live a very green life, and you're aware of how your actions help the earth. Of course, it's hard to be totally green. But when you make a tradeoff, you know why you're making it.

How Green Is Your Life?

Easing up

Ok, I think I really need to figure out how to relax all over again, since pretty much all my relaxation time gets used up by blogging. While it definitely is a fun and addictive thing to do, more that ever before, relaxing is starting to mean "away from the laptop" to me. I already spend my entire working day plus an extra 4-5 hours at the computer, so it looks like it's high time that I ease up a bit and pay some attention to my neck and back aches for a while.

Plan your summer vacation now

While we're not going for a vacation this time, we will get to sight see a bit while we check out the city, apartments etc. This time of the year, I hear that Florida is the place to head to and get yourself an Orlando vacation rental to stay in for a week or ten days at least, explore the 52 theme parks in the area, dinner shows and shopping sprees. I would actually prefer to check out the golf courses in the area, which I have heard are simply fabulous, for their variety, superb quality and wild hazards, i.e. alligators. That's sure to bring in some excitement to a round of golf.

Travel delayed

Well, we were meant to fly out at 530 in the morning but got a call from the airlines at 130am that our flight had been rescheduled to 5 in the evening, so we suddenly have some free time after the hectic, hectic packing, organizing, finishing of work, telling the newspaper and milk men not to deliver kind of day. Quite frankly it feels quite odd, to suddenly have nothing to do, well nothing doesn't exist once blogging starts, so here I am back at writing some stuff up, before we leave later on in the day.

Being organized for traveling

I sort out my bag before we head out on a trip and when I sorted it out last night I found 4 gel pens inside, the pens I had been looking for everywhere else. I like to travel with a slightly larger handbag, large enough to carry all our travel documents, a book, a shawl for chilled flights, an eye mask thingy to get some sleep, and in the days before all these travel restrictions, a bottle of my contact lens solution. It's essential to have a couple of pens in a bag, since one always has to fill up forms at the airport or in the airplane when traveling internationally.

Back to basics of retail

Retailers in India getting back to basics and are matching prices of fruits and vegetable sold at farmers markets or mandi’s to bring in customers, and are also showing the way to hundreds of new retailers at how to do the business right. According to Raman Mangalorkar, head of consumer and retail practice at AT Kearney, "Having an efficient way of sourcing, storing, moving and replenishing products is going to be very critical to profits." With these changes, consumers have a huge range of choices, not only in the variety of food but also in price and quality at all the levels of retail stores.

Ipsos Insight's Face of the web report

According to a report by Ipsos Insight, 78% of online consumers use broadband connections. Just three years ago, this figure stood at 37%, showing just how widespread the use of broadband Internet connections has become. These results were released in a report titled "The Face of the Web 2006" and is based on study and interviews in 12 global markets.

The U.S. lags the rest of the world in high-speed access, with 71% of Internet users accessing the Internet via broadband. In the U.S., cable connections accounted for 30% of Internet access, while DSL accounted for 33%.

Japan is the most high-speed nation in the world, with 89% of users connecting via broadband, 11% via wireless and none through dial-up. At the other end, 52% of Russian Internet users connect via dial-up, 26% via high speed, 18% via wireless and 4% other/don’t know.

Football crazy

There was a time that all of us in college went to as many football games as we could. Part of it was the importance of rooting for our team but after a while, we got so into the games, that it wasn't good enough to just watch them on TV, we actually had to go and watch them in the stadium. While it works out fine, if you live near your home team, but it can be pretty inconvenient if you're from out-of-state and want to go back to attend each and every one of your home town games. Well, my friend Kristine was quite mad about football that year and went out and bought steelers tickets for as many games as she could.

Targeting customers using audio waves

Agenda reports on a new way for marketers to target customers: audio technology that transmits sound in a beam like a light beam, so a specific customer by sending a message directly to their ear. Holosonic Research Labs Inc. are the creators of the audio spotlight, which is now being used in a wide variety of places already such as in supermarkets as well as doctors offices. Using this method, advertisers can target only the specific customer rather than disturbing the entire store with loudspeaker announcements.

Unlike traditional speakers, which broadcast sound in every direction, sound from an audio spotlight speaker can be focused directly at one spot, so no one else can hear it, or projected against a surface so that sound appears to come from the surface itself.

For example, a box of Fruity Pebbles can advertise its nutritional content, heard by shoppers only as they walk by boxes in the cereal aisle. The audio spotlight uses ultrasound to stimulate the air into making sound, which is emitted in focused, laser-like beams.

Adding a professional touch to your website

When I started my blog the main purpose was just for me to write but little by little the focus has shifted to creating articles that people want to read, hence readership has risen in importance. One of the ways that my readership has increased is that I have made it easier to be contacted on my website, by adding a contact form. This is a great way to let readers get in touch with you, when they would rather not leave a comment on a specific post. I’ve had people make me job offers on my contact form too, and I’d rather not have stuff like than on regular comments, open for everyone to see.

If being able to make contact is important in a blog, then you can imagine how important it would be for a small business. Making an HTML form can be tough unless you’re an expert at it, but for most small business owners who want to create a simple website, getting contact forms or email forms form Forms4Free is a good option. It’s really easy to add the script even if you have no knowledge of HTML. Instead of just using a single contact page, the company created a system of downloading a formfile, which is a processing file that is uploaded to the website and processes the HTML form and emails to the webmaster. How this helps is that webmasters are able to process it through their own website rather than an outside service. It’s a good way to make a site look professional and stylish.

Amazon raises fees

Amazon announced that it would be raising it’s variable fees in marketplace shipping credits due to the rise in the USPS postal rate from May 14, 2007. It’s shipping credit increase depends on the product category and selected shipping method, and will range from $0.39 to $2.51. Shipping credit for books, video games and software will increase from $3.49 to $3.99; music, DVD and VHS shipping credits will increase from $2.59 to $2.98.

All or nothing

Lots of things happening all at once. It's usually everything or nothing it seems, never something normal in between. This time it's to do with my errant Internet connection, that has made me get delayed in doing my work and pretty much everything else, since I've been so caught up in calling support and trying to get it fixed, checking and rechecking every so often, yes too often, and pretty much just wasting time I guess.

Reliance is highest bidder for Park Circus market

Reliance Retail has won the bid for the Park Circus civic market under the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC), after it beat out three Kolkata based real estate developers. According to the agreement, Reliance has 154,000 sq ft of space in a total area of 230,000 sq ft. The Park Circus civic market has 400 stall holders who will have to be rehabilitated. Only 10-15% of the total area would be kept for the corporation, and the balance would be for Reliance to develop a mall or multiplex or shopping market.

Travel plans for the week ahead

Going to be out for a few days, but hope to keep blogging on and off, not as regularly but hopefully it won't be a complete halt either. This will be my first trip to Dubai and it will be nice to see the city first hand. I have been to the airport several times, but that doesn't really count, I guess. We might even drive to Abu Dhabi, which I hear is developing at a super fast pace and is already the richest city in the world. The city has huge reserves of oil which Dubai does not have and therefore is working to build itself as the financial capital of this side of the world.

Using mailing lists

A lot of companies rely on mailing lists for their business, to promote new products, to launch new services, to develop new business and so on. The direct mail industry has been growing at a fast pace with new entrants coming in all the time due to the huge demand for such services, but one of the most respected firms is Martin Worldwide which is based in California and has created innovative mailing lists for it's impressive list of clients. ResponseCom is one of its most creative and versatile products and has created a system where lists from over 100 demographic and psychographic criteria can be selected. Mailing lists are not as simple and basic as they use to be at one time, these are fine tuned to the point of guaranteeing higher response rates, increased profitability and increasing clients.

Retail gets maximum support in South India

Organized retail in India first got its boost in south India, in cities such as Kochi, Coimbatore, Chennai and Bangalore and even now, customers there are more loyal to these formats than customers in other regions of the country. At CEO-Speak, AC Nielsen ORG-MARG’s Director of Online Research and Technical Training, said that Kochi received the largest number of sales by volume and Comibatore had the fourth largest sales through organized retail formats.