When I began my career as a travel journalist in the 1980s, there was lots of talk about "remoteness." This was what many travelers were looking for: places so hard to get to, and so different from the world we knew, that their very existence seemed almost miraculous.


Today, the value has shifted. What we look for now is connectedness: the opportunity to check our e-mail, upload video clips and chat on Skype -- even if we happen to be on the Khumbu Icefall, 18,000 feet high in the Nepal Himalaya.

Last week, a network of eight 3G base stations began operating along the route to Mount Everest, in Sagarmatha National Park. They were installed by Ncell, a Nepali telecom firm. The news didn't surprise me. But I felt that, irreversibly, another blow had been struck against magic.

Access to the Internet is starting to seem like a human right, so let me offer a disclaimer. There is no rational downside to the arrival of broadband on the flanks of Everest. I'm not a Luddite, and would never suggest that developing nations should be denied, for any reason, the global access that technology can provide. This 3G network will undoubtedly save lives -- not only by providing weather information and support to Everest climbers and trekkers, but as an alert system for the nearby villages threatened by flash floods from Glacial Lake Overflow (GLOF), another peril caused by global warming.

It's a good thing. So why did the news make me feel like Robert Conway in "Lost Horizon," looking back on a land to which I can never return?

During my earliest visit to Nepal in 1979, phoning home even from Kathmandu was an adventure. I'd bike to the Telecommunications Office at 2 a.m. (mid-afternoon in New York), fill out a form, and wait hours for my trunk call to go through. The costly result was often a busy signal -- or a barely audible connection. The most reliable means of communication was "snail mail": a metaphor that, with three weeks of lag time between a letter and its response, seemed literally true.

Even this much contact was a marvel, compared to the situation in the mountains. When I first trekked the Everest route, in October 1983, it felt as though I'd entered a world completely detached from the familiar. After a harrowing flight to the tiny airstrip at Lukla, the 10-day hike to Base Camp (with an elevation gain of more than 8,000 vertical feet) began. Immersion in the Sherpa Buddhist lifestyle was inescapable, and transformative. Phone calls were impossible. Even writing a postcard was like putting a message in a bottle, and tossing it out to sea.

None of this seemed like an inconvenience. Though there were bouts of homesickness, and the occasional longing for new music and old friends, it was exhilarating to have entered such an isolated realm. This, actually, was the point. Travelers embarked on our journeys to Everest or the Annapurnas aware that it would be a full-body experience -- an equation that included our brains.

As a result, trekking in the Himalaya never felt like sightseeing. It was a commitment to the here and now, demanding full-time engagement with both Nepalis and fellow travelers. There were infinite opportunities to forge new friendships, experience Sherpa Buddhist culture, or enjoy exquisite solitude. By day, you could walk alone or with companions; at night, the lodges flickered with candles and butter lamps. Out came the maps, backgammon sets and tattered journals. Tales of avalanches and Yeti sightings were shared, along with cups of the dizzying local rakshi.

During my most recent trek to Everest region in 2008, it was clear that the area was changing. Though the mountains looked the same, they felt less like a world apart. For one thing, it was a lot more crowded; an estimated 15,000 trekkers shared the narrow trails. Cellphones were already in use between the main villages, and the isolating aspects of technology were taking hold. Sherpa guides and sinewy porters marched up the steep mountain grades with telltale white headphone cords snaking beneath their parka collars, lost in the private soundtracks of their MP3 files.

Getting online was a different story. There were only a handful of cybercafes along the trekking route -- the highest of which was at Everest Base Camp itself, at 17,500 feet -- with Internet access via satellite. Connections were sluggish; it often took Gmail more than five minutes to load. Sitting in a cozy inn, immersed in conversation, was far more seductive than surfing the Web.

The arrival of 3G will change all that -- and not just how quickly trekkers can upload their photos to Flickr, keep tabs on their investments, or stream the latest episode of "Mad Men." Wireless broadband, barely imaginable even 25 years ago, will change the way future travelers and locals interact in the world's highest mountains.

For the Sherpas of Sagarmatha, of course, it may well seem that one kind of magic has simply been traded for another. Broadband on Everest! What next? If the Yeti buys an iPad, he might even decide to "friend" Bigfoot on Facebook.

For the rest of us, this constant connectedness may have a bittersweet aftertaste. My recent trek into the Himalaya was a reminder of the pleasures of remoteness. It was a joy to escape from the hamster wheel of distractions, and immerse myself in the expanded moment of real time. Because being connected -- really connected, with the place you're in and the people you're with -- requires disconnecting, at least temporarily, from everywhere else.

We are far past the time when we can expect to a find a Shangri-la, anywhere, beyond the reach of the Internet. But as the world races toward connectivity, travelers might stop to consider why we travel in the first place, and which connections we really want to make.

We all know how to pin our favorite programs to the Windows 7 taskbar. Simply right click them, and select the 'Pin to the Taskbar' option. We don't have similar option for folders.  Here's how we do that.


Right-click any folder of your choice, drag it to the empty space of Windows 7 Task bar and drop it as soon as you see 'Pin to Windows Explorer' flashing. You read it right, it'll pin the folder to Windows Explorer's jumplist. Not simply to the taskbar.


Hope that helps.

Proliferation of electronic communication has affected many traditional ways of doing things. Last year, major newspaper declared big losses. Hence, came e-subscription. It's yet to see, if it's going to help them sustain. There seems no chance for postal mail services. Evidently, the Postal Service are blaming the deeper losses on the recession and on the continuing growth of e-mail.


Right now, U.S. Postal Service(pretty much postal services all around the globe) is on huge loss. Despite last year's huge trimming of it's workforce, the Postal Service said its net loss totaled $8.5 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. That compares to a loss of $3.8 billion the prior year.

Many corporates are holding a notion of Going Green which means no more paper. Mentally, growing number of population are considering more paper use as cut trees(definitely not good for planet). Bank of America just launched compulsive online banking or pay more fees if clients opt-in to use paper mails. Their motives behind this could be cutting expenses. But it's undeniable that pretty soon, everyone will disregard paper mails to escape from pounding bank fees. This is just one example. Others will follow the suit rapidly.

Now is the age of online social networks, digital information boom era. Across the globe, information is passed on in matter of seconds. Email or any other sort of communication exchange technology, de facto,  will replace aging postal services sooner or later. I feel sorry for them, a traditional stuff soon to be superseded. It's hard to see their existence in next 20 years.

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Calibre is a free open source ebook management software. It catalogs ebooks residing in your hard drive or the one downloaded from internet. Once ebooks are in Calibre, you can efficiently manage your ebooks like giving it proper tags, fetching publishers info and all other stuffs. All these tasks are automated if you are connected to the internet, it does everything for you.



It has built-in reader. So, once you've your ebooks in the calibre, you can read it on your computer.

But, if you have external ebook readers like kindle and nook, it's another excellent tool to must have. It easily syncs to all ebook reader devices available today in the market. Even more, it does the conversion of ebook in proper format so that it can be transferred, properly displayed and read on those devices.

See the Video demo, what it can do.
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People are falling for various forms of scams and frauds over the Internet and email. Googling is the best bet for investigation of any suspicious offers often so good to believe. But these fraudsters are so good everytime they roll out their new scam tactics with new innovative ideas.


Mostly elderly citizens and females of any age are getting victimized to these frauds and scams according to the survey.

The reason I'm writing this post is to guide you how not to fall for these so convincing lies and scams. Hopefully, you'll spread the words or share it in social networks or in any forms.

Okay, here is the common scenario: One day you wake up, you get an email and you are told that you become a partner of some going-to-be-soon-rich-guy for huge stash of inheritible money to be transferred to the USA. If and in doing so, you would be rewarded with some percent and that percent when you calculate turn out to be millions of dollars. This story is just one example of thousand cases.

Even the smarty-asses are falling for it well..knowingly unknowingly. (In ancient stories, I've read that Greed is such an evil that even an intellect is useless against it.) They get fake checks or money orders, they religiously deposit it in their banks. Now, when you get checks in thousand dollars, who wouldn't be happy. They call you, they direct you what to do and stuff. You think you are in right track. Without a second thought, you take money off your savings and like an obedient slave you send that money overseas. After a week or so, your bank warns you for depositing fake checks/moneyorders.

It's been quite a while now that I've known this saying "Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on me!!"

well..story continues. If you stop after your bank warns you about your misdeed and cooperate with them, pay the compensation fees or anything like that, consider yourself lucky. But if you don't stop and keep continuing your nonsense trying banks after banks following that unreal greed of yours, you'll soon find yourself behind the bars for bank fraud, money laundering and possession of counterfeit checks.

In above paragraph, I mentioned elderly citizens and females are the most victims. So, it's your duty to warn them of possible frauds or have someone tell them. Instinctively, you are inferiour to them and no matter how educated you are, you are always easily ignored.

There are many government and non-government agencies educating people about all kinds of these frauds and scams. I came across a site ACTION FRAUD. They are funded by government and  is solely established to render these scammers and fraudsters every tactics useless. Show them (possible victims) the way to this site. It has thousands of cases reported online.

Also, if you are a silent victim, it's time to open up and report what kind of experiences you had. This will save others money and life too.

www.actionfraud.org.uk is the site which has listed all frauds in categories as ~

Individual fraud:
Individual fraud could be any fraud that targets a person directly.

• Abuse of position of trust
• Advance fee frauds
• Bogus tradesmen fraud
• Goods sold as investment
• Holiday club fraud
• Insurance broker scams
• Internet dialler scam
• Land banking scams
• Miracle health scams
• Pension liberation scams
• Ponzi schemes
• Premium rate phone fraud
• Property investor scams
• Pyramid schemes
• Share sale fraud
• Shopping and auction fraud
• Timeshare fraud

Corporate fraud:
Fraud impacting businesses can be both general frauds that target any business, to sector specific frauds.

• Account takeover
• Application fraud
• Bankruptcy-related fraud
• Betting scams
• Business directory fraud
• Charitable publication scams
• Cheque fraud
• Cheque overpayment fraud
• Domain name scams
• Exploiting assets and information
• Fake invoice scams
• False accounting
• Fixed line fraud
• Government agency scams
• Insurance fraud
• Intellectual property fraud
• Long and short firm fraud
• Mobile phone fraud
• Mortgage fraud
• Office supply scams
• Payment fraud
• Personnel management
• Plastic card fraud
• Ponzi schemes
• Premium rate phone line scams
• Procurement fraud
• Pyramid schemes
• Receipt fraud
• Share sale fraud
• Travel and subsistence fraud

Online fraud:
Fraudsters rely on the internet/email to commit their crimes.

• Account takeover
• Advance fee frauds
• Bank card and cheque fraud
• Business directory fraud
• Business opportunity fraud
• Charity donation fraud
• Clairvoyant or psychic scams
• Click fraud
• Domain name scams
• Fraud recovery fraud
• Government agency scams
• Health scams
• Holiday fraud
• Identity fraud
• Inheritance fraud
• Internet auction fraud
• Internet dialler scam
• Land banking scams
• Loan scams
• Lottery scams
• Mass marketing fraud
• Miracle health scams
• Money muling
• Online shopping fraud
• Plastic card fraud
• Rental fraud
• Romance scams
• Vehicle matching scams
• West African or 419 scam
• Work from home scams

Advance fee fraud:
Advance fee fraud is when fraudsters target victims to make advance payments for goods, services and/or financial gains that do not materialise.

• Career opportunity scams
• Clairvoyant or psychic scams
• Cheque overpayment fraud
• Dating or romance scams
• Fraud recovery fraud
• Impersonation of officials
• Inheritance fraud
• Loan scams
• Lottery, prize draw and sweepstake scams
• Racing tipster scams
• Rental fraud
• West African letter or 419 fraud
• Work from home and business opportunity scams
• Vehicle matching scams

Thank you for reading my post.