Category Archives: iLike

Why would I buy an Apple

apple

Sitting the kitchen of my parents home I was thinking about what to post about and then I drifted towards Apple. Apple that comes in fantabulous designs with state of the art software.

So why would I buy an apple product?

First of all they are awesome in design, got cool looks and have the chick factor.

They sure do attract the audience and make you feel at par with the similarly qualified person.

The apple products have a good flaunt value which I couldn’t have even with an xps m1210 3 years back.

The quality of software in the Apple products is at par with most of the software. They are so intuitive and easy to use. ITs so great that I had to hack my xps to install Leopard on it to run all the Mac software i wanted to.

The battery life of Apple notebooks is way more than the normal notebooks. They run for more than 6 hours at a stretch.

The first and the only phone, the iphone by apple set new industry standards and moved the focus from the voice to data and value added services. And the way it does is so seamless that nothing seems out of the way.

I guess that would be all from me but I would love to hear more from you all. Coming soon a post on reasons why I wont buy an Apple product.

What is your Deepest Fear – Coach Karter

http://www.thatjonesgirl.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/img_76641_fear_380_450x360.jpg

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

A return to love – Marianne Williamson

James bond style watch phone by LG

http://feelgizmos.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/lg-3g-watch-phone-3.jpgAt first glance, LG’s new Watch Phone appears to simply be a high-end timepiece. The company used materials and stylistic elements found in watches from top manufacturers to ensure that people will be comfortable wearing it for any occasion. The Watch Phone has a curved tempered glass face, high quality metal casing and is a mere 13.9mm thick.

The Watch Phone is as technologically advanced as it is stylish. It is the first touch watch phone in the world to feature 7.2 Mbps 3G HSDPA compatibility, enabling high-speed data transmission and video phone calls using the built-in camera.

http://www.mobilephoneonly.co.uk/phonereviews/upload/LGGD910.jpgLG did not sacrifice functionality in favor of size and the Watch Phone is fully capable of sending text messages, making phone calls, and, of course, keeping accurate time. This is all achieved using the phone’s touchscreen interface on its 3.63cm (1.43-inch) screen and LG’s intuitive Flash Interface.

Voice recognition features, which can be used with or without a Bluetooth headset, make it easier to place calls and look up contacts. Text to Speech (TTS) reads text messages and other information out loud for even greater convenience. The phone also includes stereo Bluetooth and a built-in speaker for playing back music files. A large phonebook and scheduler help with organization.

http://dustbowl.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/lgwatchphone.jpg

8 = Cat

As a kid I loved to draw. Till I was not of the school going age, my mom used to teach me how to write A, B, C etc. But I liked drawing the most. The figure I drew most was a cat. Here is an incident from my childhood when I had just started to goto school and we were learning to write the numbers.

cat=8

As I have told that I loved to draw cats and thus I was very happy when we reached the number 8 and we got to fill 4 pages with the same figure. I just loved it. It was for the first time I had finished my home work in shcool. When I came back from school, I showed it to my mom and told her that I made so many cats… 🙂

Arvind Kejriwal :- social activist and crusader for greater transparency in Government

250px-Arvind_Kejriwal

I was reading a magazine in my last journey where I read about a group called PARIVARTAN ( Change) . Started by  Arvind Kejriwal , who is a IIT passout, who further joined Indian Revenue service and became an Additional Commissioner of Income Tax. He was not happy with the way everyone took bribes to keep papers moving. The conscious had hit him hard.

In the year 2000, Arvind started PARIVARTAN  which focuses on the following issues:-

  1. Empowering Indian Citizens
  2. Awareness About RTI Act (Right to information Act 2005)
  3. Awareness about systematic solution towards Corruption and Red tapism.
  4. Facilitates Indian Citizens in there dealings with government department without any bribes.

Do not be surprised if you find people of PARIVARTAN standing outside any government department with banners like “ DON’T PAY BRIBE”  and exhorting Indian citizens, not to pay bribe for getting there problems fixed. The group also helps to facilitate Indian citizens get there work done without any bribe.

  • 2004: Ashoka Fellow, Civic Engagement.
  • 2005: ‘Satyendra Dubey Memorial Award’, IIT Kanpur for his campaign for bringing transparency in Government [2].
  • 2006: Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership.
  • 2006: CNN-IBN, ‘Indian of the Year’ in Public Service [10]
  • 2009: Distinguished Alumnus Award, IIT Kharagpur for Emergent Leadership.
  • I found it worth to be known to all the people. So thought to share. The idea is brilliant. Those who have that passion inside them can surely join. Those who still think they are doing good work can surely still be a part of them in some way or other maybe once in there life’s. Stop giving and taking bribes. To change the society we need to change ourself first.

    To reach him or to join him in some way or another please check his website – www.parivartan.com or you can also contact via email parivartan@parivartan.com .

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_Kejriwal

    aidkol_RTI_poster2

    One avatar throughout the globe – Gravatar

    Gravatar! What is it?

    Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?

    Some Sample Gravatars

    MayaRyanAnthonyGianThorsten


    Visit Gravatar site to create one for you. Its easy.

    And where ever you post anything with you email there you gravatar would be displayed.

    How it works?

    A commenter creates an image suitable for a gravatar and uploads it to his account on gravatar.com.  The gravatar is rated using pretty much the same ratings as the movie industry: G, PG, R, and X.  These ratings are used by bloggers to set limits on the kinds of gravatars that appear on their sites — a gravatar with a G rating will appear everywhere while a gravatar with an X rating may not appear on many blogs at all.

    Meanwhile, a blogger (like me) sets up his/her blog to enable it for gravatars.  Then, when a commenter submits a comment, the blog’s gravatar plugin (automatic since WordPress 2.5) takes the commenter’s e-mail address (submitted in the comment form) and attempts to find a match at gravatar.com.  If it finds a match, it displays the corresponding image. (The e-mail address is not used anywhere in the underlying page code.)  If there’s no image on file, the blog software either displays nothing or displays a default image chosen by the blogger.

    How the URL is constructed?

    Step 1, The URL base: A gravatar is a dynamic image resource that is requested from our server. The request URL is presented here, broken into its segments. The URL always begins with

    http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/

    Step 2, The email hash: The next part of the URL is the hexadecimal MD5 hash of the requested user’s lowercased email address with all whitespace trimmed, for example the fictitious “iHaveAn@email.com” would have a hash of “3b3be63a4c2a439b013787725dfce802” This may be followed by .jpg (useful for some places on the internet which require that image URLs have filename extensions)

    http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/3b3be63a4c2a439b013787725dfce802

    http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/3b3be63a4c2a439b013787725dfce802.jpg

    Everything from here on… is optional and can be found here

    College to corporate

    I am a B school student and as all of us know that the B schools host numerous guest lectures for their students which helps them get the insights of the industry and the corporate world throught the visiting guest who have been very good at doing what they do. Eminent personalities come and speak in the guest lecture about various technologies, methodologies, frameworks, designs, procersses, leadership, entrepreneurship and what not. We have had lot many of such lectures but this one by the Chief Administrative Officer and Head HT of Avaya Global Connect Mr. Abhay Valsangkar. He shared with us his experiences and learnings and the way he put forward the things was very practical. I was fortunate enough to present in the guest lecture and taking the advantage of the situation recorded it and am presenting it to you all.
    Please listen to it and let us know of your feedback.

    I am a B school student and as all of us know that the B schools host numerous guest lectures for their students which helps them get the insights of the industry and the corporate world throught the visiting guest who have been very good at doing what they do. Eminent personalities come and speak in the guest lecture about various technologies, methodologies, frameworks, designs, procersses, leadership, entrepreneurship and what not. We have had lot many of such lectures but this one by the Chief Administrative Officer and Head HT of Avaya Global Connect Mr. Abhay Valsangkar. http://pcquest.ciol.com/2008/images/secure2_nov2k8.jpgHe shared with us his experiences and learnings and the way he put forward the things was very practical. I was fortunate enough to present in the guest lecture and taking the advantage of the situation recorded it and am presenting it to you all.

    Audio link

    College to Corporate

    Please listen to it and let us know of your feedback.

    [Will be adding the streaming in some time. Till then plz bear with the download.]

    Really cool reasons to get Snow Leopard

    There’s much more to Snow Leopard than just a few tweaks. Apple set out – as they put it themselves – to “build a better Leopard”, and it shows in every streamlined action and snappy response time.

    What that means for you, the user, is that you get some of your precious time back: time that you’re not spending waiting for an application to launch or a spring-loaded folder to open. That in turn means less frustration: Snow Leopard (and Mac OS X in general) is about technology that respects the user by keeping out of their way.

    What about Apple’s other claims? For instance, does Snow Leopard really save your disk space? The iMac we’re using had 152.06GB on its hard disk before we installed the new OS.

    And afterwards? It’s currently showing 145.14GB used: a saving of 6.92GB. And that’s as near as dammit to Apple’s claimed 7GB saving, we reckon.

    Extra support

    One of the other aspects of Macs that we don’t think gets nearly enough attention is their continued support for people with disabilities.

    From its early days, Mac OS had features such as Sticky Keys to help those who have difficulties using the keyboard. The Universal Access System Preferences pane now offers a wide range of support technologies built in to Mac OS X, and Snow Leopard incorporates the drivers for more than 40 models of Braille display.

    If you use your Mac at home, Snow Leopard now has built-in support for Microsoft’s Exchange Server mail, calendars and contact lists.

    What does that mean? Well, if you’ve been trying to cajole your work’s IT department into letting you bring your MacBook into the office, they’ve now run out of excuses! They’ll find system requirements for Exchange on Apple’s site.

    All in all, then, we would say that it’s worth upgrading to Snow Leopard – for those of you who can. If you have a PowerPC Mac, Leopard is still supported, and will be updated for a while yet. What follows is a summary of some of the features of Snow Leopard that we’re enjoying. And we’re pretty sure you’ll enjoy them too.

    1. Safari – so good

    Alright, we know – Safari 4.0 has actually been out for quite a while now, but for some of you, this might be the first time you’ve seen it. Certainly Snow Leopard’s default browser has much to recommend it: rendering of pages is fast, accurate and mostly error-free.

    Safari

    It’s even one of the most standards-compliant browsers out there, and passes the Web Standards Project’s stringent Acid 3 Test with flying colours (visit acidtests.org for more details).

    2. Where in the world…

    Take a look at the Time Zone tab in System Preferences > Date & Time. You’ll probably find it’s now a much more accurate reflection of wherever you are at present. That’s because Snow Leopard rather helpfully uses the same Core Location technology as the iPhone and iPod touch to work out your exact location.

    Location support

    And if you’re the globe trotting type, no longer will you need to remember to reset the time zone after a journey – Snow Leopard does that automatically too.

    3. Printer support

    Mac OS X has always been a good citizen when it comes to supporting a large number of printers. And now it’s even more helpful than ever before. It will look for local printers on installation, and even checks for their latest drivers over the internet.

    Printer

    The underlying technology behind Snow Leopard’s printer support is called CUPS (which stands for Common Unix Printing System) and it’s also a brand-new feature this time around.

    4. Watch your language

    The International System Preferences pane has received a makeover too. Now called Language & Text, it’s a point of reference for all system-related uses of text. Here’s where you set your Mac to use British-English spelling, and also set up keyboard shortcuts for symbols and phrases.

    Language

    For instance, already enabled for you is the shortcut that converts ‘(c)’ into ©. You can also use it to turn simple combinations of letters into words or phrases: for instance ‘MF’ could become ‘MacFormat’.

    5. Taking a shortcut

    Remake or remodel could be the watchwords for Snow Leopard with Keyboard being another of the Preferences panes receiving an overhaul.

    Keyboard

    Once you’ve launched it, choose the Keyboard Shortcuts tab and you’ll see what we mean. Now properly codified, Keyboard Shortcuts offers you – the user – the chance to add, remove or modify the keyboard shortcuts you want.

    For instance, if there’s an application you want to launch with the touch of a key, go ahead. Want to change the default keys for Exposé? No problem.

    6. For the record

    Ever had to explain one of the finer points of Mac OS X to a Mac newbie over the phone? Well, now you don’t have to, thanks to QuickTime X (you could always ignore your phone of course, but that would be rude).

    Record

    In QuickTime Player X, go to File > New Screen Recording, use the pulldown menu to choose your sound and quality settings, choose a place to save your movie, and record yourself explaining the problem with full visuals. You could even post your tutorial masterpiece to YouTube (go to Share > YouTube…).

    7. Exclusive preview

    And the updated features just keep on rolling in – including Preview, which proudly continues with its onward march towards being one of the most useful applications bundled with Mac OS X. Its handling of text selection from PDFs is absolutely superb now, and it will even grab text that is arranged in columns.

    PDF preview

    Annotations have also seen something of an improvement in this version too. If you click on the Annotate toolbar button you’ll see that a full toolbar appears at the bottom of the application window.

    You’ll find that this makes it much easier to select and use multiple tools, further speeding up your work and increasing your efficiency.

    8. Disk-onsolate…

    Do you remember the bad old days, when you’d try to eject a disk from your Mac’s desktop, only to be told that it couldn’t be ejected because it was ‘…in use by another application’? Extremely frustrating. But which application was actually using it?

    Disk in use

    Snow Leopard now works out which application is currently using the disk in question. It will then present the information in the ‘disk in use’ dialogue before advising you to quit the application and try it again.

    9. Pair remote

    Using the General tab of the Security System Preferences pane you can also choose to pair your Apple Remote with your Mac so that another remote in the vicinity doesn’t trigger Front Row, either by accident or design: simply click Pair…, and follow the on-screen instructions.

    Pair remote

    You can also disable all remotes: handy if you’re in an open location and your Mac might pick up signals from others.

    10. Firewall

    To prevent unauthorised servers contacting your Mac, go to System Preferences > Security > Firewall, and hit Start (you might need to authenticate first; click the padlock icon and enter an administrator password).

    Firewall

    To enable incoming connections for certain apps click Advanced…, then add the app you want by clicking +, finding the app and clicking Add.

    11. Control remotes

    Using the General tab of the Security System Preferences pane you can pair your Apple Remote with your Mac so that another remote in the vicinity doesn’t trigger Front Row: simply click Pair…, and follow the on-screen instructions.

    Remotes

    You can also disable all remotes: handy if you’re in an open location and your Mac might pick up signals from others.

    12. How does that grab you?

    To make a screenshot hit Shift+Cmd+3 to grab the whole screen, Shift+Cmd+4 to grab a window. Not so long ago, you’d have to wade through images named Picture 1, Picture 2, and so on, to find the right one.

    Screengrab

    Well, not any more: Snow Leopard adds the date and time to screenshot file names, making it easy to find the one you need.

    via TechRadar

    Stranger than fiction

    http://www.reel-men.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/stranger-than-fiction.jpgAnything worth writing comes inexpecably and without method!

    If a man does know he is going to die but dies willingly knowing that he can stop it. Isnt that the type of man you would keep alive?

    Sometimes when we loose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank god for we can find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin or a kind and loving gesture or subtle encouragement or a loving embrace or a ooffer of confort not to mention a hell lot…. and may a occasional piece of fiction.

    The nuances the anomalities the subtleties which we assume only accesorize our day are infact here for much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives.