Raman's Blog

I had embedded my youtube playlist in my previous post about nursery rhymes. Today Labnol.org gave me a new resource to try and the baby I was babysitting, loved it. KIDO'Z is a new service that offers an adobe air based kids safe browser with all the kid stuff preloaded! So it saves my time to search through the vast cyberspace for the kind of videos that my little niece would like to watch.You can safely leave your kid to watch videos on the web with this application. There is no need to know to read to use this intuitive software.  Link: http://kidoz.net/beta/index.html

Lifehacker today announced the entry of a new online service called Livedrive . It is like a dream come true! Livedrive offers unlimited file storage with a standalone software client. The software installs a virtual drive called L into which you can drag and drop files. You can also select a custom domain http://someusername.livedrive.com for accessing their files and sharing them. The service is at present free and I’ve pretty much strong intuition that it could be for fee soon. But until then enjoy! Technorati Tags: filestorage , backup

I started a new blog about spirituality and not even 2 days passed before blogger blocked access to my blog. I have no clue why since it was a genuine blog with nice content (in my opinion of course). The reason it gave me is the following. Your blog is disabled. Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive. I just hope to get access to it back soon. At least I should have been given the option to backup my blog data after it was blocked so that my hours of effort doesn’t go wasted. Technorati Tags: Blogger , blogs

It is a tough job to babysit a baby or a toddler. Whenever I had to babysit my little niece who is only 6 months old now, I have found that she is mesmerised by the nursery rhymes videos on youtube. I had to search for the nursery rhymes every time I had to babysit her. Then I thought it is easier to keep the links safe in the form of a playlist and to play it next time rather than searching for the songs every time. I am sure that these songs stimulate learning and is a nice way to keep the kids entertained. These videos on the playlist below were not uploaded by me. I would like to thank them all who uploaded them to youtube and making my occasional babysitting work easier. Technorati Tags: nursery , rhymes , songs , kids

Matrix is my favorite movie and I would like to watch other movies similar to it. But how to search for a movie that is similar to another movie? That is where Jinni helps. Jinni's social search-and-recommendation engine uses Movie Genome, a big, ongoing project with the Jinni community to describe video more complexly. Using proprietary technology, a Jinni search takes you inside plot elements, atmosphere, and more to give you appropriate recommendations according to your taste. You can watch the movies online. Presently it is in invitation only beta. But I have 10 invites and would like to share with those interested.   Technorati Tags: movies , search

If you are a blog or a website owner and would like to get a wider audience getting a translator button will be very helpful. Your readers can read your site contents in their own language at the click of a button. Conveythis is a service that includes all the major online translators such as Google Translator, BabelFish, MSN Traslator and more in a single button widget. Also you have statistics. According to the site more than 30 different languages are supported. This is how a sample button looks like. Mouse over it and you can get a number of options.     Technorati Tags: blog , translate

Currently the economy is down and it won’t be a surprise if even the best of the best loses his job. If you are one of them, don’t fall into the vicious circle of depression and non productivity. Don’t despair, maintain your spirits and productivity, make use of your time and keep going. Rachel Zupek of CareerBuilder.com has given a few important tips in an article on MSN. Click here to read it.   Technorati Tags: jobless , productivity

Image by Paul Trafford via Flickr Livestation is an application for viewing many live television channels on the computer via internet. Livestation delivers a range of live radio and television channels to your computer over a broadband network. Those who are regular users of livestation or those who want to watch live television on their computers will appreciate it if they could watch them using their favorite media players rather than using a separate application. Mediaplayer connectivity addon in firefox will help you to watch the live video using the media player of your own choice. It allows you to launch embed video of website in an external application with a simple click of a button. All you have to do is the following 1. Install the MediaPlayerConnectivity addon in your firefox. 2. Select the media player of your choice in the wizard that automatically appears after restarting firefox. 3. Simply go to ChannelKing Log in to livestation website (sign up is f...

I was surprised to read a post on the Clinical Cases and Images Blog. 2 out of 4 top US Hospitals are on Twitter. There is an impressive list in the blog. Click here to follow them on Twitter.   Technorati Tags: twitter , medical

Is there any website that you really care about? You can help the websites of your choice to grab the 2nd Open Web Award by voting for them online. Open Web Awards is the only one international online voting competition that converts major innovations in Web technology. It recognizes and honors the top achievements in 26 categories. The first Open Web Awards winners included Facebook, Digg, Google, Meetup, Twitter, Netvibes, woot!, Last.fm and Mahalo. The first and final voting rounds will be held from November 19 to December 15. You can vote for one company in each category per day. Technorati Tags: open web awards , poll

Everything that I thought of writing in this blog about why I chose Google Chrome and dumped firefox as my default browser is already there in CNET News ! Read the review written by Stephen Shankland. Individually, a few tenths of a second doesn't make much difference. But it adds up fast. I spend hours a day using the Web – browsing the web, uploading pictures, commenting on blogs etc. It is annoying to sit in front of a slow browser waiting for the page to load. Just like many drops make an ocean, a few seconds saved accumulates to a lot of productive time. You can watch an interview with Stephen Shankland of CNET below. Technorati Tags: google chrome , cnet

Trivandrum Medical College Alumni Association was found in September 2006.The alumni association has promised to take over 2 wards in the Medical College. As part of the scheme the association will take over the Burns ward of Trivandrum Medical College for upgradation as a modern burns unit. The remuneration for the staff of the Burns unit will also will be paid by the association! The association has also promised to renovate the old auditorium of the Trivandrum Medical College.               Technorati Tags: alumni

I got tired of the same old template everyday and changed it today. This template is provided free by Ourblogtemplates.com whose link you can find at the bottom of this page(unless I changed the template again:-)). Please drop in your comments about this new template. Thanks. Technorati Tags: template

Image via Wikipedia Copy the URL of the video and paste it into the box in ClipNabber and press enter. You will get the download link of the video which you can download with your web browser or download manager. The service supports a large number of video hosting websites. The best thing I like is the ClipNabber bookmarklet which you can drag to your bookmarks toolbar of your web browser and click it when you are in the webpage with the video you want to download. If you just want to download the audio as mp3, you can use the service of TuneNabber . It seems to be a sister website of ClipNabber. But to use this service you need to agree to abide by your country’s copyright laws and provide your email address. The download link will be sent to your email. But I am quite sceptic of sharing my email address and did not try this service yet. There is a Nab Mp3 bookmarklet too akin to ClipNabber video download which you can keep handy. Technorati Tags: bookmarklet

I missed the auto fill form function of roboform in Google Chrome. I have been searching for an automatic form filler that will work in google chrome and finally found a software that will work in all applications. PhraseExpress is a very useful utility that will work in all windows applications. It can be personalized in different ways to suit our needs. We can launch applications, get auto suggestions for input fields, create macros for applications etc. It is a light weight application which monitors our keyboard and learns to give auto fill suggestions. It is a freeware for personal use. The application shows an average amount of time we saved using it. The following is a Youtube video showcasing PhraseExpress . Technorati Tags: productivity

After reading the intro in Lifehacker about the first issue of Productive magazine, I wanted to check it out. I was glad to find it uploaded to issuu which is my favorite online ebook reader. According to the Productive magazine website the mission is to be a platform where the top productivity bloggers will share their best productivity principles and tips’n'tricks. It is an online free magazine aiming to feature the best of the productivity blog posts. Get your own - Open publication Technorati Tags: productivity

I used to see things either as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, right or wrong and nothing in between those two choices. But I am sure that I have to be more open minded to choices in between. What fascinates me is the way our brain looks and analyzes things. Necker's cube points to me the same idea. It is just a 2 dimensional picture which gives us an idea of a 3 dimensional cube. But if you keep staring at it you can notice that it seems to have changed it's orientation. It is just because either orientations are compatible with 3 dimensional quality of the image on our retina and brain can interpret it the same image differently. But no matter what the orientation is, it is the same image. now loading... the best visual content, for the best publishers Publish this image close ...

As everyone knows if you are not a premium user of the famous file sharing site Rapidshare, you need to wait for about 15 min for the next download. For users with a dynamic IP address it is just a matter of disconnecting and reconnecting their internet connection to bypass the waiting time. But for users with a fixed IP address an easy way to change IP address is to use the freeware hotspotshield from anchorfree . Technorati Tags: rapidshare

There is an interesting poll result in Reader's Digest asking 11,000 people in 10 countries when they last called their mother. Among the results: Thirty-three percent of Russians phoned their mother just once in the last month. Sixteen percent of Americans can't remember when they last called. But no wonder, India and China are top scorers.   Technorati Tags: poll

In this digital era of electronic documents and ebooks, Adobe Digital Editions fills the void for the need of a visually pleasing interface for reading ebooks. Organize your eBooks into a custom library and annotate pages. Digital Editions also supports industry-standard eBook formats, including PDF/A and EPUB. Use it to download and purchase digital content. There are other ways to read pdf documents in an engaging and visually pleasant interface. Issuu lets you upload all your pdf files and read and share online. Scribd is a more famous service of the same kind and is not limited to pdf files. If you want to share your files with others and need a free online storage, Scribd or Issuu will be a good choice. If you are like me and would like to keep your files private in your computer and would like to have a more visually pleasing reader for pdf files, Adobe Digital Editions is a good choice. Technorati Tags: ebook reader , reader , ebooks , pdf , adobe

> Voxox is a new Skype+Digsby alternative. This service offers an integration of popular messenger clients, email notifications and internet telephone. What made me switch to voxox and dump digsby is the free telephone number with 2 hours of free credit that voxox offered. I have been a user of Grandcentral and Voxox can serve as a receiver to the Grandcentral calls. Since incoming calls to Voxox are free, it is a great combination with Grandcentral.

I think I have landed upon the best search engine for Indian stuff especially music. The website claims to be the first crawler based search engine developed completely in India and designed to make search simple for Indian users. The website automatically identifies content on the web and organizes it in such a way that Indian users get search results that are most relevant, real fast. “Guruji”, a respectful way to call one's teacher, is the person one seeks help from in times of need. Likewise, Guruji.com aims to help provide easy access to information in every walk of life in an Indian context.  Personally, I loved the way it searches and displays music search results. I would consider this Skreemr alternative for the Indian music.

Springpad is a beta service offering online notbooks in an ajaxy style and works on Google chrome too! Each notebook called springpad is packed with features which you can customize according to your needs. You can create your own springpads or get a ready  made template from the site. I have started experimenting with the service and am discovering new features each time I use it! The drag and drop interface and integration of other web services like google calendar, maps etc make it a compelling service for everyone to try.

Now it is possible to download torrents like any other downloads using web browsers like Google chrome or IE which does not support downloading torrents natively. Bitlet is an online service where you have to paste the torrent metafile url and press download. An easier way to use the service is to use the bookmarklet. Bitlet uses java and it needs to be installed in your computer to use it.

Get unlimited online storage space at myBloop.com ! According to the website, you can store all your files online forever for free!! I didn’t have any problem with the uploader. But you can also download “blooploader” for uploading files to your account. In addition to online storage, there are social functions offered by the website like sharing files, twitter updates etc. I just hope that this site continues its free service forever. You can see a short video about this service below. What is MyBloop.com in 5 minutes from gubatron on Vimeo .

I got a few queries from readers who read my earlier post on Transcendental Meditation . The transcendental meditation as founded by Maharshi Mahesh Yogi is being taught all over the world by his followers and masters of transcendental meditation. You can visit tm.org for more information. The website claims that it is the key to clearer thinking, better health, fulfilling relationships and a peaceful world. The Transcendental Meditation technique is easy to learn, enjoyable to practice, and it enriches all areas of life. You may view the introductory videos or get going from your nearest place to learn. Technorati Tags: transcendental , meditation

It was a sweet surprise when I decided to test my new windows vista’s speech recognition. I had already had not so good experience with windows XP’s inbuilt speech recognition and did not expect much from any of Microsoft’s speech systems. I was wondering if I have to shell out from my pocket to have some decent functioning speech recognition software like Dragon naturally  speaking. But after I tried my hands on Vista’s inbuilt speech recognition I did not have much to complaint about this free gift from Microsoft. Check out this nice video demonstration from YouTube. Technorati Tags: speech , vista

If you have been searching for ways to stumbleupon in browsers like Opera or Google Chrome, your search ends now. Stumbleupon can be used without installing a toolbar. Just bookmark  http://www.stumbleupon.com/toolbar/  and start stumbling! 

I'm a fan of google chrome since the day it was released. I love it for its blazing speed. But my web experience is incomplete without stumbleupon. I know it will be a long wait for me to wait for an official stumbleupon toolbar for the chrome. The solution is same as that for opera. Go to Operastumbler website and login with your stumbleupon credentials. After you are logged in add the following link to your google chrome bookmarks: http://www.operastumbler.com/stumble/ All you have to do to stumble is to click on the above bookmark. Visit http://su.is.dreaming.org/ for more bookmarks for surviving without stumbleopon toolbar. Happy stumbling :-) UPDATE: Stumbleupon is now toolbarless! Click here for more info.

Get a cool, simple and FREE CO.CC domain! CO.CC supports for CNAME, A, MX, NS records. CO.CC supports free DNS services. Does this sound like mumbo-jumbo? It just means that you can get your own own web address like www.yourname.co.cc and email address like anything@yourname.co.cc using Google Apps. CO.CC supports Google Apps, Windows live, Blogger, Wordpress, Zetaboards and Tistory. Domain Mapping is the process of pointing a registered domain name to a blog or website. Domain mapping is more than domain forwarding, because your permalinks and URL contain the address of your domain (www.yourname.co.cc), and not a sub-domain (yourname.blogspot.com). You can now use your own custom domain with your blog or customized services and you can create customized email accounts.

All Indian channels in one page with email and sms reminders: that is ZipAZap . It has over 300 Indian TV and Radio Channels are available at least 7 days in advance. There are options for e-mail and sms reminders and so from now onwards don’t worry about missing your favorite soap or cinema. You can carry all your favorite programs wherever you go through their mobile link at http://wap.zipazap.com . I rarely find time to sit much time in front of the idiot box. But for me and for others who would want to keep up to date with the latest happenings in the television industry; the official blog is much helpful. I have subscribed the rss feeds of that blog and put sms reminders of my favorite programs on Discovery Channel. My feature request is a single feed for all my favorite programs from all the channels

I wanted my GTalk as a sidebar panel in my Opera browser and tried to load the GTalk gadget. But unfortunately it is not working :-( So I thought Meebo will work instead and put the iphone version found here as the sidebar widget. It works great in Opera's sidebar panel and I'm sure it will work in firefox too.

I'm definitely not a sports enthusiast and it is only with the curiosity of a lay person interested in facts that I wonder what is and should be the criteria for selecting a national sport. Hockey has always been considered the national sport of India . It truly deserved that status near the time of Indian independence. In the present time cricket has undoubtedly captured the Indian minds and I believe that those who gave that status to hockey; if were alive today will consider of awarding it to cricket. I don't think that there is anybody there to blame for the degradation of hockey in the hearts of the Indian populace, but just that change is the law of nature and is inevitable. The sport further suffered massive setback in the popular opinion after the team failed to qualify in the Olympics. I think it inappropriate to award the status of a national sport based on the past glory alone. If the popular opinion is what matters in the criteria; the deserving sport is obvi...

It is so easy for a lay person to create a personal blog and be in touch with family and friends. If the aim of social networks is just to help to socialize in cyberworld, a personal blog exactly does the same thing! I had to create a link with all my web 2.0 links on a separate tab, so that my friends can trace me in all those sites. The feeds from profile aggregators like Profilactic or MyBloglog serves the purpose of this unification to a certain extent. But then there are many such profile aggregators which again fails to serve the purpose of aggregation in a common platform. Then the argument is about sharing pictures, videos and other personal stuff and websites like Youtube, Flickr and other web 2.0 sites serve that purpose. But a personal blog is needed to combine all those services in a single interface and to share the contents in an organized manner. The use of these services is limited to storage of specific media or files online for a final output in a personal blog. RSS/A...

I came across this interesting read in Rxpg. It depicts the plight of an average Indian medico victimized by the current political apathy and policies.

I have started a new blog called MnemonicsMD at http://mnemonicsmd.blogspot.com . I'll be posting my medical mnemonics as and when I come up with any. Though there are other readymade sources for medical mnemonics, I think it is better to come up with our own to retain in memory for a longer time. Though I make some good mnemonics and note them down in a notebook, I don't find them when I need it as there are many notebooks and I sometimes might misplace them. This blog will serve as an online notebook for my medical mnemonics and hope some others might find it useful as well. Please send in your comments. Please visit http://doctor82.blogspot.com for more contents

Pubmed is a premier source for biomedical researchers. PubMed is a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine that includes over 17 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles back to the 1950s. PubMed includes links to full text articles and other related resources. Gopubmed.org allows you to search pubmed in easier and faster way and helps to sort out the information. GoPubMed doesn't rank, the user does! GoPubMed retrieves PubMed abstracts for your search query and sorts relevant information to the 4 top level categories: "What", "Who", "Where" and "When" show the concepts, persons, institutions, places, journals and times which are relevant to your query search."Show statistics for these 1,000 articles" shows graphically publications history, author collaborations, most active publishing authors, countries and cities for your query. The same information can be found in the What, W...

An online reference for Indian pharmaceutical products is something I always wished for. Though there are similar services for US pharma products, they are quite useless from an Indian context. Current Index of Medical Specialties (CIMS) has always been a ready reckoner among Indian physicians for drug reference. Now the contents of CIMS is available on the net at their website at http://www.cimsasia.com/ CMPMedica is a leading healthcare media company providing tailored solutions to a global healthcare market. They provide reference data, decision support solutions, news and education to communities of general practitioners, specialist doctors, pharmacists, nurses and patients across 26 countries. The website is quite intuitive and you can search either CIMS or Searchmedica. You can choose to search for druginfo, interactions or diagnoses. I liked the feature of interactions but won't comment on the diagnoses option. Though I was interested only on Indian pharma products, you can ...

I always wondered whether there is any free VOIP solution to call my friends in USA. ICall is a small software which will let you connect to any phone in USA for a few minutes. You can call your beloved ones in US and give your extension number which they can dial for free from their local number which is listed on the website. Those who can afford to pay can get unlimited free outgoing and a virtual number in USA. Do let me know if you have any better option :-) Tags: VOIP , call , phone

Wish you a Happy Malayalam New Year ! Tags: vishu , malayalam

The Indian Medical Association, Thiruvananthapuram branch has already started its 21 st weekly CME series for post graduate orientation for the year 2008-09. According to the organizers of the programme, it is a fully restructured and scientifically designed advanced CME series by eminent teachers drawn from all over the state of Kerala, India. Printed notes and explanatory notes will be issued. Periodic revision, assessments including frequent model tests and surprise tests will be conducted. Not much is needed to be said about the extremely competitive arena of the Indian Medical PG entrance test. Interested persons can contact the IMA branch at imatri@sify.com . Tags: IMA , CME , AIPGE

Wowio is offering copyrighted high quality books for download in pdf format for free. You can sign up for a free account and can download upto 30 books in a month with a limit of 3 books in one day. You can give your friends a surprise gift by sending them an ebook by email. They have a wonderful collection of books which I always wanted to buy but never did either because they were expensive or were not available in the local bookstore. I also liked the way the ebooks are displayed in the website and enjoyed browsing through the collection. My book rack is already out of space though I would like to increase my library collection and ebooks seems to be a perfect solution. Also this is one way of avoiding unnecessary wastage of paper and helps in environment conservation. Tags: books , ebooks , wowio

"In this country of vast socio-economic disparities and inequities, it is unjust and misleading to define merit in an academic fashion. Should there not be a way by which `merit' is translated into actual relief for the millions of our people in rural and tribal areas?" Read more on "The Hindu" - India's Leading Newspaper Tags: reservation , OBC

I don’t support plagiarism but some good things must be shared and must be told and retold. With due credits to the unknown original sender of the forwarded email, let me share this story. It was allegedly narrated by Swami Vivekananda and gave me a wonderful insight into human relationships. ---------I once had a friend who grew to be very close to me. Once when we were sitting at the edge of a swimming pool, she filled the palm of her hand with some water and held it before me, and said this: "You see this water carefully contained on my hand? It symbolizes Love." This was how I saw it: As long as you keep your hand caringly open and allow it to remain there, it will always be there. However, if you attempt to close your fingers round it and try to posses it, it will spill through the first cracks it finds. This is the greatest mistake that people do when they meet love...they try to posses it, they demand, they expect... and just like the water spilling out of your hand, l...

"Boast not of youth, friends or wealth; Time steals each of them faster than eyes can wink. Abjure this illusion of the world and join yourself to timeless truth." Jagadguru Sree Adi Sankara extols the common man to live the life in pursuit of the absolute truth through the immortal verses of "Bhaja Govindam". The highest principles of Vedanta have been condensed into these verses and made immortal through M S Subbulakshmi's voice and is listened and chanted by innumerable people for their heart's solace. It has only been less than a century since Adi Sankara's birthplace was identified as Kalady in Ernakulam, Kerala and proper monument and temple built near the bank of river "Purna". This year's Sankara Jayanthi falls on May 9. Tags: sankara , bhaja , govindam , jayanthi

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