Numbers...

The culture of reading and pessimism about it

Just watched this interview of Salman Rushdie at PennState university.
Someone asked him about the reading habits in today's times and he replies (at 48:52) saying "Reason for pessimism(about the culture of reading) can be expressed in 2 words Dan and Brown". The book he's refering to is 'Da Vinci code' and he calls it "that book shape object[called Da Vinci Code]" or the same shape as the packet of cereals.

The Q&A from 47:55 to 52:54 can be found here

openSocial, gPhone

Last year, when everyone was thinking of google launching a rival service for PayPal, it released 'Google Checkout' (payment service+API) allowing developers to build secure applications
Although it has it's own limitations compared to paypal, it's a gud step forward. In the pipeline are google mobile and openSocial.

While everyone's of the view of google to launch a 'gPhone' and a new social networking platform or a major restructuring of orkut(google is sponsoring a HCI project at Carnegie Mellon university), it might just turnout that google is developing a OS for mobile phones and API for social networking sites. As per the buzz, openSocial is supposed to debut as API tomorrow at code.google.com/api

flock - the social web browser

flock is now reintroduced as 'the social web browser' with it's 1.0 beta release. It's better than the previous releases in terms of UI and other social networking features. With the slight pondering that I have done, it is quite impressive in terms of features especially the blog editor(albeit no straight photo blogging feature), photo uploader.
Flock takes the 'Password remembering' feature from firfox to the next level. Once you login to a site like facebook, you are now able to view your friends in the 'people sidebar'. U have similar sidebars for media, feeds.
Do this: Login to facebook. U get a people sidebar opened up with your facbook contacts. Click on the media link on any of your contacts to see the photos, etc of your facebook buddies in another sidebar.
Also, the online note taking facility is pushed into the browser(aka google notebook)

Here's a quick guide to facebook: http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9753415-2.html?tag=nwb.sidebar

Song of Cheeni Kum in Tamil

Remember 'Jaane do naa' song from the hindi movie 'Cheeni Kum'. Taste the orginal here.


Get Your Own Music Player at Music Plugin

Week 41

$29.99 for a Wi-Fi signal detecter. Catch: It's a T-shirt.
Check this out.

Found this free streaming video software: http://camstudio.org/

Downloading music

Google trick for downloading music/songs etc.
Type "intitle:index of" then group name/song title etc and then file format e.g.mp3
For example, to search for illayaraja use the following query without the quotes
"intitle:index of pink floyd mp3"

It directly takes you the server from where you can download it. Enjoy ;)

Video Tutorials

Stumbled on this youtube.jimmyr.com. Jimmy makes video tutorials on whole lot of things. The thing is you can request him for video tuts. that u want to c. In the request page, there's a sentence which goes like this - "Vista is also a blocked keyword. If something doesn't work on vista it's normal". I have seen my collegue who got Vista installed(almost by force) and now he just uses his computer like a kid. He comes to me for printouts, opening excel from outlook, downloading things, there's so many things which doesn't seem to work. It should have been in alpha release.

Apart from this, I found whole lot of video tuts. about watching online TV, links to education tutorials ;) , and .. and watching/downloading free movies/TV shows. Aur kya chahiye bhai !! Some of them are:- dailymotion.com, videohybrid.com, comedycentral.com/motherload for TV shows;
frostwire-a much better version of Limewire for P2P downloads;
gnutella, emule for software downloads, bitTYRANT for movies, thepiratebay, mininova.org for torrents,

Programmer's Day

Had some 4 forwards today regarding Programmer's Day. The prophecy goes something like this: 2 raised to power 8 = 256; 256^th day of an year is 13^th September for a normal year and 12^th September on a leap year.

Also there's an image attached to the forward showing a wikipedia page shown in the left(<--). Checked with wikipedia for the actual page, but it's already marked for deletion.

bhooooooooooo.

Hey! What's on your eyes boyz !!

Ctrl+C during Internet session

Here is some useful information for all.

Ctrl+C may be the most important work we do everyday. But it's not a very safe thing to do. Read on to know why.
What happens when you press Ctrl+C while you are Online...?
We do copy various data by Ctrl+C for pasting elsewhere.
This copied data is stored in clipboard and is accessible from the net by a combination of JavaScript’s and ASP.


Just try this:

1) Copy any text by Ctrl+C
2) Click this Link
3) you will see the text you copied was accessed by this web page.

Do not keep sensitive data (like passwords, credit card numbers, PIN etc.) in the clipboard while surfing the web. It is extremely easy to extract the text stored in the clipboard to steal your sensitive information.

To avoid Clipboard Hack Problem, do the following:
1. Go to internet options->security
2. Press custom level
3. In the security settings, select disable under Allow paste operations via script.

Now the contents of your clipboard are safe. :)

Hello! Wrong number

This sruthi is really irritating me. I get some 3-5 calls/day for this girl on my phone. And the calls are from IBM, Wipro and other IT companies. Indian job market is booming, especially the IT sector.

Yeah! forgot to mention this - she seems to be in job-search mode and she
gave my number in the contact details and that's it. Mailed her(but no reply yet) after trying hard to get her mail id from the callers.

Next time, when u up against someone, just give their no. in a job site. That's it :D :D

Gotcha

Trying to make firefox use 1GB memory since 2005 and got it now. I mean, I didnot try intentionally ever but today, opened this wink .html presentation in firefox and that's it.C it for yourself.

Give Away Free Time

I was just looking into various tools which uses computers' free time for various projs.

How about making use of little time of ppl. with little/medium computer knowledge into useful things ? Is it possible ? Is there any work which can be chunked so that it can be done/partly done in little time and also it should be able to be continued by a brand new person ?

50 movies to watch before u die

This list is compiled by film critics, experts and personalities for Channel4's Film4. I have seen 10 of them. May be I would be seeing another 20 at max. There are similar lists at imdb's top 250, AFI's 100, TIME magazine's 100, Guardian's 100.
Here's the Channe4's list :

1. Apocalypse Now (1979)
2. The Apartment (1960)
3. City of God (2002)
4. Chinatown (1974)
5. Sexy Beast (2000)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
7. North by Northwest (1959)
8. À bout de souffle (1959)
9. Donnie Darko (2001)
10. Back to the Future (1985)
11. Alien (1979)
12. Lost in Translation (2003)
13. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
14. Lagaan (2001)
15. Pulp Fiction (1994)
16. Touch of Evil (1958)
17. Walkabout (1971)
18. Black Narcissus (1947)
19. Boyz N the Hood (1991)
20. The Player (1992)
21. Come and See (1985)
22. Heavenly Creatures (1994)
23. A Night at the Opera (1935)
24. Erin Brockovich (2000)
25. Trainspotting (1996)
26. Hero (2002)
27. The Breakfast Club (1985)
28. Fanny and Alexander (1982)
29. Pink Flamingos (1972)
30. All About Eve (1950)
31. Scarface (1983)
32. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
33. Three Colors: Blue (1993)
34. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
35. The Ladykillers (1955)
36. Fight Club (1999)
37. The Searchers (1956)
38. Mulholland Drive (2001)
39. The IPCRESS File (1962)
40. The King of Comedy (1983)
41. Manhunter (1986)
42. Dawn of the Dead (1978)
43. Princess Mononoke (1997)
44. Raising Arizona (1987)
45. Cabaret (1972)
46. This Sporting Life (1963)
47. Brazil (1985)
48. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)
49. Secrets & Lies (1996)
50. Badlands (1973)

| Pipes |

Just had a glimpse of Yahoo! pipes. As usual, did a bit of tik-tik on the thing.
Here's my set of pipes
http://pipes.yahoo.com/people/Uoncleo3oW10IWsBUZAtgyM-

Let's c how gud is the future for Pipes