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Democratic National Party that maintains barakobama.com has Job openings, see here.

5 News that you can use !

1. Rays of Hope for Job Hunters - New York Times
2. 12 Plug-in Cars You Can Drive by 2011 by Earth2Tech
3. Body makes its own morphine by Science News
4. Mandatory Retirement age in academia? good blog post from The Chronicle
5. Want to live in Alabama? Learn English - Political news by USA today

Are you a Green collar worker?

In the true spirit of World Earth day, we need to think both at personal and professional front, how and what are we doing to save our environment. Green Jobs is one of the hot keywords of this time!
First of all, what does a Green collar worker mean; someone who does a "Green Job" for leaving. A green job can be anything which has a net positive impact (improvement) on our environment. It can be engineering job that is developing complex systems to make our roads and transportation smarter so that less fuels are wasted on road, or making intelligent global utility network to smartly distribute power to masses. It can be thousands of other types of jobs in the area of renewable energy development and distribution and many other professions which are evolving but not matured yet. Take a look at the Green Jobs Network Portal, where you can browse by Job Category or Locations. California is forefront of Green Energy development and leading the country in producing Green Jobs. 
Guess, demise of manufacturing jobs from America is going to replace the entire Blue Collar worker class to a whole new worker class called "Green Collar" and those workers will be proud of their net impact on environment. Happy Earth Day !!

Our pledge on Earth day !

University of the People - Tuition Free online University

Named one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company magazine, entrepreneur Shai Reshef is tackling the higher education system problem, which no one has tried to addressed before this way. He has tried to address  the global need for democratized education, Reshef founded University of the People (UoPeople), the world’s first tuition free online university providing quality, accessible higher education to those who have the desire to learn but lack the resources. 

Currently University of the people offers higher grade courses in Business Administration, Computer Science and  General Studies. Look at the Admission process and Mark your calendar, University is taking new application on April 25, 2010. University of the People is a tuition-free, non-profit institution. The University does not charge students to take classes. Readings and other study materials will be available online free of charge.

The University advisory committee includes a list of distinguished people from across the globe. 

Zillow Home Value Index for San Jose area

Zillow Home Value Index

More San Jose Home Values

No hot water on Saturday Morning

Home-owners face problems around the house and I am no exception, but no hot water on an unusually cold April Saturday morning is not a good surprise by any means. I am a big DIY fan for the small problems around the house. See my other posts on 5 DIY Things to do. However when it comes to appliances that run on gas, I am initially little hesitant to touch. But when things break on Saturday, you have no other option than take a first look and analyze the problem before trying to make a call which can cost you at least $100 for someone to show up on your door. I had very generic idea about how a gas water heater works, but absolutely no idea on how the appliance maintains a small flame for thermostat to kick and use the flame to heat the water.
After a basic google search I got the clue on where to look; it was pilot light assembly one of the very important part of water heater system. Pilot light keeps the flame burning which remains the gas valve open.
So how pilot keeps the flame burning? 
Actually Thermocouple does the real job. Thermocouple is an electronic device that senses if the pilot flame is hot enough to sustain burning the gas fuel from the burner. If the thermocouple thinks it's safe, then it keeps open the main gas valve located in the pilot assembly. If the thermocouple does not sense enough heat from the pilot flame (such as when the pilot is out), then the thermocouple shuts off the gas valve to the burners.
How did I know that thermocouple was bad?
I found a very nice video on how to isolate the thermocouple in the water heater. This guy has done an extra ordinary job of illustrating how to test if thermocouple is good or bad. Basically, you run a quick test of lighting the pilot by overriding the pilot button. In my case, I was able to conclude that my thermocouple was burned out as it was not holding the flame after depressing the override button for a min. Now, when I was done isolating the  problem with thermocouple it was just the matter of finding how to replace it. The keyword search on "Thermocouple replacement gave me plenty of good links using which I was able to get a Honeywell Thermocouple for $10 from Home Depot and replace it. After a short trip to Home Depot and few keystrokes later, we had hot water again on Sunday morning. DIY works with the help of great you tube videos, Thanks to the Pros who are willing to provide quality tips and tricks on you tube absolutely free !!

Making Water Smarter

Gartner's 2010 Predictions - A must read for IT professionals

Gartner has come with it's 2010 predictions on IT trends for organizations and users. As an IT professionals I take these predictions seriously and try to make sense out of it. It helps us shape up our career goal and twist them as necessary. The report is an 8 page PDF that can be downloaded from Gartner's website after providing your own professional information and email. Here is my summarized versions:

1. 20% of businesses will not own any IT assets, This is a powerful prediction, basically Gartner is saying that IT asset management will go to outsourcing providers and businesses will adapt to cloud computing environment where there will be no need to own IT assets. This will eliminate need for expensive manpower needed to maintain those IT assets. Gartner is predicting hardware professionals will have tough time finding jobs in 2012 and beyond.
2. India based IT services providers will play major role in offering cloud based services offerings. Gartner is predicting that Indian IT service providers will invest in R&D on cloud based solutions to gain customer's confidence and trust. Businesses will be forced to separate their business processes and adapt strategies that give those individual processes competitive advantages. 
3. By 2012 facebook will be a hub for web socialization and no business will be able to ignore its potential for advertising, communication, marketing and client support.
4. Companies will be penalized for CO2 emissions. Just the way, Monitor and Television manufacturers recover the recycling costs from consumer before the life of product ends, IT vendors will add the CO2 emission costs to its product and services. Hence they will be forced to reduce and eliminate the emissions.
5. Internet marketing will be regulated by 2015. The "World Wild Web" for marketers and spammers will eventually force lawmakers and companies to regulate the way we see web today. Gartner predicts that companies that only exists on web for marketing will have tough time ahead.
6. More than 3 billion people will transact using mobile internet. This is probably most agreable prediction based on the rise of mobile use in emerging economies. This will open a floodgate of opportunities for Mobile operators, Internet companies and financial organization as mobile commerce will take over existing way of doing B2C.
7. Context aware computing will be HOT. In other words, location based services (LBS) offerings will generate huge opportunities. This signals that context providers like google, AT&T, Apple and social web such as Facebook will have advantage as they can contribute on context aware computing.

Let me know what you think of these predictions...

Innovation Lab Fellowship Application

The Democratic National Committee and Organizing for America is inviting applications for Fellowship at Washington DC. This is a wonderful chance for students to work on the technologies and tools that are powering www.barakobama.com portal. See detail here: 

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/devjobapp

$18K Tax Credits for home buyers - Are they Real?

Seems like they are real my friend, if you qualify. It is actually possible to receive both the Federal and State tax credits on one transaction.  23 days left to get into contract to try to make this happen.  That is you must be in contract before April 30th and close escrow between May 1st and June 30th to try to get both. Here are the simplified version:

Federal Tax Credit

• $8,000 for first time home buyers (those who have not owned a home they live in for the past 3 years)
• $6,500 for move up or move down home buyers (must have owned a home they live in for 5 of the past 8 years consecutively)
• Max purchase price is $800,000
• Max income to receive the full credit is $125,000 for single people and $225,000 for married couples
• Can apply the credit to 2009 or 2010 tax year
• Get the full credit in one shot in the year applied
• To claim it you include it when filing taxes for 2010 or amend the return for 2009
• Must be in contact to buy on or before April 30th 2010
• Must close escrow on or before June 30th 2010

California State Tax Credit

• $10,000 tax credit
• Two ways to qualify for the credit:
• You are First Time Home Buyer (Not owned a home you’ve lived in for the past 3 years)
• You buy a New Construction property 
• No income limits
• No purchase price limits
• Must buy a Single Family Home either Detached or Attached only, NO townhomes or condos,  No exceptions!
• Tax credit is given in 1/3 per year increments for 2010, 2011, and 2012 tax years
• Must close escrow between May 1st 2010 and July 31st 2011
• Must have fully executed contract to buy the property on or before December 31st 2010
• Must file with the State of California with in 2 weeks of close of escrow or you lose it
• There is 100 Million allotted to the First Time Buyer Program
• There is 100 Million allotted to the New Construction Program

Source: Internet Research and Government websites, see references below:
2010 Tax Credit for New Home / First-Time Buyer
First-Time Homebuyer Credit Questions and Answers

Top 10 April Fools' Pranks from around the world !

This is from The Christian Science Monitor Global News Blog - A must Read Top 10 April Fools' Pranks.. Here is the interesting ones...
CHINA: 1993: Getting in on the liberal fun, state newspaper The China Youth Daily announced those with doctorate degrees were exempt from one-child limits. According to an article, doctorates’ children would reduce the need for foreign experts. As with the joke in Greece, the news wire Agence France-Presse reported it as true. The next day, a Beijing newspaper ran an editorial stating that April Fools' jokes "are an extremely bad influence."