Self Googling or call it 'Ego Surfing' scales higher with more online surfers found to be just looking for themselves or checking out their friends, co-workers or for romantic interests.

A research Entitled "Digital Footprints: Online Identity Management and Search in the Age of Transparency," Pew Internet and American Life Project said 47 percent of US adult Internet users have looked for information through googling themselves. The search engines sorted are either Google or of choice. 53 percent adult users are looking up for information about someone else with often, about those they've lost touch with. However, looking for information of friends, colleagues and the like is common. 60 percent people aren't worried about the extent of information about themselves online, despite of the concern on how the data can be used.

Pew finds that teens were more likely than adults to restrict who can see their profiles at online hangouts like facebook.

Well, Googling reveals a lot of information as people leave footprints on web. However, I always ego surf when I sort for my own writing since posting on a couple of websites and blogs since more than many many years, keeps one lose tract of posts and as such, google reveals all! So, it's quite easier to find the lost tracks. I've a special Children Search Engine here and you can find these ex students on the web with all their activities! That's how a teacher can keep a track of all its students:-) What they've achieved, where they are, what they're doing...n lot more. Even the ex students have united and called back reviving the memories of the yester years.

Searches have the capacity to reunite, reignite social connextions and even googling for professional reasons. Ego surfing finds way to stat reports too as the googling name reflects keyword on the stats while you visit the search results. As such, googling self or others itself is apt to increase as at least, once a person will look for his name.

So, the next time, you are leaving your impressions on the web with your words, images or searches, Google knows it all!

- ilaxi

This is my First Google Doc! Post. You can Try this too!

As I explore, here's to raise a toast to the newly re-design www.kidsfreesouls.com - Visit again for updates on n often....Enjoy!

Keep the Faith!

- ilaxi patel

Microsoft is back in news. Microsoft hopes to charm small businesses with a new bundle of software and services called Office Live, available for public beta testing started recently. They will be offering free, basic Web site for your company- courtesy of Microsoft and some third-party ads that will run on the page. Office Live will also offer monthly subscriptions to a bundle of 20 Web-based "applications," many of which are templates for organizing and sharing information online.

Yahoo has offered free Web pages to small-business owners since spring 2005. However, Microsoft's page templates have more eye-appeal as I browse through the site.

Sign up for Office Live and get your own Web Site Design for Free. You can even sign in here and see the demo too.You will find more feedback on Office Live Blog. Though, they have a Free version, the sign up do require to enter your Credit card no. which I guess is a 'No No' - the other options are all paid. Also Find a Faq file here with Getting Started

However, for the tips n tricks on Designing, Microsoft offers Free copy of Entrepreneur Magazine's I Hate My Website! 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Website, Plus 9 Things Never to do. And get a free subscription to the Office Live Advisor newsletter too. All you need to do is fill up your details here and Download.

I understand the Beta Office Live is offered only in selective countries and India is not yet on the list!

- ilaxi

Burnt your Feeds with Feedburner? Lately, you must have noticed the Headline Animator is not reflecting the posts headlines. Through it's many transformations, the Feedburner Headline Animator is now turning to a unique Marketing Tool. You can now Pubvertise your Live Content to a Wider Audience. With the Feedburner feed advertising network, content publishers will now have the ability to create their very own dynamic, feed-powered ad units and place them in the feed ad network (all by themselves). "No sales folks, no ad trafficking to ensure the creative is current. No speed bumps", mentions their Blog. You get a wider audience knowing you and your contents which Feedburner places the dynamic content in front of the audience who's subscribed to the most popular feeds.

The feeds has wide coverage in newspapers too - like newsweek, usa today, wired and many more sites. Login to your Feedburner account, navigate to Publicize tab and click for the Headlines Animator. You can create an Ad - all depending on the $$ you can afford to spend and all depending on how much you want to be Popular. Enjoy!

- ilaxi

Google makes Newspaper Advertising Easy in US. Google Print Ads, the extension of Adwords will now make advertisers and agencies to run newspaper ads across US - whether the space is bought in one paper of many. Google Print allows advertisers to select newspapers and place bids for ad space in them. The newspapers than approve or decline the bid. As Google Print is a dynamic offer based market place, Advertisers propose the price they're willing to pay for an ad.

Google calls for a small group of advertisers who can try out the Beta Test here on the google site. If Interested, Be an Early bird. You can watch a Demo here. The complete list of newspaper partners can be found on the site.

- ilaxi

Copyright Royalty Board decided to raise royalties for Internet broadcasters and also double the rate in next five years. Hence, National Public Radio (NPR) took the initiative and appealed the CRB’s decision, but was denied the request by a panel of judges. Kurt Hanson, who publishes the Radio and Internet Newsletter, had organized a Day of Silence to showcase what could end up happening with the ridiculous rate hike.

In protest of royalty fee increases, participating Internet radio went silent yesterday . Listeners were asked to contact representatives in support of the Internet Radio Equality Act, and they did. Servers were overloaded and Congressional switchboards were constantly busy. Here is the Webpronews Video. For further read, visit the website.

Broadcasters, Yahoo!, Pandora, Rhapsody, MTV Online, Live365 stations, etc. are not happy with the unfair target. Last FM did not mean to punish listeners but in no way can escape the fee hike.

Well, I have no idea whether Desi live radio was silent or not but here, you can listen to all your desi songs. As for me, I am happy with the Yahoo Launchcast - My exclusive playing songs online. Enjoy!

- ilaxi

The Chicago based Feedburner has been Acquired by Google! Google believes that feed-based content and advertising is a developing space where they can add value for users, advertisers and publishers. FeedBurner's technology and talented team are a great addition to Google's current solutions for advertisers and publishers. Though, the official deal is closed, the terms of acquisition are confidential. Feedburner has been providing exception tools to content providers throughout the world. As of time, feed-based advertising is of great value. As more and more content emerge on the web, users look for an easier way to aggregate that content. Advertisers can reach their target audience while maintaining high quality user experience. Currently, Feedburner feeds 431,171 publishers who've burned 736,494 feeds as of 29th May 07. Blogger. TypePad, WordPress, Myspace or podcast/video feeds are burnt at Feedburner. You can Publicize, Optimize, Analyze, Monetize at Feedburner. However, the best feature now would be focusing on the Live Stats! The Google Analytics tool will have a way to go with Feedburner Stats, thus providing better optimizing and marketing strategies. You can grab the Headline Animator and subscribe to all Blogs Feed Reads.

Subscribe in a reader

It's Resync your way to Healthy feed now. Boost up your Readership if you have a blog or just burn your podcast and videocast feeds which now number to over 112,998 at Feedburner. Google gobbles Feedburner and you can read more here on the Google and here's the Feedburner Blog too.

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

Subscribe Kidsfreesouls Blog - All my other Blogs too! Enjoy!

Btw, did you know WEB 2.0 SITES MAKE UP the fastest-growing category on the Web--doubling their traffic over the last year, according to data presented Monday by Nielsen//NetRatings at an industry conference in New York. Social networking sites with the highest traffic growth included Feedburner (385%), Digg.com (286%), MySpace (170%), Wikipedia (161%), and Facebook (134%).

A bright future lies ahead for video advertising too, in particular, for Web 2.0 sites. Market researcher eMarketer forecast online video advertising to grow to $2.9 billion by 2010 in a study released Monday. Video will play a huge role in advertising and marketing and that is for sure. Watch there for the Google video ads soon to be seen....Enjoy!

- ilaxi

Google is Microsoft's biggest competitor currently, vying for dominance in a lot of the same spaces. And I think competitions are good for users.Google announced on 17th april,Tuesday on it's Corporate Blog that it has acquired Tonic Systems, which specializes in collaborative presentation software. It will be adding presentation software to its Google Apps suite of office software. Due this summer, it will complement the word-processing and spreadsheet software Google has already released. Users of the Web-based Google Docs & Spreadsheets software can log in from any computer through a Web browser and collaborate, making simultaneous edits and changes to files.This will enable to generate and share presentations.

- ilaxi

When we search Google, Google keeps logs of all searches, along with digital identifiers linking them to specific computers and Internet browsers. It records search, IP address & cookies, Now, Google would start to make those logs anonymous after 18 to 24 months, making it much harder to connect search records to a person.

Sometime ago, I logged in to my Google Account and there, my search was stored in my account. I real got wondering as I could delete my search too, as it disturbed my privacy search! Thus, Google has made it accessible to retain search data in personalized Search as long as you like it with an option to delete it too. Here is the Google Blog which highlight the Google Search Privacy and here's Google Privacy for all who want to know further into the details.

Btw, if you are Blogging on Cricket, Join the world Cup Excitement and become a Cricket Blog King. Enjoy!

- ilaxi

Google has introduced Google Gadgets to make webpages even more interesting and useful to visitors.A webmaster can add Weather, calendar, clock or a quote of the day to your own page. Just pick the gadget you want from directory of “Google Gadgets for your webpage,” customize that gadget, and copy-and-paste the HTML into your page's source code. Then, reload to see the gadget on your page.



Webmasters can even make their own gadgets and submit to google. Surfers get a wider choice to select your gadgets. You can make on jokes, cartoons, crosswords, news or whatever. Creating a gadget seems easy. Little experience with web design or programming is needed. Here is a link on how to create gadgets. All you need is "time...time...& time...some breathing space while you work!" Enjoy!

- ilaxi

Reuters has invested $7m (£3.7m) in an internet startup, aiming to push the world of blogging further into the mainstream. Texas dotcom firm Pluck brings together almost 3,000 highly rated blogs and syndicates them to news media organisations for use on their websites. The service covers subjects such as politics, sports, technology and travel, and has negotiated deals with news groups including the Washington Post and Guardian Unlimited. As part of the agreement, Reuters will syndicate third-party blog content alongside its news and information.

Also, several major newspapers, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Houston Chronicle, The San Antonio Express-News and the Austin American-Statesman who began syndicating and displaying high-quality blog content from the BlogBurst syndication network on their web sites. BlogBurst, the industry's first blog syndication service linking new and traditional media with a blog-powered newswire service, now includes many activated and available blog sources. Pluck helps its customers leverage the new open content model that has emerged of Web 2.0 technology.

More than 15 million unique visitors per month turn to live BlogBurst sites SFGate.com, Statesman.com, Chron.com and MySanAntonio.com for the latest news, entertainment and commercial information. With the addition of syndicated blog content from BlogBurst, visitors to these sites can enjoy an expanded perspective on a variety of topics. Bloggers are rewarded with increased exposure and reader traffic through attribution and links back to their blogs.

Following on the foot-steps goes MSN India with it's recent features of MSN Contribute. Accepting manually, the articles submitted by Contribute readers are checked and posted on their main page with viewers who can read, rate and even labelled 'Editor's Choice'. So, if you think you can pen your thoughts, express your views, get your thoughts published - contribute on web - Blogburst or msn contribute or Goarticles - Choice is entirely yours!

- ilaxi

Saturday, (27th Jan) thousands of Americans will march on Washington DC to demand peace and justice in Iraq and the Middle East. The global Avaaz.org is working to raise a worldwide voice of solidarity through an international virtual march. Avaaz supporters in Washington have offered to carry real banners and placards at the US demonstration,showing how many internet marchers from all round the world are joining in.

Moveon will carry the flag of each country that generates more than 500 internet marchers.Avaaz has mobilized over 45,000 people from over 100 countries to join the call to oppose Bush's military escalation and demand a real plan to end this war.Visit here to support Moveon-Avaaz

- ilaxi

The popular hangout on web might be Orkut for Indians but My Space is fast pacing up with multiplied websites providing My space goodies like layouts, profile pimps, comment codes, etc. To avoid the mistakes Orkut did, My Space announced recently that it will develop technologies to help block convicted sex offenders by partnering with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. They will build a database that will contain the names and physical descriptions of convicted sex offenders in US. An automated system will search for matches between the database and My space user profiles. Parents, school administrators and law enforcement authorities have grown worried that teens are at risk on My Space and other social networking sites, which provide tools for sharing photos, creating personal pages and using pimp up profile sites. In October, about 12% were teens on My Space.

Well, this reminds me to mention the Dinosaur Band Rockosaurus Rex, Aliens come down to Earth with a profile at My space. They are the Rock Band Group who entertain children & adults too, with their new CD 'Big Bang' Rock Rhymes for Kids. You may read my review of this CD here on my site and get into the groove with kids dancing n romping on kiddie rock rhymes. Enjoy!

- ilaxi