First edition of Nat Geo magazine to have India’s most-haunt​ed places

First edition of Nat Geo magazine to have India’s most-haunted places If you are an ardent traveller and wish to do paranormal investigations on your own, here’s a guide. India’s most haunted places will feature in the first edition of National Geographic Traveller (NGT) India.

NGT India is the Indian edition of  National Geographic Traveller (USA), the travel magazine of the National Geographic Society. It is being brought out by Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) Media through its tie-up with National Geographic Society. The inaugural edition will hit the stands next week.
Priced at Rs 120, the Indian edition of the travel magazine will feature a series of unusual Indian and
global destinations.
NGT India is the Indian edition of National Geographic Traveller (USA), the travel magazine of the National Geographic Society.  “Around 85 per cent of the content will be for Indian travellers, specifically catering to the family travellers in India,” said Mr Manas Mohan, Publisher, National Geographic Traveller India and Chief Operating Officer, ACK Media. Around 60,000 copies will be out in the first month and the publishers are hopeful of tapping the emerging market on the back of a buoyant growth in the travel segment in India. “We are seriously activating the trade and in the next few days we will be meeting more than 1,000 vendors across different cities in India,” he added.
NGT India aims to be inclusive and is all about travel experiences, family travel and unusual elements in travel, as well as new ways of covering older destinations and eco-tourism insights.
Without revealing much about the content of the first edition of NGT India, Mr Mohan said that there will be plenty of “unusual and unexplored” travel destinations that will be featured. Amar Chitra Katha acquired India Book House Pvt. Ltd (IBH), one of the oldest and largest distribution networks
for books and published material, last year. IBH has been distributing Nat Geotitles in India for the last three years. It has a distribution network of more than 15,000 vendors and stores across India and for NGT India, it will tie-up with around 800 vendors, retail outlets and stores. ACK also has plans to bring the merchandised products of National Geographic Society to India like travel kits. “We also have aggressive plans for e-commerce. In fact, 80 per cent of our subscribers are from this segment,” Mr Mohan said.


Source
| Business Line | 29 July 2012

op 10 Most Usable Content Management Systems

op 10 Most Usable Content Management Systems

There are plenty of options when it comes to picking a content management system for a development project. Depending on how advanced you need the CMS to be, what language it’s built in, and who is going to be using it, it can be a nightmare trying to find the “perfect” CMS for a project.

However, some CMSs have a slight edge over the rest of the competition because of the usability of the software. Some are just easier to install, use and extend, thanks to some thoughtful planning by the lead developers. Here are 10 of the most usable CMSs on the web to use in your next project.

1. WordPress

What is there left to say about WordPress that hasn’t already been said? The PHP blogging platform is far and away the most popular CMS for blogging, and probably the most popular CMS overall. It’s a great platform for beginners, thanks to their excellent documentationand super-quick installation wizard. Five minutes to a running CMS is pretty good. Not to mention the fact that the newest versions auto-update the core and plugins from within the backend, without having to download a single file.

For those users not familiar with HTML or other markup language, a WYSIWYG editor is provided straight out of the box. The backend layout is streamlined and intuitive, and a new user should be able to easily find their way around the administration section. Wordpres also comes with built-in image and multimedia uploading support.

For developers, the theming language is fairly simple and straightforward, as well the Plugin API.

The WordPress Community is a faithful and zealous bunch. WordPress probably has the widest base ofplugins and themes to choose from. A great part about the WordPress community is the amount of help and documentation online you can find on nearly every aspect of customizing WordPress. If you can dream it, chances are it’s already been done with WordPress and documented somewhere.

2. Drupal

Drupal is another CMS that has a very large, active community. Instead of focusing on blogging as a platform, Drupal is more of a pure CMS. A plain installation comes with a ton of optional modules that can add lots of interesting features like forums, user blogs, OpenID, profiles and more. It’s trivial to create a site with social features with a simple install of Drupal. In fact, with a few 3rd party modules you can create some interesting site clones with little effort.

One of Drupal’s most popular features is the Taxonomy module, a feature that allows for multiple levels and types of categories for content types.

Drupal also has a very active community powering it, and has excellent support for plugins and other general questions.

3. Joomla!

Joomla is a very advanced CMS in terms of functionality. That said, getting started with Joomla is fairly easy, thanks to Joomla’s installer. Joomla’s installer is meant to work on common shared hosting packages, and is a very straightforward considering how configurable the software is.

Joomla is very similar to Drupal in that it’s a complete CMS, and might be a bit much for a simple portfolio site. It comes with an attractive administration interface, complete with intuitive drop-down menus and other features. The CMS also has great support for access control protocols like LDAP, OpenID and even Gmail.com.

The Joomla site hosts more than 3,200 extensions, so you know the developer community behind the popular CMS is alive and kicking. Like WordPress, you can add just about any needed functionality with an extension. However, the Joomla theme and extension community relies more on paid plugins and themes, so if you’re looking for customizations, be ready to pay.

4. ExpressionEngine

ExpressionEngine (EE) is an elegant, flexible CMS solution for any type of project. Designed to be extensible and easy to modify, EE sets itself apart in how clean and intuitive their user administration area is. It takes only a matter of minutes to understand the layout of the backend and to start creating content or modify the look. It’s fantastic for creating websites for less-than-savvy clients that need to use the backend without getting confused.

ExpressionEngine is packed with helpful features like the ability to have multiple sites with one installation of software. For designers, EE has a powerful templating engine that has custom global variables, custom SQL queries and a built in versioning system. Template caching, query caching and tag caching keep the site running quickly too.

One of my favorite features of EE that is the global search and replace functionality. Anyone who’s ever managed a site or blog knows how useful it is to change lots of data without having to manually search and open each page or post to modify it.

ExpresssionEngine is quite different than other previously-mentioned CMS in that it’s paid software. The personal license costs $99.95, and the commercial license costs $249.99.

5. TextPattern

Textpattern is a popular choice for designers because of its simple elegance. Textpattern isn’t a CMS that throws in every feature it can think of. The code base is svelte and minimal. The main goal of Textpattern is to provide an excellent CMS that creates well-structured, standards-compliant pages. Instead of providing a WYSIWYG editor, Textpattern uses textile markup in the textareas to create HTML elements within the pages. The pages that are generated are extremely lightweight and fast-loading.

Even though Textpattern is deliberately simple in design, the backend is surprisingly easy to use and intuitive. New users should be able to find their way around the administration section easily.

While Textpattern may be very minimal at the core level, you can always extend the functionality by 3rd party extensions, mods or plugins. Textpattern has an active developer community with lots of help and resources at their Textpattern.org site.

6. Radiant CMS

The content management systems that we’ve listed so far are all PHP programs. PHP is the most popular language for web development, but that doesn’t mean we should overlook other popular web languages like Ruby. Radiant CMS is a fast, minimal CMS that might be compared to Textpattern. Radiant is built on the popular Ruby framework Rails, and the developers behind Radiant have done their best to make the software as simple and elegant as possible, with just the right amount of functionality. Like Textpattern, Radiant doesn’t come with a WYSIWYG editor and relies on Textile markup to create rich HTML. Radiant also has it’s own templating language Radius which is very similar to HTML for intuitive template creation.

7. Cushy CMS

Cushy CMS is a different type of CMS altogether. Sure, it has all the basic functionality of a regular content management system, but it doesn’t rely on a specific language. In fact, the CMS is a hosted solution. There are no downloads or future upgrades to worry about.

How Cushy works is it takes FTP info and uploads content on to the server, which in turn the developer or the designer can modify the layout, as well as the posting fields in the backend, just by changing the style classes of the styles. Very, very simple.

Cushy CMS is free for anyone, even for professional use. There is an option to upgrade to a pro account to use your own logo and color scheme, as well as other fine-grain customizations in the way Cushy CMS functions.

8. SilverStripe

SilverStripe is another PHP CMS that behaves much like WordPress, except has many more configurable options and is tailored towards content management, and not blogging. SilverStripe is unique because it was built upon its very own PHP framework Saphire. It also provides its own templating language to help with the design process.

SilverStripe also has some interesting features built in to the base, like content version control and native SEO support. What’s really unique with SilverStripe is that developers and designers can customize the administration area for their clients, if need be. While the development community isn’t as large as other projects there are some modules, themes and widgets to add functionality. Also, you’ll want to modify the theme for each site, as SilverStripe doesn’t provide much in terms of style, to give the designer more freedom.

9. Alfresco

Alfresco is a JSP is a beefy enterprise content management solution that is surprisingly easy to install. A really useful feature of Alfresco is the ability to drop files into folders and turn them into web documents. Alfresco might be a little bit more work than some of the other CMS and isn’t as beginner-friendly, it certainly is quite usable given the massive power of the system. The administration backend is clean and well-designed.

While Alfresco might not be a great choice for most simple sites, it’s an excellent choice for enterprise needs.

10. TYPOlight

TYPOlight seems to have the perfect balance of features built into the CMS. In terms of functionality, TYPOlight ranks with Drupal and ExpressionEngine, and even offers some unique bundled modules like newsletters and calendars. Developers can save time with the built-in CSS generator, and there are plenty of resources for learning more about the CMS.

If there is a downside to TYPOlight, it’s that it has so many features and configurable options. Even though the backend is thoughtfully organized, there are still a lot of options to consider. But if you’re wanting to build a site with advanced functionality and little extra programming, TYPOlight could be a great fit.

The State Education Ministers’ Conference

Press Information Bureau  Government of India
Ministry of Human Resource Development 
05-June-2012 19:59 IST 
 
The State Education Ministers’ Conference : Summary Record of Discussions  The Conference of State & UT Education Ministers’ was held on 5th June 2012 with Shri Kapil Sibal, Minister for Human Resource  development,Communications and IT, Government of India in the Chair. Shri E. Ahamed, Minister of State for Human Resource Development, 20 Ministers of Education representing various State Governments and Union Territories, Smt. Anshu Vaish, Secretary, Department of School Education & Literacy, Shri Ashok Thakur,Secretary, Higher Education, Prof. Sanjay G. Dhande, Director, IIT-Kanpur, Prof. Damodar Acharya, Director, IIT-Kharagpur, Prof. Gautam Barua, Director, IIT-Guwahati, heads of autonomous institutions, and senior officials of the Central and State Governments were present. 

In his opening remarks, Shri Kapil Sibal, Minister for Human Resource Development (HRD) emphasized the centrality of State Governments both in policy formulation as also in their effective implementation. The HRD Minister recalled the cooperation extended by the State Governments in the education sector during the last three years and thanked all the State Education Ministers for the same. He stated that Education being a Concurrent subject, consultations and continuous dialogue with the States becomes crucial in a federating structure. These interactions have been extremely useful in shaping the initiatives and policies of the Ministry, ranging from the Right to Education, continuous and Comprehensive evaluation, reforms in higher education
etc.

At the outset the Minutes of the State Education Ministers Conference held on 22nd February 2012 were confirmed and the Action Taken Report was noted. Thereafter the following issues were deliberated.

1. A presentation on the reforms proposed in the entrance examinations for admission to engineering institutions was made by Prof Sanjay G. Dhande, Director, IIT Kanpur. The process adopted in consulting various stakeholders and the details of the decision arrived at the meeting of the Joint Council of IITs, NITs and IIITs in its meeting on 28.5.2012 was explained in detail. The percentile normalisation process and the modalities for organisation of the common test were explained by Directors of IIT-Guwahati, Prof Gautam Barua and
IIT-Kharagpur, Prof Damodar Acharya. The representative from Maharashtra stated that a consultation with various stakeholders had been organised by the State Government, where the overwhelming opinion was in support of the common test. The Minister from Gujarat stated that they have written to the Central
Government supporting the common test. It was explained that States would have the freedom to join in the common examination system and have the autonomy to determine their own relative weightages to normalized Class XII Board marks, performance in JEE-MAIN and JEE-ADVANCED. 

On queries raised by States, it was clarified that the Academic Body to be constituted for the JEE-MAIN test would have representation from States in an appropriate manner. It was also clarified that where the State intends to join in the common test for admission to engineering institutions in the State, the exam papers would be also available in the regional language of the State in addition to English and Hindi. On a query raised on the syllabus for the JEE-MAIN, it was clarified that the Council of all Boards of Secondary Education had, in 2010, adopted a core curriculum in Sciences and Maths and the examination would be based on the core curriculum so adopted.  After detailed deliberations, the proposal for a common examination process for admission to engineering programmes was supported unanimously. The States were of the opinion that IITs should also adopt the same format as other central educational institutions in the longer term. The States were requested to
convey their decision on the year of joining in the common admission process and the relative weightages to normalized Class XII Board marks, performance in JEE-MAIN and JEE-ADVANCED by 30th June to enable preparations to be made accordingly.

2. A presentation was made by the Shri R.D. Sahay, Joint Secretary, on the draft Bill for establishment of IIITs and the implementation of the Scheme for IIITs on public-private partnership mode. The draft Bill was discussed in detail and States unanimously supported the Bill. There was a demand from States that the Bill should be moved at the earliest for Parliamentary approval. It was informed that the Central Government intends to introduce the Bill in the Monsoon Session of Parliament. The Scheme for establishment of IIITs was
discussed in detail and various suggestions were offered by the States. On a query from some States, it was clarified that the States were expected to provide land free of cost under the Scheme. A suggestion was made by the Minister of Rajasthan that the private partner need not necessarily be from industry. A suggestion was made by the Minister of Bihar for allowing State or Central PSUs to be accepted as industry partners. It was agreed that the following modifications to the Scheme could be considered:-

(i) To allow Central and State Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) to be accepted as industry partners for establishment of IIITs; and 
(ii) Giving States the flexibility to bring in one or more industry partners
instead of limiting the no of partners to three.

3. Smt. Archana Chitnis, Minister of Education Madhya Pradesh presented the Report of the Group of Ministers on the “Concept and Frame work of the Community College Scheme” in the Conference. The Report was unanimously accepted by the States and UTs. While welcoming the setting up of Community Colleges, the State Education Ministers agreed that the concept of Community Colleges will be paradigm shift leading to skill development and energisation of the community and the youth will be educated not only for taking employment,
but more importantly for becoming self-employed. It was decided to start 200 Community Colleges on a pilot basis in 2012-13 and then scale up gradually. The States were requested to identify local skill requirements linked to local needs which could form the basis of opening community colleges and forward proposals to the Central Government by June 2012.

4. A presentation was made by Financial Advisor on the recommendations of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) for adoption of accounting standards for educational institutions. An accounting system that presents a true and correct picture of the state of affairs of an educational institution is an important requirement for transparency and accountability besides assisting in prevention of malpractices. Educational institutions are set up as trusts or societies and adopt different accounting systems. Adopting a common
accounting standard would assist States in evaluating the expenditure of schools and estimate the reimbursement to be provided to private schools under RTE Act. The adoption of common accounting standards by educational institutions was endorsed unanimously. While States may consider adoption of the accounting standards in the school system according to their convenience,the adoption of these standards in the higher education sector through instructions issued by the concerned regulatory authorities was supported. It was also
decided that the accounting formats prepared by ICAI be circulated to all States and States would revert on these formats at the earliest. States would also be supported for capacity building in implementation.

5. A Presentation was made by Dr. Amarjit Singh, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development on Revised Centrally Sponsored Scheme on Teacher Education. In the presentation revised guidelines pertaining to financial sharing between Centre and States, provisions for strengthening of SCERTs, Colleges of Teacher Education, Institutes of Advanced Studies in Education, DIETs, establishment of Block Institutes of Teachers Education (BITEs) were explained in detail. The States were requested to submit proposals under the scheme for strengthening teacher education. They were requested to fill up vacancies in the teacher education cadre, provide in their respective budgets to meet the State share for the scheme, strengthen management of teacher
education institutes, increase the use of ICT, strengthen mechanisms for ensuring quality civil works, grant more autonomy to the teacher education institutions and strengthen monitoring mechanisms.

6. A presentation on Two Years of RTE-SSA was made by Shri Pramod Tiwari, Director, School Education. The presentation gave an overview of the progress made by the States in regard to the implementation of Right to Education Act – Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the areas of concern were highlighted. The issues
related to availability of funds, construction of buildings, PTR norms, teaching hours, etc. were discussed at length. There was unanimous view that all these concerns are genuine and need to be addressed at various levels in order to facilitate the implementation of RTE Act by the States. The State Education Ministers also raised the issue of funding of reimbursement of cost of education of 25% children admitted to private schools under Section 12 of RTE Act

7. Discussions were also held on UGC Regulations on Prevention of Discrimination and Establishment of Ombudsman, setting up of Model Schools under Public Private Partnership and Saakshar Bharat. It was decided to circulate the UGC Regulations to States for their comments. 
 
Source | www.pib.nic.in

Get Ready to Fail by Scott Edinger

You will fail. It's inevitable, so you might as well begin preparing for it now. The failure may be small, like, say, making a mistake on a client engagement. Or it may be quite grand, like losing a job you valued. How you handle that failure can raise or lower the risks of failing again — and shape your legacy as a leader.
Some people handle these setbacks well. Others not so well. In my work, I've observed several common themes among those leaders who tend to cope particularly effectively with the inescapable.
Acknowledge the failure and put it in perspective. You can't begin to bounce back from a mistake if you don't admit you've made it. As obvious as it sounds, it's clearly not always easy to do. Research shows that owning up to their mistakes is the key factor separating those who handle failure well from those who don't. Those who were derailed perseverated and didn't talk to others about it. They made little attempt to rectify the consequences. Those who weren't derailed did the opposite: They admitted their mistakes, accepted responsibility, and then took steps to fix the problem. And afterwards, they proceeded to forget about it and move on.
Look for causes, not blame. If you've caused a problem, the good news is that you have control over that cause. By focusing on finding the cause(s), rather than assigning blame (with all the value judgments that go with that), you take control and move to prevent similar failures from happening again. Thinking in terms of causes rather than blame is similar to adopting what Carol Dweck describes as a "growth-oriented" rather than a "fixed" mind-set. A fixed mind-set tends to leave us helpless and ready to wilt in the face of a challenge. A growth mind-set puts us in a position to press on toward success.
Before you wrack your brain to think up an appropriate response, take a break. Get away from the task at hand for a while and let your brain refocus. None of us is designed to work 24/7, but in the wake of failure, it's often hard to stop thinking about what's happened. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, this is probably the last thing you should do. Engage in other pursuits. Spend time with loved ones, read, or simply get some rest. Physical activity is a plus (we're all familiar with the effects of endorphins on brain activity). It doesn't matter how long of a break you take: five minutes, five hours, five days. The point is to let your mind wander. You'll be amazed at what you come up with.
Get some help. Feeling down is normal. Prolonged periods of depression and despair are not. If you find you can't get into that growth-oriented mind-set no matter how much of a break you take, find some way to express your feelings in the company of someone you trust. That could be a friend, a colleague, a mentor, or a therapist. There's no shame in seeking help when you've suffered a setback. And therapy no longer carries the stigma of being damaged that it used to. To prove that, I'll admit here that I've gone to therapy at times in my life when I've felt particularly down, and it has helped immensely. See, no stigma.
Refocus your efforts and take action. Nothing will make you feel quite as good as taking action and finding even a modicum of success in that action. It may take some time to reach that success, but you certainly won't have any until you start trying. One of the ways we feel better is to exert influence and control over a situation, and creating a plan of the actions we intend to take is a surefire way to start feeling that control. Create your plan and get specific about what you'll do to reach your new goals. While you can't change what's happened, you have options for the future, and as you refocus your efforts, think about what would be best from this point forward.
No matter how you dice it, failing is a drag, and none of us likes it. Yet we all have to face it sometime. If you prepare yourself, and know how you will deal with it when you do fail, you'll be able to bounce back that much faster.