This online utility supports the following formats:
-MS Word (DOC)
-MS Word (RTF)
-MS PowerPoint (PPT)
-MS PowerPoint (PPS)
-MS Publisher (PUB)
-MS Excel (XLS)
-WMF, EMF, GIF
-JPG, PNG
-BMP, TIFF
-Text (TXT)
-HTML (MHT)

Also, you have an option to download the trial version and evaluate if you want to use it for bulk conversions. For more conversion options and other information, visit their site . I did try to convert few of my documents and it was fairly simple and easy, all in a matter of few minutes! Have fun creating all those important documents in the format as needed.

It doesn’t stop there, now everyone takes a dig at the strategy adopted by the team. No surprises if a set of individual cricketers are targetted to play the blame game. Last time no one had expected this team to win, the expectations were very high this time even though Indians never looked so convincing throughout the tournament. Last time when the team arrived with the cup, a huge welcome parade was arranged on an open top bus to welcome the heros. God knows how it is going to be this year. Everyone wants to be a hero, but wouldn’t it be wrong to expect someone to become a hero when they really aren’t?

I have seen a couple of my friends openly saying on social network sites that they aren’t Indian cricket team supporters anymore! I fail to understand why fans can’t accept the reality. After all it is a game. Winning and losing is a part of the game. Take it easy folks.

Specs as below:
2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB DDR3 SDRAM, 232 GB Serial ATA, 15.4-inch LED-backlit display 1440×900, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M and 9600M GT 256 MB, DVD/CD SuperDrive, Mac OS X 10.5.x

Here is the list of things that I like the most on this macbook. First comes the performance and looks, so far I haven’t seen any application crashing with errors. It was a bit tough to get used to in the beginning with a touchpad having no buttons. But not any more! it is so easy to use even my 4 year old nephew knows how to operate use some of the applications! That is the level of usability I am enjoying on this macbook   This mac is the thinnest compared to others note books I have used so far. The single piece aluminum case looks stunning and the black keyboard gives feather touch feel. Some of my colleagues didn’t like the keyboard, but I am okay with that. Only thing that bothers me is the highly gloss screen that results in lot of glaring effect at times. On full charge, the battery lasts for 5 hours!

Migration of mails from Outlook to Entourage has been easy. I still have MS office for Mac . Macros in Excel doesn’t load properly on mac. Apart from that I have no complaints about mac. Today, I had to work on a colleagues windows box (sadly on HP nc6400) for a while and I was not comfortable using the touchpad on that… that is the kind of addiction now with macbook. I am certainly enjoying the better than windows usability features and power of linux, both on one machine ‘The Mac’. A new ‘mac guy’ has born in me for sure! What about you? still on windows or already thinking of changing to mac?

GM India has announced that it continues all its normal operations and is not included in the court reinvention process of GM’s US operations. GM India operations are not included in the US filing for Chapter 11. Consequently, all GM India dealers, warranty and customer support services will remain unaffected.

With that assurance from GM India, let me share my views on Chevrolet Spark LT. The Spark has funky and youthful styling external looks if not as good as the Hyundai i10/i20 or Maruti A-Star. For me it looked like a make over of Daewoo Matiz! Circular tail lamps catch you attention at the back. It looks cute though if not great when compared to other cars in the hatch back segment. The body build quality seem to be pretty strong.

Interiors : The car looks small from outside but it has generous space in the cabin. I personally didn’t like the all dark plastics inside this car, which gave a kind of dull look. The  steering wheel and the center mounted instrument panel make up for the rest of the design flaws. It wouldn’t be easy to get used to the speedo meter and the other display lights. The driving posture is good enough but not as good as my Santro Xing, couldn’t get to check if the seat can be adjusted vertically. I could feel my left thigh getting brushed against the central instrument mount. This could be a major let down if you are going on a long drive. Apart from that various switches are placed within easy reach, not happy with the quality of the material though. Boot space is certainly a big disappointment. My strong feel is that it can be a good car for 4 adults when it comes to seating comfort. It could prove to be highly uncomfortable for 5 adults with the kind of small leg space for the rear seat.

Engine, Ride and Performance : All the spark models come with a 1000 cc (1 ltr) engine which can deliver 63 bhp. Since the body weight is around 850 kilos, the power should be sufficient enough to pull 4 adults. The car was noiseless under idling conditions. Pick up of the engine is good and I felt happy with the kind of response upon acceleration. It was very easy to handle the ride with the power steering. The gear shifts were smooth and precise. The only irritating thing I could notice is that you cannot reverse with half clutch. If the wheels are turned fully, you need to slightly press the accelerator to get the vehicle moving. I assume it is due to the low turning radius. However, this low radius makes parking much easier in congested parking areas. I am happy with the ride and handling.

Mileage, Price and Warranty: Chevrolet has certified the Spark engine with a mileage of 12.5 kms in city while 16.7 kms on highways. Spark has been recently released with a model that can run on LPG. I have no information about the mileage of LPG model. Ex-Showroom price of the Spark can cost you between 3.2 lakhs for a low end model to 4.2 lakhs for an high end LT model with airbags. Price of LPG model is not available on their site, you may have to call up their support to know more details. As far as 3 years no service cost promise is concerned, one has to purchase the extended warranty on the car. Just that they don’t say it the ad and compromise that with a standard *. It is a well known fact that there is nothing called free lunch in this world . You do have to buy this premier warranty contract  by paying 13K, with this they will cover all the maintenance and service costs.

My final suggestion for you is to test drive the car and compare the cost and comfort with other players in this segment before making up your mind. You may want to think about A-Star, Xing, Wagon R etc., if cost is the constraint. If you can afford to spend a little bit more, think about Maruti Swift, Ritz or Tata Indica Vista or Hyundai i10.

In its current  state, Bing doesn’t appear to be the next best thing in search as the search relevancy is the most important aspect for web search which hasn’t really impressed. Apart from that, I have found few interesting things, search for the words like ‘google‘ or ‘yahoo‘. You will get to see just one result found for each. I think that is pretty impressive and nice of them to keep it short and simple instead of bombarding with seamless number of search results when compared to traditional search engines.

Another feature I like is the mouse-over pop up screen that appears to the right of the search results. It gives a sneak preview of the article excerpt in a convenient pop up window. Yet another fact I like the most is the response time for displaying the search results.

Now coming to the multimedia search, few nicely thought features are available. Few to name would be the endless scrolling in image search works very well (it may be recalled that this was first introduced in Live’s image search). At the same time video search is excellent too. You can play back videos within Bing, this feature helps to quickly preview them. There is also a mechanism to filter images by size, layout, color, style and people – yet to explore more on this. Here is another caveat – do an image search with your exact name as in ‘facebook’, Bing will show up your facebook picture! you decide whether it is good or bad

Haven’t explored much on maps and news search on Bing. Though some of the features are really good, the only thing that I am very skeptical is the releavancy. If that main aim itself is compromised, I don’t find any reason to use it again. What is your take?

Those were the initial days for me with twitter when ‘BarCamp Bangalore 08‘ (#bcb8) event was held during 1st week of March 2009. The venue for this event was our own office! As always, I was curious and excited about the kind of talks that may come up in that event. Since we had a huge cafeteria where the event being conducted, organizers had managed to put up about 5 talks to go simultaneously in various corners of the premises. It was indeed an easy task with the help of twitter hash tag to figure out where to find which topic being talked about and attend the one that meets my interests. That was for the very first time I was witnessing the real time usage of social network media with so much of effectiveness. That wow’ed me and I was a fan of twitter soon after that. I have been using twitter more often after that. This is what I call the ‘Good’ thing about twitter – getting the real time information about something when it is required the most!

In the same event after lunch break, most of the sessions were boring and infact many speakers were making the event a platform to market their incumbent products. I presume those speakers were all working for some start ups and trying to showcase their product in bits and pieces. Due to this most of the event attendees were hopping across the sessions. From nowhere a guy posted a tweet that read something like this ’sitting next to the cutest gal @ #bcb8′ at 2:20 PM IST on Mar 7th. Thats it… the traffic on #bcb8 started to raise exponentially! Everyone was curious to know who that guy was and how to identify which gal he was talking about. Most of the bar campers had forgotten their actual purpose of being there, but their intent had changed dramatically with that one tweet. It might have been an entertainer for many, but certainly that wasn’t the purpose of coming to bar camp event. This simple tweet defeated the whole purpose of the event for sometime. This very act makes me term twitter as a ‘Bad’ tool at times.

Now coming to the ‘Ugly’ side of twitter. I have been observing the most trending hashtags on twitter since a week or so, #3wordsaftersex, #3wordsduringsex, etc., are a few of those tags to name. Is this right to spread/share such extreme content which is being closely followed by millions of people around the world. This may not be appropriate for all. In my view, this is too much folks. Let us use social network for ‘Good’ and let us use twitter more responsibly. Am I the only non cynical person out here or do you feel the same?

Unlike regular plants, these flowers bud out of leaves directly and not from the stem. You can go through my previous posts on this night queen flowers here and here. If you wish to grow this plant at your place, feel free to ping me and I would be happy enough to distribute few of them. Ofcourse, you don’t need to pay me for that… I am just spreading the green love

Engine options:

• All new K12M Petrol engine that is made completely of aluminum. Because of this, it is light in weight when compared with other engines and expected to yield a good mileage. This engine is a 1.2L, 1197cc engine and is capable of putting out 85 PS of power at 6000rpm, with a torque of 113NM at 4500 rpm.

• If you are skeptical about the performance and reliability of the new petrol engine, you have an option to choose a diesel engine. 1.3L, multijet Diesel engine that is currently powering the Fiat Linea is the other option. This common-rail diesel is 1248cc engine which develops maximum power of 75 bhp.

Interiors:
Looking at the images suggest extensive use of plastic parts just like A-Star and with its stylish new interiors the Ritz also offers a center console designed to give a strong presence and easy access. It also has a host of other features like a large independent speedometer, colored fascia, dashboard display, comfortable seat fabric as well as door trim which further contribute to the fresh appeal. Another noteworthy feature here is the gear shift lever is ergonomically shaped and is positioned relatively high in the centre console (see the picture above) to minimize its distance from the steering wheel and permit extra storage space.

Mileage and Price:
The company claims that its latest K12M engine offers a mileage of 17.8 kmpl in city roads and 21.8 kmpl on highway. If this is practial, then Ritz can be recognized as the most fuel efficient car in its segment and Maruti is expecting very good market response to Maruti Ritz because of its mileage. Also, it will be first car in Indian market which will be equipped with BS-IV compliant K12M engine. Ritz will be available in 7 variants with two engine options as mentioned above in a price range between 3.9 to 5.2 lakhs along with a choice of ten colors to choose from, eight of which to have a metallic finish.

Variant	Non Metallic (in Rs.)	Metallic (in Rs.)
RITZ LDI BS IV	4,63,970.47	4,63,970.47
RITZ VDI (ABS) BS IV	5,16,005.20	5,16,005.20
RITZ VDI BS IV	4,93,903.73	4,93,903.73
RITZ LXI BS IV	3,88,367.88	3,88,367.88
RITZ ZXI BS IV	4,80,417.08	4,80,417.08
RITZ VXI ( ABS) BS IV	4,43,701.89	4,43,701.89
RITZ VXI BS IV	4,18,683.43	4,18,683.43

** These are Ex-Showroom (Indicative) prices for Bangalore. I know the prices look the same for both metallic and non metallic, but that is what being displayed on Maruti site as of now. I shall correct it as and when the data gets updated.

Breathing the clean and fresh oxygen along the forest roads was a great relief for our souls, which are used to inhale highly polluted air within the city! We were at Cauvery fishing camp by 9:30 am. I had booked our day visit package at Jungle Lodges Resort office located in Shringar complex near MG Road. This is my third visit to this place. Upon reporting at the reception, we were offered welcome drink and had sometime to fresh up before heading for the guided trek. Usually, the trek here is a very small one unless you force the guide for a longer one. Since our group is not so experienced when it comes to trekking with few exceptions, most of us were exhausted by the time we reached the hillock watch tower. One thing that surprises me time and again is the cleanliness of this forest. Unlike Skandagiri, in this forest you can hardly spot any plastic wastage. While enjoying the beauty of the nature and relaxing, I had to convince the guide to satisfy few members who wanted to go on a longer trek. Not all were game for it, hence decided that others can go to river banks and play in the water en-route to base camp. Plan ahead for both the teams was to reach the camp by 1pm for lunch. We could only spot a good number of deers in this forest.

Most of us were exhausted due to sheer amount sweating and humidity during the trek. Lazing on the hammocks under huge tamarind trees is something one cannot afford to miss. You can choose to lay on the huge rope net and enjoy the naturally cool breeze. There was a myna bird which was humming a melodious chirp that was so soothing to listen to. If you still have energy, you can create waves and play many a things to have fun. This can be continued even after lunch till the authorities pull you out for coracle boat ride. You have the option of conducting any team building activity as well during the course of time. Coracle boat ride is another highlight! We were lucky enough to spot a crocodile on a rock. The boat rower cum guide told us that the crocodile population has been increasing over years at this place. This is a great news for wild life lovers! None of us had any intention of going for fishing. If you want to go fishing here, you need to get your own fishing stick or you can rent one with the authorities. After snacks and tea in the evening around 5.30 pm we headed back towards our bus. We had a surprise guest waiting for us to bid bye… It was none other than the ‘Grizzled Squirrel’. There was an environmentalist who told us that, spotting this squirrel is rare compared to spotting a tiger in a forest!

We certainly had a great time with nature and a welcome break from routine work and city life. One more good thing here is none of the mobile services work in this forest range except Reliance. So feel happy to forget your cell phone irritations for a day! I am sure you wouldn’t be disappointed by visiting this place which is so close to nature and yet close enough to reach out from a busy city life. Feel free to drop a comment if you need any more information and you can see the photos here.

Food Quality & Variety:
If you are a non-veggie, you will enjoy the food without any thoughts. Vegetarians have limited options and might not feel as satisfied as the non vegetarians. However, forget not to try out methi malai matar, dal makhni and paneer khurchan with a basket of rotis. Coming to rice items, you will like kashmiri pulav and veg dum biryani. There is no buffet service available here. Non vegetarians must try Tandoori platter and chicken kababs. They also serve a range of spicy rice items including chicken biryani and ghost dum biryani. They serve liquor too if you wish to have. You can also choose from a wide variety of delicious desserts.

Ambience :
Though this restaurant is spread over ground and first floors, it is not a very big one. You will notice a number of foreign nationals in the evenings. The interior roof works are too good lit up with proportionately, so are the murals and paintings. Polished wooden furniture all over gives it a complementing look.

Service and Cost:
The restaurant staff are extremely courteous and service oriented. In all my three visits, I have experienced a very high level of service and I could only wish they continue to provide such good service in the future as well. They have a vallet parking and booking is a must if you plan to go there in the evenings. If you don’t book and go there, you might end up in waiting for a long time for sure. Cost is slightly on the higher side and it will easily amount to 1000/- rupees for two without alcohol. You wouldn’t regret paying that much for excellently delicious food at Tandoor!