enginerd

The Winner is Cricket

2007-07-31T00:48:00.000-07:00

"Nothing gets the nation going like Cricket does." A few days ago, I would have thought twice before saying this, but the recent exploits of our Men in Blue in the European continent have ensured that we fans have converted back to our first religion of choice- Cricket!

They went to Ireland down and out- written off, forgotten by their fans, away from the radar of the media. And then, all it took was a 2-1 drubbing of the Proteas in Belfast and the "Team India" was on its road to recovery- the road to fame again.

Then came England and by this time, the media had got excited- again, the newspapers and Television were discussing cricket- again, and "expectation" was back- again. The Mighty Four were on their last full tour to England and all of a sudden, none wanted to miss the spectacle. Cricket was back, forgotten for just a while, but back in all its glory; much like one of its own disciples whom we all know as Dada. The nation was believing again, so much so, that by the time the first test ended at Lord's, the Rain God had himself intervened in the interest of this born-again "faith".

The Indians celebrate Andrew Strauss' wicket, England v India, 2nd Test, Trent Bridge, 4th day, July 30, 2007 © AFP

With victory in sight in the Second test, amidst all the hoopla around Sreesanth theatrics, Zahir's fondness(?) for jelly beans and the the umpiring, all I'll say is that it feels great to be back in the good old days where Cricket is the uniting force of the nation, where a victory makes us Indians feel Indians. You know sanity has returned to the country when you can simply start a conversation with a stranger at the bus stop on everything and anything involving Cricket- Sehwag or no Sehwag?, Dada or Dravid?, the umpiring blues and all!

Pottermania

2007-07-20T16:47:00.000-07:00

I'll have to admit that the nature of Pottermania is beyond my comprehension capabilities! As more and more fans of all ages and countries immerse themselves in Harry’s adventures, adding fuel to the belief that Pottermania is inescapable, I am purely and simply baffled by its ability to appeal to all ages.

Bored by the inactivity prevailing in this muggle world, I began to read the first one of the series and immediately concluded that reading beyond the tenth leaf was something impossible. Undeterred, I watched the first movie. I Hated it. But with the evil-wizard becoming apple of more and more eyes with every passing moment, around the world, it could only have been something wrong with me and so I watched the second movie. And then it became so easy to establish that I loathed the Potter Kid!

Just a passing thought - "Would it be a bad idea for a Potter special appearance in Oliver Twist? The poor kid could do with some wizardry."

Wimbledon - Swan Lake and Bartoli

2007-07-05T14:59:00.001-07:00

OK. In the last few hours, I've been asked this question thrice and hence this post: Who am I rooting for in this Wimbledon?

I no longer cheer for "Gentlemen's Tennis" these days. For it is unusually mundane and boring. FedEx and Nadal are way way ahead of anyone else that is clearly reflected in their rankings and hardly makes for any competition. Andy Roddick comes a distant third and this makes watching men's game a little less exciting when compared to the yesteryears of the men's game. The years that passed by had a different air to them, with the likes of Sampras, Agassi, Jim Courier, Goran Ivanisevic taking to the courts, the atmosphere that much more intense, the involvement all that much more. Plus as my friend Santosh says it- where are the serve and volley plays!

(For all those jigging about on this stance of mine on FedEX and Tennis, I won't still buy your arguments about Schumi's dominance making F1 mundane though! F1 without Schumi is still like a kiss without a squeeze ;) )

On the other hand, the Ladies game is as exciting as it has ever been. With all the gussied up stars packing such punch, amidst shots characterized by elegance; it is nothing but a spectacle.

And Yes, intermittently you'll find some things to talk about, like there's this Swan Lake style that Ms. Sherapova was seen in this Wimbledon. Really don't know what was in her mind but she was looking like a damn swan herself. Swan or no swan, she surely disappointed her fan!

But coming to the first question, with which this post began: Who am I cheering for this Wimbledon? Well, honestly, till yesterday I had no doubts what so ever that Justine Henin was going to win (and I was happy in the same way I am when Chelsea wins.) She's still going to win it unless Venus can pull off a performance extraordinaire, but after the 4th of July, I am totally going for this French lady Marion Bartoli after seeing her match against Michaella Krajicek! Seeded 18 for this year's event, she is what one could call a surprise survivor- the one with the weird serve and that hyper-enthusiastic dance on the baseline. She should make it to the finals. But then, why does she have to play against Justin in the semis! :(

So, who're you cheering for???

Update:

Set 1: Marion Bartoli has just been given a tennis lesson by Justin.
I think that says it all. 6-1 for Henin.

Set 2: Ms. Plumpz takes the lesson!
Who would have thought so? Bartoli wins 7-5. Boy, does she pack some punch.

Set 3: "OMG, I can lose this!!! "
Henin trails 0-4 in the decider! None around can believe it. She's simply being toyed around with.

Himesh, Paris and Piclens

2007-07-01T03:23:00.001-07:00

The last Monday I woke up feeling not all that well- indisposed with some sort of weird cold, the sort that makes your nose go blue or pink, and a nasal tone that could give even Himesh Reshammiya a semblance of some competition. This illness streak has continued for the week and it's only now, on a cloudy, windy Sunday afternoon that I feel fine, almost perfectly.

Besides sickness, nothing really happening except that I moved in to a new place with another awesome bunch of guys. That adds something like 70 odd more minutes to my commute everyday and requires an ungodly time for me to wake up. But then, I get 24x7 Internet connectivity here which more than makes up for the trivialities :)

And for all those, who believe that the geek quotient of the enginerd weblog has come down drastically in the recent past, here's something real cool that I came across:

Piclens

I installed Piclens,a firefox plugin which delivers an "immersive full-screen experience for viewing photos on the Web." The plugin enables us to search and browser images from Google, Flickr, Picasa, Yahoo, Friendster and others in full-screen theater like mode. Way too cool! Check this video:

Paris

And then, if this is still not enough to take the geek-meter of this blog higher, soon you'll find a post here about the geek gamer- Paris Hilton. Yes the same celebrity/ socialite/ business woman/ model/ actress/ recording artist we all know so much about. Surprised? Didn't you know she is in the list of "Ten Top Girl Geeks!"

Technorati Tags: piclens, paris hilton, geek, celebrity, socialite, business woman, model, actress, recording artist, himesh reshammiya

The Music-Impaired

2007-06-21T04:11:00.000-07:00

I have a disability when it comes to music- understanding it and appreciating it.

So much so that sometimes when I stand with my friends, I can't help but feel that they are an alien bunch talking gibberish in an alien language about this thing they call music. I stand there dazed and confused, seemingly lost in their conversations laced with words like melody, rythmn, beats and what not.

They say its World Music Day today; and that I have a serious problem.

Sania Mirza and Laloo: The IE correlation

2007-06-12T00:17:00.000-07:00

Sania Mirza appears again on the enginerd weblog.

This time for two reasons:
1. She is back in Top 50 again. Good going Miss.
2. The Indian Express (IE) goofup where her pic is with the caption: "Railway Minister Lalu Prasad cuts cake during the celebration of his 60th birthday as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress". Some correlation this: Sania in 50. Lalooji just out of his 50s.

Not quite the intended caption!!!

Bombay update:
Last couple of days in Bombay have been hectic and a lot of fun. Back to Bangalore tomorrow morning. And I heard Desh was on Radio City!

TOI fanboy

2007-06-08T02:20:00.000-07:00

Girl: Did you know this [...] happened?

Me: Yes, I read about it in the TOI.

Girl: You read the TOI?

Me: Absolutely. I am a big Information junkie.

Girl (with that unapproving look): You got to be kidding me! You mean you actually look up the TOI for information???

Me (quipping): Oh yes, I do! In fact, I start with the supplement- The Bangalore Times.

Wonder why girls got to act so smart!

Weekend plans?

2007-06-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

At lunch today, the topic of discussion was passion for motorcycles; and by the end of it, we had planned out midnight ride to Nandi Hills.

Didn't turn out to be a particularly bad idea, considering Local Live estimated it just over 6000 miles :O

Bangalore to Nandi Hill in just 6000 miles

Didn't know they had a Nandi Hill in Kenya too.

Kaapi and Cappuccino

2007-05-28T06:51:00.001-07:00

So, what did I do this weekend? I drank a cup of coffee. And now, If you're wondering why would I be blogging about some cup of coffee I drank, its purely because I have understood that "life is not solely composed of tasks, but tastes."

Okay, continuing: I drank another cup of hopeless coffee at the ubiquitous Cafe Coffee Day. Hopeless, I say, because that is exactly what it appears when compared to the kaapi at any of the numerous Darshans or Saagars in every nook and corner of the city.

It's not that I realize my preference for kaapi only now but the law by Mr. Murphy, or any of the corollaries following from it probably played their part. I was there meeting a friend and it is only obvious that I ask the individual for a cup of tea/coffee. The answer in most cases is yes, for almost everyone knows my affinity for caffeine. The problem here was that I meant a filter kaapi and the friend here was more of a cappuccino type. No problems, I thought as it was just a matter playing my own convincing self but no, it was not to be. The friend wouldn’t budge an inch, and when I saw that condescending glare, CCD it had to be.

An hour and a half later, smoking passively all the while, I silenty shelled out two 100ers; bid the friend adieu, and headed for the same old darshan. Filter kaapi, it had to be!

Podworks.in - India's Biggest Event on Podcasting

2007-05-21T12:45:00.000-07:00

As someone who is really hooked on to podcasts, I find it really odd when people are completely oblivious to podcasts, and that the term podcasting still remains geek to many. So much that The Times Of India once ran a whole article on Podcasting without even mentioning terms like RSS, web feeds, or subscription!!! What they said:

All downloadable audio files are now called ‘podcasts’.

[...]But while all those who download music from the net are indeed ‘podcasting’

Why I am writing about Podcasting today is because I just got to now that Chennai will be organizing another unconference this June 9th and 10th on Podcasting . Podworks.in, as the event is called is a "2-day workshop styled unconference dedicated to the sharing of knowledge around new / social media (audio and video podcasting, blogging, more.)

The event being a workshop styled unconference, is the place to know all about Podcasting ; and then start publishing/consuming all that media content with the available syndication technologies. After the event, I hope that at least in Bangalore, no one would call me weird if I am listening to an interview and not a song while commuting.

SMS and Mobile Targeting

2007-05-17T06:31:00.001-07:00

Writing his guest column at the Mobile Marketing Magazine, Richard Webster writes about how SMS and intelligent targeting can produce great results:

The key to unlocking the real potential for customer recruitment lies in understanding more about them and having the ability to interact with them directly. The availability of mobile data, and the intelligent application of it, is absolutely critical to SMS campaign success. Analysis and careful selection can be carried out before broadcast, and afterwards, with detailed responder profiling.

[...] With intelligent application and targeting, SMS messaging can enhance a brand, and produce great results. Furthermore, it is cost-effective, measurable and intuitive: lifestyle data in particular has a wealth of additional variables, because the way in which the information has been volunteered allows for the fine-tuning of campaign targeting like no other data can.

[...] here is a pipeline for immediate, measurable and targeted communication bursting with potential, and waiting to be exploited to the full. Delivery of message, capture of response, trackability of source-to-sale at a low cost-per acquisition: the next big thing for mobile marketing is the application of data. They say there is no idea so powerful as one whose time has come: so get targeting, get texting.

[via Emergic]

Technorati tags: mobile, marketing, sms, communication, advertising, texting

New Search Experience with Google Experimental

2007-05-17T00:14:00.000-07:00

The ever-experimental Google now redefines our Search Experience with new User Interfaces for Search. The new interfaces provide a more "integrated" search experience, that means that you don't have to go about looking for different search engines for videos, blogs, news, pictures etc.

New Navigation Features

Navigation within search results and within different Google sites is going to be a whole new experience with a top navigation bar as seen in this screenshot:

Google results: The new top navigation bar

But the best part about the new navigation is the contextual navigation links on Search Results. With this, for any keyword searched, if there are relevant results in any other Google service like Maps, Blogs, Videos, the links to those would also appear. For example, a search for India would result in a dynamically generated navigation bar with links to results from Google's News Maps Blogs Groups Images Video etc. But I always liked the Live Search top navigation. At least the "More" option is better thought out!

Google Search results: The tall "More Dropdown

Live Search results: The multi columned "More" Dropdown

Experimental Interfaces

Three new experimental interfaces, and three very different ways to search. But definitely interesting. The Lab has come out with something stunning here, I guess.

Timeline and map views

See results on a timeline or on a map. The search results are dug to extract key dates and location and the results are shown on a timeline and map. The first time I saw that bar graph depicting the timeline, for a moment I thought Google had used the wonderful ajaxified slider timeline that was first used by the guys at Measuremap. But it isn't and one fails to understand why.

For example, a search for "Indian Independence", came up with the following results on the timeline:

Google Timeline Search

Left hand navigation and Right Navigation Context Menu

The other two interfaces are to allow users to search deeper and look for a particular type of content like images, videos, patents, products or news. Nothing really special about these. And I am not too sure why we have the right side navigation menu at all. Right side in Google the area with supposedly the least attention on the screen for users. So why the navigation? The left hand navigation contains 1.) Links to search results from within different Google sites and 2.) Related Searches (like the ones to the right column in Live Search)

Of all these, I think the Left Navigation is something that could be integrated into the search results page now. It is quite intuitive to use and people won't take one minute to get used to it.

Elsewhere on the web:
Google Marries the Static and Live Web
Google Experimental: Opt-In To Google User Interface Experiments.

10 New Uses For Newspaper

2007-05-16T07:19:00.001-07:00

Not in India, where newspaper readership is soaring, but everywhere else Traditional Media is finding new ways of not being irrelevant. Read these 10 New Uses For Newspaper from Net!!!

Pipl- People Search Engine

2007-05-16T06:54:00.001-07:00

Just came across Pipl, a Search Engine for People on SEL.Pretty interesting is all I'll say at the moment; but the results I looked for were far from accurate.

Here's what SEL had to say about it:

Pipl is a people search engine that tries to be a little different. Rather than just go off and hunt for email addresses, this tries to search through the deep/invisible/hidden web to return content that other search engines are going to miss.

[...] This however maybe a little churlish, given that it's only recently launched. It's an engine that's worth taking a peek at - even if it's only to see what they have on you and your namesakes. It will probably be more than you expect.

Technorati tags: pipl, search

Every start.com has an end

2007-05-16T06:41:00.001-07:00

start.com, the incubation experiment that finally led to the hyped Live.com is all set to retire on the 22nd of May 2007. I actually used start.com for a while before I moved on to Newsburst and finally Google Reader.

Announcing this, Sanaz Ahari wrote on the start.com blog:

This is a bittersweet moment as I reflect on what start.com accomplished from it's inception in February 2005, helping pioneer ajax homepages and gadgets on the web. We accomplished great things both in terms of technology as well as being an agile small team and connecting with our customers. A successful incubation project that evolved to live.com. Unfortunately it is now time for us to retire start.com as our incubation ground for live.com. Effective next Tuesday, 5/22/07, start.com will redirect to live.com.

How to search Google without ads

2007-05-15T01:01:00.001-07:00

How to search using google without seeing those ads in the right and top?

Simple: Use http://www.google.com/search?output=googleabout

Doesn't make sense, but that is the way it is!

Amit Agarwal at DI has another method to block all Google ads from showing in your browser by making certain entries in your computer's HOSTS file.

Mobiles- Push based advertising might work

2007-05-10T15:48:00.000-07:00

The last time I wrote about mobile advertising, I had written that push based advertising could really get annoying. However, speaking at the PMN Mobile User Experience conference, Antti Ohrling-co-founder of advertising-funded MVNO Blyk said that it might just work!
From mobileuserexperience.com:

[...]push-based advertising will not annoy customers if it is correctly targeted. In fact, Blyk's research in the UK market (where it will launch this summer) indicates that customers perceive value in receiving push messages if they provide unique offers. Ohrling, who also chairs a global advertising agency, explained that push advertising can be a way of enabling customers to differentiate themselves from their peers by giving them access to information and events unavailable through other channels.

Microsoft Dead?

2007-05-08T00:37:00.000-07:00

Microsoft, for a dead company has pretty lively profits, says The Var Guy. He sits down and comes up with 10 Stunning Facts About Microsoft’s Profits.

He compares Microsoft's profits with other giants, and computes how long does it take to beat the quarterly net income of some of the companies like Apple (just 2 weeks), IBM (5 weeks), Google (just 18 days), and Nike (1 week!)

Mobile advertising - Its about Timing

2007-05-07T06:33:00.001-07:00

Timing is Everything

Telecoms.com has a wonderful piece on Mobile advertising. Timing is Everything, it says:

"The key to the promise of mobile advertising lies in the fact that the mobile device provides a very personal, direct and interactive communications channel to customers, he points out. In advertising terms, mobile operators own some of the best advertising inventories available anywhere. In addition they own two key assets: the customer's location and personal identity in terms of behaviour, demographics and content preferences. This puts mobile operators in a very strong position when competing for advertising budgets."

Somehow I am confused by the two possible ways of mobile advertising: First, the push based advertising where you just send an advertisement through an SMS to the user. The second, where the user sees an embedded text ad on his screen, say while browsing on his mobile. While the former seems too intruding and offensive, the second simply eats into the precious screen estate. Which one will turn out trumps? We'll have to wait and watch!

Mobile Is Going to Be a Larger Market Than Internet Advertising

K@W spoke to AdMob's Omar Hamoui on Mobile Advertising: How is mobile advertising evolving? How does it differ from conventional web-based advertising?

He makes an interesting comment: "Finding the inventory and getting ads to run on it is harder than getting advertisers to be interested in it"

Life in namma Bengaluru

2007-05-04T07:07:00.001-07:00

"Life" has to be spiced up in Bangalore! Absolutely no second thoughts about it and when someone in the Government thinks the same way too, you can't help but wonder if what you're hearing is right.

Back in college, I can recall everyone excited about the prospect of moving to Bangalore. After all, it was supposed to be the city with a "night life" worth boasting about and what not. And boy, weren't expectations hurt when we set foot in Bangalore. Creatures of habit- we, who hardly went to sleep before pinging Sun God that it was his time to take over, were left devastated that there was not even a cup of tea and Parle-G to be had after 11pm. I've seen many an individuals feel let down by this city of their dreams seeing the roads deserted, the shops and eateries shuttered down, the auto-rickshaw-wallahs shouting obscene fares at them (come on folks, assuming you are a Software Coder and since almost all autowallahs in this city consider it their duty to penalize us who are obliterating this wonderful city which it once was, you ought to be willing to pay well for a royal ride home)

So, its really late, really late like 10pm, you can do one thing and that is to get down to the cheapest movie hall around- Urvashi and catch a movie or two. It's Bangalore and in bangalore you don't get movie tickets easily like you d in Mumbai. So Spidey-3 will have to wait for you. Till then, go catch Tara-rum-pum-pum. Better if you can take your doggie along too! If you're not amongst the ones who are obsessed with the so-called-meaningful cinema, you should be having a good time.

Others can go and watch Blood Diamond. I heard PVR at Forum is screening it and those who have not yet seen it, it's a must watch. From my unfinished review for a newsletter I should be contributing a lot more regularly: "One may call Blood Diamond an adventure thriller, but it is much more than that. It appeals to you; to wake up and see for oneself the grimness of the situation in Africa. The movie narrates the tale of the trade in conflict diamond, profits from which buys guns and fuels violence. If Hotel Rwanda made one feel guilty about not doing anything about the terror that torments the continent of Africa, Blood Diamond takes it a step further with making people realize how they are actually encouraging it unknowingly. Edward Zwick (The Last samurai fame) chooses to tell this story with a big name star Leonardo dicaprio and does a fantastic job of it."

AOL India

2007-04-27T00:12:00.001-07:00

AOL has come to India with their India specific portal www.aol.in, though I might wonder if they are too late. Nothing too interesting about it. It has the usual news channels, with Cricket and Bollywood getting obvious attention. Plus there's the email and the Instant messaging about which I am not too sure if there would be many now who'd be keen on an @aol.in web based email address with the much superior likes of Yahoo and Gmail.

How I'd see is that its just another India specific portal, and there is simply no need for it- with Rediff,IndiaTimes,Yahoo, and MSN already around.

How, if they, do they actually pull it off will be interesting to watch. If you remember, long long time ago, Lycos had came to Asia, India included, www.lycosasia.com (the link doesn't work anymore), and didn't really deliver.

PowerTwitter by 30Boxes

2007-04-26T00:55:00.003-07:00

For a while I was beginning to think that the world had forgotten about about 30Boxes which I feel is a top-class Calendaring application and would be my first choice any given day.

If you thought so that they've been chilled by Google, the PC World Magazine doesn’t think so. They continue to roll out interesting stuff and have now have released a Firefox plugin called PowerTwitter to enhance Twitter with photo sharing, video sharing etc and other cool things.

ICC CWC 2007 - The Final Four

2007-04-17T13:31:00.000-07:00

ICC CWC 2007 - The Semi Final LineUp

There you go. The final 4 of the ICC CWC 2007 have been decided and it's basically what one had predicted even before the tournament started. A few hiccups here and there but things finally went the way they were thought to go! So, here's the final four:

Australia: The ultimate package. By far the favourites.
Sri Lanka: The most versatile attack. Invincibles in this form, just give them a slow dead pitch
South Africa: If they were called chokers, Greame Smith dismissd any such notions with utter disdain today.
New Zealand: The black horse. How much ever I want SA to win, nothing like a Aus-NZ final!

Stats Reveal

Another intersting thing I noted today. While everyone here want the likes of our "seniors" - Ganguly, Sachin, Sehwag out of our Indian Cricket Team (yes, the same Team India as it is more fashionably called these days) because of their age and the need of a fresh change, almost everyone forgot to see the top run getters in this World Cup- the average age comes upwards of 33. Apparently, experience does matter!

Top Scorers in ICC CWC 2007
	WC 2007 Runs	Current Age	Career ODIs
ML Hayden (Aus)l	477	35 years 170 days	142
JH Kallis (SA)	463	31 years 183 days	255
SB Styris (NZ)	435	31 years 281 days	131
RT Ponting (Aus)	414	32 years 119 days	277
ST Jayasuriya (SL)	379	37 years 291 days	387

At home - TV, Bollywood, and just about everything

2007-04-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

There is no place like home! 2 days and I haven't got a clue how they flew off. I already feel I should have planned a longer vacation.

Anyways, what I've been upto here? Nothing at all except eating, sleeping, eating and sleeping. And ofcourse, the television, which somehow is never short of interesting offerings inspite of the cable wallah not kind towards my requests to improve the reception of Star Movies and HBO. A quick scan of my television watching during the last 48 hours:

I'll have to say, there simply can not be a more ridiculous channel than AajTak. Just a few hours ago, they ran a detailed story on how Richard Gere hugged and kissed Shilpa Shetty (now Big Brother fame) on stage for some AIDS awareness program. The newsreader was all bashing Richard Gere on how this is in stark contrast to his Dalai-Lama-disciple image that we Indians have and how this is so against Indian culture (or mentality?) Bull shit. If these news channel guys want to do moral policing, why the hell should they be showing that particular clip non-stop (literally) on the screen at all??? Aren't they doing more damage??? In fact, our heroine Rakhi Sawant, (whom they called up thinking she would be the ideal person to comment on this) showed more sense than the whole AajTak team when she gave her expert comments on the issue!

Richard Gere hugs and kisses Shilpa Shetty during an AIDS awareess event was organised by Truckers Corporation of India Foundation. Photo: IBNLive/AP

The ICC Cricket World Cup is still on and apparently people are still interested in what Mandira Bedi is wearing. Honestly, her outfits have followed the path from crap to crappier to the crappiest. And just so you know, it was her birthday today and the nice folks on Sony Max's "extraa innings" pre-match show- Tony Greig, John Wright and Charoo Sharma, did get a cake for her.

The advertising industry seems to have burnt a lot of midnight oil coming up with their new ad campaigns when our Men in Blue betrayed them like never before. But they seem to have done well. Pepsi Gold's "World Cup ko laa" program seems to have been rescheduled for 2011 now with a new young team appproaching a tailor uncle for new outfits. Real refreshing ad and makes one wonder why they need celebrities in first place at all? Sunfeast biscuits too have gone back to ads featuring Shahrukh Khan with Sachin not the flavour of the hour anymore.

And then, there is Soccer and F1. Couldn't watch Massa win it with Ferrari because of some stupid rescheduling by ESPNStar showing the race on ESPN. Waiting to catch the highlights now. In soccer, Ballack has scored too and Chelsea are all set for the Quadrupule!

That was television. I am also planning to spend some quality time looking at some of the DVDs I found lying at home too. Total bollywood entertainers, I can assure you. For tomorrow, it's going to be Vivah and Dhoom-2

0130 hours and am waiting for Ireland to cause yet another upset in this World Cup!

iPod saves Soldier's life

2007-04-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

An apple can save your life!

Apparently, a US soldier somewhere in Iraq (where else would you find them) was hit in the left chest when an insurgent opened fire on him. Fortunately, his iPod was in his jacket pocket which slowed the bullet down enough that it did not completely penetrate his body armor! Check out this picture of the Life saving iPod.

Mobile Interfaces and Latency

2007-04-05T13:35:00.000-07:00

"How long is half a second? In the context of a mobile user interface, it can be long enough to cripple the experience and make the difference between a converting a user from a casual browser to a dedicated customer."

This wonderful piece highlights how latency in Mobile interfaces is such a big Usability issue. This half a second delay has been the major undoing on the proliferation of mobile based applications. What a consumer looks for is an intuitive + quick interface that responds lightning fast. How the service providers and the developer network manages that with the device OS, Processor or the memory issue isn't of concern to him, and justifiably so. Unfortunately, all mobile applications we come across somehow haven't been able to get the UX right, and it would be interesting to see how and when are we able to come up with something to address this issue.

Talking of usable interfaces, I just came across a couple of mobile widget platforms:

The first one was iframe Microsoft's ZenZui, a mobile widget browser that allows searching through a grid of 36 widget tiles with each tile acting as a mobile optimized interface to a website. Interestingly, ZenZui’s zooming user interface was initially developed by Microsoft’s Redmond Research lab, and was spun off into it’s own company. MobileCrunch has more on this.

The other is GPS Widgets from Where. According to "where", "GPS Widgets are small (or large) applications that help you find interesting things and do everyday tasks." An interesting concept and definitely a sign of things to come in this domain!

Technorati - heartTonic? haterTonic? niceThroat?

2007-04-01T05:17:00.000-07:00

Just saw these weird mastheads on Technorati. Anyone What's with these???

haterTonic, heartTonic, Threaticon, niceThroat, Tonierchat and so on...

Ireland upset Pakistan

2007-03-17T16:12:00.000-07:00

Just the other day I was discussing with my boss about the banality of this Round I of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 . And boy, how wrong could I have been!

Two upsets, and two giants of cricket virtually eliminated from the World Cup! First, Bangladesh defeated India making quite a dent in the Men in Blue's golden hopes and plans of glory in the Calypso land. And second, in one of the most remarkable upsets we are to see in WC Cricket, an unknown bunch of players from Ireland defeated Pakistan, virtually eliminating them from the tournament.

0500 hours here and Team Ireland is doing a victory lap. I am loving it. For the unpredictable game called cricket!!!

Technorati Tags:
Cricket World Cup Ireland Pakistan

No surfing at IIT-M, or is it IIT-B

2007-03-13T00:38:00.000-07:00

The last time I posted on this blog, it was all about goof ups that some newspaper called Central Chronicle did. This morning, however, I came across a couple of mistakes on LiveMint, the newest, slickest financial daily in the country.

In its story titled "Stop surfing, make friends, IIT-M students told", the newspaper refers to IIT-Bombay. The last time I heard, IIT-M was IIT-Madras and IIT Bombay was known as IIT-B. Thankfully, Bengaluru folks have thought enough to keep the first character same while renaming their city. Pretty smart, I must say.

Talking of the same story, one can't help but wonder about how stupid this decision is. From what I know, Internet nowhere would count as the culprit. A hostel without Internet is not a "dull" hostel by any means where "children" go to bed on time. Its the tons and tons of movies with the TBs of data the hostel networks boast of and the LAN gaming with the CS clans knifing around and the Conquerors traveling back in time to conquer the world, that keep the students busy at all hours of the night. Just restricting the Internet access won't work. The only hope is to pull off complete connectivity- reduce all machines to standalone good-for-nothing boxes. That might be your only hope to make the nerds "socialize" more.

Technorati tags: Internet, IIT, surfing, LiveMint

Some reporting this!

2007-03-08T23:09:00.000-08:00

There's this newspaper called Central Chronicle. I think I've seen it in some stands, when I was home last summer.

How is this relevant here? Naresh just sent me this link to a piece on IIM-Indore's placements. As he said, it's a comedy:

This year several renowned companies visited here to offer placements to the students; some of them are Macancy, Assenger business consultant, KPMG, Stern Stewart and company, Deloty consultancy, Aptiva consulting, Price waterhouse Coopers, Sap labs banking and financial services, Lehmen brothers, Goldman Saches, Duche bank, Ocvin financial, Bank of America, HSBC, City group, Standard Chartered and JP Morgan etc. Whereas in marketing field include Alghamin Industries, Colgate Palmolive, Asian Paints, ITC, Reliance, Dabur Astro meset etc.Some IT companies include Oracle, Cap Gemini, Hand strong, Cognijent, IBM, Kotek Mahindra and Kevonsis etc.

Astonishing.

Quidditch meets Formula One

2007-03-06T06:26:00.000-08:00

Matthew Reilly has been one author whose work I have enjoyed thoroughly. You read Area 51, Ice Station, Temple, and Scarecrow and you can't help but become a fan of his writing style- slick, real fast paced, what some call as "improbability following improbabilities." And so I sat yesterday, reading his "Hover Car Racer" even when my friendly neighbourhood library-wallah virtually pleaded with me not to read it. And I'll have to say I should have listened to him.

After reading Hover Car Racer, I can't stop wondering if the Pottermania has caught up with Mathew Reilley too! There's a Race school, world's best for Hover Car Racing. And our 14 year old lad, who goes by the name Jason Chaser, manages to get admission into it. And what follows is nothing but high paced narration of one race after another where our hero Chaser takes on the big bad Draco Malfoys in school and the pro-racing world.

Exciting in the beginning, predictable in the middle and absolutely mundane in the end. In one word: Disastrous. Nothing else.

Technorati tags: Matthew Reilly, fiction, Ice Station, Scarecrow, Area 51, Hover Car Racer

Its March, its F1 time

2007-02-28T14:47:00.000-08:00

Its March 2007 and we will be witnessing two major sporting events kicking off this month: The ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 and the F1 2007 season.

Just a couple of quick thoughts though:

Is this the biggest cricketing world cup yet??? I'd rather say that it is definitely the Longest. 16 teams and one is rest assured that the first half of the event is going to be booring.
Will F1 be the same again without Schumi? They might say it will get more competitive but as our Mr. Siddhu would have said, "F1 without Schumi is like giving Kiss without a Squeeze."

Technorati Tags:
Schumacher Cricket F1 ICC World Cup Siddhu

Virb Invites

2007-02-26T06:43:00.000-08:00

Just received an invite for Virb. Thanks to Nogg3r5.

If you're interested in trying it out, leave a comment here :).

Cheers
Anand

Technorati Tags:
Virb Invite Virb Invite Publish

LiveMint : A Minty Approach

2007-02-07T08:25:00.000-08:00

Okay, its been really really long since I last posted here and I'll have to say its been very boring and exhausting. Slaving away to barely meet the deadlines was pretty much the norm all this while and its only now that I have some time to pay attention to this much neglected weblog.

I recently looked at LiveMint, India's newest financial daily- for the "new, young readers and members of the Internet generation" and will have to say that it's got a splendid design at least for the online edition that I've seen so far.

The design for both the online and print editions was done by was done Garcia Media. On the approach to the design of LiveMint, Mario Garcia writes:

1. It should be colorful, like India itself.
2. Ideally it should be in a small format ---we did versions of broadsheet and Berliner, and opted for the smaller, easier to handle format.
3. It must have perfect fusion with the online product. And, in fact, I recommended from the start that this product should appear FIRST as an online newspaper, and then two weeks later on print. That is the way it will be. This newspaper is born as an online product.
4. There should be substance, but also quick reads.
5. Navigation should be paramount.

Very slick, very neat when compared to the some of the other biz papers we have. Now only, if they could put a small orange icon next to the Link for numerous RSS feeds they have, it would have saved me a whole lot of time looking for it. And btw, didnt we all think that we no more used partial feeds these days?

Technorati tags: livemint, newspaper design, india, financial daily

Somehow I dont understand

2007-01-20T08:24:00.000-08:00

Saddam Hussein:
1. was not an Indian.
2. was not hanged by India.
3. was not hanged in India.
4. cannot be back, come what may.

Then what is the point?

The iPod Car

2007-01-05T21:42:00.000-08:00

Long long time ago, we had seen the MSN Messenger Car.

Could an iPod Car be behind?

Technorati tags: Messenger Car, iPod Car

Firefox 3 and Microformats

2007-01-03T05:36:00.000-08:00

The last week, I was trying to sell someone the idea of Microformats and how the whole semantics integration would make information on the web a lot more organized and I'll have to admit I was hardly making any sense to the individual and had to give up real soon. Perhaps, with Mozilla now looking at Microformats, it may just result into a wider acceptance and integration of Microformats. Here's a little something about Microformats for those who aren't aware of what they are. Mozilla Designer Alex Faaborg in a recent post explained how microformats will transform the future Web Browser (read Firefox 3) into an "Information Broker":

"Much in the same way that operating systems currently associate particular file types with specific applications, future Web browsers are likely going to associate semantically marked up data you encounter on the Web with specific applications, either on your system or online. This means the contact information you see on a Web site will be associated with your favorite contacts application, events will be associated with your favorite calendar application, locations will be associated with your favorite mapping application, phone numbers will be associated with your favorite VOIP application, etc."

A couple of happenings I came across in social bookmarking today. RawSugar seems to have shut down its shop last week and Duncan Riley recommends Bluedot, a social bookmarking service that Michael Arrington mentioned in his List of Web 2.0 companies he couldn’t live without. I haven't been able to look at it yet but the idea of not having to leave the page in order to bookmark it is a much better option than the del.icio.us way.

And on an ending note, you might want to double check that slick favicon on your blog/site is not using 27 GIGS of bandwidth a month!

Technorati tags: mozilla, Microformats, Semantic Web, RawSugar, BlueDot, favicon

Innovation? Microsoft?

2006-12-29T04:45:00.000-08:00

Yes, Microsoft is Innovative! PC World's list of The 20 Most Innovative Products of the Year has Microsoft Office 2007 on top. All because of that new ribbon. They must be celebrating out there in Redmond! But top spot for this seems a bit unjustified. Its cool alright but the remaining list has some pretty exciting "innovative" products. From the list below, I'll have to say these are all amazing products. So they've got the collection right, probably not the order.

1. Microsoft Office 2007
2. Intel Core 2 Duo
3. Parallels Desktop for Mac
4. Nintendo Wii
5. Samsung 32GB SSD
6. Sony Reader
7. YouOS
8. Dell XPS M2010
9. Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB
10. T-Mobile Dash
11. Pioneer Inno
12. Farecast
13. Sony BWU-100A Blu-Ray Disc Rewritable Drive
14. Olympus EVolt E-330
15. Google SketchUp
16. Sony PlayStation 3
17. RIM BlackBerry Pearl 8100
18. Rhapsody 4.0
19. Logitech NuLooq
20. Shure E500PTH Sound Isolating Earphones

Free SMS Greeting Service from MyToday

2006-12-28T05:37:00.000-08:00

The "someday" I wrote of in the last post has arrived sooner than I expected. Things've been outright crazy: at work, and at home. But I hope they'd be relatively calmer in the days to come.

I've been in Bangalore now for 3 weeks and it's been pretty much fun albeit the fact that I spend a whole lot of my time commuting amidst blaring horns on the jam-packed roads . Met lots of my friends from college the past weekend and had great fun at the not-so-chilly hill station Coorg over the extended weekend. Also met Atishay but didn't get to see his Ferrari laptop. Perhaps Microsoft would bribe me too with one!

MyToday has launched a free SMS greeting service for Indian Mobile users. You get to type your greeting message of 110 characters and the message is sent free along with 50 characters worth of MyToday ads. Tried composing a cool 110 characters new year greeting. No success so far.

"Is Microsoft Driving Innovation or Playing Catch-Up With Rivals?" Microsoft critic Dave Winer and former Microsoft "technical evangelist" Robert Scobledebate the topic on WSJ. Certainly an interesting read. Another of Dave Winer's posts I've enjoyed recently is "Good Luck Jimmy" where he opines that "Someone should try to make the next big leap in search, there's little incentive for Google to try." I particularly liked the quote "Revolution, from time to time, is a healthy thing." that Soxiam had on this.

One thing that I often fail to understand is why Newshutch is overlooked when people talk about Feed Aggregators. I've used it for a very long period of time and will say that it is pretty useful with a very slick interface. And so I was very surprised today to see it being completely left out in this comparison of best RSS Aggregators on SplashCast.

Cheers!

Technorati tags: MyToday, SMS, Ferrari, Bangalore, Dave Winer, Microsoft, Newshutch

Someday

2006-12-27T06:01:00.000-08:00

Someday, this space will be updated more often.

Zune's Monstrous Ads

2006-12-09T00:36:00.000-08:00

What exactly is it that the guys at Big M are trying to achieve with these ridiculous (dangerously bordering absurdity) ads for the Zune?

The first one I came across was at RockInsider. How a couple of monsters swallowing down people and vans are related to MP3 players beats me.

Then the new redesigned YouTube also suggested that I see the other Zune ads. And could it have been any different? Looking at these and other Zune ads, I'll say I even believe this conversation did take place at the fictional Microsoft Zune Design Laboratory.

The ads on Soapbox were disappointing too. But atleast they made some sense!

Video: Zune TV Ad - Snow

Technorati tags: Zune, Television, Commercial, Soapbox, Youtube

Google ads on forehead?

2006-12-08T06:57:00.000-08:00

OK. I couldn't think of any title for this post. So just picked up the last thing I mentioned in this post and made it the heading. But with Google now planning even “targeted measurable television ads” you never know!

But Google did one great thing and that was to come up with Gtalk. Things are such that I can barely manage without Gtalk at work. Now that's not because my team is separated all over the building, but it is necessitated because of the frigging earphones and all the stupid music people around me are tuned to. Somebody make them read this!

Browsing through Scoble's Link Blog, I came across this interesting piece titled "Dumbing Down of Programming". I am sure these guys will try to make a point at me through this ;)

Then, there's this wonderful Reformat option in Eclipse that Desh told me about. Its such a pity people can't write a clean piece of code. But this at least solves all the indentation blues. Just hit Ctrl+Shift+F and it indents all the code as per the preferences set. Talking of Eclipse, Google has now joined hands with Eclipse. How this will bring Google closer to the open-source community remains to be seen.

And this week's super comic. I'll have to say this kid is certainly showing signs of excessive blogging!

What code DOESN'T do in real life...

2006-12-07T22:30:00.000-08:00

In films and television code is always sailing across the screen at incredible speeds; it's presented as an indecipherable stream of letters and numbers that make perfect sense to the programmer but dumbfound everyone else! Matthew Inman has this amazing piece on how code, programmers and hackers are portrayed in the movies.

The best in his List: #10

10 Most code is not inherently cross platform
Remember in Independence Day when whatshisface-math-guy writes a virus that works on both his apple laptop AND an alien mothership? Bullshit!
If real life were like film I'd be able to port wordpress to my toaster using a cat5 cable and a bag of glitter.

[via Rushi]

MTV Back Pack Holidays with TravelGuru

2006-12-05T23:09:00.000-08:00

MTV India, after Roadies, takes its adventure travel concept further with MTV Back Pack Holidays. Joining hands with TravelGuru, a travel site offering pretty decent deals, they've put together custom-made adventure-travel packages for the youth.

This for sure seems to be fun. And with packages that range from Rs. 800 for a day's adventure to Rs. 10000 for longer vacation, capturing the attention of the adventure enthusiasts in the country would be real easy.

The site currently has a package listed for KIHIM near Mumbai and they've got an exciting line up of activities there: rappelling, Rock Climbing, Beach baseball (wonder what that is?) and stuff. All bundled up within a weekend.

Too bad I leave Mumbai this weekend :( But they are to offer new packages around Bangalore too! Anybody game???

Technorati tags: MTV, Travelguru, Backpack, Holidays, Mumbai, Kihim, Adventure Travel

Want to play with the Vaio?

2006-12-05T07:26:00.000-08:00

After cool iPod Shuffle ad, the uncool Vista ad, its now time to see the funny Vaio Interactive Flash stuff. It features a PC, a Mac and a Vaio (Remeber the I'm a mac, I'm a PC ad from Apple) . But wait a sec, isn't Vaio a PC??? But then, you can always say that Vaio is in a league of its own.

Beats me, how I couldn't convince my cousin to get a Vaio instead of the stupid Compaq thing she got.

Check out the funny Vaio Interactive Flash and the explore the new Sony Vaio C Series .

Technorati tags: Vaio, iPod Shuffle, Vista, ads

The Vicious Circle

2006-12-05T06:16:00.000-08:00

"And this, O Fate, is I think the most vicious circle that thou ever sentest" Remember the classic Poem by Ogden Nash. Caught up in a similar vicious circle at work for the past few days, these words from my primary school text book simply came to my mind. What fun days were those!

Is there a way out? Prasoon recommends spending more time at Digg rather then burning out with the build-compile-deploy routine. I honestly fail to understand how that could make things better, if not worse. No sir, I'd rather stick to my feedreader like BusinessWeek's Rob Hoff, without all that crap Digg throws.

And the feed reader and the unanswered mails in my Inbox are certainly keeping me busy. This morning, Andy Kazeniac over at compete.com informed me about their comparison of the demand for the three Video Game consoles through the week of November 25th. Really interesting to note from their research how the XBox 360 is holding its own in terms of popularity despite the recent launches and abundant press for the other two next-generation gaming systems.

Also, I saw this new network and web stats monitoring service http://mon.itor.us/ I just can't seem to pronounce it but certainly is something you might like to give a try. Then there's also this new Virtual Machine that Sun has offered Solaris on with software for calendars, e-mail, Web sites, Java server software etc. Great idea considering that VM is such a woderful and hastlefree way for people to try out new software. [via Andy Tucker]

Zune Hacks and Why Zune is better than the iPod

2006-12-05T03:37:00.000-08:00

Its been a bash-Zune season so far with so much written about it ever since its first appearance, without anything being remotely positive about the Zune. Sometimes I felt that they were written with the sole intent of bashing up the big M and their latest offering. As I mentioned once earlier, Andy Ihnatko even proclaimed that it'll bedead and gone within six months.

But finally, someone has come up with praise review for the Zune, declaring that Zune is even better that the iPod itself. Unbelievable, it may sound, but thats what Matthew Miller at ZDNet thinks after three weeks with the Zune.

Unlike many people slamming the Zune, I have been checking out the Zune and the iPod with video in direct comparison and have to say I prefer the Zune for my usage.

In side-by-side comparison, I find the Zune with its directional pad much easier to navigate than sitting there spinning my thumb around in circles on the iPod wheel.

The Zune is taller and thicker than the iPod, but feels lighter in my hand since it isn't as dense as the iPod. [...]

While the display resolution is the same, the larger landscape display on the Zune is honestly more enjoyable for movies than the iPod and the movies don't appear grainy or poor in quality like some people have speculated without even seeing a Zune in person. I like the integrated FM radio with RDS support and find that the signal strength is actually quite decent.

Also, Matthew has put together this list of hacks for Zune that have surfaced over the Internet over the past few days. Take a look at these for a snazzier Zune experience:

The ability to playback Zune Pass content on up to 3 computers

The ability to easily integrate podcast feeds into your Zune experience
The ability to use the Zune as an external hard drive
A simple method to bypass the WiFi sharing limitations
Running Zune on Windows XP 64 bit Pro
Running the Zune on Vista

Its really hard for me to understand the hue and cry over Zune's compatibility with Vista. The latter isn't even out yet for everyone!

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Zune, Apple, iPod, Review, Hacks, Zune hacks

The 'uncool' Vista Television commercial

2006-12-04T08:14:00.000-08:00

And Microsoft does it again. Just like everything else with the Vista, they screw up the first television commercial too. Its simply too boring . I couldn't even stand to see the whole one-and-a-half-minute video.

Judge for yourself.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Vista, television, commercial, advertisement

Short notes

2006-12-04T05:53:00.000-08:00

"They are grand memories." replies Max Skinner to the question "Are they good memories" in the movie A Good Year, prompting me to spend the whole of Sunday wondering what were my grandest memories. Surprisingly, nothing came to my mind- zero, zilch, nada. And so, I concluded finally that either I've had a pretty boring life or I simply do not realize the grandeur of my memories.

NR Murthy of Infosys was talking on one of the zillion news channels out there about the phenomenal growth of Infosys. And this he attributed to "the great Indian Middle Class" and its "strong work ethics". He said that "people didn't go home before completing their work." I am not too sure about Mr. Murthy and Infosys but others in this country's IT services companies seem to possess a completely different mindset with the sort of restrictions imposed on the employees, Internet access restriction being one of them. And the most absurd of reasons: "bandwidth availability!"

Tech2 has this review of PS3, Sony's next generation console, and they declare it a winner hands down over the XBOX 360. I wouldn't agree on that completely with what I've seen of the XBOX but still they've done a fantastic review.

Then, there are 250 Office templates for free download (via LifeHacker). [This link saved me the effort of creating a new template for a friend :P]

Over at ZDNet Blogs, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes writes how Microsoft Zune has grabbed a 9% market share in 4 days brushing aside "most awful, naive nonsense" by the pundits on how Zune would fail.

Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, Co-founders of flickr talk about how they ended up building flickr when they originally started with the idea of a game conceived as a context for social interactions. Quite an interesting read this at Inc.com

Cheers!

Technorati tags: A Good Year, Narayan Murthy, Indfosys, Tech2, XBOX, PS3, Microsoft, Zune, flickr

Nine Video Sites Compared

2006-12-01T01:16:00.000-08:00

Continuing with his experiment where Chris Pirillo comapred YouTube, Google and revver, he now has a "shootout" between nine different video networks.

Chris called it "multimedia madness". Yes, that's exactly what this is!!! And my results on comparing the 9 videos: YouTube- the best, Soapbox- didn't do bad either, and iFilm- took forever to stream.

Technorati tags: Chris Pirillo, Soapbox, YouTube, Break.com, Vimeo, Jumpcut, Blip.tv, Metacafe, Revver, iFilm, Video Comparison, Christmas

Their Most Popular Blog Posts Ever

2006-11-30T23:25:00.000-08:00

Philipp at Google Blogoscaped has put up a list where he asked the likes of Dave Winer,Joel Spolsky, Chris Pirillo, Om Malik, Niall Kennedy, Steve Rubel, Jeremy Zawodny and others "about their most popular, or one of their most popular, blog posts – the kind that made an impact on people, had skyrocketing traffic numbers, or triggered a meme or changes"

Here's what they considered their most popular posts:

Darren Rowse (ProBlogger.net):
18 Lessons I’ve Learnt about Blogging

Joel Spolsky (JoelOnSoftware.com):
How Microsoft Lost the API War

Chris Pirillo (Chris.Pirillo.com):
Windows Vista Feedback

Dave Winer (Scripting.com):
Scripting News: 9/11/2001

Nathan Weinberg (BlogNewsChannel.com):
Banned Xbox 360 Ad: Best Ad Ever!

Michael Arrington (TechCrunch.com):
Completely Unsubstantiated Google/YouTube Rumor

Om Malik (GigaOM.com):
Six Apart buying Live Journal

Niall Kennedy (NialKennedy.com):
Google Reader API

Nick Denton (NickDenton.org):
“... hard to measure, but celebrity babies and Apple announcements always do very well.”

Steve Rubel (MicroPersuasion.com):
Forbes Cover Story Blows It, Calling Bloggers Lynch Mobs

Tony Ruscoe (ruscoe.net):
What’s in Google’s Sandbox?

Jeremy Zawodny (Jeremy.Zawodny.com):
Diet Tips or How To Lose Weight with a Spreadsheet and a Web Site

Phillip Torrone (MakeZine.com):
MAKE’s Mostly Under $100 Gift Guide 2005!

Seth Godin (SethGodin.typepad.com):
Small is the new big

Dave Shea (Mezzoblue.com):
Google Maps and Accountability

Thomas Hawk (ThomasHawk.com):
PriceRitePhoto: Abusive Bait and Switch Camera Store

Deane Barker (Gadgetopia.com):
Why Macs Suck

Technorati tags: Dave Winer, Joel Spolsky, Chris Pirillo, Om Malik, Niall Kennedy, Steve Rubel, Jeremy Zawodny, Blog, popular posts

Stuff: Coding, Orkut, Big MashUp and Podcasts

2006-11-30T06:16:00.000-08:00

It has just struck me that of late I am spending more time documenting stuff rather than developing. Typical case of a developer in a large corporation. Long long time ago I had written that You remove fun from programming, include a whole lot of responsibleness and bring in hierarchy, what you get then is 'software engineering'. And I wasn't wrong then. If I were to throw a random number, I'd say I am documenting for about 40% of my time. Huge and terribly bad.

Its been ages I've logged onto Orkut. The Facebook account is dormant ever since I registered. It's high time the nice folks at Google release an Orkut API so that we can have something like this Facebook Firefox Extension for searching, notifications, and sharing. Great work there by Facebook developers. And it's all open so you can go ahead and modify it the way you like!

Then there's this new site I was looking at that Sun Microsystems have put up- The Big Mashup that'll feature "interviews and commentaries from some of the movers and shakers in the participation age". As this Sun Blog says it: "It features a documentary about how the network is changing how we get news, make social change happen, and are entertained. " I like the whole idea and have another subscription in my pod-aggregator now. I really dont understand why only a few are hooked to Podcasts.

And yes, apparently there's still hope for Zune. I always knew it!

Cheers

Technorati tags: orkut, facebook, software, firefox extension, the big mashup, sun, podcasts, microsoft, zune

The snotty bunch that we are

2006-11-29T22:32:00.000-08:00

Are we a snotty bunch of people? Given the way we like to flatter us and our fellow countrymen as a polite, accommodating race, the question might not seem appropriate. But this is how I am beginning to feel in the past few days.

First, we behaved in a ludicrous manner with Brangelina when they were here. And the couple themselves did nothing wrong. What instead we gained was the emergence of one of our cities on the global tourism map. Here were two of the biggest Hollywood stars, roaming freely carrying their children around towns in India, taking the Mumbai's trains, walking the seaside- what better endorsement could our Ministry of Tourism could have got? And yet we created a ruckus when none of their bodyguards supposedly 'abused' an Indian, something that none has been able to establish. With the treatment meted out to one of the most celebrated couple, it'll be hard to see India's already tattered image getting any better across the globe.

The next in line was our national cricket team's coach Greg Chappell. He made a remark about the political class in the mighty India. And the poor man has a defamation case filed against him. Apparently some respectable citizen of the country did not like to hear such remarks about his leaders. Freedom of Speech, anybody?

Why this rotten behaviour all of a sudden? Who doesn't overhear atleast ten profanities any given day, walking the footpaths, travelling the trains/buses? And who are these directed against- the country, the state of affairs, the people who are leading this nation of ours. And then, why don't these protectors of national honour do anything about it? Why are we picking minute issues and making mountains of them? Is it because of our new status as a 2.5th World nation? Or, as someone wrote in that column in DNA last week, is it that the frustration during years of subjugation under the colonial rule is now wanting to vent out?

Pictures: http://www.hellomagazine.com

Technorati tags: angelina, brad pitt, brangelina, pune, mumbai, the mighty heart, greg chappell, tourism, endorsement

There we go again

2006-11-29T09:01:00.000-08:00

Not for the first time in my life, I am struggling to beat a deadline. I've always wondered how engineers like me always make it a point to meet the deadline. Never beating it.

Anyways, here is some random stuff:

This guy wrote on his blog, how he wanted to drive an aston Martin. And guess what, he got to drive it. The super cool people at Aston Martin SA arranged for him to spend a day driving an Aston Martin.

The new Apple 'Get a Mac' ads are out. I haven't been able to see them because somehow Quicktime declines to install on the machine I am currently on and the ads weren't yet on YouTube the last time I checked.

Wired is "asking for your help choosing the brainy men and women who filled your Google search boxes and fueled your dreams. " So go and leave your suggestions!

"Avoid the loony Zune." Thats how Andy Ihnatko titled his blunt review of the Zune where he wrote that it'll be dead and gone within six months. Till this morning, I was wondering if there did exist a 'positive' review for the Zune. And then, I read this.

Technorati tags: apple, mac, ipod, ads, wired, aston martin, microsoft, zune, youtube, geek

How to get a free copy of Windows Vista and Office 2007

2006-11-28T04:02:00.000-08:00

Watch some Webcasts,part way with some information and get a free copy of Windows Vista and Office 2007. Not bad at all. But doesn't make sense to me but who cares!

So here's how you can lay your hands on a free copy of Windows Vista and office 2007. Just a simple 1-2-3-4-5 process

Visit the Power of Together website
Sign up (it's only for US residents only)
Watch three Webcasts/vLabs each for Windows Vista and Office 2007 within 30 days of registering
Wait 6 - 8 weeks
Your software will be delivered to you free of charge

Reminds me of the last time the folks at Microsoft were distributing free XP CDs. I was there and yet returned empty handed :(

And I am yet to decide what was it that Microsoft wanted me to see and what it did not in this video:

Source: » Get a free copy of Windows Vista and Office 2007

Technorati tags: windows, vista, office 2007, software

Apple Tablet ?

2006-11-27T02:04:00.000-08:00

I'm a Mac. I'm a PC. And now we have I'm a Mac tablet PC! (Why use the word PC ???)

From Smarthouse:

"Apple researchers have built a full working prototype of a Mac tablet PC and three Companies in Taiwan are now costing a product for a potential launch in mid 2007."

Surprising given that Steve Jobs has maintained a NO/UNSURE stance on a tablet so far.

September 2002: [via MacRumors]

"We're not sure the tablet PC will be successful. It's turned into a notebook that you can write on. Do you want to handwrite all your e-mail? We have all the technology ourselves to do that - we just don't know whether it will be successful."

June 2003:[via MacObserver]

There are no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards. When Apple first started out, "People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this." "We look at the tablet and we think it's going to fail." Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already.

But with Steve you never know. Video iPods were never on according to him. Similarly the Tablet might have looked like a pretty bad idea at that moment. Not anymore!

And I cant agree more with Scoble when he says: "I can’t wait, cause then all the Tablet naysayers will ooohhh, and aaaahhhh, and praise Steve Jobs for being a visionary."

Technorati tags: apple, tablet, pc, steve jobs

lg3d: Project Looking Glass Demo at foss.in

2006-11-23T06:03:00.000-08:00

Just got to know from Atishay that he and his team will be giving a demo onthe super cool Project Looking Glass at the foss.in this weekend.

I must say the demo is pretty slick and if you're anywhere there, do not miss this chance to see and experience this "Minority Report like UI".

For those of you who haven't heard about lg3d: Project Looking Glass, here's a little something about lg3d from the Project Home:

What if your desktop was actually a 3D environment? What if your CD or movie database became a 3D jukebox? Project Looking Glass is based on Java technology and explores bringing a richer user experience to the desktop and applications via 3D windowing and visualization capabilities. It is an open source development project based on and evolved from Sun Microsystems' Advanced Development division. It supports running unmodified existing applications in a 3D space, as well as APIs for 3D window manager and application development. At the moment, existing application integration is supported for Linux and Solaris x86 platforms. The platform for 3D application development is available for Linux, Solaris and Windows platforms.

Update:
Atishay has made available these links to some demo videos from GoMonkey/Sun demo at CeBIT 2006:
Movie Clip One | Movie Clip Two | Movie Clip Three

Technorati tags: foss, sun, lg3d, open source, demo

Top Ten Girl Geeks

2006-11-22T23:00:00.000-08:00

Just yesterday, c|Net tried putting up a list of Top 10 Girl Geeks. And no surprises, they had to include a cartoon and Paris Hilton(yes, Paris Hilton!!!) to fill the list.

Here's the complete list:
1. Ada Byron, world's first programmer
2. Val Tereshkova, went to space
3. Grace Hopper, found computer "bug"
4. Daryl Hannah, eco-friendly geek icon
5. Rosalind Franklin, chemist
6. Mary Shelley, wrote Frankenstein
7. Lisa Simpson, future president
8. Marie Curie, plutonium in her pockets
9. Aleks Krotoski, very chic geek
10. Paris Hilton, famous girl gamer

I'd say put Lenna on this list too :P

Technorati tags: paris, hilton, lenna, lisa, girl geeks, cnet

Apple's new iPod Shuffle ad

2006-11-22T03:31:00.000-08:00

Wandering aimlessly, flipping pages after pages of my feed reader (which these days is showing lots of 500 errors), I came across this new iPod shuffle ad on UNEASYsilence. Cool, but definitely not extraordinary!

Talking of ads, you ought to see these amazing HP's Computer is Personal Again ads that Justin pointed out.

Technorati tags: Apple, ipod, shuffle, HP, advertisement

The South African Safari gets underway

2006-11-21T23:35:00.000-08:00

I just realized that a long long time ago, I really thought that our men in Blue were Champs and not Chumps! Something, I am afraid, is not the case anymore.

What if the Final Frontier could not be defended. As Team India lies all battered and bruised at the hands of visiting Aussies, why have millions of cricket lovers donned their hats of critical analyzers and have come up with the unanimous verdict- Ganguly's men have failed them. Why is it that contempt is all what the public is throwing at 'its' team.

I seriously think our players deserve much better treatment than what they are being meted out. This is the same team that took India to the World Cup finals, the same team that stunned Australia, with the very same bunch of 'invincible' players, on their own soil, and tamed the Pakistanis in their own den. The Men in Blue have not played upto their full potential. But no one likes to under perform. The guys are out there giving it their best, and they are the best in their own rights. The day we question the ability of the Sachins , the Sauravs and the Dravids, I say, we better question our own sanity.

And so, today when our team takes on the Proteas, after a really long time, I'm going to be there cheering for India sitting in front of the idiot box watching a channel that is something of a mix of white-noise and ESPN (courtesy the cablewallah.) This, should the rain relent.

Talking of sports channels, I've always believed that ESPN Star Sports have been the best producers/broadcasters of cricket in India. Not only is their production top quality but the line up of commentators they have is really impressive- Gavaskar, Boycott, Shastri, Harsha Bhogle, Alan Wilkins and Wasim. But if any of you had been watching Star Sports during the first washed-out ODI looking for sporadic rain updates, you'd have seen three clowns all gussied up in some sort of weird kurtas talking all crap on anything and everything but cricket. That was supposed to be Star Sports' answer to MAX's Mandira - Shekhar Suman and Arun Lal presenting the match in Hindi. Horrible is horrible. But this was b***s***!!! (a la Shiv)

Technorati tags: Cricket, MTN Series, South Africa, India, ESPN, Star Sports

Dilbert's First Date

2006-11-20T02:20:00.000-08:00

Another of the many reasons why Dilbert is the magnifying glass and mirror to a geek's life!

Source: Dilbert.com

Microsoft Zune - Weird Screenshot

2006-11-16T23:06:00.000-08:00

This guy was lucky enough to lay his hands on the new Zune! And he's put up this image that shows up when Zune install failed for him.

[ via Angry Asian man | Boing Boing ]

OK. This hardly makes any sense to me! Can you make out what's going on here in this image?

mymuv - Tracking Trends

2006-11-14T22:53:00.000-08:00

The other day Arun sent me this invite to check out their latest trend-tracking application- mymuv and today I finally got to take it for a spin.

I wasn't even remotely sure of what to expect but just as I keyed in the invitation code, I must say I found it pretty slick. I'd refrain from using the word web2.0 here for all the uncoolness that's now associated with the word but it's one of the best "next web" application we've seen from India.

The Idea
Lets begin by calling it a memedigger for trends. The whole idea is simple. Lifestyles change. The trends around you always change. So what do you do? You set a trend, or make a "muv" and let others rate it as cool or uncool, post comments on it, discuss the trends. As "mymuv Dilberts" put it, "you get to be cool! set trends. track trends. and tell others, what you think of their muvs!"

For example, if you're making a muv from a PC to a Mac, you'd mark this changing trend as PC ≈ Mac. And then people can click on either PC or Mac to show what trend have they followed and share their thoughts on it. Now this whole ratings/comments/discussion stuff essentially transforms mymuv into a wonderful direct comparison tool as you compare "apples to apples, and not peaches". This makes mymuv an excellent option to take a look at the emerging trends, compare them, take in what others have got to say and finally decide. The folks at muvblog have put up this image to illustrate how exactly does the muv thing works:

The Interface
mymuv provides an excellent feature set with a great UI to enable trend tracking and build a social community around it. On first looks, the UI appears very neat. It's all there- gradients, rounded corners, lively colours and even a mascot Treemy- an Asian Arowana fish!

For all its features, I found it pretty usable but still it could do with some changes. I felt that the area around a muv looks all crammed up. The idea I think is to show a comment each for muvs in either directions but maybe that's making it look a bit cluttered. But on the whole layout is clean with the sidebar holding the tags and the buddy list and the map locating the trendsetters placed just above the comments on the muv details page.

MyMuv- Homepage Screenshot

It remains to be seen just how well do people take to this trend-digging, and just how profitable this idea turns out to be but overall the concept is pretty interesting and exciting. Registrations for Mymuv would be open anytime this week and so you can expect to get muving real soon. And do let me know what you guys think.

Technorati tags: mymuv, beta, memedigger, trends, lifestyle, netkode

Uniform Blues for Team India

2006-11-13T23:34:00.000-08:00

Alright. Just as Team India's departure to The South African Safari has made news for being sent off without official blazers or any formal attire, I was just wondering what happened to the Team India's navy blue one-day kit that Kiran More showed off sometime last December???

I thought this darker version of blue looked "much more smarter" :P than the current blue that Indian Team sports. But then, I am known to have a pretty bad taste in colour. What's your take on the Team India blues???

Picture: Kiran More poses with the new Indian one-day kit last December© AFP

The Big Bad Champions

2006-11-07T02:27:00.000-08:00

Certainly not a behaviour expected from the world champs! Perhaps they dont realize that the same enthusiasm and attitude on the field that makes them champions transforms them into an ungracious and arrogant lot off the field.

Just wondering what Mr. Dalmiya and Co. would be thinking on this. What they've been trying unsuccessfully so far was so easily accomplished by Ponting and Martyn: nudging Mr. Pawar aside.

Technorati tags: Ponting, Martyn, Pawar, Cricket, ICC Champions Trophy

Movie Review: The Departed

2006-11-06T23:58:00.000-08:00

What's the first movie that comes to your mind when you see Mark Wahlberg on screen? Does it ring a bell?? Oh, I know, I know, he was in this movie; Arre yaar, I just can't get the name. How can I forget???

The answer, folks, is The Italian Job. This I figured out after one full day of watching Scorsese's The Departed.

The Departed is the fourth Scorsese movie I've watched after The Avaitor, Goodfellas and Cape Fear. And I can say that it is as good, if not better than any of these with a star line up of Matt Damon, DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson and a cop-mob plot that redefines deceit and deception.

Synopsis:

The plot isn't all that complicated. You've got a sadistic Irish Mob Boss Frank Costello (Nicholson) and a team of good cops, Captain Queenan (Martin Sheen) and a rough, ever-the-foul-mouthed sergeant (Mark Wahlberg). In the middle of all this are two moles placed in each other's camps- Bill (Leo DiCaprio), a young Irish kid working for Queenan, and Colin Sullivan (Damon) placed inside the Police Department by Costello. Their existence is known, but not their identity and thus starts a rat race to uncover each other.

Leonardo DiCaprio and Jack Nicholson in The Departed.

It's Jack Nicholson's movie all the way. He is fearsome, he is evil, he is maniacal. The rest are all around him. Leonardo DiCaprio, working with Scorsese the third time is absolutely brilliant. Matt Damon was good playing the charming, greedy starcop. But the best package in the movie was Mark Wahlberg who gives profanity a new dimension. The only disaster, I could say, was Vera Farmiga, the psychiatrist who didn't seem to have any role at all. Why was she in the movie in first place is beyond my comprehension. But it doesn't matter one bit in the end amidst all the wonderful performances.

My two best moments from the film:

The conversation(?) between Bill and Collin over their cell phones. It's the silence that conveys the most- the fear that surrounds both the characters, Bill is scared shitless- he can feel Costello breathing down his neck and Collin can't believe his luck- will he be able to get to this rat?

The second, I guess is when somebody asks Wahlberg who he is. And boy, how he replies! "Who am I? I'm the guy that does his fuckin' job! You must be the other guy!"

Technorati tags: movie, The Departed, Scorsese

Shiv Visvanathan on 'Sex and the Single Man'

2006-11-04T01:29:00.000-08:00

My favourite Professor from college, Shiv, was on television yesterday talking about the findings of the fourth India Today-AC Nielsen-ORG-MARG survey on sexuality. The half hour piece on Headlines Today, was a discussion on his recent essay on India Today's cover story, "Men In A Muddle".

For the better half of those 30 minutes, I was frantically trying to reach all my friends asking them to turn on their Television sets and while some did manage to do that, some just had to make do by swearing at their cable wallahs. And so, I thought I'll just post here some of Shiv's lucid statements, which we've all been so used to of hearing in those Humanities lectures back in campus:

On Bollywood's role in changing the outlook of men on sensuality:

"Bollywood is the magnifying glass and the mirror of the middle class."

On Pornography: [Hehe, we've all heard that often, haven't we ;) ]

"Pornography is a part of the Information Revolution and it is here to stay and grow."

"Pornography is like Democracy. The only difference being that unlike democracy, pornography cannot be regulated through legislation [...]"

"[...] educational device than an erotic stimulus."

And finally, "Women might be oppressed but men might still be repressed!"

Blog sloth no more

2006-11-03T02:02:00.000-08:00

And finally it appears that this long hiatus is coming to an end. It's been over six months that I last blogged here and the whole idea excites me again.

These past few months were quite something. Things moved at quite a pace and a lot of those did indeed make blogworthy content. But as ever, procrastination got the better of me and my return to the blogosphere just didnt seem to be happening. But now, lets just hope that updates here are not few and far between.

So, here's just a quick round up of what I've been upto recently:

I finally graduated. Yes, this'll come as a surprise to many who knew how keen some people were back there in the campus to have me around for a little longer :P

Crossed all limits of indecision, just as it came down to deciding which company I'd have pay me for going to their office daily. (It is quite a story and at some point of time, I'll be elaborating on that for sure.)

Moved to a new city, a city where I had spent three blissful years a decade ago. A city that just got itself renamed.
...
...

Then there've been lots of other things happening here in Mumbai, something that includes a 4 am joy ride across Mumbai, and the opportunity to meet an awesome bunch of bloggers - Amit Varma, Vulturo, Gaurav, Divya, Akshay, Ideasmith, Melody, Manish Vij, and Peter Griffin who were really nice to this baby blogger at Sakshi's place for Blog-a-Ween.

And, this is it.

2006-04-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

These past few days, I have given it quite a thought on how do I continue this blog, and be more regular. I've been wanting to blog more often- blogging stuff that is interesting, and blog-worthy. But the fact is that Blogging doesn't appear as exciting to me as it used to, and it could only be due to what I've referred in the past as blogging-burn out.

And so, it's time that this journey of 400 odd posts comes to a halt. It was great fun writing about all the cool stuff and I'd like to thank everyone for reading the blog. I've enjoyed every bit of it right from the moment I decided to start this blog to this moment when I decide to call it quits.

I am not saying I am quitting blogging altogether. I might as well start a new blog or continue this one real soon, but for now, there are lots of other things in life that provide better distractions.

Cheers!

The tragic mistake

2006-03-28T20:04:00.000-08:00

From Adam Green's The second coming of the Web:

“When Tim Berners-Lee first gave mankind the Web, he made a tragic mistake. He granted us free will to use less than perfect HTML. His tools, and the tools of those to follow him, allowed users to develop sinful habits based on ignorance and sloth. The result was a Web of corrupt data, in which misformed tags abounded. This great fall from grace by the users of the Web prevented it from ever attaining the state of perfection desired by all computer scientists, a completely machine readable database.”

The Joy of Tech - Windows XP on Mac

2006-03-27T10:25:00.000-08:00

Without doubt, The Joy of Tech is the best techie cartoon site out there. Just browsing through their archives for the past week, I stumbled upon this awesome strip:

Source: The Joy of Tech Comic

Vox Populi: "I couldn't give a boot load about this, gimme OS X on a non-Apple PC, ... it's what's inside that counts."

Windows Live Developer Central

2006-03-25T12:01:00.000-08:00

At last week's Mix 06, Microsoft announced the launch of their Windows Live Developer Central. There's lots of cool stuff available there if you're interested in developing apps using Windows Live Services.

From Windows Live Developer Central website:

The Windows Live Platform puts a deeper level of control into developers' hands by offering access to the core services and data through open, easily accessible APIs. Start building applications and mashups today with Windows Live.

The site has spme pretty useful information and resources that enables people to start building applications using the easily accessible APIs:

MetaWeblog API programming interface for MSN Spaces for external programs to get and set the text and attributes of Weblog posts.
Getting Started with Virtual Earth's rich and easy to implement set of interfaces to get it running on your site

There's also a link to the Channel 9 video where Scott Swanson is interviewed by Robert Scoble about the Messenger Activity APIs and other Messenger-related demos.

Also, I stumbled upon this transcript of Bill Gates's opening keynote at Mix06 featuring Aber Whitcom from MySpace and Ashley Highfield from the BBC. At the end of the speech, there was a dicussion between BillG and Tim O'Reilly that makes quite an interesting read. (btw, MySpace uses SQL Server and Tim O'Reilly's Safari books online service runs on SQL Server and ASP.NET ;) )

Sun Grid - The Network is the Computer

2006-03-23T23:56:00.000-08:00

Whoever said that the world would need only five computers was probably correct. Sun has now released its on demand Grid computing for $1/cpu-hour. As Jonathan Schwartz writes about Sun Grid, "...experience for yourself what it's like to use one of the world's largest supercomputers. Without having to house it, manage it, power it, administer it, provision it... or buy it.

Sun's Grid Service is available at network.com, a domain they got with the acquisiton of StorageTek. From the About Sun Grid page:

Sun is changing the very nature of computing by delivering access to enterprise compute power over the Internet with its Sun Grid Compute Utility. Sun Grid provides an easy and affordable access to an enormous computing resource for the predictable and all-inclusive price of $1/CPU-hr.

Reminds me of what my Professor had said last semester in our "Introduction to Grid Computing" class: "As the world uses the Internet to communicate, soon it would use the Grid to compute".

ShameIt - Shame 'em into behaving better?

2006-03-21T04:17:00.000-08:00

Alright. This is a wicked idea.

An exasperated father has discovered to his cost that cyberspace is not the ideal arena for family feuds. Two weeks ago Steve Williams became so fed up with his daughter's messy bedroom that he built a website featuring pictures of his slothful offspring's lair in an attempt to shame her into action.

But the public humiliation proved a short-lived victory. While it did spur his daughter, Claire, into tidying up her room, it also whet her appetite for revenge. With the help of her father's friends, the 20-year-old business student has now set up a rival website that displays photos of him in a variety of compromising situations.

So if you wanna shame somebody or something with something like this, just keep it in mind that it could backfire!

MyToday - Online News Aggregator

2006-03-18T15:35:00.000-08:00

I just cant help but think that the success of Digg and Newsvine has inspired a whole bunch of news tracking sites and mixups like diggdot.us and SlashDigg.

Another one to have sprung up recently is MyToday. MyToday is your another "public RSS aggregator providing the latest news, views and content on a topic-based collection of feeds."

I first heard of MyToday earlier this month at BarCamp Delhi and at that time I had thought of it like more of a memedigger with human-voting-system for news stories and it seemed a good idea to have an Indian memedigger at last. But as it turns out, MyToday is not a memedigger but only an AJAXy Public RSS Aggregator with an objective to bring the most relevant quality content to the readers through selective sources. This really is a wonderful thing considering the significant increase in the Indian Blogs that have sprung up and an assorted list of feeds in different categories would be a great help.

However, on first impressions, the whole news aggregator thing here looks pretty under developed:
- there aren't any customization features available
- no options to change colour schemes, font sizes.
- no Search within feeds
- no options to "Mark as Read/Unread" or Bookmark

It seems to be a good idea for the large number of people out there who do not use a News Reader but others might as well have the OPML and use their preferred Reader.

I just wonder how are the editors going to handle the vast number of requests they are soon going to be bombarded with by bloggers wishing to be a part of MyTodays Dailies.

The Web 2.0 Quiz

2006-03-17T09:13:00.000-08:00

Ever got confused between a Web 2.0 Company and a Star Wars character?

How silly is the Web 2.0 hype getting? You tell us! Here's a quick quiz...we looked in 30Boxes and analyzed 37Signals that led us to come up with the 43Things below. So without further ado, can you decide...Web 2.0 or Star Wars Character?

I scored 32. You?

Gmail Chat Disabled

2006-03-16T02:31:00.000-08:00

The fact that it happened does not surprise me but that it took so long for our network administrators to figure it out does.

And if you are wondering how do you disable Gmail's chat features on your network, you only need locking DNS lookups to chatenabled.mail.google.com, by returning 127.0.0.1.

Windows Live Weather Forecasts - High vs Low

2006-03-14T09:46:00.000-08:00

This is what I had on my Windows Live Desktop the other day:

Correct me if I am wrong but shouldn't the High and Low readings be the other way around in this case? I mean, how can we have a high of 10 degrees C and a low of 18 degrees C in a day?

Bumble Search

2006-03-13T14:25:00.000-08:00

I received an email this evening from Andy about Bumble Search, a Firefox extension built by him and Chris. Bumble Search is meant to add to your search experience and it introduces the concept of Cross Pollination, analyzing pages for keywords and finding related or similar pages.

This was the second Firefox extension for Google Search that I was hearing in the day, the first one being Advanced Dork that lets users quickly search for specific information using Google's Advanced Operators. Curious with what Bumble Search was about, I installed it to give it a shot and was mostly impressed with what it had to offer.

The Bumble Search extension enhances Google Search to include specialized search engines like Wikipedia, flickr, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB etc, resulting in multiple search options. You can also optionally remove certain commercial keywords like shop, store, bargain, shipping etc. thereby refining your search a great deal.

An example of Bumble Cross Page Pollination

Also, the extension lends the capability to cross reference an auction item in Amazon and Froogle or a product in Ebay and Amazon to find the best deal.

Cross reference items in Amazon andFroogle with Bumble Search

The extension puts up a Sidebar in your browser which provides for a Search and a Notes Tab. The Search tab lets you search for keywords with MSN or Google and the Notes tab lets you drag certain links in the "Pages to Remember" box or add notes on the searched pages on the Notepad. However, once I filled up the available screen space for the The Pages to Remember section, I had to close the toolbar and start it again so that more links could be added. This definitely is a problem.

From what I've seen so far, it seems a decent enough experience and I am going to use it for a couple of days. Don't go by all those negative reviews on the Firefox Extension Page. It really is a nifty extension that wouldn't go down well with all users because of different searching behaviour but for a select user group, it is going to be pretty useful.

You can download Bumble Search Extension from BumbleSearch.com or the Mozilla Addons site

It's been a long time

2006-03-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

It just seems that this hiatus is coming to an end. Recent updates here have been few and far between but there is really not much that I could do. Things were moving at quite a pace and yet they somehow didn't fall into the category of weblog content. Those that did, suffered a result of my now famous procrastination streak.

Anyways, lets just hope that this trend takes a deviation. (Though, I am really not too sure how as I am again off the town for next 4 days beginning tomorrow)

Here's a run through of what I've been upto recently (in no particular order):

Been to BarCamp Delhi and met some really amazing people. I'll most definitely be posting about in detail later.
Formatted and reformatted my desktop.
Cleared an IBM Certification Examination
Saw the new Google Pages thingy. You can't imagine how glad I was to see it flop! But found the Google Calendar screenshots way too cool.
Struggled with tons and tons of meaningless assignments. It really amazes me how we engineers always manage to meet the deadlines. It seems that "beating deadlines" is concept alien to us.

There really isn't an end to this stuff...

And finally, thanks to Prasoon for posting here in my absence.

Microsoft’s Origami Project

2006-02-27T19:55:00.000-08:00

Microsoft on 2^nd of March is expected to be launching its Origami Project. Essentially, its just another tablet PC kinda hand held device which would allow you to listen to music, give Internet access, messaging, photo editing, and video gaming. The project details are expected to be out on Thursday and not the whole thing – the site itself suggests 3 weeks of timescale.

Photographs started surfacing about 3-4 days ago and then, finally came a video which is supposed to have leaked from the headquarters. The final product prototype seems huge to me and I doubt if it really gets all that well amongst the masses. A Microsoft Evangelist Robert Scoble himself says that the Origami Project is overhyped and may not quite deliver what's expected of it - quite possible. I'd be with Joe Wilcox who says that the best companies underpromise and overdeliver. It's a wait and watch on these big giants – Apple and Microsoft; who are using this week as a launch pad for their fun products.

- Prasoon

The Big Guns at it again

2006-02-23T02:00:00.000-08:00

Anything about Apple or Google draws my attention and today both of them need a mention.

Apple sold its Billionth song by itunes and that is one helluva achievement not just for Apple, but even the billionth buyer who would get – A 20” iMac, 10 60-GB iPods and a $10000 iTunes Music Certificate – so much for just spending those “lucky” 99 cents which earns him/her a lottery of about $16000.

With Apple holding a special event to launch ‘fun products’ on February 28^th, I wonder what would be launched now. I have already seen rumours which suggest that apple could be launching new iPods, may be even a Phone of a Gaming device but then, any rumour about Apple can never hold true unless Steve jobs holds that one more thing out in his hand. Reports also suggest that a mega event could be planned for April 1^st this year, when Apple celebrates its 30^th Anniversary when there could a touch screen iPod or even more sleek and faster MacBooks. Stay hooked – Apple is just getting better Day by Day; Month by Month and Year after Year.

100 MB of space with a wysiwyg interface for making pages is what you get with Google Page Creator now. It was launched just a couple of hours ago and my first impression – It’s a product launched to compete with and the whole new bunch of wikis that have sprung up everywhere and the old-school Yahoo! Geocities!

With AJAX based interface and couple of templates and layout already available - Google Page Creator is a ‘perfect solution’ for beginners with minimum requirements who would want to maintain information pages n allow for a few files to be there on their pages. 100 MB might seem less but then, it could be used in integration with say flickr [for photos], or other file hosting services. Every change triggers an auto-save and all changes are published by a single click – The Google crawler would update all published pages within a few hours – this I suppose is a plus point over other similar services.

Currently all the pages are hosted on a url of type .googlepages.com and Google says that someday they could be allowing users to create new sites as well. I’d maintain a wait-and-watch strategy on this release of Google as of now.

- Prasoon

BarCamp Delhi

2006-02-22T08:22:00.000-08:00

Alright. I know I am supposed to be taking a break from blogging here but I had to blog this!

Asia's first BarCamp is happening in Delhi this March 4th and whats' more I am going to be in Delhi that weekend!! How cool could it get??

If you are anywhere near there, just be there. C'ya at BarCamp Dehi.

Technorati Tag: BarCampDelhi

Flock it !!

2006-02-22T01:56:00.000-08:00

First, I'd thank 'enginerd' for proving me a space here to write :)

Flock - The so called next gen social web browser aimed at Web 2.0 gurus and bloggers has released an update and I should say - its impressive. The only flaw I still see in it is the memory leak, something native to anything built over Firefox 1.5 and sometimes, the RAM usage skyrockets itself to over 250 MB when Flock is left idle with an AJAX webpage like meebo.com running.

Whats new in this version -

I noticed a new and better blogging interface, advanced flickr integration and a host of tiny tweaks with the topbar. The upgraded RSS viewer is definitely fast and looks great. Good news for Wordpress users because now, categorization happens right from the blog editor within Flock. Next time, you use Flock for filling out forms, do not forget to use the inbuilt Spell-Checker. This version also supports shadows.com integration other than del.icio.us.

I wonder how many of you visiting have used the previous version but I would suggest all of you to at least give it a try for once.

Going by my description which Anand gave about me, I shall not end my post without criticizing Microsoft for its IE 7 Preview to Beta 2, it sucks - at least for bloggers using Blogger.com

-Prasoon

Finally...

2006-02-20T07:56:00.000-08:00

It took me a week but I have finally succeeded in persuading Prasoon to guest blog here at the enginerd Weblog while I take a small break from the blogosphere.

Prasoon is a Mac geek and maintains a kind of antipathy against all software that come from Microsoft. He has a whole array of blogs online, from photoblogs to technoblogs to stuff you hardly hear about. I can't really say what stuff will he be putting up here but it could include photography, the latest gadgets, or even rants and raves on how Google is God and Microsoft is History.

Signing off for a while,
Anand

Technology Festivals In India

2006-02-18T08:34:00.000-08:00

About an year ago, I wrote:

I write this post in the middle of the biggest college technology festival in the country. With what would have begun as an attempt to create, connect and relate aspects of technology, it has now taken the shape of an entirely commercial event with enormous budgets and unprecedented extravagance.

Forced to wonder, is it still THE platform for the energetic and creative to push the frontiers of expanding technology, or is it the place to see 'branding' take new dimensions, the place to "walk away with a fortune".

The trend just can't seem to stop. In a year, this "festive spirit" is sweeping the country with every second institute organizing a festival boasting of budgets running into millions of Rupees.

Short Notes

2006-02-07T09:20:00.000-08:00

Traffic on the enginerd Weblog is scaling new heights ever since Laurent linked to my Firefox Extension from the coComment Teamblog. Also, I checked out the GreaseMonkey script and it is simply awesome.

Meanwhile Microsoft Research has released GroupBar, a tool that allows window tiles to be rearranged in any order or dragged and dropped into "groups" with one-click task-switching and convenient group operations. Really useful and makes a lot of sense.

I got my invite for 30Boxes, the online calendar application (with a bit of social networking thrown in) from 83degrees yesterday. It's certainly the best online calendar application I've seen till date.

And finally, while browsing through my blog archives, I came across this post on software engineering that I thought would be quite relevant NOW for some of my friends on campus ;)

Firefox Extension for coComment!

2006-02-06T15:16:00.000-08:00

I have put up the Firefox Extension for coComment! I and a few friends have been using it for a day now and it seems to work fine!

Download coComment! for Firefox

coComment! for Firefox allows you to coComment! from the right-click context menu and is of great help especially when commenting in a pop-up window where you can't access your bookmarks.

Also, with this extension you will not have to move from the comment area to your bookmarks to click the 'bookmarklet' and then back, before you click the submit button on the blog. With this extension, you can directly move on to the submit button after writing the comment and merely hit the right click 'activating' coComment before submitting the post. Simple Fitts' law and it makes your browsing experience a great deal better and faster.

Let me know what you think of it!

More on coComment

2006-02-06T00:23:00.000-08:00

Update:
I have put up the Firefox Extension for coComment! I and a few friends have been using it for a day now and it seems to work fine!

Laurent has posted a few coComment invitation codes in my previous post's comments. Thanks, Laurent. Make sure you get them before they are gone.

SolutionWatch has put up a quick review of coComment with a Greasemonkey script

Also, here is the screenshot of my Firefox Extension for coComment that allows you to coComment! from the right-click context menu that I quickly put together. This extension is of a great help especially when commenting in pop-up windows where you can't access your bookmarks. And even on a general page, reduces your onscreen movement time (Read more here).

Its high time I got myself some web hosting space.

coComment - Tracking Comments anywhere

2006-02-05T15:48:00.000-08:00

So, all the cool guys in town checked out the very awesome coComment this weekend. The basic idea behind coComment is to help a user keep track of all the comments he leaves on other's blogs. One can simply get an indication of how much this was needed in the Blogosphere by merely looking at the number of comments on this post where Robert Scoble first writes about coComment.

Meanwhile, the cooler guys in town wrote a Firefox extension for it that just made their life a bit easier. coComment requires the user to click on the "bookmarklet" before you click the submit button on the blog to submit comment. So everytime I have to comment, I have to move from the comment area to the bookmark and then back to the comment area. This simply increases the amplitude of the movement if we talk of Fitts’ Law as you'll see here.

So the workaround I thought was to write a Firefox extension that opens up the bookmarklet in the context menu of Firefox on right-click. Thus, now I can directly move on to the submit button after posting the comment and merely hit the right click 'activating' coComment before submitting the post. This invariably saves a lot of on screen movement! (I wonder if I should put the extension up online for others to use. I heard there is already a Greasemonkey script doing rounds.)

There is also the 'Blog Box' that that shows your visitors where you’ve been commenting lately. You require an invitation code to try coComment. Register yourself and wait for the invite code to be delivered to your inbox. Luckily for me it didn't take an eternity like it does for most other betas (Measuremap!!!) This one is a really killer app. No wonder both Scoble and Michael are excited!

And yes, the coolest guys were off to the mountains ;)

Yahoo Mail Beta - Way too slow

2006-02-02T12:40:00.000-08:00

So after waiting for months, I finally got my Yahoo! Mail Beta invite a fortnight ago and wasted absolutely no time in clicking on the link which read something on the likes of 'Try the new Beta'.

However, two weeks into the Yahoo Mail Beta and I am left completely disillusioned. For all the AJAX thrown in with the objective of making it a "native" application supporting drag-and-drop, reading pane, and a very desktop application like interface (read Outlook like), the application is extremely sluggish. There is just too much of lag in everything- be it message loading, or the over-crowded contextual menu that pops up on right click.

Takes forever to load. Takes forever to respond. If it were the old days, I could have blamed it on my more-than-obsolete machine. But that is no longer the case. Thankfully, they have a "Switch Back" option sitting right next to "Sign Out"!

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview

2006-01-31T13:20:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview is now available for developers and IT Pros to download and evaluate.

"Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview will only run on Windows® XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) systems, but will ultimately be available for Windows Vista, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Windows Server 2003."

Who had imagined that one day even "Betas" will have a "Preview"?

Live Messenger Beta Invites Available

2006-01-30T07:35:00.000-08:00

Interested in trying out Windows Live Messenger?

I have a few Live Messenger Beta invites with me to give away. Let me know if you want them.

Google Toolbar 4.0

2006-01-30T02:37:00.000-08:00

The new version of Google Toolbar would come packaged with a host of new features that surely sound useful. According to the Revision History, the new Google Toolbar for IE would feature:

Version 4.x.x.x
New Feature
Custom buttons: Add custom buttons to the Toolbar to search your favorite websites
Bookmarks: Create bookmarks that are accessible from any computer
Enhanced search box: Get query suggestions as you type in the enhanced search box
"Send To" feature: Send web pages to friends via Gmail or SMS, or post directly to a blog
Log into your Google account from the Settings menu

I am not too sure what the Bookmarks feature is all about? If it is only about accessing your personal bookmarks from any computer, then it is no big deal. But if Google manage to do a del.icio.us with bookmarks sharing and tagging, it could be an interesting proposition.

But one just wonders what usefulness will these features have with the release of Internet Explorer 7 as it has an integrated search tool (like Firefox) and with Windows Live Favorites looking better by the day, bookmarking in IE is sure to undergo a major change. But then, just how many would switch to IE7?
Go Google Toolbar!!

enginerd v2.01 with a Web2.0 Template

2006-01-26T12:42:00.000-08:00

With everything around me looking so web2.0, it was time the blog too had a web2.0 look to it! And so the enginerd Weblog is now in v2.01

So what has enginerd v2.01 got? Well it has really large headings, white background (tons of whitespace thrown around), Trebuchet font, simple underlined links with hover style highlighting the full link, and the flavour of the season: selective highlighting in the lightest yellow possible.

If that isn't enough web2.0, enginerd v2.01 also switches to a content-rich footer. Now that definitely make it web2.0 styled!

And, if you would like to have a modified version of this template for your Blogger blog, feel free to contact me.

Another Gem from The Times Of India

2006-01-22T23:35:00.000-08:00

Here is how Times Of India ePaper defined Podcasting:

All downloadable audio files are now called ‘podcasts’.

But while all those who download music from the net are indeed ‘podcasting’...

Only The Times Of India in this world could have run a whole article on Podcasting without even mentioning terms like RSS, web feeds, or subscription!!

iPod - Lame

2006-01-21T11:30:00.000-08:00

Here is what Slashdot had to say on the original iPod:

No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

Apparently, "Lame" turns out to be the most coveted pocket gadget ever!

via Infectious Greed, Mashable

Technorati Tags:
iPod Slashdot

Enhance Computer Security with Graphical Passwords

2006-01-19T11:48:00.000-08:00

Researchers at the Rutgers University have developed a unique system to safeguard your computer and online accounts by using images, and not digits and alphabets as passwords.

In one of the solutions proposed by the group, the user is required to pick certain 'click-points' that he had selected initially while setting the password on an an image. The other solution requires the user to select certain icons scrambled within hundreds of icons and then click inside the "convex hull" formed by connecting imaginary lines among these selected icons.

In the first method, the user sets the password by selecting an image of his choice and then selecting a number of regions in that picture. Now to authenticate himself, he will have to click within those regions in the picture.

Example: To login, the user is required to click within the 4 circled red regions in this picture.

The second method requires the user to select a number of pass-icons from a large pool of icons and memorize them. Now to authenticate himself, the user will have to locate a minimum of three pass-icons from the randomly moving icons pool and click anywhere inside the "convex hull" formed by connecting imaginary lines among these pass icons. The user is required to click inside these regions perform this a predefined number of times and only then is he defined access.

Icon Based Graphical Password: The user has to click inside the area shown here as highlighted

Visit:
The Graphical Password Project Homepage
Graphical passwords for better security

Logos 2006

2006-01-18T14:56:00.000-08:00

Intel, AT&T and Kodak, all three changed their logos recently. Even Hutch, provider of GSM mobile services changed its 'orange everything' to 'pink everything'.

I might have found these "swanky" new logos thoroughly disappointing but who's complaining. The corporate suppliers are surely in for some serious money now with new business cards, letter heads, and all the stuff that would have to be done sporting the new logo.

My quick thoughts:

AT&T: Everything lowercase is not always cool.

Intel: The least horrible change of all three, mixing the 'Intel Inside' and the intel original logo.

Kodak: The less said about it, the better.

What next? Which company do we have next going for a new logo, a new image? Microsoft, or Yahoo! with its all new taste for tagging? btw, which logo redesign did you like the most?

The Time is Now for Front-End Architects

2006-01-14T11:22:00.000-08:00

Garrett Dimon writes that with the developments in the front-end technology which allow increasingly complex possibilities, the web needs more front-end architects today than it ever did.

Garrett attributes this to factors such as better cross-browser support of advanced technologies, an increased focus on user experience, and a greater awareness in topics like accessibility which makes it almost mandatory for a front-end architect to be comfortable with topics such as XHTML, CSS,DOM Scripting, AJAX, Flash, Accessibility, Usability, Information Architecture, Interface Design etc.

In the article, he also makes the point that a front-end developer must be able to programme or have a programming background, the lack of which, very often acts as a bottleneck to the whole integration of the front-end and back-end.

Read The Time is Now for Front-End Architects