September 18, 2007 by Manav | मानव.

I consider web as a biggest junk yard as there are tons of website that don’t have anything interesting. Hey! but my blog is not :). Anyhow, I found below sites very interesting if you want to read about the startups in India.

• http://www.pluggd.in/
• http://www.venturewoods.org
• http://contentsutra.com

Manav | मानव गौड़

Posted in General | No Comments »

August 10, 2007 by aayush.

Once upon a time, there was a software engineer who used to develop programs on his Pentium machine, sitting under a tree on the banks of a river. He used to earn his bread by selling those programs in the Sunday market. One day, while he was working, his machine tumbled off the table and fell in the river. Encouraged by the Panchatantra story of his childhood (the woodcutter and the axe), he started praying to the River Goddess.

The River Goddess wanted to test him and so appeared only after one month of rigorous prayers. The engineer told her that he had lost his computer in the river. As usual, the Goddess wanted to test his honesty. She showed him a match box and asked, “Is this your computer ?” Disappointed by the Goddess’ lack of computer awareness, the engineer replied, “No.” She next showed him a pocket-sized calculator and asked if that was his. Annoyed, the engineer said “No, not at all!!” Finally, she came up with his own Pentium machine and asked if it was his. The engineer, left with no option, sighed and said “Yes.” The River Goddess was happy with his honesty.

She was about to give him all three items, but before she could make the offer, the engineer asked her, “Don’t you know that you’re supposed to show me some better computers before bringing up my own ?” The River Goddess, angered at this, replied, “I know that, you stupid idiot! The first two things I showed you were the Trillennium and the Billennium, the latest computers from IBM!” So saying, she disappeared with the Pentium!!

Moral: If you’re not up-to-date with technology trends, it is better keep your mouth shut and let people think you’re a genius, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt!!! ( plz comment if u like it )

From Aditya

Posted in Entertainment | 1 Comment »

July 27, 2007 by Manav | मानव.

Last night I finished filing my taxes online using Indian Income Tax department website https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/portal/index.jsp . The process is fairly straightforward and frustrating at the same time. I used the following approach:

• Download the appropriate tax form in PDF format from the website. It’s ITR-I for salaried employees.
• Fill the PDF form using your Form-16. I had to do the computations myself. The form does not do much for you except letting you fill-in the details.
• Now as soon I save the form, the date field is gone. I tried several times and I could not save the date field.
• I verified the form for correctness using “Check Form” feature.
• Than I saved the form data as XML file using “Export to XML” feature.
• I registered to the website using my PAN number.
• Now as soon as I tried uploading I started receiving all kinds of validation errors.
  • My e-mail id of form xxx_yyy@yahoo.com was rejected. Apparently I can not have “_” in my e-mail L
  • The XML file would not have my DOB entries. Apparently, I need to save the form before I can export to XML and upon save, my DOB was getting lost. A weird position to be in L
  • My geeky mind made me open the XML file in notepad and edit the XML tags directly J
  • Boom – the website won’t accept my DOB in DD/MM/YYYY format.
  • My geeky mind came to my rescue! I downloaded their XSD schema file and found out the date validation routine. The routine was accepting the dates in YYYY-MM-DD format.
  • I edited the XML file, changed the date per format and the website was very happy accepting my return J
• Website also generated ITR-V acknowledgement forms which I printed out and deposited to my local IT office.

Phew! It department has long way to go and my best wishes are with them.

Happy Tax Filing J

Manav | मानव गौड़

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

July 8, 2007 by Manav | मानव.

Mandira is 1 ½ year old daughter of a very good friend of mine Diganta Bhattacharya. She is suffering from Neuroblastoma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroblastoma) – a kind of cancer that affects children up to age 2. Please pray God for her speedy recovery and try to help the family in distress in whatever way you can. Please visit http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/mandira to read about the progress she’s making.

Thanks for reading
Manav | मानव गौड़

Posted in General | No Comments »

June 12, 2007 by Manav | मानव.

I downloaded the Safari browser for Windows and tried my hands on some websites I normally visit. Safari is slick - no doubt but it has to go a long way if they really want to beat Mozilla Firefox. Below are the screen shots of popular news site http://www.timesofindia.com.

Above screen shot is of Safari - see how the characters are squished. The rendering is very hazy and the image (on the left hand side) is missing.

Above screen shot is of IE - see how the characters are clear. The rendering is very niceand the image (on the left hand side) is missing.

Above screen shot is of Firefox - see how the characters are clear. The rendering is very nice and the image (on the left hand side) is present. Somehow neither IE nor Safari would show the image. They both have a long way to go… 

Manav | मानव गौड़

Posted in Microsoft | No Comments »