Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Networking sites

I am surprised to see the number of social networking sites that keep coming up.
Everyone with a new set of features. But I am still not able to comprehend what google is doing in this area. Orkut doesn't see to be that professional. They click for me but lack a number of features that I would like to see on a good networking site. It seems it has got caught in the beaurocracy -- of who owns what. Unless they scale it up to support important features like blogging, uploading infinite pics and videos and a better networking set-up, they just cannot beat the compitition. They are not a late entrant into this area but still lag far behind mySpace. The only reason I use it because of the number of indian users using it.

Random notes`

I have still not been able to see for myself how google webtoolkit works. I hope I would be able to do that by tommorow. It's not getting downloaded at a speed I would love to see but that's what I have to live with. There are other things getting downloaded and I understand it cannot get better even if I take a better connection. I would put something else for download and bandwidth  for more essential things will remain the same ;)
I could not start my works even today. Probably I will have to create in myself a new determination to get it done anyhow. this is the last chance -- now or never.

Copyright and easy downloads

Downloaded a movie last night. The connection from airtel is really cool with downloads of 800mb possible overnight. With so much fuss around YouTube and copyright issues, I am surprised as to why people are overlooking so many sites which offer pirated versions of cds for free on net - at no cost.
Days ahead seem to be better with such downloads everyday ;)

Browser sync

Browser sync helped me yet again significantly. I was reading a article and left it midway to home. Switched on lap-top and hey browser sync brought it here for me. That's real cool. Now no hassles which leaving office with undone pieces of work!!!

Daily log

The day went in a normal way. Fixed a VI and I am happy about that. Met Satish in the evening and had a few chat sessions with Rahul Bharadwaj. Then went to meet Deepak at his home. Reason was to deliver him Windows XP cd. Normal working days can't have anything better to offer. Unfortunately Deepak's comp has gone out of order. Maybe I am the reason, maybe the poor look after.
And here I am doing the normal daily browsing. This used to happen in office normally. thanks to the new internet connection I can do it from home now. The news of Jot getting sold out to google has just got out. That is really surprising especially since google offers similar and better services in all its domains. May be they are looking at expanding their user base or employee base whom they won't have to train now. In  fact Zoho offers remarkably better services. And I am particularly impressed with them since they operate from India.
Another interesting application that I have got across is FindMeOn.com
It tries to integrate various usernames something I am very keen about using. Let's see how much useful its going to be for me.

Monday, October 30, 2006

Weekend Movie

Last weekend, I saw a movie of salman Khan -- Jaaneman. Incidently, a class-12 friend of mine -Rahul Bhardwaj came in contact this weekend as well (I hope to meet him over the next weekend - venue is Akshardham temple and reason - a treat from Naveen Bhartiya for his new job - that's interesting - I haven't given them any as yet).
I am not a great friend of Salman Khan - and I ended up liking the role of Akshay Kumar. He is a real scene stealer (far ahead of Salman - girls may disagree). And had improved a lot over the years. A forgetable story but still the movie was worth its money - with laugh bites every now and then and typical hindi movie love triangle maasalaa.

Blogs not getting posted again

Its disappointing to see some of my earlier blogs still not published. This error keeps troubling blogger. I won't like see some of my blogs getting lost due to server/technical errors. Hope they will find remedy to it soon.

At 1:00

Got the internet at home today...
Its 1:00 now and I am yet to think of sleeping. I have gotten net-alchoholic. Hopefully this situation won't change for the next one month or so. I have been using a number of google products - one of them being Browser sync. I was syncing my office browser using it but was yet to test it on another computer. The amount of syncing done by this application is simply incredible!! I saved a  huge amount of time googling and finding out the sites, the user-names, pass-words -- thanks to this application. I am sure there must be many other players in the market doing such syncing but google is ahead simply because I don't have to use another user name and the visiblity that google products get.

Airtel: A frontline service provider

Finally I have a net connection at home. It seems like it has been a long time. I had been waiting for this for quite some time.
Probably things would start for me at a speed much faster than what it has been till now. I hope I would be able to complete my works by 15th. Now with all tech requirements almost fulfilled, I cannot complain any longer. Its the time to  act.
Getting a net connection was a  memorable experience especially after long years  of getting used to the beaurocratic ways of things. Airtel had ushered India into an internet age, in line with the best in the world. They offer some incredibly good services that too in Indian circumstances. Getting unprofessional and untrained people do such professional work is a feat in itself. Airtel provides some of the frontline services like mobile ticket bookings at quite manageable rates. Such experiences are a real pleasure to see happening in India.

Net at Home !!!

And I have  got net at home!!
Would be blogging details  later.
For now, its time to install important things....

Friday, October 27, 2006

Integrating greasemonkey: A nice experience

I was trying Greasemonkey this evening. It is an interesting platform to change some particular web-pages in the way you like them to display. Thats an interesting application. You can play with any web-page and even display some contents of one web site on another. I tried some famous scripts for gmail. It is good to see how flexible gmail can be with this platform. Although, none of the applications that I was testing were worth keeping, I enjoyed using it. Probably in future, I need arises, I can revert to it for making confortable changes in the frequently visited web-sites.

Movies

Ever since I came to noida, I have been watching hell lot of films in multiplexes here. Unfortunately, thats the best pass time here. Week end at home made me miss some of them last week. Hopefully, I would be making up for them this week. I would be having a net connection at home by this week-end and that would only compliment things. There is little to do when outside office. I tried reading novels but that did not went quite long especially because of disturbances at home

Google custom search

http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=012261214304761821105%3Axmb5r2yeata

I had created this search engine to see the effictiveness of google custom search. Prima-facie it works well and brings results not just from the sites which you want to search but from the whole web. But weightage of results from the given sites are more making initial results effective. A number of other things are also customizable.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Time Pass

I was just going through my old blogs. And I realised how important they are for recollecting old memories. I had started bloging when I was in Singapore. I remember those days as one of the best in my life. Blogs and pictures have kept the memories fresh. Although I am no longer in touch with the people. Had a small chat with Divya one day and that was it. Maybe in the next few days, I would be getting back in contact with a few of them. Time is also running out for me and I need to plan very meticulously for the next few days to fruitfy certain goals. And I don't want to be loser yet again.
I have just returned from home and probably wont be going back for next three months. Contacts are getting weaker and I am learning some facts of life the hard way. Again this is not the ideal place to explain which ones.
I will be returning home into a calm environment especially after Satnam was there for around a month. Life should be easier that way.

Official blog

Atrenta has created a web-space for its employees to blog.
So would I be using it? Definitely not now, particularly when I a big google fan and my technical knowlegde is not good enough to blog on such issues.
http://web.noida.atrenta.com/wp/wp-admin/

Back to office

I am back to my workplace !!
It was short journey home and I know for sure it's not going to be any longer in future.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Just keep moving

Sometimes you are not in a frame of mind you would love to be and you can't do anything about it. Today is one such day for me. Unfortunately, this is not the best place to talk about it. In the next fews hours, I have to get on the move. Let's see what life has in store for me next. For now, I am just in a sorry mode :(

Illumination pics

here is the pics of nehru hall illu
I would try to upload the ones of Atrenta in a few days.
 

Custom search from google

Its good to see yet another google product -- a customisable google search engine, I tried one from another site and always wondered if google is going to provide one sometime. It has done that finally and the outcome is quite good. A lot of customization is possible and I would love to use it for so many personal search needs that I have. http://google.com/notebook/cse
 

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Help the lost usb drive

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/windows/make-your-lost-usb-drive-call-for-help-209086.php
This seems to be a good application. Would be something really useful. Especially since I have bought a new usb drive .

Rubic's cube

Rubic's cube is an interesting puzzle and a timepass. I just came across this article showing how to solve a Rubic's cube. I would make an interesting read for people who have tried their hands on it and are still to find a methodical way to solve it. http://www.lifehacker.com/software/fun/how-to-solve-a-rubiks-cube-208227.php

Got the firefox

I installed a firefox and things are better now... But the big problem if I log out, all data stored by me will go and I will have to install it everytime I log-in. But that's the best compromise available

Finally at home!!

Last few days have passed in an interesting manner. I have a lot to write but unfortunately this cyber cafe doesn't have the facilities to do it now. Only explorer is present here and that too sucks in a big way.
My journey to home began in the worst possible way. I had choose a very bad train since reservations were not available in other trains. The train typically takes 24 hours to cover a distance which other trains cover in 12 hours. On the top of it, the engine got fire (thankfully while on a platform). That forced us to change train but that too did not changed things for better. The other train a passanger too 3 hours to cover 40 kms. any way after two nights journey, I am finally at home and enjoying the good ambience and weather here. It was long time since I came to home and its seems such times will become rare in future.
I came here for doing some of my works but unfortunately that cannot happen. That's to adam's explorer. It sucks !!!
 

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Configuring firefox 2.0

In firefox type: -  about:config
Almost all the variables can be configured in firefox 2.0 here including the tab size and way you scroll.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

hiding files in jpeg!!!

Just another thing to blog about. A good way to hide your files in jpeg. http://www.thetechtray.net/videos/rar/

I had come across this article previously, but this one is much better in showing more clearly. :)

Daily chores

The days pass off without much ado. Today, I had my lunch outside. That has become a more regular thing these days with outings on atleast four occasions in last five working days.  The times are not particularly pleasant  although you get good food. "Company" matters!!

Greasemonkey: a new platform for creating extensions

Greasemonkey is providing some interesting add-ons for firefox including a gmail extension for google reader. Ever since the upgradation of google reader, I want that kind of embedding. Unfortunately, I cannot use it just now since I have switched over to firefox 2.0
At this moment, it won't be a good idea to migrate back although I am facing a number of problems with my firefox (I am not able to add a number of extensions which I dearly need). Let's just wait and see when people will start supporting firefox 2.0
I have switched over to the new version much before time!!

Remote logging over internet

An interesting web-based application is here for remotely logging into a computer, although I have not yet tested it and am just not sure about the security aspect : http://www.logmein.com/

But if the security aspect is taken care of properly, it can be really helpful in working across computers.

Spam free googling

I just came across a site which uses the results of google to give results which are spam free. It's quite revealing to note the amount of spam that comes in with google http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/

Friday, October 13, 2006

Daily chores

The day went off with not much to do and with a headache. Probably I need to see an eye-specialist. I met one today, who came to office for a free eye-checkup. He just confirmed that the problem with my eyes have not reduced. Head-ache has only become regular with long hours before computer.
Did not do much of reading or search and could not grab anything else to write. I tried signing up for Adsense, in a hope that it brings some money for me as well. Let's see!!

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Got it back!!

And here the lost post got blogged. That's probably a fault of servers. Might have lost somewhere in between ;)
Anyway its good to see I am not actually losing it!!

Losing blog-posts while posting by mail

I was just wondering if the e-mail blogging works the right way. I have lost one of my blog-posts, and I don't see that I typed in a wrong address. Blogging by e-mail never seems to be a safe method anyways, you never know where your post is going and if it is getting filtered. Anyway, you just have to trust google on that. I still prefer this method since you don't have to log-in into another site. That's a bit teasing. More so when you keep blogging on different blog-titles.

Yubnub: shortcut for browsing!!

I just came across yubnub.com That's another cool application. It allows users to create command lines for browsing. That's really COOL!! As yet, it does not ask users to create their log-in. So, if someone somewhere has created a short-cut, it becomes a bit difficult. However, they do allow aliases and overwriting. I hope other people will come up with such an idea and something much better and much more usable will come up soon. Anyway, it looks to be a very simple and good beginning.

Tech notes

I would like to see google starting a service wherein any update in writely is reflected on my web-site. It is very easily possible by feed. I hope google does it soon. Zoho has this service already!! Infact, it has many more of them. Only problem with it - the servers are not capable of handling the traffic it gets.
Only today has google launched a google educator has nothing new, but looks good to see google interested in promoting its products among educators.

I came across jot.com and writebot.com both working in the area of online text processing and collaboration. See them the work done by google seems far more impressive. Zoho is quite good as well. Probably these are some of those new player and may take some time before catching up. Another thing which these ppl try out is chat service. They have made their log-in's really simple. You don't have to write too much and fill big forms to see how these applications work. One good thing about jot was the page customization that it allows. Such an option can help users decide between simple look and bulky but good look.

Tech notes

I would like to see google starting a service wherein any update in writely is reflected on my web-site. It is very easily possible by feed. I hope google does it soon. Zoho has this service already!! Infact, it has many more of them. Only problem with it - the servers are not capable of handling the traffic it gets.
Only today has google launched a google educator has nothing new, but looks good to see google interested in promoting its products among educators.

I came across jot.com and writebot.com both working in the area of online text processing and collaboration. See them the work done by google seems far more impressive. Zoho is quite good as well. Probably these are some of those new player and may take some time before catching up. Another thing which these ppl try out is chat service. They have made their log-in's really simple. You don't have to write too much and fill big forms to see how these applications work. One good thing about jot was the page customization that it allows. Such an option can help users decide between simple look and bulky but good look.


Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Tech: AJAX solutions

Like everyday, I came across a number of cool Web-based products today!!
The day started with the news of writely and Spreadsheet collaborating to docs.google.com. Such a thing is better for user perspective. Now users can access both using a single login.
The second thing was I came across a web based application site: zoho.com
It is interesting to find such a wide suite of products from a company which has a center in India. AJAX (asynchronous java and xml) technology is taking web documenting by storm. Looking at the kind of products that zoho has on offer, one can easily guess what Google can do about its products and what new areas can be ventured. Soon after I read about a google board member talking about scarcity of people in India. He was especially talking of dearth of people with knowledge of AJAX. His anxiety is very valid, and with the government still not thinking about education seriously, things will only get worse.
I don't need to surf the internet a lot these days, Google reader brings everything which interests me to me. Thats another good thing about RSS.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Google Web toolkit

Almost everyday I come across something interesting from google. Newspapers are abuzz with the news of google buying YouTube. Thats interesting - it seems text internet will be a talk of history.

Another interesting thing I came across was Google Web tool - http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/gettingstarted.html
I would like to use it in future and learn making some interesting applications. I am already in love with the way Google handles web-pages. It would be interesting to use them on my web-pages.

Emotional ambivalence

Emotionally unsure people are more creative. This is what I came across while reading a article on research by a Prof. of Washington Business School. I tend to draw inspirations from such articles thesedays ;)
It is even more interesting to find so many people interested in doing such research. Seems like topic to think about has declined a lot. At the end of day, reading such an article gives you a lot peace of mind. This situation of not much to do has forced me to spend a good amount of time reading. Recently, I finished Alchemist - another classic inspiring story of a young guy searching for his goals. These days I am reading "Who killed Daniel Pearl" (got nothing better :( ). That again is an interesting story. although only one perspective is highlighted.

Monday, October 09, 2006

Daily Updates

Was busy working since morning. Today was supposedly the code freeze date. So, I was working on last minute testings. At the very last moment, the code freeze date shifted. A huge relief for the day. And the server got down as well!! The only worry- why it did not happen in the morning :(

Sunday, October 08, 2006

A record number of blogs

This is the seventh post today. I am becoming a [chronic] blogger. Writing nothing interesting!! and still managing so many updates.

checking again!!

Just a check again. This time it should get published without going into the draft mode. If that happens, it eases me of another small task of converting draft to post

check

check if it works. I am trying to blog by sending mail to *.noida@blogger.com

Blog by sending mail

hey I just noticed blogging is possible just by sending mails. I just discovered it while editing a post. That's a good thing. I had lost hope of blogging in an offline mode. That's a much better way. This service brings gmail nearer to blogging. I can just mail and get it blogged with a little more effort of converting the draft to published post.

Daily chores

Unfortunately, there is hardly anything happening which differentiates one day of my life from other. And I don't hope this situation will change in the next few weeks. This is probably the first week-end going without watching a movie in theatre. That business was gettting increasingly boring. Although almost everyday we visit the mall - Spice which nearby our home - a time well spent. The stay in my new home is atleast better than the last one, where I got bored most of the time. Most of them were nowhere around whenever and if ever you need them. And everybody moved to the cosiness of his room when in. Although in my new house, things are not in the normal mode these days. I hope things would get back in a few days.

A slow progression

I have started working towards applying again. Although the progress is rather slow. Life is quite active and I love such a situation. And I am able to update this blog even if it is just a sentence!!!

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Missing Tech

I am missing electronic gadgets that I wish I should have. I dont have a personal computer here. And that's unfortunate! I hope I will be having one in a few months. The other thing that I need dearly is a camera. Its a long time since I posted my pictures on web. And my mobile, its too obsolete. Changing them would take at least a year.

Daily chores

These days I very rarely forget to wish people on their birthdays. Thanks to a lot of technologies which send me timely alerts. It's also the outcome of the fact that I have got used to the place and people. Its important to be in a good shape mentally. Unfortunately, it took 9 long months to get back. Only today, I called Anjan to wish him. I hope this trend will continue in future.

Google gadgets for your webpage!!!

http://web.anurag.googlepages.com/googlereader

I was just trying out some random things with Google Gadgets. Google has recently extended its gadgets capability to be added to googlepages. I would love to develop some new gadgets for me in future, for my web-page. It works well and adds a lot of usability easily to your page.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Google APIs

I was just trying the Google APIs provided for search customization and linking maps to your site. The features provided by google are really exciting. It helps integrate the google features into your website. Such features bring programmers nearer to google!

Google Code Search

Google comes up with something new every other day. Today it has released Code search. That's a very good thing for me, just that it has not included Verilog and VHDL search for now. May be it follows later. The other good thing was google bookmark. I just discovered you can directly bookmark it using a firefox extension.

check

this is just a check for a feature of blogger.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Blogging has started!!

hey I just noticed after a long long time, I am back to my ways. Blogging a lot!! Three in just last half an hour. And this because I am still waiting for Naveen. Although I know he is not coming.

Google Bookmark

Although a good idea to keep bookmarks online, still its in a very primitive stage. I am using it going by the google's reputation of improving upon its products. In some time, I hope when it becomes more handy to use, I will be able to use it in a better way!!

Google Reader: in a new look

Just today, Google reader has changed its look. I hope with this my long standing quest for a single reader is fulfilled, now no more browsing for hours to get a single piece of information. And I can remain updated with blogs updates aswell !!
RSS feeds are truly a new information revolution