How to – Plan Baksheesh during Festive Season

Tips and Guides

Around Diwali, the usual constant stream of “visitors” will show up. The crew of building watchmen (half a dozen of whom you’ve never seen before), the janitor, the postman, the maid, and probably some random strangers chancing their luck – they will all knock on your door looking for Diwali “Baksheesh.” Baksheesh is a term that loosely refers to either a tip or, interestingly, a bribe.

For people, the popularity of tipping has always been something of a mystery. Take restaurant tipping as a typical example. Since the tip is usually given at the end of the meal, what good purpose does it serve? Since the service has already been provided, it can’t by definition affect the quality of the service you received? It would make sense maybe for a repeat customer on the basis that a kind tip would lead to the probability of better service next time.

But researchers have something else to say. As per the researchers, tipping is equally likely to yield same service whether a customer plans to return or not. The consensus seems to be that tipping is best understood as a social norm, a form of charitable giving tied to the provision of a service.

Continue reading →

What if, we had the fastest broadband in India

Thoughts and Ideas

If you follow tech news you might have heard of Netflix and it’s recent success after adopting the streaming model. Their website says “For only $7.99 a month, you get unlimited movies & TV episodes instantly over the Internet to your TV or computer. There are no commercials, and you can pause, rewind, fast forward or re-watch as often as you like. It’s really that easy!”

Isn’t this great, for just Rs.400 a month, Netflix gives Video on demand on a lot of devices (PC,macs, mobile devices, gaming consoles etc.) with recommendations, resuming playback of movies/T.V shows where you left them off and a lot more. So if you’re watching a movie late in the night and you get too sleepy, you can shut off your movie and resume it the next day on your way to work on your phone.  We end up paying more for Tata sky which doesn’t even provide video on demand or multiple device viewing.

Continue reading →

Show me – 300+ profile picture ideas

Get Inspired

I was looking for a WordPress theme for this blog. While I was hunting for suitable theme for Revolutioners, I stumbled upon a theme website. The theme is fine but the content on the demo site made me post this article. Website has a lot of Profile Pictures of a single person. I thought it would be a good idea to all profile pictures posted at a single point to refer in case someone is looking for profile picture ideas for his/her next Soclail Network profile picture. So I quickly saved the entire website as image and posted the entire profile pictures in single image file. All profile Pictures are taken from different angles and they all look really professional and awesome. I really liked the ideas of the profile pictures shown on the blog. If you need inspiration for clicking your next great profile picture for your social network website then look nowhere else. The image is really long and huge in size. So be careful.

Continue reading →

How to – Turn Windows 7 into a Virtual Router

Tips and Guides

Sharing your Windows internet connection via virtual router software has traditionally been a tricky business. There are programs that can help you do it, but they’re often awkward to set up, and prone to complicated security and reliability issues, so most people don’t even think about trying.

But that could all be about to change, thanks to a new Windows 7 feature called Virtual wireless adapter. The idea is a simple one: the operating system can virtualise any compatible wireless adapter, to make it appear as though you’ve as many additional adapters as you need.

The effect is dramatic. Once it’s set up, then any Wi-Fi compatible device that can connect to you – another desktop, laptop, or an iPod Touch, say – will immediately be able to get online, by sharing your internet connection through a duplicate of your wireless adapter.

Getting this working isn’t too difficult, either, as long as you can get over the first hurdle: finding a virtual Wi-Fi-compatible driver for your wireless adapter.

Continue reading →

How to – Get Sony Ericsson MW 600 drivers working on Windows 7

Tips and Guides

I recently bought Sony Ericsson MW600 Bluetooth earphones. And I was shocked to discover that it didn’t work with my laptop (Thinkpad T410) because neither Microsoft nor Sony Ericsson provide the drivers for Sony Ericsson MW600.

Windows did, however, give me 3 possible action center solutions to choose from. It suggested I needed an updated adapter driver, as well as one for the device. One sent me off to Broadcom, the other to Lenovo. I downloaded the Broadcom driver which looked like it was going to work, but the most I could get out of it was standard hands-free which produced phone quality audio, which sucked.

I uninstall it all and tried the Lenovo driver and voila! Everything working, Media Player track name is displayed on the OLED screen, I can play/pause etc – wonderful. At the time of writing the only thing I have left to test is a simultaneous connection to my phone so I can handle calls while listening to music on my laptop.

[Click here to Download Drivers]

Explore – India China comparison – An eye opener

The Control

Below is a really nice comparison of India and China. Where we stand in terms of population, income, industry and many other.

China started their family planning policy in 1970, India in 1952

In 2001 our birth rate was nearly 3 times more than China. 27 births per 1000 as against 8.8 for China! India is adding 18 million people per year, against 9 million per year in China. Total addition to population is a function of total births minus total deaths.

India’s per capita earning is US$440 per year against US$990 per year in China

As per the World Bank, the poverty line definition is US$1 per person per day or US$365/person/year, for underdeveloped countries like India, China etc. As per the official data from both governments, China has 3% population below the poverty line, compared to India’s 26 to 29%! Only better governance can help.

China attracts 87 million tourists per year (this is expected to reach 90 million in 2002) against 2.5 million per year to India.

The international Tourism Industry is [7 times the size of I.T. or software] about, US$3700 billion per year. India, in spite of its old history and 21 cultures and languages, seems to have ‘missed the bus’, in Tourism. Tourism is a very big employment generator. It is estimated that every one tourist generates 2 to 4 jobs. Tourism promotes International trade and understanding.
How will we provide additional 10 million jobs per year?

The Public Sector and State/Central Government, which is already overstaffed, has a total of 18.7 million employees, therefore offers very little scope for new employment. We have to look outside the government for new employment. The unorganized sector and the SME’s (SSI is not SME) offer the maximum scope for employment, like in all other countries of the world, including China. SME’s account for nearly 75% of employment and 80% of trainees!

The Government can only facilitate jobs; they cannot provide jobs for the 300 million partly or fully unemployed in India!

At 10 million jobs per year it will take us 30 years to remove unemployment, at 5 million jobs for year it will take us 60 years! The present Indian ‘mind set’ will require rethinking and reorganization of the existing perceptions about Public Sector enterprises, and the actual role they are supposed to play! Only efficient organizations can deliver results and growth. Only better governance and efficient administration can deliver results!

In Foreign Direct investment, FDI, China + Hong Kong received US$106 billion last year [US$70billion from NRC's] vs US$3.6 billion [US$0.2b from NRI's] for India! Only better Governance can attract FDI and Tourists. In exports, China is nearly +700% of India

Taking the exports of Hong Kong + Macau into account, China’s exports would be +1000% of India! China’s GDP is 50% in manufacturing or $ 650 billion per year. India’s GDP is 25% in manufacturing or $110 billion per year. China’s manufacturing base is nearly 6 times of India’s.

[Click here to read more comparison]

Thoughts – Wikipedia needs money, then what’s the point of non-profit

Thoughts and Ideas

I guess I am not the only one who feels the same way. I was just going through the Wikipedia Financial today on their page. What I saw there made me look into this matter in much greater detail. Wikimedia spent almost $3500, 000 in recruiting and wages in the financial year 2009-2010. And it grew to almost $6000, 000 in the financial year 2010-2011. I was just wondering isn’t that too much for 50 employees of Wikimedia. I am now confused as in what is actually a non-profit organization. I mean apart from running your websites do you also need money to run the show? Posting a conversation excerpt that I found in a forum.

Continue reading →

Top Burning Issues India need to sort out quickly

The Control

There may be millions of things that Indian Government needs to fix but these are few of them that I feel will decide upon our country’s future in the coming years.

  1. Inflation: With the most of India’s vast population living close to or below the poverty line, inflation acts as a ‘Poor Man’s Tax’. This effect is amplified when food prices rise, since food represents more than half of the expenditure of this group.
  2. Terrorism- I know it should have been on the top of the list however I chose it to be on the 2nd place because people are any which ways dying due to not being able to feed themselves because of the rise in price of the consumable commodities.We spend a huge amount of money on defense but where is the defense. We have been preparing for WW III for I don’t know how long. And in that process we have forgotten to spend money in the right direction.
  3. Unemployment – Not a big deal in the rural areas but a huge concern for the people living in the urban areas. It seems to have deteriorated in the past 1 year but we need to go miles from here. We are no where near what a developed country should be. Unemployment rate as of now is around 10%
    Continue reading →

Show me – stunning wikileaks posters

Get Inspired

I have been following wikileaks for a long time now. This website has given journalism a new image. Website launched in 2006 has gained a lot of popularity. Website won a lot of awards as well. Everything funded by people around the world.

More about Wikileaks : WikiLeaks (sometimes Wikileaks) is an international organization that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of otherwise unavailable documents while preserving the anonymity of sources. Its website, launched in 2006, is run by The Sunshine Press. Within a year of its launch, the site claimed a database that had grown to more than 1.2 million documents.

The organization has described itself as having been founded by Chinese dissidents, as well as journalists, mathematicians, and start-up company technologists from the U.S., Taiwan, Europe, Australia, and South Africa. Newspaper articles and The New Yorker magazine (June 7, 2010) describe Julian Assange, an Australian journalist and Internet activist, as its director.
Continue reading →

Explore – Indian Government and Google.

The Control

Recently read a news about US government asking Google to provide lots and lots of data related which is related to the services Google provides. I am sure they must be utilizing this data for get to the corrupts. And then automatically me being a typical Indian wanted to check our country’s  rank in that list. To my surprise we rank 3rd in that list after US and Brazil. Wow.. It feels great to be in a such a list. Well that’s one side of the story I was thinking. But after reading the data requests that Google received I started thinking about what would our government departments have actually asked for. Checkout for analysis after the break.

Continue reading →