E-ticket cancellations fetch railways Rs 750 crore

Between 2005 and 2011, the Railways earned a neat Rs 750 crore (almost equivalent to its annual profit) on account of cancellations of e-tickets alone. (Its earnings from e-tickets from 2005 to April 2012 were Rs 30,094 crore.)who procured this information, says that the railways must do away with cancellation charges. "Indian Railways now has several avenues for generating revenue, he points out. It must stop burdening the common man with cancellation charges.

In 2011, between March and December, the railways earned Rs 198 crore from  of e-tickets. Ever since it began in 2005, e-ticketing has ballooned to make up about 40% of all rail ticket sales. Railway officials say that the convenience that booking and cancelling an e-ticket offers has seen more passengers making advance bookings that very often result in cancellations. In fact, one out of every three e-tickets sold is cancelled.

If a confirmed ticket is cancelled more than 24 hours before the scheduled departure of the train, the penalty is Rs 70 for an AC first-class ticket, Rs 60 for AC Tier-2, AC Tier-3 and AC chair car, Rs 40 for sleeper class and Rs 20 for a second-class ticket. In fact, even if a wait-listed ticket is not confirmed, the Railways go on to deduct Rs 20 before refunding the remaining sum.

Popular trains have long waiting lists of 700 or 800. "Close to 95% of the wait-listed tickets do not get confirmed and automatically stand cancelled,explains a rail officer. Hence, what ordinarily happens is that most passengers book themselves on more than one train; others with flexible travel dates book tickets on different days if they are on the waiting list.

Clearly somebody's attempts to stay on top of the chaotic train travel in India can be somebody else's huge gain.

Alibaba will buyback half of Yahoo stake for $7.1bn

US internet company Yahoo said it has reached a deal to sell part of its stake in China's biggest internet company Alibaba Group.

Alibaba will buy back half the 40% stake owned by Yahoo, following years of negotiations.The deal will raise about $7.1bn (£4.5bn) for Yahoo, which has been losing ground to rival Google and Facebook in online advertising.The agreement also allows Alibaba to consider an initial public offering

Both companies revealed in a statement that Alibaba will pay Yahoo $6.3bn in cash and up to $800m in Alibaba preferred stock.

For Yahoo, the deal gives it the ability to pay dividends, make acquisitions, or buy back its own shares, something its stockholders have been asking for

"We look forward to delivering the proceeds of the near-term transaction to our shareholders," said Timothy R Morse, chief financial officer at Yahoo.

5,000 people die in the U.S. each year from texting while driving

A report in India's IBN Live says that in the U.S., texting kills 5,000 people a year, mostly younger drivers. The article quotes a study made in 2009 that says that those driving larger vehicles and trucks while texting are 23 times more likely to end up in a crash than non-distracted drivers. What makes thaty stat so shocking is that most truck drivers are professionals and if texting can through them off, imagine what it does to a teenager. According to Uvid Hosansky, a Environmental Researcher who wrote a study on the problem, "Texting drivers took their eyes off the road for each text an average of 4.6 seconds, which at 55 mph means they were driving the length of a football field without looking." 

Part of the danger of texting while operating a vehicle is getting your imagination to distract you. While talking to a passenger in your car while driving might be a bit distracting, texting requires you to use "additional resources" while in conversation,including your mind making a visual image of the person on the other end of your texts. And the problem extends beyond the use of a handset as car manufacturers are adding GPS, browsers and other technology to the dashboard, all of which can help a driver lose his concentration. 

Still, mobile phones get the biggest blame as the NTSB in the States said that 16% of all drivers younger than 20 involved in a fatal car crash were distracted by texting and/or making a call on a cell phone. The 16% is the highest percentage of any age group. And if it isn't texting, it's

Please Drive Safely

New Phones Reviews and Specs

New Phones  Reviews and Specs

LG Optimus 

HTC One X vs Samsung Galaxy Note

Samsung Galaxy Nexus for Sprint Review

HTC One X vs Sony Xperia S

HTC One X for AT&T Review

Asus Transformer Pad 300 Review

                                                                                                 

Sony Xperia GX

Sony Xperia SX

RIM BlackBerry Curve 9320

Samsung Focus 2

HTC DROID Incredible 4G LTE

Samsung Galaxy S III

NASA's Spitzer detects light of alien (Super-Earth)

Washington, May 9 (IANS) NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected light emanating from a "super-Earth" planet beyond our solar system for the first time.

"Spitzer has amazed us yet again," said Bill Danchi, Spitzer program scientist at NASA Headquarters here. "The spacecraft is pioneering the study of atmospheres of distant planets and paving the way for NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to apply a similar technique on potentially habitable planets."

The planet, called 55 Cancri e, falls into a class of planets termed super Earths, which are more massive than our home world but lighter than giant planets like Neptune. The planet is about twice as big and eight times as massive as Earth. It orbits a bright star, called55 Cancri, in a mere 18 hours, according to a NASA statement.

Previously, Spitzer and other telescopes were able to study the planet by analyzing how the light from 55 Cancri changed as the planet passed in front of the star. In the new study, Spitzer measured how much infrared light comes from the planet itself.

The results reveal the planet is likely dark, and its sun-facing side is more than 2,000 Kelvin (3,140 degrees Fahrenheit), hot enough to melt metal. The new information is consistent with a prior theory that 55 Cancri e is a water world: a rocky core surrounded by a layer of water in a "supercritical" state where it is both liquid and gas, and topped by a blanket of steam.

"It could be very similar to Neptune, if you pulled Neptune in toward our sun and watched its atmosphere boil away," said Michael Gillon of Universite de Liege in Belgium, principal investigator of the research, which appears in the Astrophysical Journal. Brice-Olivier Demory of theMassachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, led the study.

The 55 Cancri system is relatively close to Earth, at 41 light-years away. It has five planets, with 55 Cancri e the closest to the star and tidally locked, so one side always faces the star. Spitzer discovered the sun-facing side is extremely hot, indicating the planet probably does not have a substantial atmosphere to carry the sun's heat to the unlit side.

Delhi girl raped for months in Jaipur

Delhi girl raped for months in Jaipur

A Delhi-based girl who had come to Jaipur to work in an event management company in 2011 was allegedly raped by her boss for months. The man even got her abortion done when she became pregnant.

Though the victim Seema Sharma (22) kept quiet for six months as the accused had promised to marry her, but when she felt she was merely being misled, Seema along with her family approached Lal Kothi police station on Wednesday and lodged a case of rape against one Salman Khan, an event coordinator. Police arrested the accused on Thursday from his rented house in Sodala.

"The victim, in her FIR, stated she came to Jaipur in January 2011 and started working for an event management firm. In later course, she met the accused Salman Khan (22) and both became friends. Later, during a party the accused drugged Seema and raped her," said Har Chand Meena, station house officer of Lal Kothi police station on Thursday.

Quoting the FIR, the officer said despite the accused being married and his divorce case pending in a court, he claimed to be unmarried.

"The girl continued physical relationship with the boy after he promised to marry her. In November 2011 when the accused failed to fulfill his commitment, Seema went back to her Rohini-situated house in Delhi but kept calling the accused to marry her," said an officer.

When the accused was informed that Seema was pregnant, he went to Delhi and after winning confidence of the girl's family he got her pregnancy terminated at a private clinic there, police added.

Despite that the girl believed he will marry her some day. It was only after a while that the girl came to know that he (the accused) was a married man and his divorce case was pending in a court. The girl has also stated the accused took her to Mumbai, Chandigarh and Jammu for various events in the last one year.

"The victim met up with accused's wife Neha (24) and both the women came to the police station and lodged an FIR on Thursday evening," said an officer.

Based on the FIR, the police have arrested Salman Khan for rape and illegal termination of pregnancy.

Police added the accused hails from Barmula district of Jammu and Kashmir and lives in a rented accommodation at Sodala. "We also recovered pictures of many other girls from his cellphone and questioned them if they, too, were raped. None of the other girls have lodged any case so far."

Tips to Build Blogger Blogspot Site Traffic

Tips to Build Blogger Blogspot Site Traffic

This article discusses 10 easy ways Blogger (Blogspot) Bloggers can build site traffic and in many cases improve SEO - search engine optimization. By implementing these steps you will improve the likelihood of your site ranking more highly in search engine results of major search engine players Google, Yahoo and MSN and as a result increase the number of visitors accessing your site.

10 Easy SEO Tips for Blogspot Bloggers to Improve Search Engine Rankings

1. Make Your Title Tags Search Engine Friendly
One of the most important tweaks necessary for Blogspot Blogs is theadjustment of the title tags of your website because Blogger.com by default has not optimized these for search engines. To prove this point navigate to an individual post on your blog and you will see that the blogname appears first in the title bar at the top of your browser followed by the post name. As search engines place greater value on the first words of an entry this puts your site at a disadvantage in search engine results. Fortunately it is easy to reverse the blog name and the post name with a simple tweak. For instructions on how to change the order of these title tags please refer to my article entitledAdjust Blogger Title Tags to Improve SEO



2. Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks
Blogger automatically generates a permalink based on the title of your post each time you make a post. For this reason it is important tocraft your title carefully. Permalinks are sometimes less than ideal especially if you have a long title. Take for example the following permalink for one of my posts:

http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2009/02/improved-permalinks-for-blogger-posts.html

You will see that it is search engine friendly in that in contains 2 keywords blogger and permalinks. However you may be surprised to know that How to Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks for Blogger Posts is actually the title of this post not Improved Permalinks for Blogger Posts. I have initially used a title that is keyword rich and then after publishing gone back and entered a more descriptive title. No matter how many times I change the title the original permalink remains. If I had entered the second title straight away I may have ended up with the following permalink:

http://blogknowhow.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-to-create-search-engine-friendly.html

Not very pretty is it? And as you can see the whole point of the post is lost.

For more information on crafting permalinks please refer to my article How to Create Search Engine Friendly Permalinks for Blogger Posts


3. Add a Social Networking Button to Your Blog
By adding a Social Bookmarking button to your website you will enable visitors to your blog to create links to popular social bookmarking sites such as Google, Technorati, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, Delicious, Furl, Yahoo etc. This means that visitors to your site will be able share these links with others thereby helping you attract more traffic to your site and encourage return visits.

Another benefit of a social bookmarking button is that you will be able to identify visitor trends and social bookmarking behaviour on your site. For more information on how to add a free Add This Social Bookmarking button to your Blogger blog please refer to my articleAdd a Social Bookmarking Button to Your Blog. 



4. Submit a Sitemap of Your Blog to Popular Search Engines
If attracting traffic to your site is important to you then it is imperative that you ensure that your Blogger (Blogspot) blog isproperly indexed by popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. One way to expedite this is to submit a sitemap to each of three major search engines. Please refer to my tutorials on website submission, authenticating your site and adding your site feed to Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Tools and MSN Tools.

Google - Submit Your Blogspot Blog Sitemap to Google

Yahoo - Submit Your Blogspot Blog to Yahoo

MSN - Submit Blogger Sitemap to MSN Live Search

Also take a look at my tutorial on submitting your blog to major search engines

5. Build Quality Links
If you want to rank highly in Google and other search engines then you need to generate quality in-bound links. That doesn't mean exchanging links with everything and everyone as I see some new webmasters do. A few quality links from authoritative sites will boost your page rankings quickly and are far superior to a bunch of links from low ranking sites.

There are several good ways to generate links to your blog. One easy way is to to submit your site to blog directories. For more information on recommended blog directories please see my articleSubmit Your Blogger Blog to Blog Directories. Another way to cultivate in-bound links is to submit your best articles to article directories. A third possibility is to actively participate in forums and on other related blogs where commenting affords you the option of adding a link to your site.

I would recommend linking to DMOZ (Open Directory Project). Care needs to be taken to submit your site to the correct subject area. Becoming listed can take awhile so patience is needed. 


6. Write Quality Content and Post Frequently
If you have read any articles on the subject of Blogging and SEO you will no doubt have observed writers emphasising the importance ofquality content. I can't stress enough how much return visits depend on providing inducements to visitors to come back. If your site content is well written and informative half the battle is won. Make sure you post frequently so that visitors can see the value of subscribing in a reader. Take some care with the presentation of your content and images as this will present a professional image. Avoid common pitfalls like bad grammar and spelling mistakes which stand out like a sore toe and detract from a visitor's overall positive experience of your site.

One leading professional blogger Yaro Starak recommends the use ofpillar articles. These are articles that don't change over time and continue to attract visitors. The best pillar articles explain some concept, provide definitions, give advice or present some argument. Your site needs to have at least 5 pillar articles and more if you can manage it. Pillar articles need to be more than 500 words long, crafted to generate interest and provide a welcome resource to your visitors. 

7. Ensure Your Content is Keyword Rich
Apart from the quality of your content there is the question ofkeyword density. The more keyword rich your posts are the greater the likelihood they will appear higher in search engine results. This means it is worth the effort of crafting your content in such a way that you make use of important keywords and keyword phrasesfrequently used. Don't go overboard however as Google is smart enough to recognise if your pages are littered with keywords and nothing much else. A useful free SEO tool to help you optimise your site using keywords and labels is Google Adwords. Another good tool to help you quickly craft keyword rich material is Live Keyword Analysis which assesses the keyword density of keywords and keyword phrases of any post you paste into the analysis box.

When writing posts make sure your opening sentence describes what the article is about and contains your keywords and keyword phrases. It is important that your first sentence is keyword rich as search engines like Google give more emphasis to content at the beginning of the post. Also it is worth including a short ending statement about the content of the post as there is some evidence that Google also places value on the content at the end of the post.

8. Manage Your Feeds Carefully
Feeds help your visitors find your site so they need to be managed carefully in order to make the most of them. Your site feeds are an important way to create backlinks too. Backlinks from authoritative sites are highly valuable and can boost your page ranking. For information about showing backlinks please refer to the Blogger Help Article About Backlinks

Ensure you have your RSS feed icons clearly visible for visitors to see. The most superior positioning of the feed icons on your site is in the header. Watch out for coming tutorials on how to improve positioning of RSS feed links.

You can redirect your feed to a feedburning service like Feedburnerand then add a chicklet to your site (orange RSS feed button) so that the feed is instantly available on click. Please refer to my tutorials about Blogger feeds:Burn a Blogger RSS Feed at Feedburner andBlogger RSS Feeds and Feedburner. To add a FeedFlare to your burned feed check out my tutorial. 

If you haven't burnt your feed you can try adding a Subscription Links widget to a sidebar too to encourage visitors to subscribe to your site in popular on-line readers such as Google Reader. You will find the Subscription Links widget available under the list of gadgets.


Display your most recent posts by configuring a feed widget. UnderLayout > Page Elements add a feed gadget to a sidebar. Enter the URL of the default feed of your site which will be:

http://yoursitename.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Enter Recent Posts in the title and then Save. For more information about adding a posts feed widget to a sidebar please refer to my article Add a Recent Posts Feed to a Blogger Blog 

You can do the same for comments if you wish to have a list ofrecent comments displayed in your sidebar. In this case you would enter:

http://yoursitename.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

For more in depth coverage about adding a comments feed to your sidebar please see my article Add a Recent Comments Feed to a Blogger Sidebar

Ensure you set up your site feeds to show the full text. To check this navigate to Settings > Site Feeds and select yes from the dropdown box for all three feeds.

Consider having a feed specifically for a popular label if it contains 20 or more posts.


9. Optimize Your Use of Images
Chances are you don't give a thought to images when you insert them into your posts but images can be optimized by careful use offilenames and the alt attribute. When naming images avoid long names. Instead give your images distinctive filenames rather than something generic like 00045.jpg which has no meaning. 

The alt attribute allows you to specify what text is displayed when a visitor's mouse hovers over an image. The alt attribute also gets displayed if the image is not available for some reason. By optimizing your alt attributes you are increasing the likelihood of your images appearing in Google Image Searches.

Optimizing your alt attributes is easy. Every time you insert an image into a post look for the alt attribute which will be empty by default

style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 122px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt=""src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/abcdeefgBxA/4560/sidebar-add-this-bookmark-button.JPG" border="0" />

Fill in the alt attribute with a useful description of your image 

style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 122px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="Blog Know How Sidebar Showing Add This Bookmark Button" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/abcdeefgBxA/4560/sidebar-add-this-bookmark-button.JPG" border="0" />

Depending on the subject of your site you can gain a lot of traffic from the images you post on your site. The more unique the content of your site the greater the likelihood that your traffic will stem from images. Without going overboard ensure you have a good mix of images to support your articles.


10. Take Advantage of Web Analytics Services
Having implemented some strategies to improve crawling and indexing of your site by search engine giants Google, Yahoo and MSN chances are you will want to see how these changes have impacted on the traffic reaching your site. Web Analytics programs are a valuable tool for gaining insight into visitor behaviour and trends. The kind of information that a program like Google Analytics will provide is:

how users reach and behave on your site

the most popular content on your site

the impact of optimizations you make to your site (e.g. by how much did changing the order of title tags improve traffic from search engines?)

To integrate Google Analytics into your Blogger (Blogspot) blog please refer to my articles Track Visitors to Your Blogger Blog and Add Google Analytics to Blogger Blog

This article has discussed 10 easy ways to build site traffic and improve SEO for Blogger (Blogspot) Bloggers by addressing the following areas: feeds, images, social bookmarking, title tags, permalinks, content, analytics, submitting your blog to search engines.