For example Xerox recently launched an online video marketing campaign to get you interested into buying some of their new products. Video blogs aren’t a new phenomenon, but are gaining steam every day.

Gone are the days when corporate videos were boring. Today professional filmmakers run sophisticated video shops to cater to your every needs from corporate training video, to video presentations and live events, which don’t don’t put you to sleep.

While the industry is still underdeveloped in India, it is highly developed in USA. In USA, California has the highest concentration of quality video production firms. One of the California video production company is Groovy like a movie. Its one of the top ranked video production firms, and is based in San Diego. So confident they are of their expertise that they will even refund your money back if they don’t meet their deadlines. Their services include corporate videos, TV commercials, live events, and entertainment videos.

They take care of items such as location scouting, Scriptwriting, casting, to media delivery both online and traditional cd/DVD. It pretty much covers everything.

With many back office processes being done from India, this could be another opportunity for back office video editing and processing. Companies such as these can even globalize and find eagerly waiting clients in India as well. It could be the perfect mesh of American expertise, Indian talent, and a global marketplace. Indian firms are already doing video editing for Hollywood, and this could be an opportunity that has missed everyone’s radar.

Bringit brings the NBA Live 09 game online in a tournament where you can win cash. Best of all, membership is free. Now you can beat the recession by beating others just doing what you love to do.

BringIt is a website where gamers can play video games for real cash. They can go head-to-head or jump in to multiplayer style tournaments, and win real cash. They have over 25 video games in which you can plan online and the site supports XBOX 360, PS3, PS2 and Wii.

As visitors of my blog know that I believe that if there is a way to earn a little, doing things you love to do and do anyway, then go ahead and earn some :). If you’ve been playing NBA video games for free, hey why say no when you can make some money. If you’re no good at this, the tournaments might help you improve even.

So scoot over to their NBA live 09 game page for more details.

I wasn’t really aware of the details of Mexican outsourcing industry, except for the fact that from a USA point of view – its cheap, its near. I didn’t even know about any outsourcing company from Mexico.

Recently I came across a Mexican firm which outsources manufacturing, and became more and more interested in their industry. I’ll give you a small glimpse of this company as a case study, if you will. Its called NAPS – North American Production Sharing. If you are a US based enterprise, its services may be of interest to you if you are willing to outsource to mexico.

They bill themselves as providers of manufacturing services. Its not like you building a factory in China. Its like you have somebody do everything for you. You do get oversight and control over the operations, including processes, quality, intellectual property, etc. Its very similar to the offshoring industry in IT.

You provide raw materials, factory equipment and know-how, and they take care of setting up facilities, operations, quality, productivity, compliance to local laws and regulations, shipping, and labor. Basically they take care of your headache so you can sleep well at night.

Here’s a neat graphics from their site to illustrate an example

While Europeans still prefer India and China for its outsourcing needs, Mexico is campaigning to position itself as the natural option for US.

With persistent human rights complications in China and rising cost of Indian operations, Mexico is now a clearly attractive option for US enterprises. Expertise and services offered by firms like NAPS are the engines driving this phenomenon.

After a lot of research and trial, came up with some simple remedies and practices to keep the bathroom clean and happy. I’m sharing them for the benefit of those who are still suffering. I will cover both cleaning and future prevention.

The deposits are primarily calcium deposits, which come from the mineral content in water. Some areas have high mineral content and calcification can form very quickly (my showerhead clogs up in a week). Soap scum is another culprit which forms deposits in wall and floor.

Before starting cleaning and any other steps, the first step is to fix any leaking tap or pipe. Leaking water leaves ugly stains and wastes a lot of water. Now lets move on to the cleaning.

Take a bottle and fill it 3/4 with white vinegar. Fill the rest with water. This solution is your primary weapon in the war against calcium.

First we will fix the showerhead, because it irritates the hell out of me when I turn it on and only a trickle of water comes out!

Pour the solution in a mug. Detach the showerhead from the pipe and dump it in the mug. Go to bed. Wake up in the morning and rinse it with water. Calcium will be dissolved away.

If you cannot detach the showerhead, then pour the solution in a plastic packet. Pull is over the showerhead from below and tie the opening on the top with rope/rubber band. Make sure the head is submerged in the solution. Rest of the steps are pretty much the same.

Now on to the wall and floor tiles. Take a plastic garden spray bottle and fill it with the solution. Spray over the tiles and leave it for 30 minutes. Then wipe off with old newspaper. Any residual vinegar on the tiles will evaporate away leaving no odor.

You must be feeling pretty tired or at least bored by now. I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t want to clean your bathroom either. But now is not the time to give up. Its a war remember? Think of how much calorie you will be burning

Lets now turn to the chrome plated faucets and other surfaces. Spray the surface with the vinegar solution and wait 30 minutes. Then cut a lime/lemon in half and use it to clean the surface. The chrome surface will be clean and glistening and your bathroom will have a nice and natural lemon fragrance.

Finally the toilet bowl. I recommend a professional cleaning solution like Domex. Pour it overnight and flush away in the morning. I don’t even have to use the brush, the bowl comes up sparkling bright. However, don’t ignore the rest of the toilet like the seat and the exterior because they can be heavily infested with bacteria, even more than the bowl.

You must be really tired now, but wait there is one final heroic act left. I would have advised hanging a large “Mission Accomplished” banner on the toilet door, but Bush ruined it for us. So do the next best thing. Shout and call everybody and proudly display your newly cleaned bathroom.

Unfortunately you’ll have to do it again, and again, and again. You don’t want to? Well you can’t really totally avoid it, but can reduce it to a large extent. Here’s some tips:

Use shower gels instead of soap. Shower gels do not contain soap. This will prevent build up of soap scum on floor and wall tiles.

Switch on the exhaust fan when taking a shower and keep windows open when you can. This reduces water droplets forming on the tiles and drying, leaving deposits on the tiles. It will also reduce fungus and mold growth (yuk!).

Crush some common candle wax on a cloth and rub over the chrome surfaces, as if polishing them with shoe polish (which is also wax based by the way). The wax will form a thin protective film and protect the chrome surface. Cleaning will be easier, just dip a towel in warm water and wipe of.

Last tip: To clean the disgusting rust stains in bathroom fixtures do the following -

Take a lemon and squeeze its juice over affected area. Sprinkle some salt over it and leave it for a day. If lemon juice dries up, top it up with more juice. You can cover with cotton soaked in lemon juice to automatically keep the area wet. Clean gently with a soft cloth. Repeat if required.

Note that the reason we use lime and vinegar is that they are acids. The acid reacts with the deposits and dissolves or loosens it. These are weak acids and do not corrode the surface like strong mineral acids (Hydrochloric/Muriatic acid is a common household cleaning agent in India).

Do post your comment on your experience and any other tip you have.

Option 1 – Microsoft Office live.

A little known offering from Microsoft if Office Live Small Business (OLSB). It offers free hosting and a domain name free for 1 year.

See example website built on OLSB at Begum’s Kitchen.

Option 2 – Register.com Coupon

Another great option is the free one year registration for a domain name. Use this link for the free domain http://www.register.com/promo/acquisitions_lp_1.rcmx?.

It does not provide hosting. However there are a number of sites offering free hosting. I recommend the host I use for this site (freehosty.com).

FYI, this site is built using Option 2.

Announcing the launch of Byte Monkey’s free eBook Search Engine – Book Monkey. The search engine will help you find free eBooks available for download all over the internet, without the hassle of going all over the internet.

It is also safer as you won’t land up in a harmful website in search of that elusive book. The search is restricted to safe sites only. The white list of eBook sites will be monitored regularly, just in case.

If you don’t find the eBook you are looking for here, then you probably won’t find it anywhere else.

The search engine is still in its beta, and more features will be launched later (like ‘What is new’, ‘Highlighted Books’ etc.).

So all you book lovers out there, take it for a test ride and check it out.

If you do have any suggestion or feedback, please post your comment here.

Note: Some of the book downloads you find in the search point to sites, like uploading.com, with country restrictions. To get around it read my post on how to bypass the country based restrictions.

Stock market is a essentially zero sum game (if you take out dividends from the equation). For every Rs/$/Euro/etc. you make, someone must loose an equal amount. So it seems odd that everyone is sure they are not the losers. Surely some of them must be

Assuming some people indeed can outsmart the rest, who are they. Are you one?

Wouldn’t it be great if one could figure out objectively…Risk-free

Yes it is possible to find out, risk-free. The tools are available, but few use them. There are multiple websites which allow you to practice investing, with real stocks, but virtual money. The sites pull almost live price quotes and gives you virtual money to invest. The stock prices are usually delayed by 15-20 minutes (true live feed is expensive).

Without risking your own money, you get to test how good you are.

Here’s a roundup of few such sites.

(Recommended)

Smartstocks is a free site with 15-20 minute price delay, gives you $1 million to invest in US stocks. You can manage your portfolio, buy, sell, compare results of other investors. You can also create/join groups of likeminded investors, and see how the group performs overall. In all a very simple to use and effective implementation that feels very close to actual investing. I recommend this for US listed stocks.

Investopedia is another leading stock market simulator, which gives you $100K to start with. Has fewer users that Smartstocks, but is backed by the big name Forbes, This too is based on the US stock market.

Virtual Stock Exchange backed by another big group (Marketwatch). It promotes the site as a stock market game. The features are geared towards setting up a game scenario you create. You can also join a game someone else started. I kind of like the smartstocks’ simpler approach. This could be fun if you like it.

Now for some options to try out your hand in the Indian stock market.

 (Recommended)

Moneybhai, is one of the most popular Indian stock market simulator. It is backed by moneycontrol.com. The features are similar to Smartstocks, but looks more glossy. Like all the sites in this post, this too is a free service. It is based on NSE stocks. You start out with 25 Lacs Rs.. There are interesting additional options like short selling and brokerage fees, all virtual. It also includes a message forum where you can bang your head with other virtual investors. I recommend this for India listed stocks.

Markethero is another Indian stock simulator, which also doubles up as a social network (friend list and such). A slightly different approach that the standard stock simulator, features options like challenges for real money. It allows trading of stocks from NSE and BSE with a stock price delay of 10-25 minutes. You start out with 10 lacs Rs. It doesn’t look like the site has a huge user base, but if they keep focused on the basics, rather than leaning on fun and games, I think it will be taken more seriously.

Fourstocks is a prediction simulator of stocks in Nifty and Sensex. It leans towards stock market prediction. You pick a stock and rate it based on your prediction. Others also make their predictions. You make points for good predictions. They hope to identify good stocks and good predictors through this. There is no actual or virtual investing involved. I am a little skeptical of this approach, because it kind of promotes herd mentality, which in turn promotes losing money. Also successful prediction in the past could be attributed to luck just as much as talent.The only reason I mention it here is because it chose to take a different path. It might be your cup of tea; who knows

So there you are, three websites each for the US and Indian stock markets, to practice and test your vaunted stock picking skills.

If you are a bad investor (which most probably you are) don’t let anyone say that to you. Find it out and say it to yourself

Remember, whether it is stock markets or lotteries or pyramid schemes or scams, more people lose money due to overconfidence than to stupidity.

Have FUN

The principle is that you use file hosting sites to upload your files, and share/post the links. When someone comes to download it, they are shown ads. The hosting company gets paid for displaying the ads. From that, they pay the uploader a small sum.

Here’s a review of several sites and recommended ones.

Uploading.com (Recommended)

The site pays up to $20 for 1000 downloads from US, which is a very decent sum. However, the maximum payout is for larger file sizes (more than 300 MB). For smaller files you get paid less, 

The bad part is that they pay for US/EU and Russia downloads only. They also restrict downloads in other countries by using country quotas. The good part is that the payout rate is pretty good and they support PayPal.

PS: The country quota can be easily bypassed by using a proxy. I recommend using Ultra Surf.for ease of use.

Easy-share.com

Another Pay to Upload site, This site to pays differently based on country of origin. However, the payment is in ePoints, not money. The points can be redeemed for money. There is no variation based on file size, like Uploading. For example 2 points per download from USA. 1000 points is equivalent to $1. So the maximum payout is $20 for 1000 downloads, same as Uploading.

The bad thing is that you need to be a premium member to withdraw money. You could in principle earn points which can be redeemed to get a premium membership, but those points are now gone. There is also some requirement for “traffic quality” which the site does not explain clearly. You don’t get paid if “traffic quality” is low.

Ziddu.com

Another site which you can use is Ziddu, which works similar to the above. The good thing is that there is no country or file size specific restriction. However the bad thing is the payout is really low. They pay $10 for 10,000 downloads, ten times that of the previous two services.

They too pay via PayPal like the two above.

Some others you might try out are.

  - bigupload.com

- Depositfiles.com 

Not all help articles have the new button. I found 777 pages with the button (I would have freaked if I had found 666 such pages!).

Anyway, here’s the full list of such pages (its just a modified google search really).

To see original post from Microsoft click here.