SharePod

Want to copy music from your Ipod? I know. I know. All the tracks in your Pod are renamed by Itunes. How do you copy and retain track, album, and artist names?
Simple. Get SharePod. Small footprint. Easy to use. Effective. Brilliant!

Note: SharePod needs the Microsoft .NET 2 Framework to work correctly.

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Honesty Pays. And How!

See for yourself

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The Fall of the Sparrow

A year later, however, an ornithological survey conducted by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research confirmed birdwatchers' worst fears: the sparrow population in Andhra Pradesh alone had dropped by 80 per cent, and in other states like Kerala, Gujarat and Rajasthan, it had dipped by 20 per cent, while the decline in coastal areas was as sharp as 70 to 80 per cent.

Read more on Outlook

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Here we go again Chennai!

This time is it is the outfit that Mallika Sherawat wore during the release of Dasavatharam's music. It seems some self-proclaimed guardians of the so called Tamil culture tried lodging a complaint against Mallika. But the cops refused to accept the complaint saying it is impossible to enforce a dress-code. Oh really? Ask the students of Anna University sirs. Also see the FrontLine piece. Scary!

Now the cynic in me tells me that the cops are doing this because the Chief Minister too shared the stage with Mallika.

Let us, for a moment, think that the guardians of Tamil morality are right... then, they need to burn all the weekly Tamil magazines. I kid you not, but every magazine that's worth its name carries pictures of skimpily clad actors. Every week!

Strange but these guardians of morality do not seem to have a problem with actors baring skin in Tamil movies (which are very high on Tamil culture). Why are we being such hypocrites!

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Youmint.com deletes my account finally

You signed up for youmint.com. Imported your contacts from gmail or Orkut and sent invites to your friends. Suddenly, your friends start screaming at you 'What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you sending the same youmint invite 10 times!' Shock laga?
I was stunned too when a few of my friends started mailing me inquiring why I was spamming them.

So I promptly wrote to all the mail ids listed in their 'contact us' page and asked them to delete my account; there is no option on youmint.com to delete your account. Somebody did call me from youmint and assured me that the spamming will stop. But it didn't. So I lost my patience and blogged about it. And, that post now comes up in the first results page on Google when you search for youmint.com or youmint.

:-) and their top boss one Mr. Ankush called and spoke to me. Today I received a mail from them saying that my a/c has been deleted. Ankush also promised to add to their FAQ list on 'how to delete my youmint account'

I'll have to admit that folks at youmint are quite serious about customer care but it'd have been better if only they had paid attention to design. That's another story.

P.S. youmint.com whois

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Weekend Birding

It was him! the Egret said pointing to the aquabatic Cormorant. This rather weird bird was hanging around with a family of ducks and when he was not, he was fishing in the lalbagh lake. He was careless enough to not spot a juicy water snake that swam right under his nose.


This diminutive bird of prey is supposed to be shy;at least during daytime according to popular belief. But this guy was almost shameless. He or she stared at me as I clicked away. For good measure, the bird turned so I could get a good view of the beautiful face.
More pics on my flickr space

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Ubuntu Ahoy! The Wubi Revolution

Note: The points I discuss here are applicable mostly when you want to install Ubuntu alongside Windows XP (dual boot).
I was curious about a Linux Desktop OS. I have heard so much about Ubuntu. A few months earlier I did try to install it on my Windows XP box but the whole partition thing overwhelmed me; I did not want my curiosity to kill my box. So I left it at that. I recently upgraded my computer. Bid goodbye to my old, wheezing CPU (R.I.P ol' boy!) and got me self a new one (AMD 64-bit processor, Geforce motherboard with Nvidia chipset, 2 gigs of RAM, and a 250 gigs HDD). I installed XP all right and one night when I was half asleep, watching Arnab of Times Now act like a moron on steroids, a little voice in my head whispered, 'Ubuntu?' Very soon the whisper became a scream and I went online to see if things had changed since the last time I had tried to install Ubuntu on my Windows XP. Yes, things have changed! And how!



I was chatting with Arnab - no not the news chap - my geeky friend who is doing a Phd on some very geeky shit in University of Michigan, and he told me about this new Windows installer called Wubi for Ubuntu. You can install Ubuntu on Windows like you would any other executable and uninstall it from the Add/Remove Programs menu. I went 'Whaa....t the faaaaaaaaaaaaaa...k?' And, and, and I discovered that Ubuntu had packaged Wubi in its current release (8.04). So all you folks out there that want to try a Linux Desktop OS, just to get a feel of how stuff works on planet Linux, I got news for you: you don't need to worry about the tricky partioning etc anymore. Download the latest Ubuntu release ISO, follow instructions, and Voila! Your Windows PC is now a dual-boot PC. I installed it last night and I gave Ubuntu a spin. Now, I wouldn't call it the most intuitive OS for I am still struggling to set up my broadband connection on Ubuntu. But hey, I am a complete dufus when it comes to all this and even I could install Ubuntu and have it up and running. I am sure I will figure out how to get my Internet working on Ubuntu shortly.

Ubunti (with Wubi) Pros

• Faster, easier Ubuntu installation: It breaks down that old barrier. More people are going to give it a try. I like the 'install and try' approach than the 'try and install' of Live CD.
• No need to burn CDs. When you run Wubi, it downloads Ubuntu (around 700 MB so might take an hour or more; depends on your connection). If you don't want Wubi download, copy the latest ISO (Ubuntu 8.04) to the same folder where Wubi resides.
  
• Does not eat up your computing resources.
• You can uninstall it like any other Windows program from 'Add/Remove Programs'
• No more virus.
  
• Comes loaded with all the software you'll ever need, including OpenOffice
  
• Seamless upgrades through the Internet.
• Install add-on software that the huge Ubuntu community churns out; there is some cool stuff out there man-o!
  
• And, it is all free of cost.
  

Ubunti (with Wubi) Cons

• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=481219&highlight=catch

All right, that's all I had. If you wanted a stable, no-nonsense OS that did not cost too much (read 'nothing') and one that offers an amazing array of software for your productivity and entertainment; and you wanted to kick Windows through that window. This is it. Repeat after slowly, U-B-U-N-T-U. Yeah, that's right mate, Ubuntu.

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Cartoon wants animated characters instead of cheerleaders

Siddharam Mhetre, Minister of State for Home and guardian of Indian morality has called the cheerleaders of IPL 'absolutely obscene'. He also suggested that they use 'animated' characters in the place of cheerleaders. Why didn't anyone think of it? Didn't you all know that you are going to offend a few cartoons in this country when you brought those lovely girls to cheerlead?
Mr. Mhetre also said:
[quote]"We live in India where womanhood is worshipped. How can anything obscene like this can be allowed?" he asked. Mhetyre wondered why the organisers require "semi- nude" women to entertain people at cricket matches.[/quote] Oh gee! Really? Aren't you from the same party that watched in glee as rabid mobs slaughtered pregnant women in Gujrat?

Sharukh said: "What's wrong with cheerleaders? I am also a family person, I do not see anything negative in it," Yeah, I am sure Karan won't mind the cheerleaders. As long as they are women. Hee hee.

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