Thankfully, Tax Information Network website came handy.

So, now the question is, how do we check our Tax Statements?

Well, you need to register to get access to Annual Tax Statement (Form 26 AS) first. You can register by visiting this page. The registration process is manual. You will have to fill in required details, then within 5 days,  the authorized person will get in touch with you, their person will visit your place, verify the details and collect Rs. 100 + taxes as fees. And within 3 days your account will be activated.

Once the account is active, you need to login here with your details, once logged in, the site will give you access to Tax Statements of all the years. (From the year you have started filing tax). The statement will show the details of Tax Deducted at Source, Tax Collected at Source, (Advance) Tax Paid and Tax Refunds Paid. Next to each TDS entry, it displays the status of each entry, which basically says, the Tax amount was accepted by the government or not.

Okay, now, if you just want to check the status of your Tax Refunds, then you can directly check it here. Absolutely no need to register to check the status, you just need a PAN card number. If you are facing any difficulties there, you can call them up on the helpline: 1800 425 9760 or email them here

Thanks to the IT Department for developing such a wonderful site, I can’t imagine myself calling or visiting the babus just to get this basic info.

I guess that’s about it, I hope this helps someone.

Image Source: “Tax by definition” by Alan Cleaver

Since my monitor was HD, I was planning to get HD based STB as it won’t require any TV Tuner card and will give me better quality for Audio and Video too. (Even on the normal SD channels).

I got Airtel’s Digital TV HD. Pretty decent looking stylish STB and remote controller. So, to get it working with my monitor, all I needed was HDMI to DVI cable / converter. I am not sure if all the HD monitors have HDMI port but if your monitor has DVI port, then you should get this cable. You will also have to keep in mind that, the type of DVI port can be different for your monitor. In this case, mine is DIV-D (24+1, this one is a common one) but some the monitors might have 24+5 pin DVI port too. Check here for more info. These cables cost merely Rs. 250 on eBay India website.

Once this is done, you will need to get the speakers working. You may want to connect your surround sound system (2.1 or 5.1) but for my office, I just had basic speakers, so I just needed a Mini Stereo (Female) to 2 RCA Male speaker cable. This costs just around Rs. 30 and you get it at any local stores.

So for me, by spending additional Rs. 280, I saved myself for lot of mess (wires) and got much better sound and video quality. I use this monitor as a dual monitor and whenever I want to watch TV, I just take out the VGA cable from my monitor and we have the TV ready.

I know, this is not any rocket science but this will surely help the newcomers.

Image Source: HD by phjellming

I googled around for quite sometime, checked many solutions and finally I managed to get things working.

So, here is the solution:

Get the video working (Ubuntu detected the cam but for some reason, it never worked with skype). So to get it working, try this command in the terminal first: (Solutions is posted here)

env LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype

This will basically load skype with the help of a shared library called libv. (Correct me if I am wrong here)

Once the skype is loaded, you can test the video and if it works. Just edit the Menu entry of Skype:

Right click on the Applications menu > Click on Edit Menus > Locate Skpye (Mostly under the parent menu called Internet) > Select Properties > enter the above command in the command box and hit close.

This will make Skype load using the shared library. (i.e. whenever you open it from the Applications menu)

So, this solves the problem with the video. Now, on many computers (Including mine), the mic never worked too. The mic showed under the Sound Preferences > Input devices but there was no sound while testing it.

So, this is how we get the Mic working:

1. Download my patched GSPCA: gspca-2.9.51-vx1000-patch-20100712.zip
2. Extract the zip file on your Desktop (so you have the folder “gspca-2.9.51-vx1000-patch-20100712?).
3. Open a terminal window and enter the following commands:
   cd Desktop/gspca-2.9.51-vx1000-patch-20100712/
   make
   sudo make install
4. Reboot your computer and test your webcam in an application such as Cheese (which can easily be found in the Ubuntu Software Center).

The above solution is provided here

So, after applying these 2 fixes, my Microsoft Lifecam VX-1000 worked perfectly fine and this helps me to solve another Windows to Linux migration issue. Will post more tips / pointers soon.

Hope it helps.

Okay, that’s one part, but they still managed to make a good compilation. I did not bother about the copyright issues much. (As it’s their headache)

Today, while checking some lounge music at Crossword, I found 2 albums pretty cool. First thing I do before buying the album is, I check the packaging date. Since most of the music labels sell old albums so I simply ignore those CDs.

So, their Lounge Session One and Session Two had June 2010 as manufacturing date. I picked up both the albums, paid Rs. 798 (Rs. 399 each), was kind of excited to listen to the music as I am a big fan of Lounge music. (Specially the Asian ones)

The shocking part was after opening the CDs. The 2 CD set of Session One had 2 different CDs with labels Lounge Bar II and Vale’s Nirvana Lounge 2. Okay, this was a shocker, the 2nd shock was when I heard the songs, the recording of the song was of sub-standard. I felt like I was listening to 128kbps quality songs. Very badly recorded.

I decided to Google around a bit to find the release dates of the actual albums. Lounge Bar II was released in 2006 and Vale’s Nirvana Lounge Vol 2 was released in 2003. This is case of open cheating, where music label sells you their old albums with just new packaging. Can you believe, they were selling 4-7 year old albums in 2010 combined with a new packaging and new album name.

So, this was about the Session One. I opened Session Two expecting some recent albums in it. But these buggers packaged older albums in it. The 2 CDs were Lounge Bar (2004) and Lounge Cafe (2006). Again same problem with the sound quality.

So, moral of the story is, they packed their old stock in new box and sold it to me. In other word, it’s clear case of cheating. Yeah,  I know, legally I cannot do anything (and I don’t wish to also) but ethically, it surely is a cheating. How can a person sell old stuff claiming it’s new?

But after this incident, I have decided one thing, I am never going to go near this music label and will try to stay away from other Indian labels (who are into Lounge music). Disgusting experience.

FYI, here are the images of the CDs

I am not a frequent traveler but I have heard lot of stories about how Indians are treated in foreign countries or how Indians behave in foreign countries; and my recent Thailand trip proved each and everything right.

I will give you few examples. We had gone to some park in Bangkok, there were good amount of Indians out there. I felt very happy to see our people there but soon this happiness turned into a major disappointment.

I was standing in a queue for the lunch, few other Indians were standing in the queue too. But the queue was moving way too slower than it should. The reason? Few guys, instead of filling in their own dishes and moving ahead, they started doing the same for each and every family member. (Who were not in the queue obviously). So it was like 1 person taking food for 3-4 people at a time. This was obviously not the scenario with all the Indians but yea I saw quite a few guys getting into this kind of mess.

The fun part is yet to come. Every table had 4-5 chairs and glass of water for each person. Couple of guys on the next table, got up to get some food.. 2-3 guys passing by from that place, saw the glass full of water, drank the water, kept the glass and moved ahead. I was like “WTF these guys are upto?” Everyone, including me, kept staring at those idiots. Some idiots even managed to throw banana peel on someone else’s empty table.

And this was not enough, while going out, waiting for our bus, few Indians in a group, opened up a huge pack of “chivda” (Indian snack) and started eating it as if they have never seen it in their whole life. So, after finishing their so called “snack time”, they left keeping the place dirty.

There were many other instances were I felt ashamed of being an Indian, even at the airport, they started making their own queues with 4-5 people standing together and some guys joining their friends in the queue, I even heard some saying “Apna he hai.. aaj jaa na”. The staff at the airport was going crazy managing these guys, there was not exception in the plane too. I saw crew members getting very irritated with these guys.

I had bee to couple of malls in Bangkok. The noticed sharp change in behavior of staff towards the Indians. No, they were not rude at all but they knew, Indians mostly come to the mall for the window shopping, try out few things and go away.

This is not just limited to one place. I have heard so many cases from UK, US and Canada too. Some funny incidents like..

In US, if you don’t put stamp on the letter, the postal department send the letter back to you. So our fellows, to save the cost, they post the letter without any stamp on it and in the “from address”, instead of writing their own, they write the recipient’s address and “to address” is their own address. So, when the postal department does not find any stamp on it, they return it to the person in “from address”. So in this case, the recipient is the “from address”. And this is how the post gets delivered to the right person without spending a penny.

There are numerous examples like this but the moral of the story is, we end up messing up the places. I don’t know why we do it, obviously all Indians are not like that, may be small minority but because of them the majority suffers.

I have absolutely no idea if this is going to be improved or not. Let’s hope for the best.

Note: By this post, I never meant to say that we Indians are bad at things, we are absolutely not but some of us certainly are.

Image: Caution Tape by Eugene Zemlyanskiy

I call this system a “Point Based Reward System”. I have assigned points to various tasks and each employee should achieve certain level of point slab to get the rewards.

Here is the table with break up of the points:

Most of the points are self explanatory but I think some of the points might need some explanation.

Same Date Notice for Leave: For the pas few years, I have noticed that many employees take the day off without informing in advance, they just call up in the morning saying, “I am not keeping well” or any other reason. Now, this affects the scheduled tasks a lot. So I have assigned 10 points to it. For the first leave, 10 points are deducted and if it repeats again, additional 1 point will be deducted from the total earned points. Exactly same logic applies to 2nd point too.

If you notice, I have given very high number of points to tasks related to QA and Timelines. As in the end, quality is what matters to us. To track time lines and bugs, we are currently using ActiveCollab. It comes with a desktop timer application which helps to track the time of the user.

Now, this has some backdrop too. Some of the employees might feel restricted to the timelines and might give the highest importance to finishing the task on time rather than on the quality of the code. So to solve this issue, currently, I have not put any time based strict restrictions, I have asked the team leaders to maintain weekly milestones and make sure his / her team finishes the tasks in that period. No total number of fixed hours required.

For the Bugs, so far we have been using ActiveCollab but we have some in-house application planned for this but it’s going to take sometime for us to develop it. So you can either use ActiveCollab or applications like Trac or Mantis

We have also set certain procedures and standards for the code, so these standards must be followed. At this point, we are relying on the team leader’s feedback but it’s on you how you want to go ahead with this.

Another 2 important aspects are, Communication via emails and employees not spending more time on doing personal work.

In the past, I have come across so many instances where, either employee or me forget the important tasks or assign the task explaining few features mutually. Now, in this, there are very high chances that the employee might forget some of the points or he might do something the way you did not want. And this will end up raising questions like “You didn’t tell me about it” etc..

So to avoid this, I have added few points for communication via mails. Yes, it takes out some good amount of time to write the mails and all but it certainly helps to make your application better.

Another point I have mentioned is related to the personal work. Let’s face it, we all do personal work when we are at work. Be it phone calls, chat or surfing the sites. I don’t see anything wrong in that but in most of the cases, these kind of things affect the work and timelines. And if that happens, as a businessman, it’s surely going to pinch me hard. So that’s why the points come in for this.

I have also added 10 additional bonus points for the ideas. I am open to great ideas and suggestions always. This helps specially when you are developing your own application. So if anyone suggests the idea and if it’s been implemented, the 10 points goes to that employee.

So now what we have to do with these points? How does it work?

Well, We review these points at the end of every month and have made following slabs:

So, to get rewarded, you will need atleast 80 points in a month. More you work harder more you earn.

And in my opinion, it’s not at all difficult to achieve 90 points. You just have to be extra careful while doing your work. Specially when it comes to timelines and the bugs. You will have to start thinking logically rather than doing work like a machine.

In the current scenario, most of the employees work like a machine, they do not take care about the quality and bugs. Designer blames programmers and programmers blame designers for it. So this will help to squash all these issues. If the designer has given the HTML with no bugs then it has to work same way after programming too.

This was just a small example, there will be many other instances you will find that employees work like a machine.

NOW, there is 2nd part to it which I am not sure how many will follow.

On the basis of these points you can work out your annual or bi-annual appraisal structure too. I had planned it but I scrapped it after getting suggestions from the various employees. (Yes, we sit and discuss everything before making any new policies)

This is how the structure can be: (Following is for the period of 6 months)

I personally liked this structure for the appraisals but some of the employees felt this will end up reducing their freedom and ability to work in team. (As everyone will be working for themselves rather than working as a team)

So for now, in our company appraisals will be based on their overall points and the performance based on the feedback from the team members.

There are few more things which I am going to implement soon to make everyone’s life easier. I will share the same with everyone once we are ready.

I hope this helps and yes, do let me know your suggestions, would love to hear from everyone. Specially from the people currently working for any company.

Image Source: Show us your smile! by Ben Smith

So, what’s up Deep? Well, it’s surely a new theme. Got bored of the previous theme, bought this one, customized it a bit and we are online In 2009 I had got a new custom design done for the blog but due to my laziness, I ended up staring at those PSDs all the time and now when I look at it, I felt like, “hell with it”, I need something sober.. I think this one fairly does the job.

So apart from the theme, what else is going on? I am not sure if I have shared this with everyone here or not, we (me and 2 other friends) bought a hosting company called Expertrio a year back, setup few servers, managed to get everything in shape and things are going on very smoothly out there. Few years back, I had almost stopped Web1′s hosting services because I was not able to dedicate full time to it but now, since we are team of 3 and few staff members, the rail is very much back on the track without putting any load on me.

Apart from this, the most exciting thing happening around me is, BiteBank Websites – I am Technology Director there. It is basically as SaaS based CMS (targeted to Dentists in Canada and US for now) with very user friendly and advanced features. Yea, I am not good at boasting the stuff so I will stop there itself. But I am proud of what I have been doing for the past 1 year. We have started showing the app to various biggies and so far the response has been more than what we had expected. Just love it when your designed architecture is loved by people, it’s a different feeling.

So what about Web1? Well, Web1 is doing pretty good too, but have minimized taking projects, I just take selected projects these days. I do not want to be in a situation where I take more projects than and deliver the bad quality stuff, so the quality is on very high importance right now. Happy with the way it’s shaping up. Not too fast, not too slow. Steady and the good part is, I am getting time to explore some ideas of mine.

About the personal life, well, it’s going on pretty smoothly too, have started playing badminton on regular basis but for the past 15 days, I am trying to get back in shape. Managed to mess up my back while playing, now almost on the verge of recovering. And I think I should be able to get back in action in a week max.

I guess that’s about it, I should go to sleep now..

Later..

Image Source: High in the Clouds by aLiTaBlondeGoth

And finally, the Bandh day arrives.. and what we get? haha a Bandh obviously.. I don’t see any rickshaws or buses on the road, around 84 flights have been delayed / cancelled, around 74 buses have been damaged in Mumbai so far… the trains services are hit in many areas…

The political parties claim the Bandh to be a peaceful one but I don’t see it around? I don’t see any peace in damaging the buses or halting the trains.. These parties on Twitter boast about how peaceful the Bandh is but they themselves know that it’s not peaceful at all.. The funny part is, these parties are being proud of Bandh is trending on Twitter but they are not bothered to read the content of the tweets… The Bandh is trending on twitter because everyone is frustrated of it and tweeting about it…

So, now after all this, what’s the reality? Thinking of a common man?

Well, the price hike is a really bitter truth and the worst part is, the government is not able to do anything to tackle it. The vegetables prices have reached almost double the cost than earlier.. (in some cases, the rates have touched 5-6 times costlier too), fuel prices have touched the rooftop, the movie tickets which used to cost me Rs. 50 – 75 max are now, Rs. 225 – Rs. 500, Rs. 10 popcorn costs Rs. 70 now.. Everything has become way too costly.

Now, in this, some of the prices have actually gone up due to lack of resources or say high demand but in this process, many have taken undue advantage and hiked the prices.. (e.g. cinema halls, packaged food, drinks etc..)

So, instead of doing something to control these factors, the political parties preferred halting normal life of a common man. They claim that, they are doing it for the common man and this Bandh will open eyes of the ruling government. But these parties do not understand that, the common man does not want all these.

It hurts a common man, when their one day’s wage is wasted due to this so called unwanted Bandh, it hurts a common man when he cannot travel just because of the Bandh which he never wanted..

The common man is helpless, the ruling government is not acting tough, they are just making tough statements but everyone knows the reality.. the opposition parties are forcing everyone to do whatever they want.. a common man cannot speak up.. the media is working more for the TRP than than the common man, Media is more interested in knowing what is Dhoni wearing for his marriage than focusing on the issues of the common man.

It was time, when these Bandh used to work but now a common man has become much more smarter than earlier, by doing all these forced Bandhs, these parties are making things worst and lose the remaining voters they had till now..

We should start working towards the solution rather than running away from the problem.. 

Okay, let’s get to the basics now..

Earth Hour is basically to save as much as electricity in a hour.. or in other words, it’s an initiative to save the climate change.. Okay, I agree it’s a good cause but how well can we apply this to India?

Do we have regular power and water supply at the first place? (Which I feel is necessity for the living) Don’t you think we should fight for that first? We are paying taxes to Government on time, we are paying our bills on time then why we are not getting the basic services?

In other countries like Australia, US, UK etc.. they have all these basic facilities provided by the government and they can afford to take part in these kind of initiatives.. but we certainly cannot..

Even after paying approximately Rs. 10,000 electricity bill per month, I get random power cut atleast twice in a week.. Thankfully, in our area, Load shedding has stopped since past few months.. (It used to be daily 2-4 hours), the power companies increase their rates at almost every 6 months.. The government is not aggressive in making people aware about other sources of power.. (Solar, Wind etc..) The water supply is not 24 hours, due to negligence of government authority, millions of liters of water gets wasted.. and in the end.. we face water cuts..

This was just about Mumbai, I am sure other cities and states are also facing similar issues..

So why not work towards that rather than following the crowd? We should do something about our country and then worry about others..

We have actually habit of following others blindly, another such example would be Aman ki Asha campaign.. according to me, it was one of the worst campaign I have ever came across..

At one end, militants in Pakistan making Anti India statements, the Pakistan government officials not taking action against them.. and we are working out on so called “Aman ki Aasha"?

Okay, let’s leave Pakistan aside, we won’t ever understand these political things.. Let’s talk about issues in our country first…

We see, fights on the name of language and religions going around in many states.. the government is doing almost nothing to control that.. At one end, the Congress government calls itself as secular and in the other end, they approve quotas for minority..

We don’t want to look at our own issues and we want to build bridges of peace between 2 countries..

We should actually start fixing our own system first before trying to fix something else.. Developed countries have done all that, citizens get all the basic necessities there, so they can afford this kind of initiatives.. but we certainly cannot..

We just need to wake up and smell the coffee..

But why would India welcome him? Well, because in 90s, he had painted Hindu goddesses and mother India nude.. and he hurt sentiments of so many Hindus or I should say, Indians.. but that was just his freedom of expression and there was nothing wrong in it..

I am sorry, but I don’t buy the bullshit of freedom of expression. I am game for the freedom of speech or freedom of expression but not at the cost of hurting anyone’s sentiments.. what was the need to paint mother India or any goddess nude? What was he trying to achieve from it? I am really not sure about it..

And, if he actually feels it as a freedom of expression, then why can’t he try with prophet or any other Muslim gods?  Well, he won’t.. he wants to live in this world

I have noticed that Indian media is always most interested in bringing up anti-hindu issues.. they never show the stuff on Kashmiri Pandits or other issues where Hindus are being attacked (or got injustice..) We are shown only one side of the story..

I am actually very much afraid by this “political” side of these news channels.. (Specially the English ones), these guys have got lot of power in their hand.. and they are misusing it..

I have nothing against any religion but the news or anything should not be judgmental based on the religion.. it should be balanced..

And I am yet to see that day..

Update: Following videos which will throw some light on the issue… (Excuse the poor guy’s English)