How many times have you had forgotten to wish for birthday's, anniversaries, events and so on.
We all have tasted the after effects isn’t? We had set a reminder on phone, still somehow we miss it.

Here comes the rescue!!!!! All you need to do is "Set it & forget it"
Here is http://www.yourli.st/ gives you a simple way to set up reminders to be sent to your email.  The best part is that you don’t have to register for anything in order to use it.  Registration isn’t even an option.  All you need to do is enter in your email, add some event details, and choose when you want it sent.

Isn’t true to what it claims "set it & forget it".

PS: This service is not recommended to those who forget to use this service and get spanks as the after-effects

Happy Wishing

Eyes opened, waiting for the page to load...2 Mins, 4 Mins.., 101 thoughts striking per second and finally the page is up!!!
I sign in and I get connection timed out!!! For few minutes I was clueless, tried refreshing, opened IE and still the same error. Troubleshooter inside me woke up and I tried all possible steps to check if it was a problem from Google (Yes!!! It was Google) or all websites. I was shocked,  It was Google and all of its FREE services. They were down.

Gmail, Google reader, YouTube, Google Docs. I rely on Google so much that there's no way I can survive without Gmail. I was scared for a moment.

It was down for sometime, and one it was up and it locked out my account!!! This experience made me think on how much I, you and millions of people depend on just one service for our internet thingy.

Search, mail, storage, feeds, online docs, maps and how can we forget YouTube!!!

What would you miss the most if your ISP blocked all Google services for a week? the search engine would no longer work, Gmail's web interface wouldn't load, YouTube videos would be blocked, web pages would load slower because the Analytics tracking code would no longer work, all the Google Maps mashups would be completely useless for you.

Won't we all feel like runners in a long distance marathon and suddenly discover that our legs have been cut out. Hard to imagine isn't.

A friend of mine advised me; don't put all your eggs into one basket and about the dangers of relying solely on one provider. My answer was Google is the best provider for many of these services which is why I am with them.

Saying that I had a question which I kept asking myself, could I survive at least for a week without Google? I decided to find out.

My conclusion, after 4 days were up, it was difficult, but not as much as life-altering traumatic experience that I thought it would be. The search part was not so bad. MSN Search is actually not that bad. I used Yahoo search too and I took the opportunity to try out Ask as well. I still prefer Google but using other search engine is not a bad option.

The contacts in Thunderbird were also not a problem as I use that all the time.

The real nightmares were Yahoo Mail and Bloglines. I was missing my Gmail and Google Reader. I use the two services so much that it has got to the point where I want to see everything smooth and simple.

Yahoo is real clunky with huge adverts. Using Yahoo, I realized how much I value my Gmail labels, how much I disliked the Yahoo interface in general. I tried changing fonts and font size in the browser and yahoo kept pushing me to death by its Times New Roman font, size 12. Dude give me Arial, size 10 any day of the week.

3 Days flat I rushed to my Gmail and Google reader,  I cancelled the mail forwarding, It was like a kid rushing back to his mother after being forced to stay with his bad bad  uncle.

I declared to myself that Google has stranglehold on me, it's a bad idea to have all my services with one company but if they're the one's that do everything right, then I guess I'll stick with them.

What about you guys?  Just imagine: About 1000 missing spam mails ;-)

Tiny post but carries a lot of depth and meaning into it.  Totally Off-beat on what I usually write... Here it goes

Try to say nothing negative about anybody.

a) For three days
b) For forty-five days
c) For three months

See what happens to your life

i never thought such a simple task would be such a challenge. I'm going to see if i can attempt a week starting from tomorrow morning

What about you guyz ?

Before I starting to blogging, I had a writers block. There were so many questions in my mind.

1. Why should start a blog?

2. Even If I start blogging, will I be wasting my time which can be utilized for something else?

3. What benefit will I get by writing?

4. Investing my time and energy, is it worth?

5. Whom shall I write for? Just for myself, students, web workers or just nobody

I did a thorough research how blogging improves writing and how it affects routine and I'm sharing few tips which I came up with.

1. You'll form a habit of writing regularly

If you've a serious ambition of writing, then blogging is the best platform to stick to it and see yourself grow. It's much easier to write daily on your blog than to keep plugging away on stories and articles that might not be published for months.

2. Instant feedback lets you know how you're doing

If you're writing for yourself, then you don't need feedback, Most of us though feel that a piece of post is not complete without a reader.
One of the best things about blogging is that not only is publishing instant, feedback is too. As soon as your piece is posted, readers will start adding their comments, emailing you, or even linking to it from their own blogs. You'll know when your writing is good because you'll get positive responses. Negative feedback or no comments at all, this will tip you off that your style might need work, or that the content of your piece may be boring, or may be overdone.

3. it's a motivation to see your writing is read.

Do you have days when you sit down to write … and stare at the screen for ages before giving up in frustration? Sometimes you just aren't "in the mood" to write. When you're feeling motivated, though, the words come easily. Knowing that real people are reading what you write is a huge boost – something you can only appreciate once you've experienced it. Even on days when you wont feel like writing, the thought that your readers is enough to get you writing.

4. Your writing will improve

The more you write, the more you get better. Practice is the Mantra to learn.
You already know you've readers, go for it. Write more and your writing style, use of words, sentence structure will see a change. When you look back at your earlier posts, you might notice the difference.

5. Blogs are the best medium for experimentation

We all get excited and want to try out new things which come up, and it applies to your writing as well. You'll start trying a new style of writing or you might come up with better ideas.
Writing a whole article or a story is a risk, a blog on the other hand is quick to write and free to publish. If it fails, you won't loose much, thus blogging gives you the freedom of experimenting to try out something new which is unique in its own way.

If you feel blogging made you a better writer. Let me know.

Happy Blogging!!!

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We all love Firefox, because it lets us tweak it, Install extensions, add-ons, themes and do so much which is not possible with IE.

I admit it !!! Im a big fan of Firefox. Being a fan and not spreading a word how you can also enjoy its features will be like ditching Firefox, So here I’m with yet another cool Firefox extension which will change the way you look at websites !!! I mean it.

You've been looking at those same websites - Google, YouTube, Wikipedia & Gmail - for years now, and you're sick of their boring design? It's time to take matters into your own hands!!! Install Firefox extension here Stylish  (that’s direct download link)

How do you use it?

Stylish is a Firefox Extension that allows you to easily edit the way a website looks.

Stylish is easy to use and will not mess up anything because all pages now use CSS (Cascaded Style Sheet) which is meant to change the presentation of a web site without altering the content. So you are playing safe!

Stylish allows you to create a Cascading Style Sheet and easily apply it to a web site. The next time you visit that web site, Stylish will apply the style sheet automatically.

After installing the extension, an icon will appear in the status bar in the form of a page with a paintbrush. Left-clicking on the icon will display a context menu with the following options: Manage Styles, Write Styles, Find Styles for this Page, and Global Styles.

Manage Styles displays a dialog box with a list of styles that can be applied to the page. If you are just starting out, your list will be blank. If you want to create one, click on the "Write..." button and type in your description and the CSS style. The style will be applied immediately. There is a "Find Updates..." button available to see if anyone else has created other style sheets for other sites.

This time I’ve Molly to explain you more about Stylish.

Click Here To Watch The Screen-cast

In the screen-cast you’re introduced to how you'll can use http://userstyles.org and style website using user created styles.

Here are some of the most useful ones which I found really cool. Particularly Gmail which we cant live without.

http://userstyles.org/styles/5553

http://userstyles.org/styles/2148

http://userstyles.org/styles/8206

Im sure once you’d start using Stylish, you’d forget the Old Gmail, Google or YouTube pages and fall in love with stylish and amazing things you can do with it.

Happy Styling!!!

We love web and have fun listening music, watching videos, playing games, reading news, we love it don't we? In old days we bookmarked websites as favorites and then looked at them manually on a regular basis to see what had happened in that site.

The major problem with bookmarking is

1. You as a web surfer had to manage the bookmarks

2. As the list gets longer, it starts getting complicated and tough to keep track many websites at once

3. More chances that you miss information when you forget to check your bookmarks

4. You get to see information every time on websites which don't update often.

The prayer was heard and a Technology called R S S was born

So what is R S S? "Really Simple Syndication" In simple words, RSS is a technology that is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite websites.

It can be explained in 3 simple steps

1. You visit you favorite website

2. Subscribe to that website so that you get Feeds (Updates)

3. Using a RSS Reader to read the content of your favorite site delivered as its updated.

It's similar to subscribing to a newspaper/magazine which gets delivered daily without you going physically to get a copy.

This video below explains R S S it all in a simple way

RSS : Many possibilities

RSS is a technology that provides you with a method of getting relevant and up to date information sent to you for you to read in your own time. It saves you time and helps you to get the information you want quickly after it was published.

I can go on with how this technology works but that's for some other day, we as a user are concerned about why it's good and how to use it. Aren't we?

How do I Use R S S

Get a RSS reader: You'd need something to which you hook up your feeds.

There are many browser based readers with variety of approaches and features, however a good place to start is with a free and easy ones like Google Reader (Watch out for this one) and Bloglines.

Both these readers act like email, as you subscribe to feeds you'll see them unread entries from the site you're tracking. As you click on them you can read the updated content right there!!! isn't cool ? If you choose to go to that site and read, you can do that as well.

The best way to learn how to use either Google Reader or Bloglines is to simply subscribe to some feeds and give it a go

What's the Orange button?

Over the last few years you may have noticed a lot of little buttons and widgets appearing on your favorite sites and blogs. Little orange buttons, 'counters' with how many 'readers a blog has, links called RSS, XML, ATOM and many more.

Browser Subscription

When you surf to a site you can usually tell if it has an RSS feed by looking in the right hand side of address bar where you type in the site's URL.

You can quickly and easily subscribe by clicking these icons you'll want to set up your browser to do it with your feed reader of choice as by default they will probably subscribe you using the in-browser reader. You can do this by going to the 'preferences' to your browser and choosing 'Google Reader' or 'Bloglines' etc as your feed reader.

Once you've done this and have subscribed to a few feeds you'll begin to see unread items in your Feed Reader and you can start reading.

Don't want to Use an RSS Reader? Email is an Option!!!

If the above explanation all just seems a little too complicated for you then please don't worry. Many sites also enable you to subscribe to RSS feeds via a more familiar medium - Email. You need to fill in your email address and content will be delivered right in your inbox.

Posterous doesn't have email subscription yet, I guess they'll include it soon.

Well… that's about R S S, hopefully I've answered what's an R S S

Subscribe to my feeds and get more fun content delivered in you reader!!!

There were days I used to get handicapped when I didnt have MS-Office suite installed.
There were so many documents which were in my hard disk which went unusable and I also lost many files when my system died on me !!!
Dead story apart, I had painful time when I wanted to access these files from a different computer. I had 2 options, either attach these docs and save it in dafts or carry a external drive, not to forget those files which never opened when you wanted them to.

Here's one more incident, I was working on a document few months back and wanted inputs from my other friends, who were also working on the same project.
We all were emailing documents to and forth to end up in a mess and to add to the glory of frustration, one of them lost many important files.

There are numerous frustrating, nerve wrecking and dumb moments which not only me but even you would have experienced.

Introducing Google Docs Beta ( http://docs.google.com/ ), Google Docs Beta is fast, Elegant, Convenient, Clean has intuitive interface and its free !!!

So what is Google Docs is all about ?
Here is the Video which explains the same in Plain English

Google Docs is part of a free mini-office suite that contains a word processor and a spreadsheet. It's all web-based and collaborative, meaning several people can edit the same document at the same time. Documents are stored on Google's servers.

This is what I learned when working with documents on Google Docs

   1. Google's collaborative way of writing, works fantastically.
   2. There's never any lost text or data, and conflicts are easily resolved.
   3. The document sharing is fantastic, Just add emails to the sharing list and automatic  invites are sent.
   3. The UI is nice and clean

What I liked most about Google Docs is its Fast performance. Better than other online services.
The one big missing piece has been offline access., so what's offline access ?
Google Docs allows you to view and edit your word processing documents offline, without an Internet connection, you just need to install Google gears, which can be downloaded here.... http://gears.google.com/

It's speedy, AJAXy and makes me want to use it. You can even drag and drop things into folders -- I'm sure Gmail users are hoping the same thing comes to their inbox soon too.

And last, but not least, the search box now tells you what you are searching for before you finish typing.Overall, a great job by the Google Docs team on this one.

Ovearall Solid economic engine, good on collaboration/mobile, increasingly mature/ready for prime time…Yes, Google Docs looks like a major winner.