• Be serious about your online identity such as a domain name or website. They are no more items made just to be shown on your business cards, they can bring business to you.
• As much as possible, try to maintain a reminder about domain renewal if you have paid for the domain for just one year.
• 10 years is the maximum duration a domain name can be registered for, for now. You may go for the maximum duration for your firm’s branded domain name, considering your firms operation for years to come.
• My advise is that you learn to register domain name yourself and to manage it. Domain name is an asset, gone are those days where it was nothing for SMEs.
• If you cannot do register and maintain domain name yourself, seek help of a trust able web design company and keep an agreement that they register the domain name mentioning you as the registrant and technical/administrative contact so that the notification about domain renewal reach you through the email id mentioned as part of these contacts. 

There is good news for Airtel fans, Airtel has started selling 3G data cards for a price of 4,250 Rs, but current limitation is that you will be getting max speed of only 256kbps as currently there is no 3G and it relies on Airtel’s GPRS/EDGE network.

I visited Airtel’s relationship center nearby to enquire about this, since there is no ads any where, it was only rumours. Obviously Airtel isn’t advertising since this isn’t working on 3G network yet and giving a smaller speed. The airtel relationship manager was happy to explain it to me. The max speed of 256kbps again depends on the network in any particular area, but since its Airtel I feel even 256kbps will not let you down.

Tariffs: He mentioned to me about two plans – 999Rs for unlimited usage and 599 Rs with a download limite (Sorry, i didnt hear this limit part properly as I was more keen towards unlimited packs).

To confirm, I asked whether this tariffs are going to change after introduction of 3G – the answer was ‘probably it could’. I do not have any complaints on this answer as 3G pricing is yet to be announced, there could be a number of factors to be considered before the final customer pricing is decided.

At the moment Reliance charges 1500 odd Rs per month for an unlimited plan with National roaming for their 3.1Mbps data card. I assume Airtel price might settle somewhere in the same range once 3G is in place.

Am I going for this card now? : Well, I might not, I have a broadband connection at home and have a spare Airtel SIM card to be used while roaming on their Mobile Office plan. I can go for a data card only when the speed and network reliability is good so that I can abandon my wired broadband connection at home. At the moment I cannot afford paying for both, I cannot discard my wired broadband connection at the moment since I work from home after returning from office and I am too much dependant on the availability of Internet. I can bet, other providers cannot give me such a reliability score than Airtel.

Hope Airtel launches 3G with a right price for customers like me, again not leaving the reliabilty factor so that wireless 3G becomes the one and only internet connection used than multiple connections .

Tariffs:

My Airtel Broadband wasn’t working today, I noticed frequent disconnection – the modem was negotiating connections too frequently which was quite unusual on Airtel Broadband. First I suspected my UPS, on which I had connected my modem and router, it was an old UPS, which I use only for modem and router in order to get broadband even during powercuts! Well this works with Airtel and other providers who offer broadband on telephone line (say BSNL).
After wasting some time, I thought there could be some problem with the Airtel telephone line itself. I picked up my phone receiver only to hear noise and not dial tone. So conclusion – the line had some sort of issue. I called up Airtel customer care in Bangalore on the number 080 – 4444 4121 to report the issue. I made the complaint registration at 1:15 pm, kept the receiver, got ready to start to office. 1:40 pm I have the Engineer from Airtel checking the junction box in front of my home!!

Just 25 minutes, can you expect any other responding to your complaints faster than this? I am over 100% sure, they are yet to be born. I am still a customer of BSNL landline, for such complaints if I am lucky I can see a technician checking it next day, and probably will be rectified soon after some bribing. I was a customer of Tata Indicom VSNL’s broadband and have see worst service a provider can give to customer, its a fact that Airtel has kept high standards in resolving complaints from customers.

There are some complaints from few that Airtel charges heavy for their services, but buddy you cannot get high quality for a cheaper price always. Hathway provides internet very cheap – damn cheap, but if power goes, your internet is down. Hathway’s internet is through cable, which transmits TV channels too, so one booster burns on the way or not powered, internet is down.

I use Airtel internet to make use of the option of working from home, because its a connection I can trust when there is some emergency task is being handled away from office.
My point is, if you are serious about your broadband connection, use Airtel – else use any other provider but only expect it to work at their will, not based on your requirement.

I am not an employee of Airtel, Airtel doesn’t need someone to make fake statements about their service, if you have used it yourself, you will be in line with my comments above.
Hope others try to learn from Airtel !

If you look in detail, the link (promo) points to another site – IndiaTodayBookClub.com which obviously look like a third party site.

NOW My Question is, who the hell is IRCTC to share my email ID to third party email advertisers, without my consent and knowledge?

Checked out IRCTC again, there is NO privacy policy document and nothing which explains me what they do with my private data such as name, email id, contact address etc !!!

Should IRCTC do such things with the user data? DISGUSTING !!
Is there anyone from IRCTC to explain what the sHiT is this??

We were just wondering how much we would have earned if we had bough google shares at that time

Thats history, but I was watching google prices by adding a stock portfolio gadget onto my iGoogle and today’s price really brought back those days when we were closely watching this stock. It was really shocking to see a price around 259 USD !! I couldn’t really digest the fact that the price has gone down even below that Aug 2005 figure !!
Whats going around? I know as a company, Google is still doing really well, but Google too relies on the money which is spent by advertisers through Google’s sponsored search results. There must be really a major drop in the advertising spend in recent times due to the economic slowdown.

Any views in this regard, do not forget to click and add a comment below .

I googled around for 2 days for some good material on how to network computers to share dialup internet connection. You can find enough material on networking but this requirement was unique so I had a tough time finding the right information. Finally I found one at

http://www.notebookforums.com/thread113829.html

I used a wireless router from NetGear. Not sure its the one same as the one at

http://www.netgear.com/Products/RoutersandGateways/WirelessGRouters/WGR614.aspx

The explanation above somehow didnt completely solve my issues but did upto 95%. Only difference being I had to use a static IP 192.168.1.2 on my laptop which being a client machine on which I was using the internet connection originally at my desktop PC (192.168.1.1). The wireless router was given a static IP 192.168.1.250 . So an all static IP network. My desktop PC failed to assign IP dynamically at times to the laptop, thats why I had to go with a static IP on the laptop.

The configuration on the router is similar to what is explained at http://www.notebookforums.com/thread113829.html. If you are using NetGear and need assistance on similar configuration, do shout here !! I will be happy to help you out !!

Internet connection has become one of a lifeline for me as it makes me upset
seeing the connection getting down.

I browsed Airtel site for their new plans as I have seen them as the primary
alternative and then BSNL. Searching about BSNL’s new plans, the new thing
struck me for a while – BSNL EVDO USB Modem.

BSNL EVDO service is not new, but its not given the much needed hype as BSNL
is still working on its infrastructure.. Remember how BSNL came out with the
mobile network after getting all the necessary infrastructure ready and
functional?

So here is the only official information I could get about BSNL EVDO, though
there are a quite number of blogs and forums already about BSNL EVDO.

http://www.bsnl.co.in/newsdetailed.php?news_id=370

My first impression about BSNL EVDO is really good. It uses a tiny USB
device just like Reliance netconnect and tata indicom USB device. Currently
the device is priced at 3500 Rupees, which you can buy or take the device on
rental at 200/pm.

For the unlimited package with upto 2.4MBps the charge is 550/pm+ taxes. If
you tae the modem on rental, total charges per month will be
550+200(rental)+service taxes . Cool eh ?

BSNL has not launched it officially, hence I don’t have much info where to
get things going, but as far as what information gathered by me in internet,
in Bangalore, BSNL has installed Base Transceiver Stations (BSTs). Each BST
is capable of covering a radius of 5-8 km.

Sandhya Lodge, Near Majestic.
Sona Towers, Near Indian Express.
City Exchange, Near Market.
Malleshwaram Exchange.
Kormangala Exchange.
BTM Layout Exchange.
RT Nagar Exchange.
Kengeri.
K.R Puram Exchange.
Electronic City.
Padmanabanagar.
Yelahanka.
SanjayNagar Exchange.
Peenya Exchange, Jalahalli Cross.
HSR Layout Exchange.
Mysore Road Exchange.
Vijaynagar Exchange.
Yeshwanthpur Exchange.

You can check bsnlevdoclub.com for more updates on BSNL EVDO.