When I was studying fifth standard, one day, I came home from school after lunch break. I used to study in my mother’s school and she is scared of sending me alone anywhere. So, when she was not feeling well and wanted to go home, she brought me home as well. My sister is not yet home and I was alone. We used to have a stack of old copies of the Telugu children’s magazine Chandamama in a cupboard. Infact, my grand father is buying every issue of the magazine (even now) since its inception in 1947. I casually picked a copy of it. Once I completed reading the issue, I got addicted to it. I even bunked school feigning stomach pain and read issue after issue till I completed all of them. It was simply an experience I would never forget. It also introduced me to the world of books. I turned a vociferous reader, first of children’s magazines, then children’s books, comics and upgraded to others one after the other.
Chandamama which was initially owned by Vijaya Publications which is owned by the legendary film making production company Vijaya Productions, later changed hands. Now, in 2009 it turned digital as well. Some of the archives of the magazine dating back to 1940s to 1980s are digitized and kept for the fans of the magazine to feast upon. Do not miss them.
Here is the link
Arvind Adiga’s White Tiger won the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Arvind, an ex-journo with the Time magazine writes to Tehelka about an incident that happened in Kolkata that pushed him to complete novel which he thought of putting aside.Read the article here
A trend that is catching up fast on the top management campuses across the country is students opting out of the campus placements. In some institutes like Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad the count reached double digits. After all, the aspirants go through the toughest of all the entrance exams in the world for management education (CAT) and slog through endless assignments for that seven digit placement offers. Rashmi Bansal, editor of JAM Magazine (if you haven’t read it yet, try it. It would be great) an IIM alumni herself captures the story of twenty five such students who opted out of placement process and are now successful entrepreneurs in her book Stay Hungry Stay Foolish. The name of the book itself seems to be inspired by the famous Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech. Rediff published two excerpts from this book which is now available at leading book-stalls across the country for an economical price of Rs 125/-.
Read the Excerpt one here
Read the Excerpt two here
If you are a netizen and not using firefox, you are insane. If you don’t have these add-ons on your firefox there is no point in using this cool internet browser. Here are some cool firefox add-ons to add to your browsing experience.Video DownloadHelper: Download all the videos you liked and would like to add to your personal collection from thousands of websites like You Tube just at the click of a button.DownloadTimeTracker: This add-on keeps track of the time you spend on each website. Good to know your browsing patterns and understand yourself.DownloadFlagfox: Know the location details of the websites you open. This add-on displays the flag of the country where the website is hosted and gives quick access to detailed location and web server information. This is fun. I am sure you would be opening all your favorite websites to check where they are hosted.DownloadForecastfox: Get weather updates of the cities you select in the task-bar or tool-bar of your web browser.DownloadURL Fixer: This add-on corrects the URLs you enter in the address bar of the browser. If you enter google.con, it asks you if you are trying to open google.com and once you confirm corrects it. Cool Na?DownloadFlashGot: There are a number of links and media on a page which you would like to download. FlashGot does the job for you. It downloads all the links and media on a page using the best external download managers at the click of a button.DownloadPDF Download: You have just discovered a cool site or a blog with some interesting info, but do not have time to read them there itself. Convert them into nice PDF without all the unnecessary links and ads, print them and read them on your way home.DownloadWizz RSS Newsreader: Keep track of the updates to all your favourite sites through their RSS feeds into this Feed reader. Do not forget to add our site too.DownloadFireshot: Take screen shots of websites. Useful to web developers and testers, it allows you take the screen shot in complete or parts. The screen shots can be sent by email or saved for further processing.DownloadSxipper: If you already got hundreds of usernames and passwords for hundreds of sites and don’t know how to memorise or manage them, sxipper does the job for you.DownloadMeebo: Install this add-on to firefox and chat with all your friends on various accounts like Google, yahoo and skype at the same time.DownloadiMacros: If you are tired of opening the same sites, filling out forms, logging in and logging out again and again, IMacros will do all these repetitive jobs for you. DownloadFirebug: A must have for every web developer, the cool firefox add-on will integrate a wealth of web development tools at your finger tips and while you browse. You can edit, debug and monitor CSS, html and java scripts live while you browse.DownloadYSlow: If you feel that the website is slow and wants to know why, this add-on tells you who is that guy (may be a cookie or a URL) slowing down the website you want to open. Believe me, Its great fun.DownloadFoxClocks: You want to chat with your friends and cousins at locations across the world and want to know if you can ping them and wonder what the time is in their location. Install this add-on and configure it with the cities, places and regions you need and it will inform you the time at each of these places.DownloadNote: Open this link in firefox to install these add-ons.
Arogyasri, the programme which is aimed to bring high end medical aid to the masses by government private partnership is attracting international media attention. Andhra Pradesh Government tied up with Emergency Medical and Research Institute (EMRI) set up by Ramalinga Raju, Chairman of Satyam Computers to provide Medical Insurance to the people by tying up with insurance companies. This model is successfully tested abroad, in providing free medical aid to the impoverished and at economical rates to the others.
Read what Business Week wrote about this
Information Source suggested by Gopi Krishna Gupta, Columbus, United States
Earth is just one of the planetary objects in the universe. There are a number of others revolving around the sun in our solar system and innumerable other solar systems. Many a times in the geological history of the earth, their trajectories have collided and meteors and comets have hit the earth. The wiping out of dinosaurs from the face of the earth, the disappearance of Indus Valley civilization, Tunguska incident etc is attributed to these meteors hitting the earth. The news is one such meteor is on a collision course with the earth probably in 2036. The chances of it hitting the earth are one on one thousand. Read more about this and how we can avert the situation in case the meteor hitting the earth becomes inevitable atClick here for the complete write-up
Google released new browser Chrome for Windows XP/Vista platforms. Linux and Mac users have to wait some more time for compatible versions. People who have just started using it say that the speed is lightning fast. However it does not have any plug-ins available which is definitely a draw back. You can download the browser from Google’s homepage. For those of you who have tried to download it from your office and could not due to the proxy, here is the offline link to download the complete installation file.
Download the offline installer here
The time between the freedom movement and end of 20th century is an era of journalists who stood for ideals, free thinking, and authentic reporting. Telugu Media saw a number of people who brought great name to the profession. Narla Venkateswara Rao is the foremost among them. He is sometimes called father of Telugu Journalism. He is also the founder of iconic newspapers like Andhra Prabha and Andhra Jyothy. Andhra Prabha which has a glorious history of extra ordinary journalism has now lost its sheen and ideals, forever as the ownership of the newspaper went into the hands of political leaders from goenkas. Andhra Jyothy after going into oblivion for sometime came into limelight again. Few like minded journalists have digitized his works and kept them for everyone to read. A must read for everyone who is interested in Telugu Journalism and Literature. His works include a treatise on Bhagavat Gita, a telugu sathakam which you might have studied in your telugu language text books in high school. I remember that the poems end with the phrase "Narla Vari Mata"
Click here to go to the site.
On every Olympic eve, Time magazine brings out a special edition of 100 players to watch for. This time too it has brought out one. Dara Torres (41) tops the list. A nine time Olympic gold medalist, she is participating for the fifth time. A mother of a two year old kid, she is the hot favorite for the 100m swimming. If this is not excellence, then what is? Also figures in the list are Abubakr (22) a Sudanese army sergeant practicing in the half finished stadium and brick weights, Dayron Robles (21) from Cuba a world record holder in 110m hurdles all set to make their mark from china and Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore at number 55.
Read the complete story here
If reading the word Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia brought a feeling of uneasiness to you, you might have just been diagonised with fear of long words identified by the same name that just brought that feeling to you. If not try some other phobias. Nucleomituphobia (fear of nuclear weapons), Odonto phobia (fear of dental work), Octophobia (fear of figure eight), Ablutophobia (fear of bathing). Find more at www.changethatsrightnow.com
Digital Cameras have made photography so easy that you can take an expert level photo once you get used to the camera. Chances are that you get bored of using it after short time. If you are one among them, go ahead and read on. Before that, switch on your camera, start moving your head fast which ever way you want like a pendulum and take a picture of yourself. If the resulting photograph is really funny and weird, go ahead and post it on shakeskin.com. Who knows, if the viewers too find it interesting, it might end up among the favourites.
When I am browsing through the online edition of Outlook yesterday, I came across this write up about successful Indian entrepreneurs in Uganda. In 1972, the Idi Amin government ordered people of Indian origin to leave the country as its capital Kampala looked more like an Indian City than any thing else. It received wide spread criticism at that time. Later in 1980, the government that was formed after he was ousted declared the Indians can come back to the country and their properties would be returned back to them. After more than three decades the business owned by them are creating waves not only in Africa but in other parts of the world as well. Uganda is also doing its best to attract Tata Group that is on a buying spree across the world. When the main stream media is busy in focusing on US, UK and Asia, this article makes an interesting read.
Read it here: http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20080811&fname=Uganda+(F)&sid=1
