"A person should not be too honest.
Straight trees are cut first

and Honest people are screwed first."

--Chanakya

Ever heard of Internet Search by Color ?

Must confess I found some of the coolest ideas and fresh experience while sufring for kitchen and dining stuff recently at this new place that I discovered.

If you happen to remember the green colored pack of ready to cook "Paneer", all you need to do is

1.  key in "Paneer" into the search box and heres what you get ...

2. Next, select the closest "green" color from the color pallete and the search narrows down to the green colored objects :) This is way too cool.

Of course you can narrow the search by Price and Brand too... but that is necessary anyways.

This one does few things:

1. Indexes all the shopping possibilities and provides you a wider choice, since it does not show sponsored/paid items, it shows all

2. Helps you with Price comparisons

3. Encourages you to contribute and collaborate about your experiences with shopping. This I am sure would give some practical advices for enthusiasts. You could have your private page too that is not related to shopping.

I was excited to find things ranging from "indian kadai", "moong", "haldiram", "Biryani" and what not...One of the biryani masalas that I got hold of on my last visit to the US was "shan masala" and I could quickly find it over here.

I think its pretty useful for Indians abroad, not necessarily for Indians in India.

Getting the right insurance

Risk management is an essential part of life today. Its a vital component of one's financial needs especially when you have dependents in various age groups. Its extremely crucial to understand certain facts about getting an insurance policy for your various needs, but, there are certain thumb rules that apply irrespective of your specific constraints, if you want to reduce premiums.
Thumb Rules to reduce your premiums :
1. The more the coverage, more is your premium. Exercise discretion while deciding your coverage.
2. Do a thorough comparison across various providers. Most of these providers have calculators to compare rates such as the following one from Advantage Term Life.












3. Go for Renewable policies
4. Riders only if required
5. Take care of yourself :)
6. Do look at your employer's insurance coverage while taking up a job. Typically, group policies have better benifits and coverage.
7. Make use of the Quoting Service of companies like Advantage Term Life to get the best price around for your specific needs, online. It can be a daunting task to collect such info, but, online quotes can make it a cakewalk for you.

Alive, kicking and freelancing

Well, am back ... alive and kicking :)

Discovered a few things in the last 4 months about free lancing. Must say it sounds really promising and satisfying to put to use your skills for solving REAL problems for companies and people across the globe.

Personal Recommendation :
Elance










Guru










Others that you may want to look at:

RentACoder :

DesignOutpost : For Graphic designers








Scriptlance

Bloggerwave is now ready for bloggers.

Discovered another good service called Bloggerwave.
I owe a lot of such nice discoveries to one of my favorite sites viz. BlogSailor.
It carried a recent post on BloggerWave and I wanted to give it a try. Must confess, that it has been a decent experience till now. The response has been quicker than expected and of course favorable too, at that.

Well, am encouraged to understand that Bloggerwave means business. Need to discover further, and see for myself how the relationship goes, but, my first impression has been excellent.

Recommendation : Must Try it out!

Masterseek : Business oriented Search Engine

Recently, came across Masterseek

Its a search engine that focuses on providing information about Businesses(Companies) and their products, their contact information, business profiles and services. You could search, e.g. based on the country of choice.

If you are looking for business partnerships, suppliers, vendors, opportune customers, investment opportunities and market analysis, must check it out. Just follow this

Income Tax India : ITR-2 Useful Info

Had lot of trouble understanding the BFLA(Brought Forward Losses) schedule and CYLA and CFL etc. in the form. Found the following useful link on the incometaxindiafiling.gov.in site by simply searching on google. Search for "BFLA Schedule" and this will be the first link you will get. This has the "formulae" used in the ITR-2 form. It came in pretty handy for me to file it on the last day, confidently :)
Simply Click Here

I know the last date for filing returns is over, and BTW, thanks for participating in the poll !