Showing posts with label Websites. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Websites. Show all posts
Looking for internship or job? Check Microsoft's Students to Business program

Looking for internship or job? Check Microsoft's Students to Business program

Microsoft's Students to Business website connects graduating students with  Microsoft, Microsoft Partners and its customers. This program is open to graduating students in India. The enrollment process is simple and does not require any fees.

Microsoft's DreamSpark program gives students Microsoft professional tools at no charge.

For students passionate about software development, there are also other avenues where they can publish their original projects or contribute to ongoing open-source projects and get noticed. Here is a list of popular project hosting sites -

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Website to track weather in Indian cities - imd.gov.in

Weather isn't a hot topic in India (as it is in the US) & forecasts aren't taken seriously.

Possibly to promote awareness, the Indian Meteorological Department has put out an ad in today's Times of India (with a glaring typo -Meteorological is misspelt as Meteorogical right at the beginning) to publicize the features if its site - IMD.GOV.IN



click image to enlarge

Besides a host of services & forecasts, the site publishes 3-day city forecast for 100 cities. Unfortunately, neither this nor the information from other weather forecasts are accessible as RSS feeds or through widgets as on the US National Weather Service website. As such, there is no easy means by which other websites or individuals can consume useful weather information.

There is a toll free number (1800 180 1717) to get city weather forecasts & observations but the site lacks services that have a "push" mechanism

A better designed site with interactive features (better maps, email alerts, easier accessibility on mobile phones) can boost the utility of India's official Weather tracking service by sharing its wealth of information among the general public.

Also see:
India - Know your elected government representatives
State of Internet in India
Browser Usage Stats for India
Jago Grahak Jago
E-Commerce in India
India IT - facts, numbers & trivia
Discover public transport in India with Google Transit
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Online database of medicines used in India - MedGuideIndia.com

No matter how big or small your ailment, you should never try to play doctor. However, there may be times when you want to verify details of medicines you are consuming. Typically, Indian doctors scribble names of medicines that are almost illegible but surprisingly understandable by the pharmacist.

MedGuideIndia lets you check details of commonly used drugs in India by their brand name. Their search feature also shows brand names for a specified generic drug and you can find out which manufacturers sell that drug and at what cost. Composition of brands and comparative prices of various brands of same composition are shown as well.

This website, aimed mainly at medical professionals, is not an alternative for an actual doctor but it helps consumers to be well-informed.
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Tatkal Train Ticket Reservation Tips

Tatkal Train Ticket Reservation Tips


Tatkal train ticket reservation is a ray of hope for millions of Indians who prefer to commute by trains over other forms of travel even if they have to pay extra because the original reserved ticket quota has run out. The IRCTC website is possibly the best known site in India as it helps travellers avoid the long queues at the train reservation centers. It is also probably the most hated site as getting the more premium Tatkal ticket is a harrowing experience.

Some of these tips to book a Tatkal train ticket online maybe too obvious for experienced folks so don't write to tell me. If you like them, tell your friends. None of these tips guarantee confirmed availability as they are numerous factors involved that matter (like season, day of the week, route etc), these may just improve your chances. Here are the tips that I usually offer to my relatives who are not Internet power-users -

  • Many cities have multiple stations and IRCTC will get you results for all stations for that city. If the original station codes don't match, you will have to subsequently fill another form to specify the exact FROM & TO stations which is a waste of precious seconds during the first half-hour of Tatkal booking.
  • Keep alternative station codes ready. Don't wait for the autocompletion feature to fill-in the FROM & TO fields. 
  • There MAY be a greater probability of getting Tatkal tickets on long distance trains as they will cost more than those which run between major cities and they are less known as they don't run on all days of the week. 
  • Keep long words like your name and bank details saved in Notepad/text editor so that you can quickly copy-paste. Youngsters are generally quick with the keyboard (due to the long hours they spend on the computer) so you could get a power user to assist you in case typing isn't your strongest skill. It may help to have multiple people around while booking in order to take quick decisions & also to sanity check the data that is being entered. For instance, mis-typing the gender in the hurry could lead you to do some explaining to the TTE or a visit to the reservation office to get it corrected.
  • Use a modern browser (not IE6 or older versions of other popular browsers) as they load pages relatively faster.
  • Your IRCTC "session" may time out if you leave the site unused for a long time. If you anticipate the reservation exercise to take a lot of time, use Opera browser's native auto-refresh feature or use this bookmarklet in IE, Firefox, Safari & Chrome to automatically refresh a webpage at specified intervals.
  • Get the fastest Internet service possible (3G USB) & browse from a decent laptop. That way you can avoid any disruption due to an unfortunate powercut or a landline Internet service issue. If you perform a dry-run before the actual exercise, some elements of the IRCTC site like images maybe cached and may improve speed slightly.
  • Rather than take a single direct train, you can use 90di.com to look for multiple trains in the same route. You have to compromise on comfort & cost but at least you may be able to get confirmed tickets.
  • Every second counts, so keep yourself distraction free & busy till you have finished all options.
  • Each user is currently permitted to book only 10 tickets in a month. So if you book a lot of tickets, make sure you are not crossing the monthly limit before you start the Tatkal ticket booking adventure. In such a case, you can be prepared with credentials of another userid.
A scenario that I foresee for the future in case IRCTC doesn't tackle the "Service Unavailable" issue (which typically comes up between 8-8:20 AM) is that desperate train ticket seekers will stand in queues with their smartphones at ticket reservation counters to try their luck both online & offline.

If you end up without confirmed Tatkal tickets at the end of the fateful first hour of booking, take consolation in the fact that you are one among thousands that had the same luck. Instead of despairing, consider this as a learning experience & a practice session for a future encounter with IRCTC.

If you have any practical tips, feel free to share them through the comments section below.

Also see:
IRCTC Alternatives
Make the most of IRCTC
Travel Planning & Reservation Tips using Online Tools
Indian Railways RAC and Waitlists concepts explained
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Thanks Scott Mitchell, 4GuysFromRolla!

13 years after founding the website 4GuysFromRolla & writing for it for all these years on Classic ASP & ASP.NET, Scott Mitchell is calling it quits. And oh! I got to know just today that the site I've been following since 2000 is pronounced 4GuysFromRawl-ah, not 4GuysFromRoll-ah. He has made a candid assessment of why the site started failing after he sold it to Internet.com during the dotcom heydays.

Scott Mitchell belongs to that rare breed of developers who can also explain things well as they can identify with the audience. Like scores of other web developers, I relied heavily on his tutorial site when I started my career with Classic ASP. He has consistently maintained the quality of articles & they are always educative. His "An Extensive Examination of" series of articles covering important .NET topics is excellent material for self-learners.

As I mentioned earlier, I find it is an interesting coincidence that besides sharing the same first name, Scott Mitchell, Scott Guthrie, Scott Hanselman & Scott Allen - all big names in the ASP.NET community, have an entertaining & simple style of writing.

I hope Scott Mitchell continues to write a lot more great books & articles.
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Track the most visited websites worldwide & by country

Track the most visited websites worldwide & by country

Google's DoubleClick Ad Planner maintains a list of the 1000 most visited websites worldwide & the top 100 websites in 20+ countries. This list is based on estimates & updated monthly.


It combines information from a variety of sources including anonymized, aggregated Google Toolbar data from users who have opted in to enhanced features,  publisher opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in external consumer panel data, and other third-party market research.


For each site on the list, you'll be able to see:

  • The site category
  • Unique Visitors (users)
  • Page Views
  • Whether the site has ads
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The Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites is growing

The Internet is a great place to find answers provided you know where to ask. Search engines can only go so far. The Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites is unique because the user community votes up or down answers & therefore the best answers float to the top of the list. People who provide good answers get “reputation points”, which gives an additional indication of the value of an answer.

It all started with the site Stack Overflow over 2 years ago. 82% of 1.1 million questions there have been answered so far on the forum that has 415,000 users. Anyone can propose a new Q&A site but there is a process it has to go through to show a lot of people support that topic. If a Q&A site for a proposed topic goes successfully from the Define & Commit phases & if there is sustained interested in the Beta phase, that site stays.

I currently follow these Stack Exchange forums during the weekends -


I'm looking forward to see the proposed Project Management site, AskAboutProjects, get into Beta & beyond. If that topic is of interest to you, go vote for it.
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Display global trends with Heat Map & Slider

I liked the way Google Insights for Search graphically shows country-wise trends for keywords you search on with a Heat Map & Slider. The slider below the heat map neatly provides the interactivity.

The below images show the web search interest for the keyword "swine flu" in May-August 2010 & the same period in 2009.




Someday I would like to create a generic data visualization control out of the Heat Map-Slider combo (or is there one already?) that can have a easy way to bind to any data source.

It would be interesting to see wealth distribution across countries over the years & centuries. I couldn't find this with a cursory search on Gapminder.org, a site that unveils "the beauty of statistical time series by converting boring numbers into enjoyable, animated and interactive graphics"
 
Also see:
Free ASP.NET Charting Tools
.
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Fun facts about domain names

Fun facts about domain names

The right-most label in a domain name is referred to as its "top-level domain" (TLD). For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the top-level domain is com

While wiki surfing this Sunday, I came across some fun facts about domain names -

Most TLDs with three or more characters are referred to as "generic" TLDs, or "gTLDs". Currently there are 20 gTLDs out of which 6 (.biz, .com, .info, .name, .net, .org) are open TLDs i.e. any person or entity is permitted to register

Country-code top-level domains (ccTLD) are two letter domains established for countries or territories or their internationalized domain names (IDN ccTLD). With some historical exceptions, the code for any territory is the same as its two-letter ISO 3166 code.

A number of the world's smallest countries have licensed their TLDs for worldwide commercial use. For example, Tuvalu and the Federated States of Micronesia, small island-states in the Pacific, have partnered with VeriSign and FSM Telecommunications respectively, to sell domain names using the .tv and .fm TLDs to television and radio stations.

Vanity ccTLDs are TLDs which are used for various purposes outside their home countries, because of their name. The list of ccTLDs on Wikipedia (incompletely) identifies countries (there are atleast 15) that permit foreign registration.

A domain hack (sometimes known as a domain name hack) is an unconventional domain name that combines domain levels, especially the top-level domain (TLD), to spell out the full "name" or title of the domain.

Some popular domain name hacks are who.is, blo.gs, del.icio.us, cr.yp.to, retou.ch, goo.gl, bit.ly and ow.ly
 
Also see:
My favorite Developer Cheat-Sheets
.
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Aids for comparative analysis of software tools/products

If you are asked to recommend the best software tool or product for a particular requirement, a good way to start researching is to check Wikipedia. There are articles specifically devoted to comparative analysis of products under various categories. These articles typically start with the title "Comparison of". Wikipedia's search box supports auto-suggestion, so typing those words first followed by the category can lead you to the required article faster.


The topic of Project Management software came up in a discussion on the LinkedIn Groups (requires free subscription) & I learnt from there & the Comparison of project management software that while Microsoft Project is a commonly used tool, the most expensive tool in the class is Primavera (now owned by Oracle) while CA's Open Workbench & Serena OpenProj are open source alternatives.

LinkedIn Answers and StackOverflow are some other sites where you can find justifiable opinions on competing products.

Also see:
Crowdsource your supplemental learning with Stack Overflow
90
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HOW TO find why your competitor has better search engine rankings

This question appeared on Webmasters.StackExchange.com, a new Q&A Forum (currently in beta) for pro webmasters from the makers of Stack Overflow.

One suggested answer was to study the competitor's backlinks using SEOmoz's Open Site Explorer, a link popularity checker & back-link analysis tool.

The comparision chart below (click to enlarge) shows how two of India's popular websites Rediff & IndiaTimes fare against each other.




Related:
Tools to monitor your website
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Web Applications - Tips & Tricks

Web Applications - Tips & Tricks

Did you know, you can append +any-word to a GMail address & use that word to filter emails or distinctly identify where the mail has come from? For instance, any email sent to the following email address: example+webapps@gmail.com will be recieved by example@gmail.com because gmail ignores the "+" and anything after it. In fact, you can also have multiple full-stops or dots WITHIN the actual address as GMail won't recognize them. This literally means you can have unlimited email addresses based on your primary GMail email address & they will all reach a single inbox.

This is a tip from WebApps.StackExchange.com, a new Q&A Forum (currently in beta) for power users of web applications from the makers of Stack Overflow. There are lots of other interesting tips & tricks there related to commonly used websites and if you have some pesky problems you can post yours as well.
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Check out O'Reilly Answers

Check out O'Reilly Answers

The website currently in beta describes itself as a community site for sharing knowledge, asking questions, and providing answers that brings together our customers, authors, editors, conference speakers, and Foo (Friends of O'Reilly).

To me, O'Reilly Answers looks like a cross between Stack Overflow & LinkedIn Answers. The nice thing about it is that you can get to interact with O'Reilly authors & earn points for participating that can be redeemed for books, training, courses, and conferences.

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IRCTC Alternatives

The IRCTC.co.in website has to be the most trafficked e-commerce site in India as you can book a train ticket online within minutes by paying a few rupees extra rather than buying them from a Railway ticket counter which has perennially long queues. In April 2010, there were over 7 million transactions carried out. The website has an Alexa Rank of 474.

These impressive figures are probably not due to the quality of the website but due to the monopoly that it enjoys. Like many, I've endured the slow-loading pages but since the last few months I'm happy to have discovered alternatives to IRCTC.

Since a couple of years, IRCTC has started providing an API at a hefty fee for third-party vendors. As a result, there are now a bunch of websites now that offer a superior interface & experience for buying train tickets online at a slightly higher cost, like -
I've tried the first two & am impressed with the clean interface & relative speed with which you can book tickets.


 The MakeMyTrip site interface (click to enlarge)

Booking a Tatkal ticket on Cleartrip appeared faster although it still probably hits IRCTC's servers. Some of these sites also occasionally have special offers. For instance, Cleartrip is giving away a cash back of upto Rs.100 on train bookings done through Net Banking till May 31st, 2010.

Also see:
Travel Planning & Reservation Tips using Online Tools
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Twitter For Dummies

I discovered today that you could just type the command "F username" into the What Are You Doing? text box to follow any user on Twitter. I picked this tip from the Cheat Sheet of the book Twitter For Dummies that is excerpted on the Dummies website.

Impressed with all the tips I found on the Dummies website, I've started following it on Twitter
A fading alert shows up to notify confirmation

I noticed that when you copy and paste content from that site, the URL of page you have copied it from gets added at the end with a "Read More:" label

Thanks Joe Mayo for the link to the excerpts of the book

Also see:
Explaining Technology in Plain English
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jQuery is now on W3Schools

Whether you are getting started with Web development or need a good reference, W3Schools is a great online resource you can turn to. In over a decade of it's existence, the Norwegian family-owned company Refsnes Data that runs W3Schools has meticulously created tutorials on close to 50 Web development topics. The tutorials are in plain-English, thorough and to the point. I was glad to see today that jQuery has been added to that growing list of topics.  Also included is a tutorial on HTML5, the next generation of HTML.

W3Schools has been a dependable companion to me for much of my web development career. Just yesterday, I learnt that the rel attribute of the anchor tag is not really supported by any major browsers and it can take over a dozen possible values. rel="nofollow" is used by search engines to let search spiders know they should not follow a link which contains that attribute.

W3Schools is currently ranked 341 on Alexa & enjoys over 103+ million monthly page views (March 2010).

Also see:
Free .NET 4 & VS 2010 Learning Resources
HOW TO block IFRAME based ads
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Free Photos & Images

Images & illustrations make content lively & sticky. Commercial websites can affoard to pay for slick images but thankfully for the rest of us, there are a good many sites that offer free photos & images.

I spotted a list of over a dozen such sites with liberal licensing policies on the morgueFile website (at the bottom of the home page). morgueFile allows usage without attribution.

Smashing Magazine also has a nice compilation of free stock photography sites.

Here are a few more obvious & popular ones that both the lists missed (sites are linked to their pages on licensing terms):

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Indian software product start-ups that are making news

The business newspaper Economic Times (Hyderabad edition) carried an interesting front-page article yesterday on successful Indian software products coming out of India.

Over two-and-a-half million people worldwide, half of them in the US, are using word processors,creating slide-show presentations and doing their sums with the help of an online suite of software products built by technology start-up Zoho, located in Chennai.

In Bangalore, InMobi,a company that builds technology for mobile internet advertising,is helping global advertisers and publishers reach 175 million customers every month across Asia,Africa,the UK and the US.

... while it took Infosys Technologies 18 years to record its first $100 million in revenue,product start-ups such as InMobi expect to do so within five years.

In Kolkata, FusionCharts,a graphic data visualisation tool created by startup Infosoft Global is used by 1,500 organisations across the globe, including the US government.

..Webaroo’s SMSGupShup a Twitter-like closed group messaging product for cellphone subscribers, has 27 million users in India. In three months GupShup will be available to mobile users in nearly two dozen countries.

Apalya now has one million customers for its product MiMobiTV that streams live television onto mobiles starting at a subscription price of Rs150 a month.

Earlier this year, Mango Technologies, that was incubated at the NSRCEL centre in IIM-Bangalore, sold two of its proprietary telecom solutions to handset maker, Qualcomm.

This blog uses a contact form that's built with Zoho Creator & I'm happy with the way its been working. Zoho also provides APIs for integrating Zoho services with third-party applications.

The free version of FusionCharts works with PHP, ASP.NET, JSP, ColdFusion, Python, RoR, simple HTML pages or even PowerPoint Presentations. I was not aware of it when I was evaluating free ASP.NET charting controls for a project requirement.

Webaroos SMSGupShup was probably the inspiration for Google India's free SMS service called Google SMS Channels.

Similarly, JustDial may have been the inspiration for another Google India Labs service called Google Phone Search. This free service which is in the pilot stage provides voice search for region-specific info like local business listings, movie showtimes etc., in Hyderabad, Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore. While Google Phone Search (toll free # 1-800-41-999-999) uses speech recognition technology to process a query and read out the results or send the information via SMS, a real person picks up the phone at JustDial (phone # in India - 6999-9999; in 240 cities in India) to address a query.

JustDial makes money from small businesses paying up to be sponsored listings. In this fiscal year, it made about $32 million in revenues having answered 72 million calls. JustDial (1-800-JUSTDIAL) has recently been launched in the US. The operations will be handled out of India but it will soon be creating call center jobs in the US.
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