Book Challenges that improve reading habits

While the internet is flooded with fitness, cookery and fashion challenges, the book challenges that are being hosted by the various literary sites have proved to be the toughest deal so far. Moreover, some of these challenges have received really good feedback from their takers and have helped them improve their reading habits. So, if you are a bookworm who prefers poring over tomes to partying the night away, here are a few interesting book challenges that you will love...

52 books in 52 weeks

The challenge is to finish one book every week, so that by the end of the year, you would have read 52 books in total. This is an exciting challenge for readers who want to improve their speed of reading. The key is to stick to your favourite genre. If non-fiction and autobiographies do not interest you, don't try to explore new genres because your aim is to finish one book every week of the year.

The Victorian era challenge

The task at hand is to finish reading the work of the major authors of the Victorian era — between 1807 and 1901. The major writers of this era are Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, the Bronte Sisters, Oscar Wilde, Thomas Hardy, Robert Browning, George Eliot, Lewis Carroll and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Pick up the works of one author at a time and finish it within a stipulated period of time. For instance, give yourself a fortnight's time to finish The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Doyle and follow it up with other works of the same author.

The five-book challenge

This challenge, started by the Duke's Library in United Kingdom, demanded the taker to finish five books from five different genres in one month and then write a 100-word review for each of them in an hour. What makes this challenge unique is that the idea is to go to a library to read the selected books. So, you have to give up your cosy blanket and mug of hot chocolate while reading, and embrace the silence of a public library instead.

The social media challenge

Challenge your friends on social media to read ten of your favourite books and give them a time period and ask them to carry forward the challenge once they are done. On successful accomplishment of the mission, you can reward your friends with small and cool surprises.

The A-Z Challenge

The rules of this challenge are simple. You have to finish one book with a name that begins with A in the first week. In the second week, you have to read a book with a name that begins with the letter B. So, in 26 weeks, you are supposed to finish 26 books.

Theme challenges

Pick up a theme, for instance, a book that is about a journey (Motorcycle Diaries) or coming of age (The Sense of Ending) as its theme. You can also select one predominant place, thing or activity and read a book on it. For example, you can pick up a country like Japan and read books that have been set there.

The book club challenge

Form a book club on your social networking page or in your phone's chat group. Invite friends to join and put up monthly challenges. The exciting thing here, you can fix a prize and reward the winner who wins the challenge.

12 books in 12 months

This is an easy challenge to take. Unlike the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge, here, you have enough time to experiment with different genres. This challenge is for someone who has been trying to read different genres. Make this year the year of trial and error. You can try 12 interesting books based on these classification:

- A book published in the year you were born.

- A book that has the initials of your name in the title.

- A book with a colour in the title

- A book with a name in the title

- A book with a number on the title

- A book with your favourite colour on its cover

- A book with non-human characters

- A Booker-winning book

- A book written by an author with your initials

- A book set in a different era

- A book that borrowed its title from a song

- A 600-pager

Source | http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/books/Book-challenges-that-improve-reading-habits/articleshow/46419993.cms

Even in the Internet age, good research needs a good library

When the foundation stone for the Prince of Wales Museum, now the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), was laid on November 11, 1905, by the Prince of Wales (later King George V), it also marked the beginnings of the library that became an integral part when the museum was thrown open on January 10, 1922.

One of the oldest reference libraries in the country, the library at CSMVS has managed to remain the primary source of information for archaeologists, historians, artists, heritage conservationists and students, despite the onslaught of the Internet and social media, say officials at the museum.

“This is a reference library where researchers and scholars can find all important reference books and latest publications on art, history, archeology, heritage and culture,” said S Mukherjee, director, CSMVS.

“Since we are a reference library, noted scholars and researchers access the library for primary information. We also get students from various colleges, including our own students of Post Graduate Diploma in Museology,” he added.

What started off as a modest library with around 5,000 books has now grown into a rich collection of over 30,000 books and 5000 periodicals and journals.

There is a massive collection of 200 rare books and manuscripts and these can be accessed only with special permission. The oldest among these include ‘Travels in India During the Years 1760, 1781, 1782, 1783’ by William Hodges and ‘Jataka, Volume 4,5 6’ by V Fassball among others. While the pages in some of these books are worn out, the process of restoring them is currently underway.

The library, is divided into two primary sections.

The first floor stores journals, which includes Marg, Artibus Asia, Annals of Bhandarkar, Journal of Bombay Asiatic Society, Islamic Culture, Journal of Indian Museums, Indian Journal of History of Science, Epigraphia Indica, The Indian Antiquary, Rooplekha, Rupam, National Geographic and Oriental Art.

The floor also houses the rare books that are stored carefully.

The ground floor, which includes computer facilities and reading tables, has books segregated into dedicated sections covering paintings, Ancient History, Archaeology, Geography, Sanskrit literature, Indian Civilisation, Zoology, Mahabharata and Ramayana, Mughal period, British period, customs, language and folklore, Sociology, Economics, Hinduism, Vedic religion, Buddhism, Jainism, Mythology, Religion and Philosophy, Library Science, Textiles and Handicrafts, pottery, terracotta and jewellery, coins, sculptures, temple architecture, Indian, Western and Mughal Art.

While the library was refurbished in 2013 with the help of funds from the Kala Ghoda Association, it is currently engaged in digitisation of its collection.

“I started using the library since I was studying for my BA in history in 2012. I am currently pursuing my masters in history and I am simultaneously pursuing my PG diploma from the museum. I am working on my dissertation on museum exhibition and this library is a one-stop information platform,”said Ajay Salunkhe, a student.

Sofiya Karanjia, who teaches art and design at Rachana Sansad, is another regular. “It is not an ordinary library and has a huge resource in art and culture from the beginning of the 20th century.”

The museum staff consider the library as “a robust back-end resource”. The curatorial staff consult the source material for writing books, catalogues, guide books and research papers. “

“It is an integral part of the museum as we need research and references for our collections. We need to refer to the books here constantly so that we can effectively communicate about the collection to our visitor”,” said Bilwa Kulkarni, education officer, CSMVS.

Even in the Internet age when information is readily available by entering the correct terms in a search engine, the library is quite popular among its users.

“The Internet and social media revolution has a discernible impact on physically accessing books, youngsters want to take shortcuts which is definitely a cause for concern. However, it is heartening to see that people still do come to the library,” said Mukherjee.

Source | Indian Express | 11 March 2015

Now, an app to censor your books!

Don't like profanity in your books? Let 'Clean Reader' make it easy for you! This new app is developed by Jared and Kirsten Maughan from Idaho, United States, who were concerned about their daughter when she began reading library books with significant curse words. This led to creating a 'profanity-filtering' programme, reports The Washington Post.

Users of the app can choose from three settings, 'Clean', 'Cleaner', and 'Squeaky Clean'. The app obscures the F-word, the S-word and all their permutations along with racial slurs and other racy terms, coming to a total of more than 100 words. And it's an ever-growing list!

The app is available on Apple store and Google Play store for free.

In its online demonstration, a line from a David Baldacci novel, "Pick up your damn game, Bobby", becomes "Pick up your darn game, Bobby".

The creators of Clean Reader explain, “If there are books you’ve put off reading because you’ve heard they’re full of curse words, chosen to stop reading some books because you weren’t comfortable with the bad language in them, or if you worry about what’s in the books your children read … then Clean Reader is for you!”

Source | Daily News Analysis | 18 March 2015

How to Develop Reading Habit in Your Children

Karthika Gopalakrishnan

Karthika Gopalakrishnan is Project Manager at the Book Lovers’ Program for Schools. She has worked previously as a journalist and a sub-editor with The Times Of India and The New Indian Express, Chennai. She loves books and runs a free beach-side library on Sundays.

I teach at DAV Public School, Velachery three days a week as a part of my work with the Book Lovers' Program for Schools (BLPS). Ours is a company that gets children from classes I to VIII to love to read. Each school that works with BLPS devotes a class once a week to storytelling, discussions about books, and activities revolving around books.

Achyuth, one of my students from class VIII, is among the best readers at the school. I spoke to his mother about his reading habit. She told me that ever since he was a child, Achyuth and his mother would get on a bus and travel to a library whenever he had a holiday. "Now, if I give him a book, he finishes reading it in a day. His father downloads ebooks for him and tells him to read slowly so that his father has some time to find and download another book for him."

There are a lot of ways that you can get your child to read. One of the first things to do is to give your child access to lots of books. These could be of any genre: animal stories, adventure, mystery, folk tales, fairy tales and so on. It's important to expose your child to a range of books at his or her reading level. By reading level, I mean just that a child should be able to read a book independently and understand the content correctly. Allow your child to tell you which of the books he or she is comfortable reading. Once children tell you about their choices a few times, you will be able to figure out what types of books to pick for them. A best case scenario is for children themselves to select the books that they want to read.

Discussing a book that your child has read provides an added boost. Your child will finish reading the book knowing that there will be an audience that is interested in his or her opinions. Often, the thought process that a book can trigger in a child's mind can surprise you. This next step may be hard but you should try your absolute best to go through with it as a parent: don't impose your tastes in books on your child. You may think that Geronimo Stilton is nowhere near as interesting as Georgina Kirrin (or George from The Famous Five series of books by Enid Blyton) but if your child prefers Geronimo, do let your child be. It's great that he or she is reading a book. Time will spur them to discover other, possibly better, books and authors.

Make reading a family activity. Allow your child to see the people around him or her reading. You could be reading newspapers, magazines, non-fiction, biographies, or any other sort of book, if not fiction. Give books a visible presence in your house. Make them a part of your child's life. Birthday gifts, return gifts, visits to book stores, trips to the library during the summer holidays are wonderful ways to instil and build a love forbooks in your child that lasts for life.

 

Source | http://idiva.com

5 safest apps to send private and secure messages

People are always looking for better ways to shield their communications from prying eyes. The `end to-end encryption' technology means that a message is ciphered before it's sent and then deciphered after it is received. This way, anyone looking to snoop on intermediary servers won't be able to understand the message.

erson to adopt into their everyday work. Now developers are figuring out new ways to make message-sending as easy as possible using this kind of encryption. 

TextSecure 

TextSecure is an Android app built for the sole purpose of secure texting. It was created by a group of developers known as Open Whisper Systems, who build suites of completely private communication apps and release the code to the world under an open-source license. TextSecure is OWS's Android solution. It provides end-toend encryption both over the air and in the actual phone. The app used to send encrypted messages using SMS standard. Last month, the app decided to nix SMS and send messages using data. This made it possible for users to send messages to TextSecure's iOS counterpart, Signal. The app requires users to have a unique passcode, which can be used to prove that they received the message. 

Signal 

Signal is the iOS app made by t he O p en W h i s p e r S ys t em s pr oje c t . L i ke TextSecure, it provides complete security to protect users from any external snooping. It now supports sending and receiving messages from TextSecure, which runs on Android. The app uses the same encryption technology as its Android counterpart. 

Telegram (secret chats)

Telegram is a messaging app available on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. It was created by two brothers who helped launch the huge Russian social network V K (formerly VKontakte) in 2012. It offers two different types of chat op tions: normal chat -which has chats stored in the app's cloud, and `secret chat' -which uses end-to-end encryption. While the normal chat does not follow the most scrupulous securing processes, if a user sends only secret chats, that person ought to have their security bases covered. 

Silent Text

Silent Text is the secure messaging app from Silent Circle, one of the better-known companies building secure communication programs. Most famously, the company built the supposedly ultra-secure BlackPhone, which purports to be an NSA-snooping proof mobile device.Silent Text is said to be completely secure, using the best encryption practices available.But it requires a monthly subscription, which starts at $9.99 (`629 approx). 

Gliph 

Gliph is another messaging app, supposed to be completely secure. Its spin dif fers from most other apps, however, in that it also facilitates Bitcoin payments. The app allows users to anonymously send amounts of the digital currency to other Gliph users. It also has special message features, including the ability to set a message. expiration time as well as schedule messages

Source | Economic Times | 22 April 2015

Regards

TOOLS THAT WILL MAKE YOU A SOCIAL MEDIA MASTER

It's hard to stay on top of everything in the social media space because there's so much happening at any given time. The problem is compounded if you have multiple accounts to handle. Hitesh Raj Bhagat & Karan Bajaj show you show to make it seem that you have six hands when it comes to managing all that data

 

HOW TO MANAGE MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS 

Many of us have accounts with multiple social media networks. Posting the same thing individually on each network will require a lot of time and you need to juggle tabs so that you can sign-in to all sites. Some networks let you cross-connect with others to post simultaneously. For instance, Facebook lets you connect with Twitter, Twitter lets you connect to your Facebook account, Instagram lets you post to both Facebook and Twitter at the same time and so on. You can access and activate this feature from your account settings. 

EveryPost 

The inter-connect method works fine if you mainly stick with Face book and Twitter. However, if you use other social networks like Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Tumblr, you need a tool that will post to all of them. We recommend Everypost (http:everypost.me).

The paid service (US$ 9.99month) lets you post simultaneously across multiple networks and lets you cus tomise content to suit each platform. It is also loaded with features -you can post images & videos, select which networks they should be posted on, automatically shorten posts for twitter and even schedule posts. You can try it for free for 7 days before deciding if you need to subscribe for the service. 

Buffer 

This tool is great for scheduling posts on multiple social networks.The free account lets you connect one profile per network which is good enough for most unless you want to use it for business. It works with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest and you can queue up to 10 posts per network. You can attach images, set automatic link shortening, queue posts via email and even mention people on various networks in each post. Plus, Buffer seamlessly integrates with the default Facebook and Twitter interface -this makes it easier to schedule a post directly from the default page instead of logging into Buffer every time. 

GET YOUR ANALYTICS ON

Klout

Klout connects with your social media accounts, analyses them and gives you a rank and Klout score that depicts your influence level. It connects with Facebook, Foursquare, Google+, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn to compute an influ ence score -the higher your score the more influence you have. Klout shows an easy to understand graph to show the impact your posts have on your Klout influence score. 

Cyfe 

With Cyfe, you can connect almost all you social networks for analytics. It has a dashboard view that shows individual as well as collated reports for all the connected networks in real time. It's a cloud-based service and also lets you view detailed infographics about each social network so that it is easier to understand which of your posts have had have more impact.Keep in mind that the free account limits you to five social networks. 

TWITTER 

Pullquote 

This is an interesting extension for Google Chrome that lets you get around the 140 character limit when you want to share something. You start by downloading the extension and creating an account. Then, if you see an interesting piece of text you want to share on Twitter, just select it and the menu will appear. Pullquote takes your selected text and embeds it into the tweet as an image ­ but it also includes a link to the URL, to take a reader directly to that page when heshe clicks on it. You can also Pullquote images, though this fea ture is in beta. Warble Twitter is useful so long as you're signed in and watching carefully. The more number of accounts you follow, the more you will miss when you're not looking. Warble (http:www.warble.co) is a free daily alert service for Twitter. It tracks the keywords, phrases and hashtags you want, collates your messages and mentions, compiles it all and sends it to you in an email for you to read at your convenience. It's also a great way to discover content and people that you may miss otherwise ­ especially if the people talking haven't specifically mentioned your Twitter handle 

FACEBOOK 

F.B. (Fluff Busting) Purity is a free browser extension that gets rid of all the superfluous junk on Facebook. If you're constantly annoyed by Candy Crush invites, horoscopes of random people and nonsense status updates, this is for you. It's free and compatible with Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera and Maxthon web browsers. There is a long list of features on offer, mainly designed to help you save time by seeing only what you want to see. For instance, you can disable those annoying autoplay videos, hide posts using keywordsphrases, remove trending topics (which can easily flood your feed), change font, font size, background image, background colour, hide notification pop-ups and hide smiliesemoticons. A basic blacklist and whitelist is built in too -by default it hides the more annoying stuff: info about someone liking something, attending something, joining a group and so on. 

NutshellMai

These guys offer a free digest email that will help you de-addict from all these services (or keep track of multiple profiles without taking up too much time in the day, as the case may be). For Facebook, they will send you new friend requests, birthday reminders, status updates & photos.For Twitter, it will tell you who followed or `unfollowed' you, direct messages, retweets and replies. Reviews, photos and checkins for Yelp, job listings & recommendations on LinkedIn and finally, Foursquare checkins. You will need to create a NutshellMail account and then link all your accounts. 

Hootsuite 

This platform includes tools that let you listen, respond, analyse and collaborate.It integrates with over 25 different social networks and lets you manage them all from one dashboard. You can reply with a single click, schedule updates at optimal times, target posts, send messages in bulk and view detailed reports. The free version lets you manage up to 3 social accounts (ideal for personal use). You can schedule one message at a time and get 3 basic analytics reports. If you need more, the Pro account (US$8.99 per month) lets you manage over 50 profiles and allows you to have multiple team members to divide up all the responsibilities. 

Source | Economic Times | 13 May 2015

Habits that will make you smarter

Intelligence is not limited to those with high IQs. There are also potential methods to develop one's cognitive abilities and become smarter

 

Here are some simple actions that could help you become a smarter person: 

1 Come up with 10 ideas every day Think about how to reduce poverty, how to solve a daily problem you have, interesting movie ideas, or anything. It doesn't matter what subject your ideas fall into, as long as you're working your brain and your idea muscles. Your list might even lead to a new startup idea or writing subject. 

2 Share what you learn with other people If you find someone to debate and analyse ideas with, you can add to each other's knowledge and gain new perspectives. Also, when you can explain ideas to someone else, it means you've definitely mastered the concept.You can even share what you learn without directly talking to someone. Many people like to start blogs so they can engage others in an online dialogue. 

3 Follow your questions If you see or hear about something cool, don't just let the moment pass. Follow up -pursue your curiosity and find the answer to your question. 

4 Read the newspaper It will help you become more aware of the important things happening around the world. You'll learn to form your own opinions and connect the dots between seemingly unrelated things. You'll also have a lot more to talk about at parties or with friends. 

5 Use a word-of-the day app You will increase your vocabulary, which can help you in competitive tests like the SAT or GRE, or even just sound more eloquent in daily interactions.

You can also try to learn new vocabulary in a differ ent language. Every day, try to add five to 10 more words to the foreign language you are trying to pursue. You can use LiveMocha, Basuu, or DuoLingo. 

6 Talk to someone you find interesting Even if they're strangers, don't be afraid to approach them. Ask about their interests and how they discovered them. Often, you learn the most from people you barely know. 

7 Do something scary Getting out of our com fort zone always makes us wiser. Every day, push yourself a little further. Try public speaking, lead a meeting by volunteering a proposal at work or reach out to someone you really admire by sending a quick letter or email. 

8 Take online courses Check out some of the most popular online courses for professionals, relevant to you. Make sure you don't overload yourself; commit to one to two and truly focus on them. The syllabus will also keep you on track, so you know you will be doing something every day, whether it's listening to a lecture or working on an assignment. 

9 Play `smart' games Some games, like chess and Scrabble, expand your mind. Certain games can train the brain and muscles to perform better in real-life activities. Challenge yoursel f when you play them. For example, play Scrabble without a dictionary. You can also solve puzzles via games like Sudoku, 2048 and Doors. 

10 Exercise, and eat a healthy diet Opt for brain foods to fuel your thinking, and avoid alcohol and heavy meals that will make you sluggish. When your energy dips, take a walk. The more blood f lowing into your brain, the better your performance. Great thinkers like Mahatma Gandhi and Charles Darwin were famous for their long walks. 

Source | Economic Times | 14 May 2015