Corbis, started by Bill Gates in 1989, owns millions of images, some of them kept underground in a former limestone mine in rural Pennsylvania – reports in an article by New York Times. Mr. Gates started Corbis in 1989 with the idea that people would someday decorate their homes with a revolving display of digital artwork.

Corbis has spent tens of millions of dollars acquiring image collections and other companies, hired more than 1,000 people and set up two dozen offices worldwide. NY Times, further says that, although Corbis brings in some $250 million a year in sales, it has yet to turn a profit. Meanwhile Corbis has built up a formidable stash of historical photos, including those in the Bettmann Archive. In 1999, Corbis acquired the licensing rights to the Sygma collection in France, and two years ago it did the same with a German stock image company called Zefa. It licenses those images for an average of about $250 apiece.
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It’s Women’s Day. And suddenly everybody is talking about celebrating womanhood. There are a lot of articles about women’s issues. Various programmes organised for women on television. There are a lot of schemes for women, discounts at various places and the likes. I like this concept of celebrating womanhood. But I have issues with one day for doing the same. Although even this one day is good to begin with all this seems like a farce.

What happens to women everyday is of utmost importance. There are a lot of women’s issues that have not even been addressed. For instance wife battering, being raped by their own husbands an so on.
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“Bought your girlfriend flowers although you know she’s allergic to them? Can’t think of anything except chocolates even though she’s on a diet? Log onto blah blah blah dot com and get innovative ideas for a Valentine’s day gift!”

When The Beatles sang “Money Can’t Buy Me Love”, they had no clue about Hallmark moments that would set the template and price for emotions. Since Esther Howland, the woman who produced the first commercial American valentines in the 1840s, sold a then mind-boggling $5,000 in cards during her first year of business, the valentine industry has been booming.

People now believe that Valentine’s Day announces your place in life, declares your popularity publicly and assesses your worth, and, from being a bonanza only for card companies, this “occasion” has blossomed into a day of immense profit for entrepreneurs in all fields, ranging from estate agents (“This Valentine’s day, gift her something she’ll treasure forever. Gift her a Mantri home”) to diamond merchants (“A diamond is forever”) to horticulturists (“Today’s headlines– 50 million rose buds exported to foreign shores for Valentine’s Day”) to the music industry (“Top ten romantic albums – only Rs.1999”) to tour operators (“The Perfect Valentine’s Day Gift – A Tour of the Seven Wonders”) to fitness clubs (“This Valentine’s Day, lose that extra weight, and make him fall in love with you all over again”) to mobile network operators (“Romantic wallpapers, pictures and caller tunes. For more details, visit Hutchworld”) to the ever popular Worldspace (“Make every day Valentine’s Day.

Gift your lover a Worldspace today” to your neighbourhood supermarket (“Offers to fall in love with this Valentine’s Day”) to websites packed with information on do’s and don’ts for Valentine’s Day.
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As “Flickr (Flickr)”:http://www.flickr.com/ is one such popular site, people spend a lot of time on the site. Some organizations are known to block Flickr. Organizations don’t want their employees wasting time on social networking sites. If Flickr is blocked in your organization, the easy way to access it is though a different url.

For instance my original “Flickr Photos (Flickr Photos)”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/brajeshwar/ can be accessed with a suffix of “mud.yahoo (mud.yahoo)”:http://www.flickr.mud.yahoo.com/photos/brajeshwar/.

Times of India, one of the most popular newspaper in India carries an article on “Digg (Digg)”:http://digg.com/. So, beware, there might an Indian troll on Digg looming around the corner ready to pounce anytime.

The Indians are very patient, they can do repetitive and mundane task very effectively, they are quick to catch up with simple, quick to finish jobs. Seeing the growth of *PO (read, KPO, ITO, BPO and all the other POs) in India, the above statement is evident that the majority of the Indian Technical Swarm is good with such works including the new growth of self proclaimed SEO experts, Web Masters and of course the much praised Technical Engineer Workforce working in “Call Centers and BPOs (Call Centers and BPOs)”:http://ojustme.com/2006/11/a-deafening-time-bomb-waiting-at-indian-call-centers/.

“Times of India (Times of India)”:http://www.timesofindia.com/ is perhaps one of the most popular Daily Newspaper in India. It carries a page on technology related article everyday just before the sports section. This section is where I don’t miss and I shirk everyday with the feeling “can’t they be a bit advanced than this”. All the news, technical articles are about 3 to 4 days old at most and sometimes a week or a month old. Let me take that with a pinch of salt assuming that it is well suited for the other regular people who don’t need to and want to live on the bleeding edge of technical happenings. So, it is OK.

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Articles promoted to the front page of Digg from my submissions hit the 100th mark with Get A Mac: surgery, sabotage, and tech support. My profile is currently ranked at 61 at the time of writing this article and is the 54th most popular on the Top Diggers List.

*My Current Digg Status*

Overall Ranking: 61
News & Videos Dugg: 4,601
News & Videos Submitted: 672
News & Videos Made Popular: 102
Popular Stories Ratio: 15%
Profile Views: 9,635

*Graphical Re-Presentation From DiggSig*

Happy Digging.

Well, it looks like it has become more of speed and timing when you can submit articles from Ars Technica to Digg that gets dugg most of the times. It looks like every article from Ars Technica have been submitted to Digg!