Reasons to quit WhatsApp

There are hundreds of benefits using https://www.whatsapp.com/. An effective communication tool and everybody is wondering how this is made available free to them.

Many are deeply engrossed onto this cute app - morning through midnight.  The day starts with it and the midnight, latenight ends with it.

People try all sorts of "Account > Privacy" settings to show their uniqueness.

WhatApp is very addictive and we the elders, may be teaching something wrong to the  kids to show this as a relationship tool.


I am currently on WhatsApp Fasting. 

I have not quit WhatsApp but trying to stay away from WhatsApp.  Atleast from Xmas through New Year through Sankaraanthi, I dont want to be online and looking at the messages.

There is element of artificial-ness lifestyle set in using WhatsApp.  Our brains are getting tuned to something unnatural.  I can clearly see thats creating some problem in day to day life. 

• The morning light alerts give a false sense of urgency on the messages that arrived
• How much time to wait anticipating a favourable response? (Why not pick the phone and talk?)
• We stopped saying good morning and good night to the folks at home sincerely (but those on Whatsapp get all those well-crafted greetings with emoticons)
• Reading, workouts, writing, interacting, ...all the times have reduced

If you want to practice MINDFULNESS, stay away from WhatsApp for sometime.

Here are the steps:

1. Decide to quit WhatsApp for 2 full weeks
2. You may fail for the first two days (based on the relationships you have) but start all over
3. Dont worry about how people will share important pictures, and messages.  NOTHING is important in this world
4. Even if you dont greet someone good morning and good night, they will be alive
5. Explain politely to anyone who asks about it - that you are trying to reduce distraction and not to stay away from relationships
6. If you declare this first and then try to go on WhatsApp fasting, people may pull you off
7. Switch off mobile data and wireless options for the two weeks period
8. By doing the step 7, the added bonus is you are not going to check FB as well
9. Now that you have more time, find the useful things you can do in life
10. After two weeks, on a Sunday, you may check the messages - you will naturally tend to skip all the forwards.  You will naturally respond to the one that is very important.
11. Try this every two weeks
12. Stop anything in your life that takes away your power, focus and authenticity!
 

How I solved lesser internal space issue in my android mobile

my HTC Explorer  desktop

I bought HTC Explorer few months back.  A very good Android mobile and has lesser internal memory and storage. I consciously decided not to invest in high end mobiles given the everyday mobile war and launch of phablets (phone+tablets).

However, the real issue came when I started downloading the apps which by default stores in internal memory and the updates would fail due to insufficient storage space.  I was left choice of uninstalling or moving the apps to SD card.

I guess most of the Android mobiles have this issue and buyers generally compromise for the cost. Instead they buy a 8 GB or 16 GB card.  Only thing they dont realize is the apps gets downloaded into the phone and not the SD card by default.

Fortunately, I came across this article on How to install Android Apps in SD card by default which saved my problem.

If you spend about 10-15 minutes, you can make the SD card as the default location for installing apps.

The simple steps are:

1. Enable USB debugging in your Android mobile
2 (a). Install the Java JDK in your computer (if not already installed)
2 (b). Install the Android SDK in your computer
3. Using the ADB utility, issue the following command -
           adb shell pm setInstallLocation 2

Now two magics would happen -
a) You will be able to move some of the adamant apps to the SD card
b) All your new downloads will happen to your SD card.

I found the instructions very useful!

Monday Malware Issue!

There is a news on the internet that on Monday, many of the Internet users will not be able to access the Interenet due to a malware. The details are here:http://www.firstpost.com/tech/malware-threat-how-not-to-lose-internet-access-on-monday-369517.html




Please click on the following link to check if your computer is infected: http://dns-ok.us/



If you see a bright, flashy green - then you are alright!



If not, you need to take some action.

Google and your mind

There is a lot of research on neuroscience that Google focuses on. I am impressed by the depth of the topics on neuroscience, mind, brain, cognitive science etc covered in Google Tech Talks (link).



Most of these videos run between 50 min to 65 min. And they are very technical. There are several other topics shared under this link. I am sharing some of the neuroscience related topics below:

Way to download Youtube videos

Yesterday I found a way to download Youtube Videos through a free software.  Youtube has a wealth of information.  Thanks to YouTube, knowledge is truly free.



The tool name is FreeCorder (link).  You can play the Youtube vidoes and then save it as FLV and various other file formats as MP4. I was able to download both from Firefox and IE.



It is supposed to take the Youtube video URL and give me choice to download in different formats.  It worked in IE but not in Firefox.  (Firefox was probably suspicious about uncertified apps!).  IE did not care, it just prompted me to run a Java Runtime and I was able to download.



Alternatively, irrespective of IE or Firefox, if you have played a video from youtube, this software tracks it, and you can download from there.  Ensure, you play the full video if you wanted it full.  This tool also have video format converter.



I started downloading very good videos of Anthony Robbins and Google Tech Talks from Youtube. The quality is very good. I hope to convert them into DVDs.