Food Food

If you love food you will love zomato.com

Simply stated, zomato is all about food and where you can find the best of it. Just login to the site, type the type of food you like (chinese, punjabi, tandoori) , along with the place where you would like to find it, and voila !  You have a list of restaurants serving that kind of food in that area. You can further filter it based on dine out or takeaway and you can latch in to exactly what you want, where you want !

Zomato seeks to provide you everything that you might want to and need to know about food before you actually take the first bite. From the nukkad wala dhaba to the swankiest restaurants in your town, they provide you all the info you may ever need: menus, reviews, ratings, contacts. Above everything else, they provide you the convenience to reach all restaurants around you.

Currently, restaurants in Mumbai, Delhi,  Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad are covered and more cities are ready to be covered soon.

So if you are thinking of eating out over the weekend – try www.zomato.com and decide on where to go or what to order, with ALL the information at your fingertips.

Math Aids


Math-Aids.Com is a free resource for teachers, homeschoolers, and parents. You can make an unlimited number of printable math worksheets for children, the classroom or homework practice.

The flexibility and the text book quality of the math worksheets make Math-Aids.Com a very unique resource for people wanting to create and use Math Worksheets.

The worksheets are categorized topic-wise as well as level-wise. Just click on a topic on your left, select the worksheet that you would like, and click “Create Worksheet”. The worksheet is instantly created. If you are not too sure, you can also create the answers along with the worksheet ! You can save or print any no. of worksheets – all for free !

It is an ideal resource for brushing up your math skills. Try it !

Digital Accessible Information System

DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) digital format assists people who, for various reasons, have challenges using regular printed media. DAISY digital talking books offer the benefits of regular audiobooks, but they are superior because DAISY includes navigation.

Typical audio talking books do not allow the reader to move through the book easily. You can listen from beginning to end, but not much more, resulting in frustration and wasted time.
Electronic content that lacks navigation makes reading slower and less efficient than it has to be.
Navigable DAISY content that has electronic text available, either with or without audio, may permit readers to examine the spelling of words, or search the text, using a software player on a computer. When DAISY full text is available, some software players also offer users the ability to display and highlight the text of the book on the screen.
DAISY books can increase reading speed and improve reading efficiency. With the press of a button, you can jump to the chapter you need. . . faster than the eyes can skim.
The DAISY standard provides flexibility and options never before possible. You can listen to a DAISY book on a computer while reading the text with a braille display. Or you can listen to a DAISY audio book with a special stand-alone player at home or when traveling.
Although the DAISY Standard was developed with books and people with print disabilities in mind, we can envision many applications for it:

  • Lectures that are available as audio and text files simultaneously.
  • Emergency preparedness materials in audio format as well as available to all who really need them.
  • Synchronized text and audio – very valuable in teaching literacy or a foreign language.

Learn, support, and embrace the huge benefits of this technology: Go DAISY ! More details available at www.daisy.org

Digital Photo Frame

We all love to share photos with our loved ones. The camera screen is too tiny and the computer screen too large, and to some, too complicated. And printing photos and sticking them in an album is sooo very outdated these days. We need something in between – enter the digital photo frame !

A digital photo frame is a photo frame that that displays digital photos without the need to print them or use a computer. Digital photo frames are common in 7 inch to 20 inch sizes. Some digital photo frames can only display pictures. Most digital photo frames display the photos as a slideshow and usually with an adjustable time interval. You can even add background music to suit the mood. So, on a single frame you can have several photos (of say a trip, or a navjot or a wedding), which can change every 10 or 15 seconds.
Some advanced models may support  movie clips recorded in a digital camera’s movie mode, MPEG video files and/or MP3 audio.
Digital photo frames can display the pictures directly from a camera’s memory card, though certain frames also provide internal memory storage. Some allow users to upload pictures to the frame’s memory via a USB connection. Built-in speakers are common for playing video content with sound, or just the pics with background music.
Because a digital photo frame’s display is not very flexible, some pictures cannot be displayed in a satisfactory manner. They tend to have thick black borders or somewhat distorted.

But overall, a Digital Photo Frame is a welcome addition to your family gadget collection.

Google Wallet

In the past few thousand years, the way we pay has changed just three times—from coins, to paper money, to plastic cards. Now we’re on the brink of the next big shift.

Google Wallet is an Android app that makes your phone your wallet. It stores virtual versions of your existing plastic cards on your phone. Simply tap your phone to pay and redeem offers using near field communication (NFC).

Google Wallet has been designed for an open commerce ecosystem. It will eventually hold many if not all of the cards you keep in your leather wallet today. And because Google Wallet is a mobile app, it will be able to do more than a regular wallet ever could, like storing thousands of payment cards and Google Offers but without the bulk. Eventually your loyalty cards, gift cards, receipts, boarding passes, tickets, even your keys will be seamlessly synced to your Google Wallet. And every offer and loyalty point will be redeemed automatically with a single tap via NFC.

Google Wallet is coming soon. When it launches, you’ll be able to use Citi MasterCards and the Google Prepaid Card with Google Wallet. You’ll be able to tap to pay at hundreds of thousands of merchants. At launch, Google Wallet will be compatible with Nexus S 4G by Google, available on Sprint. Over time, they will be expanding support to more phones.

This is just the beginning, but in time, your phone with Google Wallet will be the one thing that holds everything you need to carry.

Samsung Galaxy SII

The Samsung Galaxy SII is dubbed to be an iPhone killer. And with a 1.2GHz processor, super-slim chassis and feather-light finish, it’s easy to see why.

It is one of the thinnest smartphones on the market at the moment, rivalling the iPhone 4 and Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc. And, at just 116gms, it is one of the lightest too. The super AMOLED 4.3 inch screen is a delight – looks even better than the iPhone with its vivid colors, but some may find the colors of the iPhone little more natural. The 8.1MP camera with single LED flash takes great pictures and videos for most day to day requirements.

As compared to the iPhone 4, the Galaxy SII has a tad lower screen resolution and has a plastic body. But otherwise, in terms of speed of browsing and customisability, the SII scores over the iPhone 4. Maybe the iPhone 5 will catch up with this later, but as of now, the SII has an overall breezy experience.

The Android Marketplace for the SII has many more free apps than the Apple iOS marketplace. Besides, for the flexibility of the Android system, the ease of replacement of batteries and the simplicity of the entire experience, I would vote for the SII.

Finally, finding your phone is like finding your life partner, you don’t know whether it is the right one until you meet in person. The final choice must be made after holding the phone in your hand — finding out the build quality (sturdiness), the actual speed of launching applications, the ease of use etc.. But, based on the hard specs, Samsung definitely has an edge. And if you are looking for a good smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy SII is going to be top of the line for a while.

Stress Simplified

Stress can be triggered by many things in life, and it can be helpful to know the source of our stress. Stress has been linked to coping with grief, depression, sleep problems, worry, among others. Learn how to recognize the signs of stress so you can manage it effectively, by visiting http://www.stresssimplified.com.

The site states that your body is naturally equipped to deal with a certain amount of stress. But if stress increases and your reserves are low, stress can have a bigger impact. Building up your defenses is a “long-term” plan for reducing stress. It will also improve your overall health and give you more energy.

www.stresssimplified.com has many useful sections to understand stress, the symptoms,  different types of stress and ways and means of how to deal with them. The complications that can arise out of extended stress handling are detailed. Support groups for stress and Clinical Trials are also covered (mainly US based). It also has links to podcasts ( audio broadcasts) on various topics of stress handling and how patients coped with the same. You may hear them online or download them for future access.

Stress is an ailment like any other, more so, in our fast-paced city lives. This site simplifies the understanding of stress and shows ways and means to overcome the same. Interesting if you are affected or pass it on to others whom you know, could benefit from the same !

Everyone’s talking to SIRI !

The brand new Apple iPhone 4S has an inbuilt personal assistant called Siri. Siri helps you do things by just giving oral instructions to the phone.

Suppose you want to send a message – you can just dictate the message to Siri and tell her whom to send it to and voila – the message is sent – without your having to use the keyboard! You want to mark an appointment or book a table at a restaurant or book movie tickets – just tell Siri and it will be done. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean and even talks back. e.g. if you are going to Delhi, you can ask Siri “ Do I need a jacket in Delhi tomorrow?” and Siri may answer you with the forecasted temperature in Delhi and also whether you will need a jacket or not. Siri is so simple to use and easy to handle that you will keep discovering new ways to utilize her capabilities.

Under the hood is a very powerful and intelligent voice recognition program that recognises what you are saying, sends it to a central server for analysis and comes back with answers. So, if you ask Siri, “where is RA.one playing tonight?” it will send the message to a central server, which will find out where you are (through GPS) then go to a portal to find where RA.one is playing in your vicinity and come back with appropriate answers. Pretty efficient !

Siri can even voice-guide you with locations on the map, set tasks and appointments, find out “am i free this Sunday” and handle almost all the functions which your phone is capable of executing. You will most certainly fall in love with her for her efficiency – just that your wife won’t mind !

Catch Free Stuff online

We all like free stuff. But how does one find free stuff online and having found something, how do we know it works well ? www.catchfree.com is the answer.

This simple website lists several softwares which are available free online. It makes it easy to compare the best free online solution for your exact need. For example, if you wish to share your desktop, would you use Skype or Teamviewer ? Which sites offer free music and are accessible easily ? How does one make voice calls free on the Internet ? How do I watch free TV online ? catchfree.com provides comparisons and allows you to choose the option which best fits your precise need.

CatchFree was founded in 2010 by a team that was tired of the challenges of trying to compare free alternative solutions on the details that really matter. Today CatchFree collects feedback from thousands of real users across a broad range of categories so you can easily compare and choose the best free solutions for your particular needs.

So the next time you need to manage projects, share files or manage your personal finances for free, just login to www.catchfree.com and you will find neat little charts comparing the top free apps available online.

saveenergy.co.in

As we enter the month of May, tempers and temperatures start rising and availability of power starts falling. We all want ACs but have no clue where the additional power is going to come from !  And the best way to have more power is to conserve it !

http://www.saveenergy.co.in is a great resource to find ways of saving energy. The site provides information and tips for saving energy. It is an initiative of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) which is responsible for making the star rating of appliances across the country mandatory.

The energy labeling program is explained in detail. Did you know that if ALL ACs in India had a 5 star rating, the power saving would be equivalent to a month’s power supply in Mumbai ? or emergency services like hospitals will have uninterrupted power 24×7 all year round ? India Room Air conditioner Industry has approximately 38 brands of Air conditioners as of March 2010. Before the labeling program was introduced, the consumers could not easily get information on and understand the energy consumption details from the name plate information of Air conditioners. Now, since it has been made mandatory for ACs and Refrigerators (and a couple of other products too), it has become easy for the consumer to find the efficiency of the equipment he is buying.

There is an interesting section on Energy Calculation. You can choose your room size and matching airconditioners, the operating time and the city in which you live – and voila ! It tells you how much you will pay on electricity bills on account of airconditioning. If you choose a higher star rating for your ACs you can even see how much savings you will be able to achieve. Energy Saving FAQs and power savings guide are incorporated in different sections.

Energy saving is good not just for your pocket but also for your environment. So better start saving energy now, contribute to reduction of Global Warming and leave the earth a better place for our children !