Top 10 brands of India

Here is the list of top brands of the second most populous and one of the largest economy in the world. India has many world renowned brands and has a strong presence in western countries too but this list rates the brands on its novelty, importance and obviously quality and respect among the Indian customers.

1. Amul

Amul is more than just a milk brand to the Indians. Its advertising campaign has always represented the common man's point of view on the serious national issues with a sense of beautiful humour. Amul has been ranked as the best brand from India.

Owned and marketed by Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), Amul has beaten all other Indian brands to notch the 89th position in a 'Top 1000 Brands of Asia' survey, conducted by Campaign magazine.

The July issue of Campaign, published from Hong Kong and Singapore, ranked Amul the number one among Indian brands.

The mascot of the brand is a cute little girl often referred to as "amul baby".

2.  Kingfisher Airlines

Owned by the flamboyant Indian billionaire, Vijay Mallya, Kingfisher is the leading Indian Airlines having presence in both low cost and premium services.

Kingfisher started its operation in May 2005 and has been ranked 5 star Airline by the independent consultancy research firm.

3. Big Bazaar

Launched in 2001, Big Bazaar started off with four stores in Calcutta, Indore, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

In a span of ten years, there are 148 Big Bazaar stores in 80 cities and towns across India.

Big Bazaar offers a wide range of merchandise including fashion and apparels, food products, general merchandise, furniture, electronics and books.

Big Bazaar is part of Future Group, a wholly owned subsidiary of Pantaloon Retail India Limited.

4. ICICI Bank

India's largest private sector bank having total assets of nearly $91 billlion is one of the most respected companies of India.

Even during the economic recession, ICICI bank was among the only few banks in the entire world which got least affected and barely lost their any client.

5. State Bank of India

The State Bank of India is the largest Indian banking and financial services company (by turnover and total assets) with its headquarters in Mumbai.

The bank traces its ancestry to British India, through the Imperial Bank of India, to the founding in 1806 of the Bank of Calcutta, making it the oldest commercial bank in the Indian Subcontinent.

6. Airtel

Bharti Airtel operates in 19 countries across South Asia, Africa and the Channel Islands. It operates a GSM network in all countries, providing 2G or 3G services.

Airtel is the fifth largest telecom operator in the world with over 207.8 million subscribers across 19 countries at the end of 2010.

It is the largest cellular service provider in India, with over 164.61 million subscribers at the end of 2011 April.

Founded in July 1995, Airtel also offers fixed line services and broadband services.

7. Cafe Coffee Day

Cafe Coffee Day, a division of India's largest coffee conglomerate, Amalgamated Bean Coffee Trading Company, grows coffee in its own estates of 10,000 acres.

It is the largest producer of Arabica beans in Asia. ABCTCL is one of India's leading coffee exporters with clients across USA, Europe and Japan.

The first CCD outlet was set up in July 1996 at Bengaluru. Today there are 1000 outlets across India. Their tagline 'A lot can happen over coffee' became popular among youngsters.

8. Titan

Founded in 1987, Titan Industries is the world's fifth largest wrist watch manufacturer. Titan, Fastrack, Sonata, Nebula, Raga, Regalia, Octane and Xylys are the popular brands of Titan watches.

Titan is a joint venture between the Tata Group, and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO).

Its product portfolio includes watches, accessories and jewellery, in both contemporary and traditional designs. It manufactures precious jewellery under the Tanishq brand.

9. Lakme

Lakme started as a 100 per cent subsidiary of Tata Oil Mills (Tomco), part of the Tata Group.

Lakme started making cosmetics for Indian women in 1952. In 1996 Tata sold off their stakes in Lakme to Unilever for Rs 200 Crore (Rs 2 billion).

Lakme has also set up Lakme Beauty Salons all over India.

10.  HDFC Bank

Founded in August 1994, HDFC Bank has 1,725 branches and over 5,000 ATMs, in 780 cities in India.

For the fiscal year 2010-11, the bank has reported net profit of Rs 3,926.30 crore (Rs 39.26 billion), up 33.1 per cent from the previous fiscal.

The total annual earnings of the bank increased by 20.37 per cent to  Rs 24,263.4 crore (Rs 242.63 billion) in 2010-11.

10 most expensive cities in the World

Global consultancy firm Mercer recently came up with a survey to determine the cost of living of cities across the world.The index for the survey is based on cost of living expressed in US dollars.

If the dollar weakens against the local currency of a city, the city becomes more expensive and moves up the index, even if prices expressed in local currency remain the same or even go down.

The survey covered 214 cities across five continents and measures the comparative cost of over 200 items in each location, including housing, transport, food, clothing, household goods and entertainment.

Rank 1: Luanda

Luanda is the capital and the largest city of Angola.
It has an excellent natural harbour; the chief exports are coffee, cotton, sugar, diamonds, iron, and salt.
The city also has a thriving building industry, an effect of the nationwide economic boom experienced since 2002, when political stability returned with the end of the civil war.

Rank 2: Tokyo

Tokyo was originally a small fishing village named Edo.
It is one of the three world finance 'command centres', along with New York City and London.
Tokyo was rated by the Economist Intelligence Unit as the most expensive (highest cost-of-living) city in the world for 14 years in a row ending in 2006.The Tokyo Stock Exchange is Japan's largest stock exchange, and second largest in the world by market capitalisation.

Rank 3: N'Djamena

The largest city in Chad, N'Djamena is a port city on the Chari River, near the confluence with the Logone River.
It is a regional market for livestock, salt, dates, and grains.
Meat, fish and cotton processing are the chief industries, and the city continues to serve as the centre of economic activity in Chad.

Rank 4: Moscow

The city is named after the river Moskva.
Moscow is one of largest city economies in Europe and it comprises approximately 20 per cent of Russian gross domestic product.
In 2006, Mercer Human Resources Consulting named Moscow as the world's most expensive city for expatriate employees, ahead of Tokyo.

The Cherkizovskiy marketplace is the largest marketplace in Europe with daily turnover of about $30 million and about ten thousand sellers from different countries (including China, Turkey, Azerbaijan and India).

Primary industries in Moscow include chemical, metallurgy, food, textile, furniture, energy production, software development and machinery.

Rank 5: Geneva

Geneva's economy is mainly services oriented. The city has a finance sector, which specialises in private banking and financing of international trade. It is also an important centre of commodity trade.
Watchmakers, Baume et Mercier, Charriol, Chopard, Franck Muller, Patek Philippe, Gallet, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Rolex, Raymond Weil, Omega, Vacheron Constantin, and international producers of flavours and fragrances, Firmenich and Givaudan, have their headquarters in Geneva.
The Geneva Motor Show is one of the most important international auto-shows. The show is held at Palexpo, a giant convention centre located next to the International Airport.

It is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland.

Rank 6: Osaka

Osaka literally means 'large hill' or 'large slope'.Historically, Osaka was the centre of commerce in Japan.
However, many major companies have now moved their main offices to Tokyo. Panasonic, Sharp, Sanyo, video game maker Capcom are still headquartered in Osaka.

The Osaka Securities Exchange specialises in derivatives such as Nikkei 225 futures.

Rank 7: Zurich

Zurich is not only the largest city in Switzerland is also a leading financial centre.
The most important sector in the economy of Zurich is the service industry, which employs nearly four fifths of workers.
Other important industries include light industry, machine and textile industries and tourism. Most Swiss banks have their headquarters in Zurich.

The Swiss Stock Exchange, established in 1877, is one of the most important stock exchanges in the world.

Rank 8: Singapore

Singapore has a highly developed market-based economy. Along with Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan, Singapore is one of the Four Asian Tigers.

The economy depends heavily on exports and refining imported goods, especially in manufacturing.
Manufacturing constituted 26 per cent of Singapore's GDP in 2005.The manufacturing sector boasts of electronics, petroleum refining, chemicals, mechanical engineering and biomedical industries.

Singapore has one of the busiest ports in the world and is the world's fourth largest foreign exchange trading centre after London, New York City and Tokyo.

Rank 9: Hong Kong

Hong Kong was once described as the world's greatest experiment in laissez faire.
It still maintains a highly developed capitalist economy, ranked the freest in the world by the Index of Economic Freedom for 15 consecutive years.
Hong Kong's currency is the Hong Kong dollar, which has been pegged to the US dollar since 1983.
It imports most of its food and raw materials.
Much of its exports consist of re-exports, which are products made outside of the territory, especially in mainland China, and distributed via Hong Kong.

Rank 10: Sao Paolo

Sao Paulo, in Brazil, is transforming from a strong industrialised base into a service and technology-oriented offshoring location.
The city has a mix of global multinational executives who have their BPOs and contact centers providing IT services and R&D.
Brazilian exports are currently scaling new heights, its major export products being aircraft, coffee, automobiles, soybean, iron ore, orange juice, steel, ethanol, textiles, footwear, corned beef and electrical equipment.

List of Top Online Brands

Each quarter, General Sentiment releases its “Top Global Brands Report,” which ranks brands based on the dollar value of their online “buzz.”

What does that mean exactly?

General Sentiment measures these brands based on two criteria: impact value and perception value.

Impact value measures all online mentions of the brands and places a value on the overall level of discussion and exposure for the brand. Perception value measures the positive, negative, and neutral mentions of the brand.

Now that we’re caught up, here are the top 20 brands from the first quarter and the overall dollar amount of their “buzz”:

1. Apple - $952, 303
2. Google - $704,327
3. Microsoft - $522,769
4. Yahoo - $259,046
5. Ford - $251,683
6. Intel - $202,262
7. Toyota - $176,861
8. eBay - $132,569
9. Hewlett-Packard - $131,525
10. Sony - $129,700
11. IBM - $121,297
12. Nokia - $117,588
13. Mercedes-Benz - $110,782
14. Oracle - $108,570
15. Samsung - $94,831
16. Disney - $93,442
17. GE - $90,621
18. Starbucks - $74,647
19. Honda - $74,391
20. Goldman Sachs - $74,042

Top 10 bloggers

Blogging, which is no more a mere social hobby to voice your opinion on interesting topics, but over the years it has been transformed into the serious business. With major blogs having more than 100 million dollars valuation, blogging has changed the lives of these opinion makers. The blog directory websites like "technorati" itself have registered more than 150,000,000 blogs since 2002. According to the reports approximately 80% of the active internet users have read or subscribed to some or the other blog. So here is the list of few money makers who hit the bulls eye in this utterly clouded sphere called as "Blogosphere".
Here is the list of  owners of top 10 blogs.

      1.  Arianna Huffington

Blog                  Huffington Post

Type of site      News & blogging

Launched          May 9, 2005

Located             New York City, New York, U.S.

Key people        Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief

                           Tim Armstrong, Chief Executive Officer

                           Roy Sekoff, editor

Parent               AOL

Slogan              "The Internet Newspaper: News, Blogs, Video, Community"

Alexa rank        95 (July 2011)

Available in       English

Current status   Active

    2.  Pete Cashmore

Blog                   Mashable
Type                  Social media,technology,mobiles
Launched           July 2005
Located             New York City, New York, U.S.
Key people        Pete Cashmore, Chief Executive Officer
                           Adam Ostrow, Editor-in-Chief
                           Ben Parr, Editor-at-Large
Parent                Mashable Inc.
Slogan               "The Social Media Guide"
Alexa rank        176 (July 2011)
Current status   Active

   3. Michael Arrington

Blog                   Tech Crunch
Type                  Technology news and analysis
Launched          June 11, 2005
Located             New York,U.S
Key People       Michael arrington
                          Dave Feldman, Product manager
                          Matt Scheinker, manager
Parent               AOL
Alexa rank        217 (July 2011)
Current status  Active

 4.  Henry Blodget

Blog                   Business Insider
Type                  Online Newsroom,Business
Launched          February 2009
Located             New York, USA
Key People       Dwight Merriman
                          Kevin Ryan
                          Henry Blodget,former top-ranked Wall Street analyst
Parent               Silicon Alley Insider, Inc.        
Alexa  rank       389(July 2011)
Current status  Active

5. Faiz Shakir

Blog                   Think Progress

Type                  News and forum of progressive ideas and policies

Launched          2005 

Located             Washington D.C., U.S

Key People       Faiz Shakir

                          Ben Armbruster

                          Amanda peterson

Parent               Center for American Progress Fund

Alexa  rank       6,448 (July 2011)

Current status  Active

6.  Peter Rojas

Blog                   Engadget

Type                  Gadgets, technology weblog

Launched           March, 2004

Located              New York city, New York, U.S

Key People        Peter Rojas, founder

                           Darren Murph, managing director

                           Vlad sanov, senior Associate

Parent                AOL

Alexa rank         316 (July 2011)

Current status    Online

7. Harvey Levin

Blog                  TMZ
Type                 Celebrity news
Launched          November 8, 2005
Located             New York city, New York, US
Key People       Harvey Levin
Parent               Time Warner
Slogan               Celebrity Gossip. Entertainment News. Celebrity News.
Alexa rank   354 (July 2011)
Current status  Active. News-in media

8.  Nick Denton

Blog                   Gawker
Type                  News, gossips Blog network
Launched          January 2003
Located             New York, U.S
Key People       Nick Denton (Publisher)
                           Remy Stern (Editor-in-Chief)
                           Brian Moylan/Richard Lawson
Parent                Gawker media
Alexa rank         903 (July 2011)
Current status   Active

9.  Pete Rojas

Blog                   Gizmodo

Type                  Gizmo, Gadgets, technology blog
Launched          2002
Located             New York, U.S
Key People       Pete Rojas, co-founder
                          Joe Brown,Editorial Director
                          Jason Chen,Editor
                          Jesus Diaz,Senior Contributing Editor
Parent              Gawker Media
Alexa rank   688 (July 2011)
Current status  Online

10.   Tina Brown

Blog                      The daily Beast
Type                     News reporting and opinion blog
Launched             2008
Located                New York, U.S  
Key People          Tina Brown (Editor in chief)
                             Christopher Buckley, Scott Turow, Mark McKinnon
Parent                  The Newsweek Daily Beast Company LLC
Alexa rank          1,377 (July 2011)
Current Status     Active

                                                                                                            COMPILED By- Irfan

How to increase Page Rank of your Website and Blog

Here is the 10 brief ways to increase your page rank. Do follow it to get your "website" or "blog" self optimized for the search engine.

• Use lots of meta keyword tags. Use it WITH Commas. Make sure you don't repeat the same word more than 3 times in a row. Google only indexes the first 101K of the document - so don't use TOO many.

• Make sure you include at least one link to Google. They need quality traffic as well. Don't be greedy and hog it all to yourself. This can do wonders for your pages. Remember - Google may be going public soon - so the more traffic you send them the better

• Use invisible text but make it close - colors like 00FF33 & 00FF66 are both browser safe, but are so close most humans can't tell the difference. Even though Google has over 50 Phds on staff - none of them probably know this - so use it - the bottom of the page is a good place - right above what you will learn in number 4. 

• Dots, Dots, and More Dots. Put them at the bottom of your document like this:      .............

Then link each one to your pages - make sure you link one to Google and for good measure another to Yahoo. Don't link to other sites (other than your own) that aren't search engines. Don't even link to sites that used to be search engines - like AltaVista.

• This tip is probably the most powerful one on here. Make at least three pages on your site and link them as follows:

Page 1 >>>>>> Page 2
Page 2 >>>>>> Page 3
And this is the kicker
Page 3 >>>>>> Page 1

Google will give points to page 2 from page 1, then to page 3 from page 2, and then - if you link it back to page 1 - it starts all over again. I can't even count how many points this will end up giving you. Just don't abuse it too much - or the big sites will complain you are taking too much PR from them.

• Use H1 Tags for your entire page (except the title and other header information). You can use CSS Style sheets to make them look smaller and Google will give you bookoo points for having everything so big on the page (even though it doesn't look big to the user).

• Submit early and submit often. I prefer to submit on a Sunday. That way - on Monday morning - the Googleplex will be swamped with so much to do - my submits will slip by. See the Googleplex hard at work. Would you work to ban submits if you could get FREE goat cheese (especially after doing two days without). Wouldn't you rather play "chopsticks" on a grand piano while getting a massage? Or look at pages all day of Britney Spears?

• Link back too other people linking to your page using link:www.example.org.This is similar to the technique in #5, but not as powerful.

• Be careful spelling. Words like "PENS" and "ANGINA" can easily be mispelled to be words of the male and female anatomy respectively. This will cause Google to mistake your site for an ADUL† Site - and get it banned. Noticed how I used a special character to look like the letter "T" in the word before site. Use clever tricks like this throughout your documents.

• If all else fails - mail a 10 spot wrapped inside a number 10 envelope (make sure you wrap one layer of aluminum foil around it). Write your URL above the serial number on the front. If it won't fit, then that's THE problem - as Google hates long URLs.

Hope it will benefit you as well as me. If you know some more tricks than do let us know by commenting below. We'll publish it in the updated version of this post.

Collection of "Harry Potter" franchise

It all started with the orphaned young boy with the scar in his forehead struggling to find his identity named "Harry Potter" and the rest as they say is history. While Harry had a tough time in destroying "Horcruxes" and going through agony and excruciating pain,  on the other hand his production house "Warner Bros" was laughing straight to the bank with this franchise.

Harry Potter took the box office by storm with the last installment of this magnum opus saga "The deathly hallows- II".

As the poster of the last part said "IT ALL ENDS"....Yeah so true its all definitely ended but not before addind nearly 6 billion dollars to the production house.

Here are the numbers associated with the Harry Potter movies. This Potter boy can spell in the real world too.

Tech guys valuation

Its not surprising that the valuation of tech companies are ranging in millions of dollars within a short period of time. But the geeks behind these ventures are making big moolahs too and their personal stake in those ventures are sky-rocketing. Gone are the days when you needed to complete education to make it big in the industry. The wealth of colllege dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, are in billions of dollars have become the prominent examples of this fact.

Last few years saw many new ventures making it big in the internet and services sector. Companies like "Facebook" and "twitter" revolutionised the social networking, while "digg", "stumble upon" and "delicious" have organised the user's internet activities.

Here is the list of few tech companies with their per founder wealth.