Author: Uttam Pegu

I visited Goa recently on some photography work, wedding photography to be exact. I think Goa is one of the cleanest place in India. May be I was traveling to good or tourist locations in Goa, but I found all roads remarkably good, without any potholes!

While, I would be uploading my picture in my Photography Blog, I thought I would also upload few here.

I visited the following beaches in Goa :

1. Colva
It is a very big beach and never look crowded. It has almost white sand!

2. Calangute Beach
Picturesque beach with many shacks to eat good food and beer!

3. Bagha Beach
Smaller beach, but found it to be crowded with many domestic and international tourists.

4. Anjuna Beach
Anjuna Beach in North Goa is what I liked most!

Some of Goa pictures here :-

Recently, I faced a hacking attack due to which my VPS ( Virtual Private Server) was disabled by hosting service provider and all my websites were down almost for 18 hours! The server was hacked by some hacker and were using the server to attack other servers all around the world!
Since I had no other option but to reset it to default and putting back the websites manually one by one! It was very difficult for me to put back all the websites! During the process, I learnt few things :-

1. Always use daily Snap Backup service by the hosting provider! It may cost you money but its worth it!

2. While installing CMS ( Content Management Software) like WordPress, always create your own databases. If you use those One click installer, make sure to give names, user name, and password of your choice! These comes in handy when you have to put back the database in future manually!

3. Remember to change your root password monthly at least! If one can keep changing weekly, much better!

4. One should monitor server usage, CPU, Memory and space daily. Also if possible, put email alerts if any of those resources cross certain thresh hold. This will you monitor if any unusual activity in your server. Some regular distraction, but it saves lot of pain!

5. When your hosting provider does not respond to your support tickets, pick your phone and call them up! Most of the time, phone call is the fastest way to get help. Phone call also alerts support team about the seriousness of the problem.

These are my thinking after a really a nasty hacking attack and pain of putting back many websites manually! Be smart, learn from others mistakes!

Online reputation monitoring is checking if anyone is ‘talking’ about you or your brand. Online Reputation Monitoring is very important for any online business like e-commerce portal, travel portals, online shops. With recent explosion of social networking sites( Facebook, Twitter etc.), even brands which normally sells offline, monitoring online reputation has become a major brand management exercise.

Common people, customers of any service or product may write ( a blog post), tweet ( on twitter), update status ( on Facebook) about his own experience about that service of product! And his blog post, status update or tweet may go viral ( which means it gets shared by many people who agree with his view about that product) in web, then it may mean huge credibility loss tot he product, brand or service! This in turn may result in huge revenue loss to the brand owner!

For a person, it may tarnish his image, destroy ones authority on his subject both online and offline, which may result immediate loss of revenue, embarrassment! Imagine a doctor or hospital whose reputation goes down! Or which gets bad reviews online, no one will take their patients to them!

The same is true for a blogger! But since a blogger can be anonymous, both good review or bad review may help him getting more visitors to his website! And normally, more visitors mean more revenue for a blogger! But if blogger blogs about some of his authoritative subject and he he gets bad reviews, his offline revenue may go down! For example, if a photographer blogs about “Photography“, and if he gets negative review, tweet, or status update in Facebook, his blog may get more visitors, but he may lose many photography assignment!

One of the most interesting thing is, Google stores almost all information including the tweets, reviews, blog posts about any one, any product or service and Google shows them when some one searches about that product, brand, service or person!

So, everyone, whether depends on internet/website or not, needs to do Online Reputation monitoring!

The very first question I am asked, as soon as I introduce myself as blogger to any one, is “How I earn for living ?”!

I find it hard to reply, even when I reply, I do not find people to be convinced. So I thought, if you are really curious, here are how I earn from blogging:-

1. I earn from inquiries sent to my blogs. People do send inquiries about IVR Software requirements. I pass on them to related IVR companies and I earn from them.

2. I earn some from advertisements in my blogs.

3. I earn from Google Adsense. Not much. But I earn some. But one day, I hope to earn good amount from Google AdSense. According to me, Google AdSense can provide one regular and sufficient earning per month if one devotes proper time in blogging!

4. I have ancestral land and I do farming there. I want to go back to my village and do farming and blog, full time.

5. I am trying to learn and earn from photography. It is difficult, but I am trying.

Blogging, Farming an Photography are three fields where I would like to earn my living. Presently, these are not main bread earner, but I hope to achieve soon.

I have been blogging for four years now! While I blog variety of subjects, my main and original blog is IVR ( Interactive Voice Response) System which was my first blog with .COM domain!

It has been a good experience with the blog. I have come to know many people in the small IVR industry in the world, learned many technologies in IVR!

There have been many encouraging comments by visitors! One of the best comment is when, one web visitors thanked me for putting up list of IVR companies! He applied to some companies and got a job!

Apart from that, there have been many interactions among company representative as well as their customers on the blog!

I attended a photography workshop conducted by Shiresh R Karrale in December 2011. It was my first photography workshop and I did not know what to expect from it!

The first day was kind of introduction of the participants as well as Shiresh Karrale. We were shown pictures taken by him which were breath taking! I could not understand many sentences about photography told by him!

Int he second day, he explained us about taking portrait! Taking portrait is is a challenging task, which I did not know before! The tricks of taking portrait depend more on the lighting than the camera equipment! Well, I knew that lighting is important, but never knew it is that important!