January 2024 recommendations

 

I decided to list down the things i liked and would like to recommend to others. It may be podcast, youtube videos, Movies , Songs and writeups. 

Movies : 

I had some good free time this month due to holidays and less work. I liked Salaar,Irugupatru, Hi Nanna, Mission Impossible Dead reckoning,  How is it for a Monday(Telugu- English) , Awe (Telugu). 

In Salaar, Prabhas got one of the best role for him which utilizes his cutout (i like how he is named that too in that movie for a while :P ) and the Kateramma fight was brilliantly executed , the high of Shreya Reddy shouting on top of her lungs screaming "Salaar Devaratha Raisaar" are some peak points, for me and Prashant Neel is probably the best SSR school topper now in India .

Irugupatru deals with married couples , so may be not everyones cup of tea but i liked how simplistic the topic was dealt. Hi Nanna, kudos to Nani for doing it and director Shoryuv for ensuring an emotional movie had enough high points to be hooked to . I watched Mission Impossible so that its checked off my the list and it was fun and as expected. 

One movie which i liked how a acquintance of mine , Sripal Sama executed and made such a wonderful film called " How is it for a Monday" , intertwining Telugu customs , Telugu NRIs and a very very good message . I even tried to nod like Kaushik ghantasala in that "Nenu Nasagaadina " scene quite a few times. 

Awe was another movie wanted to watch since long time and i now understand why it was so highly critically rated . Brilliantly made right from start to end with enough cues to keep hooked and some loose ends too. 

Music :

I am now hooked to Guntur Kaaram (Dum Masala, Mawa enthaina) and Hi Nanna albums . 

Podcast: 

Iam now commuting to office more due to new rules and have more time to finish pending podcast episodes. 

My favorite Telugu podcast "harivillu" by Nag Vasireddy where he is back with a review of 2023 movies with guest Yaswant Aluru. I am mind blown by the analysis and thoughts of Yaswanth and out of those 23 movies discussed, i had similar thoughts about 20 movies. 

I am a fan of Amit Varma podcast and i finished the KP Krishnan's one (probably the longest one i heard till now ) which is just great for anyone to understand the inner workings of a govt servant. Another one of India's pension crisis where as usual Ajay Shah keeps you hooked on to the subject. Another one with Pritika Hingaroni on citi planning . Lately, i think iam getting more interesting in cities planning and public safety. 

I heard couple of episodes from Ideas of India by Sruthi Rajagopalan , the year 2023 in review, Rahul sagar on hidden 19th century India  ( where he discusses some interesting things about how Indian monarchs did public policy in British Raj and lot more on Madhav Rao, the Diwan of Travancore ) and listened to a bit of Alain Bertaud episode too where he discusses some interesting points of city planning) . 

As usual , i finished Decoding Democracy episodes as soon as they are out. This is a treasure for every folk out there interested to public policy. Available on Spotify and Amazon too .

And finished all pending episodes of Morgan Housel podcast. I do think i am reading the book at free of cost.

I noticed that my org has now tied up with linkedin learning and also has some good book summaries available. 

On Youtube, i started watching Eco India series by scroll Link  . I do think we are getting over scared on Climate Crisis and doing so less on mitigation front. And Along with Waning Antibiotic resistance and Plastics, Climate Crisis will change lives so soon that when it hits the fan, we will be in a pandemic . 

I was so much fascinated by credit card and became a junkie recently that i started exploring credit cards for no particular reason, more on that later. 

Paytm payments bank going down has impacted me a lot and currently in mitigation efforts. 

I ordered a new fastag from ICICI and it arrived . 

I changed my UPI credit card linkage to Phonepe ( It already gave me decent cashback for this linkage than paytm ever gave me ). 

I am in process of changing my mutual fund auto pay mandates to my ICICI account . 

I am now looking for a digital account and if you have any suggestions, please do let me know. As of now, i am looking at Kotak 811(suggested by a friend) and Jupiter app ( Federal bank- i liked the jupiter app and their philosophy)  

My best uses for Alexa

 

I had bought the first generation of Amazon Alexa from US in 2015. I was very excited with it and wanted to explore it more and even code some skills for it. That coding part didnt go as per plan . However, Alexa has been part of the daily life since then . I wanted to list down some cool uses i use Alexa for. 

1. I added my home and Office location and used it ask Alexa how is the traffic every day just before starting from home to office. It would give the time taken and route which helped me guess the traffic without looking at maps. 

2. I had a routine setup ( Series of commands grouped ) to list down the weather, top news on that day when i got up and taking care of morning activities. 

3. I have a 3 year toddler now and i have a lullaby playlist which i play it in loop while he sleeps and there are some outside noises. 

4. In extension to above, we use the skill " Animal sounds" where i play with my kid listening to various animal sounds . 

5. Ofcourse, listening to music from Amazon music with voice commands is the best use in addition to setting up Alarms and Timers. 

6. My best and fun usecase is playing with Smart bulb . I have a wipro smart bulb setup and we play it almost every day with commands , changing colours , brightness and on/off.

Digitize old negatives of photos

 I am sure most of us have some old negatives of photos from our parents time lying at our home. I saw some posts that we can digitize them but after trying one or two things , they seemed difficult.

Until i encountered this app called Filmbox by Photomyne . It is simple to use and was able to digitize some of the negatives i had into colour photos. 

Links for app : Android , iOS.

The app is very simple to use . Just install, it gives instructions on how to create backlight (going to their website) , just scan and hold and voila you have your photos. 

The Tech Magics

 Recently i came across the Paytm audio announcement box where it announces to the merchant that a payment has been received. This is so indigenous solution to avoid fraud , give a confirmation without much effort to the merchant and is a brand advertisement every time it speaks. And i marvelled at the people at Paytm for thinking such an awesome solution.

I was thinking what all other similar things i loved seeing in the tech world where it solved a problem with an awesome thinking.

My first on the list is Chromecast . I was blown away when i heard of it and experienced it in person. It was a simple thought that you can just use a small hardware piece and stream almost anything to the TV and make any TV connect to Internet. 

Next is the PayTm QR code payment and also its Audio announcement box. You can transfer the money by just scanning an QR code. It has decreased the transaction time , no touch and made it cool.

Next is the Airtel WiFi calling , this solves a bigger problem of cellular network availability using the Internet at home and is probably the biggest factor for me to continue with Airtel . 

Next is the UPI transfer mechanism ; This is mindblown . It is easier to remember an emailid than a number which is unique and be used for transferring the money. And that thought to implement the communication feature which revolutionized the world has been brought to be used for financial transactions. 

Next is the OneNote software from Microsoft. The most underrated and awesome software Microsoft has produced after Microsoft Excel. You dont need to save anything and it does tons of Auto formatting.

Next are the voice assistant devices, I know lot of work has to be done for these to work but whatever the progress done till now has been remarkable. 

What are your favorites ?

I got some answers that Google Docs . True. It has truly revolutionized the way we could collaborate.

Telugu app for E-books , audio books, podcasts and more

 If you are Telugu Literary lover and would like to explore more on e-books,stories , audio books and podcasts , there i no better app than " Dasubhashitam " .

Link for ios Appstore download : https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dasubhashitam-telugu-audiobook/id1319854474

Link for Android playstore download : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dasubhashitam&hl=en_US 

App to discover deals on cards you hold

Often we get swarmed with credit card and debit card offers which are in noway need of the hour and then when the times comes, we dont remember there exists an offer and we could have save some bucks.  We wish we know if there are any deals which only pertains to the cards we hold and make our purchases accordingly. 

I recently came across an app called "Russh" available on both ios App Store and Google Play store. It doesnt ask much details from you except your mobile number and it doesnt take any card details. No, this is not a paid post . If you are the developer of this app reading this, you letting you know that you got a fan . 

ios AppStore Link : https://apps.apple.com/us/app/russh/id1471083101

Google PlayStore Link : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.russh&hl=en_IN

Websites of the Week Nov 30

Did u ever feel like a having a on the go playlist for youtube videos .
So , here it is http://youtubelister.com/

This is one interesting website i found , a social network for drivers
http://www.passingremarks.com/  . As per website, you can pass a remark on any road-user: anytime, anywhere. All you need is their number plate.

If you are an avid traveller, Govt of India has developed an website and app to create your personal itineraries  http://www.tripigator.com/home

Irctc has also created a mobile app that work flawless 
Android  : IRCTC 
Windows : IRCTC
Blackberry : IRCTC

Ixigo mobile app has a PNR status tracker . App

Take a visual journey through different facets of #India -view 350+ #documentaries, also in foreign languages, at Indiandiplomacy - YouTube

They say it's pretty hard to be creative in a quiet space so here's a solution Coffitivity - Increase Your Creativity!

Quora post for the week ;
Quora Spotlight - India

Websites of the week

Welcome Back !!! Long Time !!!

India is experiencing its every 5 year political Olympics and the nation is poised to move on to the next step of democracy. And that’s why this week its India Special.

If you are Ilayaraja fan like me, this blog gives you an interesting insights into the Raja sir creations.

http://switchme.in/ is probably the most underrated website and this helps people to switch between Home loans accounts, Mobile numbers and electricity connections and saves tons of money for Indians J We are hard bargainers.

http://smartmumbaikar.com/  is one drive pooling platform specially for Mumbai and hope things like these decrease our traffic woes.

Rail Travel Tip: While travelling by train,if there is NO fan/light/security SMS on 8121281212 from a running train with train #,bogie #, nature of complaint

If you are still struggling to learn Kannada even after spending couple of years there , http://www.kannadabaruthe.com/ should be your go to site.

A catchy interactive game developed by UNICEF provides clarity on the status of sanitation across the globe. http://www.unicef.org/toilets4all

Quora thread for this week :

What are some unknown/interesting Indian election facts?

Android app of the week :

How about you are paid for viewing ads  on your phone lock screen . This app does that .

And will end with this political jibe :) Abki Baar.......

Websites of the Week - Programming special

Hello all, Programmers of the World , this edition is dedicated to all the programming junta of the world , who  slog out day in and day out, churning out thousands of lines of code with caffeine and pizzas as inputs . This is in memory of Douglas Angelbart, the internet pioneer and the inventor of mouse , who propelled all these graphics we see today on our little screens.He has given this demo video called as Mother of all demos which demonstrates the mouse, file processing and some other intricate details of Computer processing,this demo was given in 1968.

There is a professional holiday called  'Programmers day' in Russia and is celebrated on 256th day of the year.

We see some awesome website and want to know what all technologies are used in building that, Go to buildwith.com  and check out all the intrinsic backend details of a popular website.

Sometimes you might be annoyed when the hand palm brushes the touchpad and it changes the position of cursor in the document/programming editor . Use this utility called touchfreeze and it freezes the touchpad whenever your are typing.

Do you wish to know what all popular opensource projects are going on round the planet , checkout this  ohloh website.This a network  website for all open source programmers out there.

Its not that software is only opensource now, Raspberry pi  is the opensource hardware and they are some very good implementations of it.

At last, Browse the complete internet history at this website.

Bonus: Dear Tennis followers like me, you can get a Federer autograph like this.Looking for someone in swiss,who can help :)

Quora thread of the week :
In layman's terms, what are the major programming languages, and what are they used for? (Love the first answer).

Android App of the Week: There have been some rave reviews about this hacking tutorial app on Google play store. Checkout if interested.

Cheerio.. Bye Folks..

Websites of the Week - Jun 30

Welcome back !!
What an awesome weather it is in India with onset of Monsoon and Sunday Mornings at this time are filled with a semi bright Sun with a rustic rainy smell. But there are thousands of Indians who were stuck in a natural disaster and many of them are coming back home after a week of survival struggle..

First of all, a heart filled Salute to Indian Army for their daring, dashing, successful efforts in relocating 70 thousand people from the flashfloods of Uttarakhand, a northern state in India.You can follow Indian Army on Twitter and on Facebook.
Uttarakhand is a state completely dependent on tourism and this disaster will take back the state atleast 10-15 years back.The cost that require for this comeback would be mindboggling.
Please donate generously to Indian Prime Minister relief fund here and other NGOs like Goonj who are actively involved in this operation.

Coming back to technical stuff, Gmail new email interface is really useful to filter out the important emails and iam actually spending more time on email now. A tip to use it better, you can Go to the next tab with ` and go to the previous tab with ~ .

Continuing on the tips, have you ever wondered what are the two tick marks (Right symbols)  at the end of every whatsapp message . If its one mark, it means the message has been delivered to Whatsapp server and if its two , the message has been delivered to the receiver. And if you are slightly irritated by the 'Last Online' feature on whatsapp , you can always allow the messages to load without opening whatsapp and then turn off data connection and then view and respond back and close it. Then turn on the whatsapp . Last online time will not be updated :)

Do me a  favour and search for "241543903" in Google Images :)  .Noticed something ..? Yes, its one of the google easter egg and you will see all the images with people keeping their heads inside refrigerators.

Have you ever been disappointed that you are unable to print a pdf because of some restrictions on that pdf document , this website FreeMyPdf  should mostly resolve your issue.

Do you want to know what all Twitter accounts are verified. Hop on this twitter account Verified and check the twitter accounts its following ;They all are twitter verified accounts.

This is one amazing blogpost . Check out yourselves and appreciate the effort.

Android App of the Week : Plan B . Dont panic if you have lost your android phone, you can install this app even after loosing it and get to know its whereabouts  (Disclaimer: Not tested).

Quora Thread of the Week:    Fathers Day was couple of weeks back but its not never too late to appreciate parents and take their advice. Get to know some brilliant advice of fathers to various Quorans at

What is the best advice your father ever gave you? 

May your Happiness increase like Indian Petrol prices, may your sorrows fall like Indian Rupee and May your joy fill your heart like corruption in India. !!!  You can  follow me on Twitter and on Facebook 

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Websites of the Week - Startup India Special

With the recent sucess of Just Dial IPO , Webengage 10k customers and very recent successful exit of Redbus.in , Indian Tech startups are back on the spotlight. These successes have put the faith back in hearts of  tons of Indian Startups that there is indeed a bright light at the end of tunnel..

First, to know the best curated daily updates about Indian startups, Subscribe to  Unitechy News letter . This is curated and sent by ApruvaChaudhary of MediaNama

To know the  hottest startups in town , hop on to  500.co which funds some rockstar startups worldwide (There are around 10 Indian startups in this recent incubation)  and Morpheous is its Indian Counterpart incubator and accelerator.

If you are a 'wantreprenuer' (Yes, there is a word for people like us )  , you must take this Online Coursera course ( Startup Engineering ) being delivered by Quora superstar Balaji Vishwanathan  .

If you have already STARTed , you must see this nice slideshare deck of Indias Angel investors prepared by Yourstory.in folks.

If you want to be a part of this Indian Startup conversations, be a part of this google group ( HeadStart Network )  . NASSCOM , India's software association, has just recently announced its 1000 startups initiative and even though the dates are ended, the learning resources on this website are great.

This Android App gives you daily updates of Indian Startups, Yourstory.in

And finally, Quora threads for this week :
Which are the hottest startups in India? 
Which Indian technology companies are doing the most interesting projects?

Bonus:  If you are not sure when to START, where to START, how to START and most importantly WHAT to start ..Read this and this .

Just pump out your nerves with this TED talk of Elon Musk, the man who is pushing the horizons of tech and is like the Dravid of Cricket, if Steve jobs is Sachin ; Nadal of Tennis , if Steve Jobs is Federer.

PS - If you have an idea, let me know , i believe we can work  :)

--
Vamsi
Startup Connoisseur 

Website of the Week - June 16- Vacation special

Welcome Back !!

Some parts of the world have just completed their Summer and for some , its SUMMER time.

Well, Summer is always synonymous to Vacation and what better than to teach your parents some tech basics of computers , Google has compiled some nice videos so that elders can understand Tech and not be afraid of it.
TeachParentsTech/

Might be needed, that you want to upgrade your parents pc to latest operating system, and dont be worried about softwares that need to be installed after that. Ninite makes your life dead simpler with installing all the necessary applications at once and taking care of updating them automatically.

And vacation always means travel, This website FlightRadar  gives you some live tracking of flights . Seems fascinating ..Easn't it ?

And coming back from Vacation wouldnt be nice to share your experiences to audience around the world. There is this mail list called Listserve where one lucky person per day gets a lottery to share his email to around 22000 people around the world.  Try your luck and enjoy the first count experiences and ideas from people who might want to meet in future. Iam still waiting since last one year :(

Coming back from Vacation mood, wouldnt you want to share the pics or videos , and for people who are still lagging behind the internet explosion of sharing and most importantly who dont want to signup for a website , there is one hassle free website which is for file transfer . https://www.wetransfer.com/ .This is probably the awesome website for file transfer.

People who follow TED talks know about Hans Rosling and his awesome way of depicting statistics. If you want to witness them on your computer , just go ahead to GapMinder  and download the world to your computer as he says.

Caring about the world, you can always go ahead to FreeRice website , brush up your vocabulary and donate some rice to the World Food Programme.


As promised last time, presenting you the one of the awesome Quora thread :
What are the best new products that people don't know about?

And an Android App of the Week .
uTorrent Remote  . Yes, as you guessed, its remotely controlling your Torrent downloads, no need to be at your home computer to put the latest Game of Thrones or Dexter on download :)

Cheerio..

Happy Weekend !!
QOTW: "You can Do anything , if you stop trying to do everything " - Oliver Emberton.

Websites of the Week - June 9

Welcome Back !!!

It was really a long time and hope everyone is good.And everyone is fit.

If you are not, and are having some time crunch to be fit, go ahead to this site http://7-min.com/ and be fit with 7 min per day.

Everyone knows about the Great Nobel prizes given to persons for their extra ordinary contribution to Mankind . Well, there are some people who have also have done some extraordinary breakthrough work , but alas might not be helpful . But , they are given ignobel awards for their brilliant work. 

Hop on to this wiki page of Ignobel awards for some of the astounding works you cannot even imagine have done.As per their website, these are some of the things which first make people laugh , but then make them think.

Have you any time regretted that you missed a wonderful course during your collegehood  or did you ever want to delve into a subject and learn all about it.There are numerous websites which gives you access to free courses and there is now no excuse for not pursuing those aspirations. This website NoExcuselist helps you learn something you wanted to learn.It is a directory for all the free education resources on the internet.

And just be noted, the next arena that will be revolutionized by digital presence is Education. 

Ok , enough of knowledge gathering and education, lets go some travelling. This website gives you the list of some abandoned wonderful places in the world. Might be fun to travel there :) 

Travelling to such far place reminds me of movie Life of Pi , and if you have watched, Life of Pi, here is a wonderful webpage which gives you details on its making. This is one movie you dont want to miss watching it in 3D. 

If you are one poor soul living in Bangalore and hate those interrupting power cuts, now atleast be informed about the pathetic times ahead.Subscribe to BESCOM alerts for Sponsored Earth Hours in your locality.

 Well talking of electricity, one joke i remember is "In a power cut ,Indians first check if electricity is down for neighbours and then be relaxed if its for everyone ". Likewise, if you just want to know if a website is down for everyone , Check this 

 We will start with something new from this edition.

Quora thread of the week : This thread got me roflol .

Spoiler :Indian Context

What is the craziest experience you've had when a prospective groom/bride had come to see you for the first time (before the wedding)? 

Android app of the week : Probably the best app for learning a new language 

Duolingo

Cheerio.. Bye !!!

How to Migrate between two smart phones

Migrating between phones is really a pain .
Data can be migrated easily by just changing the SD card given that all the data is stored in SD card and not in phone memory.
However, two things which are not so easy are SMS messages and Contacts.

1) Contacts.
Contacts can be exported to a .csv file from old phone and that file can be imported in the new phone.
(Contacts Options >> Import/export )

2) SMS messages
Install SMS backup restore app on both the phones and export the xml file from old phone and import to new phone :)  In case import is not working, one can open the xml file with this app.
Similar apps is available for all the platforms.Since this app works with any xml file, it allows interoperability.

3) For important docs, and other things, use cloud services like Box,Dropbox,Google Drive,Skydrive etc and backup your docs.