Buying Web Domain Names - Some Tips and General Precautions

Essential background checks for web domain names

When you are in the market to buy an existing web domain name, always ensure that the site you are about to buy has a clean track record. Here are some online tools to help you run background checks against any domain for free.

1. Archive.org - The Internet Archive Wayback machine maintains snapshots of web pages as they change over time. You can use this service to find the kind of content that was earlier hosted on the domain that you are looking to acquire - stay away from porn and hate sites.

2. Dogpile - The next step is to find web pages that mention that domain name in their content. This is again to get an idea about the previous owners of a domain and what kind of content was available.Always do a search with and without ‘www’ added to the domain name (e.g., abc.com OR www.abc.com). You could either perform these searches on different search engines individually or use Dogpile that will simultaneously search Google, Yahoo, Ask and Live.com from a single page.

3. AdSense Sandbox - You want to make sure that the domain you are about to buy is not banned by Google AdSense.Type the domain URL in the sandbox to confirm that Google Ads are available for the domain else you may miss an opportunity to monetize the site via AdSense in future.

4. Yahoo! Site Explorer - This tool shows a list of web pages that are linking to a particular domain.Yahoo! Site Explorer, in combination with Technorati Search and Google link: operator, will help you ensure that the domain is not part of any bad neighborhood.

Buying Web Domain Names - Some Tips and General Precautions

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Sex Drive: 7 Reasons Your Boss Should Send You to Sex Conferences

When it comes to technology, it's the great unfulfilled needs that matter most. That's where the next fortunes will be made. But if you're in the tech biz, how do you know what users want if you're hanging out with techies all the time?You turn to sex. Here are seven reasons why your tech company should send you to sex conferences like Sex 2.0, Arse Elektronica and Sex in Video Games rather than to mainstream events like this week's Web 2.0 Expo.

2. Tech adapted for sex has applications outside the bedroom.

A tech conference exposes you to ideas people have already had. A sex conference exposes you to people who aren't afraid to ask for what they want, no matter how technically improbable it seems. You can use your tech-savvy brain to adapt these desires for general usage and present them to your boss. Meanwhile, you can create a sex-specific application on the side, knowing you have a willing user base waiting breathlessly for your next release.

3. Social-media platforms are built for sex.

If an application becomes crucial to lovers, they will have no problem coming up with genuine reasons to integrate that tool into their work flow. And once corporate users are on board, the paper millions are just an IPO away.

4. Young people -- your future customers -- do it with tech.

There's money in bridging old-school romance with new media, and the sex-positive community knows how to make that leap better than anyone. When today's youth get out of school, they're going to remake the world the way they want it -- and that means tech will be an essential ingredient in courtship, romance and sex. It's so essential to young people's communication now that they don't even realize they're doing it. And this is at a time when they're still spending most of their time surrounded by their peers. Just wait until they're out of school and in the workforce.

Sex Drive: 7 Reasons Your Boss Should Send You to Sex Conferences

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Doaba region: Hub of dental tourism in India

India has recently become a major tourist hub of dental care solutions. You can have your teeth fixed and make your holidays memorable without getting a hole in your pocket.As dentistry gets a new edge with state-of-the-art technology, a large number of NRIs, mostly hailing from the Doaba region of Punjab, better known as the NRI belt, are thronging the city for specialised dental treatments at affordable costs. The NRIs mostly club their travel with treatment.

Doaba region: Hub of dental tourism in India

There is a huge opportunity in Hyderabad.

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Ad money begins to trickle in for bloggers

It is no longer unusual for blogs with just a couple thousand daily readers to earn nearly as many dollars a month. Helping fill the pockets of such bloggers are programs like Google's AdSense and many others that let individuals - not just major publications - tap into the rapidly growing pot of advertising dollars with a click of the mouse.

In 2006, advertisers spent $16.9 billion online, up steadily each year from $6 billion in 2002, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau. In the first half of 2007, online advertising reached nearly $10 billion, a nearly 27 percent increase over the first half of 2006.

Cupid Can Be Stupid

"We don't know why eHarmony has rejected over a million people looking for love," goes the tag line. "At Chemistry.com, come as you are."

Companies like Match, eHarmony, and Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) rely on serial daters to keep their premium services going. If all these lengthy registration forms are bunk, why should folks looking for love bother with the tollbooth-anchored dating sites?

It's free to post an ad on Craigslist to reach others within your town. PlentyOfFish.com is another free website that claims responsibility for 500,000 relationships last year alone. Don't forget the folks who are hooking up on free social networking sites like Facebook, News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace, and United Online's (Nasdaq: UNTD) Classmates.

Why would eHarmony rock a boat that is already taking on plenty of water from free matchmaking sites out there? I just don't see why eHarmony rejects a premium-paying model.

Stupid cupid. It shot itself with its own arrow.

Teacher turnover leaves void in U.S. schools

The commission has calculated that these days nearly a third of all new teachers leave the profession after just three years, and that after five years almost half are gone - a higher turnover rate than in the past.

Los Angeles has offered teachers signing with low-performing schools a $5,000 bonus. The district, the second-largest in the country, had hired only about 500 of the 2,500 teachers it needed by Aug. 15 but hoped to begin classes fully staffed, said Deborah Ignagni, chief of teacher recruitment

According to the most recent Department of Education statistics available, about 269,000 of the nation's 3.2 million public school teachers, or 8.4 percent, quit the field in the 2003-04 school year.

Thirty percent of them retired, and 56 percent said they left to pursue another career or because they were dissatisfied.

The Best States For Business

In Forbes.com's second annual Top States for Business, Virginia may be the top-ranked state for the second straight year, but Washington is the big story. The biggest mover (tied with Tennessee), rising from 12th to fifth place, Washington is also the only state to finish in the top five in three main categories (labor, regulatory environment and growth). And Washington's numbers are up across the board when you look both backward and at projections into the future.

When Insurance Doesn't Pay

Bad things happen. That's why you bought insurance. But do you really know what your policy covers?

Too many small-business owners don't. And when disaster strikes and it comes time to make a claim, plenty of policyholders are shocked to find that they weren't as protected as they thought they were.

Why Wal-Mart Will Help Finance Customers

But financial-services experts view this as a positive for the industry that might inadvertently clean up some of its usurious practices. Wal-Mart caters to customers with little or no access to banking services, people who are often described as the "unbanked" or "underbanked." According to ACNielsen, 42% of Wal-Mart shoppers have yearly household incomes of less than $40,000. Many of these consumers pay high fees to subprime and payday lenders for cashing checks and receiving credit. Bank consultant Ely says that those money services and transmitters ought to fear Wal-Mart's expansion. "Wal-Mart will bring increased efficiency and bring down prices," says Ely.

Wal-Mart already has brought on a bonanza of savings for consumers. Wal-Mart says it conducts more than 2 million money-services transactions a week. Last year, customers who used Wal-Mart's services saved an average of $450 a year, or nearly $40 per month, the company said. The opening of additional Wal-Mart MoneyCenters will put more than $320 million back into customers' pockets, according to the retailer. Plus, some consumers are acquiring new financial skills. "As we piloted the card, we were happy to see how quickly our customers began using it to manage their money," says Thompson. "They immediately understood the value and how to take advantage of benefits, such as direct deposit or loading their paychecks in our stores. The acceptance has been exciting to watch because it means we've met a real need for our customers."

The Large Stake of U.S. Small Business in an Expanding Global Economy

A Trade Agenda for U.S. Small Business

America’s small companies need a trade policy that expands their freedom to sell, invest and buy in a growing global economy. In general, U.S. small businesses can grow and compete most effectively in a domestic economy that avoids uncompetitive tax rates and burdensome paperwork and regulations. Small businesses also need flexible labor markets that allow them to hire the workers they need to meet the needs of their customers. Comprehensive immigration reform and an increase in visas for highly skilled workers would enhance the ability of U.S. companies to meet global competition.

On the trade front, U.S. small businesses benefit when the United States signs bilateral, regional, and multilateral trade agreements that reduce trade barriers with our major trading partners. Those agreements not only reduce barriers to trade but they also establish predictable and enforceable rules that increase transparency when smaller U.S. companies venture abroad. Free trade agreements with the countries of Central America, Chile, and other trading partners have already stimulated an increase in U.S. exports and have opened up new opportunities for U.S. companies to reach new customers, just as the North American Free Trade Agreement has expanded opportunities in Canada and Mexico. Absent trade agreements, Congress should reduce remaining U.S. trade barriers unilaterally.

What U.S. small businesses do not need are higher trade barriers to our domestic market or more federal subsidies to supposedly promote exports or foreign investment. Punitive tariffs against a country such as China would threaten to drive up costs for U.S. small businesses that import intermediate products from that country. A trade war would also jeopardize export opportunities in growing markets abroad. Antidumping orders and other tariffs against such imports as steel or agricultural commodities drive up costs for domestic producers, many of them small businesses, who use those imports in their final products.¹⁰ For the same reasons, a dramatically weaker U.S. dollar, while benefiting certain U.S. exporters, would drive up the costs U.S. small businesses pay for imported energy, parts and capital machinery.

Nor do U.S. small businesses need a larger share of federal subsidies for international trade. While small and medium sized companies do qualify for such programs as the Export-Import Bank and the Market Access Program, they account for a small dollar share of total federal support. U.S. companies do not need federal subsidies to compete effectively in global markets. Our research at Cato has shown that U.S. exporters have outperformed their counterparts in Great Britain, Germany, France, Canada and Japan even though the share of U.S. exports receiving government support is much lower than exports from those countries. Most U.S. export subsidies go to firms that do not experience subsidized competition abroad.¹¹ U.S. and global markets are currently awash in private capital ready to finance new trade and investment opportunities. Federal export subsidies do not promote more exports but only reshuffle the export pie in favor of larger U.S. companies, crowding out smaller exporters.

If Congress and the administration want to increase opportunities for U.S. small businesses to compete and thrive in a global economy, they should work together to reduce barriers to international trade and investment wherever they exist.

Tech CEOs Predict Swelled Use of Offshore Talent

Admitting that finding, hiring and retaining qualified employees is their biggest operational challenge, nearly half of fast-growth technology CEOs said they are tapping overseas markets for talent.

Sixty-seven percent of the technology CEOs surveyed, consistent with the 66 percent in the 2006 survey, said high-quality employees are the biggest contributors to company growth. Finding, hiring and retaining the best employees, however, is continually their biggest operation challenge, cited by nearly half (48 percent) of CEOs, and up from 41 percent in 2006.

This talent shortage has caused tech-company CEOs to increasingly pull out all of the stops to lure in new hires. Sixty-nine percent said they relied on equity compensation and stock options, though down from 71 percent in 2006; 51 percent offered flexible hours, up from 29 percent in the prior study; and 38 percent offered training programs and educational opportunities, up from 35 percent in 2006. Only 31 percent of CEOs said they offered workers a career path, up from a previous 28 percent.

"When it comes to talent, supply and demand are out of balance, making employees more like consumers," explains Jeff Alderton, a principal of Deloitte Consulting.

"And like consumers, if employees with those in-demand skill sets are not receiving the satisfaction they seek from their work place, they will find it elsewhere—with the competition. This will put an even greater strain on employers for available talent."

Technology CEOs said they are increasingly turning to overseas talent to compensate for this shortage of qualified workers, with nearly half (45 percent) stating they are currently offshoring. This percentage will only increase, as 55 percent of respondents said they are planning to offshore in the next five years, so much so that in five years, 30 percent of these tech-company CEOs planned to have one-tenth (10 percent) of their workers offshore. Twenty-seven percent planned to have up to one-fifth of their work force (20 percent), 19 percent expected to have almost one-third (30 percent) and 15 percent expected to have up to 40 percent of their work force situated in other countries.

Top 25 Apps to Grow your Business

If you are running a small business, you know that to be successful you need to be a jack-of-all-trades. The smart way to manage everything from company finances, to client relations, to marketing, is to use the right tools – tools that are simple enough that they won’t require you to spend a lot of time and money you don’t have setting them up.

In this guide we cover the 25 best web2.0 applications for entrepreneurs who are looking for simple, cheap, and effective solutions to solving some of the tasks facing their small business or startup. The 25 applications selected were chosen both on the basis of their usefulness for the individual small business manager as well as their effectiveness in providing community support and networking opportunities for users.

The New Pornographers

Above Acworth’s desk is a framed article from a British tabloid, The Sun, which he picked up by chance while vacationing in Spain in 1997. The headline reads, “Fireman Makes ¼ Million Pounds Pushing Internet Filth.”

“I realized this article was going to change my life,” says Acworth. At that point, he had already earned a mathematics degree from Cambridge, a master’s from the École des Hautes Études Commerciales in Paris—one of Europe’s most renowned business schools—and was working toward a Ph.D. in finance at Columbia University. He had also worked for a year at Barings Bank in London.

“This guy had simply taken some photos, put them behind a password-protected area and started charging people with credit cards. There was nothing even remotely clever about it. The fact that he could make that amount of money was astonishing. I thought, Do I really want to finish my Ph.D. and end up in a bank?”

Peter Acworth is a bondage enthusiast who started kink.com in 1997 out of his student bedroom while he was a PhD student in New York City. His first models were students at Columbia University, who he paid to be tied up while he tried to conceal his erection! After a huge initial success, he moved to San Francisco and started expanding.

Outsourcing ..

Most of us heard about elance. Here are some more: odesk.com, guru.com along similar lines.

And online tutoring sites seem to be booming, take a look at http://www.iitiancollege.info

Expect to see a whole lot along these lines. First boom, then consolidation.