Yahoo! and Indiatimes- Changing times for IndiaWritten by John Benjamin (ProMinds Inc)
Continued from page 1 With Yahoo! having its share in Small Businesses and with Rediff and Indiatimes too venturing into Small-Medium segment, Yahoo! will have upper hand as compares to MSN or Google. According to Alexa.com, which ranks websites based on number of site clicks, top two local portals in India are Rediff.com, ranked 139, and Indiatimes at 316 in a league of 500 most visited sites. Both lag behind Yahoo! India This leaves us with an obvious question as to why tie up with Indiatimes if Yahoo already enjoys a good ranking compared to Rediff and Indiatimes? There are various reasons behind this and one of them is to project Yahoo! India as a completely Indian Portal. Another fact is that when it comes to Online Advertising or PPC Models, none of 2 Indian portals have experience in setting up system to offer to Indian online consumers. Although Rediff has ventured into this model, they still need to clean up ground work. By joining hands with Yahoo!, Indiatimes can, if they want to, get upper hand over Rediff in terms of technology implemented marketing vehicles. All said and done, story is yet to begin. It’s a win-win situation here with both parties (read as Yahoo! and Indiatimes) looking at seriously expanding their online presence. While Yahoo! can try to out beat its rivals MSN, and partly Google, Indiatimes can be comfortably slated to slide over Rediff and actually make it to number 1 slot, with Yahoo! India backing it up. By reaching out to Indian Markets, and already having consolidated its position in Chinese market, Yahoo! is surely one company to look out for. After Google and MSN, may be its time for Yahoo to be in spotlight. And finally, with these changes happening, may be its time Indian markets have opened up and recognized online marketing.

John Benjamin works as an Internet Marketing freelance consultant. He also operates his website http://www.promindsinc.com
| | What is it with FireFox?Written by Pete Crewdson
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Open Source Project and Patches? There are currently hundreds, possibly thousands of FireFox patches and upgrades for download across Internet. Adding to bare-bone structure of original FireFox, these patches allow more usability and customisation of FireFox browser - but with patches not being "officially endorsed" by Mozilla Foundation, these patches could cause browsers security issues to be exposed - all it would take is one malicious patch. Being Open Source Software means browsers coding is commercially available to anybody who wishes to use it - The upside to this is that FireFox can ease strain a bit by letting people continue to work with code and create patches, cover up security holes and customise browser to how they feel it should be, without encouragement of Mozilla Foundation. Feedback and Production? One thing that is prominent in FireFox is its "fan base", a dedicated following of users who promote to death and spread word about FireFox. One thing that people like about FireFox is how much designers appreciate and encourage feedback and ideas on project. This is a browser that they want people to use, and way they do it is by letting people tell them what they want. What more can they do? And after all that, no, I am still not convinced that FireFox is a good enough browser for me to make a switch. I can understand hype behind it, but I'm sure it will soon die down. There are plenty of flaws and design features which are snarled at in FireFox, and as a web developer and website builder, it is not easy to get around them using new methods of building on market (CSS based browsing, for example). FireFox is, in its own right, a good browser, and once they have smoothed everything out, then maybe I will think about a switch again.

Pete is the owner of the Forfeit The Game Network, Forfeit The Game: A Linkin Park Fansite, and runs the Forfeit The Game Media Weblog - For all the latest Music, TV, Film, Computer and Internet and Sports articles.
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