Name These Connectors!

Finding hidden hardware gems in bins of archaic cards at computer shows and swap meets is an ever-so-crucial nerd skill. Frequently the only way to discern the difference is to do an on-the-spot ID of the edge connector. True nerds should be able to identify even the most esoteric connector in their sleep (if they sleep with their eyes open, that is). Can you separate the crap from the kick ass? No cheating!

A. PCI-Express connector
B. DDR memory
C. Dual-channel RIMM

Run All Your Essential Apps on a USB Stick

Any real nerd is almost sure to have a USB thumbdrive in his pocket at all times. After all, USB flash storage is pretty much the best way to keep data conveniently at hand. What the average nerd might not know, however, is that it’s possible to install all sorts of apps on a thumb drive, meaning that you can use your USB stick as a mobile platform for your browser, email and instant message client, office suite and more. That means you can access these programs, settings intact, from any computer with a spare USB slot.

It’s all made possible by PortableApps.com, an open source platform for portable software. To get started with PortableApps, go to this page and download whichever version of the portable suite suits your needs. Then run the installer, and choose to install to the root of your USB drive. In the future, if you want to add additional portable applications just download the app, then select “add a new app” from PortableApps’ options menu and browse to the .paf.exe file you downloaded.

Right now, there are portable versions of heavyweights like Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice, as well as a whole ton of other, awesome programs.

Straighten the Pins on an Older CPU

There are two quick ways to realign bent pins on older CPUs.

The first, quickest way is to take a credit card and run it through the rows of pins in each direction, which will realign lightly-bent pins.

If a pin is bent too far for the credit card trick, use the barrel of a mechanical pencil to sheath the pin and gently bend it back up straight.

Know the 13 Basic HTML Tags

Dreamweaver is for sissies; real geeks prove their skills by going old school and coding web pages by hand in notepad. But even if you can’t keep up with the newest iterations of hypertext markup language, you should still be able to at least edit website code to make minor adjustments. So in case you’ve forgotten, here are the 13 most basic HTML tags:

<h1> to <h6> — Heading styles from large to small
<p> — Start a new paragraph
<br> or <br /> — Create a single line break
<! – Your Comment Here — > — Make a hidden comment
<hr> — Mark the page with a horizontal rule line
<b> — Bold text
<em> — Emphasize text
<strong> — Strong emphasis
<i> — Italicize text
<u> — Underline text
&nbsp; — Insert a non-breaking space
<a href=”URL”> — Anchor a link
<img src= “URL” alt=”description”> — Insert an image

Get Through to Executive Customer Service

One of the most frustrating experiences in a nerd’s life is when a part you’ve bought turns out to be a dud. When something breaks, you have to hit up the customer service line, which can often be an excruciating process involving an endless circle of robotic menus, long hold times, and patronizing, outsourced technicians (yes, I am sure it’s plugged in, thank you for asking). However, there’s a couple of ways to make the process a little easier.

For one, if you’re stuck dealing with a robot phone menu, there’s usually a way to get through directly to a human operator. Generally, ignoring the prompts and repeatedly mashing the 0, 9, * or # keys will eventually confuse the system enough that it’ll send you to an operator. If you have a specific company that’s giving you trouble, go to www.gethuman.com, where there’s an enormous list of customer service numbers, and how to get through to a human at each one.

Second, if you’re not having any luck with the “tier 1” tech support and they won’t elevate you when you ask, consider going over their heads yourself. Search for the phone number of the offending company’s corporate office (the Consumerist has a whole bunch available, or you can search for their corporate info on Yahoo! Finance, if they’re publically traded) and give them a call.

Beat Quake in Under an Hour

The speedrun seems to be a lost art. Sure, new games like Mirror’s Edge encourage that you replay its levels in a time trial mode to compete against other players in the world, but these sanctioned game modes don’t carry the credibility or audacity of classic Quake speed runners. We’re still amazed every time we watch a video of someone beating all of Quake in less than 15 minutes. It’s not just the brevity of the run that impresses us; it’s how elegant and gracefully these players navigate through levels, capitalizing on every perfectly aimed rocket jump and timed bunny hop to shave seconds off of their run time. Watch and learn from these masters.

Admit it—you’ve cast some sidelong glances at OS X, wondering to yourself if Apple’s shiny OS really lives up to the hype. Well we’re here to tell you that it’s OK to be curious.

Build a Hackintosh

Even if your pro-PC leanings have prohibited you from buying a Mac, they don’t have to keep you from trying out OS X. The kind folks over at LifeHacker have posted a how-to about making a Hackintosh—a system custom-built from non-Apple components running OS X. So go ahead; let yourself experiment. Who knows, you might just like it.

Watch TV Shows on the Internet (Legally!)

For quite a while, watching streaming TV on the internet meant suffering through tiny, poorly encoded video on YouTube, 10 minutes at a time, hoping whatever you were watching didn’t get removed before you were done. But those times are behind us now, with a host of corporate-sponsored sites offering legal, ad-supported shows and movies in (comparatively) luxurious resolution.

So what are the options available? Hulu’s still pretty much the best site out there, offering a huge array of full-length shows from NBC, FOX, Comedy Central, FX and others. Veoh.com hosts ABC’s programs, as well as others, and YouTube has recently reached an agreement with CBS to host their shows. One of our favorite video services is southparkstudios.com, which hosts every potty-mouthed episode of South Park for viewing on demand.

Streaming movies are just now becoming available from several sources. Hulu has a modest selection of free flicks, NetFlix offers streaming movies to subscribers, and Amazon, Blockbuster.com and others allows you to stream videos for a per-movie fee.

Get Around the Content Filter on Public Computers

Are the content restrictions on public computers cramping your style. Don’t worry about it; there’s two easy ways to bypass those filters completely.

If you’re just doing some normal web browsing, and aren’t planning to send any passwords or sensitive information, you can try using a simple web proxy. Proxy.org maintains a list of free anonymous proxies. If you’re worried about privacy, using Tor is a more secure option. If you install Tor on a copy of the (aforementioned) portable edition of Firefox, and keep it with you on a USB drive, you can surf the web anonymously from any computer that allows you to run your own software.

Recite pi to 23 Decimal Places

3.14 may have been enough accuracy for 10th grade geometry, but it’s just not going to win you any respect from the other nerds. We consider 23 places the bare minimum for pi memorization.

If you’re having trouble dealing with all that, try “chunking” your memory. That is to say, instead of simply trying to remember each number in sequence (a task that humans tend not to be very good at) try to remember the numbers in groups or chunks that have more significance for you. If that’s not doing it for you, consider piems—stories and poems structured around digits of pi.

For the record, pi is: 3.141592653589793238462643…

Replace the Controller Board on a Hard Drive

Hard drive failure is more common than you think, but the culprit isn’t always a faulty platter. If your hard disk goes dead and you didn’t hear any screeching death rattles, one thing you could always try is replacing the drive’s controller board. It’s a long shot, but an essential skill nonetheless that occasionally works.

Replacing a hard drive’s controller circuit is as simple as unscrewing the PCB board from the bottom of the drive and detaching the ribbon connector. Make sure you can do this without exposing any of the drive’s internals. You also have to make sure that the new board comes from EXACTLY the same hard drive model as your defective unit – the make, model, and even firmware have to match. Mount the new board in with the same screws and connect the ribbon cable. If you did everything right and the problem was indeed the controller board, you should be able to retrieve your data.

Benchmark Your Computer

There are a lot of ways to increase the performance of your PC. But what fun is it unless you can actually see how much faster your machine runs. You might be able to get a vague idea of how much it’s improved by observing its performance while playing games, but unless you thoroughly benchmark your computer you’ll never know for sure. Professional-grade benchmarking software like we use for our reviews here at Maximum PC runs pretty pricey, but it’s not impossible to benchmark your system using entirely free software.

Nitin is a Microsoft MVP in Windows Desktop Experience, Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), Graduate in Computer Applications and a Professional blogger from India. He is very passionate about sharing knowledge and to learn new things from others. He loves to Blog and writes for many popular websites, a Tech Savvy guy addicted to Computers and gadgets. He loves to tweak and research on Microsoft Windows and Mobile Phones.

He also authored a popular eBook “The Complete Windows 7 Shortcuts eBook” and personally blogs at Windows Lifestyle.com. Apart this he contributes at many Microsoft featured tech communities and helps Windows and PC users in solving there issues.

Nitin also likes movies and music, crazy for Hollywood movies, big fan of Mylie Cyrus, Jonas Brothers, Backstreet boys and A.R. Rahman. His role models are Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

You can find him on Twitter @nitinagarwal198 or on Facebook.

Hope you people will like his releases at beingpc. Thanks and Regards.

That’s a big some of money, till now we have seen only Bill and Melinda Gates to do a lot of charity work. Allen joins other wealthy philanthropists making public commitments to donate at the urging of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, whose The Giving Pledge campaign seeks to persuade U.S. billionaires to donate half their fortunes to charity, The New York Times reported Friday.

“I’ve planned for many years now that the majority of my estate will be left to philanthropy to continue the work of the foundation and to fund non-profit scientific research like the ground-breaking work being done at the Allen Institute for Brain Science,” Allen said in a statement.

Read the more detailed story here

Bill Gates (Founder of Microsoft)

1. There are people who don’t like capitalism, and people who don’t like PCs. But there’s no-one who likes the PC who doesn’t like Microsoft.

2. Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

3. Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

4. If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.

5. We are not even close to finishing the basic dream of what the PC can be.

6. Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose.

7. DOS is ugly and interferes with users’ experience.

8. Any operating system without a browser is going to be fucking out of business. Should we improve our product, or go out of business?

9. About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.

10. At Microsoft there are lots of brilliant ideas but the image is that they all come from the top – I’m afraid that’s not quite right.

Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple)

11. I want to put a ding in the universe.

12. Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

13. Nobody has tried to swallow us since I’ve been here. I think they are afraid how we would taste.

14. Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.

15. Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?

16. We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them

17. You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.

18. Unfortunately, people are not rebelling against Microsoft. They don’t know any better.

19. The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!

20. Everyone wants a MacBook Pro because they are so bitchin’.

21. It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook)

22. I don’t have an alarm clock. If someone needs to wake me up, then I have my Blackberry next to me.

23. There’s lots of stuff none of us have ever seen before. That’s good in some ways, but limiting in other ways.

Sergey Brin (Founder of Search Engine Giant – Google)

24. We just want to have great people working for us.

25. To me, this is preserving history and making it available to everyone.

26. Some say Google is God, others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine.

27. We believe we could build a better search. We had a simple idea, that not all pages are created equal. Some are more important.

Larry Page (Founder of Search Engine Giant – Google)

28. Basically, our goal is to organize the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful.

29. We don’t have as many managers as we should, but we would rather have too few than too many.

30. The Star Trek computer doesn’t seem that interesting. They ask it random questions, it thinks for a while. I think we can do better than that.

Jack Dorsey (Founder of Twitter)

31. In 2006, SMS was getting really big in the U.S.. We looked at it (Twitter) again.

32. I knew the concept was huge, but the velocity was surprising.

33. The most surprising thing is that people adopted the technology and made it their own.

Thomas J. Watson (Founder of IBM)

34. The way to succeed is to double your error rate.

35. Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.

36. You don’t hear things that are bad about your company unless you ask. It is easy to hear good tidings, but you have to scratch to get the bad news.

37. Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops.

38. Don’t make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up.

Elon Musk (Founder of PayPal)

39. I didn’t really expect to make any money. If I could make enough to cover the rent and buy some food that would be fine. As it turns out, it turned out to be quite valuable in the end.

40. “I don’t want to say specific numbers. But I’ve certainly spent more than I expected to spend,”

41. This is the chance to fulfill a dream.

42. I’m nauseatingly pro-American. It is where great things are possible.

43. I could either watch it happen, or be part of it.

Jerry Yang (Co-Founder of Yahoo!)

44. On the outside, Yahoo is a fun and irreverent place, but on the inside, we are extremely competitive.

45. We look at our users’ interests, without our users, we don’t have business.

Which one is your favorite, mine favorites are highlighted in post with Bold – Italic font style

Celebrity Tweeters

Alan Carr — @AlanCarr
Arnold Schwarzenegger — @schwarzenegger
Brea Grant — @breagrant (From Heroes)
Elijah Wood — @elijahwood — Hollywood actor
Greg Grunberg — @greggrunberg (Matt in Heroes)
James Kyson Lee — @jameskysonlee (Korean American actor, Heroes)
Jimmy Carr — @jimmycarr
Richard Branson — @richardbranson (Virgin founder)
Britney Spears — @britneyspears
Michael Phelps — @ Michael_Phelps

- thanks Guardian

Telivision Shows

1. Sarah Beeny (Property Ladder and founder of mysinglefriend.com)
2. Gloria Reuben (Jeannie Boulet on ER, Roz Whitman on Raising the Bar)
3. Stephen Fry of BlackAdder, QI
4. Janina Gavankar (plays Papi on The L Word, Ms. Dewey the search engine)
5. Brea Grant (plays Daphne Millbrook on Heroes, Season 3, and was on Friday Night Lights)
6. Greg Grunberg (plays Matt Parkman on Heroes and previously Eric Weiss on Alias)
7. David Hewlett (plays Rodney on Stargate Atlantis, goofs off online)
8. Kate Hewlett (sister of David Hewlett, co-starred in the movie A Dog’s Breakfast, guest appearances on Stargate Atlantis)
9. Juliet Landau (played Drusilla in Buffy and Angel.)
10. David H. Lawrence XVII (Plays Eric Doyle on Heroes)
11. Michael Pennie (Earl TV show writer)
12. Richard Roeper (columnist and film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, and former co-host of “At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper“)
13. Adam Savage, MythBusters, twitter.com/donttrythis
14. Philip Schofield (UK TV presenter)
15. William Shatner
16. Brent Spiner (played Lt. Commander Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation)
17. Wil Wheaton
18. Chris Hardwick (Attack of the Show)
19. Ashton Kutcher
20. Joel McHale (The Soup)
21. Ryan Seacrest
22. Adventure Girl- Stefanie Michaels (Travel Personality CNN FOx-News Channel)
23. Rainn Wilson (The Office)
24. Layla Kayleigh (Attack of The Show, The Feed)
25. Jimmy Fallon
26. John Hodgman
27. Alison Haislip (Attack of the Show, The Feed)
28. Olivia Munn (Attack of the Show, Host)
29. Kevin Pereira (Attack of the Show, Host)
30. Kinsey Schofield (Party Monsters Cabo on E!)

Sports

1. Chris Moneymaker (2003 World Series of Poker Champion)
2. Robby Gordon
3. Ryan Newman
4. Darren Gough (Former England Cricketer)
5. Chris Jordan (Sports Handicapper)

CEO’s and Executives

1. 3tailer (Official twitter account of 3tailer.com)
2. Aaron Matos (Founder/CEO of Jobing.com)
3. Matthew Colin Bailey (CEO of MODR Corp modrarch.com)
4. Angelo Sotira (CEO of deviantART.com)
5. Chris Drennen (CEO of PracticeHire.com – jobs for health professionals)
6. Corporate Headquarters (Official Twitter Blog from Corporate Headquarters, Inc.)
7. Rob Meadows (CEO of Originate Labs), also Rob Meadows (CEO of Thrive [fashion])
8. PawLuxury (Adam and Wendy Leidhecker, President / CEO of PawLux.com )
9. PopGloss (Supermodel MARA)
10. Prof. Martín Sotelo (Senior Partner of MARTÍN SOTELO®, a leading global law firm based in Madrid, Spain)
11. Zappos CEO -Tony (CEO of Zappos.com shoes)
12. Jason Nazar (CEO of Docstoc)
13. Richard Branson
14. Steve Jobs
15. Jason Tryfon Chief Visionary Officer Massive! Social Media (Founder of Tweepular, Tweeple Magazine) CEO of Vital Insight Group
16. Roger Connors – CEO and co- founder of Partners In Leadership.

Popular Blogger

1. BRITannica (the official Britney.com blogger)
2. Maryan Pelland (Associate Ed. DemystifyingDigital.com and Owner WomenDaybyDay)
3. Dave Seeram (Editor of the PhotographyBB Magazine Online and Blog)
4. Ari Burton (President / C.E.O. of Corporate Headquarters, Inc. – A mix of personal blog & Interesting Items)
5. Barely (The Barely Podcast)
6. Jason Tucker (TuckerTales Podcast)
7. CaliLewis (Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.tv)
8. Robert Scoble (Tech)
9. John C Dvorak (Tech)
10. tallglassofmilk (Pop Culture, NASCAR)
11. Leo Laporte
12. Amit Agrawal (Tech)
13. Hank Green (Ecogeek.org)
14. Michael Buckley (What The Buck?)
15. Avi Abrams (Founder and Lead Author of DarkRoastedBlend.com)
16. Darren Rowse (Author of Problogger.net)
17. Kurt Kohlstedt (Founder of Webist Media and Author of Dornob.com)
18. Arianna Huffington (Founder of HuffingtonPost.com)
19. Mark Boardman (Founder of Markmeets.com )

BollyWood Stars

1. Sharukh Khan
2. Preity Zinta
3. Shahid Kapoor
4. Mallika Sherawat

Follow beingPC – @being_pc

#UPDATE 1:

Some More BollyWood Celebs

1. Shah Rukh Khan – @iamsrk
2. Abhishek Bachchan – @juniorbachchan
3. Priyanka Chopra – @priyankachopra
4. A.R.Rahman – @arrahman
5. Karan Johar – @kjohar25
6. Deepika Padukone – @deepikacalling
7. Akshay Kumar – @akshaykumar
8. Preity Zinta – @realpreityzinta
9. Shahid Kapoor – @shahidkapoor
10. Farhan Akhtar – @Karthikcalling
11. Anupam Kher – @AnupamPkher
12. Sonam Kapoor – @sonamakapoor
13. Imran Khan – @1mrankhan
14. Genelia D’souza – @geneliad
15. Neil Nitin Mukesh – @NeilNMukesh
16. Celina Jaitly – @CelinaJaitly
17. Minissha Lamba – @Minissha_Lamba
18. Sajid Khan – @sajidk23
19. Reteish Deshmukh – @Riteishd
20. Lara Dutta – @DuttaLara
21. Gul Panag – @gulpanag
22. Lisa Ray – @Lisaraniray
23. Mallika Sherawat – @mallikala
24. Vishal Dadlani – @V1SH4L
25. Fardeen Khan – @khanff
26. Mahesh Bhatt – @MaheshNBhatt
27. Amrita Rao – @Amritarao17
28. Uday Chopra – @udaychopra
29. Jugal Hansraj – @jugalhansraj
30. Jacqueline Fernandez – @jacquie_furr
31. Dino Morea – @DinoMorea9
32. Konkona Sensharma – @konkonas
33. Abhishek Kapoor – @Abhishekapoor
34. Vivek Oberoi – @vivek_oberoi
35. Ram Gopal Varma – @rgvzoomin
36. Pritish Nandy – @PritishNandy
37. Shreya Ghoshal – @shreyaghoshal
38. Meghna Gulzar – @meghnagulzar
39. Ranvir Shorey – @ranvirshorey
40. Madhur Bhandarkar – @mbhandarkar
41. Sophie Choudry – @Sophie_Choudry
42. Sonakshi Sinha – @sonakshisinha
43. Pooja Bhatt – @PoojaB1972
44. Shekhar Kapur – @shekharkapur
45. Anushka Manchanda – @IAmAnushka
46. Bruna Abdalah – @Bruabdalah

Thanks Nitinr

Well this is an old interview recorded in the year 2007, but may be, like me if you don’t know about it than watch the video below or read the Transcript below to know the most interesting interview ever of the Two Major IT Giants (Face to Face).

Following is Excerpts of transcript of the interview Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg conducted with Microsoft
Chairman Bill Gates and Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the D5 conference on May 30, 2007.

Kara: So let’s get started. I wanted to ask, there’s been a lot of mano-a-mano/catfight kind of thing in a lot of the blogs and the press and stuff like that, and we wanted to–the first question I was interested in asking is what you think each has contributed to the computer and technology industry, starting with you, Steve, for Bill, and vice versa.
Steve: Well, you know, Bill built the first software company in the industry and I think he built the first software company before anybody really in our industry knew what a software company was, except for these guys. And that was huge. That was really huge. And the business model that they ended up pursuing turned out to be the one that worked really well, you know, for the industry. I think the biggest thing was, Bill was really focused on software before almost anybody else had a clue that it was really the software.

Walt: Bill, how about the contribution of Steve and Apple?
Bill: Well, first, I want to clarify: I’m not Fake Steve Jobs. What Steve’s done is quite phenomenal, and if you look back to 1977, that Apple II computer, the idea that it would be a mass-market machine, you know, the bet that was made there by Apple uniquely–there were
other people with products, but the idea that this could be an incredible empowering phenomenon, Apple pursued that dream.

Then one of the most fun things we did was the Macintosh and that was so risky. People may not remember that Apple really bet the company. Lisa hadn’t done that well, and some people were saying that general approach wasn’t good, but the team that Steve built even within the company to pursue that, even some days it felt a little ahead of its time–I don’t know if you remember that Twiggy disk drive and…

Walt: You want a computer you can write your own programs on. And obviously, people still do.
Steve: We had some very strange ads back then. We had one where it was in a kitchen and there was a woman that looked like the wife and she was typing in recipes on the computer with the husband looking on approvingly in the back. Stuff like that.

Read Complete Transcript of the interview here

Or you can watch the interview-

Transcript and Video courtesy: digitalliteracyproject.com

• Don’t forget to read the interview of a Man who at the age of 13 HACKED CHIP MAGAZINE’s official Website
• Also Do read the interview with Anand Khanse Microsoft’s MVP

If you liked this post Subscribe to our feeds to get updated!!!

And yeah do let us know what do you think.

Image Credits: theHindu.com

Unethical activities land one in trouble right? Wrong! Not if you are Ankit Fadia, India’s first and youngest ethical hacker. At the age of 13, he hacked the website of his favourite magazine CHIP and instead of being handed over to the cops, he was offered a job by the editor of the magazine.

“I was 13 then and I defaced the website and put up my photo on it. Later, I was worried about the consequences so I called up the editor and confessed to him. He took it well and offered me a job in his organisation. When I told him my age he said I could join them when I turn 18,” says Ankit.

It all started when he got a computer at the age of 10 and developed an interest in hacking and related issues. You can’t really penalise the boy if he is using his skill for a good cause. After the September 11 attacks, the U.S Government found some encrypted mails. The mails apparently had only pictures and no text accompanying them. “The pictures followed the steganography pattern where in photographs with embedded messages are used. I gave a few suggestions on decoding them. It was exciting as I was only 16 then. They usually never give any feedback as it is classified information but since I received a few projects even after that I feel I have been of use at some level,” smiles the 24-year-old.

Back home, he has also assisted Indian authorities when a Pakistani hacker group had defaced an Indian Government website. “I submitted a report for which I received threats,” he adds. In August 2008, Fadia was consulted by the Navi Mumbai Police Department to trace the terror email sent just before the Gujarat serial blasts. The baby-faced mastermind also feels that if there is another World War it will be through the Internet. “If a country’s networkis attacked it won’t be able to function,” he adds.

Read Complete Interview at theHindu.com Know about his new show on MTV – What the Hack? and lot more…

D0 not forget to read the Interview of our Tech Champ Anand Khanse

If you liked this post Subscribe to our feeds to get updated!!!

Anand Khanse -one of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals in Windows Desktop category. He is a member of various Windows Communities and Forums, most of us know him by the name HappyAndyK.

He is engaged in the business of Outdoor Advertising. He has been a Rotarian and is a Member of the Pune Festival Committee. He is also a member of The Poona Club Ltd.Anand Khanse is passionate about this new-found ‘hobby’ called Windows! He loves Windows  Trouble-Shooting & Optimization; and is knowledgeable about Malware Removal Methods & 3rd Party Application Support.

Lets know about him more-

Q.1 Who is Anand Khanse as a person?

Thats a question, most of us spend our lives trying to find! Who are we really?

That’s a question, most of us spend our lives trying to find! Who are we really?

On a very basic level, I consider myself to be a down-to-earth person, who takes satisfaction in the simplest things in life and extends help to all, including those who are embarrassed to ask, without expecting anything in return.

Q.2 Tell us when, how and in which field did you received your MVP award?

For me, Windows OS is a hobby, a passion. And it all started when for every minor Windows annoyance the ‘Computer guy’s’ stock reply was – we will have to format the computer! So that’s when I visited a tech forum asked questions, received answers, implemented them. And that’s when my interest grew and I realized that from asking questions I had graduated to answering them. This was 4-5 years back.

While I was active on some forums, Microsoft noticed my activities and decided to their Most Valuable Professional Award in 2007 in the Desktop category.

When they first wrote to me, I actually wrote back to them and said: Hey, are your sure, you want to give me the MVP award; I am no techie! The reply I received was that the MVP Award was not meant for umber geeks and yes they were sure.

Q.3 When did you recognize that you have a biased side for technology?

Technology always interested me, but the interest never really took any form.

Q.4 When did you launched The Windows Club and why? Why you moved toward a forum rather than maintaining a blog?

In May 2009 that I decided to start my website www.WinVistaClub.com to cover everything about Windows Vista; and then www.TheWindowsClub.com in May 2009. Along the way, I also added a Windows Help Forum

I used to get a lot of individual mail asking questions and for my help, and I felt that I was just unable to attend to them all. That’s when I decided to start a forum, where folks could direct their questions to, and get solutions from expert members from various fields.

Q.5 What are the future plannings for TWC?

Well, I believe in taking life one step at a time, so nothing really planned for! Lets see where the road leads!

We will encourage budding developers to create freeware apps for Windows users which we then help launch.

Q.6 In your opinion what are reasons that VISTA fails and 7 succeed so far?

Vista was probably an idea, launched before its time…and that too in a bit of a hurry. While it introduced a lot of new features, it also came with several bugs like the ‘slow copy’ bug. It also suffered from compatibility issues which just could not be ignored. The WOW hype further increased expectations, and when Vista failed to meet these expectations, consumer dis-illusionment set in.

Q.7 Which feature of Windows 7 you like and dislike?

The in-built troubleshooting tools are what impress me the most in Windows 7.

A small annoyance. I find that, unlike vista or XP, I have to click more number of times to connect to the Internet. That’s one small thing I don’t like!

Q.8 Do you always wanted to be what you are today or there is another side of you too?

I guess I am what I was destined to be!

Q.9 What does one have to become an MVP?

No straight answer really. I suppose the best way to do it is not aim to become an MVP.

If you enjoy Microsoft technologies AND you are visible, either via your blog or a tech forum, in helping people out, Microsoft will ‘hunt’ you out and make you an MVP. Your focus should therefore be on developing and submitting tips, How-To’s and helping people out with real world answers to their real world questions.

Of Course you can always hope another MVP nominates you or you can even apply directly to Microsoft.

Q.10 What comes in your mind when i say beingPC? Any Suggestions for Us at launching our new website ?

beingPC is a nice name that you have chosen for your blog and I wish it the best!

Focus your blog on a topic. Don’t make it too general. And update it atleast 2-3 times a week. And as the cliché goes … and still holds true … Content Rules! In the intitial months, Digg, Stumble, etc your own articles. Start a Twitter, FaceBook, etc account. Network! Participate in related forums.

Hope you guys enjoyed reading the personal interview of Anand Khanse.