Why Google plus won’t hurt Facebook, but Skype will hate it

Google launched its much awaited and highly anticipated social networking platform today to a limited number of users. Dubbed Google+ (Plus), the service may take its cue from social networking giant Facebook, but in the end it is about the harsh reality of Google saving and enhancing its core franchise — Google Search. It is search (and, by extension, advertising) that made Google a company that has run afoul of the Federal Trade Commission because of its huge size and influence.
At the time of Google’s founding, search was broadly defined as a sifting through a directory of websites. As the web grew, search became all about pages. Google, with its PageRank, came to dominate that evolution of search.
Today, search is not just about pages, but also about people and the relevance of information to them.
Google’s senior executives — long dismissive of the idea of importance of social to search — were contrite during their briefing earlier this week. “It is about time we have come to the realization,” said Bradley Horowitz, vice president of product with Google, “If you don’t know people, then you can’t organize the information for people.”
Google’s realization — however late – that it needs to use social, location and other signals to enhance its core search platform is welcome. “Google needs to understand these relationships and basically use those to make search better,” said Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president for Social in an hour-long briefing earlier this week.
Why? Because the the internet (and information) are expanding with such rapidity that there is no room for assumptions, and as such our systems need to adapt to this world of no (or alternatively infinite) assumptions. Google needs to adapt, and getting social and location signals is important for the company. Search is now search relevant to you in the context of your world — and that is where Google+ comes in.
What is Google Plus?

Is Google+ a destination like Facebook.com? Is it a social network? Is this an identity play? The answer to those questions is yes and no. Google’s Gundotra said that this is the first step by the company in its long social journey, which is going to evolve.
Today, you can get to Google Plus by visiting a website – Google.com/+. But it also travels with you across different Google web properties, thanks to a Google Toolbar. The toolbar is personal to you and allows you to share and send photos, videos, links or just simple messages. A notification icon informs you if others have shared stuff with you.
Google, Gundotra says, has leveraged its infrastructure to offer an array of services, and at the same time the company is attacking Facebook’s noticeable shortcoming — granular privacy that average folks can understand. More importantly it is trying hard to not be compared with Facebook.
Some of Google + Features:
In order to use Google +, you need to have a Google account, though it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to have a Google Mail account. Once you set-up your Google account, you can use your address book to invite people to your network and use that as a starting point.
Circles: Google has come up with the concept of circles — you can create a circle of contacts that are family, friends, work friends, former co-workers and so on. With these groups or circles you can define who gets to see what kind of updates. Facebook currently doesn’t offer the ability to control who sees what goes in our life that we share online.
Hangout: This just might be the killer feature of Google + effort. It is essentially group video chat done right. You click on the Hangout button and invite members of a certain group by sending them a notification. If there is no one around, all I could do is hang about without much drain on the system waiting for someone to show up. So theoretically I could invite all members of team GigaOM circle and have a quick video chat. In the demo at least, Hangout felt intuitive and easy to use (Google uses its own video codec and not Adobe Flash for this feature).
Huddle: This is a mobile group-chat service that is very much like Beluga, the fast-growing service that was snapped up by Facebook weeks after it was launched and is now said to be part of a major new communications push by Facebook. I think this is a great little feature and frankly, if Google was smart they should be rolling this out to all Google Apps for the Enterprise customers.
Instant Uploads: It has also come up with a new approach to mobile photos & videos. Google calls it Instant Uploads. Take a photo and it uploads to your Picasa or YouTube account and then you can share those videos via Google+  to specific “circles.”
Sparks: It is a new feature that allows you to create topics of interest and use them as source of information and then share it with various different groups. For instance, I could share results of Top Gear with my “petrol head” friends. These “interest” or “topic” packs offer a lot of content and not surprisingly YouTube videos. Circles, Hangout and Huddle are about personal sharing and personal communications. Sparks on the other hand is devoid of that connection and stands out as a sore thumb.
Google Plus + Chrome + Android
A few months ago, I wrote about how Google could beat Facebook, pointing out that it was not going to be on the web, and instead on the mobile.

I’ve always maintained Google has to play to its strengths – that is, tap into its DNA of being an engineering-driven culture that can leverage its immense infrastructure. It also needs to leverage its existing assets even more, instead of chasing rainbows. In other words, it needs to look at Android and see if it can build a layer of services that get to the very essence of social experience: communication.
However, instead of getting bogged down by the old-fashioned notion of communication – phone calls, emails, instant messages and text messages – it needs to think about interactions. In other words, Google needs to think of a world beyond Google Talk, Google Chat and Google Voice.
To me, interactions are synchronous, are highly personal, are location-aware and allow the sharing of experiences, whether it’s photographs, video streams or simply smiley faces. Interactions are supposed to mimic the feeling of actually being there. Interactions are about enmeshing the virtual with the physical.
The ability to interact on an ongoing basis anywhere, any time and sharing everything, from moments to emotions – is what social is all about. From my vantage point, this is what Google should focus on.

I am glad to see Google is thinking along these lines and is building products with a mobile-first point of view, a concept that former CEO Eric Schmidt has often talked about.
While I was given a demo by the Google executives on a notebook computer, the heavy use of HTML5 makes Google Plus an experience that could easily work on Android tablets and Android phones. Instant Uploads, Circles, Huddle and Hangout can work on these mobile devices without much textual input, making them easy to use on the touch-centric mobile platforms. Google at the same is also making  Google Plus available as an app – for Android and the iPhone platform – ensuring that it is getting the experience right.
Facebook Has Nothing To Worry About
I don’t think Facebook has anything to worry about. However, there is a whole slew of other companies that should be on notice. Just as Apple put several app developers on notice with the announcement of its new iOS 5 and Mac OS X Lion, Google+ should give folks at companies such as Blekko, Skype and a gaggle of group messaging companies a pause. I personally think Skype Video can easily be brought to its knees by Google Plus’ Hangout. And even if Google+ fails, Google could easily make Hangout part of the Google office offering.
One of the reasons why I think Facebook is safe is because it cannot be beaten with this unified strategy. Theoretically speaking, the only way to beat Facebook is through a thousand cuts. Photo sharing services such as Instagram can move attention away from Facebook, much like other tiny companies who can bootstrap themselves based on Facebook social graph and then built alternative graphs to siphon away attention from Facebook. Google, could in theory go one step further – team up with alternative social graphs such as Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr and use those graphs to create an uber graph.
Build it, But Will They Come?

Will You Sign Up & Use Google+

Facebook is good enough for me.I am anti-socialSure I will use it.

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In the past, I have been pretty skeptical of Google’s social ambitions, mostly because of company’s DNA. Based on a briefing and a demo, I am not yet ready to change my opinion. Google needs this social effort to work — it needs to get a lot of people using the service to create an identity platform that can rival Facebook Connect. It needs the people to improve its search offering. Of course, the Google’s biggest challenge is to convince people to sign-up for yet another social platform, especially since more and more people are hooked into Facebook (750 million) and Twitter. I don’t feel quite compelled to switch from Facebook or Twitter to Google, just as I don’t feel too compelled to switch to Bing from Google for Search.
I can easily see services such as Hangout and Huddle get traction, but will that be enough to get traction with hundreds of millions of people? Doubtful, though I am happy to be proven wrong, for it would surely be nice to have a counterbalance to Facebook.

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8 Million Dollar iPhone 4

Apple iPhone has got millions of fans and now Stuart Hughes, a British jeweler has come up with a new iPhone 4 which has got over 500 diamonds and is priced at $8 million.
The new iPhone has got 500 diamonds lined around the steel band and it has got 53 diamonds on the Apple logo which is located in the back cover of the iPhone.
Stuart Hughes is known for remaking popular gadgets for an expensive price, this is yet another add on to his list. According to the sources, only two of such 8 million iPhone 4 will be developed.
Coming to your budget now, do you think it really fits in your pocket? Do you have a budget of $8 Million for this sexy iPhone 4?
I know most of you will say no. $8 million is an expensive price but I am sure there are some people who must be excited to buy one of these.
If you have got $8 millions in hand, what will you buy, is it going to be this iPhone 4 by any chance?

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What is bank

A bank is a financial institution that serves as a financial intermediary. The term "bank" may refer to one of several related types of entities:

• A central bank circulates money on behalf of a government and acts as its monetary authority by implementing monetary policy, which regulates the money supply.
• A commercial bank accepts deposits and pools those funds to provide credit, either directly by lending, or indirectly by investing through the capital markets. Within the global financial markets, these institutions connect market participants with capital deficits (borrowers) to market participants with capital surpluses (investors and lenders) by transferring funds from those parties who have surplus funds to invest (financial assets) to those parties who borrow funds to invest in real assets.
• A savings bank (known as a "building society" in the United Kingdom) is similar to a savings and loan association (S&L). They can either be stockholder owned or mutually owned, in which case they are permitted to only borrow from members of the financial cooperative. The asset structure of savings banks and savings and loan associations is similar, with residential mortgage loans providing the principal assets of the institution's portfolio.

Because of the important role depository institutions play in the financial system, the banking industry is highly regulated, and government restrictions on financial activities by banks have varied over time and by location. Current global bank capital requirements are referred to as Basel II. In some countries, such as Germany, banks have historically owned major stakes in industrial companies, while in other countries, such as the United States, banks have traditionally been prohibited from owning non-financial companies. In Japan, banks are usually the nexus of a cross-share holding entity known as the "keiretsu". In Iceland, banks followed international standards of regulation prior to the recent global financial crisis that began in 2007.
The oldest bank still in existence is Monte dei Paschi di Siena, headquartered in Siena, Italy, which has been operating continuously since 1472.^[1]

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How Google Works

 If you aren’t interested in learning how Google creates the index and the database of documents that it accesses when processing a query, skip this description. I adapted the following overview from Chris Sherman and Gary Price’s wonderful description of How Search Engines Work in Chapter 2 of The Invisible Web (CyberAge Books, 2001).
Google runs on a distributed network of thousands of low-cost computers and can therefore carry out fast parallel processing. Parallel processing is a method of computation in which many calculations can be performed simultaneously, significantly speeding up data processing. Google has three distinct parts:

• Googlebot, a web crawler that finds and fetches web pages.
• The indexer that sorts every word on every page and stores the resulting index of words in a huge database.
• The query processor, which compares your search query to the index and recommends the documents that it considers most relevant.

Let’s take a closer look at each part.

1. Googlebot, Google’s Web Crawler

Googlebot is Google’s web crawling robot, which finds and retrieves pages on the web and hands them off to the Google indexer. It’s easy to imagine Googlebot as a little spider scurrying across the strands of cyberspace, but in reality Googlebot doesn’t traverse the web at all. It functions much like your web browser, by sending a request to a web server for a web page, downloading the entire page, then handing it off to Google’s indexer.
Googlebot consists of many computers requesting and fetching pages much more quickly than you can with your web browser. In fact, Googlebot can request thousands of different pages simultaneously. To avoid overwhelming web servers, or crowding out requests from human users, Googlebot deliberately makes requests of each individual web server more slowly than it’s capable of doing.
Googlebot finds pages in two ways: through an add URL form, www.google.com/addurl.html, and through finding links by crawling the web.

Unfortunately, spammers figured out how to create automated bots that bombarded the add URL form with millions of URLs pointing to commercial propaganda. Google rejects those URLs submitted through its Add URL form that it suspects are trying to deceive users by employing tactics such as including hidden text or links on a page, stuffing a page with irrelevant words, cloaking (aka bait and switch), using sneaky redirects, creating doorways, domains, or sub-domains with substantially similar content, sending automated queries to Google, and linking to bad neighbors. So now the Add URL form also has a test: it displays some squiggly letters designed to fool automated “letter-guessers”; it asks you to enter the letters you see — something like an eye-chart test to stop spambots.
When Googlebot fetches a page, it culls all the links appearing on the page and adds them to a queue for subsequent crawling. Googlebot tends to encounter little spam because most web authors link only to what they believe are high-quality pages. By harvesting links from every page it encounters, Googlebot can quickly build a list of links that can cover broad reaches of the web. This technique, known as deep crawling, also allows Googlebot to probe deep within individual sites. Because of their massive scale, deep crawls can reach almost every page in the web. Because the web is vast, this can take some time, so some pages may be crawled only once a month.
Although its function is simple, Googlebot must be programmed to handle several challenges. First, since Googlebot sends out simultaneous requests for thousands of pages, the queue of “visit soon” URLs must be constantly examined and compared with URLs already in Google’s index. Duplicates in the queue must be eliminated to prevent Googlebot from fetching the same page again. Googlebot must determine how often to revisit a page. On the one hand, it’s a waste of resources to re-index an unchanged page. On the other hand, Google wants to re-index changed pages to deliver up-to-date results.
To keep the index current, Google continuously recrawls popular frequently changing web pages at a rate roughly proportional to how often the pages change. Such crawls keep an index current and are known as fresh crawls. Newspaper pages are downloaded daily, pages with stock quotes are downloaded much more frequently. Of course, fresh crawls return fewer pages than the deep crawl. The combination of the two types of crawls allows Google to both make efficient use of its resources and keep its index reasonably current.

2. Google’s Indexer

Googlebot gives the indexer the full text of the pages it finds. These pages are stored in Google’s index database. This index is sorted alphabetically by search term, with each index entry storing a list of documents in which the term appears and the location within the text where it occurs. This data structure allows rapid access to documents that contain user query terms.
To improve search performance, Google ignores (doesn’t index) common words called stop words (such as the, is, on, or, of, how, why, as well as certain single digits and single letters). Stop words are so common that they do little to narrow a search, and therefore they can safely be discarded. The indexer also ignores some punctuation and multiple spaces, as well as converting all letters to lowercase, to improve Google’s performance.

3. Google’s Query Processor

The query processor has several parts, including the user interface (search box), the “engine” that evaluates queries and matches them to relevant documents, and the results formatter.
PageRank is Google’s system for ranking web pages. A page with a higher PageRank is deemed more important and is more likely to be listed above a page with a lower PageRank.
Google considers over a hundred factors in computing a PageRank and determining which documents are most relevant to a query, including the popularity of the page, the position and size of the search terms within the page, and the proximity of the search terms to one another on the page. A patent application discusses other factors that Google considers when ranking a page. Visit SEOmoz.org’s report for an interpretation of the concepts and the practical applications contained in Google’s patent application.
Google also applies machine-learning techniques to improve its performance automatically by learning relationships and associations within the stored data. For example, the spelling-correcting system uses such techniques to figure out likely alternative spellings. Google closely guards the formulas it uses to calculate relevance; they’re tweaked to improve quality and performance, and to outwit the latest devious techniques used by spammers.
Indexing the full text of the web allows Google to go beyond simply matching single search terms. Google gives more priority to pages that have search terms near each other and in the same order as the query. Google can also match multi-word phrases and sentences. Since Google indexes HTML code in addition to the text on the page, users can restrict searches on the basis of where query words appear, e.g., in the title, in the URL, in the body, and in links to the page, options offered by Google’s Advanced Search Form and Using Search Operators (Advanced Operators).
Let’s see how Google processes a query.

Copyright © 2003 Google Inc. Used with permission.

For more information on how Google works, take a look at the following articles.

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Apple Introduces iCloud

Apple today introduced iCloud, a set of free new cloud services that work seamlessly with applications on your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, or PC to automatically and wirelessly store your content and push it to all your devices. iCloud services include new versions of Contact, Calendar, and Mail; iCloud Backup and Storage; Photo Stream; and iTunes in the Cloud. And for just $24.99 a year, iTunes Match will give you all of the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud for music you haven’t purchased from iTunes. iCloud will be available this fall, along with iOS 5. A free beta version of iTunes in the Cloud is available today in the U.S. and requires iTunes 10.3 and iOS 4.3.3. Read more: apple.com/icloud

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Movie Review: 'Double Dhamaal'

"Double Dhamaal" — "Fun" in Hindi — features four goofy unemployed guys so desperate to strike it rich they will do just about anything to grab some cash. They are Adi (Arshad Warsi), Manav (Jaaved Jaaferi), Roy (Riteish Deshmukh) and Boman (Ashish Chowdhry), and they could easily be called the Four Stooges. The four hard-working comedians, director Indra Kumar and writer Tushar Hiranandani are awe-inspiring in their sheer stamina and seemingly inexhaustible energy in sustaining a 138-minute running time that by Hollywood standards is about 50 minutes too long for comedy but is typical for Bollywood.

The film is amiably silly, gaudy and even pleasantly diverting for the non-Hindi-speaking viewer who realizes that the verbal gags that elicited laughter in the original language tend to elude translation via English subtitles. The comedy, however, is also heavy on slapstick, pratfalls and crazy disguises.

At any rate, the doofus quartet is somehow acquainted with Kabir (Sanjay Dutt), a rugged-looking, middle-aged and decidedly shady Mumbai tycoon who pretends to take them on as investors in a fake oil field scheme in order to set them up to ensnare and bilk a rich, phony preacher. That's barely the beginning of the nonstop shenanigans and adventures, which eventually proceed to Macao, where Kabir has just bought a fancy casino. He also has two gorgeous girlfriends, Kamini (Mallika Sherawat) and Kiya (Kangna Ranaut), who eventually provide love interest for two of the stooges.

"Double Dhamaal" — the first "Dhamaal" came out two years ago — may be wearying for some viewers, but crazy, cockamamie incidents, some of them inventive, hurtle along at a fast clip with considerable bounciness and boundless good nature. The obligatory musical numbers are cleverly framed as the various characters' daydreams and never interrupt the film's steady pacing. In its extremely broad humor, "Double Dhamaal" is, for the most part, fun.

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RA.One is for respect not money: SRK

“Kabhi kabhi jeetne ke liye kuchh haarna bhi padta hai (Sometimes to win something, you need to lose something)…” Shah Rukh Khan’s famous line from Baazigar (1993) rings trueas his home production, RA.One,gears up for a Diwali release.
Reportedly, the superhero SFX adventure has already cost him Rs 150 crore, with an additionalRs 40 crore now going into print and other other publicity. The actor-filmmaker however isunperturbed by comparisons with Rajinikanth blockbuster Robot (2010) that was the most expensive Indian film evermade, and the biggest grosser too.
Apprehensions about RA.One turning out to be a profitable venture are growing. “I don’t know about the budget of Robot, but when we started RA.One, I knew I could lose money on it unless it can do better business than my last bighit. I’m okay with that, I just might have to dance at a few extra weddings,” Shah Rukh jokes. Shahrukh KhanHe insists that it’s highly unlikely that the film won’t work, attributing his confidence to the film’s noveltyvalue: “After 20 years, comparisons no longer bother me. And as for the apprehensions about profitability, well, as my wife Gauri puts it, even if I lose a few crore, I can afford it, given how much I’ve earned from thisindustry in the last two decades.” The hype for this Anubhav Sinha directed fantasyfilm is slowly and steadily growing.
It’s believed that SRK has already spent Rs 6 crore on its promotions. “The unveiling of the first look of the film cost Red Chillies at least Rs 2 crore. And the trailers released during the ICC World Cup also didn’t come cheap,” points out a tradeveteran.
SRK shrugs off the money factor, insisting that it will come and go. “I’m glad I could fly for my kids in the film. The technology we’ve used is here to stay,” he enthuses.
Prod him on the film’s financial prospects and he quips, borrowing Rhett Butler’s famous words from Gone With The Wind (1939), “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. Even if I don’t earn money from the film, it will earn me respect.”
However, the actor, who has Farhan Akhtar’s Don 2 coming up this Christmas, admits that after playing G.One, the good guy in RA.One, and the bad guy in Don 2, he wants to take a break from big budget movies and do a small film: “If I can, good. If I can’t, then I’ll just go off on a holiday.”

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5 Reasons Internet Access in America is a Disaster

Right now, I'm typing this column from a friend's shed. At 1:30 a.m. -- it's 100 degrees inside. There is no bathroom. It smells like oil and gasoline from the lawnmower behind me. Why? Because Internet access in a large part of America is kind of fucked.When you hear people complain about it -- say, when somebody jokes about how jealous they are of their Korean friend's 50 MB/s connection -- everybody assumes they're complaining about how long it takes to torrent an HD movie or whining about a latency disadvantage in Call of Duty.

FUCK!

But that's not the real problem. First of all, I work on the Internet -- it's my full-time job, my employer's office is 2,000 miles away. And second, there are big chunks of the USA where, if you moved there right now, you can't get broadband Internet access at all, no matter who you offered to blow for it. So for all of you out there who are having to pause periodically so more words will load, let's run down all of the ways that Internet access in the USA is shit.

#5.

Some of Us Just Plain Can't Get It

The reason I'm having to access this article from a makeshift connection in a tool shed is that last month I finally moved out of my old apartment that would have been classified as a war crime if POWs were held there. I got to the new place, called up my friendly ISP to have the connection set up and heard them say that service was unavailable there. Not that particular hour or day -- but unavailable, period. Keep in mind this apartment isn't in the middle of the Sahara, it's located right in the middle of a small town in the USA. Fine, I called another ISP. They said the same thing. This was a problem because it means I could not fucking telecommute to work until a friend finally felt sorry for me and ran a line out to a corner of a building he owns.

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The computer is made of beetle droppings.

I'm not an isolated case -- up to 10 percent of the country can't even get basic broadband. That may not sound like a lot if you're among the people who can get it, but in rural areas of the country, there are huge stretches of Internet dead zones (take Nebraska for instance -- the FCC recently reported that more than 300,000 people -- almost 20 percent of the state -- can't get even low-end broadband).
So in my case, I live in a town in the Midwest with about 2,000 people and was told by the area's DSL provider that they are currently "maxed out" on connections -- if I wanted one, I had to wait for some meth-head to go to jail so that his connection frees up and I can take his spot.

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He's right there in the weeds, officer! Get him!

It is, of course, about money -- to them, upgrading their capacity isn't worth it if there aren't enough potential non-meth head subscribers to pay for it (here's a tech for one provider citing $750,000 as the cost to add a new terminal to carry additional DSL lines).

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It's made out of this.

America has been through all of this before, by the way -- the exact same situation played itself out in the early days of telephone service, when it was too expensive to run a line out to a smattering of customers in some rural farming community (this was back when such communities had only moonshine to entertain themselves, before advances in meth technology rendered it obsolete). Those people didn't get service until the government forced AT& T to do it.

#4.

Often There are No Real Options for Service (and No Competition)

"Now wait a minute," some of you are saying. "Even in a small town like yours, if DSL providers are dropping the ball, the free market should introduce alternatives to compete for all of that money generated by methamphetamine sales."
Hey, sure enough, I got a flier from the cable company offering service. I called and the woman on the phone told me that this service was more of an optimistic hypothetical than an actual "service" you could "buy," but that I should call back every day until it became available. I actually tried that, for 31 days, told each time to try again later while she presumably masturbated at the thought of my pain. The last call I made, another woman said, "It should be very soon because they're physically laying the lines now. I'd call back in a month and a half."

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I know, that's what I thought, too!

A motherfucking month and a cockshitting half? "Very soon" doesn't mean what she thinks it means. If it does, I wonder how she'll react when I tell her I'll pay my bill "very soon."
OK, maybe you've seen those ads for satellite Internet (like HughesNet, which specifically advertises their service to places that have lots of corn fields). Even if I was fine with the price and speeds (it's about 400 percent more expensive than DSL, and gets about a third of the speed), when I called I didn't even get that far -- I was informed that they have a 200-meg limit on downloads per day (you can get that boosted to 400 megs for the low, low price of $90 a month). Let me break that down for you: My last Windows security update was 300 megs. That's auto-updating, which means it happens in the background without me noticing.
Their solution? Don't download shit.

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"Thanks for your business. You can't eat any of this.

By the way, that's from their announcement page. And on that page, they give us great news! They're currently increasing the cap! By 25 megs. In my job, I'll use that in about 20 minutes. Again, I'm not complaining that this, for instance, eliminates services like Netflix. My work requires me to download dozens of large files (high res images and video) per project, every day, seven days a week. When Brockway talked about bandwidth caps a little while back, it scared the shit out of me. I had no idea how fast I'd run into it.
Just to emphasize that I exhausted every possibility, I found out that DIRECTV and my local electric company both offer a wireless connection called Blue Sky. If you don't have a direct line of sight to their tower (a tree or another house is in the way), you can't get it. OK, a half an hour with a chainsaw later, I had that shit covered. What's the next step?

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I mean besides breaking it to the landlord that I didn't cut the tree.

Their representative did some quick figures and said that after installation, equipment and startup fees are all added, I'd be paying about $600 cock-shrinking dollars just to get it going. And that's not counting the $90 per month to use their "just above dialup" speeds, which is not fast enough to stream even a low quality YouTube video. Oh, and it's an 18-month contract -- with no early termination. If I decide their service is too horrible to use a few months later, the $90 bill keeps coming every month until the 18 months are over.

#3.

Those Who Have Access Still Lag Behind the Rest of the World

But I only use my situation as an example. I don't want you to think that my message here is, "Don't move to small town America unless you hate the Internet as much as you love meth!" This is a nationwide problem. You'll hear politicians talk about improving broadband infrastructure and if you're happy with your own service, you may not understand what the big deal is.

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These guys certainly don't.

Beyond people in my situation, there's just the overall speed of the system as a whole. For instance, if cable Internet had been real rather than a cruel psychological experiment, the fastest speed they offer is 15 megs-per-second. I'd be paying roughly $70 a month for that.
Now compare that to other countries like South Korea, where the average user boasts 15 megs-per-second -- nearly quadruple the speed of the average user in the USA (which I would still kill for, compared to my current 0.0 Mbps download rate). The USA barely ranks in the top 20 in Internet speed worldwide, behind countries like Romania and Iceland.

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Don't celebrate, assholes. Your Internet sucks, too.

Oh, and next year, Korea is implementing a 1,000-meg connection. Japan already has one -- for the same $70 per month my cable company charges for their fictional service. Korea claims that theirs won't be anywhere near that expensive.
But don't be discouraged. Chattanooga, Tennessee is working on one themselves. It'll cost around $350 per month.

#2.

Bad Internet = Shitty Economy

As I alluded to before, we still fall into the trap of thinking of the Internet the way we thought about it in 1997 -- as a frivolous luxury used for porn, copyright theft and ALF slash fiction. When the government pushed a plan to help improve lines and accessibility, the opposition across comments sections Internet-wide went nuts, with cries of, "You're fucking with this bullshit in this economy just so people can download their furry porn faster?!"

The Internet.

The only thing I can guess is that this is what happens when you have a debate about technology being held by old politicians who don't completely understand what this "Internet" gadget is. "It's that 'Facebook' thing my secretary is on all day, right?"
But tell that to the people who work for those same politicians, running entire campaigns online. Tell it to the people who used online voting to get their wrinkled asses into the office in the first place.

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But if you lose, it casts your vote the other way.

But more than that, online retail is expected to be worth $279 billion by 2015, and as entire industries shift to a world that presumes that everyone has broadband, offline choices will continue to disappear. Every bank has online banking now, and in turn, makes it more of a pain in the ass to do it the old way. With streaming services like Netflix, brick and mortar video stores disappear (in this town, there used to be four movie rental places, now there's one). Hey, did I mention that Netflix is now the largest user of streaming bandwidth in the United States?
That means that in many cases, the choice is between doing the commerce online and not doing it at all. Downloading games off Steam isn't a matter of me being too much of a lazy ass to get down to a Wal-Mart. The vast majority of Steam's library simply isn't available for purchase off the shelf, even if I offer the cashier a suitcase full of cash and 10 grams of top-quality meth to get it. I guess I could just order a physical copy off Amazon ... oh, wait. Right.

#1.

At This Point, Internet Access is Kind of a Necessity

Earlier I compared Internet access to the early days of universal phone service, but that's really not even close. Nobody in 1950 was working entirely over the phone. Nobody was doing all of their purchasing, banking and entertainment over the phone. And even then it was still considered a necessity because the powers that be realized that soon, the whole civilized world would operate under the assumption that you had one.

Via Wikipedia
As proof, here's a picture of my current cell phone.

We're so reliant on the Internet now that you don't even realize how much of what goes on behind the scenes depends on it. Last week, I didn't get a chance to grocery shop. The kids were getting hungry, so I rushed up to the store, grabbed a couple of things and pulled out my debit card. When I swiped it, the machine told me to see the cashier, who then told me that their Internet connection was down. Which meant I either had to pay with cash or check, or put all of my shit back on the shelf and serve the kids some loafs of "go fuck yourself."

Photos.com
Eat up, bitches.

And then there are the millions of telecommuters, like me. Let me be clear -- as I mentioned in my article about being poor, having Internet access is the only thing between me and homelessness. In an area of the country where every non-meth industry has stopped hiring, finding a work-from-home job online was what saved me from god knows how long a stretch of unemployment. Moving to a new, more economically viable town costs money I don't have. The Internet was the difference.
For those looking to improve their prospects with a degree, college is often only possible thanks to online courses. My nearest community college is an expensive and time-consuming two-hour round trip away. I could go on and on.

But I won't because I plan on exceeding my bandwidth shortly.

I have a feeling the UN is going to take a lot of shit for declaring that Internet access is a human right. It sounds weird to say when you think of "human right" as "the right to not have electrodes applied to your nuts for attending a protest." But having tried to go without it for a stretch, I can fucking see where they're coming from.
And while I have no interest in getting into a debate about federal funding for new fiber optic lines or whatever, it seems like we've progressed to a point where having Internet is less like phone service and more like having water lines or sewage or roads. It's not so much a thing you buy as the thing that makes it possible to function in society. The sooner the world figures that out, the better.

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How to Write the Perfect Love Letter :- Rupak (Trupasko)

Maybe your heart is beating wildly or maybe it is broken. Either way, you wish you could say what you feel, but every time you try, you come up short. Welcome to the complicated world of love! Take comfort in knowing that poets and statesmen have struggled with the same question—"How do I write the perfect love letter?" Here are some simple guidelines that can help.
1. Presentation. Use beautiful stationery (a neutral, soft color, such as cream or white) and a flair pen with black or brown ink—no blues, greens or reds! Remember, your Love Letter is being written to someone special. Hand-written letters are best. This is personal--you are not writing a business letter!
2. Ambience. Go to a secluded place and put on soft, romantic music. A quiet room would be nice. Dim the lights. Stimulate a romantic mood.
3. Keepsake. Date your Love Letter (month, day, year). This is a letter that will be treasured and remembered. You can bet that it will be read over and over and safeguarded in a special place.
4. Greeting. Choose an endearing salutation. Don't be formal. Use your love's first name. For example: "My dearest Jennifer . . ." or "My darling Matt . . ."
5. Beginning. Start your Love Letter by telling your beloved your reasons for writing. For instance: "I have lain awake many sleepless nights trying to compose words that might adequately describe the feelings of my heart. But every time I have made the attempt, I have failed miserably. Please forgive my poor effort and accept a trite and simple phrase: I love you. I think I can say it no better than that..." Never insult your beloved's feelings or belittle yourself by saying something like: "I know you probably don't feel this way," or "You must think I'm crazy." If you are timid in your Love Letter, your attempt at conveying heartfelt words will fall flat and might be misunderstood.
6. Body. The body of the Love Letter should include reasons for why you fell in love. Here are some ideas:

• recall when you fell in love with him/her
• explain how your life has changed for the better
• describe how much you miss your love when you're apart
• explain that you can't imagine life without him/her
• list some of the many things you have in common
• tell how wonderful and complete he/she makes you feel
• recall some special moments you've shared together
• mention times you've picked him/her out of a crowd
• list qualities that set him/her apart from everyone else

Avoid being casual, too light-hearted, or openly erotic. A Love Letter is a letter of respect that coveys deep, difficult-to-express feelings. Don't discount the impact of poetry in place of, or in addition to, your words. Maybe your beloved has a favorite author or poet. It will be seen as a compliment if you take the time to quote someone he/she admires. Be sure to give proper credit where it's due. Don't forget the Internet is a great place to find that poem or song you are trying to quote!
Be real. Your Love Letter should be a carefully crafted work of art, but it also needs to sound sincere. You want your Love Letter to make your beloved fall in love, not fall into laughter. Be confident as you express your emotions, dreams, and vulnerability.
NOTE: don't expect your first attempt will be the letter you send. Practice on scrap paper before you start writing on your good stationery. REVISE, then leave it for a few hours, then return and revise it again. Read it again in the morning before you send it. You'll improve it, as well as have fewer regrets—guaranteed!
7. Closing. End your Love Letter with carefully worded prose: "There, I have said it. I can rest now. And as I dream, I will dream of you." Make your closing upbeat and positive.
8. Valediction. Don't just end with: "Love, Eric." Even if you said, "All my love," it would be better. You become even more romantic by writing something like: "Dream of me, my love..." What you want is a simple, yet heartfelt goodbye: "With undying love," or "Forever yours." Remember, you may think this is too sappy, but your loved one will treasure each word. Be prepared to have it quoted to you in years to come.
9. Insert. Include a special extra: petals from a flower, sprinkles of stars, a teabag of your favorite tea ...You get the idea. That little extra effort means you really put some thought (and heart) into this.
10. Neatness counts. Gently fold the Love Letter and place it in a neatly addressed envelope—hopefully, one that matches your stationery. The correct way is to fold a small stationery sheet (or sheets) in half with the text on the inside. Place the letter in the envelope with the crease at the bottom and the salutation facing the back. Hand address the envelope. Remember what your elementary teacher taught you about penmanship--make sure your love is able to read your writing! Add a stamp that looks romantic--the Garden Bouquet stamps are nice--and affix it upside down. It is a custom that means, "I love you." Drop the letter in the mail. That's it! Expect an emotional response. And here's another tip: buy some breath mints--you'll need them!
11. Be expressive. Here are some popular words to use in your Love Letter: angel, angelic, lover, giving, alluring, tempting, sensual, sensuality, seeing, tasting, touching, holding, caressing, memories, memorable, darling, gorgeous, absence, velvet, voyage, beautiful, vision, elation, blossoms, happy, kisses, innocent, passion, dreaming, delirious, temptation, complete, desire, content, embrace, rainbow, rose, adoring, stars, privileged, heart.

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Mind over Body

You start slowly, moving your body and finding the rhythm. Your breath becomes faster and you explore new positions to see the effect. You generate heat and after the exertion come a great relaxation and peacefulness. Are we talking about a yoga class or lovemaking? How about both?
Both yoga and sex are physical and emotional, uplifting and challenging, they both use the body to calm the mind and stimulate the spirit. So how can practicing yoga improve your sex life?
On a physical level, yoga helps strengthen pelvic floor muscles and sex organs and accumulate energy to achieve better orgasms. Increased flexibility and a toned body give more self-confidence and help you to experiment with different positions.
But more importantly, yoga can help you deal with the biggest spoilsport of great sex: the mind.
You are turned on, the other is making the right moves and then it happens. Like the first clouds on a clear sky, the first thoughts appear. "Is he going to still find me attractive naked", "will she be comparing me with her ex", "what shall we have for breakfast". The mind is bringing up insecurities, work stress, to-do lists and other random thoughts. Another great trick of the mind is comparing the person in bed to the image you have made up of the perfect lover, and they hardly ever match.  And before you know it, your sex drive is seriously diminished or completely gone.
Yoga makes you aware of your body and how it feels from one moment to the next. Learning to feel and adjust to the smallest sensations during yoga practice teaches you to savor all the sensations in your body. This awareness is carried over into your daily life and yes into the bedroom too. This awareness helps with the focus towards your body, but also takes the focus away from your mind and the things your worry about. Free from your stresses you can completely enjoy everything happening between the sheets.
"Yoga focuses people on how they feel, which is something they don't do enough during sex," says Dr. Marty Klein, a sex therapist and author of Beyond Orgasm: Dare to be Honest about the Sex You Really Want. "During sex, people tend to think more about what they imagine the other person is looking at or thinking about. Yoga brings the mind away from judgments, thoughts, speculations, assumptions, anxieties—things that interfere with physical response and emotional satisfaction."
Whether you choose Hatha, Asthanga or Iyengar, a consistent yoga practice helps in improving better understanding of yourself and more sensitivity about the other's needs. In the bedroom, this increased attentiveness helps you recognize subtle shifts in your partner—a level of focus that will put you on the fast track to becoming a world-class lover.
"You will be tuned in to what feels good and what doesn't—for yourself and for someone else," says Kevin Courtney, a yoga teacher based in New York City. "Take the time to be fully present—no mental grocery list, no daydreaming, no anxious gathering of fears and insecurities. Look your partner in the eye and spend time on every caress and every kiss."

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By The End Of 2011, PayPal Expects To Process USD 3 Million In Mobile Payment

It is reported that PayPal is currently expected to process USD 3 million in mobile payment or m-commerce by the end of 2011.

According to the report, it is that PayPal now has over 8 million users and USD 10 million per day in mobile payment volume. Though in India, Paypal has faced lot of objection from RBI (Reserve Bank Of India), it still persisted in the country given the fact it currently has huge growing market. In recent report released by Paypal, it received a growth of 16% reaching 97.7 million in Q1 2011. That means PayPal can have 97.7 million active registered accounts by the year end.

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Create your own "Facebook" Book

If you have been active on Facebook for some time, you’ll love Social Memories.
This app analyzes your entire Facebook activity since June 2009 – your status updates, photo albums, events you’ve attended, places you checked-in, friends who you frequently interact with, etc. - and turns all this data all into an elegant printed book.
Every page of this book is made of beautiful infographics offering new insights into your Facebook activities like when are you most active on Facebook, where do most of your friends live, your most popular Facebook pictures, etc. The way this data is presented in the book makes it all the more interesting.
The Facebook book would cost you around $32 (with international shipping) but you don’t necessarily have to buy one to get all these interesting insights.
The Facebook App will create a Flash version of the book that you can view in the browser itself though the resolution is not good enough for printing. You can also save selected pages of the book as photos in your Facebook profile. Impressive! Thanks Ilya Vedrashko.

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Text Mirror Turns Web Pages into Plain Text

is an online tool that lets you read web pages in plain text. You specify a URL of a page, the tool will download that page on to its own servers, removes all the HTML tags and renders it for you in plain text.
All browsers have a “Save as Text” feature but this tool sort-of preserves the layout of elements - text that originally appeared in the left sidebar of the page will still show up in the left side of the text-only document but everything else is removed from the page including hyperlinks.
You can’t really do much with the output text expect for changing the color scheme. The question is why would anyone need a tool like TextMirror when there are far better alternatives in the form of Readability or even Instapaper?
There are a few scenarios where you may use this too. One, the conversion is extremely quick and it massively trims the size of a page because it is serving pure text. The conversion is happening on another server so you may use it as a basic proxy to read web articles that are inaccessible from your computer.
TextMirror could also be used for comparing the content of two web pages or two versions of the same page. Download the pages separately as text and compare them using Google Docs.

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is wwe real ?

is an American publicly traded, privately controlled entertainment company dealing primarily in professional wrestling, with major revenue sources also coming from film, music, product licensing, and direct product sales. It is currently the largest professional wrestling company in the world, reaching 13 million viewers in the U.S. and broadcasting its shows in 30 languages to more than 145 countries.^[7] It promotes under two brands, known as Raw and SmackDown.
Vince McMahon is the majority owner, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the company. Together with his wife Linda McMahon, and their children Shane McMahon and Stephanie McMahon-Levesque (WWE Executive Vice President of Talent and Creative Writing), the McMahons hold approximately 70% of WWE's economic interest and 96% of the voting power in the company. The company's headquarters are located in Stamford, Connecticut with offices in New York City, Los Angeles, London, Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore, and Mumbai.^[8][9]
WWE holds an extensive library of videos, representing a significant portion of the visual history of professional wrestling. The company began as the Capitol Wrestling Corporation in 1952, which promoted under the banner of the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) and later the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). In 1982, it was sold to the same family's Titan Sports company, which later changed its name to World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, before finally becoming World Wrestling Entertainment in 2002, and simplified to "WWE" in 2011

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In India, 3G Services Are Projected To Touch 50Million Subscribers By 2012

Research and Markets from Dublin, Ireland conducted a survey and the firm declared this Friday a report on “3G in India: Technology and Market Analysis“. This elucidated that by 2012, India will have a hike in the 3G services which will pull in almost 50 million subscribers from the nation.

With the view that Indians love to talk, Indian telecom firms had bet for almost 102.7 crores in the latest 3G and BWA (Bradband Wireless Access) auctions. There has been a significant growth in the Indian telecom market and the average growth rate is 30%. The recent graph shows almost a steady user base of almost 600 million of the population in India.

It is estimated that by 2012, 3G will spread like wildfire to almost 50 million subscribers. The most sought after telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel, Reliance Communications, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices, Aircel and Vodafone Essar are getting ready with their 3G services for next gen’ communications and give them a better experience altogether.

Reliance Communications has already rolled out its new 3G plans, MobileNet Plan- providing unlimited Internet access, multimedia content download, instant messaging, chat services, and access to social networking sites and email to pre-paid and post-paid subscribers at an affordable Rs. 99 per month.

It is also been added that VAS (value added services) is also emerging out as a savour for telecom players. We had also reported earlier effect and penetration 3G technology is going to cause in India. It was also estimated that by the year 2015, around 30% of Indian population will be using the technology. But with this recent development we need to wait and watch how farther the 3G service penetrates itself  into the country.

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Fidelity Growth Partners Invests $15 million in Classteacher.com

Fidelity Growth Partners India (FGPI) has invested upto $15 million to acquire a minority stake in Mind Shaper Technologies, the company behind Classteacher.com. The investment would be used to expand ClassTeacher.com’s portfolio.

Classteacher.com provides technology solutions to primary and secondary schools. It started 10 years ago and now has over 500 schools and more than half a million students using their technology. The company’s catalogue boasts of an impressive 85,000 teaching modules spanning across different educational boards.

It has software and hardware solutions for schools to assist them in management, administration, productivity and communication. They also have an offering called ‘Virtual School’ which is an internet based platform to connect students, parents and schools.

Commenting on the funding ClassTeacher.com CEO Rohit Pande said:

“This investment will help us enhance our product offering as well as expand into new segments of education. We see this as a key milestone in our evolution and are glad to partner with FGPI to achieve our goal to support learning and teaching in classrooms across India”

Cloud based platforms are increasingly being adopted into education. Wikipedia had recently partnered with Pune colleges to integrate the wikimedia platform into the students’ curriculum. Just a few days ago NIIT launched Cloud Campus which helps student leverage the cloud to learn anywhere, anytime. iProf, another such company which offers tablets and wi-fi centers to assist in education had raised Rs. 22 crores to expand.

There are about 1.6 million schools in India, and only a fraction of them have integrated technology into their daily working. There is a huge scope of growth for ClassTeacher.com and other such companies which investors hope to cash in on.

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Al-Qaeda releasing their new force

 Al-Qaeda releasing their new force

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Receiving massage very soon

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After the Iron Gate (SLC)

As we pass the much awaited ‘Iron Gate’, we enter a world which is full of opportunity and choices. Presently in Nepal, we have three different types of curriculum that students can choose from with all three having their pros and cons. +2, IB or A levels - what is your choice after SLC?
Ten + Two
The rigid curriculum is supposed to make the student more focused on their careers right from the beginning.
Karma Pakhrin, 18
11, Himalayan White House International College
Why +2?
+2 is a system that has been running successfully in Nepal from a long time. There are other courses like A Levels as well but they are new and are yet to be trusted. So, I went for +2 to pursue my after-SLC education.

This is a curriculum developed by Higher Secondary Education Board (HSEB) and is associated with the Government of Nepal. The fields available in “+2” are Science, Commerce and Humanities. The Humanities field offers Sociology, Rural Economics, English and Nepali. In Science, you don’t only have to study Chemistry, Physics and Biology but you also have Botany and Zoology. Along with this, you need to study Math during the first year of the course and it becomes optional for the second year of the +2 Science course. In Commerce, you need to study Accounts, Economics, Math and Business Studies with Nepali and English.

The curriculum is more on the theory side, which makes it more examination oriented. The total course is of 24, weeks where each subject gets about 8 to 9 hours per week. The admission starts right after the SLC results and you will be made to take an entrance examination as well with your results. The forms are distributed just after SLC while the classes usually start in July. Most of the students that are willing to take this type of curriculum are usually future doctors, engineers and CAs. The rigid curriculum is supposed to make the student more focused on their careers right from the beginning.

Since the +2 curriculum is purely Nepali, it has to depend on the Government of Nepal. The invigilators of the examination and the copy correctors all come from the government. The exams usually happen during May and the best part about the examination based result is that even if you do not do well during the first year you will automatically be promoted to grade 12 and you can still give the papers of 11. This curriculum is entirely Nepal-based; the courses are designed such that it helps a student learn more about their own country.
Information provided by Golden Gate International College, Battisputali.

A-Levels
A-level students have the opportunity to choose subjects even though the fields might clash.
Akash Shrestha, 19
AS, Lumbini International College
Why A Levels?
A Levels is a course designed and conducted by Cambridge University and is recognized in more than 160 countries. After completing my A Levels, I can go to anywhere in the world and study under any faculty. A Levels is a more advanced course in comparison with +2 and the learning is very practical.

A-levels course is affiliated to Cambridge University, UK. It has gained popularity amongst Nepali students because in A-levels, the student does not really have to go through courses that they do not feel like studying. Even though the courses available in the UK have much more variety, quite a selection is on offer from the British Council and numerous colleges here. A-level students have the opportunity to choose subjects even though the fields might clash. They are able to take Economics, Biology and Chemistry at the same time or take one subject from each field like Chemistry, Sociology and Business Studies. New subjects such as Environmental Management, Psychology, Geography and Tourism have recently been introduced.

The A levels course is of 2 years where examination are held twice a year-during May and October. Students studying A-levels have the opportunity to sit for exams for the entire two years’ course at once, at the end of A-levels or they can give their board examinations at the end of the year. If the student gives his/her examination during May and cannot score as much as they wanted, they can give the exam again in October. This way, without wasting time, they are given a second chance to get better grades. Another good thing about A-levels is that you can choose for how long you want to take a course. Even if you have all the science subjects, it is not necessary that you need to take them for the whole two years. If one subject of the science field doesn’t feel right you can always take it for the first year and continue with the other two.

This course is popular in the UK and it tests your real ability to grasp the concepts that you study. The grading system starts from As, Bs, Cs, Ds, Es to Us (where U stands for an UNGRADED paper). From 2010 they have also started giving A*s which is better than A.
Information provided by Trinity International College, Dillibazaar

IB
The IB courses are designed in 6 groups and students are expected to take at least one subject from each group.
Why IB?
Anjan Sharma
tells us that he feels IB is a curriculum that is more student friendly. After his SLC when he was trying to figure out what to do, IB was more appealing because he felt that the subjects and the way it is taught is more practical. It isn’t focused on one particular field and in addition to this it is widely known outside of Nepal.

International Baccalaureate is a curriculum which is not focused on one type of board. It is known as a global curriculum. The IB courses are designed in 6 groups and students are expected to take at least one subject from each group. Each group consists of different fields like Language and Science to Business Management to Anthropology and Arts.

Aside from the subject choices, the students have core requirements to fulfill. These core requirements are Theory of Knowledge (TOK) where students are expected to research independently on one subject matter and have an in depth study on that particular subject. The next core requirement is the extended essay, which is designed for students to critically reflect on the subjects that they have studied and write an essay of about 4000 words. This extended essay is usually written in the break of year one and year two. The third requirement is Creativity, Action and Service where students go beyond the classroom to gain knowledge and handle different types of real life tasks.

The students are required to take the IB examinations at the end of two years. It is a written examination and the students at least need to gain 24 out of 42 (6 subject having a maximum score of 7). 30% of its score is attained internally by the teachers and the rest 70% is tested during the written examination.

International Baccalaureate is a course which has now been recognized internationally. It is a mixed course (not focused within one country) and is only provided in Nepal at Ullens. Most of the students that opt for this Diploma Programme at Ullens, go to universities outside for Undergraduate Studies. Many colleges abroad prefer IB students because the IB course is a great model of what you do at college as well.

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Best courses After SLC

Things have changed from the first School Leaving Certificate [SLC] board exam in 1933 where only 34 students toiled their way through the tough tests to 2004 when 949 SLC centers across the country saw a total of 313,216 students. Results are scheduled to come out sometime this month and a good many of the students that get through the 'iron gates' can look forward to what else but more school! Cheer up, because a good education almost guarantees a gold-plated future. And so this issue, we help post- SLC students who are relishing their time off from school to take a quick trip back to their academic future.There are plenty of options for the post-SLC students if the showy advertisements of educational institutions are anything to go by. This leaves a lot of students confused at best and downright panicky at the other end of the scale. So, they do what they can-- while some have their career path plotted out clearly, most are influenced by their friends' choices, others pick the path that requires the least effort and a group of obedient children do what their parents tell them.
"There is enough time after the SLC exam to think about the future and decide on options," says Mohan Bahadur Singh, Principal of Xavier Academy. If you don't happen to be among the 80 percent of students who have no idea of what they want to study or among the 50 percent who change their subjects at least once in college and you're just very, very confused, you could always get counseling. The advantage is that your counselor won't have a hidden agenda and will genuinely want to help you decide on what's best for you.
Careers are easy to talk about but hard to commit and follow through on. Psychologist Dhan Bahadur KC ups the pressure: "Planning a career is the most crucial decision in life… after marriage." Marriage? Most SLC graduates just want to get through high school and college! Although it's trendy to head North (China, Russia), South (India), East (Singapore, Australia) or West (US, UK), Nepal is brimming with choices. Whether they are technical subjects or the trinity of doctor-engineer-computers, there is an astonishing range of colleges all over the country.
News flash: what you study is as important as where you study—after all, it's not like the 1970s where having any old degree would get you a plum job. A good institution will teach you to excel, not just academically but into a well-rounded individual through extra-curricular activities. In other words, don't be exam result oriented when you go shopping for a new school. Look at the infrastructure (ball courts, swimming pool, auditorium and cafeteria) student evaluation of teachers (what, teacher's are not evaluated?) and it's always good to talk to ex-students (The "I love/like/hate/adore campus" Club).
Making a choice is difficult and a bad one will change your life and end up as a waste of time and effort (see Kapil's Story). Indu Chemjong, Principal of Campion Kathmandu College believes, "Making choices is an integral part of our daily lives and the biggest question is whether we make the right one or not. The right choice is the bottom line of every success story."
The Rundown
To make your job easier, here is the WAVE rundown:
Tribhuvan University (TU), which was established in 1958, offers Proficiency Certificate Level, also called the Intermediate Level. Kathmandu University (KU) had its first batch in 1991 and promotes the Intermediate Level. Mahendra Sanskrit University (MSU) opened its doors in 1986 and has the Uttar Madhyama Examinations but the most popular is the Higher Secondary Education Board (HSEB or +2) started in 1992. Yes, there are colleges that offer A-Levels but the king of the heap is definitely the HSEB, which has quite a good reputation with an updated curriculum, new methods of study and of course, encouraging results. More than 1,000 private colleges offer HSEB in Nepal with umpteen courses and 'streams' leading to many attractive careers.
Science
Science remains the most popular on the +2 scheme because it opens the path to engineering or medicine. Apart from compulsory subjects like English and Nepali, there are choices between biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. ISc students can only take mathematics or biology in the second year. More than 73 percent pass without a hitch.
Management
Commerce and Management are almost the same although the latter has a wider scope. Business, trade, accounting, marketing, economics are Commerce subjects. Management students also have to study the management of business and organizations like hotels and tourism. More than 60 percent pass the HSEB board exam in Commerce and Management.
Humanities
Humanities has the largest number of subjects: from social sciences, arts, to economics and even dance and music. It's a mix n' match combination and a student with an eye to a politics can get a good foundation with political science along with history and Nepali as a major for a career as a smart politician or a political analyst.
Law
An Intermediate in Law from TU is more appropriate even though it can be your Bachelors degree (LLB). It'll take five years to complete the degree and there are nine subjects, so be ready for the challenge. HSEB will be introducing Law very soon.
Education
Higher secondary schools offer a two-year higher secondary program in Education, which is a formal program for primary school teachers. The Ministry of Education also organizes primary teacher training programs. TU offers a two-year Certificate in Education. The minimum requirement is a SLC qualification. It can be expanded for a year or three towards a Bachelor's degree.
Fine Arts
The stream of Intermediate in Fine Arts (IFA) is for creative students with talent. The curriculum includes the basics of drawing and painting, and sculpture. English and Nepali are compulsory subjects. Colleges for IFA are Lalit Kala Campus at Ratna Park and Srijana Institue of Fine Arts at Ghanta Ghar among others.
Forestry
If you are interested in conservation and environment, forestry provides advanced training in forestry and natural resource, conservation and management including research and development of forestry technology suitable for Nepal. Two institutions (Hetauda and Pokhara) offer Proficiency in Certificate Level (PCL) in Forestry, which is equivalent to +2.
Hospitality Management, Tourism Management and Hotel Management
Colleges like Nepal Academy of Tourism and Hospitality Management (NATHM) offer access only after the completion of the intermediate level. However, they also offer some short-term courses for waiters, room boys, chefs, etc. Students can begin their hospitality careers after these courses.
Nursing
Nursing is popular among girls. The main attraction is job options. Sharda Nursing Campus, Teaching Hospital Nursing Campus are few campuses that teach nursing.
Fashion Designing
Local institutes in Nepal offer certificate level courses that generally run between 4 - 8 months. Students are taught computerized art designing (CAD), graphic designing etc. To join the diploma level one has to complete +2 or an equivalent level of studies. Namuna Institute of Fashion Technology is the first to provide academic education in fashion and design up to the Bachelor's level.
Agriculture and Veterinary
CTEVT has a 3-year Diploma in agriculture and veterinary practice. This is equivalent to +2 or I.Sc. The Rampur Campus at Chitwan is the only government college in the country that provides general agriculture education along with veterinary studies. You can join the BSc if you have Pure Science at ISc or +2. The Himalayan Institute of Agriculture and Science and Technology also offers agriculture and veterinary studies at the Bachelor's level. CTEVT provides Junior Technical Assistant (JTA) course on agriculture for SLC students. A year of Junior Technician after JTA is equivalent to ISc.
Sanskrit
Sanskrit is the base of our language and can be fun for the literate mind. All Sanskrit campuses fall under Mahendra Sanskrit University (MSU). The Intermediate in Sanskrit is called Uttar Madhyama, equivalent to IA. Students from non-Sanskrit background can also join Sanskrit campuses to study the subjects provided at Uttar Madhyama.
Vocational courses
They qualify you to work in a certain field of your interest but are not usually valid for University academics. Plumbing, mechanics, computer software and hardware and secretarial courses are a few of the career options. If you think you have had enough of schooling and would like to jump into career, a vocational course could be just the ticket.
CTEVT
The Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT) offers Technical Education and Vocational Training (TEVT) programs in Nepal. CTEVT offers training courses directly and there are many affiliated institutions. Hetauda Polytechnic in Hetauda, Tansen Nursing School in Tansen, and the School of Health Science in Bharatpur are branches of the CTEVT. At present, there are more than 165 affiliated private training institutes covering 47 districts of Nepal offering courses on diverse subjects like Electrical Engineering, Carpet Weaving, Therapy in Acupressure and Food Technical Assistant for the level equivalent to Intermediate or lower.
Computing
Opt for a computer course during your SLC break or while in college. It's not very advisable to leave academics and opt for a degree in computers because computer institute degrees are not eligible for university studies.
End Note
Explore and understand your strengths. Create opportunities. It is true that some careers have more windows of opportunities and less competition than the others. If you know what you want or love to do, this is the right time to decide and go for it. Have a long-term goal. Ask yourself what you want to be doing in ten years time. Now make a plan and work towards it.

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