Another loss for Indian test cricket

A great loss for Indian team, that they loss their majestic captain from test matches. Yes Mahendra Singh Dhoni has retired from Test cricket as an effect of serious defeats in overseas. The decision comes after India drew the third Test in Melbourne on Tuesday. Out of the 90 Tests he played, Dhoni led India in 60 matches. Dhoni finished with most Test wins as India captain (27), beating the previous best of 21 wins held by Sourav Ganguly.

After the 3rd test match between India and Australia this news came up as a atomic bomb. Dhoni’s decision came as a surprise since there is one more Test remaining in the series. He did not make the announcement at his post-match press conference.

The Board said: “M.S. Dhoni has chosen to retire from Test cricket in order to concentrate on the ODI and t20 formats. One of India’s greatest Test captains under whose leadership India became the No. 1 team in the Test Rankings, Dhoni has decided to retire from Test cricket to minimal his burden of playing all formats.

The 33-year-old Dhoni led India in 60 Tests and has the most number of victories (27) by an Indian captain. He took over from Anil Kumble in 2008. Under his leadership, India reached a historic No. 1 Test ranking in December 2009, a position it held for 18 months.

Known for his calm mind, Dhoni captained India to three premier ICC titles, the No. 1 Test spot, the ICC World Twenty20 in 2007 and the ICC ODI World Cup in 2011.

An often explosive middle-order batsman, the stylish hard hitter as well finisher Mr."Cool"(Dhoni) made 4,876 runs in 90 Tests at 38.09. As a energetic wicket-keeper for the most part, he held 256 catches and makes 38 stumpings.

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A Give Away Software for a day

“When you look up the word free in the dictionary, you’ll find a lot of definitions, but in the days of digital dependency and a falling economy, free only means one thing—expensive stuff for nothing. And if you own a Windows computer, one of the best sites to get free software from is Giveaway of the Day.
Giveaway of the Day has been around since 2006, with a few bumps in the road, but it’s still going strong thanks to PC users looking for great deals—free deals. Every day they have a new piece of licensed software available for Windows operating systems,Android,iPhone varying from helpful system tools to file format converters to cool photo editors.”

There are two perks that come with using the Internet. The first is that, whatever you need done, you can probably find software that will do it. The second is that, a lot of times, you can find free software to do whatever you need done.
Who doesn’t love free software? And there are enough freeware and shareware sites all over the Internet to keep me occupied for hours at a time.
I’ve seen programs at Give Away of the Day that would usually cost you a hundred dollars or more, and you can get them at this site for no cost. But there is only a twenty four hour window of opportunity. Once you miss a giveaway, it’s gone. In fact, if you don’t want to weep, ignore the list of past giveaways that you’ve already missed.
Give Away of the Day is a site I make sure I visit every day. And you should to.”

Check for free software's daily at  giveawayoftheday.

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Garden -A gods gift

Kaatrile manam Veesaa..

Kangalil paravasam suzhlala..

Vandinangal vattamida..

paravaikal padaiydukka...

Paraparapaana pattana vazhlkaiyai..maranthu ...

marangalodu uravadi, kuyilgalodu kathai pesi

pattamboochiyai parakiren...

vasantham kalla varaverpin varaverpodu yngal poonthotathil..

pookalodu pookalai poothu nirkiren..

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Online marketing - A master plan to drive more upsells

Upselling your customers may possibly be the biggest source of revenue that you’re missing out on. Traditionally, online marketers spend a lot of time and money on driving new and relevant traffic to their website, with their ultimate goal being to drive more conversions. However, every additional conversion from a new visitor can cost a large sum of money. Upselling focuses on the driving additional conversions from your current customers, and can be the largest and most profitable revenue source for any business. Focusing on customer service is one traditional strategy that businesses have used to maintain customer retention, but through online marketing and social media, businesses now have an arsenal of marketing tools that can further help with customer retention and upselling.

Online marketing gives businesses a lot more access to its customer base, therefore providing additional tools and tactics that can be used toward driving upsells. Here are three channels that you can use to effectively improve your upsell game:

1. Social Media – A study  found that 53% of people are more likely to purchase a brand after following and engaging with that brand on Facebook. No, this doesn’t mean that you should focus your entire social strategy on Facebook, this means that you should engage with your audience on the social platforms that they live on.
2. Retargeting – Traditionally, retargeting is used to drive lost conversions by keeping ads in front of a website’s bounced visitors. We have also found retargeting to be an awesome upsell tool. By segmenting all of your current customers, you can keep your upsell-focused messages in front of your customers. In fact, we’ve found CTRs and conversion rates (conversions per impressions) to be anywhere from 3% to 5% higher than standard site-based retargeting.
3. Email Marketing – Marketers are only now tapping into the full potential of this tried and true channel. While the idea behind email marketing focuses on keeping your brand’s latest messages in front of your prospects and customers, focusing on A/B testing your email subjects and content can further improve the value of your email marketing strategies.

While selling to new customers helps expand your customer base, upselling your current customers can additionally generate a tremendous amount of revenue from your customer base to your business. Focusing on customer service has conventionally helped lots of businesses retain and drive additional sales from their customer base, but utilizing tactics such as social media, retargeting, and email marketing can help further improve your upsell strategy.


Courtesy :retargeter.com

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Qt vs. HTML5 - An Analysis on Cross Platform Apps

Although building a separate native app per platform is currently proving to be the most successful approach for mass market consumer apps, there are still a lot of situations where it makes more sense to go cross-platform. In this article we’ll look at the most popular option, hybrid web apps built with HTML5, versus an up-and-coming challenger, Qt.

 Why Qt?

Those who know the history of Qt may be surprised to see it described as “up and coming”. Qt was originally designed for building cross-platform desktop apps, it’s creators started working on it in 1994! However, Qt became interesting for mobile development after Nokia bought Trolltech, the company developing Qt at the time, and invested heavily into making it the ideal toolkit for building mobile apps. Unfortunately, Nokia was making this strategic decision shortly before the iPhone launched (the acquisition was completed afterwards). This changed the game from building apps for devices with numeric keypads and Qwerty keyboards, to large touch-screen based devices. The former Trolltech engineers recognised that they needed a very different way of creating apps for Nokia’s offering to compete.
When Steve Jobs said that the iPhone was 5 years ahead of the competition at launch, he was not far wrong. Android had managed to close some of that gap, probably due to executives at Google having some advanced warning about the iPhone. Unfortunately, Nokia eventually gave up on it’s own Qt based devices in favour of Windows Phone as the software efforts were taking too long and they were falling a long way behind in the ecosystem wars. They sold Qt to one of their major services company suppliers – Digia – who have recently established a fully-owned separate entity for the product, The Qt Company. Only after being fully disentangled from Nokia has Qt been able to return to its roots as a cross-platform framework and start supporting the major mobile platforms. However, in the mean time, others had seen the great foundation for mobile apps that Nokia’s investment created. As a result the BlackBerry 10, Jolla Sailfish, Ubuntu Mobile and Tizen platforms all have Qt as a core framework.
From a personal perspective, I re-wrote a popular iOS game for Symbian using Qt in early 2011. The UI design and general debugging tools were a bit immature at the time but it was one of the simplest learning curves and most pleasant development experiences I’ve had on any platform (note: I was not paid to say that), even though the core of Qt is using the less than developer friendly but high performance C++. I was able to achieve smooth 60fps performance on some rather low-spec hardware. It was easy enough to learn their new UI technology, Qt Quick, and build the menu screens for the game with it in a couple of days.

Why HTML5, or why not?

HTML5 is the most popular option for developers building cross-platform mobile apps, however, it appears to be falling out of favour a little. Web browsers and web views are available on every platform and web developers are able to transfer their skills from building websites to building mobile apps. Open source frameworks like Cordova (PhoneGap) allow developers using HTML5 to access additional mobile specific functionality and make it easy to package apps in a native format for each platform. The added bonus is that you can usually have a version of your app on the web as well as in the app stores for minimal additional effort. HTML5 is generally more productive for building UI centric applications than native apps. There is also an embarrassment of riches when it comes to libraries and frameworks for building mobile web apps. Hybrid web apps are in the privileged position (on iOS at least) of being able to update their code directly, avoiding the App Store review process for all but major changes.

Given its ubiquity and large developer base, why isn’t HTML5 the default cross-platform approach? Despite many advantages, hybrid web app developers have been struggling with performance (partly due to crippled or outdated webview implementations, an issue which has been fixed in the latest versions of iOS & Android, although this will take a while to penetrate the entire installed base). There is also an issue with varying levels of support for standards across mobile browsers (again, this is something that’s improving but not entirely fixed yet). Web technologies have also not really been designed for the highly animated UIs that are now expected by mobile users. This is something that the much hyped Famo.us framework aims to resolve.
A number of very high profile consumer startups have publicly switched from web hybrid to native mobile app approaches. The most common reason stated for these switches has been lack of adequate tooling. It’s certainly possible to make web apps perform well on mobile devices within their limited memory budgets but with the current state of debugging and profiling tools, that’s still not an easy thing to do compared to producing native apps. This said, not all apps need flawless UI animations and we’re not comparing HTML5 with native, so lets look at how it goes head to head with Qt.

Qt vs. HTML5 – Pros & Cons

Supported platforms:

• HTML5 is supported almost everywhere.
• Qt is supported on all major platforms (and minor ones that happen to use it for their UI).

Although in theory you can target more platforms with HTML5, this is not how most developers are using it in the real world. HTML5 developers are increasingly abandoning the browser and building hybrid apps. Most mobile developers are targeting some subset of Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Windows 8 and BlackBerry 10. Qt supports all of these and more. In fact, in practice our data shows that Qt developers actually target fractionally more platforms on average than HTML5 developers. As a result, this is basically a tie for most developers with a significant advantage to HTML5 for those who really want to run their software everywhere (feature phones, Smart TVs etc.).

Learning curve:
This one depends whether you’re already a web developer. If you are, learning to build mobile web apps is probably easier than learning Qt. However, if you’re new to either then Qt has significant advantages in terms of having one framework to learn rather than 10s of them to choose from before you even start. Qt also has great documentation, which isn’t necessarily true for all web frameworks. In a fair contest, this is a clear win for Qt.
Openness:

• HTML5 is open standards based and there are multiple open source implementations.
• Qt is open source but dual licensed and effectively controlled by a single vendor.

Clearly HTML5 is more open than Qt. This isn’t always an advantage. The process of creating standards and getting multiple vendors to implement them is slow, Qt can be more agile. If you really need something fixed or a new feature added in open source you can do it yourself or pay someone to do it. If you need to support Internet Explorer and there’s an issue with it, you have to work around or wait for Microsoft. Then again, there’s no vendor lock-in with HTML5 and the web isn’t going anywhere. Someone else could buy Qt and take it in a direction that doesn’t align with your goals. Or they could just put the price up beyond your budget. HTML5 has the edge but it’s not a clear win.
Cost:

• Building for HTML5 is free. There are some non-essential paid tools that can help.
• Qt requires a commercial license for most commercial use on mobile.

Qt’s open source licenses are not compatible with distribution on most app stores. Although the iOS port of Qt is developed in open source, you need a commercial license to ship apps in the store. The lowest cost subscription that allows developing mobile apps for the iOS & Android stores with Qt is $25/month. HTML5 wins.
Cross-platform compatibility:

• HTML5 has multiple independent implementations of a standard.
• Qt has one vendor implementing the same runtime on multiple platforms.

Multiple implementations, with several in open source and a large community reporting on and working around compatibility issues makes for a very robust platform. Even so, having a single vendor making sure all platforms behave in the same way is almost always better for compatibility of your app. Qt wins.
Performance:

• HTML5’s DOM was not built for modern mobile apps.
• Qt Quick’s (QML) scene graph is built directly on top of OpenGL ES.

Both environments use JavaScript. However, with Qt it’s much easier to drop down to native code if you really need native platform functionality or performance. The performance penalties for switching between JavaScript and native code are much lower with Qt. The biggest difference however, is graphics performance. People looking for serious graphics performance with HTML5 resort to complex schemes to avoid touching the DOM as much as possible. Building the entire UI on top of WebGL seems like the most promising path to future performance, now that WebGL has much wider support (Apple adding this in iOS8 is key). Qt has a massive advantage here, it also has more extensive animation options than CSS3 for web app developers.
Native user experience:

• With HTML5 you rely on either a 3rd party framework like Ionic or building your own clones of native interface elements.
• With Qt you can use components that clone native interface elements, or use real native UI calls.

Being able to call native APIs in Qt potentially gives it the advantage here but in reality this loses cross-platform compatibility. In practice neither option is really well suited to situations where you need a genuinely native user experience. Both can emulate one adequately for a subset of possible apps. In general it’s best to use a cross-platform approach where a fully custom UI is needed, or a native look and feel is not essential.

Conclusions

Comparing across these metrics, Qt has a slight edge over HTML5. However, there are other metrics you could use that would give the opposite result. In practice the technology needs to be selected to fit the project. Both options have merits and if you’re an HTML5 developer who’s not already familiar with Qt’s offerings, they’re worth a look. I also didn’t mention that Qt apps can display HTML5 content in a webview, meaning that it doesn’t have to be one or the other, it can be both.

Courtesy : http://www.developereconomics.com/cross-platform-apps-qt-vs-html5/
 

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Less Known facts of Ramayanam

• Ramayana has been written by Maharshi Valmiki. This epic has 24,000 shlokas, 500 upkhand and 7 Kand with answers. The time when King Dashrath had organized a yagya for the birth of Lord Rama, his age was 60 years.
• According to Ramayana, King Dashrath had organized the yagya with the help of sage Rishyashring. Rishyashring’s father was Vibandak. One day while Vibandak were bathing in the river, he ejaculated inside water. A female drank that water and Rishyashring was born.
• As per Shri Ramcharit Manas, during Sita’s swayamvar, Parshuram had come, but according to Ramayana, when Lord Rama was returning to Ayodhya after marrying Sita, that time Parshuram had come.
• When Lakshman came to know about Lord Rama being asked to go on exile, he was very angry and had asked Rama to fight with his own father and win the throne. But he calmed down after Rama explained him. 
• Bharat had come to know about his father, King Dashrath’s death through his dream. He had seen his father wearing black clothes in his dream.
• Vidyutjinn was the husband of Shrupnakha who was Raavan’s sister. He was a senapati in the army of Kalkay King. When Raavan was out to conquer the world, he fought with Kalkay too. In this battle, Vidyutjinn died. Angry Shrupnakha cursed Raavan that she will become a reason for her brother’s death.
• When Lord Rama and Lakshman were searching for Sita in the forest, they had come across a demon, Kambadh whom they killed. Actually Kambadh had become a demon due to a curse. When Lord Rama went to burn his dead body, his soul was relived from the curse and he told him to do friendship with Sugreev.
• As per Ramayana, it had taken 5 days to construct a bridge over the ocean.
• Once Raavan went to Kailash Mountain to meet Lord Shiva. At Kailash he made fun of Nandi and laughed at him. In anger Nandi cursed Raavan. His curse was that a monkey will become a reason for Raavan’s destruction
• As per Ramayana, when Raavan had lifted Mount Kailash to impress Lord Shiva, Goddess Parvati had got scared and cursed Raavan that he will die because of a woman.
• When the battle between Rama and Raavan was being fought, Indra Dev had sent his magical cart for Rama. Lord Rama sitting in that cart had killed Raavan.
• Once Raavan was going somewhere in his Ppushpak Viman when he saw a beautiful woman busy in worshipping Lord Vishnu to marry the God himself. Raavan pulled her hair and ordered her to go with him. The woman sacrificed her body on the spot and cursed Raavan. 
• Raavan was the king of all demons. As a child he was feared by all the people because of his ten heads. He was a firm believer of Lord Shiva. It’s a known thing that Ravana was also a very good scholar and studied the Vedas, but the reason of having the instrument veena as a symbol in his flag is that he was also an excellent player of veena. Though much of consideration was not given to this art in him, he liked playing this instrument.
• The fight between Rama and Raavan ended by Rama killing Raavan, but it couldn’t have happened if not for Vibhisan support. When Raavan discussed about his war against Rama, all his ministers advised him to fight, while his younger brother Vibhisan advised Raavan to set Sita free and ask for forgiveness from Rama. But Vibhisan was sent away from the kingdom as Raavan was angry on him for taking sides of Rama. So Vibhisana helped Rama at the time of war, and Raavan made Rama believe with illusions that Sita is dead. When Rama fell fainted, it is Vibhisan who makes Rama understand the power of black magic of Raavan and how he can be killed with the power of his ten heads and his boon of immortal of nectar drink. If not for Vibhisan, the war could have ended differently. So Rama was able to defeat Raavan with the help of Vibhisan, hence Rama makes him the king of Lanka, after the death of Raavan.
• According to the entire story, Raavan was pictured as a cruel, most monstrous demon, which disrespected all the holy people. When he heard about Rama’s attack because of kidnapping Sita, his brother advised him to surrender. Being as adamant to his powers Raavan denied the fact that he will be killed, instead he stood his ground to fight in order to get moksha/mukthi from Rama’s hands and reach back to Lord Vishnu. He said “if Rama and Lakshmana are two normal humans, than I will carry Sita and win over the humans, but if they are Gods, then I will die in their hands with arrows and will attain Moksha”
• One of the most intriguing episodes of the entire Ramayana story is the Lakshman Rekha, in which Lakshman draws a line circled their hut in the forest. When Sita requests to catch the deer, Rama follows it and tries to kill when it takes the form of a demon Maricha. At the time of dying the Rakshasa cries out for Lakshmana and Sita in the voice of Rama. So Sita urges Lakshmana to go and help his brother as he might be in some trouble. Though Lakshmana was reluctant at first to leave her alone in the forests, he agrees to go as he should obey Sita’s requests and help his brother if he is indeed in trouble. Hence to protect her he draws a line around the hut, through which no one can enter inside, if so anyone enters, they burn to ashes and requests Sita not to step out of it until his and Rama return. The unknown fact of this episode is that, the story is not a part of either Valmiki’s version of Ramayan or Ramacharitamanas. But in the Lanka Kanda version of Ramacharitmanas, its been mentioned by Mandodari wife of Ravana, when he boasts of his strength and his wife points out to him that he could not even cross the line drawn by Lakshmana.
   
• It is believed that Rama left the earth by taking the jala samadhi in the Sarayu River, when Sita is taken back by her mother earth Bhoodevi. When Sita could not bear yet another test to her innocence, while living in the forest, she requests the Goddess of earth to take her back. The Goddess parts the earth into two and Sita is taken back, while her son Kush tries to hold his mother. Later Kush being disappointed with losing his mother also follows her. Rama feels it unbearable to lose his beloved wife he ends his human life on the earth and reaches Lord Vishnu in Sarayu River.

• It is believed that Lakshman did not sleep for the entire period of the exile of 14 years in order to protect his brother and sister- in-law. Because of this he is called Gudakesh. When the goddess of sleep appeared before him at the first night of the their exile to the forests and when Rama and Sita were asleep, Lakshman requested the goddess to give him no sleep for the entire 14 years, so that he can be awake to protect his beloved brother and Sita.
  
  The goddess was impressed by this and granted the boon on a condition that someone else has to bear his sleep. On Lakshman request the goddess visited his wife Urmila, sister of Sita. Urmila agreed to share her husband loss of sleep, and thus slept for entire 14 years. Hence the reason she is not much in the story, but a strong reason for helping Laksman to kill Ravana son Meghnadh in the war against to Ravana as Meghnadh could be killed only by a man who have not slept for 14 years.
• Raavan used to like in Lanka, which was made of gold. Lanka was first ruled by Raavan’s elder brother Kuber. Raavan had won Lanka from his brother in a battle. 

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Oliyilla Ethirkaalam

kaal oondrum idamellam

            koormaiyana mutkal.. 

kannerudan payanithaen 

              kallori vazhlkaiku piragu...

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Mazhlai Thoothu

Kattrirkum kirruku pudithathu..

unnai kanda nodiyil...

Mazhlaiyai thoothu anupiyathu ...

than kathalai velipadutha...

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Lord Krishna's triumph - Mahabharath A Epic Story

In Mahabharatham before Kurukshetra  begins Duryodhana requested Sahadeva to find him a suitable auspicious date to offer ‘Kalabali’ – a ritualistic sacrifice before war that would ensure victory for the performer.Sahadeva, the great astrologer and one of the pandavas.  And following the path of Dharma, Sahadeva told the recipe of pandavas downfall.Enter Shri Krishna, when he came to know about this, he devised a way out of this. A day before the new moon, Krishna calmly went down to the banks of river Yamuna and with the help of two brahmin priests, started performing Tarpana, a ritual submitting offerings to ancestors and divine entities which is usually done only on new moon day (amavasya).Brahmins nearby watched Krishna performing Tarpana on a non new moon day with surprise.  They were puzzled as to why Krishna, the all knowing supreme Lord would perform the ritual of tarpana on a non new moon day.They thought that no way Krishna would do tarpana on the wrong day and that their own prediction of new moon day as the next day was wrong.  They were convinced that since Krishna was doing tarpana that day, then that day would indeed be new moon day as great Shri Krishna would never be wrong.The sun god Surya and moon god Chandra who were watching the activities of Lord Krishna and other brahmins giving Tarpana on earth were intrigued as even they knew it was the next day they would align and come together to form new moon day.  They thought that there would have been a mistake somewhere and that they should bring it to the notice of Lord Krishna.Both, Surya and Chandra descended to earth and met with Lord Krishna to enquire about the ongoing activity and explained him that it was chaturdashi, not the new moon day to perform tarpana.Lord Krishna greeted them both and responded that it was indeed new moon that day.  The puzzled deities questioned him how was it possible.  Krishna asked them what exactly happens on a new moon day.  The two stellar deities explained that the day when the Sun and Moon align and appear together, the lunar eclipse takes place and that day is the new moon day.Shri Krishna on hearing that said that since that very day, Sun God Surya and Moon God Chandra came appearing together before him, it was indeed the new moon day (amavasya) and that was the reason he was performing tarpana on that day.The Sun and Moon gods could not argue against Lord Krishna who so tactfully elaborated the reason for his strange activity and accepted His verdict and thus the entire world changed the new moon day, a day in advance to its usual occurrence at that point. Krishna, once accomplishing this superhuman feat, at once ordered the Pandavas to perform the Kalabali from their end the very same day.  Since it was accepted by the sun and moon gods that it was indeed the new moon day, the Pandavas performed the Kalabali ritual on the newly established auspicious date which brought them victory in the Mahabharata war at Kurukshetra.  Duryodhana, on the other hand, performed the ritual on the next day (the usual new moon day) all in vain.

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Internet marketing - Hope of future

Internet marketing, or online marketing, refers to advertising and marketing efforts that use the Web and email to drive direct sales via electronic commerce, in addition to sales leads from Web sites or emails. Internet marketing and online advertising efforts are typically used in conjunction with traditional types of advertising like radio, television, newspapers and magazines.

Specialized Areas of Internet Marketing

Internet marketing can also be broken down into more specialized areas such as Web marketing, email marketing and social media marketing:

1) Web marketing includes e-commerce Web sites, affiliate marketing Web sites, promotional or informative Web sites, online advertising on search engines, and organic search engine results via search engine optimization (SEO).

2) Email marketing involves both advertising and promotional marketing efforts via e-mail messages to current and prospective customers.

3) Social media marketing involves both advertising and marketing (including viral marketing) efforts via social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Digg.

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