Ever since the camera was invented, it has been a great chronicler of life. People relish flipping through their albums, refreshing their memories of the joyous moments and the past. Cameras are the obvious companion on a picnic, family gathering or a trekking. If you are planning to buy a digital SLR, I will tell you why not to buy one.

What do you need the camera for?
The answer to this question will be the key to making correct decision while choosing a camera.  If you need a camera for clicking friends and family, weekend bash, college party or a weekend trip, a compact digital camera should be most of the time as good as a digital SLR, or DSLR, camera. Also, it will be less hassle clicking photos.

I want to flaunt my camera.
A DSLR such as Nikon D60 or Canon EOS 450D is not the right thing if you just want to flaunt a high-end camera. It's good only if you are a photo enthusiast and want to take up photography as a serious hobby or a career option. If you are looking for a camera to flaunt, go for one of the several stylish and feature-rich digital cameras that have enough zoom and video recording features, etc.

Are you ready for the complications?
A digital SLR camera is the only option if you need complete control while clicking photos and want to be a pro photographer. But if you just want to a camera for just capturing memories, a digital SLR may prove to be too cumbersome to handle and take care of. A digital SLR is a very delicate equipment that needs to be handled carefully. It also requires lot of adjustment for getting satisfactory results. If you are not ready for handling the occasional time-consuming maintenance procedure, you should opt for a compact digital camera.

Is an expensive digital SLR worth its price?
Yes, every single penny, but only if you are a photo buff. Whenever you manage to click a grasshopper in action or a grass will a string of glistening dew drops, the great feeling of having achieved something great will outdo the money spent on the camera and its accessories. But if you do not intend to click a grasshopper, do not go shopping for a digital SLR. It will be more of a wasteful expenditure for you.

Ready to spend more money on upgrades?
If you plan to buy a digital SLR, you should be ready to spend several times more than the price of the basic equipment. A digital SLR will come with a body and a kit lens, which will hardly be sufficient for your photography needs. When you will try your camera with the kit lens, you will see yourself severely crippled by the limitations of the lens. To match a professional photographer, you will need to add several lenses, flash, lens filters and tripods to your photography kit. It will cost lot of money. Many lenses will cost several times more than the camera body.

Do you know basics of photography? 
If you don't know what's focal length, aperture and exposure, you will have to spend lot of time learning the basics of the skill. It will require lot of time and practise. Every time you will use a digital SLR, it will require proper adjustments so that the aperture, exposure time, depth of field, etc., are optimal for correct focus on the sublect. Even minor deviations will result in disappointments. Of course, you can use the digital SLR in "Auto" mode for clicking photos on a point-and-shoot basis, but then the SLR will be as good as a compact digital camera.

Are you ready to carry a bulky camera bag to a party?
I guess no. So why spend so much money on a digital SLR. In comparison, a compact camera will fit in your jeans pocket and would give equally good results.

If you have reached here, and still think a digital SLR will be a better option, go ahead and buy one. Just keep in mind that you try all the popular brands such as Nikon and Canon before deciding in favour of one. Once you buy one camera, it will be difficult to change the brand as you will have a lot of lenses and other accessories that will become useless in case you make a switch. So if you are more comfortable with a Nikon, don't settle for a Canon, or vice versa. Also, do a proper market research before spending the money.

Which ever camera you finally decide to buy, go clicking your favourite subjects. Let the camera be an appendage of your body, like your phone. That's how you will get the best photos. A great photo opportunity often comes unannounced.

Have you lost someone to one of the several farm games on Facebook? Many of my Facebook friends are compulsive FarmVille players. The game is designed to keep users engage to the highest level possible. It demands lot of time and care from the users. Some would stay glued to their computers, working on their virtual farms—sowing, harvesting, erecting fences, going to the marketplace, etc.


One of my friends spends hours on this game. Not that I don't play the game, I do it for the joy of having my own farm. Having your own piece of land where you can grow crops and raise cattle is one of the dreams of a large fraction of people, and FarmVille allows people to realise that dream. The developers of the game haven't made online version of farming any easier than real farming. Sowing any crop takes time as it would in real world. Then the crop takes its own time to grow and be ready for harvesting. Once ready, the crop has to be harvested before it wilts.The sophistication of the game makes loyal users who will log into their Facebook account not to see what friends are doing, but only to see if it's time to harvest crop or milk the cows.

I read in an article that some people even set alarms so that they can wake up in the night when their crop is ready for harvest. Amazing compulsion.

So far I have been able to stay away from FarmVille Complusive Disorder. How? Here are a few tips:

Set realistic targets: Like real life, you need to set a goal for the virtual life as well. Don't go for some outrageous target. Think realistically. In my FarVille farm, I am saving for a barn house. Once I buy the barn house that costs 40,000 FarmVille coins, I will reduce the size of my farm and work sparingly, just to maintain my farm.

Choose the right crop: Like any wise farmer, you need to see which crop is best for you. Instead of quick-growing crops such as raspberries and strawberries, go for crops that take some time to grow and be ready for harvest. I find rice to be the best crop for my farm. First it will need 12 hours to be ready for harvest and then I get another 12 hours for harvesting the crop. That means I have to work on my farm only once a day. When I am not sure if I would have time for harvesting, I go for crops that take even longer for being ready. Apart from saving time, a longer harvest period means I spend less money on ploughing the field, which compensates for the lesser amount of coins earned.

Have enough open space on your farm: Any patch of land has a limit of the number of creatures that it can support. If the number exceeds that, the ecological balance gets disturbed. This the reasons why lemmings commit suicide; they try to restore the balance by reducing the pressure on the limited resources available. Apply this logic to your farm and have only the number of animals and trees that look aesthetically pleasing on your farm and don't suck your energy juice. Keep your farm organized and leave lot of empty space for the cattle and yourself.

Don't spend dollars for FarmVille money: You might be tempted to spend some dollars and buy FarmVille currencies. Steer clear of it. Play the game without any hurry and collect all those coins and currencies to fund your purchases. And no rags to riches dreams. Like real life, work your way to prosperity and wealth.

No alarms for playing FarmVille: Please. What joy is a game if you have to set alarms for it. Just play the game in your spare time.

If these tips does not help you get rid of FarmVille Compulsive Disorder, visit a psychiartist for help.

Facebook reached the landmark of 300 million users on 16 September. It must have been a thing to celebrate for its creator Mark Zuckerberg but not for those who have lost their loved ones to this addictive social networking site. And to make sure that their woes don't end any soon, the website says it has started generating enough revenues to keep it operational. Sigh. Here's a story of three close friends who realized the power of Facebook.

Once upon a time, there were three close buddies--Tom, Dick and Harry. They were born on the same day in a village community hospital. Once they got to know each other when they were old enough to sprint on the playground grass and pluck all the beautiful jasmine and roses off the shrubs, they had always been together. They would steal mangoes from the orchard, tie a tin canister to a poor cow's tail and go fishing in the river with their self-made rods. When they grew old, they were enrolled in the village school. Now the mischievous trio would go about teasing poor Lucy and be made to stand against the wall outside the classroom. All this together. They enjoyed it.

And then one day in their computer class, they go to know about this great website that gave "people the power to share and make the world more open and connected".

"Will it bring us even closer?" asked Dick.
"Of course, that's what it is for," said Tom.

So the three friends registered themselves on the website and added each other as friends. They were happy--the whole world now knew they were so close friends.

Now when Harry got his pup, he posted the picture of the little creature on his Facebook wall, Tom and Dick liked it. Harry even posted the pup's barking sound in is Facebook. "Doesn't he sound cute?" he asked his friends on Facebook. "Yeah, the pup is great," they wrote. They were able to share all their stuff on Facebook. Tom and Dick did not have to come to Harry's house to play with the pup as they had done when he had got his rabbit.

Soon the trio started hanging out in Yoville, the Facebook town. They also played Mafia on Facebook. They worked on their farms in FamVille and also helped each other in their chores on Facebook.  Before they could realize, they had started spending all their time together on Facebook. Now they were together even at night, sitting before the glowing computer screens in their homes.

"Isn't Facebook great? We are now always together." wrote Tom after a few weeks of their stay on Facebook. The other two couldn't stop nodding affirmatively.

And there after the trio always remained together as friends on Facebook, though now they hardly met each other on playground.

Facebook is great in allowing people to stay connected but it shouldn't be like Tom, Dick and Harry. Stay connected on the playground. Hangout in pubs in your city, not just in Yoville. Have a farm in the country and grow fruits and vegetables that your friends can enjoy for real. Don't just have Facebook friends, have friends.

A few days ago Google launched its online news reader Fast Flip. The Internet giant launched the product to make reading news online as comfortable and faster as flipping through the pages of a print magazine, at least the official GoogleBlog says so.

Fast Flip is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting.

When I got the news (coincidentally through Google News) I headed straight to get a first-hand experience. Yes, the page loads fast, but does it allow you to flip through the various news pages like a newspaper or a magazine? At present, no. It actually gives you screenshots of the news pages on a single page, allowing you to scan through several pages--only if you have an eye sight that allows you to read tiny prints. The screenshots of the pages are what will grab the attention of your eyes but they fail miserably to let you see the headlines and other details as the pages are squeezed into 200px by 220px images. You end up taking help of the secondary element on the Fast Flip page--the text headlines below the screenshots--which obstructs the normal flow of eyes.

Designers often appreciate Google's search page's design, particularly the huge text box for entering search queries. But ask any graphic designer about Fast Flip, and Google's new venture that is out to offer netizens the comfort of print in their Web Browsers, will hardly be appreciated.

Let's get past this. When you click on one of the screenshots of the news pages, you end up on another page with a bigger screenshot where fonts are of the size that human eyes can read. But as soon as you want to read the remaining portion of the news, you are transported to the original page.

What does this mean. After going merry-go-round with Google Fast Flip, I end up on the same "media-rich page" that "loads dozens of files and can take as much as 10 seconds to load over broadband". And I took this detour with Fast Flip just to save some time!

Couldn't I just subscribe to the feeds of those important news sites? That would have been a lot better. I could have read the entire news in my RSS reader or at least would have been directed straight to the "media-rich" page without ending up on some intermediary page that provides me just half the news. What do you say?

Till recently, I was not on Facebook. Many of you would wonder how I managed to survive for ages without being a part of the world's one of the most popular social networking site? I won't give any details about why I avoided Facebook for a long time, instead I would like to discuss what has hooked me to Facebook and what makes the site such a success.

Chain letter strategy
How has Facebook managed to proliferate so rapidly? If you have ever noticed, Facebook always encourages you to invite new friends to the network. It offers to extract your contact list from various emailing sites and send invites to them on your behalf. The site also keeps suggesting you names of users who could possibly be your friend or acquaintance. Do you know what is this business strategy called? Yeah, it's a form of pyramid sales network or a chain letter, where a person joining the network is supposed to bring in more members. Though many other networking site use the pyramid sales strategy, Facebook does it in a very effective and subtle way.

Twitter with more features
Though Facebook arrived lot earlier than Twitter, it won't be wrong to say that it is a more complex and feature-rich version of Twitter, which is now being dubbed by the traditional media as the most happening thing on the Web2.0, evolving into Web3.0. In Twitter one has to use various independent websites providing services linked to Twitter, say TwitPic that allows Twitter users to post images.
Who won't like to use a more advanced Twitter where one gets all the desired features on the site?

Facebook applications
How does Facebook manage to provide all the services on its own site? Answer is applications. Facebook was wise enough to let others use the popular networking site to host their own services--games, quizzes, interactives, etc. These applications have enabled Facebook to provide a host of services that no single entity can ever manage. Above all, it doesn't have to worry about those applications as all of them are completely taken care by their developers.

There are several applications that increase the traffic on Facebook. Games such as FarmVille, MafiaWars, Scrable and India-made Lexulous have hundreds of Facebook actually hooked to them. Like Facebook, most applications on the site encourgae users to introduce the application to others and also incentivize spreading word about the application, it proliferates pretty fast.

Unobtrusive advertisements
Any venture can be a success only if it can generate significant revenues to sustain itself. Unlike Twitter, Facebook has been able to seamlessly integrate advertising. And contrary to Google's Orkut, Facebook ads are not a banner or ad box that serves no other purpose than an eyesore. They are, like the website, interactive, which makes them more acceptable by users.

Highly mobile
Making Facebook accessible from the most basic of cellphone can be credited for some of its success. Imagine the reach that opens up when it allows users to send and receive updates using mobile text messages. No Internet, no high-end cellphone required.