Alternatives to windows media player

This is worth trying out - MoreAmp is a Audio player, transcoder and cd ripper - runs on windows and mac as welll.

SoX is  the Swiss Army knife of sound processing programs- but they run only from the command line. 

RBI Guidelines for Corrections in Cheques from 1 July 2010

Hi readers,
I would like to share this important announcement with the august readers [:)] of this blog.

RBI has issued a guideline regarding the handling of cheques which comes into effect from 1 July 2010 - Herafter, i.e. from 1 July 2010, Corrections to the cheque amount in words, cheque amount in numerals, and name of the payee will not be allowed. This means that you cannot strike or rewrite or overwrite the following -
1. The name of the person to whom you are issuing the cheque
2. The amount of the cheque in numerals(numbers)
3.The amount of the cheque written in words.

So, you are allowed to make corrections to only the date, which should have your signature next to it.
Also Banks have been instructed to print/stamp the account number on the cheque as a compulsory measure.

TED Global Conference streaming LIVE in Chennai!

TED conference brings together some of the visionaries and thinkers from all walks of life. The latest edition of TED Global has started today 12 July at Oxford and is a week long event till the 16th of July.

Sigh, but what can we do here in Chennai sitting so many hundred kilometers away? Guess what, We can get to listen to the TED Global talks at 1/128th of the price, that too sitting right here in our Singara Chennai.

Think thats too good to be true? Well, thank your stars and the TEDxChennai team. They are organizing a live telecast of the TED Global event at IIT Madras Research Park on Wednesday and Thursday from 6 PM to 11 PM daily. Its a little late in the day, but well worth it. Go ahead and register at http://tedxchennailive.doattend.com and make hay while the sun shines!

UPDATE: CHANGE IN VENUE - The address of the Venue is
SAE Institute 
6th Floor, Jayalakshmi Estate, 29/8 Haddows Road
Chennai-600006
Phone: +91 (0)44 2820 3942

Podcast Workshop on July 4th 2010

As computer science engineers, we deal with the 'cast' (pun intended) system a lot. We have unicast,multicast,telecast,broadcast, overcast,typecast.. oops too many casts to deal with isnt it? Now of late, there is a new 'cast' ;) that is catching on. Its called the "Podcast". It is a word you will commonly hear when, as a commoner, you stand between 4 or 5 comp sci grads. But for the benefit of the muggles (non techies, common people) let me introduce you to the latest 'cast' in our society - Podcast. 

Podcast is a broadcast. Ah, simple thing. But it is done over the internet. So, in simple terms, its an audio clip containing a discussion about a topic that you can listen directly on/ download from the internet. And the beauty is, whenever a new podcast is published, you will get to know about it immediately through the podcast's RSS feed. Cool isnt it? :) And the good thing about this is that you dont need costly equipment to do your own podcast. All you need is an internet connection, a voice recorder, a computer to upload your recording, and something to talk about.

So now coming to the point, Business Blogging is conducting a workshop on Podcasting - where they give you answer to the question - "How to do Podcasting?"

So go ahead and read about it here - http://businessblogging.org/podcast/the-workshop.html

and register here - http://businessblogging.org/podcast/register.html

Paradox

dotSUB - your video your language

dotSUB is a video sharing website. Ah, whats new, you might ask. What if you could view the videos on that site in a language of your choice? Yes, that sets dotSUB apart from the existing video sharing websites.

With dotSUB you can view the videos that are already there - like any other video sharing website - but there is a high probability that you will find a technical how to video translated and running in,say, Telugu.
Or probably some old Bruce Lee movie clip in Tamil.

What you can also do, is if you know another language besides the language in which the video has been made, then you can do the translation for it. Or you could just transcribe it, i.e. write out the text of the video. In a language of your choice. Cool isnt it?

I find it amazing. Only thing, the guys at Vijay TV (a local channel in Chennai) who dub all those odd oriental movies into tamil might face some stiff competition here. :) But anyway, I believe competition can bring out the best of the talent in people.

So check it out - http://dotsub.com

Something