Livehead invites you to contribute…

Here’s a note from a new startup; try being a part of its success:

We are LiveHead, a Hyderabad based startup who are in the process of developing a community driven Quiz Portal. We aim to be the single destination for quizzing on Internet.

We are looking for people who love quizzing and have a passion for finding, asking and answering good quiz questions. No academic criteria but all they should be able to do is to create/find great quiz questions. A desire to go out of the routine mode and innovate with quiz formats will be not only an added advantage but also will make the person eligible for an offer from LiveHead to be a part of our team!

And ofcourse people get paid for their efforts. As mentioned impressive candidates have a chance to earn an offer from LiveHead for longer stints and much more!

Interested readers can contact us for more details at: contact@livehead.in

The Single Calorie Hamburger

‘Breakthrough’ read the New York Times, Nature called it as the end of the world obesity crises. With his unical Hamburger, John Gates, a relatively unknown entreprenuer from Texas has zoomed into popularity and because a celebrity himself.

Scientests and nutritionists have been baffeled with this unique offering offered specially and uniBurger joints all across the country has uprooted the consumer of base of the likes of Whitecastle and McDonalds. Even the neigbourly diners have been shaken up!

‘The discovery has not been easy! We have designed a process to extract all the fat and carb molecules from the ingredients, without affecting the flavour’, said Mr Gates.

‘When the key ingredients like flour, cheese, beef and mayonnaese interact with the extractors of our process, they lose their ability to add fat and extra carbs to the offering. We have already patented the process, and our dream to end the obesity epidemic shall be fulfilled’

Mr Gates detractors are wary of his finds and are worried about possible negative impacts of the food being offered. The prime worry is the risk which always  has been associated with GM modified foods coming true.

‘We have found part answer to the quote mentioning that everything good in life is either fattening or married! I believe that McDonalds shall be a thing of the past, with our safe technology food lovers need not worry about the ill effects of their love for flavor food. Soon you shall see uniCal’s Hot Dogs, fries, Steaks and sausages.’

Upon being asked why the name uniCal, Mr Gates smiled and said,’Honestly our burgers add upto 6 calories per meal, however a normal human spends upto 5 calories munching the meal. As a result the net addition of calories is just 1, thats how the name uniCal comes from!’

The first advertisement of the product showed Gisele Bundchen munching onto cheeseburgers with ease with a catch line, ‘Now even size 0 doesn’t mean going hungry!’ This Superball advertisement has had immense impact on people, who have flocked to uniCal outlets ever since!

TIME magazine claims it to be the find of the century, way above the iPod or Nintendo Wii! Mr Gates is one of the top contenders for TIME Man of the year!

‘Ankur, Ankur…get up! Tea is ready’
‘Hmm…’, I can see my dad calling from the corner of my eye, its time to get up!
Sigh…I wish I could continue that dream…and be the solution to the obesity problem! But instead I shall treat myself with a 100 calorie tea!

Online from nowhere!

Well, difficult to believe! Am currently online from a moving train; the Rajdhani express from Bangalore to Delhi! This is a first for me, and the fun part is that I don’t really know my real location!

Its been a nice stay at Bangalore for the last two months, they just went a breeze. I throughly enjoyed myself, and its time to go back home for a few days before rejoining college.

Updated: I can find my location too! Using http://www.indiarailinfo.com

My current location is shown below on the google map:

Bangalored!

Yesterday, I had some urgent work to complete the final presentation for submission. I decided I shall go home; take a nap and then work late to be ready with my presentation today morning. However, Bangalore traffic knew better! The on average 1 hour bus ride ended up being a 1 hour and 45 minutes torture; it gradually ate up my nap time too!

It was during this time when I did some math assuming a few facts i arrived at a fact that if Bangalore’s infrastructure remains the same and I spend the next 30 years of my life working here (assuming early retirement!) I would lose over 332 days of my life in unnecessary travel. See the math below:

Ideally your workplace shall be 20 minutes from your home; however you end up spending 1 hour in travelling in one direction from home to work i.e. total extra time spent a day in commuting = 80 minutes

We have 22 working days a month, but we have around 21 holidays in a year too = 22*12 - 21 = 243 working days per year

Assuming we do not go to work with regular bus service and reach earlier on 43 days; thus 200 days per year during bad traffic.

Total time per year = 200 * 80 = 16000 minutes or 266 hours wasted due to extra traffic conjestion in a year!

This equals to 30 * (266/24) = 332.5 days lost in a 30 year working period!

I know the assumptions are quite simplistic and may be broken; but even if 10,000 people in this city end up living like this we have 3 320 000 days lost of their lives due to bad infrastructure!

Okay, that was the math of a useless guy in a bus cursing his luck!

 

Donate your computer - A survey

 Hi!

Please fill in the survey, as per the link below.

This is for a social enterprise being planned, your inputs would help in determining the feasibility of the same.

http://fewsurveys.donate.sgizmo.com/

PS-Your contact details would remain confidential, so don’t you worry.

How to put add Twitter Updates on your WordPress.com blog

I finally got Twitter-ed last week; had been avoiding it since a few months. I guess I finally gave in to the temptation!

The next step after creating my twitter account; I wanted to show those updates on this blog. But then life has never been that simple (or maybe it is, I just ignored the easier way?). Anyhow, I couldn’t use any of the available Javascript buttons on the blog; so I chose the RSS feed. Here’s what I did:

1. Open Twitter. On your homepage, scroll down. Click on RSS.
2. Copy the URL which opens up. It would look like similar to this:
   http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/14769714.rss
3. Login to WordPress.com, navigated to Design>Widgets
4. Select RSS Add, drag and drop to your widget bar.
5. Select Edit, type in the RSS feed URL (copied in Step 2) in space given. Type in a title and click Change. Finally click on Save Changes. The snapshot is given below:

You can then see the Twitter updates of your friends and yourself; similar to how it is on the right widget bar of this page.

Picasaweb’s unlisted Albums…a threat to privacy

Let’s say you have a girlfriend, and you went out on a special romantic camping trip with her. You also took plenty of pictures, some maybe candid, and uploaded them on Google’s Picasweb. Responsibly you selected the Unlisted album option while creating the album because you wanted to share it with only a few of your friends and nobody else.

 

However, you never realised that Unlisted for Picasa is not the same as Private. People can still view your Camping trip’s album if they have access to the hidden URL, which would be like:

 

http://picasaweb.google.com/user.name/CampingTrip?authkey=KG52TTsFTLY

 

Now Google claims that this is not an issue, because Unlisted doesn’t mean its Private. Unlisted means that anyone with an access to the authorized URL can view the album even without logging in. Unfortunately many of the users may not be able to read between the lines here. Moreover, this isn’t a new thing, it was raised perhaps back in 2006 as well.

 

The real risk is that anyone could visit your unlisted album by maybe accessing your browsing History (yeah, we all are supposed to clean history and not share computers, but does it happen always?). Another risk is that Google may list your unlisted link on Google search if its found on any public forum; case in point > Click the URL below:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:picasaweb.google.com+authkey&num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&filter=0

 

The result gave me 9,780 hits of unlisted albums floating around accessible right through the web search! Now its upto you to decide whether Picasaweb serves your online photo gallery needs or not, because Google isn’t listening.

Myjourneys on Rediff.com

My Wayanad blog post has been featured on Rediff.com

I am thrilled!

Here’s the  link: http://specials.rediff.com/getahead/2008/apr/28sld1.htm

Wayanad - A trip to God’s Own Country

I finally visited my last remaining southern Indian state “God’s own country” Kerala. A group of us six dudes went for a road trip to Wayanad. This was to be my first tryst with the Kerala, and boy it wasn’t at all disappointing.

We booked a Tata Sumo, and started around 6.15 AM on Saturday, 19 April. By the time we were done with the pickups of everyone it was already 7.30 AM. We then took the route of Bangalore-Mysore-Gudalur-Wayanad. We literally zipped all through Karnataka, and took the NH 212 to Wayanad from Gudalur(or Gundlupet).

En route to Wayanad, we had to pass through the Bandipur national park and the Mathunga national park. It was lush green and dense, however, we could only witness Elephants during our journey.

We reached Sulthan Bathery around 1.30, and were throughly surprised that it was pretty humid and wasn’t at all what we pictured it to be. So we moved ahead to Kalpetta, which is further 25 kilometers from Sulthan Bathery.

At Kalpetta we checked in to Arun Lodge. We got decent double bed rooms with a clean toilet and a TV (the bare minimum for stay) for just 440 INR.

Later in the evening we went to the Pookot lake, the images speak the rest of the story. After Pookot we went to the Banasura Dam. I guess this place is a must watch for visitors; it is the biggest earthen dam in Asia. The reservoir and the partially submerged hills tell a story.

On our return we were greeted by a sudden downpour, something which we hadn’t expected after the warm day that had been. There were moments when the visibility of low and I was perturbed by the rain. However, it all calmed down and we were back in our cosy rooms in a while.

Food in Wayanad is way cheaper than Bangalore; a typical South Indian breakfast for the 6 of us with a cup of coffee each could cost us less than a 100 bucks! I also discovered a top-notch bakery known as ‘The Walnut Cake‘. You could treat yourself at the pasteries, Jew Chips, Plum Cake, Cookies, Fresh chocolate and tarts. It was mouth watering and yum!

The next morning we checked out and visited the Soochipara Waterfalls which are around 17 kilometers from Kalpetta. The journey to this place was filled with tea gardens; shining golden under the sun light. This waterfall varies from 100 ft to 300 ft in hieght, its a great place to take a shower the way liril models do, and even try rappling. Do remember the  journey to reach the bottom of the falls itself is quite tiring because of the sun and the stairs.

On our way back up to the hill; we treated ourselves to Pineapple slices. My friends ended up buying almost the whole stock on the urchin selling them!

We now moved to the last destination of our trip to Edakkal Caves. This place is around 25 kilometers from Kalpetta. The name Edakkal means ‘Stone in between’, the main cave has a huge rock stuck between the walls forming the cieling. The cave is said to have engravings dating back to around 4000 B.C. It was discovered back in 1890 by the SP of Malabar. For more information visit: www.edakkal.com

My friends decided to venture further up from the cave to the hill top, while I decided to wait for them. Sensing the change in air, I felt it was going to rain so I came down to the base, however they were stuck there. What happened next was a huge downpour which resulted in addtional slipperiness to the pathway. They had a tough time coming down, however, they did enjoy the thrill and the risk in that!

Being the last place, we then had lunch on our way back at Sulthan Bathery, finally we reached Namma Bengaluru at around 10 PM ready for another week at our offices!

Something really special about the whole trip was the presence of a guiding angel to tell us which direction to take whenever we were confused with the route. In the middle of nowhere there would be someone present to tell us which way to take! Maybe thats why it is called God’s own country

[1] Carry extra change of clothes, and good canvas shoes for trekking.
[2] Arun Tourist Home, Kalpetta. Phone: 04936 - 202039
[3] Distance from Bangalore is around 280 kilometers. It takes around 6 hours on road to Wayanad.

Services v/s Product Companies

Here’s a favorite debate of software professionals working in India. The IT Services company guy envies the Product Company guy because all the additional relaxation/benefits they get.

A typical IT Services company life Infy, Wipro etc…may not offer you free soda; cookies; work from home; Internet freedom and even a lower salary than a product company like Sun, M$ or G00gle which offers you immense freedom in terms of dress code; work from home policies; fun at work; food and beverage and of course better pay.

But people tend to ignore the fact that both these types of firms work differently. A services company thrives on process based best practices; large workforce (10,000+) and strict SLA linked time lines; and perhaps little innovation. On the other hand, a product company strives on Innovation, may go against processes and all this thrives under a free environment. Pay packages are higher because the rewards are too; an IT services firm may train and improve efficiency of employees and keeping costs low is what drives profits (atleast in an outsourcing destination like India).

Imagine me paying for softdrinks for 10,000 employees everyday and me paying for softdrinks for 1000 employees everyday!

The bottom line is that a conducive and relaxed environment is critical for employees to perform in innovation driven companies with much smaller workforce; while basic hygiene factors are more relevant to a Services firm.