The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 7,000 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 6 trips to carry that many people.
Click here to see the complete report.
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done.”
–Steve Jobs
Just loved this one. True Wisdom.
I’ve always been fascinated by how much one can actually do on the mobile phone, after getting my iPhone last year. This time as well, I tried some thing as much that blew me away and that’s what am here to write about. Yes I downloaded a movie from a torrent, watched an .avi file on the iPhone all with out using a computer. It took almost 3 hours figuring out how to get it done. Not many tutorials were really helpful, so I am going to save you those precious 3 hours with which you could watch a movie on your iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch 
Setting up the device to download and watch.
Firstly this tutorial is for those who have their iOS devices jailbroken or are willing to take the efforts to jailbreak. Based on the versions of iOS you are running on your device (you can find yours by navigating >settings> general>about, look next to Version) jailbreak your device first if you haven’t already. (look up for a tutorial on redmondpie to get it done for your version).Make sure you are getting Cydia installed on the device while jailbreaking.
Open up Cydia and search for ” torrent downloader safari plugin”. Get it installed. Next search for the package iFile in Cydia and get it installed.
Open the Installous app to search for Vlc player, yes the impeccable player has an iOS app, sadly it has been pulled out of the App store, hence we are forced to download the player from the alternate app store. If you dont have the installous app, look a tutorial here. Please be reminded that it is illegal to install the app. On the Installous app search for VLC player and install it. Do not install the VLC streamer app, look for the VLC player App and install it.
Torrent downloader plugin on Cydia
Download iFile manager from cydia
Vlc Media Player app from Installous
Downloading torrents.
Now that we are all set to download from torrents and watch movies, Let me go through how to download so that it gets easier and quicker. Just go to a torrent site like Piratebay or Isohunt , Search for the torrent and click the download button. once a torrent file is downloaded the torrent downloader plugin automatically kicks in and prompts that the torrent is loaded, press the start button to download the file/movie. As far as i have tried, it does support pausing and resuming the torrent. It downloads even if the screen gets locked, Quite neat i must say. Once the download is done, open up the iFile app that we downloaded from Cydia. Browse to /var/mobile/Library/ you would find your download file/Movie here. If the file is a pdf or a txt or audio or video or you can directly open with a suitable app, and you can as well archive or compress the file which is nice. If it was a movie in Mp4, you could use the default Quicktime player to watch it.
Download the torrent file
Torrent loaded in the downloader
Torrent Downloading
Watching AVI files with VLC.
What happens if the movie doesn’t play on Quicktime, thankfully we downloaded the VLC player app which supports most codecs. VLC App is done in a such a way that you need iTunes to share a specific video file so that the VLC player can access it, which is a lengthy process and requires a PC/Mac. My whole idea of downloading the movie directly on the iPhone was not to rely on the computer. So here is the workaround for it. Select the movie file from /var/mobile/Library/ (could be where ever you have saved your download) by pressing the edit button in the iFile app. Cut or copy it by pressing the clipboard icon. Now browse back to /var/mobile/Applications/ . You would see a list of folders with jumbled letters and numbers, the trick is to find the VLC player among these. As of now, manually opening each folder is the only option to find out which folder has the VLC app. How you find the VLC app folder is by looking for a folder with a name VLC.app. So once you find out, just remember or make of note of the folder name (Mine was something like A65A27……, Also remember the folder name is randomly generated and might change if you upgrade your iOS ) so that at least the next time its just a tap away. Inside this folder you could find the documents folder open it and tap the edit again, you will see the clipboard icon highlight again, tap to paste the file. Now the file is inside the documents folder of the VLC player app.
Copying using iFile
Copying/Moving file
VLC app Folder
Just open the VLC player app and you already have the movie you downloaded to watch. I must mention that VLC does use a lot more battery than QuickTime, that should be acceptable given you are trying to use your iOS device as a replacement computer 
VLC player playlist
You can use an app like iExplorer from you PC/Mac to back up the movie if you want
Hope it was easy for you to follow the tutorial. Feel free to let me know if you liked the tutorial, or share your queries in the comments section below.
It’s known that I am an avid Feedly user on desktop and mobile . These day’s I am just using Feedly on the desktop and I switched to Reeder for my mobile needs, and here are a few reasons why I can’t live with out Reeder these days.
Simplicity:- It’s layout is out right simple, and intuitive. Nothing closely compares to the simplicity of the app. It hardly takes a few minutes to get used to the app. The app feels snappy and all the content is delivered just right to suit the mobile device (iPhone/iPad). I love the layout on both iPhone and the iPad.
Google reader sync:- Syncing to Google reader is mandatory for me, since I have more than 100 odd hand picked feed subscriptions on Google reader. Reeder syncs with Google reader, once you setup your Google account, it just Works.
Offline:- The killer feature which forced me to keep looking for a better Feed reader for the iPhone was the ability to download all the feeds for use offline and sync back the changes when I am back online. My commute to work takes about 3 hours everyday and catch up on the feeds during my commute. The kinda travel I do, I prefer not to use data, so all I do is allow Reeder to sync my feeds on wifi at home before leaving to office and similarly before leaving to home. I am surprised by the amount of data it can sync and store. When run offline, it works flawlessly without complaining for data/network which is really cool . While offline I can either share on Google reader or favorite an article or mail an article with out any issues. Any other sharing features like sharing on twitter or Facebook or Instapaper or Evernote require Internet. Please note that when I mean offline the entire article (text and photo) is available for offline consumption, except for any embedded links which would only be available with Internet. So you get to consume a majority of the article, which is the best that is possible offline. All the changes like sharing, favorites etc are synced back on your next sync flawlessly.
Reeder’s online capabilities are equally impressive. When the app is open, It syncs in the background and opens links within the app until you explicitly ask a link to be opened in safari. Besides there a a tonne of customization you can make to suit senses. In all Reeder is a must have app for your iDevice and is worth every penny. How I wish there was one for windows
Different sharing options
A photo blog running offline, It had over 150 pics
LinkedIn has been creating a lot of buzz lately for all the good reasons which could only be good for the web. Be it their first announcement of quarterly results after being public or be it with subtle changes like profile makeover or advertise yourself/firm feature or the new Apply with LinkedIn button. All of these changes are nothing new, just mere copy of Facebook’s like button/ features, but I for one believe these are significant changes which can change the way professionals and organizations connect and engage. These changes are quite different from the past for two reasons, one these mark the new era of changes i.e. after the company going public and the other being that they are leveraging the potential of the platform they have built over the past few years. The earlier changes were majorly to build the community of professionals, to get more like minded career oriented professionals to sign-up, get them to interact.
LinkedIn now believes it has achieved the critical mass to start reaping large scale benefits from the platform that was slowly but steadily built over the years since 2003. Be it with the wide scale paid access to companies/recruitment firms to Mine/Connect with LinkedIn or the LinkedIn everywhere button, they are definitely going BIG . With new the “Apply with LinkedIn” feature they have opened up the possibility for 100M professionals, to apply to a job opportunity on any website which supports the functionality. LinkedIn aims at being the standard for any job application across the web, which would make it easy for both organizations and professionals to process their job applications with ease. If this move succeeds, i.e. when companies allow people to apply to jobs on their websites likewise candidates use it religiously, don’t be surprised if job applications get synonymous to LinkedIn, like now it is synonymous with professional networking in most places.
This a welcome move for all professionals and organizations but not so much for the Recruitment firms. If LinkedIn gets everywhere, LinkedIn would be the ultimate bridge between candidates and corporations surpassing all recruitment firms, why so in a minute. Earlier companies had people or recruitment agencies mining LinkedIn for Niche/ Top notch professionals and there used to be an interaction of mails/ discussions over the phone before the resume actually got submitted for the opening and further processing, But it won’t be any more. These apply with LinkedIn buttons would replace most recruiters, may be some of them would just become coordinators. Professionals would directly apply with their LinkedIn profile, thereby making their LinkedIn profile their resume. Matching profiles to jobs would be done more by the candidates themselves and less by the recruiter. Employers would have an even scale to compare candidates. There also would be a major change in the trend people make their LinkedIn profile. Now not many people make their LinkedIn profile like their resume, they just have their titles and organization names, education, but they would be forced to update their job role, achievements, or a mixture of either of these etc. if they would want to use their profile to apply for an opening. This would marginally help the recruitment firms to connect with the right candidate with more confidence given they get a glance at a detailed profile.
In all the apply button could be a trendsetter in the way candidates and companies connect. If the trend gets set, it will affect the recruitment firms for sure, hope it is for the better. The recruitment firms do have a challenge, to stay the middleman and not lose out to LinkedIn. They would be forced to aggresively build networks offline, depend on traditional techniques and they would be forced to innovate new ways to connecting/gaining trust of potential professionals. LinkedIn has set the ball in motion, we will see where they get to, till then play along :).
Note:-
By recruitment firms i refer to all firms focused on fresher’s/later hiring and it does not include executive/Senior level/CXO search firms, since its a a sub domain with its own different characteristics.
I am eagerly following the tour and hope you guys are as well. To celebrate the cycling season, I have done another chrome theme for the tour. The link to the Tour de France theme is here. Below is a screenshot of the theme. Hope you like it. Feel free to share your thoughts on the theme.
Tour De France theme
Yet another attempt by Google on breaking into the social networking domain after a failure with Orkut and Buzz. After almost 5 days using Google plus, I can say that this time they have managed to stand by the expectations people have on a company like Google. Plus one is indeed a plus one site to be on for now. Plus is Facebook with a pinch of geeky Google.
The key differentiators from Face Book being the following
1. Group people into a list/ circles and each circle is private from the other. i.e What you share with circle A(friends) is not visible with circle B(colleagues) until you explicitly say so.
2. You get to follow pretty much anybody who has a plus profile, which is cool. It saves time for popular people like Scobleizer, Guy Kawasaki, Vic Gundotra, etc. Eg:- All those who want to follow Scoble (In 6 days he already has 11k people following on Plus) can’t friend him on Facebook, if they did his profile would go for a toss, and nothing on his wall would remain personal. So he needs to create a Facebook page and keep updating that for his followers, But here on Google plus its simple, They let everyone follow every one, and with a couple of clicks you decide who see what updates. This way it seems like a middle ground between Twitter and Facebook.
3. Sparks is a stream of links to articles/videos from Google search based on your interest. So you are always engaged with latest information of your interest. This seems more a filler now, till people start getting active. Since I don’t have a lot of updates flowing in real time, I also keep checking sparks of my interest to see if some new stuff has happened in my area of interest. This way they are keeping me on Plus for some more time before I get bored and move to check Facebook . This might seem pretty simple and might not get an attraction that much, but it has a huge value to Google moving ahead. Imagine a couple of years down the lane when Plus has a couple of million users, at least a third of those people will drive traffic to websites from these sparks and it would give the edge back to Google from Facebook as the number 1 traffic generator.
4. Huddle is a mobile feature where people can send text to one another like chat messages, where group texting as well is possible. I haven’t been able to play around with this feature, given I am on an Iphone in India. The introductory video looks interesting none the less.
5. Video and voice chat called Hangouts for groups is the most compelling feature of Plus.. This is just crazy. Imagine a Video chat with 10 people for free. BTW I like the way it highlights the person who is talking is really cool.
Most of my stream ( i.e equivalent to the News feed in FB) is with very little real time data, vastly due to the reason that the amount of active friends I have on FaceBook is way more than what I have now on Google Plus.
What is best about Google Plus is the privacy seems to be implemented to perfection so far. The settings provide ample options for one to decide who see what of the data you share. The iPhone still doesn’t have a native app like android, but the web app on safari works perfect and is well implemented. The UI animations are cool and feels like you are on desktop rather than on the web b. Over all Google plus seems to be a bit geeky as of now at least thats how it look like with all the geeky guys getting invites. Hope the geekiness won’t last really long else, it won’t help Google keep up in the social wars.
So do I think it will beat Facebook and become the best social network. I don’t think so. It has a potential and it has a long way to go, and i don’t think Facebook will just sit tight and watch. We definitely will benefit with Google having a check on Facebook and Vice versa. It will take ages for a lot of grandpa’s and Grandma’s to Sign-up to Plus and very hardly will they signup if at all, given they already are on Facebook. Its just a good beginning for Google So far, it all depends on how they pan out. I just hope they allow all my friends to signup before i get bored looking at a stream that hardly flows.
The Internet has revolutionized the way we work over the past decade and we are truly gifted to be living in the Internet era. Truth be said it comes with it’s own set of perils.Majority of us whose work involves staring at computer screens, day after day, come to believe checking personal emails, or twitter, or Facebook or the new york times, for a few a minutes during wont change much of anything. It is this small illusion which slowly develops, and you get too casual on a Saturday, and you end up spending your half day surfing the web and doing no productive work. This happens so unknowingly, that it goes without being realized. It happens with everybody (even me, I am no zombie) and it’s nothing new.
This is no alien thought, it’s something we all know, but we miss it. I realized it when I went through Seth Godin’s post a couple of days back. He is quoted below.
work hard.
That way, you’ll have something to show for it.
The biggest waste is to do that thing you call work, but to interrupt it, compromise it, cheat it and still call it work.
In the same amount of time you can expend twice the effort and get far more in exchange.”
If you are in such a situation, where the Internet or your mobile phone with those cricket/ Facebook updates keep you distracted, Remember its like you are trying to fill the bath tub with the drain open. So just think it over you might know where to close that bath tub.
Photo by Tim patterson.
Recruitment being my profession, I am always on the lookout for improving myself at it. If you are a recruiter yourself you would know how important the tool LinkedIn is for you to connect with those passive professionals out there who might be interested in exploring the opportunity you have at hand. Sadly not everybody gets to use the premium version of the LinkedIn. For people with little options, the best way is to utilize the tool to the maximum possible.
Since search is among the key aspects, I was looking to exploit the search feature in LinkedIn. The Basic search and the Boolean search was something that was easy to figure out. I was looking for more ways to exploit search, and I ended up into their tutorial sections here. The page is an extensive documentation of the searches which can be performed on LinkedIn. Reference search and search by operator’s were the key learning’s to me. I’ll just mention the operator’s here for your quick reference. If you are a beginner trying to use LinkedIn searches I suggest you head to the linked page and do a detailed study.
Its been two months now since I became a roadie with my Ridley Excalibur. The first set of things i ordered besides some parts for the bike was the Topeak Morph turbo Mini. I earlier used the mini pump from decathlon which had rest-
-rictions for use with the road bikes, given the valve types and the amount of pressure. So I was forced to look out for a versatile pump which can get to 100+ psi quickly with minimal efforts. After quite a few searches and research on biking forums I ended up with the Topeak Road Morph Mini, which seemed to have a lot of good reviews. But unfortunately at the time of ordering CRC did not have Topeak Road Morph in stock. So I chose to buy the Topeak Morph turbo Mini, since there was not much difference between the both, except for the pressure gauge and the size of the product, which is completely negligible as both go only on the frame or into your jersey if you are a true scum or a back pack.
So far I have used the pump thrice and I am really satisfied with how quickly i can get my tires to pressure. The pump is a bit large for any jersey pocket, but i am sure one can live with that rather than buy C02 cartridges every now and then. Besides pumping the air gives that extra satisfaction of accomplishing something completely on your own and a much need upper body workout . The pressure Gauge works perfect to let you know when exactly you need to stop, and the pump head fits snug to the tube valve’s so that there’s no air escaping. It takes a few tries to get the head to seat correctly on “small presta valves”, as the head starts touch the rim already. This a minor learning curve, and you would get used to it after the first time, and from then on pumping air is as easy as your floor pump, only that you are little bent and pumping a little lesser volume than the floor pump. The fold-able foot pad and the hand grip is a big advantage. With the hold from the foot on the pump, the pump stays stable on the ground and the extra hand grip that opens out makes it easier to pump. Though if you go real hard (carelessly) and end up pumping the last air molecule into the tube, you will end up hurting your fingers on the side walls of the pump. The only disadvantage I have seen so far. You can avoid getting hurt if you are cautious not to pump till the very end.
The pump head fits both schrader and presta valves. The head has adjustments valves which need to be interchanged to fit the other valve. Yet another one time learning. The pump can take up to 160 psi or 11 bar and weighs about 280 gms. I havent tried pumping to 160, i have managed 120, and 160 requires some strong arms, but i din’t bother as road bikes run fine on anything 100+ psi and am under wieght. It does come with a frame mount which still is yet to find use on my bike. The pump sways from side to side in the jersey pockets, but never has fallen off. Overall the pump is good value for money and i would definitely recommend it to anyone.
