Get Noticed with these unique (E-Commerce) Gifts

Firstly, I wish you a very-very happy and prosperous NEW YEAR 2012 in advance. With the new year fast approaching I remember those old school days, I exchanged greeting cards and gifts with my friends. Now a days with the increasing E-commerce trend sending gifts to your loving ones is just single click away. Here are few Online stores that may help you with some new unique gifting Ideas this new year 2012.

Get Noticed with these unique (E-Commerce) Gifts this New Year:

Flipkart.com: The Online Mega Store of India, offers you to buy/gift items from its widest categories of Books, DVDs, Games, Cameras, MP3 players, Mobiles and Computers. It recently added Pens and Year diaries to its list. You can also send e-Gift vouchers up to Rs 10000/-.

Coming to payment methods Flipkart accepts Debit/credit/net banking they had at-least 4 different Payment Gateways integrated. They introduced Cash-on-Delivery. Then they are also doing order on phone. Payment via DD/Cheque is also accepted. Flipkart provides free delivery on all items if your total order amount is more than Rs. 200/-. Otherwise Rs. 30/- is charged as delivery charges. It also has a 30 day replacement guarantee on its products with any defects or problems. With the help of the Customer Care you can choose (negotiate) when(date) your Gift/Item should be delivered.

Similar sites: Infibeam, Ncarry.com

Zoomin.com: Though the whole world is moving towards digitization with eBooks and e-transactions the experience of passing time some printed family photo albums is more better than watching them on a screen. Zoomin.com India's top Photo printing websites, offers you to make customized T Shirts, mugs, Laptop skins, Flip books, calenders, posters, frames and many morewith your photos.

The website interface is clean, and you can make the payment after customizing your product with adding text, backgrounds, layouts, re-sizing the images Zoomin.com offers doorstep delivery all over India also with a option of speed delivery. Shipping charges apply. The print quality of Zoomin is exceptional, if you have some cool shots of your friend/family member you should try gifting them with these prints(memories) this year sharing your best moments. Zoomin also gives a free flipbook for it's first time users. For more discounts and coupon follow them on their Facebook fan page.

Similar sites: snapfish.com by HP and printbindaas.com

Villcart.com: presents a range of handicrafts, handlooms and cottage industry products made in the villages across India that you can buy for yourself /gift someone. The Vision of this is to  enable village folks achieve sustainable livelihoods by providing marketing support for their produce.

They provide a wide range of product categories like Personal utility (bangles, ear rings, key chains, hair clips), stationery (diary, pen stand, visiting card holder, folders), kitchen items (vegetable and fruit basket, tea set, coffee mugs, trays), fabrics (khadi shirts, stoles, dupattas), home furnishing (curtains, cushion covers, bed sheets). Free shipping in India for over Rs 200/- purchase. It also has a return/exchange policy for damaged goods.

Best place to gift for people interested in handicrafts.

NurturingGreen.com: A new online store that promotes gifting varieties of plants to your friends. Gifting a plant to your loved one simply reiterates your concern and care for the person and promotes a message of life and an everlasting relationship.

 The site also provides different options of sorting based on the occasion, plant type, price etc.These plants come in a jute pot which are easy to maintain and they also support welfare of the rural women.

The plants cost varies form Rs 100 to Rs 125,000, Costliest one being 80 year old bonsai from China. Shipping charges apply. Best gift for green enthusiasts.

Once again Happy New Year 2012 in advance,

Thanks for reading,

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Aakash is sold out..!

Kapil Sibal's made in India low cost tablet, Aakash is sold out for now. The company thanks the users for their overwhelming response and also quotes that Currently Aakash is SOLD OUT with tweet (@aakashdatawind) today.

The much anticipated world’s ultra low cost Tablet PC, Aakash tablet was made available for sale online on this Dec 12th. Datawind, the developers of Aakash has put up for sale about 30,000 tablets on the internet at the cost of Rs 2500 each. The fact that within 6 days all the 30,000 pieces being sold out shows how eager people are to get the tablet into their hands.

Definitely there is no other touch pad computing device or tablet available close to the price of Aakash. The company is also gonna launch an Upgarded version of Aakash, Ubislate-7+ this January  loaded with great features at an excellent price of Rs. 3000 only. Along with the functionality of a mobile phone, 700MHz processor (three times that of the original tablet), a battery of 3200 maH (lasts for up to 5 hours). It comes with a headphone/mic plus integrated speaker.

You can pre-book the commercial version Ubislate-7+ here.

For more recent news on Social media, Tech, Start ups follow me on Twitter and Google+

Best Timeline Cover Photos

As Facebook made it's new kind of profile, Timeline available everywhere from today. And one of the best features of this timeline is adding a cover photo. It is good that you take your own time in making the cover photo such that it represents you the best because it's the first thing people see when they visit your timeline. Below are few creative cover photos the web. Have a look at them and leave your comments.

 

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These images are from various social media news channels like mashable. we do not have any rights on them.

Get Free .in domain for your Business

Ever wanted to run your business, online? Here it is, you can get a free .in domain, free email address and also you can host your website free for one whole year.

Google India in association with ICICI Bank, Federation of Indian Micro and Small & Medium Enterprises and Hostgator launched a new program Get India Online where they make small and personal business get online with just 3 easy steps. It also provides you with free tools and resources to run your site along with free .in domain and email address.

The 3 easy steps include:

• Choosing a domain name for your business
• Filling a form with your business information
• Choosing a professionally designed template customized to your business and publish

Google India has also made it mandatory for businesses to enter their Permanent Account Number (PAN) or Tax Deduction Account Number (TAN) at the time of registration. Since these numbers are unique for every individual / business, you can’t avail it more than once. Also Google uses it for the validation of your resident status in India.

To give you an idea of what can happen visit the success stories of Khosla Printers and Vijashivi International.  After your first 12 months you'll have the option to renew your services with HostGator at a discounted fee. For more queries click here.

No thinking twice, Get Started now...

Get Secured and Better Facebook

Starting with some recent news update…“Facebook held its f8 developers conference on Thursday where it unveiled the new Timeline layout for user pages. The new Timelines replace the familiar concept of Wall and Profile; Facebook won't use those terms going forward. You can opt out of the new layout for now, but Facebook will eventually force you to switch to the new version simply because it will be unable to manage both. Facebook said on Thursday that the rollout of timelines will be very gradual."

Today I would like to introduce you two new things that make your Facebook better.

MyPageKeeper.org:  Researchers from University of California and security experts from StopTheHacker.com have joined forces to provide this as a service. Hackers, malicious individuals and even Facebook friends can unknowingly post malicious content on your wall, like “Click here to find who deleted you”, “Facebook shirts” etc…Visitors to your wall may get infected with viruses, may get scammed by phishing campaigns.

Using MyPageKeeper puts you in charge of what content can be allowed on your wall and news feed. You have the power to protect your friends visiting your profile from getting infected with malware. MyPageKeeper scans and monitors all content posted on your wall and news feed to protect your online persona on Facebook.

Also it’s easy to use and as many on the web it’s completely free. Once you visit the site you just need to allow it read your wall, personal info…that’s it. You are done and secured. Use the Settings tab at the top right corner to change your notification settings.

BetterFacebook.net: Better Facebook developed by Matt Kruse is a free browser extension that improves the Facebook site by adding lots of great enhancements and functionality. It has over 75 individual options which control many features of Facebook! Some of them are:

• Themes: Lets you customize your Facebook experience by changing the colors, layout, styles, and images used. Tired of the boring blue and white Facebook? Personalize it!
• Hide Posts You've Already Read: Better Facebook gives you the ability to mark posts as "read" - either individually or everything on the page - and they will be hidden next time you visit! Only new stories will be shown by default.
• Highlight New Comments: If a post you have marked as "read" has new comments, Better Facebook will automatically detect this, and (optionally) make the post visible again so you can see the new comments. You can even mute the post so new comments don't appear anymore
• Character Counter In Status Updates: Facebook allows 420 characters in your status updates, but it doesn't tell you that you've gone over the limit until after you try to publish it. Better Facebook adds a character counter to the status update box so you always know how many characters you've typed.

To know more click here. This browser extension runs in most browsers and installs in just a minute. Once if the extension is installed you need to go and login into Facebook, it’s that simple.


This is a part of weekly series where i introduce you to my new app findings that can help you in various ways....You can find this series under the weekly label.

Google+ for every one

Three months after the launch Google makes Google Plus available to every one. The search giant also suggests users about  the new service in its home page with an arrow.....Google launched the new social networking site in late June, 2011. against Facebook. It made 99 changes to it after its first launch, today Vic Gundotra posted that it made a new 100th change to it being available to all(no invitation required)...  It got 20 million users in less than a month, but later there was less enthu among the people. Should see how this new change is gonna effect it's no. of users...

Find your second half

Each weekend I would like to share with you about a new app or website. This series can be found in the weekly label

This week I would like to present about the new online dating startup Soul2Match.

Whenever I watch the movie Surya son of Krishna I remember the scene Surya (Hero) meets Sameera Reddy (Heroine) for the first time in the train….and Surya holds his heart....saying/feeling love at first sight. Is there anything like soul mate or love at first sight?

Yes! Says a new online dating tool, based on comprehensive scientific research in the areas of psychology and biometrics. It says “Both the phenomenon «soul mates» and «love at first sight» date back to ancient Greek, with Aristophanes mentioning the concepts in Plato's Symposium. Recent scientific research confirms the existence of both. People are attracted to people who resemble their close genetic counterparts, which can be measured in features in the face. The more you match, the happier couples are in long-term relationships. This is what Soul2Match is based on."

The Online dating startup promises to match singles based solely on one piece of information from each of them: their head shot. Then it analyses over 1000 points on their faces giving a compatibility score for their relationship.

Yes, founders Jorn Eiting and Linda van Liempt are serious. They cite several studies that show what we’re all really looking for in our ideal mate is ourselves. “The more two people have similarities in their faces, the more they look alike, the happier they are in the relationship, the stronger the relationship,” says Eiting

They also quote that "The Soul2Match tool is used by Universities to do research on both attractiveness and on how relationships start. Not only has Soul2Match been built on science, but it also contributes to the furthering of science."

Soul2Match will work well for those who want to leave their time-consuming online dating questionnaires behind forever. But it seems the site’s main draw will be entertainment value. So, start making fun with this tool and see if you can catch your soul mate (your second half).

 Checkout the the matches I made below:

Facebook improved friend lists

Facebook is really trying hard to encounter its new competitor Google+; the new social networking site released by Google in late June. As a part of this encounter Facebook is planning to release their improved friend lists this week. With these improved Friend Lists, you can easily see updates from and share with different lists of friends.

Facebook in its blog post says to make lists incredibly easy and even more useful, we're announcing three improvements:

Smart lists - You'll see smart lists that create themselves and stay up-to-date based on profile info your friends have in common with you--like your work, school, family and city.

For instance, if you list Boston College as a school you've attended and your friends John and Sarah do too, then you would instantly have a smart list called "Boston College" with John and Sarah on it. This means that if you're having a grad party or a college reunion, you can easily share photos with just your college friends, without bothering other people you know. You can also add or remove friends manually to make the lists even more accurate.

Close Friends and Acquaintances lists - You can see your best friends' photos and posts in one place, and see less from people you're not as close to.

Better suggestions - You can add the right friends to your lists without a lot of effort.

When you add someone as a friend or confirm a friendship request, you'll be able to add the friend to any of your existing lists.

See and Share With Exactly Who You Want

Each of your lists has its own News Feed, where you can see just the photos, status updates and other posts from the people on the list. To view list News Feeds, look for the Lists section on the left side of your homepage and click the list you want to see. Whenever you feel like sharing something with a narrower set of friends, simply use the dropdown audience selector in the sharing tool and pick one of your lists.

You can also use lists to help control who sees what on your profile, using the audience selector next to each detail on your profile.

Upload into Facebook status via Email

Many workplaces have restrictions like not to browse Facebook in the offices. But you got a message to share with your friends on Facebook..!! What to do??

Some login into Facebook accounts to update their status and after an hour find them still on the Facebook wall..!! How to escape this situation??

To help us from these situations Facebook provides each one of its users with a personalized upload email to past status updates or send photos & videos straight to your profile. You can get your Upload Email Id from here… 

When you send an email to that Id...

• The email subject will be used as your updated status if your email contains no photo or video.

• The email subject will be used as the caption of your photo or video if your email contains photo or video.

Warning: Please make sure that you don’t share this Id with others except with the other admins of the page because using this mail Id any one can upload status or photos into your profile…..you can also refresh the upload email from the Find it more tab in the above link….

To know more about how spammers and hackers can use your secret upload Email Id checkout this post.

World IPV6 day

Today, June 8th the world celebrates the entry in to it's new internet protocol IPV6...
The addresses used by the current version of the Internet Protocol, IPv4, are nearly all used. IPv6 is essential to the continued health and openness of the Internet – and that by allowing all devices on a network to talk to each other directly, IPv6 will enable innovation and allow the Internet to continue to grow.

Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai and Limelight Networks will be amongst some of the major organisations that will offer their content over IPv6 for a 24-hour “test flight”.IPv6 will be enabled in addition to IPv4, so if you don’t have IPv6, don’t worry - you will simply use IPv4 as usual. The goal of the Test Flight Day is to motivate organizations across the industry – Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.

If you experience delays connecting to IPv6-enabled websites, you can work around the problem using one of the following:

• Use an IPv4-only website, if one is available. For example, you can access Google at ipv4.google.com instead of www.google.com.

• Upgrade to the latest version of your browser. Older versions of many browsers have known bugs with IPv6, and later versions may incorporate workarounds for IPv6 connectivity-related issues in operating systems, routers, and ISP’s.

• Install a browser that includes workarounds for IPv6 connectivity problems, such as Google Chrome.

Test your IPv6 connection to see if your computer and connection are ready for IPv6.

IBM-Watson

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it.

Watson is an artificial intelligence program developed by IBM designed to answer questions posed in natural language. Named after IBM's founder, Thomas J. Watson, IBM, who supposedly said that

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers"

This quote is probably not true, but is nevertheless popular. Watson is being developed as part of the DeepQA research project. The program runs on POWER7 processor-based systems.

Watson is an application of advanced natural language processing, information retrieval, knowledge representation and reasoning, and machine learning technologies to the field of open domain question answering.

In Feb 2011, Watson competed on the television quiz show Jeopardy! As a test of its abilities. Jeopardy is a quiz show, but works slightly differently. The answer is given and you have to figure out the question. In a two-game, combined-point match aired in three Jeopardy! Episodes running from February 14–16, Watson bested Brad Rutter, the biggest all-time money winner on Jeopardy!, and Ken Jennings, the record holder for the longest championship streak. Watson received first prize of $1 million, while Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter received $300,000 and $200,000, respectively. Jennings and Rutter pledged to donate half their winnings to charity, while IBM divided Watson's winnings among two charities. This was the first man-versus-machine competition in Jeopardy!’s history...

The IBM team provided Watson with 200 million of documents, including dictionaries, encyclopaedias and other reference material that it could use to build its knowledge, such as bibles, novels and plays, content consuming 4 terabytes of hard disk storage. A standalone program, Watson does not utilize the Internet when playing the game show. This is similar to man memorizing stuff from his brain.

Rather than relying on a single algorithm, Watson uses thousands of algorithms simultaneously to understand the question being asked and find the correct path to the answer.

In other words, it must do more than what search engines like Google and Bing do, which is merely point to a document where you might find the answer. It has to pluck out the correct answer itself.

Three artificial-intelligence experts, including the leader of the Watson team, discuss the supercomputer's prospects as the more algorithms that independently arrive at the same answer, the more likely Watson is to be correct. Once Watson comes up with a small number of potential solutions, it is able to check against its database to ascertain if the solution made sense. In a sequence of 20 mock games, human participants were able to use the six to eight seconds it takes to read the clue to decide whether to buzz in with the correct answer. During that time, Watson is also able to evaluate the answer and determine if it is sufficiently confident in the result to buzz in...

By February 2010Watson was then able to buzz in and speak with an electronic voice, when it gave the responses in Jeopardy!'s question format

Originally Watson buzzed in electronically, but Jeopardy! requested that it physically press a button, as the human contestants would. Even with a robotic "finger" pressing the buzzer, Watson remained faster than its human competitors. Jennings noted, "If you're trying to win on the show, the buzzer is all," and that Watson "can knock out a microsecond-precise buzz every single time with little or no variation. Human reflexes can't compete with computer circuits in this regard." Also, Watson could avoid the time-penalty for accidentally buzzing in too early, because it was electronically notified when to buzz, whereas the human contestants had to anticipate the right moment

According to IBM, "The goal is to have computers start to interact in natural human terms across a range of applications and processes, understanding the questions that humans ask and providing answers that human can understand and justify."[35] The natural constraints present in games may provide an ideal environment for the development of computer intelligence.

Technologists have long regarded this sort of artificial intelligence as a holy grail, because it would allow machines to converse more naturally with people, letting us ask questions instead of typing keywords.

Forgot your password?

A password is a secret word or string of characters that is used for authentication, to prove identity or gain access to a resource.

The goals when creating a secure password should be to create a password which:
• Is long (at least 8 characters)
• Does not use a dictionary word
• Is mixed-case
• Contains at least one digit
• Contains at least one non-alphanumeric character
Check your password strength here.

There is no point in choosing a very secure password if in the end it is too difficult to remember,It is hard to say what is the lesson here, whether you should memorize your password better, or choose an easier to remember.
A good way to have your cake and eat it too is to create a complicated password based on some memory trick. Instead of remembering the password, you could associate it with something easy to remember in itself – no not your personal data! 

n<7Plc8c could be memorized as “no less than 7 People like chocol8 cake” The sentence itself does not make sense, but that might just make it easier to remember!

There's also another way to manage your passwords....that is done with Passpack.

This gives you tools  to organize your passwords all in one place, the way you want them, even with tags, also its free for home users. Finally be able to secure every online account with a unique password, since you no longer have to remember them all.Passpack is specifically built for secure sharing of passwords with partners, clients or family.With Passpack 1-Click Login button you can login in to your online accounts, no remembering or typing passwords!
So go and Sign up for a free Passpack account here.

MNP in India

   Mobile Number Portability (MNP) is a facility which allows you to change mobile network without  changing your mobile number.MNP will be available from 20th January, 2011.It is applicable for porting between mobile operators only, in the same telecom Circle. Also, by regulation, customer can port-into another operator only if he/she has been with that operator for at least 90 days.

    The procedure for mobile number portability is the same for prepaid and postpaid connection in India.TRAI has stipulated  19RS/- as the maximum charge for changing a number to another provider.

   Steps to avail MNP

1. To begin with, you need to send a SMS as PORT <your Mobile Number> to 1900(charges apply)
2. Then you will receive an SMS from 1901 giving 8 digit alpha-numeric Unique Porting Code (UPC) and it's expiry date
3. And this code has to be submitted with your new connection application at your new operaters outlet.Existing offers and balance amount in a prepaid number will not be carried to the new network.
4. Also before applying for MNP, you should clear all their exiting bills with the current provider.The new operator will then send an SMS on your old/existing operator’s SIM (existing connection) intimating about the porting date and time, i.e. the date and approximate time till when you can continue to use your existing operator’s SIM card 
5. There will be a 2-hour ‘no service period’ which will begin after the porting time as given above. The ‘no service period’ will be between 12 midnight to 5 am during which your mobile service will not be active on any SIM
6. After the ‘no service period’, you can replace your existing operator’s SIM card with the new SIM card in your handset.

 The maximum time allowed for the service providers to make the transition is 7 days from the date of application.Please do poll on the bottom right of this page

Google wishes Happy Sankranti...

Google doodle on Jan 14, 2011

Wish you all a very happy and prosperous Makar Sankranti ,today on the eve of Makar Sankranti the search giant Google surprised all us with it's new doodle.Google decorated its home page in India with flying kites and balloons.Makar Sankranti is celebrated in many parts of india to mark the transition of the sun into Makara rashi(Capricorn) on it's celestial path.

Google's first doodle

Generally, Google makes changes to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists and scientists.A group of Googlers regularly get together to decide the events and holidays that will receive doodles. The ideas for the doodles themselves are gathered from numerous sources including Googlers and the general public. The doodle selection process aims to celebrate interesting events and anniversaries that reflect Google's personality and love for innovation

The doodle team is open to user ideas, requests for doodles can be sent to proposals@google.com

All doodles can be found at www.google.com/logos

How Google Work

Today I would like to tell you how the the search engine Google founded by the two young brains Larry Page and Sergey Brin works...

The life span of a Google query is usually less than half a second, yet involves quite a few steps that must be completed before you see the most relevant results. Now lets get an idea of how this is done when you search Google, you're not searching the live web. Instead you're searching Google's index of the web which, like the list in the back of a book, helps you pinpoint exactly the information you need..

 Google has three distinct parts:

• Google-bot(also known as spider), a web crawler that finds and fetches web pages.

• The indexer that sorts every word on every page and stores the resulting index of words in a huge database.

• The query processor, which compares your search query to the index and recommends the documents that it considers most relevant.

       
     PageRank is Google’s system for ranking web pages. A page with a higher PageRank is deemed more important and is more likely to be listed above a page with a lower PageRank.Google considers over a hundred factors in computing a PageRank and determining which documents are most relevant to a query, including the popularity of the page, the position and size of the search terms within the page, and the proximity of the search terms to one another on the page.

For more info click here