This one was due for a long time, lying in the drafts folder with dust collecting over it, so here it is...
How often does it happen that you turn on a news channel and see those flashing "Breaking News" banners marqueeing all over the TV screen...actually it happens all the time now. What this is meant to imply is that there is some news which stands out of the bulletin and demands immediate attention, but these days this is rarely the case. It is often not the news item but the poor channel which pleads for your attention, putting any of the seemingly eye-catching news in the flashing ticker and if that does not rake in the desired TRP's, they don't shy from creating some news that's "breaking" enough(breaking what, they only can answer that).
What prompts me to bawl out on these channels are the following so called breaking news, have a look at these and decide yourself which one is the most breaking...
"5 year old girl claims to be a reincarnation of Kalpana Chawla"...reporters quiz the poor child for an hour on live television, the channels calls on a host of people ranging from astronomers to astrologers inspecting the veracity of the claim...
"a man who eats only grass"...gets prime time coverage on a leading news channel and is interviewed about the rather different preferences of his taste buds...
"a 14 year village boy suddenly starts speaking fluent English in American accent and further declares to be a rebirth of a scientist"...the boy being confronted by a panel of psychologists, astrologers, scientists and many others...this story was shown continuously for about two to three hours after every hour...in short the boy was a runaway TV star, threatening even the ratings of Ekta Kapoor's daily soaps.
And not to forget the daily dose of "bhoots and disturbed souls" who also get their due regularly on prime time news. Another man who has made a name for himself is the "Sansani guy", don't remeber him?..."Chain se sona hai to jaag jao"...this must help you replenish your memories. Perhaps the guy was chosen to anchor this programme coz his appearance helps the audiences to relate better with the wanted criminals he's making us aware against. Some even say that the old night time warning given by mothers to their children- "soja beta nahin to Gabbar aajayega..." would be far more effective this way..."soja beta nahin to Sansani vaale uncle aajayenge..."
With the growing list of News channels these attention seeking TRP wars are set to be more intense but what's going to suffer is the credibility of these channels and availability is of quality news. Hope these channels stop supplying broken news as breaking news and salvage their own reputations.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Monday, July 9, 2007
When ads become sensible...
Nobody likes the interruption ads cause be it on TV or those stupid banners on web pages taking millions of seconds to load...but ever wondered if the ads could just serve to your interests, if the ads could be sensible enough to market something you were just thinking of...Google has made this a reality with Adsense.
Google Adsense...is an advertising program by Google to participate in which website/blog owners put a small snippet of code onto their sites and in turn "Contextual Ads" are displayed on their webpages. What this means is that Google scans the content of the pages and only the ads related to the subject matter of the pages, the user's geographical location and some other factors (which are therefore aptly called Contextual Ads) are displayed.
Thus the probability of users visiting the site being interested in those ads becomes substantially high. For example, on a recruitment related site, Adsense will automatically be showing ads related to "writing resumes" or "potential recruiters" which are likely to interest the visitor. Now coming to the money-matters, when the visitors of the site click on these ads the owner of the site gets paid by Google, which in turn is paid by the Advertisers(who have subscribed to Google Adwords), in simple words Adsense is a Pay-Per-Click program but with the Google flavor.
Google also uses the same Adsense technology in Gmail and Google Search Results also. Have you ever noticed while using gmail, that the ads in the sidebar are closely related to the content of the mail you are reading. Similarly the sponsored links in the search results are also targeted towards the search text.
What prompted me to dedicate this one to Adsense was the popularity of this concept. Today you can seldom find sites not having the "Ads By Google" tag on them (mind you this one's no different, there's one at the top of this post).
There are a lot of Adsense success stories. People are bringing up websites and blogs for the very purpose of deploying Adsense on them...coz all it takes is a Google Account and then it's just clicking and picking....
What's also noteworthy is the fact that Adsense has been known to be really smart, people have left no screw unturned to trick it - "hiring others to click on the ads", "using automated scripts doing the clicking work" and many more...but Google bots have proven too smart to be fooled and above attempts have resulted in people getting banned from Adsense.
If you feel ever so slightly tempted to use Adsense after reading this then don't wait, hold firmly your scrollbars, scroll a little upwards and there's an invitation to glory(Referral button) waiting for you....;)
Google Adsense...is an advertising program by Google to participate in which website/blog owners put a small snippet of code onto their sites and in turn "Contextual Ads" are displayed on their webpages. What this means is that Google scans the content of the pages and only the ads related to the subject matter of the pages, the user's geographical location and some other factors (which are therefore aptly called Contextual Ads) are displayed.
Thus the probability of users visiting the site being interested in those ads becomes substantially high. For example, on a recruitment related site, Adsense will automatically be showing ads related to "writing resumes" or "potential recruiters" which are likely to interest the visitor. Now coming to the money-matters, when the visitors of the site click on these ads the owner of the site gets paid by Google, which in turn is paid by the Advertisers(who have subscribed to Google Adwords), in simple words Adsense is a Pay-Per-Click program but with the Google flavor.
Google also uses the same Adsense technology in Gmail and Google Search Results also. Have you ever noticed while using gmail, that the ads in the sidebar are closely related to the content of the mail you are reading. Similarly the sponsored links in the search results are also targeted towards the search text.
What prompted me to dedicate this one to Adsense was the popularity of this concept. Today you can seldom find sites not having the "Ads By Google" tag on them (mind you this one's no different, there's one at the top of this post).
There are a lot of Adsense success stories. People are bringing up websites and blogs for the very purpose of deploying Adsense on them...coz all it takes is a Google Account and then it's just clicking and picking....
What's also noteworthy is the fact that Adsense has been known to be really smart, people have left no screw unturned to trick it - "hiring others to click on the ads", "using automated scripts doing the clicking work" and many more...but Google bots have proven too smart to be fooled and above attempts have resulted in people getting banned from Adsense.
If you feel ever so slightly tempted to use Adsense after reading this then don't wait, hold firmly your scrollbars, scroll a little upwards and there's an invitation to glory(Referral button) waiting for you....;)
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Lucky 7!
Do you realize this blog you are reading is gonna make you extra lucky....Why?...the answer lies in the date of post..."07.07.07" and yes don't leave the fact it's a Saturday, which is the 7th day of the week...This date has been dubbed as a super special one all around the world. Its on TV, internet, papers everywhere...Well I'm not one of those who believes in these sequential superstitions...coz you can find something like this occurring every year...like 05.05.2005 or 06.06.2006...so what's different this time around....
Those believing in these ceremonious sevens have more to say...they start making you count the colors in the rainbow, the days in a week, the continents, the number of musical notes and the eternal list goes on. By the way, you may ask why I chose ceremonious to describe the trio of sevens, that's coz brides and grooms, especially, looking for a little extra dose of marital fortune, are flocking to the decorated podium in droves on 07/07/07.
Whatever it is majestic or not, I think this supposed bit of positivity even if superstitious to an extent is nothing bad, after all the coming together of the sizzling sevens gave me something to write about....
Those believing in these ceremonious sevens have more to say...they start making you count the colors in the rainbow, the days in a week, the continents, the number of musical notes and the eternal list goes on. By the way, you may ask why I chose ceremonious to describe the trio of sevens, that's coz brides and grooms, especially, looking for a little extra dose of marital fortune, are flocking to the decorated podium in droves on 07/07/07.
Whatever it is majestic or not, I think this supposed bit of positivity even if superstitious to an extent is nothing bad, after all the coming together of the sizzling sevens gave me something to write about....
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Kaun Banega Rashtra-Pati/Patni
As you might have rightly guessed this one's dedicated to the lady who's most likely to win the much hyped "Race to the Raisina Hill"(I wonder how the News channels always manage to find attractive alliterations for their headlines!).
When one gets teemed up with the musical junta singing their throats out on every other TV channel(no doubt the judges always prove to be more entertaining...), the news channels are the final resort. Thus being largely influenced by the hourly dose of the same recipe I am writing this one on "Kaun Banega Rashtrapati"(another of those famous taglines...which actually appears to be more of a misnomer...as the title of this blog suggests).
So lets meet the contestants! ( actually I feel like calling everyone a contestant nowadays thanks to the talent show hangover)...or I should better call them candidates, which is more politically correct (pun intended ;) )...Madam Pratibha Patil and BJP's independent candidate Mr. Shekhawat.
Ms. Patil who's riding high with Sonia asking one and all to support her so that we can have a lady first citizen perhaps she needs to shout a bit louder coz everyone seems to be aware of the fact that Ms. Patil's name popped up out of nowhere to serve as a compromise formula and what gave her the edge was the loyalty coefficient.
Confronting her is our current VP in Shekhawat, who's quite assured of something unexpected happening and thereby improvising his present portfolio. Unexpected coz the numbers quite clearly suggest this time we'll see a lady in command of the Armed forces.
So without sounding very much like a news channel myself, I'd like to conclude this one. This time the presidential election promises to be a lot more interesting than usual lack-luster affair, of course it would take some more time for our contestants to generate interests comparable to their American counterparts...but I guess its all a matter of the stakes involved...one is a mere rubber stamp, the other has his(or perhaps "her" seems to be a better pronoun here too for obvious reasons) stamp running all over.
When one gets teemed up with the musical junta singing their throats out on every other TV channel(no doubt the judges always prove to be more entertaining...), the news channels are the final resort. Thus being largely influenced by the hourly dose of the same recipe I am writing this one on "Kaun Banega Rashtrapati"(another of those famous taglines...which actually appears to be more of a misnomer...as the title of this blog suggests).
So lets meet the contestants! ( actually I feel like calling everyone a contestant nowadays thanks to the talent show hangover)...or I should better call them candidates, which is more politically correct (pun intended ;) )...Madam Pratibha Patil and BJP's independent candidate Mr. Shekhawat.
Ms. Patil who's riding high with Sonia asking one and all to support her so that we can have a lady first citizen perhaps she needs to shout a bit louder coz everyone seems to be aware of the fact that Ms. Patil's name popped up out of nowhere to serve as a compromise formula and what gave her the edge was the loyalty coefficient.
Confronting her is our current VP in Shekhawat, who's quite assured of something unexpected happening and thereby improvising his present portfolio. Unexpected coz the numbers quite clearly suggest this time we'll see a lady in command of the Armed forces.
So without sounding very much like a news channel myself, I'd like to conclude this one. This time the presidential election promises to be a lot more interesting than usual lack-luster affair, of course it would take some more time for our contestants to generate interests comparable to their American counterparts...but I guess its all a matter of the stakes involved...one is a mere rubber stamp, the other has his(or perhaps "her" seems to be a better pronoun here too for obvious reasons) stamp running all over.
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