Hey Everyone,

Here’s what stood out to me in the news about Facebook this week:

Facebook as a Corporate HR or CRM
Imagine instead of your company discouraging the use of Facebook, actually implementing it as a system within the corporate network for the purposes of Human Resources Management or Customer Relationship Management. Well such solutions may be on the way as the brainstorming sessions at Facebook are starting to include ideas about rebranding FB as an enterprise software application or something of the sort.

Facebook as a Social Network Platform
Recently, Facebook started to make certain parts of its platform open source, allowing for individuals to use the infrastructure of Facebook for their custom setup. As a result people could connect to Facebook and develop their own niche social networks without having to recreate the whole system. If you think something like this is new, think again. Ning has been around for a while providing exactly this solution, but with the powerful Facebook engine behind it, the Facebook social network platform might provide competitive challenges to Ning.

Rate Ads on Facebook
Recently Facebook has opened up its advertisements to public opinion. You can thumb up or down an ad based on its quality and provide further feedback on the advertisement. By learning about users preferences, it is hoped that ads can be targeted more appropriately and result in higher conversions.

stay in high spirits,

-k.s.

Image Source: Javier Aroche

Okay, as I posted earlier this week, my mind has been completely off from blogging or thinking about technology topics in general. However this week I’ve had the great opportunity to work with a group called Youth Ending Poverty, and help them launch their website. Hopefully I’ll be working with them more actively in the future.

The exercise of working with them gave me insight into how technical expertise can actually help with humanitarian and goodwill projects. You can use almost any type of technical expertise to somehow assist a non-profit organization in optimizing a certain part of their organization, whether it be the financial / bookkeeping aspect, the donation/donor management aspect, or just getting their organization known by helping them with a website or some type of media.

So for the next week to ten days, I’m on the hunt for two things:
1) Individuals that are using technology, specifically their expertise related to the internet, to help good causes around the world

Before I outline the second thing let me explain. It’s been a month since Cyclone Nargis in Burma and stupid news agencies across the board are still more concerned with trivial issues than large-scale humanitarian crises. Therefore it’s been a little difficult to seperate the regurgitation of old hearsay from the current reality. I really want to make a commitment of my time, part-time but for a long-term, to helping people in impoverished communities in Burma, Ethiopia, Somalia and farmers in Punjab, but I don’t know which organizations are doing work out there in a more efficient and reliable manner. So I need to find…

2) Organizations to which I can contribute money and time, which are highly efficient (good result of their work but not too much administrative cost), and are helping directly to alleviate the problems of impoverished communities around the world.

If you can help me with my hunt, please e-mail me at info [at] kulpreetsingh [dot] com, or leave a comment below. Thanks!

stay in high spirits,

-k.s.

Hey Everyone,

So just over a year ago, I purchased a new Dell Inspiron 9400 from the Dell.ca website. For the first eight to ten months, the battery would last at least 1.5 if not two hours without a recharge. Recently, however, whenever I’d pull out the power cord, the battery would give strange numbers about how much power is remaining. It would say something like “28 minutes…” and just a few minutes later it would say “8 minutes.”

So I decided to call up Dell technical support and was introduced to a catch in their sale of notebooks. The 3 year warranty with CompleteCare that I have apparently does not extend to the battery. I was not made aware of this at the time of purchase, and the friendly voice on the phone now told me that usually the battery is only covered for the first year. So I thought, “well that’s alright - I am within the first year right?” Sadly I was informed that I was just a few weeks past the first year mark and therefore the battery was no longer covered.

Then, the friendly voice on the phone said, “But what I can do for you, sir, is connect you to our [forget the name] department and they can quote you on the price of a new battery.” The tone with which he gave me this sales pitch, as if he was doing me a huge favour by connecting me to a sales person to purchase a new battery because this battery had barely lasted a year, was priceless.

In any case this post is just a heads up to all those who own or are planning to purchase a Dell notebook. Check your battery regularly and if it has issues, get them fixed within the first year. :)

stay in high spirits,

-k.s.

——

Photo Source: Kansir

This has been a very interesting week and the past weekend was also quite unique. I had the opportunity to do a lot of introspection, meditation, thinking, being, and learning. I was at a Sikh retreat on the weekend and then coming back I’ve been meeting with clients and working on new business ideas the past few days. Before leaving for the retreat, I was feeling a heavy emotional burden after the Burma cyclone and China earthquake and Crisis in Somalia - I was started to get restless about the plight of poor people around the world and the inaction of world governments. At the retreat I was exposed to a lot of new information and it is taking me a few days to digest it, especially the situation of poor farmers in Punjab, who have been committing suicide over the unbearable burden of high-interest loans and the demands for payment from relentless and intimidating lenders. I’m trying to spend some time to learn more about the microcredit concept for which Muhammed Yunus won a Nobel Peace Prize recently, and thinking if that could be applied in Punjab. Since 1947, the government of India has depleted Punjab of its resources without giving support to residents in the state, causing the Punjab economy to devolve from one of the most productive in South Asia to a struggling economy.

Coming back, I’ve been talking to people about new website and business projects. It was very difficult, though, to get my mind away from the Punjab farmers and thinking about their widows and orphaned children. So I really didn’t know what to blog about - I have new things going on for WordPress and internet marketing but my mind isn’t totally into it so my blogging might be off and on over the next week.

For those of you who use StumbleUpon regularly, do you encounter a situation where a website is very nice, very well made, or has a very good purpose, BUT does not inspire or interest you in any way?

Perhaps it’s some very well done art or photography, or a worthy local cause in a foreign country, or something which you support but don’t necessarily want to see more sites about.

Do you thumb it up or down? You don’t want to thumb it down because it’s not something poor quality. But you don’t want to thumb it up because you don’t see it as relevant to your interests and don’t want more sites like that showing up.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the way StumbleUpon works and the influence of thumbs up/down, but sometimes the little voice in my head says, “Go ahead! Just thumb it down. No one will notice. This highly efficient humanitarian charity isn’t even on your continent!”

My Answer:
Well, it is not only the content management system or blogging platform that will bring you traffic. However, WordPress will make your posts have better links, and with the tagging and category links it will probably give you better ranking in the search engines. Also, everytime you post, WP will send notifications (pings) to search engines and blog trackers, which will notify them you have new content and give better ranking to your “fresh” content. If you have better ranking for terms that are searched often in the search engines, you will get more traffic. WP alone is not going to drive people to your site - the content of your site will do that - but if you’re asking me “is WordPress the best tool for me to use to make a search engine optimized site?” I would say yes. Definitely.

There are many factors in bringing your site traffic and keeping the traffic. This includes having great search engine ranking, having links to your site from reputable websites, having unique content that is valuable to your visitors, and creating a social buzz about your site through social media and bookmarking channels. WP can help you with these to various extents, but none of it is automated (at least not yet!). You need to get the links, make and promote the unique content, join and be active on the social networks, etc.

—-
Thanks to Taylor for the question.

Related: 11 Most Important WordPress Plugins to Build Traffic [FinancialJesus.com]

Dot So Fast
My e-mail address is kulpreet [dot] singh [at] gmail [dot] com. So today, when I received an e-mail sent to kulpreetsingh [at] gmail [dot] com, I was surprised and thought the e-mail was sent in error. It turns out, when you register for an e-mail account with Google, the alphabetic characters in your username matter, not the dots. If you have dots in your username, you will still receive e-mail for the same username without dots. At least, that’s what this Gmail help page says.

Dot Be Gone
The reason I’m posting this is because I had always told people to e-mail me at the address with the dot, and then regretted it because it’s just annoying to mention the dot. So now I can just tell people to e-mail me without the dot. I have to admit I am still a little suspicious because I thought somebody else already had my e-mail without the dot, but I guess not.

Keep the Dot
One thing to keep in mind is, even though your e-mail address without the dot will work, if you originally signed up with the dot, that will remain your username when you login to your e-mail.

Dot’s all folks.

Hi Everyone,

You’ve probably noticed that in the new WordPress 2.5 series Admin Panel, the navigation menu items (Write, Manage, Design, Comments) are split from the option / settings menus (Settings, Plugins, Users). Personally I don’t like it separated, but I haven’t yet had time to fix it.

What I’ve done in the meanwhile is make the sizes same of the links on the left and the links on the right. The way to do this is:

In your wp-admin/wp-admin.css file, replace:

#wphead a, #dashmenu a, #adminmenu a, #submenu a, #sidemenu a {
text-decoration: none;
}

with

#wphead a, #dashmenu a {
text-decoration: none; }

#adminmenu a, #submenu a, #sidemenu a {
text-decoration: none;
font-size: 12pt;
}

That’s it - now the links on the left and right will be the same size. I like it better because I check the “Settings” and “Plugins” almost as often as I write a post or manage comments.

Also if you want to make the sub-navigation links (the ones in the white, below the navigation links) a different size, like maybe 11pt, use this:

#wphead a, #dashmenu a, #adminmenu a, #submenu a {
text-decoration: none; }

#submenu a {
font-size: 11pt; }

#sidemenu a {
text-decoration: none;
font-size: 12pt; }

-k.s.

Very glad to read in Business Week today that Facebook is planning to do an overhaul of the profile designs so as to reduce clutter and improve user experience. Most people have very long profile pages, and some have a variety of applications that can be distracting and annoying. Business Week predicts in this article that some of the profile content will be split into tabs. I think this would be cool as it would give individuals’ profile pages the feel of a personal website. In fact what would be great is if you could add one or two custom tabs of your own (of course these should be limited so as to avoid the ugliness of MySpace profiles).

Now… if only Facebook could pay attention to my wish list :)

Hi Everyone,

For the past roughly 8 years, I’ve been signing off many of my e-mails with “stay in high spirits” or “stay in rising spirits.” This is inspired by a concept in the Sikh community called “Chardee Kalaa.”

I will explain it to the best of my ability. The words Chardee and Kalaa are from the Punjabi language, and together they form a phrase which is a state of being.

Chardee means rising, but it can also mean growing, unrelenting, blossoming, becoming whole, increasing, and elevating.

Kalaa has various meanings. Kalaa means an art, and an artist is called a Kalaa-kaar (art-doer). In addition, in Sanskrit, Kalaa-vanth means the moon (beauty-having). Kalaa therefore also refers to beauty, or unique personality.

I have a few definitions of Chardee Kalaa.

The first is the art of being in perpetual elevation. This means to always be in a state of growth, evolution, and increasing love and faith for the Truth, the Creator and Creation.

2nd: the art of becoming whole. This means to be like the moon when it is going from nothingness to becoming a full moon. The moon reflects the light of the Sun, and a truly enlightened soul reflects the light of the Truth.

3rd: having an unrelenting, blossoming personality. This means to be always in a state of faith, to not give up on righteousness, and at the same time to approach challenges with patience and love.

4th: the art of rising. This means to consistently be in spiritual growth, and to not waver or be lazy in your spiritual path. To elevate yourself, little by little, consistently, every day, to eventually become one with the Truth and the Creator who is the Truth.

I think all of these definitions work together to form the personality of an individual that is truly in “Chardee Kalaa” and this state of being relies on faith, love, courage, patience, discipline, grace, steadiness, perseverance, and optimism based on trust in the Will of God.

It’s easy to say it as a sign-off, but practicing this state of being is a real journey and there are some fortunate people who can remain in this state of being. At the end of every congregational prayer in the Sikh community worldwide, the following phrase is recited, which I think sums up this state of being:

Naanak Naam Chardee Kalaa
Thayray Bhaane Sarbat Da Bhalla

Through the teachings & blessings of Guru Nanak, through the Name of God, may we remain in Chardee Kalaa.
By Your Will, Dear Creator God, may you ensure the Wellbeing of All.

alright that’s all for now :)

-k.s.

—-

Update:

This topic continued on Cre8asiteForums with some interesting comments from the members there.