Inside AdWords: +1 button to start appearing on display ads today

Inside AdWords: +1 button to start appearing on display ads today: Starting today, if you’re running display ads through the Google Display Network, you may begin seeing the +1 button and annotations with y...

Why moving to the cloud is so important...

In last couple of weeks I have become huge fan of Android not just because it's open source but convenience to have my total mobile data sync with my Google account is just amazing. Now practically I do most of my communication work including Email, calendar, appointment, tweet, Facebook, blog (including this post), office documents, navigation, translate, network management... from my Android driven phone. But knowing all my information is backed up in my Google account is a big relief.

Specially now a days when we are being tormented with the thoughts of natural disaster & not to mention fear of losing the phone - moving to cloud seems to be only logical answer. There was a time when we used to backup physically our data and used to carry back home. But recent disasters clearly pointed out that those physical backup could not save important data. Having them across the servers in several countries over the cloud solves this issue.

For small businesses having access to Google Apps & Android driven device - you can streamline your cloud experience & make sure your business data is safe from natural disasters.

Custom Typeface or Font blog, email, website ....

Auckland Bangladeshi Entertainment Group (ABEG)

Finally after a long time Bangladeshi community had a concert by prominent visiting artists from Bangladesh. We had the opportunity to see Abida Sultana and Rafiqul Alam performing at Auckland. Bangladesh community only had opportunity to see Fakir Alamgir, Kaderi Kibria and Rezwana Chowdhury Bonna in span of last 16 years as a visiting artist! I guess due to proper support and non-cooperation between the people of our community here who often gets divided on personal issues hampering frequent organisation of such events. 

We have talented cultural people and organisers who always felt the need for a separate body or organisation which will not represent any specific group amongst our community but will have involvement from all the talented people within our community to focus solely on organising such events. That dream was fulfilled by formation of Auckland Bangladeshi Entertainment Group - ABEG. The acronym also conveys a Bangla word (আবেগ) which means whatever we do we do it passionately.

ABEG's first project was the concert by Abida Sultana and Rafiqul Alam at Auckland Liberty Church Theatre. The month long project was very successful although when personal grievance tried to over-shadow the event by discouraging people within the community to attend the event. It was sad but I believe people who missed the event realised later that they have missed a milestone event and this famous artist couple perhaps will not pay Auckland a visit in near future as a performer as they are busy with much larger events in Australia, US and other European countries. Both Abida Sultana and Rafiqul Alam were also shocked and saddened by the groupings amongst our small number of Bangladeshis here. 

As a whole - the whole concert was very professionally arranged - from theatre to ticket design - every aspects were handled by experts in their own field giving the event this huge success. Having ABEG's band group playing live with Rafiqul Alam's few songs added more vibrancy to the event. No other Bangladeshi performer ever had this support. The stage design attracted everyone's attention and it portrayed how a professional designer can make a great set for the event. Everyone enjoyed the solid sound and the performing artists were also happy equally. 

ABEG's journey just started and it has two wings - event organisation and band group. The idea started as having a band group as we have all types of musical instrument expertise and good voices. But soon we also realised our community lacks good professional organisers of such events. With like minded people and with host of experience in those areas - event management wing was formed. Today ABEG is fine tuning it's operation and management practice and at the same time will meet the community with their vision and plans to get the whole community involved with them. Our community is yet to realised that this organisation has no interest in local politics nor it represents the main goal presented by our BANZI or Society. In my opinion the sooner our BANZI and BNZFS official understands that - I am sure they and whole community will benefit. 

Our main problem is our ego and the mentality to showing off what I have done for the community. I am not saying it's bad to do something good for the community and showing off about it. But it's wrong to show off to the community when you don't have any clue of what you are doing. As a result - either these people don't do anything or prevent and discourage others from doing something for the community. Hopefully meeting with public and explaining them what we have planned for them would give them some comfort!

Google Web Fonts - Goodbye Typekit and other paid font services

From early as 2001 I have tried to incorporate and embed stylish fonts using various tools in my and clients website but found it to be very inconsistent. Most of the tools were not cross browser compatible leaving me designing fancy font site with flash or plain simple graphics. This also pose other problems like size of the web page which became larger which posed other problems.

Then came Typekit with option to embed stylish fonts. Followed by Ascender. Over the period of time Typekit became the most popular webfont service provider. Large companies including Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Twitter, Harvard Business Review and many more became their client. Font plays a major role in branding and marketing. Besides that able to see sites in different stylish fonts makes them attractive as well. How long web visitor is going to be tied up with Arial, Verdana, Trebuchet and other similar traditional fonts. I have nothing against them but as a human we crave to see something different and creative. But due to price and packages offered by those existing companies made webfonts bit of a expensive game.

Good news is Google has entered the market and they have created webfont library to be used free of cost! Yes it's right - FREE. Google has listened to so many creative developers wishlist and have created the API's which can be easily embedded to any site. Have a look at this test page I have created. It displays three of my favourite fonts currently available in the library. I have used two methods of embedding the fonts. One is very very simple and the other one I would say simple.

Using CSS you can also add special effect like shadow to your font. Have a look at this page I have created which has one my favourite font Tangarine with shadow. That's only the beginning of what you can do with the Font API and CSS.

As Google said - The Google Font API helps you add web fonts to any web page. Benefits of the Google Font API include:

• A choice of high quality open source fonts.
• Works in most browsers.
• Extremely easy to use.

Time to Save Up

When it comes to money management I am totally pathetic. I am the perfect person for retailers who can be easily mesmerised by their typical marketing campaigns. But couple of months back I realised it’s time to stop thinking about the latest and greatest stuffs that comes out in the market and start looking at my life more seriously. You might be saying – oh yeah … at the age of 39 you are getting serious!! But hey it’s better late than never and I don’t want to look back at my financial disaster at the age of 65. But why I am blabbering about this cause I believe I am not the only one who is in this situation but many others. Most of them might be in their early 30s or late 20s and thinking that I am too young to think seriously about my financial plans. I thought in that same direction and I realised today I should have really stick to tight stringiest spending habit. The Superannuation here in New Zealand is so bare minimum that surviving on it would be a nightmare. By the time you have reached that age you should have investment income which will pay for your council taxes, bills and other expenditures. 

I did not mention anything about having good time – say you want to travel or hang out in restaurants or pubs from time to time then you obviously need to have access to cash in-flow either from fixed deposits or some less effortless income. If you want to continue taking some tension then obviously you can go on investing in shares or debentures.

I don’t want to point out that nowadays people all around the world has found out as a family they can financially be better off if everyone does their part to chip-in for family financial freedom. Two earnings are always better than one and can help anyone reach their goal much earlier than anticipated. Besides that – financial institutions feels safer to lend you out when they see two source or more of earnings. I guess I have blabbered enough and I am pretty sure what I mentioned is common sense and everyone knows about it. But knowing all about it is no answer. To act and react accordingly is much more important thing.

Every bank nowadays features different sorts of financial planning and step by step articles on their websites. Tell me honestly, have you ever paid any attention to those articles. Like me – you probably visit the bank site only to do your online banking. But other day I stopped and read couple of articles. Some of them are brilliant. In my opinion ASB Bank’s website stands out from most for not only online facilities but the quality of articles. Pay a visit to their site even if you are not their customer. You can check their website at www.asb.co.nz.

Next best thing in sorting your financial plan is SORTED.ORG.NZ. The idea of the site is brilliant and it was born to teach Kiwis about something called financial goal. Gradually over the last several years the site matured and has been judged one of the best personal monetary management site. The articles and calculators are just brilliant. Go check them out and do a personal finance health check. You can find SORTED at www.sorted.org.nz.

SORTED will guide you about making your plan – but there is a site which has taken the teachings of SORTED to next level. I am talking about Uncle Percy financial site. The design and approach of the site very soothing – which I guess is important specially when you start talking about saving money and control the habits of spending more than you can afford! Anyway – the site actually helps you to reach your goal by creating a plan then tying that plan to your actual bank account so that there’s a forced savings. The money taken out from your account lands up in your account at Uncle Percy’s. Which by the way gradually grows and if you stick to it – on the stipulated time you reach your goal. Pay a visit to Uncle Percy at www.unclepercy.co.nz.

Hope I have shade some lights for people like me. If you have anymore sites in mind please do share.

I am back to blogging...

It has been a while - too long in fact - I have been out of blogging for various reasons. If I say time then I have to admit I am lying. I do spend lots of time in front of the computer but without doing any fruitful work. When I say fruitful - in terms of quality time and of course making money - I don't think I have made much! Anyway recently I was reading one of my friend's blog and she is a young girl who has amazing talent of convincing people into what she believes and doing consultancy on social marketing. In her blog she pointed out the fact - social blogs or networks actually is the heart beat of people's existing nowadays. The moment you stop social network - you are simply wiped out of this world of network. Gradually our existing is becoming more of living on the digital world then our own fresh green world. Yes being in New Zealand I can boast about "fresh" and "green" all the time.

I started thinking and realised yes - only way to get to my target audience and making sure I am reachable or "alive" is by making myself visible in the digital world. Every company now wants to target socail "networkers" and this whole rush to get the target audience has given birth to consultants like my friend. Question is does it really work? Well it's simple - most of us gets carried away by so called "good deals" and if it's presented in a right way then - BAM!!! You are bought! Just like the supermarkets - where goods are presented in such a way you tend to buy stuffs which you don't even need. As for creative people giving inside peak to upcoming work can actually create quite an interest among your fans.

Well from now on I will share my thoughts on anything - software, hardware, creative work, social chat, technology, environment... whichever I feel discussing... I hope my discussions will help you think about issues and resolve some of the confussions.

I had awesome time @ Tech-Ed  

Venue and sessions were sooo well organised 

The carnival atmosphere 

We enjoyed these 3 days session and the Tech-Fest was the icing on the cake