Month of August, 2008

Business luminaries share their thoughts on why M.B.A.s aren't all they're cracked up to be. [via InsideCRM]

Most business schools would love for you to believe that an M.B.A. is the ticket to huge paychecks and unlimited career growth. However, a large number of businesspeople have achieved success without a business school's stamp of approval. In fact, BusinessWeek reports that fewer than one of three executives who reach upper- echelon positions hold an M.B.A. Before deciding to spend significant money and effort on earning an M.B.A., consider what these successful and intelligent players in the business world have to say about getting a business degree.

[via Lifehack]

from Stepcase Lifehack by TatsuyaNakagawa

It looks like much of the gold that was brought to China for this year’s Olympics will remain there after the games’ end. Michael Phelps’ legendary 8 gold medals for the US team helped the Americans bring up their count but not nearly enough to keep them in the top spot for winning gold since the fall of the Soviet empire. Even if you discount a few from China for biased judging, they still won this year’s Lycra War. This 29th Olympiad became China’s great coming out party. Everyone was invited and entertained while these enthusiastic hosts met their ambitious goals for the August event.

There are some important lessons we can learn from what some call China’s great awakening. This relates to Napoleon’s account to his European colleagues that China was a sleeping tiger – one he figured should best be left asleep while his forces agitated in Europe and the New World. Since Napoleon is no longer around, we decided to fill in and take some careful notes from our experience in China these past several days. We have come up with the following ten lessons from China’s Olympic preparations:

[www.quarkbase.com via Makeuseof]

Quarkbase is a new web app which claims to find everything about a website. And when you actually try it out, it certainly displays enough information to live up to your expectations. The homepage of Quarkbase is a Google like plain white page which has a box where you can put in the website name or url you want to lookup.

Contrary to the homepage, the results page is really comprehensive. It shows the entire description of site, domain owner, date when the site was created, traffic ranks like Alexa and Technorati ranks, Alexa traffic stats, social media reach of the site like in Digg, Delicious and others, similar sites, RSS feeds and much more. The results may not be dead accurate but are comprehensive nonetheless.

[www.mygazines.com via Makeuseof]

Mygazines is a website which lets you read popular print magazines online. It allows its users to upload and share their favorite magazines and hence, understandably, you’ll find even the latest issues of popular magazines like Macworld and PC Mag online. And if you’d like to read adult magazines like playboy, you can do that by signing up with them and then turning off the adult filter.

It also has a cool user interface and you can read magazines just like you’d read it in your hand, flipping through pages using the mouse button. Further it allows you easily share pages of magazines with your friends on social media. And you can create your own magazines too.

We aren’t sure if this site violates copyrights and if it does, then why it hasn’t been taken down by the big publishers yet. Make sure you read their terms carefully if you decide to sign up with them.

[via Gizmodo]

As rumored, Nikon's D90 is the first-ever DSLR with HD video recording, but maybe more importantly for actual photographers, Nikon is promising much of the same low-noise performance of their higher end DSLRs. The brand new12.3-megapixel image sensor was developed in-house like the D3 and D700's (the D300 uses a Sony sensor) and you can crank the ISO up to 6400, so we're hopeful. It's a mutant DSLR (not in a bad way) bringing down features from the higher-end cameras at the same time it cribs more hold-your-hand consumer stuff from the point-and-shoots. Now about that HD video.

[vuclip.com via Makeuseof]

Ever wanted to stream online videos (i.e. Youtube) on your mobile? Want to download and save videos favorite to your phone in MP4 format. Try VuClip. It allows you to watch web videos on your mobile phone and optionally save them in mp4 format.

VuClip simultaneously transcodes and optimizes videos to deliver optimum viewing experience on your mobile device. Works with almost any mobile phone.

Features:

• Watch videos from video sharing sites on almost any video-enabled phone.
• Search videos or browse by category.
• Download and save videos in mp4 format.
• Supports over 2,000 mobile devices.
• Share favorite videos with friends using SMS feature.
• Setup daily SMS video alerts.
• Nothing to install or download.

Note: VuClip is a free service, though you might be still charged by mobile provider for the internet usage. So make sure to check your contract before downloading videos to your phone.

[www.abbreviations.com via Makeuseof]

Not sure what HTTP, RSVP, KGB, PHP, CSS or any other abbreviation stands for? Check out Abbreviations.com. It is a search engine where you can easily search, browse a and finds meanings for almost any acronym and abbreviation.

From the Page:  Abbreviations.com is the world’s largest and most comprehensive directory and search engine for acronyms, abbreviations and initialisms on the Internet. Abbreviations.com holds hundreds of thousands of entries organized by a large variety of categories from computing and the Web to governmental, medicine and business and it is expanding daily.

Additionally to searching and browsing you can create and keep you own list of abbreviations and acronyms.
Features:

• Lookup  what acronyms, abbreviations stand for.
• Search, browse  alphabetically, filter by category  such as Computing ,Governmental, Medical, International etc.
• Create and keep your own list of acronyms.
• Become an editor and contribute by adding new definitions.
• Supported Tools : Widget for Mac, Custom button for Google Toolbar, Firefox search plugin, IE addon.
• No sign up or registration required.
• Also check out similar website AcronymFinder.

[tjoos via Makeuseof]

Added: 22 Aug, 2008 (158 Views)

Tjoos is another website to get free discount coupons for online stores. In case you have never used online coupons before then basically these are codes or links that give you instant discount on certain products. It can be on Dell.com, Best Buy, GAP site and so on.

You can search or browse coupons by product name or brand, by category (and sub-category), or by store name. Coupons are also frequently checked to ensure they work.

As mentioned above, users have an option to view all available coupons from specific online retailer (Dell, Best Buy etc.). This can come in quite handy for those who freqently shop at one web retailer.

Another great feature is something called “Demand a coupon”. When you can’t find the coupon you need you can “demand” it. When the number of requests reaches 50, Tjoos will contact the retailer and request an exclusive deal on the product.

[Intel via Gizmodo]

from Gizmodo by Mark Wilson

2050. That's the year that you'll plug your brain into a toaster. Intel doesn't know how, precisely, but according to Intel CTO Justin Rattner's recent keynote at the Intel Developer Forum, they're working on it. From Intel's summary of the event:

He said Intel's research labs are already looking at human-machine interfaces and examining future implications to computing with some promising changes coming much sooner than expected.

"The industry has taken much greater strides than anyone ever imagined 40 years ago," Rattner said. "There is speculation that we may be approaching an inflection point where the rate of technology advancements is accelerating at an exponential rate, and machines could even overtake humans in their ability to reason, in the not so distant future."

Excellent, Intel, While simple math can show computers crushing our intellect in no time, it's very comforting when the world's leading microprocessor developer confirms it. You'd just better sell me faster chips than the machines. I've been an excellent customer.

[FontPark via Makeuseof]

Cool and creative web application that lets  you create  an art  from letters of Japanese and Latin alphabet. Works simple,  just drag, drop and  rotate letters from the pallet and arrange them to create an art of your own. Once an art is created you can easily share it with your friends . Additionally, you can also browse and rate  Most popular and  Recent arts created by other users.

Features:

• Create Art from Japanese and Latin alphabet letters .
• Create as many art works  as you like .
• Share your arts with others by forwarding  link URL.
• Check out arts  created by other users and watch replays on how they were created.
• Check out  most popular and recent arts.
• No sign up or registration needed.
• For more similar tools go Here