320GB hard drive showing only 298GB only..!!!

One of my friend recently contacted me and asked a question that why his 320GB hard disk shows only 298GB of available space. He wanted to know whether the hard disk has some problems or his computer.

Actually, this is not a very big issue and its a normal thing.

The companies who sell hard disk consider the following:

1KB = 1000 Bytes
1MB = 1000 KB
1GB = 1000 MB
1TB = 1000 GB and further…

But, the Operating System or Computer System consider the following:

1KB = 1024 Bytes
1MB = 1024 KB
1GB = 1024 MB
1TB = 1024 GB and further…

Lets take an example.

Consider that you have bought a 1GB pen-drive.
So, According to company it is 1*1000 = 1000 MB and 1000 * 1000 = 1000000 KB and 1000000*1000 = 1000000000 Bytes.
So, when we divide 1000000000 Bytes according to computer system, its
1000000000/1024 = 976562.5 KB = 953.7 MB = 0.93 GB

So, the actual available space in a 1GB storage device is 0.93GB

Similarly, the actual available space in a 320GB hard disk is 298GB.

thinking of building a comic character or a comic strip...and dont know a way to do it...then this link will surely end your search..!!

Bitstrips.com

 

If you'd rather create your own cartoons than reading any of theose listed above, Bitstrips.com lets you do just that. You can create your own strips, consisting of single, three or more panels, depending on the story you wish to convey. The website gives you a limited choice of several characters, whose body language, facial expressions and surroundings you can alter. You can create a several series of comic strips and publish it for the world to read through the website itself.

Happy creating:)

Woooooo...someone's taking Mr.Rajnikanth too seriously..!!

A Rajni-inspired "Offline Only" Website

We have already heard tales of Rajinikanth humbling Google with his email id: gmail@rajinikanth.com. This time around, he has beaten the entire web with a new website that does not require an internet connection!

The site has been developed by Desimartini.com and reportedly runs on "Rajini power". On visiting the home page, you are asked to disable your web connectivity. Thanks to some tricky coding, the Flash-based website downloads entirely to your computer, thus working even when offline. What's more, the continuously verifies if you're online, probably by pinging a reference site such as Google.com. If you enable the internet access at any point of time, the site displays a unique error message, "Aiyyo! That was unexpected".

The design is very gaudy, which does justice to Sir Rajinikanth's personality. Visitors can read the superstar's biography, some interesting facts, and a list of stuff that he can do (nobody dares to call it a bunch of jokes).

Here's the website link: www.allaboutrajni.com. Just make sure that you don't have any ongoing downloads.

Spamming gets innovative!!!

Spammers Hakckers keep finding new and innovative ways to reach out to the masses. Since facebook has been immensely popular social network, it becomes vert attractive media for spammers. It also seems to be very easy to convince users to click a few buttons and steal all your data. They also post links on your friend's walls to attract more visitors.

Found a couple of my innocent friends posting these materials again and again.
How do you safeguard youself?

• Dont click on any link that you do not know or is suspicious.
• If any application asks you to approve/join/like do not do it unless you know the website/link
• They will have very attractive images/text - Eg. Osama bin Laden's uncensored pictures. If its too good to be true, it may not be safe link.

What do they get by spreading these kinds of links?
Any of the following

• Viral marketing - Website may be trying to make some product/website popular
• Stealing your details - They may be collecting your name, geographic location phone etc to sell it further.
• Stealing your id and passwords .

So please safeguard our accounts and share the good messages/links/videos with your friends. Do waste your and your friend's time and energy by clicking the wrong links.
Happy socializing.

Hoax mails..give away phones, bill gates sharing his fortune !

Ah! another spam mail.. asking you to spread word of mouth and they are giving away cell phones free... Or bill gates is sharing his fortune..and you need to cc to some one.

I keep receiving such hoax mails and finally thought let write something on this topic.

Here is a sample mail.

Dear ALL ,
I just want you guys to take hold of this opportunity from Ericsson . Ericsson is distributing cell phones for free over the internet to compete with Nokia, which is doing the same. They want to be better known through the Internet by word of mouth and so they are giving away their new WAP phone.
All you need to do is mail this to 8 of your acquaintances. In two weeks you will receive an Ericsson T18. If you send this email to 20 people or more, you will receive an Ericsson R320 Wap Phone. Don't forget to mail a copy of this email to anna.swelund@ericsson.com to ensure that your participation is noted.

What do they get?
The company or the product gets benifited, surely word of mouth will spread their name to every corner of the world. But people wake up! You are just distributing the garbage..

How can you avoid spreading such mails
Thumb of rule! There is nothing called free lunch. Always strings are attached. So before expecting anything free think again. If you are in doubt, just search few keywords of that mail on any search engine, that will reveal the truth.
Checkout some similar mails collection at www.breakthechain.org

And finally if you still want to try your luck sending these mails.. here is a good list of such letters in circulation. http://hoaxbusters.org
:p Hehe just kidding..

Do continue to send/forward mails to your friends that are worth their time and attention. Happy mailing ;)

LED bulb with 20 year life goes on sale in the US

Traditional incandescent bulbs are history and LED bulbs are here. LED bulbs are known to be energy efficient and offer more light than the power they consume. A news by Psys states that Philips is going to be launching one such model of LED bulbs this weekend in the US. It’s being priced at close to $60 (roughly Rs. 3,100). Now, this seems like a fairly large sum of money for a bulb but consider the fact that the bulb is said to have a life of 20 years. Philips, the makers the of bulb has already received the L Prize, which was a contest for creating a cheap, highly efficient bulb. Incandescent bulbs are highly wasteful of energy and a lot of it turn to heat. They are also not as reliable as the new LED based bulbs being sold in the market.

The future of lightning

Philips hopes that the product's price will drop to a more affordable $22 (Rs. 1,200) in a year’s time after the launch. The L Prize was meant for products that could offer a replacement to the 60W incandescent bulb. Philips was the only company to enter the contest and their product came out winning the product after a long testing period. The product is said to offer a very natural looking light while being very energy efficient at the same time. Attempts are being made to drop the price of the product further. Discounts have got that price down to $50 (approximately Rs. 2,600)

The Philips LED bulb is said to consume only 10W and is expected to save some $8 a year, if used for four hours a day. Considering the life of the bulb, it should make up for the investment in a few years time itself. CFL bulbs have the advantage of being cheaper but their life isn’t as long as LED bulbs. 40W and higher intensity incandescent bulbs are being used across the world. It looks like LED bulbs are going to take their place very soon. India on the other hand has a long time to go before LED bulbs become mainstream, more affordable and easily available.

QR Codes

Do you know what is QR Code?
 

A QR code (short for Quick Response) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code), readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data.

These are easily readable by most smartphones with camera by 

installing small app.

It was first designed for the automotive industry.

Convert Youtube to other formats

Ever wondered how to play youtube video in your cd player or how to watch it offline?
For those of you who havent explored or asked this question, here is some gyan.

Lot of freeware applications exist (do check their reliability from the reviews) that can take youtube URL (song address) and download it for you to almost any format.

http://www.vidtomp3.com/ Converts the URL in to standard or high quality mp3 file. You can play it strait in your car(Provided you have a mp3 player in your car). Found this site very handy.

Just search for download youtube + format you want and some website will convert it for you withought even downloading/installing any software.

Meet A Delhiite Who Won Google Code-In Contest Twice!

Gautam Gupta, a 16-year-old boy, is currently involved in WordPress, bbPress and LimeSurvey. He enjoys writing plug-ins and contributes to the core.   

 

Scene 1: The National Employability Report 2011, prepared by employability assessment company Aspiring Minds, says only 17.45 per cent of the engineers roped in by the IT sector are employable nationally.

Scene 2: A 16-year-old Delhi boy wins Google's Code-In contest twice.

These two situations are rather contradictory in nature and show the two extremes of the Indian technology world. But they both are true. In a nation like India where such employability reports grab the headlines, a boy like Gautam Gupta knows how to make a mark of his own when it comes to world-class competitions like Google Code-in.  

Google Code-in is an online programming competition organised by Google for high school students in the 13-17 age group. The contest is held over a period of around two months. Open source organisations appoint some mentors who create byte-sized tasks for the students. The tasks could be anything ranging from programming, translations, documentation, research and so on. For the first task that the students complete, they get a t-shirt. For completing every three tasks, they get a hundred dollars. The maximum amount they can receive is 500 dollars. Based on the number of tasks the student completes and the difficulty of the tasks, the students are ranked. The top ten are then invited to visit the Google headquarters, also known as Googleplex in Mountain View, California. Gupta has won the contest twice.

Speaking about his achievements, the teenager said, “It all started with a tweet that was about this competition, linking to a blog post which stated that an open source organisation, WordPress would be participating in a programming competition organised by Google. Such coding competitions for high school students are rare so I thought of being a part of it. When I first participated in the Google Code-in I was 15 years old and in IX grade. I had always been trying to find international level competitions for children of my age group and younger, in which they could get a chance to show off their talent in the world of programming, and Google Code-in was exactly that!”

Gupta's journey with open source began in 2008 when he was introduced to WordPress and bbPress. He continued, “That was the time when I had already acquired a year's experience with PHP and used to write small scripts. I tried porting a social bookmarking plugin for WordPress named SexyBookmarks to bbPress and released it as Social It in 2009. Then I wrote more plug-ins and eventually started contributing to the core and have been doing that since then, with exams playing the role of speed-breakers.”

He participated in the competition for the first time in 2010. Recalling his first time experience with the contest, Gupta said, “The first time the competition was held, I went straight to work the first day and started contributing to the all new bbPress plug-in for WordPress. bbPress basically allows to run forums on a website. My first task was to allow users to mark topics as favourites, then I did other tasks like handling errors, topic subscriptions, profile pages, topic stickies and so on. I remember continuously coding for around 16 hours by the end of the competition.” Being one of the 10 winners was more of an experience for the youngster. With age on his side, Gupta decided to be a part of that event again in the following year.

He added, “In 2011, I was already looking forward to it. This time, I mainly contributed to the OSS organisation LimeSurvey, which is a tool for creating surveys. The tasks were mainly to port it to the Yii framework from CodeIgnitor due to licensing issues. I also did some OpenIntents tasks as I had acquired some Android Application development experience too. In addition to that, I helped in finding libav bugs. As things turned out, I completed a total of 40 tasks, acquiring 116 points, which positioned me on the sixth place on the leaderboard.”

BUT... the journey was not as easy as it appeared to be. The boy had to face some virgin challenges, but could move out of them with flying colours. Talking about the challenges, Gupta said, “I was completely unfamiliar with the open source projects I was going to work with during the competition. I had absolutely no experience with Limesurvey or Yii, nor did I know anything about libav or zzuf. All I had was a little experience with Android. This contest changed all of that. I got an opportunity to work on awesome pieces of software and collaborating with cool people. Another challenge was time particularly when I participated for the second time. Since it was 10th standard, I was busy with the activities and tests happening in schools. But when you're passionate about something, you achieve it.”

Gupta is now passionate about open source technologies. He tries his hands on WordPress and Linux the most. The freedom of open source technologies impresses the lad. “I like to attend meetups. I recently attended DevFestX at Google Gurgaon, where I got to meet many open source lovers and know about new and interesting technologies. Open source exposure in school is rare, but I like to open source anything that I make,” he explained.

Gupta is currently involved in WordPress, bbPress and LimeSurvey. He enjoys writing plug-ins and contributes to the core.  

DataWind UbiSlate7+ Coming This Month, Aakash 2 'Early May'

The wait is over! The much awaited DataWind UbiSlate7+ is all set to arrive this month and Government of India's Aakash 2 may get released officially by early May.

Ubislate7+

It seems that the launch of India's cheapest tablet is imminent. "We will be launching our UbiSlate7+ later this month," revealed Suneet Singh Tuli, president and CEO, DataWind, in an exclusive conversation with EFYTimes. He further stated that the company would announce the exact launch date very soon.

When asked about the Government of India's Aakash 2 launch, he responded, "The Aakash 2 launch date will be set by HRD minister Kapil Sibal--probably early May."

 According to a report, the upgraded version of Aakash will get Google's Android 4.0 aka Ice Cream Sandwich OS. Confirming this news, Tuli shared, "At launch, Aakash 2 will support Android 2.3, but we're also actively working on Android 4.0 and expect to be able to offer an Android 4.0 upgrade in about six to eight weeks after delivery."

Regarding the specs upgrade for Aakash 2, Tuli provided us with the details for the key differences in the Aakash 1 (IIT Rajasthan) version and the upgraded Aakash 2 (DataWind recommendation) unit as below:

While Aakash 1 comes equipped with ARM 11 366Mhz processor, Aakash 2 brings a faster single-core, 800MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor. On the display front, Aakash sports a resistive touchscreen whereas the upgraded Aakash 2 packs a projective capacitive, 4-point multi-touch screen. The other key differentiator is the battery power. The earlier version packs 2100 mAh battery but the upgraded one comes with a better 3200 mAh battery power.

"Over time, there will also be significant improvements in the processor, as we are continuously seeing price drops for microprocessors," he further elaborated.