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FREE eBook eReader software - An App for iPod Touch/ iPhone Compatible with iOS version 4.2

Post last updated: October 2014. Updated Freading 1.0 link below. Freading 2.1 doesn't support iOS 4.2 compatible devices.

"The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book." - Northrop Frye.

You are reading this because you are a good reader and you want your old iPod or iPhone to be able to carry your best friend - the ebook ereader. But alas, you know that the iBooks app requires a minimum of iOS 7.0 whereas your iPod Touch can no longer travel the iOS road beyond its 4.2.1 limit.

Here comes our rescue partner, when I was exactly at that crossroads. Left alone to ponder over this issue with some apps that promise to deliver but fail what I really wanted - to just read books. Simple. That's it.

Finding your perfect eReader app for free for your old iOS device with 4.2.1 as the last version has become easier now.

EDIT: Freading, as on October 2014 is upgraded to 2.1 in the Apple App Store and is no longer compatible with iOS 4.2 devices. Hence, I am providing my archived version (Freading 1.0) that I use in my iPod Touch with iOS 4.2 version.

You can download the older version of Freading from here.

The app's name is Freading - Library Ideas, LLC this app comes to our rescue. It does a simple job - let's you read, peacefully.

Supports ePub, PDF - the two of most used ebook formats. Best of all, this app comes for free!

~~This app is available from the iTunes Appstore, with the base version as iOS 4.0. Compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.~~

Let me know your thoughts and other app suggestions. Please leave your comments below.

Think About It # 4

Just because you got used to your surroundings, it doesn't mean you can take them for granted or ignore them.
Think About It.

Want more of TAI? Granted!

Think About It # 3

Try to enliven old habits (like switching off from technology for few minutes, taking a walk focusing on breathing) while going with the flow in busy life. I feel happy to have found my lost old selves, or rather younger selves, when I do that.

Think about it.

Read more of TAI thoughts here.

Think About It # 2

When was the last time you referred a dictionary to know the meaning of a new word you came across. I meant the hard copy - did an online thesaurus come to your mind, even now while reading this line?

Think about it.

See more of TAI

Think About It # 1

Would You Still Do What You Do If You Don't Get Appreciated For What You Do?

Think About It.

See other TAI thoughts.

Quick Tech Trick # 8: How To Open Microsoft Command Prompt Window In Any Folder

If you've have tried navigating to a specific folder using Windows Command Prompt Screen by manually typing the code in that little black window screen, you will agree with me that even pros sometimes have to do a trial and error to get it correct.

That's when this surprise little trick will come in handy:

Whenever you want to open the command window in a particular location, just do a 'shift + right click' on a blank space within that folder and you'll find a new context menu entry there – "Open Command Window Here".

If you are an avid command prompt user, you will thank this trick (of course if you didn't know about this earlier).

Written by Arun Sarathy

WearFin - A Wearable Thumb Gadget - A Breakthrough Invention By An Indian

Technology keeps changing everyday. There is some new invention in some part of the world every day. Only some ideas make to the top and get named as Facebook, Google, Apple and become a huge fan following brands. Though we come across many such ideas daily, only few makes our heads turn and in this case the fingers.

"Fin" is a small wearable device that can be worn on your thumb as a ring and it can convert your palm into a gesture controlled station. This project has raised about $202,448 from some 1500+ people around the world who have pre-ordered the product as well.

This new invention is by an Indian from a state that is commonly known as God's own country, Kerala. Rohildev N, is a 23 year old young grad from Kathir College of Engineering in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. Few months ago, he had setup his own startup, RHL Vision Technologies.

RHL Vision Technologies was among 50 startups shortlisted from around the world to pitch and showcase their ideas at Pioneers Festival, one of Europe's largest startup events, held in Vienna last year. It was one of the top 15 companies (from 11 countries) at the TechCrunch CES Hardware Battlefield in Las Vegas this year, a competition for hardware startups. And Rohildev would have been the youngest speaker at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February. (Source:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Indian-wearable-device-Fin-gets-huge-pre-orders/articleshow/31761591.cms)

Worn as a ring on your thumb, this device can be used to control virtually any bluetooth and infrared based devices like TV Remote controls, SmartPhones, Wheelchairs, iPods, Cameras, and can be used in many other ways.

"There's no effort, no stress. Unlike other touchless technologies, you don't have to raise your hand, wave your arms, nothing that tires you," says Rohildev.

Fin will be priced at $120 each, but that cost could come down with mass manufacturing. The first shipments are expected in September. "The Indiegogo campaign helped us identify some good manufacturers and distributors too. Many want to fund us now. We expect to finalize a $1 million funding in another month," says Rohildev.

All the best to the team!

Posted by Arun Sarathy

Information sources:
http://www.wearfin.com/
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/fin-wearable-ring-make-your-palm-as-numeric-keypad-and-gesture-interface

Best Way To Search Fresh Recent Results In Google

If you want to search the internet using Google and if you want search results that are only recent ones - probably a week or month old, then follow this trick while searching in Google.

This trick is especially useful when using Google Maps and Products to search more relevant and also recent updates.

After the search query is typed in the Google search bar, select the Search Tools drop-down option.

Then select Any Time drop down

Now select the time frame you need to filter the search results.

There is also a 'Custom Range' feature available for you to select from. Pretty neat!

Know any other neat tricks in Google search that you think the World may not be aware of? Please do input your comments below.

3 Top Ways To Read Online Effectively By Tackling Distractions

Earlier, reading was done using the 'hard bound' or 'Paper back' books, before the advent of computers. Then, the distractions were little less - as there were no popup advertising inside a book, or a mail notification showing up in the corner of the page nor a 'related' content showing up at the end of the page before turning to the next one.

However, these are some of the common distractions faced by every one of us while a serious online reading is taking place - a silent conversation between our eyes and the computer screen that shows the content. People like us get easily distracted in this modern age - at the same time there are so many online bookstores with plethora of online textbooks and educational websites.

Here are some practical tips that will help you overcome the dreaded distractions while reading online:

Use Readability plugin for browsers (Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox) to not to get distracted. This extension is similar to the Reader feature within Apple's Safari browser. What this does is provide you with a clutter-free version of the same article.
If you find any link that is part of the original article you are reading, simply do not go about reading every other hyperlink provided. Right click on the link and open it in new tab or new window to read it later - after finishing the currently reading article. (You can also 'scroll click' or 'ctrl click' on the link to open it in new tab). This way you can finish reading the original article you opened in the first place.
If nothing works, or you find many articles and webpages to read for the entire day - use an online bookmarking tool to bookmark your site so you can read it from any part of the world. You can also use a free app in Chrome called Quick Note to save texts and links to read later - this is a note taking app which can be used in this way also. This way you can revisit less important ones later. I use this app often. Best of most of the other note taking apps available for Google Chrome.

These are the top 3 best practices I follow to have a pleasant reading experience without getting distracted much - or by tackling the distractions in a technologically productive way.

Do you have any other tip to have a disturbance free reading experience? What do you do to read articles online without disturbances? Please share your comments below.

Written by Arun Sarathy

How to clear your clipboard using Command Prompt

Admit it - sometimes you wish Windows offered an easy way to do this - clearing the clipboard after copying a piece of text!

Well, here is a way to do that using a tiny piece of code. Just copy the code given below and follow the steps given to create your own small software to clear your clipboard.

C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c "echo off | clip"

Steps:

Right click on the desktop.
Select New > Shortcut
Paste the code copied above. Save and exit.

You now have a shortcut which when double clicked clears your clipboard in a whoosh!!

Written by Arun Sarathy

How to charge your iPod or iPad or iPhone with USB using your computer

Life without technology is only for few and for the rest of us, a little disruption in it causes havoc!

Being in the technology driven world, most of us have atleast one iPod (old or new doesn't matter), or an iPhone or iPad. One of these iProducts might be lying at our home - at least for most of us who are Apple fans. That being said, there will be times when we do not want to always plug it in to the wall socket to charge the iDevice. But when we sync or transfer content to and from an iDevice to our Windows computer how better the world would be if that time is also used to charge our iDevice!

That's where our protagonist of this story enters our world - ASUS Ai charger

What this tiny software does is simple:-

Install the software available from their website here.
Just connect your iDevice.
It starts charging.

Yes! That was indeed silly to list them down - however that's all it is to it to charge your iDevice using your Windows computer.

Note: for Mac, it automatically charges - without any need of a third party software installation, as you might already know.

Know of any other software that does the job better than ASUS Ai Charger? Please let us know by writing in your comments below.

Written by Arun Sarathy

Best website to learn the summary of every Matt Cutts video on SEO out there

Matt Cutts, (bio) the head of the web spam team at Google has provided a number of videos talking about SEO, blogging best practices and answering questions from bloggers worldwide. His videos are not only informative but are very short and precise.

That being said, what if you still want to lessen the time spent - instead of watching all his videos how would you feel if there is a Summarized Solution given for every question asked in the Google Webmaster videos series? Awesome, right? That's how even I felt when I came across this website which is aptly named as:-

The Short Cutts. The Short Answers to every Matt Cutts Video

This website provides a simple, sweet, precise answer to all the questions asked to Matt Cutts by humans worldwide. The website is a simple one which you'll definitely find useful, if you are a regular follower of the Google Webmaster Videos YouTube Channel.

The website also offers four guides as freely downloadable after we sign up on their contact form page. Though, I wouldn't sign up unless I really want to read their guides - they are useful but I chose I would pass them for the time-being and revisit them later.

One funny feature about the website is that they provide different colored T-Shirt pictures which when clicked filters the webmaster videos that has Matt Cutts wearing that colored T-Shirt which was clicked!

Give it a try and please let me know your comments below if you found this useful.

Written by Arun Sarathy

How to map an offline folder like your Network Drive within My Computer In Windows 7

Let's say you have a frequently used folder in your Windows PC or Laptop which you open frequently.
There are 3 traditional options which I've used so far to get to my frequently used folders:

1. First I go to my folder – right click on it – and 'Send To Desktop (Create Shortcut)'. Or

2. I copy the full path of my folder, keep it in 'Run' utility command box and open it from there. Or

3. Add it to my favorite folders inside an Explorer window.

Though all of the above works equally well, here is a geeky way to get this job done, using the Command Prompt Window. Using this trick you can assign an unused drive letter to your frequently used folder, making it an entry within your 'My Computer'. I guess this stays inside My Computer until you logoff or shut down your computer.

Example:

Let's say you want to have a folder called 'Source' within your C drive, assigned to a drive letter called 'Q'.

Open Command Prompt Window. (Type CMD in Run command window) (Win key + R to open your Run command) and type the following command:

SUBST Q: "C:\SOURCE"

That's it. Now you will have a folder added within My Computer window like this one:

How to remove the drive letter assignment:

If you want to remove that folder from the assigned drive letter then simply type in this command:

SUBST Q: /D

Hit enter to free your drive letter assignment within My Computer.

Find this tip useful? Please let me know your comments.

Written by Arun Sarathy

13 Questions To Understand The Bug "Heartbleed" Better - A Definitive Guide To Know What Exactly Is The Heartbleed Bug In OpenSSL

What is Heartbleed?

It is one of the most wide spread vulnerabilities in internet.

This is one of the biggest flaws today's internet has faced. The core of heartbleed is encryption and encryption standards used in the design of HTTPS. SSL and TSL - Security Sockets Layers and Transport Security Layer. These toolkits are commonly known as OpenSSL - toolkits to frame cryptography. A flaw in this toolkit is called Heartbleed - something which the human user nor the server side platforms have any clue that a security flaw exists - which can be taken advantage of by anyone.

When was this discovered?

Around Monday, the 8th of April, 2014. Severe implications for the entire web community were foreseen. This bug can leak sensitive user information and personally identifiable information like usernames, passwords, SSNs, credit card numbers, bank account details and transactions. This bug has been in place since 2011. And all this bug does is compromise 64K of information from a piece of the storage. That's well enough to steal sufficient user personal information - more importantly that's also enough to get a private key and decrypt that to find the rest of the information.

Who found the bug first?

This bug was independently discovered by a team of security engineers (Riku, Antti and Matti) at Codenomicon and Neel Mehta of Google Security, who first reported it to the OpenSSL team (source:heartbleed.com). While this is not essentially a bug but a simple programming error that led to Heartbleed, Neel Mehta from the Google research community needs a big thanks for another reason - he also donated a $15,000 bounty he received as an award for discovering this bug to the Freedom of the Press Foundation's campaign for development of better encryption tools. According to LATimes, "Both teams found that OpenSSL, an open-sourced security encryption program used by 66% of Internet servers, had a flaw that would allow any hacker using a simple script to gain access to a treasure trove of personal information".

Who is responsible for this Heartbleed bug?

According to the Guardian, the programmer behind this code glitch was Robin Seggelmann who worked on the OpenSSL project for the Heartbeat extension. This extension is just an additional feature and is not the core part of the OpenSSL project. And since this was an open source in itself, one person cannot be blamed.

Nomenclature. Why is it called as Heartbleed, what's the reason behind this nickname?

An engineer in Codenomicon coined it. The technical name, CVE-2014-0160 was named for the particular line of code that contained the vulnerable code. According to the systems administrator at Codenomicon who coined the term, he just played on the words 'heartbeat' which is an extension in the OpenSSL Toolkit. Ossi Herrala - the Codenomicon employee "thought it was fitting to call it Heartbleed because it was bleeding out the important information from the memory". They even went ahead and bought the domain heartbleed.com from a group who owned it as a music lyrics site, so as to spread this security flaw among the IT community and they are quite happy with the outcome and the way the IT community has responded quickly to correct the flaw. Basically they just had to upgrade the OpenSSL toolkit version to the latest one to overcome this security flaw.

Why only few sites are affected?

Since the core problem was in the extension of OpenSSL toolkit called 'Heartbeat', which is the central point of vulnerability - any website which used this feature got affected. Although OpenSSL is popular, some websites used other SSL/TLS features and options. Some websites used an upgraded version or an earlier version of this toolkit, that's why they escaped this vulnerability. While this doesn't completely solve the problem at hand, not all companies use PFS or Perfect Forward Secrecy, a key agreement protocol in Cryptography. PFS keys are the most secured ones as on today as it ensures that the compromise of a single key permits access only to data protected by that single key. These have short shelf life, hence one key leak will not allow the leak of all data.

Am I really affected? Why should I care?

This is simply not another virus or bug wherein an antivirus can help you on your computer or smartphone. This is a more complicated bug (actually a programming error) on the services you use like hosting providers, bank servers and email service providers. Technically speaking this is not a client-end problem but a server-end issue.

Every user who uses email, browse internet, conduct business and ecommerce and every normal prudent surfer who cares for a secured browsing experience and have signed up for services, free or paid, online should care about this flaw and take corrective measures. More importantly if you have visited a website with HTTPS, trusting that it was a secured one all these days in the last few years, then you sure will be interested in knowing and learning about this further. And as an example, if you are a Gmail, Facebook or Yahoo email user, you better change your password now - for it is a suggested solution even by Google.

According to EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), this flaw allows an attacker who connects to an HTTPS server running a vulnerable version of OpenSSL to access up to 64KB of private memory space. Doing the attack once can easily cause the server to leak cookies, emails, and passwords. Doing the attack repeatedly can potentially leak entire encryption keys, such as the private SSL keys used to protect HTTPS traffic. If an attacker has access to a website's private SSL key, they can run a fake version of the website and/or steal any information that users send, including passwords, private messages, and credit card numbers. Neither users nor website owners can detect this attack as it happens.

How do I know if my bank account was also compromised using this flaw?

Most banks use proprietary encryption software instead of the open source OpenSSL. Still, it's wise to confirm with your bank information security personnel or their website for any press release related to this.

How do I know or check if a website has taken corrective measures or fixed this problem?

Password management companies have come up with ways in testing websites to check if the flaw has been corrected and if the website is safe or not. You can check LastPass - to see if the bug has been corrected by websites. Also, there would be press releases and news from the website themselves stating that the issues are fixed.
For example, The Canada Revenue Agency has extended the filing deadline for tax returns and promised to resume e-services by the end of the weekend for all federal departments using software vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug (Source: www.cbc.ca)

How to protect myself against this security flaw?

Keep an eye on your financial statements and bank accounts physically, not online.
Once you confirm that the bank websites are safeguarded, change your passwords.
Do not login to any sensitive accounts like bank websites and email accounts until you are sure that the flaw has been corrected.

Which websites need a password change right now?

You can first check what websites were affected and if they have taken corrective measures to release a patch. Mashable has collated a quite massive list of websites that need a password change. You can check them out here. These are some of the websites which were affected and corrected. So a password change is suggested, though not a must. As Google puts it, better be safe than sorry. Of course, keep in mind that the specific website must issue a patch to correct the flawed version of OpenSSL. Only then your password change makes sense.

What versions of OpenSSL are affected?

OpenSSL 1.0.1 through 1.0.1f (inclusive) are vulnerable

OpenSSL 1.0.1g is NOT vulnerable

OpenSSL 1.0.0 branch is NOT vulnerable

OpenSSL 0.9.8 branch is NOT vulnerable

Bug was introduced to OpenSSL in December 2011 and has been out in the wild since OpenSSL release 1.0.1 on 14th of March 2012. OpenSSL 1.0.1g released on 7th of April 2014 fixes the bug.

(Source:heartbleed.com)

How widespread is this flaw in the internet sphere?

Most notable software using OpenSSL are the open source web servers like Apache and nginx. The combined market share of just those two out of the active sites on the Internet was over 66% according to Netcraft's April 2014 Web Server Survey. Furthermore OpenSSL is used to protect for example email servers (SMTP, POP and IMAP protocols), chat servers (XMPP protocol), virtual private networks (SSL VPNs), network appliances and wide variety of client side software. Fortunately many large consumer sites are saved by their conservative choice of SSL/TLS termination equipment and software. Ironically smaller and more progressive services or those who have upgraded to latest and best encryption will be affected most. Furthermore OpenSSL is very popular in client software and somewhat popular in networked appliances which have most inertia in getting updates. (Source: heartbleed.com)

Thanks to........?

Thanks to Neel Mehta of Google Security for discovering this bug and to Adam Langley <agl at chromium.org> and Bodo Moeller <bmoeller at acm.org> for preparing the fix. (Source:https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv_20140407.txt)

Information collected and posted by Arun Sarathy

Resources: (Information sources)
http://heartbleed.com/

http://www.cnet.com/news/heartbleed-bug-what-you-need-to-know-faq/

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/why-web-needs-perfect-forward-secrecy

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-how-the-heartbleed-bug-got-its-name-20140410,0,631939.story#axzz2ykahqqH2

http://gigaom.com/2014/04/08/heres-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-heartbleed-web-security-flaw/

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/04/08/heartbleed_openssl_encryption_bug_discovered_by_codenomicon_and_neel_mehta.html

http://www.dailydot.com/news/heartbleed-neel-mehta-freedom-press-foundation-encryption/

http://www.geekwire.com/2014/amazon-facebook-google-others-deploy-fixes-heartbleed-bug/

http://mashable.com/2014/04/09/heartbleed-bug-websites-affected/

http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/09/technology/security/heartbleed-bug/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04/08/aws_heartbleed/

10 Great Videos To Supercharge Your Blog Or Website - Google Webmaster Videos

These videos are a part of the Google Webmaster series posted on YouTube. I have collected them and posted here in a single place so anyone who wants to learn a few basics and few advanced topics on SEO and Blogging can be benefited.

These are given in no specific order. However, the #1 rank is aptly given, at least IMHO.

10. 5 Common Mistakes in SEO (and 6 good ideas!)

9. What are some effective techniques for building links?

8. How can I make sure that Google knows my content is original?

7. What are the top 3-5 SEO areas where webmasters make the most mistakes?

6. What is the best way to check your own site for keyword rankings?

5. How important is it to have keywords in a domain name?

4. What are some examples of SEO misinformation?

3. How would a non-optimized site outrank a site which has done SEO?

2. SEO for startups in under 10 minutes

1. How Search Works

This is definitely not a complete list. These are just the 10 videos that I felt truly great. These helped me learn the basics of SEO and blogging. For more videos like these - subscribe to Google Webmasters Group.

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Posted by +Arun Sarathy

You Ought To Know This Little Secret Within Google Chrome Omnibox

Google Chrome – the World's widely used browser has a tiny little secret.

Searching using the Omnibox –

which is searching using address bar is the same as searching directly on Google.com. However, if you are not a Google searcher by default, then you might be searching using AOL, Yahoo or Bing – within Google Chrome.

In Internet Explorer you attain this by changing your default search provided in the Settings. Google Chrome too allows to change your default Search Engine settings on their Settings page.

Better still, Google knows that already and has made it even simpler for you - that's exactly the little secret I was talking about. Here's how:

How to search Yahoo, Bing, AOL, YouTube or Ask in Google Chrome:

In Google Chrome if you want to search using Bing, Yahoo, but still don't want to change your default search provider, all you have to do is just this.

To search using AOL search engine within Google Chrome, just prefix the letter 'a' before you type your search text in the Google Chrome's Omnibox. This also applies for searching in Ask.

To search using Bing search engine within Google Chrome, just prefix the letter 'b' before you type your search text in the Google Chrome's Omnibox.

To search using Yahoo search engine within Google Chrome, just prefix the letter 'y' before you type your search text in the Google Chrome's Omnibox. This also applies for searching in YouTube.

Related: Search using the address bar.

Additionally, after you try the above tricks, if you'd watched closely, you would have noticed that when you prefix 'a' to search using AOL, Google not only provides AOL as one of the suggestions in their Google Autocomplete feature – but also provides options to search websites from your web browser history.

For example in my screenshot above you will notice Autocomplete suggestion to search my text within Automattic website too.

Did you like this Google Chrome Omnibox trick?

If you know of any other Google Chrome secret trick, please write them in your comments below:

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Written by +Arun Sarathy

How to make the best use of Microsoft Developer Network Library

If you are a software developer who uses Microsoft Developer Network often, then you might be well aware of this neat little feature.

A feature which allows you to add certain articles, tips and resources from their portal to a set of pages and then export it to PDF neatly.

As a newbie in to development, I find this feature really useful. It allows me to 'take-away' certain really good articles as PDF documents so I can read them in my leisure time, offline.

How to use the export to PDF feature

Let's see in detail as to how to make use of this feature:

First of all, you must have a Microsoft Windows Live ID to sign in and use this export option. Creating a Live ID is simple and you can use any email address as the user name for your new Microsoft account, including addresses from Outlook.com, Yahoo! or Gmail. If you already sign in to a Windows PC, tablet, or phone, Xbox Live, Outlook.com, or OneDrive, use that account to just directly sign in to the Developer Network.

Once you sign in to the developer network, head to the different dev resource portals available in the library.

There if you want to include a page to your set of pages to be exported, just right click on the page link (given on left side of the screen) and select Add this page. This also alerts you before adding - if there are too many pages within that group.

You can also browse to the page you would like to read, select Export on top right side of the screen and within the options given under Export feature, you can click Add this page. You will also find Manage pages on the same options strip.

Clicking on Manage Pages is where you will find the next steps - especially exporting your added contents to PDF. Here you'll find Advanced Options section which helps you select what kinds of

Example Code Languages you prefer,
to include community content or not,
if you find any localized content - if you would want that to be translated or not.

Once the content creation is done, the PDF can be downloaded by hitting the download button. This contains neatly organized information with links working within the PDF document.

PDF ready to download

The PDF document looks like this after downloading:

Conclusion

The opportunities and resources in the Microsoft Developer Network are really good and organized, in my opinion. They offer subscription options, code samples, software developer tools and frameworks, app development guidance, cloud and server details, developer access to downloads and builds, innovative options and access to libraries and various other options. Sometimes, you can get access to latest build sets and information, fundamentals, game design aesthetics and promo offers, discounts too.

Am not that great a fan of Microsoft. I love Apple and their developer programs. However, for Microsoft, this portal definitely is organized and useful - especially for the Microsoft related development purposes. Hence thought of posting this for the benefit of everyone who might be new to the MSDN and aren't aware of the export to PDF feature.

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Written by +Arun Sarathy

Every Employee Must Make Use Of - Employee Discount Programs

One of the benefits as part of your employment with an organization is the discount coupons received through the tie-ups that your employer has with major brands - not necessarily within your industry.

Most of the companies and organizations with a good amount of employees worldwide would often have tie-ups with major brands to offer discounts to its employees under the 'Employee Discount Program', 'Corporate Perks', 'Discount Purchase Programs' or whatever it is called by your employer. There would also be Employee Discount Policies which explains the details of such programs. If you work for any automobile industry, chances are that you might as well get discounts on certain classes of vehicles and its related discount on auto insurance too. It's not so common, however, there are some companies that provide these.

An employee is usually not aware of these benefits and these come in various forms: deals, coupons, discounts, promo codes and offers. Some companies even offer a booklet of printable coupons that has to be used by a certain date after which it would expire.

If you are an employee working for a company with a reasonably large employee-base then it's wise to check with your respective Human Resources officer in the company that you work for.

Chances are that these tie-ups are not often flashed publicly. However, they will be announced in one of the Leadership emails or HR communications. Watch out for those, if not just reach out to your HR representative in your organization. Nothing wrong in just checking it out. There might also be an exclusive access to discount options from local and national merchants from any part of the country you live in. Employees can enjoy exclusive promotions, daily deals, online discounts that can provide savings opportunities and thus result in higher levels of employee satisfaction and loyalty.

Some commonly available discount programs include coupons, discounts and deals on Jewellery, Medicines, Hotel deals, Spa, Healthcare, Softwares, Cars, TVs, Computers, Mobile phones, Apparels and sometimes even Tire and Insurance quotes too. Some organizations also provide coupons for movies, ski tickets and theme parks.

Hope you get benefited from these programs. It often goes unnoticed and waste. Better make use of it.

Do you know of any more commonly forgotten work place benefits? Write in your comments below.

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Written by +Arun Sarathy

What exactly is the 802.11 Standard?

The following article tries to throw some light on what is the 802.11 standard for wireless networks.

What exactly is the 802.11 standard?

IEEE 802.11 technology is a set of specifications related to the physical layer & media access control (MAC) for implementing wireless LAN in certain frequency bandwidths. They are created by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers LAN/MAN Standards Committee. The base version was released in 1997 and has amendments made to it thereafter. With every amendment, an alphabet is suffixed to show the improvements made which would be defined in the standards.

What is Wi-Fi?

As the general misconception goes Wi-Fi does not stand for Wireless Fidelity. The term was coined by a brand-consulting firm called Interbrand Corporation. The name, then became, Wi-Fi standard which was a little more easier to remember for a common man when compared with IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence.

Wi-Fi can be generally less secure than the regular Ethernet (wired) connections as there is no physical connectivity required. These days Smart phones, laptops, game consoles, TVs can connect wirelessly to the WiFi modems.

The following websites provide more rich information related to the WiFi concepts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_LAN
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Electrical_and_Electronics_Engineers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi
http://www.ieee802.org/11/
http://standards.ieee.org/about/get/802/802.11.html