Shashank Rana

The Great Driving Challenge! Vote for Us

I was told about this new contest by Mitsubishi Motors, which really got me excited. It is a contest inviting couples from India to drive for 3000kms in Mitsubishi’s new car, the Cedia Sport. The participants will have to create a travelogue of their journey and also probably use the car for the purpose (probably!).

The applicants for this contest by Mitsubishi Motors, called the Great Driving Challenge, will have to prove their mettle in a four step contest.

The first phase of the contest is the registration and public voting, where participants register and vote for their favourite applicant, on the website.

The top 100 contestants from here will be judged by an independent jury, on the basis of their profile and their travelogues, posted on the same website.

They will shortlist 9 couples, who will have to go through various aptitude, driving and other tests, to confirm their ability to participate in this kind of a journey.

Finally, three couples will go around the country driving a Cedia for 3000kms. They will have to click 5 pictures a day, create 5 blog entries, and also shoot a video, to be in the contest.

The couple with the best travelogue will win a cash price of Rs 1 Million.

I have decided to participate and have created My Profile HERE. I need your support for the purpose and would request you to please vote for me, to get to the contest! You can vote by clicking here.

I will keep you posted of the events and my progress at the voting.

Tags: contest, driving challenge contest, great driving challenge, great driving contest, greatdrivingchallenge, mitsubishi, mitsubishi cedia, mitsubishi contest, the great driving challenge

Using WordMobi – wordpress client for Nokia Phone

I had spent sleepless nights looking for a good blogging client for my Nokia E71 . This is a great phone and I had really thought that Nokia would have taken enough care in making things more efficient with it’s business series!
Little did I know that people in the enterprise do not really blog, they have people to blog for them!

About 10 minutes ago, I stumbled upon a great tool – WordMobi . I was directed to this site by an unofficial Nokia E71 blog – E71.wordpress.com. WordMobi is available here . The developer claims that the application will work without any trouble on Nokia E71 and has also been tested on Symbian 5 series . It requires Python to be installed on the phone before WordMobi is installed and there is a very good installation guide here .

I particularly like the insert options. There is no need for you to know HTML anymore. The application has everything set for you, in form of start and stop. So if you want to insert a link, all you need to do is select Insert Link , and type the address. You can continue o write your text after that, and once you are done, again go to Insert Link and select it!

This post has been created using WordMobi!

Posted by Wordmobi

Tags: Blog using mobile, Blogging on Nokia, freeware, live spaces, microblogging, Mobile blogging, Nokia E71 blog, shashank.asia, social networking, tested freeware, wordpress, wordpress customization, wordpress installation, wordpress plugins

Listing the Best Free Software for Windows PC

I market software and my clients respect their IP because it is their bread and butter. At the same time, they also respect the IP belonging to other companies and people because they understand the effort behind developing it.

I have learned to not use any P2P software to share music or torrent sites to download software. I download demos of Games and if I like any, I purchase them after looking for the best deal! I enjoy buying good music because it ensures that the good artists will be encouraged to perform better and create masterpieces.

There are times when I am stuck because the task at hand requires a specialist software, which may be expensive. For example, creating or editing a document may require an Office suite. The first option that comes to our mind is Microsoft Office. There are however other cheaper Office suites available in the market, which offer almost the same features. There are also free software options, which can fill in the place of your existing software suite, without any learning curve or costs!

I am trying to make an extensive list of freeware. The purpose of this list will be to let users start from a free Operating System (which may be a trial from Microsoft) and add on other free software which they will require during the course of business.

I will try to divide this list into interest categories, like business, home and entertainment, but that will of course depend upon the number of freeware I find in each category! If you have any suggestions, please feel free to comment.

Tags: best freeware, business software, entertainment software, free computer, free office, free operating system, free software, free windows, freeware, office software, software for home, tested freeware, trial software

Google Search and Wolfram Alpha… and yes, Bing!

It looks as if after the browser war with the entry of Chrome and Opera 10, there is some action in the intelligent search market. ‘Search’ on Internet has been dominated by Google, despite the fact that Search Engine Optimization has killed the logic of intelligent search on Google.

Having said that, it is true that Google is and will rule the Search Engine market for a long time to come. For a search query like “brief history of Jaipur”, Google has about half a million results while Bing only produced about sixty thousand. What’s funny about Bing is that the first result was from something completely irrelevant to the search term. It gave a website from a school that has a hostel named as Jaipur House! This query did not produce any result on Google Squared or Wolfram Alpha.

I thought of looking for something more intelligent. After all, Internet is supposed to be a place for research and I personally believe that if there is no learning from it, there is no use. I tried to look for the “distance of sun to moon”. I think it is different because there may be several websites about distance of sun from earth and moon from earth.

Google had the first result from Wikipedia, the entry for Moon. It didn’t give any information about the distance but the third result was from Wiki answers and it was the one I was looking for. Of course this could be better, like Bing. The first result was from Wiki answers and the excerpt was on target. What’s more, I could also place my mouse over the result and see the preview of the website, getting more information about my query.

Sadly, Google Squared didn’t bring anything out, which made me realize that it is not meant for such queries. The best answer was from Wolfram Alpha, the clear winner here! It told me that the Sun was 1.016 AU away from the moon. An AU is an Astronomical Unit and another query told me the meaning of 1.016 AU in KMs, along with the values in Miles, Meters, Minutes (travel at the speed of light), and comparison of the distance with other similar entities.

This is what I call intelligent search! I am looking forward to a great Search Engine, which will help people find information that they can use. Black Hat and White Hat wearers have already spammed Google database and the websites looks more like link directories. Information is being replaced by Keywords and content by strategy!

Tags: bing, google search, intelligent search, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, wolfram alpha

Jaipur.ws – looking for information on Jaipur

Since I started working on Jaipur.ws, it has been a new learning for me! I have found out things about the city that I would not have read in the routine course. I already have some traffic on the website and I am expecting this to be useful for visitors.

I managed to AIESEC in Jaipur to provide me with information on the city. They have interns coming to Jaipur for short durations and they need a central repository for their documents. They also need to provide information to their interns about the city and I believe Jaipur.ws can be a good start.

I am still trying to figure a plan for navigation through the website. It is not easy, given the various places of attraction in the city. Another trouble is to find out more about the history of Jaipur and the monuments and provide information that is not generally available. I do not wish to create this into a run-of-the-mill travel website, which partners with a tour operator and gives the usual stuff to people. I am trying to design something which can be used by the visitors in planning their trip, or by people who want to learn more about the city.

Work is on! There is no contact form on the website yet but if you have any comments then please feel free to post write here!

Tags: aiesec jaipur, brief history of jaipur, description of jaipur, information on jaipur, jaipur city, jaipur.ws, travel in jaipur, website on jaipur