A sophisticated travel planner

How to ace telephone interview

In this economy and job market, it is very rare for anyone to get a telephone interview. If one does, following are few good tips to ace that telephone interview:

1. Be prepared
2. Dress up
3. Find a quiet and private place for the call
4. Do not do anything else while on the call
5. Keep notes and documents handy
6. Practice
7. Find out who will be in the call

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Pronounce names properly

Have you butchered someone's name before?

Do your groundwork before you meet them. Use the following site

Murali

m oo - R AH - l ee m oo - R AH - l ee me food   rat car   let see

Check your pronounciation here

Smart Installer for reinstalling apps on your computer

Reformatting? Retiring your old computer and getting a new one?

Dreading installing all the applications on your old computer?

use Smart Installer Pack



It includes a host of apps like Firefox, Chrome, OpenOffice, Winamp, Skype, Daemon Tools, Picasa, Winamp, Thunderbird, Adobe Reader and Flash, WinRar, Rocket Dock, CCleaner, and more. Everything downloads in a single file, so you won't be cluttering up your drive with a bunch of separate installers.

Get it here

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Faking a clean house in short time..

When your guests make a surprise visit or when you slack cleaning your house till your guests arrive, follow these simple tricks to fake that you do a good job in keeping your house clean...

The Living Room

• Reserve one side of sofa cushions to be shown to guests. Before company arrives, flip over the cushions to reveal good-as-new fabric. When guests are gone, flip them back.
• To disguise windows in need of washing, pull curtain panels closed.
• Fold a clean blanket neatly and drape it over a stained sofa. Strategically placed throw pillows can also camouflage soiled upholstery.

The Kitchen

• When the dishwasher is full and the sink is overflowing, stow dirty dishes and silverware in a stockpot and pull them out later to be cleaned.
• Cover up the lingering aroma of last night’s supper by boiling nutmeg, cloves, or cinnamon and orange peels in a sauce-pan on the stove.
• Declutter the refrigerator by taking down notes, drawings, and magnets and throwing them in a plastic bag. Sort through it later.
• Fold hand towels to hide stains. Two tips: Hang the clean side over the oven handle (with the stains in the back), or roll towels in neat spirals and stack them pyramid-style next to the sink.

The Bathroom

• Glide a sticky lint roller over the bath mat to pick up hair.
• Light a candle. Everything looks better (and cleaner) by candlelight.
• Hang a fluffy bathrobe on top of damp towels dangling from the hooks on the back of the door.
• Mound cosmetics and hairstyling products in a container underneath the sink. In a pinch, pile them in the tub and close the shower curtain. Cross your fingers that guests don’t snoop.

The Kids' Rooms

• Stow pajamas under the pillow. This way, they’re off the floor and ready for later.
• Put blocks in a handled shopping bag and hang it on a hanger or a doorknob inside the closet.
• Put homeless stuffed animals in extra pillowcases. Or prop them up behind shams.
• If your kids have a play tent, hide toys and clothes inside it.

The Laundry Room

• Pile any laundry that needs to be folded in baskets or storage containers and lay them on the washing machine to be sorted through later.
• As for dirty clothes awaiting washing, simply toss them in the washer.

The Home Office

• Stash stray office supplies, like pencils and pens, in decorative stationery boxes or filing containers on your desk.
• Temporarily hide wayward Post-it notes and to-do lists underneath the keyboard.

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How to undo sent email?

Instead of hitting "reply" to an e-mail, we accidentally push "reply all," sending a potentially embarrassing or insulting message to those we didn't intend to see it.

To address this problem, Google Inc.'s Gmail Labs has launched an experimental feature called "Undo Send" that gives users a chance to rewrite their message, correct settings or simply fix typos.

When a Gmail user who enables this feature sends an e-mail, a button that says "Undo" will pop up on their screen for five seconds. If the user hits the button within that time, the service will retrieve the e-mail in draft form -- allowing the user to make changes or cancel the message altogether.

Read the rest here

Transfer files from your computer

Using JetBytes you can transfer files directly from your computer without needing to upload a file to a 3rd party location.

To send files, open a browser go to jetbytes.com and simply select a file on your computer you like to transfer. JetBytes then generates a web URL which you can forward to your friend. Your friend can then click on the URL and save the file.

Only pain here is that your computer needs to be on and your browser need to be open as well.

You can send as many files as you want and there is no limit on the file size or bandwidth usage.

Features:

• Direct file transfer over internet.
• Sent as many files as you want.
• Files are not store during the transfer.
• No file size or bandwidth restrictions.
• Both sender and receiver should be online.
• No registration and free

Read the rest here

Start your sharing from here

Convert HTML pages to PDF

Tired of dealing with saving webpages to your computer.

Saving a webpage as PDF has lot of benefits (for e.g., emailing the page is easy as a pdf)

Features:

* Convert web page to pdf file online.
* Convert as many times as you need
* Free, no registration. Nothing to download or install.

Read the rest here
Use the site here

How to make a remote user friendly...

Tired of explaining your remote functionality to your parents / guests?

All you need is a piece of paper, pen, and a pair of scissors

Source: DI

Weird Hotels

See more here

The myth about contacting police during ATM Robbery

I received an email recently that talked about using reverse pin# to contact police in ATM emergency. I did some research online and unfortunately that technology is not implement yet.

Email Excerpt:
If you should ever be forced by a robber to withdraw money from an ATM  machine, you can notify the police by entering your Pin # in reverse. For   example if your pin number is 1234 then you would put in 4321.

The ATM recognizes that your pin number is backwards from the ATM card you placed in the machine. The machine will still give you the money you, but unknown to the robber, the police will be immediately to help you. This information was recently broadcasted on FOX TV and it states that it is seldom used because people don't know it exists.

Check this site that proves it wrong

Inauguration viewed from space

Layoff scorecard

Today, we had layoffs at my workplace. Its so sad to see people leave. Years and years of their careers invested in a company goes kaput in few minutes they ask you to leave.

CNET has a living scorecard of layoffs happening at various tech companies.

Check it out here

How to Save Web Pages and Blogs for Offline Reading

If you have Google Desktop running in the background, you already have a local copy of all web pages that you have recently opened / read in any browser on your computer. You can click "Browse Timeline" inside Google Desktop and your web history will be listed in reverse chronological order - the most recently visited websites will be listed at the top.

The problem with web history in Google Desktop is that it can get cluttered too easily and finding relevant pages from the history may require some effort.  In that case you may install Scrapbook for Firefox and only save relevant web pages that you intend to read in an offline environment.

FeedDemon - it’s fast, rich in features and the upcoming v2.8 is even better since it lets you export unread items as an HTML web page that can be read on any device.

If you are subscribed to feeds in Google Reader, you can either try RSS Bandit or  Scoop - these are desktop based readers that work in offline mode and can synchronize with your Google Reader subscriptions. If you are on Bloglines, a similar solution for you exists in the form of GreatNews - a desktop RSS reader that is also portable. Google Gears is another solution for Google Reader users but it has limitations.

The advantage with either of the above solutions is that they all support synchronization - so if you mark an item as read in an offline environment, the change will get propagated when you go online next so there’s no double work.

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Hickey remedy

A hickey is a red mark on an individual's skin caused by a suction on the area. Usually hickeys are made with another individual's mouth while kissing, biting or sucking on the person's neck.

Hickeys fade and shrink in size over time. One way to speed up the healing process is to freeze a spoon and place it over the hickey while turning the spoon clockwise. Another fast-acting hickey hider is a bottle of eye drops designed to eliminate red eye. Place a few drops on the hickey, and it will push blood vessels away from the surface of your skin temporarily. The best way to stay away from hickeys is to talk with your partner ahead of time. If you have something important to do the next day, ask them to hold off on the hickeys until you have a few days to wear turtlenecks.

Note: This blog author has never tried this approach and cannot promise you wouldn't need to wear turtle necks..

New York Man Demands $1.5M From Estranged Wife for Kidney

Richard Batista, 49, is suing his wife for $1.5 million or the return of his kidney after she dumped her husband following an alleged affair.

A New York doctor who gave his wife a kidney is suing her for $1.5 million — or the return of the vital organ — after he says she cheated on him with a physical therapist.

Richard Batista, 49, is demanding the sum in the middle of a messy divorce with his now-estranged wife, who suffered kidney ailments for years before the transplant.

The Long Island surgeon said he gave the gift of life to his wife in 2001, but things turned sour just two years later while she was recovering from a karate injury, the New York Post reported.

His wife, 44-year-old Dawnell Batista, had an affair with her physical therapist in 2003, he said. She recovered from the knee injury, but he says her low blow has him all out of joint.

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