MediaVidea

I had been working on BasicVersity.com for a year. Now, it is live and running. BasicVersity is an online education site where you can practice and test your basic knowledge of all topics -  basic maths, it-skills, business skills, soft skills, certifications, health sciences, engineering, as well as standardized tests including, but not limited to, SAT, CLEP, AP, DSST, GRE, GMAT and many more.

Currently there are around 180,000 questions in 1500 tests across 700 topics.

I shall not forget to mention that it is all free. If you think you are up to date on online marketing, I suggest you go test your knowledge on BasicVersity right now!

Surprise brings delight in relationships. Tina Brown of The Daily Beast (19 million pageviews/month) says about her non-existent Facebook usage:

What about Facebook?No, I don’t use Facebook. I absolutely don’t want to stay in touch with everybody in my past. I really believe in falling out of touch with people.

...There’s something very healthy about not seeing someone for three years, not knowing what they’re doing, running into them, and finding that they’re now utterly changed. You know, they have gray hair now and they’re divorced. If I was on Facebook, I would know all those things, and I don’t want to know them.

The June 9 OccupyIndia protests by Anonymous teaches you a lot about organizing peaceful protests. These were the instructions, reprinted verbatim, from Aonymnous:

You can wear the GuyFawkes mask during the protest (download the printable version from here).
Protesters may not use vehicles to protest as this may cause accidents, please keep vehicles out of the protest crowd.
Please bring placards, Banners etc that you can prepare so for the cause.
For whom it is possible, Bring cameras and record events, Or better use your smart phone to stream it online using ustream. This will give a proof if something bad is attempted at the protesters.
IF POLICE BLOCKS THE WAY, STAY 50Mts MIN AWAY. DO NOT CONFRONT THEM.
Play the pre-recorded anon Msg to the crowd via loudspeaker (download from here).
Stand in one horizontal line and chant in union
“UNITED AS ONE! DIVIDED BY ZERO! WE ARE ANONYMOUS! WE ARE LEGION! WE DO NOT FORGIVE! WE DO NOT FORGET! EXPECT US!”

However there were those who weren't pleased with how the protests went, in Mumbai, for example. The writer gives these tips for future protest-organizers in India:

1. When holding a protest, take the local weather into account.

2. When planning a protest, don’t pick a venue without shade.

3. Give clear, specific directions on how to reach the site.

4. Prepare activities or speeches in advance, and try to get the crowd involved.

5. Last but not least, ensure that people show up, by hook or crook–even if it means forcing your friends to attend.

Now, there you go, how to organize peaceful protests 101.

Related: Gene Sharpe's 8-point method of non-violent revolution

100 Acronyms that teach us is a chapter in the Success Manual, my 600+ page compilation of business and self-improvement advice. Now it is also available as a free Android App. It is an early version, an updated one is on its way.

Yes, yes, we have all read, heard and seen many things about the land of meritocracy, of capitalism, of this and that... but evidence suggests otherwise. The land of the great American Dream, where every man is one's own master and all that, has been exporting a more stifling form of bureaucracy to other countries. From The Baffler:

Americans do not like to think of themselves as a nation of bureaucrats—quite the opposite—but the moment we stop imagining bureaucracy as a phenomenon limited to government offices, it becomes obvious that this is precisely what we have become. The final victory over the Soviet Union did not lead to the domination of the market, but, in fact, cemented the dominance of conservative managerial elites, corporate bureaucrats who use the pretext of short-term, competitive, bottom-line thinking to squelch anything likely to have revolutionary implications of any kind.

Read this article in The Atlantic, which also mentions famous people such as Woody Allen and Winona Ryder not using mobile phones.

Sure, there are all sorts of philosophical reasons to forego the latest gizmos, but the bottom line is this: these people can afford to do so. Emailing, browsing the web, loading a phone with apps, movies, and music -- all of these things are basically grunt work.

Yashwant Singh, who runs Bhadas4media, a blog which recently celebrated 4 years of existence, is in my opinion the best Indian blogger, in the true blogger sense - blogging on an issue he is passionate about, the right/plight of Indian journalists, highlighting any example of media-industrial complex on a regular basis, which all the Twitteratis and pseudo-bloggers (English language) have mostly failed to do so far.

From a wide sampling of Yashwant's writing, which is in Hindi, first you have to read this, which is the most frank personal story of any Indian blogger I have read so far.

It is a passionate blogger's philosophy, a manifesto for carrying on no matter what. This blogger thought he would be dead by 38. No chance, so far.

Yashwant receives threats for his blogging all the time, and he often responds by giving the caller the address of his home.

Read Yashwant's post about high salaries of media organization CEOs, and this one about huge salaries of new channel/newspaper editors while stringers go unpaid.

Also read these:

Chetan Kunte, Blogging Hero
A simple guide to the biggest moments in Indian blogging history

Students in China cramming for a competitive exam, studying non-stop, hooked up to IV Drips of invigorating amino acids. The Indian equivalent can be a doting mother sending in unending supplies of any nutritional drink. Forget the bucolic imagery, it is still a sad rat race.

Is it measured by IQ tests? No. Is it measured by Peformance in entrance exams? No. Here's Susan Sontag:

I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces “intelligence.”

I just finished updating The Success Manual. Simultaneously, I also compiled 3 new collections of useful advice from the best sources.

1. The Gist: 1000+ Big Ideas From 200+ Greatest Business & Self-Improvement Books of all time.

2. Rules for Startups:  Compilation of big ideas about startups from 50+ Best Books on Entrepreneurship.

3. Rules for Writers: 200+ Big Ideas about Writing from Great Writers.

I hope you will find them useful.