The most difficult thing I've had to do after moving out of home is managing expense. I don't have good ol' dad to fall back on. I've got to pay my bills, manage my menial salary and still have some savings. I've been trying hard to get my finances in order and as always I found my answers to my trouble online. I'll be reviewing 3 amazing online expense planners.

1. www.walletproof.com - Again a very quick sign up. I love their piggy bank logo and their tag line - Start budgeting today. The interface is also very easy. The tabs are divided into Income and Expense and further categorized into recurring and this month. You just put your expense and the amount and voila you are done.

The only difference is that it doesn't have the option of remotely updating the information. It will need you to login every time you want to update.

2. www.plan2spend.com - This site asked for a lot of details before sign up. After sign up however I was impressed by the way the site was organized. You can update your account information by updating the deposits, bills and usual expenses and then your daily expenses.

I really liked the budget tab on the site, it does a comparative analysis of where most of your money is being spent. Its simple and easy to use. The one thing I don't like about it is that it takes far to long to load and that is painful.

3. www.xpenser.com - This was the quickest sign up. It took me so little time to get into the system to start updating my spend. The interface is clean and doesn't have too many distractions. I was able to update my October expenses online within 15mins.

It has the option of updating your day to day expense via email, instant messaging or twitter. (US citizens have the option to use sms as well as JOTT calls).

All in all, this was my favorite product of the lot.

There were a couple more online expense planners that I didn't review cause they catered mostly for the American citizens as they will need your Bank account information and more details. I'm still not very comfortable with sharing personal information online with sites. Here are the two sites if you are visiting from the US - www.mint.com and www.rudder.com

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James Randy is a stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. He is also the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation hosting the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.

To quote the history of the challenge from Wikipedia:

In 1968, James Randi was working on a radio program with his friend and parapsychologist Stanley Crypter. During one of the programs, someone challenged him to "put his money where his mouth is", and Randi offered $100 of his own money (even though he wasn't sure if he had $100 at that time) to the first person who could provide objective proof of the paranormal. Eventually this grew to $1,000 and then $10,000. Later, Lexington Broadcasting wanted him to do a show called the "$100,000 Psychic Prize", so they added $90,000 to the original $10,000 raised by Randi. Finally, years later a rich investor told Randi that he "should have more teeth" to his challenge and offered him the current $1,000,000 prize. As the prize fund grew, the rules that surround claiming the prize became more official and legal.

This challenge has withstood the test of time and so far no one has made claim to the prize money. Also a lot of myths have been busted as a result but unfortunately a lot of this information is not commonly available. Here is a list of all the Million dollar challengers.

Homeopathy has been proved to be pseudoscience and all its benefits have been attributed to the placebo effect.

BBC Horizon organized a Million dollar challenge of Homeopathy Vs James Randi. Its available in youtube as 5 episodes:

Everyone taking homeopathic treatment might want to make a fresh stand after watching these videos.

In the video below James Randi shows how to fake psychic powers.

Skeptic are you now?

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Shelfari is a social networking website for book lovers. With Shelfari you can build a virtual bookshelf to share with other people, discuss books in forums, review them and use it as a platform for book exchange. There are reader groups based on authors, titles, content and geographics locations. This is an ideal platform to find new books to read based on your tastes by meeting like minded readers. If you have a blog, you can even put up a virtual bookshelf on your website like the one below:



Click on the image to see my bookshelf.

Enjoy!

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Swype is a new way to input text into mobile phones based on touch screens which are all the rage now. Traditional T9 dictionaries in phones auto guess words from the keys you have pressed. But most new touch screen based phones have individual character keys and consequently you have to move fingers across more keys to input your text. Swype is a technique for making the process of typing into touchscreens easier.

Check out this video to get the idea.

To quote the swype website:


Swype provides a faster and easier way to input text on any screen. With one continuous finger or stylus motion across the screen keyboard, the patented technology enables users to input words faster and easier than other data input methods—at over 50 words per minute. The application is designed to work across a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, game consoles, kiosks, televisions, virtual screens and more.




Simply Trace a Path

The word “quick” was generated from tracing the path shown above in a fraction of a second, by roughly aiming to pass through the letters of the word. A key advantage to Swype is that there is no need to be very accurate, enabling very rapid text entry.

Swype is not yet available in production phones and is expected to launch soon on all touch screen mobile phones.

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Have you been showing off your new bootable pen drive to your friends? You must be having a halo behind your head right now. Wanna make that halo stay there for a longer time? Ok, here are a few utilities and links to their official pages.



I will say this again and again, please back up all your important data on your PC or anybody else's PC before doing anything that involves Disk partitioning, formatting, recovery etc. You get the idea.

Before you proceed, please download & install the following software to extract files from a compressed archive. We are assuming that you know about compressed files and folders and how to work with them - 7zip and/or Universal Extractor.

Utilities to be copied to your Pen Drive:

1) TestDisk
TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy. TestDisk has features for both novices and experts. For those who know little or nothing about data recovery techniques, TestDisk can be used to collect detailed information about a non-booting drive which can then be sent to a tech for further analysis. Those more familiar with such procedures should find TestDisk a handy tool in performing onsite recovery. We recommend using the DOS version of this utility if you are not able to boot into Windows. Just download it, extract it and copy it to a folder on your pen drive. Remember to rename the folder to TestDisk as Long File Names are not supported in DOS.

2) Super Fdisk
Super Fdisk is the free DOS Partition Manager. With Super Fdisk you can quickly and easily create, delete, format partitions in DOS. There is a free Windows version also available at the website. Download, extract and copy to a folder of your choice on the pen drive. If necessary, rename the folder. A detailed FAQ and step-by-step screenshots are available on the author's website.

3) Undelete Plus
Undelete Plus is a quick and effective way to restore accidentally deleted files. It can also recover files that have been emptied from the Recycle Bin, permanently deleted files within Windows using the Shift + Delete, and files that have been deleted from within a Command Prompt. Undelete Plus works under Win 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista operating systems. The program supports all Windows file systems for hard and floppy drives including FAT12/16/32,NTFS/NTFS5 and image recovery from CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia and Secure Digital cards. This utility does not have a DOS version. Download the version without the installer. Just one single file. Copy it to your pen drive and you are ready to go. To launch this utility, just double-click on the file.

4) Recuva
Recuva (pronounced "recover") is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses! Runs on Microsoft Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000 and 98.

These are some of the best free recovery/disk utilities I have come across. Please use these with care. In our next part, we will come up with some Windows based applications & utilities which will make you a "Portable" guru.

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We've written about Google Phone Search before. And recently Google Phone Search is released in New Delhi. Again the number is the same 1-800-41-999-999

Here are 5 things I like about the phone search.

1. Anytime information - Getting the information when you want, where you want is amazing. I just need to dial the toll free number to get the number to the nearest Chinese restaurant.

2. Really low call wait time - I've never had to wait for more than 15 seconds (Yes I've counted) for someone to lift the phone on the other end

3. You get the information sms'd quickly - Sometimes I've received the information on a sms while on the call with Google.

4. I trust Google not to sell my number to cold callers - I've asked the agent and they've assured me that they don't keep a record of the number. In fact the agent asks you if you want the information sms'd or over the phone and you give your number just incase you want it sms'd

5. Free call forwarding - They offer to forward the call to the number that you require for FREE!

3 Things I don't like about Google Phone Search

1. Speech Recognition - It could work better, much better. But right now it doesn't work all that well. Sometimes you've got to repeat 3 to 4 times to get the computer to understand what you are saying. With thick Indian accents it might be difficult for users to get their desired number soon.

2. Agents google the queries- I've asked one of the agents how they get their information and he simply said "Ma'am I google it". So when I asked for a launderer in my area, they were unable to provide information as it wasn't available in their search result. 

3. Enough local content - I wonder if there are enough local results online. Are local businesses putting their information online? 

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I ain't no big rap fan but this one has nice music and animation. Enjoy!

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By Jiljith C.P.

I only had 3 rounds around my office building (which includes the basement parking lot too) on a badly maintained RTR 160, so this review can’t be very useful. Nevertheless, here goes.

The bike seemed small even to a guy like me who is just 5’ 4". I cannot imagine how a bigger person would feel on it. The seating position is rather extreme. My neck began to hurt after just 3 rounds on it! You do feel wrapped around the bike though. It corners well. It brakes well. It accelerates well. The engine is ’ok’. I have heard people comment that the bike can be used to zip in traffic. I don’t think that has much to do with the handling of the bike - it must have more to do with its size. The bike as such seems to lack character. It is ’ok’ in most categories - perhaps even good in some; but it seemed like it had no distinguishing trait. It holds its line well too. It did remind me of the Fiero though; and there were times when I felt somebody had installed a powerful engine onto a small frame on purpose. 

It is not really what I would call a nice commuter bike, though - yes, it would not be out of place on the track. The bike lacks sophistication; it is too lean to look good; if you pay money for this bike, then you are paying for the performance more than anything.

I wasn’t very impressed - looking at it from a commuter’s perspective; not very unimpressed either. It seems like a good bike that has been engineered well. It leans more on the performance side. It seemed like many aspects like braking, cornering, power, had been taken into account well; but the bike as a whole had been left out.

Unless you’re a TVS fan or one of the so called race-bred boys on a budget [ignoring the R15], you would be better off overlooking this bike.

Apache RTR 160 FI:

Would a rear disc brake and Fuel injection change the character of this bike? --naa...I don’t think so. It is already good in those areas. If it needs the attention of the commuter it will have to improve on some of the other areas.

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By Jiljith C.P

Pink Floyd's "High Hopes", I personally feel, is the best music video I have ever seen. It represents the lyrics well enough to affect our sympathy and reach into our souls. Infact, it outdoes the lyrics in its presentation

It is rich in imagery - guitars floating in rivulets and apples 'running' out onto the road. The images have interpretations which reach out to multiple levels. Tall suited men (on stilts) with cases have distanced themselves from the common folk. Men in the present day continue to carry busts of great men; and it is a burden. Men carry heavy bells past the rage (symbolic of fire?) of modern civilisation; and continue to carry them at dusk. The wheel of time continues its journey, albeit carried on by mankind [halfway through the video]. Modern age mocks the architecture of society without realising that it sees this far because it stands on their shoulders: clowns on the pathway in front of a grand staid home.

A man filled with remorse looks over the heath (his past has been painful); a remorse built on the soul-lessness of the modernity; a modernity which has been interpreted by many a modern man in a wrong sense. And how does a man release his sorrow? Certainly not through tears; it is not manly to cry, it never was. Tears do not beget action, and without action a man fails to find expression in his being. So, instead, he decides to let the 'balloons' out; which move out, into the country roads, through the corridors, past cathedrals, over the bridges... His remorse is not his anymore, his sorrow has now become a part of all mankind - the table-tennis players find their ball bigger than before - it is not possible that one man hold to himself all pain; and there is no need either - all mankind shares a common soul.

A group of youngsters (boys and girls - was this intentional?) release their balloons symbolising the possiblity of a harmonious and joyous victory but only if we work together in love (which itself speaks for friendship) through seeming machinations of social order which respects and delivers to each gender its place.

There is a need for release, yes, but not through ecstacy or loss of memory resulting in instantaneous liberation, which is premature and we are forced to (as mentioned in the song) 'sleepwalk back again'. Though, there is need for action, strict action, as the little boy does: He throws his baby-bear out of the window - it has become too big for him; not the other way around. In this age, if you don't outgrow your toys, they'll outgrow you.

And it ends with one of the most memorable electric-guitar solos of all time - albeit the slide. There is no match here for Gilmour's guitaring - no predeccessor, no imitator. He has explained his theory through music. His music embodies the remorse of the man sitting on the car, yet has all the hope of the one who releases the balloons: this is the genius of Gilmour - he does not let his idea percolate to bland emotion, nor condescend to the whims of hope. He appeals not only to the heart, but also the soul. He is a guitarist for men: he brings hope into a life filled with "high hopes" - which is the intention of this song.

It is sad that Gilmour's guitaring has waned in popularity with the 'imitator' crowd of the electric guitar growing in numbers. They find his guitaring simple - they convince themselves that they've succesfully played through his tunes; though I have never heard anybody play it the way Gilmour plays: but nobody cares for depth - who has the time?

Then the greater imitators with their 'technical' and 'accurate' music - which is more a cadence of the classical idea - bring their own egos into play and call for more imitators; then imitators will need their fans and soon the purpose is lost: nothing is conveyed, there is no overflowing of the soul, Music is not art anymore.

PS: After all these years, I feel I have finally done justice to this video. This is modern art in a true sense: art changes but never idea.

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When I think about surviving in the wild, movies like Rambo and Predator first pop in to mind (If you really want to watch a good movie about surviving in the the wild check out: Into the wild) . The whole idea of living in the wild and being able to stay alive sounds like the kind of thing that can make one feel at the heights of living-the-moment. But a Rambo knife just won't cut it. Survival in the wild is a skill and requires good planning and knowledge. Even then, there are no guarantees.

Survival topics is an interesting website I came across that has information on the various aspects of surviving outside your comfort zone.

The website is split into various sections like FireSteel, Blades And Knives, Blog Books, Bushcraft, Clothing, Compass, Fire, Food, Health, Heat, Hunting, Fishing, Trapping, Improvised Gear, Jobs, Knots, Lost, Music, Myth, Navigation, News, People, Pets, Plants, Preparedness, Psychology, Safety, Shelter, Signaling, Stoves, Survival, Gear, Survival Kits, Survival Skills, Survival Supplies, Survivalist, Blogs, Water, Wilderness Medicine, Wildlife and Winter.

There is lot of good information about surival skills. Some of the interesting ones are:

1. How to choose a survival knife

2. The 5 basic surival skills

3. How long can you live without food

4. Using Time as a compass

5. Find the temperature using Crickets (insect)

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Webcomics are a staple in my daily web diet. Some are an interesting way to keep in touch with the not-so-obvious crazy ways of life while some are simply funny and some just strike a chord with the way I think. So here goes:

1. XKCD: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language





With XKCD do not forget to keep your mouse on the image for some time to get the alt-text which completes the image strip. Written by Randall Munroe, this is probably the first comic to popularize stick figures. It gives out the notion that to get a good comic, you don't necessarily have to be a great illustrator. A good idea and creativity will suffice to bring out the comic artist in you.


2. Ctrl+Alt+Del

A full and full geek gaming comic by Tim Buckley, some of the strips might be hard to comprehend if you are not a gamer familiar with the popular games out there. Even otherwise there is the the occasional gyan on romance and relationships. Off late, the comic has gotten serious with the protagonist's relationship in trouble. Head back to the archives and start off from the beginning to laugh your ass off.




3. Cyanide and Happiness

Yet another stick figure not-for-the-regular-crowd, this comic might just gross you out with the brutal violence and sex if you don't have the balls for it. Openmindedness is a pre-requisite.



4. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Zach Weiner touches on a variety of topics some of which might make you want to skip your morning breakfast.




These are my favorite ones. Other notable ones are: See Mike Draw, Abstruse Goose and The Rut.

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I have a lovely dress that I want to wear this New Years Eve, without feeling too conscious about my flab. So I have tried Aerobics, Yoga and Gym. It has helped but now I have an aim, and am motivated to reach that 65kg before the clock strikes 2009. So yes I continue to work hard on the treadmill and sweat off those calories but that doesn't help me, what about my food intake, what about working out the pain areas? What about a consistent regimen. I travel and hopefully I will find a gym wherever I am traveling but how do I continue to track my progress? It's simple - join Gyminee.

It's an online resource to meet a targeted need in the health and fitness market. There are some amazing Workout programs, food listings, physical challenges, exercise library, forums, blogs and groups. Your one stop shop to meet your fitness goals!

It's easy to use, start by following the few steps listed below:

1. Register and finish the formalities
2. Set up your Profile with as much information as possible
3. Choose a workout program that suits you the best in the huge list of programs available.
4. Setup Calorie goals, this is easy, just tell the system your current weight and desired weight the system does the rest. It also tells you realistically how long you'll have to wait till you see yourself at that weight.
5. Get some Gymbuddies (your online motivators)

After you finish the initial registration the cool part is checking out the various workouts and you can find something that suits you. Here are some advantages to having pre-set exercises, you just need to finish the regimen once you hit the gym and come out, no waiting for a gym partner or instructor. You're responsible for your progress and your weight. I've signed up for Killer abs. I had to add what I did today in the gym and I knew how much I worked out (estimate).















I also added what I ate today, surprisingly I didn't expect them to have Indian foods but was surprised to find Rasam as an option in their food list and samosas of course (Yes I ate a Samosa (gulp)). It also adds your glass of water in a day.

I am excited about this and I intend to follow. So little black dress on New Years Eve, here I come! (For those who are curious a glimpse at what my dress is going to look like)

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Sumo paint is a web based image editor which at first glance looks exactly like photoshop. A quick glance at the drop down menus seems to indicate support for most things that photoshop is capable of. For this reason Sumo Paint can boldly claim to be the most advanced web based image editor. For the price tag of free comapared to the $700+ you pay for photoshop, Sumo paint is fantastic tool for your image editing needs.

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This is the first part of a series of articles about maintaing your windows PC using a USB flashdrive (also called USB pen drives, USB thumb drives and USB Keys). The first part explains the usefulness of the USB flash drives as well as how to turn it into a bootable one. Later in the series we will add utilities and applications to the pen drive to make it useful.



Your friend calls you and tells you that he needs your help in recovering some important data he just deleted. If your friend has internet connectivity, it’s fine. You could download one of the many data recovery software freely available on the net and get his data back for him. What if he didn’t have an internet connection? What if his Microsoft Windows Operating System has crashed or failed due to some unknown reason? How do you get your data back for him? There are lots of other situations like these where you wish you had your own set of utilities and applications you have come to trust over the years and would like to have them in a CD/DVD for instant gratification. You would also like to have them updated regularly or at the least manually update them so that you don’t leave yourself fretting and fuming at the last moment. Again, CD’s & DVD’s have this problem of not being read in particular drives, or scratches can cause them not to work properly. You may even loan it to a friend and forget to take it back from him or your friend may pass it on to his friend!

This is where a USB thumb drive or pen drive or flash drive or anything else that you may want to call it, comes in handy. You will not only carry your important data in it, it’s possible to use it as a Swiss Army Knife for the Personal Computer. You can update the software in it regularly. You can make it bootable. We will show you how to create one. We will also tell you where to find some of the best free applications & utilities that you can copy to this pen drive and take it along with you.

No, you will not be installing applications. Just copy some of the files of a particular application and run it off the drive. You will ask “how does this matter?”. It does matter. All Microsoft Windows compatible applications and software write settings to a master database in the Operating System called the “Registry”. This Registry, over a period of time is filled with unwanted data, especially if you keep installing new applications, games, utilities and then uninstalling them too. Uninstalling software is pretty easy. But, are the registry settings & files that this software used been removed? I would say NO. This is where a new and fast growing concept of “Portable Software” comes in. No installations. No registry entries. Just download the software and run it.

All right then. Get your pen drive ready so that we can make it bootable. You will need an active internet connection to download all the software listed in this article. You will also need to make a back up of all your existing data in the pen drive before continuing. We will not be held responsible for any data loss occurring because of the content published in this article.

A few points that need to be considered before proceeding:

1. The PC has to support booting from a USB flash drive. There may be anywhere from 1-3 items to change in the BIOS to make this possible assuming your BIOS supports it. Some BIOS’s may refer to your flash drive as a USB floppy or USB zip drive or show it to you as a Hard Disk Drive too.
2. The USB flash drive must support booting from it in general.
3. The flash drive must contain the boot/system files.
4. The flash drive must have a boot sector area. This is done with special utilities as shown below.
5. Before you proceed, please download & install 7zip and/or UniExtract to extract files from a compressed archive. We are assuming that you know about compressed files and folders and how to work with them.
6. You will need important DOS files to make the pen drive bootable. You can download them from this link. Extract the files to a directory of your choice. I recommend C:\DOSfiles or wherever you like. Just remember the location of these extracted files.

Steps to create a bootable pen drive:

1) Download the file SP27213.exe from either here or here.

2) This utility is provided by HP to make USB pen drives bootable. Just go ahead and install this software in Windows. This works on both Windows XP and Windows Vista.

3) After you are done installing this, insert the pen drive you want to make as bootable into one of the free USB ports of your PC. Warning: Please back up the data in the USB flash drive before proceeding to the next step.

4) Click on Start -> All Programs -> Hewlett-Packard Company -> HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool.

5) You should see a screen similar to the one shown below.

• Under Device, select the Pen Drive that you want to make bootable.
• Under File system, select FAT32.
• Under Volume label, click in the blank space & type in the name you want to give to this pen drive.
• Under Format options, place a check mark on Quick Format and Create a DOS startup disk.
• Once you have checked Create a DOS startup disk, the options below it will get activated.
• Select using DOS system files located at:, and then browse to the drive/folder where you extracted the Win98 Boot Files.
• Click on Start and follow the instructions.
  

6) Voila! You now have a very handy bootable pen drive. Go ahead and check to see if you can boot through this pen drive.

7) If you know how to boot using a pen drive, great. If you don’t, just refer the manual of your motherboard to see how to boot using a USB drive. Usually, this involves pressing the DEL key to enter the BIOS Setup Options and setting the First Boot Device to Removable.

Note1: The key required to enter the BIOS may be different depending on the make and model of your PC.

Note2: All or most of the recently manufactured/assembled systems have the option of pressing a key like ESC or F11 or F1 to access the Quick Boot menu. Just keep pressing any of these keys as soon as you have switched on your PC and check if you can get a Quick Boot menu. Select your pen drive from the list and hit Enter. You should be able to boot using your pen drive.

8) If you have booted successfully, you will see the DOS prompt C :\>

You have now learnt how to make pen drives bootable. In the next article, we will add useful utilities to your pen drive for day to day use.

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We all get inspired by Science fiction and comics and try to make them real. For example the cell phone was first seen in Star Trek, the communicator as it was called. Or how about the Universal translator in star trek or the Babel fish which inspired the translation tools that we currently have online - yes they used the same name Babelfish.

Jules Vernes and his crazy ideas of underwater vehicles, the submarine is a reality today isn't it? I know you're wondering where I'm going with this. Not too far. Very close to home in fact.

I love reading Viswas's forwards and the one's I like the most are from xkcd.com. Amazing cartoon strip. Love the disclaimer at the bottom "Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)." (chuckles)
I came across their comic which had a very unique concept. Thought it was funny and forgot about it.
Just recently I see Youtube have that very unique concept on their site. All you need to do is type your comment in the comment box and Youtube robot reads it right back at you when you click on audio preview. Try it out!

I did, here.

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Bangalore is one of the most overcrowded cities in India. Its infrastructure is under severe stress with narrow bad roads, one ways, bridges under construction, lack of proper public transport and many other things that can possibly go wrong with a city's infrastructure. The city has one of the highest density of cars per sq. km in the country and most of these 4 wheelers carry just 1 person while it could carry 4. All this put together, makes Bangalore one of the worst cities for commuting.

Bangalore Traffic Information system is a website providing some services that can greatly benefit commuters in the city:

1) Live Traffic: 

Get video feed from key locations in the city to judge crowd

2) Directions:

Find your way around town, avoid jams.

3) Car Pool:

Share the road. Save money. Make friends.

4) BUS:

Find Bus routes, stops, and transit points.

5) Safety:

Accident zones, road signs, and more.

BTIS also has a mobile version for its services that you can download from here.

The coolest part of BTIS is definitely the live traffic feed from various spots in the city that is marked to the city map.

Traffic Information Systems have been created for other cities as well. Check them out for Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi and Pune.

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30% or our population is below the age of 20. Many of those people in colleges. One of the things that happen when you join college in India is you get ragged. Its illegal but seniors still think its important and you get ragged.

I was ragged on my first day to college. It wasn't a hostile ragging session, quite weird, I felt a little sad that people were picking on me, but nothing that bothered me for too long. I was happy that the first day was over and I was initiated into the college by my seniors. But its not the same for many people. Ragging can be hostile and down right dirty.

The Legal Definition of Ragging is and I quote "Ragging means the doing of any act which causes, or is likely to cause any physical, psychological or physiological harm of apprehension or shame or embarrassment to a student, and includes– (a) teasing or abusing of playing Practical joke on, or causing hurt to any student. or (b) asking any student to do any act, or perform any thing, which he/she would not, in the ordinary course, be willing to do or perform."

*

A few examples of the extent of Ragging are given below (extract from www.noragging.com)

 

We were asked to strip, lift pens with our buttocks, sit on empty bottle with their mouth upward

 

My friend may not talk about it because he has to study 5 more years in college. But later on i took my revenge by ragging my juniors

 

“They are made naked and ordered to do bad things... I can't tell it even to my parents. It is not justified but I can't bear it any more."

Amit committed suicide on 11 October 2005 by jumping in front of a moving train

This is serious and now many organizations are getting together to solve the issue of ragging. Its about time too! Here are a list of sites that you can go to if you want to read more about ragging and how you can report it you should try out the following sites.

http://muthoot.com/antiragging/

http://www.no2ragging.org/

http://www.noragging.com/

Here is a small video that talks about the extent of ragging in our country.

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The credit crisis as Antarctic expedition from Marketplace on Vimeo.

So you have heard about the economic crisis, the shattered global economy, the tumbling stock markets, the inflation and everything that can possibly go wrong. But do you know why this is happening? 

American Public Media's Marketplace, Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch draws a beautiful analogy between an antarctic expedition and the banks to explain what is happening around us. 

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Ever wanted a software to quickly edit that image you captured with your camera phone? Don't want to go through the pain of installing an image editing software on the hard drive? Want to quickly optimize the quality of an image you shot and upload it? Picnik is what you are looking for and it does a lot more than the basics.

Here are some key features:

1) You do not have to register to use it

2) One-touch autofix colors, red-eye and exposure issues

3) Rotate, crop, resize and sharpen your images

4) Pull your photos straight from flickr, facebook, photobucket, myspace, webshots and picasa web album, edit and upload them

5) Undo your image editing mistakes

6) All this for free

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ImgBurn is a free CD, DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Burning Software. With a file size of 2 MB this is a lightweight application that goes easy on system resources unlike some of its paid counter parts. You can burn any of the aforementioned type of media besides being able to directly burn disc images, create disc images from disc in the drive and also verify burned data.  There is also graph data available to measure burning performance. Click on the image to go to the download page.

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1) What are Torrents?

BitTorrent (torrents in short) is a method of downloading files on the internet. Instead of downloading a file from one single location (a specific server), BitTorrent helps download files from multiple sources while at the same time sharing the downloaded portion with other people who are downloading the same file. It is a mutual system where you share what you are downloading.

2) Why use Torrents?

Dowloading with torrents doesn't require the file we are downloading to be at a single location. If the server having the file has issues we wouldn't be able to download the file. But distributing it across many people gives multiple sources to download from.  Different parts of the files you are downloading are taken from different sources. Also, transferring from multiple sources is generally much faster than otherwise. Popularly shared files download much faster using torrents as there are multiple sources to download them from. Downloading using torrents can be conveniently paused to be resumed later. This is helpful if you are downloading a large file and would like to shut your system down over night.

3) What do I need to download using torrents?

a) You will need a BitTorrent client to download files using torrents. Some of the popular ones are: uTorrent, BitTorrent, Azureus and Bittornado.

b) A .torrent file:  Files ending in .torrent have information regarding the files you are trying to download. 

4) Is downloading torrents illegal?

Downloading copyrighted content like movies and music is illegal unless the producer wishes to distribute the content in BitTorrent format. Using BitTorrent as a method to share information you have created is not illegal.

5) Where can I find .torrent files?

.torrent files are normally provided by the creator of the information you want to download. For instance, if you want to download the latest version of Fedora Linux from RedHat, you will find the .torrent file for it in their download page. Popular sources for illegal file distribution are Pirate bay, BtJunkie are Mininova.

6) How do I start downloading?

Just open the .torrent file with the BitTorrent client and the download should begin.

7) There are many torrent files for the content I want to download. How do I choose the right one?

Choose the torrent file which has the highest number of seeds are peers. Seeds are the number of systems having a complete copy of the files you are trying to download and presently sharing. Peers are the number of systems having a partial copy of the files you are trying to download.

8) My downloads are slow using torrents. Is there anything I can do to speed it up?

Make sure you are using .torrent files which have many sources and peers. BitTorrent does not work properly if your ISP blocks outbound content on ports that are being used by the Torrent protocol. This is very common if your ISP is providing a static IP address. Torrent download speeds are very bad with ISP like Hathway which blocks outbound on non-http ports. Airtel has open outbound ports.

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I just installed a nice little tool on Topic Bean called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

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Are you the sort who likes building things for a hobby? Want to spend your idle time in the weekend building a bookshelf instead of buying one? As a kid, did you spend your time dismantling your toy car to get to the motor and do cool stuff with it? If so, instructables is the website to help you get back on track to Doing It Yourself (DIY).



Instructables is split into various sections like Art, Craft, Food, Games, Green, Home, Kids, Life, Music, Offbeat, Outdoors, Pets, Ride, Science, Sports and Tech. Instructables features user created DIY content presented as step by step procedures for clear building instructions.

Some interesting instructables I came across:

1) Building a Solar Powered R/C car



2) How I built an electricity producing wind turbine



3) Chess table

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God, Homeopathy, Psychics, astrology - all scientifically unproven is challenged by Tim Minchin in this song called "If you open your mind too much, your brain will fall out". This one is really worth watching. Enjoy!

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I came across this browsing online:

1. Read an excerpt from a book (Book Search)
2. Use Google to keep time (just type "time country" to get the present time in the location)

3.Converting currencies (£100 in chinese currency)

4. Look at the Leaning Tower of Pisa (Google Earth)

5. Make lists, share presentations (Google Doc)

6. Make travel plans (Flight timings - US)

7. Translate, learn a new language

8. Find a skill in Youtube and learn something new.

9. Read the newspaper in a language of your style.

10. Become famous - upload a cool video.

And another 42 reasons to check out this page.

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