Peak of Erudition

What do you do with your old car? You go through all kinds of trouble to get it sold. Right? You might advertise it. You might go through brokers. You would take all the time and trouble and effort to realise some money.

What will you realise at the end of the day? Not even one sixth of what you actually paid for it in the first place.

Is it worth it?

It is not as if you cannot afford. It is not as if you desparately need the money. We all can do with some more money but not necessarily desparate for it.

So, what else can you do ? The car is anyway occupying your space. You need to get rid of it to put your new car in that space.

There is a way. Simply donate your old car. Give it away. Car Donations actually might end up save a life. Give a better life to children who are poverty ridden. help the rehab of young people. It would also get you the proper IRS tax deduction. You would have a smile on your face which is worth a lot more than the money you can get by selling that old car.

Not only your old car. you can also Donate Boat if you have one. Again, the proceeds will be used for charity purposes. This donation also would help in bringing education to millions of kids. Free DVDs for Kids gt distributed which are educational in nature. Your cat and boat will help in that.

You will also be given a free vacation for 2 when you help in the charity. You will also get the Free Educational DVDs for kids.

IBM is planning to launch an “open” cloud computing strategy. However, there are lots of accusations that it can backfire, though a few deals have been closed.

For example, Google has pulled out after signing up. Amazon has clearly told it would not get involved.
Microsoft has criticised the plan, saying it was given just two days to sign up to a “secret” manifesto with no input.

“We had concerns about process and governance that led us to question IBM’s intentions,” Microsoft’s Steve Martin told reporters.

The Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum, which had also added its name to the list of more than 30 companies in the plan, withdrew its support over the weekend.

Some of those companies still backing the plan include CISCO, Sun, AT&T, Red Hat, SAP and AMD.

There was no comment from IBM over the Google change of heart or that of the CCIF. However, IBM said that it hoped Microsoft would reconsider and get involved in the Open Cloud Manifesto at some stage.

“The aim was for this (Manifesto) to serve as a rallying cry to the industry to get focused around the importance of the cloud environment being open,” Karla Norsworthy IBM’s vice president of Software Standards explained .

To all those who are planning to buy a new home, here is a small new find on what to do for the window drapes and curtains: do visit curtains and check them out. Fabulous collections!

In Sunday’s incident, a passenger train hit a stationary cargo train near the town of Dodoma, in central Tanzania. It happened near Pandambili in Dodoma’s Mpwapwa District, as per the Tanzania local media .

The initial death toll was thought to have been 15.

William Lukuvi, Dodoma’s regional commissioner, told AP news agency: “Cranes have been ordered to help separate the crumpled wreckage and retrieve bodies.”

In 2002, more than 200 people were killed and hundreds more wounded when a freight train collided with a passenger train outside Dodoma – the worst rail accident in the country’s history

The only difference however, is that in this case, the train wreck is no accident. It has been a clear robbery in the guise of an accident. The cargo train was carrying petrol and a mob wanted to steal the petrol. They have ‘engineered’ the train wreck so that in the ensuing chaos, they could steal and get away with it.

But, the poice seemed to have caught on to the plot.

Seven people have been arrested, including the driver of the cargo train and the station master.

Google is God since it is supposed to everything that is there. Right? I would agree readily. But my wife doesn’t agree to it. She is a self confessed shopaholic and she still doesn’t rate Google very highly when it comes to her passion of shooping.

Her point is that the Google system still does not help her big time.

She wants something which can help her. In terms of knowing her shopping habits. Knowing exactly what are the things she loves. What are the things that she does not really like.

She wants to be able to shop online (this is apart from shopping physically!) and she wants the computer (read: the search engine) to remember and know whatever she expects in the shop and her own peculiar shopping habits.

She wants to see some ratings of the product. Now, you don’t get that offline. You don’t get the reviews and ratings of products when you shop physically. But, online, you can get. But everytime you shop, getting ratings for the prodcuts that you want to shop for? Difficult right? But that is what she expects.

She wants to see the search engine to remember her price history. How much she has paid for what in the past. I have no problems with that one. It will at least remind her how much she has been splurging on!

She wants to be able to sort by all sorts of things. By the product ratings. By the most recent entry in the category. By the price levels to see the most expensive things out there and so on and so forth.

She also wants to set price alerts. If an item is available below a certain price (and at times above a floor price also since she considers anything below a certain price to be too cheap to be of good quality), she wants to know and she wants to know in a hurry.

Now, Google doesn’t do any of this.

But she found something which does all of this. And, in her eyes, that is being God!!

Exspecto shopping search engine is what it is. She is online on it all the time. She is online shopping. Setting the price history. Sorting by all advanced methods which are available out there. Looking at the ratings of the different products. Discovering some new products to buy every now and then – and never mind whether they are really needed or not!

No marks for guessing who really pays for all that the search engine unearths!

The Arab leaders have been urged to reject an international arrest warrant against the President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan who has been issued the warrant for the war crimes in Darfur.

According to the Arab nations, the warrant was completely non warranted.

The warrant was “another stage on the road to dividing Sudan”, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad said. He was speaking at the Arab League’s annual summit on heads of state in Qatar. This was attended by Mr Bashir as well.

The summit is also expected to discuss Iran’s influence in the Middle East, and Israel’s new government. A number of countries are concerned about Iran’s influence in the region, particularly its support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and for Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

A number of these countires have expressed utter dismay at the international warrant against Mr.Bashir.

Our homes feel oppressively hot at summer and painfully cold at winter times. We have often wished it would just stay cool in summer and warm in winters but nature is not like that. It doesn’t give you finely balanced climatic conditions which are always enjoyable.

But, we can do something about it.

What causes the extra heat inside the home in the summers? It is the problem of the heat getting reflected back into the house.

What causes the cold shivering when it is the winter? The heat gets conducted back and does not get trapped inside the house in the winter.

Suppose you found a way of reflecting the heat which falls on the house in the summer and keeping the heat inside the home trapped during the winter, then you can balance out the fury of nature and keep your home cooler in the summer than it is now. You can also keep it warmer in the winter it is possible now.

All you need is the insulation by EcoFoil Reflective Foil. It increases the “r” value of the insulation and hence improves the energy efficiency levels in the building.

These are inexpensive and are very easy to install. There are absolutely no side effects at all. The insulation is not at all harmful to either the skin or any other part of the body, including the inner organs such as lungs or heart.

This can be implemented in all kinds of places in the house – wherever the insulation is required. One can install this in attics. This can be put up in metal buildings and many other places.

Since this foil insulation reflects the heat away from the surface, there is no heat which comes in. Hence, it helps keep the house cooler in summers. Similarly, since it reflects the heat trapped inside the house back into the house without allowing it to escape, it keeps the house warmer in the winter.

Installing this Reflective Insulation is very easy and does not cost much.

The Peugeot-Citroen shares first fell and then tumbled more than 6 percent early Monday. This came in the wake of the loss-making French car maker abruptly removed its CEO. It has named a long-time steel industry executive to replace him.

Peugeot-Citroen cited “exceptional difficulties” in the auto industry as the reason for the boardroom shakeup.

Peugeot’s stock had lost nearly 38 percent since the former CEO Streiff took over little more than two years ago. Peugot-Citroen last month announced a net loss of euro343 million in 2008 and forecast more losses this year.

Earlier this year Peugeot-Citroen and domestic rival Renault SA received euro7 billion in French government loans as part of the state-backed bailout of the auto industry.

In fact, the auto units around the world seem to be losing their marbles. Except for the TATA of India, who have infact gone ahead and launched their NANO, no news from the auto world is positive these days.

When I go for a vacation, the one thing I surely miss is my home. I have got everything at my home. Apart from my adoring family, I also have every single amenity at home. I at times wish I could only take my home also away! And, the one thing I really hate while on vacation is the stay at hotels. The stay at hotel rooms is drab. Small rooms, with everything which has to be paid for, robs the vacation off its charm.

So, when I heard of ‘vacation homes’, I sat up. They promised more living space. Much more amenities than can ever be at a hotel. Beach facing view. Swimming pool and so on and so forth.

All those amenities which are simply not possible to get at a hotel and even if I got it, I had to pay a fortune for the same.

Added to that, the privacy which no hotel can afford to give me at the price that I was paying for the homes. Add to this the possibility of sharing even these costs with other families if I wanted to – which meant that I could actually bring my friends and extended family people also for vacation on a shared basis and split the costs and have a lot more fun was absolutely exciting.

But, how is it possible? It is made possible by the HomeAway.com Coupons from PricePickle.com.

Use the HomeAway Promo Code and get the best rooms with a sea view yourself! These people have more than 124,000 vacation homes in about 118 countries. You can also enter the contest to win $5000 when you invite your frinds to visit Homeaway.com

Internet phone company Skype announced the availability of their Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony service for Apple’s iPhone and the BlackBerry, a smartphone manufactured by Research in Motion (RIM), as per the Reuters reports. The application, which is available on Tuesday for the iPhone and Wi-Fi enabled iPod touch would come to BlackBerry devices this month of May 2009.

With more than 450 million registered users, Skype has long been the most demanded mobile application across the globe. Clients from third party developers such as Truphone and Nimbuzz allow Skype functionality on the iPhone, and Nimbuzz also made Skype available to BlackBerry users, but this is the first Skype-powered application for either device.