Recently WooThemes added another Magazine Theme in their theme club portfolio. The theme name is Headlines. Simplicity with modern outfit such as featured area, social bookmarks, author highlighting, flexible layout, etc. charmed a lot.

These days I have found that simplicity is getting more preference than heavy one. Faster loading, catching typography, few light graphics, etc. this kind of features are preferable by every wordpress theme hunter. It’s my experience that loading your wordpress blog with tons of plug-in’s slows down your blog a lot. So, minimizing too-much to most needed will be good practice.

What do you think?

What’s your experience?

So, why I thought that, Headlines is one of top prefered WordPress Magazine Theme. As I explained earlier that, “Simplicity with modern outfit” is the utmost reason to choose Headlines among Magazine Theme segment.

SponsoredTweets the sponsored conversation giant is holding its Supatweeta Referral Challenge for the second time. The first referral challenge was such a big that won a trip to Dominican Republic for Zac Johnson. This time  Supatweeta Referral Chalenge can win you a brand new Canon EOS Digital Rebel 15.1 Megapixel Camera Kit.

The challenge started on 28th October 2009 and will be valid till 1st November 2009. So,Hurry!

How to be part of this challenge?

• Gather maximum number of Sponsored Tweets new referral sign-up during the contest period (from October 28th  to November 1st).
• You have to valid US resident 18 years of age and older.

Never forget to view the official challenge rules.

Social Media Marketing the proven marketing method to promote business and service offerings.  We have seen synergistic effect of tagging marketing campaign with social media such as Blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc. previously, when on 2nd March, 2009 Forrester released an independent report on Sponsored Conversations, looking into series of effective outcome of social media marketing campaigns run by Kmart, Panasonic, etc. through IZEA and others.

This time another social media marketing campaign, Accor Hotels 3-Day Super Sale Asia Pacific run by Accor Hotels (a major global group and the European leader in hotel) is on the air. What the promotion is all about:

• From 27th to 30th October, 2009 travelers can take advantage of booking over one million room nights which is on sale. Rates starting from US$30 per night.
• You can book your travel and holidays now for stays between December 09 to April 10 across Accor’s Asia pacific hotels include Thailand, Korea, China, Japan, HK, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Fiji, Indonesia, Taiwan, India and Bali.
• As a traveler you can also enjoy different rates with a vast range of affordable options at Accor’s various brands include Sofitel, Pullman, Grand Mercure, Novotel, Mercure, All Seasons and Ibis hotels.
• Apart the above, Accor’s A|Club members can earn points and Accor Advantage Plus members get 10% discount on this super sale offer.

This three day super sale by Accor Hotel is going to create envy for other big hotelier a bit, because all favors is going to travelers side. With this super sale offer travelers can enjoy their winter or spring holidays at an affordable price across the Asia Pacific region’s many exciting places.

Here are few picture of Accor Hotels across Asia Pacific where you can enjoy your holidays.

Every year for a particular day Bloggers around the globe raise voice for an issue of global importance. Luckily since inception of the concept I used to be part of this big day—Blog Action Day 2009. This year’s theme “Climate Change” is a serious global issue. But, how many serious people are there who ever think of this? This year around 11,300 blogs participated from 155 countries. Is this enough? I don’t think so! Only one day awareness is not enough. This need to be continuous program till we reach the destination.

Indian economy is booming . Industrialization is getting new shape, Malls are touching sky, new cars are coming out, lucrative durable goods launching day-by-day, Neon sign flashing with discounts and offers…and many more thing happening except ignorance of agriculture. Farmers are committing suicide. Around 200,000 farmers have ended their lives since 1997 due to debt and other governmental policies.

The scenario that I talked above need to be discussed and given a global importance, because it’s associated directly to eco-system balance and climate change. We can’t live in eating iron bar, we need fresh healthy vegetables. If Industrialization is given more importance than agriculture people will fear to become farmers because of the above issue.

Recently, Genetic Engineering Approval Committee approved Genetically Modified Bt Brinjal for environmental release (source: TOI).

Regarding this I have found a very kind urge on the blog post’s “8 Great Climate Change Resources for Your Blog Action Day Post” comment by Ram, columnist of Indian Reflections:

As you people wake up for the Blog Action day, the Indian Government has let the first edible GM Food by approving the Bt Brinjal (egg plant for you) against major protest across the country.

Brinjal is a humble vegetable grown by small farmers for their own consumption and for the market with seeds retained and exchanged amongst themselves.

This step will move us towards the take over of this vegetable by the industrial corporates, making it more carbon footprint intense. Do include a note to the Minister for Environment & Forestry, Government of India as part of the Blog Action Day.

I think Blog Action Day 2009 is the #BAD day for India’s poor farmers. What do you think?

So, this is my kind request to world leader to think on the above agriculture issue and raise a discussion in upcoming Copenhagen meet in December.

Some Resource:-

• BBC World: Indian Farmer Suicides
• GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers committing suicide after using genetically modified crops
• VIDARBHA JAN ANDOLAN SAMITI
• Why Are Indian Farmers Committing Suicide and How Can We Stop This Tragedy?
• BT Brinjal GM crop is a necessary evil
• The Hindu: Say ‘no’ to Bt brinjal: civil society

Journey of the Internet Explorer started in 2001. During 2002 and 2003 IE6 captured 90% usage share. After 8 years IE6’s usage share is around 14% (as per W3Counter Global Web Stats August 2009).

Why does IE6 market share dropped so far?

Incomplete standards support rapidly made it look shoddy in the face of strong competition. In today’s market, surrounded by Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera and its own successor, Internet Explorer 7, version 6 of Microsoft’s browser looks positively ancient. (source: “Bring Down IE6″ a .net Magazine initiative)

That means IE6 failed to be with going trend. Today situation of IE6 is like Dinosaur.

So, how does people around the world reacting on IE6’s failure?

By running different web-based campaign.

1. The first such a campaign I encountered is .net Magazine’s “Bring Down IE6″. Craig Grannell of Bring Down IE6 movement asked designers and developers to unite “to take IE6 behind the shed and shoot it”. Article ‘Calling time on IE6’ is showing strong reasons to call off the IE6 usage forever and urging you and me to educate our colleagues, users and clients about calling time on IE6.

Bring Down IE6 movement is not confined to only campaign. It is already happened and trend has been seen at Information Tech Biggies. Lets look:

• On August 15th, 2008 October 1, 2008 we will begin phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6 across all 37signals products. In order to continue using the products without any hiccups, Internet Explorer 6 users should upgrade to a newer browser.
• Apple says ‘no’ (well, upgrade) to IE6 users if they want to use MobileMe.
• One of leading WordPress premium theme club WooThemes has announced, “We’re considering dropping support of IE6 on our new themes”. The site also conducted a vote, that gathered 72% vote for It’s time for IE6 to die right now.

2. “The Browser for the Better Campaign“, a campaign run by Microsoft is another indication that the giant itself want that the IE user should upgrade to latest one.

3. “IE6 No More” is another such a site providing different language code to show a custom message whenever your site is browsed by IE6.

4. “Shockingly Big IE6 Warning“ is a plug-in for WordPress user that shows a warning message alerting the user why it is bad to use IE6, the security risk and the bad compatibility of Web Standards.

5. Beside the above bring down IE6 movement, SaveIE6.com is moving towards to save IE6 and asking signed petition, showing different reasons and graphical data such as Browser comparison table, reasons why you should use IE6, etc. Amazingly the site gathered good number (1,448) of petition.

Twitglry v1.0 finally came into limelight. Basically, Twitglry is a WordPress powered Twitter Directory cum Gallery showcasing the twitter tools, twitter applications and other twitter related goodies. Purpose of this project is to provide a common place for both Twitter app developer to showcase their work and Twitter goodies hunter.

Twitglry featuring:

1. Section for separate featured Twitter Tools and Apps,
2. Find tools and apps based on tags,
3. Vote your favorite Twitter tool and app,
4. View most voted Twitter tools and apps,
5. Become fan of Twitglry on Facebook,
6. Get twitter and blog updates of individual tools and apps,
7. Find similar type of tools and apps,
8. e-mail updates subscription, etc.

You can follow Twitglry on Twitter @twitglry.

Become Twitglry fan on Facebook.

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Twitglry-Pic-2

Few hours back Blog Action Day ‘09 got its shape after a time lag. This year Blog Action Day has taken long time to decide the theme and for that they had done quick survey few week back. It was 2007, when Blog Action Day first came into limelight with theme Environment, and this year the theme is again related to Environment. The theme is Climate Change.

Why does this years theme has been chosen Climate Change?

Climate change affects us all and it threatens more than the environment. It threatens to cause famine, flooding, war, and millions of refugees. (source: http://www.blogactionday.org/)

So, get started. Promote the event to masses. Make the 15th October a memorable and big once again. I’m in are you?

It has been seen in many Indian IT ventures, that they have expanded their portfolio amidst global recession. When I first encountered 9.9 Media group, I came to know about their ReviewMe clone, Create Online Buzz (a blogger driven advertising venture). After that this year in March they launched Consumer Mate, a notebook buying advisory web site. So, this non-stop serial portfolio extension of  the 9.9 Media group was at the time of global recession. But, their expansion policy is not stopped on the verge of global recession as it is on the way to end. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) recently said that,

The global recession is coming to an end faster than thought a few months ago and may already be over, but recovery will rely on massive government spending and low interest rates for some time

Recently, ConsumerMate.com has extended its category by adding Mobile Phones and LCD TV’s beside Laptops. So, with this category extension ConsumerMate.com user will now be able to find their suitable mobile phone or LCD/Plasma TV at latest Indian street prices. It is also a welcoming news for users to visit this site again and again is that its unique features such as Ask us or Guru Gyan, Compare Models, Buying guide, Hot Deals and Test centre ratings by Digit, etc. are also easily accessible.

Another few new addition that I found over there are Price Drops and Contest section, that I think is more futuristic approach of ConsumerMate.com, because Price Drops shows latest price drops of different brand models that help users a lot in decision making and Contest increases more user engagement on the ConsumerMate site by allowing its users filling up review and grab some prizes.

Recently I have posted a blog post, “BrandMurder coming with Big Bang Giving Away some Apples”. Now, there is another chance to grab Netbook, IPod Touch, a Flip HD and some other goodies. This time it is from TweetMeme—a service which aggregates all the popular links on Twitter .

It is rejoice time for TweetMeme, because they have added new feature, comment system in their TweetMeme platform. So, to celebrate TweetMeme organized a comments competition.

Here is all about the competition.

The best comment along with the highest number of re-tweets on a post will win this competition. The competition will continue for 7 days (Tuesday 15th September around 5pm GMT) starting from today means.

What you can win?

1. First Place – An EEE PC Netbook, a TweetMeme Tshirt and stickers.
2. Second Place – An IPod Touch 16gb , a TweetMeme Tshirt and stickers.
3. Third Place – A Flip HD, a TweetMeme Tshirt and stickers.

Never forget to visit TweetMeme Comments Competition For more details, terms and conditions of this competition.

BrandMurder the first child of Brandstack.com—the world’s biggest Brand Marketplace, is on the way to launch. What is BrandMurder.com at all? Lets have a look from their own voice,

in the tradition of corporate rebranding (wait, wait don’t go; I’m going somewhere good with this), in which sometimes companies like to construct elaborate murder mysteries to make the transition to their new identity smoother and more fun for their employees, we’ve decided to take that concept and make something fun for you.

The murder of a brand has already happened at their center with 2ndSite and is counting. 2ndSite is been rebranded into FreshBooks.

So, to celebrate the launch of BrandMurder.com, they are giving away pair of NEW Apple iPod Nano . How to grab it?

• Follow @BrandMurder and tweets about anything using #BrandMurder.

The wining mantra is: The more times you tweet, the more chances you have to win!

The contest will continue till 9/23/2008 noon CDT.

That is not end, as this contest finishes they will start another contest on the same day and that will be for designers. BrandMurder has already re-branded 10 of the most famous brands in the world, so there will be big opportunity for them to win an iMac and other prizes for redesigning their logos.

But, if your are not a designer then—”Brandmurder.com will still offer up some fun for you”.  So, book your chance.