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Spam in GMAIL inbox - almost fell for it

from account-upgrade@gmail.com   sender-time Sent at 4:23 AM (GMT-03:00). Current time there: 1:46 AM.  ✆ reply-to serviceupgrade.security@gmail.com to date Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 4:23 AM subject Confirm your account!! mailed-by jagua.com.br hide details   4:23 AM (5 hours ago) Dear Gmail User, This message is from our "Gmail" messaging center to all our subscribers. We wish to inform you all that we are updating our database and e-mail center. Thus, we are currently deleting of all unused / inactive Gmail accounts to create more space for new accounts. To ensure you do not lose your E-mail account during this period, you must confirm to us that your account is still active by responding to this notice with your account information below: 1 - Username: 2 - E-mail: 3 - Password: 4 - Telephone: NOTE: This information will help us upgrade your account to our new F-Secure 2010 version HTK4S anti-virus/anti-spyware and your password will be encrypted with 1024-b

Every Day Android Apps - House help

Every day so many people touch your life. Folks like your cook, house maid etc., and items like milk that get delivered to your door step.  Ever wondered if you could simply checkin and checkout the arrival and departure of above services. "House Help" on android just does that. You can also provide feedback and provide rating for the day. You can also get report on absenteeism in a graphical pie chart for current month as well as for last month.  The current version is free and is available in android market place under productivity category. You can also search directly for "House help" and check it out.

Plusconf brings together the best

You have crazy people. You have sober people and you have people with with families. They all belong to a tribe which creates and runs startups. Some common themes Most startups begin in consulting/services mode wherein you gather cash to burn for your idea. You pick an idea that solves a specific problem for a specific customer. Its not a ego drive. You want somebody else to pay for your product/service. Most startups begin at home either at second bedroom ( if you have) otherwise shared. The event was  http://plusconf.com/  being stictched together by Benjamin ( Could not get contact details) on livestream.com. Allan Branch - Lessaccounting.com Missed of the part due to poor audio quality, dont know at whose end Do coworking more for exchanging ideas. Working from home is difficult but you need to learn to balance. Tell hello to every customer that signs up. Todd Garland - BuySellAds Do not leave your fulltime job until cash can sustain you for a while. You can wor

Big Bazaar is changing Consumers Buy Choices

The time to redeem wednesday 2 kg sugar coupon was around. When I reached Big bazaar I was disappointed to find it being offered to anyone whose purchase exceeded Rs. 500. Nevertheless the place was crowded. This time compromises had to be made for choices of brand in the given shopping list. The following brands were unavailable. Parle G biscuits Sabeena Powder Harpic Blue Toilet cleaners Tata Salt  So the choice was to shop elsewhere and find the above brands or collect the alternatives that Big Bazaar was offering along with free Sugar 2kg. No 1kg biscuits bought Alternative brand - dont recall name - spouse said it looks like its filled with sand. Harpic rose cleaner which spouse claimed had milder effects on commodes. Saffola salt which was Rs 8 costlier than Tata.  How was your wednesday at Big Bazaar?

Every Day Android Apps - Send To Computer

Quite a nifty tool. Good for website viewing for sites that are yet to be mobile enabled. I had been struggling with the web browsing experience when I stumbled upon it. I was searching for a good barcode scanning android app on android marketplace because "Barcode scanner" was not scanning the 1D code. It could be a limitation of Samsung Galaxy 5 as the camera is not auto-focus. Have you been able to decode 1D bar codes with Samsung Galaxy 5 ? Please let me know. I initially could not understand the concept behind "Send To Computer". After a struggle these were the steps that got me going Goto http://send-to-computer.appspot.com/ on your desktop. Enable popups in your browser for this site. Scan the 2D code with your phone " Barcode Scanner ". The app will obtain a unique id for your session. Go to Browser in phone, open any site. Click on Menu-->More-->Share Page-->Send To Computer Lo and behold the page opens in your desktop browse

Everyday Android apps - Cardio Trainer

Cardio Trainer - Your personal trainer and route tracer. You are likely to use it twice a day. How I got it?  I was on Morning walk, saw Vijay Prahallad, shared usual Hi and was almost on Bye when he said "I am sure you would love it" and showed me the accuracy of Cardio Trainer and path traced, calories burned and distance covered.  Searched on Android Market and there it was. What I like? I am hooked , todays is third day and even though I was slightly sick I went out. The music integration. GPS accuracy. First day was poor as I had set it for good and 1s refresh but now changing it to fair and 10s interval has significantly improved. I jog in a cluster of buildings and its amazing to see the path. No user registeration. You get a code and can use it anytime you want to. What I dont like? It looks like it interferes with call. Yesterday I was having a conference call and at about  4:45PM the phone rebooted itself. This is also about the time it sends reminder to g

Ruralzing invites school student

Halenijagal kids dancing The Sunday, 28th Nov,2010 was different. The students were divided into four groups. Each group had to present the idea as to "Define a feasible project for village development if you have a budget of 1 Lakh". There were interesting ideas on Improve irrigation and extend rainwater harvesting Cultural center in villlage with a outlet on NH4 highway close to the village. Scale biogas plant to cater to needs of every household. Basic Health care center. The constraint of the project were in line with India@75 vision of Professor Prahalad. The winning entry beat the runner up by mere 3 points. The participating schools were Shishuvan from Mumbai , The Jain International School from Bilaspur and a school from Kochi. The students played games like गिल्ली ओर डंडा (Gilli and डंडा), कंचे (marbles), लट्टू () and danced with local children in the school campus. Highlights of the day Kochi school kids talking about seasonal unemployment e

Why Nokia is so paranoid?

Nokia is all over the place with great push for their ovi store. They are in malls, in conferences and in start-up events. They are extending their distribution channel for app developer to connect their customer with their apps. What is in an mobile phone app that Nokia is losing its sleep over? It looks like market share. New India based mobile manufactures have gathered significant marketshare in last couple of years. With companies like Spice,Micromax,Lava and Videocon in the fray. It could be Android too. The adaption of android development environment by developers across Asia and world is one such sign. Second could be price point of touch based devices. Nokia has lowered one of their best offering to about Rs.7k. Other day @mayanks mentioned that he now he has bought the device where will he find the apps. All the fun apps are either on iphone or android. Another could be deployment of 3G. 3G will go hand in hand with smart phones. Interestingly the package offering o

How Android is changing the home environment?

The buy was long pending. It was triggered by a theft . I bought the Samsung Galaxy 5 paying Rs 650 more at Sangeetham mobiles than at flipcart.com just to have their theft/accident/water insurance coverage. My daughter picked up the features faster than I and she demonstrated some cool tricks within few hours like you could go to clock-then camera and then run slideshow. My Spouse was a late entrant but was hooked to " Angry Birds ", Bistro Cook. My one year kid always changed the swype keyboard language to one of European languages and the keyboard layout changed each time and I had struggle understanding why the letters are changing places each time I go to swype. The initial rush of downloads saturated onboard memory and I had to uninstall few apps including angrybirds. I learnt about kies and how to do firmware upgrades through it. I was hoping to get Froyo 2.2 in a whiz so that I could install the apps on SD card. But kies cried foul and provided no upgrade, p

Dell Support says mechanical fault is by design

The battery bay of Dell Inspiron N5010 has a latch that has two positions. Lock and Unlock. The battery shakes a little when you lift the laptop. I thought I should seek Dell Support . Big Mistake number 1. The DVD drives makes a grhoom and a hoom sound, sometimes. I thought I should seek Dell Support. Big Mistake number 2. I called up support after contemplating for a while as to amount of time I will be put on hold. But I had been postponing the above two issues for a while and thought why not try today. I though of chat but the link said all our customers representative are busy, please email. When I went to email it said you should email only for the following 10 things else you should call. So I called. I was quickly connected and shared info. I explained the problem. The Dell customer representative cut me in middle and said she will connect to technical representative . It was about 10 mins before he came online. I spoke the above 2 problems. He could not understand

How is donation pitch different from securities pitch?

We have made 300 crores and we need 50 crores more. Both use the same sentence. One is six months out of MBA from Ramya College and is management trainee with ICICI Securities. Other is an engineering graduate, converted and dons orange color clothes and works for ISKON temple/trust. One is selling Pinnacle II, an ULIP which has 5 years outflow of 50k per annum and assured returns after 10 years at the highest NAV. Other is selling a mammoth temple construction which will be one the largest of its kinds with amusement parks and thematic studios. One promised 5 times the value of investment as life insurance. Other promises car park passes, books, and special pujas on your birthdays and anniversaries. One promises financial prosperity. Other promises spiritual progress and सुकृति . The instrument of investment is Unit linked Insurance policy. The instrument of investment is a step that will lead on to the temple. Your name could be somewhere on side of the steps in gold

Children Day Celebrations @Brigade Gardenia

Jawaharlal Nehru was born on 14th November. We celebrate children's day in his honor. The daily routine may force you to forget about him but for the sincere and dedicated mothers who like their kids to showcase their talents at stage. Not really, I really appreciate the hard work and effort put by the ladies in composing a event that is memorial for their kids as well as their parents. Their is dance,skit, keyboards,songs and fashion shows. Ah! I forgot another active class in enclaves who needs the events. The teachers of various arts and crafts like dance/song/keyboards who want to market their availability for your kids so that he can attend one more class. There are dance and more dance and too much dance. Indian bollywood music and its steps copied by students, cheered by parents. Where is talent? Traditional music being rendered by half screeching loud speakers. Will you close your eyes to get lost in music? Distribution of fast foods like chips packets means more

Big Bazaar is changing Buyer Behavior

This Diwali Big Bazaar gave a sheet to all its customers with coupons for getting 2 kg of sugar on every Wednesday for the next few months based on the kind of spend they did during the offer period. Generally we postpone our Big Bazaar trips to end of week and gather the dump and bring back home. Now they want to come on the day that they want and spend atleast 500 rupees so that you get the 2 kg of sugar that you have been consuming so fastidiously. What this entails? Your consumption of sugar goes up. There are 4 Wednesdays in a month and now you consume 8 kgs of sugar. Apparently sugar is responsible for most of middle and old age diseases according to a 100 year old Rishi who never had roti in his life. Your outflow to Big bazaar goes up. You spend atleast 500*4 = 2000 rupees to get that 8 kgs of sugar. And you know better  than me that bill is not always exactly 500 depending on who accompanies you. Chances are high if you are alone but if your daughter,son or spouse around

NASSCOM Product conclave - Day 1 - Points

The day began with keynote from Mr. Amitabh Srivastava from Microsoft with a rather long job title. He warned that nobody knew cloud well. Rest of the time was spent on how Microsoft was playing the azure game the way they had done for windows OS. Apparently a OS for the cloud which they called as PaaS which was obviously different from salesforce or Google. Amazon was claimed to be IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) where you have to manage your server and its security updates etc., This was followed by the story of On24 by Sharat Sharan, a rather serious note. They had to do away with their initial management team because they did not have the relevant IT credentials. The product which is on web casting was intensely technical. They survived the market crashes and now desire to move on to from being a 50 Million to 200 Million Dollars company. The kind of challenges at every size are different and they have managed to address them organically so far. Next we had discussion on UID

Learn kannada from Auto driver in Bangalore

Will you go to Hotel Ashok on Kumar krupa road? 10 rupees extra sir Can you go by meter? Okay, sit ---after the auto starts and in motion--- You will have to pay rupees 30 I will pay by meter, if you dont want it then please stop the auto and I will get down Sit sit ---reach a traffic signal, a beggar comes on the side I dont have a rupee, can you give him a rupee? Even I dont have a rupee See sir, a truck struck me from front and i have almost lost a eye, thanks to god that I have survived, since then I earn and eat well but also give needy when ever I can. ---i check for money but the least amount that comes out is 10, he takes the 10 and obtains a change of 5 from beggar and puts it back into my hand, the signal becomes green sirr, do you know kannada? No How long you have been here? 6-7 years ---then he starts teaching me kannada, the below in double quotes is in kannada next time when you meet a auto driver tell him "I am kannadiga, dont cheat me" -- i

Brigade School @Brigade Millenium- Annual Day 2010

A beautiful evening of performance at MLR convention center. An evening where the children performed, teachers and support staff orchestrated the events and parents simply walked in and witness the performances. We could only clap at the series of performances. The skits made us laugh. The history took us into our past. The theme for this year was Goa and Maharashtra. We could see the costumes of Portugese,Hindu and Sultanate/Mughal rulers. We could hear the Portuguese music customized by local and called as Goan. The choir. The flowing dances, ballets and folk. Mumbai illustration had Songs and Dance from Bollywood, fashion from the commercial capital of India. The dance/fashion of every decade was portrayed, we could see twist/disco/... The children looked so happy in performance. The older kids looked so matured walking on the ramp. The kids helping with seating arrangements were so courteous , soft and beautiful. The inauguration speech was by Ms. Jaishankar. She touched

NASSCOM Product conclave - Day 2 - Points

The first keynote had Yahoo CEO , Carol Bartz. The kalinga house of lalit ashok was full. There were media vans outside and nobody was wasting their time outside. The points India could have better Internet penetration if there is access to more bandwidth and access to more devices (need not be laptops or phones) at rates which are affordable to Indians. Yahoo is about content and how it can be relevant to its end users. Yahoo does not yet have plan for an app marketplace. Yahoo encourages women to come and contribute more in the engineering realm. The next keynote was by Dr Frank H Levinson. The points I will try to make the session fun but jokes across cultures can backfire at time. The hall is full and I should thank Carol for same. The biggest mistake was becoming CEO of my first start up and I got fired within 6 months. My wife said it was not my fault but I said it was mine. I took full responsibility and accepted my failure and learned from it. In the next venture I wa

Lost Mobile in BMTC bus in Bangalore

So much for the public transport. So much for the public apathy. I was screaming I have lost the mobile and no one moved in the entire bus. Everybody turned around twitched a little and ignored the cry. More than the loss the reaction of the public shocked me. The bus conductor of BMTC bus somewhere in front. He did not bother to intervene. One person offered to call the number but the phone was promptly switched off. Other said you can block the phone by using some code. The doors of the bus were closed. The thief was inside. I could do nothing but get out of the bus. Bus number is 201 and it mostly runs between Banasankari and Koramangala. I had heard stories of people losing mobile phones and purse in 201 but it was a first hand experience for the first time. I called up my spouse and she kept trying to reach BSNL toll free mobile help line number. She was always in queue after choosing the lost mobile option. She visited the nearest BSNL office and they said she had

Buy laptop in india - dell online experience

It will be close to a month and the laptop is nowhere in sight. I discussed with the sales person for customizing the configuration. Is it possible to upgrade RAM from 3 to 4 as there could be 2 GB per slot? No its not possible. Is it possible to have multiple partitions? I can give two partitions with 60 GB in one and rest in others? Is it possible to give equal partitions? Not possible. You can do it yourself. Do you also share windows OS disk? No we have stopped shipping it a month back. How do I reinstall or update in case of issues? You will have to make your own disk and you can take help of technical assistance post delivery. When will the laptop come? Within a week . The conversation happened on September 1st 2010 . Dell sent me the invoice with 7 days validity. I called back customer care on September 6th 2010 . I would like to place the order. No Sir, you cant the rates have gone up. But your invoice is valid for 7 days .Today is 7th. I dont know

Bubbles Centre Outing, August 14th 2010 write-ups

August 14th trip: A write-up by Parvathy: Staff and parent at Bubbles centre My daughter and I had a wonderful experience during our trip to Hallenijgal. It was as close to nature we could get as possible. The lush green fields, the tractor ride, the walk through the fields and amidst the village houses and cattle.. it was truly an undescribable experience. We were touched by the kindness and openness of the villagers. The best part was that our kids were able to interact freely with the village school children, which is a huge benefit. I hope we will be able to take our kids more often to get such exposure which is key to their development. 0 Trip to Hallenijgal, August 14th, 2010: A write-up by a parent and staff-member: Pamela The trip to Hallenijgal was a very enjoyable trip. The children had a very good experience. They got to see the village scenario and the village life. We have taken photographs and are doing picture talk based on what they had seen and experienced i