Satish | Technotip.org

My 25th Birthday and A Message!

I had no idea that I’ll be blogging about this to night, sitting on top of my home in this cool breeze. Actually, I dint want to blog about this quite intentionally and I had a reason for that, which I’ll explain shortly.

The Past
I had no idea of how to celebrate my birthday, in my childhood. For me it was special prayers and a visit to temple, for many years.

It was in my masters degree(MCA) that my friends started it and I continued it for my friends. I love them. I love them all. They are special to me.

We spent a lot on parties and sometimes it would take at least 1 or 2 days to come out of the hangover :p

It was fun and a sweet memory in all our hearts, to carry forward..especially the things we talked and did in the party and it’s not just about the ffOOd.

The Present
I finished my masters degree last year and continued with my usual works, not much changes in my life in terms of lifestyle, locality and work.

But it isn’t same for my friends. They had to move to other places get job or to get some special coaching. So the party hangover was all over!

The Intuition
All these years while we had party, I would tell everyone that we shall celebrate next time in any ashrams. We could donate the helpless and could make life more meaningful. Everyone was supportive and were ready to contribute.

But it never really happened 🙁

But Why?
Because we just talked. We just thought.
There is lot of difference between thinking and doing.

It was something like: As thinking is like half doing, I’ll be thinking twice :p

We never acted upon it.

Birthday
Today is my birthday again..and I dint want to live in the planning phase any more.
So made firm decision and took action.

The Influence
Now suddenly everyone is charged. Self motivated and ready to serve and make a difference.

Again, Why?
At least, why now and not until now?

I could find the answer to this question on this day of my 25th birthday!
It is because, people need to taste it at least once.

The Message
Today we could feel the difference between sitting in a cool comfortable place, talking random stuffs, passing time(as if we live forever) and to be in a place where we realize we can help too. We distributed food and fruits to hundreds( 180 to be precise ) of children with our own hands. We are blessed enough and we should do whatever we can do and beyond what we could do, if we did not have the goal to serve. yes its possible.

The Future
We have decided to continue with this activity, even more actively and to help more and more people in coming days.
It need not be birthdays. We never knew we are so blessed until we saw the world of physically disabled and mentally disordered: those are just worldly name to them, which many of them have proved wrong.

Rewind
When I decided to get out and contribute, I thought not to blog or Facebook about this as I’m doing it for my own satisfaction. But later on learnt that, there is a message. And I must communicate it to the world.

Golden Words

“There are people who give with joy, and that joy is their reward.”
– Khalil Gibran

“At the end of life, what really matters is
not what we bought, but what we built;
not what we got, but what we shared;
not our competence, but our character;
not our success, but our significance;
Live a life that matters. Live a life of Love..”

“It’s not what WE get. But who we become, what we contribute..that gives meaning to our lives.”
– Ton Robbins

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you.
Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough.
Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.”
—— Mother Teresa

Ask And You Shall Be Given.
Give And You Shall Deserve.
– Satish ( your’s truly 😉 )

“If you do good, people may accuse you of selfish motives. Do good anyway.”
– Mother Teresa.

Do Good Anyway!

Get Free ReTweets: TwitFever!

We all know how important it is as a blogger or a business owner to connect with people in the right way on social networking sites these days. These social sites are easy tools to get out messages to your customers..and also to listen to their feedback.

The Problem:
To reach out to as many people, in as less time as possible.

Our Solution
To help you spread your message to a wider audience, we have built a tool called TwitFever, which lets you help each other(members).

How it works?
We accept people who have atleast 1000 followers.
If you get at the least 10 tweets, then there is a minimum chance of your message reaching to
10 x 1000 = 10, 000 people minimum.
The chances are almost endless.

Update: You must have atleast 199 followers to become eligible.
[ Changed this after a lot of requests. ]

Rules
1. Do not tweet about sales pages and affiliate links.
2. Make sure to submit those tweets which contain informative and interesting content.
3. DO NOT retweet the tweets which contains promotional stuffs, and affiliate links in it.
4. Please make sure to visit on a regular basis and be a active member.
5. You must have atleast 1000 followers. ( Can’t help it. It is in place to help you get maximum value out of the tool. )

YOU Are Special
TwitFever.com is still in its early beta, but I’m inviting YOU( Technotip.org blog readers ), as you are special and a priority.

Some Insider Story
I’m making use of Twitter API for this app, so the loading may take some time, if enough people start using it. But I’ll be upgrading the servers soon, so that will not be a problem.

If you find any errors, bugs, please take a screenshot and post about it on our official forum at Technotip.com under TwitFever Section. Your suggestions and queries are highly appreciated. Our forum is open and waiting for you!

I’m passionate about building these kind of web applications that help solve problems. Along with that I also need to consider the reality that I will have to pay the bills, of server, domain, coding cost, my time. ( My Mom will be really angry if I don’t take care of all these bills / expenses myself. )

As a matter of fact, I can get a lot of businesses which could be interested in sponsorship. But honestly, I want to concentrate only on coding and other stuffs that I absolutely love. Finding sponsors, negotiating, getting paid and recursively doing this month after month..will take considerable amount of time and energy.

So I’ve decided to have 1 adsense ad inside the app, which I hope could compensate a bit. And a big thanks to you all for understanding.

Features:
1. You can retweet others tweets.
2. Submit your own tweets.
3. See the number of retweets.
4. See who retweeted the tweets.
5. See a separate list of tweets submitted by you so far and its retweet count and the people who retweeted it.
..lot more features coming soon, stay tuned, stay active and participate regularly.

Recommendation
Spend some time ReTweeting others tweets, use the pagination to browse through more tweets.

I would love to see people take maximum advantage of this smart marketing tool, which will save you a lot of time.

Being Smart in your marketing approach, is always better.
Invest your time more on the things you really love and on things that matters the most.

Amazon’s Junglee.com Live In India

Maybe due to FDI rules in India, Amazon has smartly taken a different approach in India. They are not selling the products directly; Right now they are just listing the products from different sellers in India and directing the users to purchase the products directly from the sellers via their website or local store.

Want to put your product online for selling ? Goto Amazon Services page.

Advantage is, users get to see the price and all the required info about the product. It’s like de-cluttered smart price listing tool.

Nevertheless, entry of Amazon into Indian market would surly alert FlipKart and other such online businesses.

There is no checkout/shopping cart, as you can’t buy directly from Junglee. You can however signin via the same amazon.com credentials: To see your reviews and votes for different products listed on Junglee.com

I hope Amazon would soon start selling directly and start providing competitive rates to its customers. Amazon having its reach worldwide can provide products at much lesser price…..if at all our government do not put their big dirty mouth in between Amazon and us(customers). [ I’m not talking about the regular TAX. Everyone must pay it. Talking about other things deeply would make this post out of focus! ]

Anyway, I wish Amazon a great success and welcome to India wholeheartedly.

How-To Update android OS On Sony Ericsson Xperia

I’m using Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc to illustrate android os updating procedure.

Goto phone settings -> About Phone -> Software update -> Update; It informs you to install update via your computer!

Now goto your computer install software(pc suites) and try it; once again it shows some connection error messages and other frustrating error messages 🙁

So does your Sony Xperia doesn’t support os updation? It certainly does.

Install some fashing software; follow some procedure; after that you can directly update your phone OS at settings -> About Phone -> Software update -> Update; via wi-fi or 3G.

PART 2: Once you are done with PART 1. Goto your phone settings -> About Phone -> Software update.
Now hit update. It may show error connecting to the network for some time.
In such situation, switch off and switch on your Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc.
Repeat the process, and hit “Update” button.
Once the update starts, relax and sit back. It will take some 15min to download. After that it will show a message that your mobile can not be used(even to make emergency calls) while its installing the updates.
Click Ok. and relax again. It will take some 20 to 30 min to install the updates.
Phone will be switched off and switched on. You need not interfear until its completely installed.
Once the installation is complete: Again goto settings -> About Phone -> Software update. and click on “Update”.
It will search for updates and in my case it installed some more new updates once again. So check it.

Technotip proudly introduces a tech forum and to the glory of it’s launch, we have written Updating android OS: Sony Ericsson Xperia post on the forum.

Feel free to participate and share your expertise on the forum.

How Do I Preview My Site Before Updating DNS?

Keith,

Q: How Do I access my files on the new server ?
I’ve recently purchased hosting from HostGator and have transferred all my files to new servers. I want to preview it and make changes before letting it live to my audience. Is it possible? If yes, how can I do that ?

Yes, it’s absolutely possible to preview and make changes to it before making it live to general public.

Here are the simple steps:
Usually computers look at the IP in the local host file before looking into the actual DNS( Domain Name System ).
So make changes to this simple file on your computer and trick the computer!

If you are using Windows XP or Windows 7 Operating System, then goto this location, to locate the ‘host’ file: c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
(Ofcourse if you have installed your OS on a different drive, then the path differs accordingly.)

Open the host file in a simple text editor.

The content looks something like this:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a ‘#’ symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

Now get the new Dedicated IP Address of your server/host from your new hosting provider.
Usually it will be present inside the cpanel.

Assume that new dedicated IP is 165.100.98.10 for www.yourdomain.com

Now: add this line of code to your host file.

165.100.98.10 yourdomain.com www.yourdomain.com

Now your host file looks something like this:

now restart the browser. If it doesn’t work, then it’s due to the cache.

To clear the cache use these dos commands:
Goto your command prompt.
type “ipconfig /flushdns” (without quote).

Now restart your browser and visit your site.

Finally:
Once you make changes and change your original DSN to point it to your new server, then make sure to delete the line of code you added to your local ‘host‘ file.

bbpress(plugin) Theme Compatibility

There are many threads on bbpress forum where people are almost frustrated with the problem of making their theme work with the new bbpress plugin version.

Particularly, they have this problem with making a theme, child-theme and applying it to the forum.

Ex: Your blog has sidebar and you don’t want to have sidebar in your forum.

I had the same problem, and solved it after trying it for a long time. Now I feel like, why the hell did I spend so much time on this simple thing 🙂

Without much delay: In this example I’ll illustrate by keeping the official “bbPress (Twenty Ten)” theme in mind, which is present in /wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-themes/bbp-twentyten folder by default when you install the bbpress plugin.

1. Move twentyten theme from /wp-content/plugins/bbpress/bbp-themes/ to /wp-content/themes/.
Note: You can rename the folder with any name you like.

2. Now get into twentyten theme and edit style.css file. Add Template: yourWordpressThemeFolderName (yes add the folder name of your present wordpress theme) to your style.css files comment section, as shown below.

If your WordPress theme name is MyTheme. You have to add Template: MyTheme to style.css file of twentyten bbpress theme.

/**
* Theme Name: bbPress (Twenty Ten)
* Theme URI: http://bbpress.org
* Description: Adds bbPress forums to the Twenty Ten theme
* Author: WordPress and bbPress teams
* Version: 1.2
* Tags: bbpress, black, blue, white, two-columns, fixed-width, custom-header, custom-background, threaded-comments, sticky-post, translation-ready, microformats, rtl-language-support, editor-style
* Template: MyTheme
*
**
*
* This file intentionally left blank. Styles are enqueued in functions.php
*
* 1 – ./css/bbpress.css
*
**/

3. Now you have made the twentyten theme a child theme of your present WordPress theme.
4. Now log into your WordPress dashboard. Goto Appearance, and activate the child-theme.

To remove the sidebar:
Goto the child theme, inside that bbpress folder and comment these line of code /* < ?php get_sidebar(); ?> */ in page-front-forums.php and page-front-topics.php files.

If this method does not work, then create a file called sidebar.php and drop it inside your main theme folder. sidebar.php must be blank.

Now Reload your forum :p

‘YOU’ Are A Big Deal

If you’re working on your own i.e., if you are your own boss, then you will have the risk of getting distracted or interrupted easily.

This new year, my resolution would be to focus on myself. i.e., You should start focusing on yourselves.

YOU
You are the highest leverage thing in your business/life.

If you are happy, healthy, strong and in good mood, you can perform better and you will have a better result; and at the end of the day you would feel satisfied and thus feel more happy, healthy and strong. Yes, it’s a recursive process. If things don’t work properly, you would feel sad, unhealthy and weak; and there is more chances of getting bad results inturn.

In order to balance our life, we need to take care of 2 things: Profession and Personal Life.

Measure Your Work:
If you are not digging ditches or manufacturing tires or any physical goods for that matter, you will be able to measure the exact amount of work you accomplished at the end of the day.
For example: If you are into information business or if you are into some work which is directly related to information and there is no physical product involved; Like a software: it’s not a physical product.

Tip: Fix the amount of work that you want to accomplish for the day.

Solution:
Fixing a goal and working daily in chunks of fixed blocks of time to achieve the goal. Ex: If you decide to do Yoga, to help yourself with maintaining your health, then do it daily on a fixed time, for a fixed block of time.

Kill Multitasking
All these days I was efficient with multitasking..now also I’m! But if I focus on one specific task alone, I will get better results and finish tasks soon, one at a time.

Do not keep sms’ing, emailing, Facebooking, Tweeting all day or whenever you get distracted by it’s thought. Fix time for most of these things. Yes being in touch with friends is as important, but it’s not the only thing on earth. You dint start your business to end it this way, right ?

Solution
Kill unwanted distractions. I’m going to kill most of it. I’ll sms, email, Facebook, Tweet only once in a day, and not more than 20min for all these things.

And I would make sure, I WILL NOT INTERRUPT OTHERS.

Stop Unhealthy Habit
I’ll not drink caffeine, beer, wine etc. Will stick to healthy diet.

Good Emotional Habits
Yoga, Meditation brings good health to body and mind. It would surly help in the long run to maintain health and good state of mind. With good health and good state of mind, we have more chances of succeeding at whatever that we are doing.
Imagine, if you have some illness and your mental status is out of focus and you are attending a meeting to decide about the future of your company :p How worst the situation can be?

Do’s and Dont:
From now on, we have to do things which brings us closer to our goal. We need to eliminate the useless things which we regularly do, which neither creates value to us nor to others.

Enjoy Life
Regularly Take Break’s. Yes I get satisfied while working. I enjoy my work. But there is a life outside it. We have people who love us. and there are people whom we love.
We need to spend as much time as possible with them. These are the only things that will remain in our heart till the end.
Spend time with your parents, children, wife, girlfriend, friends etc. Remember the last time you had spent time with them, how happy you were.

We need to take time and regularly spend time with loved ones and never ignore them for the sake of business and money.

Reading Books:
If you fall asleep while trying to read books, then, try doing it at the end of the day.
Try to finish reading one book, … two books, .. three books. Take interesting books; things you like to know about.

Slowly you’ll fall in love with books. I’ll end my day reading atleast one chapter from my favorite authors.

Summary:
1. Wake up early in the morning.
2. Start the day with Yoga, Meditation.
3. Eliminate doing things which do not bring any progress in what you want to achieve.
4. Focus on things you want to do: one at a time.
5. Kill multitasking.
6. Take care of yourself. You are the most important thing in your business/life, nothing else. If you stay fit/healthy, you could achieve anything.
7. Your priorities matter. Don’t prioritize wrong things; and don’t ignore the right things.
8. Life has it’s up and down: Know this in advance and continue focusing on your values and do not get distracted.
“Don’t swell when you are happy, don’t dwell when you are sad”

I wish you all the success. Happy New Year. Remember, for all the reasons quoted about and more, ‘YOU’ Are A Big Deal.