Thursday, April 16, 2009

CJ Components: Military Handsets

CJ Component Products is based out of the Greater New York area and specializes in tactical communication tools used by the army - ground, air and naval, and the police and the first responders. The company also does contract manufacturing. CJ is a leader in its category. It is open to new design concepts from its major customers.

Their primary presence is in the defense industry. Their handsets are different from similar devices used in other sectors. They tend to be more robust and designed to function in all weather conditions.

Some of their offerings are as follows.
  1. Military handset
  2. Lightweight handset
  3. Tactical handset: Used for small group communication at the frontline of action.
  4. Tactical wireless headsets
(This is an advertisement.)
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

That StartUp Mentality



{{legend|#ff0000|1930 to 1939}} {{legend|#ff54...Image via Wikipedia

It is a mindset. It is a personality type. If a tech entrepreneur were not a tech entrepreneur, he/she would be standing at the edge of a cliff, or facing a hurricane on the high seas. There is something innate about risk-taking. Very few attempt it. Very few of those who attempt succeed. That is why the rewards are so astoundingly huge.

But then that startup mentality is being forced upon the rest of the population. The internet and globalization are going to inject the startup mentality into ordinary jobs. There are degrees of risk taking. Ordinary jobs will have low levels, low doses of risk taking, but it will be there. It is there. It is here.



Looks like the worst part of the bad news of a bad economy might be behind us. You can get gloomy about what just happened. Or you can objectively look at it and see capitalism's creative destructions. What will happen next is way more exciting than what was there before. The jobs, companies and industries of tomorrow stand to be created. This is high time for a mega renewal of the human spirit. I am optimistic. I was throughout the past six months of bad news. All hard economic times of the past decades have also been periods of major innovation, of companies launched that went on to do big, bold things. I don't wish a bad economy upon anyone, but you have to wonder why.

You have to stay hungry also during good times, or success will get the better of you. The trick is to stay hungry during good times. What gets your juices flowing? Do you got fire in your belly?

On The Web

AT&T And Verizon's Start-Up Mentality - Forbes.com
Techcrunch takes on Israeli startup mentality | ISRAELITY
Teaching the Startup Mentality
Startup Mentality
European vs US startup mentality | anders.tyckr.com how often would you say that two of your friends start the same business idea - separately - without them knowing about each other ..... reports keep coming in that the mobile social network market is going to be huge. ..... Europeans do not aim big enough, and on the other hand, US startups go super big with sometimes very crazy ideas. But crazy ideas are only crazy and funny if they are done with bad timing. ...... Going too slow might be a problem, and is probably as hard to fix as going too fast. ..... I would not want to miss a minute of the action to come.

In The News

EBay Unveils Skype IPO Plans BusinessWeek Skype sales surged 44%, to $551 million, last year and the company expects them to top $1 billion in 2011. The user base surged 47%, to 405 million, in 2008. ..... Zennstrom and Friis reportedly offered less than $2 billion for Skype. An IPO could fetch $3 billion to $5 billion ...... Skype could find itself in closer competition with such sites as Facebook or Twitter. ..... "I see [Skype] as a Ferrari that's only firing some of its cylinders."
Plus: Skype in Your Pocket
Google's Trademark Tussle
Business Exchange: Search Advertising
Goldman, Give it All Back
Taxing Grandma to Pay Goldman Sachs
Intel Says PC Demand 'Bottomed'
IBM Roars into Business Consulting
Cuba: How Much, How Fast?
Obama Pitches His Economic Plan
China Faces a Water Crisis
Learning from Recession, the Japanese Way
Nokia: Signs of Stabilization?
Can Widgets Save the Television Industry?
How to Make Acquisitions in a Down Economy
Time to Buy TV, Radio, and Internet Ads?
Put a Human Face on Your Presentations
Today's Tip: Sales Strategy for Tough Economic Times
Getting Ready for the Recovery
Preparing Now to Drive Future Growth
Options for MBAs Without Jobs
Getting to Know Yourself
It's Now a Renter's Market





Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

A Blogger Is Also An Editor

Hemingway posing for a dust jacket photo by Ll...Image via Wikipedia

A blogger is a writer. We all know that. But a blogger is also an editor. I have to make this point because some bloggers feel they are cheating when they have a lot of links and a lot of video clips to go with their blog posts. You are not cheating, you are being an editor. It is perfectly okay to once in a while put out blog posts that are all links, or that are all video clips, no original writing whatsoever. You are telling your readers these are news articles or blog posts I read, these are videos I watched, and I recommend them to you. Actually, I would be suspicious if your blog posts are all original writing. If there are no links, at least a few links, I am going to ask, so what is the context? And images and videos add to the aesthetics. The best videos on the topic at hand I would say are indispensable. A video is worth 10,000 words, or more. YouTube makes it easy. The video code takes so little space. You don't have to worry about bandwidth issues. You embed. That does not make it cheap, that makes it user friendly.



YouTube is an essential tool for blogging. Zemanta is an essential tool.


Blog Daily
Where Have You Placed Your Ads?
Sites That Pay You To Blog



Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Blog Daily



.deviation in direction.Image by just.K via Flickr

Blog daily. Take a day or two off per week, but otherwise blog daily. You must have one thing you feel really passionate about. And your blog has to revolve around that passion. But once it does, you are free also to rant about whatever else, whenever. But that one passion has to shine through. And if you were to read about 10 news items on any given day in your passion domain, you will find at least one topic, one subtopic to rant about that day. The more blogs that link to yours, higher goes your ranking, but that is not directly in your control. More often you blog, higher your search engine ranking. That is in your control. Blog daily.





Blog Daily
Where Have You Placed Your Ads?
Sites That Pay You To Blog

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Where Have You Placed Your Ads?

Deng XiaopingImage via Wikipedia


Until yesterday my ads were in the white zone, at the very bottom, and on the side bar in the middle. I had this if-you-build-it-they-will-come attitude. Once I start getting enough page hits, revenue will follow, that was my attitude. But the point is, ad placement works at all page hits levels.

I moved my ads to the orange zone only yesterday evening, and already my earnings have gone up by a factor of four, and I am only half way through the day.

I made two major changes on my three primary blogs yesterday.
For now Nepal and Barackface have the most blog posts, but now my primary blog is Netizen.
  1. I used to have only one blog post per page. Now I have three blog posts per page.
  2. Now I have ads at the bottom of each blog post. That also ends up being ads at the top of two blog posts. So I have one in the orange zone, and two in the red zone now. And that has made a huge difference.
A less cluttered side bar also makes a blog more user friendly. And the footer now only has a search engine. That makes the blogs look cleaner.

And all this was very easy to do. For those of you familiar with the Blogger dashboard, click on "Layout." Then click on "Page Elements." Go to the box called "Blog Posts." Click on "Edit." There you can decide you want three posts per page and that you want to "Show Ads Between Posts." Google only allows for three ads per page, so three posts per page is a good number.



Because I now have three posts per page, now I don't feel the pressure to write particularly long posts. And so yesterday I had the busiest day ever at Netizen measured by the number of posts. So ad placement is not the only reason the earnings today are so much higher.

And yesterday I wrote my first blog post advertisement: Advanced Global Materials. Google makes money from ads, so can I. It is a problem only if all your posts at your blog are blog post ads. But as long as you maintain a healthy ratio between your regular posts, and your ad posts, and you clearly state at the bottom of a post that it is an ad, I think you are okay. (Sites That Pay You To Blog)

Like Deng Xiaoping said, to make money is a good thing.



Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Twitter Is Not Micro

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...Image via CrunchBase

Take the links away, and Twitter is not going to be fun no more, at least not for me. And I don't see what's micro about full blown webpages, news articles, blog posts, pictures, video clips. When I envision a tweet, I don't envision 140 stale characters. I envision a few words that point me to a weblink, more likely a tiny URL, that I might have the option to click on. That is not to say I don't enjoy tweets that are all words and no links. I do. But they are in the sea of links. That is why I enjoy them. It takes seconds to skim through an all words tweet, and usually another with a link is right below.

That is not to say I am a link clicking monster blindly clicking the links away. I pick and choose. But then that is why you carefully choose to follow people. Your library of Twitter contacts should be such that whenever you jump into your stream you find at least a few links to click on. I find that every single time. So when I go online, of all the places I could go to, Twitter ends up being the one with the greatest pull. You have to convince yourself it is not distraction, it is education.

Twitter is not micro. Twitter is smart. Can't do without Twitter in this day and age of information overload. Twitter allows for a smart consumption of information. You swim in the Twitter stream for half an hour, maybe 15 minutes, maybe 10, and you feel like you are in the loop, with the world. You know what's going on. You know all the right people. Heck, you follow them. They can't say no.

The tweet is the ultimate equalizer. Some of the fanciest names in tech put out tweets that are not that different from the kind of tweets I put out. I feel level with them much of the time.



After I have a new blog post, I tweet it, I don't submit it to Digg, or any of the similar services. I do use Delicious for bookmarking. But often time I just tweet an interesting link. I know I can track it with one Twitter search down the line. So I use Twitter also for personal bookmarking.

Twitter keeps my blog fresh. I guess there you could argue Twitter is indeed microblogging. But then, is it? My tweets tend to be link rich.




Demi Moore and I joined Twitter the same day. I have 230 followers, she has 520,738 followers. I am guessing she is better looking.

The Depth Of Your Friendships At Twitter
Goal: A Billion People On Twitter
Search Come Full Circle: That Human Element
The Search Results, The Links, The Inbox, The Stream
Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter
I Talked To Google Through Twitter And It Worked Like Magic
Twitter And The Time Dimension
What Should Facebook Do
TweetDeck, Power Twitter, Twitter Globe, Better Than Facebook
TCC: Twitter Community College
Twitter Tips: It's A Bird, It's A Bird
Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter
I Get Twitter





Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Cupcake: Android 1.5

Android has an interesting list of new features. Just like the distance from your laptop keyboard to the internet is zero, Android seems to envision that the distance from your mobile phone to the internet ought to be zero. That picture you shot from your mobile phone should end up straight at Picassa. Why download? Why upload? Why the drama? Same with video. Take it straight from the mobile phone to YouTube. Skip the download, upload drama. Online photo and video editing would be tackling the same problem from another angle.
The new Android looks to be muscular and ambitious.


T-Mobile G1 Google AndroidImage by netzkobold via Flickr


https://twitter.com/Android_Bot/status/1522494989
Finance 2.0 Manifesto



On The Web

Android 1.5 Highlights | Android Developers
Sneak a Peek at the Next Version of Android
Android 1.5 Early Look SDK | Android Developers
Android Developers Blog: Getting ready for Android 1.5
iPhone 3.0, meet Android 1.5 | Tech Gear News - Betanews

In The News

Google touts Android 1.5 features to coders CNET News



Reblog this post [with Zemanta]