When I was studying in United States I made frequent calls to my friends and family in India. Thus I ended up finding out what is the best way to make a call to India. If you want to make a call to India, you will have to buy one of the prepaid calling cards. But the problem is which is the best calling card in terms of quality of call and the calling rate. Here is the update summary: Read the rest of this entry »

Before we discuss how to use facebook to promote your business let us see why you should use facebook in the first place. Here are some quick facts about facebook (as per Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide)

Clearly these kind of traffic numbers cannot be ignored by any marketeer. Now let’s move on to how to promote your business on facebook.

Step 1: Start a community or brand page on facebook. This community can be about your product, service or company. You will need to constantly update the content on this community. The content should be such that it interests the facebook users. The content which has lot of viral appeal is special deals, discounts, promotion codes, freebies etc.

Step 2: Invite your existing users to connect with you on your facebook page. You can do this by sending emails to existing users to rate / review your products or services on your facebook page.

Step 3: Provide content which is available exclusively on your facebook page. Examples of such content are branded screen savers, wallpapers, special discounts, promotion codes etc.

Step 4: Use advertising available on facebook to promote your facebook page amongst existing facebook users.

Step 5: Decide on the ultimate action you want from the visitors to your community on facebook. This could be a registration on your site, a call to your call center or any other relevant action. All ‘Call to Actions’ on your facebook page should focus clearly on this one ultimate action.

Are you certified to be a good parent? Now you can be. Madurai Kamaraja University (MKU) has started a course on parenting. It will teach parents how to raise their kids while coping up with their busy lifestyles.

Most of the families have working parents today and it becomes important to know how to raise your kid in the most efficient manner. Till now parenting had been driven by popular beliefs, with parents doing what their parents did or suggested. I am not sure whether the methods of parenting which worked 15-20 years ago are still valid. I think such a course makes perfect sense as you cannot afford to do experiments in raising your kid.

This course is a PG course and will be offered through distance education mode. This means that busy parents can pursue this course without disturbing their work life. You need to hold a undergraduate degree to enroll for this course. Initially this course is being launched in Tamil but will soon be available in English medium, as per university sources.

The course will teach parents about family relationships, psychology of children, and career options which parents can consider for their children. This course by MKU is inspired by a similar course offered by the Chinese University of HongKong where it was introduced as a means for checking the increasing number of divorces and family separations. I think in India this course should focus more on children centric issues like peer pressure and competition. But I wonder how will the parents measure the effectiveness of this course?

Reliance calling cards and Airtel Calling Cards have been fairly popular amongst people who make frequent calls from USA to India. Reliance calling cards were introduced a couple of years before airtel calling cards but the latter have quickly replaced the former primarily because of the cheap calling rates. Also many users of reliance calling cards have switched to airtel calling cards because they some how felt that reliance calling cards do not full fill what is promised in it’s various special schemes. Here is a quick comparison between reliance calling cards and airtel calling cards

Both reliance and Airtel provide special offers on calling cards from time to time. Currently airtel calling cards are offering IndiaOne plan which give 600 minutes of talk time for $6 (@ 1 cent / minute, 3 cent / minute from toll free number) with a validity of 45 days.
How to Call India

Solar eclipse is once in a life time opportunity and it is an absolutely not to be missed event. But it is important to watch the solar eclipse safely. Here’s how you can do it:

Step 1
Build a pinhole camera. This is really easy and completely safe. Take a cardboard or a similar hard material and make a hole with the help of a pin. Now with your back towards the sun hold the card board to your side or above your head. Allow the sun rays to fall on a dark colored surface which will act as a screen. This can be a black paper or a wall. You will see the sun as a bright spot; by moving far or close from the dark surface you can increase or decrease the size of the image. Ideal distance is around 3 feet between the card board and the screen. As the solar eclipse happen you will see the bright spot fading and getting smaller. Read the rest of this entry »