Samsung to launch the Galaxy S IV later today

 
Samsung will launch the Galaxy S IV later today at an event in New York city. Samsung will hope that the new device will build on the success of the Galaxy S III, which by far was the best selling Android smartphone in the world for 2012. The success of Galaxy S III was only eclipsed by the iPhone 5 that arrived in Q4 of 2012, but even after its arrival it has given Apple’s signature product a tough fight. The arrival of the Galaxy S IV could make things difficult for the iPhone 5 as the next iPhone is expected to be launched at a much later date.
Over the last few weeks we have seen Samsung post teaser videos for the device and today it even invaded Times Square in New York with a group of mob dancers.
The Galaxy S IV is expected to have a 4.99-inch 1080p display, a 8-core Exynos Octa 5 processor, which is based on ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture, 2GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel camera, a larger battery, wireless charging, Android 4.2, some eye tracking capabilities and a new version of the TouchWiz user interface.
People hope that with the Galaxy S IV, Samsung abandones its brash favouritism for a plastic industrial design, but recent comments by Samsung executives and leaks suggest that to be unlikely.
While there are already many smartphones like the Sony Xperia Z, the HTC Butterfly and the soon to be launched HTC One that offer features comparable to what one expects of the Galaxy S IV, undoubtedly the Samsung flagship is the most highly awaited of the lot. Pricing wise it should be competing with the iPhone and one can expect Samsung to pull all the stops in terms of marketing the device.
Photographs: Rohit Sharma

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Book Review: The Moslems Are Coming

It’s a book that might attract curious stares if you’re found reading it in public.

But don’t get excited as yet. The subtitle ‘Encounters with a desktop terrorist’ might give you the impression that you’re in for a thriller about a jihadi who takes on the world from the comfort of his desktop. But the book isn’t any of that. I was mildly disappointed when I learnt this.

However, that was soon overcome by Essa’s remarkable prose, wicked humour and a mature opinion on issues which seemed isolated in the 90s, but are extremely relevant in a world which is far more connected than earlier.

Based on the author’s popular blog, this book is a collection of essays on a variety of topics, ranging from international politics, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racial discrimination and offers a unique point of view on the Israel Palestine conflict, the India-Pakistan issues, how the soccer world cup held inSouth Africadidn’t do anything for the economy, amongst other things.

The book is a fresh insight from a writer who belongs to the Twitter generation and is one of the resurgent voices of independent thought in a world that’s come to cherish and celebrate the Arab spring.

The author writes with a flair that’s unmatched. Witty, wicked and satirical, the book is a sharp insight from a writer looking for self-identity in a world where despite blurred borders, remains an environment of hostility, suspicion and unwelcome sentiments.

Essa has a provocative pen, one that’s skilled at satire and tall enough to get a bird’s eye-view of global happenings.

Recommended reading for the evolved reader, who is politically aware of international politics and global issues.

- Sanjay V

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Book Excerpt: Farhad Dadyburjor’s ‘How I Got Lucky’

If only you thought about it.Railway stations were matrimonial ads in disguise—waiting to happen; a love paradise abandoned of its reaping. Faces criss-crossed in a hurry, everyone rushing somewhere, with their pliant guises of variable emotions firmly set in their outer masks. It wasn’t a large stretch: hope, fear, anxiety were the regulars. The rest were just deadened in anger, creased by non-love. And yet, with a sliver of eye contact…perhaps it could all change. 
But nobody had the time to think about that, and Raman Malhotra knew. Toss a smile and they violently stared, or incredulously glared, with their eyebrows raised: ‘Who the fuck are you?’ Move a few bogies up to the alleged cleanliness of the First, and their eyebrows seemed to say, ‘Who the fuck are you to smile at me?’ 
Raman scratched his outer thigh. It was the state of the city; it was what it demanded. Lock your doors and sleep light. And if you get a spare moment—pray. Pray that someone loves you. Your servants love you. Your watchman. The early morning unrecognisable newspaper boy. This was important. It could be life-enhancing. As for money—oh yes, money—there was plenty of that. It was half-regarded. Not reason enough. 
Your life is just another commodity in abundant supply. 
Ask anyone who lives in a city.
**************
Raman wiped his oily fingers on the outer wrapper of Lay’s Magic Masala and threw it away. Why couldn’t they make wrappers more absorbent, more tissue-like, so you didn’t have to spot the sides of your pants instead? As always, he felt that pull. That urgent knocking in the bottom of his bountiful bones. Advertising or marketing or some such wasteland of commercial creativity—that’s where he was meant to be. Group head. Marketing president. Creative director. He could see the toshed gold emblazoned name plate already. Soon. Very soon. But they’d have to pursue him. The truly talented never chased.
The platform was slushy with the polished slipperiness of fish basket sweat, that dirty bilious water that leaked from the edges. Raman squeaked as he entered the compartment—or rather, his shoes did as they heaved forward onto the high-stepper. Expensive sneakers came with an attitude: they sniggered at bad treatment. They too demanded equal rights like their leather contemporaries and aspired to walk on lush carpeted floors. And then it hit him full in the face. Raman raised his arms to shield himself, as if cowering from attack, but it was too late. He felt the full force of it, the intense vindication, the boisterous tang of heated armpits. His nostrils flared; he coughed, wheezed, as he tried to find a place under the fan. His eyes began watering, mist-filled, as the blades above him droned on. The air was too thick, too potent even for electricity. Raman moved to the door. It wasn’t much better. It seemed to be what everyone else had done.
‘What do you do?’
Raman looked up to see who was talking to him. He turned around. Still coughing, he looked down to be faced with a bobbing head.
‘What?’ asked Raman with a hint of alarm.
‘I mean, what do you do professionally?’
‘Why?’ Raman stared hard at the man. He remembered something, uncreased his brow and smiled gently. ‘Why?’ he asked pleasantly.
‘I’ve seen you somewhere,’ said the man plainly.
Raman had a theory: if you smiled, people were more inclined to be nice to you. Even if you had robbed, maimed, killed, or were about to. Smiling and lying went hand in hand. Scams, bust-ups, indiscretions, financial takeovers, political warfares, marriages had all succumbed to it. Well, as long as you didn’t grin shiftily, attracting suspicion. Lying was an art, really.
‘…Where?’ Raman stopped smiling. The man was still grinning gormlessly. ‘Where have you seen me?’
‘Aren’t you from TV?’
Raman’s eyes darted over the bristles of the little man’s moustache: unevenly patchy, hastily snipped, with bits of orange on one end. TV. Yes! He’d been on it. But how the hell did this twit remember? Five months on a game show. Prime time. 9 pm. In the audience. Well…what’d you know!
He used his best camera angle and pursed his lips. ‘Yes,’ said Raman, matter-of-factly. Life was suddenly everything he wanted it to be. He could bottle this moment and make it last forever. ‘And you?’ he asked.
‘Rahul Bhangari. BCom, CA, having business of hardware.’ The pudgy hand was outstretched. ‘Mobile, com-poo-ter, diary—electronic, latest models, CP209 mobile. With conference facility and micro-small earplug, water resistant, wireless. What you use?’ 
Marketing is a hard job in the world outside of trains. Working the phone, secretarial suck-ups, perspirational delays—almost as tough as dating. But here, if luck struck out, you just moved on to the next guy: on the right, left, back, or front, in the passageway. It was a breeze. Forget about call centers and rigging up your bio: No prior experience was required. Success rates were high. The lines used were the same, naturally. Everyone wanted to be from TV. No one ever was. But in a roomful of strangers, would you admit it? Other conversation hookers were Page 3, fashion shows, and nightclubs—altars of mass worship for everyone. 
Raman gave an incomprehensible look. Far too many CPUs, OEMs, RAMs, hard and soft drives to take in at one time. He was confounded. It was all too overwhelming: the disabling motion of the train, the dancing pamphlets, and his controlled urge to fart. His eyes welled up. 
‘Thanks,’ Raman murmured.
‘What com-poo-ter you use at home? The 568E Konkita with parallel folding speakers?’ The thick stubby fingers brushed open an extensive white folder. 
There was only one other way to tackle this. 
‘…Listen.’ Raman drew a deep breath and looked back to address the man. His body twitched. He peered at the man more closely.
‘You have place, my friend? Somewhere I can show you demonstration?’ The man’s thick upper lip was twitching, the nubby thumb subtly rubbing the outer flap of his crotch. 
Oh, that’s another thing about the city. Everyone has a second job on the side. Everyone. But we’ll get to that later.
——
‘If I didn’t know you so well.’ You obviously couldn’t, or shouldn’t, or needn’t, Raman felt like barking back into the phone. It was one of those that came from the family of ‘I love you but…’ Yeah. Trust words to dampen things, to abuse your dependence on them. Just when you needed not to hear, they always came through. They softened as you got hard. Words ought to be banned.
There was a pause on the other end. Lola breathed in hard. Her concern was audible. She said, ‘You really need to think about this shopping trip because the more you don’t…’ It sounded as if she were biting the phone. Digging her front teeth in for an absolving answer.
‘Sure,’ said Raman. ‘I’ll think about it. Seriously.’
Another pause. Another asthmatic gulp of breath. 
‘Yup. Okay,’ said Lola, hanging up.
And that was it. For today. But there’d be another later, Raman knew. Everyday conversations. That’s what they really were. Nobody should waste time trying to figure them out, solving their apparent ineptitude. There would always be another one to follow soon. And another. Every single day of your life. Things never looked up in this department. 
Raman sighed. He hated his life. His miserable, inconsequential existence. It loomed before him and he knew someday, at the end of it all, there would be nothing to write about. At 35, his life had come to a standstill. A full stop. But something inside kept banging on, raging on, trying hard to get out. He would keep letting loose occasionally. 
A thought flashed. 
He pulled out his pad. Grabbed his pen. And sat, pen poised in mid-air as he conjured up an inspiration. What was that again? He tried delaying the thought abortion. ‘After a point you stop fighting life—and accept what it gives you. But where do you go from there?’ Deep hmm, he thought, penning it down and then putting down the pen in satisfaction. For several more minutes he lovingly stared at the pad hoping to add any discarded remnants. And then looked at that other magical source of inspiration—at that very moment in time before his eyes there appeared two sad, middle-aged women in pantyhose and black eye-masks with red stilettos. One longingly sucking a lolly, another brushing back her hair with a knife. A rubber dog, a bowl of fish, and a naked man in a tub. Yes, MTV made reality look preposterously dull. 
Oh hell, it was Sunday. Lazily, Raman slouched into the curve of the sofa. When in doubt: scout. He bummed the remote hard for another music channel. Munni badnaam hui, darrlling… The song screeched. It drew out. It seemed to be coming out loud, from somewhere down below. Somewhere between the crack of his ass. Damn! The cell phone.
‘Hello?’ said Raman.
‘Darling, where are you?’ a sharp tone boomed back.
Shit! What interview had he missed? His boss never just called. On a Sunday. ‘On the couch. At home,’ Raman said, panic creeping into his voice.
‘No darling!’ The words buzzed among strange zing-like sounds. Raman pressed the receiver hard to his ear to check if she’d hung up. ‘Where are you!’
His mind whirred for an answer. It was a game show moment. His time was running out. 
‘Have you seen today’s issue of India NOW!? So tacky!’ said Shaailaa.
‘Oh, of course,’ said Raman, with the delayed acknowledgement of a half nod. ‘I read their lead on that Sonali from Vijayawada. She’s becoming really hot in modelling. Shaailaa, we should do a piece with her on ‘What Makes Sonali So Hot’ before India NOW! even think about roping in her twin Monali and doing something like a ‘Haute Sisters’ piece where they both…’ Raman stopped to envision the contents of his scoop only to see the shiny black of his screen staring back at him. He was talking to himself. Shaailaa had hung up after making her literary statement. She rarely cared for addendums.
Moments of nothingness, hours spent daydreaming of who’s popular. The life of a journo was tough. He hated the word: Journo. What the hell? He wasn’t a hack claiming to be a reporter who did celebrity interviews, but pretended to be a writer waiting to be a novelist. He was a dignified wordsmith. His terms, his words. No puff pieces, no ego massages. On occasion, Raman needed this self-justification like an internal mantra that he kept repeating to himself for sanity. Or else crashing to earth from fourteen floors above was his destiny. 
He had flirted with suicide once. With a bottle of Benadryl. He slept leisurely and woke up 18 hours later. It was another day, just like any other. Nobody noticed. No one ever asks ‘How’re you doing?’ and really expects an answer. A nod or a groan was indication enough. You were still breathing. No one had time for anything more. 
As if imitating a scene in his head, Raman suddenly rammed his crotch into the cushion. First slowly, then forcefully. When he was alone, aggression descended. He loved the grazing playfulness of it, the plump softness massaging the protruding hardness, the edges of the mirror work inlay that felt like teeth. He used the tassels to gently massage his balls. He felt the tingle, that vibrating sting that readies you up. But something was missing; something was not quite still there. The ambience—it had to be as per the latest clip going on in his head: Raw Military Action II. With his raging hard-on in hand, Raman got up and flung open the bedroom windows. The outside greyness loomed dramatically. The dark clouds dominated. It was time. He pitched back on bended knees, and sprayed into the air with violence as a few pigeons fluttered past.

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Book Review: The Oath Of The Vayuputras

Shiva is gathering his forces. He reaches the Naga capital, Panchavati, and Evil is finally revealed. The Neelkanth prepares for a holy war against his true enemy, a man whose name instils dread in the fiercest of warriors.

India convulses under the onslaught of a series of brutal battles. It's a war for the very soul of the nation. Many will die. But Shiva must not fail, no matter what the cost. In his desperation, he reaches out to the ones who have never offered any help to him: the Vayuputras.

Will he succeed? And what will be the real cost of battling Evil? To India? And to Shiva's soul?

Discover the answer to these mysteries in this concluding part of the bestselling Shiva Trilogy

What is evil? Why does it exist? How does one deal with it? These are questions that keep coming up in the first two books of The Shiva Trilogy. The third and final instalment of the series, The Oath Of The Vayuputras, offers some answers.
In The Immortals Of Meluha, Shiva, a tribal from Tibet, was invited to the kingdom of Meluha, ruled by the Suryavanshis who are at war with the ‘evil’ Chandravanshis and facing attacks by Naga terrorists. Meluhan citizens live long thanks to the Somras, a drink manufactured by Meluhan scientists. Shiva’s throat turns blue when he first drinks the Somras, giving rise to the belief that he is the Neelkanth, an incarnation of Lord Rudra. The book ends with Shiva helping the Meluhan king, Daksha, defeat the Chandravanshi king.
The Secret Of The Nagas suggested the notion of evil is more complicated than the Meluhans would have Shiva believe. The Chandravanshis, it turned out, also believe in the legend of the Neelkanth and while their way of life is not as orderly as the Meluhan’s, it isn’t evil. Something far more sinister is afoot — this is causing the river Saraswati to dry up, creating deformed babies and causing cancerous diseases.
While the first book was a runaway success, the second book received criticism for bad editing and sloppy writing. Philosophical discourses interfered with the arc of the story. Those chinks have been ironed out in The Oath... and while characters do slip into monologues about topics like life and the significance of human action, there’s enough richly detailed action to engage those reading the book purely for ploy. One scene where Sati, Shiva’s wife, fights a group of assassins is particularly well-told.
New characters are introduced in this book, including the Vayuputras, Lord Rudra’s tribe and those whose divinely assigned task is to help the next incarnation of Lord Rudra —Shiva — with his mission. It’s unclear why author Amish Tripathi imagined the Vayuputras to be from present-day Iran but as a result, the description of Zoroastrian mythological elements seems ornamental. Tripathi also mentions Hariyuappa in the book, (an obvious reference to Harappa) melding ancient history with mythology. Again, there doesn’t seem to be a good reason to do this.
Ultimately, different characters turn out to be weak, greedy, foolish, brave or principled. But Tripathi doesn’t tag them with value judgements like ‘evil’. Which leads to an end that is fitting, for ultimately, everyone has lost something.

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Because Shit Happened - Harsh Snehanshu

 

Book Summary:

A fun novel about love, starting a company, and leaving it all to follow your heart

On a fateful winter day, Amol Sabharwal, co-founder of one of the most ambitious start- up ventures in the country, yourquote.in, decides to quit. What makes Amol quit his own business venture just when it is on the brink of raising its first round of funding?

Harsh Snehanshu, bestselling author of Oops! I Fell in Love! gives us an insiders peek into the big, bad entrepreneurial world of fame, betrayal, lust for power, greed, and unethical business practices. Based on the real-life story of the start-up that the author co-founded in 2010, Because Shit Happened will tell you what NOT to do in a start-up. 

 

Book Review:

Amol, an IIT student who has a knack of writing witty one liners comes up with an idea for his entrepreneurial venture, YourQuote.In . A popular guy in college, who is also an author, Amol relied on wrong people who he thought would add value to his venture and will make reap the maximum benefits out of the entire thing. Dealing with the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur, Amol suddenly decides to quite his own venture. What made him do that? A person who is so passionate towards his venture has to leave everything in the midway. This book definitely throws a light on the dark side of entrepreneurship and what one must NOT to do if he is running his own business.

Too many sub-plots and a lot of events, as do happen in a college student's life, Harsh has spun the tale with quite a finesse. It does become a drab in between, solely because somewhere as a reader I knew the startup is not going to work and wanted to read the climax soon. That's not a totally bad thing, in a way.

Overall, a pretty good read. Especially for someone like me who is reading a fiction after a year or so. In fact, the book is a must read for student entrepreneurs who often go through similar stage of indecision, new found relationships, the ever increasing parental pressure and rejections.

****/5

 

An Excerpt:

Patna, Bihar

When I was twelve, I had a very serious conversation with my mother. I wanted to know the answer to a question that had been bothering me for the past few days. 
‘Mom, will you and Daddy ever leave me?’ I asked her.
‘Yes, if we find a more obedient boy than you, then we definitely would,’ she said, her serious face increasing my worries with each passing minute. Then she suddenly broke into a huge smile and I knew there was nothing to worry about. She was only kidding!
‘Mom, seriously, please answer me,’ I persisted.
‘No, Amol. We will never leave you,’ she assured me. 
But my curiosity was still not satiated and my question was not going to be bogged down by a simple yes or no.
‘Never ever?’ I asked once again.
‘No parent will ever leave his or her child, no matter what happens. Never ever,’ she said. Her eyes twinkled this time.
I smiled, took my cricket bat, and went outside to play gully cricket, imbibing her statement as the universal truth that was never going to change. The question never haunted me again. Well, not for ten years. 
A decade later, when I became a parent to my baby—my start-up—the question resurfaced and drilled an irreparable hole in my heart. After raising my start-up from birth for two whole years, I left it. Yes, I left my child. And I never bothered to look back. Never ever.


The Spark
May 25, 2009
Glasgow, UK
Shades of blue painted my laptop screen. Like always, my eyes were glued to the screen. I re-read the address bar for the umpteenth time that day. It said www.facebook.com.
Sign up, connect and share with the people in your life.
It’s free and always will be.
I read the above lines twice. It was my first encounter with a mission statement of a company. And I was touched by its simplicity. I logged in, completely awestruck.
There was a dark blue bar on top which contained the logo of Facebook written in lowercase. No flashy fonts, no flashy colors. There was a notification box at the bottom right (yes, it used to be there in 2009!), something known as a News Feed in the centre, a few sponsored ads on the right, and my profile on the left. After assimilating whatever I saw, I came to a realization. That I frigging hated the damn website! Everyone could read my updates, which was so unlike the social network with the funny name that I was addicted to—Orkut. Whatever I wrote on my wall was visible to everybody. And whatever I was writing on my friend’s wall was visible to all our mutual friends. It seemed so sickening! All the privacy was suddenly turned into news for people who had absolutely no connection with it in the first place, thus the name ‘News Feed’. 
I cursed the friends who spammed me with numerous mails asking me to join the damn site. Harassed, I wrote my first status. 
I hate Facebook. It’s boring, disorganized, and does not respect privacy at all. 
And I closed the tab. 
*****

‘Hello sugar.’ 
Priya loved it when I called her sugar. She was the woman I was madly in love with. Back in India, she was counting the days left for my return to the country. 
‘Hi boyfriend’, she said in her typically excited tone. 
It had been almost one month since I last saw her face. I had come to Glasgow, Scotland, on a three-month summer internship program, and I still had two months to go. Almost everybody at IIT, just by virtue of being an IITian, aspired to get a sponsored internship in the second year, where one hoped of working less and travelling more. I was one of those lucky ones who got a fully sponsored, ‘academically stimulating’ research internship at the Optics group of the University of Glasgow.
‘Have you heard of this thing called Facebook?’ I asked her.
‘Huh, so my boyfriend gets the time from his busy schedule to call his oh-so-awesome girlfriend from the other end of the globe and the first thing he wants to know is whether I know about a frikkin social networking site! Aren’t you already too addicted to that Orkut thing of yours?’ she retaliated. Being one of those rare species who preferred the real world more than its virtual counterpart, she completely despised the concept of an online social network. Orkut had been her mortal enemy for getting more attention from me lately.
‘Wow, so you have heard of it! I thought you were technically imbecile,’ I remarked.
‘I always keep myself updated with the arrival of my competitors, especially when I have loyal friends like you who send me an invite to join it,’ she replied sharply, which, as I thought in my head, would have definitely been followed by a wink.
‘Smart. You would be glad to know that I don’t like her,’ I said.
‘Her? Who is she?’
‘Your rival, Facebook. I just posted my first update a couple of minutes ago.’
‘Yes, I saw that. I even ‘liked’ it along with three other people.’
‘Really? Which three?’
‘Pratik, Ravi, and another girl—Mary. Who is she?’ Priya asked curiously.
‘Well, she’s just a woman I have had the pleasure of spending a few nights with,’ I joked, hoping to fuel her anger even further. In the meanwhile, I unconsciously logged into the website that had sent me to hate trips an hour ago. 
‘Is she blind?’ 
‘No, she is dumb like you. I’m going now; have to check my notifications,’ I said, my mouse pointer inadvertently moving towards the bottom right corner where number 3 popped up in a red voice-box. The hatred at first sight was immediately vaporized. 
‘Hello, come again? You just told me you hated it,’ she said. 
I was too engrossed in what was displaying on my computer screen to pay any heed to her, and so disconnected the call. 
A moment later, number 3 changed to 4, with a wall post from Priya complimenting me: ‘You are the biggest jerk on this planet.’ 
I liked the post. And unknowingly, I started to like Facebook as well. 
*****
Two days later, Orkut was history and Facebook became the next grand love affair of my life. Already an avid blogger, I could not find a better place to showcase my opinions, get friends and readers to read them, involve them in a discussion, and more than anything else, get appreciated for it in the form of ‘likes’. Such was my obsession with likes that I started coming up with something outrageously witty, or at times, profound or philosophical, just in hope of getting likes. Facebook became a mini-blog for me. 
To Priya, I became a bigger jerk with each passing day since she would come to know about my well-being more via Facebook than through my awaited international calls—although the website did provide her with a medium to keep a constant tab on me. 
It allowed her check my pictures in picturesque Scotland, including snaps of my fair-skinned female friends, three of whom seemed quite hot to her, as I could tell from her comments on the pictures.
On one of my only pictures with Mary, Priya made sure I would not be saved from embarrassment, commenting: ‘Why is that gadhi keeping her hand on your shoulders?’ which prompted Mary to follow-up with a question for me: ‘Hey Amol, what does gadhi mean?’ After two minutes of thinking for an apt answer, I replied: ‘It’s a Hindi word meaning “beautiful girl”.’ Mary instantly replied saying, ‘@Priya—Even you are a gadhi honey!’ If Facebook had an option to like comments back then, I would have definitely clicked it.
In the next seven days, I had posted over 25 status updates. More than 3 statuses a day. All of them were original, witty, or profound one-liners and could easily be classified as popular judging by the number of likes they managed to get, helping me outshine every other friend in my list. I wouldn’t be wrong in calling myself a Facebook addict. And the only fuel to ignite this addiction was likes, their number, and the happiness that followed.
However there was one problem. Though now Facebook works on the concept of a ‘timeline’, back then it sucked at archiving data. The chronological organization of the posts meant that my favorite one-liners, if they got too old, couldn’t be traced back immediately. I needed to click on older posts and go on and on to collect data. Even with the new timeline, I need to remember the exact date when I posted a particular quote to check it.
 
This posed a grave problem for me. And, this was the moment that gave me a sense of a great opportunity. I thought how Facebook was making people exercise their creativity but was unable to archive it properly. Moreover, there was no way that creativity could be monetized. Being a prolific blogger, I valued my creativity and didn’t like seeing it go to waste. I searched for websites where my one-liners could mint money for me; and if not the money, then at least the recognition that I was the creator. 
I came across Twitter which was a fledgling website back then but was focussed more on updates and interactions than just quotes. Then there were micro-blogging websites, but none that concentrated on monetization or even giving some recognition to the inventor of the one-liner. I came across quotes websites, all of which archived famous peoples’ quotes. There was no room for the common man. Oddly enough, a lot of them listed many anonymous quotes. This infuriated me further as I realized that some common man who would have come up with that quote hadn’t been credited for it and was now forgotten. His name was probably buried along with an epitaph stating: ‘Here lived the man who would be remembered by nobody in future’. 
Can’t common people get a chance to get famous? Can’t they be quoted? Can’t their words become immortal? Why is fame a prerequisite immortalize creativity? Thoughts like these clouded my mind. 
Suddenly, I smelled a very viable business opportunity. I was going to do what no one had attempted so far. You see, I had to. The seed was implanted in my brain and I had to make a tree sprout out of it—come what may.
As I explored further, I realized that the time was apt. Thanks to Facebook (and later on, Twitter), common people had started writing one-liners, but there was no avenue where they could be archived or monetized or even recognized. Why would you need to quote Shakespeare, when you yourselves could come up with something apt to suit an occasion? What you say matters. You deserve to be quoted. Your quote matters. YourQuote. I checked the domain. The address was available. yourquote.in. It didn’t even take me a minute to confirm the booking. However, there was a little problem. I didn’t know how to ‘code’, that is, how to develop a website.
I thought that until I figured out a way to get the damn website made, I would run it as a blog. I was already an avid blogger, and knew it inside out. Within minutes, I started a blog and put down all my quotes in it. 
I logged in my Facebook account to share the link of the blog with friends. On top of my News Feed was my friend Pratik’s update which struck me with its witty humour.
The root of all sins is…less than 1.
I googled the quote to check whether it was original or copied. It was an original one. I liked his post and immediately, I called him asking him to become the co-author of the blog. I didn’t share with him the bigger picture. He complied, published a bunch of his quotes on the blog. We had two authors now, including me, as I began hunting for more. 
An hour later, I pinged my friend Vikram—one of my closest school friends—on Google Talk. He was on the other side of the globe, pursuing Computer Science in Punjab. He could tell from how thrilled I seemed that I was onto something new. Five minutes into the chat, I inducted him on board as the web developer for the website. He liked the idea but asked for some more time, around four to five months, to prepare himself for the task at hand. Having just passed his second year, he still wasn’t adept in programming to undertake the project of developing a social network. I gladly gave him the time he asked for, assuring him that I needed time to ideate as well. 
I couldn’t sleep that night. I was dreaming with eyes wide open. 
Late at night, Shardul, my co-intern from IIT whom I was sharing the room with, returned piss drunk state and dropped off to sleep. I didn’t need alcohol to remain intoxicated for the rest of my college life.

Author: Harsh Snehanshu

Publisher: Ebury Press/ Random House India (2013)  

Read the reviews from flipkart.com or buy it your own from flipkart.com


-Akhil Ramesh

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Get Free Facebook Likes & Other Facilities!!!

No doubt Facebook is on top in all social media. Facebook is the best place for online businesses to promote their products and for free advertising. Well Recently Facebook has reached the target of 1 Millions of users and its really huge. That is why it has become the best place for promoting and advertising your products as well as to build the audience and significant traffic to your blog or website. But unfortunately not all the people knows how to utilize the strongest Social network i.e. Facebook for their business.
Well today I am going to show you how can you promote your business as well as impress all of your friends very easily.

We often see 1000's of likes on celeb's page or any famous brands etc. even their silly status and photos gets 1000's of likes comments and shares. What if you also treated like a celebrity on Facebook..? good isn't it.? Yes, so now you are at the right place. I am going to show you how you can get unlimited likes on your self created page or on your each and every photo and status you post on your Facebook timeline.

There are lots of websites available which sells the Facebook likes for some dollars etc. but all of them are just waste of time and money as well. I am going to tell some awesome websites which are able to give you and your page the significant amount of likes absolutely free of cost which would help you to impress your friends.

Second thing is that its obvious that if someone likes your status or pages or any photo then it is shared on his all of the friend's wall thus it goes viral and if your content is good and unique you will definitely get a huge amount of traffic and can easily promote your website at no cost means absolutely free. So below are the superb websites which you can use to get lots of free likes subscribers and many more. Just visit them and start getting likes. :-

• Likesss.com

The question is that “how to get Facebook likes on status, photos, feeds, auto followers and much more”? But this too free of cost. For getting likes, the one needs to give $$$. But here is guy Yeshu Agarwal designed a free online easy software for not only facebook likes but also giving out so many other facilities for its users like Auto Follower, Auto Commenter, Auto Friend Adder & much more. His website likesss.com is entirely different from others spammers ( I mean other auto liker). This website is simple to use and simple to see making users no much bored. 

Since this Site is unique from other competitors' AutoLikers, why not have a web site that is unique from our competitors' web site? Likesss.com does not use 'templates' and 'fill-in-the-blank' programs to design web sites, they start each one from scratch. With more and more people accessing the World Wide Web everyday instead of the yellow pages, Likesss.comhad got a very good position now.
That guy helps you with an attractive, easily navigational, and professional looking customized web site to enhance your works..

Likesss.comoffers a wide varieties of services around the clock any time, any where, any how, they perform a very grasp type of schedule for their things and serve users at the extreme point and they will keep on updating like revising, editing, adding and changing existing web pages to keep the website up to date.
Likesss.com offers all of the possible services required to ensure both the short and long-term success of works.

FAQ’s

• Why should I Post in Public?

We need your Status to be in public because you will be reciving likes from the users who are not even in your friends list, and even you know, so its necessary to post in public.

• What is an Access Token?

Access token is a code that our application will use to get access to your facebook account and give you likes. note:- Access token can be used to post a status, comment, spam and many things, so be careful before entering an access token in any other site | don’t worry Likesss.com prohibits all such activities.

• Why Should I allow Followers?

Its because this application will work in public, public can be set when you are 18+, and so if you allow followers it’s obvious that you are 18+.

• Why Post/status ID's are needed?

Post/Status/Photo ID's are the Unique IDs given specific to each by facebook, so we need your ID's to give likes on them

• Will my likes be given to others?

Not Exactly, we will not give your likes on other status in all case, but yes in some case we are pleased to give the likes, and we promise that the post will not be sexually exploit

• Does my ID get Block by using Likesss.com?

No. They don’t spam likes Others, So your ID will not be blocked or anything, we are safe at every edge.

• How to get Access Tokens?

At First Get The Access Token And Allow All The Permission To App,

Then you will see a URL like this 'https://www.facebook.com/connect/login_success.html#access_token=AAABempp6Ls0BAFlJ5iPQ0ZAdRjwlAdDLyxCrL
JJrRulUncDjn9ARUtT13ZCLR9Yuv3IMKXdniSDjw3VtKAZDZD&expires_in=5153149'
   
Now Copy that and paste in the Main page and click on Submit
Also Please DON'T FORGET TO ALLOW Facebook Followers [Settings] As Well. Finally click on submit button.

Click on the pictures to get it zoomed.  

- Team WebAroundMe

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