Free Video Streaming - join.me

In my earlier post about Free Video Recording - Screenr, I discussed about the features of video recording and sharing provided by Screenr, completely free for basic usage. This post am going to talk about another similar free tool collaborate, train, help or just show off :) Very useful for online tutors, elearning institutes. join.me is another website featuring online live video streaming, without even registration.

Features - Free version

1. Visit join.me and get code, and invite others by emailing code, parties on other side just have to join using the code in url.

2. Once joined, screen can be broadcasted, paused, again broadcasted.

3. Free Internet Calling provided for talking to the participants

4. Free Chating provided for public chat with all participants or private chat with specific user.

5. Option to give control to other participants to share their screen.

6. Option to give control to participants to control your screen.

All these are available in free version, they also have a commercial version, which is based on the number of users. Additional features provided in professional version

1. Unique code for each broadcaster, rather having a new code everytime

2. Free desktop version provided, so no need of browser.

3. Schedule meetings in advance

What not, they are ultimate in the service they provide. This is another great tool in this video broadcasting segment. If you compare this tool to Screenr, join.me does not have sharing recorded video to social networking sites. join.me is more of live streaming done immediately.

Free Video Recording - Screenr

Every human has some unique talent, some show it outside and few lack to show it. Some go ahead one step and teach others. Recently I came across a very useful website(Screenr), for online trainers, who can record whatever they do in their PC, while they can talk, which can be recorded in maximum 5 clicks :) sounds easy isnt it. Say you want to show your friends how to apply an effect in photoshop, only thing you need to do is switch on the video recording tool and start using your photoshop as well keep talking what you are doing, once you are done, click done and your video tutorial is ready.

Step 1: Go to Screenr website

Step 2: Click Record

Step 3: Fix the frame you want to record

Step 4: Click Start Record

Step 5: Finish whatever you want to record along with your audio

Step 6: Click Stop Record

Now you have the video ready and you can either share it in social network sites like facebook, g+, twitter, or even email the video to someone private.

You do not have to go through a complex registration process, if you have google/facebook/twitter/linkedin account, it can be used to login to the application. Screenr also provide webcast, which means live streaming is possible, wonderful isnt it. The free version of Screenr has the basic options for any movie creation and live streaming.

Screenr is also provides a commercial version for corporate who can customize recording, have private sharing, replace company's logo for branding purpose etc. Screenr is the top most tool in this segment accepted by CNet, Mashable, The New York Times etc...

Power of Group Buying

In this fast moving machine world, everyone is busy and doing everything to get they income high to cope up with the increasing prices of everything starting from a pin to a house. Market is so vast and challenging nowadays so every product has to give some offer or the other to increase their sales. By default the first thing a manufacturer thinks is to sell more, so there is always a profit if booked in bulk, this power of group buying is something similar to that. 

Groups are formed within our relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues etc and try to approach a seller for bulk order and share the discount the seller provides between the group equally, this way each one of us is satisfied with the same product with a discount, sounds simple right. Now how many of us implement this in real life, and in what places these are applicable? how often this can be implemented is another question. For any human, grocery is the first expense in monthly list, so why not we try this first within our friends or colleagues or relative initially ?

Let us take few examples and analyze this group buying concept to actually understand the real power of group buying

Product 1: Complan(Chocolate), 1Kg Pack - Rs.407.00, it already comes as two 500gm pack, so the cost of 500gm is Rs.203.50, where as if you buy only 500gm then the cost is Rs.216.00, almost Rs.13 more, think if you and your friend join together while purchasing this, you are saving Rs.13 in just one product.

Product 2: Britannia Oats, 1Kg pack is Rs.140.00, which brings 400gm to Rs.56.00 and 200gm to Rs.28.00, whereas if you buy them as separate pack of 400gm and 200gm it would cost Rs.58.00 and Rs.32.00 respectively, so again a profit of Rs.2 - Rs.4

Product 3: Ashrivad Atta, 10Kg pack is Rs.289.00 (1kg is Rs.28.9) and 1Kg pack is Rs.35, so if you and your friend are sharing this product, then you end up saving Rs.6 per kg

This is just an example list of items I could think of, you can actually join hands and saving money instead of giving it to the shop keeper or manufacturers extra. In case of  supermarkets bulk offers are very popular like buy 2 get 1 free, think if we just need only 1, we can share with our friend who is willing to buy the same product and enjoy the saving. 

In US, each area has a Group Buying club, where they join hands with members and purchase in bulk from wholesaler and pick up the product from this club, enjoying the profit equally among members, sounds great right. Lets start saving wisely :)

Fire Your Boss - The story behind

The world is now seeing internet revolution, wherever you go, whether it is to launch a song like kolaveri and win the worlds heart or launch a product or sell or buy or do what not using internet. The negative side of internet revolution is people getting cheated by false promotion and magical words. One such case is "Work Online From Home" to get rich. 30% of websites showcase someone whom you do not know showing a cheque with some whoooping amount attracting you, so what is all behind this ?

To my knowledge the most searched phrases in google are

1. How to make quick money

2. Earn money working from home

3. Free money to give away

4. Here is your share of profit

5. Spend 10 minutes daily and you can earn more than $50 everyday

and so on…

But, there is nothing called Free Money in this world. No one will give their money for free, unless you work and bring profit to them. So, don’t get fooled by some one, who sucks your time and effort and pay you peanuts.

I am not discouraging any one that you cannot work or earn money sitting at home. But there is nothing like “Earn $50 every 1 hour or earn $500 per day”, unless you are ready to put so much effort to get paid that handsome sum in your pocket daily.

There are two types of work from home. One is, you are associated with some company or won some online project and work on it. In this matter, you can earn the amount fixed by you and the company / project, as per agreement. Obviously, you know how much time and effort that particular job requires and you need to plan accordingly.

Apart from that, many people looks for wirting articles and earn money online, by attracting views to their articles. Again, it is not going to be so easy as you dream.

1. You need to be creative and capable of developing a single line story into a 3 hours cinema (just an example). Your content should be original

2. You need patience in editing and fixing photos / video to make your content more attractive.

3. You need to spend hours together to write more number of articles. The more the number of articles, the more the page views you receive and more the income you earn.

4. You need to spread the news after you finished publishing your work. For this, you need to log in to your social network sites (literally) and spread the news. Let us say, you are member of 10 social network sites like Facebook, Orkut, twitter, reddit and so on… Then let us say, if you are going to take 2 minutes approximately to log in and post your news in each site, then you need at least 20 minutes completely to spread the news of your new article to your friends circle.

After spreading the news, you cannot stand still waiting for page views to accumulate in your site, unless if your article is so catch and unique to attract people automatically. Otherwise, to make people visit your site, you need to visit them before. We write comments to other users and in turn, they visit ours and leave comments. So, let us say you need 10 comments and so you go and write 10 comments to your friends articles, then it is again going to consume your time. For example, if you take 5 minutes to read and comment an article, then approximately you need 1 hour to complete the entire task.

So, it is like 1 day to think about an article, 1 hour to write about it, 20 minutes to spread the news and again 1 hour to run through friends. So, you need to calculate how much it is worth. So friends, never get fooled by those Magical words “Earn thousands and fire your boss right now”. Because, with your boss, you are assured you will get paid at the month end, where as in working with online, you never know the ups and downs of earnings, unless you reached a level like 3000 or 4000 articles written already and they altogether has the capacity to draw at least $1 per day.

Otherwise, writing is fun and you can enjoy it, without a serious thinking of earning, which will surely raise by time.

BTTR - Back To The Roots

Back To The Roots (BTTR) is a great green initiative by two Berkeley university students. They decided to spend spring break growing mushrooms in the kitchen of their house. Nikhil Arora and Alex Velez stumbled upon a brilliantly simple way to change the way we think about food production.

In 2009, they launched Back to the Roots, which began as a tiny mushroom farm and has since moved full-time into producing irresistible little kits that allow pretty much anyone to grow their own oyster mushrooms. Two months away from graduation, and heading into the corporate world of investment banking & consulting, they came across the idea during a class lecture of being able to potentially grow gourmet mushrooms entirely on recycled coffee grounds. Inspired by the idea of turning waste into wages & fresh, local food, they experimented in Alex's fraternity kitchen, ultimately growing one test bucket of tasty oyster mushrooms on recycled coffee grounds. With that one bucket, some initial interest from Whole Foods & Chez Panisse and a $5,000 grant from the UC Berkeley Chancellor for social innovation, they decided to forget the corporate route, and instead, become full-time urban mushroom farmers!  

As the business grew, Arora and Velez also built a partnership with locally based Peet’s Coffee, somehow convincing the company to pay them to cart away used coffee grounds, which means they now turn a small profit on their biggest raw material. And as the two began giving tours of their West Oakland warehouse, where they would eventually grow as many as 500 pounds of fresh mushrooms per week. Then visitors started asking if they could take the coffee/spawn mixture home and try it themselves.

Back to the Roots has created 31 green-collar jobs in West Oakland, and they’re collecting and diverting about 40,000 pounds a week of coffee ground waste from the landfill. And turning waste into food just once isn’t enough anymore: They plan to start embedding vegetable seeds into the kits’ cardboard boxes, allowing budding farmers to grow their shrooms, plant the box, fertilize it with the leftover coffee grounds, and (hopefully) come up with tomatoes, basil, onions, or parsley. Back to the Roots has reached an estimated 10,000 kids via a Facebook campaign that donates mushroom gardens to elementary school classrooms nationwide.

Moral: Nothing is waste, waste for you is gold for someone else.

Auctioned Property - Not everyone's cup of Tea, even cheap

Real estate prices are soaring up and everyone's urge to buy a house is still as a dream. For those who dream of buying a property for the first time, this option may not sound good, because some people consider auctioned property unlucky, and have belief that buying the property which the owner does not willingly sell, another attractive factor in this auctioned property is the price fixed by the banks which is 25-30% less than market price. Also, since they are auctioned by banks, the title to these properties would likely be clear.

AUCTION PROCESS

Banks issue a public notice in newspapers about the proposed auction and invite bids. The notice includes the details of the property, date, time and venue of the auction, reserve price, and earnest money deposit.

Bidders must submit their applications to the bank quoting their bid amount which should not be less than the reserve price. Along with this, they must pay earnest money deposit which may be around 10% of the reserve price. The auction usually takes place after 30 days from the date of the public notice

• If the borrower settles the dues within 30 days, the auction will not happen and your earnest money deposit will be returned. 
• If the auction takes place and you do not win the bid, your earnest money deposit is returned. 
• If you win the bid, you will have to pay around 25 per cent of the bid price on the day of the auction. You need to pay the balance amount within the next 15 days or an extended period agreed between you and the bank.
• If you win the bid but do not pay the required amount within the specified periods, you will lose the money paid earlier. 

AUCTION INFORMATION SOURCES

• You will need to scan newspapers for announcements by banks regarding such auctions. 
• You can contact real estate agents who may have this information. 
• Web sites such as  http://www.foreclosureindia.com/,  http://indiabankauction.com/  http://bankpropertyauction.com/ provide online listings of properties which banks advertise to auction.

In a normal (offline) property auction, bidders gather at the auction venue where their bids are considered. Banks may also allow competitive bidding among the bidders for improving their offers.

CONSIDERATION BEFORE BIDDING

If the auction attracts aggressive bids, the price could go up and dilute the cost advantage. So, it is important that you make an assessment of the market value and bid prudently to get a good deal. Also, to be on the safer side, it is better to check the property documents before deciding to bid, or engage a lawyer to verify the title.

Also expenses on any repairs, renovation, unpaid property taxes, electricity dues and statutory liabilities will have to be borne by the buyer. The buyer also has to bear other expenses such as stamp duty and registration fees. So, do a proper inspection to assess the true cost of owning the property.