And the world ends on 21st of December?

For the past two years, thanks to our mainstream media, lot of debates are going on about doomsday. Most of the people are scared about the end of the world. The hysteria has taken the world by storm! What else to say? Recent events around the world have seemed to prove the Apocalypse!

Many believe that recent natural disasters like 'Sandy' storm in US, earthquakes and tsunami in Japan are precursors to the world's end. More than that, several "evidences" have been discovered (or created?) by philosophers, astrologers, and especially media! One of such evidences is "The Mayan Calender".

How true the Mayan Calender's prediction is?

Mayan calender is said to end on 21st of December of 2012, and it is just 10 more days for that day. But in reality, there are many such Mayan calenders! Every calender has different end dates! Then how could we determine which is the actual end date of the earth? Or at least, how could we confidently say that the calender in our focus is the last one of such calenders?! It is not mentioned on the calender like "It is the end!". Just like every year has an end, every Mayan calender also has an end and another new calender begin as a continuity.

It doesn't make sense to believe that Mayans had an extra ordinary ability of foretelling. Only with the advent of modern science the humans started to explore the universe and study its laws. There is no anarchy in the universe, everything has a definite law and they work according to that law. Unless understanding the law, one can't decide the fate of something. Media has repeated it again and again the same crow-sparrow stories under the disguise of 'scientific' analysis.

What to believe?

 No scientist has ever said that world will end on December 21. But media has, again, lied to people that scientists have speculated the end on 21st of December. Despite of all the advances in science and technology, it is a morose that people still yield to blind beliefs so easily. Let the common man be aside, even many scientists yield to superstitions. Last month when Russia sent a cosmonaut crew to International Space Station, I was spellbound by watching a priest performing rituals around the rocket launchpad before the launch!

Is there no end to life on earth?

It is not like world will last forever, it has its doomsday for the future. But for the present estimates, that end is far beyond our many future generations. There is no logical basis for the world to end on 21st December. No asteroids are coming in the hunt of the earth. In fact, thousands of asteroids come and go near (yet in astronomical figures) the earth everyday. But they follow a definite path and no asteroid is found to be having its path through the earth. Storms and earthquakes have been occurring since the birth of earth. If they are more monstrous and increased today, it is because of global warming and man-made crimes. For the rest of the speculations, they are too childish to be true. In my opinion, if world ends, it will not because of natural disaster, but because of human beings!

While everyone is hysterical about the end of the world, anyone thinking of changing the world for the good?

Titan Arum - The biggest flower in the world!

This is not just a flower, but a monster flower! Arum Titan, or scientifically termed as "Amorphophallus titanum", is the largest tropical flower in the world!

Blossomed in Swiss botanical garden of Basel, Switzerland, on 19th of November, Titan Arum has attracted the attention of the whole world by its uniqueness.Titan Arum is 2.27 meters tall and it is also the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world. It is a flower, as well as a plant!

Titan Arum has its origin in the rain forests of Sumatra and blooms only once in every few years. It can grow up to 3 meters and rarely blossoms outside its natural environment. But this is the second time, in Switzerland, it blossomed in last 18 months, thanks to the staff of the Swiss botanical garden for their utmost care! It was April 2011 when Titan Arum had blossomed last time.

Titan Arum is also known for its stinky nature. It releases stinkiest odour that resembles the rotting meat. Yet, this flower has succeeded in attracting more than 25,000 visitors to its place. But if you are intolerant to such smell, just enjoy watching it online!

Print Friendly - Easy way to convert web pages into pdf

Sometimes we would need to print web pages for several purposes. But most of the times we can't expect the printer to print web pages exactly as it looks in the browser. A great looking website in your web browser may go messy on paper. And it would be even helpful if we could get a pdf (portable document format) copy of the web page so that necessary changes can be made to the document before printing it on paper. If you are really looking for something that can do this for you, look no further, go Print Friendly!

PrintFriendly.com helps you to turn web pages printer friendly and also to create pdf copy of the web page. PrintFriendly provides two easy ways to achieve these tasks. One, just point your browser to PrintFriendly.com and type the URL of the web page of your choice in the space provided and you are ready to go. Other, just add the bookmarklet provided on the website to your favorites, go to the web page you want to turn into pdf, and click on this bookmarklet. That's it! You don't need to install any software for this. It works on all the major web browsers like Internet Explorer, Safari, FireFox and Google Chrome.

If you have a website or blog of your own, there available also a button using which your visitors can print or save web pages on your website/blog easily.

Check out how friendly it is by visiting PrintFriendly.Com once :)    

The longest recorded telephone call ever!

 How many hours in a day do you talk on your phone, 6 hours or 12 ? There may be some, if any at all, who would stay on phone as long as half a day. But can you imagine a conversation on phone which would last almost two days ?


Yes, Avery Leonard and Eric Roff Brewster have managed to keep their telephone conversation lively for almost two days to record their names in Guinness Book of World Records! The longest recorded phone call ended after 46 hours 12 minutes and 52 seconds between Avery and Eric, at Adams Pool Theater, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA!


 Think that they must have spent time talking the same coconut tree tale ? Or with just 'yes' or 'no' ? If so, you are wrong! Even a 10 seconds of continuous silence could have disqualified their attempt!


Some of the rule to consider the attempt for Guinness World Record were:


> If there is silence for more than 10 seconds the attempt is disqualified.
> Single word answers like ‘yes’ or ‘no’ do not count as meaningful contributions.
> No two topics of conversation are to be repeated during the attempt.



Both Avery and Eric abided by these rules and it is said that they discussed about 700 topics. Audience were not aware of what was going on in the beginning but later when they came to know about the attempt, their responses were overwhelming.


Thinking of breaking this record ? Well, I think it is almost impossible but remember, Records are meant to be broken!

The Debt Effect - Students turn faces into billboards to pay debt!

After becoming graduates, the first question to answer is not where to work but how to pay the university debt? Yes, global economic slowdown has created such a scenario today that finding a job is almost impossible. At the same time, university debt starts to eat the head. If you are facing the same situation and thinking what to do, here is the answer for your question - Sell your face!

Ross Harper and Ed Moyse, both Oxford alumni, have found a way to pay their university debt. They are selling advertising space on their faces for hundreds of pounds a day! Starting from last October, Ross and Ed are successful in raising more than £32,000 of money and their business is growing day by day like nothing else. Students from as far as Germany and US have contacted Ross and Ed to rent out their face to pay their university debt.

When Ross and Ed faced the question of paying university debt, the face painting idea came to their help."It was kind of wacky with a lot of fun," Harper said. "When it started making money, just from a practical side of things you have to talk to an accountant and things like that, stuff we hadn't expected. Then we were suddenly making enough for it to be more of a career." In the beginning, they had to sell their face ads to their friends and family at as low as  £1 a day. But today, with the increasing demand, they sell face ads for whopping £400 a day!

Anyone from business firm to individual can buy ad space on their face through their website buymyface.co.uk. Harper, a former neuroscience student at Oxford said, "It's our unconventional way of paying off our student debt. The graduate job market is incredibly hostile, and so we thought we'd try and bypass it altogether". Moyse added, "It has exceeded expectations, but we always knew it had value and is novel and crazy."

Chandra Bahadur Dangi - The Shortest Man in the World!

The country with world's tallest mountain is now also the home for world's shortest man! Chandra Bahadur Dangi, a 72 year old man from Nepal is now the shortest person in the world. Measured 21.5 inches or 54.6 centimeters, Chandra Bahadur Dangi was the world's shortest person living and shortest person ever measured by Guinness World Records as well!

Dangi has lived all his life in a remote village in Nepal and is now dreaming of travelling across the world. He broke the previous record of Junrey Balawing of the Philippines, who is 23.5 inches or 60 centimeters tall. Though he is short, small and aged, Dangi says that he has never undergone any treatment or medication by doctors! When he suffers cold or fever, he has his own way to cure them; drinking hot water with turmeric powder dissolved in it, which according to him, makes fever stay no longer than three days.



Dangi has six brothers, two sisters and his parents were died when he was just 16. The illiteracy caused him to wait so long to claim the award as he was unaware of any such record before! He wants to visit foreign countries and meet people around the world. He is happy that he is now popular all over the world as shortest person ever lived. And he is also the oldest person to be awarded as shortest person in the world.



Despite of being the smallest person in the world, Chandra Bahadur Dangi is a hard worker. He work all day making placemats and head straps for village people to carry load on their backs. He even look after buffalos and cows.



We people make fun of him but only Dangi could know the feeling of being short. Life is much harder for him than we imagine. Most of his time he spend at home and he needs assistance to move around.  But he has lived through 72 years and still works to support his family.

Facebook Messenger for Windows - A little Facebook browser!

Facebook has made connecting with the friends and family easy. By making the app available to all kind of mobile devices, Facebook made it easier to stay connected on the go. Now it is time to turn back to your PC again, because Messenger for Windows is on the way!

Messenger for Windows is a new, official, trial app for your windows PC by Facebook that lets you use Facebook without being on www.facebook.com. That means using this light weight and easy to use app, you can use most of the Facebook service without logging in through your web browser.

This app lets you


~ Chat and message with your Facebook friends.


~ See the latest updates from your friends in ticker.


~ Get quick notifications about what's going on.


One-time setup is all you need to use this app. It automatically install updates, so you don't need to worry about updating it every time a new release arrives. Messenger for Windows hasn't been made public yet as this is the first and trial version. As you might know, problems are inevitable at this stage. But expect it to work better as they release new updates.



 Messenger for Windows is just like a little Facebook outside the web browser. It is working fine on my computer for the past few days, and hope it continues to work fine. If you want to try this app and also want to be the first among your friends to use, download Messenger for Windows here. Already using Messenger for Windows ? Your feedback is very much important and helps Facebook team to improve the app much faster. You can provide feedback on your experience here.

Still, what are you waiting for ? ;)

Nokia Asha 200 - Classy phone in the Class!

It is again testing time for Nokia in the Indian Mobile Phone Market. Nokia has sold 19.4 million smart phones all over the world in last three months, outgrowing the expectations of Analysts. But Nokia suffered more than a billion dollar loss during that period. Though high end market is going fine for Nokia, low end is not. Especially a lucrative market like India is going out of Nokia's hand. To gain momentum, Nokia has launched a new feature-rich phone, named Asha 200.

Nokia Asha 200 is a dual SIM phone with compact QWERTY Keypad.  Asha, which means hope in Indian languages, has been designed with middle class people in mind. Change SIM without turning the phone off, just like you hot swap the memory card. Asha 200 is a colorful and stylish phone which also features a 2 mega pixel rare camera, 64 MB in built storage which is expandable up to 32 GB, and a well built web browser. Web browser supports HTML, XHTML, CSS, and Javascript. A proxy browser with compression technology helps faster data transmission and also reduces data usage.

Battery can stand up to 7 hours of 2G talk time and 30 days in standby mode. Nokia Asha 200 supports high speed USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR for local connectivity. Email, chatting, IM are made easy with Asha. FM recording user interface has been built into Radio Player, easing the recording process. Plenty of audio formats like wav,  wma, aac, amr, and video formats like wmv, mp4, 3gpp are supported.


This colorful phone is available in five colors, namely, Aqua, Green, Graphite, Light Pink, and White. Nokia Asha 200 is environmental friendly, made of 100% recycled materials, phone is is recyclable up to 47%. It costs around $90 or Rs.4300.   With all these great features built into one phone, Nokia Asha 200 is one of the best phone in its class, making it a perfect choice for your next buy. But one thing it seriously lacks is touchscreen. In this 'Touch' generation, what level would this phone succeed to? Only time can answer.

Avast Free Mobile Security for Android - Not just an Antivirus!

Is your Android phone still unsecured ? or are you still paying for antivirus on your Android phone ? If your answer is yes for any one of these questions, you need to change something to something better, or even best !

Avast has come up with a full featured antivirus and anti-theft security for your Android phone, available for free. Yes, you really don't need to pay anything! If you are using Avast Free Antivirus on your PC, you will be aware of mighty power of it. Now this impressive security solution has been extended to your Android phone as well.

Recently, Avast purchased ITAgents, maker of Theft Aware, and has combined the best anti-theft solution of Theft Aware with Avast's award winning antivirus technologies to build Avast Free Mobile Security. Avast Free Mobile Security features many amazing features, which, even paid security doesn't provide.

Some of the amazing features of this app are listed below.

~ Antivirus - Perform on demand scan of all installed apps and memory card contents. You can also schedule scans.

~ App Manager - Know which apps are running on your phone, how much memory they are consuming, and their CPU load, with options to stop or uninstall a particular app.

~ Great User Interface - Easy to use and well formatted user interface.

~ SMS/Call filtering - Filter unwanted calls and messages, based on many parmeters.

~ Web Shield - Scans each  URL that loads on your browser and warns if they are malware infected.

~ Firewall - Stop hackers from running unhealthy apps to gain access to your phone. (works only on rooted phones)

~ Stealth Mode - Makes the app invisible, creating complexities for thieves to detect and remove.

~ SIM card change notification - Get notified when new unauthorised SIM card is inserted. (you can authorize SIM cards)

~ Remote Controlling features - Control your phone through SMS commands! On theft, activate Siren, lock the phone, locate phone location through Wi-Fi, GPS or mobile network, remotely wipe all the contents of your phone including SMS/MMS. You can remotely send SMS from your phone to another phone! All the anti-theft settings can also be changed remotely.

You can find the complete set of SMS commands here. Click here to download Avast Free Mobile Security. Still, what are you waiting for ?!

John 'Dr. Hot Licks' Taylor - The Fastest Guitarist in the World!

Ever wondered who is the fastest guitarist in the world and how fast he plays the guitar ? Answer for this question is John Taylor and the speed at which he plays the guitar is 620 beats per minute (bpm) ! John 'Dr. Hot Licks' Taylor is the fastest guitarist alive, certified by Guinness World Records offcials.

John Taylor, a 28 year old music teacher from Westminister, Colorado achieved a blazing speed of 620 bpm while playing "Flight of the Bumblebee" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsokov, at the Olympian City Shopping mall in Kowloon, Hong Kong, on new year's eve.

At that speed, it is impossible to verify the correctness of the music. Moreover it feels just like listening to a random videogame sound effect than music. But the slow motion video revealed that John was successful in achieving 10.2 beats per second, without a single error ! He broke his own record of playing guitar at 600 bpm. 

John Taylor had a dream of becoming the fastest guitarist in the world, shorlty after picking up the guitar at the age of 13. He used to practice 'The flight of the Bumblebee' for an hour everyday, despite of the hand cramps he had to experience. He use specially designed picks with angled tips that help smooth transitions between the strings of his guitar. Finally his years of practice has been rewarded. He is trying to go even faster and thinks that he could reach at least 800 bpm!

The Guinness officials have set 'The flight of the Bumblebee', a century old, famous and complex composition,  as a standard for fastest guitarist record to avoid record aspirants going through a single note.

Wang Zhonghua - The man with Iron arms !

Practice makes man Perfect! There is nothing on this earth a man can't achieve with practice. When will power gets together with practice, one can make wonders! Here is a man from China who stands as a proof to above said words.

Wang Zhonghua is the Guinness World Record holder for maintaining human flag for longest duration. Wang successfully maintained his body to form a human flag for a duration of 1 min 5.71 seconds to win the title. Thousands of people witnessed this immense display of upper body strength on the set of CCTV Guinness World Records Special in Beijing, China on 15 August 2011. Watch Wang Zhonghua showcasing his iron arms in the below video.



The previous record was also in the name of Wang. He had maintained human flag for 56 seconds on the set of Zheng Da Zong Yi - Guinness World Records Special in Beijing, China on 21 December 2010. Wang improved his previous record by adding roughly 10 more seconds to the duration.

Ten seconds may look small but here it has a great weight. Wang Zhonghua is really a man with Iron arms, isn't he ?!