Saying Bye Bye to New and Expensive Books!

(Image taken from New York Times.)

According to one study, the average student will pay almost $1,000 for books during a single year. An undergraduate student may end up paying up to $4,000 on books before he or she receives a degree. - Jamie Littlefield from about.com

The internet has changed it all. A digital revolution that unfolded with the influx of mass internet users has changed the way business is done today. And, textbooks sale is no exception.

Big textbook publishing houses such as McGraw Hill and big retailers such as Barnes and Nobles have started revamping the traditional way they did business. McGraw Hill has recently partnered with book rental businesses such as Chegg and is encouraging others to try out book rental programs and share revenues. Barnes and Nobles too has started pilot programs at many universities to allow students to rent textbooks. And, they have also started focusing on online sales. At Trinity University too, Barnes and Nobles encouraged students to order books online with ease of few simple clicks. Textbook rental Businesses have started flourishing along with other online textbook sellers such as half.com.

As revenues for publishing houses have decreased over the years since online businesses started biting into their pies, they have become even more innovative and have resorted to bringing out newer editions more frequently. More often than not, these new editions do not have that much of varying material except for same content on different page numbers or newer problem sets, also differently numbered. While this does compel students to buy new textbooks every year instead of purchasing used ones at a cheap price, some college professors have started to adopt policies that would frustrate these 'innovative publishing houses'. For instance, my mathematics professor for 'Differential Equations and Linear Algebra' course assigned second edition of the textbook instead of the third one so that we could borrow the textbooks cheap.

Not unlike students and publishers, college professors too must have started to realize that newer editions not necessarily have different or 'edited/updated' material. Also, for my 'Media Intepretation and Criticism' course, my college professor asked us to return back the textbooks if we had already purchased since she would make the texts available online in pdfs. This is what real digital revolution is, in my view- Saving a lot of resources.

If college professors can be okay with older editions and also make the necessary readings available online then, textbook publishing business could be in real trouble. But, that's good for consumers. Those publishing houses would probably get better at innovation and actually come up with newer and updated stuff in newer editions. That way, it would be a fair trade, I would say.

One of the best resources when you are buying textbooks would be to read this article on about.com from one of the experts.

Free Hugs in New York

What can you get for free in New York?

• Bad odour.
• Unsolicited pamphlets/flyers on streets.
• Free newspapers.
• Unwanted brochures slid under your apartment door.
• Scolding by cab drivers and busy pedestrians.
• Look of indiference on city dwellers.

What else? I can't think of anything that you could actually use or has some meaning to you. Who gives away anything for free of some signifigance these days?

I was surprised when I saw a guy, roughly 19-20 years of age holding a sign that read, "Free Hugs" in Times Square, New York. At first, I thought it was some kind of trap that first gives you useless free stuffs and then makes you buy something as a trade-off. Wary of such disasters, I moved on. Several steps further, I saw more young people holding the sign. And, this time there were girls too. While I was watching them with curiosity, I saw some people actually reached out and hugged the volunteers. I could not wait to take out my cell-phone and click a photo with my prized 5 Megapixel camera. (I call it prized because even I-phone 3G-S has a 3 Megapixel integrated camera.)

Times Square of New York has always amused me and encaptivated with its outrageously lively atmosphere. It is the only place in the world where you can expect to see and meet people from all over the world. And, probably also the only place where a camera never stops clicking. Click. Click. Flashes, everywhere. There were actually so many people with the sign, "Free Hugs" that I knew it no more could be an individual based effort. There must be something going on, I thought. And, owing to my curiosity or 'inquisitive nature', as I like to call it, I was tempted more than once to approach and ask one of the volunteers holding the sign. But that would mean, I would have to hug the person. This time, owing to my cultural upbringing, I moved back. You see, it's a cultural thing. I grew up in Nepal, a pretty conservative society where men do not hug women, it would be termed 'inappropriate'. I have hugged women in the past, but always with reluctance and yes, I did get nervous first few times. Now, they do it, I just give in.

So, when I got home, I could not contain my inquisitive curiosity and Googled at the first possible chance. And, I found a very interesting story. It was started by a person with a very noble mission. He was in helpless state at an aiport in the UK. So, he cut off a piece of card-board and held the sign, "Free Hugs".** People gave him strange looks but after few minutes a woman came and talked to him about her deceased dog the same morning. And this was how this "Free Hugs" campaign started. I think this is a very good campaign, a very humane one. I have lived in New York for a couple of months and have seen how they are one of the most unhappiest*, unsatisfied* people in the world and so, they are the ones who need the hugs the most.

**Find more information, here. http://freehugscampaign.org/

* I know I have made a very controversial statement and I do not intend to explain why I believe so. I will do so in my future posts.

The Best Brown Bread in New York

I was not really a big fan of breads before I arrived in the United States. Back home, bread was for breakfast. Here in the US, bread is their staple food; they eat anytime, anywhere. I actually spent few hours googling about where is the place to find the best brown bread in New York. Currently, I am staying in New York but I do not intend to buy any brown bread. I was interested because I recently watched an Indian film named 'New York' where this phrase has been used.

I was curious as to whether really a place like this exists and so started running a Google search. It reminded me of how the search on the term 'Illuminati' rose staggeringly after Dan Brown mentioned the word in his famous novel, 'The DaVinci Code' and 'Angels and Demons'. Sadly, I did not find any specific place that proclaimed that it provided the best brown bread in New York. If there were any place such as this, US Intelligence would have probably conducted a covert operation immediately after the film was screened. It would have been a terrific promotion campaign though and probably the film crew would have asked for trouble if such place existed because it portrays the place in a negative way (a place that breeds/fosters terrorism.)

The movie was pretty nice and is sure to spark rage and more hatred towards Americans as it depicts innocent South Asians being racially profiled and detained after 9/11 attacks. In fact, Shahrukh Khan is also soon featuring in a movie named, 'My Name is Khan' that shows sorry state of Muslims who were racially profiled after 9/11 attacks. As if it were a publicity stunt, which it clearly was not, Shahrukh Khan was illegally detained at Newark Airport after his name returned 'Alert' message in US Immigration database.

Indian Celebrities on Twitter

I have been using Twitter for quite sometime now. I do not use it profusely and neither do I have a big fan following. I guess, I have a little more than 85 followers, many of which I don't know personally, of course. But I like the concept of Twitter and am convinced that Facebook did use some ideas of Twitter when it introduced a new version of Facebook where not only friends' statuses but also other posts, such as photo posts, video posts and notes appeared on Home Screen. This concept was introduced by Twitter and after it became popular, was copied by Facebook.

Facebook has copied ideas from here and there, but that is not my point. I was fascinated to see quite a few Indian celebrities using Twitter to communicate with their fans. It was the unfortunate incident of Shahrukh Khan's detention at Newark Airport that brought to my notice the presence of hot and gorgeous Priyanka Chopra, an Indian actress on Twitter. She apparently tweeted about this incident and spit her wrath at the US Immigration Officials. Guess what; now, I follow her. She posts periodically about what is going on with her life. Knowing about what goes on in a celebrity's life interests everyone including me. Priyanka also takes time to reply to her fans' tweet replies. Apparently, she has never replied to any of my 3 tweet replies that I sent to her.

There are also other Indian celebrities like Dino Morea, Uday Chopra and Karah Johar (I hope they count as celebrities. Never mind).

Here are their twitter usernames:

• Priyanka Chopra : priyankachopra
• Dino Morea: DinoMorea9
• Karan Johar: kjohar25
• Uday Chopra: udaychopra

I will keep my fingers crossed that Priyanka will one day reply to my tweets :D

Apparently, there is rumor that even Shahrukh tweets but others deny it based on the mechanical nature of his tweets. Shahid Kapoor, Ram Gopal Varma, MS Dhoni (the star cricketer), Shreya Ghosal and few others too are on twitter. Good going Indian celebrities.

Facebook Wants to become the next Google, not MySpace

• Facebook has 250 million active users among which 120 million login at least once daily

• More than 30 million users update their Facebook status once a day, some do so more frequently than their underwear :D
  

I read a piece of article with the same heading that incited amusement and disappointment inside me. And the timing for the claim could not have been better, since Facebook recently bought FriendFeed, another social networking tool. Facebook is trying to stay ahead of the game and knows that it can leave behind Google in this race if it can make right decisions and cater to the needs of the future. And, Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page very well know this. Facebook can do to Google what Google did to Microsoft.

The official website of Facebook boasts a healthy 250 million active users and it also claims that at least 120 million users log into their Facebook account everyday. Wow!! Whopping numbers. Are Google duos losing the battle? Opinions vary. History is evident that socializing websites bloom and fade like seasonal flowers. MySpace, Linkedn and others are few of them. But, the case is not very different for search engines either, except for Google, of course. AltaVista, the once prominent search engine has become an endangered species after Google came into the ring. And, the same can be said true for web browsers too. Who uses Netscape these days? It was the only and the most prominent browser just a decade ago, wasn't it?

So, I do have my doubts over whether Facebook can really become the next Google. In fact, I have started to see Facebook users getting genuinely concerned over the potential misuse of the information and other private details. Media has been doing a pretty reasonable role in educating general people about the security loopholes while allowing Applications to pull out your profile information. Also, it is not uncommon to see people getting in trouble at work. Also, it has started to be believed that some company recruiters pull out workers' information from Facebook and also use it to base their decisions. A clean Facebook profile has started to become the popular slogan among wise Facebook users. If more and more users start getting responsible, careful and discretionary in uploading and posting images, videos or texts then, it should hurt viral expansion of Facebook users.

Facebook Statistics are very interesting to skim through if you are an active Facebook user. For instance, every user has on average 120 friends and 2/3 of its users are users outside of college even though it was originally created for students.

Check out the complete Official Facebook Statistics .