Monday, September 18, 2006

Making Sense of Google

To the millions of people who Google everyday, the eponymous company is just a search engine, albeit the best around. Few know or care to know how Google makes money offering free search, not just in English, but in variety of other languages.

Why, when Stanford PhD students, Sergey Brin & Larry Page decided to turn their project to make internet search easier and more effective - into a business in 1998, they were equally clueless about its financial potential.

As money continues to pour into search engine advertising, Web users are helping expand the potential market by significantly increasing their search engine usage.

Suggested Reading :
1. The Search by John Battelle
2. The Google Story by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed

"Don't be Evil" is Google's official motto. Is Google living upto it?

Social networks a hacker's paradise

Social networking sites, where millions of people communicate with friends and family, are emerging as the next frontier for Internet pickpockets.

These hackers and data miners are beginning to tap into the vast amount of personal information stored on these sites to defraud unsuspecting chatters. So far, such efforts have been limited. But security experts believe social networkers could be vulnerable to "spear-phishers,'' criminals who send masked messages to a small number of people that appear to be from someone they know, as well as other, more general scams.

Social networking spam is spam directed at users of social networking services such as MySpace or orkut. Users of social networking services can send notes to one another, including embedded links to other social network locations or even outside sites.

This is where the social network spammer comes in. Utilizing the social network's search tools, a spammer can target a certain demographic and send them notes from an account disguised as real people. These notes typically are embedded with links to pornographic or other product sites designed to sell you something.

While the damage has been limited, security professionals believe social-networking scams could easily defraud young people or even the tech savvy, if they lower their guard when visiting the sites.

Trust me my readers, that at present there is so much personal information on the internet (social netwroking sites plus some other tools) that you can do absolutely anything - starting from selling any product, finding a girl to get laid, getting a job, getting your life-partner!


Random Reading:

The Wealth of Networks

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Stock.Gyan & Stock.Mitanshu: Learn & Play with stocks

To all the people interested in stock markets, here's an exciting opportunity for you.
Log on to Stock.gyan (right click to open in a separate window)
http://stock.gyan.googlepages.com/

It is a comprehensive module for stock market beginners - what you know and don't know about Share Markets. It's developed by Arindam, a student @ IIMA based on my virtual stock market game.

Go through the site, it's in easy language and very precise. It will give you vital inputs about stock market which you may even need in your interviews.

Get the knowledge and apply it in Virtual stock market (again right click to open in a separate window)
http://stock.mitanshu.com

The combo will remove your apprehensions and doubts about stocks.
Enjoy!

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Tales of CAT aspirants and IIMA stories

It's about getting admission to the most prestigious business management school in Asia-Pacific: the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA). It's a tale from the successful students about CAT and IIMA. It's an insider's view!

Visit http://catiimatales.blogspot.com/