Sky, back from the cleaners

There is a very interesting Doctor Who story, from the 80′s, “Full Circle“. I had read it as a child and for some reason I thought about the story today. With the help of Google, I was able to identify the name of the episode and the book that I had read. The story revolves around the planet Alzarius where the Doctor and his companions found themselves stranded.

The planet (or rather the area) is inhabited by a humanoid civilization which crashed their spaceship 40,000 generations ago. They were trying to fix their spaceship, “Starliner” all this time. The complete story is not relevant to the point I am trying to make today. But the Doctor discovers that the spaceship was repaired centuries ago. The problem was, there was no one who knew how to pilot the ship. The leadership team, consisting of 3 self-elected “Deciders”, had over the centuries kept up the charade of repairing the ship, rather than admit that couldn’t fly even though the ship was fixed.

Imagine people replacing each part of the spaceship over and over, generations upon generations, with no clue about their fate. Think about what you do at your job. Are you fixing a problem only to repeat it 6 months into the future? Is it your fault or has the top-level management lost track of its objectives? Think about what is happening in your country and all around the world. Are we repeating the mistakes of our previous generations?

The human race has the ability to learn from its mistake, we should, considering we can put 1 and 2 together and call it 3 instead of 12. We have backtracked our history to 3500 BC and beyond to a certain degree. Watching the documentaries of Michael Wood, I would say there are people who understand the mistakes of the past civilizations. Are our world leaders so short-sighted that they can see only 5 years into the future? Are the “wise old men”, The Elders, of the world sitting back on their chair sighing at the mistakes of the present generations?

“Strong leadership has never been more needed than it is today”.

Out of context, but true. Source

Do a favor to your grandchildren. Let us not force them to do the same thing that we are doing. Don’t wait for someone to change the world, but ask for a change. It starts from one, becomes the need of many, until it becomes the need of the nation and the civilization.

• The Elders are an independent group of global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela, who offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering, and promote the shared interests of humanity.
• The Elders are Martti Ahtisaari, Kofi Annan, Ela Bhatt, Lakhdar Brahimi, Gro Brundtland, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Jimmy Carter, Graça Machel, Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu (Chair). Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi are honorary Elders.

And I will give you 10 years of bliss!

If you could live 10 years of your life in total bliss – with NO pain – but in the end, not remember any of it – would you do it?

via A Happiness Tip From Aristotle | Psychology Today.

I was stumbling, after a long time, when I came across this question. And according to Aristotle, you should say no. I would agree with him for various reasons.

I am the sum of my experience

The individual that I am, is not just a 3 dimensional figure frozen in time. I would have to say that every atom that is present in the universe has its influence on me, and so has every thought that goes through the minds of other people. The interaction between 2 or more objects (living or non-living) would have an impact on who I am and how I think. Even a piece of rock could make me think and channel my thought. The sight of two people fighting might make me think of peace, and diplomatic conversations might make me think of taking up a rifle.

For better or for worse, the influence that the world has made on me is part of who I am, and I would not want to lose any part of it, whether it is 10 years or 1 second.

You evolve when you are forced to

If you have total bliss for 10 years, those are 10 years you have wasted. A person who has failed in everything he did in 10 years would have learnt more than you did and he would have been richer for the experience. If you know that you will have total bliss for the next 10 years, why would you try to do anything to ensure your happiness? At best you might save something to keep you going after the 10 years.

What would happen if you release a wild animal into the forest after giving it food for a year? Do you think it will be able to cope?

Happiness v/s Pleasure

Don’t say you are happy when you watch a movie or hear a joke. Your brain is tickled into giving you pleasure. If it is a really good movie, you might feel something close to happiness, but it is still an illusion. The pleasure from a movie, joke, good food etc are fleeting. True happiness is achieved through your accomplishment, or accomplishments of those you care about, be it a fellow human being, a group or a nation. When you set out to get something, there are challenges that you have to overcome and the sense of accomplishment and the happiness you derive from it is based on the perceived difficulty of those challenges.

Imagine a person climbed Mount Everest. Don’t you think he would have faced challenges? At the top of Everest, he would literally be on top of the world. Compare that with watching an inspiring movie. What do you think will last longer? The pleasure of watching the movie or achievement of climbing Mt. Everest?

Let me illustrate something else with the same example. What if that person was set on top of Everest,  call it divine intervention! Will he be able to climb down? The descent is much more dangerous than the ascent and the ascent prepares you for the descent. Do you think you will be able to live 10 years not knowing what will happen and what you should do, when you don’t remember what happened in the last 10 years?

Glider-logo

If instant messages reduced the number of e-mail that you sent, social networking sites (facebook) has brought it down to virtually zero. A quick check at my sent items in Gmail shows that in the last 20 odd days I have sent barely 4 emails without counting e-mails related to work. But the amount of mails that I receive has increased with every passing year and its mostly junk. A study conducted on the impact of spam mails showed that a considerable amount of time is spend deleting spam mails. What about those mails which are not considered spam, but are still unwanted? I got thousands of unread emails just because I don’t know why I got it and I found it useless. If I had time, like I did pre-2005, I would categorize each of those mails with relevant labels and then forget about them.

Even with the Gmail Labs’ SmartLabels, I still have too many bulk mails and few important mails mis-categorized as Bulk/Notification. There were times when I wished Google would take steps to make e-mail more relevant and useful. Apparently I am not the only one who thought so. Glider is one company who wants to make email better for you.

Glider, an email client that automatically sorts your messages based on context. -Facebook Page

Glider processes and categorizes your email, privately and securely. - glider.io/learn-more

Disclaimer: This web-based e-mail client is still in beta and the features might not work as it should, yet. If you are brave enough you could ask for an invite on their website Glider.io or through their Facebook Page or through their Twitter account.

Conversation View- Glider

Your conversations with others should show up here. For me, it shows up as Recent Contacts  and unfortunately its mostly bulk emails.

Notification Center - Glider

All those notification mails from your Twitter/Facebook should show up here and that seems to be working well for me, though it is without those thumbnails.

Mailing list is another Box which I have in my Glider Inbox. It lists all those mails I get from various mailing list I am in and that is working pretty well.

Do you have a method of keeping your inbox organized or are you looking for something like Glider? Let me know.

Box.net Upgrade

Box.net is giving a free lifetime upgrade for everyone who uses their android application. The lifetime upgrade will give you 50GB of space, instead of the usual 5GB, and and increased file size from 25MB to 100MB.

I would never say no to free space. The 1GB space in Picasa,  7683 MB in Gmail, 3.25GB in Dropbox etc is never going to be enough. My first hard disk was a monster at 20GB, in 2000. Today that is barely enough to install Windows 7. That is the reason why I jumped up looking for my mobile when I saw the offer from Box.net.

Android Market - Box QR

What you see on the right is a screenshot taken from my Nexus one after installing the Box.net appplication.

Here is how you can get 50GB of free space with Box.net. Trust me its very simple.

1. Download Box.net application from Android Market Place or use the QR code. You can use Google Goggles to scan that QR Image on the left (Select Market instead of browser, if you are prompted).
2. Install the application and log in if you already have an account. If you do not have a Box.net account, just register.
3. Your Box.net will be upgraded to 50GB.

As I said, quite easy.

This offer is available till Friday, March 23, 2012.

Quick tip: Did you know the new version of Dropbox for Android can upload files automatically to the cloud? And they give up to 3 GB of additional space to upload those as you use it.

Related articles

• Box Offering Free 50 GB Space for Android Users (techie-buzz.com)
• Sony Ericsson Offers Xperia Users 50 GB Free Space on Box.Net (techie-buzz.com)

“Forget to Remember” That is what Friday claims it will do.

About the developers

Friday is an Android app from Dexetra, the developers of Iris, a virtual assistant. Even though it does not have all the features as Siri, yet, it shows a lot of promise with constant updates and improvements. Iris (Siri in reverse) was created within 8 hours after Apple announced Siri and that was how many people heard about its developer Dextra and the sibling of Iris who has been gestating for a while now.

About Friday

Many people find it difficult to maintain a diary (me), but I wish I knew what I did a week or a month back. Sometimes I would know what I did, but would have no idea when I did it. Android has some apps which will export your call logs and SMSs to your Gmail inbox or to Google Calendar. This means I know when I talked to who, but it stops there. With Friday on your mobile, it will keep a track of everything you do. It would know where you were at a particular point of time, who you called and what music you were listening to. Think of it as a personal biographer. Who knows, you may need those details when the world wants to know all about you.

I am sure that many people would be worried about their privacy, but Dexetra says, the information stays on your mobile. If you are worried about someone stealing your mobile to find out what you did last summer, you might want to wait before you try this app.

Getting Friday

You can get Friday by invite only, but it is not easy. I have been on the list for a few months now with hardly any luck. Dextra says they will be sending invites this week, but I am still waiting. Hopefully I won’t have to wait for long and I am sure you won’t experience the long wait that I had to endure.

Get in line for Friday here

The opinion of people who tried the alpha version of Friday have been overwhelmingly positive and with Dextra’s work with Iris, they are planning to incorporate the best features of Iris into Friday.

Reviews

Review by Appnomy
Review by Androidtapp

Once I get my hands on Friday, you can be sure there will be a followup post with screenshots and my opinion on how it can make a difference to your life.

Update: The followup post can be found at 2byts

Who doesn’t love free stuff! Here is how you can get 50 free cards from Moo.com based on your Facebook Timeline. I just ordered mine.

Facebook Card from Moo.com

This is how it looks like and you can have your quotes, Facebook vanity URL & E-mail address printed in the back. If you are one of those people who constantly change their cover image, then can have cards printed with each of those cover images, max 50. Did I mention that this is free only for the first 200,000 people?

Here is how you get your Facebook Card.

Getting your Facebook Card

• Head over to https://www.facebook.com/~your-username~/info
• Scroll down to “Contact Info” and hover over the business card icon next to it. and click on Print Cards.
• Follow the instructions.

Remember, only the first 200,000 people will get the free card, so get it soon.

Update: They are giving out 5000 a day, so if you don’t get it today, try again tomorrow.

Update: (26th Jan ’12) I got the cards from Moo and they are really good. But I wish I had put more thought into the pictures and quotes.

Just like that, 2011 is over. What happened the past year? It went so fast I can’t believe a whole year went without making much of a mark in my life. This is what I got when I took stock of my life last year.

Blogging

Sometime in the beginning of the year, I vowed that I would post every day. That was a promise I could not keep, and to some extend didn’t want to keep. Out of the 37 posts that I did last year, only a handful of them were what I would consider as real post. Most of the time, I was writing something just because I had committed to do so. Some of these are worth maybe a tweet or maybe a wallpost, but not a blog post. And so I stopped the postaday campaign and reverted back to posting when I had something to post and when I got the time. Apparently I was too busy to write, or maybe I didn’t have as much to write about as I thought.

2012 was the year when I moved to paid hosting. I had used blogger and moved to WordPress when Dreamhost offered me 2 years hosting and domain name. It was a very generous offer but I moved to HostGator with a 3 year hosting plan. It was fun moving my database to a different server.

Work

I spend some time trying to figure out how certain infections work and how to remove it, but at the end of the year, I feel I had spent most of my time fighting a never-ending battle with Excel Sheets. There were so much more I should have done.

Hobbies

Reading:

I managed to read a few good books and some of them are… Theodore Boone by John Grisham, The Confession by John Grisham, Paths of Glory byJeffery Archer, Only Time Will Tell by Jeffery Archer, Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia by Jean Sasson, The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum, The Bourne Supremacy by Robert Ludlum.

Travelling:

From Ooty, Oct 2K11, posted by Sunil Joseph on 10/21/2011 (22 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

My Nikon D5000

Photography: I always wanted a DSLR camera and this year I managed to buy a Nikon D5000.

Education

Just because I am out of college doesn’t mean that I would stop learning. There are things that I learn at work, from friends, colleagues. I have learnt a few things on my own too. But when I look back, I should have learnt more.

Guess I know what I have to do this year…

Thinking

Most people feel that I don’t believe in God and I wouldn’t blame them. Truth is, I have never given anyone a reason to think otherwise. I don’t consider myself as an atheist, and I have often said I am agnostic. But that isn’t entirely true either.

I don’t believe God in the conventional sense. Let me break it down further.

Creator of the universe

Most religions consider their God to be the creator of all, whether it is visible or invisible, living or lifeless, observed or perceived phenomenon. But there seems to be a contradiction with such an assumption. Is God a singular entity that does not confirm to the universe? If we were to assume that to be true, then what is the source that created God or made God, God. If such a singular entity was created why can’t it happen again? If there is such a source, then is it bound by the constraints of our universe or is it beyond it?

The easy way out would be to call it a miracle, or an inexplicable phenomenon and leave it at that.

What I feel is, the entity we call God, is not the creator of the universe, but a part of the universe. It was not created by the universe, nor when the known universe was created. It was created by the first shred of intelligence in the universe. The intelligence that created it, gave it infinite powers and made it timeless.

Let me go off the tangent over here with some wild thoughts.

Logically, it would be the first intelligent being that resulted in the entity called God, but theoretically, the idea of God might still be unborn. Maybe human race would evolve to such an extent that the human mind would be able to create an entity that transcends all of time to embed itself into all intelligence.

We follow a linear time, and it is difficult to think of time as anything other than linear. What if you were suddenly released from the linear timeline. You will be able to know what happened/ is happening/will happen anywhere at any point in time. You would be able to see what happened at exactly 9 AM on 29th June, 1764 and 8 PM on 12th December, 3058 in New York, Beijing, and London as if you were looking right at it the very moment. You can call it immortal existence, or you can call it living all moments in one moment.

And I am back from that excursion.

As I was saying, it must have been the first shred of intelligence that created God. You might wonder whether I am trying to push an idea that human beings created God. Maybe, maybe not. We may call ourselves the first intelligent life form on Earth, but the universe seems to have an intelligence of its own. Not the human intelligence, but something on a wider scale. What other explanation could you give to such a huge system that works non-stop with hardly any glitch? The universe is like a mechanical time piece with each of its smaller part contributing to a near perfect outcome. System is intelligent enough to overcome the small imperfections. Clockwork!

The Big Bang is an accepted scientific theory, and I am going follow that in trying to understand how and when God manifested.

An Explosion that was felt all over, chaos, objects of various sizes and shapes rollicking in all possible directions, hitting against one another,  and then hurling further apart. There is no order in it, and there is no powerful, intelligent or divine intervention. But over time the dust settles, there is a purpose and trajectory in the motions of the objects. There is interaction between those objects. Is there some sort of communication? Once each of the objects gets a measure of the other, they settle into a pattern. Is that intelligence or a logical conclusion? Is there any difference between those two?

Logic is when the subject understands the how variables interact with one another under different circumstances and derive a possible patterns.

Isn’t that what happened after the Big Bang? If that is what happened, then wouldn’t that be the point when God manifested itself? Isn’t what happened manifestation God itself? Isn’t God the intelligence made order out of chaos?

It took billions of years for the universe to reach a state of equilibrium. The entire human history is a fraction of that and each human life is just a firefly flying in front of a sky filled with never ending stars.

This has been sitting in my draft for over 2 months and I forgot where I was going with this. To be continued when inspiration hits me again.

Here are some interesting news that I read online recently. Hope you like this tiny digest.

Siri For iPhone

Siri for iPhone

That is one of the hottest news in tech world. A virtual assistant that can not only talk back to you, but do it with a certain amount of (Artificial) Intelligence. That is the dream of every Geek.

Siri (pronounced /ˈsɪri/) is a personal assistant application for iOS. The application uses natural language processing to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions by delegating requests to an expanding set of web services. Siri claims that the software adapts to the user’s individual preferences over time and personalizes results, as well as accomplishing tasks such as making dinner reservations and reserving a cab.[1]

via Siri (software) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Unfortunately, I don’t have Apple, and I prefer my Android phone and after some digging I came up with a few interesting applications for Android, maybe not as good as Siri, but I am hoping one of them will develop to something that is really useful.

Iris (Siri in reverse) was created within 8 hours of Apple announcing Siri. Having generated a huge interest, this app could develop to something really really good.

Speaktoit is much more developed than Iris and can update your Facebook and Twitter account, or check in to a Foursquare location.

Jeannie (Voice Actions Plus) has both paid as well as free version. I would spend the small amount they ask for this great app, but I think I am going to wait.

Eva & Evan: Probably one of the most advanced of personal assistants on Android, and a just a little expensive. The free version is pretty good, but the drain on the battery made me think twice.

Get Paid For Your Citizen Journalism With Citizenside [Android & iPhone]

Image by Gauravonomics via Flickr

Do you regularly find yourself in the midst of all the action in your town? If you’re also taking great photos, capturing video footage or writing up quick explanations and putting them online, you’ve probably crossed the line into citizen journalism. Citizenside is designed to make it easy for photographers to submit newsworthy photos and videos and make them available for purchase by major news outlets. Citizenside does all the work finding buyers for your work – all you need to do is keep taking great photos and video footage.

via Get Paid For Your Citizen Journalism With Citizenside [Android & iPhone].

The Litigators | Bookreporter.com

The Litigators

Grisham’s novels are no longer just suspense-packed adventures. He now uses the pages of his bestsellers as a pulpit for commentary on contemporary legal issues. THE CONFESSION was a sermon against the death penalty, and THE APPEAL was a homily against the evil of an American legal system spending millions on the election of judges. The lecture subject of THE LITIGATORS is mass tort litigation, a system that makes millionaires out of lawyers on both sides of the legal battle but does little to compensate the actual victims. Readers are probably familiar with one of the cornerstones of this type of litigation: national appeals to potential plaintiffs through advertisements on television, radio or newspapers. In THE LITIGATORS, the culprit is Krayoxx, an anti-cholesterol drug that may be causing heart attacks and strokes.

via The Litigators | Bookreporter.com.

Disclaimer: The link on the image takes you to Amazon page for which I will be paid.   Codeacademy

Codeacademy

Codeacademy is a site you should be watching if you are interested in learning how to code. Right now the only course available is Javascript, but will change soon since they just received $2.5 million funding. Read more below.

Since it launched last August, the site has become what’s (probably) a global hit. It has users in more than 200 countries, only 30% of which are in the United States. The company has declined to share its current user count, but it had 200,000 within their first 72 hours, and I’ve heard whispers that they’re still doing very, very well.

via Codecademy Raises $2.5 Million To Teach You How To Code | TechCrunch.

Coming Soon – Propeller Last year, when Google tried to purchase the innovative content reader application Flipboard, they were greeted with a confident decline. With a $200 million valuation and over 4 million downloads so far, it’s clear why Flipboard thinks they can be plenty successful on their own. But that decision may come back to haunt them. Google told Flipboard that if the company didn’t sell now, Google would be coming back with a product of their own. That product is going to be called Propeller, and it should be launching next week.

via Google’s Flipboard clone, Propeller, launching next week | Android and Me.

Diaspora is not something that someone built after Google Plus. If anything, it has been around from the beginning of the year. Diaspora is a decentralized social network. It is not hosted on one server or on servers owned by a company like Google or Facebook.

If you want you can host it on your own server, and get your family to join, maybe a few friends too. If you happen to have a killer domain name, you might end up with thousands of users. The server version that you can install on your own server has been available from the beginning of the year and there are many servers available which will allow you to join Diaspora. However, the developers have made the platform available on their servers too.

So you already have Facebook and most probably have Google+, what can you get from Diaspora that you can’t from either of those or from Twitter? If you ask me, not much. The crowds are already flocking to Facebook or Google+, you are unlikely to find some long-lost friend, or an amazingly interesting person who is not on Twitter or Google+. The interface is quite similar to Google+, in fact almost identical. No, you are not going to get anything new from Diaspora, at least not in the near future.

Why am I on Diaspora if that is how I feel?

The idea of my content being on my own server, that is what I like about Diaspora. Diaspora have themselves said that they are not here to kill Facebook or Google+, so lets not argue about that. I would like to have a single gateway to the web. I should be able to upload a picture to one server and decide which social networks should have access to that image. In case someone at Facebook goes crazy and systematically wipes out all the data stored in their servers, I don’t want to lose my data. The web is all about information and it will remain that way for the foreseeable future. What Google, Facebook or any other service does is, give you a different way to send/share or create that data. Let them continue doing it, but I would like to have the data with me with right to display given to each of the service. Maybe, in the future, social networks will be able to communicate between each other, just like email does with different domains.

I am on Diaspora because I think this is the right way forward.

If you need an invite, just fill out the below form. Those who had selected “Any future invites” previously will be getting their invites soon.

Update (25^th September):I know that I haven’t been able to send invites for the last few days. The problem is at Diaspora end, all pending invites will be processed as soon as Diaspora fixes the issue.

Update (27th November): Due to some problem with the invitation system in Diaspora, I am closing down the invitation. This post will be updated with useful links that you can use to get Diaspora invitation shortly.