Twitter, as most of you must be knowing by now, is the fastest growing social networking site with million of users as their members. Obviously, i am part of it as well and I’m simply loving it. I joined twitter on 7th of March’2009 which apparently was pretty late considering the fact that twitter was launched publicly on August of 2006

Twitter

Twitter is growing at a rapid speed. Probably faster than any other social networking website. Simplicity has really played a great role in it’s success. Twitter is all about “What are you doing?” and the idea of connecting with other people brings in million of people worldwide to join and use twitter. It also acts as a real time short messaging service as it can be used via cell phones, various desktop applications n API’s and of course from the twitter website itself. The best part is, that you can follow many popular celebrities on Twitter and know what they are up to, And if you lucky enough, you might end up being good friends and have long chats with them.

There is however one thing that most twitter users do not know and there are not many source you can get this information from. Twitter have set some following and daily follow limits that you should be aware of. I have listed the limits below along with a detailed description on all.

• Maximum Following Limit : Twitter has set the maximum following limit to 2000 or 110% of your total followers. This means, that you can follow only 2000 people in total, until and unless you have that many followers as well. Calculating 110 % for 2000 followings, you should have at least 1820 people following you in order to raise your limit of 2000 followers. In simpler terms you first limit is of 2000 followers and thereafter you can follow maximum of 110% of the total followers you have. For example if you have 5000 followers, you will be able to follow a maximum of 5500 twitter users only.
• Daily Following Limit : I have noticed many people asking me this very question on twitter pretty often. How many people can i follow on twitter every day? Well, the answer is simple. Twitter limits the number of accounts that a single person can follow in a day to 1,000. Thereafter, either your account will be flagged, suspended, banned or probably you will not be able to follow any one else! My advice would be to keep it under the scanner. Do not follow more than 500 members a day.
• Maximum Follower Limit : So how many people can follow you on a daily basis? Answer would be, infinity. There are no limits on that. It’s out of your control as to how many people follow you. So it would be little stupid to have a follower limit. (You can however control the number of people that follow you. Go to settings and check the box which says “Protect my Updates”. Thereafter people will have to send request to you so that they can follow you and only those will be allowed whom you approve.)

I tried to explain as easily as i could but i may have messed up a little, while ignoring all the technical terms that i could have used. So if i didn’t make sense, Roll Out on Floor and Laugh Out Loud ROFLOL. Thereafter, just use the comment section and ask me the thing you didn’t understand. I will make it more clear for you!

Alright, so presuming that i have explained the twitter limits successfully, i think it’s a good time to mention some of the Twitter tools that i really prefer and recommend for all twitterers.

• Twitter Karma : It’s one tool that i use on a daily basis. If you ever notice my stats (except on Friday’s due to #F0llowFriday participation), you will see that my stats of people whom i am following and my followers are always the same. I use twitter karma for keeping such stats. You simply have to login by filling up your twitter email address and password or you can sign in with twitter ID itself. Once signed in, it will find all your twitter followers and people whom you follow and very briefly it will show three categories of people. First one being people who follow you and you follow them back. Second will be of people who are following you but you are not following them back. Third and last category is of people whom you are following but they aren’t following you back. So thereafter, it’s very simple. I just select people who are not following back, select them all by a single click of button provided on site and “Bulk Unfollow” them. Similarly with people whom i am not following back, i select them all and “Bulk Follow” them. So now you know. You can’t escape me if you unfollow me as i will do the same for you!
• Twitter Follower : It’s a very very new site and just started two days back. Apparently the site is owned by John Chow! I first read about it on his web blog. Here is the link >> “Twitter Follower Launch”. I will have to say that he got a great domain for the tool. It matches perfectly with the role of this tool. It’s basically a well organized list of all those twitter users who have agreed to follow back each and every user who follows them. I signed up with them yesterday night and my Twitter stats have gone up by nearly 150 users in less than 12 hours. It really works and it’s highly recommended. Also, the tool has a mass unfollow button that unfollows all users who are not following you back. That is great but Twitter Karma and FriendOrFollow.com already does that so nothing very cool about it. There is one thing though, the site certainly do what it says it will. But overall, the site sucks as there is no design on homepage, no contact us, no about us, no feedback or suggestion form. Maybe it will come up soon as the site is still new but i expected better looks from a John Chow’s website!
• TwitPic : You know you can’t share pics on twitter but TwitPic solves that problem for you. I have it bookmarked although i am yet to make use of it and explore it in all ways. But i love the concept and i love how it helps in shortening image URL’s for the tweeple! So, if you ever feel like sharing a pic, just upload it to Twit Pic, then tweet the url it provides and all Twitter friend of yours would be all to see it,and even comment on it.
• Twitter Counter : I love stats and there are at least dozen web tools that work with twitter statistics. However, i really like Twitter Counter of the lot. First of all they provide a button with my follower stats on it. You can see that in action on the right side of my blog just above the flags/language translator. Besides that, their stats tell me about the total followers i have, how many followers have been added since yesterday and what is the likely prediction for tomorrow or 30 days from now on. It even let’s you tweet these stats. Lastly, it also display your Global or local rankings among some 2 million twitter users who are hooked up with Twitter Counter.

I did want to mention TweetMeMe.com which basically works like Digg.com. It shows the hottest stories on twitter. It’s user voted concept wherein twitter guys retweet the stories and most popular stories show up on the main website of TweetMeMe. You will see there widget on my site also and if you can then don’t forget to retweet my post! Now why i didn’t mention it along the above tools is because i consider it more of web site rather than a web tool. Pretty simple

I do use some more twitter tools but the above mentioned twitters tools are the most popular and often used. I hope you like them and i will appreciate your comments on this article. Thanks!

Right back in February 1976, a 19 yrs old, Army recruit Pvt. David Lewis of Ashley Falls, Mass. complained to his drill sergeant that he felt very tired and weak but not sick. 24 hrs later, he was dead, killed by what health officials disclosed as “Swine Flu”. Such deadly influenza was last seen in the “Great Plague” of 1918-19 which took almost 20 million lives worldwide. With that disaster in mind, everybody started considering “Swine Flu” as a big scare and epidemic. Apparently, no one could trace where the virus came from back then. Except for Pvt David Lewis, there were no other casualties however his few colleagues did catch the flu, still they remained unharmed. The virus and the story ended with that. Now guess what? “Swine Flu” is back again and it’s bigger and better, so to speak.

So what exactly is “Swine Flu”?

Symptoms Of Swine Flu (Wikipedia)

Basically, when pigs get influenza or flu, it is said to be a “Swine Flu”. According to a reliable resource, Swine Flu viruses often does not infect people. The few rare human cases that have occurred in the past have mainly affected people who had direct contact with pigs. So it was not as dangerous as it looked like. Perhaps not. But this swine flu virus has behaved differently. It’s actually spreading from person to person irrelevant of whether the person infected was in contact with pigs or not. Apparently it all started in Mexico and then moved onto United States, Canada, United Kingdom and even Australia. There have been some suspected cases reported in South America and one confirmed case in Moskva, Russia. If you are wondering how it is spreading, well you can pick up germs directly from the infected person. Sneeze, cough or even by touching an object they recently touched. It becomes airborne when the infected person send the germs into air, when coughed or sneezed without the mouth being covered.

“Swine Flu” has caused many deaths in Mexico which apparently has been worst effected. Both in UK and USA, there have been various reported and confirmed cases of Swine Flu, however big majority of people survived the flu in those countries. Researhers have no clue why effected Mexican were not able to survive this flu while most effected Americans did. Of course the research has been going on and some reason or other will come up soon.

I really believe you should know the symptoms of “Swine Flu” and keep up to date with the latest on this deadly virus. Apparently the symptoms are almost similar to other regular flu symptoms. It includes fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills, and fatigue. It is also reported that Diarrhea and vomiting are associated with “Swine Flu”. Now what worries everyone is that such symptoms are common for every kind of flu. And neither you, nor your doctor can easily tell you whether you have Swine Flu or not. The doctor has to send a sample for lab test in order to ascertain the disease.

It’s always better to take precaution rather than find a cure. The advised precaution are to wash your hand with soap on a regular basis, specially after sneezing or coughing. You may want to use some alcohol based hand cleaner for that matter. You should also avoid getting too close to sick people and of course avoid touching your mouth, nose or eyes at least when you are not at home. As for the treatment, may people who were infected by this virus, recovered fully without any medicines or treatment. However it is suggested that antiviral drugs like Tamiflu and Relenza should be taken within 48 hours when the symptoms develop. These medicines treat or prevent swine flu. However there is no vaccination for “Swine Flu” as on yet. Since it is a totally new form of virus, therefore the vaccinations should be out within few months. And in case you have been vaccinated already with this season’s flu vaccine and you think you won’t get this swine virus, well, think again! The vaccines does not have any fighting power against these new viruses.

One more thing. You cannot get infected with “Swine Flu” if you eat Pork, Bacon or any pig product. However i would say, what’s the rush? Why take chances anyways?..

Alright, so that is all things important that i knew about “Swine Flu”. If you are wondering why have i written such an article then here is the reason. My father is a Doctor and it is important for him, professionally, to keep up to date with all such diseases specially with flu and viruses outbreak. So, today, early morning, i researched lot of reputable websites in order to find information on this influenza. When i was done with it, i felt the need of spreading to message to everyone. If even few of you read this article on “Swine Flu”, I’ll believe my hard work on this research has been paid off. Just don’t forget to spread the message to as many people as possible. Tweet it, Digg it or mail it or just word of mouth. I will be happy with anything!

Please Note: It is also important to mention that my research has been from reputable websites like Wikipedia.com, WebMD.com and Google.com. So i think the article is pretty accurate as far as symptoms, stats and treatment is concerned. However you might want to double check it again! Thanks

Google Maps is being updated regularly with people who are suspects or have been confirmed for “Swine Flu”. It also marks the areas where cases have resulted into deaths. The legends used for your convenience are : Yellow for those who tested negative, Pink for suspects, Purple for confirmed cases and markers with no dots in between are death cases.

Philips SHP2700 Headphones

I have to admit here that this is my first Philips brand device/gadget that i ever purchased. For displays, i have always trusted Samsung. For audio, Sony has been the only choice. And Apple, Nokia and Sony Ericsson do well when i have to look for a cell phone. So Philips never made to my list of favorites ever.

However this time around, i went on to shop for audio headphones. As i prefer Sony in this case, i went to the best-est Sony retailer and  asked for a full size audio PC headphones. The only available model was Sony MDR-XB300. It is supposed to be an extra bass headphone. Apparently, i could try the headphones as for demo. The sound clarity was crystal clear, bass was as good as zero, and the maximum volume was never satisfactory. It was little disappointing as i had lot of expectations from Sony’s headphones. Unfortunately there was just one model available in the full size headphones. So i had to move on…

I tried few other shops in Chandigarh as well. But it looked like Sony was shipping only the MDR-XB300 model to Chandigarh. I had almost given up on finding some good headphones until i visited Music World. There was a whole section dedicated just for the headphones and i could see Sony, Philips, Microsoft and few other brands that i do not find worth mentioning. My first impression as i laid my eyes on Philips SHP2700 was “Wow! This looks cool”. However once again, it was difficult judging the sound quality as there was no demo available. Usually at such stores, demos/trials are least expected. I had already tried Sony headphones, so the last option i had was to compare the specifications of both the branded headphones. The frequency range for Sony was 5 to 22,000 Hz whereas that of Philips was 18 to 28,000 Hz. Amplifier power for Sony was 24 Ohms whereas that of Philips was 32 Ohms. One look at these stats and i knew i found a better headphone than Sony’s MDR-XB300. The only factor remaining was the price tag on both of these. Sony MDR-XB300 was priced at INR 1090 and Philips SHP2700 came with a price tag of INR 1495. But the price equation soon was discarded as i noticed that Sony MDR-XB300 is not even a full size headphone as it’s diameter measures 30mm. On checking Philips SHP2700, i found it measured 40mm speaker drivers. Thus it would fit the ears and cover them much better than Sony’s headphone. So without further ado and any checks on more stats, i paid for Philips headphone and brought it home.

Now what? I unpacked the headphones as soon as i came home. Surprisingly, it had single cable and not the Y shaped cable which i didn’t notice while purchasing. I prefer single cables with headphones so that was good. The cable length turned out to be 3 meters which is pretty damn long. That’s not a bad thing but perhaps is not required. Now it was time to plug-in the headphones and see what it could do. With full volume on my PC and on Winamp, i wasn’t expecting too much loudness in the music, specially after the disappointment by Sony’s headphone. But believe it or not, i had to take off the headphones as soon as the music started. It was too loud and i simply couldn’t bear it. I was lot happy with the loudness. The box came with an additional adaptor for the wire. The default size is 3.5mm and that of additional adapter/converter was 6.3mm. The headphones looks damn good as well.

One thing i do need to mention is that there should have been a volume controller on the headphones. I always have to turn down the volume on winamp or youtube or other media players as on 100% volume, it really becomes very unpleasant. Fact is that you may be able to listen to music at loud volume. But i don’t think anyone can watch movies or videos on that volume. Sounds a little insane. Also, the box says that you can listen to hours on this headphone. Well it’s not cent percent true. In summers, your ears will become so hot that you won’t be able to wear it continuously for even couple of hours. Of course this is based on personal experience so you better believe it.

Anyways, i think i finally made a good buy in the end and with that i got my first Philips product in my gadget galleria.

I’m really not sure why i termed this post as a revolution. Probably i feel that such campaigns will bring a revolution in the world and make it a better place to live in, eventually.

Anyways, you might have noticed on my blog that the whole blog is about me. The niche/subjects everything has to do with me or things that i own or admire. Probably that keeps my blog as original as one can be. However there is one thing that i received today in an email that i would like to share with you! I am not sure about the copyrights of the following images and the source of these pics as they were sent via an email. Of course copyrights of the images below belong to their respective owners and i have no intentions to misuse them at all and i do respect owners’ decision if they want to get them deleted from the following gallery.

I will probably post this as a public service message. And of course it will be a constant boost to myself for the motivation and determination because i am a culprit myself. So here are some images that will help in quitting bad habit of smoking cigarettes and cigars, etc.

Image 12 does state lot of reasons to quit smoking. If you do not smoke, you will probably find this posts as boring or useless or not worth reading. Probably it’s true for you but you might know a good friend or someone you care about who smokes and finds it hard to quit smoking. Why not share this article with theme and help in the revolution.

By the way, i had to do a lot of work on editing these 5 images. Apparently these all were part of one single image. So that’s my little contribution in the revolution to make earth a better place!

If you have been on my blog recently, you would have noticed small changes frequently being made to my blog design. In the last few days, i have tried many new stylings for my blog. I’m pretty sure that i will stay with the present look that i have given to my blog.

The cross browser compatibility has been a major challenge for me, in so called redesigning of the blog. On my Samsung SyncMaster 226BW display monitor wherein i have a 1680 x 1050 resolution, SharatJaswal.com seems to do well with all the browsers. I have tested it on Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari. So far so good. All looks good. However when i see my blog on my Sony Vaio laptop,  it seems that the tab which shows “Most Popular Posts” and “Most Commented Posts” is slightly falling off the theme particularly in Internet Explorer. I am so fed up of it. I have tried so many CSS changes and coding, but i don’t seem to make it any better on lower resolution. I remember when i got this new professional/custom design for my blog way back in September 2007. I even made a preview/review post about the design back then. At that time, i got the design coded by Dr. Gauresh. I just can’t find him online anymore. Else it would have been easy for him to sort out this problem. I am not sure anymore if i could take care of this problem by myself. So yes, if you can provide any assistance, help, support in fixing this issue, i will be more than thankful.

I also noticed a “stack overflow”error which popped up in Internet Explorer every time a single post page was opened. The error cause came out to be the comment page. If i had 10 comments on a post, then that post when viewed in IE, would pop up 10 error pop up windows. Fortunately, searching for the solution wasn’t difficult as it seems that many blogger’s face the same problem. So i took care of that as well.

Social Bookmarking icons was another thing i concentrated on this time. You may have noticed the new icons beneath every post. It looks really cool to me. On the right sidebar, you will also notice another set of social bookmark buttons. That’s basically how you can reach me on popular social networking sites.

I hope you like my new re-design on the blog. Hopefully the colors and structure of the blog has that likability factor in it. Of course if you find any bugs in design or somewhere else, then do let me know. I will be greatly thankful.

Apparently, this is the 100th post on my weblog. My maiden century in blogging. Stating the mini facts from the Admin’s dashboard, i have exactly 100 posts and 400 comments after this post. Thank you to you guys who made my frequent blogging possible. I hope to get better with time.

By the way, i guess you might be wondering about the title i gave to the post. Have you heard something similar before. I think you did. “Hey…What’s up Doc?” is the punchline of the famous cartoon character “Bugs Bunny”. I just wrote the title casually until i noticed that the title sounded familiar.