Vineet Dwivedi's Blog

eCommerce looks like a promising space and most of my friends are bullish about future of e-commerce businesses in India. I had a horrible experience with Indiatimes. They started a new concept called Indiatimes Book Club and invited (so called) few distinguished people to become a part of that. Unfortunately I was once of those distinguished people who were chosen. The offer was very hard to refuse:

1. Lifetime membership for only Rs 525

2. A discount coupon of Rs 525 which can be redeemed against any book (even in Big Bazaar)

3. Flat 25% discounts over and above the usual 10% discounts they give

Looks like the offer was valid only for a week and only for people like me. I hurriedly paid. I did not get any login id and password, even after waiting for 10 days and few e-mails. I looked into the website and here is what I found:

1. Rs 525 is only for one year. I need to renew it every year.

2. No disocount coupon. It was a fraud.

3. 25% disocount on most of the books. No you know what would “most of the” would mean. Very similar to “Upto 50% Off…on select merchandise”.

Wow! That was an eye opener. Now think of our (poor) young entrepreneur who is going to start e-commerce business in India. It will be very hard for prospective customers (like me)to trust anybody except Amazon. Good Luck!

Every weak we analyze search logs to find out what are the popular words people are searching. We need to automate this process but somehow it is slipping in priority. I am told that dictionary.com and m-w.com also do the same but never publishes the list. The reason is simple; It is easier to optimize the site for few words than whole dictionary.

We do not mind publishing the list. Here is our top 30

1. agnostic

2. cynical

3. apathy

4. esoteric

5. dichotomy

6. cathartic

7. gregarious

8. ominous

9. amorous

10. cantankerous

11. insidious

12. obsequious

13. pithy

14. vapid

15. animosity

16. capricious

17. mundane

18. pensive

19. ameliorate

20. amenable

21. commensurate

22. copious

23. morose

24. pompous

25. sardonic

26. epiphany

27. poignant

28. indignant

29. allusion

30. ubiquitous

We have (indeed) filtered some bad words!

While analyzing the search log of our Bee English Dictionary I realized that people are also looking for meaning of their (or their friend’s) names. The list is topped in boys by John followed by David, James, Michael, Daniel, Mark, Ryan and Jacob. In girl names, the order is Jessica, Michelle, Emily, Jennifer and Mary. Few names with much lower volumes are Andrew, Anthony, Ashley, Joseph, Nicole, Robert, Taylor. Most of these names do not mean anything but are the names of some mythological and historical creatures.

Interestingly the volume of searches for male names is 4-5 times higher than that for girl names.

My colleague has an interesting theory. These kind of tasks are usually performed by girls and that is the reason search is high for boy’s names. Funny..huh

I tried to look for my name but unfortunately the dictionary does not have my name. Someday it will

Google danced again and the page ranks of websites all over the world is changed. I am happy because our Bee English Dictionary reached a PR of 4 from 0 in just 3 weeks. Earlier this Web 2.0 dictionary was hosted on a subdomain of our site vocabbuilder.net. We had a lot of discussion on changing the domain internally because Google Webmasters Tool does not allow change of address from a subdomain to a full domain. This would mean all the indexed pages on earlier would need to be re-indexed and we were not sure how much time Google would take in doing this.

We finally decided to bite the bullet. Put a 301 redirect on all pages of the old domain (basically subdomain). Requested webmasters of pages having links to our page to change it to new domain. Some of them actually complied.

The thing to note here is that the Google has two page ranks for every page. One to show to the world through Google Toolbar and other to use in search results. Previous one is updated every 2-3 months and that is what webmasters called PR of a page. If your site/page is old enough you can be pretty sure that your actual PR is very close to your PR shown in the toolbar.  We are confident now that our site is getting traction and is being referred by web pages.

Let’s picture a civil servant called A who finds himself overworked. Whether this overwork is real or imaginary is immaterial; but we should observe, in passing, that A’s sensation (or illusion) might easily result from his own decreasing energy—a normal symptom of middle-age. For this real or imagined overwork there are, broadly speaking, three possible remedies

(1) He may resign.

(2) He may ask to halve the work with a colleague called B.

(3) He may demand the assistance of two subordinates, to be called C and D.

There is probably no instance in civil service history of A choosing any but the third alternative. By resignation he would lose his pension rights. By having B appointed, on his own level in the hierarchy, he would merely bring in a rival for promotion to W’s vacancy when W (at long last) retires. So A would rather have C and D, junior men, below him. They will add to his consequence; and, by dividing the work into two categories, as between C and D, he will have the merit of being the only man who comprehends them both.

It is essential to realise, at this point, that C and D are, as it were, inseparable. To appoint C alone would have been impossible. Why? Because C, if by himself, would divide the work with A and so assume almost the equal status which has been refused in the first instance to B; a status the more emphasised if C is A’s only possible successor. Subordinates must thus number two or more, each being kept in order by fear of the other’s promotion. When C complains in turn of being overworked (as he certainly will) A will, with the concurrence of C, advise the appointment of two assistants to help C. But he can then avert internal friction only by advising the appointment of two more assistants to help D, whose position is much the same. With this recruitment of E, F, G and H, the promotion of A is now practically certain.