Shashank Rana

Why do I use Windows 7 on my Laptop and not Linux/other OS

I recently bought a new laptop, HP dv7-2180us, Core2Quad, with 6GB RAM and an ATI Radeon with a GB dedicated. It had Windows Vista preinstalled on it and before I bought it, I ensured that I had a Windows 7 upgrade available (postponed my purchase for 3 days). I have used other operating systems, including OSX, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and CentOS. The moment I came home and unpacked my new beast, I took out the DVD with the Windows 7 RC and upgraded my laptop.

I knew that I will have to do a fresh install when Windows 7 will finally be available, as upgrade from Windows 7 RC to Windows 7 Release is not allowed (yet). I knew that my license allowed me an upgrade to Windows 7 Home, which meant that I will have to do away with my installation that I was about to perform on the system as RC was available only in Windows 7 Ultimate. I knew that the Windows 7 RC will stop working after sometime, the bi-hourly shutdown to begin on March 1, 2010.

Even after all this, I chose to install Windows 7 RC on my laptop.

Windows means a ‘life without walls’. After using all the operating systems that I could put my hands on, I can say that I love Windows. I have used Windows Mobile on my HTC Touch Diamond, and when I changed it to Nokia E71, I missed the convenience of doing things the way they were meant to be done. Cut, Copy and Paste were so much easier on Windows Mobile, am glad IPhone users are also able to experience it now!!

Windows 7 seems to have been designed for the latest machines. Adding my Canon Printer or the E71 or HTC Phone was not even a task. I connected them and the Device Manager automatically installed the required Drivers, else told me what was required. Before installing the Windows 7 RC, I forgot to make a driver-disk, which would have all the drivers of this new laptop. I was amazed to see that everything installed perfectly and there were no conflicts whatsoever!

Windows 7 makes the online life easier. With Windows Live Essentials and the Internet Explorer 8, there is not much that I would require for working on the Internet. I have an instant messenger, blog writing application, email client, movie editor, networking utility, safety and security software, Fax and Scanner software and everything that I will require in a Home PC!

I didn’t have to do anything except give a couple of details and press next. It was smooth and it works perfect. I am not in a habit of shutting down the laptop anymore because the wake-up time from Sleep is about 2 seconds, and it doesn’t consume any battery on Sleep. I can move between my work and home wireless without worrying about establishing connections and the networking with a wired connection is also painless. The Action Center keeps on telling me about the problems ‘and’ the solutions, which taught me to create a Backup of my important files.

I don’t know if I have any reasons to move to any other Operating System. I have Windows 7 and I am very happy!

Tags: device manager, laptop operating system, linux, netbook operating system, netbooks, operating system, windows, windows 7, windows 7 for laptop

With or Without..

Baaton baaton mian bicharney ka ishara karkey
Khud bhi roya woh buhat ham se kinara karkey

Sochta rehta hoon tanhai main anjam-e-khuloos
Phir usi jurm-e-mohabbat ko dobara karkey

Jagmaga di hain terey sheher ki galiyan main ne
Apney askhon ko palkon pe sitara karkey

Dekh letey hain chalo hosla apne dil ka
Aur kuch roz tere saath guzara karkey

Aik hi sheher main rehna hai magar milna nahi
Dekhtey hain yeh aziyat bhi gawara karkey

 

Found this on the Internet. I’ve translated this according to my little sense of language and tried to retain as much meaning as possible. 

His words meant that he wanted to part ways,
He cried a lot too after he separated.

I wonder what was the reward of my sincerity,
But I think love is a sin and I did it again.

I have lit the entire city, each alley and street,
by placing my tears as stars on my eyes.

I wait to see the will of my heart,
I won’t stop thinking of you for some more time.

To live in the same city and not meet,
will be torture but I am willing to test.

Tags: together, without

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

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

Working on Jaipur.ws, a resource for Jaipur

I have always wanted to ensure that my city Jaipur, is placed well in the international community, for it is really one of the best cities in the world. I am sure everyone feels that same about their birthplaces but there is this charm about Jaipur which makes it lively and worth a shot for anyone who wants a hassle free life.

I got hold of a domain, www.jaipur.ws and I knew this was my chance to do something. I anyways wanted to try Drupal and build a site using it. I started to work on the website of my dreams and have been able to collect a little bit of information about the city. The best part is the history of Jaipur, which I guess was not known to many. The design of the city is not new as most people would think. This is based on the design of an ancient Chinese city called Chang’an. The division of the city in 9 parts, with walls surrounding the city and gates for public that would close at night to protect the citizens, is all based on the principles from Chang’an.

I know that there is a lot to add to the website and what I have compiled till now is not even a decent overview. I am still trying to get more information and should be able to get it with time. I am also trying to think of a Photography competition for people with pictures of Jaipur, so that I am create a decent gallery of pictures on the website. I am sure it should incite people to participate and we will ultimately have a ‘fair, non-sponsored’ resource of information on Jaipur.

I am hoping to compile it all soon and will post updates as and when possible.

Tags: brief history of jaipur, description of jaipur, information on jaipur, jaipur, jaipur.ws, website on jaipur

techspeak.com is the new home of the company!

Finally I got the domain techspeak.com. I had been told forever that a website which doesn’t have the dot.com domain is not a real business, and while there were a lot of exceptions, I somehow believed this as well.

There was a generous Canadian lady who owned this domain for about 10 years. She got this first registered in 1997 and then in 2007 I first got to see it (because that was when I started the company!). I contacted her via the form on her new website and requested her to let me know if she was interested in parting with the domain as she was not using it at that time.

She surprised me with her quick and pleasant response. She politely refused to give me the domain at the moment because she didn’t know if she wanted to give it to me, or to anyone. I told her that I am starting my company and it will be a great boost to me if I have the TLD. She probably understood and told me that she will think about it and let me know when she has decided something.

I mailed her a couple of times and she promptly responded, telling me her situation or point of view. In the beginning of the year 2009, I wrote again and she said that she was leaving for a vacation. She told me that she will decide about transferring the domain once she is back, finally. She was back in a couple of months and wrote to me saying that she was all prepared to transfer it to me. I could send the payment to her and she will ensure that the domain is transferred without any trouble.

I didn’t know if this was the right thing to do, it was a decent amount by any means. I was sure that she genuinely wanted to give me the domain otherwise she wouldn’t have written to me. I knew my money was safe but I was only unsure of the registrars as I had never transferred a domain comfortably before. I moved 2 of mine from Rediff to Znet and it was a horrifying experience.

Well, I did transfer the money and she sent me the authorization code in less than 12 hours of receiving it. I tried to move the domain to my registrar and as I had expected, something went wrong somewhere and the transfer didn’t happen. I was really troubled and anxious to get it all happen. I wrote to the support staff and they were as usual, clueless.

She was a great help in the meantime. She kept on writing to me to find out about the status of the transfer and she also ensured that I was comfortable during the entire process. She didn’t disappear after receiving the money but let the transfer complete till the end. It was a great relief and I am really thankful to her.

So, don’t forget to check techspeak.com in a couple of days. I am trying to figure out the best CMS at the moment and will ensure that the site is up before the end of next week. Fingers crossed!!

Tags: domain authorization code, domain tranfer, rediff, techspeak.com, techspeak.in, website, znetindia

You Need to be Connected to remain Disconnected!

Please bear with me as I give the background of this story.

I was trying to look for a nice template for Zen Cart, which I have installed for the new domain, ITShopIndia.com. This site is supposed to be a place where the buyers of Computer parts and Accessories can connect directly with the suppliers and manufacturers and get products at wholesale prices. I reached the site of Kuroi Web Design, which has demos of free Zen-Cart templates. To appreciate the service by Kuroi Web Design, I decided to Tweet the page using Twitthis. I started to browse the top twitted pages and found a nice article by Seth Godin, the marketing guru. Phew!

The article is about personal branding and the Google effect. It talks about three people who applied for a job and how Google revealed the truth behind their claims. It is important to realize that privacy has a new meaning in the Internet era. People may think that they can disconnect their lives by not signing up to FaceBook, Orkut, MySpace and the likes, but it is not true.

Recently, I was seeing my own profile on FaceBook and realized that someone had tagged me in a photo. With over 2 billion photos uploaded, almost everyone in the world who has ever been clicked must have been tagged at least once, or will be tagged soon. It is true that you can restrict people from tagging you in pictures but you need to have a FaceBook profile for that!

You need to be on the network to ensure that you are not on the network!

It is difficult to remain behind closed doors when there is someone on the prowl all the time. The crawling spiders will not let any stone unturned. It is better that you are in control of the situation and manage your Online Profile judiciously. Even if you consider your privacy very important, just ensure that you have a decent public profile available to those who seek it, lest they will have to settle for what is made available to them.

Tags: facebook, google, myspace, orkut, privacy, public profile, seth godin, social networking

Facebook Status, Twitter and Micro-blogging

How much can one write in 140 characters? Not much?!? There are millions of people who are posting their thoughts on Twitter daily, in 140 characters.  There is yet another set of young netizens, who login to Facebook only to update “What’s on your mind” and share it with the rest of the world.

Micro-blogging has been around for a while and has started to catch up recently because of the ease of venting the increasing frustration in the youth. A crashing economy, pink slips, lower pays and higher taxes have led to a situation where the current generation can not think about anything but work. The hectic schedules and omnipresent stress doesn’t allow people to interact with each other and spend quality time with friends and family.

Micro-blogging is the easiest resort for this community to interact, discuss, shout, tell, share – What’s on your mind! When I update my status on Facebook, I know that it may be read by 150 people. These people may sympathize, appraise, help, comment, suggest or just add to my emotions.

It is a nice way to connect to the world and the best part is that you do not have to speak to anyone about it. It is personal, discreet and yet so public! It helps people in getting rid of their emotions, or enjoying them more, and that’s the reason it became so popular in such a small time.

Follow me on twitter @ranaonline or let me know if you like micro-blogging!

Tags: emotions, facebook, microblogging, social networking, status update, twitter

Got my blog started! Credits…

Finally, I have managed to get this blog up and running. I have been thinking about creating my own blog instead of using the Live Spaces service by Microsoft.

I wish to thank a few people for this. Foremost is WordPress, for the most beautiful piece of code that I have ever seen. They are correct, code is poetry! Then I would like to thank Jai Nischal Verma from Blog Oh! Blog, for the wonderful theme that I am using here. And finally, I wish to thank Paint.net, the one software that makes editing images easy. The logo of this website has been created using Paint.net.

There are a few things that I need to do before I can consider this complete. I need to look for a few plugins so that I can ensure that this blog works the way I expect it to. Then I need to see if the widgets in WordPress are working correctly. I need to add the Akismet code to save myself from all the spam that is going to be generated. Lastly, I need to check if this setup will work with Windows Live Writer or not.

So much for it!

Tags: beginning, live, live spaces, live writer, microsoft, paint.net, shashank.asia, wordpress