Posted on

Simplest Tax and Budgeting tool

Note: Budgeting tool can be used in any country but the Tax tool is only for India.

I always end up more tax than others as I am not good at planning my finances. My financial consultant keep advising me for a stronger saving mentality. Somewhere I am still not able to manage it. My friends know me ki “mein aisa hi hoon”. Our HR manager is trying to help us save some more money this year. She forwarded a simpler tool to help us plan better. You too can benefit from it.

http://ynithya.com/taxcalc/ – Creator’s note – “My name is Nithyanand. I am not a Chartered Accountant, but am a Software Professional working in Bangalore. This tax calculator has been made with the information I have. I don’t claim this to be 100% accurate.”

Nithyanand, your hard work is highly appreciated and people like us seriously needed a simpler Billu tool like this. I am already using one budgeting tool (but not to its fullest :().


Budgeting tool
http://www.mortgagefit.com/spreadsheet/personal-budgeting.html – It says, “Even grandma can use it”.

Budgeting tool
It is really one simple tool to use. Not a complex one to understand. I am sure you will love this tool (even the grandma :)) as well.

Enjoy the financial success with these simple tools.

Posted on

recommendation ==> Sales

In an article about startup Aggregate Knowledge, Matt Marshall writes, “Amazon says 35 percent of product sales result from recommendations.”

recommendation

Why I count on recommendations?
Recommendation is the best way to check quality. “Do you recommend my Blog to your friends?” is the best quality check for my blog. I do not think there is anything better possible. Looks much simpler than 10 page Survey sheets but much effective.

Count on recommendations and offer integrated platforms to make use of it.

Posted on

Few posts in draft status

We are busy with appraisal forms and policy changes, so not getting enough time for blog postings. These are some of my posts with a draft tag,

  1. Lage Raho Aji Bhai (another HR post, one done for India Inc). Will cover my much awaited “personality vs character post”.
  2. Website downloading speed and sales (stats, surveys and Progressive HTML Rendering examples).
  3. Social networking – Flies attract more flies not honey.
  4. Future of Television – A warning to Karan Joher and NDTV.
  5. Some prediction for year 2007.
  6. My presentation at Grmtech on Leadership.

I do not know when I will manage some good time for blogging. Sunday???? Sunday school at 8:00, Sunday worship at 9:00, CGPF meeting at 5:00 pm, …. “Oh God, Please add some hours a day”. God says, “there are many more hours added in a day you just need to find it”. I will try and if I am able to expect few posts tomorrow and till then enjoy.

Posted on

Introduce yourself

If you have not introduced yourself to me and other blog visitors, please do. Put as much details as possible. It will be highly appreciated. (add it as a comment to this post)

Thanks,
Aji Issac

Posted on

Who are Grmtech Leaders?

(I am no more associated with Grmtech)
Before writing about website download speed and sales comparison let me clarify some of the queries thrown at my mailboxes. Today I took a four hour class on “leadership” (the ppt will be made available through this blog). After the presentation even my colleagues wanted me to define my role as “Grmtech Leader” (If Grmtech interests you, contact me at ajiissac(at)gmail.com as we are looking for Innovative minds.). For all those who do not know about my involvement with Grmtech, I think I am the first employee for Grmtech and I have completed over 40 months with Grmtech.

Yes I accept that the position title sounds a little out of box to many. “What does a Grmtech leader actually do?”. Let me try to simplify my role as a Grmtech Leader (this is for all those who have asked me these questions over 5 times 🙂 ).

Grmtech leader is like an Internal VC (Venter Capitalist) who invests company money in teams. Grmtech is like a VC firm supporting and motivating different teams (you can call them “companies in a company”). Grmtech leader is supposed to help the teams with proper resources and guidance. This was a simple (rather not so complex) definition of a complex (rather not so simple) position. The work I do as a Grmtech leader includes:-

  • Culture and climate check: Since Grmtech is innovation centric, we need to make sure that 75% of the Grmtech smells like a university than a company. We also create the required positive energy zones for innovations. I handle some 6 to 7 innovation centers and I am very happy to say that almost every member is involved in innovation. We encourage attempts that bring success but failure is never discouraged.
  • Salary and Incentive policies: We hire artists and want to pay them on the basis of performance; thus incentive designing is a crucial part of our culture. We are trying to make it as stable as possible by adding improvement tabs. Our target is to make sure everyone working with Grmtech for over a period of 3 to 5 years should take home a 6 digit salary. We can do that, as we are a product based company and not a service oriented one (one right idea can change everything).
  • Innovation centers: This is one of the tasks I like. All Grmtech teams run innovation centers and I encourage innovation through these centers by broadcasting it. Also, I award one innovation every month (awarded only once the idea is implemented, ideas without implementation is considered dead in Grmtech). Soon I will be awarding the members with maximum failures or attempts too, as experiment is the source of innovation (and many of us needs to be trained and explained the need of failure).
  • Human firewall: I try to act as a firewall for the company by filtering out bad entrants. In other words, I am involved in the hiring and firing process (At Grmtech we do not like to fire anyone but constructive feedbacks are given to help the team members).
  • I was(am) a programmer: Since I had spent some good time in programming, I help teams with technical issues too (nowadays, I do this very rarely as we were able to develop really good programmers for each team). I am generally a part of final discussion where major decisions are to be taken.
  • I was(am) a marketer: I try to think like a customer and thus I like marketing. KISS and Creative destruction are my major tools while developing or reviewing products. Online marketing is still a new domain for many of us, I keep sharing my experience with everyone involved.
  • Documenter I am converting myself as the chief documenter for the company where we can document the Company pulses (both high and low). We use a wiki based documentation platform.

There are more points but it is already 1:30 am (IST) for me and I think I should give my body some rest. If you think that you are born differently, then you can contact me at ajiissac(at)gmail.com and we can together enjoy the luxury of experimentations at Grmtech (success is a guarantee, Read point 7).

Before I go to bed here is a snippet (1 slide) of the presentation on “Leadership”:-

  1. Be a Mentor not a boss.
  2. Make yourself approachable.
  3. Make Grmtech a university not a company.
  4. Appreciate your team members.
  5. Give the credit and take the blame.
  6. Optimization of work.
  7. 1 Experiment a day keeps no success away.

(complete and detailed presentation will be uploaded soon)

Update on 23rd Dec 2006
I took the second class on Leadership and summary goes like

  1. Self discipline – Instruct vs Inspire
  2. Transformational vocabulary – Optimism Ratio
  3. Battle Vs War – Winning both but not focus the battle.
  4. Problems or communication gaps – 90/10 principle
  5. Guess ?

(This was an instant class before we press the restart button for Grmtech. We are shifting to our new office on Jan 1, 2007.)

Posted on

Pay per post is a sweet poison for bloggers

There is a new market coming up for bloggers (a web 2.0 generated Job). Not exactly a new market but still a young one. Yes, I am talking about “earning through blog posts”. We all are aware of Payperpost.com (what a good domain to have!) and www.blogsvertise.com. Reviewme is the new born baby in this market but certainly with a web 2.0 growth rate.
pay per post for bloggers

Why is Pay per post a sweet poison for bloggers
You can expect more and more players entering the market. Is it good for blogosphere? In my opinion this is just a sweet poison for the bloggers (and blogosphere in general). Sweet as it can pay you as high as $250 per post (according to reviewme.com), poison as this can change the perception towards bloggers. I will cover two aspects of it :-

  1. A pain for matt cutts and his team: Search engine consider each link to be a recommendation (a vote) and may value a Blog over other sites due to some factors (Some say that Blog === “Better listing in Google” :)). If you are paid to write then it is more or less like buying links which according to Google is not a good practice without a no-follow tag (Google rule book ref Articles 6a and 9b). You can add a nofollow but I am not sure whether this is in accord with their policy. It is a pain as Matt also knows that it won’t be an easy task to catch the paid ones. I am less worried about Google and Matt as they work on a “smoke and mirror” policies. Google will have a problem in catching you if you are selective about the posts (also try and keep paid vs genuine post ratio low).
  2. “Maven” badge for sale: People perceive a blogger as a maven and want them to write as independently as possible. Money business will influence some leading to influential positive posts (You can’t deny it, I agree that only some will write it).
    one bad apple
    (One apple spoils the bunch)

    The word will soon spread like a fire that bloggers can’t be trusted as they can be paid to write reviews. So every post can be suspected. Will you be happy to hear that all news by cnn is genuine except few which are paid? Even if some are paid ones it is not visible at the surface. CNN is still not perceived as a maven but as a business. Mavens (Bloggers) have more responsibility towards the society and should not destroy the trust factor.

What is the way out?
On the other hand as a blogger I am attracted towards it as it can help me earn extra. If my blog is getting traffic due to its value (Value of blog = value of blog x quality time spent in research for the post) then I should be able to earn through it (something better than adsense). There is a way out by letting the visitor distinguish the paid ones. Existing way of advertisements are Banner ads or text ads. This can be revamped for the new Web 2.0 supported blogosphere, “advertising through blog post”. Advertisement posts or paid posts can be marked with some additional colors to help visitors distinguish. It can be done in simpler ways:-

  1. Use color markers
  2. ICON markers
  3. Simplest and the best -> Different category label: Simplest way is to label all the post as “paid reviews” (Let Google, Yahoo and MSN come together to suggest a category label). This can be done for any blog (wordpress or others).
Posted on

new look to Google SERP – is it Good?

Google believes in experimenting and here is another example. I do not know why it is not happening on other computers (or why is it happening only on my computer for .co.in). When something is happening only to you then you are suppose to share it with others. So here is the snapshot of the new SERP look (click on the image to enlarge it).

Google new SERP looks

My first 30 sec analysis on the change.

  • My eyes were trained to look at Google’s content (or Search results). Now with this change I had to see the left menu first and then the content.
  • It looked as if Google is other sections like books,new,images or groups. May be an introduction phase. It can be good for relatively new surfers but for regular surfers it is a distraction.
  • Overall I am not liking it. Btw does that matter for Google?

Where you able to see the new look?

Posted on

Say aaaaa! and go through the links

My earlier post on dental checkup did create a fear cloud for few and this post is an attempt to clear it. Today I had my second appointment with the dentist for scaling. Scaling ?????????? As a maths graduate I had my own definition for this word. Scaling is done to clean up things which are not good for oral health. I advice you to go for a dental checkup and if needed a scaling too costing approx Rs 500 (no I am not getting any commission from dental association of India for this post). Also you can go through http://www.dentalhealthindia.com/patient.htm for a life long bindaas muskan.

say aaaaa

Say aaaaaaaaaaaa! (now this sounds more comfortable that earlier days).