Ubuntu – What I love

Things I love with Ubuntu:

* Speed – No need to go for a coffee after switching on 🙂

* Security – No virus.

* Stability – Never hangs.

* Regular updates – You get the latest OS in the field for free every six months. Even applications update themselves.

* Connectivity – Internet connection speed is always faster compared to Windows. Works even when Windows can’t detect the connection.

* Support – The Ubuntu user community is awesome. It teaches me patiently like i am a kindergarten kid 🙂

* Philosophy – I like the Ubuntu brand name and the philosophy behind it. You make me and I make you and we make the community 🙂

How to get more visitors for your websites?

1. First let know your friends, relatives, contacts about your site. Mail them once.

2. Submit to your site to popular search engines like Yahoo, Google, MSN and web directories in your field. Link to your new site from your already existing sites. Or request your friends to link to you. Make sure, your site is visible in the search engines ASAP. Learn Basic search engine optimisation tips. (Some SEO tips in Tamil here)

3. Comment / participate in similar websites / forums. Leave honest and useful thoughts there and try helping people with your expertise. Be known for activities, thoughts, input that you leave in other website. Become a source of information. Be part of a community. People will return the favor.

4. Give quality content. Don’t write for the sake of updating. You will have to read, learn a lot in your area of interest and spend time polishing your articles. Don’t cheat your visitors with misleading titles, unfulfilled promises.

5. Give full feeds. Will get you loyal visitors.

6. Respect your visitors even if they don’t agree with you.

Simple solutions for Global warming

Global warming may be complicated. But some simple steps from everyone can contribute a lot.

* Consume less of anything. Lesser consumption leads to lesser material need, lesser energy needs, lesser Green house gases release. In a way, ancient Indian life is sustainable by philosophy as it advocated a simple living.

* Waste less. MaKe full use of anything you have. Try recycling.

* Close the water tap when unnecessary.

* Open your windows. use natural light. Switch off the extra / unwanted lights. Supersitions like Goddess Lakshmi won’t come to your home if வாசப்படி விளக்கு is not lit is not true 🙂

* Use your foot or bicycle for nearby distances. For long distances, prefer Public transport which require less fuel per person.

How to save money when you travel abroad

1. Ask your friends to pay all your bills right from booking the air ticket, pick up, local expenditures. They will try all the cheapest ways possible with their local knowledge. Though you may pay back, they will think twice before they draw their own money and would think not to burden you with too many expenses.

2. Don’t change to local currency. When you have money in hand, you go on a spending spree. Depend on your friends for purchases, so you will think twice before bothering your friend.

3. Visit only those places which don’t charge an entry ticket. If you have to visit, let it be world renowned. European cities promote tourism heavily and market even stupid museums, attractions with an entry ticket.

4. Find friends enthusiastic in traveling. Package deals are cheaper when you are a group. example: EuroPass for train travel.

5. Keep watching for tourist offers. Ask the Chinese guys 🙂 They are the best source of info for cheap travel.

6. Take the Bus trip for short distances. It’s tiring but cheap.

7. Stay in Youth Hostels. They have sufficient comfort.

8. Plan in advance. Rush for the tickets.

9. Have one meal in the finest restaurant to know the local cuisine. Other times, stick to the cheap Fast Food restaurants or eat in your friend’s home 🙂

This is how poor students roam around 🙂

Can you share more tips with me?

A for Apple

Firefox 3 Location bar has new feature: It recognizes what address you want to visit when you start typing few letters. It is based on your frequency and recency of visit. I realized how each alphabet has been associated with some regular sites we visit. It’s like saying A for Apple, G for Google.

Here is my list based on regular sites I visit. Missing letters just had irrelevant recent visits:

B  for BehindWoods

D for Dinamalar

G for Google

I for IndiaGlitz

M for Maatru!

N for Nonoh

O for Orkut

R for Google reader

S for Sify Tamil Movies

T for Twitter

V for Vikatan

Y for YouTube

I have never played Tagging. But would like now in hope of finding new sites.

I am Tagging

* Mayooresan

* Boston Bala

* Shankar Ganesh

Rule:

* The Tag name is A for Apple

* Give preference for regualr sites

* Ignore your own blogs, sites.

* Tag 3 People.

A for Apple articles from friends:

1. Boston Bala

2. சர்வேசன்

3. சந்தனமுல்லை

4. கயல்விழி முத்துலெட்சுமி

5. MyFriend

6. Mangalore Siva

7. Sanjai

8. உருப்படாதது அணிமா

9. பழமை பேசி

10. Mahesh

11. திவ்யா

12. மங்கை

13. புதுகைத் தென்றல்

14. பிரியமானவள்

15. திவ்யபிரியா

16. MSK சரவணகுமார்

17. சிறீ

18. ரம்யா ரமணி

19. க. மகாராசா

20. சிறீ

21. அருட்பெருங்கோ

22. சின்னப்பையன்

23. தமிழ் பிரியன்

24. குசும்பன்

25. மயூரேசன்

Tamil writers websites

Some of the Tamil writers websites and blogs :

1. Paamaran

2. Charu

3. Maalan

4. Jeyamohan

5. Sudhangan

6. Pa. Raaghavan

7. S. Ramakrishnan

8. Era. Murukan

9. A. Muttulingam

Please let me know if I have missed some well known Tamil writers’ web sites and blogs. Thanks.

Related posts:

Tamil literature magazines websites

Tamil magazines websites

Tamil ebooks download

Buy Tamil books online

NHM Converter – Tamil font encoding converter

NHM converter is a free-of-cost Tamil font encoding converter tool from the makers of NHM writer.

NHM Converter is a free-of-cost Tamil font encoding converter tool available for download from the makers of NHM writer.

Now, NHM Converter is available online too. Since this is browser dependent, now we have a converter for Linux, Mac operating systems too. Earlier, Suratha‘s Pongu Tamil was the only available tool.

The downloadble version is available for Windows and will be soon made available for Linux too.

Some of the features of NHM converter are:

1. Embedded fonts. You don’t need to install any fonts.

2. Speed of the conversion as conversion takes place at client side. We used NHM converter for the Tamil Wiktionary Automation project and it helped us convert font encoding of large MB files with ease.

3. Auto detect encoding

4. Extendability

5. Sometimes it will be helpful, if you want to type in a 8 -bit encoding without any font. (another usage of font embedding feature)

Related posts:

Download Tamil fonts

Tamil font converters

Download NHM Writer

Tamil software websites

 

 

Things you may not know about Gmail

1. Do you use more than one gmail account for managing official, academic, friendly mails? You can read them all through just one account. Go to your secondary email accounts – > Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP and enable forwarding. You can also set filters to make things easier.

2. You can not only read different mail accounts at one place but also can send out mails using different IDs. Go to Settings -> Accounts -> Send mail as, add the secondary mail ID and then verify it.

3. You can modify your email id as you wish by just adding a + after your mail ID. For example, [email protected] and [email protected] are one the same. You can add different +labels and give it to different people. So when they send mails to those addresses you can use filters to sort them. You can use them just for fun too. Try sending a mail to your crush with +iluvu 🙂

4. Do you have a user name with a dot in between? Don’t worry where you place the dot. It will work wherever you place it. And even without the dot it will work. This means, people cannot create another user name by just varying the dot placement. This assures people can’t fake your user name that easily. For example, [email protected] , [email protected] and [email protected] are one and the same.

5. Instead of having a @gmail.com address you can also replace it with @googlemail.com address and vice-versa. You can use this to create filters and manage your incoming mails.

20 Practial Tips for Better Chat Management

Chatting is one online activity which can eat your time and get you in trouble if mismanaged. I am trying to list down some practical tips from my experience regarding this.

Chatting is one online activity which can eat your time and get you in trouble if mismanaged. I am trying to list down some practical tips from my experience regarding this.

1. Do not stay signed in always.

This is the golden rule of time saving in online chat. Your chat application is not a mobile phone to keep it on always for people to reach you. People can reach you by mail, phone if things are urgent. And if you want to check whether people are online you can always sign in for a moment and check things. But if you keep it signed in always, unknowingly you will be wasting too much time in unavoidable and unnecessary conversations.

2. Do not open chat applications during Windows start-up.

Can we say this as Silver rule? 🙂 When you set the chat application to sign in on starting up your computer, besides delaying your start-up time and slowing down your system, it can get people jumping at you to chat before you take care of other activities for which you started the computer.

3. Do not accept chat request from unknown people.

Yes, you need to network, promote your website / business and socialize but you need not accept anyone who sends you a chat request. Before you accept a chat request make sure you know something about the person and get genuinely interested in him. If you aren’t sure who he is ask him by mail. This will help you to keep your buddy list uncluttered and also help you maintain your privacy.

4. Use Google Talk Chatback badge.

It helps you to chat with people without having to accept them as friends.

5. Hide online friends.

I am less likely to pick a chat with my online friends without a purpose. So let me hide them showing their status automatically. If I have a purpose I can always check their online status and initiate a chat. But seeing their status by default can be distracting.

6. Do not visit chat rooms.

Full stop. It’s a plain waste of time and addictive.

7. Visit IRC support rooms only on a fixed hour and on a fixed day in week.

If you are a benevolent geek and would like to help folks by visiting IRC support rooms, fix an hour and day once a week when you would do so. Being logged in there for ever will kill your time. That you are being helpful wouldn’t get back your time.

8. Remind yourself that chat is not free.

People end up wasting lot of time in chat because they think it is free unlike a telephone call. Remind yourself that it is no free. If you are using dial-up connection, you can disconnect internet connection and save your money spent for the time chatting. Even if you chat from a free or unlimited broadband connection, remember your time is worth as well.

9. Think whether you will discuss the same if you had to call that person and spend money.

Else, it is equally worthless to discuss in a chat. Cut it. Consider chat as any other formal medium of communication and you would save time.

10. Focus in the chat.

Chat while you chat and don’t multitask. Would you feel OK if your friend left you in the living room and goes to clean his toilet, repair his car? The same etiquette applies for internet. If your response time is slow, people can easily find out that you are busy with something else and can get annoyed and leave the chat.

11. Do not open more than 3 chat windows.

Try to keep the number of chat windows as minimal as possible. For the same reason cited above. If needed put some in hold and try to finish the conversation with others.

12. Go for the simplest chat application.

I recommend Google Talk. When the application is simple, you would just focus on conveying the message instead of trying the playful additions in the chat application. Those are best left to teenagers, people new to online life and kids.

13. Use GTalk inside your Gmail.

14. Go for Voice calls.

Voice calls can cut much off the distractions in text chat. Unlike text chat, it is hard to prolong voice chat with not so familiar people. So automatically, nonsense and the time spent in it will be minimal.

15. Archive your chats.

They can be as informative as your mails and you would need it for future reference. When you share sensitive information like credit card number, hot rumours 😉 , scold someone 😉 remember to go off-record.

16. Stay invisible.

This gives you the power to decide when and whom you initiate the chat with.

17. You need not ping your friend always whenever you see them online and it is not rude to stay silent.

Some people might think it is nice and polite to say hello or start chatting whenever they see their friends online. But it is not necessary. Your friends’ telephone is switched on all the day. But you don’t ring them for that reason, right? Give your friends some space and time and good friends will always understand and stand by you.

18. Mail.

It can be precise, purposeful and time saving. Many times we don’t know how to conclude the chat and keep talking something.

19. If you want to ask some question or reply to your friends, Go for chat only if you know the answer is simple and if you need to do so immediately.

20. Remember to disconnect the webcam.

If you forget to do so, once you finish chatting with your friends, your webcam can still be online and people can catch your embarrassing moments 😉