.NET From India

Ad Supported Applications

I have an idea for an application that is focused on some india specific needs for which I don't see an application out there that fits well. My current thought process is that I will create this application and then maybe offer it free, maybe with some kind of Ad support for the hosting and other costs. This is not a pure web app, but rather a smart client kind of application. For a web site, I know that Google Ads work out very well, but what about a smart client applications?

Before Google Ads, you had to be a very sucessful site with millions of hits to get some kind of Ad revenue. But now even sites like mine with a few hundreds of hits a day can make enough to cover my hosting costs. Is there an equivalent for the smart client/desktop space?

I know that the big games developers sell Ad space on their games, but what about smaller application developers. Also I want to be sure that this is not of the spyware type, but rather non-intrusive text or graphics based Ads that will not invade the users privacy and that will not scare users away. Has anyone tried something like this before?

Have I run foul of the Weather God

Cross post of the original post at my personal blog "Thoughts From India" (http://www.thougtsindia.org)

With all the news about the climatic change and environment, actually made me think about some of the recent brushes I have had with the weather gods recently. It seems to be too much of a coincidence, but I happen to have been in two different places, exactly when they experienced some very bad weather.

I was in Seattle in the second week of December. After around 4-5 days there, I was getting ready to leave, when one of the worst storms in the past few years hit Seattle. Power was out the night I was supposed to fly out. I reach the airport nice and early in the morning, after packing my stuff using a torchlight (as the electricity was out through the night). I see a big queue at the Delta counter. Reached there to hear them announcing that all flights were delayed by over 4 hours or so. The reason, there was no power, so no computers, so no ticketing. The planes were actually standing there at the gates, but they could not print out our boarding passes to get us on to those planes. Of course, with that kind of a delay, there was not chance of me catching my flight. And worst of all, Air France, which is what I was connecting to had no flights the next day. So had to spend two extra days in Seattle before returning to Chennai.

Next, on a weeks trip to London, another bad storm hits London, UK and coastal Europe. Luckily there is no power cut in London, just traffic snarls and most of the underground running delayed or canceled.

So looks like the Weather gods are not pleased with me and follow me with storms whenever I go abroad..:)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Got a mail from Amazon that they are accepting pre-orders for the last Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and it is still more than three months away!!!!

Vista Drivers

One of my fellow MVP pointed to this Vista Drivers Page that has links to Vista compatible drivers for most of the common devices.

If you are installing Vista on your older machine, then this is a very useful resource and saves a lot of time you will spend searching for drivers. especially you built your machine over time, adding components over time.