A weekend drive to OSU on Mustang

Y'day, I made a day long trip to Oklahoma State University (OSU) to meet a friend of mine. I got the flight from Dallas and OK City, and then drove 1.5 hrs to reach the university. At the airport, I rented a Ford Mustang Coupe and a GPS device to make my trip a lot more fun.

OSU is located in Stillwater, a town close to Oklahoma City. My friend guided me to a quick university tour. I should say OSU is pretty big, especially compared to UTD. The buildings are old like any other univ, and new constructions are in progress. This town reminded me of CollegeStation where Texas A&M univ is located.

I liked the comfort of Ford Mustang'07 as it is similar to my own VW Jetta'06. I however disliked a couple of aspects in Mustang. It gets thirsty often, and craves for gas (i.e. low MPG). I don't complain becoz I knew it before I rented it.

I was surprised at the absence of an Electric Power Steering (EPS). As a result of it, the steering wheel is very sensitive to touch even at high speeds. Thats not safe! Anyways... At end of the day, I had a nice drive on the Mustang, but I always love my own VW Jetta.

New Features to Sanskrit Voice

Sanskrit Voice now supports Devanagari font in the new Glossary RSS feed (subscribe)! Hope this will give joy to some of my users who have requested this feature in the recent past. In addition to it, a dictionary widget to search Sanskrit words-meaning pairs can be found on the homepage. Feel free to steal this widget for your blog.

Also, a unified Facebook-app is built for the glossary feed and dictionary search. If you are a Facebook enthusiast, you can now learn Sanskrit glossary from the comfort of your favorite social application. Thanks to Dapper tools for making all these enhancements possible.

I found secrets in my room

Here is a mini-article that talks about the secrets of success that one can learn from his bedroom. I really liked it.

Roof said 'Aim high'
Fan said 'Be Cool'
Clock said 'Every minute is precious'
Mirror said 'Reflect before you act'
Window said 'cd world' (i.e. change the world)
Calendar said 'Be up to date'
Door said 'Push hard to achieve your goals'

Multi facets of FundooWeb

FundooWeb is now updated to provide you multiple interfaces in an effort to become ubiquitous. It has a new logo, and an easy navigation layout at its footer. Now, you can use FundooWeb from your IPhone, Facebook, or your Homepage via widget. Also checkout its new Flash interface for superior look and feel.

I used Adobe Flex to provide these enhancements. Hope you all will like it.

Free Give Away : Fancy About-Me Icons Set-2

Do you think you are any of these... Here are a few About-Me campaign buttons that I created last weekend. Feel free to use them in your Blogs, Websites, MySpace, or wherever you like.

Here is the first set...
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The second set of images can be viewed in my RSS feed. Subscribe here!

Here is the second set...

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Note: You are NOT permitted to re-distribute these images. Right click on the image, and save the image to your PC. There is no obligation to link back, but I would appreciate it.

Logic and Emotion in Decision making

It is important for the decision to be backed-up by both logic and emotion. The decision can be as small as choosing an electrical gadget, or as big as choosing a career, life-partner, etc... we should first make a logically sound decision, and then get approval of our emotion.

Remember how we choose a professional career in life... We don't conclude whatever we love doing the most as our undisputed career choice. It is probably just a career option to consider. Quickly, other factors such as long-term happiness, benefits, requirements, and passion kick in. We make a logical decision that is supported-by and inline-with our emotion.

Arranged Marriages Win! A marriage is a huge responsibility and a decision of a lifetime. I bet most non-Indians are not (may be vaguely) familiar with the system of arranged marriages. They may also find it funny in the first place. But, I personally believe this concept is a perfect winner! There is analysis prior to getting emotions involved.

We have seen investments made and wars fought purely out of emotion and has no proof of reasoning. You know what I am referring to... Don't you? Such mindless actions can be evaded by putting more thought in after-effects of a decision, and thus changing the decision itself as required. Check out the article "How emotions affect economic decision making".

I am a believer of intuition. I tend to go by intuition (no reasoning required) only if:
# The decision itself is very small
# I should pick from a set of options that have no appreciable advantage over each other.

In all other cases, I believe we should put logic first to shortlist all options, and then make a final decision based on emotion. The articles at "Changing Minds" and "Practical Philosophy" have explained this concept very well.

A jukebox for Indian music

Finally, a jukebox for Indian music is in the market. Its called Rhydhun, and is owned by the highly popular music site MusicIndiaOnline. I've been using it for the past week, and am very pleased with it. It has a huge collection of live streaming songs in decent quality.

I'm truly impressed with the clean ad-free user interface, and browser-like navigation. I'm sure they borrowed the code from Mozilla Firefox to program the browser functionality. It's currently in Beta and is free to use. However, I don't mind paying a premium for this service if I am asked to. Life seems more fun with it...

This comes as a huge blow to Ad dominant Raaga.com. Easily, I can see where Rhydhun is heading... In times to come, it may provide Itunes like functionality to buy individual songs online. Recently, Amazon announced to go international with its music store. Hope India is in its radar!

Flex: I'm lovin it so far!

After reading about the well praised Adobe Flex on several tech blogs, I gave it a shot last weekend. Its simplicity and ease of development took me by surprise. No prior experience with Flash is required to get started on Flex.

Adobe® Flex is a cross-platform development framework for creating rich Internet applications (RIAs). With flex, I can create powerful good looking webapps in less than an hour. I'm lovin it so far! Ajax is sooo old fashion. Quite a lot of web2.0 sites were developed in Flex. Check them out at Flex showcase.

The Flex SDK is free, but the FlexBuilder (an Eclipse based IDE for Flex) will cost us a bunch. I plan to get a lot done during the 60 day trial period of FlexBuilder. We can learn Flex in a couple of days using the Getting Started Guide from Adobe website. There is also a Video Tutorial on how to develop and debug a very basic application.

This weekend, I will probably get my hands wet in developing a flex version of my search mashup FundooWeb. I also found a great Javascript IDE called JSEclipse that is supported by Adobe, and is free for personal use. Great find Ah!

UPDATE (2/2/08)
Here is my first Flex application! It comes 2 sizes: Wide and Slim. Below is the wide one!

Feel free to grab this widget (Wide OR Slim), and embed it on your site.

This Week's Link Love

Some great useful sites that I found this week... Some are fun, some intuitive and others are useful.

Web 2.0

1. Revision3 : Nice videos to watch from the comfort of your computer chair ;)
2. MicroPlace : Invest money, and end poverty
   
3. OpenID wins the support of Yahoo and Google. Hurray!

Lifehack

1. What’s Stopping You from Getting Started (and What to Do About It)
2. 10 Secrets of Success: Same old stuff, but good to be reminded.

Startup Tips

1. How to choose Mentors
2. The Launch of 5PM: Casestudy of a web startup
   
3. Collaboration between Startups: Mutually help each other succeed is the way to go!

India

1. The Zero Rupee Note: A new way to show your finger to the corrupted idiots in India
2. Provoked at Perth: Great victory for Indian cricket
   
3. Taare Zameen Par : An excellent movie that should be watched by parents
   

Add Life to Years

Here is an excerpt from Swami Vivekananda that can give us the strength and vigor to make this new year 2008 blissful.



I admire the swamiji for the following qualities that we should all strive to develop:
1. Daring
2. Sincerity
3. Steady Mind
4. Selflessness

This year, my goal is to consciously take these four striking qualities to a whole new level.

Here is a quick thought on Sincerity. The path we take to achieve a goal should be as pure as the goal itself. Resorting to illegal or unethical means to achieve a worthy goal is NOT a sincere approach. The satisfaction that we get on living life with a set of noble principles cannot be equaled by anything else.

Dareness is usually a side-product of being sincere & honest. When there is nothing to hide, there is nothing to fear. Steady mind can be achieved only by the path of yoga and meditation. We can selflessly spread love, care for each other, and make this world a wonderful place to live.

Lets add LIFE to years, and not just years to our life. Happy New Year to all... Have a fabulous year 2008!