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 ;)