If you wanted to learn without paying thousands of rupees for expensive textbooks ,help is here. This is an initiative by Rice University called connexions and I quote "
Connexions is:
a place to view and share educational material made of small knowledge chunks called modules that can be organized as courses, books, reports, etc. Anyone may view or contribute:
authors create and collaborate
instructors rapidly build and share custom collections
learners find and explore content "
The textbooks are basically mashups of modules by experts around the world. Especially check out the applied statistics textbook.
I kind of liked it better than Google Knol ,but lately
1) www.VCcircle.com A website for Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs and Mergers and acquisitions news in India
2) www.JohnTP.com A website for making money from Blogs. Very Popular as John culls the best of the rest ,and adds his own code tricks especially for WordPress.The number 1 site of this kind in India
3) www.labnol.blogspot.com An extremely popular website for Web Related news and Articles . Useful tips and tricks too for creating websites not just blogs. One of the pioneers since 2004 in India.
4) www.pothi.com India’s first self publishing Website for authors. I published 2 poetry books on it. At 100 $ per book for everything including designer cover,formatting help,design and layout it’s a steal. Starts from as low as 10 $ for custom services.
5) www.lootstreet.com India’s first negotiation algorithm based platform for buying stuff. Different from auction model of ebay, its more like a reverse auction done electronically.
6) www.workosaur.com A web startup by an IIM batchmate- Its India’s first website for jobs above Rs 1 Million (or USD 22000 per Year) .Includes international placements as expatriates from abroad are in demand for India’s booming economy.
Note – All screenshots belong to respective owners.
Sites chosen on basis of innovation in existing site types in India.
Well for customers who are India bound, and are shopping for loans face an acute shortage of options. Most online banks claim to be award winning in terms of design. Unfortunately, most of them act as lead generators and nothing more. I have worked with one of them myself. Even third party loan comparers end up NOT making a commitment on the final loan and amount, because of
1) lack of credit assurance in India due to established credit ratings for individuals.
CIBIL is considered too young (< 5 years) and is the only credit rating agency.
2) lack of exposure to latest tools available globally online.
As the saying goes, Why risk being innovative , if you are already having respectable market share, and are meeting your annual banking bonus in India’s financial services sector – booming (till 2007) and now rapidly growing (despite the central bank’s rate raises).
I recently won some 250 $ for contributor of the month at www.analyticbridge.com. Since I enjoy doing that ,contributing to analytics communities – it was hardly work for me. So I decided to donate 200 $ to One Laptop per Child. It is based on the concept (my opinion) that if you give someone a fish, he will eat for a day , if you teach someone how to fish , they will eat for a lifetime. Here are the official words from them.
Saturation: A healthy education is a vaccination, it reaches everybody and protects from ignorance and intolerance.
Connection: When we talk together we stay together.
Free and Open Source: Give me a free and open environment and I will learn and teach with joy.
10 Sep 2008
Dear AJAY,
Thank you for your contribution of $200.00 to the One Laptop per Child
Foundation. Further we confirm that no tangible benefits were received by you,
the donor, in exchange for the gift referenced above.
The mission of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) movement is to ensure that every
school-aged child in the lesser-developed parts of the world is able to engage
effectively with their own personal laptop, networked to the world, so that
they, their families and their communities can openly collaborate as they learn
and learn about learning together.
The OLPC Foundation is focused on enhancing and sustaining learning among those
children, their families and communities in lesser developed communities by
ensuring rich, diverse and open access to innovative learning materials and by
encouraging interactive learning, communication and exploration with their XO
laptops. For this purpose the Foundation provides grants and other support for
the development and use of collaborative learning resources and other
initiatives that enrich children’s learning and learning about learning. We
will also provide support the purchase of laptops for children.
Your contribution will help us move forward with these important programs for
children. Please tell your friends and colleagues about the One Laptop per
Child program (www.laptop.org) and encourage them also to support our mission.
Sincerely,
Robert D. Fadel
Treasurer,
One Laptop per Child Foundation
How many children are you going to teach computers this Christmas ? ? ?
DECISION STATS 