Apple - iPad

The iPad is a tablet computer developed by Apple Inc. It features multi-touch interaction with print, video, photo, and audio multimedia, internet browsing, and runs most current iPhone OS apps. The device has an LED-backlit 9.7-inch (25 cm) multi-touch in-plane switching color display running at XGA resolution made by Innolux, a subsidiary of Foxconn. Prices for models in the United States range from US$499 to US$829 depending on the amount of storage and inclusion of 3G access.

Apple intends for the iPad to affect the textbook, newspaper, and television industries much the same way the iPod reshaped the music business.

All of the built-in apps on iPad were designed from the ground up to take advantage of the large, Multi-Touch screen. And they’ll work in any orientation. So you can do things with these apps you can’t do on any other device.

Safari

The large Multi-Touch screen on iPad lets you see web pages as they were meant to be seen — one whole page at a time. With vibrant color and sharp text. So whether you’re looking at a page in portrait or landscape, you can see everything at a size that’s actually readable. And with iPad, navigating through the web has never been easier, or more intuitive. Because you use the most natural pointing device there is: your finger. You can scroll through a page just by flicking your finger up or down on the screen. Or pinch to zoom in or out on a photo. There’s also a thumbnail view that shows all your open pages in a grid, to let you quickly move from one page to the next.

Mail

See and touch your email in ways you never could before. In landscape, you get a split-screen view, showing both an opened email and the messages in your Inbox. To see the opened email by itself, you just turn iPad to portrait, and the email automatically rotates and fills the screen. No matter which orientation you use, you can scroll through your mail, compose a new email using the large, on-screen keyboard, or delete messages, with nothing more than a tap and a flick. If someone emails you a photo, you can see it right in the message. You can also save the photos in an email directly to the built-in Photos app. And iPad will work with all the popular email providers, including MobileMe, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, and AOL.

Photos

With its crisp, vibrant display, and its unique software features, iPad is an extraordinary way to enjoy and share your photos. For example, the new Photos app displays the photos in an album as though they were in a stack. Just tap or pinch to open the stack, and the whole album opens up. Then you can flip through your pictures, zoom in or out, or watch a slideshow. You can even use your iPad as a beautiful digital photo frame while your iPad is docked or charging. And there are lots of ways to import photos: you can sync them from your computer, download them from an email, or import them directly from your camera using the Apple Camera Connection Kit.

YouTube

The YouTube app organizes videos so they’re really easy to see and navigate. To watch one, you just tap it. When you’re watching in landscape, the video will automatically play in full screen. And with its high-resolution display, the latest YouTube HD videos will look amazing on iPad.

Video

The large, high-resolution screen makes iPad perfect for watching any kind of video: from HD movies and TV shows, to podcasts and music videos. You can also easily move between wide-screen and full-screen with a double-tap. And because it’s essentially one big screen, with no buttons or anything to distract you, the picture fills your line of sight. So you feel completely immersed in what you’re watching.

iTunes

Just tap on the iTunes Store icon, and you can browse and buy music, TV shows, podcasts — or buy and rent movies — wirelessly, right from your iPad. There are thousands of movies and TV shows (in both standard and high definition), along with thousands of podcasts, and millions of songs to choose from. You can even preview songs before you buy them. And you can sync iPad with the content you already have in your iTunes library on your Mac or PC.

iPod

With the iPod app, all your music is literally at your fingertips. You can browse by album, song, artist, or genre, with a simple flick. To play a song, just tap it, and the now playing screen will show the album art at full size. Then you can listen to your music with either the powerful built-in speaker, or with wired or Bluetooth wireless headphones.

App Store

iPad will run almost 140,000 apps from the App Store. Everything from games to business apps, and more. And new apps that have been designed just for iPad are highlighted, so you can easily find the ones that take full advantage of its features. Just tap the App Store icon on the screen and you’ll be able to browse, buy, and download apps wirelessly, right to the iPad.

iBooks

The iBooks app is a great, new way to read and buy books.¹ Just download the app for free from the App Store, and you’ll be able to buy everything from classics to bestsellers from the built-in iBookstore. Once you’ve bought a book, it’s displayed on your Bookshelf. To read it, all you have to do is tap on it and it opens up. The high-resolution, LED-backlit screen displays everything in sharp, rich, color, so it’s very easy to read, even in low light.

Maps

See more of the world with high-resolution Satellite and Street View images. You can even see topography with the new Terrain view. You can also search for a nearby business type (for example, “Restaurant”) and then tap on that business to see the route and directions from your current location.

Notes

With its expansive display and large, on-screen keyboard, iPad makes jotting down notes easy. In landscape mode, you get not only a note-taking page but a list of all your notes. It even circles the current note in red. So you can see where you are at a glance.

Calendar

iPad makes it easy to keep on schedule by displaying Day, Week, Month or List views of your calendar. That way, you can see an overview of a whole month, or the details of a single day. iPad will even show multiple calendars at once, so you can manage work and family calendars at the same time.

Contacts

The Contacts app on iPad makes finding names, numbers and other important information quicker and easier than ever before. A new view lets you see both your complete contact list, and a single contact, simultaneously. Need directions? Just tap on an address inside a contact and it’ll open Maps.

Home Screen

The Home Screen gives you one-tap access to everything on iPad. You can also customize your Home Screen by adding your favorite apps and websites, or using your own photos for the background. And you can move apps around to arrange them in any order you want.

Spotlight Search

Spotlight Search allows you to search across iPad, and all of its built-in apps. Including Mail, Contacts, Calendar, iPod, and Notes. It’ll even search apps you’ve downloaded from the App Store. So no matter what you’re looking for, it’s never more than a few taps away.

Start a Conversation with New People

Whether you are a host or a guest, there are many social situations that will call for interaction, even when you are stumped for some way to get it going. For example, you might want to help a friend’s new “significant other” feel comfortable. Or, you might see a stranger across a crowded room, and realize that this is your only chance to impress Mr. or Ms. Wonderful. Then, you realize that you’re not sure what to say.

1. Start with a “hello,” and simply tell the new person your name then ask them theirs. Offer your hand to shake, upon his/her responding to you. (If you go to other countries, greet the person in tune with the particular culture). If you already know the person, skip this step and proceed to step.
2. Look around. See if there is anything worth pointing out. Sure, talking about the weather is a cliche, but if there’s something unusual about it–bam!–you’ve got a great topic of conversation.
3. Offer a compliment. Don’t lie and say you love someone’s hair when you think it’s revolting, but if you like his or her shoes, or a handbag, say so. A sincere compliment is a wonderful way to get someone to warm up to you. But be careful not to say something so personal that you scare the person off or make him or her feel uncomfortable. It is best not to compliment a person’s looks or body.
4. Ask questions! Most people love to talk about themselves — get them going. “What classes are you taking this year?” “Have you seen (Insert-Something-Here)? What did you think of it?” Again, keep the questions light and not invasive. Do not ask too many questions if he or she is not responsive to them.
5. Jump on any conversation-starters he or she might offer; take something he or she has said and run with it. Agree, disagree, ask a question about it, or offer an opinion, just don’t let it go by without notice.
6. Look your newfound friend in the eye, it engenders trust (but don’t stare). Also, use the person’s name a time or two during the conversation; it will help you remember the name, and will draw the person’s attention to what you are talking about.
7. Don’t forget to smile and have fun with your conversation!

Tips

• Just relax. Chances are that whatever small-talk you’re making isn’t going to stick out in anyone’s mind a few months from now. Just say whatever comes into your head, so long as it’s not offensive or really weird. (Unless, of course, the person you’re attempting to converse with is into weird stuff.)
• Remember, if you think of something in your head while you’re talking, it’s probably related.
• It will help if you watch some TV, listen to radio shows, and/or read a lot — newspapers, magazines, and/or books. You need to have some idea of what is going on in the world. Also remember and plan to share anything you like, think is funny, or find intriguing. This is building up your own library of things that might be helpful to another person during a conversation someday. It will be amazing how you thread these interesting things when you least expect it, and make conversation an adventure instead of a dreadful task. If you take it to the next step and say things that you want the person to think of as adding value, and keep to yourself things that the person might not, you are actually honing your own personality to be appealing to the other person, and what is a greater act of kindness than that.
• If you are shy, it will be helpful to have thought about a topic or two that you could talk about.
• Follow the lead that your listener is expressing. If he or she appears interested, then continue. If he or she is looking at a clock or watch, or worse, looking for an escape strategy, then you have been going on for too long.
• Interesting and funny quotes or facts can lighten things up, and make way for things to talk about. You could also use a set of conversation starter question cards for inspiration.
• If talking over the phone, keep the person involved in the conversation at all costs. If you can’t come up with a good topic, try the “questions” game. Just keep asking them questions; random questions work just fine as long as they are appropriate. This technique can save a phone conversation. The questions should be open ended questions that do not require a yes or no answer. For example “How do you know the hosts?” This way you can ask questions about what they just said or follow up with how you know the hosts (for example) instead of acting as if the conversation is an interrogation.
• Half of an effective conversation is the way you non-verbally communicate, and not necessarily what you say. Practice better non-verbal skills that are friendly and confident.
• Read newspapers and magazines to increase your knowledge so you can have more interesting things to talk about

Keep Teeth White Naturally

There are many effective methods of teeth whitening available, but some come with heavy price tags. Here are some steps you can take at home to whiten teeth naturally without breaking the bank.

Things You’ll Need:

• Straw
• Toothbrush
• Lemon Juice
• Salt
• Baking soda
• Hydrogen peroxide
• Strawberries

Step 1:
Limit your consumption of drinks that stain tooth enamel. A few of these include coffee, tea and red wine. If you simply can't cut back on these beverages, consider drinking them though a straw to limit the amount of liquid that actually comes in contact with teeth.

Step 2:
Brush your teeth immediately after eating, especially if eating foods that stain easily, such as berries.

Step 3:
Rub raw strawberries on your teeth, preferably pureed. There is an enzyme in strawberries that acts as a whitening agent. You'll want to brush and rinse after applying the strawberries to remove the natural sugars and acids they may leave behind.

Step 4:
Eat crunchy foods that require a lot of chewing such as carrots, celery, broccoli and apples. These foods are abrasive and will remove built up plaque, which dulls the appearance of teeth.

Step 5:
Dip your toothbrush directly into baking soda and brush. The results are worth the lousy taste.

Step 6:
Combine lemon juice and one teaspoon of salt to make a paste-like substance. Brush your teeth and rinse. Again, not so pleasant on the palate, but your teeth will thank you.

Step 7:
Use hydrogen peroxide to brush your teeth. Dip your toothbrush into a small capful of the peroxide and brush as you would with regular toothpaste, being careful not to swallow. Rinse with water.

- Tips -

• Consider using one of the several whitening toothpastes on the market that have all-natural ingredients.
• Brushing after every meal and flossing regularly are the first steps in maintaining a healthy smile.

Free Stuff for Web Designers

Free Flash Pieces

PhotoSlide Gallery with Captions A little image gallery with captions and numbering that lets you drag the photos left and right through the gallery. All the images and captions can be controlled through the XML. PREVIEW | DOWNLOAD
Doodle Pad! An easy to customize Flash doodle pad. As always, source included... PREVIEW | DOWNLOAD
Clean Blue Preloader A nice little preloader for all your preloading needs. Easy enough to change colors as necessary. PREVIEW | DOWNLOAD
Circular Preloader Another preloader with progressive loop. Enjoy! PREVIEW | DOWNLOAD
Percentage Follow Preloader A preloader that has the percentage follow the mouse cursor. (Move your mouse over the active window if previewing.) PREVIEW | DOWNLOAD

Free Audio

Thanks to the kindness of audio mixmaster Adrien Gardiner, here are some fine audio loops that are free for the taking, and can be used both personally and commercially (outside of reselling them, of course). A great asset to freelancers on a budget! Adrien sells many more loops over at FlashDen.

Cotton Candy (0:48)
Layed back elevator style music.

Utter Mourning (0:15)
Haunting and melancholic.

Plastik Module (0:14)
Some upbeat electronica.

Umbrellas (0:35)
A whimsical little ditty.



Free Docs

Here's a sample Terms and Conditions for website freelancers in Word format. Hope it helps you prepare your own!

Download Website Freelancer Terms and Conditions



Free Giveaways

There are a couple contests each month so if there isn't a current one happening right now, just be patient.


Letterhead and Logo Design 9 (October 19, 2007)
Contest Over. Winner: Greg Ferrell
To a random commenter, we gave away a brand new copy of the best-selling annual Letterhead and Logo Design which features the most creative and inspiring work from well-known design leaders, new design firms, and cutting edge artists -- a highly useful resource for freelancers.


Coffee for Bloggers (November 2, 2007)
Contest Over. 5 Bloggers Selected.
We gave out $5 gift cards to the first five bloggers who met the conditions mentioned in this entry here.


Coffee for Freelancing (November 30, 2007)
Contest Over. 3 Commenters Selected.
We gave out $5 gift cards to 3 random commenters who shared why they freelance.


Holiday Reading Giveaway (December 21, 2007)
Contest Over. 6 Commenters Selected.
We had three books and some coffee to give away, just in time for the holidays.

sIFR

Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (sIFR) is an open source JavaScript and Adobe Flash dynamic web fonts implementation, enabling the replacement of text elements on HTML web pages with Flash equivalents. It was initially developed by Mike Davidson and improved by Mark Wubben. It is a scalable variety of HTML text-to-flash replacement pioneered by Shaun Inman.
CSS support in web browsers did not, at the time of sIFR's creation, allow webpages to dynamically include web fonts, so there was no guarantee that fonts specified in CSS or HTML would show as intended, as the browsing user may or may not have had the specified font installed in their system. sIFR embeds a font in a Flash element that displays the text, preempting the need for a font to have been manually pre-installed on a user's system.

A common technique is to use raster graphics to display text in a font that cannot be trusted to be available on most computers. Text created this way pixelates when scaled and cannot be partially selected. In contrast, sIFR text elements mimic normal HTML text – they are relatively resizeable and copyable.

sIFR requires JavaScript to be enabled and the Flash plugin installed in the reading browser. If either condition is not met, the reader's browser will automatically display traditional CSS based styling instead of the sIFR rendering. sIFR is not designed for body copy text as rendering greater bodies of text with Flash place formidable demands on the computer. Due to this restriction, Mike Davidson himself admitted that
“ While sIFR gives us better typography today, it is clearly not the solution for the next 20 years. ”

sIFR has been used on a variety of well-known web pages, such as those of GE, Nike and Red Hat. As of December 2008, the current sIFR release is version 2.0.7. Version 3 is in beta.
Even though sIFR has been around for a couple years, many web designers have still never heard of it, let alone use it. sIFR (or Scalable Inman Flash Replacement) allows you to use custom typography on your site by utilizing JavaScript, Flash, and CSS. While most people simply create images when they need a custom-type title, sIFR can dynamically create short text blocks using whatever font you want (while still rendering the text with a default font on non-Flash browsers).

Why would this be useful? Well, for starters, it makes creating custom titles a snap (no images needed). sIFR is also great if you need to create titles on the fly (like for blog post titles). In general, if you want to utilize better typography for your site, sIFR might be the easiest way to pull it off.

Unfortunately, using sIFR is somewhat programmatic in nature and reliant on the user having a little familiarity with JavaScript and Flash. So for those who care more about implementing the effect than the actual programming behind it, here's a quick guide to get you started:

Step 1: Download the Necessary Files
For our purposes, you can download this zip with the necessary sIFR files (currently in version 3).

Step 2: Choose Your Font in the FLA and Publish
After unzipping the file, locate and open sifr.fla in the Flash directory. Double-click on the text movie clip, then click on the text and change the font to any font on your system. Publish the Flash file and move the newly created sifr.swf down to the same directory as your web page. Rename sifr.swf to a more descriptive name like avenir.swf.

Step 3: Include the CSS and Javacript in Your Page
Open up default.htm and notice the inclusion of these three necessary files:

sIFR-screen.css
sIFR-print.css
sifr.js

These files need to be included wherever you will be using sIFR.

Step 4: Create the CSS for Your Custom Type
Also notice in the default.htm that there is some CSS (which is included internally here for simplification):

This first part sets the size of the font as well as the backup font-family for non-Flash browsers:

.flash-title
{
font-size:22px;
font-family: Arial;
}


This second part is a required class used to hide the text if they do have Flash.

.sIFR-active .flash-title
{
visibility: hidden;
font-family: Verdana;
line-height: 1em;
}


Step 5: Run the JavaScript and Use the CSS
And lastly in default.htm, you need to run the few lines of JavaScript you see there, making sure to use the swf you published and named in Step 2.

var avenir = {
src: '/sifr3/avenir.swf'
};

sIFR.activate(avenir);

sIFR.replace(avenir, {
selector: '.flash-title',
wmode: 'transparent'
});

Now you're free to wrap any text in the flash-title class. That's all there is to it (note that you may have to run this on an actual server).

I'm no image. I'm real-life, selectable Avenir!

If you're feeling more ambitious, you can always explore the multitude of options via JavaScript and Flash at the official sIFR wiki and download site. And if you end up using sIFR a lot, consider donating to the developers who've spent hundreds of hours on this. Hope this little guide has been helpful!

External links

• sIFR 3
• Wiki.Novemberborn, sIFR Documentation & FAQ
• Introducing sIFR: The Healthy Alternative to Browser Text by Mike Davidson
• FLIR - Facelift Image Replacement software
• Mike Davidson - sIFR
• Online sIFR Generator
• Another Online sIFR Generator
• A Library of sIFR fonts
• SiFR explained in Spanish with SiFR tutorials
• Official Google Webmaster Central Blog Google prefers sIFR as announced during SMX Advanced 2008
• This is how you get sIFR to work, a guide for implementing sIFR (using sIFR3)
• jQuery sIFR plugin, a jQuery-flavored version of sIFR

Nexus One Google Phone - Web meets phone

The Nexus One is a smartphone from Google, which uses the Android open source mobile operating system.The device is manufactured by Taiwan's HTC Corporation, and became available on January 5, 2010. Features of the phone include the ability to transcribe voice to text, noise canceling dual microphones, and voice directions while driving.

The phone comes unlocked and is not restricted to any particular mobile network provider. Google currently offers it for use on the T-Mobile network in the United States; a version for use on the Verizon (US) and Vodafone (European) networks is expected in the second calendar quarter of 2010.

Get a Free CAPTCHA For Your Site

CAPTCHA: Telling Humans and Computers Apart Automatically

A CAPTCHA is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. For example, humans can read distorted text as the one shown below, but current computer programs can't:

The term CAPTCHA (for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas Hopper and John Langford of Carnegie Mellon University.

Get a Free CAPTCHA For Your Site

A free, secure and accessible CAPTCHA implementation is available from the reCAPTCHA project. Easy to install plugins and controls are available for WordPress, MediaWiki, PHP, ASP.NET, Perl, Python, Java, and many other environments. reCAPTCHA also comes with an audio test to ensure that blind users can freely navigate your site. reCAPTCHA is our officially recommended CAPTCHA implementation.

Use reCAPTCHA on Your Site!

reCAPTCHA helps prevent automated abuse of your site (such as comment spam or bogus registrations) by using a CAPTCHA to ensure that only humans perform certain actions.

• It's Free! Yep, reCAPTCHA is free.

• It's Useful. Why waste the effort of your users? reCAPTCHA helps to digitize books.

• It's Accessible. reCAPTCHA has an audio test that allows blind people to freely navigate your site.

• It's Secure. Most other CAPTCHA implementations can be easily broken.

• It's Popular. Over 100,000 sites use reCAPTCHA, including household names like Facebook, Ticketmaster, and Craigslist.

• It's Easy. reCAPTCHA is a Web service. As such, adopting it is as simple as adding a few lines of code on your site. For many applications and programming languages such as Wordpress and PHP we also have easy-to-install plugins available. We generate and check the distorted images, so you don't need to run costly image generation programs.

Improve Self Confidence

Here are some quick tips to improve your Self Confidence. If we are committed to have a healthy self confidence there are many things you can do every day to boost your self confidence, each small steps that will help you to reach your goal. The good news is that self-esteem is not fixed and can be improved, try some of the steps below to boost your confidence and self-esteem.

1) Identify your successes. Everyone is good at something, so discover the things at which you excel, then focus on your talents. Give yourself permission to take pride in them. Give yourself credit for your successes. Inferiority is a state of mind in which you've declared yourself a victim. Do not allow yourself to be victimized.

2) Look in the mirror and smile. Studies surrounding what's called the "facial feedback theory" suggest that the expressions on your face can actually encourage your brain to register certain emotions. So by looking in the mirror and smiling every day, you might feel happier with yourself and more confident in the long run.

3) Exercise and eat healthy. Exercise raises adrenaline and makes one feel happier and healthier. It is certainly an easy and effective way to boost your self-confidence.

4) Turn feelings of envy or jealousy into a desire to achieve. Stop wanting what others have just because they have it; seek things simply because you want them, whether anybody else has them or not.

5) When you're feeling superbly insecure, write down a list of things that are good about you. Then read the list back. You'd be surprised at what you can come up with.

6) Don't be afraid to push yourself a bit - a little bit of pressure can actually show just how good you are!

7) You can try taking a martial arts or fitness class/course (or both). This will help build confidence and strength.

8) Invest in some new clothing and donate some of your old clothing to send a message to yourself that you both look sharp and feel sharp.

9) Try to make yourself talk positively at all times. When you hear yourself saying you can't do something, stop and say you can. Unless you try, you will never know whether you are able to or not.

10) Don't get wrapped up in your mistakes and dwell on bad points; they can contrast your good points or even give you something to improve. There's no feeling like being good at something you were really bad at.

11) Don't confuse what you have with who you are. People degrade their self worth when comparing possessions.

12) Surround yourself with nurturing friends, not overly critical individuals who make you feel inadequate or insecure. This could do great harm and damage to your self confidence.

SixthSense Technology

Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of 'SixthSense' Technology

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data -- including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper "laptop".

In an onstage Q&A, Mistry says he'll open-source the software behind SixthSense, to open its possibilities to all.

Tips to Take Control of Your Weight

FatboyAnyone who is overweight will testify that losing weight is not as easy as it seems. The people that are lean, or have gone from fat to skinny will say it’s just a matter of motivation and elbow grease. Although it is not as simple as that. Our environments have waged war on us. Their weapons are sedentary lives and trans fats of mass destruction. All is not lost though, here are some quick simple tips to get ahead!

Substitute Water. Our bodies are about 65-70% water. It follows that water would be not only essential, but the best possibly choice of liquids to ingest. In fact, our bodies will sometimes simulate a hunger response, when in reality the body is craving hydration. When hungry, drink a glass or two of water to check if it suppresses your hunger.

Chew Your Food. Chewing our food very slowly and deliberately has several benefits that are often overlooked. It gives us the ability to relax, and enjoy our meal. Slow chewing is the first, and highly important, step in a complex system of digestion. Besides, if we eat slowly, we might feel full before finishing the whole meal, and can leave the rest for the next meal.

Exercise daily. How silly of me to include something as obvious as exercise. I did a 30 day trial with waking up, and walking for 30 minutes first thing in the morning. My journal records that I was feeling amazing during the period of time that I was following this habit.

Publicize your intentions. Start a blog, join a forum, and have other people keep you accountable to help. Tell other people your plan, it would help you get the motivation to go with it!

Create a food schedule. Plan your day so that you’re eating at approximately the same time each day. This scheduling will incorporate itself into your circadian rhythm, and aid in digestion.

Do not over eat. Know your limit and stop eating when you are full. I have often been a victim of wanting to finish a meal so that it doesn’t go to waste. This has left me with many a stomach ache. Next time, doggy bag it for later, and don’t hurt yourself!

Choose your snacks wisely. Put down the Lays® and cheese puffs. Pick up the apple and baby carrots. Make the right decision, I know you can do it.

Lifestyle. Remember, it’s not about special diets, or special exercise programs. The real secret is in turning your health into a lifestyle, and focusing on this healthy lifestyle with every choice you make.

Tips for good sleep

Stick to a schedule. Erratic bedtimes do not allow for your body to align to the proper circadian rhythms. Mum was right when she set a time we always had to go to sleep as kids. Also, make sure you try to keep the same schedule on weekends too, otherwise the next morning, you’d wake later and feel overly tired.

Sleep only at night. Avoid daytime sleep if possible. Daytime naps steal hours from nighttime slumber. Limit daytime sleep to 20-minute, power naps.

Exercise. It’s actually known to help you sleep better. Your body uses the sleep period to recover its muscles and joints that have been exercised. Twenty to thirty minutes of exercise every day can help you sleep, but be sure to exercise in the morning or afternoon. Exercise stimulates the body and aerobic activity before bedtime may make falling asleep more difficult.

Taking a hot shower or bath before bed helps bring on sleep because they can relax tense muscles.

Avoid eating just before bed. Avoid eat large meals or spicy foods before bedtime. Give yourself at least 2 hours from when you eat to when you sleep. This allows for digestion to happen (or at least start) well before you go to sleep so your body can rest well during the night, rather than churning away your food.

Avoid caffeine. It keeps you awake and that’s now what you want for a good nights sleep. We all know that.

Read a fiction book. It takes you to a whole new world if you really get into it. And then take some time to ponder over the book as you fall asleep. I find as I read more and more, regardless of the book, I get more tired at night and so find it easier to fall asleep. Different for others?

Have the room slightly cooler. I prefer this to a hot room. I prefer to turn off the heat and allow the coolness to circulate in and out of the windows. If I get cold, I wear warmer clothes. It also saves on the bills as you’re not going to require the heat all night long.

Sleep in silence. I find sleeping with no music or TV on more easy and restful. I guess others are different, but sleep with no distractions is best for a clearer mind.

Avoid alcohol before bedtime. It’s a depressant; although it may make it easier to fall asleep, it causes you to wake up during the night. As alcohol is digested your body goes into withdrawal from the alcohol, causing nighttime awakenings and often nightmares for some people.

Google Wave

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation
and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

What is a wave?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Google Translate

Make your website instantly available in other languages
Add Google's website translator to your webpages, and offer instant access to automatic translation of the pages. Adding the website translator is quick and easy.
Google enables you to create a translation of your website on the fly. All you have to do is add a piece of code to your html anywhere on the page. Users will be able to select the langauge of their preference and the page will immediately will be translated to the chosen language. Naturally machine made translation is not as good as if it were done by a human, but it's good enough for people who do not speak the original language of the site to be able to understand the content.
Translate words instantly from English with no clicks at all

It's free and installs in seconds

Don't bother looking up word translations one by one in webpages in English. With Google Toolbar, you just pause the pointer over an English word, and the Word Translator displays that word's meaning in your own language.

You can translate from English to Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.

Google Sidewiki

As you browse the web, it's easy to forget how many people visit the same pages and look for the same information. Whether you're researching advice on heart disease prevention or looking for museums to visit in New York City, many others have done the same and could have added their knowledge along the way.

What if everyone, from a local expert to a renowned doctor, had an easy way of sharing their insights with you about any page on the web? What if you could add your own insights for others who are passing through?

Now you can. Today, we're launching Google Sidewiki, which allows you to contribute helpful information next to any webpage. Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page.

In developing Sidewiki, we wanted to make sure that you'll see the most relevant entries first. We worked hard from the beginning to figure out which ones should appear on top and how to best order them. So instead of displaying the most recent entries first, we rank Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from you and other users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals we developed. If you're curious, you can read more on our Google Research Blog about the infrastructure we use for ranking all entries in real-time.

Under the hood, we have even more technology that will take your entry about the current page and show it next to webpages that contain the same snippet of text. For example, an entry on a speech by President Obama will appear on all webpages that include the same quote. We also bring in relevant posts from blogs and other sources that talk about the current page so that you can discover their insights more easily, right next to the page they refer to.

We're releasing Google Sidewiki as a feature of Google Toolbar (for Firefox and Internet Explorer) and we're working on making it available in Google Chrome and elsewhere too. We also have the first version of our API available today to let anyone work freely with the content that's created in Sidewiki.

We've been testing Sidewiki with several experts and news organizations for a while and are happy to hear their positive responses. We hope you'll try it for yourself, follow our Twitter feed, and let us know what you think!

If you're ready to start exploring the web with Google Sidewiki, visit google.com/sidewiki to download Google Toolbar with Sidewiki and contribute your own entries alongside pages on the web.

Mac OS X browsers

Safari and Firefox is the most known browsers for Mac, but there are many more out there. Give them a try and feel free to add more if I missed something?

Safari

Comes with OS X. Currently at version 4 it's one of the fastest browsers out there, which can tackle almost anything you throw at it. It syncs with your iPhone unlike other browsers.

Firefox

Firefox's advantage is the hundreds of extensions which allow you to customize your browser to your exact needs. Flash runs on FF a little slower than other browsers.

Opera

Opera is the most feature full and advanced browsers out there. It's really fast and has visual tabs, which is great if you have a large screen. If you haven't tried it yet, give it a go. You may stick with it.

Chrome

Chrome is the browser from Google and the Mac version is not very stable yet. But when it works it's really fast and has a lot of small innovative features.

Flock

Flock is a specialized social browser based on the Mozilla Gecko engine. If you're into the social media you must give this one a try.

Cruz

Cruz is another social browser which allows you to browse multiple pages in split view. You can load pages into two side windows by simply dragging the links into them. Great for wide-screens.

Camino

Camino is an OS X only web browser that tries to make the best of OS X. It's very fast and the interface is really simple and easy to use.

OmniWeb

OmniWeb has been optimized for OS X and it features a couple of cool functions not available on other browsers. It's most notable feature was the tabs with thumbnails, which is now being replicated by other browsers too.

Shiira

Shiira is a Japanese open source browser based on Webkit. It features an innovative interface and a couple of unique features. It's fun, but not ready for serious work just yet.

Sunrise

Sunrise is also based on Webkit and it's main advantage is it's speed. It has a couple of unique features. Again, good initiative, but ready for serious use.

Seamonkey

Seamonkey tries to be a full featured browsers, which does more than just web. It includes email, newsgroup client, html editor, IRC chat and development tools.

iCab

iCab is a shareware browser with features not available in other browsers. It's been around longer than most browsers, but I don't really see why would anyone pay 20 bucks for it.

Wonderful Idea to park a car

Konkan

Bhimashankar cliffs in karjat

Water falls on the way to Mahableshwar on Konkan side

Varandha ghat

Amboli ghat

Marleshwar waterfall in Sangameshwar

Backwater in ratnagiri district

Caves in Ladghar

Kashedi ghat

Typical village in Konkan

View from Kashedi ghat

Kumbarli ghat

Jog falls

Paddy fields in konkan

Pune to Shrivardhan bus

Rice fields in chiplun

Marleshwar waterfall

Mumbai-Goa Highway near Kashedi ghat

Mumbai-Goa Highway near Kashedi ghat

A fishing village in konkan

image020 image019 Betul nuts drying on roofs Malvan Doodhsagar waterfall, Goa Varandha ghat Varandha ghat Paddy fields Road to Konkan from Satara Bullock cart route Kumbharli ghat Yana rocks,Sirsi Yana rocks,sirsi Ganpatiphule beach Ganpatiphule beach Tamhini ghat Amboli ghat