This Week I Learned - Week #165

This Week I Learned -

* Azure App Service app cloning can be used to clone apps from one region or one app service environment to another. 

* Active geo-replication in Azure SQL Database provides database-level disaster recovery, cross-region redundancy, readable online secondary databases, and automatic asynchronous replication.

* On June 2, 2016, users from multiple locations faced issues searching for a product on Amazon’s desktop as well as mobile websites. The problem lasted for more than 3 hours.

* Based on interest-based ads policy pages of Facebook and Amazon is that they are both associated with the Digital Advertising Alliance & follow the same modus operandi

* The average age of an InMobian is 28 years

* It takes quite some time to draw a cartoon & color it

* In October 1887, John Boyd Dunlop, a veterinary surgeon, developed the first practical pneumatic or inflatable tyre for his son's tricycle

* Henry Nicholas III cofounded fabless semiconductor firm Broadcom in 1991 from a spare bedroom in a Redondo Beach, Calif. condominium with business partner Henry Samueli, his professor at UCLA to become one of the most financially successful student-teacher partnership of all time. In February 2016 Broadcom finalled a $37 billion cash and stock deal to be acquired by chip firm Avago and, the largest acquisition in technology to date.

* In 1984, less than half of people on The Forbes 400 were self-made; today, 69% of the 400 created their own fortunes. To merit a score of 10, a member of the Forbes 400 (billionaires) would have to have been born into poverty, or lower middle class, and had to overcome obstacles such as being left an orphan, forced to work low-paying jobs, or faced abuse or discrimination.  Oprah Winfrey, who grew up dirt poor, raised alternately by her single mom and her grandmother, and was sexually abused by several male relatives, and George Soros, who survived the Nazi occupation of Budapest, fled Hungary under Communist rule and worked his way through the London School of Economics as a railway porter and a waiter, are prime examples of what a 10 represents.
1: Inherited fortune but not working to increase it: Laurene Powell Jobs
2: Inherited fortune and has a role managing it: Forrest Mars Jr.
3: Inherited fortune and helping to increase it marginally: Penny Pritzker
4: Inherited fortune and increasing it in a meaningful way: Henry Ross Perot Jr.
5: Inherited small or medium-size business and made it into a ten-digit fortune: Donald Trump
6: Hired or hands-off investor who didn’t create the business: Meg Whitman
7: Self-made who got a head start from wealthy parents and moneyed background: Rupert Murdoch
8: Self-made who came from a middle- or upper-middle-class background: Mark Zuckerberg
9: Self-made who came from a largely working-class background; rose from little to nothing: Eddie Lampert
10: Self-made who not only grew up poor but also overcame significant obstacles: Oprah Winfrey

* Teens react differntly to information when they believe it has been endorsed by many or few of their peers, even if these peers are strangers, according to UCLA researchers.This behavior influences posts they may "like" on Facebook

* India Post is one of the prime carriers that Amazon India uses as a delivery channel in over 19,000 pin-codes through 155,000 post-offices which includes a majority of outlets in rural areas across all 35 states and union territories in India.

* Tiger Global Management, the largest investor in Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart, reduced its stake in the rival company Amazon by about two-third in the January-March 2016 quarter. Alibaba has investments in PayTM, Snapdeal, NDTV’s gadget e-commerce venture, Gadgets 360.

* Every year, Indian Railways loses about Rs.1,500 crore in providing 53 concessions as a part of social service obligation, including those for senior citizens, differently-abled and patients. Of the total loss of Rs.1,500 crore on passenger fare concessions, the largest chunk of about Rs.1,000 crore is accounted for by subsidies for senior citizens. The Parliamentary Affairs Ministry pays the full ticket fares for Members of Parliament travelling on railway concession passes - The Hindu

* The automobile industry is the largest constituent of the manufacturing sector in the country's economy which contributes to more than 47% of the manufacturing GDP of the country...it is the fifth largest sector receiving Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the country.

* "There is no doubt that our grievances against the British Empire had a sound basis. As the painstaking statistical work of the Cambridge historian Angus Maddison has shown, India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3% at that time, to as low as 3.8% in 1952. Indeed, at the beginning of the 20th century, "the brightest jewel in the British Crown" was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income." — Manmohan Singh

* Happydent White chewing gum is an Ayurvedic Proprietary Medicine! It lists Neem satva, Pudina satva, Pudina spiceta, Meetha (baking) soda as ingredients and is manufactured by Perfetti Van Melle, a global confectionary conglomerate headquartered in Lainate, Italy and Breda (the Netherlands). Perfetti Van Melle India crossed 1,200 crores in 2010 and 1,600 crores in 2012.

* Hong Kong Phoenix Television political commentator Wu Jun thinks Trump “could in fact be the best president for China,”

* The New York City Marathon sure has come a long way; from 127 entrants in its inaugural year (1970) to being the largest marathon in the world in 2015 with over 49,000 finishers!

* When drinking alcohol, intoxication occurs when it passes from the stomach and intestines to the blood, in a process called absorption. While all types of ingested alcohol are eventually absorbed, the rate of absorption is determined by factors such as biological sex, body weight, type of alcohol, full or empty stomach, speed of consumption, and the use of medications or other drugs in your system. For most people, the body can process approximately 1 to 1.5 ounces (oz.) of pure alcohol an hour, which is the amount contained in a single standard drink (i.e., twelve oz. beer, five oz. of wine, or one and a half oz. of hard liquor). While the choice of alcoholic beverage can vary between people, the rate at which the alcohol is absorbed into the body does not change  - Go Ask Alice!

This Week I Learned - Week #163

This Week I Learned -

* The latest ebook from Microsoft "Understanding Azure - A Guide For Developers" covers newer Azure platform services such as Azure Functions, Azure Service Fabric and Azure IoT application development.

* This interactive Azure Platform Map provides short summaries of Azure Services

* The range of tools that are available now and can be considered while designing, developing and deploying software applications is vast

* Zoho AppCreator lets you create native applications across iOS, Android, and Windows that take complete advantage of your device's hardware.

* Some good folks have created a custom ImportJSON formula for Google Spreadsheets

* Progressive Web Applications take advantage of new technologies to bring the best of mobile sites and native applications to users. Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce site, decided to combine their web presence and native app into a Progressive Web Application - Flipkart Lite

* Pinterest loads 4x faster and uses 8x less data with a speedier version of their mobile web pages using Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP).

* In 2015, the Mountain View-based social network site, LinkedIn agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit over its 2012 security breach. The lawsuit suggested that the company violated not just its privacy policy but also an agreement with premium subscribers on keeping their personal information safe.

* Uber can read your smartphone's battery levels. People are more likely to pay for surge if their cell phone is almost out of battery.

* Some annoying Facebook features like auto-playing videos and interest-based ads can thankfully be controlled through Settings

* reCAPTCHA is a bot that can find bots

* 49 execs at Infosys drew over Rs 1 crore

* Caused by the highly contagious varicella-zoster virus, chickenpox is spread through inhalation of droplets dispersed into the air by coughing and sneezing as well as through direct contact with the skin. Because the virus is spread so easily, it’s advised that people affected by chickenpox steer clear of contact with others until the lesions have dried and crusted over into scabs — usually between four to seven days after the initial onset of symptoms. The chickenpox rash is characterized by three distinct phases: first, the initial breakout of pink bumps; next, fluid-filled blisters; and finally, crusts and scabs. Once you’ve reached phase three, you’re typically good to go back to school or work...the great majority of chickenpox infections last no longer than ten days. The best way to accelerate the healing process is to avoid scratching. Try dabbing calamine lotion on itchy spots, and avoid popping fluid-filled blisters. Adults can also experience temporarily relief from itching through the use of an oral or topical antihistamine, such as diphenhydramine. Do not take any medications that contain aspirin, as this may lead to a serious condition called Reye’s syndrome - Go Ask Alice!

* Platinum is rarer than gold, as the amount of platinum mined each year is a small fraction of the amount of gold mined each year. Its price is more volatile than gold's.

* Niobium is used to produce stronger, lighter steel for industrial pipes and aircraft parts. It is mined in only three places on Earth, and the price of every kilogram is seven times higher than copper.

* Sugarcane is a perennial grass that is grown in tropical and subtropical areas

* In Maharashtra , the biggest producer and exporter of the fruit in the country, the best quality pomegranates come from the driest regions of the state such as Solapur and the rain shadow regions of Sangli district.

* Indian Railways generates over 100 Terabytes  (1 Terabyte= 1,000 GB) of data in a year. Rather than building better websites that can also work on mobile browsers, it plans to release the relatively hard to maintain mobile apps.

* India Post has over 1.55 lakh post offices of which more than 1.39 lakh are in the rural areas

* SBI, India’s largest commercial bank, is still not among the top 50 banks in the world. It is ranked only 67th among the global banks. For an economy such as India’s — the fastest growing large economy in the world — the domestic banking industry is fragmented.

* The Taj Mahal complex is believed to have been completed in its entirety in 1653 (commissioned in 1632) at a cost estimated at the time to be around 32 million rupees, which in 2015 would be approximately 52.8 billion rupees (US$827 million).  It houses the tomb of his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal. Mumtaz during the birth of their fourteenth child.  Aurangzeb, her sixth child, jailed Shah Jahan soon after the Taj Mahal's completion

* Voot is latest among video streaming sites like ErosNow, Hotstar, Spuul that now serve movies for free or through subscription. Voot works in IE 11 but not in Chrome as the content is DRM protected

This Week I Learned - Week #153

This Week I Learned -

* You can integrate your web, mobile, or API apps with your V1 or V2 virtual networks.

* HockeyApp provides mobile app distribution, crash reporting, and in-app user feedback so you can build the world’s best mobile apps.

* Azure DNS is an Azure Resource Manager–only service, it is not supported in the Azure classic portal.

* Red Hat Enterprise Linux images are now generally available and offered through Azure Marketplace on a pay-as-you-go model with per-hour billing.

* Developers who used Facebook's Parse hosting (which is now closed) as the backend to support their mobile apps, can now utilize Azure App Service.

* Google's Chrome Music Lab makes use of Web Audio API, an open web standard that lets you create and manipulate sound right in the browser.

* ZXing ("Zebra Crossing") is an open-source, multi-format 1D/2D barcode image processing library. The ZXing Decoder Online web application is powered by the barcode scanning implementation in the open source ZXing project.

* ZXing (zebra crossing) provides the capability to initiate the bar code scanner via a webpage through a button click event, anchor tag, or other action that could call a URL on a mobile device.
When the barcode scanner application is installed on an android device, a URL call to:
zxing://scan/?ret=http://foo.com/products/{CODE}/description&SCAN_FORMATS=UPC_A,EAN_13
...will bring up the device bar code reader, the user scans the code, and the code is returned via the callback URL parameter supplied in the zxing URL.

* EAN, or EAN13, stands for European Article Number. The EAN includes the country of origin, the manufacturer, a product number & a checksum digit. When you only look at the barcode, you can't easily see which product it belongs to. EAN-Search.org website provides a reverse EAN lookup, that tells you the product the EAN code belongs to.

* 13-digit EAN-13 barcode format is the most common format used in India. UPC barcodes are 12 digits long, and are used mainly in the USA. EAN barcodes are usually 13 digits long, and they are used all over the world. Any number system which starts with the digit 0 is a UPC-A bar code. Most barcode scanners can read both types of barcode.

* As an affiliate of GS1 Global -  a not-for-profit, industry-led global standards body, GS1 India (set up by Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Governmentof India along with leading Chambers of Commerce and Industry, BIS etc in 1996 as a not-for-profit, independent standards body) administers and allocates GS1 product identifiers used in barcoding for unique and universal identification of supply chain objects, i.e. - products, logistic items, trading partners, locations, documents, assets etc. and other GS1 Standards.

* Google Shopping feeds targeting Australia, Brazil, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom or the United States require merchants to submit valid Global Trade Item Number or ‘gtin’.

* Open Food Facts is a free, open and collaborative database of food products from the entire world.

* Facebook's Bug Bounty Program fetches 22-year-old Flipkart security engineer, Anand Prakash $15,000

* Cortana, Microsoft's voice-based virtual assistant, is also popular AI character in Microsoft's blockbuster video game franchise, Halo.

* The Hindu BusinessLine series covering the plans, proposals, strengths and weaknesses of the top 20 cities that the Government has identified for the 'Smart Cities' program is timely & insightful

* In 2002, Australian scientist Karl Kruszelnicki won an Ig Nobel Prize (link is external), a parody of the Nobel Prize award that “honors achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think”, for his year-long belly button lint study of some 5,000 individuals. His main finding was that belly button lint is more prevalent in people with stomach hair, affects more men than women, and is made up of clothing fibers. The main engine of this process is belly hairs that act similar to a conveyer belt directing the fibers into the navel. Deep navels, poor hygiene, and obesity may result in more lint. Top-loading machines tend to be rougher on clothing than front-loading machines resulting in larger quantities of dislodged fibers that remain on the clothing, which then can result in more lint - Go Ask Alice