Amar E. Chakravarthi’s Blog

“Come gather ’round people, wherever you roam, and admit that the waters around you have grown. And accept it that soon you’ll be drenched to the bone. If your time to you is worth savin’ then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone. For the times they are a-changin’.” – Bob Dylan

The Global Recession

Re-ces-sion \ri-se-sh?n\ “a period of reduced economic activity”1

Recession: it’s an ugly word, but unfortunately a fact of life—especially these days. The current economic crisis not only affects individuals and businesses in North America, but those around the globe as well.

Nearly every day during the last six months when I’ve opened up the newspaper, there’s been some story about a company that has laid off its employees. The sad truth is that many of these layoffs are targeted toward individuals who have been working for the same company for many years and now are finding themselves looking for work in a job market for which they may not possess the skills required.

So what are these individuals and businesses doing to weather the storm? Well, I guess you could say it depends on the individual and what business he or she is in. Some industries have been harder hit than others (e.g., construction and manufacturing), but one thing is certain—the recession’s effect is being felt by everyone everywhere.

Unemployment Rates on the Rise

During the Great Depression (from 1929 to the mid 1930s), the unemployment rate reached 25 percent. Those kinds of numbers make today’s economic difficulties pale in comparison. That being said, today’s unemployment rates are still steadily rising—with no immediate end in sight.

According to the United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)2, in February 2009, the overall unemployment rate was at 7.2 percent—a 15-year high. Since the current recession began in December 2007, the news has been full of reports of job layoffs. More recently, the US government released a report showing that the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits was at its highest level in 25 years, as more and more workers sought government assistance.

The Human Element

Managing your workforce when times are good is hard enough; managing it when times are tough can be extremely taxing on everyone involved. Dealing with people and emotions can take its toll, even on the most change-resilient businesses.

One important factor that has to be considered throughout this period of economic difficulty is your people. People are a business’ greatest—and most important—asset. In the Webster Buchanan Research report Managing Change and Growth, the author brings this fact to light by saying: “The importance of the people/performance equation is only just starting to be understood but has important implications for organizations that rely on their human assets to deliver financial success.”4

If this statement is indeed true, then what does a company do when it must lay off the very employees that aid in its success? A financial crisis often allows a business to take a deeper look at its staff and their potential to grow with the company; then, it makes the decision about which ones are expendable. This decision can be based on many factors; however, reasons often given to employees are due to “downsizing” or “a lack of performance.” Another reason may be the simple fact that one employee has less seniority than another.

In large companies, employees already feel like they’re “just another number”—with uncertainty about their opportunity for growth within the firm. During tough economic times (often due to cutbacks), these employees feel even more at risk, and are afraid of being laid off when their “number” is up. Stress levels are high, and employees often fear for their future—and the welfare of their families.

Change Is Perpetual—and Inevitable

Change is perpetual—and inevitable (especially if that change comes by way of an economic crisis). But what happens when the change is global? The US and Canada are just two countries working toward fixing the problem. Let’s take a closer look at just what they’re doing.

Government Stimulus Programs

Canada is attempting to tackle its economic situation by taking a deeper look at its Employment Insurance program. Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labor Congress, says: “The hard working people of this country are getting hammered by job losses. People are fed up with a government that refuses to fix the Employment Insurance (EI) program. Simply put, if the government doesn’t fix the problems with EI now, this recession will get a lot worse, more people will suffer and the recovery will take longer.”

Georgetti goes on to say that Employment Insurance is an important form of economic stimulus. “It helps people deal with tough times like these. It ensures that while the mill or the factory is shut down, money is in peoples’ pockets so the grocery store, shops, and other services in the community aren’t driven out of business too.”

Canadians are not alone in the fight to keep the economy stimulated. In January 2009, the US President, Barack Obama, unveiled a plan to revitalize the economy in the short term with a stimulus package that will immediately inject $75 billion (USD) into the economy—in the form of tax cuts and direct spending targeted to working families, seniors, homeowners, and the unemployed.5

Besides providing an immediate $250 (USD) tax cut for workers and their families and an additional $250 tax cut to workers and seniors if the economy continues to worsen, the stimulus package will also provide relief to homeowners hit by the housing crisis. President Obama believes that the areas hardest hit by the housing crisis (state and local governments) should be provided immediate, temporary funding too so that the decline in property values does not cause these levels of government to reduce critical public services and cut vital infrastructure spending.6

As the economy slows, state and local governments should avoid postponing major infrastructure spending. Doing so would only exacerbate the economic slowdown.

Managing Your Workforce in a Recession

While governments are hard at work putting together their stimulus packages, companies must also do their part to take care of their employees. Many companies understand these fears, but they often lack a strategy or plan to help calm them. Creating a long-range plan will not only help calm the fears of your employees, it can help motivate and reenergize them as well.

Motivation through Rewards Goes a Long Way

Dealing with the up-and-down cycle of the economy is a part of doing business in a changing world. It’s important to remember, however, that change brought on by recession should be handled in a manner similar to that of any other business change (whether due to a merger or acquisition, organic growth, or a change in business model).

While it’s impossible to control a downturn in the economy, it is possible to control how your business—and more importantly you workforce—will cope. The short- and long-term management of your resources is a crucial aspect of managing a business. In order to get the highest level of performance from your people, your business must continue to develop them—even when times are tough.

A recognition program based on a company’s strategy often helps employees understand its goals more clearly—and then rewards them for delivering. One way to develop this is through the use of human capital management (HCM). HCM—often referred to as talent management—is the strategy of acquiring, retaining, and managing employees. It’s a powerful tool that enables businesses to assess the value of key employees within the organization. By using HCM, organizations can create strategic action plans that are recession-proof.

Mass layoffs are also difficult for those employees left behind. It places extra demand on personnel, including the pressure to take on additional tasks and to perform well. How better to put minds at ease than with a program that recognizes and rewards individuals, ignites motivation, and enhances productivity. One of the best ways to weather an economic storm is as a team—one that feels important. If your people feel that they are valued—and that their contribution to your business makes a difference, you will have both their loyalty and support through difficult times.

Another form of motivation is through employee input. Often the best ideas come from people within your organization. Allow them the freedom to state their ideas and opinions—and then reward them accordingly for their efforts.

Recession Checklist: A Guideline to Managing your Workforce

The UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD)7 is a firm that helps businesses manage and develop people. Along with the Advisory, Conciliation, and Arbitration Service (ACAS)8, it has released an official guideline to managing your workforce during a recession. It’s a great checklist for any business that’s looking to make it through the recession unscathed.

• Think long term
• Maintain employee engagement
• Support your employees’ health and well-being
• Develop a strategy for redundancy so it’s there when you need it
• Think about ways to minimize redundancies if workforce reductions are inevitable
• Consult with your workforce and employee representatives
• Establish fair and objective selection criteria that will help you to retain key people
• Help redundant employees find other work
• Plan for the future

For complete details of the above checklist, visit CIPD’s Web site.

Technology that Can Make a Difference during Times of Change

Change and growth are two forces that can disrupt a business. When change occurs, organizations must take a look at not only their current business processes, but also at the technology they’re using to run the business, to ensure it is capable of handling change effectively. Transactional systems, such as finance and human resources, are the core of a business’s operations and must be able to easily and rapidly adjust to changing conditions.

Recession-proof HR: Agresso Talent Management

One vendor that recognizes and understands change is Agresso. In fact, Agresso has incorporated the whole essence of the word into its product and go-to-market strategy with its Businesses Living in Change (BLINC)™.

Agresso is already widely known for its Agresso Business World (ABW) enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that enables businesses to capture and deliver unlimited amounts of analytical information across their organizations. With over 1.5 million global users in 100 countries, Agresso is considered by analysts to be one of the leaders in this space.

A Setup for Managing Change

The key drivers for changes in business can range anywhere from restructuring to mergers and acquisitions. But even through the current global recession, Agresso takes managing change to the next level. The key to this is its VITA architecture. This service model-based architecture can make adapting to change easy, fast, and efficient.

In 2000, Agresso took its change management ideas one step further by developing a Web-based human resources (HR) and talent management suite and offering it as an add-on to existing ERP infrastructures. Agresso’s BLINC™ plug-ins allow businesses to easily manage their workforces—especially in times of great change.

Agresso’s talent management suite can help businesses effectively manage change—whether that change is due to an economic downturn or other reasons—by helping to optimize workforce coverage, manage and develop employee competency/skills, as well as create regulatory and statutory training plans for employees’ future career goals. It can also be used to predict or plan competency gaps using a range of tools—including business analysis and reporting. This type of broad functionality makes strategizing and preparing for change (i.e., succession planning) a breeze.

Automation allows data to be entered once, when it then becomes available across the enterprise for those departments or individuals that need it the most.

Other features of Agresso’s HR suite include:

• HR administration
• Competency tracking
• Training administration
• Payroll
• Absence tracking
• Expense ledger
• Organization management
• Employee self-service
• Competence portal

Conclusion

Economic recession—while taxing on businesses—is just one of the changes that businesses must weather. For your business it could be the difference between sink or swim. With a well-constructed “recession action plan”—one that includes recognition and rewards—and a system that can change with the times (such as an HCM or talent management system), managing your workforce through an economic downturn is possible.

References

1 – Merriam Webster
2 – Bureau of Labor Statistics

3 – Statistics Canada
4 – Webster Buchanan Research

5 – Barack Obama.com
6 – Barack Obama’s Plan to Stimulate the Economy
7 – CIPD
8 – ACAS

“Behold the Positive Thinking to get you out of a jam or bad times. Ne’ver the negative thoughts that come to invade your mind not only during the day, but in your sleep.”

You wake up worrying, sweating and panicking. These are the manifestations for the causes that occurred during your conscious and unconscious activities during the day. The fear, the anxiety you feel during your sleep can only be eradicated when you change your thinking process. By worrying about your job, how you are going to pay the bills or if someone you care for is sick, will not bring you peace.

What I strongly suggest you do to rid yourself of those sometimes paralysing effects is not simple nor easy. But by dwelling on the ‘problems’ you activate that particular channel of energy and magnify it. Your very thought, giving life to it becomes a reality for you. It is like an instant manifestation, which our society has failed to acknowledge, accept and witness that is all around us.

So, you have a great responsibility as well as an opportunity to change things around for you and your family. I cannot stress enough that how you think, what you think is what you make happen.

You’re probably thinking it’s the company’s fault, the industry’s fault, even the neighbor’s dog and the list goes on. There is no time to point fingers at any one. But there is growth here. You got to understand that you can make it, no matter how grim the situation looks.

We never know, perhaps our neighbors’ are worse off than us. It is not the time to compare, nor the time to feel bad. We have only one mission right now and that is to get out of this recession.

It is a collective consciousness, not the work of an individual. But if every individual consciously make effort, the group consciousness will rise.

No matter how we feel, the events that have brought this recession had already began long before we admit it to ourselves, long before we even noticed.

Think, think, and understand that the recession means to find another way out. The recession means that we are to think out of the box, recession means that we have a lot more to offer to others, recession means that we are capable of overcoming any obstacles, recession means we are a lot stronger than we give credit to ourselves, recession means fear holds us back, recession means let go of the fear and make events change and you can do it. I have faith in you. Sometimes best things happen when least expected.

You are not in this alone, help others along the way when you can and seek help when you need one.

This is the birth of another human evolution.

My best wishes to each and every one of you.

With the doubling of the JAVA stock price on March 18, 2009 based on a Wall Street Journal report that IBM is bidding to buy Sun Microsystems, and with the StockTradersPlace sell action commentary on March 21, one open question is “Should the stock be shorted?”. Here is where other factors have to be considered beyond technical analysis. With speculation that other companies such as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Cisco Systems (CSCO), among others, may want to buy Sun Microsystems, a bidding war can emerge. For this reason, it is probably risky to short the stock at this point, although selling the long position holding is the prudent thing to do.

I continue to be amused by corporate acquisitions and the price paid for such actions.

The previous paragraph was not meant to suggest a similar fate for IBM but was simply old memories coming to the fore as this Sun Microsystems acquisition is being reported. The price is high at $8B. There will be corporate culture clashes and integration issues, as well as clear conflicts in technology in terms of Intel and Advanced Micro Devices microprocessors used in IBM server products versus the Sun Microsystems SPARC architecture microprocessors.

And what is the latest craze with Sun Microsystems anyway? Well, Sun’s legacy is in engineering workstations and server products. But in 2007, Sun changed its stock symbol from SUNW to JAVA to clearly re-orient the company strength and leadership in the JAVA programming language. As significant as the JAVA technology is to the Web computing industry, one must continue to question how they intend to make money from this. As an investor/trader, that is the most important question to answer.

It will be very interesting indeed to see how this unfolds if IBM does end up acquiring Sun Microsystems. Will IBM then customize JAVA for its own internal purposes, thereby creating a potential issue with the open JAVA standard? How does IBM intend to recover the $8B spent predominantly on the acquisition of the JAVA technology which rightly belongs in the domain of open standards.

As an investor/trader of JAVA now and IBM now and in the future, the company fundamentals are extremely important to analyze beyond the technical analysis indicators. This is the time to avoid being over-focused on technical analysis alone.

StockTradersPlace (http://stocktradersplace.com) provides a trend following system that is conducive to trading the trend cycles.

Use the StockTradersPlace system to make paper trades on the demo stocks available to guest users. Sign up for the StockTradersPlace free trial to gain access to all supported stocks.

Empower yourself and show that you can repeatedly execute winning trades using StockTradersPlace as an element of your trading tool box.

On a quite Sunday, you should spent a few minutes and check 2 posts this week by the Internet Commerence Association (ICA).

As a frequent reader to this blog, you should know due to the roll out of the new gTLD’s there is a ton of activity going on with ICANN and many parties are weighing in.

You should also know that because all registries what to be treated the same under ICANN rules, any rules and regulations ICANN imposes for the new gTLD operators will wind up being the rules and regs that existing registries including VeriSign.

The first post by the ICA this week covers the some of the proposals floating around to curtail “trademark” infringing domains, changes in the UDRP, placing responsibility on Registrars to prevent domain registrations that infringe on trademarks and the ICA Policy on this.

The Post states in part:

“””””•    ICANN could establish an “IP Registry” of sanctioned names that could then be restricted to their “owners”. Brand holders would bear the burden of proof, according to ICANN-defined procedures, of establishing their ownership of a brand name.

•    ICANN could establish a “loser pays” policy for the UDRP, where the losing party would pay the litigation costs of the prevailing rights holder. This would provide an incentive for applicants to make sure that they weren’t infringing on a trademark or copyrighted name, or at least quickly to relinquish their claim on a name when the legitimate owner made a complaint.

•    ICANN could place the responsibility on the registrars to enforce these property rights and the liability to pay rights holders’ costs associated with infringement. Registrars may be in the best position to perform this policing function.

The ICA has major concerns about such proposals, and believes that any major revamp of rights protections at the second level of the DNS should be considered carefully and on their own merits, and should not be a negotiating chip in the new gTLD rules debate.

The Internet is a global medium and there are few truly global brand names, and even then they only cover a specific relevant marketplace. Despite any assurances that some reasonable burden of proof will be placed upon brand holders, an IP Registry is likely to quickly resemble a large multilingual dictionary encompassing brands that are less than global, generic words used as brands, and  typographical variations of all of these  out to and beyond six degrees of separation.

A “loser pays” regime for the UDRP could well exacerbate reverse domain name hijacking cases brought by large multinational firms using law firms billing $600 per hour against domainers who believe they acted in good faith but can barely afford their own legal costs, much less pay the Fortune 500’s.

And that is not the only UDRP change sought by TPI – it also advocates “establishing a quick and low-cost way for established trademark holders to protect their intellectual property and prevent cybersquatting and other nuisance registrations on new registries”, but provides no details of what that might be. The UDRP is coming up on its 10th anniversary, and probably deserves a long and thorough review that incorporates the views and legitimate interests of both trademark owners and registrants with the aim of recommending balanced consensus recommendations for reform — and that is entirely separate from the new gTLD uproar.

Also, while registrars may at first find the notion of running ICANN in tandem with registries to be attractive, making them responsible for policing trademark rights, and financially liable to trademark interests, could quickly douse any enthusiasm.

Elsewhere, the Report suggests that Google, Yahoo, and other search engines “are likely to feel competitive pressures from users to guide users to a company’s correct website and not a bogus site”, so TPI apparently feels that they should jigger their algorithms to factor in brand owners.

The fundamental analytic flaw in the TPI report and recommendations is its willful blindness regarding the interests of the true users of the DNS — also known as those who pay the fees that are subsequently upstreamed to ICANN via the registrars and registries after they take their cut for services rendered – that is, the registrants, including domainers who invest in and develop domain portfolios. Contrary to the report’s view that registries and registrars are ICANN’s “direct users”, they should more properly be thought of as its authorized agents. The true users of the DNS are registrants of all stripes, as it is their registration fees that find their way to ICANN and constitute more than ninety percent of the organization’s income. The only registrants referred to in this report are “cybersquatters” and others that TPI regards as nuisances. Its plan translates into nothing less than “Taxation Without Representation” for registrants, as well as a dramatic erosion of due process rights in the UDRP.””

I urge you to read the complete blog post on the ICA site, which you can do by clicking here:

The second post this week of the ICA deals with proposals that are being discussed that would expend current trademark rights and adding new procedures that would amount to quick take down of domains without notice or right to defend.

Again quoting from the ICA site:

“”””Domainers may think that RPMs are something they can check on their car’s tachometer, but WIPO is proposing a new species of RPMs that have the potential to fundamentally change the domain name dispute arbitration process — and substantially increase the risk of reverse domain name hijacking – first at new gTLDs, and later at incumbent gTLDs.

The ICA is actively working to protect registrant rights as this process goes forward.

On March 13, 2009 Eric Wilbers, Director of WIPO’s Arbitration and Mediation center, dispatched a letter to several high-ranking ICANN executives regarding the protection of trademarks on new gTLDs. That letter is available at http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/amc/en/docs/icann130309.pdf.

“””It is these further, as yet unknown models that are worrisome, to the extent that they begin to displace the UDRP as the mechanism for resolving allegations of trademark infringement against domain name registrants. Trademark owners have been openly discussing notice-and-takedown procedures for ordinary infringement allegations. ICA believes that such expedited procedures are appropriate for websites that are engaged in illegal activities such as phishing, malware distribution, or the hosting of illegal content such as child porn, but that they do not afford adequate due process in situations now subject to the UDRP. Registry applicants will be under intense practical pressure to offer the full range of RPMs – including “further models” – as the WIPO letter makes it clear that a registry’s endorsement of such mechanisms will assist its application and its implementation of “adequate RPMs” will be a significant consideration in any post-delegation case leveled against it.

The UDRP is far from perfect, and domainers have many of the same complaints about it as trademark holders, including its cost and the lack of uniform appeals mechanisms and binding precedents. But reform of the UDRP is a serious subject worthy of separate consideration – “complimenting” it in the context of developing the final rules for the rollout of new gTLDs, where trademark owners are the very squeaky wheel demanding to be greased before ICANN can open the new gTLD floodgates, is a near-certain formula for domainer rights getting short shrift – despite WIPO’s statement that it “appreciates the need to strike a reasonable balance between the protection of trademark rights…and the legitimate expectations of good-faith domain name registrants”.

The ICA will continue to actively monitor and participate in the new gTLD process as it relates to trademark protections and all other matters relevant to our members. We learned last week that the IPC was open to having non-constituency members serve on its task force preparing trademark protection recommendations and we nominated ICA President Jeremiah Johnston, who oversees Sedo’s Rights Protection Program. While we hope the IPC will incorporate the domainer viewpoint within their working group we will provide input no matter what. We are also actively participating in the GNSO’s Registration Abuse Policy Working Group and in the Business Constituency’s own internal discussions of appropriate trademark protections. In all of these endeavors we will continue to be guided by the initial position on rights protection staked out in our December 2008 comment letter.

•    Strong, cost-effective, and readily implemented protections for rights holders should be established but they must be limited to enforcing their rights under existing law and not be premised upon the creation of broader rights by ICANN fiat. It is for this reason that we object to creation of a reserve list of trademark names as this would provide rights protections beyond the geographic and relevant marketplace limitations of trademark law. We also object to the imposition of any new rights or procedures that would supplant or supplement the UDRP absent extensive consideration of such proposals in a process that ensures that registrant concerns about current UDRP enforcement trends are heard.

It is critically important that IP rights protections adopted in conjunction with the gTLD process be limited to protecting existing rights conferred by relevant law and do not create newly expanded rights beyond the scope of current law.

Any extralegal expansion of IP rights resulting from the gTLD process has the potential to find its way into and further bias the UDRP against good faith registrants. This concern is particularly acute given that the World Intellectual Property Organization, which is inherently biased in favor of IP rights and their expansion and also serves as a leading arbiter of UDRP cases, is the only designated provider of dispute resolution services for legal rights objections and that such disputes will be decided by a single panelist.

Notwithstanding that caution, we support requiring gTLD applicants to adopt strong best practices to protect IP rights and, if the method chosen is a sunrise period, we would urge that trademark owners be charged only a reasonable minimum fee to register their protected names at the second level on the new gTLD.

However, we strongly object to suggestions that ICANN establish a near-term requirement for cost-free takedown procedures for domains alleged to be established in bad faith for both new and existing gTLDs, as establishment of bad faith registration is already one of the key elements of the UDRP – it should remain one of three elements in a balanced proceeding, and not become the single determinative element in a biased proceeding. Any alteration or supplementation of the UDRP should not be implemented as a footnote to new gTLD implementation but only after presentation to and consideration by the community — and such process must take into consideration and redress concerns with the present UDRP voiced by registrants and not simply react to the complaints of trademark interests.”””

Once again you should read the entire post where you can do by clicking here.

The ICA is the ONLY group representing domain holder in this process.

There is a mind blogging amount of issues arising from the new gTLD’s.   It’s a full time job.

You need representation in this process.  You need someone to represent your interest.

You need to join the ICA.  It’s a lousy $295 a year.

Not only do they need the money but just as important they need the numbers.

The ICA needs to have hundreds if not thousands of members to give them more credibility and a bigger presence in these proceedings.  The ICA needs to represent not just the “big” guys but all domain holders.

Believe me, if ICA does not get the support they need its going to cost you a lot more than the $295 a year in fees, legal fees, and losing domains.

Some consumers simply have very little interest in television. Subscription TV packages aren’t appealing to these individuals and, no matter how many channels are offered, none of them are enticing. Unfortunately, many of these consumers don’t realize that satellite dishes provide much more than entertainment these days and that buying a television subscription is not always required to receive satellite Internet broadband.

There are several companies that offer satellite Internet as a stand-alone package. For customers in rural areas who don’t have an interest in television programming, these connections can be a huge asset. Aside from the entertainment value they provide, they can make doing business much easier, whether that business be a family farm or simply an office job that entails a long commute. The most powerful function of the Internet is to allow quick communication over long distances at low costs. This functionality is now available to anyone.

Satellite dishes are very small today, owing to advances in technology, and the same dishes used for television services are used for Internet services. If one isn’t currently interested in television, having the Internet service provided via dish ensures that the capability to expand is there in the future. The installation is free in the vast majority of cases, so getting the hardware and having it installed is never a problem, no matter how far off the beaten path one’s residence may be.

Even within a city, satellite Internet subscriptions are becoming more and more competitive with their rivals. The distance limitations on DSL technology remain in effect. The way cable Internet is distributed means it’s still susceptible to slow downs during peak usage hours. Both of these drawbacks are eliminated with satellite broadband services. Satellite services are also scalable, so there’s no need to pay inflated rates for huge amounts of bandwidth that may never be used, as is the situation that plagues cable services.

Even apartment dwellers can benefit from this service. Apartments allow the installation of satellite dishes and if one is simply seeking Internet service this can oftentimes be the most cost effective route to go. The service is also more portable than its rivals as installation fees are something most satellite providers eliminated long ago to obtain customer loyalty. If one chooses to move, the service can generally be moved with them at no cost.

Given the convenience of the service and the always-improving maximum bandwidths available, satellite Internet may be a viable option in more situations than many individuals would initially suspect. While the dishes formerly indicated that a household was a television subscriber, today they quite often mean that the home is receiving their broadband Internet service from a satellite, as well. Even for individuals who aren’t enamored of what television has to offer, there are ways in which the wireless revolution is making more and more services very convenient with each passing day. Receiving Internet connectivity via wireless technology is one of the rapidly expanding examples of this.

Initially, people who are not too familiar with domain names would ask, what is domain name parking? Domain parking simply refers to generating profit thru placement of advertisements on an auto-created web site. There are many considerable ways to make money on parking your domain. You can definitely generate income from a quality domain name. Try to look for the best domain name parking sites that make genuine SEO sites and 100% return of revenue. Be careful of domain parking sites that are void of content and filled with sponsored links. They will not help you make money out of your domain name and might affect the value of your domain name in case you sell it in the future.

Your domain parking service must possess the capacity to auto create content rich web sites. This will increase traffic to a domain name. Thus, you will have better pagerank and increased in the value of domain name. Additionally, traditional domain parking gives less or even no value to its visitors at all since there are no valuable content from the site anyway. Internet users are too bored to see the same content again. That is why a new way to enhanced domain parking is made available in the market. This service can guarantee your site to have fresh and relevant content daily.

Said content will be based on the keywords you choose. Therefore, you have the liberty to choose the keywords that are relevant to your domain name. By having quality content, you can be assured that your visitors will come back to read more of what you have in store for them. On a different note, since the main reasons for domain parking is really to increase your profit, make sure that before you park your domain in domain name service site. You must be clearly aware of their conditions for forwarding revenue. Otherwise, they will only charge you with a hefty fee without the guarantee that you will be able to get 100% revenue.

It is a must that the domain name parking service will offer you an optimized domain name because you can be assured of the added value to the domain name. So it is important that your domain parking service is filled with rich and quality content that can point back to your chosen keywords. If the service that you get has keyword rich content on its site, then they can have better search engine rankings. Among the list of Domain parking companies, choose the one that will allow flexibility and customization of web site.

It will give you much convenience to be able to maximize a service to your advantage. You do not need to be an expert webmaster to create your own layout. Getting the right service provider will make things easier for you without sacrificing the quality of your web site. Domain name parking is a good income generating method. However, you have to know which services to tap so that your revenues are sent directly to you. Beware of domain parking services that will eat up your profit without your knowledge.

http://domains.afxisi.com

The answer is easy for me: No. Would eBay sell its domain names? Would SmallDeadAnimals sell theirs? Would you sell your name? No.

I got an email today, appropriately sorted into the Junk Mail folder, offering to buy my domain name IF I got it appraised. Well, it costs $23US to get a value for my domain name, which I pay about $5/year to own. Judging by the amount I make each year in free stuff or from sponsorship, I could get a pretty penny for the name.

Dear sir,

we are interested to buy your domain name TWENTYPLENTY.COM and offer to buy it from you for 65% of the appraised market value.

As of now we accept appraisals from either one of the following leading appraisal companies:

sedo.com
pedma.com
accuratedomains.com

If you already have an appraisal please forward it to us.

As soon as we have received your appraisal we will send you our payment (we use Paypal for amounts less than $2,000 and escrow.com for amounts above $2,000) as well as further instructions on how to complete the transfer of the domain name.

We appreciate your business,
Thanks,
[person looking to make easy money by turning my good domain name into a site for ads only]

Well, it’s pretty common knowledge by now that BizTalk Server (from version 2004 onwards) comes with a Business Rules Engine (BRE), but do you really know just how powerful it is? The BRE provides a mechanism to implement complex business logic in a highly versatile and optimised manner, allowing the business to update the logic without forcing redevelopment or a recompile of the solution.

So what does that mean? Let’s start with a really simple case. Suppose your company takes orders from its customers and awards a 5% discount if the order total exceeds a certain amount, say $5000. You have a BizTalk solution that tracks the incoming order and manages the business processes surrounding fulfillment and billing. Now… as a developer, where would you put the discount logic? Well, you have several options; here are just a few:

1. Put the discount logic in an expression shape within the orchestration
2. Put the discount logic in a satellite helper (.NET) assembly called by the orchestration
3. Put the discount logic in the Business Rules Engine and call it from the orchestration using a “Call Rules” shape.

Let’s say that you’re a “consultant” (by Mick’s definition) and you’ve gone with one of the first two options. Now suppose that your CEO has decided to run a special next month to promote more business, and wants to expand the existing discount to 10%, as well as offer a further discount (%15) for orders over $10,000. You think this is good news for you on the job security front because you’re skills are required to re-code, recompile and test the logic. But then you observe your boss’s increasingly unimpressed demeanor as you explain the cost and effort to implement the change, not too mention scheduling a full release (with the associated system down-time… translation: loss of $$) to deploy the change. And of course you get to do the whole thing again when the temporary offer expires and you need to restore the original logic. Looking at his face now, you suddenly decide it’s a good time to update your CV …

OR… if you were smart enough to go with the third option, you can explain to your boss that he can have either you, his business analyst, or even an IT-saavy information worker update the rules using the Business Rules Composer that came with BizTalk. The rules can be tested independently inside the Composer, and then published to any environment. And here’s the best thing: rules are effective immediately upon deployment, without any recompiling required! (in many cases, you won’t even have to stop your BizTalk application for the rules to be deployed and take effect) In other words, flexibility to alter the discount logic in real-time with no interruption of service. Now your boss is smiling and you just might get that Christmas bonus after all.

While this example is a pretty simple one, think about the complex set of rules that support a decision about awarding credit, or for setting a premium on an insurance policy. The BRE is incredibly adept at representing elaborate decision making processes that are typically too complex or cumbersome to model in traditional code. Combine this with the versatility demonstrated above, and you begin to appreciate the immense value that the BRE adds to your enterprise solution.

So how does the BRE work?

Rules are constructed based on Facts and Vocabularies. A fact is a specific bit of information based on a data item, for example “Quantity” in the scenario above. Now if you were to reference this data item from an XML message using XPath, it might look something like this:

/*[local-name()='PurchaseOrder' and namespace uri()='http://schemas.ACME.com/2007/Purchasing']/*[local-name()='Item' and namespace uri()='']/*[local-name()='Quantity' and namespace-uri ()='']

Eyes starting to cross? Vision going blurry? Don’t worry – you’re not alone. Imagine confronting your business analyst or information worker with that kind of verbose syntax! However, the BRE allows you to define a custom vocabulary to provide friendly names for facts like these. Add a definition for the XPath expression above and call it “Quantity”, then watch that glazed expression slowly disappear from your BA’s face. Moreover, you can express the rules using semantics that even your CEO can understand – which means he can verify your work if he wants to.

Now that you have your facts and vocabulary defined, you can begin writing your rules, which are simply based on conditions and associated actions. So for the example above, the rules might look something like this:

IF Quantity > 10000
DiscountApplied = 0.15

IF Quantity > 5000
DiscountApplied = 0.1

IF Quantity <= 5000
DiscountApplied = 0.0

Unlike normal procedural logic like you’d write in C# code, there is no concept of an “ELSE” or “ELSE IF” branch in the BRE; a rule either fires or it doesn’t. So how do you control which rule fires above if the Quantity were greater than 10,000 (since both of the first two conditions are met)? Well, actually both rules do evaluate, but you can set a priority for each rule to govern the order they are evaluated. As long as the first rule above is evaluated last, the result will be correct.

Rules can be grouped together in Policies which are then saved, published and deployed. Once published, a policy can’t be modified, but you can copy it into a new version, update it and deploy that. BizTalk always uses the latest deployed version of any rules policy. So when the special offer discount period ends, just undeploy the new version and you’ve instantly rolled back to the regular policy!

“Gee, the BRE is really something! But can I only use it from within BizTalk?”

The million-dollar answer is… NO! The BRE is written entirely in .NET, and presents APIs that allow you to call it from any .NET class. So you can expose your rules with a Web Service (or in WCF) and access them anywhere!

“Can I get the BRE separately from BizTalk?”

The cheapest way to get the BRE is through purchasing BizTalk RFID Services, which bundles in the BRE for free.

Useful Links:

BRE Blog by Sreedhar Pelluru, Senior Programmer Writer (Microsoft)
Overview of BRE Integration with BizTalk RFID
Using the BRE Outside of BizTalk

So… get acquainted with the BRE and you too can start making the rules!

I have come a long way, from years of suffering and struggle
just to get a recognition in this harsh world
where you strive and strive making people believe that
even you have your own identity, even you can do something.

The agonies I suffered long back still remain with me,
haunting me, torturing me, bringing back the days,
I cried upon my failure, pondering over my future,
losing all my perseverance and control of myself,
but I had to strengthen myself to be once again seen by this world,
face its wrath, show people that even I can recover from my failures
and gather the courage to fight back and try to gain what I aimed for,
long back before my failures, I could achieve at least something
if not everything
with my hard work and dedication,
my pertinacity and the spirit to win in any circumstance,
in any dreadful situation,
to fulfill my dreams and give color to them as my wishes do
and no doubt, at last I have attained so much I wanted to,
but hopes still remain aspiring high as they are,
one day to touch the skies!

Gmail storage is currently rising at 1/1000 MB every 25 seconds. This means that:

* It takes a little over 6 hours 56 minutes to increase 1 MB
* Every day storage increases by 3.456 MB
* It takes 289 days to increase 1 Gigabyte
* By the turn of the next millenium, Gmail users will have 1,257,183 MB of storage, enough to store about 100 million emails
* Every .003125 seconds, Gmail users get one additional bit of storage, enough to store either a 1 or a 0