Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Some cool stuff!

A Bookaholics delight!
Found a really cool lending library with a pretty good collection where you can book online and get delivery at your doorstep (for a small price, but very worth it). I’ve been trying to find a good library for a while now, so I am thrilled to bits when RM asked me to check out this site! It’s a nice concept and this is the first time I’ve actually come across a library making use of the Net so extensively. If you’re in Bangalore, and like reading, it’s worth trying.

A manager to manage your bookmarks!
del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.I am pretty much hooked on it now. Simple and great idea. I have now stopped bookmarking in my browser and instead use del.icio.us.

Connecting to the world
While I was researching the internet connectivity options, I discover (thanks NG) that even BSNL has an "account free" dial-up connection scheme called NetOne that authenticates based on Caller Line Identification (CLI) and is reasonable at 10 paise per minute. This is apart from the normal outgoing call charges for ISP dial-up numbers (17xxxx). TouchTel in fact has gone one step further and has eliminated the ISP charges altogether for its subscribers! Anyone with a landline connection from either BSNL or TouchTel can therefore start using their dial-up services right away and there is also no hassle of renewals. Now you don’t have to buy an ISP pack from VSNL or Sify?

Encyclopedia
I recently rediscovered the excellent online resource Wikipedia - I had seen it in its early days when it didn't have much useful or accurate content but I was quite pleasantly surprised to see just how much it has evolved in the intervening period. I was also quite sceptical of a wiki producing anything useful, considering just how much it can be abused, but I seem to be wrong after all. Wikipedia is quickly becoming the de-facto starting place for me to find out about something. Very highly recommended!!

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