Thursday, July 31, 2008

Movies in Pune: My Dapper for

Add to your site
powered by Dapper


You can access the original Dapp at this place
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Dapper... interesting mashup service



I
don't remember how i landed here, but Dapper.net looks interesting...
watched a video on how it works and believe me its interesting!!

Hoping to experiment with it!! will come back soon with my experiments.

Edit: I was finally able to do some work with dapper.. created a widget from DPChallenge Favorite existing dapper itself..dpchallenge Version 2

I also managed to create a igoogle widget and even post it to google directory..Add to Google

Interesting things.

One
complaint: The Dapp Factory is taking AGES to analyze the pages i give
myself so could not create "my own" ones from scratch yet... hope to be
soon.


There was a problem with my settings.. for the
Dapper to create a Dapp, you need to turn off the Add Block
extensions!! I did that (thanks to help from Ilan from Dapper) and
created some of my own Dapps, gadgets, RSS feeds and Image Loops...
very exciting. Here are some of my experiments on Dapper.

BTW, i cannot stop from comparing this with Yahoo Pipes... similar in many ways and different in many!!
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Sanskrit and Marathi Online Dictionary

A practical Sanskrit dictionary with transliteration,accentuation, and etymological analysis throughout.

Found this great resource... works great if you install unicode fonts.. you can actually see words in Sanskrit and the meanings in English.

Also found Marathi Dictionary on the same site (infact two of them)The Aryabhusan School Dictionary, Marathi-English.

If you have unicode fonts installed, it actually shows you the "मरठी" names and their english meanings... Fundu...

Links:



http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/apte/ :
Sanskrit

There are dictionaries for lots of other languages available on the same site.
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ScribeFire 2.3: Power-up your blogging

I have been using ScribeFire for more than 6 months now to post things to my blog.
I am not a person who likes to write a lot and use my blog as a personal reference of good things i like on web and things which may be useful to my friends... so content-drag-drop is just what i need and that's exactly what i get from ScribeFire.

Overall, i just love this firefox extension, and believe me, without this my blog updates would have reduced to 10-15%... its too much of a pain to go to blogger, sign-in, click new post, then create the content :( Also there is no pane-view available to easily reference links / content / images!! just love it.

The latest feature "Live-Preview" is very cool.. I keep changing the color schemes of my blog so its pretty useful to check before i publish!!

One thing i am still to resolve is to setup the image upload settings for blogger, hopefully i will crack it soon :P

Happy Blogging....
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Wednesday, July 30, 2008

EveryScape: Cool new World Exploration


Real World Online!
Fundu beta site to compete with Google Street View.

Some great ideas like integrated news, maps, inside-view of historic places... simply wonderful!!

Worth a try!!

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Face Swapping to protect privacy

FaceswapperFound these cool images and good article about how Google is working on protecting privacy in the StreetView and also keeping their projects "live"


After finding itself in hot water with privacy advocates, Google has
begun obscuring the faces of people in its Street View service, which
lets users of Google Maps zoom in to view street level images. But the
images look decidedly odd, with whole streets peopled by blurred faces.










It
needn't be this way, says Neeraj Kumar of Columbia University, New
York. Kumar and his colleagues have developed software that gives
everyone a face - just not their own. The software randomly selects
33,000 photos of faces from picture-sharing sites like Flickr.com, then
picks the most suitable faces for each person in shot. Only the eyes,
nose and mouth are used, resulting in a composite image of the two
people. "It matches subject pose, lighting conditions and image
resolution," says Kumar. "The selected faces are aligned to common 3D
coordinates, corrected for colour and lighting, and blended into the
target image."










The end result is a convincing face rather than a blur, although the team's images (pdf link here)
can be spooky, especially when people get features from the opposite
sex. What's more, the software works automatically. "Previous face
replacement software required manual assistance, much like editing an
image in Photoshop," says Kumar.


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Inside-Widgets: myths busted!

Read a very good article (The truth about widgets) on Widget myths... good read.

Published: June 23, 2008


9 widget myths debunked



More by this Author

Contact Author
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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Widgets Lab



I found Widgets Lab to be super cool. Got to know about so many widgets out there to spice-up my blog!! planning us check for the good ones.. you will see some added soon!!
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ECO-SAFE widget: Send/Download PDF for your blog

https://eco-safe.com/images/ecosafe_hdr.gif

I found this cool widget on the A VC blog and thought of using myself. Cool Idea. It has good amount of options available for display on the blogs!! Also has some kind of itunes tie-up (which i did not understand much... i should be frank enough!!)

Talks about environment friendly... but forget about it.. If people print blogs, they are not going to suddenly start downloading the pdfs. (they will probably then print the PDFs.. ha ha ha...). Frankly... I don't think its worth printing blogs anyway!!

Said that, the widget looks cool... i am going to have one immediately!!

http://eco-safe.com/eco.php/green/merit_badge

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Cuil... wiered search results

Got to know about the new "Cuil" search engine recently... it rated as having 12bn pages indexed (121,617,892,992 web pages when i saw last on 29th July)... but believe me, its a sheer waste!!
Not completely... got good results for searches like "Loyalty", "Oracle", "Google".
I also liked the concept of having "download here" links for some softwares from Google. Also getting logos of companies displayed on results for "Loyalty" was a cool idea, so was the tabbed results for "Customer Loyalty", "Loyalty Management" etc that came up.

But the shocker came when I started to do some ego-searching, as suggested by Veronica in another article.
I got all kinds of irrelevant resutls... i have my photo posted on my blog, few forums, websites, linked-in etc... none of which came up. I gave it a "benefit of doubt" as there are other people with the name "Yogendra Joshi" and are doing great in their respective areas.

But one thing i know for sure is that, i am the only one who has properly maintained linked-in account along with my name in the URL. So I searched for Yogendra Joshi Linkedin... and what i got was a shocker... see it for yourselves!!
As you see, it shows some horrible photo and a profile of some "deepak gopinath" that too going into wiered.ru site... will you not hate a site that pulls such horrible picture for your name search and ignores a great other resource everywhere on the web?

What us of those 12bn sites indexed if you cannot even pull a simple search out of it..??

BTW, full credit to the experiment... i like the UI, 2/3 column search (which i anyway do with google thanks to a greasemonkey script in firefox called GoogleMonkeyR [Install this script]).

I would love someone challenge Google on their search. That would
  • make Google better,
  • keep Google from being the "monopoly-search-engine"
Lastly, the pages says 33 results found... so where are the other 32?

EDIT: There is another good article that has come up on Google Operating System blog which discusses about the creators of Cuil. Sphere: Related Content

Monday, July 28, 2008

FixYa: Free Tech Support for your devices

FixYa.com

Jabra Bluetooth Headset with Adjustable Ear-Hook HeadsetToday i was looking how to resolve the issue of broken ear-hook of jabra bt-125.. i googled it and reached this site called FixYa... I saw that there were many who got replacement of the ear-hooks..

http://www.fixya.com/support/t210320-jabra_ear_piece

This increased my interest in what this site is all about and realized that it has lot of things to help us, right from fixing computers, TVs and even Cars.

For many products it also has pdf user guides, numbers and emails for company support, tips and tricks and many more things... certainly good place to go before you start asking your friends frantically..


Another interesting freature is the Warranty Manager where you can add all your products and warranty information for future access... also has added services like extended warranty.. (BTW it requires log-in... limited usability for me as i am in India... shound be much usable for people in US / Eurpoe)

What is FixYa?
Fixya provides Free tech support and technical help for gadgets, electronic equipment and consumer products. Fixya's technical experts advise on fixing problems and provide instructions on proper usage of products either by chat or message posting. Fixya stores manuals and troubleshooting guides for over half a million products. Fixya's tech support community will provide a quick solution for your "how to" problem.
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Google: Success Story of 25 Million to 1 Trillion

As i just finished writing a post on Google crossing 1 trillion indexed pages mark... I thought of looking at the past, and this time http://web.archive.org/ came to my help!!

Here is the page that shows extensive archive of All the versions indexed for "Google.com"


I took a dig on the first captured version as on Nov 11, 1998 *. As i continued to explore i found this page (image shown on the left) what showed "Index contains ~25 million pages (soon to be much bigger)". The promise has certainly come true and in less than ten years it has crossed 1 trillion mark. That apart it has also moved from "search project" to a multi-billion dollar international giant...

(BTW, interestingly, the last archive of google is on Aug 29, 2007 !! what happened? Archive.com sleeping or it just blacklisted Google???)

Kudos to Google, its creators, investors, contributors and most importantly the USERS
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Google Clocks 1 Trillion unique web-content pages

http://www.ohgizmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/gooooogle.jpg

We know that Google is huge tracking every bit of "internet" with its huge "google-ware".
I happened to read this big news yesterday when Google announced in their blog that "systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a
milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web
at once!
"

Now interpreting how big is 1 trillion is insane... but as they say... its big... and i am sure that there are plenty more pages that are waiting to be "indexed". You are welcome to read the original article to know how they track these pages and how things "actually" work at Google.

Accuracy?
While its great that google is tracking every-bit of information, i am wondering how they keep it up-to-date? There is perpetual internet-decay (internet rot or link rot) where the links disappear, the websites shut-down, sites are hacked or people simply change their addresses. I am wondering what google does with the cached data?


http://www.orangeinks.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/googlolopoloy.gifDownside?
Now its been proved that being indexed by google is a "previledge" and not a "right". While i am a big lover of Google, it also scares a bit as we are moving towards a clear-cut monopoly. Any system that becomes too big to compete with, will necessarily bring injustice to a small group of people... hope i am wrong here.

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Friday, July 25, 2008

Power Tricks for RSS Readers

rss-icon11 Power Tips To Get The Maximum Out Of Your RSS Feed Reader

Fundu article on Jeet Blog posted by Arpit Kumar from TechRaga

Good Read and great to implement!
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Celebration means...

Celebration means......

Four friends.
Bahar barsaat.
no raincoat, no
umbrella


Celebration means......

Hundred bucks of petrol.
A rusty old bike.
And an open road.


Celebration means......

Maggie noodles.
A hostel room.
4.25 a. m.


Celebration means......

3 old friends.
3 separate cities.
3 coffee mugs.
1 internet messenger.


Celebration means......

Rain on a hot tin roof.
Pakoras deep-frying.
Neighbors dropping in.
A party.


Celebration means......

You and mom.
A summer night.
A bottle of coconut oil.
A head massage.



You can spend

Hundreds on birthdays,
Thousands on festivals,
Millions on weddings,


but to Celebrate all
you have to do is spend your Time with your loved ones.

Keep in touch
with those who care for you......
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Thursday, July 24, 2008

Tips for New Blogger

I found this Tips for New Bloggers website extremely useful for changing some UI elements on my blog... The back link trick is my favorite.

Here is a quick index of things it has.

Blogger FAQ and Help


Header
  • Insert an image to the left of Blog Title and Description [read]
  • Add a Horizontal Navigation Bar in Header Image [read]
  • Unable to remove Header Image [read]


Blog Posts
  • Arrange, customize and shift the Blog Posts and Footer elements [read]
  • Insert a picture or image beside the Blog Post Title [read]
  • How to have standard or pre-formatted text in Blog Posts [read]
  • Add Highlighting to Text and Background Color in Text Box [read]
  • Change Blogger Post URL - SEO Tip [read]
  • Change the Post a Comment Link [read]
  • Add scrollbars to text within Blog Posts [read]


Sidebar
  • Add Background color and image to Sidebar Titles [read]
  • Have different Background colors for each widget [read]
  • Style and Position Sidebar Images [read]


Footer
  • How to align Blog Post Footer elements to the left [read]
  • Move Comments Label to below Post Title [read]


Links and Labels
  • How to add Hover, Mouseover and Rollover effects for links [read]
  • Remove automatic number count in Labels widget [read]
  • Remove link underlines in Blog Posts and/or sidebar [read]
  • Be notified by Blogger when there is a Backlink [read]
  • Change and Edit Labels in Multiple Posts [read]


General
  • How to change Background Colour of TicTac Template [read]
  • How to remove the Pencil or Screwdriver and Wrench icons [read]
  • How to add animated graphics in Blogger Post and Sidebar [read]
  • Add Text Box or HTML textarea code in Blogs [read]
  • Know the limits on our Blogger account [read]
  • How to take Screenshots or Screen captures [read]
  • How to change and transfer Blog ownership [read]
  • Change font size and font styles in template [read]
  • How to center align Page Elements [read]
  • How to insert a separator line between each comment [read]
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Invisible Waterproof Coating for Electronic Devices : Golden Shellback

Something great to look forward to... apart from its obvious advantages, i am more intrigued by the whole idea and its execution.. Scientists decide the fate of almost everything in our life :)

Golden Shellback | Splash Proof Coatings

Golden Shellback coating is a unique coating that protects critical operational equipment against damage and loss of function caused by exposure to weather and moisture. It is ideal for application in the electronics industry.

Golden Shellback coating produces a vacuum deposited film that is nonflammable, has low toxicity and has the ability to weatherproof electronic devices and other surfaces. It contains no volatile organic combustibles (VOCs). The clear, nearly non-detectable, uniform film is insoluble in solvents. When applied to clean, moisture free surfaces, such as plastic, copper, aluminum, metal, ceramic, steel, tin or glass, the coating is transparent with excellent weather proofing and anti-corrosion properties.

VIDProduct Demonstration
DocProduct Description-2008-07-14
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World without Engineers!!

Imagine!! Its scary, isn't it?

Aeronautical Engineers


Electronics Engineers


Mechanical Engineers


Civil Engineers


Communication Engineers


Computer Engineers

Electrical Engineers

http://maqtanim.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/electrical_engineering_ipod.jpg
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Weapons of Mass Destruction >> Not Found

Cannot find Weapons of Mass Destruction







information.gif

These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed



The weapons you are looking for are currently unavailable.
The country might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your weapons inspectors mandate.




Please try the following:


  • Click the refresh.gif Regime change button, or try again later.

  • If you are George Bush and typed the country's name in the address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly. (IRAQ).

  • To check your weapons inspector settings, click the UN menu, and then click Weapons Inspector Options.
    On the Security Council tab, click Consensus. The settings should match those provided by your government or NATO.

  • If
    the Security Council has enabled it, The United States of America can
    examine your country and automatically discover Weapons of Mass
    Destruction.

    If you would like to use the CIA to try and discover them,

    click Detect SettingsDetect weapons

  • Some countries require 128 thousand troops to liberate them. Click the Panic menu and then click About US foreign policy to determine what
    regime they will install.

  • If
    you are an Old European Country trying to protect your interests, make
    sure your options are left wide open as long as possible. Click the Tools menu, and then click on League of Nations.
    On the Advanced tab, scroll to the Head in the Sand section and check settings for your exports to Iraq.

  • Click the BombBomb button if you are Donald Rumsfeld.





Cannot find weapons or CIA Error
Iraqi Explorer

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How to handle criticism on your Blogs > Good article by JeetBlog

Found a nice article on JeetBlog on how to handle the criticism on your blog.
Handling Criticism As A Blogger Some of my favorite stuff from that!!
handling criticism
  • Be prepared for the unexpected

Be prepare for the worst. It doesn’t mean that you should be
pessimistic, but you should have a frame of mind where you are ready to
face all kinds of feedback.

  • Reduce the passion

Now.. thats a bit tough one

” The less passion there is, the better we work. The
calmer we are the better for us and the more the amount of work we can
do. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much energy, shatter
our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work. ”
-
Swami Vivekananda

  • Believe in yourself

Again quoting Swami Vivekananda- ” Each work has to pass
through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance.
Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Nice Speech by India's PM Manmohan Singh

Advani called me nikamma PM: Manmohan-The Times of India

Even though i am not a great fan of politics, i happened to read this speech (that could never be delivered to the parliament).
I liked some parts of it.. here they are!!

These are words of a man many call "weak" but he was the author of india's economic revolution and undoubtedly the "cleanest" guy on the indian political platform today (I sincerely hope i am not wrong)!!



The Leader of Opposition, Shri L.K. Advani has chosen to use all manner of abusive objectives to describe my performance. He has described me as the weakest Prime Minister, a nikamma PM, and of having devalued the office of PM. To fulfill his ambitions, he has made at least three attempts to topple our government. But on each occasion his astrologers have misled him. This pattern, I am sure, will be repeated today. At his ripe old age, I do not expect Shri Advani to change his thinking. But for his sake and India’s sake, I urge him at least to change his astrologers so that he gets more accurate predictions of things to come.
The Management and governance of the world’s largest, most diverse and most vibrant democracy is the greatest challenge any person can be entrusted with, in this world. It has been my good fortune that I was entrusted with this challenge over four years ago. I thank with all sincerity the Chairperson of the UPA, the leaders of the Constituent Parties of the UPA and every member of my Party for the faith and trust they reposed in me. I once again recall with gratitude the guidance and support I have received from Shri Jyoti Basu and Sardar Harkishen Singh Surjeet.


I have often said that I am a politician by accident. I have held many diverse responsibilities. I have been a teacher, I have been an official of the Government of India, I have been a member of this greatest of Parliaments, but I have never forgotten my life as a young boy in a distant village.


Every day that I have been Prime Minister of India I have tried to remember that the first ten years of my life were spent in a village with no drinking water supply, no electricity, no hospital, no roads and nothing that we today associate with modern living. I had to walk miles to school, I had to study in the dim light of a kerosene oil lamp. This nation gave me the opportunity to ensure that such would not be the life of our children in the foreseeable future.

Sir, my conscience is clear that on every day that I have occupied this high office, I have tried to fulfill the dream of that young boy from that distant village.


The greatness of democracy is that we are all birds of passage! We are here today, gone tomorrow! But in the brief time that the people of India entrust us with this responsibility, it is our duty to be honest and sincere in the discharge of these responsibilities. As it is said in our sacred texts, we are responsible for our actions and we must act without coveting the rewards of such action. Whatever I have done in this high office I have done so with a clear conscience and the best interests of my country and our people at heart. I have no other claims to make


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Indian Politics: bringing our heads down in shame

Yes... I am not the one who writes my own thoughts on the blog... but whatever i saw/heard in last two days in Indian politics, certainly brings my head down is sheer shame on the international scale.


First the nuclear deal, then left withdrawing support suddenly, baseless Mayawati claiming for "the first dalit lady PM" post, the trust motion and the topping was the money brought into the parliament!!

On one hand we boast of being the "biggest democracy" in the world and at the same time display the ugly face of democracy.. after looking at this, who would want democracy?

But as they say, "people get the king they deserve" this time the ever-visible corruption at grass root level makes it inevitable that it is reflected at the highest level... we cannot avoid it unless we start doing something!!

Shame ... Shame .. Shame...

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Monday, July 21, 2008

Egypt Trip Photos

I had a wonderful short business trip to Cairo, Egypt last week.. here are some of the photos from that trip.


Here is a link to the public picasa album
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Twitter cartoon spoof!! cool one

http://blog.ivanpope.com/awol/twitter.fedup.jpg
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1 reason i left the new igoogle!!

I read a lot about "why new igoogle sucks" and still i was ok to experiment... but one thing that i just could not stand was ... there is no minimize button... huff... it sucks...

I keep loads of things and open each when i have time.. otherwise they are minimized... its a must have and if its not there, i will not be the one to use the new UI just for the heck of it!!
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Constructive Criticism of the new Experiemental iGoogle

I thought of trying my hand on the new iGoogle and successfully did that by declaring myself as a developer iGoogle Sandbox Sign Up

Thought of also checking what people are saying about this new UI experiment and stumbled on this nice bit of article...

I have tried to pick my favorite ones:

* There is no way to hide the left-hand navigation tab. Since I onlyhave one page of information, which contains just the info I want to see at a glance when I start my browser, the left hand navigation is useless and takes up 1/4 of my screen width. I would love an option to "collapse" that column and free up that space for the actual content.

* There is no way to view just RSS headlines. With the new two-line preview for every item, I cannot fit all my feeds on one page without scrolling.

* After clicking on an item in an RSS feed from iGoogle, or clicking on one of my gadgets in the left-hand navigation, if I hit the "Back" button in my browser I am redirected to the page I was just viewing and cannot get back to my iGoogle page.

the new iGoogle page seems to be loading an INCREDIBLE amount of information in the background. Looking at my status bar, it seems like it's retrieving every image from every RSS feed on my page as it loads. This slows down my entire browser and my internet connection. Sphere: Related Content
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