The great Indian site

National Informatics Center(NIC) has recently released india.gov.in - the official site of government of India. Unlike other sites of NIC this one is very refreshing. It has a very good, easy to navigate template. It is no IE specific crappy asp coded pages. It is built using php and is probably running on a GNU/Linux server. Most of the pages load quickly. The site has tons of information and surely is serving its purpose of being a one-stop place for things related to India. It has links for official documents like budget, five year plan, Constitution of India etc. The "Know India" section is the one i liked the most. This has subsections like the Profile of India, National symbols, Culture/Heritege, States, Photo Gallery and also a kids section( not joking ). Going through these pages it was like reading history and geography books during school days. Reading about the history of India ( from Indus Valley Civilisation to partition of India ) and about the various geographic features of the country, brought back the memories of the good old school days. As they say "Those were the days". Apart from these educative things the portal has other useful links like directory, maps, photo gallery, who's who and also a e-greeting facility. The site has seperate section for citizens of India. This site is worth exploring.

Google Adsense Referral

Google Adsense has added a new referrals feature. This allows website publishers to increase their adsense revenue by referring more people to Google Adsense. Thats the button you see at the top right corner of this page. What are you waiting for? Click the button and start making some money ;-) The interesting part of the Google Referral scheme is that it is also encouraging people to refer others to use "Firefox browser with google toolbar". Google will pay 1 USD for every such referral. This feature is currently available only for web publishers who reside in US, but it will soon be open for others as well. With Microsoft and Yahoo showing their intentions of having a tieup to counter Google's recent successes in the webservices domain, Google is trying to take both its rivals in one shot with this new referral campaign. Google's support for Firefox will go a long way in popularising the browser. Its not long before Firefox challenges Microsoft IE as the leading browser. How i am waiting for this to happen???

What a cook?

I'm loving it. Having weekends off, after a long time, i have taken to cooking. Last weekend i was on a role and prepared Mutton Masala. Suprisingly it was awesome and we managed to finish it. This has given me enough courage to go on with my new found passion. Tonight i was looking for some recipes online. Karthik suggested me sanjeevkapoor.com. On this site you can find recipes prepared by Sanjeev Kapoor. Unfortunately access to most of these require annual subscription, which costs 750Rs but comes with 3 best selling books of sanjeev kumar, which actually cost 750Rs when bought. However there are around 38 free recipes to try out. I will be having a shot at Mahorba Mushroom tommorow. It looks good, let me see how i end up doing it. Apart from these recipes the site also has some interesting sections:-

• Fun-n-Food - some trivia about food and quiz section
• Cuisine - has fundae about various cuisines from hyderabadi to parsi, ...
• Glossary - glosary of ingredients, cooking techniques etc from english to indian languages
• Tips & Tricks etc.

I hope to keep this passion of mine alive, but it all depends on what i manage to do tommorow.

Windows Live

With Windows Live MS is venturing into the online services sector in a big way. Though Windows live.com is not a novel idea it comes in a good package. With efforts like these they are directly competing with the Google, claiming their share in the pie. One thing Microsoft is trying to do with this is to build a "community" of users, like its rival Google. According to Microsoft the launch of live.com doesnot come in the way of its existing msn.com and its services. Windows Live.com is a site into which user can login with their microsoft .net passport. The page can be customised by adding various gadgets like Mail previewer, Horoscopes, Stock Quotes, Clock, Shopping tool etc. There are many more cool gadgets available at microsoftgadgets.com. Some of the things i have on my page are:-

• TODO list
• Google News Top stories
• Weather forecast
• Word of the day

Apart from the live.com the Windows Live includes

• Windows Live Mail
• Windows Live Messenger
• Windows Live Care , etc..

To know more about these services check the site ideas.live.com. sandbox.msn.com is the MSN equivalent of Google labs. It is a place where all the cool ideas of MSN are put on display. Start.com is one such cool idea.