There is news doing rounds in blogging circle that Indian government has banned and ordered ISPs to block blogs which includes blogs from blogspot.com, typepad.com, etc.

As soon as I read this on few websites I tried opening few of blogs that I read and they seemed to work absolutely fine. BTW I was in Gurgaon during that time. I think someone has played a hoax it could be due to problems in some ISPs which may be using the backbone of some big brother.

These days bloggers can spread a news like fire. Anyway lot of bloggers have already listed few sites on their blogs which lets you visit those banned domains as well.

Google Page Rank for webpages does not show the exact information that webmasters need to have the to optimize their sites. Here’s a tool which help you to find your webpage page strength based on the following factors :

- Links pointing to full URL
- Links pointing to domain
- Position at Google for first four words of title tag on target URL
- Age of Domain
- Links from domains with .edu TLDs
- Links from domains with .gov TLDs
- Alexa Rank
- Domain name visibility : A count of results at Google for a search for your domain, showing URL visibility rather than incoming link count.
- Internal Link Percent : The percentage of pages on the domain that link to the target url.
- Number of search results for URL search at del.icio.us
- Listings in DMOZ (ODP)
- Links found in Wikipedia
- Google Pagerank of full URL and Domain

There are lot of websites which offers stock pictures and are very expensive too but if you are looking for absolutely free stock pictures SXC is the best site that I have been using for quite sometime now.

They have absolutlely wonderful collection and its never happened to me that I am looking for a good stock picture and I am not able to find it on http://www.sxc.hu . One can submit their own pictures to be used by other users.

I have found an excellent link which features an excellent collection of free icons for your websites / applications.

I am having few Life Insurance Corporation of India policies and it was getting difficult remebering the premium due dates and managing them. I forgot to pay policy’s premium which was due in april and I paid it through my agent today and it cost me Rs.350 as fine for late payment surcharge.

Sometime back I heard it from one of my friends that you can register with LIC and manage your insurance policies online. Today I went to their site and got an account. Its absolutely free registration and it took me around one and half minute to register, it was quite a simple provided you have your policies number with you and all my policies were attached got to the account. So from now on LIC will be regularly sending me the bills/invoices mentioning the due dates, premium amount, late fees, validity date, etc. This will ensure that I make payments on time. Thanks LIC!

Not only this one can pay for premium online using net banking & few other authorised bill payment service providers. Belw is the list :

Authorised Banks:-
HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Bank of Punjab, UTI Bank, Federal Bank, Corporation Bank, and Citibank
Authorised Service Providers (available only in select cities) :-
BillJunction.com, Timesofmoney.com, and BillDesk.com.