In the last two years online spam has increased exponentially. Until a few months ago, I used to get a 1:1 ratio of spam messages relative to personalized messages, addressed to me. Somehow, when I post comments on external sites or list an email address online like at the LinkedIN OpenNetworker Group, these email ids tend to attract “lottery winnings”, “15M transfer to my bank account”, “great stock picks” and the many other mails not worth mentioning.

While I had contained my email spam problem, recently someone asked me how I manage Drupal comment Spam, as they got 45 spam messages over a few minutes. It is a fact, as your blog ages, you attract higher spam comments. She was expecting me to solve her problem, when I told her that I use a sophisticated Drupal SPAM module and I then moderate the comments.

Almost once a month I get question on RSS, what it is, how to read rss feeds and should I use rss. This blog answers this question. First let’s start with what it is:

With the embark of the cut throat competition and hunger for affluence, social relationships were on the point of gradual extinction, when suddenly the twist in the doomsday had the thunderous breakthrough with social networking emerging from its embryonic cocoon.

You find youngsters and business networking people hooking up to these for their own reasons. Virtually though, the connectivity has soared by simultaneously widening the dimensions of its existence and erasing out the need of face-to face once needed encounters.

Over the Christmas holidays I chose to add a video to our home page, that describes the benefits from a training course I developed – called the Online Business Blueprint. I decided to jump on PowerPoint and convert the PowerPoint video to flash and later uploaded it to Youtube. Kathy, however, didn’t think much of my video creation skills and insisted that I get it redone. There are many comments on the web around having home made videos as opposed to professional ones.

There is much hype about Web 2.0. So what do the internet users really think? Or rather, what are the corporates doing? Are they using it to its maximum potential and rolling in cash?

Lets look at the current scenarios. In the current landscape of the business environment, almost all office tasks involve online or information technology transactions. The office landscape has been completely modified, and there is nothing companies' management can do but acknowledge the trend.

Skype shifted the VOIP momentum with people around the world talking on the internet for free. How would you like to talk on your regular handset for free instead?  There are many VOIP based providers doing just that charge around a fifth of what your local telephone company charge. First came jajah and the one I really love is jaxtr. Tom Keating's article Jaxtr launches public beta describes many of the benefits people received during the beta period -

Recently I was in the market to find a solution for a client that wanted a web database. The requirements started of simple, but grew to where people from around the world would be able to enter data and others would be able to analyze and infer from this data.  In my past role I would have recommended a solution like SQL server or Oracle, with a Visual basic front end. Such a solution would easily take a week or more to develop, along with database hosting costs and you need good programming knowledge. What if a solution needs to be ready in say a day?  Is this even possible?
 
Some of the web 2.0 based database web publishing sites promise just that. In a matter of minutes you can import relational database elements from a spreadsheet or from a database, and create a web front end to it. The entire upload and web interface to it can be created in matter of hours. You can host this application on your website with a form. I evaluated three leading providers in this space, that offer relatively similar offering -

Are you a budding artist who finds it hard to make a living selling art or photography? You know you are good and may have even created a website. However you cannot get enough visitors to your site.  With RedBubble you do not have to give up on your dream and you do not even need a website. With the advancement of technology it is possible to sell art online and meet like minded individuals from around the globe to exchange ideas.

Red Bubble is a community of budding artists who share their thoughts and views on art and art related topics. You can digitize your art, which means that you can scan or upload your painting or pictures online at RedBubble. You can also promote and display your art to online visitors and potential buyers and people who love your work will help raise your art popularity. As your art sells more often your credibility in the community you will increase. RedBubble brings buyers for your art and when an item sells they will print it and ship it to customers around the world.

Photo critic has written an excellent article from an artist standpoint on selling art online.

If you want to help a poor person in a developing or third world, giving to charities is not the answer.  Money soon runs out and the person is now dependent on that charitable offering again (most likely). Not if you have a plan to do something with the funds - like create a business. Well that is what Kiva does. It is a lending organization that enables people like you and me to give to person who is in need. They have third party organizations that vet the claims and uses of funds for these individuals.