2 months of BigFlix

Here is my feedback on BigFlix, India's version of NetFlix, after subscribing to it for 2 months -It's nice that DVDs are home delivered generally in a day. You can place a pick-up request by phone or their website. Their Call Center initially used to work from 10:30 AM to 9 PM but now stays open between...

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Search Innovations

Google's prime properties like Google Earth, Gmail, Picasa, Google Docs, Blogger, YouTube, Google Calendar are said to have been developed in the "20 percent time" or one workday a week Google gives it's developers to work on whatever projects fan their passions.Among the other "20 percent time" projects...

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HOW TO spot a bad apple or a problem team member

A study on team dynamics has found that groups that had a bad apple (a person with a personality type of "Depressive Pessimist" or "Jerk" or "Slacker") would perform worse and other team members begin to take on the bad apple's characteristics....the worst team member is the best predictor of how any...

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Google Search - Then & Now

Speaking at WSDM 2009, Google Fellow Jeff Dean in a keynote talk shared how Google has grown from 1999 to 2009. Various search engine enthusiasts have blogged about the facts presented in the talk from their own notes.Excerpts:Google handles 1000 times more queries now with 1000 times more processing...

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neXpert - YSlow clone for Fiddler

neXpert is a add-on to Fiddler similar to the YSlow add-on that integrates with Firebug on Firefox. The version 1.0 released recently still has some rough edges but looks to be a good addition to any ASP.NET Developer's toolkit.neXpert looks for performance issues and generates a HTML report with recommendations...

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The Collective Decisions of Competitors

Analogous to the collective wisdom of the masses that some websites mine for the benefit of users, it is heartening to see competing search engines join hands to make search results and the Web more effective. Microsoft Live, Yahoo & Google now allow you to "normalize" urls by picking one "canonical"...

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Free OCR Tools

Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, is a technology to convert different types of documents, such as scanned paper documents, PDF files or images captured by a digital camera into text so that they are editable and searchable.There are both free & commercial tool-kits.Free -SimpleOCR - 9.3MB...

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HOW TO convert a video's format with free tools

FFmpeg is a free computer program that can record, convert and stream digital audio and video in numerous formats. It contains multiple components including a a command line tool to convert multimedia files between formats. FFmpeg is developed under Linux, but it can be compiled under most operating...

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HOW TO identify a Font

If the text for which you want to know the font type is editable, you can identify it using it's related application. If it is on a website, you can usually find it by viewing it's HTML source. If the character is in an offline source like a newspaper, it would take a human font expert to identify a...

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HOW TO add subtitles to YouTube videos

"Why do people go to India to find themselves? India is where you go to LOSE yourself." ~ found on the InternetI love watching movies on DVD with subtitles turned on as I can understand the dialogues better. Captions/Subtitles make videos and movies accessible to a wider audience. In India, PlanetRead...

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Book Review: Software Project Survival Guide

"How does a project get to be a year late?... One day at a time" - Fredrick P. BrooksWhen you are setting out on a long journey along an unknown path, it pays to seek advice from folks who know that path well. Similarly you can count on the book Software Project Survival Guide by Steve McConnell, the...

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Sing your songs with Songsmith

It is said that A R Rahman, the Mozart of Madras, composes his tunes for film songs first & then the song-writers fill in the words. He is also said to have a bank of tunes that he mixes and matches to create award-winning songs.Everyone likes to sing (some at least secretly). Although only a talented...

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AJAX Frameworks for ASP.NET

If you are planning to AJAX-enable a ASP.NET website, a good option is of course the ASP.NET AJAX Framework from Microsoft due to it's better integration with the Visual Studio IDE and documentation. Occasionally I see questions on the Forums from folks having issues making ASP.NET AJAX work. Very often...

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IE8 Developer Tools Tips & Tricks - #5: Find Link Paths

Cloaking hyperlinks is a cunning trick that comment spammers & phishing attackers use to ride on the popularity of websites that are in the good books of search-engines. If you run a public website that allows comments or accepts input, you should keep an eye on URLs submitted by users that could...

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IE8 Developer Tools Tips & Tricks - #4: Edit CSS Visually

Debugging CSS in an inherited web application or trying to adapt CSS from an inspiring design of someone's website is generally not an easy task. One of the interesting features in IE 8 Developer Tools is the facility to edit CSS visually.After you open the desired web page of which you want to debug...

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IE8 Developer Tools Tips & Tricks - #3: Customize HTML Source Viewer

Developer typically look at the HTML Source to locate possible coding issues. Notepad is not an ideal viewer as it lacks the sophistication of EditPlus or NotePad++ or any of the numerous editors. Luckily it is easy to change the viewer in IE8 (RC1).Hit F12 to invoke Developer Tools. From the menu,...

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