What Food $5 Can Get You Around the World

Five US Dollars may not sound like much - or it could be a lot, depending on where you live in the world. A cool capsule depicts how much food $5 is worth in different countries across the world. Interesting to know...oh, and, beer may be the odd one out (though it may be food for some!).

[Infographic] Twitter by the numbers - If there were 100 tweets...

Twitter has grown by leaps and bounds and is amongst the top social / news / sharing sites in the world today. People across the globe are using it to share short messages not just at a personal level, but also to tackle real-world events. There are many instances of how twitter was helpful during crises situations like wars, storms, floods, and more. So, twitter is no doubt a useful tool.

Back in 2009, when twitter was on it's rapid growth path, a team of (data) analysts looked at the data from twitter, and put forth some interesting facts and observations: this infographic below (courtesy of InformationIsBeautiful.net) shows what twitter is (rather, was like) then. [Things may have changed since, and hope that these folks are kind enough to provide a revised infographic!]

So, if you are a twitter user, find out which group you come under, and maybe use this to figure out how others use twitter too!

[Infographic] Dining Etiquette for Beginners

We all love to dine finely, at least on special occasions, and it's not about going to your neighborhood fast food joint. Or, it could well be that you're invited to a fancy wedding or party. In case you've wondered, how do I figure out the right etiquette for this (assuming of course, that you figured out the dressing bit in the first place), then you may want to take this quick guide to ensure that you don't embarrass yourself, the host or the guests - and also enjoy the meal after all!

[Video] How to Wash Hair / Shave in Space (Inside the ISS)

Zero gravity can be a weird place to be. And, mundane, daily chores like washing, bathing, etc. which we do without a second thought, can't be taken for granted when you're hovering around in space, at the International Space Station (ISS). Someone's gotta be thinking about how to do these things - easily enough!

Well, here's a peek at how to wash your hair or shave if you're one of them out there [or plan to be sometime in the near future]!

BitCoin - The Secure, Digital Currency (of the future?)

Now, we'll admit, this one is tricky to explain. So, we'll quote Wikipedia on this one:

"Bitcoin (BTC) is a cryptocurrency first described in a 2008 paper by pseudonymous developer Satoshi Nakamoto, who called it a peer-to-peer, electronic cash system. Bitcoin creation and transfer is based on an open source cryptographic protocol and is not managed by any central authority. Each bitcoin is subdivided down to eight decimal places, forming 100 million smaller units called satoshis Bitcoins can be transferred through a computer or smartphone without an intermediate financial institution."

"The processing of Bitcoin transactions is secured by servers called bitcoin miners. These servers communicate over an internet-based network and confirm transactions by adding them to a ledger which is updated and archived periodically using peer-to-peer filesharing technology. In addition to archiving transactions, each new ledger update creates some newly-minted bitcoins. The number of new bitcoins created in each update is halved every 4 years until the year 2140 when this number will round down to zero. At that time no more bitcoins will be added into circulation and the total number of bitcoins will have reached a maximum of 21 million bitcoins."

"Bitcoin is accepted in trade by merchants and individuals in many parts of the world... See the whole wikipedia entry here. 

The USD price of a bitcoin increased ten-fold in early 2013 from $13 on 1 January to $190 on 9 April."

Well, don't worry, if you didn't follow everything up there - even we are trying to get our heads around this whole new stuff! But, here's a short video that takes you through some of this and hopefully makes it easier.

Will this be a kind of new trend as the global economy continues to battle one challenge after another? Guess, only time will tell...