MamunAhmed.com » Business

Site review: FunnyJunk.com -where the junks are funny. The pioneer of the social picture sharing

Mamun Ahmed — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 14:33:28 +0000

FunnyJunk is an image and video sharing website where people post funny pictures, animated gifs and funny videos. After posting other users can vote if it is funny or junk and comment on the pictures. According to its statistics page, everyday it gets on average 600/700 new sign ups, 20m page views and 90k comments. Given the fact that this site has never done any marketing or PR the statistics figures are pretty good.

Registering and uploading something on the site process is pretty simple. From users aspect simplicity strikes a chord. I signed up on the site within few minutes and started voting by clicking on funny or junk options.

The FunnyJunk.com also known as fj among the users. It has a very close knit community. In my first visit to the site, I came across to some really funny images. Most of the images reflect the real life stories of the users. Here is one I found quite funny.

The site has been floating around on the web for quite awhile. The whois information is showing the site was first registered more than 10 years ago on 2001. I am guessing the site had its own thumbs up and thumbs down time over the last 10 years. But it also seemed it had a viral effect after launching on the users.

Sharing things socially has been a big thing for last 5/6 years. We have seen the growth of Hot or Not, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr etc sites all were built on the idea of getting the users to fill up the site and sharing with other users.

FunnyJunk also made me think- if it was the pioneer of social image/video sharing, which has been a catalyst of the aforementioned sites, which were based on social sharing model.

The number of people comment and vote on each image are astonishing. I am pondering of Tumblr actually got the idea from FunnyJunk when they first started.

If you are bored and want to see some really funny jokes, comics and videos you can visit FunnyJunk by clicking this link.

Let me know if you ever visited FunnyJunk and what do you think about it by commenting below.

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Locanto Classifieds Canada introduced the French version

Mamun Ahmed — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 09:19:25 +0000

Locanto Classifieds now offers a French version of its local classifieds sites in 38 major cities across Canada to cater to the needs of the large Francophone community.

The English version of Locanto Canada (www.locanto.ca) has been offering the Anglophone community a free classifieds platform for all their local needs since November 2006. Given the increased number of ads written in French, it was time for a French site to accommodate to the more than six million Francophones in Canada. The French site can be reached at www.fr.locanto.ca.

Although the Internet has made the world smaller and more connected, most of life still takes place local. In the search for a new home, a babysitter, or a car, nearby offers in a language that the users are most comfortable with are the best solution. Within the site, users are able to switch between the English and the French site by clicking on “EN” or “FR” at the top right corner of the Locanto sites. The French Locanto Canada site with its over 400 categories offers a well structured site that meets these everyday local needs.

The Francophone community of Canada represents more than six million people and has its own identity. With the French Locanto Canada site, we aim to meet the local conditions and culture of the Francophone communities in Canada and be as authentic as possible”, says Klaus Gapp, CEO and founder of Yalwa, the company behind Locanto.

Besides Canada, Locanto Classifieds is available in five more French speaking countries (France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Belgium, and Morocco). A French blog and a dedicated French customer support team that devoted to help the Francophone Locanto community with answers to all of their questions regarding the website complete the French service offered by Locanto.

About Yalwa: The local Internet company Yalwa, a start-up based in Germany, develops and operates Internet platforms that are free, helpful, and most of all: local. Yalwa, a free business directory, a skalo, a location based Q&A community, and Locanto, a free classifieds site are all offered in 40 countries worldwide, covering five different languages (Dutch, English, French, German, and Spanish).

Source: press ralease

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Site review: Bonsoni.com – Your online marketplace

Mamun Ahmed — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:24:18 +0000

Intriguing site – convenient to use and provided that you are keeping an eye you can get yourself some great bargains as well as giveaways. Already I found a free desktop computer from there. In their own word-

“Bonsoni.com is an online marketplace for buying and selling items, properties, finding a flat share, jobs, local services, free to collect items and many other categories.

Our aim is to provide a simple, safe, friendly but nimble platform for people to connect with each other, and trade goods and services”

Bosnoni.com successfully avoided Gumtree and Craigslist issues with spam and scam stuff, the aforementioned websites can learn a lot from this new promising start-up.

One of the things I really liked of this site was, when users post an ad they don’t need to fill up page after pages of information. The site allows you to post an ad in single page with just few clicks. After posting the ad users can easily manage them from their account, which is really useful.

The design and usability of Bonsoni.com is 10/10, very easy on eye. Space planning as well as the categories are up to the scratch.

Replying to an ad also very easy on Bonsoni.com, as long as an user is signed in, no need to fill up captcha. They don’t charge to post any ads not even on the services or Jobs section.

Whethers its getting a used TV or searching for accommodation hunting for a job or trying to find a free of charge haircut then Bonsoni.com an excellent site to look at.

You can visit Bonsoni.com by clicking here

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International Calling Cards – A Hidden Gem for the UK Telecom Industry

Mamun Ahmed — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:17:16 +0000

A quick Google research on how much the International prepaid calling cards in UK market worth did not bring any results, if it were bringing any results at all that would be a surprise. However, it brought some information about North American domestic and international calling card market, that combined are $2.75 billion in 2008. In 1995 the same market was worth merely $750 million.

The increasing amounts of the immigrants bolstering the sales of the International calling cards in both side of the Atlantic. UK mobile operators are more often offering plenty of “free minutes” with the mobile phone packages, but visibly failed to attract the customers with the need of international calls.

Hopefully the mobile phone industry would not repeat the British Airways fiasco, by not counting the “budget customers”. Vodafone already sensed that hidden market, which prompted them to offer a package with free roaming in EU.

Most of the news agents have a long list of calling cards on display to show the availability. The cards are very easy to use, anyone can use the cards. Also it gives a great amount of mobility, if someone has free minutes on the mobile and a calling card on the pocket; it gives them licence to ring any parts of the world from anywhere. Leisure and business travelers are quite frequent in UK. Keeping contact with home and family is one of the biggest challenges for travelers. These cards allow them to ring anywhere using payphone’s free 0800 number.

All of the cards are pre-paid so the companies do not need to chase people up for the incurred bills, even sometimes the frequent travelers do not spend all of the available minutes before leaving the country. From that unused numbers calling card companies also making money.

The biggest challenge of this industry is to maintain the quality of the calls. Most of the companies always make some money at the beginning but after that most of them become greedy and lower the quality of the service. Customer care service virtually not existed in this industry. Therefore the customers are looking forward to a reliable company they can trust.

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Time for Self Service Postal Machines for Royal Mail?

Mamun Ahmed — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:17:27 +0000

I wonder what people do when they have a Mon-Fri hectic jobs, but need to post something recorded or next day delivery items. Posting something which needs customised pricing is a night mare, if you have hardly anytime in your hand during the week. It leaves only option of Saturday posting. But only specialised post office branches are open on Saturday for few hours.

In the era of technology and Do It Yourself services, Post office do not offer self service posting facilities yet, it sounds a bit odd. You can do banking, shopping , buying train tickets and many other things using self services but you can’t post recorded delivery letters.

According to The National Federation of SubPostmasters, services designed to boost incomes are failing to deliver. They also called on the Government to introduce “tangible new work” for post offices.

There are plenty of people out there those who are avoiding to use the Royal Mail services just for it has a time consuming method of working. Just to post a letter using the counter service you need to wait average 15 minutes. People do not have that amount of time in their hands anymore. Well, Royal Mail do have a service where people are able to print off the stamps off the net, but if anyone wants to have a next day delivery or recorded, still you need to queue up on a post office.

I wonder why the Royal Mail not introducing 24/7 self service postal machines? If Royal Mail been compared with other services, it seems it is so old fashioned.

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Everyone is Green

Mamun Ahmed — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:24:41 +0000

There is a competition going on in UK among all of the companies to prove how green they are. Everyone is trying to relate the message to the public that they are the greenest company in UK. There is a surge of proving everyone that they are environment friendly by making everything green.

They are adding a slogans next to their brand name and sometimes changing the colour of their fonts. But is it enough to prove themselves as a green company?

Tesco introduces zero emission delivery fleet, which says “Blue on the outside, Green on the inside” , According to The Sunday Times 60 Best Green Companies, Tesco came fifteenth. Not bad for a company with a size like this.

i-TV gone green as well. During the commercial breaks they will show a big green button saying “i-TV”. So the viewers will think i-TV is a green company?

All of the energy companies are in a rat race to prove how green they are, as far as I remember it was the BP who initiated this trend. Even conservative party is trying to be green. Don’t you think all of these are nothing but PR activities fuelled by hypocrisy?

Vodafone Summer Roaming Offer – A Strategy To Becoming Market Leader

Mamun Ahmed — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:27:48 +0000

Vodafone introduces the summer roaming option which allows their customers use the phone while abroad.

Arun Sarin – the former CEO- had the vision to expand the brand and safeguarding their dominance by expanding to emerging markets. By the year of 2010 Vodafone looking to be the largest player in Indian market by securing at least 25% share.

Vodafone Coverage in the World

In Europe, which is a matured market for mobile operators, only unique offers will brought new customers, having realising that Vodafone have introduced the free roaming option on a tester basis.

Although it is very tempting to sign up for this summer offer, but since the customers are more conscious and smarter than ever, they will think twice to switch operators, clearly because there is no guarantee that Vodafone will do the same next year as well.

However, Vodafone has been planning for this quite a long time, now they are closely monitoring how many new customers making queries about this offer, based upon that they will permanently introduce the free roaming option in EU.

Vodafone Market Share in Europe

If any other operators do not act swiftly and quickly jump on the free roaming offer boat, there is a significant possibility that Vodafone would be the number one in the UK market, regardless how hardcore customer retention policy the other companies follow. Remember the TalkTalk and BT fiasco?

However, the Vodafone strategy certainly welcomed by many customers. The overpriced roaming charges are unscrupulous. Vodafone ushering other operators towards a proportional market where the EU customers will certainly be benefitted.

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The Response of the UK Government and The Regulatory Authorities to the Recession

Mamun Ahmed — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 22:33:41 +0000

Jeremy Paxman philosophically asked a question on 1^st July BBC’s Newsnight -

“nearly a year on from the banking crisis, has the government have any idea about how to stop it happening again?”

That is the question from bonus fueled city traders, bankers, the local corner shop owner as well as the all of the taxpayers in this country.

Although there was an amid speculation from the economists and analysts that the 2008 recession going to hit hard to UK economy and perhaps UK GDP set to fall more than 1990′s recession. But UK government took extra few months to acknowledge the presence of the recession in the country.

However, the UK government and regularity authorities acted swiftly to resuscitate the economy. Government increased spending to revamp the money circulation. On the other hand, the FSA and the Bank of England have been drafting a strategy to tame the wild horse natured super size banks.

After the 1990′s dotcom bust, the city became extremely desirous towards the bonus culture than ever. The treasury was controlling the bankers by using their “eyebrow controlling method” before the FSA era, there was no written rule of how to run a bank. But after the birth of FSA, the eyebrow controlling evaporated and FSA handbook become the control margin. Everyone is happy as long as you follow the banking rule bible produced by the FSA.

Now the 64 million dollar question, are the UK government and the financial regularity authorities doing enough to take us out from these crises?

At the beginning of the recession volatility controlled the trading Market. FSA banned short selling for a short period, hoping the recession would end soon. Many people believed short selling was the main reason for the sharp falls of HBO’s share before Lloyds TSB rescued it.

UK government cut the VAT to make public to spend money instead of saving it, but is it good enough help the SMEs?

Bank of England slashed the interest rates to all time low, asked all of the high street banks to pass it on to the consumers, but still there is no definite sign of recovering from this crisis.

Marvyn King – Bank of England governor- declared that big banks with complex structure should be divided in two divisions. One will be operating by taking risk with little capital, the other would be dealing on the high street in good old fashion- ordinary banking. Banks have to have a healthy capital as a back up to allow the banks to absorb the losses should any arises in the future.

The size of the banks and the capital are a vital factor to allow them to fail. Already this “suggestion” been criticised by some analysts. They argued that the problem is not with the banks’ operational structure, it is something else.

However, so far today the UK government and the regularity authorities significantly strengthen regulation supervision and governance to ensure the risk of failure is reduced from future crisis.

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Are The Bankers Are Really Wankers?

Mamun Ahmed — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:31:25 +0000

Since the much hyped credit crisis begin, everyone started to blame all of the bankers and the whole banking industry fuelled by the media. No one ever dared to blame the golden boys before the crisis.

Discuss…

Where is the Speed Controller in My Car?

Mamun Ahmed — Sat, 02 May 2009 10:09:09 +0000

I am just back from a week Holiday in South West part of England. Everyday was consist of quite good few hours driving for site seeing purposes.

Whenever I drive in UK, I feel it is so confusing. Too many instructions on the road, too many speed cameras with “watch your speed” signs. While I was driving through this instructions and signs jungle, literally I was going above the national speed limit (70 mph/112 kmh) time to time. Also while I was overtaking any vehicles, it was very tempting to raise the speed and overtake more.

Albeit the government is trying to “kill the speed” by introducing tough rules and regulations by penalising the drivers in various way. But there is no sign they will impose any tougher regulations to car makers, which might help to reduce speed on the motorway. A driver has the same experience of driving since the first drove a car. Nowadays the cars are more sleek, easy to speed up, quicker in turns but there is no effort has been made from the car industry to introduce any technology on the car, which will make the drivers to drive within the speed limit.

While I was driving in a comparatively less busy road sticking to the speed limit, I was missing a device which allow me to stay under the speed limit. The device could be like – the driver can set up the speed limit and “lock” the speed. Until he unlocks the limit, the car wouldn’t drive more than the speed he has intend to drive. If he needs to speed up he can override it. The use of the device can be voluntarily.

The car manufacturers are moaning and groaning about how their sales plummeting day by day and blaming the economy, but why don’t they realise that they have lack of innovation?

Whatever car you buy it serves the same purpose regardless how much you are paying. They have been marketing the cars as a sign of prestige, ego and social status. But they forget to promote them as a “need”. Nevertheless they completely ignored the necessity of introducing new features on the cars by introducing new technology.