My ramblings about the world...

How a Kindergartner Beats an MBA Graduate

2010-06-14T21:11:00.000-07:00

I simply loved Tom Wujec's TED talk about the Marshmallow Challenge. Tom borrowed the idea from Peter Skillman, VP of Design at Palm. If you have not heard of this activity it's pretty simple. Teams of four are given 18 minutes to build a free standing structure made of spaghetti, a yard of string, a yard of tape and a marshmallow. The challenge is that the marshmallow must be placed on top. The team wins by creating the tallest structure. Tom ran this game experiment on Fortune 500 CEOs, engineers and architects, kinder-gardeners, and business school grads. He had some pretty amazing discoveries about how people collaborate.

Business school grads performed the worse. Why you ask? They are taught to find and execute the correct solution. CEOs did so so. Architects did great (thank god!) Amazingly kindergartners who practice iteration, did the best. They would iterate through the prototype and refine their process. This is very similar to something a startup would do. The little kids would build, see if it works, and repeat until they found a structure which would stand by itself. Most of the time they built the tallest structure! Iterate and you might get the best solution!

Tom also tried to incentivize the teams with money. What do you think happened? Horrible performance! Why you ask? Have you watched this Dan Raskin video on why bonuses kill motivation? If not - do so. It'll change how you inspire people around you.

"Every project has it's own marshmallow" Tom says. "Design is truly a contact sport, it demands that we apply the very best of all of our senses for the task. Take a look at this short video of the talk below.

"Pictures will solve anything" - Dan Roam

2010-06-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

I'm a huge fan of Dan Roam. Heard of him a while back, recently bumped across this amazing 2010 IA Summit keynote address he gave. If you have not listened to this podcast this is a must! Any man who takes a 1000+ page Healthcare Bill and puts it into a few slide presentation which has been downloaded 250K+ times is a hero in my book. :)

The first time I really tried to employ his methods was about 9 months ago. Tried it on a very simple example: explaining the stock market to my grandfather. One tiny picture on a post-it note and gramps got it. Since then I was hooked on this idea of drawing pictures to explain things. I've tried to use it more and more since then. I recently came across this detailed interview with the man himself which I wanted to share.

Go draw a picture! Now!

It's been a while since I wrote. I'm back.

2010-06-09T15:20:00.000-07:00

It's been close to a year since I last wrote a blog post. I truly appreciate all the comments and responses to my existing blog posts. Apologies for being MIA for a while. Lot's of changes in the last year. I'm finally back and plan to get back into writing some more. See you on the interwebs.

Plane crashes vs. Car Accidents

2009-07-24T13:57:00.000-07:00

Most of us travel on planes with not much worry, but for some reason, we do tend to worry just a tiny tiny tiny bit. True? Am I over-exaggerating? When we drive a car somewhere however the "worrying" never enters our mind. Why is that?

Whenever we hear of a plane crash, just like the recent news of the Iran plane crash killing 17 we tend to re-think (or just worry) about our own plane travel plans. Airplane crashes make people more worried than any other type of accident (including car crashes). Why is that? We all know that the risk of us dying in an airplane crash is so small that it cannot even begin to be compared to car accidents.

This latest report from Aircraft Crashes Record Office in Geneva, Switzerland tells us that 879 people died from airplane crashes worldwide in 2008.

Compare that with World's Health Organization annual report 1.3 million people die from car accidents every year worldwide!

Compare that with just data for United States: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's 2008 report here the number of fatalities from car accident just in United States from car accidents is 37,261! More stats and probabilities are available here.

So when 879 people die from airplane crashes worldwide, compared to 1.3 million people dying from car crashes, why is it that we are more nervous about plane crashes then car crashes? Obviously we know our risk is much smaller with the airplanes....

Everything I've read about this, suggests that its mental. We are creatures of control, we all love to be in control. In a car, we feel we are 100% in control, we turn it on, we have the wheel in our hand, we shift, we stop, we control our fate. Its all in front of us. In a bus, we have less control, but we can see the driver, and we can all relate to driving a car or a bus, so this is nothing too foreign for us. In some way we still have control. With an airplane, we loose that control. We cannot see the pilot, most of us have absolutely NO IDEA about flying a plane, and hence we worry much more. That loss of control makes a plane trip a much more riskier travel option.

Since I do a lot of traveling (especially this summer) I see this phenomenon a lot with many people. I'm interested to know what you think of it? What are your thoughts?

Wolfram Alpha - killer for Google?

2009-07-15T14:43:00.001-07:00

I know I know, I have not written much on my blog recently. Thats because I've been traveling for quite a while now, and just have not had much time for the blog. I did want to get back into it, and what better way then talking about Wolfram Alpha. I've been itching to do a post on it all this time I've been playing with it since late May. You guys know what I'm talking about? Wolfram Alpha is a project launched on May 15th, 2009 and started by Stephen Wolfram who is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research. Back in March, 2009 Stephen Wolfram wrote on his blog that he is working on a new search engine that is capable of answering questions written in english language. As everyone knows search is dominated by Google, it holds about 65% of all search done in US. Everyone in tech community flipped and lots of headlines appeared. Why?

A bit about Stephen Wolfram

Stephen Wolfram published his first scientific paper at 15, and earned his PhD in physics from CalTec when he was 20. Smart guy? I guess so...

He formed Wolfram Research in 80s and soon after released the its very very very well-knows Mathematica software. Mathematica is used across industries: finance and engineering, it does very high-end computation number crunching. And actually the very same algorithms from Mathematica are used to run Wolfram Alpha!!!

One of Stephen Wolfram's goals was to be able to ask a computer anything you want in plain english language. Natural language recognition is hard, Wolfram Alpha uses a lot of algorithms to recognize patterns in your query.

You can read more about Stephen Wolfram here.

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha launched on May 15th, 2009. Unlike Google, Wolfram Alpha does not organize and index world's info, it uses computation to come up with the info. Google crawls the web for sites and adds them to its directories. If a site has a lot of links pointed to it, Google ranks it high and presents it high on the results page. Wolfram Alpha DOES NOT scan web for sites, it actually take the data from databases which are created by Wolfram Research employees. There are over 10 trillion pieces of info on Wolfram Alpha's servers. Thats a lot of hard data!

To use it - simple type in what you're looking for: type a math problem and it will solve it and show you steps on how it did it, type a city name and it will tell you all the info about that city currently and its history, type a date and it will tell you everything significant about this date, type a food name it will tell you nutritional info, type a few companies it will will give you a comparison... Again - Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine, so no pictures of places, cheapest fares, all the jazz, this is only information about the world.

I hope by now you understand why people started talking about this when Stephen first mentioned Wolfram Alpha on his blog. Business model is not clear yet, but some hints to utilizing the same advertising model as Google have surfaced. Stephen Wolfram and Sergey Brin actually talked before the launch in May, and Mr. Brin was very impressed. This is definitely the same direction Google wants to head.

I urge you guys to try it out and let me know what you think.

The MP3 Experiment - ImpovEverywhere

2009-06-18T10:30:00.000-07:00

So, I know that most of you know that I love these guys, and love what they do. In fact I'm currently trying to set up a meeting through an intro to Charlie Todd to just get to chat with the master! These guys are "creativity in action". Every one of these "missions" is full of excitement, imagination, and passion from everyone involved! I'll be in NYC this summer and cannot wait to participate in a mission myself in July!!!

Feel free to check out all of their missions here.

Enough rambling, here is the latest and greatest from our man Charlie Todd at Imporov Everywhere:

10 apps to get stuff done for PC people

2009-05-26T14:27:00.000-07:00

Ok - I found myself constantly suggesting the same free software packages to people who can't separate with their PCs. There are tons of software packages out there, a lot of them are expensive, complex, require lots of resources, and truly are un-necessary! Same tasks can be accomplished by a FREE application which uses a fraction of the resources the alternatives use and is SIMPLE to use. In the light of having SIMPLE, FREE, and RESOURCE-EASY software I want to share with you these must have software packages.

To get rid of viruses, I do not like Norton, McAfee and the giants that take over your machine, instead I've been VERY successful with these tools (I run both of these):

1.) http://www.malwarebytes.org/

2.) http://spybot.com

For cleanup of your PC (making in faster and deleting all the gunk and junk) these are the best free tools:

3.) http://www.ccleaner.com/ - cleans up the junk on your computer

4.) http://www.defraggler.com/ - best free degrag tool I know out there

To burn Audio, Video, Data CDs, burn ISOs, or copy CDs this is the best:

5.) http://infrarecorder.org/

To manipulate images and convert to many other image formats as well as create transparent images this is the best free tool:

6.) http://www.irfanview.com/

To play Divx, DVD, and most video encodings:

7.) Media Player Classic

For easiest, simple, free email client:

8.) Mozilla ThunderBird

Best and simplest free Word Doc to PDF converter:

9.) http://cutepdf.com/

Best and simplest free PDF to Word Doc converter:

10.) http://hellopdf.com

CrossLoop - Mac Releasing buzzing all over!

2009-05-10T15:35:00.000-07:00

Yes... it's here!!! And yes... we have Mac and PC guy hugging on front page of our Crossloop coverage post here. It's been a long long long road to this point, lot's of emails from users asking for this, and we've been overjoyed to announce the release of the Mac client. The response has been phenomenal. We've had hugs:

We've had friendships:

It has been phenomenal to scroll through all the great coverage people have given us!!! We could not have been more happier with the reception on the net, you can look through the specific stories and link here:, but here is the great collage of all the places that covered our release:

MagPie - Your Thoughts?

2009-04-30T17:45:00.001-07:00

I know I have not blogged for a while... I have been buried under people. Been incognito... I'm slowly coming back to normal life from all the craziness, and wanted to ask people's opinion of this controversial little app titled: Magpie Magpie is actually a type of a bird - go figure right? Twitter.. birds... i don't see any relation. In any case, as an Stanley's guest blog post points out people can generate a pretty decent amount of cash by simply tweeting advertisements. I am still a bit skeptical and uneasy about, will this be the beginning of the conversion or Twitter into MySpace? As Mrinal puts it in his Tech Crunch post here the behavior of Twitter is really starting to lean toward main stream, myspace, ads, and all that stuff that make you loose interest in a social network. Magpie might be the latest addition to things that are starting to make Twitter more like Myspace. What do you think is next? Will twitter take any actions? Will more Magpies start to surface? What do you think?

Trouble with Twitters

2009-03-24T15:09:00.000-07:00

I am sure all of you have heard of "Twitter" by this point, even NPR is even talking about it these days! In any case - here is a short HILARIOUS little film about "Trouble with Twitters". Pretty funny! Enjoy!

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

2009-03-15T14:41:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine recently reminded me of a neat book which I wanted to share with you... it's a book titled: "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" By Robert Fulghum. Fulghum is an author of many short stories and teacher of philosophy out in Seattle, WA. During his lifetime he actually worked as: ditch-digger, newspaper carrier, ranch hand, salesman for IBM, and singing cowboy :) :) This is a very easy read and applies to everyone! It's simple a must read. See link here.

I want to share a small excerpt from the book here:

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don't hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don't take things that aren't yours.

Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before you eat.

Flush.

Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life — learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every afternoon.

When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.

Wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.

Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup — they all die. So do we.

And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned — the biggest word of all — LOOK.

Hang out with weird, an thou shall be weird

2009-03-14T14:42:00.000-07:00

All of you know Tom Peters probably, well just a few weeks ago I received an email from a friend of mine who sent me an old video on Innovation by Tom Peters. I've seen this a number of times, and really really love this clip! It is interesting to re-state and remember that there are ways for people to become innovative. Toyota, Google, IBM, Intel were not just born innovative, they actually have things they do which make them more innovative. There are processes, actions, and sequences of processes people use to learn and become innovative. I absolutely love this quote: "Hang out with weird, an thou shall be weird!!!", and also this one: "To be remarkable, you don't follow someone who is remarkable"... This little clip from early 2007 is full of these nice little quotes and lessons on innovations... Love this clip... Enjoy!

Getting heard in today's economy

2009-03-14T11:24:00.000-07:00

We have all heard that it is all about who you know and what company. Connections are everything. In today's clutter of trillions of emails and millions of resumes out there HOW DO YOU GET SEEN? Even if you are a genius and the company will be MUCH better off if they met with you - how do you get a hold of someone there if you don't know people? Thinking about things very differently is what gets people attention. Check out some of these innovative ways in which people have reached out to companies:

http://www.cangooglehearme.com/

http://whygoogleshouldhireme.brendangates.com/

http://www.myhusbandneedsajob.com/

http://www.twittershouldhireme.com/

http://www.hiremeseth.com/?page_id=2

Bailing Out Banks 1 toxin at 1 time...

2009-03-14T10:51:00.000-07:00

Ok - I stole the title... but as you all know I love This American Life and am a financial crisis junkie... so - I can't help myself but share this story with you about one ex hedge fund manager and one mortgage broker out in New Jersey who are bailing out banks 1 toxic asset at a time... Raj Bhatia and Albert Behi are going around rural New Jersey and are buying pools of these underwater mortgages. This is by far the first individual effort I've seen to bail out banks. Really amazing! So the basic idea here, as described in article below, is that a $100,000 mortgage which is bought by a hedge fund for .30c on dollar, the hedge fund is looking to sell to Bhatia and Behi for .40c on dollar. Of course there are more details involved as far as diligences, who lives there, the neighborhood, etc... I truly urge all of you to read through this article, makes me want to get up and join them right now!!! Raj, Albert - if you are reading this - leave a comment, email me!!! :)

Click here to read the article.

Becoming a reporter for reporters

2009-03-12T10:01:00.000-07:00

Many of you ask me all the time, so - how in the world do so many people get stories about themselves or their companies on front pages of websites? How do reporters pick what to report on? Well some news websites rely on user tips, and this phenomenon is growing! Techmeme is not the only one leaning on Twitter for news tips... A very neat article by ReadWriteWeb here does explain some of the way people tip off news. Email, phone, pitching stories in a way has become obsolete. A blogger or an online news reporter is not interested in you calling them up and pitching your business to them. Tips via twitter, connecting people with a question to an answer out there is where things are at currently. In this spirit I want to share this article with you, it really shows what becoming a reporter for a reporter is all about.

On the other note, here is a really neat article about CrossLoop in the Entrepreneur Magazine, funny, witty, but to the point. See here.

Boy Scouts Breast Exam

2009-03-01T13:09:00.000-08:00

Hey All... Have not posted in a long time, just really not much time these days... I did want to share this funny video of Boy Scouts giving out breast exams video...

Love the Onion! If you don't know the onion yet, i suggest you check it out here: www.theonion.com

Boy Scouts Offer To Give Breast Exams @ Yahoo! Video

Stand By Me - Intl Version (playforchange.com)

2009-02-04T22:29:00.000-08:00

Such a great international version of "Stand By Me", couldn't help but share it with all of ya... Suuuuch a great company this is - play for change! I really urge you guys to visit www.playforchange.com - they record music around the world, sell the track off at Starbucks locations (and online) and then give back the money to communities they record in.

Steve Jobs commencement speech - 2005

2008-12-02T14:42:00.000-08:00

Since I am on a roll here, this is dating back a little bit, but I absolutely have to follow Bill Gates speech with Steve Job's one.. so here we are:

Bill Gates Commencement Speech @ Harvard

2008-12-02T14:34:00.001-08:00

Not much words for this post... I heard this speech back in 2007 (it was delivered in June 2007). Recently a friend of mine pointed me to it on youtube. I really wanted to share it with all of you here on my blog, its such a great speech! Make you wonder - isn't the meaning of life to simply make a world a better place?

You can see the rest of 5 parts of the speech here.

Run Forest.... Run!!!

2008-11-12T18:48:00.000-08:00

Big Sur Half Marathon! Who knew I could run? It was such a blast!!!! Live music throughout the course, ocean by my side, and an awesome group of people - our training group... I am hooked and want to do it again! A very good friend of mine did an awesome review of our training team and the Half Marathon with pictures of some of us in action! I wont make this a long post, I'll just refer all of you to this post - check out her blog entry about this here:

http://findanewpath.typepad.com/withoutroadmaps/2008/11/finishers.html

Wrapping up this wonderful debate...

2008-10-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

I am not going to bore you with views, opinions, and lots of text at this time. Instead - lets all say goodbye to Mr. Bush and reminisce a little bit about the fine entertainment he has provided to us over these past 8 years... here are some good Bush moments:

Crossloop - in WSJ and on Fox News !!!

2008-09-28T21:41:00.000-07:00

As Mrinal says – “Walted away!!!”

That is what we were here at CrossLoop this past week – Walted away!!! Well – if you guys have not heard by now from me (which I find hard to believe) - this past Thursday our little startup CrossLoop was in the printed and online edition of Wall Street Journal all over U.S. and the world! Who wrote about us? This is one of the most exciting parts – Walt Mossberg of all people!

If you are not familiar with Walt’s technology column – it has been in every Thursday issue of Wall Street Journal since 1991. Walt Mossberg is a principal technology columnist at Wall Street Journal who appears every week on Fox Business Network and in web video reports. Walt is one of most prominent figures in technology, he reviews products like Google’s G1, iPhone, Blackberry, and various other very well established companies products. One of my favorite interviews b y him is his 2007 interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. He was called “the KingMaker” by Wired saying that he can either “make or break a product” with his reviews. If you would like to know more about Walt – this Wired article is really a great one!

So – the online article about Crossloop was up on Wall Street Journal website here on Wednesday evening – the 24th of September, 2008.

The review was also on Walt’s own All Things Digital website (where he publishes all his reviews).

Here is Walt’s Personal Web Video Report about Crossloop (link here):

If that was not enough – we were on Fox Business News in a morning interview with Walt Mossberg the very next day, you can see the segment here (link here):

To finish this up – I would like to show you a small part of the printed version of the article about us in printed version of September, 25th 2008 WSJ.

All of us here at CrossLoop were shacking from excitement and could not believe what happened! It has been an amazing week for us: right after the announcement of our $6M Series B funding – this has been more than a dream come true for us! I think it would an understatement if I said – A HUGE THANK YOU from me and out team to Walt! There is no way to put into words how thankful we truly are to him!

What a week! Pheewww! Can’t believe it! WSJ!

Bill Gates/ Steve Jobs - Dating Game?

2008-09-28T21:19:00.000-07:00

Back in May of 2007 Walt Mossberg of Wall Street Journal interviewed Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. It was a remarkable interview - lots of jokes, some serious talk - and just really really interesting interview in general for anybody who uses Windows or a Mac!!! My friends have been asking me to put up some of the videos on my blog...

Before the interview started the following prologue was shown, check it out:

Here is the start of interview:

There are 7 parts... so if you're interested from these 2 videos, click here to go to Walt Mossberg site to watch the rest of the 7 parts. Enjoy!!! I know I did!!!!

Funny commercials...

2008-09-23T14:21:00.000-07:00

To take a small break after studying, working, studying and on and on and on... I love to watch funny commercials... this one had me laughing more and more as it progressed... thought i would share with you:

The Kite Runner

2008-09-21T13:42:00.000-07:00

If for some reason you are unhappy or tired of things - it happens to the best of us... it does... We start to complain about this, that, we are not happy with this, that, we wish we would have this or that. We can't help - it's human nature - once we've had something for a long time - we forget to value it as much as we did when we first got it. I observe this everyday with people and even catch myself doing so. It is books like Kite Runner which put you back into your seat and tell you - "Hey - it's not that bad!" Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini is a truly gripping story much of which is based on his own experiences and his talks and with other Afghan refugees).

The book was made into a movie in 2007, I urge you to visit Khaled's website here and if you dare - you can read more about the book here - (just be aware - they give away the plot!)

Sitting at home and reading a story of a man who leaves California to got to Kabul to rescue his half brother's son at the time when Taliban has a firm grip on the country is truly amazing! It puts you right back into your spot... the complaining, or unhappiness stops immediately!!! haha!

Even if you were not complaining to start with, the book is just generally an amazing story - I recommend it to all!

Crossloop - $6M series B

2008-09-21T13:05:00.000-07:00

We have recently announced our Series B funding and it was truly an amazing day for all of us at CrossLoop. We are all still unbelievably excited! We all gave it the best we could leading up to this announcement, we pushed, pushed and pushed. It has really showed me what startup life is all about - the experience leading up to this milestone was truthfully unforgettable for me. As an intern I believe my job at CrossLoop is truly invaluable - I am very much grateful for this opportunity.

We are currently backed by El Dorado with initial investment of $3M and now Venrock who backed us this time with $6M. Venrock is truly one of the best VC firms out in the industry. They have recently been inducted into the Private Equity Hall of Fame, and in their long history since 1938 have backed many companies including more recent companies you might know: Apple, 2Wire, DoubleClick, ZoomInfo and many others. It's a pleasure to have such an experienced partner on board!

It was so much fun to watch the coverage come in from all over the world as we announced the news this past Monday. I could not help but compile a neat collage of the coverage - take a look here:

Really exciting day for us... All the coverage links can be found here.

Live life like its...

2008-08-15T05:44:00.001-07:00

Since I have been away from the states for months now - it seems like I have not been as up to date with happenings and news. It was only about a week ago that I found out that Randy Pausch has passed away. It was a truly sad moment for me. I first learned about him in my early bachelor years of studying computer science and dabbling a little in the 3D Virtual Reality stuff. I did not remember the names of pioneers in "Virtual Reality" - but him I remembered since then very well. Back in 2007 Randy delivered the The Last Lecture entitled "Really achieving Your Childhood dream". This speech is something I will probably remember for the rest of my life - I was struck so deeply with how he lived his life and how we should live our lives. Recently, some months back, in one of my classes this past year we watched this speech one more time, and again the same emotions awoke with me.

All my life my parents and elders were very reserved about things. "This" is not for us. "That" we'll do later. "Maybe we should not try this because..." Sensible, punctual, rational decisions which can be reasoned for by any person. It seems that very few of us live life to the fullest unless we know some is at stake. Whether we are running out of time, or we know that we will run out of something, or we had a truly life-changing experience, or we've been diagnosed with sickness, only then we start to take every opportunity we get to life to the fullest. For some reason I think of the The Bucket List and associate it with Randy's speech.

As you listen to Randy's speech below here, imagine all the things this man has done, and how he lived his life. Perhaps we do not need to be diagnosed with a disease, or have time running out to take the chances, go out there, and truly do what you always wanted. Even if you have a silly dream, go out there and TRY IT! Because if not now, then when? Later? No - it will not happen later... Perhaps we should re-think how we live our lives, and take an example from Randy.

Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

2008-08-15T05:08:00.000-07:00

I have not done a book review probably since high school? junior high school? As soon as I did not "have" to do it, I stopped. I read lots of books. This particular book I got from my family actually... a truly heart gripping book which I wanted to share with you. The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon.

I must warn you - this is a very heavy book! (By heavy - I do not mean physically, I mean emotionally). For those who are Jewish this will be even more "heavy". I am not a very religious person but this book honestly spoke to my heart and in times to my stomach (in a bad way). At times I did have to put it down.

The book is actually a translation of a 16th century manuscript which due to a sequence of events was found in Istanbul by Richard Zimler - a researcher of Sephardic poetry. A lawyer in Istanbul who befriended Richard left him an old house in his will. While doing renovations at the house the manuscript was found. Richard was kind enough to spend a good while translating the script which was not an easy task since some of the pages were not in order and of course the language.

A good majority of the manuscript deals with tragic events in Lisbon, Portugal in 1506, during the Spanish Inquisition . Berekiah - a young kabbalist, a student of his uncle who is a part of a secret circle of kabbalist threshing group, finds his uncle murdered with a naked girl on the floor of the secret cellar where they pray. Throughout the book Berekiah is on a quest through streets of Lisbon which are filled with Old Christian rioters to find who killed his uncle. As the book goes on and describes the life, society, and reasonings of that time, and the brutal massacre of forcefully converted New Christians (jews).

As I mentioned.. I truly scary and "heavy" book. But I always say - it is truly necessary to re-visit the history day in and day out as we live to keep ourselves in check and not repeat our own mistakes.

SearchStatus Firefox Extension

2008-08-14T03:03:00.000-07:00

Continuing my posts about add-ons for Firefox - this one is a great on if you want to see quickly how popular a particular site is. SearchStatus gives you a Google Rank and Alexa Rank for every website which you navigate to. It sits on the bottom right hand corner of your browser. All you need to do is simple give it a quick glance and right away you know how popular the particular site is.

Just like with all the other add-ons you need to download the Search Status add-on. TO do this you go through exact same process as in my Delicious Toolbar post. Once you download it, you'll need to restart the browser. Next time you start it up, you'll see the following in the bottom right hand corner of the browser:

That's all! Start browsing the net baby! The SearchStatus gives you info on the current page you are on. The best rating for Google Rank is 10. If you hover over the PageRank - you'll see a number. Generally speaking if the rank bar is mostly filled with green - it is a 9 or a 10 rank. Alexa rank works in similar fashion - if the bar is all the way filled - it is very high rank. The best rank for Alexa is 1. In my experience - I do not trust Alexa as much. They do not always have the best data, and not always right. It's nice to have it there, but I give the Google Rank much more value.

Definitely a great one! Enjoy!

Delicious Toolbar Extension

2008-08-14T02:09:00.000-07:00

I am a huge fan of Firefox add-ons, I love to check new ones out all the time, at this point I accumulated a good amount of them which I use, I decided to do a little review of some of the most useful ones in my opinion. I'll start with this one which I use all time these days:

Delicious Firefox Toolbar

As you probably have heard, Delicious is a very popular social bookmarking services where people sign up for free and bookmark the websites which they like. The advantage of bookmarking with Delicious is that you can access you bookmarked favorite sites from any computer in the world, and you also are able to comment/browse other people's bookmarks. You can also see the ratings/feedback people have given a particular website and perhaps discover new sites. You can have your saved favorites be only visible to you or share them with the rest of the Delicious community. Generally people share their bookmarks with others, comment on other people's bookmarks, rate each others bookmarks, and discover new sites.

Delicious Extension for Firefox lets you bookmark a site with simply one key stroke. It is easy and convenient, while you are browsing, if you land on a a page you want to add to favorites, simply hold ctrl+D down and this website is saved to your Delicious account! Here is how it works from A to Z:

1.) First you need to download the Delicious Toolbar. (After you click Add to Firefox and Accept the terms you'll see the installation screen). Go ahead and wit for the countdown, and then proceed with the instructions ont he screen. You'll need to restart your Firefox browser, so make sure you have all you websites closed.

2.) Once you have installed the Delicious Toolbar you'll be prompted to create an account. Go ahead and fill out all the information - this will also assign you a URL which you can navigate to to check your bookmarked sites.

3.) Once you have created your account - you should be all set to start adding bookmarks. Click on the Delicious button on the top of your browsed to see your toolbar:

4.) Your Toolbar will open up. The top portion of the toolbar are the tags associated with each bookmarked site. Tags are useful way of having your bookmarks discovered by other people searching for sites on Delicious. For example: I just bookmarked a cool site : www.earnmoneybyblogging.com (something I just made up on the fly right now) - in the tags I can put the subjects that this site is associated in words, so my tags will be: work, home, stay at home, blog, blogging, money, earn, salary, web. Many people on Delicious simply want to see what other cool new sites people have bookmarked. If they search for anything which has any of the tags I added to my bookmark, they'll discover my bookmarked site. If the like it - they'll leave me a comment, I'll check out their sites, and so on. I hope you get the picture. The bottom portion of the toolbar are your actual website which you have bookmarked. The little lock symbol circled in red - tells you that this bookmark is not shared with others, it is a private bookmark.

5.) Ok - now you can start bookmarking. Just like I mentioned earlier... see as site you like? Press hold down CTRL and D at one time. You'll see a dialog prompt show up, fill in the description of the site, as well as tags which you want associated with it, you can also specify if you want this bookmark to remain private by checking the Do Not Share on the top right. Press save, and that's all.

6.) You can now navigate to http://delicious.com/ and check on your saved boomarks from any computer. Also - you can connect with others, share bookmarks, leave comments, etc. etc.

I use this thing all the time!

iCall - pretty neat to use for free calls to U.S. & Canada

2008-08-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

I recently discovered this nice little application - ICall. It is very similar to skype, except all calls to any land line or cell phone in U.S. and Canada are totally free! Skype only lets you call 800 numbers for free and charges a little bit (2cent - 3cent) per minute for calls to U.S. and Canada. Thus you have to open up a PayPal account, upload money there, make sure you have $5 or $10 there... ICall is completely free. You can all you want for free. The application is very self explanatory. After you download the application you can double click on the .exe file and set it up on your computer.
After you set it up, launch the application. You have to create an account, do so by clicking the Create new account button at the bottom. You fill out the details, and click next.

After you create an account you are all set! The application will ask you if you want to create a PRO account. This feature is useful if you want to have your own number (similar to skype). If you do not want to do this - click "No". You are now ready to make free calls to U.S. and Canada. The quality is very comparable to Skype. You can talk for hours - won't cost you a single cent!

They do also have an IPhone version. The IPhone version is very impressive since it does allow you to transfer inbound calls to VOIP. You can read more about iCall iPhone beta here.

Short and simple, and free. I like it...

A little blues with an 8 year old guitar prodigy

2008-08-13T04:30:00.000-07:00

So I have known this little man for a just a little bit but already love him! Recently - saw a few more videos and was just stunned! Had to write a blog entry on this one!

Currently 8 years old, Tallan Latz is a youngest Blues Performing artist in the World! He started out with drums when he was just 3! At 5 he asked for electric guitar after watching a video of Joe Satriani. Since then he never looked back!

People love this little man all over Illinois and Wisconsin area and he is making it big in just months! His music influences range across many genres from classical to rock to blues to country. Some of his top influencers are Jimmy Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, BB King, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, Led Zeppelin, Bon Jovi, Steve Miller, and even Beethoven!

Tallan has played for small venues as well as for huge crowds as well. Here are some of his performances:

Here is song called Red Hot - my favorite video of his:

Just some good ole' blues... from an 8 year old...

A little Voodoo Child

Please pay attention to his attitude while he is playing - simply unbelievable. He is totally
"in the blues!" Here he is jamming with Albert Cummings - a song named Red Hots.
Check out his site here: http://www.carllatz.com/ and here http://www.tallanlatz.com/

This one is definitely a WOW for me!