The Olympic fever has caught up with search engines too. Yahoo has come up with various shortcuts to provide live information through its search engine.

The new enhancement for Olympics would include country specific and overall medal count updates, athlete performance and records. It is estimated that 10,500 athletes would participate from 205 nations world wide. It would be a tremendous job in updating all the events and happenings live on the internet. There are 302 events scheduled to be conducted for 28 different sports.

Yahoo has also provided tips to find out the latest in Olympics. Once the Olympics starts, a query for ‘US medal count’ would turn up recent medals won, event results and track records.

You can also see a personalized athlete performance update by just adding his or her name along with the word ‘Olympics’. Yahoo! Sports would also feature news casts, interviews, images and feeds to get the best possible view on Olympics. Isn’t this a good feature from Yahoo? Google should be having something in its pocket too. Lets wait till the Olympics starts off.

Baidu’s fall is Google’s gain. Google has planed to launch a music search engine for China to gain the customers Baidu is loosing out.

Baidu which was a dominating the entire music search in China has been recently caught under various copyright laws.  Though Baidu is still popular with the common people, most of its advertisers have been forced to boycott by the International Federation of Phonographic Industry.

Baidu [Chinese name inspired by a Song Dynasty poem written 800 years before] offers more than 57 community and search services for the Chinese audience. It has over 740 million pages and more than 10 million multimedia files and became the first company in China to be included in NASDAQ-100.

Yahoo China and Sohu have also been under scrutiny by the International Federation on violation of copyright laws. Google is getting into the field when all others are being defeated. Google has to get rights from hundreds of record labels before it can launch the service. Let’s wait and watch who wins the battle.

Journalists who landed for Olympics were surprised to know that most of the popular websites were not working inside China. That even included Wikipedia. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) came under severe criticism for allowing Chinese officials to hold on to their crazy censorship.

International human rights activists have raised their voices on this issue. They have mentioned that censorship of internet during Olympics is a violation of basic human rights and have requested for an uncensored internet access.

Though the restriction to Chinese citizens has been imposed for years, it has recently become an international point of discussion due to the Olympics and the journalists. Initially BOCOG, Chinese Olympic Organizers and the International Olympic Committee IOC stated that they would lift restrictions. However, it turned out to be no good as it was just partial.

The Chinese government has removed few sites from its ban and has blocked sites categorized as “against national interest” or “seditious”. Journalists still have difficulty accessing their company sites or their high secure servers. China has broken its promise of providing an unconditional internet access to sports journalists.

Google has been noticing the power of Wikipedia during the recent years. The announcement of Knol is not a big surprise. Knol would be a Wikipedia killer. Google has been understanding the profit it can make out of a Wikipedia-like product and also Wikipedia’s loop holes.

Knol, which Google claims to be its own idea, is actually an enhanced version of Wikipedia. Knol means a unit of knowledge. Google plans to include a large number of user-written articles on a wide range of topics. However, when it was released as a beta to the public, it had few articles written mostly in the medical and health sector.

Unlike Wikipedia, Google requires all Knol projects to be posted only after signing into the account. Also, Google would check the authenticity by using an account owner’s credit card information or their phone number.

Search engine experts feel that Knol has been given too much favouritism by Google helping their new pages to come to the top of search results. Even if the content is copied from another website and posted in Knol, you would get top results in Google. Isn’t this cool? This is a huge mistake Google has done to its image. Google followers would no longer feel its results are unbiased.

16 Serial Bomb Blasts in Ahmedabad

After the Bomb Blasts in IT capital of India, Bangalore two days back, its now Ahmedabad. A stunning 13 bomb blasts have taken place in Bapu anagar, Maninagar, Isanpur, Narol Circle, Narodha Patiya, Hatkeshkar and Hakar areas in 15 minutes of Ahmedabad today. Eighteen people have died in this shocking Ahmedabad bomb blast.

The bomb blasts have happened starting at 6:45 pm to 7:00 pm today. Bapu Nagar faced the first blast happened near Danmanthri Hospital. Bapu Nagar is a very crowded area anytime and is called the diamond city of India with a lot of diamond workers.

A CNG bus was blown away completely during the blast in Sarkhej. Initial reports also state other areas had blasts using cycles and tiffen boxes.

48 have been injured in the blasts and have been admitted in the hospital. Awaiting further news.

7 Bomb Blasts in Bangalore kill 1 Injure Many

Seven bomb blasts rocked the IT Capital today. The blasts made Bangalore on a stand-still today. The locations include Adugudi, Nayandahalli, Ashok Nagar, Koramangala, Madiwala bus stand, Vittal Malya Road. The blast happend subsequently within few minutes in 1:30 afternoon.

One woman and four others have been killed in the bangalore bomb blast and several injured.  Other places include Mallya hospital, Langford Road and Richmond Circle in Bangalore city. Two blasts are reported to be in Madivala.

The first blast has been reported to have taken place near Madiwala check post. This is located close to Forum Mall, an important shopping center where crowds of youngsters hang out usually on a friday evening. The second bangalore blast took place in Nayandahalli which connects Mysore Road. This has a huge number of traffic usually. Nayandhalli has been followed by Adugodi blast.

The bombs are reported to have been made using gelatin sticks. Reports state that the blasts are of low intensity as they were made similar to ones used in coal mines. The bombs had timer devices and were triggered using mobile phones.

The injured have been admitted in St. Johns Hospital in bangalore.  Bangalore City Police Commissioner Shankar Bidri has reqested bangalorians not to panic and to carry on with their normal activities. However, people have restrained from going out and have stayed back in their offices or at home.

Well the IT capital, Bangalore is not new to terrorism. There has been many incidents in the software capital of India. The recent one being a terrorist attack in IISc campus, bangalore.

On october 2007,, police arrested two pakistani nationals in Mysore for attacking the Karnataka Secretariat, Vidhan Soudha.

South India has not been spared from bomb blasts. Coimbatore in 1998 faced a series of bomb blasts followed by Hyderabad with twin bomb blasts in Mecca Masjid.

Further news awaiting on Bangalore Bomb Blasts.

24/7 Customer on a phased ramp down

After software companies, its now BPO companies who are on a slow down. 24/7 Customer one of India’s leading BPO firms have informed that they would carry out a phased ramp down of their offshore call center partnerships in India.

24/7 has planned to reduce 450 employees in Gurgaon and would also assist the employees to find employment opportunities outside their company. More than 70% of its employees are already on a lookout for other opportunities.

But as all companies say, the company also claims that it will increase its workforce from the existing 7,500 to 10,000 employees by May and it is already hiring in India, Guatemala and Manila. These claims have become common with most of the companies to cover their real skin.

President of New services and Global Chief of Risk and Infrastructure stated that they have taken all necessary steps to help employees pursue careers in other centres.

Industry analysts feel that the current slow down in the market can no longer help companies afford having employees in bench. They do have to ramp down employees in the name of performance review and cover their real cause with news about increasing work force.

The BPO has its head office based in California with its Indian call center operations in Chennai, Bangalore, Gurgaon and Hyderabad.

Whether you are a newbie or an experienced search engine optimizer, any free SEO lessons on the internet would surely be of interest. If you are an experienced SEO expert, you would still like to take a glimpse of a free SEO article to see if there is anything new that you can add to your knowledge.

Well, in this article, I would like to collate all the tips and articles I wrote about SEO under one topic in a chain so that you can have an easier understanding.

Define:SEO

In simple terms, SEO is the art of bringing up a website on a search result by making some changes on the site and outside the site. SEO is as simple as that. But the strategy or procedure used is more of an art which would be more complex.

You would have found various websites asking you to subscribe for a free article or lesson on SEO. All articles on the net would say the same story but from a different angle. Click on the topics to read about them.

1. Introduction to SEO
   This section talks about what SEO is in general and how it can be implemented effeciently.
   
2. The SEO Process
   The various processes involved in SEO
   
3. SEO Objectives
   Why you want to optimize your site? What are your long time goals? Read more.
   
4. Analysis of Company Goals and Values
   Optimizing a site should go along with the company goals.
   
5. Keyword Research
   Your site would be seen by new visitors largely through search engines. How would you find out which keywords they use and the keywords for which you wish your site to have a good SERP.
   
6. Site Analysis
   Analyze your existing site and find out its pros and cons.
   
7. Competitor Analysis
   How well are your competitors performing? Do you draw more visitors or do they have the largest piece of cake? Sounds interesting? Find out more as you read the article.
   
8. SEF Content Rewriting
   Content writing needs a lot of creativity and speed. You need to write a huge amount of content and also make sure it’s interesting. Also read the free content writing tips on the website.
   
9. Optimizing Meta Information
   What are meta tags? How can these small tags make huge changes to your search engine rankings?
   
10. Site Map Generation
    How can you make search engines know how many pages you have on your website? Where they are and how much priority you wish to provide them.
    
11. Link Popularity Enhancement
    Make your website presence in third-party websites.
    
12. Site Speed and HTML Validation
    Shouldn’t your site be faster and without any coding errors? You should also know at least the basics of HTML if you have big plans for your website. Learn more from the article on basics of HTML for SEO.
    
13. Search Engine and Directory Submission
    An article on how to submit your site to search engines and directories.
    
14. Paid Advertising
    Paid advertising can be a great option if you have a sound budget.
    
15. Compatibility Check Offsite Testing and Deployment
    Testing is a crucial step in making your site perfect for search engines.
    
16. Post Optimization
    Is SEO dead after optimizing the site and making it live? Well, there is a lot of continuous optimization you have to carry out after the site is live. This will ensure you are competitive and well ahead of your competitors.

Hope this free lesson on SEO sounded useful. Read more through the Articles and SEO Basics sections on the site for a larger understanding.

Any onlooker who reads for the first time what is going on with Icahn, Microsoft and Yahoo can easily figure out that Icahn is being fed three times a day by Microsoft. The software giant is just using him for its own gain. This is a well planned puzzle that Microsoft has hosted. But are the shareholders so dumb to listen to the Mr. Nobody Icahn?

I feel Microsoft is acting similar to how America acted in the days of war. A decade back America supported Iraq against Iran. Few years after the war was over, Iraq was invaded by America itself. Wow! Doesn’t it sound similar?

It is so obvious that Steve Ballmer is using Carl Icahn to weaken Yahoo to get an at-ease best buy deal done. Even dummies can understand it. But how then do all the investors wag the tail exactly as Icahn does? May be Icahn is so clever to mesmerize the investors and could that be how a college dropout became a billionaire financier and a well-known private equity investor?

Carl Celian Ichan has a history of successful quests and deals by pressurizing or trapping the opponent. Now it’s Yahoo which he’s looking for. Microsoft could well have made a deal with him titled, “If you make it happen, then…” Icahn has now filed a definitive proxy statement nominating that a slate of nine directors should replace Yahoo’s current board members including CEO, Jerry Yang. But why? Is it just because they consider Yahoo is worth much more? Or is it because they are not happy that Yahoo, a once upon a time King is being sold out? What is wrong in that? What else did they do? Did they commit a crime?

Remember how he pressed the board for a seat in Motorola and how Icahn could make the deal with Lear Corporation. If not, you should be remembering at least how he pressured Medimmune Inc to consider takeover bids. If you do wag the tail like he does, then you should be aware.

If you are just a casual onlooker watching what’s going on in the arena, then join me to watch the game of dummies, wealthy mesmerizer, the rich giant and the once-a-king-now-a-poor-man.

Bangalore STD Code: 080

Other Karnataka City codes are listed below: