How does Indian PIN code system work?

Postal Index Number (PIN) code is a six digit number which was introduced on August 15, 1972 and appears in almost all postal articles. Though PIN code has not received much respect in the recent times with more private courier companies coming into picture and stressing more on providing phone number than PIN code, it is indeed one of the most important piece of information which ensures your package reaches the correct location. So it may not be wrong to say that the PIN code is as important to a letter as is a steering wheel to a car!!!

 

How does a PIN code work?

The PIN code system works on a coding system wherein each number represents a particular place and the combination of these letters determine the location to which the package is to be delivered.

The entire country has been divided into nine zones including eight regional zones and one functional zone, which is provided below:

Number	Region	States Covered
1	Northern	Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir
2	Northern	Northern Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal
3	Western	Western Rajasthan and Gujarat
4	Western	Western Chattisgarh, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh
5	Southern	Southern Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka
6	Southern	Southern Kerala and Tamil Nadu
7	Eastern	Eastern West Bengal, Orissa and North Eastern
8	Eastern	Eastern Bihar & Jharkhand
9		Army Post office(APO) and Field Post office(FPO)

The first digit indicates one of these zones / region.

First 2/3 Digits of PIN	Circle
11	Delhi
12 and 13	Haryana
14 to 16	Punjab
17	Himachal Pradesh
18 to 19	Jammu & Kashmir
20 to 28	Uttar Pradesh
30 to 34	Rajasthan
36 to 39	Gujarat
40 to 44	Maharashtra
45 to 48	Madhya Pradesh
49	Chattisgarh
50 to 53	Andhra Pradesh
56 to 59	Karnataka
60 to 64	Tamil Nadu
67 to 69	Kerala
682	Lakshadweep (Islands)
70 to 74	West Bengal
744	Andaman & Nicobar Islands
75 to 77	Orissa
78	Assam
79	North Eastern
793, 794, 783123	Meghalaya
795	Manipur
796	Mizoram
799	Tripura
80 to 85	Bihar

The second digit indicates the sub-region, and the third digit indicates the sorting district within the region.

The next three digits will indicate the particular post office where the letter is to be delivered.

The first 3 digits together will indicate the sorting or revenue district where the letter is to be basically routed. The last 3 digits refer to the actual post office where the article is to be finally delivered.

Example:

The PIN code for the Press Information Bureau in Madurai is 625 020. Here the first digit 6 again stands for the PIN zone – Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Kerala. The next two digits – 25 – represent the District of Madurai, while the two final digits -20 - together represents the post office of Gandhi nagar, the delivery post office for PIB, Madurai!
Here it is also important to note that the number given to the Gandhi nagar post office in the city of Madurai in Tamil Nadu is unique. No other post office in India will have this number. A check with the post PIN code directory will reveal that the delivery post offices in Mathura – the holy city in Uttar Pradesh (UP) – with which the temple city of Madurai is likely to be confused has a completely different PIN code – 281 001. Two stands for the PIN zone consisting of UP and Uttarkhand; 81 represents the district of Mathura while 001 stands fro Mathura Head Post office.

Source - The Pincode – The “Steering Wheel” of a Letter by Dr. K. Parameswaran. Image from Wikipedia.

Rajinikanth’s theory of Light

Practical demonstration of the theory

Theory of light specifically referring to the corpuscular theory of light, set forward by Sir Isaac Newton, states that light is made up of small discrete particles called corpuscles (little particles) which travel in straight line with a finite velocity and possess kinetic energy. 

Though Newton's theory remained in force for more than 100 years, if failed to answer the most important question which has troubled humankind for centuries altogether. The unanswered question related to harnessing the power of ordinary light from artificial for lighting man made items like a cigar.

This illusive question remained unanswered for centuries. Ultimately, Padma Bhushan Shri Rajinikanth ji answered this question in the year 2002. He explained the entire concept in a 214 page book titled, Rajinikanth’s theory of Physics, Volume III. For the benefit of our readers, we have provided the abstract provided by him.

“Throw a beam of your torch light on a mirror with a refractive index 100 at an angle of 17.63 degrees. The reflected beam hits the ceiling and then further hits the wall before striking the cigar. The reflected light due to high air friction and friction at the wall gets converted into heat which in turn gets converted into fire in 0.001256 micro seconds. The resulting fire lights the cigar.”

We hope that he will keep illuminating our lives with such ground breaking theories in the future.

Google tests new ‘Sitelinks’ layout and design

It is a known fact that Google iterates its search results from time to time to try new things. A few months before changing to the new search layout (currently applied), Google changed its layout and design.

Original Sitelinks as seen for cnet:

New SItelinks as seen for sinapse blog:

The new search layout provides ‘Sitelinks’ with are now underlined, show the link and a very small snippet. The new sitelinks format is descriptive and helps to understand the content of each sitelink. However, it makes the sitelinks occupy a lot of screen space.

Further, sitelinks generally show up only when the search is directly matching with a site. In case of specific searches like that of ‘sinapse blog’ would be helpful.

Update – A day later the new trial format seems to have been changed back to original one: see below image

‘Angry birds’ appear in Physics Examination Paper

There is no doubt that Angry birds is one of the most popular mobile game app for mobile devices. The popularity of the brand seemingly has now crossed all known records.

Finally, angry birds seams to have appeared on a physics examination paper. It is though not clearly known which school / college gave the question. However, it is definitely a good way of making the examinations more interesting.

By the way 7 marks will be given to the person who provides the correct answer in the comments :-P 

Play Angry Birds

To play Angry bird on your system, try the following:

• Angry birds for desktop
• Angry birds for Android devices
• Angry birds for iTunes
• Angry birds for ovi store

 

About Angry Birds

Angry Birds is a puzzle video game developed by Finland-based Rovio Mobile. In the game, players use a slingshot to launch birds at pigs stationed on or within various structures, with the intent of destroying all the pigs on the playfield. As players advance through the game, new birds appear, some with special abilities that can be activated by the player.

With a combined 250 million downloads across all platforms and including both regular and special editions, the game has been called "one of the most mainstream games out right now", "one of the great runaway hits of 2010", and "the largest mobile app success the world has seen so far".

Source - Wikipedia

Related post widget for blogger with thumbnails

Note: The same widget also works for platforms such as Wordpress and Typepad amongst others.

Blogger is one of the most used blogging platform but lacks the related post widget which according to me is important to decrease my blogs bounce rate. And the same feeling is shared by many other blogger. However, some people at Google don’t feel the same. I remember to have read a response by one Google employee on a question by one blogger user to incorporate the related post feature in blogger. To this, the Google employee responded (this is based on recollection, which i read some weeks back and might not be the same as i remember it to be. If you find the post, please send the link in the comments section) that the label feature can take care of it. But clicking on a label is the last thing i do on other blogs, i myself read. So how can i expect someone else to do so on my blog and feel more engaged with my blog.

Related post widget as it appears on my blog

 

Things which a related post widget should have

I searched a lot (improve your searching capabilities with a Google a day) to find a good related post widget for my blog which would satisfy the following aspects:

• Looks clean and not filled by ads
• Is not complicated to implement on my blog
• Has a good loading speed

Though there area a lot of options available, which succeed on either of the parameters, nothing based on my search was as good and easy to implement as LinkWithin. LinkWithin is the best related post widget which i have seen in a long time. Its beautiful and takes less than 2 minutes to implement on the blog.

How to implement the related post widget

Visit LinkWithin, fill a extremely simple form (see image below). Once you click the Get Widget icon, follow the four steps provided on LinkWithin site and voila you are done. Refresh your blog and you should be able to see the related posts.

To get a further understanding of LinkWithin, check out their FAQ page. This page provides details such as:

• How does the widget decide what stories to show?
• how to customize the text which appears above the widget?
• how to customize the placement of the widget on the blog?
• how they plan to make money with this?

Funny Sardar Jokes

Sardar: I haven't slept all night in the train.
Friend: Why?
Sardar: Got upper berth.
Friend: Why didn’t you exchange?
Sardar: Oye! There was nobody to exchange in the lower berth.

 

A Sardar went to a bank to open a savings account.
After seeing the form, he went to Delhi for filling it up.
You know why?
Form said:
"Fill up in Capital"

 

Sardarji standing below a tube light with an open mouth.
Why?
Because his doctor advised him:
"Today's dinner should be light!"

 

One sardarji professor asked a plumber to come to his college.
You know why?
Because he wanted to check where the question paper is leaking.

 

Santa!  Your daughter has died!
Depressed, Sardar jumps from 100th floor.
At 50th floor, he remembers, “I don't have a daughter! “
At 25th floor, he remembers, “I’m unmarried! “
At 10th floor, he remembers, “I’m Banta not Santa!”

 

On a romantic date Sardar’s girl friend asks him:
"Darling! On our engagement will you give me a ring?"
He said:
"Sure! What's your phone number?"

 

Sardar found the answer to the most difficult question ever.
What will come first, chicken or egg?
Oh Yaar, whatever you order first will come first.

 

A teacher told all students in a class to write an essay on a cricket match.
All were busy writing except one Sardarji.
He wrote:
"Due To Rain, No Match!"

 

Sardar and his wife buy coffee in a shop.
Sardar:  Drink quickly.
Wife: Why?
Sardar: Hot coffee Rs 5 and cold coffee Rs 10

 

Why can’t sardars dial Nine-Eleven (911) at emergency in US?
They cannot find ‘eleven’ on the phone.

 

What does a sardar do after taking a Xerox?
He will compare it with the original for any spelling mistakes.

 

Sardarji was standing in front of the mirror with his eyes closed.
Wife:  What you are doing?
Sardar: I am seeing how I look while sleeping.

 

Sardar news: A 'Two-Seater' plane crashed in a Graveyard in Punjab (Pakistan).
Local sardars have so far found 500 bodies and are still digging for more (victims).

 

Sardar visits Chinese friend dying in hospital.
Man says "Chin Yu Yan" and dies.
Sardar goes to China to find meaning of friend's Last Words.
It is "You are standing on the oxygen tube!"

 

Sardar at an Art Gallery: I suppose this horrible looking thing is what you call modern art?
Art dealer: I beg your pardon sir, that’s a mirror!

(received via email)

Google+: Social networking from Google (possible facebook killer?)

Google+ project is definitely a response to facebook becoming an increasing threat to Google’s dominance on the web. Reuters reported that the average U.S. visitor spent 375 minutes on Facebook in May, compared with 231 minutes for Google.

Google+ project is currently under field trials and available by invitation only. To get yourself invited, visit the google+ page and click on keep me posted link. In the meantime, it might be a good idea to take a virtual tour of the Google+ project. It is the best you may be able to practically witness the things which are in store in Google+, unless you receive the invite.

Google+ combines a lot of key features which include:

• Circles
• Hangouts
• Instant uploads
• Sparks
• Huddle

For more details, check out the Google blog.

Is it going to revive Google’s fortunes in the social networking space, only time will tell. But the first impression is not that bad.

What Facebook and Google are hiding – TED Talks

I came across this video with the title “What facebook and Google are hiding” on the internet and wondered if this was really something i would want to see. I am so happy that i did. The audience was awed by it and so was I.

 

As a guy who does normal stuff on the internet, i knew that things were changed to an extent in the name of personalization. But it never occurred to me the extent to which things were hidden by bigges like Facebook, Google, Yahoo!, and other corporations in the name of personalization.

It brings us to the question: Are we willing to get personalized results at the cost of losing on reality? I think i would want to keep some objectivity in life and see my digital world not completely morphed. Further, I would like to have the power to control what i see and not giving the entire power to some algorithm which i don’t even know what it does.

This insightful and though provoking talk is by Eli Pariser who says that the Internet is hiding things from us. I would definitely recommend this video to everyone. Enjoy and please do express your feelings with us!!!

 

 

How to change / customize favicon in Blogger

Adding a favicon to one’s site is perhaps one of the finer things to do in personalizing a blog to one’s liking. Though there have been many sites showing how to add a favicon to a blogger blog, majority of them involved fiddling with the code of the blog. Realizing that i am not much of a software guy, i just skipped all these options.

Custom favicons are now official on Blogger in draft. Blogger in draft users now have an option to change the blogger default favicon to ones own personalized favicon.

Things to do before changing / Customizing the favicon in Blogger

• Blogger accepts favicons only in .ico format as of now. You can use any service to convert the image to an .ico format. I used icoconverter for converting the image to .ico format. (Note: Blogger accepts only 10kb sized favicon images only.)

Changing / Customizing favicon in Blogger

1. Open Designs | Page Elements (Layout tab for new interface users)
2. You will see the Blogger favicon. Click the Edit button
3. Upload your personal favicon
4. Save. You should now see the blogger favicon replaced by your own favicon.
5. Save the changes made to the template and your personalized favicon should appear in the browser window or tab.

Step 1

Don’t see the favicon in your dashboard as given in step 1, join Blogger in draft and the option will become available.

Step 2

Step 3 

Step 4

Update: BTW the update of the favicon to my blog was not instant. It took less than a day for my personalized favicon to appear on my blog.

Rajini catching goli: Reliance Digital HD tv ad

Reliance has not been a popular choice with me and many others like me with regard to their advertising as their ads has not touched me in a way which makes me remember them. But this time it seems different. I have somehow stuck to their latest offering the "Rajini catching goli ad" for Digital HD tv.

The creative elements in the ad work for me. The visuals are clean, cool and classy. The ad has a very modern day look and feel. I found the sound track to be really good. The ad sticks to me even after it is off air.

It has been some time since i have seen such a nice hummable tune in an advertisement. My childhood favourite has arguably been the Amul’s Dhoodh Dhoodh ad. (I loved the ad. Somehow couldn't find the entire 60 second ad anywhere on youtube). I guess the Reliance ad team is also happy that their ad is striking chord with their audiences. The fact that i am actually writing a post on this shows that i am really engrossed with the ad. The Reliance team has this to say about their ad:

“A clutter breaking TVC with an anthem like jingle, simple hummable lyrics & shot on a phantom camera to bring alive a true HD exp.”

My favourite line in the ad is definitely the "Rajini catching goli" line. Which line is your favourite?

Transcript:

World Cup… Winning six...

Ganon ke Remix...

Breaking news ka drama...

Cartoons ka hungama…

Mere tv pey, sub HD mein...

Rajini catching goli...

Loud Speaker Dolly...

Bouncer pey Hook... Master Chef ka cook...

Mere tv pey sub HD mein…

Federer and Nadal: Laughter filled shooting off the court

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal arguably are the two most exiting players on the tennis court and play each other guts out in a match. But off the court they seem to have a great chemistry between them. Don’t believe me, check out the following video which was made to promote an exhibition match, titled, “The Match For Africa” between Federer and Nadal seemingly conducted by the Roger Federer foundation.

 

 

Ribbon Hero: Microsoft Office game for easy and fun learning

Microsoft Office Labs brings a great way of learning Office by turning Office into a game. The game is named "Ribbon Hero". The game is a move by Microsoft to make every player to become a Hero of the Ribbon added in Office 2007 and later versions. By the way, Ribbon Hero only works with Microsoft Office 2007 and Office 2010 versions.

The game starts with a story involving Clippy as the lead actor. Clippy might sound familiar to everyone. Yes, it was  a Microsoft Office assistant we all loved in the earlier Microsoft Office versions, which was removed from later versions of Office including 2007. Microsoft Office website provides the story which is excerpted below:

"The player will hop on board Clippy's stolen time machine and explore different time periods. With each time period, they get to explore a new game board with challenges they must complete to get to the next level. Each challenge takes the player into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote to complete a task. Discover new Office features by actually using them, with a hint button to fall back on in case you get stuck. Race for a high score with colleagues, classmates and friends, or even put your score on your resume to show off your Office skills!"

How does Ribbon Hero work? 

Ribbon Hero works on points. Points can be earned in two ways:
1. Once the app is installed as an addon on Office, using basic commands such as bold, italic, underline and complex commands such as styles will give points. Complex tasks definitely give more points than the basic tasks.
2. Play the challenges in Ribbon Hero. This is the real way of accumulating points as one can accumulate a good number of points in this option.

Also, Ribbon Hero keeps a tab on the features which are in use and those that are not. Ribbon hero also  recommends other challenges to expose the players to new unused features. If you are planning to increase your score at a fast pace, then the second option is the way to go. By the way, Ribbon hero also allows to see the breakup of the points tally for the kind of activity performed right within the app.

Ribbon Hero facebook integration
Ribbon Hero allows for facebook integration and challenge friends on facebook. To integrate with facebook, click the "Connect to Facebook" button from the Ribbon Hero dialog box. After connecting with Facebook, Ribbon Hero will allow to compare your score to the average score of all of your friends, the average score of all Ribbon Hero users, and the average score in your primary network.

Ribbon Hero 2: Clippy's Second Chance
This is the second installation of Ribbon Hero, that is why '2' appears at the end of the title. The difference between the two versions is Clippy, comic strips, colorful graphics, surprise animations, multiple levels, time travel, upside-down Clippy, space ships, Greek Gods, bow-and-arrow battles, and a ton of useful Office features.

So go ahead, download Ribbon Hero 2: Clippy's Second chance, learn Microsoft Office and challenge your friends on Facebook.

 

Requirements: Vista or Windows 7 (32/64 bit) or XP (32 bit), Office 2007 or Office 2010 (32/64 bit)

Limitations: English only, Works with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote only, Does not support versions of Office earlier than Office 2007

RSS feed error in Google Webmaster Central Blog

Today when i opened up Google Reader to catch my dose of news for the day, i was surprised to see some pictures appearing in Google Webmaster Central Blog RSS feed. On clicking on one of the pictures, a website with a lot of personal pictures opened up. I wasn’t sure why Google Webmaster Central Blog RSS feed would show some personal folder. So i opened up the Google Webmaster Central Blog directly and i noticed that the blog didn’t have those pictures at all.

So i wonder whether this was an anomaly which happened with only me or were there many people like me who observed the same phenomenon. But to my surprise, a quick Google search didn’t reveal any post which reported this incident.

Conspiracy Theories

Further, i started thinking why this happened. I have listed down some theories below:

1. The blog RSS feeds were hacked
2. A Google employee might have inadvertently linked the images somehow to the Google Webmaster Central Blog instead of her own blog.
3. Google Reader might have retrieved some other feed and put it in the Webmaster Central Blog feed.

Apart from the above theories, i couldn’t think of any other option as i had a long day of grey matter use which had a prohibiting effect on further brain functioning. So i leave it to the readers to suggest the possible reasons. Lets see who’s theory is the craziest of all!

Please see the below image which shows the two posts which were last updated on the Google Webmaster Central Blog: Introducing schema.org Search engines come together for a richer web and Add +1 to help your site stand out.  

And the images i was talking about, see one screenshot below, for more you can visit: www.joehewes.com. By the way if you are thinking that this is a weird way of promoting the said website, this is not. That is why i haven’t given a hyperlink. Stop thinking that i am doing this for fun!!!

Is it one of the theories which i suggested? What do you think? Do you have a better explanation, then do suggest in the comments.

Boy and Girl story with a twist

There was a Girl & a Boy, they loved each other.
Boy always Used to Say: "My heart is always with you, I am living without a heart." 

After sum days:
Girl said that she can't marry him because her family disagrees to the marriage.
The Boy said: "I need you and your family's happiness" and agreed to be just friends,

After few months:
Girl got married and she was looking through her gifts. She come across a Gift and started crying!!! The Gift was the boy's heart (Real one) packed in a Jar!!!

Climax:
Ladke ne Suicide kiya ya Murder huwa?
Kyun ki agar Sucide kiya toh Heart pack kisne kiya?

Jaan ne ke liye dekhna na bhooliye "CID", Only on "SONY TV".

Google Search Results get new layout and design

It was different when performed searches using Google today. Though i was getting the Google search results in the same design and layout, once in a while it changed. Initially i couldn’t realize why the results seemed different once in a while. After trying a bit more, i figured it out that the searches i performed using my Google toolbar gave the same old layout and design but when i searched in the location bar of Firefox, the results seemed to be different. Later i realized that Google was seemingly conducting a test on its layout and design and the change was witness able for Google.com only and not for country specific Google searches such as for Google.co.in.

Coming straight to the point, let me take off the curtains and let you have a look for yourself and see what i am talking about. Both the new and the old Google search result layout and designs are provided below for easy visual comparison.

New Google Search Result Layout and Design (below)

Old Google Search Result layout and design (below)

Differences

1. There seems to be a clear difference in the colours used in the new layout and design. The new one has a slightly lighter shade of blue.
2. The tiltes in the new layout and design are without underlines.
3. The description text is smaller and lighter than the old design.
4. The space between the results has increased substantially.
5. The cached and similar links have seemingly removed.

My views

Though the new layout seems more uncluttered and removal of underlines is a welcome step, there is too much blank areas between the results for my liking. Moreover, removing the cached and similar links is not a big problem for me as i don’t use that feature very often. I personally seem to like the old blue colour but i guess whenever there is a change people tend to oppose it until the change becomes part of our lives. Since the present layout and design is stuck to us for a long time, it may take us some time to get accustomed to the new layout and design.

How to add a watermark using GIMP

GIMP provides a relatively easy way of adding a watermark to images. The following steps provides the entire process of adding a watermark with GIMP. The steps provided herein below have been performed with GIMP 2.6. If you are using another version of GIMP, then also the steps will almost be the same with minor variations.

1. Open the image in GIMP
2. Open the Layers window by clicking the Layers button on the image toolbar (alternatively press CTRL-L)
3. Right Click on the Background layer and select a New Layer and select OK.
4. Click on New Layer in the Layers window to select the New Layer
5. Click on the Text Tool icon (Full Black A) to bring the text option on the Toolbox. Alternatively press the key ‘t’.
6. Select the font and size and click on the photo to insert the text.
7. Enter the text you wish to use as a watermark in the GIMP text editor
8. A black and yellow box with the text will appear.
9. Move the box to the desired location.
10. Click on Filters in the image toolbar (alternatively ‘Alt r’)
11. Then click Distort (alternatively ‘d’)
12. Then click Emboss (alternatively ‘e’)
13. An Emboss screen with the preview of the text will be shown. You may just keep the settings and select OK, which will reduce the colour intensity of the text.
14. Select the text layer under the Layers box and reduce the opacity by dragging it to the left. Select your optimum watermark opacity.
15. Right click the Background layer and select flatten image.
16. Save and you are done! (Check out the monkey image for the watermark added by me)

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. You can download your copy of GIMP for free here.

A Google a day keeps the searchOmania away!!!

Google has launched a trivia game called ‘A google a day’ wherein it is allowing everyone to search for the answers on Google. The game asks a question everyday and Google provides its vast database to search for the answers using your Google searching capabilities. The game also comes up with its own Google search page which is powered by Deja Google, which helps to avoid spoilers by providing search results before the day the specific ‘a google a day’ trivia was uploaded.

CLICK TO PLAY THE TRIVIA GAME

According to Google, they will follow the traditional style of increasing the complexity of the puzzle with the difficulty levels around Thursday or Friday. Though the game asks questions which are many a times US centered but, what the hell, it becomes even more challenging to figure out the answer if you are not from US.

It seems to be a nice strategy to get users inclined to using Google. Moreover, Google may be receiving a ton of data which it may further use to improve its search results. Keeping everything aside, I found the game to be fun as well as challenging. It will obviously help everyone become good Google searchers.

Source – Google blog

Google PageRank Graph: Google PageRank visualized

Google has undoubtedly become one of the most important sources of traffic to a website. With many of us depending on a predominant chunk of traffic from Google searches, it has become a necessity to rank better in Google search results.

One way Google ensures better search results is through its PageRank (PR) algorithm. Though the exact algorithm behind Google's PageRank is not exactly disclosed by Google, many companies have actually broken the code about PageRank, to some extent at least.

I always wondered what was the difference between different PR values. How much time it would take to move from one PR to a higher one once Google updates the PR in the Google toolbar? Finally i came across an image by Elliance, Inc. which shows the Google PageRank in the form of a graph and helps to visualize the PageRank system. Though it is not official (not by Google) but is good enough to put an end to the speculation in my mind. :)

Source: Elliance

Rings in action

Another interesting gadget by Adam bowman: Rings in action: Dancing to your tunes

The rings race around on their own or in circles around the cursor. To see more of these types, click the label ‘Games’.

Penguins in action

A gadget by adam bowman: Penguins in action.

point your cursor and these cute, little creatures follow your cursor. Enjoy!!!