How to apply for Voters’ ID card online (India)?

It is every citizen’s responsibility to vote. Even if one is not interested to vote, options are there to go to the ballot and press a button that conveys your no-interest in voting. However, it’s our collectively taken decisions during these elections which decides who would be our leaders. 

Thus, every eligible citizen must vote. How does one register/enroll for this? Keep reading...

Image courtesy of Taoty / freedigitalphotos.net

Which form should I use for my application?

The answer to this question depends on your requirement. Given below are the different form numbers and their purposes.

How do I apply online now?

This is known as e-registration. Various ECI State specific websites have their e-registrations available on their websites. You just have to input some details which would then be translated in that particular State’s local language. Don’t worry, translation is automated with just a click of a button provided along with the e-registration form - named as ‘Translate’.

If you reside in Andhra Pradesh, apply online through 'e-registration' menu given in Andhra Pradesh’s e-registration website.

To know your State specific link check here: http://eci.nic.in/eci_main1/Links.aspx

What are the photo specifications?

The photo should be uploaded using the browse option. Only .jpg images are allowed and image size must be less than 100 KB. Width and height must be 240 X 320.

It’s prudent to remember that mere registering of one’s name for obtaining a voter’s id card and mere possession of a voter’s id card doesn’t guarantee that you are an elector. One must also be included in the Electoral Rolls to vote their choice of Netas. So how do we know our names are included in the Electoral Roll?

How do I know if i am included in an Electoral Roll?

To check if one’s name is included in Electoral roll, we have to check in the list for our respective State - District - Assembly Constituency list using our Voters’ ID Card No. and Name and Address. Using this information, we can find out if our name is included in the Electoral Roll.

This link will help you do just that: http://eci.nic.in/eci_main1/Linkto_electo_search.aspx

What about NRIs?

NRI voters. NRI voters can fill up Form 6A for inclusion of their names. However, one must note that there is no provision for any e-voting, voting by post or email or voting at an Indian Mission or embassy abroad. For more info on NRI electors, please go here http://eci-citizenservices.nic.in/frmForm6ANew.aspx

Bonus Information:

Election Commission of India website http://eci.nic.in/eci/eci.html

Name, email address, phone, fax, intercom numbers and residence phone numbers of different officers are given in this link.

Lodging complaints:

http://eci-citizenservices.nic.in/ also provides a way to lodge your complaints. the site asks if you are a citizen or an officer first, then you’ll have to register there first before lodging a complaint.

Happy Voting!

Written by Arun Sarathy.

How does my blog look in all browsers worldwide – how to check compatibility?

It’s not just Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Opera. There are many more web browsers used by people worldwide in their computers, tablets and Smart phones. In addition there are different versions of the same browsers and different Operating Systems. 

So how does my blog or website look like in all these permutations and combinations?

It’s the wish of every blogger and website builder to know an answer to this important question. Let’s find out! The reason is that if their blog didn't look correct in any of these, they might lose a good chunk of visitors.

Not surprisingly, there is an easy solution to this problem.

A service online provides a feature which captures screenshots of your blog or website in various platforms and shows them all in one screen for you.

The two most important advantages of using this service are:

1. It can help identify visual differences, plug-in problems of your site on all web browsers. 
2. Your website’s appearance as it is – and to use that screenshot for studying and enhancing user experience.

Bonus advantage: It also provides the page loading time in most cases.

Who provides this service?

1. One that immediately comes to my mind is browsershots.org. They have a big list of permutations and combinations of OS platforms and Web browsers. You might get around 150+ screenshots once the blog is tested.

2. The second one is www.browserstack.com.  This is also equally good in terms of checking your blog or website on many platforms.

3. Another one that is available is www.browsershots.at.

Though all the above given services are FREE, one may have to wait in the queue as there is a lot of demand. They also let us register and/or pay for the service to get precedence.

Thus, this helps us in ensuring our visitors get the view that we intended to show when we kept our best foot forward with our blog or website. 

Good luck in enhancing your user experience!

Written by Arun Sarathy.

Changes in Google's AdSense new homepage

Google has updated its AdSense homepage. The newer look is neat and offers key insights and analysis right on the initial view of Google AdSense homepage as soon as one logs in, avoiding the clutter and unwanted information. 

You can still revert back to the old homepage layout after trying out the new homepage. 

Let's now walk through the key changes made in the new look.

Look and Feel

 The number of tabs has remained the same though:

However, what you see on the initial view of your Google AdSense homepage differs a bit more than the older look. A guided tour shows us the key changes when we adopt to use the new look.

Mainly the options available under the “Home” tab have taken a back seat in the new look. In fact, all the options in the left side list under the “Home” tab are now placed under various other places. We will now look their placements in the new look:

Messages and Policy Violations are now placed under the ‘Status’ screen given inside the ‘Gear icon’ drop down menu on the top right corner.

Google AdSense - Previous Look

  

Gear Icon

Gear Icon > Status Page

        

Payments and Account Settings are now placed under Settings page given inside the ‘Gear icon’ drop down menu.

 Alternatively, Payments can also be viewed within the Home page by clicking on ‘View Payments’.

It’s the Resources page that’s been dropped in the new look.

Here’s what AdSense’s product manager, Matt Goodridge has to say about the new look:

The new Insights stream on the right-hand side of the page provides personalized recommendations for your account, such as monetization opportunities and tips to enhance user experience, which can be put into action in just a few clicks.

Your key account stats for today are quick and easy to view and now provide comparison data such as earnings so far this month versus the same period last month.

The new Performance Today section gives you quick access to more detailed information like your countries and platforms reports, without requiring additional clicks.

Your Scorecard will continue to be prominent on your homepage, providing quick benchmarking information on how your site is performing relative to the sites of other AdSense publishers.

  

You can read more about it from here: 

http://adsense.blogspot.in/2013/11/get-right-insights-quickly-with-new.html


Written by Arun Sarathy.

How to sort and filter emails in Gmail by size and more

Gmail from Google has a feature that lets you filter emails in many ways.
But let's say the day has come when suddenly your Gmail's storage capacity is nearing its full limit.
Of course Gmail offers 15GB of free storage for your Gmail account (as on today) and they keep increasing the storage capacity eventually but what if today you've reached almost the full capacity.?

First I would check my emails to see if there are old, never or seldom opened forwarded emails with loads of photos in it that weighs more than 10MB in size. But this is not outlook to simply sort the emails by hitting on the header that says 'size'. So how do we do that?

Google has an excellent inbuilt feature to do just that.

Simply go to your Gmail and in the search bar type "size:10m" to filter emails that are 10MB or more in size. You can type in any size that you want to filter with.

Note that Gmail's maximum size limit for an attachment is 25MB. To add an attachment more than that size you might want to use Google Drive.

To know more about adding attachments in Gmail, go to this page. 

Next time you want to kill time productively, I would suggest to first go to Gmail, filter your 'All Mail' section with specific sizes and clean it up. It helps in the long run to save that precious virtual disk space for storing something better. 

Written by Arun Sarathy.

Five websites that provide Currency Conversion online

How often have you decided to travel abroad and wanted to know the value of your local currency outside your country?  Or just simply wanted to know what you currency value is when compared with any other nation?

Image courtesy of PinkBlue / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

No matter what’s the situation, there are many websites to work that out for you. More so, there are also apps that can do the job on the go - most of the websites given below in this post have their own apps available for download. 

How to know which website offers a better solution to answer your above questions? 

First of all, you can just jump to any of these websites to get the conversion done. However, if you wanted to dig deeper, ponder over which website you might want to stick to in the future or share with your friends, then this guide shows you five easy to use websites that helps you convert the currency as per the current market rate.

1. Xe.com (xe.com)

XE.com not only is the top in my opinion but it also provides a very good snapshot of many other currencies right on their homepage. It refreshes automatically to show current rate.

2. Google (google.com)

My 2nd option to go for currency conversion is Google homepage. Yes! Google search window offers quick currency conversion online. Just type in your local currency amount to be converted to the other nation’s currency that you want to convert to. For example, you may type in 11 USD in EUR and it gives you the following output:

3. Oanda.com (oanda.com/currency/converter/)

Oanda.com offers the same conversion but website is little more trendier in my opinion. I have been using Oanda since 2007 and their way of presentation is pleasing. I usually take a print of their Traveler’s cheatsheet. Pretty neat personalized cheatsheet for our wallets.

4. GOCURRENCY.com (gocurrency.com)

Gocurrency provides a drop-down menu right on top as soon as we visit them. This has a list of countries which when chosen gives historical data, credit ratings, bank rates, GDP details, etc. Their currency conversion is also good enough that gets the job done.

5. finance.yahoo.com (finance.yahoo.com/currency-converter/)

Yahoo Finance page has its own currency conversion section within finance.yahoo.com page. But it takes some time to locate it in the site. One good thing is that it also offers along side their page an ‘education’ section. It provides us links to trading with currency, intro to currency, floating vs. fixed rates, etc. For someone who wants to learn the basics should surely give it a shot.

These are the five currency converter websites available online which does well in my viewpoint. Sometimes you may find slight differences in the converted rates. This should be kept in mind and thus warrants a reason to check more than one website - this post helps you to do just that!

As with freedom of choice, you're welcome to dig even deeper and find your favourites. Though many other websites offer this conversion to us like Bloomberg, X-Rates, etc., in my opinion the above mentioned websites do the job well. You can find the rest here in this simple google search for Currency Converter.

Written by Arun Sarathy.

An Inspirational video - a mouse that never quits - Life Lesson

If there is something in this world that comes at the right time to us, it's inspiration. We sometimes just have to wait or just go search for it. Nevertheless, we can be sure to get it.

One such thing happened when I wanted to find out how not to quit. Entrepreneur.com linked to this video on their website from liveleak.com

In this video, a tiny mouse works its best to take that treasure to its home - a biscuit! The way it perseveres is simply contagious and anybody can find inspiration from this little mouse. Worth watching. 

See it here: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1fa_1383127879







Written by Arun Sarathy.

What is Google Apps for Business? Is it worth paying for?

Let’s say you want to register a domain for your company. Or you simply wanted to register a domain in your name for the sake of it. 

When you are at that juncture of your life, you would have lots of options laid out before you - especially if you just Googled it and you didn’t find a suitable solution.

There are many Domain name registration service providers like GoDaddy, Register.com, Domain.com and then our post’s main point of discussion - Google apps for business. 

This post aims at providing three main topics about Google apps for Business which you wanted to know.

About | Services | Pricing

About: Google Apps for Business was started by Google, Inc. as their proprietary web productivity tools. For a complete history of Google Apps, check out this Wikipedia article. It was an idea of Rajen Sheth, a product manager of Google enterprise, who is known as ‘father of Google Apps’. He was also responsible for development of Chrome and Chrome OS for Business.

Main Services:

More Products:

Pricing:

Google Apps for Business is offered for FREE for 30 days. Post which a fixed fee is charged based on the number of users you want to register. As on date, it’s USD 5 per user per month or USD 50 per year. They offer two ways of pricing - fixed and flexible. On the other hand, Google Apps for Education is completely FREE and offers the same amount of storage as Google Apps for Business. You also get to register your domain through Google Apps for Business. 

This is a much better thing to be done using Google for two main reasons:

1. Making use of Google’s home grown benefits: Google is known for its content indexing. Registering a domain through this makes it easy to utilise their home-grown indexing opportunities; Google+ makes it even more easier along with back links, Page Rank which are Google’s key factors to order their search results. Overall it helps with the SEO.

2. Protecting your sensitive personal data: Since personal details like phone number, email addresses, business address details are required to register a domain name it becomes highly sensitive data to play with. And none of us want to get this in the hands of notorious hackers. But domain names registered with Google helps in protecting your personal details and doesn’t show up in the WhoIs searches.

With these products up your sleeve to start your new start up, it’s hopefully easier for you now to decide if Google Apps for Business is worth paying for. 

For even more details, the following video provides you a quick intro in to What Google Apps for Business is straight from Google itself:

Written by Arun Sarathy.