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How to Get a free US Phone Number from anywhere in the world
Once you have a US local phone number, your friends and relatives in the US will be able to dial you from their landline or regular cell phones without paying international rates. The calls can be forwarded to your mobile phone or desktop based VoIP softphones (also see: Make phone calls over the Internet).
Skype also offers a service called Skype-In (also known as Online Number) where you can get a local phone number for USA but it costs around $18 for 3 months.
Getting your own USA Phone Number – Step by Step
Step 1: Sign-up for a free account with CallCentric.com and click continue. CallCentric will send you a confirmation mail to verify your email address.
Step 2: Once you’ve verified the email address, provide your city and country code, agree to the terms and conditions and click “Sign me up.”
Step 3: CallCentric will now provide you with a virtual tour of their websites. Skip it and choose – “Go to My CallCentric.” The next screen will list your CallCentric # in the format 1777** – copy that number to the clipboard.
Step 4: Open a new browser tab and go to phone.ipkall.com. Set the account type as SIP and paste the CallCentric # from the clipboard into the field that says SIP Username. The hostname is in.callcentric.com and choose the same email address and password that you used while setting up your CallCentric account.
[*] The default area code for your local US phone number is 253 but you may choose a different one from the drop-down. For this example, I’ll go with 425.
Step 5: Within a minute, you should get an email from ipkall.com with your new local phone number. Keep the email handy as you’ll need it while configuring the SIP client.
Step 6: Now that we have got ourselves a US phone number, let’s activate it.
6a. Download and install Express Talk on your computer. The trial version is good enough for our task. Make sure that you don’t install any of the “optional components” like toolbars, etc. during the setup.
6b. During installation, choose the default options for all the wizard screens. When you are on “SIP Setup,” choose “Yes, I already have a SIP account” and click Next. Fill the SIP details as in Step 4 above. Finish the setup.
6c. Once the setup is complete, go back to your My CallCentric page and refresh it. You should see a notification saying – “your phone is registered.” Done!
Next steps – You can now grab a SIP VoIP client for your mobile phone and configure it with your new CallCentric /ipKall number. Most Nokia Symbian phones can be configured for SIP without external apps or just search for “SIP phone” in iTunes or the Android marketplace.
Popular mobile app Fring is free and also supports SIP but for some reason, I couldn’t get it to work with CallCentric’s SIP server.
WWF for Printless PDFs – Now Available on Windows
The WWF file format, in case you missed reading about it before, is just a regular PDF file except that you can’t print the content of that document. This format was developed by WWF Germany to prevent unnecessary printing.
You may download the WWF software for free from SaveAsWWF.com and it’s now available for both Mac and Windows machines.
The WWF software will install as a virtual PDF printer and you can then convert documents or emails to the WWF format by simply printing them with this new printer.
Once installed, the software will also associate the .wwf extension with the default PDF reader on your machine but if you are sending that file to someone else who may not have the WWF software, just change the extension from .wwf to .pdf and they won’t even notice the difference –
The Total Number of Web Domains
The total number of domain names registered worldwide has recently crossed the 200 million mark (201.8 million to be precise) according to a VeriSign report.
These numbers reflect “domain name registrations” and therefore the total number of websites on the Internet would be much higher.
To give you an example, 16 million blogs are currently hosted on WordPress.com – these are separate websites but since they are all part of one domain, they won’t have any effect on the overall VeriSign numbers.
The most popular Top Level Domains (TLDs), in terms of registrations, were .com, .de, .net, .uk, .org, .info, .cn, .nl, .eu and .ru in the same order.
The Marriage Aptitude Test
1. Write a snark-free essay on two of the following (3000+ words):
1. My dad (your would-be father-in-law)
2. Your emotions right now
3. Foreplay
2. Describe the appearance of your ideal woman, starting with her shoes. Actually, just the shoes—the rest, I know.
3. Critique the outfits I wore on our last 7 dates (skip the 3rd and 5th most recent dates; add more detail about the 6th.)
4. Write a hypothetical conversation between you and any one of my girl-friends, where she will find you cute, endearing, sexy, funny and attractive, but not flirty; she should feel herself attracted to you, while realizing that she is definitely not your type.
5. Draw a dinner fork, a teaspoon and a tablespoon. To scale.
6. List (all questions compulsory):
1. 10 colors that are not in the rainbow, or in a box of crayons.
2. 10 things you can do that my mom will find cute (bonus points for listing things that I haven’t told you).
3. All our anniversaries and important days (use additional sheets if necessary).
4. All festivals when you are not permitted to discuss religion, or give any variant of your “how 99% of the world’s religions are already extinct” speech.
5. 10 friends—besides members of your “band”—that you think you will need to phase out of your life, once we’re married. (Do not include friends that have already been phased out.)
7. Write the last joke you will ever make about my brother’s writing, clothing or preference for drinking warm water.
8. Describe your favorite book of all time, and discuss how it could be improved to match Gone With The Wind.
9. Describe in brief all your ex-girlfriends. Attach their pictures. All the pictures. And gifts, etc. Basically everything that’s in “the box.” Just attach the whole box.
10. Under what circumstances are you permitted to lie to me ? (One word or less.)
@neoindian
Fun for Fun
Raju Raju had a great fall
Balance sheet died
Shareholders cried
Raju Raju made a fraud
Raju Raju
Yes baba
Cheating us
No baba
Telling Lies
No baba
Open the balance sheet
HA HA HA
@raagavihaari
Parents take the high tech info route for school analysis.What DNA says
Are the teachers good?
Can a child cope after four years of alternative education in a traditional school?”
These are just a few of the many queries that pop up on the interactive forums on admission/parenting websites today. As school admission dates draw closer and parents try and make important decisions about which school is best for their children, their top source of information now is the interactive website.
Forums like parentree.org, zeeksha.com, schoolsearch.in, onlineschooladmissions.com are a great help to parents who need instant information or if they want to interact with other parents across the city. Though some schools have put up their own websites on the Internet, it is these interactive forums that parents find most helpful.
Says Reena Sofiya, programme manager, Target and parent, “I work all day and I just don't get the time to call up schools for information. And so I use the help of interactive websites that give me all the details I need. I get to know what other parents are talking about and though I would not make a decision based solely on these opinions, at least I get the primary information. I find it best to talk personally to the parents I find on these sites. My favourite site is parentree.org . My son is only one year nine months now and attends a Montessori toddler's programme now, but I am already planning ahead to when he joins a school.”
According to another parent Dhanya Menon who is a corporate lawyer, a website can only be a starting point. “Though I use the Internet for a lot of purposes when it comes to something major like school admissions, I would not rely on it entirely. But it is a point where you can get started and something that will supplement my other efforts. Also I don't look at schools that are heavily publicized, and I would not go by the number of hits that a site gets. I rely completely on content. For example if a blog says a teacher was very mean to a child, I would be put off immediately as I am a very cautious person.”
Some parents search the websites for specific information. Says Chaitali Sarkar, stay at home mum, who has a 22 month old daughter. “Many schools do not have enough information on their websites; so if I need dynamic info like opinions about a school, I would go to an interactive website. I like to know more about the schools and I try to get to know the parents too. If I want to speak to them in person I call them up. I also go through the blogs in detail. Unfortunately, many of these blogs are only available on alternative school sites, not on traditional schools. Once I have got the information I need, I usually go and check out the school itself, and observe the attitude of the principal and the staff.”
For Anuradha Banerjee, parent,who works in a leading bank, location is of prime importance. “These forums are very good for working couples and we get to know more than what is available on a school's website. I also like to see if the school has a good listing and this would be my primary research. The reviews on the Internet forums, however, have to be taken with a pinch of salt however as people's personal opinions keep varying. I also like to see how many children have gotten into noted institutes like the IIT from these schools. I also like the fact that you can put up posts and connect with other parents too.”
Heads of schools feel that parents should look at any website objectively. Says Santosh Gnanakan, director of communications, Acts Group that runs various schools and educational institutions across the country, “It is a good idea to be able to check out websites as a lot of parents are at office and would like to look for information. No parent will, in any case go entirely by a website. An internet forum therefore plays a small but important role when a parent is selecting a school. It is also good that parents are blogging because that keeps schools on their toes and this is the age of information so people will blog and express their opinions.
But parents should be intelligent enough not to dismiss a school just because one parent has had a bad day with a teacher. There is always another side to the story.”
@chitra Aiyer
found this letter in ACM portal,funny and eyeopening for researchers
Editor's Corner
A letter from the frustrated author of a journal paper Editor's Note: It seems appropriate, in this issue of JSS containing the findings of our annual Top Scholars/Institutions study, to pay tribute to the persistent authors who make a journal like this, and a study like that, possible. In their honor, we dedicate the following humorous, anonymously-authored, letter!
Dear Sir, Madame, or Other:
Enclosed is our latest version of Ms. #1996-02-22-RRRRR, that is the re-re-re-revised revision of our paper. Choke on it. We have again rewritten the entire manuscript from start to finish. We even changed the g-d-running head! Hopefully, we have suffered enough now to satisfy even you and the bloodthirsty reviewers.
I shall skip the usual point-by-point description of every single change we made in response to the critiques. After all, it is fairly clear that your anonymous reviewers are less interested in the details of scientific procedure than in working out their personality problems and sexual frustrations by seeking some kind of demented glee in the sadistic
and arbitrary exercise of tyrannical power over hapless authors like ourselves who happen to fall into their clutches.
We do understand that, in view of the misanthropic psychopaths you have on your editorial board, you need to keep sending them papers, for if they were not reviewing manuscripts they would probably be out mugging little old ladies or clubbing baby seals to death. Still, from this batch of reviewers, C was clearly the most hostile, and we request that you not ask him to review this revision. Indeed, we have mailed letter bombs to four or ®ve people we suspected of being reviewer C, so if you send the manuscript back to them, the review process could be unduly delayed. Some of the reviewersÕ comments we could not do anything about. For example, if (as C suggested) several of my recent ancestors were indeed drawn from other species, it is too late to change that. Other suggestions were imple-mented, however, and the paper has been improved and bene®ted. Plus, you suggested that we shorten the manuscript by ®ve pages, and we were able to accomplish this very e€ectively by altering the margins and printing the paper in a di€erent font with a smaller typeface. We agree with you that the paper is much better this way.
One perplexing problem was dealing with suggestions 13±28 by reviewer B. As you may recall (that is, if you even bother reading the reviews before sending your decision letter), that reviewer listed 16 works that he/she felt we should cite in this paper. These were on a variety of different topics, none of which had any relevance to our work that we could see. Indeed, one was an essay on the Spanish-American war from a high school literary magazine. The only common thread was that all 16 were by the same author, presumably someone whom reviewer B greatly admires and feels should be more widely cited. To handle this, we have modified the Introduction and added, after the review of the relevant literature, a subsection entitled ``Review of Irrelevant Literature'' that discusses these articles and also duly addresses some of the more asinine suggestions from other reviewers.
We hope you will be pleased with this revision and will finally recognize how urgently deserving of publication this work is. If not, then you are an unscrupulous, depraved monster with no shred of human decency. You ought to be in a cage. May whatever heritage you come from be the butt of the next round of ethnic jokes. If you do accept it, however, we wish to thank you for your patience and wisdom throughout this process, and to express our appreciation for your scholarly insights. To repay you, we would be happy to review some manuscripts for you; please send us the next manuscript that any of these reviewers submits to this journal.
Assuming you accept this paper, we would also like to add a footnote acknowledging your help with this manuscript and to point out that we liked the paper much better the way we originally submitted it, but you held the editorial shotgun to our heads and forced us to chop, reshu‚e, hedge, expand, shorten, and in general convert a meaty paper
into stir-fried vegetables. We could not ± or would not ± have done it without your input.
R.L. Glass
Computing Trends,
E-mail address: rglass@acm.org
The Journal of Systems and Software 54 (2000) 1
www.elsevier.com/locate/jss
0164-1212/00/$ - see front matter Ó 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0164-1212(00)00020-0
JOB Openings in VIT University vellore# Lab Staff Positions
| S.No | Post Name | No of Vacancies | Minimum Educational Qualification | Required Skill set / Certifications |
| 1 | Lab Assistant: Hardware | 1 | Diploma in CSE / ECE / EEE | Basic Electronics Knowledge, Microcontroller, Board Level Knowledge, Assembly Programming Knowledge |
| 2 | Lab Assistant: Operating Systems / Networking | 1 | Diploma in IT/CSE (or) B.Sc. (CS) | Certifications like Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE), Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) & Cisco Certified Network Administrator |
| 3 | Lab Assistant: DBMS | 1 | Diploma in IT/CSE (or) BCA & B.Sc. (CS) | Certifications like Oracle Certified Professional (OCP), Oracle Certified Administrator (OCA) |
| 4 | Lab Assistant: Software Engineering Tools | 1 | Diploma in CSE (or) BCA & B.Sc. (CS) | STQC - Standardisation Testing and Quality Certification from Department of Information Technology |
My Mission 10X experience -past and post.....
How it started
I got a mail in our university mailbox, stating that a training program, by wipro is to be held for a week, and that was the first time of that kind-of training program in the University. There were no competitions for the seats, which was limited with constraints. I got it, actually we got it ,as we three of our faculty friends resistered.Little we know that the training program “Mission 10X” by Corporate giant “WIPRO” is going to change our professional Life.
Day 1
We were all asked to be in the auditorium at 9.00 am for the inaugural function. As usual we were there by dot 09.10(our mind time is set in that pattern ,that we do go to any inaugural ten minutes late to find out that we were already 15 minutes earlier.) ,possessions were all set in correct fashion ,and eventually got over in the stipulated time frame.
The first glimpse of the resource person was not very attractive in the perspective of agedness, we usually are in a standpoint that somebody old with salt and pepper head are worth a teacher (that IIT, IISC, kind-of).The lady in our auditorium was introduced as so and so and most of the participant are bytes older than her. But the minute she opened her mouth, we were all out of thought, several questions raised in our minds, eventually as her talk got sank in our brains.
Day 2
The resource person was trying to disapprove several of our teaching skills, which we were hundred percent sure that, it was optimal. Videos of our teaching explained properly where we lagged, was it body-language, English language, subject or lag of passion for teaching. On watching there own two minute videos, Self-consciousness rose among all the participants and later transformed itself in to competition and confidence, filling the room filled with professionalism. I saw with my own eyes forty plus professors, expressing their feeling and objections for the first time officially and openly.
Day 3
The timeliness and punctuality of the participants was also altered in to a better state, the treatment is with a dose of embracement (whenever a participant comes to the learning centre after a break, he will be welcomed with a huge round of clapping).
Day 4
The one thing that needs to make a person perfect, complete and composed is his book-keeping manners. Mission 10X flaunted the way we need to write our course file, technical descriptions and lesson plans .that was eye –opening and we saved a lot of time after that forever.
Day 5
Though all the teachings of Mission 10X are exempts for
The overall one –week process was clear and clean and each one of them absorbed it like a sponge, still using it in our career.
Mission 10 x –enlightens every teaching soul.
Back to classroom (The Plot)
The class room was as usual, the students were little dull, as it was the last but not the least period in mid day (maybe they were happy for a week, and I am in today so they are like this).I decided that I need to make use of all the techniques, tricks and magic thought to me to improve the teaching –learning process. I personally feel that my University was the best plot to play this post mission 10 x games, as students were from different latitudes and longitudes and each of them had different moods and reactions. Someone wants the teacher to teach for all the fifty minutes, someone at the last, don’t want the class itself (will go for so called self realization, that’s self learning).The best teacher is the one who fulfills all the extremes .I had got the training to be a best teacher at ease.
I started the class with a round of huge applause, with the class co-operating for it little with less decibels. They asked what for I asked them to clap their hands; I said that is thanking me in advance for what they are going to get from in for the whole semester.
I asked the students to move out of their comfort zone, by replacing them from their existing seating positions. Told them to “change their views”. Little more alert they were in their newer seats ,little more conscious .The class was divided in to several segments ,time frames for teaching,learning,activity based learning,experimenting,and so on to get through over what we were doing.
The fifty minutes class was not so enough for us this time. Anyway I felt happy about it.
The mission 10 x program taught as to notice each and every activity of the students, that too who doesn’t have the property of getting concept faster, or the slow learners. I used to traverse to loop and corners of the class (not standing only with front benchers) to grab their attention.
By this implementation, I personally came to know about each and every one in the class, starting from their unique register number and first names.
Results came, all was good, as forecasted, and the hypothesis was right, not null.
I still was going on with the magic of mission 10x to my classroom, looking forward for the next class always. (One secret to share, I got 93% feedback on that semester)
All my blog followers were in thoughts, about me un-blogging all that week. “Yes” I got locked in myself in another world, called mission 10X and came out with an real experience on the teaching-learning process .Mission 10x is Wipro’s initiative to improve the quality of the Engineering teachers, who were never trained formally ,How To Teach. Students finishing their post graduation degree, just enter an engineering college or a University, chalk in hand. Thinking the fact, the fate of the Future India also lies in the hands of engineers. Azim Premji’s this initiative
The primary vitality of the training to my experience was not with the different approach to teaching –learning paradigm, but with the application of the same in order.
They focused on the issue of University teacher (like the word more than Professor) perspectives on the students. Mostly Every One of them always thinks the students as someone ready and born to fool them. True in some case, but due to wrong perception of the student dimension, things get worse. It was a eye-opener, when they taught as how to deal with last benchers and late comers (class claps for them, another students writes his/her name on the board, late coming students gets embarrassed and ultimately never comes late again).
The training focused on facial expression and hand movement to be done by the teacher while lecturing training a student to understand a complex topic. The 30 registered university faculty were video graphed for all their actions and was reviewed. It was nice to see oneself teaching to himself, more than self evaluation and thereby evolution.
The post sessions
The portal that have been dedicated to the teaching community by wipro is buzzing with activities .various innovations in the teaching learning process are being done by technical teachers ,across the country. It gives newer perspective for a professional to look at the problems. Subjects are not restricted to numbers and it has all domains of engineering and science. The basic principle of mission 10x of making teachers from rural and back staged arts of the country to get the knowledge of cutting edge is fulfilled.
The portal carries different representations of a same concept in varieties like charts ,diagram, picture ,puzzles,games,illustrations,program ,analogy and lot more.It a big think tank.
I still follow their teaching; I dedicate this article to them, who were behind the mission plus to their mentor Azim Premji.
Disclaimer:-This is not a friction.
