1] www.vconversion.com

Converting your favourite videos from YouTube has never been this easy. Today’s site lets you convert and save videos from YouTube into various formats for the PC, iPod, mobile phones or PSP, such as .WMV, .MOV, .DVD, .MP4, .3GP, .MP3, .WAV and .FLV. It’s simple, free, and quite fast too!

2] freemaptools.com

Today’s site provides a bunch of easy-to-use cartographical tools. Some are useful, such as a measurement tool that lets you calculate the exact distance, as the crow flies, from one city to any other.

Others are just entertaining, like the tool that lets you find out what’s on the other side of the Earth if you started digging a hole at a certain point. All in all, it’s a very handy resource that should be bookmarked for future reference.

3] wikitravel.org

Those with wanderlust might do well to consider today’s resource before they embark on their next foreign jaunt. Inspired by Wikipedia - the free online encyclopaedia - today’s site aims to create “a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide”. In existence since July, 2003, Wikitravel currently boasts of nearly 19,000 destination guides (and other articles) written and edited by “Wikitravellers” from around the globe.

4] www.vegtaste.com

Today’s site describes itself best: VegTaste is a community for vegetarians, or anyone interested in the healthy veggie lifestyle to share their experiences, news, stories, and recipes. Join in the discussion about what you heard, did or tasted; or become a writer by simply registering and building your own unique profile to give feedback to other users.

5] www.populair.eu

So what’s popular on the World Wide Web? If you’re one of those that absolutely hates missing out on all the hot happenings on the Internet, you had better bookmark today’s resource.

The ‘single page’ site displays 150 cool Web addresses, including top blogs, hot video sites, comprehensive search resources, on-the-dot news aggregators, foot-tapping music, how and why gadgets, etc.

Consider: One million people have already got their dose of what’s popular on the Web from here.

6] www.igougo.com

If you are planning to take a trip to foreign shores, be sure to check out today’s resource first. The site offers travel reviews with a twist: All the articles – on destinations, hotels, eateries, etc – are written by users, and usually accompanied with their own photos of the same. IgoUgo is a must-visit for those with wanderlust.

7] osliving.com

Through a simple and efficient interface, today’s resource lists some of the most popular free and open-source applications in categories such as multimedia players, games, file transfer software, office suites, graphics and photography tools, etc. And yes, each application comes with a short write-up and user-submitted reviews as well.

8] www.befunky.com

Here’s a quick way to jazz up your pics and videos.

Today’s site offers three modes which let you add effects to your photo, make funky-looking avatars for your social networking page, or ‘cartoonise’ your videos – all through an easy-to-use interface.

And yes, it’s completely free, and requires no registration.

An experience of a lifetime..

This is how i would describe my trek to the one-tree hill at matheran.. A day full of thrills & frills .. Officially my first trek.. I was nervous as well as excited to say the least.. Nervous because of the fact that i didn't know whether i would be able to complete the trek or not & excited because it was going to be a different experience in itself leaving the luxuries of travelling in chauffer driven cars & a day in life where i would have the taken the road less travlled...

Explorers & Adventurers as they would like to call thier club .. A bunch of crazzy people i thought initially who were willing to walk for 6 hours just to reach on top of a mountain & do nothing apart from that.. Later i realized i was going to join this crazy bunch of people after a little bit of convincing by my Masi who is in her late fifties & is crazzy enough to go to the himalaya trek at this age..

From what i heard that it was going to be a long walk across the jungle with mother nature & its set of problems like the bees, the snakes, the rain, the slippery paths & the muddy terrains.. But just the thought of leaving a crowded metro like mumbai for even one day really excited me. So, i made up my mind to take all the pains that mother nature had in store for me.

We were to reach karjat at 6 am in the morning sharp with one page long list of grocery & other items that would almost last for a week .. We had to bring 2 litres of water, lots of snacks, some bandaids, a pair of clothes, tissue papers, paper soaps & what not.. It made me feel that i was almost leaving mumbai for a long vacation..

We reached karjat at a spot where the entire group of people gathered from age group 16-60.. I was almost surpised by the turn up.. it was almost 150 of us.. I never knew there would be so many manaics who were willing to sacrifice thier one day of sunday sleep just to climb a stupid mountain. The head of the club "Mr. Vishwanath" people call him Vishy.. addressed all of us the do's & don'ts of the entire trek.. It felt like my MBA class.. with environment management as a subject & an old professor telling us how beautiful our nature is & we need to protect it.. He informed all of us to be in a group because it was quite easy for people to lose their way in between since we were walking inside the jungle..

At 6.30 sharp started our trek... Vishy & his team of 4-5 expert trekkers took a group count of all of us.. & we started walking along the path that nature had laid for us.. The weather was perfect... clear skies, beautiful breeze & lovely birds across us.. ( Both type of birds ) .. That was a good motivation for most of the bachelors to walk soo early in the morning.. The Journey started from a entrance ,which went through lush green farms and mountains. We came across Many flat plains ,one of them was so filled with eeks ! mud that , our shoes gained weight .. We felt like giants while walking . Ultimately we reached the bottom of the mountain which we had to climb..  We started the climb ..The atmosphere was such that we forgot that we  ' Are supposed to become tired ' ..It was a lively walk ..

We walked for an hour and a half & then took a break at a native village .. Since, we had our bag packs on which were carrying soo many things that we had got.. Each one of us started marketing of the things he / she had got so that they could get finished & the bag would weigh much lighter & it would be easier for us to walk through the rest of the path..

Now was the ' great slope of Matheran ' as I call it ...Its just a 45 deg slope extending for a kilometer or two ..''Just look down ,bent ahead and Move ''..that's what is the funda to walk it right . if one slips on the slope He may cruise down by a more than 30 feet ..But its not dangerous. At last we reached the Mid summit ,where we had to take a harder and junglee route ..  This was a path through the thick vegetation ,and the clouds.. We could hardly see each other ..The rule was " Just go on " ..At last we reached  to " Point of no visibility" .. the fog cleared a bit ,and we resumed our trail ..Now we were at the rocky part of the summit ..  "The Shivaji's Ladder ".. Its a vertical patch of rock climb about 100 meters high, taking bout 45 minutes to climb.. Our group leader give us clear instructions not to overtake, and keep feet firm on the ground. He also told us to take our own time, and keep our own pace. One mistake can be fatal. We could see winds just swooping in front of us .. At the end, there are two ways, one to the one tree itself, and other to the one tree hill point .. 

We went to the hill itself ,,wow ,its was a beauty .Only one tree and us .. Alas !! Matheran had come... !!  glad to reach there in one peice.. One hell of a experience for sure..

Movie review Sarkar Raj

Being an Ardent RGV fan right from the days of Shiva, Satya, Kaun & a host of other classy flicks made by him, I just prayed for RGV’s sake that Sarkar Raj matches the expectations & turns out to be a huge hit after all the bashing he received from his version of sholay & a string of other skimpy, b-grade movies with Nisha kothari in the lead roles. And I wasn’t disappointed at all to say the least.

Earlier sequels weren’t the norm as the producers & distributors were too skeptical to make a sequel if the original has done too well at the box office. But I have to say that our film industry has grown so much in the last decade or thanks to the multiplex culture that we are getting to see movies with such diverse genres. I can proudly say that now Indian films can also have good sequels which were rare sometime back because we were so used to appreciating international films & criticizing the Indian counterpart for the lack of good scripts. With films like Lage raho munnabhai, Krissh, Phir hera pheri doing better than the original & hoping that Sarkar Raj works well at the box office, I hope to see many good sequels.

Coming back to Sarkar Raj, RGV has managed yet again to get exceptional performances from all the characters played in the movie. The intensity, the background score, the restrained performances... & the camera angles are just perfect and to back it all it has got a good script.

Amitabh Bachchan - Subhash Nagre (Sarkar)
Abhishek Bachchan - Shankar
Aishwarya Rai - Anita
Victor Banerjee - Mike Rajan
Supriya Pathak - Pushpa Nagre
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
Producer: Nitin Chandrachud , Abhijit Ghatak , Praveen Nischol
Written by: Prashant Pandey , Ram Gopal Varma  

When Anita, CEO of Sheppard Power Plant, an international company, brings a power plant proposal to setup in rural Maharashtra before the Nagres, insightful Shankar is quick to realize the benefits  the power plant can bring to the people. However, things are not what the seem to be & Shankar's dream project gradually becomes a political minefield. The evil forces, mightier than ever,  mushroom and gang up to bring down the regime of Sarkar and obliterate Shankar's name from the political horizon

It seems RGV was desperate to prove a point to the audience that he’s a great director & also sequels can be better the original. The pace & the intensity of the movie is maintained just like in the original but the best part about the movie is the twists & turns and the breathtaking climax.

The movie is definitely worth a watch & adding it to your collection of classics to be stored forever.

This is my first blog & the only thing i can think about writing is what the entire nation cheered for almost 6 weeks which includes our franchises & the BCCI..

As Mandira Bedi pointed out .. it was a marriage of cricket & entertainment with all the style & glamour around the entire stadium which included the who's who of the film fraternity to the head honchos of big co-orporate organizations. Unlike the ICL, which was a disaster of all sorts.. the entire credit of success of IPL goes to Lalit modi & various other people involved in conceptualizing the entire format & creating the hype in such a big way that it was the talk of the town months before the actual series started.

The Perfect script written by Mr. Lalit Modi paid off soo well that people who criticized the T-20 format started appreciating it the entire format & it rewrote all the rules of captaincy, bowling & batting. To Add to this, there were glitter, glamour, star power, cheerleaders .. & of course the controversies as well.. As the series unfolded it also spelt dooms day for the Ekta Kapoor Raj on television as well as the Tashan's of Yash raj.. only to revive the hopes of millions of husbands that some day they'll stop being compared with the likes of 'Mihir Virani' & company.. As the Series evolved, new icons emerged which were never heard of before like Goni, Yusuf pathan, Asnodkar & many more whose dreams of making to the Indian cricket team are now not far from reality.

The first season of IPL with a great start & heart stopping finale was a perfect taste of what an ideal buffet should be like.. But the question is.. will it manage to catch the eyeballs year after year with the same level of hype & hoolah.. that we'll have to wait & watch..