What I really wanted to get focus on is what I feel about the bill itself. Although I have been an ardent supporter of the health Reform Movement and Obama’s efforts in this area, i am having a hard time fully supporting the bill that just passed. If there was a public option in the bill, I thought it would be the perfect thing to do. Requiring people to pay for insurance from a private company is unconstitutional. If the government was providing health care and says I have to pay extra tax or a fee for it like Medicare or Social Security, then yes, it is legitimate and I have problem with that. But telling me that I have to pay a private company for a service that I might or might not need is just not acceptable.

Some people will say that its the same as paying tax for roads etc, you cannot say that you will not use the roads and hence not pay the tax. In that case, the government is laying the roads and so I can understand that I have to pay for it.

To put it perspective, Medicare runs on a 3% overhead, non-profit insurance companies have around 16% overhead and the private companies around 20%. So paying for Medicare is not the same as paying the other companies. There is a lot of overhead, usually unnecessary and not to mention the huge pay packages for the upper management of these companies. I think by giving more money to the private insurance industry, the country is digging itself into hole. Eventually, when/if US government tries to provide the health care directly, it will be that much more difficult to accomplish that.

When I came here from India, my first concern was maintaining my health. I did not have insurance as I could not afford it at the time, and so I had be careful not to hurt myself etc. Back at home, even though my Mom was a doctor and worked in government, we seldom went to a government hospital. Yes, there is corruption and government hospitals lack some of the advanced medical facilities, but just having a public option is much more relieving. India I think is a perfect example of private health providers and public ones to co-exist. The private hospitals know that if they charge ridiculous prices for services, people will opt for the government care, so they tend to put their prices in check.

At the end of all this, I still support this bill but was expecting a lot more from the president.  I hope he and the rest of the democrats keep this up and make this country better and just may be, we will see a public option some time in the future.

Apple I guess thinks that its more important (and profitable) for them to control the apps on their tablet with iTunes Store than giving the user the freedom to do whatever he wants with his gadget. I actually thought having atleast a lite version of Mac on this “pad” would get more people used to it and then switch to Mac on their main laptops or desktops. But again Apple would lose all the money that comes from selling apps at their store.

By now, you should be wondering why I said iPad is good. Well like everything else, anything Apple does always get a very high audience. Although HP and others have released tablet PC’s before, nothing really clicked. Take the iPhone for example, we all knew touch screen phones would be the way for the future but until the iPhone came out, it didn’t become a reality. So I think the iPad will do good overall because more people will think about getting it and then look at its alternatives. And who knows, may be one day we will see a slick new practical tablet PC with an actual OS on it.

It is also nice that the submission is free, other directories like IndiaBook are huge and have a strong user base but then charge for submission. I don’t believe in paid anything on the internet except if its a product or a service. I believe, the way to make money to have lots and lots of free content and then sell ad space. Anyways, if you are looking for a free SEO submission site, I strongly suggest you give SurfIndia a try. And stay tuned for more link building tips!

As per the new memo,

“The petitioner is a computer consulting company (which is what all small consulting do). The petitioner has contract with numerous outside companies in which it supplies these companies with employee to fulfill specific staffing needs. The specific positions are not outlined in the contract between the petitioner and the third-party company but are staffed on an as-needed basis (this is nothing but, Service Agreement between the petitioner and the mid-vendor!). The beneficiary is a computer analyst (which is what many small consulting company’s employee are). The beneficiary has been assigned to work for the third-party company to fill a core position to maintain the third-party company’s payroll (this nothing but, Mid-Vendor’s or so-called Prime-Vendor’s or Consulting Partner’s Revenue). Once placed at the client company, the beneficiary reports to a manager who works for the third-party company (as it happens, when Consulting partner hires employee as a contractor). The beneficiary does not report to the petitioner for work assignments, and all work assignments are determined by the third-party company (petitioner just runs pay-rolls!). The petitioner does not control how the beneficiary will complete daily tasks, and no propriety information of the petitioner is used by the beneficiary to complete any work assignments (petitioner just runs pay-rolls!). The beneficiary’s end-product, the payroll (payroll of mid-vendor/prime vendor/consulting partner), is not in any way related to the petitioner’s line of business, which is computer consulting. The beneficiary’s progress reviews are completed by the client company, not the petitioner (petitioner just runs pay-rolls!).  [Petitioner Has No Right to Control; No Exercise of Control].”

This basically means, if you take work from a 3rd party client manager, your employer has no control over the work you are doing and hence you are not eligible to hold a H1B visa for that employer. I am sure the thousands of consulting companies are trying to find loop holes which they will definitely find, it is better to be careful until the direction of the USCIS is clear.

You can read the full memo here.

I don’t think its a good idea for the USCIS to force about 60 to 70% of the contractors out of the country. In the my workplace alone there are hundreds of contractors that are exactly in the scenario described above. If they are all sent back or not allowed to re-enter the country, it will be a major issue for the company. And then who will they hire? Most of the IT positions that Indian’s take up are very technical and seldom do you find an Americans who is able AND willing to take it up. Even if the firms manage to find Americans with the right talents, most of them want to be salaried employees rather than contractors.

As I see it, this move by the the US government only worsens the economic situation in the country and will drive more and more companies to outsource there IT projects to cheaper countries sending billions of dollars out of America. Which is better? Indian’s getting paid in US and paying taxes, medicare (which most will not use) and social security (which most will not use and are not eligible for) or Indian’s getting paid in India paying taxes to the Indian government.

Do comment, especially if you had a recent experience coming into US.

In addition to answering you question, the question and answer it self goes into an archive and is available for searching on their website. So if you are online, you can simply search they site for any question in your mind, but then we have Google for that!

India has very good sms usage which is also cheaper than here in the US. I have tried to find such a service in India but haven’t had any luck. Ironicaly I sent a question to ChaCha asking about it and the reply was vague selling their website and not giving me any real answer. None the less, since I’m not India right now, I might be missing it. If no such service exists though, I think it would be a nice start up India for someone to implement.

Of course, getting a SMS short code and maintaining a staff required quiet a bit of money, so make sure you have enough to support you through a few months before you can do some fund raising.

Let me know how it works for you and have a happy holidays everyone.

Web CEO is a very useful tool which allows you to submit your website to most of the search engines online right now. They offer a free download of their basic version which I think should be enough for your personal blog or even a small website.  The process is very easy when you follow the wizard, basically putting in your web address, description, meta keywords etc and put in an  email so that the submission can be confirmed. Make sure you put in a secondary email because you will get a lot of spam to it (the tool even tells you that!!), which I think comes from the search engines rather than from Web CEO.

Here’s a brief description from their site.

• Increase traffic from search engines
• Understand visitors’ behavior, get complete analysis of revenues and sales conversions, plus measure efficiency of ad campaigns
• Ensure your Web site is ultra-reliable
• Promote Your Site
• Search Engine Submission
• Link Partner Finder
• PPC Campaigns Manager

I have used this particular tool before and I can vouch for the software. It makes Search Engine Submissions a cake walk! I hope you will find it useful in making your site popular and getting more hits.

Every time someone selects and copies text on your website, this script will automatically append a link giving you credit. The following screenshot shows this paragraph pasted into an IM, but you can try yourself by copy / pasting any paragraph from this site.

Read more about Text Citations by seox.org

As you can see, the last line was automatically added by the script when I copy pasted from their site!

Here’s a list of sites that make is easy to link from. There are many story submission sites our there that you can register with now a days. First few are good in general and then I will suggest some specific for the Indian crowd.

1. Blog Catalog

The first thing you should do once you have started publishing your stories is to register your blog to BlogCatalog. Its one of the top blog directories online right now and a link from there would definitely help page rank. One tidbit to know is that, BlogCatalog only lets you register a “blog” and not a store website etc etc.

2. Social Marker

Although there are many sites you can submit to these days, Social marker is one of the top story aggregation site that has a very simple step by step procedure to do this.

3. Reddit

Reddit has a very very intelligent and socially responsive crowd. Even though it lags Digg in rankings, if you want some sensible intelligent traffic for you blog, Reddit is the way to go. Its probably easier than any other submission site once you have an account. Although, I must warn you, be ready for some real beating in comments that can make your site really unpopular if redditor’s don’t like your content or feel that you are just posting spam.

Now, coming to India

4. OneIndia Bookmarks

OneIndia is one of India’s popular news/portal sites. One of its under valued features is the bookmarks. Much like other new aggregators on the internet, OneIndia makes it very easy to submit your stories or for that matter any stories you like for everyone to vote on. The registration and submission processes are a breeze because they are using the Pligg CMS for this sub domain which is always good to see.

5. Hum Surfer

Although, not as popular as OneIndia, I think HumSurfer gets more traffic than the Bookmarks pages in the former. it has a basic split design on its homepage for different categories. For me, I prefer a clean story list similar to Reddit, but with its strong user community Hum-Surfer is a site not very easy ignore.

6. Desi Themes

Although still in its adolescence stage, Desi Themes shows good promise to become a nice user based news/story aggregator. Unlike others, it has a very clean design  very much similar to Reddit which makes it very pleasurable to browse through. What the site lacks in is a big user base which is the most common problem for any new websites right now, sort of the chicken and egg problem. Another interesting feature is the regional news in their own languages, if you are looking for Hindi news, its available in its own language. I am looking forward for more categories and users here. Again this website is also based on the popular Pligg CMS.

So that was the that I think will help you make your site popular. The most important thing other than actually getting links form other sites, is the anchor text. This is what makes your website unique to the search engines. So make sure, you choose your story title carefully and you should see a considerable increase in your website traffic and rank.

]]> http://www.indopinions.com/2009/web-development/link-building-in-india-easy-and-essential/feed/ 4 http://www.indopinions.com/2009/tips/tooltip-not-showing-up-in-firefox/ http://www.indopinions.com/2009/tips/tooltip-not-showing-up-in-firefox/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:33:11 +0000 Bharat http://www.indopinions.com/20091209/uncategorized/tooltip-not-showing-up-in-firefox/ If you are having this problem where a small square shows up instead of the tool-tip, its actually a bug with the Google toolbar. Uninstall and reinstall the latest one and it should go away.
It has been particularly hard to find this solution because any search for tool-tip problems just bring up web developer posts about their code not working with tool-tips etc. Hope this will help you solve this easily.