Google Earth: Watch Earth Like You Have Never Before

earth.google.com

You know one of the things that bored me to death during school days whilst I had to sit through my geography teacher kept yapping about earth and all things ought to know about it. As luck might have it, due to lack of interactive instructional technology I stayed innocent of Geography for a long time to come but not anymore.

With Google Earth I have rediscovered passion for learning about Geography. Google Earth provides you the opportunity to get to know your planet well with so many interesting artifacts and research which boggles my mind. The imagery and way it uses interactive multi-media technology along with Satellite Imaging System just takes you into a world you have never seen or experienced before. I almost fell down from my seat when I saw the way it took me to a Grand Canyon in US. I have never seen Grand Canyon in person but I have a dam good idea what its contours look like.

I highly recommend it to everyone. Its a must see! For more info please read the info Google has put out on their website:

Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in -- Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.

Fly from space to your neighborhood. Type in an address and zoom right in.

Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions.

Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings.

Save and share your searches and favorites. Even add your own annotations.

Google Earth puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop. View exotic locales like Maui and Paris as well as points of interest such as local restaurants, hospitals, schools, and more.

Sterilization of Stray Dogs & Cats to prevent animal cruelty

You know there is an explosion in Mumbai of stray dogs and cats. Dogs and cats ruthlessly attack each other in territorial fights and end up contrating and spreading disease and go through a inhumane life. It doesn't have to be this way. With appropriate sterilization process we can help prevent them from multiplying so that they won't go through so much cruelty. The bigger problem is that everytime BMC catches hold of them most of them end up being electicuted or are put in gas chambes to die.

We can prevent this from happening by sterilizing dogs and cats to prevent them from multiplying. There is a very scientific way of doing this. There is an organization in Phuket Island, Thailand which does exactly that. They have been doing this for last 5 years and had a tremendous success. I encourage everyone to visit the website listed below and e-mail me if you are interested in taking up this cause.

http://www.thaiwave.com/atigaro/

Some info from the above website

"....What is the Atigaro Project and why is it necessary?
The Atigaro Project is a capture-neuter-release scheme in conjunction with education programs in animal respect and responsible pet ownership. The aim of the Atigaro Project is to initially control and eventually eradicate the stray cat and dog problem in Phuket. It is impossible to venture very far without coming across stray dogs and cats, usually mange ridden, scrawny animals that survive by feeding out of bins and fighting for their territory. While spoiling the aesthetics of an island renowned for its beauty, these animals also pose a considerable health risk to locals and tourists alike.

By neutering and vaccinating them we can halt the population growth; dramatically improve the health of the existing population and rely on them to defend what will then be a disease free area. Through education it is possible for responsibility to be taken for a problem that has been here so long it appears to have become an acceptable part of street life. The Atigaro Project is a Thai and expatriate initiative whereby we will work together to the benefit of Phuket, environmentally and aesthetically, to the benefit of public health and also of animal welfare......."

For more info please visit:

http://www.thaiwave.com/atigaro/

Wikipedia: Free Encyclopedia with over 733,000 articles that anyone can edit

The most interesting thing about Wikipedia.org is that it that over 7,33,000 articles and guess who wrote them. The answer is people like you and me. This is a fascinating, contemporary and updated encyclopedia available for free to the whole world (just like this blog :). What a noble undertaking! Be sure to look it up and test it for something that you want to find out more about. See if wikipedia can help you.

www.wikipedia.org

Wanna Understand Internet More?

"Jakob Nielsen has long been the acknowledged leader in making Web sites more usable. As a principal with the business design consultancy Nielsen Norman Group, Nielsen is hired by dozens of companies that want to improve their Web sites. He walks the walk: His Web site, useit.com, itself is a paragon of simplicity and speed, with absolutely no graphics on the home page because they slow the experience for millions of people still using dial-up connections." - Business Week

This website goes into lot of detail about the crux of how internet can be made more useful. Also statistics about how internet is being currently used. This website is a must for techies.

www.useit.com

New Picture Displaying Website

"Of the photo sites, Flickr.com, which was bought by Yahoo! (YHOO ) earlier this year, offers an astounding selection. Type in one word, Katrina or Iraq, and you'll see photos taken there within recent hours. Flickr.com is the eyes of the world on one site, and it grows richer every day as 1.2 million users all over the world upload their photos -- 37 million of them, and counting.For browsing, Fotolog.net, with 57 million photos, boasts a collection more geared to people-watching than Flickr's. One key difference is that most members are limited to uploading only one photo a day. So instead of putting an entire archive online, members are more likely to pick photos that illustrate their day. The result? Visitors can click through photo journals of hundreds of thousands of lives all over the world. Of course at Fotolog, as at most of these new interactive Web sites, participating is a lot more rewarding than just watching." - Business Week

There is also a great free software called picasa that will allow you to organize your pics on your computer and edit them using some basic but effective techniques. Please visit

www.picasa.com

New Music Website that adapts to your musical taste

"Many of the new music sites feed off of their audiences, too. While Internet services in the past have provided streaming music by genres, from rockabilly to grunge, the new sites enable users to custom-build their own channels. One of the slickest sites is Pandora. The three-week-old site invites listeners to type in a few favorite artists. Then it plays a selection of songs thematically or musically related to those choices.

Don't like a song? Click the thumbs down icon, and the service tweaks your profile. Other clicks lead users to buy the song at iTunes or Amazon.com (AMZN ), or to share their mixes by sending them in e-mails to friends. If you wonder why a track was selected, the service will explain. A Talking Heads listener recently received a song by guitarist Mike Stern because it had "a contrapuntal melodic presentation, groove-oriented approach, and quirky ideas." Pandora's downside? It's not free. Listeners can try the service for 10 hours, before paying a $3 a month charge. " - Business Week

A similar free site is Mercora. In a recent test, its connection seemed a bit more tenuous, but it boasts different features. Users, for example, can record some music for later listening. One important distinction: The songs on these services are not downloaded files that can be made into CDs or loaded onto iPods. They're for listening on systems connected to computers.

Posting a secret anonymously and creatively

If you're in a strolling mood, a good place to start is PostSecret (postsecret.blogspot.com). Every day, hundreds of people illustrate and caption their confessions on postcards and send them to an address in Germantown, Md.

There an art and pop culture lover named Frank Warren picks out the best and posts them on his site.Whether they're true or dreamed-up, these confessions are a delight for amateur shrinks and fans of popular culture, not to mention voyeurs. The captioned artwork careens between poignant, nasty, and hilarious. This combo has rocketed PostSecret to the 10th most-popular position of the 13 million blogs monitored by Feedster.com, a blog search engine.

Some of the secrets in PostSecret are comical. On a Starbucks (SBUX ) cup, one reads: "I give decaf to customers who are rude to me." Others are dead serious. Next to a drawing of spotted pink lungs: "Sometimes I wish I had lung cancer so my Mom would quit smoking."

Donorschoose.org - A innovate approach to giving charity

Donorschoose.org is way for donors and donees to come together on the internet. This allows the donors to truly get a feel of what's need to those in need. It also allows direct control over how their resources are being spent and can help them choose causes that are closest to their heart. Currently this is being done in US and a model has been implemented in China. Can India be next? Can you help?

I am interested in doing this project in India. All we would need is a website and some publicity to get things going. We don't have to manage anything besides keeping the website up. Its upto donors to check out the credentials of those who need help and how they dispense their charity.

Check out this article on Business Week
"School Aid: It Takes A Web Site In Chicago, a high school social studies teacher needs 10 globes for hands-on geography lessons. Cost: $1,134. In Winston-Salem, N.C., a first-grade teacher wants the technology to let her young readers listen to books on tape. Cost: $667. And in Flushing, N.Y., a fifth-grade teacher at Public School 165 is trying to scare up five beanbag chairs for her library. Cost: $189.

Thanks to a charity called DonorsChoose.org, these teachers' wishes are coming true. In a move that redefines traditional philanthropy, DonorsChoose uses the Internet to connect teachers directly to donors. Teachers who once spent their own money for supplies, or simply went without, can now turn to donor support to roll out creative lesson plans. Meanwhile, rather than writing checks blindly, donors of any scale can decide which projects they wish to support. Like eBay (EBAY ) or Amazon.com, (AMZN ) DonorsChoose eliminates the middleman."

To read the complete article visit:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_39/b3952411.htm

Radio Frequency Credit Cards

After months of testing, MasterCard is preparing for a major national rollout of its PayPass swipeless RFID credit cards, and expects to have up to 4 million of them in circulation by the end of the year. Like similar offerings from American Express and JP Morgan Chase, the cards can be waved at a retailer’s reader, eliminating the need for a “swipe” or signature. MasterCard and its rivals insist that the new cards are as safe as traditional credit cards, and often point to the success of ExxonMobile’s SpeedPass system as proof. Of course, with over 4 million RF credit cards lining the pockets of American consumers, crackers may just find the opportunity to test MasterCard’s security too tempting to pass up.

http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=newIssuesNews&storyID=URI:urn:newsml:reuters.com:20050919:MTFH10181_2005-09-19_17-07-55_N19252722:1

Top Health Sites

Living today is stressful and what's worse, you don't have time to attend to your health or the health of loved ones. With age and stressful lifestyle comes different types of medical ailments. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to get the basics of how to deal with medical ailments from doctor without having to go to one. Even if you do go to one, chances are they aren't going to take the time explaining you everything that you need to know. So what's the solution you ask?

Say Hello to medical websites.

www.webmd.com
www.subimo.com
www.mayoclinic.com

I have personally used WebMd and its pretty good and not to mention comprehensive. The opinion and information provided on the website is actually reviewed by qualified doctors so you know you are getting access to accurate information. It has a free version which you can use and if you more specific help about a medical ailment you can subscribe to their host of services. I highly recommend it, if you haven't been to it yet. I haven't been to the other two so if someone has any experience to share regarding them, please feel free to do so.

Ladies & Gentlemen: The Konfabulator

2. The Konfabulator:
Konfabulator is great piece of software that allows you install some really neat utilities on your desktop while working. They're fun, stylish, useful and 100% free!
Bring life to your desktop with fun Konfabulator Widgets. These little guys hang out on your screen and give you quick, easy access to favorite content. You can even change their style to match yours.

To download the Konfabulator, visit

http://widgets.yahoo.com

To add additional widgets to the Konfabulator, visit:

www.widgetgallery.com

Gautam Parekh 

The Best of New Web

Yesterday a Girish Joshi, a former NASA scientist and a successful businessman, forwarded me this article from Business Week about the "Best of New Web" from the Sept 16, 2005 issue. Being a great fan of internet and its implications on enhancing personal and professional life I read that article with a lot of interest. Before I get started on the merits and my findings, here is the link to that article so that you may explore it for your self.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/toc/05_39/B39520539web.htm

Here are the list of things that I found fascinating and useful. I hope you will find it too!

1. Tagging: Keeping Tabs on The Internet
"The power of del.icio.us stems from the clicking keyboards of its many members. The service was a homegrown project created in late 2003 by Joshua Schachter, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, to track and share bookmarks. As the system took off, Schachter quit his job and raised venture funding. Now, 200,000 subscribers busily label online articles, blog postings, and more. They use tags like "katrina," often adding comments such as "Pictures of before and after. Very good." The process creates a mountain of information subscribers can explore." -Business Week
To read more on this specific article please visit:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_39/b3952408.htm

Synopsis of how it can help YOU:
I have been always curious about how other people are using internet to further their personal lives, career, hobbies and more. The website above is perfect example of what people hold dear on the internet by allowing you to see their bookmarks. All you have to do is go to this website and continue to see all the booksmarks updated several times a day. If you wish to share your bookmark just create an account so someone can benefit from your research. If you decide to create an account please be sure to post a link on this blog. I for one would be interested in what your bookmarks might help me learn. http://del.icio.us

Here's a great example of what I found while browsing through bookmarks of someone.

http://www.ai.uga.edu/mc/WriteThinkLearn_files/frame.htm

How to Write More Clearly,Think More Clearly, and Learn Complex Material More EasilyCopyright © 2002 Michael A. Covington Do not redistribute without permission

It does a great job of telling you how to write and disspells a lot of myths about writing. I would give it a 5 out of 5 on the usefulness factor.

Great Quote from this website:

“I don’t think I’m really all that intelligent,
but I have a talent foramplifying my intelligence.”
— R. D. G., 1975

More about this article in the next post.

Let's Connect Islands of Information

My main goal in creating this blog is be able to bring some really intelligent people who have Masters, Ph'd's and or tremendous experience in business or some field of expertise to share their knowledge with me and rest of the world. Although we live in the connected Internet world but yet what I find is that there is a real problem with sharing good information. The problem essentially lies because nobody gets and an opportunity to share where others can benefit from their field of expertise essentially making each of us an Islands of fragmented information.

By allowing each of us to share and critique different postings we can tap in to vast amount of research, knowledge and wisdom that each of us gather throughout our lives but can't distribute to worthy souls beyond our physical distances. It is my hope and request to all of contributors to share information, knowledge and experience selflessly on different topics that can benefit lives of thousands of people around the world!

Together by doing so we can create a world that truly is boundaryless and enlightened! I hope you will choose to participate and help me connect the dots to empower and make a difference in lives of one and many.

Thanking you in advance,

Gautam Parekh :)

PS. It is my humble request to all my friends to invite as many friends who are willing to participate and share in this process. Thanks again. :)