1. I know most people take notes for things to do, things they liked, remembering birthdays, work tasks, Url's and anything else you just need to jott down for future reference. Apart from the traditional ways of taking notes like the diary and pen, there are a lot of online options now a days. Some of these are Google Notebook, Yahoo Notepad, , evernote, etc.

    I started with Yahoo Notepad first and loved it. I used it mainly to keep notes about work. It also had a nice widget which I used a lot. But later somehow I thought the options were not enough and I also stumbled upon google notebook. With google's enhanced search capabilities I started using it. I liked it for its efficient interface. I had most of my data captured on google. But google recently announced that they are freezing any new development of Notebook. Even though this doesn't mean that the notebook suddenly becomes a bad app, there will not be any new features added to it.

    This is when I found "Evernote". It is a robust online note taking application which does everything that Google or yahoo could do and more. Apart from storing, organizing and tagging notes, evernote also had advanced features like OCR (Optical Character recognition), which means you can just scan your handwritten notes and Evernote can search on them. Its a killer feature for those who like to take notes by hand. It has a lot of other features like tagging, clipping, screenshot, etc. It had a desktop download available which syncs with the evernote on web to keep your notes updated on all your machines. You can also attach PDF files. It has a Delicious import tool to store all your Url's. They also recently released a Google Notebook import tool to make the transition easier. Theres a lot more things you can do. So if you like to keep notes and keep them organized, I would recommend trying Evernote.
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  2. So, my prediction about Sehwag made last year has come true for sure. But I really hope that he comes back to form in the world cup. I think his problem last year has been concentration. Maybe because he wasn't motivated enough. But what better platform to motivate yourself than the world cup. I think he will come back to his devastating best in the wc. Even when he is in half decent form, he can win India matches and we need him in the first eleven as he also gives us a decent bowling option. So I really hope this prediction of mine also comes true and Sehwag gets his devastating touch back!
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  3. Have you ever wanted to read your email quickly as a rss feed? Then you can use bloglines. Bloglines is a great site that helps you organize your favourite rss feeds including news and blogs.

    But it also has an interesting feature - Email Subscriptions. Basically, you get a temporary email address, which you can use to subscribe for those newsletters which you feel might not be safe to receive on your regular email account. This is a temporary email id which gets wiped you when you unsubscribe it from bloglines settings. So don't worry about about those spam newsletters which do not have an unsubscribe facility.

    Whats more? If your personal email account supports automatic email forwarding (gmail does), you can auto forward all your email to this bloglines email and read them as rss feeds quickly. It works great if you work behind a firewall which does not allow you to check your personal emails! You cannot send emails, but you'll never miss anything.

    Whats best? You can create unlimited such email id's! But if your firewall blocks bloglines :-) try something else.
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  4. If you are tired of this message on Windows media player (like I was), trying to play Xvid, DVD , avi or mpeg-2 files , then try downloading the VLC media player.

    It plays almost all types of media files, is open source and takes up less space than most other media players.

    Its Cool!

    Click here for the direct download link.
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  5. Enough has been said recently about how reservations based on caste are bad. And more so in Private institutions and companies.

    Although a little late, let me put forth a few points.

    I tried to look at how this problem was tackled since independence. There were some castes which were historically poor and backward because they were oppressed socially and economically by the rest of the society.

    The government needed to do something to facilitate these castes to come out of their poverty and improve their social status.

    To resolve this problem, the government started with reserving around 22.5% of seats for such castes in government and affiliated educational institutes and offices.

    After about 30 years, the government felt that the above solution is doing no good. Hence they set up a commission to identify the actual backward classes and a solution to alleviate these castes of the backwardness. The commission reported (Mandal commission) that more than half of the population in India can be termed a backward. So the government increased these reservations even after a lot of opposition from the public to about 50% (Which is the limit set by the supreme court .. otherwise, it could have been anything) and increased the number of castes that could take advantage of these reservations.

    After 20 more years, the government still feels that this solution hasn't worked. So they are now contemplating increasing these reservations in private companies and private educational institutes.

    Successive governments have only been reinforcing reservations as a solution for this problem, even though it is a proven failure.

    So, why is this government doing the same mistake again?

    It is pretty clear that this is being done more as a populist measure to gain support of the backward castes, than for the larger good. What the government seems to be doing is reserving some votes for themselves in the next election.

    Even if the law doesn't pass, they have the sympathy of the lower castes in backward areas.

    The best way to tackle this problem is probably to increase scholarships for backward castes. There are so many scholars in our country who could suggest so many better ways to tackle this problem, but our politicians would agree only if these solutions would result in reserving some votes for them!!
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  6. I started following F1 sometime in 2000. Since then I have seen Michael Schumacher and ferrari win race after race with the same formula. They wait for their closest rival make the PIT stop, then something happens to Michael, he sets the track on fire with some blistering laps which are generally the fastest of the race. Michael then Pits and the ferrari mechanics almost always do their work a couple of seconds faster than their rivals and Michael comes out ahead and takes the win. Amazing!
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  7. Just read a story about a traffic cop in Bangalore breaking the rules and getting caught by a common man. Very interesting indeed.

    But what this story is doing to the blogosphere is amazing. Already hundreds have left comments on this blog. I am sure thousands have read this story one way or another. And this is going to spread like wild fire. (Atleast I hope so)

    Interesting points come up in my mind while reading this story and the comments later.

    Almost all of the comments agree that what the cop did was wrong. Even though some of us jump traffic lights ourselves, we agree that a better discipline would be good. So I can assume that even the Cop himself knows he is wrong. He could not accept it in front of Swaroop for obvious reasons. So there’s always a hope that the situation will improve. But for that we need a society who WANTS change. All these politicians and Cops are after all a part of the society and also elected by us.

    The system is too slow to adapt to the huge changes happening in information sharing these days with blogs and emails. I am sure when this cop starts getting phone calls he won't have a clue how so many people already know about this. I think we should take advantage of this fact

    What we all can do is give this incident as much publicity as we can through whatever means and create a social pressure on the administrators to do something about such incidents.

    I am sure that some person in the system above the level this concerned cop is going to know about this incident one way or another. Will he do anything about it? May be not. But he will definitely talk about this to his colleagues and maybe also to that cop.

    A whole lot of other people – administrators and politicians will also know about this. When they know that people are starting to react to their behaviour, they will think twice before doing such things.

    This change is going to happen. How fast this will happen depends on “YOU”. (I mean us).
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  8. "Urgent! Rajkumar's demise" was the subject of the first email when I opened my Inbox today morning. A long forwarded chain, where one of the lines said "There are reports of violence on Bangalore streets." I thought he was murdered or something, but then i read - He had an heart attack. Doctors tried their best, but could not save him.

    People in IT companies were sent home early. A Holiday was delacred the next day citing dangerous conditions even before the government declared mourning!!

    Can anyone explain? I had a tough time explaining this to our Client. Why would there be violence if a celebrety passes away naturally? All sorts of questions came up - Was he killed? Was there a conspiracy? Was the hospital which treated him inefficient? and likewise.

    Sadly, we need no reason to come out on streets and destroy public property. First Faridabad, then Guwahati and now Bangalore... and many more such occassions before. Some people just seem to be waiting for the slightest opportunity to create trouble.
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  9. 1. When India used to falter chasing a less than decent total.
    2. When we had only 1 batsman to regularly dominate opposition bowlers.
    3. When India used to play the opponent going down or Up to their level and have nail biting finishes even against zimbabwe and bangladesh.
    4. When fast bowlers were only used to roughen up the ball just enough for the spinners to grip it.
    5. When 10 out of 11 players were certain of their place in the team at any given time.
    6. When someone with long hair was considered to be irresponsible.
    7. When fast bowlers were called so just because they opened the bowling. They were infact no more than medium pacers.
    8. When India used to lose atleast 1 match after winning 2 so as not to dishearten the visiting teams.
    9. When batsman defended very hard to compensate for an explosive start to the innings so as to give the opposing team a gettable target.
    10. And last but not the least, the BCCI would not give television telecast rights to companies before penultimate day.

    I am sure there are many more changes. Feel free to comment and I will add those here.
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  10. Its been a long hiatus in blogging for the past 1 month due to various reasons ... esp. work, laziness and an overall dull atmosphere here. But I hope to get back on track soon..
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I am a technology enthusiast and test software for a living. Through this blog I want to share my experiences in Software testing and Technology in general. Linkedin: http://in.linkedin.com/in/ameyanaik
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