I have a lot of friends who travel a lot. One complaint I often hear from them is about how there is very little information about cities they are visiting.
Information like travel routes, some basic interesting places in the city they are touring will actually help people explore more.
I found Must See India quite informative and it seemed to have all the information you would need while travelling in India.
One thing that stands out with the website is that it has more options than one can handle.
I could search for the best bus, plane or train travel details from one place to another.
It also has comprehensive information on almost all places of interest in India.
The portal is split in three parts Search, Explore and Book. I found the Search part quite novel is tours arranged in different themes like hill stations, beaches or historical places.
The next time I decide to plan a vacation, I am surely going to look up MustSeeIndia. I guess it would be beneficial for you to look up if you are planning a trip. 😉
I always wondered if there is a way out to talk with remote teammates while playing Counter Strike and now Voxli makes me happy at last.
It is the solution for all those who want to hold conferences for a short time, probably to get acquainted with someone you met on Facebook or somewhere else on this internet world.
The simplicity of using it adds up to the comfort. It is as simple as holding a button and talking (No sign-up needed)
Just visit Voxli and share the URL with your friends and start talking. This is as anonymous as it can get. 🙂
If you are talkative then you can switch the hands free on and do all the talking.
You can even install a add-on and use this feature without giving a tab of your browser to their site.
So if you are looking for online voice chat without wanting to share your skype or Gmail ID, then Voxli is quite perfect. Try it out and do drop in your views and comments.
Have you ever traded stocks at the real markets? Often people are scared of the stock markets because of the continuous activity it observes every second. Few people are not aware on how these markets operate but they are always looking for some greater knowledge on how to invest and stay safe at the same time.
Inspired by this I decided to share few interesting websites, where you can play with virtual cash on “real markets” in your country. For now, I have included websites which uses market data from India and the US.
A MoneyControl.com entity, the portal is designed nicely. Registration is FREE and easy after which the user receives Indian Rupees 25 Lakhs which can be used for Buying & Selling and even Short selling. You can buy & sell stocks based on real streaming data from the NSE (National Stock Exchange, India). The experience you will have will be full of learn while you play.
Not much appreciable on the design part, however the website is organized in a very simple way. You can get access to a bunch of learning resources, Stock Games and even get to take part in Contests. Khelostocks streams Live data from two big stock indices of India namely, NIFTY and SENSEX.
With a great appearance and design, I found this one to be a great choice for beginners as well experts. You get to shop for companies in the United States using an easy to search module and you can pick up companies from the well-prepared categories. You can even take up a short course on Investment in three easy to learn levels. Overall exploring through this website is a great fun.
As the name says, you get to do Virtual trading using the Live data from the Wall Street. The website offers some unique contests where it distributes real cash prizes to winners of the trading game. It also let you create your own Contests for Free for your friends and colleagues to play on your custom created market. And everyone including you get a chance to win real cash prizes. Isn’t that cool?
So next time you feel inspired about playing the stock markets, do try out these websites to test your market sense. 😉 Do drop in your comments.
Did you ever feel the need to ask your friends and colleagues about their opinion on some product?
Real-life Example:
Suppose if you are looking to buy a new Smartphone!
My Case:
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I was looking for a new smartphone for myself and faced with tremendous confusion..
The Process:
I consulted many of my friends for their opinion on certain brands and models.
The Result:
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The pattern I used to collect their opinion was somewhat haphazard. I ended up in an opinion-bin with lots of random opinion.
The Solution:
One of my friend’s always keep saying, there is nothing you can’t find on Google! Yeah, he proved right even this time, I searched and found the website “SurveyMonkey.com” which lets you create surveys for free and post them directly to your friend lists on Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook and other social networking websites.
All about SurveyMonkey
The website is all about doing Market Research in a formatted and organized way with even input data being validated.
Chose what kind of answer you are expecting by selecting the type of question.
One feature I must share is the question Logic which can be added to any question. The question Logic saves time by not asking questions which are not necessary. For example – If there is a market research on Nokia E5, ofcourse you would be looking for specific opinion from people who have actually used the mobile phone and not just from every passer-by. So if there is a question which asks “Did you use or presently use Nokia E5?”; for people who answer ‘Yes’ would be asked further specific questions or else the general questions would follow and finally the survey would end.
Safety of your data is guaranteed by SurveyMonkey which holds the US Federal Law Section 508 compliance certification. Data is carefully kept and is available in a PDF format also.
Generate charts, prepare real-time reports using the Survey results and even share them with your friends.
Now what? Do you want Survey Monkey to even write the questions for you? Obviously it can’t, but it can definitely help with the available Question templates. Howz that?
Few of the above features are available only in the Paid plan which is available for as low as Rs. 415 per month (annual payment). To view the plan details, click here.
Editor’s Note: Currently McDonald’s, Voucher is removed from freecharge.in and hence is not available.
I hope all of you carry a mobile phone and most are Pre-paid ones (though I carry a Post-paid too! 🙂 ). Recharging of cell phones is now an important part of our daily lives and no one would like their available talktime showing zero. Owing to this and with increasing Internet usability, lot of companies started their Online recharge facility quite early and that too without any extra charges. However the website I am talking about here gives back their users when they recharge for any amount; seems interesting? Read on to know more.
Freecharge a Mumbai-based firm, is offering one of the latest innovations in the mobile commercial world. It is offering an equal amount of Vouchers or coupons for brands like McDonald’s, Cafe Coffee Day, Naaptol, Dominos, Basking Robbins, Yatra and few more like this for the amount you recharge through the portal.
Yes, this is quite funny that even in this electronic world they are sending vouchers through normal post only.
I would quote an example from my experience. I recharged my Reliance GSM mobile for Rs. 109 (since I get a full talktime on that) and I was asked to select coupons worth upto Rs. 150, so I selected 3 coupons worth Rs. 50 each of McDonald’s. The reason I selected McDonald’s and nothing else was that McDonald’s vouchers are redeemable on the equal bill value itself which means if my bill is Rs.150, I can use all my vouchers worth Rs. 150 (Rs. 50 x 3) to have anything and pay actually nothing! Isn’t that cool?
Note: Rs. 10 extra charges (irrespective of your recharge amount) for delivery of the vouchers to your place.
You can recharge for almost every cell phone carrier like Reliance CDMA & GSM, Vodafone, Aircel etc and get set go. Please do comment on how much useful this website is going to be for you!
Search for any music track,song or music clip over the internet and listen to it online in your browser for free.
To search and listen to any music track available over the internet just follow some simple steps. (This only works in Google Chrome)
Go to Beemp3.com and enter the track name or select from various options like Top mp3 or last 200 searches.
Then you will see a results page, on that page check for track length(small length tracks may be just a clips) and select the track(song) which you want to listen.
3.After this enter the captcha
and click on download (It won’t download in Google Chrome).
Now the track will open in the new browser tab and will automatically starts playing in browser audio player.
This way you can listen any track online in your browser for free. The audio takes less time to buffer so high speed internet access is not required.
If you really want to download the song/track,perform this process in any other browser and your track will download into your documents.
I don’t bet the fact, but almost everyone might have heard about the tiny word “RTI” or Right to Information, in expanded form. RTI is basically an Act in the Constitution of India which came into effect in the year 2005 and henceforth really effective in fighting cases of corruption in the Administration and the public sector.
Right to Information Act allows any Citizen of India to get the information related to expenditure, planning or any other public welfare schemes (though exceptions are always there 🙂 ). The cost to file a request under the RTI Act, 2005 is very little however it varies in different states of the Union of India. With the Government planning to promote knowledge among the citizens to use their rights to get information, it has allocated a pretty good budget for RTI education and of course it is using Internet in the process.
Image Credit: Official Website
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Who is involved?
The course I am talking about here is launched by the Department of Personnel & Training which comes directly under the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions in the Central Government. Centre for Good Governance, Hyderabad is associated with the course implementation & certification.
Can I do this course?
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You can get enrolled to this course if you are any of the following:
A Student
An Indian national
A Government officer
A Public Information Officer [for RTI implementation]
Authorities who handles RTI appeals
A Media worker
Facts about the Course
The total course duration is of 15 days.
The first 12 days you get access to all the course material including the Discussion forum where you discuss any queries and post suggestions. I have seen the admin replying to queries pretty quickly 🙂
The course registration is available only on First-cum-first-served basis. You must keep a watch to know if the Registration are now open or not. Presently the 32nd batch is going on with about 469 candidates registered.
The Exam is conducted online and don’t think you can cheat :p There will be a total of two ‘case-studies’ having 2 questions each. Each question is worth 25 marks and you must secure a minimum of 50% to qualify the course.
Why should I do it?
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To increase your knowledge on this Act which is one of the best laws ever enacted in the Indian history. ‘YOU’ never know when it helps you.
If you have never participated in any RTI camp or knowledge seminar.
If you think you are a responsible citizen of India and respect the Indian Constitution.
And last but not the least, you get a Certificate (PDF format) directly from the Government of India indicating your Grade and Performance.
You can see a copy of the certificate I received after I completed the course:
I have been always interested in bringing Government & Citizens closer and that’s why I focus on Socio-IT related topics. Please do comment on whether you like the way I write, do I need to change or if you are interested in something else! Afterall, a Writer without a Reader is like a Speaker without a listener…
Now a days many people work from home. They also collaborate and work with people who are not in the same place. Sometimes there is a need for drawing a quick flowchart to explain work flow or even a diagram to explain things better. This is where online tools that allow creating diagrams are in demand.
If you are looking to make flowcharts, sitemaps and diagrams online, then Lovely Charts is a great service.
Registration to the site is free but we have to register.
Once done I could save the charts I created. I can also import it as a .png or .jpg images.
The various options with these charts were very useful. Also creating flowcharts was really easy. All I had to do was drag and connect two objects automatically.
There is also a desktop version but then, that product is a paid service. I won’t recommend this as a way to create mind-maps as I prefer using these online tools.
Do try out Lovely Charts and drop in your views and comments.
You finally get your own website up and running one fine day, and have your very own entrepreneurial venture under your complete control. Well, since you might be a hardcore coder, a HTML CSS Genius, or a developer in general, you are hardly aware of the legal aspects that come into picture as soon as your website goes ‘live’. That is exactly where the Terms of Service (ToS)/ Privacy Policy (PP) come into play. Every website that you might have visited would have had a ToS/PP link at the bottom of their website.
Image Credits: icanhascheezburger.com
What are Terms of Service and Privacy Policy?
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Terms of service are nothing but rules and regulations by which one must agree to abide by in order to use a service/website. Privacy Policy is a legal document that discloses some or all of the ways a website gathers, uses, discloses and manages a customer’s data.To know what a ToS page looks like, check out the ToS of WordPress .
As you can see, its a huge document with tons of clauses and paragraphs, which reminded me of the a country’s Constitution!
So what do you do if you have just started out as an entrepreneur of your website and want a ToS of your own?
I bumped onto links on Google which gave me what I really wanted. A Terms of Service Generator!
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There were quite a few Generators available. Out of the lot, following are the ones which I found easy and efficient.
This tool designed by blogger/developer Ben Nadel is simple and efficient, giving you a pretty generic ToS which you might have to revise later. All you have to do is enter your company name and the state where you belong, and simply click on “Generate Terms of Service agreement”.
legalriver.com
This service asks detailed questions regarding the policies of the website, services which it provides,Details about the designated agent, warranty details etc. and delivers a complete Terms of Service. Also, I found the website (legalriver.com) a ‘must visit’ for new entrepreneurs that face difficulty in understanding legal aspects. Do check it out.
Again a generic ToS which might need more editing later on. It also provides the Privacy Policy and Acceptable Use Policy along with the ToS. The generated Terms of Service can be retrieved in 2 forms: Sending the ToS at the email address provided, or in the form of an HTML script.
This generator provides both ToS and PP, although one might still need to go through it to make sure everything is relevant for one’s specific product/service. The guys at codeachrome have used ready Terms of Service and Privacy Policy of Automattic Inc- A company dealing with wordpress projects. Details such as Premium services provided other than the normal services can be entered to get detailed Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
Couple of days ago, Ankit Das reviewed a SEO tool called Traffic Travis. The software could be downloaded but to test it, I needed to register with an email address. I usually get sceptical of such sites that ask for email, because this is how your inbox can end up being spammed.
10 Minute Mail is a nice online service which creates disposable E-mail address for us to register and work. As the name suggests, the email account lasts for only 10 minutes.
When you visit the URL, a temporary email address is automatically created.
This can be copy-pasted anywhere. The email notification can be see at the page itself. This email id self-destructs after 10 minutes.
A good thing is if you need another 10 minutes then that option also exists.
Over years there have been a lot of filters, court orders and more to deal with email spam. Fact is spam seems to just keep increasing. This is why I think it is better we use innovative services like 10 Minute Mail. What are your views ? Do drop in your comments.
I have a lot of friends who travel a lot. One complaint I often hear from them is about how there is very little information about cities they are visiting.
