Types of EV batteries

 

Feb 2024 - Interesting things

 

How India has been urbanising . A clear expansion on cities like Delhi, Hyderabad , Jaipur etc. 

It is said that eating food of 30+ different plants is good for gut health. 

Electoral Bonds - Biggest scam of this time

 

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. 

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

Best option to store images and videos on cloud

 As the title says, this post will give you the best option to store photos and videos online on cloud.

My options are best known online organisations which are reputable.

Google, Microsoft, Amazon,Apple, Box, Dropbox.

Amazon :

Amazon in US gives everyone unlimited storage to images and 5GB for videos for every prime account. Additional storage can be bought at 2$ -100GB , 7$ - 1TB per month. This is not available in India.

Apple:

Apple gives 5GB of free storage for everyone. Additional storage can be purchased at INR 75 for 50GB every month , INR 219 for 200GB every month , INR 749 for 2TB every month . 

Google:

Google gives everyone around 15GB of space which includes your email , photos and Drive.Usually this is sufficient for some people if you want only the important photos and videos on cloud. I use this one as of now and this blogpost was an extension of my research on what to do in future.

Additional storage can be bought at 130 INR/Month for 100GB , 210 INR/month for 200GB,  650 INR /month for 2TB and Google also mentions some additional perks with this subscription. Good thing this storage can be shared across family. To buy , use the link One Google.

Microsoft :

Microsoft OneDrive gives 5GB storage by default . For an additional storage of 100GB per month, one needs to pay 123 INR per month . There are other options to increase the storage to 1000GB and that comes with office365 subscription costing around 4200 INR per year and a family version of 6000GB for 5300 INR per year.Link 

Box :

Box is on a higher end cost wise and would cost around 785 INR per month for 100GB , after its initial 10GB of free spac.

DropBox:

Dropbox is also on higher end with 2000GB of space for $10 dollar per month , 3000 GB for $16.5 per month. 

So, effectively, for 100GB  , cost is 130 Rs for Google, 123 RS for Microsoft, 150 Rs for Apple per month. The advantages with Google is that data storage can be shared across family and its easy to upload images and videos via Photos App.

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 - Sep 13

Hello , Welcome Back !!!

Jammu and Kashmir is reeling under heavy floods and a natural calamity which was unprecedented in last 60 days. You can generously donate here at PM relief fund and help in rescue and restoration activites. And kudos to Army for all its efforts , almost rescuing 1.5 lakh people.

India Flooding Situation Reports and needs of the affected communities can be viewed at Corporate Disaster Resource Network (CDRN): Disaster and Emergency Management India, DRR

Whenever you are in doubt in what should you read next ,  check out http://whatshouldireadnext.com type in the last book you liked/read and it generates similar book recommendations!

For some light hearted moments from our Indian movies and their poetic translation Paagal Subtitle

For those daft moments when you forget the entire English language in one instant phraseup* - find the right words

 And finally for sachin and cricket fans, a blog with videos of all of Sachin's 99 centuries (barring 10)  Enjoy. Sachin's Centuries

For Apple freaks, The evolution of iMac: 1998 to 2013 ~ Apple (India) - iMac - Design

Do follow my Quora blog which lists out awesome content on India .

Websites of the week - India special

Welcome Back !!!

India has just completed a successful medal run at Commonwealth games and please consider helping other Indian athletes by sponsoring their olympic gold quest.

If  you have booked a wait listed train ticket , you can hop on to this website and get an insight on your chances on getting ticket confirmed .

confrmtkt  and trainman are the websites in this space now . 

Check your vehicle pending challans/offenses registered by Hyderabad traffic police here 

Track Indian Monsoon rainfall at our Met Department website 

Who knows RBI also has some fun games listed on its website. Check out yourselves here

Interested in some awesome infograms and data visualisations on Indian electons and etc , check out here 

If you are interested in Interesting Indian content on Quora , please do follow Quora Spotlight blog , curated by yours truly .

The Next Internet – Healthcare, Education, Governance

Internet has changed the way we connect, the way we communicate and the way we share .
Internet has changed the way we express, the way we entertain and the way we get enlightened.
Internet has changed the way we explore, the way we experience and the way we enjoy the world.
Now its time to move on to the next level and see whats going to be changed with this Internet communications.
Internet is already disrupting these three spheres of our life and this is going to be big in coming days.

• Healthcare
• Education
• Governance

If there is one aspect of life, which even after spending billions and billions into technology, we are still unable to cope up to the challenge, its Healthcare.
We are making huge progress in Biosciences and creating an enormous impact by curing the most deadly diseases on the planet. Internet will help these fruits to be available for all. A patient in Africa can connect with a doctor in India or a doctor in United states and get treated with the help of telemedicine or e-medicine facilities. Internet is helping to get more people to access to healthcare and decrease the costs of healthcare in various countries. Some internet startups are trying to disrupt the Complex US healthcare system and this is another list of startups in SanFrancisco.

“In rural Bangladesh, 90 percent of births occur outside hospitals. A mobile-notification system alerts clinics to dispatch nurse–midwife teams, who are now present in 89 percent of births. In China, a public–private partnership created a cardiovascular-monitoring system that allows patients to self-administer electrocardiograms and transmit data to specialists in Beijing, who can suggest treatments by phone. At New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, a venture with General Electric uses smart tags to track the flow of hundreds of patients, treatments, and medical assets in real time. The hospital estimates it could potentially treat 10,000 more patients each year as a result and generate $120 million in savings and revenues over several years.” – McKinsey Quarterly Report.

There are internet startups in India which ease the pain of various healthcare related tangles ranging from  getting a doctor appointment ,to advise on symptoms , to have a discussion with doctors ,to buy pharmacy online, to buy healthcare products online and much more . Complete list can be found here .Working in a healthcare organization , it is exciting to know what progress can be possible.

Education is the only solution to elevate people out of poverty and there are at least 20- 30 % of world population with very low income levels and cannot afford a meal day .To make education accessible for all and available for all, Internet plays a key role. Khan Academy is pioneering in flattening the education field .Anyone who has access to Internet can be educated . Right now, the growth of  MOOC courses which started offering free online education is super successful. Coursera , Udacity and edX are complementing the school/college education and also helping people gain free knowledge.Everyone , even a PHD should try these out.

There are internet platforms offering tutoring services, offering textbook rentals, offering test preparation services, consolidating video lectures,providing virtual classrooms and most importantly developing educational games . Some exciting list is here and the possibilities are endless. Students now have the entire knowledge at their fingers thanks to Wikipedia and Google. The tablet revolution is turning the tide of how education is perceived  and is disrupting the Education landscape in a way that was never imagined , equalising the Education advantage across the world. Social platforms like Linkedin enables to connect professionals like never before and engage more.
India is not far behind this revolution, though there is a lot to pickup the race and there are some exciting internet platforms striving for the change.

Finally, the most important change that just started is the way how governments perform their Governance.

Obama has successfully used the Internet trends to maximize his victory chances and projects like CodeforAmerica are changing the landscape on how internet can be put to public use. Almost all the government agencies in many countries have online grievance redressal systems and are used effectively for tracking the people issues.Many governments are already using the Web to improve services and reduce waste. Governments can also use IT to better engage citizens, as South Korea has done with its e-People site, which helps citizens send online civil petitions for policy changes or reports of corruption. Our next world leaders are moving to the internet for their political aspirations and be more reachable to their electoral franchise. Media , now a days takes almost any news and issues from the buzz on SocialMedia and which in turn shapes the political discourse of a country.Its widely acknowledged that Facebook and Twitter played a major role in Arab Spring . Technology is transforming and bringing a new wave of democracy in Africa.

In India, we have internet platforms like PRS legislative  documenting the legislative procedure and is bringing the complex constitutional process to common man.Andhra Pradesh has pioneered in e-governance initiatives helping citizens bringing government functions to his doorstep  .Almost every state government is pursuing e governance initiatives and trying to bring transparency. Open Data initiatives are catching up in India and Govt of India has officially announced open data platform.Some government agencies are active on SocialMedia are resolving queries.And very recently the main political parties have taken their battle to the internet sphere with mocking websites. Almost every news channel takes the issues which are on buzz on SocialMedia and on internet. Major political parties now have  digital campaign management teams. It is estimated that SocialMedia plays major role in election outcomes in India, in the coming general Elections.

!!! The world is flattening more , Thanks to Internet.

You can  follow me onTwitter , Facebook and on Quora

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 

.

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 !!!

Website of the week - Astronomy special

Well, i just found a new interesting topic to be inquisitive about. There is a Quora answer which shows what we are in this vast universe (A tiny peck in an ocean)  and Robert Frost in Quora explains the intricacies of this space exploration and gives a peek inside much of what NASA is doing about. (Have deliberately not included links so that you can go and find these amazing answers and who knows you may have found the real treasure of Quora)

These are some awesome links to be in awe of whats going in out of our planet.

Do you want to see whats going in at ISS . ISS stands for International Space station . This link of NASA gives live stream of inside ISS.

Many argue that why do we spend so much money on Space programs .Well, here is the answer which may satisfy that question to a certain extent. NASA inventions as part of the space programs are being used to help many millions on Earth.

Well, to see more briefly what are the contributions of NASA to society. Here it is.

How many of you know that there is a man made object which is approximately 18 Billions kilometres from Earth and is still in contact with our planet. Its the Voyager1 and Voyager 2 which were launched in 1977 when probably the entire tech expertise is now present in our handheld smartphone . Track it here.

The next one is a website which gives an amazing space photographs every day. Astronomy Picture of the Day

Well, Iam an Indian first and rest next, here is the Indian Answer to Google Earth,GPS etc. Proudly presenting Bhuvan . Believe still in experimental phase though. By the way ISRO is recruiting heavily for this work .

And this is the most  magnificient imagery of the Mighty Sun.

Last, we will deviate and come back to Earth and zoom into India . The biggest thing right now in India is IPL. Are you like me feeling too bored  to see the same templateof  Cricinfo or Cricbuzz and see that routine commentary . Someone has created an amazing scoreboard .Check out SCORYBOARD

Bonus : Do you think you are shortcut pro and productivity hacker. This video will blow your mind definitely.

Tech tricks, tips and Tantras - 06/01/2012

Some tech hacks which are interesting,helpful  and hopefully insightful .


1)  Whenever you are on a long journey or going to a place where there would be no cellular signals, better put the phone in Flight Mode.This will save a lot of battery. Cellphones use lot of power just to search for signals.

2)  If you have an android phone , you dont need to go to playstore in your phone and download the apps. One can browse the playstore from web interface and install it from there. I believe this is true for all appstores.

3) Skype is completely free for 1 month as trial offer. Follow this link  for signing for this and this link  for instructions. Yes, you an call US numbers for free for a month :)

4) Utorrent remote is an amazing app to monitor your utorrent downloads from anywhere .

5) If you think, your email is getting spammed a lot , just search for "unsubscribe" and unsubcribe to all those unnecessary things you might have subscribed earlier and are no mood to read all those now.


Happy Weekend !!

- Vams

Websites of the Year - 2012

Its the new year , new aspirations , new resolutions, new insights and new hopes.leaving all the bad and cherishing all the good  Internet plays a major role in our daily life. And this is my tribute to the Best of Internet for me in the year 2012. Hope you like this as well:)

1) Quora

If browsing something has inspired me, made me addicted , made me Q(C)urious and Qu(V)oracious , its Quora.
The most wonderful discovery i made on this internet space this year.Hop on and thank me later.The real knowledge Hub of the internet . Question Jimmy Wales,Checkout answers of Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry and follow the most intelligent people on this planet.And get credits :)

2) Paytm

If there is a option to recharge your Indian cellular phone with maximum benefit and miniumum effort, its this paytm.com . They even launched bus tickets with a bang offer of flat 50% discount on Dec 12, the online shopping festival day. You can even store your credit card and can complete recharge in a whiff. Did i tell you there android app is awesome.

3) Pocket

I am a big time procrastinator and a voracious internet reader. So what can be my biggest internet tool than a facility to read all those internet stuff later when i have time. Initially i was a fan of Instapaper, but after the Samsung Tab added to my digital ecosystem , I had to shift to Pocket as Instapaper App was a paid one.And this is one shift i regret not doing earlier.
Pocket has one of the awesomest user interfaces i have seen. Love the way it displays those Arrays of my to-read list.

4) Livemocha.com

Havent made much progress in my 2012 new year resolution of learning a foreign language, but livemocha.com is one of the best website if you also have a similar bucket list.

5) http://kaipullai.com/
And why should we not end the list with an awesome blog which has some excellent stories to tell in more excellent way. These blogposts blew my mind .if you are interesting in  history and current affairs of India, visit this .

- Vams.

PS- Happy New year 2013.

Websites for the Week - Oct 7

This is the list of websites i have found interesting while i do the 'random" browsing everyday.


There is no excuse now if you wanted to learn something on the web and time has flown . This has been the inspiration for Xuan Li  , the curator for this awesome website http://www.noexcuselist.com/index.html .
All the open course ware links are brought under one roof. Learn Music, learn cooking , learn a new language and what not.And all the links are FREE and not some tutor sites .

If u miss having a HD tv at home with an music channel on it. This http://grapevinyl.com website substitutes you for this . Wonderful songs with an HD format and can play randomly . Yea, you can do this on youtube as well with some effort by yourself . But if someone takes care of curation of content, are we not happy a little bit more :)

Well, the perfect address for  edutainment, inspiration and most awesome talks is the TED. http://blog.ted.com/2012/08/21/the-20-most-watched-ted-talks-to-date/ gives the best TED talks , rather the most watched TED talks of all time. I completed this bucket list and you should also give it a try.

Ever wonder, how awesome your office can be . http://www.officesnapshots.com/ is the link you should be browsing . Well, i am not responsible if your management doesnt agree to the changes you suggest to office landscape after seeing this link .:)

This one is for techies and the guys who want to START. http://whattouse.com/toolkit/web-site-launch-toolkit gives a list of things you need to take care when your website is being started.

And this one is for Indian history, political buffs like me . http://kiranasis.blogspot.in/2012/01/jammu-and-kashmir-injustices-and-myths.html illustrates brilliantly about the notions we have about Jammu and Kashmir .


PS: Hoping to run such series every sunday :)