My Mind Leaks

Imagining the ten dimensions

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:04:08 -0700

You can see how you 3D enables you to travel quickly travel from one point to another without literally traveling on the plane.

Remember the deja vu movie ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0453467/ ) ?

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Gmail labels, how useful is that?

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:20:00 -0700

Gmail has revolutionise the concepts of labelling in mailings. The concept of folders are now at the stage of obsolete. A conversation can be have more than one label. The labeling has become a kind of tagging. More than one label has been labelled on a conversation. But, did labels improvised the concepts of folder? Yes, you do label it and archive it, it acts as a folder. Whoa! what a brilliant concept. Now the mail conversation exists in more than one folder. Kind of Quantum mechanics, the object exists in more than one location.

And Today Gmail had a new featured showed on to the face. The drag and drop feature for the mails into labels. Gmail is constantly improving with the User Interface. But sometime, such user improvements doesn't give much improvement to the user experience. Similarly, this drag and drop doesn't make me feel that it's actually improved my working style.

I'll tell you why. When I drag one ore more conversations(s) into a label, all the conversation are first labeled and then archived. But why is the conversations archived by default when I drop the conversations, I didn't expect them to be archived.

Lets say, I've a label called "Followup", and I move the items to Followup. What I expect is,

Either the items count is shown in the Followup label area like "Followup ( 12 )", unless there are any unread mails in it.
The conversations should be visible to my eyes. So that I don't forget that there are some mails for follow up.

Because, Gmail doesn't have an option to setup follow-up remainder for conversations, which will pop-up according to the remainder.So, I would like all those conversation to be in front of my eyes, even though I move them to a folder / label them or just show up counts near the labels. I'm testing other gmail features too and will post soon on how I felt about them. And if Gmail team feels that my suggestions are quite useful, I would be glad!

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Steve Jobs - My role model and an Icon

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 21:58:09 -0700

Image via CrunchBase

Today I browsed through the life pictures of Steve Jobs, the one of the great visonaries in the field of Computers and Software. I'm living my life using the machine he has built and It wont be a fair, if I dont write few lines about Steve in my life. I would say! and of course anyone would agree that he is the Pioneer, an Icon in the computer industry. Sometime It makes me think that why anything things related to Apple makes a revolution in the world ( Newton & Apple ).

Using Mac is not just like using any other computer. It's a Cult. Cult of Mac. I was wondering why the people who buys Apple product or Macintosh machines goes crazy about them, until I bought one. There are lots of things written about Steve which leaves me nothing much to write about him. All I can say is, he is a role-model for me and an icon in computer field.

I bought a iMac 24" around mid of 2008, which was my first try with Apple. It's robust and stable UNIX based operating system allowed me to extract most out of the machine which instantly impressed and made me to buy a Macbook Pro 15". I'm eagerly waiting to get the copy of Snow Leopard.

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Histogram helps determining the type of statistical distribution

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:08:00 -0700

It was a pain time for me to learn how to determine which statistical distribution does a given set of data obeys. You have various probabilistic distribution like Geometric, Normal, Poisson distribution. Unless you determine how your data is distributed , you cant choose the appropriate tool.

Here is the data stream.
4 3 2 6 8 7 5 6 7 3 4 5 5 6 4 5

Are you able to identify which distribution does this number following? By looking at it, it's pretty difficult to determine what kind of distribution it does follows.

Now just feel how histogram will help you to visualize what kind of distribution did the data follows.

Now this histogram provides a pattern on how the data is distributed. Can you identify the pattern?

Let me show you another visualization of the same data.

Now? Hope you would have identified now. Yes, the data follows a Normal distribution. The histogram will help you to determine it.

If your data point is large enough, the bars will gets close enough and all those bars be filled within the curve and looks like an area filled inside the curve.

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Hello World! Hello Lifestreaming! Here I come.

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:25:21 -0700

Hello World!

This is the first text that would be printed if I’m trying out any new programming language. So, this is my new Lifestreaming blog and hence shouting to the world! Hello World!
I will be keeping this as as my personal notebook / workbook, where I would have my thoughts recorded ( of course not any such scraps ). This will be filled by new ideas and crazy thoughts that would be generated out of my mind.

I was exposed posterious via steve rubel. He have moved from blogging to life stream recently. And he continues to live with the lifestream instead of blogging. Though I record my randomness in this lifestream, I will continue record my work in my blog as an archive.

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Wikipedia adds Video support

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 23:02:51 -0700

Soon Wikipedia is going to add support for Videos in the wiki entries, along with tools to search, edit and link videos in the Wiki entries. Shortly you will find tags and user interface for this facility. Wikipedia will allow to search videos from pre-defined sources where you can obtain copyright free videos. Wikipedia will offer ways to search for videos and also provide tools for in-place editing , add into Wiki links as it is done with text.

So, the advantage of enabling the video in Wikipedia will motivate the people to add more open source and make their videos more famous and public. One the people feel how the open-source videos take a pace in the videos, lots of people will pitch in to add more copyright-free open-source videos.

The pre-defined video sources will be

Another interesting fact is the Wikipedia’s effort is funded by Mozilla.

Tagged in My Mind as: video, wikipedia

Girls dies after twittering during bath

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:25:20 -0700

It’s a bizarre event at a very unusual place. A 17 year girl dies of twittering while she was twittering in the bathroom. People are obsessed with technology and the social-networking, which they couldn’t resist being dis-connected from the world.

The girl dies when she was trying to plug in the laptop charger with her wet hands. Though the girl dies due to an electrical shock, but then she is so obsessed with the social networking twitter, it is now the at-fault which made the girl to take the laptop to the bathroom.

image source: landofchaos

Tagged in My Mind as: Twitter, wierd

Firefox bug reports - Some interesting facts

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:42:16 -0700

Today I was curious to know about the list of bugs that has occurred for the Firefox browser over all these time. And the count of bugs received and fixed made me surprise about the development at Mozilla. Bugs are important players in any development projects. Hence bugs determines the robustness of the software. But still if a strong developer team available, then more robust the software as all the bugs will be fixed and hence more robust is the software.

Below diagram displays the defect segmentation based on the operating systems. I’ve grouped all the outdated and less used Windows OSes ( Win 95, Win 98, Win NT etc ) as Windows ( others ), Similarly for Mac Os and Linux and Unix Versions. You can see that Windows XP based Firefox browser has a huge number of defects. I’m amazed with the huge number of defect logged for Firefox in Win XP. This actually shows that there is a huge user base for Firefox in Windows XP and software is much less stable compared to other operating systems ( though this is an hypothetical assumption ).

Here is the bugs segmentation based on components of the Firefox. Bookmarks & History, Tabbed browser tops in defects. Developer would be much interested in this chart as it involves a kind-of technical details. Also, I didn’t include the General defects which counts more than 19,000+, because of the charting technicalities. The other bars becomes very smaller if you plot the General defects. It was a small in-sight for me when I saw “Session Restore” is a seperate component, which got a revamp recently in the Firefox 3.5 beta release.

If you are more curious in such things, try digging the Bugzilla database and find more interesting fact and do ping me.

Note: I’ve taken the “Unverified / Unreported ” bugs into consideration for this statistics purpose.

Tagged in My Mind as: bugs, firefox, Microsoft, statistics, windows

Firefox 3.5 beta “Restore Session” has got smarter

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:52:08 -0700

Firefox 3.5 beta has improved a lots features and added few stuffs too. One of the thing which impressed me is the “Restore Session”. In the older firefox, once you session crashes, and you re-launch the firefox, it will popup this.

And it will open up all the browser tabs in your previous session, which is very annoying sometimes.

Now the revamp in Firefox 3.5 beta has made an improvement in the Restore session. Now it got smarter and lists down all the websites that you were browsing in your previous session. And you can deselect the website that you dont want to launch in the current session.

This improvement will actually help you to get rid of the site which caused you the crash previously.

Tagged in My Mind as: firefox improvements

Know it: Terms of Service

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:15:20 -0700

Source: bigocean

You are living a life in Internet and you are using a lots of web-application, services via Internet. But still there are much better services comming up and we tend to subscribe and start using it. But, are you ever read the Terms of Service ( shortly ToS ) of the service you are using it? Facebook has faced serious concerns over it’s change in ToS. Many of it’s users are not happy with it’s change in ToS. So the question is, why does a Infrequently read ToS bothers much? Whats in there in the ToS.

Ok. Lets begin with knowing about what is terms of service.

What is Terms of Service ( ToS )?

Terms of Service are the rules written by the Web-service providers ( eg: Google, Yahoo, Facebook ) to make the usage of the application in a reasonable way. Example, if you look at the point 8 in Google Docs ToS ,

8.3 Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any Service. For some of the Services, Google may provide tools to filter out explicit sexual content. These tools include the SafeSearch preference settings (see http://www.google.com/help/customize.html#safe). In addition, there are commercially available services and software to limit access to material that you may find objectionable.

Now this restricts users who are about to upload the illegal / sexual contents. Now this forces the users to use the service in a resonable way.

Why the companies using it?

Companies are using ToS service for the following reasons

1. To provide reasonable service to it’s customers.

Online services company runs web application for massive user base. The companies should provide reasonable amount of service to their users. They promise this in the ToS.

2. Proper utilization of service by users

Companies running those web application will be spending for Server, Bandwidth, and other computational and non-computational resources.So, the user should access those resources in a reasonable and optimal way.

Eg: Google will not allow you to upload files of size more than 500 KB or Presentations upto 10 MB.

So by enforcing this rule, the companies make sure that they are able to provide good service to everyone. Think, if the google allows to upload files of size 2 GB at a single shot, not all the users will have the same bandwith to upload the files, hence will convert into slow servers, unhappy customers, then loose business.

3. Protect themselves from legal issues

Companies will write up the ToS in such a way that they are most protected via the legal issues that might face from it’s customers. Recently Twitter has been sued due to it’s fault on it’s service ( but twitter has responded back accordingly )

How to keep track of the Terms of service?

So, if you have ever seen a ToS page of any service it runs for miles and sure anyone wouldn’t have enough patience to read/glance it even. A online service TOSBack tracks about 42 companies ToS and it’s changes. You can check what does a company tells in it’s ToS and what it has changed recently. Based on this you can use the service accordingly.

Screenshot of TOSBack displaying difference in YouTube’s ToS

Tagged in My Mind as: Know-It, terms of service, ToS

Google Book Tip: Manage Your Library via Barcode

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 11:14:33 -0700

I Came across an interesting tip for Google Book. If you are having a lots of book and you arent not able to type in all your ISBN number and need to keep track of them using Google’s book service. Here is a quick tip.

Google’s Software Engineer Matt demonstrate a tip using a USB powered bar code reader.

Just login into your Google account.
Google Book
Goto My Library
Click Import
Power your USB bar code reader
Scan the bar code behind your book
And thats it. Done.

Google Book service recogonises the ISBN number and adds the book into your library.

Power your USB scanner, scan the bar code of your books and import into your library.

Once you have build your library, you can make use of Google book services to work on them. You will have benefits like

One big advantage of having your You don’t have to go manually search for all the respective books for the pages. Google Book will search for the text in your library and will list down the pages where you can find the

Tagged in My Mind as: Google, Google Book, Tips

Google Book Tip: Search your home library

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 11:07:35 -0700

Source: sbj

Have you ever used Google Books? If yes, have you unleashed the power of Google books? For those who aren’t aware of Google book,

Google Book Search is a tool from Google that searches the full text of books that Google scans, converts to text using optical character recognition, and stores in its digital database.

Source: Wikipedia

You dont need a seperate account for Google Book. Login into Google Book ( http://books.google.com) then you are done. You can search millions of books and the texts with the Google Book.

Search your home library:

Ok, now how does it helps to search my book library at my home. Simple, add all your books you own in your home library, tadaaa…done. Type in a search text in your book library, it will tell you which book does your search query has it and what is the page number of it. Simple and Powerful.

How to create a replica of your home library in Google Books:

Login into Google Books
Goto My Library
Left hand side, you will find Import Books Link
Type in all the Book’s ISBN number you need to import
You are done.

Now type in the phrase / reference you want to search. Google will get you the Book Name & Page number. Either you can read it on line ( if the entire book is permitted to read for free ) or You go fetch it in your book.

Tagged in My Mind as: Google, google bookmarks, Tips

Mailplane - A better gmail client for mac

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:58:57 -0700

I came across this Mailplane application for Mac recently and I started liking it as soon as I used it in 5 minutes. Probably will buy one copy for me. Mailplane provides a GUI interface for Gmail. Consider this as Microsoft Outlook for Gmail, but without modifying any thing that gmail provides. Right from the Look & Feel, the settings, the options of the web Gmail can be availed via Mailplane. The main feature is you can manage multiple Gmail ids at one place and switch between them by a single click.

Features in Mailplane:

Looking at the extra features in Mailplane, it allows you to send any file to this mail application using the “Right Click > Send to Mail Plane”

Mailplane apart from managing multiple Gmail ids, it has extra features like dropping any file in to the MailPlane, which would just create a new Conversation in Gmail and attach the file instantly.

iPhoto integaration is also breeze with Mailplane via the built in plugin, which would instantly attach the photo to your mail.Go to iPhoto, Select the photos that you need to send then “Share > Email“, which would open the Mailplane and load all your selected photo into the Mailplane app.

Also you can send document to MailPlane by printing it to the Mailplane app.

Tagged in My Mind as: Apple, GMail, Mac, Mac Applications, Mailplane

Even Mac can get viruses too - iWork 2009

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 06:15:36 -0700

Mac is Immune to Virus. This is globally acclaimed status until the iWork’ 09 worm infused into the Mac. So this tell you none of the OS in the world is immune to virus analogous to no human is immune to any virus. But the difference is, until we are healthy and cautious no external objects affects our body. Same thing for OSes too. Mac doesnt accept any executables to run without users notice, unlike PC. Though a nice writeup from ‘the How-to-Geek’ Even Mac’s can get viruses, ‘the How-to-Geek‘ mostly writes on the PC tips, tweaks and tricks, so there is no wonder that he writes about the Mac when Mac fails ( no offense here ).

The trojan is installed as a “Start up” service in in /System/Library/StartupItems/iWorkServices, a location reserved normally for Apple startup items.

Screenshot: A clean iWork installation will not have the 'iWorkServices' in the startup folder

Though the fix for this trojan has not been around, it’s true that the trojan turns the infected Macs into Zombies. But still Mac is much better than PC in stopping the viruses. It’s true that Mac cant claim that it is not affected with virus, but still it holds a proud position of having lesser viruses compared to the PC’s large virus base.

So, Mac users though you download the pirated software, make sure that you run through the anti-virus softwares.That keeps your mac health and of course you too

Tagged in My Mind as: Apple, iwork, Mac, macs, trojan, virus

How to turn on CAPS Lock and NUM Lock in Blackberry 8900

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 08:11:44 -0700

CAPS lock and NUM lock are cool features in Blackberry, which was not known by many Blackberry users that they exists or how to activate it. And I was also one of those poor user ;-). I was not using this feature to its full extend until a necessity arisen for me.

Turn on CAPS Lock : Press ALT Key + RIGHT SHIFT Key

Turn on NUM Lock : Press ALT Key + LEFT SHIFT Key

Tagged in My Mind as: Blackberry, Blackberry 8900

My Mind Leaks

Imagining the ten dimensions

Gmail labels, how useful is that?

Steve Jobs - My role model and an Icon

Histogram helps determining the type of statistical distribution

Hello World! Hello Lifestreaming! Here I come.

Wikipedia adds Video support

Related posts

Girls dies after twittering during bath

Related posts

Firefox bug reports - Some interesting facts

Related posts

Firefox 3.5 beta “Restore Session” has got smarter

Related posts

Know it: Terms of Service

What is Terms of Service ( ToS )?

Why the companies using it?

1. To provide reasonable service to it’s customers.

2. Proper utilization of service by users

3. Protect themselves from legal issues

How to keep track of the Terms of service?

Related posts

Google Book Tip: Manage Your Library via Barcode

Related posts

Google Book Tip: Search your home library

Search your home library:

How to create a replica of your home library in Google Books:

Related posts

Mailplane - A better gmail client for mac

Features in Mailplane:

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Even Mac can get viruses too - iWork 2009

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How to turn on CAPS Lock and NUM Lock in Blackberry 8900

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