What the contest was: The contest ran for five days with one different question for each day. Anyone who answered all 5 questions correct, stood a chance to win, chosen by the random-ness.

Most of the competitions/contests on web are limited to particular websites. You go there, enter your name in comments or blog/tweet about it, and a randomly chosen winner gets the prize. Even though ‘Search for N’ have got the random-factor too, the way the contest was conducted is interesting. They (Nokia), came out and struck up agreements with popular and widely read tech bloggers/forums and hosted the contest at these places. Now, this is very smart. Doing so, Nokia got to present their new flagship product (which is really awesome, by the way) to a very targeted yet huge audience. And the most interesting part is that, they probably didn’t have to shell out much for this campaign (if at all they did).

This was a real example of a sensible win-win situation. Nokia won. The hosts won. And the participants won too. If they had decided to host this contest on their own, instead of inviting web authors as hosts, they would’ve spent thousands of money on online AD campaigns and email marketing, none of them returning anything near to what they’ve got by the cool and innovative campaign they did.

Which one would be better ? A newspaper being made to promote a new product, or full-page ads in the most read newspapers?

Nokia ported the same to web – the new social medium.
You see, the basics are the same. It’s just that the medium evolves.

Teachers are always trying to combat student apathy and University of Texas at Dallas History Professor, Monica Rankin, has found an interesting way to do it using Twitter in the classroom. Rankin uses a weekly hashtag to organize comments, questions and feedback posted by students to Twitter during class.

The article continue, talking about the experiment and results, including a reply from the teacher herself. Down there, RWW have pointed out a strong limitation of twitter i.e. the short life span of a tweet. As of now, twitter search returns only those tweets that are younger than two months. This is something that should be taken very seriously if twitter search is to be developed into something definitive. With twitter developing to be something like what electricity is now for us (said by Jack Dorsey, co founder at Twitter), the potential it carries is huge; as twitter search is the real time search of people’s opinion, advice and thoughts.

I was just thinking, what if there was an option to preserve tweets even after two months. Like, selecting a unique hashtag for your tweets that should be archived and paying a reasonable sum to twitter for this. As simple as that.

Apart from archiving tweets for a longer time, it gets twitter some revenue. I don’t usually engage in ‘what could be a possible revenue model for twitter’ discussions, as almost all the suggestions that arise stand against the fundamental aspect of twitter – Simplicity, and also I believe the people at twitter are capable of keeping up. But this one, about paying twitter to keep tweets longer does nothing to hamper the sweet simplicity of twitter, I believe.

Google Wave

This one is the latest (or is it the Bing?). Google Wave is far far higher than the tag line ‘just another web app’. It is aimed at transforming the web. It is “what if email and IM was invented today”. Techcrunch says:

“Yesterday, during the Google I/O keynote, Google’s VP of Engineering, Vic Gundotra, laid out a grand vision for the direction Google sees the web heading towards with the move to the HTML 5 standard. While we’re not there yet, all the major browser players besides Microsoft are aligned and ready for the next phase, which will include such things as the ability to run 3D games and movies in the browser without additional plug-ins. But Google wants to take it one step further with a brand new method of communication for this new era. It’s called Google Wave.”

Developed by two brothers at Google, “Wave was born out of the idea that email and instant messaging, as successful as they still are, were both created a very long time ago. We now have a much more robust web full of content and brimming with a desire to share stuff.”

This ’set of tough questions’ is, from where, the two brothers at Google developed Wave.

• Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?
• Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?
• What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers’ current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms?

No one can say more about Wave than Google & TechCrunch! Here’s the official post from Google and here is the  Techcrunch post. You’ll know it’s REAL BIG. Below is the full video on Google Wave, uploaded by TechCrunch.

Bing

Code-named “kumo”, this one from Microsoft was unveiled just one day back. It will become available over the next few days, and be fully launched by June 3. While it’s generally regarded as another search-engine, it seems that “it is designed to be “more of a decision engine”. Read the following excerpts.

“Each search result page is customized according to what type of search you do (health, travel, shopping, news, sports). The algorithms determine not only the order of results on the page, but the layout of the page itself, concluding what sections appear. These sections can include anything from guided refinements and a list of related searches in the left-hand pane to images, videos, and local results.
Bing tries to alleviate problem by offering up different experiences depending on the search. It also acts more like a destination site for certain searches. Travel and product searches bring in comparison pricing, reviews, images, and more. Hulu videos can be played within the video search results. Bing pulls in data from other Web services when it can so that you often don’t have to leave to get the information you want.”

Read more about Bing and see the screenshots at TC.

Wolfram Alpha

Chronologically, it was Wolfram Alpha the first to create waves, coming up with charts, graphs, tables and statistics for your search queries. The following excerpts are real interesting.

“In a nutshell, Wolfram and his team have built what he calls a “computational knowledge engine” for the Web. OK, so what does that really mean? Basically it means that you can ask it factual questions and it computes answers for you.

Think about that for a minute. It computes the answers. Wolfram Alpha doesn’t simply contain huge amounts of manually entered pairs of questions and answers, nor does it search for answers in a database of facts. Instead, it understands and then computes answers to certain kinds of questions.” – Nova Spivack in his really long and explanatory post about WolframAlpha at TC.

Take this screenshot tour of WolframAlpha and go, play with it to really understand what it’s all about. And yes, this looks big.

Google Squared

“As the sheer volume of stuff on the Web keeps growing, keyword search keeps getting closer to its breaking point. Adding structure to the Web is one way to make sense of all that data, and Google is starting the tackle the problem with a Google Labs project called Google Squared.
Google Squared extracts data from Web pages and presents them in search results as squares in an online spreadsheet.” (Source: TC)

Though not entirely similar to WA, Google Squared is more or less analogous to WA by displaying searh results in a structured and organised manner. But, as of now, it isn’t capable (better to say, Google is developing) of realtime computational power as WA boasts off. Still, this one is from Google and is to be watched for sure.

Here’s an exclusive video of Google Squared from TechCrunch.

Conclusion

It is crystal clear that things are progressing very fast and neat. With the rate at which information is created and the rate at which it is transformed into knowledge, all these developments are timely and needed. I presume, we’re nearing the point where, web will play a perfect and important role in everyday life. Let the party begin!

Yes. You can gift your kid with a real story book, with your child and his/her friends as the characters. IAndMyStory puts it this way: “Imagine a book where your child becomes the star of the story, making reading enjoyable. The story comes to life with the child’s name, age, hometown, family, friends and uncles & aunts all being part of the adventure”. I was nothing short of surprised to see this.

The catalogue is short, understandable as they’re just launched. Writers and illustrators are invited to join them. Affiliate dealerships are encouraged too.

The books are priced at an average of Rs. 380 per copy which seems very reasonable, if not low for what’s offered. The service is primarily focussed on India but they take international orders too.  A comprehensive list of supported payment options including International/Domestic Credit/Debit cards, netbanking facilities of 10+ Indian Banks and other options like ItzCash and Mobile payments, makes it more accessible.

This is a perfect gift for children anytime. Congratulations to the ones who conceived and created iAndMyStory – they’ve done something that stands out and makes sense.

Discovered with a tweet by @manuscrypts linking to a review at StartupDunia. Image courtesy: Carf

Nothing makes a product demo, presentation or screencast more catchy than a professional quality, timed narration or voice over. And this is something which isn’t as easily available as other resources required. You’re lucky if you’ve got an acquaintance of yours with powerful voice; but everyone isn’t lucky that way. Text – to – speech services/softwares could be used as an alternative. But, when it comes to life-like voice reproduction and accent, those services aren’t upto the mark
- except Text To Speech from IMTranslator.Net

I tried it out and the results were great. They’ve perfected the system, that the generated audio sounds very genuine.

TTS Voice engine converts text into lifelike spoken audio in a variety of languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Russian.

This could be used

• to learn pronunciation of different words and languages
• as a text to speech application
• and as narration or voice over in your presentations or movies

This one is a great blessing to anyone who wants to make their work/project  best with a custom speech/audio. You can have professional narration or voice over for free and use it for

• Documentary narration
• Voice-over
• Presentation narration
• Advertisement narration
• Screencast Audio
• Intro speech for videos or movies

It’s interesting to note that you can generate specific accents. For example, you can create the voice of a Spaniard speaking English and the like.

Saving the produced audio as a file

You aren’t provided any links to download the generated audio. But, you can always record any sound that plays through your speakers by selecting the recording source as “Wave out” using some audio editing software like the awesome Audacity. Feel free to ask for any help and it will be good if you share the feedback.

Twexperince

I had registered for a session. It wasn’t a talk, but was a video – “Twexperience”. The video carries the simple but strong message about the value of Twitter and encouraging people to start on with it. Watch it here.

BarCampKerala5 Goodies

Here are some beautiful snaps of the event. Many more are uploaded elsewhere on the web. Search for the tag “bck5″ or “bck”, you’ll get the goodies including presentations at Slideshare, Photos on flickr and Picasa.

The leading Indian newspaper, The Hindu honoured us with some good coverage. Thanks to Ms. Sangeetha Unnithan (Reporter), a good report of  the event was published.

BarCamps are excellent platforms one should make the best use of. Though there’ll be some developer-intensive sessions, you don’t have to be a programmer/geek/techie to attend one. I strongly suggest that you don’t miss another BarCamp or an unconference.

We’ve received suggestions to organise the next BarCamp as a BlogCamp (the last one was a full day event on a HouseBoat). Before that, we plan to gather feedback about BCK5 so that future events could be made better. We’re seeing a lot of volunteers coming forward that is a good sign of the BarCamp culture strengthening in the state.

Photo by: Novembering

1. Offline
Take your GMail entirely offline with this lab. This one makes use of Google Gears to backup and localise a copy of your GMail account, allowing you to browse through your GMail through your browser, even when you’re offline.

Make Gmail go where the Internet doesn’t. Access your inbox through your browser and use Gmail’s familiar features when you’re offline. To get started, enable this lab and then click on the “Offline” link in the upper-right of your inbox.

Tip: If you want to keep a backup copy of your GMail, you may use GMail Backup (FREE) app. You can use that backup even Google Apps accounts.

2. Tasks
Gives you an overlay box titled “Tasks” that’s similar to the chat boxes. You may close it anytime and reopen it from the “Tabs” button located below the main navigation buttons.

Tasks adds a to-do list to Gmail. After adding the lab, click the Tasks link above the chat box on the left-hand-side of the page. Your task list will appear on the right – click anywhere in the list and start typing to add a task.

Tip: If you’re looking for a light and efficient desktop To-Do app, MiniTask is for you. Powered by Adobe AIR, this one is so light and just works brilliantly.

3. Rich Media Previews (YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, Yelp!)
Shows an inline preview of any links to above mentioned content.

4. Mark As Read Button
This is a really tiny feature but a killer one. Gives you a dedicated ‘Mark As Read button’, eliminating the need to check the mails and then access “Mark as read” from the drop-down menu. Saves precious time. (I realized, how great is this tiny feature, when I had to use an uncustomized GMail account. )

5. Multiple Inboxes
This one is seen as the second-best lab after Offline. This one enables you to have multiple panes on your traditional Inbox, that can display mails according to custom preferences, that are accessible at “Multiple Inboxes Settings” area. A screenshot will make it clear for you.

Add extra lists of emails in your inbox to see even more important email at once. The new lists of threads can be labels, your starred messages, drafts or any search you want, configurable under Settings.

Tip: You may read about using this feature to transform GMail into your feed reader.

6. Filter import/export
Filters could be rightly called as the biceps of GMail. And this one makes it possible to export your filter list and to import them to another account or to use later.

Tip: Use filters to keep those forwards, promotions, and notifications away from your gracious inbox !

7. Inserting images
Till now, GMail did not support inserting images into an email. There have been workarounds to do this, including the simple way of dragging an image and dropping it into the message. But now with this lab, GMail adds an “Insert Image” button to the rich text editor Toolbar. You can upload images from your computer as well as from any other place on web.

There are many more available for you. I use 17 labs. Take a good look at ‘em. Check ‘em frequently, as newer labs keep on coming. I believe you are rushing to GMail to get the labs activated, if not, gone and activated it midway, reading this !.
Oh yeah, some time back, I had written about Visiting the Labs, once in a while ! Cool.

BackType gives a home for all your comments by crawling over the web (mainly blogs) to find comments you made and aggregating them to your profile. This aggregates all those bits of knowledge and opinion shared by you, all over the web.

You may want to read my posts over at LostInTechnology. Here is some of them.

• Genuine, Legal and FREE Music Sharing on Jamendo
• How To Make GMail the Home for All Your Subscriptions
• 5 Tools to Quickly Share Text, Notes or Code over the Internet
• Find Out the Anatomy of a Webiste with Sitonomy

We’ve traveled a lot from, where static pages, scientific information & some GIF animations were all you could get from the internet. This shift was then termed as Web2.0. This refers not only to improved programming and designing paradigms but also, to the change in attitude towards the web. Earlier, the web was just a tool or hobby but, now, it’s the way life is to be lived.

We can’t be wrong in saying “we’re yet to see a bigger & better web”, given that we work towards it. Some feel that the web is saturated and there is no space for anything new; that every possible web app has been built and that people have become tired of social networking. Not really. There is always space for things.

Photo by bottleleaf

Now that the web, through its exponential growth and evolution, have developed into a stellar, rock-solid platform, it’s the time for us to start working, based on this platform. i.e. the technical aspects have been reached a near-perfect state (at least, as of now) and now it’s the time to impart human qualities and attribution to the web, and use the web to cause great changes and impacts.

If something could reach in 20 years, where others took thousands, think of the immense potential that is left for us to use it sensibly. Web needs enlightened and sensible people, like us, to use its power and make the world a better place to live in. And this needs open discussions and strong conversations.

So, it’s time we pause talking about web and start talking about using the web for the good of the world. I’m sorry that I can’t put some examples forward at this point of time. But, we might come up with some great ones, once we start talking. We need to.

The Feel-good-with-your-iPod Shuffle2G-Table

Now, that us, the ones with 2G are pretty consoled, let’s welcome the successor, 3G (C’mon. Clap. I know it’s tough, but just, just clap!). The friendly guys ( @preshit, @goobimama, @aryayush) over at the beautiful Smoking Apples, put it this way:

Think of it this way. Apple has taken its $30 earphones which you’d normally buy from their store, packed a 4GB flash stick and an mp3 player into a tiny aluminum container and is selling that to you for just $40 more. – @preshit

The real question is, has Apple made an sexy new music player that is irresistible to shell out some dough for, even in these trying times? Hell yeah! – @goobimama

That’s indeed, awesome. No wonder, “iPod” ruled over “iPhone”, the past few days on Twitter !

The Photo Shoot

Now, the photo shoot of the mighty iPod shuffle 2G. [Models: iAm's of @AravindJose(blue) & @ArunGeoJohn(white). Click on the thumbnails for a bigger look]

Come on. Pour in comments. You know you want to !
[Sharing this is, as always, encouraged and deeply thanked]