Wednesday, August 25, 2010

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?

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Google Alarm Firefox Addon

500x_google-alarm

 

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.

 

 


clip_image002You can get the addon at http://fffff.at/google-alarm/.

Monday, August 9, 2010

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…

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

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/