Category Archives: MyOrbit Blogs

Daily Time Management

Time is our greatest resource. Nobody can stop or stock time. Everyone will have the same 24 hours per day. What we do with this time decides where we go in life. We never seem to have enough of it and it seems to pass so quickly. What we can do is make the most of the time we have. Here are 7 simple steps to get the most out of each day.

1. Plan your day the night before – At the end of each day write out all the things you need to do the following day to achieve your goals. Pull together all the information you’ll need, phone numbers and relevant paperwork.

2. Prioritise the list – Number each item and do the nasty jobs first. There’s always the temptation to do the easy jobs first. However, think how the thought of doing the nasty jobs hangs over you as you do the easy stuff. Think how good you’ll feel when the nasties are out of the way and how motivated you’ll feel. Continue reading

Notes for Commercial Real Estate Investments

Commercial real estate is defined as property that is used for the purpose of commerce. For example, an office building, a warehouse, retail store, shopping center or an apartment building with five or more units.

Today in 2010, due to the global recession since 2008, there is a much higher supply of commercial real estate than its demand, and hence the prices are attractive and can be negotiated hard by interested buyers.

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/05/0529_commercialrealestate/image/4_gherkinbuilding.jpg

We expect that commercial real estate prices may correct by 10-20% in 2011 depending on the country and city. In general one can’t go wrong with buying commercial real estate (office space, rather than shopping malls) in big cities if the time frame is 5-10 years.

The risk-reward is more in commercial property than in residential property. Commercial real estate returns can give attractive over 5-10 year period; much better than you would get from residential real estate of the same proportion.

Location is very important in commercial real estate. Our experience has been that “it is better in general” to have a small space at a busy city-center/downtown place, than to a big space at a suburb.

London and New York are two cities that will deliver good returns despite recession if you can invest for 5-10 years. Irrespective of where you are in the world, see if you can invest in commercial property in high growth cities like Mumbai, New Delhi, Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc. These cities can deliver 5x returns in 10 years. Continue reading

Miracle 2010: All 33 Miners Rescued Safely from San Jose Mine in Chile

All 33 Miners Rescued Safely from San Jose Mine in Chile, and it is an amazing feat.  This is a miracle. We are very happy to see all miners come back alive and safely. 33 out of 33 in such a difficult mining accident will make it a milestone in mining history, or any engineering accident for that matter.

And it has been made possible by (1) sheer determination of the trapped miners to survive and (2) absolute top class engineering and mining effort by the rescue teams. We hear the total team was made of experts from USA, Germany, and many other countries. NASA also helped with special high calorie liquid food and psychological coaching to the trapped miners to survive the long isolation. This is a world class example for Project Management.

Congratulations to all people involved in this extremely well executed project.

estamos muy contentos de los mineros! le deseamos una larga vida!

Juan Carlos Aguilar

Fenix was the capsule designed to rescue one miner at a time.

Miner Jose Ojeda arrives as the seventh miner ...
Residents rally in support of the miners trapped ...
Following were photos taken from inside the mine on 27 August 2010, and we were praying for the safety of the miners, and today we are very happy after their successful rescue mission.

http://l1.yimg.com/a/i/ww/news/2010/08/27/082710minervid2.jpg

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20100827/capt.df5fb5040dea4d1aa7dfbf3601ba93e3-df5fb5040dea4d1aa7dfbf3601ba93e3-0.jpg?x=213&y=163&xc=1&yc=1&wc=409&hc=313&q=85&sig=HcuDaYZ_FDsuIeKPWm7RUA--

UK HMRC at melting point with over £40 billion uncollected tax

This audio interview reveals a very difficult situation within the UK HMRC, which has the responsibility to collect taxes, with £40 billion uncollected tax due to bad software systems and under-staffing.

UK HMRC at melting point

There are a million pieces of unanswered post. It will be taking 3 months to answer them, which itself might increase the problem further if a person has to pay back taxes with interest.

The UK HMRC contact centers are severely under-staffed, and that fact comes out from numerous press reports of people having to wait for a long time just to be able to speak to a tax officer to understand any discrepency in the tax numbers they have with them vs what HMRC is asking from them.

The average tax payment due is about £1400 and about 1.4 million people will receive letters from HMRC by Christmas.

So if you are in the UK and frustrated with not having any response from the HMRC, now you understand that many others are facing the same, and that the staff at HMRC are stretched to the limits already.

As long as you keep the communication from your side intact, it should be okay.

Search Engine Marketing update: Google Instant

Hello Folks, you may have started seeing the latest update in Google search engine. Its called Google Instant.

Since many companies and professionals have used MyOrbit services for their online business, I wanted to share this with you. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/sep/09/google-instant-effect-on-seo

What is clear is that Google wants to offer long-tail keywords to users as early as possible in the search process.

For example, along with the keyword: “Hair Transplant Surgery Cost”, people will also see options like: “how much does hair transplant surgery cost”, and the latter phrase will now receive many clicks too, even though its hardly a keyword in today’s internet marketing book.

Earlier such a longer sentence or question would have received very few direct clicks because people won’t type long text, but people can surely select longer text if its offered as a drop-down like it is being done now, thereby generating more exposure/visits to web content built on long tail keywords than today.

In addition, Google has been working hard to improve “personalization”, which means they want to show you things relevant to your search profile based on past searches, geography, etc.

What does it mean for website owners and SEO? I believe websites that cover their topic thoroughly using all possible keywords and their natural expressions will ultimately come out winners.

We will study this further to see how Google Instant can be used for our work, and will share the learning with you. Meanwhile all basic SEO work should continue because that is essential to get started in the search engine indexing game.

Best Wishes,
Shankar