Thursday, June 14, 2007

Create your own digg like site with coRank!

coRank had started as a digg like social voting platform. But now it has transformed to allow users to create their own digg like social voting platform with a lot of customization! I have recently created a page using corank on my domain: http://news.anurag-kumar.com. I hope to use it in future :)

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Zoho creator to have an upgrade!

Zoho keeps coming with nice upgrades and new tools! They are now going to announce an upgrade of Zoho creator. From what I have been told this new upgrade will have following important features:

1. Completely New UI. Ability to creats apps with simple drag & drop.
2. Scripting with no coding. Introduction of 'Deluge Script Builder' which will let users add advanced functionalities into the applications users create.
3. Embedding Form/View in websites, blogs and other Zoho Applications.

A demo is available here: http://www.vimeo.com/clip:210220
Such applications are good time-savers when you don't want to create them yourself. I had once used it for creating form for my web-site. It works well and data filled in forms is stored on zoho server. What irked me then was that there was no notification process for web-site administrator to know when a visitor has filled a form.


Sunday, June 10, 2007

Finding longitude and latitude on Google maps

Google maps does not show the longitude and latitude of a place by default. I remember wasting a lot of time finding these data for an application of mine. This small javascript code can solve the purpose!

javascript:void(prompt('', gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

This code when copy-pasted in the location bar of browser and executed, pops up a window showing the longitude and latitude.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Find the neighbors of your domain!

MyIPNeighbors is a good application for finding the sites which are hosted on the same server. Searching for yahoo.com gives all the domains hosted on its server. google and msn search also give such results but they are not as accurate as the results of this site!

Some funny csh/sh command outputs!

Just came across some funny csh/sh command outputs:

% cat "food in cans"
cat: can't open food in cans

% nice man woman
No manual entry for woman.

% ar r God
ar: creating God

% "How would you rate Quayle's incompetence?
Unmatched ".

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

% ^How did the sex change operation go?
^ Modifier failed.

% If I had a ( for every $ the Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.

% make love
Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop.

% got a light?
No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.

% !:say, what is saccharine?
Bad substitute.

/* not csh but sh */
$ PATH=pretending!/usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!

$ drink bottle: cannot open
opener: not found

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Some inspiration

Graduation day speeches are meant to be inspirational. Steve Jobs speech at Stanford is probably his most famous one. Just came across this piece by President of NUS:

I see three paths ahead of you – those of the Koi, the Bluefish and the Atlantic Salmon.

Of all the fishes in the world, the Koi has the most comfortable life. When young, it is carefully selected and bred for its beauty. It then spends its entire life in a sheltered environment, living in order to be admired by others.  The Koi is also fragile – change the water by a bit, and the Koi perishes.  People who are like the Koi play it safe and do not venture out; they thrive in the established system. Then, there is the path of the Bluefish. Some years ago, I went deep sea fishing in the Atlantic Ocean. I caught a bluefish. It was not a large fish, yet it put up a strong fight. And when I reached inside its mouth to take out the hook, it bit right through my thick gloves into my finger, almost biting it off. The captain said to me: "You must be a first-timer at ocean fishing. Ocean fishes like the bluefish are tough and fierce. Have you been fishing only in small ponds?"

People who are like the Bluefish take risks and embrace life, seizing the abundant opportunities of the vast ocean. While others are exhausted by a changing environment, Bluefish types thrive in it. This is the path of the worldly Bluefish. Home can be anywhere – and perhaps, nowhere.

Finally, there is the path of the Atlantic Salmon. Born in freshwater streams, it heads out to the open seas in young adulthood. After maturing in the ocean, the Atlantic Salmon returns to where it was born, to breed, and then heads out again. It makes this journey between its home and the open sea several times over its lifetime.

People who are like the Atlantic Salmon are at ease moving between the old and the new, between the familiar and the unfamiliar, between what is comfortable and what is challenging. While they seize opportunities to grow in the global arena, they understand the true meaning of home. Home is not just anywhere. Home is where the heart is. Home is about identification and commitment, about family and nation.


Monday, June 04, 2007

Orkut now allows feed import!

Just found that Orkut is now allowing importing feeds into your profile. To make things easy, blogs of blogger account and pics of picasa web-album are already present in the list of feeds that can be added. This is good improvement, although slow compared to other players in social networking especially facebook. I have added my picture blog and this weblog to my profile!

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Google announces Feedburner acquisition

Google has finally announced the acquisition of Feedburner. Feedburner is one of the services I have been using for my blog. With this acquisition, the number of different log-ins that I have to remember will reduce :) Also, if the blogger feed can be directly burned, I can deliver ads directly into the feeds! That's what google wants to do with this acquisition. We can also hope for some nice improvements in the way we consume feeds today (google has recently announced a closed beta of mashup editor, which people are hoping to be something similar to yahoo pipes).