Wiki Donor

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We have been using internet for quite some time now. We use it for entertainment, news, knowledge enhancement, communication and many other purposes on a large scale via computers, mobiles, tablets and other internet enabled devices. One of the main reason for logging on to the net (as we call it) is accessing information. And the largest cache of information is available on one and the only wikipedia.org, the website hosted and maintained by wikimedia foundation. This is the largest manmade cache of information available to mankind. An encyclopedia for the people, of the people and by the people. The information is uploaded by common people like us and validated by similar other common people. Even though being a non profit organisation, wikimedia has been able to sustain throughout all these years of its existance.

But if you have ever hosted a website, you will surely know how costly it is to maintain a website. It requires lots of resources to maintain a #5 website at that position without any revenue from advertisement. Yes, you might have noticed that wikimedia websites do not host any advertisements, thus making maximum area available for information while we have fastest loading pages. This all while serving about 450 million people every month with billions of page views. And to complicate the matters, the websites are maintained by miniscule staff to reduce overheads.

With all such logistics involved, it is natural that the founders of this organisation ask for a helping hand from us users time and again. And its more appropriate from our part to provide assistance. They don’t ask for much. They simply calculate that if everyone reading the request for donations donate Rs. 100 their fund raiser would finish in an hour. That may not be possible in practical world, but what’s possible is for us to skip that pizza once a year so that everyone can access wikimedia websites for another year.

I on my part have been putting in my minimum since 2 years. That and this informative blog. Its up to you readers to increase their funds.

Be a Wiki Donor.

Whatsapp Alternative

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Smartphone users have been using whatsapp for quite a while now. There have always been talks about how whatsapp will be a paid service after first year of use. I’ve not yet come across such case except for iPhone users for whom the app is not free. But to avoid being charged at a later stage,I am sure that we all have been on a lookout for an alternative. It seems my friend has introduced me to such an alternative today.
‘hike’ the name of the application is similar in use to whatsapp, except for a fresh interface. And an additional facility of being able to send sms to mobiles which are not using the app, for free. You need to download the app on your smartphone( as far as I am aware, this app is available on android, blackberry,ios and symbian as of now), register your mobile number and you are ready.You’re account gets credited with 100 free sms. Promote the app on facebook and twitter and you get 100+100 additional credits. Meanwhile, you can continue using free unlimited hike to hike messages even if you consume all this credits. The fun doesn’t stop here. Invite a friend and once he/she downloads the application you get 50 free SMS per months per friend who signs on. And the best part; your account is credited with 20 rs in addition to initial 10 Rs credited by hike in to your account per person joining. Accumulate 50 rs and you can recharge your phone using that amount. Isn’t this a deal!!

Download the app at http://get.hike.in/ to start messaging for free!

End of an Era

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“Ubha Maharashtra Petvun Taakin”(a metaphor to signify the ability to create an uprising at moments notice) were his words when Bal Thackeray, the Shiv Sena Supremo, was addressing a rally years back. And it was true. If he decided so, he could do it and no one would dare touch his hair, as the saying goes. Such was the influence of the late Bal Thackeray over his followers, that they would spare no measures to fulfill his word. Looking around at the state of politics in Maharashtra, it is difficult to find a politician, clean or corrupt, who can command such an influence over the common man, barring Raj Thackeray, his nephew whose influence has not quite developed due to the divide in sena a couple of years back. From a humble cartoonist, to the (Ektaa Tiger)lone Tiger, his journey of 86 years has not been without the roar.abd9a57f8b61c3daefba46aff842-grande

The future of sena lies in shambles with Uddhay not quite in a position to take up stress and Raj estranged from the lot. But I am sure that the Tiger has taken care of matters before he passed.

Truly the End of an Era with the passing of the charismatic leader who had a huge influence over New Delhi and common people. May his soul rest in peace.

Hemlock Society – Movie Review

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I try to stay away from a movie as far as possible if it’s not a Hollywood movie. Not that I proclaim myself to be a person with good knowledge and understanding of movie making. Hollywood movies make up for their lack of storyline with their clean and colourful surrounding. Most important of all, I like the freedom they have to touch any subject with least,interventions from the, censor boards.
Bollywood movies rarely have sad endings which is not a real life scenario. In south movies there is less of a storyline and more of a Rajnikanth, Chirinjeevi,Mohanlal and the likes. Throw in a lot of foul language and your have a huge applauding crowd for north based movies. I’ve not seen any eastern based movies, except for the subject matter of this post.There have been exceptions in Bollywood in terms of the overall movie experience and I’ve rarely missed such movies.
Now to continue with the review. I would never have dared to watch any Bengali movie, had my colleague not told my the story in brief. Hemlock society was formed in the USA in the 90′s. Verbatim “its primary mission included providing information to dying persons and supporting legislation permitting physician assisted suicide”(source: wikipedia). The film revolves around a women with troubled past, recent breakup and a bleak future. She is stopped during her suicide attempt by person who explains her how her attempt would be unsuccessful and she would be left embarrassed, injured and may even face prison. He introduces himself to be a person from hemlock society, which could help her carry out her plan successfully. He enrolls her for a 3 day course which would teach her few sure methods of successful suicide.
As the story progresses, it becomes evident that the women is not ready to die and wants to stop the course. But the society wouldn’t let her go as a part of rules. What happens next cannot be revealed as it would ruin the plot for you.
Meanwhile the emotions in her family are pain to watch.
At certain points the acting by various actors in the movies seem lacking. But when the entire plot is revealed, everything fits perfectly. The cinematography is excellent with perfect closeups and mixing of sequences. No out of context dance numbers here. Just the plain soft songs with music pleasant to ears. Though I don’t understand Bengali, the subtitles were sufficiently clear.
Final say: a movie to watch.
Rating: 4/5

Nexus 7 is here!!

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The name nexus commands respect in the field of mobiles and tablets due to its association with Google, which has been marketing such devices under the nexus brand name for some time now. Nexus phones are known to flaunt the latest hardware and coupled with Google’s own android, nexus turns into a device to race against. Nexus phones have been highly popular in the united states and elsewhere as they were guaranteed to latest updates as soon as Google released them.
But Google has strangely avoided Indian market all this while. Anyone with a desire to own a nexus phone has to get it imported, which would be deterrent due to warranty and customs issues.
Not anymore.As per the latest new, Nexus 7 tablets will be available in India from today. The tablets will be available in croma across the country. With this move expectations are high that the last Nexus 4 mobile will also be launched very soon in India.But all’s not merry from here on. Read on.

Upside :

  • G.O.O.G.L.E. N.E.X.U.S……wow!!
  • Extraordinarily and ridiculously(are we there yet to utilise its full powers)powerful hardware configuration.
  • Assurance of update to the future upgrades to the operating system.
  • "Project Butter" jelly bean out of the box.

Downside:

  • As compared to US market, ridiculously costly. In US it costs 199$. I expected it to be priced around 15000 in India.But the cost is19990, ie. 20000. It’s better to buy imported piece from ebay which is priced at 24000 for 32 GB.
  • Not available online. Only in CROMA stores as of now.
  • Older model, which is not sold anymore in US(they still think India is not ready)
  • No android 4.2 out of the box.
  • No 3g connectivity.
  • Compared to other tablets, no expandable memory.

Setting aside these drawbacks and the discrimination in pricing, this will be one device to look out for, while we hope that Google releases the 3g version in India soon and follow it up with Nexus 4.
Sadly, I didn’t wait for it. I ordered my new phone yesterday.

Discounted Windows 8 Pro

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It has always been my opinion that if software is made cheap, the menace of piracy can be curbed very easily. People would go for the licensed version instead of pirated versions which are normally loaded with viruses and malwares. Lots of open source communities have put in efforts to provide free software which include almost all the bells and whistles present in the paid licensed software. But due to deep penetration of licensed software in corporate world, people are forces to learn and use these applications and ultimately are forced in to piracy.

Though not very much a fan of Microsoft applications and operating systems due to exorbitant costs and lots security threats in the past, I am beginning to feel better about the efforts being put in by Microsoft lately to reduce piracy by of providing software at a reduced cost under some pretext or the other. One of it being the Home Use Program(HUP). Under this program, if your company is registered with Microsoft for the HUP, you can buy the entire suite of Microsoft applications for rs. 450. That’s less than 10$ for MS Office 2010. Isn’t it a great deals!! I even found out that they provide software like Microsoft Visio and Microsoft Projects at the same price. So check out with the IT team of your respective organisation if they have applied for this offer.

Secondly Microsoft has given out upgrades to its latest Operating Systems like Vista, Windows 7 in past for a nominal price(I think it was around 800rs in India when windows 8 was launched). The offer seemed quite generous at that time. The catch was that you had to be in possession of a licensed copy/machine with OEM license which was purchased not more than a couple of months before the launch of the new OS. Upgrading from pirated version was out of question. But with Windows 8, Microsoft has given an option to upgrade while turning a blind eye on your license status(legal or pirated). They upgrade you to the top version, Windows 8 Pro for 1999 Rs. (about 38$). No questions asked. The only qualifier is the compatibility of your machine with windows 8 which is checked by a the upgrade assistant. I found that my 2008 machine was compatible if I choose to transfer just my files and not my settings, . I am now planning to upgrade to Windows 8 once positive reviews about the OS are out. The upgrade is available until 31st Jan 2013 so there is quite some time.

The main purpose of providing this may be to drive up sales but who cares about that. This offer can be viewed as the Christmas present by the people who have not yet bought any licensed copy of windows.

More details here.

Print your Albums

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Those times of rewinding your celluloid films before opening the back of your camera are long gone. Infact, still cameras with celluloid film are very rare sight, with manufacturers stopping mass production of the films. The advent of digital cameras and high resolution cameras on mobile phones have fueled their decline. Of course, old time professionals and die hard fans still swear by it. But the younger generation has born in the digital age and accepted it rapidly. I, neither am from the  older, nor the younger generation. I belong to the generation which witnessed this change and was a part of it.

That being said, the methods of printing photos have also changed. First, it was rewinding the film and handing over to the studio, which developed the roll and we could print whichever photos we wanted. To save the hassle of going twice to the studio to select the photos, I used to just get the entire film printed. Now, printing is so out of fashion. It’s the age of sharing online. That way, we spend less, the photos need no preserving/salvaging, and they are accessible to friends and family, anywhere, anytime.

But people who like to have print handover the digital copies on pendrive/cd to the studios and get them printed. The prints either plain photo prints or artistically designed albums. Since quite some time now, photo editing softwares are being used to mix and match and create albums which add a better perspective and visual appearance to the albums. But it can be a rip off for your wallet if you want to create albums with lots of photos.

A cheaper alternative to this is getting the albums printed online. I’ve been using this for quite sometime now and I get excited when I see the results. It requires bit of work on my part, but then I get the album exactly as I want. Couple of site offering this service are Zoomin, Snapfish, Picsquare, Myprint etc. Personally I’ve used zoomin and snapfish and I am satisfied with both.

Upon registering on these sites, you will either receive coupons or few free prints as a welcome gift. You need to upload the photos using their photo upload utilities, or if you have uploaded on picasa, zoomin has the feature of linking the account, thus “pulling” your photos from picasa on to zoomin. The user interface for creating the albums is quite user friendly. You can customise according to your choice and budget. It gives you an option to choose from a plain paper flipbook, to hard bound and leather covered album for a premium.(which, I feel is less then what normal studios would charge). You can select the type of paper used, the number of pages, size of the album etc. You can allow the software to automatically arrange the photos, which normally doesn’t give good results, or manually insert individual photos. The theme for the album can be selected from the available options and if it does not satisfy you, you have an option to individually design the pages with individual background from the available choice or even your high resolution photo. Then there are lots of cliparts to decorate the photos, just like the ones shown below. While organising the photos, they can be cropped, resized, rotated inplace thus getting the actual effect of the final finished page. Captions can be added to the page as and when required.

For Zoomin, this entire activity has to be done online and hence requires a stable internet connections. Snapfish used to provides a downloadable software which could be used to create the album offline and then uploaded. I found the offline utility tedious to use and while uploading, it would be a very big file at a time. I highly doubt they still provide it. Check it out. Zoomin on the other hand has the feature of saving online so that the album can be worked on at a later stage.

Once completed with creation of album, the user needs to just pay for the print, give the delivery details and the album reaches in major cities within 3-4 days. (I created the album below and applied 40% discount coupon available online.I got a discount of about 600 rs. and paid some 1300 rs. for the below shown, 45 page album.

For people looking for a home project to spend time on something creative, this kind of job is exciting and a standard 2 hour job for about 130 photos. The pleasure and satisfaction you’ll get after you receive the album is worth the 2 hours.

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Front of the Album

 

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A random page inside

P.S.:The project need not be just for albums. There are lots of other products on offer on these sites like tea/coffee mugs, calendars, collages, name tags, cards, keychains etc.

Salvage your Photos

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With the advent of digital cameras and lots of free space available online in form of Picasa, Google Drive, Photobucket, quickly archiving your current photos has become and easy job. Just click and synchronize via the software provided by the websites. But the real deal is about preserving your old photos, dating back to celluloid film era.

I didn’t have a digital camera till year 2007. So all my old photos are in print format. All seen once or twice, bundled up and stored in a cupboard. Recently it occurred to me to create collage of all the events right from my parents marriage till current times. After few days of procrastination, we got the bundle out. It was disheartening and shocking to see that some photos are losing colors due to age and some are almost glued together due to damp environment, thus damaging the surface. I am trying to salvage whatever I can at this moment, but I guess, best of my memories will be all smudgy.

Luckily I have a scanner and I have taken it as a home project to scan as many photos as I can and preserve them. I may want to look back at my childhood in some years. I may want to recount those memorable moments in my life.

I still repent the day I lost all my Honeymoon photos when I wrongly configured and then formatted my Hard Drive.

A flatbed scanner will cost somewhere around 4000 rs. but when you have all your memories backed up, the trouble will be worth it.

No Big Deal

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My colleague commented today morning that I looked sullen and off mood. She kept saying this time and again. I didn’t feel any different. I was trying my best to look engrossed in work as always.
May be she expected me to be all cheerful on my birthday. Maybe I was expected to be all well dressed up in new clothes with a big smile and pretending to be the king for a day.

I don’t see the big deal. I never do.

Can someone tell me what’s it all about? How can today be any different from other days. Of course, there is the usual wishing and the cake and a small/big feast. But then, why should it really excite me? Agreed that this was the day I was born a few decades back. But then, I’ve lived through all other days of these 33 years and each one has been different. So why should I deem this day special?

I am not that old to start thinking like a grandpa, but somewhere down my life, I stopped thinking much about birthdays. Now my focus has shifted to my kids and their days of glory.

For me, birthdays have stopped being a big deal.