AdesBlog.com

I have created a shared folder (see pic) at http://www.adesblog.com/files.php.

The folder will contain some useful freewares, sharewares and other interesting files that are worth to share.

The folder works in a Windows-like manner, so just click on the folder names to see their contents. Clicking on a file name will show the file information. In order to download a particular file, click on the link (globe icon) at the far right.

I am still in the process of uploading softwares and files, so make sure to check back later for more useful stuff.

How it is done?

The page is created using 4shared.com. It’s a free service that offers 5GB storage space and 10GB bandwidth/month for your file downloads.

As I discovered, disadvantage of the free service is: 1) it is with ads (of course!) and 2) you need to login at least every month, if you do not login more than 30 days, your account will be deleted.

The url of my folder on 4shared’s site is at adesblog.4shared.com.

Have you wondered how Amazon’s books would look like if it was in a real bookstore? Well, zoomii tries to visualize just that (see below). It’s a real life like bookstore that is based on Amazon. It’s very interactive, you can click and drag, and use your mouse wheel to zoom-in and zoom-out. Clicking on a book will display the book details.

See it in action below. Cool huh? I won’t be surprised if Amazon will buy this website…

AdesBlog is now mobile device compatible, thanks to AlexKing’s WordPress Mobile Edition plugin.

Once installed, this plugin will redirect all mobile devices’ browsers to a mobile friendly version of your blog.

As you can see from the screenshot (i am not sure you can see or not, sorry for the bad shot ;), only the content of the blog will be displayed in the mobile version. All the graphics and other excessive things will be removed.

Unlike in RSS readers, in mobile version you can view/make comments too.

Mobile RSS Reader

As for RSS readers for mobile devices, I have found NewsGator’s RSS reader for mobiles particularly useful. SonyEricsson’s built in RSS reader was not so good, it truncates the posts. And when you click on “more” it loads the blog itself.

But one disadvantage with NewsGator’s RSS readers is that, you need to manage all your RSS’s through your account on NewsGator’s site. That means, you cannot add any new RSS’s through your mobile phone, you need to add it online to your NewsGator account first and then it appears in your mobile phone automatically. I have no idea why they have done it this way.

Do you know of any other good RSS reader for mobile devices?

Gmail for Mobile

And what is mobile device without your favorite email service - gmail, right? Gmail has developed a mobile version of its Gmail. It’s very neat application. I have been enjoying it very much. To install, point your mobile device browser to www.gmail.com/app

Do you have any interesting internet related mobile apps? (not games) I would be

Note: Maxis users type *100# and press “Send/Call” to setup your internet connection on your mobile. When you receive a message, press reply and type “5″ and send. (5 should be “Phone Settings”). Then reply again and choose “1″ and send (1 is “GPRS WAP Settings”), after which just follow the instructions.

What happens when you make a mistake or forget to add required info when commenting on someone’s blog? Well, almost all the time you will have to comment one more time saying… “sorry, i forgot to add…”

Good thing is that with WP Ajax Edit Comments (see screenshot) you don’t have to make your readers double comment anymore.

This plugin allows users to edit their comments after they have clicked on the submit button. Comment will stay editable as long as the countdown has not reached “0″.

Current version is only compatible with WP 2.5, if you are using WP 2.1 to 2.3X then use this version of the plugin.

I don’t know you guys, but I am going to use it… ;) comment to see it in action.

Plugin Page: wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-ajax-edit-comments/

Yaro Starak’s online course on blogging - Blog Mastermind seems, was a success. Blog Mastermind is a series of 27 lessons created by Yaro, in order to teach people how to become professional blogger and start earning steady income from blogs. Lessons come in text, audio and video materials. It’s a 6 month program, with one lesson a week for 27 weeks.

Yaro’s first group of students has already graduated, and he has put up some testimonials (actually a lot of testimonials) from them on his youtube page.

Second intake for Blog Mastermind is going to open sometime in July. So, if you want to join, you have to be on the lookout. I say you have to be on the lookout because the first intake was open for a limited period of time only. And during this registration period, all seats were sold out.

I was wondering, why he has to close the registration when he could make more money? Obviously, the more people sign up, the more money he makes. And since, the course costs $77 a month, I thought he could make huge money by allowing more people to sign up for the course.

His reason for limiting the number of students for the course was to keep the number of students just enough - not too big, not too small. So that, he can pay enough attention to each student and help them with their questions. Thus, keeping the quality of the course high. At the end, I think his strategy paid off. Now, as you can see from the testimonials, there are a lot of satisfied students. (At least somebody cares about the quality! And not just wants to rip off people’s hard earned money. Hats off to him for that.)

Who is this course for?

I think the people who will benefit the most from this course are the ones who have just started a blog (or wants to start a blog) and who have yet to take his/her blog to the next level. By next level I mean, where you have a high traffic blog and earning if not steady, at least some amount of money from your blog.

So, if you are interested to be part of next july-intake, check http://www.BlogMastermind.com from time to time for the announcement.

P.S Here is a blog post on Yaro’s blog that lists the full contents of the program.

Just finished reading Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround by former IBM CEO Louis V.Gerstner. He was the CEO of then struggling IBM during the period from 1993 to 2002. Since the book was written by Gerstner himself (not some ghost co-author) it was an interesting read, I quite enjoyed the book.

As you can see from the graph to the right, during his tenure at IBM Gerstner did a good job. When he retired in 2002, IBM’s share prices were ten-fold higher than when he joined IBM in 1993.

Turning around huge organization like IBM is not an easy task, and as Gerstner says the most difficult part was changing the organization culture.

The book generally covers the events from his recruitment to his retirement. However the events do not follow strict chronological order, it’s written more like a story - telling important ones and skipping some. His strategies were mostly bold, clear, open, well communicated to everyone and most importantly based on common sense. Here is one such example from the book, excerpt:

Over the prior decade, IBM had amassed a large and important fine-art collection, most of which was stored in crates out of sight from anyone. Some of it did show up now and again in a public gallery in the IBM tower on 57th Street in Manhattan. We had a curator and a staff who maintained this collection. In 1995 the bulk of it was sold at auction at Sotheby’s for $31 million. Unfortunately, the sale was condemned by many people in the art world. For some reason, these people felt that it was fine for IBM to fire employees and send them home, as long as we kept some paintings in a gallery in New York City for people to view them occasionally.

As he writes in the book, there was a lot of resistance in the organization when he was implementing various strategies e.g discontinuing nonperforming products, selling of non-core businesses, changing the organizational structure from regional to product based, changing the organizational culture from “inside-out” to “outside-in” i.e customer oriented etc.

So, the book talks about how and what Gerstner did to overcome these resistances and successfully implement his strategies. Thus saving the Big Blue.

I highly recommend the book if you are interested in strategic management. This was not meant to be a full review of the book. I just wanted to give you a brief overview of the book. I hope you found it helpful.