BrainBuzz

Google Chrome OS - First Impressions (or should I say, Disappointments!)

2009-11-21T14:07:00.003+10:00

An early prototype of the much awaited Google Chrome OS was released a couple of days back, and as expected of any product announcement from Google, everyone in the tech world was excited, including me. This is a very early version of the Operating System, and the initial demo wasn't that impressive, but I wanted to have a go at it. Following TechCrunch's simple guide to install Chrome OS on a virtual machine, I loaded it up yesterday in VirtualBox.

The boot time of 7 seconds was indeed quite a feat (the intend to halve that by next year!), and I had no problems logging in with a Gmail/Google account (Warning: don't use your primary Gmail address if you intend to try it out yourself. Its a prototype, after all.). Chromium browser (the open-source counterpart of Google Chrome) loaded up, with a few changes to the UI to make it handle some things that traditional OSes have dealt with as a separate affair, like options to turn networks on & off, a rudimentary digital clock and a battery monitor.

Here is what's different (or rather, missing) in ChromeOS, compared to Windows, Linux et al. :

Cannot install applications; all applications are web services (websites)
Need Internet connectivity to even login, as ChromeOS uses your Gmail account for login and the app panel (its version of 'Quick-Launch' in Windows, and is like a tab inside the browser - but its not). Furthermore, as all apps are web apps, you can't do zilch without a decent net connection.
Does not (and will not) support existing desktops/ laptops/ netbooks/ smartphones, and requires specialized hardware designed specifically to run ChromeOS. If you want to run it somewhere other than a virtual machine, you need to wait for year for ChromeOS to be released as pre-installed OS on specialized netbooks with solid state hard drives (SSDs). ChromeOS is free, but the netbooks surely won't be.
There are no options to log out, shut down or restart, except using the power button. I guess logout is not really needed, all you have to do is logout of your browser session. But come on, a simple shut down button?

On the plus side, you'll never need to update anything - everything is stored online, including your data & customizations/settings, and you can access your data and programs from anywhere in the world, provided you have a stable connection to the net. For example, the app panel required a google.com login when I tried it out yesterday. But when I opened up the OS today, they had switched it to a regular google account, which meant that I could login with my Gmail username and password instead. To update the UI, all they have to do is change it at the server, and all users will instantly be upgraded to the latest version.

Some other things I noticed:

The file manager, accessible through the browser's open/save dialogues, is a chrome-less window, and reveals the Linux file system, on which it is based.
No desktop, no icons. Well, there is the app panel. None outside the browser - which is the OS, by the way. Technically, no other OSes have icons or wallpapers outside the OS, so its a moot point. Its a new way to look at it. (Saying 'paradigm shift' is such a cliché :p )
If you close the last tab (the app panel is not really a tab, so it doesn't count), the whole browser restarts, reopening the closed tab.

Its UI is also very choppy. I had given 1GB RAM to the virtual machine, with 128MB of video memory. But then, my hard disk is not an SSD, and the OS is not even at beta stage.

What I don't understand is, when you have free OSes like Ubuntu which works on every computer (at least every one of the dozen or so I've tried on), and features like hibernate which can reduce the need for a restart/boot to the rare occasions of a kernel/system update, what exactly is the need for such an OS? They are polished (unlike ChromeOS, in its current state), works with a huge number of devices (unlike ChromeOS), can be installed on any computer used today (unlike ChromeOS), and can choose from tens of thousands of applications to be installed on them, taking advantage of the local processing power.

If you can suggest a valid reason why I should use this OS, please, enlighten me in the comments.

New Orkut design copies many of Facebook's features

2009-11-05T15:43:00.008+10:00

Orkut has rolled out a new design to some users, and has given the ability to invite others to it, à la Gmail / Google-Wave. There is an entry in the Orkut Support Section which claims that the new interface is faster & simpler, and will make it easier to follow your friends' updates. From the listing of features, it appears that Orkut has copied many of Facebook's features to make the UI more streamlined. And I'm glad they did!

The upgrade adds the ability to comment on friends' updates, and to change the colour scheme of your profile page. But here is the most exciting feature that they are adding to Orkut : with the new version, you will be able to do Audio/Video Chat with your friends! This will probably require the installation of a plugin like the one used in Gmail. There is also the option to do a conference chat.

(Update: The plugin is needed, but if you have it installed and working in Gmail, you don't need to do that again. It just works. No option to set status though. Only the pre-set statuses 'Available', 'Busy' & 'Invisible' and the option to sign out of chat are available.)

Orkuteers will be able to select multiple photos for uploading at once, and also rotate them if needed. All your contacts' activity notifications will be available through a unified what's new section, which will also have the ability to play the videos added by your contacts - exactly how Facebook's 'News Feed' works.

The new version also adds a link header on top like the ones on top of Gmail & Google Docs, allowing users to navigate to other Google properties.

It also looks like they are integrating the scrapbook into the home page, thus making it more like Facebook's wall posts, but I'm not sure about this. The help page says that "The 'scrap' feature lets you post directly to their profile pages". What exactly that means is yours to figure out; your guess would be as good as mine. (See Update below)

As a web developer, I'm happy to hear that in the new version, Orkut has also joined the growing list of large sites which have stopped supporting the IE6 (Internet Explorer 6) browser. They suggest that users should "upgrade to a supported browser" by "download[ing] the latest versions of Google Chrome, Firefox or Internet Explorer 8".

Update: I'm in! Using the new design now. They have 'Ajax'-ified the interface, so all sections (scraps, photo albums, fav. videos, testimonials etc.) appear in the home page itself. The friends list and communities list are now scrollable, and shows all your friends/communities. You can also narrow-down the list with search-as-you-type. Aesthetics could have been better though.. I miss the old Orkut already.

Update 2: Apparently, this isn't news. The orkut blog had announced it last week. Can't believe I missed that... :p

Blog Upgrade!

2009-07-17T18:19:00.002+10:00

Hi all,

Upgraded to New Blogger Template (Finally!), added a few widgets. Still have the same design, so yes, I was converting for the last few hours..

Has Google FriendConnect enabled, so signup here if you like my posts..

I've been on Twitter for a while now, so smaller updates are going up there instead of a full-blown blog post.

Follow me on Twitter! @lifenstein

P.S.: Will add more posts here soon.

[Video] Data Portability - An Introduction

2008-01-24T03:10:00.001+10:00

An excellent article at PC World about Data Portability

Doing Your bit to reduce Spam - Using BCC

2007-12-21T13:23:00.000+10:00

In 2001, spam accounted for an estimated 5% of our email. In 2007, it clogs our inboxes* to the tune of 90-95% of all email sent, according to a new report released recently by Barracuda Networks. Barracuda, a leading vendor of spam filtering technology, based their analysis on the over 1 billion emails that the company's software scans each day.

Spammers need email IDs to send the spam to, and there are many sneaky sites out there who collect addresses from visitors and sell them to the spammers. Email addresses are also collected by spambots, which crawl the web just like regular search engine crawlers (like Google's Googlebot) , but looking for email IDs in webpages (say, in comments) instead of keywords.

Another source of valid email addresses are, believe it or not, your own forwarded emails. Whether sending jokes, amaaaaaazing pictures, inspiring presentations, friendship quotes or, the worst of them all - Chain Mails, the way you send it could very well be helping spammers send more unwanted messages to your own friends, relatives & colleagues...

As I mentioned in the last post, when you put all the addresses in the 'to' or 'cc' boxes while forwarding an email, the email IDs of all the recipients are visible to each other!. The actual use of 'cc' is for intimating persons other than those whom the message is meant for about the email. For example, you want to let Archie know that you have sent the mail to Jughead, while the letter isn't actually meant for Archie himself. If you didn't want Jughead to know that, then you'd put Archie's email ID into the 'BCC' box instead. Since email IDs in 'BCC' aren't visible to any of the recipients, the addresses remain safely within your contact list, away from prying eyes.

Another responsible thing you can do is to clean up the mail being forwarded before sending it across - remove the huge list of previous forwarders & forwardees from the mail. That isn't what you want your friends to read, right? You want them to see the contents of the mail itself. I have seen forwards with three to four PAGES of

"Forwarded Message: Fwd:Fw:Fwd: Subject
From: xx32, To: yy1, yy2..... yy56, yy 57...
---------
Forwarded Message: Subject
From: zz20, To: xx1, xx2, xx3.... xx71
...
.....
...
......."

... followed by a One-Liner Joke. What gives?!

Once I even got a mail with just the list; no content - it had been clipped due to the mail being too long.. ( In Gmail, you can view the full content through the 'Show Original' link in the Reply button drop-down. )

Same thing with the Subject line as well - whatz with the 'Fwd: Fw: Re: [Groupkkk] Fwd [MailingList DingDong]....' ?? In Gmail, you should just click 'Edit Subject' link, clean it up so that just one 'Fwd:' & the Subject itself remains before sending it.

Inspired by a post at Yahoo! Mail's blog, where they explain the use of BCC through a screencast. The video itself isn't that impressive, so I'll just link to it rather than embed it here in the blog. > Using BCC Feature (Yahoo! Video)

* The part about 'Clogging your Inboxes' assumes that you aren't using Gmail :D

Its now easier to locate your Gmail contacts in Orkut. But...

2007-12-15T13:12:00.000+10:00

Orkut has just announced the ability to check whether people in your Gmail Address book are already in your orkut friends list. If they aren't, you are given the option to either add them (if they are already orkut members) or invite them to orkut.

Original Post : orkut Blog: I'm feeling serendipitous!

This would've worked out better, If only Gmail didn't add each and every contact you ever emailed - even just for once - to your address book! When I tried out the feature, I had to spend hours cleaning up my Gmail address book. Why? The sequence of mistakes are as follows:

A friend of mine gets a forward. He is compelled by the warning in the email to send it to all his contacts, because otherwise, he could die within a few hours!! (Have been receiving mails which ask you to forward them? They are called 'Chain Mails' - click here if you have a minute to spare.)
He puts his entire address book into the 'To' field when sending the forward. By doing so, he has just exposed all the email addresses in his contact list to the entire world - even company emails, private addresses which other people trusted him with.. each and every one. If only he had put them in the 'bcc' field - the email ids of his contacts would've remained hidden from all recipients.
When I got the email, I couldn't resist telling him the errors of his ways, so I told him the stuff I just explained in the last two steps through the 'Reply' button - but alas! I had used the 'Reply to all' button instead; my advice is now being sent to more than a hundred people - my friend's entire address book..
The last mistake wouldn't have been so bad as it was, if it wasn't for the Gmail feature I mentioned at first - all of the addresses which I (accidentally) just sent the email to were now in my address book as well! People I don't even know, haven't even heard of - were now in my Address book. Great. Just Great.

So when I tried to use the new orkut feature, many of those contacts appeared in the list of prospective orkutians who aren't already in my friends list. Suffice to say, hours had to be spent cleaning up my address book before I could bring down the number to below 100.

One of the features I really wish Gmail had is the ability to combine contacts - I don't want to manually merge multiple entries into single contacts. But since I had to, I've already done that - just took me about three days... :(

I've also noticed another mistake some orkutians are making. They have multiple email addresses, like most of us do, say, tom@gmail.com & tom@yahoo.com. Lets say Tom created his orkut account using the gmail id (It was possible with any email id until Google integrated orkut into the Google Account). So when a friend searches for Tom with his yahoo ID, they may not find him.. Tom thinks, "Oh no! I don't want to keep my friends from finding me!"

So Tom figures out a workaround - he makes a dummy profile in orkut with his yahoo ID, and adds himself as a friend to that profile. Now when anyone searches for him in orkut with his yahoo id, they'll come to this profile, notices his real profile in the friends list, and sends the friend request to that profile instead. Simple, right?

No, its not, and there are two reasons: One, when we search for an email id in orkut, and if a profile with that address already exists, the orkut interface just gives us the option to add the friend; it doesn't show us the friends list of that profile. So, your friend won't even know that it was just a dummy profile. And Two, you could just add the second, third or even fourth email id to orkut's Contacts section in 'Edit Profile'. If you are signed-in to orkut, just click here to get there. All searches for any of the added addresses would lead the searcher to your profile.

BREAKING : Get your @live.in email address right now!

2007-12-07T17:25:00.000+10:00

Microsoft enabled public signups to their live.com email addresses exactly 1 month ago, but Indians couldn't sign up because it was only available from US locations. I tried a few URL hacks, but those didn't work. Kept trying for weeks, but it wasn't working at all... until now!

Okay, it isn't @live.com - but @live.in is even kewler!! (As in, you know - LIVE IN, like the Jeans Brand?) All you have to do is go to the signup page and click on the 'Get It' button to signup. The best thing is, since this hasn't been announced officially (well, I haven't heard :D ), virtually all email usernames are available for the taking - I just got ashley[at]live.in!!! No need to add numbers & random junk to get an address you really want!

Note: You have to access it from India to get the live.in address. Otherwise, it will be the country-specific TLD that shows up. It is also possible that you get only a hotmail.com address as the option..

EDIT: Forgot to mention, Microsoft already provides lots of custom domains for their 'Windows Live Hotmail' email services at CoolHotmail.com, exclusively for Indians (Anyone can get it, but the domains are mostly India-specific: such as bangalorerocks.in, bornleader.co.in, chennairocks.in, clubaishwarya.com, clubasin.in, clubdravid.com, clubsachin.com, clubsrk.com, ilovebhavans.in & ilovekabbadi.com, to mention just a few.)

World's Tallest Building, Burj Dubai.

2007-12-07T04:37:00.000+10:00

Twice as tall as the Empire State Building, Burj Dubai is destined to take the crown for "The World's Tallest Building" back to the Middle East, since the time of the Pyramids..

TechCrunch : While Live Documents Yaps, Zoho Delivers

2007-11-27T17:45:00.000+10:00

India and Silicon Valley based Zoho has launched full offline access for Zoho writer, based on the Google Gears open source platform.

Read more at TechCrunch

Easy to use ExoSkeleton nearing completion

2007-11-26T17:05:00.000+10:00

Just Imagine the possibilities.. I hope one day robots will fight our wars for us, away from living things - no more casualties, just scrap metal.

An Introduction to Feed Readers (aka Aggregators)

2007-11-19T17:44:00.000+10:00

What are Feeds?

The Internet is a huge place. Literally billions of websites, and many of them keep changing day by day, if not minute-by-minute. How do you keep track of the latest things going on the websites / blogs we like? You can't possibly consider going to each and every site and keep hitting the 'refresh' button every now and then, can you?

This is why RSS was introduced. RSS, or Rich Site Summary, is an XML output of the latest changes to a website's content. If the site is a blog, RSS will update itself each time there is a new post. The RSS output is called a feed, which will not contain any of the color information or javascript in the original post, but it will maintain the links. There is another feed standard, called Atom, which is usually shown as a second option when setting up a blog.

All popular blogging platforms such as Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad etc. have feeds, and are turned on by default. Some platforms even have feeds for comments to a particular post. Many forum softwares also provide feeds for latest threads, replies to a particular thread, posts made by particular members etc. There are even search engines which provide feeds to the latest results to search phrases!

How do we read the feeds?

"Ok", you'll say, "there are no more websites to check, but what do we do now? Open the feeds and keep hitting refresh button for the latest changes?!!?" HELL NO. There are dozens of online (web-based) and offline (desktop) softwares called 'Feed Readers'.

NewsOnFeeds.com has a huuuuge list of offline and online feed readers

Feed Readers

If you are using a desktop-based (offline) feed reader, they'll register the feed:// protocol to themselves, which means that (if all goes well) when you click on a link to a feed, the feed URL (usually ends with .xml, some times its a query string such as ?output=rss) will be directly passed to the reader.

In case you are using a web-based reader unsupported by your browser, you'll have to manually copy-paste the feed URL into that site.

Whichever the case, the reader then lets you tag the feed with keywords of your choice, for categorizing. Now, whenever you fire up your offline feed reader (or open/refresh the online reader's page), the reader will check all the feeds for updates, and shows you the content of the latest posts in a neat, single scrollable list.

Most readers let you search posts you have read in the past, star posts for later reference, email a post to your friends etc. Imagine searching all your favorite sites for a post, and you'll see how helpful this can be..

The good thing about online feed readers is that there is no installation to be done, which means you can use the site from public cafes or at a friend's computer, without changing anything. Just sign-in, and your own Personalized Newspaper is right there waiting for you.

Some bloggers / websites prefer to share only a portion of their posts via feeds, so that a feed subscriber who reads the summary (first few lines) of the post (or some times just the post title - as decided by the blogger), and finds it interesting, will visit the original site and see / click their ads. Oh I forgot to mention - feeds by default don't have ads - unless they are manually put in by the content owner.

Google Reader is the most popular feed reader worldwide. Head over to the site, and if you are not a user yet, they'll give you a quick intro as well.

How do I know whether my favorite site has feeds?

Sites with feeds usually display the orange feed icon (See FeedIcons.com for multi-sized samples), clicking on which you'll see the feed for the site. Some blogs show a list of feed readers, each with dedicated buttons which let you subscribe to their posts via specific readers in one click.

Browser support

Modern Browsers (Opera 9, Firefox 2 & IE7 do, I'm not sure about older versions.) will display the icon at the right end of the address-bar itself. Click on the icon to see a preview of the current feed listings.

If you are using Firefox 2.0 or above, it will show you a list of supported readers, from which you can set one as default, if you want. I've chosen Google as the option, which means that each time I click on a feed icon, a page asking me to choose either iGoogle or Google Reader shows up.

Latest versions of IE, Firefox & Opera have inbuilt feed readers, albeit simple ones. (Firefox's reader is called Live Bookmarks)

Feed-related Services

FeedBurner (now owned by Google) helps you monetize your feeds, as well as provide a permanent feed URL. You'll be able to change blog platforms without changing your feed URL. My feedburner URL, for example, is feed://feeds.feedburner.com/liveash/blog (the part after .com is customizable.) The monetizing part comes only after you have about 50,000 subscribers, so don't expect to make a quick buck just yet!

Yahoo Pipes is a bit more complicated service; it lets you create mashups of feeds. That is, you can combine different feeds programmatically (with if/else , for/while loops and much more) to create a customized feed.

List of Geek Feeds

To help you get started, here are a few (geeky) feed URLs which I have subscribed to:

Digg / Technology > http://www.digg.com/rss/containertechnology.xml
Digital Inspiration (Famous Indian Blogger, Amit Agarwal) > http://feeds.feedburner.com/labnol
GigaOm / Web (Om Mallik, a US-centric Indian Tech Blogger) > http://feeds.feedburner.com/gigaom/software
Google Blogoscoped (All things Google, and then some!) > http://blogoscoped.com/rss.xml
Guardian Unlimited: Technology blog > http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/index.xml
TechCrunch (Michael Arrington, one of the most respected tech bloggers, posts here) > http://feeds.feedburner.com/Techcrunch
Lifehacker - They cover a lot of topics, so you better go to http://lifehacker.com/about/#5 and choose a feed that suits your needs. They provide multiple feeds for each tag, for each author etc.
Official Google Blog > http://googleblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Mashable! (A bit too geeky, newcomer) > http://feeds.feedburner.com/Mashable

Gmail Tip : Access your Addressbook in One Click

2007-11-16T13:11:00.000+10:00

All of my contacts are stored in my Gmail Contacts list : emails, phone numbers, addresses, IM usernames (available in Gmail 2.0). The advantages of having a central access point available from anywhere is a great advantage, but getting the info quickly has been quite a pain. Waiting for the full-fledged Gmail UI to load is quite time-consuming - even for getting a single email address, you have to wait several seconds.

Not anymore! The new Contact Manager, available in Gmail 2.0 (The new version of Gmail, with preloaded messages, attachment icons etc..) can be accessed via its own URL. Just bookmark the link below.

Gmail Contacts Manager : http://mail.google.com/mail/contacts/ui/ContactManager

Of course, you'll have to be logged into your Google Account for this to work.

Update: The Official Google Blog has a post with a few tips as well.

Yahoo! KickStart - Social Network to connect Employed Alumni with Students

2007-11-05T18:48:00.000+10:00

Here comes KickStart, a new service (now in testing phase) from Yahoo! to form a professional social network for Students & Alumni, which helps you find inside contacts in companies they aspire to join. Looks like LinkedIn, in some ways..

Excerpts from some technology sites' reviews:

"...give users profile pages which are focused on the user's resume..." - TechCrunch

"...Yahoo Kickstart may never see the light of day: it's still a concept in testing with college students. But if the tests are a success, Yahoo will roll out the network officially" - Mashable

"...network for recent graduates looking for a fast track to viable employment. The concept certainly sounds good — particularly the idea of connecting graduating students with alumni who want to help them get an in with companies. " - Wired News

"...endeavours to help recent college graduates find jobs using social-networking features. It will allow students to connect with fellow classmates, alumni and companies who may be able to help them with their budding careers." - Indiatimes Infotech

Check it out at http://kickstart.yahoo.com/

( Detailed review at CNET Blog )

Zoho does it again!

2007-10-04T00:50:00.000+10:00

The tech-blog world is buzzing today with posts (saw here, here & here) heralding the arrival of another killer online-office app from Zoho.com, called Zoho DB.

Demogirl has created a screencast for us, explaining the features of this online database tool, which is embedded below.

Note: Zoho is an Indian company, which seems to be beating the almighty BigG's offerings, at least on the Online Office front.

Stanislav Petrov : The Man who saved the World

2007-09-22T20:17:00.000+10:00

Without knowing on the cold Moscow night back in 1983, a badly paid 44 year old military officer saved the world, and made himself one of the most influential persons of the century in the process, saving more lives than anyone ever did.

Read the whole story : maltaStar.com

Apple cuts 8GB iPhone price to $399, Early Adopters of $599 phone left crying in streets.

2007-09-06T11:27:00.000+10:00

Just after two months of its release, Apple has cut th price of the most hyped cellphone in the history of technology, the iPhone, by 33% from $599 US (~24,500 INR) to $399 US (~16,300 INR). We all know that technology gets cheaper with time, but this is ridiculous!

Those who were having second thoughts due to the high price tag of the iPhone will surely be much more willing to get one, but people who waited outside Apple stores for days on end to be the first in line to get one could be feeling ripped off.

Indians won't get to have one at least until a couple of years (unless they can get from the gray market). However, Rs. 16k for a touch-screen cellphone with an in-built iPod, not to mention dozens of high-profile websites having custom versions for just this phone, is as much bang-for-the-buck as it gets!

Source: Engadget

Update: After receiving 'hundreds of' emails from upset customers, Apple has decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. In an open letter to all iPhone customers, Steve Jobs justifies the price drop, saying that Apple is using the price drop to 'really go for' a wider customer base this holiday season.

New Domain, update your bookmarks!

2007-08-25T22:30:00.000+10:00

I'm starting a new website at www.liveash.com, and am moving this blog to the new address, blog.liveash.com. Haven't thought of what to put on the main site yet, but will figure out eventually.

Please update your bookmarks and/or feed URLs to point to the new domain.

Aug. 7, 1991: Ladies and Gentlemen, the World Wide Web

2007-08-08T11:33:00.000+10:00

WWW's historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau.
Courtesy: Wikipedia.

The World Wide Web turned 16 yesterday.

No, not the 'Internet', which is an interconnected worldwide network of networks through which users connect to (and via) ftp servers, smtp servers, http servers etc. WWW comprises of the interconnected web pages we visit every day; just one of the services of the Internet, provided by http servers (a.k.a. Web Servers). The basis of the WWW (or 'Web') is the Hyper-Text Markup Language, HTML.

The Wired News Article is being copied here:

1991: The world wide web becomes publicly available on the internet for the first time.

The web has changed a lot since Tim Berners-Lee posted, on this day, the first web pages summarizing his World Wide Web project, a method of storing knowledge using hypertext documents. In the months leading up to his post, Berners-Lee had developed everything necessary to make the web a reality, including the first browser and server.

His historic post appeared on the alt.hypertext newsgroup, ending a journey that began back in 1980, when Berners-Lee was at CERN, an international particle physics lab located near Geneva, Switzerland. There, working with collaborator Robert Cailliau, Berners-Lee began the Enquire project, the forerunner to what would become the web.

The project, which made hypertext a chief communications component for the first time, was intended to facilitate the sharing of information among researchers across the broader internet.

Today's web is far more powerful and sophisticated than the research tool developed by Berners-Lee and Cailliau but continues operating on basically the same principles they established a quarter of a century ago.

My Favourite Web Services, and why I prefer them (Part 1/2)

2007-07-17T13:18:00.000+10:00

Everyday, we use many online services for keeping our data accessible from anywhere, anytime. And each time a new service finds success, others are sure to follow. I have my own reasons for choosing some over others, and even though its mostly a personal preference, the reasons might help you choose a better service. As you'll see, I'm a fan of Google's offerings :)

The good thing about using personalized online services from a single provider is that you only need to sign-in once to access all the services, and there aren't many (if any) companies which can match Google at the number of services provided.

# Webmail ( Online Email )
I don't think many will object to my choice of Gmail in this space. Google started it out as an invite-only email service with a previously unimaginable, humongous storage of 1GB. Later, the quota was increased to 2GB and it keeps on rising as we speak. Many competitors followed suit with GB-sized inboxes, but there are certain features that kept users glued to Gmail :

(Nearly) 100% spam protection - Web users used to be afraid of posting their email ids on any forums or giving to websites for subscribing to services, due to fear of spam. The amount of spam has tripled in the last two years, but Gmail inboxes remain clean. From the days of using 'honeypot' email addresses for possible spam, Gmail has taken users to the state where they can post their primary email address anywhere, and still feel confident that spam will never reach the Gmail inbox ( I did see one get past Gmail's spam protection yesterday, but that was in more than three months! )

Conversation View - Google's novel idea of grouping related messages together was a boon to frequent email users. Before it, we would quote the original message thread in every message, increasing the size of mails being shuttled back and forth, thus increasing latency. Now, we can just type-in our response and send the email on its way without having to worry about losing track - as long as the subject line remains the same (even if 'fwd:', 'fw:' or 'Re:' are prefixed), Gmail will organize our mails for us.

There are many more things that users love about Gmail. The use of labels instead of folders, ability to preview pdf / ppt / pps / jpg /gif / bmp files, integration with Google Docs & Spreadsheets to view doc / odf / xls / ods / csv / rtf / sxw files , inbuilt chat etc are just a few examples.

# RSS (Feed) Reader

Google Reader is what I use, being a simple and easy-to-use service. It wasn't the first service I used, but it is the only one I've used more than once. Even though it is a beta product (as with most of Google's services), it has been quite stable. The recent addition of Google Gears brought offline functionality to GReader.

# Word Processor / Spreadsheet App.

Simply because I don't have to sign-in to one more service, I use Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Features include collaboration with simultaneous edits, ability to publish documents, inbuilt chat with people currently editing the document, tagging etc. Competitors in the field include the Zoho Suite of products, which was recently in the news for bringing offline functionality to the browser using Google's own 'Gears' technology to its range of products, before Google could implement it in its own Online Office suite. Zoho does have a much wider variety of offerings, all of which are listed at www.zoho.com

If you have better suggestions, lets hear it in the comments.

New Design - Do you like it?

2007-06-07T02:34:00.000+10:00

Thanks to Blogger Templates blog for the new design.

Do post your opinion in the comments..

Geni - Make Your Family Tree, as easy as 1-2-3!

2007-05-27T01:50:00.000+10:00

I have been putting this off for a long time; been using Geni more than a month now - So here it is: A review for Geni : The flash-based, easy to use family tree service.

Geni is not the first team to venture into genealogy, the study of pedigree (ancestry); which deals with the bloodlines which connect you and me. Others, like Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Genealogy.com, Genealogy.org etc. have been in the field for many years (See for yourself if you want; the basic services are free for all.), but Geni steals the prize by being simple.

Just seven weeks after going public in January this year, Geni caught the attention of hundreds of thousands of people through a simple, intuitive interface which far surpassed the interfaces of the competitors. Another major reason behind its popularity is its viral nature : you invite, say, 10 relatives, they invite 5 each, and so on - soon, your tree will contain hundreds of members you've never even heard of!

The service caught my sight when it was mentioned in Digit Magazine as a free service for building family trees. I was actually looking for a way to re-connect with my family members; its quite hard for me to remember the exact relationships when meetings are quite rare with distant relatives - sometimes, even close ones. So I didn't waste a minute and jumped online to www.geni.com...

Needless to say, I was instantly Hooked! Hectic days of compiling relations ensued, and within just 3 days I had added 500+ relatives to my tree (Yeah, I'm impulsive like that :) ), thanks to my parents who helped a lot by making dozens of phone calls to get names & long-forgotten bloodlines. (You don't have to do all the work yourself; inviting relatives to join is the recommended way to compile the tree.)

Here is a screen shot of the tree view:

You can add more members to your tree yourself, or can invite relatives to join the tree. Only those you invite to your tree will be able to see it, so there is no privacy threat. If a member joins Geni through your invite and chooses a password, their profile will become un-editable by others; otherwise you can edit any profile in your tree.

Every member gets a photo album by default. Uploaded family photos can be tagged with the names of those who are in the photo, which will automatically add the photo to their profiles. For example, if I upload a photo of my cousins, and tag it with their names, all the cousins' profiles will have the picture in their album. Nice!

Recently they added the option to invite your family friends to Geni, which will enable those who join via the invitation to see your profile and your immediate relatives (but not their profiles).

In the true spirit of Web 2.0, Geni carries a 'beta' tag; they are still working on many of the features frequently requested by users, such as ability to import trees from other genealogy programs, an option to merge trees, exporting the entire tree as a GEDCOM file (industry standard for genealogy information) etc. Expect much more, soon.

So why wait? Go to Geni.com and start your tree - maybe one day you'll beat the old-school members of ancestry.com, with over 30,000 relatives(!!) in their trees...

One kilobyte is just 1000 bytes?

2007-05-13T13:50:00.000+10:00

Quantities of bytes
SI prefixes		Alter- native Use	Binary prefixes
Name (Symbol)	Standard SI	Alter- native Use	Name (Symbol)	Value
kilobyte (kB)	10³ = 1000¹	2¹⁰	kibibyte (KiB)	2¹⁰
megabyte (MB)	10⁶ = 1000²	2²⁰	mebibyte (MiB)	2²⁰
gigabyte (GB)	10⁹ = 1000³	2³⁰	gibibyte (GiB)	2³⁰
terabyte (TB)	10¹² = 1000⁴	2⁴⁰	tebibyte (TiB)	2⁴⁰
petabyte (PB)	10¹⁵ = 1000⁵	2⁵⁰	pebibyte (PiB)	2⁵⁰
exabyte (EB)	10¹⁸ = 1000⁶	2⁶⁰	exbibyte (EiB)	2⁶⁰
zettabyte (ZB)	10²¹ = 1000⁷	2⁷⁰	zebibyte (ZiB)	2⁷⁰
yottabyte (YB)	10²⁴ = 1000⁸	2⁸⁰	yobibyte (YiB)	2⁸⁰

The above table is taken from the Wikipedia page for Byte - took me by quite a surprise.. I mean, have you ever heard of the word 'kibibyte'? I know I haven't...

Apparently, the hard disk manufacturers were right all along! I thought they were ripping us off by selling 80 billion bytes of storage, saying that its 80 x 2³⁰ - which I thought, was 80 Gigabytes (80 GB). Well, lets just say I'm so sorry for spreading that story among my friends, many of whom look up to me as the computer genius (a.k.a geek)...

On a side-note, Hitachi just announced a 1TeraByte Blue-Ray Writer; they had released a similar sized Hard Disk about a month back.

'Digg This Page' Script / Bookmarklet

2007-04-20T13:49:00.000+10:00

The only reason I was using the Groowe Toolbar for Firefox was the 'Digg This Page' button, really. Being a coder myself, that shouldn't be the case - why should I tolerate all the bloat for a simple button?

So, I made a script to add the current page to digg - all you have to do is drag the link below to the 'Bookmarks Toolbar' in Firefox, or right-click on it and choose 'Bookmark this link' (or 'Add to Favorites', if you are using IE)

Digg This Page!

If you are a digg user, a click on the bookmark[let] will submit the current page to digg, and if the page has already been submitted, it will take you to the digg article itself.

If you want to have a confirmation before the actual submission (to avoid accidental submissions), you can choose to use the link below instead.

Digg This Page!

Pi is Wrong!

2007-04-11T02:42:00.000+10:00

'Pi is Wrong!', says Bob Palais, Research Associate Professor of Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics at University of Utah - the article is an scanned copy of his own post in a magazine's readers' section.

He says the current value of 2π should have been assigned to the symbol we all are familiar with, π. He has all the arguments right, too - wonder why others decided they way it is now!

Grammar Help : How to properly punctuate a sentence

2007-04-07T19:01:00.000+10:00

Michael Leddy of Lifehack.org (not to be confused with LifeHacker.com, a similar and more popular website run by Gina Trapani) guides you through five rules to remember, to properly punctuate a sentence. Not surprisingly, he teaches college English.

He uses well-placed commas, semicolons, and colons, to dramatically improve the readability of sentences. Not only does it help the reader move through the sentence faster, it makes it that much easier to understand what exactly the writer intends to convey.

A related article by Michael himself, on 'How to Unstuff a sentence', is worth a read.