Yet Another Year end Post

Another year passed by. This time it’s the end of the decade. I no longer love my birthdays and I hate to grow up and become older. Why do I love new years then? Not sure why do I become cynical when it comes to year end post. When I look back at 2000, that’s the beginning of my engineering. I knew nothing then and scared of everything. I was a serious guy in class during my time in B.Tech, With lots of ambitions, lots of fears, doubts and questions.  I’m the kind of person that likes order in life. The fears still remain, just that they are different now, not the same set of problems. Of course, the way of dealing with them changed a lot. The order in life no longer remains.  Who would have thought I would have fall in love, and the power of bad break up, of course I underestimated it. And then another set back with a break up of the engagement. I used to plan for everything then. Needless to say, I’m not much of a planning person anymore. 2010 has been a pretty interesting year for me. While the cynic inside my knows that this too shall not last, I tried my best to make it interesting. Coming to the resolutions I made, I didn’t succeed in at least one of them. Neither in reading the books, nor in making the trips. I am sick of making the same resolutions again year after year when I know that I never keep them. This time I am going to make some resolutions that I can actually accomplish.

 

• Read less
• Gain weight. Put on at least 4 kgs.
• Stop exercising. Waste of time.
• Watch more TV. I am actually missing some interesting stuff.
• Procrastinate more.
• Start being superstitious.
• Spend more time at work and in front of computer.
• Eat out more, Eat more sweets and junk food.
• Make a new habit. May be drinking or smoking.

 

King Kongress

The picture above is about a protestor who confronts Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a protest of election results earlier this year. Wish I could do this to the current congress government. Earlier it used to be quite shocking, if the news paper talks about a corruption scam in our country. Now it is like same old scams and a couple of news ones etc..The latest political drama in the state is about the ruling party MP’s staging protest against the govt for lifting of the cases against the students. It obliged happily so that the credit entirely goes to the ruling party. Whereas couple of months back the opposition protested for the same and it didn’t even respond. Dropping cases against students who destroy public property sends wrong signals to the whole country. Riots of any form should be punished harshly.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone. Hugs and Kisses…

 

The Namesake : Review

I was disappointed with this book- not to say that it was a "bad" book by any means -I was just disappointed. It’s a family saga from the initial immigration of a bengali wife and husband from India to US. The story goes on to talk about the life of their son Gogol who appears to be confused as to what his identity is and is conflicted over honoring tradition and the culture of a new world.Gogol, hates his name and states his hatred of his name Gogol “not only because it’s a pet name turned good name, but a last name turned first name". Even after he goes and legally changes his name from Gogol to Nikhil he continues to complain. Gogol or “Nikhil” is a shallow and self absorbed character that doesn’t do anything but ignore his family and have affairs with random women. I got bored with the second half that focused on lots of rich, young New Yorkers sitting around drinking wine. The story had a strong beginning, but I just simply began to lose interest halfway through the book...it was just getting too long for what she was trying to get across. The author failed to get the idea across with an unclear theme and structure. I have to admit that I LOVE the author's writing style with her elegant and incredibly descriptive nature while not boring whatsoever.

 

Overall I found the The Namesake to be a disappointment. Skip this one.

Chrome OS–Does it make sense?

 

The Truth About Chrome OS: It's A Waste Of Time

 

Google Will Kill Chrome OS Next Year, Predicts Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit

 

Bussiness Insider adds more speculation to this…

 

Why is Google making Chrome OS, an operating system for PCs?

In part, perhaps, to boost Google search queries or Google web apps or Google-something-else. In part, perhaps, as a novel pet project -- because Google's founders think it's cool to do a little bit of everything. In part, perhaps, to give people a more modern PC experience for less money.

But the REAL reason is that it's a big chance to disrupt Google's archrival Microsoft, and to start to destroy its core business, Windows.

Despite all the things that Microsoft is involved in -- servers, Office, gaming, MSN, Xbox, Zune, phones -- Windows is still by far its biggest profit driver. During the last eight quarters, Microsoft's Windows division represented 51% of the company's operating income, including as much as 63% in an individual quarter.

By attacking Microsoft's core business with Chrome OS, Google is taking a small risk that could have a major payoff. Because the weaker Windows is, the weaker Microsoft is, and the less it can afford to try to attack Google. (Similarly, this is why Microsoft continues to dump money into Bing; to try to destroy Google's core search business.)

Now the question is whether Chrome OS will last, or whether it's a huge waste of time -- and that Google's attack on Windows would be stronger via a unified push behind Android.

Is it really the question of Windows 7 Vs Chrome OS now? Comparing a complete full fledged OS i.e. Win7 and browser based OS like Chrome OS doesn’t make sense! I feel Chrome is the next generation tablet which is trying to keep everything on web and access from anywhere. Its more of light weight Client OS targeting Ipad/Tablet PC rather than a full fledged OS. Boot time in Chrome OS is claimed to be few seconds which I don’t think will make any difference from the business perspective. Chrome OS quality, usability, public response could be questionable once it is released. It certainly has opened a new market segment and a new way of managing data and OS. I would certainly think of buying it if it offers features like touch-screen panel hanging on the wall, showing photos from Picasa, on touch, showing calendars for family members, weather, map, etc and costs less than 400$. As far as the competition with Win 7 & Microsoft is concerned, Google main objective is to compete with Microsoft Office as they are finding it difficult to penetrate the market using their Google Apps.Its main strategy is to get the user to put documents in Google servers and then create an ecosystem for their Apps.

Google Books

 

http://books.google.com/help/ebooks/overview.html

 

Google announced new mobile editions of 1.5 million public domain books. Kindle is not supported ofcourse. iPhone and Android users now have access to five times the number of titles currently available on Kindle. Is this the beginning of end for Amazon. The major challenge is getting the content itself. This is a struggle for Amazon too. Gadget fans will clearly swoon over Kindle 2 but the real story is the growing competition between Google and Amazon in the digital book arena. Google want their data suppliers (publishers, writers, developers, news syndicates) in their long tail environment to make very little money to nothing at all. Amazon has a very strong proven track record establishing solid models for its business partners. Amazon has an embedded install base for the last couple of years.  Most passionate (the ones who spend the most money) e-reading users have jumped in. Amazon’s environment and their incentives demonstrated to the big name publishers and business owners how to make a solid consistent income year after year without being squeezed. Let’s see who wins the race.

Bing New Features on IPhone

This video demonstrates bing’s new features Panorama maker, Streetside, Visual Search for their mobile app for iPhone. These cool features are pretty awesome. Many could ask, why these features are on iphone and not on WP7. WP7 is fairly new and there isn’t much user base and even the Wp7 sdk hasn’t much penetrated into the right developer hands.

 

WikiLeaks: Rahul warned US about Hindu terror

 

Wikileaks finally released something that is relevant to India, which makes it to the world stage. Congress spokesman actually confirmed this statement by trying to provide interpretation of what actually meant.

 

"Responding to the Ambassador's query about Lashkar-e-Taiba's activities in the region and immediate threat to India, Gandhi said there was evidence of some support for the group among certain elements in India's indigenous Muslim community," "However, Gandhi warned, the bigger threat may be the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community,"

I am ashamed of this congress party politicians who can go to any extent for Muslim votes. It is a fallacy to state that Hindu terror is equivalent to Islamic terror in India. How can he just play down our war against terror and compare it with Hindu groups. It isn’t,  at least not yet and most likely it will never be. It is surely something incorrect and immature on his part. He should realize that there is nothing like Islamic terror or saffron terror. Its either Internal terror in the form of naxalism and communism or external terror in the form of pak militancy.

 

The comment should be torn apart over the Congress year end meeting but nothing happened on this front. Instead Sonia just talks about its stance on corruption and how to avoid it. Shame on them that even after 60yrs of independence these guys in the form of secular party have perfectly ensured that they keep ppl divided on religious basis.

Back from vacation

I am back from the exhausting marriage vacation to Hyderabad. It was a fabulous journey so far and I’m inclined to say it even beat the bachelor experience. I’m juggling work with bringing up the travelogue and marriage photographs to the blog. Meanwhile the health is gone for a toss and I am struggling hard to get back into perfect condition. Winter has started and hyd weather is at its peak currently. I realize I haven’t updated my blog since long. I haven’t forgotten about it, The new journey has just began. All excited currently, hope this stays for long. Wish me luck. The blogging will continue..

United we Stand

I couldn’t let this joke pass…This made me smile from ear to ear…

 

2G Scam

Open Magazine has exposed everything. The corruption and nexus involves media, politics, corporates and bureaucrats! Looks like Barka is also in the Scam. The audio tapes and transcript on the Open Magazine website related to DMK, Congress, Barka Dutt and 2G are very disturbing. You could clearly hear the conversations between Barkha Dutt ,Vir Sanghvi’s and Nira Radia (a big-shot in telecommunications).  The 2G scam headed by Raja has many unknown skeletons.

 

http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/some-telephone-conversations

 

Hear are the audio links….

 

http://openthemagazine.box.net/embed/1eohxj927ys7m0d.swf

 

http://openthemagazine.box.net/embed/9mpjug8m5bya55o.swf

 

http://openthemagazine.box.net/embed/5qgzrq6zmipd5nq.swf

 

http://openthemagazine.box.net/embed/yb7gvnzf5kt96lg.swf

 

http://openthemagazine.box.net/embed/eignlbavp9ulvy2.swf

 

Are the politicians like Kalmadi, Deshmukh, Chavan and now A.Raja are the only scapegoats here or they are just thrown under the bus by the congress to save the party image. And yes Manmohan Singh is very clean. After all he is a highly qualified head of the country and we sure will forward the mails of his high qualifications.

The Social Network : Movie Review

I usually don’t write a movie review on my blog unless it is too good to watch it twice or thrice. This movie certainly blows you away with the screenplay and will definitely be the best contender for the next oscar awards. I almost loved it from start to finish. The dialogs were so quick and there is so much going in the movie, you will not realize that movie is longer than it actually is. The movie kicks of with the break up between Mark Zuckerberg and his girl friend Erica at Harvard university. This opening scene is critical to the rest of the story, for as much as we want to root for Zuckerberg throughout the movie, we have to remember that he is very much a nerdy jerk, and people hate him. The film does its best to potray him as an anti hero through out the movie. The break-up gives Zuckerberg the motivation needed to create Facebook, although it doesn’t happen right away. During a night of drinking and blogging, Mark hacks into the websites of the different houses on the Harvard campus, gathering up picture after picture of girls. He then sets up a site where students can vote on which of two girls they think is hotter. Eventually the entire Harvard network is crashed, causing Mark a mixture of fame, hatred, and trouble from the Harvard big wigs. If you want to know the Facemash algorithm used in it , here is the best link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system. The site also helps to gain the attention of Winklevoss twins who wants to create a Harvard exclusive dating site. While Zuckerberg agrees to help them, he decides to wants to build on that idea and develop ‘The Facebook’. He then starts with developing the new site with his best and only friend Eduardo (Andrew Garfield) on board as co-founder/financial support. He then ditches Winklevoss brothers and his best friend Edward eventually. From then on, it’s just a matter of who you believe deserves credit, be it partial or full, of the creation of Facebook. Smart dialogue, sharp editing, and brilliant acting lead the way for yet another solid and spectacular movie. The ultimate lesson is You Don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.

 

Social Networking -This is one of the films to see this year. Don't get hung up on the idea that it's just a silly "Facebook movie", or else you'll be missing out on an excellent picture. (IMDB)

Acts of Faith–Erich Segal

This was the last Erich Segal book I have and I had determined to finish it at any cost before going for any other author. The beginning of the story is a bit slow that i have to force myself  multiple time too continue reading hoping that it will have a great end. My patience pays me off...towards the middle the plot started to build up and later i know that i don’t want to stop reading it. The story is about Faith, religion, love and friendship. You will learn a lot about Jewish culture and of course the Bible. It's an interesting tale when it comes to talking about two diverse cultures. The saga is told from the point of view of two Jewish siblings and a Catholic boy growing up in New York. Segal takes the reader from Brooklyn to Israel, Rome, and Brazil in this epic. The characters were struggling to understand their own heritage and what part of it was choice and what part a required privilege. It was extremely interesting and the characters and locations were well drawn. Its about three characters Deborah, Daniel and Timothy. It’s a love story between rabbi's daughter(Deborah), and the Irish catholic boy (Timothy). It captivated me to say the least and you do learn about the tradition of various religions in a way which doesn’t make you feel bored.

Facebook Email

Facebook is out with a new email service..

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40197663/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

 

The product contains three pieces:

Seamless messaging - Instead of dealing with the dilemma of reaching people via e-mail or direct message or SMS, all of these will be combined, so that you'll be able to reach someone the way they prefer to be reached, without you having to think about it. "All you need is a person and a message," said one of the product managers.

Conversation history - All communiques between friends will be logged, regardless of their format, so that you can browse all sorts of exchanges between you and your individual peeps.

Social inbox - Since they know your friends, and those friends of friends, Facebook will apply social filters to the e-mail inbox, prioritizing real humans who you like over spambots you'd rather avoid.

It looks like it has announced another Google Wave, only difference was Google clearly defined the problem then, all collaborations at one place ( superset of email functionality). Wave was a solution in search of a problem. Wave also taught everyone that putting complicated feature set frightens people away. FB guys might do it bit by bit. FB email seems to be a reflection of how a large section of FB users are already using the service. It probably reflects how people are already using FB messages – as a replacement for email. As of now FB seems to be a big threat to both Google and Microsoft.

 

Facebook Chat  -- GTalk – MSN Messenger

Facebook Messaging – GMail -- Hotmail

Facebook Ads – Google Adwords -- AdCenter

Facebook Places - Bing Local Search

Facebook social search -- (part of) Bing Search

Facebook developer API – Google App Engine API -- Azure + various SDKs.

Facebook Money -- Points

Facebook enabled-ISVs (Farmville et-al) --  Xbox ecosystem

Facebook Connect -- LiveID.

 

FB will lead dominate the web over Google within the next five years. It will become and already is starting to penetrate every single aspect of the web and will continue to eat away at Google’s advertising revenues as it understands more and more about people.  Watch out Google, Facebook is coming

Google Music

 

Well Google has come up with new service for Google India. http://www.google.co.in/music. This was a great movie although it supports only hindi songs. Music and phones is a big market in India. The similar service is provided by local search engines http://music.guruji.com/. Bing already launched similar service in US- http://www.bing.com/music.Similarly a lot of features of Bing, you can unlock by changing your Country Settings to US. I don’t understand, what is stopping Microsoft to invest and make these things available in Local regions like India. Google can very much ‘copy’ from Bing and provide similar experience across Local regions as well as US.The problem with this is, in Local market, this resonates with what people want. This makes the entry of Bing even more difficult in future with people’s perception  that it’s copying from Google. I am sure if it is advisable to be followers all the time especially w.r.t emerging markets?

Translate wiki pages to your own language!

 

Microsoft Research launched a beta version of “WikiBhasha” – a tool that helps users create multilingual content on Wikipedia. The WikiBhasha tool enables contributors to Wikipedia to find content from other Wikipedia articles, translate the content into other languages, and then either compose new articles or enhance existing articles in multilingual Wikipedias. You neither need to be a subject matter expert to contribute, nor need to be familiar with the Wikipedia format. The beta version of WikiBhasha will enable easy content creation in non-English Wikipedias by leveraging the large volume of English Wikipedia content as the source of information. It current takes english as the source language and supports all of the target languages offered by Microsoft’s free Machine Translation system.

 

You can find more information from WikiBhasha.. To see how it works see the video below..

 

WikiBhasha

Indian Military Organization To Develop Its Own OS

Some headlines are filled with irony, such as these

 

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/India-to-develop-its-own-futuristic-computer-operating-system/articleshow/6719490.cms

 

DRDO makes proposal to develop its own operating system. Sounds Amazing..50 people are going to create a new OS under guidance of DRDO and they think that keeping source code secret will keep their data safe. I would like to see DRDO beat the security levels, Microsoft takes 2K best engineers to create just a new version of an existing OS. Microsoft releases security patches every 2nd Tuesday of every alternative months. NASA does have it's own OS, but even those are hacked regularly. Hackers just need http response to know what the OS is doing and hack it. Country specific issues can pertain to security or maybe some features which are very very limited. All I could think of is it will be Real Time Operating system with windows software, source code and proprietary architecture.

Prizes : Book Review

Its been long since I read a book, So I am determined to get back to my reading habit. Which other author I could think of, Erich Segal this time disappointed me, not much but a little. Though this novel is not upto the level of other novels by erich segal, I still enjoyed reading. This book is about the Nobel Prize and follows the process and the lives of mainly three characters.

 

THREE EXTRAORDINARY LIVES,
THREE EXTRAORDINARY STORIES....

 

Adam Coopersmith, Sandy Raven and Isabel De Costa ,with these three characters in the centre erich segal paints a powerful and moving saga where they compete for the ultimate glory: the Nobel prize.  It projects scientists exactly the way they are – who dedicated their lives to the cure of one disease, given up most of the pleasures of social lives to solitude of their labs. They go through affairs, marriages, divorces and childbirths - but live their life for only one dream – science !

 

There are some important quotes as well..

 

‘Behind every Nobel prize, there is a saga – of betrayal, sacrifice and hard work’.

‘Aim for the stars. If anyone can do this, only you can !!’

 

Read this book if you have no other master piece to read. Not such a bad book, but not stuffy or overwhelming.

Microsoft releases Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 7 launces with 9 different models. Windows Phone 7 is not just like another smart phone. It’s smartly designed to surface information right to your fingertips through Live Tiles and brings together all the things you care about most with all the Microsoft Innovative hubs. This is a product that showcases all Microsoft assets across Windows, Windows Live, Bing, Zune, Xbox Live, Office, SharePoint, and Exchange. Windows Phone 7 launches in a variety of styles from Samsung, LG, HTC, and Dell as shown below on networks including AT&T, Orange, T-Mobile, Vodafone, and more.

Take a look at this video to experience the Xbox gaming on Windows Phone 7 . There would be a blockbuster portfolio of over 50 game titles that would be available on Windows Phone 7.

The much waited Copy & Paste feature will be available in early 2011! Its time for a phone to save us from our phones. Get ready for windows phone 7.

Google developing self driving car

Google is developing autonomous self driving car.

 

http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/09/google-car/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/science/10google.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/personal-tech/computing/Google-developing-self-driving-car/articleshow/6727837.cms

 

Not sure how far is it going to work, especially in countries like India. There were many attempts made and some of them are successful partially to a certain extent. There are many automotive companies working on driver assistance for a long time and they are well integrated into the design process of the car manufacturers, i.e. they build a box that fits into an existing car. They might have proved on well mannered roads like in US but that too with not 100% accuracy. This may take a while may be a decade or more than that because, Its not easy to get rid of existing cars and move to autonomous cars, For many, driving is a passion and they can just away to computers. Though computers may have faster reaction time, they don’t drink, they look all around, etc.. but they certainly will not understand humans. They will not understand how humans drive, especially on roads like Hyd. The best place to test the car is Bangalore where you find dead end on almost all lane and surprise one way traffic which changes every hour. Even a god cannot predict and drive the car safely there, forget about Artificial Intelligence the real intelligence does not work.

 

The only way is to have automated only cars and roads suitable to them, but that might be quite a challenge to the first set of cars. Unless there is a mass production of cars and every one moves to automated self driving cars, it not going to be so easy. It will be very interesting  to see if Google can make any progress.

Bing Dynamic wallpaper update

I am sure most of you must have appreciated bing background images. Now you can set those Bing images as your desktop wallpaper through an official theme, and keep it updated automatically through an RSS feed. Bing team provide an RSS feed that will update your wallpaper weekly for 3 months.

 

Do you enjoy refreshing your Windows 7 wallpaper with beautiful scenes from nature? Try the Bing Dynamic theme pack, which is automatically updated with two new photos every week..

Get Bing dynamic

 

Babri Verdict

Everyone thinks there should not be any distractions after the verdict…Media asked not to speculate too much about the verdict and asked to stay away from it, Govt banning the bulk sms and MMS much before the verdict…So What is all about this verdict, Is it Babur knocking down a Hindu temple and building a mosque over it? Should it allow the construction of the masjid or the temple? There are about 20 points court needs to touch upon…All I could say is It happened long time ago, Get over it and get a life. No one is around who remembers what went down, and even if they are there, I don’t think they will be protesting still? I am not saying people should forget or not care for giving justice to those who died as a result of the riots that happened post-Babri mosque demolition.Families who lost their loved ones after the demolition can still be there and might be suffering and deserve justice. I am just talking about the current whether Ram temple should be there at the Babri Mosque is all I care about?

 

Why worry about Babur looting us and the babri masjid demolition when there is so much wrong happening currently in the country. What about the gang of Commonwealth Master politicians in Delhi, under the guise of organizing an international sporting event, looting crores of money from us. No I am not making fun over CWG flaws on public forum, I know I never tried to take a government job, nor did I want to enter politics, I am not bitching about it either, I know that our democracry is like that and I guess I have the freedom to write. The law and order exists now

because it hasn’t been broken yet. It takes one mob to crack the largest democracy in the world, by raising such sensitive issues.

 

And as long as you have people who feel happy, coz they get a holiday on the verdict day and feel sad, when the holiday is cancelled since the verdict is postponed, You just cant change much there.  Now what needs to be done at the Babri site, I honestly don’t know what needs to be done. May be the SC should leave the place like that only..' or 'build a memorial monument which has no special significance to either Hindus or muslims, Christian, Sikh, etc..Or May be they should build a gigantic shopping mall which could atleast generate some revenue for the country.

India will be 3rd most powerful nation in the world by 2025

Well, Totally Possible.

 

http://ibnlive.in.com/news/india-third-most-powerful-nation-us-report/131421-2.html?from=tn

 

And from IndianTimes perspective..it already is. What’s the use of being most powerful when the country can’t a CWG”? 700000000000 worth of money... and all we get are broken bridges? filthy village?incomplete stadium?leaking roofs!!! Thanks to Kalmadi and Mrs Shila. And one minister says today’s bridge collapse is a simple issue.  Yeaah riggggghhhhhhhhhttttttttt.

 

People ask me 'oh, they're way behind' -- that's the Indian way. Probably from a western culture they might be, but in India that is way they do things.
They're actually going fine from an Indian perspective, it's just internationally that we're all worried. It will have a quite unique spin on it and that will make it a really cultural experience,"

Its like Ranbir kapoor saying…

The Ayodhya verdict is an important day for the country. I hope there is no dispute and the decision is favourable to all.

New Twitter UI

 

There is a new UI release for Twitter.com with lot of new features. It now more looks like a just another twitter app rather than a website. It has embedded media, keyboard shortcuts, new two pane interface etc...The UI is completely revamped with better look and feel. No more ‘more click ‘ to scroll (infinite scroll), easier @replies, Quick profile/details view etc..The entire area is divided into two windows: twitter stream window and navigation window. In the navigation pane you can see the profile of the twitter user, follow/unfollow, add to list, post replies without navigating to the new page. Some of the key board shorts are as below.

 

The buffalo Theory

Impeccable explanation! My friends must be getting smarter day by day….May be I should start sometime soon…

Google has a sense of humor

Is there anything you won't find on Ebay anyway?

 

You see? Google's got it right! Just kidding, honey...

 

This Google Bomb was actually up for quite some time.

IE9-Unlocking the beauty of the web

Browser is the stage, or backdrop, for the web, and the sites which we visit often are the star of the show. "Unlocking the beauty of the Web." That's Microsoft's new tag line for Internet Explorer 9, and this time they really made it promising. The Design and the user interface looks awesome and the new functionalities definitely makes the surfing easier and better.

 

Some of the new functionalities which we liked are…

1) Pinned Sites

2) One box address bar (Address bar is THE Search bar!!!)

3) Tab functionality

4) Download Manager.

 

Your favorite sites will shine with a clean new UI that integrates web sites into the Windows 7 experience. If you want enjoy a faster and more immersive web that uses the full power of your Windows PC, IE9 is the best option you have in the web right now. IE9 is made as fast web browser with GPU-powered HTML5. 

And for developers, IE9 delivers excellent support for HTML5 and other modern standards, so the same markup works across more browsers, and the web is more interoperable.

 

“IE9 Will Change the Web Forever” that’s what Digital Trends has to say about IE9. IE9 is the most significant update to the browser Microsoft has produced in a decade. One more review is here..

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/15/internet-explorer-9-beta-review/

 

Download IE9 Beta Today It’s a pleasure to use IE9, and with its improved feature set and interface, its definitely going to change the web.

And now Youtube Instant

 

Looks like Google Instant is not creating that much buzz as Google Wave did…

 

Not soon after Google Instant is released, a student is out with Youtube Instant using Google Api.  A guy who did something in 3 hours using Google Product and Google API becomes world famous overnight. Never mind about the tweeted job offer he got from YouTube CEO Chad Hurley. Not sure if they are serious of the job offer, but it did generate the buzz.

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20016172-93.html?tag=topTechContentWrap;editorPicks

 

http://ytinstant.com/

I can almost see it, that dream i'm dreamin' but........

I can almost see it, that dream I'm dreaming but..
There's a voice inside my head saying
You'll never reach it!
Every step I'm taking,
Every move I make feels
Lost with no direction
My faith is shaking but I
Got to keep trying
Got to keep my head held high

There's always going to be another mountain
I'm always going to want to make it move
Always going to be an uphill battle,
Sometimes I'm gonna to have to lose,
Ain't about how fast I get there,
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb

The struggles I'm facing,
The chances I'm taking
Sometimes they knock me down but
No I'm not breaking
I may not know it
But these are the moments that
I'm going to remember most yeah
Just got to keep going
And I,
I got to be strong
Just keep pushing on, cause

There's always going to be another mountain
I'm always going to want to make it move
Always going to be an uphill battle,
Sometimes I'm gonna to have to lose,
Ain't about how fast I get there,
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb

There's always going to be another mountain
I'm always going to want to make it move
Always going to be an uphill battle,
Sometimes you going to have to lose,
Ain't about how fast I get there,
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb

Keep on moving
Keep climbing
Keep the faith baby
It's all about
It's all about
The climb
Keep the faith
Keep your faith

Google Instant

I am still around, I won’t give up on this blog so easily..Some Personal stuff kept me busy over the last one month and still the ups and downs continues.

 

 

Google now started to live stream search results. Does it mean that Google is streaming search ads? May be not, the advertisers are only charged on ad click through, so may be its for a better user experience. Some one has already tried this on bing, not as fast as google, but intelligent enough.

http://www.istartedsomething.com/livesearch/

 

I am wondering how is it going to change the way users query. Will the average length of the query changes, if So what would happen to search advertising. As a user, I definitely find this feature useful. It lets me iterate more quickly through different search strings. Google might be dramatically increasing the server load per user-keystroke with this improvement, where instead of returning a short list of suggestions they are returning entire search results. This might be a big investment in terms of physical resources. There’s a blog post that explains how live streaming impacts their backend (and the optimizations).

 

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-instant-behind-scenes.html

Use GMail to Make VoIP Calls

Google is out with yet another schema to extract even more personal information out of the public. At present calls to Canada and North America are free and call rate to India is Re 3/-, and yes it is open for US gmail users for now.

 

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/call-phones-from-gmail.html

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-20014734-2.html

 

How Long do you think the free calls in America last before it gets open to other countries?

Google Alarm Firefox Addon

 

Ever wondered how much of your personal information is sent to Google servers, whenever you do some operations over their sites. Not many people are even aware that Google collects personal browsing data whenever you visit a web page. The google Alarm firefox addon does exactly that and raise an alarm whenever your personal information is sent to Google servers. The demo video of this tool is both scary and hilarious – it’s plain impossible to walk around internet without tripping the alarm.

 

 

You can get the addon at http://fffff.at/google-alarm/.

End of Google Wave…

This post has been lying idle in the drafts for more than a week, and before the news gets too old I want to post it here in the blog. I am little skeptical about Google Wave from the time when Google wave is out. I have my own doubts about the pain points it is trying to solve and wrote about the same in my last post Google Wave First Impressions, way back in October.

 

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/update-on-google-wave.html

 

Constructive collaboration in conversational form is the main problem Google wave was trying to solve. Collaboration on content is a partially solved problem, with wikis, document portals and other solutions, but still they are terribly inefficient. Wave had technically the potential to address a good part of those problems, but it hasn’t been adopted by many and it didn’t have the critical mass to replace the email. It was too much complicated at that time. It’s interesting technology but had too many “new” things for the average user to get lost in. A combination of email + IM + real-time collaboration + a slick extensibility mechanism, to address too many scenarios than any other tool was too much for people to take it, may be it has a future potential but not today.

Some Links…

Have you ever come across a site and wondered what language it is?

Just copy and paste a sample of the text at Google Language Detection.

 

P may not be equal to NP….If your interested in this stuff

http://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2010/08/08/a-proof-that-p-is-not-equal-to-np/

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Vinay_Deolalikar/Papers/pnp_preliminary.pdf

The proof is really difficult to understand for an average CS person like me, Looks it is using some statistical physics notions and results…

Random Stuff

No one beats Gujarat Govt at development. For one, banning cell phones in schools and colleges and the other making mandatory voting for every one. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Gujarat-govt-bans-mobile-phones-in-schools-colleges/articleshow/6245775.cms

 

Gujarat is the only state in India which has GDP growth of 13% every year. I don’t say there is no corruption there but Modi Govt is doing really well in showing progress compared to the other states.

 

Delhi police are using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers. Social networking is playing a major role at least in Delhi.  The traffic police started a Facebook page two months ago, and almost immediately residents began posting photos of drivers violating laws.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/New-Delhi-India/Delhi-Traffic-Police/117817371573308?v=wall I wish other state police also police start something like this, atleast in cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai.

 

Another Interview of Fatima Bhutto in Guernica Magazine. The entire interview is worth a read. Go read it.

http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/1110/in_my_place/

Google Image Search

Google has changed the way images are displayed (Bing like) in it’s image search screen.  The main thing I like about Bing Image Search is is that you no longer have to click to view another page of images … the pages just scroll on down the screen.  That’s the main reason I switched to Bing when searching for images.  It also offers a larger thumbnail preview When you hover your mouse over an image.

 

So it’s the chicken first..

Finally the chicken egg problem made me resume my blogging. I opened my blog after many days today. So the problem is solved finally, Well atleast the scientists claims so. I just don’t care, I love them both anyways  

 

From the Article,

 

Researchers from Scotland and England used a supercomputer called HECToR to look in such detail at a chicken eggshell that they were able to determine the vital role of a protein used to kick-start the egg's formation.
That protein is only found, wait for it... inside a chicken.

It happens so that, there might be many problems getting stuck like they are the same chicken/egg problem, meaning they don’t have a solution.

 

On another note, Do you really need to be a chicken to produce the first egg that contains the first chicken (through mutation), so I feel the egg was first. But from philosophical/evolutionary point of view, you have to believe that it is the chicken first.

 

Full article…

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/14/tech/main6676542.shtml

iPhone4 Vs Other Smart Phones

This video is funny, it has all the WTF and some cursing stuff. This pretty much sums up the whole iPhone paradox.

Apple's attitude - antenna problem

http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/24/iphone-4-antenna-issue/

 

http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/24/apple-responds-over-iphone-4-reception-issues-youre-holding-th/

 

http://i.imgur.com/zAJ0y.jpg

 

 

Only Apple Can get away with this kind of attitude. When do they ever start accepting that sometime even they could be at fault. I cannot imagine any other company getting away with such a kind of thing.

 

Dear Mr. Steve Jobs,

 

You Can’t ask the customer to adjust himself to fit the iPhone, the iPhone has to fit to the customer. Improved looks , body , antenna, resolution..All these are nice. .. But to make calls, Asking customers to hold their iphone “differently” or to buy a case worth $29.99 ? Epic Fail.

Hard Drive Weight Increasing! HELP!!!!! :P

You gotta love this thread:

 

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistahardware/thread/3abf6156-47cd-465a-984b-cc016973367e

 

Why , You ask?

 

After running for a while, laptop usually get hot and therefore, sweat might addon to the weight of your laptop.  Make sure you warp it around a towel next time.

Don’t know how many of you folks came across such threads, Please post links to such threads in the comments section.

Rajneeti: Review

 

I watched Rajneeti yesterday and I have to say, it completely sold me. Well many of us know that Politics is all about big business and big money. Rajneeti is a political melodrama about one big family who fight to gain power and supremacy. Though inspired from Mahabharata, you find it difficult to relate some of the characters of the movie to the actual epic story. The entire plot is carried out by some exquisite performances, with the lion share of the acting from Ranbir, Arjun Rampal and Katrina. Brilliant performances by Manoj Bajpai and Ajay devagan. The youngest of the actors Ranbir is at his best. Prakash Jha's Direction is really top notch because to have these many characters and not to loose track at any point with them, is commendable. The movie is quite lengthy with no songs but there hasn’t been a dull or lighter moment. Not to expect much from Katrina, and after her last speech in the movie, I will prefer her watching in the aam ras add than in a serious movie like this. The story is fast paced and has enough twists and turns to keep the viewer entertained. The performances are power-packed. Arjun Rampal is at his best and is looking handsome as well in that crisp-white Kurta Pyjama. 'Rajneeti' succeeds in holding you to the seat for almost 90% of the 2 hours and 50 minutes length of the movie. It should be seen as a serious movie and its been long time since we had such a high voltage bollywood melodrama epic.

Microsoft Kinect – Project Natal

Microsoft Natal Project is now called Kinect. I like the new name, combination of connect and kinetic. Natal enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 console without the need to touch a game controller through a natural user interface using gestures, spoken commands or presented objects and images. I liked the dance/rhythm game in the video. The dance and fitness apps look promising.  The soccer/football app has a lot of multi-player potential. I liked what I saw, the games are amazing, great technology, Although the kinect games are not yet to materialize, the concept itself is great. Its just a start, they may have to show how they could integrate Kinect into games like Dead Space with xbox 360. Overall they sold me.

 

WTF Google?

I am sure most of you must have seen the google new Avatar. The traditional white background of Google has changed with a colorful full screen image. If you see the screen, The choice of layout and background image makes half the text on the page nearly impossible to read.

Even the link to turn this off is basically invisible against that background. Adding to the irony, to turn it OFF, I have to sign in..

 

 

I like the way BING do with background images. Hand picked. Not too large. Easy to read text…

 

With success comes the responsibility. WTF GOOGLE, for the love of search, make it stop! If you’re going to copy Bing, at least do it right.

Safari 5 - Mainstream browser with ad blocking

I installed Safari 5 and tried out their new 'Reader' feature. It essentially finds the central text in the page and extracts it out and displays it in a nice reading experience.  It removes all the ads and gives you a nice reading experience with basic features like print, email and zoom. Ads on the web today are garish, consume CPU, get in the way of the user experience and never (in my personal experience) useful.  Ad blockers in the mainstream could act as a forcing function to make webmasters clean up their  act and for the industry to rethink how they try and advertise to consumers. In practice, this has the effect of stripping out all the ads you'd see on a site. This is interesting since this has to be the first mainstream browser with a form of ad-blocking shipping by default. Sure, you have to press a button but the UI for it is prominent (the 'Reader' button is part of the location bar) and this is a short jump away from having this turned on by default.

 

iPhone 4

 

Apple iPhone announced officially today.  You can own it on June 24. iPhone 4 video doesn't work on 3G, only on WiFi. People have been doing video calling on Skype as well as on Nokia phones with BSNL 3G even in India for a long time. My other phone Nokia N85 has a front end camera and video calling functionality from more than a year. 99% of the time that I have WiFi in my own house, and in my house I can use my laptop to skype. Putting a video editor in the phone seems interesting to some but I don’t want to edit things in such a small form factor. The iPhone 4G still doesn't seem to do true multitasking. Only one app is actually run, the others seem to be frozen. Why would I spend for loading my phone with bullet proof glass and steel that is 1000 times stronger than normal steel.

 

Overall, I don’t get what the shock and awe over the new phone is. They have amazing marketing machine for sure.

How incentives don’t work as we expect them to?

This video grabbed my attention for the whole video time, not just with the content but with  the way it is presented.Its not only fun to watch but actually explains in easy to understand language (and pictures) the vital ingredient behind success. One among the best creative presentations out there. There are a lot more of these here: http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/videos/. The idea of augmenting the information with clever visuals is just brilliant.

 

Microsoft academic search

Most of the people must have heard about Google Scholar, There is similar thing from Microsoft Which most of them must have not heard of. Well, maybe people in the academic community do know about it, and it is just me. Still, very cool especially compared to Google Scholar. How hard is it to integrate it into Bing’s Visual Search?

 

http://academic.research.microsoft.com/

 

Here is Bhaskar’s Graph, one of the Prof from IIT Kanpur.

 

Google TV Announced

 

Google TV is unveiled, a couple of days back in Google I/O conference. Looks like it is going to be both set-top box as well as built and play into TV’s. Well it’s all about Ad reach here, They make money from advertising. Google does not sell content -- it sells ads. The difference here is in the business model. Google is going to pay OEM’s and operators like DISH, Google will get paid by advertisers and do a revenue share with OEMs and operators. Apple will have a different business model where it sells customers to the operators and boxes to end users at a profit. . I feel Microsoft has to do some thing similar to this, since they already have the infrastructure. They have to append XBOX with something similar and leverage XBOX market and do some of the same search functionality with BING powered video results and what not. The only concern is XBOX is directed towards hard core gamer, whereas as GOOGLE TV is mass market device.

Interactive pacman game on Google's home page

 

This space isn’t dead, The updates has been really slow this month. Some office work stuff is keeping me busy this month. Anyways to celebrate the 30th anniversary of classic video Game Pacman, Google has its first interactive doodle – a Pac man game that Web users can play straight from the Google’s home page. When I first opened its home page today, I figured out that there is some annoying noise coming out, and to figure out what was causing this noise, I had to close the Google tab to make it shut.A mute button on the screen, for that tab only, would have been enough, but I can't mute my computer when I need to listen other music from the system. You can’t buy publicity like this. Front page on Digg, front page on reddit, mentioned on NPR, front page on Google news, covered by ABC news, fortune, CNET, They just killed the productivity of every other company with internet access on the planet for the day. It would definitely have all IT managers block Google homepage from work. Coming to the technical side of it, This is apparently Javascript + HTML4.  View background image shows the sprite layout. Insert coin twice gives two player mode.

 

Update: Google is making it’s Google Pac-Man game permanent here. If you double-click on Insert Coin you get Ms. Pac-Man.

Google Redesign - Mimicks Bing

 

 

Recently Google Search Results got a make over. Good to see that Google is going in the direction of the Bing. It certainly shows that they are paying attention towards Microsoft Bing and think that what Bing’s doing is some what right. Its interesting to notice how if Microsoft tries to imitate something they get blasted whereas if others do the same, they get lauded. Google appears to be much better at generating hype than any others. The mere fact that the ridiculously minor changes they made to their search results somehow qualified as front page news speaks volumes. One thing I have to admit is, Bing experience outside US is not so great. By default it redirects you to local home page based on your location and the quality of results outside US is not up to the mark. Though their side bar looks like Bing, but the feature they are offering is not anywhere close to Bing. I still feel Bing is actually helping you to make the decisions and therefore called as a decision engine rather than a search engine with WYSIWUG (What You See Is What You Get).

Invisible mode in GTalk

One of my friends asked, how to be in invisible mode in GTalk.One aspect She find particularly irritating with Google Talk is not to be able to appear as invisible. Well this problem can be solved in you use Pidgin for IM. Pidgin is an IM chat client which supports many chat networks like yahoo, gtalk,AIM,MSN etc..Add your gtalk account to it after installing and it acts just like your gtalk, infact much more than that with tabbed interface to handle multiple chat windows, smileys etc…

 

You still need to do something to enable invisible mode here…

http://fahhem.com/pidgin/gtalkinvisible.zip

 

Download the zip file, extract it,  Move the  gtalkinvisible.dll file to "C:\Program Files\Pidgin\plugins\".

 

Restart Pidgin and enable it

 

Go To Tools->Plugins, Scroll down the list of available plugins. Install the GTalk Invisible plugin by enabling it.

 

After enabling you  need to restart once again and you are all done.You can see the invisible mode option down there along with Available, Busy, Do Not disturb etc…

Kasab Found Guilty

Yes you heard it right, After so many twists to Ajmal kasab trial, he is finally found guility, no pun intended here, You might be wondering that it is the greatest discovery of 21st century. It took around 16 months for the supreme court to make this amazing discovery. One among the charges included "walking inside the railway station without a platform ticket". No wonder Indian Govt is spending so much on his security and health !! Rs. 2 Lakh per day ? Given the Nature of Indian Legal system, There is no wonder if Indian Govt take a decade to hang him. In India, where police cops like Rathore who was responsible for a 14 year old girl -Ruchika's death is still roaming outisde, and Jaish-e-Mohammed militant Mohd Afzal who was sentenced to death for the 2001 attack on parliament is still having fun behind bars eating mutton biriyanis, I wouldn’t be surprised if Kasab is given an opportunity to submit a mercy petition before the President of India.Ever wondered how dumb can an IPS officer be? This is the perfect example of it.

http://news.in.msn.com/international/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3600136 where Kasab citied as inspiration to Indian Police by an IPS officer. I seriously do not know whether to celebrate or hang my head in shame. I personally feel he should be hanged in public before 26/11 victim families. Infact Auction the hangman's job. I'm sure many would love to do that!!

 

This is my opinion. You might have yours. Feel free to state yours. Take the following Poll, Share your thoughts.

 

 

Update: Kasab gets death. Judge mentions about, how Kasab was anxious to attack India and how he was disappointed when there was not so much rush at the Mumbai CST, etc.

Something Meaningful

So Little, yet magical

A plate of paani puri over the road side, fresh smell of mud when it has just started to drizzle, Watching the rain washed sky,The smell of a new book, The early morning sun, A long drive on my bike, Experiments in the kitchen. Scribbling in my blog, A walk in the evening. The breeze on the terrace. All these are little things, yet they are so magical to me. It rained yesterday and I could feel all these little things. Everything in life is temporary. Darkness of the night; or a bright day. Even sunrise is temporary; so is sunset.So if things are going good, enjoy it because it won't last forever. And if things are going bad, don't worry. Because it won't last forever either. Everything passes by. Its up to you to either choose to laugh it off and move on..or whine and become bitter.

IPL Saga

This IPL drama is getting into my head. Cricket was once called a gentleman’s game. IPL has taken it to the new level. Cheer girls, Bollywood, movie stars, entertainment and what not, every masala added to it made it  more spicy and yummy. Indians have always loved cricket.  And IPL has cashed in big time on the cricket frenzy by transforming the game into more of a commercial enterprise than a pure sporting event. It doesn’t matter about the result of the match, and whether it is fixed or not fixed. It is generating the cash, and it is raising the eyebrows of many. Money is always the centre of attraction in India and so is with these news channels and their ROI from their capitalistic setup. They always focus on events like IPL or filmfare awards more than anything else because that’s what boosts their TRP’s.  Big reason why people spend time on things like IPL is very simple; while they are connected to any such event there are in dream-land.There is this interesting piece article, a simple one yet thought provoking.   The news channels are more interested in churning news for raising eyeballs than for providing information. Its not just about IPL, any popular news event like Hollywood/Bollywood movie, marriage of a big star, reality show like Rakhi ka Swayamvar” , dalit girl with communal riots, terrorism (bomb-blast) etc. We will show our loyalty to IPL and all such news channels and their rubbish news and still watch it and tweet about it. Dear 24 hr news channels, Keep fooling us.We don't mind being fooled.

Some Random news

When IPL is almost coming to an end, I was wondering why this time there is no controversy. In IPL 1st season  it was that slap by harbhajan to Sreesanth that created the news, in IPL 2nd season  it was the fake IPL player blog about Kolkata Knight riders which created sensation. Now in IPL 3rd season it is that tweet by Lalit Modi which made Sashi Taroor to resign from his ministry. My favourite team(DC) reached Semis again this time, and Kolkata and Delhi missed out of semis though both the teams ended with a high note. IPL is no more about cricket, its just about business. I personally liked this article and mainly this note.

Shashi Tharoor says he has no financial dealings with the Kochi IPL franchise. I believe him. I don't question either his honesty or his personal life but was it really worth a minister's time and effort to help out a group of businessmen?

At the end of the day this is not about any individual but about the nexus of sports, business, and politics. Lalit Modi has raised questions; like it or not, answers must be forthcoming.

Finally there is some justice done with the Jessica Lal case. Though the justice is delayed for about 10 years, the justice is delivered. Her soul will indeed rest in peace now. SC confirms Manu’s life sentence: What about that spineless wimp, Shayan Munshi? How can he get away scot free in this case?

 

Sania got married breaking the heart of one of my class mates for the 2nd time. He is into depression now and not speaking to me much these days. He says I declined all my matches for her and now he is not getting any better matches. Sania says, She married a person, not a Pakistani.

“I wasn’t marrying a Pakistani. I was marrying a person I liked and he was marrying a person. It didn’t matter if he (Shoaib) was from Timbuktu. He could have been from anywhere,” Sania (23) said.

I am glad I am not a Timbaktu, Otherwise I’d be terribly offended by this.

 

One more accident today close to our office campus, 3rd in a month’s time. All 3 were bike guys, I should soon move to a car now. Though I am careful driver, but I do speed some times. It's really difficult to predict uncertainties in Hyderabad traffic. I strongly feel driving slowly and straight is always better option, we cannot control others driving and nobody will complain even if you are late by 5 mins or so.