Best of 2008

This post lists few popular posts published this calendar year, selected primarily based on comments and page views received.

1. An analysis of MLM companies
It is the only post which crossed a comment count of 50 this year. (Few other posts with all time high comment counts: Club Mahindra (318) * Laptop guide-HP vs Dell vs Sony vs others). While a good number of comments extended support to what I wrote, others were written with an intent of making me ‘understand’ that MLM business is very good, genuine and highly rewarding. Initially I did made an attempt to respond to each comment and make them understand my stand and viewpoint, but after sometime stopped responding, as the comments more or less conveyed the same as earlier comments.

2. Similar to above topic, the review of Merchants of Deception also attracted good number of critics.

3.Gender confusion over my name:
Many people, including Times of India, mistook me for a lady. An analysis of why this confusion happens time and again.

4. As there was no proper platform to sell timeshare memberships, myself and Bhupesh (a Club Mahindra member) created a simple Google spreadsheet wherein prospective buyers and sellers of timeshare membership could enter their details. This post for buying/selling timeshare membership has got more than 130 entries so far and several readers have indicated that they could successfully sell their membership though this post. Feels good that our posts could bring some real life value to few readers.

5, 6. My guide on Self drive rentals in India, coupled with a post on my first self drive expedition in a Skoda Octavia did receive some good attention and comments.

7, 8.Should we ban live music in pubs? A discussion over Bangalore police’s decision reached a comment count of 20, with views supporting and opposing the move. Another similar discussion was on “Why should men take off their shirts at the temple”

9. Times of india publishing my photo without credit and publishing a clarification later was the other post

However, Google analytics suggests that I haven’t written anything great this year. 5 out of 9 most visited posts (between 1st Jan 2008 to 18th Dec 2008) were written last year, with the legendary Club Mahindra post still ruling the charts. Book review of Chetan Bhagat’s “3 mistakes” is the most viewed post written this year, followed by post on network marketing and selling timeshare membership

While that was about popular posts, here’re few posts which couldn’t manage to secure a single comment

Kuruva islands Wayanad-Though not successful in getting a comment from any of my readers, this post has served its purpose by reaching top 20 in Google search results for the keyword ‘Kuruva island’

Yaari changes for good- last year I’d criticized Yaari heavily due to their practice of getting email passwords from members and spamming all entries in their address books. This year when I noticed that they’ve changed the layout, design and process flow and no more require anyone to compromise with their email passwords, I felt like giving it a mention. Of course this didn’t add much value to readers and probably sounded as a commercial.

Launching a photoblog- Launching any initative is easy (particularly when it doesn’t cost money), but sustaining interest in it despite poor audience response is tough. Over confident of my photographic skills and loaded with thousands of photographs clicked during several trips, I thought I’ll launch a photo blog. Over a period of time I did realize that my camera is no match for SLRs and the photos nowhere come close to those of professional photographers. Obviously there wasn’t much response to my photo blog, though few kind souls did visit it and left encouraging comments.

To the extent possible I occasionally published a summary of posts-not sure to what extent people found it useful.

If you’ve been following this blog for some time, I would like to hear from you which post you liked the most and least. Please drop a comment- will you? (Use anonymous if you prefer)

Best of 2007 *