Being Yogendra

25 Places to Find Awesome Stock Photos — Free and Cheap

2009-05-05T00:51:00.001+05:30

25 Places to Find Awesome Stock Photos — Free and Cheap

This is REALLY COOL... some great stock photos for using EVER
StockVault
Pixel Galerie
Free Range
MorgueFile
EveryStockPhoto
Stock.xchng
Openphoto
Unprofound
PhotoRogue
Geek Philosopher
Woophy
PhotoRack
FreePixels
Design Packs
FreeFoto
Pixel Perfect Digital
Free Digital Photos
Public Domain Photos
Free Historical Stock Photos
NationsIllustrated
Kave Wall
Free Stock Photos
ImageBase
Cepolina
Abstract Influence
Image After
WOW.. itn't this great?

Flicker Macro Photos

2009-04-23T23:43:00.000+05:30
Here goes my latest dapper on Flicker Macro Images

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Lead Management through Web 2.0

2008-12-04T14:20:00.001+05:30

Here is a very good research on lead management through web 2.0

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Meditation

2008-12-04T00:56:00.001+05:30

Some great cartoons @ www.everydaypeoplecartoons.com

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Picnik.com: Great online photo editor

2008-12-01T23:41:00.001+05:30

I tried a few things on Picnik and it works GREAT. Not slow when you consider that its online and has lots of features, without much complication.

I reached here, thanks to StumbleUpon and this great post
10 Free Web-based Alternatives to Photoshop
Enjoy..

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Social CRM... be careful.

2008-11-25T13:58:00.001+05:30

With the launch of Siebel 8.1.1 and innumerable discussion / blogs across
the web community, the Social CRM (or CRM 2.0) has suddenly come to a
limelight... so much that it almost looks like a "classic bubble"... getting
bigger by day, and possibly waiting to burst if we dont be careful (and help our
customers to do so too!!)

Every company and every CRM consultant is now saying that "Social CRM" is
the future, and, it is to an extent. Our employees and our customers are
incresingly getting used to product reviews, company reviews, chats, blogs,
twitters, gadgets, widgets and the RSS feeds. And its fair that they will expect
the same environment on the work or while they buy something.

But this is not a reason to go overboard on Social CRM investment..
especially the IT investment. We need to evaluate "each option" in Social crm
very carefully.

Here are a few things i could pull out of my hat:

What does your company sell.. to whom?

There is no point in having a Consumer Discussion Board for a company which
sells industrial adhesives... When you buy any machine / product, do you really
care which adhesive is used in the production? And if the anser is a big "NO"
(or better.. "do they use adhesives... why?") then there is no reason why that
company should run a forum for end consumers anyway!!

So it makes more sense in B2C companies or some companies that produce end
consumer products but sell it to Businesses (CPG industry for that matter)

Social CRM... for whom?

When you plan for a Social CRM strategy, you need to think whom are you
targeting through it? Is it your employees (if yes is it higher management, your
sales staff, your service staff, your own support staff?) or your Partners or
actually the customers. The tool type, display content, data security and
targeting entirely depends on who is going to use it and WHAT'S IN IT FOR THE
ORGANISATION & THE USER!

You need to take a "hard-look" at these things otherwise the CRM 2.0 just
becomes a money-drain just because it looks "cool" on the new iPhone and some of your already
spoilt employees love it.

What is the activity?

CRM has three main pillers: Marketing, Sales and Service. (Arguably the
forth one PRM!). You need to take a call on which piller you are targeting
through the Social CRM strategy. In true sense, you should try to touch your
customer to enable them give valuable feedback. But other functions like
Marketing and Sales are also equally ciritcal. Best practice would be to combine
all three into a bunch of tools and make them available for the customers..
easier said than done!!

How do you track down the Internet?

Hearing to customer chatter on the web and proactively reaching out to them
to convert their grivances into opportunities to make them loyal >> sounds
good. very good. But how much of this is "process" and how much is "system". I
look at this piece more of a proess, where the "human" tough is paramount not
the systems. If you have a system that can help you track that easily...
great... but do you really think you need to develop all this yourself when its
already available free with great search engines, alerts, twitter analytical
engines and what not! What's important is what do you do with the amount of
noice you can already hear.. how do you reach to the customers and truely
resolve their grivances.

Data or Junk?

Now consider opening the flood gates of blogs, forums, chatting, picture
sharing, video sharing.. within months you are going to store terrabytes of
data... have you figured out what to do with all that data (or junk). do you
intend to store each of this data in your CRM system against each customer /
prospect / member.... i would say BAD IDEA.

So catching hold of the "Right Data" and using it in your CRM is much
harder than it seems when you collect all that data!!

With this, i take a pause to my long drown narration.

I love social CRM (the fact that i am writing this in blog and not it a
mail is telling itself)! But the key is not to go overboard only because its the
"in-thing"!

Your comments are highly valuable!

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Cartoon on Bailout

2008-11-24T21:28:00.001+05:30

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Google Search in India on SMS!!

2008-11-21T00:38:00.001+05:30

[Via TekRaja]
A great news for those, who don't have the enabled phone in India : Now
you can search Google via SMS and that without paying any premium charges!

Just sent your queries to 9-77-33-00000 and get
information about cricket scores, Indian Railways train schedules &
ticket status, horoscopes, movie showtimes, restaurant information and
more. To get started sms "help" to 9-77-33-00000.

The best side of this service : you will be n't charged @ Rs. 3/- like
other similar services. Just pay standard SMS charge and enjoy the SMS
search.

To see the query format visit this page. Here, you can try an interactive demo too, and view results just as they'd appear on your phone as SMS.

Cheers!

Related :

Send Free Picture SMS
How to get alerts of new e-mails for FREE
How to get more than 250 Tweets per week from Twitter
Google SMS Channel : Free Group SMS service
Post Tweets via SMS at Cheaper rates
CAT scores via SMS and e-mails

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Dilbert on Internet time wasters!!

2008-11-20T15:40:00.001+05:30

This is the condition i get into so many times...
not that i am proud of it.. but funny.

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CleanAfterMe: Good tool to go invisible

2008-11-12T20:28:00.001+05:30

Copied from techraja

CleanAfterMe is a small tool which helps you in deleting all types of traces and logs from the computer.

The features of CleanAfterMe :

Deletes files and Registry entries that are automatically
created by the Windows.
Cleans Cookies, History, Cache, Passwords of Internet Explorer.
'Recent' folder, the Registry entries that record the last opened files.
Temporary folder of Windows, the event logs, the Recycle Bin, and more.

Now, the Best thing about CleanAfterMe : CleanAfterMe is a portable application.
Hence, You can carry it with your USB drive and run it without any installation and without leaving any trace in the
Registry.

So, carry it with your pendrive and use it when you have to work on a shared or public computer. It deletes all your logs and traces and keeps your activities and data private.

CleanAfterMe

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Battery & Charging: Anyone really innovating?

2008-11-12T20:25:00.001+05:30

Every time my cell-phone goes dead or my battery shows red signal, i wonder why there is absolutely no improvement in the battery life in past decade?

We have gone from b/w screens to color screens and not touch screens. We have improved from basic call / text messages to real time internet access... but where is the battery support for all these features.

We all saw what happened to iPhone 3G as compared to old iPhone... the battery life sucks.

The story is not too different with Laptops.. most of them give 3 hours backup time when they are "brand new" but as you start doing some serious work on it, within months the life comes down to 1 hour or even less. (Seriously, i have some friends who cannot use the laptop if the power is not supplied continuously... which defeats the purpose of having a laptop in the first place)

So my question is, why are there no new advancements in the battery technology?
why does it still take 2-3 hours to charge the battery? If the storage space can go from 1mb to 20gb in 5 years, why does the battery talk time go from 1 hour to 20 hours?
Are our researchers too concentrated in solving the storage problems and ignoring the energy problem?
We talk about Global Warming 1000 times a day, then is it rocket science that if we can change the charging technology and make our devices use less power for more time, it will save our earth (i know i am stretching the too far, but i really mean it!!
Any comments welcome!! Am i missing some thing REALLY BASIC here?

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Odiogo.com: Text to Speech RSS.. real time

2008-11-11T10:23:00.001+05:30

I was reading a marketing related blog and found a link

Thought looks interesting and landed up on odiogo.com...

Still to explore it fully but looks cool and this is something that i was looking for, for a while.

I use NaturalVoiceReader for almost 3 years as i am too lazy to read myself and generally can make more sense of documents if someone read it for me and i just keep an eye over the text..

Hope i will use this more often and will come back with a complete review.

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Timeboxing

2008-11-07T14:44:00.001+05:30

I have been hearing about Time-Boxing... and may be doing it sometimes...

This is a good article which talks about in detail!!

I wish i will be able to do this effectively... at times i tend to linger and read too many things which are relevant, alright, but takes too much time than the importance of it to me and to my organization..

good opportunity to stop it and start TimeBoxing

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Selling Wisdom

2008-11-07T12:57:00.000+05:30

Copied from here
Jonathan Farrington’s blog is always packed with incredibly valuable wisdom that any sales manager or business owner can use.

Now he’s packed all the best of his posts and those contributed by others into a nice, neat e-Book that you can download and take with you.

If you’re leading a sales effort and you want to be sure
you’ve got your eyes wide open to potential challenges and
opportunities, I highly recommend giving this a read!

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BusinessListening.Com

2008-11-04T14:02:00.000+05:30

Cool site.. has some interesting material on how to listen! Highly useful at office as well as at home

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Dilbert on ERP Deal

2008-10-27T12:01:00.001+05:30

Interesting

Self Portrait: This is Imagination

2008-10-23T13:59:00.000+05:30

This is a beautiful picture by Enzo Maisano on

And he was kind enough to share the setup as well.

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Social Technology Ladder

2008-10-21T12:13:00.001+05:30

Found this very interesting!!

Copied from one of the forrester blogs .. here is the link

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Live Trains: Lovely experiment

2008-10-17T16:32:00.001+05:30

http://www.swisstrains.ch/

Its an alpha version of a real-time train map. Tracking the Swiss train system, SwissTrains gives
you a glimpse of the trains as they make their way around Zurich and
surroundings.
The red circles marked with an S represent the trains,
while the red squares make up the stations. Clicking on any station
reveals a schedule with arrival and departure times.
If you click on a
moving train and click follow in the drop down menu, you’ll get a
bird’s eye view with satellite images of the train as it
traverses the country.
Street names and stations are listed as well in
the hybrid map view.

Its a beautiful example of a live-meshup.

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Financial Crisis Cartoons (Part 2)

2008-10-13T19:42:00.001+05:30

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Financial Crisis Cartoons

2008-10-13T18:57:00.001+05:30

Looking at the cartoons through a cartoonist's eyes:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26761901/displaymode/1107/framenumber/1/s/2/

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Google in 2001

2008-10-01T10:57:00.001+05:30

Google has brought back the index from January 2001
to show how many things have changed in almost 8 years. At that time,
Google's index included 1,326,920,000 web pages and it was the most
comprehensive index of a search engine.

Google explains that the
index from January 2001 is the earliest available. "Well, for various
technical reasons that are too boring to go into, earlier versions of
our index aren't readily accessible. But we did still want to offer
users a chance to search an older index as a way of looking back at web
history, and the January 2001 index is the best we can do."

It is extremely interesting exercise... do click on the "View old version in the internet Archive' link for a few results to see the web pages as of 2001 itself.

You will not believe how much world has changed in last 8 years.
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10 Meeting Basics

2008-09-29T12:23:00.001+05:30

Found a very good article on Meetings Here

You've
been sitting in the meeting for 93 minutes. It feels like 93 days. It was supposed
to last an hour, max, but the Senior VP is in the room, and the point of the session
was to discuss his pet project, and no one wants to be the first to crack. Everyone
else is busy making gratuitous points designed to flatter Mr. Big. You're entertaining
fantasies about throwing a cream pie, or worse, at the blowhard who just won't
stop talking about how successful the project will be. You know it's doomed to
fail; it's the high-tech equivalent of selling ice to the Inuit.
You're asking yourself, who's in charge here? How did all these
reasonably well-intentioned people get so far out of whack? And, more to the
point, how can this juggernaut be stopped?

Since mass laryngitis is not an option, you need the Ten Commandments
of Meetings. Moreover, you need to post them prominently in meeting rooms so
that everyone can begin to follow them – especially the leader. Remember that
even Moses had trouble with his unruly flock from time to time, so be prepared
for the occasional outburst of the modern corporate version of Baal worship.

Thou Shalt Always
Know What Time It Is

The clock is God in meetings. Out of respect for the commitment and sanity
of everyone who attends, meetings should never run over the time allotted.
Especially regularly scheduled meetings. If the session gets bogged down
in an issue, table it for another meeting. If the meeting must conclude
by taking an action or decision, then schedule it accordingly. Tell all
the participants before the meeting starts that it will go as long as
necessary to reach the stated conclusion. Don't mislead people by minimizing
the amount of work involved; that kind of trickery will only come back
to haunt you.

Thou
Shalt Not Forget the Main Reason for Meetings

The only good reason to have meetings is to do something together that
you can't do better alone. In business, meetings have three primary purposes:
communicating, administering, and deciding. Of these, the first and last
are most worthwhile. But the focus of all three kinds of meetings should
be action. They should either be communicating the intention to take an
action or the results of action that has been taken, administering a plan
of action, or deciding among alternative actions. If you find yourself
calling meetings – or going to them – that have some other purpose,
you're wasting your time. And everyone else's. Find something else to
do.

Thou Shalt Remember
the Golden Rule of Meetings:

Praise in Public, Criticize in Private

Shut off public criticism when it arises. It's extremely destructive
to morale and should be prevented. Indeed, much misery could be avoided
in the business world if all members of the corporate community would
remember a simple fact: if they are working for the same employer, then
they are all on the same team. Corporate politics we will always have
with us, but that doesn't mean that we have to accept them tamely. Help
your vocally critical teammates by making it clear, in advance of each
meeting, who is in charge, how long the meeting will last, and what the
point of the meeting is. Then deal with attempts to take the meeting in
other, more vicious directions as simple misunderstandings of the agreed-upon
ground rules. Politely but firmly steer the meeting back to the right
terrain.

Thou
Shalt Not Convene Meetings Outside of Normal Business Hours

Of course there are times when this commandment must be
broken, but they should be reserved for real emergencies. People who schedule
meetings for evenings and weekends are merely advertising the embarrassing
fact that they have no life - and they're expecting others to give up
theirs. That kind of person should not be allowed to run anything, much
less part of a modern corporation, because they lack the basic humanity
to do a good job. Surviving in the fast-moving, devil-take-the-hindmost
business world of today requires good peripheral vision as well as keen
understanding of the work involved. Those without the necessary life balance
can't possibly understand that world they're in or see around the next
business corner.

Thou
Shalt Not Use Group Pressure to Logroll Conclusions

It is simply wrong to use meetings to pressure people into agreeing to
actions or ideas that they know to be immoral or illegal in order to promote
the business of the corporation. Group pressure is a powerful force, especially
where jobs are at stake. Don't misuse it to get people to stray from the
straight and narrow, or bend the rules, or set the quotas dangerously
high, or cut corners on quality, or any one of a thousand such activities
that go on every day in misguided organizations everywhere. Your corporation
has a set of values. If it doesn't include adherence to a code of ethics
and the rule of law, change the values or find values or find somewhere
else to work.

Thou Shalt Not Use
Meetings to Destroy Others' Careers

There is enough room in every meeting for a disagreement without making
it personal or destructive. More than that, it's wrong – and politically
unwise. Modern corporate life has become so ephemeral and its denizens
so transient that your past is bound to come back and face you again,
and sooner rather than later. A petty triumph at someone else's expense
at one job may well prove seriously embarrassing at your next job. Resist
the temptation. Curiously, the unstable nature of today's workplace has
encouraged people to take the opposite attitude. The thinking seems to
run, "I'll never see these people again, so why not cut loose?" But the
opposite is almost certainly true.

Thou Shalt Keep the
Personal and the Corporate Distinct

There's nothing wrong with having friends at work. But meetings are not
for social calls. To be sure, a certain amount of socializing at the beginnings
and endings of meetings is part of the grease that keeps the well-oiled
corporate machine running smoothly. But the balance should be clearly
kept on the side of business. Too much socializing will lead to resentment
among the others at the meeting who are not part of the party. More than
that, it's inefficient, bad for business, and corrosive for your soul.
You need to have a life outside the corporate one. If you find that all
your socializing is taking place in business meetings, it's time to change
a few things.

Thou Shalt Remember
that the Best Model for Meetings Is Democracy, Not Monarchy

Resist the temptation to railroad your fellow participants into a decision
you want. You need to lead by moral persuasion, not by virtue of your
title. Brute force is not the appropriate mode for meetings, though jujitsu
sometimes is. As a leader, you should always strive to understand the
sense of the meeting. If you want to issue edicts, publish them in the
media available to you. You don't need a meeting to announce a new course
of proceeding that is not up for discussion. And watch out for other participants
in the meeting trying to take control. Hijacking a meeting is a cherished
corporate game, but a nasty one. It's your job as a leader to prevent
that from happening.

Thou
Shalt Always Prepare a Clear Agenda and Circulate It Beforehand

It is more than courtesy – it is good efficient business practice to
think hard about the purpose, nature and structure of a meeting before
it takes place. These thoughts should be codified in the form of an agenda
and circulated to all participants well in advance of the meeting. Time
enough, at any rate, for the participants to prepare whatever they need
to in the way of reports, plans, proposals, or the like. Far too often,
people who call meetings grossly underestimate the amount of preparation
required of the participants.

Thou Shalt Terminate
a Regularly Scheduled Meeting When Its Purpose for Being No Longer Exists

If you can no longer clearly state the reason for having
a regular meeting, it's time to kill it. Purposes change, and when the
meeting has lost its reason fortaking place, be the first one to put an
end to it. All periodic meetings should have a stock-taking every few
sessions to determine if the meeting still has a purpose. It's just one
way to fight corporate bloat and bureaucratic encrustation. Of course,
for this discipline to work, you must have decided what the regular meeting
was for when it was begun. Goal-setting is just as important in meetings
as it is in the rest of corporate life.

The only meetings that people wish had run longer are those
magical ones that take place when lovers first set eyes upon one another.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that your business meeting is that
thrilling. Keep its timing, purpose, and tone in perspective. Live to
meet another day.
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Savalee Marthi Movie (2007) Songs

2008-09-20T03:56:00.001+05:30

Savalee Marthi Movie (2007) Songs

Classic songs thanks to Ashok Patki, Devaki Pandit, Arati Ankalikar and others

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Arati Ankalikar Tikekar (Esnips Songs)

2008-09-20T03:22:00.001+05:30

Arati Ankalikar-Tikekar Classical Songs esnips.com

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Bolava Vitthal by Arati Ankalikar

2008-09-19T23:32:00.002+05:30

Great Album to listen!!
Title Length Rating

1. Ata Kuthe Dhave Mana Tuje Charan Dhek Liya N/A 0 sur 5
2. Ye Pandhari Sukh Pahata N/A 0 sur 5
3. Bolava Vitthal Pahawa Vitthal N/A

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Indian Music Online Radio

2008-09-17T23:25:00.001+05:30

http://radio.musicindiaonline.com/

Good collection and online music.
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FREE HI-Q Recorder: It Rocks

2008-09-17T05:08:00.000+05:30

In the quest of ultimate sound recorder... this is certainly the best one and simplest one i have found... Download Free

There are so many good sites where you can play great Hindustani Classical Music (like esnip, musicindiaonline etc.) but you cannot download it.. so Hi-Q Recorder does the job for you.

Hi-Q Recorder is certainly a high-quality one and does not trouble you with pop-ups, registration or anything else for that matter.

It also has a paid sibling.. but i really don't care for all those fuzzy features... this one just works perfect for me..

Happy Recording.

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iSound: (not free) ultimate audio recorder

2008-09-17T01:36:00.000+05:30

For a while i was searching for an uncomplicated but workable recorder that can record whatever music that is being played on my computer.. and i found this ~~as the best~~ one to do that.. small & simple.

Keep the volume to full to record really good sound.

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You can find others here

POST UPDATE: i have a better one now which is free..
http://applian.com/sound-recorder/
It works like a toobar in firefox / ie. The issue is that it wastes space on the browser.
Another one worth looking at is FREE HI-Q Recorder... (this one i am using now and recorded a dozen songs today without any issues ...)

Youtube to MP3 conversion

2008-09-16T23:47:00.001+05:30

I managed to stumble upon this nice utility on vixy.net.

It has an online youtube converter to other formats. There are many sites and tools that allow the flv download and mp4 conversion but this is one of the few that allows direct download into .mp3, which is what i care for...

It also gives you a desktop utility (for both Windows and Mac)..
Download Installer for Windows (Xp, Vista)

Download App for MacOSX (10.4, 10.5)
Intel /
PPC

Simple but useful... no major UI stuff or user preferences.... just paste the url, select the output format and boom..

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Good Hindustani Clasical site on Blogger

2008-09-16T23:41:00.000+05:30

http://hindustaniclassical-anand.blogspot.com

Very good cross Raag and cross Artist collection... best part is that you can play stuff right there...
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Delhi Blasts!! Do we really care?

2008-09-14T11:26:00.000+05:30
I cannot express how disturbing are the Delhi blats yesterday for me! I put a small blog note on Bangalore, Ahmadabad and Jaipur Blasts... what i am worried is not the deaths and the threats, but the political apathy to take any action...

Interestingly I am in US right now for a short business visit and experienced the social and political will-power on the 9/11 blasts.. It’s already been 9 years and US has managed to virtually destroy 2 countries relating them to the blast... while the moral right about that still remains as a question, it at least gives some comfort to the citizens. And more importantly, there have been not a single terror-attack on US since then....

Now let's look at India... Mumbai Blasts about 15 years back, then the parliament, then Delhi, again Mumbai, then Hyderabad, then Bangalore, then Ahmadabad, then Jaipur, then again Delhi… I am sure I am missing out on few other names… easily 500+ lives lost and innumerable injured and will suffer for their whole life… but doe we care? What has “India” done apart from a common message from each party and each government that “Terrorism will not be tolerated”. So, does this statement alone drive away the terrorists? They are striking at will at any place of their choice… the feeling is so disturbing.

I still remember seeing the board conveying Mumbai blast on a main road in Pune 15 years back. My father used to go daily to Mumbai and we were just crossing our fingers till late night to get a message from him. I do not want to go through that hell and don’t want any Indian (or anyone in the world for that matter)… but who cares… I don’t even remember how many bomb blasts happened in India in last one year…how can I keep track of it when all the newspapers and news channels want me to divert my attention to “entertainment” which has gained more importance over the “national and individual security”… but again… as long as your relative is lost… who cares, and if you loose your relative, who cares to listen to you?

Is there any Indian Politician who is ready to take national security seriously instead of caring about increasing his/her personal wealth??

TinEye Illustrated

2008-08-30T02:02:00.001+05:30

Tin Eye ... great image that says about the service.
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Hit Me Later: email reminder on demand!!

2008-08-15T22:22:00.001+05:30

Found this on techcrunch simple but wonderful concept... planning to use it often... lets see how it goes. :D

HP dv2910us: my wife's new laptop

2008-08-15T19:58:00.001+05:30

Purchased this stunning beauty yesterday from Fry's ... in a special 2 day offer... got this for $679 USD + $52 taxes - $50 mailing rebate... (hope my friend collects it and gives it to me... i am leaving for india in 4 days :( !)... effectively $680 USD (under 30 thousand INR)

I am generally getting lucky with Frys... last time i purchased Jabra 125 @ half price on a single day offer and this time 20% discount on one of the hot selling brands in Laptops..

Just checked the prices in india for HP Pavilion pieces.. they range anywhere from 50000 to 60000 rupees.... man we are talking of 20000 -30000 saving... that's big :D... lucky me.

It comes with headphones and remote control.. completely built for ENTERTAINMENT... my wife got to love it :D

Some SPECS directly from the HP Website

Enjoy entertainment at the touch of a button. Chat face-to-face or take video clips with the webcam and integrated microphone. Watch, pause, and record live TV with the optional TV tuner. The Pavilion dv2910us Entertainment Notebook has you covered, and with its sophisticated-looking Radiance finish, it looks great to boot.
Power performance
Experience genuine Windows Vista Home 64-bit Premium^†† with Service Pack 1
Get things done with the 1.83GHz Intel Centrino Processor Technology featuring an Intel Core2 Duo Processor T5550, 2MB L2 cache, and 667MHz front side bus
Run several apps at once with the 3072MB DDR2 SDRAM (2 DIMM)
See clearly on the 14.1" (diagonal) BrightView WXGA high-definition widescreen
Surf the Web with the integrated 10/100Base-T Ethernet LAN modem
Go wireless ¹ with Intel wireless Wi-Fi link 4965AGN
Chat face-to-face or take pictures and video clips with the webcam and integrated microphone
Store data on the 250GB (5400 rpm) hard drive
Keep working with the six-cell Lithium-Ion battery
Make an impression with the glossy Radiance Imprint design
Movie, music, or game?
Watch movies using the double-layer DVD±R/RW SuperMulti drive
Download music from AOL Music, then create playlists for commuting, parties, and work
Control movies and music with a swipe your finger on the back-lit panel; start them fast with QuickPlay
Play games and enhance multimedia with the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 graphics
Watch, pause, and record live TV with the optional HP ExpressCard TV tuner
Connections and software
Share files with thumb drives, iPAQs, and cameras via the 5-in-1 digital media card reader²
Organize photos and videos, plus edit, print, share, and store, with the included Photosmart Essentials software
Burn and edit DVDs with the muvee autoProducer software
Guard against viruses, spam, and spyware with the preinstalled Symantec Norton Internet Security 2008 (60-day free trial)
Transfer data faster via the ExpressCard/54 slot

Will post on the performance and my feedback on this beauty soon...

Daily dose of Chintoo

2008-08-14T10:21:00.001+05:30

Chintoo

This is a cool site with daily upload of chintoo (marathi) cartoon. I have been reading this in the daily newspaper for past 15 odd years and its still so fresh... especially i like this site when i travel abroad... i have added this to my google reader so i get the every day post in my igoogle.. this is one thing i do not want to miss in my reader threads.. :D

The site also has different subscription options and even widgets for your websites.

Way to go..

Magellan RoadMate 1412 - GPS: My Review

2008-08-13T21:39:00.001+05:30

I am using Magellan Roadmate 1412 while i am driving for next 10 days in Orange County. I purchased it (for my friend) yesterday... got a great deal @ costco ($199 + tax) but it says $299 on the magellan website.

Best part is that its small, reasonably priced and has most of the features a GPS should have... one i was looking for was calling out street names instead of just "left turn/right turn"... so loving it.. will explore it more on the weekend and update back.

Floods in Pune (My Society)

2008-08-12T11:14:00.000+05:30
I came to US today and realized that it has rained cats and dogs in Pune after I started on 9th night...
My building is all over in the news and the access road to the building is cut off.. fortunately my family is safe and moved my parent's place...

I had a major function in my house on 8th.. what a close call.. would have been a clear mess had the rains come 2 days earlier
here is a news article about the floods

Here are some of the Photos:

Pune, August 11
Pregnant woman, elderly people and 1,000 others stuck in one housing society
Please help us, cries Sunita Dhawar of Whistling Palms Society at Kaspate Vasti near Wakad.

“Water from the river has flooded the road leading
to our society. Around 1,000 residents have been stuck in the building
since yesterday afternoon. I am nine months pregnant and may need
medical attention anytime. The lives of many senior citizens are also
at risk. What if they need to go to the hospital?” Dhawar said on
Monday.

Fear is the pervading emotion among the 1,000
residents of Whistling Palms, as the road leading to their society has
been flooded since Sunday afternoon.

Due to heavy rains for the past two days, the
water from the river Mula has flooded a few societies in Kaspate Vasti.
“Nisarg Pooja Society, Yashda wedding hall and a crematorium are also
flooded,” said Gokul Tilekar, a resident of Vishal Nager.

“We are surviving on noodles and biscuits for two
days now. Two of my friends staying with me are stuck outside the
society and have no way of coming in. The municipal authorities should
immediately to address this situation. There is a supermarket near the
compound of our building, but the goods in his shop are almost
exhausted,” says Tushar Pawar of Whistling Palms.

An uninterrupted downpour for the second
consecutive day in Pune and its surrounding areas wreaked havoc on
people in parts of the city. Particularly, residents of-Whistling Palms
and Nisargapuja- two housing societies in Wakad, were turned helpless
and had no choice but to stay indoors. The situation was no different
in Madhuban Society in Sangvi.
Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) authorities
shifted 478 families along the Mula-Mutha riverbanks in the last two
days. Of them, 200 families were from Bopodi area. Other areas included
Patil Estate slums (37 families), Adarshnagar (177), Shantinagar (70).
The chief of the flood control cell of the PMC,
Pravin Ashtikar, said, “We are being kept on or toes. We are
continuously tracking the discharge from all the dams around Pune and
taking necessary steps. The fire brigade, too, has been asked to be
ready to tackle the situation.”
Ajay Chaudhari of Whistling Palms said, “Our
water woes started on Sunday afternoon, when the rainwater logged
around our society in huge amounts. Today, I had to skip going to
office, as it needed to wade through shoulder-high water. Even if we
manage to get out of it, the public transport too, is not reliable.”
Amol Govindwar and his wife, both software professionals working in
Geometrics and Cognizant respectively, had to take a day off from their
work for the same reason.

The Presentation Blog

2008-08-06T20:04:00.001+05:30

Superb resource and a great idea... hope it grows more.

Making better business presentations!!

Panoramio: View Photos from Google Map

2008-08-06T13:01:00.001+05:30

Viewing photos from google map is a great idea... did not know about it before.
I am visiting Fountain Valley next week and wanted to check out how it looks around... here it goes.

Great Idea perfect execution.

Uploading your photos is also pretty easy. You have to sign up to Paroramio, and simply upload your photos by giving locations...

There is also some contest going on to promote this tool.

Go.. keep shooting and uploading.

TinEye: The Common Moon

2008-08-01T16:29:00.001+05:30

I searched for this pic of moon

and got 194 results, here are few good ones

Twhirl: another twitter tool

2008-08-01T12:07:00.001+05:30

I installed twhirl today.. its looking quite impressive... currently i use TwitterFox(firefox extension), which serves most of the purposes but does not have very good search capabilities.

Twhirl, which is based on Adobe Air is pretty good.. will experiment more and update again.

Interestingly it can connect to multiple tols similar to twitter identi.ca, Friendfeed and seesmic.

Dapper: Bollywood Movie Reviews from Rediff

2008-08-01T11:27:00.001+05:30

Add to your site powered by Dapper
Click on Title to read Review

I created yet another Dapp and a widget from rediff movie reviews page... Dapper Rocks

Dapper: Ongoing Challenges in DPChallenge

2008-07-31T20:19:00.000+05:30

Add to your site powered by Dapper

Yet Another one... to track Ongoing challenges on DPChallenge

Live Gold Prices: Dapper Widget

2008-07-31T19:05:00.002+05:30

Add to your site powered by Dapper

I created another Dapper Widget to track Gold Prices in India LIVE

Movies in Pune: My Dapper for

2008-07-31T18:55:00.000+05:30

Add to your site
powered by Dapper

You can access the original Dapp at this place

Dapper... interesting mashup service

2008-07-31T18:52:00.001+05:30

I
don't remember how i landed here, but Dapper.net looks interesting...
watched a video on how it works and believe me its interesting!!

~~Hoping to experiment with it!! will come back soon with my experiments.~~

Edit: I was finally able to do some work with dapper.. created a widget from DPChallenge Favorite existing dapper itself..dpchallenge Version 2

I also managed to create a igoogle widget and even post it to google directory..

Interesting things.

One
complaint: The Dapp Factory is taking AGES to analyze the pages i give
myself so could not create "my own" ones from scratch yet... hope to be
soon.

There was a problem with my settings.. for the
Dapper to create a Dapp, you need to turn off the Add Block
extensions!! I did that (thanks to help from Ilan from Dapper) and
created some of my own Dapps, gadgets, RSS feeds and Image Loops...
very exciting. Here are some of my experiments on Dapper.

BTW, i cannot stop from comparing this with Yahoo Pipes... similar in many ways and different in many!!

Sanskrit and Marathi Online Dictionary

2008-07-31T17:40:00.000+05:30

Found this great resource... works great if you install unicode fonts.. you can actually see words in Sanskrit and the meanings in English.

Also found Marathi Dictionary on the same site (infact two of them)

If you have unicode fonts installed, it actually shows you the "मरठी" names and their english meanings... Fundu...

Links:

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/molesworth/ :
Marathi

http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/apte/ :
Sanskrit

There are dictionaries for lots of other languages available on the same site.

ScribeFire 2.3: Power-up your blogging

2008-07-31T09:29:00.001+05:30

I have been using ScribeFire for more than 6 months now to post things to my blog.
I am not a person who likes to write a lot and use my blog as a personal reference of good things i like on web and things which may be useful to my friends... so content-drag-drop is just what i need and that's exactly what i get from ScribeFire.

Overall, i just love this firefox extension, and believe me, without this my blog updates would have reduced to 10-15%... its too much of a pain to go to blogger, sign-in, click new post, then create the content :( Also there is no pane-view available to easily reference links / content / images!! just love it.

The latest feature "Live-Preview" is very cool.. I keep changing the color schemes of my blog so its pretty useful to check before i publish!!

One thing i am still to resolve is to setup the image upload settings for blogger, hopefully i will crack it soon :P

Happy Blogging....

%p7dSHTMB0A%

2008-07-31T09:19:00.001+05:30

%%vg8v1Olr%%

EveryScape: Cool new World Exploration

2008-07-30T11:48:00.001+05:30

Fundu beta site to compete with Google Street View.

Some great ideas like integrated news, maps, inside-view of historic places... simply wonderful!!

Worth a try!!

Face Swapping to protect privacy

2008-07-30T11:35:00.001+05:30

Found these cool images and good article about how Google is working on protecting privacy in the StreetView and also keeping their projects "live"

After finding itself in hot water with privacy advocates, Google has
begun obscuring the faces of people in its Street View service, which
lets users of Google Maps zoom in to view street level images. But the
images look decidedly odd, with whole streets peopled by blurred faces.

It
needn't be this way, says Neeraj Kumar of Columbia University, New
York. Kumar and his colleagues have developed software that gives
everyone a face - just not their own. The software randomly selects
33,000 photos of faces from picture-sharing sites like Flickr.com, then
picks the most suitable faces for each person in shot. Only the eyes,
nose and mouth are used, resulting in a composite image of the two
people. "It matches subject pose, lighting conditions and image
resolution," says Kumar. "The selected faces are aligned to common 3D
coordinates, corrected for colour and lighting, and blended into the
target image."

The end result is a convincing face rather than a blur, although the team's images (pdf link here)
can be spooky, especially when people get features from the opposite
sex. What's more, the software works automatically. "Previous face
replacement software required manual assistance, much like editing an
image in Photoshop," says Kumar.

Inside-Widgets: myths busted!

2008-07-30T10:27:00.001+05:30

Read a very good article (The truth about widgets) on Widget myths... good read.

Published: June 23, 2008

9 widget myths debunked

By Leah Messinger

More by this Author

Contact Author

Widgets Lab

2008-07-29T17:53:00.001+05:30

I found Widgets Lab to be super cool. Got to know about so many widgets out there to spice-up my blog!! planning us check for the good ones.. you will see some added soon!!

ECO-SAFE widget: Send/Download PDF for your blog

2008-07-29T16:27:00.001+05:30

I found this cool widget on the A VC blog and thought of using myself. Cool Idea. It has good amount of options available for display on the blogs!! Also has some kind of itunes tie-up (which i did not understand much... i should be frank enough!!)

Talks about environment friendly... but forget about it.. If people print blogs, they are not going to suddenly start downloading the pdfs. (they will probably then print the PDFs.. ha ha ha...). Frankly... I don't think its worth printing blogs anyway!!

Said that, the widget looks cool... i am going to have one immediately!!

http://eco-safe.com/eco.php/green/merit_badge

Cuil... wiered search results

2008-07-29T12:17:00.001+05:30
Got to know about the new "Cuil" search engine recently... it rated as having 12bn pages indexed (121,617,892,992 web pages when i saw last on 29th July)... but believe me, its a sheer waste!!
Not completely... got good results for searches like "Loyalty", "Oracle", "Google".
I also liked the concept of having "download here" links for some softwares from Google. Also getting logos of companies displayed on results for "Loyalty" was a cool idea, so was the tabbed results for "Customer Loyalty", "Loyalty Management" etc that came up.

But the shocker came when I started to do some ego-searching, as suggested by Veronica in another article.
I got all kinds of irrelevant resutls... i have my photo posted on my blog, few forums, websites, linked-in etc... none of which came up. I gave it a "benefit of doubt" as there are other people with the name "Yogendra Joshi" and are doing great in their respective areas.

But one thing i know for sure is that, i am the only one who has properly maintained linked-in account along with my name in the URL. So I searched for Yogendra Joshi Linkedin... and what i got was a shocker... see it for yourselves!!
As you see, it shows some horrible photo and a profile of some "deepak gopinath" that too going into wiered.ru site... will you not hate a site that pulls such horrible picture for your name search and ignores a great other resource everywhere on the web?

What us of those 12bn sites indexed if you cannot even pull a simple search out of it..??

BTW, full credit to the experiment... i like the UI, 2/3 column search (which i anyway do with google thanks to a greasemonkey script in firefox called GoogleMonkeyR [Install this script]).

I would love someone challenge Google on their search. That would
make Google better,
keep Google from being the "monopoly-search-engine"
Lastly, the pages says 33 results found... so where are the other 32?

EDIT: There is another good article that has come up on Google Operating System blog which discusses about the creators of Cuil.

FixYa: Free Tech Support for your devices

2008-07-28T15:54:00.000+05:30

Today i was looking how to resolve the issue of broken ear-hook of jabra bt-125.. i googled it and reached this site called FixYa... I saw that there were many who got replacement of the ear-hooks..

http://www.fixya.com/support/t210320-jabra_ear_piece

This increased my interest in what this site is all about and realized that it has lot of things to help us, right from fixing computers, TVs and even Cars.

For many products it also has pdf user guides, numbers and emails for company support, tips and tricks and many more things... certainly good place to go before you start asking your friends frantically..

Another interesting freature is the Warranty Manager where you can add all your products and warranty information for future access... also has added services like extended warranty.. (BTW it requires log-in... limited usability for me as i am in India... shound be much usable for people in US / Eurpoe)

What is FixYa?
Fixya provides Free tech support and technical help for gadgets, electronic equipment and consumer products. Fixya's technical experts advise on fixing problems and provide instructions on proper usage of products either by chat or message posting. Fixya stores manuals and troubleshooting guides for over half a million products. Fixya's tech support community will provide a quick solution for your "how to" problem.

Google: Success Story of 25 Million to 1 Trillion

2008-07-28T12:23:00.004+05:30
As i just finished writing a post on Google crossing 1 trillion indexed pages mark... I thought of looking at the past, and this time http://web.archive.org/ came to my help!!

Here is the page that shows extensive archive of All the versions indexed for "Google.com"

I took a dig on the first captured version as on Nov 11, 1998 *. As i continued to explore i found this page (image shown on the left) what showed "Index contains ~25 million pages (soon to be much bigger)". The promise has certainly come true and in less than ten years it has crossed 1 trillion mark. That apart it has also moved from "search project" to a multi-billion dollar international giant...

(BTW, interestingly, the last archive of google is on Aug 29, 2007 !! what happened? Archive.com sleeping or it just blacklisted Google???)

Kudos to Google, its creators, investors, contributors and most importantly the USERS

Google Clocks 1 Trillion unique web-content pages

2008-07-28T12:07:00.002+05:30

We know that Google is huge tracking every bit of "internet" with its huge "google-ware".
I happened to read this big news yesterday when Google announced in their blog that "systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a
milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web
at once!"

Now interpreting how big is 1 trillion is insane... but as they say... its big... and i am sure that there are plenty more pages that are waiting to be "indexed". You are welcome to read the original article to know how they track these pages and how things "actually" work at Google.

Accuracy?
While its great that google is tracking every-bit of information, i am wondering how they keep it up-to-date? There is perpetual internet-decay (internet rot or link rot) where the links disappear, the websites shut-down, sites are hacked or people simply change their addresses. I am wondering what google does with the cached data?

Downside?
Now its been proved that being indexed by google is a "previledge" and not a "right". While i am a big lover of Google, it also scares a bit as we are moving towards a clear-cut monopoly. Any system that becomes too big to compete with, will necessarily bring injustice to a small group of people... hope i am wrong here.

Power Tricks for RSS Readers

2008-07-25T12:26:00.001+05:30

11 Power Tips To Get The Maximum Out Of Your RSS Feed Reader

Fundu article on Jeet Blog posted by Arpit Kumar from TechRaga

Good Read and great to implement!

Celebration means...

2008-07-25T11:15:00.004+05:30

Celebration means......

Four friends.
Bahar barsaat.
no raincoat, no
umbrella

Celebration means......

Hundred bucks of petrol.
A rusty old bike.
And an open road.

Celebration means......

Maggie noodles.
A hostel room.
4.25 a. m.

Celebration means......

3 old friends.
3 separate cities.
3 coffee mugs.
1 internet messenger.

Celebration means......

Rain on a hot tin roof.
Pakoras deep-frying.
Neighbors dropping in.
A party.

Celebration means......

You and mom.
A summer night.
A bottle of coconut oil.
A head massage.

You can spend

Hundreds on birthdays,
Thousands on festivals,
Millions on weddings,

but to Celebrate all
you have to do is spend your Time with your loved ones.

Keep in touch
with those who care for you......

Tips for New Blogger

2008-07-24T17:56:00.001+05:30

I found this Tips for New Bloggers website extremely useful for changing some UI elements on my blog... The back link trick is my favorite.

Here is a quick index of things it has.

Blogger FAQ and Help

Header
Insert an image to the left of Blog Title and Description [read]
Add a Horizontal Navigation Bar in Header Image [read]
Unable to remove Header Image [read]

Blog Posts
Arrange, customize and shift the Blog Posts and Footer elements [read]
Insert a picture or image beside the Blog Post Title [read]
How to have standard or pre-formatted text in Blog Posts [read]
Add Highlighting to Text and Background Color in Text Box [read]
Change Blogger Post URL - SEO Tip [read]
Change the Post a Comment Link [read]
Add scrollbars to text within Blog Posts [read]

Sidebar
Add Background color and image to Sidebar Titles [read]
Have different Background colors for each widget [read]
Style and Position Sidebar Images [read]

Footer
How to align Blog Post Footer elements to the left [read]
Move Comments Label to below Post Title [read]

Links and Labels
How to add Hover, Mouseover and Rollover effects for links [read]
Remove automatic number count in Labels widget [read]
Remove link underlines in Blog Posts and/or sidebar [read]
Be notified by Blogger when there is a Backlink [read]
Change and Edit Labels in Multiple Posts [read]

General
How to change Background Colour of TicTac Template [read]
How to remove the Pencil or Screwdriver and Wrench icons [read]
How to add animated graphics in Blogger Post and Sidebar [read]
Add Text Box or HTML textarea code in Blogs [read]
Know the limits on our Blogger account [read]
How to take Screenshots or Screen captures [read]
How to change and transfer Blog ownership [read]
Change font size and font styles in template [read]
How to center align Page Elements [read]
How to insert a separator line between each comment [read]

Invisible Waterproof Coating for Electronic Devices : Golden Shellback

2008-07-24T16:32:00.001+05:30

Something great to look forward to... apart from its obvious advantages, i am more intrigued by the whole idea and its execution.. Scientists decide the fate of almost everything in our life :)

Golden Shellback | Splash Proof Coatings
Golden Shellback coating is a unique coating that protects critical operational equipment against damage and loss of function caused by exposure to weather and moisture. It is ideal for application in the electronics industry.

Golden Shellback coating produces a vacuum deposited film that is nonflammable, has low toxicity and has the ability to weatherproof electronic devices and other surfaces. It contains no volatile organic combustibles (VOCs). The clear, nearly non-detectable, uniform film is insoluble in solvents. When applied to clean, moisture free surfaces, such as plastic, copper, aluminum, metal, ceramic, steel, tin or glass, the coating is transparent with excellent weather proofing and anti-corrosion properties.
VIDProduct Demonstration
DocProduct Description-2008-07-14

World without Engineers!!

2008-07-24T14:49:00.001+05:30

Imagine!! Its scary, isn't it?

Aeronautical Engineers

Electronics Engineers

Mechanical Engineers

Civil Engineers

Communication Engineers

Computer Engineers

Electrical Engineers

Weapons of Mass Destruction >> Not Found

2008-07-24T11:31:00.001+05:30

Cannot find Weapons of Mass Destruction

These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed

The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable.
The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors mandate.

Please try the following:

Click the Regime change button, or try again later.

If you are George Bush and typed the country's name in the address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly. (IRAQ).

To check your weapons inspector settings, click the UN menu, and then click Weapons Inspector Options.
On the Security Council tab, click Consensus. The settings should match those provided by your government or NATO.

If
the Security Council has enabled it, The United States of America can
examine your country and automatically discover Weapons of Mass
Destruction.

If you would like to use the CIA to try and discover them,

click Detect weapons

Some countries require 128 thousand troops to liberate them. Click the Panic menu and then click About US foreign policy to determine what
regime they will install.

If
you are an Old European Country trying to protect your interests, make
sure your options are left wide open as long as possible. Click the Tools menu, and then click on League of Nations.
On the Advanced tab, scroll to the Head in the Sand section and check settings for your exports to Iraq.

Click the Bomb button if you are Donald Rumsfeld.

Cannot find weapons or CIA Error
Iraqi Explorer

How to handle criticism on your Blogs > Good article by JeetBlog

2008-07-24T11:09:00.001+05:30

Found a nice article on JeetBlog on how to handle the criticism on your blog.
Handling Criticism As A Blogger Some of my favorite stuff from that!!

Be prepared for the unexpected
Be prepare for the worst. It doesn’t mean that you should be
pessimistic, but you should have a frame of mind where you are ready to
face all kinds of feedback.

Reduce the passion
Now.. thats a bit tough one
” The less passion there is, the better we work. The
calmer we are the better for us and the more the amount of work we can
do. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much energy, shatter
our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work. ”
- Swami Vivekananda
Believe in yourself
Again quoting Swami Vivekananda- ” Each work has to pass
through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance.
Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.
”

Nice Speech by India's PM Manmohan Singh

2008-07-23T14:31:00.001+05:30
Advani called me nikamma PM: Manmohan-The Times of India

Even though i am not a great fan of politics, i happened to read this speech (that could never be delivered to the parliament).
I liked some parts of it.. here they are!!

These are words of a man many call "weak" but he was the author of india's economic revolution and undoubtedly the "cleanest" guy on the indian political platform today (I sincerely hope i am not wrong)!!

The Leader of Opposition, Shri L.K. Advani has chosen to use all manner of abusive objectives to describe my performance. He has described me as the weakest Prime Minister, a nikamma PM, and of having devalued the office of PM. To fulfill his ambitions, he has made at least three attempts to topple our government. But on each occasion his astrologers have misled him. This pattern, I am sure, will be repeated today. At his ripe old age, I do not expect Shri Advani to change his thinking. But for his sake and India’s sake, I urge him at least to change his astrologers so that he gets more accurate predictions of things to come.
The Management and governance of the world’s largest, most diverse and most vibrant democracy is the greatest challenge any person can be entrusted with, in this world. It has been my good fortune that I was entrusted with this challenge over four years ago. I thank with all sincerity the Chairperson of the UPA, the leaders of the Constituent Parties of the UPA and every member of my Party for the faith and trust they reposed in me. I once again recall with gratitude the guidance and support I have received from Shri Jyoti Basu and Sardar Harkishen Singh Surjeet.

I have often said that I am a politician by accident. I have held many diverse responsibilities. I have been a teacher, I have been an official of the Government of India, I have been a member of this greatest of Parliaments, but I have never forgotten my life as a young boy in a distant village.

Every day that I have been Prime Minister of India I have tried to remember that the first ten years of my life were spent in a village with no drinking water supply, no electricity, no hospital, no roads and nothing that we today associate with modern living. I had to walk miles to school, I had to study in the dim light of a kerosene oil lamp. This nation gave me the opportunity to ensure that such would not be the life of our children in the foreseeable future.

Sir, my conscience is clear that on every day that I have occupied this high office, I have tried to fulfill the dream of that young boy from that distant village.

The greatness of democracy is that we are all birds of passage! We are here today, gone tomorrow! But in the brief time that the people of India entrust us with this responsibility, it is our duty to be honest and sincere in the discharge of these responsibilities. As it is said in our sacred texts, we are responsible for our actions and we must act without coveting the rewards of such action. Whatever I have done in this high office I have done so with a clear conscience and the best interests of my country and our people at heart. I have no other claims to make

Indian Politics: bringing our heads down in shame

2008-07-23T11:18:00.001+05:30

Yes... I am not the one who writes my own thoughts on the blog... but whatever i saw/heard in last two days in Indian politics, certainly brings my head down is sheer shame on the international scale.

First the nuclear deal, then left withdrawing support suddenly, baseless Mayawati claiming for "the first dalit lady PM" post, the trust motion and the topping was the money brought into the parliament!!

On one hand we boast of being the "biggest democracy" in the world and at the same time display the ugly face of democracy.. after looking at this, who would want democracy?

But as they say, "people get the king they deserve" this time the ever-visible corruption at grass root level makes it inevitable that it is reflected at the highest level... we cannot avoid it unless we start doing something!!

Shame ... Shame .. Shame...

Egypt Trip Photos

2008-07-21T23:01:00.001+05:30

I had a wonderful short business trip to Cairo, Egypt last week.. here are some of the photos from that trip.

Here is a link to the public picasa album

Twitter cartoon spoof!! cool one

2008-07-21T17:31:00.001+05:30

1 reason i left the new igoogle!!

2008-07-21T12:25:00.001+05:30

I read a lot about "why new igoogle sucks" and still i was ok to experiment... but one thing that i just could not stand was ... there is no minimize button... huff... it sucks...

I keep loads of things and open each when i have time.. otherwise they are minimized... its a must have and if its not there, i will not be the one to use the new UI just for the heck of it!!

Constructive Criticism of the new Experiemental iGoogle

2008-07-21T11:43:00.001+05:30
I thought of trying my hand on the new iGoogle and successfully did that by declaring myself as a developer iGoogle Sandbox Sign Up

Thought of also checking what people are saying about this new UI experiment and stumbled on this nice bit of article...

I have tried to pick my favorite ones:
* There is no way to hide the left-hand navigation tab. Since I onlyhave one page of information, which contains just the info I want to see at a glance when I start my browser, the left hand navigation is useless and takes up 1/4 of my screen width. I would love an option to "collapse" that column and free up that space for the actual content.

* There is no way to view just RSS headlines. With the new two-line preview for every item, I cannot fit all my feeds on one page without scrolling.

* After clicking on an item in an RSS feed from iGoogle, or clicking on one of my gadgets in the left-hand navigation, if I hit the "Back" button in my browser I am redirected to the page I was just viewing and cannot get back to my iGoogle page.

the new iGoogle page seems to be loading an INCREDIBLE amount of information in the background. Looking at my status bar, it seems like it's retrieving every image from every RSS feed on my page as it loads. This slows down my entire browser and my internet connection.

Tin Eye: Om

2008-07-17T00:30:00.001+05:30

Searched for

Got

Searched for

Got..

Searched for

Got...
Searched for

Got..

Text Search in Video Speeches: Another feather in the cap for Google

2008-07-16T23:56:00.001+05:30

This is another awesome innovation... Google constantly puts people in "shock and awe" situation... don't even imagined they could do this.

http://speech.clients.google.com/elections2008videosearch/gadget

This is simply unbelievable.. i tried searching for at least two dozen works and everything worked perfectly.

If you want a gadget for it, its also available

http://www.google.com/ig/directory?root=/ig&dpos=top&url=www.google.com/ig/modules/elections_video_search.xml

Currently the search in restricted to few political speeches but i am sure it will spread to all sorts of things like movies and video songs once they can take music out of the songs and recognize the words (easy said than done, but its google who needs to be blamed for spoiling people with great innovations).

Freeware Collection (Gatzed.com)

2008-07-16T23:10:00.001+05:30

Freeware Collection
Looks to be a good site... still to see what all it supports!! lets see.

LinkBunch.. cool concept: club multiple URLs into single one.

2008-07-12T18:16:00.001+05:30

This is another interesting find...you can put multiple URLs and it gives back single URL which you can use in blog, twitter, ims etc.. nice concept.

Would love to see a few tools developed on this to allow people to do this without coming to LinkBunch.com at all.

GetSatisfaction.com great concept to service users of free services

2008-07-12T17:46:00.001+05:30

I never thought something of this sort will be existing... initially looked like a typical support forum... but believe me, its much better. came here as i was searching for things on twittering in india... (http://getsatisfaction.com/twitter)need to check what all it has.. will update back.

Top 10 Twitter Apps

2008-07-12T16:18:00.001+05:30

Top 10 Twitter Apps - ReadWriteWeb
Top 10 Twitter Apps
Written by Andrew Pipes / July 11, 2007 1:41 AM / 26 Comments

Twitter has been a runaway success since the status message inspired web app launched about a year ago. Its rapid adoption, ease of use and extensibility resulted in a lot of excited developers taking Twitter's best bits and mixing them up to their own ends. FranticIndustries and the Twitter Fan Wiki together present a comprehensive list of Twitter mash-ups and extensions. But what to try first? Here's our selection of the most interesting and practical Twitters apps.

Oracle Business Indicators for iPhone 3G

2008-07-11T23:17:00.001+05:30

This is pretty unexpected and great news (atleast for me).
Never thought that Oracle will release free software on Apple mobile that too just when the iphone 3g comes out in Shops today.

Great timing.

http://www.oracle.com/corporate/press/2008_jul/iphone-apps.html

http://www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/business-indicators.html

Unfortunately, there are no screenshots available here...

Database driven Vista Gadget

2008-07-11T11:57:00.001+05:30

link

~~Good concept.. hope it can be readily used for Google gadgets too~~

Its already available for Google Gadget... here is the link

TinEye: Cool Searches

2008-07-11T10:40:00.001+05:30

Searched for

And got

Very impressive as usual.

CommonCraft Show... great way to explore web through paper cuttings.

2008-07-09T15:38:00.001+05:30

This is a great resource of small things that matter and it makes much sense and much fun to see them this way than watching usual demo videos or reading to documents... Also the paper cuttings look too cool.

Convert Powerpoint to Flash... for free... ispring free

2008-07-09T13:39:00.001+05:30

Easy, Fast, Accurate... & Free

Free PowerPoint to Flash converter creates web friendly Flash movies from your
PowerPoint content keeping its visual parameters and animation effects.
Generated Flash presentation will look as if it has always been a Flash movie.

Download iSpring Free (7.0 Mb)

http://news.swzone.it/link.php?action=h&id=21815

The top 40 tech podcasts

2008-07-08T17:15:00.001+05:30

The top 40 tech podcasts

Interesting 40 tech podcasts available today...

Safarp: Great alternative for Add-Remove Programs

2008-07-08T15:44:00.001+05:30

This is really cool and sleek way to remove your programs.... very efficient, light weight and fast.

I never liked the interface and speed (or lack of it) with the existing version.

Print Screen Alternative: Gadwin Print Screen

2008-07-08T13:56:00.001+05:30

Just downloaded it and used it... just amazing what windows could not achieve with this simple day to day thing... another MUST HAVE for anyone who has to take frequent screen-shots.

I have tried quite a few applications till date and this one beats all of them "hands down"

http://www.gadwin.com/download/

Duplicate Files Cleaner

2008-07-08T13:45:00.001+05:30

I used this tool today and feeling very good about it... it has dozens of options to identify and select for removal (or even hard linking or moving to another place)

Duplicate cleaner
is a tool to assist anyone in cleaning up the
contents of their personal hard drive or corporate network. You'd be
surprised just how many redundant or duplicate files you could find
forgotten in an obscure documents folder. Photos, music, Word
documents, PowerPoint presentations, videos - you name it, if it
appears twice on your computer then Duplicate Cleaner will find it.

http://www.digitalvolcano.co.uk/dupe.html

Desktop Widgets: Tech comparison of available options

2008-07-07T18:54:00.001+05:30

Here is a great recourse if you are looking for getting your hands dirty on Desktop Apps / Widgets
link

Though its on yahoo blog, it looks pretty unbiased!!

I would like to do this comparison for Flex as well... some day (or better by some one else)!

IZARC: The ultimate compression solution... and its free!!

2008-07-07T15:11:00.001+05:30

IZArc is the ultimate freeware
archive
utility supporting many archive
formats like: 7-ZIP, A, ACE,
ARC, ARJ, B64, BH,

BIN, BZ2, BZA, C2D, CAB, CDI, CPIO, DEB, ENC, GCA, GZ, GZA,
HA, IMG, ISO, JAR, LHA, LIB, LZH, MDF, MBF,

MIM, NRG, PAK, PDI, PK3, RAR, RPM,
TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TGZ, TZ, UUE, WAR, XXE, YZ1, Z, ZIP, ZOO.
With a modern easy-to-use interface, IZArc provides support for most compressed and encoded files, as
well as access

to many powerful features and tools. It allows you to drag and drop files from and to Windows
Explorer, create and extract

archives directly in Windows Explorer, create
multiple archives spanning disks, creating self-extracting archives, repair

damaged zip archives, converting from one
archive type to another, view and
write comments and many more.

IZArc has also
build-in multilanguage support.

Here is the features page

Enterprise Widgets: The Story So Far

2008-07-02T16:33:00.001+05:30

GREAT READL!! Web 2.0 making its mark on the Enterprise Apps.

A desktop widget is a small application that provides very focused
information from a predetermined data source. Desktop widgets generally
have a small footprint, are of fixed dimensions, and provide
information “at-a-glance.”
A widget sounds a bit
like a dashboard, but unlike dashboards, widgets allow you to input
data as well as view it. In addition, desktop widgets generally run on
a widget engine, which is a runtime environment that may be ported to
two or more operating systems and provide security, local-management,
and access to system and network resources through platform agnostic
APIs. Dashboards, on the other hand, tend to be stand-alone
applications. Figure 1 shows the general architecture of a desktop
widget engine.

Figure 1: Architecture of a desktop widget engine

Desktop
widgets have been around for a very long time. The first set of desktop
widgets were introduced by Apple back in 1983 with their release of
Apple Desktop Accessories (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Apple Desktop Accessories (1983)
Obviously
Apple was way ahead of the curve, but these early widgets were not
Internet enabled – the popular Internet, as we know it,
didn’t exist – so their utility was pretty limited.
Although
there were assorted forays into Internet connected widgets in the late
1990s, most notably in push technology provided by PointCast and
Microsoft’s Active Desktop Update, it wasn’t until
Konfabulator (see Figure 3) came along in 2003 that Internet widgets
truly arrived. Today it’s hard to imagine a widget engine that
doesn’t connect to the Internet – at least one that is
useful.

Figure 3: Konfabulator (2005)
Konfabulator
was eventually purchased by Yahoo! - becoming Yahoo! Widgets, which
offers a fantastic assortment of consumers-oriented desktop widgets
– things like clocks, weather dashboards, stock tickers, music
streaming, etc.
Today there are many widget engines including
Dashboard on Mac OS X, Google Gadgets, Microsoft Gadgets and about a
dozen other widget engines from small vendors, freeware, and open
source projects (see this list on Wikipedia).
What
strikes me, however, is that all of these widget engines are designed
for fairly trivial consumer-oriented tasks. There are very few widgets
for the enterprise. I’m only aware of one vendor that offers
enterprise widgets, Extensio, but they are not in the business of
providing a widget engine; a platform on which other vendors can build
widgets. Extensio’s widgets are tied to their own proprietary
Information server and while interesting they hardly represent a
platform on which an ecosystem of enterprise widgets can grow.
What
is needed is an enterprise widget ecosystem. The ecosystem would have
to be portable across the most common desktop operating systems and it
would need to be backend agnostic. The Fit Client, the Grand Convergence
of the web, RIA, widgets, and client/server applications, is the best
kind of platform on which to build an enterprise widget engine. You
could build an enterprise widget ecosystem on top of Fit Clients such
as Yahoo! Widgets, Google Gadgets, Adobe AIR or the like, but the
requirements for enterprise widgets are different from consumer widgets
so perhaps a new platform is needed.
First and foremost, the
enterprise widget platform needs to be secure so that widgets are
restricted to a sandbox independent of other widgets. At the same time,
however, the ability to link widgets together so that widgets can act
as data feeds for other widgets (Extensio does this to some degree) is
also important. Another important requirement is manageability. An
enterprise widget engine needs to provide centralized management and
provisioning so that the IT department can monitor who is using which
widgets and deploy and remove widgets over the network from a central
location.
The question that comes to most people's mind when I
talk about enterprise widgets is, “why would the enterprise need
widgets in the first place?” Good question. I think the answer
lies in the narrow focus of widgets. Organizations that write their own
software, or even those that use packaged ERP software, tend to provide
mammoth client applications (desktop or web based) that provide much
more functionality than any single employee needs. One employee uses
one set of windows and menus while another uses something different,
but they all use the same application. That in my mind is not very
effective. It would be better if employees could have only those input
forms or views on their desktop that they need and wanted. If you buy
that argument, then you have an excellent use-case for widgets.
The
idea of each employee having a few to a dozen small enterprise widgets
on their desktop may seem like a maintenance nightmare, but actually it
would be much easier than maintaining a mammoth interface. For one
thing each widget could evolve separately so that you could update
functionality without having to do a huge application release. The
narrow focus of widgets also makes testing, maintenance, and
development a lot easier. In addition, if the backend data sources are
accessed as micro-services (very granular web services) or REST
resources, then creating new enterprise widgets would be much easier
than adding new features to a large desktop client.
Enterprise
widgets provide a win-win for everyone. Tacit workers can have a more
focused desktop – just the views and input forms they want and
need – while IT has an easier time updating and adding
functionality.
The enterprise widget platform is very different
in many ways from the traditional mammoth front ends we are used to.
They allow an organization to be more nimble and its workforce to be
more effective. In my opinion, the days of large enterprise application
front ends are coming to a close. In the future, the desktop will
become the enterprise front end and every employee will have exactly
the enterprise functionality they want and need.

GMarks: Cool extension for Google Bookmarks

2008-07-02T09:10:00.001+05:30

Categories

Bookmarks

GMarks helps you sync & manage your bookmarks with Google Bookmarks...
GMarks can display the bookmarks almost the same as Firefox's native
bookmarks: in a separate menu and in the sidebar. There's also a
dropdown that can be added to Firefox's toolbars. The sidebar is useful
when you want to perform full-text searches in your bookmarks without
having to visit Google's site, while the GMark menu has an excellent
option for managing bookmarks. If you click on "Organize bookmarks",
you'll be able to import bookmarks, edit or delete bookmarks and create
Gmail-like filters. For example, you can automatically add the label
Google for any bookmark from this blog.

Importance of Failure and Imagination

2008-07-01T11:44:00.003+05:30
J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination,” at the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.
President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilizes thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, and the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world; we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.

Google Export Data

2008-06-30T14:51:00.001+05:30

Very good article that lists all ways you can export your google data!!

Google mentioned in many occasions that it doesn't want to trap users' data
and some of its services have started to provide import/export options.
Here are some of the ways to export your data from Google's services:

* iGoogle lets you download the list of gadgets, feeds, themes and their corresponding options if you go to the settings page
and scroll down to the "Export / Import" section. The resulting XML
file can be imported to another Google account and those who are
familiar with XSLT could covert iGoogle's data file to OPML, so you can
subscribe to the feeds in Google Reader or any other feed reader.

* Google Calendar has options to export your calendars one by one as iCal files, but it's much easier to export all the calendar you created by going to: http://www.google.com/calendar/exporticalzip.

*
Google Docs lets you export your documents as an archive of HTML files
and images. To export your files, restrict the Docs list to documents, select all the files and choose "Save as HTML (zipped)" from "More actions". Zoho can already import your documents and there's a Greasemonkey script that helps you download all the files from Google Docs, not just the documents.

* Blogger added in the experimental version available at draft.blogger.com an option to export the posts and comments
from your blogs as an Atom feed. Hopefully, developers will write
scripts that convert Blogger's feeds to the formats accepted by other
blogging services.

* Google Bookmarks can be exported as a HTML file,
but for some reason browsers can no longer import the bookmarks. The
web history or search history can be exported as a RSS feed: http://www.google.com/history/lookup?q=&output=rss&num=1000 (replace 1000 with the number of items you want to export).
BTW: Firefox 3 imports Google Bookmarks just fine. It just uses folders instead of tags.

* Gmail lets you export your contacts as CSV or vCard, but Google automatically adds all the people you send a reply in the list of contacts.

*Gmail : To download your GMAIL, set up POP or IMAP (recommended) access in your
GMail account(s). Then use an email client such as Microsoft Outlook or
Mozilla Thunderbird (recommended) to download all your mail. Mac users
can use Apple's Mail which is built in. After downloading all your
mail, you can use your chosen client to export it to whatever format
you wish.

It
would be nice to export all your data from a single page, so you can
delete a Google account or switch to a competing service without losing
your data.

Wipro CRM PDC Party Photos

2008-06-30T09:49:00.001+05:30

Really great party!!

Here is a link in case you cannot see the slide-show above properly

http://picasaweb.google.com/yogendra.joshi/WiproCRMPDCParty27June

Tin Eye Slide Show Widget

2008-06-26T12:08:00.002+05:30

Awesome idea to convert the tin eye image find into an animation... great work
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Still to figure out how do i create my own widget with the cool images i searched..

Quotes by Richard Bach

2008-06-25T14:04:00.006+05:30

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

Allow the world to live as it chooses, and allow yourself to live as you choose.

An idea is never given to you without you being given the power to make it reality. You must, nevertheless, suffer for it.

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they're yours.

Ask yourself the secret of YOUR success. Listen to your answer, and practice it.

Avoid problems, and you'll never be the one who overcame them.

Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. Nothing is the worst thing that can happen to us!

Can miles truly separate you from friends... If you want to be with someone you love, aren't you already there?

Civilization... wrecks the planet from seafloor to stratosphere.

Don't be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.

Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.

Every gift from a friend is a wish for your happiness.

Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.

Get this in mind early: We never grow up.

Happiness is the reward we get for living to the highest right we know.

Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.

I don't want to do business with those who don't make a profit, because they can't give the best service.

I gave my life to become the person I am right now. Was it worth it?

I want to be very close to someone I respect and admire and have somebody who feels the same way about me.

If it's never our fault, we can't take responsibility for it. If we can't take responsibility for it, we'll always be its victim.

If you love someone, set them free. If they come back they're yours; if they don't they never were.

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.

If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem.
In order to live free and happily you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice.

In order to win, you must expect to win.

In the United States Christmas has become the rape of an idea.

It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost.

Jonathan is that brilliant little fire that burns within us all, that lives only for those moments when we reach perfection.

Learning is finding out what you already know.

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.

Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world, even if what is said is not true.

Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true.

Our soulmate is the one who makes life come to life.

Rarely do members of the same family grow up under the same roof.

Some choices we live not only once but a thousand times over, remembering them for the rest of our lives.

Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.

The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other's life.

The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly.

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

The simplest questions are the most profound. Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What are you doing? Think about these once in a while and watch your answers change.

The simplest things are often the truest.

There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.

To bring anything into your life, imagine that it's already there.

To fly as fast as thought, you must begin by knowing that you have already arrived.

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

You are always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.

You are never given a dream without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.

You don't want a million answers as much as you want a few forever questions. The questions are diamonds you hold in the light. Study a lifetime and you see different colors from the same jewel.

You teach best what you most need to learn.

Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.

Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah.

E Books Online

2008-06-25T13:35:00.001+05:30

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Possible Firefox for Mobile video

2008-06-17T18:17:00.001+05:30

Firefox Mobile Concept Video from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Really cool stuff...

ipod tips / tricks and utilities

2008-06-14T21:47:00.001+05:30

44 Things you can do with your Ipod | Random Good Stuff

50 Fun Things To Do With Your iPod (kottke.org)

Podagogy » Amazing things you can do with your iPod

10 Things Your iPod Won't Tell You (10 Things: Personal Finance ...

Some Unbelievable and Real Things You Can Do with Your iPod - Yepeoo

5 Cool Things To Do With Your iPod!

Fun things to do with your iPod that don't involve music ..

9 Things Your New iPod Can't Do / Yes, it does everything. But can ...

75 Things You Can Do With iPod

All the things you can do with your ipod... - iPod - iPhone ...

Digg - 50 Fun Things to Do With Your iPod

TinEye: My Cool Searches (globe)

2008-06-02T14:29:00.001+05:30

I searched for and got 806 results

searched over 487 million images in 0.331 seconds (thats maximum i have searched for anything)

Just a few cool ones...

I am stopping here... too much to handle for me... can't imagne how it can pull something like these...

Title	Length	Rating
1. Ata Kuthe Dhave Mana Tuje Charan Dhek Liya	N/A	0 sur 5
2. Ye Pandhari Sukh Pahata	N/A	0 sur 5
3. Bolava Vitthal Pahawa Vitthal	N/A

Being Yogendra

25 Places to Find Awesome Stock Photos — Free and Cheap

25 Places to Find Awesome Stock Photos — Free and Cheap

Flicker Macro Photos

Lead Management through Web 2.0

Meditation

Picnik.com: Great online photo editor

10 Free Web-based Alternatives to Photoshop

Social CRM... be careful.

Cartoon on Bailout

Google Search in India on SMS!!

Dilbert on Internet time wasters!!

CleanAfterMe: Good tool to go invisible

Battery & Charging: Anyone really innovating?

Odiogo.com: Text to Speech RSS.. real time

Timeboxing

Selling Wisdom

BusinessListening.Com

Dilbert on ERP Deal

Self Portrait: This is Imagination

Social Technology Ladder

Live Trains: Lovely experiment

Financial Crisis Cartoons (Part 2)

Financial Crisis Cartoons

Google in 2001

10 Meeting Basics

Savalee Marthi Movie (2007) Songs

Arati Ankalikar Tikekar (Esnips Songs)

Bolava Vitthal by Arati Ankalikar

Indian Music Online Radio

FREE HI-Q Recorder: It Rocks

iSound: (not free) ultimate audio recorder

Youtube to MP3 conversion

Good Hindustani Clasical site on Blogger

Delhi Blasts!! Do we really care?

TinEye Illustrated

Hit Me Later: email reminder on demand!!

HP dv2910us: my wife's new laptop

Power performance

Movie, music, or game?

Connections and software

Daily dose of Chintoo

Magellan RoadMate 1412 - GPS: My Review

Floods in Pune (My Society)

The Presentation Blog

Panoramio: View Photos from Google Map

TinEye: The Common Moon

Twhirl: another twitter tool

Dapper: Bollywood Movie Reviews from Rediff

Dapper: Ongoing Challenges in DPChallenge

Live Gold Prices: Dapper Widget

Movies in Pune: My Dapper for

Dapper... interesting mashup service

Sanskrit and Marathi Online Dictionary

ScribeFire 2.3: Power-up your blogging

%p7dSHTMB0A%

EveryScape: Cool new World Exploration

Face Swapping to protect privacy

Inside-Widgets: myths busted!

Widgets Lab

ECO-SAFE widget: Send/Download PDF for your blog

Cuil... wiered search results

FixYa: Free Tech Support for your devices

Google: Success Story of 25 Million to 1 Trillion

Google Clocks 1 Trillion unique web-content pages

Power Tricks for RSS Readers

Celebration means...

Tips for New Blogger

Invisible Waterproof Coating for Electronic Devices : Golden Shellback

World without Engineers!!

Weapons of Mass Destruction >> Not Found

These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed

Cannot find weapons or CIA Error Iraqi Explorer

How to handle criticism on your Blogs > Good article by JeetBlog

Be prepared for the unexpected

Reduce the passion

Believe in yourself

Nice Speech by India's PM Manmohan Singh

Indian Politics: bringing our heads down in shame

Egypt Trip Photos

Cannot find weapons or CIA Error
Iraqi Explorer