IRCTC Tatkal Ticket Booking Tips

1. Have a fast internet connection.

 When it comes to booking a Tatkal ticket, Internet connectivity and speed is one factor that we tend to ignore. Faster internet can magically convert your “maybe waitlisted” ticket into a confirmed ticket! With a high speed broad band, a 3G or 4G  mobile connection, you can book and complete the payment faster.

2. Book from a personal network.

 

Preferably book your tickets on your home network instead of trying to book at your work place, college or from any other shared public network because many people will be trying to book their tickets and all of them have the same parent IP address. IRCTC allows only 2 tickets to be booked from a single IP address. Apart from the first lucky 2, everyone else is destined to be disappointed

3. Come early on IRCTC site.

 

Make sure your computer time is in sync with IRCTC.  Search for any train on Indianrail.gov.in and see the time at the bottom and compare against your system time. Log into your IRCTC account by around 09:55 am. Keep your session alive by periodically hitting on My Profile > Master List till 9:58. Then proceed to “Plan My Travel” Page. Fill in the journey details, choose quota as Tatkal. And the moment the IRCTC clock ticks 10:00, click submit. “The early bird catches the worm!”

4. Use a fast internet browser.

An extremely unassuming trick is to use Chrome or Mozilla as your browser as these are faster among the rest. Don’t risk your confirmed tickets to the mercy of something like Internet Explorer or Opera.

5. Disable Images.

Images also take up a lot of bandwidth and slow down the loading process of the IRCTC website. All browsers allow users to disable images and the option is available through browser settings.

6. Use the IRCTC Master List.

 
 Go to the profile tab on IRCTC and add all passenger details to the master list. You may also add their respective ID card details.

7. Decode the CAPTCHA quickly.

 Enter the captcha as quickly as possible and move on to the payment page. If the captcha is not clear enough, “Refresh Captcha” to get a new one instead of guessing it.
Size Problem: Size of Captcha image during Tatkal hour is very small so increase the size of image so that you can read captcha easily. You can do that by zooming your browser (I have zoom out around 200%)

8. Choose a faster payment gateway.

Internet Banking always has an edge over Credit, Debit or other Cash Cards because you can bypass entering the never ending card numbers and other details. SBI, HDFC and Union Bank provide Internet banking payment gateways without OTP verification and save time. ICICI bank’s payment gateway is usually a slower option.
ADDITIONAL TIP: You can get an OTP issued from the bank shortly before the tatkal timings and keep it unused and safe. This OTP can be directly entered when you’re actually processing the payment during the tatkal timings.

 

Tips For maintain & increase lifespan of laptop battery

This tip will work with most of the modern laptops and smartphones. Let’s get started.

 

 

1. How to break in new laptop & smartphone battery

Let’s say you just purchased a new battery for your laptop or smartphone. In our understanding, most people will just use their laptops and smartphones right away after installing, but this is not a good way to use your new battery. Most batteries need break-in period just like speakers. Without any break-in, the battery reading or battery life will not be accurate. Breaking in batteries will help the batteries perform the optimal performance. Let’s learn how to do it.
1. Install your new battery to your device, and charge it for overnight with your device turned off. Do not use your device (laptop or smartphone) right away.
2. After the battery fully charged, unplug the power adapter, and start to use your device to discharge the battery. Use it until your device shuts down or until it says low battery.
3. Repeat this 3 – 5 times.

2. How to maintain & increase lifespan of laptop battery (Only for laptops)

We are now going to learn how to maintain your laptop battery properly to maximize the lifespan. Here are some tips.
1. Do full charging & discharging once a month.
2. When your laptop is fully charged, unplug the power adapter and use with battery power.
3. If you are using your laptop at home, remove the battery, and use with power adapter.
4. If you are not using your laptop for a long time, remove the battery and store it separately.

Natural skin and hair care tips for Holi

Oiling: Oil your hair with warm coconut oil, castor oil or olive oil. If you have dandruff add 8-10 drops of lemon in your oil and liberally apply the mixture in your hair. Apply oil all over your body, including hands, feet, and elbows. Do the oiling part at least 20-25 minutes before you start.

Moisturise: Use a generous amount of moisturizer with sunscreen all over your body, especially behind your ears and ear lobes as these are areas one tends to neglect. Make sure that the moisturizer has an SPF as you do not want to catch a tan from the sun!

Clothing: Wear dark colour-full sleeves cotton clothes. Synthetics would be sticky and denims would be heavy once you have a bucket full of water splashed on you.

Ensure that the clothes
you choose to wear should cover maximum parts of your body. The best choices would be high-necks or full-sleeves. The rule; the more you cover your body, the higher are the chances of saving your skin from colour harm.

Nail paints: Protect your nails by applying nail polish as this will give you a protective coat.

Water: Drink loads of water before you start playing Holi. This will keep your skin hydrated. Also keep sipping water carefully while playing Holi.

Lips and Eyes: Don't wear lenses. In fact completely avoid wearing lenses or glasses. But if you cannot do without glasses, just be careful while applying colour. Mostly people are interested in applying surprise colours on your face and the edges of your specs might hurt your face. For lips, apply a lip balm generously.

Don't get waxing, threading, facials or skin treatment done at least 3-4 days before Holi.


Soothing: Use an aloe vera gel, cucumber juice or at least a rose water bottle handy with you, just in case get some irritation from a colour, these would act as soothing agents.

If you have acne avoid scrubbing your face past Holi. Use a paste of raw milk and besan and gently work on your face to remove the colours.

Use glycerin or aloe vera based soaps. Some people use detergent soaps on their body to remove colour. AVOID such desperate attempts. Apply a body lotion on your body generously after taking bath.

Best Facebook tips and tricks

1. Download your Facebook data 

With so much of our lives plastered over Facebook, many of us feel forever locked in for fear of losing that content. It doesn't have to be this way. Facebook can email you a Zip file containing any posts, photos and videos you've shared, messages and chat conversations, information from the About section of your profile, and more. Just click the downward triangle at the top right of the page and choose Settings. On the General tab hit the link 'Download a copy of your Facebook data'. Finally, on the next page click 'Start My Archive'.

2. Keep your parents off Facebook: Make your photo albums available offline 

My mum keeps threatening to join Facebook. She's interested only in looking at my photo albums. Rather than giving her access to everything and staying on my best behaviour forever more, I can simply send her a link to view the photo album offline. To do this just open an album and click the settings icon. Choose Get link. You can either copy and paste the photo album link or click 'Send in message', but note that the latter uses Facebook's messaging system, so it won't work for your not-on-Facebook mum. So copy the link, open an email client, paste in the link, address the email to your mum, hit Send and voila. 

3. Display a nickname or maiden name 

Remember when people used to change their names on Facebook every other week, perhaps adding in a nickname or a maiden name? Well, Facebook had the last laugh when it limited the number of times you could change your profile name. As if the wind had changed, all of a sudden you were stuck with that name for all eternity. For example, I know a bloke called Neil who is now called Philip for Facebook purposes (I don't pretend to understand why).  

If you must play around with nicknames, maiden names or whatever, there is a better way to do it. Click the downward triangle at the top of the screen and choose Settings, then on the General tab click Edit next to Name. Enter an alternate name and tick the box to include it on your Timeline, then click Save changes. Don't try to add anything that is either offensive, promotes your business or impersonates someone else, however - Facebook will block your attempts.

4. Block app requests and notifications 

Did you just get yet another request to play Candy Crush Saga? Or are your friends pestering you to log into Meow Chat? Are you still just as disinterested as ever? The good news is that it's incredibly easy to block Candy Crush Saga, Meow Chat and any other apps that irritate you. Just click that downward triangle icon, choose Settings, Blocking, then scroll to the bottom of the page and enter the names of any apps you don't want to hear from.

5. Limit who can see a post 

Sometimes you don't want a specific friend to see a particular item that you're sharing. Perhaps you don't want your mum to see a photo of you holding a cigarette, or your boss to see a post in which you're telling the world you're pulling a sicky. Write up your status or add an image as you normally would, but before you hit post click the Friends drop-down before it. Choose More options. From here you can choose to share it with either a particular friends list, or you can click Custom to specify exactly who can and who can't see the update.

6. Keep your Facebook profile private 

Facebook these days does a pretty good job of securing your privacy by default, but you may have accidentally altered a setting and are now giving away far more information than you'd like - and potentially to complete strangers. Head to Settings, Privacy and check all the options listed. From here you can define who can see your posts, items you've shared or those you're tagged in, as well as who can request you as a friend. There are other options, too. Check them out.

Trick To Hide Text In Notepad

Steps to hide text in a Notepad

1. Open your command prompt Start–>Run and Type cmd
2. Type cd.. to move to C:\> drive or Type cd desktop to move to your desktop.
3. Type the below code in your command prompt
notepad filename.txt:hidden
4. Write some data and save(Ctrl+S) the file.
5. Browse to the file location and Open filename.txt you cannot see any data in the file.
6. To retrieve the hidden data open command prompt and type the same command.
notepad filename.txt:hidden

Hide Drives for security & Privacy

Hide Drives for security & Privacy :-

This is a great trick you can play on your friends. To disable the display of local or networked drives when you click My Computer.

1.Go to start->run.Type regedit.Now go to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Now in the right pane
create a new DWORD item and name it NoDrives (it is case sensitive).
Now modify it's value and set it to 3FFFFFF (Hexadecimal) .
Now restart your computer.
So, now when you click on My Computer, no drives will be shown(all gone...).

To enable display of drives in My Computer, simply delete this DWORD item that you created.Again restart your computer.You can now see all the drives again.

8 Simple Tips for Improving Your Web Design

 Want to ensure that visitors will exit your website almost immediately after landing there? Be sure to make it difficult for them to find what it is they are looking for. Want to get people to stay on your website longer and click on or buy stuff? Follow these 13 Web design tips.

1. Have a polished, professional logo--and link it to your home page. "Your logo is an important part of your brand, so make sure it's located prominently on your site," says Tiffany Monhollon, senior content marketing manager at online marketer ReachLocal. "Use a high-resolution image and feature it in the upper left corner of each of your pages," she advises. "Also, it's a good rule of thumb to link your logo back to your home page so that visitors can easily navigate to it." 

2.Use intuitive navigation. "Primary navigation options are typically deployed in a horizontal [menu] bar along the top of the site," says Brian Gatti, a partner with Inspire Business Concepts, a digital marketing company. Provide "secondary navigation options underneath the primary navigation bar, or in the [left-hand] margin of the site, known as the sidebar."

Why is intuitive navigation so important? "Confusing navigation layouts will result in people quitting a page rather than trying to figure it out," Gatti says. So instead of putting links to less important pages--that detract from your call to action or primary information--at the top of your home or landing pages, put "less important links or pieces of information at the bottom of a page in the footer."

3. Get rid of clutter. "It's very easy these days to be visually overloaded with images, to the point where our brains stop processing information when confronted with too many options," explains Paolo Vidali, senior digital marketing strategist, DragonSearch, a digital marketing agency.

To keep visitors on your site, "make sure pages do not have competing calls to action or visual clutter [e.g., lots of graphics, photographs or animated gifs] that would draw the visitor's eyes away from the most important part of the page." To further keep clutter down on landing pages, "consider limiting the links and options in the header and footer to narrow the focus even further," he says.

Another tip to streamlining pages: "Keep paragraphs short," says Ian Lurie, CEO of internet marketing company Portent, Inc. "On most Web sites, a single paragraph should be no more than five to six lines."

4. Give visitors breathing room. "Create enough space between your paragraphs and images so the viewer has space to breathe and is more able to absorb all of the features your site and business have to offer," says Hannah Spencer, graphic designer, Coalition Technologies, a Web design and online marketing agency.

"Controlling white space through layout will keep users focused on the content and control user flow," adds Paul Novoa, founder and CEO at Novoa Media. "With a lot of visual competition taking place on the Web and on mobile, less is more. Controlling white space will improve user experience, increasing returns from the website."

 

5. Use color strategically. Using "a mostly neutral color palette can help your site project an elegant, clean and modern appearance," says Mark Hoben, the head of Web design at Egencia, the business travel division of the Expedia group, who is also a believer in using color wisely. "Employing small dashes of color--for headlines or key graphics--helps guide visitors to your most important content," he explains.

6. Choose fonts that are easy to read across devices and browsers. When choosing fonts, keep in mind that people will be looking at your website not just on a laptop but on mobile devices. "Some large-scaled fonts may read well on [a computer monitor], but not scale or render well on mobile, losing the desired look and feel," explains Novoa. So he advises using a universal font.

"Pick a typeface that can be easily read and size it no less than 11pt," says Ethan Giffin, CEO, Groove Commerce. "If you're using Web fonts, try to use no more than two font families in order to ensure fast load times," he says.Popular On CIO.com

"If you're using a fixed-width design, use a font size that allows a maximum of 15 to 20 words per line," adds Lurie. "If you're using a fluid design, use a font size that allows 15 to 20 words per line at 900 to 1000 pixels wide."

 7. Design every page as a landing page. "Most websites have a design that assumes a user enters through the home page and navigates into the site," says Michael Freeman, senior manager, Search & Analytics, ShoreTel, Inc., which provides hosted VoIP, cloud PBX service and business phone systems. "The reality, though, is that the majority of visits for most sites begin on a page that is not the home page," he says. Therefore, you need to design the site in such a way that whatever page a visitor lands on, key information is there. 

8. Test your design. "Whether you are trying different placements for a call to action or even testing different shades of a color, website optimization can make a big impact to your bottom line," states Lindsey Marshall, production director, Red Clay Interactive, an Atlanta-based interactive marketing agency. "A user experience manager at Bing once remarked that Microsoft generated an additional $80 million in annual revenue just by testing and implementing a specific shade of blue!"